Wednesday, July 31, 2013

CEOs: We Want Coaching, But We Don't Receive it.

Stanford has collaborated with the Miles Group to release its 2013 Executive Coaching Survey.   The findings are quite interesting.  According to the Stanford website, the report indicates that, "Nearly two-thirds of CEOs do not receive coaching or leadership advice from outside consultants or coaches, and almost half of senior executives are not receiving any either."  However, it seems that almost every CEO responded that they welcomed outside coaching and advice, and they thought it was worthwhile.   Huh?  So, you think having an external sounding board would be a good thing... what exactly is stopping you?  Is the board prohibiting you from reaching out to get this outside advice and counsel?  Can you not afford it?   It seems that the CEOs are telling us what they think we want to hear, but when asked about actual practice at their firms, they reveal the truth - many of them are not reaching out to make sure that they receive the kind of feedback, advice, and external input that could be very helpful. 

Now interestingly, most of the CEOs who do receive coaching made this happen on their own; they were not forced to do so by their boards.  Thus, some CEOs do see the benefit, and they have reached out to find coaching that can help them. 

In what areas did the CEOs indicate that they need the most help?  Conflict management ranks very high for them.  Since I do a ton of work in this area, I was quite pleased to see that executives value this competency.   I would hope, though, that they recognize that sometimes the key challenge for CEOs is the lack of conflict in key decision-making processes; too often people do not raise dissenting voices in the presence of a powerful chief executive.

Finally, the survey responses indicated that boards of directors are very concerned about talent development practices within firms.  They want their CEOs focused on developing future leaders, and putting good succession plans in place.  That's good news, as we see too many companies left searching externally for a CEO when a sudden need emerges because they have not put a good talent development and executive succession process in place.   


Tuesday, July 30, 2013

A Culture of Experimentation at Intuit

If you are interested in moving your organization toward a more effective, lower cost method of developing new products and services, take a look at this terrific presentation by Kaaren Hanson, VP of Design Innovation at Intuit. 

Thursday, July 25, 2013

How Can Multinationals Find Talented Candidates? Go Where Firms Don't Hire Many Women

Suppose you are a multinational company searching for highly talented candidates.  You are finding it difficult in certain markets to attract the best people.  Where might you have an easier time finding top notch talent?   HBS Professor Jordan Siegel, MIT's Lynn Pyun, and Hanshin University's B.Y. Cheon have conducted a fascinating study titled, "Multinational firms, labor market discrimination, and the capture of competitive advantage by exploiting the social divide."   These scholars find that global firms can enhance profitability by recruiting and hiring women in countries that traditionally do not have ample opportunities for females to achieve leadership positions in business.  

Siegel and his co-authors focused their research first on South Korea.   According to this article on HBS Working Knowledge, South Korea makes a great setting for this research because, "Universities in South Korea are highly meritocratic about accepting and educating women. Hence, the country sports a large number of highly education, highly qualified women with advanced degrees in business, engineering, economics, and foreign languages - all useful in corporate management."   Unfortunately, the opportunities for these talented women are limited in many traditional Korean companies.   

This research focused on multinationals who were taking advantage of this talented pool of candidates that were not being given sufficient opportunities by domestic firms.  "Even after accounting for unrelated variables, the researchers found that a 10 percent nominal increase in the percentage of female managers (at the level of the then-prevailing glass ceiling) was associated with a  1 percent nominal increase in ROA."  

The researchers are focusing on Japan next, a country that also does not provide wide opportunities for women to assume senior leadership positions in business.  (I just read yesterday that only 1% of Japanese chief executives are women, though 1/2 of university graduates in the country are women).  Interestingly, Siegel's research in Korea suggests that Japanese multinationals might be providing more opportunities for women abroad than they are at home.  His work looked at 37 Japanese firms hiring in Korea, and he found that many of them were hiring female mangers there, but not at home in Japan. 

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

When Joint Ventures Fall Apart

The Wall Street Journal reports today that Ford and Toyota have chosen to end a partnership focused on hybrid vehicle development.  The article offers some speculation about why the partnership was dissolved, but it's not quite clear what all the reasons are.  The story does offer us a good opportunity to comment on some of the reasons why joint ventures do fail:

1.  Disagreements and concerns about intellectual property protection - who exactly owns the IP, and how does a firm protect the IP that it does not want to share/lose to its partner or any other rival?

