01 November, 2015

Happiness is not something ready made - It comes from your own actions. Dalai Lama


Happiness is not something ready made - It comes from your own actions.  
Dalai Lama 


You cannot pursue happiness directly. Happiness is a result of doing something that is meaningful to yourself. It is rarely something easy that makes you happy, nor is it something that you take from the world that makes you happy. Huge difficult challenges that stretches you and make the world a better place will make you a lot happier than any titel and money can ever do.

What is meaningful is for you to decide. It changes with time and age but it does not change character. It is not about easy - it is not about taking.

If you want happiness from your job find a place where you can grow, where you are challenged and where you are part of something worthwhile and bigger than yourself.

Subscribe to the articles of Claus Aasholm here.

21 October, 2015

Autosistants - The Automated Assistant List - WIP



Autosistants - The automated assistant list:


Apple - Siri

Amazon - Echo

Facebook - M

Google - Now

Microsoft - Cortana

IBM - Watson
Watson is built to mirror the same learning process we use. Available through the cloud, Watson is a significant element of the IBM cloud strategy. The services of Watson is offered to business customers helping them analyse and make sense of dark data. It speaks many languages and is constantly improving its cognitive capabilities to interface to humans in a natural way

Samsung - S Voice

Others:
Maluuba
Mya
Hidi
Saera
Silvia
Sirius
Vlingo
Voice mate

Read about Autosistants here.


20 October, 2015

The Unicorn List - WIP




Unicorn is the popular name for a startup company that has a valuation higher than 1B USD. A high valuation is not the same as having a lot of cash to burn, but often this is the case. More importantly is it a sign of a very strong belief from investor circles that the company not only has a viable business model but also have the potential for hyper growth.
Established companies should watch out for these companies as they disrupt and destroy existing markets and companies. Unicorns are normally build around a new business model that does not respect traditional market boundaries. They exploit asymmetrical flaws in the traditional value chains like sharing assets with low utilisation (Cars are used less than 4%) or connecting users with suppliers in networked models.
The Unicorn list will be continuous updated:

  • Actifio (US) - Data backup and protection
  • Adyen (Holland) - Payment Services
  • AirBnB (US) - Private room renting
  • AppDynamics (US) - Application performance management
  • AppNexus (US) - Monetising content for publishers


  • Avant (US) NEW - Personal Loans
  • Box (US)
  • Cloudera (US)
  • CloudFlare (US)
  • CreditKarma (US)
  • Deem (US)
  • Delivery Hero (Germany)
  • Docker (US) NEW - Application platform
  • DocuSign (US)
  • Dropbox (US)
  • Eventbrite  (US)
  • Evernote (US) 
  • FanDuel (UK)
  • Fanatics (US)
  • Farfetch (UK)
  • Funding Circle (UK)
  • Gilt (US)
  • Good Technology (US)
  • Home24 (Germany)
  • Houzz  (US) - Home Improvement
  • Insidesales.com (US)
  • Instacart (US)
  • Intarcia (US)
  • Jasper Technologies (US)
  • Jawbone (US)
  • JustFab (US)
  • Kabam (US)
  • Legendary (US)
  • Lookout (US)
  • Lynda (US) (Now LinkedIn)
  • MagicLeap (US)
  • Mongo DB (US)
  • Nutanix (US)
  • Palantir (US)
  • Pinterest (US)
  • Powa (UK)
  • Pure Storage (US)
  • Qualtrics (US)
  • Razer (US)
  • Rocket Internet (Germany)
  • Shazam (UK)
  • Skrill (UK)
  • Slack Technologies (US)
  • Snapchat (US)
  • SoFi (US) NEW - Student loan refinancing
  • SpaceX (US)
  • Square (US)
  • Stripe (US) - Mobile payment 
  • Sunrun (US)
  • SurveyMonkey (US)
  • Tango (US)
  • Tanium (US) NEW - Endpoint Security
  • Thumbtack (US) NEW - Access professionals for projects or teaching
  • TransferWise (UK)
  • Uber (US)
  • Unity Technologies
  • Vice Media (US)
  • Ve (UK)
  • Wework (US)

09 July, 2015

Corporate lies that support mediocrity: People are motivated by money


I will be the first to declare myself guilty of living corporate lies. I have both received the lies as an employee and passed it on to subordinates. 

