Say It All in 100 Words or Less

No matter what your role, you undoubtedly have to explain what your organization does several times a week (even if it’s just at a cocktail party).  This “elevator pitch” can be a critical tool in securing backing for your organization, forging a productive new partnership or winning a new customer.  Start by explaining the problem your company aims to solve.  Follow with a brief overview of what your company offers to your customers and why it is helpful to them.  Share any successes or traction in the market you’ve had to date. Don’t forget to express what you find personally compelling about your company’s mission before the elevator reaches your floor.

Adapted from “How to Write an Elevator Pitch,” by Babak Nivi.

 

Stop Working and Have Fun

You don’t have to retire early to stop working. You just need to take the “work” out of work.  Make work fun by doing these two things:

• Find people you enjoy working with.  Of course you don’t always choose who you work with; but when you do, choose projects that allow you to work with people you trust, respect, and enjoy spending time with.
• Find problems you enjoy solving.  Again, you may not always have a choice, but try to seek out projects you find interesting and are passionate about.  If you’re not excited about any of the projects you currently have, propose a new project that you can lead.

Adapted from “How to Make Knowledge Work Fun” by Larry Stybel.

How to backtrack in Safari

When you want to go back to a previous website that you visited in Safari, you don’t want to have to retype the address, or backtrack more than once.  You can easily hold down the back arrow at the top of the screen, and it will show a list of recent websites you’ve visited.  Then, click the website you want to visit and you will instantly be taken there.

You can also do this if you have websites you visited after the website you are currently on (forward arrow).

Have fun with your iPad!

 

Three Reasons You Should Wear a Suit

In the tech boom of the 1990s, people began to trade in their suits for business-casual khakis and sweaters; and business attire has continued to get more casual ever since.  Dressing appropriately is critical to landing clients, impressing your boss, and making business interactions easier. Here are three reasons to consider going old school and wearing a suit:

• Ease. There’s no need to agonize over whether you’re dressed up enough.  Because a suit is at the top of the dress-code hierarchy, you can wear it worry free.
• Professionalism. There is no doubt that wearing a suit makes you both look and feel professional.  It can be a good way to raise someone’s opinion of you — perhaps even your opinion of yourself.
• Respect. Wearing a suit shows whomever you’re meeting with that you value the meeting enough to dress up for it.

Adapted from “What Your Suit Says About You” by David Silverman.

 

Leadership’s Full Measure

Sometimes, the measures managers use to guide their decisions stop making sense.  Take television ratings—the metric by which TV shows live or die in an advertising-supported industry. The New York Times reports that, given today’s “time-shifted” viewing habits, the prevailing method of gauging audience size distorts the truth by counting only three days of viewing. Scripted shows like Modern Family, more likely to be recorded and watched later with full attention, come out looking less popular than reality shows which are almost wholly consumed on their air date. Nonetheless, “the overnights still set the tone and agenda,” according to an ABC executive. Here’s the upshot of that: because TV executives are encouraged to manage to that measure, they achieve better performance on paper but worse—wait for it—in reality.

It’s a problem that’s rampant right now in the practice of capitalism. Whether at the level of whole economies fixating on GDP or corporations trying to nail quarterly earnings targets, managers are being influenced by the wrong metrics and making decisions that actually leave us worse off. They’re ignoring the fact that, given today’s measurement capabilities, it is possible to gauge outcomes that matter more: well-being at the macro level; broader creation of value at the firm level.

This is why it was such big news when Paul Polman of Unilever announced that his company, by 2020, would help more than a billion people improve their hygiene habits, and halve the waste associated with the disposal of its products by their consumers. And when Walmart announced its intention to be supplied 100 percent by renewable energy.  And when Apple, stung by recent scrutiny of its supplier base, pledged that its workers everywhere will work in safe and fair settings. For these firms to understand their baseline performance and know if they’re making progress, their managers have to attend to new measures.  Evidently not everyone is choosing to see their world in black and white financial terms.  Some are seeing in color.

This is how capitalism changes. While it’s helpful for Klaus Schwab to declare at Davos thatcapitalism “no longer fits the world around us,” it really comes down to firms and individuals to try different things, some of which turn out to suit a changed environment better. Certainly there has been change in the environment of commerce. Many impacts that once defied measurement, and were therefore ignored by firms as externalities, are now knowable (like after-air-date TV show viewing).

