Do You Have a WOMEN-CENTRIC Home?

Cheryl offers:  My friend Bob Morris recently loaned me the book Women Want More by Michael J. Silverstein and Kate Sayre, two consultants who are making a mint being experts on what women want and how/where they are willing to spend their money. Did you know the female economy was larger than the estimated GDP of India and China combined over the next 5 years? Well, it is and by a large proportion. One quote seems to sum it up “The rise of the worldwide female economy will challenge assumptions about how companies do research, how they develop products, how they sell merchandise, and how they add services to their value proposition.” 

It seems some homebuilders have followed their advice by designing and building “WOMEN-CENTRIC” homes.  Kim Sliney, a 46-year-old interior designer in Rhode Island turned down 37 houses while looking for a new home; she almost gave up…until she drove past a development advertising WOMEN-CENTRIC homes. What does that mean you ask? Instead of the run of the mill jumble of rooms and space, she purchased a home with killer walk-in closets(sigh), spacious open living areas, and custom details like crown molding, granite countertops, and a gas fireplace – all at no extra cost. What else might it include? The other details a woman might want of course: security system, walk in pantries and “drop zones” for groceries, plus low maintenance. It seems there is a company in Omaha that has been teaching and certifying home builders to be WOMEN-CENTRIC for several years. (Really, in Omaha?) For a measly $10,000 a year, you can also use their logo in your marketing.  Michael and Kate aren’t kidding when they stated the female economy will challenge assumptions. Obviously for anyone looking to expand their business into new markets, innovate, or challenge competition differently, this is one aspect worth looking into. And I want one!

Interview: Richard L. Brandt

Brandt is an award-winning journalist who has been writing about science and technology for 25 years. He was a correspondent for BusinessWeek magazine for 14 years and editor-in-chief at Upside magazine for five years. He writes about entrepreneurs, Silicon Valley, medical and biological technology, Internet technology and environmental issues. He has profiled Bill Gates, Andy Grove, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and other executives leading their field. He acts as a consultant to entrepreneurial companies, writes three blogs, and opines about the news and promotes his book on his Web site, http://www.richardlbrandt.com. He is author of Inside Larry & Sergey’s Brain (Portfolio/Penguin, 2009), and One Click: Jeff Bezos and the triumph of Amazon.com (Portfolio/Penguin, 2011), and co-author (with Thomas W. Weisel) of Capital Instincts: Life as an Entrepreneur, Financier and Athlete (John Wiley & Sons, 2003).

Morris: Here are two separate but related questions. First, why did you pursue a career in journalism? Also, what led you to concentrate primarily on the business world and high-tech companies?

Brandt: I always wanted to write. I also love studying about science and technology, so I first studied mathematics for two years at Harvey Mudd College, then switched to marine biology and environmental issues at U.C. Santa Barbara. My focus then morphed into microbiology, then neurobiology, and I ended up with a degree in biology without any specialization. I then started studying engineering at the University of Delaware, working for Dupont as an engineering technician at the same time. Obviously, I could never settle down into one specialty. So I finally decided to become a journalist and write about all this stuff instead. I won a summer fellowship at Business Week and was hired at the end of the summer. I started out covering science at Business Week, but there was so much demand for covering technology, which is primarily advanced by companies, that I ended up with a strong focus on business and technology. I’d like to get back into more science writing soon.

Being a journalist is recording history as it happens. I get to write about science and technology at a time of unprecedented growth and change. The people I interview and write about are fascinating, exceptional people who are making those changes happen, who are changing the world around us. I’m not part of their world, but I’m an observer, and that’s a special position to be in. At this point I don’t know what else I would do.

Morris: Over the years, what have been the most significant changes within the Silicon Valley culture?

