Leadership

4 Keys to Thriving in an Unpredictable World

July 1, 2015

4 Keys to Thriving in an Unpredictable World

Fortune Magazine recently published its annual list of the largest U.S. corporations. Among the top 500, the names are all familiar. Only about 5% of the overall companies are newcomers or returnees. But understanding the challenges some of these companies have faced over the past years tell a clearer story of the shifting headwinds. One popular acronym today is VUCA which stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. According to writers Nathan Bennett and G. James Lemoine in the January-February 2014 issue of the Harvard Business Review (What VUCA Really Means For You), your level of VUCA reflects how much you know about your situation, and how well you can predict the results of your actions. (more…)

What’s in Your Portfolio

August 1, 2014

Priscilla Archangel

Capability, Leadership

What’s In Your Portfolio?

A portfolio is generally understood as a collection of valuables; whether artistic drawings, important papers, or financial investments. It reflects the talents and treasures of the owner, and is generally carefully cultivated and added to over a period of time. But to increase the treasures in your portfolio, you must first focus on increasing your talents.

A recent issue of Forbes Magazine featured The Best Investment Advice of All Time, which profiled insider tips from some of the financial industry’s best known thought leaders. These were financial gurus such as T. Rowe Price, Jr., George Soros, Sir John Templeton, David Tepper, Sam Zell and Warren Buffett who built their professional expertise and personal portfolios based on their intellect and abilities. They had to invest in their talent before building their treasure.

These talents or skillsets include knowledge, wisdom, abilities, experiences and interests. And most of all they include your innate gifts, those characteristics endowed upon you from birth that attract you and compel your learning decisions. Properly applied they develop and produce treasures.

Your Talents Form A Foundation For Your Treasures

Building and investing in a portfolio of talents is equally important as your portfolio of treasures. Here are several great examples.

Jeff Maggioncalda – courtesy of www.FinancialEngines.com

Several decades ago when Jeff Maggioncalda was newly married, he created a simulation engine to model the results of one million Monopoly games to generate the probabilities and payoffs for its various properties, and used this as a cheat sheet to beat his wife at the game. Later, Jeff used his ability to develop simulations to found Financial Engines, a company which provides financial advice to almost 800,000 employees at 553 large employers. Because Jeff invested in himself first he was able to transform his ideas and skills into a lucrative business, and build his portfolio.

Floyd Mayweather, Jr. courtesy of Wikipedia

Floyd Mayweather, Jr. is the world’s highest paid athlete with $105 million earned in the boxing ring over the past year. According to Wikipedia, he is currently undefeated as a professional and is a five-division world champion, having won ten world titles and the lineal championship in four different weight classes. His father, a boxer and trainer, started taking him to the gym as soon as he could walk, and fitted him for his first pair of boxing gloves at the age of seven. Floyd developed his skill by investing years of practice in the gym, but it was fueled by an innate love for the sport. This propelled him to his current position atop the list of highest paid athletes, with a portfolio to match.

Sarah Ketterer courtesy of Columbia Business School

Sarah Ketterer was born into the investment world. Her father, John Hotchkis, founded several successful asset management companies where she worked during the summers; but she didn’t initially pursue a career there. After several educational and professional shifts, Sarah eventually became interested in understanding and organizing the data used to make investment decisions, and joined her father’s firm to start a new international equity arm. From there, she and a partner developed a new model of money management, and in 2001 started their own international asset management business. Their unique approach which combines quantitative computer program probability predictions with fundamental analysis of stocks has paid off, and in the past 18 months their assets have more than doubled to $33 billion.

Leave a Legacy

The typical result of building a successful portfolio of treasures is to bestow it upon your heirs, or to donate it to a worthy cause. Some have amassed family fortunes in a trust for generations to come. Others have joined Bill Gates’ and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge, a commitment by the world’s wealthiest individuals and families to dedicate the majority of their wealth to philanthropy. Whether your portfolio is valued at $10,000 or $10 million or $10 billion, if properly managed its value may outlive you.

Similarly, a successful portfolio of talents can add value to others and provide benefits for those around you and for future generations. Inventors and innovators like Steve Jobs, George Washington Carver, and Thomas Edison have proven this already.

