In an interesting post at HBR Peter Bregman talks about attending a conference as yourself instead of as your role, although roles are far easier, because we feel more comfortable and safer.

It’s why, within a minute of meeting someone, we begin to define ourselves by our roles, our status, and our relationships to others. We think it’s because other people need that information to know us.

But standing alone at that party I realized I’d been fooling myself. Other people don’t need that information to know me. I need that information to know myself.

I would go further and suggest that you attend life as yourself as opposed to your roles.

Roles make it easy to interact with strangers, but they also allow us to hide from our bosses, colleagues and even serve as barriers between us and our families—but the greatest disservice roles perform is allowing us to hide from ourselves.

If you define yourself internally by your roles you preclude exploration and the chance to discover new depths, travel new paths and learn what you are really capable of.

Putting yourself first and your roles second is scary and makes you vulnerable, but it also opens the door to a myriad of possibilities.

Flickr image credit: sxc.hu

It’s spring, although you wouldn’t know it here in the Pacific Northwest, but most parts of the country seem luckier. Spring is considered a time of new beginnings, which are especially noticeable in the garden. But, actually, spring is any time you want; new beginnings are a state of mind.

Maria Robinson didn’t believe in new beginnings, “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.”

Centuries before Maria shared her insight the Roman philosopher Seneca said something similar, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

W. Clement Stone provides a concise explanation of what prevents new beginnings, “So many fail because they don’t get started – they don’t go. They don’t overcome inertia. They don’t begin.”

Theodore Roosevelt tells us to just get on with it, “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

The always savvy Anonymous reminds us, “Yesterday’s failures are today’s seeds that must be diligently planted to be able to abundantly harvest tomorrow’s success.”

G.R.Blair offers some wise words to keep your new beginnings on track, “Long-term planning is not about making long-term decisions, it is about understanding the future consequences of today’s decisions.”

But it is the brilliant Mary Shelley who serves up the five words you should repeat every morning when you wake, “The beginning is always today.”

Flickr image credit: foxtongue

There’s a lot of exciting exploration going on these days in space and under the sea, but some of the most exciting is the ongoing exploration of the human brain.

Most people recognize a certain validity in the old maxim ‘clothes make the person’, but would you believe that clothes can actually improve cognitive ability?

If you wear a white coat that you believe belongs to a doctor, your ability to pay attention increases sharply. But if you wear the same white coat believing it belongs to a painter, you will show no such improvement.

Oh, goody; once again corporate America is hijacking brain research to sell more (just what we all need) stuff.

…neuromarketing…helped researchers decode secrets such as why people love artificially colored snack food and how to predict whether a pop song will be a hit or a flop.

This next essay looks at how love affects your brain and you might wonder about its business application, but the information on how relationships change brain chemistry is as applicable to you and your boss and business colleagues as it is to you and your romantic partner—more so, perhaps, considering the hours spent in work-related relationships exceeds those spent on personal ones.

A RELATIVELY new field, called interpersonal neurobiology, draws its vigor from one of the great discoveries of our era: that the brain is constantly rewiring itself based on daily life.

Have you ever wondered why you acted/reacted a certain way? Could it be because of a cat you have, had or visited at some point?

Jaroslav Flegr believes a “latent” parasite may be quietly tweaking the connections between our neurons, changing our response to frightening situations, our trust in others, how outgoing we are, and even our preference for certain scents.

And before you start laughing, consider the words of Stanford’s Robert Sapolsky, “My guess is that there are scads more examples of this going on in mammals, with parasites we’ve never even heard of.”

Finally, an all natural, fully organic, multi-useful way to improve brain function—and it’s free! Additional benefits include potentially improved business functions and a myriad of benefits to your social life from more ways to meet chicks/guys to choosing restaurants and enjoying vacations.

Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age.

Flickr image credit: pedroelcarvalho

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

Last fall I commented on Zynga’s foot-in-mouth incentive stock errors; now it’s Groupon’s turn to open-mouth-insert-foot and they’ve done a bang up job—and not for the first time.

