Marina Gorbis's Blog, page 1400

Education Needs to Factor In Entrepreneurship

Nearly every debate about the “value” of a college degree is based on two questions: “Is college worth it?” and “Does someone with a degree earn more than someone without one?” Both of these questions come up year after year as headline fodder despite the fact that at a macro level, the answer to both of them is an unequivocal yes.

Unfortunately, both questions frame the debate as if America’s jobs and income will automatically rebound, regardless of our interdependence on a global economy and the increasingly fast pace of technological change. There’s a third question we must ask instead, and it’s one with far more long-term importance to the economy: “Do college degrees adequately teach value creation?”

The answer, sadly, is largely no.

Value creation doesn’t mean creating individual wealth for our grads; it means empowering our grads with the know-how to innovate, create jobs and contribute to long-term economic growth. And who creates more value than entrepreneurs?

Although the mindset of young people is shifting toward a more entrepreneurial way of thinking, our education system is lagging behind. According to the annual 2014 Youth Entrepreneurship Study conducted by YEC and Buzz Marketing Group, 81 percent of non-self-employed individuals believe they will be a business owner or self-employed at some point because of the new economy. Eighty-seven percent of young people want to pursue entrepreneurship. Nevertheless, 62 percent weren’t offered any entrepreneurship classes in college at all — and of those that were, 62 percent deemed them inadequate.

At the same time, entrepreneurship in the U.S. is declining steadily; despite the increase in hype around entrepreneurship, the actual firm entry rate (businesses less than a year old as a share of all businesses) fell by half between 1978 and 2011.

This must change.

Here are some strategic ways to ensure that a four-year college education is most certainly “worth it” for the next generation of leaders:

Start preparing young people for success before they start college. Understanding value creation doesn’t start on day one of college. It starts with the K-12 system. To that end, we must help more of the youngest Americans access programs like Junior Achievement and Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE).

By providing experiential learning in financial literacy, entrepreneurship, and work readiness, these programs train young people to apply the “hard” skills learned in K-12 to real-world problems, preparing them to recognize opportunity in work of all kinds. Such programs also increase the rate of business creation; according to one NFTE study, 36 percent of their grads actually started businesses, compared to 9 percent of the control group.

Once students are in college, we must equip them with the skills they need. Namely:

Create real dialogue between universities and business leaders. Universities and colleges could bring in business leaders to create apprenticeship and internship opportunities, mentor students, and provide clear pathways for graduates of all degree programs to both find work and make an impact on their communities.

Bringing entrepreneurs in to help design curricula or mentor current college students, especially those earning MBAs or undergraduate business degrees, would provide the training they need to solve real, current problems through companies of their own. Babson’s hands-on entrepreneurship curriculum would be a good model for other colleges to look at.

Rethink the “core curriculum” to meet actual business needs. Thirty-seven percent of the YEC/Buzz survey respondents said that, if they found themselves unemployed, they would try to start a business or freelance — versus the 19 percent who would go back to school or the 21 percent who would take any job they could find.

However, if we don’t teach young people how to freelance or start a business in college — not because they necessarily want to, but because they might have to — then we are not doing our job. No matter the major, every degree program should include experiential learning so that grads are able to apply their learning to the increasingly high-tech, fast-paced world we live in.

To do so, educational leaders must start consulting with the people actually creating jobs when designing core curricula. Partnerships can speed up that process; companies like IBM are partnering with schools (again, Babson among them) to develop curricula that blends business training with the IT skills U.S. companies will need in the next decade.

Onboard more grads into startups. Getting practical experience in a small business or start-up setting is an invaluable experience for students, whether they plan to start a business or simply need to nourish the kind of 21st-century skills (team-building, leadership, entrepreneurial thinking) employers today value highly.

And yet, year after year, many of our top-tier grads continue to end up in the same three sectors: finance, consulting and law.

But it’s not for lack of interest — even though an astounding 88 percent of Millennials want to work for a startup, most startups have neither the cash nor the bandwidth to recruit at top schools and compete against major corporations for talent. Organizations like Venture for America provide a roadmap for onboarding America’s best and brightest into the startup world. Plus, VFA plugs its trainees into cities sorely in need of economic revival and capable talent (Baltimore, Las Vegas, Detroit, and others) — creating value locally while also preparing young people to create their own business opportunities.

Creating value can’t just be about one person’s individual learning or one person’s paycheck. Rather, a degree must also be about equipping a generation of highly educated and capable individuals to contribute to building a better, more sustainable economy — so that they can someday help create the tens or hundreds of thousands of jobs America needs to keep moving forward. That is the real value colleges must unleash in order to truly be “worth it.”

 

CEOs Sometimes Need Outside Help

We know we want leaders who are smart, decisive, transformative, and possessed of a singular vision. But there’s an often-overlooked factor that can make the difference between success and failure: a leader’s ability to go far outside the organization—mobilizing networks of critical expertise—to get help in solving problems.

Outside the organization? Why would the CEO of a huge corporation with vast capabilities need to look elsewhere for assistance? If outside help is truly needed, doesn’t that say something pretty negative about the CEO’s own staff and existing supply chain?

The reality today is that businesses, governments, and nonprofits are so complex and often must move so quickly that in many cases, finding answers to difficult questions requires tapping experts, service providers, and innovators scattered all over the world.

As Bill Joy, founder of Sun Microsystems, pointed out years ago, “No matter who you are, most of the smartest people don’t work for you.”

Malaysian authorities’ initial failure to track and recover Flight 370 shows how a lack of outside help can impede solutions during a crisis. National and airline leaders weren’t able to adjust to the fluid and complex situation by engaging external resources in the critical first hours and days after the plane’s disappearance. Collaboration and coordination eventually improved, but still faltered at times.

