Is it Time to Panic?

September 27, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I suspect that anyone not concerned about the state of “things” going on in our world and specifically in our economy would reasonably be labeled as naïve.  We have big problems, they could get bigger in a hurry or maybe they won’t.  The loss of some long-standing financial icons is annoying, the potential for the choking off of access to working capital for otherwise healthy companies is downright disconcerting.  The issues being debated in Washington have long-since ceased being about Wall Street and are most squarely about mitigating catastrophic risk on Main Street.

You don’t have to look far for some pundit somewhere offering up the end of life as we know it, usually with comments about a worldwide depression the likes of which we’ve never experienced.  Hey, they may be right or they may not.  I’ve long since given up trying to peer into the crystal ball and prognosticate beyond the late George Carlin’s famous weatherman bit that called for a forecast of “dark, followed by widely scattered light in the morning.”  The sun will rise and it will still be in the east.

In spite of my inability to foretell the future, I do know one thing for certain, it is never good to panic.  For you science fiction buffs out there, Frank Herbert had it right when he wrote that, “Fear is the Mind Killer.”  Panic creates a fight or flight response, where rational thinking is replaced by instinctual flailing.  Individuals panic, participants in markets can panic, and organizations can panic.  More often than not, the panic results in dramatic or even fatal mistakes.

Unfortunately, we have recent experience with horrific scenarios.  What happened on 9/11 was unthinkable on 9/10.  There were no road maps for dealing with the grief and the anger, and for awhile no one understood what was next.  It was a time when the best that many could hope for was to process on taking the next breath.  In all likelihood, we are still dealing with the ripples of this unthinkable day, and those ripples will likely shape the lives for generations to come in some form and fashion.

In addition to the pundits and talking heads, some really smart people that I know are beginning to let fear creep into panic.  Discussions of how to grow, how to compete better and even discussions about the pursuit of excellence are being replaced with focus on retrenching, battening down the hatches and/or boarding up the windows for the storm on the way.  Again, we would be naïve to ignore the signs and we would be naïve to think that anyone actually understands the impact of this horrific financial mess unfolding in front of us in real time, albeit drawn out over the past few weeks.  It’s time to focus on taking one breath at a time.

While there is some probability that the worst cases will play out, I will place my bet on widely scattered light towards morning.  There are many reasons why the world’s global capital markets cannot stop and why the earth’s burgeoning population and the world’s rapidly growing economies will not stop consuming, investing and yes, even growing.

As you look at your own firm and your own situation, it is not a time to take foolish risks.  Frankly, it’s never a time to do that, so nothing has changed.  It is a time to adopt a philosophy that seeks to find opportunity in chaos.  It is a time to carefully evaluate your strategies and check your assumptions.  It is also a time to consider making some hard calls on your future.  Working for a firm in the post 9/11 world where the board and leadership had the courage to invest in reinventing the firm’s core offerings at a time when our competitors were scaling back R+D efforts, was a brilliant learning lesson. 

It’s always time to improve your talent…either by investing in growing their knowledge and capabilities and by culling the herd.  It’s a great time to evaluate spending, to hold marketing accountable to genuine measures of value creation and to deploy the best-trained, solutions focused sales force to serve your customers.  It’s also a remarkable time to scale up your communications with your stakeholders and with your employees and provide them opportunities to share their many great ideas.   

The Bottom-Line for Now:

At the end of the day, people must eat, people must clothe themselves and frankly smart people will figure out how to use the opportunity to challenge themselves and their organizations to improve.  The rest will start boarding up the windows to hunker down for a long, agonizing wait.  I know which team that I want to be a part of. 

Filed Under: Crisis Leadership, Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Career Growth and the Product Manager

September 26, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I wear my respect on my shirt-sleeve for the many dedicated Product Management professionals that hold down what I believe is one of the most difficult and one of the most critical roles in today’s fast moving technology and B2B organizations.   (See my post: In Support of the Product Manager as MVP) The individuals in these positions have a tremendous responsibility to provide guidance to the organization, often with little formal authority to translate this guidance into action.

While admittedly biased based on my own PM and PM leadership experience, I firmly believe that these talented and well-rounded business professionals are potentially some of the most valuable assets in an organization’s talent pool.   Of course, realizing value from this talent requires a proactive approach to helping Product Managers develop some of the “softer” skills that we all know are important, but that we as leaders often overlook in our preoccupation with the day to day crises that can rule our lives.

Here’s my short-list of the skills that Product Managers cum Executives must focus on if they want to crack the ranks of senior leadership.  Given the fact that Product Managers are some of the only individuals that see the firm from the outside-in and inside-out, it is well worth it for Product Managers and their managers to steer development, and yes, training efforts towards these areas.

