Uberization is an opportunity !

Several prerequisite reminders are necessary: first, this isn't about the "good" on one side - startups and the new economy, and the "bad" on the other - big static businesses that are bogged down by their own complexity. CAC 40 companies and others, including SMEs, have profoundly transformed in recent years by integrating the rules of the digital revolution. In all reality, some are quite advanced. There aren't startups on one side, with their youth and modernity, and traditional businesses on the other with their baby boomers. Young people are active on both sides, and elders bring even more value than some people at first thought. The solution is not to set the two worlds apart, but rather make them work together. Startups and classical economics can certainly offer something to each other. 

Startups push traditional companies to adapt their business models in order to avoid being out of the market. This is why "uberization"  is an opportunity ! An opportunity for those able to take it before it is too late.

We must get out of clichés between the world of  startups and the one of the traditional economy.

 My intention is not to place the actors of the new economy that act very quickly against those of more traditional business world, which have sometimes been innovating for decades. I don't need to make an endless list.

However, it seems that certain practices allow companies overtaken by new market entrants to not only react with greater responsiveness and efficiency, but also benefit.
Without being exhaustive, here are those that I have identified over the past two years. 

Practice 1 : Put creativity at the heart of the organization, of all processes and trades.
It should not only concern Research & Development, but naturally also organizational, social, human, environmental and business matters. When diffused, it can only change the state of mind of each person, hence more broadly, the whole company. It becomes the best defense to deterring new potential market entrants and avoiding brutal disruptions. 

Practice 2 : Encourage teams to take measured risks.
It is therefore fit to accept the principle of the right to err or fail, according to the saying attributed to Nelson Mandela: "I never lose. Either I win or I learn." It's the rest that characterizes the operating method of startups. They take risks - they do not have a choice. By disseminating a culture of engagement and pushing managers to make decisions, classic businesses move into position to more effectively deal with "disrupters" whose sole dream is to take market share. Risk taking is by no means only reserved for startups. 

Practice 3 : Develop a strong corporate culture.
It is the glue between teams. The values ​​held by the company and its leaders bond employees together and create a true collective identity. We must remember that culture is the sole factor that is impossible to copy. It is what differentiates two entities or two groups of people. This is one of the benefits of older companies. They have history, and we know that in many cases, mobilizing their energy at key moments can make all the difference. 

Practice 4 : Leverage talent and skill.
One must have the "right people in the right positions taking the right actions at the right time" and invest in the training of teams. Knowledge - even if it changes very quickly these days - allows any company to create competitive advantages, which are often determinant. In disregarding this, the company may stall. 

Practice 5
Ensure that cultural diversity is well represented within the company. We are so used to work with stereotypical elites who enjoy co-opting amongst themselves, that we haven’t always realized that the world has changed. Integrating different profiles within a team is a tremendous asset to diversifying the team and making it more agile, more able to react to external attacks.

We must capitalize on young people, the generational mix, diversity, cultural diversity, talents, all forms of intelligence and give meaning to our actions

Practice 6

Make diversity a reality. Women and men will have to share positions of responsibility for the good of both our company and economy. Equality - especially in management positions - ultimately means better performance and more creativity. On this last point, women undeniably offer a different view. The theme of diversity is not new. We've spoken about it for a long time, too long. We must now make it a reality. It's a battle, nothing else. 

Practice 7 : Have a thriving generational mix.
We must first trust the younger generations. "Conventional" companies must attract young developers, Generation Y - soon to be GEN Z - and ensure that they are well integrated with quality roles. It is vital that they be coached by the older employees who have experience and expertise. By successfully implementing this collaboration, the company increases its chances of not missing out on major business. 

Practice 8 : Mastering the digital revolution 
It tipped the world's balance into the 4th industrial revolution. Not understanding the issues and its significance is sure to lead to great turbulence. This means that management committees should take on major future challenges and assimilate the "mechanics" and procedures. This will have an obvious impact on employment and talent management. 

Practice 9 : Grant space for all forms of intelligence.
Do not select job applicants solely on the usual criteria, such as the famous IQ scores. Emotional intelligence seems to be of the utmost importance in order to progress in the world of tomorrow, as does relational intelligence, i.e. the ability to form networks, support them and use them effectively. 

Practice 10 : Give meaning to everything we do, our actions.
The younger generations are very sensitive. But in reality everyone is. We want an answer to the question "why". It's a bit like when we were kids, and we wanted to understand everything. We have lost the habit, trapped in the cycle of our daily lives.
I think these are the major actions to be taken in order to gain a prime position in this rocky digital world, and emerge a winner. 

Lastly, startups allow definitely classical economics to reinvent itself. They should be praised for it!

• 

  Written by 

  Gérald Karsenti

Mark Cuban's 12 Rules For Startups

The Best Reason Yet To Increase Women In Business Leadership

Victor Lipman ,

Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

You can make all kinds of emotional arguments about the need to increase women in business leadership. I just came across the most compelling logical argument.

It’s a new, large global study that shows a strong link between “the presence of women in corporate leadership positions” and positive “firm performance.”

Released earlier this month, the study is called “Is Gender Diversity Profitable? Evidence from a Global Survey.” The survey, which analyzed 21,980 firms in 91 countries, was conducted by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington-based think tank. The study’s authors are Marcus Noland, Tyler Moran and Barbara Kotschwar; financial support for the study came from Ernst & Young.

Mary Barra, General Motors CEO, at no. 5 is the highest-ranking corporate leader on Forbes’ “100 Most Powerful Women” list. (Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

It’s 35 pages of fascinating if rather dense reading. At the heart of it, however, is the basic core notion of the “positive correlation between the proportion of women in corporate leadership and firm profitability.”

