Marina Gorbis's Blog, page 1549

Don't Let Them Underestimate You

We all hope our resume and experiences will speak for themselves. But a friend of mine — a 40 year-old former special agent and combat veteran — recently emailed me about a persistent problem. "When I contact leaders in my industry, they almost always agree to talk," he told me. "But some have been treating me as if I were an undergrad." One asked if he was working on a "class project," while another suggested he "thank his parents" for sending him to graduate school (he paid his own way).

Those responses might be extreme, but my friend's situation isn't: many of us are underestimated by the people we come into contact with. With co-workers or others we see regularly, we can overcome negative perceptions through hard work and behavioral change. But how do you make a strong first impression on someone you're just meeting - and avoid falling into their unthinking mental frameworks (such as "anyone who asks for an informational interview must be an inexperienced student")?

I've certainly been there. A few years ago, I met a retired professor from a top business school. At the time, I had already taught at one business school and hoped to teach more. I thought he might be able to offer advice about how to break in at his school. He waved me off dismissively. "Every executive wants to teach at our business school," he told me. "My best advice is to apply to the doctoral program and maybe you could be a TA."

A year after that, I connected with an executive who ran a respected conference. I was thrilled when, at the end of our meeting, he introduced me to his employee, who was in charge of recruiting speakers. "I wanted to introduce you two — you should follow up," he said. I assumed the intro from her boss would have paved the way for an invitation to present, but just minutes into our follow-up meeting, I realized she literally knew nothing about me and had no idea why I was there. Suddenly, I was thrust into an unexpected "prove yourself" mode. At the end of the conversation, she turned to me: "I'm always looking for good speakers," she told me. "If you can think of anyone, let me know."

We all hope our merits will be recognized — and it's a jarring comeuppance when they're not. Some people begin to doubt themselves: should I actually be going back to graduate school? Others get angry at the people who have failed to see their potential (or their actual demonstrated ability). But the best plan, of course, is to ensure we're vigilant upfront about conveying our expertise — and that if we falter in an encounter, we move quickly to correct those misimpressions.

Before you meet a new contact, make sure they're aware of your background and expertise. I assumed the conference organizer had been fully briefed by her boss, but it was a costly mistake. She obviously could have been a lot more curious or organized, but setting the tone of the meeting was my responsibility, and I dropped the ball. Instead, as the famed psychologist Robert Cialdini advised when I interviewed him for my book Reinventing You, you should "send a letter of introduction that says, 'I'm looking forward to our interaction on Thursday on the topic of X, and my background and experience with regard to X are as follows.'" Says Cialdini, "It's perfectly appropriate to say those things in a letter of introduction, but it's not appropriate as soon as there's a face-to-face interaction because you look like a boastful braggart and a self-aggrandizer." The letter of introduction establishes your authority before you even step in the room, which would have helped me immeasurably.

During the meeting, have a number of anecdotes ready that demonstrate your expertise. You can likely predict the questions they'll ask; for each one, identify a story that showcases your abilities. If someone asks my friend about his "class project" and gets a response that instead cites his combat experience, it may (finally) sink in that he's not a regular student seeking career advice.

After the meeting, if you suspect they haven't fully grasped your potential, don't push it. I didn't argue with the business school professor that I actually was qualified to teach, or with the conference organizer that I was an excellent speaker. When it's clear someone has pigeonholed you, those protestations come off as slightly pathetic. Instead, recognize that you're in the long game now, and you need to change their opinion of you over time. If the relationship is worth cultivating, keep in touch and periodically update them with news about your progress ("just thinking of you, since I recently spoke at the XYZ conference"); if you have mutual friends, let them talk you up. They need to "discover you" and your value for themselves.

Meanwhile, don't let their limited judgment of you get you down. In the years following the dis from the retired business school professor, I've secured teaching engagements at four additional top business schools; I'm actually just back from guest lecturing at his own university.

Someday, if we're lucky, we may achieve enough recognition that our reputation always precedes us, and people are always thrilled to do business with us. Until then, there will be people who don't have a clue what we can offer. To advance in our careers and get the respect we deserve, the only solution is to recognize it's our responsibility to ensure they find out.

