Category: Leadership

Executive Hiring

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I have a simple test that I occasionally use to figure out if an executive is a reasonable leader. It’s one that is useful sometimes (organizational situations may make this a difficult test to pass). That test is; do any former employees follow the executive to his/her new company. Now this test is really a single attribute test – it highlights whether employees will follow someone to a different company (hence the ‘leader’ title). It DOESN’T test for the reasons behind the employee moves, quality of the leadership, or the direction of the migration (did the employee follow the leader or did the leader pay the employee to follow).

Regardless, employees following executives to new opportunities is an indicator of leadership and team commitment. I’ve thought about this from time to time as I’ve experienced different executives and have really paid attention to the ones that have teams around them that are willing to move to new roles with the leadership. Why is it that some executives join a firm and people from the old firm send in resumes right away and other executives join a firm and there is no trace of their former employee base anywhere around? I also wonder about companies that hire executives with a track record of bringing people with them to manage existing teams. Sometimes this works well and sometimes it can be an organizational disaster.

My view is that this comes down to two different attributes; leader with broad group interest vs. self-focused leader and team building need vs. existing team leadership need. These are important attributes to understand because they will help illuminate what opportunities and risks new executives may bring to your emerging organization.

In some cases, organizations have teams in place that needs executive management and there is a desire NOT to bring on an executive that has a ‘ready-to-go’ team ready to follow. Bringing on an exec with strong former team loyalties and structures may be inviting massive churn into your organization as the executive brings on ‘their team’ and moves out existing employees.

In other cases, an executive may be needed to build a new capability or organization and an executive that has a rolodex of experienced people willing to follow him/her would speed up the team development and reduce organization ramp time.

Sometimes a team exists with solid performers but there is not the experience, strategic planning/vision capability, industry relationships, or management capacity and a strong executive is needed. In that case, an executive that has a good track record of management but not a ‘ready team’ may be preferred.

Many times executives are hired based on their personal accomplishments rather than the organizational leadership and development skills that they have. It’s important when hiring executives for startups and emerging businesses that consideration is given to the type of leader being hired. It’s important for both the health of the business and for the likely outcome of the executive hire.

Dedoose – providing context to qualitative research

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One of the challenges that I have found over the years in my career has been getting technical (read engineering) people to accept and appreciate the value of qualitative research.

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In marketing, customer feedback is a critical part of understanding what customers need and value.  Whether the feedback is around product features, advertising, customer satisfaction, messaging, or other important customer engagement areas, qualitative research plays a key role.

Technical people by nature tend to gravitate towards quantifiable data.  This is why surveys with Likert scales (e.g. 1-5 ratings) or numbers driven research (the volume of units or click data) is frequently favored by more quantitative minded people.  Part of this is because qualitative data is, by the very nature of the data, open to interpretation and easy to manipulate.  Regardless, while quantitative data provides the measure, qualitative data provides the flavor – it provides the deeper understanding behind the quantitative data.

Because of the challenge of presenting qualitative data to broader audiences, I’ve learned over the years to use several tricks to make this data more palatable.  Things like boiling down the data to the ‘Top 10 most common statements” or “This message was consistent among X number of focus group participants”.  This works in some cases but it still leaves a lot to be desired.

Enter a fantastic new tool called Dedoose.  Dedoose is an online research tool that can be used individual or in teams of researchers.  It allows for the management of qualitative data or mixed methods input (both qualitative and quantitative data).

Dedoose provides a structured way to code transcripts from customer interviews, focus group research, email or online responses (think customer service emails as research input!).  Based on the coding, the data can be manipulated and presented in ways that make it understandable and broadly usable.  Because of the workgroup capabilities, people outside the research team can be given access to the data for their own review and manipulation (dangerous, I know – but at least possible!).  WebBasedFullSize_2

One of the (many) nice things about Dedoose is that it’s easy and fun to use.  Our research group had several folks that were not computer or data oriented and they were able to immediately begin using Dedoose and contribute to our project.

Why is this such a powerful approach?  It allows marketing teams to conduct research using different methods and use the Dedoose platform to integrate them into usable, actionable data fast and accurately.  Spending time defending qualitative findings is non-productive time for marketing folks.  Tools that provide better integration, analysis, and presentation of qualitative data are invaluable in getting to the answer more quickly and getting organizational understanding more quickly.

