It's interesting that Samsung share values have dropped their market capitalization by 4.2% on Monday, as announced in press releases in the last two days. Of course, the World markets are down and with the problems confronted by Europe at the moment, demand may be down.
However, marketing might also be a major contributor. Why? Well from personal observations, they have not done a good job of managing and meeting expectations on some of their products.
A case in point is the Galaxy Y Pro Duo-Sim. In the Philippines, they have been talking about launching this product since the beginning of January, and it is yet to be released. They appear to have released it in India, but so far that seems to be the only market. In successive months, when asked in their stores as to when this product will be released, it is the evasive "within the next two months." We are now at the end of June, 2012.
Last week Samsung launched the Galaxy S III in the US and earlier in other markets. So now, will people who want a Duo-Sim, wait for this Duo-Sim version with a keyboard or buy the older processor and older features from the Y Pro Duo? This looks like a mess from a marketing and product positioning point of view.
Even a visit to Samsung's Corporate Offices last Friday, and asking to speak with someone about when the Y Pro Duo will be released, access was not granted to see anyone in their offices. Only a person coming through the lobby from Samsung, took my business card. "They will get back in response to your question."
So, three business days have elapsed and still no word. Where is the market positioning? Where is the customer service in addressing questions?
Maybe we should be assured by J.K. Shin's (President for Samsung's Mobile Business) upbeat announcements, but if you compare these two launches: Samsung vs Apple's iPhone 4S....is there any comparison?
It seems Samsung has some work to do, regardless of whether the Galaxy S III is a success or not, it doesn't speak highly of how this company manages it's high visibility business. Maybe they need some marketing and visioning exercises.
Recent pre-launch reports on the iPhone 5 indicates that the Galaxy S III optimism might be a bit premature as it will be good competitive product.
This isn't going to help the mobile division either:
U.S. Judge Orders Halt to Samsung Sales of Galaxy Tab
What do you think?
Samsung Shares Fall on Lowered Estimates - WSJ
Showing posts with label Visioning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Visioning. Show all posts
Monday, June 25, 2012
Monday, March 12, 2012
Customer Service and The Wait-Time Misery Index
Recently there was an interesting article in the WSJ about new innovative ways companies are using by improving customer service and raise customer satisfaction for their products and company. Nothing is worse than non-performance or having to wait around for hours.
Not only does waiting increase stress, but creates a bad impression with clients. Many companies do not even provide 4 hour windows, but 8 hour windows, which kills the whole day. The longer in the day that service is finally provided, the less satisfaction a customer generally has.
Maybe some people of have heard of the Wait-Time Misery Index, but if not, it is a useful definition for measuring potential customer satisfaction. The greater the misery, the less customer satisfaction there will be.
The best adage is under promise and over deliver!
What new ways can you create to help reduce this index for your company? What change management techniques can be employed? How much do you communicate the need for great customer service and what metrics do you have in place to manage it and improve it? How can technology and IT, social media, visioning exercises, and strategic planning help to improve performance around this index?
Have you, your C-Suite and Marketing personnel given thought to this? If so, how effective have you been? If not, why not?
(Link to the article is at the end.)
Now some companies are whittling down the wait window to two hours and trying to improve communication with customers. Some send texts with arrival updates while others reveal online where people rank in the day's delivery queue. The thinking: people, trapped in the house waiting for something to be delivered or installed or repaired, will feel less powerless if they know what to expect.
More than 50% of adults used a sick day or vacation day to wait at home for a service or delivery, according to a 2011 survey of more than 1,000 people by TOA Technologies, a Beachwood, Ohio-based firm that works with companies to reduce customer wait times. More than 25% of people surveyed lost wages while waiting.
People often become more stressed by the uncertainty, says Richard Wurtman, a neuropharmacologist and distinguished professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The underlying personality will determine the extent to which you are vulnerable to stress induced from waiting."
Shaving two hours is a big leap, companies say, because so many factors affect delivery from traffic to calculating the time a repair or installation will actually take.
General Electric began experimenting with moving from four-hour windows to two-hour windows last year for its appliance deliveries in the Midwest. UPS late last year launched a program called My Choice which, for a $40 fee, offers customers a two-hour window delivery option. Use of the service has been strong, UPS says.
FreshDirect, a grocery-delivery service based in New York, offers two-hour wait windows. Less than a year ago, it began giving people $2 discounts on its usual $5.95 delivery fee to choose a "green" time slot—a window in which the company knows it has trucks in the customer's neighborhood. It is marketed as an eco-friendly innovation, but it also has the effect of grouping deliveries for more efficiency.
Linda Peterson, an interior designer from Atlanta, says she has resorted to paying more for an appliance-repair company called Appliance Doctor that guarantees two-hour windows, even though it costs at least 25% more, she says, than if she called the manufacturers of the appliances or other repair services.
"I didn't want to pay the premium, but I became so frustrated and being asked to wait for more than two hours was exasperating," she says. She finds even two hours hard to bear. In August, while waiting for a repairman, she began ironing linens to take her mind off the time. He arrived close to the end of the window and the work took awhile. "It was probably 50 napkins, four or five tablecloths easily," she says.
Calling during the wait window to inquire about the status of a shipment or delivery generally is not worth your time, companies say. That's because a customer will likely be calling the retailer, but usually the delivery is handled by a separate delivery company.
Service visits can be a different story. Bill Kula, a spokesman for Verizon, says usually that kind of inquiry wouldn't make a difference. That said, if a customer calls near the end of a promised window, perhaps 30 minutes before the time is up, it could be helpful. Verizon could see if there is a technician nearby who could reach the customer ahead of the scheduled technician, Mr. Kula says.
