Marina Gorbis's Blog, page 1578

New York City's Culture Will Shape the Next Tech Sector

When we first decided to move the headquarters of our software company from Atlanta, we didn't think of Silicon Valley. In fact, Silicon Valley wasn't even on our short list. At Infor, we chose New York City.

There are many reasons why Silicon Valley might have been a top contender: for years, it's been the premier technology hub of the world. Talent flocks to companies like Google, Facebook, and Oracle, just as it does to the slew of start-ups looking to become the next big thing. Universities like Stanford, Caltech, and UC Berkeley continue to churn out the next generation of founders and engineers. Why would we turn to any other place to start Infor's next chapter?

In a word: culture. While no one can dispute Silicon Valley embodies the quintessential technology culture, there's another piece of the culture equation that matters just as much for a company like ours: diversity.

When I say diversity, I don't just mean racial and ethnic diversity — San Jose actually has New York beat on that front. But our company makes software that is used across dozens of industry verticals — automotive, health care, hospitality, and the public sector — each with their own specific needs and goals. So when we talk about diversity, we are talking about the diversity of customers, the diversity of job functions, the diversity of backgrounds, the diversity of training. A walk down almost any street in Manhattan is likely to involve brushing shoulders with a huge cross-section of professionals. When you put it all together, you have an environment so rich and varied in skill sets and perspectives that Silicon Valley just can't match it. We believe that when this incredible professional diversity collides with software engineering talent, you have the recipe for breakthrough innovation.

Further, Silicon Alley offers an alternative to the closed environment of Silicon Valley (e.g. the campuses of the "Googles" and "Facebooks") that keep "tech workers from having even accidental contact with the surrounding community," according to The New Yorker. Those accidental (and non-accidental) interactions are what spur creativity — working and collaborating with different people is what inspires new ideas and new thinking — it's what drives us at Infor, and more reason why New York and its open community was the right fit for us.

Infor has already benefitted by tapping this local talent pool is our in-house creative agency, Hook & Loop, which helps us design software that is intuitive and easy-to-use. Our intention for Hook & Loop was not to hire the best and brightest software developers. Quite the opposite: we wanted to hire ad agency execs, fashion designers, and filmmakers — all people who would bring an outside perspective to business software, helping us create products more powerful and intuitive than we might have ever imagined without their input.

We aren't the only tech company that's noticed New York's potential. Recent statistics speak volumes about the Big Apple's bright future in tech, including 486 new tech companies that have emerged since 2007, with start-ups popping up every day. A report by PrivCo shows that in 2012 there were 100 mergers and acquisitions for privately-held tech companies in NYC, with an accrued value of up to $8.3 billion. Further, according to the Center for an Urban Future, tech jobs in the city have grown almost 30% in five years, with no signs of slowing down anytime soon. The center also reports that between 2008 and the beginning of 2013, New York saw a 24 percent gain in the number of venture capital deals, while Silicon Valley dropped by 21 percent.

New York is also creating the infrastructure to grow and develop technology talent organically. In January, Cornell's NYC Tech campus (located on Roosevelt Island) opened its doors to a class of students pursuing master's degrees in computer science. In addition, NYU opened a new urban science graduate school in Downtown Brooklyn in April, and Columbia is creating an Institute for Data Sciences and Engineering, expected to open this fall.

But the talent isn't just coming from inside the city, and the influx isn't just recent college graduates. Established executives, like former Yahoo! executive Chad Dickerson (founder of popular crafts e-commerce site Etsy), are moving from the West Coast to join the New York City tech scene. And while larger companies such as Infor, Ernst & Young, and JP Morgan are hiring from this talent pool, the NYC-born startups that are also attracting global talent. By offering flexible hours, a fun work environment, and career growth opportunities, start-ups like Catchafire, Qlabs, and Crowdtap are able to hire unique talent to help them raise capital and grow their businesses.

Mayor Bloomberg's new "We Are Made In NY" campaign points out that there are currently 900 tech startups hiring for over 3,000 jobs. The campaign highlights the city's burgeoning digital industry and underscores the Mayor's commitment to nurturing a thriving tech sector. "Growing our local tech industry is an important part of our economic development strategy to bring new businesses to our city and more job opportunities to New Yorkers," said Mayor Bloomberg. And what's even more interesting, between 2007 and 2011, a time when venture capitalism was down 11% nationally, New York saw growth of 32%.