Whether that increased profitability results from the quality of female leadership, the benefits that accrue from more diverse thinking, or other factors, isn’t clear. What is clear, however, is a statistical link.  The report notes that the link could reflect, “the existence of discrimination against women executives (which gives nondiscriminating firms an edge) or the fact that the presence of women contributes to skill diversity (to the benefit of the firm).”

The report also makes an important point about the value of an organic “pipeline” of female managers throughout an organization, as opposed to simply installing a female CEO at the top. “The largest gains [in company performance] are for the proportion of female executives, followed by the proportion of female board members; the presence of females CEOs has no noticeable effect on firm performance. This pattern underscores the importance of creating a pipeline of female managers and not simply getting lone women to the top.”

Recommended by Forbes

 

The report emphasizes that the amount of profitability shown by the data is significant. “The estimated magnitudes of these correlations are not small,” the report concludes. “For profitable firms, a move from no female leaders to 30% representation is associated with a 15% increase in the net revenue margin. This estimate, derived from a cross-section, may well diminish if re-estimated in a panel setting and is surely subject to diminishing returns. Nevertheless, the robustness of this result from a global dataset warrants further study.”

Indeed it does. Of the 21,980 companies studied, nearly 60% have no female board members, over 50% have no female C-suite executives, and less than 5% have a female CEO. The report dryly states, “Women do not participate in the global economy to the same extent as men do.”

How do I personally feel about this research? How does it fit with my own experience? Well, over the four decades of my own career I’ve worked with and observed great female leaders and awful female leaders.  Compared with men? Well, in that same time span I’ve worked with and observed great male leaders and awful male leaders. In short, in my own small world it’s hard to know. As we might say down on the farm, it’s a horse apiece.

Which is why, for big important uncertain issues like this one, it makes great business sense to get broad data.

Results from such studies may not always be popular, especially among some male business leaders. It’s just data, one can always argue. Perhaps. But if you’re not willing to listen to the data, then why ask the questions?
*    *    *
Victor is author of  The Type B Manager: Leading Successfully in a Type A World.

Harnessing the Power of Awe To Engage and Inspire Your Team

When I’m in the wilderness, I love looking up into the sky and feeling awestruck by the magnitude of the universe. It blows my mind when I try to comprehend that that every star is a sun like ours. I feel both tiny in comparison and connected to infinite possibilities.

We’ve all experienced awe. We have those experiences that stop you in your tracks, catch your breath and open your heart and mind.

It turns out these experiences are important because they actually positively affect health and well-being. Studies found people who experience the emotion of awe felt they had more time, were less impatient and more willing to volunteer to help others.

As a manager, you can create experiences that inspire awe as a way to engage your team and bring them closer together. You can use it to sell your product or services more effectively. Or, you can use it to amaze your customers and turn them into raving fans. And why not? As a tool for influence awe is incredibly effective.

As a magician I make awe work for me. I often say I manipulate my audience’s feelings for their own benefit. The experience of awe opens people’s minds, and activates their creativity and problem solving skills. It has the potential to create a deep and meaningful impact.

The more awestruck you are, the better I’ve done my job. As a manager, you can use the same principles to manipulate your team for their own benefit. 

What Inspires The Feeling Of Awe?
While the feeling of awe is subjective, there are a few common traits:

1. The unknown - the pursuit of understanding the unknown inspires scientists, scholars, explorers and enthusiasts alike.
2. Nature - mountains, oceans, natural wonders, exotic animals.
3. Extreme size - what we see in the sky, or through a magnifying glass.
4. Technology - the possibilities of what it allows us to do and the rate it changes.
5. The future, and in some cases the past. We are amazed about what is to come and the history of the world.
6. Mastery - People who have really mastered their craft often are awe-inspiring. Watching a Cirque Du Soliel show is a prime example of this.
7. The unexpected - when your expectations are defied, you can get a moment of wonder.
8. Generosity - acts of kindness, unconditional love and generosity. 

5 Situations In Which Awe Can Help Influence Your Team To Their Benefit

1. When implementing large organizational changes 
Change can affect morale, commitment and productivity. When people become worried, they start becoming focused on their own needs. By facilitating experiences that use awe, you help your team to shift perspective from that of worry to seeing the positive opportunities that change brings. 

2. Resolving conflicts
Conflict is often a result of only seeing things from a single perspective. Awe is a pattern interrupt. By nature, awe expands someone’s thinking.  This is useful when people are stuck in old patterns and need to shift their perspective. 

3. Improving communication
I recently posted about The Empathy Toy - a tool that gets people to experience how easily miscommunications can occur, and elicits self learning and adjustment of communication. Participating in an experience like that creates moments of awe and wonder. 

4. Inspiring Innovation
Awe lurks in the heart of innovation. People who ponder how to fly, go faster or make something more efficient all harness the power of awe. When you want your team to think big, awe is a great way to get them there. 

5. Problem solving
Effective problem solving requires big picture thinking and the ability to see things from different perspectives. Awe helps to inspire new connections and ideas. 

Make Your Team Awesome!

 
Whether you are helping to break the everyday routine to spark some creativity, innovation and problem solving or you need to make changes and resolve conflict, awe is a powerful tool to influence your team members for their benefit.

A little awe can go a long way.

About the Author
Dan Trommater is a Speaker and Magician who transforms passive event attendees into engaged participants with unique keynotes and workshops. By using world-class magic, humour, stories and interactive exercises he delivers a powerful message about learning to see things from other people’s perspective. This provides business and life changing opportunities for those who adopt it.  Connect with Dan on Linkedin and visit him at www.dantrommater.com.

