Does it matter where you went to school?

Here is an article written by Margaret Heffernan for CBS MoneyWatch, the CBS Interactive Business Network. To check out an abundance of valuable resources and obtain a free subscription to one or more of the website’s newsletters, please click here.

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(MoneyWatch) Every year, Amazon (AMZN) hires hundreds of MBA graduates. Where they come from, they say, doesn’t matter as much as the way they think. According to Jennifer Boden, who runs their university programs, Amazon wants entrepreneurial thinkers who are good at using data to drive decisions and get new products to market fast.

She said that where you went to school didn’t really matter and that experience counted for more. I’m not entirely sure I believe this. The target schools she mentioned — Carnegie Mellon, Wharton, Michigan — are a good deal more famous for their quantitative style than their entrepreneurial flair. And it’s hard to imagine a true entrepreneur eager to join a company rapidly becoming famous for treating its low-level employees like robots.

But she makes a good point in arguing that jobseekers can expect too much from their school’s name or even from their degree. Thinking that the institution’s reputation will stand in for your own is always a mistake. I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve known (and sometimes hired) for whom getting into a big name school was pretty much the biggest achievement of their lives. They hoped to ride on that — and many did. But their work was never interesting and their leadership didn’t inspire.

We are rapidly approaching a moment in which the number of candidates with great degrees from great schools are plentiful — even over-supplied. What makes the difference isn’t your ability to get into these places or even to emerge with a decent degree. What matters is who you are and what you’ve achieved outside of the warm embrace of an institution. The true test of a great employee isn’t their MBA or their quantitative skills but their ability to see what is needed — in the company, in the market — without being told.

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Margaret Heffernan has been CEO of five businesses in the United States and United Kingdom. A speaker and writer, her most recent book, Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril, was shortlisted for the Financial Times Best Business Book 2011. Visit her on http://www.mheffernan.com/. To read Margaret’s articles for CBS MoneyWatch, please click here.

To read my interview of her, please click here.

Laura Vanderkam on “What great coaches do — and leaders should, too”

Here is an article written by Laura Vanderkam for CBS MoneyWatch, the CBS Interactive Business Network. To check out an abundance of valuable resources and obtain a free subscription to one or more of the website’s newsletters, please click here.

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(MoneyWatch) You and your team pitched a project to a potential client. She shot it down. Everyone’s feeling a little sore about it. So the last thing you want to do is relive that meeting play by play, right?

That’s human nature. But if you have a tendency to tell everyone to just move on, not to worry and that you’ll do better next time, you could be missing a huge opportunity.

In the sports world, coaches often make their teams watch footage of past games. They study what plays worked — and which could work better with some tweaking. They figure out vulnerabilities. This post-game analysis is key to improving. It’s expected as part of practice.

I’ve written before of how few people practice in work contexts, which is a shame, because practice is one of the things the most successful people do at work, daily if they can. If one person is actively trying to get better at her job, and another is not, it’s not hard to guess who will eventually do the job better.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Laura Vanderkam, a Philadelphia area journalist, is the author of 168 Hours and All the Money in the World: What the Happiest People Know About Getting and Spending. To check out all articles by Laura Vanderkam on CBS MoneyWatch, please click here.

Why you should avoid charismatic leaders

Here is an article written by Margaret Heffernan for CBS MoneyWatch, the CBS Interactive Business Network. To check out an abundance of valuable resources and obtain a free subscription to one or more of the website’s newsletters, please click here.

(MoneyWatch) I’ve written about the perils of narcissistic leaders. They’re dangerous because they want the applause that ensues after big dramatic gestures and that inclines them to heroic strategies that make their companies far more volatile. But what about charismatic leaders — doesn’t every company want to find its own Steve Jobs?

No, at least not according to Christian Stadler, writing in MIT Sloan Management Review. I like Stadler’s work because, as you might expect of a European, his sense of history is more than a week long and he’s interested in the patterns and lessons it can offer. Surveying 100 years of European business leaders, he found that leaders of high-performing companies were not charismatic — at least not as charismatic as the leaders of companies that did worse. He argues that the problem with charisma is that you can persuade just about anyone to do anything — even when it’s crazy.