So what’s in your portfolio of talents, and how will that transfer to your portfolio of treasures? What assets do you have in terms of your skillsets, abilities, interests, and experiences? Whether you’re just holding a job, or in the midst of a successful career, it’s important to hone in on those elements upon which your success has been or can be built. Doing so will not only drive the right decisions to maximize your future personal development and professional career choices, but will enable you to provide lasting benefit to others in their growth and development.

Read Forbes Magazine’s June 30, 2014 issue for more information on Maggioncalda, Mayweather and Ketterer. Learn more about Mayweather’s early years here.

From Irritation to Innovation

June 30, 2014

Priscilla Archangel

Inspiration, Leadership, Results

From Irritation to Innovation

Elizabeth Holmes hates needles. To her, the idea of being poked by a needle and withdrawing blood is more than just unpleasant. When she knows that she has to give blood, she becomes consumed and overcome with the thought until it’s finally over.

So it should be no surprise that at age 19 she founded Theranos, a ground-breaking blood diagnostics company that 11 years later is worth more than $9 billion. The company has patented its secret technology of performing 200 different blood tests (soon growing to over 1,000 different tests) without using a syringe. They use a few drops of blood drawn using a finger stick to minimize discomfort, and collected in a “nanotainer”; a container the size of an electric fuse. Her board is stocked with powerful blue chip members including former cabinet secretaries, former U.S. senators and former military brass. Theranos’ innovative technology is poised to transform health care technology at no more than half the cost of similar tests using current technology.

Holmes leveraged a process that irritated her to innovate a new method of getting it done.

Productive Dissatisfaction

Tony Fadell was building a vacation home for his family. One of the seemingly mundane decisions was selecting thermostats, but he wasn’t satisfied with his choices. So he developed the Nest Learning Thermostat, a digital and WiFi enabled device that conserves energy by learning its owners’ habits. He also designed the Nest Protect which uses new technology to detect smoke and carbon monoxide.

Fadell’s real goal is to use technology to redesign and control all technology in the home. He was successful in raising startup capital as a result of his Apple pedigree, and extensive connections in Silicon Valley. He previously led the team that created the iPod, thereby rejuvenating Apple and transforming the music industry (yes, I love iTunes), and assisted in the development of the iPhone. Fadell left Apple in 2008 (along with his wife who was an HR executive there) and his thermostat irritation became the epiphany to innovate his next career move. As evidence of his success, Nest was purchased by Google earlier this year for $3.2 billion.

Innovation Mindset

Holmes and Fadell were irritated by processes and technology that others accepted as status quo. Obviously this wasn’t just a minor irritation either. Most of us would have dismissed it, avoided it, complained a bit while it was on our minds, then moved on to what we believed were more important things. We would think that change wasn’t needed, or that technology couldn’t effectively be applied to it and scaled for use. Instead, they saw it as a challenge and took the opportunity to do something about it. They had a mindset for innovation that they applied to their environment.

At the time, Holmes was a sophomore at Stanford, and according to her chemical engineering professor, viewed complex technical problems differently than other students. She dropped out shortly thereafter and persuaded her parents to invest her education fund into the business start-up.

Fadell’s tenure at Apple was distinguished by asking lots of questions, challenging Steve Jobs, and building his network in the “valley” outside the company; something normally reserved for Jobs himself. He didn’t conform to the typical concept of the Apple executive.

The Key to Innovation

So what is the key to your innovation? What is it that irritates you, but you find it difficult to simply walk away or ignore it. Instead, you keep trying to figure it out. This may be your opportunity to move from irritation to innovation; to find new approaches to address old ways of doing things. Though Holmes and Fadell applied innovation on a large scale, you can easily do this within a smaller sphere of influence; in your work team, organization, community group or family. Here are a few simple steps.

Tap into what’s irritating you. What problem needs to be solved? Chances are it’s right in front of you.
Find the benefit. Who will it add value to? Identifying your stakeholders will help you to target what action to take, and encourage you to stick with it for their benefit.
Ignore the naysayers. What do you believe is possible? If you don’t have faith in yourself, no one else will either.
Identify all the assumptions associated with the status quo. Why do people do it this way? Calling them out individually helps to break the innovation opportunity down into workable sizes for better analysis.
Methodically challenge each assumption. Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? By the time you’ve asked “why” five times, you’ll uncover some suppositions that really don’t have a strong foundation.
Think of a new approach. What if we did it this way instead? Then think of another different approach. This practice gets you into the mode of change.

