Brian Grey Blog

Sorry to be repeating myself with the emphasis on “People”.  But I feel compelled because over the weekend I ran across two pieces from a couple of my favorite old media friends — The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times — that highlight again the art versus science aspect of how important the “people aspect” is to the success of any organization.

First up is the Sunday NY Times article “Secrets of the Talent Scouts” by George Anders, highlighting the short list of ways professions ranging from venture capitalists to country music A/R guys go about making their bets on what they hope will be their next hits.  One general theme highlighted in Anders’ piece is the focus on putting your money on young, passionate people.  I agree on this one, especially if we are talking true early stage investing or finding the next sports, music or acting star.  When was the last time you saw a 50-year old starting a semantic Web search start-up or launching a music career?

Now, in the spirit of full disclosure, I have met with George.  In fact, we chatted just a few weeks ago about the angle of talent scouting in the context of sports scouting — specifically baseball scouting, something I did on a part-time basis for a couple seasons in the mid 90′s for the Chicago White Sox.  It’s too bad George didn’t track down a sports scout for the story — it would have added another valuable dimension to a fascinating, yet amorphous topic.

From my perspective, evaluating talent is largely about pattern recognition.  As with sports, the more repetitions you get, the better you get.  There is predictive power in being able to say “this guy reminds me of that other guy from 10 years ago who flamed out in AAA” or “this team reminds me of those other guys who zigged and zagged before they locked in on their idea that they sold to Cisco for $500 million.”

Yet unlike sports, even with a long history of pattern recognition, you can still fall prey to false positives and false negatives.  Cleary the former can be quite costly which is perhaps why the story didn’t talk too much about such examples.

Another story that I found interesting this weekend was the WSJ’s piece about evaluating the value of college basketball coaches, Matthew Futterman’s “College Basketball’s Bargains and Busts”.  What’s great about this story is the very simple calculation that Futterman does to rank college coaches — at least the guys who make at least $1 million a year in salary.

By dividing each coach’s annual salary by their average Ratings Percentage Index (or RPI, the stat that measures a team’s winning percentage against the difficulty of it’s schedule), The Journal arrives at a simple number that basically calculates what a school pays in dollars for each RPI point.  There you have it — a quick way to figure out is it worth keeping your coach or not!

Now, to be fair, this doesn’t take in to account other factors such as NCAA Tournament performance (e.g. Billy Donovan ranks pretty low on the list, but he has won a couple NCAA Tourney’s in the past 5 years) or how much revenue the coach’s program generates via gate receipts, merchandise and TV revenue (e.g. how many times a year does CBS put Jim Calhoun’s Connecticut Huskies on national television?).

But think for a minute how an approach like this could be applied to CEOs given today’s economic maladies.  What if The Journal published a similar list of S&P 500 CEOs that tabulated their total compensation divided by the company’s EBITDA.  From this simple ratio we could get a snapshot of how much a company is paying their CEO for each dollar of profit.  Sounds simple, eloquent and down right unveiling doesn’t it?  Maybe that’s why the Journal hasn’t done it?

I would love to see companies in today’s environment talk more about “pay for performance” in a credible way.  Maybe a simple calculation a la what The WSJ has done to rank college basketball coaches doesn’t quite cut it, but something along these lines would be a welcome change to the divergent path between these two numbers that we see all to much these days.

The obvious topic to write about tonight is the fact Hulu has requested that Boxee.tv pull down Hulu content. I don’t think I have much to add at this point beyond the obvious, so let me offer up some lighter fare.

How about the snippet in today’s Wall Street Journal highlighting some of the special executive MBA courses designed to help managers lead their teams through stormy economic waters.

Start with the premise of these classes for managers: Take a class for a week and learn new tricks of the management trade.

