The Problem With Managing Millennials...(Is Not What You Think)

If I sit around and look through my LinkedIn feed or Facebook, Twitter, Zite...whatever, I am bound to see something about the millennials and their "narcissism" or their "poor work ethic" or what have you. And, the point of this post isn't to say if these things are true or they are not. 

The point is that the problem with managing millennials isn't them...its you. (I'll pause while you fire off a hateful email to me...)

But here is the thing, no matter what person you are dealing with, no matter the generation, no matter the position...you, as the manager, are ultimately responsible for the performance of your team. 

So I have found in working with my clients that a lot of the challenge of dealing with millennials stems from a poor grasp of setting clear goals and expectations for your teams. Which means that even if millennials have short attention spans, need praise, or anything else that is being said, as the manager, you need to set your expectations and goals in a clear and understandable way. 

Here are a few tips to help:

1. Focus Your Goals On The Output: Too much of our time is spent on just doing tasks that don't move us towards our goals. Millennials are sometimes called lazy because they talk about "balance" between work and life. I think by focusing your goals on the outputs you are trying to achieve you accomplish a few key things...you give your team the flexibility to attempt to solve problems with creativity; you don't get bogged down on assigning tasks; and, if you are lucky, your team works hard to solve the challenge in an effective and efficient manner which will lead to more "balance" by allowing them to complete mission critical tasks and knowing what they need to accomplish to get out of the office. 

2. Open Clear Lines Of Communication: No matter what you do, where you are in your career, people love to have information. The void of communication will always be filled and if you aren't careful it will be filled by bad or false information. So as a manager, help everyone by setting clear expectations for your communications with staff...including updates, status reports, and feedback. Its going to help tremendously.

3. Listen: Another big one I hear about millennials is that they want to be heard. And, somewhere along the line we seem to have forgotten the fact that as managers and leaders, we are only as good as the information we have at hand. So it only makes sense that you take a little time to talk with your team and listen. Sure listening takes time and building relationships with your staff is tough, but the first time you save a huge hunk of time and money by paying attention to something your team tells you, the investment will have paid off...and the added benefit is that you might not really be so willing to lump a whole group of people in generational stereotypes. And, that's something I guarantee will make you a better leader. 

Posted by:Dave Wakeman

Four Pillars of Good Leadership

In my work I get the privilege of being exposed to some of the best leadership methods and seeing them tested on a regular basis. Sometimes I see outstanding leaders, sometimes I see marginal leaders, and sometimes I get the rare opportunity to see absolutely abysmal leaders. Lucky me. This has allowed me to come up with four basic pillars that are present in all leaders, but the balance of which divides the good from the bad.

Intelligence
The first of these four pillars is intelligence. The ability to meet challenges with reason and logic is of utmost importance to a leader. With intelligence comes imagination and thoughtfulness that prevents many rash decisions from being made. Intelligence also serves to eliminate wasteful practices and pointless exercises, benefitting the overall organization as well as that leader's subordinates. An intelligent leader knows the craft. They are aware of the ins and outs of their organization and are capable of seeing where and how to improve it.

Passion
While intelligence is important, idle contemplation is a bane to any endeavor. At some point a leader must act, and the force that turns thought into action is passion. Passion is what inspires action, and fuels thought. A passionate leader is able to move mountains when necessary, and revels in the thrill of hard work. Passion is contagious, too. When a leader is passionate about their job it infects those around them and multiplies the efforts of the organization exponentially.

Focus
Unbridled passion, however, can result in a great deal of expended effort with very little result. Focus is needed to ensure that passion and intelligence are being poured into the right venues. This is the one that I struggle with the most as a young leader in my own organization. When everything is a priority then nothing is a priority, and it's rare to actually accomplish much. The ability to focus on a task to completion is a trademark of a high level of leadership in the fast-paced world of the workplace. Multi-tasking is great, but when it results in not accomplishing much at the end of the day it tends to be counter-productive.

Adaptability
The danger of focus is that a leader can become myopic and miss opportunities and challenges that they would have otherwise seen. As such, adaptability is the final pillar of good leadership. Adaptability is the one trait that is cherished above all others in the world of survivability, both of organisms and organizations. "Survival of the fittest" is too short-sighted. "Survival of the most adaptable" is more suited to the creature who wants to make it in a constantly changing world.


As pillars supporting any structure, they must be in balance for the structure to stand. If one of these is too far dominant then it throws the leader out of balance and creates a disparity. There are many intelligent leaders who are slow to act, passionate leaders who fail to think, focused leaders who fail to see critical issues and many highly adaptable leaders who never get anything done because they're chasing the next shiny object. A good leader is one who keeps these four pillars in balance and self-assesses to ensure they are being as effective as possible. At least, that's what I'm trying to do. 

