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Golden Oldies: Ducks in a Row: Culture is Critical

March 16th, 2020 by Miki Saxon

Poking through 14+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

Focus on culture isn’t new, but it used to be a lot more positive. These days I see more about toxic cultures than about good ones, but what hasn’t changed is culture’s effect on performance, productivity and staffing. For better or worse, culture is still the most potent factor for any company.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Shawn Parr, whose company works with large corporations, such as Starbucks and MTV, on innovation wrote a meaty post called Culture Eats Strategy For Lunch.

It reminded me of something I wrote back in 2008, because the title is from a quote by Dick Clark, CEO of Merk and after rereading it I decided it’s worth reposting, so here it is.

Culture Trumps All

A post on Dave Brock’s blog led me to an article at IMD’s site called “An Unpopular Corporate Culture” and, as Dave said, it’s a must read for anyone who still thinks that corporate culture is some ephemeral concept with no real impact that consultants use to sell their services.

And a double-must for those who talk about culture’s importance, but don’t walk very well when it comes to creating a great corporate culture.

For those who prefer to put their faith in plans and strategy, hear the words of Dick Clark when he took over as CEO of Merck in 2005 and was asked about his strategy for restoring the pharmaceutical company to its former glory. “His strategy, he said, was to put strategy second and focus on changing the company’s insular, academic culture.” The fact is, culture eats strategy for lunch,” Clark explained. “You can have a good strategy in place, but if you don’t have the culture and the enabling systems that allow you to successfully implement it… the culture of the organization will defeat the strategy.””

If you’re looking for a best practice corporate culture silver bullet forget it—one size doesn’t fit all.

Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, describes that company’s top-down command and control culture of consistency and discipline as “the source of our competitive advantage,” and has made it a priority to reinforce it.

Meanwhile, Robert Iger and Steve Jobs, in their discussions about the acquisition of Pixar by Disney, have been concerned with avoiding an Exxon style command and control culture. Jobs says that, “Most of the time that Bob and I have spent talking about this hasn’t been about economics, it’s been about preserving the Pixar culture because we all know that’s the thing that’s going to determine the success here in the long run.””

It took Lou Gerstner a decade to remake IBM.

The key lesson Gerstner learned in his time with IBM, as he later reflected, was the importance of culture.”Until I came to IBM, I probably would have told you that culture was just one among several important elements in any organization’s makeup and success—along with vision, strategy, marketing, financials, and the like… I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game—it is the game.”

The article is more than just additional proof for my favorite hobby horse.

The analysis of the role of employee complaints/negativity play in culture and the importance of what to keep when setting out to change a culture as opposed to what to jettison will give you new insight on your own company’s culture.

In case you still doubt the power and value of culture I hope that Dick Clark, Rex Tillerson, Robert Iger, Steve Jobs and Lou Gerstner combined with the articles in Fast Company and IMD have finally changed your mind.

Flickr image credit: Bengt Nyman

Change Too Late?

March 11th, 2020 by Miki Saxon

https://www.flickr.com/photos/christopherdombres/20657778626/

As we saw yesterday, business is learning the hard way that walking their corporate responsibility talk is vital to their very survival.

They aren’t the only ones out of touch.

John C. Williams, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, said in a speech last month that “there is still time to avert this fate.” Moving inflation up and keeping it there could convince millennials, he said.

“In this case, it’s fortunate that the young are impressionable.”

“Fate” refers to the potential economic mayhem that could result from the high savings rate among Millennials looking to retire ASAP. “Impressionable?” I wonder how long it’s been since he actually knew any of the “young.”

Powerful men who have seen women as things to do with as they please are thinking twice in the wake of #metoo and Harvey Weinstein’s conviction. Hopefully that caution will trickle down to the rank and file bosses who still seem untouchable, although that’s unlikely.

Big Tech is no longer seen a solution to the world’s problems, but, in many cases, as their cause.

Startups are learning that public investors, whether knowledgeable or casual, are still hung up on mundane ideas like profit as opposed to their beloved EBITDA.

