20 Entrepreneurial Truths
Tag » Leadership
This is Your Stress Test
Recently I took a doctor recommended stress test and I realized I was demonstrating physically how the world is impacting our businesses and how we need to act to be able to maintain our success in the new economy.
How it used to be.
When I first got on the treadmill life was good. It was a nice manageable steady pace. Easy to maintain without much exertion and as long as I simply kept moving I was handling everything just fine.
When the economy was robust that was how we ran our businesses. It was easy to be profitable and maintain our expected results without much stress because we understood how the business world functioned. Sure we’d trip once in a while but with a bit of time it was relatively easy to recover.
The business world for the most part operated as we expected and we had confidence in how our actions were going to deliver for us – keeping us on track moving down the road.
Changes are made for us, or are they made to us?
After a couple of minutes on the treadmill my cardiologist asked how I was feeling. Confidently, I said, “Fine, I can do this all day.” Next thing I know the elevation is changing on me and I am now walking up a steep incline.
Largely because of the impact of the speed of the internet and the globalization of business, the pace of business for most of us changed. We suddenly had to have a plethora of technology changes; we were competing in a bigger league, customers were better informed and demanding more. The learning curve from this caused many business owners to begin feeling like they were constantly working uphill. For many executives these were not changes they were craving, these were changes forced on us like the doctor deciding I suddenly needed to be working uphill.
Businesses were excited with the new opportunities being presented but realized they had to be much more agile to work at this new pace and in better shape to be consistently working up the hill.
At this pace we need agility over stability.
Still able to manage this pace and increased incline I felt confident. My thinking was, I work out, do half-marathons, have good health measurement numbers over the years and I can handle this test. That is, until this uphill pace was increased to a new faster pace I was unfamiliar with. An external force was pushing me to perform at levels beyond my comfort zone. (I swear I saw an evil smile cross the doc’s face when he did this.) I realized at this pace a small trip would leave to a painful stumble. I found myself working harder and realized my stability on my feet needed to be replaced with agility on my feet.
Business is going through this same shift. Stability was an important desire for decades. Remember how businesses would tout how long they had been in business? Today, people care less with how long you’ve been in business and care more about how well you are doing at this moment in time. Stock holders and customers share this view. Stability is rapidly being replaced with a need for agility – the ability to operate at increased speeds and constantly uphill.
Look at the before and after pictures.
Before I stepped onto the treadmill the doctor took a series of pictures of my heart and shortly after the treadmill stress test was completed more pictures were taken for contrast and comparison.
Businesses should be conducting comparison studies within themselves. Take a snapshot of your business from five years ago and compare it to your current operations. How do things look? Were you more profitable then than you are now? Did you feel more comfortable and confident then than you do now? Be cautious not to simply look at the numbers – they can be deceiving. For decades my medical numbers have been solidly in the normal zones for health. Keep in mind, many businesses have died in the last few years that according to regulators and auditors were in great shape as far as numbers go.
Look at the heart of your organization. How well are you dealing with your stress test? Are you increasing you abilities and agility to operate at this new pace or are you huffing and puffing trying to maintain until “things get back to normal?” In my case the stress test saved my life with the doctor’s expertise in knowing what he was looking at and how to properly deal with what he saw. Is it time to save your business by taking that same approach and analysis and incorporating the skills of experts? I know it’s time to take care of the health of your business.
On a personal note: I encourage my business friends over the age of 50 to consider talking with your doctor about taking a stress test. At the very least it will establish some baselines for comparison as you age, or as in my case it could also be a life-changing event.
3 Ways to Align Talent and Strategies
Have you changed how you approach your business in the last few years? Have your products and services shifted to meet a changing customer expectation? What kind of new innovations or initiatives are you working on to increase market share? Most businesses are operating quite differently than they have in the recent past and they may no longer have the right talent fit for these new approaches.
To retain your top talent in a free agent market it is critical to know how to align your business strategies with the right talent. One of the greatest frustrations to both employees and executives occurs when the talent is a mismatch with the strategies of the company. Granted if you are transforming an organization there will be a period of time adjusting the alignment of strategy and talent, and as long as everyone is being continuously informed of this transformation while they are going through it, they will tolerate that ambiguity for a time.
The Right Talent with the Right Initiatives
Look at the five top initiatives that are driving your business this year. I’m guessing your marketing is taking a more Internet and social media focus. I would imagine your customer care is elevating for better communication, less wait time and customer expectations are setting a greater need for directly communicating with a knowledgeable employee. I am willing to bet you have moved innovation up the ladder of priorities. These are the types of changes most organizations are seeing to be competitive at the speed of change. As you upgrade your initiatives to reflect the increasingly competitive marketplace you have to ask, is my talent upgrading with the expectations?
Once upon a time longevity was a desired trait in employees but at the pace of change today longevity is only as good as the employee is willing to upgrade his skills. Let’s say, you have a marketing director that has been in that position for 20 years. Good for him, but how well does he understand the seismic shifts happening in marketing with social media? Does he know how to use a QR code? Does he even know what a QR code is? If you have a marketing director who still places ads in the newspaper and on local cable channels as his first choice for his budget dollars, you have to ask if he is the right talent for the times.
