Marina Gorbis's Blog, page 1418

Dialing Up the Volume on Strategic Innovation

As generations-old business models are upended by innovations in retail, financial services, bookselling, and a host of other industries, companies must continually adjust their strategic positioning to edge out rivals. But senior executives often find it difficult to conceptualize all the tweaking and retweaking that must be done — let alone explain it to their employees. As a result, people throughout the ranks are often confused about what their company is trying to accomplish in the marketplace.

To help my clients fix this problem, I’ve devised a tool that draws on a simple metaphor: the volume control on a computer. Designing and revising strategy requires regular repositioning on key components of competitiveness – that is, moving those sliders up or down to control the “volume” in each area.

McDonald’s provides an excellent illustration. Some years ago, after decades of nonstop growth, the fast-food chain made a loss. But then it recovered by innovating — fast. The company repositioned itself on four strategic factors: product range, image, store presentation, and price. To identify those four, it reviewed societal changes and trends in health, looked at what competitors were up to, and got back in touch with target customers’ tastes and preferences.

The chain turned up the “volume” on its product range, expanding its menu beyond traditional offerings to include more-nutritious foods, such as Salads Plus and grilled chicken, along with some higher-end treats, such as McCafe lattes, smoothies, and cakes. On image, McDonald’s moved from its unhealthy pigeonhole to a more wholesome position through advertising, in-store nutritional information and product labeling. On store presentation, it went from dated to modern by changing the layout and colors and by adding wireless Internet connections and plasma TVs. Price was the one strategic factor that didn’t require much of an adjustment — McDonald’s decided to keep that low.

As a result of the repositioning, customers had additional — and more nutritious — products to choose from, they liked the stores and the changes in image, and they spent more. Getting the levels right on all four factors produced a competitive advantage.

To stay ahead, however, the company had to keep refining its strategy and adapting its business model. It next turned to suppliers. To build a supply chain based on partnership and collaboration that made it possible to serve consistently safe and high-quality food, McDonald’s had to move the sliders on factors such as long-term contracts, clear specifications, and on-time payment. The result: improved quality of suppliers’ products and services, keener pricing, and timely fulfilment. Those adjustments and improvements were congruent with those already established for customers. The company then made changes that improved working conditions, organizational culture, and professional development for its staff — all of which created the right conditions for employees to get what they needed from suppliers and deliver what customers wanted.

As you’re adjusting your own company’s sliders, consider these principles:

Look outside and inside: A.G. Lafley, the CEO of Proctor & Gamble, re-energized innovation within his company some years ago by taking an outside-in perspective on what the company did. He recognized that key decision makers were spending far too much time at their desks and an insufficient amount of it out in the field. (Executives at most companies are guilty of this.) So P&G created its “connect and develop” model, linking to a vast network of outside innovators around the globe that complemented the company’s own capabilities. This meant that executives remained in touch with emerging consumer trends. The company’s sliders then moved accordingly, on a just-in-time basis.

Continually rethink your business model: A business model is not simply a flowchart of your organization’s activities. It involves tending to stakeholders in a way that benefits the company. Finding the right balance right isn’t easy, partly because it’s a moving target, but again the volume-control metaphor will help: As McDonald’s did, think of the relationships your organization has with each key stakeholder group — not just customers but suppliers, employees, and so on. Consider which sliders you should move for each one, and how you can get them all working in concert to obtain competitive advantage.

When Innovation Is Strategy

An HBR Insight Center




Is It Better to Be Strategic or Opportunistic?
Your Business Doesn’t Always Need to Change
Should Big Companies Give Up on Innovation?
How GE Applies Lean Startup Practices

How Sleep Became the Enemy of Productivity

Wake Up, It’s NighttimeThomas Edison and the Cult of Sleep Deprivation The Atlantic

Sleep no more! Thomas Edison doth murder sleep. The inventor claimed he slept just four hours a night and apparently forced the same standard on his employees, who responded by falling asleep a lot. “At first the boys had some difficulty in keeping awake, and would go to sleep under stairways and in corners,” Edison said. “We employed watchers to bring them out, and in time they got used to it.” The no-sleep thing became part of the Edison mystique, Olga Khazan writes in The Atlantic, with biographies describing his 4 a.m. interviews of job candidates and his catnaps on lab benches between marathon work sessions. Sleep deprivation was seen as manly. Psychologists began promoting the idea that people didn’t really need much sleep after all. But I guess it’s logical that the inventor of the incandescent light bulb would consider sleep to be his ultimate competition. –Andy O'Connell

