I suppose it’s easy for me to talk about the pitfalls of being a public company given that there aren’t thousands of people lining up to buy shares in Jackson Fish Market (yet ). That said, I will judge anyway…

From the New York Times on the topic of Starbucks recent troubles:

“These people say that the company was so determined to meet its growth promises to Wall Street that it relaxed its standards for selecting new store locations.”

Basically, Starbucks had discipline in selecting store locations but in order to meet their growth targets they became more lax in their approach. The problem of course is that the planet may only support so many Starbucks outlets. And just because some executive set the number higher than that doesn’t mean the economics are suddenly going to change.

Why is it that so many business leaders feel that they have so much control over things? Why don’t they recognize that businesses have an organic size that’s dependent on many more factors than they personally control (or claim to control).

Of course, if CEOs had to admit how little control they have over the physics of their business environment and opportunities then they might have a difficult time justifying their huge payouts.

Instead, CEOs make poor judgments based on hope and the demands of Wall street. Starbucks basically shifted their disciplined decision making from being based on what the numbers told them about a location to what they hoped the numbers would say down the road. Hope doesn’t get people to buy more coffee.

And then there’s the question of growth:

“The potential rewards of rapid growth may have led Starbucks astray.”

It’s not that I am opposed to growth. I’m a fan. That said… there’s the kind of exponential growth that leaders of big business look for and Wall street rewards, and there’s horizontal growth that is unglamorous and doesn’t give the same return to investors. Exponential growth is a “never-ending” hockey stick type curve of new coffee shops being opened (as opposed to the 600 being closed right now by Starbucks). Horizontal growth is growing a solid business to its natural size, having it constantly renew itself to keep its customers and outpace inflation, and then using the proceeds to reward the employees and find new businesses to grow organically.

Mention that to Wall street and they’ll yawn.

I wonder what Jerry Yang thinks these days the upside is of having Wall Street’s priorities decide the fate of his company?

Video gaming has always been a hobby of mine, and though I don’t delve into the game world as much these days, I still get excited about the different news items that pop up from time to time.

I’m particularly keen on old games making a comeback on new systems, although I generally like the experience to stay the same as it was. I am sure there are video game purists on both sides of the argument as to how much needs to be fixed in a great game in order for the younger generation to enjoy it. I, for one, am all for keeping content relatively the same, when a game is updated. However, I still seem to get my hopes up when a game is announced to be revised or renewed, that there will be new characters or a brand spanking new story line, or any way I can milk more playing time from its delicious gaming udder.

That being said, yesterday, I was surprised to see this site: http://na.square-enix.com/ctds . It may seem familiar to some, and to others, it might look like the next big JFM app (it’s called Countdown to Vortex of Doom clock, and it’s one of Walter’s ideas). It actually heralds a renewal of one of the best games of all time: Chrono Trigger. Not a remake, but it has an extra dungeon and wireless multiplayer playability, which will make for some good game-milking later on this year when it comes out.

I’ve been a manager many times throughout my job history. There’s a trap that most managers fall into - the trap of control. Basically, you want to lead your organization and guide them to shared success. What better way to do that than to optimize them around a shared objective? After all, once everyone is on the same page with what you’re trying to accomplish, then you can all march in lockstep to making it happen. And as an added bonus, since you’re one person trying to manage many, there’s a convenience to having one simple goal. You can say the same thing to everyone.

Unfortunately, this approach only goes so far.

You can rally a team this way, you can achieve goals this way, you can even have fun this way… for a time. But, in my experience, it’s not sustainable.

Less obvious, but more effective (in my experience) is the bottoms up approach. This means that your team or company isn’t about the goal of maximizing shareholder value, delighting customers, earning profit, raising the stock price, etc. It means that your company exists primarily to keep its employees happy.

Blasphemy? Yes. The good kind.

How many companies can you think of right now where management is being very clear about the shared goals they all must achieve (a good thing… right?) and yet a significant chunk of the employees are somewhere between discontent and miserable?

Happy employees don’t want to leave a company. Happy employees know the company needs to be profitable to move forward. Happy employees know a company needs financial stability so they can get paid and keep their jobs. Happy employees are happy to work together cause they’re not worried about covering their ass or looking good for an employee review process that pits them against each other.

Given that there are only three shareholders at Jackson Fish who also happen to be the only full-time employees, it’s easy for us to talk about focusing on employee happiness as opposed to shareholder value. Our test will come someday. But we’re not without some current examples.

We’ve come across projects that would have been great for us as shareholders, but not great for us as employees who had to do the actual work. Guess what… we passed. The employees won out over the shareholders.

In the meantime, the folks at WholeFoods and The Container Store are saying the right things:

“Simultaneously we hit upon the philosophy that I think will be the dominant philosophy in business in the 21st century,” Mackey says. “It’s this principle that the purpose of business is not primarily to maximize shareholder value.” That’s a little like saying the purpose of religion isn’t to achieve salvation.

What are your thoughts?