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I have no direct relationship with Dedoose other than as a subscriber.  I’m using it in some of my academic research and it’s one of the new tools that I’ve come across that I believe provide real value for marketeers.

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http://www.dedoose.com

Organizational Justice and the Application for Managers

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Unknown Artist. Source: Google Images

Last term in the Ph.D. program at Oklahoma State University we spent an amazing day with Dr. Deborah Rupp, the William C. Byham Chair of Industrial/Organizational Psychology at Purdue University.  Dr. Rupp is a researcher and expert in the area of Organizational Justice.  If you look at her Curriculum Vitae online it is amazing the body of work that she has already produced.

When we read some of the academic papers around her area of expertise the title of ‘Organizational Justice’ really threw me.  Slightly switching the words to ‘Organizational Fairness’ helps clarify a little but still not obvious.  What Organizational Justice research addresses is the area around fairness in the workplace, organizational ethics, and high performance work systems.

What was most interesting about the readings and her area of research is that it provides a framework that any manager could (should?) use in processing and communicating decisions that may have an impact on organizational emotions, morale, and/or commitment levels.  Internally these are decisions such as organization changes, promotions, raises, project assignments, etc.  Externally these are decisions such as partnership choices or business interactions.

Using the framework may provide two benefits; 1) it allows the manager to ensure that the decision is appropriate and fair before the decision is communicated, and 2) it clarifies for all parties affected the critical contributors to the decision.  In short, it’s a way to ensure that tough, potentially challenging decisions are fairly made and communicated.

So, what is the framework?  It’s made up of three specific components.  For the sake of translating this to business application I have generalized the descriptions – more detail and the empirical data that supports these three are available for anyone that wants to churn through the academic articles:

1) Distributive Justice – is the decision appropriate and fair regarding the  decisions’ outcomes and distribution of resources? The outcomes or resources may be tangible (e.g., promotions, pay) as well as intangible (e.g., social recognition, praise).  A manager needs to step back and ask, “will the organization  view this as a fair decision”.

2) Procedural Justice – Was the process used to make the decision fair?  In order for decisions to be accepted as fairly arrived at it is critical to ensure that the decision followed a process that the organization (internal or external) perceive as ‘fair’.  In many cases this may mean taking additional steps that the manager may think are unnecessary but may be critical to ensuring a fair process.  For example, soliciting additional feedback on a potential promotion may be seen as unnecessary but may provide further evidence of the appropriateness (or inappropriateness) of the decision.

3) Interactional Justice – Was the decision communicated fairly and with respect for all parties?  This component is made up of two key areas which are related; interpersonal fairness and informational fairness.  To be precise, Interactional Justice states that decisions must take into account the interpersonal response and must be communicated in a way that is fair and clear.  For example, communicating a potential promotion to part of a team would NOT be seen as fair – from both an interpersonal standpoint (those not in consideration will be upset) and an informational standpoint (those not in ‘the know’ will be upset).  Ensuring that decisions are communicated with an intent to be fair and sensitive to the personal impacts to individuals may positively impact the organizational perception of fairness.

This framework provides an excellent tool for thinking through decisions that may impact the perception of fairness of a decision.  It may also provide a checklist to ensure that decisions that have difficult potential outcomes are well thought out.

Dr. Rupp’s work is incredibly important for managers and executives.  Many managers are able to make good decisions but may not be good at communicating and implementing them.  How many times are ‘correct’ decisions negatively impacted by poor implementation or communication of the decisions?  Her work provides useful, implementable concepts that should improve decision implementation in organizations.

Rupp, D.E., Baldwin, A., & Bashshur, M (2006).  Using developmental assessment centers to foster workplace fairness.  The Psychologist Manager Journal, 9(2), 145-170

Rupp, D.E. (2010).  An employee-centered model of organizational justice and social responsibility.  Organizational Psychology Review, 1(1) 72-94

Austin Web CEO Best Practices meeting held

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On Friday we had the second Austin Web CEO Best Practices meeting at River Place Country Club. The first meeting was held in April and we had 5 companies represented. The Friday meeting had 17 participants with 12 companies represented. A really great turnout. The nice thing about the meeting was that we had a really good group that was open and there was a lot of sharing of ideas and resources. Our goal for these meetings is to further support the development of successful web businesses in Austin by creating a forum and network of executives living the challenges and opportunities on a daily basis.