Founders, too, are rethinking their actions. Thanks to high profile cases, such as Travis Kalanick (Uber) and Adam Neumann (WeWork), and a much savvier workforce, visions and charisma are no longer enough.

One might look at all this and say, “the world is changing,” although a more realistic view could be summed up as “too little, too late.”

Image credit: CHRISTOPHER DOMBRES

The Downfall of Historic Corporate Responsibility

March 10th, 2020 by Miki Saxon

I wrote yesterday’s Oldie back in 2007; it ended with this comment,

Corporate responsibility is a major buzzword these days, but it’s hard to tell whether it’s tied more closely to

  • doing what’s right;
  • doing what you can get away with; or
  • not getting caught.

It’s taken 13 years for practitioners of the second and third approaches to even consider changing.

The pressure they face to take such steps is real; the industry’s years of reliance on hypocrisy, lobbying, and misleading public relations tactics is eerily reminiscent of the approach taken by tobacco companies, and its litigation risks are set to follow a similar trajectory, with lawyers and activists framing failure to address climate change as a human-rights violation.

The changes certainly aren’t being driven by the Feds (consider the EPA’s decision to limit scientific research when drafting environmental and public health regulations), but by people.

The corporate responsibility façade is—finally, thankfully—crumbling. Activist investors and angry citizens have forced a reckoning. The Conference Board views the upcoming 2020 proxy season as a tipping point for disclosure of corporate political activity.

Even more potent are Gen Z’s and many Millennial’s attitude on choosing a place to work.

Young graduates evaluating prospective employers know that the true narrative of a corporation’s purpose can be found by reviewing who it does business with and which politicians it backs [emphasis mine].

There is no company that can survive without an adequate workforce and there is no Generation in history as suspicious and downright cynical about corporate America, including Big Tech, unicorns and startups in general than Gen Z — an attitude already infecting other generational segments.

Amazon employee reaction to CEO Jeff Bezos’ climate change initiative is a good example.

Amazon Employees for Climate Justice responded to Jeff Bezos’s recent $10 billion commitment to fight climate change by reminding their CEO that “one hand cannot give what the other is taking away.”

That two-faced approach isn’t unusual; in fact, it’s common practice — more plainly described as talk the talk, but screw the walk.

It will be difficult for that approach to continue working when it seriously limits recruiting efforts, not to mention paying customers.

Image credit: Frits Ahlefeldt

Golden Oldies: Corporate responsibility

March 9th, 2020 by Miki Saxon

https://www.flickr.com/photos/willemvanbergen/271164398/

Poking through 14+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

Jack Welch died recently and Jeff Immelt is also gone from GE, but at the time, they were a good example of two sides of corporate responsibility — one who talked and the other who walked.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

If you’re a long-term reader you’ll know that I’m not a big fan of Jack Welch, while I am of Jeff Imelt—two guys with very different MAP.

Knowledge@Wharton made this comment as background in describing what Judy Hu, global executive director for advertising and branding, is doing to publicize the “new” GE.

Since becoming boss in 2001 — just a few days before September 11 — Immelt has aimed to make GE not only an innovator but also an environmental leader. In doing that, he has broken with his predecessor, Jack Welch, but also, in some ways, taken the company back to its roots. Thomas Edison, inventor of the light bulb and the phonograph, started GE in the late 1800s. More recently, under the combative, controversial Welch, it came to be known for operational excellence and a brassy pugnacity.

Welch famously declared that GE would have to be no. 1 or 2 in every line of business in which it competed and would ditch divisions where it wasn’t. And he battled state and federal regulators for years over their order that GE clean up carcinogenic waste that its factories had dumped into New York’s Hudson River. Under Immelt, the company hammered out an agreement to dredge the still-polluted river bottom. “Jeff said, ‘We’re going to fix that and move forward,’”

I find this ironically amusing after reading various articles where Welch was talking about corporate responsibility.