2.  Culture clash - different firms have contrasting styles of decision-making and leadership, as well as different values and norms

3.  Strategic misalignment - the firms have a different view of how and where to compete in the future, or they potentially cannot overcome the challenges and conflicts of interest associated with head-to-head competition in many markets

4.  Catching up vs. Holding you back - Firms sometimes engage in joint ventures as a mechanism for "catching up" in an area in which they lag technologically (or otherwise).   However, at some point, the joint venture may hold you back.  If you have caught up sufficiently, you may wish to reduce your dependency on the partner at some point and focus more on internal capability development

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

True Engagement via Social Media: Honda's Latest Campaign

Honda launched a very creative social media campaign recently designed to truly drive engagement.  The company created a powerful back-and-forth conversation with its customers.  To kick off its summer promotions, Honda asked customers to write tweets using the hashtag #wantnewcar if they were itching to ditch their old car for a new set of wheels.   The company responded with six-second personalized Vine videos in response to some of these creative tweets.  The Vine videos made suggestions for new Honda cars and encouraged these potential customers to take a closer look.  As you might imagine, this campaign created quite a conversation between Honda and potential customers, as well as among consumers.    Check out this creative exchange as one example of the type of back-and-forth that emerged.  You can see that Honda was truly trying to have some fun with this campaign. 

Did the social media campaign have an impact?  It tripled Honda's engagement via Twitter.  According to this article, the hashtag has been used nearly 7,000 times.  The article reports that, "The word 'Honda' received an estimated 247 million impressions between July 14 and Tuesday morning." 

Has this incredible level of social media engagement with the consumer led to increased revenues?  That will be the key question.  We will watching closely to see if Honda reveals any data on the connection between the increased social media engagement and auto sales. 

Monday, July 22, 2013

Understanding Cultural Differences: The Michigan Fish Test

Check out this image. What do you see?   

Source:  Richard Nisbett via CNN.com

In this article for CNN, Columbia Professor Sheena Iyengar describes how people of different cultures view this picture quite differently, and she explains what that tells about important cross-cultural distinctions.   Iyengar is an expert on cross-cultural differences in decision-making processes.  Here is an excerpt:

The image here, known in psychology as the Michigan Fish Test, was presented to American and Japanese participants in a study conducted by Richard Nisbett and Takahiko Masuda.  In their five-second viewing, Americans paid more attention to the large fish, the "main characters" of the scene, while Japanese described the scene more holistically. For Americans, the large fish were the powerful agents, influencing everything around them. For Japanese, the environment dominated, interacting with and influencing all the characters.  After the initial test, the researchers offered participants different versions of the fish picture, with some elements changed and some not. With the altered pictures, the Japanese were more likely to notice changes in the scenery or context. The Americans, on the other hand, proved adept at recognizing the large fish wherever they appeared, while the Japanese had more trouble recognizing the fish in new contexts, outside the original environment.  So members of two different cultures--the more individualist Americans and the more collectivist Japanese--"saw" the pictures with differing emphasis on individuals, the environment, and how these elements interacted. The divergent accounts point to differing narratives of what controls what in the world, and how individual people fit into it.

For more on Iyengar's own research comparing how Japanese and American children approach choice, see this earlier blog post

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Is the Sum of the Parts Worth More Than the Whole at Sony?

In May, hedge fund investor Dan Loeb proposed a break-up of Sony, the Japanese electronics and entertainment giant that has struggled over the past decade.   Actually, he's not proposing a complete break-up, but rather an initial public offering whereby Sony would sell a 20% stake in its music and movies business to outside investors.  Loeb argues that the sum of the parts is greater than the whole.  Sony has an entertainment division that produces movies (Skyfall, Spiderman) and represents recording artists (Adele, Springsteen).  The entertainment division has been more profitable than the electronics division in recent years.  Investors recognize that Sony has been subsidizing losses in areas such as its television business with profits from its entertainment division.   Sony also still owns a majority stake in a firm called Sony Financial Holdings, which operates in the banking and insurance business.  Here's an excerpt from a Bloomberg article about Loeb's push for a partial break-up at Sony:

The value of Sony’s entertainment division -- which makes the “Spider-Man” movies through its Culver City, California-based Sony Pictures and also represents music artists including Grammy winner Adele -- isn’t being realized in the company’s current structure, said Michael Souers, an equity analyst at Standard & Poor’s.  “It’s totally being weighed down by the struggling consumer electronics unit and the fact that it’s had to subsidize that unit,” Souers said in a phone interview from New York. A partial spinoff “would make sense for them. And from a managerial perspective, they could focus a little bit more on turning around the electronics business.” A sum-of-the-parts analysis by Christian Dinwoodie, a Tokyo-based analyst at CLSA, values Sony at 2,400 yen a share, 28 percent higher than its price May 14, before Loeb’s proposal lifted the stock. Spinning off part of the entertainment business would give Sony an infusion of capital and allow it to transfer some debt to the new entity, Dinwoodie wrote in a May 14 report. 