By contrast, consider the 2010 Chilean mining disaster, which resulted in the triumphant rescue of 33 miners trapped underground. As Faaiza Rashid, Amy C. Edmondson, and Herman B. Leonard found, Chilean president Sebastian Piñera immediately and effectively mobilized not just the critical government ministries and industry executives but also a variety of outside experts across the globe—from an Australian mapping software company to UPS. At the mine site, project leader André Sougarret sought assistance while managing the boundaries of the rescue effort to screen out contributors who lacked expertise or workable proposals. Together the officials and engineers overcame unprecedented technical challenges and brought about a rescue that most observers hardly thought possible.

A growing number of organizations now routinely draw on timely assistance beyond their own boundaries to pursue innovation, solve business or social problems, or expand ventures. These initiatives go well beyond the largely transactional exchanges promoted through crowd-sourcing approaches.

They are also quite different from CEOs’ typical outreach to various stakeholders, people who are already invested in or connected with the company. Sometimes the experts are freelancers or employees in other businesses; sometimes they’re in governments, NGOs, or academia. If the challenge at hand is industrywide, they might even be competitors. As a result, today’s leaders need to be good at building connections with a variety of outsiders beyond the usual value chains.

But making contacts is just the first, and often the least important, step in tapping experts. In my observations over the past several years, I’ve seen that effective CEOs don’t just sign up contractors; they lead in a way that mobilizes a network. They create energy, a sense of purpose, and even something of a community among people over whom they have no control. These groups of experts blur the distinctions between insiders and outsiders. How do they do it?

It often starts with greater humility. Compared with internally focused leaders, mobilizers simply have to be more humble. Even paid outsiders usually have plenty of other projects to work on, so mobilizers can’t just issue demands. They need to show much more respect and at times even deference toward these outsiders. But they can’t be shrinking violets either; they must have a confident, positive outlook and provide a strong sense of purpose and direction. Take NASA’s Mike Ryschkewitsch, who headed NASA’s Flight Readiness Review for Space Shuttle missions. He had the critical but delicate leadership role of facilitating networks of internal and external technicians, specialists, and managers to address final technical problems and approve launches in the wake of the Columbia disaster in 2003. An accomplished NASA leader, he gained the respect of all constituencies by deferring to superior expertise in the room (but he also moved decisively to close off debate when he sensed the collective was ready for a decision).

This humility often leads mobilizers to be more imaginative about what’s possible, and who can help. During the Chilean mine rescue, a key breakthrough came from a 24-year-old field engineer who showed up at the site on his own. To take a corporate example, Alan Mulally’s pioneering transformation of the fortress-like Ford organization was fueled in part collaborating with outsiders, seeking insights from regulators, investment bankers, and consumer automotive researchers, as well as major customers and car dealers. The overhaul even benefited from occasional conversations with Mulally’s counterpart at General Motors.

Finally, they tend to have an eye for networks of networks. Like good chess players, mobilizers think a few moves ahead. That means not just identifying network contributors who might help a project, but also looking to see what networks each network might bring along. In assembling a highly effective intelligence network during the Iraq War, U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal brought together siloed units from historically competitive branches of military service and government. That in itself was a major accomplishment. But instead of being satisfied with having a few representatives from each unit, he encouraged all participants to draw from their related networks of intelligence, both in Washington and on the ground in the Middle East. McChrystal’s success was marked by the steady growth of participants in the network’s regular knowledge-sharing videoconferences.

The importance of these skills in recruiting outsiders and keeping them engaged will become increasingly critical in large organizations as advancing technology makes business ever more complex, global, and interdependent.

What to Do If You Already Hate Your New Job

Everyone has bad days at the office. But what should you do if you are increasingly convinced you’ve taken the wrong job? Should you quit right away, or try to make the position work for you? And how can you put yourself back on the right career path?

What the Experts Say

“Every job is going to have tradeoffs,” says Dorie Clark, author of Reinventing You: Define Your Brand, Imagine Your Future. Your biggest challenge is to figure out whether the problems are temporary or baked into the nature of your new role. That’s where it pays to start asking the right questions, of both yourself and your boss. “Most people who take the wrong job haven’t done enough research going in,” says Priscilla Claman, president of Career Strategies, Inc., a Boston-based career coaching firm. But don’t assume that the job can’t change in ways that will encourage you to stay. Here’s how to make a bad career move work for you.

Be realistic

“No job is perfect,” says Clark. Some jobs offer a competitive salary, but a terrible commute. Others put you behind a desk for more time than you’d prefer but promise more opportunities for advancement. Ask yourself, “what did you want from this job and are you still going to get it?” says Claman. Is the role a good stepping stone to a better job down the line, or does it allow you to spend desired time with your family? “A good job will have many positive things and a few things that bother you,” says Clark. But if you are already fantasizing about exit strategies after only a few weeks, don’t ignore those signs. “You owe it to your job to think about it long term,” Clark says. “And if you are already out the door in your head, you aren’t going to serve yourself or the company very well.”

Explore if it’s salvageable

Think about whether the issues that are troubling you are temporary or structural. All those dreaded late nights at the office may come to an end in a few months’ time with a project’s completion. On the other hand, you may detest the sales part of your new sales job. If you are having questions or doubts, go to your boss and explain your concerns. “The worst thing you can do is to blindside people and up and quit,” says Clark. “You can’t have this conversation 100 percent in your head.” Come armed with ideas for how your job could adapt in ways that are better aligned with your skills and goals. You may find that your boss isn’t aware of the mismatch, and is open to deploying you in a different way. “It may be possible to get the job you want if you play your cards right,” says Claman. Or you could find that your definitions of success for the role are radically different. Either way, you’ll have more information to help you make your decision.

Look for development elsewhere

If you do decide to stick it out, whether for financial or personal reasons, remember that there are other avenues for professional development and stimulation outside the office. Consider taking online classes or joining volunteer professional activities. “If your job isn’t giving you what you need to develop,” says Clark, “that may be your opportunity to take a leadership role in a professional organization to make contacts and build skills that help you further down the line.”

