Be heard above the Electronic Din

From Fast Company, by Christopher Percy Collier, October 2005

Email, instant messaging, Web conferencing, blogs. So many new ways of communicating--and yet they've paradoxically made it harder for leaders to get their messages across effectively. As the number of virtual communication methods continues to expand--have you started your video blog yet?--we spoke with Alan L. Nelson, a partner in the communication strategy consultancy CRA Inc., for guidance. He has worked with leaders at companies such as McDonald's, PepsiCo, and Capital One to help them embrace these tools, understand how and when to use them, and make sure they can get their messages across.

1. Match the Medium To the Message.

You don't fire 10,000 people in an email. You don't announce a major restructuring via Webcast. Choose the appropriate tool for each communication event based on the complexity of your message and its strategic importance. As the significance rises, so does the need to meet face-to-face. You may have a full quiver of devices, but not all will hit the bull's-eye.

2. Be Obsessively On Message.

Ten years ago, there were fewer ways to address a company and few opportunities to do it. Now it's the inverse. Employees get 500 emails a day. Messages from the CEO don't register like they used to. In order to be heard, leaders must beat the same drum. "Find a way to tie what you're saying into the bigger message," says Nelson. "Or don't communicate it.""

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Grist: Save the Founder

From Inc Magazine, by Adam Hanft

"If I had a dime for every time I've heard it, I could start another business: Entrepreneurs are passionate people, great at building companies, but only to a certain level.

As their enterprises reach maturity, these impatient, impetuous founders need to be replaced by 'professional' managers. It's a stereotype that's become a truism. In VC land they even have a name for the problem: founderitis.

The most recent public eruption of this hypothesis occurred when Amazon.com celebrated its 10th anniversary, and the media openly wondered whether it was time for Jeff Bezos to surrender control. Give me a break. That same logic came close to destroying Apple. You know the story: In 1985, convinced the company had outgrown its founder, the board dismissed Steve Jobs and handed the reins to John Scully - a packaged-goods guy, a branding maven, whom Jobs had wooed from Pepsi two years earlier. Scully, of course, failed either to expand the company in the computer market or to innovate elsewhere, and in 1993 was replaced by Michael Spindler, who in turn was replaced by Gil Amelio - neither of whom did much better. Jobs returned as interim CEO in 1997, dropped the interim in 2000, and the rest is white-earbud history.

The lesson is obvious. The notion that entrepreneurs outlive their usefulness is both stunningly wrong-headed and potentially dangerous -- especially now. It's universally acknowledged that today's business environment is faster-moving and more unpredictable than ever. And those are precisely the conditions that cry out for more, not less, of the founder's restless spirit. Indeed, the very skills and qualities that gave rise to a business at the outset are what's needed when companies find themselves in a constant state of re-creation. No business, however "mature," needs mere tending. But all businesses require sparking. Entrepreneurship needs to be a chronic condition."

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The Founding CEO's dilemma: Stay or Go?

From HBS Working Knowledge, August 2005

"Noam Wasserman is an assistant professor and MBA Class of 1961 Fellow in the entrepreneurial management unit at Harvard Business School. His paper 'Founder-CEO Succession and the Paradox of Entrepreneurial Success,' published in Organization Science in March-April 2003, won Harvard's 2003 Aage Sorensen Memorial Award for sociological research. With his coauthor, Rock Center Entrepreneur-in-Residence Henry McCance of Greylock Partners, professor Wasserman recently completed a case study about founder-CEO succession at Wily Technology. New Business publisher Mike Roberts met with Professor Wasserman to learn more about his research.

New Business: Tell us about your research.

Noam Wasserman: My research focuses on founder frustrations in entrepreneurial firms, with a particular emphasis on the core issues of organization building that cause problems for founders' abilities to achieve their goals. I've been especially interested in the pattern of succession in many entrepreneurial firms�specifically, that many founders are replaced by 'professional' CEOs early in the life of the venture. My data shows that the percentage of founder-CEOs who 'go the distance' is extremely low, especially in high-potential ventures. People like Bill Gates and Larry Ellison, who are able to lead their companies for quite a while, get all the attention because they are rare, not because they are typical.

NB: What do we know about why this happens?

