“The Idea” or “The Team”
Walking around our incubator last week, I stopped in to talk with a younger employee of one of our tenants. In the middle of our chat, he asked me if I had an opinion on the question of what contributes most to a start-up’s success: the product/service/idea or the team developing it and taking it to market.
For those who know me, I have an opinion on pretty much everything. This one however, was a no-brainer. I think I heard a VC in town say it best:
I rather invest in an “A” team with a “B” product, than a “B” team and an “A” product.
Takeaway
I don’t think this is just a cliche limited to just entrepreneurship. There is a universal truth embedded here. If you are interested in growing your company, making a strategic initiative a success, or undertaking any important program of any size, I suggest you examine the strength of your personnel beforehand, and make sure you give them the tools they need to grow.
When I was in IT we had a similar saying: “Good people can make bad applications a success.” The seeds of success lie in your people, it’s up to you to as leader to make sure they get what they need to grow.
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Web 2.0 meets Web 1.0
I moderated a fantastic panel last night for the local SIM Chapter I’m a member of. As a Board member in charge of Programming, I’m always very nervous come meeting night. After four years of scheduling presenters, the one lesson I’ve learned is no amount of planning is sufficient to even guess how the program will be received. Having a panel presentation also adds to the degree of difficulty. Given some past bad experiences with moderators, I decided to moderate the panel myself.
I’m happy to say the panel was a tremendous success. The topic was “Using Web 2.0 to Drive Top-line Growth.” I leveraged my personal network for some great recommendations of panelists and ended up with Laura Bennett, President and Co-Founder of Embrace Pet Insurance; Kristy van Auken, SVP of Marketing and Communications for Akron Canton Airport; and David Toth, President and Co-Founder of Worksmart eMarketing, a consulting firm helping their clients understand and leverage social media and Web 2.0 mindsets.
For anyone looking for tips on putting together a successful panel, one of the keys to success last night was balance. Sure, all our presenters were knowledgeable about the subject matter. But what I heard after the event from our members was that there was great balance between the presenters. From strategy to metrics to specific campaigns, there was a minimum of overlap between the speakers. Everyone brought a different perspective which added greatly to the panel.
Leveraging Web 2.0 to drive growth is a hot topic these days. What was interesting about last night was the audience questions as an indicator of where certain industries are and what is holding them up from embracing these new channels to market. With our panel representing Web 2.0, a large portion of the audience was still Web 1.0 focused. Our group has a diverse mix of companies, but generally they reflect our regional economy fairly well: B2B manufacturing and financial primarily, with some education and service companies. While education and services have tended to embrace these new tools, manufacturing and finance still have lots of questions.
The discussions, and questions, were wide-ranging. A few main points rose to the top that I thought you might be interested in.
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Dots: Connected - Thanks Chris
I’ve always felt I’m a good “connect the dots” kind of person, whether those dots are people, concepts, initiatives, strategies, etc. In a sense a big part of my job now is helping entrepreneurs connect dots: their business concept to markets, their markets to market pain, market pain to opportunity and opportunity to investment.
I’ve written before about some Social Networking basics. In this post on leveraging social networks, I talk a bit at the end about the power of social networks, that “viral” nature that you hear so much about and how a well run campaign has the power to add exponential, potentially explosive results to your company.
File that away as Dot A.
Obviously, it doesn’t a blog post to know that we are in the midst of a huge economic crisis. We can debate the roots of the crisis ad nauseum, but the results are that companies are going out of business, people are getting laid off, and sales are down. Pretty much across the board.
File that away as Dot B.
Now it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to connect Dot A (potentially explosive lead-generating technology) to Dot B (we really need some new business). Maybe you’ve tried some new media campaigns in you company, maybe you’re just considering it. But I think (I would like to think, at least) that most smart companies are thinking through how to take advantage of these new channels.
There are different levels of genius when it comes to connecting dots, and the Chris I refer to in the title is Chris Brogan, blogger and consultant specializing in helping companies use social networks to build relationships and add value. Chris’ takes the connection between our two dots above to a whole ‘nother level in his post Target Marketing. It is a quick read and if you have any involvement in your company’s value chain involved in retaining customers I highly suggest it to you.
