Marissa Mayer

We recently asked members of the online CEO Discussion Group what they thought of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayers decision to ban working from home.  Thought you might be interested in some of the comments from your peer leaders.

“It is all about creating cultures for the new reality of business.” 

“Hire the best people, wherever and whoever they are and trust them to do what they need to accomplish.”

“I think most people miss the point. If you are worried about people being less productive at home, it isn’t a physical issue, it is a hiring and management issue. Maybe you don’t have the right people on board if this is a big issue. Maybe your managers don’t know how to manage a remote employee? Maybe the right processes aren’t in place to help this work for everyone…”

“It seems to me the company needs to be ALL virtual or ALL localized…”

“Our company of 20 people uses videoconferencing extensively to get things done efficiently while still maintaining good working relationships across the country and even across continents.”

“Come on we are human beings, if you don’t pull yourself out of home for the purpose of work, and have no supervision; you just don’t work as hard or as efficiently.”

Good idea or bad idea?  What are your thoughts?

The question was simple, albeit the answers more difficult. The question was, “Where is the Culture established from inside your organization, from the top down or from the bottom up?” Great question and one that received some equally great answers from the two “Bryan’s” on our panel (even though they are spelled differently), Brian Paulen, CEO of Madrona Solutions Group, Inc. and Bryan Mistele, CEO of Inrix. Listen to what they had to say about their views of culture and how it impacts the people inside their organizations.

If you have some additional questions for either Brian or Bryan, just let us know and we will ask them and give you their answers in the comments below. If you have another comment or question that was triggered as you listen to their answers, please share it with us in the comments below. You can also ask our other 100+ CEOs the same question by posting it on our LinkedIn Discussion Group as well. Thank you for contributing…

Starting out the breakfast John Hartman asked a table of leaders to share in one (or sometimes more) words what they thought it takes to be a great leader - we got some very interesting and sometimes unexpected responses.

Mary Jesse, Founder and CEO of Ivycorp  started by saying “To Care about your customers and employees deeply.” This is a key to their success and if you don’t care with true passion, they won’t follow and you can’t lead.

Bryan Mistele, President and CEO of INRIX, a mobile communications company, said, “Integrity…you have your network and your reputation – one you continually build and one you maintain.”

Mike Komola, President and CEO of HRnovations, simply said, “Humility” – I think he was living this and being humble.

Bill Swint, President of High 5 Sportswear, said he got a lot of his inspiration from Warren Bennis, well known author and consultant in the area of leadership. Bill said, “It’s the ability to make great decisions flying blind – applying knowledge and wisdom.”

Shelley Rotondo, Executive Director of Northwest Harvest, was called out by John since she is his wife – boy did he get lucky! She said, “A leader has to have a vision and a passion about whatever they are leading. They also have to have Integrity, good judgement, good communication skills, and the ability to execute – and of course, kicking down doors.”

What great wisdom in a nutshell from some very successful and accomplished leaders. No wonder their organizations are the leaders in their respective industries. Thank you everyone for sharing some of your quick insights to what makes a successful leader. Next up, some exciting comments and video of some of the other well-known leaders who shared their thoughts and insights…stay tuned!

Whether you are a Bill Gates fan or not, there are some interesting books on this reading list. We want to thank GeekWire for organizing these for us to share with you and if you would like to read their introduction to this list, you can find it here, “Inspired reading: Bill Gates list the top ten books of 2012 that made him think.” So here is his list of books:

1. The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence has Declined by Steven Pinker
2. Deng Xiaoping by Ezra Vogel
3. The Quest by Daniel Yergin
4. Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer
5. Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo
6. One Billion Hungry: Can We Feed the World? by Gordon Conway
7. A World-Class Education by Vivien Stewart
8. Academically Adrift by Richard Arum & Joshipa Roksa
9. This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly by Carmen Reinhart & Kenneth Rogoff
10. The City that Became Safe: New York’s Lessons for Urban Crime and Its Control by Franklin Zimring

