Long time friend and cohort, Lorne Cooper, has two new posts up on the AccuRev blog that are must reads if you’re in the software development business.  Aside from his role as CEO of AccuRev (I am a board member and investor), which develops and sells software for software developers, Lorne has a long history of running software companies and projects.  In these posts, he shares some of the wisdom he has gained over the years.

• The Seven Deadly Sins of Software Application Development
• Three Absolute Requirements for Successful Offshore Application Development

Check ‘em out.

Popularity: 16% [?]

A long time ago I read a book about group brainstorming - using group-think to solve problems and uncover new ideas and directions.  I don’t remember the book or much that was in it, as is the case for the vast majority of business how-to books that I’ve read.  My one take-away, though, was the concept of accepting all input during a brainstorming session without passing judgement on anything said by anyone.

Yeah, this is hardly a breakthrough when you think about it.  As soon as you shoot down one idea, others are afraid that their idea will be similarly criticized and they clam up.  This then sets off a domino effect of fewer ideas with even fewer add-on ideas which, in turn, completely kills any opportunity for the group to chain off the thoughts of others to come up with new or modified concepts. 

As this un-remembered book suggested, it’s critical for the leader to just shut up, giving every idea its due (always a good idea to write it down on a white board of something to openly signify its value) and encourage everyone else to contribute, learn and grow.  Gee, this idea of the leader shutting up at times comes up frequently.  It’s too bad I suck at it.

As a flawed leader, I’ve made the mistake of shooting down ideas too quickly too often.  As my kids point out today, even when I remain quiet, my face contorts in strange ways clearly indicating how incredibly stupid I think what I’m hearing is.  So, even when I actually dig deep inside and make myself shut up, I really don’t hold back at all.  My face gives away everything.

This might even be acceptable if, in fact, all the ideas I shoot down were actually bad ideas.  The problem is that they often are not bad ideas at all.  My reaction is based on my initial thinking about what has been proposed or, sometimes, just my initial understanding of it.  Once I think it through, I often warm up to the idea.  Although, by that time, I’ve usually squelched the discussion and killed any upside to the brainstorming going on.

You get the idea . . . When you’re in a leadership role during any type of brainstorming, it’s really important to sit back, smile and treat every idea like it was your own.  Even better, like it was from someone that you would listen to even if they were saying something completely wacky (think Albert Einstein or Mahatma Gandhi).  Encourage people to put forward the most preposterous idea possible and for others to add to those ideas.  The minute you put up a wall, the traffic of new ideas will slow to a crawl and, eventually, disappear.

Unless you know everything there is to know (I doubt it), then you and the organization you run will be better off with as many ideas floating around as possible.  After all, you still can think they’re stupid and shut them down later <g>.

Popularity: 12% [?]

They say it’s lonely at the top.  CEOs are uniquely responsible for the results of the company and how those results are achieved.  No one shares this total responsibility.  There are no peers in the organization and there is, generally, little understanding of the pressures that such responsibility carries.  As such, CEOs are often held up as superheros when things go well and as almost satanic when they don’t.  Fair?  Not exactly.  Reasonable?  Well . . .

In my career, I’ve had the opportunity to run several private companies and a few public ones.  There have been some successes and there have been more than a fair share of failures.  Some of the successes were big ones that were highly visible and some were small and less visible, although at times, even more important.  The same can be said for the failures - while they came in both big and small forms, the big, hairy, nasty ones were not always the most important ones.  Although, they were always the ones that everybody got to see and, likely, remember. 

Sometimes I basked in the glory of the company’s success, getting treated like I carried 750 people on my back across the finish line.  Other times, I got the crap kicked out of me by employees, investors and/or shareholders who thought I was solely responsible for a hiccup in performance.  Both of these points of view are right and both are wrong.

I’m a strong believer in the buck stops here view of the CEO’s role and responsibilities.  The CEO’s role is unique for the fact that he/she is responsible for everything that goes on inside the company - whether or not they are actually in control of it.  In good companies, the CEO is held accountable for what the company does and how it does it.  In this way, getting the lion’s share of credit for a success and being taken to task for a failure are both right.