Brandt: The fundamentals are the same as they’ve always been. It’s full of all the kinds of people needed to incubate companies–VCs, bankers, smart executives, daring entrepreneurs, enormous egos–that ecosystem just keeps attracting more of those people. Marketing and PR folks are still largely young and creative. Investment bankers are the same they’ve always been. But the VCs have gotten younger and stopped wearing ties. Entrepreneurs have gotten younger, and more of them are dropping out of college or grad school to start companies. There’s a wider array of skills and interests, because the Internet can change almost any business, from entertainment to communications to retailing to news to finance. The Valley has grown enormously, become incredibly diversified, and keeps breeding new types of entrepreneurs. It’s livelier, more creative, more interesting every year.

Morris: Of all the CEOs you have observed thus far, which – in your opinion – is the most impressive in terms of her or his leadership and management skills?

Brandt: I’d have to pick five. Andy Grove, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. There are few people who can deeply understand technology well enough to exploit it and also understand business well enough to build a company around it. Those five are the best I’ve seen. Each has different strengths. Grove understands technology and did a brilliant job maneuvering Intel through all the changes in the industry and all the new companies coming after him. Gates was the first entrepreneur to recognize the potential of software as a separate industry, and knew how to drive his company to the top of the heap. Jobs doesn’t know how to build the technology himself, but he knows what it can do and he’s able to get others to build it. He has an incredible design sense and is probably the most brilliant marketer in the world. Page and Brin haven’t stood the test of time yet, but they will. You can recognize who will be in that top tier the first time you meet them. For one thing, you’ll notice they all have multiple skills. Someone who’s just a great CEO will not be innovative enough. Someone who’s just a great engineer will get outmaneuvered in the market. The only real synergy that creates greatness in this business is the synergy of having many skills in one person. Those are the legendary folks with the legendary companies.

Interview: Robyn Waters

Waters has more than thirty years experience tracking and translating trends into sales and profit. As Target’s former Vice President of Trend, Design, and Product Development, she helped a small regional discount chain become a national fashion destination. Seth Godin calls her “the woman who revolutionized what Target sells, and helped the company trounce Kmart.” Fast Company magazine featured her as one of the top twenty ‘Creative Mavericks’ in their June ’04 Master of Design issue. She has served as a juror for numerous national design competitions, including the BusinessWeek IDEA Design Awards, the National Design Awards for the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, and the International Housewares Association. She was also been invited to serve as a juror for the 2007 Microsoft PC Design Competition. Waters is the author of The Trendmaster’s Guide: Get A Jump on What Your Customer Wants Next, a simple and witty guide to tracking and translating trends into sales and profit. In her second book, The Hummer and the Mini: Navigating the Contradictions of the New Trend Landscape, she explores the contradictory nature of today’s consumer. She is also a contributor to The Big Moo, a collaboration of 33 of the world’s best business thinkers.

Morris: What were the most important business lessons learned during your association with Target?

Waters: The most important business lessons I learned at Target were (1) the power of good design to differentiate your product and your brand, (2) the power of good trend research to help you understand your customers and connect with their desires, and (3) the value of good brand management.

Morris: Here’s a related question. Why has Target prospered during a period when so many other retailers in some instances struggled to survive?

Waters: Target brilliantly positions itself as “the upscale discounter” and then over-delivers on its brand promise of “Expect More/Pay Less.” It’s a powerful promise that is delivered with panache by leveraging great design.

Morris: To what extent (if any) are there “early warning” signals about emerging trends which are relevant to almost any organization, whatever and wherever its competitive marketplace may be?

Waters: There are always “early warning” signals…the trouble is that they are normally revealed to us in hindsight. Too often we don’t see the early indicators because our attention is focused elsewhere. We spend so much time in the virtual world that we’re not paying attention to what’s happening in the real world. I also think that too often we look for whatever we want to find or expect to find, and then end up missing so much that’s right there under our noses.

Interview: Jeff Prouty

Jeff Prouty

Prouty is founder and chairman of Minneapolis-based The Prouty Project. He and his associates work with boards of directors and senior management teams from around the world, ranging from a huge Germany-based not-for-profit to a husband/wife team with their dream scribbled on a napkin. Once a year, Prouty and his associates take clients and business associates on a “STRETCH Expedition” to stretch them physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally. In previous years, for example, there were expeditions to the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro (in 1999) and to helping rebuild Weligama after the tsunami disaster (in 2006). In March (in 2008), the STRETCH team visited India, to better understand how microfinancing can help eliminate poverty.