Here are some of my favorite soundbites (uh, I guess wordbites) from The Journal’s story:

Best Profit Margin – MIT’s “Implementing Radical Innovation”, one week for $8,800. I assume that’s just a 5-day work week, not a 7-day week that includes some weekend sightseeing around Boston and a few spa treatments. Better hope that the afternoon cookie platter kicks butt!

Best “No Duh!” Quote – From Rory Simpson of the London Business School, who in talking about LBS’s course “Navigating Through the Downturn” says: “The market meltdown focuses people’s minds a little bit.”

Really? Imagine that. Sounds like Rory snagged this quote from his cousin Homer. At least Rory’s course is only $4,200 for a week of ground breaking insights.

Best Example of Questionable Value — Well, all the courses could arguably win this award, but Cal Berkeley’s Haas School takes the prize.

You see, this course is designed “to help executives figure out personal leadership strategies in what school leaders call a never-before-seen situation.” Wait a minute! If this is a “never-before-seen situation”, are the instructors gonna just be making stuff up? It’s not like they’ll be citing any specific case studies or historical precedent.

As confirmed by Haas’s assistant dean Whitney Hischier: “It’s an unprecedented environment — there’s not history that you can repeat.” Well, probably not, but then again, somebody once said (paraphrasing) that those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.

So I guess if a manager/leader is gonna shell out $5-10K and be out of the office for a week supposedly to learn how to navigate in a never-before-seen environment, the least he or she can do is to pay attention to what is really happening to their company today so that they don’t repeat the same mistakes in the future.

Might I suggest that a manager could best accomplish this lesson from the office for free?

Today I had one of those near misses in life.  My wife and the girls had headed to the North Bay for the afternoon.  A rare non-workday window opened up where I could actually try to get caught up on a thousand things like email, reviewing some pitches that made their way to my inbox last week, reading the latest book I just started…you get the idea.

So how did I experience a near miss?  Well, you see, in the digital world that we live in today, all it takes is one project — or related project — to suck you down that death spiral that I like to call “technorati hell”.  Let me stop here before I go any further to clarify that “technorati hell” has nothing to do with the fine site at http://technorati.com that my friend Rich Jalichandra runs.

What I am referring to when I say technorati hell is that experience we’ve all had where you proudly begin to dig in to your to-do list on a rainy weekend (or in this case national holiday) day, only to end up spending every second on one damn bullet on that to-do list.  Worse, often times that single bullet ends up haunting you well in to the evening after you have slept walk your way through reading to your kids and tucking them in for the night.

For me the challenge of getting Boxee.tv’s alpha to show up on my Panasonic plasma television could have very easily paved my own road to technorati hell.  The day started simply enough — an early morning workout, running a couple of errands with my younger daughter that included a tasty lunch and taking her to a place where she could dart around on her Razor scooter without me be worried that she would get hit by a car.  We fathers are such worry warts.

Back home with my very first HDMI-DVI cable and some other crazy looking cable from the Apple Store that I was informed would deal with the audio since the aforementioned cable only dealt with the video, I launched in to the project.  Getting up and running with Boxee on my MacBook Pro was no problem — though the software did lock up a couple times on me, requiring my favorite of all MacBook Pro moves:  the “forced quit” maneuver.  Boxee is after all in alpha.

Next it was on to the major initiative, trying to take the Boxee experience and get it on to my Panasonic TH-42PD50U television.  (Okay, right there you know I spent too much time on this project given that I can rattle off the exact model number of my TV set!).  Now I’m not going to bore you with all the machinations I went through to get the MacBook to pump Boxee’s video and audio up to the Panasonic, that’s not the point here.  In fact, the point isn’t even the fact that I got it to work — but let me just say, I GOT IT TO WORK!  Maybe I should take a weekend shift with the Geek Squad or hang out with the A-V superstars over at Magnolia Hi-Fi?

