Help! how do you talk to your Waldorf 8th grader about "Food, Inc."?

[As I sat and tried to collect a few thoughts before writing this posting, I began to wonder whether there is something of Horace's "The City Mouse and The Country Mouse" underlying the American debate about food and agriculture].

Last week my 8th grade Waldorf educated daughter, Isabella, and her class sat through Food, Inc. As it's viewing did for so many adult audiences, the movie hit a nerve with her and her classmates. And, as I try to sift through her questions and emotional reaction to the questions raised by the book, I am forced to re-examine certain questions and decisions I have made myself.

I had spent the last year researching the emotional fall-out, and rising criticism that has pummeled the GMO movement (Monsanto in particular), the poultry, cattle, and hog industries. I thought I could sit with my 13 year old and learn a lot from that conversation.

Her first 3 remarks were along the lines of "I'm never eating chicken again" and "why does Monsanto fight with farmers" and "what if Monsanto has it wrong"?

I have written about how destructive the rhetoric and "the noise of the special-interest groups", calling for a return to civility, for using "words that work", and for creating metaphors that move us towards civility once again. My personal library has grown to include numerous studies about seeds, the climate, soil use, tillage practices, and the future. Every author has an answer or a gripe, or some combination of both.

Sadly, I do not have "the answer".

Perhaps there is not one, single answer. In fact, how could there be just one answer!?

I have come to realize, however, that the underlying complexity of safe food production and of how American Agriculture feeds, clothes, and supplies the world is not as widely understood as we Americans need. Moreover, i've also come to realize that this subject matter: feeding and clothing the world safely - will only grow in importance as the planet races to embrace 9 Billion people by 2050. We need to talk about food production and future without all the rancor that controlled the health care debate.

To begin to grasp the complexity of the questions surrounding food production, safety, and availability, I encourage everyone to adopt Peter Senge's view of systems (c.f., Fifth Discipline) so as to begin to understand that whatever changes we make in one area necessarily have an impact on another area of the system.

Tonight is Jamie Oliver night at my house: my daughters' choice of programming!

So : what did you tell your teenager after s/he saw Food Inc. ?

Did, in fact, s/he see it? Did it cause a visceral reaction?

CRM: it still is not a package or cloud Solution!

Effective CRM initiatives have yielded a gold-mine of profits, customer information, and competitive advantage. Yet, even a decade and 1/2 after CRM entered our business vocabulary, fewer companies succeed than fail. The artistry, the magic in successful CRM and Customer Experience Management comes from your company's ability to transform the data into relevant and valuable information, and then to again turn that information into actionable knowledge - again relevant, timely, and of value at each point across the customer corridor - a value that changes with each transaction or touch.

Sadly, many CRM & CEM initiatives have failed to achieve the "results" or the ROI that the sponsoring executives were told to expect. More alarming to me, however, is the fact that Customer Relationship and Customer Experience Management initiatives are believed to be technology plays: technology or package or cloud-computing solutions.

The failure to achieve ROI or to have "expectations" met could in fact be a result of failing to realize that CRM is not a package solution!

Loyalty-based, Customer Relationship Management is a strategy based on customer focus, on customer knowledge, and on delighting the customer. CRM is real-time, actionable, customer knowledge management. The best CRM approaches are holistic, involving all facets of your business and demonstrating accountability for results. CRM becomes a guiding philosophy and framework for doing business.

Successful CRM practitioners anchor the initiative in their strategy, as well as in their mission, vision and values not in the package, or point-, solution they choose.

Market-at-risk Analysis

The Quality movement in the US came to the forefront in the mid-80's. Satisfaction and loyalty became the next banners brought into the battle. Today it appears as though satisfaction and loyalty have slipped to a lower focus of attention. Corporate social responsibility, corporate reputation, and customer experience management are more "top-of-mind" than at any time in my career.
Yes, customer satisfaction is still important. In fact a new "standard" for reporting satisfaction has emerged. Borne from Fred Reichheld's ground-breaking studies while at Harvard, Net Promoter can be a powerful tool and quite a number of firms have chosen Net Promoter as their scoring mechanism.

If you want to find out exactly where to concentrate your efforts to improve and or fix issues ready to your company's product, delivery, and service issues: Market-at-risk analysis is the way to go!
Developed by John Goodman and brought to the marketplace and placed under its scrutiny and spot-light by TARP (quality firm, not asset relief), Market-at-risk analysis allows your firm to stack rank the 10 or so top reasons why customers will not buy from you or why they won't refer or why they will DEFECT as soon as they can.
Stack ranking by economic impact caused to your business : fix it and win big!

Customer Selection: strategy as choice

Selection, Not Tunnel Vision
Social media reinforces what B2B marketers have long known.
Targeted communications to select customers can create an
on-going dialogue, grow into deeper conversation, create bonds between
customer and dealer and company, and affect a conversation to loyalty.

It has been our experience that, by looking at proper customer
selection, effective data-based, loyalty-focused, business-to-business
marketers escape the kind of tunnel vision that results in
traditional mass-media attempts to send one watered-down
message to an entire, undifferentiated universe. Instead, they find
that they are able to invest more budget in highly targeted
communications to the segments most likely to become loyal
customers.
These companies have the tools to become more active relationship
managers with both dealers and end-users. They educate their
organizations about the needs of individual segments, continually
enhance the delivery of products and services, develop targeted
offers more likely to draw a response, and better allocate resources
in the design of sales territories.
And, since they’re talking to each customer’s specific concerns, a
dialog is established; relationships are formed; satisfaction, growth
and profits follow; and, with them employee performance and
morale are increased — reinforcing the feedback loop that leads to
a sustainable competitive advantage.