Wasserman: In large companies, when the CEO doesn't do well, the CEO gets replaced. When the CEO does do well, there is almost no chance that person will be replaced. If he or she has led the company to success, that person is about as solid in the position as one can get."

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The next generation Web

From Rich Sharples, at blogs.sun.com/roller/page/sharps

"First, let me get this off my chest - I don't like the 'Web 2.0' moniker - or rather I don't like the way it has been and will increasingly be used as a marketing tag-line for countless dead-at-birth start-ups, products and services. That said - I do use the phrase (because it's convenient) but I really use it to mean 'the post-bubble evolution of the Internet as a platform and associated technologies' - I'm really not trying to hype it up any more than it will be. There, I feel better.

Some time ago, I read a Wired article on the history of the Web (well at least the mainstream era - from the Netscape IPO 10 years ago) which got me thinking about what comes next. This is a subject I've been wanting to write about for a while and in fact this post has been sitting in the queue for a couple of months.

So, what is the ' Web 2.0' ? The answer really depends on who you ask, it also depends on who you are - Web 2.0 (just as with Web 1.0) is different things to different people; to some it's a set of intertwined standards and APIs; to others it is a platform for expression or commerce or learning and to others it's a virtual world of Dungeons and Dragons. But basically the 2.0 bit is meant to infer 'the next version' - so it's really about the evolution of the web we know today to the web of tomorrow. And I think the world evolution is an important part of the definition - fundamental to the future of the web is the part natural selection plays.

I've read and listened to a number of opinions and I am gradually forming my own thoughts of what the web will (or could be) be like going forward; and I'll be refining that in the future; but here's a start. By far the best Web 2.0 summary I've read is by Tim O'Reilly himself - in that article he manages to get his arms around the fundamental 'memes' of Web 2.0 and how it relates to the web as we know it.

One of the important differences between the Web of the 90's and the Today's web is it's reach. I don't mean just the number of nodes on the Internet or the number of web-surfer-hours but the degree to which the power of the web has become more inclusive. This is due to realization that the value is in volume (the many, not the few) - the best example is the difference between online retailers vs. brick and mortar - E-Bay and Amazon can sell you pretty much anything whereas Sears and Borders have a fairly limited stock - so the reach of online retailers is greater and this also translates to a better buying experience - with online retailers (as a collective) you are more likely to buy exactly what you want (at the price you want) than when you shop at the local mall. This Long Tail phenomenon applies equally to many other aspects of the Web - from journalism and opinion, software, news and entertainment".

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Creatives Managing Creatives?

From Fast Company, by Danielle Sacks

Dany Lennon places the hottest leaders in advertising. Here, she talks about what she looks for in candidates for creative jobs - and why you should be watching the same movies as your 8 year-old.

Who she is: Dany Lennon, president, the Creative Register Inc.

Who she's placed: Paul Silburn, executive creative director, Fallon North America; Dan Morales, creative director, TAXI NY; Kevin Roddy, executive creative director, BBH

"Creatives managing creatives sounds like a nightmare. What kind of leaders are best at managing creative folks?

The most rewarding trait a leader can have, as far as I'm concerned, is the ability to hire people who are better than himself. It takes a huge person to be able to come to terms with that. I can usually get a good sense of this by asking a candidate what sort of structure he would devise for his creative department. I'm suspicious of people who are more fixated on hierarchies than the purest creative potential of the people who work for them.

I also believe leaders will achieve far more for themselves if they care about their staffs. I'm drawn to those who are generous - in terms of time, not money - who will allocate plenty of hours to their employees, versus just to the clients who pay the bills.

Is the ad industry looking for a different type of creative person today than it was a few years ago?

Two years ago, clients would still call me and say, 'I'm looking for a copywriter,' or 'I'm looking for an art director.' Today, people are saying, 'We want creatives, period.' I just got a call yesterday from an agency looking for an executive creative director, and they don't care if the candidate has a background as a copywriter, art director, or designer. They want a visionary - someone who can see not only what's happening now but what's possible in the next 15 to 20 years. Someone who understands what's beyond the 30-second commercial. Someone who understands participative media and that TV and the Internet are going to be the same thing."

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