Why have you been so successful in reaching some of your goals, but not others? If you aren't sure, you are far from alone in your confusion. It turns out that even brilliant, highly accomplished people are pretty lousy when it comes to understanding why they succeed or fail. The intuitive answer — that you are born predisposed to certain talents and lacking in others — is really just one small piece of the puzzle. In fact, decades of research on achievement suggests that successful people reach their goals not simply because of who they are, but more often because of what they do.
1. Get specific. When you set yourself a goal, try to be as specific as possible. "Lose 5 pounds" is a better goal than "lose some weight," because it gives you a clear idea of what success looks like. Knowing exactly what you want to achieve keeps you motivated until you get there. Also, think about the specific actions that need to be taken to reach your goal. Just promising you'll "eat less" or "sleep more" is too vague — be clear and precise. "I'll be in bed by 10pm on weeknights" leaves no room for doubt about what you need to do, and whether or not you've actually done it.
2. Seize the moment to act on your goals. Given how busy most of us are, and how many goals we are juggling at once, it's not surprising that we routinely miss opportunities to act on a goal because we simply fail to notice them. Did you really have no time to work out today? No chance at any point to return that phone call? Achieving your goal means grabbing hold of these opportunities before they slip through your fingers.
To seize the moment, decide when and where you will take each action you want to take, in advance. Again, be as specific as possible (e.g., "If it's Monday, Wednesday, or Friday, I'll work out for 30 minutes before work.") Studies show that this kind of planning will help your brain to detect and seize the opportunity when it arises, increasing your chances of success by roughly 300%.
3. Know exactly how far you have left to go. Achieving any goal also requires honest and regular monitoring of your progress — if not by others, then by you yourself. If you don't know how well you are doing, you can't adjust your behavior or your strategies accordingly. Check your progress frequently — weekly, or even daily, depending on the goal.
4. Be a realistic optimist. When you are setting a goal, by all means engage in lots of positive thinking about how likely you are to achieve it. Believing in your ability to succeed is enormously helpful for creating and sustaining your motivation. But whatever you do, don't underestimate how difficult it will be to reach your goal. Most goals worth achieving require time, planning, effort, and persistence. Studies show that thinking things will come to you easily and effortlessly leaves you ill-prepared for the journey ahead, and significantly increases the odds of failure.
5. Focus on getting better, rather than being good. Believing you have the ability to reach your goals is important, but so is believing you can get the ability. Many of us believe that our intelligence, our personality, and our physical aptitudes are fixed — that no matter what we do, we won't improve. As a result, we focus on goals that are all about proving ourselves, rather than developing and acquiring new skills.
Fortunately, decades of research suggest that the belief in fixed ability is completely wrong — abilities of all kinds are profoundly malleable. Embracing the fact that you can change will allow you to make better choices, and reach your fullest potential. People whose goals are about getting better, rather than being good, take difficulty in stride, and appreciate the journey as much as the destination.
6. Have grit. Grit is a willingness to commit to long-term goals, and to persist in the face of difficulty. Studies show that gritty people obtain more education in their lifetime, and earn higher college GPAs. Grit predicts which cadets will stick out their first grueling year at West Point. In fact, grit even predicts which round contestants will make it to at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
The good news is, if you aren't particularly gritty now, there is something you can do about it. People who lack grit more often than not believe that they just don't have the innate abilities successful people have. If that describes your own thinking .... well, there's no way to put this nicely: you are wrong. As I mentioned earlier, effort, planning, persistence, and good strategies are what it really takes to succeed. Embracing this knowledge will not only help you see yourself and your goals more accurately, but also do wonders for your grit.
7. Build your willpower muscle. Your self-control "muscle" is just like the other muscles in your body — when it doesn't get much exercise, it becomes weaker over time. But when you give it regular workouts by putting it to good use, it will grow stronger and stronger, and better able to help you successfully reach your goals.
To build willpower, take on a challenge that requires you to do something you'd honestly rather not do. Give up high-fat snacks, do 100 sit-ups a day, stand up straight when you catch yourself slouching, try to learn a new skill. When you find yourself wanting to give in, give up, or just not bother — don't. Start with just one activity, and make a plan for how you will deal with troubles when they occur ("If I have a craving for a snack, I will eat one piece of fresh or three pieces of dried fruit.") It will be hard in the beginning, but it will get easier, and that's the whole point. As your strength grows, you can take on more challenges and step-up your self-control workout.
8. Don't tempt fate. No matter how strong your willpower muscle becomes, it's important to always respect the fact that it is limited, and if you overtax it you will temporarily run out of steam. Don't try to take on two challenging tasks at once, if you can help it (like quitting smoking and dieting at the same time). And don't put yourself in harm's way — many people are overly-confident in their ability to resist temptation, and as a result they put themselves in situations where temptations abound. Successful people know not to make reaching a goal harder than it already is.
9. Focus on what you will do, not what you won't do. Do you want to successfully lose weight, quit smoking, or put a lid on your bad temper? Then plan how you will replace bad habits with good ones, rather than focusing only on the bad habits themselves. Research on thought suppression (e.g., "Don't think about white bears!") has shown that trying to avoid a thought makes it even more active in your mind. The same holds true when it comes to behavior — by trying not to engage in a bad habit, our habits get strengthened rather than broken.
If you want change your ways, ask yourself, What will I do instead? For example, if you are trying to gain control of your temper and stop flying off the handle, you might make a plan like "If I am starting to feel angry, then I will take three deep breaths to calm down." By using deep breathing as a replacement for giving in to your anger, your bad habit will get worn away over time until it disappears completely.
It is my hope that, after reading about the nine things successful people do differently, you have gained some insight into all the things you have been doing right all along. Even more important, I hope are able to identify the mistakes that have derailed you, and use that knowledge to your advantage from now on. Remember, you don't need to become a different person to become a more successful one. It's never what you are, but what you do.
Heidi Grant Halvorson, Ph.D. is a motivational psychologist, and author of the new book Succeed: How We Can Reach Our Goals (Hudson Street Press, 2011). She is also an expert blogger on motivation and leadership for Fast Company and Psychology Today. Her personal blog, The Science of Success, can be found at www.heidigranthalvorson.com. Follow her on Twitter @hghalvorson
Monday, June 6, 2011
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Mentoring Principles
Principles to Remember
Do:
Build a cadre of people you can turn to for advice when you need it
Nurture relationships with people whose perspectives you respect
Think of mentoring as both a long-term and short-term arrangement
Don't:
Assume that because you are successful or experienced in your field that you don't need a mentor
Rely on one person to help guide you in your career
Expect to receive mentoring without providing anything in return
Do:
Build a cadre of people you can turn to for advice when you need it
Nurture relationships with people whose perspectives you respect
Think of mentoring as both a long-term and short-term arrangement
Don't:
Assume that because you are successful or experienced in your field that you don't need a mentor
Rely on one person to help guide you in your career
Expect to receive mentoring without providing anything in return
Sleep Deficit: The Performance Killer A Conversation with Charles A. Czeisler by Bronwyn Fryer
At 12:30 am on June 10, 2002, Israel Lane Joubert and his family of seven set out for a long drive home following a family reunion in Beaumont, Texas. Joubert, who had hoped to reach home in faraway Fort Worth in time to get to work by 8 am, fell asleep at the wheel, plowing the family’s Chevy Suburban into the rear of a parked 18-wheeler. He survived, but his wife and five of his six children were killed.
