Catching Negativity

My three-year-old son picked up a bad habit at school. When asked why he was behaving this way, he said “I don't know. Adrien does it!” And with that, he repeated the behavior again.Unbelievable. My impressionable, well-behaved boy was being corrupted by this child! It must be true that one apple spoils the whole bunch.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas!

Sun Tzu: The Art of War

If you haven't read Sun Tzu's The Art of War, you're missing a treat. When I was in college, one of my fraternity brothers had a habit of pulling out a Sun Tzu quote every time we had a speaking event (that's you if you're out there, Dan!).

UBS Dress

UBS, the swiss financial services firm, has recently made headlines with a dress code.  Today it's merely a five-office pilot program, but might be rolled out to all Switzerland if successful.  If you would like to read more, check out Huffington Post, Third Age, The Wall Street Journal, Styleite, or Clusterstock (a personal favorite).

The guide is consistent with UBS culture and brand, and many make sense for anyone wishing to present themselves well to others.  Here are a few paraphrased tips from the guide:

Walk the Walk, by Alan Deutschman

I just finished Walk the Walk, by Alan Deutschman. It's a short read, and could be finished in a night (I dragged it out over two myself).  The book came out in 2009, with great promotional fanfare. The blog was maintained throughout 2009 – looks like the final post was in January of 2010. Deutschman's theme is all in the full title: "Walk the Walk: the #1 Rule for Real Leaders."

Nontraditional talent

In a September post, "Just Like Me" I shared the following:

Quick note of warning about thin-slicing and making generalizations too much – it’s easy to miss a diamond in the rough.  In large part these theories are interpreted in a way that assumes more perfect information than reality affords.  Often, individuals don’t fully know who they are, or what they may be good at doing, or even identifying traits in other individuals and organizations.  From an employer perspective, recruiters are often looking for identical experience to fill a role when a better fit might be for someone making a developmental turn – or from a different industry that utilizes similar skills. 

This month's Talent Management magazine has an interesting article:  "Hiring Talent With Nontraditional Backgrounds."  It's a nice overview of the pitfalls and opportunities of hiring outside of what might be considered the "normal" pools of sourced talent.  Here's the kicker:  "

Individuals with diverse academic and vocational backgrounds can be a boon to business, but talent managers must do their homework to determine the proficiency and cultural fit of these 'outsiders.'"So how to find these people?

Communication Timing

Scenario 1:  Driving down the interstate on a recent evening, I notice a car in front of me with a right turn signal on. I assume the driver will be taking the next exit. We pass one exit, then another. Since the vehicle is in the right lane, I assume the driver has inadvertently left the signal on, perhaps after changing lanes. After several miles, the vehicle turns on the third exit as the signal is extinguished. It's almost a surprise to see the vehicle take the exit.

Scenario 2:  A new information system is being rolled out across an enterprise. In January the project team launches a robust communication strategy that touches all employees, sharing the benefits of the new system and what to expect. During the last week of the first quarter, a small group of key stakeholders receive a brief email stating a new go-live date in the third quarter. The communications to all employees continue with the same focus on the benefits of the new system and what to expect. In the fourth quarter the system goes live. Adoption of the new information system is abysmal. The project team discovers that several groups in the business have created their own siloed solutions, and there is no appetite to convert to the new system.

Both scenarios share a lesson about communications: timing is everything.

Vegas

Las Vegas happens to be a popular vacation destination for many of my colleagues. I haven't been myself, but from the anecdotal evidence there is an event series common to most of these trips. A certain amount of money is allocated as “fun money,” meaning it will be gambled away. At some point the person wins a big gamble at one of the many tables or machines. At that point, the person starts to feel lucky, and decides to continue gambling with the hope of repeating the big win. Over the course of the vacation, the remaining cash is spent, and the person comes home, having spent all of the “fun money,” and sometimes much more.

Just Like Me

Are we really all the same?

There is a great deal of interest in behavioral research over the past several years, and the energy around the topic hasn't waned. From pop psychology books to academic studies of leadership, there is renewed interest in what makes people behave the way they do. To research these differences, large samples are often taken from across several companies and disciplines – this ensures the data is statistically relevant to a larger population.

This practice alone surfaces an implicit assumption that shared behavioral traits exist within certain functions and organizations.

