Business Insight Zone

As the date of our SXSW Interactive session on sports metaphors for business approaches, I’ll be posting more here on that topic. I thought it would be useful to have a single omnibus post that collects all the other posts in one place, and that points to sports-metaphor articles from other sources.

Here’s what I’ve written on the topic so far:

• Jan. 7 — Enter the arena . . . of sports metaphors.
• Jan. 12 — Sports metaphor: “a captain’s innings.”
• Jan. 13 — Making lemonade in the bottom of the 9th.
• Jan. 14 — A little sports retrospective.
• Jan. 15 — An intemperate analogy: Wall Street and steroids.
• Jan. 19 — Sports metaphor: “a nose for the basket.”
• Feb. 1 — Sports metaphor: “consecutive games played.”
• Feb. 5 — Sports metaphors: David Brooks gets in on the act.
• Mar. 9 — Preparing for SXSW, video-style.
• Apr. 18 — Quoted in Sports Illustrated about sports metaphors.
• . . .

By all means, if you have your own sports metaphors you’d like to share, feel free to enter them in the comments here. And if you know of other posts and articles that could be listed, please leave a comment or drop me a line to let me know.

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Photo by Joel Dinda.

My friend Tyson Goodridge, who runs his own social media firm, has assembled a cast of social media marketing worthies (plus — full disclosure — yours truly) to answer a set of seven questions about their work practices.

Here are the seven questions:

1. What one trait or habit got you to where you are today?
2. Your work day just started, what’s the FIRST thing you do?
3. What makes you efficient with your day?
4. Your Favorite Business book of all time?
5. 3 things on your desk right now/ 3 things you can’t live without
6. Habit you want to kick in 2009
7. Habit you’d like to form for 2010

You can read Tyson’s explanation of the project — and see the full list of participants — in this post:

7 Habits of Highly Effective Social Marketers

So far, he has interviewed Powered CMO Aaron Strout (a good friend of mine whom you may remember from several of my previous posts) and Kate Brodock (whom I know slightly via Twitter).

If you’re interested in knowing how some very savvy people* in social marketing think about their work and organize their days, you’ll be well-served to check in regularly as Tyson posts more “7 Habits” interviews.

* Plus, and I repeat this just for the sake of fair warning, me.

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An open message to all P.R. people:

If you want me to read your press release, please do me the very simple favor of starting it with “Dear Tim . . .”

You could go a step further by indicating some familiarity with this blog, but I won’t put my foot down about that.

I will continue to delete unread any press release blasted out with no personalization at all.

Regards,

Tim

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Yes, I’m basically asking for a level of personalization that has been possible with mail-merge features since the 1980s — but I can assure you that setting up this one simple hurdle will allow me to continue to trash half of the pitches that hit my inbox.

Yes, I’ll still get lots of irrelevant pitches that have nothing to do with what we discuss here — but I’ve given up hope that the can’t-be-bothered P.R. flack will pay attention to something as strange and provocative as relevance.

And before anybody complains that I paint with too broad a brush: I know many outstanding P.R. people who are a credit to their clients and their industry. It’s just that knowing these people — and counting quite a few of them among my friends — makes the gross failure-to-grasp-the-clue of the bad ones all the more cringe-inducing.

Here endeth the rant.

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Image source.

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!

[O would some Power that gift give us
To see ourselves as others see us!]

~Robert Burns, “To a Louse”

It might be the hardest thing in the world to do.

We marinate in our own thoughts, we reinforce our own habits and beliefs, we wear grooves in our minds that accommodate our practices, whether they’re personal (do you check your calendar before your e-mail, or vice versa?) or collective (if it’s Tuesday, it must mean a staff meeting).

In business, though, we won’t thrive unless we can pull back and see ourselves as though from the outside. The vital questions are easy to say, but hard to answer truthfully:

• How do our customers like us?
• What makes a prospect become a customer?
• How do users want our products to operate?
• What problems are users trying to solve?
• How do the undecided choose between us and our competitors?
• . . .

We at Hoover’s have been asking these questions for a long time, and a loyal customer base suggests that we’ve done a solid job of answering them. But lately we’ve stepped up our efforts, which has led to major improvements to our platform — previously discussed in this post — to answer customer requests, and even to go beyond what customers have thought was possible. (Stay tuned for more on that front; I try not to be too much of a “homer” about Hoover’s products, but it’s hard not to get excited about a set of functionality that’s just so useful for our subscribers.)

As for myself, if you’ve been reading this blog for any time, you’ll know that I like to challenge my own perceptions, because I know how easy it is to get stuck in a rut with one’s thinking. With the start of the new year, I started refreshing my outlook on my work by a couple of simple expedients:

1. Reorganizing my e-mail folders.
2. Buying and using a new type of notebook — not a computer, just a nice bound paper notebook with grid pages.

No big whoop, to be sure — but even these small changes are enough to get me thinking differently.

But now, I want to pose the question to you:

How do YOU get yourself to view YOUR work with fresh eyes?

