Art Petty on Management

A Blogging Milestone and What I Learned by Writing 100 Blog Posts

It was a tough week for blogging.  A perfect storm of business and personal schedule challenges conspired to keep me from spending quality time on the blog.  OK, and the fact that I have been holding steady at 99 posts for a few days, and somehow it seemed like I needed to create something truly remarkable for the milestone, 100th post.  I'm over the "need for remarkable" part, but thought I would take a few minutes this Saturday morning to reflect back on what I've learned in this half year of blogging about all things management, leadership, strategy and project and product management.
 

• Back a million years ago in the Fall of 2007, I recall being uncertain about whether blogging was right for me, whether it would help me in my business and whether anyone would care what I had to say.  I'm now a zealot, and my friends and associates are likely sick of me raving about what an incredible experience this is personally and professionally. I enjoy and am benefiting from blogging so much, I am starting to incorporate this message into speaking engagements

• Blogging imposes a discipline that requires that I immerse myself in my subject matter and not only think about it, but put something down on the metaphorical paper.  Call me crazy, but I truly love the business world, love learning about and meeting people and companies engaged in innovative, great practices, and I love writing and talking about these topics. 

• I am constantly reminded through the comments to my posts and the many e-mails and LinkedIn invites that I've received that there are some remarkably smart people in the world that share a passion for excellence in management with me.  The cross-border dialog has been tremendously rewarding for me.  Thanks to all that reached out.

• More on the smart people theme.  I read a number of blogs religiously, and I tip my hat to the consistent excellence that emanates from these professionals.  Just a few of my favorites include: the Three Star Leadership Blog, Web Ink Now, Contrarian Consulting, ProBlogger and The Product Marketing Blog.  Thanks to all of you for the consistently outstanding content and the inspiration.

• I continue to be surprised the way some posts resonate and spread through the blogosphere and others that I thought would do the same just languish.  Of the 100 posts, the winner by far for page views was: Values Based Leadership: More of What I Learned At Matsushita.  The popularity of this post gave me a true insight to how powerful blogging can be for spreading ideas.

Looking Forward: The Next 100 Posts:

I am a goal-driven person, and I have several that I have honed in on for the next hundred or so posts.  

• I know that my posts are too long.  Everyone is busy, and the best posts for me are the ones that get across compelling points efficiently.  It is my goal to reduce the average word count of a post from 750 to 500.  I'm working on it.  Bear with me.  I'm starting right after this post, I promise!

• Somewhere between now and post number 200, I have a goal to announce and begin my next book.  The experience writing Practical Lessons in Leadership with Rich Petro was tremendous and I want to keep writing and publishing.  Given enough time, there are a few books in me that I will bring forth.

• I struggled with the comment issue on blog posts during the first 100.  I've not been certain whether I should comment on people's comments or just let the conversation run, minus the author sticking his nose back in.  I love the comments, even those that disagree, and I learn from them.  I feel compelled to do a better job acknowledging and engaging with those of you that add your thoughts, so look for more of that.

• Less preaching...more idea generation.  Many of my first 100 are soapbox posts, with me decrying lousy practices and preaching best practices.  Some of that cannot be helped, but I also want to spend more time talking and writing about the practices of others and offering ideas versus preaching. 

• Continue to learn how to be a good citizen of the blogosphere.  I will do a better job referencing other great content that is published on a daily basis. 

• It is my goal to grow this blog into a leading resource for thoughts, ideas and best practices on all things management.  That goal alone drives my desire to improve and to strengthen my ability to put out useful, practical content to help solve the vexing problems that we all face in managing and leading. 

OK, I've already exceeded my targeted word count.  Thanks again to all that joined and hung in there with me through the first 100.  I'm looking forward to doing a better job with this next round and as always, your ideas, input and constructive suggestions are fuel for improvement.

Best to all!  -Art

Seven Suggestions to Consider When Creating A New Market

If you've ever worked in an organization or on a team that got caught up in the quest to create a new market you know that the experience is all consuming and exhilarating.