The lies are about the concept of work and reward and have not changed much over the last decades despite huge leaps in technology and understanding of human decision making processes.

This series of posts are not about bad companies doing bad things, nor is it a post of lazy employees that cannot handle the truth. Rather it is a series of posts that look at the lies that companies and employees are sharing. Lies that keep businesses and people locked in mediocrity.

It is also a call for a new way of collaboration between humans and corporations that benefits both. A way that is not based on wrong assumptions and that creates value for all parties

Corporate lie: People are motivated by money

The economic theory of the economic man that is rationally trying to maximize utility has been a foundational principle of modern society together with Milton Friedman’s theory of shareholder value: Businesses and people alike only behave in rational and selfish ways and are trying to maximize monetary return. We have accepted this as a fact in business despite the world being full of unselfish and irrational behavior

“We care about you and we are going to reward you with promotions and pay increases”

With the introduction of scanners able to record brain activity, there have been advancements in understanding of how humans are making decisions. This has confirmed that humans are not rational - but we already knew that.

If humans were rational there would be no obesity, smoking or alcohol and drug abuse. There would be no wars, crime, hate and violence. Human decision making are affected by emotions, bodily states, chemistry, social settings and sensory input.

Plenty of research as far back as Maslow motivational models has documented that money is a hygiene factor that needs to be satisfied to prevent demotivation. More money does not create more motivation once that point is reached. As the author Daniel Pink puts it: “Get money out of the way”.

Despite the overwhelming evidence that money does not motivate, companies and employees are conspiring to pretend that it does. Companies pretend they will pay more for more effort and employees pretend they work hard and will work harder for more money. Both are lies.
“What people think they deserve is different from what motivates them”
Gallup has demonstrated that despite high satisfaction rates, only 13% of worldwide employees are engaged – that they give their best at work. Most employees just do enough to not get fired. Gallup has found no link between pay and employee engagement whatsoever.
“You can be satisfied with what you get at the same time as wanting more”
Most employment is firmly within companies in mature industries. They are locked in a fierce commodity battle with similar looking competitors in a race to zero.

They cannot afford to give automatic pay rises, especially when they know they get nothing in return.

At the same time the command and control hierarchy with promotions and pay based on seniority does create not many opportunity for promotions – unless somebody dies.

In the US this is very visible. For 15 years there has been no growth of median household incomes, even though the economy as a whole has grown.

You cannot blame companies for not paying people more when they don’t get anything in return.
“Employees are just plankton for the corporate whale”
The sooner this false assumption is addressed the faster the company and its people in it can rise above mediocrity. When you truly motivate people you also create financial results.

Engagement research shows that employee motivation is created by:
  1. Purpose. Not only the purpose of the company but also the department and the employees ability to make a significant contribution. Are we successful and making the world a better place. Are we proud of what we do.
  2. Fairness. How the company treats its stakeholders. How fair is the distribution of value. How fair are promotion and pay processes.
  3. Culture and leadership. Creating no blame learning environments where mistakes are ok. A non-conformist innovative environment where it is ok to challenge status quo. A low command and control structure.
  4. The way work is organised. Can the employee chose, influence and design the job? Does the employee have influence, responsibility and autonomy.
  5. Personal Growth. An environment of challenges, honest feedback and opportunities for personal growth.

23 June, 2015

What if your next job was not about salary?



Somewhere down the line, we made a mistake. We forgot that work is not about uncomfortable toil in return for tangible financial reward. It used to be so in the industrial age but those days are long gone.

Unfortunately most corporations still create non engaging jobs and most employees keeps accepting them. According to Gallup only 13% of world wide employees are engaged.

