Stop Selling Vanilla Ice Cream by Steve Van Remortel

I’m pretty sure this book was sent unsolicted to me by the author. That happens sometimes. A business consultant has a new book out, and it gets sent to me in the hopes that I’ll read it and hire the consultant for my association, or more likely, to speak at one of the conferences my association conducts.

This one came with a hand-written note from the author.

Eric,

I am confident Stop Selling Vanilla Ice Cream will bring tangible value to you, your association and its members. I look forward to the opportunity to meet with you.

Those who plan -- profit!

Steve Van Remortel

5/9/13

Well, sorry, Steve. Not only did it take me about six years to get around to reading the book you sent me, but now that I have, I’m pretty sure I won’t be asking you to speak at any of my association’s conferences.

That said, Steve’s hook is still a good one. He says it’s all about radically differentiating your company’s product or service from the “vanilla ice cream” served by your competitors. “Stop Selling Vanilla Ice Cream,” then, is a call-to-arms, to get you as the business owner to create and deliver a competence that creates a clear differentiation for your organization. And the only way to do that, he says, is to optimize the talent in your organization.

That’s the concept. Define your business in a way that clearly differentiates it from its competition, and then develop the people in your business so that they can most effectively deliver on that differentiation. And, like most business books I’ve read, that comes in the first ten pages.

The remaining 280 pages are then focused on a detailed process -- the Stop Selling Vanilla Ice Cream Process (which he never, ever abbreviates or refers to as anything else but the Stop Selling Vanilla Ice Cream process) -- which, frankly, includes just about every conceivable strategy-setting and/or management technique that we’ve all read a hundred times before.

He treats it very much like his system -- but in fact, it is everyone else’s system, cobbled together into one mega-system. Maybe that has some utility, but, frankly, I sometimes got lost in all the steps and exercises.

Here’s something that jumped out at me.

Finalize the values and beliefs statements of the organization.

This is from fairly early on (page 122 of 283), and appears on one of Steve’s chapter-ending lists of “Action Items to Complete the Process.” He did talk about the importance of values and belief statements in the aforementioned chapter, but only in a kind of passing way. When I saw this on the list of action items, I immediately asked myself: “Why? Why does Steve want me to do this? Will he have me use my values and belief statement as a filter for decisions that I will need to make later in the Stop Selling Vanilla Ice Cream process?”

I decided to keep my antennae up, looking for further mentions of values and belief statements. He has them in his system, but what purpose will he have them serve?

As far as I can tell, there is only one more mention, 28 pages later, in the context of one of the sample clients that Steve profiles in his book to better show Stop Selling Vanilla Ice Cream in operation.

Rashelle suggested action plans to “live” the values: Connecting Cultures would post the values and beliefs on the office walls and website and make them part of the orientation process for new employees. I captured those action plans and added them to the sixty or so already on the list, reminding the team of the importance of verbalizing the insights and action plans that pop into their head as we work our way through the process. It is extremely important to document all the action plans as we proceed through the process: at the end of the process we will use them to build the department plans.

“It’s important that these values and beliefs are presented for everyone to see,” I said. “One of the action plans I would suggest is determining how to communicate and use these values. This is an awesome start, and it provides us the opportunity to provide more role clarity for our team in executing the plan.” The team agreed with the values and beliefs statements Rashelle presented and accepted responsibility to see them carried out.

Is that it? Is that all you have to say about values, Steve? Have them, post them on your website, and use them in the orientation process for new employees? Oh, and write down on your action plan “determine how to communicate and use these values.”

That, truly, is an awesome start. Now, can we get back to Not Selling Vanilla Ice Cream?

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Dragons - Chapter 41 (DRAFT)

There was a staff meeting scheduled for early the next morning. Staff meetings had been planned for five-thirty every morning during the Annual Conference. It had been Mary’s idea.

