Tom Ridge's Bureaucratic Battlefield

Tom Ridge's Bureaucratic Battlefield coach outlet stores By Richard S. Dunham For four months, Tom Ridge has had the toughest job in the nation's capital, except perhaps that of President or coach of the Washington Redskins: protecting the U.S. from future terrorist attacks. Considering the scope of the challenge, the former Pennsylvania governor might as well change his name to Jim Phelps, the guy who headed up the Mission: Impossible team on television. Ridge's mission is far more real than Mr. Phelps' adventures, but it is nearly as impossible. So how's the former Army staff sergeant doing in commanding home-front defense? Pretty well, if you judge by the budget numbers that came out the first week of February. Spending on homeland security would nearly double, from $19.5 billion this year to $37.7 billion in fiscal 2003, under President Bush's budget proposal, unveiled Feb. 4. Indeed, thanks to Ridge, many federal agencies would receive even more money for security purposes than they originally requested from the White House. Beyond the dollars and cents, it has been a mixed bag for the 56-year-old Ridge. He has won some turf battles, lost some internal wars, and learned some painful lessons -- particularly in connection with the Administration's stumbling, disjointed response to the October anthrax scare. But he has grown in the job, maintains the President's steadfast support, and still might be the next Vice-President of the United States, if Dick Cheney decides to retire in 2004 and George Bush wins re-election. PASSION FOR STASIS.   The bottom line: Ridge ultimately will be judged on the Administration's success in thwarting potential terrorist attacks. There is no margin of error. Even a single slip-up would likely be seen as a catastrophic failure. Unlike the war in Afghanistan, the war against terrorism at home is harder to quantify. "It may be harder to define final victory on the home front," Ridge admitted in a Feb. 7 speech at the National Press Club. "There will be no surrender ceremony or V.T. Day, victory over terrorism." Even with the proposed funding boom, the homeland-security director faces serious challenges combating a shadowy enemy living among us, as well as bureaucratic in-fighting at the White House. With a skeleton staff, he is responsible for coordinating more than 40 federal agencies and funds dispersed across about 2,000 government accounts. As Ridge has learned painfully, it's not always possible to rein in feuding fiefdoms. "The passion with which people defend the status quo is stronger when the issue is turf than when it is dollars," says Bush budget director Mitch Daniels, a key Ridge ally. The result has been some internal setbacks for Ridge. A big one: coach outlet sale His goal of combining border-protection services into one agency was thwarted by turf-conscious administrators. Despite the short-term defeat, Ridge says he'll keep on fighting for something he thinks would improve public safety and management efficiency. "We've got everybody talking about it," he says. While he hasn't won every internal battle, Ridge boasts that "folks know that I'm around." 2008 CONTENDER?   That may be true coach purses outlet inside the Beltway, but it's not yet the case in Kalamazoo. A Jan. 30-31 Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll found that 43% of Americans don't know enough coach factory outlet online about Ridge to evaluate his performance. Still, of those familiar with his work, 82% approve of the job he is doing. Those numbers are being carefully monitored by the Pundit Elite, which is watching Ridge's every step to see if he has the right stuff for the No. 2 job on the GOP ticket in 2004 -- or even possibly the top spot in 2008. There's a reason Ridge has taken a low profile in recent months. In his early days on the job, he was unexpectedly thrust into the spotlight when anthrax was sent through the mail to a handful of leading political figures and journalists. Ridge's responses to press inquiries were incomplete and occasionally incorrect. He now acknowledges he made "some decisions predicated on limited information." He's prepared to respond more effectively the next time around -- although he hopes there never is another next time. PEACEMAKER NEEDED.   coach outlet sale You can expect Ridge to be more visible in coming months. On Feb. 5, he and the President flew to Pittsburgh to stress the importance of preparing for a bioterrorist attack. Among Ridge's other top priorities: cybersecurity, border security, coach purses outlet and grants to states and localities to help them prepare to respond to any terrorist attack. That's a start. But for the rest of Ridge's first year to be successful, he'll have to do better at ending the turf wars between federal agencies involved in homeland-security issues. It's what Ridge calls "tearing down the stovepipes." The home-front commander sees the President's budget as "a good start" in protecting Americans from terrorists, foreign and domestic. That's true. But, as Ridge is quick to admit, it's only a start. Dunham is a White House correspondent for BusinessWeek's Washington bureau. Follow his views every Monday in Washington Watch, only on BusinessWeek Online Edited by Beth Belton Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal. LEARN MORE

