Marina Gorbis's Blog, page 1260

Whole Foods Needs a More Consistent Pricing Message

Due to its pricey reputation, I rarely shop at Whole Foods. But dragged to a local Whole Foods recently by a friend, I was surprised to see a litany of yellow signs advertising sales on a variety of products. Shrimp normally selling at $17.99 per pound, for example, were on special for $6.99. Some regular prices were steals — the exact cheese I bought at a large grocery chain was 33% cheaper at Whole Foods.

I was a confused customer.

Whole Foods is known for healthy, organic, and high quality foods as well as providing a fantastic shopping experience. But the reputed prices at the store often called “Whole Paycheck” have kept a lot of potential customers – including me — away.

They’re not the only company that could attract more customers simply by clearing up that confusion. That’s not as difficult as it sounds.

First, Whole Foods has to communicate their pricing strategy to customers. Promoting “everyday low prices,” such as Wal-Mart does, sends a strong message: our prices always provide good value. To be clear, prices can vary over time, customers just have to know this. Many retailers such as Macy’s practice Hi-Low pricing: everyday prices are reasonable, but the real deals occur during the virtually weekly 3 day sales. This pricing game is well understood and accepted by customers: if you want a bargain, wait for a sale. But if customers are confused, like I was at Whole Foods, that’s a problem – they’ll just stay away.

This includes communicating sales. Many of the sales I witnessed at Whole Foods were not advertised in its weekly flyer. It’s simple: to achieve the desired bump in sales from discounts, customers have to know about the deals. Whole Foods should list all sales as most grocery chains do. This full disclosure results in selling more products to existing customers, drawing in new patrons, and conveying affordability.

But it’s not enough to make generic claims, such as Whole Foods’ proclamation of “we’re lowering prices.” A few words can’t change a well-ingrained reputation amongst customers. Instead, be specific. Provide facts. How are prices, in percentages, compared to competitors? Can’t make such a broad claim? No worries, just find a data-driven pricing angle to tout.

Another way to communicate value around a specific product is to publicize value anchors. These are ongoing deals on a handful of key products that draw in customers. I was surprised, for instance, that the fancy sandwiches at my local Whole Foods were roughly $7, which is on par or lower than standard sandwiches at nearby carry-out restaurants. That’s a solid deal…now make sure customers know about it.

And yet Whole Foods has to walk a fine line between communicating their lower prices and maintaining their premium brand. To do this, they have to explain the value of their higher-priced products. Customers are willing to pay premium prices when they understand why they should do so. To illustrate value, Whole Foods should compare their products with the next best alternatives. Many of us, for instance, are willing to pay more for “wild” locally caught shrimp over those which are foreign or farmed. Much of value, as coffee bean purveyors have learned, is in explaining a story. If Whole Foods’ meats are cut in-house, deli products made in-store daily, or artisan cheeses selected by a well-credentialed expert – let customers know to justify the premium and emphasize why to return to shop.

But to make that story believable, Whole Foods needs to avoid overpricing on non-premium items. They didn’t do themselves any favors by pricing their Asparagus water – 16 ounces of water with 3 stalks of asparagus – at $5.99 a bottle. It’s these types of snafus which are clouding how customers perceive the role of price in its brand.

This comes down to having pricing integrity, something that has sometimes been a struggle for Whole Foods – and many other companies. A recent government investigation found instances of incorrect pricing of Whole Foods’ prepackaged foods, with overcharges ranging from 80 cents to close to $15 per item. The company’s apology was fine, but its sincerity undermined by executives later complaining of being victimized by the media. Few things upset customers more than feeling ripped off, so how about a blowout Labor Day sale to make amends?

While these strategies are straightforward, the challenge for every company is in the coordination. Despite its efforts, Whole Foods has been struggling to clarify its price brand image. In part due to its pricing woes, Whole Foods’ stock has dropped by over 17% since the end of July. My hunch is the Whole Foods executive team is conflicted about lowering prices, which is resulting in mixed messages. Now it’s only customers that are confused—shareholders are too.

A confused customer is a missed opportunity. Companies need to be clear to patrons on what to expect in terms of price. Otherwise, they’ll just steer clear of your business.

What Sesame Street’s Move to HBO Says About the Media Business

Sesame Street’s move last week to partner with HBO came as a surprise to some, but it makes a lot of sense given the broad trends in today’s media industry. The new world of media prizes both high quality content and high quality technology. In fact, to thrive you really need both. And for that reason, Sesame Street Workshop made a smart move to bolster distribution and fill gaps in its business model.

Public media has generally prioritized technology only to the extent necessary to distribute its content, which has been its primary emphasis. PBS, NPR, and others source funding from government, foundations, corporate sponsors, and audiences to develop independent, high-quality programming, free from overtly commercial treatment. But that’s not enough for today’s media market. The current environment requires serious investment not only in high quality content but also in innovative digital approaches to distribution.

The problem for Sesame Workshop and others like it is that there’s no single source of funding for both the programming and the technology. The foundations that support democracy, science, and learning—the kind that fund public broadcasting—are not necessarily as interested in funding technology platforms. And the organizations underwriting media technology innovation are mostly large media or digital companies and venture capital firms, which are generally hesitant to invest in content pure-plays.