They also came out with a list of books, “Bill Gates says you should read these 5 books in 2013.” Here is the list he came up with:

1. The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — but Some Don’t by Nate Silver
2. The Price of Inequality: How Today’s Divided Society Endangers Our Future by Joseph E. Stiglitz
3. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by Daron Acemoglu
4. The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry and Invention by William Rosen
5. Tap Dancing to Work by Carol J. Loomis

So I would be curious to hear from any of our CEO readers (and others) which of these books you have read or intend to read this coming year. Share your thoughts and your comments about the books so we can all decide whether they really are worth the time to buy and read. If anybody has read any of these, we will post it on our CEOtoCEO LinkedIn Discussion Group and see what everyone thinks in greater detail. Let us know…which ones have you read and what did you think…

Years ago when I first started doing “Strategic Planning” as part of my consulting role at Arthur Andersen, it was pretty straight forward and I feel for the most part executives were on the same page when you talked about Strategy. Today the lines have gotten fuzzier and less clear for many – primarily due to the “speed of business” that is happening to virtually every industry. So why the confusion?

There was a great article/post written in Stanford Social Innovation Review, called, “The Strategic Plan is Dead. Long Live Strategy.” I feel they did a good job of discussing the differences and sharing some compelling arguments around why companies should be thinking “Strategy” instead of a “Strategic Plan”. In the article, they had a great summary that helps put this in perspective, “Instead of the old approach of “making a plan and sticking to it,” which led to centralized strategic planning around fixed time horizons, we believe in “setting a direction and testing to it,” treating the whole organization as a team that is experimenting its way to success.”

The essence is that Strategy still rules and in fact may be even more important today than ever before. But what they want to emphasize, and I personally agree with 100%, is the flexibility that is required today and the ability to “adapt” your plan to the rapidly changing market and competitive conditions has never been more important that the world we live in right now. Maybe the name should be changed from “Strategic Plan” to “Adaptability Plan” to further emphasize the need for flexibility.

What do you think? Do you and your leadership team still generate the traditional 3 or 5 year strategic plan? Does it work for you and your organization? Share your thoughts either here or in our LinkedIn CEOtoCEO Discussion Group. We would love to get your thoughts on this very important area of planning.

Seth wrote a book a few years back, The Purple Cow, where he introduced this concept of “Being Remarkable.” Only it isn’t exactly what you think. It isn’t just being special, it is “having people ‘remark’ about your or talk about you.” This is what gets spread…

He also talked about being “very good” and being “very good” is actually just being average. You can be very good at what you do, perhaps the best, but if everyone else is doing the same thing, this isn’t really differentiating or sustainable. This concept is critical for companies and individuals who truly want to innovate and those that want to build of culture of innovation. In other words, how can you consider yourself to be an innovative company if you aren’t being talked about by others? But if you are innovative, you can also be remarkable, and this is what true differentiation is about.

But don’t just take our word for it, you can watch a short 5 minute video of Seth explaining this himself…definitely well worth 5 minutes of your time if you are a leader of anything!

So what did you think? After seeing Seth’s description of “Remarkable”, would you consider your company to be innovative to a point where people “remark about it? If so, please share it – we can all learn more by hearing your success stories. If not, why not? Share that too…

As part of our Innovation Team session last week participating CEOs collaborated on how to create value by simultaneously pursue differentiation and low costs.  We used the Four Actions Framework + Eliminate/Reduce/Raise/Create Grid.  Answer these four key questions to challenge your industry’s strategic logic and business model:

1.  Which of the factors that the industry takes for granted should be eliminated?

2.  Which factors should be reduced well below the industry’s standard?

3.  Which factors should be raised well above the industry’s standard?

4.  Which factors should be created that the industry has never offered?

One CEO in the group realized by reducing manpower with a new technology his company is now able to pursue a brand new customer base.  Another business owner realized they could eliminate a documentation report that required valuable time to produce.