What You SeeDetroit: The Bankrupt City Turned Corporate Luxury BrandThe Guardian

Detroit, with its stereotypical gritty streets and history of manufacturing, has become a popular leitmotif and visual backdrop for luxury advertisers like Chrysler, Our/Vodka, and watch and bicycle company Shinola. While these firms are located, at least in part, in Detroit, The Guardian's Rose Hackman argues that they problematically use the city to advertise products only people in other cities can afford: "They present a romantic, nostalgic take on grit – a highly effective spin, which presents poverty and urban decay as cool." Shinola, for one, sees itself as investing in the future of Detroit, particularly because it focuses on the craftsmanship that made the city an economic powerhouse in days past. But as economics professor Bruce Pietrykowski notes, "The economic impact of the Detroit brand on the conditions of the residents of the city is limited at best."

Don’t Underestimate the NannyNordic Cuddly Capitalism: Utopia, No. But a Global Model for Equity Christian Science Monitor

Flinty U.S. capitalists may roll their eyes at Scandinavian countries, where the nanny state looms over everything, but guess what? Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland must be doing something right, argues Sara Miller Llana, because they produce a lot of companies that are not only successful but also possessed of a powerful creative capacity that transcends languages and cultures. Think of Spotify, H&M, Ikea, Lego, Nokia, and Skype. Despite warnings that students’ test scores are falling and economic inequality is growing, these countries are blessed with a culture of dispassionate pragmatism that allows companies to adapt quickly to business trends. Maybe a historian quoted in the article is right: Having a state that takes a lot of responsibility for citizens isn’t at all bad for the economy. –Andy O'Connell

Just Don't Do It How the Father of Claymation Lost His CompanyPriceonomics

This is not a surprising story, nor an uncommon one. But for anyone who has pioneered an art form or product, then tried to make a business out of it, the rise and fall of Will Vinton will be heartbreaking. The inventor of Claymation, Vinton built his company, Vinton Studios, into a $28-million-a-year business that had the California Raisins, the Red and Yellow M&Ms, and several movies and TV series under its belt. But with new TV deals, a slow production process, and competition from Pixar, the company needed to raise money, fast. Long story short, that money came from Nike's Phil Knight, who soon had control of the company. Knight's son, once a fledgling rapper unfortunately nicknamed "Chilly Tee," became CEO. And Vinton was out of a job, handing over the Claymation trademark to Knight in the process.

The Banker RulesRe-Thinking the Game of MonopolyBig Think

Just in time for your weekend, an idea for a rousing new version of everyone's favorite capitalism game. First, the whole notion of the "banker" should be reevaluated, writes K. Mike Merrill. No longer should managing the till be considered a thankless chore; "in real life the banker is no passive entity. The banker is the center of the universe." So instead of giving every player $500 to start, "the banker will offer each player a convertible note of $1,000 at a 20% discount and 5% interest." This amount, of course, would be subject to bargaining. Then Merrill suggests Series A financing once a player has purchased all of the properties of a given color, so that hotel construction can begin as quickly as possible. "Once the game ends," Merrill writes, "you'll find the banker (who likely owns a significant percentage of every player’s earnings) very excited to play another game."

BONUS BITSBack in the Day

The Recommendation Letter Ralph Waldo Emerson Wrote For A Job-Hunting Walt Whitman (Slate)
Infographics Through the Ages Highlight the Visual Beauty of Science (Smithsonian Magazine)
That Mad Men Computer, Explained by HBR in 1969 (HBR)

Apple’s Patently Absurd Smartphone Crusade

Look out across today’s ultra-competitive smartphone market and you’ll see something resembling the religious wars of the Middle Ages. This is no quaint summer-weekend reenactment. The weapons being brandished are devilishly constructed patents; the rules of engagement the arcane procedures of federal courts. And the havoc being wreaked — in higher prices, banned devices, and stifled innovation — is laying waste to the industry landscape.

