Latest Articles

Latest Articles from the Blog

• Mindfully OrganicPublished March 22, 2012 at 3:04 am

  I hear lots of leaders say “we grew organically.” To me that’s another way of saying,”we’re lost but we’re making good progress.” Growing organically is a good think, doing it mindlessly is the problem.

• Captain ObviousPublished March 16, 2012 at 8:55 pm

  I fish in troubled water. Time after time I’m asked to evaluate an organization or company; How do our financials look? What is wrong with our reporting? Where can we grow? How can we survive? Save us! It’s rewarding work. Nothing like playing the hero. That funny part is they already have all the answers. The innovation is in them, they know what they are doing wrong, they know what’s broken.

  Sometimes it takes Captain Obvious to come point it out. That’s better than staying blind at any rate.

• Starved for ColleaguesPublished March 13, 2012 at 1:07 am

  I’m not a big meeting person – I like “death by meeting” principles where you never sit down – in an effort to limit the time they take. I like the idea of making meetings about ratifying decisions versus discussion so as not to waste the multiple of time x participant.

  Conferences and conventions tend to leave me cold as well. In the 90s when I was living in ex-yugoslavia doing anti-war, anti-nationalist work we used to go to these glorious cities only to be locked up in a hotel with end-to-end schedules and a quick bus ride around Cairo (or wherever – since in that context it was “wherever” since we never saw much of where we were). To make matters worse we were talking about some horridly depressing topic like “war-rape” or refugee status, or intervention.

  If they were so bad why did we keep attending? To see each other. The space between sessions and plenaries and discussions – over coffee or wine or dinner … that is where the value of the meeting was.

  Being starved for colleagues is an epidemic. Too often people are isolated in their work – not because they live in a war zone – but because they never have the opportunity to meet and exchange ideas. The meetings that don’t fall prey to tracked sessions, concurrent panel discussions and such, do a great service to their attendees who only want to meet and talk, all together, not missing a beat.

   

• A Case of the ImpossiblesPublished March 8, 2012 at 2:34 pm

  A colleague recently told me about an arts institute that was struggling – *IS* struggling. They opened a big new building in a newly-vibrant part of town at the same moment the economy faltered (yeah, I know, faltered doesn’t quite cover it does it?). Like many non-profit organizations that pain took a minute to be felt. All across Washington I’ve been watching businesses rebound and non-profits just start to stumble. I don’t know if that’s just a cycle thing or if it can be helped.

  When this institute opened another big-wig in the arts community said, unbidden,”They might have over reached.” But you know what – it seems obvious to me the problem – and I’ve only look at it from the outside – but I’d bet you anything it’s another case of the “impossibles.”

  It’s got everything going for it – state of the art facilities, name recognition, foundation support (where or not that’s a plus is for other posts) … and most of all – POPULATION DENSITY. That’s the holy grail – if you want people to show up but your operation down in the middle of where all the people are. Bingo – all you have to do is juggle how you are going to manage all that high class problem. Unless … you keep your offerings narrow, your calendar limited, and bet too much of your business model on “private rentals” … the Dance Institute of Washington (there, I said it) is missing an enormous opportunity to change it’s business model.

  I have noticed more people around and a little more energy – but the website still focuses on ballet, adult classes, and limited hours. It sits in a culturally diverse neighborhood – make the site more accessible, broaden your range of classes – dramatically, start classes at 4:00 and let them run until 10pm. It’s not as if the students will all need to drive home to the suburbs – they live next door. Community events, scholarships or just low prices, whatever fills the rooms and gets them pointed in the right direction. They are right, it’s impossible – to make it without changing the model and opening your eyes to the possibility around you.

• It’s who ya know, ya know?Published March 5, 2012 at 7:29 pm

  Success in life is all about connections – who you know. For most of us that might not mean a lot. Not everyone has deep-pocketed friends or friends in high places. In Washington it’s possible to brush with minor celebrity on a daily basis even. But in the end it’s all just people getting by – it’s their sense of grandiosity that might separate one from another.

  When I say success is about connections I mean it’s getting connected to the people in your life – not just your family and friends, not just your colleagues, or even your neighbors — though those are all natural places to start. I mean deliberately making a personal connection to the people who come in and out of your like – the utility worker, the nurse, the physical therapist, the trash collector.

