Futurology: The real Superman is coming

Let's take a look into the future.  If the image you think of when someone mentions Superman is the muscular body with a yellow and red diamond shaped crest in the chest, red Speedo, boots and cape over a tight blue suit, perfect hairdo and angel face, you may be disappointed.  The real Superman that will be around us soon will be everything but that, at least in most cases.  In fact, you will likely be part of the new Supermen and Superwomen army coming up.

Don’t expect a being from outer space either, who was lucky to land in a place where his natural power became super in comparison to normal humans.  The new Supermen will be technology made.  Driven by the human impatience with the lagging interaction with technology caused by an unfit “middleman”.  This middleman which is completely inadequate to handle the speed demanded by the virtual, lightning fast world is, well, your body!  Have you noticed lately that the devices we carry today are capable of unimaginable things and that the biggest issue we have making them more effective is the fact we still need to touch or talk to them to make something happen?

Did you ever remember you had to send a message or needed some information while in the middle of something else, let’s say driving or taking a shower or in a business meeting?  You had to make the unacceptable decision to give up and let the opportunity pass.  In some other cases you tried to reach to the phone while driving to eventually decide it was not a good idea after almost hitting the car in front of you?  Well, you are ready to become Superman and accept the implications.

If our body is not fit to what is required in this new world, what is the rational decision to make?  You may say retire the body, which as we saw in the movie Matrix it is a possible concept that may be developed overtime.  However, I believe there will be a short-term solution that will bridge us to that future.  Connecting the device directly to our brain.  Bypassing and upgrading the human body instead of retiring it will be the intermediate stage.

You will become our 21^st century version of the Man of Steel.  Not as colorful and romantic.  Instead, a more realistic version of the comic books.  You will be able to multitask without the annoying interruption of reaching to a device.  Think and it happens!  Need to instant message during the meeting to get the latest update?  Done.  Need to make a calculation that would be impossible without a calculator?  Done.  Need to call or text someone while driving without losing sight of the road?  Done.  Research the internet for knowledge, play an interactive game, read a book, send a message, order pizza, get the latest football scores?  Done, done, done.  Nothing else needed other than to think about it.

Along with that there will come the interface with bionic arms, legs, exo-skeletons, etc.  You have become Superman.  However, anywhere there is one, there is also kryptonite.  In our case our internet bills.  Don’t pay them and you’ll get dumb and weak, and you may find yourself frozen in the middle of the street trapped in your shiny Superman suit begging for help.

This transformation will open all sorts of business possibilities.  Imagine the possibility of marketing on the spot directly to someone’s brain!  How about all the data that can be collected.  Today’s Big Data concept will pale in comparison to what is coming, so much so we should call it Not Really that Big of a Data.  But this is content enough for a whole new blog!

Federation or Integration? The Dilemma of Executives during Acquisitions

This week I had the opportunity to attend a great executive workshop called The Art of M&A Integration hosted by M&A Leadership Council where we discussed a topic that most C-level executives and Sr. leaders of organizations will debate this year.

As many of us heard before, over 70% of mergers and acquisitions fail to deliver value committed during the public announcement. More concerning is that many deliver value erosion with very negative consequences ranging from complete disappearance of the acquired company to millions of dollars in write-off in later divestiture.

As we discussed examples it has become apparent that the most critical issues are (1) lack of clear definition/alignment of the business objective for the acquisition and (2) lack of professional M&A leadership in the business, or both.

So, if you don’t read any further keep in mind if your company is acquiring and planning to integrate another business make sure you address upfront both of these issues:

• What/why are we acquiring this for? IP, geographic expansion, supply chain execution, etc. “The answer must be crystal clear, documented and agreed at leadership level because it will serve as the guiding principle for all other decisions coming up” Jack Prouty – President, M&A Leadership Council
• Assign a professional M&A team to deliver according to the objective. No cutting corners are allowed here. You must have people who understand the business and possess superior leadership skills. “This is not for the faint of heart, unprepared or for the people available at the time” Mark Herndon – President, M&A Partners

There are other critical steps after that but to address all of them I recommend attending the 3-day executive workshop, especially if you’re in any leadership position of M&A. I’ll concentrate on the dilemma of what to integrate.