Poster child for the perils of charisma is Michael Frenzel, Chief Executive of TUI AG, Europe’s largest travel agency. When he got the top job, the company main business lay in commodities and steel. But this was too boring for Frenzel who divested himself of those “old economy” businesses and instead went pell-mell into the travel business. The timing was wrong, the strategy was flawed and in 15 years, TUI shares lost almost 60 percent of their value.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Margaret Heffernan has been CEO of five businesses in the United States and United Kingdom. A speaker and writer, her most recent book Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril was shortlisted for the Financial Times Best Business Book 2011. Visit her on www.MHeffernan.com. You may also wish to check out another of Margaret’s articles, How to survive a narcissistic leader by clicking here.

The value of sportsmanship in business

Here is an article written by Michael Hess for CBS MoneyWatch, the CBS Interactive Business Network. To check out an abundance of valuable resources and obtain a free subscription to one or more of the website’s newsletters, please click here.

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(MoneyWatch) Just like basketball, football, tennis, or track and field, business is a competition. And competition can either be mean and dirty, or classy and dignified. It’s probably no surprise that I’m a fan of the latter. Call me old-fashioned, but I think there is a lot to be said — and gained — from good sportsmanship in our professional lives.

To be sure, the sports world has had its share of scandal and shame lately — from doping to game fixing — but there have also been some inspirational moments. Most recently I saw an incredibly moving story about a basketball player who purposely passed the ball to a developmentally disabled player on the opposing team to give him a shot that was more important than the outcome of the game. And another about a runner who helped a deserving competitor beat him to the finish line rather than exploit a mistake.

I’ve also been delighted to see the good sportsmanship displayed by kids as my own children get more involved in athletics. Whether it’s seeing players helping each other up on the football field or wrestling mat, or swimmers waiting and cheering for a struggling competitor to finish, seeing young people behave this way is heartening and inspirational.

“Business is brutal.” “Kill or be killed.” “Take no prisoners”… yeah, yeah, I get all that high-testosterone stuff. I’m not naive or polyannish about having to play to win in business.

But there are plenty of examples of successful companies that still manage to practice good, admirable sportsmanship. Zappos, my go-to favorite for so many business examples, will actively help a customer find a product at a competitor if they don’t have it (disclosure: I do business with Zappos, but I loved them long before that). At the risk of horn-tooting, at my company we do the same thing; and more often than not, the customers we send into the arms of another either come back to us for something later, or tell everyone they know about our service.

In 2011, the leading independent photo/electronics retailer (yes, there is such a thing) in our town rescued a smaller competitor that was about to close its doors. Of course it wasn’t entirely altruistic — there was some business benefit to acquiring them. But the bigger company, which has prospered for over 100 years, certainly would have done just fine without it; as the only other game in town, the customers would have migrated to them anyway. But the owner was genuinely interested in saving a long-time friendly rival and a bunch of jobs. And that attitude alone was very good for business.

There are many ways you can show good sportsmanship in business, none of which will hurt your competitiveness (in fact most will help). Here are just a few [two of five]:

Sell positively: There are few things I dislike more than the negative sales pitch. If your best sales tactic is to slam your competitor rather than tout your own merits, there is a problem. In fact, praising (or at least respecting) your competition while proudly showing off your own stuff can be much more effective — and certainly a hell of a lot classier.

Don’t win just to beat the other guy: If properly channeled, your competitive energy should only be used to benefit your company, not hurt another. How many times have companies lost money purely to undercut a rival and win what may be a one-time sale? Even though there will be a winner and loser in any competition, truly winning in business — especially over the long haul — is not necessarily the same as just making someone else lose.

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Michael Hess is founder and CEO of Skooba Design. He is also a public speaker and advisor, obsessed with customer service, communication, and culture. Read the philosophies that make Michael tick here, and visit his website and new Facebook page for information on speaking engagements and more. To check out all of his articles for CBS MoneyWatch , please click here.

Why your “to-do” list doesn’t work

Photo Credit: Flickr user Banalities

Here is an article written by Dave Johnson for CBS MoneyWatch, the CBS Interactive Business Network. To check out an abundance of valuable resources and obtain a free subscription to one or more of the website’s newsletters, please click here

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(MoneyWatch) COMMENTARY If you’re like most folks, you have some sort of “to-do” list at work. And since you’re not an anarchist, you probably assign each task some sort of priority and tackle the workload in order. “Getting Things Done” guru David Allen — someone who it’s fair to say is a master of to-do lists — says that approach sets you up for failure.