So how come companies still think we are motivated by money and most of us still behave like we are?

What if jobs were not only measured against the tangible reward that were offered but by the intangible benefits that the job might involve? Would companies create different jobs and would employees take them rather than high paying jobs?

These are the central questions in this brilliant article by Lynda Gratton of London Business School. Her recommendation is to include the intangibles into the job description:
  • How interesting and engaging the job is
  • The challenge and growth opportunity of the job both from a personal and skills perspective
  • The job being non-routine and in danger of being automated.

I would like to add:
  • Is it a job with independence, choice and responsibility
  • How meaningful the job is to the corporation.
  • The job makes the world a better place by tackling some of the large issues in society.

If you think your next job is about money then you should be ready to accept a routine, boring, controlled, non-developing, meaningless job without responsibility.

Is this your next job? 

Maybe this is your current job?

04 June, 2015

Honest Feedback is vital for Employee Engagement


If you want to create Employee Engagement you should invest in creating a culture of giving and receiving feedback. This is often confused with creating an environment of being friendly and although this is important it is more important to create relationships strong enough to be able to handle the truth (How to create a frame of honest feedback).





Gallup research has shown that a manager that gives mainly positive (based on strengths) feedback has more engaged employees versus managers that give predominantly negative feedback. What is more interesting is that giving no feedback is significantly worse that giving negative feedback.


As a leader you are responsible for growing your people which sometimes involves giving negative feedback. Research has shown that direct and honest feedback on wrong answers in tests has a bigger impact than feedback on what went well. 






When people are encouraged and allowed to grow employee engagement increases. To grow people need feedback that also means negative feedback.
Knowing that negative feedback also creates employee Engagement should be sufficient to encourage leaders to have difficult conversations with their people – ignoring the conversations are too expensive.

In the book “Crucial Conversations” the authors introduce the concept of the Fools choice: “The choice between friendship and honesty.” 

It is a fools choice because no friendship can be based on dishonesty so a crucial conversation is necessary to give honest feedback

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter" Martin Luther King Jr.

18 May, 2015

How are you engaging your customers?



To create satisfied customers doesn’t really make you successful anymore – apart from creating value you also need to engage your customer to grow your revenue.

Customers are not just looking for the same product or service they have only cheaper or with an extra feature – they are looking for something radically useful or something that creates meaning for them.

Every market matures and in every mature market the product/service looks more and more alike. It will be based on the same technology made on the same factory or delivered after the same principles. Not much room for differentiation other than price that shrinks the pie for all market players. All products will eventually satisfy customers but not necessarily engage them.

To engage customers you will need to go beyond the product or service itself. It is not about what you do, it is about why you do it and how you do it.

 "Always start with why" Simon Sinek


Customer engagement is an emotional relation between the customer and one or more actors associated with the company. It is certainly possible to create an emotional relationship between a customer and a product/service brand as is seen with luxury items and cars; however this is not possible in most markets.






Relationship with the product itself

When products and services become more alike it becomes more important how it is made and what the overall purpose of the producing company is. It is not anymore about transactional selling but more about a relationship and eventually being part of a movement.
Relationship with the company

Customers don’t buy from you just because you want a lot of money but they might want to buy from you if your company is trying to support society or making the world a better place. The low priority of CSR in many companies, will not work in the future. It does not inspire customers or employees. The new hyper growth companies predominantly from the US, all has a strong purpose in the centre of their activity. Google, Apple, Tesla, Facebook and similar are not in the business just to make money – they want to make a difference also. This engages not only employees but also customers.

Relationship with touch points

The rise of the internet and social media has made many companies forget that their employees are vital in creating engagement with customers. Unfortunately only 13% of all employees worldwide are engaged and hence capable of creating customer engagement. The service aspect has also been neglected even though there is a higher probability in creating an engaged customer through a service issue than there is through a normal successful delivery.