  Stop, open your eyes, slow down a second and acknowledge everyone in your life. You learn from everyone – connect to that before racing on around the corner to the next thing.

• Starved for ColleaguesPublished March 2, 2012 at 9:43 pm

  When you run your own thing it’s hard not to feel lonely. When you drive the revenue, the strategy, the product, the team, the xyz … it’s hard to constantly motivate yourself to keep driving. A lot of my clients suffer from this problem. They are starved for colleagues.

  When you are capable and driven enough to run your own business or build your own organization it’s hard to remember some of the most basic needs you are neglecting. Having someone you trust and respect both question and support you – someone invested in your success – is more valuable that just about anything else I can think of.

   

• Knowing When to ListenPublished February 29, 2012 at 5:18 pm

  Yesterday I spent the day at a mentoring event. Folks who had NIH grants can take part in a commercialization process via Larta Institute’s commercialization program. It’s not unlike a lot of entrepreneurship programs I’ve been a part of though this one was focused on bringing federal grantees into the commercial space (the feds really do a horrible job of commercialization).

  Entrepreneur events happen weekly all over the region (I’m triple booked tonight alone)  - entrepreneurs get their decks together and learn how to present their ideas after varying degrees of training, coaching, and mentorship. There are dolphin tanks and shark tanks, and pitch fests and graduation events – you name it, everyone is trying to help small, new businesses stand up and start moving.

  It’s more interesting and loads more fun being among the coaches and judges than in the hot seat but you do have to have the stomach for some pretty broad quality when it comes to ideas and presentations.

  Yesterday was a good example. The first presenter had an interesting technology but that wasn’t what the grant was for – so he was technically there to figure out how to commercialize a very pointy-headed, scienc-y thing that probably has no viability outside the state or federal space at all. Not commercially viable. He was passionate about the work and passionate about the technology. Passion is good but conflicting passions are bad and in the end, as one observer put it, “I still don’t know what you want to be when you grow up.” This said to a 50-something, clinical biologist from the research triangle who has lived entirely off grants since the early 80′s – not the ideal candidate for negotiating a multi-million dollar licensing deal with a global partner.

  The second presenter turned out to be a bag of wind. While he was much further along; had $2 million dollars in revenue, a handful of significant university medical systems and a vision that had the potential to really wow some serious investors, he didn’t fare well. The first guy really had nothing started – all potential, the second presenter had us wanting to pick him apart.

  What did he do wrong? He started by telling us he was going to do his shorter “45 minute presentation” (versus the 60 minute one he sometimes gave to investors). In my book you talk for 5 minutes about your idea, take questions for a few more and by then everyone in the room knows if they are interested enough to hear more. All in all if you are in front of the right people – people that know what you are talking about (already in the same space) you wont even get all the way through the presentation. The idea that we’d need 45 minutes to determine that either meant he was out of touch, arrogant enough to think we were all stupid, or a combination of the two. Add to this that his presentation was dull and had about 400 times the number of words it should have.

  When he finally finished – after numerous interruptions – 14 people had 16 minutes to say something to him … (we’d all taken the day, given of our time, to help with some perspective this guy was sorely in need of). Each taking a minute common comments were that the presentation shouldn’t be more than 5 or 10 minutes and that he was no where ready to go out to present for a $6 million A-round with heavy duty investors.

  Most interesting to me was the critique that he was argumentative and defensive around many questions posed by the group – in other words, he needed to listen more. Listen to the people who’d come out to listen to him. Listen to the market, listen to the investors, listen to his customers, listen to the risks.

  Were we harder on him because he put more out there? Sure, but isn’t that the deal? Put more out there and more is expected of you?

• Who is Leading Whom?Published February 27, 2012 at 9:01 pm

  When I was hiring consultants and contractors to do things for my software company I kept coming up against the same problem over and over. It didn’t matter what the problem, are, or vendor was – they wanted me to tell THEM what I wanted them to do. Frankly I could easily find people to do what I wanted them to do – that’s not the problem. The problem is finding someone who would tell ME what needed doing.

  Even the leaders need leaders. Real value is coming in to LEAD where they can’t. It’s true that some clients will say they are open when clearly they aren’t – in that case you’ve not done the job of listening well. They just need your leadership in another area, find it. They didn’t hire you to be another employee – they hired you to tell them what to do. . If you can’t find that area – you are wasting your time and their money.