Once we did relocate Infor's headquarters to New York last year, we found that we were scheduling up to five times more in-person customer meetings because of the location, which is having a significant impact given that 98% of companies that demo products on-site end up buying our software. That statistic is especially powerful considering the number of C-level executives that routinely visit New York City. It's a tremendous opportunity.

Would You Like Some Gender with that Leadership?

The recent toppling of Australia's first female prime minister, Julia Gillard, continues to raise questions about women and leadership. Gillard was regarded as smart, capable and resilient. However, a string of bad decisions and broken promises had the public and politicians questioning her capacity to lead. In her final exit speech before Kevin Rudd took her place, Gillard responded to the "gender wars" discourse that had come to represent her leadership, saying that "the reaction to being the first female PM"—in other words, gender—did not explain everything nor did it explain nothing.

So, when do we know it's about the gender and not about the leadership? My research on women and leadership concluded that it was difficult to make any generalizations about women and leadership simply because there were so few women leading organizations. It was difficult to distinguish between the woman doing the leading and whether her manner of leadership was specifically her own or part of a gendered pattern of leading. To paraphrase Gillard, gender explained something about leadership but did not explain everything.

So what can help women leaders make the most of their own style of leadership? How to keep the focus on leadership, not gender? Here are three suggestions.

Understand the relationship of power to authority. Understanding the connection between power and authority means that you know that having power does not give you authority. With power, you can carry out your own will; with authority, your command will be carried out by others. Others need to respect the leader's power and her authority to lead. This is why women are divided over quotas and affirmative action. While these measures may elevate more women powerful positions, the perception is that they are somehow not deserving. In other words, power can be given, but authority has to be earned. Authority is a social relationship between the leader and followers. It requires consensus: mutual expectation and mutual recognition. A legitimate rise to power carries with it the authority to lead. Because leaders need to achieve their power through their talent and through others' recognition of their talent, ensure you have the authority to lead.

Recognize that being first isn't always best. While "the first woman..." may be heralded as an achievement for womankind, this may not be for the longer term good. As the saying goes, you only get one chance to make a first impression; therefore, while some women may be given opportunities to lead and create a historical moment, they need to determine whether being first will enhance or detract from their leadership. Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer lead dynamic, diverse, and creative organizations that rely on the next new thing. They have an integral understanding of their organization and the need to update and innovate. Their leadership is suited to the context. Many younger women are well qualified, well connected, and have enough determination to lead, yet they may be missing the key ingredient that will enhance their leadership: wisdom. Wisdom means having advanced levels of cognitive, reflective, and affective capacity, and these factors have a positive effect on followers. The beginning of wisdom is to make a personal assessment of the leadership role in context. Is wisdom a hidden asset in the job? If so, then it may be wiser to wait for the next opportunity to lead.

Make sure you have sufficient resources and support. In their research on the glass cliff phenomenon, Michelle Ryan and Alex Haslam identified the tendency to appoint women leaders in times of crisis but also showed a pattern of these women leaders inevitably failing. Further analysis showed that the failure was not because of the leadership itself, but rather because the leadership was under-supported and under-resourced. With limited resources and support, women leaders desperately try to implement their strategic vision for renewal—but they inevitably fail as their vision and strategy cannot be implemented. An important lesson for any woman taking a leadership appointment is to ensure that you have the resources and support that you need to make it work; without them, your leadership will be precarious and likely to fail.

Leadership requires certain conditions to flourish, under which women—and men—can make good leaders. As more women take up the challenges of leadership, to avoid the gendered stereotyping of their leadership, they need to have the authority and wisdom to lead, and all the resources and support necessary for leadership.

Research: Why Companies Keep Getting Blind-Sided by Risk

After tsunamis, protests, wildfires, and riots — to name just a few recent major disruptions — few managers can be unaware of companies' vulnerability to the vagaries of politics and extreme weather.



You'd think. Yet three quarters of the 195 large companies surveyed recently by APQC got hit by an unexpected major supply chain disruption in the last 24 months. We are talking here about an unforeseen event involving a physical asset owned by the enterprise or a third party. Major means an event that has the potential to severely interrupt a business' ability to deliver on its promises to customers — perhaps a power station for a vital assembly plant going dark for months. Survey responders (mostly supply chain risk operators) said things got so bad that C-suite executives had to get involved in the fix-it process for a sustained period of time.



