by Adam L Stanley | Jun 19, 2018 | Technology
Clearly, it’s not just your work
Success is multi-variant, for sure. I’ve known people who were considered amazing employees in one company and complete misses in another. I’ve seen truly smart and talented leaders miss promotion after promotion. And, of course, I have known some that I found mediocre at best that thrived. There are so many plausible reasons for the seeming anomalies, not the least of which is the fact that, while pretty good, I do not claim to be the perfect judge of talent.
Recently, however, I have begun to form a hypothesis around four traits that might just guarantee your success if you can master demonstration of all of them. They just happen to all start with the same letter. And, as always, I welcome your thoughts.
Competence
This is pretty obvious, right? Of course, if you hire someone, you want them to be able to deliver to your job description. And yet this is not always what we look for in hiring or promoting.
If you’re hired to lead a team of engineers, you must have the appropriate leadership skills and technical acumen to do so. You must be able to lead, guiding your team toward some shared vision and objective. You must understand engineering, at least enough to sniff out poppycock and identify opportunities. Likewise, CIOs must be able to talk about business strategy and how to tie strategy to technology investments. Architecture leads need to understand structure and working with developers. Finance professionals must know financial standards and practices. Sales people must be able to manage a client sales cycle. This is table stakes.
Yet, all too often there are individuals who have so mastered the art of “networking”, that they forget they actually must understand their area of responsibility. This blog is not really for those guys, however. This blog is for those who are highly competent yet still miss out. Read on, because knowing your stuff is simply not enough.
Content
I truly believe that most humans do enjoy learning something new — whether it’s from time to time or everyday. Therefore, the ability to come to the table with content above and beyond your primary role is very important to success. This could be a deep understanding of one particular area of expertise so that you are the smartest person in the room whenever this topic is discussed. Or it could be a broader, slightly more shallow knowledge of many different things. Either way, the goal is that every time you bring up one of these things someone learns.
People are by nature intrigued by something previously unknown to them. When you come with facts, studies and insight, they are engaged listeners– and that increases your value and likelihood of success.
Whenever I talk to mentees, especially younger ones, I encourage them to get a subscription to Harvard Business Review, The Economist, or The Atlantic. Each of these three publications are amazing at providing insightful analysis and background on things relevant to the world today. But your content can be loads of things. If you know a lot about diversity, support your company’s D&I goals. If you are a trained musician, bring that up and perhaps apply your music talents to the crafting of strategy, which is simply a collection of “notes” coming together to form the “music” of profitable growth.
In short, bring content and you will be invited back to the table. Or the “room where it happened.” But, guess what? It’s challenging for people to find out you have content worth inviting you if they have never actually invited you to the room. See the challenge?
Communication
As you advance in your career you must communicate with greater awareness/ with purpose/ more consciously. It is absolutely amazing how many people NEVER talk to their boss about their goals, aspirations, and development needs. You want to have a spot on the agenda at the next company retreat? Ask. You think you deserve the promotion? Ask. Know something about a topic you know is important to the CEO? Make it known. How on earth would anyone know about that if you don’t speak up?
I learned this the hard way. Heck, sometimes I still forget. Earlier in my career, there were lots of specific projects and tasks and initiatives to which I was assigned. There were managers overseeing me and my work showed my worth — but these managers were mostly low-to-mid-level. They had time for overseeing and were trying to drive their own careers.
As my career progressed (as any does), management above me were more senior people with significantly less time for oversight. I realized almost too late how important it was to communicate what I had done and how I had succeeded. The fact is, senior managers are communicating regardless of whether you’re in the room so you better talk too. And the more senior you get, the less you will have others talking about you, your needs, or your successes. Sad but true.
That said, communication is not simply about selling yourself. It is also about communicating challenges and asking for support. It is about probing to find out what’s going on that you might have missed. And it’s about being clear with your intentions and your direction so that there is no doubt the path/strategy is right. And that is where confidence comes into play.
Confidence
I must admit that it took me years to realize just how confidence shrouded so many subpar professionals in a cloak of seeming invincibility and perceived intellect. Mediocre performers become super heroes daily with a simple turn of a phrase, swagger in the walk, and well-placed compliment from a close friend for whom he or she would do the same. Confidence is important and for many, it is a very difficult task to ensure you do not confuse confidence with arrogance. In cultures where talking about yourself is frowned upon, this can be even more difficult.