Chris does a fantastic job of not only painting a bleak picture for us of why our current attraction and retention methods aren’t working, but more importantly I think helping us see through the fog of hype and point out a concrete way social networking and new media strategies can help us through these difficult times. My paraphrase of Chris’ argument would go something like this:
- The Internet (and following it’s lead most print and TV news outlets) have turned us into “snackers”. We don’t read anymore, we skim.
- Even if we take the time to read some things, we don’t care. The overload of spam, mailers, E-Mail newsletters, website banners, etc. etc. has numbed us to traditional “target marketing”.
- Chris solution? Not as you might imagine. Sure he thinks the answer lies in Social Networking, but the solution to your dilemma is to Build. Relationships. Now.
The message is to cut back on the traditional approach (target marketing). It isn’t working. Save the money and redeploy some of it on well crafted social networking campaigns designed to build relationships.
Normally, I’m naturally suspicious of people touting solutions that just happen to match their soapbox. This is one case where I think the message is spot on. Something to think about.
BTW - if you have the time to read the comments on Chris’ post, there are some good ones in there. In particular, I liked a couple comments comparing social networking’s focus on building authentic relationships with good customer service of “days gone past”. I’ve been remarking to many business associates of late that I think the dearth of quality customer service is a huge market opportunity for companies that can take advantage of it.
There’s another great comment about 2/3 of the way down that reminds us of a great tool we all used to use every day to build relationships. You almost certainly have one on your desk. It’s probably square, made out of plastic, and has twelve keys on it with letters and numbers. It’s your phone and nothing beats an old-fashioned, voice to voice phone call for reinvigorating a relationship.
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How big do you want to be?
I talk to entrepreneurs virtually every day, in all stages of development and across a wide varieties of sectors. While they are all different, there are many common themes. There are the questions they ask, and there are the challenges they don’t ask about that we see them all face eventually.
Today I thought I’d touch on one of those challenges, which is Growth.
Most of the entrepreneurs I work with and talk to are in either the technology space or the consumer goods space. Since the majority of them are seeking outside investment, their projected financials almost always look like the proverbial “hockey stick”. One aspect of my job is to help them get there.
While multi-million dollar companies look good on paper, many an entrepreneur has come up against some hard choices on the road there. Are you willing to give up a significant share of your company to get the investment you want? Are you willing to tip the work/life balance squarely over to work for an uncertain number of years as you focus on building your company? What will that mean to your family? Can you maintain your values and integrity on the ride up, because they will be challenged? Do you really have the skills, personality and perseverance to grow your company as big as you think you can? Are you willing to step aside to get to where you want to go?
Hard questions that many an entrepreneur has bumped up against and struggled to answer. Similarly, we see struggles on the opposite end of the spectrum.
Not every great idea is a great business. Another aspect of my job is helping entrepreneurs understand this concept. While we sincerely want every entrepreneur we meet with to be a huge success, many simply have ideas that are more in the “lifestyle business” category versus high-growth potential. It is also interesting to watch entrepreneur’s response to this challenge. How do they respond when faced with holes in their business model? What do you really want - a small business you are passionate about or a big business you’re not? Does a setback or two on the road to riches inspire you or cause you to throw in the towel?
I think we can take these lessons easily into a discussion of Personal Excellence and Personal Growth.
How big do “you” want to be? We’ve talked about personal branding a bit on this blog, and implied that your personal brand is, in a sense, your personal business. So how big do you want to be and how prepared are you to face the journey?
If you are trying to grow your brand, have aspirations to be a CEO, published author, famous artist, or start a successful company, how prepared are you to fail? Or at least fall short of your goals? Will you be challenged or will you give up. What if you are successful? Are you prepared for the seductions of power, money and fame? Are your personal values and ethics strong enough that you can stay true to yourself even as your brand takes off?
You’ll have challenges too even if you want to stay small. Even lifestyle business and entrepreneurs grow, and it’s all relative. So what happens when your brand becomes popular enough that you’re working 60 hour weeks and it’s impacting your family life? Can you maintain the quality of your brand in that situation? Do you bring in a partner, potentially growing even more, or do you scale back potentially sending the message you don’t want to be successful?
How big do you want to be?
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Conference take-aways: Strategic Planning and 1 Question Survey
I’m at a National Business Incubation Conference (NBIA), Monday through Wednesday this week, and this is keeping me very busy. The Weekly Reader may also be in jeopardy as I’m scheduled to attend an after-hours event Thursday night after I get home.
