Two subjects today.
Podolny Palooza Report
In 1993, I was the unemployed ex-owner of a failed investment banking firm
In 1994, I started as a single person consultant having moved from Maryland to New Mexico
In 1998, I recognized I had a unique methodology for dealing with my clients
In 2000, I decided I needed to really push myself and this business and find out what it could do
In 2003, I suddenly found myself experimenting with expansion in Atlanta, Denver, and Los Angeles
In 2007, I recognized the need to try and create a real organization
In 2009, we met for the second time as a group (7 of us representing New Mexico, Southern California, and Chicago) in what we affectionately call Podolny Palooza to discuss where we were going.
For the first time I was able to make a breakthroughs critical to our becoming a 'real' business. I'd established collaboration tools, a repository for standard documents, and wrote out detailed process descriptions for our critical consulting methodology.
We met for a day and a half. On Wed morning, we did introductions. The various geographic personnel don't know each other that well. Then I conducted the first real class we had on our base consulting methodology. This was all work. I had both breakfast and lunch brought in as we were working in he conference room of my attorney.
In the afternoon we held discussions about the various sub-sets of actual consulting we implement.
On Thursday, we got down to serious discussions of the future and the need to evolve from a single entrepreneur based model to one of multiple committed owners - a big change but one that can take us to new level.
We had lots of follow on work that will need to be done to make this happen.
Pretty cool.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Thursday, July 23, 2009
Palooza Over
Worked from 8 AM through 5, two hour break then a working dinner on Wed.
Worked from 8 AM through Noon and then a goodbye lunch today.
Had a pile of work to work on until just now (7 PM)
I'm beat.
Detail on the Palooza tomorrow.
Worked from 8 AM through Noon and then a goodbye lunch today.
Had a pile of work to work on until just now (7 PM)
I'm beat.
Detail on the Palooza tomorrow.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Mucho Going On
Got back from Chicago on Friday Noon - had three meetings that afternoon.
I'm getting ready for my 6 partners to come to ABQ for a day and a half of meetings. This should be pretty interesting. I've gone from being a solo practitioner in 2000 to starting experimenting with having associates work under my umbrella and creating a brand in 2003, to our first every 'group' meeting in 2007 where we were figuring what the heck we might be and who might be willing to be involved, through a year and a half of uncertainty punctuated by a variety of personal issues on the part of myself and others to a sudden focusing of efforts to be culminated by our meetings this week.
In preparation for this I have been writing pages and pages of process definition and instruction. This sounds so easy when you tell someone else to do it. My partners have been after me for years to do this. I finally made a psychological breakthrough a month or so ago with a culmination of me writing pages and pages of this stuff this weekend.
On top of all this I got news on Friday morning that my blind father's house in Connecticut was hit by lightening and suffered a severe fire. Naturally there was all kinds of commotion about was he OK and what was he going to do. My Dad is an incredibly tough, organized and talented person and has told us all to chill out until he has taken stock of where things are and what he wants to do.
I did hike on Saturday. No pictures. Only excitement was that I underestimated the hike by about a mile and a half (8 miles instead of 6.5). Oops, that never happens with me :)
I'm getting ready for my 6 partners to come to ABQ for a day and a half of meetings. This should be pretty interesting. I've gone from being a solo practitioner in 2000 to starting experimenting with having associates work under my umbrella and creating a brand in 2003, to our first every 'group' meeting in 2007 where we were figuring what the heck we might be and who might be willing to be involved, through a year and a half of uncertainty punctuated by a variety of personal issues on the part of myself and others to a sudden focusing of efforts to be culminated by our meetings this week.
In preparation for this I have been writing pages and pages of process definition and instruction. This sounds so easy when you tell someone else to do it. My partners have been after me for years to do this. I finally made a psychological breakthrough a month or so ago with a culmination of me writing pages and pages of this stuff this weekend.
On top of all this I got news on Friday morning that my blind father's house in Connecticut was hit by lightening and suffered a severe fire. Naturally there was all kinds of commotion about was he OK and what was he going to do. My Dad is an incredibly tough, organized and talented person and has told us all to chill out until he has taken stock of where things are and what he wants to do.
