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How to Hire Like the NFL’s Best Teams

NFLShield The NFL is the most popular professional sports league in the United States. In fact, it’s bigger than the next three largest professional sports leagues combined. But when it comes to the field of talent management, what makes the NFL such an interesting case study for businesses of all types and sizes is not its popularity but its parity.

Each season, all 32 NFL teams begin with the same basic chance to be competitive. All teams have a roughly equal amount of money to spend and the same numbers of players to a roster, and the worst teams from last season get higher draft picks and an easier schedule this season. If a team gets “harmed” during free agency, the league will assign it compensatory draft picks to help it stay even.

Parity in the NFL has worked. On any given Sunday, one team can beat another. However, a few teams — despite parity — have been able to win consistently over time. In fact, over the past 13 NFL seasons from 1999 to 2012, just 6 teams out of 32 have achieved a 60% or better winning percentage: the Patriots, Colts, Steelers, Packers, Ravens, and Eagles, with only one team achieving a 70% winning percentage: the Patriots.

Clearly, if everything else is held nearly equal, then these winning teams have cultivated an edge in how they go about managing their business and developing their front office and on-field staff. Is there something you can learn from these consistent winners? And if there is something you can take away, can you actually apply it in growing your own business — a business that probably has just a fraction of the money and assessment resources that an NFL team can throw at the hiring […]

By |2021-05-18T02:00:44-07:00December 6th, 2013|

Africa Rising: An Amazing Story of Sustainable Business Doing Social Good

The image of a dark Africa is going to change radically in the coming years. The image of a dark Africa is going to change radically in the coming years.

If you’re a person who likes to hear about momentous progress happening in the world, then you’re going to like the story that about I’m to share. However, if you’re an entrepreneur who appreciates ingenious solutions to complicated problems, then you’re going to absolutely love it.

It’s the story of one of the most innovative business models I’ve seen in some time. It’s also a story of confluence – an almost magical combination of technology, market timing, and business strategy that leads to greater social good.

The centerpiece of the story is M-KOPA, a fast-growing startup based in Nairobi, Kenya. M-KOPA has a compelling vision: to bring solar panel lighting and electricity to the African continent. M-KOPA doesn’t build solar panels. It provides consumer financing for them. And even though it went into service just a year and a half ago, it already has over 35,000 customers and is growing rapidly.

M-KOPA has created an ingenious solution to bring solar panel financing to Africa. M-KOPA has created an ingenious solution to bring solar panel financing to Africa.

You probably know already that much of sub-Saharan Africa still uses kerosene-based lighting. Kerosene is not only antiquated, it’s also dangerous and unhealthy. If Kenya alone switched from kerosene to solar electricity, it would not only provide superior lighting and energy, according to Luminanet.org, it would also save the average Kenyan household $105 USD per year, eliminate 2.3 million tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (equivalent to about 500,000 mid-sized cars), and […]

By |2021-05-18T02:02:11-07:00November 3rd, 2013|

Walk Across the Valley

Have you ever wanted something only to rue the day you actually got it?

Recently, I had a simple but profound lesson that really taught me the value of “be careful what you wish for.” I’m really lucky to live in a beautiful place. Take a look. Here’s the view from our deck:

Before you make a decision, walk across the valley and see what the view's really like from that new angle. Before you make a decision, walk across the valley and see what the view’s really like from that new angle.

It’s an awesome view right? Well, when my family and I first moved here, I certainly noticed that it was a beautiful view. Almost immediately, though, my internal monkey mind started telling a story that that the view from across the valley must be even grander.

“Wow,” I thought, “the view from here is pretty spectacular but the view from that beautiful house across the valley must really be great!” I even felt inferior in some sense, as if we had ended up on the “wrong” side of the valley. The truly good stuff was clearly over there.

Well, I’m an idiot. One day my wife and I took a hike across the way. When we got to the other side and looked back, what do you think we saw? A really mediocre view compared to our side of the valley. The mountain ranges and textures that made our own view so spectacular were missing on the other side. Duh!

