As business owners age, they need to ask themselves three questions

JACOLINE LOEWEN

Special to The Globe and Mail

Published Tuesday, Sep. 02 2014, 12:15 PM EDT
Last updated Tuesday, Sep. 02 2014, 12:15 PM EDT

Business owners make their wealth through concentrated efforts. The key to successful transitions involves focusing that same energy on planning the next stage of life and putting their wealth to work through investments outside their own companies.

The problem is, most owners avoid thinking about their next stage, their businesses don’t get sold properly, and they lose the wealth they spent their lives building.

“One business owner that we came across had no transition plan, no successor, a son in the business who did not have an interest in running it, and no estate plan at all,” says Maria Milanetti, a partner at MarchFifteen, a consulting practice specializing in business transitions. “The owner was 70 years old, running a highly successful business, and utterly oblivious to the risks for his family’s future wealth.”

This scenario is all too common in Canada.

Too often, the only part of a business that can be salvaged are its assets, but not a great deal more, leaving the family in a precarious position. The economy also loses a company that could have continued under new leadership.

Why is this lack of transition such a common scenario for too many privately owned businesses?

“It’s quite natural for founders and those running the business successfully to ‘want to keep a good thing going’ and to feel that they need to keep running the business themselves,” Milanetti says. “Often they want to ‘protect’ others from this responsibility.”

But their reluctance to share how they make decisions or influence stakeholders with their next generation leaders can have long-term negative effects. Milanetti acknowledges it can be difficult to start the conversation around transition or succession. She recommends asking the following three questions:

• Have you thought about the next chapter in your business, in the next five to seven years? This question should prod an owner to share the kind of company the next generation of leaders wants to build and retain in the longer term.
• How can we plan that future together? Suggest setting aside some time with a facilitator or business adviser and describe how critical conversations can be shared in a relaxed, reflective and safe situation. It makes it a safer process.
• What will the next chapter of your life look like? The emotional challenges of giving up control over a privately owned business and transitioning into a new role as “ex-entrepreneur” – whatever this new role may be – requires reflection about one’s identity and about other family members. This is not a natural state for most high-action owners. Dealing with this identity change can be very important to helping the transition to take place. However, this can be a tricky question as it starts to deal with the prickly topic of the business transition.

Many owners or founders are mindful that these transitions take time and that it isn’t as easy to make changes as they start to deal with the aging process and its challenges. It’s much easier to keep the Peter Pan complex of thinking that aging only happens to others rather than to plan the family’s future wealth.

Peter Pan whispers that planning for life after the business means retirement, and that’s for old people, not a dynamic business owner, no matter the biological age. That way of thinking can be disastrous for a family if the owner is forced to reduce his or her time at the business or stop altogether. It is better to address changes while everyone is healthy and has the time and energy.

“At every juncture, we recommend planning,” Milanetti says. “That is planning for the mentoring of next generation leaders, for the transition between current leadership and successors and, most importantly, planning for the owner to be clear what will make their lives meaningful in their next chapter. These are not people who are used to doing nothing.”

Planning is a bore compared with running a business but if owners want to fully benefit from their lives’ work, they need to grit their teeth and start tackling those three simple questions.

Jacoline Loewen is director of business development of UBS Bank (Canada). She is also author of Money Magnet: How to Attract Investors to Your Business.

100 Great Questions Every Entrepreneur Should Ask

Paul Graham, Jim Collins, Tony Hsieh, and other business leaders share the questions you should be asking if you want to improve your company.

 

 

There’s no Superman versus Iron Man face-off between questions and answers over which is the better tool for innovation. But if there were, questions would be winning. 

Questions ignite imaginations, avert catastrophes, and reveal unexpected paths to brighter destinations. Jim Collins, Marshall Goldsmith, and other thinkers have compiled their own stocks of questions, which they urge leaders to pose to themselves and their teams. The right questions don’t allow people to remain passive. They require reflection, followed by action.

Warren Berger, author of A More Beautiful Question, praises inquiry’s ability to trigger divergent thinking, in which the mind seeks multiple, sometimes non-obvious paths to a solution. Asking good questions and doing so often “opens people to new ideas and possibilities,” says Berger.

To compile this list of provocative questions for business owners, we reached out to entrepreneurs and management thinkers, scanned blogs, and revisited our favorite business books. (Though we tried to identify the origin of each question, some had competing claims of authorship. In those cases, we made our best call.) Have you got a great question that you use at your company? We welcome you to add your own to the list via the comment box below the story. Rigid mindsets are dangerous things. We hope the following will keep your mind supple.  