In late June, Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai announced the board of directors would be conducting a thorough review of the Loeb proposal.   The board has yet to make a decision on the Loeb proposal, to my knowledge.  Will Loeb succeed in his efforts?   It will be a tough slog, given that activist investors from foreign countries have not fared well historically in Japan.  Having said that, Sony did sell a stake in its financial services business several years ago; there is precedent for a refocusing of the company's strategy.  

Sony should consider Loeb's proposal seriously.   Years ago, many firms pursued strategies that combined media content with hardware/electronics businesses.  Most of those companies failed to realize the purported synergies.   Focused firms outperformed many of the integrated players (think Apple outmaneuvering Sony, not by owning media content, but by negotiating to secure access to content for iTunes).   One of the problems with integration in the entertainment business is the conflicts of interest that arise.  If you tailor content to your devices or vice versa, you run the risk of losing certain customers and partners. CEO Kazuo Hirai will have to explain clearly how he will make synergies materialize between the two arms of Sony, if he wishes to allay the concerns of investors.   If he holds onto both businesses, he has to explain why the entertainment business isn't going to continue subsidizing unprofitable elements of the electronics business. 

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Can Uniqlo Succeed in the US?

Uniqlo, a division of Fast Retailing, is the largest apparel retailer in Asia.   Headquartered in Japan, Uniqlo (pronounced You-nee-klo) actually manufactures a majority of its clothes in China.   Known for its affordable bright-colored basic, the company aspires to be the largest apparel retailer in the world.  However, Uniqlo has encountered challenges expanding into Europe and the United States.   The firm opened a number of stores in the UK a decade ago, but then had to close many of them a few years later.  Still today, it has not been able to match the dominant home-grown rivals in Europe: Zara and H&M.   In the United States, Uniqlo operates seven flagship stores (3 in Manhattan, 3 in surrounding communities, and 1 in San Francisco).   The firm plans to open 10 more stores in the United States this fall.  However, Business Week recently noted that Uniqlo's July earnings report noted underwhelming performance in the US operations.  

What's the challenge for Uniqlo?   Clearly, cracking the already crowded casual apparel market in the US will be difficult for any new player.   Many companies jockey to attract budget-conscious young consumers interested in fashionable apparel.   Promotions and discounts are rampant, making it hard to sustain gross margins.  Moreover, young consumers prove incredibly fickle at times; today's high-flying retailer can quickly become yesterday's news.  

Uniqlo may be facing another challenge though.  It may not have a clear brand identity.  In this article for Racked.com, Kerry Folan argues that Uniqlo has not quite decided what it wants to be: a fashion brand such as Zara or H&M, a "blue jeans and basics" company such as the Gap, or a performance/technology apparel player such as Under Armour or even Lululemon.  The company has had incredible success with performance apparel actually, though many know it for the affordable and bright casual basics stacked to the ceiling at its flagship stores. For instance, the company's Heattech apparel has sold over 100 million units.  Heattech apparel actually helps to warm you up and keep you that way if you are outdoors on a cold day. 

Many Americans do not know much about Uniqlo.  I would concur with Kerry Folan's assessment.  The firm needs to establish a clear brand identity if it is to succeed in the United States.  Zara has excelled by entering the US with a clear positioning as a "fast fashion follower" with reasonably affordable price points.  Uniqlo must make some clear and perhaps difficult choices.  It would help if they clarified that brand identity before the next wave of new store openings, many in high rent urban locations. 

Can Japan Grow Again?

I'm here in Japan this week teaching an executive education program at the Nomura School of Advanced Management - something that I have done annually for the past 10 years.    Over the next week, I'll have a few blogs pertaining to interesting Japanese companies who compete in the US market. 

