Business Insight Zone

Much to my surprise, a few short posts about Will Smith that I wrote a while back continue to be among the most popular items on this blog, month in and month out. Here are the ones I mean:

• 5 December 2007: The work ethic of Will Smith: “deliberate practice” in action.
• 29 October 2008: The Talented Mr. Smith and His Money-Making Ways.
• 18 November 2008: The Basic Basics: Go the last mile(s).

I was thinking of these as I watched this montage video about Smith’s working philosophy at Trey Pennington’s site:

(If the video doesn’t work, try this link.)

Maybe some of what Smith says about the “flow of the universe” sounds hokey, but it’s well worth heeding his core messages about (a) obsessive focus on what’s important to you, (b) making the world better for others, and (c) an “unrealistic,” unrelenting work ethic.

Pennington suggests that we take Smith’s philosphy — along with that of the witty video blogger Jay Smooth — and apply it to our social media practice. It probably won’t surprise you that I want to take it one step further, into a broader consideration of how we work, why we work, and what holds us back.

Check out the video, then please tell me what you think: How can we in the corporate world emulate Smith’s approach to success?

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Other related posts:

• Deliberate practice in the working world.
• Deliberate practice in a nutshell.

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It’s endemic — and I’m not talking about the nation’s households checking to see what else in on during the commercials for LOST.*

I’m talking about the sometimes herky-jerky rhythms of our daily work, the constant mental channel-flipping between e-mail and IM and spreadsheets and meetings and drop-in visitors and . . . all of it.

It’s an old issue, and indeed I’ve written about it any number of times here. (Case in point.) I also read a good bit about how to combat it, especially at blogs like TimeBack.

But somehow today brought it all home for me. I got a couple of important things done by being systematic. Other things I interrupted by being distractable and unsystematic. But I also recognized a couple of key gaps in my work thanks to several bits of feedback that, taken singly, wouldn’t have amounted to much but, taken together, showed me where I’ve been missing opportunities — not just today or this week, but in the bigger picture.

Taking time to think, to stay on one channel, is a good way to spot those missed opportunities sooner and better. Channel-flipping, while it’s good for many things (diversity of intake, amusement, etc.), isn’t great for that kind of pattern recognition.

You think?

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* Given (a) the furor over tonight’s season premiere, and (b) the extreme confusion I’ve experienced every time I’ve accidentally watched the show, I’m glad I’m not a LOST fanatic. Maybe I’ll rent it on DVD so I can watch it back-to-back when it’s all over.

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Photo by Francis Bijl.

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.

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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The way some businesspeople talk, you’d think they never encountered a setback in their working lives. Possibly there’s just no help for them. For the rest of us, though, it’s vital to learn how to come back from failures when they happen. But how?

That’s the core question behind my just-published article in the UT McCombs School of Business alumni magazine:

The Upside of Failure: Turning Uh-oh into A-ha!

WE ALL FAIL. Some of us linger over our failures, examining the wreckage of what might have been, while others sail on toward new ventures (and new failures) without being anchored to old regrets. Why do some people emerge from failure stronger? How do they recover from setbacks to reach new heights of success? What is the secret of the phoenix that emerges from the flames?

One of the pleasures of working on this feature came in getting to interview and learn from Gary Hoover, who founded Hoover’s 20 years ago and who has a wealth of hard-won personal insight for how to emerge from failures.

I’d love to have your thoughts on the piece, either here or in the comment thread attached to the article.

And, while we’re at it: How do YOU bounce back from failure?

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Related posts:

• How do you cope with failure?
• “You’re constantly on the brink of crashing, because that’s the fastest.”
• Book review: Mindset, by Carol Dweck.
• The benefits of failure.
• How well do you tolerate mistakes?

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Image via Donna Barber.

Me, I’m grateful to say that I love my job, but I’m aware that lots of people aren’t in the same boat. I didn’t, however, know that it was this many:

Survey: Most Americans unhappy at work

Americans of all ages and at all pay levels are increasingly unhappy at their jobs, according to a new report by The Conference Board . . .

Researchers interviewed 5,000 households across the United States and found that only 45 percent of those surveyed are satisfied with their jobs, down from 61.1 percent back in 1987 when the annual survey was launched.

The Conference Board says the numbers are overwhelming negative and could spell trouble for the nation’s overall productivity. . . .

No kidding.

The challenge for companies, the economy, and all those dissatisfied workers is this: how do you forge ahead in the face of this at a time when everyone most needs to work their best?

No glib answers here. I do have some ideas about taking lemons and making lemonade, but first I’d like to hear from you:

How do you do your best
– or get the best from those under you –
when so many workers are so dissatisfied?

Looking forward to having your thoughts in the comment thread.

By the way, if you want to dig deeper into The Conference Board’s report — I know I’m going to — it’s here.

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Photo by Caitlin Doe.

Pick anything important you’re working on and think about the question in the title. I’ll wait . . .

Okay, you’ve thought about it? Now answer these questions for yourself:

• Is your timeframe tied to your sales cycle? To your budgeting process? To your personal level of patience? To some arbitrary (meaningless) standard? Or what?
• How quickly do you expect a return from your efforts? How much of a return do you expect soon? How much in the long run? (And what do you mean by “soon” and “in the long run”? Does your team agree on these definitions?)
• How quickly are you asking yourself to act? To make decisions? Is this faster or slower than what you expect from peers / direct reports / bosses / vendors / clients / prospects?