Put out feelers

If you decide leaving is your only option, “start networking as soon as possible,” says Clark. Consider reaching out to your past employer to see if your old job is still available. If you are convinced you are in the wrong job at the right company, get to know people in other departments so that you can ask polite questions about whether people there are happy, how they ended up there, and whether there are positions that might better fit your interests and skills. Developing a personal network within the company is one of the smartest things you can do if you want to stay but in a new role. “People will hire people they know and trust over the best external candidate,” says Claman. “So you have a huge advantage.”

Understand the risks

Quitting the wrong job may bring you relief, but it will also likely create a blemish on your resume. Most employers will understand that it is inevitable you will make a mistake once or twice in the course of a long career, says Clark, “but if you are changing jobs every four months for no clear reason, that’s definitely a warning sign about your reliability as an employee.” Make sure you develop thoughtful responses to future questions in interviews about your short tenure at the job, emphasizing that you felt it wasn’t a good fit for your skills and goals.

Take the high road

Resist the temptation to tell your tyrant boss what you think of her on the way out the door. “Do not get mad and do not burn bridges,” says Claman. “Because you never know when former colleagues will be valuable to you.” Employers are obviously going to be upset that their choice didn’t work out and they have to go through the process of hiring all over again. “You want to be respectful that it’s a hassle for them,” says Clark. “Be humble enough to thank them and try to leave on good terms.”

Take care with the next step

Just as you need to be careful about how you exit the wrong job, you should take care before making the next move. Don’t let your eagerness to leave your current job push you into another role that proves to be a bad fit. Consider where you went wrong in your last search and don’t be afraid to ask hard questions of prospective employers — questions like what success looks like at the company and how managers handle challenges. If you want to avoid making the same mistake twice, “look before you leap,” says Claman.

Principles to remember:

Do:

Remember that no job is 100 percent perfect — there are always trade-offs
Approach your boss early with your concerns — there may be room for adjustments that convince you to stay
Consider outside avenues for professional development to spruce up your resume

Don’t:

Blindside your boss and abruptly quit — give your employer a chance to hear and respond to your concerns
Feel obliged to stick it out — you owe it to yourself and your boss to find a role that works for you
Let the wrong job push you into another bad role — think carefully about your next move

Case study #1: Proactively build your skills

Elisabeth* wanted out of her job. As a marketing and special events coordinator for an outdoor sports company in the Bay Area, she’d worked hard for months to prove herself worthy of a promotion. But she was hurt and frustrated when her managers told her she wasn’t right for the available role. So she “made the decision to leave and took the first thing that came along,” she says.

It was a lateral move, and there were warning signs it was a bad fit from the start. “Even when I was interviewing, I knew it wasn’t where I wanted to be,” Elisabeth says. But because she felt she had no room for growth at her current company, she felt compelled to move on. Unfortunately, her misgivings proved right. Her manager was often inaccessible and the work felt repetitive and dull. “There was no room to be creative,” she says. “I didn’t have any authority to do anything.”

She began looking for new work almost immediately. But she also made a conscious decision to beef up her resume with professional development classes during her search. “I knew that this role could potentially be seen as a blemish on my resume,” Allison says. “I didn’t want to give an employer any reason not to hire me.” She took online courses in HTML, Adobe, and Excel and listened to webinars for job-seeking tips. She also sought the advice of friends working in human resource positions about how to tackle questions about her short duration at the company.

Eight months later, she landed an executive administrator role that expanded her duties outside of marketing. Today, she’s the office manager for a personal finance firm, managing budgets, expenses, and operations. Leaving the wrong job helped me find “things I didn’t know I would like,” she says.

*not her real name

Case study #2: Know your strengths

Christine Pechstein, a Kansas-based career coach for people with disabilities, loved nearly everything about her job. Her boss gave her a great deal of autonomy, she liked her coworkers, and she believed in the mission of the nonprofit where she worked. But as a single mother, she wanted to make more money than she knew the organization could offer her. “I was happy, but I knew I needed to keep my options open,” she says.

When a program manager position at a local foundation opened up, Pechstein jumped at the chance. The move increased her salary by a third, but almost immediately, Pechstein began to feel as if she’d made a mistake. Instead of interacting with clients, she was confined to a desk, dealing with grant proposals and other paperwork. “It just didn’t fit my strengths,” she says. “I’m more about people and creating programs. In the new position, I was no longer forging a path. I was following a path. I missed being in the trenches.”

After six months, she emailed her former boss, who was still interviewing candidates to fill her old position. She had to go through the standard application and interview process to get her old job back, but she left on good enough terms that the job was soon hers. She knew she’d have to take a pay cut and felt bad about disappointing her new employer, but “it was a gut feeling,” Pechstein says.” I knew it was the move I needed to make.”

Today, Pechstein puts the lessons she learned from the experience to work each day as a life management coach, helping focus clients’ career aims. “People think if they just had this job or made this amount of money, everything will be fine,” she says. “But they get those things and they are still miserable and feel they are missing something.” She tells clients that she knows what she preaches from experience: “Getting the job can’t be the only goal.”

The Secret to Alibaba’s Culture Is Jack Ma’s Apartment

In 2002, the year Alibaba.com first became profitable, founder Jack Ma gathered a handful of employees in his office and told them there was a secret project that they had the opportunity to join. But to do so, they would need to resign from Alibaba, work from a secret location, and refrain from telling friends or family or Alibaba staff about this new start-up they would be building.

This decision — to bet the company on a new and distinct business — was the first such move by Ma, but it would become the cornerstone of Alibaba’s strategy. Today, Alibaba looks more like a conglomerate than a typical tech company, with a diverse set of businesses operating largely independently. That transformation began with Ma’s decision to launch Taobao, the consumer commerce site that would dash eBay’s hopes in China and propel the Alibaba Group to even greater success.

The employees agreed to the secret project, and Ma revealed the location from which they’d be working: his old apartment, where years earlier he and 17 co-founders had launched the original Alibaba site.

Jack Ma’s First Day Speech in Alibaba Apartment from Taluswood Films on Vimeo.