The massive advertising on social media that looks the same as the old newspaper advertising can create awareness but is not successful in creating engagement. Most companies miss the point of having their senior managers’ active on social media (Only 28% of CEO has social media accounts). CEO’s have an opportunity to engage in conversations about purpose and sustainable production that can catapult engagement. Leaders like Tim Cook (Apple), Elon Musk (Tesla) Eric Schmidt (Google) are all very active in engaging both customers and employees.

Relationship with other stakeholders

The most important consumer buying decisions are heavily impacted by people close to the consumer and different interest groups. You cannot ignore Greenpeace, Amnesty international or trade unions anymore. The company need to include all stakeholders into their strategy formation and make it transparent. A transparent company does not need to hide behind a brand.



The link between Employee and Customer engagement


Gallup has shown that there is a strong relationship from Employee Engagement over customer engagement to financial results. Companies that manage to engage both customers and employees have 240% better results on performance related parameters.

"Companies that engage both customers and employees have 240% better results on performance parameters." Gallup



17 May, 2015

Are you running your company like an old communist country?



It is generally accepted that the wall fell as a result of the actions of Regan and Gorbachev although it probably would have fallen anyway as a result of the systematic and serious failures that evolved inside the totalitarian system.

You would think that companies most often are managed by principles derived from capitalism and while this might be true there are a large number of companies that have adopted similar vices to those of the former communist countries in the world.

The question is if what is likely to have caused communism to fail is a good foundation for a long term sustainable strategy aimed at creating engagement with both employees and customers.

Test your company against the doctrines below and find out if you are facing obsolescence:

1. Power is concentrated on few hands

A significant issue of the communist countries was the limited number of people that had authority to make real decisions regarding resource allocation in strategic and operational situations. A culture of delegation assumes that the top leadership of the company are better qualified to make all decisions on the corporation’s behalf – in short they know better. This kind of “Politburo” structure fights empowerment like the body attacks a virus – the distribution of power that is at the core of empowerment is a sacrilegious concept that cannot even be discussed. A concentrated power structure isolates the leaders from the organisation and alienates the employees and the customers rather than engaging them. Organisations that successfully engage both employees and customers have 240% better performance according to Gallup.


2. Information access is limited and decision making processes are not transparent

A relic from the industrial age where information was key to competing it is now mainly used by poor managers to cement their power position. Very little information can be considered so proprietary it should be kept from employees. The social revolution is changing the way that information is used inside companies and it is also making it very difficult to keep decision making processes secret when all stakeholders have the possibility to instantly spread uncomfortable secrets immediately.

3. The leadership is not democratically elected.

In principle the board and though them the CEO should be (s)elected by a democratic process that operate by shareholders voting rights. In many companies this process is not as many shareholders don’t exercise their voting rights. The largest stock holders in the world are pension funds managed by professional managers, not by their true owners. This means that rather than owners voting for managers to take care of their best interest, it becomes a case of managers voting for other managers / with that the danger of managers acting in their own best interest rather than the owners. One of the signs of a “Politburo” is a board with members that has not changed for many years and always sides with the CEO.


4. The company has a lack of purpose

If you have a mission of becoming the “Very best company in the x industry” you are probably not the most purpose driven company in the world. Instead you are likely to have a focus on serving “shareholders”, which sounds a lot better that senior management serving themselves. It is important to have a strong purpose that can attract and engage employees, customers and other stakeholders if you don’t want to compete on price alone. If your leadership team are defenders of status quo – they are likely to be a Poliburo:  The society for the preservation of senior management.

5. Doctrine based thinking

The only argument for concentrating power on a few hands is the assumption that they no best and are best equipped to manage the company. When this becomes the case there is no real reason for seeking information or advice outside the power structure. As people are isolated from the real world doctrine based group think starts to kick in. Decisions are based on assumptions that might have been true once but never gets revalidated. It is particularly dangerous if it gets combined with short term financial results that can give the illusion that all is well. Short term results can be made by stealing from long term results.