The Management Team - Guest Post From Phil Sugar

The Management Team - Guest Post From Phil Sugar Fred Wilson, A VC coach outlet stores Feb. 6, 2012, 5:19 AM 115 facebook linkedin twitter email coachoutletonline print Fred Wilson Fred Wilson is a VC and principal of Union Square Ventures. He also writes the influential A VC Recent Posts coach factory outlet online The elephant chart Understanding VCs In defense of bubbles Continuing our MBA Mondays series on The Managemet Team, we are deep into the guest post phase. This guest post comes from AVC regular Phil Sugar. I've never met Phil, but his comments here at AVC tell me that he's a very experienced entrepreneur manager. And so I reached out to him to ask for a guest post. And he responded with this post below. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Best Friends, Buddies, and Co-Workers Since there is no way I am going to be more coach purse outlet insightful than Matt or JLM about management process, I am going to go through three early stages of company growth and describe some of the management challenges I’ve faced at each.  As Fred pointed out in his original post, a company’s management evolves.  This is purely environmental, it’s going to happen and you are much better off knowing what to expect.   At a very early stage: a couple of gals in a garage, nothing gets done unless somebody goes out and does something.  No customers are going to call, no partners are going to want to meet, no bankers, lawyers are going to reach out.  Everything is outward.  Nothing happens unless you do something and frankly anybody calling in to you is probably suspect but that’s another post.  You know exactly what each person is doing because there are so few of you. As the company becomes a leader in its market with a hundred or so employees, everything is incoming.  Everybody wants a piece of your time, everybody is calling.  You have departments with managers that are larger than your original company.  Managing is critical because of the leverage; the difference between a dozen well managed people in a department achieving goals and a dozen people going in different directions is huge, people specialize in very distinct areas. It is a gut wrenching challenge to go from one to another.  Once you decide to make the leap from one stage to the next, going back is excruciatingly painful if not fatal.  You can’t hope to meander from one stage to the next because it is a chasm.  It doesn’t mean you have to go to the next stage, many companies are better off not leaping, they are a “lifestyle business” serving a small market, but you better know, not hope the market is big enough to go to the next stage.  Once you scramble these eggs it’s tough to go back, the producers will burn out and the management layer will try to hang on for dear life when you’re caught in the middle. I’ll start with three management philosophies that stay constant for me.  Understand that once a company gets past 100 or so employees, my skills don’t apply I’m the guy leaving so the company can scale. I am in charge of recruiting.  I will have somebody managing the process as we grow; departments do the interviewing, but bottom line, if my people are better than your people I win.  College football is a great analogy.  Look at the top coaches.  They always win because they have the best talent.  In college the players pick the team, in the pro’s the teams pick the players.  You bet Nick Saban goes on recruiting trips.  Don’t for a second be lulled into the notion that you are picking employees.  They are picking you and you better be the one they want to pick.  You better have an on-boarding process and it better be good.  My biggest legacy is the network of people I’ve hired and what they’ve gone on to do. I go on as many sales calls and customer visits as I can.  I’ve been told that once I hire a Head of Sales, I should stay out of the process.  I totally disagree.  I am not going to be the one managing the process, but I want to hear what the market is saying directly.  A salesperson can’t be objectively assess the market, they are too close, their livelihood depends on the sale, same for the VP.  They have to be optimistic, they have to try and make the fit whether it’s pushing the company to do something or coach outlet sale pushing the customer to accept something.  The best information you are getting from them on your market is second-hand hearsay.  I’ve sat on boards and watched as projections get trashed as sales get pushed from one quarter to the next and the CEO sits by helplessly, not knowing why as they weren’t on the calls.  