That choice cuts to the heart of Alibaba, according to Porter Erisman, who served as a vice president at the company from 2000 to 2008, and whose documentary on his time there debuted in 2012. By launching Taobao out of the same apartment from which he had launched Alibaba.com, Ma was able to imbue the new project with the same culture of his existing company, while keeping it totally separate.

“They went off to the original apartment that Alibaba was founded in and that’s where they worked with the same kind of spirit as Alibaba in those early days,” said Erisman. “Alibaba was started in Hupan Garden. That was the name of the apartment complex. Over time we realized that this Hupan culture was important to preserve even as we grew to a big company.”

It’s clear from the documentary, Crocodile in the Yangtze, that Alibaba sees a strong corporate culture as critical to its success. Preserving culture while scaling is difficult in general, but for Alibaba the task was complicated by its decentralized approach to decision-making, where separate businesses are largely allowed to chart their own course.

Ma’s insight was that a shared founding space could unite a new project with its predecessor, even while maintaining secrecy and complete separation.

The decision to launch Taobao out of the apartment that spawned Alibaba worked so well that Ma took the same approach with Alipay, the company’s digital payment business, which launched in 2004 also out of the apartment.

Of course, this only works for skunkworks projects. As the company grew, it had to devise more traditional ways to extend a unified culture across increasingly diversified business units. To do so, Alibaba had to articulate the values it believed comprised this “Hupan culture” — principles like “embrace change” and “teach and learn” — and instill them through more traditional methods, like new employee orientations and Outward Bound-style trips.

Though Ma’s apartment no longer serves as a rite of passage for Alibaba’s innovators, the culture it created lives on. And while not practical in many circumstances, it’s worth asking whether such a strategy could work elsewhere. Imagine one of Apple’s secretive new product initiatives working out of Steve Jobs’ old garage, or a Google team working out of the Menlo Park garage where the company first located.

Erisman believes Alibaba’s core strength is growing new enterprises “from apartment phase” to national or global scale. Most companies that succeed in making that transition never think to go back to working out of a cramped apartment or garage. But in Alibaba’s case, it seems to have paid off.

Venture Capitalists’ Ethnic Favoritism Pays Off for Them

U.S. venture capitalists are more likely to invest in start-ups with executives of the same ethnic origins as themselves, and these investments tend to bring superior payoffs, benefiting from close VC–manager communication and coordination, say Deepak Hegde of New York University and Justin Tumlinson of the University of Munich. About 84% of U.S. venture capitalists are of Anglo-Celtic or European origin, a proportion that nearly reflects these groups’ share of the country’s population. 3.74% and 2.96% of U.S.-based VC partners are of Indian and Chinese origin, respectively, about 6 and 4 times these ethnic groups’ share of the population.

The Amazon Fire Launch: What’s New and What They Stole From Apple

Yesterday, Amazon unveiled the new product it had worked us up into a fever pitch to see. Its new Amazon Fire is a phone with a high-definition Gorilla glass screen, rubber casing, 13 megapixel camera, 24/7 customer service through MayDay, unlimited photo storage in the cloud, plus 12 months of free Amazon Prime membership (worth $99). The cost? $199 for a 32 GB phone or $299 for a 64 GB phone, according to pricing on AT&T’s website.

Of course, expectations were high. The smartphone market is dominated by essentially two offerings, Apple phones with the iOS operating system and Samsung/HTC/other phones running on Android OS. To win major market share where even the mighty Microsoft has struggled would take a lot. So Fire also includes a button-controlled feature called Firefly, which can scan up to 100 million products for review or purchase from the Amazon marketplace (making showrooming easier than ever). More amazing, it introduces the much-heralded 3D technology called “dynamic perspective” which creates image depth and also allows for page scrolling based on the angle of one’s head. This leading-edge 3D imaging technology makes video and photo capture a more immersive, realistic experience. And I expect Fire’s 3D lock-screen images will now constitute the new badge of coolness.

All this is impressive, but as a long-time student of product launches, I was more interested in the unveiling process than the product itself.  Was the launch just as innovative as the product? Did it accomplish its goals?

The gold standard for such things was set by Apple under Steve Jobs, and it was clear some weeks ago that Jeff Bezos was taking more than a page from Apple’s book. The teaser campaign for Fire’s launch was shamelessly Apple-esque. In a YouTube video released by Amazon two weeks ago (and viewed at this point over 2.5 million times), affable-looking people in their 20s and 30s are shown from the shoulders up marveling at what they are holding in their hands. We hear their oohs and ahhs, but we never see the product. The video, featuring a very similar visual style to previous teasers by Apple, succeeded in getting the rumor mill going without giving away anything.

Of course a photo of the phone was leaked—but the glimpse it afforded of multiple cameras at each end of the device only stoked more interest in the potential for 3D capabilities. As part of the official announcement of the launch date, Bezos sent a copy of his “favorite childhood book—Mr. Pine’s Purple House” to the media, hinting that the new product would reinforce its message that “the world is a better place when things are a little bit different.” This was reminiscent of Apple’s colorful invite which teased the announcement of the multi-hued iPhone 5c by saying “this should brighten everyone’s day.”

But let’s also give Amazon credit for adding some new wrinkles to the playbook. Here were some aspects of the unveiling that struck me as innovative, and how they worked out.

Amazon granted an “exclusive” to CNET to stream live event coverage, which was an interesting move. But I doubt I am the only one who found the silly and sometimes snarky banter by the CNET reporters torture to watch for 95 minutes. I much preferred the commentary by Forbes.com, whose minute-by-minute text blogging was cogent, factual, and incisive—but unfortunately it didn’t feature video. Either way, it was disappointing not to hear Jeff Bezos’ own words about this incredible new product that is going to change the way we interact with our phone. Only experiencing coverage of the event by skeptical journalists took a great deal away from the excitement Bezos was trying to convey. The question that hung in the air: why would Amazon, given its hopes to dominate both the digital content and device world, choose not to live-stream this critical launch?

