How Three Companies Tweet Without Fear

I liked the piece in today’s Wall Street Journal by Elizabeth Holmes and on how three different companies deal with Twitter. My old personal favorite was Sea World, where they had Shamu tweeting. It took a while for me to “get” Twitter, but I love the service and along with HootSuite, I find it one of the indispensible tools to keep me up-to-date on the world of business…and other things as well. For example, during football Sunday’s, I keep my iPad next to me as I watch games as I follow the former head of NFL officiating Mike Pereira (@MikePereira) as he tweets about officiating issues regarding the games and gives his followers the correct information on why calls were or were not made.

From today’s article:

This week AMR Corp.'s American Airlines found itself caught in a public spat after actor Alec Baldwin vented on Twitter after being removed from an American flight. "Flight attendant on American reamed me out 4 playing WORDS W FRIENDS," Mr. Baldwin tweeted, referring to a Scrabble-like online game.

American replied via Twitter asking for his contact information. A day later, American tweeted, "UPDATE: Facts about yesterday's removed passenger" along with a link to a statement giving a less-flattering account of the passenger's behavior without mentioning Mr. Baldwin's name. Mr. Baldwin deactivated his Twitter account after the incident and apologized to his fellow passengers.

Companies are adopting a variety of strategies for navigating Twitter's pitfalls. One of the biggest issues is how many people to trust with a company's account, known as its handle. Spread the authority too thin, and the burden can be overwhelming. Authorize too many people, and the risk of mishaps multiplies. Here's how three very different companies—Southwest Airlines Co., Whole Foods Market Inc. and Best Buy Co.—are approaching the task.

From Drucker to Zuckerberg With a Little Page For Good Measure

Over the past three months, I hadn’t gotten my Fortune magazine. Based on a combination of moving from Syracuse to Boca Raton and that my subscription expired, I hadn’t read the publication for some time. So this morning, sitting outside drinking coffee and eating Cote France’s wonderful almond croissants, I had the chance to renew my longstanding love for this magazine. The magazine (which I now also have on my iPad) gave me a chance to read stories that started with Peter Drucker and ended up with the epic battle between on going between Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Page in the Battle for the Future of the Web. My only wish is that the Fortune website would make it easier to find the articles from the print pub so I can make sure that my students and friends can read them.

I particularly liked the short piece on Francis Hesselbein, who reminded me again of one of Drucker’s five questions:

1. What is our mission?
2. Who is our customer?
3. What does the customer value?
4. What are our results?
5. What is our plan?

For Hesselbein, who used to be the CEO for the Girl Scouts of USA, the mission was “short, powerful and compelling: To help each girl reach her own highest potential.” You have to love that mission, and it isn’t something that would be spit out of the Dilbert Mission Statement generating machine.

On Dancing with the Stars, Hiring and Never-Ever Giving Up

On an overcast and rainy Sunday morning, after reading about Stanford’s amazing win on ESPN.com, some interesting things from the paper over a couple of cups of coffee:
But my first smile of the day came from seeing JR Martinez on the cover of People magazine. While most of you know JR from Dancing with the Stars, he is also a graduate of the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities program…a program that I am proudly associated with...pick up that magazine and try not to smile when you read about this amazing young man. Here is a link to a story on the People magazine piece from JR’s home town Dalton Daily Citizen. Congratulations JR!

From the NY Times…while it’s much easier said than done, In a Big Company, Make Everyone an Entrepreneur. The article, a recurring weekly feature by Adam Bryant, is an interview with Lynn Blodgett. president and chief executive of ACS, an I.T. services subsidiary of Xerox.

From the article:

A. One of the ways that we do it is we drive the P.& L. as deep into the organization as we can. We have a P.& L. at a customer level, that’s mandatory. We have to be able to see how we’re doing with that customer. A lot of companies can’t do that. In our business we drive the P.& L. down to the people who are actually doing the work. So if we can make a P.& L. for a $10 million business, we’ll give that guy the P.& L. and he’ll have profit accountability, revenue accountability and customer satisfaction accountability. And as they grow, they make more money. That results in a higher performance, in my opinion.
So you give people control, hold them accountable, give them control of their resources, and then monitor what they do. And if you do that, you’re going to tap into, in our business, the highest level of drive — entrepreneurial drive. I want ACS to look like a whole bunch of sole proprietorships. Because that way, people are thinking to themselves, “If this was my money, if I was doing this, would I really spend it? Do I have to buy that computer right now or can I get by with my one that’s two years old?”
Q. What else is important to your leadership style?
A. Another is that nobody is above being moved, being touched, being influenced by a small gesture. I’ve experienced it myself. Somebody might call me or send me an e-mail to say, “Hey, I got that bonus and I just want you to know that really means a lot to me.” We have 85,000 employees, and I don’t get 85,000 e-mails. So when I get one it means a lot.
So it’s the little things. Like writing a note that says, “You did a great job,” or: “I’m sorry I got after you. You’re a super performer, and I lost my patience with you, and that’s my error, and forgive me for doing that.” We also set up phone calls when we win a deal, and we’ll get the team together and say: “Hey, tell me about that. What was the hardest thing? How did it come together?”

From the same article on hiring:

How do you hire? What questions do you ask?
A. The very first question is always “Tell me about yourself.” And not the résumé — I don’t want the résumé. Just tell me about yourself. What do you like? What do you enjoy doing? Because I think you can tell a lot from very open-ended questions.
Then I will say, “If you had the perfect job, what would you do?” And then I always ask: “Why do you want to come here? What is it about us?” Then, finally, “What do you think you could do to help us?” In the positions that I’m looking for, when you ask people what they can to do help, you often get some great answers and insights.
Q. What are the qualities you’re looking for?
A. People who are honest. That’s the No. 1 thing. I don’t have a test for that. I think that’s one where you have to go with your gut for a lot of it. And this is my prejudice because I didn’t go to college, but their intellect, their ability to think, is more important to me than any degrees they might have. And are they loyal? Will they take risks? Do they have integrity? Frankly, the technical aspects of it are way, way down on the list.

And in the Opinion section, What Tax Dollars Can’t Buy, Did you Hear the One About the Bankers and Our Unpaid, Extra Shadow Work give somewhat different perspectives on the current economic discussion.

From Dugout Phones to Netflix

I’ve been enjoying reading newspapers and magazines on my iPad, and in the last couple of days there were more than a few articles that caught my eye.

First, especially after the problems last night in the World Series with the dugout telephones, I went back and re-read the NY Times story in the Sunday paper on the use of that old relic of an instrument of communication in the dugout Ironically, Tony LaRussa was the cover photo for the story. From the article:

While landlines in homes collect dust and serve increasingly decorative functions, the attitude among baseball clubs is a familiar one in a sport tied tightly to old-fashioned ways: why change what works?

“The same old phones, the same old process,” said Derek Lilliquist, the bullpen coach of the St. Louis Cardinals. “I guess they’ve been that way forever.”
In today’s Wall Street Journal, there were a couple of articles about entrepreneurs that caught my eye; one dealing with China and the restaurant industry and the other dealing with entrepreneurial bankers.

A Secret Recipe in China details the story of an entrepreneur in the restaurant industry who did what some of the major chains couldn’t do…succeed in China. From the article:

Shanghai's hygiene bureau objected when Scott Minoie tried to build an open kitchen in his first Element Fresh restaurant nearly a decade ago, saying it would be unsightly: "too foreign."
But the Boston native persuaded officials to let him press ahead, confident that Chinese consumers, concerned with food safety, would appreciate a Western-style bistro that lets diners see their laffa-bread salads and raspberry smoothies while they're being made.
Now he has a chain of 11 restaurants. Sales are on track to hit $30 million this year, up 40% from last year, according to Element Fresh's managing partner, Frank Rasche. The chain's profit margin hovered between 10% and 15% last year, he says. They plan to open about 40 more outlets in China by 2015.


Go West, Investment Banker, tells the tale of one particular gentleman who went to KeyBank from Bank of America. From the article:

In July, though, the 42-year-old Mr. Fowler left the second-largest U.S. bank by assets, where he was a director covering private equity, and moved to Cleveland. He joined KeyCorp, a regional bank with a loan portfolio a tenth the size of Bank of America's, to do a similar job.
The deals at KeyCorp are smaller—and so is the paycheck—but becoming a big fish in the relatively small pond of regional banking has its advantages. In his new role, he can take on a larger role in the bank, while enjoying the benefits of living in the Midwest.