While the all-new pure white-space scenario is elusive, a fair number of organizations leverage their deep knowledge of a specific segment, a group of customers or a set of customer challenges to create new offerings that don't fit traditional market definitions or boundaries.  The combination of blazing a new trail and believing that what you have created and what you are espousing will help reshape and transform for the better how something gets done is intoxicating. 

I met the other day with a CEO living through this very situation right now, and from listening to her very real challenges and reflecting on my own experiences on one of these market-creating odysseys, I offer a number of leadership and management suggestions that might prove helpful on your own journey of market creation. 

7 Issues that Should Keep You Awake at Night on Your Way to Creating a Market:


1.  You have to surround yourself with flexible, free-thinking and adaptable people.  Hiring the former BIG CO executive who hasn't lived through what it means to swim without a life raft may not be the best plan in the early phases.  You don't have time to wean people off of big company practices...bring in the professionals that have already been through this process somewhere else.

2.  Listen to yourself and your people talk and read your own propaganda.  If everything that comes out of your mouth is about how great your new product is at the feature/function/capability level, you've got a problem.  If the answer to every business question is something about the unique capabilities and elegant architecture of your revolutionary product, you've got a problem.  If your web site is nothing but more of the above, the problem is real.  The prospective clients that you are seeking as early adopters are motivated by a bigger vision, not by the elegance of your technology.

3.  Markets don't emerge on anyone's schedule.   If you are banking on going from nowhere to critical mass on a short-horizon, you and your investors are likely to be disappointed.  While everyone in awhile markets emerge at remarkable speed, most of them take years and often never emerge.  If your market's emergence is dependent upon people and institutions changing long-standing practices and overcoming deeply embedded approaches, you better be planning for a marathon, not a sprint.    

4.  Back to the message coming from you and your web site.  Like it or not, you are evangelist and educator all at the same time.  If all you do is shout product, you will not appeal to either the hearts or brains of your prospective customers.  Make sure that your people, your web content and the preponderance of your conversation is educational and informative and not pure product propaganda. 

5.  Traditional marketing tactics don't work when you are creating a market.  Give it up and shoot your marketing head if he/she is suggesting advertising, trade shows and direct mail as primary vehicles.  (OK, this one will generate some controversy.  Sorry, I believe that the world has changed and people gather their information and assign trust in very different ways than they used to.  Before flaming me on this topic, read David Meerman Scott's: The New Rules of Marketing and P.R.  and then let's start the debate.)

6.  Traditional selling tactics don't work when you are creating a market.  See also the marketing comment above.  Transactional salespeople and sales approaches need not apply.  Your early focus is on market visionaries willing to take a risk to realize something profound for their business.  Match the value creation resource with the task to fuel the vision.

7.  Map the Influencers and figure out how to appeal to their fundamental need.  Don't know what that is.  It's simple.  Market influencers gain influence by having radical opinions on what's right, what's wrong and what organizations need to do about what's right and what's wrong.  Paint your vision for them, encourage them to develop their own vision and provide them with a soapbox to tell the world.  A good influencer will never back you or your product overtly, but if they see the opportunity to enhance their position by grabbing on to the issues that you are dealing with, they help educate the market.  This type of influence is not purchased with a subscription to an analyst firm or via press releases, it is gained through personal relationships and involving the right individuals in your strategic market and client discussions. 

The bottom-line for now:

The above 7-suggestions barely scratch the surface of what it takes to succeed in helping an organization create, define and profit from a new market.  However, they are important issues that I often do not hear the leaders of these exciting firms thinking and talking about.  Creating a market is a non-routine project, and as a result, non-routine thinking is required every step of the way.  Leave the traditional tactics at home, spend some time thinking beyond the moment and trust your gut that this is really challenging.  Remember, if you are right, you want to harvest what you spent so much time, money and gray matter pioneering.  If not you, the companies right behind you will be happy to benefit from your efforts.

Bad Bosses, A Walk with Dante and Your Leadership Legacy

Thankfully, the human brain does a pretty good job of managing memories by helping us smooth out the bad times and enhance the good.  This seems to work pretty well for a lot of things in life, with one major exception being our memories of lousy leaders that tormented us at some point in our career.