Getting to the answer is not easy but the principle is simple: integration objectives must be fully aligned and supportive of delivering the acquisition objectives, the ones I mentioned above, which in turn must be clear and aligned across M&A leadership team.

Example: a large company which product has slowly become a commodity and revenue is lagging year over year has decided to acquire a small innovative company with the objective of transforming its business and return to innovation, product differentiation and scale up sales for the target company.

Integration objectives: retain target Co. talent at all cost (it may very well be a condition for closing), incubate and protect their innovative spirit as opposed to integrate or consolidate, integrate back office in the short term, cautiously integrate sales in the medium to long-term.

Not to do: absorb organization. It’s common companies will lose sight of their acquisition objective and will make decisions that will destroy or erode value of the acquired company. Great ideas when looked at the micro level of integration, such as “why don’t we integrate our R&D teams and we will save $1M in lab and organization costs”, have proven to be value eroding or killers of great acquisitions. In this case the company would lose all the talent and end up with a product which it can’t sell or develop. That means a major loss of the acquisition investment and high probability of not being able to turn the situation around. Company would have to eventually ingest the loss.

In conclusion, to answer the question about the right approach for integration you must first align on the objective of the acquisition and then assign a strong leader who will be capable of delivering accordingly. Fail to do either and you’ll have to prepare for disaster recovery.

Please share your thoughts, comments and experiences with our community.

I want to express my deepest appreciation to Jack Prouty, Mark Herndon, Jim Jeffries, Melanie Endert, the entire M&A Leadership Council, and fellow Coaches and Alumni of The Art of M&A Executive Workshop from whom I learned so much this week. Thank you.

People leaders, understanding individual needs and desires

Read here part 1 People Leaders are Bridge Builders

I invariably start a conversation with people about their career with the following question: where do you want to go? If they can’t answer that question the conversation is usually very different from the ones who can. You may have already heard that quote by Lewis Carroll “If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.”

My version is slightly different: if you don’t know where you are going, every road will get you nowhere. I can’t build a bridge to someone who doesn’t know where they want to go. However, I still can help. That’s the first step for people leaders:

1. Understand the individual desires and needs of a person.

No answer to the question is wrong if someone is really seeking self-realization. I met countless people looking for professional advice who provided canned answers to that question. Things like: I want to grow and have increased responsibilities, I want to be Director of this or VP of that, I want to be the CEO, etc.

My follow-up probing question is simple, one word: why? That’s when most people will freeze and either have that blank stare common to those who never thought about it or they’ll look at me as if asking why they have to have a reason!

If there is no why it’s unlikely to really be a solid long-term answer. The answer though doesn't need to be a noble cause but it has to be meaningful for the individual. Some will want power and money, some will do it to help others, some for pure passion. However, there are many who in reality just want to keep a job but feel compelled to show ambition because “that’s how it works”. Others want it because it’s their parents’ expectation or to show their friends they are successful. These are not valid reasons for one will sooner or later feel empty despite all accomplishments.

2. Recommend the individual to search for a reason (no need to get too philosophic, even though it can be a great opportunity for it; one can keep it simple and look for short-term answers).

This soul searching exercise can take time but it’s important to be done often in life. Finding our true passion and reason allows us the find the path to self-realization. As we mature our reasons may change. The motives of a young professional may be different from senior ones. That’s where I believe Abraham Harold Maslow did an outstanding job with his model for Hierarchy of Needs.

Once there is a good answer to that question a leader can start the next step to help building one’s personal bridge:

3. Help individual with self-awareness. Assessing one’s true position is key. Neither being too optimistic nor too humble about it is a good thing here. It’s not a discussion about confidence but about reality. Many people struggle to see it or accept it. I’ll talk more about it in the next article.


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Are you really WFH working from home?

I spent the whole day at home today, working.  Really!  I was working.  First in bed, then in the sofa where I am right up to this moment.  It's about 8pm.  I started working about 7:30am.  I took a quick 10 minute break for breakfast at around 9am and another 15 minutes for lunch at around 3:40pm.

Would you believe that I was able to complete more work than I would in 2 full days at the office?  If you ever worked from home you would.  If you didn't, well, I'm sorry.