Beware the Silent Killer of Your 2016 Business Plan

Mining for coal is risky business. From cave-ins to machinery or equipment failures and gas explosions to electrocution, dedicated miners face dozens of risks literally every day they clock in and head underground. The greatest danger of all was the build-up of carbon monoxide, a silent killer—because humans can’t really smell it—responsible for the deaths of thousands of workers until modern ventilation systems were introduced in the past 50 years.
The best protection against this silent killer involved bringing a caged canary into the mines. Canaries were the early detection system for dangerous gas. As long as they kept singing, all was well. But a dead canary meant it was time to evacuate—and fast. 

Can You Smell It?
As a business leader, you’re already deep into the first quarter of 2016. The months and weeks you spent planning, designing and presenting business plans for the year are behind you—your strategies are set and your tactics have been carefully adopted. How can you possibly fail?

And yet, year after year, from organization to organization, without regard to industry, size, or competency, we’ve seen business plans fail to generate the returns their leaders so desperately intended.

The most common silent killer: your organization’s culture. 

Why Culture Kills?
Defined simply as “the way your people think and act,” culture has been described by Roger Connors, best selling author of Change The Culture, Change The Game, as having the ability to “eat strategy for lunch.” The fact is, the most brilliant business plans only succeed when the organization’s culture can actually execute on the plan.

So, what’s the equivalent of the canary in the “culture” mine? How can you detect the presence of poisonous gases threatening your success in 2016?

One good early indicator is your measure of employee engagement. And if your organization is like most in the United States—and around the world—there’s undoubtedly work that can be done in this area.

Don’t feel bad; you’re not alone. The Gallup organization recently revealed that 2015 was another disappointing year for employee engagement in the U.S. Just last month, it reported that employee engagement remained stagnant at just 32%—remaining in roughly the same range since first being reported back in 2000. Even more troubling was the fact that 50.3% of employees when polled admitted to being “not engaged” in the work they are doing, and another 16.8% described themselves as being “actively disengaged.” “Actively disengaged?” What does that look like? That means that in the U.S. workforce, nearly one in five workers is going out of their way to undermine, derail, and even sabotage the very plan they are being paid to execute. 

Seeing and Hearing the Hard Things
I spoke with a colleague one time who was so disengaged, he not only hoped that a specific business plan would fail miserably in order to embarrass the leadership team, but he even admitted actually taking personal action to ensure it failed. That kind of disengagement, from the very people leaders are counting on the most to propel a plan to success, is costing American businesses billions of dollars. In fact, Gallup estimates that “actively disengaged” employees cost the U.S. between $450-$550 billion in lost productivity every year. That’s a staggering amount.

Fully understanding what kind of engagement exists in their organizations is critical for leaders when they begin evaluating their culture. Creating a culture where open and honest feedback exists is the easiest and most affordable way to measure engagement. But even in organizations where that practice is common, we recommend that employee sentiment be measured by inexpensive analytical tools. Still, if engagement scores are through the roof, investing in meaningful efforts to improve and enhance your organization’s culture is paramount. 

Making Sure the Lights Are On
The first step in building an enhanced culture, is linked to the creation of clear, distinct, and engaging Key Results. Over the years of partnering with thousands of organizations, our experts report a consistent finding in virtually every company they work with—the lack of clearly defined Key Results communicated effectively throughout the organization.

In the upcoming book, Fix It! Getting Accountability Right (Penguin Publishing, May 2016), authors Roger Connors, Tom Smith, Tracy Skousen, Marcus Nicolls, and Craig Hickman unveil and explore the results of Partners In Leadership’s groundbreaking “Workplace Accountability Study,” which includes data culled from over 40,000 people since 2012. In their study, the authors found to their dismay that most companies only talk about their Key Results—the three or four absolute must-hit goals—during annual planning periods.

Those Key Results might get mentioned. They might even get published. But rarely do even the best companies effectively communicate those Key Results down to every employee in a way that is meaningful, motivational and engaging. In fact, in the Workplace Accountability Study, only 15% of respondents said that company results were “sufficiently defined.” More than 66% of employees stated that priorities changed frequently, creating confusion about what really was most important to their organization. And a mere 7% said that members of their organization effectively aligned their daily work around what was most important to the company. Just 7%! That means that your brilliant business plan, the one you and your leadership team spent months creating, most likely lacks the clarity and cultural support to achieve its true implementation. 

Modernizing Your Cultural Ventilation System
The second step is to systematically and intentionally create a Culture of Accountability where engagement thrives. Every company has its own culture, whether its leader intended it or not. Over the course of the past quarter-century we’ve learned that cultures can be successfully created and that a culture with accountability at its core is the most effective of them all. A Culture of Accountability leads to greater engagement, greater ownership and alignment, and also leads to greater innovation, execution and trust.

Most organizational leaders are well aware of the importance and power of culture. In fact, in 2014, “culture” was the number one business term in the United States. Louis V. Gerstner Jr., former Chairman and CEO of IBM said famously, “I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game—it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.” If that’s so, why do so many leaders spend so little time working on the very thing that is likely undermining their own work?

First of all, they don’t know how. We spend billions of dollars educating and training our future business leaders. They spend years in undergraduate studies, get MBAs, then hone their business acumen and skillsets for years in the business world. They can read finance reports, understand the nuances and challenges of M&A, and are masters of strategic creation, implementation and execution. But we spend little to no real time learning about, understanding and creating workplace culture. In fact, the Workplace Accountability Study found that over 70% of leaders polled admitted that their change management efforts are not supported by a simple and effective model that people at all levels can use—clearly demonstrating the lack of focus leaders are putting on managing culture.

Secondly, they believe it takes too long to implement. One study suggests that it takes on average 2.6 years to fully complete true culture change. They get the need, but they need to deliver on this year’s business plan, not the one in 2018. What that thinking misses, however, is the incremental—virtually immediate!—impact that culture change provides organizations. 