At the very least, it’s not the most efficient way to work. According to Allen in the GTD Times, a typical to-do list doesn’t account for the way priorities can shift rapidly through the work day. They also don’t consider human factors, like what time of day you are most productive and the fact that no matter how many “red bangs” you put next to a work item, you probably won’t tackle it at 5 p.m. on a Friday.

Says Allen, “On a day-to-day, moment-to-moment basis, there is no algorithm or formula that will last very long or is really worth trying to nail down in some written or coded system.”

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Dave Johnson, who worked for Microsoft from February 2004 to April 2012, has written three dozen books, including the best-selling How to Do Everything with Your Digital Camera, and covered technology for a long list of magazines that include PC World and Wired.

5 signs you’re a lousy boss

Photo Credit: Flickr user pboyd04

Here is a brief excerpt from an article written by Suzanne Lucas for CBS MoneyWatch, the CBS Interactive Business Network. To check out an abundance of valuable resources and obtain a free subscription to one or more of the website’s newsletters, please click here.

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(Money Watch) COMMENTARY Everyone has horror stories about bad bosses. Then when we become the boss, we tend to think that we’re only doing what is necessary and, by the way, that employees cause all the problems.

Thing is, part of a manager’s job is to handle bad employees; an employee shouldn’t have to handle a bad boss. So how do you know if you are one? Here are [two of] five signs that you’re failing in your job as a manager.

1. Your employees lie to you. This may sound like a bad employee problem, but why do they need to lie to you? Do you make unreasonable demands? Punish people excessively for mistakes? Interrogate them over why they need time off? These things all create a culture where your employees feel the only way they can get what they need is to lie. A culture of openness and understanding makes for employees who will speak honestly with you.

2. No other managers want to poach your employees. A good manager develops good employees. Other managers want good employees. If you are developing good employees, your peers will express interest in working with them. If you spend more time trying to get rid of bad employees than trying to keep your good ones, the problem may be with you.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Suzanne Lucas spent 10 years in corporate Human Resources. She’s hired, fired, and analyzed the numbers for several major companies. She founded the Carnival of HR, a bi-weekly gathering of HR blogs, and her writings have been used in HR certification and management training courses across the country.

To read her other articles, please click here.

 

 

 

5 timeless leadership lessons

Image courtesy of Flickr user MAMJODH

Here is a brief excerpt from an article written by Steve Tobak for CBS MoneyWatch, the CBS Interactive Business Network. To check out an abundance of valuable resources and obtain a free subscription to one or more of the website’s newsletters, please click here.

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(MoneyWatch) COMMENTARY Forget all the latest leadership concepts and fads. Forget all the platitudes and parables, the laundry lists of attributes and qualities. Forget all the executive coaches, mentors, researchers, and inspirational gurus. Forget all the books and blogs.

I’ve got something you can read in less than an hour that will teach you everything you need to know about leadership. No, I’m not kidding.

Of course, you can’t just read it and walk away a great leader. That’s not how it works. What you do with it is entirely up to you. But everything you need to know is there.

I came upon this little treasure in 1995. I had just become vice president of marketing for a well-known public technology company, which was terrifying because it was a huge opportunity, I’d never done that sort of thing before, and I definitely didn’t want to screw it up.

Hanging around the business book section of a large used bookstore searching desperately for some inspiration, a little paperback caught my attention. Its title is The Tao of Leadership: Leadership Strategies for a New Age, by John Heider.

The beat-up book, written in 1985, set me back $2.40. I know that because the yellowed receipt — now a bookmark — is still in it. I’ve read it so many times, its 81 lessons are mostly bound with scotch tape. This humble little book changed my entire perspective on management and leadership.

Here are five timeless lessons I’ve excerpted. There’s a revelation or two, but there’s nothing like reading Heider’s book all the way through.

[Here is the first "timeless lesson"]

Knowing What Is Happening

•  When you cannot see what is happening in a group, do not stare harder. Relax and look gently with your inner eye.
•  When you do not understand what a person is saying, do not grasp for every word. Give up your efforts. Become silent inside and listen with your deepest self.
•  When you are puzzled by what you see or hear, do not strive to figure things out. Stand back for a moment and become calm. When a person is calm, complex events appear simple.
•  The more you can let go of trying, and the more open and receptive you become, the more easily you will know what is happening.
•  Stay in the present. The present is more available than either memories of the past or fantasies of the future.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

To read Steve’s other articles, please click here.

