"...keeping you great"
HEADLINES:
The Blind Side -- every one of us needs someone or something to watch our blind side -- and it was great to see the success of Michael Lewis's book, The Blind Side, as a movie this past weekend -- it appears to be on the way to $200 million. I'll leave the human side of the story for you to pick-up in the book or movie. It's the x-ray like statistics underpinning football that caught my attention when I first read the book two years ago; surprising stats that were as revealing as Lewis's treatise on baseball in his classic book Moneyball.
Highest Paid Position in Football -- what was so surprising was learning that the highest paid position in football was not the quarterback, running back, wide receiver, or line backer -- players that garner 99% of the attention -- but the rarely noticed offensive left tackle whose job it is to protect the blind side of the quarterback (for right handed passers). It's a position that requires a 300 pound human with "the body control of a ballerina" to borrow a phrase from the book -- and there are only a handful of humans on the planet that qualify! And if the left tackle doesn't do his job game in and game out, one blindsided sack (when most quarterbacks get hurt) can end the career of a quarterback and the season for a team. This is why the position is so critical.
Fat Wallet's Blind Side -- take 31 seconds and watch Tim Storm, CEO of Fat Wallet, one of the top bargain hunting websites (coupons and cash back deals perfect for the holidays!), discuss how he was almost blindsided in his business from not tracking some underlying metrics that had been in decline and were not made visible until he implemented Rhythm -- underlying metrics that if not corrected would have destroyed his company.
Avoid Being Blindsided -- this has been the tagline for our online dashboarding system called Rhythm since it was launched in 2008. For the fraction of the cost of a left tackle, the system is explicitly designed to watch your back -- and to keep the CEO and management team from being blindsided by declining metrics and missed priorities -- situations that can go unnoticed if you don't take proactive action to make them highly visible, which the system does. We're learning it's best for companies with over 50 employees, where keeping track of cascading priorities and metrics can become a spreadsheet and paperwork nightmare -- the kind of thing that can make critical metrics invisible quickly.
Dramatically Shorter Meetings -- and I also talked to Alex Mackay, CEO of DMTI, a leading location content provider, about his experience with Rhythm (part of my weekly customer calls). Besides concurring with Tim that it keeps all his performance data more "in sight, in mind," he was amazed at how the system dramatically shortens his weekly meetings since everything he needs to know about the status of priorities and the KPIs driving the company are at the team's fingertips. Equally important, the system is now the objective "bad guy" instead of Alex!
WARNING -- 300 Pound Gorilla -- the system is not for leaders queasy about holding people accountable or teams unwilling to face the brutal facts -- it will expose weaknesses fairly quickly and this can be very uncomfortable -- it's why I've seen management teams push back, but the results far outweigh this resistance. Rhythm is your 300 pound gorilla in the room, though you have control of its ballerina-like movements.
Patrick Thean, My Left Tackle -- ex-Oracle (enough said) who's built and sold three technology companies, is the force behind Rhythm -- a tool he uses to run Gazelles Systems as well. Patrick, thanks for all you've done for me and our company. And send him an email if interested in a demo patrick@gazelles.com or catch him at his last half-day "Four Decisions SuperGreen™ Execution" workshop of the year, December 8 in McLean, VA (suburb of Washington, DC).
HEADLINES:
The Blind Side -- every one of us needs someone or something to watch our blind side -- and it was great to see the success of Michael Lewis's book, The Blind Side, as a movie this past weekend -- it appears to be on the way to $200 million. I'll leave the human side of the story for you to pick-up in the book or movie. It's the x-ray like statistics underpinning football that caught my attention when I first read the book two years ago; surprising stats that were as revealing as Lewis's treatise on baseball in his classic book Moneyball.
Highest Paid Position in Football -- what was so surprising was learning that the highest paid position in football was not the quarterback, running back, wide receiver, or line backer -- players that garner 99% of the attention -- but the rarely noticed offensive left tackle whose job it is to protect the blind side of the quarterback (for right handed passers). It's a position that requires a 300 pound human with "the body control of a ballerina" to borrow a phrase from the book -- and there are only a handful of humans on the planet that qualify! And if the left tackle doesn't do his job game in and game out, one blindsided sack (when most quarterbacks get hurt) can end the career of a quarterback and the season for a team. This is why the position is so critical.
Fat Wallet's Blind Side -- take 31 seconds and watch Tim Storm, CEO of Fat Wallet, one of the top bargain hunting websites (coupons and cash back deals perfect for the holidays!), discuss how he was almost blindsided in his business from not tracking some underlying metrics that had been in decline and were not made visible until he implemented Rhythm -- underlying metrics that if not corrected would have destroyed his company.
Avoid Being Blindsided -- this has been the tagline for our online dashboarding system called Rhythm since it was launched in 2008. For the fraction of the cost of a left tackle, the system is explicitly designed to watch your back -- and to keep the CEO and management team from being blindsided by declining metrics and missed priorities -- situations that can go unnoticed if you don't take proactive action to make them highly visible, which the system does. We're learning it's best for companies with over 50 employees, where keeping track of cascading priorities and metrics can become a spreadsheet and paperwork nightmare -- the kind of thing that can make critical metrics invisible quickly.
Dramatically Shorter Meetings -- and I also talked to Alex Mackay, CEO of DMTI, a leading location content provider, about his experience with Rhythm (part of my weekly customer calls). Besides concurring with Tim that it keeps all his performance data more "in sight, in mind," he was amazed at how the system dramatically shortens his weekly meetings since everything he needs to know about the status of priorities and the KPIs driving the company are at the team's fingertips. Equally important, the system is now the objective "bad guy" instead of Alex!
WARNING -- 300 Pound Gorilla -- the system is not for leaders queasy about holding people accountable or teams unwilling to face the brutal facts -- it will expose weaknesses fairly quickly and this can be very uncomfortable -- it's why I've seen management teams push back, but the results far outweigh this resistance. Rhythm is your 300 pound gorilla in the room, though you have control of its ballerina-like movements.
Patrick Thean, My Left Tackle -- ex-Oracle (enough said) who's built and sold three technology companies, is the force behind Rhythm -- a tool he uses to run Gazelles Systems as well. Patrick, thanks for all you've done for me and our company. And send him an email if interested in a demo patrick@gazelles.com or catch him at his last half-day "Four Decisions SuperGreen™ Execution" workshop of the year, December 8 in McLean, VA (suburb of Washington, DC).