I realized in that moment that I had spent much of my life assuming things were always better on the other side. From afar, they looked more beautiful or interesting or desirable “over there.” I often focused blindly on […]

By |2021-05-18T02:02:43-07:00August 11th, 2013|

Discover Your Genius Zone

How can I use my genius more effectively as a leader?

While few people are intellectual geniuses, each of us has an area of outstanding ability that allows us to perform at a high level and adds to our overall energy and satisfaction. This zone of activity is what I call your Genius Zone. What is your own Genius Zone? You can begin to identify it and activate it using an outline. Talents, Purpose, Values, Desires, and Vision.

Basically, add all of those things together and allocate your time and energy to be more “in the zone” and you’ve got it. When you’re operating from within your Genius Zone, you experience high energy gains. You tend to feel deep engagement, high personal satisfaction, and elevated productivity. You also produce outstanding work. When you’re operating outside of your Genius Zone, life is more haphazard, less fulfilling, and you have to fight vs. flow.

  • Your Talents are those activities that you are naturally exceptional at and that add to your energy, joy, and satisfaction.
  • Your Purpose is the why of your life that brings meaning and focus to your endeavors.
  • Your Values are the commitments you hold dear.
  • Your Desires are your most heartfelt desires.
  • Your Positive Collective Vision is a vision larger than yourself.

Leading from your Genius Zone means that you design your activities in such a way so that you spend most of your time and energy engaged in those that add to your energy, joy, and satisfaction and at the same time, create the most enterprise value for your business.

If you’re struggling right now to grow your business, manage your team, find the right strategy, and to do it all quickly, then this concept might seem pretty far fetched. You don’t have enough […]

By |2023-12-22T08:53:01-08:00July 10th, 2013|

How to Use Yammer to Improve Employee Productivity

the-social-enterprise

 

“Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.”
― Samuel Johnson

 

If you don’t know about Yammer yet, you should. Simply, it’s an “enterprise social network” for businesses. Microsoft purchased it in 2012 for $1.2B in cash. The goal of Yammer (and similar tools like Salesforce’s Work.com) is to help employees collaborate, stay connected, and improve company-wide communication.

Yammer’s approach is to leverage the same type of social media experience that employees are using in their personal lives — like Facebook and Twitter — to be more productive in their jobs. According to Yammer, companies who use the service reduce email use by 40%.

I think this trend of “enterprise socialization” is here to stay. As with a lot of trends, though, there’s the hype and then there’s the reality. I’ve had the chance to sit in on a few companies’ Yammer channels over the past year and here’s what I discovered:

  • The ratio of noise to signal seems (unscientifically) worse than the classic 80/20 rule. That is, for every really useful piece of actionable information, there’s a hell of a lot more useless noise/fluff/chatter filling up the airwaves. Some might argue that that’s the real benefit of these tools — they sort of capture an organization’s collective stream of consciousness. I would argue that it’s more indicative of people not being focused on or caring about what’s most important.
  • Employees seem to really like and use the tools. There’s value in that for sure. The risk is that, just as email killed the face-to-face meeting and enterprise socialization is killing email, you end up with a lot of data but little cohesiveness and actionable insight. Often, the fastest route to creating a breakthrough is to communicate less frequently but have a regular (weekly or bi-weekly) […]
By |2021-05-18T02:05:00-07:00June 7th, 2013|

How to Navigate a Crisis in 3 Courageous Steps

This article is for leaders who seek an edge in navigating a personal or organizational crisis.

dogstuckinhammock

You’re either on top of events or events are on top of you.
– Pat Riley

A good warrior must always assess his present position, evaluate his losses and assets, and move forward.
– Tim O’Shea

Shit happens.

When you’re in a crisis, there are three things you can do to get out of it. These three things will not only create distance from the current crisis; they’ll make you stronger and more resilient, as well as help you avoid a similar crisis in the future.

These three steps aren’t easy. They take great courage. But they work for just about any type of crisis: financial hardship, poor health or disease, a deteriorating relationship, or a business failure.