A handful of multinationals—among the smart ones are Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, GE, and others—have begun to make these changes. These companies have the scope to easily gather data on their true impact (Coke’s effect on the water table wherever it has a plant, for example) and the market dominance to act unilaterally.  When such companies speak, their business partners listen, and often their competitors follow suit.

But mega firms don’t have a monopoly on leadership. Any enterprise leader can aim to excel by new measures and reward progress toward them in their own ranks.  This is the story of entrepreneurs from Ben & Jerry to Seventh Generation’s Jeffrey Hollender to Whole Foods’ John Mackey. In Brazil, Luiz Seabra founded Natura, which has grown into the cosmetics giant of Latin America, on the philosophy that the performance to be managed rigorously was not only financial but environmental and social. Consequently, the firm counts as part of its positive performance the 300,000 employees who leave Natura annually. That’s because for many, selling cosmetics is their first paying job; their stint at Natura prepares them to achieve elsewhere. It’s a positive externality management has decided to measure and make known.  Perhaps most important about Natura is that its three categories of measures have equal impact on managers’ performance ratings and bonuses. An executive who makes her numbers financially but not environmentally or socially does not succeed there.  Really.

For a smaller company hoping to manage to new measures, it helps not to be a lone voice in the wilderness. We’re seeing some leaders use a new tactic to create a chorus. Patagonia’s Yvon Chouinard knew that his impact would be small as long as it was limited to his own managerial scope. So he approached the 800-pound gorilla of his industry, Walmart, with a vision of setting industrywide standards for measuring the impact of choices throughout the apparel value chain. The industry consortium they together assembled now has an A-list membership all agreeing to use the same yardstick in their efforts to make their business more sustainable. Fair Trade coffee and cocoa, or the Fair Labor Association that Apple has asked to audit its factories, are other examples. An industry-wide effort gains more attention with customers, and provides air cover for a small company.

Can even an individual manager start measuring and managing differently, and therefore be a driver of change in a complex system like capitalism?  As we see it, managers have three choices. They can simply play by the rules—and game the measurement system to the extent possible. They can be critical of the rules, noticing where measures fall short and trying to do the right thing nevertheless, perhaps at their own expense.  Or they can work to change the rules. They can emulate the small company, gathering support from like-minded people. But the new measurement capabilities afford them an additional toolbox. If better measures are possible, but the “tone and agenda” of a place still reinforces an old, narrow view of what metrics to live by, then a leader at any level can work to rally others around what really matters.  Indeed, in an age of autonomous work and fast change, that might just be the definition of leadership.

Broader measurement of how businesses affect their societies is driving much of capitalism’s evolution.  The good news is that we’re in the midst of a moment when the need for change is becoming apparent to more people, and the means are at hand.
Christopher Meyer and Julia Kirby are authors of Standing on the Sun: How the Explosion of Capitalism Abroad Will Change Business Everywhere. Meyer is founder of Monitor Networks and consults on business strategy. Kirby is a Harvard Business Review editor.

 

The One Skill All Leaders Should Work On

If I had to pick one skill for the majority of leaders I work with to improve, it would be assertiveness.  Not because being assertive is such a wonderful trait in and of itself.  Rather, because of its power to magnify so many other leadership strengths.

Assertiveness gets a bad rap when people equate it with being pushy and annoying.  But that shouldn’t stop you from learning to apply it productively (that is — in service to your strengths).  More harm is done when people aren’t assertive enough than by being too assertive. At least you know what pushy people think, but those who don’t assert themselves can be keeping vital ideas hidden and useless when they don’t speak up or speak too softly.  So I’d assert that when you are able to balance this critical skill with your other leadership abilities, you greatly amplify your power and impact.

Here are some specific ways in which assertiveness complements a wide range of the critical leadership skills you may already have:

• Creating a culture of innovation:  A couple of years ago I conducted a study to determine the characteristics of the most innovative leaders in one of the largest companies in the world. One of their most powerful traits, their peers and direct reports told me, was their ability to push back on the hierarchy.  These leaders were by no means rebels; rather, they were perceived to be fearless. Coupling assertiveness with their ability to foster innovation enabled them to take on difficult issues — to fight for resources for new projects or openly disagree with more senior managers about policy changes that could have severe unintended consequences. Being challenged required people to think more deeply to justify a course of action, which frequently produced much better ideas.