Sunlight Makes You More Willing to Take Risks

A study at an outdoor parking lot in Singapore shows that the sunnier the weather, the more severe are drivers' parking violations, and an analysis of 40 years of Major League Baseball data reveals that stolen-base attempts are more likely during day games than night games, says a team led by Nicholas Reinholtz of Columbia University. Humans' tendency to take greater risks while the sun is shining may have evolved as an adaptive behavior, the researchers say.

Office Politics for the Pros

Karen Dillon, author of the HBR Guide to Office Politics, talks with Dorie Clark, author of Reinventing You.

Download this podcast

A written transcript will be available by September 9.

The Dangerous Tension Between CMOs and CIOs

Business is largely about competition and, even within organizations, a healthy dose of rivalry between colleagues can be a good thing. However, a survey just conducted by Accenture Interactive (see The CMO-CIO Disconnect) points to a downright unhealthy relationship in many C-Suites which can do nothing but damage to firms.



At a time when many executives say that improving digital reach will be a significant differentiator for their companies, our research shows that two of the most important digital leaders — the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) and the Chief Information Officer (CIO) — do not trust each other, understand each other, or collaborate with each other. Thus, even though both marketing and IT professionals say they want to be more collaborative, meaningful collaboration is unlikely to occur.

That is very bad news for their businesses and, not incidentally, for their own careers. When IT and marketing departments work at cross-purposes, the results are inefficiencies and mishaps and it is customers who suffer. Potential buyers simply don't have the time or energy to do business with a company that makes things harder for them.

To begin to mend the CMO-CIO relationship, it's important to understand the source of each side's frustrations. CMOs' answers to our survey questions make it clear that they view IT as an "execution and delivery" provider, instead of as a strategic partner. CMOs do not believe they are getting fast enough turnaround on projects and adequate quality from the IT departments. Because many CMOs do not believe they are getting the service they want from their IT departments, many bypass the IT department and work with outside vendors. Forty-five percent of marketing executives say they would prefer to enable marketing employees to operate data and content without IT intervention.

For their part, IT executives believe marketers make promises they can't keep and do not provide them with adequate information on business requirements. The CIOs believe the marketing teams often do not understand — or appreciate — data integration or IT standards. Nearly half (49 percent) of CIOs say marketing pulls in technologies without consideration for IT standards. Forty-seven percent say the marketing team lacks understanding of data integration.

Surely there is truth to both sides' complaints. But why is it that two leaders focused on the same ultimate goal cannot make better progress in working together? For context, consider how the jobs of the two departments have changed over the past few years. Traditionally, marketers were focused mostly on creative and brand strategies, but now they are tasked with turning Big Data into relevant customer experiences via multiple channels and throughout the new decision lifecycle. On the IT side, the teams are being asked to manipulate vast reams of data to analyze every product, customer, or transaction and to adopt new technologies for mobile, social media, etc. But the IT department must also maintain strict privacy and security of data and technology, as well as follow internal protocols. IT focuses on cost takeout, increasing efficiencies, and scale, while marketers strive for ways to respond (or stay ahead) of the ever-changing demands of consumers, who are hungry for more relevant and dynamic experiences, Although both IT professionals and marketers play their parts in driving business growth and innovation, their approaches are very different.

Worse, each side suspects that the difference is even greater than it is. CMOs assume that CIOs' approaches are not only deep-rooted but contradictory to their own, and that their own perspective is undervalued by their counterpart.

CEOs and others in the C-suite should not turn a blind eye to this tension, hoping for it to resolve itself. It is crucial for companies to instill more collaboration and understanding across the functions. Here are five suggestions for supporting a CMO-CIO relationship that will ultimately benefit customer experience and drive sales.

Identify the CMO as the "Chief Experience Officer." This is more than simply a change in nomenclature It is a constant reminder to the CMO that the job doesn't end with branding and advertising. The CMO must design and drive a customer experience that is consistently first-rate, at every touch point within the company — a goal that lays more emphasis on the role of IT and the need to reach a deeper understanding.

Signal that IT is the strategic partner to marketing. The CIO cannot be viewed as only the chief technology platform provider; the role must be elevated to a strategic member of the C-suite.

Get the two leaders working from the same playbook. Already, CIOs and CMOs spend more than 30 percent of their respective budgets on technology. It is time for them to agree on key business levers for marketing and IT integration, such as access to customer data and speed to market along with security, privacy, and standardization.