  • Leadership: This is perhaps the stickiest or squishiest of all skill sets and yet developing context for the true role of a leader, understanding what it takes to build credibility and engender trust as a leader are critical lessons on the road to success.  Instead of generic leadership training, focus on an approach that emphasizes the development of key leadership skills and the application of these skills in a series of diverse leadership situations.  Ideally, any leadership development program for Product Managers will emphasize developing the skills and gaining experience for leading as an informal leader, leading horizontally and managing upwards.  (OK, again, I’m biased, but a manager armed with my book, Practical Lessons in Leadership and committed to creating a robust developmental program for their Product Managers is miles ahead of the manager sending their PM to some of the generic leadership training in the marketplace.)
  • Strategic thinking.  Like leaders, strategists aren’t born and in most cases, they are made.  Few positions in a firm have the potential to contribute more to strategic thinking and strategy process creation and sustainability, than that of the Product Manager. I was fortunate enough to enjoy early career mentors that challenged me to constantly think outside of my product, outside of my company and to look at the big picture, tune in to my various audiences and to develop and test strategic hypotheses while growing the business.  That is a very different way of thinking versus “what are the top 10 features that I can jam into my next release?”  Too many Product Managers don’t learn to look beyond their narrow scope (product, market segment) and all too many don’t grasp the importance of their role as a strategist in the overall firm’s plans.  Challenge yourself or your Product Managers to take an active role in educating the firm on the market and customer situation and proposing ideas to leverage the situation for growth.
  • Communications Skills and Mastering the Art of Diplomacy.  Great Product Managers learn to speak the language of executives and they recognize that every encounter regardless of who they are meeting with, is an opportunity to build trust by understanding needs, creating shared perspectives and creating reasons for people and teams to move forward. The recent HBO miniseries, John Adams, based on David McCullough’s biography of the same name, shows the mercurial and aggressive Adams nearly destroying any chance to earn France’s support for the revolution, as he demands action and nearly destroys the hard-won credibility that Franklin had earned in several years of creating an understanding and developing shared-reasons to fight the British. The days of command and control leadership in the corporate world are generally over.  Developing a communication style that creates interest and fosters respect is essential for success.  Diplomatic skills to manage upwards, to manage across and to manage the generations and the various cultures via distributed teams are skills that will carry the Product Manager way beyond their mid-level role.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Rather than coming across as picking on Product Managers for being deficient in leadership, strategic and communication/diplomatic skills, it is my intent to encourage them to proactively develop these skills.  It is remarkably easy to get caught up in the pursuit of day to day business and forget that everyday is a chance to advance your career.  If you are fortunate enough to have a great mentor, that is good.  If not, it’s incumbent upon you to take the initiative to create the experiences necessary for you to develop and fine tune these critical skills.  Your future depends upon it.

Filed Under: Product Management Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

HR Has Yet to Establish Credibility As Weapon in War for Talent

August 22, 2008 By 2 Comments

The August, 2008 Issue of the McKinsey Quarterly Chart Focus Newsletter includes an interesting article highlighting the expanding perception gap between HR Professionals and Line Managers over HR’s role in Talent Management. 

The article: Realigning the HR Function to Manage Talent, identifies three major challenges in the continuing war for talent:

  1. Minimal collaboration and talent sharing among business units
  2. Ineffective line management
  3. Confusion about the role of HR. 

Additionally, the article offers up the latest survey results on what McKinsey describes as the declining influence of the human-resources function. Line Managers significantly differ with their HR counterparts over:

  •  HR’s capabilities to develop talent strategies aligned with business objectives (33 percentage point gap)
  • HR’s accountability for success or failure of talent-management initiatives (28 point gap)
  •  Whether Talent Management is the responsibility of HR (22 point gap). 

None of the gaps are favorable towards HR.

Art’s Quick-Take:

I’ve observed a few great HR leaders that really understand that they are key enablers of a firm’s talent management success and key participants in the strategy process.  However, many others and many HR departments remain pigeonholed as compliance police and benefits administrators.  An enlightened management team and CEO recognize the strategic value of HR.  They also recognize that talent development and management is the responsibility of all of a firm’s leaders and not just HR.

As an aside, there are no excuses for the perception gaps highlighted above.  Twenty lashes for the leadership groups that allow those gaps to emerge and sustain.

One suggestion if you are a manager or leader in a firm with a generally tactical HR function: ask for help.  You might be surprised how anxious your HR professionals are to engage in something outside the normal bounds of compliance or benefits.

While not quick to throw stones as my own functional counterparts (sales and marketing) have plenty of their own challenges, it is time for HR to stand-up and be counted on as a key enabler of strategy. They can start by helping their firm institutionalize talent identification, recruitment, retention and development.

