Archives for posts with tag: Steve Jobs

When you are the most capable, you are the least able.

May 11, 2018 //
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The following is a short talk I delivered at the Uncharted Veterinary Conference in April 2018 as part of their Mic Drop Series.

How valuable is experience when it comes to leadership?

Should we value experience?

Is it a benefit or a hindrance?

So let’s define some terminology…

A leader is someone who is followed.

A visionary is someone with an idea or ideas.

And a manager is someone who makes things happen.

All of these can be combined, or not, depending on a persons personality, experience, or skill set.

Some examples of Visionary leaders…

Steve Job of Apple,

Elon Musk of Tesla and Space X,

Jeff Bezos of Amazon.

Visionaries who have, literally, changed the world.

they are all looked up to and considered gods of technology. People regularly compete to work for these people and to work on those products.

They also all have the reputation for being awful managers of people to the point of cruelty.

If Visionary leaders are horrible managers then what about managers who have vision?

Tony Blair – former British Prime Minister,

Michael Eisner – Former CEO and President of the Walt Disney “Company,

George Lucas – Film Director and former owner of Lucasfilm.

Tony Blair was elected in 1997 on a wave of hope and goodwill, he transformed his labor party in “New Labor” which had been out of power for 18 years. Despite some major successes, Blair resigned in 2007 and labor lost the next election and has not been in power since. New Labor is in ashes and Blair is widely reviled in the UK, and even by those in his own party, for his tone deaf approach to the Iraq war and for his corporate connections.

Michael Eisner led the Walt Disney Company from 1984 and 2005. He revitalized the company in the eighties and nineties with “Who Framed Roger Rabbit,” “The Little Mermaid, “The Lion King,” the expansion of the theme park business, cruise ships, and the creation of stage shows. He ultimately split with his long time collaborator Jeffery Katzenberg and Roy Disney and saw an unprecedented shareholder revolt in 2004 that lead to his resignation in 2005.

George Lucas – transformed the movie industry with the original Star Wars trilogy. Arguably then did more than anyone else to sink it with his widely panned prequel trilogy. He is criticized for having a singular vision and for not listening to the feedback of others.

If visionary leaders are horrible managers and managers with vision ultimately self destruct,what about managers who just manage?

Bob Iger – Current President and CEO of the Walt Disney Company,

Bill Gates – Former CEO and President of Microsoft,

Tim Cook – Current CEO of Apple.

When was the last great breakout product from any of these companies, who are led by these managers, that was not bought it?

These companies are profitable, they make good products, just not great ones.

Why do some mangers, particularly those with vision fail, when managers without vision can succeed?

How come some visionary leaders can break all the rules and still win?

This is my story.

The period of time I’m taking about I’d been in my job for about 4 years.

I knew the answers to all the questions I was asked.

I’d tried most of what is suggested by others and had strong opinions about those suggestions.

The ghosts of what had happened in the past in the workplace haunted my current interactions.

I anticipated the responses of others and therefore do not even try to have new interactions.

I overvalued my own experience.

I believed my own story, my own press.

The things that made me a good manager – a manger with vision, a leader, I now actively rejected since I had the experience to no longer need them.

And the staff, and the people I worked with, pushed back.

I became the bad guy.
I became the roadblock.
I became the one who would not listen.
I became less and less effective.
I became the manger who kept his own counsel on everything.
I was the most capable – but I was he least able.

Some call this burnout.

I call it not learning from the experience of others.

The first step in recovery is to acknowledge that there is a problem.

Interestingly during this time I, the experienced world traveler, for the first time in my life, missed four flights because I knew, knew, when my flights were and that I didn’t need to double check.

Solving this problem is not hard, you’ve, I’ve already been that person. You just need to find them again and be aware of the trap that you are currently trying to climbing out of.

The tools that made you a good manager, a great leader, when you started are the same tools that allow you to continue being so. You just have to remember that the process can be as important as result.

Capability only has value if you have the ability to use it.

Capability only has value if you have the ability to use it.

And it is those around you, those that you lead, that give you that ability. You undervalue it at your peril.

Thank you.

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Categories Business, Career Advice, Leadership, Management, Poltics, Talks, Veterinary

Social Media, ROI, and the Cost of Talking to your Customers

July 29, 2012 //
5

I am all for Return On Investment (ROI).

