Marina Gorbis's Blog, page 1349

Counterfeiting as a Form of Free Advertising

In a study of a 1995 surge in counterfeiting in the Chinese shoe market, Yi Qian of the University of British Columbia found that the entry of fakes had the effect of increasing sales of high-end authentic shoes by 63%. The arrival of counterfeits on the market affirmed the value of the brands in consumers’ minds and in many cases introduced the brands to new customers. At the low end, however, counterfeits merely ate into the brands’ sales.

Ignore Emotional Intelligence at Your Own Risk

Call it Grant vs. Goleman. Two academic heavyweights face off on a topic that every student of leadership and HR cares — or at least hears — a lot about: emotional intelligence. Wharton professor Adam Grant kicks it off with a LinkedIn blog post, “Emotional Intelligence Is Overrated,” arguing that “it’s a mistake to base hiring or promotion decisions on it” and that “even in emotionally demanding work, when it comes to job performance, cognitive ability still proves more consequential than emotional intelligence.” Daniel Goleman, the psychologist credited with coining the term EI (and, full disclosure, a friend), issues his rebuttal, “Let’s Not Underrate Emotional Intelligence,” questioning the specific assessment of EI used by Grant, and referring to the various studies conducted by “The Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence.” And the comments fly.

I have huge respect for both men, and I’m not an academic. But as a privileged practitioner, who has helped companies around the world make sound hiring and promotion decisions for the past three decades, I thought I would offer my perspective to the debate. Working as an executive search consultant at Egon Zehnder, I’ve personally led more than 500 senior appointments and been involved in many more, interviewing more than 20,000 candidates. And, as the leader of our firm’s management appraisal practice, professional development, and intellectual capital creation, I’ve also carefully studied various assessment approaches and their performance impact.

My conclusion about emotional intelligence based on this experience? I can’t emphasize enough the crucial importance of EI-based competencies for success in leadership roles.

Back in the late 1990s I did my first quantitative analysis on the subject, using information on 250 managers I had personally hired or recommended for promotion to our clients, mostly in Latin America in those days. I analyzed the correlation of three main candidate variables (experience, IQ, and emotional intelligence) with the person’s performance once on the job and was amazed with the results. When the appointees excelled in experience and IQ but had low emotional intelligence, their failure rate was as high as 25%. However, those people with high emotional intelligence combined with at least one of the other two factors (experience or IQ) only failed in 3%-4% of the cases. In other words, emotional intelligence coupled with high IQ or very relevant experience was a very strong predictor of success. However, highly intelligent or experienced candidates who lacked emotional intelligence were more likely to flame out.

My colleagues soon replicated this analysis for many different geographies and highly diverse cultures, including Japan and Germany, and the results were similar everywhere. People are hired for IQ and experience and fired for failing to manage themselves and others well.

Since then, our firm has continued to use candidate assessment and performance data to develop our competency model, which guides us in our executive search and appraisal work across 69 offices. While some of the attributes and skills that have proven to be necessary for success at the top are indeed mainly cognitive, such as strategic orientation or market insight, most of them are based on emotional intelligence, including results orientation, customer impact, collaboration and influencing, developing organizational capability, team leadership, and change leadership. In my teaching at Harvard’s graduate program on talent management, I’ve met hundreds of leaders from successful corporations all over the world and, without exception, the vast majority of the competencies they use to select and develop leaders are also based on emotional intelligence.

I agree with Adam that EI is no panacea. Neither is IQ, or any other variable. As I explain in my most recent book, the right candidates need to be clever in the traditional IQ sense, but also have the right values, the right conditions for portability, and the right competency fit for the job.

Potential for growth is also critical, as I emphasized in this June 2014 HBR article. Interestingly, however, the hallmarks of potential — the right motivation, curiosity, insight, engagement, and determination — are also heavily based on emotional intelligence. To adapt to changing circumstances, you’ll require much more than just IQ.

In sum, you can choose to ignore EI — but make sure you understand the risks.

How to Choose the Right References

You aced the last round of interviews and now your prospective employer wants to check your references. Who should you ask? Which people can best vouch for you? Will they be able to describe all your relevant qualities and skills and explain why you’re a fit for the new job?