Today is actually election day here in Japan.   The country appears poised to support Prime Minister Abe's "three arrows" strategy for lifting the country out of the economic doldrums in which it has been mired for the past two decades.  Many Americans may forget that Japan is the third largest economy in the world, partially because of the lack of growth.  Abe's fiscal and monetary policy stimuli have created a burst of recovery, but the third arrow will be crucial.  Can he push through structural reforms, deregulation, and policies that enhance opportunities for women in the workforce, particularly in executive roles?   If he succeeds, perhaps we will see renewed attention to the Japanese economy, just as it appears that the Chinese economy is slowing down. 


Friday, July 19, 2013

Can It Scale Quickly? Is it the Wrong Question for Many Startups?

Does your business model enable you to scale quickly?   That's the question facing many start-ups these days as they seek capital from investors.   The question proves most pertinent for tech start-ups, but it seems to be thrown at founders in many different kinds of companies these days.   Is there a danger to focusing on this question?   I would argue that founders and investors must be aware of two significant downsides.    First, focusing on scale, and trying to scale too quickly, can cause start-ups to lose sight of their target market.  Who precisely do they aim to serve, and who they do not plan to serve?    A strategy can become "all things for all people" very quickly as the scale question comes to dominate conversations.   Second, founders and investors often can underestimate the challenges associated with scaling quickly.    Sometimes, it makes sense to take a bit of time to get the business model right before trying to grow rapidly.   I find it very interesting that many investors proclaim the mantra of fast iteration and experimentation, yet they also push for scale at the same time. 

The Relationship between TV and Twitter: The Sharknado Case


Tuesday, July 16, 2013

The Netflix Culture

If you have never viewed this presentation about the Netflix culture, you are in for a treat.  Check it out by clicking here.   I would point you to a few things, in particular, that I find insightful and refreshing.  

1. "Great workplace is stunning colleagues.  Great workplace is not day-care, espresso, health benefits, sushi lunches, nice offices, or big compensation, and we only do those that are efficient at attracting stunning colleagues."  How terrific!  People love to work with other highly talented, reliable, and kind people.    They do not like free riders, jerks, and people who don't invest time needed for self-improvement.  Think about when you went to college.  What made it a good experience?   The best courses were not simply taught by a talented professor.  They were courses in which the fellow students were intelligent, curious, reliable, and hard-working.

2.  Netflix chooses to focus on rapid recovery rather than avoidance of failure.  The firm argues that, in some environments, such as health care, we want to be highly reliable, i.e. avoid failure.  However, in creative environments, we should focus instead on rapid recovery.  

3.  The explanation of the nine behaviors and skills that the firm values in its employees is different than most "competency" models developed by company human resource departments.  The Netflix behaviors and skills are much less generic.  They describe specific behaviors, and they fit together to form a consistent whole.

4.  I like the "Keeper Test" a lot.  Here it is:  "Which of my people, if they told me they were leaving in two months for a similar job at a peer company, would I fight hard to keep at Netflix?"  The document states that you should let go of those who do not meet this test.  Make room instead for someone who will have the potential to meet this test.  It's tough medicine, but it really does make you think about whether you are keeping under-performers around too long. 

Friday, July 12, 2013

Restructuring at Microsoft

Yesterday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced a massive organizational restructuring of the company.   According to the Wall Street Journal, "Microsoft Corp.'s broad reorganization announced Thursday aims to break down internal fiefs that have slowed product development and caused friction among teams of employees... The company said it will shift from largely autonomous product groups to a more horizontal structure, under which managers who will oversee specific kinds of functions like engineering, marketing and finance."

Here are a few quick reactions:

1.  The Ballmer memo to the company consisted of more than 2,700 words.  Wow!   If you need that many words to describe what you are doing and why you are doing it.... do you really have a clear strategy?   Will employees really digest all of this material, understand it clearly, and align behind it?  First rule of thumb for leader communication:  keep it simple & concise.  The Ballmer approach falls down on this metric.

2.  No organizational structure is optimal.  Each structure has its strengths and weaknesses.  The key to high performance is driving the right culture, values, and processes in an organization.  Just moving lines and boxes around on an organizational chart won't enhance performance substantially.  Microsoft will succeed or fail based on how they redesign key processes and shift the culture and values.   Boxes and arrows won't  be the panacea.

3.  One still wonders if Microsoft should remain as an intact entity versus breaking up into several parts.  Many investors have wondered if the whole is truly worth more than the sum of the parts.  That question still remains after the Ballmer announcement. 