If you’re really irritated, true innovation will typically involve transformation, not evolution. It will yield a totally unexpected outcome that represents a leap ahead, not just a step forward. So embrace that impatience and exasperation with the current situation, and press forward to a new mindset of innovation.

Read the articles on Elizabeth Holmes and Tony Fadell in the June 12, 2014 issue of Fortune.

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto

Lead with Your Why

May 31, 2014

Priscilla Archangel

Leadership, Purpose

Lead With Your Why

In his book Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action, Simon Sinek describes our why as “our driving purpose, cause or belief”. This why never changes, no matter what we do. A critical role of leaders is to define and communicate the why of their organization in a way that unites the leadership team and all employees around it. A shared why among the leadership team translates into alignment and consistency in decision making regarding the company’s products and services. It drives brand marketing; financial and legal matters; and treatment of employees, customers and shareholders. A shared why will also keep the organization focused on what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. This becomes a standard or benchmark against which all strategies are measured to ensure they deliver on the brand promise.

Start With Your Why

When Bill and Melinda Gates we seeking a new CEO to lead their $40 billion foundation, they led with their why when they enticed Susan Desmond-Hellmann to accept the position. At the time she was passionate about her role as chancellor of the University of California at San Francisco, thus wasn’t initially interested. But after two months of conversations, she decided to accept the role because their vision, mission and plans gave her an opportunity to be a part of a team that could change the world. The interview process between the Gates and Desmond-Hellmann cinched the deal because it brought out the shared why that motivated each of them to action. While it was possible for the Gates to find someone capable of performing the role as CEO of the world’s second largest foundation, it was even more important to find one who shared their why, who shared their passion for improving the lives of women and girls in developing countries, and eradicating disease. And sharing that why made all the difference.

Rapper and music producer Dr. Dre (Andre Young) champions the why for the Beats by Dre brand, and Beats Electronics, which was co-founded by he and music mogul Jimmy Iovine. They produce the high-priced Beats headphones and provide a streaming music service. Dr. Dre maintains a focus on what’s “cool” by ensuring they have the best quality sound, and overseeing marketing strategies in minute detail. He’s known as a perfectionist, a workaholic, and eschews market research in favor of his gut instinct, which has paid off handsomely for him in past music endeavors. This was reinforced when Apple recently purchased Beats Electronics for $3.2 billion.

Steve Jobs was similarly known for avoiding market research because in his opinion, the customer doesn’t know what they want until someone shows it to them (yes, I didn’t know how much I needed my iPad until I got one). Jobs was famous for his product launches where he educated customers on the capabilities of new products and how it would help them. He spoke from the passion of his why instead of using a hard sell mode.

Know Your Why

The leadership of the Gates, Dr. Dre and Steve Jobs to define and communicate their company’s why attracts others who share the same why, and want to help them bring it to life. The why attracts customers to products and employees to positions. We identify with companies and brands that share beliefs similar to ours, that support causes we believe are worthy, and that provide services we feel are valuable. It takes focus for leaders to be clear about their why and to continuously steer their organizations in that direction, avoiding distractions and seemingly logical arguments to veer off track. It requires a deep-rooted understanding of what you want to accomplish, and a personal belief in your ability to do so. It requires the ability to block out the glittering lights of other leaders’ why, that may look cool, but doesn’t match your passion and motivation.

The driving cause or belief of your organization should evoke emotion and passion. It should be motivational. Sinek says that making money is the result, not the cause, and companies should think, act and communicate starting with their why. It engages employees and customers. So though you may think is obvious to all your stakeholders, take a moment to query those around you. If you’re not hearing consistent responses there’s an opportunity to provide clarity to your team and begin to drive that through all their decisions.

So know your why. Show your why. Grow your why.

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto.

Read about Dr. Dre and Apple here.

Read the interview with Melinda Gates and Susan Desmond-Hellmann in Fortune here.

Who’s in Your Garage?

March 31, 2014

Priscilla Archangel

Capability, Leadership

Who’s In Your Garage

There’s a story that someone once asked Bill Gates where his greatest competition was. The expectation was that he would mention another major high tech company competing for the same business. Instead, Gates said he was more worried about two guys in a garage; quite the antithesis of the presumed response. Why should he be concerned with two guys in a garage?

