Wickenburg Business

New catering company shows off its stuff

Last night at the Town of Wickenburg's volunteer appreciation dinner Greg Calloway and his company Culinary Visions outdid themselves with food and presentation.  The dinner was fabulous and the beauty of the food table was a work of art.  Many people had seen my Sun article on the new business and took note that this was a new local business.  The quality of the food became the talk of the evening overshadowing the awards.  This was a great example of how a new business must make a good impression at start up.  It has to hit the ground running.  Your first impression could be your last impression if it is not good.  In this case, the first impression was great.

What is the truth?

Reading a piece in the Phoenix paper this morning made me realize how cautious we have to be when reading or listening to any news items.  It’s easy for any writer to slant news for a particular agenda.  “Mortgage foreclosures up ten times in the Phoenix market.” Very bad you say?  “Mortgage foreclosures much lower in Phoenix than the national average.” That sounds really good.  What’s the truth?

Both may be accurate but each certainly tells a different story.  The first is misleading because a couple of years ago the housing market was so hot that there were virtually no foreclosures in the Phoenix market.  Consequently, if you have 10 foreclosures, and then have 100 a couple of years later, the increase is a factor of ten but the actual number is still low and could represent a low total when compared to the rest of the country. 

What did we learn from this?  If we read something, we have to carefully read the whole story and sort out the truth.  Second, if we are in business we need to manage the news to make sure we tell a story with the best possible “spin.”

Incentive pay

Incentives, games, and incentive pay may be keys to morale and productivity. It has been said that an organization needs to accomplish only two things to be successful – to serve the customer and do it more efficiently. Most business owners know that to be true but to motivate employees to actually do it often seems to be impossible.

Last evening I watched a couple of episodes of an old Discovery Channel series, “Deadliest Catch.” It’s about king crab fishing in the Bearing Sea.  The connection between crab fishing and business?  Easy, note that the crews that work in commercial fishing share in the profit from the catch.  It’s that simple.  The pay is almost or completely incentive based. The crews take huge risk exposed to adverse elements and danger. They have the opportunity to make a lot of money for a short amount of unbelievably hard work. But if the boat doesn’t find crabs, the crew doesn’t make money.

Watching the crews work it’s easy to see that they are productive.  They work hard, they have great morale, and do what they are told.  There are no “union” coffee breaks and the captain doesn’t have to plead with the deck hands to get productivity.

Can we learn from this?  Many companies have adopted creative ways to incent workers for additional sales and cost savings.  Ideas go all the way from an incentive for selling a particularly profitable product or service all the way to providing employees with a significant share of the organization’s profit.