In 2010 (June 17-26), the STRETCH team will be involved with medical clinic construction in the Amazonian village called Esperanza, teaming up with Jodi Nelson of Play it Forward and Angels of Amazon to participate in a construction project that will improve the medical facilities available to the people of the village of Esperanza (“hope”). The group will be staying at Tahuayo Lodge, voted one of the ten best wilderness lodges in the world by Outside Magazine. Prouty’s ultimate goal is to help as many CEOs as possible to build great companies and great lives.

Morris: You founded The Prouty Project in 1987. What was its original mission and to what extent (if any) has its mission changed since then?

Prouty: From our earliest days, we’ve had a quote on the wall from Oliver Wendell Holmes: “A mind stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” We’ve always been about “stretching our clients and ourselves, every day.” As our business has grown, we’re putting more time into helping clients build great businesses and build great lives. If we can help leaders stretch themselves mentally, physically, spiritually and emotionally, good things will happen.

Morris: In Good to Great, Jim Collins encourages companies to pursue what he characterizes as Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs). Are they what you call “Stretch” goals?

Prouty: Whenever I think of BHAGs, I think of goals that will take 10-30 years to achieve. A stretch goal could be as simple as “running your first marathon” to “growing EBITDA% from 10% to 18%.” To achieve a BHAG, you’d have to accomplish a lot of stretch goals along the way. For instance, we are working with a publicly-traded company on the east coast to help them double their EBITDA percentage over the next 10 years. The “stretch” for them will be changing their corporate culture, setting bigger goals, and raising the level of accountability. As one of the folks on their senior team said, “Our previous CEO rode a John Deere tractor in his spare time, our new CEO races Porsches in his spare time. Get ready for some exciting change.” They’re prepared to stretch.

Morris: In your opinion, why are so many people unwilling and/or unable to “stretch” themselves?

Prouty: It takes courage and, in many cases, a lot of hard work. It’s easy to just keep leading the comfortable life. I also think there are many folks who would “stretch” more if they had someone to join and/or support them in the challenge. A friend, mentor, boss, or coach—someone to nudge, cajole, motivate and listen along the way.

A great, great column — by Pulitzer winner Kathleen Parker about her beloved teacher

This is a great, great column – by Kathleen Parker, this year’s Pulitzer winner, about her beloved teacher, James Gasque.  Stop what you are doing now, and read it.  You will not be sorry!

Read it here.

“What I Read” – A Great Collection (with my own included)

Here is a great collection of articles.  All entitled “What I Read,” The AtlanticWire asks opinion leaders and writers what they read.  I don’t know how I missed this earlier.  I first read the article yesterday, with Terry Gross of Fresh Air/NPR writing about her reading habits.  But I have put the complete list (up through the Terry Gross piece) here for you to check out.  You can see that it represents a cross-section politically, and includes columnists and authors and others.  Enjoy.

By the way, what do I read?  Here is a partial list of what I read.  Every morning, I “read” (check out, peruse, read some carefully) Slate.com, The Huffington Post, Daily Kos (especially their daily abbreviated pundit roundup), the New York Times.  Through the day, I read Andrew Sullivan (The Daily Dish), Memeorandum, Larry James Urban Daily, Daily Beast, other parts of the Atlantic site, D Magazine’s FrontBurner blog.  I check in on Seth Godin’s blog, Guy Kawasaki’s blog, and quite a few others, throughout the week.  I am always reading a business book, and a book on poverty or social justice (for the next First Friday Book Synopsis and the Urban Engagement Book Club), other business books, and general non-fiction.  I don’t read much fiction, although I do re-read all of Nero Wolfe about once every three or four years.  And, of course, other things that I “find” in all that I am reading…  And, I read the other writers on our blogging team on this blog.  And, I check in every now and then on sites like Malcolm Gladwell (Gladwell.com), Atul Gawande, and quite a few others I have bookmarked.