Sesame Street’s move also forces us to acknowledge that consumer product development of all sorts in a digital world is highly complicated and requires intense investment. Focusing on a single digital platform isn’t tenable given the fragmentation of audiences across multiple technologies. Content owners seeking a full range of digital distribution options have to develop for Apple devices, Chromecast, Netflix, Amazon, Xbox, and others; each platform requires particular expertise and multiple development cycles, quality processes, and code bases to update. Sesame Street can now sidestep much of that by leveraging the investments that HBO has already made to figure out that landscape.

Sesame’s move also enables much-needed revenue diversification beyond its sponsors, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and its audience. And, as a high quality content creator, Sesame Workshop was in a unique position to leverage exclusivity and new windowing strategies to create new financial options. For premium content creators, a full business model now likely includes subscription (or bundled) consumer revenue streams and à la carte consumer purchases, in addition to advertising or sponsorship-supported models.

Sesame Workshop’s move follows an increasingly common path among public media and content creators to fund their programming in more innovative ways and leverage new sources of digital distribution. Downton Abbey cut a deal with Amazon Instant Video to be offered as part of Amazon Prime memberships. Public Radio Exchange or PRX (where I sit on the board), which distributes This American Life, among many things, is exploring options to fund a new ambitious technology platform for podcasts beyond its current technology. And now Sesame Workshop will gain a new source of partnership revenue while leveraging HBO’s technology infrastructure to distribute on linear television platforms as well as OTT streaming platforms like HBO NOW.

HBO has a heritage of merchandising the kid-friendly components of its programming as HBO Family. Its lineup has always included offerings for young audiences ranging from Harry Potter-type fare to Harold and the Purple Crayon. However, OTT content distribution and on-demand dynamics for the industry now offer volumes of content across screens without clear standards for age-appropriateness, so parents are likely to seek out safe or branded destinations where they don’t have to worry about what their kids will see. HBO’s partnership with Sesame Street offers new opportunities to create cordoned-off areas for children to safely consume content. And, HBO’s move may build influence with key decision-makers in the home — moms.

Sesame Street taught a generation of us about “Sunny Days,” how to spell, and how to count like a count. Now it’s teaching us a thing or two about the future of media. Its deal with HBO is a wakeup call that content and technology need their own strategies to enable consumer engagement and financial models at scale.

The Unsexy Fundamentals of Great HR

Given consistent research indicating CEOs’ disappointment with Human Resources, the call for change on the cover of last month’s issue of HBR (It’s Time to Blow Up HR and Build Something New. Here’s How) is predictable — and warranted. We disagree, however, with both the premise that HR needs to be completely overthrown and the solutions proposed to achieve this. We believe that it is much easier to propose dramatic re-invention and trendy new practices than it is to execute the sometimes boring fundamentals of great HR. As a profession we favor new trends over hard work much like a child favors dessert over dinner.

While change in the HR function is overdue, the function won’t be deemed successful until it can flawlessly do one thing — improve business results by increasing the company’s talent quality and depth. Getting to that outcome is simpler and easier than it might appear.

In our book One Page Talent Management we describe in detail the three fundamental elements that allow companies to achieve better talent outcomes that positively impact the business. We suggest an approach that places fact-based research front and center, and a design process that involves balancing complexity with added value to ensure people practices that are simple and executable. Our interactions with hundreds of companies and thousands of leaders since the book was published have only reinforced our belief that these elements are the foundation of successful human resources and talent building.

Research-based simplicity

Thousands of research-based articles published in the last 50 years tell us why organizations and people behave as they do. From increasing employee satisfaction to building effective teams, we largely understand which levers to push or pull to get optimal results. If we genuinely care about HR being effective, then that science seems like the logical place for HR to start. We should understand what the academic research says about how a process should work and then implement that knowledge in the simplest possible way.

This seems like common sense but it is often where HR departments stumble. At conferences we often ask HR leaders to state whether certain statements are proven to be true (see sidebar). One of our favorites: “A leader will develop faster by focusing on their strengths rather than their weaker areas.” While there is absolutely no academic research that supports that claim, the majority of HR leaders will state that there is. The danger is that they have likely built their company’s processes on this erroneous belief and others.

Test yourself: Which of these claims is proven to be true?

1. Employees achieve more when they set their own performance goals

2. If you give someone more difficult goals they will work harder to accomplish those goals

3. Self-assessments of performance are more accurate than peer assessments but less accurate than a manager’s assessment

4. If we see a gap between our self-perception and how others perceive us, we will be motivated to change in order to close the gap

5. Some people are naturally “wired” to work harder than others

Find the answers at the bottom of this article.

How to get up to speed on the research: Magazines like strategy+business and Talent Quarterly regularly feature articles that highlight and translate relevant organizational and individual psychological research into understandable terms. And publications such as Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice provide academic research specifically targeted for application in the workplace.

Accountability

With regard to talent building, accountability is still in very short supply in most companies. When we say accountability we mean that managers experience actual consequences—good or bad—for doing or not doing what they’ve been asked to do. In a recent New Talent Management Network study, only 30% of companies said there were positive consequences for managers who developed their team. In only 12% of companies did managers suffer negative consequences for not developing their team members. Increasing accountability is an executive team issue—not an HR issue.

How to increase accountability: The executive team agrees on the two talent measures for which leaders will be held accountable (we would suggest engagement scores and talent depth in key roles as good options.) We believe that a combination of cultural accountability (public praising/shaming of leaders) and compensation-based accountability) is the most effective approach. The compensation link must be meaningful and the metrics clear and quantitative to effectively drive behavior.

