Lands' End CEO Pushed Out: Culture Eats Strategy For Lunch

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Federica Marchionni was forced out as CEO of Lands’ End Inc. after only 19 months on the job.   The news did not surprise me given the faltering performance at the firm and the controversy surrounding her leadership.   Six months ago, I wrote a blog post about her effort to turn around Lands' End.   In that post, I referred to some comments by Columbia Professor Rita McGrath, who questioned whether the Lands' End scenario would unfold much like the situation at J.C. Penney when Ron Johnson tried unsuccessfully to engineer a turnaround.  I was particularly taken aback at the time by Marchionni's choice to work out of an office in New York, while only spending one week per month at the firm's headquarters in Wisconsin. At that time, the Wall Street Journal reported, "As part of her contract, the Lands’ End board agreed to let Ms. Marchionni work primarily from an office in New York’s garment district—an arrangement that rubbed some in Dodgeville the wrong way, according to former employees. Her employment agreement says she must be in Wisconsin for holiday parties and other social events that the Lands’ End CEO “historically has attended.” 

To me, the scenario at Lands' End reminded me of the old saying:  Culture eats strategy for lunch.  You can have a bold vision, but you will not succeed as a leader if you can't build buy-in and commitment from people throughout the organization.   How could working from an office halfway across the country have sounded like a sensible way to build support for her turnaround?   There's a bigger issue here though.  Like the J.C. Penney scenario with Ron Johnson, Marchionni did not spend sufficient time understanding the culture, building a coalition of supporters, and making people feel a sense of involvement and ownership with regard to the turnaround plan.   The best turnarounds involve people throughout the organization believing that it's their plan, not simply the CEO's plan.  Sometimes, the CEO has to set the organization on a new course.  Still, the CEO can consult with employees to determine the best way to make that shift, to execute those plans, and to achieve key goals and objectives.   You can tell them what to do differently, but still ask for their input as to how to implement that strategic shift.   

Great Teams: An Interview with Don Yaeger

I had the opportunity recently to interview Don Yaeger, the former Associate Editor of Sports Illustrated and author of twenty-five books, nine of which have become New York Times best-sellers. His newest book is titled, Great Teams: 16 Things High Performing Organizations Do Differently.  Here are his responses to my questions.  As a Patriots fan, I especially loved his answer to my final question! 

1.  You focus in the book on the notion that great sports teams build a strong high-performance culture. You say that matters more than having the right offensive or defensive schemes and strategies. Can you describe the most important elements of a high-performance culture?

Don Yaeger: Culture is a buzzword that is all over the business publications these days, so I think it’s important to define it. In considering how the word specifically applies to a team setting, I came up with two possible definitions: 1) the conditions within the organization that promote either growth or failure and 2) the shared understanding of what to do in adverse situations. The effort to achieve that culture can be broken down to four essential pillars that I believe set a truly Great Team apart from one that simply performs well.

• Targeting Purpose— The team is connected to a greater purpose. Members understand whom they are serving and why that matters.

• Effective Management— The team is able to think creatively and act dynamically in order to stay fresh, effective, and relevant. 

• Activating Efficiency— Each member of the team brings a unique set of talents, experiences, perspectives, work ethic, personality traits, and know- how that melds with and complements those of the other team members. 

• Mutual Direction— There is a strong sense of understanding, appreciation, shared responsibility, and trust that unites and motivates the team to work together.

After studying the subject carefully and discussing it with truly great leaders, I found sixteen defining characteristics that special teams— the ones that are in a class by themselves, that accomplish more than just a winning season or a successful fiscal year, that pack extra punch and bring a degree of excitement to what they do— all share. These traits can be worked on independently by individual team members, but the truly outstanding teams use them to build on one another. Organizations that exhibit real greatness combine talent, relationships, and innovation in a variety of ways for the sake of achieving a shared goal. 

Great Advice For Writing Cover Letters

You are applying for that job you would really love to nab.  You have created a strong resume. Now comes the cover letter. What should it say?  How should you communicate your skills and experiences in a way that the reader will find compelling?  At Fast Company this week, Sara McCord has written an unbelievably good article about the mistakes that people often make when drafting cover letters.  She offers some great tips for how to strengthen your letter, grab a recruiter's attention, and make yourself stand out from the crowd.   

First, McCord argues that you have to get the basics write.  Make sure you proofread carefully.  Typos, spelling errors, and grammatical mistakes are all disqualifying immediately.  Address your letter to a specific person by name.  Don't address it, "Dear Sir or Madam."   Don't just thank the recruiter for considering you; make the case that you are the perfect fit given the requirements of the position and the culture of the company.   

Second, come up with a killer opening sentence that grabs the reader.  Don't start with, "I'm interested in applying for the marketing analyst position at your firm."  Instead, she suggests writing an opening sentence that makes the reader to want to know more about you.  She offers three examples:

• I’ve wanted to work in education ever since my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Dorchester, helped me discover a love of reading.
• My approach to management is simple: I strive to be the kind of leader I’d want to work for.
• In my three years at [prior company], I increased our average quarterly sales by [percentage].

Finally, she argues against compiling a laundry list of your skills in the cover letter.  Instead, focus on what distinguishes you from other applicants.  Don't just talk about skills.  Provide anecdotes, examples, and descriptions of experiences that illustrate the talents and capabilities you would bring to the position.  

McCord's article is a must-read for anyone applying for a job.  I would add one important piece of advice to her suggestions. You must know your audience!  Take some time to learn about the culture of the company.   That research will help you understand the approach you should take.  Can you be light-hearted or humorous?  The answer is simple: it depends.  Doing your homework on the company culture will help you find the right tone and format for that cover letter.  

Etsy Engineers Share Their Failures in Company-Wide Memos

Many organizations exhibit of culture of blame and shame when it comes to failures.  In a case study that I co-wrote with Amy Edmondson years ago, a doctor described the "ABCs of medicine" - in the past, he said, health care practitioners and administrators tended to Accuse, Blame, and Criticize when it came to medical accidents and mistakes.  Yesterday, I read a fascinating article about one firm's attempt to transform its attitude toward failure.  Etsy has tried to create a culture that encourages people to acknowledge, discuss, and learn from failures.   Here is an excerpt from the  article posted on Quartz: 

In a conversation yesterday (Sept. 17) with Quartz editor-in-chief Kevin Delaney, Etsy CEO Chad Dickerson revealed that people at the company are encouraged to document their mistakes and how they happened, in public emails.  “It’s called a PSA and people will send out an email to the company or a list of people saying I made this mistake, here’s how I made that mistake, don’t you make this mistake,” Dickerson said. “So that’s proactive and I think really demonstrates that the culture is self perpetuating.”  He was referring to the company’s efforts at practicing a “just culture,” based on the idea that blamelessness makes people more accountable, and more willing to admit mistakes.As described by Etsy CTO John Allspaw in an Etsy blog post, engineers (and now others at the company) who mess up are given the opportunity to give a detailed account of what they did, the effects they had, their expectations and assumptions, and what they think happened. And, crucially, they can give that account without any fear of punishment or retribution, in what’s called “a blameless post-mortem.”

I love this technique!   Etsy has done something quite remarkable here.  They are not simply demonstrating tolerance for failure.  They are not simply avoiding the tendency to point fingers when failures occur.  Etsy has gone one step further with this practice.  They are encouraging serious self-reflection on the part of their people.   The employees do  more than admit a mistake in these PSA e-mails.  They describe what happened and they analyze why events did not transpire as they had hoped or expected.  The review and analysis provides the opportunity for improvement, not only for themselves, but for others throughout the organization who read these PSAs.   