What the Experts Say

One of the biggest mistakes jobseekers make is failing to understand “how incredibly important references are,” to the hiring process, says Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, a senior adviser at global executive search firm Egon Zehnder and the author of It’s Not the How or the What but the Who:  Succeed by Surrounding Yourself with the Best. References provide “an accurate, third-party assessment of your strengths and weaknesses so managers can hire knowing full information,” he explains. “Given the option of either interviewing a candidate without checking references or checking references without interviewing, I would choose the latter.” As a job candidate, you must therefore be thoughtful and strategic about both whom you ask, and how you prepare them to speak on your behalf, according to Priscilla Claman, the president of Career Strategies, a Boston-based consulting firm and a contributor to the HBR Guide to Getting the Right Job. “You want your references to present a consistent story about who you are, what you are good at, and what it is you want to do” with your career, she says. Here are a few things you should consider.

Be prepared

Even before you start the job interview process, you should develop a mental list of past and current colleagues who could serve as references for you so that once you’re asked to provide them, you’re ready. Ideally, your list should include a mixture of former and current bosses, coworkers, and subordinates. “The best references are from people who have worked closely with you,” says Fernández-Aráoz. Never ask someone to be a reference if you don’t know for certain what he or she is going to say, adds Claman. “You should ask managers who have given you positive performance reviews. Ask coworkers who have thanked you for help on projects. And ask people who have successfully worked under you,” she says. “This is why you have to maintain those relationships.”

Understand your options

If the hiring manager asks to check your references at your current organization and you don’t want to divulge the fact that you’re considering leaving, you have two options. One, offer to provide references outside of your organization — consultants, advisors, lawyers, or clients — who can speak to the quality of your job performance. Or two, offer to provide references once the new company makes you a formal job offer. “It’s fairly common,” says Claman. “Most companies understand the position you’re being put in.” There are certain instances, however, where it is acceptable to tip your hand, says Fernández-Aráoz. Perhaps you’re not going to progress to the next level; you’re not interested in a promotion; or you need to leave your job for personal reasons. If you’ve decided to leave, use your best judgment in selectively sharing that information with colleagues. “But if you are otherwise happy where you are, wait until you’re at an advanced stage” before revealing your plans, says Fernández-Aráoz.

Get specific

When the hiring manager requests your references, “find out what specifically he or she is looking to check,” says Fernández-Aráoz. If the manager wants to learn more about your leadership style, then he should speak to your former and current direct reports. If he wants to check your ability to develop a strategy, bosses are the people to call. If he wants to learn about your ability to influence, he ought to talk to peers. “This helps the person do a more relevant reference check and get a more credible, accurate assessment,” he says. Remember: the quality of the references you offer is a reflection on you.

Offer context

Help your references offer the best possible endorsement by providing them with information about the role you are being considered for and why you want the job. “Give them a framework,” says Claman. “Tell them why you believe the company wants to hire you and how you are likely to be useful for that company so they can reinforce that.” Gently remind your references of your past achievements and approach. “Coach them on what you want them to say,” she suggests. Also ask different references to highlight different talents and strengths, she says. “One could talk about your ability to establish relationships with colleagues, another about your technical skills, and another about your project management abilities.”

Be resourceful

If you are being considered for a job in which you don’t have direct experience, it can be tricky to come up with an appropriate reference. In hiring circumstances like these, you need to take a different approach. Recount a time in your past where you picked up new professional responsibilities, spearheaded a cross-functional project, or took on a new geography, then think about colleagues with whom you worked closely then. You want “individuals who have seen you do something different,” says Fernández-Aráoz. “When a hiring manager hears that you’ve [taken on something new] under similar circumstances, he will infer competence.”

Find common ground

The best testimonials depend on the “openness” of the person providing the reference, according to Fernández-Aráoz. To “facilitate candor,” he suggests you try to identify commonalities between the person checking your references and the people providing them. Perhaps the hiring manager and your former boss share an alma mater. Or maybe the she once worked at the same company as one of your close colleagues. “People will place more weight on those references because of the familiarity effect,” says Fernández-Aráoz. Similarly, the referee will likely “be more open and candid” during the conversation.

Explain negativity

“You should know when to expect a negative reference,” says Fernández-Aráoz. It might come from a manager who fired you, from someone who gave you a poor performance review, or from a colleague who felt offended that you left the organization. If the hiring manager asks to call that particular person, be honest. “Say: ‘This person will likely give you a negative reference. Let me tell you why.’” Then suggest  other people in the same organization who “can offer relevant and objective” opinions, says Fernández-Aráoz. After all, the last thing you want is for the “hiring manager to be surprised by what he hears,” says Claman.