I am not going to be that guy. The top producer makes more than the manager.  If the only way people think they can make the most money is to manage you lose your best producers in sales and development, and they generally don’t make good managers, they are just too good at doing.  This is the only way you can keep the producers happy, it’s the same in pro-football: great players make more than the coaches.  The very important corollary is that everybody knows everybody’s salary no matter how hard you try, so you can’t fake it. Best Friends:  When you are a handful of people trying to make something out of nothing there are no management challenges.  Everybody knows what everybody is doing and everybody does anything.  The real challenge is do you have a team with the right skill-set to complement each other and just get the job done and is the market there?  Nothing less than total blind commitment works at this stage.  If you achieve your goal, get traction and the market smiles on you remember these people.  They are the team that you came on the field of battle with against great odds and succeeded.  You don’t leave the field without them.  You help position and grow them. Buddies: This is when you have up to twenty people.  People say you can only manage eight, but I think if you’ve hired great people that can stretch to twenty.  You are going to have department leads but they aren’t really managers as much as they are the leading producer or a manager that is back in the role of producing.  In this stage the biggest challenge is getting the right mix.  You need people that are willing to work their tail off to get to the next level and you need people that are used to working at the next level that are willing to go outbound because they believe in the vision.  I.e. roll up their sleeves and code, carry a bag etc.   A big challenge is some of those senior people don’t fit into your current salary structure because of their work history.  The lesson I’ve learned over and over is to either pay the salary and move other people up or not pay the salary.  Paying the salary and not moving people up means:  “I put in huge sacrifices and now you bring in some guy from outside and pay him what?”   You are going to have to start tracking commitments because there is going to be interplay between small departments.  Don’t run the company with email, setup a process.  Set the stage where the only people that can make commitments are those that are delivering.  Sales can’t be committing for development, development has coach purse outlet to take sales input.  Orchestrate between the departments.  Don’t let one area dominate over the others.  That’s tempting to do especially in the area where you are strong.   Keep administration as simple and lean as possible, try and think how do I make things simple and cheap? Not we need to act big and big is complicated and expensive.  Remember your biggest strength is your agility, don’t lose it.  You can make the wrong decision three times and get it right on the fourth faster than BigCo can make a decision.  Keep meetings short and tight, there should be minimal meetings of internal employees only, nothing happens inside your office.   If you are like me you need to find a good operations person, one that manages all of the details. Co-Workers: Now you’ve decided to make the mad dash from 20 to 100 employees.  The reason it’s a mad dash is because you will have to put in all the overhead of formal departments and management but you won’t have the revenue and people to offset the cost.   People are going to try to build fiefdoms.  Keep it lean, keep it flat.  Always make sure that you have one less person in each department than people think you need.  Keep politics out of it.  Make sure people realize that if they complain about somebody without going directly to them first, they most likely might be the person in trouble.   There are going to be resentments if people get passed by, hopefully they’ll be few; there are going to be issues where the first employees feel like it’s not the place it once was because what was a company where you could go grab a beer with friends at a table, has grown past the stage where buddies can just show up to a bar, and has graduated to the point where you need to plan events for employees.   Hopefully the vast majority of those that were with you at the early stages can look back and say: “Look what we’ve built and how I’ve grown!!” Read more posts on A VC » Read the original article on A VC. Copyright 2012. More from A VC:Fun Friday: How Will You Watch Monday’s Presidential DebateTeam and StrategyFeeding The Trolls

