Toellner Tells it

Salaries

The topic of salaries came up today.  I hate the talk of salaries.  I've always tried to live by the motto mentioned by Lester Wunderman in his book "Being Direct', in that I'd much rather work for free for the type of company that was doing good work where I had growth potential than get paid well at a dead-end job.

Unfortunately, not everyone has the luxury of working for free as they have kids to feed and houses to pay for.  Salary ends is important.  It's one of the few tangible things employers have to reward people for doing good work. "atta-boys" only go so far.

Talent follows money.  If you don't pay, talented people will have better options as to where to go. 

My advice: pay people enough to make the money isn't a deciding factor of where to go.  Then they can focus only on career growth and doing good work -- which is what you really want them focusing on.

60 Hours

That's how long it took for my city councilman's assistant to finally contact me about my note on all the buildings that I took pictures of that didnt' meet codes.  That's too long.

She at least saved face though by having strong knowledge of the situation -- although I'm not sure it's better or worse to be ignorant of the problem, or aware of the problem and doing nothing to help fix it. 

Creating Character

  There is a new trend in commercial building -- and it involves trying to build old-style downtowns in suburban neighborhoods.  These communities are inclusive communities, with 1st floor businesses, 2nd floor lofts, as well as housing and office space.  Here are some drawings of a recent effort that is going in in Leawood -- an upscale suburb of Kansas City.  The area will be built entirely of brick, and bring in local restaurants from existing locations.

I'm torn on the issue.  On one hand, it's nice that suburban planning may evolve from culd-e-sacs, strip malls and chain restaurants -- to even get to the point where people can go someplace, any place, without getting in their cars.  I'm also great with building brick buildings that may actually look good beyond the next 20 years.  However, what these communities are trying to build is the same character that exists in urban settings, in old, urban neighborhoods.  And is that something that can be built?  I'm skeptical that old-town charm can be manufactured.  I've yet to visit a new development like this that has that same feel.  The two that I've visited are nice enough, but the same fell isn't there -- maybe it's because they mostly have chain retail stores.  But it all feels manufactured to me.  Which then leads me to wonder why communities continue to spend millions of dollars to try to manufacture something that already exists, but is left to dilapidate in our inner-cities?

What Politicians could learn from Marketers

12 hours.

That's the maximum amount of time it should take to respond to email inquiries.  Great marketing companies,the kind that realize that people actually EXPECT two-way conversation, do it much faster than that.  Some almost instantly.  And when they do, it's a real person on the other end of the email line.

So why is it that when you email a politician, you almost never hear any response? 

Yesterday was a vacation day -- so, as it seems with all my days off recently, I spent the time to write my local politicians.  The kind folks in Lees Summit got a follow-up message regarding their dangerous dog ordinance and their meeting regarding a potential Pit Bull ban (which I don't think most on the committee favor, but there is one strong proponent of a ban).  The Kansas City, MO officials got a letter, and a powerpoint presentation with pictures of the homes in my neighborhood that are violating codes and driving down home prices (most are by slumlord rental owners).

I didn't expect a response yesterday.  It was a holiday afterall.

But it's 4:00 on Wednesday.  No one has responded.  Any marketer or salesperson who responded this slowly would, or at least should, expect their customers to go elsewhere.  Why would politicians not expect the same.  We live in a world of instant gratification, and instant communication.  If you aren't willing to have a dialogue with me, I'll send my business, or my vote, elsewhere.  Not sure why anyone would expect anything different.

Weird Meeting

Thursday night we went to the Lees Summit City council meeting -- there were two items on the agenda.  The first item was a proposal to ban smoking in public spaces -- the second was a potential ordinance to put restrictions on Pit Bulls in the city.

Strangely, one of the city council members was very much against the smoking ban -- he felt like it was not the council's place to infringe on the rights of smokers to smoke in public places.  Meanwhile, he was in FAVOR of putting restrictions on the types of dogs that people own in their own homes.

To put this perspective, 50,000 people die each year in the US due to effects from second hand smoke.  About 20 people die each year due to dog attacks (only about 4 of those are by Pit Bull type dogs). 

The more meetings I go to, the more I realize that the outcry against pit bull type dogs is based on two things:  1) the stereo-typing of these dogs, and the people who own them based only on the one every 3 years that makes it in the news and 2) the racism that people want to keep these types of owners out of their neighborhoods.

It's almost laughable. I joked last night that for the Independence meeting I should stand up and point out that their entire perception of who owns Pit Bulls is based on the ones that make it on tv (which are never the well behaved dogs) -- and if I used the same method to make my judgments about Independence, I'd assume that every person in Independence owns a meth lab. 

People laughed.

But the reality is that I just might say it tomorrow night....because frankly I think it will prove my point.  It's amazing that 40 years after the civil rights movement began we are still no further along in making educated decisions on things than we were back then.