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.