On a recent trip to see a client, I stayed in a Westin hotel. For over a decade, they've featured their signature "Heavenly Bed," with a more comfortable mattress, upgraded sheets, and an overabundance of pillows, half of which I promptly throw on the floor. The fancy bed now seems relatively mundane, as most other hotel chains have copied the idea. I remember when it was introduced, however, and it seemed shocking that it had taken the hotel industry decades to determine that enhancing the sleeping experience, seemingly a core component of any hotel stay, would be a winner.

While the Heavenly Bed has now become de rigueur, the simple lesson is shocking for its obviousness: improving the most basic core competencies of your business can set you apart from your competition. Hotels had spent decades ignoring the most basic component of the hotel experience: a night's sleep. Companies like Sony made the basic realization that portable, personal music could revolutionize the industry, while Apple evolved the concept by making personal electronics and computers personal fashion statements.

Step back from your business and examine each element of the experience, even those seemingly too basic or standardized to merit attention. You just may find the equivalent of the Heavenly Bed in a location so obvious that you and your competitors had missed it for decades.

One of the interesting aspects of consulting is the zeal to apply a visual or diagram of some sort to every business problem. You've likely seen countless Magic Quadrants (a wholly owned trademark of the Gartner Group), accelerant curves, exponential models, and perhaps even been thrown an occasional Fishbone diagram. My humble contribution to the heaps of diagrams would be what I've christened the Curmudgeon Curve. Picture an inverted exponential graph, with age on the X axis and interest in dealing with technology on the Y.

I've always been enamored with gadgets and all things mechanical, performing open-chassis surgery on the family computer as a child and disassembling the lawnmower's engine on a rainy day for no particular reason. However, as I grow older, a brown box left on the doorstep by a courier is beginning to represent a potential hassle rather than a potentially exciting new gadget. I now groan as the citizens of my electronic world demand firmware updates in a seemingly nonstop fashion, each representing frustration rather than potentially cool features.

While prospects look dim for reversing the Curmudgeon Curve in the immediate future, I'm given hope by a grandfather who learned how to use a computer in his 90s. Perhaps the Curmudgeon Curve is driven more by a full life than the mere passage of time. Hopefully, I'll be able to provide additional insight as a nonagenarian!

Jim Collins' seminal book of the early 2000s finally seems to be hitting the tipping point (pun intended) where its title has become such a commonplace quip as to be rendered meaningless. The high-flying companies studied by Collins have faltered, and when asked how they wanted their hamburger prepared, I swear I heard a fast-food patron respond "from good to great."

While the intentions of those who suggest a company, process, or even a hamburger move from good to great are likely noble, the phrase does little to clarify intent. "Great" could mean a whole range of outcomes, and just as one would expect 50 different people to select 50 different destinations should they be asked to book a "great" vacation, ambiguous phrases have the same outcome in a business setting. It's no fault of Mr. Collins that his catchy title has joined other quips like "out of the box," 110%, moving the needle and the litany of other bad business jargon, but it's up to us to strive for clarity and precision as business leaders, rather than sound bites.

Our family is currently in the midst of packing our household for a multi-stage move to a new home in July. Our current house sold a bit more quickly than planned, so we're boxing our possessions, with most of them destined for storage while we stay at a vacation home in the mountains.

I tend to detest packing, each move ending with me swearing I'll never move again, or will hire an army of movers to do all the dirty work for me while I retreat to a safe distance. The final days of packing seem to always involve painstaking decisions about what goes in a box versus a "donate" pile, and invariably takes three times longer than expected.

This move has the added element of a two-year old, who seems eager to participate in all aspects of the move. While my wife and I sort through piles of clothes, we'll turn our heads after a moment's inattention to find our son, his Mickey Mouse doll, and the family dog sitting quietly in a closed box. On another occasion, he proudly dragged in a box shouting "new house!," which contained a few clothes hangers, a stuffed animal, and a tube of toothpaste. While he's obviously a bit confused by the whole endeavor, I certainly can't fault his enthusiasm for the process!