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Archive for April, 2018

Golden Oldies: Benefits, Respect and Retention

Monday, April 30th, 2018

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

Today’s Oldie is a lead-in to tomorrow’s post, which will consider the difference between respect and nice on culture, creativity, innovation, and success.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Why is common sense often treated like rocket science?

If you want to increase your overall retention rate start by respecting your people.

There are too many managers who only respect their ‘stars’ and then wonder why turnover is rampant in the rest of the organization.

Then there are the legions of managers who believe that if they can’t demonstrate their respect with perks because their budget was cut there is no way to prove they value their people.

Ahem! Respect isn’t a matter of perks.

You’re people aren’t stupid, they know the score, so tell them the truth and build trust.

Provide what tangible proof you can to show that you value your workers, from health care to chocolate, but don’t insult them by saying the company can’t afford something when it obviously can.

Respect isn’t about benefits and benefits, no matter how exotic, don’t give you the right to disrespect them.

Nor will benefits underwrite bad management—you don’t get to micromanage, insult, play favorites, or bully your people just because the company offers health insurance.

The bottom line is simple—if you treat your people as replaceable don’t be surprised when you have the opportunity to do so.

Flickr image credit: Martin Abegglen

If The Shoe Fits: China’s Nerd Perk

Friday, April 27th, 2018

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

Yesterday was my birthday and the last way I wanted to celebrate was to write a post.

But since it was for Friday, I thought I would share China’s version of bro culture.

China is a gender nightmare, in spite of having the world’s largest number of self-made female billionaires, as well as women holding down senior roles in many startups.

Employment ads specify the desired candidate gender and appearance along with soft skills.

Ms. Shen is a “programmer motivator,” as they are known in China. Part psychologist, part cheerleader, the women are hired to chat up and calm stressed-out coders. The jobs are proliferating in a society that largely adheres to gender stereotypes and believes that male programmers are “zhai,” or nerds who have no social lives.

Must be attractive, know how to charm socially awkward programmers and give relaxing massages.

Note that Shen holds a degree in civil engineering.

While the bias is far more overt, one has to wonder if the harassment and bullying is as common.

Image credit: HikingArtist

Ryan’s Journal: Goal Setting

Thursday, April 26th, 2018

https://www.flickr.com/photos/pixelposition/2897189903/

I mentioned last week that I was in Vegas for a sales kickoff. The event was strong and left me feeling both pumped and ready to move towards my goals for the year.

It also left me wanting. There are certain categories within the sales ecosystem and each category has an award winner for the year. In my category I was not the winner this year and it left me wanting to step up to the challenge.

Something I truly believe is “competition breeds success.” It could be sports or academics or work. When you have someone to compete with it can take you out of your comfort zone and pushes you to be your best.

In my current role I work pretty much alone. I am on a team but we are all remote and I don’t receive a ton of feedback from my management. As a result I sometimes feel lost or drifting.

However, last week changed that. I realized there is an end goal in mind and I do have a way to achieve it.

Today I took some steps towards that. I have a whiteboard in my office and I wrote my goal for the year along with what steps I can take to get there. It’s the first and last thing I see everyday. In addition, anyone else that comes by can see it too. It creates accountability and responsibility.

I am also making sure the items I work on are getting me to my goal. Am I using my time wisely? Am I working on high value tasks? These will all add up over time.

Finally I am making it a point to document my wins and losses so I can improve.

How do you work at it when you’re going towards a goal?

Image credit: Dana Lookadoo

Role Model : Aileen Lee

Wednesday, April 25th, 2018

Backstage at the Crunchies 2013. Photo by Max Morse for TechCrunch.

Today was crazy (the aftermath of having a tree fall on your house) and I don’t have time to write a full post.

That said, I want to share an article on how individuals can band together to start changing a negative to a positive.

I hope you find The 36 Women Secretly Breaking Up Silicon Valley’s Old Boys’ Club as interesting as I did.

Now look around your little corner of the world and see where you can make a difference, too.

