A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

After reading Alexander Haislip’s post, I scurried around and removed the “CEO” from as many profiles as I could find/remember.

Back in 1999 I started RampUp Solutions I called myself “founder” and I was happy with that, but I kept being told I should use ‘CEO’, so I did. (Hey, even smart people can give poor advice.)

However, I was never comfortable with the title because I’ve worked with dozens of CEOs and knew that I didn’t/couldn‘t do what they do.

Not only did not, but could not.

Now, thirteen years later, my gut reaction has been confirmed; not only the reaction, but the reasons.

Ask yourself: would you still be CEO if it were a $100 billion business or would you require what’s euphemistically called “adult supervision?”

Considering what passes for a $100 billion business these days you may want to add ‘sustainable’ to the description.

There is nothing wrong with bringing in a “real” CEO and learning the ropes—think Larry Page and Google—but assuming a title of which you aren’t really capable smacks of a five-year-old dressing up in mommy’s/daddy’s clothes.

Actually, I’m surprised I didn’t delete those three letters years ago when I shared some of the things I’ve heard CEO really means. Call it a major case of disconnect.

I hope Haislip’s and my post inspires you to find the time to expunge CEO from your social profiles and other places, including your business cards.

You might also want to take a hard look at other company titles, especialy on the executive level.

Option Sanity™ reduces pretension.
Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock allocation system.  It’s so easy a CEO can do it.

Warning.
Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.”
Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.

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Marty Zwilling wrote a great essay detailing exactly what to do to guarantee your team’s DEmotivation.

It’s great because in addition to being oh-so-true it’s tongue-in-cheek sarcastic enough that it might even penetrate the minds of those guilty of what it says.

Zwilling writes for entrepreneurs, but most of the actions he describes apply equally well to any manager at any level, as well as parents and pretty much any human interaction.

Call it universal DEmotivation.

Here are the headings, but you should really read the article to know for sure if you are guilty of some more covert version.

1. Be sure your team doesn’t know what is important to you.
2. Never explain your actions.
3. Hire team members who will follow your instructions.
4. Keep people on their toes with a threat of consequences.
5. Team meetings are for delivering the latest decisions.
6. Agree to milestones and then accelerate them.
7. Thank your employees for the little extras.
8. Be careful not to get too involved in your employees own goals.

In the decades I worked as a recruiter and those since starting RampUp Solutions I’ve heard these or variations of them listed as reasons people left their company.

Because when you get right down to it, people quit managers, not companies, and that is especially true when a manager is also a founder.

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A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Today is a mental health day.

(Try it; you might be surprised at the difference it makes!)

See you all tomorrow!

Option Sanity™ saves your time.

Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock allocation system.  It’s so easy a CEO can do it.

Warning.
Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.”
Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.

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A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

You’re a founder and you have a vision.

You tell people about your vision with an eye to recruiting them as investors or employees or customers.

While it’s important that your vision be enticing it’s more important that it dazzle with its clarity.

Clarity is not easy, which is why elevator pitches and tag lines are so difficult to do.

Most people start with a highly embellished description and work to reduce/clarify it.

The reverse is often easier.

Start with a truly bare bones version, such as this description of a restaurant.

“We buy food. We fix it up. And we sell it at a profit.” – Celebrity Chef Mario Batali**

Then add embellishments slowly, one at a time and get feedback with each iteration.

But avoid getting all the feedback from the same audience.

Each time people hear it they add knowledge and reference, and context to their unconscious database, so in time they start interpolate and filling in the blanks just as you do.

Hence you need to constantly refresh your audience to achieve viable feedback, but that unconscious database is the bane of working with anything over the long haul,

The point of all this is to remind you to clarify your vision before you start to sell it.

Option Sanity™ is plain-spoken and direct.
Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock allocation system.  It’s so easy a CEO can do it.

Warning.
Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.”
Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.

**Hat tip to Wally Bock for the Mario Batali quote.

Flickr image credit: HikingArtist

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A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Why is it that so many who offer good professional commentary ruin it by presenting it as black and white?

Nothing that involves humans is black and white.

If I describe a manager who screams, rants, insults, and belittles his people I doubt that you would want to emulate his style.

What happens when I tell you his name is Steve Jobs?

Nothing is black and white.

A recent Inc. article listed 8 Core Beliefs of Extraordinary Bosses, they are

1. Business is an ecosystem, not a battlefield.
2. A company is a community, not a machine.
3. Management is service, not control.
4. My employees are my peers, not my children.
5. Motivation comes from vision, not from fear.
6. Change equals growth, not pain.
7. Technology offers empowerment, not automation.
8. Work should be fun, not mere toil.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the list, the concepts are good, but there is a lot wrong with the accompanying commentary starting with the adjectives.

According to the article bosses who don’t embrace these eight in the way described are average bosses.

More accurately, the descriptions of the actions and attitudes attributed to the “average boss” belong, by and large, to the toxic boss category.

Based on the categories Jobs is average, by the descriptions he’s toxic.

Tony Hsieh comes to mind as fitting the description of ‘extraordinary’, although I doubt you would hear him describe himself that way.

Apple and Zappos are both highly successful.

The take-away is nothing is black and white; things that look great at first glance need to be thought through before you embrace them.

Option Sanity™ helps think things through.

Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock allocation system.  It’s so easy a CEO can do it.

Warning.
Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.”
Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.

Flickr image credit: HikingArtist

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A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Long-term success is as much about attitude as it is about product.

How do you rate yourself on the following?

I believe that

• good information can come from nobody; bad information can come from somebody;
• values verbalized must be values lived;
• to be valid, a social contract can not embrace the concept of “but me;
• fairness comes from applying all rules evenly and equally, no exceptions;
• listening, especially when it’s something you don’t want to hear or from an unusual source; and
• it’s sometimes necessary to modify or let go of an initial vision and pivot in order to succeed.

What would you add to the list?

Option Sanity™ embodies fairness.
Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock allocation system. 
It’s so easy a CEO can do it.

Warning.
Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.”
Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.

Flickr image credit: HikingArtist

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A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Who do you want to hire?

The person who passionately wants to work for a startup or the person who passionately wants to work for your startup?

Think about it.

Who will contribute more?

• The person who always wanted to work in a startup; whose passion is engaged by the mere thought of working in the startup environment; or
• the person who craves the solution your startup proposes even if she never recognized the problem; whose passion is engaged specifically by the idea of contributing to that particular solution no matter where it is done.

Some experts will tell you that it is the drive to work in a startup—any startup—that is most important.

I disagree.

Just as the person who joins a company for money will leave for more money the person who joins because it’s a startup will leave for a sexier startup.

But the person who joins because of a deep, driving passion to be part of that specific solution will stay and fight the good fight long past the time that Hell freezes over.

Option Sanity™ engages the deeply driven.

Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock allocation system.  It’s so easy a CEO can do it.

Warning
Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.”
Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.

Flickr image credit: HikingArtist

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A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Last fall I commented on Zynga’s foot-in-mouth incentive stock errors; now it’s Groupon’s turn to open-mouth-insert-foot and they’ve done a bang up job—and not for the first time.

Once again Groupon says it needs to revise its numbers and once again the revision is in a southerly direction (along with the stock price).

Investors, whether co-founders, friends, family, angels or VCs, let alone the public markets, do not look kindly on management that gets its numbers wrong.

They may excuse it the first time, but from then on every restatement becomes a serious blow to the management teams credibility and integrity, not to mention the overall effect on trust.

Perhaps Groupon drank its own Kool-Aid (a major no-no), since it acts as if its golden boy status excuses it from the mundane requirements, such as accurate sales reports, faced by other companies.

I understand that startups love to brag about their hyper growth and lack of bureaucracy, but when internal controls are counted as bureaucracy the company is headed for a fall.

On another note, if you are a small biz looking for a successful approach  to daily deals that has the metrics in place to really measure the value and will work with you to maximize where you already are check out this 14 year old alternative, with references up the wazoo, called Constant Contact.

Option Sanity™ structures incentive stock grants

Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock process.  It’s so easy a CEO can do it.

Warning.
Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.”
Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.

Flickr image credit: HikingArtist

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A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

Pivots are the name of the game, but why would someone go from founding a commodities company in Dubai (that died when the economy crashed) to creating an e-commerce site offering merchandise from socially conscious startups supporting a wide variety of causes?

“What I was doing before was incredibly unfulfilling.”

So says Brent Freeman , founder of Roozt.

Unfulfilling.

It’s a more common sentiment than you might think.

Even when the exit is lucrative it may not be satisfying.

As someone once said to me, “My startup job made me rich, but it didn’t make me happy.”

Perhaps that’s why so many alumni from places like Microsoft and Google become socially responsible angels.

How fulfilling is your startup?

Option Sanity™  is fulfilling.

Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock allocation system.  It’s so easy a CEO can do it.

Warning.

Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.”
Use only as directed.
Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.

Flickr image credit: HikingArtist

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A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

By now, everybody knows that the Jets management turned itself into a pretzel and spent big money to acquire Tim Tebow from the Broncos.

Notice I didn’t say “add him to the team,” because from what I read there is no team, just a series of “splashy acquisitions.”

That’s the difference between the Jets and the Giants.

…championship teams are built, not bought, not bartered. … The Jets have yet to learn what the Giants already know: championship teams are built, not bought, not bartered. The Jets lacked two important elements last season: roster depth and locker room cohesion. They built their roster as if playing fantasy football, certain Coach Rex Ryan could glean character from a locker room full of characters. But when this grand chemistry experiment blew up the Jets’ laboratory, with players arguing in the huddle and on the field, Ryan acted shocked.

Last year I wrote Insanely Smart Retention and Stars (the third in a series; it contains links to the first two, Insanely Stupid Hiring and Insanely Smart Hiring) and last fall I posted the story of what happens when a founder sets out to hire a star.

In one form or another I and others have been warning that hiring stars is an iffy business and your energy is better spent building and maintaining an all-star team.

So which is your company channeling?

The Jets or the Giants?

Option Sanity™ is a team-builder.

Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock process.  It’s so easy a CEO can do it.

Warning.

Do not attempt to use Option Sanity™ without a strong commitment to business planning, financial controls, honesty, ethics, and “doing the right thing.” Use only as directed.

Users of Option Sanity may experience sudden increases in team cohesion and worker satisfaction. In cases where team productivity, retention and company success is greater than typical, expect media interest and invitations as keynote speaker.

Flickr image credit: HikingArtist

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