The central battle pits Apple against everyone and everything involved with Android, Google’s open source operating system.

Android’s release, for Apple’s late founder and CEO Steve Jobs, was the ultimate heresy. “I will spend my last dying breath if I need to,” Jobs is quoted as saying in a series of jeremiads, “and I will spend every penny of Apple’s $40bn in the bank, to right this wrong. I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”

And so Apple has. Between 2006 and 2012, the company was involved, sometimes as plaintiff and sometimes as defendant, in nearly 150 patent lawsuits around the world over various features of its iPhone — including hardware, software, and product design.

Like the religious wars of old, a complex web of alliances, side agreements, and mutual defense pacts have conspired to draw the entire industry into open warfare. Sony is suing LG. Nokia is suing HTC. Motorola (owned by Google since 2011) is suing and being sued by everyone.

While many cases have ended with settlements and elaborate cross-licensing deals, juries in other cases have awarded billions of dollars in damages. Some devices have been banned from importation. And the costs — if only the hundreds of millions being spent on the litigation itself — are surely being passed along to consumers.

The patents involved cover everything from the most basic design elements (a rectangle with rounded corners) to standard elements of the smartphone interface (swipe to unlock). In ongoing litigation between Apple and Samsung, one of many proxy wars over Android, Apple is asserting both of those, as well as patents that include automatic word correction and the “quick link” feature that allows a user clicking on a phone number to be taken directly to the dialing app.

In the most recent episode of this particular campaign, Apple not only claimed that Samsung had infringed on these inventions in Galaxy and other products, but argued incredibly that these features accounted for $30-$40 of the value of each device. The company demanded over $2 billion in damages. (A jury last month awarded a little over $100 million; a verdict that will be appealed by both sides.)

Boiled down to their essence, these and dozens of other pending patent lawsuits raise a fundamental question of particular relevance in rapidly evolving industries: when should new products be left to succeed or fail on their own merits—to trial by battle in the marketplace, if you will–and when should they be given a powerful legal advantage to offset the cost and risk borne by their inventors? What kind of inventions, in other words, deserve the singular protection of patent law, which grants the claimant monopoly control over an invention for as many as 20 years?

In the U.S., the answer begins with the text of the Patent Act, which only extends legal protections to inventions that are, among other limits, “new and useful,” previously unknown to the public, and which are not “obvious” in light of existing inventions.

That may sound like a simple test. But of course every word in the Act is subject to interpretation and construction—first by the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO), and later, if infringement is claimed, by the courts.

Here’s where the problem has become especially acute for information technology inventions such as smartphones and tablets. With minimal expertise in computers, software, and business methods, patent examiners who are under increasing pressure to process an enormous backlog of applications have developed a novel and unfortunate form of outsourcing. They approve nearly every application and leave it to the courts to determine which inventions actually meet the requirements.

While this has helped eased the burden at the PTO, it has put an unconscionable strain on the courts. And unlike economically efficient outsourcing, the PTO’s workload is now lodged in institutions that are far less competent to manage them. Overall, the cost of the patent system hasn’t simply shifted; it’s been multiplied. Some scholarly studies suggest the costs of the patent system now outweigh its benefits to the tune of as much as a trillion dollars over the last 25 years — and the gap is growing.

Worse, the current system’s grotesque inefficiency has opened the door for the full suite of abusive and counterproductive practices on gory display in the smartphone crusades. Had the patents at issue been given a thorough examination in the first place, many would no doubt have been rejected. That would have spared us the hyperbole and hypocrisy that characterizes every demand letter, court filing, and appellate brief by plaintiff and defendant alike.

One glimmer of hope, at least for a truce, was recently snuffed out by the D.C.-based Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which has exclusive jurisdiction over patent appeals. Last month, the court reversed an eminently sensible 2012 ruling by federal appeals judge Richard A. Posner, who sat as a trial judge in one branch of the internecine battle, this one pitting Apple against Motorola. (Full disclosure: Twenty years ago, I spent a year as Posner’s law clerk, a job I frankly wish I still had.)