“It’s an opportunity, Alan,” she had said to me, standing behind her gargantuan desk deep within her office, just hours before she was leaving for the airport and her flight to Miami. “Don’t pass it up.”

“An opportunity?” I said, suspicious at Mary’s very use of the word. Based on previous experience, it had the portends of ulterior motives. “An opportunity for what?”

“An opportunity to bring people together,” she said, exactly as if she thought such a thing was a good idea. “To help communicate instructions and information, and to remind everyone they’re all on the same team and need to support each other.”

Now I knew she was up to something. “Mary,” I said evenly. “You’ve been to the Annual Conference before. You know it pulls everybody in a thousand different directions. Exactly when are you supposed to bring everyone together?”

Mary was rummaging through her handbag, a sleek, aerodynamic beast that doubled as her briefcase. “First thing in the morning,” she said cavalierly, as if it didn't matter to her in the least, obviously more occupied with the items going in and coming out of her bag. Slinging it over her shoulder she looked me dead in the eye and said with all seriousness, “Start the day out right.”

Indeed. Needless to say, I was not surprised when Mary failed to show up for any of these daily meetings. Staff morale and team building was my responsibility, after all, communicated throughout the company not so much by Mary’s words but by her actions—like not showing up for staff meetings. Such trifles were beneath her; her valuable time much better spent on important things like molly-coddling Board members and their voracious egos. But although she exempted herself from these functions, dreadful consequences awaited anyone with equal temerity. It was a nice formula. It pretty much prevented me from ever succeeding.

I tried to keep the staff meeting the morning after Club NOW on as much of an even keel as possible. It was five-thirty in the morning and everyone staggered in as if in a fog, reflexively shielding their eyes from the harsh artificial sun of the fluorescent lights, and immediately grabbing a danish from the small continental breakfast or pouring themselves a cup of coffee from the ten-gallon thermos provided by the hotel catering department. As I waited for everyone to caffeine up my thoughts were helplessly occupied by the cruel mathematics of the situation. Two dozen danish at thirty-two dollars a dozen and ten gallons of coffee at seventy-five dollars a gallon. All of it with eight percent tax and delivered with a twenty-three percent service charge.

I kept it brief. There were about twenty of us, standing in a rough circle in the tiny, out-of-the-way meeting room we used as a staff office. I thanked them. I reminded them of the twenty-five breakfast sessions that would be starting in an hour, the big plenary session that would happen after that, and then the grand opening of the exhibit hall. I asked for and received updates from the people running the registration desk and overseeing our interactions with our exhibit decorator and AV provider. I thanked them again. And I told them to stay in contact over the walkie-talkies we had rented, to call for help when they needed it, and to respond when others called for help. Then I clapped my hands, and they broke away like a losing football team leaving the huddle. They left behind their empty coffee cups and plates of half-eaten pastries, piling them up on a catering tray as they filed out the door. It was over. In ten seconds there was no one left but Bethany and Gerald and Angie and me.

“What was that all about?” Gerald asked.

“What?” I said, not understanding his meaning.

“That,” Gerald said with emphasis. “That little pep talk you just gave at the end. Is that supposed to make people forget about what happened last night?”

I traded a glance with Bethany, and her eyes looked worried, like Gerald was likely to reveal some deep family secret. I looked at Angie and met her bullet stare with as much feigned ignorance as I could.

I decided not to deny that anything had happened. “How do you know about what happened last night?”

“Everyone knows about it,” Gerald said testily. “My god, Alan. Caroline’s not here this morning. Did you think her absence would go unnoticed? The rumor mill is in full force.”

“And what is it saying?”

“That he raped her.”

It was Angie, her gruff voice slicing through the bluster Gerald had been pumping into the air. Bethany gasped, her hand coming up to cover her mouth, and then an oppressive silence descended, deep enough to hear the conditioned air rolling through the ductwork above the ceiling.