Change the skill mixes. Make sure the marketing department becomes more tech savvy and the IT department better understands marketing. Again, coming together around the consumer and customers will help to breakdown internal silos and align agendas. Upgrading their skills will help both departments make better decisions about technology and understand its impact on business outcomes.

Develop trust by trusting. It is time for leaders in organizations to extend their trust to — and accept it from — business units beyond their own.

You may never turn your CIO and CMO into the best of friends, but you should be able to convince them they are natural allies. If a little competitive rivalry gets them both to bring their best games to work, so be it. But everyone needs to realize they are part of a team, their job is to make it stronger, and the real competition is out there in the marketplace.

How to Manage Someone You Don't Like

Everybody complains about incompetent bosses or dysfunctional co-workers, but what about irritating direct reports? What should you do if the person you manage drives you crazy? If the behavior is a performance issue, there's a straightforward way to address what's irking you — but what do you do when it's an interpersonal issue? Is it possible to be a fair boss to someone you'd avoid eating lunch with — or must you learn to like every member of your team?

What the Experts Say

Of course, your job would be a whole lot easier if you liked everyone on your team. But that's not necessarily what's best for you, the group, or the company. "People liking each other is not a necessary component to organizational success," says Ben Dattner, an organizational psychologist and author of The Blame Game. Robert Sutton, a professor of management science and engineering at Stanford University and the author of Good Boss, Bad Boss and coauthor with Huggy Rao of the forthcoming Scaling Up Excellence, agrees. According to Sutton, "there's a list of things that make you like people and there's a list of things that make a group effective, and there are very different things on those lists." It's neither possible — nor even ideal — to build a team comprised entirely of people you'd invite to a backyard barbecue. But there are real pitfalls to disliking an employee. Consciously or unconsciously, you might mismanage him or treat him unfairly and fail to see the real benefit he can deliver to your team. Here's how to get the most out of someone you don't like.

Don't assume it's a bad thing

Sure, you may grit your teeth at her lousy jokes or wince at the way he whistles at his desk, but feeling less-than-sympatico with your direct reports might not be the worst thing. "From a performance standpoint, liking the people you manage too much is a bigger problem than liking them too little," says Sutton. The employees you gravitate toward are probably the ones who act nice, don't deliver bad news, and flatter you. But it's often those who provoke or challenge you that prompt new insights and help propel the group to success. "You need people who have different points of view and aren't afraid to argue," says Sutton. "They are the kind of people who stop the organization from doing stupid things."

Focus on you

Still, the days can feel very long when you're constantly dealing with someone you don't like. It's crucial to learn how to handle your frustration. Rather than thinking about how irritating the person is, focus on why you are reacting the way you are. "They didn't create the button, they're just pushing it," says Dattner. He suggests asking yourself the following questions:

Is the problem the individual or someone they remind me of? "You can have a competent person who looks like your unkind aunt and suddenly she can do no right."

Am I afraid of being like this person? If your direct report constantly interrupts people, for example, and you worry you do too, you may react more strongly.

Are they a member of a group that I have issue with? This question gets into a whole host of prejudices and possible legal issues, but you need to be honest with yourself about any hidden biases you may have. "Try to unpack what this person represents to you."

"You don't have to go into therapy to figure it out but be honest with yourself about what situations or attributes make you most irritated," Dattner says. Once you've pinpointed the triggers that might be complicating your feelings, you may be able to soften or alter your reaction. Remember: it's far easier to change your perspective than to ask someone to be a different kind of person.

Put on a good face

Everyone wants their boss to like them. Whatever your feelings for your employee, he will be highly attuned to your attitude and will presume that any disapproval or distaste has to do with his performance. The onus is on you to remain fair, impartial, and composed. "Cultivating a diplomatic poker face is important. You need to be able to come across as professional and positive," says Dattner.

Seek out the positive

No one is 100% annoying. Yet it's easy to see the best in your favorites and the worst in people who bother you. "Looking for some of the flaws of your stars and the redeeming attributes of the people you don't like can help you be more balanced," says Dattner. Search for what you like about the person. "Assume the best, focus on what they're good at, and how they can help your team," says Sutton. He suggests you regularly ask: Given their talents and their limits, what can they do that would be best for the team? Can the over-achiever shoulder some additional projects? Might the slow-talker's snail-paced delivery spur the whole team to reflect more before speaking?

