Author: admin

How do YOU demotivate your employees?

There’s lots of training and literature on how to motivate employees, and yet the world is full of miserable, underperforming workers and clueless, overbearing bosses. So what if we turn the situation around and talk about how to DEmotivate employees. Then, if you don’t like the result you get, at least you have a fresh perspective to help achieve the opposite effect. Make sense?

Here’s my contribution. In one of my first “Suit” jobs, I worked for a guy named Mike who was president of a company that was named after a vineyard, but in actuality sold tools by mail. (A direct marketing company, in other words.) It was an environment full of tension and recriminations. One day there was some kind of fiasco involving a wrong price or an advertised item that wasn’t available and (being the advertising manager) I expressed concern. Mike reassured me: “This time it isn’t your fault.”

Brilliant! I was simultaneously exonerated and reminded of my ongoing incompetence, with this incident being the exception that proved the rule. That quote has stayed with me for 20 odd years and is certainly one of the reasons I’m a satisfied non-employee today.

How about you? How do you demotivate your employees? (Or, how have you been demotivated successfully yourself?)

the rumor

I was speaking with someone I respect and mentioned my favorite neighborhood Indian restaurant. His eyes widened and he proceeded to tell me the following story:

A couple, who happened to be African American of the same sex, sat down in the restaurant. They were well dressed and well behaved. When they had not been waited on in half an hour, and others had been, they asked for a menu but the waiter did not return. One of the women said to the other, “I guess we know what’s going on here…”

At this point the owner of the restaurant came to the table, began screaming at the women and eventually hit one of them. The police were called and they, too, screamed at the women who then departed without their food.

What do you think of this story? Before you answer, here is one more consideration. My friend didn’t actually witness any of this. It was told to him by his friend.

As I mentioned, I respect the anecdote-teller too much to assume he’s making it up. And I don’t think I could continue to eat in this wonderful restaurant if I knew they treated a portion of their clientele that way. But this is second-hand information…does that make a difference? Also, the described behavior of the owner is completely out of character… the person I’ve witnessed is a Sikh with immense dignity. And, the description of the cops and their behavior just doesn’t pass the sniff test (at least not here in San Francisco).

Wrestling with my moral conundrum… whether or not I should continue to give this establishment my business, based on imperfect and contradictory evidence of a reprehensible act… I related the whole story to my wife. She reminded me of something: NOBODY gets their order taken at the table. You go up to the counter, you order and get a number, then they bring the food when it’s ready.

I emailed my friend with this new information and asked him if it was possible his friend could be mistaken. He emailed back that woops, he had the name of the restaurant wrong!

I’m off for daal and samosas now….

On persuasive writing.

Before my most recent copywriting class, a prospective student sent me this email:

“Can you please let me know how applicable the course content will be to writing technical press releases, magazine articles, editorials  and advertisements. I am an engineer who recently moved into product marketing and am interested in improving my writing skills, but I’m not going to be doing any direct marketing campaigns.”

My response:

“Fair question… One of the principles I teach is that persuasive writing applies to any situation because you always need to convince people to do something. In some cases that “something” is simply getting them to read what you’ve written… So you want to translate described features into why this is important, and write in a way that’s easy for people to follow. I’ve had a number of people who don’t actually work in marketing take the course and no complaints that the material wasn’t relevant enough to invest a day in it. Also, it may help you to know that since we’re in San Jose many of the attendees work in tech and want to discuss tech writing challenges and I myself have a lot of tech writing experience. (Though the ones I share in the course are tech direct marketing, not straight technical writing.)”

She did end up registering, and I followed up and asked this morning how she liked it. She said:

“Yes thanks I really enjoyed the day. There are techniques I will be able to apply to my press releases. Also, it reconfirmed some of my personal beliefs about writing styles and what works. It’s good to learn what are the proven methods to capture an audience.”

How do YOU browse the web?

I don’t know how much data you need to be statistically significant, but I expect it would take my modest website awhile to get there in terms of analyzing who does what when they go browsing on www.otismaxwell.com. But I’ve noticed a very consistent pattern on the “examples” page where you can access samples of work. Virtually everyone who visits this page looks at the FIRST entry and the LAST entry but very little in between. It’s sort of like the P.S. in a direct mail letter, which research says is often the first thing read. Folks see what is at the top, what is at the bottom, then they form their judgment about this copywriter’s work.

What’s wrong with the post office?

I am the world’s biggest cheapskate, yet on more than one recent occasion I stepped out of a line at the Post Office and drove across town to UPS to ship the package for three times the cost with slower delivery. I see other people doing the same thing. They arrive, look at the line, shake their head and leave.

What’s wrong with the post office? Why can’t they just take our money and mail our stuff since that, after all, is that they’re there for?

Part of the problem is that the USPS has become the shipper of last resort. Nobody is simply buying stamps. Everybody is shipping a poorly wrapped package to some mysterious place, and fluid is leaking out, and they want insurance, and the clerk tells them to rewrap the package and get back in line. (At the HEAD of the line, so even if you’ve worked your way up to the front you’re not sure you really have.)

And that’s not even the biggest problem.

Everybody’s started using Priority Mail which seems sort of like blackmail, paying extra to insure your package will arrive when it’s supposed to. So, now the post office has started selling something called “Priority Bundles”. If you say you want to ship Priority, they ask you if you would like proof of delivery, or insurance, or a signature at extra cost. Of course, it takes a lot of time to explain these options and still more time to do the paperwork. And the line grows longer.