"It's very entrepreneurial," says Mr. Fowler. At Bank of America, he says he was one among legions of bankers focused on "elephant hunting" for billion-dollar deals that have become increasingly scarce. By contrast, at KeyCorp, "there's a real energy and excitement here," he says.

This week, I also sat in on Professor Brian Sommer’s Managing Organization class. Students did presentations on various companies, and one of them was Netflix. It was particularly interesting to hear about the problems of this company, given the press they’ve been getting lately. Today’s paper followed the problems of this company with a piece, Netflix Shares Sink 35%...never the headline you want to see for your company.

Now, back to my iPad.

HP's Interesting Move

Will HP’s move to hire Meg Whitman cause corporate CEO’s to decide not to keep strong exec’s on their boards? While I haven’t been following the last few months of HP particularly closely, I was surprised to see the way that they handled the firing of Leo Apotheker. What I find interesting now is the question of whether, if you’re a corporate CEO, would you want a strong unemployed or retired executive on your Board? Now I know that any strong CEO shouldn’t be intimidated by having strong exec’s in the boardroom, but I wonder now if many will find that tempts fate a bit too much and decide to take the safe route and have pals on their Board. After all, if you’re a young head football coach, you don’t generally have as offensive or defensive coordinators seasoned coaches who could step in and take your place the minute the owner becomes displeased. In the same manner, unless you’re a Jeff Immelt or Bob Lutz, with the notion of HP in your mind, you might want to not have your successor sitting there tempting the rest of the Board to make a move. And having a weak board is a move that will almost always hurt the company and its stockholders.

US News yesterday ranked Lynn University number 4 in USA for percentage of international students attending with 17 percent of its student body coming from other nations. By the numbers, Lynn University students come from 87 countries (and 44 states in the US). This also means Lynn is number one for international students among schools who appear in the publication’s listing of “Regional Universities” in the South—this was the list Lynn appeared in for the 2011 rankings. We’re in some very good company here with schools in this ranking including Purdue, Columbia University, Carnie Mellon, Northeastern and Princeton.

Now, as a student or parent…why is this important? The reason this international focus on campus is so important came through loud and clear to me this week when I sat in Professor John Cipolla’s Managing Organizations class. John was leading an outstanding discussion about the intersection of management decisions and ethics. What made that discussion so rich was that students from North America, South America, India and beyond all were able to bring their own unique perspectives to the conversation…so rather than it just being a discussion from the US perspective, we were able to hear directly from students who have grown up and lived elsewhere. This diverse student population will provide our graduate with a distinct advantage as they will see their jobs and responsibilities from a truly global perspective.

The Business of the Gym Business...Gym Jones is Interestingly Different

Yesterday’s NY Times had several interesting articles and retrospectives. On the business front, I particularly enjoyed the piece on the Gym Jones, a unique fitness gym that has nothing that most of the modern gyms have…but is doing very well. The article addressed so many of the topics that we like to talk about in the business school including opportunity recognition, customer retention, growth, customer service and all from the perspective of the fitness industry.

A willingness to take on famous clients has actually been problematic for Gym Jones. The studio cash is nice, and the “300” notoriety was rewarding; a version of a 300-rep workout designed for the cast as a graduation test has gone viral and was even plugged by Men’s Health. But the Twights prefer privacy. They aren’t angling for their own line of protein powders or a reality show, and accept only 30 to 40 clients at a time. If you are hearing about them through their work with stars, a tiny part of the gym, your chances of getting in are pretty much zero.

The Twights generally require an interview or a referral from a current Gym Jones client, the completion of a written application that’s more of a fitness SAT than anything and, if you pass that step, a workout with Mr. MacDonald, a world champion mixed-martial-arts fighter. “If I’m surrounded by substandard people, I’m not going to work that hard myself,” Mr. MacDonald said. Again, it’s right there on that full-of-itself Web site: “We choose clients. Clients don’t choose us.”

Gym Jones has another reason to guard its privacy: its military customers like it that way. Although the Twights refuse to talk much about this side of their business, which occurs inside the gym and in the nearby mountains, it appears to be considerable and to involve people who are supposed to be invisible. Six of Mr. Twight’s former students, for instance, were among the 30 Americans — most of them Navy Seals, including members of the team that killed Osama bin Laden — who died in Afghanistan in August when their helicopter was shot down.


Theater is a big part of Gym Jones, which the Twights founded in 2003 in a garage with no air-conditioning and no heat. (The couple moved to Utah from Colorado in 2001 to operate a climbing-equipment company and later started Gym Jones as a side project. Eventually, the Twights decided to go full time with Gym Jones.)

Everything about the gym’s current configuration screams hard core, from the Web site (“Don’t complain if the work is too hard, or if you pass out, drop a barbell on your head, a kettle bell on your toes”) to cold décor: cinderblock walls, black rubber floor mats, fluorescent lights, no mirrors or windows. Outside magazine described the gym as “part martial-arts dojo, part smash lab, part medieval dungeon.”

Gym Jones calls clients “disciples” and prominently displays a quote from “Fight Club,” the 1999 film starring Brad Pitt. It reads in part: “Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you’re alive.”
But once you’re past all that, the mood at the gym is surprisingly warm. Mr. MacDonald, 33, has a daunting physical presence (at 6-foot-3, he can dead-lift 550 pounds) and blunt speaking style, but he also once taught kindergarten. The pixie-ish Ms. Twight, a 50-year-old jujitsu practitioner, has a quick, infectious laugh. A celebrated mountain climber, Mr. Twight, 50, is direct and aggressive but also quite polite and generous with his time

As an educator and a parent who used to struggle with the kids and homework, I also liked the article The Trouble With Homework.

From the article:

The quantity of students' homework is a lot less important than its quality. And evidence suggests that as of now, homework is not making the grade. Although surveys show that the amount of time our children spend on homework has risen over the last three decades, American students are mired in the middle of international academic rankings: 17th in reading, 23rd in science and 31st in math, according to results from the Program for International Student Assessment released last December. A new study, coming in the Economics of Education Review, reports that homework in science, English and history has "little to no impact" on student test scores. (The authors did note a positive effect for math homework.)

A Hero's Story

Hero is a word today that gets tossed around a lot, but to read about true hero’s…take a look at a piece in the Atlantic, Wounded in Iraq: A Marine's Story. It’s my honor to know the author of the story, Justin Constantine. I met him several years ago through the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans with Disabilities program at Syracuse University. Justin is an outstanding young man, and when I think of the men and women serving our country…I often times think of Justin and the incredible price he and his wife paid so we can live here in the USA. Read it, wipe the tears away from your face as you think about young Justin and Dahlia and say a prayer for them and the other 44,000 wounded warriors from Iraq and Afghanistan…and then think of what Justin says near the end of the article and reflect on how you can help in your home town.

From the article:

As September 11, 2011, approaches, take a few minutes to think of wounded warriors and our families. We are in your community, sprinkled throughout small towns and big cities. Do not let our sacrifices go unknown or forgotten. Think about helping that soldier's caregiver with everyday chores, because he or she now has two full-time jobs instead of one. And don't forget that Marine who has to put on a prosthetic leg first thing every morning. Remind yourself that far too many service members have not made it back from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Leadership Stories...Reading on an Airplane

While waiting on Labor Day while my air plane which was number 1,847 for takeoff, I had the chance to read through most of the current issue of Fortune magazine. A couple of interesting articles caught my attention…the first was Why McDonald’s Wins in Any Economy. Great story about why the Golden Arches is winning and why the CEO, a quiet, unassuming guy is leading the way.

In addition, while the days ahead will find a run of stories about 9/11, the magazine also carried a moving piece about Sandler O’Neill, a company that I’d never heard of that lost 66 employees on that sad day, and it’s resurgence led by a reluctant, yet powerful leader.

Resources for Entrepreneurs

Talking to today to one of our faculty here at Lynn University about books for entrepreneurship classes, and we agreed that there are a ton of books out there; sort of like the amount of resources that are on the web to help entrepreneurs. While some sites are better than others, here is my listing of some of my favorite’s websites/blogs. I’ll provide some of my favorite books in a coming post.