Keep your bias out of reviews

When someone irks you, you need to be especially vigilant about keeping your bias out of the evaluation and compensation process. Dattner recommends asking yourself: "Am I using the same standards that I use for other people?" If you find you're having trouble being fair, Sutton suggests seeking counsel from another manager who is familiar with the employee's work. Ask for frank feedback on whether your evaluation matches the outsider's. You might even ask the person to play devil's advocate, to make the case for the employee's strong points. "Leadership is mischaracterized as a solo adventure. It's much more of a team sport," says Sutton.

Spend more time together

This might sound like the last thing you want to hear, but it might help to give yourself more exposure to the problem employee. Sometimes strong medicine is the most effective cure. Sutton cites studies that demonstrate how collaboration on difficult tasks tends to build affinity. "Over time, if you work together closely you may come to appreciate them," he says. Consider staffing him to your toughest project, or asking him to serve as your right-hand person on an important initiative. Most importantly, remember to keep an open mind. "Your favorite employee today might become your least favorite tomorrow. The people you like may become untrustworthy tomorrow," says Dattner.

Principles to Remember

Do:

Be honest with yourself — pinpoint the triggers that might be complicating your feelings

Check your bias in evaluating the employee's performance by getting an outsider's opinion

Keep an open mind — your perspective may change

Don't:

Assume that disliking someone is a bad thing — differing points of view are critical to a team's success

Let your distaste show — everyone wants their boss to like them

Avoid working with the person — collaborating together on a difficult task may positively alter your relationship

Case study #1: Hire "allergy shots"

Linda Abraham, the co-founder of comScores, a leading digital analytics company, established her organization on a simple premise: hire people you respect, not necessarily people you like. Since starting the business in 1999, she has intentionally brought in people she didn't like but thought would be good for the team. "They're almost like allergy shots for your organization," she says.

A few years back, she hired Dan* against the wishes of other people on her team. Even during the interview process, he rubbed people the wrong way. But Linda thought he had the right skills and experience. He came from a large tech company and tended to talk a lot about scale, which many people interpreted as advocating for bureaucracy — a no-no in the start-up culture.

For the first six months, he made regular observations about one of the company's products and how it could work better. "When I really dug into what he was trying to say, I was impressed," Linda says. While he wasn't diplomatic in his comments (he often described things as "dumb"), he was insightful. "We ended up scrapping the job we hired him for and had him take on the improvements he suggested," she says.

Even in the new role, he wasn't likable. But Linda tried to focus on the content of what he was saying rather than the way he was saying it, and she coached others to do the same. She also invested time in helping Dan understand how he was coming across and what he could do to alter his style. Eventually her attitude toward him changed. "I've come to like him quite a bit," she says. "He's ruffled more than a few feathers along the way, but he's been promoted and has really crushed it."

Case study #2: Keep your bias in check

Kevin Niehaus, a business manager at a large children's hospital, inherited a team of employees when he first took on the role. One member of the group, Chris*, always rubbed him the wrong way. "He was the source of 90% of the drama in our unit," Kevin says. "It got to the point where I would discredit his ideas because I did not like him."

One day Chris came to Kevin upset. "He wanted to know why I didn't trust him. I quickly realized that I had let my emotional reaction get in the way of being his manager." Kevin decided to change his approach; he needed to be more objective. Going forward, he intentionally paused after Chris irked him and asked himself, "Would I care if this was anyone else?" Often the answer was no and he learned to let certain things go. Using Chris's initial confrontation as a starting point, Kevin also started giving him honest feedback about his behavior, which in turn "cut down on some of the dramatics." Over time, they were able to develop a trusting relationship where Kevin kept his emotions in check and Chris felt heard.

*not their real names

Solving the Looming Talent Shortage in the Energy Industry

These days, each passing season seems to mark a new weather record, whether hottest year in the US, driest drought in Australia, or a record heat wave in South Korea. The trend towards more extreme weather appears to be continuing around the globe.

So just when electric systems need to operate flawlessly — whether to power air conditioners, pump water, or heat homes — long-term challenges to power grids are multiplying. From the US to Europe and Asia, electricity players are facing a similar set of human and physical challenges. The unprecedented loss of highly-skilled, senior workers is compounding challenges posed by aging infrastructure, rising power demand, and climate stress.