Transparency

Transparency about the outcome of talent practices, especially about one’s potential to advance, is still rare in most organizations. For the past twenty years, 30% to 40% of companies have communicated this and we see no rush to openness among the remainder. Emotional and easily addressable fears—such as the retention risk if someone finds out they’re a high potential, or conversely, if they find out they’re not one—still pervade many companies.

How to make talent practices more transparent: Transparency is simple—you start being open with people about where they stand and why. Simple doesn’t mean easy, of course. It will require some difficult conversations—difficult because many are months or year overdue. If you don’t want to be transparent, then it might help to consider the question, “How long do you feel it’s appropriate to lie to your employees about their future?”

A rigorous and research-based approach requires both HR and business leadership resist the allure of revolution in favor of simple and flawlessly executed talent practices. This can be achieved by always keeping the business objective at the center of any HR practices, and applying science-based simplicity, managerial accountability and individual transparency to everything we do. These fundamentals won’t likely garner many headlines or a “Why We Love HR” article. However, they shine through as the relevant and necessary foundation for any company that believes that better talent—and better HR—delivers better business results.

Answers: 2, 5.

The Research Is Clear: Long Hours Backfire for People and for Companies

Andrew Nguyen/HBR STAFF

Managers want employees to put in long days, respond to their emails at all hours, and willingly donate their off-hours — nights, weekends, vacation — without complaining. The underlings in this equation have little control; overwork cascades from the top of the organizational pyramid to the bottom. At least, that’s one narrative of overwork. In this version, we work long hours because our bosses tell us to. (That’s the version most on display in the recent New York Times opus on Amazon.)

But there are other explanations out there. There’s another that says all of us, including senior managers, are basically flotsam buffeted about by the eddies of economic incentive, corporate culture, and technologies that keep the office just a tap away. In this version, there’s no one really dictating the norms; we’re all just reacting to macro forces beyond our control.

Then there’s the version that looks at our psychology. In this one, we log too many hours because of a mix of inner drivers, like ambition, machismo, greed, anxiety, guilt, enjoyment, pride, the pull of short-term rewards, a desire to prove we’re important, or an overdeveloped sense of duty. Some of these are negative (see: guilt, anxiety) but many are positive. In fact, multiple researchers have actually found that work is less stressful than our home lives. For some, work can be a haven, a place to feel confident and in control.

Basically, if you think of the story of overwork as Moby-Dick, the first explanation focuses on Ahab and the Pequod; the second on the ocean itself; and the last on the whale. And although looking at the story from all of those different perspectives is certainly more illuminating than choosing only one, it won’t tell you whether Moby-Dick is a good book or just a 700-page doorstop.

So the bigger question we have to ask ourselves about overwork is not just, “Who’s to blame?” but a more basic one: “Does it work?” Is overwork actually doing what we assume it does — resulting in more and better output? Are we actually getting more done?

There’s a large body of research that suggests that regardless of our reasons for working long hours, overwork does not help us. For starters, it doesn’t seem to result in more output. In a study of consultants by Erin Reid, a professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, managers could not tell the difference between employees who actually worked 80 hours a week and those who just pretended to. While managers did penalize employees who were transparent about working less, Reid was not able to find any evidence that those employees actually accomplished less, or any sign that the overworking employees accomplished more.

Considerable evidence shows that overwork is not just neutral — it hurts us and the companies we work for. Numerous studies by Marianna Virtanen of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health and her colleagues (as well as other studies) have found that overwork and the resulting stress can lead to all sorts of health problems, including impaired sleep, depression, heavy drinking, diabetes, impaired memory, and heart disease. Of course, those are bad on their own. But they’re also terrible for a company’s bottom line, showing up as absenteeism, turnover, and rising health insurance costs. Even the Scroogiest of employers, who cared nothing for his employees’ well-being, should find strong evidence here that there are real, balance-sheet costs incurred when employees log crazy hours.

If your job relies on interpersonal communication, making judgment calls, reading other people’s faces, or managing your own emotional reactions — pretty much all things that the modern office requires — I have more bad news. Researchers have found that overwork (and its accompanying stress and exhaustion) can make all of these things more difficult.

Even if you enjoy your job and work long hours voluntarily, you’re simply more likely to make mistakes when you’re tired — and most of us tire more easily than we think we do. Only 1-3% of the population can sleep five or six hours a night without suffering some performance drop-off. Moreover, for every 100 people who think they’re a member of this sleepless elite, only five actually are. The research on the performance-destroying effects of sleeplessness alone should make everyone see the folly of the all-nighter.

Work too hard and you also lose sight of the bigger picture. Research has suggested that as we burn out, we have a greater tendency to get lost in the weeds.

In sum, the story of overwork is literally a story of diminishing returns: keep overworking, and you’ll progressively work more stupidly on tasks that are increasingly meaningless.

This is something business first learned a long time ago. In the 19th century, when organized labor first compelled factory owners to limit workdays to 10 (and then eight) hours, management was surprised to discover that output actually increased – and that expensive mistakes and accidents decreased. This is an experiment that Harvard Business School’s Leslie Perlow and Jessica Porter repeated over a century later with knowledge workers. It still held true. Predictable, required time off (like nights and weekends) actually made teams of consultants more productive.

Now, this is not to say we can never pull a long day. We just can’t do it routinely. Most of the research I’ve seen suggests that people can put in a week or two of 60 hours to resolve a true crisis. But that’s different from chronic overwork.

