It’s amazing to me, but looking back over the last decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written. Golden Oldies is a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.

I was reminded of this particular post when I read two Harvard articles, How to Hire a Millennial and What Do Millennials Really Want at Work? The Same Things the Rest of Us Do. It’s been such a joke to me ever since the Millennials hit the marketplace. Reading/hearing and working with clients, all freaking out on how to attract a workforce so different from the Boomers and Gen X. Ha! I said it then and Harvard says it now — people of any age pretty much want the same things from their employers; nothing new except how long they’ll wait to get them. Read other Golden Oldies here.

Bosses across the spectrum are wringing their hands and worrying about creating an environment that will attract and retain young workers, while still motivating and retaining the rest.

It would be amusing to watch them try and jump through the required hoops if it wasn’t so sad.

Sad because so many of the required behaviors aren’t new.

The Millennials are demanding what people have wanted all along.

Yes, there are differences between what Millennials, Gen-X and Boomers want, but the important cultural basics are the same.

The biggest difference is patience, i.e., how long they will stay when not getting what they want?

Millennials want their work to matter; they want to be heard, recognized, challenged, mentored and grow.

Correcting for descriptive language, there is nothing new on that list from what good workers have wanted for decades.

So what changed; why is it so imperative now?

Partly the numbers.

In America its staff are young: 62% are from Generation Y, 29% are from Generation X and just 9% are baby-boomers.

But mostly the impatience. The young vote with their feet far more easily than older workers because they have less to lose—no mortgage, no kids and responsible only for themselves—and the economy improves Gen-X and the Boomers will also vote more quickly with their feet.

Google is often portrayed as the embodiment of millennial-friendly work practices. But Laszlo Bock, a human-resources chief at the internet firm, points out that it has workers as old as 83. And he argues that the only thing different about Generation Y is that it is actually asking for the things that everybody else wants.

The improving economy is a sword over every boss who considers talent replaceable and, therefore, expendable.

Bosses don’t need Google-style perks to hire and keep great talent, but they do need to create a culture that provides the intangible wants, whether in synergy with or in spite of what their company does.

Flickr image credit: Bitchin’ Ol’ Boomer Babe

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over the last decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written. Golden Oldies is a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.

I wrote this back in 2007. When I first started working I learned that a quarter was three months and  that the companies I worked for, and later with, did everything based on that quarter. I thought it was stupid, because very little of real significance can be accomplished in just three months. Over the years I saw how much damage Wall Street’s short-term attitude did to companies, people and the economy. I certainly don’t claim any expertise, but recognition of that damage has really come to the fore, first BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and now Hillary Clinton. Read other Golden Oldies here.

Although I haven’t read The Taboos of Leadership, it supposedly “reveals the rarely discussed realities of leadership–the secrets that leaders just cannot admit to publicly for fear of losing power, self-respect, or even their jobs.” However, the author, Dr. Anthony F. Smith, makes a cogent observation when he says in an essay,

Well, unfortunately, there are no magic pills to becoming a Leader, just like there are no magic pills to losing weight, getting fit, making a million dollars, or shaving 10 strokes off your handicap in golf. Simply stated, becoming a Leader occurs when one exercises the arduous process of effective Leadership, day after day, week after week, and year after year….

What I have observed in my years of studying leaders, is that very few have all the gifts and talents themselves; what many of the great ones do have, is a self awareness of what talents they do have, and the self confidence and security to surround themselves with others who can compliment them, and compensate for their own lack of skills.

I have no idea whether Dr. Smith has all the answers, but he sure defines the biggest problem (red) and (unfortunately) the least likely solution (blue) in the second paragraph.

I don’t believe that any person has all the talents, skills, gifts, abilities, etc., to successfully lead across the board in today’s ultra complex world and even if they do have the awareness and self confidence fewer and fewer have the external security to hire the right people to compensate—by external, I mean enough secure time to create a team that can DO it.

We live in a ridiculous world where Boards, in fear of investors, give CEOs six months to turn around multi-billion dollar companies that have been drifting, if not actually plunging, downwards for years; expect them to do it no matter what the situation or economy; where the slightest miss is considered grounds for firing; and long-term is a quarter.

Even when Wall Street recognizes the need to change a deeply entrenched culture they still demand that it be done in a quarter and analysts not only want perfect visions of future direction, but also exact execution plans, preferably grounded in heavy cost-cutting (read layoffs).