On the other hand, the job of running a company is complex and multi-faceted.  There are loads of factors related to whether or not the company has short or medium-term successes or failures.  In recognizing the performance of the CEO, some of these factors are often ignored, biasing the external view of the CEO’s performance.  Because of this, both reward and blame may be out of context.  Take, for example, when the overall economy is good, raising all boats with the tide.  Or, when changes in regulatory laws make it difficult to continue to address a market, regardless of the company’s efforts.  Yeah, as I write this I know it sounds like I’m equivocating about the responsibilities of the job.  I’m not, really.  I’m just stating that no judgement about CEO performance is simple, although they are often made that way.

Most CEOs do a good job and are appropriately managed by company boards in a fair and reasonable way, of course.  Glaring and notable cases where CEOs receive insane awards for mediocre performance or no punishment for failure (sometimes even rewards for failure) are the ones we hear about, though.  This is primarily the result of that fact that in the past, many (most?) companies, meaning the directors and shareholders of those companies, have not held their CEOs accountable to a reasonable degree.  They have mostly sat by and watched as the CEO has taken the company to new levels, augered it into the planet or really didn’t do much either way.

So what’s a poor CEO to do?  Well, until there is some universally applied standard for accountability and a commonly understood measure of performance, it is unlikely that there will be a rational and balanced view of how a CEO is actually doing over the long haul.  Perhaps, because it’s the sometimes irrational money of shareholders involved, there can never be a common standard and CEOs will continue to bask in glory one day only to be hung from the gallows the next.

From the CEO’s point of view, the odds of being evaluated correctly increase tremendously when decisions are made in thoughtful, considered ways.  That usually means that truly major decisions, with respect to the company’s size, are made with some level of involvement of the rest of the management team, company advisors and the company’s Board of Directors.  From the Board’s point of view, corporate directors need to always hold the CEO accountable for major decisions and company performance.  That doesn’t mean simply recognizing what happened, but teaching, rewarding, or punishing based on both the results and the process of what the CEO does. 

Yeah, even in a perfect world, it’ll still be an emotional roller coaster ride for the CEO, but that’s part of what makes the job interesting.  Being judged in virtually unpredictable ways in a sometimes irrational manner keeps things exciting <g>.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Matt over at his OnlyOnce blog has a great post up titled, It Never Goes Without Saying.  Matt makes the case for why leaders and managers should take advantage of every opportunity to communicate messages, feedback, direction and vision.  What constitutes an opportunity?  Any event or “moment” as Matt calls them.  The post discusses creating such moments,

We human beings live for ‘moments.’  We mark time by observing regular occasions like birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays . . .

There’s no reason the workplace should be any different.  Think about these few examples where it could ‘go without saying,’ but where you’re so much better off creating that ‘moment’ . . . “

I think Matt makes a terrific point here, although I don’t think of such moments or events as needing creation; they already exist.  It’s the recognition of them that breaks down in most cases.  Matt concludes his post with the thought,

Clear, simple communication is the cheapest and easiest way to create a fun, rewarding, accountable, and focused work environment.”

So true.  Funny thing is, it’s the fact that it’s so cheap and easy that it tends to be ignored as a great tool.  Many leaders and managers think that there’s always time to do it, so they put it off.  Or, they’re afraid that they’ll dilute their message if they communicate it too often so they hold back waiting for the really big event to make a bigger showcase of it.

As a leader and manager, I’m afraid that I often missed opportunities to recognize events - usually because of the reasons above, but sometimes, I’m afraid, because I was so entirely focused on the big picture.  That singular focus resulted in my missing the fact that on a day-to-day basis, my big picture sometimes wasn’t the only thing on the minds of the people who worked for me.  Any journey is made up of loads of smaller journeys.  Some successful and others less so.  With my blinders on, I frequently missed the fact that the organization was succeeding and failing in small ways all along the path.  Duh.

This all became clear to me when I hired a new VP of Marketing whose first observation once inside the company was that there were few celebrations of anything.  He taught me the value of recognizing key events and as it turns out the even greater value of the way they were recognized.  I had always been on top of private recognition, but I was weak on public recognition.  Even within public recognition, it was always a few beers, pizza, a cake or two and maybe some entertainment.  Boooorrrring.