So why do we keep doing it? Why can’t we put the book down?

It could be ignorance. Maybe most people just don’t know how bad overwork is, objectively speaking.

It could be skepticism. Maybe they’ve seen the research, but just don’t buy it (or choose to act on it).

Or it could be something stronger. Maybe when you combine economic incentives, authority figures, and deep-seated psychological needs, you produce a cocktail that is simply too intoxicating to overcome.

Establish Expertise Inside Your Company

In a competitive marketplace, developing a reputation as an expert is one of the best forms of career insurance. Having a blue-chip personal brand is powerful for international thought leaders, who can leverage it to command exorbitant speaking fees. But it’s also helpful for professionals who work inside corporations, where a great reputation can bring coveted promotions and opportunities. Here’s how you can become recognized for your expertise inside your company.

First of all, it’s important to recognize that you don’t have to start out as a worldwide expert. Too many people discount their value. You can coach others on writing better business memos even if you’re not Shakespeare, or lead an office running group even if you’re not Usain Bolt.

Michael Leckie was a vice president of human resources for a prominent research company when he developed an interest in coaching. Although the subject was related to his job, it wasn’t part of his actual responsibilities—he simply began studying it because he wanted to. He started out as a novice, compared to worldwide authorities, but he quickly grew to be one of the most knowledgeable people about talent development within his company. “When you start building your brand in a corporation, it’s a confined space,” he told me in an interview for my new book, Stand Out. “You don’t need to be the best in the world; you just need to be the best one there. You can be a big fish in a little pond, and if you’re the biggest fish in that environment, you get bigger and can then start to do things outside the organization.”

In these early stages, it’s important to be clear about what you know and what you don’t. If you try to prematurely position yourself as an expert who can compete with industry giants, you risk losing credibility when you’re faced with a question or challenge you’re unsure about. But if you’re honest about where you are in the process – experienced with some facets and still learning others – then others are likely to respect you for your superior knowledge and not hold it against you if you don’t know everything.

As your profile grows, it’s also important to ensure that your company understands the value of your public brand. This is especially important if, like Leckie, you’re cultivating expertise on a subject that isn’t part of your core responsibilities. “My world is [the firm], so I need to have my brand aligned to what matters to them,” says Leckie. Developing his coaching brand began to raise Leckie’s professional profile in general, which eventually to led to an invitation to give a keynote talk for a client’s conference of technology leaders. The keynote was an exciting opportunity for him, but his superiors could have viewed it with suspicion (Why is he getting all this attention? Why isn’t he concentrating on his real job?) if he hadn’t taken the time to show them how it was relevant to the company’s business objectives.

“With outside things, you have to make sure you’re explaining them [in terms of] what matters in the organization,” said Leckie. “Otherwise, they start to look, to some, like a distraction.” He didn’t assume his boss’s boss would understand why it was important for him to speak at the conference – rather, Leckie explicitly articulated the keynote’s business benefits to him. “What he’ll be excited about is great interactions with the client,” Leckie said, “and that I’m out there developing business and increasing the relationship they have with us.”

Finally, it’s important to recognize when it’s time to expand what you’re known for strategically. “Sometimes your brand is more happenstance than thoughtful,” says Leckie. “It may be about things you like, but it’s not necessarily leading you where you want to be moving toward.” Leckie realized he’d been so successful at building his expert reputation around coaching and talent development that those skills — even though they were valuable for an HR leader — were beginning to overshadow others that were deemed more critical inside his company. “My brand got established and it opened the door, but it also began to shut other doors. It became clear to me that while I was really good at building and driving a team that got great business results, when people were talking about me, it wasn’t about business results; it was about the more unique elements of my brand [such as coaching].”

That’s why he decided to make coaching a “sub-brand.” In other words, he didn’t abandon it, but he started emphasizing it less in favor of talking about his ability to drive the bottom line. “It’s giving people a language of how to think about you subtly,” he says, by shifting the topics you discuss and by enlisting friendly ambassadors to highlight your relevant accomplishments. That’s been especially important to him as he’s risen in the ranks of his company and now holds a broader leadership role.

It’s slightly trickier for professionals to build a strong personal brand inside a company, as compared to entrepreneurs or other free agents. You have to balance the unique mix of your skills and interests with your company’s needs and sensibilities. But when done right, cultivating a brand as a “local expert” inside your company can enhance your professional reputation and ensure you’re valued the way you should be.

When to Give Feedback in a Group and When to Do It One-on-One

If you’re like most leaders, you’re probably reluctant to give an individual feedback in a team meeting. You’ve probably learned to praise in public and criticize in private. You may be concerned that if you give feedback in a group setting, you’ll put that person on the spot, get him or her defensive, make everyone else in the room uncomfortable, and strain the team’s working relationships. That’s why leaders tend to focus on the risks of giving feedback in a team, but miss the risks of inappropriately giving feedback one-on-one.

Giving feedback in the right setting is important. It affects your team’s performance, working relationships and well-being. Here are some guidelines and explanations for when to give feedback in a team setting, and when to offer it one-one one:

Give feedback in a team setting when:

One or more team members are experiencing negative consequences caused by other team members.


Team members are the source of the feedback.


The issue involves most of the team.

People need feedback about their behavior directly from those who have first-hand information. Only these team members can validate the feedback and fully answer the inevitable questions about the effects of the behavior being discussed. For example, if you are giving feedback to your direct report Carla about how her teammates aren’t able to meet their deadlines because she’s giving them low-quality work, you won’t be able to answer Carla’s questions about her teammates concerns — only they will.