Love 'Em or Hate 'Em, Icebreakers Have Value!

Cari Room has written an article this week for New York magazine titled, "Icebreakers Are Terrible. They Also, Unfortunately, Work Really Well." She interviews former Rice University Anton Villado in the article. Villado argues that icebreakers accomplish three important things for a group: 

1. They calm people's nerves about being in an unfamiliar or novel situation.
2. They also provide an opportunity for the facilitator to model the behavior that people should expect throughout the session, and/or the behavior he or she would like to encourage. Team members also can model behavior, providing that all-important first impression about themselves. 
3. Most importantly, they provide an opportunity for self-disclosure. People grow closer to one another when they share about themselves.   Research shows that self-disclosure proves more effective at building relationships than simple small talk.  

Penn State Professor Susan Mohammed explains in the article that icebreakers can begin to build psychological safety within a group. Room writes, 

And even when the bonds it creates are superficial and temporary, both Villado and Mohammed say that an icebreaker can help to foster a sense of “psychological safety,” or an atmosphere in which people feel free to speak up — to question, criticize, say something out-there — without fear of being ostracized. “Having people do weird and crazy stuff, or step out and do something wild — having people feel kind of uncomfortable, basically — would begin to help foster that,” Mohammed says. You may hate every second of it, but you’re not the only one undergoing humiliation. If everyone in the room has to tell their life story in a silly voice, or mime their favorite thing to do on weekends, at least you all look stupid together.

Mohammed stresses, however, that one should set the appropriate expectations for icebreakers. They can begin to build psychological safety, but much more work needs to be done to create a climate where people truly feel comfortable speaking up, asking questions, admitting mistakes, and expressing dissent. I agree wholeheartedly. Ultimately, psychological safety will be shaped by how people begin to engage with one another as they work to solve real problems. Moreover, if the team has a leader, that person will have a substantial impact on the climate of psychological safety. Icebreakers can be helpful, but you have to build upon that "risk-taking" atmosphere with concrete actions that make people comfortable speaking up on real issues.

Design Thinking Builds Strong Teams

The Nielsen Norman Group has a drafted a terrific blog post titled, "Design Thinking Builds Strong Teams."  They argue that design thinking accelerates the process of building common ground for a team, and thereby enhances team effectiveness.   Here is an excerpt:

Teams are the foundation of a successful workplace. But working in teams can have a fairly large cost: members must spend time building common ground — that is, a body of common knowledge, assumptions, vocabulary, and cultural practices. In strong teams, the common ground has already been established and the overhead of communication is outweighed by the benefits of collaboration. As a result, these teams are able to be not only efficient, but also produce high-quality, fruitful outputs.

How does design thinking create common ground?  They argue that it provides team members with a  shared vocabulary.  Second, the design thinking process produces what they call "tangible artifacts" that facilitate shared understanding and productive conversation - artifacts such as storyboards, wireframes, and prototypes.  Finally, design thinking creates trust within a team because it values everyone's contribution, minimizes the traditional emphasis on hierarchy and status, and encourages all to speak up and express dissenting views.  

  

WD-40: Building a Culture of Learning Maniacs

Bill Taylor has written a terrific article for Harvard Business Review about what he learned from studying WD-40 and its CEO, Garry Ridge.  Taylor explains that many managers at established firms struggle with the "paradox of expertise."  By that, he means that the more experienced and knowledgeable you are in a particular field or industry, the more challenging it can be to see emerging trends, opportunities, and developments in that domain.  You become trapped by conventional wisdom, well-established rules of thumb, and implicit assumptions.   How do you overcome the paradox of expertise?  Taylor argues that you must become an insatiable learner.  As an example, he turns to Ridge and the culture he has created at WD-40.   The company has a long track record of success with an iconic brand.  One could easily see how such a firm could become complacent.  Ridge knew that the paradox of expertise could become his organization's undoing.  He set out to create a powerful learning culture.  Taylor explains:

Indeed, Ridge is so serious about the commitment to learning that he insists everyone at the company takes the “WD-40 Maniac Pledge,” a solemn vow to become, in his words, a “learning maniac”:

I am responsible for taking action, asking questions, getting answers, and making decisions. I won’t wait for someone to tell me. If I need to know, I’m responsible for asking. I have no right to be offended that I didn’t “get this sooner.” If I’m doing something others should know about, I’m responsible for telling them.

Ridge even sends a subtle message to employees with each email that he writes. According to Taylor, his electronic signature contains a phrase often attributed to the great Italian artist and sculptor, Michelangelo: "Ancora imparo." In English, that means, "I am still learning." People used the phrase in the 16th century to describe how one could and should continue to learn in old age just as he or she did as a child.

How to Network Effectively

We all know that having tons of LinkedIn connections does not make you an effective networker.  The quantity of connections does not serve as the primary driver of networking efficacy.  The nature of those connections matters.  Researchers have compared two types of networkers for years.  First, there are those that engage intensely in a closed network.  They connect with others who share similar knowledge, expertise, and experience.  In short, they stick to their silo.  They aim to deepen their expertise in a particular field.  Second, there are the brokers.  These people are good at bridging among pools of people with different expertise.  They help connect people in different closed networks.   Brokers are incredibly important.  

Who is the more effective networker - the person who builds connections with others to deepen their expertise in a particular area or the broker who bridges multiple silos?  Ronald S. Burt and Jennifer Merluzzi have discovered that "network oscillation" actually proves to be the most effective networking strategy.  They studied 350 investment bankers at one particular financial services firm, and they tracked them over four years.  Here's an excerpt from a University of Chicago story about their research:  

The short answer: the most-successful people take advantage of both systems—sometimes they broker, and other times they dive into closed networks. In fact, without this movement back and forth, their networks give them no advantage at all... Analyzing salary and bonus packages as well as year-end performance surveys proved revealing for Burt and Merluzzi. Bankers who were able to move between brokering and working in closed networks during the year reaped the greatest rewards. These individuals formed ties across the organization, gaining access to new projects and opportunities. But once they found an opportunity, they quit brokering and engaged deeply in their new project. When that project ended, they once again tapped into their broad network of contacts at the firm to find the next interesting project. Swinging between working intensely on a project and networking more widely did have a cost: these bankers sometimes saw their reputations suffer while they were on the bench. But the hit was temporary. And the compensation data show that these oscillating bankers made the most money over time.

Why People Leave Their Jobs

Bravetta Hassell of Chief Learning Officer magazine has a good article this month titled, "Employees Really Do Leave Managers.  Use L&D to Change That."  Here is an excerpt:

When it comes down to it, having free snacks in the employee break room, for example, isn’t as important as having a manager who appreciates his employees.  According to the report, “The Human Touch for Tech Talent: Employee Retention Could Be as Simple as ‘Thank You’,” employee responses to questions about what attracted them to a company and what kept them there say as much. The survey showed that 60 percent of employees said when analyzing a job offer, knowing whether staff feel appreciated by managers matters. Variables like how fast a person could move up in the company or how they’d be evaluated for raises were of lesser concern. Other highlights from the survey included:

• 33 percent of respondents want to know their manager always has their back compared to 22 percent of people who valued having a clearly defined career path, and 17 percent of respondents who found it important to receive regular performance feedback.
• 32 percent of respondents who looked back at ‘worst boss’ experiences said that person never gave credit where it was due.
• 28 percent of respondents to the same questions said that person rarely gave verbal praise or support.

