You may have noticed that the June Leadership Development Carnival was missing from the first Monday this month. It happened because this month’s host published it the second Monday instead of the first Sunday as usual. The delay, however, had absolutely no impact on the extraordinary quality of information shared on it. Enjoy!
Those of you concerned with strategy, either because you set it or are just interested in how it works, will find McKinsey’s approach to crowdsourcing strategy an intriguing idea. (Free registration required.)
…“making the vision meaningful to employees at a personal level” and “soliciting employee involvement in setting the company’s direction.” If that’s right, it suggests that making more employees part of the strategy process should be a powerful means of aligning them more closely with the company’s overall direction.
Finally, cyberbullying is rarely a laughing matter even leading to suicide. But sometimes even bad stuff can be fought through a combination or creativity and laughter.
The comedian Isabel Fay and fellow artists just posted a YouTube video featuring a song that ridicules online bullies who have targeted them. (…)“Love ya,” Ms. Fay says. “Keep on trollin’!”
I have just one link for you today, not because it’s a long article, but because there are 32 parts to Innovations That Will Change Your Tomorrow and I think you will enjoy them all.
We tend to rewrite the histories of technological innovation, making myths about a guy who had a great idea that changed the world. In reality, though, innovation isn’t the goal; it’s everything that gets you there. It’s bad financial decisions and blueprints for machines that weren’t built until decades later. It’s the important leaps forward that synthesize lots of ideas, and it’s the belly-up failures that teach us what not to do.
When we ignore how innovation actually works, we make it hard to see what’s happening right in front of us today. (…) Worse, the fairy-tale view of history implies that innovation has an end. It doesn’t. What we want and what we need keeps changing. (…)
That’s what this issue is about: all the little failures, trivialities and not-quite-solved mysteries that make the successes possible. This is what innovation looks like. It’s messy, and it’s awesome. –Maggie Koerth-Baker
Dan McCarthy, along with Jim Stroup and Wally Bock, are of the rare breed that write on leadership, but don’t see it as an elitist function, genetic gift or an ability defined, let alone guaranteed, by position or promotion.
Tuesday Dan wrote one of the funniest (and shortest) posts I’ve seen in quite awhile—and turned me green with envy.
The post was truly “ripped from the headlines” and I offer it in full with Dan’s gracious permission.
Come on now, how hard can it be to be a great leader? It seems the bar keeps getting lower and lower every day.
All you need to do is browse the headlines and you’ll easily come up with examples of what not to do as a leader. Just follow these hopefully easy to adhere to rules, do a reasonable good job, and you’ll be running your organization in no time:
9. Don’t lie about your education (let’s hear it for New Hampshire!). Or about your ethnicity (Hey, if I’m going to mention NH, I couldn’t spare Massachusetts). Better yet, just don’t lie, period. It’s easier to remember things when you don’t make them up.
Last, but not least – and I’m sorry to have to mention this in a family leadership blog – don’t ever, ever, have sex at work, under any circumstances. Asking “was that wrong?” will not save you from being fired.
Hope you enjoyed this tour of leadership ineptitude headlines. Anything you’d like to add to the list? By the time this post is published, I’m sure we can come up with 11 more.
Seeing as how four days have gone by since publication I’m sure there are far more than 11.
To make it interesting, add your own link and comment for a chance to win a copy of Claudio Feser’s Serial Innovators. Winner chosen by random drawing.
I’ve been planning to do a varied look at compensation, but I didn’t realize that idea started with something I read in January and here it is June. I reviewed all the comp articles I saved and thought I’d share the more unusual ones.
There were actually two January articles within a day of each other.
But as one of the nation’s foremost financial compensation specialists, Mr. Johnson is among a small group of behind-the-scenes information brokers who help determine how Wall Street firms distribute billions of dollars to their workers.
The other was a Wharton look at the effect of excessive frugality on companies’ long-term health. My main reaction reading it was “ya think!?”
When workers feel that “the company is doing fine, but somehow I’m doing worse, at some point there has to be some dissatisfaction with that. It’s not sustainable,” suggests Wharton management professor Adam Cobb, who studies labor, worker benefits and income inequality. “I think there’s a general feeling of: This system is rigged and not in my favor.”