Your answers to these questions will provide new insight on how you can differentiate your value proposition in a way that will benefit you and your customers.

What competitive forces have the greatest impact on your organizations profitability?

If you answered your direct competitors you might be right BUT you might be wrong. Competition for profits goes beyond established industry rivals to include four other competitive forces.

Doug Brown, CEO of All Star Directories, did an excellent job of describing how he is using the Porter Model as a tool to evaluate all five competitive forces to better measure the state of competitiveness  in his industry at the September CEOtoCEO Breakfast.

This is a useful planning tool for your business, because it helps you understand both the strength of your current competitive position, and the strength of a position you’re considering moving into.  Click here for to gain a better understanding of the Porter Model.  Click here to view an interview with Michael Porter discussing The Five Competitive Forces That Shape Strategy.

Anna Liotta

The existence of the multi-generational workforce poses unique challenges to today’s business leaders.

Being a member of the Baby Boomer generation (ages 50 to 68) I assumed there is a log jam of Generation Xers (ages 28 to 49) waiting in the wings to breakthrough the “gray ceiling” for their turn to lead – WRONG! At the July CEOtoCEO Breakfast speaker Anna Liotta shared that over the next 10 years the demand for leaders between the ages of 35 to 45 will increase by 25 percent while the supply of eligible and interested candidates will decrease by 15%.  Whats the leadership transition plan in your organization look like?

A lack of understanding regarding generational differences contributes to conflict within working relationships, lowers productivity, and increases turnover.

As a leader are you experiencing:

• Frustration about how to recruit and retain quality talent?
• New hires who resist corporate policies and procedures?
• Younger staff that think their managers are rigid and inflexible?
• Mid-level staff who prefer the status quo to climbing the ladder
• Senior staff frustrated by the lack of work ethic in the younger generation?

If these questions are familiar and you are looking for answers I suggest you connect with Anna Liotta, CEO of Resultance, for her expertise of the multi-generational workforce.  Earlier this year she wrote a book, Unlocking Generational Codes, that is a great handbook for understanding what makes the generations tick and what ticks them off.

One of our Innovation Team members, Rick Smith, CEO of EJ Bartells in Renton, WA co-authors a blog on innovation called “Simplivative” – which is a fun new word they created which is all about “Finding simple ideas from Innovative Solutions.” Rick just posted on his blog a great story, “Are your ‘Incentives’ stopping your ability to Innovate?“, with some links to some great research by both Fast Company and PricewaterhouseCoopers in 2011. Definitely worth reading if you are trying to be a more innovative leader or want your company to be more innovative.

The intriguing part of his message is around the “culture of innovation.” This is probably the most difficult aspect of innovating inside any company.  If you think about what “innovation” really means it translates more to “execution” that coming up with the next great idea.  Everyone has great ideas and suggestions – but it is the process of making these a reality, executing on the great idea, that allows the idea to become new innovation. Innovating a great idea, product or service or simply an improvement, simply means taking this and putting it into action inside your organization.  If it never becomes actionable, it can’t help the organization be more innovative.

To this point, Rick points out a truly interesting observation from the study and survey by FastCompany and PWC.  The key point was that most management teams have the incentive to make their numbers, be as efficient as possible and create as little change as possible – just make or exceed their numbers.  They are actually incented AGAINST INNOVATION because this would mean trying out new ideas and probably failing on a number of fronts – this is not what they are measured on or paid on. So if this is prevalent in an organization, how are managers supposed to innovate at the same time? They don’t. Until this method of measuring and incentivizing management changes, innovation won’t occur!

Thanks Rick for sharing this insight and for capturing for many the dam that is keeping the river of innovation from flowing inside many organizations.  This is certainly a topic we will be attacking head on in our Innovation Teams as well because without a doubt, it is a “show stopper”…