1. How can we become the company that would put us out of business? -Danny Meyer, CEO of Union Square Hospitality Group 
2. Are we  relevant? Will we be relevant five years from now? Ten? -Debra Kaye, innovation consultant and author
3. If energy were free, what would we do differently? -Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos
   Hsieh explains, “This is a thought experiment to see how you would reconfigure the business if you had different resources available or knew that different resources would one day become available. Another question might be, what if storage was free? Or what if labor costs half as much or twice as much?”
4. What is it like to work for me? -Robert Sutton, author and management professor at Stanford
5. If we weren’t already in this business, would we enter it today? And if not, what are we going to do about it? -Peter Drucker, management expert and author 
   The late Drucker posed a variation on this question to Jack Welch in the 1980s. It inspired General Electric’s “fix, sell, or close” strategy for exiting or restructuring unprofitable businesses.
6. What trophy do we want on our mantle? - Marcy Massura, a digital marketer and brand strategist at MSL Group 
   Massura explains, “Not every business determines success the same way.Is growth most important to you? Profitability? Stability?”
7. Do we have bad profits? -Jonathan L. Byrnes, author and senior lecturer at MIT 
   Byrnes explains, “Some investments look attractive, but they also take the company’s capital and focus away from its main line of business.”
8. What counts that we are not counting? -Chip Conley, founder of Joie de Vivre Hospitality and head of global hospitality for Airbnb 
   Conley explains, “In any business, we measure cash flow, profitability, and a few other key metrics. But what are the tangible and intangible assets that we have no means of measuring, but that truly differentiate our business? These may be things like the company’s reputation, employee engagement, and the brand’s emotional resonance with people inside and outside the business.”
9.  In the past few months, what is the smallest change we have made that has had the biggest positive result? What was it about that small change that produced the large return? -Robert Cialdini, author and professor emeritus of marketing and psychology at Arizona State University
10. Are we paying enough attention to the partners our company depends on to succeed? -Ron Adner, author and professor at Tuck School of Business 
    Adner explains, “Even companies that execute well themselves are vulnerable to the missteps of suppliers, distributors, and others.”
11. What prevents me from making the changes I know will make me a more effective leader? -Marshall Goldsmith, leadership coach and author
12. What are the implications of this decision 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years from now? -Suzy Welch, author
13. Do I make eye contact 100 percent of the time? -Tom Peters, author and management expert
14. What is the smallest subset of the problem we can usefully solve? -Paul Graham, co-founder of Y Combinator
15. Are we changing as fast as the world around us? -Gary Hamel, author and management consultant
16. If no one would ever find out about my accomplishments, how would I lead differently? -Adam Grant, author and professor at Wharton
17. Which customers can’t participate  in our market  because they lack skills, wealth, or convenient access to existing solutions? -Clayton Christensen, author, Harvard Business School professor, and co-founder of Innosight
18. Who uses our product in ways we never expected? -Kevin P. Coyne and Shawn T. Coyne, authors and strategy consultants
19. How likely is it that a customer would recommend our company to a friend or colleague? -Andrew Taylor, executive chairman of Enterprise Holdings 
    "Taylor’s use of this question at Enterprise Rent-A-Car inspired Fred Reichheld to create the Net Promoter Score, a widely used metric for customer loyalty.
20. Is this an issue for analysis or intuition? -Tom Davenport, author and professor at Babson College
    Davenport explains, “If it’s a decision that’s important, recurring, and amenable to improvement, you should invest in gathering data, doing analysis, and examining failure factors. If it’s a decision you will only make once, or if for some reason you can’t get data or improve the decision-making process, you might as well go with your experience and intuition.”
21. Who, on the executive team or the board, has spoken to a customer recently? -James Champy, author and management expert
22. Did my employees make progress today? -Teresa Amabile, author and Harvard Business School professor 
    Amabile explains, “Forward momentum in employees’ work has the greatest positive impact on their motivation.”
23. What one word do we want to own in the minds of our customers, employees, and partners? -Matthew May, author and innovation expert 
    May explains, “This deceptively simple question creates utter clarity inside and outside a company. It is incredibly difficult for most people to answer and difficult to get consensus on--even at the highest levels. Apple = different. Toyota = quality. Google = search. It’s taken me three years to get one of my clients, Edmunds.com, to find and agree on their word: trust.”
24. What should we stop doing? -Peter Drucker, management expert and author
25. What are the gaps in my knowledge and experience? -Charles Handy, author and management expert
26. What am I trying to prove to myself, and how might it be hijacking my life and business success? -Bob Rosen, executive coach and author
27. If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what would he do? -Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel 
    In 1985, with the company’s memory-chip business under siege, CEO Grove famously posed this hypothetical to Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, leading them to ditch memory for microprocessors.
28. If I had to leave my organization for a year and the only communication I could have with employees was a single paragraph, what would I write? -Pat Lencioni, author and founder of The Table Group 
    Lencioni explains, “Determining the substance of this paragraph forces you to identify the company’s core values and strategies, and the roles and responsibilities of those hypothetically left behind.”
29. Who have we, as a company, historically been when we’ve been at our best? -Keith Yamashita, author and founder of SYPartners
30. What do we stand for--and what are we against? -Scott Goodson, co-founder of StrawberryFrog
31. Is there any reason to believe the opposite of my current belief? -Chip and Dan Heath, authors who teach at Stanford’s and Duke’s business schools, respectively
32. Do we underestimate the customer’s journey? -Matt Dixon, author and executive director of research at CEB 
