Everything About Business Except The Bottom Line: FunnyBusiness

Hotels, Stores & Malls Facing Commercial Mortgage Crisis

The snowball just keeps getting bigger and bigger. The HuffingtonPost is reporting that the many businesses throughout the country --including malls and hotels--- are about to default on their mortgages.

We're probably in the first inning of the commercial mortgage problem," said Scott Tross, a real estate lawyer with Herrick Feinstein in New Jersey.

That's bad news for more than just property owners. When businesses go dark, employees lose jobs. Towns lose tax revenue. School budgets and social services feel the pinch.

Companies have survived plenty of downturns, but economists see this one playing out like never before. In the past, when businesses hit rough patches, owners negotiated with banks or refinanced their loans.

Trend Report: TV Anchors Told To Ditch Suits And Ties

Seems like the Tribune Co's Chief Innovation Officer, Lee Abrams, wants to innovate the way  TV anchors dress. Evidently he believes that losing the suit and tie can help the ratings.

In a memo to the TV stations Abrams wrote,

"What with the suits and ties. I'm not suggesting sloppy...but business casual...maybe even eccentric as the Crime expert could be in a Columbo styled rumpled sweater."

The new casual. look is part of Abrams innovative solution to "rethink the medium."and "blow-up underperforming stations."

His ideas include counting down stories and putting a timer to show viewers what's coming up (both of which are already staples of some cable news programs). He wants the news program to include a "Crime Center." Abrams also suggests going to one anchor to kill the "mindless happy talk" and interviewing people on the street.

Not that he is asking, but I think it's going to take more than a rumpled sweater, a timer, and a solo anchor to help what ails local news.
The problem, of course, is that  the local news is like driving a  Model T when they rest of us are driving Hybrids. Want to rethink the medium? Then really rethink about how you deliver news to your audiences. And here's a hint:
Go to where your audiences are.

Think mobile channels and online broadcasting.
Good Night and Good Luck.

GET CANNED: A Charitable/Networking Event For Food Shelves and Laid Off Workers

Imagine the assignment: you are planning an event to support and stock the shelves of  The Food Bank For New York City  but the people who would normally give generously have probably just lost their job.

What's an event planner to do?  Create the Get Canned Event --It's part charitable giving ( you have to bring food cans to attend), part networking ( there will career experts on hand) part fun.

If I were in New York City on December 16th, I wouldn't miss  this event.

Being laid off, or 'getting canned,' rarely has a positive side to it, but Get Canned embraces the theme - collecting canned goods in place of a cover charge, offering canned beers and gourmet hors d'oeuvres made from traditional canned foods, and sending guests home with eco-friendly gift bags with various goodies, such as pink slips.

Guests at Get Canned will have access to entertainment, social networking, career support for the unemployed, and potential applicants for the employer.

What Businesses Can Learn From Angelina Jolie

It's all about the brand. What makes Ms. Jolie's story worth corporate study is that she:
1. Succeeds in getting the message out that she wants to get out
2. Drastically changed a negative imagine into a saint-like image faster than you could say UN Ambassador

From The NY Times

While all celebrities seek to manipulate their public images to one degree or another, Ms. Jolie accomplishes it with a determination, a self-reliance and a degree of success that is particularly notable. The actress does not employ a publicist or an agent. The keys to her public image belong to her alone, although she does rely on her longtime manager, Geyer Kosinski, as a conduit.

[...]

...she cut a very different, wilder figure in Hollywood during her marriage to the actor Billy Bob Thornton. After their divorce in 2003, Us magazine asked Ms. Jolie if she would agree to an interview and be photographed. According to two people involved, she declined — but then offered the magazine another photo opportunity. Ms. Jolie informed it what time and place she would be publicly playing with Maddox, essentially creating a paparazzi shot. The resulting photo, the origin of which was not made public to Us readers, presented Ms. Jolie in a new light — a young mother unsuccessfully trying to have a private moment with her son.

