Last week a friend left a note on the kitchen table letting his sons know that he had gone out to run a few errands. When he got home, his sons, ages 16 and 12, were at a loss.
“Dad,” where were you?” one boy asked.
“I was doing some errands,” the dad replied. “Didn’t you see my note?”
“We saw the note,” the boy said, “but it was in cursive. We don’t read cursive.”
The boys, both good students, explained that they never see cursive. They don’t learn it in school, and teachers never use it when they communicate with students.
Dad was astounded. Telling the story, he remarked, “It’s pretty amazing to think that today’s generation of kids wouldn’t be able to read the U.S. Constitution.”

ESPN’s coverage of the US Open tennis event this week reminds us of the need to get names right when speaking in public. ESPN had two sets of commentators covering various matches. At one point, a commentator referred to player Gilles Simon as Gilles “SY-mon.” A few minutes later, a commentator from the other group referred to this player as Gilles “SEE-mo.” ESPN looked silly as viewers were left to wonder how to say this fellow’s name.

The stakes are higher when naming names in a business presentation. A mispronounced name is an insult to that person. More so, this slip tells everyone who knows this person that the speaker has not done his homework. For every name you mention, confirm the proper pronunciation with that person or with someone who knows the person well. If need be, write in your script how to say the name. With difficult names, practice a few times until you have it down.

What more is in a name? When working with colleagues from other lands, learn their names. Many times, Americans referring to members of other nationalities are close, but not quite right. For example, I have a colleague who is close but wrong when he refers to two Japanese colleagues. Listen to how colleagues of the same nationality refer to one another, and follow suit.

Not a big deal? I know the day will come when someone refers to me as, “Bile.” Course, I’ve been called worse.

The former dean at a well-known undergraduate business school would give the following advice to incoming freshmen. While specific to his school, much of his wisdom applies to all students.

“What you get out of college is what you put into it. The yield on your college investment will be determined by how aggressively you take charge of your learning.

But what should you be aggressive about? We will spend the next four years helping you answer that question, but right now let me focus on one thing: Take risks! As the origins of the word “education” suggest, learning requires pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone. And remember that in any university, the risk–reward relationship is loaded in your favor. The downside is low, the upside is high. Ours is a school of rigorous expectations, not of hard knocks.

So, in selecting courses, build on your strengths, but don’t hide in them. Attack your gaps and weaknesses. If you are quantitatively inclined, acquire the verbal facility you will need to sell the results of your analysis—and to succeed as a leader and as a social being. If you are verbally inclined, remember that few people rise high in business who don’t also understand the numbers.

In selecting faculty mentors, pick individuals with reputations for being unusually probing and challenging, even prickly. Supportiveness is only one tool in instruction. Many of our alumni’s fondest anecdotes about their teachers seem to involve curmudgeons.

In selecting friends, seek diversity in country of origin and in ethnicity, interests, and faiths. In hospitality you will serve the world, and the world is here in this small town. Seek it out.

In sharing ideas, in your discussions inside and outside class, don’t “play it safe.” Take risks with what may seem off-the-wall. You may be breaking new ground.

A stimulating world moves through this campus. Use the whole university. If you do your part, our curriculum will assure that you graduate with a sound base in hospitality management. But leadership requires a broader take on the human experience. Explore the arts and sciences, music, drama, literature, biology, physics, and astronomy. Do so in courses, featured lectures, and campus events.

At the risk of sounding like your parents, let me also remind you: It is unlikely that you will ever again be able to spend four years of your life devoted primarily to improving yourself, much less in an intellectual environment as rich and diverse as this one.

College offers a glorious feast of experience and insight. Dine well. Where learning is involved, gluttony is a virtue.”

– David Butler, former Dean, Cornell University School of Hotel Administration

A client told me that most Americans can’t write for a global audience.

“American writers are too American,” said he, a native of North Africa who has colleagues of different nationalities located around the globe.

I said, “You mean they use phrases and jargon that are second nature to them, but not understood by non-Americans?”

“Yes,” he replied, “phrases like ‘second nature.’”

Here are eight tips to make your writing easy to understand for any audience.

1. Resist jargon. Remove all ‘American’ phrases and words. Do not “fire on all cylinders,” “kick into overdrive,” or “take a deep dive.” No “synergy,” no “matrix.” When you proofread, devote one round to spotting and cutting jargon.

2. Cut unnecessary words, usually adverbs and adjectives (“I tried to warn him in advance that the road conditions could well be very dangerous,” becomes, “I tried to warn him the roads could be dangerous.”)

3. Avoid less familiar words. Replace “enhance” with “improve.” Use “led,” not “engineered.” The team need not “conduct” research when it can “do” research.

4. Omit long words (Replace “It is imperative that we commence now” with “Let’s get started.”)

5. Use one word in place of two or more, where it works (“Take under consideration” becomes “consider.”)

6. Choose words that capture your exact meaning. (“His behavior will affect our reputation” becomes “His negative comments will hurt our reputation.”)

7. Break up long sentences into shorter ones (Long: Skilled writers learn to vary the length of their sentences, mixing long, medium and short sentences in a way that makes for effortless reading. Short: Skilled writers learn to vary the length of their sentences. They mix long, medium and short sentences in a way that makes for effortless reading.)

8. Avoid long dependent clauses (“Having stumbled through the first half of his presentation to the board of directors, Joe knew he had to finish strong.” This becomes, “Joe knew that after stumbling through the start of his board presentation, he had to finish strong.”

“Vendor” or “supplier”? I’ll take supplier.

When I am referred to as a “vendor,” I think back to when I first heard the term. I was seven years old, strolling the sidewalks of Central Park in Manhattan. My dad was hungry; he set off to find a, “hot dog vendor.”