Do

Have a ready list of references that includes a mixture of bosses, colleagues, and direct reports who will provide strong testimonials on your behalf
Think creatively about others who might be a good reference; your list could also consist of consultants or customers who can speak about the quality of your performance
Remind your references of your past achievements and ask them to highlight specific skills and strengths

Don’t

Ask someone to be a reference unless you’re sure that person will say positive things about your work
Rule out using references from your current organization; consider your circumstances and decide whether it makes sense to tip your hand that you’re leaving
Be vague about your potential new opportunity; provide your references with information about the role you are being considered for and why you want the job

Case study #1: Be honest about your circumstances and provide relevant context

For five years, Michiko Gupta had a staff job she loved at a large Boston-based university. But earlier this year, her husband got a new job based in Chicago. “My first thought was: What’s going to happen to my career? My second thought was: I need to tell my manager I’m leaving.”

When Michiko broke the news, her manager was upset but understood that she needed to move for family reasons. “The conversation naturally turned to that fact that I was now looking for a new job,” Michiko recalls. “She volunteered to be my reference and then gave me some advice: it’s always best to look for a job while you still have one.”

Michiko’s boss allowed her to work remotely from Chicago for three months while she looked for a new position. Eventually, through another colleague in Boston, she learned of an opportunity at a school in her new city, and when her interviewers asked for references, she of course provided the name of her still-current manager. “We had such a close relationship that I just forwarded her the job description and gave her a heads up that someone would be reaching out to her,” Michiko says. “She knew my strengths.”

For a second reference, Michiko chose her manager’s counterpart in another department but, since she and the person hadn’t worked together as closely, she took a different approach. “I called her to talk about the job I applied for, and I told her which areas the hiring manager would be focused on. I also reminded her of my responsibilities on an assignment we did together and asked if she could talk about project management skills and my teamwork capabilities. I wanted her recommendation to complement the one from my manager.”

Michiko got the job. And while she misses her old boss and team, she is thriving in her new role.

Case study #2: Think deliberately and strategically about whom to ask

Scott Merritt — a public relations executive in Atlanta — had gone through several rounds of job interviews at a company when he was asked for references. He knew it was a critical decision: “In job interviews, I am confident that I know my stuff and I am up on the latest methods and trends, but I also know — having hired a number of people myself — that a lot comes down to who the hiring manager speaks to and what they learn,” he explains.

But, deeply unhappy at his current company, he wasn’t about to ask his boss to be a reference. Fortunately for him, “in the PR business, there are a lot different kinds of references you can use.”

Scott asked three people. The first was a former business partner he still spoke to at least once a week by phone and whom he considered a “professional sounding board.” The second was a client he currently worked for who had been complimentary. “I knew he would provide a very solid reference, and it wouldn’t be a problem that he knew I wanted to leave my job,” Scott explains. And his third reference was a journalist. “If I wanted to be taken seriously as a PR that has strong relationships with reporters and gets a lot of media placements, I knew I had to prove it. In the job I was up for, I would be working on a lot of technology accounts,so I asked a technology writer who works for a number of tier one newspapers and magazines. I knew that a recommendation from him would enhance my value proposition.”

All three references delivered. Scott got the job and, 18 months into his new gig, he is much happier at his new company.

More on job hunting: 

How to Write a Cover Letter

How to Keep a Job Search Discreet

Reference-Check Your Future Boss

Before You Respond to that Email, Pause

Someone sends you an email message or a text, and you’re unsure how to respond.  It’s about a complex negotiation, or a politically sensitive situation. Or maybe it’s just from a person who unnerves you.

For a moment, you pause. But for most of us, most of the time, that pause doesn’t last long. Instead we react, feeling the need to immediately craft a response. And often we then hit “send” without fully thinking. The result: an awkward or incomplete message that causes the recipient to pause, then react, often starting or continuing a cycle of miscommunication and misunderstanding.

Yes, people today expect and want an instantaneous reply to any message. We often accommodate them because delay feels like a violation of modern-day social norms.

But there are many times when we should not immediately reply.  And the truth is, we usually know them when they come. That’s what that initial pause is about. The key is to heed it.

There is a simple two-step method to making the pause work for you. First, buy yourself some time to think. Second, follow the four simple C’s of effective communication that help determine how best to respond in terms of the context, content, channel, and contact.