I came across this article at Bloomber BusinessWeek which I found interesting.  It's a light and educational reading about a recent survey conducted by a company called Citrix (CTXS).  It does unveil some interesting findings which in fact are already well known by people working from home regularly.

Here is how I would appear in this survey according to my WFH experience today:

Most disliked work events: unproductive meetings, especially at 8am
Why I sneak out of the office: nap
What have you done while working remotely: took a nap (seeing a trend here)
Boss opposes working remotely: I don't think so
Have drink while working remotely: no, and while I experienced in Europe the culture of having a small glass of wine during lunch time, I still believe you have to follow local practices

So there you go.  What is your experience WFH?

People leaders are bridge builders

During the past 20 years of professional experience leading people I've been working on consolidating my leadership principles. As I mentioned in a previous article One rule and 6 steps to drive employee engagement I feel I got to something valuable. Today I have one of the most engaged team of employees working with me. No easy feat during these turbulent times.

What if I told you that this was achieved through building bridges? What if I told you your job as a leader is to build bridges? Some of them long and solid, some high. You may ask bridges to where, for whom and why? What for?

Well, I define the role of real people leaders as bridge builders. Our role when it comes to the people we lead is not for selfish growth and fame. It’s a selfless responsibility of serving others through valuable and rare skills. The skill of providing clarity to people looking for answers about their future and how to get there.

The majority of people unconsciously know in their hearts what they want in life. Few will ever realize that and turn into action. They lack the understanding or the courage to make it happen. However, when you help by removing the fog around and allowing them to find out where they want to go you will see their inner lights shine while they fulfill their potential. Then you build a bridge.

When you are helping building the bridge to your people you will have to resolve 3 simple yet critical puzzles. I’ll share them here and break them down in future articles:

1. The process of building a bridge starts with a fundamental question one must answer: where do they want to go? If one doesn't know where to go she shouldn't spend energy moving because she may be just going to the wrong direction anyway. As a leader facilitating that process it takes time and patience.
2. The second puzzle is for the individual to clearly understand where they are.Another critical step of self discovery and self awareness that great people leaders must facilitate. If one can’t accept where she really is and believes she’s somewhere else, you can’t start building the bridge for the individual won’t be able to find it.
3. And finally the final step. Once the present location and destination are fully realized by the individual, the leader will be able to start the construction. In some cases the distance between the points is great and will require a few hops. Sometimes the depth of the valley between the points is great and will require time for building solid foundations. Those analogies translate into people development approaches the leader will apply.

When people comprehend a leader’s main motivation is helping constructing bridges to their desired future, they will reciprocate, work hard and be loyal. It’s also a fact you may lose some people along the way. Some for good reasons if they found their desired destination is in a different path. Even in that case, they will respect you for life for you helped them finding their true path. The reward for all this incredibly demanding leadership task is a highly engaged and performing workforce along with the gratifying realization of seeing people fulfill their dreams; a people leader’s ultimate accomplishment.

Stay tuned for next articles with insights about how to execute the 3 steps above.

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One rule and 6 steps to drive employee engagement

You may ask what qualifies me to speak about employee engagement and it’s a fair question when you are about to spend your valuable time reading something on such critical leadership competency. I understand leaders are busy so I’ll go straight to the answer:

• 21 years of proven leadership and people development at PepsiCo, Kraft Foods and Lowe’s
• Highest employee score in recent employee opinion survey
• The highest score (90% strongly agree) to the question “my team members come together and help each other to get the job done
• Full profile here if you want additional details

So let’s get to it shall we. The trigger for this article was a question from my management about what did I do to get such results, comparatively so much better. There was speculation about bribe, power play, torture and other common leadership methods. But I didn’t use any of that. Honestly, I could not exactly describe it other than say that my team’s development is my single most important priority.

That was not enough to put the interrogators at ease. So I really had to put some time and think about it, and in a way create some sense, some logic, some method regarding something that for me was day-to-day practice.

This is what I came up with. Don’t expect rocket science. This is something you can apply any time but it must be sincere:

RULE #1 and only: give before you ask; give more than you ask.