To execute your initiatives with maximum returns you have to have the correct fit of talent for the desired results. If you want to be innovative, create an innovative work environment and employee innovative minds. It’s time to evaluate your talent and see how well they match with what you are trying to accomplish.
The Right Talent with the Right Customers
How well do your customer-contact employees relate to the customers you are trying to attract? How well have you defined the “new customer?” Are you attracting a particular demographic of customer? Typically, customers today want to deal with an employee who has very good interpersonal skills and is knowledgeable of the products and services being offered. Customers calling call-centers want quick answers and an easily understood person to speak with.
Now look at your workforce. Are your customer-contact people the most personable? Do they enjoy solving problems for others? Can they handle a confrontational conversation? Are your employees capable of sending away an unhappy customer satisfied with the response they received to their complaint? The brutality of customers’ comments take a specific type of person with the talent to manage these situations. It has less to do with their technical abilities and much more to do with their talent to communicate and interact with the customer. Are you still asking for job experience on your job applications? Experience no longer speaks to capabilities in the new economy. Hire for talent, you can train for skill.
The Right Talent with the Right Leadership
I met with an executive of a company who proudly told me, “I am president of a pure cutting-edge innovator company. I surround myself with innovative thinking people. I absolutely love the creative process.” Then why were the majority of his current innovative creative-thinking employees significantly dissatisfied? Why were those who left in a mass exodus the year before so vocal about their negative experience under his leadership? It seems this executive felt that innovative thinkers suffer from unbounded thinking and can easily be distracted and miss deadlines therefore they need a tight structure and someone to provide discipline to the process.
This speaks to the fear of many command and control style managers: If I don’t contain them, nothing productive will get done. The fact is, innovative thinkers do not work well in cages or with someone cracking a whip behind them. Yes, a tiger in the wild will roam the wilderness, but putting him a cage or in the circus under a constant watchful eye does not make him a better tiger. Creative people need room to roam, innovators need to be able to work through the process, and talent needs an environment that allows them to grow. Understanding the talented people you are leading is most important to unleashing the best their talents have to offer. Some talent works best in a private office without interruptions, some talent likes open unbounded work space, and some talent must have constant human interaction. Know your talent needs. Know how to lead them and know how they fit well with your initiatives and you will create a comfortable work environment and create great success for the organization.
S.T.A.R.T. Something
Every business executive talks about innovation, the need for innovation, they have to innovate or die, and some say how great they are at innovation, but their innovations never reach the customer in time. Why is this the case? Because when innovation is expected because it’s the most important word in Buzzword Bingo, it fails to have the passion to see it through.
Talk is cheap, ideas are free, and intent is easy.
If you want to truly give your customers some meaningful innovations follow these rules to S.T.A.R.T. Something.
S. Show Initiative
If your best innovation is covering ground your competitors have already walked, you are not innovating – you are catching up. Creating a Phone app? Are you the first to have this? Who else in your industry has one? Is your app doing the same identical things? There is no competitive advantage to being next in line, but you probably need this simply to stay competitive. True innovation comes from showing initiative. For example, being the first to take a customer pain and figuring a way to eliminate it. Start simple, take an internal process that is painfully slow and fraught with pain points (errors, internal bickering, etc) and tackle it once and for all. True innovation doesn’t come from copycats; it comes from those who strive to be unique in the market place.
T. Try Stuff
If you feel the need to hit the Bull’s eye every time, you are standing too close to the target. Innovation comes from a series of failures and missteps that create knowledge to be better on the next attempt. This is why I hate “zero defect” corporate cultures. That mindset eliminates the best innovative ideas and efforts. When you can’t fail you only reach for the sure thing. Instead, create a culture of “try stuff” and watch how ideas get bigger and better and the execution of those ideas improve with every attempt. It’s how real innovation occurs.
A. Attack Issues
Innovation implementation rarely reaches great heights because people tend to avoid risk, play safe and go for the sure thing. To innovate you must fully attack the issues you are addressing. It might get a bit messy, a few toes may get stepped on in the process, and someone’s feelings might get hurt. So be it. To win the battle with your competitors must first win the battles in-house. Half-hearted efforts never win the big prize and innovation isn’t worth trying if there isn’t a full on attack of the issue you or correcting with your innovation.
R. Re-evaluate Everything
A large stumbling block to innovation is the transition from the vacuum of a lab to the dirty real world. Innovations don’t stand alone; they can bump into everything else that works with the old rules. The old policies, procedures, department design and even the old technology can be called into jeopardy with true innovation. This is why it is important when pursuing significant innovation to examine every impact a successful launch can have.
T. Transparently Communicate
When you show initiative, try stuff, attack issues, and re-evaluate everything you have completely challenged the status quo. People like the status quo because they know what to expect, have figured how to be successful, don’t like risk and know where the pain is. Which is why innovation needs a marketing campaign every step of the way. The best marketing campaign for innovation is transparent communication. Let people hear the story along the way, encourage them to buy in, and share the benefits the overall organization will experience once the innovation is the new status quo.