No, the point here is that I had come to peace with the fact that I wasn’t going to let this project consume me.  Wasn’t going to let it drag me in to an “all nighter” like so many other tech projects have in the past (yah, I’m talking to you Mr. First Time I Tried to Install WordPress.org Software Up to My Own Web Host).  I had made it clear in my mind that I would only spend a specified amount of time on this project — and if I hadn’t conquered it, well I would do what every good American does:  just quit!  Joking!  I am joking — I would of course come back to the project at a later date, after I had had a chance to ask some experts, you know, people that have a clue when it comes to piecing together the magic that is the intersection of software, hardware and the “Interwebs”.

There you have it kids.  Progress and growth.  Let this be a lesson to you all.  If you are going to walk around with a list of things that need to get prioritized and done, get good at partitioning the time you spend on any one project.  Don’t let one single project pull you down to the depths of technorati hell.  Hey, didn’t we all learn this lesson back when we were studying for the SATs?  You remember, don’t get stuck on one problem, skip it and come back to it later?

Well, now’s a good time to bring that favorite back out of the closet.

Today I relearned an important lesson — and I relearned it in a Kindergarten class.

You see, today was the day I had volunteered to do the “cooking lesson” in my younger daughter’s Kindergarten classroom.  Me versus 22 five and six-year olds.  With knives no less!

I had given a lot of thought to what I would prepare — something elaborate, maybe chicken fajitas or a Dutch apple pie?  Actually, I thought Baked Alaska would be great, combining cooking with a geography lesson, but I realized that the combo of alcohol and fire wouldn’t play well (at least in the absence of signed parental release forms).

So after running through a bunch of ideas, I settled on fruit salad.  Why fruit salad?  Well, to be honest, because it was simple.

Five different fruits being cut up by five kids at a time — with each kid also peeling a tangerine.  Throw it all in a big bowl, mix it up and serve it with some cool whip on top.  Mmmmm….good!   The kids loved it, there was no need for a stove or oven and each child made it out of the room without cutting off a finger!

At the end of the hour, my daughter’s teacher marveled at how organized and easy the “cooking class” went — and the fact that not only did we do all the prep but the kids actually got to eat the fixings with time to spare.

So what did I “relearn” in making fruit salad for a class of Kindergarten kids?  I relearned this:

Businesses should think about trying to make fruit salad more often instead of complicated dishes — or worse yet, instead of trying to make a five course meal.  Just keep it simple.

Here’s my short list of how to keep managing your business simple — I’ve augmented a bit from a post I ran across at SuccessFactors.com:

• Clearly define the goals of the business — what does success look like?

• Lay out the strategy that creates a straight line to those goals.

• Make sure the goals and strategy are communicated throughout your business — can everyone in the company play back to the CEO what these are?

• Keep score constantly — measure people performance against goals.

• Continually reward performance — create a culture based on performance.

• Rinse and repeat.

Thanks to a room of Kindergarteners, I think fruit salad may be my new favorite food!

A couple weeks ago I ran across a picture of Steelers coach Mike Tomlin from a press conference.  His no-smile countenance, close cropped hair, piercing eyes…man he reminded me of someone.  But I just couldn’t place him.  Then it hit me!

Mike Tomlin and Chef from South Park…are they related!  Did the South Park creators use Coach Tomlin as their inspiration in creating Chef?  Check it out:

The potential connection between Tomlin and Chef made me more curious about the Steelers head coach.  What is it about the guy who in his second season could guide one of the most decorated NFL franchises to the Super Bowl?

To be fair, I don’t really know much about Tomlin.  I’ve seen a few interviews and post-game press conferences — most of what I’ve picked up are in those soundbites.  In fact all I’ve read about the guy is what was printed in Friday’s USA Today.  So what is it that makes me like a guy who coaches for a team that I don’t care about (afterall, I am still a Raiders fan despite the fact that they have fallen off the face of the NFL earth), other than the fact he resembles the coolest animated character in the history of cartoons?