The Joubert tragedy underscores a problem of epidemic proportions among workers who get too little sleep. In the past five years, driver fatigue has accounted for more than 1.35 million automobile accidents in the United States alone, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The general effect of sleep deprivation on cognitive performance is well-known: Stay awake longer than 18 consecutive hours, and your reaction speed, short-term and long-term memory, ability to focus, decision-making capacity, math processing, cognitive speed, and spatial orientation all start to suffer. Cut sleep back to five or six hours a night for several days in a row, and the accumulated sleep deficit magnifies these negative effects. (Sleep deprivation is implicated in all kinds of physical maladies, too, from high blood pressure to obesity.)
Nevertheless, frenzied corporate cultures still confuse sleeplessness with vitality and high performance. An ambitious manager logs 80-hour work weeks, surviving on five or six hours of sleep a night and eight cups of coffee (the world’s second-most widely sold commodity, after oil) a day. A Wall Street trader goes to bed at 11 or midnight and wakes to his BlackBerry buzz at 2:30 am to track opening activity on the DAX. A road warrior lives out of a suitcase while traveling to Tokyo, St. Louis, Miami, and Zurich, conducting business in a cloud of caffeinated jet lag. A negotiator takes a red-eye flight, hops into a rental car, and zooms through an unfamiliar city to make a delicate M&A meeting at 8 in the morning.
People like this put themselves, their teams, their companies, and the general public in serious jeopardy, says Dr. Charles A. Czeisler, the Baldino Professor of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School.1 To him, encouraging a culture of sleepless machismo is worse than nonsensical; it is downright dangerous, and the antithesis of intelligent management. He notes that while corporations have all kinds of policies designed to prevent employee endangerment—rules against workplace smoking, drinking, drugs, sexual harassment, and so on—they sometimes push employees to the brink of self-destruction. Being “on” pretty much around the clock induces a level of impairment every bit as risky as intoxication.
As one of the world’s leading authorities on human sleep cycles and the biology of sleep and wakefulness, Dr. Czeisler understands the physiological bases of the sleep imperative better than almost anyone. His message to corporate leaders is simple: If you want to raise performance—both your own and your organization’s—you need to pay attention to this fundamental biological issue. In this edited interview with senior editor Bronwyn Fryer, Czeisler observes that top executives now have a critical responsibility to take sleeplessness seriously.
What does the most recent research tell us about the physiology of sleep and cognitive performance?
Four major sleep-related factors affect our cognitive performance. The kinds of work and travel schedules required of business executives today pose a severe challenge to their ability to function well, given each of these factors.
The first has to do with the homeostatic drive for sleep at night, determined largely by the number of consecutive hours that we’ve been awake. Throughout the waking day, human beings build up a stronger and stronger drive for sleep. Most of us think we’re in control of sleep—that we choose when to go to sleep and when to wake up. The fact is that when we are drowsy, the brain can seize control involuntarily. When the homeostatic pressure to sleep becomes high enough, a couple thousand neurons in the brain’s “sleep switch” ignite, as discovered by Dr. Clif Saper at Harvard Medical School. Once that happens, sleep seizes the brain like a pilot grabbing the controls. If you’re behind the wheel of a car at the time, it takes just three or four seconds to be off the road.
The Joubert tragedy underscores a problem of epidemic proportions among workers who get too little sleep. In the past five years, driver fatigue has accounted for more than 1.35 million automobile accidents in the United States alone, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The general effect of sleep deprivation on cognitive performance is well-known: Stay awake longer than 18 consecutive hours, and your reaction speed, short-term and long-term memory, ability to focus, decision-making capacity, math processing, cognitive speed, and spatial orientation all start to suffer. Cut sleep back to five or six hours a night for several days in a row, and the accumulated sleep deficit magnifies these negative effects. (Sleep deprivation is implicated in all kinds of physical maladies, too, from high blood pressure to obesity.)
Nevertheless, frenzied corporate cultures still confuse sleeplessness with vitality and high performance. An ambitious manager logs 80-hour work weeks, surviving on five or six hours of sleep a night and eight cups of coffee (the world’s second-most widely sold commodity, after oil) a day. A Wall Street trader goes to bed at 11 or midnight and wakes to his BlackBerry buzz at 2:30 am to track opening activity on the DAX. A road warrior lives out of a suitcase while traveling to Tokyo, St. Louis, Miami, and Zurich, conducting business in a cloud of caffeinated jet lag. A negotiator takes a red-eye flight, hops into a rental car, and zooms through an unfamiliar city to make a delicate M&A meeting at 8 in the morning.
People like this put themselves, their teams, their companies, and the general public in serious jeopardy, says Dr. Charles A. Czeisler, the Baldino Professor of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School.1 To him, encouraging a culture of sleepless machismo is worse than nonsensical; it is downright dangerous, and the antithesis of intelligent management. He notes that while corporations have all kinds of policies designed to prevent employee endangerment—rules against workplace smoking, drinking, drugs, sexual harassment, and so on—they sometimes push employees to the brink of self-destruction. Being “on” pretty much around the clock induces a level of impairment every bit as risky as intoxication.
As one of the world’s leading authorities on human sleep cycles and the biology of sleep and wakefulness, Dr. Czeisler understands the physiological bases of the sleep imperative better than almost anyone. His message to corporate leaders is simple: If you want to raise performance—both your own and your organization’s—you need to pay attention to this fundamental biological issue. In this edited interview with senior editor Bronwyn Fryer, Czeisler observes that top executives now have a critical responsibility to take sleeplessness seriously.
What does the most recent research tell us about the physiology of sleep and cognitive performance?
Four major sleep-related factors affect our cognitive performance. The kinds of work and travel schedules required of business executives today pose a severe challenge to their ability to function well, given each of these factors.
The first has to do with the homeostatic drive for sleep at night, determined largely by the number of consecutive hours that we’ve been awake. Throughout the waking day, human beings build up a stronger and stronger drive for sleep. Most of us think we’re in control of sleep—that we choose when to go to sleep and when to wake up. The fact is that when we are drowsy, the brain can seize control involuntarily. When the homeostatic pressure to sleep becomes high enough, a couple thousand neurons in the brain’s “sleep switch” ignite, as discovered by Dr. Clif Saper at Harvard Medical School. Once that happens, sleep seizes the brain like a pilot grabbing the controls. If you’re behind the wheel of a car at the time, it takes just three or four seconds to be off the road.
