CEO Brain Trust » Education http://www.ceobraintrust.com Just another WordPress weblog Fri, 21 May 2010 05:42:20 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.4 How Not Achieving Something Is the Key to Achieving It http://www.ceobraintrust.com/1091/how-not-achieving-something-is-the-key-to-achieving-it/ http://www.ceobraintrust.com/1091/how-not-achieving-something-is-the-key-to-achieving-it/#comments Fri, 20 Nov 2009 22:02:52 +0000 Daniel http://ceobraintrust.com/?p=1091 Twitter It!

By: Peter Bregman/ Harvard Business Publishing

Many years ago, when I first started my consulting firm, a friend of mine, Jane*, who worked for a large company, suggested I speak with her colleague, a man named Fred, who might be in a position to hire Bregman Partners.

So I called Fred, mentioned Jane and asked to meet with him. I’m very busy, Fred told me, let’s just talk on the phone.

But I knew the phone wouldn’t cut it. How about lunch?, I suggested. Or a drink after work? Or maybe just fifteen minutes in person somewhere?

Fred finally agreed to a short lunch. Then he canceled. We rescheduled. He canceled again. We rescheduled again. He canceled again. It was clear he didn’t want to meet with me. I almost gave up.

Here’s what I realized though: if I could avoid reacting to my feelings of frustration or hurt, then the cost to me of rescheduling the meeting was a two minute phone call with Fred’s secretary. And the upside was potentially enormous.

So I kept rescheduling until, one day, several months later, Fred didn’t cancel and we had lunch. Which was very quick, of course, but long enough for me to ask him to let me submit a proposal. A couple of weeks after I sent it to him, he left me a short message explaining that I had missed the mark but he’d keep me in mind. Right.

I felt affronted. All that work I put in and all I got in return was a voicemail? Again, I almost walked away.

But instead I called and asked for another lunch to understand what I misunderstood. He declined but suggested I speak with his colleague, Lily, who was in a different department and might have a need for my services.

So I set up a meeting with Lily. Who canceled. As I prepared to reschedule I noticed something unexpected: I started to enjoy the process of trying to get in, the challenge of making the sale. It became a game to me and my goal was to keep playing until, at some point, I’d say the right thing to the right person and get my foot in the door. I was, surprisingly, having fun.

And I was starting to be good at it. Scheduling. Rescheduling. Finding a way to keep the conversation going. You’d think it wouldn’t be something hard or useful to become good at but you’d be wrong on both counts.

Most of our jobs hinge on repetition. That’s how we become good at anything. The problem is we give up too soon because anything we do repetitively becomes boring.

That is, unless we have a peculiar taste for the task; if it captures our interest. For some reason, maybe we don’t even understand — and we don’t have to — we enjoy it.

That’s how I learned how to do a handstand. It always seemed completely out of reach for me. But then someone told me they learned as an adult. So I figured I could learn too. It took six months but now I can, somewhat reliably, stand on my hands.

Which has led me to believe that anyone can do anything. As long as three conditions exist:

  1. You want to achieve it
  2. You believe you can achieve it
  3. You enjoy trying to achieve it

We often think we only need the first two but it’s the third condition that’s most important. The trying is the day-to-day reality. And trying to achieve something is very different than achieving it. It’s the opposite actually. It’s not achieving it.

If you want to be a great marketer, you need to spend years being a clumsy one. Want to be a great manager? Then you’d better enjoy being a poor one long enough to become a good one. Because that practice is what it’s going to take to eventually become a great one.

In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell discusses research done at the Berlin Academy of Music. Researchers divided violin students into three categories: the stars, the good performers, and the ones who would become teachers but not performers. It turns out that the number one predictor of which category a violinist fell in was the number of hours of practice.

The future teachers had practiced 4,000 hours in their lifetime. The good performers, 8,000 hours. And those who were categorized as stars? Every single one of them had practiced at least 10,000 hours.

And here’s the compelling part: There wasn’t a single violinist who had practiced 10,000 hours who wasn’t a star. In other words, 10,000 hours of practice guaranteed you’d be a star violinist. According to Gladwell, 10,000 hours of practice is the magic number to become the best at anything.

Which is why you’d better enjoy trying to achieve your goals. Because you’ll never spend 10,000 hours doing anything you don’t enjoy. And if you don’t enjoy the trying part you’ll never do it long enough to reach your goal.

Eventually, after five or six cancelled meetings, Lily and I met for lunch. Which, as it turned out, was perfect timing. When we finally met, she had a real need, which hadn’t existed when we first started scheduling a meeting.

By this time, I was familiar to her and the company even though I had never done any work for them. I had been around for months and they trusted me because I followed through on every commitment I made to them.

That year I signed a large contract with Lily’s company. Twelve years later, they’re still a big client of Bregman Partners. And they still cancel lots of meetings with me.

