Skip to main content

On Deadlines

Do you remember your first high school term paper? Did you scramble at the end to get it done? Or in college? Pull an all-nighter?

Work on any big programming projects? Do those milestone dates and go-live dates keep the pressure on you to complete your work?

While the broadcast media has reporters standing in malls on the day after Thanksgiving to check the crowds, in fact for most retailers the weekend before Christmas is typically produces the biggest revenue.

The Post Office accomodates all those last minute tax filers by staying open until midnight April 15th. The public is sufficiently frightened of the IRS, fines, penalties, big brother, etc. that most all the returns are filed by that deadline. (Wesley Snipes notwithstanding).

What is the point of this you ask? It is time to change the debate from "Stay the Course" or "Cut and Run". It is time to set a deadline for withdrawal from Iraq. And one that will get attention. Sixty days or less. Enforce it by having the big military cargo plans start to line up on the runways.

If the Iraqis want to blow each other up in the market places, bomb each other in church, behead one another, well then, have at it. On the other hand, they've got sixty days to figure it out. No sissy two year plans, or one year plans. A year sounds like a long time off. Two months, or even six weeks would work for me, will focus your attention. In the U.S., W-2's, the key document most people need for their personal income tax, are issued by January 31st. Returns are due 75 days later.

Let's set a bold deadline and see if anyone rises to the occasion.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book Review: What Matters Now by Gary Hamel

Interview of Eric Schmidt by Gary Hamel at the MLab dinner tonight. Google's Marissa Mayer and Hal Varian also joined the open dialog about Google's culture and management style, from chaos to arrogance. The video just went up on YouTube. It's quite entertaining. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)Cover of The Future of ManagementMy list of must-read business writers continues to expand.Gary Hamel, however, author of What Matters Now, with the very long subtitle of How to Win in a World of Relentless Change, Ferocious Competition, and Unstoppable Innovation, has been on the list for quite some time.Continuing his thesis on the need for a new approach to management introduced in his prior book The Future of Management, Hamel calls for a complete rethinking of how enterprises are run.

Fundamental to his recommendation is that the practice of management is ossified in a command and control system that is now generations old and needs to be replaced with something that reflects an educat…
1 comment
Read more
Have you ever watched, or been involved in, a business failure, where, despite the best efforts of hardworking people, the business doesn’t survive? Scott Sonenshein lived through it, as he describes in the Introduction to his engrossing book Stretch.  (In some books, the reader can skip the intro- not this one; the introduction is a must-read part of the book.) He was hired by start-up Vividence in Silicon Valley at the very apex of the tech boom.  Despite prestige VC backers, top-tier hires and $50 million, Vividence didn’t make it. As his career continued, that experience led to an interest in why some well-funded operations don’t succeed, while other, more resource constrained, do. Peter Senge wrote about reinforcing cycles as part of his book The Fifth Discipline, which I consider one of the finest business books ever penned. In it, Senge describes the downward cycle that some companies fall into, and why it is so difficult to reverse. Sonenshein explores those cycles from diffe…
Post a Comment
Read more

The Acceleration of Asset Lite Business Models

The number of asset lite businesses is steadily increasing, as is the breadth of industries effected.  I first noticed them in the 1970’s, when Baron Hilton sold several flagship Hilton hotels while retaining management contracts that entitled Hilton Corporation to a share of revenue and earnings. Over the next two decades, Marriott Corp copied and then perfected the hotel management agreement business approach, coupling a Marriott franchise with a management agreement for any one of a growing stable of brands (Fairfield Inns, Courtyard by Marriott, Residence Inns, J.W. Marriott, etc. etc.), enabling absentee investor/owners.  It turns out, however, that asset lite business structures date back much earlier.
Franchises and Dealers Early versions of asset lite businesses include franchise and dealer organizations. Soft drink and beer distributors, auto dealers and tire and repair franchises date to the early nineteen hundreds, as manufacturers needed mass distribution. The dealers furn…
Post a Comment
Read more