Monday, April 25, 2011
How to Get Your Idea Approved by Amy Gallo
When you have an idea, proposal, or recommendation that you believe in, it's easy to presume that getting it approved will be a breeze. If you see how great the idea is, won't everyone else? However, whether an audience accepts an idea is often less about the idea itself than about how you present it. When you need approval, don't assume that just because it's brilliant, others will see it that way — convince them.
What the Experts Say
When it comes to getting approval, style can be as important as substance. "Words matter," says John P. Kotter, Chief Innovation Officer at Kotter International, and a professor emeritus at Harvard Business School, whose latest book is Buy-in: Saving Your Good Idea from Getting Shot Down. And many times, all you get is one chance in front of your boss, the Executive Committee, or whatever group will decide your idea's fate. "Initial impressions are very strong and they can be hard to counteract," says Michael I. Norton, an Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. It's not about shoving the idea and its numerous merits down your audience's throat. Think about how you can carefully usher your idea through the approval process. "The bigger the stakes, the more it's worth taking the time to get it right," says Kotter. Here are five ways you can give your proposal a fighting chance.
Form alliances early
Before you present an idea or request resources or approval, it's a good idea to test it with those responsible for giving the green light. "Sometimes it doesn't hurt to talk around a little and see what lights people's eyes up and what makes them cloud over," says Kotter. This can also surface questions or comments early in the process. Once you've tested the waters, you can set up more formal meetings with key stakeholders to ask for their support. These meetings serve three purposes:
They build the necessary buy-in for your idea.
They demonstrate to your stakeholders that you're interested in their opinions.
They help you improve and expand on your idea — it's possible that these stakeholders will see something in your idea that you didn't.
The more you understand your audience's feelings about your proposal, the better you can prepare to get it approved.
Prepare, prepare, prepare
How you respond to questions and concerns will play a large role in your success or failure. "Primarily, when you watch someone stumble through an answer, you make an inference that they don't know what they're talking about," says Norton. Display confidence so people trust that your recommendation is a good one. Before you go into your presentation, think through what possible concerns your audience may have. In Buy-In, Kotter and co-author Lorne Whitehead lay out the four basic strategies people most often use to shoot down an idea:
Putting off the decision so it's essentially delayed to death
Creating confusion by barraging you with questions or unnecessary detail
Stirring up irrational anxieties or fears
Attacking you personally
Rather than avoiding these attacks, Kotter and Whitehead suggest "letting the lions in" to critique your idea. Don't marginalize the people who will pull apart your idea. Instead, develop concise, honest responses to each of the tactics they may use. By doing this in advance, you build your self-confidence and can avoid getting anxious or mad when people challenge your idea.
Position it for your audience
"You absolutely want to tailor the specifics of your presentation to your audience," says Norton. How does your idea benefit them? They may stand to gain prestige, cost savings, or an opportunity to build their legacy around your idea. Shape your presentation so that it speaks directly to those benefits and the ways that your audience will reap them. By doing this, Kotter says, you create a positive mindset around accepting your idea or proposal.
Keep it simple
"The curse of a presentation is that you know much more than your audience about the topic," says Norton. Focus on one or two main points and avoid getting hung up on trying to prove how much you know. Be judicious in how much data and analysis you present. Overly detailed presentations can distract your audience, making them feel stupid for not following along. Also, they can cause you to simply run out of time. Even if your audience asks for more detail, be sparing. Here, Kotter points out that one of the tactics that people use to kill an idea is to present distracting information or request so many specifics that others get confused.
Answer questions with confidence
When you present a new idea, "People will have all sorts of reactions and will want to discuss those reactions," says Norton. Many presenters get distracted by trying to discern the intention behind questions or comments. Is he trying to throw me off? Does he hate the idea? Does she not trust my judgment? Don't bother with trying to uncover motivations. Focus on answering the question as simply and straightforwardly as possible. No matter how aggressive, demeaning, or seemingly silly the question may seem, "You want to come off as a statesman," says Kotter. "Treat him like a reasonable person with a reasonable question."
If you get a question that is off-topic or potentially derailing, you can answer the question you wished the person asked instead. In a recent whitepaper "The Artful Dodger: Answering the Wrong Question the Right Way," Norton and his co-author Todd Rogers found that people who "artfully dodge" questions are trusted more than those who respond directly to questions in a less elegant way. "If we know someone is dodging the question, we don't like it. But we very, very often don't notice it," says Norton. You can give an answer that is vaguely related to the question but that confidently returns your audience back to your main point.
Principles to Remember
Do:
Meet with important stakeholders in advance of needing their formal approval
Position your idea in terms of the benefits your audience stands to gain
Answer questions concisely and confidently
Don't:
Assume that your audience will believe it's a good idea just because you do
Overwhelm your audience with detailed analysis or specifics
Get defensive or angry when people challenge your idea
Case Study #1: Build and leverage alliances
Amy Vezzetti was working for a global pharmaceutical company when she took on the role of senior manager of HR for the Asia Region. Each of the countries in the region had their own HR team, but before she and her boss re-located to Hong Kong, there had been little coordination between them. In the first few months of her new role, Amy saw an opportunity to implement a regional approach to 360-degree reviews based on a homegrown solution from Australia. It was affordable, especially in comparison with the off-the-shelf products that some countries were using, and using one system would give global HR access to regional data about performance and evaluation. Amy quickly convinced her boss that it was worth pursuing.
Her next step was to get approval from the individual countries. "We needed to know that all the HR teams were on board," she said. She met with them individually to present the case. Before the meetings, "we thought through: what is the likely resistance and how can we show them the benefits to their organization, their employees and to the company," said Amy. They then held a region-wide meeting where they presented the formal business case to the country HR managers. "We got sign off because we had already done the alliance building," she said. But getting their buy-in was only half the battle. They still needed the go-ahead from leadership to fund the project, which required approval from the regional president and all of the individual country managers. She started by casually bringing it up with the regional president. "He wasn't against it but I didn't think 'Great, this is going to be easy,'" said Amy.
Amy and her team enlisted the help of the HR directors in each country and asked them to meet with their country managers to review the business case. These meetings helped to get the country managers on board, but also generated useful feedback that they used to adjust the product. They then took the proposal to the regional president and positioned it as a cost-efficient opportunity to support his goals. For example, one of his strategies was to develop the capacity to move talent across the region, and Amy and her team explained how having consistent data would enable that. After hearing the case, he was very supportive and agreed to fund it. The new system was rolled out region wide the following year.