Steve Tobak is a consultant and former high-tech senior executive. He’s managing partner of Invisor Consulting, a management consulting and business strategy firm. Contact Steve, follow him on Facebook, or connect on LinkedIn.

10 Business and Leadership Lessons from Niccolò Machiavelli

Here is an article written by Steve Tobak for CBS MoneyWatch, the CBS Interactive Business Network. To check out an abundance of valuable resources and obtain a free subscription to one or more of the website’s newsletters, please click here.
Image courtesy of Flickr user Robert Scarth

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Few historical figures are as divisive and polarizing as Niccolò Machiavelli. The fact that this Renaissance philosophers works date back 500 years hasn’t blunted its impact or controversy one bit.

Some view him as the father of modern materialism, inspiring people to do or say anything to achieve personal gain, i.e. the ends justify the means. Indeed, the word Machiavellian – derived from his most famous work, The Prince – has come to mean cunning, deceit, and manipulation.

Others, however, see him as the world’s first great realist and a positive influence on modern politics and capitalism. Some even think Machiavelli was the first to apply empirical scientific methods to human behavior by making innovative generalizations based on experience, observation, and history.

Being a realist – much like Machiavelli – I’m not inclined to weigh in on the man’s overall affect on the world, good or bad. Regardless, many of his ideas for achieving long-term political success and power translate extraordinarily well into the current business climate of intense global competition.

Moreover, I never realized how closely my own ideas on business, leadership, and entrepreneurial culture resonated with his until I read this post by author Mark Harrison. It turns out that I’ve more or less been quoting the guy for years without even realizing it. Coincidence? Hmm.

In any case, he predates us all by a few centuries, which makes these 10 Business and Leadership Lessons from Machiavelli remarkable, to say the least:

[Here are the first three.]

•   “Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.” As I wrote just the other day,” Leaders must learn to adapt in a fast-changing world to avoid corporate or political disaster.” That is, after all, why most companies fail.

•   “Entrepreneurs are simply those who understand that there is little difference between obstacle and opportunity and are able to turn both to their advantage.” An entrepreneur’s first and most important goal is to find a unique and innovative solution that solves a big customer or market problem. Without obstacles, there are no opportunities. And those same obstacles provide barriers to competitors, down the road.
    
•   “Never was anything great achieved without danger.” I’ve often said that willingness to take risks is a critical success factor. In Irreverent Career Advice for Up-and-Comers, I encourage young folks to, “Take big risks — now!” since, “It gets much harder as you get older and begin to ‘acquire’ things you don’t want to risk losing.”

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To read the complete article, please click here.

To read Steve’s other articles, please click here.

Steve Tobak is a consultant and former high-tech senior executive. He’s managing partner of Invisor Consulting, a management consulting and business strategy firm. Contact Steve, follow him on Facebook, or connect on LinkedIn

10 behaviors of the hyper-successful

Image courtesy of Flickr user hypo.physe

Here is an article written by Michael Hess for CBS MoneyWatch, the CBS Interactive Business Network. To check out an abundance of valuable resources and obtain a free subscription to one or more of the website’s newsletters, please click here.

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(MoneyWatch) COMMENTARY Money and its material manifestations are the most typical measures of a person’s professional success, but they’re not always telling or even accurate: We all know it’s possible to buy nice things without being financially successful (debt is an unfortunately common substitute for net worth). So I rarely make assumptions about a person’s business or other financial accomplishments based on clothes, cars, boats or houses.

Knowing and dealing with many highly successful people, I’ve found that there are behaviors and characteristics that are much less superficial and more telling than just acquiring status symbols. In my observation of ultra-high achievers, the more professionally successful they are:

•  The less stuff they carry: The most successful people I know never carry laptops, briefcases or much of anything else, other than (usually two) phones.

•  The fewer calls they answer or return: Even with those two phones, top dogs rarely return calls that aren’t critical to their own business or personal needs.

•  The harder they are to reach by anyone or any means.

[These are the first three of ten defining characteristics of the "hyper-successful."

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But there is an important central theme that’s valuable to all of us, regardless of where we are on the ladder, whether we admire these behaviors or are put off by them, or whether the list accurately reflects our own style or aspirations. No matter what combination of these characteristics the Masters of the Universe might possess, the bottom line is the same: Without exception, the people at the very top of the business ladder don’t waste time.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Michael Hess is founder and CEO of Skooba Design, and also serves as an advisor to other entrepreneurs. He is “obsessed to the point of insanity” with customer service. Read the philosophies that make Michael and Skooba Design tick by clicking here.