After finally getting it (yup, I’m slow and dense), I took the next opportunity to recognize a team that had just released a new product by riding my motorcycle into a meeting in our cafeteria and handing the team leader a plaque.  It was a bit difficult getting my bike up to the fifth floor of the building we were in, but that made it even cooler.  It was simple, but had a huge impact on people.  There was a noticeable impact on the energy in the organization.  We acknowledged an event, got to send the message that it was important and publicly recognized a successful team - all in about 2.5 minutes.  It was a great learning experience for me and had a hugely positive impact on the organization.

I can’t say that I got good at this event thing immediately, but I came to understand the value of doing such things and doing them relatively frequently.  Constant communication has tremendous value in organizations.  Using the recognition of events as opportunities to communicate is a powerful tool for making it happen.

Popularity: 11% [?]

The title of this post is a quote from the latest entry on Will Price’s blog, Leaders as Weather Vanes.  In his post, Will discusses a 1915 quote from the President of National City Bank of NY (Citibank), Charles Mitchell, that he read in the recent 70th anniversary edition of Forbes.

Will goes on to say:

A vital lesson for developing leaders is that leadership is a public act. The gestures, facial expressions, and postures of leaders project across the whole organization.”

More true words are rarely spoken.  Check out the rest of the post on Will’s blog.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Whether you’re getting funding for your brand spankin’ new startup, convincing a customer to buy loads of stuff from your company or leading a team of people in an effort to turn dreams into reality, your ability to sell your vision to a wide variety of people is a required skill and a critical part of being a good leader.

The key mistake made by people when selling their vision is getting too detailed.  It’s a hole that managers fall into often when trying to be a visionary leader.  As I’ve said before, while there is some overlap, pure management and leadership skills are quite different (for more on this, see my post: Revisiting Leadership vs. Management).  Strong managers often want to show the path and specifically outline the goals instead of painting a broad and undefined picture, like great leaders. 

Their are two reasons that a painted picture is more effective than a detailed roadmap when you want to create followers:

1. The more detail provided to the audience, the more they’ll be naturally driven to poke holes and find problems with it.  When shown the way, people think mostly of implementation issues and actions and lose focus on the meta-idea.
2. A sweeping picture of what could be, on the other hand, can capture the imagination of the audience.  Listeners captured by the picture begin to share your vision and ultimately adopt it as their own.  This creates followers.

Of course, the abstract needs to be compelling, exciting and contain a reasonable amount of practical content.  If your story is about jet packs and flying cars, people aren’t going to follow you too far.  If they can be sold on the desire to follow you (because you’re cool and a great story-teller), how unique and great the idea is and the belief that the goal can be achieved (even if they don’t know how it will be achieved), then you’ve painted a great picture that people will fall in line behind.

Great leaders create a vision of what could be in their audience’s minds, not what is or how to get there.  Part of that vision there has to be a practical, for sure, but just enough to make people feel like the vision is achievable.  Eventually, you have to get down to implementation details.  Stuff has to get done, right?  But there’s no point in getting trapped in those details until your audience is as much a participant in the dream as you are.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Leaders have to be positive.  After all, how often do people choose to follow someone who’s negative all the time?

Leader: I know it sucks and what we’re about to do hasn’t worked in our previous attempts and we’ll probably all fail again this time, but follow me into the abyss anyway.

Those led: Sure, or maybe I should just shoot myself right now and get it over with . . .

So, being positive is an implicit and necessary part of good leadership.  But that doesn’t mean that the people being led will always be positive.  In fact, one of the biggest challenges for a leader is to keep people as positive as possible.  As all leaders know though, this can be a challenge.

The problem is that many people like being negative.  Negativity has this strange attraction like gravity for them.  They never seem to be able to break its grip.  There are people who always look at the downsides of a situation, searching for failure instead of focusing on success.  Certainly, there are infinitely more ways to fail than there are to succeed and many people are more comfortable with the ease of finding what can go wrong than in putting in the effort to seek out what can go right.

Try as you might to weed these people out or to avoid hiring them in the first place, a reasonable number of people are always distracted by this invisible, negative force to varying degrees.  You’d think that such people wouldn’t be interested in entrepreneurial companies or roles, but the fact is, they usually don’t see it in themselves.  They think of themselves as “realistic.”  As such, a leader has to constantly deal with the problem.