“He didn’t rape her,” I said with as much confidence as I could muster. I knew he hadn’t, but in the face of Angie’s flat declaration, I couldn’t help but doubt even myself. Given who Wes was, and his checkered history with attractive young staff members, it was surprising how believable that rumor seemed.

“Then what did he do?” Gerald said immediately. “The staff has the right to know, especially the young women. He’s obviously done something inappropriate; maybe illegal. What’s being done to protect the others, to prevent him from doing it again?”

Maybe it was the look that came unconsciously to my face, the look that revealed the pale fluttering I suddenly felt in my belly.

“Oh, Alan,” Gerald said with aggrieved disappointment. “You haven’t done anything, have you? What happened? Did you think you could lock Caroline away in her hotel room for the rest of the conference and everything would just be fine?”

I found it really difficult to respond to that accusation. I didn’t want to admit he was right, even though I knew I would be hard pressed to prove anything else had been on my mind. I didn’t have a plan, and hadn’t realized I needed one until Gerald started pressing me to produce one.

“I’ve got a meeting to run here, Gerald.”

I thought I was being strong, but if I’d had some time to think about it, there probably wasn’t anything I could have said that would have been worse than that.

“Oh, Jesus, Alan. Fuck the goddamn meeting. Did anyone check on Caroline this morning? Are you sure she’s even still in that hotel room? Or that she isn’t lying in the bathtub with her wrists slit?”

“I did,” Bethany said quickly, rushing more to her own defense than to mine. “I stopped by before the staff meeting. I heard some water running so I called her on her cell phone. She said she was fine, but wasn’t up to facing people today.”

“Did you expect her to?”

“I wasn’t sure,” Bethany said. “Maybe.”

“Do you know what he did to her?”

“He didn’t rape her. To hear Caroline tell it, he just got a little fresh.”

Fresh. Another June Cleaver word. I smiled in spite of the circumstances.

“Do you think this is funny, Alan?”

“No, Gerald,” I said, turning overly serious. “I don’t think this is funny at all.”

“Does Mary know about this?”

Again, it was Angie, stabbing her words into the air like an assassin. If her use of the word ‘rape’ had charged the situation, her reference to ‘Mary’ had set it on fire.

I blanched. There was no other word for it.

“Oh, dear god, Alan. She doesn’t know? You didn’t think to tell her? She owns the fucking company—don’t you think she’d like a heads-up when one of her people is sexually harrassed?”

To be honest, it had never occurred to me, but I couldn’t very well admit that now. Hearing the shock and anger in Gerald’s voice, it was obvious that such a thing should have occurred to me, that as the most senior representative of the company present, such a thing should have been second nature to me, should have been as obvious as the need to get Caroline out of there.

“It was late,” I said lamely. “Too late to call her. I was planning to brief her this morning, as soon as I saw her.” And then, thinking I was clever, attempting to head the next question off at the pass, “This isn’t the kind of thing one wants to leave on someone’s voicemail.”

“Call her, Alan.” Gerald’s voice was stern, frustrated, I sensed, at having to school a supervisor less experienced than he. “She’s going to want to hear about this as soon as possible.”

“She’s at that VIP breakfast this morning,” I said, my tone unconsciously communicating that I knew she ordinarily wouldn’t want to be disturbed at such a function.

“Then go see her. And, whatever you do, don’t just bring her the problem. Bring her the solution.”

“What?”

“Oh, Christ, Alan, how old are you? A problem like this? If you bring it to her without a solution, she’s just going to blame you for it. Don’t you even know that? You have to come up with the solution. You have to tell her how you’re going to fix it before you even tell her what’s wrong. How’d you get as far as you have if you don’t even know that?”

I didn’t like his demeaning tone, even less so with Bethany and Angie standing there as silent witnesses, but he was right. If he hadn’t been so right I probably wouldn’t have allowed him to speak to me that way. But what he said was obviously right, so right that I couldn’t legitimately call him out for simply calling my attention to it. I’d look the even bigger fool than I already felt.

