"Passing the Mic" May Help You Get Promoted...but Why?

Are cooperative members of the executive leadership team more likely to be promoted to CEO of the company?  Yes, according to an interesting new study by Columbia Business School Professor Wei Cai and her co-authors.  

The scholars studied more than 78,000 earnings call transcripts from 2010-2020. They focused on the question-and-answer portion of the conference calls. They identified approximately 130,000 occasions in which executives "passed the mic" to one another. During these interactions, an executive invited one of their peers into the conversation, perhaps asking them to offer more details about a particular topic. The scholars described these moments as "cooperative interactions." The scholars summarized their findings:

"Older, more senior, and more experienced executives are more likely to display cooperativeness. We also find that cooperativeness persists but can be influenced by colleagues. Turning to the relation with career and firm outcomes, we find robust evidence of a positive association between cooperativeness and the likelihood of being promoted to CEO."

The scholars also found that the capital markets responded positively when a cooperative executive became CEO.   Cai explains, "The market seems to interpret a cooperative leader as a positive signal about a firm's organizational effectiveness and value creation.”

I find these results to be extremely interesting.  I wonder, though, if there may be an alternative explanation for these findings.  Perhaps the leaders who are more likely to be promoted tend to exhibit more intellectual humility.  They are more likely not to speak about subjects about which they do not have deep expertise.  They are effective at acknowledging gaps in their own expertise, and then seeking out knowledge and information from those around them.  They are willing to ask for help! In short, they are better at getting to the right answers by understanding that they don't have all the answers themselves. 

When Leaders Change Their Minds

Source: https://esternicholson.wordpress.com

Successful business leaders change their minds at times. They do not simply stick to a plan even if it is failing. They do not throw good money after bad. As Art Markman writes in Fast Company, "In a dynamic world, though, opinions, beliefs, and plans should change as new information becomes available."  Yet, leaders are often criticized harshly and branded as "flip-floppers" when they shift their positions on an issue.  

In a 2017 study, Tamara Kreps and her co-authors conducted a series of experiments focused on how we perceive leaders who change their opinions.  They compared people who based their initial position on pragmatic rationale vs. a moral one.  They concluded, "We find that audiences believe moral commitments should not be broken, and thus that they deride as hypocritical leaders who claim a moral commitment and later change their views. Moreover, they view them as less effective and less worthy of support. Although participants found a moral mind changer especially hypocritical when they disagreed with the new view, the effect persisted even among participants who fully endorsed the new view."

How should you handle a shift in positions so as to maintain your credibility as a leader?  Markman argues that leaders need to be ready for criticism, but prepared to explain both their original rationale as well as the reasons why they changed their minds.  Many leaders try to do that, of course, yet they still face skepticism and doubts.  I would argue that leaders need to do three things when announcing a change to a previous decisions:

1. They must be extremely clear about the assumptions that were made at the time of the original decision.  Then, leaders should talk about why some of those assumptions may have been proven invalid.  

2. Leaders should talk about the information that was used to make the original decision, and then they should explain how specific updated information caused them to change their positions and beliefs.  

3. Leaders should identify changes in the external environment that shifted the context considerably. Then, they should explain how the original plan no longer fit the environmental conditions.  

Are Algorithms Hurting Netflix?

This week, Netflix announced substantial layoffs. Moreover, content chief Bela Bajaria and film head Dan Lin have been pushed out this week too. What's wrong at Netflix? According to the Wall Street Journal, "Co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos had complained internally for months that Americans were spending less time watching Netflix and that the service was short on new hit shows, people familiar with the matter said. He also has told colleagues that he wants the company, which has experimented with everything from videogames to podcasts, to strengthen its core TV and movie offerings."  

Netflix continues to have the lowest churn rate of any streaming service.   However, the Wall Street Journal reports that Netflix leaders are worried about audience engagement, and in particular, the tendency for young people choosing to watch videos on YouTube and TikTok rather than shows and movies on the streaming service.  

The key questions: Has Netflix's algorithm-driven approach to content creation harmed creativity?  The data may help the company reduce the failure rate of new shows, but does it also reduce the likelihood of finding that next big breakout hit?  Do the algorithms create "comfort" shows that are formulaic in nature?  Netflix has been somewhat vague about the extent to which the algorithms drive content creation, as well as the extent to which humans intervene to override the algorithms at times.  Still, the questions deserve to be asked.  Finding the right balance between data analytics and human creativity is a tricky task.  The same challenge applies to many businesses today.  

Obsessed with Sequels? Stuck with Incremental Innovation?