Innovation is a defining tool for the new economy for every organization, especially in well-established industries. Don’t simply play follow the leader – START Something.
Groupon Gives It Up — Finally
After a week of suffering the wrath of those offended by the ad campaign kicked off by their Super Bowl ad, Groupon’s CEO, Andrew Mason, is giving up on the campaign. Tuesday he tried to damage control by explaining the intent of the ads as a self-parody.
When that didn’t stop the tidal wave of negativity toward Groupon’s reputation, and in some cases inflamed people to get even more upset, his blog post today said they were cancelling the campaign immediately. Here is his post:
Five days have passed since the Super Bowl, and one thing is clear – our ads offended a lot of people. Tuesday I posted an explanation, but as many of you have pointed out, if an ad requires an explanation, that means it didn’t work.
We hate that we offended people, and we’re very sorry that we did – it’s the last thing we wanted. We’ve listened to your feedback, and since we don’t see the point in continuing to anger people, we’re pulling the ads (a few may run again tomorrow – pulling ads immediately is sometimes impossible). We will run something less polarizing instead. We thought we were poking fun at ourselves, but clearly the execution was off and the joke didn’t come through. I personally take responsibility; although we worked with a professional ad agency, in the end, it was my decision to run the ads.
To the charities (for which we expect to net over $500,000) and others that have spoken out on our behalf, we appreciate your support.
To those who were offended, I feel terrible that we made you feel bad. While we’ve always been a little quirky, we certainly aren’t trying to be the kind of company that builds its brand on creating controversy – we think the quality of our product is a much stronger message.
Thanks for taking the time to read,
Andrew
The speed of change in business has never been greater and that means your business reputation can change just as quickly. Instead of defending and explaining his ads on Tuesday, chances are some damage would’ve been mitigated with full blown apology and yanking of the ads immediately following the fall out.
Reaction times have to be swift, sincere and significant with the speed of information exchange. Ultimately they reached the right conclusion, but at what cost?
Reputation Roulette
During this year’s most watched ever Super Bowl the ads, the halftime show, and even the singing of the National Anthem came under instant and excessive real-time commentary in social media. What lessons can be learned here?
Opinion and instant feedback are the new norm
With the proliferation of social media, we no longer need a commentator to tell us what we just witnessed; we’d rather tell everyone else our impressions of what we just witnessed! We are a society which has been given a platform and we are eager to use it.
For the business owner:
How well are you monitoring the opinion wave of your organization? The speed, distance and momentum with which impressions and opinions can travel have never been greater. Reputation management has to be real-time, swift and with a plan in place. Viral messages travel in nanoseconds and that applies not only to your messages but to those messages that occur in response to your message.
Which brings us to Groupon…
Groupon’s ad about the plight of Tibetans was in very poor taste. The posts on social media went not only negative — they were angry. According to the CEO of Groupon, this was intended to be a self-parody campaign using a celebrity-PSA type format. Even with all of the negative feedback, as of today they intend on releasing the rest of the campaign ads supposedly all directed by Christopher Guest of Spinal Tap and Best in Show fame. (Wow, it surprised me that he would have his name attached to this.)
Whatever the intent, the concept was not properly executed. With social media, we live in a flock mentality, and once that flock turns away from your company it’s heck trying to get it to come back. Groupon has a damage control situation on its hands. I suggest they take the other ads of this campaign and burn them.
Anyone remember the disastrous movie by Tim Burton, When Mars Attacks? Oh, that was a bad parody.
For the business owner:
If we learn anything, it’s stay away from putting your reputation on the line with parody unless you know what you are doing. I think Capt. Owen Honors, who was relieved of duty from the Navy for his parody videos would agree with me on that one!
The Music(?) of the Super Bowl
Christine Aguilera put her reputation on center stage on the biggest stage and took an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty. The lesson here is sometimes it’s more about what the customer wants than about yourself. In this case customers wanted a proper and respectful rendition (with all the words in the right place) of our National Anthem.
Reputation alert:
Carl Lewis and Rosanne Barr will forever be remembered for how they got booed for slaughtering the National Anthem. Notice how those clips came back after Aguilera’s mistakes? Her reputation will forever have this mark on it and be linked with the other clips for future reference.
The Black Eyed Peas also appeared not prepared for the reputation gamble inherent with being the halftime performers. Speakers know if your normal speech is one hour and you are only given 10 minutes, you need to start over and craft something different because you can’t capture the same feeling in that time frame. If you attempt a mashup of all your best lines without the proper story build-up you have a disaster on your hands. Isn’t that what we witnessed? Poor sound, poor special effects, and trying to cram everything they do in a concert into a 20-minute set.
Business owner alert:
Never try to be something you are not. Groupon put their reputation with social media customers in the hands of people who didn’t understand their market. Christine Aguilera put her reputation on the line and tried to make the National Anthem more about herself than about those she was singing for. The Black Eyed Peas put their reputation on the line when they tried to recreate a two-hour event in 20 minutes.
Every one of them forgot what they do best and tried to be something other than who they are. Look at your business: Where are you trying to be something you aren’t and losing your reputation in the process? Do what you do best and listen to your customers for how they want you to evolve while keeping your reputation intact.