The Soul of Enterprise: Business in the Transformation Economy by THRESHOLD

As you may know Ron Baker is a founder of the VeraSage Institute, a think tank for professional firms; and that Ed Kless is a senior fellow. The Institute holds a biennial conference during which the fellows and some friends are invited to gather share their knowledge in a symposium atmosphere. The latest of these events took place in Boston in October 2015. This episode is a recording of a session during which Ron and Ed as well as VeraSage Fellows, Kirk Bowman and John Chisholm, had a conversation about the future of the professional firm. In addition, they took questions from other Fellows and Friends. We hope you enjoy this peak into the gathering.

Comedian Louis CK has a great routine which ends with him saying to his daughter Just shut up and eat your french fries. While this bit is hysterically funny, it is sadly repeated by some business leaders to people within their organizations. In his book, A More Beautiful Question, Warren Berger writes, Great products, companies, even industries, often begin with a question, yet few companies actually encourage questioning in any substantive way. There are no departments or training programs focused on questioning; no policies, guidelines, best practices. On the contrary, many companies — whether consciously or not — have established cultures that tend to discourage inquiry in the form of someone's asking, for example, Why are we doing this particular thing in this particular way? In this episode Ed and Ron tackle the idea of asking more effective questions and will introduce you to the idea of the Mother of All Questions.

Project management is critical for any business, since it allocates resources into the future. Many businesses, especially professional firms, are beginning to recognize one of the gaps in their competencies, in addition to pricing, is project management. In this episode, project management expert Ed Kless will define what a project is, the difference between goals and objectives, The Triangle of Truth, what is Quality and who defines it, the elements of a scope document, and the elements of a Change Request.

The last Friday of every month Ed and Ron will do "Free-Rider Friday." Most of our shows are "topic" driven, where we dive deep into one subject. Free-Rider Fridays are designed to be "event" driven, whatever issues are in the news that we (or you) find worthy of commentary. In economics, free riding means reaping the benefits from the actions of others and consequently refusing to bear the full costs of those actions. This means Ed and Ron will free ride off of the news, and each other, with no advanced knowledge of the events either will bring up. If you'd like to call-in during the live show, the listener line is: 866-472-5790. You can also participate on Twitter at #ASKTSOE, or email us at asktsoe@verasage.com.

By its very nature, cost accounting is a historical function, but what is important for pricing are planned costs, not past costs. As Henry Ford pointed out, no one knows what a cost should be. Yet, cost accounting has held hegemony for far too long over the pricing strategies of businesses everywhere, embedding the conventional wisdom that costs determine price. Cost accounting does not deserve to be the apotheosis of pricing, let alone running a business. No doubt, it has its role in any organization, but that role is very specific and historical, not one that should have a major influence in production and pricing decisions.

Many business owners lament they sell a commodity, or the "market" sets their price. Yet empirical evidence proves otherwise. Most customers have a range of acceptable prices they're willing to pay. How do you search that range? What's the most effective pricing strategy to capture the value from the high-end, and the low-end, of that range? Ed and Ron will discuss two specific strategies on this show: Peter van Westendorp's Price Sensitivity Meter, and the Barron Joseph von Neinbach Model.

Clarence Darrow once said, I have never killed anybody, but I have read many obituaries with delight! With that schadenfreude in mind, join us for a look at some of the funniest, poignant, and insightful last words spoken by famous, and infamous, people throughout history.

They say you can't turn back the clock and go back to the good old days. Yet this is precisely what is happening with the total quality service movement, the customer loyalty movement, CRM, and other philosophies that put the customer at the center of the business organization. Millions of dollars are being spent on consultants to relearn what was once common sense, practiced by the great entrepreneurs from the turn of the century to the mid-1950s. In this episode of our Entrepreneur Heaven Series, we will explore the wisdom of George Eastman, James Cash Penney, The Wright Brothers, and Anita Roddick. Wisdom is timeless, and occasionally turning back the clock is the wisest course of action. Sometimes history is our best teacher.

The last Friday of every month Ed and Ron will do "Free-Rider Friday." Most of our shows are "topic" driven, where we dive deep into one subject. Free-Rider Fridays are designed to be "event" driven, whatever issues are in the news that we (or you) find worthy of commentary. In economics, free riding means reaping the benefits from the actions of others and consequently refusing to bear the full costs of those actions. This means Ed and Ron will free ride off of the news, and each other, with no advanced knowledge of the events either will bring up. If you'd like to call-in during the live show, the listener line is: 866-472-5790. You can also participate on Twitter at #ASKTSOE, or email us at asktsoe@verasage.com.

Ron and Ed will discuss ten factors of price sensitivity that all pricers should consider before establishing a price. Price sensitivity is far more predictive than demand elasticity studies, which simply show changes in overall revenue in response to various price changes. Price sensitivity is far more granular, allowing pricers to analyze the particular drivers of value at the customer level. Analyzing price sensitivity is an important exercise for any business that wants to capture more of the value it creates from its offering.