Facing the Hard Reality and Overcoming It
Several years ago, while heading up a talented but challenging sales organization, I came to realize that what was holding us back as a company wasn’t the product, marketing deficiencies or excessive competition. What was holding us back was true ownership of the organization’s Key Results as a result of a fractured company culture. The sales professionals were some of the best in the industry, but they had spiraled into a team that spent more time pointing fingers of blame at everyone else rather than embracing the situation and making it better. As a young leader I recognized the problem but didn’t have a clue how to effect the change. Working with a Partners In Leadership consultant we created a plan to inject greater accountability into the organization, clarifying Key Results and introducing simple, effective tools and language into the culture to make the shift easier to make.

I believed the effort would work, but what was surprising to me was how quickly the change took shape. Literally, the day after introducing the language and the tools, I started hearing people using the language and referencing the models. While it’s true that the overall culture shift took many months to complete, the improvements were noticeable immediately and led to record sales that year. Idling on whether or not to implement a change management process can cost your company millions—leaders need to always be working on culture—and sooner rather than later.

To bring it all back, do you remember that coal mine referenced at the beginning of this article? That mine is a metaphor for whatever organization you’re working for, working with, or leading. There is great potential in that organization, potential that your business plan was specifically and painstakingly designed to produce. But without the same level of attention and effort to bolster the culture of your organization, a culture that is always changing and shifting as people come and go and environments change, the true potential of your team, your organization, your company could be in just as much jeopardy as that proverbial canary.

Source: www.ceoworld.biz

Disruptive Technologies Raise Demand for ‘Outside’ Leaders

The Internet and Other Upstart Technologies Have Been Impacting Industry After Industry. This Headhunter Takes Us Inside How These Disruptions Are Affecting How We Hire and, More Importantly, Who We Hire 

It’s no secret that the Internet and upstart or disruptive technologies, like e-books, have generated so much upheaval and uncertainty in the publishing world. For all of the benefits that technology has brought, including instant and widespread distribution, publishers continue to struggle to find a business model for new media that actually turns a profit. Though unheralded, executive recruiters have been instrumental in helping companies solve that riddle and make the transition from print to digital a sustainable one.

Bert Davis Executive Search and Consulting Services, based in New York, with a regional office in Austin, Texas, has been one of the steadier hands in the midst of the tumult. The firm serves clients in the publishing, information, and new media fields. Bert, who founded the firm nearly 40 years ago and still serves as chief executive officer, agrees that changes in how news and information are consumed have been tough on even the most venerable publishing concerns.

Indeed, even two decades after the Internet began gaining widespread usage it remains unusual for a week to pass, often just days, without news of continued losses or further staff reductions at one formerly unassailable publishing entity or another.

“The large analog companies, especially those dependent on advertising, have had challenges in keeping up with these nimble technology-driven companies now getting the attention of the younger demographic,” Bert told me recently. “‘Free’ consumer content, which is similar to ‘open access content’ in scientific and research publishing, has hurt sales in all sectors of publishing: magazines, journals, textbooks, and consumer properties, for example.”

Hybrid Talent
This is where executive search firms, especially those that specialize in publishing and information sectors, can make a big difference. In short, they recruit the human capital that’s helping companies bridge the gap between old and new approaches, ultimately finding their direction, and regaining their financial footing.

“One of our roles has been to help client companies who are committed to transformation find the quality talent needed to change how content is curated, produced, and sold,” Bert says. “Most, if not all, of this new kind of employee has a ‘hybrid’ background; that is, they have a full understanding of the importance of content specific to the industry sector plus the experience of producing digital products, systems, and solutions for a new audience of end-users. Quite often we will advise or suggest that with traditional structures companies can build digital equivalents to help created blended products, and increase market share and ultimately stock price.”

Yet the talent capable of executing such transformations is seldom found among a client’s competitors or businesses that produce similar products. In large part, these individuals are developing and plying their skills elsewhere. “It’s now about attracting and recruiting strategic talent from outside of the industry,” says Bert.

“Much of this talent was formerly with cutting-edge technology companies. This has been particularly true with private equity firms that are investing in brand name publishing, information, and educational organizations. The big brand private equity firms we work with are looking to us to provide management talent that can move at a more accelerated pace to achieve the growth they are looking for to justify the premium prices being paid for acquired companies sitting in their portfolios.”

Originally, Bert planned to make engineering his career. He studied at Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (now part of NYU). But he was also drawn to publishing. Back at Brooklyn Technical High School, he had been editor of the literary magazine. When he first stepped out into the world, in fact, he sought a writing job at the New York Times. He fell short because of weak typing skills.

He then sought to remedy that by taking a position with an employment agency, where he figured he would get plenty of time at the keyboard. But in working with the recruiters that placed publishing, media, and advertising professionals, Bert discovered that he had a knack for search work: He placed three candidates his first week and was celebrated by his colleagues as a wunderkind.

The Shift from Print to Digital
By 1977, Bert had started his own firm, specializing in media and communications. “Interestingly enough, where I really honed my craft was learning the industry from those I placed into key roles, especially those at the chairman and CEO level,” he says.

Specialization allowed him to fully understand the intricacies and the needs of his client companies. That’s been a major reason that Bert David Executive Search has been able to help publishers effectively shift from print to digital. It’s also why Bert’s own business continues to thrive.

“I genuinely feel that the search industry is moving towards specialists even though the large generalists keep growing and expanding into new areas,” he says. “Their size and growth, while I am certain serves a niche with their own clientele, has actually made specialist firms look stronger and better positioned to handle assignments that we know better than anyone.”

Without sounding self-serving, he says, “ I do think repeat business is the most effective measuring stick to signal quality work, but more than that, it signals to your clients that you really know the sector inside and out. Most of our assignments come from repeat clients or recommendations from other satisfied clients. The number of C-level assignments we now conduct has continued to increase and, again, I think this points to being a strong specialist firm; we maintain pure, in-depth knowledge of the industry.”