To while away the useless hotel hours, I thought I’d post a couple good takeaways from my session today.
One-page Strategic Plan
Just having a one page strategic plan may be the real takeaway for some folks, and it certainly is something to consider. The intent is not that your entire strategic plan only takes one page, the message was being able to communicate your plan to your Board and your Stakeholders on one page.
The presenter knew what he was talking about, managing a 55 acre Innovation Center campus. The real value of the session was the actual one-page form that he uses to visually communicate his strategic plan to his Board. I can’t share that document here, but I can describe the elements that make up the overview.
The core data elements build from the top down. For each level of the overview, I’ll list the “why”, the “what” and the “when”:
Foundation : Core Values and Culture : Forever
Why do we exist? : Purpose and Passion : Life of Leader
Where are we headed? : Mission Milestones : 3-5 Years
What do we do to get there? : Annual Goals : Annually
How do we do it? : Big Actions : Quarterly
When does it get done? : Schedule : Weekly
What takes responsibility? : Work : Daily
Pretty basic stuff, but the beauty was in the simplicity of the presentation. If I get the document after the conference and am allowed to share it, I’ll post it.
Net Promoter Score
The other real gem of the session was my introduction to Bain & Co.’s Net Promoter Score (NPS). I had never heard of it before, but it was introduced as a highly reliable one question survey indicative of the perceived value of your services. I don’t know about your clients, but entrepreneurs are notorious for not completing surveys. Actually, they are notorious for not responding to any requests for information, so any way to get a highly reliable score corresponding to the quality of our services by asking one question, was definitely intriquing.
The NPS works like this. You ask your client to rate your services on a 0 to 10 scale. Ratings of 0 through 6 are classified as Detractors. Ratings of 7 or 8 are ignored. Ratings of 9 and 10 are classified as Promoters. Add up your Detractors and Promoter scores. Your Net Promoter Score is then figured as:
Promoters - Detractors
Our instructor didn’t really have much guidance on what to shoot for with your NPS, nor industry benchmarks. He did say that when he started using the NPS in his incubator, his score was around 20% and he has since raised it up to 80%+. He also shared that best in class scores are typically taken to be 70-80%. Doing a quick Internet search I found this article with some benchmarks from a few sample industries.
At the very least, the NPS is an extremely simply way to collect an important qualitative evaluation of your program. Comparing to your industry benchmark may require extra research (or purchasing Bain services or database).
That’s it for today. Off to room service and Monday Night Football. Let’s hope tomorrow brings another thousand points…
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DCO Weekend Reader - 9/18/08
The web is a vast repository of opinions, commentary and occasionally, wisdom. Here’s a selection of the best articles I read over the past week.
If you would like to recommend an article, blog or book, please leave a comment with your suggestion. Weekend Reader is a regular feature here at DCO, and you can read past Weekend Readers here.
Well, another busy week therefore you’re getting your weekend reader a day early as a (hopefully) pleasant surprise. I’m out of town for a couple days (Here, if you’re interested), then driving home to attend an awards ceremony Thursday night. So given my normal writing times of lunch and after-work are pre-empted this week, I figured I’d just go ahead and write this one up early.
This week’s Personal Excellence section is brought to you by the Marshall Goldsmith blog I just stumbled across. I suppose I should know who Marshall Goldsmith is, but sadly I don’t. Based on his articles, he definitely knows what he’s talking about. (Could someone please comment and clue me in?) If you’re the type that uses feed readers to keep up on topics of importance, then add this one to your reader. Either way, rest assured he’s been added to mine and I’ll continue to include his best in the Weekly Readers.
Personal Excellence & Leadership
By way of introduction to Marshall Goldsmith, here is a selection of his best recent posts:
- Documenting soft values
- Why we don’t do what we say - he can read my mind!
- Leading by example
- The Importance of Challenging Up for Integrity
- Advice from your Best Expert
Some other good links this week, but I’ll save them for later. Enjoy Marshall!
Thought-Provokers
- 8 Ways to Self-Actualize by Abraham Maslow
- Mistakes as the secret to success
For Fun
- No link this week, but I have to say that the Gates-Seinfeld commercials are the most surreal, laugh-inducing thing I’ve seen on television in recent memory. Anyone else?
