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| Volume 9, Issue 8 |
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In This Issue:
 How I…revamped monday meetings
 [CEOs:] welcome a web 2.0 world
The power of passion
Success in service
 The 2009 Inc. 500|5000: The top lists by industry
 Increase your influence tenfold
How to excel at your job and be home for dinner
Take your career from good to great
Ted Kennedy's leadership lessons
 SuperCorp: Values as guidance system
 [Are you] the introverted leader[?]
Smart presentations: So what do you practice?
 Women want more: How to capture more than your share of the female economy
 How to survive the downturn: Spend and innovate
The productivity problem
The business of football, 2009
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How I…revamped monday meetings
Entrepreneur Jessica Rovello tells us how she came up with an innovative way to solve a routine problem in her business.
Most employees dread those long, boring staff meetings -- but not at Arkadium.
In fact, at this developer of online flash-based games, the 35 employees at the New York office look forward to the Monday meetings. They are eager to see what will happen this week, perhaps the conference table will be used for...
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[CEOs:] welcome a web 2.0 world
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Web 2.0 is suddenly transforming the way CEOs manage companies. This is a big change after years of resisting the Web 2.0 revolution.
What happened?
Many corporations have resisted Web 2.0 because its underlying logic, emphasizing the power of horizontal networks, is at odds with how companies are managed. Traditionally, management models have been fitted to vertical, topdown organizational structures focused on manufacturing products, marketing brands and
communicating to consumers in a one-way media path. Inside organizations, CEOs were generally regarded as quasi-infallible leaders whose judgment and decisions are expected to be obeyed and executed. No wonder many corporate executives initially dismissed horizontal, networked Web 2.0 platforms like Facebook, YouTube and wikis
as a time-wasting distraction. Worse, they regarded Web 2.0 as a potential risk-management problem due to security breaches, privacy issues and legal liabilities. Why are so many CEOs suddenly embracing Web 2.0? One reason, it cannot be doubted, is...
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The power of passion
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How your company thinks about customers determines your revenue.
What company couldn’t use more revenue right about now? But revenue only happens when people decide to buy, buy again or tell others they should—and they do. Each of the three is rooted in people’s feelings about the company and what it offers. CEOs need to take the lead in creating those feelings—because every part of the company
will have a hand in bringing them about. This is not a problem that can be laid in the laps of brand managers, marketing departments or those responsible for customer service. Customers’ feelings about the companies they do or don’t buy from fall on what we’ll call the Passion-in-Customers Spectrum. At the problematic bottom of the
spectrum is a passion we’ve seen many companies evoke in customers: “No way, no how, will I ever buy anything from you again!” These are people who have been “dissed.” Poster child: Dell’s offshoring their tech support a few years back. Dell’s senior management made what looked like a necessary decision from a cost perspective
(cheaper PCs no longer permitted high-cost support). What they didn’t fully appreciate was that their customers thought they had a relationship with Dell. They liked the company and bought their products. And they felt they got a lot for what they paid—even if there were some soon-to-arrive issues like key tops falling off.
Then Dell, by offshoring its support, badly, conveyed to its customers that they, and their technical issues, were not important. This included a support process someone actually designed that drove Dell’s technically troubled customers straight up a wall. Now Dell is suffering the “Revenge of the Dissed.” Worse, in May 2007...
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Success in service
Don’t let uncertainty threaten your performance with customers.
In tough economic times, maintaining connections with customers and delivering best-in-class performance can become more and more challenging. When things are changing rapidly and your organization is being called upon to make difficult decisions, the outcome can be cultural atherosclerosis. Uncertainty can have the
same impact as plaque in the bloodstream—slowing down decision making until inactivity leads to paralysis and lagging performance. Survival in this environment requires conviction and the kind of courageous customer commitment that positions winning companies well for economic recovery. Here, the CEO must lead. In “What Only
the CEO Can Do” (Harvard Business Review, May 2009), A.G. Lafley includes “shaping values and standards” as one of the tasks of the CEO. “Values establish a company’s identity; they are about behavior,” he notes. When it comes to customer satisfaction, this translates to what your company stands for and ultimately how it
treats customers—in good times and bad. At Toshiba America Medical Systems (TAMS), we learned the price of indecision and inaction the hard way. In 2007, our California-based company, a provider of diagnostic imaging systems, had enjoyed several years of successive sales growth and industry leading ratings in its premier
CT product line. But that year, customer ratings started to decline, quarter after quarter, until the company no longer owned the top ratings position in customer satisfaction but shared its prized market differentiator with a formidable
competitor. What follows is a case history in perseverance, research and an unrelenting focus on customer satisfaction leadership...
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Increase your influence tenfold
Joseph Grenny is the co-author of three immediate New York Times bestsellers: Influencer, Crucial Conversations, and Crucial Confrontations. He is cofounder of VitalSmarts, an innovator in corporate training and organizational performance, and a consultant to the Fortune 500
The key is understanding behavior. If we attribute the wrong causes to it, then attempts to change it won't be successful.
"That's it. If they're going to act like children, I'll treat them like children." I was sitting in the office of the CEO of a financial services company when he said this. He had asked his senior executive team to cooperatively develop a capital spending plan for the coming year. He had challenged his team to take off their
functional hats and propose a plan that put the enterprise's interests above their local needs. But the budget proposal he got back called for 150% of available capital and was loaded with low-value investments more suited to building fiefs than to creating shareholder value. The CEO's face flushed as he summarized his theory of
behavior: "These guys just flat out don't care about anyone's interest but their own." This lament was caused by the CEO's lack of influence over the behavior of his executive team. His hope was that a logical and sincere plea for change would evoke profoundly different behavior than the team had exhibited in previous years.
