HINDSIGHT - WRITE SOMETHING WORTH READING ABOUT OR DO SOMETHING WORTH WRITING ABOUT
Thursday, September 28, 2017
Wednesday, September 27, 2017
New INC Magazine Blog Post by 1871 CEO Howard Tullman
The Profits Are at the Perimeter
Technologies such as 3D printing
and smart phones are allowing companies to push manufacturing and service
delivery right to their customers' doorstep. It's a shift that encompasses
everything from auto parts to family medicine.
CEO, 1871@tullman
In today's "right
now" economy where no one wants to wait for anything, we're seeing more
instances of businesses pushing the delivery of their products and services to
the perimeter-- to the edge, or what might be called the closest boundary to
the customer. This becomes infinitely easier as digitally-enabled consumers are
increasingly seeking virtual products and services rather than physical
objects. But it's an equally valuable and important idea for nearly every kind
of business as well. Delivering what I want, when I want it, and wherever I am
has always been the end game and as we continue to be more connected, our
desires in this regard and the competition to respond to them continue to
accelerate.
For consumers like you
and me, books, games and music are just the beginning. Why travel to see your
physician when your phone can bring the doctor to your digital door?
Telemedicine is on the way and it's becoming clearer and clearer that
time-wasting visits to the doc don't enhance the efficacy of the treatment in
the vast majority (more than 70%) of cases. Let your fingers and your phone do
the walking. You save time, avoid the costs of getting to and fro, and, in most
instances, get a better, faster and more satisfactory result. And, if you still
crave that human touch, (or you just sliced your finger open) urgent care
facilities with better hours, shorter lines, and customer-centric practitioners
are popping up right next to the nail salons and bank branches in your
neighborhood.
For businesses, the
potential savings in time and money are even greater because the embedded
transportation costs imposed by multiple parties throughout the supply chain
are a significant expense contributor to many products and services. My
favorite example is the cost of hundreds of different plastic and composite
parts at any car dealership or repair shop. The math is simply amazing; the
cost to ship and deliver these myriad parts is substantially more than the cost
of the parts themselves. If ever there was a clear and compelling use case for
distributed 3D printing-- on site and on demand-- with basically NO
transportation cost, this is it. And again, 3D printing is just the beginning
of the analysis. Inventory costs are also dramatically reduced, waiting times
for critical parts, which often delay the completion of many repairs, are
largely eliminated. Any mistakes in the parts specified and required can be
remedied in the moment rather than after delivery of the wrong pieces.
The compelling
combination of constant connectivity and complete mobility is also freeing up
large portions of the workforce previously constrained and/or tethered to
offices, desktops, and proprietary environments. Not only can examinations,
inspections, evaluations and even transactions now be done almost anywhere--in
the field, in the home, in the factory--but they can be supported, supplemented
and improved with resources, decision-support tools, and even visual
supervision from afar. Forms of augmented intelligence like these will change
our businesses far more quickly than artificial intelligence. Just as our
phones let us be better and smarter shoppers, they will increasingly help
almost every enabled worker perform tasks faster and more accurately.
Even more significantly, many businesses will push the process
and the "work" out to their customers at the edge and let them take
advantage of the same tools and systems to do a better job of serving their own
needs. We can expect to see increasing instances of streamlined self-service,
like JPMorgan Chase's mobile check deposit service, coming down the pipe. Every
major automobile insurer in the U.S. will quickly copy Allstate's example and
encourage insurance claimants to use their own phones to document and report
vehicle damage using variants of the technology developed years ago by a
Chicago-based startup--SnapSheet-- which is already working with a number of
the major insurers. (See Put Your New Business Idea to
the Three Questions Test.)
And so the question
for your business is pretty simple. How easy is it to do business with you? How
can you simplify the process-- push the tools out to the end user, speed up the
transactions-- and ultimately end up with far more happy campers as customers.
If you don't do it and do it now, you can be sure that someone else will.
Monday, September 25, 2017
Profile of 1871 CEO Howard Tullman
HOWARD
TULLMAN
CEO
1871
1871
How did your early life inform your leadership development?
When I
was 10 years old, I was a magician at children’s parties. The job was not about
doing the magic or handling the kids. It was about managing the parents,
because they all wanted to stand behind me and see how the trick was done.
Dealing with adults at that early age was a confidence builder for me. My
parents were also a very big influence. They were the most unconditionally
loving parents you could imagine. But my mother and father were also very
demanding—they wanted their kids to excel.
Tell us about the best leadership advice you've received.
When I
was a trial lawyer, I interviewed with the most successful lawyer in the
country at that time. I decided not to work for him, but he shared something
interesting with me. He said that life is generally divided into three buckets:
work, recreation, and family. He said that if you enjoy and love your work, if
you are doing things that are important not only to you but to other people
that you are creating jobs and futures for, then you can focus on work and
family. Your recreation is already covered in your work.
A
corollary to that observation is that you’ll always have more work but you only
have one family. Your work is what you do but it’s not who you are. It’s very
easy for an entrepreneur to get completely consumed with the idea that the
business is everything. Startups have a lot of hills and valleys. Having family
as a solid base makes it easier to take risks in other areas of your life.
Describe your leadership style.
I want
people to learn and get better. I believe in modeling the behavior that we
expect of our people and our companies. Talent and creativity are great but
ultimately what trumps both of those is pure hard work.
There
are two key leadership skills that everyone needs to learn: triage and
iteration. You spend every single day prioritizing your time. As Steve Jobs
used to say, “It’s what you say no to that’s most important.” Sometimes you
need a competent tyrant rather than a committee. I think that the truth only
hurts when it ought to. Good leaders are strong editors. [At 1871,] we don’t
think anything is ever perfect, but we are constantly trying to get closer and
closer to that point across all the vectors that affect our business.
What advice would you offer to emerging leaders?
A startup is very much
akin to a family in a lot of ways. You must make room for all kinds of people.
Entrepreneurs often fail because they think they’re going to hire people just
like them to build a business. You have to make room for different personalities, talents, and interests.
After work, some people want to just go home, some people want to go out
together and have a beer, and some people are halfway in-between. You can’t
have effective innovation without inclusion.
What leadership skills are essential in shepherding organizations
through significant transitions?
The
co-working space isn’t merely real estate, and I think a lot of places that
come to see us and try to steal the secret sauce don’t understand that. Our
structure creates an opportunity for everybody to smash into each other all the
time. When you’re building an ecosystem, these collisions make 1871 successful.
People get the definite feeling that they’re not alone; there’s a lot of
lateral learning happening in our space. Part one is to give people the tools
and the resources they need to increase their likelihood of success. Part two
is to only let the right people in. If you pick your inputs right, you are more
likely to have successful outputs.
Fast
Facts
Location
Chicago,
IL
Number of years in
current role
4
Number of employees
29
employees; supports 1,500 member entrepreneurs, representing 500 digital
startups in 145,000 square feet of space; leverages 80 public and private
partnerships to create an estimated 7,000 jobs
First job
Magician
at the age of 10 for neighborhood children’s parties
Most admired leaders
Jeff
Bezos of Amazon, Steve Jobs of Apple, Steve Case of AOL, former President Bill
Clinton
Friday, September 22, 2017
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