    Dixon explains, “Often, companies don’t understand the entirety of the customer’s experience and how many channels may have already failed them. They don’t understand that the customer goes to the website first, pokes around but can’t find the answer to their question, and then tries to start up a chat with an agent, only to get frustrated by the delayed response. Only then do they go to the Contact Us tab and call. From the company’s perspective, the call is square one. The customer sees it as, you’ve already wasted 15 minutes of my time.”
33. Among our stronger employees, how many see themselves at the company in three years? How many would leave for a 10 percent raise from another company? -Jonathan Rosenberg, adviser to Google management
34. What did we miss in the interview for the worst hire we ever made? -Alberto Perlman, CEO of Zumba Fitness
35. Do we have the right people on the bus? -Jim Collins, author and management consultant  
36. What would have to be true for the option on the table to be the best possible choice? -Roger Martin, professor, Rotman Business School 
    Martin uses this question when members of a group bring diverse opinions to a decision. It allows people to step back from their strongly held beliefs and contemplate a range of circumstances that might--or might not--support each option.
37. Am I failing differently each time? -David Kelley, founder, IDEO
38. When information truly is ubiquitous, when reach and connectivity are completely global, when computing resources are infinite, and when a whole new set of impossibilities are not only possible, but happening, what will that do to our business? -Jonathan Rosenberg
39. Do we aggressively reward and promote the people who have the biggest impact on creating excellent products? -Jonathan Rosenberg
40. What is our Big Hairy Audacious Goal? -Jim Collins
41.  Is our strategy driving our strategy? Or is the way in which we allocate resources driving our strategy? -Mark Johnson, co-founder, Innosight Johnson explains, “You might think you have a strategic plan, but your people may be doing things on a day-to-day basis that are undermining it. It’s essential that people believe in the strategy so they can make the daily decisions that support it.”
42. How is the way you as the leader think and process information affecting your organizational culture?  -Ari Weinzweig, co-founder Zingerman’s Community of Businesses  Weinzweig explains, “Describe the culture you'd love to have in your organization. Then check the desired characteristics of the culture against the way you think and process information. Are they congruent?  Do you want collaboration but think in isolation?  Do you want a flat organization but think hierarchically?
43. Why don’t our customers like us? -James Champy
44. How can we become more high-tech but still be high touch? -James Champy
45. What do we need to start doing? -Jack Bergstrand, CEO, Brand Velocity
46. Whom among your colleagues do you trust, and for what? -Charles Handy 
    Handy tells this story: “One CEO had a problem with his best subordinate, who was very good at his job. But he was also personally ambitious, so the CEO could not trust him to be totally loyal. The dilemma was whether to keep him because of his abilities or lose him because he couldn't be sure of him.  The answer was for the CEO to either assign the subordinate jobs where his loyalty wasn’t relevant or to confront him with his feelings. After some pushing from me. the CEO did the latter, and it cleared the air.”
47.  Are you satisfied with your current role?  If not, what is missing from it? -Charles Handy
48. Do you keep 50% of your time unscheduled? -Dov Frohman, engineer and executive, author The 50% stat may be somewhat arbitrary. But Frohman’s point, laid out in his book “Leadership the Hard Way,” is that leaders should make sure they maintain sufficient “slop” in their schedules to allow space for reflection and the assimilation of lessons learned from experience.
49. What would I recommend my friend do if he were facing this dilemma? -Chip and Dan Heath
50. What kind of crime could a potential new hire have committed that would not only not disqualify him/her from being hired by our organization, but would actually indicate that he/she might be a particularly good fit?  -Pat Lencioni Lencioni explains, “In this case "crime" is a metaphor.  This question speaks to values. A particularly idealistic organization may be okay with hiring someone that was previously reprimanded for standing up for his beliefs or blowing the whistle on something. A particularly competitive organization may be okay hiring someone who in prior positions was reprimanded for being overly arrogant or difficult to work with.” 
51. If our customer were my grandmother, would I tell her to buy what we’re selling? -Dan Pink, author
52. If our company went out of business tomorrow, would anyone who doesn't get a paycheck here care? -Dan Pink
53. What is something you believe that nearly no one agrees with you on? -Peter Thiel, partner, Founders Fund
54. Do you have an implicit bias for capital investments over people investments? -Tom Peters Peters explains: “Capital enhancements are important. They're also cool. You can get your picture taken next to a new robot. People investments are invisible and hard to measure. The tendency is to favor the hard stuff over the soft stuff. But the soft stuff is invariably more related to long-term strategic success than the hard stuff.”
55. Do we have enough freaky customers in our portfolio pushing us to the limit day in and day out? -Tom Peters
56. Who are you going to put out of business, and why? -Brad Feld, managing director, Foundry Group
57. What happens at this company when people fail? -Bob Sutton and Jeff Pfeffer, Stanford professors
58. How will you motivate the dishwashers? -Bill Keena, independent casino consultant 
    Job interview questions comprise a genre unto themselves, so we chose not to include them in this article. With one exception. Keena says the only correct answer to this question, posed to manager candidates in a hotel chain, is “If they are overloaded I would roll up my sleeves and start washing right alongside them.” That speaks to the candidate’s ability to create employee engagement. Turned inward, however, the question reveals even more about culture. Ask yourself this: Are we the kind of company that cares whether our dishwashers are motivated?
59. Do your employees have the opportunity to do what they do best everyday? -Marcus Buckingham, author
60. Where is our petri dish? -Tim Ogilvie, CEO. Peer Insight
61. What Microsoft is this the Altair Basic of? -Paul Graham
62. Do we say “no” to customers for no reason? -Matt Dixon
