Mail

None of Your Business

Jeff Bedard, CEO of Crown Laboratories, has good intentions, but I believe his mandatory health-improvement policies are a terrible idea ["Get Healthy or Else," April]. I don't smoke, and I work out regularly. But were I his employee, I would not tolerate such an invasion of my privacy.

Imagine what can happen when a company is free to mandate whatever it deems to be a good thing. There have been companies that won't provide health insurance to people like me who ride motorcycles. What if you like to eat meat? A vegetarian employer could fire you if you don't give it up. Wrong political party? Drive an import? Don't fly the flag? Fired! Fired! Fired!

Well, I've decided that tomorrow I'm firing everyone at my company who doesn't own a motorcycle. (Okay, I'm a sole proprietor, so nobody gets fired.)

Alan Jay Weiner
founder
Technology 21
Needham, Massachusetts

It's perfectly fine to prohibit smoking or consumption of alcohol on company property, but employers shouldn't dictate what employees do in the privacy of their own homes. That goes against the freedoms of personal choice on which America was founded.

On top of that, these policies attempt to treat the symptom rather than addressing the true cause of rising health care costs. That involves looking at difficult issues such as tort reform.

Gregory M. Mendoza
Owner
Superior Automotive
wentynine Palms, California

Worthy of Salvation?

I wondered at what point the big, bad chain bookstores would appear in the story about Kepler's ["Rewriting the Ending," April]. They almost always do in an article about a struggling independent bookstore. Sure enough, there were the chains, insisting "on a lower price from the publisher" while forcing it to "put the screws on other bookstores to pay more quickly." I guess every good story needs a villain.

Are we supposed to be intrigued by this story of a mismanaged bookstore that was rescued by wealthy customers who are willing and able to invest even though they "should not expect to see their money again"? A much more compelling story is how a person bought one unprofitable bookstore and built the largest bookstore chain in the country. That's a story of true entrepreneurship, and it's exactly what Len Riggio has done at Barnes & Noble.

Gary McBrayer
Manager of customer services
The Hudson Group
Ridgewood, New Jersey

I thought Inc. was a stuffy magazine for CEOs until I opened the April issue and started reading. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, so the story of Kepler's is very familiar to me. You filled in many of the blanks and answered the questions I had about how Kepler's came back to life. Nothing stuffy about that.

John M. Flanagan
Colma, California

Put Me In, Coach

You say entrepreneurs need coaches "mostly because they're so isolated" ["Do You Need a Coach?" April]. That's part of it. I've spent 25 years as an entrepreneur and 12 years coaching other entrepreneurs, and I can tell you that the bigger problem is that, with the exception of Inc., there is nowhere to learn how to build and run a company. That's the main service I provide for my clients, but with a level of customization that a magazine can't offer.

John Seiffer
Owner
TheSmallBusinessCoach.com
Brookfield, Connecticut

A Test for Nerds, Not CEOs

David Freedman's "IT IQ" survey probably made the average Inc. reader feel unnecessarily like an "info dolt" [What's Next, April]. I have a feeling Freedman knows a lot more about technology than he does about being a CEO. For CEOs, technology is a tool used to drive down costs, drive up profits, lessen threats, and generally improve the way we do business. Many of Freedman's questions weren't relevant to CEOs, especially the one that tested our knowledge of Slashdot and Digg.

I happen to follow Slashdot and Digg closely, but most of my peers couldn't tell you what these sites are, nor do they care. They are executives. They don't write code all day and play video games all night. However, I'll bet if you open the door to the server room and ask the same question, most of the IT staff will know exactly what you're talking about.

Matthew Friedman
CEO and co-founder
N-Genious
Portland, Oregon

Making an Electronic Exit

It's true that getting candid responses in face-to-face exit interviews can be difficult ["Goodbye and Good Luck," April]. But the 90-minute "friendly but probing" exit interview Unicru implemented seems a bit excessive and not necessarily the best solution. Allowing employees to complete their exit interviews online leads to more open and honest responses. Online exit interviews also allow the HR manager to sort the resulting data to more easily identify trends. Otherwise, as this former HR practitioner can attest, the handwritten notes from in-person exit interviews usually end up in a file never to be looked at (or tracked) again.

B.N. Carvin
CEO Nobscot Corp.
Honolulu

A Word From Our Sponsors

My firm is a Word of Mouth Marketing Association charter member, and I was particularly interested in the idea that the "conventional wisdom these days is that everybody lies" ["Lies, Damn Lies, and Word of Mouth," April]. What I infer from that statement is that the effectiveness of word of mouth suffers because people think everyone lies. This is an interesting point that gets close to what distinguishes good word-of-mouth programs from great ones. To be most effective, a word-of-mouth program should have its recommendations come from people who are perceived as experts.

For example, I have a friend who is a chef. Last week, he told me about a great new restaurant. I booked a reservation the next day because I perceive this man as an expert in fine dining. If he had told me he liked a new CD or a car, I would not have reacted in the same way.

Ted Wright
Partner
Liquid Intelligence
Atlanta

Cracking Down on Triangulation

Thank you for calling attention to the issue of triangulation, but the scenario Leigh Buchanan described is only one example of a broader problem ["The Three-Corner Office," April]. Many people concentrate on getting their own work done without any regard for how their actions might decrease the productivity of others.

I believe these sorts of problems will persist until written policies are created to discourage this unproductive behavior.

Steve Lutz
Chicago

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