Posted by:Gabriel Thorn

Forget Setting Goals. Focus on This Instead.

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James Clear

We all have things that we want to achieve in our lives -- getting into the better shape, building a successful business, raising a wonderful family, writing a best-selling book, winning a championship, and so on.

And for most of us, the path to those things starts by setting a specific and actionable goal. At least, this is how I approached my life until recently. I would set goals for classes I took, for weights that I wanted to lift in the gym, and for clients I wanted in my business.

What I'm starting to realize, however, is that when it comes to actually getting things done and making progress in the areas that are important to you, there is a much better way to do things.

It all comes down to the difference between goals and systems.

Let me explain.

The Difference Between Goals and Systems

What's the difference between goals and systems?

• If you're a coach, your goal is to win a championship. Your system is what your team does at practice each day.
• If you're a writer, your goal is to write a book. Your system is the writing schedule that you follow each week.
• If you're a runner, your goal is to run a marathon. Your system is your training schedule for the month.
• If you're an entrepreneur, your goal is to build a million dollar business. Your system is your sales and marketing process.

Now for the really interesting question:
If you completely ignored your goals and focused only on your system, would you still get results?

For example, if you were a basketball coach and you ignored your goal to win a championship and focused only on what your team does at practice each day, would you still get results?

I think you would.

As an example, I just added up the total word count for the articles I've written this year. (You can see them all here.) In the last 12 months, I've written over 115,000 words. The typical book is about 50,000 to 60,000 words, so I have basically written two books this year.

All of this is such a surprise because I never set a goal for my writing. I didn't measure my progress in relation to some benchmark. I never set a word count goal for any particular article. I never said, "I want to write two books this year."

What I did focus on was writing one article every Monday and Thursday. And after sticking to that schedule for 11 months, the result was 115,000 words. I focused on my system and the process of doing the work. In the end, I enjoyed the same (or perhaps better) results.

Let's talk about three more reasons why you should focus on systems instead of goals. 

1. Goals reduce your current happiness.

When you're working toward a goal, you are essentially saying, "I'm not good enough yet, but I will be when I reach my goal."

The problem with this mindset is that you're teaching yourself to always put happiness and success off until the next milestone is achieved. "Once I reach my goal, then I'll be happy. Once I achieve my goal, then I'll be successful."

SOLUTION: Commit to a process, not a goal.

Choosing a goal puts a huge burden on your shoulders. Can you imagine if I had made it my goal to write two books this year? Just writing that sentence stresses me out.

But we do this to ourselves all the time. We place unnecessary stress on ourselves to lose weight or to succeed in business or to write a best-selling novel. Instead, you can keep things simple and reduce stress by focusing on the daily process and sticking to your schedule, rather than worrying about the big, life-changing goals.

When you focus on the practice instead of the performance, you can enjoy the present moment and improve at the same time. 

2. Goals are strangely at odds with long-term progress.

You might think your goal will keep you motivated over the long-term, but that's not always true.

Consider someone training for a half-marathon. Many people will work hard for months, but as soon as they finish the race, they stop training. Their goal was to finish the half-marathon and now that they have completed it, that goal is no longer there to motivate them. When all of your hard work is focused on a particular goal, what is left to push you forward after you achieve it?

This can create a type of "yo-yo effect" where people go back and forth from working on a goal to not working on one. This type of cycle makes it difficult to build upon your progress for the long-term.

SOLUTION: Release the need for immediate results.

I was training at the gym last week and I was doing my second-to-last set of clean and jerks. When I hit that rep, I felt a small twinge in my leg. It wasn't painful or an injury, just a sign of fatigue near the end of my workout. For a minute or two, I thought about doing my final set. Then, I reminded myself that I plan to do this for the rest of my life and decided to call it a day.

In a situation like the one above, a goal-based mentality will tell you to finish the workout and reach your goal. After all, if you set a goal and you don't reach it, then you feel like a failure.

But with a systems-based mentality, I had no trouble moving on. Systems-based thinking is never about hitting a particular number, it's about sticking to the process and not missing workouts.

Of course, I know that if I never miss a workout, then I will lift bigger weights in the long-run. And that's why systems are more valuable than goals. Goals are about the short-term result. Systems are about the long-term process. In the end, process always wins. 

3. Goals suggest that you can control things that you have no control over.

You can't predict the future. (I know, shocking.)

But every time we set a goal, we try to do it. We try to plan out where we will be and when we will make it there. We try to predict how quickly we can make progress, even though we have no idea what circumstances or situations will arise along the way.

SOLUTION: Build feedback loops.