Buying Time

There are a few practical ways to buy some time when you get a message where your gut tells you not to respond or where you are not sure how to respond.

The non-response response – “Got your message.”  This is meant to serve as an acknowledgement but really is only filler. It may aggravate someone in the midst of a negotiation or other serious exchange.
The expectation-setter – “Got it.  Lot on the plate today, I’ll get back to you tomorrow afternoon.”  This is often a good middle ground.  It provides an immediate response of acknowledgment and resets the timetable.
The confident pause – Don’t respond. Really. Just don’t. Pausing for at least 24 hours is a pretty good rule of thumb. Not responding is its own kind of response, which can often work to your advantage.

Once you’ve bought yourself some time, you soak in the information from the message and think of what the best response might be. There are four C’s that have served as a useful checklist for me to use during that pause time before I respond to a difficult message: context, content, contact, and channel.

The Four C’s of Effective Communication

Context – Having the right situational context is key. Who are the relevant parties to the conversation or discussion thread? Are there relationships and inter-dependencies and previous conversations that I’m not aware of?  Do I fully understand what is at stake?  In the multi-party transactions in which we often get involved in venture capital, sending out a quick response to even a simple query can backfire if the timing is wrong or the information out of date. Sometimes you can even answer a specific question in a technically correct manner, but be practically incorrect because you’ve failed to appreciate the bigger picture.
Content – The message needs to be delivered in clear manner with the right tone and style for the occasion. Having the right content means checking facts and being consistent with past discussion threads. If there is one thing that I have seen kill a negotiation or productive progress in a discussion, it is inconsistency of message, which both confuses others and diminishes your credibility. Get the facts and your message points straight in your head, then focus on delivering them in the clearest, most understandable, most consistent manner possible.
Contact – Are you even the right person to respond? It happens often: we are asked something and fail to realize that we might not be the best person to respond. Consider if someone else might be more knowledgeable or better suited in style to respond, especially in a crisis (where it is usually best to have only a single point of contact). There is a reason why terrorist and hostage negotiations are not conducted over Google Docs. And even in an open and collaborative everyday work culture, there are many times when deferring to someone else is the right answer.  Also, consider if the person on the other side who is asking a question or provoking a discussion is the right contact person as well. And always — always! — be wary of “reply all” and judicious with the cc function.
Channel – Just because someone contacts you by email or text does not mean you have to respond by that channel. Email and text lend themselves to misinterpretation and misunderstanding. They are often likelier to prolong or inflame a debate than to resolve it. As I’ve written before, sometimes it’s much more effective and efficient just to pick up the phone or meet up in person. Email is great for transmitting factual information — a spreadsheet of a business model, for example, or a summary of a prior discussion. But when there are issues to resolve, talking usually works better.

As the pressure grows to respond quickly, the value of pausing and thinking is growing too. We all should work toward developing better, saner norms of communication amid the explosion of channels available to us. But that will take time and thought to get right.  In the interim, we just need to stop being so damned trigger-happy with that send button.

Why ESPN Won’t Pull an HBO

When HBO and CBS announced they’d offer paid apps that would allow viewers to completely bypass TV and stream their content directly to their preferred device, it was hard not to see the moment as dominos starting to fall. Everyone from disruptive innovation theorists to cheapskate AppleTV-streaming hipsters has been salivating over the unbundling of cable for years. Aereo’s lost legal battle? A bump in the road on the inevitable way to a la carte TV.

It’s widely accepted that live sports is one of the major things keeping cable’s profitable bundle intact. But might that begin to change? I spoke with James Andrew Miller (@JimMiller), author of Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN. What follows is an edited version of our conversation.

HBR: I think the first thing to establish is whether ESPN is, like HBO, a generator of premium, exclusive content, or whether they’re just a middleman who brokers sports between the leagues and the fans.

Miller: They really started creating a lot of original content in the 1990s, when they developed Pardon the Interruption, Around the Horn, documentaries, series, movies, stuff like Playmakers. There was a lot of attention and money paid to that. Then when John Skipper became head of content he decided it was all about live sporting rights. He went on one of the great shopping sprees for television rights of all time. He went after a lot, and also engineered longer contract terms than was usual — eight, 10, sometimes 12 years. They’ve invested a lot of money — for instance, their last deal with the NFL was over $15 billion. Their recent deals for college football total over $20 billion.