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It’s even worse when you give feedback to Carla and don’t tell her who is concerned about the quality of her work. By granting Carla’s teammates confidentiality, you not only prevent her from getting answers that would help her to fully change her behavior, you also contribute to mistrust between team members who are unwilling to address their concerns with each other.

In either case, unless the problem is a simple one, you’ll likely need to involve Carla’s teammates to solve the problem. Even if Carla does agree that the quality of her work is suffering, she may believe that it is due — at least in part — to other teammates. Remember that a team is a system of interdependent individuals working together to accomplish a task. Solving a team-level problem with only one or two team members will usually just create new problems.

Even if you are able to solve the performance problem by speaking only with Carla, you will still have contributed to strained working relationships. Carla and her teammates who privately complained to you about her will all know this open secret and it will undermine team trust.

Give feedback one-on-one when:

Other team members are not being affected by the behavior and have no information to provide.


You want to help the team member prepare for receiving team feedback or coach the team member after receiving feedback from other team members.

Giving feedback in a team setting when others aren’t being affected or don’t have information to share will lead the rest of the team feeling like their time is being wasted. The team member receiving the feedback will justifiably feel called out. If only one team member is directly experiencing the negative consequences of another’s behavior, it’s better to have those two people speak in private.

It’s appropriate to help prepare someone for a team feedback conversation. This enables you to explain your reasoning for addressing it in the team setting and to help the individual prepare for both receiving and giving feedback in the meeting. It’s also helpful to coach the person after the team meeting, identifying what he needs to do to create any change he agreed to in the team meeting. These meetings are in addition to — not a substitute for — feedback in the team setting.

Do not decide on the feedback setting based on how comfortable you or other team members are giving feedback in a team setting or how comfortable you assume the team member is receiving feedback in a team setting. Comfort is overrated. The job of leaders — whether team leaders or team members — is to act effectively, even when they are feeling uncomfortable.

Underlying this approach is the principle that team members are accountable for giving feedback directly to those with whom they are interdependent. Apart from team members doing their own work, this is the most basic form of team accountability. Leaders are continually exhorting their employees to work as a team and to be accountable to the team. But, if you always provide the feedback, you take away the opportunity for your direct reports to develop this essential skill, and you undermine the accountability required to function as a team.

If you’re thinking that it makes sense to give feedback on team issues in a team setting, but you’re concerned that your team doesn’t have the skills to do this, you’re not alone. Many leaders share this concern. You can begin changing this by talking with your team about how you expect team members to be accountable to each other — not just to you or the larger organization. If you share your expectations for your direct reports, agree on how you’ll work together, and give your team the skills to meet the agreed-upon expectation, you’ll find that problems get addressed sooner, fewer issues land on your own desk, and your team becomes a more productive, cohesive unit.

Employees Can’t Be Summed Up by a Personality Test

When we were in college, Eleanor, then my girlfriend (now my wife), wanted me to take a Myers-Briggs type test, a personality assessment that would categorize me into one of 16 boxes, each box containing four letters that would explain me.

I didn’t want to do it.

So she made it easy for me. “Come on, it’ll be fun,” she said. “I’ll read the questions. You just lie there and answer. I’ll write down your answers.”

She began asking me questions.

“When with a group of people,” she read, “you enjoy being at the center of attention.”

“No.” I answered. “I’d rather speak to one person.”

“No way!” she replied, “You love being the center of attention. I’m checking a big YES.”

She must have changed at least half my answers. I’m not saying she was wrong. Most of the time, I think we were both right.

By definition, personality assessments simplify complexity. That’s not always a bad thing; putting a label on something helps us recognize it quickly. It’s shorthand. And, given that most of us have more to do than we have time for, shorthand is useful.

But not with people. People are not easy to understand, and—here’s where I disagree with the assessments—they shouldn’t be.

People are too interesting and too complicated to be summed up in a simple assessment. Are there really only 16 basic personality types? Have you met my uncle Ralph*? There are at least 17.

Myers Briggs—and I would argue any personality assessment—is neither valid nor reliable. These tests identify a black and white version of people, a reduction of who they really are. They offer us the illusion of understanding at the cost of truth and freedom. Sure, they may make people more comfortable (“Oh, I understand you now”). But it’s a trick.

Self-assessments, by definition, reinforce a person’s self-image. You tell the assessment what you think you are like and then the assessment tells you what you are like. Which, of course, would incline you to think they’re valid. But they’re just telling you what you told them.

Personality tests reinforce our blind spots. How would you respond to the statement: You put every minute to good use? Personally, I would answer NO. But Eleanor would say that I use my time incredibly productively. What’s the truth? Here’s another way of asking the question: Who knows me better: Eleanor or me? The truth is somewhere in between. She sees things I don’t. I know things she doesn’t.

I want to suggest an alternative. A tool that is far more reliable at understanding the complexity of a human being. A tool that is practically infallible, almost always reliable, and surprisingly practical. A tool that not only helps you understand other people but simultaneously improves your relationships with them and helps you learn, in real time, how to communicate with them, even in—especially in—the face of conflict or disagreement..

That tool? Curiosity.

As soon as we label something, our curiosity about that thing diminishes. Personality assessments are a shortcut to getting to: “I know.” And once we know something, we’re no longer curious.

