T. Alan Armstrong said, “If there is no passion in your life, then have you really lived? Find your passion, whatever it may be. Become it, and let it become you and you will find great things happen FOR you, TO you and BECAUSE of you.”
A good description of why an entrepreneur becomes an entrepreneur and why people join startups.
But it’s your passion that matters, not what the media or your friends/colleagues say your passion ought to be.
Your passion may lean to a more corporate setting, to a more socially responsible effort or to something else.
Living another person’s passion is far worse than living with no passion—because it is a sham and a sham can not sustain your effort, nor will it drive your success.
What faux passion will do is feast on your energy, suck you dry and leave behind a hollow ghost.
So whatever your passion, just be sure it really is yours.
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By viewing money as the most important thing for their business, startups often bring themselves into a corner. Entrepreneurs must place a premium on the quality of the investor(s) and understand why a smaller amount of money can serve companies better, in most cases, than big money with little or no relevant business expertise.
Sources also matter when it comes to the skills you need in your startup.
When a badly needed set of skills walks through the door managers and even team members will often turn a blind eye to the possessor of those skills.
The red flags that pop up during interviews are rationalized or ignored—even when they are waving madly in a high wind—a ‘get the skills and we’ll worry about the rest later’ attitude prevails.
The problem, of course, is that ‘later’ comes very quickly, often with weeks and sometimes just days.
At that point, you are faced with the choice of keeping the person and having your team damaged or even torn asunder or terminating her and starting your search over.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re evaluating comments or money or skills it’s the source that counts.
Or put another way (paraphrasing), it’s the people, stupid.
SUBMIT YOUR STORY Be the Thursday feature – Entrepreneurs: [your company name]
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“The Information Technology Innovation Foundation ranked the U.S. last of 40 countries in terms of improved innovation capacity over the past decade.”
What if you asked business leaders? More than two-thirds would give their organizations high marks for innovation.
But what happens when you ask the working stiffs in those same organizations? You’d find innovation marks well below half.
Some 78% of leaders said yes; just 43% of employees agreed. Does the leader “urge employees to continually expand their understanding of business trends and emerging issues”? Leaders 77%; employees 51%. Does he or she “guide employees who fail or make mistakes to reframe the experiences as learning opportunities”? Leaders 77%; employees 47%. And does he or she “champion the merits of employee-initiated ideas to senior management”? Leaders 75%; employees 42%.
Those questions were asked of “513 leaders and 514 non-leader employees.”
I found grim amusement in the recommended fixes.
Senior Management Sets the Pace
Choose the Right Leaders
Develop Innovation Leaders
Build a Business Process for Innovation.
I thought senior management were the leaders, but obviously not since they are supposed to choose the “right leaders” and develop “innovation leaders.”
The idea that innovation thinking and support can be delegated by senior management to specialists at lower levels is just plain ludicrous.
Although I find the articles you link to interesting and probably would never see them if you didn’t I do not understand why you don’t link to more bloggers and other online stuff instead of the NY Times, Fortune, Wired, Inc, etc.
He obviously does read me, since that’s a very accurate list of media to which I frequently link, so it’s a fair question.
I partly answered it in an old post referring to what I term the games required by social media, but there are much larger reasons—facts, depth and veracity.
Let me give you an example.
On August 6th the NYT published an article about HCA, a giant for profit hospital chain taken private by a group of private equity firms and since gone public again. HCA was involved in a Medicare fraud case and paid $1.7 billion in fines and repayments; now it’s back on the hot seat for performing unnecessary cardiac procedures to drive up profits.
(The bold is mine.)
Details about the procedures and the company’s knowledge of them are contained in thousands of pages of confidential memos, e-mail correspondence among executives, transcripts from hearings and reports from outside consultants examined by The Times, as well as interviews with doctors and others. A review of those communications reveals that rather than asking whether patients had been harmed or whether regulators needed to be contacted, hospital officials asked for information on how the physicians’ activities affected the hospitals’ bottom line.
A week later The Times followed up with another article showing how HCA has become a role model for hospital profitability; not better care, but more money.
I’m sure the blogging and commentary world that follows Medicare and healthcare in general has been weighing in, but what they don’t do is the research.
They don’t have the time, money, skill, patience and probably not the desire to wade through the paperwork.