In the movie business, sequels and remakes have proliferated.  How many reboots of Spiderman, Superman, or Batman have been produced?   How many sequels of The Fast and the Furious?  Of course, some of these franchises have been enormously successful.  Pursuing sequels and reboots may be the profit-maximizing move in the short run. However, we might ask the question: Is the "safer" pursuit of sequels and reboots limiting breakthrough innovation?  The same type of question might be asked about other types of businesses.  

In a new study, Wesley Cohen and his co-authors examined the R&D and product launch strategies at pharmaceutical companies.  They studied roughly 60 companies over a 12-year period. They found evidence that companies can get "stuck" pursuing incremental innovation.  A Duke Fuqua insights feature story explains:

“If a company pursues clinical studies or trials for a drug in the same narrowly defined therapeutic class as their blockbuster drug, this may signal the company is strategically pursuing the same customer segment with a sequel of the blockbuster drug,” Cohen said. They found a significant blockbuster effect: one billion dollars of additional sales of individual products are associated, on average, with 17% more drug development projects in the same narrowly defined therapeutic class as the original drug. Moreover, one billion dollars of additional sales are associated with 30-80% more drug development projects that employ similar technology as the original drug.

The decision to pursue "sequels" in the pharmaceutical industry may be very logical, much as it may be in the movie business. The question, though, is whether there may be a harmful impact on breakthrough innovation in the long run. Cohen's co-author, Yoko Shibuya says, “In the short term, the optimal strategy might be to focus on your guaranteed customers. But this may mean investing less in new R&D with greater potential upside. Someday, you may regret not having invested in other product lines.”

Remote Job Postings Require More Skills

Do managers expect more when they advertise for remote jobs? Do remote job postings list more required skills and capabilities? Yes! In a new study, Shinan Wang and her co-authors studied more than 50 million job postings in Europe. Their analysis suggests that the remote work postings featured 25% more skill requirements than the non-remote job listings.

Why do managers want more skilled employees when advertising for remote work positions? The authors offer several reasons. For instance, remote positions attract a much larger number of candidates. Thus, firms need tougher screening criteria. Moreover, managers may find it more difficult to train remote employees. Thus, they need employees who can hit the ground running much more quickly.

In addition, I wonder if managers worry about the productivity of these remote employees. Applying tougher screening criteria may be one strategy for trying to insure that they have self-motivated and self-disciplined workers who will be highly productive in a remote work environment.

The authors offer a word of caution for young employees looking for work. Co-author Letian Zhang explains, “This may hurt the entry-level workers who need training. Those are the workers who might be left out because organizations, after becoming remote, may have a stronger preference for more-experienced workers.” Put another way, younger employees may be able to increase their odds of landing a job if they apply for non-remote work opportunities. Beyond that, I would argue that younger workers should be focusing on non-remote work because it offers better opportunities to receive on-the-job training, learn from mentors, build relationships, and extend their professional networks.

Kelly Johnson & Lockheed Martin's Skunkworks

 

I'm reading a terrific book by Josh Dean.  The title is The Impossible Factory: The Remarkable True Story of Kelly Johnson and the Lockheed Skunk Works, America's Innovation Machine.   The book chronicles the history of this famous highly secretive research and development organization at Lockheed.  Moreover, it explores the principles of organization and leadership that Kelly Johnson developed to manage the Skunk Works.  I found one particular passage about Kelly Johnson illuminating, since it highlighted how a powerful, often intimidating leader could accept bad news and change his mind.  The story focuses on a young engineer, Dick Heppe, challenging Johnson's view on the design of a plane's tail.  

"Heppe was in awe of Kelly, who was already, by this point, 'a legend' to young engineers like him.  And suddenly he had to sit in front of the man himself and tell him that he needed to make his plane's tail much larger. 'I was, frankly, trembling in my boots,' Heppe recalled.  Kelly did not dismiss the young engineer or get angry at him for bearing bad news.  He listened, asked questions - prodding for mistakes - and then accepted Heppe's conclusion.  

'It's a bitter pill,' Kelly said, 'but you're right.' 

He assigned an engineer, on the spot, to go redesign the tail. 'So that taught me the first lesson about Kelly,' Heppe recalled, 'which was that, if you knew what you were doing and you can satisfy his probing to a reasonable degree, he would trust you.' 

This trait - that a confident, intimidating, often intractable genius could accept bad news, even from underlings - instilled great confidence in his workers. Which only made them want to work more, and harder. 

The story speaks for itself.  Johnson did not dismiss Heppe.  He listened, asked questions, and remained open-minded despite his strong convictions.  He let the evidence speak.   Most of all, he demonstrated the type of curiosity that great leaders must exhibit.  

Costco Case Study

My newest case study is now available through the Harvard Business Publishing catalog. The case is titled Costco Wholesale Club: The Gas Station Strategy. The case examines the company's competitive strategy, and then it dives deeply into the rationale behind this year's grand opening of the first Costco standalone gas station.