*Some information has been changed to protect people’s privacy.

]]> http://www.ceobraintrust.com/1091/how-not-achieving-something-is-the-key-to-achieving-it/feed/ 0 The Next Youth-Magnet Cities http://www.ceobraintrust.com/1050/the-next-youth-magnet-cities/ http://www.ceobraintrust.com/1050/the-next-youth-magnet-cities/#comments Tue, 20 Oct 2009 05:45:59 +0000 Daniel http://ceobraintrust.com/?p=1050 Twitter It!

By: The Wall Stret Journal/SUE SHELLENBARGE

  • If you were a recent college graduate in a recovering economy launching a career, looking for a mate or both, where would you choose to live?

Predicting cities that will emerge as post-recession meccas for the young is easy to argue about, but impossible to forecast empirically. Whether you prefer hip, casual Austin, Texas, over the cosmopolitan allure of New York City is partly a matter of personal taste. Still, we asked six experts which 10 cities will emerge as the hottest, hippest destinations for highly mobile, educated workers in their 20s when the U.S. economy gets moving again. Our panelists—demographers, economists, geographers and authors on urban issues—picked their cities based on the criteria they deem most important, from economic diversity to lifestyle.

Big cities dominate our panelists’ forecasts. Where trendy smaller cities might have captivated youth in the past, today’s recession-scarred young people are more pragmatic, placing “greater emphasis on where high-quality, high-paying jobs are created,” says Ross DeVol, director of regional economics for the nonprofit Milken Institute. Northeastern and West Coast cities are ascendant, eclipsing former Sunbelt favorites such as Atlanta.

Other cities once lauded as youth magnets fell off the radar. Naples, Fla., cited in an influential 2003 U.S. Census Bureau report on migration among young adults, was bypassed by panelists, a victim of the sagging Florida economy. The housing collapse sank another past favorite, former real-estate boom town Las Vegas. And Charlotte, N.C., a banking center, lost some of its luster to the financial crisis.

Quirky urban cultures haven’t entirely lost their allure. Our panelists’ No. 4 pick is a city with double-digit unemployment—Portland, Ore., a haven for artists, musicians and outdoor enthusiasts. The city has shown “staying power” among youth, says Rachel Franklin, a geographer at the University of Maryland and author of the Census Bureau report.

Where young adults settle is no small thing. People 18 to 29 are the most mobile age group, and their past migration patterns have defined the future of regions, from the long rural exodus of the 1900s to the Silicon Valley boom of the 1990s. Youth-magnet cities gain an enviable cultural allure and a labor-market edge.

The young are likely to be more restless than usual when the recovery comes. The recession has brought migration to a grinding halt: Fewer people moved across state lines in 2008 than at any time since 1950, when the population was smaller by half, says William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit Washington research organization.

Here’s a look at our survey’s top five cities:

First Place (Tie): Washington, D.C.

The 2008 election touched off a youthful pilgrimage to the capital that most panelists say won’t end soon. “In the eyes of some young people, Barack Obama is America’s coolest boss,” says Richard Florida, author of “Who’s Your City?” and a professor of business and creativity at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.

Government hiring is projected to grow fast, and jobs in lobbying, aerospace, defense contracting and professional services are also a draw. Mr. DeVol calls Washington the national leader in high-tech services, surpassing Silicon Valley. Washington’s 4,000-plus nonprofits hold appeal for service-minded youth. And amid rising regulation of financial markets, says Barbara Lang, president of the DC Chamber of Commerce, “much of Wall Street is now moving to K Street.”

David Gibson Jr., 25 years old, passed up finance jobs in Charlotte, New York and Atlanta to settle in Washington as a financial analyst for the Federal Reserve. Mr. Gibson, who has an M.B.A., figures the capital, with its many universities, can accommodate him for the long haul, enabling him to pursue a Ph.D. if he chooses. He loves the city’s museums and live jazz and R&B venues, he says, and its power-center status is helping him “expand my network world-wide.”

That combination of factors, says David Plane, a professor of geography and regional development at the University of Arizona, signals “sustained dynamism” for Washington.

The downside: Not all see the current federal hiring binge continuing. “Right now Washington is a magnet. It has become the new New York,” says Steven Cochrane, managing director of Moody’s Economy.com. But the ballooning federal deficit suggests that “by next year, the government is going to be looking seriously at making cuts.”

First Place (Tie): Seattle

Former Ohio residents Lane Kuhlman, 26, and her husband, Matt Mansbach, 32, mulled several cities, including New York and Chicago, as potential destinations last summer, after Ms. Kuhlman received her master’s degree specializing in interactive media.