So-called old media also seems to set the ethical bar higher and with greater consequences to those who choose to lie and cheat.
Finally, bloggers and commentators read these investigative stories and offer their opinions and spin on them just as I do.
Many of these have good value, it’s just that I would rather discuss and opine on the original than comment on the commentary.
Back in the 1980s and before and maybe after recruiter was the entry point for a career in HR.
As you may imagine, this contributed little-to-nothing to that all-important first impression on candidates.
What was ignored so often back then (and still is) is that whoever is the first direct contact with the outside world, whether customers, vendors or candidates, IS the company.
Internal recruiters, customer service, tech support, receptionists, etc., create that all-important first impression—think Zappos—the impression that lives forever in the back of the mind no matter what happens after.
Computers and mobile haven’t changed this, only now it is often your UI that creates that oh-so-important first impression.
The thing that entrepreneurs, especially young ones, need to understand is that unless their target audience is limited to the tech-savvy or nerds who rate learning new programs right up there with chocolate and visits to the amusement park a UI that doesn’t provide obvious labels and simple instructions is going to turn off a large number of prospective customers.
No matter how sophisticated your app, website or program that sophistication needs to be totally transparent.
People are creatures of habit; many hate change most have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the new whatever.
Simplicity, honesty and transparency go a long way to eliminating that resistance as well as to creating a great first impression.
That’s why first contact points aren’t always the best place to have a newbie learning—not so much the job, but the importance of external players and first impressions.
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Be the Thursday feature – Entrepreneurs: [your company name]
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Yesterday I told you how a company squashed my friend’s initiative by giving him a bonus that had no relationship to the value he provided them in annual savings.
This reminded me of something that happened back in the early 1980s when sales was truly dependent on the skill, relationships and reputations of salespeople.
Another guy friend, another incredibly stupid company.
In a nutshell,
Guy outsold every salesperson both internally and at the competition. He had years of experience; relationships with customers that didn’t quit and unmatched skill at understanding customers and convincing them that his company (whichever it was) had the best solution available.
One day guy was called into the CFOs office and told that his commission was being capped.
He was on track to earn more than the president and that was unacceptable; he asked if they were sure that was the only solution and told yes.
Guy proceeded to write a resignation letter on a sheet of paper he borrowed from the CFO.
He left the offices without speaking to anyone.
By the time he reached home there were three name-your-own-terms offers from competitors on his voicemail.
He started with his new company the next day.
Over the years I’ve found that actions like these usually come from the company’s bean counters. (In this instance, ‘bean counters’ is definitely a derogatory term.)
Apparently, some bean counters involved never learned to do the math.
In both cases the actual cost was zero, since they were funded from direct actions wellbeyond anything expected of the employees involved.
The lesson here is that you never cap a commission and the reward for saving $5 million annually should be at least 1% of one year ($50,000) as opposed to .001% ($5,000).
I realize it’s difficult for some financial types, executives and managers to understand, but that is why bonuses and commissions are called incentives—not disincentives.
Today’s articles are focused on executives, but, as usual, the content is applicable to all levels of management, as well as non-management.
Let’s start with a question; is it possible to effectively manage electronically? Research going back to the 1940s shows that it’s not.
Managing is not a science; it is a subtle and nuanced practice, learned mostly on the job, through paying close attention to gestures and tone of voice. (…) Information technology can and should expand your range of communication, but cannot be a substitute for interactions that build trust, share vision, and enhance community..
“But we humans have found ways to not feel so bad about it when we behave a certain way — we basically disconnect these self sanctions.” (…)”If you were to go to church or temple, that’s a moral domain. People tend to not think about business as a moral domain.” – David Mayer, management professor at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business
For leaders to establish those policies, they’re going to have to fear the consequences themselves. (…) By paying attention to how the environment affects our choices, people can begin to treat their ethics as a skill to develop and continue developing, even as students graduate, enter the workforce, and become executives.
But [after two decades] Beth Brooke was growing tired of hiding, particularly after being tapped to head Ernst & Young’s diversity and inclusion efforts.
Whether your team is virtual or on-site drugging them with oxytocin will keep productivity humming, drive innovation, boost retention and put your organization on the ‘best places to work’ list.