I generally read a famous/timeless speech or two a week.  I have a number of books of compilations of speeches, and I really enjoy this practice.

Here’s the list, so far:
Terry Gross: What I Read

David Frum: What I Read (4/12)

David Brooks: What I Read (4/7)

John Dickerson: What I Read (4/5)

Terry McMillan: What I Read (4/1)

Tucker Carlson: What I Read (3/24

Tyler Cowen: What I Read (3/22)

Frank Rich: What I Read (3/17)

Andrew Breitbart: What I Read (3/15)

Anna Quindlen: What I Read (3/10)

Susan Orlean: What I Read (3/8)

Felix Salmon: What I Read (3/3)

Michael Lewis: What I Read (3/2)

Steve Coll: What I Read (2/24)

Nicholas Lemann: What I Read (2/22)

James Gibney: What I Read (2/9)

Ta-Nehisi Coates: What I Read (2/5)

Jeffrey Goldberg: What I Read (2/4)

Marc Ambinder: What I Read (2/2)

What we can learn from great coaches

Recently, just for the fun of it, I drew up a list of those I consider to be the finest coaches of athletic teams. They include (in alpha order) Arnold (Red) Auerbach, Dan Gable, Mike Krzyzewski, Tom Landry, Vince Lombardi, Joe Paterno, Pat Summitt, Bill Walsh, and John Wooden. Then I asked myself, “What do they share in common?”

1. They are results-driven. Great coaches focus on getting the results they want on the practice field, in meetings, and during pre-season. Bill Walsh wrote a book whose title sums it up very well: The Score Takes Care of Itself.

2. They are avid students. The process begins when they begin to play a sport. They are determined to increase their knowledge and improve their skills.

3. They are passionate teachers. With very few exceptions, great coaches insist that they are happiest during practices. At Penn State, Coach Paterno broke an ankle while demonstrating the proper way to block. He was 78 at the time.

4. They are fierce but principled competitors. Great coaches compete against themselves. To them, “losers” are those who give less than a best effort, waste time, whine and complain, blame others, cut corners, disrespect opponents, etc.

5. They are brilliant innovators. Great coaches are obsessed with constant improvement, theirs and others’, with regard to offensive and defensive strategies, practice and off-season schedules, equipment, and even nutrition.

6. They are obsessed with significant details. Throughout his Hall of Fame coaching career, from the first season at a small high school in Indiana until his last NCAA championship season at U.C.L.A., Wooden devoted all of the first practice session each year to explaining and demonstrating how to put on a pair of wool socks. Not one of his school and college players ever had a problem with blisters.

7. They “grow” other great coaches. All great coaches can be viewed as a “tree” whose “branches” are coaches who had been their assistants. A total of 24 head coaches in the NFL were an assistant coach on Walsh’s staff at one time, and many of them led teams to victory in the Super Bowl (e.g. Brian Billick, Jon Gruden, Mike Holmgren, George Seifert, and Mike Shanahan).

Those in business who have direct reports entrusted to their care and supervision would be well-advised to study the great sports coaches. The most highly-admired CEOs have…and continue to do so.

Interview: Scott Belsky

Scott Belsky

Belsky believes that the greatest breakthroughs across all industries are a result of creative people and teams that are especially productive. As such, he has committed his professional life to help organize creative individuals, teams, and networks. He is the founder and CEO of Behance, a company that develops products and services to organize the creative world. He is also the author of Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision & Reality, published by Portfolio/The Penguin Group in 2010. Behance’s first product, the Behance Network, has become
the leading online platform for creative professionals. The Network receives more than four million visitors every month and has become one of the most efficient platforms for creative professionals to broadcast their work to top agencies, fans, peers, and recruiters. In 2008, Behance launched Action Method, a revolutionary “action management” system that has replaced traditional project management practices throughout the creative professional world and beyond.