Ok, now stop reading my blog and read this post on the difference between arrogance and confidence. (Click here to open, but come back!). In case you don’t have time, here is the key point: “Get the idea of ‘overconfidence” out of your head right now. Overconfidence doesn’t exist; there is no such thing as too much confidence.” The article goes on to say that “The opposite of arrogance is not a lack of confidence. It’s deference.”
This is so very important. I have seen time and again that people are so afraid of being confident that they miss opportunities to shine. They come off as weak because they are trying not to come off as arrogant. I have suffered from this as have many friends. You don’t have to suffer as well!
“In the board room, when you’re perceived as tough and aggressive for the right reasons, in the right moments, that’s an asset, that’s an attribute. That’s helped me,” said Gene Todd, interviewed in a recent article.
Bottom line
(This is why “culture” does matter, as an aside.) A lot goes into success, including teammates, partners, relationships, company, intelligence, work output, adaptability, etc. But these C-words above drive a ton of what constitutes “success” in most work contexts. Focus on being good at what you do, uniquely contribute content to the conversation, communicate your needs and your successes, and remember that it is absolutely ok to be confident.
You’ll rise up.
There are about 97 million books, podcasts, videos, and blogs about how to be successful. What if it’s just a series of C-words?
Adam
Adam L. Stanley Connections Blog
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by Adam L Stanley | Mar 29, 2018 | Technology
The Big-D Jargon Hit list: Cutting out Disintermediation
Purging overused buzzwords opens our minds to the new realities of succeeding in business today
If you’ve been following any of my blogs lately you’ll know that I’ve been on a rant about jargon, and, so far, have tried to exorcise both digital and disruption from our daily lexicon. Good luck, you say? Ok, well, the point I’m trying to make is that many of these words have gone past their due dates, and should be sent out to the business-as-usual pasture.
Generally, the rampant use of jargon isn’t only annoying, it blocks our ability to see with fresh eyes and stifles the way we communicate. Even worse, such words, often coined by consultants, can cause us to cram our great plans into safe, universally-defined small boxes. So much for thinking “outside of the box!”
Jargon gets on everyone’s nerves, yet, we all use it because it’s easy and everyone else is doing it. When you take overused words out of the equation, you’ll find that you’ll look at things differently and be more focused. Suddenly those meetings won’t be such a waste of time and you and your team will have a better chance at refocusing on what matters: delivering ever-better services to your clients and growing your business.
And if you don’t believe me, take the jargon-lite challenge; go a few days without using digital or disruption or any other buzzwords for that matter and see how it challenges your thought processes.
Ok – for this blog installment, I’d like to take on a longer “d” word that’s also polluting our lexicon: Disintermediation. What? I get that this isn’t a word you commonly toss around over a drink with your pals, but it’s one that consultants love and looms large over many businesses today.
Disintermediation would really be the removal of the go-between in business transactions, reducing the “friction” in a transaction and, at least in theory, improving the value of an existing product or service. Inversely, intermediation injects a middleman between distribution channels e.g. a customer and businesses that previously sold directly to consumers.
Where I work at a brokerage, disintermediation is a big topic. Stock brokers, residential real estate brokers, and insurance agents are all intermediaries, and constantly wonder how new concepts will impact their value. “Will brokerages be disintermediated?” is a constant question at industry tech events.
Ok, stick with me on this one – it’s a bit of a reductio ad absurdum argument. Disintermediation assumes that a there is a recognized, consistent intermediary that provides services to a recognized, consistent channel. But with channels changing frequently in a digital world where disruption occurs regularly is there, in fact, a recognized consistent intermediary?
Insurance brokerage, for example, has changed but it isn’t really about disintermediation. The channel is still the same: a customer looking for insurance who goes to a “source” to help them get what they need. What has changed is that that source is no longer only a person but also a website or a mobile application.
For businesses today, the idea of threat of disintermediation is negative and potentially limiting. In this world, one size does not fit all. New models must be free of narrowly defined concepts and, instead, focus harder on understanding their customer base. We must find new ways to meet needs with improved levels of convenience and selection. It’s not about disintermediation, it’s about the realities of doing business today.