Reviewing the claims and counter-claims between the squabbling tech giants, Posner declared in Solomonic fashion that neither side had earned its day in court. Dismissing some assertions by both companies as “silly” and “ridiculous,” Posner concluded in a blog posted soon after that the U.S. patent system had become “dysfunctional.”

But the Federal Circuit tossed out Posner’s decision a few weeks ago, holding that his common-sense interpretation of both the law and the patent applications (many still substantively untested) had failed to follow the higher court’s largely incomprehensible precedents. So now the parties will be forced to oil up the machinery of legal warfare once more, spending more millions on a case that should never have been brought.

If not through the firm hand of intelligent judges, how else will the patent crusade be resolved before one of the fast-growing and most innovative markets in modern history succumbs to mutually-assured destruction?

There’s a slim chance that either Congress or the U.S. Supreme Court will provide some relief. A modest patent reform bill, aimed mostly at reining in litigation from patent holders who don’t actually make anything (so-called “patent trolls”), has seen some movement on Capitol Hill this year, and may get past the partisan gridlock.

The Supreme Court has also taken steps to curb the Federal Circuit’s expansive view of patentability, reversing the court repeatedly although rarely providing explicit guidance on an interpretive framework that jibes more closely with both the law and common sense. This term, the Court will hear a record six patent cases, which could restrict the explosive growth of newly-recognized patent rights for software, the preferred weapon of choice in today’s patent wars.

We need more. The religious wars of the Middle Ages lasted over a hundred years and engulfed Europe. On the sped-up clock of technological innovation, even a decade of smartphone patent crusades could prove devastating. To put a definitive end to the conflagration, we might need something like a divine intervention.

Make Your Emotions Work for You in Negotiations

Your emotions matter in negotiations. They fuel your behaviors, energize you, and allow you to strengthen—or distance and damage—relationships with the people you’re negotiating with. But too often, people refuse to acknowledge their full range of feelings because they’re afraid of losing the ability to think rationally and act strategically. So researchers and experts in the fields of psychology and business have offered solutions to help people manage, defeat, or even ignore their emotions.

However, in my two decades of research and work with thousands of executives, I’ve found that emotions shouldn’t be managed or overcome. Rather, positive and negative emotions are valuable resources that you can use to your advantage.The key is to recognize during the negotiation what emotion you’re feeling, then quickly evaluate whether it will help or hinder you, and without taking a break, intensify or decrease the feeling, or in some cases change the emotion altogether.

That may sound easier said than done, so here’s a five-step approach that I’ve developed to make the best use of your emotions during a negotiation:

Step 1: Be mindful. Mindfulness is the first step. This means noticing and accepting what’s happening around you from the expressions on other peoples’ faces to any emotions you’re feeling in that moment, such as anxiety or pride.

Imagine that you’re at a monthly executive meeting proposing a strategy to market a new product.As you present your idea, you simultaneously notice that you feel a sense of pride because you’ve prepared a solid presentation, but you’re also frustrated because it seems that some people aren’t buying into your proposal. Compassionately noticing these feeling is the first step. Then you need to evaluate them.

In this case, you would ask yourself whether feeling — and expressing — your frustration will help or hinder your goals. If it will help — and in some cases it could — then that’s a useful emotion. Go ahead and feel it. However, if you think it will get in the way of what you’re trying to achieve, try to redirect that emotion.

That’s where the next steps come in. Your goal in steps 2-4 is to genuinely feel the emotion you want to experience, whether it’s frustration, anger, empathy, or happiness, because you believe it will be productive.

Step 2: Identify your emotional trigger and focus on something else. Once you’ve identified the emotion you want to change, find the source of it. For example, you might survey the room – observing the people in it, their reactions, and the environment. While watching, you might realize that the man sitting across from you is raising his eyebrows and frowning during your presentation and this is what’s causing your frustration.

If you can precisely identify what triggered your emotion, then you can choose to focus on other things or people. There’s a reason why psychologists suggest that if we want to feel relaxed, we should close our eyes and imagine being on a beach. Changing what you focus on has the power to change your emotion. In this case, you might ignore the frowning man and focus instead on the CEO who’s nodding and smiling at you. You effectively seek out a trigger that causes a more helpful emotion.