Each Friday, I spend 15 minutes filling out a small spreadsheet with the most critical metrics for my business. For example, in one column I calculate the conversion rate (the percentage of website visitors that join my free email newsletter each week). I rarely think about this number, but checking that column each week provides a feedback loop that tells me if I'm doing things right. When that number drops, I know that I need to send high quality traffic to my site.

Feedback loops are important for building good systems because they allow you to keep track of many different pieces without feeling the pressure to predict what is going to happen with everything. Forget about predicting the future and build a system that can signal when you need to make adjustments. 

Fall In Love With Systems

None of this is to say that goals are useless. However, I've found that goals are good for planning your progress and systems are good for actually making progress.

In fact, I think I'm going to officially declare 2014 the "Year of the Sloth" so that everyone will be forced to slow down and make consistent, methodical progress rather than chasing sexy goals for a few weeks and then flaming out.

Goals can provide direction and even push you forward in the short-term, but eventually a well-designed system will always win. Having a system is what matters. Committing to the process is what makes the difference.

Sherry Cooper’s formula for success

Sherry Cooper (@DrSherryCooper) is TMX professor of financial economics at the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University and former chief economist and executive vice-president at Bank of Montreal.

The key attributes of successful people are remarkably similar, regardless of their choice of fields. I am often asked by young people and their parents where the best opportunities are, as though success were determined by economic factors – the pursuit of a career in a growth sector. Instead, I believe that potential lies within the individual and is determined by a set of attributes and behaviours that can be applied to any field. Here is a list of the eight indispensable characteristics of successful people:

1. Passion is essential. Doing what you love is key to any successful endeavour. If you do what makes your heart sing, chances are you will be good at it. What’s more, passion is contagious and energizes those around you. Follow your dreams and dream big. Anything else is a cop-out, and forget about the money. If you follow your dreams, the money will come. 

2. Energy is closely linked to passion. Doing something you love gives you the energy required to achieve your goals. It takes hard work – very hard work – to shine in today’s complex and volatile world. The willingness to put in the 10,000 hours required to master a skill, any skill, is essential. That includes the ability to write, speak, engage and motivate – all essential to reach your full potential. 

3. Perseverance is the difference between mediocrity and success. No one achieves anything meaningful without hitting roadblocks, experiencing failures and overcoming adversity. Indeed, these disappointments and difficulties hone your skills and redirect your energies. All failures must be seen as opportunities to reroute and reinvent. That is a winner’s mentality. Never give up and never let naysayers defeat you. Unfortunately, there will always be people who question your judgment and criticize your decisions. You can listen, but let it roll off you. Believe in yourself. 

4 . A willingness to surround yourself with positive people who make you feel good, and dispose of destructive and dysfunctional relationships. That includes bad work relationships. If your boss is unsupportive and demeaning, get out. You will never succeed under such a negative force. 

5. Focus is essential. It is what psychologists call being in the flow. Any real achievement requires hours of uninterrupted concentration, which is increasingly difficult with the constant bombardment of e-mail. Anything worth doing is worth doing singlemindedly, which is the antithesis of today’s multitasking ethos. 

6. Efficacy – the power or capacity to produce a desired effect – is crucial to your well-being. Take ownership of your power. You determine your destiny, not your biography. Regardless of your circumstances, you and you alone can make things happen. The defining factor in success is not resources, but resourcefulness. Passivity is the antithesis of resourcefulness. 

7. The determination to push yourself. Take the stretch assignment or, as Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg says, Lean In. Move outside your comfort zone; it is the only way to learn, and lifelong learning is crucial. The body of knowledge is growing so rapidly that anyone wishing to succeed must keep reading, adapting and learning new skills. 

8. Innovation. Creativity is the essence of meeting competitive pressures. Anyone who remains the same is falling behind as the pace of change is relentless. As Charles Darwin said: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” Yet most of us do not like change, which lets those who embrace change stand out and rise to the top.

A Complete A to Z Guide To Personal Branding

Four Traits of Women Who Lead

by Catherine Osler, President of TEC Canada


TEC Canada recognizes the importance of having a more gender-balanced approach to leadership roles. Forbes.com reported that according to studies, firms with women on their boards “outperform their rivals with a 42% higher return on sales, 66% higher return on invested capital and 53% higher return on equity.” Quite simply, women look at problems differently and often take a more empathic approach to leadership.  TEC’s peer groups are designed to challenge the status quo and encourage dynamic, inspiring conversations to process the issues senior executives face on an ongoing basis.  We welcome more women to contribute to this dialogue and this starts with having exceptional Chairs to guide that process.

While all of our Chairs have many awards and accolades, we would be remiss if we didn’t recognize two of our own successful women leaders:

• Joyce Groote, Vancouver Chair is receiving the Influential Women in Business award on March 3, 2014.
• Katherine Crewe from Montreal is one of TEC Canada’s newest Chairs.  She was recognized as one of the Top 100 Businesswomen to Watch by Entreprendre Magazine.