“You got real responsibilities here, Alan. And you’d better start seeing to them.”

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“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Image Source
http://lres.com/heres-why-amcs-need-to-pay-close-attention-to-looming-regulatory-changes/businessman-in-the-middle-of-a-labyrinth/

Memento Mori by Muriel Spark

Muriel Spark is apt to make her readers uncomfortable.

So begins the Editor’s Preface in the torn and battered paperback copy of Memento Mori that I picked up in a used book store in some forgotten city. Was it Wilmington, Delaware? It might have been.

They get the feeling that they, as well as her characters, are being sharply and relentlessly scrutinized, and this creates in them a mixed sense of involvement and unease. Indeed, her readers, like some of her reviewers, are never quite sure what Miss Spark is up to. Her novels and short stories are brief and unsentimental. The dialogue is overheard with something that is not quite malice, yet as her people speak, they give themselves away; they do this not in a phrase or even a chapter; it is a cumulative process. As one reviewer has remarked, it is not so much what she says that is fascinating; it is waiting for what she will say next. And all the time Miss Spark herself seems to stand by, cool, disinterested, and not in the least inclined to help either the character or the reader.

I’d have to admit that I had an opposite reaction to the text -- maybe because I had the benefit of reading the Editor’s Preface and being tipped off to her intentions. I knew exactly what Miss Spark was up to, and I did not find it in any way interesting.

The theme of Memento Mori (the Latin words mean “remember that thou must die”) is old age -- what British critic V. S. Pritchett calls, in his new introduction to this special edition, “the great suppressed and censored subject of contemporary society.” One reason writers avoid the subject of old age is that it makes them and their readers uncomfortable.

This, despite the fact that I began reading this book shortly after my father died -- indeed, started reading it on the airplane down to my now-widowed mother’s house in suburban Phoenix, and consumed a good chunk of it late at night as I lay in her guest bedroom reflecting back on a day of experiencing bittersweet memories and of making sterile funeral arrangements.

The cast of characters in the book are almost entirely elderly, and one by one they each start receiving a series of annoying prank phone calls, in which the caller cryptically and only says to them, “Remember you must die.”

Those telephone calls may create a common panic but they do nothing to purify or change the hearts and minds of the hearers. They go their set, seemingly predestined ways with the malice or jealousy or acquisitiveness -- or even goodness -- that not even the prospect of death can do much to alter.

And this, evidently, is what Miss Spark is “doing” in the novel.

Her oldsters may not have much nobility but they are indisputably human. And if the book does nothing else, it demonstrates how hard it is to approach tranquility at the end of a long life marked by the deceits, subterfuges and willful departures from ordinary decency that plague all men at all times.

That’s intriguing, and it should have struck me as doubly so at that particular moment in my own life -- as the universal that it describes would be as true about my own father as it must be about me and everyone else on the planet. But I think it’s worth noting that here I have quoted only what the editor has said about Miss Spark’s words, and none of Miss Spark’s words themselves. In many ways, if I were to try to summarize my reaction to the book, it would somehow hinge on this reality. What people say about the book is far more interesting than the book itself.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Dragons - Chapter 40 (DRAFT)

Going back inside Club NOW was like entering another world. Outside it was clear and fresh, the night shining bright with excitement, the hopeful sea air mixing seamlessly with the best expectations of the city. Inside it was dark and stale, the sense if not the sight of grime coating everything, hard people and soft furnishings alike.

I steeled myself and tried to enter this world with a clear sense of purpose—but I still didn’t know what I was facing or what I would be called on to do. Were there people to save? A dragon to slay? And what weapons did I have at my command? My wits? My fists? As my overactive mind sorted through the variety of possible scenarios I saw myself beating up on Wes, slamming my fist into his face and breaking his jaw, and kicking him in the back as he lay curled up on the floor, and I couldn’t decide if that was ridiculous or inevitable.