In their eyes, none could match Seattle’s combination of a diverse high-tech sector, cultural life, access to rugged natural terrain and a strong university presence. Ms. Kuhlman has since taken a post as a new-product researcher for Microsoft, and Mr. Mansbach is weighing attending one of the city’s grad schools in his field, computer animation. Meanwhile, Ms. Kuhlman says, “we’re only 15 minutes from a beautiful waterfall, and there are amazing places to hike.”

Anchor to a region of corporate innovators, from Amazon.com to Starbucks, Seattle is “a high-tech and lifestyle mecca,” Dr. Florida says. Mr. DeVol says the city’s high-tech sector, with 226,300 workers, is just slightly smaller than Silicon Valley’s. Joblessness, at 7.7%, remains relatively low. City officials see rapid growth in biotech; Seattle also has tens of thousands of jobs in music and interactive media. And it enjoys a reputation as home to a lot of brainy people.

The downside: It rains half the time.

Work & Family Mailbox

How We Selected Our Top-Rated Cities

Naming the next wave of top cities for hip, highly mobile young adults is far from an exact science. It’s more like a parlor game.

The Wall Street Journal sought out six of the nation’s leading experts to rank the 10 U.S. cities they see as most likely to emerge as “youth magnet” cities after the recession—popular target destinations among young, college-educated, often single people setting out to start a career, find a mate or both.

The panelists, who were also asked to provide two or three reasons for their selections, were chosen based on their achievements in research, forecasting or authorship in the fields of geography, regional economics or demography.

The methodology used to compile a final list is closer to a straw poll than a scientific study.

Using criteria of their own choosing, experts provided ranked lists of picks. Composite rankings were then assigned to cities based on a point system: Each expert’s No. 1 pick was given 10 points, second choices were given nine points and so on, with 10th-place picks receiving one point. Final rankings were determined by adding the total points each city received.

The panelists:

Steven Cochrane , managing director, Moody’s Economy.com, head of the Web site’s U.S. regional forecasting service and editor of its monthly Regional Financial Review.

Ross DeVol , director of regional economics, the Milken Institute, a Santa Monica, Calif., nonprofit, and researcher on technology and its impact on regional and national economies.

Richard Florida , author of “Who’s Your City” and “The Rise of the Creative Class,” and director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.

Rachel Franklin , senior lecturer, public policy, at the University of Maryland; former deputy director of the Association of American Geographers, and author of a 2003 Census Bureau report on migration patterns among young, educated workers.

William Frey , demographer and senior fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program of the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., and a research professor in population studies at the University of Michigan.

David Plane , professor of geography and regional development, University of Arizona, Tucson; a senior editor of the Journal of Regional Science, and researcher on age-related factors in migration.

Third Place: New York

Reeling from the financial crisis, the nation’s largest city may seem an unlikely pick. But one reason New York’s unemployment rate is stuck at a daunting 10.3% is that hopeful job seekers continue to move there, city officials say. Clearly, “the city’s mythic status as a place to test one’s mettle against the best and the brightest” remains intact, Dr. Florida says.

New York hasn’t lost as many financial-services jobs as predicted, says Deputy Mayor Robert Lieber; so far, fewer than half of the 293,000 job losses that were projected by the city from 2009 through mid-2010 have materialized. Residential growth in boroughs outside Manhattan, such as Brooklyn, is making the city marginally more affordable, and some panelists see housing prices falling more.

At Vermont’s Middlebury College, New York surpasses nearby Boston as the destination of choice for the class of 2010, says Jaye Roseborough, career-services director. Allison Bailey, a 2009 grad, loves the city’s “European lifestyle,” she says. After studying in France, “I wanted to be in a ‘walking city’ like Paris.” Working lots of overtime as a litigation assistant for a law firm, she can manage the $1,450 monthly rent for her Manhattan studio, she says. And she is happy to leave behind the long car commutes of her native Houston.

The downside: The city is still unaffordable for many, and the less-pricey suburbs can impose enervating commutes.

Fourth Place: Portland, Ore.

Los Angeles native Ryan O’Leary, 23, didn’t expect when he graduated from college with a journalism degree last year to be working construction at this point, he says. But he decided about a month ago to give top priority to moving to the place he most wanted to live, and Portland was it—despite its daunting 11.2% unemployment rate.

Mr. O’Leary, who found an apartment downtown, calls his move “the best decision I’ve made in a long time.” He loves the city’s nightlife and neighborhoods, and the city’s streetcars—one of which stops by his building—are a refreshing change from Los Angeles’s car culture. He continues to job-hunt in his field, public relations, on his days off.

A symbol of “West Coast hipness,” Ms. Franklin says, Portland has continued to draw migrants through the recession. An urban-growth boundary fosters a strong downtown culture while containing suburban sprawl, easing travel to nearby mountains and forests. Portland has expanded mass transit and boasts sizeable electronics and activewear companies, several wind- and solar-energy firms, and many green-building projects.