To make deliveries within a two-hour time slot, more companies are investing in software that helps determine the most efficient route The technology can shave time off trips by taking into account speed limits, for example, and estimating how long a stop will take based on service type.
"In the not too distant future, companies will be able to tighten that window to one hour," says Satish Jindel, president of SJ Consulting Group, a Sewickley, Pa., transportation and logistics consulting firm.
"I see companies using the two-hour window as a significant marketing thing," says Bruce Champeau, Room & Board chief operating officer. The furniture retailer has had a two-hour window in effect since the mid-1990s. "It's a matter of respecting the customer's time," says Mr. Champeau.
Room & Board uses scheduling software that factors in variables from traffic routes, including roadwork detours, to how long furniture assembly might take. Employees make additional updates and adjustments accordingly.
A small delivery window can give a company a leg up on rivals. With the far and fervent reach of social media, a very good or very bad delivery experience can go viral. Increasingly shoppers are broadcasting their anger—and naming company names—on customer review sites like Yelp, and on Facebook and Twitter. In the TOA Technologies survey, 16% of respondents said they post complaints online.
When it comes to waiting, a maddening factor is often the lack of information. Is the company on its way? More companies are trying to give customers status reports during the appointment window. Some businesses believe this reduces customer stress.
This is what New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority found after it began installing digital clocks to display the number of minutes before the next subway train would arrive on the platform. So far, 209 of its 468 stations have the clocks.
"It's the 21st century," says MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz. "There are expectations that real-time information be available to customers."
3PD Inc., of Marietta, Ga., which hires local carriers on behalf of large national retailers to handle the final leg—or what the industry calls "the last mile"—of a delivery, plans to add a similar style of communication for customers later this year. Using an app, 3PD's customers will be able to look up how far away a delivery is from arriving, says Will O'Shea, chief sales and marketing officer.
Some enterprising small concierge companies have emerged in recent years to do the waiting for you in your home for a fee. Some charge around $35 an hour.
When Victoria Kingscott's cable went on the fritz, the 25-year-old senior analyst at a financial services firm in New York says Time Warner Cable told her she couldn't get a Saturday appointment for three weeks. She couldn't take off work during the week, so she booked a 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. appointment for a Saturday last August and waited. When the big day came, she waited some more.
At noon, she became antsy. She called and was assured a technician would arrive within the hour. At 1 p.m. she called again. Apologies were offered. "I said 'this is unacceptable. It's a Saturday. I have things to do.'" She was given a second four-hour appointment window and told she was "next."
More hours of waiting, more calls. At one point Ms. Kingscott was erroneously told the technician was at her home. He was not. Finally, the technician showed up around 4 p.m. "He didn't really say he was sorry or offer any kind of explanation," she says.
"Clearly that is not an optimal customer service experience," says Alex Dudley, a Time Warner Cable spokesman. "The overwhelming majority of our installations go well."
Not only does waiting increase stress, but creates a bad impression with clients. Many companies do not even provide 4 hour windows, but 8 hour windows, which kills the whole day. The longer in the day that service is finally provided, the less satisfaction a customer generally has.
Maybe some people of have heard of the Wait-Time Misery Index, but if not, it is a useful definition for measuring potential customer satisfaction. The greater the misery, the less customer satisfaction there will be.
The best adage is under promise and over deliver!
What new ways can you create to help reduce this index for your company? What change management techniques can be employed? How much do you communicate the need for great customer service and what metrics do you have in place to manage it and improve it? How can technology and IT, social media, visioning exercises, and strategic planning help to improve performance around this index?
Have you, your C-Suite and Marketing personnel given thought to this? If so, how effective have you been? If not, why not?
(Link to the article is at the end.)
The Wait-Time Misery Index
Why Do Deliveries Trap You at Home For Hours; Strategies to Speed Things Up
By RAY A. SMITH
Would you wait around if your friend was four hours late for dinner? No, but your cable company thinks this is a reasonable window of time to wait for service.Now some companies are whittling down the wait window to two hours and trying to improve communication with customers. Some send texts with arrival updates while others reveal online where people rank in the day's delivery queue. The thinking: people, trapped in the house waiting for something to be delivered or installed or repaired, will feel less powerless if they know what to expect.
Everyone hates waiting for the phone company to come connect service or for a mattress to be delivered. Ray Smith on Lunch Break looks at which companies are innovating in this area and what effect waiting has on our sanity.
People often become more stressed by the uncertainty, says Richard Wurtman, a neuropharmacologist and distinguished professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The underlying personality will determine the extent to which you are vulnerable to stress induced from waiting."
Shaving two hours is a big leap, companies say, because so many factors affect delivery from traffic to calculating the time a repair or installation will actually take.
General Electric began experimenting with moving from four-hour windows to two-hour windows last year for its appliance deliveries in the Midwest. UPS late last year launched a program called My Choice which, for a $40 fee, offers customers a two-hour window delivery option. Use of the service has been strong, UPS says.
FreshDirect, a grocery-delivery service based in New York, offers two-hour wait windows. Less than a year ago, it began giving people $2 discounts on its usual $5.95 delivery fee to choose a "green" time slot—a window in which the company knows it has trucks in the customer's neighborhood. It is marketed as an eco-friendly innovation, but it also has the effect of grouping deliveries for more efficiency.
Linda Peterson, an interior designer from Atlanta, says she has resorted to paying more for an appliance-repair company called Appliance Doctor that guarantees two-hour windows, even though it costs at least 25% more, she says, than if she called the manufacturers of the appliances or other repair services.
"I didn't want to pay the premium, but I became so frustrated and being asked to wait for more than two hours was exasperating," she says. She finds even two hours hard to bear. In August, while waiting for a repairman, she began ironing linens to take her mind off the time. He arrived close to the end of the window and the work took awhile. "It was probably 50 napkins, four or five tablecloths easily," she says.
