Plan B Mindset

Printed in the Business Record, December 31, 2020 [ Link ] A video has been making its way around social media  putting the current coronavirus pandemic into perspective . It shows the world from the perspective of a person born in 1900. It calls out the hardship of four wars with millions killed, the loss of life from the flu pandemic, smallpox and polio, and the suffering of the Great Depression. At the end, the video states that we don’t have much to complain about today when our biggest challenge in this pandemic is watching Netflix from our couch and ordering from Amazon Prime. The message is to be grateful for what we have even in this time – a good message, for sure. But the video caused me to think about perspective a bit in the last few weeks. I was reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Pat Summitt, one of the all-time winningest coaches in women’s basketball. She said, "It is what it is, but it becomes what we make of it." While the video focused on the negativ...

28 Second Takeaway:   While the GPS is an extremely efficient tool in helping us get to where we are going, a good old paper map allows us to see the big picture. This is true in business as well. If we only rely on the technology and management tools, we’ll stay focused on the “blue line” rather than looking at the bigger opportunities that might be out there. On our driving trip across the country I have found myself in places I have never driven through – eastern Ohio, upstate New York and western Massachusetts. In these situations, I have found that Google Maps on my phone is an invaluable tool. No more squinting at a map, trying to understand if I should take I-77 or Ohio 8 to get to Canton (FYI: we are on the Russell family Hall of Fame tour – pro football in Canton, basketball in Springfield, MA, the Patriots HOF for Ben in Foxboro, and the Baseball HOF in Cooperstown). But there are situations where I have questioned the information I am getting from my phone...

If you are like me, you see a bunch of interesting thoughts, blogs and articles every day that you hope to get around to reading. Here’s my answer – 28 seconds of my learning around a topic I have been exploring. If you think the 28 seconds justify reading more, I believe you will get a “useful insight for your day.” Jeff 28 Seconds of Insight on Small Data: Quantifiable, personal data (what I have labeled Small Data) takes the generalization out of life – “I am pretty active…” is proven to not be accurate when you now understand exactly how inactive you are on a day that you sit in meetings from 8 am to 5 pm. What gets measured gets managed, especially for goal-oriented people. That is as true in personal endeavors as it is in professional endeavors Instant and immediate feedback changes behavior. People will play the “game” towards beneficial results (just as they will toward non-beneficial results). The Deeper Dive Into Small Data Big Data is the buzzword of the...

Summers are mostly consumed with baseball for my family. Both of my sons play Little League and also on local tournament teams. I have helped coach with several of their teams over the years. Baseball is an interesting game to me – it is a team sport and an individual sport at the same time. No teammate can really help the pitcher or batter, but yet defense is clearly dependent on a team. And when you are 10 or 12 years old it is pretty easy to put pressure on yourself on the pitcher’s mound or in the batter’s box. One of my favorite encouragements from coaches (of which I have done as well) is, "Have fun out there, kid." During one game this year I wondered what that actually meant. There is the pitcher, usually struggling, out there on the mound alone. The pressure of the moment has usually caused the player to over-think, aim the ball and most often, not have the best result. Moving from that point to “fun” is a hard place to get (if you don't think so, trying ...

I recently had the opportunity to travel to Brazil with other credit union leaders to study the SiCredi cooperative financial system (what we in the U.S. would call a credit union or credit union system). They have a federated model much like Quebec-based Desjardins caisse popular (also a credit union system) with a centralized “home office” that can build expertise and scale, but is owned and governed by individual financial cooperatives each with their own individual governance models. In a sense it is like a super-franchise – a common brand but the “franchisees” own the entire system rather than the home office. SiCredi's president is a gracious man named Ademar Schardong who was instrumental in building the federated model in the 1980s as Brazil re-emerged from the military dictatorship that ruled the country since the 1960s. He spent a great deal of time with our study group explaining how their model works and their impressive growth trajectory in the last decade...

Now is a great time if you are a sports fan – college football bowl games having just completed (except for this BCS thing that drags on until mid-January) plus the NFL playoffs and the college basketball conference season getting rolling. Over the years, I have had the great pleasure of listening to a number of college coaches from the state of Iowa talk about their teams and their approach to coaching. With each one of them, I ask one question, “What do you do between games to prepare your team for the next game?” It is a question about how a team moves from a win or a loss in its previous game to focus on the challenge ahead. I think it is a question that goes to preparation in any endeavor – sports, business, drama or music. Nick Saban made business journal and blog headlines this past summer after a Sports Illustrated article talked about how Alabama prepared for games (click  here  for article). This was followed up with a sister publication, CNN Money , ada...

From time to time I hear great stories from others that feel like they need to find their way out to the larger world. I wanted to share a post by April Schmaltz, who is our VP, Marketing at TMG Financial Services. I thought this was a great summary of her personal lessons learned at the Inc. 500 conference, where she picked up some hardware for us as one of the fastest growing private companies in America (shameless plug #1). Also, if this is your first time to PlanBPhilosophy.com , take a moment to view past posts and subscribe via email or RSS (shameless plug #2). Jeff ------- By April Schmaltz Sometimes life is a little bit like the teacher on the childhood Charlie Brown cartoon specials.  All you hear is noise.  Noise that sounds remarkably like “Wanh, wanh, wanh,wuh-wahn, wahn” especially if it doesn’t help you cross a task off your to-do list. But what if you take a moment to listen?  What do you hear?  What do you learn? I have pr...

I have had the great pleasure of spending some time with credit unions outside of the United States in the past few months. First, I was honored to speak at the World Credit Union Conference in Gdansk, Poland. I met many amazing leaders of credit unions throughout the world. This past week I spent time talking with three different groups of Irish credit unions about their challenges to gain scale and their hope to look to collaboration through credit union service organizations (CUSOs) to build a better future. Through these conversations I have met many great, dedicated people. However, I have noticed a trend that I think is not unique to credit unions. That trend is that people can often be sorted into those that are satisfied with the status quo and those that intolerant of that same status quo. This seems like a dramatic observation. To be clear, it is not like making a distinction between Nelson Mandela and those that protected apartheid in South Africa. While there ar...

I have been an admirer of Apple. Not a fanboy, but an admirer of their simplicity, design and consumer focus. So I read the Steve Jobs biography. I am not a big fan of those that quote Jobs incessantly, but I found the last bit of Isaccson's book riveting - when Jobs spoke in his own words. Many of you have read it. Some of you haven't gotten to the end. I have re-read this part about five times in the last few weeks. I thought I would share it. Jeff ----- My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. Everything else was secondary. Sure, it was great to make a profit, because that was what allowed you to make great products. But the products, not the profits, were the motivation. Sculley flipped these priorities to where the goal was to make money. It’s a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything: the people you hire, who gets promoted, what you discuss in meetings. Some people say, “Give the cu...

With my absence in writing for a couple of months, you could believe that I haven’t been thinking much about the ideas that I write about here at Plan B Philosophy. In reality, there is nothing further from the truth. I have so many ideas for blog posts that sometimes I don’t know where to start. But a few events during the past month have spurred me on to write. The event I want to focus on is multi-billion dollar trading loss by JP Morgan Chase and subject of risk. This loss happened as a result of a highly complicated trading scheme that had JP Morgan trying to mitigate risk in their portfolio by taking a bet on the European economy. The media was *shocked* by this event. It was seriously reported for about a week and JP Morgan Chase CEO, Jamie Dimon, testified in front of Congress. With an upcoming election and the political implications of the Volker Rule, we will probably hear about this for some time to come. Putting aside the actual issue, the media reaction amaze...