And what’s been the impact of that on the competitive landscape?

They think it’s essential. It builds a big moat around ESPN in terms of competition. When FOX Sports 1 went on the air, everyone was talking about how they’d be a formidable competitor for ESPN, but I didn’t believe they could go toe-to-toe with them because there’s just not a lot of inventory left out there. ESPN has so many deals lined up, and they’re lined up for quite some time. So how are you going to compete with ESPN when they have such a head start in terms of inventory?

What’s interesting to me about the recent changes in the TV landscape is that you have distributors like Netflix turning into content providers and you have content providers like HBO trying to become distributors. It just seems like if you can have both a direct relationship with consumers and exclusive, premium content, that’s the best of both worlds. So why wouldn’t ESPN want to pull away from cable and strike out on its own?

Both ESPN and [parent company] Disney are addicted to the huge increases coming in from subscriber fees. ESPN does not want the cable universe to go away. They’ll bring in over $6.5, $7 billion dollars in revenue from subscriber fees this year and that’s a lot of money, for them and for Disney as well. They’ve spent a lot of money since the 1980s lobbying to make sure no one got rid of the cable package and create this a la cart universe, because they did feel like that was a threat.

Look, my mother spends more than $6 a month for ESPN and she’s never turned the channel on. That’s true of probably 90% of people who have cable. We think of ESPN as this behemoth, but in terms of people who watch it day in day out, that’s probably not a huge percentage of the cable viewing universe. They don’t want to go to an a la carte system.

What if they have no choice? What if the cable industry falls apart and they have to fly solo?

Let’s say Congress passed some law and there was no cable bundle. ESPN would be able to go out and charge a monthly fee that would probably be pretty high, because they have so much inventory.

Or what if, when those broadcast rights do expire, a major partner like the NFL decided they could make more money going direct-to-consumer? It seems like ESPN’s original programming wouldn’t be enough to keep people; it’s really just filler around the games.

I don’t think the NFL is going to not want a broadcast and a cable partner. At least for quite some time. The idea that Google might compete for rights next time they’re up, that’s possible, but the NFL is ESPN’s crack cocaine. It’s not just about 16 weeks or a wildcard. It’s about taking those rights and creating shoulder programming throughout the year — like the NFL draft, the countdown to the pre-season, the coverage during the pre-season. ESPN monetizes the NFL 365 days a year. They’re not about to let them go. They’re paying now $2 billion a season for the NFL, and they have it for many years to come. The NBA deal is also a long one. There’s just no way that ESPN is going to allow itself to be out of the running. The leagues don’t want that to happen either. They want to be in business with ESPN, particularly when it comes to college football and college basketball — the coaches love ESPN as a recruiting tool. Now, ESPN lost out on the World Cup, so those things may happen, but by and large they have a ton of baseball, the basketball, soccer, football. They’re going to be as aggressive as they need to be.

So where do you see change starting to happen?

The deal ESPN just struck with the NBA is really fascinating in terms of the future. Read between the lines of that deal, there are a multitude of possibilities for ESPN to create a new universe with certain rights and possibilities. You could possibly spend a couple bucks to go on demand and buy a specific came you want; there are all sorts of options. I think it shows that ESPN is building for the future.

We are straddling two worlds right now. Consumers are definitely in a multi-screen universe. But the architecture of the pricing and the way it’s all going to work hasn’t been fully realized. Those things will shake out in the next couple of years. And in the end there will be more customization, more choice, more flexibility for the consumer, depending on what a particular consumer’s appetite is.

One thing that has always bugged me as a Red Sox fan is that I can’t go out and buy, say, Pedro Martinez’s 10 best regular-season starts. Is that the kind of thing you’re talking about?

Yes. I mean if all of a sudden I wake up this morning and I have an old Beatles or Led Zeppelin song in my head, I can buy that song on iTunes. If I’m getting psyched up about the World Series, though, and I want to watch the last time the Kansas City Royals were in it, there is no mechanism to pay and watch that game. But there will be.

What if you get some Aereo-type, low-cost disruptor coming in? Is that a viable threat to a company like ESPN?

I just think in the world of televised sports, “low-cost competitor” is an oxymoron.