What’s a leader to do?  Here are a few thoughts:

1. Understand that there are people who work for you who are always searching for the dark side - in your own exuberance and given your positive nature, you may forget that there are other points of view and that some of those will be a path to failure.  Address it up front, making sure everyone can see why the path you’re on is more likely to succeed than fail.
2. Expose the fact that many people are drawn to failure while focus on success is a prerequisite for success - as every entrepreneur knows, a positive attitude is an integral part of creating success.  Call it like it is and challenge people who seek failure to make the effort to adjust their focus to positive outcomes.  Make it clear that negative attitudes are actually part of the problem.  This is a fine line, because you don’t want to discourage contrarian thinking.  You just want to eliminate irrational negativism.
3. Create a mental image to help people focus on the positive - Help people adopt more positive thinking by giving them a mental model.  I always liked to tell a story about looking into the night sky - it’s easy to see the black void, but with a small amount of effort, you can concentrate on the more interesting bright stars.  Once one’s focus is there, it doesn’t stray back to black, open space again.  Corny, but effective.
4. Constantly share your out-of-control, positive view of what you’re doing and where you’re headed - be an evangelist of your ideas and the path you’ve chosen.  Never assume that people are happy and convinced.  Make the time to spread your excitement and energy about what’s going on.
5. Expose incremental progress towards goals - by showing that the organization is successfully implementing along the chosen path, you can debunk nay-sayers and create converts.  Some people just need a little proof to throw them over the edge.  Organizations generally don’t celebrate small successes enough anyway.  Recognition of incremental success can be a great tool for moving an organization in a chosen direction with real excitement and a positive attitude.
6. If after working with someone on their negative view of the future and finding that they are adversely impacting those around them, move them or fire them - if you’ve made your best effort at trying to convert someone with a negative attitude who thinks it’s their responsibility to poison the water for others, you have no choice but to make a change.  Most likely, their negative attitude has nothing to do with the project they’re on or the organization’s current direction (again, keep in mind that a negative attitude is very different from a contrarian viewpoint), it’s just the way they are.  My previous post, When to Get Rid of the “Best” People Who Work for You, covers this in more detail, but in brief, one person’s vocal, negative outlook can kill the effectiveness of an organization.

Positive thinking organizations move faster, more effectively and are simply more successful.  As such, every leader needs to make creating a positively motivated environment a high priority.  This does not mean that people need to have happy feet every day and be giddy about their jobs, their office and the people they work with, but they should feel good about the direction the organization is heading in, that it will lead to success and that they’re in integral part of it.

Popularity: 10% [?]

My general view of business (and life) is that humility is a big part of success.  But that’s almost assuredly more representative of my value system than of any generally accepted business wisdom.  In fact, there may be strong evidence to the contrary.  There are of course many quiet, humble people who have run successful enterprises.  Those heroes are hardly household names, though.  The business leaders that we know of, quote and point to as examples are usually the ones that make the most noise about what they do and what they have achieved. 

If you can be successful either way, why does it matter?  Generally speaking, the more people you know and, more importantly, know you, the more access you have to resources, investment, supporters, partners, the media and customers.  This access opens doors and reveals paths that may not have been obvious or even available to you otherwise.  Again, this is not to say that you can’t make it fly if you’re not an active, outgoing promoter of yourself and your business; but increasing your visibility simply makes many aspects of creating and running a successful business easier and isn’t easier something we all seek? 

I found myself thinking a lot about this topic recently when I read the story of Reginald Fessenden, who is actually responsible for the first two-way, transatlantic radio transmissions and being the first to correctly described how radio signals actually work.  No wait, wasn’t it Marconi who did that?  Guglielmo Marconi is generally credited with the invention and discovery of most radio technologies.  As it turns out, while Marconi was brilliant and clearly responsible for some of the most important discoveries of his time, he was also good at playing the patent and publicity game.  Fessenden, a brilliantly but much quieter and humble scientist, was overshadowed by Marconi (and others).  Apparently more interested in the science, Fessenden’s company went under while Marconi’s companies were, in general, very successful.