These women, along with all our Chairs, are committed to the relentless pursuit of excellence and providing their members with the tools to achieve success. I invite you to join me in recognizing International Women’s Day on March 8th. It doesn’t matter if you are a successful entrepreneur, a corporate executive, a new manager – or someone who is at a crossroads in her career and wondering “what’s next?” You are part of a sea of change in leadership style and behavior.

Sheryl Sandberg’s bestseller “Lean In” paints a vivid picture of how far women in leadership still have to go:
• Out of 100 global heads of state, only nine are women,
• In the corporate sector, just 15 to 20 per cent of C-suite jobs are held by women, and
• In the non-profit sector, women hold only 20 percent of the top positions.

Helping women to develop their leadership potential has been a passion of mine and a key professional commitment I made many years ago. After more than two decades of executive consulting, study at some of North America’s most recognized leadership institutes, and my role as CEO of TEC, I have found the successful women leaders I have coached and worked with over the years generally all share four particular traits. What follows is a brief look at these four and what some of the world’s most successful women CEOs have to say about them. 

1. Believe in Yourself
Believing in yourself – your vision, your aspirations and dreams – will drive you forward especially on those days when you can’t see the forest for the trees. Author J.K. Rowling, fashion icon Coco Chanel, Body Shop Founder Anita Roddick – these are women with resolute beliefs in themselves despite their many critics and naysayers. Rowling, who was named the “Most Influential Woman in Britain” by leading magazine editors in 2010, achieved publishing success only after several years of constant rejection. “I was convinced the only thing I wanted to do was to write novels. So what’s the worst that could happen? Everyone turned me down; big deal,” she said.

2. Value Perseverance
Building a business, moving forward in your career and leading organizations all require dogged determination. Whatever obstacles may be put in your path, it is essential to move forward, modelling for your employees, colleagues and customers that you will not back down from a challenge. Cosmetic icon Estée Lauder once said, “I didn’t get there by wishing for it or hoping for it, but by working for it.”

3. Stay Focused
The power to set both short- and long-term goals should never be underestimated. Goals are the road-map to success and goal-setting takes place daily, weekly, monthly and annually. Consider what Mary Kay Ash, Founder of global cosmetic company Mary Kay, once said, “We must have a theme, a goal, a purpose in our lives. If you don’t know where you are aiming, you don’t have a goal.My goal is to live my life in such a way that when I die, someone will say ‘she cared.’” Staying focused is about knowing what you want, then mapping your path with the goals and measures to achieve it.

4. Be a Smart Risk-Taker
To truly accomplish great things, you must go outside your comfort zone because that’s where growth happens. As Sandberg says, this is where you need to “lean in,” raising your hand for opportunities and stepping into new challenges.

Never underestimate that quiet inner voice and its ability to lead and guide you forward. Your inner wisdom – something women are generally closer to – can help you to accurately assess risk. Calculated risks can lead to payoffs beyond what you thought possible.

Martha Stewart, who through her savvy, grit and determination created a brand and a business enterprise that has weathered all kinds of difficulties, maintains “it is within everyone’s grasp to be a CEO.” I am committed to making TEC the kind of organization where women business leaders can achieve beyond what they thought possible. 

If you are aiming to move your leadership skills and abilities to a new level contact Richard Peters at rpeters@tec-canada.com

How to lead when your 'old' business world is gone

SAM GEIST

As I worked with different organizations in 2013 I asked their top management what were the big challenges they were facing, and uneasily shlepping into 2014. I found that no matter the industry, most of the people I spoke with had the same five concerns:

• a shrinking globe with nowhere to hide;
• competing with dwindling margins;
• growing customer demands and purchase options;
• increased electronic gadget distraction;
• intensified difficulty engaging their workforce.

They also felt these marketplace changes were permanent. The “old” was gone – long gone. They had to adapt, alter, transform themselves to be in sync with the 2014 marketplace.

What to do?

While certainly not a comprehensive list, here are five ideas to consider and hopefully institute to make your business life in 2014 healthy, fulfilling and accomplished.

1. Get in the “new” game. Passionately.
First recognize that it’s not the same game you played in the past. That game has changed. Master the new game. Before you can play to win, learn the new rules. Get the right equipment. Find out what it takes to make the best plays. Assist your people to learn the rules, use the equipment and make the plays. Play as a team. Scrimmage, huddle, review, improve.