Calling during the wait window to inquire about the status of a shipment or delivery generally is not worth your time, companies say. That's because a customer will likely be calling the retailer, but usually the delivery is handled by a separate delivery company.
Service visits can be a different story. Bill Kula, a spokesman for Verizon, says usually that kind of inquiry wouldn't make a difference. That said, if a customer calls near the end of a promised window, perhaps 30 minutes before the time is up, it could be helpful. Verizon could see if there is a technician nearby who could reach the customer ahead of the scheduled technician, Mr. Kula says.
To make deliveries within a two-hour time slot, more companies are investing in software that helps determine the most efficient route The technology can shave time off trips by taking into account speed limits, for example, and estimating how long a stop will take based on service type.
"In the not too distant future, companies will be able to tighten that window to one hour," says Satish Jindel, president of SJ Consulting Group, a Sewickley, Pa., transportation and logistics consulting firm.
"I see companies using the two-hour window as a significant marketing thing," says Bruce Champeau, Room & Board chief operating officer. The furniture retailer has had a two-hour window in effect since the mid-1990s. "It's a matter of respecting the customer's time," says Mr. Champeau.
Room & Board uses scheduling software that factors in variables from traffic routes, including roadwork detours, to how long furniture assembly might take. Employees make additional updates and adjustments accordingly.
A small delivery window can give a company a leg up on rivals. With the far and fervent reach of social media, a very good or very bad delivery experience can go viral. Increasingly shoppers are broadcasting their anger—and naming company names—on customer review sites like Yelp, and on Facebook and Twitter. In the TOA Technologies survey, 16% of respondents said they post complaints online.
When it comes to waiting, a maddening factor is often the lack of information. Is the company on its way? More companies are trying to give customers status reports during the appointment window. Some businesses believe this reduces customer stress.
This is what New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority found after it began installing digital clocks to display the number of minutes before the next subway train would arrive on the platform. So far, 209 of its 468 stations have the clocks.
"It's the 21st century," says MTA spokesman Kevin Ortiz. "There are expectations that real-time information be available to customers."
3PD Inc., of Marietta, Ga., which hires local carriers on behalf of large national retailers to handle the final leg—or what the industry calls "the last mile"—of a delivery, plans to add a similar style of communication for customers later this year. Using an app, 3PD's customers will be able to look up how far away a delivery is from arriving, says Will O'Shea, chief sales and marketing officer.
Some enterprising small concierge companies have emerged in recent years to do the waiting for you in your home for a fee. Some charge around $35 an hour.
When Victoria Kingscott's cable went on the fritz, the 25-year-old senior analyst at a financial services firm in New York says Time Warner Cable told her she couldn't get a Saturday appointment for three weeks. She couldn't take off work during the week, so she booked a 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. appointment for a Saturday last August and waited. When the big day came, she waited some more.
At noon, she became antsy. She called and was assured a technician would arrive within the hour. At 1 p.m. she called again. Apologies were offered. "I said 'this is unacceptable. It's a Saturday. I have things to do.'" She was given a second four-hour appointment window and told she was "next."
More hours of waiting, more calls. At one point Ms. Kingscott was erroneously told the technician was at her home. He was not. Finally, the technician showed up around 4 p.m. "He didn't really say he was sorry or offer any kind of explanation," she says.
"Clearly that is not an optimal customer service experience," says Alex Dudley, a Time Warner Cable spokesman. "The overwhelming majority of our installations go well."
Monday, March 5, 2012
New Demographics about older populations in the US: Old-Age and Divorce
Two recent articles in the Wall Street Journal address new information about demographics in the US, in particular, older populations and divorce. For those whose markets/products are affected, these may be of particular interest.
This data DOES affect most companies, in one form or another. Anywhere from pools of employees, possible absences due to employees having to care for parents/grand parents, to employment benefits long term insurance, succession planning, visioning and social media, to just mention a few.
The link to each article is at the end of the two articles, if you desire to access the original ones.
It's no surprise that the older a group of people get, the higher the percentage of them who will die in any given time period. Benjamin Gompertz, a 19th-century British mathematician, charted the increase in mortality rates as very regular. His Gompertz law of mortality says that each additional period brings a constant percentage increase in mortality rates.
![[NUMBGUY]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_sbXevKg4NXAPIcJDWNSzSc3cnquJ1PWbUMbDNjWYWwz8IQuGm296_25Sn6PxpmpjIHMr_xq-lVtNh_Cx92qa09S2HkxfaS6Q8aoF2jqwIUGwoPqvpjkqhTQjefx7etjjckSTRs-qVeB3gSMTLQooNg2rs=s0-d)
In the 20th century, though, as the world population aged and demographers' data improved, Gompertz started to look fallible. Researchers have found that, starting around age 80, mortality keeps increasing, but more slowly. More 100-year-olds die before turning 101 than 80-year-olds do before their 81st birthday, but the difference was less than Gompertz predicted.
But Gompertz may be right after all. In a study published last year and publicized last month, two longtime researchers of aging and believers in the late-life mortality slowdown reported that they and others were wrong. Death rates among Americans born between 1875 and 1895 kept on climbing steadily as they aged, they found, all the way through age 106, when their numbers got too sparse to follow.
This is bad news for anyone who wants to reach the century mark, but could provide an odd measure of relief for pensions, retirement programs and medical insurers, whose costs rise as people live longer.
The result came as a surprise to the study's authors, Leonid Gavrilov and Natalia Gavrilova, a husband-and-wife team at the Center on Aging, part of the research center NORC at the University of Chicago. They married in 1975 after he proposed—with a promise he would discover how to halt aging if she would accept.