Quite simply it’s the fact that as far as I can tell his no BS approach is legit and that his players have bought in to how he goes about pus.  The USA Today piece actually highlights a few of Tomlin’s favorite quotes, the ones he uses over and over to keep his team focused on winning it all:

“Iron sharpens iron” — pretty self explanatory on this one — I would suggest that the application for everyday life is pretty clear.  Challenge yourself everyday.

“More grounded, more humble, more selfless makes us more opportunistic” — this one captures the essence of “team” and getting more people to think this way in their day-to-day pursuits would be a real good thing.

“The time’s coming when we’re going to have to ante up and kick in like men” — sure he pulled this one from a movie (“Glory” starring Denzel Washington), but it hits the beat of accountability and ownership.  Again, pretty important concept these days.

“I’ll tolerate you until I can replace you” — A little too “NFL harsh” this one, but it does cut pretty sharply to the point of how important it is to be optimizing your talent at all times.  That said, you may want to find a more HR friendly way to convey this one to your team!

Now, if all you did was focus on these quotes in the Tomlin story, you’d easily overlook a couple of his own quotes that really capture why the guy has the impact he does on his team:

“People aren’t very good listeners by nature…Part of being a good communicator is recognizing and understanding that and trying to make the complex simple.” Amen!  It’s super easy in today’s world to get lost in data, information overload and the like.  Finding a simple way to consistently deliver a message is a valuable skill for leaders.

“I’m not interested in evaluating my performance, and particularly I’m not interested in my players’ evaluations of my performance…I’m paid to evaluate them.” Again, a little “NFL harsh” here, but the essence is there.  You can’t get caught up in what people think of you as a manager — you have to stay focused on managing your talent and team in the way that you believe gives you the best chance to achieve your ultimate business goals.

“Every morning when I come to work…I walk past five Lombardis, not five rushing titles.” This is my favorite of his quotes.  The only trophy that matters is the one that measures what the team achieves…not the ones that measure what individual players achieve.

So yes, I am a Mike Tomlin fan.  My pick Sunday is Steelers 20, Cardinals 17.  Now I have to get back to researching this connection he has to Chef?

So, what’s a safe prediction from the business book publishing world over the next couple of years?  How about the fact that there will undoubtedly be several (say half a dozen, a dozen…maybe more?) books that breakdown the “Search Wars” between Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft along with some of the bit players like GoTo.com (Overture), AOL and others tossed in for the sake of telling the story from as many angles as possible.

Friday’s WSJ article by Robert A. Guth summarizes a few of Microsoft’s missteps (ah, the beauty of hindsight) in the battle to own what is now a $12 billion advertising market.  The article is an entertaining read and and for folks who haven’t followed this story over the past decade, the piece flashes three interesting lessons for managers:

Lesson 1 — Patience is a virtue

As Steve Ballmer is quoted in the piece:  “The biggest mistakes I claim I’ve been involved with is where I was impatient – because we didn’t have a business yet in something, we should have stayed patient.”  Again, nobody ever has a crystal ball and sure, Google’s only business was trying to figure out how to make money on search while Microsoft was trying to protect huge businesses that needed engineering talent more than a $1 million paid search business.

Let’s face it, that’s a good excuse for Microsoft crashing the search party late, but what’s the lesson?.  The lesson here is for the big guys — keep your eyes out for little businesses that are growing fast and organically.  Figure out how to shelter them internally and don’t use the “well, it might canibalize our core business” excuse.  Cannibalizing your core business is actually a good thing (so long as you are replacing it with a potentially bigger business!).

Lesson 2 — No decision is ever really set in stone

Later in the story there’s a snippet describing how Ballmer supposedly refused to revive the search-ad business within MSN becuase it would mean reversing a decision made by managers “at least three levels below him.”  To be fair, Ballmer refused to comment on this piece of the story, so not clear if this is what he really said to the MSFT employee who implored him to rethink the decision.