I wrote a blog early this year which got a lot of flack about the risk/value of starting a web-based company in Austin rather than in the Bay Area. The negative was that I got a lot of unpleasant mails about my choice of subject. The positive was that I heard from others in town who said that they were constantly asking the same question. That posting (and an initial get-to-meet others luncheon hosted by Rudy Garza of G-51 Capital) led to the formation of our Best Practices group.

A really nice recap of the meeting was written by Jeremy Bencken on his blog.

If you’d like more information about the Web CEO Best Practices group drop me an email at daltounian@itaggit.com.

Location Dependence (independence?) for Emerging Tech

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There has been a recurrent question in discussions that I’ve had recently with potential investors, other web executives, and partners. That question is, ‘does an emerging tech company need to be in the Bay Area to have a chance of success?’?

There are two sides to this issue; the first is that there are several advantages to being in Northern California. There is an abundance of funding sources out there and they all seem to prefer to invest in the area. There are also a great number of tech companies already established out there so the opportunity for partnerships may be easier due to location. Finally, because there is a rich business base in tech there is an incredible amount of services and resources that are competing for mind and dollars of the tech community (note SEO/SEM consulting firms – there are only a few in Texas so they are in high demand. In the Bay Area there are so many that they are fighting for clients).

On the other hand there is also a tremendous amount of competition BY the tech firms for technical and marketing employees so wages are high and it appears that turnover may be a challenge there. The area also acts as a fairly ‘small town’ so secrets are not so easy to keep. For example, last week I was at a popular Woodside breakfast place and it was very telling to see who was meeting with whom.

So… what does this mean for us at iTaggit? Well, over the next few months we are going to attempt to build a stronger corporate presence in the bay area while maintaining our base of operations in Austin. We have a fantastic, dynamic workforce and we need to develop the tech infrastructure for Web 2.0, 3.0, 25.0, etc. right here. We believe that we can combine the best of both environments to deliver a better solution for our users and a lower cost of operations for our investors. We’ll see how it goes and I’ll keep you updated as best that I can on my blog.

It’s Lonely on the Edge

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I was observing my 12 year old daughter as she was going through the tribulations of a middle school student council election this week and realized an important thing about leadership. It’s challenging when you are doing something that is groundbreaking and public and you don’t have peers that you can talk to about the ‘thing’.

This was brought home when my daughter was having challenges with the competitive part of campaigning and was getting down. This was a case where the people that were experiencing this were three – her and her two challengers, yet the whole school was watching what was going on in the campaign between them. Very public yet a very private experience.

As her energy was starting to wear down from the negativity her sister called her and gave her a pep talk. The talk went along the lines of – ‘you’re doing great, this is normal, and you are taking the high road and learning from the experience, keep going’. This little talk from someone that she respects seems to have done wonders for her efforts and psyche and she is back in the fight.

How often does this parallel happen in the workplace and how often do we not pay attention to the needs and challenges of those that are trying to ‘push the edge’. Often people believe that those in leadership positions or on leading, tough projects are strong enough to do it on their own. It’s important to realize that a true leader (including leaders that aren’t managers) remembers to pay attention to those working at the edge and reinforce their efforts. It’s even more true when those efforts are groundbreaking, public, and difficult to do.

Glad April’s over…

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One of the things that I frequently deal with is the overpersonalization of issues. I know that I’m not alone in this. It’s very easy when things go awry to look at each issue as a ‘me’ thing such as ‘why did this happen to me’ or ‘what did I do to make this happen’. Another manifestation of this is the proverbial luck or karma thought – ‘are the moons in some weird pattern’ or ‘who did I wrong that cursed me’.

I have been learning that this overpersonalization is a real challenge that can lead to bad reactions and has to be dealt with. Things Happen. Good things happen and bad things happen. The trick is in how you deal with them, how fast you address them, and making sure that the reaction to the event is proportionate to the impact/need. Separating the ‘me’ from the response (the world DOESN’T revolve around you) is important to helping make good decisions.

This doesn’t take away from the fact that issues CAN have a personal impact. Some things are very personal and painful such as a family member getting sick, a valued employee quits, etc. and some are not personal at all such as a new competitor coming into the market, a customer issue, your favorite sports team losing a game.

Recognizing the personal reaction and separating it from the responding action is important to making sure that rational decisions are being made. It’s a really difficult thing to do and to learn but it’s critical in a leader. I hope that I’m making strides in this area.