So, let’s stop talking about disintermediation. Instead, here is what your meetings should cover:
- Who are my customers, and what do they need? Not just which of my existing services do my customers need.
- What are the most important relationship factors desired by my customers in a partnership?
- How do my customers access their needs today and what factors (environmental, demographics, etc.) may influence these buying patterns in the future?
- Are we willing to change the way we deliver services even if that means we lose good people or abandon successful products?
Netflix did not disintermediate Blockbuster. Customers have always wanted entertainment. They want convenience and enjoy watching movies wherever, whenever, and on whatever device they want. Netflix did not disintermediate Blockbuster. Netflix recognized the channel was changing and became an intermediary of that channel.
I’ve now covered digital, disruption and disintermediation in my Big D Hit List. I would love to have your thoughts on this post.
Adam
Adam L. Stanley Connections Blog
Technology. Leadership. Food. Life.
AdamLStanley.com (Driving Value)
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by Adam L Stanley | Feb 6, 2018 | Leadership, Teamwork, Technology, Vendors and Partners
The Big-D hit list: Disrupting the word disruption
Purging overused buzzwords is a big step we can take to open our minds to the realities and challenges of succeeding in business today.
The problem with business jargon, which most of us use ad nauseam, is that it’s not merely annoying, it carries the real potential to block progress. Those nifty little words and phrases may make us sound ingenious within our respective tribes (and own minds), but they can also narrow our thinking to the point where we start cramming our strategies and plans into the same universally-defined small boxes. So, just when we believe we’re thinking “outside of the box,” we’re not!
OK, in the name of creative thinking and staying focused on what matters, like our clients and growing our businesses, the time has come to retire some long-hacked-to-death words. In my first blog, I summarily purged the word “digital.” This time, it’s my pleasure to join a growing mob that can’t wait to see “disruption” in the rear-view mirror. Please, by all means, agree, disagree and/or share your own hit-list words.
“Disruptive innovation,” a term coined by Harvard Business School’s Clayton Christensen in 1997, describes a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves up market, eventually displacing established competitors.
Don’t we love talking about disruption! Very rarely does a day go by when the word doesn’t pop up, and it’s applied to everything, from cool new apps to getting a new dog. There are copious books on the subject that everyone, including me, reference a lot. Christensen and his theories on how disruptive innovation are upending large incumbent companies is a favorite.
Here’s the rub: Disruption makes sense when you’re talking about revolutionary change that takes place over months and years. Christensen defined the difference between sustaining innovation and disruptive innovation. The sustaining side is what established market leaders do by listening to their customers and creating products that satisfy their “predicted” needs in new and exciting ways.
Disruptive innovators create markets that initially appear too small to attract the interest of established firms, which are more focused on delivering steady returns and growth to their shareholders. It isn’t easy for larger firms to justify the risk and investment needed to launch a new concept, which ironically gives smaller firms and start-ups a head start at cornering a market.
Major disruption occurred in the 1990s and early 2000s when new players suddenly burst on the scene with products and services that revolutionized traditional industries. BlackBerry disrupted the mobile telephony market, iPhone disrupted Blackberry and Kodak in digital photography, and so on. The big companies didn’t see it coming.
You could say that Moore’s Law, introduced way back in 1965, gave us the first idea on what disruption would look like. Gordon Moore, the co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel, nailed the speed of change we were about to experience when he observed that it would take a year (later revised to 18 months) for costs to be cut in half and productivity to double, and that this rate of growth would continue for decades. Welcome to the early days of the information age! Today, such changes can double in months instead of years. And, as I discussed in a prior blog, just wait until quantum computing hits the scene. It will be like comparing texting to snail mail. Point being, we’ve been in this “disruptive” bubble since the ‘60s!
So, let’s get over “disruption.” Let’s see it as a constant and rise to the challenge of operating in a world where change will only escalate. It’s business-as-usual in the high-tech fast lane and we need a firm grip. Our jobs as business leaders is to know our customers across the spectrum better than ever before; scan emerging markets; watch for new competition; react, not over-react; proactively search for new opportunities; and invest wisely in systems and strategies that are agile enough to withstand the change bombardment. For that, it always comes down to having the best and brightest people on your team.