Once again Groupon says it needs to revise its numbers and once again the revision is in a southerly direction (along with the stock price).

Investors, whether co-founders, friends, family, angels or VCs, let alone the public markets, do not look kindly on management that gets its numbers wrong.

They may excuse it the first time, but from then on every restatement becomes a serious blow to the management teams credibility and integrity, not to mention the overall effect on trust.

Perhaps Groupon drank its own Kool-Aid (a major no-no), since it acts as if its golden boy status excuses it from the mundane requirements, such as accurate sales reports, faced by other companies.

I understand that startups love to brag about their hyper growth and lack of bureaucracy, but when internal controls are counted as bureaucracy the company is headed for a fall.

On another note, if you are a small biz looking for a successful approach  to daily deals that has the metrics in place to really measure the value and will work with you to maximize where you already are check out this 14 year old alternative, with references up the wazoo, called Constant Contact.

Option Sanity™ structures incentive stock grants

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.

Flickr image credit: HikingArtist

Last week I invited entrepreneurs to share the story of their startup (see below) and the first response came from “family.”

Matt Weeks is an occasional contributor here and member of my company’s board; he’s co-founder and CEO of WorkersCount, an advisor to two startups, volunteers for several other organizations in his “spare time, is an involved dad, all around family guy and makes time for friends.

Someone asks me what I do.  “I make workers count.” Here.  Have a cookie.  Smile.

WorkersCount is a direct-to-consumer mobile service that anonymously measures worker sentiment at the workplace.  Using a simple mobile “check-in” experience, workers can safely express their sentiment, discover what’s happening at their company and track other companies. They can easily see what workers in their roles or with similar backgrounds are saying and experiencing.  Using a simple set of radio buttons, workers check-in several times daily and respond to “How are you doing at work right now?” and one “Question of the day” (such as “my boss values my contributions” or “I am proud to tell friends where I work and what I do.”

WorkersCount is not a typical silicon valley start-up, and we’re fine with that.   Most start-ups fail, and that is neither good nor bad, but just a statistic and a reality of life.  Pack a lunch, bring extra water and a power bar.  Because it’s a long run in the desert.

So we began with that vision in mind—that we had to be very different to survive.  We knew that we would have to build it, launch it, develop traction and users before we would raise dollar 1.  That’s the new reality in consumer software and services.

Who cares about this?  We arrived at WorkersCount as a pivot from a much more complicated and difficult-to-scale concept.  That was an important epiphany and a valuable lesson.  Once you get your team and your concept into what we call the “information corridor” and begin the product and market validation process to find “product-market fit” you start down the path to success.

It was during these “getting-hit-over-the-head-lessons” (for Monty Python fans) that we became disabused of our preconceived notions, and landed on the real problem that needed solving.

I call this the “market invalidation process”—meaning that we needed to push ourselves to explain why our assumptions and the monetization and engagement models we had built were NOT invalid.

Most people do it backwards—they attempt to find data points that validate their preconceived notions.  As a result they often get the answer they were looking for, instead of a new and more powerful answer.  Even if it is “start over, this one won’t work.”

Great entrepreneurs don’t drink their own Kool Aid.  Even if it looks great on a pitch deck for investors.    Building a company and holding a team together through extreme weather is tough enough when everybody is being authentic and honest.  It falls apart fast if everyone is agreeing to tell the same fantasy bed-time story.

Yes, your mom will love your idea (even if she doesn’t really understand it), and your dog will love it (especially if there is a treat involved).  But real users only care about their own experience and their own problems.  Not yours.

Through this painful process we found our market—where there was huge chaos, pre-existing spend by large entities, and an already connected and established set of communities of end users.  We discovered that there was very little dependable and valid data, and even less information that end-users (of various types) could act-upon.  The perfect storm for disruptive innovation.

Now all we had to do was build an engaging and meaningful mobile consumer experience and create habitual use, shake up some of the existing assumptions and build a trusted brand.  On a shoestring budget.  Ha!    Welcome to start-up land.