JC Penney’s got a branded UGC site - Rock Your Look. Users can pick from a handful of songs and then make a karaoke video using their webcam. It’s also got a contests element (you marketing guys love contests) that’s connected with the Teen Choice awards. The site isn’t super novel but it’s not bad at all. There are a few things of note:

• the JC Penney branding is not shoved down your throat.
• They keep the site simple. It’s focused on one task and doesn’t distract you with a bunch of random crap.
• There are cute effects you can have on your karaoke video like a silhouette of the crowd in front of you. Neat.

All in all not bad. I wonder if they’ll let the site atrophy after the contest is over or if they’ll develop it further.

Now that we’ve corralled some interns here at JFM (they started 3 weeks ago and are off to the races on their project), we’re trying to shake loose the rust on some actual management skills. Not that there’s much “managing” ever going on around here.

That said, this writeup making fun of a U.S. News article on how to manage 20-somethings was super helpful. My favorite two examples of their “perspective” are:

• Food: Can we get some free food up in here?
• Shut Up: Dude, you are old and we already know how to do this stupid job, so please just shut up.

Is it wrong that I identify more with the blog post making fun than I do with the sage advice from U.S. News? Or would the 20-Somethings just tell me to stop kidding myself.

There’s no need to convince most marketing folks that a presence on the web is critical. They appear to understand that. There also appears to be no need to convince them that they need to stand out on the web. The problem comes in the conception of what it means to stand out.

Over and over again marketing professionals, ad agencies, creative folks are proposing sites/microsites/widgets/advergames that are fundamentally distractions. The more distracting the better. Today’s candidate is an adorably rendered hodgepodge of random stuff from our friends at State Farm - nowwhat.com. Some of the stuff is on message: one mini-game on driving and another on stealing expensive stuff from an apartment. But a bunch of the other stuff is just thrown in for kicks: music festival video updates, free mp3 downloads, and a bunch of other junk I could barely get through.

It’s like the people who conceived of and made this site sat around and came up with as many things as they could to jam in here in the hopes that someone might stick around for an extra 20 seconds.

On a positive note, we’re very fond of the whole “street scene motif” replete with partyers on the roof, quaint retail storefronts, and a park. We also think the level of branding (the tiny State Farm tab that pulls out in the bottom right corner) is understated yet powerful — just right.

Why do people think that their marketing presence on the web needs to be disposable? Do folks in the ad business only think six months out? Isn’t anyone actually building a brand for the long term? And if so, why not design your online experiences to be long term as well.

Here’s my proposal. Hey State Farm folks… hey DDB ad agency… hey OMD… hey all the folks that worked on this — how about a site that lets you catalog and document your valuables so that in case of theft you can present the list to your insurance company and get reimbursed. Not “out there” enough to compete with Geico? O.K. How about a site where you can store a treasured thought, photo, or memory for 100 years. Basically “ensure” that it remains long after your gone, accessible by your descendants. You would guarantee the site would continue to exist and remind people about the permanence, stability, and reassurance of working with State Farm. You really like the games on your site? Great. How about investing to make one of them actually good and worth playing more than once. The ninja game is at least cute. The driving game gets you all excited for 8-bit retro fun, but the controls are so unresponsive, and the hit detection so poor that the game is unplayable. How about one really good realistic (and even retro) driving game that puts real world obstacles in your way?

Ideas aren’t the issue. There are plenty more. Money isn’t the issue. I bet we could put together one of these sites for you to sponsor for a fraction of what you spent on nowwhat.com (which we’re sure cost you a pretty penny).

I was complaining to someone about nowwhat.com being another missed opportunity. They patiently explained to me that State Farm’s goal wasn’t to get you to come back over and over to the site, it was to get you to come once after you saw the ad. And that’s the crux of the issue.

The real problem is not the site. The real problem is that the people that built the site were thinking so small. When advertisers start to think about long term engagement (like Nike already has) then we’ll get a flood of great new apps on the web, and brand advertisers will reap the rewards for a fraction of their current budgets.

To be fair to nowwhat.com and the folks who put it together, at least they’re trying. I just believe it’s time to move beyond this type of experience. And clearly the folks who put the site together know how to make a lovely experience. They just need to conceive of one that can hold our interest for more than a couple of minutes. And likely, that won’t happen until the people with the budgets shift their perspective on what web marketing is really about.

P.S. And if you think that this short term thinking isn’t a disease that’s infecting the entire ad industry, nowwhat.com received an innovation award.

OK. Well, it wasn’t quite a vacation, but thanks to a lot of hard work by Walter and Jenny, our friends Karin and Debbie, more friends at Glyph, as well as Shola and all the folks on the Internet Explorer team at Microsoft as well as MSFT folks in Germany, France, and Poland, Carbon Grove is now available in multiple languages - French, German, Polish, and (still) English.

I’ll admit it’s been awhile since I’ve been close to the details of localizing software and let’s just say it was bracing. That said, we’re through the weeds, and the site is (hopefully) now even more broadly appealing.

Even cooler news is that the #1 question we get now has a great answer. The folks on the Internet Explorer team are now planting real trees for every virtual tree that reaches six weeks of maturity. So now Carbon Grove helps you reduce your carbon footprint with handy reminders, and the folks at Microsoft are pitching in by planting real trees as well. Cool.

Check it out.