What can learning and development professionals do about these findings?   According to Hassell, they can rethink the types of capabilities that they focus on during professional development  programs and initiatives.  These findings suggest a renewed emphasis on how to delegate effectively, how to recognize employees for their work, how to celebrate team successes, and how to maintain an open and ongoing dialogue with subordinates.  

The Path to Becoming a CEO: The Long and Winding Road

The New York Times published the findings of a fascinating new study by LinkedIn regarding the path to becoming a CEO.   They examined 459,000 people who had worked as management consultants at one point in their career.  They tried to discern some patterns regarding how and why some people reached the position of CEO of a company during their careers.  Here is how Neil Irwin described the findings in his article in today's New York Times:

To get a job as a top executive, new evidence shows, it helps greatly to have experience in as many of a business’s functional areas as possible. A person who burrows down for years in, say, the finance department stands less of a chance of reaching a top executive job than a corporate finance specialist who has also spent time in, say, marketing. Or engineering. Or both of those, plus others. However, there is still such a thing as too much variety: Switching industries has a negative correlation with corporate success, which may speak to the importance of building relationships and experience within an industry. Switching between companies within an industry neither helps nor hurts in making it to a top job. These are some of the big findings in a new study of 459,000 onetime management consultants by the social network LinkedIn. Experience in one additional functional area improved a person’s odds of becoming a senior executive as much as three years of extra experience. And working in four different functions had nearly the same impact as getting an M.B.A. from a top­ five program.

The results do not surprise me.  You need to master a diverse range of skills to become an effective CEO.  You have to understand the different functions and disciplines within a firm.  Therefore, accumulating a range of experiences tends to be helpful if you wish to become a chief executive.  It also speaks to the importance of being a successful lifelong learner.  You can't just build upon the expertise you have.  You must take risks and venture into domains about which you are not an expert, and be willing to learn quickly.  

Great Advice for Those with Creative Ideas

Matthew Jones has written a neat column for Fast Company titled, "5 Ways You Can Improve Your Organization (Without Sacrificing Creativity)." Most importantly, he recommends setting some priorities. He suggests that individuals, "Stop taking on more projects." Similarly, he writes, "Don't attach yourself to every great idea." In other words, know when to say no. You may have tons of creative ideas, but there are only so many that you can develop and implement at any given point in time. You may be asked to participate in lots of exciting projects, but you have to know your limits. Jones argues, "Most individuals will find that their creativity will plummet when trying to take on too many tasks at the same time."   I think it's terrific advice, because innovation ultimately is about more than creating a new concept or idea.  It's about creating AND implementing that new idea.  Taking on too many tasks at once reduces the probability that you will transition from creative thinker to effective innovator.  

Advice for First-Year College Students

It's that time of year... here's a blog post from several years ago regarding advice for first-year college students.  

Starting College: Words of Advice

1. Pick your faculty, not just your courses. Ten years from now, it won't matter much if you took "18th Century French History" or "Cognitive Psychology" in your freshmen year, but you will remember the faculty member who made a huge difference in your life. Seek out the professors who care the most, who have a passion for teaching, and who are willing to spend time outside the classroom with students. Building those relationships early in your college career, and finding good mentors, can have a huge impact. 

2. Be smart about personal finance. Think carefully about how you manage your money. The habits you cultivate at 18 years of age will last a lifetime. Have a great time, but don't take on unnecessary debt and don't spend carelessly. 

3. Redefine how you study. For many students, studying means reading or re-reading the textbook and their notes from class. I would encourage you to think differently about studying. As you prepare for an exam, sit down with all your class materials, and write out a detailed review of the entire course. Then, boil that review down to just 1 or 2 pages. Then, boil it down again to just a few note cards. That process of having to synthesize and integrate all your learning in writing will have much more impact than a few extra hours spent re-reading the same tired words from a textbook.  Then, most importantly, quiz yourself!  Forcing yourself to retrieve knowledge from your memory will be extremely helpful as you prepare for tests.  

4. Seek out your own space. Don't count on studying in your dorm room. Far too much distraction exists in the dorm room. Find a spot on campus in which you are comfortable, and in which you can focus. For many, it will be a spot in the library. However, there may be other locations as well. If you do go to the library, don't sit in a high traffic area where you will constantly be approached by friends. 

5. Care for your whole self - mind, body, and soul. Don't just focus on academics. Stay in physical shape, take care of your spiritual well-being, and be mindful of your stress level. 

6. Read constantly about world events. You might think I'm crazy. After all, you will have tons of assigned reading in your courses. Who has time for more reading? Actually, staying abreast of current events in world affairs, business, science, and the like will be very helpful in your college career. As you read, you can and should try to make connections to what you are learning in class. By applying what you are learning in class as you read about world events, you will engage in much deeper learning. The lessons will sink in much more effectively. 

7. Thank your parents. Be sure to express appreciation early and often to your parents and other family members who are supporting you throughout your college experience. Be mindful of the sacrifices that your parents are making for you. Don't dismiss the fact that it may be emotionally difficult for them to see you leave home. Surely, you should seek out and affirm your independence from your parents, but don't trample on your parents' feelings as you do so.

Seven Characteristics of Successful Innovators

I was asked recently to share my definition of innovation as well as the characteristics of successful innovators.  Here is my response.

Innovation: the process of creating and implementing an idea that generates significant positive change. 

What are the characteristics of successful innovators?

1. Intellectual curiosity - a deep and persistent desire to learn new things, explore beyond one’s base of expertise, to read broadly, and to ask excellent questions

2. Growth mindset – a belief that abilities are not fixed traits, but instead can always be improved.

3. Collaboration – You must be able to work with others, because the "lone genius" theory of innovation is a myth.

4. Integrative thinking – Roger Martin argues integrative thinkers “have the predisposition and the capacity to hold in their heads two opposing ideas at once. And then, without panicking or simply settling for one alternative or the other, they’re able to creatively resolve the tension between those two ideas by generating a new one that contains elements of the others but is superior to both.”

5. Connectors – the ability to draw unique connections among seemingly unrelated concepts from different fields.

6. Grit – perseverance and passion in pursuit of long-term goals

7. Tolerance for failure – willingness to experiment and prototype, accept feedback, adapt quickly, and cut your losses when appropriate.

Design Rituals to Reinforce Organizational Values & Culture

Mollie West and Kate McCoubrey Judson have published a wonderful blog post for the Huffington Post about how to strengthen organizational culture.   They focus on the importance of establishing rituals that bring the organization's mission, purpose, and values to life.   I've always believed in the value of such rituals.  At universities, such rituals include ceremonies such as convocation and commencement, as well as alumni reunions, honor society inductions, and new student orientations.   Of course, they also include many smaller rituals that are part of everyday life on campus.   For us, these rituals reinforce our institutional values and remind us of the meaning and purpose of our work - to transform the lives of the young people who come here to learn and grow.   West and Judson describe the importance of rituals in this excerpt from their article:  

Companies practice rituals of all kinds—celebration rituals, eating rituals, storytelling rituals. Why are they important? Rituals engage people around the things that matter most to an organization, instilling a sense of shared purpose and experience. They spark behaviors that make the work and the company more successful.

Rituals can be powerful drivers of culture, so they should be thoughtfully designed and nurtured. This starts with setting an intention. What is the organization’s unique purpose and set of values? What mindset and behaviors will help people deliver on those? A great ritual will reinforce that mindset and those behaviors in a way that feels authentic to the organization and its people. What works at one company, might feel totally foreign somewhere else.