But these are the same senior executives and middle managers that have supposedly been embracing formal enterprise risk management (ERM) for some time. Why did these systems fail so spectacularly?

Part of the problem stems from the familiar gap between the talk and the walk. Survey findings indicate that most organizations' leaders did indeed express concern about the impact of political turmoil, natural disasters, or extreme weather. But the findings also show that the people at the front lines of the business were hamstrung by a lack of visibility into risk. Nearly half said they lacked the resources needed to adequately assess business continuity programs at supplier sites. Many relied on the suppliers filling out perfunctory, unreliable checklists.



It's likely that the push to protect profits during the recession made matters even more difficult for supply chain operators. Seventy percent of the respondents to the APQC survey say their organizations pruned their lists of suppliers over the past five years, with the intent to reduce costs. Moreover, nearly three-quarters (74%) of the companies over the period added suppliers physically distant from their facilities, with 63% acknowledging that their suppliers are located in areas of the world known for high-impact natural disasters, extreme-weather events or political turmoil. It appears the urge to source in low-cost regions clouded the cost-versus-risk calculus for some.

Finally, supply chain disruption risks often got painted as an operations-level risks and for that reason never made it onto the list of 15 or so major strategic/enterprise risks assessed and managed by the Chief Risk Officer's formal ERM process. Many ERM assessments focus on risks related to competitive strategy or the customer experience. The result is that too many boards don't think to ask about — and are not briefed on — the risks of, say, sourcing key components in risky regions of the world. They wind up blind, therefore, to many crucial strategic risks.

"The important thing is to figure out what might be a severe disruption and to do this you have to look down into the different tiers of supply. People at the top need to ask: 'What might be out there that we are not currently aware of,'" says Dr. Paul Walker, an expert in ERM at St. John's University in New York.

The good news in all of this is that nearly half of the survey respondents said that their firms are now adding rigor to the process of assessing supply chain resiliency. Let's hope the purse strings will be loosened enough to get this right.

Don't Make New Hires Conform; Instead, Focus on Their Individual Strengths

Newly hired employees of an Indian call center were at least 60% less likely to leave within a period of a few months if they went through an onboarding process that, instead of emphasizing conformity, focused on their individual strengths, for example by highlighting what was "unique" about them, says a team led by Daniel M. Cable of London Business School. In a related lab experiment, new hires whose individual strengths were highlighted ended up performing more efficiently and making fewer errors. Thus the best way for an organization to develop early organizational commitment may be to encourage employees to make daily use of their unique strengths, the researchers say.

The Era of Corporate Silence on Climate Policy Is Ending

"Tackling climate change is one of America's greatest economic opportunities." So proclaims the Climate Declaration, a public statement signed by a fast-growing list of U.S. corporate giants, including GM, Nike, Intel, Starbucks, Unilever, eBay, Swiss Re, and even The Weather Channel.

This new attempt to encourage companies to lobby for climate action is gaining steam. President Obama gave the movement a boost in June when he highlighted the declaration in his big climate speech.

More companies are taking a proactive role in climate policy, and for good reasons.

First, many of these corporate leaders believe that climate change is a risk today, not in some distant future. In the World Economic Forum's Global Risks 2013 report, the respondents named "rising greenhouse gas emissions" as the third most likely risk to the global economy (after inequity and deficits/debt). There's too much at stake for the private sector to sit this one out - or worse, to lobby against policy and government action (which is basically the mission of the government relations function in most companies).

Second, it makes strategic sense to engage in the discussion now. As the impacts of climate change become even more evident, we will see calls for increased regulation to help us move away from carbon-emitting energy. Shouldn't companies get involved now instead of waiting to see what governments come up with on their own?

Third, the leading companies realize that coordinated climate action will be very good for our economy and well-being. The Climate Declaration, created by the NGO Ceres as part of its BICEP advocacy group, makes a simple case for action: Taking on climate change will save money, improve efficiency, and drive innovation, all of which will keep America competitive internationally.