After two straight years of wages remaining nearly flat, tech professionals on average garnered salary increases of more than 2%…
A reminder that the jobs of the truly rich aren’t like ours comes from Rupert Murdoch who got a huge raise, in spite of legal bills from the ongoing hacking scandal being nearly a billion dollars in February; considering the continuing revelations they’ve probably surpassed that by now.
“I don’t believe in them,” says Jens Begemann, the 35-year-old co-founder and chief executive officer of Wooga. “If people are not motivated, you may need bonuses to make sure they work. But I don’t think that’s the right incentive.”
It used to be that people gave up some salary for the opportunity to work on bleeding edge products in companies with little-to-no structure, like-minded people and the chance to hit the jackpot through stock options—but no more.
Going to work for a start-up used to be a gamble and a sacrifice. You’d have to work longer hours for a lot less money than you would at a publicly held company. (…)To compete for talent these days, start-ups can’t skimp too much in salary negotiations.
There is much written about the rising wrath of shareholders with regards to CEO pay, but little written about a potent subgroup—shareholders who are also employees.
One potentially powerful class of shareholders — employees — seems to be rousing, too. And, to the degree that employee-shareholders band together to have their say on the boss’s pay, they can be a formidable force.
Finally, Apple’s Tim Cook raised the bar for all highly compensated CEOs Thursday; not because of a higher paycheck or by taking a symbolic $1 annual salary, but by refusing part of what he is owed.
In a regulatory filing Thursday, Cook stated that he would forgo around $75 million in dividend payments he otherwise would have revived for the 1.125 million stock awards is set to get over the next several years.
Facebook’s IPO is all over the news and who am I to ignore a topic of obvious interest? Suffice it to say that IMHO valuing Facebook above McDonald’s, Citigroup and Amazon is totally ridiculous—but what do I know?
A survey done by WhisperNumber.com polled 1,100 registered traders and investors, found that 71% do not consider Facebook a long-term investment and will not be buying share after Facebook’s initial public offering.
But when Facebook amended its S-1 on Monday…the company reported a season decline in revenues hitting $1.058 billion compared to $1.131 billion in the quarter before — the questions started cropping up about whether it was too much to ask that Facebook soar in the markets like Google had. Just prior to Google’s IPO, on the other hand was gearing up quarter after quarter pre-IPO and experienced sequential revenue growth of 27.2% from Q4 to Q1 before its IPO.
Bottom line is that for garden-variety investors (that us) making a profit from Facebook isn’t likely (unless, IMHO again, the market crashes and you still have spare change to invest. And even if you there would probably be better places to use it.)
But if history offers any lesson, average investors face steep odds if they hope to make big money in a much-hyped stock like Facebook.
The hand-painted Italian bicycles that flash across Silicon Valley on Saturday mornings have become the new Ferrari — and only the cognoscenti could imagine that they cost more than $20,000.
My favorite bit of IPO wisdom addressed to all those newbie Facebook millionaires comes from Seattle-based entrepreneur and investor Jonathan Sposato, who earned his first taste of wealth at Microsoft 20 years ago, then founded Picnik, which was bought be Google, and is currently GeekWire’s chairman.
For some, stock wealth launched entrepreneurship and philanthropy. For others, materialism and conspicuous consumption. It was a lottery ticket, plain and simple. And statistically, 90% of all lottery ticket winners go broke after 3 years. And while people seldom talk about money in our culture, avoiding the topic makes history repeat itself, and stigmatizes issues around money.
Thus, I offer some very candid advice for my younger colleagues at Facebook, who are about to have a life-changing event.
The shares-versus-dollars decision presents a common dilemma for startup staffers and consultants. Early-stage companies often don’t have the ready money to just write a cheque, so they have to lure talent with the promise of stock. (…) If you are in the fortunate position of weighing a juicy stock offer, what issues should colour your decision?