It’s also important to think about what will make a ritual stick. Why will people want to participate? Can it start organically and catch on, or will people look to certain leaders to model it first? Designing a ritual that will sustain over time requires tuning in to the organization’s existing culture, beliefs, and behaviors. 

Interview with Phillip Barlag, Author of The Leadership Genius of Julius Caesar

1. Why did you choose to write this book? 

Early in the book, I discuss a story where Caesar was able to stop a mutiny of his army - which occurred while he was away from camp - by returning, standing before them, and uttering one single word. When I first heard this story, I was enthralled. How could any leader have so much gravitas, that they could bend the will of an organization in open and violent revolt with just one word? To me, that was a question that needed to be answered. 

2. Who do you think should read this book? What will be the most important takeaways for that audience?

It would be too easy, and too self-serving to say something silly like 'every leader everywhere,' should read this book. Rather, I think the best audience would be those leaders or managers who are tasked with driving a change management agenda of one kind or another, but find surprising organization inertia or active resistance impeding their progress. Caesar's career was defined by his ability to do what people had been trying - and failing - to do for hundreds of years. Most of his predecessors not only saw their efforts end without success, but found themselves murdered by the oligarchs who stood to lose should much-needed reforms take hold. Given how hard change can be in any modern organization, people that are a part of such efforts, or have a goal for doing things differently, should read the book. 

3. What is one surprising lesson from Caesar that you discuss in the book?

In the conventional narrative of Caesar, he is described as a tyrant, a dictator. Certainly he was capable of blind pursuit of his ambitions, but adjusted for his time, he was remarkably enlightened. For me, the most surprising aspect of his leadership that reveals itself with a deeper exploration, is that forgiveness was an absolute cornerstone of how he led. As a result, he was able to turn enemies into supporters, and neutralize many people that would otherwise have fought him to the death. Caesar's life and career make a fascinating and compelling business case for the power of forgiveness; he would not have been able to achieve all that he did without going against the conventions of his day and welcoming enemies back with honors and open arms. 

4. How did you go about researching for the book?

This book is a result of following an interest until it becomes an area of general expertise. I'm not a historian; I just like history. After reading 30 or so books about Rome and about Caesar, patterns began to emerge that I felt needed to be put together into a guide for a modern leader. I was in the very happy place of doing research by reading books and articles that I found intrinsically interesting. When these efforts needed to be augmented, I sought the opinion of some professional historians, academics, and editors who helped me filter out the overwhelming body of literature to arrive at the most important and respected work available. Roman history is fascinating. We know so much about Rome and the people that lived there. But there is just enough gap in the historical record, and there are just enough different ways to interpret what we know, that there is endless debate and discussion about what Rome was as a social and political entity, and what it meant. There was plenty of information to choose from!

5. What modern leaders remind you of Caesar and why?

Caesar was singularly unique. There hadn't been anyone quite like him before he arrived, and there hasn't been anyone since. But if you break him down into some of the unique aspects that added up to make him who he was, then there are a few people that come to mind.

To me, the closest we could come would probably be Steve Jobs. He, Caesar, saw a way of doing things that was badly outdated, and took on the incredibly difficult task of changing the whole system. Caesar also was single-minded in accomplishing goals ahead of competitors, and created such an overwhelming sense of urgency in the organizations he led. To me, these things have echoes of Steve Jobs. They were both innovators beyond compare, very clear about defining the line of battle, and rising to every challenge. Jobs was more volatile and less emotionally generous, but in terms of the scope of their goals and ambitions, I think it's a fairly apt comparison. 

I guess the term 'modern' is a bit relative when discussing someone that lived more than 2,000 years ago, so I am going to cheat a little from what I infer to be the spirit of the question and draw a comparison to Abraham Lincoln. When Lincoln was a young lawyer on the circuit, he encountered Edwin Stanton. Stanton thought Lincoln to be so boorish as to be barely human. As their careers progressed, Stanton would heap insults upon Lincoln, often calling him the 'original gorilla.' Hardly kind (or accurate). When Lincoln was President, and his first Secretary of War Simon Cameron got embroiled in scandal, Lincoln overlooked the countless years of insults and nominated Stanton for the post. Lincoln never held a grudge, and he could see past his pride and identify Stanton as the best man for the job. It would be an inspired pick, and the two became incredibly close collaborators, changing the course of the Civil War and of American history. Find me another leader that could have so much forgiveness that they could do the same. Obviously the point is that Caesar often did the same thing: Forgetting the past and forging a new future with unlikely partners. As with Jobs, there are key differences. In this case, Caesar's forgiveness was more calculating and self-serving, but in a lot of ways, the outcomes and the lessons are the same. 

Running "Sprints" Effectively

Rachel Emma Silverman wrote a short piece for the Wall Street Journal last week about the use of "sprints" to solve tough problems at companies such as Alphabet. A sprint is a focused group problem-solving process that unfolds in just five days. She features Jake Knapp of Alphabet in her column. Knapp has co-authored a book titled "Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days."   I thought he offered some terrific advice about decision-making during such group sprints. 

“It’s really important to know who the decider is,” says Mr. Knapp. “For many teams there is a lot of ambiguity about who makes decisions. If you can’t get the decider for the whole sprint, make sure you can get her in the room for cameo appearances during the sprint to make decisions.”A sprint works best when there is one person tasked with making the final call for big decisions, rather than relying on a more democratic process, he says. Team members can provide input and feedback, but in a sprint there should be a sole decision maker. “We want there to be a single decider to make the calls, and we want him or her to be opinionated, says Mr. Knapp. “It becomes an informed dictatorship.”

Mastering the One-on-One Meeting

Julia Austin, Chief Technology Officer at DigitalOcean and advisor to many startups in the Boston area, has written a terrific blog post about how to conduct effective one-on-one meetings with your direct reports.  I highly recommend reading the entire post.  Here are a few highlights: 

• "Book a regular cadence of 1:1s. They should not be ad-hoc. It’s ok to skip one every once and awhile, but having it locked into the calendar is your commitment to being there for your employee. Decide the best cadence with them (weekly or every other week? 30 minutes or an hour?) and what the format should be – your office or theirs, a walk, or maybe grabbing coffee. Different formats work for different employees... 
• "24 hours or so before the meeting, email the employee a list of what you’d like to cover. Try to do a split between strategic, tactical and personal items and always ask your employee what they want to cover too."
• "Do not monopolize the conversation. This is for you each to get time to talk. Pause often and make sure there is opportunity for discussion and questions."
• "It is important to always follow up any 1:1 (or scheduled meeting, for that matter) with notes on what was discussed, decisions made and, if relevant, any constructive feedback that will be measured going forward." 

Is There Such a Thing as Too Much Feedback?

The Wall Street Journal reports today on the changing culture at Kimberly-Clark, maker of products such as Huggies diapers and Kleenex tissues.   In this article, Lauren Weber writes the following: 

"One of the company’s goals now is 'managing out dead wood,' aided by performance-management software that helps track and evaluate salaried workers’ progress and quickly expose laggards... Armed with personalized goals for employees and large quantities of data, Kimberly-Clark said it expects employees to keep improving—or else. 'People can’t duck and hide in the same way they could in the past,' said Mr. Boston, who oversees talent management globally for the firm.  It has been a steep climb for a company that once resisted conflict and fostered a paternalistic culture that inspired devotion from its workers."

Weber goes to write that Kimberly-Clark's performance management system reflects a trend taking place in many companies, in which firms have eliminated annual merit reviews and replaced them with more continuous feedback.   She cites examples such as Accenture, Adobe, and GE, all of whom eliminated traditional annual performance reviews.   These firms have adopted real-time feedback systems for a number of reasons including, according to Weber, the belief that, "Millennial workers, meanwhile, demand more feedback, more coaching and a stronger sense of their career path."  

