Did you know that as nimble as an ordinary bat is when flying it can’t take off from a level place?
If it is placed on the floor or flat ground, all it can do is shuffle about helplessly and painfully until it reaches some slight elevation from which it can throw itself into the air. Then it takes off like a flash.

That’s also a good description of what happens to workers who aren’t given what they need to succeed.

Whether it’s coherent instructions, correct and complete information, additional training, viable feedback, or something else, without it they struggle to survive, let alone thrive.

If you want your people to perform and succeed then it’s your responsibility to provide the slight elevation from which they can launch themselves.

Identifying and providing that slight elevation is your responsibility, whether you consider yourself a leader or a manager.

That small height isn’t one-size-fits-all nor is it necessarily what works for you, which means you need to learn through interaction and discussion what constitutes a feasible elevation for each individual and provide it.

That’s your job, whether you are a CEO, team leader or anything in-between, that is what you are paid to do.

So if doing it doesn’t float your boat and give you an adrenalin rush every time someone takes off you’re in the wrong position. You may like the paycheck, but you’re leaving your people to shuffle in circles and setting them up to fail.

And doing so will come back and bite you at some point.

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When was it lost?

We choose whom to hire/follow/marry/date/befriend—or not.

Some of those choices work out and some don’t, but it’s when we choose someone who’s flawed, who just isn’t nice, that bothers us the most—think Bernie Madoff.

How could we have missed it—it always seems so obvious after the fact—and we end up wondering why our social judgment is so faulty.

A couple of years ago I read an article about research that shows infants do just as good a job discerning the difference between naughty and nice as Santa does.

Babies as young as 6 to 10 months old showed crucial social judging skills before they could talk, according to a study by researchers at Yale University’s Infant Cognition Center published in Thursday’s journal Nature…the Yale team has other preliminary research that shows similar responses even in 3-month-olds.

Ouch.

So what happens between 6 months and the future? Why do we hire/follow /marry/date/befriend the oh-so-obviously wrong people?

Why do we make so many poor choices?

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When possible I prevail on someone I know to attend the major AlwaysOn conferences, usually it’s KG Charles-Harris, but more recently it’s been Chris Blackman.

Last week Chris attended this year’s AlwaysOn Venture Capital Summit at Sand Hill Road in the heart of VCland and got a glimpse into the future investment strategies of that storied world.

From Chris Blackman

What can put venture capitalists in a frenzied state? More money—raising it or losing it.

Was the mood somber, reflecting the fact that a huge chunk of available capital was erased when university endowments closed their piggybanks? No; the mood was frenzied at the thought of being able to raise capital once again.

Going forward, who do VCs anticipate will open the spigot for them? Sovereign wealth funds.

The other depressant in the room should have been found in talk of this year’s IPO market falling without a parachute.

Instead, a second source of glee is their belief that next year will be the year of recovery for the IPO market? Why? Because it can’t get any worse than this year.

This was tempered by the keynote speaker, Bill Gurley of Benchmark Capital, who reminded the audience that, “VCs are inherently an optimistic bunch.”

Anticipation and optimism are all well and good, but does anyone believe that Dubai is unique amongst the rentier states—bankrupt?

There is a real possibility that sovereign wealth funds will need to deploy them to buoy their own economies, which will kill the buzz in short order.

If not, what if the SWFs prefer to sink their teeth into physical assets as opposed to swallowing more IOUs?

And there is certainly no guarantee that the money won’t continue to hide from the markets.

Videos from the conference should be up soon.

Click for more from the Summit and a look at how culture is faring.

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Image credit: AlwaysOn

When possible I prevail on someone I know to attend the major AlwaysOn conferences, usually it’s KG Charles-Harris, but more recently it’s been Chris Blackman.

Last week Chris attended this year’s AlwaysOn Venture Capital Summit at Sand Hill Road in the heart of VCland and got a glimpse into the future investment strategies of that storied world.

From Chris Blackman

A culture of innovation? Customer driven? Family oriented? Work hard play hard? Top down or bottom up?

Do companies still embrace and boast about these corporate attitudes anymore?

Judging from what I heard at the AlwaysOn Venture Capital Summit they have taken a back seat to burnishing a reputation of being a green in many companies—but not all.

Amiel Kornel, senior managing director of the Emerging Technology Group at venture firm Spencer Trask still cares about those values and behaviors.

In particular, he looks for “companies that will define new market categories of business while emphasizing a top down approach to a balanced lifestyle.”

Innocentive is Kornel’s poster child for such values.

It also created the business category known as crowd sourcing.

For example, last week, the US government announced an online challenge with the aim of discovering a process for how the Internet can help with rapid problem solving.  How was it won? A group of MIT students used incentive-based collaboration techniques to encourage individuals to share the winning information.

Innocentive is fast becoming the nexus of such competitions. They have the ability to bring together thousands of minds to solve intellectual challenges quickly.

Mr. Kornel reminds us why company culture is important: “Key individuals must be fun to spend time with because at the end of the day, this relationship is like a marriage.”

And to be productive it needs to be a good marriage.

For more from the Summit check out the buzz.

Image credit: AlwaysOn

Today was a super cool day for me. I met my Russian business partner Nick Mikhailovsky, CEO of NTR Lab, for the first time, although we’ve worked together for a decade.

So when I started thinking about today’s quotes Russia was on my mind. And when I think of Russia I think of proverbs.

I find proverbs to be fascinating proof that no matter the color, culture or time there really is only one race on this planet—human.

