A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read allIf the Shoe Fits posts here
Influence isn’t about your online ranking or the strength of your brand, although they contribute.
Influence is about effect.
The effect your words or actions have on those exposed to them.
Yesterday I linked to an article in which Penelope Trunk said that it’s a bad idea for founders to be of different genders and because of her influence dozens of founders are probably rethinking their startup plans.
There is a common arrogance among influencers to generalize their opinion and present it as a fact applicable to all and the more successful the influencer the greater the arrogance.
But from day one every founder has influence, before success and beyond the expected, so even a casual word can cause trouble.
A founder CEO I know, whose original education years before was engineering, had a habit of occasionally strolling through engineering to see what was going on. One day he commented that he wouldn’t do a design the way the team was doing it. It was a casual, throw-away comment, one he had forgotten five minutes later, but it devastated the design team. The CEO had no clue to the havoc he wrought and it took the vp of engineering, who was co-founder, hours to settle them down. He then told the CEO not to talk to the team and banned him from the department.
What those on the receiving end of influencers need to realize is that no matter how brilliant or experienced someone is they are still voicing an opinion. And as valuable as the opinion may be, it should never be swallowed whole, because opinions are subjective.
They are the product of that individual’s MAP, which itself is a product of upbringing and experience. Even someone else having exactly the same background and experience would not have identical MAP because each person processes differently and has different inherent characteristics.
Influence comes with responsibilities—how well do you handle yours?
Option Sanity™ reflects your influence.
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.
If a business collects data on consumers electronically, it should provide them with a version of that data that is easy to download and export to another Web site. Think of it this way: you have lent the company your data, and you’d like a copy for your own use.
He goes on to offer specific examples of ways in which people would gain significantly from having access to that data if it was in a user-friendly form.
(His comments reminded me of the legal fight by people whose genomes were added to data bases without their consent.)
Senators John Kerry and John McCain (wow, that is an odd couple) have co-authored a bill called the Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights, which is good (if it passes), but Thaler says it only addresses privacy and security issues, not useable access.
Both sound like a good idea.
The UK already has both.
US marketers claim that any kind of privacy or data control will affect the economy adversely; I even heard some say that any kind of limitations on the use of data in the US could impair the global recovery.
Pu-leeeze!
If, as Thaler demonstrates, giving useable access to collected data would allow consumers to better evaluate pricing to find the best deal the result would be less smoke and mirrors and (slightly) more authenticity.
It seems to me that would benefit the recovery—at least for those companies that aren’t playing games.
It’s funny, most bloggers release products, immediately write about them on their blogs and then all of their blogger friends write about them. It’s logical to do so, even reasonable.
So why haven’t I done it? Actually, I announced it in August, but there was no reaction or comments you, my readers, or any of the bloggers I contacted (but more on them in another post).
Going forward, I thought it would be fun to share some of the challenges, problems and results of our marketing effort, since it turns on subjects about which I frequently write.
In case you don’t remember, Option Sanity is a totally new, values-based way to allocate stock options, with a focus on fairness. It levels the playing field and even makes investors happy.
To give you a much better understanding of how it works, here is the video tour. There is additional information on the website and for those who are really curious, you can play with the full app demo and post your thoughts, opinions or questions here or on the review page.
Yesterday I shared my love of crossing stuff off lists because of the sense of accomplishment it brings, but that kind of stuff is small potatoes; it lifts me up and helps me move forward, but it isn’t a substitute for hitting the goals that move my life.
I just hit the biggest one on my list and want to share it with you.
For the last several years we’ve been working to turn a consulting approach for allocating incentive stock in private companies based on the company’s values and culture into a web-based subscription service (SaaS)—and it’s finally a reality!
Not only that, but because I hate the way traditional Help works, I conceived a brand new, user friendly type of Help that our programmers implemented brilliantly—you’ll love it.
It’s a soft launch, but Option Sanity™ has its second beta client (I’m looking for three more) and is looking good.
But it feels strange; for so long the focus and the goal has been to produce the software and the website. That meant working with the programmers, tons of writing and editing, working with the guy who originated the math and mechanics of Option Sanity™ and who was primary tester and developing my own skills as a user.