    You may have created your customer policies at a time when you lacked resources, technology wasn’t up-to-snuff, or low service levels were the industry norm. Have those circumstances changed? If so, your customer policies should change too.
63. Instead of going to current contacts for new ideas, what if you reconnected with dormant contacts--the people you used to know?  If you were going reactivate a dormant tie, who would it be? -Adam Grant
64.  Do you see more potential in people than they do in themselves? -Adam Grant
65. Are you taking your company in the direction of better and revenue or cheaper and cost? -Michael Raynor, director, Deloitte Services LP
66. Would you rather sell to knowledgeable and informed customers or to uninformed customers? -Don Peppers, founding partner, Peppers and Rogers Group 
    Partly it’s a matter of values: uninformed customers can be easy targets who swallow your pitch without pushing back. Selling to knowledgeable customers, by contrast, “is a mark of a trustable firm--one that is working to advance its customers’ best interests,” says Peppers. And there’s another benefit: “Your most valuable customer references are not the ones who spend the most, but the ones who have the most expertise and authority. That gives them credibility with their peers.”
67. What are we challenging, in the sense that Mac challenged the PC or Dove tackled the Beauty Myth? -Mark Barden and Adam Morgan, founders, eatbigfish 
    Barden and Morgan explain that for companies challenging market leaders with greater resources, competing on the status quo is death. Instead they must assault the dynamics of a category (the dominance of PC) or a cultural meme (what society defines as “beautiful” in women).
68. In what way can we redefine the criteria of choice in our category in our favor, as Method introduced style and design to cleaning and Virgin America returned glamor to flying? -Mark Barden and Adam Morgan
69. In the past year, what have you done (or could you have done) to increase the accurate perception of this company/brand as ethical and honest? -Robert Cialdini 
    Cialdini explains: “Of course, the preferred way to increase the perception of a company as ethical is to foster ethical practice within the organization. However, sometimes a company can be ethical without a corresponding perception in the marketplace that this is indeed the case. Therefore, companies should strive not only to enhance and reinforce an ethical culture but also to arrange for a warranted perception of that ethicality to be part of their brand.”
70. To whom do you add value? -Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood, co-founders, The RBL Group
71. Why should people listen to you? -Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood
72. How would our PR, marketing, and social media change if we did not use outside agencies? -Guy Kawasaki, founder, Garage Technology Ventures and Alltop 
    Kawasaki explains, “Let’s see what happens when a company can't abdicate these functions to hired guns. I'd bet that employees, because they know and love their product more than any agency, can do a much better job at less expense to boot.”
73. What was the last experiment we ran? -Scott Berkun, author
74. Are your clients Pepsi or Coke drinkers?” -Marcy Massura Massura explains: “This is a symbolic question that gets at how deeply you have researched your target clients. Business leaders can find out more about their customers than ever before thanks to the ability to collect data on a grand scale. Such detailed information allows the company to interact with targets in new ways and to assess current product development and marketing roadmaps.”
75. What is your BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement)? -Roger Fisher and William Ury, negotiation experts
76. What's the best design framework for an organization in a post Industrial-Age if the top-down, command and control model is no longer relevant? -Traci Fenton, CEO, Worldblu
77. Who are four people whose careers I’ve enhanced? -Alex Gorsky, CEO, Johnson & Johnson
78. Where can we break convention? -Shane Snow, co-founder, Contently
79. Whose voice (department, ethnic group, women, older workers, etc) might you have missed hearing from in your company, and how might you amplify this voice to create positive momentum for your business? -Jane Hyun and Audrey Lee, partners, Hyun & Associates
80. In retrospect, of the projects that we pulled the plug on, what percent do we wish had been allowed to keep going, and what percent do we wish had ended earlier? -Ron Adner
81. Do you, as a leader, bounce back quickly from setbacks? -Bob Rosen
82. Who do we think the world wants us to be? -Geoffrey Moore, organizational theorist and management consultant
83. How will we build a 100-year startup? -Phil Libin, CEO, Evernote
84. What successful thing are we doing today that may be blinding us to new growth opportunities? -Scott D. Anthony, managing partner, Innosight
85. If you could go back in time five years, what decision would you make differently?  What is your best guess as to what decision you're making today you might regret five years from now? -Patrick Lencioni
86. What stupid rule would we most like to kill? -Lisa Bodell, CEO, FutureThink
87. What potential megatrends could make our business model obsolete? -Michael A. Cusumano, professor, MIT
88. What information is critical to our organization that our executives are ignoring? -Max Bazerman, professor, Harvard Business School
89. What have we done to protect our business from competitive encroachment? -Tom Stemberg, managing general partner, Highland Venture Capital
90. If you had to rebuild your organization without any traditional competitive advantages (i.e., no killer a technology, promising research, innovative product/service delivery model, etc.), how would your people have to approach their work and collaborate together in order to create the necessary conditions for success?” -Jesse Sostrin, founder, Sostrin Consulting
91. What are the rules and assumptions my industry operates under? What if the opposite were true?Phil McKinney, innovation expert
92. Do the decisions we make today help people and the planet tomorrow? -Kevin Cleary, president, Clif Bar
93. What is your theory of human motivation, and how does your compensation plan fit with that view? -Dan Ariely, professor, Duke University
94. How do you encourage people to take control and responsibility? -Dan Ariely
95. Who do we want out customers to become? -Michael Schrage, professor, MIT
96. How do I stay inspired? -Paul Bennett, chief creative officer, IDEO
97. Do I know what I’m doing? And who do I call if I don’t? -Erin Pooley, business journalist
98. Do they use it? -Howard Tullman, CEO, 1871
99. What is our question? -Dev Patnaik, CEO, Jump Associates
100. How is business? Why? -Thomas A. Stewart, executive director, National Center for the Middle Market

