The other day I said to a friend that I’ve turned into a real wimp. He thought I was kidding and said that I was the last person he associated with wimping out on anything.
I was surprised, but as we discussed it I realized that what I saw as wimpiness he saw as strength.
That got me to thinking how often what one person calls wimping out may be another person’s greatest act of courage. Likewise, what moves one person can leave another cold.
It’s all relative depending on your MAP, the circumstances and even the mood you’re in.
Sounds obvious, but it’s important knowledge, not information, but knowledge—maybe even wisdom—for any person responsible for motivating others, whether at work or in everyday life.
Working with entrepreneurs on writing business plans to finding affordable office space and everything in-between is big business. And, as with most services, they vary in value and effectiveness.
But venture firm Highland Capital Partners (Boston and Silicon Valley) is doing something different. Instead of charging the promising entrepreneurs they pay them.
“The program was designed as a sort of summer camp for entrepreneurs. Open to undergrad and graduate students, it offered aspiring entrepreneurs a $7,500 stipend, free office space, and access to Highland’s staff and outside contacts.”
The greatest value to the entrepreneurs isn’t the cost or the pay, but Highland’s knowledge and network.
Last year, “Michael Sullivan was trying to figure out how to add some mojo to his startup. As a graduate student in applied mathematics at Harvard, Sullivan had co-founded Affine Systems in 2006 with classmate Bobby Impollonia. Working out of their homes, the two computer whizzes had whipped up a software program to let media companies know if their copyrighted videos show up on the Internet.”
Anyone who follows the news knows that copyright on the Net is beyond hot.
So what did Sullivan and his partner get out of their ten weeks?
Highland’s partners helped Affine craft a business strategy, land their first test customers, and hire two senior executives. Ultimately, last winter, Highland put venture money into Affine, one of two companies in the program to get funding.
Highland isn’t the only program, Lightspeed Venture Partners (Silicon Valley) also runs a camp as do several other VCs. As with conventional startups, not all attendees’ ideas fly, but that’s OK, the connection is made and the next idea could be the next big thing.
Robert Nardelli, best know for almost killing Home Depot by trashing its customers and ignoring its culture and poster boy for the platinum parachute, is back in the news.
For those of you vacationing on Mars (the only way you could have missed it) last August, Cerberus hired him to run Chrysler.
A year later, in a marriage between surreal and oxymoron, Nardelli is teaching executives how to create a a quality-based customer-centric culture.
It’s a sweeping change in MAP, but apparently he read a book and was converted.
Wow! As Kevin Meyer said over at Evolving Excellence, “I guess I better get a copy of that ice cream book. It must really be something.”
But before you get too excited, let it be noted that Nardelli hasn’t actually talked to any dealers or showroom customers—probably too mundane and not measurable enough.
How committed do you think Robert Nardelli is to customer service?
If Obama wins will he really be the first black president? No, he’ll actually be the seventh.
What’s my point?
I thought that maybe, just maybe, using high-profile, emotionally-charged information might drive home the realization that your knowledge, even your self-knowledge, doesn’t always match the facts.
Do you look for discrepancies between your knowledge and the facts?
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned a discussion going on at Business Week, offering readers the chance to weigh in and comment on serious workplace topics. My error was in misreading that June 30 was the last day to comment—the discussion is still going on. Additionally, there’s a place to offer up stories, pictures and videos of your own wacky experiences in the workplace or just to enjoy others’.
A month ago I wrote about HBS’ James Heskett’s research question on deep thinking—or the lack of it—in business and life.
Now, in Heskett’s typically masterful summing up he tells this story and says that it “captures much of the sense of the responses to this month’s question about why managers don’t think deeply.”
“A since deceased, highly-regarded fellow faculty member, Anthony (Tony) Athos, occasionally sat on a bench on a nice day at the Harvard Business School, apparently staring off into space. When asked what he was doing, ever the iconoclast, he would say, “Nothing.” His colleagues, trained to admire and teach action, would walk away shaking their heads and asking each other, “Is he alright?” It is perhaps no coincidence that Tony often came up with some of the most profound insights at faculty meetings and informal gatherings.“
The summing up is valuable, but of far more value are the 136 comments from people around the world.
Take the time to read Heskett’s query and his audience’s thoughts, then ask yourself—how much deep thinking do you do?
What does change really entail? Should the focus be doing things differently from this point forward or does it require admitting publicly that the previous approach was flawed?
I get asked this more often than you’d think. It seems as if many people feel that the mea culpa is as important, if not more so, than the new behavior.
I vehemently disagree.
It’s actually far easier to talk about a fault than to actually change it, especially when the cause is rooted in your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™).
I wrote about this last fall at Leadership Turn. Changing manager’s minds and the comments are a good example of why I don’t believe that mea culpa matters.
As I said then, “When admitting the change is tantamount to saying “I was wrong” you’ll find few people jumping up and down to do it.”
Change is difficult enough without the added burden of ‘you/they are right and I’m wrong’. The admission accomplishes nothing more than opening the door to ‘I told you so’—four words that aren’t high on anyone’s motivational phrase list.