GIVE (4)

1. Make your employees’ career your #1 priority (I stuck to my initial gut feel here) – Indeed the most important step is to remember that as leaders of people our first priority is to take care of people. Forget about your boss, forget about your deliverables and forget your other stakeholders. Their needs will be met naturally while you attend the needs of your employees. Engaged employees will deliver better results. Your engagement with your employees will provide the information you need to properly communicate with your boss and stakeholders.
2. Trust before compliance (this is a tricky area) -. There is no question about the need for employees to comply with company rules and policies. However, if you treat everything under the compliance lens you are removing the one thing that differentiates us from the rest the animal kingdom: intelligence. Give them trust and they will positively surprise you.
3. Flexibility and space (but stay connected) – one important way to demonstrate you trust your team is giving them space to work and allow flexibility in how they work. Set a clear objective and get out of their way. It doesn’t matter if they got there in a different way than you thought. Actually, often they will find better ways to get there. Note it’s very important that you understand people’s limitations and support them when needed. No matter how much flexibility and space you give a trainee he won’t be able to devise the company strategy. I’m assuming this is common sense though.
4. Appreciate – this is likely the one step that requires the most sincerity. You don’t need to say “great job” to everything that is not really a great job. However, expressing your gratitude with a simple thank you goes a long way. Make appreciation public and again sincere. Remember that some things that may look like business as usual and simple at your career stage; can represent a major accomplishment to a more junior professional.

ASK (2)

1. Accountability – make sure people understand that with greater power comes greater responsibility. It doesn’t need to be through punishment. Explain that along with trust you give you expect the individual or team to take accountability and escalate whenever things are not going as planned.
2. Results – under the same principle, all that you gave to enable team success will be measured by the employee engagement and also by results. If everything else is in place and results are not being delivered there is something wrong. It can be your team’s readiness to transition to a more open model, your understanding of their capacity to deliver or lack of support. With time these will be discussed openly and any problem will be minimized.

The method is fairly simple. Make your people your first priority. Give them more than you ask. Observe your team thrive. If this is too different than what you do today and you are willing to try, make sure to explain the game plan and pace the transition accordingly. If team members are afraid to speak up or to think rather preferring to take orders, it will take same time before it works, however, the prize is worthwhile. The power of 10 engaged brains is always bigger than 100 disengaged ones.

Privacy is Down; Get Over It, Will You!

If I had one social networking advice to give for 2012, this is it: privacy is down; get over it, will you!

The most common complaint or reason people mention to me about their hesitation in joining the social network world is lack of privacy.  In these people’s minds there is a clear privacy hole in this technology.  Some don’t want to share information about their lives or pictures.  Some are concerned about what people can do by stalking their profile.

What I can tell this people is: act according to your beliefs, but as interesting as your life may seem to you I can guarantee that 99.999999% of the world’s population is completely uninterested in it.  Your life is very likely less interesting to other people than you give it credit for.  And there will be hundreds of thousands of others who will make all they can to show everything, and I mean everything, to the social world audience, which makes it even less plausible people would be interested in our “boring” lives.

Even if someone end up looking at your profile, the behavior in the web shows they will move to the next one in a matter of seconds and will never remember you anyway.  And if you are concerned about serious stalkers or identity theft, it’s known that the vast majority of the offenders are people physically close to us, so you should be concerned about the real world not the virtual one.

The exception is children.  They really need to be protected because they can fall prey because they don’t have the maturity to deal with some sick people out there.  Even though, once again, the majority of the problems will unfortunately happen with people close to them and who they trust (also read The Strange Faces of Crime).

There are some reasons why the concept of privacy is changing so dramatically.  The people who created Facebook were teenagers when they did it.  They didn’t want privacy!  They wanted to be found!  Surprisingly the very nature of Facebook and social networks in general is to connect with people, to show off, to engage.  Not to hide!

The other reason is that there are few countries in the world where individual rights are really enforced.  So most of the world’s population was never used to have privacy anyway in the first place.

If you put these groups together you are going to get to the conclusion very few people really care about privacy after all.  Take a look at the half billion+ people putting information in Facebook.

So, trust me: if you are not a celebrity or politician, unless you post your social security number, salary, bank account and password in the social world, you will be safe.  And if you don’t believe me, try to became famous in the social world and let me know what did you have to do to make it happen.  I can guarantee posting about your life will not make it.

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