Entrepreneurs Network
Bikers Guide to Business
Daniel Pink
Ask the VC
Feld Thoughts
Sean Branagan
Sramana Mitra
The Future of Less

Leadership and the Social Entrepreneur

While drinking coffee and eating apple fritters this morning, I ran across this story about leadership in today’s NY Times. The story, Leadership Doesn’t Rest on Your Title by Adam Bryant, was about Terri Ludwig, president and C.E.O. of Enterprise Community Partners, a nonprofit housing finance organization.

First, I liked Ms. Ludwig’s comments about being a producing leader. All too often people tend to think leadership is about strategy and goal setting and all that stuff…and forget that leaders have to be out there doing things…or as she puts it…producing.

Secondly, I like the description of her transition to social entrepreneurship. So many of the social entrepreneurs I know could have led a large company or started a successful entrepreneurial one, but instead chose to put their skills to work helping others. Years ago in Orlando, I met a gentleman named Frank who ran the Boys and Girls Clubs. He was one of the absolute best business people I knew, and thank goodness he decided to take that route. By Frank doing what he did in life, he ended up helping out literally hundreds and hundreds of children and set a wonderful example for people who he motivated to start helping others as well.

From the article:

Q. How would you say your management style has evolved over time?

A. I think I’m more self-aware. When you become C.E.O. of a large organization, you become aware that you telegraph things that you may not intentionally telegraph. So you make sure that you’re really telegraphing the information that you want, and it’s important to make sure you’re keeping that energy really positive.

You also really have to think about your audience and how you’re communicating. I grew up on a trading desk, so I’m a bullet girl — give me the high points, let’s make a decision, let’s have action. But when we’re dealing with governmental partners and a lot of other partners, or even within Enterprise, there’s a healthy process. And you have to think about how to get the best result and the best outcome, and go through a process without letting it become an obstacle.

I Like (Finally) Twitter

OK, I’ll say it. I like Twitter. Finally.

For me, this was a long time in coming. I was an early adopter and got involved with Twitter in its formative days. I tweeted, read posts and followed people… people I really wanted to listen to. And then I started following lots more people…lots and lots more people so many so that I couldn’t seem to follow what anyone was saying anymore. I felt like I was sitting on the bank of the Shoshone River in Wyoming just watching the water rush by…except in my case it was watching a river of tweets run past me and there was no way I could see what anyone really was saying any more and worse yet I was missing out on lots of interesting content. For me, content is the king on Twitter as I love seeing people suggest articles in places that I’d never find. But with so much stuff roaring past me, I knew I was missing out on stuff I really wanted to read.

I talked to folks and they told me to “unfollow” people, but for my Midwestern sensibilities that just seemed plain rude. So I stopped using Twitter. Oh, I’d post things and read a bit here and there, but for me Twitter was a non-factor. And then, right before I left Syracuse to come to Lynn University, I asked social media guru Kelly Lux what she used, and she recommended Hoot Suite.

So I set up Hoot Suite, read some more stuff on the internet about Twitter, and I can say I really “get” it now. I’ve set up multiple streams on Hoot Suite that I’ve divided into things I like to read about. I’ve got an entrepreneurship stream, a politics stream (wish I had a better idea who to follow here), an interesting persons stream, a sports stream and a foodie stream. And I’ve arranged people I’m following into those streams; not everyone ends up there, so I still following the rushing river, but I just do it a couple of times a day. And I use my “streams” a lot like I would a newspaper (or CNBC on the TV in my office)…I go to it in the morning, around lunch and again in the evening to see who is saying what, and more importantly what articles they’re linking to. Which for me, is the best thing about Twitter, it allows me to read more things and be connected to more interesting content than I ever would have previously. So even though I jumped on it early, I can now say that I’m really using Twitter…and yes, I really like it.

And you can follow me at DeanTomKruczek...on my new friend...Twitter!

Technology and the Magic Kingdom

I spent part of today having a fascinating conversation with Chris Boniforti, the CIO at Lynn University. He was telling me about ways Lynn is using and planning to use technology to make everyone’s time more productive and to make things better for our student’s as well…plus making the educational experience so much richer. He even convinced me to get ready to ditch my beloved Moleskin notebooks and use an iPad instead using Evernote. Chris also told me about Inkling, a new company developing interactive textbooks for the iPad.

On the topic of technology, a friend from the southwest sent over this blog from Jennifer Fickley-Baker. This is a very nice “backstage” look at how the Walt Disney Company is using new technology to renovate their attractions. Taking a look at the video, it’s a wonderful way to use the new tablets while making it easier for your team to work together http://tiny.cc/ddpyd

Morning Reading

This morning’s New York Times had quite a few interesting articles. The artcle on Danny Meyer by Sean WIlsey was outstanding. Now I do like anything with food in it, but this piece dealt with entrepreneurship, leadership, customer service and quality…all things that companies no matter where they are on the growth scale should be thinking about. He also goes into some of the entrepreneurial demons that Mr. Meyer had to deal with as he grew his company.

The other food piece that I enjoyed dealt with Pret A Manger. The article, Would you Like A Smith With That, by Stephanie Clifford, discussed how the British company is trying to bring better customer service to the fast food industry.

I also liked the interview of Joe Torre that discussed respect in baseball…something that our world, sports or otherwise…is dearly in need of.

Summer Reading- Part 1

Through the course of the summer I had the chance to catch up on some reading. In particular, I liked two books…Enchantment by Guy Kawasaki and Double Double by Cameron Herold.
First to Mr. Kawasaki. Now I’ve been recommending Kawasaki’s Art of the Start for some time, as well as his company’s Garage Technology for resources for entrepreneurs…especially the pieces about writing an executive summary and making the pitch. Both are outstanding and I make sure to give the executive summary piece to students, entrepreneurs and social entrepreneurs who are writing a business plan. Enchantment was a different kind of book than Art, but very interesting. The book addresses what I would call is a higher level of marketing…enchantment. Lots of great examples and stories are included, and no doubt, you’ll be seeing him speaking at a location near to you. If you do, go see him…he is well worth the time and money.

Double Double was a book about growing your business. While I’m never enchanted with books that either have lists (Top 10 Ways…) or wild promises in the title, I nonetheless found D-D interesting. Since finishing the book in June, I’ve recommended this book to a number of student entrepreneurs as a grass-roots approach to developing a focused approach to starting or growing a business. The book starts with an invitation to think about your vision for the company and then moves on to specifics areas of concern to the entrepreneur such as communications, PR, technology and (one of my favorites) how to grow when it's slow. In addition, I liked the chapter, “The Roller Coaster Ride of Entrepreneurship as it brought make many memories and reminded me of other things that I need to talk to both students and entrepreneurs about.

The Millennials and PricewaterhouseCoopers

Playing a bit of catch up here, but there was an interesting article in the July 11 Wall Street Journal about one of my favorite topics…the millennials! PwC’s CEO Switches Tactics to Keep Millennials is worth reading on a number of fronts, but especially in his comments about the millennials and their interests relative to working. Dennis Nally is the CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers and the author of the article is Javier Espinoza.

From the article:

Mr. Nally: This millennial generation is not just looking for a job, they're not just looking for salary and financial benefits, they're looking for skill development, they're looking for mobility, they're looking for opportunities to acquire different skills and to move quickly from one part of an organization to another. How you manage that sort of talent and how you deal with their expectations is very different from what's been done in the past.

Mr. Nally: The millennium generation is probably the most technological group of people ever joining the workforce. How they want to work, use social media and team within a company is very different than the prior generation. If your human policies aren't responsive to what they are looking for, they are going to go to a company that is. They want less-hierarchical structures, they want more flexibility, they want to work as hard but they want to define how they do their work. If you can't figure out a way to accommodate that kind of flexibility, you're not going to be able to retain that talent.

WSJ: What [is PwC] doing to attract and retain talent?

Mr. Nally: We have adapted both how we recruit and how we work with people once they join us to suit the millennial generation. For example, in the U.S. we have set up a LinkedIn application that allows students to track the career paths of existing graduate trainees already in the firm so a student can see how a career with PwC develops. In the U.K., we use a Facebook application to connect recruits together before they join so they can begin to build their own PwC community.