2. Know your business’ purpose.
Keep in mind that your “old” function has disappeared. Ask yourself: Why do you exist as a marketer? What’s your purpose on the field right now? What’s the value of your position to your customers? What extra, unique, needed value can you provide them today? Determine how you are going to discover your purpose and how you are going to adjust and modify it as the playing field continues to evolve.

3. Focus. Don’t get distracted.
Stay in the present. (The past has already happened and the future is not yet here.) Practice specific strategies to make the most of every moment – but at the same time remain flexible, willing to make changes if needed. Use your sharp concentration to play faster, with more agility. Today you need both speed and accuracy – remaining focused in the here and now gives you those abilities.

4. Simplify.
From start to finish. Simplify your business process. Find ways to make it easier for your customers to do business with you. Make it effortless for your people to do their job. Make it trouble-free for your associates, suppliers, affiliates, contacts to do business with you.

Simplify your communications – from face-to-face to e-mails to meetings. Simplify your business plan, the execution of your plan. It’ll make you a formidable competitor.

5. Execute. Execute. Execute.
I can’t stress it enough. Nothing happens until you do it. Execution is the engine. It’s the bond between strategy and results. It’s the action on the playing field. It’s the forward movement in the organization. I’ve always believed that strategy gets you into the game, but today execution is the game.

Finally, be a leader. This is the perfect year to push yourself and those around you to great new heights. Be a leader of your leaders. Be innovative. Make it your game. Play like you’ve never played before.

Sam Geist (@samgeist) is a professional speaker, author and facilitator who specializes in strategy, marketing and leadership. His e-mail is: samgeist@geistgroup.com and his website is www.samgeist.com.

Five key leadership traits for 2014

JOE NATALE

No different than during the advent of the printing press, the steam engine and electricity, we’re living in a time of fundamental change. The unprecedented pace of technology adoption and its limitless capacity to redefine how we solve problems, entertain, educate, transact business and form social connections is nothing short of revolutionary.

The telecommunications industry is on the vanguard of this change. When I look to my leadership team, or consider promoting new leaders, there are five key capabilities that are important to me, and, I would argue, universal to business. Regardless of industry or company size, I believe they set exceptional leaders apart from average ones. They are:

1. The ability to zoom
A former boss was fond of saying: “From 30,000 feet, a bear and a possum look about the same.”

Leaders need to be forever running a filter in their minds: What is truly important, and what is truly important for them to focus on intensely. The distinction between these two is essential. There are some important things they should focus on, and other important things someone else should focus on.

Leaders have to choose the places where they can have the biggest impact. They need to decide on key areas of focus, and then zoom in on those specific issues or projects, moving from overseeing to being more hands-on and working in closer proximity to the core team.

And then they need another essential ability: to zoom out when it’s time – yet still support the team in moving forward.

2. The ability to lead in a complex environment
Telecommunications is inherently complex. It’s a network business, a solutions business, an entertainment business, a communications business, a security business, an outsourcing business, a retail business – I can keep going.

Any organization in this environment must live in a matrix structure and function well with both internal and external partners. A “command-and-control” structure, in which a leader simply sets the direction and controls execution, is a relic of the past.

We look for leaders who are good at getting things done without direct authority. Do they have good ideas? Can they build support for their ideas? Can they marshal resources from those who don’t work for them directly?

If they are able to make good things happen by engaging teams from customer service, to sales and marketing, to IT and Web strategy, to human resources, then they have one of the most important attributes of a leader. Today, everything is integrated and interdependent.

3. An exceptional ability to communicate
Someone once told me that as a senior leader you actually don’t have a lot of direct authority. It’s a provocative thing to say. But it’s true.

You can redraw an organization chart, you can hire and fire. But what truly has an impact on a company’s culture are the cues or symbols people take away from you because they reflect what you believe is important. And I believe unequivocally that generous, strategic and heartfelt communication is a leader’s most important tool.

Look at Churchill, one of the greatest communicators of the past 100 years. I think about his task during the Second World War, giving hope to a whole nation in the middle of an incredibly fearful and tumultuous time.

Churchill would sit in his tub and dictate speeches while his assistant sat outside the bathroom on the floor. The prime minister was a bit of an odd duck, but that didn’t take away from the fact that he gave such consideration and weight to his words of encouragement that were meant to elevate people who were going through daily bombings and facing fear that we can’t imagine. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 for a reason.

Communication is important because it sets the tone, it tells people what is important, it can galvanize. How to do it well is a challenge for people to trying to get to the next level. Those who can master it tend to see greater results as leaders, and in their careers.

4. The ability to learn and to teach
Most leaders know their business. They live it, breathe it. They can stand up and talk about it, strategically, tactically, financially, operationally. This is table stakes.