Obviously, he was wrong. But the kind of hope and subsequent disappointment he felt is extremely common. Over the past 25 years, my colleagues and I have repeatedly heard similar laments and conclusions—and not just from businesspeople. The "Fundamental Attribution Error"...
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How to excel at your job and be home for dinner
A former Goldman Sachs executive shares her tips for balancing professional work with your personal life during a recession.
When I was a new manager at Goldman Sachs, an executive coach told me: "If you can't get your job done in 10 hours a day, there's something wrong with you—or there's something wrong with your job." I laughed. In my 16 years in finance, I found it hard not admire the 24/7 ethic and even harder to imagine that top results could be
produced without it. But this coach was an advisor to highly respected CEOs. And he forced me to open my eyes and see what really effective executives do to cut time—and stress—for both themselves and the teams they lead. Intrigued, I dug into the research. I learned how performance and judgement erode when we work too many
hours and that motivating people to spend ever-more hours at work is bad for the bottom line. I also talked to hundreds of men and women working in a wide range of executive roles—C-suite jobs, partners at big investment, law, and accounting firms, and middle managers in various industries—to learn how they manage the stress in
their lives. Today's downturn means everyone who still has a job has more work to do. Things have been so uncertain that we all have to work harder because we don't know what will pay off. While "balance" may be a term that makes executives nervous in bad times, it's merely good management to ensure that each hour gets invested in
the right things and that we cut all the waste we can. Here are five tips I've found that let executives produce world-class results and still get home for family dinner—most nights...
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Take your career from good to great
Transform your unfulfilling career into something extraordinary using three strategies to overcome common assumptions that hold you back.
Do you ever find yourself asking, "Is this it?" Sure, you've had some successes in your career, made some money, received a promotion or two. Yet you can't help but wonder, "Is this what I am supposed to be doing with my life? Is this the limit of my contribution?" These questions are familiar territory for me. At the age of 35, I
was stuck in a career rut. Then, unexpectedly, my life turned in an extraordinary new direction. Over the course of the next 18 months, I...
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Ted Kennedy's leadership lessons
Rosabeth Moss Kanter on what managers can learn from Ted Kennedy's extraordinary career in the Senate.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, whose loss America is mourning, was no darling of the traditional big business community. He fought for the little guy, for children, for the poor and disadvantaged, sometimes against establishments and elites. But as a leader, he was greatly admired across the political spectrum. Even those who
disagreed with his politics can draw inspiration from his life. From knowing and observing him, I choose four leadership lessons I hope executives will take to heart...
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SuperCorp: Values as guidance system
Many people today are focused on the global economic crisis, but Harvard Business School professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter sees also a global crisis of business.
The model of American capitalism that worked so well to raise the fortunes of millions of people last century appears to have hit a wall. What's good for General Motors may no longer be good for the country. In its place must arise a new model of the company, one that serves society as well as rewarding shareholders and
employees, Kanter argues in her new book, SuperCorp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth, and Social Good. She tells the stories of "vanguard companies" such as IBM, Proctor & Gamble, Cemex, Banco Real, and Omron that are rewriting what it means to be successful in the 21st century. In this excerpt,
Kanter explores how vanguard companies use values to guide business strategy...
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[Are you] the introverted leader[?]
Jennifer B. Kahnweiler, Ph.D., is a workplace and career expert and author of "The Introverted Leader: Building on Your Quiet Strength." Founder and president of AboutYOU, Inc., an Atlanta-based leadership consultancy, she is an executive coach and corporate speaker.
In today's extroverted business world, introverts can feel ignored, overlooked, and misunderstood. In fact, according to my research-a two-and-a-half-year national study of introverted professionals-four out of five introverts say extroverts are more likely to get ahead in their workplace.
In addition, more than 40 percent say they would like to change their introverted tendencies, but don't know where or how to begin. The good news? Introversion can be managed. The goal is not changing your personality or natural work style, but
embracing and expanding on your unique strengths. Here are 10 tips for getting started:...
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Smart presentations: So what do you practice?
When people say, "You need to practice your presentation beforehand," exactly what you should be doing to best prepare yourself may not be so obvious. Here are a few ideas to fill in the blanks:...
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How to survive the downturn: Spend and innovate
Take advantage of the recession to churn out something new, says Bloomberg president Daniel Doctoroff.
Only companies and governments that use the recession as an opportunity to innovate will come out of the downturn stronger, says Daniel Doctoroff, president of Bloomberg, the media company founded by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Doctoroff, whose previous job was as deputy to Bloomberg in the city's
administration for $1 per year, cites the case of New York itself, which he says has been through ten downturns already in the last 200 years. "What we are going through is not unique," Doctoroff told journalists at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan Tuesday. Doctoroff shrugs off...
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The productivity problem
Bad news for the jobless: People are working harder.
After firing millions of workers, employers have been doing more with less. No wonder the productivity of Americans is increasingly dramatically. A report Wednesday says productivity is rising at an astounding 6.6% rate. If it continues,
in a decade, the average worker would be twice as productive as he or she is now. But could productivity slow an economic recovery?...
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The business of football, 2009
The National Football League was sacked by the recession over the past year. How did your team do?
Tight credit markets, a precipitous decline in the number of people who could afford to buy a team and an unusually high number of franchises looking for investors combined to lower the average revenue multiple used to value teams from 4.7 to 4.4...
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