investiledysfunction

I’d previously co-authored an article (along with Sandeep Arora) that appeared in Business Finance Magazine titled “The House of Rolling Heads” in which we decried mindless cost cutting in favor of a more thoughtful approach which segmented expenses into strategic and non-strategic.

It seems Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence, agrees with us.  In the December 2008 issue of Inc Magazine, he comments,

“Instant, mindless cutting of R&D or training or salesforce travel in the face of a downturn is often counterproductive - or, rather, downright stupid.  Tough times are in fact golden opportunities to get the dro, and the longterm drop at that, on those who respond to bad news by panicky across-the-board slash and burn tactics and moves that de-motivate and alienate the workforce at exactly the wrong moment.”

I’d previously written and complimented Domino’s Pizza Tracker in a post entitled “Innovative Pizza Technology“.  While skeptical at first, I did find the Pizza Tracker to be a pretty useful little technology.

For the exact opposite in pizza technology, we have Papa John’s Order Online Widget which they’ve created for Facebook.  This technology marvel has 34 users so far.  As Caroline Waxler points out in her Nov 2008 Fast Company article entitled Social Misfits, the widget “lets customer place their order upto 21 days in advance of their preferred delivery date or pickup date and time.”  She goes onto to appropriately state this functionality is great if you just sit back and “Remember that time you got a pizza craving for two weeks from next Tuesday @ 7pm and couldn’t act on it?”

Building a Facebook, iPhone app or using Twitter doesn’t make you current or cool if you’re not doing anything to actually help you enhance your brand and ultimately sell more stuff.  These attempts are just as misguided as the me too social networks which were cropping up regularly but which the current market malaise seems to have squashed a bit.  Technology for technology’s sake, no matter how cool, is a bad investment.  These gizmos must help people actually do something they want to or might be interested in doing and ideally help them do it better.

Here’s the Papa John’s widget.  I’m going to get going now and order a pizza for Nov 23rd now.

The November 3, 2008 issue of Newsweek contained a letter from Mayor Michael Bloomberg to the President-Elect (and now Barack Obama).  This blog is strictly non-political and will remain that way, but Mr. Bloomberg offers a great commercial for portfolio management applied at the public sector level.

In his letter to the president, Bloomberg writes,

“In exchange for legislation creating an infrastructure bank that funds projects based strictly on merit, agree to invest more money on the infrastructure our country needs most.  And you should also demand more from the states and cities that get federal money: hold them accountable for building on time and on budget.  Call it a “New New Deal”: investing more, more wisely and getting bigger returns.”

I’m not sure there has been a better encapsulation of what portfolio management is all about.  I am pretty sure that government and citizens ultimately would benefit significantly from the approach Mayor Bloomberg is advocating.  Competition for funding and holding people accountable for results always yields good results.