My question is simple though:   Can we take this shift to continuous monitoring, evaluation, and feedback too far?   I keep hearing that millennials want more feedback, but I've spent a ton of time around young people as a college professor.  I'm not sure any of us love being critiqued at every turn.   We work on some projects that take some time to get off the ground.   Some ideas require some time to take shape.   In short, I think this shift taking place in corporate America raises some critical questions:  Is too much early "feedback" going to quash some creative ideas?    Are managers adept enough at offering constructive critique to make this type of real-time feedback system effective at many firms?  Are we evaluating what truly drives success, or are we focused on what is easy to measure?  Are we encouraging short term thinking when we provide real-time feedback, or are we making sure to keep long term objectives in mind?  

Early, Often, & Ugly!

Adam Bryant interviewed Christa Quarles, CEO of Open Table, in this week's New York Times Corner Office column.   Quarles describes one important leadership lesson she learned when she became CEO of the firm:  

The other surprise was that people were afraid to share things early on. Teams were trying to perfect something before they would show it to me, and they’d waste a ton of time trying to get it to be perfect to show to the C.E.O. So I said, “Early, often, ugly. It’s O.K. It doesn’t have to be perfect because then I can course­-correct much, much faster.” No amount of ugly truth scares me. It’s just information to make a decision. 

Awesome advice!  You have to strongly encourage people to show you work earlier on, because they will naturally have a tendency to want to perfect it before exposing those ideas to senior leaders.  Of course, how you then provide critique and feedback is essential.  If you attack those ideas in a fashion that is not constructive, your folks will stop bringing you ideas "early, often, and ugly."   You cannot invite those rough sketches and ideas without also considering how to critique those ideas differently than you might approach a near-finished proposal.    

Why A Few Box Office Hits Generate More Revenue Than Ever

The Wall Street Journal reports today on some interesting trends in the movie business.   According to this article by Ben Fritz, a small number of blockbuster hits accounts for a higher fraction of total box office receipts than in past years.   This year, the hits have included movies such as Finding Dory and Zootopia.  Fritz writes, "Increasingly, success in the movie business requires being one of the handful of most popular movies that draw a disproportionate amount of attention on social media and in the cultural zeitgeist. This year’s five most popular films account for 30% of the total domestic box office. At the end of last year that figure was 22%, a record at the time. The inevitable result is a smaller pool of moviegoers left to see everything else."  

Why the shift toward a larger share of revenue from the top movies of the year?   Fritz wrote an earlier column that may offer some clues.  In that piece, he noted that viewers tend to be getting their information from different sources these days.  In the past, people watched Siskel and Ebert (and others like them), and those experts shaped their movie-going decisions.  Today, people pay much more attention to what other viewers think.   What is the movie's Rotten Tomatoes score?  A bad score can doom a movie.   

Is this shift an example of the power of the wisdom of crowds?  Is it necessarily a good thing that we are using the crowd's wisdom to guide our movie-going decisions?   Interestingly, some research points to the pitfalls of the wisdom of crowds.  Jan Lorenz, Heiko Rauhut, Frank Schweitzer, and 

Dirk Helbing have studied this issue through experimental research.  They summarize their findings in the excerpt below:  

This wisdom of crowd effect was recently supported by examples from stock markets, political elections, and quiz shows [Surowiecki J (2004)The Wisdom of Crowds]. In contrast, we demonstrate by experimental evidence (N = 144) that even mild social influence can undermine the wisdom of crowd effect in simple estimation tasks. In the experiment, subjects could reconsider their response to factual questions after having received average or full information of the responses of other subjects. We compare subjects’ convergence of estimates and improvements in accuracy over five consecutive estimation periods with a control condition, in which no information about others’ responses was provided. Although groups are initially “wise,” knowledge about estimates of others narrows the diversity of opinions to such an extent that it undermines the wisdom of crowd effect in three different ways.

Interestingly, one other shift seems to be occurring in Hollywood from the production standpoint. More than ever, studios appear to be relying on franchises, sequels, and reboots.   Why is that happening?   One could argue that the studios are trying to enhance the probability of achieving a strong box office by bringing familiar characters to the screen.  That may be true to some extent, but there may be a limit to this positive impact.  At some point, they may saturate theaters with reboots and sequels, and customers may desire more originality.   

Accepting that Job Offer When the Internship Ends

You have completed your summer internship, and you have received a full-time offer of employment.  Fantastic!  Now, should you accept the position.  Most young people might say, "If you had a good summer internship experience, then of course, you should take the job."   Jon Simmons has published a good article for Fast Company that addresses this issue.   Simmons suggests that the answer might not be so simple.

How should you make this decision?   Simmons suggests careful consideration of a wide range of factors including compensation, benefits, company culture, opportunities for growth and development.  Certainly, all of these items matter.  However, I think the decision should not primarily be about factors such as compensation.  In fact, the differences in compensation across multiple job offers will be relatively trivial for most students.  The real issue is growth and development.   Interns should ask themselves three questions:

1.  Will my full-time position be substantively different than my internship experience?  Will it be more challenging?  Will I assume new responsibilities?  Will I learn new skills?  If the answer is no to these questions, then you don't want to take the offer.  The best firms that hire here at Bryant University provide full-time opportunities that build upon, but go well beyond, the internships that they offer.

2.  Does the firm have a track record of investing in the growth and development of its young employees?   Will I have opportunities to enhance my skills through in-house leadership development programs, training courses, tuition reimbursement at local universities, and mentoring by senior leaders?   If the answer is yes, then you should seriously consider taking the job offer.

3.  What are my short term career goals, and would this full-time position help me achieve those goals?  Don't think in terms of 10-15 year plans.    That's just not advisable in today's world.  Think instead of the next 5 years.  What do you hope to achieve?  Suppose you plan to apply to a top MBA program. Then ask yourself:  Will this full-time position help me gain admittance to such a school?  Suppose instead that you hope to become a young entrepreneur.  You should ask:  How will this position help me achieve that goal?

Who is More Empathetic: Intuitive or Analytical People?

The British Psychological Society's Research Digest features new work by Christine Ma-Kellams of the University of La Verne and Jennifer Lerner of Harvard. They focus on empathy, something that has gotten a great deal of attention in the management field recently. The human-centered design movement emphasizes empathy with customers as a key tool for driving innovation. Meanwhile, efforts to improve employee engagement have focused on the need for managers to empathize with their subordinates. La Verne and Lerner study how different types of people engage in empathy, and their results prove rather surprising. The Research Digest summarizes their conclusions: 

Reading what other people are feeling is an important skill that helps us navigate conflicts, deepen relationships, and negotiate effectively. So what’s the best way to approach this? New research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that most of us believe that the best approach is to trust our instincts. But the paper goes on to show that, on the contrary, accurate empathy comes from operating deliberately and analytically.

What explains this surprising finding that contradicts the conventional wisdom?  The authors argue that reading others' emotions often proves very difficult.  The cues are not always obvious or clear.  Therefore, it takes some effort to discern how others are feeling.   That's where a more analytical mindset has value.   Focusing on details, evaluating a situation comprehensively, and deliberately analyzing a variety of cues turns out to be crucial to empathizing with others in many situations.  Instincts alone do not always do the job.  

How to Listen to an Employee's Pitch

Adam Bryant interviewed Lisa Gersh recently for his New York Times Corner Office column.   Gersh explains an early leadership lesson she learned.  In short, she's talking about how the "yes, and" principle from improv comedy can be used to enhance the quality of team meetings.  