I can see the USPS’ logic: their clerks and customers are there anyway, so selling the extra services provides pure profit. But they disregarded the opportunity cost which is so great that other customers abandon the post office… perhaps permanently.

Much of my business depends on reliable of transmission of lots of mail, so this kind of thing makes me nervous. I’m reminded of what the new Postmaster General said in Canada a few years back when he was asked some question about direct mail advertising and reliability. I’m assuming this guy was a political appointee and had not read his briefing book. He said something to the effect of “that’s ridiculous, nobody would ever had a business that depended on the post office”. Right.

Aargh! My website is down.

My hosting company, Dreamhost, is running a signup special–a year’s hosting for $7.77–and there is grumbling on the user discussion boards about the fact they didn’t offer this to current customers. A few days ago I would have been among the grumblers, but then I got caught into a URL forwarding mess (still unresolved as of this moment) which makes the saving of a buck or two seem trivial.

Thus far the inability to reach my website has cost me a/$40-50 in paid-for clickthroughs from Overture and Google where people couldn’t access the link they had clicked on; b/an unknown amount of goodwill, certainly a few hundreds of dollars, from people who’ve clicked on the website since I put it up, came back, and now assume I’m dead or out of business. I’d pay many times $7.77 to undo the problem.

I went with Dreamhost because they got good reviews, were not the cheapest but were cheap, and because the founders went to Harvey Mudd, the place where I used to play video games late into the night when the coop down the hill at Pomona was closed. Though they haven’t been especially helpful, the current issue doesn’t seem to be their fault. (The domain www.otismaxwell.com is at another registrar which seems to have messed up the nameserver instructions and can’t fix it easily).

This reminds me of the early days of fax machines. Suddenly you had to have a fax number, and if the fax number which didn’t even exist last week was down (usually because the machine ran out of paper) it was a business emergency. This is the sort of aggravation that is compounded with one-person businesses because the same amount of person power is involved as for a much bigger company but it’s just you doing the work.

By the way, my backup site is still working: www.otismaxwell.dreamhost.com

No ‘Que for You…

Let’s start by agreeing that people who refer to certain fire-smoked meats as “‘Que” are like those who refer to mushrooms as “srooms”. The pet names come from an uneasy relationship with food, and they deserve to be ignored.

The bigger issue is that “barbecue” itself is a term with such broad application as to be useless. In Texas where I grew up, we’d say “I’m going to Sonny Bryan’s” rather than “I’m going to Sonny Bryan’s Barbecue” and never the generic “I’m going out for some barbecue”… a meaningless description since smoking, grilling and saucing styles varied tremendously from one establishment to another.

My all time favorites include Kreuz’s in Lockhart, Sonny Bryan’s in Dallas (original location only, near Parkland Hospital where they took JFK), and Sam’s in Fairfield. When I lived in LA I would try to swing by a place called “Mr. Jim’s” on Florence Blvd, near the epicenter of the LA Riots. They had a saying, “you need no teeth to eat Mr. Jim’s Beef.” I have teeth so can’t validate this, but it seems plausible.

Today I live in the Lower Haight, 100 feet from Memphis Minnie’s which was praised in Gourmet Magazine as the best barbecue place in the U.S. The brisket is good, as are the rib tips. But if you order a sandwich they will bring it to you on a sourdough roll (?!) with a set of distracting sauces. Instead, buy a pound and bring it home and eat on cheap white bread with dashes of Tabasco or Crystal hot sauce.

(Memphis Minnie’s also makes an excellent sour slaw, but you don’t have to get on the 71 bus to enjoy it. The San Francisco Chronicle printed the recipe on 7/2/03 and last time I checked it was archived.)

But my favorite place in San Francisco (especially now that Claypool’s is gone) is Rudy’s in the Bayview, on 3rd Street near Oakdale. Hours are somewhat unpredictable, so I try to stop by on my way home if I have meeting in Silicon Valley, rather than making a special trip, and I try not to go too hungry in case I’m disappointed.

I order the brisket sandwich with two sides: a mustardy potato salad and beans with the tangy, intriguingly scorched taste of dark molasses. Ask for “mixed” sauce… not too hot, not too mild… and you will be set for more than one meal.

“Print your boarding pass here!”

There are plenty of little internet shops that charge $2.50 for 15 minutes of access and 25 cents for a copy, but French Quarter Computer Services had the inspiration to bundle them to create a product. A textbook case of turning a service into a benefit that solves a simple but serious problem… you can now retrieve your boarding pass online in your hotel, but how do you get it onto paper to give to the airline? Their window sign stopped me in my tracks.

If you are ever in New Orleans, give these folks some business. They are at 824 Chartres, 504-525-4660.

Philip Claypool

I drove to the Marina district the other day to check out the rumor and, sad to say, it’s true: Claypool’s B-B-Q is gone. A lady who looked to be closing out the books said he was “out of town… working on a franchise to open in Southern California” but further investigation reveals he’s simply gone… off to the Napa Valley with no immediate plans for a new spot.

Which is a true shame. Because this Arkansaw boy (whose family ran the huge Claypool duck farm, incidentally) who specialized in Tennessee pulled pork established, in the last year, a true talent for Texas brisket to go with his wonderful Jack Daniels beans. And is a good and generous guy as well as (full disclosure) the original owner of my backyard barrel smoker.

Come back soon, Philip. In the meantime, all of us should head off to Amazon.com and buy one of his country albums or, at the very least, listen to a clip or two.