While the labor challenge is especially stark in the U.S., utility systems in most advanced economies are facing similar demographic dynamics. New workers are not entering the market as fast as veterans — particularly engineers — are retiring. In the U.S., for example, a backlog of baby-boomer retirees is expected to turnover upwards of 40 percent of utilities' 400,000-strong workforce, according to a study by the Task Force on America's Future Energy Jobs produced by the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC). The need for digitally savvy technical hires is especially pronounced. By 2030, the BPC predicts, utilities in the United States will need to hire 150,000 additional workers in information-technology intensive roles.

The consensus solution to the infrastructural challenges is to continue the build-out of a smarter, self-healing digital grid (which President Obama mentioned in his June 25th speech on climate change), while integrating new technologies with the old. But solving the workforce problem is inherently part of this process. A digitally-skilled workforce is vital to help deploy advanced digital technologies that can streamline and automate grid operations.

The industry's most competitive companies are using this generational shift as an opportunity to transform their organizations, aggressively recruiting for digital fluency at all levels — from research engineers to midlevel customer service managers. To this effect, we've seen them implementing programs that cultivate the following vital milestones on the way towards a smarter grid:

Grooming more data scientists. Utilities are taking a crucial first step of adding sensors and digital meters across their networks. Once in place, this new generation of devices can feed a deluge of data, which presents huge opportunities to discover early signals that can prevent faults and increase grid reliability. Data scientists are vital in analyzing data not only from these devices, but also from customers' signals in the form of unstructured data from posts on social media sites, so technical troubles can be detected early and communicated. Behind company walls, data scientists' ability to mine operational data is helping to develop digital repositories of workers' best practices, and helping fewer workers do more, via collaboration tools.

Utility companies are now developing these advanced data skills through public-private initiatives. For example, the Pittsburgh-based University Energy Partnership is working with the Energy Department's National Energy Technology Laboratory and URS Corp. Collaborating with five research universities, the program is cultivating engineering, software, and material science research projects that address key grid challenges, from transmission and distribution problems to computer-aided simulation of carbon capture.

Getting the attention of the next generation. Other utilities and businesses are partnering with local colleges to raise awareness about smart grid job opportunities and start training talent to replace those departing boomers. In 2010, Florida Power & Light estimated that 65 percent of its workforce was near or eligible to retire. Now their Gateway to Power program ranks among the largest of the 52 smart grid labor training programs seeded by the 2009 Recovery Act. That same year the utility partnered with seven regional colleges and universities to promote a series of programs focused on ensuring the graduates had the knowledge and skills to design, plan, construct, operate, and maintain a modern electricity delivery system, including power system infrastructure and information systems.

Encouraging trade skills. Traditional vocational and technical education programs are also part of the answer. San Francisco-based utility Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), which is facing the potential retirement of two in every five of its workers by 2015, is collaborating with colleges, vocational schools and universities across the state, together with the Gates Foundation, and other public and private partners to train tomorrow's workers. The result is PG&E's PowerPathway program which has already graduated hundreds of new workers with skills that span from linemen to advanced power engineering. The program has also helped PG&E's current staff to upgrade their skills.

August 14th marked the tenth anniversary of the US's worst-ever blackout, a grid failure that left more than 50 million North Americans in the dark for days. While experts agree the grid has improved since then, the economic toll still looms according to a recent White House report. To avoid these costly disruptions, investment in both the workforce and the infrastructure is a rising imperative around the world, both in mature markets such as North America, Western Europe as well as the growing economies such as Latin America, Africa and Middle East.

A new generation of smarter energy technologies, coupled with a workforce that is just as digitally savvy, holds great promise to ensure reliability of the grid, decrease economic losses due to power outages, and meet the world's growing demand for power. There is time, technology, and will to avoid this fate, but the clock is ticking.

There Really Is Such a Thing as the Protestant Work Ethic

The psychic harm from unemployment is about 40% worse for Protestants than for the general population, say André van Hoorn and Robbert Maseland of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. Moreover, people living in Protestant societies are hurt more by being unemployed than people living in other societies, according to an analysis of subjective well-being data on nearly 150,000 people in 82 societies. An analysis of the data shows that the effects derive from an intrinsic appreciation of work among Protestants and in Protestant societies, the researchers say.