IMAGE: Shutterstock

LEIGH BUCHANAN is an editor-at-large for Inc. magazine. A former editor at Harvard Business Review and founding editor of WebMaster magazine, she writes regular columns on leadership and workplace culture.

Leaning Into Difference: The Key to Solving Tough Problems

By Craig Weber

"Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress." — Mahatma Gandhi 

"Life is a series of problems," observed M. Scott Peck. A more accurate statement was never made. But when it comes to solving them it's important to realize that not all problems are created equal. All our difficulties fall somewhere on a spectrum; at one end of this spectrum we find routine problems, and, at the other end, adaptive challenges. A routine problem isn't considered routine because it happens regularly, but because we have a routine for dealing with it – a protocol, a process, or expert on which we can depend for a reliable fix. A routine problem may be irksome and expensive, but at least we're in familiar territory and know what to do about it. When we're facing an adaptive challenge, on the other hand, we're off the familiar trail in uncharted territory where there are no proven routines, protocols, solutions, or experts. To successfully negotiate an adaptive challenge we must work and learn with others to navigate the alien terrain. All the problems we face in life fall somewhere between these two distinct poles.

It's easy to see these two types of problems in the workplace. If our corporate computer loses connectivity, for example, there's a clear process for getting the problem fixed. It might be frustrating, but the problem is routine. If our corporate culture is trashing our strategy, however, we're in highly adaptive territory, because, unlike the computer problem, there is no simple solution, no established process, no ready expert who can solve the problem for us.

Performing effectively in today's world is increasingly difficult because the number of adaptive challenges we face is snowballing. The culprits driving this trend are well known – rampant technological, social, economic, and political upheaval, and all the unpredictable change, surging complexity, and expanding globalization that comes with it.

Given this shift, it's more important than ever to recognize the distinction between routine and adaptive issues because they each require a profoundly different problem solving approach. For a routine problem a bias for action is appropriate. We have a routine, we know what to do, so as Nike suggests, we should "just do it." But for an adaptive challenge – where there is no clear routine, no proven process, no ready expert who can save the day – a bias for learning is essential. Why? To navigate our way over unfamiliar ground we must roll up our cognitive sleeves and work with others to figure out the best way forward. We must orchestrate, in other words, a process of adaptive learning.

The key to adaptive learning is leaning into difference – the act of seeking out and exploring conflicting ideas and views. "If people don't engage across the divide of their differences there is no learning," says Ron Heifetz. "People don't learn by looking in the mirror. They learn by talking with people who have different points of view. In a sense then, conflict is really the engine of adaptive work, the engine of learning." And a critical competence that enables our ability to learn from difference is something I refer to as conversational capacity – the ability to have open, balanced, learning-focused dialogue about tough, heated, adaptive issues. High conversational capacity transforms how we react to people with different perspectives and information because our strong bias for learning leads us to see them as rich opportunities to expand our awareness and learn, not petty nuisances to be avoided or attacked. Rather than cave in or argue when someone has a different point of view, we get curious: "What might their perspective teach me about how I am looking at this issue?"

This learning-focused orientation dramatically expands our ability to make informed choices, because, as Peter Elbow explains, "The surest way to get hold of what your present frame binds you to is to adopt the opposite frame. A person who can live with contradiction and exploit it – who can use conflicting models – can simply see and think more." And when working in unfamiliar territory nothing is more important than the ability to see and think more.

Abraham Lincoln understood this. Facing an adaptive challenge of historic proportions – a civil war and the utter failure of the American experiment – he did something unusual: he pulled into his cabinet people with political agendas that clashed not only with his own views but with each other's. He didn't create this hornets' nest of conflicting perspectives because he yearned for comfortable cabinet meetings, nor did he do it because he wanted to get his way all the time. He did it because he knew a room full of contrasting points of view would help him make wiser, more informed decisions about the adaptive realities he was facing. The diversity of Lincoln's cabinet helped him to see and think more.

Vistage (In Canada: TEC Canada @ www.tec-canada.com) gets this too. Vistage/TEC-Canada is a global organization of over 17,000 CEOs, business owners, and top executives that meet in peer advisory groups to facilitate conversation, spark insight, and spur growth. I've spent over fourteen years working with hundreds of Vistage groups and I'm impressed with the learning the experience generates. As with Lincoln's cabinet, the power of a Vistage/TEC meeting isn't in the sameness around the table – it's in the difference. The candid dialogue and open-minded exposure to the varying personalities, organizations, educations, cultures, and life experiences of the group members allows each executive to see and think more about their important leadership problems. After a CEO explores an adaptive challenge she's facing with her Vistage/TEC group, she drives home with an expanded field of vision and clearer set of choices precisely because she leaned into – and learned from – the diverse views of her colleagues.