The basic concepts of human action and interaction span the globe. In fact, I’ll bet that your culture has a saying that embodies the same concepts as these do.

War has been around as long as the human race as has the desire for peace, which only proves the truth of this proverb, “Eternal peace lasts only until the next war.”

Common sense underlies this proverb, “as long as the sun shines one does not ask for the moon,” but people rarely follow it.

Real Estate people are fond of saying that the there are only three things that matter, location, location, location, but I’ll bet that this proverb predates that by decades, if not longer. “Don’t buy the house, buy the neighborhood.”

It is well know that age is no guarantee of wisdom, knowledge or smarts, but “long whiskers cannot take the place of brains” is a more elegant way of saying it.

My next offering is one that has always been true, but has been proven in spades over the last couple of decades. “With lies you may go ahead in the world – but you can never go back.” Bernie Madoff has decades to think that one over.

“There is no shame in not knowing; the shame lies in not finding out.” This is one that all of us need to take to heart. We need to find out about our politicians, financial managers, corporate chieftains, religious leaders and any others we choose to trust.

Speaking of politicians, we should never forget that “when money speaks, the truth is silent” and we have condoned a culture of political silence.

There is a universal applicability and truth in this proverb, “When you meet a man, you judge him by his clothes; when you leave, you judge him by his heart.”

Maybe the reason for the universality of these thoughts is found in my final offering, “Proverbs are the people’s wisdom.”

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See all mY generation posts here.

The dreaded annual review is on us once again, so I rounded up some great information to help you deal with them.

The second most important thing to know about performance reviews is that using software to write them creates a totally inauthentic experience for your people.

Number one-and-a-half is a great commentary on the stupidity of waiting to apply a retention tourniquet until an employee is frustrated, disgusted and ready to leave.

The most important thing to know about performance reviews is that they should be ongoing conversations throughout the year.

Most managers understand the need to help their people grow and do their best to give them timely feedback—although some do a better job than others. But even the managers who are good at it have trouble when it comes to providing feedback to their top performers, even though they are often the most eager for challenges and growth—neither of which can happen without candid feedback.

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Three great interviews sharing what to do and one commentary on the opposite.

Do you long for simplicity, especially in software? Jason Fried built his company 37Signals because he hates complexity. Read more about his attitudes in Inc’s excellent article, you may be surprised.

Next is the story of and an interview with Steve Chang, co-founder and chairman of Trend Micro. Learn why two failed startups didn’t dampen his entrepreneurial fire and what drives him to innovate.

I love this interview with William D. Green, chairman and C.E.O. of Accenture. He tells his first training seminar as a manager where he was told the 68 (no joke) things he needed to do to be successful; Green decided there were just the three Cs.

The first is competence — just being good at what you do, whatever it is, and focusing on the job you have, not on the job you think you want to have. The second one is confidence. People want to know what you think. So you have to have enough desirable self-confidence to articulate a point of view. The third thing is caring. Nothing today is about one individual. This is all about the team, and in the end, this is about giving a damn about your customers, your company, the people around you, and recognizing that the people around you are the ones who make you look good.

I don’t follow sports, but Wally Bock’s offers a comprehensive commentary on the amazing unprofessionalism of Brian Kelly, whose actions are a case study on the fastest way to trash your people. But I wonder how many people will actually find them offensive or just shrug and say no big deal.

Finally, the ongoing sex scandals of the Catholic Church have offered up some of best examples of how leaders dance around the truth, never really admitting their errors even when they claim to be sorry. Cardinal Egan is a Church leader who has danced for decades before his house of cards comes crashing down, but even now he hasn’t stopped dancing—or blowing smoke. When will those in power understand that an apology means nothing when the deed is diluted, denied or rationalized.

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I often do work around my house, fixing, redoing and maintaining stuff, as do most of us.

When I moved and bought this house in March 2003 I found that every time it rained water ran under the garage door. Typically, I’m a jerry-rigger, especially fixing stuff around my home, but I thought I would do it “right” this time.

Over the next few years I spent over a thousand dollars on drywells, barriers, etc., but was still getting water under the door.

Having run out of affordable do-it-right options, I went back to jerry-rigging and usd a clear, vinyl shower curtain, tape, and a few bricks—no water under the door since then and I just check the plastic each fall.

This got me thinking, how much is too much?

How “right” does a fix need to be?

How “fixed” does a challenge/problem need to be to count as solved?

Every day we all face a myriad of challenges, any number of which may upgrade (downgrade?) to the status of problem in the blink of an eye, so this isn’t a casual question.

What do you do?

Managers, like the rest of us, have their own routine for evaluating and deciding on solutions, corrections and fixes.

I’m not saying you should change yours, but I am suggesting that you give thought to what end results you really need in order to avoid overkill in your decisions.

In other words: Does it need to be “right” on some cosmic yardstick—or does it just need to work.

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Have you ever wondered what the perfect attitude is? Not just a top dog or the person out front, but for any entrepreneur who aspires to succeed and, for that matter, every person who lives and breaths.

I recognize it when I see it, know when I’m doing it, and can explain it when I’m coaching, but I’ve never seen it so perfectly boiled down to ten short words—all self-explanatory, nothing to look-up or study or requiring training.

I found those words in a friend’s description of how his daughter lives.

Like 3 year olds, be passionate, humble, impatient, grateful…daily.

Do it and change your life—and your world—guaranteed!

Image credit: LizMarie on flickr