Disruption is the second word on by Big D Hit List, following Digital. For my next blog, I’ll dig into another longer word that’s been choking conversation particularly in the business world for too long: Disintermediation.
Be well. Lead on.
Adam
Adam L. Stanley Connections Blog
Technology. Leadership. Food. Life.
AdamLStanley.com (Driving Value)
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by Adam L Stanley | Dec 26, 2017 | Leadership, Technology
This post originally appeared on cio.com.
Purging overused buzzwords from the lexicon
Business has always been plagued by jargon and buzzwords. They’re everywhere.
Utility compute morphed into the “cloud” today. We ask people if they have “bandwidth” as if they’re a network device. Consultants want us to “think outside the box” so that we “push the envelope” to create “cutting-edge” solutions. I mean, who wants to hire someone when they can “leverage” an existing employee instead? Why not open a “window of opportunity” to capture “low-hanging fruit”? Before we spend too much time trying to “boil the ocean”, we “take it offline” and “synthesize”. Then there’s all those texting abbreviations – SMH!
The problem is that buzzwords can be more than annoying – they can be real impediments to progress. Such words and phrases can narrow our thinking, forcing people to cram corporate strategies into neat little universally defined boxes. So it’s time to blow a few up that have been clinging on for too long! We all have a hit list of words we’d like to kill, and I thought I’d share mine in this series, so you’ll hopefully share yours. Hint: They all start with a “d”.
Part 1: DIGITAL: The Mother of All D Words
For me, the first Big D word on my hit list is digital. Gasp! How can that be so? Off the top, it brings to mind another phrase that went the way of the dodo bird. When I was an undergrad, my primary major was finance. My secondary major was international business. Now, I won’t say exactly when I graduated, but suffice it to say, it was when the idea of doing business outside of America was still hatching.
Back then, before the world was found to be “flat” and modern planes, trains, and automobiles had made far-flung places accessible, international business was taking off and subsequently became a popular major at colleges. We were taught how to think about the complexities of doing business when your clients were located in different countries with different customs, languages, and economies.
Today, given the tangled web of global supply chains, every business is international in scope. The phrase is no longer needed because it’s just understood. The world is flat and it’s hard to find a scalable business that doesn’t transcend borders.
There’s a parallel with the word digital. Almost 20 years ago, people first started talking about digital transformation and moving to digital business platforms. Back then, it seemed like science fiction and we madly studied the topic and posited on what it meant and how it would radically change business models.
In 1999, I wrote a paper with fellow Wharton students about the battle between online and brick-and-mortar grocery stores. We laid out a fairly robust case that it was unlikely that people would buy their groceries online anytime soon and, if they did, it would only be in limited quantities. We argued it was more likely that grocery stores and online stores would begin to merge. Customers would make choices based on relationships with a particular brand or company, and companies would evolve to provide services where customers needed them.
Now, I’d love to say that we were predicting that startups like Amazon would become behemoths and one day buy traditional grocery stores like Whole Foods. Alas, that wasn’t so, but we did hit on the idea that every business would eventually become digital. Today, saying a business should go digital is a lot like saying the Pope should be Catholic. As you can’t build a house without some form of concrete, you can’t build a business without being digital. Duh. Every business is digital.
The ability to truly differentiate your business in an era where brand and company loyalty are waning as consumer and business choice are increasing is an even greater imperative. As differentiation becomes ever more critical, the ability to leverage and manage information as an asset is a non-negotiable requirement. Don’t talk about digital. Just do it.
What does that mean?
- Be you. Whether a sole proprietor, small business, or major corporation, your journey must be yours. Not everyone can be Uber or Airbnb. Your strategy for handling business in the era where all things are digital will be different.
- Don’t forget your customers. If you realize that digital business is a redundant term and that really it’s just business, you must also remember that customers come first. Learn from them. Predict changes in their behaviors based on other industries, but never forget why they buy your product or service.
- Realize that today’s trend will be different than yesterday’s. Yeah, duh. But it’s amazing how many people jump from fad to fad playing an interminable game of whack-a-mole. Don’t hire a data scientist or invest millions in Hadoop because everyone else is doing so.