Follow these three steps whenever you’re feeling stuck, afraid, or trapped by circumstances and you’ll break through to greater freedom, perspective, and new opportunities – usually much faster than you could have imagined. The three steps are:

  1. Stick to your strengths and core values
  2. Do what you’ve been resisting doing
  3. Trust and follow one expert or method until the crisis has passed

HG Wells said, “The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow.” Putting these three elements into practice will transform your crisis of today into something you can laugh at in the near future.

Stick to Your Strengths and Core Values

If you’re in a crisis, chances are that you stopped playing to your strengths or stopped living by the real values in your heart some time ago. Is this true for you? If so, then this crisis is your wake-up call.

Now is the time to get back into your strengths and double-down on your core values. Say “no” to everything that’s not in your wheel house. Say […]

By |2021-05-18T02:05:54-07:00May 16th, 2013|

How to Be a Genius

Last week, I was invited to speak to a group of college students at the Next Generation Summit at UCSB. I knew that most of them were probably under extreme pressure from their parents, peers, and society to go forth and “get a fricking job,” so I thought it would be fun (and helpful) to tell them the exact opposite: “Don’t get a job. Get in your Genius Zone!”

My core message is that everyone is a genius at something. If you don’t know what that is, and if you want a life with greater success, meaning, and happiness, then your mission is to go forth and find that “thing.” Once you’ve found it, then you must sacrifice to design everything in your life around it.

When someone hears this message for the first time, the typical reaction is, “OK, but what am I a genius at?” I answer this question in the talk with a simple formula: Talents + Purpose = Genius and then I give several examples of college students living this formula right now who are showing up as geniuses within their niche and making a positive impact on the world.

I, too, benefitted from giving this talk. My personal key takeaway is that there are committed and talented people in every generation. While the media often portrays “Millenials” as a spoiled, over-parented, unaware, and texting- and Ritalin-addicted bunch, I found this group to be incredibly insightful, passionate, engaged, and sincerely committed – not just to having a job, but to making a real difference. It was inspiring and reaffirming that humans are indeed very cool beings.

How about you? What do you think of the talk?

By |2021-05-18T06:41:14-07:00May 14th, 2013|

What’s the Common Ingredient for Team Success in Surgery, Banking, Software, Airlines, and Basketball?

This article is for leaders who are seeking an edge in maximizing the talents and performance of their teams.
noiinteam

Adam Grant, author of Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success (a must read book!), recently published a great LinkedIn article called “What’s the Common Ingredient for Team Success in Surgery, Banking, Software, Airlines, and Basketball?” I want to share it with you, along with my comments, because it’s a great illustration that success has more to do with the surrounding environment (i.e., vision and values, structure, process, and team) than with individual talent.

To get important work done, most leaders organize people into teams. They believe that when people collaborate toward a common goal, great things can happen. Yet in reality, the whole is often much less than the sum of the parts.

Many teams fail because they lack the requisite experience. If you want to perform a successful cardiac surgery, you need to bring in surgeons who have mastered the techniques. If your aim is to make good stock recommendations to investors, it would be wise to hire analysts with a long track record of star performance. If your goal is to produce high-quality software, land an airplane safely, or win basketball games, you’d be smart to rely on people who have done it before. As Jim Collins put it, we need to get the right people on the bus. But what if work experience is overrated?

How many times have you interviewed in the past year looking for “past experience” as one of the primary drivers of job fit? This is a fallacy, which I’ve written about before in “What Warren Buffet Can Teach You About Hiring”, that needs to end. Yesterday. And here’s where this gets interesting:

In a brilliant study, […]

By |2021-05-18T02:07:29-07:00May 7th, 2013|

A Scathing Portrait of the Innovator Leadership Style at AMD

When a Big Innovator is CEO, this leads to an up-and-down ride.Ars Technica published a great article this week “The rise and fall of AMD: How an underdog stuck it to Intel.”

The article follows the rise and fall of AMD over the years in its attempt to wrest a market leadership position from Intel (a war it was never able to win) and gives many anecdotes about the leadership style of the company founder and CEO Jerry Sanders. I want to share this article because it’s a good read and because it captures the essence of how a company behaves when a Big Innovator is at the helm.

