Why The iPad Is Firing You From Your Job.

Eliminate the middleman. If you've ever reviewed a process, one of the first rules of management is to eliminate the superfluous and streamline. I've never seen a successful organization ADD layers of management or processes and succeed. The more people, approvals, and regulations all add time and money to any endeavor.

So the rationale for success in the 21st century is to be more agile, efficient, effective, nimble and inexpensive. Follow this simple progression — Memos to Email to Messaging or Film Camera to Digital Camera to iPhone. Faster, cheaper, more effective.

Take a look around — it's happening all over:

• Best Buy is Amazon's showroom. I can't remember the last time I bought something there.
• Have you walked into a Macy's, JC Penney, or even a Walmart lately? The employees HATE their job and each place is a mess.
• See a cash register at an Apple Store? They check you out with their iPhone. In fact, they have an app for your iPhone to allow you to check yourself out (I tried it this weekend - it works!).
• Bookstores are dying all around us. So are record stores.
• Expensive gyms are being consolidated into inexpensive monthly membership groups.
• Supermarkets have lost their way. There are some stand-outs (Shop-Rite, Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Aldi), but for the most part, they're getting TOO big.

What's happening? They are eliminating the middleman. Why buy shoes at a shoe store when I can use Zappos? Same price, huge selection, and they have my size. If they don't fit, I can send them back free. Aldi's supermarkets can run with 3-4 employees (I'm not kidding) - super efficient layout and structure.

What would happen if Stephen King decided to leave his publisher? He could write his book, hire his editor to edit the book, and distribute it via Amazon. He could also have it printed via a print-on-demand structure. And he can eliminate the middleman. And keep ALL the profits.

Look at what Radiohead did when they offered their new album digitally and allowed their fans to pay anything they wanted for the music. They averaged about $5 per album download and kept ALL the profits.

What would happen if a famous professor taught a course via webinar and charged $1000 a credit ($4K total) per student? And they offered it to anyone? How much would they make if 500 students attended? That's right . . . $2 million dollars. The logistics are easy - billing, registration and testing online - books can be purchased digitally. The professor can take questions and have a virtual whiteboard. All they have to do is teach ONE CLASS. Eliminate the middleman.

Kickstarter is a game changer. Check out Amanda Palmer. She bypassed the recording industry, requested $100K via Kickstarter and raised $624K to launch her new album (great video).

The iPad is a game changer. It is slowly killing huge areas of business, entertainment, and education. Textbooks, printing, television, DVD's, gaming, etc. Walk into an Apple Store and look around — I only saw 3 computers. The rest of the huge store was littered with iPads, iPhones, and MacBooks. Another one bites the dust.

My charge for you today: Is your position, vocation, or organization being slowly eliminated? Are you the middleman? It might not be happening now — but it might in the future.

You don't want to be the company who made slide rules when calculators were invented.

How To Deliver Incredibly Bad Service.

This weekend, my family and I ventured to a large, local shoe store to pick up a pair of shoes for me and sneakers for my two sons. Not to bore you with a long story, here's what happened:

1. Initially, no one approached us when we entered the store and began to look at shoes.
2. Until I tried on a pair (the demo pair was my size) a salesman ran up to us to ask us if we would like to purchase the shoes.
3. I asked the salesman (he's in his late 50's) about the relative merits of one shoe manufacturer over another — he had no clue. He also coughed like he had a bad disease. He followed (stalked) us all around the store — I got the feeling that he worked on commission and there was a 'territorial issue' with sales.
4. Our sons shoes were actually from a 'half-off' rack in the front — discontinued styles — but brand new sneakers. Unfortunately, we thought the $80 sneakers were $40, but they were really $160 marked down to $80 (we found out when we were checking out). Honestly, these were not $160 sneakers.
5. We left the store with a sour taste in our mouths and no shoes.

Guess what? I just made another purchase at one of my favorite companies, Zappos. Why are they my favorite? They exemplify good service, a large product selection, and reasonable prices. And no salespeople with tuberculosis.

I found the exact same shoes for me - for $5 less, free shipping, and no tax. My son's sneakers were also marked down to $52 from their original price of $80. Go figure.

At the bottom of Zappos' web page, something caught my eye: "As we grow as a company, it has become more and more important to explicitly define the core values from which we develop our culture, our brand, and our business strategies."

These are the ten core values that the Zappos family lives by:

1. Deliver WOW Through Service
2. Embrace and Drive Change
3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
5. Pursue Growth and Learning
6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
8. Do More With Less
9. Be Passionate and Determined
10. Be Humble

There aren't many companies I know that exemplify these values. Many of them have a hard time exemplifying just one of these values. My questions for you today:

What would your career be like if you came up with a list of YOUR own core values?

What would your company be like if you had your own list and published it?