Because there are people like John Nottingham and John Spirk, who founded their namesake company in 1972, in a garage (several years before Microsoft was born). After graduating from the Cleveland Institute of Art, they declined offers from well-respected and established companies to instead strike out on their own and form their namesake company. Their objective was to design products using a different business model. Instead of creating products and then trying to sell them to other companies or customers; they invited companies to bring their product predicaments to the Nottingham Spirk Innovation Center. They then engineer solutions for these companies and receive payment in the form of royalties on sales, or a flat rate up front.

Today they’ve moved from the garage to a converted church building in Cleveland, Ohio, where with a small team of 70 people, they’ve amassed over 900 patents to their credit. This includes repackaging Purell hand sanitizer, developing the Twist and Pour paint can for Sherwin Williams, developing Dirt Devil products, Scott’s Snap Lawn Spreader, the Unilever Axe Bullet, Swiffer SweepVac, and the Crest Spinbrush.

Garage Thinking

One obvious question is why companies like these weren’t able to solve their product dilemmas internally. My guess is that they needed an external perspective and focus; literally, someone to help them think outside their corporate box or mindset. They needed to be able to think like they were in the garage by starting from the beginning and taking a fresh and different approach.

Think about it. As leaders, how many times have we had a product or process dilemma where we needed a simple, but elegant solution? We come at it from every angle we can think of. We brainstorm, use mindmaps, and other elaborate problem solving techniques. But when we casually mention the issue to someone totally unconnected to our organization, they quickly come up with a new perspective on how to solve it. Sometimes their suggestion is so simple that we initially dismiss it, because after all they don’t understand the complexities, rules and processes of what we do. But in reality, the customer needs uncomplicated answers, not encumbered by the back office complexity of how we got there.

Sometimes we find a need for this in our personal lives. How many times have you been thinking though a major decision, or wondering how to handle a situation. You labored with it, until one day you mentioned it to a friend, loved one, coach or even a total stranger. Maybe they only asked you one question, but it was so perceptive and insightful that almost instantly, you had the answer. You knew what to do.

The Magic of a Garage

So back to the two guys in a garage. There’s a slew of companies that started out in the proverbial garage like Amazon, Disney, Apple, Hewlitt Packard, Google and Harley Davidson. A couple of guys and gals, slogging through a problem that no one else perceived as a problem or took the time to resolve. They took risks because at that point they had nothing, so there was nothing to lose. They had few predispositions as to how their project should operate because it had never been done before. There was no bureaucracy or lengthy decision making process impinging on their activity. The boundaries of imagination were wide, and the possibilities for development and integration of technology were unlimited.

Sometimes, in the midst of all the business challenges and demands on our time, we need to find time to become two guys in a garage. Find that spot where we can innovate, concentrate, create, and view situations from the perspective of a learner to come up with an answer. Or find a few people on our team who can work on the issues without being encumbered with an expected solution; who can innovate, inquire, and integrate to arrive at the best answer. So who’s in your garage?

Read the Forbes article for more information on the Nottingham Spirk Innovation Center

Photo courtesy of IStockphoto

New Ideas, New Work

January 31, 2014

Priscilla Archangel

Capability, Leadership

New Ideas, New Work

Recently, while perusing Forbes Magazine’s list of the top 30 Under 30 people in 15 different industries, I was struck by how many of them were listed as “founder” of a company. In industries such as Media, Technology, Energy and Industry, Food and Drink, Education, and Social Entrepreneurship, more than half the individuals held this title. In Sports, Music, Hollywood Entertainment, Art and Style, independent individual contributors comprised the majority of the list.

Many in this millennial group of 30 Under 30 have rejected the traditional notion of graduating from college and finding jobs. Instead they have used the campus environment to facilitate networking to create their own jobs. They have avoided the conventional corporate environments in favor of unconventional workspaces and work relationships, like living and working in the same space to increase productivity and connectivity. They have pushed back on the established methodologies of getting things done, and created new pathways to purchase art online and process financial transactions.

Their advantage obviously is that they aren’t entrenched in a “this is how you do it” mindset. Their educational process and developmental upbringing likely placed greater emphasis on creativity instead of conformity. Research shows that millennials as a group, are less interested in considering a career in business. According to an article by Shama Kabani in the December 2013 issue of Forbes, millennials are projected to comprise the majority of the workforce by 2025, however data from Bentley University’s study on the preparedness of college students to move into the workplace shows that:

6 in 10 students say they are NOT considering a career in business, and 48% said they have NOT been encouraged to do so.
- 59% of business decision makers and 62% of higher education influentials give recent college graduates a C grade or lower for preparedness in their first jobs.
- 68% of corporate recruiters say that it is difficult for their organizations to manage millennials.
- 74% of non millennials agree that millennials offer different skills and work styles that add value to the workplace.
- 74% agree that businesses must partner with colleges and universities to provide business curriculums that properly prepare students for the workforce.