Image credit: TechCrunch via Wilimedia

Ducks in a Row: Owning Up to Your Advantages

Tuesday, April 24th, 2018

https://www.flickr.com/photos/bonniesducks/4409318291/

It’s always gratifying when something I wrote in years past, based on my own experience, is validated by current research. Yesterday’s Oldie about privilege is no exception.

I wrote it in 2015 and last week I read the validating research in the Harvard Business Review (love these little ego trips).

There are lots of people held back by bias. And that means that some of the people at the top have advanced partly through privilege.

Our research finds the idea of being advantaged to be uncomfortable for many senior leaders. We interviewed David, a senior executive who recognizes both having benefited from unfair advantages and the injustice of bias. He’s tall, middle-aged, well-educated, heterosexual, able-bodied, white, and male — and these provide David with unearned advantages that he intellectually knows he has, but that in practice he barely notices. He tells us he feels an underlying sense of guilt. He wants to feel that his successes in life are down to his abilities and hard work, not unfair advantage. “I feel like a child who discovers that people have been letting him win a game all along,” he says. “How can I feel good about myself succeeding if the game was never fair?”

Over the years, I’ve found the idea of ‘fairness’ and ‘unfairness’ deeply embedded in people’s MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) where it has a major impact on all three MAP components.

In speaking with leaders about their built-in advantages, we have seen that David’s experience is widely shared. Acknowledging these advantages can challenge their very identities and sense of worth.

As is often the case, normalcy erases awareness.

Our research on speaking truth to power shows there is often a blind spot among the powerful, preventing them from seeing their impact on the less powerful. We call this advantage blindness. When you have advantage blindness, you don’t feel privileged. You don’t notice a life of special treatment; it’s just normal. You don’t think about your physical safety most of the time; you don’t worry about holding hands with your partner in public; when you get angry, no one asks you if it’s because of your hormones; and people in power generally look like you.

The results of the researchers interviews list three negative reactions

  • Denying the playing field is unlevel.
  • Focusing on one’s own disadvantages.
  • Denying the playing field is unlevel.

And three positive ones

  • Owning personal prejudice and bias.
  • Empathy from connecting with people who are “other.”
  • Putting personal advantage to collective good use

The one problem with the research is it’s focus on executives, which is to be expected from Harvard, but the same advantages, bias, guilt, and negative reactions can be found at all levels.

The good part is that the positive approaches discussed also work at all levels.

What should you do next?

  • Read the article.
  • Consciously and honestly identify your own advantages.
  • Write (not keyboard) them down.
  • Reread the list often.
  • Heighten your awareness.
  • Lower your defensiveness.
  • Implement the actions described and add your own.

While you can’t eliminate societal advantages, you can put them to work for the greater good. Doing so will go a long way to validating your advantaged success.

Image credit: Duck Lover

Golden Oldies: Are You Privileged?

Monday, April 23rd, 2018

Poking through 11+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.

Privileged is different than entitled. Entitled mindsets believe the world owes them, whereas privileged is often unconscious — a matter of birth. Not necessarily born to great wealth, but being born with fewer challenges, such as white instead of black, brown, yellow, red, or any combination thereof; male, instead of female. Interested/knowledgeable parents. Average-to-good schools. Etc.

Most don’t see themselves as privileged, like Rick, in the story below.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

If you’re an outsider, or even an insider prone to objectivity, Silicon Valley’s culture is a mess.

When I said as much to “Rick” his response caught me off guard — although it shouldn’t have.

“I wish they would just give it a rest. I am sick and tired of all the crap about wealth inequality, lack of diversity and privacy rights. That stuff is not my responsibility. I’ve worked hard and deserve my success; nobody went out of their way to help me. I’m sure not privileged and I figure if I can do it so can they.”

I’ve heard this before, but it still leaves me speechless.

Rick is white, nice looking, middle class family, raised around Palo Alto, graduated from UC Berkeley; his dad worked for Intel.

Yet he doesn’t see himself as privileged.

Over the years I’ve known thousands of Ricks.

And therein lies the true problem.

Because it’s hard to change that which doesn’t exist.