Rather than leave the future of the convents to prayer and chance, Sister Elaine Lachance has turned to the Internet. She’s using social media and blogging to attract women who feel the calling to serve God and their community. “But I knew I had to go there, that I had to do it,” said Lachance, who turned 70 on Sunday. “You have to go where the young people are. And that’s where they are.”
With 80,000 people surrounded by not much of anything — with no Interstate, no university, and the closest major city 160 miles away across steep and snowy mountains — beer has had room to make a difference. (…) “You have to thank Gary Fish for kind of creating that culture,” said Larry Sidor, a former brew master at Deschutes who left last year to open a brewery of his own this summer, CRUX Fermentation Project. “It’s been kind of a training ground, a spawning ground for the craft movement.”
We’ve put a self-perpetuating cycle in motion. The more anxious, isolated and time-deprived we are, the more likely we are to turn to paid personal services. To finance these extra services, we work longer hours. This leaves less time to spend with family, friends and neighbors; we become less likely to call on them for help, and they on us.
Young couples have long signaled their devotion to each other by various means — the gift of a letterman jacket, or an exchange of class rings or ID bracelets. (…) It has become fashionable for young people to express their affection for each other by sharing their passwords to e-mail, Facebook and other accounts.
Fast forward to adulthood and that tell-the-world social sharing is still creating mayhem, although not because of changing affections.
After a few relationship-testing episodes, some spouses have started insisting that their partners ask for approval before posting comments and photographs that include them. Couples also are talking through rules as early as the first date (a kind of social media prenup) about what is O.K. to share. Even tweeting about something as seemingly innocent as a house repair can become a lesson in boundary-setting.
Enjoy today and have a memorable Mother’s Day tomorrow.
As you may have guessed there is no unifying theme today; just some very interesting stuff.
According to the media today’s college grad wants to either start a company or work in a startup, but is that really true? An article in the The Brown Daily Herald says otherwise, but obviously, the external media probably knows more than an internal college paper.
Of the 67 percent of Brown graduates who entered the workforce after graduation in 2011, 20 percent — 171 students — worked in either consulting or finance. Teach for America was the top employer of graduates, followed by Google and Goldman Sachs.
Next, Tien Tzuo, CEO of Zuora, shares great career wisdom from Larry Ellison, Marc Benioff and Scott Thompson, the CEO’s of Oracle, Salesforce.com and Yahoo
Larry Ellison, Oracle founder/CEO: “Sometimes, you need to piss off the boss.”
Marc Benioff, Salesforce.com founder/CEO: “Break the glass ceiling in your head.”
Scott Thompson, Yahoo CEO: “Your job is to make people successful”
Those who favor a meatier subject should read new research from Michael C. Jensen, the Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus, on the impact of integrity in the real world.
Behavior that lacks integrity leads to value destruction. This paper analyzes some common beliefs, actions, and activities in finance that are inconsistent with being a person or a firm of integrity. Each of these beliefs leads to a system that lacks integrity, i.e., one that is not whole and complete and therefore creates unworkability and destroys value.
How do the magazines treat your personal information when you subscribe? Do you have value to them beyond the price of your subscription? That’s what a reporter wondered, so she did an informal test to find out.
“It is revenue-producing for a publisher to collect subscribers’ information and sell it,” said Paul Stephens, the director of policy and advocacy at the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a consumer group in San Diego. “It’s just information that is very valuable to advertisers who want to target individuals based on their interests.”
Now that you’ve eaten your meat and veggies here’s a goody for dessert. It’s the best version I’ve seen of images set to Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start The Fire. Turn up your speakers, go to full screen and enjoy!
It comes with the impeccable credentials of TED and is called, rightly so, TED-Ed.
It’s a link to a world for you to explore with your kids and other learning-oriented friends.
It’s one of those links that you should blast out to everyone in each of your networks and Tweet so the world will know.
“Our goal here is to offer teachers free tools in a way they will find empowering,” said TED Curator Chris Anderson, on the new TED Ed site. “This new platform allows them to take any useful educational video, not just TED’s, and easily create a customized lesson plan around it. Great teaching skills are never displaced by technology. On the contrary, they’re amplified by it. That’s our purpose here: to give teachers an exciting new way to extend learning beyond classroom hours.”