In their jointly written papers and books over the past three-plus decades, they have advanced what they call a reliability theory of aging. This suggests that the body, like a machine, amasses more flaws as it ages. Redundancies in design meant to keep it from failing become more heavily loaded with time, increasing the probability of breakdown, or death. Past a certain point, these layers of defense have fallen away and mortality approaches a constant rate.
Their model therefore predicted a slowdown in mortality increases with age, which their new study calls into question. "We are confronted with inconvenient truth for our theory, and we have to accept what the data say," the authors wrote in a response to questions, that, like most of their writing, was a collaborative effort. "Now we are trying to reconcile the reliability theory of aging with our new observations."
Their findings have created a stir among demographers and others who study the very oldest people. Some hail the findings as offering important insight into how people age, and in explaining an unexpected slowdown in the rise in the ranks of American centenarians.
In 2004, the Census Bureau projected that there would be 114,000 people aged 100 or older by 2010 and 1.1 million centenarians by 2050. But the 2010 census counted just 53,364, a slender 5.8% increase from 2000. And now the Census Bureau is projecting there will be 592,000 Americans age 100 or older by 2050.
"Centenarian data have a long history of being affected by various data-quality issues," says Julie A. Meyer, an analyst in the Census Bureau's population division. She adds that the bureau's projections staff "is continuing to improve the accuracy of mortality estimates."
Robert Young, who administers the database of the Gerontology Research Group, which tracks the world's oldest people, says the new study "helped to explain why this error was made." He adds, "It seems that predictions of future centenarian counts are often unnecessarily rosy."
However, other researchers question the findings. Underlying the controversy is that many other studies have documented the plateau in death rates the new study rebuts. "There is actually a very deep controversy underlying the results presented," says Laurence Mueller, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Irvine.
One aspect of how the latest study was conducted may help explain some of the discrepancy. Dr. Gavrilov and Dr. Gavrilova used a data set of deaths from the Social Security Administration that allowed them to track all Americans born between 1875 and 1895 who died before 2011—presumably, all of them. This presents two advantages over other data sets. One is that birth and death dates are derived from the same source, rather than potentially inconsistent data. Another is they can track monthly rather than annual changes in mortality, which can help correct for understated death rates.
It remains to be seen, though, if this pattern will apply to other sets of aging populations. Dr. Gavrilov and Dr. Gavrilova say they will be watching. "For people born after the 1940s, there is only one way to get mortality data above age 80 years," they write. "That is to wait."
They had stayed together all those years because of the kids, but now nothing was left. "He was so uncompassionate, and I had turned to my religion, and he would never go to church with me," she says. "I realized that I was alone in the marriage and would be better off with someone whose values and interests were more like mine." She seized the moment and left, filing for divorce.
For the new generation of empty-nesters, divorce is increasingly common. Among people ages 50 and older, the divorce rate has doubled over the past two decades, according to new research by sociologists Susan Brown and I-Fen Lin of Bowling Green State University, whose paper, "The Gray Divorce Revolution," Prof. Brown will present at Ohio State University this April. The paper draws on data from the 1990 U.S. Vital Statistics Report and the 2009 American Community Survey, administered by the U.S. Census Bureau, which asked all respondents if they'd divorced in the past 12 months.
Though overall national divorce rates have declined since spiking in the 1980s, "gray divorce" has risen to its highest level on record, according to Prof. Brown. In 1990, only one in 10 people who got divorced was 50 or older; by 2009, the number was roughly one in four. More than 600,000 people ages 50 and older got divorced in 2009.
What's more, a 2004 national survey conducted by AARP found that women are the ones initiating most of these breakups. Among divorces by people ages 40-69, women reported seeking the split 66% of the time. And cheating doesn't appear to be the driving force in gray divorce. The same AARP survey found that 27% of divorcés cited infidelity as one of their top three reasons for seeking a divorce—which is not out of line with estimates of infidelity as a factor in divorce in the general population.
So what is going on with these baby boomers? Are they finally seeking adventure, now that their kids are out of the house? Are the women exacting their revenge, at last, against the feminine mystique?
The trend defies any simple explanation, but it springs at least in part from boomers' status as the first generation to enter into marriage with goals largely focused on self-fulfillment. As they look around their empty nests and toward decades more of healthy life, they are increasingly deciding that they've done their parental duty and now want out. These decisions are changing not just the portrait of aging people in the U.S., as boomers swell the ranks of the elderly, but also the meaning of the traditional vow to stay together until "death do us part."
"Some of those marriages that in previous generations would have ended in death now end in divorce," says Betsey Stevenson, assistant professor of business and public policy at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, who studies marriage and divorce. In the past, many people simply didn't live long enough to reach the 40-year itch. "You can't divorce if you're dead," says Ms. Stevenson.
But that's not the whole story, given that the bulk of the increase in late-in-life divorce has come among people ages 50-64. As a generation, boomers have changed American notions of marriage—and in the process, they have sown the seeds of their own discontent.
Most sociologists argue that boomers entered marriage with expectations very different from those of previous generations. "In the 1970s, there was, for the first time, a focus on marriage needing to make individuals happy, rather than on how well each individual fulfilled their marital roles," says Prof. Brown, author of the gray marriage paper.
According to Prof. Brown, over the past century there have been three "phases" of American views of marriage. First, there was the "institutional" phase, in the decades before World War II, when marriage was seen largely as an economic union.
This was succeeded in the 1950s and '60s by the "companionate" phase, in which a successful marriage was defined by the degree to which each spouse could fulfill his or her role. Husbands were measured by their prowess as providers and wives by their skills in homemaking and motherhood.
