Life's Lessons or What Have We Learned So Far?

It's always interesting for CEOs, on down, to look back on their life and accomplishments and missed opportunities. While maybe not as profound as it could be, the article below might stimulate some thought of where we put our efforts and time. The comment about looking at our lives through chapters, taking risks, and being growth oriented is probably appropriate for many of us.

Life coaching is always of interest and can be beneficial for a lot of us.

What do you think that you have learned so far, or what could you have done better?

The Life Reports II

By DAVID BROOKS

Published: November 28, 2011

A few weeks ago, I asked people over 70 to send me “Life Reports” — essays about their own lives and what they’d done poorly and well. They make for fascinating and addictive reading, and I’ve tried to extract a few general life lessons:

The Life Reports

In response to a previous column, readers shared how they had done and what they had learned over their 70-plus years. Read the reports »

Related Column

David Brooks: The Life Reports (November 25, 2011)

Divide your life into chapters. The unhappiest of my correspondents saw time as an unbroken flow, with themselves as corks bobbing on top of it. A man named Neil lamented that he had been “an Eeyore not a Tigger; a pessimist, not an optimist; an aimless grasshopper, not a purposeful ant; a dreamer, not a doer; a nomad, not a settler; a voyager, not an adventurer; a spectator, not an actor, player or participant.” He concluded: “Neil never amounted to anything.”
The happier ones divided time into (somewhat artificial) phases. They wrote things like: There were six crucial decisions in my life. Then they organized their lives around those pivot points. By seeing time as something divisible into chunks, they could more easily stop and self-appraise. They had more control over their fate.
Beware rumination. There were many long, detailed essays by people who are experts at self-examination. They could finely calibrate each passing emotion. But these people often did not lead the happiest or most fulfilling lives. It’s not only that they were driven to introspection by bad events. Through self-obsession, they seemed to reinforce the very emotions, thoughts and habits they were trying to escape.
Many of the most impressive people, on the other hand, were strategic self-deceivers. When something bad was done to them, they forgot it, forgave it or were grateful for it. When it comes to self-narratives, honesty may not be the best policy.
You can’t control other people. David Leshan made an observation that was echoed by many: “It took me twenty years of my fifty-year marriage to discover how unwise it was to attempt to remake my wife. ... I learned also that neither could I remake my friends or students.”
On the other hand, some of the most inspiring stories were about stepparents who came into families and wisely bided their time, accepting slights and insults until they were gradually accepted by their new children.
Lean toward risk. It’s trite, but apparently true. Many more seniors regret the risks they didn’t take than regret the ones they did.
Measure people by their growth rate, not by their talents. The best essays were by people who made steady progress each decade. Regina Titus grew up shy and sheltered on Long Island. She took demeaning clerical jobs, working with people who treated her poorly. Her first husband died after six months of marriage and her second committed suicide.
But she just kept growing. At 56, studying nights and weekends, she obtained a college degree, cum laude, from Marymount Manhattan College. She moved to Wilmington, Del., works as a docent, studies opera, hikes, volunteers and does a thousand other things. She acknowledges, “I did not have the joy of holding my baby in my arms. I did not have a long and happy marriage.” But hers is a story of relentless self-expansion. I wonder how we can measure that capacity.
Be aware of the generational bias. Many of the essayists have ambivalent attitudes toward their parents. Almost all have worshipful attitudes toward their children. I’m not sure how to explain this pattern, but I don’t think it’s pure egotism. Many writers mentioned that given their own flaws, they are astounded that their kids turned out so well.
Work within institutions or crafts, not outside them. For a time, our culture celebrated the rebel and the outsider. The most miserable of my correspondents fit this mold. They were forever in revolt against the world and ended up sourly achieving little.
There are other patterns running through the essays. I was struck by the fact that almost nobody mentioned whether or not they were good-looking, though this must have been an important factor, especially when they were young. Many people lament the fact that they had to make the most important decisions in their 20s, at the age when they were least qualified to make them.
People get better at the art of living. By their 60s many contributors found their zone. Metaphysics is dead; very few of the writers hewed to a specific theology or had any definite conception of a divine order, though vague but uplifting spiritual experiences pepper their reflections.
Finally, the essays present disturbing quandaries. For example, we are told to live for others. But one savvy retiree writes, “Don’t stay with people who, over time, grow apart from you. Move on. This means do what you think will make you feel okay — even if that makes others feel temporarily not okay.”
Is that selfishness or hard-earned realism? That one you’ll have to answer for yourself.

The Life Reports II

Can you change your circadian clock?

An interesting article about changing your body clock was recently in the NYTimes. Something that we may not be aware of is that computers and iPads late at night are highly stimulating to the brain. So it tends to make us night owls. Also, for those of us who are very early risers or night owls, to change is much harder to do. Also, changing your routine on weekends can upset your internal clock. So for those who struggle with making it to work in the morning, there are methods to reset yourself, and for those who fight with jet lag there are methods also.

Enjoy the article below and the link is at the end for your convenience.

November 18, 2011, 11:43 am

So You Think You Can Be a Morning Person?

By TARA PARKER-POPE

Emiliano Ponzi

This column appears in the Nov. 20 issue of The New York Times Magazine.
Like most creatures on earth, humans come equipped with a circadian clock, a roughly 24-hour internal timer that keeps our sleep patterns in sync with our planet. At least until genetics, age and our personal habits get in the way. Even though the average adult needs eight hours of sleep per night, there are “shortsleepers,” who need far less, and morning people, who, research shows, often come from families of other morning people. Then there’s the rest of us, who rely on alarm clocks.
For those who fantasize about greeting the dawn, there is hope. Sleep experts say that with a little discipline (well, actually, a lot of discipline), most people can reset their circadian clocks. But it’s not as simple as forcing yourself to go to bed earlier (you can’t make a wide-awake brain sleep). It requires inducing a sort of jet lag without leaving your time zone. And sticking it out until your body clock resets itself. And then not resetting it again.
To start, move up your wake-up time by 20 minutes a day. If you regularly rise at 8 a.m., but really want to get moving at 6 a.m., set the alarm for 7:40 on Monday. The next day, set it for 7:20 and so on. Then, after you wake up, don’t linger in bed. Hit yourself with light. In theory, you’ll gradually get sleepy about 20 minutes earlier each night, and you can facilitate the transition by avoiding extra light exposure from computers or televisions as you near bedtime. (The light from a computer screen or an iPad has roughly the same effect as the sun.) “Light has a very privileged relationship with our brain,” says Dr. Jeffrey M. Ellenbogen, chief of sleep medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and assistant professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. While most sensory information is “processed” by the thalamus before being sent on its way, Ellenbogen says, light goes directly to the circadian system.
But recalibrating your inner clock requires more commitment — in the form of unwatched reruns or lost time with a spouse — than many people care to give. For some, it’s almost impossible. Very early risers and longtime night owls have a hard time ever changing, says David F. Dinges, chief of sleep and chronobiology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine. Night-shift workers also struggle, he says, because they don’t get the environmental and social cues that help adjust the circadian clock. The most important of these cues, called zeitgebers (German for “time givers”) is sunlight. But a zeitgeber could also be a scrambled-egg breakfast or children coming home from school in the afternoon.
Besides computer screens, the biggest saboteur for an aspiring morning person is the weekend. Staying up later on Friday or sleeping in on Saturday sends the brain an entirely new set of scheduling priorities. By Monday, a 6 a.m. alarm will feel like 4 a.m. “If the old phase was entrained for a long time,” Dinges says, “the biology has a kind of memory of this.” In other words, he says, “it takes self-discipline.”
Are you a real morning person? This version of a test commonly used by sleep experts can determine whether you are a lark, a night owl or somewhere in between. Click the box in front of your answer and we’ll add up your score.

