The Big Idea: Before You Make That Big Decision... The Idea in Brief When executives make big strategic bets, they typically depend on the judgment of their teams to a significant extent. The people recommending a course of action will have delved more deeply into the proposal than the executive has time to do. Inevitably, lapses in judgment creep into the recommending team’s decision-making process (because its members fell in love with a deal, say, or are making a faulty comparison to an earlier business case). This article poses 12 questions that will help executives vet the quality of decisions and think through not just the content of the proposals they review but the biases that may have distorted the reasoning of the people who created them. Thanks to a slew of popular new books, many executives today realize how biases can distort reasoning in business. Though there may now be far more talk of biases among managers, talk alone will not eliminate them. For most executives, these reviews seem simple enough.
Liar, liar! Startup on fire! (Editor’s note: Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank is the author of Four Steps to the Epiphany. This story originally appeared on his blog.) There’s something about the combination of human nature (rationalization and self deception) and large hierarchical organizations (corporations, military, government, etc.) that actively conspire to hide failure and errors. Institutional cover-ups are so ingrained that we take them for granted.Yet for a startup, a cover-up culture is death. In a startup, founders and the board need to do exact the opposite of a large company – failures need to be shared, discussed and dissected to extract “lessons learned” so a new direction can be set. The first time I saw a corporate cover-up was as a new board member of a medium size public company. What was a surprise was the boldface lies the VP told us at the board meeting. It would have been so much simpler for him to say, “We’re screwed, and I need your help.”
5 things you’re doing that are killing your culture (Editor’s note: Clate Mask is co-author of the New York Times bestseller Conquer the Chaos and CEO of Infusionsoft. He submitted this column to VentureBeat.) We’re kind of crazy about culture at my company. Hiding the numbers – Does everyone in your company know where the company stands financially? Hoarding the decision-making – It’s easy to keep decision-making authority restricted to one person or a small group. Withholding praise - In Marcus Buckingham’s book, “First Break all the Rules,” he suggests people need specific positive feedback on their job performance AT LEAST every seven days. Bottling up the strategy - Is your strategy plan clearly articulated, written out and shared with the company or stuck in the recesses of your mind? Talking down to employees – Too many in the labor pool are made to feel like second class citizens. VentureBeat and marketing expert Dan Freeman are working on a Marketing Automation buyers report.
The hallmarks of a great boss There are plenty of bad bosses. There are fewer good ones. But it’s especially rare to find a great boss. Stanford professor and author Bob Sutton looks at the hallmarks and strategies of that rare breed in this Entrepreneur Thought Leader Lecture given at Stanford University. While traditional management theory indicates that monitoring employee monitoring and processes is the path to greatness, his own research shows just the opposite. (Can’t see the video? VB's working with marketing expert Scott Brinker to understand the new digital marketing organization. Do you need a data scientist? How can big data and smart analytics tools ignite growth for your company? Find out at DataBeat, May 19-20 in San Francisco, from top data scientists, analysts, investors, and entrepreneurs. Register now and save $200! Some of the world’s biggest tech companies from Google to Facebook are data-driven, but few startup founders have any idea what a data scientist does, never mind whether they should hire one. What does a data scientist do? DJ Patil led LinkedIn’s data science team and is now the Data Scientist in residence at Greylock Partners. For startups, the most relevant applications of data science are probably decision science and product and marketing analytics. Product analytics covers anything from how users are reacting to new features to developing standalone data products. Using data to showcase or market a product is the domain of marketing analytics. Who are the data scientists? Since data science is a new area, practitioners often migrate from other fields.
How to actually get things done in virtual meetings Forget the company conference room. Coworkers no longer need to be in the same office space — let alone the same time zone — to hold a productive progress reports or brainstorming session. We asked nine young entrepreneurs about how they conduct virtual meetings between their startup teams, and actually get things done while doing so. Stick to the agenda Since it’s incredibly easy to get off task in a virtual meeting, it’s important to have an agenda, listing only a few goals of the meeting and complete with an overall time limit. Nick Friedman, @NickFriedman1, College Hunks Hauling Junk Start the meeting beforehand Sending supporting information before the meeting can often help save you time in the meeting, since everyone is already briefed on the basics. Jason Evanish, @Evanish, Greenhorn Connect Remember, the clock is ticking For even more efficiency, put a time limit on each subject of the agenda and ruthlessly cut off rambling. Kelly Azevedo, @krazevedo, She’s Got Systems
The 5 traits of radically successful people I have a crazy idea: success isn’t just about hard work. We hear about hard work all the time—it’s what Olympic champions talk about when they get to the top of the podium and it’s what the media credits as the sole force behind of multimillion-dollar Internet entrepreneurs. But there has to be something else in the equation of obtaining unimaginable success. What helped propel their careers before they had track records? For the past year I’ve been fortunate enough to interview some of the world’s most successful people to find the answers to these very questions. 1. In his early twenties, Tim Ferriss, bestselling author of The 4-Hour Workweek, was running an online sports nutrition company and realized that he would be risking his businesses’ survival if he followed the industry standard of accepting payment up to twelve months after the product was shipped. “Everyone followed those rules,” Ferriss revealed to me. Ask yourself what rules in your industry you accept as fact. 2. 3. 4.