From Start To Finish

Okay, so here's today's cash call question: As you look over the list below, what do the numbers at in front of each statement have in common?

#59 Should you jump in and save every sales situation?
#39 Do you have to know everything that's happening?
#38 What is the one thing that makes people join your new company?
#6 Is having fun at work over-rated?
#7 Why is firing someone at your startup extra hard?
#96 Why do you have to be an energy-creator?
#82 Why you don't want your people to worry like you are worrying.
#66 Why the "new guy" could be doing more harm than good.
#67 Why you shouldn't trust those who say they can help you raise money.
#54 What is the biggest sign of a culture that is developing badly?

Here's a clue...they represent just 10% of the subjects covered in StartUp, 100 Tips to Get Your Business Going.

Some may recall a quip attributed to Mark Twain in which he said to a friend to whom he had written a letter something like "I would have made this shorter, but I didn't have the time."

To be honest, I don't know if Twain was the one who first came up with this truism or not, but it makes a very important point. Specifically, being able to deliver meaningful and powerful information in confined space is an art form. Few have done it, and fewer still can do it in a way that is truly memorable.

Exactly what the genes are that allow these few word wizards to do what they do I don't know; just wish they could be beamed into my Blackberry.

One thing I do believe, however, is that those who can do it have at least one characteristic in common and that is that they are super busy individuals.

By way of example, I offer up GL Hoffman, who among others things, describes himself as a serial entrepreneur. "Certifiable" is more like it.

If you know of GL then no further proof is needed. If you don't, you are missing something, and you check out everything that he is and has been involved in, and stand back amazed like the rest of us.

So what does all this have to do with a book that measures 4 x 5.5? Answer: If you ever wanted to see how much truly important management advice can be crammed into one place, set your cyber GPS right here, right now.

Here's why:

There is almost no executive I have ever met who isn't always looking for advice and counsel on those myriad of situations that confront leaders on a daily if not hourly basis. Most of us see all the well-publicized business books written by the gurus of managing that promise upon finishing their latest tome you will have the universal solvent for every management challenge known to man.

Unfortunately, most of us are way too busy fighting our way through the day to get much beyond the list of the best sellers in the NY Times and feeling depressed because we haven't gotten to any of them.

Well, here's a book you can not only have time to read but much more importantly you can't afford NOT to read. Better still, it is small enough to carry around with you so that you can very likely find the issue and the answer to almost any issue that stands between you and moving your enterprise forward.

If you are a type "A" personality like me, you may remember the satisfaction you felt when back in the day you got turned on to Ken Blanchard and the One Minute Manager. StartUp deserves similar standing.

With praise, however, also comes some criticism, and to that end I would say to GL that with the title he has sold himself short. This book goes way beyond great "learnings" for startups.

Anyone from first time supervisor to CEO would not only love this book, they will treasure it.

I gave copies to our management team and they are still cheering.

Three Questions Executives Should Ask for the New Year

We're almost out of January, and a lot of the resolution stuff is wearing off so I am rushing to get this off my chest before it simply proves I am further behind the power curve than even I thought.

Question: Do you hate stuff that makes you think as much as I do? Okay, maybe hate is too strong a word, maybe feeling humiliated and embarrassed is more like it.

Well, I have to admit publically that when I read Melissa Raffone's blog post in the Conversation section of the online Harvard Business Review, I had one of those moments.

It's a great post, and it ends with posing three questions, the kind that make it hard to look in the mirror for most of us. That said, like most such questions, they are super insightful and well worth pondering in January or any other time. The kind of stuff that some of us would tape to the bathroom mirror even if it was hard to see each morning:

1. If there was only one thing I could do to improve my business, what would it be and how would I make it happen?

2. If there was only one thing I could focus on to improve my personal performance, what would that be and how would I make it happen?

3. What messages am I not listening to or refusing to confront in my business and personal performance and how am I going to overcome that this year?

As uncomfortable as it made me feel for not being able to come up with immediate answers (was I afraid to hear what I would say?) I was struck by how flexible these questions were in terms of both one's professional as well as personal lives, and it is in that spirit that I pass them along in case you might have missed the post.

A belated Happy New Year from those of us who are still trying to catch up with ourselves.

Getting From Here to There

ExecuNet is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, and as a result, that sort of a milestone event has prompted a number of interview requests from various and sundry media wanting to know how this all happened and the details from ’88 to now.

As I have talked over the past several months with many different reporters and writers of many stripes, it has caused me to reflect frequently about the past 20 years and the transformation that I have experienced in my professional work life. It also got me wondering what the stories might be from others both inside and outside our membership.

In talking with our Executive Editor Lauryn Franzoni about this, she suggested it would probably be both fascinating and fun to learn more about other's “passages” so we thought a blog post would be one place to begin. So, in the interest of the “you go first” custom, here goes:

The short version is that the company I was working for as the VP of International Personnel was bought. For the first time in my life (at age 48), I found myself looking for a job when I didn’t already have one. In about the time it takes one to pull away from touching a hot stove I came to the conclusion that I didn’t like the way this felt at all, and the longer the search went on, the more I felt that the process was broken. What I thought ought to be a relationship based on a win-win outcome was one that felt like win-lose and very adversarial to boot.