But for sake a “lesson”, let’s say he did.  Well, the lesson from my perspective is pretty simple:  the folks at the top have to have the gumption (that’s a nice way to say it) to change decisions that they don’t feel are right.  I know that when a manager is new in a role that sometimes they are compelled to not change decisions for fear that it will demoralize their staff.  That’s a short term mindset.  In the long run your team will be committed to a leader who is willing to change a decision if they feel it is in the best interests of the business in the long-term.

Lesson 3 — When playing from behind, “build” is rarely the right answer

Ok, this may be a bit obvious, but the part of the search story that involves Yahoo!’s acquisition of Overture in 2003 stands out like a sore thumb.  As the article recounts, a core team within Microsoft recommended that the company acquire Overture as a way to speed time to market in the paid search business when it was clear that Google was on the fast track.  Here we see classic big company – particularly classic big tech company – reaction.

Perhaps the easiest way to think about this lesson is to ask for the top 3 examples of a company trying to come from behind to catch a fast growing leader in a fast growing market who did so by doing it in a “build” approach versus a “buy” approach?  How about naming one example?

Small companies have a singular focus:  to do one thing better and before anyone else.  The big guy is tied to a core business and hitting the quarter.  Unless a big company figures out a way to be patient (re-read Lesson #1) and to really invest in new lines of business, they’re better off buying their way in than trying to build from behind.

I took a detour off the typical Silicon Valley meeting circuit today and hopped over to the East Bay to have lunch with Billy Beane, GM of the Oakland A’s. 

First, let me say that the Oakland Airport Hilton does a pretty darn good New England clam chowder (if you like the creamy variety), and the halibut special was pretty good too.

But I digress.

Any sports fan knows Billy Beane — thanks partly to the success the A’s have enjoyed over the past decade, and in large part to the book “Money Ball” by Michael Lewis.  Having played, coached and even done a bit of scouting, Billy’s efforts with the A’s are particularly of interest to me.

What I found most interesting in meeting with Billy today was how curious and smart he is.  He had a lot of interesting questions about what life is like these days with venture backed start ups and investing, and we talked about several topics out of the realm of baseball and sports.

I think this is a characteristic that you find in people who are at the top of their given profession — the fact that they have keen interest in other topics and can engage in conversation outside their domain expertise.  It seems to compute that being able to stretch your brain around other areas helps develop creativity and new perspectives that you can bring to your “day job”.

Perhaps this is a lesson for all.  Being a leader in your field and having a diverse set of interests and knowledge may not be mutually exclusive.  In fact, they may very well be complementary?

Thanks for the time — and the lunch — Billy.

Just read Daniel Henninger’s piece “Top 2009 Resolution: Don’t Be Stupid” in today’s Wall Street Journal. I can’t really argue with this as a resolution (though, if you scroll down you’ll see that not being stupid will have to be my #2 resolution), however what Henninger is calling for just may not be genetically possible for some folks?

Henninger’s main point is that the Web, Internet, etc. caused stupidity amongst our financial industry workforce by creating a nation of info overloaded, attention deficit disordered workers. Financial types “clicking” from Web link to Web link and from email, text or Twitter message to email, text or Twitter message, lost their abilities to really focus or “go deep” analytically on what was happening in fanancial markets, which ultimately resulted in a massive financial bubble and 2008′s collapse.

While all of this may be true, I would suggest that Henninger’s point is actually more far reaching than just financial markets. Are we becoming a nation of attention deficit disordered workers – constantly ping-ponging from websites to messages all day long?

Perhaps. And even if this is a little bit the case, how do we get back to the good old days of sound analysis, due dilligence, planning and execution?

Might I suggest a “2 Channel” approach. One channel of information for the stuff that is time sensitive and urgent – like when my wife texts me asking if I can pick up a People magazine on the way home from work (ok, I use the term urgent a bit loosely here). This channel would always be “on” and would be responded to in real (or near real) time. People would use SMS and “@name” on Twitter for this channel of communication.