Here’s what ESPN knows. Five years from now, we don’t know if The Good Wife is still going to be a popular show, we don’t know whether there’s going to be contract problems with Julianna Marguiles or if the writers are going to stay. But we do know that there is going to be an incredible amount of interest for the Rose Bowl. We know that the NBA finals are going to be popular. Depending on who the teams are, they may be up or down 5% but there is a built-in constituency. And that’s the genius of live sports programming. People want to see these games, and see them right away.

Get Buy-in for Your Global Strategy with Local Partners

I never considered myself an “ugly American,” but my UK colleagues apparently thought otherwise.

Just before I moved to the UK to head up marketing for KFC International in Europe and Africa, Pepsico had bought out our joint venture partner in the UK. I was part of the new management team that was going to try to turn around a 60-year-old business that had been declining for 10 years.

Because most of the UK KFC system was franchised, it was important to win our franchisees over to a new brand strategy we had been planning before the acquisition took place. I put a lot of work into getting ready for my initial pitch to the UK franchisees, some of which had been involved in the business their entire career.

In my presentation, I did a quick review of the financial mess we were in, laid out three big strategic consumer initiatives needed to turn the business around and made a passionate plea for them to work with me to make this happen. They asked for some time to talk among themselves. I left the room. Finally, Keith, the head of the franchise group, came out to deliver their verdict.

He started with the good news. “Kip, we like you, and we like what you are recommending. You’ve got our support.” I breathed a big sign of relief. Then Keith continued, “But I want you to remember the people in that room have spent their life building this business. Even though it’s in trouble, we’re not stupid. And if you ever come here again and treat us like we are stupid, this relationship is officially over.”

That was a valuable lesson.

During my career, I’ve worked on adapting global brand strategies in 65 different countries, and I’ve learned three principles about how to do this well.

Show respect for your global partners in everything you do. You would think this would be stating the obvious, but I’m shocked at the number of ex-pats, unfortunately including way too many Americans, who totally blow their chances of success in the early days of a new international assignment by violating this principle. Stephen Covey’s advice to “seek first to understand, then be understood” absolutely applies to working with teams around the world to expand a brand from one market to another. For example, I created a “Helping Hand” award at KFC-International given each quarter to a country team that went “above and beyond” to help an emerging market team. This simple and free peer recognition was remarkably effective at fostering a spirit of mutual respect in all our markets.

Be clear about “negotiables” and “non-negotiables” for the brand. Some non-negotiables are crystal clear, such as your trademark, logo and core products (for KFC, that would include the Original Recipe). If you allow the local team to have flexibility about as many issues as possible, the more they will feel they own the finished product. For example, eBay allowed local market units to decide on the categories they wanted to focus on initially and how they wanted to promote them with buyers and sellers. With H&R Block India, we focused more on the Internet-based services and only built a nominal number of retail locations, the exact opposite of our U.S. strategy. By being collaborative and flexible in how you enter a new market, your odds of success go up dramatically.

Understanding the “why” is a lot more important than the “what” for a global brand strategy. When I came back to the United States to manage the global KFC brand, my new boss asked me to travel around the world and meet with the various teams to develop a global strategy and initiatives. When I returned after six weeks on the road, I told him we were in big trouble unless we figured out a better way to explain the importance and rationale for such strategies to everyone. That led to the creation of the KFC Global Marketing College, which brought in teams from around the world for exactly that purpose. While it took several years for this to have a significant business impact, once we had a critical mass of teams that believed in our global strategy, there was no stopping them. KFC International has since grown from a $2 billion to a $14 billion business.

The principles I’ve outlined can apply to any business with international expansion aspirations, whether you’re aiming for two countries or two hundred. If you treat your global business partners with the proper respect, give them the insight into your brand strategy they need, and let them implement it as they see fit, odds are that strategy will succeed.

Hovering Over a Touch-Screen Keyboard Has Its Consequences

Desktop-computer keyboards allow you to rest your hands on the keys as you type, but touch-screen keyboards, such as on many tablets, are less forgiving: They require you to keep your fingertips off the screen to avoid accidentally activating the keys. Thus the upper-back muscles that support your arms are more active when you type on a touch screen than when you use a standard keyboard, which could lead to chronic shoulder problems, according to research reported in the Wall Street Journal. The average typing speed on touch screens is also less than half that on desktop keyboards, the researchers found.