The declaration is not about specific policy prescriptions — that's what BICEP is for — but more about bringing companies to the table to change the dialogue. As Ceres' president Mindy Lubber told me, the declaration is "an entry-level point for a large number of companies to come in and say 'climate is not a job-killing, regulation creating platform, but quite the opposite.'"

In other words, we're getting some of our corporate bigwigs on the record saying that building a clean economy is good for us. These companies can help change the conversation — they have significant clout and reach, not just in Washington, but also through their extensive employee networks (millions of people), supply chains (hundreds of billions of purchasing), and marketing and social media machines (millions of tweeters).

Before getting too excited about the potential here though, we should humbly remember that the Climate Declaration and BICEP are not the first attempts to engage companies in climate policy advocacy. In 2007, Alcoa, GE, DuPont, Johnson & Johnson, Caterpillar, and other corporate giants formed the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), led mainly by the NGO Environmental Defense. USCAP called for large reductions in emissions, but focused mainly on supporting a "cap and trade" program. When the climate bill featuring this policy failed to pass through Congress in 2010, USCAP became quasi-defunct.

More recently, in 2011, a large group of mostly European companies, led by the Prince of Wales Corporate Leaders Group, signed the 2°C Challenge Communique. This statement asked the world's governments to "break the deadlock on international negotiations" and enact policies that would hold global warning to 2 degrees Celsius.

Unlike in 2007 and 2011, it seems like there's a larger momentum for change now for the three reasons I mentioned above. So what should companies advocate for specifically? My list of high-priority lobbying efforts includes (a) putting a price on carbon; (b) eliminating fossil fuel subsidies or potentially all energy subsidies; (c) encouraging massive public-private investment in the green economy; and (d) improving product and production efficiency standards for cars and appliances.

It doesn't take an advance political science degree to recognize that this list of policies will help us tackle climate change. What's new is that large companies are signing on to support these priorities. BICEP's specific policy goals run along the same lines, and the Prince of Wales' group created a more targeted Carbon Price Communique to push for the most important policy of all.

But let's be honest: in the end, statements are just that. To back up the intentions, we need aggressive corporate lobbying on the ground in statehouses and Congress. Only then, when these companies fight with gloves off, will we break down the perception that business is against carbon reductions. Some very powerful groups with deeply vested interests — basically the fossil fuel industry and some powerful co-conspirators like the Koch brothers — are still fighting hard to maintain the status quo.

But the other corporate bigwigs who know that they, and all of us, will benefit from aggressive climate policies need to speak loudly to legislators, employees, and citizens. And with the Climate Declaration, it looks like that's finally beginning to happen.

How to Ditch Marketing And Make Friends

There's a chasm widening between old school and new school marketers. New school marketers, typically those closer to social marketing channels targeted at Millennials, are telling me they're having a hard time getting their projects funded internally because old school marketers in the C-suite don't understand the new context and metrics driving social marketing.

This often results in CMOs retreating to their comfort zones and wasting money on what I call "studio-based" marketing channels, which still take their cue from the traditional awareness-consideration-action sales model that was debunked almost five years ago by McKinsey.

Studio-based channels require the slow and methodical creation of studio assets (via film or photo shoot) with the goal of beaming the creative to a designated "appointment" (a slot on Modern Family). The guiding principle is the content itself — any hope of conversation around that creative is mitigated by a marketing (not consumer) defined hashtag burned into the spot. It's a one-way proposition at best, as useless and pretentious as the ethnocentric American who shouts the same thing louder and louder hoping that the Korean tourist he's giving directions to will finally understand.

This type of marketing isn't the be-all-end-all that it once was simply because the one unit of measure it relies heaviest on — time — is the same measure that will render its obsolescence. In today's social communities, quick-thinking and hustle (not a precious and polished spot) are the currencies most revered. That's because the audience most addicted to these social channels — Millennials — expect brands to live in the same world they live in, speaking the same language about the same issues they care about, find humorous, or strike an emotional chord. And since this generation collaborates online more freely than any other, the exponential reward of their sharing pays off with a far higher return on customer acquisition. For every Millennial customer acquired, chances are you'll acquire another two Millennials for free just from their word-of-mouth endorsement on social channels (the "share" at its purest form).

