A Bouquet of Wisdom.
Image by Mid-Journey.
50 years ago Jim McCann founded 1-800-Flowers. Last year he fired himself as a CEO believing a new era needed a new leader and that he had stayed in the role for too long…
On the latest episode of “Unbossing”, Jim shares his learnings from the past five decades with a very future forward perspective that will inspire everyone from a student to a CEO.
Here are a few of the take-aways:
1) Resume is a verb not a noun.
A resume is not a collection of past achievements but a spring board for future growth.
We should not be defined by just what we have done but what we can do. This requires a mindset of child-like curiosity, constant improvement and ongoing investment in relationships.
Our stories are alive and ever changing.
Our focus should always be to become a better person.
2) Relationships and Rituals.
1-800-Flowers decided to align with AOL versus a much bigger (at that time) Prodigy because Jim and his team resonated with Steve Case, Bob Pittman and Ted Leonsis who led AOL .
Jim believes in the importance of investing in relationships.
One approach is to take inventory of our relationships and focus on three categories:
Current strong relationships which we should continue to cultivate.
Lapsed relationships we would like to re-ignite.
New relationships that we would like to initiate.
To build great relationships we should focus on what we bring to others in the relationship versus what we take away.
Another way to strengthen relationships is to understand the power of rituals.
These might include leveraging the calendar to reach out to a new person every day/week or schedule to meet certain friends every few months. There are lots of ways to create rituals including inventing new rituals.
3) Fear of failing can lead to failing companies.
1-800-Flowers experimented with dozens of technologies that failed. But if they had not embraced and tried these technologies, it is unlikely that they would have had the success of being early with 1-800 numbers which allowed for convenience and 24 hour service, or cable television that allowed them to become a national brand or AOL and then the web that enabled new ways to reach and sell to consumers.
4) A key to success over time is to understand the real benefit a business delivers.
1-800-Flowers believes that it is not in the gifting business but in the connection business. The company helps people express themselves and connect to those who are important to them.
Every decision including those pertaining to technology are filtered through this lens. Thus one of the ways the company is looking at AI is how to leverage it to enable people to express themselves in uniquely personal ways.
Technology allows a company to deliver its goal. The goal is not to deliver the technology.
5) AI will require “unlearning”.
Jim believes AI is the sixth big change in how brands and business get built and he has been a pioneer in each of the first five: Franchising, 1-800 numbers, Cable, Online services like AOL and finally the Internet.
Each time there is a technology shift there is both opportunity and threat for existing businesses and brands.
Jim says almost every thing have we believe about business may have to be unlearned in the AI Age.
These include:
a) Lack of speed will kill: Slow and steady will lose the race and speed is critical. Jim shared that one of his biggest mistakes was moving too slow.
b) Scale is likely to matter much less in most categories and could be a disadvantage: Jim believes that many of the scale advantages of his own company might be used against it because AI is eliminating many of the moats of scale leaving many big companies with the disadvantages of complexity and sluggish movement that comes with size.
c) Almost all future competitors may come from outside the existing ones being monitored: Increasingly new companies hire some of the best talent from existing players in a category and give them a blank sheet of paper and capital but none of the tech, organizational or mindset debt of their former places of work. They change the rules of the game.
Every leader should assume that everything they believe is open to questioning except the importance of attracting and retaining talent, investing in trust/trusted relationships and creating truly differentiated personalized solutions.
An incredible conversation and distilled wisdom in 45 minutes wherever you listen to podcasts.
One Single Thing.
“There is no place for us” is one of the best books I have read. It is about those who work full time but are homeless.
It recently won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction.
Fact filled, deeply researched and grippingly written “There is no place for us” may change the readers perspectives on a range of issues.
Here are some selected lines from the introduction:
Today there isn’t a single state, metropolitan area, or county in the United States where a full-time worker earning the local minimum wage can afford a two-bedroom apartment.
Some 53 million Americans, or almost half the country’s workers between the ages of eighteen and sixty-four, hold jobs that pay a median hourly wage of $10.22, which amounts to a mere $21,000 a year-below the poverty line for a family of three.
It used to be that owning a home was held up as an ultimate goal, a reward for diligent effort and perseverance. Now simply having a home is elusive for many. The myth that hard work will lead to stability has been shattered, revealing a stark disconnect between the story America tells about itself and the deepening precarity.
This is a book about what we are not seeing…