This data, and the accomplishments of the 30 Under 30 speak loudly about how current organizations must adapt to and embrace the future generation both as employees and as customers, to be able to leverage their ideas and intellect to solve problems, and effectively compete in the marketplace.

A New Model

Many companies still operate based on the old model of experience taking priority over innovation at the individual employee level. Employees with greater technical, policy or process knowledge, and therefore experience in a particular area, teach the younger people how the organization works. Such companies may externally broadcast their innovative products and methodologies, but internally they muffle creativity at the expense of familiarity. Instead they need to place innovation and creativity of the culture and work style on par with their innovative products and services. Those who fail to adapt and become more flexible will pay the price of failing to keep pace with the speed of technology and change.

A glaring example of this is Eastman Kodak, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection two years ago in January 2012, after more than a decade of falling sales and stock prices. Kodak, a name long synonymous with photography, didn’t go bankrupt because people stopped taking pictures, but because they couldn’t adapt to the new way pictures were being taken. People started using their smart phones to capture, send and store pictures electronically, instead of solely using traditional cameras and hard copy prints. Twenty months later, Kodak has emerged from their restructuring transformed into a technology company focused on imaging for business, in a way that will hopefully produce better corporate results.

Preparing for the future

So what about these 30 Under 30? Instead of just talking about new ways of doing things, they take new ideas and develop them into marketable strategies, trends and entrepreneurial ventures.

For example, Carter Cleveland (#1 in the Art and Style category) founded Artsy as a student at Princeton when he realized that there was no quick and easy way online to find art for his dorm room walls. His website now provides more than 85,000 works of art from 1,800 museums, galleries and foundations. Most of it is for sale and he also recommends artists to users. (This is an idea I’m sure I could have thought of, but would I have done anything about it?)

So how are you leveraging innovation, creativity and technology in your team or organization to capture the next NEW idea or process? How are you finding new and different ways to meet customers’ needs? Are you developing intrapreneurs (in all demographic groups) who will keep your team fresh, or are you attracting entrepreneurs who will collaborate on new ways to accomplish organizational objectives? Whatever your strategy, recognize the value of new ideas and build a culture that embraces the new world of work for millennials.

Photo from iStockphoto

The Power of “Co”

August 30, 2013

Priscilla Archangel

Capability, Leadership

The Power of “Co”

Almost all organizations operate with a singular leader at the top, whether the Chairman, CEO or President. A few have two individuals functioning as “co-leaders”. But how many organizations are run by a troika? Three people working equally together to lead the team. Gensler, a global architecture, design, planning and consulting firm with over 3,500 professionals working at 44 locations in 15 countries on 6,700 projects is led by the threesome of David Gensler, Diane Hoskins, and Andy Cohen. With diverse backgrounds, they’ve worked together for 20 years, and now share the leadership role of the firm that David’s father founded in 1965. Their most notable current project is the 2,073 foot tall Shanghai Tower that was topped off in August. It is now China’s tallest building, and second in the world to Dubai’s Burj Khalifa.

What makes their working relationship even more unusual is that every two years they shift responsibilities for different aspects of the firm. Rather than align responsibilities solely around their areas of strength or interest, each of them continues to grow through taking on roles that are not in their normal suite of skillsets. Their success is evident by their list of projects and clients, about half of which are Fortune 100 companies, and is profiled in the September 2, 2012 issue of Fortune.

What is “Co”?

Gensler’s leadership team has harnessed the power of “co”; sharing joint or mutual responsibility among two or more people. At the risk of riling dictionary enthusiasts, the opposite of “co” is “solo”, or one who leads or functions alone. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with operating solo, or as the singular lead on a project or initiative. The decision to do so is a result of individual style, skillset, convenience, or appointment. But let’s take a minute to explore the power of “co”; sharing accountability and authority with two or more people to lead a team or accomplish a goal.

Here are ten principles to help leaders to successfully leverage the power of “co”.