However, defining ROI in any small service business, particularly in marketing, can be incredibly difficult to be even remotely useful. Most businesses don’t bother except when it is easy. But for some reason, when it comes to social media, ROI is mission critical.

Why?

You can place an ad for discounted services, with a coupon, running for a month, and a unique web address, and  a unique phone number, and track that (but honestly how many actually do this?) But how can you track the person who becomes aware of your business through that ad, spots your sign one day while driving by, and then six months later needs and uses your services unrelated to the ad?

What is the ROI of your fax machine?

What is the ROI of customer service?

What is the ROI of a strong brand?

How do you place a value on communicating with a significant proportion of your clients every day?

Most businesses consider word of mouth one of the most important forms of promotion. It is essentially free and it is highly effective. With social media, we have the opportunity to insert our businesses into the “word of mouth” of our customers, and thereby their friends, and their friends friends. Why would you not get involved and take advantage of that?

Facebook for my business probably takes up 15 minutes of my day on average. An email, or even a call by the time I’ve documented it, to an upset client can easily take an hour. Should I not deal with an upset client when I don’t have to because the ROI is lousy? Yes, you can place a value on a client and on retaining that client. You can even track that you do get some clients from Facebook, but you may also get clients because you have an email address or a telephone number. When was the last time that anyone figured out the ROI of their email system? Even when buying a new phone system most businesses to not justify it with ROI, but rather than as the cost of doing business.

Small businesses often look up to companies such as Nike and Apple and see their devoted, and almost rabid, fan bases as evidence of marketing in action. I would argue, however, that companies like Apple and Nike create devoted fan bases is by being approachable and interacting with their clients – Apple in particular. I’m not the greatest Steve Jobs fan, but there are lots of examples of Steve taking the time to reply to ordinary consumers and being very interested in what they had to say. HP, Dell, et al. for a number of years, sold dramatically more computers than Apple, but it was Apple who held Mac World every year. Nike became cool because they did not go after deals, they went after people who actually used their shoes – athletes. They engaged their most high profile target market.

Of course, there is a lot of other marketing involved, but remember Apple’s most famous ad only ran once in most markets. Apple, and Nike for that matter, opened their own stores that operate on a quite a different model from other retail outlets. There is some argument that this was to help control the customer experience, but I also feel it was to be able to respond, and engage, with customers. Like all companies, they do not always get it right, but I do think that it is the willingness to attempt true engagement, and a real concern for the customer experience, that breeds fierce loyalty.

Social media is not a strategy – engagement, however, is.

So how to do social media and get some results and some traction?

To me, a major issue for small businesses is when they are on Facebook, Twitter, Google +, YouTube, and are doing all of them badly. Focus on one, and only one, and do it well. Then you can move on to another one.

Create things,or provide a service, using social media that other people will value.

Share other people’s content sparingly.

Self promotion has to have value, or at least not look like self promotion.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions of your fan base or ask them to share.

Drive fans to your website, or blog, from places like Facebook or YouTube not the other way round.

Pick your social media sites carefully. In my opinion, YouTube, for example, is very useful and can expose you to an enormous audiences, but the attention span is fleeting and the sense of community is almost non-existent. Embed videos in your site or page. Facebook works for my business and my previous business. Twitter does not. However, Twitter will almost certainly work for my new business, and it works for me personally. This has a lot to do with the small towns versus large cities and the  nature of my business – it may well be different for yours. Google+ has some personal value, and some SEO benefits, but has little real world value at this point in time in my opinion. But it does look very pretty!

Numbers of likes or followers are pretty irrelevant. It is the level of engagement that counts. I’d much rather have two hundred relevant, and engaged, fans or followers than 6,000 just making up the numbers. As someone much smarter than me once said: “If you believe business is built on relationships, make building them your business.”

And finally, don’t cross post, post from one social network to another, unless you really know what you are doing.

And even then just don’t do it.

Please.

I beg of you.

I see people I respect and who should really know better, cross posting and it is counterproductive. Content for Facebook does not translate well to Twitter because of the character limit. Twitter’s special characters are not understood by most Facebook users.

There are social networks where cross posting seems to work pretty well, but again, it is a black art, and if you are questioning the ROI of any social network, cross posting from a different network is not any kind of an investment.