Its quirky culture appeals to musicians and artists: The city has more than its share of oddball events, including an adult soap-box derby and an urban Iditarod (wherein costumed revelers pull shopping carts). “Keep Portland Weird” is a popular bumper sticker. Although Austin claimed that motto first in the 1980s, “we live it pretty well here,” says a city staffer.

The downside: While regional officials have laid plans to add 10,000 jobs in the next five years, Portland has done better at promoting its quality of life than fostering job growth. “As nice as it may be to live in Portland,” says Economy.com’s Dr. Cochrane, “you can only sleep on someone’s couch for so long. At some point you have to get a job.”

Fifth Place: Austin, Texas

After a year spent traveling and working overseas in 2007, New Jersey resident Olga Garcia, 26, and her boyfriend, Kevin Kurkjian, 27, debated places to settle. Then Kevin announced, “Olga, I’ve got it figured out: We’re going to Austin.” She agreed. Both had heard from friends that Austin offered housing and career opportunities and a welcoming, youthful culture. “I had never heard anything bad about Austin,” says Ms. Garcia, a marketing consultant.

A state capital and the site of a big University of Texas campus, Austin has become a gathering place for tech- and arts-conscious young adults. Its SXSW media and arts conference, and its Austin City Limits music festival, draw hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. Both unemployment and the cost of living are relatively low. And with significant high-tech, videogame and renewable-energy sectors, Mr. DeVol calls Austin “a model for a thriving 21st-century knowledge-based community.”

The downside: Some panelists have doubts about how strongly Austin will rebound after the recession.

]]> http://www.ceobraintrust.com/1050/the-next-youth-magnet-cities/feed/ 0 The modern talking pad http://www.ceobraintrust.com/942/the-modern-talking-pad/ http://www.ceobraintrust.com/942/the-modern-talking-pad/#comments Sat, 05 Sep 2009 08:33:08 +0000 Daniel http://ceobraintrust.com/?p=942 Twitter It!

By: Seth Godin

I think this is a big idea, but your mileage may vary.

I’ve been having great success with a hybrid of the yellow legal pad and a printed presentation from Keynote (or Powerpoint). I use it during small meetings where more interactivity is useful, and where the group is too small for a laptop to be the best way to present slides (I think running a presentation says, “I talk, you listen…”)

Here’s how it works:

  1. Create a presentation. A good one, not one filled with bullet points. Instead, graphs, images, a few words to anchor a discussion. A page might be nothing but a blank 3 x 3 grid.
  2. On every page, remove some of the information.
  3. Print the presentation out (horizontal, not portrait).
  4. Bring it to Staples and have them spiral bind it with covers. (Not that cheap plastic comb, though.)
  5. Get a good pen.

Now, when you make your presentation, sit next to the person you’re meeting with and go through the booklet page by page, writing directly on each page. As you work your way through the ideas in the booklet, the two of you can talk about what’s in front of you and mark it up.

It’s not a brochure, it’s the outcome of a working session. Leave it behind when you go.

]]> http://www.ceobraintrust.com/942/the-modern-talking-pad/feed/ 0 Jim Rohn – How to have Your Best Year Ever (1 of 3) http://www.ceobraintrust.com/936/jim-rohn-how-to-have-your-best-year-ever-1-of-3/ http://www.ceobraintrust.com/936/jim-rohn-how-to-have-your-best-year-ever-1-of-3/#comments Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:42:06 +0000 Daniel http://ceobraintrust.com/?p=936 Twitter It!

Great video of Jim Rohn… strongly recomended.


]]> http://www.ceobraintrust.com/936/jim-rohn-how-to-have-your-best-year-ever-1-of-3/feed/ 0 How to Give a Lousy Presentation http://www.ceobraintrust.com/914/how-to-give-a-lousy-presentation/ http://www.ceobraintrust.com/914/how-to-give-a-lousy-presentation/#comments Wed, 02 Sep 2009 08:27:46 +0000 Daniel http://ceobraintrust.com/?p=914 Twitter It!

By: Business Week/ Carmine Gallo

Fifteen ways to make a bad impression

By Carmine Gallo

Giving truly great presentations requires skill, work, and practice. Giving catastrophic presentations is far easier. So if you want to take the easy way out and look like a rank amateur, here are 15 surefire tips to guarantee that you leave a really, really bad impression.

1. Misspell words. Failing to check the spelling on your slides shows a complete lack of care. If you don’t care enough to proof your presentation, your audience will care less about you and your message. It’s the easiest way to look unprofessional.

2. Create distracting color combinations. Blue on green is especially hard to read.

3. Use inconsistent fonts. Professional PowerPoint designers will use no more than two, perhaps three, font styles in an entire presentation. But why stop there? There are thousands of typefaces available. See how many you can incorporate into your slide show.