Bert and his colleagues bring a lot of credibility to the table. They have a well-developed network to draw upon and recruiters with first-hand knowledge of the challenges that their clients are facing. “We have been asked, or have suggested, that companies seek out new leaders in order to transition business models,” Bert says. “We have a strong group of technology leaders, many from the major technology companies, who are passionate about leading transformation and we have been working with them over the years to find suitable companies in our area to match their skills.”

It really helps to have a staff that includes executives most recently from technology backgrounds who began their careers in publishing, he says. “They possess an experiential approach to search. ‘I have been there and I understand your needs’ type of approach. We have a very good sense of where our clients need to go in order to be successful in our hyper-fast digital world. We comprehend and foresee market trends and are in close contact with our clients, informing them of changes that are significant to their business.” This is a critical role that search firms have to play today, he says. “It’s not just about finding an individual to fill a position but serving as a strategic advisor is critical and adds so much value.”

And though Bert is optimistic about the future, he knows that change is always part of the equation. His firm’s client landscape, for instance, has begun shifting toward a greater global presence. In the years ahead, Bert expects that more of his clients will be based around the world, particularly in Asia. Such repositioning throughout the publishing industry will only naturally require adjustments by would-be prospects.

“Our company’s growth has been tied to many successful placements in India, China, Japan, and Europe,” he says. “Successful candidate profiles will need to adapt to market needs and conditions. Adaption is the key, as is adoption of new technologies, many we can’t even dream of today. Candidates will need to be more open to international relocation and language skills will become more important. I’m bullish looking ahead 10 years. What a time to be a recruiter specializing in this sector.”

Scott A. Scanlon is founding chairman and CEO of Hunt Scanlon Media. Based in Greenwich, Conn., Scott serves as Editor-in-Chief of Hunt Scanlon's daily newswires, its recruiting industry reports and Executive Search Review

What makes an employee highly engaged

4 Essential Steps to Building a Customer-Centric Model

Ed O’Boyle

By Ed O’Boyle and Amy Adkins 

Customer engagement represents the emotional and psychological attachment between your company and your customers. It is vital to business growth and vitality, and can accelerate your company’s revenue, sales, profitability and share of wallet. 

Every B2B leader we’ve worked with understands the importance of customer engagement and has a strategy in place to improve it. Yet a recent report from Gallup has found that B2B companies have only managed to engage 29% of their customers. Where’s the disconnect between strategy and outcomes?

The very best B2B leaders we’ve worked with take a customer-centric approach to engaging customers. This approach puts their customers at the core of everything and is about more than focusing on customers or having a defined customer experience. We believe that customer centricity provides the surest path to customer engagement.

Although an increasing number of B2B companies realize they need to be customer-centric to compete in today’s market, not all have figured out how to put this model into use. We have found that developing a customer-centric model essentially comes down to four phases: Discovery, Diagnostic, Analytic and Sustainment. Within each of these phases, there are also common tasks that companies can follow to understand and act on the voice of the customer. 

1. Discovery: This phase involves an evaluation of the current state of your customer relationships. Some of the tasks associated with this phase include:

• conducting stakeholder analyses to identify the current customer landscape
• identifying your organization’s needs and priorities
• exploring your existing world, including account structure, the language and culture of your organization and any prior metrics used to evaluate customer relationships to date
• building or refining a customer engagement strategy
• creating a customer list and relationship map

2. Diagnostic: This phase incorporates qualitative and quantitative analyses. Some of the tasks associated within this phase include:

• conducting a key account review
• gathering key account review findings to make insights into customer accounts
• using key account review insights to make recommendations
• sharing best practices based on insights and recommendations
• carrying out an ethnographic study of customers
• identifying key priorities for customers

3. Analytic: This phase encompasses the findings and insights from the Discovery phase to identify the key drivers of the customer experience and how your company is performing on those key drivers. Some of the tasks associated with this phase include:

• identifying the key drivers that propel the customer relationship forward
• gauging the company’s success with the key drivers
• linking the key drivers to customers’ key priorities and conducting a gap analysis
• making connections among the findings of the Discovery phase

4. Sustainment: This phase pinpoints specific steps to take to improve your customer experience. Some of the tasks associated with this phase include:

• creating an action plan to transform the customer experience
• identifying quick wins for ways to improve the customer relationship
• implementing a results communication strategy across your organization
• communicating progress with customers to ensure they understand your organization’s efforts to improve the relationship

Of course, there is one predominant factor in a customer-centric model: people. It is critical that every employee understands what customer centricity means for your business and how they can deliver on it. This applies to your employees at all levels, including leaders, managers and individual contributors.

Leaders: Leaders must hear the voice of the customer to improve the company’s relationship with the customer and to improve business outcomes. They must take accountability for generating a holistic culture shift and for creating processes to build strong, vital relationships that support business results. 

Managers: Managers are in the best position to set the tone for improving customer relationships by targeting the key drivers that best link to customers’ overall experience.
Individual contributors: Individual contributors who work day in and day out with client contacts are the face of your organization. Helping individual contributors understand the importance of improving the customer relationship is the ultimate catalyst for creating change. 

As your company moves through the four phases outlined previously, you must provide employees with the education, training and tools they need to play their part in the customer experience. For example, during the Discovery phase, your leaders should develop an in-depth understanding of customer engagement and impact, and how both work to strengthen customer relationships. Or, in the Diagnostic phase, your managers should attend a course or similar training to learn how to set up their account teams for success. 

Ed O’Boyle is Global Practice Leader, Workplace and Marketplace at Gallup. Amy Adkins is a Writer and Editor at Gallup.com.