During a guided visit to a busy trading floor, the people there were described as pampered, very hardworking, and compensation driven. A recent stop at a financial advisory office struck me because every person dressed alike, and had shared vocal intonations, mannerisms, and gait. At a recent nonprofit gathering, the similarities in personality were absolutely striking. At a funeral I attended a few years ago, someone looked at my pin-striped suit, cuff-links, and polished shoes and said “oh, you must be a banker” - which I was.

Every day we are able to function more efficiently by thin-slicing parts of our world (nod to Gladwell's book Blink), ascribing characteristics to particular people and things based on our prior experiences with similar people and things. We know that, generally speaking, similar people have similar traits.

Think about these statements, one by one. Likely an image will form in your mind as to characteristics of the people.

• He's a boxer


• She's a ballerina


• He's an administrative assistant


• She's a president

Is it valid to think this way?

Eat That Frog, by Brian Tracy

I've just finished Brian Tracy's 2007 book, Eat That Frog, 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time, and found it to be a quick and interesting read.  Brian is a writer, speaker, and consultant focused on both personal and corporate development.

The major themes of the book:

• Determine what's really important to you, where you want to be/go/become in the future.  Do so from both career and personal perspectives


• Determine which tasks (frogs) are most important in achieving these goals


• Tackle the biggest, ugliest frog first, and finish that task all the way through.  To achieve this, carve the big task into smaller, bite-sized tasks (insert eating an elephant reference here :) ).  With that one complete, tackle the next hardest and finish it as well


• While doing these things, be sure to get plenty of sleep, time away from technology, and exercise at least 250 minutes per week

MarketWatch article:"What I've Learned From the Market Bubbles"

Quick hit:  check out "What I've Learned From the Market Bubbles" on MarketWatch.  Very quick read, and a nice macro view of a repeating bubble trend.

Lunch

It's almost always enjoyable to connect with someone over food or coffee.  I really like sitting down with someone over lunch, learning more about the individual's purpose, work, and what makes him or her tick. There are lots of reasons to connect with others, and each type of interaction has its own benefit:

• History. The other person's experience reminds me of things I've done before, maybe not as well, or maybe better


• The Now. We're experiencing the same pains or joys, and compare notes and next moves


• Virtual Travel. I get to take a vicarious journey to an situation or place I've never been (skydiving, anyone?).


• Improvement. We philosophize or have a mental jousting of sorts, sharpening one another with competing logic and new information

I have a very strong preference for the other person to select where we'll have lunch. Very.  There are specific reasons for this:

Better Speakers, Better Leaders, Better Communicators

I've just completed a term as president of my local Toastmasters club, Gateway to Speaking Excellence. During my year in office, the theme of the club was the same as the title of this blog post. When asked to describe Toastmasters, I say something like this:  “Toastmasters is a safe-to-succeed, safe-to-fail environment in which we practice becoming better speakers, better leaders, and better communicators every single day.”

Wondering about the cheesy name?

Insubordination and followership

Browsing Bloomberg the other day I found Rosabeth Moss Kanter's review of Obama's firing of General McChrystal from a management and leadership perspective.  It was a reprint from a Harvard Business Review blog.  HBR has a couple of other posts around the firing that might be interesting, including this one and this one.

Two energy giants

With all of the emotional charge swirling around BP as of late, I thought it might be interesting to look at a couple of other players in the energy markets.

BP is sitting at just under $30 a share and market capitalization just under $93B, about half of where it was pre-Gulf-oil-spill crisis.  The dividend has been canceled for the first three quarters of 2010, and it's being reported in Bloomberg and elsewhere that a cash injection could be coming in the next few days to stave off takeover bids.

The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell (2000)

Malcolm Gladwell, a writer at The New Yorker magazine, has become better known for his books than his articles in recent years.  He has written a string of bestsellers in the new millenium:  The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, and What the Dog Saw.  Gladwell fittingly started with The Tipping Point, a view into understanding change.

Are You Done?

A teacher, one of four teachers in an elementary school, is frustrated at work. This teacher, let's call her Carol, is one of four 4^th grade teachers, and is also the newest. She is finishing her first year in this school, and one of the other teachers (her name can be Sally) has been assigned as her mentor.

The three teachers keep their doors open, plan class activities together, and sit together at lunch.

Sally's approach to mentoring revealed itself early in the year. She introduced Carol to the others, and casually said that Carol could reach out with any questions. Sally and the other two teachers continued to plan joint class activities, and talk with one another. When Carol would join their group, she realized that the majority of their time was spent gossiping about other teachers – and Carol wondered if they talked about her when she wasn't there as well.