In the 1970s, the boomers initiated what Prof. Brown calls the "individualized" phase, with an emphasis on the satisfaction of personal needs. "Individualized marriage is more egocentric... Before the 1970s, no one would have thought to separate out the self as being distinct from the roles of good wife and mother."
None of this is especially surprising for the "Me Generation," but today's gray divorces include a generational twist: For many boomers, it is not their first marital split. Fifty-three percent of the people over 50 now getting divorced have done so at least once before.
In fact, more "complex marital biographies," as Prof. Brown puts it, seem to be one of the driving forces behind gray divorce. Having been married previously doubles the risk of divorce for those ages 50 to 64. For those ages 65 and up, the risk factor quadruples.
For boomers who have had trouble maintaining commitments in the past, hitting the empty-nest phase seems to trigger thoughts of mortality—and of vanishing possibilities for self-fulfillment.
"With the children out of the house, boomers in unhappy marriages often look at each other and think, 'I may have another 25 to 35 years to live. Do I want to spend it with this person?' " says Deirdre Bair, author of the book, "Calling It Quits: Late-Life Divorce and Starting Over," a chronicle of nearly 400 interviews with people splitting in midlife. "There is an overwhelming, urgent feeling among them of, 'I have to strike out now, or I'll never have the chance again,' " says Ms. Bair.
Many of those now opting for gray divorces, however, fail to foresee its complications in today's bleak economic landscape. This is especially true of women.
![[DIVORCE]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_tOuNBBBePgrM_jZIS-yLZiitG5mACAJCRmliCIMMn1aAUPCwemP3VdKEujVWnPddG_lTAMYDG_yJTNL7GF33f_zOpvKsKAWtuka3uOr4xQeFVojBTd6abazHRDSg_CCFjpnRsuZjKqU9PzlTixrEGy1VU=s0-d)
Though homes are often awarded to ex-wives, points out Pennsylvania divorce and family lawyer Elizabeth Bennett, this can be a burden instead of a blessing in a collapsed housing market. And when it comes to obligations to kids for things like continuing education, weddings and down payments on homes, according to Janice L. Green, a divorce and family law attorney in Texas, "it's always the mother who is willing to give up settlement money that should be on her side of the ledger."
Divorcing fathers have their own reasons to be concerned. According to a 2003 study from the University of North Florida, they are more likely to see a major decline in contact with at least one child, compared with stably married fathers, whereas divorced mothers tend to get closer to their children.
Still, many older divorcés say they're happy. According to the 2004 AARP survey, the vast majority of divorcés ages 40-79 (80%) consider themselves, on a scale from 1 to 10, to be on the top half of life's ladder. A majority of 56% even consider themselves to be on the uppermost rung (8-10). But "being alone" was nonetheless the top fear among both men and women, and those who had remarried reported significantly higher levels of life satisfaction.
So would some of these late-in-life divorcés have been better off trying to preserve their troubled marriages? According to John Mordecai Gottman, founder of the Gottman Institute in Seattle and author of "What Predicts Divorce?," the behavioral precursors to late-life or empty nest divorce are no different from those for younger couples—criticism, defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling. And, of course, the longer such behavior has persisted, the more deeply ingrained it becomes in a couple's personal dynamic.
In its work with older couples in crisis, Gottman Institute therapists recommend that spouses "turn toward" each other—that is, that they actively respond to bids for reconnection—rather than, say, snapping: "Excuse me, I'm trying to watch 'CSI' here!"
Those boomers who can't manage to hold on to their marriages, though, will hardly be alone. Prof. Brown's paper predicts that the number of over-50 divorces in 2030, based on current trends, could easily top 800,000 per year. And all those new divorcés shouldn't have too much trouble finding a date. Indeed, over the past year, the number of dating-site users 50 or older has grown twice as rapidly as any other age group, according to comScore Inc., an online data-analysis and marketing company.
Dawn, the 51-year-old who divorced her husband of 20 years, found her current boyfriend of nine months on the over-50 dating site OurTime.com. He's a divorcé with no children, and Dawn describes him as "very religious and compassionate, the things I was lacking in my former husband." Her kids—19, 20 and 26—are less sure, she says. "You can't expect kids to be excited about a new person who isn't their dad…But I'm very happy."
Death Gets in the Way of Old-Age Gains
The Gray Divorcés
This data DOES affect most companies, in one form or another. Anywhere from pools of employees, possible absences due to employees having to care for parents/grand parents, to employment benefits long term insurance, succession planning, visioning and social media, to just mention a few.
The link to each article is at the end of the two articles, if you desire to access the original ones.
Death Gets in the Way of Old-Age Gains
A new research paper, and a census surprise, are calling into question some long-held beliefs about a morbid bit of math: how much mortality rates increase with age.It's no surprise that the older a group of people get, the higher the percentage of them who will die in any given time period. Benjamin Gompertz, a 19th-century British mathematician, charted the increase in mortality rates as very regular. His Gompertz law of mortality says that each additional period brings a constant percentage increase in mortality rates.
But Gompertz may be right after all. In a study published last year and publicized last month, two longtime researchers of aging and believers in the late-life mortality slowdown reported that they and others were wrong. Death rates among Americans born between 1875 and 1895 kept on climbing steadily as they aged, they found, all the way through age 106, when their numbers got too sparse to follow.
This is bad news for anyone who wants to reach the century mark, but could provide an odd measure of relief for pensions, retirement programs and medical insurers, whose costs rise as people live longer.
The result came as a surprise to the study's authors, Leonid Gavrilov and Natalia Gavrilova, a husband-and-wife team at the Center on Aging, part of the research center NORC at the University of Chicago. They married in 1975 after he proposed—with a promise he would discover how to halt aging if she would accept.