4. Use a really small font size. If you really want to drive people crazy, say something like this: “I know you can’t read this, but if you could, here is what it would say…”

5. Insert improperly sized photos that are stretched to fit the slide. Images used in PowerPoint slides should be at least 900 pixels wide by 720 high. Designers start with larger images and shrink them to fit the slide. If you really want to look bad, however, find much smaller thumbnail images, say 200 x 300 pixels, and simply stretch them to fit the slide. They will look blurry, cheap, and bush-league.

6. Look completely and totally disinterested. I attended a conference in which the keynote speaker hadn’t even bothered to create a presentation and had a few handwritten notes in front of him. That’s fine, if you can pull it off. This speaker could not. He shuffled through his notes, lost his place several times, and twice asked the organizer, “How much time do I have?” The people in the audience—influential venture capitalists—found this so appalling that they started looking at each other and laughing.

7. Look disheveled. If you really want to leave a bad impression, wear faded blue jeans, worn, dirty shoes, and a stained shirt.

8. Read every word of each slide. Better yet, turn your back to the audience and read your slides word for word.

9. Don’t bother with a backup plan. If you need a live Internet connection to demo a site, don’t bother making a screen shot of the site in case the connection doesn’t work. That way, you’ll be at a complete loss for words when the connection fails.

10. Don’t practice. At all. Practicing a presentation out loud takes work and will make you look far too polished. Just wing it.

11. Call attention to your mistakes. If you want to show a complete lack of preparation, say something like “Oops, I have no idea how that slide got in there.”

12. Open with an offensive or off-color joke. Half your audience will walk out immediately and you’ll have succeeded in making a really bad impression right out of the gate.

13. Use wild animations. Letting text simply fade into a slide is way too straightforward. Especially when PowerPoint offers you the bounce, the boomerang, and the dreaded “neutron,” which makes letters circle wildly. All are effective at giving your audience a headache.

14. Use cartoon clip art. Why spend $3 on high-resolution photos from a stock photography service such as iStockphoto when there are plenty of cheap-looking and free cartoons that will make your presentation look like a sixth-grade project?

15. Use ancient presentation software. PowerPoint 2003 served its purpose (I used it for years). But there’s no comparison with PowerPoint 2007, which is simply a better, more robust tool. Says Darla Wigginton, an expert PowerPoint designer and creative director at eVision Design in San Francisco, “When [PowerPoint] 2007 came out, it scared the design world because the average user could now create some impressive-looking work.” Why scare professional designers? Stick to older versions of the software and leave the slicker presentations to others.

I hope you find some of these tips memorable enough to avoid them at all costs. But make no mistake, these presentation “techniques” are alive, well, and thriving. Just when I think I’ve seen or heard it all, someone has one more observation to add to the list. Feel free to use the comments section below to add your own experiences. We look forward to hearing from you.

Carmine Gallo is the communication skills coach for the world’s most admired brands. He is a popular speaker and the author of several books including Fire Them Up! His upcoming title, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience, will be published by McGraw-Hill in October. More of Gallo’s columns are available in his ongoing series.

Carmine Gallo is the communication skills coach for the world’s most admired brands. He is a popular speaker and the author of several books including Fire Them Up! His upcoming title, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience, will be published by McGraw-Hill in October. More of Gallo’s columns are available in his ongoing series.

]]> http://www.ceobraintrust.com/914/how-to-give-a-lousy-presentation/feed/ 0 Tony Robins interview Frank Kern and John Reese http://www.ceobraintrust.com/909/tony-robins-interview-frank-kern-and-john-reese/ http://www.ceobraintrust.com/909/tony-robins-interview-frank-kern-and-john-reese/#comments Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:19:34 +0000 Daniel http://ceobraintrust.com/?p=909 Twitter It!

I just see this great interview of Tony Robins with Frank Kern and John Reese, two internet marketers I admire and respect. They discuss what makes people successful and how they achieve things…. Great 38 minute educational video… I strongly recommend it.

You can see it in this link http://tonyrobbinstraining.com/320/interview-with-frank-kern-and-john-reese/

]]> http://www.ceobraintrust.com/909/tony-robins-interview-frank-kern-and-john-reese/feed/ 0 Critics that matter http://www.ceobraintrust.com/906/critics-that-matter/ http://www.ceobraintrust.com/906/critics-that-matter/#comments Thu, 20 Aug 2009 06:19:24 +0000 Daniel http://ceobraintrust.com/?p=906 Twitter It!

By: Seth Godin

If you invent or launch or market (and you’re human) it’s likely that you have the voice of the critic in the back of your head. It’s natural to fear what they’ll say, and if you’re not careful, you’ll end up redesigning your product to please them before you even launch it.