What Stops Leaders from Showing Compassion

Most good people want to act compassionately at work. And recent research suggests that compassion also creates positive outcomes in organizations: People who experience compassion feel more committed to the organization and feel more positive emotions at work; when people receive bad news that is delivered with compassion, they remain more supportive of the organization; and acting with compassion can increase your own satisfaction and mitigate your own stress at work.

And yet even if you want to be compassionate with others at work, you may find it difficult. You may find yourself either judging others or making assumptions about what will happen if you are compassionate.

This can be especially challenging for leaders. As a leader, you get paid for your judgment. You are constantly evaluating situations and people. But that strength can become a liability when others need your compassion. If you find yourself thinking any of the thoughts below, chances are you're letting your judgment get too much in the way of your compassion:

"Your suffering isn't that serious." When you tell yourself that others' suffering isn't serious enough, you're saying they don't deserve compassion. When your direct reports say, "We're totally overwhelmed with work and can't get any cooperation from the other divisions," do you think, "Your workload is nothing; you have no idea how much I'm working. Stop complaining and make it happen"? Suffering isn't a competition. Other people's suffering doesn't have to exceed yours for you to be compassionate. Remember that acting with compassion can also reduce your own stress.

"You contributed to your problem." In this misguided approach, people must be fault-free to earn your compassion. If they didn't take complete initiative, respond as effectively as possible, or seek help early enough, they don't merit your compassion. But most of us contribute at least somewhat (if not largely) to our own challenges. If you extend compassion only to those who are totally fault-free, you will exclude most of the people you work with — including yourself. Instead, try shifting your mindset so that you are willing to respond even if others made their situations worse.

"You're acting like a victim." People act like victims when they discount their ability to help themselves or blame others for their problems. It doesn't mean they're not suffering, but rather that they don't see the extent of their ability and responsibility to deal with their problems. Instead of getting angry at them or feeling pity for them, you will be more effective if you respond with compassion as you help them see their own ability to respond to their problems.

A second reason some managers struggle to be compassionate is their own assumptions about negative outcomes that might occur if they show compassion. Here are some common assumptions and how to think differently about them:

"If I'm compassionate, they will think I agree with them." You may worry that if you show people compassion, they will think you agree with what they've done. But you can and should be compassionate even as you disagree or can't support their actions. You can say something like, "I don't agree with how you went about doing this, because I think you contributed to the situation you're in. Still, I feel for you. You're in a really tough situation."

"If I'm compassionate, I can't hold people accountable." You may mistakenly believe that if you show people compassion, you lose the ability to hold them accountable. But this is a false choice. You can and should hold people accountable while being compassionate. In fact, if you don't hold people accountable when it's appropriate, you risk taking on their responsibilities.

"If I'm compassionate, I could open a can of worms." You may worry that if you show compassion, people will start to tell you about their mental health problems, their challenges at home, or other problems you're not prepared or qualified to address. You may think, "Have I gotten myself in too deep on this? I'm a boss, not a therapist." The problem here is assuming that you have to solve the problems others confide in you. The good news is that you can be compassionate without expertise about the situation that is causing the individuals' suffering. That's because compassion isn't about solving problems. All you may need to do is listen, express your concern for the person, and if you're able, simply help the person think about ways to get help for the non-work problems.

Remember that compassion doesn't mean taking responsibility for solving other people's problems or pitying them. Compassion does rely on three things: noticing others' suffering, connecting with them cognitively and emotionally, and responding to them. By being compassionate you help others, you help your organization, and you help yourself.

A Light Footprint Can Lead to Powerful Business Gains

Some of the best current lessons on how to adapt to our changing business environment come from the realm of military doctrine. And one key methodology stems from mid-1990s, when students at the U.S. Army War College were told repeatedly they were preparing for leadership roles in a "Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous" (VUCA) world. Barack Obama's "Light Footprint" doctrine of warfare, featuring novel uses of drones, cyberweapons, special forces, allies, and proxies, is an early adaptation to the VUCA world.

The business analog of the use of drones is easy to see and already happening; business has an insatiable hunger for automation and values the efficient, targeted strike. The analog of cyber warfare is, most obviously, the fact that competition increasingly takes place in cyberspace. More broadly it is the recognition that there can be many ways beyond hand-to-hand combat in the marketplace to rob a competitor of its advantage. Management's version of the use of special forces might be a switch from a hierarchical into a modular form of organization, and a shift of agency from executive committees to self-managed, multi-disciplinary teams. The equivalent of the military's use of allies and proxies might be a propensity to form partnerships that verges on the indiscriminate.