Corporate responsibility is a major buzzword these days, but it’s hard to tell whether it’s tied more closely to

    • doing what’s right;
    • doing what you can get away with; or
    • just not getting caught.

Image credit: Willem van Bergen

Irrational Humans / Rational Animals

March 4th, 2020 by Miki Saxon

https://www.flickr.com/photos/146269332@N03/48571681591/

Way back when I was in elementary school I remember a teacher saying that the difference between humans and other animals was that humans were rational.

Being an overly-observant kid I was a bit skeptical of that comment.

That skepticism grew as I got older and over the last 15+ years has grown at warp speed.

Paralleling the growth of my skepticism has been research into the intelligence and rational actions of a multitude of animals.

Only two months into 2020 and it seems the world’s gone nuts.

Not just the problems/panic/hype/cons being driven by Covid-19, but all kinds of crazy happenings around the world, including the US, with a crazy election year that seems even crazier than usual.

Very little ‘rational’ anywhere in the mix.

Animals, from insects to primates, are far more rational.

Any animal living in a group needs to make decisions as a group, too. Even when they don’t agree with their companions, animals rely on one another for protection or help finding food. So they have to find ways to reach consensus about what the group should do next, or where it should live. While they may not conduct continent-spanning electoral contests like this coming Super Tuesday, species ranging from primates all the way to insects have methods for finding agreement that are surprisingly democratic.

Yet more proof that my long-ago teacher got it wrong.

Image credit: Marco Verch/trendingtopics

Humans Not Ready for Primetime

March 3rd, 2020 by Miki Saxon

https://www.flickr.com/photos/automobileitalia/30430513415/

It’s not just self-driving or any of the other “DDIY (don’t do it yourself) tech that isn’t ready for primetime.

It’s humans.

The National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday that Tesla’s Autopilot driver assistance system was one of the probable causes of a fatal 2018 crash into a concrete barrier. In addition, the safety board said the driver was playing a mobile game while using Autopilot before the crash, and investigators also determined he was overly confident in Autopilot’s capabilities.

“Overly confident,” huh. Well, duh.

Who ever heard of a human who wasn’t, at the least, confident that the tech they spent their money, especially expensive tech, wouldn’t do what they expected.

“In this crash we saw an over-reliance on technology, we saw distraction, we saw a lack of policy prohibiting cell phone use while driving, and we saw infrastructure failures, which, when combined, led to this tragic loss,” NTSB chairman Robert Sumwalt said at the end of the hearing on Tuesday. “We urge Tesla to continue to work on improving their Autopilot technology and for NHTSA to fulfill its oversight responsibility to ensure that corrective action is taken where necessary. It’s time to stop enabling drivers in any partially automated vehicle to pretend that they have driverless cars.”

Even driverless cars tell drivers to stay alert, as do “Autopilot.”

Of course, doctors have been telling people to eat more veggies for decades and you know how well that’s worked.

Say the word “auto” to anyone and they will hear “you don’t have to do anything, X does it for you.”

Real pilots know better.

Image credit: Automobile Italia

Golden Oldies: Entrepreneurs: Tesla Hack

March 2nd, 2020 by Miki Saxon

https://www.flickr.com/photos/30998987@N03/16642738584

Poking through 14+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

In August 2016 I wrote Self-driving Tech Not Ready for Primetime and a month later Tesla was hacked. But, as you’ll find out tomorrow, hacking isn’t the only problem — humans are actually way higher on the problem scale. While it’s not easy, hacking dangers can be minimized, but fixing humans is impossible.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

I’ve been writing (ranting?) about the security dangers of IoT and the connected world in general.

Security seems to be an afterthought— mostly after a public debacle, as Chrysler showed when Jeep was hacked.

GM took nearly five years to fully protect its vehicles from the hacking technique, which the researchers privately disclosed to the auto giant and to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in the spring of 2010.

Pity the half million at-risk OnStar owners.

A few days ago Tesla was hacked by Chinese white hat Keen Team.

“With several months of in-depth research on Tesla Cars, we have discovered multiple security vulnerabilities and successfully implemented remote control on Tesla Model S in both Parking and Driving Mode.”