1. Collaboration – A form of co-laboring or working together collectively to lead the firm. This is their key word and they model its effectiveness by integrating each other’s strengths, ideas and knowledge for the good of the team.

2. Mutual Respect – This involves recognizing each other’s value, esteeming and acknowledging one another. In many cases, having mutual respect is the key to resolving disagreements, because it provides a basis for working toward positive relationships.

3. Communication – Sharing information, seeking input, and ensuring clarity and alignment of purpose and direction. Cohen says they can almost complete each other’s sentences. They also have a video meeting every Friday that is “sacred”.

4. Likability – Shared values and interests form the basis for liking someone. It’s an intangible factor in building effective relationships. Gensler says that they’ve worked together for so long that they’ve even built a level of affection for one another.

5. Low Ego – Some corporate leadership styles are domineering and authoritarian, based on the premise that only one person can run the organization. Operating as a “co-leader” requires valuing colleagues as much as, or more than oneself. Since David Gensler’s father founded the firm, one might expect that he’d have the lead role, but that’s not the case.

6. Cross-Pollination – Recognition that great ideas may come from a variety of people, and ensuring openness to receive, debate, evaluate and integrate those ideas.

7. Perspective – Leaders who have diverse points of view on situations, events and causation can create a rich environment of discussion and debate, but too much diversity can lead to divisiveness. An underlying shared perspective is important for cohesiveness and alignment.

8. Self-Confidence – When leaders are comfortable with who they are, their skills, abilities and particularly their limitations, they will be more open to others’ ideas and input. Insecure leaders are cancerous to the organization.

9. Trust – This is like the oil that makes the engine run. Without trust the organization will quickly seize up and cease to function.

10. Cooperation – The team must work together towards a common purpose or benefit. Their actions must complement one another and be aligned toward a singular goal that is clearly understood by all.

Leverage Your “Co”

Leaders that model the power of “co” at the top, derive benefits from it at all levels of the organization. The effectiveness of their working relationship defines the culture for current and prospective employees to share information, ideas and intellectual capability, and models the behavior for others.

Of course, all organizations aren’t conducive to a leadership troika, three people working equally together to lead the team. But all organizations do need the leadership team to operate with the power of “co”, using the principles outlined above to be more effective in reaching their goals. Even the singular Chairman or CEO needs a team supporting him or her that demonstrates these traits.

So whatever your role or the size organization or team you may lead, think about how you can leverage the power of “co”.

Read the Fortune Article here.

The Spark that Ignited a Firestorm

May 27, 2013

Priscilla Archangel

Courage, Leadership, Purpose

The Spark That Ignited a Firestorm

Caine was a nine year old boy trying to keep himself busy during summer vacation. He spent his days with his father who owned a used auto parts store. The store had a lot of empty boxes in the back room, so Caine had an idea. He began creating arcade games out of the empty boxes and setting them up in the front of the store. Not just one game, but many games, intricate games. There was just one problem. Because most of his father’s customers purchased via the internet, there wasn’t much walk-in traffic, and no one was interested in playing his games. Until one day, Nirvan Mullick walked into the store looking for a part for his car. He was Caine’s first customer, and he thought Caine was really bright. So Nirvan had an idea to bring a lot of customers to Caine’s arcade. He created a flashmob event that brought hundreds of people to that small store. And Nirvan’s small gesture was a spark that ignited a firestorm and changed Caine’s young life, and along with the lives of many other children and adults.

Caine’s Arcade

It turned into a Global Cardboard Challenge with over 270 Events in 41 countries, celebrating creativity and community around the world, while raising funds for various causes. Watch the videos to find out what happened and how a seemingly chance meeting sparked a firestorm.

www.cainesarcade.com

Then think about these leadership lessons from a nine year old boy. In fact, are you a better leader than a nine year old?

You’re never too young to develop and use your gift.
Follow your passion. Find your magic moment, your spark. That’s where your leadership will shine.
The best gifts serve others. How are you serving others with your gift?
Success in leadership doesn’t happen solely based on your own actions. You must walk with others in your leadership journey.
Don’t sell yourself short. Even when it doesn’t look like much, things can change quickly.
If you build it will they really come? Maybe not, but maybe so. But even if they don’t, there’s a lesson in the process alone.
Never discourage creativity, even when it doesn’t look like reality. Instead provide encouragement in constructive ways.
Always be ready for your big break. You never know what opportunity is right around the corner.
One simple idea may be more powerful than you could ever imagine.