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Photo by Upsilon Andromedae.

[UPDATED -- 5:20 p.m. Tuesday with still MORE topics . . . ]

There are more topics on my mind this week than I can get to, especially since I’m traveling up to Dallas tomorrow for my fireside chat with Suzanne Hoenig and Colleen Barrett for the DFW Servant Leadership group. (More information and registration for the event available here; more information on the principles of Servant Leadership via the Greenleaf Center.)

Here are some posts I am working on:

• What to expect from the (amazing!) new Hoover’s site functionality, coming soon for our subscribers.
• Why it’s a mistake to make too many predictions about this economy — and what to do instead of making predictions.
• Following up on Professional networking: overcoming obstacle #1, a series on tools and techniques for cultivating your professional network.
• Sports metaphors: “Trash Talk.”
• “Look at your work with fresh eyes.”
• [NEW] Sports metaphor: “Line drive hitter.”
• [NEW] Sports metaphor: “Don’t try to make it all back at once.”
• [NEW] Sports metaphor: “Blocking and tackling.”

Here are more topics I could work on:

• “The Garden of Forking Paths for Finding Relevant Twitter Users.”
• Sports metaphors: “Winning Streaks.”
• Using Social Media in your job search. (Series.)
• [NEW] An elaborate football/social media metaphor comparing stats for quarterbacks (read: ROI) with teams’ measurements of linemen (read: metrics).

Here are a few I might not get to:

• “What will it take to get Facebook to stop showing me ads for Mafia Wars?”
• Ford’s — and Hyundai’s — continuing ascendance over their competition.
• How to host a webinar.
• Reflections on Drucker’s “purpose of a business.”
• The daily hilarity of searching Twitter and the Web for “Hoover’s” and “Hoovers.”
• Pursuing seamlessness in your work.
• [NEW] The New York Times’ adoption of a pay wall for some users.

Which of these interest you? And what topics would you like to see me add to the first and second lists?

(By the way: all these ideas are free. If you’d like to blog on any of them, be my guest. When you do, please alert me and I’ll add comments of my own.)

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Image by Isabelle Palatin, used under a CC-Share Alike license.

Last week I found out from my friend David B. Thomas that his company, SAS Institute, has won yet another award for being a great place to work. (You may remember Dave from last summer’s exchange about “Social Media Manager” — the title that he and I both bear.)

This time around, SAS won the Big Kahuna award in the category — the coveted #1 slot in FORTUNE magazine’s annual list of the “100 Best Companies to Work For.” It comes as little surprise, since SAS has made the list in each of the 13 years that FORTUNE has compiled it.

Lest you think that SAS sacrifices its bottom line to coddle its employees, you should know that it is the largest privately held software company in the world, and that it continues to grow steadily.

Dave was nice enough to field a few questions about his experience with the company. My questions and his answers follow.

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How long have you worked for SAS? What roles have you held there?

I’ve been at SAS since May of 2007. I started as a corporate PR representative, working with local media and national general media, and overseeing our awards program, including the Fortune Best Companies Award. I handed that off when I took the job of Social Media Manager in January 2009.

Based on your own career experience, what distinguishes SAS as a great place to work?

A lot of companies talk about work/life balance, but SAS really does believe in it and practice it every day. If I have to stay home with my son when he gets sick, there is absolutely no stigma in that. If I want to go to the gym in the afternoon (something I don’t do often enough), that’s seen as a positive thing.

The benefits all have a bottom-line value, but even in tough times like this past year, SAS sticks to its guns. Jim Goodnight announced at the beginning of 2009 that we would take a hit to the profits rather than lay anyone off. That was the most principled stand by a CEO I’ve ever experienced.

Plus, they really do trust employees. I saw that in the creation of our social media policies. We talked a lot about the upside and the downside, but there was very little discussion of enforcement and penalties because that’s not the way management thinks around here. And the outcome is we haven’t needed heavy-handed enforcement or penalties.

SAS is no stranger to this type of award. What is the company doing to sustain its performance as a great place to work, given prevailing conditions in the economy?

The Fortune #1 ranking was only one of our big pieces of news today. The second was that we achieved 2.2 percent growth in 2009 with total revenues of $2.31 billion. Even in a really tough year, we managed to increase revenue and be profitable. That’s the validation that our commitment to employees works and is an integral part of our business strategy, not a superfluous add-on.

In your view, what’s the very first thing an average company could do to mimic SAS’s success as a great place to work?

Try to take the long view. If you truly want to build a company with lasting potential, plan for your success five or ten or 20 years down the road, not quarter by quarter. Give your employees a stake in the outcome and show them that you trust them to do their best, and chances are they will. And don’t block their access to social media!

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Thanks to Dave for taking the time to share his thoughts — and congratulations to SAS for its sterling performance.

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Related:

• David B. Thomas on “Social media at Fortune’s Best Company to Work for in America”
• In defense of “Social Media Manager.”