Creating and sustaining a culture of innovation isn’t easy in the best of times, but what do you do when ‘best’ is a distant memory and the times are well on their way to ‘worst’?
According to Wall Street “wisdom” you throw your strategy out the window, cut your staff beyond the bone and focus on now—since even a quarter is too long-term.
The Wall Street approach is to pull in your head and limbs like a turtle and spend as little as possible—and that means getting rid of people.
But not so fast. Statistics show what any employee can tell you, including the ones who aren’t directly affected, that layoffs don’t motivate.
“For companies, layoffs are a quick, albeit unpleasant, way to trim costs, right? Not necessarily. A recent study of 200 enterprises found that even a modest downsizing can unleash an exodus of valuable employees. For instance, companies that laid off 0.5% of their staff experienced, on average, a turnover rate of 13%—compared with an average turnover rate of 10.4% at companies that didn’t do layoffs. (Academy of Management Journal)”
And that additional 2.6% of turnover are rarely the folks you’d choose to lose.
Way back in 2001, when thousands were being laid off, Frederick Reichheld, author of The Loyalty Factor (1996) and Loyalty Rules! (2001) showed in carefully researched studies that a 5% improvement in employee retention translates to a 25%-100% gain in earnings.
So what are the advantages of layoffs?
They take the least creative effort from management and Wall Street approves.
Keeping your people and juicing innovation and productivity when times are tough takes work—lots of it.
Post from: MAPpingCompanySuccess The day before a long weekend doesn’t seem the time to offer up anything heavy, instead here’s another of my Rules.
Life is short, break the rules, forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably and never regret anything that made you smile.
Read them all, you’ll find a lot of wisdom and life help in them—I do.
And since it’s a holiday you’ll probably be seeing people, so here are a couple of good conversation starters. Both are supposedly signs, but you know how reliable Internet stuff is:)
Dr. Jones, at your cervix. (In a Gynecologist’s Office)
CAUTION - This Truck is Full of Political Promises (On the back of another Septic Tank Truck)
Feel free to add a Rule or another conversation piece.
Want to know what people are really thinking about the hottest topics in the workplace? Then check out Business Week’s massive discussion of the top six topics.
The six topics are the result of voting by 8500 people; they are
Work-Life Balance
Staying Entrepreneurial
Time Management
Negotiating Bureaucracy
Toxic Bosses
Generational Tension
“…now we’re looking for solutions. Starting today, you can submit comments, essays, pictures, or videos chronicling the challenges you face in any of the categories—and how you’ve tried to resolve them. At the end of June, BusinessWeek writers and editors will use the material, along with the input of experts, to produce a precedent-setting multimedia package—with content and videos online beginning Aug. 14, the Special Issue in mailboxes Aug. 15, and broadcast segments appearing on BusinessWeek TV Aug. 16 and 17.”
My apologies for bringing this information to you so late, but you still have today. And I will bring you more on the discussion as it develops.
Recently, the conversation at Slacker Manager turned to how a manager bounces back from a bad hiring. Although the five steps Barry Moltz listed are good, I commented that they didn’t include making hiring a priority and core competency, which would do much to alleviate bad hires. (Barry agreed:)
In most instances, the key to a bad hire is poor synergy between the candidate and the corporate culture. Culture is also the culprit in most screwed up M&A.
There’s actually not a lot of difference between hiring one person and acquiring/merging two companies. No matter how complementary the skills, technology and experience, cultural incompatibility usually leads to disaster.
There are dozens of examples to choose from—Alcatel-Lucent is one that’s happening right now.
Good technical synergies, but light-years apart culturally.
“But the cultures could hardly have been more different. One was hierarchical and centrally controlled, the other entrepreneurial and flexible.”
Don’t assume that the first description is Alcatel, it’s not.
[Lucent] retained a command-and-control style, and after years of restructuring, executives were so obsessed with cost-cutting that even the smallest purchase had to be logged into a central accounting system… “It was a slow-moving ship with an entitlement mentality,” says John Wright, a former Lucent vice-president…”
While it may be that the candidate is the ship, it’s just as possible that she’s a speedboat. Either way synergy is unlikely and conflict almost inevitable.
While culture may not be obvious when acquiring or hiring, due diligence/interviewing is able to identify and explore it. The problem is that managers often ignore culture, because they believe they that theirs is ‘right’ and the other will change. But it’s not a case of you/your company being right and ‘her/them’ being wrong, it’s a case of the pieces don’t fit—and 98% of the time you should see it coming.
Don’t you love it when experts and powers-that-be formally study and recognize what the rest of us could have told them—namely that constant interruptions ruin productivity.
Remember years ago when that guy in the next cubicle talked too loudly on the phone, constantly got up for coffee or whatever, popped his head over the cubicle wall (or stuck his head in the office) comment/question and was generally distracting?
The interruptions are still happening, only now they’re in the form of email, instant messaging, texting, twittering and other digital annoyances.