Imagine the restaurant chef who changes the interior of the restaurant to please the Michelin critic (they insist on a certain quality of cutlery in order to award a three star review). It might be your boss who is the critic. Or consider the B2B manufacturer who alters the product specs in order to meet the standards of the GAO so he can sell to the US Government…

Some critics matter. (Your biggest customer, for example). Some are merely loud. Others are just difficult.

Janet Maslin at the New York Times is a cranky hack. She reviews popular fiction and non-fiction, and as best I can tell, she likes neither very much. She’s taken authors to task for questionable copy editing and devoted entire reviews to pointless rants about trivia. Here’s the thing: she doesn’t matter. Janet’s reviews appear to have no impact at all on whether or not a book sells. Her voice is not in my head.

Robert Morris, on the other hand, is a useful guide for people in search of good books. He’s reviewed nearly 2,000 books and received almost 25,000 helpful votes for his reviews on Amazon. If he likes your book, you’re going to sell more copies–not because he liked it, but because his thorough review lets other people decide if they want to buy it or not.

The challenge is in figuring out which kind of critic is worth paying attention to as you create your product or service. In a business to business setting, pleasing the gatekeeper and the bill payer is essential. On the other hand, pleasing an angry blogger might not matter at all.

In our desire to please everyone, it’s very easy to end up being invisible or mediocre. Far better to please the right people.

]]> http://www.ceobraintrust.com/906/critics-that-matter/feed/ 0 Who needs an executive coach? http://www.ceobraintrust.com/873/who-needs-an-executive-coach/ http://www.ceobraintrust.com/873/who-needs-an-executive-coach/#comments Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:22:29 +0000 Daniel http://ceobraintrust.com/?p=873 Twitter It!

By: Forbes/ Douglas McKenna

Executive coaching is hot. What was stigma (“You’re so broken you need a coach?”) has become status symbol (“You’re so valuable you get a coach?”). Tiger Woods and Michael Phelps have coaches. Even President Barack Obama has a coach, if you count David Axelrod. Microsoft’s young high-potential leaders get coaches. If elite athletes and organizations think they need coaches, shouldn’t you have one too? Shouldn’t we all?

No. Executive coaching–personal training in leadership from someone who provides it for a living–should be used like a powerful prescription drug that works best under certain conditions. When employed as a cure-all, it is less effective, too expensive and has negative side effects.

Executive coaching is not aspirin. It’s interferon. So when should it be prescribed for an executive? When should it be avoided?

Based on the latest research and 25 years I’ve spent coaching senior executives and high-potential young leaders, here are five diagnostic questions you should ask before making the decision to hire a coach.

1. How valuable is this person’s performance and potential to your organization?

When done right, executive coaching is expensive and time-consuming. It should be reserved for people who are critical to your organization’s success, or will be in the future. In general, this includes everyone at C-level, heads of major business units or functions, technical or functional wizards, and your bench of high-potential young leaders.

Just how expensive and time-consuming is executive coaching? Although there is tremendous variation in fees and arrangements among coaches, be prepared to pay a C-level coach what you pay your top attorney. If this seems excessive, consider that a coach must have the experience and expertise to quickly grasp a leader’s situation, challenge assumptions and choices, and bring credible, fresh ideas to the table. Doing this with your best and brightest is not easy. And given the influence a coach can have on an executive’s decisions and actions over the course of a typical six-to-12-month engagement involving bimonthly meetings, regular phone calls and e-mail check-ins, a bargain coach whose sophistication does not match the client’s is a big mistake.

2. What is the challenge the person is facing right now?

People, relationships, organizations and behavioral change are what executive coaches know best. When an executive is struggling to learn how to best manage herself and engage others, you’ve found the sweet spot for executive coaching.

He might be a chief executive officer trying to figure out how to work with his board chair. Or a regional vice president scaling up to global responsibility, learning how to lead her former peers. Or a technical wizard who destroys teams with his resistance to all ideas but his own.

But be warned: An executive coach is not a consultant. He may have technical or functional expertise. But he should not be used as an answer person, an extra pair of hands or a bolster for a weak leader. He helps executives think through and tackle their own problems. Self-reliance, not dependency, is the goal.

3. How willing and able will the executive be to work with a coach?

The client has got to want to change. A bright, motivated coaching client can step up to most challenges. A bright, unmotivated one will waste everyone’s time and money. Working with an executive who has been pressured into coaching by his boss or human resources department is an uphill battle, though it’s not impossible.

Coachability is important. Look for a track record of unusual growth under the guidance of teachers and mentors. Coachable executives readily share their experience. They are realistic about their strengths and weaknesses. They learn from others but do it their own way, taking responsibility for whatever happens. They know how to leverage a coach.

