The Entrepreneur's Mentor

Too Much at Once

Wow. Who would have thought six months ago that President Obama would be evoking such strong negative feeling for trying to solve the country's major problems?

But look at how he has done it. He has attacked many large problems at once. He has not provided the American people (his stakeholders) with clarity. He has not built consensus around his sense of urgency. He has used his political capital (i.e his authority) to push through what he wanted.  He left us behind and what lingers is a sense of a huge amount of debt, and instead of hopefulness, fear.

This is not a comment on whether he made the right moves or the wrong moves. It is more a look at what was wrong with his methodology. In a corporate setting, bringing about change is recognized as a process that takes time. There has to be buy in on a few levels. There has to be a carrot and a stick, rewards and accountability. There must be clear communication and there must be a vision of a believable positive future. Confusion cannot be allowed to reign- clarity is a must.

Well, who is clear on TARP? On the stimulus? On the healthcare reform plan?  Obviously, not enough people. How can we be so against fixing a system that doesn't work? It is because Obama doesn't own the conversation- he let opponents fashion the communication. Rumors, negativity, outright lies and a total lack of clarity prevail. All of this is on top of a prevailing environment of fear at the huge deficits we have incurred already.

He may be doing everything right while he is communicating it and executing it all wrong.

Stop for a minute and think about instances in your business when you have been positive what you are doing is right and you haven't bothered to be thoughtful in the way you present it to others.

There are proven, successful ways to implement change. Take the time to do it right and do it well and your chances for success are multiplied. many times. Try to push it through just because you are the boss and have the authority to do so, and you will be dragging your team along unwillingly and the effort will wear you out and end up giving you a less than satisfactory result.

Multiple change initiatives pushed in the same timeframe are almost impossible to sustain unless your team is primed for them, incentivized and motivated. Typically, doing too much at once is a prescription for failure. It dilutes the focus on any one thing, making everything equally important or unimportant and therefore leaving no prioritization.

Do one thing. Do it right and do it well- embed it in your culture and then move on to the next initiative.  Too much at once will be lost on everyone.

Is Our World Real?

As often happens during the summer, I have immersed myself in the exploration of new subjects by reading as much as I can. I have become fascinated by the subject of the "synthetic worlds." Synthetic world are crafted places created by software designers that are designed to accommodate huge numbers of people. They put ordinary people in a strange environment, where they can act as they do in the real world, or in a totally different manner. And interestingly, what they do inside this world can gave effects outside of it.

The author that seems to have the best handle on this subject is Edward Castronova. He has written "Synthetic Worlds" and "Exodus to the Virtual World."  It is fascinating to read how thousands prefer their online world to the real one. For them, the online world is more real.

By analogy, some business leaders live in their own virtual world. They create their own reality  They bend the facts to their own view and perceive things in a way that satisfies them. The essentially create their own customized vision of what is going on. But their connection to the real world, the one unhabited by their companies and their employees, may be tenuous.

In my role as an entrepreneurial mentor, I have seen many company owners go through life thinking all is well. They have constructed their own stories - and they don't let the facts get in the way of their happy story. Is this any different from living in a virtual world where we fight dragons, conquer Black Knights and capture the heart of the damsel in distress?

Some CEOs don't even listen to direct evidencer that contradict their view. In retrospect, everyone can see that Bernie Madoff was running a scam. Why was everyone blind to it, even when evidence was so strong? We believe what we want to believe.

If you believe your employees love you and will be loyal forever, you will not listen to those who tell you they are not engaged or not productive. If you think your customers have a great personal relationship with you that can survive anything, you won't be on the lookout for dissatisfaction. You are living in a very dangerous world.

Business leaders have to test their assumptions and beliefs. They must be in touch with the facts. They must look at what is happening in the world and must question how that impacts them and their businesses. They must learn to accept that their virtual world is a nice aspiration but not the reality of paying the bills, feeding the family, building a nest egg and developing something great.