I did hike on Saturday. No pictures. Only excitement was that I underestimated the hike by about a mile and a half (8 miles instead of 6.5). Oops, that never happens with me :)
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Erie Cafe
Being the gourmand that I am I just love my business trips to Chicago. Not only do I get to see members of my family (daughter Motherrocker, son-in-law Armenian Deal Hound, and granddaughter Ms. Dukes), not only do I get to spend time with my partners and friends Lakeview Coffee Joe and Ricardo, but I get to sample from the incredible variety of quality eating experiences that make up Chicago. I love living in Albuquerque and wouldn't move but from an eating perspective it is strictly minor league.
Joe and Ricardo took me for dinner to a place called the Erie Cafe located downtown oddly enough on Erie Street (go figure).
My partners (as usual) browbeat me until I agreed to order a cocktail with them
LCJ has written twice about the food and service at Erie and I totally concur. He particularly expounded on the grilled calamarie appetizer with a sherry (I think) reduction sauce. Bread sopping up good!
Going to a classic steak house such as Erie Cafe is never going to be cheap. You expect great ingredients, well prepared and great service. Got all those. I was a little disappointed with the wine list. It was limited in selection and very pricey even for the steakhouse genre. However, there were a couple of relatively inexpensive wines. The first we tried, this malbec from Argentina, was very nice.
I had my salad with blue cheese dressing - very good.
It's hard to see but this is a classic dish called Chicken Vesuvio. It's hard to find a lot of times these days. The chicken and potatoes are roasted together. Very yummy.
Joe had shrimp de Jonghe. Excellent. A lot of time jumbo shrimp are tough, chewy and not flavorful. These had great flavor.
Ricardo was in the mood for restraint so he order the lamb chops. Ok in reality he ate two, gave me one, and took two home. They were the best of our dishes in my opinion.
We ended up ordering a second bottle of wine (and all you smarty pants out there we brought about 2/3rds of it home so no Joe is not a lush). Santa Cristina is a widely distributed, popularly priced Tuscan wine and the price on the menu was where it should be for a reasonable but not exhorbitant mark-up.
It was a very enjoyable meal. The typical steak and fish entrees are definitely not cheap. However, my chicken was about 40% less than the steaks and other chops as were the other chicken entrees. There was also a wide variety of pastas which were even less. If the pastas are as good as my chicken, one could definitely go here and enjoy the service and not break the bank.
Joe and Ricardo took me for dinner to a place called the Erie Cafe located downtown oddly enough on Erie Street (go figure).
My partners (as usual) browbeat me until I agreed to order a cocktail with them
Hey! Who put that picture of adorable granddaughter Ms. D riding her bike into a bush here?
LCJ has written twice about the food and service at Erie and I totally concur. He particularly expounded on the grilled calamarie appetizer with a sherry (I think) reduction sauce. Bread sopping up good!
Going to a classic steak house such as Erie Cafe is never going to be cheap. You expect great ingredients, well prepared and great service. Got all those. I was a little disappointed with the wine list. It was limited in selection and very pricey even for the steakhouse genre. However, there were a couple of relatively inexpensive wines. The first we tried, this malbec from Argentina, was very nice.
I had my salad with blue cheese dressing - very good.
It's hard to see but this is a classic dish called Chicken Vesuvio. It's hard to find a lot of times these days. The chicken and potatoes are roasted together. Very yummy.
Joe had shrimp de Jonghe. Excellent. A lot of time jumbo shrimp are tough, chewy and not flavorful. These had great flavor.
Ricardo was in the mood for restraint so he order the lamb chops. Ok in reality he ate two, gave me one, and took two home. They were the best of our dishes in my opinion.
We ended up ordering a second bottle of wine (and all you smarty pants out there we brought about 2/3rds of it home so no Joe is not a lush). Santa Cristina is a widely distributed, popularly priced Tuscan wine and the price on the menu was where it should be for a reasonable but not exhorbitant mark-up.