Now, I like hot dogs, sometimes three at a time. There’s real money in hot dogs. Did you know that in 2009, the vendor selling dogs outside the Metropolitan Museum in New York paid the city $415,000 for the privilege? That’s a big pile of wieners.

Further, I am not suggesting that what I produce has more beef than a hot dog. Frankly, at times there is very little beef in my product.

So what’s my beef with “vendor?” Not sure, just a gut feeling.

ESPN is putting the ‘Twit’ in Twitter.

In the recent build-up to the women’s World Cup soccer final, SportsCenter anchors reported that President Obama had tweeted to offer “his best wishes” to the U.S. team. Viewers were left to wonder, How is this news? Is it not safe to think that President Obama would want the U.S. to win, or that he has a staffer charged to tweet this sort of canned message for him?

After the game, ESPN re-twitted. In the wake of the U.S.’s loss to Japan, the network reported on tweets from three celebrities, all of whom expressed pride and sympathy for the U.S. team. These tweets offered no news, no insights, not a hint that any of the three know a soccer ball from a beach ball.

ESPN, let Twitter be Twitter. You stick to being the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network.

How did a word like ‘gerrymandering’ find its way into our lexicon? The term dates to 1812, when then Governor of Massachusetts Elbridge Gerry drew a state-Senate district that resembled the shape of a salamander. A satirical cartoon by Elkanah Tisdale appeared in the Boston Gazette that transformed the district into a salamander. The term “gerrymandering” was born, describing the practice of drawing boundaries of electoral districts to give one party an unfair advantage over its rivals.

Now California is working to put gerrymandering under a rock for good. California recently redrew 177 districts, doing so for the first time with an independent commission of citizens, rather than state legislators. The commission’s aim is to create compact, contiguous districts that preserve natural “communities of interest” such as ethnic groups, and to ignore politics.

One less newt in American politics would be a huge step forward.

Last week my friend Kathy was running late to a meeting in Europe where for the first time she would meet Alexis, Lesley, and Maggy. She stuck her head in what she thought was the right room, only to see three men sitting at the table.

“I’m sorry,” she said, as she turned away.

“Wait,” said one of the men. “Are you Kathy?”

“Yes.”

“This is your meeting,” Alexis replied.

Alexis then introduced Kathy to Lesley and Maggy.

“I learned to be a little more open-minded about names, especially in other lands,” Kathy observed.

Judging by the look on the queen’s face, Prince Philip appears to have fouled the air at the recent royal wedding. At age 89, the prince can be forgiven for this little slip.  

A fart is a pleasant thing,
It gives the belly ease,
It warms the bed in winter,
And suffocates the fleas.
  
A fart can occur
In a number of places,
And leave everyone there,
With strange looks on their faces.
From wide-open prairie,
To small elevators,
A fart will find all of
Us sooner or later.
 
But farts are all bad,
Is simply not true-
We must never forget…….
Sweet old farts like you!

It’s the ultimate marketing feat, building a brand name that becomes synonymous with the product line. Here are seven sports products that have achieved this status:

Astro Turf. A brand of artificial turf made from synthetic fibers made to look like natural grass. Astro Turf rose to prominence in 1965 when it was installed in the Astrodome in Houston.

Frisbee. The flying disc made by Wham-O. In 1938, Walter Morrison discovered a market for the flying disc when he and a lady friend were tossing a cake pan on a beach in California, and someone offered him 25 cents for it. “That got the wheels turning, because you could buy a cake pan for 5 cents, and if people on the beach were willing to pay a quarter for it, well, there was a business,” Morrison told The Virginian Pilot in 2007. 

Hacky Sack. This footbag is another Wham-O product, invented in 1972 by John Stalberger and Mike Marshall of Oregon City, Oregon. Marshall had created a hand-made bean bag that he would kick around. His friend Stalberger was recovering from knee surgery and was looking for a way to exercise his knees. Together, they called the new game “Hackin’ the Sack,” which they later marketed under the trademark of “Hacky Sack.” Game has given rise to its own language: common tricks include bag daggers, ham spalts, and milk tosses.

Hula hoop. This toy hoop is also made by Wham-O. A hula hoop craze swept the country in the 1950s, when Carlon, Inc. was making more than 50,000 hoops per day. The record for the most hoops twirled at once is 132, set by Paul “Dizzy Hips” Blair in 2009.

Jet ski. A brand of personal watercraft, made by Kawasaki Heavy Industries.

Rollerblades. A brand of inline skates, owned by Nordica. In 1980 two hockey-playing brothers in Minnesota discovered an in-line skate while rummaging through a sporting goods store. They decided that this design would make an ideal off-season hockey-training tool. They refined the skate and assembled the first Rollerblade skates in the basement of their parents’ Minneapolis home. They founded the company that would become Rollerblade.

Wiffle ball. A perforated plastic ball, made by The Wiffle Ball, Inc. It began in a Fairfield, Connecticut backyard, where a boy would pitch a perforated plastic golf ball to a friend holding a broomstick handle. After the boy spent days trying to throw curves with the golf ball, he told his dad his arm felt, “like jelly.” Dad had been a semi-pro pitcher and knew that throwing curveballs was not good for young arms. He bought some plastic balls and, using equipment borrowed from a nearby factory, cut in holes of various shapes and sizes. Father and son agreed that the ball with eight oblong perforations worked best (www.wiffle.com).

Here are three sport-related products that have earned similar brand recognition. 

Band-aid. This adhesive bandage is made by Johnson & Johnson.

Jacuzzi. A kind of whirlpool bathtub. Launched in California by seven brothers who had immigrated from Italy in 1900. The business was sold in 2007 to a private equity firm.

Vaseline. This brand of petroleum jelly is made by Unilever. Hey, why doesn’t Vaseline rhyme with baseline? That’s for another day.