So, like the politicians who once elected spend much of their time fund-raising, CEOs and the senior managers below them spend much of their time focused on immediate numbers, which they must produce quarterly by hook or, more and more frequently, by crook.

Under these circumstances, the real practice of leadership becomes a very iffy proposition.

FANTASTIC! An absolutely fantastic, no-frills conference that went to the core of what any startup CEO needs to know about starting and scaling sales, how to align with marketing and what types of people to hire and how.

AA-ISP stands for the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals and is an international association dedicated exclusively to advancing the profession of Inside Sales. The association engages in research studies, organizational benchmarking and leadership round tables to better understand and analyze the trends, challenges, and key components of the growth and development of the Inside Sales industry.

When I arrived I was exhausted after pulling an all-nighter and having had only 1.5 hours of sleep. I was sitting in the parking lot before to going into the conference (of course I was an hour late for the start) and kept nodding off as I was collecting my thoughts prior to going into registration. Eventually I did go in, registered and went to my first session, which I mostly dozed through.

However, by my second session called “The Uberization of Sales”, I was perky and awake, and the subject matter held my total attention. It continued this way until I left the conference at about 8:30 pm, elated that I’d had lucked out in this manner.

In fact, I had been dubious about whether I should attend at all, as I had slept so little and my impression was that it would be of only limited interest or relevance to Quarrio and me personally. I was embarrassingly wrong.

This conference is among the best I’ve attended as a startup CEO and addressed a number of issues I’ve struggled with throughout my career in startups.

After creating a product, the most challenging aspect of making the company successful is not continuous rounds of funding, but rather building the sales organization, getting the product out to customers and driving revenue.

The AA-ISP conference was wholly devoted to this. In fact, it’s the first conference I’ve attended with this focus.

In my experience, sales is the most under-emphasized area of knowledge for the startup CEO.

For some strange reason, we are just supposed to understand the process, how to build the team, how to hire reps and managers and how to manage them.

We are supposed to be able to know how to hire people whose profession it is to sell, while being immune to their ability to make us like them and make us oblivious to their weaknesses.

They are professional sales people — this is what they do every day, and most of us just have no defenses or ability to properly identify a good sales person from a bad one.

I know this has certainly been one of my areas of failure in the past.

This conference should be attended by every B2B startup CEO – other than creating the product, this is the best way to learn and network with people who are in the business of selling, building sales teams and getting new products into the market.

This is the place to learn how they think and how to hire and collaborate with them. I’d say that this is a must attend conference for anyone who hasn’t built several B2B companies.

I highly recommend joining the AA-ISP to gain knowledge and save yourself a ton of pain.

Wow! 2015 sure went by in a flash.

I seem to say this every year, but this year was gone in three blinks of the eye — down from the five blinks that took 2014.

2016 will probably go a lot slower considering it’s an election year.

It won’t take long before the media/ad tsunami will become the watched pot that never boils and have us all longing for the year to be over.

But it’s still 2015, so if you’re looking to remember or review what happened this year you have many choices.

You can watch Faceboook’s version or Google’s view through search.

There’s Forbes review of tech, video and games or Geek & Sundry’s 2015 video game review.

For excitement there’s the best of GoPro’s Hero footage.

There’s CNN’s 167 facts and a look a look at who died.

There’s one more that you might not think to watch — NASA.

Watch the review of 2015 and the sneak peak below of 2016.

Did you know that yesterday was New Year’s — or so it seems to me.

But today is Labor Day—summer’s over, school’s starting, the leaves are turning and the year is nearly done.

Hard to believe.

Every year goes by faster for me — what about you?

Flickr image credit: joiseyshowaa

As I said in June, Wally Bock is my hero.

The stuff he writes is loaded with common sense and practicality.

Best of all, his advice to bosses can be implemented at any level in an organization by individual bosses.

He’s also one heck of a writer, which, in my mind, moves him from gold to platinum.

I’ve added this post from last week to my collection of all-time favorites.

Minims for Bosses

Merriam Webster defines a “maxim” as “a well-known phrase that expresses a general truth about life or a rule about behavior.” Minims are different.

Minims aren’t well known. They don’t express a general rule about life. They’re not big important truths, just little things that will help you do a better job as a boss. Each minim is a one or two sentence distillation of a tip in my forthcoming ebook, Become a Better Boss One Tip at a Time. Here are a dozen.