Carol's approach to teaching is a little different from the others. She closes her door, spends less time outside with her class, and uses teaching techniques that are slightly different from the other 4^th grade teachers – but in line with her pedagogy and prior teaching experience.

Near the end of the school year Carol confronted the other teachers about excluding her from planning the last event, something of a send-off for the students. The three other teachers had planned an event for their classes outside, and excluded Carol yet again. Words were exchanged.

The Selfishness of Good Deeds

Interesting article posted yesterday on FoxNews.com from Nancy Colasurdo called "The Selfishness of Good Deeds."  Very quick read - maybe 2 minutes?

Nancy writes, "What in the heck is so wrong with feeling good that you’re helping someone? When did anything that makes the “self” feel better become so frowned upon?"

She's touching on something we explore from time to time in discussing the value proposition - that give vs. get:  what you get is often not monetary.  Keith Ferrazzi touches on this as well in his writings, that there are several currencies with which we are able to exchange.

Span of Control

Recently we tackled an organizational design project. This particular project, like most, included determining the appropriate organizational shape.

Organizational shape is exactly what it sounds like – if you're looking at an org chart. People talk about flat organizations, tall organizations, etc. A flat organization is one that has a lot of direct reports for every manager, and a tall one has fewer. If you're staring at an org chart, you can see the difference in the “shape” of the chart, a rough triangle with the head of the organization at the top.

The number of direct reports a manager has is that manager's span of control.

Division of labor

If you've worked with a performance improvement consultant (nod to Geary Rummler, founder of the Performance Design Lab, may he rest in peace) or anyone in the organizational design field, you've probably taken a very close look at how work gets done in the organization.  Here's a term you might come across in one of those conversations:  division of labor.

Talent Assessments

Walking down the sidewalk this afternoon in a bustling city, I overheard a group of professionals having an interesting conversation. A woman in the group was talking about a personality assessment she was being required to take by her manager. She was appalled.

“Why do I have to take a personality assessment? It’s the work that I do that’s important, not how I do it!” She went on to share her concerns that this was probably the first step towards her termination, and that she’s been a top performer relative to her peers. There was a lot of nodding & sympathy all around.

Talent Assessments

Walking down the sidewalk this afternoon in a bustling city, I overheard a group of professionals having an interesting conversation. A woman in the group was talking about a personality assessment she was being required to take by her manager. She was appalled.

“Why do I have to take a personality assessment? It's the work that I do that's important, not how I do it!” She went on to share her concerns that this was probably the first step towards her termination, and that she's been a top performer relative to her peers. There was a lot of nodding & sympathy all around.

Small Ball

Small Ball

Recently an executive leading a newly integrated business said she was not interested in playing “small ball.”  On several occasions, almost always as a response to a question of why his initiatives were so big / controversial / sweeping, former President George W. Bush said he didn’t like to play “small ball.”

Small ball is a baseball term, a reference to getting several base hits, playing it safe, and marching players towards home plate in a methodical, low-risk fashion.  The idea is that you don’t swing for the fences, because you might miss and never get to base at all.  Better instead to swing to just get on base – not to score.

If you have 100 innings to play, a 100-run lead, and a strong pitching staff, it’s easy to play small ball.  There is time, and the law of averages is on your side.Small ball is playing not to lose.

Foreclosures: what you need to know (a re-post from 2007)

This is a piece I had published in December 2007.  As the pundits and reporters spin us out of the Great Recession, I thought it might be interesting to look back at my thoughts from a couple of years ago - as the pundits were spinning us into the Second Great Depression.  Enjoy. :)

-Bryan

Foreclosures: what you need to know

Bryan Seaford©2007

Things we learn by age two

Some friends of mine and I were talking the other day about human development, and how quickly we learn. As I thought more about how we develop – and when we develop, my thoughts turned to a time not too long ago when my son had just turned two years old. By that age, so much has already been learned.

Proxy voting: owning the firm - a follow up

Speaking of owning the firm, here's a note from Wealth-Bulletin.com, noting that "Investors are more careful with their own money."