In their jointly written papers and books over the past three-plus decades, they have advanced what they call a reliability theory of aging. This suggests that the body, like a machine, amasses more flaws as it ages. Redundancies in design meant to keep it from failing become more heavily loaded with time, increasing the probability of breakdown, or death. Past a certain point, these layers of defense have fallen away and mortality approaches a constant rate.
Their model therefore predicted a slowdown in mortality increases with age, which their new study calls into question. "We are confronted with inconvenient truth for our theory, and we have to accept what the data say," the authors wrote in a response to questions, that, like most of their writing, was a collaborative effort. "Now we are trying to reconcile the reliability theory of aging with our new observations."
Their findings have created a stir among demographers and others who study the very oldest people. Some hail the findings as offering important insight into how people age, and in explaining an unexpected slowdown in the rise in the ranks of American centenarians.
In 2004, the Census Bureau projected that there would be 114,000 people aged 100 or older by 2010 and 1.1 million centenarians by 2050. But the 2010 census counted just 53,364, a slender 5.8% increase from 2000. And now the Census Bureau is projecting there will be 592,000 Americans age 100 or older by 2050.
"Centenarian data have a long history of being affected by various data-quality issues," says Julie A. Meyer, an analyst in the Census Bureau's population division. She adds that the bureau's projections staff "is continuing to improve the accuracy of mortality estimates."
Robert Young, who administers the database of the Gerontology Research Group, which tracks the world's oldest people, says the new study "helped to explain why this error was made." He adds, "It seems that predictions of future centenarian counts are often unnecessarily rosy."
However, other researchers question the findings. Underlying the controversy is that many other studies have documented the plateau in death rates the new study rebuts. "There is actually a very deep controversy underlying the results presented," says Laurence Mueller, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, Irvine.
One aspect of how the latest study was conducted may help explain some of the discrepancy. Dr. Gavrilov and Dr. Gavrilova used a data set of deaths from the Social Security Administration that allowed them to track all Americans born between 1875 and 1895 who died before 2011—presumably, all of them. This presents two advantages over other data sets. One is that birth and death dates are derived from the same source, rather than potentially inconsistent data. Another is they can track monthly rather than annual changes in mortality, which can help correct for understated death rates.
It remains to be seen, though, if this pattern will apply to other sets of aging populations. Dr. Gavrilov and Dr. Gavrilova say they will be watching. "For people born after the 1940s, there is only one way to get mortality data above age 80 years," they write. "That is to wait."
The Gray Divorcés
The divorce rate for people 50 and over has doubled in the past two decades. Why baby boomers are breaking up late in life like no generation before.
By SUSAN GREGORY THOMAS
For years, 51-year-old Dawn and her husband of two decades, Tim, had buried their differences over finances, child-rearing and religion. But when the last of the Wisconsin couple's three daughters was finishing high school in 2009, those differences were all that Dawn could see. "I had gone back to school to advance my career as a paralegal, and his work had dwindled, so he was just basically hanging out with his buddies," she says. "We had nothing to talk about, and when we did, it was bickering."They had stayed together all those years because of the kids, but now nothing was left. "He was so uncompassionate, and I had turned to my religion, and he would never go to church with me," she says. "I realized that I was alone in the marriage and would be better off with someone whose values and interests were more like mine." She seized the moment and left, filing for divorce.
For the new generation of empty-nesters, divorce is increasingly common. Among people ages 50 and older, the divorce rate has doubled over the past two decades, according to new research by sociologists Susan Brown and I-Fen Lin of Bowling Green State University, whose paper, "The Gray Divorce Revolution," Prof. Brown will present at Ohio State University this April. The paper draws on data from the 1990 U.S. Vital Statistics Report and the 2009 American Community Survey, administered by the U.S. Census Bureau, which asked all respondents if they'd divorced in the past 12 months.
Though overall national divorce rates have declined since spiking in the 1980s, "gray divorce" has risen to its highest level on record, according to Prof. Brown. In 1990, only one in 10 people who got divorced was 50 or older; by 2009, the number was roughly one in four. More than 600,000 people ages 50 and older got divorced in 2009.
What's more, a 2004 national survey conducted by AARP found that women are the ones initiating most of these breakups. Among divorces by people ages 40-69, women reported seeking the split 66% of the time. And cheating doesn't appear to be the driving force in gray divorce. The same AARP survey found that 27% of divorcés cited infidelity as one of their top three reasons for seeking a divorce—which is not out of line with estimates of infidelity as a factor in divorce in the general population.
So what is going on with these baby boomers? Are they finally seeking adventure, now that their kids are out of the house? Are the women exacting their revenge, at last, against the feminine mystique?
The trend defies any simple explanation, but it springs at least in part from boomers' status as the first generation to enter into marriage with goals largely focused on self-fulfillment. As they look around their empty nests and toward decades more of healthy life, they are increasingly deciding that they've done their parental duty and now want out. These decisions are changing not just the portrait of aging people in the U.S., as boomers swell the ranks of the elderly, but also the meaning of the traditional vow to stay together until "death do us part."
"Some of those marriages that in previous generations would have ended in death now end in divorce," says Betsey Stevenson, assistant professor of business and public policy at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, who studies marriage and divorce. In the past, many people simply didn't live long enough to reach the 40-year itch. "You can't divorce if you're dead," says Ms. Stevenson.
But that's not the whole story, given that the bulk of the increase in late-in-life divorce has come among people ages 50-64. As a generation, boomers have changed American notions of marriage—and in the process, they have sown the seeds of their own discontent.