6.  Strategies that benefit few

If a politburo structure enters a company so does entitlement. As the power circle constantly reinforces their own importance the companys strategy turns to serving the few that matters. In strategy creation the interest of other stakeholders will start to be underserved to give to the few. Starving customers and employees can create short term results and with that the illusion of success. When CEO’s make more than 500 times the pay of ordinary workers, it is a sign that the company has started to serve the few. These strategies are rarely sustainable in the long haul.

7. Central planning structure

The Politburo owns all the money and need to concentrate resource allocation and planning to a central point. The focus turns from investing in new equipment, people and in new business opportunities to a focus on efficiency. More effective P&L or Balance sheet control of business units is replaced with a micromanaged central structure where everybody has to make endless request to just get the minimum for the business survival. It is a great way of starving the business at the same time as being able to blame the individual units of not contributing.

8. Policies are designed to limit people, not enable them

The bureaucracy shows its face once the company’s policies turns from guiding the people to starting to control and limit them. Policies will move from enabling everybody to be a mean to only protect the company interest and money. When the health and safety policy that should be designed to protect the employee turns into a 50 page legal document that describes what will happen to an employee that does not follow the rules – then you know you have turned into an old communist country.

9. Staff functions transform into secret police

When policies change to protect the company, a similar change can take place in the staff functions. Originally designed to support the business with financial, people, legal and IS support the staff functions start to control, check and report behaviour that can be deemed dangerous to status quo. They start to resemble the security police in the old communist states. This has a significant impact on employee engagement and instead of seeking new ways of doing things and creating value, employees gets trained into low profile, low risk behaviour. Don’t spend any money, do make any requests and don’t challenge status quo.

10. Lack of engagement kills productivity, initiative and innovation

When employees understand that they are not encouraged or rewarded for taking initiative, learning and experimentation stops. Productivity growth will start to decline compared to high engagement organisations although it can be hidden by the results created though starving the company. With the concentration of information, a focus on low risk behaviour and low employee engagement – innovation will stop. Innovation can only happen if people are allowed to challenge status quo and the doctrines of the corporation – this is one of the key reasons the old communist countries did not survive.


If your company share some of the characteristics of an old communist country it might be a reason to start looking for healthier doctrines that enable employees and engage customers. 
You cannot run a 21st century company based on 20th century management principles.

05 May, 2015

The Fastest and Cheapest leadership step you will ever take.






Have you ever had a leader that had a completely different self-image to what others saw? Leaders like this are normally not very effective as they have no idea of the impact they have on others nor do they seek feedback to verify or try to change this impact. 

A key step in your personal leadership development is to get to know yourself - as in truly know yourself. This is not easy as you might not like what you see or not understand the impact you have on other people. This is however and important step and the foundation of personal growth.


“You cannot learn, what you think you know”

The best and simplest action for creating self-awareness is to ask the people you spend time with for feedback. This is also one of the foundations of the Johari Window.


"Simple does not mean easy."

The Johari Window

The two American psychologists, Joseph Luft and Harry Ingham developed a tool to help people create self-awareness. Although developed in the 50’s the Johari window is still a very effective tool for leaders and individuals to create self-awareness.





The top of the Johari window illustrates what is known to others can be divided into two areas: What you also know yourself and what others know you don’t know yourself. If you are willing to explore this area and create a frame of “Giving Feedback” you can gain some extremely valuable insight into how your attitudes, feelings and behaviours impact other people. You can then decide what change you want to make to yourself to create a different impact.


Creating a frame of “Feedback”

Normally we stay away from difficult conversations with people as we are concerned with the way it might create trouble for us later. We co create a conspiracy not to touch certain topics, that might create uncomfortable situation. We “hold the fort” or “we do not rock the boat”. The topics we are not willing to deal with stay in the room as huge elephants we pretend to ignore: We have created group think. 
To be able to benefit from feedback, it is first necessary to create a “Frame of feedback”, an environment where it is ok to speak the truth. Rather than just seek feedback yourself, you should do it as a workgroup or as a peer team, where everybody opens up.