They hacked the firmware and could activate the brakes, unlock the doors and hide the rear view mirrors.

Tesla is the darling of the Silicon Valley tech set and Elon Musk is one of the Valley gods, but it still got hacked. And the excuse of being new to connected tech just doesn’t fly.

And if connected car security is full of holes, imagine the hacking opportunities with self-driving cars.

The possibilities are endless. I can easily see hackers, or bored kids, taking over a couple of cars to play chicken on the freeway at rush hour.

Nice girls don’t say, ‘I told you so’, but I’m not nice, so — I told you so.

Image credit: mariordo59

Role Model: Craig Newmark

February 26th, 2020 by Miki Saxon

https://www.flickr.com/photos/cambodia4kidsorg/6298843358

Is anyone in tech truly immune from the lure of the big bucks that come from mining user data?

Not just in the short haul, but over the long haul — like 25 years?

Certainly not Google, with its management-trashed “don’t be evil.”

Or Facebook, that continually violates its users in the name of revenue.

but there is one site known to techies and the rest of us alike.

Craigslist.

Craigslist started as an email listserv in 1995, when early web enthusiasts were looking for a sense of community and DIY education. By 1996, it had become a website with job listings, apartment rentals, and personal ads. Almost as soon as the internet was becoming widely available—roughly 1 out of 5 households was online at the time—Craigslist was there to help people find roommates, look for jobs, go on blind dates, or sell used furniture.

Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster has been at the helm since 2001, and the founder, Craig Newmark, is still involved in the company. For years, Newmark did customer service, responding to design complaints and concerns about scams. Today, Craigslist has more monthly page visits than The New York Times or ESPN, and it’s been incredibly profitable.

Its profitability might come as a surprise to some. Many of those I spoke with thought Craigslist was a nonprofit or that it was community-run. In fact, Craigslist has always charged money for certain ads, such as job postings and classified ads. (By siphoning revenue from classified ads, Craigslist has been one reason newspapers across the country have struggled to stay in business.)

More recently, Craigslist has started charging for other kinds of ads, such as real estate listings from firms and car ads from dealers.

But regular users don’t have to pay a fee. The site doesn’t display banner ads, nor does it sell user data to third parties.

Way back when Craigslist was a startup I met Craig and found him to be a very nice, unassuming guy and it seems  he’s still the same, as reflected in a 20017 interview.

“Basically I just decided on a different business model in ’99, nothing altruistic,” he said. “While Silicon Valley VCs and bankers were telling me I should become a billionaire, I decided no one needs to be a billionaire — you should know when enough is enough. So I decided on a minimal business model, and that’s worked out pretty well. This means I can give away tremendous amounts of money to the nonprofits I believe in … I wish I had charisma, hair, and a better sense of humor,” he added in a completely deadpan voice. “I think I could be far more effective.”

Current entrepreneurs seem more focused on charisma, hair, and reaching unicorn status via multiple rounds of investment. A sense of humor is considered optional.

Image credit: Cambodia4kids.org Beth Kanter

Crooked Signs of the Times

February 25th, 2020 by Miki Saxon

https://www.flickr.com/photos/newtown_grafitti/8353307428/

It’s a good time for crooks of all kinds.

Corporate shenanigans are a growth industry. Not since the days of the robber barons has white collar crime enjoyed such freedom.

OVER THE LAST TWO YEARS, nearly every institution of American life has taken on the unmistakable stench of moral rot.

Tax evasion siphons 10,000 times more money out of the U.S. economy every year than bank robberies. SOURCE: FBI; IRS.

And this clubbiness has human costs. Tax evasion, to pick just one crime concentrated among the wealthy, already siphons up to 10,000 times more money out of the U.S. economy every year than bank robberies. In 2017, researchers estimated that fraud by America’s largest corporations cost Americans up to $360 billion annually between 1996 and 2004.