Yes, it’s a fantastic tool for actual teachers (send those you know the link), but, in the end, we are all teachers and learners.
All the world is Facebook—or so Facebook would have you believe—especially with its upcoming IPO.
I don’t have a Facebook account (we maintain on for Option Sanity™, although it’s not particularly active at present). The more I hear the surer I am that I don’t want one.
Mark Zukerberg would have you believe that Facebook’s only interest is making your life better, but a comment from RickyGunns reveals a more and more frequent and unflattering view of his colossus.
…he plans to make it a mandatory agenda to broadcast everyone’s life in real time invading all privacy for his own legacy and profit trying to be another Bill Gates with the exception that he will do it at anyones expense.
Long defamed for frequent, unannounced changes to its (so-called) privacy policy, problems are now arising that are likely to play out in Congress and at Supreme Court level as the demand by private employers, government and colleges for access to candidates’ Facebook pages (either by asking for logins or to be friended) escalates.
In their efforts to vet applicants, some companies and government agencies are going beyond merely glancing at a person’s social networking profiles and instead asking to log in as the user to have a look around.
In 2007 I wrote about an executive’s dilemma when he found out that the wife of a senior manager cited abuse when she sued for divorce. Although his work performance was fine, the executive was uncomfortable having him on staff. Liz Ryan, a well know HR guru, said, “Ron should be evaluating Terry’s performance on the job, and nothing else.” Most of the other commenters agreed with this. That’s only five years ago, but the personal/professional boundaries have changed drastically.
Wharton management professor Nancy Rothbard says, “The core of the problem is the blending of personal and professional lives. We are still in the infancy of trying to understand how to deal with all this.”
Interestingly enough it is younger people who are changing their behavior to meet the challenge.
But today’s spring breakers — at least some of them — say they have been tamed, in part, not by parents or colleges or the fed-up cities they invade, but by the hand-held gizmos they hold dearest and the fear of being betrayed by an unsavory, unsanctioned photo or video popping up on Facebook or YouTube.
But the company is running into a roadblock in this country. Some people, even on the younger end of the age spectrum, just refuse to participate, including people who have given it a try.
Dave Morin, who worked at Facebook for four years before leaving to help found Path in 2010, explains the rationale for his company this way: “Facebook has made socializing on the Internet normal. But now there is an opportunity to return to intimate socializing.”
Tomorrow is T day (if you aren’t prepared I hope you have filed your extension), so it seemed like a good time to look at who pays what.
No new books meant President Obama’s income is down nearly a million, but he still paid 20%.
President Obama and his wife, Michelle, reported adjusted gross income of $789,674 in 2011 and paid just over 20 percent of it to the federal government in taxes.
He paid 13.9 percent in taxes on income of $21.7 million for 2010 and about the same rate for the not fully completed 2011 returns.
The current tax code is 5,296 pages long vs. 27 when it was written. The majority of the additional 5,969 pages are descriptions and explanations of how to legally cheat on your taxes.
If economists ran the tax system, there would be virtually no exemptions or loopholes. Instead, businesses, rich people, Congressmen and attorneys spend a shockingly large amount of time lobbying for tax breaks or exploiting the ones that exist.
As is often the case with his activities, just beneath the surface was a shrewd use of the United States tax code.
Just in case you are wondering, here’s some intel on what catches the eye of those who pay in the 15% tax bracket.
Neiman Marcus sold out of pewter-color Ferraris (luggage set matching the interior included) at $395,000 each within 50 minutes of making 10 of them available through its “fantasy” holiday catalog late last month.
But in the great scheme of US taxation, Romney’s 14% is still significantly higher than many of our large corporations pay, especially those in the so-called “Dirty Thirty.”
In January, the two organizations identified 30 corporations whose cumulative profit was $164 billion from 2008 to 2011. These corporations didn’t just avoid paying taxes — they actually collected $10.6 billion in tax rebates, according to the groups. They were dubbed the “Dirty Thirty.”
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
A bit of this and that again today.