Ed O’Boyle

Gallup

As Gallup’s Global Practice Leader, Ed O’Boyle oversees strategic vision for the company’s Workplace and Marketplace practices. He is responsible for turning ideas into innovation using Gallup’s leading-edge science and discoveries as a guide. Ed was instrumental in developing the company’s B2B framework, which empowers clients to achieve exponential increases in performance through customer engagement and impact.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast

Are Successful CEOs Just Lucky?

• Walter Frick

 

“Ask chief executives why their companies are performing so well, and they’ll typically credit a brilliant strategy coupled with hard-nosed, diligent execution. When you ask Lars Sørensen of Novo Nordisk what forces propelled him to the top of HBR’s 2015 ranking of the best-performing CEOs in the world, he cites something very different: luck.”

So begins our recent profile of the best performing CEO of 2015. Sørensen’s modesty is refreshing, but is it accurate?

A series of recent papers help answer that question, by quantifying the roles of luck, ability, and experience in CEOs’ success. Together they suggest two conclusions: first, no single trait or skill seems to explain CEO performance; and second, luck plays a very large role.

There is a long line of research that attempts to measure the impact of CEOs on the companies they run, and it provides background for these newer studies. Estimates of CEOs’ contribution to companies’ success vary, but one study found that it varies between 2% to 22% depending on the industry, and most estimates I’ve seen fit within that range. There is also some evidence that this “CEO effect” has been rising over time.

The CEO, then, is not the primary driver of a firm’s success. Industry, for instance, matters far more. But what factors determine which CEOs rise and fall, and who makes it to the top job in the first place?

It shouldn’t take a careful empirical study to convince you that CEOs don’t get where they are on the basis of ability alone. If that were true, the C-suite would not be so dominated by white men. Nonetheless, a new working paper by Renee Adams at the University of New South Wales, Matti Keloharju at Harvard Business School, and Samuli Knupfer at BI Norwegian Business School helps to quantify the role of ability in becoming CEO.

The researchers used data from the Swedish military to compare Swedish men who ended up becoming CEOs to men who didn’t. Military service was mandatory in Sweden between 1970 and 1996, and the government attempted to measure young men’s aptitude using a series of cognitive tests, as well as an interview. The researchers were able to match this data with other sources to determine the professions these men eventually entered, and how well they were paid.

Their results are what you might expect: CEOs are, on average, smarter than most people. But they’re hardly exceptional. The median CEO of a large firm in Sweden scored in the top 17% in “cognitive ability,” a measure based on four tests given by the military to assess inductive reasoning, verbal comprehension, spatial ability, and technical comprehension. 

(The researchers don’t argue that such ability is necessarily innate, as opposed to shaped by one’s upbringing; they just note that the scores predate any leadership experience.)

CEOs of large firms scored higher on this measure than CEOs of small firms and family firms. But large firm CEOs didn’t score much higher than other professionals, like doctors, lawyers, or engineers.

Success in the military interview was a slightly better predictor of becoming a CEO, compared to cognitive tests. As the researchers explain, “Conscripts obtain a higher score in the interview when they demonstrate that they have the willingness to assume responsibility, are independent, have an outgoing character, demonstrate persistence and emotional stability, and display initiative.” Perhaps this represents a measure of the things CEOs need beyond smarts; perhaps it reflects bias in the interview process.

Overall this evidence suggests that CEOs are a relatively talented bunch, but not much more so than other skilled professionals, or for that matter than the executives who report to them.

“These results suggest that the high pay CEOs enjoy does not arise from scarce supply of the three traits we study,” the researchers conclude, noting that Swedish CEOs receive a 1200% pay premium compared to the average worker. “While a favorable mix of traits may make it easier to climb on the corporate ladder, it by no means assures a position as a chief executive of a major company.”

What else shapes the careers of successful CEOs? It’s hard to avoid Sørensen’s conclusion that luck is the single biggest factor. Consider a 2014 study by Dirk Jenter at Stanford and Fadi Kanaan at MIT: they looked at more than 3,000 CEO turnovers between 1993 and 2009 and found that CEOs were frequently fired for factors well outside their control. Recall that in the CEO effect studies, industry and macroeconomic factors tended to matter more for financial success than who was running the company. Yet, Jenter and Kanaan found that CEOs were significantly more likely to be dismissed during recessions or when their industry is suffering, despite the fact that these trends have little to do with managerial skill. (Lest you start to feel bad for CEOs, if anything they are more likely to be compensated for good luck than fired for bad.)

Perhaps the most sweeping indictment of the idea that CEOs’ careers are shaped by skill comes from a 2014 paper by Markus Fitza at Texas A&M. He argues that even that 2% to 22% of firm performance that studies have attributed to CEOs could be largely the product of luck. To understand why, you have to dive into the methodology of all this research, but I promise it will be worth it.

Studies of the CEO effect usually look at how much CEO turnover correlates with a company’s financial performance, after accounting for other factors like industry performance, overall economic performance, and the like. If a firm does badly for four years under one CEO, then another CEO comes in under the same economic conditions and the firm does well for the next four years, that gets counted as the CEO effect.

But that’s not necessarily proof of CEO skill. Imagine that when CEOs take the top job, they get to pick between two strategies, and once they pick, that strategy is in place for their full tenure. One strategy leads to success, the other to failure, but no one knows which strategy is which. Perhaps the first CEO in the example above just randomly happened to pick the bad strategy, and the next CEO happened to pick the good one. In that case, the CEO effect would just be measuring luck.

That example is purposely oversimplified, but CEOs clearly do face uncertainty when choosing a strategy. If a new CEO coming in and changing course is more like a dice roll than an indication of competence, then measurements of the CEO effect reflect luck rather than skill.