As Airlines Look for More to Sell

As Airlines Look for More to Sell, Your Comfort Is Their Merchandise The airline industry’s push to impose new charges for small perks has come to this: “subscriptions” for extra legroom. In its latest revenue-raising experiment, United Airlines has introduced annual payments that provide travelers with roomier seats or the ability check a suitcase without an additional fee. For $499, you can sit in United’s Economy Plus section each time you fly and enjoy four or five extra inches of legroom, depending on aircraft model. A $349 option—with United generously agreeing to waive its arbitrary $50 initiation fee, yea!—buys one checked bag on every flight for a year of flights. Or check two bags all year for $399.United currently has 16 products for sale through its Travel Store, including the option to hold a fare for up to a week before you purchase. That power, of course, is particularly useful now that the major airlines, led by United in April, hiked their fee to change a domestic ticket to $200. American Airlines will even let indecisive travelers buy their way out of the $200 penalty: Choice Essential and Choice Plus fares, which the carrier introduced six months ago, include one checked bag and waive the ticket-change fee. Or let’s say you get hungry when flying to Europe but can’t stomach the typical in-flight chicken breast? US Airways has started selling a new line of premium DineFresh meals on its international flights, offering assorted charcuterie, antipasto, vegetarian orzo, and a half-bottle of coach online outlet wine for $21.99. The airline also sells a $7 Power-Nap Sack on flights over 3.5 hours containing a fleece blanket, neck pillow, eyeshades, and earplugs. Note the branding.The point is clear: Airlines are striving like mad to become merchandise marts full of new products and services, a shopper’s paradise for people willing to fork over cash upfront for the prospect of a better experience when they travel. Commodification has been one of the central themes in airlines’ disastrous financial performance since the industry was deregulated 35 years ago. In the eyes of many consumers, every coach outlet sale flight is the same beyond the core variables of time and price—and even the price is often the same, down to the penny, lest one airline lose market share on a competitive route.Hence the race to differentiate the product, whether it be flat beds on cross-country flights, expanded legroom, first dibs on the overhead space, Wi-Fi passes, coach outlet sale or new services to deliver your bags to your destination before you arrive. At coach online outlet least six carriers, including American and Frontier Airlines, have also introduced “branded” coach fares, where paying more offers additional services.Airlines are “maturing as retailers” and are motivated to find new ways to show off product investments, says Rick Elieson, American’s managing director of digital: “It’s not just about getting from A to B. It’s about what coach outlet online are you going to get for that price?” To get travelers to stop focusing on the basic airfare, the retail approach is considered a smart way to go. “Industry wisdom indicates the vast majority of consumers only want the lowest price. Yet, when properly merchandised, airline travel can fetch a premium,” according to an April report (PDF) on airline retailing by IdeaWorks, a travel consultancy. There is also the reasonable expectation that if you’re paying an airline hundreds of dollars before you even step foot on its plane, chances are very good you’ll dedicate most of your business to that airline for at least the next 12 months.For some, the new world of airline merchandising might make travel seem more like a restaurant meal, with optional expenses that can be added at the customer’s discretion. Airline press releases announcing coachoutlet.com these new products and services almost always emphasize one or all of the following words: relaxing, rewarding, comfortable, convenience, options, and value. “A la carte” is also popular, to carry the dining analogy further.Those travelers inclined to a not-so-positive view may feel airline hands in their wallets at every click of the mouse. United and others are disaggregating each piece of the flight into ever-smaller components, in effect saying: Give us $848 and for the next year you can forgo the indignity of paying $25 per trip to check your suitcase and sucking on your knees in 37E. Each time you pay us, there will be slightly less pain. Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal. LEARN MORE

3 Reasons Michael Kors Shares Are Crashing

3 Reasons Michael Kors Shares Are Crashing Ashley Lutz coach online outlet Nov. 4, 2014, 2:23 PM 4,709 2 facebook linkedin twitter email print Getty The Michael Kors brand might be past its prime.  Shares are down as much as 8% today on concerns that the company's growth is slowing. Despite a same-store-sales increase of 16%, many analysts are worried that the business is unsustainable  The fashion label, which coach factory outlet online enjoyed a stunning rise in popularity in recent years, is facing new challenges. Forbes notes that Michael coachoutletonline Kors is no longer a billionaire because shares have declined in recent months. Here are a few big problems with the brand.  1. Everyone is wearing Michael Kors.  Widespread popularity is the "kiss of death for trendy fashion brands, particularly those positioned in the up-market younger consumer sectors, " industry expert Robin Lewis writes on his blog. Lewis compares Michael Kors to Tommy Hilfiger, which reached its peak in the late '90s.  coach outlet sale Michael Kors is considered an aspirational brand, with consumers paying a premium for its label. Once everyone has the product, it is no longer considered cool.  Other brands who have experienced this phenomenon include Juicy Couture, Jordache, and Coach.  Google searches for the brand are declining in the US. Baird coach online outlet Equity Research 2. Inventories are piling up.  Michael Kors is entering the current quarter with a 65% inventory increase, writes retail equity analyst Marie Driscoll.  While the company says that the excess inventory is because of the company taking the e-commerce business in-house, Driscoll is skeptical that it will sell.   "That’s a lot of inventory in an increasingly competitive category," she writes. "I'm worried." She also compares Michael Kors to the Tommy Hilfiger collapse more than a decade ago.  "While the brand continues to enjoy vibrant demand, these investors are on to greener pastures," she says. "It’s probably time to sell KORS shares!" Shares are down 25% in six months. Yahoo! Finance 3. The strategy could backfire.  Michael Kors has also has several brands at different price points, a strategy that could easily backfire, Lewis says. Kors has a high-end department store brand, a middle-market brand, and discount outlet stores.  "Some would argue all of those coachoutlet.com segments will simply end up competing with each other, thus cannibalizing the top end of the spectrum," he writes.  In other words, consumers won't pay $300 for a department store Michael Kors bag when they can get one at the outlet mall for half-price.  SEE ALSO: Everything You Wanted To Know About How McDonald's Food Is Made Follow Us: On Facebook. More: Retail Michael Kors