But that’s not nearly as powerful as living in the mindset of “I don’t know”. True understanding comes from not knowing. Real connection comes from not knowing. Brilliant innovation and problem solving comes from not knowing.

See people. Don’t label them. Allow yourself to be surprised. Notice how someone may be different today than yesterday. How someone’s personality—or point of view—may change when you eat lunch together instead of meeting in their office. Notice how often communication “tactics” actually get in the way of communication.

Recently one of our clients asked us to lead a session in which each person on the team would take a character strength self-assessment. I have often seen teams and organizations use assessments like this (e.g. let’s put everyone’s strengths and weaknesses on the table so we can support each other).

I proposed a different idea. Together, as a team, they should agree on the three to five most important character traits that would help the team achieve its objectives (instead of the 24 character traits assessed by the instrument). Then, in small groups, they should give feedback to each other about those character traits and talk about what they can do to take advantage of their strengths and mitigate their weaknesses.

To do this, they would have to learn how to talk about sensitive issues, how to listen without getting defensive, and how to share, courageously, what they perceive in each other.

That’s the point. Not only will they gain the benefit of the information, they will increase their capability to have difficult conversations. It’s those conversations, not the assessments, that will improve relationships and results in an organization.

If you want to understand people, talk to them. Ask questions. Listen to their answers and to the silence between their answers. Watch their body language. Study them. And stay open to what you may find – about them and about yourself.

What you’ll find is that people are constantly changing. If you talk to someone in a meeting and then, a little while later, over a bite to eat, you may notice that his personality completely shifts. Curiosity allows you to see people more clearly and learn about them in all their beautiful and interesting variability. And because of that, it helps you build much stronger, more resilient relationships.

If you’ve based your relationship on curiositiy, when you have to communicate about something difficult, you’ll be talking to a person, not an ENTJ. You’ll be more understanding—and a lot more convincing.

But it’s hard to let go of the comfort that comes from thinking you’ve figured someone out.

I was leading a two-day training for senior-level coaches who were interested in working for my firm. Coaches love assessments and many of the coaches in the room were certified to administer a gaggle of them. During the training, I made it very clear that, at Bregman Partners, we don’t use assessments for all the reasons I stated above. I told the coaches that one of our hallmarks is that we remain curious and we encourage our clients to remain curious, which makes them much stronger leaders.

After the training, one of the coaches came up to me.

“You’re an ENFP,” she told me, referring to one of the boxes in the Myers-Briggs.

“Seriously?” I was bewildered. “Have you been listening?”

“I teach Myers-Briggs,” she said, “And I’ve been watching you all day. I’m telling you, you’re an ENFP. I know you don’t like these tests, but I think you don’t understand them.”

“I don’t think that’s the problem,” I answered, “The problem is they think they understand me.”

 

*Name changed to protect my relationship with Uncle “Ralph.”

Creating an Effective Peer Review System

Employee performance reviews are a hot topic once again. Deloitte and Accenture have abandoned annual evaluations and rankings, and according to the July/Aug issue of HBR, it’s time to “blow up” traditional HR. What practices should be instituted instead? Many people think real-time peer reviews will be a key piece of the puzzle. Why?  By providing instant and continuous recognition of positive behavior, typically via a public social platform, they yield more and richer data on employees, offering managers a clearer picture of a team or company’s strengths and weaknesses and everyone a better sense of how they’re performing.

Most programs, including ours, enable and encourage the sharing of praise and appreciation – immediate acknowledgment that a colleague is doing great work. And, while this should, of course, be accompanied by constructive, privately delivered criticism, various studies and articles, including this recent HBR piece, have touted the benefits of positive reinforcement. According to the 2015 SHRM/Globoforce Employee Recognition Survey, such reinforcement can boost retention, productivity, creativity, and business outcomes.

But how do you create, maintain and support a successful real-time peer review program to make sure it delivers on its potential? In the 15 years that Globoforce has been helping companies implement social recognition solutions, we have learned to recommend the following steps:

Reflect on core values. Ensure that the metrics on which people are recognized are aligned with your company’s mission. JetBlue, for example, has five core values – safety, caring, integrity, passion, and fun – so its Lift peer-review program encourages its 16,000 crewmembers to recognize each other for achievement in those areas. Another company might choose to emphasize fiscal responsibility, collaboration, or innovation. This allows for detailed tracking and comparison on key strategic objectives by group, team, or department, as well as across the company.


Embrace new technology. Today’s workforce is multi-generational and global. So pick a program that is intuitive, easy to use, fun, interactive, engaging, and fully mobile. Peer reviews shouldn’t feel like work. If they do, you’ll have a hard time getting employees to embrace the system and use it to its fullest capability. When Intuit was using a stale, catalog-based program with lengthy delivery times it logged 5,000 recognition awards per year. But when it moved to a more modern solution that number jumped to more than 20,000.


Explain and celebrate the launch. Position the program as a change designed to help recognize and celebrate employees, and not a new way to monitor or judge them. At The Hershey Company, the launch of its SMILES peer-review program was accompanied by posters, badges and luggage tags, an online campaign kick-off, and launch-day events featuring cupcakes, photo booths, tutorials, and more. This led to 800 recognition moments in the program’s first week, 14,000 in the first three months, and 40% of all employees participating within the first 90 days.