Fitza’s contribution is to estimate just how confident we can be that the CEO effect is due to skill rather than luck. To do so he simulates how big a CEO effect you might see in the data if company performance were entirely random. He shows that, because of how few data points exist about any single CEO, randomness can create the illusion of a CEO effect, even when no skill is involved. Fitza calculates that the portion of the CEO effect that we can be confident is related to skill is between 4% and 5% of total company performance. (The study that found the 2% to 22% range tried a similar approach and came to the conclusion that in some industries the CEO effect was large enough to rule out luck, while in others it was not.)
What should we make of all this?

It’s safe to say that CEOs are, overall, a talented bunch, but that’s not what separates them from other professionals, nor is it the main reason their firms succeed or fail. Certainly it doesn’t come close to explaining why they’re so well paid. Put another way, CEOs matter, just less than many people think. Instead, luck, and yes, bias, play a far larger role in determining who ends up leading companies, and whether they are fired or end up industry leaders.

There’s perhaps no better proof of this point than the third factor the researchers looked at in the study of male CEOs in Sweden. In addition to the interview and the cognitive tests, the researchers considered height. Taller men, they found, were more likely to become CEO, though the effect wasn’t as strong as for the other two factors. Even though CEOs weren’t at the very top of the spectrum in intelligence, when the researchers combined cognitive ability, interview results, and height into one score, they found that CEOs of large Swedish firms were in fact in the top 5%. Becoming CEO doesn’t necessarily hinge on being the best and brightest, though that helps. It’s also important that society thinks you look the part.

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Walter Frick is a senior associate editor at Harvard Business Review.

The Secret Weapon That Will Make You and Your Business Stand Out in the War of Ideas

Image credit: David Ryder | REUTERS

Carmine Gallo

Contributor

Keynote Speaker, Bestselling Author, Communication Coach

A Silicon Valley venture capital investor turned to me during a recent lunch and said, “I’ve seen more than 2,000 pitches, and I can only remember about 10 of them.”

“What made the 10 stand out?” I asked.

“They all told a personal story.”

Professional investors agree: ideas that catch on are wrapped in story. “Show me an MBA and your sales numbers, that’s fine. But tell me a great story about how you got started and your vision, and we’ll talk.” says Shark Tank’s Barbara Corcoran.

Related: How Storytelling Helps Business Connect With Customers and Drive Growth

Although stories inform, illuminate and inspire, very few entrepreneurs and business professionals are aware of the power of story to persuade. But it gives those who do master the art of storytelling a significant competitive advantage. In today’s increasingly automated world where robots are replacing humans in nearly every task, storytelling is the one skill that will keep you relevant and successful through your career.

“Storytelling is the most underrated skill,” says Ben Horowitz, general partner with venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. “The company story is the company strategy. If don't have a clearly articulated story, you don't have a clear and well thought-out strategy. The story must explain at a fundamental level why you exist.”

While conducting the research for my new book, The Storyteller’s Secret, I discovered that many of the world’s most successful business leaders are master storytellers: Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Sara Blakely and others. While their stories are very different, they share three common communication habits. 

1. Make stories at least 65 percent of your presentation.
Human rights attorney Bryan Stevenson received TED’s longest standing ovation. In his now famous TED talk, Stevenson told three personal stories to reinforce the theme of injustice in the prison system. Stevenson spoke about his grandmother, meeting Rosa Parks and an event that happened in a courtroom when he was particularly drained -- an incident that gave him the courage to go on.

“Narrative is hugely important in effective communication,” Stevenson told me. He should know. Stevenson argues and wins cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Stevenson believes story is the secret to winning hearts and minds.

Related: The 5 Elements of Storytelling Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know 

2. Introduce heroes and villains.
Tesla CEO and space visionary Elon Musk relies on the components of story to pitch products, notably heroes and villains. When Musk introduced the Tesla Powerwall, a home battery to generate energy from sunlight, he launched the presentation in the form of a problem (villain) and solution (hero).

“This is how it is today,” Musk began as he showed a photo of a power plant spewing pollution into the air. “It’s pretty bad. It sucks. This is real. This is actually how most power is generated, with fossil fuels.”

Musk continued: “The solution is in two parts. Part one, the sun. We have this handy fusion reactor in the sky called the sun. You don’t have to do anything. It just works. It shows up every day and produces ridiculous amounts of power.”

A technology blogger covering the event wrote, “Dude’s selling a battery and still manages to be inspiring.” Musk is inspiring because he understands the language that’s hardwired in our DNA: story. 

3. If you’ve faced hardship, share it.
Once you’ve introduced a villain, the hero of your story must wage battle against the adversary. People don’t want to hear about your solution or your success until they know you understand their failures and struggles. Great storytellers are relatable because they share their tales of struggles, failures and hardships.

Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz often tells the story of growing up in a Brooklyn housing project and watching as his family struggled after his father was injured on the job. They had no health insurance and found it difficult to make ends meet. The story underpins Schultz’s initiatives such as offering health insurance for all employees, including part-time workers.

Don’t pretend you’ve never had to struggle. Embrace your past and the experiences that define you.

There’s a war going on -- a war of ideas. Selling products, building companies and grabbing attention are increasingly difficult in this hyper-competitive global economy. Your story might very well be the secret weapon that you need to stand out.

The Future is Your “Now What?”

Elaine Newman

CEO & Founder, Global Learning

I believe Futurism is the “now what?” for Diversity and Inclusion. (D &I)  

After 20 plus years of working with organizations on planning and executing their diversity strategies, we are beginning to see that inclusion has become a primary pillar to many organization’s working cultures.

And I keep hearing a similar statement from those leaders who have fully embraced the concepts of D&I, but are looking to maximize the effectiveness of or expand upon their existing diversity strategies.

Leaders are asking “Now what? “

While I have always been someone to look ahead and plan for tomorrow, it wasn’t until I read Bill Jensen’s Future Strong that I discovered the link between future preparedness, leadership and diversity. His research on the Future of Work reveals five critical choices that make people Future Strong.