Case Study #2: "Consistent persistence"
In 2007, Matt Rady, the Head of Banking and Financial Service in North America for Macquarie, a global provider of banking, financial, advisory, investment, and funds management services, had a breakthrough idea. At the time he was the head of Macquarie Global Investments and responsible for sourcing and developing new products. He and his team had come up with the idea of expanding their footprint into agriculture. They knew there was strong global demand for food, and a growing rate of protein consumption in Asia. But Macquarie had played in relatively traditional markets and he knew he would have a tough time convincing leadership there was money to be made from buying farms and fattening cattle. Still, he felt the proposition had promise and set about proving its worth.
Matt started off by presenting the proposition to his boss. "He was highly skeptical but we didn't get a blatant 'no'," Matt said. Without his boss's wholehearted approval, Matt knew he would need a champion within the organization to help them push the idea through. They decided to go to his boss's boss because they believed their proposition was in line with the culture he was trying to build. He had recently told his organization that they should be pursuing BHAGs (big, hairy, audacious goals) and Matt felt the proposition qualified. "We didn't want to circumvent line management or go behind my boss's back, so we said, 'Give us an opportunity to pitch the idea to both of you," said Matt. This pitch was not to get full approval; rather they needed resources to prove out the concept. They got them.
"We knew there would be other skeptics," Matt said, so they began to gather allies trusted in the organization. In particular, they brought in two retired executives who believed in their idea and who could lend credibility to the proposition. Prior to going to the bank's executive committee to ask for final approval, they thought through the concerns the committee might have: Would they question whether there would be enough investor demand? Or would they doubt that the company had the right internal capacity? They tailored the pitch based on the issues they thought the committee would find most worrisome. "It's about being prepared for the unexpected questions," said Matt.
Matt and his team succeeded: the executive committee approved the proposition and the product was launched in 2008. The whole process took 18 months. Matt says that they never got to the point that they thought they should throw in the towel but "we did see that it would be a long road to glory." He described their approach as "consistent persistence." The fund is the second largest producer of cattle in Australia, has raised over $750 million globally, and has subsequently spawned other initiatives at Macquarie.
What the Experts Say
When it comes to getting approval, style can be as important as substance. "Words matter," says John P. Kotter, Chief Innovation Officer at Kotter International, and a professor emeritus at Harvard Business School, whose latest book is Buy-in: Saving Your Good Idea from Getting Shot Down. And many times, all you get is one chance in front of your boss, the Executive Committee, or whatever group will decide your idea's fate. "Initial impressions are very strong and they can be hard to counteract," says Michael I. Norton, an Associate Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. It's not about shoving the idea and its numerous merits down your audience's throat. Think about how you can carefully usher your idea through the approval process. "The bigger the stakes, the more it's worth taking the time to get it right," says Kotter. Here are five ways you can give your proposal a fighting chance.
Form alliances early
Before you present an idea or request resources or approval, it's a good idea to test it with those responsible for giving the green light. "Sometimes it doesn't hurt to talk around a little and see what lights people's eyes up and what makes them cloud over," says Kotter. This can also surface questions or comments early in the process. Once you've tested the waters, you can set up more formal meetings with key stakeholders to ask for their support. These meetings serve three purposes:
They build the necessary buy-in for your idea.
They demonstrate to your stakeholders that you're interested in their opinions.
They help you improve and expand on your idea — it's possible that these stakeholders will see something in your idea that you didn't.
The more you understand your audience's feelings about your proposal, the better you can prepare to get it approved.
Prepare, prepare, prepare
How you respond to questions and concerns will play a large role in your success or failure. "Primarily, when you watch someone stumble through an answer, you make an inference that they don't know what they're talking about," says Norton. Display confidence so people trust that your recommendation is a good one. Before you go into your presentation, think through what possible concerns your audience may have. In Buy-In, Kotter and co-author Lorne Whitehead lay out the four basic strategies people most often use to shoot down an idea:
Putting off the decision so it's essentially delayed to death
Creating confusion by barraging you with questions or unnecessary detail
Stirring up irrational anxieties or fears
Attacking you personally
Rather than avoiding these attacks, Kotter and Whitehead suggest "letting the lions in" to critique your idea. Don't marginalize the people who will pull apart your idea. Instead, develop concise, honest responses to each of the tactics they may use. By doing this in advance, you build your self-confidence and can avoid getting anxious or mad when people challenge your idea.
Position it for your audience
"You absolutely want to tailor the specifics of your presentation to your audience," says Norton. How does your idea benefit them? They may stand to gain prestige, cost savings, or an opportunity to build their legacy around your idea. Shape your presentation so that it speaks directly to those benefits and the ways that your audience will reap them. By doing this, Kotter says, you create a positive mindset around accepting your idea or proposal.
Keep it simple
"The curse of a presentation is that you know much more than your audience about the topic," says Norton. Focus on one or two main points and avoid getting hung up on trying to prove how much you know. Be judicious in how much data and analysis you present. Overly detailed presentations can distract your audience, making them feel stupid for not following along. Also, they can cause you to simply run out of time. Even if your audience asks for more detail, be sparing. Here, Kotter points out that one of the tactics that people use to kill an idea is to present distracting information or request so many specifics that others get confused.
Answer questions with confidence
When you present a new idea, "People will have all sorts of reactions and will want to discuss those reactions," says Norton. Many presenters get distracted by trying to discern the intention behind questions or comments. Is he trying to throw me off? Does he hate the idea? Does she not trust my judgment? Don't bother with trying to uncover motivations. Focus on answering the question as simply and straightforwardly as possible. No matter how aggressive, demeaning, or seemingly silly the question may seem, "You want to come off as a statesman," says Kotter. "Treat him like a reasonable person with a reasonable question."
If you get a question that is off-topic or potentially derailing, you can answer the question you wished the person asked instead. In a recent whitepaper "The Artful Dodger: Answering the Wrong Question the Right Way," Norton and his co-author Todd Rogers found that people who "artfully dodge" questions are trusted more than those who respond directly to questions in a less elegant way. "If we know someone is dodging the question, we don't like it. But we very, very often don't notice it," says Norton. You can give an answer that is vaguely related to the question but that confidently returns your audience back to your main point.
Principles to Remember
Do:
Meet with important stakeholders in advance of needing their formal approval
Position your idea in terms of the benefits your audience stands to gain
Answer questions concisely and confidently
Don't:
Assume that your audience will believe it's a good idea just because you do
Overwhelm your audience with detailed analysis or specifics
Get defensive or angry when people challenge your idea
Case Study #1: Build and leverage alliances
Amy Vezzetti was working for a global pharmaceutical company when she took on the role of senior manager of HR for the Asia Region. Each of the countries in the region had their own HR team, but before she and her boss re-located to Hong Kong, there had been little coordination between them. In the first few months of her new role, Amy saw an opportunity to implement a regional approach to 360-degree reviews based on a homegrown solution from Australia. It was affordable, especially in comparison with the off-the-shelf products that some countries were using, and using one system would give global HR access to regional data about performance and evaluation. Amy quickly convinced her boss that it was worth pursuing.