Today, leaders have to absorb information quickly because the environment changes so fast. One technology decision, one regulatory decision, a critical customer experience issue, and your business can change dramatically. Unless you’re able to learn and adapt, you’re going to struggle. Leaders must have an unquenchable thirst for deeper insight. They must be natural teachers and draw satisfaction from sharing what they know.

5. Be authentic
You can call it integrity or “values-based leadership,” but the essence of humanity is authenticity, the ability to be straightforward, to act and speak without guile, to consistently act with awareness, kindness and compassion.

Authenticity is the No. 1 quality I value in the people around me. They are self-aware, humble and stay true to their values regardless of the challenges at hand. Without authenticity, your team is like a house with a poor foundation. It won’t stand the test of winds or time.

Leaders hire slowly and carefully, and surround themselves with only the best. Great talent with the wrong values will be like vampires on your team, and will drain your corporate culture. Talent in combination with the right values will create an enviable culture and results for your business that your competitors can’t begin to copy.

Dominate Your Industry: How to Become the Best in Your Field

Image credit: Shutterstock

The notion of a miraculous genius being born smarter and more capable than the rest of us mere mortals charms our curiosity. Robert Greene, author of the popular The 48 Laws of Power (Penguin, 2000), would disagree. The fascination we have in prodigies, he says, is "bogus. It's completely bogus." Exceptional talent is about hard work, he says.

Greene studied the lives of exceptionally successful people for his latest book, Mastery (Viking/Penguin, 2012). He says that there is no such thing as being born into superior success. Rather, those politicians, entrepreneurs, scientists, athletes and artists who rise above the rest in their field, achieving what he calls a "high-level intuitive feel" for their specialty, have an unyielding focus and work ethic.

"It's not a question of some natural talent or brilliance that you have, it's that you have reached that level of experience or practice," Greene told Entrepreneur.com. "We have to get rid of that old-fashioned notion of genius and creativity." He holds himself to the standard he preaches, having put in more 20,000 hours researching and writing his last five books.

Robert Greene

Image credit: Susan Anderson

In Mastery, Greene examines the cultural poster-children for natural-born genius: Mozart and Einstein. For example, by the time he was 9 years old, Mozart had already put in 10,000 to 20,000 hours of work, equaling the efforts of an average person in his or her 20s, says Greene. Einstein attributed his own success to persistence, he says.

Greene developed a near cult-following for his methodical and -- some say -- Machiavellian breakdown of power and the people who wield it in The 48 Laws of Power. Part of what makes Greene popular is that he studies powerful people and then breaks down their process such that others can emulate it. Here are recommendations from Greene for entrepreneurs eager to be the next Steve Jobs.

1. Chose a topic to focus on that you are deeply in love with.
"Masters and highly successful people are emotionally and personally engaged in their work" on a level beyond intellectual curiosity, Greene says. It's the personal commitment to a topic, problem or skill that is ultimately necessary for motivating and maintaining the long hours and fervent curiosity required to rise to the level of "mastery" in a field. "Otherwise you are never going to have the energy, the patience, the persistence, the ability to put up with the criticism, you will give up too easily, you won't push through all the crap the world is going to throw at you."
  
2. Skip all the extra school. Learn by doing.
According to Greene, learning entrepreneurship in school is inane. "Being an entrepreneur is making something, it's like Legos," Greene says and the best way to become an entrepreneur is to try building businesses.

Henry Ford's first two automobile companies failed miserably, notes Greene. "You want to actually psychologically desire failure because it is how you are going to learn." If you aren't going to start your own business, at least work in as small a company as possible to learn as many skills as possible. Avoid large corporations and business school, Greene says. As an entrepreneur, "you are going to hire the people that have the MBAs. They are going to bring in that nuts-and-bolts knowledge."

3. Don't focus on making money in your 20s.
"Tune out the idea of making your first million. It's about learning. You are there to accumulate as much experience building a business and you want to build several, if possible," says Greene. In the first five to 10 years after college, pursue experience over money. You will learn more than you could earn in those years.

4. When you have some experience, select a mentor.
When selecting a mentor, look for somebody who is already doing what you see yourself doing in five to 10 years, says Greene. If you are going to try to approach a master to be your mentor, wait to do so until you have already started amassing a body of work.

A healthy mentorship relationship is like that between a parent and a child, says Greene. A good mentor should be older than you and at a point in his or her career that he or she is wants to give back. Personality is important, too. "You want somebody who matches your spirit. If you are a very rebellious type, you don't want a stuffy conservative type mentor," says Greene.



