There’s nothing I like better than when a client teaches me a thing or two about doing business. Imagine how much I loved learning from my new client and friend Parviz Firouzgar at the AAA Gold Exchange one rainy Friday evening…

Parviz called late on Friday, seeking a new company to host his website www.aaagoldexchange.com. When I took the call, I mentioned I’d been meaning to exchange my old gold jewelry for cash, but had never gotten around to it. The consummate business owner, Parviz said, “bring your hosting contract and your old jewelry in tomorrow – I’ll sign your contract and give you a quote for your gold.”

Ahhh, how can you tempt a sales professional like myself more? The promise of a new client and cash in my pocket all from one visit? There’s a guy who knows how to read his audience! So, up I went, Saturday morning…rain coming down in buckets on my windshield…my GoldenComm hosting contract in one hand, gold jewelry in the other (and quote for the gold from a local jeweler in my back pocket!) (more…)

TechCrunch wonders if it’s time for Microsoft to change its culture. They have an interesting analysis:

The trouble, I feel, lies in the middle layer of the cake — as it does so often in real life (damn the jelly). The issue is that the best ideas often occur on the lowest levels, as much because those levels are highly populated as that they are the youngest and freshest, and these ideas must trickle up…. Unfortunately, when you factor in the inevitable corporate friction, you’re looking at years of development for a product which may or may not even be worthwhile. By the time the sausage is made, everyone has already moved on to quail…

Microsoft is simply too big and too inflexible to really push truly interesting products out the door as fast as they need to. This isn’t any sort of big revelation, but it’s a problem with a solution: turn the company upside-down…. The Microsoft method of slowly advancing employees’ responsibilities has created so many middle men that there is hardly any other kind of person working there any more.