The upside of oxytocin is that it’s totally legal; the downside is that it’s directly tied to your management/leadership skills.
“Whether it’s online or in an office, the leader’s role is to empower individuals to be more successful,” says Paul Zak, a professor of economics and director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, Calif. “If you keep making me successful, I’ll want to keep working for you.”
That’s because oxytocin is a neurochemical produced by the brain in response to certain stimuli that bosses like Tony Hsieh are experts at keeping it flowing.
The economist’s studies tell him that oxytocin is produced in high-performing workplaces. “The classic way to get people to do what you want is fear, but people acclimate to that,” he says. “If you want to keep people on task all the time, you want oxytocin-producing situations.”
Increasing oxytocin is a byproduct of the traits and actions evangelized by management, leadership and corporate culture experts not to mention 110% of the general workforce.
The leadership traits he has identified to produce this include praise, given unexpectedly and in public; transparency in identifying tasks and setting goals; authenticity; effective delegation of work; empathy to others’ situations; anticipation of challenges; and autonomy.
Not exactly rocket science; in fact, you need to be from another planet not to have heard of the value of these traits.
If you don’t already, start practicing them; if you do practice them look for ways to increase/enhance your actions.
That’s a big percentage for something considered random, dubious or non-existent, depending on whom you ask.
Further research found “a combination of what we call a lucky attitude and a lucky network” as opposed to random luck.
What happens next? Does that attitude continue as success mounts?
But the biggest risk for top leaders is being complacent and overconfident — which amounts to being disconnected from the reality, attitude, and relationships that can sustain and take excellence to a new place.
Tjan recommends seven MAP functions to avoid the disconnect:
humility, the lack of which leads to arrogance;
intellectual curiosity, the lack of which also leads to arrogance;
optimism, looking first for the positive attracts great people, while the opposite repels them;
vulnerability, the best preventative for arrogance;
authenticity, which is lost when shrouded in spin; worse, believing the spin leads to arrogance;
generosity, no matter your success, share your knowledge sans the ‘what’s in it for me’ attitude; and
openness, willingness to a listen to new ideas from 360 degrees of non-traditional sources.
Read the article (it’s short) and then share your thoughts on luck below.
Option Sanity keeps you lucky.
Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock process. 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.
A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here
Most people consider it wrong to take something, whether tangible or intangible, from someone’s home without asking—it’s called stealing.
Most people will be highly offended, if not downright pissed off, if someone goes through their cell phone, contacts their friends or reads their texts and emails.
I’m not referring to sleazy porn sites, but to the biggest names in mobile and social, the ones that are role models; names like Google Android, Twitter, Foursquare, Apple i-Whatever (Apple claims they prohibit it, but Yelp, Gowalla, Hipster and Foodspotting all do it) and a host of startups and app makers.
The address book in smartphones — where some of the user’s most personal data is carried — is free for app developers to take at will, often without the phone owner’s knowledge.
Heck, appropriating data was actually industry standard, until they were caught, that is.
Now they all claim to be changing their practice and giving users notice when they take personal data.
Does that give you a warm feeling or do you still feel violated the way you would if your home was broken into? (Most people spend more time with their phone than their home.)
Do you trust them to be upfront/authentic/transparent/honest in the future?
Or do you wonder what else they are doing that they haven’t mentioned and probably won’t unless/until they are caught.
Trust is fragile and difficult to fix once it’s broken.
Even oblivious Americans are starting to notice.
Option Sanity™ is trustworthy.
Come visit Option Sanity for an easy-to-understand, simple-to-implement stock allocation process; 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.
T. Alan Armstrong said, “If there is no passion in your life, then have you really lived? Find your passion, whatever it may be. Become it, and let it become you and you will find great things happen FOR you, TO you and BECAUSE of you.” 
If you listen to the media, especially new media, you would think the US is a hotbed of innovation.
A note from a reader posed this question.
Yesterday I told you how a company squashed my friend’s initiative by giving him a bonus that had no relationship to the value he provided them in annual savings.
Today’s articles are focused on executives, but, as usual, the content is applicable to all levels of management, as well as non-management.
Whether your team is virtual or on-site 
Analysis by VC Anthony Tjan, founder of Cue Ball, found that 