Thursday, July 11, 2013

Freemium Business Models: Taking Advantage of Cognitive Bias

Psychologists have described a number of cognitive biases that affect our decision-making processes. These biases are systematic errors or traps that we encounter as we make choices.  Put another way, these biases are ways in which actual human behavior deviates from the assumptions economists make in their models of "rational" choice. 

In this terrific blog post titled, "The Psychology Behind Freemium," Alex Mayyasi describes how one such bias may explain the success of many freemium business models.   For those not familiar with the term, a freemium business is one in which customers can use a service for free at first, but must pay for upgraded versions or additional features.  

Mayyasi attributes the success of freemium business models in part to something called the "endowment effect."  If humans were perfectly "rational" in their choices, they would be willing to pay the same amount for a product or service they did not have as they would demand to be paid for giving up a good that they already possessed.  However, many individuals actually demand more in compensation for giving up a good they already have than they are willing to pay for that same good if they do not already possess it.   Mayyasi cites a study by Ziv Carmon and Dan Ariely in which they examined how people behave with regard to NCAA Final Four men's basketball game tickets.  They asked people what the highest price was that they were willing to pay for such tickets.   They also asked them the price at which they would be willing to sell their tickets if they already owned them.  The selling price was more than 10 times the buying price! 

Psychologists attribute the endowment effect, in part, to a cognitive bias called loss aversion.  As Mayyasi says, people "generally react more strongly to losses than gains."  Selling something you already have is a "loss" in many people's minds.  Loss aversion may kick in when you experience a freemium product or service and face the decision about whether to pay a fee to continue enjoying the service. 

I would argue that you can think about this effect in terms of sunk costs too.    Sunk costs are not just investments of dollars.  Sunk costs can be investments of time and energy as well.  If you have put a great deal of time and effort into a video game, you don't want to "waste" those resources that you have invested.  Therefore, when faced with the question of whether to now pay for additional features of the game to continue playing, you are prone to invest some money.  You put more resources into the endeavor because you don't want to "waste" the investment you have already made. 

Tuesday, July 09, 2013

Buy Online, Pick Up in Store - A Surprising Result for Retailers?

Many retailers now offer an option known as Buy Online, Pick Up in Store (BOPS).   What impact does that have on sales?  A new study by Kellogg's Antonio Moreno and Dartmouth's Santiago Gallino has uncovered a surprising result.    They studied one year of data from a housewares retailer with more than 80 locations in the US and Canada.   The scholars compared the behavior of individuals who had the BOPS option with those that did not (either because they lived far from one of the retailer's locations, or because they lived in Canada, where the retailer did not offer the BOPS option).  What did they find?  Online sales actually fell at the stores offering the BOPS option!  However, revenues overall rose for the retailer.  What happened and why? 

In this article on Kellogg Insight, Moreno explains, "We started thinking about what in the operations literature could possibly explain this behavior of people going more to the stores after this option was available, and that was when we came up with the idea of reliability of inventory information."  When customers shopped online, the BOPS system enabled them to see if items were in stock at that moment at a local store.  Knowing that, many of them simply went to the store to check out the item firsthand before committing to the purchase.  BOPS gave them a line of sight into inventory and item availability that they did not have in the past.   

As evidence of this effect, scholars found that many online shoppers were abandoning online shopping carts with items in them.  They had investigated, in other words, but not completed the purchase.  Yet, revenues at brick-and-mortar locations rose, suggesting that many shoppers then visited the stores and completed a purchase.  Moreno notes, "The most surprising thing to me was that online sales went down when the customers were given more options.  If you’re a customer and were planning to buy online, now you have even more reasons to [do so], because now you could buy online and pick up in the store.  We thought it would make the online channel more attractive, but what happened was that it led to this shift towards brick-and-mortar stores, which is a good thing for the company."  