To read all of his articles, please click here.

How to Get the Best Results from Remote Brainstorming

Here is an excerpt from an article written by Wayne Turmel for CBS MoneyWatch, The CBS Interactive Business Network. To read the complete article, check out an abundance of valuable resources and obtain a free subscription to one or more of its newsletters, please click here.

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One thing you always hear about remote teams is how hard it is to generate good ideas and brainstorm when you work remotely. I disagree. It’s pretty easy to brainstorm remotely. What’s really tough is actually turning the results of that brainstorm into the best solution to whatever problem you’re trying to solve.

I’ve seen groups reach great answers with a conference call and some scratch paper. Other teams have the latest brainstorming tools and video conferencing gimmicks and still couldn’t solve the TV Guide crossword puzzle. The problem isn’t getting people to contribute ideas, necessarily, it’s putting the process in place to get the best possible input.

Here are some of the ground rules and processes to establish if you want to get the best input and (more importantly) output from your team’s collective wisdom:

Does everyone understand the problem to be solved or desired outcome? Great ideas are fun to generate, but what is it you’re trying accomplish? Solving a problem for your team that IT can’t support won’t get the job done any easier. Before generating lots of ideas establish what the parameters of a good solution are. Make sure people understand (and question) what the gatekeepers are.  The quality of your ideas will go up. Also, do they understand how you’re going to make a final decision? will it be a simple majority vote? Will you be making a recommendation to a decision making committee? Many people won’t contribute if they don’t think their ideas will be discounted by others.

What’s the time frame for making a final decision–really? Just because you kick up a lot of dust in a meeting, doesn’t mean those are the best ideas you can come up with. A lot of teams find that by giving themselves time to think about, fine tune, and build on ideas that come up in the actual brain-storm session they do better work. Here’s where the ability to post ideas to a shared file or internal blog can be very helpful. Sometimes you want to sleep on an idea before acting. It’s also a great way to get input from those quiet, thoughtful types who don’t jump up and down to speak on conference calls.

What tools do you have at  your disposal and how will you use them? Brainstorming requires visually looking at the input (it helps kickstart other ideas and tangential concepts) as well as getting input both verbally and in writing. There are plenty of tools like Mindjet, Mindmeister, Brainreactions, Grouputer and many, many others. but don’t forget things like the chat feature and white board in your webmeeting platform. The best tool is your own ears. Listen not just to what people say, but how they say it. Are they sure that’s what they want to say? Is there something else they want to add? Leaders have to facilitate the discussion, not just transcribe what people say.

How will you get input and from whom? One of the best ways to get results is to involve the right people in the decision process. If everyone comes fromthe same team, or the same discipline, you’re going to get ideas that sound a lot the same as the old ones. Don’t be afraid to invite people who might have a stake in the outcome to participate early. If you have people on the team whose first language isn’t English, consider taking ideas both in writing as well as verbally. Sometimes these folks aren’t the first ones to pipe up in a meeting. Don’t let a strong accent or  uncertainty about their language skills be the reason you miss out on great ideas.

What’s going on with your team that might help or hinder your efforts? Are all your team members playing nicely together? Will people in the remote offices give you their best efforts if they feel they’ll only be overruled by the bunch of lunatics at the Home Office? Listen closely to who is contributing–and who isn’t. Is one group or individual cutting others off at the knees or are people really giving a fair hearing to all ideas. If you’re not aware of the team dynamics, you can seriously cripple your group’s efforts and limit the quality of the results.

What’s important to remember, is that technology is merely the medium through which the information flows. Setting the right parameters, encouraging input and truly facilitating the discussion (as opposed to merely playing host and emcee) is the real work of brainstorming and leading your team to great decisions and problem solving.

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Wayne Turmel is obsessed with helping organizations and their managers communicate better, even across cyberspace. He’s a writer, a speaker, the president of Greatwebmeetings.com, and the host of one of the world’s most successful business podcasts, The Cranky Middle Manager Show, where he helps listeners worldwide deal with the million little challenges and indignities of being a modern manager. His book 6 Weeks to a Great Webinar: Generate Leads and Tell Your Story to the World is the leading web presentation book on Amazon.com. Follow him on Twitter @greatwebmeeting.