Reading the story of Fessenden, then got me thinking of Philo Farnsworth and Nikola Tesla.  Both brilliant scientists who were steamrolled by brash, self-promoting contemporaries.  Farnsworth invented not only the television, but the first real camera and broadcast mechanism.  Of course, David Sarnoff of RCA fame is generally remembered to have played this role in history (although Sarnoff really hired Vladimir Zworykin to do RCA’s work on television).  Farnsworth did most of his work in obscurity and the companies that he (and others) created around his work failed.  Sarnoff, on the other hand, had already made RCA into a large and successful enterprise and used that platform as well as his strong personality to take credit (in the name of the company) for the creation of television.

Tesla, who is considered one of the most brilliant scientists and engineers of all time is well known for many discoveries and inventions.  However, with respect to one of his greatest creations, large-scale power generation, he remains in the shadow of another brilliant, but much more vocal scientist, Thomas Edison.  While Edison was doing his damndest to get DC power transmission to work, Tesla created the first simple and reliable AC power generation facilities (including the first hydroelectric power generators) as well as AC motors to utilize his new form of power transmission.  Edison spent much of his highly visible career discrediting Tesla and is generally given credit for what we take for granted today.

In the end, what’s the correlation between strong self-promotion and success?  There are too many subjective components to quantify it, but empirically there is more upside to brash self-promotion than to the lack of it.  None of this means that you should be an asshole, of course, but spending more time increasing the world’s awareness of you and your company will likely offer benefits that will far outweigh the energy you put in to making yourself more visible and more closely associated with your solution and market.

Popularity: 14% [?]

This week, Steve Jobs did his MacWorld song and dance.  While he delivers his message to an eager and receptive audience, there’s no question that his mastery of public speaking helps promote his message and causes even those who aren’t Apple zealots to take notice.  I’d hazard a guess that this skill is also a huge arrow in his leadership quiver inside of Apple Computer.

It’s rare to find great leaders that can’t speak to a crowd and get them to follow or at least riled up about what they are promoting.  I’m sure there are cases where introverted, soft-spoken leaders have been successful, but most often, the ability to speak well to an audience is a required skill in successfully leading groups larger than a few dozen people.  Unabashedly promoting one’s organization and, often, oneself, is just a fundamental skill that anyone who is now a leader or wishes to be one must learn.  The good news is that it can be learned.

At this week’s Needham Growth Conference, I attended roughly 25 presentations by companies - both private and public.  There were some poor speakers, some mediocre and a few really good ones.  As you might expect, the quality of each presentation had little to do with its content.  There were great presentations by CEOs of companies dealing with a boat load of stock option issues, their stock in the toilet, and there were crappy presentations from squeaky clean companies growing 300% year-over-year. 

Generally speaking, the boring speakers lost their audiences, physically or mentally, by the time they reached the halfway point of their speech.  The great speakers held their audience and were surrounded by people that wanted private time with them after their presentation.  Good speakers walked away with dozens of business cards from potential investors and poor ones ate lunch by themselves.  See a pattern here?

I’ve said before, that I believe that leadership and management are separate disciplines.  If being or becoming a good leader is the goal you seek, practice being a good speaker (yes, it requires practice), prepare (a lot) before you speak, have something meaningful to say and ban timidity (but not humility) from your presentations.  Use the force, Luke.

Popularity: 10% [?]

Rudy Giuliani was the keynote speaker at today’s session of the 9th Annual Needham Growth Conference.  While he refrained from announcing his candidacy for President, he certainly didn’t hold back from reminding everyone what his broad political beliefs are.  Whatever you think of Rudy Giuliani and his political opinions, few question his abilities as a leader, especially his efforts in the aftermath of September 11.  I thought the self-proclaimed “Principles of leadership” he talked about today were all dead-on.

1. Have a vision - great leaders all have a strong vision of their own
2. Be an optimist - people won’t follow negative thinkers
3. Have courage/Take risks - great leaders aren’t conservative
4. Relentlessly prepare - plan ahead, know the path, study the contingencies
5. Work with a team - no one is the best at everything, surround yourself with people who compliment your strengths
6. Communicate - make sure everyone knows where you’re going, why you’re going there and how you’re going to get there

Popularity: 8% [?]