4. What alternatives to coaching are available?

There are many ways to help executives grow as leaders. High-level training, mentoring, reading, job rotation and special assignments are just a few. The most overlooked alternative is attention from the individual’s own manager. As coaching has become more fashionable, I’ve seen too many managers abdicate their own coaching responsibilities, turning a struggling executive over to a professional. Sometimes the problem is beyond what the manager can handle. But often managers hand off executives because they’d rather not deal with messy people stuff.

The manager is already being paid to coach. Don’t incur an executive coaching expense if the problem is within that manager’s capabilities.

5. Are key people in the organization ready to support this person’s efforts to grow and change?

Changing the way you think and act is tough even when you have support from others. But when key leaders above or beside you are indifferent, skeptical or hostile to changes you’re trying to make, things get exponentially more difficult. Coaching works best when key people in the executive’s world stand solidly behind her. They need to provide tailwinds, not headwinds. Coaching relationships in a vacuum of support fall apart before any goals are achieved.

When conditions are right, executive coaching can be one of the best people investments you’ll ever make. But it is not a panacea for every executive development problem. Answer these five questions, and you’ll make better decisions about who is likely to benefit from coaching. And who isn’t.

]]> http://www.ceobraintrust.com/873/who-needs-an-executive-coach/feed/ 0 Best Advice I Ever Got; Two Lies; Worst Advice; Stimulus Package for Growth Firms http://www.ceobraintrust.com/789/best-advice-i-ever-got-two-lies-worst-advice-stimulus-package-for-growth-firms/ http://www.ceobraintrust.com/789/best-advice-i-ever-got-two-lies-worst-advice-stimulus-package-for-growth-firms/#comments Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:24:18 +0000 Daniel http://ceobraintrust.com/?p=789 Twitter It!

By Verne Harnish

“…keeping you great”

HEADLINES:

Best Advice I Ever Got — Fortune magazine produced a wonderful series featuring the best advice people like Tiger Woods ever received in their life. For Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, it was to “hire a coach.” He at first resisted the idea since he had been CEO of several successful firms, but John Dorr, the VC behind Google, insisted Schmidt meet Bill Campbell (also Steve Jobs coach) and it proved to be the best advice Schmidt at ever received. Take 60 seconds to read the role of Schmidt’s coach (http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/fortune/0906/gallery.best_advice_i_ever_got2.fortune/14.html) and possibly peruse some of the other Best Advice features. And thanks to Matt Heinz, Heinz Marketing (http://www.heinzmarketing.com) for bringing this to my attention.

Guarded Advice — I’m just returning from leading a workshop for an EO Forum and their executives in Bogota, Columbia. According to the EO members that hosted me (and my limited observations), Columbia is on the mend. Kidnappings are down from several hundred per year to just 40, and those were limited to the jungles. The present President is cracking down on the guerillas, security is visible everywhere (vs. sitting inside like before), and you could see people biking and enjoying what is one of the more beautiful (and clean) cities around the world. And with the challenges of nationalization of businesses in Venezuela and Ecuador, many major firms are setting up shop in Bogota. Its airport is also the largest cargo hub in Latin America. With a 48 hour work week (fun fact), they also seem serious about business. Anyway, my views of Columbia were moderated on this visit.

Worst Advice — FSB Story Request (July 10 deadline) — Megan Erickson is working on a story examining the downside to receiving external funding (on a state or federal level–small business grants, commercialization awards, government contracts or stimulus money, etc.) for small businesses and would like to interview small business owners who had negative experiences or setbacks that they attribute to having received grants, awards, and other external funding–as well as if/how they overcame them. Please only respond if you or a small business owner you know fits these exact specifications. Email Megan_Erickson@timeinc.com

Stimulus Package Advice — take three more minutes and read pages 11 — 13 of this eBook entitled “The Stimulus Package: What it Means for Growing Businesses“. (http://www.score.org/pdf/StimulusPackageeBook.pdf) Of particular note:

  • You can carryback net operating losses (NOLs) in 2008 (tax years beginning or ending in 2008) as far back as five years if you’re under $15 million in revenue. Using the longer carryback period ensures that current losses will be fully utilized to produce the largest tax refund possible. This can help with cash flow issues NOW.
  • You can fully depreciate $250,000 in furniture, computer equipment, off-the-shelf software, etc. in 2009 — and there are other accelerated depreciation bonuses along with limitations if you have over $800k to depreciate. Time to get everyone new computers!
  • Tax credits for hiring certain workers, including veterans.
  • There are certain energy tax credits for going green.

Produced by MyVenturepad in cooperation with SCORE and sponsored by SAP, the eBook (http://www.score.org/pdf/StimulusPackageeBook.pdf) explains what the Stimulus means to small and midsize businesses, including an analysis of the tax implications of the stimulus package by small business and tax expert Barbara Weltman.