As you might know if you’re familiar with my work, the Innovator style is one of four management styles that we all possess to some degree. You can read more about these styles (Producer, Stabilizer, Innovator, and Unifier) in Part II of my book Organizational Physics: The Science of Growing a Business.

Our best Innovator qualities are our ability to anticipate change and to be imaginative, charismatic, and inventive. Without the Innovator force, we would have no ability to adapt to changes in our environment and we would quickly become irrelevant or extinct.

When the Innovator force is really high, we call it a “Big Innovator” or “Big I.” The Big I shows up in some predictable and telling ways, and this description of Sanders is a perfect example:

On June 10, 2000, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) wanted to party—and party big. The company’s CEO, Jerry Sanders, arranged to rent out the entire San Jose Arena (now called the HP Pavilion) and then paid big bucks to bring in Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, the husband-and-wife […]

By |2021-05-18T02:08:07-07:00April 25th, 2013|

The Lean Startup Goes Mainstream: Here’s What You Need to Know

Entrepreneurial guru Steve Blank (awesome systems thinker) has an article coming out on the cover of Harvard Business Review this month: “Why the Lean Startup Changes Everything.”

I really appreciate the framework of the Lean Startup approach and I’m a big fan of the movement. One thing I notice that’s missing from it is a discussion on the lifecycle stages of the customers that the lean startup should be targeting/getting feedback from. Here’s what I mean:

The Product Lifecycle goes like this: Pilot it, Nail it, Scale it, Milk it, Kill it.

The Market Lifecycle of customer types goes like this: Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority/Laggards.

In order to navigate from the temporary organization of a startup, find the business model, and scale it, the disruptive entrepreneur should seek to align this sequence of steps together. I.e., Pilot it for Innovator Customers. Nail it for Early Adopters. Scale it for the Early Majority, and Milk it for the Late Majority/Laggards like this:

Align the product and market lifecycles with the execution lifecycle (not shown). Align the product and market lifecycles with the execution lifecycle (not shown).


Put another way, you DON’T want to be Piloting a project for a Late Majority/Laggard clients or misaligning the other stages. Why not? Because those Late Majority/Laggard clients are old and stable. They are outstanding at telling the entrepreneur what the market needs now (or 5 years ago) but tend to be incapable of identifying where it’s going to be 5 years from now. To find that out, you have to go to the fringe — those Innovator and Early Adopter Clients that aren’t currently served by the status quo. That’s where the true disruption lies.

Late Majority/Laggard clients also have a vested interest […]

By |2021-05-18T02:09:10-07:00April 16th, 2013|

A Beautiful Portrait of a Unifier Leader

Pacific Lutheran football coach Frosty Westering in his office in Tacoma, Wash. in 2001. (AP Images) Pacific Lutheran football coach Frosty Westering in his office in Tacoma, Wash. in 2001. (AP Images)

I came across a phenomenal obituary written for Frosty Westering by Chuck Culpepper at Sports on Earth today.

Frosty was the football coach for the Division III Pacific Lutheran football team and he was remarkable. He coached for over 32 seasons without a losing record in any. He never mentioned playoffs or titles to his players but won four national championships and four runner-up finishes on two levels. He died on Friday at age 85 surrounded by a loving family.

Tears welled up in my eyes and my throat got caught when I read it. I want to share this story about Frosty for that reason alone. But I also want to share it because it’s a wonderful portrait of a strong Unifier leadership style in action.

The Unifier style is one of four management style dimensions that we all possess to one degree or another. You can read more about these styles: Producer, Stabilizer, Innovator, and Unifier in Part II of my book Organizational Physics: The Science of Growing a Business.

Our best Unifier qualities are our ability to create rapport, understand and motivate others, build cohesive teams, and create sound organizational cultures based on caring, empathy, and loyalty. Without the Unifier force, we would have no ability to respond to change efficiently because the organization couldn’t act as a whole.

Let’s see how the Unifier force shows up in coach Frosty’s leadership style so that you can learn to recognize it, develop it, and manage it in your own life and work:

His players implored […]

By |2021-05-18T02:09:40-07:00April 16th, 2013|

How to Think About Your Health & Diet

I lost 35 pounds and several sizes in three months. I didn’t do it by dieting. I did it by changing the way I eat. There’s a difference.