A mentor, Geraldine Laybourne, gave me a great lesson when I had my first child. She said the best way to control the “terrible 2s” and make your kids happy is to learn how to say “yes.” It doesn’t mean giving them everything they want; it means directing them to something else. The same thing is true in business. It’s about learning to say yes. People pitch ideas all the time, and I find that others in the room can often want to say no and talk about why it’s not a good idea. A bunch of really smart people can kill any idea. You can always find out what’s wrong with an idea, but you can’t necessarily find out what’s good with the idea. And so the first thing she said to me when we were starting Oxygen Media is to learn how to say yes. Listen to people’s ideas almost like an improv session, and play with the ideas. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to do the idea. It just means you’re going to listen to the idea and work on the idea.

Remembering (or Forgetting) or Own Misdeeds

Maryam Kouchaki and Francesca Gino have conducted some interesting research about how we think about dishonest or unethical behavior.   In a series of experiments, they examined how we recall our own misdeeds versus the unethical decisions and actions of others. What did they find? First, according to this article from Kellogg Insights, they discovered (not surprisingly) that, "People recall their unethical behaviors with less-than-vivid clarity—increasing the likelihood that they will take similar actions in the future."  The scholars describe this phenomenon as "unethical amnesia."  They argue that such behavior is problematic because forgetting our own misdeeds makes us more likely to take such actions again.   If we recalled that behavior more clearly, it would act as a deterrent.   Why do we engage in unethical amnesia?  Well, of course, we are employing a defense mechanism.  We don't like to consider ourselves in a negative light.  Failing to reflect on our own misdeeds, however, may heighten the risk that we engage in such bad behavior again.  

What about others' misdeeds?  The scholars find that we are much more likely to recall the unethical behavior of others than our own.   Here's the experimental result:

So are all memories of unethical behavior hazy? Or are we just fuzzy on our own bad deeds? The researchers tested this question by having people adopt the perspective of someone else. They recruited participants online to read a story describing either ethical or unethical behavior. Some of the stories used a first-person perspective so that the reader assumed the point of view of the main character. The other stories used a third-person perspective.

Four days later, the participants rated their memory of the story. Indeed, the perspective of the narrator—and therefore, presumably, the reader—mattered. Participants who read a story with a third-person perspective remembered it just as clearly whether it was about ethical or unethical behavior. But participants who read a first-person story reported remembering the story about unethical behavior less clearly.

Why Do You Want to Work Here?

We've all faced this question in a job interview:  "So, why exactly do you want to work for us?"  The question seems very straightforward, yet it trips up many candidates.  I'm shocked by how many times I've heard responses that indicate a lack of in-depth research about our organization.  Doing your homework, though, is only the first step.   You have to go much further to answer this question effectively.   In a recent article for Fast Company, James Reed explains how to approach this question successfully: 

CONNECT WHAT MOTIVATES YOU TO THE JOB DESCRIPTION

Some hiring managers will ask you directly what motivates you to do great work in order to see whether you’re just in it for the paycheck. This is a great opportunity to explain why this job at this company, and not just a job at any company, is what you’re after.

Most of us go to work each Monday morning, at least in part, so we’ll be paid by the end of the month. But as both you and your potential employer have probably discovered, people who are motivated solely by the money are rarely the most enthusiastic, productive, or successful members of the team. The jobs you excel at will be ones that really get you buzzing—that you find you enjoy in some way and have some intrinsic motivation for. Your interviewer wants to know if this job will be one of those jobs for you.

I think there's a danger here though.  I've seen many candidates try to connect what motivates them to the job description.  However, they don't quite get the skills and capabilities dimension of this question right.   Most candidates are eager to argue that they have the right skills for the job.  They wan to explain that they are highly qualified.   However, the best candidates also argue for why this position will be challenging in some respects.  In what ways will it help them grow and develop? Where's the stretch in this position for them?   Being able to argue that you are highly qualified, yet there is also some opportunity to grow and develop, is essential to answering this question effectively.  Otherwise, the interviewer will wonder:  Will this person be ready to move on after only a short period of time?  Will this position be engaging enough to keep them interested and intrinsically motivated?   It's a delicate balancing act, of course.  You don't want to portray the position as too much of a stretch... but on the other hand, you don't want to make the case that it will be a piece of cake either.  The best candidates walk that fine line, and in so doing, they make a powerful case for landing that desired position.  

Team Retrospectives: Driving Learning & Improvement

In a blog post this week, The Design Gym offers an inside look into their "team retros" that they conduct each month.  Other organizations describe such processes as post-mortems, lessons learned exercises, or after-action reviews.   The Design Gym conducts these sessions each month, with skilled facilitation and a simple process that all must follow.  They have a straightforward six-step process:

1.  Check-in: Each person checks in by jotting down a sentence or drawing a sketch that highlights how they feel about the past month's activities, accomplishments, and failures.  

2. Solo Reflection: Each person spends some time alone jotting down their thoughts about the past month's activities on sticky notes.  

3. Share Out: Each person spends a few minutes putting their sticky notes up on the wall and explaining their reflections and conclusions.

4.  Themes, Insights, and Red Flags: The team looks across all the shared reflections and tries to identify any recurring themes, insights, and red flags.  

5. Commitments: Each person completes an "I will __________" statement describing what they pledge to work on in the coming weeks to improve team and individual performance.   

6. Check-out: Each person takes a few moments to jot down a phrase or illustrate in a simple way their closing thought for the session, reflecting on all the discussion that has taken place.  

I've examined how many organizations conduct such retrospective sessions.  They seem simple to execute, but in fact, they can be very challenging to perform successfully.   Here are a few of my tips for conducting such sessions:

• Don't jump to conclusions.  Focus first on the team's goals and the actual events that took place.  Build a solid shared understanding of the facts before trying to determine what went wrong (or right).  
• Think systemically, not individualistically.  Don't focus on the person to blame for a failure.  Instead, consider the broader environmental, organizational, cultural, procedural, and technical drivers of performance.  
• Spend time on success and failure.  We learn more effectively if we can compare and contrast different outcomes.   Don't just dwell on failures. 
• Set priorities.  Don't come up with laundry list of things to do differently next time.  Focus on the few things that will matter most, and over which you have the most control.  

Is There Such a Thing As Slow Prototyping?

IDEO designer Keaton Herzer has written a terrific blog post titled, "What the hell is Rapid Prototyping?"  Here's an excerpt:

It implies that there is an alternative — slow prototyping. I’m not aware of any design team that practices slow prototyping. That would be a waste of time and money for everyone and thatis super obvious. Let’s remind ourselves what the purpose of a prototype is: to test our ideas!  History and statistics tell us that our ideas are wrong MOST of the time. So most of our prototypes will get thrown out after being invalidated. If that’s the case, why would we do anything but prototype rapidly? If you’re going to build a prototype — build it. Then test it. Then learn how bad your ideas were. Then do it again.  I guess you could do that slowly if you wanted to, but I don’t see the point. There is no such thing as “rapid prototyping.” There is only prototyping — and you should be doing it rapidly.

I think slow prototyping does exist though, and it's not a good thing.  Consider how large companies engage in what they consider to be prototyping.  They build a mock-up of a potential new product.  However, they take quite some time to do so.  They try to make it as "beautiful" as possible, as free of imperfections and problems as they can imagine.  Why?  They are actually trying to validate an idea that they have.  It's a demonstration to others in the organization, often used to solicit resource commitments.  It's not actually prototyping.  Why is it slow?  They do not want to hear lots of criticism.  They want positive feedback, so they take lots of time to make it as "good" as they can.   To me, that's the type of slow prototyping that does exist in many organizations, and it often is counterproductive.   It inhibits learning and adaptation, and thereby prevents the type of rapid improvement that Herzer describes.  