We also provide mentors for our people from day one both formally and informally and encourage people to actively use their mentors to build skills and experience. We understand that flexibility and the ability to gather useful experience are key, as a result we actively encourage our people to move both between different business areas and around the world to gain experience. We also provide career breaks, flexible working, cycles of experience outside PwC and we actively encourage volunteering.

Non Profits and the Mission Statement

Terry Teachout’s column in today’s WSJ, Why Does NY Need Two Opera Companies, should be required reading for non-profit executives. While the focus is on opera, anyone in the nonprofit space can read this and see their own particular organization and consider their own mission statement.. While I think he overstates the case of the very short mission statement, a clear notion of “what do you do” and “why do you do it” needs to be at the core of everything the nonprofit does. Good luck to the Opera company in coming to grips with those questions.

From the article:

Good mission statements grow naturally out of sound strategic thinking. Peter Drucker, the great management consultant, said that a mission statement should be "short and sharply focused. It should fit on a T-shirt. The mission says why you do what you do, not the means by which you do it…. A mission cannot be impersonal; it has to have deep meaning, be something you believe in—something you know is right." That's what made "The People's Opera" so effective: It summed up in three crystal-clear words a mission that made sense.

Apple and Their Retail Stores

Just ran across the Wall Street Journal article, Secrets from Apple’s Genius Bar by Yukari Kane and Ian Sherr. While I’m not an Apple guy, I love their stores and loved this article. As entrepreneurs, there is much we can learn from this piece. Now, you might be saying to yourself that Apple is a huge company with lots of resources, how can you possibly compare us to them? However, as you read the article, think about their focus on customer service, details, and training…and then think about how you can do this better in your own organization.

From the article:

Apple lays its "steps of service" out in the acronym APPLE, according to a 2007 employee training manual reviewed by The Wall Street Journal that is still in use.
"Approach customers with a personalized warm welcome," "Probe politely to understand all the customer's needs," "Present a solution for the customer to take home today," "Listen for and resolve any issues or concerns," and "End with a fond farewell and an invitation to return."

Apple's control of the customer experience extends down to the minutest details. The store's confidential training manual tells in-store technicians exactly what to say to customers it describes as emotional: "Listen and limit your responses to simple reassurances that you are doing so. 'Uh-huh' 'I understand,' etc."

Babson Conference at Syracuse University

The Babson College Entrepreneurial Research Conference is in full-swing at the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University, and the Post Standard wrote an article on the event. Written by Charles McChesney, the article describes the conference and provides insight into some of the research which is all about entrepreneurship. The Conference, hosted by the Entrepreneurship and Emerging Enterprises Department at the Whitman School of Management, brought together 330 academic researchers from 29 countries around the world.

From the article:

Steven A. Edelson, of Walsh University in Ohio, presented on research regarding what attracts would-be employees to start-up companies. Research has shown that the success of startups can depend on getting the right kind of employees so he and his co-writers, J. Michael Haynie and Alexander McKelvie, both of Syracuse University, wanted to find how entrepreneurs could present their companies so they would appeal to potential workers.

Graduating college seniors were surveyed and said they preferred was a company that perceived to treat workers like family. That, they said, beat out innovation, style, market dominance and clearly defined job duties. “More than all the other factors combined,” Edelson said.

That’s good news for entrepreneurs, Edelman explained, because clearly defined job duties and market dominance are traits more typically found in larger, older companies. Since startups can’t compete for workers for those attributes, they can focus on the trait that research shows is most important.

Workers want “good, wholesome make-you-feel-good-at-work companies,” McKelvie said during the discussion after the presentation.

A Little Disney History

As someone who really learned business while working for The Walt Disney Company, there was something in the following story from the Associated Press on June 5 that really struck me. Thanks to Robin Dickerson for sharing this story!

Disney legends Betty Taylor, Wally Boag die within a day of each other

ANAHEIM, California — They shared a stage at Disneyland five days a week for nearly three decades and died within a day of each other.Betty Taylor, who played Slue Foot Sue in Disney's long-running Golden Horseshoe Revue, passed away Saturday — one day after the death of Wally Boag, who played her character's sweetheart, Pecos Bill.The 91-year-old Taylor died at her home in Washington state, Disneyland announced on its website. Boag, who was 90, died Friday. He was a resident of Santa Monica, California.The causes of death were not announced and attempts to contact relatives for comment were not immediately successful."Betty's role as leading lady in Disneyland's Golden Horseshoe Revue helped turn it into the longest-running stage show in entertainment history," George Kalogridis, the president of Disneyland Resort, said in a statement. "It is a tragic coincidence that her passing comes just one day after the death of longtime co-star Wally Boag."Boag, a former vaudeville performer, signed a two-week contract with Walt Disney in 1955. He originated the role of Pecos Bill in the revue, taking the stage three times a day and logging nearly 40,000 performances before retiring in 1982.Most of those shows were alongside Taylor, who joined the revue a year after Hoag. Her run on the show — which closed in 1986 — lasted nearly 45,000 performances.The Golden Horseshoe Revue is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest running stage production in show business history."Wally was instrumental in the development of live entertainment during the early years of both Disneyland Park and Walt Disney World Resort," Kalogridis said. "His characters will continue to live in the hearts of our guests, while his larger-than-life personality will forever make him the true Clown Prince of Disneyland."Boag's comedic timing influenced generations of performers, including actor Steve Martin, who called Boag his "hero." Martin tweeted Saturday that Boag was "the first comedian I ever saw live, my influence, a man to whom I aspired."Boag and Taylor both appeared on television in "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color."And before joining Disney, Boag appeared in a number of films during the 1940s, including "Without Love," starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, and "The Thrill of Romance," with Esther Williams.He later appeared in Disney films such as "The Absent-Minded Professor," ''Son of Flubber" and "The Love Bug."Born in Seattle, Taylor began taking dance lessons at age 3. At 14, she sang and danced in nightclubs across the country, and by 18, led her own band called Betty and Her Beaus, which included 16 male musicians and appeared regularly at the Trianon Ballroom in Seattle.In 1956, while living in Los Angeles and performing as a drum player with a musical group, Taylor heard about auditions for a song-and-dance job at Disneyland. She got the gig, which she held for 30 years, leading to appearances on a USO tour of Greenland and Newfoundland and a show for President Richard Nixon and his family at the White House.She performed at the park until 1987, but continued to appear in special events, such as Walt Disney's Wild West, a 1995 retrospective at the Gene Autry Museum of Western Heritage in Los Angeles.

It's Good to Be Back

After a wild end of the semester and a daughter’s wedding, it’s good to have the chance to blog again. While I have lots to get to, for starters, take a look at Me'Shae Brooks-Rolling’s article in today’s Post Standard, 12 tips for emerging entrepreneurs, which included some great thoughts on resources as well. Of the tips, my favorites were to be sure and do a business plan, seek out mentors and (especially) help others along the way. As I tell students, I've started businesses with business plans and without...and I will never, ever, ever start a business or a department within a business without doing a business plan.

Mark Russell from EMA, sent over a wonderful article... Ten Entrepreneurship Rules for Building Massive Companies from Greylock Partners. While a number of the rules resonated with me, two of my favorites were rules seven and eight.

Rule #7: Aspire, but don’t drink your own Kool-Aid. Rule #8: Having a great product is important but having great product distribution is more important.

It's good to be back!

Up in the Air and On the Way to V-WISE

Air travel in and out of Syracuse isn’t the easiest thing in the world, but traveling to speak at the V-WISE conference in San Antonio gave me the chance to read through the current issues of Fast Company and Inc Magazine. As usual, both issues carried lots of interesting articles for entrepreneurs. My favorites were in Fast Company, The Cure (by Russ Mitchell) the story of a journey of a new CEO for a hospital in Oakland. The leadership and team issues were particularly interesting.

From the article:

He quickly began building a new management team, including COO Bill Manns, who was hired from Providence Hospital in Southfield, Michigan, near Detroit. At Manns's suggestion, they immediately commenced a grassroots money hunt, which Lassiter now calls "the foundation of our success." The pair gathered the top 85 managers, formed them into a dozen teams, and gave them 16 weeks to find $21 million in cost cuts and new revenue. Lassiter says he told them: "It's up to you. We barely know where the restrooms are, so we're not going to solve this problem. You're going to solve it."