You get the gist of the article in the first few sentences, so here's the rest:  firms with family ownership (as defined by Oddo, an investment firm in Paris), perform better than others. :)

Proxy voting: owning the firm

This is a very busy time of year for some, and not just because we’re close to the U.S. federal tax deadline.  Over the past three weeks or so, I’ve received at least 15 information packets through the mail from various firms.  The packets typically include an annual report, a 10-K SEC filing, and a card for voting the shares I hold in the firm.  On top of the mailed packets are the electronic proxies.  Because of the way my investments are structured, some firms send me multiple copies of material – always with a request to complete my proxy.

Instructional Design

Great and enduring leaders are also great and enduring teachers. In organizations, the function is usually called learning, training, development, or some combination of the three. In short, the idea is to equip the team with the knowledge to make both the team and the individual successful.

Delivering quality training is more than simply telling the team to “do what I do and you'll pick it up.” It requires a thoughtful design process that develops the content necessary to make the team successful.

On-boarding well

If you've ever been on a cruise, you know it takes more than a couple of minutes to actually make it from port to actually getting on the ship. It's a long process of the crew making sure you're supposed to be on the ship, you learning what you can and can't do while on board, finding your cabin, learning what do do in an emergency, and so on.

The process of introducing someone new to a team is called “on-boarding.” Sometimes it's written without the hyphen (“onboarding”), and I firmly believe the only reason the powers that be keep the hyphen is to avoid a spell check flag in office documents. :)

Compensation considerations: taxes & discretionary effort

During a very interesting exchange at a recent gathering of business professionals, a conversation around compensation and benefits practices of different firms arose.  We were talking about two specific firms that reward employees in different ways.

The first firm believed in cash compensation based on performance:  if you deliver X, then you receive Y.  Cash compensation is very high for this firm, but minimal additional benefits are paid to employees.

The second firm believed in lower cash compensation, but with a significant benefits package that included insurance, development opportunities, community involvement, and a generous retirement package.

Both firms are successful, and we pondered how the compensation philosophy affected the bottom line....

Dell and the margin

Computer maker Dell (DELL) released 2009 year end and quarterly earnings yesterday. Cash flow from operations increased 106% YOY (that's year-over-year) and the cash conversion cycle improved from -25 days last year to -36 days. On top of that, free cash flow and cash on hand are both on the rise.

So why did the stock price drop 6.65% right after the release?

Professional networking

After I earned my MBA, I joined the Career Services committee of the alumni association.  This year, our focus is to deliver seminars focused on two things:  professional networking and personal performance.  It's how we add value to both the school and alumni - creating a resource where individual can equip themselves for professional success.

The first component of that is called professional networking.  Interesting concept by itself, but we took some time to define it.  Here's what we came up with:

Professional networking is the creation and maintenance of relationships for mutual benefit and advancement, within the context of your own personal and professional goals.

Marketing Mix: 4P Model (a.k.a.,"Marketing 101")

In large swaths of the US, the word "marketer" is synonymous with "Business Development," "Sales," or "Advertising."  This is especially true in the SMB (small- and medium-sized business) space, where there is often one person or department wearing all of these hats at once.

At it's purest, the textbook definition is pretty broad.  Stuart & Solomon in Marketing:  Real People, Real Choices define marketing as "the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion, and distribution of ideas, goods, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational changes."  It's big, broad, and deep.

Back in the 1960s a Harvard professor named Neil Borden wrote an article called "The Concept of the Marketing Mix" in a Journal called Science in Marketing.  Soon after, he started sharing the idea in his marketing classes at HBS.  The ideas are simple and straightforward, and the academic marketing community hasn't come up with a better model since.

Extension

First there was Coca-Cola.

Then there was Coca-Cola and Diet Coke.

Then there was Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, and Cherry Coke...and Coke Vanilla...and Coke zero...and...and....

Marketers call this “extension,” and the idea is that consumers will try the new product because it's related to the old in some way.

Ceteris paribus and the MBA

“Ceteris paribus.” I still remember my first year in B-school, hearing this phrase being bandied about like everyone in the room knew what it was. I learned later that I wasn't the only one Googling the phrase after class.Ceteris paribus is a Latin phrase that roughly translates to English as “all other things held constant,” or “all things held equal.” It's used in scientific experiments, finance, economics, and complex models of several stripes. Ceteris paribus is a quick way to say that, if nothing else in the world changes at all, then a change in variable X will create a change in variable Y.

Resolutions for the new year

It's the first day of the new year, and there are several things still on my to do list from last year:  run a 10-k, finish a marketing case with some colleagues I'd hoped to complete by October, and organize my office.  What's on your list?