A Relationship of Trust

April 28, 2013

Priscilla Archangel

Character, Leadership

A Relationship of Trust

How do you determine who to trust? How much trust can you place in those around you, and how much can you trust them with?

A recent story chronicling the “re-education” of Mark Zuckerberg in the April 29^th edition of Fortune provides a good example. With the fast paced growth of social media, apps and smart phones, Facebook needed an effective wireless strategy. This was the next big shift in technology, and if they missed it, the young company’s phenomenal successes could be short lived. Zuck, as he is commonly called by those in the business, turned to Mike Schroepfer his Chief Technology Officer, and Cory Ondrejka who was in charge of mobile engineering. Cory had co-founded Linden Lab which created the virtual world Second Life, and later started a tech company that Facebook recently purchased. It was Cory who proposed not only restarting their current mobile efforts again from scratch, which would take precious time, but doing so in the midst of the much publicized IPO when investor scrutiny on their technology problems would be especially intense.

After much discussion Zuck approved that approach, even though as he said, it was against his instincts. According to the article, his decision paid off as Facebook launched a new iPhone app in August 2012that has received top ratings in the App Store. While it may be too early to determine the long term success of that decision, there’s great learning in the “process” of making it.

So why would Zuck decide to trust the recommendation of these two men, even when it ran contrary to his normal approach and instincts? Because he trusted them. At that moment he made a conscious decision to place greater faith in their experience, analysis and resulting recommendation, than in his own. If they were wrong, he had more to lose than anyone else. The potential impact to his reputation and respect, his company, and his wealth could suffer a significant and possibly irretrievable blow. But he knew that the current strategy wasn’t working, and he had to try something different, so he bought into it and exercised trust.

Active Trust

This type of trust in others is earned. Its an active verb, and it’s a choice. It comes as a result of several foundational elements.

Confidence – belief in their abilities and their motives, that they’re reliable and dependable.

Capability – they have expertise, past proven successes, and experience in a specific critical area.

Consistency – exhibiting the same behavior and communicating the same values repeatedly such that it’s easy to predict their responses.

Collaboration – willingness to work with others, exchange ideas and leverage the strengths of others in coming up with solutions to problems.

Confidentiality – using good judgment in communications with others, and ensuring that information is shared only as necessary with appropriate persons.

Now think of situations where you’ve placed a great deal of trust in someone else.

· You trust your physician with your health.

· You trust your business partner with your work.

· You trust your financial planner with your investments.

· You trust your spouse with your heart.

· You trust your friends with your happiness.

· You trust your work team with your ideas and strategies.

· You trust your boss with your career.

And yet you retain a measure of control over these “trusting” relationships, balancing the right amount of confidence, capability, consistency, collaboration and confidentiality that you place in them, with what they provide in return. It’s a reciprocal relationship, reinforced or weakened by every action or counter-action. You can “remove” the trust at any time, almost immediately, whether for cause or for instinct.

Rock Climbing Trust

So how do you grow to trust someone? And how much are you willing to trust them? For any productivity to occur we must trust others, because we’re incapable of finding fulfillment, achieving our goals, or attaining significance in life without having trusting relationships. And at the same time, we must display these same characteristics so that others will place their trust in us. But your ability to trust others is based in part on your ability to trust yourself. It is based on your ability to demonstrate the 5Cs in the same manner that you want others to demonstrate it. So because Zuck is able to experience and exhibit confidence, capability, consistency, collaboration and confidentiality, he recognizes it and shares it with others.

I recognize that I’ll never be able to trust someone else in a certain area, unless I overcome my personal fears in that area. For instance, I have no desire togo skydiving. As someone eloquently said, why would I jump out of a perfectly good airplane? My fear of having only a parachute on me at ten thousand feet above ground has nothing to do with my trust in the instructor or the pilot. It has everything to do with ME. And unless I deal with that fear, I’ll never learn to trust them. Similarly, while I might step on a narrow boulder a few feet off the ground, I cannot imagine ever (did I say ever) rock climbing and stepping up on a boulder thousands of feet off the ground (see the picture). I’m afraid of that height and don’t trust my ability to master such a feat. Before I perform either act, I’d first have to learn to trust myself and gain more confidence, capability and collaboration before I could trust others to help me do it. The same is true in marriage relationships and business relationships.