- Talent still matters. I have blogged on this multiple times. There still isn’t any special sauce behind hiring for business today, whether you call it digital business or just Business. You need intellectual curiosity, agility, and tenacity. The fundamentals of talent still apply.
Saying digital business is like saying international business- it’s silly; it’s redundant. Don’t be silly. Be smart.
Digital is the first word on by Big-D Hit List. Stay tuned for the next word I think should be purged.
Be well. Lead On.
Adam
Adam L. Stanley Connections Blog
Technology. Leadership. Food. Life.
AdamLStanley.com (Driving Value)
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Be sure to view related blogs here and on CIO.com
Leading Change in the Digital Age: Part 1
Leading Change in the Digital Age: Part 2
Do IT Like Darwin
by Adam L Stanley | Nov 23, 2017 | Leadership, Technology
The slippery slope of getting what we pay for
So, this blog may get me into a bit of hot water, but oh well. Here’s the deal: I wish I had the time to actually do more research, but I’ve been mulling over ideas around pricing and quality that I wanted to test with you out there in the blogosphere.
The perception bias is something that retailers continue to debate and examine in creating their pricing strategies. The theory is based on the concept of selective perception, the tendency not to notice or quickly forget something that caused emotional discomfort or that conflicted with prior beliefs. For example, a teacher may ignore bad behavior of a student because the student resembles a favorite nephew or grandchild. The teacher ignores the student’s shenanigans while punishing others that do the same things. But I’m not wading into theory – and there’s plenty of it. Instead, I want to put out my own observations, and if any of you out there have seen studies to illuminate this issue, please share.
Did I just pay $900 for a meal?
Ok, so think about the last time you or a friend went to a classy restaurant, one of those dining emporiums where dinner costs roughly the same amount as a monthly rent payment. If you don’t know anyone who’s done that, look at some of the reviews for high-end restaurants like Alinea, Next, or French Laundry on sites like Yelp or TripAdvisor – and note the prices, which are enough to destroy or whet your appetite depending on your own snack bracket (pardon the pun).
What I’ve noticed is that it’s pretty rare that anyone who goes to such a place will say anything negative about it unless it’s outrageously bad. The question is: did they really enjoy everything about the experience or is there some sort of bias at play that makes us believe that anything that costs so much has to be amazing? Same goes for expensive cars, clothes, homes, and so on.
What makes so many of us defend the quality of high-priced goods or services even when we can clearly see they don’t measure up? I think it’s got something to do with not liking to admit we made a mistake when we drop a ton on money on something. I’m labelling this blind spot the Embarrassment Bias.
So, let’s get to the point.
It cost more. It’s worth more.
This pervasive bias — where pricing obscures judgement — is also very active in the corporate world. Put it this way: the amount of straight-up honesty you get out of a team or vendor that has led a large initiative is often directly linked to the size of the budget involved. The more money spent, the less objectivity there is in the picture, no matter what the outcome.
How many executives out there have bought into an acquisition or a new product that has been sold by a team as a game changer that winds up being trashed? The fact is the team that built it invested massive amounts of money, time, and passion into the initiative – and along the way everyone lost the ability to see its real value. They become so blinded by the prestige and scope of the project, along with its high price tag, that their objectivity was blown out the window and they could no longer tell if it was meeting its original goals.
If someone designs you a souped-up ERP, for example, and it’s clearly not working for the stakeholders that need to use it — but you’ve invested tons of money and time on it — what’s a common reaction to the result? It’s mostly grin-and-bear-it positivity, which makes all attempts at real evaluation and ROI capture go out the window. Of course there are always people who knew things were going sideways, but until the bitter end will say “nothing is wrong”.
It takes great courage for teams to bust through the Embarrassment Bias and to halt massive programs underway and write them off, but there are notable stories of companies that have done just that. Think Cargill and their major write-off a few years back.
The human relationship to money, as explored here by MIT, is a twisted and complex dynamic. How we relate cost to value and quality has deep roots entangled with hierarchy and the primal idea that only the fittest will survive. As we all know, those who make the most money achieve the most power and respect, whether deserved or not. When it comes to high-stakes projects with big teams and crazy price tags, our egos, along with our deeply engrained attitudes about money, superiority, and quality (you get what you pay for) make it very difficult to stand back and clearly evaluate our performance and outcomes. And no one wants to risk embarrassment.