Ask a room full of mid-level managers to talk about great leaders that have supported them and you get a few nice stories.  Ask them for examples of bad leaders and bad leadership practices and you may have to run for high-ground as the trickle of mildly repressed memories turns into a torrent of frightening anecdotes described by individuals with a far-away look in their eyes and a tone tinged with revenge in their voices.

OK, I may be exaggerating a bit on the glazed eyes and revenge stuff, but not a bit on the ease with which people can describe being victimized by bad bosses.  The stories of micromanaging, verbally abusing, backstabbing, credit taking, time wasting and endless pontificating flow freely and are told with gusto.  One story begets another and pretty soon you have a room full of people trying to out do each other with, "you think that's bad, I had a manager that... "  Unfortunately, there's a lot of material for bad boss stories.

I've often imagined inserting an additional section to the manuscript of Dante's Inferno where the poet Virgil and Dante upon journeying through the circles of hell come upon a special place reserved solely for evil managers, probably between Circle 5 and Circle 6.  I'll leave it to your imagination to work out what the appropriate punishment would be in this guaranteed blockbuster of a re-release of this literary classic.  I can see the caption now...Leadership Lessons from the Inferno!  Remember, you heard it here.

If you find yourself embarking on or immersed in a role in leading others, you have a distinct choice to make about the impact you will have on those fortunate or unfortunate enough to serve with you.  You can add to the inventory of "bad boss" stories by focusing on yourself, not understanding what your true role is and doing everything possible to build your career on the backs of others.  Or you can take the much harder, but ultimately more rewarding path of doing the right things all of the time for the people in your care. 

Some suggestions to build a leadership legacy that ensure you don't end up as fodder for more bad boss stories or find you in a conversation with Dante and Virgil during one of their strolls:

• Get to know the people that work for you.  Your effort to pay attention and show genuine interest is a show of respect for your associates.  Learn names, learn the names of their spouses and children, and pay attention to the pictures and personal mementos on their desks.

• Listen more than you talk.  Two ears, one mouth...use them in proportion.  Take the time for formal and informal discussions where you ask for input, feedback and ideas.  Bad managers think that they are being paid to generate the best ideas.  Effective leaders understand that their people are the source of the best ideas and they work hard to create forums for those ideas to be uncovered and developed.

• Dispense credit liberally.  Never ever take credit that belongs to someone else.

• Ensure that your actions match your words.  We all know that words are cheap.  If you want people to commit to you and your vision, you've got to show that you are committed.  One leader suggested that, "The Say and the Do" have to match.

• Know when to stay out of the way.  If you've done your job in picking people, creating the right working atmosphere and providing general direction, it's time to get out of the way and let people work. 

• Everyone respects accountability.   Enforce it fairly, evenly and consistently.  No exceptions.

• The only finger pointing you should ever do is at yourself.  Back your people, recognize that you are responsible for their results and if the results come up short, it is your fault, not theirs. 

• Keep your agenda visible.  People sense when someone has a different or personal agenda.  Don't let this be an issue.  Your agenda is your team, your company and achieving goals.

The bottom-line for now:

Every time I feel like we're making some headway on stamping out bad bosses, I run into another group of great professionals that remind me that too many of our managerial experiences are lousy.  Effective managers and leaders are made one person at a time, and every one of us makes a choice every day to do it right or not.  What will your legacy be? 

In Search of the High Performance Project Team

I recently conducted a leadership workshop for a group of technical professionals at an industry conference, and as always, I walked away from the session with a couple of insights gained from the input of the participants.  One that surprised me was that after talking about characteristics of high performance project teams, I asked for a show of hands from anyone that had been a member of this type of team.  Only 5 out of 58 raised their hands.  Even discounting for the people that don't tend to respond to "showing of hands" requests, anything even close to the 10% range here seems abysmal.

How Healthy is Your Leadership Culture? Rate It Yourself and See or, "Rate it and Weep"

Chances are if you are like most of the business professionals that take the 10 question Leadership Culture Index below, your organization can use some improvement.  A lot of improvement.