So instead of examining others to determine if they’re worthy of our trust, we must first decide if we’re worthy of theirs. Do we display confidence, capability, consistency, collaboration and confidentiality? Do we behave in a manner that would make others want to trust us? Do we use those trusting behaviors to support others in their goals in a manner that creates a reciprocal relationship? I encourage you to practice these characteristics to build your relationships of trust.

Read the Fortune article by Jesse Hemphill here.

You Dreamer!

March 29, 2013

Priscilla Archangel

Capability, Leadership

You Dreamer!

Disruptors, innovators and entrepreneurs; that’s how Forbes Magazine describes their 30 Under 30. These are the 30 brightest stars under the age of 30 in 15 different fields such as media, music, energy, education, sports, marketing and advertising, finance, and science. I call them dreamers. As leaders in their respective fields of expertise; many of them accomplished feats that most people haven’t even dreamed of attempting. Their inventions, innovations, creative thinking, physical abilities, and thoughtful approaches have had a major impact on society and culture. Several that most impressed me were:

Joshua Sommer – Seven years ago as a freshman in college he was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Instead of accepting the low possibility of survival and lack of treatment options, he cofounded the Chordoma Foundation dedicated to raising money to fund research to cure it.
Hugh Evans – Founded the Global Poverty Project committed to ending extreme poverty, and developed an innovative means of raising $1.3 billion in new funding commitments.
Leslie Dewan – Is developing a new kind of nuclear reactor with a plan to power the entire U.S. with zero carbon emissions and eliminating mountains of nuclear waste.
Matt Mullenweg – Launched WordPress open source blogging software at the young age of 19. It’s now used by 17% of all websites.

Qualifications

But how did they accomplish so much at such a young age? As I read their stories, several qualities were obvious.

Dreaming – Every great accomplishment starts with a dream, and a great dream combined with great desire leads to destiny. The dreamer believes in the possibility of what appears to be impossible; believing that as they move toward their destiny, the pathway will emerge. A great dream may look fragile to the outside world, but is intense in the mind of the dream holder.
Selective hearing – They ignore the naysayers, those who would try to tell them that whatever they’re attempting isn’t possible; that no one has ever done it that way before. They don’t buy into the status quo and accepted ways of doing things. They chart their own path.
Sacrifice – Being the best at what you do only comes with hard work and lots of it. That won’t seem “fun” to others, but there is nothing else these dreamers would rather do than to work to pursue their dream. In fact, what others perceive as sacrifice, brings pleasure to the dreamer.
Failure – This is simply the process of eliminating options that don’t work. Thomas Edison reportedly failed 1,000 times before he succeeded in making the light bulb. But Edison says that he discovered 1,000 ways NOT to make a light bulb. (http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090218050711AAw6KhA) So learn from every mistake. Failure with a purpose equals progress. John Maxwell’s book on Failing Forward says that the only difference between people who achieve and those who are simply average is how they handle failure.
Perseverance – Giving up is not an option. Setbacks can be turned into setups. Difficulties, roadblocks and financial worries are simply tests of your commitment. They build commitment just like lifting weights builds strength.

Your Dream

I believe that everyone has a dream of accomplishing something that is bigger than them, but few people follow through on it. For some people, that dream is vivid and tangible; they can almost reach out and touch it. They think about it daily, devise plans to work toward accomplishing it. Others are still discovering their dream. And still others have almost abandoned theirs. Maybe it once existed in the recesses of their mind, but was beaten still further back by constant affirmations of impossibility.

Children are often great dreamers because they haven’t yet learned all the reasons that adults have bought into about why their dream shouldn’t come to pass. They have:

No boundaries to confine them.

No past to live up to or sustain.

No thing to lose and everything to gain.

No fear of failure.

So what is your dream? You may have to reflect back on your early years to remember what it was, and what happened to it. Can you recapture the passion you once had for it? Can you regain the excitement you once felt as you replayed it in your mind? Can you take one step to redirect your path toward accomplishing that dream? Let go of the things that restrict your ability to dream. Instead, dream big and make something happen.

4 Keys to Thriving in an Unpredictable World

What’s In Your Portfolio?

From Irritation to Innovation

Lead With Your Why

Who’s In Your Garage

New Ideas, New Work

The Power of “Co”

The Spark That Ignited a Firestorm

A Relationship of Trust

You Dreamer!

Leadership Tips