To Fight Ebola, Stop Pointing Fingers

The burgeoning Ebola crisis hit home for Americans the other week with the death of a Liberian man in Dallas. Blunders in the treatment of Thomas Eric Duncan put two well-intentioned nurses at risk and potentially exposed many others. These developments unraveled the projected confidence of leading physicians and officials of the Center for Disease Control that the disease was a low-risk threat to our country with its advanced medical systems.

The recent Congressional hearing was predictably all finger-pointing and demands for greater accountability of CDC Director Thomas Frieden. And after announcing the need for a more intense government response, President Obama named former White House staffer Ron Klain as his “Ebola Coordinator.”

Unfortunately, we need something different in a world increasingly threatened by cross-boundary, multi-dimensional threats. No single bureaucratic institution, such as the CDC, will be able to get ahead of this challenge, and mid-level administrative coordination won’t be enough either. Instead of institution-based siloes and command-and-control, Ebola demands the collective problem-solving and action of a virtual community — and the mobilization of an entire ecosystem of diverse players.

The struggle of the old management model is playing out before our very eyes. The public narrative is focusing on gaps, blame, and the assessment of this or that person’s incompetence. We shouldn’t be surprised. Hierarchical command-and-control is slow and operates less on incentives for solutions than on avoiding criticism or mistakes. Instead of the cross-silo collaborative learning needed, hierarchies count on “trickle-down knowledge.” The nurses treating Duncan lacked critical information, skills, and the necessary protective equipment. The bureaucratic response that “the right information was posted on a website” bespeaks how frail traditional management approaches can be in this kind of situation.

Containing this kind of disease is all the more difficult because many different institutions must be part of any solution. In addition to hospitals, an integrated systemic response will call on community health organizations, airlines and other public transportation companies, the TSA, and providers of other services patronized by those potentially infected. The media has to focus on public awareness and communication of evolving risks.

The requirements for creating and enforcing a universal, end-to-end response are tall: instilling a shared sense of urgency for a common approach; sharing knowledge and creating common protocols about what to do, aligning all players across the potentially infected (and infecting) ecosystem; and perhaps most difficult, managing actual front-line performance in accordance with protocols. Adding to the challenge, it all must be done with great speed and judgment at every step in the many chains of different players.

Techno-enthusiasts will reply what’s needed is a network-based approach, with better use of specialized and mass social media to rapidly share information among the institutions and individuals involved, to collect data about disease spread, and to surface new ideas and volunteers. Relying on the crowd and building more networks among those pulled into the Ebola crisis will add more flexibility and innovation to the existing bureaucratic response.

That’s important. But as I described in an earlier blog, networks struggle to build shared purpose among diverse players and to create shared accountability for real performance on the ground. For that, we need a community. Communities take networks to the next level by building on a common purpose to drive collaborative problem-solving. They instill a sense of joint responsibility without all the finger-pointing. It’s urgent that we move from the “thin we” of today’s current response to the “thicker we” of a community engaged for true cooperative action.

Creating such a cross-boundary community will call for a different kind of leadership than we have seen thus far. We don’t need a White House staffer to “coordinate” an ambiguous ecosystem over which he has little authority or expertise. And we definitely don’t need an Ebola “czar” to command and control various disconnected entities. We need a leader who, with strong professional experience and motivational skills, can mobilize many different institutions, constituents, and even volunteers – all potential players and contributors across many different networks. A mobilizer can create energy and a sense of common purpose – and accountability – to drive people to set aside their turf concerns and collaborate. They have vision to identify existing and new problems-to-be-solved; they support continuous learning, even through mistakes; and they instill a culture of trust, based on transparency and merit of solutions, not the prestige of someone’s title or position.

We’ve seen examples of these mobilizers in other times of crisis. Most notably, in the Chilean mining disaster in 2010, Chilean president Sebastian Pinera and onsite project leader Andre Sougarret brought together a massive international response to quickly solve an unprecedented problem – albeit one in a single location. Rather than special skill, it takes a leader who can draw in and direct outside help without becoming so controlling that the contributors drop out or push their own agenda.

Beyond the immediate risk of Ebola, we should strive to identify and promote this kind of mobilizing leadership for future crises. Our world is awash with cross-boundary multi-dimensional threats: terrorism, climate change, interdependent financial chaos, demographic dislocations. Institutions and even nations will never meet these challenges alone, and especially not with yesterday’s management approaches. We need the kind of problem-solving communities that only creative leaders can foster.

Can We Quantify the Value of Connected Devices?