Tech took a personal hit thanks to Warren Buffet’s partner Charlie Munger and his views on EBITDA, which stands for earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. Tech companies love to talk about their “adjusted EBITDA,” because it makes them look profitable — even a financial loser like Uber.

“I don’t like when investment bankers talk about EBITDA, which I call bulls— earnings,” Munger said at a recent company shareholders meeting. “Think of the basic intellectual dishonesty that comes when you start talking about adjusted EBITDA. You’re almost announcing you’re a flake.”

Tech workers aren’t faring well, either, even at the most hallowed companies.

Silicon Valley has often held itself up as a highly evolved ecosystem that defies the usual capital-labor dichotomy — a place where investors, founders, executives and workers are all far too dependent on one another to make anything so crass as class warfare. The recent developments at Google have thrown that egalitarian story into doubt, showing that even in the most rarefied corners of Silicon Valley, the bosses are willing to close ranks and shut down debate when the stakes are high enough. (…)  Workers weren’t just organizing to save the world from Google. They were also organizing to save themselves from Google, where those who didn’t fit the mold of the straight, white, male techie felt they could be too easily marginalized or dismissed.

The rot isn’t just trickling down, it’s a raging torrent. Student cheating is at an all time high across grades and globally is a billion dollar market.

Philemon is part of the global industry of contract cheating in which students around the world use websites to commission their homework assignments. (…)  Lancaster began studying contract cheating more than a decade ago when he noticed one of his own students posting assignments online. “I found one of my students who was putting up my assignment up for tender on an internet site. So, people were bidding different amounts of money to complete that computer programming assignment.”

Let’s hope the handbasket we’re careening down in is well made, so we can survive our trip to Hell and come out the other side in one piece.

Image credit: Newtown grafitti

Hat tip to KG for sending me the white collar crime article.

Golden Oldies: Quotable Quotes: Bertrand Russell on Fear

February 24th, 2020 by Miki Saxon

Poking through 14+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

I used to have a feature called Quotable Quotes and may bring it back. Bertrand Russell, 1872 – 1970,  (use the link if you aren’t familiar with him; it is a good use of your time) spoke on many subjects. Considering current societal upheaval and forces at work today, it seems like a good time to review his comments on fear. I find them extremely timely, probably even more so than when they were written.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Most of us live with one kind of fear or another, although few of us admit it. Fear often masquerades as something else—envy, arrogance, failure, success—to name just a few. Bertrand Russell provides interesting commentary on fear in it’s many guises.

“Fear makes man unwise in the three great departments of human conduct: his dealings with nature, his dealings with other men, and his dealings with himself.” This explains much of what’s going on in the world today.

Fear not only paralyzes us it builds in our minds until it’s many times its original size; as Russell points out, “Until you have admitted your own fears to yourself, and have guarded yourself by a difficult effort of will against their myth-making power, you cannot hope to think truly about many matters of great importance . . .” I would add that ‘of great importance’ doesn’t necessarily mean global in scope or world-changing—unless you mean your own little corner of the world.

These days superstition is rampant and cruelty—physical, mental and spiritual—abounds in epic proportions at every level of human interaction. It’s worse now than ever before because technology has shrunk the world, given a louder voice to these evils and muted what wisdom is available. Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom . . .

Envy is another form of fear; fear that someone has more, but as Russell points out there is always someone with more… “Envy consists in seeing things never in themselves, but only in their relations. If you desire glory, you may envy Napoleon, but Napoleon envied Caesar, Caesar envied Alexander, and Alexander, I daresay, envied Hercules, who never existed.”

Fear feeds off fear and can be overwhelming. Fear of technology is usually well masked, but it can be substantially diluted if you remember that technology is finite, while humans deal in the infinite. There will still be things that machines cannot do. They will not produce great art or great literature or great philosophy; they will not be able to discover the secret springs of happiness in the human heart; they will know nothing of love and friendship.”

Fear drives ideology, ideology preempts thought and not thinking kills or, as Russell said, “Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.”

Russell didn’t name it, but he had a wonderful take on ideology, “The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”

Image credit: Wikipedia

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