Thirty-odd years ago when what most people think of technology were young and the Digital Generation was barely started Bill Gates and other experts raved about how that generation would revolutionize the world because they would all grow up programming.

The assumption was that most anyone with a computer would learn to program, because that was the nature of the beast.

Many others disagreed saying that just because someone drove a car didn’t mean that person wanted to work under the hood.

Turned out the latter group was correct.

Few people, whether their careers or their pleasures, depend on computers and the Internet have a clue as to what is actually going on—nor do they particularly care.

But for those of you who have a bit of curiosity as to what happens when you click ‘send’ I offer the following video; and if you already know watch anyway.

You’ll appreciate the skill it took to make something opaque so transparent.

Your comments-priceless

Don’t miss a post! Subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Has tuit culture invaded your team’s culture?

Has it seeped into your personal culture and infected your values?

Tuit culture is insidious; it usually starts with small inconsequential stuff and then quietly spreads.

If not dealt with immediately it can delay projects, impact vendors, damage customer relationships, substantially increase turnover, especially among your best and brightest, and ruin your street rep.

Are you familiar with the warning signs, so you can take action before tuit culture takes root?

Be warned if you notice any of the following:

• Small tasks aren’t done on time or just aren’t done.
• One or more of your team are slow to respond to requests.
• Individuals and teams find ways of bypassing one or more of its members or bosses.

The best antidotes to tuit culture are vigilance, awareness (both group and self), transparency and open communications.

Beware the Round Tuit

Image credit: RampUp Solutions

Your comments-priceless

Don’t miss a post! Subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

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

When I started this blog I wrote a post called Management Bedrock in response to a query from a newly promoted manager who didn’t want to be mediocre.

My advice to him hasn’t changed and it reflected in two very different situations.

The first is from Derek Flanzraich, founder of Greatist, talking about mistakes to avoid.

Not Sharing Enough With the Team

I aim to be transparent with my team to the point of feeling uncomfortable about it. Since we’re so small and what we’re doing is so important, believe it’s key to express that trust. This year, I failed to share my general thoughts on the future a few times, so I’ve learned to be more proactive. We’re all in this together–and I need their help!

It’s an older and much different environment in Europe; however, transparency and skilled communications not only worked for BMW, but won it an award.

“There is no better way to motivate than to communicate,” Johannas Haider, VP of Purchasing, Production and Technology Plastics-Exterior at BMW, told INSEAD Knowledge at the 2012 Industrial Excellence Awards ceremony near Munich in October.  Haider calls his BMW subsidiary in Tubingen a “Transparent Factory” in which management and workers are cross-trained to understand the entire manufacturing process.  The workflow is also visible on “dashboard” charts throughout the plant.  “This is our answer to complexity,” he says.

Transparency; trust; openness.

Here’s the simple mantra I shared years ago and have shared with clients for more than three decades.

Premise: People are intelligent, motivated and want to help their company/manager succeed.

Corollary: It’s management’s responsibility to provide them with all the information needed to understand how to perform their work as correctly, completely and efficiently as possible.

Print it. Post it in where you’ll see it every day. Practice it all the time.

Don’t wait for a good time, just do it now—do it always.

Image credit: HikingArtist

Your comments-priceless

Don’t miss a post! Subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

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.

SUBMIT YOUR STORY
Be the Thursday feature – Entrepreneurs: [your company name]
Share the story of your startup today.
Send it along with your contact information and I’ll be in touch.
Questions? Email or call me at 360.335.8054 Pacific time.

Flickr image credit: Geek and Poke

Your comments-priceless

Don’t miss a post! Subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

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.

Be the drug dealer your people will love.

Wikimedia image credit: Edgar181

Your comments-priceless

Don’t miss a post! Subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

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

Analysis by VC Anthony Tjan, founder of Cue Ball, found that 25% of both entrepreneurs and corporate business builders consider themselves lucky.

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.

Flickr image credit: HikingArtist

Your comments-priceless

Don’t miss a post! Subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Unless you’ve been living on another planet or alternative reality you’ve heard that Facebook is going public.

Facebook loves to position itself as users’ friend, with only their best interests at heart.

In his founder’s letter Mark Zuckerberg said “We don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services.”

Huh?

There is far more truth in the editorial comment, “This also seems disingenuous considering that Facebook’s biggest triumph is to help advertisers by mining user data to target ads and to train them to treat corporate brands like friends.”

The exception is the 845 million people who log in on Facebook’s mobile app, “We do not currently directly generate any meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products, and our ability to do so successfully is unproven.”

But I’m sure they’ll find a way.
How much personal data does Facebook collect?

Consider the disk sent to Max Schrems, a 24-year-old law school student, a Facebook user since 2008, who is spearheading a protest against “Facebook’s illegal practices of collecting and marketing users’ personal data, often without consent.”

The disk contained 1,222 pages of information.

That’s a very rich vein of ore for any marketer to mine.
Privacy is a far bigger deal in Europe.

Europeans demand more privacy than Americans and the EU is far more willing to enforce that desire than the financially beholden US Congress.

That makes international monetization more difficult.

The drive for monetization underlies everything Facebook does—but that’s not what’s bad.

What’s bad is their pretense that it isn’t true.

Facebook as a social force isn’t going away, but you would be wise to remember that Facebook is not your friend.

Flickr image credit: marcopako 

Your comments-priceless

Don’t miss a post! Subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

Certain subjects have been discussed and debated constantly over the years; today’s links are updates on four of them.