Bezos spent more than an hour talking features, taking the crowd to school on Firefly product-scanning and 3D technology. Was it the right thing to do for a hall full of tech devotees? Perhaps. For marketers, it’s always a challenge to decide how much relative focus to place on features or benefits, and understanding both is critical. But certainly no consumer was able to experience the “awesome nature” of the features being explained (since we were mostly getting secondhand screen shots from CNET’s live coverage). Watching the 3D portion of the presentation was like trying to enjoy Avatar on a tube TV.

Consumers were invited to enter a lottery to attend the launch event, and that was a cool idea. But of the 60,000 who petitioned to attend, very few wound up among the 500 media and influencer attendees. I expect we’ll see refinements—perhaps even some that are consumer generated—on this way to build excitement for the device.

The launch event took place at 10:30 am in Seattle, obviously convenient for the Amazon folks and west coast watchers. But that meant it kicked off at 1:30 pm eastern time and didn’t conclude till after 3:00 pm. The timing no doubt made it difficult for stories by national reporters to be filed in time for same-day reading—especially since the video did not simultaneously accompany the news.

While the Fire event fell short of the panache an Apple event typically delivers, and did not produce the kind of excitement this innovative device deserves, much about the launch was effective. Even through the foggy lens of blog coverage, it was clear that Amazon has introduced a wondrous new entry into the crowded smartphone category. Early adopters and innovators will no doubt rush to buy it, and they’ll show it off to their friends. More fundamentally, with the launch of Fire TV (a streaming content device similar to Apple TV), and the growth of its Appstore to more than 240,000 applications (tripled from last year), Amazon has the device and content ecosystem to support this launch. It’s obvious this multi-million dollar bet that is four years in the making wasn’t conceived on a whim.

Will that generate enough consumer demand (through a single phone carrier) to grab massive market share? This will depend on how much hype Amazon can continue to generate, and what it does next to motivate early adopters to check out this new eye candy. And then, as Amazon well knows, it’s all about the user reviews, word of mouth, recommendations from family and friends, and social chatter.

From the Most Memorable New Product Launch Survey my colleagues and I field annually, we’ve learned that consumers look for six or more sources of information before buying a new product.  Yesterday’s launch was only the beginning – consumers will need more data points to be persuaded to make this discretionary smartphone purchase – but it started the Fire.

How to Spend the First 10 Minutes of Your Day

If you’re working in the kitchen of Anthony Bourdain, legendary chef of Brasserie Les Halles, best-selling author, and famed television personality, you don’t dare so much as boil hot water without attending to a ritual that’s essential for any self-respecting chef: mise-en-place.

The “Meez,” as professionals call it, translates into “everything in its place.” In practice, it involves studying a recipe, thinking through the tools and equipment you will need, and assembling the ingredients in the right proportion before you begin. It is the planning phase of every meal—the moment when chefs evaluate the totality of what they are trying to achieve and create an action plan for the meal ahead.

For the experienced chef, mise-en-place represents more than a quaint practice or a time-saving technique. It’s a state of mind.

“Mise-en-place is the religion of all good line cooks,” Bourdain wrote in his runaway bestseller Kitchen Confidential. “As a cook, your station, and its condition, its state of readiness, is an extension of your nervous system… The universe is in order when your station is set…”

Chefs like Anthony Bourdain have long appreciated that when it comes to exceptional cooking, the single most important ingredient of any dish is planning. It’s the “Meez” that forces Bourdain to think ahead, that saves him from having to distractedly search for items midway through, and that allows him to channel his full attention to the dish before him.

Most of us do not work in kitchens. We do not interact with ingredients that need to be collected, prepped, or measured. And yet the value of applying a similar approach and deliberately taking time out to plan before we begin is arguably greater.

What’s the first thing you do when you arrive at your desk? For many of us, checking email or listening to voice mail is practically automatic. In many ways, these are among the worst ways to start a day. Both activities hijack our focus and put us in a reactive mode, where other people’s priorities take center stage. They are the equivalent of entering a kitchen and looking for a spill to clean or a pot to scrub.

A better approach is to begin your day with a brief planning session. An intellectual mise-en-place. Bourdain envisions the perfect execution before starting his dish. Here’s the corollary for the enterprising business professional. Ask yourself this question the moment you sit at your desk: The day is over and I am leaving the office with a tremendous sense of accomplishment. What have I achieved?

This exercise is usually effective at helping people distinguish between tasks that simply feel urgent from those that are truly important. Use it to determine the activities you want to focus your energy on.

Then—and this is important—create a plan of attack by breaking down complex tasks into specific actions.

Productivity guru David Allen recommends starting each item on your list with a verb, which is useful because it makes your intentions concrete. For example, instead of listing “Monday’s presentation,” identify every action item that creating Monday’s presentation will involve. You may end up with: collect sales figures, draft slides, and incorporate images into deck.

Studies show that when it comes to goals, the more specific you are about what you’re trying to achieve, the better your chances of success. Having each step mapped out in advance will also minimize complex thinking later in the day and make procrastination less likely.

Finally, prioritize your list. When possible, start your day with tasks that require the most mental energy. Research indicates that we have less willpower as the day progresses, which is why it’s best to tackle challenging items – particularly those requiring focus and mental agility – early on.

The entire exercise can take you less than 10 minutes. Yet it’s a practice that yields significant dividends throughout your day.

By starting each morning with a mini-planning session, you frontload important decisions to a time when your mind is fresh. You’ll also notice that having a list of concrete action items (rather than a broad list of goals) is especially valuable later in the day, when fatigue sets in and complex thinking is harder to achieve.

Now, no longer do you have to pause and think through each step. Instead, like a master chef, you can devote your full attention to the execution.

Case Study: Is It Ever OK to Break a Promise?

Editor’s note: This fictionalized case study will appear in a forthcoming issue of Harvard Business Review, along with commentary from experts and readers. If you’d like your comment to be considered for publication, please be sure to include your full name, company or university affiliation, and e-mail address.