Why are we doing this?  We are a values-driven band of 5 workers with decades of work experience under our belts at large enterprises and startups alike.   We have personally felt the pain of being a worker and of trying to be a great boss or supervisor.   The experience is frustrating coming from both directions.  We think we can fix some of that, and create a little bit of fun and lots of smiles along the way.

We are passionate about enabling workers to drive a better workplace.  To discover where people like them are thriving and where they are struggling.  To enable workers at all levels to validate that they are in the right job in the right role in the right company for them, now.  And where they might look (with a little help from their friends at other companies) for their “next hop” now or sometime in the next 30 to 40- months (the average duration of the “gig” in a career these days).

We are making it fun, simple and easy, and we are rapidly introducing a fun game aspect and lots of cool rewards to build traffic and encourage people to share the experience. We want them to keep coming back to see new fun facts and get deeper vision into their own company and those of their friends.  But it’s damn hard.

The pay-off is when our early beta users (please become one, by the way, at www.workerscount.com, and help us shape the features as they are brought live) say “where have you been all my work life?  This is something that I’d use all the time!” “This is something my son/daughter/spouse/best friend needs to know about!” And when, as one beta user shared

“I would just be relieved to know that I’m having a bad day or a bad week, but that I’m really much better off here at this company with it’s imperfections, than people like me appear to be at those other two other companies I’ve been watching.  Now I can relax and get on with my job knowing that, at least for now, I’m in the right place.”

For our friends not working or actively looking, not to worry. You are more than 8% of the workforce and we respect that.  We are soon to launch insights and features for you, as well as for our college and grad school friends who want to get the same insights so that they can be smarter and more informed about where to consider for their “next hop.”

What about the “next hop?”

Are careers a series of “gigs” and short stints?  We think that this may be the new reality.  So even if you stay at the same company, your world will in all likelihood change radically every 30 to 40 months anyway.  Having a handle in real time on what’s happening inside and outside of your company is a new type of power and knowledge that every worker can now have.

By the way, in case anyone is asking:  we don’t work for employers or HR departments.  This is a direct-to-consumer service, delivered on mobile, tablets and laptops.

Yes, we’re looking to scale rapidly when we exit beta, and with broad engagement we aim to change the way workers communicate with one another, with their companies (via our public indices and reports) and with friends at other companies.

WorkersCount.  Your voice counts.  Come along with us and join the community.

We will soon have cool schwag, tee shirts, hats, mugs and yummy cookies.  Naturally.  It’s a startup.

Thanks for asking what I do.  “I make workers count.”

Thanks, Matt. I encourage all of you to sign up at WorkersCount, enjoy Personal Time, the official WorkersCount blog Matt writes, like them on Facebook and follow them @workerscount.

ATTENTION FOUNDERS, FRIENDS OF FOUNDERS AND STARTUP EMPLOYEES
SUBMIT YOUR STORY

Be the Thursday feature – Entrepreneurs: [your company name]
Share the story of your startup (not a product pitch) along with your contact information.
I’ll be in touch.
Questions? Email or call me at 360.335.8054 Pacific time.

Flickr image credit: WorkersCount

The following quotes are from an interview with Charlotte Beers, former chairwoman and C.E.O. of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, and meant specifically for women leaders.

As usual, I find that such insights and advice focused on a certain demographic is applicable to a much broader audience.

Don’t let someone tell you who you are. Keep your own scorecard, and it has to include the good, the bad and the ugly.

This is a humongous insight that qualifies as real wisdom.

Too often our perception of self is, in reality, a reflection of how our various worlds see and treat us; worse, that perception is often colored by negative experiences that happened to the person we were years ago and bear no relationship to who we are now.

Sometimes a company’s culture is a big influencer in how you see yourself, and you have to sift through that and see if it’s a fit. Part of it is knowing yourself so well that you know where you fit, and knowing yourself so well that you know why you work.

I would disagree and say that all of it, “it” being anything you do/try to do/want to do, is knowing yourself (the good, bad, ugly and inane).