1

How alert do you feel during the first half hour after you wake up in the morning?

• Not at all alert
• Slightly alert
• Fairly alert
• Very alert

2

How hungry do you feel during the first half hour after you wake up?

• Not at all hungry
• Slightly hungry
• Fairly hungry
• Very hungry

3

A friend wants to exercise with you during the week, and the best time for him is between 6 to 7 a.m. Bearing in mind nothing but your own internal "clock," how do you think you would perform?

• Good
• Reasonable
• Poor
• Very poorly

4

You want to be at your peak performance for a test that you know is going to be mentally exhausting and will last two hours. You are entirely free to plan your day. Considering only your internal "clock," which one of the four testing times would you choose?

• 8-10 am
• 11 am-1 pm
• 3-5 pm
• 7-9 pm

5

If you went to bed at 10 p.m, how tired would you be?

• Very tired
• Fairly tired
• A little tired
• Not at all tired

6

If there is a specific time at which you have to get up in the morning, to what extent are you dependent on being woken up by an alarm clock?

• Very dependent
• Fairly dependent
• Slightly dependent
• Not at all dependent

7

For some reason you have gone to bed several hours later than usual, but there is no need to get up at any particular time the next morning. Which one of the following events are you most likely to experience?

• Wake up at the usual time and not go back to sleep
• Wake up at the usual time and doze
• Wake up at the usual time and go back to sleep
• Wake up later than usual

8

Do you consider yourself to be a "morning" or "evening" type of person?

• Morning
• More morning than evening
• More evening than morning
• Evening

So you think you can be a morning person? 

When should Visionaries and Leaders step down or move over?

A recent article in the NYTimes talks about Visionaries and Succession. The key is that many founders tend to stay too long and may become too fixated on what worked in the the beginning. Only really truly growth oriented managers can keep their companies growing and remaining extremely viable.

It's up to the Board to make sure that the CEO/Chairman is delivering the results desired and needed, and whether he/she is growing with the company. Many times, high growth companies outgrow their original owners. It is realizing when it is best to step down that is critical.

Enjoy the article below. The original link can be found that the end of the article.

Tech Visionaries and the Succession Question

By QUENTIN HARDY

November 19, 2011

“Founders stay too long, and they chase out the next generation of leaders,” says Kevin Rollins, who served three years as chief executive of Dell before he was replaced by the company’s founder, Michael S. Dell.
Techdom turns out many wonderfully rational products with cool precision.
Which seems amazing at times, given how some high-tech companies are run. Up in the C-suite, emotion can trump reason, particularly on issues like succession and corporate governance.
Silicon Valley and the rest of the technology industry are rich in visionary founders and strong early leaders, those whizzes who dream up game-changing products and strategies. These executives are often celebrated, even mythologized, and with reason: The right one can make employees and shareholders rich. Perhaps only in fashion and entertainment are leaders with the magic touch also so lauded.

 

Bazuki Muhammad/Reuters“Founders stay too long, and they chase out the next generation of leaders,” says Kevin Rollins, who served three years as chief executive of Dell before he was replaced by the company’s founder, Michael S. Dell.

Visionaries are fantastic, but their companies are often notoriously hard to run. Sometimes, these leaders cling to dated visions and stifle innovation. And sometimes, they simply won’t get out of the way. Promising executives with new ideas get fed up and leave.
“No one wants to talk about it, but founders stay too long, and they chase out the next generation of leaders,” says Kevin Rollins, the former chief executive of Dell, the computer maker. “It’s really the fault of the board, which doesn’t manage the strategy and sticks with a founder whose vision has run out of gas.”
Mr. Rollins speaks from an interesting perspective: He was Dell’s C.E.O. from 2004 to 2007, when he was ousted and replaced by the company’s founder, Michael S. Dell. Mr. Dell had given up the C.E.O. spot to become chairman — until he wanted his old job back.
Mr. Rollins, who was paid tens of millions of dollars as C.E.O., oversaw a series of disappointing quarterly earnings, and Dell’s share price fell 9 percent during his tenure. He acknowledges that his comments may be seen as sour grapes, but he is standing by them.
“There is my case, but there is also the case of Cisco, Microsoft, Research in Motion and Yahoo,” Mr. Rollins says. “You are going to see a big succession problem in the next three years, and the boards probably won’t do anything about grooming for succession until the next generation of leaders gets in and has problems.”
Charles H. Giancarlo, a managing director at Silver Lake Partners, a private equity firm specializing in technology, says succession “has become a lunchtime topic in the Silicon Valley.”
He knows something about the issue, too. He spent nearly 20 years at Cisco Systems, and became the executive vice president and chief development officer. But he quit in 2007 over disagreements about the performance of the longtime C.E.O., John T. Chambers.
Mr. Giancarlo says many technology companies are at a turning point. “People are realizing that the business has gone from unbelievable leadership, with teams making the right calls, to those companies meandering and failing,” he says. Like Mr. Rollins, Mr. Giancarlo concedes that he may sound like a whiner. “On the other hand,” he says, “you might want to look at the performance of the company and think there is something to it.”
Cisco’s share price, for instance, has fallen to $18.42 as of Friday from almost $43 in early 2001. Both Cisco and Dell have underperformed the broad stock market in recent years.
Mr. Rollins says Mr. Dell balked at his ideas about moving beyond PCs. Mr. Giancarlo says Mr. Chambers created a thicket of time-sucking boards and councils that led to endless meetings.
“Councils are how every dictator organizes below themselves,” Mr. Giancarlo says. “It prevents any real challenger from rising up.”
A Dell spokesman said that, under Mr. Dell, the company has made “significant progress” in diversifying its business. “Mr. Dell has recruited the strongest, most capable and stable senior management team in the industry,” the spokesman wrote in an e-mail.
A spokesman for Cisco noted that the company earlier this year streamlined its decision-making and exited a business in consumer cameras, among other changes.
Similar accusations of aging vision and lack of succession are leveled against Microsoft, which has had a stream of top leaders leave. Last week, Microsoft’s C.E.O., Steve Ballmer, the longtime best friend of Bill Gates, declared that the era of cloud computing and the explosion of new computing devices was great news for Windows, the operating system born on the PC.
A Microsoft spokesman, Frank Shaw, says the fact that senior Microsoft leaders have left to run companies such as Juniper Networks and Nokia indicates that the company builds leaders.
“You want that,” Mr. Shaw says. “We are good at grooming talent, and we still have a very strong bench.”
As for being hung up on Windows, Mr. Shaw notes that under Mr. Ballmer, Microsoft has grown in areas like enterprise software and gaming.
Other tech companies seem to do a solid job of succession. EMC, which after earlier troubles has made many successful cloud investments, plans to move up an internal candidate to succeed the current C.E.O., who promises to move on to become chairman for a short time. I.B.M. recently named its second internal candidate in a row to the top job.
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a professor of management at Yale, says tech boards have a hard time managing founders and early leaders, since those executives also have exceptional value.
“The founder and the early leader can do certain things to change the company, too. Rollins couldn’t change the company religion, but Dell can — he has inspirational authority,” Mr. Sonnenfeld says.
Though some such leaders, like An Wang at Wang Computer or Kenneth Olsen at the Digital Equipment Corporation, didn’t always adjust to changing times, Mr. Sonnenfeld says that Steve Jobs was able to change Apple precisely because he was a charismatic founder.
“The board is challenged to ask if this person is frozen in time,” Mr. Sonnenfeld says.
“They have to benchmark the performance against other companies, see where the revenues are coming from.” He adds: “The board can fear the founder, but that is O.K. if he is growing with the business.”