• Being customer focused: We typically think of service or business development professionals as being good at, and focused on, building relationships.  But the most successful sales professionals, as Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson point out in their blog and their book, The Challenger Sale, are not the ones who build relationships.  They’re the ones who push back, challenging their clients to see problems they hadn’t anticipated. Essentially, Dixon and Adamson’s research finds, assertiveness creates more value for clients than conciliatory relationship building does.

• Fostering teamwork and collaboration: It might seem like assertiveness has little to do with the skills you need to be a team player. But teams thrive when their members are able to express their not-always-popular points of view.  Excellent team players (who generally are already inclusive and able to defer to others) would improve considerably by learning when to assert such views. And team leaders who are assertive in creating a safe environment for less-popular opinions will make their teams all the stronger by increasing all team members’ ability to participate fully.

• Leading change: Constructive change rarely happens passively.  Change requires the leaders to challenge the status quo and find new ways of doing things to further organizational goals. It’s nearly impossible to lead change without some measure of assertiveness because in most cases, even when change is generally viewed as positive, some kind of resistance still needs to be addressed.

• Acting with integrity: There are plenty of highly principled people who are too timid to speak up in meetings — to question a decision that appears to violate a corporate value or is otherwise not in the best interests of the organization.  Assertiveness doesn’t cause honesty or vice-versa, but when the two operate together they give people the courage not only to know what is right but to stand up for it as well.

• Creating a safe environment: This might seem self-evident — there are times when it’s vital to speak up in the face of danger.  And yet there are so many times when people don’t, even in cases of life and death.  The National Transportation Safety Board, for instance, has traced the cause of some plane crashes to co-pilots who were so deferential to their pilot in an emergency that they made suggestions too subtly. While most of us are not faced with life or death decisions each day, plenty of leaders are responsible for the safety of those they lead.

• Communicating effectively: Assertiveness adds power and conviction to a message and enables a leader’s voice to be heard.  You can clearly tell the difference between a message communicated with passion and vigor as a leader asserts his or her point of view and one that lacks the energy of conviction.  Assertive leaders also tend to communicate more often, as their passion leads them to capitalize on every opportunity they can find to deliver a message.

Many leaders (though certainly not all) struggle with being assertive enough, whether through self-doubt, a lack of confidence, a fear of not being liked, or a host of other reasons.  Most people who know me personally would probably say that I possess a reasonably strong level of assertiveness.  Yet there are times (like when I’m with people whom I admire or whose opinion is particularly important to me) that I become relatively timid and less likely to assert my point of view. Ironically, when I review those situations, I recognize that they may be some of the most important times for me to speak up.

Adapted from Scott Edinger, Founder of Edinger Consulting Group.

 

iPad Tip ~ How to check your firmware version

If we ever talk about a feature you can’t find on your iPad, you may need to update your firmware version.  To check what firmware you are running on, go to Settings -> General -> About, and look for firmware version.  If you want to check if there is a new version, simply plug your iPad into iTunes and a message should pop up if you need to update.

Have fun with your iPad!

 

The Three-Minute Rule

At our venture capital firm, Cue Ball, we are pretty maniacal about understanding customers.  We encourage our portfolio company CEOs to dive deep — very deep — and learn about their customers along every possible dimension.  My Partner, Dick Harrington, and developed a customer-driven approach and capability set that we put in place at Thomson which ultimately was a key driver of the company’s transformation into a global media and information powerhouse.  We wrote about this in a 2008 HBR article, Transforming Strategy One Customer at a Time.

While there are obvious ways to gain significant customer understanding, such as surveys and focus groups, some of the most interesting insights come from less direct analyses.  Take our three-minute rule as an example.  You can learn a great deal about customers by studying the broader context in which they use your product or service.  To do this, ask what your customer is doing three minutes immediately before and three minutes after he uses your product or service.  At Thomson, one of our products provided investment analysts with financial earnings data.  What we hadn’t fully appreciated — until we applied the three-minute rule — was that immediately after getting our data, a large number of analysts were painstakingly importing it into Excel and reformatting it.  This observation led us to prioritize developing a more seamless Excel plug-in feature with enhanced formatting capability over other product development initiatives. The result was an almost immediate and very significant uplift in sales.

