Beware of an Old People Culture
Posted on May 16, 2012 | 1 Comment
Categories: Guest Blogger, Innovation, Leadership
Today’s guest post is from Bob Herbold, the long-time Chief Operating Officer of Microsoft Corporation and author of What’s Holding You Back: 10 Bold Steps that Define Gutsy Leaders (CLICK HERE to buy your copy). You can read more about Bob at the end of this post.
The stories we’ve been reading these past few weeks about Kazuo Hirai, Sony’s new CEO, and the challenges of reversing a 10+ year slide are downright sad – but not entirely surprising. For a long time we’ve been watching Sony act as if it were run by a bunch of tired veterans from an out-of-touch generation. At one point in its sixty-five-year history, however, Sony was an electronics rock star.
• Trinitron was king of the TV market; now it’s Samsung and LG.
• The Playstation used to be every teenager’s dream. Now Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is crushing the competition.
• Sony invented portable music with its Walkman. Smartphones now own that business.
• Speaking of smartphones, ten years ago it would have been Sony that would have been most likely to invent that category. Today they are nowhere in sight.
• Tablets? Sony is again missing in action. In a category of the type they used to dominate, but here’s what PC Magazine had to say of Sony’s recently-released Tablet S: “Underpowered, overpriced, and doesn’t pull Sony’s multimedia services together in a convincing way. Where Apple’s and Amazon’s tablets fuse device and content seamlessly, the Tablet S does not.”
So what’s Sony’s new CEO to do?
Why Product Simplicity Always Wins
Posted on May 14, 2012 | 2 Comments
Categories: Entrepreneur, Innovation, Strategy
We humans love to complicate things. The more crap we hang off of a product, the better we think it is. The more engineering that goes into it, the more we can sell, right?
Wrong.
Simplicity wins. Every time. (iPod, anyone?)
As an entrepreneur, I get to hang out with other entrepreneurs (and we act all clubby and hip and cool like it’s some secret club – but it really is). In those circles I get to see and hear a gajillion awesome ideas and pitches.
Oftentimes, many of the idea pitches suck (and if you want to know why they suck, here’s a straightforward post that explains all the contributors to suckitude). For the ones that don’t suck, the difference between a winning or losing product invariably comes down to simplicity and elegance.
For example, you’ve probably heard the urban legend that during the late 1960′s, NASA spent tons of money on pens that would write in the zero gravity of outer space. Huge amounts of R&D by private firms went into creating the highly-specified, super cool, usable-in-any-environment writing devices. I mean, who wouldn’t want a space age pen that could write anywhere?
Now you’ll remember, the dirty nasty red menace commie bastards of the USSR were also locked in the space race with us (chillax – I’m saying that tongue in cheek for those of you who are new readers and aren’t familiar with my style or lack thereof). They didn’t have as much cash and they were super-lazy too. They just said “Here komrade kosmonaut! Is pencil! Is good, da?” (They actually totally said that too. I’ve heard the recording).
A pencil. A freakin’ pencil. Simplicity of design wins. Lower cost. Easier to use. Arguably more effective. Frees up resources to work on higher value stuff or to market the simpler product and outspend your competitors on advertising.
Here are a couple of examples of how I’ve seen the space pen dynamic show up in entrepreneurial ventures and, more importantly, what you can do to prevent spending hoards of cash on useless products that no one ultimately wants:
The Road to Value – Part 2
Posted on May 9, 2012 | No Comments
Categories: Guest Blogger, Sales, Strategy
Today’s post is by Thomas Butta, Founder and CEO of 21 Weeks. You can read more about him at the end of the post. Here’s Thomas:
In The Road to Value (Part 1) I revealed a powerful way to lead a changing or emerging industry by developing a roadmap that delineates the way to create and capture value in that industry. The post showcased market-based benefits to doing this leading work. It also referenced the internal value that could be gained inside the company architecting the roadmap. Internal value is the focus of this post.