Image credit: Dagny Mol

When Money isn’t Enough: Inc or PBC?

Friday, April 20th, 2018

I first mentioned Public-benefit company (PBC) as a viable alternative to the typical Inc corporate structure in 2015, especially for entrepreneurs with an eye on more than money.

The next year I expanded on that when Kickstarter changed its legal status to PBC.

Don’t confuse PBCs with B-corps; both are profit-making entities and both have stated values, but PBCs are legal entities and legally held to their specified values and mission.

“A value is only a value if it’s non-negotiable.” –Kickstarter co-founder Perry Chen

PBCs come in all sizes, both public and private. The variety is obvious in this list of the Top 25 PBCs globally in 2016, including

Method Products, Patagonia, Etsy, Toms, Clif Bar and now Danone.

What is Danone?

Danone is a French multinational food-products corporation based in Paris and founded 99 years ago in Barcelona, Spain. The company is listed on Euronext Paris where it is a component of the CAC 40 stock market index.

Danone is present in over 130 markets and generated sales of €21.9 billion in 2016, with more than half in emerging countries. In 2015, fresh dairy products represented 50% of the group’s total sales, early life nutrition 22%, water 21% and medical nutrition 7%.

Some wonder how/why large, public companies would even consider a legal status that doesn’t put shareholder interest first.

Emmanuel Faber, Danone Chairman & CEO , explains.

The reason I am writing is because this new major milestone is a breakthrough point for Danone on our global B Corp roadmap. With our major North American activities being certified as of today, it is now proven that it is possible to certify as a B Corp for large organizations that are committed to being change agents, for business and for the world we live in.

 

Obviously, if a company with such far flung parts can do it shoots holes in those who claim it’s not possible.

And before you claim that startups can’t spend time/resources on stuff like this, remember that Marc Benioff implemented his 1/1/1 philanthropic model when he founded Salesforce in 1999 and that certainly hasn’t slowed its growth.

These days, the definition of success involves more than just money.

Image credit: Danone via Wikipedia

Ryan’s Journal: Thought Leadership in Vegas

Thursday, April 19th, 2018

https://www.flickr.com/photos/kozumel/4972048347/

This week I have the privilege of spending time in Vegas for the BMC Sales Kickoff for 2018. (I work for BMC.) It is a lot of excess and excitement, as are most things in Vegas.

However, there is a profound impact being made as well when it comes to how we go to market and create true value for our customers.

What I have found about being at these events is that energy matters. How you think and act will impact your outcome.

I had the opportunity to hear from leaders in tech that all said one thing.

Your mentality will determine your outcome.

If you don’t believe, you won’t get to your goals. It sounds simple, but it’s profound.

Our belief shapes our desired state.

What is your desired state and how do you get there?

Image credit: Camilo Rueda López

Privacy Dies as Facebook Lies

Wednesday, April 18th, 2018

During the dark ages of the 1970s, 80s and into the 90s people who refrained from drinking soda, living on fast food and cooked for themselves, instead of relying on the convenience of processed foods, were disparaged.

I know, because I was one of them. We were called “health food nuts.”

That changed with the advent of research into sugar, the value of veggies and a more general understanding that health wasn’t an accident, but a personal responsibility based on your own choices.

In the 1980s the World Wide Web became ubiquitous and existing bulletin board systems, such as AOL, migrated to the web. The dot com boom saw the birth and growth of social media communities that were free — and everybody loves free.

The contemporary internet was built on a bargain: Show us who you really are and the digital world will be free to search or share.

People detailed their interests and obsessions on Facebook and Google, generating a river of data that could be collected and harnessed for advertising. The companies became very rich. Users seemed happy. Privacy was deemed obsolete, like bloodletting and milkmen.

That bargain led to a new kind of nut.

“Privacy nuts;” I’m one of those, too.

As with health food nuts, privacy nuts were pooh-poohed as Luddites, anti-progressive, alarmist party-poopers.

But as they say, that was then and this is now.

Most people, no matter how they access their news, are aware of the stunning breaches in Facebook’s security, especially the current Cambridge Analytica fiasco.