But mere exposure to difference isn't enough. Our differences only facilitate adaptive work if we have a bias for learning that is greater than our natural defensiveness to new and conflicting ideas. To truly learn from different perspectives we need the conversational capacity to balance candor and courage with curiosity and humility, to genuinely approach conversations with people who see the world differently as opportunities to trigger an "aha" moment – the exhilarating experience of having a blind spot in the mental map of our predicament unexpectedly illuminated.

Because it enables us to think smarter, faster, and together, the adaptive learning provoked by leaning into difference is invaluable in any organization facing tough challenges (and what organization isn't?). So let me leave you with a few questions to consider and discuss: What are the major issues facing your team and organization? What aspects of those issues are predominantly routine and which are more adaptive? When it comes to the adaptive challenges you're up against, does your team have the appropriate bias for learning needed to do the necessary adaptive work? If not, what can you do to build their conversational capacity so they can engage these challenges in a more balanced, healthy, learning-focused way?

Craig Weber is the author of the groundbreaking book, Conversational Capacity: The Key To Building Successful Teams That Perform When The Pressure Is On (McGraw-Hill, 2013) and the founder of The Weber Consulting Group, an alliance of experts committed to helping organizations and teams build their capacity for engaging tough, wicked, adaptive challenges. 

Mark Cuban's 12 Rules for Startups

BY Mark Cuban

Image credit: ABC

Anyone who has started a business has his or her own rules and guidelines, so I thought I would add to the memo with my own. My "rules" below aren't just for those founding the companies, but for those who are considering going to work for them, as well.

1. Don't start a company unless it's an obsession and something you love.
2. If you have an exit strategy, it's not an obsession.
3. Hire people who you think will love working there.
4. Sales Cure All. Know how your company will make money and how you will actually make sales.
5. Know your core competencies and focus on being great at them. Pay up for people in your core competencies. Get the best. Outside the core competencies, hire people that fit your culture but aren't as expensive to pay. 
6. An espresso machine? Are you kidding me? Coffee is for closers. Sodas are free. Lunch is a chance to get out of the office and talk. There are 24 hours in a day, and if people like their jobs, they will find ways to use as much of it as possible to do their jobs.

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7. No offices. Open offices keep everyone in tune with what is going on and keep the energy up. If an employee is about privacy, show him or her how to use the lock on the bathroom. There is nothing private in a startup. This is also a good way to keep from hiring executives who cannot operate successfully in a startup. My biggest fear was always hiring someone who wanted to build an empire. If the person demands to fly first class or to bring over a personal secretary, run away. If an exec won't go on sales calls, run away. They are empire builders and will pollute your company.

8. As far as technology, go with what you know. That is always the most inexpensive way. If you know Apple, use it. If you know Vista, ask yourself why, then use it. It's a startup so there are just a few employees. Let people use what they know. 

9. Keep the organization flat. If you have managers reporting to managers in a startup, you will fail. Once you get beyond startup, if you have managers reporting to managers, you will create politics.

10. Never buy swag. A sure sign of failure for a startup is when someone sends me logo-embroidered polo shirts. If your people are at shows and in public, it's okay to buy for your own employees, but if you really think people are going to wear your branded polo when they're out and about, you are mistaken and have no idea how to spend your money.

11. Never hire a PR firm. A public relations firm will call or email people in the publications you already read, on the shows you already watch and at the websites you already surf.

Those people publish their emails. Whenever you consume any information related to your field, get the email of the person publishing it and send them a message introducing yourself and the company. Their job is to find new stuff. They will welcome hearing from the founder instead of some PR flack. Once you establish communication with that person, make yourself available to answer their questions about the industry and be a source for them. If you are smart, they will use you. 

12. Make the job fun for employees. Keep a pulse on the stress levels and accomplishments of your people and reward them. My first company, MicroSolutions, when we had a record sales month, or someone did something special, I would walk around handing out $100 bills to salespeople. At Broadcast.com and MicroSolutions, we had a company shot. The Kamikaze. We would take people to a bar every now and then and buy one or ten for everyone. At MicroSolutions, more often than not we had vendors cover the tab. Vendors always love a good party.

Mark Cuban

A serial entrepreneur, Mark Cuban is co-founder and chairman of Denver-based independent cable network HDNet and owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team. He is also an active investor and regularly appears on ABC's reality series, Shark Tank.

ELEVATING GTA’S BUSINESS LEADERS’ COMMUNITY

"What do you want to be remembered for? It is a question that induces you to renew yourself, because it pushes you to see yourself as a different person - the person you can become" - Peter Drucker

ELEVATING GTA’S BUSINESS LEADERS’ COMMUNITY

DICK PETERS TO LAUNCH GTA’S NEWEST TEC EXECUTIVE GROUP

TORONTO, ONTARIO (January 16, 2014) – Seasoned Toronto business executive Richard (Dick) Peters (http://ca.linkedin.com/in/richardpeters2/)– President and founder of consulting firm Leader Logic Ltd. – will launch an exclusive learning-oriented peer group for growth-focused business leaders in early 2014.