It was a very enjoyable meal. The typical steak and fish entrees are definitely not cheap. However, my chicken was about 40% less than the steaks and other chops as were the other chicken entrees. There was also a wide variety of pastas which were even less. If the pastas are as good as my chicken, one could definitely go here and enjoy the service and not break the bank.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Surviving Business Air Travel
This post is dedicated to my daughter Pulisha who for about the fourth time in a row was raked over the coals in the course of business travel as she documented in this post.
I've been traveling for business for over 3 decades. Some periods less, some scads. If you travel a lot you are going to run into problems...sooner or later. I've developed a list of rules that have held me in good stead and which I cleave unto without alteration.
Rule One - Never Check Your Bags
As in never, never, never, never. I mean never. And if I wasn't clear never. If you are flying for business (I don't mean a long international trip when you may not have a choice) in the U.S. you are rarely flying more than 3 to 5 days. Figure out how to get it all in the carry-on. With creativity, using wash and wear cloths, etc. It is doable. This eliminates one of the biggest problems of screwed up travel; the loss of bags. If you are on business you need your cloths. End of story. If you carry out it may be a pain but you always have your stuff. Plus if you get caught in flight cancellations it is much harder to get rebooked when you have baggage checked on a flight
Rule Two - Don't be Cheap, Concentrate Your Flying So You Get Frequent Flyer Status
This has nothing to do with gaining free flights. It has everything to do with preferential treatment. When flights start getting canceled and there are limited seats available, all airlines have a pecking order of they give those to and at the top of lists are their very frequent fliers. I can't tell you the number of times I've been at some airport disaster when the lines are beyond belief and passenger after passenger is being told that it will be days before they get rebooked and I find that I am already booked on a flight that leaves the next morning. Or my only option for getting the hell out of Dodge is a standby, there are 20 people ahead of me for 4 seats and I get one because my status puts me to the top of the list. You may pay more in your travel budget overall but how much to you value not getting stranded somewhere? Plus there are other benefits like preferential seating, boarding first (important if you are carrying on bags all the time), and upgrades which make business travel more bearable.
Rule Three - Study Your Airline's Patterns
One things start falling apart like when terrible weather hits and there is a cascade effect of cancellations, if you know which airlines fly where and when, you can often figure out your own route to freedom. I've done this when I've been cancelled in Chicago and because I know of a direct flight from Washington Dulles to Albuquerque, I've had them rebook me there even though it seems out of the way. Another time I was in LA where there are four different airports when I was notified that a flight I was taking was canceled. Knowing there were alternatives from the other airports, I was able to rebook from one of those.
Rule Four - Have All the Airline Numbers in Your Cell Phone
If you need to rebook because of any reason, don't just sit there in line. Make phone calls. Typically, I will be on the phone and in line at the same time (since in bad situation there may be a long wait on the phone). I book through whichever one I get through first.
Rule Five - Take Advantage of Airlines' Automated Messaging Services
I always sign up for these. I like getting them as text messages best. These inform you if a flight is running late or getting canceled. The earlier you get this information the more time you have to plot alternative strategies. We used this right after my kidney donation surgery. We were saying good by to my sister, taking our time, when I got a text about our flight from CT to DC being late. Looking at the rescheduled time, it was clear we would miss our connection. We got this with a number of hours to spare. We hightailed it to the airport where we were one of the few people to be able rebook to a Chicago flight that got us home ok.
Rule Six - Study the Weather and Escape Hubs that get Socked In
When a hub like Chicago, Dallas, Minneapolis, Atlanta, etc. goes through a major weather meltdown, get somewhere else. This happened to me last year in Chicago. I was on an evening flight back home. Huge thunderstorms and tornado warnings came through screwing things up. They were going to schedule me the next day on the same flight. I had been watching the weather and knew that this pattern was suppose to hold for days. I arranged to go to Denver early the next morning. Even though they couldn't guarantee me a seat until late that day from Denver to ABQ, I was able (using my status) to snatch up the earliest connection on standby.
Rule Seven - Avoid Flying Late in the Day if You Can
Things always get worse and get more backed up as the day goes on. Plus there are fewer alternatives for you to take if things get screwed up. And in the summer, thunderstorm activity, a major headache for air travel, is always worse as the day heats up.
Rule Eight - Carry Emergency Rations
Always have some nuts, bars, something that you can eat if you get trapped on a plane waiting to either take off or get back to a gate.