Get everyone on board. Managers and leaders need to be early adopters. Active support from senior executives communicates to staff that the program is worth their time. You must also make sure that any employee, at any level, feels empowered to participate. Emphasize that positive, public feedback is universally welcomed. Members of the executive team should be recognizing even the most entry-level employees and vice versa. For example, JetBlue’s CEO Robin Hayes has at one point given each crewmember in the company a Lift award for reaching certain milestones.


Encourage frequent, timely recognition. Sooner is better when it comes to promoting desired behavior. When you note good work immediately, the employee feels compelled to repeat it immediately. If recognition is delayed, the link might be lost and the company has lost out on better performance and higher engagement in the meantime.


Empower managers to track results. Give managers access to detailed, real-time, easily actionable reports on recognition activity, correlated to key business goals.  For example, when ConAgra Foods analyzed its peer recognition it found that failure to recognize an employee’s good performance was a key predictor of attrition. Managers needed to step up the praise when they saw that key workers weren’t getting enough.

Effective real-time peer-reviews motivate people to perform well every day of the year, not just when a quarterly or annual evaluation is approaching. But these programs can’t be casually instituted. They must be tied to core corporate values, compatible with the latest technologies, launched and communicated well, used by everyone in a timely fashion, and relied upon by managers to inform employee development plans.

How to Get Feedback as a Freelancer

If you work as a freelancer or independent consultant, it’s not always easy to get the feedback you need to remain competitive. But, it’s a crucial part of running your own business. Word of mouth and client referrals are consistently ranked by freelancers as their most important sources of new business. Without honest reviews of your work, it’s hard to know if clients are genuinely happy and therefore likely to engage your services again or refer new business to you.

Self-assessment is never easy. Most people aren’t able to fully see their weaknesses, especially from the point of view of a client. But truthful reviews of your work can provide a way to identify both your weaknesses and your strengths — creating potential new paths for becoming more competitive in your field. For example, I started consulting in the small business space because a client at a technology firm that provided products for small businesses suggested that I had the right skills for this field. Without that advice, I could have easily missed the opportunity.

But clients aren’t the only good source of information to tap into. Mentors and other freelancers are in many cases a better source of constructive criticism. This is in part because clients often don’t want to offend a freelancer. It’s sometimes easier to give false praise and/or no feedback at all, and simply not hire someone again, than it is to give negative feedback. It’s a good practice to develop mentoring relationships with a few trusted advisors. Try to include a mix of other freelancers and people who hire freelancers, so you get multiple points of view. This type of “kitchen cabinet” can provide invaluable advice on running a successful business.

However, not enough freelancers solicit feedback in these ways, and few have processes or methods in place to systematically collect reviews of their work. Because of this, most of the feedback freelancers get is client-initiated and/or informal.

You and Your Team



Giving and Receiving Feedback

Make delivery–and implementation–more productive.

Why don’t more freelancers ask for evaluations of their work? Mainly because they’re too embarrassed to ask, or are worried that the assessments will be negative. This is human nature. Most people don’t like to be graded or open themselves up to potential criticism. But, successful freelancers understand the importance of overcoming these fears and feelings, and put systematic methods in place to seek out feedback.

Over the past decade, my colleagues and I at Emergent Research have interviewed more than 1,500 freelancers/independent workers both one-on-one and in focus groups, during which we often discussed the role that feedback plays for them — mostly as it pertains to developing a new business. Here are some best practices we’ve noticed:

Set yourself up for positive feedback by ensuring that you and your client are in agreement on the project plan and deliverables right from the start. Problems that come up are often due to a lack of clarity around that assignment’s goals, schedules and/or deliverables. A kick-off meeting is critical for making sure that everyone agrees on the scope and terms. Ask probing questions during the meeting, and get signoff on the main deliverables to ensure that problems don’t creep up later.

Build “project reviews” or “check-in” meetings into the project plan. This can be either in-person or virtual. The number and timing vary by type of work, but a first check-in meeting should generally be held after the project is well under way, but early enough to course correct if there are issues. A good rule of thumbs is to schedule the first check-in meeting for when the project will be 25-30% complete.

A second check-in meeting is usually held when the project is 50-75% complete. These meetings don’t need to be long or formal. The goal is to figure out if the client thinks the project and deliverables are on track, if the process and methods used to manage the project and do the work are effective, and to find out if the client has any issues or concerns.

A formal feedback meeting should also be held once the project is complete. The goal of this meeting is to ensure that the project requirements have been met and to understand any problems the client has had with the process or deliverables. It’s also an opportunity to discuss possible follow-on ideas that add value to your client and extend the relationship.

Be sure to go into formal feedback sessions prepared. Prior to the meeting, develop a list of questions you’d like to have answered. Don’t formally interview your client, but work these questions into the conversation. A good feedback session is a lot like a jazz performance — a combination of scripted parts and improvisation. Think through what your client may ask, problems she may point to, or issues that may be brought up. “War game” the meeting ahead of time, so you can anticipate what the client might say and prepare your responses ahead of time.

After any formal feedback session, review the key points for valuable takeaways. Be sure to send an email to your client thanking him or her and summarizing any action items or project changes decided upon in meetings, to show that you listened and that you’re taking action.

And don’t forget to collect more informal feedback along the way. This can be done via a combination of listening and occasionally asking open-ended questions such as “How does this look?” or “How are we doing so far?” or “Do you have any concerns? Open-ended questions give the client more room for interpretation, and generally lead to more information than closed-ended questions. One important caveat is not to ask for informal feedback too often, or you risk having your client see you as a pest. Every situation is different, so there are no hard and fast rules about frequency, but checking in informally several times during a project is certainly not too much.