As a group Chair for The Executive Committee (TEC Canada), Peters will mentor and facilitate the personal and professional growth of a select group of business leaders.

Experience in a wide variety of senior corporate leadership roles, as well as an entrepreneurial and consulting background, have given Dick Peters a reputation for team-building, creative risk-taking and a capacity for making the challenging decisions associated with disruptive change. These traits dovetail perfectly with his new role of TEC Chair.

“My role within TEC is to create a community where leaders flourish,” Peters explains, “a community in which leaders increase their personal effectiveness through fresh thinking and challenging conversations with their peers.” He continues, “A TEC group is not a social club. Members join to enhance their businesses and their personal performance. This new group will comprise non-competitive CEOs, Presidents, business owners and individuals who run companies. Members will act as a private board of trusted advisors with no agendas other than helping each other share best practices, solve management issues, make better decisions and improve leadership skills. Research shows that TEC members outperform non-members by a wide margin.”

Dean Chudleigh, President, Chudleigh’s Limited, a TEC member since 2004, shared, “I attribute a great deal of my company’s success to our membership in TEC. Every month I leave with solid ideas that I can put into action right away. I can’t imagine not being a member.”

The TEC community in Ontario is strong with 284 members across 24 different groups, yet TEC Canada President, Catherine Osler confirms there is still room for growth. “The GTA has a vibrant and healthy business community full of leaders eager to learn and grow. With the addition of Dick Peters’ new group, TEC is in an excellent position to support further growth and development of leaders in the region.”

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For more information, on becoming a member of this new TEC Group please contact:


Dick Peters                                                       Tammy Schuiling
Chair TEC-Canada                                              Marketing Communications Manager, 
RPeters@tec-canada.com                                TEC Canada(416) 471-1956                                                    tschuiling@tec-canada.com
                                                                         (403) 800-5519

About TEC Canada:
TEC Canada is the pre-eminent member-based leadership development organization in Canada. Our membership base is comprised of nearly 1000 top business leaders from across Canada, representing more than $54 billion dollars in annual revenue and over 105,000 employees. Through our affiliate, Vistage International, TEC is part of a powerful global network of over 18,000 members which provides members unparalleled access to global business resources and the intellectual capital of like-minded passionate and experienced business leaders from around the world. For more information visit www.tec-canada.com.

Linear Income vs. Residual Income: Knowing the Difference Will Change Your Life!

By: Dimitri Turner

If you don't know the differences between linear income and residual income, then you definitely need to spend five minutes and read the remainder of this article. Knowing the difference will change the way you think, in return, changing the decisions you make and ultimately change your life from this day forward.

These income concepts are what divide the rich and the poor, the wealthy and the struggling middle-class, the knowledgeable and the ignorant. Linear income and residual income are the two ways that people make money in the world. This article will show you which income concept is best, or let's just say, preferable.

First off, let's address what is understood to be linear income. Employees, independent contractors, and self-employed business owners make up the linear income bracket. Linear income earners are only paid for the specific time expended, or paid directly proportional to the number of hours invested in their job. Linear income earners must be physically present or "clocked in" to get their paycheck.

Now here's the biggie! Linear income earners cannot leverage their time and efforts. Leveraging is what creates the wealthy/rich social class, and the absence of leveraging is what creates the middle to impoverished social classes. I will discuss leveraging in depth when we talk about residual income earners.

Linear income earners can be fired or "down-sized" at any time. For example, an employee could be the perfect worker within their company. But now a bigger and better company has bought out (acquire and merge) the smaller company, and the bigger company now "downsizes" several workers of the original company. What's sad in this situation is you were the perfect employee, but because you were working for the wrong company at the wrong time, you are now out of a great job with great benefits. You have no control whatsoever of the situation.

In addition, in the linear income bracket, the height of your success is determined by your boss, not you. You have very little control of your achievement within the company that employs you. You must work and hustle in an effort to be recognized as valuable to the company, but only for your superior to get the credit for your work and hustle while you remain in your current position. That sucks doesn't it!

If you're self-employed, you do have control of your personal achievement which is great, right? Now tell me this, what happens to your business if you're in a car accident and/or hospitalized, and it takes you three months to reach full recovery? Because you're self-employed, you'll more than likely miss that money!

Let me ask this question. As a linear income earner, can you pass your job down to your children or grandchildren? I don't know too many jobs that allow you to do that. And even in the corporate world, in order to be promoted, your superior either has to be promoted or demoted.
In summary, linear income earners have little control of their success, they live paycheck to paycheck, they can be fired at any time, they cannot pass their job down as an inheritance, and they are participants of the "dog eat dog" world which thrives on the destruction of co-workers' and superiors' reputation in order to receive promotion.

Now, the alternate income bracket is the residual income earner. I'll let you decide which the better of the two is.