Why am I asking all of these questions? Because experience tells me that mismatched timetables are a major source of business friction, misplaced urgency, and fouled-up projects.

What do you think?

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Photo by Alexander Boden, used under a CC-Share Alike license.

A lot of businesspeople treat December like the off-season. They’re tired — especially after a loooooooong and wearing year like 2009. They want to book as much business as they can before the year closes, sure, but in many cases they primarily want to stay warm, avoid trouble, and limp along toward a bit of time off with their families. Their motto could be, “We’ll hit it hard in the new year.”

Believe me when I tell you that I’m sympathetic to this view. I indulged myself in a real mental vacation around Thanksgiving. I had been traveling for work and juggling lots of tasks in the office (it’s not all ivory-tower thought leadership here at Hoover’s Galactic HQ) while keeping up with my family duties and a steady workout schedule. Spending a week out of the office, including a few days at my folks’ place, was a real breather for me.

But then reality set in: the work doesn’t stop. You know this, I know this, but it’s worth repeating — and in language that puts a fine point on it:

The needs of your customers and your business don’t stop.
Not for the holidays — not for anything.

If you ease up too much on your efforts in December, not only will you fail to serve your customers and your business, you’ll also lose precious momentum that you’ll need when 2010 rolls around.

And if all of that doesn’t give you motivation enough to keep grinding ahead, refer back to the sentence that started this post: “A lot of businesspeople treat December like the off-season.”

Some of those people may be your competitors. Just because they’re sleeping this month doesn’t mean you should. In fact, if they are sleeping, December is the perfect time to steal a march on them.

I’ll leave you with an analogy: the football great Jerry Rice was famous for his durability — he was catching touchdown passes when he was 40 — which arose from his intense offseason fitness regimen. That regimen started the very next day after his team finished its season. So if the 49ers won the Superbowl on Sunday . . . Rice was out on the training field, in the cold and wet of a San Francisco winter, by 7 a.m. on Monday.

That’s how Hall of Famers are built, in business as in anything else.

So, please, enjoy time with your family during the holiday season. Watch some TV, eat some good food, and vegetate enough to recharge your batteries. I know I will.

But use your secret weapon — your focus during December — as a way to elevate your game, for 2009, 2010, and beyond.

What do YOU do in December to build your business?

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Photo by Josh Evnin, used under a CC-Share Alike license.

(This is the first follow-up to “Insert blog topic here.”)

Here they are:

1. Be more dogged.

In “The sad lie of mediocrity,” Seth Godin pointed out a fundamental, devastating truth about success:

Doing 4% less does not get you 4% less.
Doing 4% less may very well get you 95% less.

Yes, I know you work hard. Yes, I know this particular obstacle is big and hairy and has fangs like chainsaws.

So what? Get a bazooka. Enlist friends. Stay up all night to work toward its demise, if need be.

But buckle down and get it done. It’s not over until you win.

2. Get creative.

Maybe this fanged monster is impervious to bazookas, but susceptible to poison. Maybe, like Al Capone, it’s susceptible to indictment for tax evasion.

Pull back the lens. Zoom way back so you can take in the landscape. Think again about the problem you’re trying to solve — the beastie you’re trying to kill — rather than focusing on what hasn’t worked so far. Look over my advice from “Killing off a vampire project” and see if any of it rings a bell for you.

Maybe all you need to overcome this obstacle is a skateboard and the right attitude.

“But it’s not that simple!” I can hear someone say.

Actually, yes, it is.

Go.

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Image by Daniel Catt, used under a CC-Share Alike license.

Are you like me? Do you have a hard time saying “No”?

Last month a friend invited me to take part in a blogging project. When I saw the list of people he was inviting, I was flattered even to be included. The guy making the offer is a friend of mine socially, but also a stone-cold professional. I wanted to jump at the chance to work with him.

But as much as I did, I had to admit it wasn’t the right opportunity. Before I told him “No,” I listed the two main reasons for myself:

• I like to think I know something about business, but I know I lack expertise in the topic at hand. My friend was giving me too much credit.
• I say “Yes” too much in general . . . which makes me overbooked . . . which means that each project I do suffers under the weight of all the projects I take on. (Sound familiar at all, O overworked legions?)

This one time, I talked myself down from saying “Yes,” and I was glad I did. It’s a habit I’m working hard to replicate. The takeaway I hope you’ll share with me:

It’s easy to say “No” to obvious losing propositions.
It’s hard when the opportunities are attractive.

So where does the rainbow-colored diagram come in?

It’s taken from Ted Williams‘ classic baseball manual, The Science of Hitting. Williams used it to show what batting average he guessed he’d earn if every pitch he faced were in that particular part of the strike zone. (Imagine you’re the pitcher facing Williams, and he’s standing on the left-hand side of the chart.) The colors are brighter for the areas where Williams knew he hit the best. They bear out his assertion — backed up by his own prodigious career — that “baseball history is made on the inner half of the plate.”

The fact that Williams gave this so much thought helps to explain why he was one of the greatest hitters of all time. But the book has an even simpler formulation for what goes into great hitting, regardless of the type of hitter we’re talking about:

“Get a good pitch to hit.”

I submit to you that it’s a great rule for business, too. Sure, you could reach the prospects at the fringe of your ideal target range — and it’s especially tempting to do that when the economy is as tight as it is now.

But is that where your best margins lie? Are those the kind of customers you’ll have in the brightest version of your company’s future? In other words, is that how you’ll make business history?

Ignore the pitches you can’t drive. Get a good pitch to hit.

Be selective.

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Image source.