Dr. Janice
Are Your Customers on Your Team?
For the start up, every person and every advisor you need to hire represents a critical commitment of your company’s available time and cash. In essence, you trade those resources for the knowledge and skill (intellectual assets), contacts (social capital), and the pure energy, ideas, and actions you expect that person to bring to your budding organization.
But what if you could get some of same resources without having to give up any of your precious start-up funds?
You can – if you put your customers – and those who you’d like to have as customers – on your team! Here are three ways to start:
1. Stop thinking of customers as ‘them’. Customers are stakeholders who can help you move and shape your vision. Try posing a provocative question that will trigger thoughtful responses. For instance, my company created a completely new way to predict how people perform in teams–but we were struggling to find a way to properly present it. So I started asking, ‘Why do people say they want team players, and then hire people who aren’t?’ Instant reaction! We not only got some great feedback, but some of our customers even went out and recruited other customers for us!
Why I Love Detroit
The economy has affected all of us, and Detroit, which has been hit harder than most, has been working on the solution harder than most. They’re fighting back by supporting entrepreneurship.
This is entrepreneurship in a nutshell: You identify a need; you create a solution; and then you either make money – or you start over. Henry Ford said, “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” I think I got a little more intelligent with each of my failures. At least I stopped doing what didn’t work. And so has Detroit.
Venture capital research says that 60% of the blame for investment failures lies not in the business plan or the IP or the strategy or even the economy. It lies in people’s failure to work together effectively.
Business is a team sport. And Detroit is going to be playing in the majors because they’ve come together to build Tech Town, the ballpark for entrepreneurial farm teams – the ones that are destined to be the players of the future. They’ll put Detroit back on the cover of Time, but this time instead of the ‘tragedy’ of Detroit, it will be about triumph.
The Falconi Test
You may be quite adept at metrics, measurements, and even Role-Based Assessment, but if you haven’t used the Falconi Test, read on.
I got a call today from Ken Krauss, VP of Operations for US Axle, a very cool manufacturing company about an hour outside Philadelphia. They use Role-Based Assessment because it predicts how people will work on a team, but he was calling to ask if I knew of anything useful for measuring engineering skills.
It turns out that people who are coherent tend to be better judges of their own abilities, and are less likely to cover up for their shortcomings. (In fact, many people revel in the things they do badly and are happy to tell you, for instance, how they can never find anything on their desk.) So RBA is a good start.
Three Questions for Performance Management
Ask any manager about their least favorite tasks, and more than likely they’ll put ‘performance evaluations’ at or near the top of the list. Why? Lots of reasons - not the least of which is the “Gotcha!”: an assumption that you need to find something deficient in each staff member, and come up with a prescription to fix it, thereby improving performance. All too often, you’re going to find something that the person thinks they are doing very well (and they may be right), or something they have no interest in doing better. At worst, you’re expected to assign tasks or reassign job responsibilities to develop one person’s undesired ’something’, which may well be a task or a job that someone else on your team really enjoys (or would enjoy) doing!
SocialVibe
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May Wrap-Up
Sorry for this being the latest wrap-up ever.
May was a fun month for us. We rolled out a ton of new features: the ability to add YouTube videos and polls to comments, stats in your time zone, the VideoPress upgrade (with HD!), post by email, new stats charts, comment search, improved comment reply by email, and VideoPress.com.
A Family is a Team
My uncle Phil passed away late Monday night and today was his funeral. He was around 93 or 4 as far as I can calculate. As we gathered at the cemetery, it was eerily reminiscent of a virtual team team coming together for some face time. Some people see a lot of each other, some are only seen at the obligatory times of life transitions. And some stay in the shadows and are never seen.
Get Out of My Facebook!
If this blog had a subtitle, it would be The Intern Diaries: Day 1. They arrived today, our new flock of team members – one each for technology, operations, marketing, client services, and communications. Such a wealth of new energy!
Recognizing Women
Last week was a nice one for women in business. Xerox named Ursula Burns the successor to Anne Mulcahy, effective keeping the magic number of women CEOs of Fortune 500 companies on an even keel. This is no small thing for my generation, the ones who gathered in ‘consciousness raising’ groups and thought about how our sons and daughters lives should give them the same freedoms and responsibilities. We were not as happy when eBay’s Meg Whitman was replaced by a man. Back then in the early seventies we’d hoped by the new millennium it wouldn’t matter. We thought things would even out more than they have.
But enough of this whining, Dr. Janice. You got recognized this week too. Jayson Saba, a top analyst in the human capital industry, cited your company’s product in a LinkedIn discussion of assessments and integrity.
Love in the Time of Economic Indicators
Matt’s in love.
This may seem pretty mundane given that it’s Spring and a young man’s fancy is supposed to turn that way. But Matt is a first class Explorer. Traveling man for a lot of his professional life. Not exactly a bon vivant – too hardworking for that – but not a cocooner by nature.
Are You Taking Any Prisoners?
As a coda to the conference on women entrepreneurs, last night there was a gathering at the Innovation Center in Philadelphia to hear the results of a survey on the same subject. I was still on a roll from the previous day, which was a flashback to my first consciousness-raising group in the early 70’s.
ABC’s for First-Time Entrepreneurs
I’m thinking about tomorrow’s event at Fox School of Business (Temple University) – Where are the Women Entrepreneurs? I’ll be on the first panel and will doubtless be expected to come up with some sage advice for the young women there.
Since this is an academic environment, I’m thinking ABC, so here’s a sneak peek:
Coherent Conductors, Crabby Culture
The simplest definition of corporate culture I’ve ever seen was “the way we do things around here.” But corporate culture is anything but simple. It actually derives from the human infrastructure, the energy of the organization as determined by the predominating Roles and coherency of the people who get the work of the organization done.
Will That Be One Hump or Two?
Jason Zweig (aka WSJ’s Intelligent Investor) had a great article in the weekend Wall Street Journal. After giving examples of bad group decision making (as they say on Law & Order, ‘ripped from the headlines’) he concludes that the ‘wisdom of crowds’ is an illusion, that it depends on the competency of the group.
I’d like to add here that what he’s talking about is entirely measurable.
The Agony and the Ecstasy
Just when you think HR has learned that some assessments aren’t right for hiring, you open today’s Wall Street Journal and there’s an ad for a COO position being recruiting by a major search company that asks for a resume and “complete Myers-Briggs personality type test results.” Then they refer to a free online knockoff of the original, which the publishers of clearly state is not appropriate for hiring.