In the 1990s, Procter & Gamble’s Product Supply Organization kicked off a major Reliability Engineering program, much like the efficiency initiatives of companies such as Toyota. They institutionalized the use of data collection systems in their manufacturing facilities to understand how products and machines would “behave” and could be optimized. By collecting machine failure data via manual sources as well as PLCs (programmable logic controllers), they were able to plot statistical distribution curves that predicted the failure rates of machines, along with the specific causes. More impressively, by linking all the machines together, they were able to predict — and subsequently improve — overall process reliability and product quality. This was all done through physical, smart, connected devices and sensors, which monitored, controlled, and optimized the units with increasing autonomy via continuous learning.

Sound familiar?

The Internet of Things may already feel like an overused buzzword, but the value is real. A seminal article in this month’s issue of HBR by Michael Porter and James Heppelmann starts off with a definition of what the “Internet of Things” (or “IoT”) really is – a collection of smart, connected devices or products that, when pieced together well, can yield new functionality, reliability, utilization, and capabilities that were previously not deemed possible.

Organizations are salivating at the prospect of more and more data being fed into an IoT infrastructure and transforming industries globally. However, there’s skepticism that the results will live up to the hype. The Wall Street Journal ran a major story questioning how all the data collected can be commercialized and valued.

How can companies get beyond the hype to measure the value? The answer lies in recognizing that we’ve been here before. Early examples of connected devices offer lessons in estimating the value of the data they generate.

P&G didn’t go into its early connected device initiatives with a “let’s try this out and see what it gets us” mindset. Yes, they experimented in the labs and ran pilots to hone the methodologies and models, but they eventually rolled out the program with stated improvement targets which set overall process reliability numbers, and resulted in reductions in TDC (“Total Delivered Cost”). And this addresses the commercial value creation question – P&G’s mindset was to create operational efficiencies that would contribute to healthy EBITDA margins.

Another useful example comes not from connected devices but earlier data businesses.

A key challenge in quantifying the value of IoT is in valuing the data assets it creates. In many companies, these types of data assets are currently assigned rough valuations and classified as “intangible” or “goodwill” on the balance sheet. Part of the reason may be that although considered high potential, insufficient emphasis has been placed to understand their monetization as an ongoing business proposition.

Information companies such as Thomson Reuters and Bloomberg are examples of companies that have historically understood the value of data assets. Over the years, they have excelled at collecting, producing, and processing raw data to create valuable analytics and insights, which are subsequently distributed and commercialized. While not historically dedicated to connected devices, these companies are good case studies for the commercialization and valuation of their data assets.

These companies’ valuation of their data assets begins with a commercial business case. In this case the typical questions are: what’s the data, how do customers use that data, and therefore how can it be sold? On the revenue side, what’s the business model (for example, subscription or licensing)? On the cost side, what’s the sourcing cost, the production cost, and the distribution cost? Which of these are ongoing, and which are one-off? Combining these creates a P&L and a projection, which through a discounted cash flow analysis yields an NPV, which can be used to assess valuation. The process also includes a determination of how much of the activities are classified as capital expenditures versus ongoing operating expenses. This method is not perfect, but it is a good start.

The concepts of utilizing smart, connected devices and commercializing vast datasets are not altogether new, and that some organizations have been doing this already for a number of years on a limited basis. What’s different now is the volume of the data, the availability of efficient sensor technologies, and the prospect of application in every walk of life. The task may seem daunting, but it needn’t be, if one considers this to be the next logical step of an already existing trend, rather than a brand new phenomenon.

Watch: Mastering the Five Skills of Disruptive Innovators

Have you mastered the five skills that distinguish innovative entrepreneurs and executives from ordinary managers?

In The Innovator’s DNA, co-authors Jeffrey Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton Christensen (The Innovator’s Dilemma, The Innovator’s Solution) built on what is known about disruptive innovation to show how individuals can develop the skills necessary to move from idea to impact.

Through their research on the world’s best innovators—including leaders at Amazon, Apple, Google, Skype, and Virgin Group—these authors have identified five key skills that differentiate great innovators.

In this interactive Harvard Business Review webinar, Dyer describes these five key skills and explains how managers can develop them. He discusses how to generate innovative new ideas, collaborate with colleagues to implement them, and build innovation throughout the organization. He also details the behavior changes necessary to drive innovation and improve creative impact.