Step 3: Reinterpret the trigger. Often our initial interpretation of a trigger is based on what we most fear. You might see the man who raised his eyebrows and frowned as a critic because you’re worried that your presentation isn’t good enough. But you can reinterpret the trigger to help spark another emotion. Imagine instead that he forgot to wear his contact lenses and was squinting to read the small font on your slide. This alternative interpretation of the same exact data — his facial expression — could replace your frustration with relief or empathy.

Step 4: Alter the emotion by changing its physiological expression. If steps 2 or 3 don’t work for you — perhaps the emotion is already full-blown or others have sensed you’re feeling frustrated ­— there’s another option. You can alter physiological things like your facial expression, body posture, or breathing to decrease, intensify, or replace the emotion. If you’ve already started showing frustration, then you could try turning toward the projector and directing your frustration at the small font size. Or, if you want to feel calm instead of frustrated, then you can try slowing down your speaking pace.

Step 5: Take action that others will see.  For the most part, the previous steps happen internally and are ideally invisible to your counterparts. But feeling the right emotion isn’t enough – your actions need to reflect those emotions. You can do this verbally — for example, by apologizing to the raised-eyebrow man for the small font size— or non-verbally— displaying a curious look rather than frowning back. Or you could do it both ways and smile at the man and ask him if something is wrong. Mastering your emotions in step 2-4 will make it easy to take this constructive next step to move the conversation forward.

Emotions will inevitably arise during negotiations but instead of letting them happen to you or trying to overcome them, use them genuinely and strategically to get what you want and create value for everyone.

How GE Trains More Experienced Employees

Trainee programs for new recipients of bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD degrees  have been around for years. Each year, organizations race toward campuses and grab hold of the recruits they consider best for their talent pool. Once in the program, the newly minted graduates are rotated through various functions and departments, interspersed with periodic training and mentoring. By the time people complete the one- or two-year program, they are expected to be fully ready and cultivated for the long haul within the company.

Entry-level programs are an integral part of talent-development strategies and often are the only effective bridge between academia and the business environment. They work quite well. But let’s say you are growing geographically and are struggling to hire enough people who align with your culture and expectations; or you have recently acquired another company and need to bring their leaders into your fold; or you are hiring a lot of people at mid-career who have not had the advantage of going through a formal entry-level program.

At GE, we have created mid-career leadership programs as one answer to these challenges. They support the growth of our talent pool, broaden the skill set, and shorten the promotion cycle.

Consider Jim Smith (not his real name) who joined GE after 10 years as a top-gun pilot in the U.S. Air Force. While he had his BA and MBA, he did not have business-world experience. Too senior for an early-career program, Jim was nominated to the Corporate Leadership Staff, one of our mid-career accelerator programs. For the first year and a half, he drove sales under the guidance of a veteran sales leader. He then spent a year in product development and after that, served on the shop floor as an operations leader. Each step of the way, he was given feedback and his next assignment was based on his biggest skill gap. At the end of three years, Jim had the knowledge, connections, and skills to be successful, and several business leaders were clamoring to hire him. He finally became a key account manager for one of our biggest clients.

We’ve learned several lessons as the Corporate Leadership Staff has evolved:

The employee’s development plan must be customized. An entry-level program can afford to treat everyone equally since most of the participants need the same set of skills. While mid-career programs possess common elements, they must also reflect a personalized approach so assignments can be crafted carefully to address each participant’s individual needs. For instance, one participant may need an international assignment because he or she has never experienced another culture, while another participant may need a shop-floor experience so that he or she learns to manage a large group of people.

Identifying the right “raw material” is essential. Prospective participants should already show signs of promise. Additional assessments and reference checks are needed beyond the regular talent review process.

Sponsorship of the program must come from the highest level. At GE, each of our eight big businesses has assigned a very senior leader who either heads a function or a business to be the sponsor of the mid-career programs. The sponsors ensure that the right candidates from the business are hired into each program, and they play a key role in ensuring that the participants get the most challenging assignments. They also see to it that the off-program assignment for the individual does justice to the investment in the individual. Such sponsorship ensures visibility and credibility of those in the program and positions them well with assignment leaders.