Shifting the focus is one of Ms. Jolie’s best maneuvers, magazine editors and publicity executives say. When she became romantically involved with Mr. Pitt, for instance, she faced a public relations crisis — being portrayed in the tabloid press as a predator who stole Mr. Pitt from his wife, Jennifer Aniston.

This time, it was Ms. Jolie’s charity work that helped turn the story. Long interested in international humanitarian work, Ms. Jolie appeared in Pakistan, where she visited camps housing Afghan refugees, and even met with President Pervez Musharraf. Ms. Jolie and Mr. Pitt made a subsequent trip to Kashmir to bring attention to earthquake victims.

“Presto, they come out looking like serious people who have transformed a silly press obsession into a sincere attempt to help the needy,” said Michael Levine, a celebrity publicist and author.

The reason Ms. Jolie has been able to shift her brand imagine is that her audience believes in the new image. People believe that she loves being a mom even when the cameras aren't following her around.While she is working strategixally to make sure the media portrays her the way she wants ---(don't all businesses do that?)  She doesn't seem to be doing anything to contradict that portrait.

In other words, there is an authenticity to the message.

People believe that she is passionate about her charitable work- because there is real data to support that Ms. Jolie is not just talking about her charitable passions--there is data to show she is walking the talk.

Lessons Learned:
Be Nice
Do Good
Make sure your target audience knows you are nice and do good.

Burrowing: Bush Adminstration Transfers Political Appointees To Permanent Civil Service Jobs

Burrowing is a practice to make sure the out going administration has the ability to give the gift that keeps on giving. by placing key political appointees into permanent federal jobs.

Burrowing is not a strategy that the Bush administration concocted, evidently it has been a tradition for some time.

By way of the Huffingtonpost.com by way of The Washington Post

The personnel moves come as Bush administration officials are scrambling to cement in place policy and regulatory initiatives that touch on issues such as federal drinking-water standards, air quality at national parks, mountaintop mining and fisheries limits.

The practice of placing political appointees into permanent civil service posts before an administration ends is not new. In its last 12 months, the Clinton administration approved 47 such moves, including seven at the senior executive level. Federal employees with civil service status receive job protections that make it very difficult for managers to remove them.

[...]

Outside groups are trying to monitor these moves but are powerless to reverse them. Alex Bastani, a representative at the Labor Department for the American Federation of Government Employees, said it took months for that agency even to acknowledge that two of its Bush appointees, Carrie Snidar and Brad Mantel, had gotten civil service posts.

"They're trying to burrow into these career jobs, and we're very upset," Bastani said. "Everyone should have an opportunity to apply for these positions. And certainly career people who don't have partisan bent and have 10 or 15 years in their respective fields should have a shot at these positions."

While these new permanent employees have the potential to be showstoppers, at least one of the people commenting on the Washington Post demonstrates that when it comes to employee retention there are tried and true strategies to make people's lives so miserable the leave voluntarily. From Judy:

So, it's OK because Clinton "burrowed" 47 appointees?
OK.
Pay close attention to who these people are.
Issue extremely detailed orders reversing the policies they were set in place to preserve.
Micro-manage the living daylights out of them from above.
Don't let 'em write an e-mail that's not strictly examined and corrected first.
Should they dare to send out the original, write 'em up.
Every infraction of the new orders, write 'em up.
Tolerate no independent action whatsoever.
If they try, write 'em up.
Until they get sick of it.
They'll leave, or give sufficient reason for dismissal.
There's always a way.
Marginalize 'em; freeze 'em out from any role of responsibility.
This administration has no moral base whatsoever.
65 daze or so and counting ...

11/18/2008 2:41:35 AM

Chinese Parents Want To Sue Over Melamine Laced Dairy Scandal

It was not surprising to read that the Chinese government is strongly discouraging anyone from filing lawsuits in the melamine-laced dairy scandal.

What is surprising that the Chinese parents are saying..not so fast. From the International Herald

In the milk scandal, judges are trying to decide whether to accept three lawsuits that have been filed separately in the provinces of Gansu, Henan and Guangdong. The Gansu lawsuit is the only one to involve a dead child, Yi's son. Courts in Henan have already rejected two other cases, said Chang Boyang, a volunteer lawyer in Henan representing parents whose 1-year-old son died in early September.