Tech Visionaries and the Succession Question

Interactive Display comparison of top 20 Multinationals vs top 10 Companies in each Asian Country

Below is a link to a very interesting comparison of top Asian companies vs top 20 MultiNational copmanies operating in Asia. It is interactive so you can select Multinational vs different country's top 10. Or you can compare the top 10 in one country vs another country.
Enjoy the analysis. CEOs and Senior Executives in particular may find this of interest.

Compare countries and industry groups, and measure local companies against the top 20 multinational companies operating in Asia-WSJ

"Gamification" - Mixing Work and Play?

A recent article in the WSJ talks about introducing "gamification" into the workplace. This could be interesting and effective, but like anything in the corporate world, it needs to be applied properly and uniformly. Otherwise, it can be misused and communicate the wrong message into the company, create friction internally, or deliver the wrong result(s).

In the early years of KPA/KRA's many times the metrics used resulted in a counter-productive results. It is suspected that they are still being misapplied.

So it is suggested that care be used in this possibly interesting process. On the surface, this technique should help to gain "engagement", and build stronger and more cohesive Teams. It might be used more with Front Line and entry level positions. It doubtful if this will significantly affect long-term motivation and retention. Training in it's proper use and establishment of standards might be needed.

It's beginning to seem that people need to be constantly entertained to be engaged, both in our education systems and now at work. While it may be that this is the case, what happens to those companies and people who can't marshal the skills and techniques? It is doubtful that everyone will want "gamification" applied to everything in their lives.

This technique can possibly lead to "burnout", as many sports professionals, in particular, find out. Being on too high a "charge," for too long, may not be life healthy. There is a need for work/life balance. A time to refresh/recharge and have some "downtime."

In order to speed the reader's time, the article is pasted below for your review with a link at the end. It is up to the reader, CEO or senior manager, HR department and company, whether to pilot or employ this method or not.

Latest Game Theory: Mixing Work and Play

By RACHEL EMMA SILVERMAN

Companies are trying to bring more play to the workday.
Striving to make everyday business tasks more engaging, a growing number of firms, including International Business Machines Corp. and consulting firm Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd., are incorporating elements of videogames into the workplace.
They're deploying reward and competitive tactics commonly found in the gaming world to make tasks such as management training, data entry and brainstorming seem less like work. Employees receive points or badges for completing jobs or meeting time limits for assignments, for example. Companies also may use leaderboards, which let players view one another's scores, to encourage friendly competition and motivate performance, experts say.
This "gamification" of the workplace, or "enterprise gamification" in tech-industry parlance, is a fast-growing business. Companies have used digital games for a number of years to help market products to consumers and build brand loyalty. What's emerging is using games to motivate their own employees.

All Work and All Play

Examples of videogames in workplace management.

View Slideshow

Global consulting firm Deloitte employs digital games for its Deloitte Leadership Academy

Tech-industry research firm Gartner estimates that by 2014, some 70% of large companies will use the techniques for at least one business process. Market researcher M2 Research estimates revenue from gamification software, consulting and marketing will reach $938 million by 2014 from less than $100 million this year.
Some companies build their own games in-house. Others rely on outside firms such as San Jose, Calif.-based Bunchball Inc. and Menlo Park, Calif.-based Badgeville Inc. to "gamify" various business processes including employee training.
Business software company SAP AG employs a variety of games, including one modeled after a golf game that assigns sales leads and environmental challenges that award points for tasks like carpooling, says Mario Herger, senior innovation strategist, at SAP in Palo Alto, Calif.
SAP even turned its gamification efforts into a game, holding a series of "Gamification Cups" to generate ideas for turning various business processes into games. One recent winner turned the traditionally boring process of invoicing into a competition.
IBM uses a variety of game-like strategies throughout much of the company including video games in which users can help make a virtual city more efficient or simulate various business scenarios, says Chuck Hamilton, IBM's virtual learning leader.
With some 400,000 employees, roughly 40% of whom work from home or on the road, gaming is a way to help colleagues connect and stay engaged, explains Mr. Hamilton.
And global consulting firm Deloitte employs digital games for its Deloitte Leadership Academy, an executive education program it uses to train clients and its own consultants.
Users receive virtual badges after completing training courses and "unlock" more complex training courses when basic levels are completed, says Frank Farrall, a partner with Deloitte in Melbourne, Australia, where its gamification initiative began last year. He says that the tools are still too new to gauge their effectiveness, but that they seem to be catching on among consultants.
"The reason why gamification is so hot is that most people's jobs are really freaking boring," says Gabe Zichermann, organizer of the "Gamification Summit" conference held last month in New York.
So far, the tactic has proved effective. A study last year by Traci Sitzmann, an assistant professor of management at the University of Colorado Denver Business School found that employees trained on video games learned more factual information, attained a higher skill level and retained information longer than workers who learned in less interactive environments.
LiveOps Inc., which runs virtual call centers, uses gaming to help improve the performance of its 20,000 call agents—independent contractors located all over the U.S. Starting last year, the company began awarding agents with virtual badges and points for tasks such as keeping calls brief and closing sales. Leaderboards allow the agents to compare their achievements to others.
Since the gamification system was implemented, some agents have reduced call time by 15%, and sales have improved by between 8% and 12% among certain sales agents, says Sanjay Mathur, vice president of product management at LiveOps, Santa Clara, Calif.
Still, gaming experts say there are some pitfalls for companies when implementing games internally. Companies need to make sure that the games are designed to actually reward desired behaviors and are not just doling out meaningless awards or badges.
Firms also need to make sure that friendly competition doesn't get out of hand, fostering animosity among employees, says Byron Reeves, a professor of communication at Stanford University and a co-founder of Seriosity Inc., a firm that helps companies develop gaming strategies.
"Adding gamification to the workplace drives performance but it doesn't make up for bad management. If you are a bad manager, gamification won't help you," says Kris Duggan, chief executive of game-maker Badgeville.