I deliver this simple and I'm sure non-scientific survey (see author's note for origin) almost every time I'm in front of a group of managers and executives talking about leadership, and I'm still shocked by the scores.  I suppose I should quit being shocked by how abysmal many businesses are at identifying, developing and retaining leadership talent, but the optimist in me continues to believe that people are too smart to ignore this important issue.

Leadership and the Winning Environment

I never get tired of hearing stories from leaders about their winning teams in business or in high school athletics.  These stories are usually told by the leader or coach with parental pride about the remarkable success of a group of people that have figured out if they work together and in support of each other, great things can happen. 

More often than not, the leaders or coaches of these teams are quick to dismiss their own role in the success, quickly pointing to the individuals and their work habits, dedication and coordination.  While humility is admirable, the leaders that put together groups that regularly achieve and exceed goals deserve credit for helping create the environment where winning becomes a habit. (See also, The Seven Leadership Levers that Shape the Working Environment.)

From selecting and supporting the right people to caring enough to provide the tools, mentoring and constructive feedback, this leader, whether CEO, Shift Supervisor or High School Tennis Coach, is truly responsible for creating an environment that breeds success. Success as we know, tends to breed more success.  It's a wonderful, vicious cycle. 

Your Next Boss Might Just Be a 20-something Level 5 Guild Leader

This month's Harvard Business Review finally spoke to a long-standing question/concern that many of us in mid-career (read 40-something or older) have likely pondered: When will the generation that grew up on computers and video games learn to apply the unique skills gained through countless hours in front of a screen and on a keyboard for career and economic gain?  Of course, the dark side of this question is, has this younger generation evolved skills from all of that time clicking beyond those of the rest of us to gain a competitive advantage in the job market?  (Asked just a bit tongue in cheek.)

The answers to these compelling issues might just be hinted at in a fascinating article entitled Leadership's Online Labs by Bryon Reeves, Thomas W. Malone and Tony O'Driscoll in the May, 2008 issue of HBR.   

Values-Based Leadership: More of What I Learned at Matsushita

I've highlighted on occasion my pride in being an alumni member of one of the world's great organizations, Matsushita (now formally known as Panasonic).  I left in 1996 to continue my still-early career development, and like most other things in life, I figured out a number of years later what a remarkable and formative experience it truly was. 

While there are many memorable elements of my eight years working in and for this Japanese company, including a tremendous exposure to the country and people of Japan, I credit my experience here for opening my eyes to the power of establishing strong values as bedrock for leading and for managerial decision-making.

I reflected on the Basic Business Principles as the values are known at Matsushita, when I co-authored the Values for a future employer, and I reflect and draw upon them regularly as I teach sections on Values-Focused Leadership in workshops and classrooms.  A typical session will end with a majority of participants highlighting how they never understood until now how powerful the corporate values could be in strengthening their culture, driving performance and guiding behavior.  This is a valuable lesson to learn for all of us. 

Three Simple, Low Cost Ideas to Help Jump-Start Leadership Development

One of the most frequent questions that I get at seminars or workshops goes something like this:

"Art, I've read your leadership book, I've listened to you in the workshop and I understand how important it is for me to put time into the development of leaders on my team.  Where should I start?"

It's actually a great question, and one which some creative and conscientious leaders have offered me some great, low-cost, easy to implement ideas that I am happy to share with you. 

Marketers, Are Trade Shows Extinct Yet?

This post is certain to generate some controversy about a long-standing, big investment marketing tactic  that I believe is increasingly irrelevant.  At the worst, if you read this and at least think about scrutinizing your investment in this marketing approach, I've done my job. 

The thoughts were prompted by a recent article in BtoB magazine  entitled: "Exhibition industry sees growth slowing."  What a shocker.  And while the economy is identified as the primary culprit for this slowdown, I submit that this tactic is a carryover from another era when people gathered information and insights about prospective suppliers or service providers in a very different way, and when lead generation was more about trolling and interrupting than pinpointing.