That also seemed to wake people up to what the privacy nuts have been warning about all along.

Zuckerberg, of course, claims he supports the privacy law Congress is considering, but covertly Facebook is lobbying against it, so his statement that he would offer EU controls globally is highly unlikely.

Never forget that for Facebook it’s all about money.

The power of the company’s ad platform comes from the ability it gives politicians, brands, real estate agents, nonprofits and others to precisely target people on its social networks.

Of course, it’s not just Facebook.

And while Congress runs hearings and the public freaks out Zuck, as he is called, still seems to believe that it’s not Facebook’s fault and what happened should be excused because the his vision is for it to be a force for good.

but change is unlikely to happen, since greed still rules.

After two days of questioning by American lawmakers, Facebook’s share price rose more than 5%—mostly on the first day of Zuckerberg’s testimony—boosting the tech company’s market value by more than $24 billion.

Finally, NEWYORKMAG.COM provided commentary from people who are far closer to both Zukerberg and Facebook. The interviews are a real wakeup call (if you still need one).

A Propaganda Engine ‘Unlike Any in History’: Q&A With Early Facebook Investor

A conversation with early Facebook investor Roger McNamee on propaganda, early warning signs, and why outrage is so addictive.

Image credit: Marco Paköeningrat

Data Says Older Entrepreneurs are More Successful

Tuesday, April 17th, 2018

http://www.hawking.org.uk/

Yesterday’s Golden Oldie ended with my sarcastic comment about tech’s distorted and manipulative approach to data a la “gut instinct” and “pattern recognition,” especially when it comes to age and gender equity.

Data only matters when it supports prevailing prejudice.

A couple of years later I linked to articles that clearly showed that age was more a mental state than a physical one, including this one.

Vivek Wadhwa, a Duke University researcher, worked with the Kauffman Foundation in 2009 to explore the anatomy of a successful startup founder. That survey of more than 500 startups in high-growth industries showed that the average founder of a successful company had launched his or her venture at the surprisingly high age of 40. The study also found that people over 55 are almost twice as likely to launch high-growth startups than those aged 20 to 34.

In March, Forbes again focused on the fact that older entrepreneurs are more successful.

…late-career entrepreneurs benefit from the kind of deep domain expertise that younger counterparts lack. The more intimately an entrepreneur knows their particular industry, after all, the better positioned they are for success. A newly published study of hundreds of companies confirmed just this: the startups most likely to succeed have technically savvy founders who know their space inside and out. A classic example is Garmin, maker of the ubiquitous GPS devices. The company was started in 1989 by two career aerospace contractors (in their 40s and 50s, at the time) who pooled their technical know-how to turn military-grade technology into consumer tools. Today the company is worth more than $10 billion.

Even Brian Acton was almost ancient when he founded WhatsApp at 37.

Earlier this month, KG sent along an article from TechCrunch that added more data.

What they found is that the average age of a startup founder is about 41.9 years of age among all startups that hire at least one employee, and among the top 0.1 percent of highest-growth startups, that average age moves up to 45 years old. Those ages are taken from the time of the founding of the company.

The researchers broke down the population of founders along a number of lines, including geography and industry. They found little difference in their results between subcategories, and, in many cases, the subcategory definition actually increased the average age. For instance, industries like oil and gas can have average founder ages as high as 51.4 years old. The researchers wrote that “The only category where the mean ages appear (modestly) below age 40 is when the firm has VC-backing. The youngest category is VC-backed firms in New York, where the mean founder age was 38.7.”

One interesting dynamic in the data is that older entrepreneurs appear correlated with better startup performance. “For example, the 1,700 founders of the fastest growing new ventures (1 in 1,000) in our universe of U.S. firms had an average age of 45.0 (compared to 43.7 for the top 1% and 42.1 for the top 5%),” the researchers wrote.

As you mull these numbers, stay aware that these are companies with actual, and often substantial, revenues, as opposed to valuations based on fundraising and hype.

Image credit: Hawking.org

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