 

To: Patrick Fishburn, Asst. Manager, Operations

From: Sameer Hopskin, Asst. Manager, Operations

Date: January 20, 2012 20:41

Subject: RE: lunch today?

thanks for the burritos—and the advice. i’m totally convinced i need to go for the MBA and move into the business side of things. i’ve learned a lot here, but i can’t be a college-educated factory hand forever! but man the tuition is crazy expensive!

To: Ioana Romana, VP Operations

From: Sameer Hopskin

Date: January 23, 2012 14:18

Subject: Meeting with Mr. Baba

Dear Ioana,

I want to ask a big favor: I’d like a meeting with Mr. Baba to discuss the possibility of the company sponsoring me in an MBA program. I’m sure that I could add a lot of value if I had more business training.

In my time at BABA, I’ve had four promotions and consistently high evaluations. I can do the job of just about anyone in the factory and can work most of the software the engineering guys use. But I feel pretty far behind on the business side of things.

Please help me get a meeting with Mr. Baba. If he agrees to sponsor my MBA, I’ll be able to bring so much more to this company.

Sincerely,

Sameer

To: Sameer Hopskin

From: Ioana Romano

Date: January 23, 2012 14:42

Subject: RE: Meeting with Mr. Baba

Hi Sameer,

As I mentioned, Anil doesn’t think it makes sense for us to send people off to do MBAs. He thinks it’s best to have our employees “get their hands dirty” and give them the training they need here.

He’s also worried that they’ll leave the company if they get “fancy credentials.” Manufacturing is not the most glamorous business, and MBA recruiters are known for tempting people into more “prestigious” careers. Anil is big on commitment. He still talks about one senior manager—a man he’d spent years teaching the business to—who left a while back after taking an executive education program and being wooed away by one of our competitors.

I’ll try to get you a meeting, but I wanted to give you this background first. Anil started this company 20 years ago, and it wasn’t easy to get it where it is today. He’s really a committed boss, and he expects the same from his employees.

Regards,

Ioana

To: Anil Baba, CEO

From: Ioana Romano

Date: January 23, 2012 17:52

Subject: Sponsoring an MBA

Hi Anil,

Sameer Hopskin has worked for us for five years. He joined just after completing his BS in engineering and has had an excellent progression with the company. He’s part of my operations team now, and he hopes to transition to a management position. I think his real goal is to work more closely with you at headquarters?

He’s hoping we’ll give him a one-year leave of absence to do an MBA, and that we’ll cover his tuition.

I know you don’t like this kind of thing in general, but I think you should meet with Sameer. He’s a real asset to us. Will you do that for me?

Respectfully,

Ioana

To: Ioana Romano

From: Anil Baba

Date: January 23, 2012 18:37

Subject: RE: Sponsoring an MBA

Fine. Tell him to come to my office tomorrow at 8 a.m. sharp.

To: Ioana Romano

From: Sameer Hopskin

Date: January 24, 2012 10:17

Subject: Never Give Up

Dear Ioana,

Thanks for arranging for me to meet with Mr. Baba. I really appreciate it.

Unfortunately, Mr. Baba was not keen on my idea. I know he is a very successful man, but I think he may not appreciate fully what I could add to this company with some formal business training. The landscape is getting more competitive and complex. Surely the company could benefit from a more contemporary perspective.

I know Mr. Baba really respects you. I would really be grateful if you would talk to him again. I am a loyal employee. Please help me get Mr. Baba to understand that.

Thanks in advance,

Sameer

To: Ioana Romano

From: Anil Baba

Date: January 29, 2012 05:02

Subject: RE: Sponsoring an MBA

You’re right about that Sameer kid. He reminds me of me. If he works hard for a few more years I can see him on my team. See what we can do to keep him around.

To: Anil Baba

From: Ioana Romano

Date: February 3, 2012 12:17

Subject: RE: RE: Sponsoring an MBA

Dear Anil,

I talked with HR, and we can structure a contract so that Sameer Hopskin will be obligated to work here for at least three years after finishing his MBA. If he leaves beforehand—and Legal says there’s nothing we can do to make that impossible—he’ll be required to repay us for his tuition.

Sameer is a good kid, and I think he’s right about the advantages of having a few more MBAs around here. This investment might not look so bad if you consider how much we paid those consultants last year.

Should I push this forward with HR?

All the best,

Ioana

To: Ioana Romano

From: Anil Baba

Date: February 3, 2012 12:27

Subject: RE: RE: RE: Sponsoring an MBA

Get HR to draft the contract, and have that guy with the Russian name in Legal look it over. He doesn’t miss a thing.

If this kid comes back in two years working for one of those consulting shops and charging us $10,000 a day, we’ll pay him out of your salary.

To: Sameer Hopskin

From: Ioana Romano

Date: February 6, 2012 13:42

Subject: RE: Never Give Up

Sameer,

I talked to Anil, and he’s open to sponsoring your MBA. I also talked with HR about how to formalize this. The deal is the company would pay your tuition and commit to a position (with a promotion) upon completion of the degree. You would be obligated to work here for three full years; otherwise, you would have to repay the tuition. It’s a pretty standard setup—more or less what the consulting firms do.

That’s the legal part of it. But I don’t want to offer you this unless we settle something more important. As you know, Anil’s main worry is that you won’t return after your MBA. It’s not about the money. It’s about the precedent. If you set a good example, Anil may see value in sending more of our people to get their MBAs, something I know several others, including your friend Patrick, are interested in. But if you violate his trust, no one else will get the chance. You have to promise that you’re going to bring all your new knowledge and skills back to this company.

Sincerely,

Ioana

To: Ioana Romana

From: Sameer Hopskin

Date: February 6, 2012 13:49

Subject: RE: RE: Never Give Up

Dear Ioana,

Thank you so much. I am fully committed to BABA. I will study hard and come back to really help this company grow.

Faithfully,

Sameer

To: Sameer Hopskin

From: Patrick Fishburn

Date: February 6, 2012 20:41

Subject: RE: MBA here I come

dude that’s amazing! you’re totally paving the way for the rest of us!