Her next step was to get approval from the individual countries. "We needed to know that all the HR teams were on board," she said. She met with them individually to present the case. Before the meetings, "we thought through: what is the likely resistance and how can we show them the benefits to their organization, their employees and to the company," said Amy. They then held a region-wide meeting where they presented the formal business case to the country HR managers. "We got sign off because we had already done the alliance building," she said. But getting their buy-in was only half the battle. They still needed the go-ahead from leadership to fund the project, which required approval from the regional president and all of the individual country managers. She started by casually bringing it up with the regional president. "He wasn't against it but I didn't think 'Great, this is going to be easy,'" said Amy.
Amy and her team enlisted the help of the HR directors in each country and asked them to meet with their country managers to review the business case. These meetings helped to get the country managers on board, but also generated useful feedback that they used to adjust the product. They then took the proposal to the regional president and positioned it as a cost-efficient opportunity to support his goals. For example, one of his strategies was to develop the capacity to move talent across the region, and Amy and her team explained how having consistent data would enable that. After hearing the case, he was very supportive and agreed to fund it. The new system was rolled out region wide the following year.
Case Study #2: "Consistent persistence"
In 2007, Matt Rady, the Head of Banking and Financial Service in North America for Macquarie, a global provider of banking, financial, advisory, investment, and funds management services, had a breakthrough idea. At the time he was the head of Macquarie Global Investments and responsible for sourcing and developing new products. He and his team had come up with the idea of expanding their footprint into agriculture. They knew there was strong global demand for food, and a growing rate of protein consumption in Asia. But Macquarie had played in relatively traditional markets and he knew he would have a tough time convincing leadership there was money to be made from buying farms and fattening cattle. Still, he felt the proposition had promise and set about proving its worth.
Matt started off by presenting the proposition to his boss. "He was highly skeptical but we didn't get a blatant 'no'," Matt said. Without his boss's wholehearted approval, Matt knew he would need a champion within the organization to help them push the idea through. They decided to go to his boss's boss because they believed their proposition was in line with the culture he was trying to build. He had recently told his organization that they should be pursuing BHAGs (big, hairy, audacious goals) and Matt felt the proposition qualified. "We didn't want to circumvent line management or go behind my boss's back, so we said, 'Give us an opportunity to pitch the idea to both of you," said Matt. This pitch was not to get full approval; rather they needed resources to prove out the concept. They got them.
"We knew there would be other skeptics," Matt said, so they began to gather allies trusted in the organization. In particular, they brought in two retired executives who believed in their idea and who could lend credibility to the proposition. Prior to going to the bank's executive committee to ask for final approval, they thought through the concerns the committee might have: Would they question whether there would be enough investor demand? Or would they doubt that the company had the right internal capacity? They tailored the pitch based on the issues they thought the committee would find most worrisome. "It's about being prepared for the unexpected questions," said Matt.
Matt and his team succeeded: the executive committee approved the proposition and the product was launched in 2008. The whole process took 18 months. Matt says that they never got to the point that they thought they should throw in the towel but "we did see that it would be a long road to glory." He described their approach as "consistent persistence." The fund is the second largest producer of cattle in Australia, has raised over $750 million globally, and has subsequently spawned other initiatives at Macquarie.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Why Leaders Don’t Learn from Success
The annals of business history are full of tales of companies that once dominated their industries but fell into decline. The usual reasons offered—staying too close to existing customers, a myopic focus on short-term financial performance, and an inability to adapt business models to disruptive innovation—don’t fully explain how the leaders who had steered these firms to greatness lost their touch.
In this article we argue that success can breed failure by hindering learning at both the individual and the organizational level. We all know that learning from failure is one of the most important capacities for people and companies to develop. Yet surprisingly, learning from success can present even greater challenges. To illuminate those challenges—and identify approaches for overcoming them—we will draw from our research and from the work of other scholars in the field of behavioral decision making, and focus on three interrelated impediments to learning.
The first is the inclination to make what psychologists call fundamental attribution errors. When we succeed, we’re likely to conclude that our talents and our current model or strategy are the reasons. We also give short shrift to the part that environmental factors and random events may have played.
The second impediment is overconfidence bias: Success increases our self-assurance. Faith in ourselves is a good thing, of course, but too much of it can make us believe we don’t need to change anything.
The third impediment is the failure-to-ask-why syndrome—the tendency not to investigate the causes of good performance systematically. When executives and their teams suffer from this syndrome, they don’t ask the tough questions that would help them expand their knowledge or alter their assumptions about how the world works.
Lessons from Ducati
We began to examine the challenges of learning from success in 2004, when we did a case study of an organization with a long history of winning: the Ducati Corse motorcycle racing team. Motorcycle racing may seem a long way from the world of business, but in fact it provides a perfect laboratory for research on learning. Performance is unambiguously measurable by lap times and race results. You know with brutal precision whether you’re getting better or worse. Racing is also unforgiving. The race is Sunday, and it won’t wait if you’re late. Finally, the racing circuit is intensely competitive: During a season a dozen world-class teams battle each week for the top spot. For an organization like Italy’s Ducati, wins have a huge impact on brand equity and commercial bike sales.
In 2003, Bologna-based Ducati entered the Grand Prix motorcycle racing circuit (or “MotoGP”) for the first time. Being a newcomer, it approached 2003 as “a learning season,” its team director told us. The goal was to acquire knowledge that would help it develop a better bike for future seasons. To that end, the team fitted its bikes with sensors that captured data on 28 performance parameters (such as temperature and horsepower). Riders were debriefed after every race to get input on subjective characteristics like handling and responsiveness. The team looked like a model learning organization.
Then something unexpected happened: The rookie team finished among the top three in nine races and was second overall for the season, and its bike was the fastest in the field. But with each success the team focused more on winning and less on learning, and it ended up analyzing little of the data it collected. As one team member commented, “You look at the data when you want to understand what’s going wrong. You do not look at the data because you want to understand why you’re performing well.”
read more
In this article we argue that success can breed failure by hindering learning at both the individual and the organizational level. We all know that learning from failure is one of the most important capacities for people and companies to develop. Yet surprisingly, learning from success can present even greater challenges. To illuminate those challenges—and identify approaches for overcoming them—we will draw from our research and from the work of other scholars in the field of behavioral decision making, and focus on three interrelated impediments to learning.
The first is the inclination to make what psychologists call fundamental attribution errors. When we succeed, we’re likely to conclude that our talents and our current model or strategy are the reasons. We also give short shrift to the part that environmental factors and random events may have played.