Filed Under: Leadership, Strategy Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Strengthen Your Team By Seeking People Who Believe that They Can Grow

August 14, 2008 By Leave a Comment

In this must-read article: “If You’re Open to Growth, You Tend to Grow,” by Janet Rae-Dupree, Stanford Psychologist Carol Dweck  summarizes decades of research into how people think about intelligence and talent with the following:

“Those who believe that they were born with all the smarts and gifts they’re every going to have approach life with a fixed mind-set.  Those who believe that their own abilities can expand over time, however, live with a growth mind-set.”

Dweck goes on to indicate: “People who believe in the power of talent tend not to fulfill their potential because they’re so concerned with looking smart and not making mistakes. But people who believe that talent can be developed are the ones who really push, stretch, confront their own mistakes and learn from them.”

The article continues with some great examples and worthwhile advice for any leader or recruiter charged with building or strengthening a team. 

Rethink How and Where You Look for Talent:

The greatest personal/professional successes that I’ve witnessed over my career have come from individuals with an unyielding thirst for knowledge and personal development. While many of these individuals were gifted with natural abilities, their innate sense of adventure and experimentation and their attitude that failure puts you one step closer to success, combined to help these individuals create great careers.

Interestingly, many of the successes that I recall were with individuals working in lower-level jobs due to lack of formal credentials.  The secretary that developed into a remarkable marketing professional; the customer service rep that became a consistent top-seller and ultimately a successful sales executive and the technician that developed into a great product manager, are just a few of the examples of people that were driven by a growth mind-set.  Of course, it didn’t hurt that these professionals benefitted from a supervisor or manager along the way that took the time to get to know them and recognize their potential for growth. It took an enlightened observer to see the talent and the hunger in these individuals

Don’t Let the Pedigree Be the Only Determinant:

I can think of numerous examples of situations where clearly brilliant individuals failed miserably because they were afraid that if they slipped up, the world might question their brilliance.  Instead of helping the business, these individuals spent most of their time making certain that everyone around them understood how smart they were.  And while the academic credentials were visible, if you looked beneath the ivy, there was no innate drive to succeed; no focus on innovating and no interest even to learn by trying and failing. 

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Look back on your own recent string of hires and promotions, and if your batting average is lower than you would like it to be, consider Ms. Dweck’s advice: “look for both talent and a growth mind-set in prospective hires—people with a passion for learning who thrive on challenge and change.  And remember to open your eyes and look around you for talent in unexpected places.  Your greatest future success stories might be closer than they appear.

Filed Under: Leadership, Leading Change, Professional Growth Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Capturing Talent and Creating Great Customer Experiences: They Go Together

July 18, 2008 By Leave a Comment

The Poor Interviewing Habits of Many Managers

You would think that we would have this problem crossed off the list by now.  I wonder how organizations and leaders in good faith can let managers recruit talent without teaching them HOW to interview and holding them accountable for executing this task effectively. 

Most organizations offer some cursory training in the compliance and legal issues of interviewing, but I’m hearing from too many job seekers with hilarious (sad, but true) examples of miserable interviews.  Consider the slob that took two smoke breaks while interviewing a talented professional.  In-between breaks, his focus was on convincing the individual that he should come to work for the firm, even though they could not pay him what he was making now.  Great recruiting!  Impressive.  This person has no business interviewing. 

Questions to consider:

  • Are the interviewing skills of your managers helping or hindering when it comes to recruiting talent?
  • Do you know what your managers are saying in interviews?
  •  What’s your organizational batting average on landing the top recruits (and then keeping them)?

Great Marketing: Building Value with The Complete Customer Experience. 

I received my new 24” Apple iMac yesterday and once again, marveled at how hard this company works at creating an incredible experience for the customer.  The unpack to on-the-internet time is about 4 minutes, but the experience transcends the simplicity of set-up.  My wife helped me with the unpacking she marveled at the detail and quality of the packaging materials.  “It feels like we are unwrapping something very special,” was her comment.

It’s hard not to be awestruck by the beautiful design and the spectacular display on your desk, and I’m going on five years with our stable of Macs growing as our two sons head to college.  The products always work and it’s still exciting to use one. 

Questions to Consider:

  • Are your customers saying the same things about your offerings?
  • Are your employees obsessed with creating great customer experiences?

The Bottom-Line: Talent Fuels Performance:

There’s no way that an organization that accommodates sloppy interviewing habits is landing and retaining the best and brightest.  As a business leader, you want your customers to constantly be surprised and delighted.  A manager that takes mid-interview smoke breaks and badgers a talented candidate about salary expectations is someone that I want working for my competitor. 

My suggestions:

  • HR, get it in gear as the trustee of talent and create systems and tools to ensure best interviewing practices are developed and reinforced. 
  • Leadership Team: It’s not all HR’s job.  Set high standards and demand excellence at all levels in the hiring process. 
  • Managers at all levels: evaluate the interviewing habits and track records of your managers and supervisors. 

There are no excuses for getting this wrong and just one reason for getting it right: success. 

Filed Under: Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , , ,
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