Does Your Firm Conduct "Declined Offer" Interviews?

In a blog post for Harvard Business Review, executive coach Ben Dattner makes the case for conducting "declined offer" interviews at your organization.   He argues that organizations should interview job candidates who are made an offer, but who choose to work somewhere else.   Why did they take another offer?  What made your firm less attractive than another organization?  Was it simply money, or were there other key factors in the decision-making process?   Here's how he describes this technique and the reasons for employing it: 

Successfully competing for top talent involves both selling jobs to the best candidates and retaining the highest performing incumbents. In order to be seen as an employer of choice with a compelling value proposition for employees, many companies measure turnover and conduct exit interviews with departing employees to gather feedback about the experiences people had working there and the reasons why they’re leaving. But a less common practice is to track how many people turn down job offers at your company, and an even less common practice is to actually gather feedback from candidates who receive offers but don’t accept them. Like “exit interviews” these “declined offer” interviews can yield a lot of information about your own organization as well as valuable data about your industry and competitors.   While academic institutions often gather feedback from students who are accepted but do not matriculate in order to improve student recruitment and retention and to better compete with rival institutions, doing so with job candidates in a systematic and consistent manner is rare in the corporate world. As with other kinds of selling and marketing, you may learn as much, if not more, from the feedback of customers who choose not to buy as you learn from those who do.

Does Hosting the Olympics Make Economic Sense?

Each year, we hear about the amazing construction programs embarked upon by countries and cities hosting the Olympic Games.  The cost of hosting the Olympics has skyrocketed.  The Beijing Olympics reportedly cost more than $40 billion!  No worries, claim the host cities... The economic benefits will be tremendous and long-lasting to boot!   Is that actually true?  Does hosting the Olympic Games make economic sense?  Is there a positive return on investment for host cities?   Most academics argue that hosting the Olympic is a losing proposition, from a purely financial perspective.  One or two cities have seen a positive return on investment, but most have not.   The research is abundant and quite clear.   Here's an excerpt from an NPR article describing one such study: 

Allen Sanderson, senior lecturer at the University of Chicago who specializes in sports economics, investigated that question. He and a student, Samantha Edds, compared cities that hosted the Olympics with similar cities in the same country or region that did not. The cities were also comparable in other ways — size, population and tourist appeal.

They compared Atlanta, which hosted the Olympics, to Charlotte, which did not. They pitted Olympic city Barcelona against Madrid, and matched up Sydney, Australia, against Melbourne. They checked for marked growth in construction, tourism and the financial-services sector over a nine-year period — four years before the games, and five years after.

"We couldn't find any difference in terms of building permits, tourism, anything before or after," Sanderson says. "If you masked the name of the cities, you would not be able to tell which of these two cities had the Olympics and which did not."

According to Sanderson, this doesn't mean cities should stop competing to host the Olympics; it just means they should stop claiming that the games make economic sense. "We do lots of things that don't turn a profit," he says. "We own dogs. We have boats. Those things lose lots of money, but we know it." So cities, go ahead and host the Olympics. It's a great party. It's just a terrible investment.

Five Questions Your Strategy Should Answer

Ken Favaro, contributing editor of Strategy+Business, has a good article today about the key questions that every strategy should answer.   Here are Favaro's five crucial questions.  

How Fearful is Your Organization?

INSEAD Professor, Gilles Hilary, and Managing Director of Alchimie Asia, Vip Vyas, have written a good blog post about fear in organizations.  They argue that a culture of fear does not reduce the risk of major failures; it actually enhances the probability of a catastrophe.   They offer a list of signs that your organization may possess a culture of fear that enhances risk of failure and stifles innovation:  

• An absence of frank and open dialogue. For example, when important conversations happen either before or after meetings, but everyone remains silent during the official discussion.

• A resistance to participate, for fear of being ridiculed, overlooked or “shot down”.

• Only notional alignment (“lip-service”) on action plans, underpinned by a collective belief that those plans will be ineffective anyway.

• A partial or total reluctance to pass any bad news upwards.

• A culture of “going through the motions” without any real engagement; and

• A focus on salient but unlikely catastrophic outcomes.

Does your organization have these characteristics? Are senior leaders aware of the climate of fear that they have created? The opposite climate, on the other hand, is a climate of candor. In those climates, people talk openly about problems and issues, and they are not afraid to share bad news. Those types of cultures not only help senior leaders spot hidden risks, but they also promote creativity and innovation because people do not fear being labeled a failure.

What is Yahoo? What is Every Firm's Toughest and Most Important Question?

The Wall Street Journal has a good article today about Yahoo discussing the company's lengthy struggles leading up to its sale to Verizon.  Jack Nicas writes, "Yahoo’s prolonged demise serves as a classic business case, with an existential question its numerous chief executives struggled to answer: What is Yahoo?"  He goes on to cite a famous memo written by Brad Garlinghouse, a former Yahoo executive.   That memo, written a decade ago, questioned the firm's strategy.  Here's an excerpt from Nicas' article today in the Wall Street Journal: 

“If you’re everything, you’re kind of nothing,” said Brad Garlinghouse, a former Yahoo executive who in 2006 wrote the “Peanut Butter Manifesto,” an internal memo criticizing the company for spreading itself too thin. “The sad reality…is it never solved its core identity crisis.”  Mr. Garlinghouse said Yahoo’s fluctuating strategies often confused employees. He recalled asking managers at a retreat in 2006 the first word they thought of when he named a company. Google, eBay and others yielded clear answers—“search” or “auction.” Yahoo didn’t. Managers said “mail,” “news,” “search,” and other things.

Does your firm have a good answer to this question? Can you define your organization's purpose/mission in a simple sentence? Marc Gobe, author of Emotional Branding, puts it slightly differently, but he gets at the same issue. He asks: Can you tweet your brand promise? In other words, can you express your core pledge to your customers in 140 characters or less? FedEx can do it: "Absolutely, positively overnight."  Ritz Carlton can do it as well: "Ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen." What was Yahoo's brand promise? It's hard to find a way to describe its pledge to its customers in 140 characters or less. In the end, the lack of a clear identity led to its demise, and it hurts many other firms as well.

Jonah Berger on Social Influence

Building on the recent blog post about social influence, here's Jonah Berger himself talking about his research.

Video on Social Influence: Mob Rules

Building on the last blog post, check out this National Geographic video about social influence.

When Do Others Help Us Make Better Decisions, and When Does the Influence of Others Hurt Us?

Jonah Berger of Wharton has written a new book titled, Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior.   He was recently interviewed for an article on the Knowledge@Wharton website.   In that interview, he discusses how the presence and influence of others sometimes helps us, and on other occasions, can have a detrimental impact.   Here's an excerpt from that interview:  

There’s this wonderful old study on motivation. This researcher was interested in just the question you were interested in. He looked at a bunch of research and said, “Well, sometimes others seem to be motivating. They lead us to work harder, do better. Sometimes they lead us to get demotivated, do worse. Why is that? What are situations that lead to one versus the other?”

He wanted to figure out a way to test that. He designed this amazing experiment with running, looking at how running was affected by other individuals watching you run. But he didn’t do it with people. He did it with cockroaches. He built this cockroach stadium, where these little cockroaches would run cockroach races — run from one stadium side to the other. But then he could manipulate whether other cockroaches are watching them…. He’s interested in, “Well, how does the mere presence of others affect what we do?”