One of the bartenders caught my eye. Like the bouncer he was heavily muscled and wore a tight polo shirt. He looked at me with an inquisitive glance, his eyebrow lifting with three shaven stripes along its length, signaling that he was ready to answer a question or take a drink order, whichever I preferred.

“Where’s the karaoke bar?” I asked, loud enough to be heard over the dance music, and feeling like a gunslinger in one of those spaghetti westerns.

“Downstairs,” he said, his words coming to me more through the movement of his lips and the tilt of his head, the pulsating music drowning out his actual vocalizations. It added to the surrealism, like maybe Sergio Leone had hired an Italian extra to play the Cuban bartender in this scene. I turned in the direction he indicated, and I saw a wide flight of stairs heading down. It was flanked by two pillared banisters, each topped with a carved eagle, their hooked talons gripping the heavy oak, their wings extending wide, and their beaks and grim stares greeting anyone foolish enough to rise up out of the depths. A wooden sign, faded and in need of repainting, was hung crookedly on the lip of the upper floor directly over the stairs. It read, “Karaoke - 8 PM to close daily.”

About halfway down the stairs the bellowing Karaoke music from below met the pulsating dance music from above and again I felt suspended as if between two worlds. There was a landing up ahead, and a sharp turn to the left, and after that God only knew. The voices I heard were almost entirely female, and their raucousness conjured up in the mind a prurient image—a chorus line of deeply intoxicated women, arms wrapped around each other in bacchanalian excess, incoherently shouting the words to a pop anthem, and Wes Howard in the center of them all, prancing with them like a satyr, squeezing their flesh and rubbing his crotch against them whenever the opportunity presented itself.

I steeled myself against the distasteful possibility, looking as forward to confronting Wes and his coven as I did to removing dead mice from the traps I put out in the garage. As my foot touched the landing, however, I stopped—frozen in place by the braying and unmistakable laugh of Amy Crawford, howling out over the din like the shriek of a banshee.

Amy Crawford? My mind raced to keep up with the beating of my heart. Amy Crawford? Didn’t Don fire her? What the hell is she doing here in Miami Beach?

It didn’t take long for me to realize the answer to my own question. Just one heart-stopping plunge into a pit of understanding too deep ever to think of climbing out of again.

Jesus...Fucking...Christ. She actually is sleeping with Wes Howard.

I felt a slap on my shoulder and someone hustled past me on the stairs. “Hey, Alan,” a man’s voice said from somewhere outside my consciousness. “You coming down to join us? The ladies are really getting wild tonight.”

He didn’t wait for an answer. He was around the corner and down into the Karaoke den before I even knew who he was, and it wouldn’t be until much later that I would connect enough dots to realize it was Jeff Hatchler, treating me like the fraternity brother all men in that situation were, regardless of their position above or below you.

But I didn’t move for many more seconds, dots of far greater import connecting themselves in my head like a computer virus running amok in my synapses. She’s sleeping with Wes Howard. That’s why she’s here in Miami Beach. She’s probably staying with him at his hotel, going out drinking and getting it on every night. He’s middle aged, rich, and married, but his wife’s not here, and she’s single, aggressive, and hot as hell. What’s to stop them?

Certainly not me. It was less like I decided that and more like it had been decided for me. This was out of my league. I was a supervisor—with Susan and Michael gone, supervisor to probably half the women down there—but the worst I’d ever dealt with was people not showing up on time and taking things that didn’t belong to them from the office refrigerator. This was something entirely different. This was automatic termination. This was illegal. This was downright dangerous.

Not thinking that I would come to regret it, and not realizing just how scared I was, I turned around, hopped up the steps two at a time, and got my ass out of there.

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“Dragons” is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. For more information, go here.

This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.

Image Source
http://lres.com/heres-why-amcs-need-to-pay-close-attention-to-looming-regulatory-changes/businessman-in-the-middle-of-a-labyrinth/