To encourage fresh thinking, Lassiter and Manns devised "odd-couple arrangements," putting together doctors, nurses, techs, and other managers. The teams drilled into vendor contracts and challenged their own habits. Take the kit used to test newborns' umbilical-cord blood, a $96.50 item. A simpler tool does the same job for 29¢. Is the more-expensive device better? How much better does it have to be to be worth the extra $96.21? ACMC had been choosing the premium option, at a cost of $322,000 a year. Now, the teams decided, ACMC could not afford it.

While I’m always a bit leery of articles providing corporate lessons from the playing field, Lessons of LeBron (by Chuck Salter) was nonetheless interesting and a fun read as well. Knowing that I always read articles on the food industry, I enjoyed Inc Magazine’s piece, Toughen Up Cupcake (by Burt Helm) on the Washington DC cupcake wars. I also thought Jason Fried’s piece How to Hire an Assistant, about how he and his partner hired an assistant particularly intriguing. I mention that because in it he mentions that when they were hiring the assistant, rather than drafting the typical boring job description, they instead the things that the assistant would have done over the last day had then been on the job. He said based on the ad, they were flooded with applicants. It still took time to find the right person, but in part that was because they neglected to include a key piece of info in the ad. But despite that misstep, it seems their approach has merit and should be considered. Here is how they described the position:

Instead of a boring list of skills—this software, that many years of experience, "team player," etc.—we wrote a list of 26 things that this person would have done in a week had he or she been working here.

The list included things such as "Booked two hotel rooms and two flights for out-of-towners"; "Packed up and shipped out about five copies of Rework to various people"; "Coordinated with Abt Electronics to schedule installation of four flat-panel TVs"; and "Researched and recommended local floral arrangers for weekly flowers for the office." This way, whoever was applying would know exactly the kind of work he or she would be expected to do. (You can read the job posting here).

What drew me to the piece was that right now in the Entrepreneurship Department we’re in the process of hiring three professors, two of which will spend a considerable amount of time mentoring student businesses. I find myself wondering if rather than drafting the usual ad, we should have said that if they were on campus, in the last day they would have taught a class, mentored a student, talked with an alum, attended a couple of meetings with student startups, and met with the E-Club on a new business idea.

Oh well, maybe next time.

Ozzie, Baseball and the World of Social Media

Major League Baseball now has to deal with wonderful world of social media. One of their managers, the White Sox’s Ozzie Guillen was tossed out of a recent baseball game for arguing with an umpire, and then went into the clubhouse and tweeted about it. Ozzie, who is no novice when it comes to getting thrown out of games, is cutting new social media ground for the business of baseball.

Baseball is a wonderful lesson for all of us…it was once America’s game, but thanks to incredibly long games, World Series games that start and end way too late at night, and a season that keeps starting earlier and ending later in the year(can you say baseball games in November?)…they’ve lost key fans to football. Of course if I was in charge of any of the four big-time sports in the US (baseball, football, basketball and hockey) I’d be terrified of the future. If you want to have some fun, ask someone who is in the age range of 16-25 how many complete games of any of those four sports have they watched recently. The answer will be very low (maybe zero) and very different from what the response would have been twenty years ago. These sports need to find a way to engage the younger audience, because without it, 20 years from now there will be half filled stadiums ...and the only games being broadcast on TV will be video games.

Party Like It's Well...You Know

With apologies to Mr. Prince, apparently on the left coast they are getting ready to party like it’s 1999. Again. Or as it was once put, “it’s déjà vu all over again.” Take a look at the article in today’s Wall Street Journal by Monica Langley, In Silicon Valley, Investors Are Jockeying Like It’s 1999.

While the article was right on target, I’m wondering why as a country we seem to be so inclined to go overboard on things. Think the last tech bubble when an investor honestly told me that “the old rules of investment didn’t apply anymore.” Or think of the recent housing bubble when everyone had to own two or three homes and TV shows were all over the “flippers.” Or the derivatives mess a few years previous. Hopefully this incarnation of growth in tech will be something different than the disaster it was the last couple times around and if not, there will be a couple of sock puppets around for people to buy and for those of us in colleges to talk about.

Scott Adams on Getting an Education in Entrepreneurship

When I saw in the Friday Wall Street Journal that Scott Adams of Dilbert fame was writing about entrepreneurship, I didn’t know whether to cheer or run and hide. Given the treatment he’s given to corporate America, I was wondering if he would turn his talents next on us. But my fears were unfounded, so when you get the chance, take a look at the article, How to Get a Real Education. In the article, he gives some lessons that he’s learned along the way. From the article:

Combine Skills. The first thing you should learn in a course on entrepreneurship is how to make yourself valuable. It's unlikely that any average student can develop a world-class skill in one particular area. But it's easy to learn how to do several different things fairly well. I succeeded as a cartoonist with negligible art talent, some basic writing skills, an ordinary sense of humor and a bit of experience in the business world. The "Dilbert" comic is a combination of all four skills. The world has plenty of better artists, smarter writers, funnier humorists and more experienced business people. The rare part is that each of those modest skills is collected in one person. That's how value is created.

Fail Forward. If you're taking risks, and you probably should, you can find yourself failing 90% of the time. The trick is to get paid while you're doing the failing and to use the experience to gain skills that will be useful later. I failed at my first career in banking. I failed at my second career with the phone company. But you'd be surprised at how many of the skills I learned in those careers can be applied to almost any field, including cartooning. Students should be taught that failure is a process, not an obstacle.

Find the Action. In my senior year of college I asked my adviser how I should pursue my goal of being a banker. He told me to figure out where the most innovation in banking was happening and to move there. And so I did. Banking didn't work out for me, but the advice still holds: Move to where the action is. Distance is your enemy.

Attract Luck. You can't manage luck directly, but you can manage your career in a way that makes it easier for luck to find you. To succeed, first you must do something. And if that doesn't work, which can be 90% of the time, do something else. Luck finds the doers. Readers of the Journal will find this point obvious. It's not obvious to a teenager.

Conquer Fear. I took classes in public speaking in college and a few more during my corporate days. That training was marginally useful for learning how to mask nervousness in public. Then I took the Dale Carnegie course. It was life-changing. The Dale Carnegie method ignores speaking technique entirely and trains you instead to enjoy the experience of speaking to a crowd. Once you become relaxed in front of people, technique comes automatically. Over the years, I've given speeches to hundreds of audiences and enjoyed every minute on stage. But this isn't a plug for Dale Carnegie. The point is that people can be trained to replace fear and shyness with enthusiasm. Every entrepreneur can use that skill.

Write Simply. I took a two-day class in business writing that taught me how to write direct sentences and to avoid extra words. Simplicity makes ideas powerful. Want examples? Read anything by Steve Jobs or Warren Buffett.

Learn Persuasion. Students of entrepreneurship should learn the art of persuasion in all its forms, including psychology, sales, marketing, negotiating, statistics and even design. Usually those skills are sprinkled across several disciplines. For entrepreneurs, it makes sense to teach them as a package.

Delighting Your Customer

Alec Stern, one of the founders of Constant Contact, the email marketing company for small businesses, is on campus today and speaking in three different entrepreneurship classes. Having just had lunch with Alec and after sitting in on his first class of the day, I know that our students are having a wonderful experience. Some of the lessons learned that he pointed out: 1. Think of the “why” of your business, rather than just the “what.” He specifically mentioned the Simon Sinek TED talks lecture on that topic. 2. Keep your business within the guardrails. When you’re growing your business, you’ll find people and money sources who are interested in moving your business…think of what’s important to your business and stay focused on it. 3. Delight the customer…Constant Contact’s attrition rate is amazingly small, even though many of their competitors are giving away something that CC charges for. They keep these customers because they are so good on customer service and by helping the entrepreneur learn how to really use their product. Plus, you can actually…and this is just amazing…talk to a real customer service person when you need help. New customers get a phone call from CC within the first 48 hours after signing up to make sure they really know how to take advantage of the full suite of product. 4. Give back. I was particularly pleased to hear Alec talk to our students about the importance of giving back to your school, your community and your country.