5. Be flexible and creative.
For the book, Greene interviewed Paul Graham, the computer programmer entrepreneur who started Viaweb, a company acquired by Yahoo in 1998 to become the Yahoo Store, and a partner of Y Combinator, an accelerator for startup entrepreneurs. In the highly competitive interview process for Y Combinator, Graham "can tell after one minute if he has the next Zuckerberg or this guy is useless, and it is because they are open-minded, they're flexible and they love, they are excited, they have a childlike interest," says Greene. Building a company will inevitably confront you with unexpected challenges, and your ability to adjust your path to deal with those surprises is critical.

Catherine Clifford

Don Yaeger: How Little Details Can Solve Big Challenges

 

Try to dissect why a great team wins a championship and you’ll quickly see it’s all about the moving parts. Can the offense use speed and timing to score frequently? Can the defense make the necessary adjustments to get the job done? Can every player on the team remember their own responsibilities and execute their tasks when needed? It’s fascinating to see how independent assignments can influence the collective success or failure of the team.

This month, a lot of national attention was placed on a plaque inside the football locker room at the University of Notre Dame that insinuated an easy return trip to college football’s BCS National Championship game. But I will tell you there’s another sign in the Fighting Irish locker room worth examining.

There is a poster that instructs players specifically how to keep their respective areas. It includes a detailed description of where the cleats should be placed, how the knee and ankle braces should be hung, and even where the practice jersey should drape within the locker. Each player is required to consistently arrange his locker as diagramed on the poster.

For me, the significance of this poster is an absolute of how great teams and successful businesses are able to take the step from good to great; they simply pay attention to the little details.


By establishing such a thorough locker room protocol, the Notre Dame players have taken a few minor decisions off the board. The time wasted trying to find equipment needed for success can now be used for bigger tasks and making decisions that could prove pivotal in achieving greatness.

By instilling such a simple yet detail-oriented procedure, Notre Dame head coach Brian Kelly was able to make it easier for his players to do what’s expected of them. He was able to unlock more time for his team to focus on being better players. He was able to build a structure that showcased unity, discipline and an attention to detail.

What if an assembly line at an automobile plant didn’t have a well-devised procedure? What if the nuts & bolts worker wasn’t as efficient at following protocol as the wheels and tires guy? The overall product is still viewed as faulty, regardless of which moving part actually failed during the assembly.

Every successful business has moving parts. The Great ones understand that their final product relies heavily on the attention to detail at the beginning stages. By creating a simplified procedure, great leaders emphasize that the little things are just as important to the overall success as the bigger items. Once that becomes part of the culture, it makes working on the bigger tasks much more effective.

What routine do you follow consistently that adds value to your own productivity? What little detail can you tackle today that could make your bigger challenges run more smoothly?

To Strengthen Your Confidence, Look to Your Past

by Amy Jen Su and Muriel Maignan Wilkins

Confidence..It is an attribute we seek to have and look for in others, especially those in positions of leadership. Yet, time and time again, we meet executives who lack a confident presence. (We also encounter those who are overly confident — to the point that they are blinded by it — but that is a topic for another time). What many fail to realize is that confidence is dynamic and not a static emotion. Just like a physical muscle that needs exercise to grow stronger, a leader's confidence requires continuous attention. 

Face the Facts: To strengthen your confidence, first face the facts. When you look to your past, you'll realize that successes often outweigh failures. And, more importantly, that you survived through the failures and gleaned priceless lessons along the way. Your track record provides an inventory of what has happened over the long run, which you can then balance against what you fear may happen in the short term.

Take for example, an executive we coached in a global marketing service — we'll call him Dave. Having recently been promoted to a senior vice-president position (the third person to take the post in two years), Dave found himself facing new challenges: turning around a low-morale staff, driving new initiatives, and rebuilding the reputation of the department. He also had a whole new set of relationships to manage; he was now part of the executive team and frequently sought for advice by the CEO. "I often feel like I am going to get caught — that someone is going to realize that they made a mistake by promoting me into this position," said Dave at one of our coaching meetings. 

When Dave stepped into the executive suite, his confidence stepped out the window. After taking inventory of the various promotions that he had received throughout his career, Dave realized that he had successfully faced new, albeit different, challenges before. His track record served as a basis of truth against the uncertainty he currently felt. While a cliché of sorts, there is truth in the saying "confidence starts from within." Ultimately, confidence is the counter to the fears we face — fear of failure, fear of change, fear of inadequacy.

Focus: With your track record as a foundation, it is helpful to focus on your strengths while managing your weaknesses. Most leaders are very strong in a few competencies, average in the majority of competencies, and weak in a few. Successful leaders focus on leveraging their strengths and managing their average/weak areas so that they do not become a deterrent to their effectiveness. Dave accepted that he was not going to be great at everything (nor did anyone expect him to be). With the help of a 360 assessment, he identified his strengths in "managing others" and "creating vision." By focusing on what he knew he could contribute, Dave grew more confident in his ability to tackle the challenges ahead.

