meetKendall.com

This is weekly roundup of a few of my blogging friends.

John Song blogs about how Competition Drives Performance.  Based upon John’s competitive experiences, he illustrates how the thrill of competing on the golf course can drive performance…even if it’s for only $2.

Tamara Dull finally gets a moment to blow the dust of her blog…and gets her own domain name http://www.tamaradull.com. 

Michael Arrington talks to Yahoo’s CTO about moving beyond the Microsoft deal.  I blogged about the risks and strategic nature of a potential Microhoo back in February.

I’ve been doing a lot of interviewing and hiring lately and my friend Robert Hacker provides some practical advice on interviewing.  Coincidentally, Robert and I are both celebrating our one year anniversary of blogging.  Robert does a much better job of describing the makeup of his audience.  Perhaps that is a function of Robert using Typepad vs. WordPress.  Though I like Google as a platform, their Blogger platform is not as robust in this area as WordPress. 

Bill Gates bids farewell to his full-time duties at Microsoft.  Watch Tom Brokaw’s full interview with Bill.  I was particularly impressed with Bill’s ideas on trying to motivate corporations to use their strength for helping poor people in the world.  The entire interview is very inspiring. 

Twenty years and one month ago today, I graduated from Purdue University’s Krannert School of Management.  What a proud day.  Since I previously flunked out of college but later received straight A’s, my Father actually shed a few tears at the ceremony.  A happy day indeed.

I’ve been fortunate to be in the right place at the right time a few times in my career.  Because of that luck, I feel like I’ve earned some success.  Yet no matter what may be accomplished in the future, earning my degree from Purdue is by far my most proud accomplishment.  Go Boilers!  Hail Purdue!  (don’t forget to check out the “with distinction” sticker on the right of my diploma).

Twenty years ago today, June 13, 1988, I began my professional career with Oracle Corporation.  I arrived on Sunday, June 12, just in time for an earthquake during a reception party for my fellow college graduates.  The most impressive thing about meeting folks were their credentials:  graduates from Harvard, Stanford, MIT and Carnegie-Mellon were most represented and a few folks, such as myself, from little old Purdue. 

Sunday night before class, I became violently ill from food poisening.  With almost no sleep, I can recall former Oracle CFO, Jeffrey Walker, telling the class that “…at Oracle, we set the bar high.”  I never thought I’d make it through bootcamp. 

Over the next three weeks, we learned Oracle’s products, sales skills, consulting skills, and a variety of other “soft” skills training.  But mostly, we learned the Oracle Way.  Of course, meeting Larry Ellison during evening events was very special.  I often thought I might take over for him.  After all, I’m much younger than Larry!

I’m very proud of the time I spent at Oracle, I met a lot of very good friends who I continue relationships with today.  Indeed it was a terrific institution to begin one’s career.  Upon graduation from bootcamp, everyone received Howard Miller quartz alarm clock, which works to this day.  Enjoy!

As a fifth time CEO, I have bootstrapped my own organizations and I have taken over existing ones.  Which one is harder?  Taking control of an existing organization is certainly the most challenging and I blogged about how to find a great fitting CEO job last month.  My advice to anyone in this situation is to spend the first few weeks listening to people from each area of the organization carefully.  In those first few weeks, build a mind map of the high level process for the organization - product development, lead generation, prospect qualification, proposals and contracts, production, shipment, invoicing, collections, quality assurance - literally everything that makes up turning ideas or widgets into cash.  Once you’ve listened to each area, you will be able to determine weak points in the organization and the current major focus of the management team. 

It is also important to understand clearly why the board of directors brought you in.  After all, you’re an outsider.  What wasn’t the board or company getting from those already in the company?  What created the need for bringing in someone from the outside?  Was it to fix a problem in a certain area?  Was it growth?  Was it fund raising?  Knowing what that goal was by the board, and helping them reach those goals, should be one of your primary focuses.  Those first few weeks listening should give you great insight into how to achieve the goals for which you were hired.

Leading Indicators

As quickly as possible, you must focus on getting real-time information about where the company is going, and most specifically the areas in which you want to fix.  Examine the available internal software applications and insist that information is provided to you in summary format.  Leading indicators, or as business consultants, we like to call them Key Performance Indicators, which are critical to making decisions on implementing new initiatives or improving existing initiatives that get you to where the company is going.  Having this summary or “dashboard” of Key Performance Indicators, however small, will hopefully allow you to measure the daily, weekly or monthly trends. 

You must ensure the company is focused on the future and not dazing into the rear-view mirror looking only at historical data.  Point people forward and begin asking questions about what they think the future looks like in their market, products or services and especially financials. 

