A recent article in Wired focused on the industry claim, amplified by the media, that driverless cars will be a boon to seniors — not that any of them were asked.

Not only are the claims that these systems might help older people overblown, they’re also made, for the most part, without including those older people in studies of the effects of the technology.

What a joke. If you claimed to design a better surfboard, but had never surfed, people would be more than skeptical.

This is a common cycle in technology, more broadly. Over and over again, designers claim their products will be great for an aging population without actually including that population in the conversation. “I think there’s been a lot of new technologies being marketed toward older adults but that haven’t necessarily been designed for them, with their capabilities in mind,” Wendy Rogers, a professor at the University of Illinois, told me for an episode of my podcast Flash Forward. (…)

In many cases, such products were designed by younger people with little sense of what seniors actually need. “So, the buttons are small, the voice quality is not easy to hear, the number of steps required to set it up to get it to do what you want to do is complicated,” Rogers told me. “There are a lot of apps out there, things that are supposed to support pain management, for example, and they’re just not designed well for older adults.”

One of the best examples of bad design is found in most alarms, such as smoke alarms and carbon monoxide monitors. They all have one thing in common, the sound they emit is usually high-pitched, which is pretty useless, since high frequencies are the first to go; not just in old people, but in middle age and younger.

A friend in the geriatric field told me that nursing homes and assisted living facilities often have trainees smear a light coating of Vaseline on their glasses. Functioning all day (or longer) gives them a much better understanding of what many seniors deal with all the time.

You would think companies would be more interested in the reactions of their target market, but when that market is seniors, companies see no need to ask, since they know best — especially true when technology is involved.

There seems to be an assumption, conscious or not, that as joints stiffen brains do, too. And I’m sorry to say it is much worse in younger males.

And younger males are the guys who get funded first.

Do you see a problem here?

Image credit: foundin_a_attic

Receiver Larry Fitzgerald, entering his 15th season, said this is the advice he’d like to give rookies.

God gave you two ears and one mouth for a reason. Listen twice as much as you talk. You learn a lot more when you’re listening.

Wally Bock quoted the same thing in a recent post.

Describing a manager who made a major hiring error that went uncorrected, I commented , that he couldn’t hear and wouldn’t have listened anyway.

Of course, it’s easier to talk than listen.

And you can’t really listen if you are looking at your phone.

Or doing anything on your computer.

Or thinking about where to go to lunch or what to make for dinner.

Or thinking about what you want to say as soon as the other person shuts up.

In other words, you can’t listen, really listen if you’re multitasking.

I might end this post with Wally’s high-level, positive summing up.

Listening is a critical leadership skill you can master. It will help you learn about the people you work with, demonstrate you think they’re important, and help you make better decisions.

But my take is low-level simple.

Knowing and practicing good listening is a great way to avoid being the lead character in Bob Sutten’s book The No Asshole Rule.

Image credit: Alan Goudy

Bosses spend inordinate amounts of time, and often money, working on improving their management skills, frequently turning to the latest “thought leader” for insightful new approaches.

But trendy isn’t always good and frequently it isn’t even new.

Rather than spending your time listening to a varying roster of pundits, why not get it straight from the proverbial horse’s mouth. i.e., your workers.

Ask anyone at any level what they love most about their boss and, in one form or another, they’ll say “they listen.”

Ask what they hate and some version of “they don’t listen” usually tops the list.

Listening isn’t rocket science, but it is one of the smartest, most formidable skills you can develop that will also serve you  in a myriad of situations well beyond your role as a boss.

Ironically, it’s not the actual listening that people find so daunting. Rather it’s the pre-listening step that trips so many up.

So, if your goal is to listen, then you must practice its anagram, which is to be silent.
The first is impossible without doing the second.

In other words, your ears turn off when your mouth is running.

As I said earlier, not rocket science.

Image credit: Steve Heath

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a 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 some of the best posts during that time.

Often the most important stuff we need to learn doesn’t require multiple videos, books, and coaching. Sometimes a simple memory aid that’s easy to remember will do it, although execution still requires effort and self discipline, as in this case.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

For years I’ve interacted with entrepreneurs from the US and other countries. And while they have many traits in common, there is one that never ceases to amaze me — their approach to their users.

Maybe ‘approach’ is the wrong word; perhaps attitude or interpretation or wishful thinking is closer.

Your users are who they are, not who you want them to be.

That means it doesn’t matter if you/your friends/peers think it’s cool.

Or that you/your friends/peers like the style/fashion/etc.

That’s why Lean Methodology says to get out of your office, your comfort zone, and talk to your market.

Actually, rather than talking, you should listen to your market.

Truly listen.

Hear what they are really saying, instead of hearing what you want to hear.

Doing the latter has sunk many a startup.

Be sure to come back tomorrow for a look at some of them.

Image credit: Ky

Founders have a new, or should I say, back to the future, attitude regarding the success of their companies.

It can be summed up in one word: revenue.

While there are great examples and plenty of advice on generating revenue, as opposed to just growing users, I think these four lessons that Tien Tzuo, CEO of Zuora, the eleventh hire at Salesforce.Com and its first CMO, learned from Marc Benioff are worth keeping front and center in your mind (details are at the link.).

• Pitching is Listening.
• Run towards big ideas, not away.
• Never lose sight of your first principles.
• Tear Up the Master Plan.

Based on my experience, founders, especially younger founders, will have the most trouble with the first and the third in the list.