Latest Game Theory: Mixing Work and Play - WSJ Oct. 10, 2011 

Cloud computing results in "Asymmetric Warfare" being employed by Google against Microsoft

The strategic approach that Google is using, is "asymmetric warfare", significantly pricing one's product below the price point of a competitor while at the same time forcing your competitor to incur increased costs.

In addition to the strategy change, there has also been a noted change in behavior once people and companies start using "cloud computing" has been observed, per reports in yesterday's New York Times, by the company: Journal Communications. Greater interchange of ideas and network sharing is taking place.

In all, the internet and cloud computing can rapidly change strategies on a global basis, as well as radically change competitive pricing and costs. CEOs and senior managers need to be aware of this rapid pace for change, the need for change management, increased communications to adapt to these changes and the quick drop in costs. All makes for interesting Strategic Planning Sessions, Succession Management issues, evaluation of skills and Visioning exercises.

Enjoy the article link below to an expanded view of some of these topics:

Mixed Results as Google Enters Microsoft’s Turf

CEOs Get Warnings About 2012 - WSJ Nov. 18, 2011

Re-Posting this important article from the WSJ. The article addresses these issues: the challenges of doing business in China, World Economy, US Business Taxes, US visa policies, global competition for resources, building exports, and enforcement of intellectual property rights in China and elsewhere.

NOVEMBER 18, 2011

CEOs Get Warnings About 2012 

By JOHN BUSSEY

Just how likely is U.S. business to get whipsawed by troubles in the year ahead?
"If you haven't thrown up yet, you're getting ready to," Erskine Bowles, former co-chair of the national fiscal responsibility commission, told a group of CEOs in Washington this week. Efforts to cut the deficit are falling short, he said. Congress is in seizure. Calamity beckons.

FedEx CEO Fred Smith during a Q&A at the CEO Council. He said operating in China has become much harder. "We've got to spend our money more wisely, just like you guys do," Mr. Bowles said. "We have this treaty with Taiwan that we'll protect Taiwan if they're invaded by the Chinese. There's only one problem with that: We've got to borrow the money from China to do it!"

His shtick brought the house down, but there was no mistaking the nervous edge to the laughter.
The 87 CEOs had gathered this week at a Wall Street Journal conference to get clarity from Washington figures about the year ahead. Here's what they heard: more alarms about the deficit crisis in the U.S., the debt crisis in Europe, and distracting elections or leadership changes in the U.S., Europe and Beijing. The words "instability" and "contagion" came up more than once.

And though there was beneficence from some CEOs toward China, the message for business here, too, wasn't a good one:
"I strongly agree with the sentiment expressed that the Chinese government is going backwards, that they are reverting back to more central control of the economy," Fred Smith, CEO of FedEx, told the group. "It's become more difficult to operate there by a large margin, and I would say almost every one of the U.S. companies that operate in China would agree with what I just said."
In private, they did. The group would hear from senior officials about a range of national issues. But it was China, one of the main themes of the conference, that threaded through the proceedings and appeared top of mind for the CEOs. Indeed, the executives were asked what books they read recently, and the No. 1 pick was Henry Kissinger's "On China."

When they weren't talking China, the chief executives got commiseration from Eric Cantor, R., Va., on taxes. "It has to be tougher and tougher to justify the domicile location of your headquarters given our tax code," he said.

They also groused with officials about immigration and visa policies that prevent talent from getting into the country and discourage tourists from coming to visit.

Enlarge Image

"Ridiculous," Klaus Kleinfeld, the CEO of Alcoa said, recounting his own company's experiences. "We're talking about jobs here. We want to create jobs."

And they heard Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner reassure them, again, that Europe will find its way—sort of. Gail Kelly, the chief executive of Westpac Banking, asked if matters were going from bad to worse in the Eurozone, a belief widely held by the CEOs and the markets.

"It's hurting growth already, it's hurting us already," Mr. Geithner responded. And then he offered a familiar line of late: "This is a problem within their capacity to solve," he said. "They are working through the very tough things they have to do to get there, obviously not fast enough, obviously not enough traction for the confidence of markets yet."


To drill deeper into some of these problems, the CEOs broke into working groups to debate topics such as how to manage the global competition for resources and how to build U.S. exports (the U.S. is near the bottom of the list of all nations when measured by the share of national economic output that exports comprise.)

The Journal will publish a report on the CEOs findings Monday. One early peek:

The group that explored ways to improve U.S.-China relations was decidedly gentle, choosing the carrot, not the stick. Noted the group in its oral report back to the conference: "We have to be patient" with China and appreciate "step by step progress" "because we know our future is together." U.S. business should give China "more face." The CEOs "chose to use words such as win-win." "There wasn't a lot of appetite in our task force for government-to-government saber rattling on things like currency."

Two other working groups, though, recommended measures to increase enforcement of intellectual property rights in China and elsewhere, something that sounded more like a stick. And when the full group voted on action items for business and government across the range of subjects discussed that day, that stick ranked just ahead of the diplomatic carrots. It was a message, during troubling times, from American business to a rising China.

CEOs Get Warnings About 2012

The need to walk your talk....leads to trust and engagement....if you don't...

There is a recent "dust up" about Eric Holder's (Attorney General in the US) 5 day trip to the Caribbean Islands at a time when government spending is supposed to be curtailed and expenses cut back.

It brings back memories of being with a Fortune 100 USA company, and we were advised that we had to reduce costs: travel, phone calls, and office expenses. We were called into the Executive's office and told that telephone bills would be closely scrutinized for personal calls, trip expenses and justifications would be closely monitored and prior approval had to be obtained, and even checking out pencils and pens now had to be signed out and accounted for by our assistants, with a final review by the Executive.

Two weeks later, there was a senior executive meeting to be held in Monte Carlo, which was over a week long. Needless to say this did not engender any good morale or engagement building! Quite the opposite.

Another related situation occurred when a CEO asked for candid feedback about areas that could be improved within our divisions. The first senior manager called upon, discussed those areas where he could improve, and those he could personally improve upon also. The CEO proceeded to lashed into the manager for over 15 minutes. After that, the other Manager reports were merely stated factually and skirted the issues where improvements could be made.