A Decline in Startups and Jobs

Here is an interesting post that has been getting some traffic today based on a paper that was written by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. The paper discusses a real decline in start-ups which began right before the economic troubles started, making an argument that the high US unemployment rate is related to this lack of new ventures. The post from the NY Times is called A Decline in American Entrepreneurship by Catherine Rampell. From the post: American workers weren’t the only ones sacrificed by the Great Recession. Start-ups suffered, too. A new paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland tracks various measures of entrepreneurship over the last few years. It found that the number of businesses with employees — one indicator of entrepreneurial activity, like self-employment — took a nosedive. The population-adjusted number of businesses began falling even before the recession officially began in December 2007. But once the downturn hit, the number of businesses began falling precipitously. Some of that decline was because of business failures. But it was primarily tied to the lack of new business formation. The report’s author, Scott Shane, writes: 68,490 more businesses closed in 2009 than in 2007, an 11.6 percent increase in the business closure rate. But in 2009, 115,795 fewer employer businesses were founded than in 2007, a 17.3 percent decline in firm formation. The financial crisis held back new business formation in many other countries, too, as documented by this paper presented last fall at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Given these findings, it is perhaps no wonder that the job market is still so poor. Young businesses (not small businesses, despite what politicians may tell you) are the biggest engines of job growth. With so few businesses forming, hiring is staying very depressed. And the main problem in the job market is not layoffs — which are at a record low — but new hiring.

How Many Pro's You Have?

Driving in to school today, as I do most mornings, I was listening to Mike and Mike in the Morning on ESPN radio. Today they were talking about March Madness and how you pick which teams are going to win, especially in the early round games. And Jimmy Dykes, one of the ESPN game analysts said that to figure out which team has the best chance of winning, you have to answer the question, “How many pro’s you have?” What Dykes meant was when you look at both rosters, you look at which team has the most players who are going to go on to the NBA and play, and especially in tournament crunch time, that’s the team you want to pick.

As I think back to being a part of an angel group in Florida, that’s exactly how I, and the rest of the group decided which companies we wanted to invest in…and it was based on which team had the real “pros.” Our group was getting on an average, around 25 to 30 business plans a month to read. We would narrow this down to just two presentations a month, and since we shut down for the summer, we were looking at around 20 opportunities a year out of the more than 350 business plans that were sent our way. Many people have said this, and when our own money was on the line, most of us deferred back to the notion of “I’d rather in invest in an A team with a B idea, than an A idea with just a B Team.” So even in entrepreneurship, we were using the notion of “How many pro’s you have” to decide which deals to invest in. As you are building your start-up team, remember that and find the best players you can to fill each slot. Friends are good, family is OK, but the best of the best is the best way to get your shot at angel and other institutional funding.

Now, back to the NCAA tourney and Go ‘Cuse!

China and the New Entrepreneur

Allan Kupetz sent over this very interesting article from the Economist on entrepreneurship in China, titled, Let a Million Flowers Bloom. I used to travel a lot in China, and even a number of years ago, you could see the very early stages of the growth of the entrepreneurial enterprise. I remember walking through an area just outside of Shanghai, called Pudong, which at the time was just a lot of mud, and not much else. Now, as testimony to its growth, over 1.3 million square meters of prime office space was completed in Pudong in last few years.

From the article:

China’s state-controlled entities are not particularly profitable. A study by Qiao Liu, a professor at the University of Hong Kong, concludes that the average return on equity for companies wholly or partly owned by the state is barely 4%, despite the benefit of cheap leverage provided by government-controlled banks. According to a recently published paper by Mr Liu and a colleague, Alan Siu, the returns of unlisted private firms (my note: this is how the article is referring to the Chinese entrepreneurs) are no less than ten percentage points higher.

Angel Financing and the Entrepreneur

For years, as a partner at one of the major law firms in Orlando, Bill Grimm touched virtually every high tech start-up and growth deal that took place in Central Florida. Bill is now an entrepreneurship professor at Rollins College and a blogger on things related to startups. Take a look at his blog, Thoughts on Advanced Entrepreneurship, for several recent posts related to raising capital from angel investors. Related to his post, one of the best books I've seen on angel financing is by Susan Preston, Angel Financing for Entrepreneurs.

From his blog:

When an entrepreneur comes to me for advice on raising capital from angel investors, I ask him or her "Do you know why angels make investments in early stage companies?" Inevitably, the answer reflects superficial thinking and deserves an "F." Most entrepreneurs do not have the foggiest idea about what it takes to raise capital from angel investors and make little effort to find out. They seem to think that if they have a good business plan and enthusiasm, angel investors will invest.Any entrepreneur who decides to raise capital from angel investors should conduct as much research on why angels invest as they do on why customers buy their products or services. Few entrepreneurs even read a book on how to raise capital from angels when there are many books on the subject through Amazon. It's no wonder that most entrepreneurs who set out to raise capital from angels fail miserably.Every angel investor is different, just like every customer is different. But, there are some characteristics that are common to most angel investors. If an entrepreneur would come to me for advice on raising capital and demonstrated the same degree of ignorance about his or her customers as the entrepreneur usually demonstrates about angel investors,I would tell the entrepreneur to find another occupation.Why is it that entrepreneurs make little effort to find out the same type of information about angel investors, yet will work really hard to find out about the characteristics of potential customers? I attribute this to an underlying sense in most entrepreneurs that an angel investor is not a "buyer or customer" but is a "seller or supplier." An erroneous view is that an angel investor is "selling capital" to the entrepreneur and the price to be paid is an equity interest in the entrepreneur's company. Not true. The seller in this case is the company, selling an equity interest to the angel investor who is buying, not selling. If an entrepreneur would only take this view of angel investors, the entrepreneur would do extensive research into the characteristics of the angel investor market. How many angel investors will the entrepreneur have access to, what is the decision making process for an angel investor, who influences the angel investor to make the investment, what is the competition for the angel investor's funds, what will it take to get an angel investor to seriously consider the entrepreneur's opportunity, etc. These are the types of questions the entrepreneur would seek answers to for his or her customers; why not seek this information about angel investors?Finding out the characteristics of the angel investor market is difficult, but not impossible. It is inexcusable for entrepreneurial companies who set out to raise capital from angel investors not to know as much about the angel investor market as they know about their potential customers.

It’s Time to Build a Better Boss

Yes, many of us have thought about that a bunch of times, and many organizations have discussed it, but I don’t know any that have gone to the steps that Google has done to actually try and do it. The article in the NY Times, Google’s 8 Point Plan, is interesting on so many different levels. Take a read, and think about what you could do in your own organization, to help defeat the Peter Principle and find ways to create a better boss for everyone. I liked the quarterly reviews, I liked the data gathering, I liked how they were thinking about the reasons people left organizations, but most of all, I liked the fact that Google was trying so hard to do something so wonderfully good for their employees.

A Bit of Bragging and Brainstorming

I hate to use this space to brag, but I’m so excited that I just had to put in here that the Falcone Center for Entrepreneurship’s South Side Innovation Center has been selected as one of the finalists in the National Business Incubator Association’s Incubator of the Year competition. The NBIA, which has over 1,900 members in 60 countries, annually selects just two incubators to honor; one in the High Tech arena and the other in the General/ Special Focus category. The SSIC has been selected as one of only two finalists in the General/Special Focus category. The winners will be announced at the NBIA annual conference in April.

On the non-bragging front, take a look at this article Seven Steps to Better Brainstorming by Kevin Coyne and Shawn Coyne. Thanks to our friends at McKinsey and Company for including it in their newsletter. As somebody who has been in countless, mindnumbing brainstorming sessions, the approach recommended by the author is clearly the right way to go.

The Hiring Decision

Yesterday’s blog in the NY Times by Jay Goltz struck home. The Hidden Cost of Bad Hiring brought back some not-so-wonderful memories of hiring decisions I’ve made which were less than memorable. In addition to the costs that Jay mentions, there are also the costs involved in hiring the new worker who didn’t work out as well as the cost for their replacement. Remember those interviews that you and your key team members did? Think of the time you spent doing the interviews, preparing for them, following up, the ads, the time drafting the job description…all costs that impact your bottom line. Plus, keep in mind that most employees take at least six months before they really start producing for you, which means that you have a boatload of costs which will never be recouped every time you hire somebody based on a gut reaction that says that he or she is the right person. Do the work, hire an HR expert, ask the right questions…and good luck!

