Subscribe to the Three Star Leadership Blog

The Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training.

Follow me on Twitter

For weekly tips and resources pointers, check Wally's Three Star Leadership Letter

Find out more about having Wally speak to your company or convention.

Find out more about Wally's coaching services.

Here are five choice articles from the business press to start off your work week. I'm pointing you to articles about re-gaining trust, bland business, social networks, the wisdom (?) of crowds, and Mario Batali.

From Business Week: The Great Trust Offensive
"Companies as diverse as McDonald's, Ford, and American Express are revamping their marketing to win back that most valuable of corporate assets."

Wally's Comment: Warren Buffett once referred to a company's reputation as a "moat" that protected it in tough times. He tries to buy companies that have a moat and sees the key job of management as widening the moat. Business Week's annual look at the "Best Global Brands" is about moats – creating them, widening them, and refilling them.

From the Economist: Taking flight
"Anti-business sentiment is not as pervasive as it once was, thanks to the Thatcher-Reagan revolution and the collapse of communism. Instead there is new irritation to contend with—the blandification of business."

Wally's Comment: The Economists sallies forth with the first of a new column to be called "Schumpeter." It's insightful. It's droll. It's a great read. Let's hope they keep it up.

From HBS Working Knowledge: Understanding Users of Social Networks"If the ongoing social networking revolution has you scratching your head and asking, "Why do people spend time on this?" and "How can my company benefit from the social network revolution?" you've got a lot in common with Harvard Business School professor Mikolaj Jan Piskorski."

Wally's Comment: What can we do with social networks of the technological kind? The fact is we don't know yet. We'll figure it out as we go, the same way we figured out that the phonograph was good for things besides recording the last words of the dying. Nevertheless, Professor Piskorski and others want to see around the corner of adoption and what the professor sees will help us find our way.

From Technology Review: Can You Trust Crowd Wisdom?
"Vassilis Kostakos, an assistant professor at the University of Madeira in Portugal and an adjunct assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), says that rating systems can tap into the "wisdom of the crowd" to offer useful insights, but they can also paint a distorted picture of a product if a small number of users do most of the voting."

Wally's Comment: Anyone who's followed the reader reviews on Amazon will not be surprised by this article. We've seen the books that have only been reviewed by people mentioned in them. We've noted the reviewers who never give less than a five star rating and wondered if they were paid. And we've gotten emails from authors offering us "premiums" for a positive review.

Just like common sense should have told us, the wisdom of the crowd depends a lot on the make-up of the crowd and the issue. Every system can be gamed and you can be sure that at least one person will try.

From the LA Times: Mario Batali loves the adrenaline rush of kitchen work
"The celebrity chef co-owns 15 restaurants including L.A.'s Pizzeria Mozza and Osteria Mozza, appears on the Food Network's 'Iron Chef America' and owns dozens of pairs of Crocs -- most of them orange."

Wally's Comment: I love Mario Batali. I love his enthusiasm for life and for what he does. If all you've seen is the Mario on TV cooking shows, with thinning red hair pulled back in a ponytail and orange Croc, explaining why cooks in a certain region of Italy cut a vegetable a certain way, you've only got part of the picture.

Mario is also a very savvy businessman. Like most good businesspeople, he can reduce business to its basics. Asked by an interviewer what they do at his restaurant, Po, Mario replied: "We buy food. We fix it up. And we sell it at a profit." It's a recipe for success in any business.

Wally's Working Supervisor's Support Kit is a collection of information and tools to help working supervisors do a better job. It's based on what Wally's learned in over twenty years of supervisory skills training. Click here to check it out.