A story in the NY Times tells us that the “biggest technology firms, including Microsoft, Intel, Google and I.B.M., are banding together to fight information overload.”
Did you know that “A typical information worker who sits at a computer all day turns to his e-mail program more than 50 times and uses instant messaging 77 times… on average the worker also stops at 40 Web sites over the course of the day…”
So what’s the tab for the unnecessary interruptions? Is it really high enough to warrant the founding of a non-profit group created specifically to combat it?
I guess that depends on whether $650 billion a year gets your attention.
“At the heart of our definition of a great place to work - a place where employees “trust the people they work for, have pride in what they do, and enjoy the people they work with” - is the idea that a great workplace is measured by the quality of the three, interconnected relationships that exist there:
The relationship between employees and management.
The relationship between employees and their jobs/company.
The relationship between employees and other employees.”
She’s right. The kids who sang “I am special/ I am special/ Look at me…” (set to the tune of “Frère Jacques) in nursery school are still thinking that way in the workforce.
If your kids are young start now by not only eliminating empty praise from your home, but also teaching them how to recognize it and why to discount it.
Praise what they accomplish and instill in them an appreciation of the real value found in the words, actions, deeds, and contributions, both large and small, that they make in the world.
With older kids—teens, twenties, thirties—help them wrap their minds around the idea that life doesn’t offer entitlements to anyone and share with them the real facts of life:
They’re special to you, because you’re their parent and you love them.
They’re special to themselves, because “self” is the only person they will ever truly know or actually have the ability to change.
They’re not special to others, except as a result of their words, actions and deeds.
Being special to you and to themselves does not entitle them to special treatment from their teachers, friends, bosses, colleagues, the guy complaining about their loud cell phone conversation at Starbucks or the cop who tickets them for speeding.
Special isn’t related to self-esteem—self-esteem is grounded in and built from their own efforts and accomplishments.
Self-esteem entitles them to nothing, but provides the strength to not only survive, but thrive, in today’s world—and tomorrow’s.
They may not appreciate your efforts now, but they will be forever grateful as they make their way though the world as adults.
There’s no time to post about all the interesting articles on corporate culture that I find, so I thought I’d offer several up with a few notes.
Wow! A founder who not only knows the front-line people (read: those the customers see) are the key to success, but puts his founder stock where his mouth is. No, not some high tech hot-shot in Silicon Valley, but Robbie Lee, CEO and founder of U.S. Dry Cleaning Corporation, the nation’s fastest-growing chain of dry cleaning operations.
According to Deborah Rechnitz, chief operating officer, “Robbie believes very strongly that our front-line employees are the key to our success. He also wants them to know that the company values their efforts and that they too can participate in the success of the company.”
Michigan isn’t the first place most people think of when cultural innovation is mentioned, but that’s what Rich Sheridan, CEO of Menlo Innovations in Ann Arbor has successfully fostered.
“Inside Menlo’s offices above a coffee shop a few blocks from the University of Michigan’s central campus, there are no walls.
No cubicles.
Nobody working long nights.
Nobody working weekends.
No offshoring of work to programmers in India or other countries.
And nobody telecommuting, sort of counterintuitive for a technology firm in the era of virtual offices.
And if a client is a cash-starved entrepreneurial start-up — is there any other kind? — Menlo might just cut its usual rates for custom software by 50% in return for equity in the client’s business or royalties from its products.”
Casino’s are the last place you expect to find good culture, but apparently Caesars gets it right.
“It’s something you hear over and over about Caesars in its birthplace; good people, the place runs right; the staff make good money. Not the best money, like they raked in back in the good old days . But still among the best.”
Many Canadian companies also have their cultural act together, among them are…
“When people have passion projects or interests . . . there is a culture here that they’re not shy or unwilling to come forward… It’s that kind of flexibility, out-of-the-box thinking and attention to corporate culture that truly differentiates a company from competitors” explains Chris Bedford, president of Calgary-based branding agency Karo Group.
“Creating an open dialogue where employees truly have a voice and are listened to also makes a profound difference. “We’re constantly hiring,” he says. “Not only are we overstaffed, but we’re cherry-picking the best people and it all comes because of the reputation,” according to Bruce Rabik, chief operating officer of Rogers Insurance Ltd.”
There are great lessons to be learned from these cultures and the people who create/enable them. And if you want to implement similar ideas in your company, I’m willing to bet that every one of them would take the time to address your how-to questions.
How do you foster out-of-the-box cultural idea in your company?
Have a quick question or just want to chat? Feel free to write or call me at 866.265.7267. Up to a point it's free, beyond that point it's business. Not sure? No problem:) I'll say something if the line's crossed.
The other day I said to a friend that I’ve turned into a real wimp. He thought I was kidding and said that I was the last person he associated with wimping out on anything.
and was converted.
Does skin color matter to you? Your 
A couple of weeks ago I 
A month ago I 
thinks that parents should stop “meaningless, baseless praise,” which may start even before nursery school.
There’s no time to post about all the interesting articles on corporate culture that I find, so I thought I’d offer several up with a few notes.
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