Communicate

You should quickly determine your short-term focus.  Make assessments about what is holding back growth.  If demand is outpacing supply, what bottlenecks in your production capacity are keeping you from reaching that demand?  If quality is an issue, focus on that area.  If sourcing raw materials are an issue, focus on that.  If supply or inventory are outpacing demand, what is it about demand that is keeping you from growing?  If it is a lack of leads, focus on marketing.  Determine what’s working and tap people around you to experiment with new initiatives.  Assess your sales team and determine if you need to improve or upgrade the existing staff.  Regardless what your initial focus is, communicate your intentions of that focus with the team so as to set their expectations.  You heard a lot in those first few weeks, and some people may expect you to work magic for their problem but your short-term focus may not be in their area.  Acknowledge what you heard needs to improve but communicate frequently about your focus and accomplishments made by the team. 

There are three ways to becoming CEO:  Start your own company, be promoted into the CEO post at your existing company, or, as an outsider, take over as CEO of an existing company.  Pretty simple right?  It is much easier becoming CEO of your own company because the only person you must convince of your skills and a match is you.  Being promoted to the CEO post isn’t quite as simple but you have the advantage that people in the organization know you and your transition into the CEO’s office is sometimes seamless.  Accepting a CEO appointment from the outside is much more tricky than either of the other two.  Assuming you have experience with all aspects of a business and of leading teams, perhaps even as CEO, there are several important factors to consider in finding that new CEO post, most of which have to do with knowing thyself. 

Know Your Goals

Knowing why you want to be CEO of a company is critical.  Do you have proven leadership skills in seeing the bigger picture and helping others to succeed or are you only looking for fame and fortune?  Why you want to be CEO is important but more importantly, what do you want from life.  You may want to begin by writing down your most important life goals and then why you want to be CEO.  See how your life goals match up with why you want to be CEO and begin to develop a picture in your mind’s eye about what kind of organization might fit with those goals. 

Know Your Skills

I was looking for an organization and people who would benefit from my rounded skill set.  My experience in sales and sales leadership would be a good match for a company that has great growth opportunity but lacks a strong sales structure.  My experience in legal contracts are a good match for a company with a strong culture of utilizing legal contracts but perhaps where most of that expertise lies within their law firm and not internally.  My experience in developing complex software systems will be useful in a company with smart individuals but where methodology is lacking.  Examine your leadership skills and refine that picture in your mind’s eye about what might be a good match between your skills and an organization.

Know Your Values

People have differing values and knowing your own values will help to match you with cool people like you.  What you value guides your behavior and within a company, behavior defines culture.  Knowing your own values will help you tremendously in matching up culturally with a company.  If your values differ significantly from a company, you will more likely fail in your new role.  It was more important for me to find a company where the current leadership and board matched my values than to find, say, a cool company. 

Open the Rolodex

Armed with your inventory of goals, skills and values, you are ready to look for that company which is a match.  Executive recruiters who know you already are a good place to start.  Think about other people you’ve met over the years such as people involved in private equity firms, venture capital firms, and other local CEOs.  Call them, meet with them, tell them about your goals, your skills and your values.  Sharing yourself with them will help you to find the right opportunity, not just any opportunity.  Get on LinkedIn and other sites to both look for open opportunities and to extend your network.  For me, networking with people I know produced significantly greater results than working through executive recruiters.

The Choice is Yours

I began my search in January by meeting with leaders in my full local network.  Through January and February, I met with roughly two people per day.  Towards mid-March, there were four opportunities that became mutually interesting.  Three of them matched my skills, two matched my goals and two matched my values.  Only one company matched all three.  I’ve been at my new post nearly two months now and thoroughly loving it. 

Many people choose to work in a company that’s cool and others choose to work with cool people.  For me, the choice of looking for a match to my goals, skills and values led me to a cool company with cool people.  Lucky?  Remember, it’s always your choice and remember to Know Thyself!

Rober Hacker, author of the blog Sophisticated Finance, wrote a recent post entitled “The Consequences of Technology Adoption.”  In the article, Robert references a paper by two Harvard Professors who say that a country’s economic expansion is directly related to its pace of adopting new technologies.  This is very compelling data that I believe also applies to a company and perhaps even individuals. 

If a company adopts certain advanced technologies quickly, they may gain an edge on their local and global competitors.  This can be seen in traditional industrial companies such as automobile manufacturing and computerized airplane design.  It also most certainly applies in the online world of business, such as Google, Microsoft and other companies who are quick to adopt technologies that enable sales, supply chain and employee access directly from their web site. 

If evidence can be measured between countries and companies in the same industries, can evidence be found for comparing individuals?  In other words, if I trash my three-year-old laptop for a new Macintosh, trade in my Blackberry (though it’s pretty advanced) for an iPhone, and upgrade my car to include Bluetooth technology, won’t I have greater economic expansion than the guy who competes for my next job?  Tell me what you think, I want to know your opinion.

What causes a company culture to be fun, productive and professional while others are full of politics, disintegration and dissention?  Why do some companies make the book of lists for best place to work and others don’t?  Simply, a company’s culture is defined by the behaviors of its people, most notably by its leadership, beginning with the board and the Chief Executive Officer. 

Behavior defines culture and what the leadership of a company values effects the way they behave and therefore the entire organization.  Each person within a company comes with a certain worldview of things.  This worldview is a collection of what they have been taught and experienced from the earliest age until working age.  What we each value evolves as we age and those values cause us to behave in ways that define our culture.  Therefore, a company culture is defined by what it values.

Employees within a company shape their behavior to match what is acceptable and what is not acceptable according to behavior of the company’s leadership.  The leadership within a company can help to shape employee and their own behavior by specifically outlining the purpose of the organization and its core values.  A written mission statement, purpose, vision and values can be useful in helping to define the guardrails of behavior when it is combined with a humble leadership team who is willing to be scrutinized by their own written purpose and core values. 

We’ve all seen companies whose written mission and values hang on a wall yet behavior is not affected by those written words because of a lack of willingness in the leadership to use those values as a guide for people’s behavior including their own.  If what you value is important, you should write it in a succinct statement that can help guide behavior.

I participated as an executive in the leadership of a company, including the CEO, to define and use a mission statement that outlined our purpose and values into a single mission statement.  It went like this:

“[Company] is an innovative professional services and software firm that partners with clients worldwide to maximize their use of new and existing information technologies.  In fulfilling our mission we act with mutual respect, honesty, uncompromising integrity, and fiscal responsibility resulting in long-term relationships with:

• Customers:  We seek to exceed their expectations.
• Employees:  They are our greatest asset.  We provide a progressive environment with opportunities and recognition.
• Partners/Vendors:  We work together to our mutual benefit.”

The combined purpose and values in this statement lasted for many years.  Executives and managers used it to recruit, and as a guide for behavior during one-on-one and group interactions.  Our strong CEO asked people to hold him personally accountable to the mission and values contained within.  The culture was exciting and fun because we felt strongly about our values and allowed it to guide our behavior. 

Another company I visited recently stated the following three values to guide behavior:

• Customer Loyalty
• Employee Quality of Life
• Sustainable Profitability

Compare that with the specificity of the core values I recently read of another organization:

• Absolute Truth
• Absolute Compassion

In both cases, the organizations are attempting to write down what they value to guide behaviors.  In the first one, the values do not specify what behaviors are acceptable for customer loyalty or sustainable profitability.  Its focus is more of a purpose.  In the second one, the organization outlines specific behaviors of the individuals within which to operate but not necessarily the finer points of its purpose.  In each case, I may be missing the finer details of how they communicate their mission and values but hopefully the point is made that you need both to more specifically guide behaviors that shape culture.

If you don’t have a written purpose or mission statement along with specifically stating what you value in your organization, you should take the time to write it down.  Invite your leadership team to participate in a session where you discuss their own personal values and upon completion, ask each individual to hold you accountable to them.  It’s a simple exercise that will guide behaviors and therefore shape your culture.

I recently opined about whether Microsoft’s bid for Yahoo is a strategic or panic move by the company.  Choosing which businesses to be in is an extremely important part of any executive team.  And the recent band of armchair executives continues to opine whether Microsoft should continue its bid or look for other means of growth and diversification.  Should Microsoft stalk different prey or are they finally growing up?  Contrast these recent opinions between Randall Stross of the New York Times and David Kirkpatrick of Fortune Magazine. 

Fred Wilson, a VC in NYC, has an excellent post today with his thoughts on choosing board members.  Though I may reorder the attributes of a solid board member, I agree wholeheartedly with his post.

The management of a company freely makes decisions for their companies in the face of avoiding entropy.  At the highest level, these decisions include:

• Choosing which businesses to be in
• Choosing the right business strategy (or business plan) with components such as a sales and marketing strategy, a facilities strategy, a legal strategy and so on
• Choosing the right systems, including decision-making systems, incentive systems, management systems, etc.
• Choosing the right organization structure and
• Choosing the right people 

In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins studied 11 companies whose stock outperformed the market by 3x over a 15 year period.  One of the tenets made in the book is to first get the right people, then decide what you’re doing.  Though there may be some debate about choosing the right businesses and organizing properly before getting the right people, there’s no question that deciding on the right organization structure can be critical. 

Recent evidence of an example for organizing properly is Nike.  For years, Nike was organized by product type:  shoes, apparel, equipment, etc.  In 2005, Mark Parker, the new CEO of Nike, organized entirely around sports:  golf, soccer, skateboarding, etc.  Though it took some time to see benefits, Nike began growing at a stronger pace and the stock market has rewarded them for the results.  Most certainly this was a painful reorganization of the company but has paid huge benefits.  On the increase, Nike Skate, the division that makes and sells products to the Skateboarding world, went from a stalled and money-losing operation of $25 million per year to $200 million per year.  What a case study on the proper organization structure! 

Surely Nike has always had great people but organizing properly for your market is critical.  I wonder what Microsoft and Yahoo might be able to glean from this, should the merger be successful and even if it is not.