To: Raji Hopskin

From: Sameer Hopskin

Date: May 12, 2013 21:37

Subject: RE: RE: Back to School

Mom,

Tell dad I gave Mr. Baba the bottle of whisky he sent. Mr. Baba asked for your address; so I assume he’ll be sending you a thank-you note. He’s old school just like dad. Please thank dad again and tell him I did look Mr. Baba in the eye when I shook his hand today. (By the way, I don’t need any more lessons in “how to be a man.”)

Love,

Sammy

To: Sameer Hopskin

From: Lucia Baltimore, HR

Date: August 15, 2012 09:49

Subject: Tuition Payment Confirmation

Dear Sameer,

I confirm receipt of the signed contract. We have made a bank transfer, and your tuition is paid. Regarding your last question: Yes, your medical insurance will remain active. There is no cost to you.

See you in a year.

Lucia Baltimore

To: Sameer Hopskin (MBA)

From: Patrick Fishburn

Date: June 6, 2013 20:16

Subject: catching up

dude, how is b-school wrapping up? things are good here. they gave me your old job, and i’m learning a lot. i’m psyched to do an mba myself. peace, p

To: Sameer Hopskin (MBA)

From: Dana Knight, Principal, Zeisberger Assoc.

Date: June 8, 2013 07:12

Subject: Employment Opportunity

Mr. Hopskin,

I work with Zeisberger Associates, an executive search firm, and we represent a client who is interested in your profile. It is a startup in Silicon Valley with some serious VC backing. Your background in engineering and manufacturing, together with your stellar MBA performance, is really appealing to the company.

Can we arrange a meeting to discuss?

Cheers,

Dana Knight

To: Dana Knight

From: Sameer Hopskin (MBA)

Date: June 8, 2013 07:22

Subject: RE: Employment Opportunity

Dear Ms. Knight,

I have class all day, but I can talk this evening after 6.

Sorry to ask, but how did you find me?

Thanks,

Sameer

To: Sameer Hopskin (MBA)

From: Dana Knight

Date: June 8, 2013 07:25

Subject: RE: RE: Employment Opportunity

Sameer, we looked through your school’s CV book. Your profile is clearly the best fit for this job. Trust me, it’s a very cool company. Silicon Valley, amazing office with a tennis court, gourmet lunches, jazz playing all the time, etc. I would so work there! Talk at 6. Cheers, Dana

To: Dana Knight

From: Sameer Hopskin (MBA)

Date: June 8, 2013 19:21

Subject: RE: RE: RE: Employment Opportunity

Dear Dana,

I really appreciate your time today. The job does sound perfect. As I said, however, my company is sponsoring me, and I promised my boss I would return. I wouldn’t be here without their support. I need to think about this.

Thanks again,

Sameer

To: Sameer Hopskin (MBA)

From: Dana Knight

Date: June 14, 2013 19:26

Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: Employment Opportunity

They loved you! But their investors are on their Board, so management is being pushed to fill critical vacancies ASAP. Sorry but they want a decision quickly. You said your contract requires you to pay back your tuition. I can try to arrange for WeDiggIt to cover those costs. As long as you honor the contract, you’re fine. Cheers.

From: Sameer Hopskin (MBA)

To: Raji Hopskin

Date: June 14 2013 23:47

Subject: RE: RE: Tough Decision!

Mom,

I still can’t figure out what to do. I feel really bad about all this. I didn’t look for it. They came to me! I know how you and dad feel, but the new job is an unbelievable opportunity—with a salary twice what I’d be making at BABA. When I promised Ioana I’d go back, there’s no way I could have predicted this. Please make sure dad knows that the world is different these days. Things are more competitive now.

Love,

Sammy

To: Sameer Hopskin (MBA)

From: Ioana Romano

Date: June 15 2013 18:22

Subject: RE: Headhunter

Sameer,

That’s pretty common. Headhunters have approached me several times in my career. I appreciate the heads-up. (No pun intended.) I presume you told them you already have a job?

See you soon,

Ioana

To: Sameer Hopskin (MBA)

From: Lucy Vinapola, HR Manager, WeDiggIt

Date: June 22 2013 10:14

Subject: Offer of Employment

Dear Mr. Hopskin,

I have attached your offer, with an annual base salary of $146,000 and a sign-on bonus of 50% of your MBA tuition. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Yours,

Lucy Vinapola

To: Sameer Hopskin (MBA)

From: Ioana Romano

Date: June 23 2013 18:22

Subject: RE: RE: RE: Headhunter

Sameer,

The job sounds fantastic. I get it. I just want to remind you that you gave us your word you would come back. I want the person I supported then to make this decision, the one who swore to me he’d help the company that helped him. I trust you’ll do the right thing.

Sincerely,

Ioana

Question:  Should Sameer return to BABA or take the WeDiggIt offer?

Please remember to include your full name, company or university affiliation, and e-mail address

The EU Privacy Ruling Won’t Hurt Innovation

Consumers have a “right to be forgotten” – at least in the EU. Last month, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) classified Google as a data controller and ruled that they must comply with individuals’ requests to remove certain links to personal data. Google has asserted that this will adversely affect innovation, but those claims are premature. The EU’s human rights-centered views have been influencing global standards and privacy practices in the Middle East for decades, and businesses have adapted to more restrictive markets, like China and North Korea, and thrived. The ruling presents opportunities to establish profitable relationships with European clients who desire privacy-based services. Corporations need to see privacy as another market ripe for innovation, one that can yield global profits, because adapting to EU concerns means extending your market reach across the world.

And Europe’s concerns are global concerns. The ECJ ruling has implications for all multinational businesses that handle European data, and it dilutes the “proportionality test,” where businesses claim that the economic effort of deleting personally identifiable data is damaging to their business models. Now, companies need to pay attention to where their clients live (and the jurisdictions that govern them) because they can be held accountable.