In order to create content that thrives in this social environment and maximizes shareability — people having conversations related to your brands — marketers need to behave less like studios that charge by the hour and more like newsrooms that charge by the word (even if those words are limited to a mere 140 characters).

For brands that were born into the world with a Facebook page on launch day — think Virgin America, Lululemon, and Warby Parker (the Ryan Gosling of brands at the moment) — conversions don't result from shouting product promotions; they result from a deeper emotional connection stemming from what's actually going on in its customers' lives and communities. It's almost like making new friends in high school: You don't walk up to someone and say, "Be my friend. Be my friend! I'll pay for your lunch if you be my friend!" You need a savvier approach, striking up a conversation about something you may have in common with the prospective friend.

In order to contribute to and sustain a presence in social communities, brands need to post with the in-the-know mentality of your hyper-social friend on Facebook or Twitter — the one who's exhausting to hang out with, but still knows what's hot at the end of the day.

I refer to this method as "newsroom marketing". Every post, every engagement is breaking news optimized for the speed of pop culture. In this model, it takes hours, not weeks, to create content — and it will cost you less than a :30 network ad on TV. These newsroom tactics complement typical display advertising, which now has the job of retargeting the user with promotional messaging several sites after the prospect enjoyed the newsroom-style branded engagement.

If all goes according to plan, the brand's daily commentary becomes the opening joke of a stump speech, and the audience is more likely to consider that brand's products and services when they are prepped for product investigation or purchase. Unlike studio marketing, the content isn't king; context is.

So how do you gain footing in this new arena? At Virgin Mobile, we made the decision to learn from platforms that thrive in this environment — and who in turn need brands to help fund their innovation through paid media.

Our results from working with BuzzFeed for the past year have been extraordinary. On the day Instagram launched on Android, for example, Virgin Mobile could have simply announced its arrival on our Facebook page. Instead, we created an emotional connection among fans. "11 Things No One Wants to See You Instagram" hit a chord with readers who were huge Instagram fans, but could also relate to the trappings of tragic, try-hard Instagram posts. The piece's virality shot up, allowing for roughly 1.2 million views of the post from over 8,000 sharers across Facebook, Twitter, StumbleUpon, and LinkedIn.

In general, our subsequent clickthroughs from retargeted banner ads following campaigns like this are higher, and if we append a targeted flash sale to the campaign, we'll often see lifts of 95% in phone sales. According to a Vizu study BuzzFeed conducted earlier this year, prospects who enjoyed our branded social content were 235% more likely to investigate Virgin Mobile for their next phone service versus those that didn't see our content.

Currently, Virgin Mobile boasts an average 3 million views a month for its social content, rivaling the online audiences of Pitchfork and Rolling Stone. Why? Because we create content on a platform that was perfectly optimized for shareability. The name of the post, the length of the list, the photos selected — all these choices were thoughtful results from the A/B tests that founder Jonah Peretti and his disciples ferreted through before indoctrinating them as gospel. Of course, there are several platform options marketers can choose to take advantage of this trend in native advertising. But to truly reap the benefits of it, marketers need to tailor all of their assets — even their studio assets — to drive prospects to conversion by bridging seductive content with hard-core commerce. If a platform like BuzzFeed can optimize storytelling for content shareability, why can't marketers optimize storytelling for sharing products?

The social "share" metric has single-handedly redefined what it means to engage with an audience on a regular basis. New school marketers are less concerned with the unique monthly views on their microsites and are increasingly more obsessed with "owning the water cooler" — that is, owning the spaces where stories spread most. Even if you don't have a partner like BuzzFeed you can share a stream of photos on Instagram during Fashion Week, provide real-time commentary during the Oscars on Twitter, or create gasp-inducing fireworks GIFs on Tumblr to help strengthen your voice.

Before your C-suite execs finalize their bloated budgets in the fall, they should first take a hard look at the total "shares" from the campaigns conducted by their new school marketers. Hopefully they'll realize that some of the best acquisition tactics are earned, not bought. In other words, stop acting like a marketer. Act like a friend.

CIOs Must Lead Outside of IT

The CIO paradox is a set of contradictions that lies at the heart of IT leadership. Be strategic and operational. Stay secure and boost innovation. Adopt emerging technologies, while weighed down by the past. Many CIOs have buckled under the CIO paradox, while others have managed to be effective despite it. In working with these successful CIOs over the years, I have found that they all share a common set of practices, philosophies and approaches. We are in the midst of a computing renaissance, when all CIOs will need to raise their game and master this same set of practices. Herewith, three items that should have a permanent place on any CIO's "breaking the paradox" checklist.

