Dire Analytics

06/01/2017

"Winning" by Jack Welch with Suzy Welch has been selected as June's book of the month! Who's read it?? What are your thoughts?

Here is our take:

Jack Welch was the CEO of General Electric from 1981 to 2001. The company’s value rose 4,000% during his tenure at GE. This book is a summary of what he learned during his career and what companies should do to “win”.

The book covers a wide variety of topics; everything from hiring employees, to finding the job you love, to acquiring new businesses. The major theme that Jack really pushes in this book is having candor, regardless of the situation. When it comes to managing employees, Jack uses what he calls the 20-70-10 rule. This entails doing regular formal reviews with your employees, being candid about their performance whether it’s good or bad, and letting them know they are in the top 20%, the middle 70%, or the bottom 10% of employees. Then you adjust incentives (i.e. salary and responsibilities) accordingly. In Jack’s experience once of the most frustrating things is when some people are clearly outperforming others, yet everyone sees the same merit increase at the end of the year. People deserve to know exactly where they stand, and what they need to do to move forward. Be candid with your employees.

Another big topic Jack discusses is the typical budgeting process that businesses use. The method referred to here is when department heads procure numbers they think they can easily hit, meanwhile the board is pushing to stretch the departments in order to drive growth, and the business settles somewhere in between. The whole process of settling on some middle-ground number takes multiple days and lots of peoples’ time. What a waste right? Jack’s method scratches this whole concept. Instead of departments being incentivized on hitting their budget number, they should bonus based on performance versus previous year and against top competitors. Then the budget process turns into the whole business stretching to see what numbers they can hit, and the discussion between department heads and the board of directors becomes more about what resources departments will need rather than what the number should be. This puts everyone on the same team and puts the focus on winning.

We’ve just barely skimmed the surface of the topics in this book, but here are a couple other topics to think about before reading this book:
What is the one most important question to ask during the interview process?
What are the important factors to think about when acquiring a company?
When experimenting with a new business or product, how many resources do you give the managers of the project and how much do you stick your own neck on the line to promote the project?
What should you do when you lose a top performer in your company?
How do you know when you’ve found the right job and how do you advance in your career?
What is the right work life balance?

Thanks,
Dire Analytics

Jack Welch knows how to win. During his forty-year career at General Electric, he led the company to year-after-year success around the globe, in multiple...

05/29/2017

Looking for podcast recommendations! What is everyone listening to?

05/26/2017

Thrilled to be celebrating the marriage of one of our own tonight!! We wish nothing but the best for Grant and Amanda. Cheers, you two!

05/22/2017

A Squawk Box interview with Warrant Buffet (and later Charlie Munger and Bill Gates) after the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholders meeting in Omaha. Such topics as the state of the current economy, airlines, google, apple, and healthcare are discussed. Check it out!

CNBC's Becky Quick speak with billionaire investor Warren Buffett on CNBC's "Squawk Box" live from Omaha, Nebraska, following the Berkshire Hathaway Annual S...

05/10/2017

Which lessons have YOU already learned?

“Never go back.” What does that mean? From observations of successful people, clinical psychologist and author of Never Go Back: 10 Things You'll Never Do Again (Howard Books, June 2014), Dr. Henry Cloud has discovered certain “awakenings” that people have—in life and in business—that once they have...

05/06/2017

Join Dire Analytics for a monthly book review!
Each month we will read, review, and recommend a new book.

And the book of the month for May goes to....
"The Lean Startup" by Eric Ries

The Lean Startup at first appears to be geared towards only new businesses trying to get off the ground, but you can quickly see the methodologies Eric Ries is proposing can help every business looking to grow no matter where it’s at in its lifecycle. Here are the main takeaways from the book:

1. Develop an MVP – If you are trying to grow your business you’ll need to try new things, The Lean Startup recommends trying out the minimum viable product (MVP) of any new product, feature, marketing plan, etc. There are what Eric calls “early adopters” that are always looking to be the first ones to try a new product, you can use their feedback to work all the bugs and issues out of the product before selling to the rest of your niche population. Where businesses/people fall into a trap is they try to create a perfect product up front just to find out customers don’t even like the product, wasting all that time and money. Start with the basics, find out what’s working, adjust accordingly and move forward.

2. Validated Learning – Creating an MVP and testing with the early adopters doesn’t help you if you have no way of determining that customers are reacting positively or negatively. Don’t fall into the trap of simply looking at revenue month over month and making all your major business decisions from the numbers. Decide ahead of time what metrics you will use to determine success of a pilot, set up the experiment so you can analyze those metrics, then learn from the results. You may find there are parts of your product that customers really like and other parts they hate, the latter leads us into the idea of a pivot.

3. Time to Pivot – This concept is simple but can be hard to swallow. When you’ve set up your MVP and tested on the early adopters, perhaps adjusted several times and kept testing but still aren’t seeing the results, that’s when it’s time to pivot. The key here is to use everything you learned from your testing to change your product into something that people want. There is a great example about Intuit originally creating software for people to balance their checkbooks, after visiting customers and getting feedback they found most people were using the software for their small businesses. That’s when Intuit pivoted and created Quickbooks that is now a popular business accounting software.

Eric Ries goes into much further detail with great examples and covers more topics that are beyond the scope of this summary. We highly recommend this book to all entrepreneurs out there looking to grow their business.

Thanks,
Dire Analytics

The official website of all things Lean Startup presented by Eric Ries.

04/14/2017

Thrive, don't just survive.



https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/discover-your-why-never-lose-sight-richard-tidswell

I think it is important to remember what is important to us in life – both professionally and personally. What really drives you and gets you out of

04/14/2017

Had a poor week of performance at work? Sales slugging? Orders backing up? Short staffed?

Why not seek help from the professionals at Dire Analytics Llc. We are four experienced professionals in all facets of business, analytics and consulting. Put our knowledge and brains to use for you!

Interested in learning more?! Visit our website: www.DireAnalytics.com to learn more and set up your free initial consultation.

Our business is helping your business grow. Keeping up with your business requires diligence to daily operations and ongoing operating strategy.

02/22/2017

Keeping up with your business in today’s environment requires a diligence to your daily operations and your ongoing operating strategy. At Dire Analytics we are experts in the field of developing, improving, and implementing analytically based operating strategies. Whether you’re interested in cutting costs, improving efficiency in staffing, maximizing profitability through pricing, managing your inventory, or pivoting your business to new horizons.

Contact us today for more information!

01/27/2017

Keeping up with your business in today’s environment requires a diligence to your daily operations and your ongoing operating strategy. At Dire Analytics we are experts in the field of developing, improving, and implementing analytically based operating strategies that we can prove work. Whether you’re interested in cutting costs, improving efficiency in staffing, maximizing profitability through pricing, managing your inventory, or pivoting your business to new segments and horizons we have done it all.


We believe strongly that people and relationships matter. Our sales process is unlike anything you have ever seen – because our passion for your success begins the moment you contact us. Instead of signing documents and promising the world we promise a real live discussion about you and your company. After we have taken the time to learn about you and your business we will begin to develop a strategy where we believe there is room for improvement.


That means contacting us and having a discussion is free! We want you to feel comfortable and confident that you will get real results. We also understand that not every business is a fit for our analysis and we won’t waste your time or money if we don’t feel confident in making a difference.


So give us a call, send us a text, or shoot us an email and the world is yours!