How might Light Footprint management look in action? Here's an example that shows some of the differences from conventional practice. A manager I know was recently appointed regional vice president in charge of a product line at a major consumer goods company. I'll disguise the particulars, but let's say her name is Sheila Regan, and she oversees yogurt business lines for Latin America. Faced with falling market shares in major cities, she refused to make the easy excuse (that competition had become more intense there) and instead got to work organizing her first foray: a precisely targeted intervention in one city where growth had petered out.

"We didn't push all the levers", she recalled, "We focused on channels, the 48 stores and key brands. We stopped buying media and did in-store promotion. Target stores got special treatment. To avoid stock-outs, for example, we always served them first."

The 48 stores were never told about the special treatment, because Regan was anxious not to alert competitors. A key objective of the mission was to persuade competitors that the incumbents were too strong to make the investments they would need to gain a foothold worthwhile.

A cross-functional team was assembled, and a "war room" was opened with a wall showing the 48 stores and their objectives. When a store went from red to green, cheers broke out. "It had a snowball effect", said Regan. "By sharing results, we encouraged others and could apply best practices quickly."

If ever there was a business analog to the effective use of special forces, this was it. Before the mission, revenues in the target city were falling by 1% a year. By the time Regan left, revenues in the target city were growing at 18% a year, and global head office was planning similar missions in other markets.

I've seen other VUCA-adapted companies using what I would call Light Footprint Management. Companies whose structures are modular, allowing them the benefits of being centralized and de-centralized at the same time; companies who leverage their own strengths with strategic collaborations and partnerships, because they add much less weight than acquisitions; companies who are unusually secretive, because their advantage hinges on an element of surprise and they must be prepared for the responses their actions will bring. Light Footprint companies tend to be more integrated with and more sensitive to their constantly changing environments and therefore less likely to be caught flat-footed by the unexpected developments common in the VUCA world.

It's important to note, however, that even when new tactics win major battles, it takes a long time until they are routinely taught. Pixar and Apple under Steve Jobs grew opportunistically, guided by a man who combined technical know-how with an artistic sensibility. The moves Pixar and Apple made under Jobs' stewardship may seem inspired strategies now, but at the time they were simply tactical responses to problems and opportunities.

Xavier Niel's French telecoms firm Free is another early adapter to the VUCA environment. It is nimble, unpredictable, tech-savvy, and seems to pay no heed to the sector's conventional wisdoms and business models. UK chip designer ARM Holdings is apparently achieving enviable "lightness." Its chip designs dominate the world mobile phone market, but it makes nothing. Its essence is its intellectual property and its partnerships with chip and device manufacturers.

We will see the victories of Light Footprint managers long before we quite understand their strategies. But applying the framework of a different discipline, like a military doctrine that has already adapted to a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous environment, can help. Recognizing that gains can be made and sustained with a light footprint not only explains how some unlikely players manage to win on certain fronts — it might help you figure out, going forward, how to beat them at their own game.

This post is part of a series authored by speakers at the forthcoming Global Drucker Forum, taking place in November 2013 in Vienna, Austria. For more on the theme of the event, Managing Complexity, and information on how to attend, see the Forum's website. A collection of previous posts in the series can be found here.

How a Cosmo Woman Kick-Started Her Brand

For 14 fun and pretty thrilling years, I was the editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine — and, yes, that means I was the one responsible for wicked coverlines like "Mattress Moves So Hot His Thighs Will Burst into Flames." But it also means I had close-up view of the modern consumer landscape. And in the year since I left the magazine, I've had a chance to distill some of the the strategies I used to make Cosmo number one on the newsstand (and keep it there).

First, a little background. Cosmopolitan has been around for over a hundred years but the version most of us are familiar one is the one Helen Gurley Brown brilliantly brought to life in 1965. She took a dreary magazine that was about to fold and relaunched it as "the bible" for fearless young single women. It was an instant, mega success.

By the end of Helen's thirty-two year tenure, Cosmo had become dated in feel and sales were eroding. When I arrived in 1998, my mandate was to take a magazine that baby boomers had devoured and make it compelling for Gen x and Gen y readers.