Sell the foundation

Most large companies have underinvested in IT for decades. They've spent the bare minimum, and that's been fine, since IT has had to function merely as a "keep the lights on" necessity. As long as the mainframe systems aren't broken, let's not fix them. Today, however, technology innovation is creating a drastic change — across all major industries — in the way customers want to interact with their suppliers. Companies can no longer get away with treating IT as a commodity. These companies face a technical debt, and it's time to pay up.

Most CIOs find it relatively easy to convince an executive team to invest in a technology that increases near-term revenue. They find it considerably harder to ask their colleagues to invest in a major infrastructure upgrade that will take 12 months or more before delivering direct business benefit. But all CIOs need to find a way to convince their peers that without these infrastructure investments, they will be mortgaging their company's future. Through visuals, storytelling, and metaphors that resonate with the company's business leaders, CIOs must develop the skill of showing their stakeholders that foundational investments are the table stakes of innovation. If they do not, they will get crushed between the rock and hard-place of legacy technologies and business demand.

Grow blended executives

The companies that have underinvested in IT have also underinvested in IT talent. IT leaders are a unique breed, and they need to possess a heady brew of business, technology, and interpersonal skills. High-performing IT organizations appoint executives to sit at the intersection of business areas and the IT function, helping business leaders to shape their IT strategies and marshaling a technology team to deliver against that demand. Ideally, these "business relationship executives" would have two heads: one for business and one for technology. Since cloning is still an imperfect science — and these gorgeously blended executives are in short supply in the talent market — companies will need to grow their own.

The most effective approach to developing blended executives is to develop a program that rotates IT people into business roles, and business people into IT. But regardless of which approach companies take, they need to start now. We are in the midst of war for IT talent, and companies that always have to go outside for their IT leaders, are at a disadvantage. A far better strategy is to take the people that they have and develop them into blended executives. You know you are on the right track when you walk into a business unit meeting, and from the dialogue taking place, you cannot easily distinguish the IT person from everyone else.

Reach beyond IT

The IT function is not easy to manage. IT is highly strategic, intensely operational, hard to staff and extremely expensive. CIOs who are successful in running IT tend to develop expertise in important areas including project management, continuous improvement, people development, M&A, and strategic planning. These disciplines are critical to every other department in the company. CIOs who want to be effective in the future will extend their leadership and expertise beyond the IT function. They will set up enterprise project management offices; they will take the reigns as their company's continuous improvement champion; they will absorb HR and legal and procurement, along with IT, into a new Chief Shared Services Officer role. They will step out of their IT boxes because they know it is good for the company. They will not wait to be asked.

With cloud, mobility, consumerization, and big data, the CIO paradox is not disappearing; it is growing stronger. The contradictory forces that define IT are getting more acute, and CIOs will work harder than ever to perform. Those who are already struggling under the paradox will continue to struggle. But those who can rise to the occasion, break the paradox, and deliver value in our new technology marketplace will secure themselves a place of leadership in what promises to be an exciting new era.

Reinventing Corporate IT
An HBR Insight Center





The CIO In Crisis: What You Told Us
How to Compete When IT Is Abundant
Can UX Save Enterprise IT?
The Metamorphosis of the CIO

Rediscover Your Company's Humanity

We've heard the rallying cry for the past few years for companies to "be customer-centric" and to transform into "a social business." But what does that really mean?



As I've said before, It's hard for most organizations to come to any real consensus because each part of the company only sees one small sliver of the customer, a sliver that comes with different meanings and measurement: a segmentation profile in marketing, website traffic for the digital team, "call volume" to the customer service team, a "conversion" to the sales team, or an "impression" to the advertising team. The real risk here is that no one sees the customer as an actual human being.

But the challenge the corporation really needs to answer — listening to and understanding the customer more deeply — can start with the concept of empathy: encouraging employees to put aside their particular duties with the company and put themselves in their customer's shoes.