He had them run one of two mazes. One that was either straight ahead, just really easy, or one where you had to run straight and then make a left turn, really difficult — “Do I go right? Do I go left? What do I do?” What he found is, when the task was easy, when it was well-learned, running straight — something cockroaches know how to do well — having others around helped them do better. They ran faster with others than they did by themselves. But when it was a difficult task, when they had to figure out, “Do I go left or do I go right?” Then it was more complicated. The mere presence of others actually made them do worse.  

As you mentioned, parallel parking. If we know how to do things well, if they are easy things we’ve already done a bunch, then having others around makes us do them better. If you’re great at shooting pool, for example, shooting pool with someone else will actually make you better at shooting pool than by yourself.

But if you’re not so good at shooting pool, if it’s something that you’re not used to doing, if it’s difficult for you, then having others around can make you do worse. Parallel parking, for example, maybe some of us are good at it. But most of us tend to be a little bit nervous to begin with. We’re not excellent parallel parkers. Merely having someone else in the car can make it more difficult for us. It makes us more nervous, more anxious. While that anxiety can help us do better when it’s easy for us to do those tasks, they can lead us to do worse when it’s a difficult or complicated task.

Alumni & The Recruiting Process

Scholars Jason Greenberg and Roberto Fernandez have conducted an interesting new study about job searches and MBA recruiting. They studied approximately 600 students from a top MBA program over two years.  They conducted the research from a sociological perspective, comparing students who landed jobs through connecting with alumni at various companies (search through social networks) to those students who were hired through formal on-campus recruiting programs (formal search).   They refer to connections with alumni as weak ties (i.e., the students did not necessarily know the alumni prior to the search process; they connected with them through a variety of networking activities).  They found that MBAs are much more likely to accept a job offer landed through alumni networking than through formal on-campus recruiting processes.   That's true, even though the compensation tended to be higher from offers derived through on-campus recruiting programs.   Why is the networking so influential and effective?  Those conversations and connections help the students understand the growth potential associated with a particular job, and that proves to be very important to many talented students... more important than compensation perhaps.   Here's an excerpt from the abstract of the academic paper that the scholars published:   

We find that contrary to conventional wisdom, search through social networks typically results in job offers with lower total compensation (-17 percent for referrals through strong ties and -16 percent for referrals via weak ties vs. formal search). However, our models also show that students are considerably more likely to accept offers derived via weak ties. They do so because they are perceived to have greater growth potential and other non-pecuniary value. On balance, our tests are consistent with Granovetter’s argument that networks provide value by facilitating access to information that is otherwise difficult to obtain, rather than providing greater pecuniary compensation.

What's the implication of this study?   Greenberg puts it this way:  “Based on our findings, recruiters earn a higher ROI when spending time and money on facilitating connections between current employees and potential recruits from their alma mater.   Students look to and trust an alumnus from their school who ‘looks like them in three years’ to provide inside information about growth opportunities within the firm. And that powerful association is a huge influencer when it comes time to accept or reject a job offer.”

Becoming a Better Listener

Judah Pollack and Olivia Fox Cabane have written an interesting article for Fast Company about how to become a better listener.   Pollack and Cabane explain how our mind works while we are listening to others.   They argue that we "mentalize" while we listen.   Here's their description of this important, but perhaps highly flawed, sense-making process. 

When we listen, we don’t just hear a person’s words, we try and put those words into context. Neuroscientists call this "mentalizing," the ability to understand another person’s internal motivations and desires. When we hear a person’s words, we also try to imagine why they're saying them. And some of us do this more successfully than others.

What's the problem?  Well, when we mentalize, we often make assumptions about others.  A variety of factors may shape those assumptions (our own beliefs about a subject, the appearance of others, the other party's background or prior statements, etc.).   Unfortunately, those assumptions may not always be correct.   The other party may be motivated by something quite different than we have presumed.   If we are incorrect about their motivations, then we may miss vital information that the other party is trying to convey, or we might misinterpret something that they have said.  

How do we become better listeners?  First, we have to question our assumptions about others.  Ask yourself:  What am I presuming about the other party's motivations and desires?  How might I interpret their statements differently if my assumptions are incorrect?   Second,  we have to engage in thoughtful inquiry.  We have to ask non-threatening questions to try to unearth and understand the other party's goals, interests, and desires.   

The Power of Wishful Thinking

Tim Harford writes a great column (The Undercover Economist) for the Financial Times.  This weekend's essay is titled, "Brexit and the Power of Wishful Thinking."   He derives an important lesson from the widespread Brexit analysis about the way we adhere to our preexisting beliefs.   

Harford begins by describing an experimental study conducted by Guy Mayraz.  In this research, Mayraz asks research subjects to predict the future price of wheat.   He first provides participants with 3 months worth of historical wheat price data.  He informs the subjects that they will be paid based on the accuracy of their forecasts.   Mayraz assigns 1/2 of the participants to play the role of a farmer, while the other 1/2 of the subjects play the role of the baker.  What happens?  According to Harford, "Nearly two-thirds of farmers predicted higher-than-average prices, and nearly two-thirds of bakers predicted lower-than-average prices.  People tended to predict that their dreams would come true."    Harford then draws a connection to the Brexit situation.   He argues that Remain supporters engaged in rampant wishful thinking leading up to the vote by they British public.  People tended to forecast that their dreams would come true, rather than looking objectively at the situation. 

Similarly, Harford argues that many people have displayed confirmation bias in their post-vote analysis.  He counts himself as one of the culprits.  Harford explains that he looked at the drop in the value of the pound and the decrease in the FTSE 100 index as support for his preexisting view that Brexit would have a painful impact on the UK economy.  On the other hand, he dismissed the subsequent stock market rebound because it did not support his position.  "I accepted bad news when it chimed with my beliefs, and dismissed good news when it did not." 

What should we do about this wishful thinking and confirmation bias?   Harford advocates for scenario planning rather than to construct single forecasts.   Harford writes, "Because scenarios are persuasive stories, they can help us face up to uncomfortable prospects and think clearly about possibilities we would rather ignore.  And because scenarios contradict each other, they force us to acknowledge that, in the end, we cannot actually see into the future."  

P&G Overhauls Bonus System

The Wall Street Journal reports today that Proctor and Gamble has chosen to overhaul its bonus system for managers. According to the newspaper, 

"Starting Friday, annual bonuses for thousands of senior managers will be tied more directly to the performance of each leader’s specific business unit instead of being based on the company’s broader, regional operations. “We are trying to get a clearer line of sight between an individual’s responsibilities and their results and their compensation,” Chief Financial Officer Jon Moeller said this week in an interview.

P&G has been trying to reduce bureaucracy, give managers more autonomy to make key decisions for their units, and hold people more accountable for results.  This compensation system change fits with those other efforts.  You should not tie compensation more directly to a specific unit's performance unless you provide the unit manager with a sufficient level of autonomy to make important decisions.

We should keep in mind, however, that no compensation system is perfect.  Diversified firms, in particular, always face a tension between tying compensation to local unit performance vs. the results of large segments or even the corporation as a whole.   One the one hand, you want people to realize the benefits of managing their units effectively.  On the other hand, related diversifiers such as P&G want managers to cooperate with the heads of other units so as to realize important synergies.  The risk of this latest move for P&G is that managers may become too parochial, not thinking enough about how to collaborate with other units to achieve economies of scope.