Prior to founding Behance, Belsky helped grow the Pine Street Leadership Development Initiative at Goldman, Sachs & Co. He is also the founder and Chair of an international leadership development network and serves on the Board of Cornell University’s Entrepreneurship Program. Belsky’s education is in design, environmental economics, and business. He attended Cornell University as an undergraduate and received his MBA from Harvard Business School. He also hopes to increase “productive creativity” in the nonprofit world through his involvement on various nonprofit and foundation boards and currently serves as the Chairman of the Board of Reboot and is a Director for the Kaplan Foundation. He lives and works in New York City.

Morris: In recent years, you have conducted dozens of structured interviews of, and have been engaged in hundreds of conversations with, some of the world’s most creative people as well as with those who are widely recognized as authorities on creativity. Is there agreement (or at least a consensus of opinion) on what creativity is and does as opposed to what innovation is and does?

Belsky: My focus has actually been on those that routinely execute their ideas. I believe that the quality of the idea (unfortunately) has very little to do with whether or not the idea is made to happen. Over the course of building Behance and writing Making Things Happen, I focused on the most productive people and teams in the creative world. I wanted to find the anomalies – those that make their ideas time and time again. The people I met were living examples of WHY organization and leadership skills are a competitive advantage in the creative world. So, I would say that there was consensus of opinion that its all about the execution. Even the legendary creative minds that I met – artists and otherwise – admitted this.

Morris: When and why did you found Behance?

Belsky: I was most inspired by a sense of frustration. There is so much discussion in the creative world about inspiration and creativity, but very little discussion about organization and execution. The stuff that makes our lives interesting – the art, the design, and all of the original content – is all created by the creative professional community. But, unfortunately, creatives in particular face unique obstacles when it comes to actually making their ideas happen.

We created Behance with a very specific mission: To organize the creative world. We are not trying to increase creativity. On the contrary, we are trying to help creative leaders harness their own creativity and actually make ideas happen.

Morris: Since then, to what extent has its original mission changed?

Belsky: Actually very little. We have begun to use additional mediums to do it, but our original mission “to organize and empower the creative world to make ideas happen” still rings true and governs everything that we do.

Morris: My own opinion is that the most valuable business lessons are also the most valuable life lessons. For example, asking the right questions, focusing on what is most important, and nourishing mutual respect and trust in relationships. Do you agree with me that the same principles of creativity that are most effective at work are also most effective in one’s personal life?

Belsky: Yes, I agree. I think that creative projects are creative projects – regardless of whether they are at work or at home. And, when it comes to finishing creative projects, we face a common set of obstacles across the board.
Morris: What are the Behance Network and its primary mission?

Belsky: Our goals with the Behance Network were to maximize exposure and to help organize the creative world’s work. Tapping the forces of community is critical to making ideas happen. The Network was designed to facilitate this. When we interview some of the world’s leading recruiters and agencies, they complain about typical “portfolio sites” and how difficult it is to organize and navigate creative talent. We developed Behance.net to be a neutral, powerful platform that organizes creative work based on location, field, and – to some degree – quality. Behance.net was NOT designed to be a “social network.” We don’t use the word “friends” in Behance. Instead, the platform is designed to push careers forward. When you add a new project to your portfolio, it is automatically displayed in any other network you are a part of (such as AIGA or MTV) as well as other galleries, circles, and collections across the web. You maintain complete control and ownership of your work, you select privacy and copyright settings, and you are always associated with your content.

Morris: Now please focus on your brilliant book, Making Ideas Happen. As I began to read it, I was immediately reminded of two observations, the first by Thomas Edison: “Vision without execution is hallucination.” Years later, Peter Drucker observed, “There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.” There seems to be no shortage of ideas in today’s business world. The challenge is to select the best of them and then execute them effectively. Why do most people fail that challenge?

Belsky: You’re quite right, there is no shortage of ideas. In fact, the creative class is thriving. The conundrum is that the people with the most ideas inherently face the greatest obstacles to making them happen. Why? Because the creative person’s essence is to think of new ideas at the expense of completing old ones. I call it “idea-to-idea syndrome.” Idea generation can easily become an addiction that we turn to during the doldrums of project management. As a result, most ideas never happen. There are more half-written novels in the world than there are novels. The mechanics of execution are not romantic, but they transform vision into reality. They are worthy of discussion!