Development results from assignments, continuous 360-degree feedback, and close assignment coaching. Selecting the job the individual will benefit from, ensuring that there is constant feedback (often a 360), and coaching to shape the proper behavioral development makes the program an integrated, experiential opportunity for development in a short amount of time.

There are no guarantees. We have had some participants discover that the program is simply not for them and opt out. This is perfectly OK in our system; our company still continues to view such people as very valuable. When we feel that a person is not likely to graduate from the program into an executive role, the sponsor will still try to make sure that the individual is promoted into a key role in the business. That way, the person can still look at other options to grow and advance in his or her career.

Leadership is a never-ending growth opportunity, which is why we must always look to extend development in an intentional and deliberate way. As the world becomes more complex, accelerating the development of mid-career employees in a more intentional, structured fashion ensures that a company always has a bench of ready, trained, motivated, and high-performing talent at all times.

Should You Approach Your Audience When Giving a Talk? Maybe Not

People feel better about objects and people–whether positive, negative, or neutral–that are seen to be receding rather than approaching, says a team led by Christopher K. Hsee and Yanping Tu of the University of Chicago. For example, research participants viewed a neutral-looking person in a video more positively when he was walking backward away from the camera than when he was walking toward it (3.67 versus 2.70 on a seven-point scale). Approach aversion, which also applies to events in time, may have an evolutionary basis: Humans have developed a tendency to be on guard against stimuli that are approaching, the researchers say.

Help Leaders Be Less Useless at Strategy

At some point in the formulation of a strategy, its creator must review his or her work with the leader, either by choice or by procedure.

If the strategist is a CEO, the reviewer is the board (or a committee thereof). If the strategist is a business unit head, the reviewer is the CEO, and so on down the organization. Regardless of the specific players, the process looks much the same; typically, we wait, and wait, and wait until the strategy feels iron tight. Once it is ready, we go in to the meeting with a perfect slide deck and lots of points in defense of our view.

The goal is to get a big gold star for having produced a wonderful, perfect strategy. Anything less is a disappointment. The creator and the reviewer both know that this is the desired outcome — and they know that the other knows it too. Hence, the creator presents as if everything in the strategy is obviously and unassailably true. And the reviewer most of the time provides the gold star or offers minimal and easily incorporated feedback on small aspects of the strategy. He or she knows that if any criticism is levied or shortcoming pointed out, the creator will be dismayed, if not entirely disillusioned.

This approach to strategy review has the unfortunate effect of rendering the leader in the review position almost useless. If they give the gold star, they have added absolutely nothing of substance to the strategy. And, even if they offer reservations and feedback, the timing of the conversations renders those all but useless too. As W. Edwards Deming taught the production world, inspecting outputs at the end of the production line is the most ineffective way to improve quality.

If these leaders are in their positions legitimately (and if they are not you have a much bigger problem), then strategists should want to use the leader’s judgment and experience to the maximum to improve the strategy. That means going to the leader early and often. Don’t want until your strategy is so polished that you don’t want anything more than a pat on the back. Instead, construct a more productive series of interactions on strategy:

Go early with the framing of the strategy challenge that you want to tackle. Ask your leader whether there is a different way he or she would frame the challenge that you should be working on.
Go back with the possibilities you generate. Ask your leader whether there might be different possibilities he or she would consider or ones on your list that he/she sees as unacceptable on their face.
Return a third time when you have reverse-engineered the possibilities to determine what you believe would have to be true and have identified which of those things that you feel are least likely to hold true. Ask the leader whether there are additional conditions that would have to hold true and about which are they most skeptical.

If you do these things, three great things will happen:

You will get insights along the way that will shape and improve the way you are thinking about the problem at hand;
You won’t be sent back for time-consuming and expensive rework at the end of the process;
You will have a leader who is enthusiastic about the outcome because he or she genuinely helped to shape it.

That is how you transform a leader from being useless to being valuable in creating strategy.

 

Taking Business Back from Wall Street

Gautam Mukunda, HBS professor, on the dangers of managing companies for shareholders. He is the author of the forthcoming article “The Price of Wall Street’s Power.”

Download this podcast

Jill Abramson’s Ouster: Why Aren’t Standards This High For Male Leaders?