• The best way to “empower” competent and willing team members is to get out of their way.
• Power isn’t something you bestow. It’s something you unleash.
• Mistakes are the price you pay for better performance in the future.
• Most performance issues are not self-healing. If you leave them alone, they will usually go from bad to worse.
• Sugar-coating legitimate criticism robs it of nutritional value.
• Creativity lives in those cracks in your schedule.
• The example you set determines the behavior you get.
• When you’re silent, you can listen and when you listen you can learn.
• Distrust the abstract.
• Most of your team members, most of the time, only need suggestions and informal direction.
• If you mess up, fess up and fix it.
• Great ideas are everywhere and the best way to find out if they work is to try them out.

As I said, clear, pithy, doable advice and, if you take a step back, solid common sense.

Of course, it only works if you’re willing to check your ego at the door and sit on your dignity.

Humblebragging (a brag veiled in a complaint, so as to sound less blatantly like a brag) has to be near the top of today’s more annoying trends.

It’s not really new; I’ve heard similar phrasing for decades, but it was much more rare.

It’s common now, but if you indulge you’ll do yourself more harm than good.

Humblebragging runs rampant on Twitter, but it turns out to be a lousy self-promotion tactic, especially in business situations such as job interviews… Research shows that when given the choice to brag or to humblebrag, it’s better to straight-out brag.

The research described is interesting, because it’s easy to remember being on the receiving end of similar situations allowing you to compare your own reactions to those in the study.

Humblebragging is a close relative of hints that are usually in the form of a poor-me complaint.

We’ve all been on the receiving end of “I don’t know how I can…” which practically forces an “I will help…” response.

An extended family aunt of mine was a past master of this approach, so I learned early on to recognize the words for what they were — manipulation.

Both humblebrags and hints annoy because they are inauthentic and sneaky.

But there is humor to be found when you realize that the worst practitioners are those most offended when others do it.

Flickr image credit: Area 224

Last Friday we looked at the disturbing number of entrepreneurs who suffer from anxiety and depression, exacerbated by the pressures of founding a startup, and too often find their solace in suicide.

Mark Suster wrote how the same problems often haunt success.

Today’s New York Times had a complimentary article, Campus Suicide and the Pressure of Perfection.

There are several compelling points to consider;

• almost all are young;
• they are high achievers recognized for ‘crushing it’ — whatever ‘it’ happens to be;
• they are driven to live up to outside expectations; and
• they constantly compare themselves to others’ external images as depicted in social media.

The acts required to “keep up with the Joneses” have changed significantly from my under-35 days.

Back then it was your neighbors and school/social/professional circles that comprised the Joneses.

Now it is the no-holds-barred world.

The existential question “Why am I here?” is usually followed by the equally confounding “How am I doing?” In 1954, the social psychologist Leon Festinger put forward the social comparison theory, which posits that we try to determine our worth based on how we stack up against others.

Growing up and in the years since ‘how am I doing’ was never my focus, because I never fit in; never was part of any crowd and certainly never told I was special.

Fortunately, I wasn’t competitive; in fact, competitive has never been part of my personal vocabulary.

Somehow I’ve always known that no matter what I accomplished there would always be people who were richer/smarter/thinner/more popular/more whatever than I.

Unlike those described in the aforementioned articles.

And the pressures have increased exponentially for those susceptible.

In the era of social media, such comparisons take place on a screen with carefully curated depictions that don’t provide the full picture. Mobile devices escalate the comparisons from occasional to nearly constant.

“Curated” is the polite way to say that people lie — not only to convince the world, but probably to convince themselves.

Don’t get caught in this trap; teach yourself to talk about how you feel — to at least one real person, preferably more.

And take time to be there for others who are struggling.

Flickr image credit: Rodney Campbell

Jim Heskett is a very smart guy. At the beginning of each month he asks a question of his readers, then publishes a summation of the general ideas expressed the comments at the end of it.

The topics are always timely, of great interest and the conversation lively.

This month he asked about something that is on many founders’ minds thanks to Tony Hsieh actions at Zappos.

The question was, Is the Time Right for Self-Management.

Here is the summary. I believe you will find it of great value to read all the comments if you are considering adopting/adapting it for your company or just intrigued by the idea.

When and Where Will Holacracy Work Best?

Holacracy, or self-management, is an interesting concept and not entirely new. It can work, but only under the right conditions. And its applications will be limited. That’s what one might conclude from reading responses to this month’s column.