Infographic by Dennis Michael Dimos
A value roadmap can provide a number of sustainable benefits inside the company that invests in the effort.
The 7 Deadly Sins of Leadership
Posted on May 7, 2012 | 8 Comments
Categories: Leadership
Yes, I recently wrote about the 7 deadly sins of entrepreneurship. This is the same construct but instead on the topic of leadership. Hey, don’t judge me – if Hollywood can take a good concept and reuse it with a different angle, so can I.
Leadership is perilous territory. People’s lives are at stake (sometimes literally). While avoiding the following 7 deadly sins won’t guarantee you’ll be a great leader, succumbing to them will guarantee you’ll have a significant learning moment (translation: you’ll fail miserably but hopefully you’ll learn something from it).
We’re human (if you’re not, lemme know because I’ve always wanted to meet either a zombie or an android). We make mistakes. We succumb to temptation, pressure, and insecurity. Many times we don’t intend to behave badly but it happens to all of us. Sometimes we’re left wondering how the heck we ended up in a certain predicament and other times we deliberately choose the wrong choice.
The following are common ways you might find yourself in trouble and, more importantly, things you can do to avoid that trouble or extricate yourself from it.
Lust
Don’t worry – we’re not talking about sex here. But I am talking about appearances. While it’s important to dress the part of a leader and to be charismatic and have sex appeal, more than a hint of it can be your undoing. Sex appeal is like cologne or perfume. It needs to be understated because the moment you even think about being too charismatic, you’ve gone too far and you reek of it. Let your actions and achievements attract others to be members of your team – not your Gucci Armani Coach Louis Vuitton Polo ensemble.
Gluttony
Resources are scarce. Budgets, people, IT support, etc. are all at a premium. If you’re lucky enough to have some of these assets, bully for you. As a leader, you must resist the urge to hoard these resources. You’ll be seen as not being a team player and you’ll hurt other areas of your business who need the resources more than you do. When you’re offered resources, take only what you need. Being a resource pig is a quick way to earn a bad reputation.
The Balancing Act – Self versus Collective Leadership
Posted on May 2, 2012 | 5 Comments
Categories: Communications, Guest Blogger, Leadership
Today’s post is by Jan Rutherford – author of The Littlest Green Beret. You can learn more about Jan at the end of the post.
The thing about leadership development is that it all starts with everyone’s favorite subject – themselves. Self awareness is the starting point for effective leadership, and it’s always interesting to watch my students obsess about survey results, feedback from peers, aptitude tests, and what it all means to their careers. The focus shouldn’t be on oneself, but on the leader’s effect on others. That is, our primary leadership tool is how we effectively communicate.
The variables are simply how well do we listen and how well do we speak to align expectations, and achieve results? Ultimately, we control two things: where we spend our time, and how we respond to our environment. What priorities will best produce the results we’re after, and what attitude will we choose to deal with everyday ups and downs? After all, a leader’s environment is largely made up with a bevy of complex and unending interpersonal relationships.
Nick Petrie recently published a brilliant white paper on “Future Trends in Leadership Development” where he discussed the transfer of greater developmental ownership to the individual. As a strong proponent of self-reliant leadership, I believe Petrie expertly articulated the need for developmental ownership to be squarely on the shoulders of the individual. Leadership can be an illusion of control, but changing your perspective on everyday experiences can provide inspirational learning opportunities for personal growth and development.
What questions should you routinely ask yourself? On a daily basis, what steps should you take to find personal success in your life’s work? Do you know your life’s work? Some say it’s the place where your passion and others’ needs intersect. I believe a key determinant of success is whether you can rely on yourself for self-coaching. However, self-reliant leadership is dependent on achieving a balance between independence and the interdependence of working with others to accelerate your own personal growth and development.
