Blog Yes & Know

Sweat the small stuff, sweat it all

Last week, I attended a roundtable of CEOs. And one CEO of a well-known and privately held firm provided a showcase of his upcoming rebranding effort. Interestingly, the consumer company …

Asking the right questions

Just finished a call with a prospective client, and it got me thinking about the questions we ask. The CEO was asking great questions about us, and how we work …

Genuine vs. Canned Customer Nurturing

Ever see those banners that say ‘we love our customers’. Do you ever believe them? Customer relationships are more than good intentions. It means setting the intention to pamper good …

Community is what we all seek

Just finished a book, Plainsong, that my stepdaughter lent me. It’s an interesting story of 2 brother farmers, a pregnant high-schooler, two young boys deserted by their mother, and so …

Hey what’s that in the corner?

I had another late night meeting last week, where my firm was involved in helping a company evaluate a decision to an upcoming product launch. Sorry for not being able …

Hey what's that in the corner?

I had another late night meeting last week, where my firm was involved in helping a company evaluate a decision to an upcoming product launch. Sorry for not being able …

Darn that Ben Franklin

I’ve been away from posting here lately. My company has a newsletter we publish and I was responsible for doing the intro copy to our collective work. [For those interested, …

Get a Going

If you hang around me a while, you might hear this very southern voice and phrase “Get a going” come out of my mouth. It usually generates a look because …

Help! Microsoft Is Targeting Our Business

Recently we’ve been hearing that more and more. The companies being targeted usually assume they’ve being singled out for special attention from Microsoft, but when you add up all the reports, a different picture emerges. Microsoft is targeting almost every major tech company, all at once. This is a fairly new behavior for Microsoft, and it means the rules of competing with Redmond have changed as well.
Not so many years ago, Microsoft was famous for its ability to focus on one unifying goal. The cry would go out: “Make Windows the dominant OS,” or “Make Internet Explorer the dominant browser,” and the company would rally around that cry.
Today, the threats to Microsoft are different. The famous “Internet Services Disruption” memo written last October by Microsoft CTO Ray Ozzie is notable because it attempted to focus the company against an entire sector of the tech industry, rather than against a single competitor or product.