To sum up this long, and sprawling post, the ROI of social media is the ROI of engagement. If talking to existing and new customers is not for you then I wish you well.

That just means more customers for the rest of us.

Many thanks to my friends and colleagues on the Marking in Veterinary Medicine LinkedIn group for the conversation that this post was cannibalized from. Also many thanks to Ali Burden-Blake (@inkspotsocial) for her excellent blog post: “Stop! Why using social media won’t work for your veterinary practice.” which inspired the conversation in the first place.

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Categories Business, Content Marketing, Customer Service, Marketing, Social Media

Managing the Unmanageable

January 31, 2012 //
5

We’ve all heard the excuses:

“They just care so much…they are very passionate.”

“You should have seen them a few years back – they are really mellow now in comparison to then!”

“They have a lot on their plate at the moment.”

The bottom line is that a lot of people, in a lot of businesses, get away with being badly behaved because of who they are. Maybe they bring in more business than anyone else, maybe they have been around for a very long time, maybe your business genuinely does depend on their work. None of this, however, overcomes the fact that behavior that would not be tolerated from most members of staff is quite often considered part of who these “superstars” are.

This phenomenon can be called “The Steve Jobs Effect.”

I’ve been reading Walter Isaacson’s excellent biography of Jobs. For all that I admire the man for his dedication to the user experience, and to creating great products (I’m writing this on an iPad, while listening to an iPod, and checking Twitter on my iPhone), I can’t help feeling that I would have had nothing to do with the man had I met him while he was alive. That is not a very popular opinion these days, but even if you ignore all the dubious dealings, and less than perfect life choices, it is difficult to argue that Jobs was anything other than a horrible person to work for.

Tantrums, routinely losing ones temper, and humiliating those who report to you, are not how most people want to be treated, and at the end of the day, as a management or leadership strategy, it does not work and it is not acceptable.

There are essentially three ways to deal with people who’s idea of management is to induce fear and to shout louder than anyone else.

1: Accept it.

2: Fire them.

3: Work with them to improve.

It is interesting to note that Steve Jobs experienced all three.

As mentioned above, just accepting bad behavior from any employee is the road to ruin.

Firing them is a viable option, but since they are a superstar, you will have to think very carefully as to the ramifications of termination.

Working with them on their behavior is really the only option unless you feel it is either you or them.

In reality, most businesses are going to accept bad behavior from their “superstar” employees, but ultimately this does no one any good as the employee will probably end up being fired for going too far. Not to mention opening up the business accusations of creating a hostile work environment. It is important to understand that this kind of behavior is about the person themselves – not the people that surround them and are the aledged triggers. Bad behavior makes the badly behaved feel good. It is a way of telling themselves that they are doing something without actually having to do anything other than shout or throw things.

The challenge, of course, is to try and work with these individuals to limit the worst of the behavior and solve the underlying issues that set them off in the first place. This does require a certain amount of “pandering” for want of a better expression, but since the alternative is to fire them you do what needs to be done. It is important to note, however, that the disciplinary action, up-to and including termination has to be an available option, and as a manager you have to be prepared to use this should the situation demand it.

I believe, that the tools you use to work with the badly behaved “superstar” are pretty similar to those of working with an under performing employee. Coaching sessions, inserting yourself into issues before they turn into explosions, and winning enough trust and respect from both sides to come up with workable solutions. If you can show your badly behaved “superstar” that praise, cooperation, and the basic social niceties (please and thank you go a long way) actually work, and makes their lives better, then hopefully they will adopt some of those tactics as their own.

I am however a realist. I can complain that the Arizona Sun is hot, and I can do things to modify the environment to lessen its impact on me, but I cannot change its nature. Many badly behaved “superstar” employees will fall back into bad habits if you do not stay on top of things and call them behavior that crosses the line. It is important not to back down – but also not to fall into their way of handling conflict. They are wrong, you are right, and you have to have the courage of your convictions.

Ultimately, the badly behaved “superstar” employee may have be a superstar somewhere else. The chances are the superstar of your business is not Steve Jobs. If they are, maybe you need to be somewhere else.

The great Malcolm Tucker from the BBC’s superb “The Thick of It” showing how not to people manage. WARNING: Very strong language!

Do you have any experiences with  the badly behaved superstar – Care to share?

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Categories Business, Leadership, Management, Uncategorized
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