Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

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Archives for August 2019

Why not an official day for small business owners?

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Labor Day began as an idea in the mind of a 19th-century labor leader – some say Matthew Maguire, others say Peter McGuire – who cared greatly for a very important segment of the marketplace, its workers. 

Regardless of paternity, such a day was first celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, when members of the CLU took an unpaid day off to demonstrate solidarity and, of course, have picnics. And ever since 1884, when President Grover Cleveland’s signature designated the first Monday in September as Labor Day, it’s been an official federal holiday.

In 1898, Samuel Gompers, then head of the American Federation of Labor, called Labor Day, “the day for which the toilers in past centuries looked forward, when their rights and their wrongs would be discussed…that the workers of our day may not only lay down their tools of labor for a holiday, but upon which they may touch shoulders in marching phalanx and feel the stronger for it.”

Alas, entrepreneurs aren’t organized like our union brethren – probably because we’re too busy making payroll. There is no single Small Business Day officially decreed by the U.S. Government. No Entrepreneur’s Day set aside to honor the few who do so much for so many; a day to picnic and party down in honor of the real heroes of the marketplace, small business owners.

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OHIP – The Small Business Owner’s Acronym

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The military has spawned many acronyms that are used as short references for official and strategic purposes. But life as a member of the five services (don’t forget the Coast Guard) has also inspired other syntax shortcuts that are less than official. Some of these cultural coinages are straight forward and handy, some are sweetly sarcastic (and some can’t be explained in polite company).

One prominent example of such a military culture acronym that’s always handy and sometimes used sarcastically is RHIP, which stands for, “Rank Has Its Privileges.” RHIP is the unofficial contraction for the accrual of a benefits hierarchy based on a person’s rank and applies to sergeants and generals alike. In his comedy “History of the World,” Mel Brooks’ character said it another way with, “It’s good to be the king.”

In that spirit, here’s an acronym I’ve coined for small business owners: OHIP, which stands for “Ownership Has Its Privileges.” Like RHIP, OHIP can be sarcastic and/or handy. Let’s look at a few business-ownership privileges, beginning with sarcastic applications and winding up with the handy.

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How to starve your business’s alligators

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Small business owners know all about that metaphorical business reptile – the ubiquitous alligator. They slither in from everywhere, continuously chomping holes in your business, tearing apart projects, taking a bite out of performance and eating away at momentum.

As the CEO of your business, if your enterprise is to survive, let alone flourish, you have to deal with each alligator that pops up.

To paraphrase Rudyard Kipling, your business’s sustainability and organizational effectiveness depends on the ability to keep your head when all around alligators are trying to take it off.

We know three things about these caustic crocodilians: 1) every small business has them; 2) they don’t go away on their own; 3) besides the operational intrusion, they take an emotional toll. And as good as we may get at dealing with the damage they can cause, we’re not usually as good at dealing with that emotional thing.

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It’s the Age of the Customer – the rules have changed

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For 10,000 years, customers refined their search for products and services down to a couple of semi-finalist sellers based almost entirely on the classic competitive value proposition: price, product, availability, service, etc. I’ve termed this period the Age of the Seller.

That was a nice trip down memory lane, wasn’t it?

The new prime differentiator today is no longer the competitive model, but rather a customer’s appraisal of how relevant a seller is to them, often before they even know if a seller is competitive. So, does this mean that sellers no longer have to be competitive?

Not at all – no one will pay you more for less. But consider three new marketplace truths:

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All hail the Quantum Leap Generation!

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It’s been more than a half-century since the advent of three legendary Digital Age markers: the printed circuit board, the first IBM mainframe, and Moore’s Law. So, by now it would be reasonable to presume that we analog humans would have our digital adoption corn flakes together.
Alas, 21st-century reality doesn’t bear out that reasonable assumption, as the dynamism of digital leverage has matched almost every sweet opportunity with a distasteful disruption, creating a lot of anxiety in the process.

Indeed, when the Fraternal Twins of Innovation – Disruption and Opportunity – set up shop in the Digital Age, they imposed transformation on every market participant. And since Disruption is the Twin that typically shows up first, those adjustments were likely brutal until Opportunity arrived, often fashionably late. Of course, we all know stories where the rude cousin of the Twins, Irrelevance, wrote too many tragic, final chapters.

Thankfully, on the Opportunity side of the Twins’ balance sheet is a list of unprecedented sweetness: awesome communication options; digital leverage at lightspeed; amassed information about everything from local to global to galactic, and all literally at our fingertips. And entrepreneurs benefited further from lower barriers to entry and competitive advantage from the incrementalization of digital leverage at prices we can afford. But the Twins only convert to sugar on the bottom line when we transform them into something customers will pay for today and tomorrow. There’s still much consternation over yesterday’s analog model being tomorrow’s digital fish wrapper.

Today, when I talk with business audiences about their level of anxiety from the urgency created by 21st-century innovation – these are all technology high-adopters, mind you – most admit to still being anxious about the awesome implications of the Digital Twins. Even balanced against the amazing benefits, humans continue to be unsettled about the unabating digital disturbances coming at them from all quadrants.

But, it must now be revealed that what’s causing all this anxiety isn’t technology: The Internet is just a new way to harness fire, and a computer is merely a fancy wheel. In truth, change itself has been an abiding part of the human experience since Adam and Eve. What’s really causing all this unsettledness, intimidation and anxiety is what I call the Sudden Increased Velocity of Change. No previous generation has ever experienced this level of innovation compression, and it’s doubtful any future generation’s innovation ramp will be as steep as ours has been.

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