Rebooting Wal-Mart

Typically, I like to write about entrepreneurial companies in this space, but today’s Wall Street Journal has a very interesting story about one of the very largest companies in America…Wal-Mart. The story is Wal-Mart Tries to Recapture Mr. Sam’s Winning Formula by Miguel Bustillo. The story is a cautionary tale of what happens when you try to expand by being something you aren't and in the process, forgetting about your core customer. The good news if you are a Wal-Mart shareholder is that it appears that they now "get it' and are back focusing on that customer who they previously were taking for granted. Which of course, is bad news for Target and other competitors.

From the beginning of the article:

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is in the midst of its worst U.S. sales slump ever.
When it reports earnings on Tuesday, the retailer is widely expected to post its second straight year of declining domestic same-store sales.

Wal-Mart's struggles are the result of a misstep: To jump-start lethargic growth and counter the rise of competitors such as cheap-chic rival Target Corp., executives veered away from the winning formula of late founder Sam Walton to provide "every day low prices" to the American working class. Wal-Mart, the world's biggest retailer by sales, instead raised prices on some items while promoting deals on others.

Company executives acknowledge having miscalculated and are adjusting their strategy again. The big question is how quickly the mammoth chain can turn itself around.

And from the end of the article:

"Wal-Mart just went and broke it," said mechanic Mike Craig, 41 years old, lamenting that he could no longer find honey, which is now next to the peanut butter instead of near the salad dressings. "I just don't like what they did at all."

So once again, Wal-Mart is back to cramming wood pallets of $8.97 boxed wine and $8 Justin Bieber CDs into the store's corridors, recreating the messy procession of discount merchandise in the main aisles that the company calls "action alley." Now analysts are concerned that, in changing direction again, Wal-Mart risks alienating whatever higher-scale shoppers it had gained.

Bringing the Change

Dwain DeVille sent over the blog, Jack Griffin's Ouster: Lessons from a Failed "Change Agent" by Julia Kirby and at first, I wasn’t that sure I even wanted to read it. After all, it’s about a media guru and as the post points out, there is nothing the media world likes to do more than write about itself. But as I read on, I realized how often we’re thrust into situations in new jobs or when we buy a company… that we have to bring change into an organization. As someone who has had to bring change more than a few times, I particularly liked her six lessons when you’re faced with being the person who has to bring about that change. From the blog:

Avoid the term "change agent." The strange thing about Griffin's case is that he appears to have applied this "kick me" sign to himself. In most cases, it's the board that puts the word on the street that a change agent is coming. Try to keep that from happening. It's not as though the organization won't hear the news, and it's insulting. It casts veteran managers as part of the problem, not forces for positive change themselves. As one Time Inc. veteran complained to me, "it's not as though all of us had just been sitting on our thumbs." That is a classic, and predictable, response.

Gauge the internal hunger for change. It's one thing to be the agent of change in an organization that realizes it needs it; it's quite another when you're the only one in the room convinced of that. A big problem at Time, at least as far as Griffin was concerned, was that there was no such sense of a burning platform. People, therefore, would perceive any change as being done to them, not for them. It's not impossible to take a comfortable organization and get it excited about a quest, but it definitely affects how you should frame the mission.

Arrive without a vision. Reportedly, Griffin showed up on day one of his new job with a manifesto in hand. When I heard this, I couldn't help but recall some great advice from leadership gurus Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner. "Somehow, through all the talk over the years about the importance of vision," they observed, "many leaders have reached the unfortunate conclusion that they as individuals must be visionaries." They spell out for less incisive thinkers what the future holds and therefore how the enterprise must be transformed. "Bad idea!" say Kouzes and Posner. "Yes, leaders must ask, "What's new? What's next? What's better?" — but they can't present answers that are only theirs. Constituents want visions of the future that reflect their own aspirations."

Go directly to "us". As leadership expert Steve Reicher and his colleagues convincingly argue, great leadership involves tapping into the psychology of "us" versus "them." This means that job #1 for a leader is to go native, immediately taking the side of the organization, uniting it against a common enemy, and building consensus on what "we" should do. From this perspective, it's clear how the work of anyone fighting the status quo is fraught with the potential to be misread. Ask yourself honestly whose side you are on — and if it's not your organizations, don't blame them for hating you.

Act as catalyst not cattle prod. Chances are, there is change energy to be tapped in the organization at some level. To get at it, think first of what might be holding it back, and address those things. As in chemistry, a catalyst lowers a barrier to effect a transformation — it doesn't apply a shock.

Surround yourself with new friends. Of all the new-manager missteps Griffin is accused of, probably the worst is his decision to surround himself with cronies. It's an understandable temptation, when you don't yet know your new colleagues well enough to say who's brilliant and trustworthy, to just recruit some folks you already know to have those qualities from past experience working with them. But nothing — nothing — is more alienating to your inherited team than to suddenly be on the outside of the inner circle looking in. It doesn't help that, in Griffin's case, the cronies were also perceived to be carbon copies of himself.

Tell Me Another Story

Yesterday I heard Mark Russell of Eric Mower and Associates give a wonderful presentation on marketing to the Entrepreneurial Society of Central New York. As a part of Mark’s presentation, he spoke about the power of stories as it relates to your brand and showed the brilliant piece called The Man Who Walked Around the World. Great piece of storytelling that makes you just want to keep watching. If you get the chance to hear Mark talk about marketing and branding, make a point of doing that.

Launch Box Digital

I ran across this post about Launch Box Digital at the blog of Sramana Mitra, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and strategy consultant who founded 1M/1M.

Written by guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

I am talking to Chris Heivly, executive director of LaunchBox Digital, an accelerator program for entrepreneurs based in Durham, North Carolina. The program structure and workings are similar to Y Combinator and TechStars.

Irina: Hi, Chris. Let’s start with a bit of history.

Chris: LaunchBox Digital started in 2008 in Washington, D.C. We ran an accelerator session in the summer of 2008 and summer in 2009 in Washington, D.C. Last year, we decided to move that to Durham, North Carolina, and ran an accelerator session in the fall of 2010.
We have a full-year physical location now in a really cool restored tobacco warehouse. The address is 334 Blackwell St. in Durham, North Carolina. It’s called the American Tobacco campus. There are about 35 software companies as well as venture capitalists and venture banks. It’s a nice, tight little ecosystem of entrepreneurs, mostly software-oriented entrepreneurs as well as some other businesses.

Irina: Do you still have accelerator sessions?

Chris: We do. It only runs three months of the year. We’ve taken space all year round, and we’re augmenting the three-month accelerator with some mini programs that can also offer value to entrepreneurs in the area. This is the first year we’ve had full year space, where someone like me is committing time all year round. We’re going to do more than the three-month accelerators.

Irina: What kind of organization is LaunchBox Digital?

Chris: It’s definitely a for-profit. It’s set up like a venture fund. We’ve secured funding from a bunch of limited partners around the area. We then invest in up to 10 companies a year, in our accelerator session. We take a piece of equity for that – 6%. It’s set up like a venture fund.
There’s a group of us at LaunchBox Digital that [will] manage that fund over the next four years. We hope that some of those companies provide a nice exit, which provides a return back for our investors, like a standard venture fund.

Irina: Do you invest in all of the companies you incubate?

Chris: Yes. The way the program works – by the way, this is very similar to Y Combinator and Tech Stars. If you’re familiar with those, it’s a similar model.
We have an application process. We accept up to 10 companies. If you’re accepted and you come in to the program, we provide an investment of $20,000 per company. For that, we take a 6% common equity interest in you. That’s the investment part.
Then we offer the program, which is all about mentorship and guidance. That runs for three months. We provide space, $20,000, advisory, and mentorship and for that, we take 6%.

Irina: If entrepreneurs are accepted and they have to come to North Carolina, they pay their own travel expenses, right?

Chris: That’s correct. They have to be here for the three months of the program. We built some arrangements outside of Launch Box with some of our partners to help facilitate their finding short-term leases for three or four months. We try to make that as easy as possible for them.
Irina: Do you have an industry preference?

Chris: Sure. At the highest level, they’re all software . . . there’s got to be a fairly large software component. We’re not doing pharma or life sciences or medical devices or dry cleaners or restaurants. These are all software or Web-based companies. To give you an example, we had seven companies that we went through in our first session here in Durham. There were two healthcare IT companies. There was a social media tool. There was a Web analytics company. There was a Web-based fantasy sports meets gaming, kind of a new gaming craze, a different spin on that. We had a Groupon-like company that came through. They’re pretty broad in scope, but they’re all software oriented.