Company culture as an influencer is more than sometimes, it is all the time. Culture is the atmosphere you breathe and the values by which you work. If you are not at least synergistic with the culture going in you will either leave or be co-opted into its vision of values.

Beers also talks about what she looks for when hiring.

I’m trying to understand how they used the power to hire and fire and promote and make those kinds of invisible choices that really affect other people’s lives. If they don’t have some generosity of spirit and some quality of teaching, I worry that they’re not going to bring along a strong culture.

I’m trying to find out if they have confidence about the things that matter, their own ability to think and to get to the true center of things.

The importance of these traits to a potential manager pales in comparison to their importance to the individual.

Understanding these things about yourself in conjunction with your scorecard provide a firm foundation on which to tweak the you-you-are, as well as to build the you-you-want-to-be.

Take a minute and read the entire interview—it’s well worth your time.

Flickr image credit: bradleypjohnson

I’m not really a sports fan, but I read the NYT and occasionally an article that focuses on the human side as opposed to the play intrigues me. That’s how I ended up reading about Jeremy Lin and using him as an example of how easily bosses miss their real star talent.

In mid-March another Knicks story caught my eye.

[Coach] Mike D’Antoni and the Knicks parted ways Wednesday — an event that seemed fated once the franchise acquired Carmelo Anthony, an immense talent whose individual playing style clashed with D’Antoni’s spread-the-wealth offense.

At first glance you might not think this is applicable to business; obviously, no boss is going to quit when an employee disagrees with the culture, no matter how good he is.

In fact, it’s much more likely that the boss will laud him and shower him with whatever perks, bonuses, promotions and raises possible.

Anything to keep him happy; anything to keep him, period.

Not all star players have star egos; from the little I’ve read Lin is the former, while Anthony follows a more typical star profile with the ego to match.

So what really happens when a culture starts focusing on star egos?

The most obvious problem is the deep doodoo you are in if your star ego is injured or leaves.

The more subtle crisis takes place quietly over time as all the potential star players leave for more spread-the-wealth cultures and bosses who will give them a chance to shine.

Flickr image credit: Joshua Smith

Seems like only yesterday, but here we are again; the first Monday of the month and the newest Leadership Development Carnival hosted this month at by Tanmay Vora at QAspire. Tanmay has dedicated this month’s Carnival to Earth Day on April 22.

Dan McCarthy guides us on How to Discuss a Problem with Your Manager. Dan was recently reminded by a younger employee how intimidating it can be for an employee to bring up an issue with a manager. In this post, he explains why it’s important to be able to address a problem with your manager and how to do it.

Jesse Lyn Stoner outlines 5 Important Leadership Lessons You Learned in Kindergarten. Whether you are facing challenges as a result of changes in the economy, new opportunities because of advances in technology, or already have a good idea you want to implement, these five leadership lessons can make the difference between a successful outcome and a false start. The good news is: you already learned them in kindergarten. All you need to do is remember to use them.

Mary Jo Asmus tells us “Don’t Leave Your Heart at Home”. Many leaders feel they need to be serious and tough at work. This post is an argument for the importance of leading with your heart as well as your brain.

In her post titled “Of Money, Trust and Elephants” Miki Saxon points that focusing on profits doesn’t make a company more profitable, while focusing on customer service usually does. Great customer service rests solidly on a foundation of trust and its lack is the elephant many bosses choose to ignore.

Wally Bock has been training and coaching first-time bosses for more than a quarter century and has learned some things along the way. Wally shares this wisdom in his post “What I’ve learned from 25 years of working with first-time bosses”

At Lead Change Group, Kate Nasser helps leaders question their values via her post “Leaders, Do Your Pet Peeves Disengage Employees?”. Pet peeves masquerade as values giving them hidden power over your leadership style.

Tim Milburn presents “Three Traits Of A Lifelong Leader”

In his post “Leaders, Change What You Pay Attention To”, Blanchard’s culture guru S. Chris Edmonds outlines why leaders should apply time, attention, messaging, and reinforcement of BOTH performance expectations AND values demonstration.