This process need not require deeply specialized skills: it can be as simple as it sounds. The problem is, professional training has distanced us from fundamental principles of human communication. We now tend to focus on empirical data from survey results and analytics or customer insights from feedback forms and focus groups constrained by what the company knows to ask.



And, just as challenging, the differences in each of our professional trainings as we look across disciplines within any organization means that people think and talk differently about their relationship with that customer. Even more confusing, we are often using the same words for somewhat different purposes from department to department.



As a result, empathy with the customer, which is among the simplest of principles, can be among the most challenging to master, especially for employees managing communication with a community to which they've never actually belonged themselves.

At our agency, Peppercomm, this core philosophy of listening and empathy has transformed the way we work. We strive to see ourselves as beholden not just to the clients paying us for our consulting but equally so to the audiences they seek to reach, who give their time and who ultimately determine the success of our clients' businesses.



We've largely accomplished this through putting a deeper focus on helping our clients see the world from the eyes of their various audiences. We make it a priority to think about the communications experience of various stakeholders at every step along the way.



Thinking this way is a challenge. We still find ourselves accepting assumptions passed along by clients about their audiences without thinking them through from the audience's perspective. Occasionally, we'll catch one another talking about the customer as a number, or a profile, or a concept instead of an actual human being. And we sometimes still realize that we have created a communications strategy or drafted content more intent on capturing what everyone within the company would like to communicate without much thought as to what audiences actually want or need to know.



Customer empathy is a goal we'll never claim to "master," because it requires constantly challenging ourselves to work as a team from the common place of the perspective of the customer, the employee, the journalist, or any other constituency. But we pride ourselves on holding it up as our rallying cry and our filter on a daily basis.



As all of our companies continue acclimating to the realities of today's communications environment, it's imperative that those of us who see listening and empathy as a critical determinant of organizational health make it a company priority. We must all ensure our daily work reflects these principles. And we have to spread that message, both vertically and horizontally, within our organizations (and, for those of us in professional services, inside those companies we work with).



It will likely be frustrating and occasionally disheartening, especially since it seems so deceptively simple. But it is vital work, not just for the sake of our companies but for those audiences we serve. Only when all employees, from the C-suite to the interns, work to truly understand the world from their customer's points of view can we truly call ourselves "customer-centric" and a "social business."

Surprises Are the New Normal; Resilience Is the New Skill

The difference between winners and losers is how they handle losing.

That's a key finding from my ongoing research on great companies and effective leaders: no one can completely avoid troubles and potential pitfalls are everywhere, so the real skill is the resilience to climb out of the hole and bounce back.

Volatile times bring disruptions, interruptions, and setbacks, even for the most successful among us. Companies at the top of the heap still have times when they are blindsided by a competing product and must play catch-up. Sports teams that win regularly are often behind during the game. Writers can face dozens of rejections before finding a publisher that puts them on the map. Some successful politicians get caught with their pants down (so to speak) and still go on to lead, although such self-inflicted wounds are harder to heal.

Resilience is the ability to recover from fumbles or outright mistakes and bounce back. But flexibility alone is not enough. You have to learn from your errors. Those with resilience build on the cornerstones of confidence — accountability (taking responsibility and showing remorse), collaboration (supporting others in reaching a common goal), and initiative (focusing on positive steps and improvements). As outlined in my book Confidence, these factors underpin the resilience of people, teams, and organizations that can stumble but resume winning.

For anyone who wants to get beyond adversity or start over rather than give up, America is the Land of Second Chances. According to Jon Huntsman, former US Ambassador to China, getting back on our feet is an American strength widely admired in China. And everywhere, rapid recovery from natural disasters is increasingly a key to a robust economy. Entrepreneurs and innovators must be willing to fail and try again. The point isn't to learn to fail, it is to learn to bounce back.

Some stumbles are due to circumstances outside of most people's control, including weather events and geopolitical shocks. But while people might not control the larger problem, they control their reactions to it — whether to give up or find a new path. Recession in Europe is an example. I recently spoke to European audiences at public conferences and within companies about cultivating resilience in their businesses even when markets are shrinking, so that they hold their own as recession continues and are well-positioned for recovery. A German machinery company showed resilience by growing its service contracts when demand for machines slowed, and it mobilized employees to find new service possibilities. An Italian cosmetics firm grabbed talent from job-shedding multinationals and increased its international marketing tied to both health and fashion; new sales followed. In both companies, like others described in my book SuperCorp, such initiatives were made possible by a strong sense of purpose that drew members together and motivated them to take responsibility to help the companies survive and thrive. Employees were resilient because they cared, and that made the companies resilient.