Hope this is helpful Pu. If you're going to be a road warrior, be armed like one :)
I've been traveling for business for over 3 decades. Some periods less, some scads. If you travel a lot you are going to run into problems...sooner or later. I've developed a list of rules that have held me in good stead and which I cleave unto without alteration.
Rule One - Never Check Your Bags
As in never, never, never, never. I mean never. And if I wasn't clear never. If you are flying for business (I don't mean a long international trip when you may not have a choice) in the U.S. you are rarely flying more than 3 to 5 days. Figure out how to get it all in the carry-on. With creativity, using wash and wear cloths, etc. It is doable. This eliminates one of the biggest problems of screwed up travel; the loss of bags. If you are on business you need your cloths. End of story. If you carry out it may be a pain but you always have your stuff. Plus if you get caught in flight cancellations it is much harder to get rebooked when you have baggage checked on a flight
Rule Two - Don't be Cheap, Concentrate Your Flying So You Get Frequent Flyer Status
This has nothing to do with gaining free flights. It has everything to do with preferential treatment. When flights start getting canceled and there are limited seats available, all airlines have a pecking order of they give those to and at the top of lists are their very frequent fliers. I can't tell you the number of times I've been at some airport disaster when the lines are beyond belief and passenger after passenger is being told that it will be days before they get rebooked and I find that I am already booked on a flight that leaves the next morning. Or my only option for getting the hell out of Dodge is a standby, there are 20 people ahead of me for 4 seats and I get one because my status puts me to the top of the list. You may pay more in your travel budget overall but how much to you value not getting stranded somewhere? Plus there are other benefits like preferential seating, boarding first (important if you are carrying on bags all the time), and upgrades which make business travel more bearable.
Rule Three - Study Your Airline's Patterns
One things start falling apart like when terrible weather hits and there is a cascade effect of cancellations, if you know which airlines fly where and when, you can often figure out your own route to freedom. I've done this when I've been cancelled in Chicago and because I know of a direct flight from Washington Dulles to Albuquerque, I've had them rebook me there even though it seems out of the way. Another time I was in LA where there are four different airports when I was notified that a flight I was taking was canceled. Knowing there were alternatives from the other airports, I was able to rebook from one of those.
Rule Four - Have All the Airline Numbers in Your Cell Phone
If you need to rebook because of any reason, don't just sit there in line. Make phone calls. Typically, I will be on the phone and in line at the same time (since in bad situation there may be a long wait on the phone). I book through whichever one I get through first.
Rule Five - Take Advantage of Airlines' Automated Messaging Services
I always sign up for these. I like getting them as text messages best. These inform you if a flight is running late or getting canceled. The earlier you get this information the more time you have to plot alternative strategies. We used this right after my kidney donation surgery. We were saying good by to my sister, taking our time, when I got a text about our flight from CT to DC being late. Looking at the rescheduled time, it was clear we would miss our connection. We got this with a number of hours to spare. We hightailed it to the airport where we were one of the few people to be able rebook to a Chicago flight that got us home ok.
Rule Six - Study the Weather and Escape Hubs that get Socked In
When a hub like Chicago, Dallas, Minneapolis, Atlanta, etc. goes through a major weather meltdown, get somewhere else. This happened to me last year in Chicago. I was on an evening flight back home. Huge thunderstorms and tornado warnings came through screwing things up. They were going to schedule me the next day on the same flight. I had been watching the weather and knew that this pattern was suppose to hold for days. I arranged to go to Denver early the next morning. Even though they couldn't guarantee me a seat until late that day from Denver to ABQ, I was able (using my status) to snatch up the earliest connection on standby.
Rule Seven - Avoid Flying Late in the Day if You Can
Things always get worse and get more backed up as the day goes on. Plus there are fewer alternatives for you to take if things get screwed up. And in the summer, thunderstorm activity, a major headache for air travel, is always worse as the day heats up.
Rule Eight - Carry Emergency Rations
Always have some nuts, bars, something that you can eat if you get trapped on a plane waiting to either take off or get back to a gate.
Hope this is helpful Pu. If you're going to be a road warrior, be armed like one :)
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