The second impediment is overconfidence bias: Success increases our self-assurance. Faith in ourselves is a good thing, of course, but too much of it can make us believe we don’t need to change anything.
The third impediment is the failure-to-ask-why syndrome—the tendency not to investigate the causes of good performance systematically. When executives and their teams suffer from this syndrome, they don’t ask the tough questions that would help them expand their knowledge or alter their assumptions about how the world works.
Lessons from Ducati
We began to examine the challenges of learning from success in 2004, when we did a case study of an organization with a long history of winning: the Ducati Corse motorcycle racing team. Motorcycle racing may seem a long way from the world of business, but in fact it provides a perfect laboratory for research on learning. Performance is unambiguously measurable by lap times and race results. You know with brutal precision whether you’re getting better or worse. Racing is also unforgiving. The race is Sunday, and it won’t wait if you’re late. Finally, the racing circuit is intensely competitive: During a season a dozen world-class teams battle each week for the top spot. For an organization like Italy’s Ducati, wins have a huge impact on brand equity and commercial bike sales.
In 2003, Bologna-based Ducati entered the Grand Prix motorcycle racing circuit (or “MotoGP”) for the first time. Being a newcomer, it approached 2003 as “a learning season,” its team director told us. The goal was to acquire knowledge that would help it develop a better bike for future seasons. To that end, the team fitted its bikes with sensors that captured data on 28 performance parameters (such as temperature and horsepower). Riders were debriefed after every race to get input on subjective characteristics like handling and responsiveness. The team looked like a model learning organization.
Then something unexpected happened: The rookie team finished among the top three in nine races and was second overall for the season, and its bike was the fastest in the field. But with each success the team focused more on winning and less on learning, and it ended up analyzing little of the data it collected. As one team member commented, “You look at the data when you want to understand what’s going wrong. You do not look at the data because you want to understand why you’re performing well.”
read more
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
Should I Become an Entrepreneur? by Jeffrey Bussgang
When to become an entrepreneur is a common quandary for many. For whatever reason, this issue has come up a great deal recently (recession-driven workforce dislocation?), so I thought I'd share a few thoughts that might help frame this critical decision.
I have concluded that being an entrepreneur is an irrational state of being. If human beings were purely rational, evaluative, value maximizing individuals (see HBS Prof Michael Jensen's paper on self-interest and human behavior (link PDF)), they would not start companies. If they sat down and did the expected value calculation by laying out the probability-weighted outcomes of being an entrepreneur as compared to taking a safe job, it would not pencil out.
Yet, entrepreneurship is not simply a rational journey. It is one that is defined by passion and personal satisfaction that transcends purely financial analysis. And, of course, there is always the hope for the big payout, no matter how long the odds.
Despite popular wisdom to the contrary, age is not a major factor in the decision to start a company. The Kauffman Foundation reports that the median age of founders is 39 - right at the midpoint of a typical professional career - and 69% are 35 or older. Another study by Washington University professors of 86,000 science and engineering graduates showed that age was not a significant predictor of becoming an entrepreneur.
So when should you become an entrepreneur. Here are the kinds of questions you should ask yourself:
Do you have an idea that no one can talk you out of? When you bounce your start-up idea off your spouse, friends and trusted advisors, are they able to raise enough objections that you begin to doubt whether the idea has merit. Getting honest, objective advice can be hard because the people you are likely to go to care about you and may be afraid to tell you what they really think for fear of offending you. Thus, you need to get feedback from objective parties (e.g., advisors, experts, prospective angel or VC investors with whom you don't have a deep personal relationship).
Do you have a partner you trust with complimentary skills? Starting a company is a lonely adventure. Having a partner that you can trust and whose skillset and experience is complimentary to yours can be a huge functional and emotional benefit.
Are you prepared to endure with modest or no salary for a few years? Founding a company often means making personal sacrifices and below-market cash compensation. All the talk about "lean start-ups" (which I'm a big fan of) sometimes obscures the practical reality of what it means to eat through your personal savings.
Are you bored with your current work environment/life situation? There is nothing boring about being an entrepreneur. More apt adjectves might include stimulating, engrossing, obsessive, exhilarating, nerve-racking - but not boring. If you are tired of viewing your work as a chore and if every day is a bit of a grind, then entrepreneurship is for you. I find that the intrinsic motivation behind an aspiring entrepreneur is sometimes the simplest - because it's fun. Seeking fun can transcend all other factors.
Do you perform best in the absence of structure? In my book, Mastering the VC Game, I describe a metaphor for the three stages of a start-up: the jungle, the dirt road and the highway. In the earliest stages of a venture - the jungle - there are no clear paths available and the skills required are to thrive in the midst of the chaos. For those who possess that makeup, being a start-up executive is an excellent fit. But for those that like clear paths with little uncertainty and a great deal of structure - the highway - an early-stage venture will feel like a very uncomfortable environment.
Reflecting on these questions, I find it intriguing to reflect on what kind of environment - either from the perspective of parents raising their children or policy makers thinking about encouraging entrepreneurial ecosystems - can be created to foster more entrepreneurship? HBS Professor Noam Wasserman is writing a book called Founding Dilemmas which is coming out later this year (I've read early drafts and believe it will be a must-read for entrepreneurs). In it, he quotes career guru Dr. Tim Butler who points out that signals from parents, mentors and local leaders have a large influence on whether people chose to become entrepreneurs. "We receive very powerful messages [from those around us] about what's important, what success is, what failure is, what counts for achievement and what doesn't. "
Celebrating entrepreneurial success stories in our culture and putting folks like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Page (the new Google CEO!) and even more accessible, local heroes on magazine covers and in front of audiences is obviously a huge factor. Every college kid in America looks at Mark Zuckerburg and thinks, "Why not me?" Why not, indeed?
Jeff Bussgang is a general partner at Flybridge Capital and an Entrepreneur in Residence at Harvard Business School. He is author of the book, Mastering the VC Game.This post originally appeared on Jeff's blog, Seeing Both Sides
I have concluded that being an entrepreneur is an irrational state of being. If human beings were purely rational, evaluative, value maximizing individuals (see HBS Prof Michael Jensen's paper on self-interest and human behavior (link PDF)), they would not start companies. If they sat down and did the expected value calculation by laying out the probability-weighted outcomes of being an entrepreneur as compared to taking a safe job, it would not pencil out.
Yet, entrepreneurship is not simply a rational journey. It is one that is defined by passion and personal satisfaction that transcends purely financial analysis. And, of course, there is always the hope for the big payout, no matter how long the odds.
Despite popular wisdom to the contrary, age is not a major factor in the decision to start a company. The Kauffman Foundation reports that the median age of founders is 39 - right at the midpoint of a typical professional career - and 69% are 35 or older. Another study by Washington University professors of 86,000 science and engineering graduates showed that age was not a significant predictor of becoming an entrepreneur.