Most sociologists argue that boomers entered marriage with expectations very different from those of previous generations. "In the 1970s, there was, for the first time, a focus on marriage needing to make individuals happy, rather than on how well each individual fulfilled their marital roles," says Prof. Brown, author of the gray marriage paper.
According to Prof. Brown, over the past century there have been three "phases" of American views of marriage. First, there was the "institutional" phase, in the decades before World War II, when marriage was seen largely as an economic union.
This was succeeded in the 1950s and '60s by the "companionate" phase, in which a successful marriage was defined by the degree to which each spouse could fulfill his or her role. Husbands were measured by their prowess as providers and wives by their skills in homemaking and motherhood.
In the 1970s, the boomers initiated what Prof. Brown calls the "individualized" phase, with an emphasis on the satisfaction of personal needs. "Individualized marriage is more egocentric... Before the 1970s, no one would have thought to separate out the self as being distinct from the roles of good wife and mother."
None of this is especially surprising for the "Me Generation," but today's gray divorces include a generational twist: For many boomers, it is not their first marital split. Fifty-three percent of the people over 50 now getting divorced have done so at least once before.
In fact, more "complex marital biographies," as Prof. Brown puts it, seem to be one of the driving forces behind gray divorce. Having been married previously doubles the risk of divorce for those ages 50 to 64. For those ages 65 and up, the risk factor quadruples.
For boomers who have had trouble maintaining commitments in the past, hitting the empty-nest phase seems to trigger thoughts of mortality—and of vanishing possibilities for self-fulfillment.
"With the children out of the house, boomers in unhappy marriages often look at each other and think, 'I may have another 25 to 35 years to live. Do I want to spend it with this person?' " says Deirdre Bair, author of the book, "Calling It Quits: Late-Life Divorce and Starting Over," a chronicle of nearly 400 interviews with people splitting in midlife. "There is an overwhelming, urgent feeling among them of, 'I have to strike out now, or I'll never have the chance again,' " says Ms. Bair.
Many of those now opting for gray divorces, however, fail to foresee its complications in today's bleak economic landscape. This is especially true of women.
Though homes are often awarded to ex-wives, points out Pennsylvania divorce and family lawyer Elizabeth Bennett, this can be a burden instead of a blessing in a collapsed housing market. And when it comes to obligations to kids for things like continuing education, weddings and down payments on homes, according to Janice L. Green, a divorce and family law attorney in Texas, "it's always the mother who is willing to give up settlement money that should be on her side of the ledger."
Divorcing fathers have their own reasons to be concerned. According to a 2003 study from the University of North Florida, they are more likely to see a major decline in contact with at least one child, compared with stably married fathers, whereas divorced mothers tend to get closer to their children.
Still, many older divorcés say they're happy. According to the 2004 AARP survey, the vast majority of divorcés ages 40-79 (80%) consider themselves, on a scale from 1 to 10, to be on the top half of life's ladder. A majority of 56% even consider themselves to be on the uppermost rung (8-10). But "being alone" was nonetheless the top fear among both men and women, and those who had remarried reported significantly higher levels of life satisfaction.
So would some of these late-in-life divorcés have been better off trying to preserve their troubled marriages? According to John Mordecai Gottman, founder of the Gottman Institute in Seattle and author of "What Predicts Divorce?," the behavioral precursors to late-life or empty nest divorce are no different from those for younger couples—criticism, defensiveness, contempt and stonewalling. And, of course, the longer such behavior has persisted, the more deeply ingrained it becomes in a couple's personal dynamic.
In its work with older couples in crisis, Gottman Institute therapists recommend that spouses "turn toward" each other—that is, that they actively respond to bids for reconnection—rather than, say, snapping: "Excuse me, I'm trying to watch 'CSI' here!"
Those boomers who can't manage to hold on to their marriages, though, will hardly be alone. Prof. Brown's paper predicts that the number of over-50 divorces in 2030, based on current trends, could easily top 800,000 per year. And all those new divorcés shouldn't have too much trouble finding a date. Indeed, over the past year, the number of dating-site users 50 or older has grown twice as rapidly as any other age group, according to comScore Inc., an online data-analysis and marketing company.
Dawn, the 51-year-old who divorced her husband of 20 years, found her current boyfriend of nine months on the over-50 dating site OurTime.com. He's a divorcé with no children, and Dawn describes him as "very religious and compassionate, the things I was lacking in my former husband." Her kids—19, 20 and 26—are less sure, she says. "You can't expect kids to be excited about a new person who isn't their dad…But I'm very happy."
Death Gets in the Way of Old-Age Gains
The Gray Divorcés
Friday, December 16, 2011
Evaluating Our Lives, Both in Retrospect and Now...What About the Future?
In an earlier posting the question was posed: Life's Lessons or What Have We Learned So Far?
Whether as a CEO, Senior Manager or entry level individual, we need to consider these issues.
The only way we grow as a person and in our contribution to society, is by evaluating what we have done in the past, what we are doing in the present and what we plan to do in the future. Especially, reflecting on what we want to be doing and contributing now and in the future is a critical life valuing process. Otherwise we wake up one day and life for the most part has passed us by.
Like in business, we need a plan, a life plan. This can be highly detailed or a "fly-over" view, but its is a critical process to be done periodically. Just like the pilots of aircraft, while the plane may be off-course 90+ % of the time, they ultimate land the winged monster. Likewise, by planning what we want to accomplish in life we may be off course most of the time, but if we have visualized and plotted the course, then we arrive close to where we want to.
Life coaches can help in this endeavor, or you can tackle it yourself. A proprietary methodology has been developed which I use with those that I help. It is not rocket science, but it is valuable as it forces a person to look at not only desires, wishes and ruminations, but also possible world events and economics that could positively and negatively affect these paths.