The first looks at the very sensitive subject of job, creation, loss and outsourcing, using Apple as its case study. (You may also find this op-ed companion piece of interest.

“All these new companies — Facebook, Google, Twitter — benefit from this. They grow, but they don’t really need to hire much.” –Jean-Louis Gassée

In particular, companies say they need engineers with more than high school, but not necessarily a bachelor’s degree. Americans at that skill level are hard to find, executives contend. “They’re good jobs, but the country doesn’t have enough to feed the demand.”

Then, of course, there is the ongoing debate on the effectiveness of managers; it started around the time the first hunting party organized to go after a wooly mammoth.

“It’s very tough to believe that there are such wide differences in management out there.” –Raffaella Sadun, assistant professor at Harvard Business School.

(Only someone who has never been in the workplace could make that statement with a straight face.)

The list of companies, not to mention executives, that have crashed and burned as a result of their lies is extensive and very public, while the number that are more or less opaque is uncountable. Is there truly a benefit for those that practice candor?

“In fact, the share prices of survey companies in the top quartile of CEO candor outperformed companies in the bottom quartile by 31%. For nine of the past 10 years, top-ranked companies have outperformed bottom-ranked companies on average by 18%.”

Finally, a disturbing look at the meritocracy called Silicon Valley.

“Silicon Valley is indeed a meritocracy for those to whom these criteria are not hurdles. But others—the blacks, women, and Hispanics whom it overlooks—find it an elite private club from which they are excluded.” –Vivek Wadhwa

(Hat tip to Emanio CEO KG Charles-Harris for sending this to me.)

Flickr image credit: pedroelcarvalho

Your comments-priceless

Don’t miss a post! Subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

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

Last summer I wrote about the damage done by misrepresenting the real facts of your company culture.

Today I want you to think about the damage that can be done by misrepresenting your past—as was done by Yale football coach Tom Williams.

Williams said he had chosen to pursue a career in professional football at the expense of a possible Rhodes scholarship — and never regretted the decision. Witt leaned on his coach for advice, and eventually decided to play in the game. Yale was crushed, 45-7.

But Williams’s story was a lie.

Bottom line, Yale lost the game, Witt lost the scholarship, and Williams lost his job.

It doesn’t matter if the lie is large, like Williams’ was, or a minor tweaking of the facts; these are personal lies and they go beyond damaging cultural touchstones, they damage lives.

Too many entrepreneurs believe there is wiggle room as long as the words or actions further company goals or land rare and needed talent.

These entrepreneurs are willing to sacrifice not only everything, but everybody, to their vision.

Are you one of them?

Option Sanity™ isn’t for liars

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.”
Option Sanity™ is not recommended for micromanagers, manipulators, or politicos. Founders and CEOs with large egos, or a sense of entitlement, should avoid prolonged exposure to Option Sanity™.
Use only as directed.
Excitement and a strong feeling of virtue are expected; contact your Option Sanity™ rep at the first sign of smugness or if you experience any difficulty explaining Option Sanity™ to others.
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

Your comments-priceless

Don’t miss a post! Subscribe via RSS or EMAIL

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

Today is not another rehash of the Zynga fiasco or CEO Mark Pincus’ follow-up email to the troops.

What I found fascinating is that the entire problem could have been averted by using Option Sanity™.

Seriously.

Yes; I know; every founder believes his or her product is the perfect solution in its nitch, but rarely are we gifted with such a high profile, real-life demonstration.

Rather than simply firing under-performing employees and handing unvested options over to the replacement, Pincus often likes to find another position within Zynga where the employee might still be able to contribute. But because that new position was often lower down the corporate totem poll, Pincus basically wanted to cut the person’s compensation by reducing his or her number of unvested options (vested options were not touched).

Some say bad hires just shouldn’t happen, while others accept them as a normal part of business and believe fast hire/fast fire is the right approach.

I believe Pincus’ approach to a miss-hire is valid; in the heat of a high growth hiring frenzy managers do hire good people for the wrong positions, oft times because candidates oversell their experience and/or managers are desperate to fill their openings.

Think of it as a people pivot—repositioning talent for the good of the company.

The problem is that any unexpected changes made after the fact, no matter how valid, breach the social contract and, in doing so, break trust.

The hiring errors and the associated stock grants should have been corrected as soon as they were identified. Waiting until just before the IPO significantly exacerbates the damage to both Zynga’s and Pincus’ street rep and puts employee morale in the toilet.

It’s a different result when incentive stock grants are based on a transparent, fair, structured methodology that everyone understands, especially when it’s rooted in the company’s stated values/culture.

A methodology that

• assigns positions to levels based on its ability to influence the company’s success as opposed to urgency or charm and history of the candidate;
• assigns an ISO baseline to each level that dictates both the initial hiring grant and
• the Annual Stock Bonus, so that a significant portion of each person’s stock rewards are based on the actual success of the company over time, as measured against quantified annual goals approved by the Board;
• allocates based on the current risk level as defined by set milestones; and
• spells out what happens for both promotions and demotions

It’s easiest to put that structure in place at the very beginning when it’s just the founders.

That’s why we provide Option Sanity™ free for six months to any startup with fewer than four people.

(Feel free to email me or call 866.265.7267 for more information or if you are just curious.)

Option Sanity™ prevents Zyngavitis

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.

Image credit: hikingartist.com

Your comments-priceless

Don’t miss a post! Subscribe via RSS or EMAIL