Now that it’s done I keep waiting for a massive feeling of accomplishment and although it’s there it’s dwarfed by what needs to be done now—marketing, identifying and closing multiple sales channels, supporting new users, developing a FAQ based on their questions, creating a user community—the list seems endless.
With all that starting me in the face I thought I’d ask for some help.
It would be terrific if you would to www.optionsanity.com, read about the product and click Take the Tour. Unfortunately the tour isn’t done, but on that page you’ll find a link to the full app demo.
Check it out and then leave your comments on the review page. Forward the information to anyone you think would be interested
I know it will take a few minutes, but I would be eternally grateful.
2010 is not only a new year it’s a new decade; are you looking forward to big changes in your life? I am.
I thought I’d take today to tell you about mine and you can use comments to talk about yours.
Fortunately it’s not just good things that end, but also the not-so-good and the downright rotten. That includes 2009 and converting a consulting service into easily useable software and creating a new form of “Help” that is actually useful and useable.
The biggest change on my horizon is (finally) the release Q1 of Option Sanity™, a SAAS (software as a service) product that’s been a bear to develop.
Another change stems from the demise of Leadership Turn, the blog I’ve written for b5 Media for the last two-and-a-half years.
Many of my regular readers from LT are joining our community and that will increase our interaction, i.e., more comments, discussions and requests to address topics of interest to you.
I’m incorporating 3 of Leadership Turn’s weekly features
Tuesday’s Ducks in a Row: offering what-to’s, why-to’s and how-to’s about culture, managing and motivation;
Thursday’s Leadership’s Future: musings and commentary on topics that affect where we go in the future, such as education, attitudes, etc.;
Sunday’s Quotable Quotes which will run in addition to the mY generation comic
Saturday’s article links will be under the new category of Expand Your Mind;
More of my own take on ‘leadership’—why initiative equates to leadership and how it should be a core competency and not just a vision by the person out front;
By the end of the month all my content from Leadership Turn (there were other authors previously) will be posted here and searchable from the main search box (we’re working out the technicalities now).
I have other major changes in the works, either too personal or too boring to share, but since those I’ve mentioned account for 85% of my focus you aren’t missing anything—suffice it to say I’m one of those dinosaurs who chooses not to live my private life online.
Clare Booth Luce, according to columnist Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan, once told President John Kennedy that “a great man is one sentence.” Noonan writes that Lincoln’s life could be summed up as “He preserved the Union and freed the slaves.” –Bloomberg.com
Smith Magazine just published its second collection of six word memoirs by, as they say, “the famous and obscure.” They also continually collect them on their website.
Forcing yourself to boil down your current situation or a specific aspect of it is a great way to bring clarity to often smoky or downright opaque feelings.
I love this idea and would like to invite all of you to post your six word summation in comments. I’ll then create a permanent page in the right-hand column to make it easy to post updates as often as you choose. I’ll start off.
One of the things that RampUp does for its startup clients is help implement our unique approach to awarding stock options. The original methodology was conceived by RampUp’s angel Al Negrin for his own startups and we’re currently in the process of turning the consulting service into a software program called Option Sanity™.
Among all the neat things that Option Sanity™ does is track award dates and provide an audit trail that discourages backdating.
Yup, 12 years of misdated stock options, but no misconduct!
“If we eliminate misconduct, we find ourselves in the land of cluelessness, sloppiness and ineptitude… There were other goofy mistakes, like recording option grants for folks who were no longer on the payroll…And the firm’s options accounting treated some consultants like employees.
As in many of these options messes, the compensation committee’s use of “unanimous written consents” instead of real meetings (and befuddlement over who had authority to make grants) led to massive confusion about the dates on which options were officially granted. The investigators had to reconstruct the circumstances behind every grant to figure out the “appropriate” date (and hence the real exercise price) for each one. The company admits that some dates “could not be determined with certainty.”
All of which goes to prove Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
Influence isn’t about your online ranking or the strength of your brand, although they contribute.
By now you all know that I am a digital dinosaur, no cell phone, no iAnything, and a careful participant online.
2010 is not only a new year it’s a new decade; are you looking forward to big changes in your life? I am.
Can you sum up your life in just 6 words?
It also provides the intelligence necessary to avoid the level of idiocy present in 