Lawyers in Henan, a poor backward province, have faced more harassment from local officials than lawyers elsewhere. At least 20 of the lawyers who have dropped off the volunteer list are from Henan. On Sept. 27, officials from the province's judicial bureau, which administers the courts and legal licenses, met with lawyers to discourage them from taking the cases.

A working brief issued Oct. 7 by the national volunteer group said the officials had directly told the lawyers not to give any legal aid to the parents.

Chang said the pressure actually took a subtler form. Officials told the lawyers to report to the government if they decided to handle a milk case. The officials also reiterated rules mandating that the lawyers tell the government if they take any cases centered on incidents involving many people or delicate issues.

   

The Associated Press reports that despite estimates that 93,000 children became ill from the tainted milk, the official death count from the toxic milk is listed at three deaths. Chinese families believe this is the government's way of trying to discourage lawsuits.

Beijing's apparent reluctance to admit a higher toll is reinforcing perceptions that the authoritarian government cares more about tamping down criticism than helping families. Lawyers, doctors and reporters have said privately that authorities pressured them to not play up the human cost or efforts to get compensation from the government or Sanlu, the formula maker.

"It's hard to say how the government will handle this matter," said Zhang Xinkui, a Beijing-based lawyer amassing evidence of the contamination for a possible lawsuit. "There may be many children who perhaps died from drinking Sanlu powdered milk or perhaps from a different cause. But there's no system in place to find out."

In the weeks since Xiaokai's death, her father and his older brother have talked to lawyers and beseeched health officials, with no result.

While the families may not be successful in the Chinese legal system, that isn't stopping them from pursuing lawsuits elsewhere. Radio Free Asia reports that several families are planning to sue in Maryland - the home base of a subsidiary of a Chinese powder milk.

Lawyers And Layoffs - A Brave New World

Next Friday, Amanda* is going to take the day off from work to attend a job fair.  She won't be missed at work, she won't jeopardize any deadlines.  It's been a few weeks since she has done anything of significance.  Her work as a real estate and construction attorney has evaporated. 

During her thirty plus year career she has traveled the world, stayed in the best hotels and lived a life that only comes with job security.

Amanda, like thousands of other attorneys, are finding themselves in a place where they never envisioned themselves -- out on the street with little clue of how to turn their skills into non-legal jobs.

The New York Times  is talking about the shrinking legal field and in August the blog End of Esq launched which chronicles the collapse of the legal profession in America. There is not a lack of stories to tell.

Some Headlines from the blog:

White & Case: The Reaper Will See You Now

Tuesday Tip: Law Is No Longer a Career; It’s A Waste of Life

The Reaper Feasts at White and Case, McKee Nelson and Bell Boyd & Lloyd

 

There's more on the shrinking law field at my post on BlogHer.

*Amanda is a pseudonym.

Election Obsessed- Hard To Concentrate On Business

 

Tuesday cannot come fast enough. The election is very distracting. I'm obsessed.  Wonder if there are any surveys analyzing how much productivity is lost during an election cycle. I'm not talking about the time it takes to vote, I'm talking about the time people take talking, debating, and checking political blogs to see what is going on in real time.

I'm one of the 26 million or so who voted early. Had to. Out of town on business. Four years ago I was also out of town on business. After that experience I promised myself I would never try to facilitate any kind of session the day after an election.  That 2004 session was a disaster. Of the 14 people sitting in the room, 13 were devastated and there was one smiling face.

Instead of focusing on positioning, competition and features, the participants wanted to take breaks to listen to Kerry's concession speech just in case he was announcing that he was challenging the Ohio results. It was a long day.

 

If you are election obsessed as well, here is some recommended reading.It should cheer you up.
For poll data. fivethirtyeight.com
Satire: Christopher Buckley's column on the Daily Beast- check out November Surprises