Wednesday, July 03, 2013

Flocking Behavior on Social Media Can Lead to Narrow Thinking, Flawed Decisions

Ethan Zuckerman has written about an important issue regarding our use of social media.   The Harvard Gazette recently wrote about a talk that Zuckerman gave at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.  Berkman noted, "Human beings flock; we tend to seek out people like us."  He argued that individuals tend to engage in a great deal of "flocking" behavior on social media platforms.   They find and follow people who are very similar to them.  He says, "We have a talent for finding people with the same socioeconomic background or racial background. But this tendency to flock may be keeping us from finding the information we need... My fear is that our tools are not promoting diversity."   In short, we are not experiencing a wide range of perspectives on issues and topics.  We are hearing from voices that are similar to ours.  As a result, we are vulnerable to the confirmation bias, i.e. we are looking for information that confirms what we already believe.   Cognitive diversity can be an important factor when making decisions, yet social media seems to discourage the nurturing of this key attribute.  For more on Zuckerman's work, see this Ted Talk below:


Tuesday, July 02, 2013

The Protege Effect

Fast Company's Drake Baer has a new column titled, "Why Teaching Makes You Smarter."   In the article, he draws upon a terrific blog post by Annie Murphy Paul about how people learn.  Paul writes about the so-called "protege effect" that has been discovered by teaching and learning researchers:

Students enlisted to tutor others, these researchers have found, work harder to understand the material, recall it more accurately and apply it more effectively. In a phenomenon that scientists have dubbed “the protégé effect,” student teachers score higher on tests than pupils who are learning only for their own sake. But how can children, still learning themselves, teach others? One answer: They can tutor younger kids. The benefits of this practice were indicated by a pair of articles published in 2007 in the journals Science and Intelligence. The studies concluded that first-born children are more intelligent than their later-born brothers and sisters and suggested that their higher IQs result from the time they spend showing their younger siblings the ropes.

Are there lessons here for business leaders?  Absolutely!   Mentoring, apprenticeship, and succession processes all involve the transmission of knowledge from expert to protege.  Most of the attention often focuses on the benefits to the recipient of this new knowledge.  This research demonstrates that a great deal of benefit exists for the expert as well.  They develop a better understanding of how to do their work by showing others the ropes.  I would argue that they can even become better leaders by reflecting on how they do their work, and helping to groom young future leaders of their organizations. 

Monday, July 01, 2013

Starbucks: Handcrafted Sodas?

The Wall Street Journal reports that Starbucks is testing handcrafted sodas at locations in Atlanta, Georgia, and Austin, Texas.   The article states that the flavors of soda include spiced root beer and lemon ale.  The sodas are created using a carbonation machine in the Starbucks stores, and a grande size drink sells for $2.95 at these locations.

What do we make of this newest product line extension for Starbucks?  As the article explains, the move clearly constitutes another attempt to drive sales at off-hours, i.e. in the afternoon and evening.  Moroever, it offers another way to drive same-store sales growth, a key metric for any restaurant or retailer.   

The move does come with some risks.  Naturally, customers must enjoy the product, or it could harm the Starbucks brand.  In addition, continued menu extensions add complexity to the operations of a particular location.  Can Starbucks maintain speed and customer service as the menu expands?   With food items expanding as well, Starbucks must watch the issue of complexity carefully.  The good news:  Starbucks understands the power of experimentation.  It is testing the concept in two locations, and presumably, it's gathering a great deal of data.  That data include customer feedback, barista input, and information about the impact that the new products are having on the speed of service.   What happens if customers love the soda, but service slows?  That could be tricky.  At that point, Starbucks will work to streamline operations as much as possible to increase throughput.   They have done quite a bit of that type of work in the past few years.  Still, I notice considerable differences in speed across locations.  Part of the difference can be accounted for by the fact that some store layouts are clearly not as conducive to streamlined, efficient operations.   Part of that is due to local differences in the way locations are managed.  

One final point about the notion of testing and experimentation.  Sometimes, companies find that such small tests go quite well, but national roll-outs then falter.  Why?  The tests are not truly representative of what will happen during a full-scale expansion.  Senior managers supervise the tests very carefully. Extra resources are deployed.  The test becomes something more than a test... it's actually a "proving ground" or "demonstration" rather than a true controlled experiment.  

LDRLB's David Burkus Podcast Interview: Why Great Leaders Don't Take Yes for an Answer 2nd Edition

Oral Roberts Professor David Burkus interviewed me for his LDRLB podcast series last week.  The podcast may be accessed here.   The interview focuses on the 2nd edition of my book, Why Great Leaders Don't Take Yes for an Answer, which was released several weeks ago.  I hope you will check it out. 

Fox Business News Segment About My Research

Organizational psychologist, Michael "Dr. Woody" Woodward talked extensively about my work during this segment on the "Career Accelerators" show on Fox Business.   Here is the link at which you can view the segment.