Complacency, arrogance, and greed crowd out resilience. Humility and a noble purpose fuel it. Those with an authentic desire to serve, not just narcissism about wanting to be at the top, are willing to settle for less as an investment in better things later. Raymond Barre, former Premier of France, after being defeated for reelection at the national level, ran for a lesser office as Mayor of Lyon and became a hero of his region. That's the strategy Eliot Spitzer is taking by running for a lesser city office after having been governor of a state. He showed remorse quickly when scandal surfaced and then reentered the public conversation talking about the issues, increasing his comeback prospects.

Some observers say it is harder for women to stage comebacks. Still, consider Martha Stewart. She served prison time for insider trading rather graciously, showing remorse, and that graciousness restored much of her fan base afterward. In a more positive vein, Hillary Clinton was not a sore loser to President Obama in 2008 (though some of her followers were) and accepted his offer to become his Secretary of State. She's now perhaps even better-positioned for a 2016 Presidential run. In the long term, graciousness beats sour grapes.

Resilience draws from strength of character, from a core set of values that motivate efforts to overcome the setback and resume walking the path to success. It involves self-control and willingness to acknowledge one's own role in defeat. Resilience also thrives on a sense of community — the desire to pick oneself up because of an obligation to others and because of support from others who want the same thing. Resilience is manifested in actions — a new contribution, a small win, a goal that takes attention off of the past and creates excitement about the future.

Potential troubles lurk around every corner, whether they stem from unexpected environmental jolts or individual flaws and mistakes. Whatever the source, what matters is how we deal with them. When surprises are the new normal, resilience is the new skill.

Avoiding the Soft "Yes"

It was undoubtedly a high-quality piece of work. The project team had spent the past six months designing a new strategy to accelerate growth in a critical emerging market for a multibillion-dollar multinational. The summary document had that rare combination: a compelling long-term vision and a credible set of near-term actions addressing critical strategic unknowns.

The last page of the 50-page document concluded the compelling story with a small request — four dedicated individuals for six months and $250,000 to conduct an in-market pilot. The project leader believed the modest request would translate into an easy yes.



I could see the logic in that approach, but I feared it wasn't going to work the way she was expecting. In actual fact, I've found, saving "the ask" for the end of the document increases the risks of encountering a hidden enemy of innovation inside large companies: the "soft yes." This happens when executives get jazzed about a broad innovation strategy, nod their head vigorously in support of it, but stop short of committing real, tangible resources, however modest.

It was the four dedicated people that were going to be the sticking point, I thought. You almost always can find money in someone's budget, or find creative ways around financial constraints to progress a new idea. But there are only so many hours in the day. Executives often hesitate to hire additional staff ("What happens if this doesn't work — then what do we do?" they say). They're equally reluctant to ask their best performers to shift from what are perceived to be critical tasks related to running the core business to risky innovation efforts.

They're more comfortable asking busy people to add another item to their to-do list. But since most people's incentives are tied to delivering against the core business, they'll likely nod their heads and agree to help out — but prioritize the tasks they feel they're being paid to do over the pursuit of uncertain ideas.

Thus, the soft yes — people agree (in principle) to your request, but they don't come through whole-heartedly. The net result is that innovation efforts limp along, making just enough progress to keep management intrigued, but not enough to have any material impact.

One way to avoid the soft yes is to make your resource request clear early — within the first 10 minutes of any review meeting. Be specific. Then lay out the logic for the request. Detail the metrics that senior management can monitor as they watch their investment. Consider creating an exit strategy in case things don't go according to plan. If you are hiring new people, for example, perhaps they could be redeployed to other functions, if things don't pan out. Or maybe they could be brought on using temporary contracts. End your meeting by repeating the resource request. If you obtain verbal agreement, send a written summary to stakeholders to nail it down.

This all might sound like overkill, but remember that companies left to their own devices will naturally default to executing today's business, not creating tomorrow's. Being clear in intent, consistent in your explanations, and persistent in getting formal agreement can ensure that you get the resources you need when you need them.