Even before the ECJ decision, Europeans felt that they had to balance access to US markets with the risk of EU fines. A lawyer for an EU corporation told me, “When we work with U.S. companies who process our data, we have to put something in our contracts that give us some protection because we know that they won’t be held accountable. We want to participate in U.S. markets, but we know we are exposing ourselves at home.” Officials are even reviewing the Safe Harbor agreement, which enables the transfer of personal data from the EU to companies in the U.S., and pressing for more robust enforcement on U.S. soil. And a new Data Protection Regulation aims to create one centralized law and expand the arm of EU enforcement. If it goes into effect by 2015, the stakes will be even higher. These efforts will pressure European companies to look for U.S.-based providers who can address these concerns. This may keep EU companies from using U.S.-based services, but it also opens a market for companies with healthy privacy systems, since others won’t be able to shield their EU clients from litigation.

The Google case should motivate telecoms and global corporations to integrate privacy into their operational models, instead of treating them solely as issues of compliance. Google has already extended its practices to states outside the EU with similar laws, which (despite the company’s condemnation of the ruling) is an innovation that places Google at the forefront of privacy services. Bing is also following its lead by striving to develop a “right to be forgotten” feature. If other companies establish mechanisms to protect their clients’ private data, they can cater to the more regulated EU markets and rebuild consumer trust at home (it has deteriorated as a result of Snowden’s revelations and growing concerns about U.S.-based cloud computing).

U.S. laws about government surveillance and corporate data ownership likely won’t harmonize with Europe any time soon, but this is an opportunity for companies to maintain competitive advantage and keep up with newer market players. To respond to these changes and make privacy work for profit, consider:

A new market for privacy services. Google already handles a host of removal or review requests from the broadcasting and music industries for IP violations. Now the company is fielding an average of 10,000 individual requests a day through its new online form, and a team must be trained to review them. The economic impact on Google and others has yet to be determined, but it opens a job market for privacy experts. Reputation management companies, which work to bury search engine results, could also offer request services to individuals.

Integrating privacy officers. Privacy is not just about fulfilling legal obligations; it involves understanding telecom systems, regulations, and the operational characteristics of a particular industry. Businesses should take a cue from the intelligence community and make privacy officers more than compliance watchdogs. Train risk assessors to identify sensitive or important data and assess the connections among your security teams and your business models.

Privacy as part of your client relationship. These rulings mirror growing mistrust of how consumer data is managed. Surveys indicate growing American and European unease over how companies gather and use consumer data, their role in sharing personal data with governments, and the transfer or sale of data to third parties without consent or knowledge. Consumers increasingly believe that companies see them merely as data fodder. Treat their private data with respect, and you will attract loyal new customers. Firms that process data already provide tailored services for their clients, so it makes sense to include European privacy protection as another customized service. Hire data security experts and have them work with privacy officers to construct systems that secure data, use it responsibly, and test these mechanisms regularly. Embed data protection into your company’s culture, and involve your clients in the process. Communicate how you protect them in clear and concise language, and invite feedback.

Failure to take privacy seriously can put you at risk of fines or litigation, but the worse case scenario involves negative publicity equating your company with a lack of concern over personal information (e.g. Target and Neiman Marcus). The Google ECJ case is an opportunity to strengthen relationships between clients and consumers by reconsidering how their data is managed. The winners of the digital age will be those who see privacy as an investment that secures profits and opens up privacy markets across the globe.

How to Kill Quarterly Earnings Guidance

Quarterly earnings guidance has outlived its usefulness.

There are instances when it might be perfectly legitimate and value enhancing to issue earnings guidance in an effort to inform the market about material disruptions, shifts in the business model etc., but on the whole, the practice is not a helpful way of building a sustainable business that is geared to succeed in the long-term.

By now it is well understood that the short-term focus by shareholders on quarterly earnings can impair firms’ ability to create long-term value. Research by our organizations — the Generation Foundation and KKS Advisors — suggests that the costs of regularly issuing earnings guidance, either quarterly or annually, may well outweigh the benefits, and likely contributes to this short-term focus. Earnings guidance attracts investors focused on the short-term, and tempts executives to engineer quarterly earnings to meet the expectations that they have issued. At a macro level, there is evidence that it negatively influences analysts’ reports, thereby distorting the market.

Despite these costs, many firms feel tethered to the practice, worried that abandoning the practice might send a negative signal to the market. But these concerns can be mitigated with the proper strategy for shifting away from earnings guidance, and by replacing it with integrated reporting.

If you want to move away from this practice there are a few, clearly defined steps the CEO or CFO can take (importantly, the message should come from one or the other of those executives to highlight the company’s conviction in this decision):

Clarify that stopping guidance is not a sign of increased uncertainty or economic conditions, rather an effort to establish practices that emphasize long-term value creation.
Reinforce step one by confirming guidance numbers for the same period and issue one last set of guidance numbers for the following period when you announce your decision to end issuing earnings guidance.
Highlight that your board agrees with the decision, suggesting that this is a strategic, thoughtful choice that has received broad support internally.
Communicate a clear five-year strategic plan defining financial and sustainability milestones.
Announce the adoption of integrated reporting as it not only enhances the information environment of the firm but it also serves as a disciplining mechanism to ensure that the company has a long-term sustainable strategy. Integrated reporting is the process of communicating how the firm is using different forms of capital, human, financial, natural, physical, intellectual, and social to create value over the short, medium and long-term. Integrated guidance that intends to inform market participants about future changes in the value of these capitals can further improve the information environment of the firm.

In adopting these recommendations in your company, the guiding principle should be: are your communications with the market helping you attract and retain the right type of investor to support your strategy? Short-term investors that speculate on volatility and short-term performance are unlikely to support abandoning earnings guidance. But they are also not likely to support your efforts to increase the sustained profitability of your organization by focusing on initiatives like engaging your workforce and satisfying customers – which both require time and patience to accomplish.

To build a sustainable business that will succeed in the long-term you must seek backing from market participants who are aligned with this vision. It is time that you revisit whether your communication strategy is the right one in achieving this alignment.