Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

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Management Fundamentals

The New Regular: The Power of Post-Pandemic Brainstorming

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This is the 10th edition of my New Regular series, which is committed to helping Main Street businesses make the tenuous transition to a post-pandemic economy. You can catch normal in a bit-part on the revival of PBS’s “Downton Abbey.”

Whatever your business looks like going forward, it won’t be what you used to call normal. The easy part is that, as the recovery plays out over the next year, what you’re supposed to be doing will be revealed to you by customers. The hard part will be making that transition personally and organizationally. In other words, getting out of your own way.

Since it’s likely that how you serve customers this December will be drastically different from how you did it last December, there’s no better way to “get out of your own way” than through brainstorming.  This is a leadership practice that helps shed hidebound baggage – “Well, that’s how we’ve always done it” – your business can no longer afford in the New Regular.

Brainstorming has always been powerful. But now that we’ve been keelhauled by the coronavirus shutdown, it’s essential. Plus, it’s the best way to get organizational creative juices flowing. And creativity is the mother’s milk of a powerful tool without which you cannot brainstorm: adjectives.

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The New Regular: Beware The Compounding Effect

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This is the sixth edition of my “New Regular” series. No one’s seen hide nor hair of normal – old or new – since March 15.

Today we start with two quotes. The first is from a certified genius, and the second … not so much.

“Compound interest.”

Reputedly, that was Albert Einstein’s answer to the question, “What’s the most powerful force in the universe?”

And now a maxim coined by your humble correspondent, from years of experience operating a small business.

“When it starts going bad, it all goes bad.” This is not hyperbole or meant to be pessimistic, just sobering.

“The Compounding Effect” is my term for that maxim, and it, too, can be powerful. Except, unlike compound interest, not in a good way.

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The New Regular: Technology at the Speed of Your Humans

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This is the fifth installment of my New Regular series. No one’s seen “Normal” since COVID-19 took it out months ago.

Last week, we covered the concept of business fundamentals being neither Old School nor New School, but rather THE School.

To help restart your business in the New Regular of the post-pandemic economy, let’s continue that theme with two more THE School fundamentals. One is primal and one is, relatively speaking, a new kid on the fundamentals block. But both now as inextricably linked as they are completely different.

First, allow me to introduce two really smart dudes.

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The New Regular: Reboot to the Prime Fundamentals

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This is the fourth edition of my “New Regular” series, focusing on the post-pandemic marketplace. “Normal” curled up in a whimpering, fetal position four months ago.

At last, we’re squeezing through this coronavirus shutdown wormhole as, state-by-state, Americans break out of coronavirus hell to pursue our lives and work.

For many business owners, unlocking their doors to customers for the first time in weeks will feel like a bear digging out of hibernation into a world reset. Emerging into the sunlight, they’re anxious to find familiar – anything that looks like what they left.

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Your 2020 Attitude: Surviving is Winning

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In response to the coronavirus pandemic, I’ve written recently about Black Swans, maintaining perspective and anticipating government assistance.

Today, it’s all about attitude.

Not since the convergence of two deadly, cataclysmic events over a century ago – when a World War teamed-up with a Spanish Influenza pandemic – has there been a comparable time of pain, fear, and uncertainty as today. We’ve watched the novel coronavirus expand from a regional outbreak in China to a textbook pandemic, on its way to causing a global economic crisis.

When the Enter key was pushed to send my “Perspective” column exactly three weeks ago, less than 200 Americans had succumbed to COVID-19. In the blink of 21 days, that number is now over 16,000. No one was prepared for the sheer velocity of the human and financial toll as, incredibly, the coronavirus infected the planet. It’s now abundantly clear that this is one mean disease – tough and angry.

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Five marketplace truths about human customers

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Spend time in the marketplace and you’ll have many close encounters of the third kind with the most interesting species in all of nature: the human customer. And as we’ve learned, the nature of this being isn’t much different from other animals: All need to breathe, eat, drink, procreate and survive.

But there is something that clearly sets human customers apart from other fauna: sentience. And one of the manifestations of this self-awareness is that beyond what customers need, they’re the only lifeform on planet Earth that also wants. Your customers want things.

Every human who owns an automobile will need to buy new tires. But what they want is to keep the family safe without spending an entire Saturday shopping for tires. So, if you’re in the tire business, should you advertise that you sell tires, which are commodities that the Big Boxes can sell cheaper than your cost? Or should you develop, market and execute a customer loyalty program that combines peace-of-mind for the customer’s family with pick-up and delivery? How about this tagline:

“Let us help you keep your family safe when it’s time for new tires, and we’ll give you your Saturday back.”

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