Frankly I don't care about the stock price tomorrow or next week or next month.
What I care about with Peapod is EXECUTION. I want to see CONFIDENCE, INITIATIVE, FOLLOW-THROUGH, LEADERSHIP, and EXECUTION.
There's no time for any more excuses. I heard a lot of excuses in the conference call today.
An interesting moment in today's conference call was when some analyst asked management to talk about Peapod's 5-year vision -- where do they see themselves in 5 years. Admittedly it was a pretty lame question --- but in a way, it hit the nail right on the head.
While the response was appropriately cautious (talk about "forward-looking statements") I was disappointed with the reply because I don't think it demonstrated that Peapod really does have a Core Mission that it cares deeply about. That Core Mission should be, seems to me, to be the undisputed leader in online grocery delivery in the US. I wanted Peapod to reply, after only a split second, with something like: "Our mission is to be a household word, from coast to coast. To be equated with the best. With excellence. And value. To be the number one online grocery service bar none." I didn't hear any of that. Instead I heard some hesitant reply about well we're on a 70 million run rate now, with only 5% of US households, why, if we grow we'll be on a billion-plus annual run rate.
I somehow think it's going to take a lot more passion, focus, and execution than what is being shown right now.
Focus, focus, focus. Execute, execute, execute. Beat deadlines. Over deliver and under-promise.
Time's running out.
I didn't get a sense that things are in panic mode at Peapod, and I think they should be. Panic mode in the "Always-be-paranoid" sense of Andrew Grove at Intel.
I think Peapod's slipping, and this is not a good time to be slipping.
Does Peapod want to be the bug or the windshield? |