Self-reliance and leadership may seem to be contradictory notions, but there are three mutually supporting concepts:
Authentic Leadership Means Eliminating Buzzwords and BS
Posted on April 30, 2012 | 17 Comments
Categories: Books, Communications, Leadership
The following is an excerpt from my book One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership (you can get your copy here). This post focuses on the importance of eliminating buzzwords and instead simply speaking from your heart.
If you have been in the professional world for more than a year, you have probably heard something like this a million times:
“My leadership philosophy is to optimally leverage the passions of my people such that at the end of the day we maximize employee engagement to get them to think outside the box and synergistically drive value-added activities in a profit-maximizing way that is a win-win for our people, our shareholders, and our customers.”
It sounds great. It is polysyllabic. It uses words with long definitions. I have only one question: what the hell does it mean?
I want you to wipe away all those unproductive phrases and words that get in the way of you being an authentic leader. Consider this a bit of a slap upside the head. You may not realize how deeply ingrained some bad behaviors have become in your daily routine. You have likely looked through the same lens on the world for a while and that lens colors the way you view leadership. The color of that lens is determined largely by your organization’s culture. Somewhere along the way that culture has shaped you more than you are shaping it. We are going to reverse that dynamic.
5 Marketing Strategies that Don’t Change
Posted on April 25, 2012 | 2 Comments
Categories: Communications, Guest Blogger, Sales, Social Media
Today’s post is by David Chapman – Director of Marketing at Webrageous. Here’s David:
Musicals never go out of fashion, because the formula is well understood. It is tried and tested and everyone knows what to expect when they sit down to watch a good musical. The audience is given what they want. The marketing strategy is a classic strategy and doesn’t need to change because the audience and their desires are considered first.
Online marketing managers could learn a lot from this kind of simple approach. The old school marketing strategies should be at the top of our modern marketing plans, even though the marketing world has developed incredibly over the past ten years.
Why?
Because even though the marketing world has developed from a technological point of view, buyers are still the same. People are dinosaurs at heart. We don’t change. We approach a sale in the same way as we have always done and we will continue to approach our sales in the same way as the years sail by, because human beings don’t really change.
So… with this in mind… what are the 5 most important marketing strategies that a marketing manager must utilize when working on any campaign to ensure marketing success, even within our technologically advanced marketing world?
The 7 Deadly Sins of Entrepreneurship
Posted on April 23, 2012 | 1 Comment
Categories: Entrepreneur, Innovation, Strategy
Most new ventures fail. Accept it.
Sometimes those failures are market-driven. A great new competitor beats you to the punch. The economy tanks and you run out of cash. Meteors take out your corporate headquarters.
However, many failures are self-inflicted. I’ve been lucky enough to be an entrepreneur for a while and I’ve also hung out with a ton of great (and not great) entrepreneurs. I’ve seen businesses thrive and I’ve seen others fail.
I’ve noticed a few things along the way that can cause entrepreneurs to fail. I’ve tried to neatly bundle them up into what I affectionately refer to as the seven deadly sins of entrepreneurship. If you want to succeed in building your new venture, I strongly suggest you avoid these sins at all cost.
Lust
Sex sells. But sometimes trying to make your product so sexy can lead to your downfall. Excessive thoughts of sexy UI’s, features, bells, and whistles can distract you from building something a little frumpier but more durable. When you spend all your time thinking about how to make a sexy javascript HTML Boolean double-quad Flash SDK widget app, you’re likely not focusing on the core functionality you need to create to solve the one or two major problems your customers actually want you to solve. Throw a non-sexy muumuu and a bathrobe on your product and build the basics.
Gluttony
Over-consumption can kill you. Just because you have the funding you need (now) it doesn’t mean you need to go buy all sorts of crap so your offices can be hip and cool. It also means you shouldn’t go out and buy up a ton of people (via hiring) unless you’re equally prepared to fire a similar number of people when your cash can’t keep up with your appetite. Know your burn rate and keep it to a minimum. Buying stuff just because you have cash will burn your business down to the ground.