Jill Abramson is out at The New York Times, and the circumstances of her departure have lots of observers feeling all flavors of depressed, angry, and tired.

We’ve seen this movie before.

It always starts out on a high note (the first woman to be put in charge of an American institution!), but then quickly deteriorates. Throughout her brief tenure, her management style comes under public fire. She’s too brusque. She’s too pushy. She’s too (dare I say it?) bossy. She promotes herself too much, has too many speaking engagements, or isn’t around the office enough. She might even be criticized for her clothes, or her voice. And then, one day, she’s gone.

In the case of Jill Abramson, there is another all-too-familiar twist: reports saying that she was paid less than her male predecessor.

The feminist commentariat has quickly latched on to these details to cry, “Sexism!” Others have been more wary, saying hold on, we don’t know all the details. Maybe she really was an overbearing boss. It’s a tough time to be in journalism – maybe top salaries have to come down.

The skeptics could be right, but that still doesn’t mean her dismissal was unbiased. It would only be free from bias if she were let go the same way a male editor would have been pushed out. Consider: Howell Raines, one of her predecessors, was occasionally critiqued for having a “hard-charging” management style, but he was only chased from the executive editor’s chair following the Jayson Blair plagiarism scandal. He was allowed to resign, and at his send-off, Sulzberger emphasized the decision had been Raines’s, that he had accepted it “sadly,” and that he wanted to “applaud” him for “putting the interests of this newspaper” first.

Again, it’s not biased to fire a woman; it’s biased when a woman is held to a higher standard than a man and is punished differently when she doesn’t meet it. There are a lot of opinionated editors in any newsroom. But are the men allowed to punch walls while the women must hire executive coaches to help smooth their rough edges?

To put it differently: wouldn’t offices everywhere benefit if the male executives were held to the same impossibly high standards as the women?

In 2009, Herminia Ibarra and Otilia Obodaru presented their analysis of 2,816 executives’ 360-degree evaluations: they found that female leaders scored higher than or equal to their male peers on ten out of ten key leadership behaviors. Ten out of ten. This doesn’t mean women are inherently better leaders than men are; it just shows they have to be exceptional to be promoted into positions of leadership at all. And when they do make it to the top of the career ladder, women are more likely to find that ladder leaning against a crumbling edifice. A famous study of FTSE 100 companies by Michelle Ryan and Alex Haslam also showed that women are more likely to be appointed to senior leadership roles when a company is suffering financially – a phenomenon they termed the “glass cliff.”

Why do women have a harder journey to the top and a tougher job when they get there? Joan Williams and Rachel Dempsey offer some answers in their 2014 book, What Works for Women at Work. Consider what they call the “Prove-It-Again! bias.” Citing study after study, they document how women’s mistakes are judged more harshly, and remembered longer, than men’s. When women are successful, it’s more likely to be ascribed to luck; when men succeed, though, it’s noted as skill. Men are also more likely to be judged on their potential, while women are held accountable for having actual accomplishments. In the hiring and promotion process, standards that are relaxed for men are tightened for women. Over two-thirds of the female leaders in Williams and Dempsey’s study reported encountering some form of Prove-It-Again! bias.

Or think about another form of bias the authors call the Tightrope. It’s been well documented that for men, success and likability go hand-in-hand, while for female leaders, there’s a tradeoff. Here’s how Williams describes it: “All high-paying jobs are traditionally seen as requiring masculine qualities, while women are expected to be feminine. So women in these jobs often find themselves walking a tightrope between being seen as too masculine – respected but not liked – and being seen as too feminine – liked but not respected. ” Nearly three-quarters of the women in her study reported this type of bias.

Williams also found that the Tightrope became even more difficult to navigate as the woman continued to climb higher in the organization. Instead of getting to the top role and finding that they’d finally “made it,” the women in her study reported that the scrutiny only got worse. To deal with it, the more hard-charging female executives had to develop intentionally compassionate, consensus-driven leadership styles – ones that wouldn’t conflict with the stereotype of how a woman is supposed to be.

While it’s easy to lament that this isn’t fair – women should be allowed to be just as brusque and bottom-line focused as men, dammit! – what we should really be arguing for is the reverse: more humane workplaces where male bosses, too, have to occasionally remember to ask how their employees are feeling.