The more thoughtful of them provide a primer on applying the concept. Deborah Nixon’s comment echoed several others when she said the idea has been around a long time in other forms, by other names. “The larger an organization becomes, the tougher one model is to implement. The time has always been ripe for self-management and there are always people who will poke up their heads and insist on managing themselves. But it isn’t a quick fix.” Others cited its long-time application in the London taxi system (Andrew Campbell), the hospital ER (M Iqbal Gentur B), and even Aboriginal societies in ancient Australia (Kai Akerberg).

Stephens Jr., who loves the idea, said, it does not come without extensive time, cost, and involvement in employee development. “I not only say yes (to the question of whether the time is right for self-management), but ‘it’s about time.'” Dyan Porter added, “Holacracy strikes me as a positive way to manage professionals, especially in flat organizations where job advancement is limited.” Brooks Tanner commented, “Regardless of its level of success at Zappos, this form of organization is the way of the future. The rapidly increasing complexity and unpredictability of our world is such that only a highly distributed decision-making structure will be able to adapt and respond effectively, she continued. “Most of us don’t think a centralized planning type economy makes sense. Why should it make the most sense for organizations?”

Others saw limited potential in the concept. As Edward Hare put it, “There are some people capable of managing themselves in a larger organization … but many who can’t… This strikes me as another of those ‘ideas’ promoted by consultants and academics. ” Frank Fabela added, “Holacracy in its form of each individual taking responsibility for their own self-management is absolutely necessary, however it is the responsibility of ‘managers ‘ to ensure effectiveness of the organization through coordination of those objectives. Pure holacracy … absent management is destined to fail.” Krishnan Mak was more succinct when he said: “Culture will eat Holacracy for breakfast.”

Many comments addressed conditions under which Holacracy might work best. “It might not be for everybody,” wrote Maria Rosa Serra, “but if you hire employees aligned with your values and pay them fairly, it seems an interesting proposal for both the company and the individual.” Juan Manuel Salas Guevara commented that the challenge in Holacracy “is a strong communication process from the top level of the organization that enables each member to understand the company’s vision.” Charlie Efford added that “The key to self-management becoming embedded is changing the mindset of the management team. Most corporations haven’t made this shift.” Denis Collet suggested “it’s all about clear goals and deliverables, and the metrics for success. Absent of these it’s bound to fail.”

Personally, I agree with Krishnan Mak when he said, “Culture will eat Holacracy for breakfast.”

Image credit: HBSWK

The Data Alchemy Conference that I recently attended was well worth going to. In contrast with a lot of these types of conferences, it was an interesting view of how to use predictive and other technologies to improve business outcomes, i.e. not the more common type of technology or data scientist oriented conference here in Silicon Valley.

One of the factors that was attractive was the way that vendors used case studies and best practices to elucidate some of the advantages and complexities of big data and analytics. People from companies such as PayPal, IBM, HP, SAP, Silicon Valley Data Science and others were speakers. There were also lots of industry practitioners in the audience.

The emergence of predictive analytics as a core tool in planning and monitoring in organizations is a relatively recent phenomenon, being less than 10 years old. Now, companies like SAS have been around for a long time, but it is only when IBM acquired SPSS in 2009 and applied their significant marketing engine behind predictive analytics that this market started to take off. 

Of course, it had been used with regards to risk analytics in insurance, churn analysis in telecoms companies and credit worthiness analysis in FICO scores, etc.

Since then we’re seeing predictive analytics being incorporated in many different areas in enterprises based on the growing amount of data and the increasing need to make decisions based on data.

This comes partly from increasing complexity in the business world, greater binary behavior (1 major company in each market that is 10x larger than #2), speed of growth and decline of companies, and decreased cycle times.

One of the most interesting talks was by Jenny Dearborn, Chief Learning Officer at  SAP, who spoke of the way they’re using predictive analytics with regards to employee turnover and onboarding. By using big data analytics on structured and unstructured data, it is possible to understand employee sentiment, training needs and likelihood of staying at the company.

A major challenge to analytics is data quality, what in common vernacular is termed bad or dirty data. Theresa Kushner, VP Enterprise Information Management at VM Ware mentioned that 1/3 of her staff were focused on data quality and cleansing.

It seems as if data quality is an even more important issue than being able to apply advanced algorithms to the data, and that by just ensuring that data is clean we can make better decisions that reduces the need for advanced algorithms in many situations.

In short, it was interesting to see how analytics is being advanced within organizations and getting a practical view of what challenges are faced from a business perspective.