So when should you become an entrepreneur. Here are the kinds of questions you should ask yourself:
Do you have an idea that no one can talk you out of? When you bounce your start-up idea off your spouse, friends and trusted advisors, are they able to raise enough objections that you begin to doubt whether the idea has merit. Getting honest, objective advice can be hard because the people you are likely to go to care about you and may be afraid to tell you what they really think for fear of offending you. Thus, you need to get feedback from objective parties (e.g., advisors, experts, prospective angel or VC investors with whom you don't have a deep personal relationship).
Do you have a partner you trust with complimentary skills? Starting a company is a lonely adventure. Having a partner that you can trust and whose skillset and experience is complimentary to yours can be a huge functional and emotional benefit.
Are you prepared to endure with modest or no salary for a few years? Founding a company often means making personal sacrifices and below-market cash compensation. All the talk about "lean start-ups" (which I'm a big fan of) sometimes obscures the practical reality of what it means to eat through your personal savings.
Are you bored with your current work environment/life situation? There is nothing boring about being an entrepreneur. More apt adjectves might include stimulating, engrossing, obsessive, exhilarating, nerve-racking - but not boring. If you are tired of viewing your work as a chore and if every day is a bit of a grind, then entrepreneurship is for you. I find that the intrinsic motivation behind an aspiring entrepreneur is sometimes the simplest - because it's fun. Seeking fun can transcend all other factors.
Do you perform best in the absence of structure? In my book, Mastering the VC Game, I describe a metaphor for the three stages of a start-up: the jungle, the dirt road and the highway. In the earliest stages of a venture - the jungle - there are no clear paths available and the skills required are to thrive in the midst of the chaos. For those who possess that makeup, being a start-up executive is an excellent fit. But for those that like clear paths with little uncertainty and a great deal of structure - the highway - an early-stage venture will feel like a very uncomfortable environment.
Reflecting on these questions, I find it intriguing to reflect on what kind of environment - either from the perspective of parents raising their children or policy makers thinking about encouraging entrepreneurial ecosystems - can be created to foster more entrepreneurship? HBS Professor Noam Wasserman is writing a book called Founding Dilemmas which is coming out later this year (I've read early drafts and believe it will be a must-read for entrepreneurs). In it, he quotes career guru Dr. Tim Butler who points out that signals from parents, mentors and local leaders have a large influence on whether people chose to become entrepreneurs. "We receive very powerful messages [from those around us] about what's important, what success is, what failure is, what counts for achievement and what doesn't. "
Celebrating entrepreneurial success stories in our culture and putting folks like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Page (the new Google CEO!) and even more accessible, local heroes on magazine covers and in front of audiences is obviously a huge factor. Every college kid in America looks at Mark Zuckerburg and thinks, "Why not me?" Why not, indeed?
Jeff Bussgang is a general partner at Flybridge Capital and an Entrepreneur in Residence at Harvard Business School. He is author of the book, Mastering the VC Game.This post originally appeared on Jeff's blog, Seeing Both Sides
The Best Cover Letter I Ever Received by David Silverman
In my last post I talked about how to make your résumé more likely to catch the attention of a hiring manager. As a follow up, I'd like to discuss cover letters. Here's my basic philosophy on them: don't bother.
That's because the cover letters I see usually fall into one of three categories:
The recap: The résumé in prose form. It's redundant, harder to read than the résumé, and provides no additional insight.
The form letter: This says, essentially, "Dear Sir or Madam: I saw your ad in the paper and thought you might like me." And it's clearly a form letter where maybe they got my name and company right. If they're lucky, I will still take the time to read their résumé after being insulted with a form letter.
The "I'm crazy": This one's rare, and it expands on the résumé of experience with some personal insights. Examples range from the merely batty ("I find batik as an art form has taught me to become both a better person and project manager.") to the truly terrifying ("I cast a pentagram hex and the central line pointed towards your job listing. I know you will find this as comforting as I do.")
There are really only a few times to use a cover letter:
1. When you know the name of the person hiring
2. When you know something about the job requirement
3. When you've been personally referred (which might include 1 and 2)
Under those conditions, you can help your cause by doing some of the résumé analysis for your potential new boss. To illustrate, here's the best cover letter I ever received:
Dear David:
I am writing in response to the opening for xxxx, which I believe may report to you.
I can offer you seven years of experience managing communications for top-tier xxxx firms, excellent project-management skills, and a great eye for detail, all of which should make me an ideal candidate for this opening.
I have attached my résumé for your review and would welcome the chance to speak with you sometime.
Best regards,
Xxxx Xxxx
Here's what I like about this cover letter: It's short. It sums up the résumé as it relates to the job. It asks for the job.
The writer of this letter took the time to think through what would be relevant to me. Instead of scattering lots of facts in hopes that one was relevant, the candidate offered up an opinion as to which experiences I should focus on.
And that means the writer isn't just showing me skills related to the job, he's showing me he'll be the kind of employee who offers up solutions — instead of just laying problems on my desk.
What do you think? Have you ever secured a job thanks to a cover letter? What's your view on the value — or lack thereof — of cover letters?
David Silverman has been an entrepreneur, an executive, and a business writing teacher. His latest book is Typo: The Last American Typesetter or How I Made and Lost 4 Million Dollars.
That's because the cover letters I see usually fall into one of three categories:
The recap: The résumé in prose form. It's redundant, harder to read than the résumé, and provides no additional insight.
The form letter: This says, essentially, "Dear Sir or Madam: I saw your ad in the paper and thought you might like me." And it's clearly a form letter where maybe they got my name and company right. If they're lucky, I will still take the time to read their résumé after being insulted with a form letter.
The "I'm crazy": This one's rare, and it expands on the résumé of experience with some personal insights. Examples range from the merely batty ("I find batik as an art form has taught me to become both a better person and project manager.") to the truly terrifying ("I cast a pentagram hex and the central line pointed towards your job listing. I know you will find this as comforting as I do.")
There are really only a few times to use a cover letter:
1. When you know the name of the person hiring
2. When you know something about the job requirement
3. When you've been personally referred (which might include 1 and 2)
Under those conditions, you can help your cause by doing some of the résumé analysis for your potential new boss. To illustrate, here's the best cover letter I ever received:
Dear David:
I am writing in response to the opening for xxxx, which I believe may report to you.
I can offer you seven years of experience managing communications for top-tier xxxx firms, excellent project-management skills, and a great eye for detail, all of which should make me an ideal candidate for this opening.
I have attached my résumé for your review and would welcome the chance to speak with you sometime.
Best regards,
Xxxx Xxxx
Here's what I like about this cover letter: It's short. It sums up the résumé as it relates to the job. It asks for the job.