David Burkus at LeaderLab presents “How Good Leaders Become Bad Bosses” outlining leadership burn out and entropy.

Bret Simmons takes a fresh look at leadership and management in his post “The Difference Between Management And Leadership”

Leaders often think that enthusiasm alone will help them get their teams lined up behind a vision. Jennifer V. Miller, in her post “How To Gain Buy-In from Your Team” outlines why this isn’t true and describes two other key components needed to gain buy-in from team members.

Gwyn Teatro presents Leadership Lessons from Ernest Hemingway’s story “The Old Man and the Sea”.

Robyn McLeod at The Thoughtful Leaders Blog presents “Bucket filling as a leadership competency”. Bucket filling technique is used in schools to teach children the value of compassion, respect and kindness. This post looks at how leaders can be more effective by practicing “bucket filling” in the workplace.

Mary Ila Ward at Horizon Point Consulting presents a post titled “Queen Bee Syndrome” with an interesting take on women and leadership.

Flashing back to his days in the headquarters of the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command, Michael Wade of Execupundit.com outlines 10 key qualities of effective staff officers (equally applies to great leaders)

Art Petty at Management Excellence presents “At Least 10 More Things to Stop Doing if You’re the Boss”

Jane Perdue presents “7 Ways to Maintain Momentum”. The next time you’re cruising down the highway and see the road sign that reads “keep moving, change lanes later” – smile and follow these seven tips!

It is easy to feel victimized when your ideas are rejected by your Boss. Soon, you will be in a leadership position and people that are following you will start feeling the same. Rajesh Setty offers a fresh look at the problem in his post “Is Your Boss Killing Your Ideas?”

Laura Schroeder’s post “Think Moneyball” emphasizes on important fact that the war for talent is won from within.

Lynn Dessert at Elephants at Work blog presents How to introduce an assessment to the team.

In his post, Sustainable Means More Than Recycling, Mark Bennet nudges us to think what can happen when leadership is focused on how they manage talent and shape behaviors to the same extent it is focused on strategy and structure.

In his post “The Truth About Your Time”, Kevin Eikenberry dispels the myth that leaders don’t have enough time and challenges us to have a proper perspective of time.

Utpal Vaishnav states that if we learn to look beyond what’s normal, if we learn to be unreasonable, we can enter into realm of new possibilities and make a difference. Check out his post: Want to Make a Difference? Be Unreasonable.

Linda Fisher Thornton writes about “The Adaptability Paradox” – difficulty we have as leaders staying current and “learning through” change.

Many leaders are afraid of change rather than seeing it as an opportunity to move forward and build a stronger organization. Are You Ready for Change? by Guy Farmer provides some signs to assess “change readiness” of your organization.

Kurt Harden in his post “On Reaching Out” suggests that we speak clearly in business world rather than succumb to the urge to fall in the herds of business men and women who speak jargon.

Image credit: Great Leadership

Can you believe? Q1 is over, done, gone and all we have to show for it is a day especially for fools. So on this day dedicated to fools and foolishness I offer you up some foolish words of wisdom.

Way back in 1894 Mark Twain wrote a book in which the main character, Pudd’nhead Wilson, says, “This is the day upon which we are reminded of what we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.” A home truth if there ever was one.

If you plan on pulling any pranks today you might want to keep Will Shakespeare’s words in mind, “Better a witty fool than a foolish wit.”

Ben Franklin must have been thinking of politicians when he said “Wise men don’t need advice. Fools won’t take it.”

As usual, it’s Will Rogers who nails April Fool’s Day perfectly—not to mention the upcoming elections, “The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected.”

Finally, we can all see the truth in this old Welsh Proverb, “If every fool wore a crown, we should all be kings;” all we have to do is look in the mirror.

I wish you a wonderful day full of pranks, silliness and friends.

Happy April Fools Day!

Flickr image credit: Jonny Hughes