When you are trying to build engagement and trust, not walking your talk, seriously undermines your messages and interrupts candid and needed communications by a CEO, senior manager or leader. It also negatively affects Charisma for those who want to engender that view.

So always try to be consistent and sincere, others will know if you are not!

Acquisitions and Tax implications for Overseas Cash

Acquisitions are always interesting and the article below helps to take into account tax implications for companies with large amounts of cash and what happens upon repatriation. It is an excellent description of how to value stocks. Many times it is hard to find out cash position information. Of course you need to know the amounts involved in different countries, as there may be tax effects in those countries to take into account also.

In the past, Brazil, for example, did not allow the money to be repatriated and so companies were stuck with money in the foreign country. Then they had to either invest in the current company, invest in other companies within the country, or wait until the government policies changed.

The article below has been included in it's entirety, as it is too interesting not to be able to read it. Good reading!

Tech Firms Find It's Not Easy Holding Green

By ROLFE WINKLER

If you buy a $1 million house and find $200,000 in the basement when you move in, how much did you really pay for it? That, in a nutshell, is the question facing shareholders in Apple and other mega-cap tech companies.

WSJ's Rolfe Winkler makes a stop on Mean Street to explain the challenges in determining the valuation of companies that hold large cash reserves. AP Photo.

Buying a share of Apple stock for $385, Friday's close, an investor finds it has $87 per share of cash on its balance sheet. Google, Cisco Systems and Microsoft are other tech titans with gargantuan cash piles on their balance sheets. So what's the right way to think about how much investors are paying to own a piece of these companies?

The cash lying on Apple's balance sheet is, in theory, just a bonus shareholders get when they buy the stock. With interest rates near zero, cash adds nearly nothing to earnings. So when measuring a company's valuation, many will simply "back out the cash" to understand a company's value relative to the earnings it generates. In Apple's case, analysts estimate it will earn $34.43 a share in the fiscal year ending next September. Today's price per share is 11 times earnings. If you exclude cash per share, the multiple is just 8.6 times earnings.

 

But it isn't so simple, for Apple or any of the other tech companies noted above. For starters, most of Big Tech's cash is held overseas. In its last financial filing, Apple said two-thirds of its cash is abroad. For Google, it's nearly 50%, and, for Cisco and Microsoft, about 90%. Companies can't return cash to shareholders before they repatriate it. And that incurs a 35% tax liability. So even if investors are to take cash piles at face value, they need to discount the portion held abroad by the tax rate.
Bondholders also have a claim on the company's cash, of course. While Apple has no debt, Cisco, Microsoft and Google do. So, for instance, investors eyeing Cisco's $44.4 billion cash pile should note the company has $16.9 billion of debt, too.

Another reason to discount cash: Companies can waste it on ill-considered acquisitions. Google's proposed $12.5 billion price tag for Motorola Mobility Holdings seems expensive, as does Hewlett-Packard's $10 billion deal for software-maker Autonomy. When those deals were announced, the market capitalizations of Google and H-P each fell more than the cost of their respective acquisitions. It's as if shareholders not only ascribed zero value for the acquired companies but penalized Google and H-P for their lack of discipline.
After its pricey $8.6 billion purchase of Web-telephony company Skype, which makes little money, Microsoft also seems a candidate to have its cash pile discounted.

Apple, meanwhile, has been content to just let its cash accumulate. That could finally change: Apple's new chief executive, Tim Cook, has said he's "not religious about holding cash." So perhaps a dividend is in Apple's future, giving some confidence Apple will act responsibly.

But perhaps the best rule of thumb when analyzing the true value of corporate cash piles: guilty until proven innocent.

Tech Firms Find It's Not Easy Holding Green

Not all Acquisitions or Strategies, Work

Not all acquisitions or strategies work, but you do need to know when to change before disaster strikes. Two recent articles have borne this out. The first is that HP will not sell off their PC unit and Republic Air decides to spin off Frontier Airlines.

Two questions might be asked.

How do you arrive at making an acquisition, and then deciding to sell it off?

Well, even sophisticated organizations make mistakes, but many times it is because of insufficient efforts in due diligence. Not only do you need to look in the area of financial diligence, but in the integration of "culture fit," "core values," and "strategy" integration. While Republic Air blames it on "fuel costs" it really appears to be much more. Most probably on of entirely different strategies that Republic Air has compared with what Frontier was. One is a "feeder line" versus a regional airline.

The other question, is why might you say you are going to sell off a business and decide to keep it?

Sometimes, it sounds like a good idea but when you look into the depths of the financial impact on the company, it doesn't look so great.  There can be hidden synergies within the company. Also, there can be the expediency in wanting to look like you are doing something, but in the end it isn't a good decision. Many times these are created by internal political powers that push or pull decisions or shareholders.

In the end, a good CEO will retract or make a hard decision to change course. One of the hardest had to have been Roberto Goizueta's famous decision to reformulate Coke in 1985. Massive amounts of PR and inventory had been expended. Then, 77 days later, the formulation was returned to it's original, being labeled "Classic." Mr Goizuleta's strategy was to encourage risk taking, and he remained as CEO for many years afterward, in spite of this massive mistake and cost to the corporation. Even most recently Coke changed their packaging back in the article below:
A Frosty Reception for Coca-Cola's White Christmas Cans

On the same day as the "Frosty Reception" above article about Coke, there is one about AT&T and T-Mobile (Deutsche Telekom AG) changing their acquisition strategy:
AT&T, T-Mobile Mull Plan B

So own up to mistakes, and cut your losses sooner rather than later. Hopefully, there will not be too many of them.


Republic Air Changes Course

Social Media's Banging on Marketing's Door

In the past 3 years social media has fast become a required part of a company's marketing and strategic plan(s). Many of us are trying to determine how to effectively use it, reaching the right audiences with the right messages while helping to promote our products and services while also giving the customer and potential customer what they need, when they need it. This impacts sales, customer service, supply, our methodology of communication, and essentially involves the entire company.

The complexity of these interactions can be seen from the graphic (Customer's Preferences and Behaviors) taken from Accenture's recent research, who's link can be found below the graphic.

 Consumer's Changing Preferences and Behaviors

Taking social media and networking into consideration is critical, because either you lead, or follow your competition. Getting to markets  and understanding how to be use these channels, sooner rather later, can spell success or failure. The World is an oyster, but it can also be a labyrinth of dead-ends and sunken costs (in time, ineffective marketing methods and messaging). Good luck!