1. Feedback as a concept

The first step is to have a conversation around feedback itself as a concept. The following sentences can help the conversation:
- People have the right intent but create the wrong impact. 
- Giving feedback is aimed at helping not criticising. 
- Robust relationships can handle feedback.
- Don’t make loyalty more important than the truth, then you have created a conspiracy
- If your friendship is not strong enough to handle the truth it is not a real friendship.
- Feedback is not true or false – it is an opinion
- Feedback gives clarity


2. The context and commitments

The second step is to discuss the context, common goal and commitments of the team that will open up for feedback. We live with each other not based on the feedback we give but on the commitments we make. The feedback will be given in support of the common commitment.


3. Rules of engagement

3rd step is to set the rules: What is acceptable, confidentiality, care and commitment. It is important to be deliberate of getting permission from everybody. Don’t create a room of criticism, create a room of support, honesty and camaraderie.


4. Rounds of feedback

4th step is do rounds where each participant receives feedback from colleagues, managers or employees as appropriate. It is important not to defend yourself against feedback – it is not about right or wrong, it is an opinion. We are not judging people; we are helping them understanding their impact

Do not respond to the feedback, just receive it and let it sink in – it could take weeks before you are ready to process it. You should thing of the person that gives feedback as somebody that cares about you enough to tell the truth. You have to be willing to interrogate your impact.


5. Use the feedback

Once you have had time to assimilate the feedback it is time to do the work. It is important to remember that it is not about right or wrong, it is about what impact you have on people. If you receive value from the exercise there are two more elements of the Johari window to go explore.

(This article is based on the wonderful work of Hendre D. Coetzee – may he soon write a book to enlighten us all.)

03 May, 2015

Why corporations love delegation and are scared of Empowerment



Not only does empowerment of employees take the load of the task away from managers, it also takes the load of the decision away, making the role of the manager much easier. The time the manager does not have to be in the operation, she can work on the operation – improving it.

Having more decision power closer to the customers and the employees create a more agile organisation that can respond to rapid or local changes without HQ being awake.
Decision power and responsibility is a powerful motivator that significantly increases Employee Engagement and through that increases customer engagement and financial results.

Most employees also tend to grow capabilities faster when trusted with decisions rather than being locked in a training room for mandatory compliance training. So how come many companies don’t really deploy empowerment?

So why don’t organisations embrace Empowerment?

Many organisations now see themselves as values based. This should in principle means less rules and higher ability for the individual contributor to have responsibility and decision power over what they do. Often in the same companies there are more rules than ever, often camouflaged as a need to meet governance, compliance or to lower corporate risk. Many of these rules are created to protect the organisation against potential actions of the individual employee - a strange concept indeed. 

Decisions are concentrated around a few select senior managers and delegation trickles down the organisation in a way that often is counterproductive to what individuals and departments are trying to achieve.
In these organisations it looks like control and hierarchy is more important than making the company great and able to create value. There are powerful forces that make it so, as senior management is always benefitting from status quo.

Their operating logic dictates that highly paid individuals knows best and needs to decide. While this might be true it completely disarms the organisation and lowers the engagement of the entire organisation. This can become a threat for the survival of the organisation. People without engagement stay and get their pay check but they are not motivated and do not contribute.

The direct manager

When divine decision does not create the intended greatness the spotlight is on the middle manager responsible for the implementation close to the employees. Creating an environment that punishes only increases the middle managers need for control and somebody to direct the blame to.

At the same time, it has become so popular to coach that managers call everything they do and have always done for coaching. Reality is that most managers are still coaching for compliance: Trying to manipulate the employee into what the corporation thinks is the right behaviour.

Delegation is a great tool if it is more important to stay in power than to create a great company and all stakeholders should analyse if their company has a delegating or an empowering culture. This is likely to determine their fate.
Seek companies with an Empowered Culture