The writer of this letter took the time to think through what would be relevant to me. Instead of scattering lots of facts in hopes that one was relevant, the candidate offered up an opinion as to which experiences I should focus on.
And that means the writer isn't just showing me skills related to the job, he's showing me he'll be the kind of employee who offers up solutions — instead of just laying problems on my desk.
What do you think? Have you ever secured a job thanks to a cover letter? What's your view on the value — or lack thereof — of cover letters?
David Silverman has been an entrepreneur, an executive, and a business writing teacher. His latest book is Typo: The Last American Typesetter or How I Made and Lost 4 Million Dollars.
Can a Big Company Innovate Like a Start-Up?
When Google announced that co-founder Larry Page was replacing Eric Schmidt as CEO, the official reason was to "streamline decision making" at the top. Instead of a triumvirate, there would be one person clearly in charge. Speculation among Google-watchers, however, is that there were deeper underlying issues that triggered the change, including the fear that Google is losing its "start-up" edge. In an interview following the announcement, Page confirmed this concern by saying, "One of the primary goals I have is to get Google to be a big company that has the nimbleness and soul and passion and speed of a start-up."
But can a big company like Google really act like a start-up? After all, start-up employees have a totally different psychology and motivation than those in established firms. Joining (or founding) a start-up is an act of faith — the conviction that an idea eventually can become a sustained commercial success. To translate that belief into reality, start-up participants pitch in wherever it's needed, put in long hours, and forego financial security. In effect, they are rolling the dice in the hope of hitting the jackpot — but willing to take the slim odds because of their strong belief in the new venture, the adrenaline rush of living on the edge, or the potential size of the prize.
In contrast, employees of large established firms operate with a different sense of risk and reward, reassured by financial security and structure. They want the enterprise as a whole to be successful, but are more motivated by the challenges of their particular function and the ability to advance in their careers. Within this context, people in big companies tend to focus more on protecting and preserving their existing businesses than on breakthrough innovations that might cannibalize or destroy them.
Obviously these broad generalizations don't apply to every start-up or established organization. But from my experience, they do represent stark differences that make it very difficult to turn a big company back into a start-up. For example, a number of years ago the CEO of GE Capital, Gary Wendt, was worried that rapid growth had reduced the sense of innovation that fueled the company's success in the first place. To get back that "start-up spirit," he offered one million dollars in seed money to any manager who could turn an idea into a new business. Across more than two dozen managerial teams, there were no more than one or two takers. Most managers felt that they could be more successful by continuing with their established business.
My point here is not that big organizations shouldn't try to be innovative and fast-moving like start-ups. Rather, with all due respect to Larry Page (who is clearly more successful than most people), trying to turn back the clock on a big organization and return it to its start-up days is probably not going to work. Instead, managers of large organizations should try to deploy other approaches that might be more effective, such as the following:
1. Set up a venture group that can fund internal (and external) entrepreneurs who want to start businesses that are related to or adjacent to your core. Obviously, criteria need to be established about types and sizes of investments, but if run like a real venture fund this kind of approach can attract people who have the right mentality and energy both from inside and outside the company.
2. Carve off skunk-works groups to tackle new opportunities that might be threatening to existing business units, or that will never get enough attention from them. However, treat these groups themselves like start-ups — with risks and incentives that match. Don't overfund them or they will become projects rather than start-ups; and put real rewards on the table so that start-up types of people will want to play.
3. Sponsor innovation contests to generate ideas for new businesses and innovations related to your company and its space. Put up enough money that it will attract internal or external entrepreneurs who will want to turn the idea into a start-up.
Let's face it: Big companies are not the same as start-ups, and never will be. But that doesn't mean that they can't be innovative and fast-moving like start-ups. They just have to do it differently.
What's your experience with big companies behaving like start-ups?
By Ron Ashkenas
Ron Ashkenas is a managing partner of Schaffer Consulting and a co-author of The GE Work-Out and The Boundaryless Organization. His latest book is Simply Effective.
But can a big company like Google really act like a start-up? After all, start-up employees have a totally different psychology and motivation than those in established firms. Joining (or founding) a start-up is an act of faith — the conviction that an idea eventually can become a sustained commercial success. To translate that belief into reality, start-up participants pitch in wherever it's needed, put in long hours, and forego financial security. In effect, they are rolling the dice in the hope of hitting the jackpot — but willing to take the slim odds because of their strong belief in the new venture, the adrenaline rush of living on the edge, or the potential size of the prize.
In contrast, employees of large established firms operate with a different sense of risk and reward, reassured by financial security and structure. They want the enterprise as a whole to be successful, but are more motivated by the challenges of their particular function and the ability to advance in their careers. Within this context, people in big companies tend to focus more on protecting and preserving their existing businesses than on breakthrough innovations that might cannibalize or destroy them.
Obviously these broad generalizations don't apply to every start-up or established organization. But from my experience, they do represent stark differences that make it very difficult to turn a big company back into a start-up. For example, a number of years ago the CEO of GE Capital, Gary Wendt, was worried that rapid growth had reduced the sense of innovation that fueled the company's success in the first place. To get back that "start-up spirit," he offered one million dollars in seed money to any manager who could turn an idea into a new business. Across more than two dozen managerial teams, there were no more than one or two takers. Most managers felt that they could be more successful by continuing with their established business.
My point here is not that big organizations shouldn't try to be innovative and fast-moving like start-ups. Rather, with all due respect to Larry Page (who is clearly more successful than most people), trying to turn back the clock on a big organization and return it to its start-up days is probably not going to work. Instead, managers of large organizations should try to deploy other approaches that might be more effective, such as the following:
1. Set up a venture group that can fund internal (and external) entrepreneurs who want to start businesses that are related to or adjacent to your core. Obviously, criteria need to be established about types and sizes of investments, but if run like a real venture fund this kind of approach can attract people who have the right mentality and energy both from inside and outside the company.
2. Carve off skunk-works groups to tackle new opportunities that might be threatening to existing business units, or that will never get enough attention from them. However, treat these groups themselves like start-ups — with risks and incentives that match. Don't overfund them or they will become projects rather than start-ups; and put real rewards on the table so that start-up types of people will want to play.
3. Sponsor innovation contests to generate ideas for new businesses and innovations related to your company and its space. Put up enough money that it will attract internal or external entrepreneurs who will want to turn the idea into a start-up.
Let's face it: Big companies are not the same as start-ups, and never will be. But that doesn't mean that they can't be innovative and fast-moving like start-ups. They just have to do it differently.
What's your experience with big companies behaving like start-ups?
By Ron Ashkenas
Ron Ashkenas is a managing partner of Schaffer Consulting and a co-author of The GE Work-Out and The Boundaryless Organization. His latest book is Simply Effective.
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