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Or at least some of them, are available in this USA Today story by Matt Krantz:

IPO market making noise again, but sell-off slows recovery

As the headline suggests, the IPO market would probably benefit from more of a bullish streak in the stock markets as a whole.

My take-home lessons, in brief:

• The IPO market remains much healthier than it was a year ago.
• It would benefit from a better flow of filings, and especially filings for offerings worth $500 million and above.
• The IPO recovery has been well distributed across industries, and there’s no reason to think that won’t continue.
• There’s been a mix of IPO debutants based in the U.S. and based elsewhere, which is also likely to continue. (It’s particularly interesting to note the assortment of IPO filers headquartered in China.)
• The IPO market thrives on overall market stability, even when the economy is down. The recent string of little slides in the NYSE and NASDAQ could disrupt the impression of stability and raise worries among IPO aspirants and their underwriters, thereby chilling the environment for offerings.
• The next IPO bubble is still nowhere in sight.

That’s how I see it for now.

It’s one of the big questions that emerged in the research for my article in the new issue of the UT McCombs School’s alumni magazine.

In Favor of Doggedness

Entrepreneurs must have endless determination to channel their passion into business success. In other words, there is no limit to how many doors they should knock on or how much hard work they should pour into their ideas.

Against Over-Doggedness

For the article, Gary Hoover, Trent Thurman, and Jay Drayer each volunteered stories about fellow entrepreneurs who stuck with a failed idea long after it was time to lay it to rest. These overly dogged businesspeople allowed themselves to be so stubborn that they went beyond persistence, to the point that they ignored clear market signals. In other words, they took a virtue so far that it became a fault when it clouded their business judgment.

The Takeaway

There’s a certain flexibility of mind required to succeed as an entrepreneur. Yes, you need a deep well of determination, but you must also be able to tell when your doggedness and passion needs a new outlet.

A metaphor: If you hit a brick wall and figure out that you can break through it, by all means grab your sledgehammer and start to work. But if you hit a solid stone wall that no sledgehammer will ever break, you’re better served to acknowledge it so that you can find your way under, over, or around it — or so you can address a different wall altogether.

Where do you draw the line on doggedness in business? When do you finally take “No” for an answer?

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Related items:

• “The Upside of Failure: Turning Uh-oh into A-ha!” in Texas: The McCombs School of Business Magazine
• Emerging from failure stronger than ever.
• When do you kill a business?
• When is it time to kill a project?

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Photo by sabianmaggy.

All going according to plan, I’ll put up a series of posts in the next couple of weeks about using social media in a job search. I’ve been thinking of this both because (a) lots of people use Hoover’s information to help them look for work, and, (b) since I spend my days immersed in the business uses of social media, friends who are looking for work sometimes turn to me for advice about how to use it better.

When I was talking to a friend about this earlier today, I ran into probably the most common objection I hear about professional networking. In so many words:

How do I build my professional network without imposing myself on others and pestering them for favors?

It’s a good question. Many people I know want to succeed in their careers, but don’t want to be seen as grasping or needy. So how do you bridge that divide?

Here’s what I conveyed to my friend — the same advice I’ve given a number of times before:

THE secret to networking for folks who are reticent to ask for help: make it about LEARNING from others and OFFERING help.

I believe you can be helpful even when you don’t have a job or many contacts — by answering questions, by promoting others’ good work, or simply by offering moral support. Plus, in my own experience and in what I’ve observed for others, you can often quickly develop contacts — and land jobs — based on your willingness to listen to others, learn from them, and offer help without any kind of quid pro quo.

What do you think? How do you build your professional network?

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Image by Think London.

(I’m warming up for my March 16 South by Southwest Interactive session by trying out various metaphors that bridge sports and business — and especially the use of social media in business. Feel free to chime in with your own metaphors in the comments!)

The sports concept: Julius Erving didn’t have the world’s best jump-shot, and he didn’t have great range as a shooter. Yes, he was a dunk artist, but there’s only so many chances to dunk in a game — even for Dr. J — and a lot of dunks aren’t enough to generate 30,026 points in a pro career.

The Doctor had, more than anything, “a nose for the basket.” He would take a jump shot, drive for a dunk, or do any of a thousand things in-between . . . but somehow the ball found the net more for him than it did for almost everybody else.

The business analogy: Surely you’ve known someone like this — call her Linda — in your career? Linda got a solid education, but not from the fanciest schools. Maybe she doesn’t have an MBA. Linda would never claim to be the smartest person on the team, much less in the company. She’s not necessarily the first to arrive in the morning or the last to leave at night. She’s not the fastest at completing individual tasks.

And yet Linda gets the most done. She has that sense (is it innate? learned? honed from years of practice?) for getting things DONE. You put the ball in her hands, she puts the ball in the basket. Period.

What separates Linda from the rest of us? What makes her a Dr. J. of business? Or, to put it another way, . . .

What attributes do you think give some people
“a nose for the basket” in business?

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Related posts:

• A little sports retrospective.
• Sports metaphor: “a captain’s innings.”
• Enter the arena . . . of sports metaphors.

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Image source.