Here are the three brand-kickstarting strategies that I relied on at Cosmo, both with the magazine and the many brand extensions. Warning: the word sex appears more than once in this article.

Make sure the baby still bounces. I know it's a boring cliché, but I've always lived by the maxim "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater." I've seen so many editors in chief (as well as other types of business leaders) fail because they ignored this adage. But you have to be certain the baby (a.k.a. the core brand identity) still has viability.

It wasn't hard to spot the baby — or the bathwater — when I arrived at Cosmo and began to look through old issues. Though under Helen the magazine featured a wide variety of content, including fashion, beauty, and self-improvement stories, what really made the magazine fly off shelves was the candid advice it offered about sex and relationships. Helen firmly believed, ahead of her time, that unmarried women had the right have sex and totally enjoy it. Cosmo went where others didn't dare to go.

My gut instinct told me that the baby still had plenty of life. Young Gen x and Gen y women might be more comfortable with sex than their baby boomer counterparts, but I sensed that, nonetheless, they were very hungry for candid sex advice. Cosmo could provide that.

I backed up my instinct with lots of research. I regularly used not only focus groups and surveys, but I read every reader email.

Of course, what was candid in 1970 seemed tame by the turn of the century. So, guilty as charged, I made the content more explicit. It may have seemed shocking at times to the public at large, but readers never found it so. They regularly wrote in to say that the sex articles — pieces like "The Cosmo Kama Sutra" or "Never Lose An Orgasm Again"— helped them have happier sexual relationship with their partners.

Oh, what was the bathwater? In Helen's last years, the magazine featured some pretty cheesy pictures and a breathless tone that no longer worked. The editor who briefly ran Cosmo between Helen and me had already jettisoned that stuff.

Find the growth pony. That's an expression used by a friend of mine who helps re-launch tech companies. His point: it's great when a brand's DNA still makes sense, but that's not enough to ride into the future with. You need something that's going to help you take the business to the next level and bring in new consumers — though it had better be in tune with the core values.

My team and I made several changes that definitely helped us grow Cosmo (overall I increased circulation by 700,000). One was shifting the tone of the magazine and making it irreverent, cheeky. Movies like Bridesmaids hadn't even been green-lighted yet but my top editors and I could see a different sense of humor emerging among young women.

Readers also gave high marks to the new pieces we ran on sexual health and personal safety. These were women who clearly wanted to take charge of their lives and were looking for information on how to do that.

But one of the best growth ponies we used was one I discovered a good year or so into the job. Thanks to a ratings system I employed to measure reader satisfaction with the content in the magazine, I discovered how fascinated readers were with anything that explained what made men tick. Whereas baby boomer women often seemed anxious to make men more like them (i.e. chattier, more sensitive), younger women seemed to accept that guys would never be like them (even if they encouraged them to drinks lots of chardonnay). They just wanted to understand men.

So at Cosmo we looked at the male brain and said, "Hey, we're going in." We commissioned articles on everything from deciphering a man's body language to why guys tended to cheat more in August. Eventually we started a monthly section called "101 Things About Men." It rated as high as any sex feature, thus helping drive readers to the magazine. And it fit perfectly with the DNA.

By now you can probably tell how much I love research. Trendera President Jane Buckingham, a researcher who I used extensively at Cosmo, puts it this way: "If you do the research, the secret sauce is often there for the taking, but too often people don't want to look."

Return to the T. When my husband was teaching our young kids how to play tennis, he'd set them up at the point on the court where the lines intersected. Eventually they'd drift to the left or right and he'd tell them, "Come back to the T." After hearing him use this phrase many times, I realized it was a good mantra for me as an editor. Over time you can start to drift from your mission (maybe an art director pushes you in a kooky new direction without your realizing it) and it's key to recognize when that's happened and how essential it is to get back in position.

I found it useful to regularly audit the content and make certain we weren't doing too much of something that didn't matter — or too little of what did. I also tried to book an hour a week on my schedule to just focus on the big picture.

What also helped: offsite meetings where my top staff would help me take an objective look and make suggestions, even if ruthless. Unfortunately those became tougher to do when resources shrunk after the recession. In hindsight I wish I'd found a way to make them happen.

So those are some of lessons I took away from that wonderful job. Cosmo Confession: I also learned a few things about the Kama Sutra. But I'd better not go into that here!