Check your biases at the door
Anyway, awareness is the antidote for most of our shortcomings, and it’s good to check in on our biases around pricing and quality now and again. I’m wondering though if you’ve seen the embarrassment bias at play in your own workplace? Have you ever seen a big-ticket initiative launch, then flop, and still be defended? Oh, and next time you go to a fancy restaurant, decide if you really like that foie gras!
Be well. Lead On.
Adam
Adam L. Stanley Connections Blog
Technology. Leadership. Food. Life.
AdamLStanley.com (Driving Value)
Follow me on Twitter | Connect with me on Linked In | “Like” me on Facebook
Be sure to view this related blog:
Avoid Value Destroying Arms Race
Leading Change in the Digital Era
by Adam L Stanley | Nov 14, 2017 | Technology
Leading Change in the Digital Age
Part Two: Beware Complacency!
Being an early adopter has its perils, but sitting on the sidelines thinking no major action is needed can be the kiss of death for any company navigating disruptive waters
In my last blog, I reviewed the magnitude of change swamping commercial real estate and how our firm has established four goals to keep our teams focused on delivering the most practical systems and tools for our buck, while also embracing the best cutting-edge innovations.
We touched on the speed of change (in case you haven’t noticed) and I raised the specter of quantum computing, which will make even millennials feel like dinosaurs in the digital age.
Search quantum computing and you’ll find out what I’m talking about. For the purpose of this blog, think of it as computers teaching each other to analyze problems more like humans. Quantum computing is to today’s computing what the IPhone 10 is to a pocket watch from 1920. All of the big players in tech, including IBM, Google and Microsoft, are in the global race to build the world’s first practical quantum computer, and the prestigious journal Science said Google expected to have a 50-qubit quantum computer by the end of this year.
Once quantum computing is made widely available, it will spark the next industrial-super revolution, which will be many times bigger than that caused by the birth of personal-computing in 1984, or the rise of the searchable internet in 1995.
Meanwhile, while we wait for this seismic shift to occur, the digital revolution is quickly gaining momentum. Take data for a moment (bear with me; it really is interesting): In 2010, you might have produced a gigabyte (1,000 megabytes) of data in a week or two – or even a month. That’s the equivalent to about 200 songs, 10 episodes of the Game of Thrones, or roughly 34,000 emails.
Today, an enterprise user produces 60 gigabytes per hour! So, before lunch, the average employee produces about 400 gigabytes. Multiply that by the hundreds of millions of people creating data every day and you can see how 90% of the world’s data was created in the last two years.
With such mind-blowing speed of change in mind, think of companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon. They only got started in the mid-90s, not long ago considering their ginormous size and power. And, just as these new giants rose up, other iconic brands were taken out by disruptive change, including:
– Kodak, which had more digital photography patents than any other company;
– US Steel Mills, with the highest quality and tremendous customer loyalty;
– Many national hotel brands that had consultants hooked on their points and rewards, and;
– Blockbuster, which is perhaps everyone’s favorite story of a giant that was killed by a fledgling startup.
As we move deeper in to the information age, the forces of change will continue to broadside unlikely companies. No matter what period in modern history we’re talking about, what’s always separated winners from losers is what leaders do at critical inflection points that demand change.
Will we be Blockbuster or Netflix? That’s top-of-mind question for leadership at my current company, which refuses to fall into any complacency traps (not in our DNA!). Should we be worried? Not if we focus on value, which to our firm means: a strong bias for action and results; value created by insights not transactions; and giving our people the right platform to drive growth. That, and always keeping an eye out for the next big thing!
Be well. Lead On.
Adam
Adam L. Stanley Connections Blog
Technology. Leadership. Food. Life.
AdamLStanley.com (Driving Value)
Follow me on Twitter | Connect with me on Linked In | “Like” me on Facebook
Be sure to view these related blogs:
Avoid Value Destroying Arms Race
Do IT Like Darwin
With such mind-blowing speed of change in mind, think of companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon. They only got started in the mid-90s, not long ago considering their ginormous size and power. And, just as these new giants rose up, other iconic brands were taken out by disruptive change, including: