Box CEO Aaron Levie: To Create Something Exceptional, Do Sweat The Small Stuff. Fast Company wants you to have your best year yet in 2012; click for more advice and tips on how to work smarter, manage your career, and lead a more meaningful life. Business schools and most jobs don’t teach you how important it is to sweat the small stuff. In fact, we’re mostly told the opposite--don’t be a micromanager, don’t be penny wise and pound foolish, don't miss the forest for the trees. The implied wisdom is that abstract and conceptual thinking always prevails over narrow determination and single-mindedness. And yet, when we look at the greatest inventions, greatest companies, and greatest teams of our time, their success always comes down to tireless concern over every last detail. Big, sluggish companies--you know the ones, with brands that elicit ambivalence instead of aspiration--are fat, dumb, and uncaring for a reason. It’s certainly easy as a startup to focus on the small things, because when you’re small, every issue is big.
Why the small stuff is so important. Stop Competing to Be the Best - Joan Magretta. With Cyber Monday, the tablet wars kicked into full swing. Which one is the best? Is it the iPad? The Kindle? Who has the best technology? The best distribution? Who’s the best overall? But if you want to win, says Michael Porter, this is absolutely the wrong way to think about competition. Consider a business as prosaic as seating for airport waiting areas. If there is no “best” airport seat, now think about all of the industries in the economy. Yet, it’s a pervasive idea. In war, there can be only one winner. Here’s the problem: When rivals all pursue the “one best way” to compete, they find themselves on a collision course, trapped in a destructive, zero-sum competition that no one can win.
Instead, Porter urges a different kind of competition: compete to be unique. Grasp the true nature of business competition and you’ll see that the performing arts provide a better analogy than war or sports. What’s your organization’s underlying model of how competition works? Five Common Strategy Mistakes - Joan Magretta. By Joan Magretta | 1:15 PM December 8, 2011 I just finished a two-year project looking at Michael Porter’s most important insights for managers. Connecting the dots between his classic frameworks (the five forces, for example) and his latest thinking (the five tests of strategy) gave me a new understanding of the most common mistakes that can derail a company’s strategy.
In a previous post, I focused on the fallacy of competing to be the best. Here are five more traps I’ve seen managers fall into over and over again. Understanding Porter’s strategy fundamentals will help you to avoid them. Mistake #1. Confusing marketing with strategy. Correction: A value proposition isn’t the same thing as a strategy. Correction: Building on strength is a good thing, but when it comes to strategy, companies are too often inward looking and therefore likely to overestimate their strengths. Mistake #3: Pursuing size above all else, because if you’re the biggest, you’ll be more profitable. Mistake #4. Three Ways to Overcome Career Anxiety - Daniel Gulati. By Daniel Gulati | 1:57 PM November 30, 2011 At a recent dinner party, I was speaking with a friend who had just been promoted to vice president at a well-known New York hedge fund.
The promotion was unexpected, involved an immediate 50% pay raise, and came with broad new responsibilities. When he should have been feeling optimistic and excited about his new position, why did he look like the unhappiest person in the world? This isn’t uncommon. Many of those I interviewed echoed her sense of hollowness, a sense that seemed to be largely career- and situation-agnostic. The answer is both surprising and unique to this generation. First, they realize that large companies aren’t safe options anymore. Second, Facebook and social networks are increasing anxiety.
Finally, young leaders have more career choices than ever. But there is good news. De-emphasize prestige and compensation. These are just some of the techniques I’ve seen young leaders adopt to move forward with confidence. You’re Not As Busy As You Think. In many ways, I’m writing this post to myself. I had a very interesting conversation with my shrink the other day, wherein which he was calling me out on some of my less-attractive behaviors. He said to me, “Maybe you don’t do those things because you think you’re too busy and too needed elsewhere to do them.†(In this instance, the “things†were all the tasks I can’t seem to master in life, like paying bills on time.)
What’s interesting is that the conversation resonated with a few others I’d had. Jacqueline had asked me something about why I produce as much content as I do. Julien Smith had asked me why I still blog daily, and whether it was worth any more or less than writing weekly, or even less frequently. YOU’RE NOT AS BUSY AS YOU THINK Again, this post might be me writing to myself. Most humans want this. But it can also be another kind of addiction. If you’re busy, you must be important. I did the same to my computers. This is the hardest part for me. The CEO Should Be The Chief Experience Officer.
Earlier this week, I was chatting with my friend, co-founder and CEO of HubSpot, Brian Halligan. We were doing one of our ad-hoc strategy sessions about the business, and working through some things. After that conversation, as I was driving to a dinner meeting, an idea occurred to me. The phrase “Chief Executive Officer” doesn't convey much, if anything. There's a better way to describe the role. I will posit that in a technology company, the CEO should be the Chief Experience Officer. If the CEO can make the following set of experiences amazing, by definition, she will make an amazing company. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Notice that most of the above experiences are all about the customer. So, Don't just improve the product, improve the experience.
What do you think? How to Instill Purpose - John Baldoni. By John Baldoni | 1:26 PM November 11, 2011 A great many organizations invest a significant amount of money in trying to improve themselves. This commitment to getting better is laudable, but many times organizations overlook something within their organization that, when tapped, can sharpen focus, tighten alignment, hone execution, and — in the process — deliver better results. It’s called purpose. While a veritable tsunami of resources — many of them first-rate — exist to help individuals discover purpose, a mere trickle of resources are available to help organizations discover theirs.
This dichotomy led me to research ways to help organizations discover their purpose, and upon discovering it find ways to put it to good use. The result is Lead With Purpose, Giving Your Organization a Reason to Believe in Itself. Purpose, as savvy leaders know, is the foundation for creating vision, executing the mission, and abiding by the values of an organization. 1. 2. 3. 4.
How to Avoid Becoming a Person You Hate - Peter Bregman. I was so angry my whole body was shaking. I stared at Günther* with hate, my left hand in a fist and my right hand gripping a tennis racket as a weapon. I was ready to kill him. Was this really me? I had returned to Ann Bradney’s extraordinary workshop, The Radically Alive Leader, which I wrote about last year. One by one people stood up — people from the U.S., Colombia, Somalia, Mexico, Israel — and spoke about the cruelty they had experienced in their countries. Then a quiet woman named Nancy spoke. I could no longer restrain myself. The room went silent. Nancy shrank, and I didn’t care. Then Ian, who hadn’t yet said a word, spoke into the silence. “You scare me.” I scared him? But Ian was on to something deep and important. It makes us feel better to separate ourselves from people whose behavior we don’t like. I am not saying that we should excuse violence or poor behavior. It didn’t take long for me to learn that lesson firsthand.
Every time the racket slammed down, I flinched.