Let me connect these choices back to how it links to how leaders might think of Diversity Futurism…

Diversity is a laundry list of demographics that we consider in what makes us unique: race, family, location, faith, ability, gender, shared passion, etc. While making many choices in life, we must consider these demographics to ensure we are making the best possible decision. Large or small, we are faced with choices on a daily basis that will carry an effect on our future. Our decisions, even in the workplace, are generally made based on our own personalized diverse set of considerations.

For example: in order to live tomorrow, I must eat today. So yes, I must choose to eat. But now let’s add another layer: what do I choose to eat, and why do I choose it?

There are multiple factors that come into play in why I may choose one type of food over another:

• What food tastes the best to me?
• Which food will help me live longer?
• Which food is within my price range?
• Which food will also benefit my family?
• Which food might take too much time, and stop me from getting to work on time?

Give or a take a few, these are sample of typical considerations and represent a multitude of other choices each of us make every day at work . Toss in smart-technology and the internet, and we have created a hyper-connected society that is pushing people to their maximum capacity

I’ll ask you to put on your managerial hat for a second.

Imagine you have a workforce of 30 people, and you can almost guarantee that each of those 30 people have a large list of decisions they have to make a daily basis, with a diverse set of personalize considerations, all while being hyper-connected to their decisions, considerations, and endless information.

As a manager who has embraced diversity and inclusion, you know you must understand each of those 30 people’s individual value, choices, and considerations in order to ensure organizational effectiveness. Easy, right? Let me help you get started.

Here are some suggestions:

• Consider approaching inclusivity with a futurist lens. Identify the desired future for each of your individual team members. If they do not have this clear vision for themselves, encourage them to really think about it, and start to build a personalized plan. People feel included when they know that their own personal goals are being considered when decisions are being made.

• Identify how their current working situation will help them attain their desired future. When our daily work is aligned with our personal goals, the quality and care for the end result increases.

• Identify any changes that can be made to their work day that align organizational needs with an individual’s desired future. 
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Why most definitions of leadership are wrong

• Travis Bradberry

What makes someone a leader anyway?

Such a simple question, and yet it continues to vex some of the best thinkers in business.

We've written several books on leadership, and yet it's a rare thing to actually pause to define leadership. 

Let’s start with what leadership is not…

Leadership has nothing to do with seniority or one’s position in the hierarchy of a company. 

Too many talk about a company’s leadership referring to the senior most executives in the organization. They are just that, senior executives. Leadership doesn’t automatically happen when you reach a certain pay grade. Hopefully you find it there, but there are no guarantees.

Leadership has nothing to do with titles.

Similar to the point above, just because you have a C-level title, doesn’t automatically make you a "leader." We often stress the fact that you don’t need a title to lead. You can be a leader in your workplace, your neighborhood, or your family, all without having a title.

Leadership has nothing to do with personal attributes.

Say the word "leader" and most people think of a domineering, take-charge, charismatic individual. People often think of icons from history like General Patton or President Lincoln. But leadership isn’t an adjective. We don’t need to be extroverted or charismatic to practice leadership. And those with charisma don’t automatically lead.

Leadership isn’t management. 

This is the big one. Leadership and management are not synonymous. You have 15 people in your downline and P&L responsibility? Good for you, hopefully you are a good manager. Good management is needed. Managers need to plan, measure, monitor, coordinate, solve, hire, fire, and so many other things. Managers spend most of their time managing things. Leaders lead people.

So, again, what makes a leader?

Let’s see how some of the most respected business thinkers of our time define leadership, and let’s consider what’s wrong with their definitions.

Peter Drucker: "The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers."

Really? This instance of tautology is so simplistic as to be dangerous. A new Army Captain is put in the command of 200 soldiers. He never leaves his room, or utters a word to the men and women in his unit. Perhaps routine orders are given through a subordinate. By default his troops have to "follow" orders. Is the Captain really a leader? Commander yes, leader no. Drucker is of course a brilliant thinker, but his definition is too simple.

Warren Bennis: "Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality."

Every spring you have a vision for a garden, and with lots of work carrots and tomatoes become a reality. Are you a leader? No, you’re a gardener. Bennis’ definition seems to have forgotten "others."

Bill Gates: "As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others."

This definition includes "others" and empowerment is a good thing. But to what end? We've seen many empowered "others" in life, from rioting hooligans to Google workers who were so misaligned with the rest of the company they found themselves unemployed. Gates’ definition lacks goals and vision.

John Maxwell: "Leadership is influence – nothing more, nothing less."
We like minimalism but this reduction is too much. A robber with a gun has "influence" over his victim. A manager has the power to fire team members which provides a lot of influence. But does this influence make a robber or a manager a leader? Maxwell’s definition omits the source of influence.

So what is leadership?

DEFINITION: Leadership is a process of social influence which maximizes the efforts of others toward the achievement of a greater good.

Notice the key elements of this definition:

• Leadership stems from social influence, not authority or power.
• Leadership requires others, and that implies they don’t need to be "direct reports."
• No mention of personality traits, attributes, or even a title; there are many styles, many paths to effective leadership.
• It includes a greater good, not influence with no intended outcome.

Leadership is a mindset in action. So don’t wait for the title. Leadership isn’t something that anyone can give you — you have to earn it and claim it for yourself.


Dr. Travis Bradberry is the award-winning co-author of the #1 bestselling book, "Emotional Intelligence 2.0," and the cofounder of TalentSmart, the world's leading provider of emotional intelligence tests and training, serving more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies. His bestselling books have been translated into 25 languages and are available in more than 150 countries. Dr. Bradberry has written for, or been covered by, Newsweek, BusinessWeek, Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company, Inc., USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The Harvard Business Review.