How Samsung Gets Innovations to Market

Let’s say you’re working in a new market, far away from headquarters, and you need to get approval for an initiative that is somewhat outside the company’s current strategy. What do you do?

A case study we just published on Samsung’s European innovation team offers some helpful insights. It details how in 2010, Samsung set up a small consumer-focused innovation team in London, headed by Luke Mansfield. The team’s mission was to come up with new products for the European market — and then, significantly, to convince senior management in South Korea to invest in those projects — several of which, it turned out, required Samsung to deviate from their current strategy within the product categories in question.

After more than three years of operation, it was clear that the team had worked out how to do this: by late 2013, the total measurable profit contribution from their projects was expected to hit half a billion dollars. As we spoke to them, Mansfield and his team shared five insights on how to work with senior management to get strategy-stretching innovations to market:

1. Negotiate the expectations up front. Everyone realizes that a new market will often require deviations from the existing strategy. So have a conversation with your managers about how to handle these types of conflicts and negotiate increased autonomy for your team so you get some wiggle room on results.

Mansfield made it a precondition of accepting the job that he got a three-year grace period before he was required to deliver results. As he told us, “Getting the agreement in place didn’t prevent management from asking questions, but it did allow us to push back and tell them ‘no’ at times.”

2. Build trust with low-risk ideas.  As Mansfield’s colleague Ran Merkazy put it, “When we hire people, we explicitly tell them that their job is not to push for disruptive ideas at Samsung. Rather, it is to position themselves to create disruptive innovation. Before they can do anything, they need to move the needle on the trust gauge, making other people in the organization believe in them.”

In one case, the team managed to deliver a new, low-risk project to a senior manager in Korea just when he needed to present new ideas to his boss. He was eventually promoted, and became a useful resource for the team in their work to get more ambitious projects approved. Merkazy added, “Having built that initial trust means that once or twice a year if we run into resistance with a disruptive idea, we can bypass the middle levels and talk directly to the senior executives in the division. [But] you need to be very cautious about using that connection; bypass middle management too often and you risk turning them into enemies.”

3. Present a portfolio of options. Team member Jerome Wouters explained: “If we present five concepts, we will make sure two of them will be low risk and more incremental, two will be a bit more ambitious and only the final one will be a high-risk/high-reward concept — but with some elements that will be doable in the short run, which makes the whole concept less crazy. That way, our stakeholders can select how much risk they are willing to take for their business given their current circumstances, instead of making it a go/no-go decision on specific ideas.”

4. Manage the choice of evaluation methodology. Many large companies use established frameworks to assess new ideas, and by nature, methodologies favor specific types of ideas over others. To get ideas past the approvals gauntlet, it is crucial to have a detailed understanding of how the test works.

Mansfield’s team arrived at that insight after one of their earliest and most ambitious ideas (for a new kind of fridge) was rejected by headquarters. One issue was that Samsung used a specific quantitative survey methodology that, while good for assessing incremental products, was arguably biased against more radical ideas, such as the new fridge. Following that setback, the team took an unusual step: they developed their own evaluation methodology, and convinced senior management to use it alongside the standard one.

5. Consider going under the radar. Sometimes, it is better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission — and in one case, the team deliberately decided to ignore the corporate rules.

They had identified a problem with the Galaxy phone brand: If you switched to the Galaxy S2, it was difficult to import your contacts, photos and other data from your old (non-Samsung) phone. So they built an app called EasyPhoneSync that solved the problem, and got ready to launch it — only to be told to drop the project, as a team in Korea was working on a similar solution.

Mansfield’s team understood that some projects would be killed, and normally would have followed the order. But it was unclear when the other app would be released, and the team knew that the timing was crucial: the Samsung Galaxy S3 was about to be launched, and the lack of a good solution could cost Samsung lots of new customers. So they decided to take a risk and proceed with the launch of their own app.

It proved immediately popular, and by the end of 2013, it had been downloaded over a million times. As we have written elsewhere: If other options are closed to you, sometimes a bit of judiciously applied corporate disobedience can be the right way to go.

When Innovation Is Strategy

An HBR Insight Center




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