Residual income earners consist of business owners, network marketing associates, and investors. Their income continues to be generated after the initial effort of building the business has been expended. Residual income earners don't worry about "clocking in," they can be absent for periods of time and still see consistent income from their business. As a residual earner, you could be in the shower, in the hospital, or in the Bahamas, and you'll still see checks in the mail or direct deposit transactions on your bank statement. Doesn't that sound like fun!
Remember when I mentioned the word "leveraging" earlier? Leveraging is basically using someone else's time and money to benefit you. Now wait just a second. I know that sounds very harsh and cruel but think about it first. Isn't your boss leveraging your efforts? When I put it that way, you start to get the picture of how this concept separates the wealthy from the not so wealthy.

A residual earner's income stems from their business or businesses. They are the boss; they have total control of their business's success and achievement. Wouldn't you like to be in that position if you aren't already? With your own business, you can pass it to your children, and they can pass the business to their children in return, you are leaving a family legacy. You are able to leave your children with a ready-made pipeline of income versus working your job, retiring, and leaving your kids with nothing but debt.

With a residual income business such as a network marketing (multi-level marketing) business, you benefit only by helping others to be successful. I personally don't know of too many instances where corporate employees are helping others they work with to become successful.
The two major separations between linear income earners and residual income earner's is the linear-minded people work, scrap, and hustle for money. Most are only after a quick paycheck. Residual-minded people work, scrap, and hustle for freedom. By freedom I mean, freedom with their time, freedom with their lives, and freedom with their finances.

So which would you rather be? Would you rather be the linear individual living from paycheck to paycheck, no control over your success, unable to spend quality time with your children, and always sick because you have dreams and goals but are unable to achieve them? Or would you rather be the residual individual who possesses full control of their life, spends quality time with their kids regularly, is able to leave an inheritance for the future, doesn't have to sit on their goals and dreams, and can show others how to do the same?

I'll leave it up to you!

Now I would not explain those two concepts without providing a means to crossover from the linear mindset to a residual mindset.

http://www.payitforward4profits.com/dlturner3183

Check out the website above. This company will provide you with free information and they will simply introduce you to the most prominent and successful businesses that you can build out of your home and/or online. Aligning with this program will make the transition from linear income to residual income a smooth one.

If you want something you never had, you have to do something you've never done, period!


Author Bio
Dimitri Turner is an Internet Marketing Guru out of Memphis, TN. He writes in-depth and passionate articles about the network marketing industry as well as inspirational and motivational articles that encourages his readers to maximize their potential and maximize the present moment.

The Basics of Crowdfunding

What it is: Crowdfunding is about persuading individuals to each give you a small donation -- $10, $50, $100, maybe more. Once you get thousands of donors, you have some serious cash on hand.

This has all become possible in recent years thanks to a proliferation of websites that allow nonprofits, artists, musicians -- and yes, businesses -- to raise money. This is the social media version of fundraising.

There are more than 600 crowdfunding platforms around the world, with fundraising reaching billions of dollars annually, according to the research firm Massolution.

How it works: The most common type of crowdfunding fundraising is using sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo variety, where donations are sought in return for special rewards. That could mean free product or even a chance to be involved in designing the product or service.

It is also possible to use crowdfunding to assemble loans and royalty financing. The site LendingClub, for example, allows members to directly invest in and borrow from each other, with the claim that eliminating the banking middleman means "both sides can win" in the transactions. Royalty financing sites appear to be more rare, but the idea is to link business owners with investors who lend money for a guaranteed percentage of revenues for whatever the business is selling.

The holy grail is to sell company shares or ownership stakes in the company on crowdfunding sites, because it could be like a mini-IPO without the traditional hurdles. In the past, this has only been legal with accredited investors, people who each have more than $1 million in net worth or more than $200,000 in annual income.

The good news is that the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act of 2012 allows stock to be sold to the general public over crowdfunding sites, but as of mid-2013, the SEC was still hammering out the rules.

Upside: Crowdfunding provides another strategy for startups or early stage companies ready to take it to the next level -- such as rolling out a product or service. Before, a business owner was subject to the caprices of individual angel investors or bank loan officers. Now it is possible to pitch a business plan to the masses.

A successful crowdfunding round not only provides your business with needed cash, but creates a base of customers who feel as though they have a stake in the business' success.


Downside: If you don’t have an engaging story to tell, then your crowdfunding bid could be a flop. Sites such as Kickstarter don’t collect money until a fundraising goal is reached, so that’s still a lot of wasted time that could have been spent doing other things to grow the business.

It could be even worse if you meet your goal but then realize you underestimated how much money you needed. A business risks getting sued if it promises customers products or perks in return for donations, and then fails to deliver.

There is also an argument to be made that angel investors and even bank officers provide more than just money. They provide entrepreneurs with needed advice. Business owners miss out on such mentorship when they ignore traditional investors and turn to the crowd.

Here are more factors that can better ensure a successful crowdfunding campaign:
● Have at least a small network of enthusiastic friends and family willing to help get the ball rolling by giving and urging others to give.
● If you’re giving out perks in return for money, make sure the perks are cool.
● Present a serious business plan and an explanation of why the money will take your enterprise to the next level.
● Demonstrate that you have your own skin in the game because of the personal funds you have already poured into the business.
● Include a video pitch and keep it short and concise, with a call to action.
● PBS includes different rewards for different levels of giving; so should you.
● Be prepared to essentially live online, staying active on social media sites, until the crowdfunding campaign is complete.