Active listening is another underappreciated source of informal feedback. Generally speaking, if you’re really listening to what your client is saying, you know whether or not he or she is happy with your work. The challenge is to stay in contact, and to really listen.

Getting feedback should be seen as an opportunity to learn and grow. Go into these sessions with a positive attitude, even if you’re expecting bad news. It’s important not to become defensive or frustrated by criticism. Resist the urge to defend your work. Instead, focus on the feedback itself and how you can use it to improve. Ask probing questions to get more insights and thank your clients for sharing their thoughts.

If you do get criticism, thank the client and take action. Make any necessary improvements and, if possible, fix the problems raised. Quick action and follow-up show that you listened to the client’s concerns and are working to make the needed changes. By fixing problems right away, you can turn a bad situation into a good one that supports future business.

If the feedback is positive, you should also thank the client, but probe a bit more to make sure that it’s genuine. Again, most people default to general praise, because they’re just not good at delivering negative reviews.

After a project is completed, it’s important to stay on a client’s radar screen. This can be done with emails, social media posts, and the occasional phone call. It’s important to do this follow-up because clients are busy and can easily forget about you — even if they love your work. Don’t be a pest, but stay connected. And whenever you’re in contact with your client, listen actively for new ways you can add value to his or her work. In particular, listen for your client’s problems. This is perhaps the most valuable type of feedback, because it alerts you to new opportunities — the lifeblood of your freelance career.

Alphabet Isn’t a Typical Conglomerate

HBR STAFF

Alphabet, the new holding company created by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, is a portfolio of bold ideas embedded in an ecosystem of talent and financial capital to take on the world’s toughest challenges. In the years ahead, Alphabet could dramatically influence business models in many industries.

Its creation marks the beginning of the end of the e-commerce era defined by browsers, search, maps, and apps and monetized through advertising and the beginning of the next arc of digital transformation of industries (automotive, health care, and others) propelled by the combination of human minds and powerful machines. This new entity could bring together human talent, technology scale, and long-horizon venture and investment approaches to construct business models that could pose a formidable challenge to those designed and perfected in the industrial age. In short, I think the new entity is much more than a typical corporate restructuring and promises to become a new type of conglomerate that could attract talent from a variety of scientific and technical fields and challenge incumbents in a wide range of industries.

A digital-era conglomerate. Alphabet is not a throwback to the bygone conglomerate model whose main purpose was to allocate financial capital across divisions and rebalance the portfolio through acquisitions and divestments. It is designed to spawn companies armed with deep science and technology that share a common worldview on machine learning, big data, algorithms, analytics, and the cloud.

Digital companies in the e-commerce era could knit together their business models using standard modules from hardware, software, and cloud companies. The second era requires larger scale in technology and deeper R&D expertise. So Alphabet could gain a conglomerate premium relative to other companies that lack adequate depth and breadth of computational and industry expertise. Interestingly, Alphabet is now competitively positioned against GE with its new focus on the “industrial internet.”

A longer time horizon. The name, Alphabet also reflects Page’s and Brin’s financial aspirations: “It means alpha-bet (Alpha is investment return above benchmark),” Page said when announcing the creation of the holding company on August 10. But it is not another Silicon Valley venture capital firm seeking extraordinary returns from small number of bets with short time horizons. Venture capitalists help entrepreneurs to scale their companies for an IPO or acquisition by another company. They are disciplined (ruthless) in jettisoning those that may not be on track to scale and win.

Alphabet will have a longer time horizon, which will allow it to take on “moon shot” projects, and it is unlikely that it will sell the companies it incubates. So Page and Brin are different from such legendary venture capitalists as John Doerr at Kleiner Perkins and Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowtitz, the two founders of Andreessen Horowitz. That said, fully expect Page and Brin to work with venture capitalists to pool the financial resources required for the moonshot projects.

A talent magnet. Pursuing bold innovations in health care, life sciences, and space explorations will require core competencies at the intersection of human minds and fast machines (to paraphrase GE’s definition of industrial internet). If Page and Brin succeed in attracting such talent,  it could unleash innovations in the internet of things, health and wellness, food and agriculture, energy, and urban transportation.

By allowing it to attract experts and retain with enticements of growth stocks, Alphabet’s decentralized financial structure may help it in this regard. Its bigger tent also could help it retain talent that otherwise might go to younger, more ambitious upstarts like or Palantir.

Top universities and think tanks may see Alphabet both seeking to collaborate more with them on a broader number of fronts than Google did and enticing their talent to defect to it.

A wake-up call. The creation of Alphabet should worry companies in many industries. Alphabet has singled out health and life sciences, and the impact on this sector could be more profound than what Google did with search-engine algorithms in advertising in the 1990s. It could challenge the ability of IBM’s Watson unit to retain top talent, and it could be attractive to technologists and scientists working at GE Software, Microsoft Research, Intel Labs, and Samsung Research, just to name a few.

If Alphabet can scale up Fiber and Loon, the telecommunication industry — especially AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast — also is at risk.

The creation of Alphabet should also concern Apple. Can Tim Cook expand the scope of iOS into areas such as home, automobiles, and entertainment with the same structure and one integrated stock (which Wall Street does not see as a growth stock)?

In short, Alphabet is Page and Brin’s catalyst to unleash the next wave of Google-caliber companies in different industries. Digital disruption and the transformation of industries and markets shifted into a higher gear on August 10.