If you are interested, a portion of a part of the article is reposted here and the link is below this posting:

"The evolution of social media and other Web 2.0 tools is having a significant impact on both how consumers interact with companies and the level of control such companies have over the sales, marketing and service of their products. (Although it is difficult to find consensus on what exactly is meant by “social media,” for the purpose of our discussion, the term refers to Internet and mobile channels that enable users both to view and create content and to share that content with others.)
Today, consumers make their purchases either via retailers’ or manufacturers’ sites or retailers’ physical stores. However, as social networking and other Web 2.0 tools have exploded in popularity—consumers have many new sources of product information and buying advice, as well as answers to usage and technical questions about the products they have purchased.
In this new world, companies have an opportunity or a threat, depending on how they adapt marketing, sales and service of their own products to a new consumer ecosystem: one in which enthusiasts and detractors can dictate customer perception and experience for manufacturers.
Ramifications for providers—What are the ramifications of this shift? At a high level, the evolution of social media has introduced new contact channels that must be integrated into marketing, service and support strategies. However, while social networking and social media are certainly on the rise, there are still large groups of customers who do not communicate via these tools.
Therefore, differentiated service takes on an even greater role because of these new channels. A thorough understanding of customers’ channel preferences, combined with insights into the true value of customers to the business, must drive how companies interact with each respective segment.
In addition, because of the speed with which customers and information move today, companies must be able to incrementally, and very quickly, improve their operations based on what they learn from observing customers. As a result, many companies have shifted the focus of their investments from building channel infrastructure to creating nimble and robust content management and data collection and analysis capabilities.
From a marketing perspective, the evolution of social networks and online communities has resulted in a collapse of the marketing funnel. How so? Traditional, mainstream marketing forces a message through the marketing funnel, moving through stages from building awareness to earning loyalty. It only allows dialogue and relationship building as the prospect or customer progresses through the funnel.
By contrast, the digital revolution, and particularly social media, makes it possible to engage in a dialogue with prospects or customers much earlier and at many more touch points. The collapse of the marketing funnel, in turn, means the distinctions between marketing and sales become further blurred and, in some cases, disappear entirely. In fact, social media increasingly is being referred to not in terms of marketing or sales, but rather, as an “engagement channel,” which incorporates elements of both marketing and sales.
With consumers increasingly relying on third-party sites for usage and technical information, manufacturers must build capabilities to strengthen their brands and customer loyalty via these channels, as well as to up-sell and cross-sell relevant, related products and services, and gather and integrate cross-channel customer data. Indeed, smart use of these third-party channels can become a powerful way to boost image and customer satisfaction while reducing CRM operational costs."

CRM and Marketing

Sales Characteristics for Success that are innate?

A recent article by Dr. Croner, indicates that most high performance sales people possess the following 3 innate personality traits which only about 20% of Sales people have. They are:

Need for Achievement
Competitiveness
Optimism

Personally, from experience, most people possess these, so it is doubtful that they are innate!

In an earlier blog article that was written based on Harvard Research, it was identified that "Challengers" created the most effective sales people, and these techniques can be learned. Obviously, some people may be more comfortable with these techniques than others, but if a person is committed, they can "flex" into the needs of the position, and over time they become engrained in the individual and drives success.

Existing Sales People in your organization present the greatest challenge because you have already employed them and the question then remains how do you, or can you, elevate them to be more effective? But the advantage is you have more information about them based around Thinking, and Behavioral traits and Interests, than you may have for people you may be looking to recruit or hire.

For an existing sales force, can you identify what generates a passion or a significant need which can drive the Need for Achievement within a person? It may take some effort, but from experience, most of the time it can be found. Then the objective is tapping into this internal "need" that this person has and structuring a compensation/benefit plan around this (these) needs.

Competitiveness can be created on some level. However, it is critical that this is created in a supportive manner and environment. Humans naturally are competitive, just look at the world problems which seem to revolved around the need to be heard or recognized.

Optimism, can also be addressed or taught. There are many methods which can be employed to change how a person views change and challenges, from meditation to structured courses.

So the objective is with existing Sales people, how to motivate the engage them to the point of wanting to grow and become more effective and professional. It may take effort, coaching/mentoring and involves some training costs, but it can be achieved. It favorably impacts company morale.

For Pre-Hire/Recruiting, there are effective assessments/tests and interview techniques to evaluate candidates by helping to minimize hiring the wrong people initially.  Obviously, the benchmarks need to be created around your Top Performers. Once these are set-up, then an in-depth interview(s) can help enormously in identifying people who should be successful.

Applicant tracking systems (ATS) can help in the process by "self-selecting" out people that will not have a good "job fit" based around initial knockout questions, and then around benchmarks/performance models. These ATS systems also need to be used to help identify effective marketing programs in attracting the best candidates not only initially, but those who will remain with your company(retention). These ATS systems can greatly save time and effort for your recruiting staff and generally can be easily cost justified around ROI's. This "tracking" information is critical for future hiring programs to attract the best talent.

The more tools and methodologies you use, the greater your success can be. Hire around "job fit" and you gain the slight edge in being a successful and sustainable organization!

Charisma can be Taught and Learned

In an earlier posting concerning a presentation I gave at the HR Training Congress in August, entitled:


Linking People, Strategy and Performance to Engagement and Training: "Revolutionary Research from Global Corporations"

Profiles International (PI) identified in new research in January 2011, and published in a book found on Amazon.com, entitled "Leadership Charisma", that Charisma, and Leadership Charisma in particular, is behavior based. Thus it is learn-able, can be coached, developed, and it can be trained. This is also supported and discussed by a recent article by Jessica Stillman entitled: "Charm 101: Charisma can be Taught". (The article can be found below).


PI's research was based on over 40,000 Managers and 400,000 employees world-wide, and it seems that more people and companies are becoming convinced of this fact, which before had only been debated without hard facts and research.

Why is Charisma important? Because Charismatic Leaders have been documented in numerous studies in the past, to have companies and teams that deliver even higher profitability and even more extraordinary products, than those with just good Leadership. This is accomplished through heightened "engagement".

Therefore, there is a cost benefit to hiring, or even more so now, developing and/or training managers to not only be good Leaders, but to become Charismatic Leaders. The ROI will easily justify training costs to develop Leadership Charisma in Managers!

So what are you and your HR team waiting for? Isn't it best to start now in developing even more effective Leaders especially grooming potential CEOs and Senior Executives? The choice is yours, but it is no longer a point to debate, but only a point to implement.

Charm 101: Charisma Can Be Taught

By Jessica Stillman

.

• Del.icio.us
• Facebook
• Stumbleupon

• Newsvine
• Yahoo bookmarks
• Mixx

• Digg
• Reddit
• Google Bookmarks

• Twitter
• LinkedIn

(MoneyWatch)  With the death of Steve Jobs, the media's attention has turned to his legacy as a business leader and his ability to inspire teams to create extraordinary products. The man, in short, may have been prickly but he was also extremely charismatic.

Where does that ability to spellbind others to your cause come from? His biographer plumbed Jobs' past for answers, but recently psychologists took a more hands-on approach to the origins of charisma, testing whether this elusive and valuable quality can be explicitly taught.