Faith: It is not by accident that the Latin root of the word "confidence" is con fidere, which translates to "with faith." The ultimate faith is a belief in the unseen. Leaders are called to create vision and change for the future out of uncertainty — fundamentally, they operate on a level of faith that helps give purpose, strength, and trust to the path that they carve out for their organizations. Dave's fear of failing obstructed his ability to succeed. By shifting his attention to the excitement of building, creating, and leading something new, he tapped into a deeper purpose, beyond his day-to-day successes and failures. 

Confidence is a constant strengthening exercise. Like a well-conditioned muscle, it needs to be challenged and it also needs relaxation. Facts, focus, and faith each on their own may not get you there. But when you leverage all three in an integrated way, your confidence will absolutely grow.

 

Amy Jen Su and Muriel Maignan Wilkins

Amy Jen Su and Muriel Maignan Wilkins are co-founders and managing partners of Isis Associates, a boutique executive coaching and leadership development firm. They are the authors of Own the Room: Discover Your Signature Voice to Master Your Leadership Presence.

The #1 Mistake Entrepreneurs Make

I'll be writing about how to be a successful founder and more. Follow me at 

http://www.linkedin.com/in/lazerow.

Posted by:

Michael Lazerow

I’ve started 4 companies and have invested in 25 more. And I can say, with supreme confidence, that I have made or seen almost every mistake possible.

I’ve hired the wrong people. And fired the wrong people.

I’ve raised too much money (yes, it’s possible). And too little.

I’ve launched products that not one person used and have pivoted so many times I’m still dizzy.

None of these are fun to live through, I assure you. But they are not nearly as fatal to a young company as the #1 mistake entrepreneurs make – FOCUSING ON THE WRONG THINGS.

Successful entrepreneurs focus exclusively on efforts that matter and are able to tune out the rest. People who focus succeed. It’s that simple.

A critical difference between a startup and a large company is resources. Specifically, time and money. And having little of both is oftentimes a godsend and leads to some of our best work. Just look at your favorite indie movie!

Google can give its employees 20 percent of their time to pursue their crazy ideas. If Buddy Media had done that, we would have been out of business.

Focusing is not a natural exercise for many entrepreneurs. More ideas pop into my brain during my morning shower than many people get in a month.

So in order to focus, you need to build your “focus” muscle and train your brain to focus and stay focused.

Volumes have been written about how to do just this. One of my favorites is “Organize Your Mind, Organize Your Life: Train Your Brain to Get More Done in Less Time” by Dr. Paul Hammerness, a Harvard Medical School psychiatrist and Margaret Moore, an executive wellness coach and codirector of the Institute of Coaching.

But you don’t need to read books to bring focus to your entrepreneurial life. Here is an exercise I use with entrepreneurs I have invested in to make sure they are truly focusing on the right things.

I ask a very simple question: What are the top 3 things you need to accomplish in the next 6-12 months to give the company the best chance of long-term success?

I push them to be specific. And rank the responses in order of importance.

Is creating the best product most important? How about locking down distribution? Are those both more important than monetization? How about hiring the right people? How about raising money? Is business development important to the business this year?

Most entrepreneurs I speak to can’t name their priorities right away. And if they can, they aren’t written down anywhere and they haven’t been communicated to the rest of their organization.

If an entrepreneur can’t name their top 3 priorities without hesitation, how will the rest of the company know? It’s bad enough for an founder to work on the wrong projects. But if the entire company is not focusing in the right areas, game over!

Without focus, young companies can FEEL like they are accomplishing a lot while in reality accomplishing nothing. They solve problems that never existed in the first place. And launch products with no market.

With the right focus, entrepreneurs can change the world. I’ve seen it so many times, upclose and personal.

If Mark Zuckerberg had not focused on the photo-tagging feature years ago, Facebook would not be the world-changing company it is. If Twitter had not focused on 140 character messaging, it would never have survived. Where would Apple be if it decided to focus on watches instead of phones? Or if it focused on selling the most number of units rather than designing the best products and profitability? You get the idea.

The single most focused entrepreneur I have ever met is Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce. He has an epic and well-documented process and tool called the V2Mom that has helped him build Salesforce into Forbes’ most innovative company in the world (two years in a row!).

In one of my first meetings with Marc, he told me that everything he has written down over the past 14 years has come true. Does he have a secret genie granting him wishes? No. But he has been able to get his entire company focused on core priorities over and over again.

I encourage all leaders (of companies, of divisions and of small teams) to write down the top 3 areas of focus somewhere visible in the organization and communicate them to the entire team.

By doing so, you are not only able to focus on what is most important, but you are also able to eliminate distractions, which is the biggest gift you can give as a leader.