Books
- Some good books over the last week or so too, but I’m taking a break.
Tips & Tricks
- Definitely more than a tip or trick, but brief enough to read in five minutes, this article on How to Develop a Leadership Competency Model should be enough to get you started if this is on your executive agenda. While not laying out the process, it does do a good job of presenting some options to choose from for moving ahead.
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DCO Weekend Reader - 9/5/08
The web is a vast repository of opinions, commentary and occasionally, wisdom. Here’s a selection of the best articles I read over the past week.
If you would like to recommend an article, blog or book, please leave a comment with your suggestion. Weekend Reader is a regular feature here at DCO, and you can read past Weekend Readers here.
We’ve slipped into September and officially made the turn into Fall. There is a slight dusting of leaves on the trails that I see drifting down here and there during my walks. Whereas it seems like just last week I woke to sunshine, it is now only light gray when the alarm clock goes off.
I hope you had a nice relaxing holiday weekend. I was able to get a lot of hiking in, which is good - two very busy weeks coming up, both personally and professionally.
As always, here’s the best of what I read over the last week.
Personal Excellence & Leadership
- A suggestion that there is at least one leadership quality we take.
- Warren Buffet’s best investment advice.
- As leaders, many times we function as coaches to our peers and subordinates. As individuals committed to personal excellence, we are often called to fill that role for our friends and family. Here’s a quick self-assessment of coaching ability to take your pulse on this important activity.
- 5 Leadership Lessons.
- The Gallup Management Journal tries to answer the question of what separates great leaders from all the rest with The Seven Demands of Leadership.
- The dance of shared leadership.
Thought-Provokers
- Is Google making us stupid?
- Want to double, triple your financial position (or go even higher)? For an potential solution many of you might find somewhat esoteric, read this article on how to raise your financial vibration (lengthy post).
For Fun
- Work/life balance through the eyes of work.
- Need advice on how to stay swamped at work? This handy guide should help. (Yes, sarcasm is involved).
Books
- I didn’t find any book reviews or references that wowed me this week. If anyone has any they like, be sure to comment or E-Mail me.
Tips & Tricks
- Advice on re-entering the executive job market after a long employement. No real zingers here but a good re-examinations of what should be the basics if you think you need it.
- Good perspective on why “soft skills” aren’t soft at all, and some suggestions on how to measure them.
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So does this mean there are “Value Leaders”?
I’ve had a hard time finding good Leadership blogs. Either they are way to focused on selling their products, or they are simply mouthpieces for a Leadership “celeberity”. If you have a good Leadership or Excellence blog you could recommend, please leave me a comment.
One of the blogs I have found that I like is called The Practice of Leadership. The blog, written by George Ambler, is George’s way of thinking out loud on the topic and just having fun. What a great approach.
In citing a MIT Sloan Management Review article, George recently wrote an post entitled “Searching for Growth Leaders“. Growth Leaders, as defined by the MIT researchers, are:
… managers who can generate organic growth to “find new streams of revenue without always resorting to acquisitions.
I find two aspects of the article to be of particular interest; first the qualities listed, and second the mindset.
Qualities of Growth Leaders
The qualities of Growth Leaders listed in the article are:
- Rich in experience
- Changing the rules…
- …but managing risk
- Preferring people to data
- Pragmatic idealists
What I love about these qualities is the human/team orientation and the quite wonderful phrase “pragmatic idealist”. This is always what I have considered myself and it’s nice to actually see someone else talking this way; especially in the context of Leadership. As we develop our own sense of Leadership on this blog, we will have to remember these qualities and make sure they are taken into consideration.
George’s article presents detailed descriptions of all the qualities and I highly suggest you jump over to it and give it a read.
“The Virtuous Mindset”
What I like even more than the qualities listed, is this sense of growth leadership being tied to a virtuous cycle, whereas a fixed mindset is tied to a vicious cycle. While I’m not sure it’s quite that simple, I do believe that a virtuous cycle, one that embraces people and sees life as a journey, can be a solid foundation for growth.
What we see here is growth leadership tied to openness, understanding people, competency, and the willingness to take a risk. Much of this is common to all article written on entrepreneurship. What stands out for me is the almost “new age” aspect of broad life experiences and understanding people as a foundation for not only Leadership but Growth Leadership.
Again - a good, quick read that I highly recommend.