Turns out, the answer appears to be yes. Researchers out of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland decided to see if charisma boot camp would be effective, conducting 360-degree evaluations of 34 managers and then sending them to a three-month charisma training course where they learned what the researchers dubbed CLTs or charismatic leader tactics. These include verbal techniques such as:

• Framing through metaphor
• Stories and anecdotes
• Demonstrating moral conviction
• Sharing the sentiments of the collective
• Setting high expectations
• Communicating confidence
• Using rhetorical devices such as contrasts, lists, and rhetorical questions

Body language, facial expression and using an animated tone of voice were also covered. The results, recently published in The Academy of Management Learning and Education, show that these charisma classes worked. "Managers who underwent training saw their charisma ratings significantly grow, relative to those who didn't," according to reports in BPS Occupational Digest.

To double check the results, the researchers also asked 41 MBA students to give the same speech before and after undergoing charisma training. After learning to master their CLTs, the MBA candidates were rated more trustworthy, competent, influential, and moving when they gave their speech.

There are caveats for potential student of charisma. The researchers warn that a significant time commitment is need to improve charisma -- remember their course lasted three months, not a matter of hours. And it's also likely that when a student starts actively attempting to become more charismatic, their performance may get worse before it gets better as their attempts to appear charismatic often come off as stilted and stereotypical at first, leading to more laughs than loyalty.

Still, for the charisma challenged, the research shows that more traits that we think of as inborn are actually teachable. That's good news for those who need to be more charismatic to advance in their careers and perhaps also a call to action for others who have given up on gaining leadership skills because they thought they simply lacked the knack.

Recent data reporting a Change in the approach to Sustainability around Energy, Green Products, and Retaining Employees

Apparently, there has been a change from last year to this year, where more companies and their CEOs and Executives are looking to heighten awareness about sustainability and incorporating these concepts into their business/strategic plans by "...saving energy, developing green products, and retaining and motivating employees, all of which help companies capture value through growth and return on capital..." and that sustainability makes, or will make, a major contribution to the company's short and longer term goals.

This is stated in a recent article by McKinsey which is pasted below for your review. Executives have gained a more realistic view about sustainability and in identifying opportunities with the greatest potential value. 

You can subscribe to the newsletter. See the link at the end. Enjoy the article.

The business of sustainability: McKinsey Global Survey results.

More companies are managing sustainability to improve processes, pursue growth, and add value to their companies rather than focusing on reputation alone.

OCTOBER 2011

Many companies are actively integrating sustainability principles into their businesses, according to a recent McKinsey survey,¹ and they are doing so by pursuing goals that go far beyond earlier concern for reputation management—for example, saving energy, developing green products, and retaining and motivating employees, all of which help companies capture value through growth and return on capital. In our sixth survey of executives on how their companies understand and manage issues related to sustainability,² this year’s results show that, since last year, larger shares of executives say sustainability programs make a positive contribution to their companies’ short- and long-term value.
This survey explored why and how companies are addressing sustainability and to what extent executives believe it affects their companies’ bottom line, now and over the next five years. In a related opinion piece, “Putting it into practice,” at the end of this survey, the authors argue that more businesses will have to take a long-term strategic view of the issue by identifying and pursuing sustainability opportunities that hold the highest value potential.
On the whole, respondents report a more well-rounded understanding of sustainability and its expected benefits than in prior surveys. As in the past, they see the potential for supporting corporate reputation. But they also expect operational and growth-oriented benefits in the areas of cutting costs and pursuing opportunities in new markets and products. Furthermore, respondents in certain industries—energy, the extractive industries,³ and transportation—report that their companies are taking a more active approach than those in other sectors, probably as a result of those industries’ potential regulatory and natural-resource constraints.

Global Results from McKinsey about Sustainability

Evolution of Social Business Networks toward specialized markets and verticals. A threat to LinkedIn?

This is a very interesting article on business social media. I have copied it here for your review and information. The link to the original article is found at the end of the article.

Essentially, there is an evolution to more specific Business Social Networks versus more general Networks like LinkedIn. This is beginning to allow for more specialized content and information for a vertical network, and since LinkedIn doesn't have a good platform but does have an extensive resume database, it is vulnerable on the mid to long term basis. Essentially it still has time to react, but competition will be building.

Mentioned verticals are Academic and Investor based.

Hope that you find this interesting, as we watch the emergence of this fascinating segment of the marketing methodology. Enjoy the read!

The Verticalization Of Professional Networks Begins: Is It A Threat To LinkedIn?

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry | Nov. 3, 2011, 6:12 AM | 5,878 | 4

This note is from BI Research, a new tech-industry intelligence service. The service is currently in beta and free.

LinkedIn hiring solutions revenue Image: Business Insider Research LNKDNov 03 11:00 PM 87.50 Change 3.00 % Change 3.55%

More and more, we are seeing the emergence of "vertical" professional social networks: networks dedicated to a specific type of occupation with specialized tools.  Here are two examples:

• Academic networks. These networks help researchers and scientists get together to share data and information, and help companies tap networks of researchers to solve problems. One such network, Kaggle, recently added Silicon Valley and technology heavyweight Max Levchin as chairman. Another example is Paris-based Hypios.
• Investor networks. These networks help investors conduct private financial transactions like M&A and asset sales. An example of a contender here is CapLinked, but also investors that connect entrepreneurs and investors like AngelList. 

Are these a threat to LinkedIn, the biggest, and more generalist, professional social network?
As we argued in our study of network effects, generalist networks can be undermined by more focused vertical upstarts. Is this going to happen to LinkedIn?
In the short-to-medium term: no. From a market opportunity standpoint, LinkedIn is a giant resume database, which gives it a unique asset to attack the multibillion dollar global recruiting industry, which it is already doing as the chart above shows. That is an enormous opportunity, and whether these networks succeed or fail won't make a difference to LinkedIn's execution in this market.
That being said, it is a big missed opportunity, because it shows that LinkedIn can't become a platform. Facebook's greatest insight, and what guarantees its dominance of the web over the next 5 years, was its crucial early realization that it couldn't do everything "social"--but that it could provide tools to third parties to do it through their social graph, thereby improving the value of their company (and allowing them to take a tax later on).
Building platforms seems to be a "DNA thing." It's a core competency, and companies either can or can't do it. And LinkedIn, so far, has been in the latter category. It has certainly tried to become a platform by allowing third-parties to build apps on top of LinkedIn and providing tools like an equivalent of Facebook's Connect feature, which allows user to log in to third-party sites with their Facebook credentials. But so far the applications are very limited. And several third-party LinkedIn developers have told us, on condition of anonymity because they are partners with LinkedIn, that LinkedIn's third-party tools are limited and technically frustrating.
LinkedIn is often referred to as a "professional" or "grown-up" Facebook, but that misses a crucial difference. Like Facebook, LinkedIn is a social network; unlike Facebook, LinkedIn is not a platform. This is a missed opportunity, and even though it shouldn't affect LinkedIn in the short-to-medium term, it remains a long-term weakness because in the future vertical professional networks just might undermine LinkedIn.
Therefore, even though LinkedIn has a big opportunity ahead of it that it is uniquely positioned to grasp, its incapacity to turn itself into a platform puts a lid on its potential future value.