Irina: At what stage of development do you prefer them to be when they come to you for acceleration?

Chris: It’s funny, that target keeps moving around a bit, but for the most part – well, to give you an example, we had one company that had a concept and had not written one line of code before they applied. At the same time, we had a company that had more than 40 paying customers. Generally, most companies are between alpha and pre-revenue. I just gave you two examples of someone who wasn’t an alpha and someone who was generating revenue. So, concept to less than $500,000 in revenue is the typical target.

Tell A Story

I learned a lot of things during my time working for the Walt Disney Company. But one of the most important things I learned is the power of stories. For those of us in the nonprofit space, while it’s often easy to quote lots of statistics dealing with numbers of clients helped, students, people helped; there is nothing more powerful than telling a story about the folks we work with. Keep in mind, that whether you work for a nonprofit or a for profit organization, stories are a powerful way to tell others what you're doing and how you're doing it.

Thanks to our friends at McKinsey and Company who forwarded this article along…take a look at The power of storytelling: What nonprofits can teach the private sector about social media.

The Senator Comes to the Falcone Center

Great day today for the Falcone Center for Entrepreneurship as United States Senator for New York Kirsten Gillibrand was at our South Side Innovation Center this morning. Senator Gillibrand convened a roundtable discussion to hear from veterans and area business leaders about how the government might work to ensure jobs for New York veterans. During the session, the Senator discussed her plans to provide tax credits for businesses who hire vets, provide more job training for veterans, and better facilitate the transition from active duty to the job market.

The Post Standard’s follow-up article provided information about the session. The South Side Innovation Center is a 13,000 square foot community based microenterprise incubator operated by the Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University. The SSIC, which was opened in 2006, offers offices with phones, computers and furniture; shared conference rooms; training and resource rooms; a resource library; large equipment use and reception area services at a low cost to local entrepreneurs. The SSIC currently houses 24 resident businesses, serves 300+ non‐tenant clients, and provides training, workshops, classes, networking, and mentoring opportunities to approximately 1,000 other individuals and entrepreneurs.

I Apologize...I Mean I'm Sorry...I Mean Our Company Screwed Up

Over the weekend I read through the current issue of Inc. Magazine. Several stories caught my eye, but I wanted to call to your attention the one about how to deal with things when you have a real, honest-to-goodness-company-killing problem. The article in the magazine is titled, How to Ride a Storm, (re-titled on-line How to Turn Disaster into Gold) by Jason Fried and it describes a serious problem that the author’s company, 37signal’s had with a key product, named Campfire. If you have an entrepreneurial company…or if you’re planning to launch…read through the article and see what they did because at some point or another, you’re going to have to say to your customers or stakeholders…that you’ve messed up. And you’ll also have some fun reading through the author’s comments about how some companies go about “apologizing” when they screw up.

Here’s a section from the article:

So here's what we did when Campfire went down. First, we posted regular updates on the status page of our company's website. We let people know we were working on the problem. As we figured things out, we shared the results. And if we still didn't understand something, we admitted as much. That's OK with us. What isn't OK is leaving people in the dark. Everyone's afraid of the dark when their data are involved.

We also took to Twitter. My business partner David Heinemeier Hansson responded to more than 100 tweets from customers. "We're battling demons on all fronts and losing. It's pathetic, I know," David tweeted to one customer. "We're spending the goodwill we've built from years of reliable service like it's going out of style." "So sorry for the disruption," he wrote to another. "You can only say duh! so many times before people just think you're annoying. We're way past that," he wrote.

We responded to every complaint and took the blame every time—even when people went overboard and launched into personal attacks. There was no fighting back, no attempt to save face. We messed up, we knew it, and we let every customer know that we knew it.
And our customers responded with enormous goodwill. "37signals has been giving a free lesson in customer service and honesty the past few weeks," one customer tweeted. "Way to go on being awesome and communicative to your customers," said another. Such expressions of support were really heartwarming—and evidence of how honesty, openness, and personal attention to a difficult situation can turn the darkest moment into one of the brightest.
We decided to give every Campfire customer a free month of service. We were down for only a few hours, total, but the downtime was spread out over multiple days. Besides, we didn't earn our customers' trust in December, so we didn't earn their money, either. We have thousands of paying Campfire customers, so this wasn't a cheap or easy decision. But it was the right thing to do.

Finally, once we figured out what went wrong and took steps to make sure it wouldn't happen again, we wrote a full post on our product blog detailing exactly what had happened. We started with a general overview that could be understood by everyone. Being in the software business doesn't give you license to speak in code. Yes, some of our customers are technically gifted. But most of them aren't, so speaking in tech jargon can cause even more confusion. That said, we also delved into the technical details for those who care about those kinds of things. And we added a link to the announcement inside Campfire, so all our customers would see it. You can read the product blog post at productblog.37signals.com/products/2010/12/campfire-outage-explanation-and-service-credits.html.

New Patent Process

Today’s Wall Street Journal has an article that makes you scratch your head. The article, Expediting US Innovation Comes at a Cost by Angus Loten deals with an announcement from the Commerce Department about a new fast track process for patents. According to the article, “Until now, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office largely has processed patents on a first-come, first-serve basis for a base fee of $1,090. Last year, the office granted more than 244,358 patents, up 27% from 2009. The process takes an average of 35 months to complete, and often includes costly legal fees—patent lawyers typically charge more than $25,000, depending on the complexity of the application.” The article then goes on to explain that a new process, which is a part of the White House’s Startup America initiative, “would cut the process to just 12 months for $4,000, along with upfront processing and publication fees of $430.”

While for many of the students and entrepreneurs that we talk with, the notion of speed- to-market is more important that the patent, but for those faculty and students that we deal with that do need patents, I think this new process is well worth the extra dollars.

The reason I mention it’s a head-scratcher is that article seems to feel that it will create an unfair playing field for entrepreneurs, giving those with more money quicker access to the patent process. If a professor or student was sitting in front of me today, I would recommend get the extra three grand from family or friends and get the process rolling. Especially since the patent office is going to fast track only 10,000 applications in the first year of this new process, it makes sense to do it.

Tech Trends

I’m not a big fan of lists, but here are a couple that you might want to pay attention to from Venture Beat. Five Overhyped Technology Trends and Five Trends You Should Pay Attention to, both for 2011.

Keeping the Start Up Alive Inside

Take a look at the article from the NY Times, How to Shape the DNA of a Young Company. It is an “interview with Jeremy Allaire, chairman and chief executive of Brightcove, an online video platform for Web sites, and was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.”

From the article:

Q. How has the culture evolved as your company has grown? How do you maintain that original DNA, as you call it?

A. It’s a huge challenge. One point is that you always need to have everyone feel like they’re on some broader mission. In the early stages, the mission is: Are we going to survive? Is there a product? Does it work? Is anyone going to want it? Is there a market? They’re like existential questions for a business, but I think those core mission tenets remain important through that growth stage. It’s something that people can attach themselves to, so people aren’t just coming into a job. So I’ve tried to really provide that narrative over and over, even as the milestones just keep changing.
The other thing is to hold onto that feeling of being a start-up, and it actually relates very deeply to how you go to the next phase of growth. Companies that figure out how to really become significant in scale reinvent themselves and create completely new things. Just as an example, a little over a year ago, we created a start-up inside the company to create new products. That was so galvanizing and so energizing, and it kind of cascaded across the company. People were saying, “This isn’t the kind of same old, same old — we’re reinventing ourselves.”

Good Days Ahead?

I attended today the Centerstate CEO’s (Corporation for Economic Opportunity) Economic Forecast Luncheon, with the keynote speaker being noted economist Hugh Johnson, Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of Hugh Johnson Advisors. It was a very interesting and entertaining presentation, which included a historical comparison to the banking crisis of 1907. In between a couple of very interesting comments on the Fed, he told the group the following:

· The conditions in the economy that accompany a recovery are all in place
· Leading indicators for the economy are rising. We are early in the economic recovery which should continue through 2012.
· By 2012, the economy should recover 7.0 million of the 8.3 million jobs lost in the recession.
· Short term interest rates will start to rise late in 2011
· Stock prices should rise 7.8 percent annually for the next two years
· While we are in a recovery mode, the recovery will be anemic by post-war standards as a result of the drag caused by real estate and the housing situation