Pitching is Listening: whether driven by passion, nervousness or fear, most founders want to push their vision, their product, their ideas to potential customers.

Marc is always testing his ideas, testing his strategy, testing his vision.  Marc is always in a mindset to listen, to observe, to understand, and it’s this discipline that allows him to always be in touch with the marketplace. It’s easy for people in his position to get disconnected and fall prey to myopic thinking.

Never lose sight of your first principles: it takes thought and a solid knowledge of oneself to identify core principles. Unfortunately, taking the time and spending the energy on such an ostensibly esoteric goal seems to happen less and less these days.

Try searching “invest in yourself” and you’ll find that most talk about adding skills, exploring/developing your creativity and maximizing physical and mental health.

That’s all good, but if you truly want to invest in yourself then set aside time to know yourself, i.e., your values and basic principles; the intangibles that make you you.

Image credit: Howard Lake

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over nearly a decade of writing I find posts that still impress and 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.

Compromise Means Listening (2008)

Jim Stroup at Managing Leadership wrote a fascinating post on the effects of principles and political compromise on our Constitution.

For the political slant click the link, but I think that these ideas are just as true in the business world.

“If you rule out compromising your principles, then you become an ideologue.”

Can business people be ideologues? Of course.

Managers adopt approaches and then rigidly try to implement (inflict?) them on every organization in which they work with no consideration as to their appropriateness.

Robert Nardelli did that when he tried to impose stringent metrics a la GE on Home Depot, ignoring cultural differences and the realities of running a successful consumer business.

“…maybe they see a higher, joint goal of sufficient value… This sometimes takes a kind of discipline, stamina, and focus that can be stunning, and much more productive, powerful, and enduring…”

When senior managers open themselves up to input from all levels of their organization—instead of forcing the dogmatic use a certain methodology—the results include stronger engagement, higher productivity and more innovation.

In business, this means a focus beyond today’s stock price—a focus on the long-term, which is rarely appreciated by Wall Street.

Compromise isn’t synonymous with ethical lapse, either; it’s not an excuse to lie, cheat, steal or fudge the information or the numbers.

It is about listening to others; listening to those whose ideas are revolutionary; ideas that are atypical; ideas that buck the norm and go in a new direction and that takes a lot of guts.

In business, as in politics, compromise often means being willing to put your job on the line—but refusing carries the same potential cost.

Flickr image credit: Scott Maxwell

This post first appeared in 2012, but I believe both its premise and its point deserve another airing.

Managing Weeds

As companies grow and managers build their organizations they frequently talk about “weeding out” low performing employees—Jack Welch was a ninja weeder.

If that thought has crossed your mind you might take a moment to think about James Russell Lowell’s comment, “A weed is no more than a flower in disguise.”

As with weeds, there are better ways to look at under-performing employees.

Seeing a weed as food changes everything, just as seeing people’s potential does.

95% of the time it’s management failures that create weeds and those failures run the gamut from benign neglect to malicious abuse and everything in-between.

Weeds can come from outside your company, inter-departmental transfers and even from peers in your own backyard.

What is amazing is how quickly a weed will change with a little TLC.

“Weeds can grow quickly and flower early, producing vast numbers of genetically diverse seed.”

People grow quickly, too, and often produce innovative ideas — just because someone listened instead of shutting them down.

And while trust that your attitude won’t change takes longer to build, the productivity benefits happen fairly rapidly.

So before you even think about weeding look in the mirror and be sure that the person looking back is a gardener and not a weed producer.

Flickr image credit: Clare Bell

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

How would you respond to what works best?

Do you agree with Carlos Brito, Brazilian chief of Anheuser-Busch InBev NV?

“If you want the best out of people you have to put pressure on them all the time.”

Or are you more like Shamsheer Vayalil, founder and managing director of VPS Healthcare, founded in 2007; today it has 650 physicians and 7,500 employees and serves some 2 million patients a year?

I was a good listener. I would listen to people. I would accept that I didn’t have any experience. So I hired the best people on the job.

If you’ve read much of what I write you’ll know I support Shamsheer’s attitude far more than Brito.

As do Marc Benioff and Jeff Bezos.

Different approaches, both yielding success.

Either way the message is clear: the best CEOs in the world listen more, whether it’s to customers, employees, or business partners — and doing so can go a long way.

Yet another reason to make sure you know yourself.

Flickr Image credit: HikingArtist

How often are your actions influenced by what someone else says they heard?

I think most of us have a tendency to accept that kind of commentary, especially when other outcomes are unlikely.

The recent experience of Anthony Perosi is a shinning example of just how costly relying on second-hand information can be.

Like millions of others, Perosi plays the NY Lottery.

A few days after the Powerball drawing on March 14, Mr. Perosi, 56, was eating lunch at a restaurant, where someone told him that the 7-Eleven on Page Avenue had sold a Powerball winner.

“I says, ‘I’ve played at Page Avenue 7-Eleven,’ ” Mr. Perosi recalled on Thursday.

“She was like, ‘Forget about it.’ ” She heard a schoolteacher had won. She told Mr. Perosi, “You didn’t win nothing.”

So rather than checking himself he accepted what Sandy had heard as fact.

But his truck breaking down in April gave Perosi the impetus to check himself.

To his total astonishment the winning numbers were his.

His and the IRS, to the tune of 136 million dollars

The lesson here is that the next time you start to accept what someone states as fact, it pays to check for yourself.

Sometimes it pays very well indeed.

Flickr image credit: Mark Morgan