Recently, the article below became available and hence I am sharing it here. For some it might be morbid, but in reality, isn't the final breath we take, a bit late to change course or our plans?
I post it here with the link at the bottom of the article. Hopefully, you will find it helpful in evaluating one's life and purpose.
By Bronnie Ware
For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives.
People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. I learned never to underestimate someone’s capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed though, every one of them.
When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five:
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me
This was the most common regret of all. When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people have had not honored even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.
It is very important to try and honor at least some of your dreams along the way.
From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realize, until they no longer have it.
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard
This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship.
Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.
By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings
Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.
As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming.
We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends
Often they would not truly realize the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.
It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip. But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It is all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks, love and relationships.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier
This is a surprisingly common one.
Many did not realize until the end that happiness is a choice.
They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.
When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.
Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness.
Original source – http://www.inspirationandchai.com/Regrets-of-the-Dying.html
Whether as a CEO, Senior Manager or entry level individual, we need to consider these issues.
The only way we grow as a person and in our contribution to society, is by evaluating what we have done in the past, what we are doing in the present and what we plan to do in the future. Especially, reflecting on what we want to be doing and contributing now and in the future is a critical life valuing process. Otherwise we wake up one day and life for the most part has passed us by.
Like in business, we need a plan, a life plan. This can be highly detailed or a "fly-over" view, but its is a critical process to be done periodically. Just like the pilots of aircraft, while the plane may be off-course 90+ % of the time, they ultimate land the winged monster. Likewise, by planning what we want to accomplish in life we may be off course most of the time, but if we have visualized and plotted the course, then we arrive close to where we want to.
Life coaches can help in this endeavor, or you can tackle it yourself. A proprietary methodology has been developed which I use with those that I help. It is not rocket science, but it is valuable as it forces a person to look at not only desires, wishes and ruminations, but also possible world events and economics that could positively and negatively affect these paths.
Recently, the article below became available and hence I am sharing it here. For some it might be morbid, but in reality, isn't the final breath we take, a bit late to change course or our plans?
I post it here with the link at the bottom of the article. Hopefully, you will find it helpful in evaluating one's life and purpose.
Top Five Regrets of the Dying
Top Five Regrets of the DyingBy Bronnie Ware
For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives.
People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. I learned never to underestimate someone’s capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed though, every one of them.
When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five:
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me
This was the most common regret of all. When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people have had not honored even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.
It is very important to try and honor at least some of your dreams along the way.
From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realize, until they no longer have it.
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard
This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship.
Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.
By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings
Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.
As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming.
We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends
Often they would not truly realize the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.
It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip. But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It is all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks, love and relationships.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier
This is a surprisingly common one.
Many did not realize until the end that happiness is a choice.
They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.
When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.
Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness.
Original source – http://www.inspirationandchai.com/Regrets-of-the-Dying.html
Friday, November 25, 2011
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.
“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.
“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
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 HARDYTechdom 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
Monday, November 21, 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
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
Sunday, October 16, 2011
A recent article by Wharton about Steve Jobs
In a recent article entitled: "Life after Steve Jobs: What to Expect from the Next Generation at Apple" it discusses the challenges to Apple after Steve Jobs' passing. It explains the culture at Apple being a "high risk endeavor" as it is more controlling than it's competitors, which requires Apple's products to be "truly superior." While Apple and Pixar have been consistently successful in this approach, the question now is, can they continue to do this over the long term, or will the culture need to undergo some changes?
Therefore, the risks are much higher for Apple than for say, for Microsoft, Google or even Facebook. The question is what happens now that the "one person Visionary" has passed, and it will now become an amalgam of a team Vision?
Innovation will need to continue to be a key to success or else the strategy and team may need to change. Senior Management will definitely have it's challenges. Only time will play it's cards out....but the World will anxiously await to see the next products from the crucible of Apple and Pixar. Wouldn't we like to be a fly on the wall during the upcoming Strategic and Succession Planning sessions? What do you think will be the in the companies' futures, both shorter term and long term? The game will be an interesting one, to say the least.
Link to the article:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2859
Therefore, the risks are much higher for Apple than for say, for Microsoft, Google or even Facebook. The question is what happens now that the "one person Visionary" has passed, and it will now become an amalgam of a team Vision?
Innovation will need to continue to be a key to success or else the strategy and team may need to change. Senior Management will definitely have it's challenges. Only time will play it's cards out....but the World will anxiously await to see the next products from the crucible of Apple and Pixar. Wouldn't we like to be a fly on the wall during the upcoming Strategic and Succession Planning sessions? What do you think will be the in the companies' futures, both shorter term and long term? The game will be an interesting one, to say the least.
Link to the article:
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2859
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Innovation in the 21st Century - Modifications of existing concepts and visioning
In the earlier blog below (http://executiveandhrguidance.blogspot.com/2011/10/innovation-and-visioning-in-20th-and.html ), Steve Jobs modified existing products by implementing newer technology or refining visions. Even as early as 2007 Bill Gates discussed the concept of the iPad in an interview with him and Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs even shows his visioning of the future in the same interview.
The Tablet already existed but hadn't really taken off as expected. Apple refined the idea and now the iPad is in the history books. You might be interested in hearing a portion of the interview by clicking on the link below.
http://gizmodo.com/5541969/bill-gates-told-steve-jobs-about-the-ipad-in-2007
The Tablet already existed but hadn't really taken off as expected. Apple refined the idea and now the iPad is in the history books. You might be interested in hearing a portion of the interview by clicking on the link below.
http://gizmodo.com/5541969/bill-gates-told-steve-jobs-about-the-ipad-in-2007
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