Link to the original article:
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-verticalization-of-professional-networks-begins-is-it-a-threat-to-linkedin-2011-11

RELATED(Funding for New Companies): Investor Networks Play A Big Role In The New Company Financing Landscape →

Different Selling Techniques - Challengers vs Relationship Builders, vs Lone Wolves vs Hard Workers vs Reactive Problem Solvers

 A recent article in Harvard's Business Review came out with an interesting study. They found that "Challengers" out performed the other forms of selling techniques or individuals. Why? Because they push the client to better understand the products being offered and their use. They are particularly effective in "down economies."

"Challengers" tailor their presentations and information in a teaching way, even showing new ways to use the information/products in a more effective manner or in specific situations that the client had not identified that they needed. They also take control of the sale and the customer needs identification and challengers are into solution-selling.

The question needs to be asked, where does your sales force fit into these classifications? Most likely you have a mixture of styles. Maybe there is a need to hire differently than we have in the past? Through change management techniques and training sales forces, they can be up-graded to handle more complex sales situations which the global marketplace is forcing us to adjust to.

It can be argued, that certain clients may respond to one type better than another. But this article begs the question that companies may need to have more Challengers and fewer Relationship Builders.

Enjoy the article!

Selling Is Not About Relationships

9:29 AM Friday September 30, 2011
by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson

This post, the first of a four-part series, is also part of the HBR Insight Center Growing the Top Line.
Ask any sales leader how selling has changed in the past decade, and you'll hear a lot of answers but only one recurring theme: It's a lot harder. Yet even in these difficult times, every sales organization has a few stellar performers. Who are these people? How can we bottle their magic?
To understand what sets apart this special group of sales reps, the Sales Executive Council launched a global study of sales rep productivity three years ago involving more than 6,000 reps across nearly 100 companies in multiple industries.
We now have an answer, which we've captured in the following three insights:
1. Every sales professional falls into one of five distinct profiles.
Quantitatively speaking, just about every B2B sales rep in the world is one of the following types, characterized by a specific set of skills and behaviors that defines the rep's primary mode of interacting with customers:

• Relationship Builders focus on developing strong personal and professional relationships and advocates across the customer organization. They are generous with their time, strive to meet customers' every need, and work hard to resolve tensions in the commercial relationship.
• Hard Workers show up early, stay late, and always go the extra mile. They'll make more calls in an hour and conduct more visits in a week than just about anyone else on the team.
• Lone Wolves are the deeply self-confident, the rule-breaking cowboys of the sales force who do things their way or not at all.
• Reactive Problem Solvers are, from the customers' standpoint, highly reliable and detail-oriented. They focus on post-sales follow-up, ensuring that service issues related to implementation and execution are addressed quickly and thoroughly.
• Challengers use their deep understanding of their customers' business to push their thinking and take control of the sales conversation. They're not afraid to share even potentially controversial views and are assertive — with both their customers and bosses.

2. Challengers dramatically outperform the other profiles, particularly Relationship Builders.
When we look at average reps, we find a fairly even distribution across all five of these profiles. But while there may be five ways to be average, there's only one way to be a star. We found that Challenger reps dominate the high-performer population, making up close to 40% of star reps in our study.

What makes the Challenger approach different?
The data tell us that these reps are defined by three key capabilities:
Challengers teach their customers. They focus the sales conversation not on features and benefits but on insight, bringing a unique (and typically provocative) perspective on the customer's business. They come to the table with new ideas for their customers that can make money or save money — often opportunities the customer hadn't realized even existed.
Challengers tailor their sales message to the customer They have a finely tuned sense of individual customer objectives and value drivers and use this knowledge to effectively position their sales pitch to different types of customer stakeholders within the organization.
Challengers take control of the sale. While not aggressive, they are certainly assertive. They are comfortable with tension and are unlikely to acquiesce to every customer demand. When necessary, they can press customers a bit — not just in terms of their thinking but around things like price.
We'll discuss each of these capabilities in more depth in our upcoming posts, but just as surprising as it is that Challengers win, it's almost more eye-opening who loses. In our study, Relationship Builders come in dead last, accounting for only 7% of all high performers.
Why is this? It's certainly not because relationships no longer matter in B2B sales--that would be a naïve conclusion. Rather, what the data tell us is that it is the nature of the relationships that matter. Challengers win by pushing customers to think differently, using insight to create constructive tension in the sale. Relationship Builders, on the other hand, focus on relieving tension by giving in to the customer's every demand. Where Challengers push customers outside their comfort zone, Relationship Builders are focused on being accepted into it. They focus on building strong personal relationships across the customer organization, being likable and generous with their time. The Relationship Builder adopts a service mentality. While the Challenger is focused on customer value, the Relationship Builder is more concerned with convenience. At the end of the day, a conversation with a Relationship Builder is probably professional, even enjoyable, but it isn't as effective because it doesn't ultimately help customers make progress against their goals.
This finding — that Challengers win and Relationship Builders lose — is one that sales leaders often find deeply troubling, because their organizations have placed by far their biggest bet on recruiting, developing, and rewarding Relationship Builders, the profile least likely to win.
Here's how one of our members in the hospitality industry put it when he saw these results: "You know, this is really hard to look at. For the past 10 years, it's been our explicit strategy to hire effective Relationship Builders. After all, we're in the hospitality business. And, for a while, that approach worked well. But ever since the economy crashed, my Relationship Builders are completely lost. They can't sell a thing. And as I look at this, now I know why."
3. Challengers dominate the world of complex "solution-selling"
Given the first two findings, it might be reasonable to conclude that Challengers are the down-economy reps and that when things return to normal, Relationship Builders will once again prevail. But our data suggest that this is wishful thinking.
When we cut the data by complexity of sale — that is, separating out transactional, product-selling reps from complex, solution-selling reps — we find that Challengers absolutely dominate as selling gets more complex. Fully 54% of all star reps in a solution-selling environment are Challengers. At the same time, Relationship Builders fall off the map almost entirely, representing only 4% of high-performing reps in complex environments.
Put differently, Challengers win because they've mastered the complex sale, not because they've mastered a complex economy. Your very best sales reps — the ones who carried you through the downturn — aren't just the top performers of today but the top performers of tomorrow, as they are far better able to drive sales and deliver customer value in any kind of economic environment. For any company on a journey from selling products to selling solutions — which is a migration that more than 75% of the companies I work with say they are pursuing — the Challenger selling approach represents a dramatically improved recipe for driving top-line growth.
In the next post, we'll look at how Challengers teach their customers and how leading companies are equipping their salespeople to do the same.

Selling Is Not About Relationships