What led me to this was thinking about my health in a whole new way. After trying to navigate large amounts of conflicting nutritional information and trying on new diets over the years (many of you can relate), I had an insight based on the Organizational Physics principles I teach every day.

I took the Universal Success Formula from Chapter 1 of my book Organizational Physics: The Science of Growing a Business and made a slight modification to the terms. The original formula looks like this:

The Universal Success Formula explains why any system in the universe will fail or succeed. The Universal Success Formula explains why any system will fail or succeed.

If you’re new to the Universal Success Formula, all you need to know is that any system is acted upon by entropy and will eventually fail unless new energy is added to the system. Once you decrease entropy, the energy available for integration and success increases.

For example, imagine that you have a friend in the hospital. He can’t go out in the world and be successful (high integration) because most of his available energy has to go towards healing his illness (entropy). Once he recovers, entropy will be lower and he’ll have more energy to re-integrate into the world and thrive.

Applying the same concepts to health and diet, the Universal Success Formula can be worded like this:

Health is a function of vitality over entropy. Health is a function of vitality over entropy.

Think of your health […]

By |2021-05-18T02:11:19-07:00April 12th, 2013|

What’s Wrong with the Golden Circle?

Simon Sinek is the author of Start with Why and the creator of concept he calls “The Golden Circle.” The Ted Talk he gave on the topic is incredibly popular, almost 10 million views as I write this.

The concept of the Golden Circle is simple. It looks like this:

Sinek's Golden Circle hits on some core truths and is almost right. Sinek’s Golden Circle hits on some core truths and is almost right.

Sinek purports that great organizations seem to create their foundation by first addressing Why they exist, then How they go about their mission, and then finally, What they do. 

Let me say first that I really appreciate what Sinek is doing — inspiring leaders to think about the soulful calling of their organizations and to rally others to a bigger cause beyond just selling widgets. And he does a masterful job of calling out that people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it, and that it’s critical to attract customers who believe what you believe. Awesome.

However, the truth is that great organizations build their core ideology by first defining and reinforcing Who they serve and the customer problem or need that they solve in the marketplace. Then they address and reinforce Why they exist, then How they go about their mission, and finally What they do.

So a modified more accurate Golden Circle should really be drawn like this:

Great organizations really begin with Who they serve, then Why, How, and What. Great organizations really begin with Who they serve, then Why, How, and What.

How do I know? Two reasons:

1) A business doesn’t exist […]

By |2021-05-18T02:12:12-07:00April 1st, 2013|

The Forgotten Formula of Performance Management

The right formula is pretty damn valuable. Especially for Krabby Patties. The right formula is pretty damn valuable. Especially for Krabby Patties. Way back in 1936, the founder of social psychology, Kurt Lewin, came up with a formula to explain individual behavior. I’m going to share it with you…but don’t go running off because it looks complicated. It’s not.

B = f(P,E)

It means this: An individual’s Behavior is a function of that Person’s personality, capabilities, training, experience, etc. and his/her existing Environment.

Makes sense, right?

So what’s the problem? The problem is that most management thinking today seems to have totally forgotten the critical importance of the surrounding environment when it comes to performance management.

Businesses measure and invest tons of money in individual training and skill development. They study and implement crafty new performance incentive programs. They run personality profile tests — all that crap.

But what great organizations do differently compared to the rest is they give equal attention to the inner structure, processes, and core ideology (i.e., the environment) of the organization itself.

The truth is that each of us is governed by the environment in which we live and work. If the surrounding environment is designed well, then a C player is going to look and perform like a B+ player. And if the surrounding environment and opportunity is top-notch, then A players are going to flock to that organization to apply their talents. The corollary is that if the surrounding environment is designed poorly, then even A players are going to show up like C players.

Let me give two examples to drive this point home. One from a famous and controversial study at Stanford and the other from the NFL.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

By |2021-05-18T02:12:40-07:00April 1st, 2013|
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