The three-minute rule also helps highlight unique cross-selling opportunities.  Many years ago, I remember doing some ethnographic research on female drug-store shoppers.  One fascinating pattern we saw was that a significant number of women picked up a disposable camera after putting newborn diapers into their shopping carts.  Follow-up interviews confirmed that snap-happy moms were often new moms.  Placing disposable diapers close to inexpensive disposable cameras furthered this purchase pattern and would not have otherwise been an intuitive merchandising or cross-selling strategy.

One final retail example is described beautifully by my friend Paco Underhill, a shopping-pattern guru.  In his book, Why We Buy, he describes how shoppers who do not have a shopping basket or shopping cart go quickly to the checkout when their arms get full.  Okay…so what? A casual observer says that is obvious.  A savvier approach might be to interview people in a checkout line with an armful of goods to ask where they were three minutes earlier and if they would have considered buying anything else if it hadn’t been so difficult to carry so many items. Underhill concludes that more establishments should consider putting shopping baskets in the middle of the store to keep customers in shopping mode longer (since research showed that few would go back to the front of the store to get a cart once engaged with shopping).

These situations illustrate the narrow-mindedness to which it is easy to fall prey.  In the Thomson example, we were thinking of ourselves as a data provider, though we were really part of a broader workflow solution. We failed to realize the importance of customer context over our own product capability. In the cross-selling and shopping-basket examples, the three-minute rule reminds us that rearranging the context of a shopping experience to better meet customer patterns can be extremely effective.  Customers seek solutions, but it is likely that your offering is only part of one.  The three-minute rule is a forcing mechanism to see the bigger picture and adjacent opportunities.

So what are you doing three minutes after reading this?

Adapted from Anthony Tjan, CEO, Managing Partner and Founder of the venture capital firm Cue Balland vice chairman of the advisory firm Parthenon.

Forget Motivation, You Need Follow Through

When approaching a difficult task — getting to the gym, writing an important presentation — you may chide yourself for lacking motivation to get it done.  However, it’s often not a question of motivation, but follow through.  You may want to do the task — you know it’s important — but your brain talks you out of it.  You tell yourself you can do it tomorrow or you have more urgent things to do.  Don’t let your mind sabotage your aspirations.  Make a specific decision about what you want to do and don’t question it.  Tell yourself: I will work out tomorrow at 6 AM or I will finish the presentation by Tuesday at 1 PM. If your mind starts to argue with you, ignore it.

Adapted from “Your Problem Isn’t Motivation” by Peter Bregman.

 

Korrio: Safe Web Tool Helps Parents Manage Kids’ Sports Teams

Name: Korrio

Quick Pitch: An all-in-one planning and organizing solution for parents or coaches of youth athletes

Genius Idea: Korrio offer a comprehensive platform where parents or team organizers can schedule games, communicate with parents, share team information and more, in one safe online location.

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Your hustle should be on the field, not when it comes to planning the game. That’s why Seattle-based startup Korrio created a web tool for busy parents of young athletes or youth sports team organizers. The site is basically a sports administrator in your pocket: communicate with parents, schedule games, register for teams, host club and team websites and more — all in one platform.

“More Sport, Less Hassle” is Korrio’s slogan.

Steve Goldman, CEO and Founder of Korrio, says “Korrio offers an end-to-end unified platform which combines all the sophisticated administrative functionality needed to run a successful youth sports program — combined with family-facing benefits, including auto generated personal dashboards for every Korrio user to manage their sports life.”

Goldman founded Korrio in 2009 and launched the site’s Playflow platform in January 2011. Youth sports organizations using Korrio pay $8-$10 per player for an annual license.

Korrio says parents have no need to fear putting their children’s names on the web tool. Even though they can access Korrio from any computer, smartphone or mobile device, the information is kept safe and secure using top-notch privacy technology and full SSL encryption on every web page. Korrio also complies with COPPA and other state and federal laws requiring protection of the information of minors.

“Korrio decides what a visitor can see based on his role (i.e. parent, coach, team manager, registrar or teammate),” Goldman said. “We know who everyone is and how they are connected to the player. Protecting the player is our top goal.”

Even children that don’t have access to email can use Korrio to hold pre- and post-game discussions, share photos, compare game notes and plan events through the site, which is only accessible by teammates and parents.

Currently, Korrio is in the youth soccer market, but this year Goldman says the company plans to expand to include other major youth sports including football, baseball, basketball and lacrosse.

Do you have children in team sports? Would you use Korrio? Tell us in the comments.

Adapted from The Spark of Genius series ~ Kate Freeman