After all, it seemed to my (then) naive way of thinking that organizations seeking senior-level talent and executives who were seeking stimulating and rewarding careers had the same goals in mind. Find the right fit for both.

Said differently, I thought that from a job seeker’s perspective, all I was asking for was the opportunity to compete for a real job at a time that was meaningful and to be treated with a reasonable degree of professional courtesy. Didn’t seem too crazy a notion at the time (and still doesn’t.)

Looking at it from the recruiter’s perspective (and having been in HR I thought I had a reasonable understanding of how that world worked), I knew I would want to be able to identify qualified candidates when I needed to, have confidentiality when needed, and not get into a fight with anyone over what “qualified” meant. That too did not seem to be a concept that was too far out of step.

So, how to try and become a Don Quixote lookalike and pick up the pieces of this broken process? The answer over time turned out to be an effort to create a community where both recruiters and senior level executives could come together in a career and business network not only with confidence but when needed, in confidence.

Reflecting on the experience, I keep thinking how very fortunate I was to have stumbled along the happenstance path of career planning and end up being able to make my living from something about which I was and continue to be passionate about to the point of obsession.

There is an old saying that I am sure most of us have often heard: “Luck: where preparation meets opportunity.” As I think about my own experience, that is a fair descriptor. In my case, I know that the 25+ years I spent in the corporate world certainly qualifies as “preparation.” What I didn’t know at the time was the “luck” was that my employer was bought and I was thrown into an uncontrollable situation. I didn’t immediately recognize the event as an opportunity.

So I am wondering what others’ experiences have been as they look back at their career over the past 20 years and what “learnings” or stories they might be willing to share in the comments section of this blog posting.

Where were you professionally 20 years ago?

Was there a pivotal event or person responsible for your leadership track?

Where are you professionally now?

As an incentive, I am willing to do this:

There was an incredibly interesting discussion that went on for several weeks recently in our General Management Roundtable. The discussion came from a member who was about to take on his first role as a CEO. His question to the roundtable was “What advice would you have for me?”

So rich was this discussion that Lauryn and her team created a whitepaper, Lessons from Leaders: Advice for a First-time CEO. Whether you are aspiring to be the CEO or already in the big chair, advice contained in this paper is something that any of us in a leadership position would find of real value.

You can give as many or few details as you feel comfortable, and as long as I have your email address, a copy is yours. If you are too much of an introvert to post it here, you can email it to me at dave.opton@execunet.com

Executive Tribune

How many blogs are there? Answer: Probably no one really knows, and if you start to pare them down to ones that are "active" versus those that are just taking up a few megs on a server somewhere, it might even seem like a number that we could relate to, but even then I am not sure. All of which suggests that most of us find the stuff we want to follow the same way most of us find our way to anything worthwhile - someone tells us about it. It's another one of the fringe benefits of networking.

There are, of course, exceptions, and in the case of the Executive Tribune Tribune, a blog that launched in early May, this one I knew was coming because it's author, Michael Simon, had called me about blogging before he launched.

After my failing yet once again to convince anyone of anything, he launched it anyway. If you are interested in things of importance to the career management at the executive level, you will be glad he went ahead. The tag line will give you a nice clue as to why: "Career musings and information for A-list, B-school & C-suite residents."

If you check out Michael's background it will become immediately apparent why he would be a valuable resource when in comes to career issues, especially at the executive level.

In the interest of "full disclosure" I should also reveal that when the company I was working for was sold and I lost my job at age 48, I selected Michael and his firm to help keep me focused as I tired to figure out what was next.

Just as I failed to persuade Michael that blogging is harder than it appears on the surface, he failed to convince me to give corporate another chance. The outcome was that I started ExecuNet and Michael and I have been friends ever since.

Even though all of this is true, anyone who knows me will tell you that if I didn't think that Executive Tribune was worth your time.....you can finish the sentence yourself.

It’s the FAST that Eat the Slow!

Those who follow this blog have heard Amitai Givertiz's name before, and given what he writes about and as importantly how he writes about it, it is a name that is likely to show up again.

Amitai writes on a blog site called Bells and Whistles and as I was scrolling through it today I noted a post in which he was telling his readers about a free workshop on May 29th featuring Laurence Haughton.

While Amitai had only recently met Laurence, I instantly recognized his name since he had done a FastTrack webinar for us last year on another of his books entitled The Art of Execution. He has much to say and is a fascinating speaker.

The May 29th session is based on Haughton's first book It's Not the Big That Eat the Small...It's the Fast That Eat the Slow: How to Use Speed as a Competitive Tool in Business (You have to love the title!)

If you are one of those senior level executives who has precious little time to spend on professional development and you have not been exposed to Haughton, I think you would find this program time well spent.