Rose colored glasses have their place. But that place is not in the day to day of running a business. Business leaders need to choose the real world for their business. They can exist in alternative realities in their time off, be they online or purely of the mind. An owner can not afford to be a guru on a mountaintop spouting visionary epithets unless there are others managing the business in reality and yet others translating the language of the alternate reality into something strategically or tactically based.

They used to say "pick your poison" in the old movies. Now it is "pick your reality." Choose well, because there is a lot at risk.

What Are Our Weaknesses?

Entrepreneurs tend to be optimists. We don't see the obstacles between us and the goal line. We typically just see the goal line.

We don't want negativity around us. We want people that share our vision. In some way, we are almost encouraging people to become clones of us. And while it might be nice to have everyone aligned with a vision and a set of values., it is not nice and not helpful and not even sane to have everyone align on competencies.

One of the joys of being our own boss is to get to choose how to spend our time and what tasks we get to perform. In choosing  our areas of responsibility, we are, in fact, also choosing those areas that we are abandoning. We have either decided that there are some areas of management which we do not enjoy; or there are some areas to which we assign a lower priority. In either instance, we either delegate those duties or ignore them.

If everyone else in the company is just like us, that would mean there is no one to delegate to. And that would further mean that important items don't get accomplished.

I had one business where my general manager/COO was enamored with the position I had carved out for myself. It was a combination of visionary, rainmaker, proselytizer, customer relations and problem solver.  He wanted to be just like me.  Well, guess what? The business did not need two of me (I'm not sure it even needed one) but it certainly did need a COO who was detail-oriented, operations-minded and penny pinching. We needed someone who watched the numbers (because I certainly didn't want to be tied to a chair and a spreadsheet.) and tightened expenditures. I was out there boosting the top line to new heights and I was counting on up to get us to a bigger bottom line. Well, he didn't keep his eye on the ball and I didn't keep a close enough eye on him- until one day it hit me what was going on.

He was the one with the MBA. He was the one with the background in the business I had purchased. And yet he wanted to be me. What was wrong with that?

The entrepreneur can choose to wear a number of heights. We all have closets full of hats. But, there are some that don't fit us and we have to make sure that somebody else is wearing them, and wearing them well.

I don't particularly care for finance. I recognize its utmost importance but it is just not my cup of tea. But for a business of mine to be a success, I have to have a strong, skilled, passionate finance person to look after our numbers as if they were just his/hers. While I and other entrepreneurs can probably be a jack of all trades, we are really only masters of a few. Make sure the other hats are being worn by folks that have the competencies and the attitude to master their areas.

In every large corporation, the C level has a number of executives-COO, CFO, CIO, VP Sales, VP Marketing, VP HR, etc. Which hats do you wear and which ones do you give to others?

Even if we know what we want to be doing, we also need to know that we do it well. While what we are good at usually becomes what we want to be doing, that is not always the case. We must make sure that we are competent and have the competencies for what we are spending our time on. We need to look at ourselves and be honest and objective- and we need to ask others who will give us an honest opinion.

We can't be blind to our faults and our weaknesses and thus debilitate our businesses.Where the right hats and make sure they fit. And be just as sure that the others in your company have hats that fit.

Ethical Hypocrisy

Poor Senator Larry Craig sure made a mess of his professional, and perhaps his personal life as well. Coming out so strongly against homosexuality and gay rights and supporting family values over his entire career, his behavior recently has him tagged as a world class hypocrite. In the business world we would view this as a case of behavior not lining up with espoused values. It would be an inconsistency that might or might not be tolerated, depending on its effect on the organization.

But in the Senate, it is a different story. Every Senator is a public figure and every Senator's views are a matter of public record and discussion. Conservative Republicans truly support their platform and Craig's type of inconsistency/hypocrisy is not only a breach of ethics. It is a breach of faith, a break with the platform that they cannot tolerate. It is a big banana peel.