Parenting Advice — Two Lies That Will Destroy Your Family — and Scott Nash, CEO of MOMs Organic Market (http://www.momsorganicmarket.com), sent along a July 4th copy of a newsletter to which he subscribes entitled “Celebrate Calm” which describes the two big lies that can destroy families and all relationships: Lie #1: If you were a good parent/spouse, family life wouldn’t be such a struggle and Lie #2: “It’s too late.” Click here (http://www.gazelles.com/Celebrate_Calm_2_Destructive_Lies.doc) to read. And I particularly identified with (and continue to experience) author Kirk Martin’s final point:

HUGE FINAL THOUGHT: The truth is that I made relationships difficult because of my own anxiety, internal tension, stress and rigidity. Plus I just never had tools to communicate differently and understand my family. It’s funny how everyone and every circumstance seemed much easier once I changed!

]]> http://www.ceobraintrust.com/789/best-advice-i-ever-got-two-lies-worst-advice-stimulus-package-for-growth-firms/feed/ 0 This Year's Management Off Site: Necessary or Negligent? http://www.ceobraintrust.com/777/this-years-management-off-site-necessary-or-negligent/ http://www.ceobraintrust.com/777/this-years-management-off-site-necessary-or-negligent/#comments Tue, 07 Jul 2009 02:21:54 +0000 Daniel http://ceobraintrust.com/?p=777 Twitter It!

by Melissa Raffoni

Cuts, cuts, cuts. Rightsizing, rightsizing, rightsizing. How can a conscientious CEO–one who has asked employees to contain costs, or who has even frozen or reduced their salaries–even consider spending money to take his or her leadership team off to some nice hotel with rich food and cocktails for a management retreat?

Historically, for most organizations, annual or quarterly off sites in which senior management work on strategy has been considered “good business.” After all, it’s senior management’s task to chart the strategy of the company, and good strategy is what’s needed now more than ever to emerge from the economic crisis poised for growth.

And few can disagree with the benefits of being off site–as a way to both spur creative thinking and get away from day-to-day distractions.

But in today’s economic climate, is it really worth the cost to shuffle the suits off to a vineyard to talk shop?

Let’s look at the pros and cons.  Since every company is different, I welcome comments and insights, and your own list of pros and cons to holding an off site strategy session.

Arguments for an off site strategic planning retreat for management:

  • Hunkering down is not a strategy. Management needs to pro-actively create a strategy if it is to take advantage of opportunities being presented by changing market conditions. Working on strategy on site, where hunkering down is the order of the day, will not be as productive.
  • Management alignment is critical and at risk. Alignment’s a business basic, but with everyone running at 150% pace in lean organizations, alignment can drift. Are you talking more or less? And are you talking about the right things? Are you talking about the priorities for the company or trying to keep your head above water? Mixing in a dose of uninterrupted social time at these events always helps to foster relationships, strengthening day to day communication back at the fort.
  • Creativity is more important than ever. The playing field has changed and is continuing to change. The most successful companies will be creative and innovate. Fostering creativity is best done when people are free from distractions like client and employee issues.
  • Pure ROI. The focus created at an off site is beneficial and hard to duplicate. If the off site leads to a focused set of aligned strategic priorities, the event pays for itself. Taking each manager out of work at, say, $1,500 per day for 10 managers for two days, that’s $30,000. That’s a small price to pay if the retreat results in a honed, well-aligned strategy.

Arguments against an off site strategic planning retreat for management:

  • Managers are talking more than ever now. Developing a strategy is a process, not an event. We are iterating our strategy on a daily basis. No need to move bodies to do this.
  • It wouldn’t be prudent to spend money on a hotel, food and facilitator. The bottom line is the bottom line. Right now, an off site is an unnecessary expense.
  • It sends a bad message to those still on-site. At base, it sends a conflicting message to staff about cost containment. And while you can do your best to communicate the value of strategic planning off-sites to employees, it’s hard to understand without experiencing it.

My conclusion:

  • I would not advocate postponing or skipping your strategic planning session. Strategy is as important if not more important than ever.

They are meaningful events. Successful off sites build employee loyalty and camaraderie. When I think back on my positive business experiences, they cluster around positive team interactions happening during off site sessions. Also, much greater work happens when employees are unencumbered by both in-the-business and personal obligations.

Seriously cost constrained companies may try an on-site retreat, but I would recommend building in some after-meeting social activities with the team. Social interaction is important for teams; it improves communication and trust. You might also consider a series of shorter planning meetings, but a dedicated block of time will create more focus.

Has your company canceled its off site retreats? What does your list of pros and cons look like?

raffoni110.jpgFor over a decade, Melissa Raffoni has worked directly with more than 100 CEOs as President of Raffoni CEO Consulting. She has served on the faculty at MIT’s Sloan School and Harvard’s Kennedy School. Melissa holds an MS in Corporate Strategy and Managerial Communication from the MIT Sloan School and a BA in Economics from Colby College.

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