The second channel is the non-urgent channel. This is where email would serve it’s purpose. And then we could have national email reading hours – say one in the morning and one in the afternoon, which would be plenty since none of these email messages would be time sensitive.

Imagine how much time then you’d have in a “2 Channel” world like this. You’d actually be able to review a proposal in depth, conduct a strategy session with a group of colleagues or even do an employee interview that lasted more than 10 minutes.

Imagine working like this? A little bit of less is more, but the less would certainly be more valuable.

(Note: This post written on my iPhone WordPress app – so no linking or images available for your reading pleasure.)

For those who don’t get the chance to read the Sunday New York Times, allow me to react to a few pieces from the two sections I read cover-to-cover today: Business and Sports.

First, the Business section:

Janet Rae-Dupree’s “Innovation Should Mean More Jobs, Not Less”, highlights yet again how our national investment strategy is missing the mark. Why are we channeling so much money and mindshare towards failing financial institutions and industries as opposed to fostering growth through “innovation” spurred by investment in new, transformative technologies?

I made this comment in an earlier post in reaction to the auto industry bailout, but 5 or 10 years from now what will pay bigger dividends, giving GM a loan or giving an equal financial stimulus to spur IT investments? Don’t think you need an economics degree to answer this question, just a little history education and some intuition.

Robert Frank’s “Should Congress Limit Executive Pay?” opens a door to an interesting proposition. Frank argues that current anger — stirred up by bailouts and the recession — pointed at executives who earn way more than their employees (in relative terms) is not reason enough to legislate caps on exec pay.

Frank compares CEOs to high paid sports free agents and then matter of factly states: “And the market-determined salary of a job generally offers the best — if imperfect — measure of its importance.”

Ok, notwithstanding the double caveat of “generally” and “imperfect”, let’s really test what is “important”. How about we privatize education and health care, and let star teachers and doctors get paid based on how important society would really value them compared to a pro athlete or bank CEO.

And from the Sports section:

Thayer Evans and Pete Thamel cover an increasingly important topic in “Barely Teenagers, Already Groomed for Stardom”. The piece about a select football academy for seventh and eighth grade football players highlights (whether we like it or not) that we live in a “star struck” society. We want to prop up the shiniest stars – partly for aspirational reasons and partly to then gobble up tabloid stories when the star gets tarnished and dinged up.

I don’t actually have an issue with this football academy. Kids finding something they want to passionately pursue is great. Within the right context this is no different than a kid practicing piano for hours or becoming a voracious student of science.

Where the context breaks down is when parents, college coaches and corporate sponsors get involved.

Here are some suggestions:

1. Make the kids submit their applications 100% on their own, no parental guidance – and having a meaningful academic filter would send a positive message early for these young athletes.

2. Only let high school coaches be involved – no college coach involvment and no rabid youth coaches or dads allowed on the field.

3. And make the kids buy their own shoes and gear – and drink tap water from unbranded coolers! If sponsors want to be involved they can contribute to a scholarship fund for college football players below the Division-I level.

A lot of good can come from a young athlete pursuing a dream at an early age, so long as it’s all pursued in the right context.

Finally, after having the book sit on my shelf for years I got around to reading “First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently” over the holiday break.  For anyone who is either a manager, or being managed by a manager, I’d highly recommend reading the book.

In the event, however, that you don’t heed my advice, here are a couple key points worth thinking about as a manager.

First, take the time to really get to know your people — starting with your direct reports, but also take the time to get to know as many people on your team as possible. And by “get to know”, this means taking the time to understand the true talents of the individuals on your team. As the book points out, and I firmly believe, everyone is wired with distinct and different talents (which are different from their skills and knowledge).

This is a truism I learn a little more each year I manage. In the past, as much as I would have liked to “change” somebody or get them “trained” to improve in a certain area, the reality is that people through both nature and nurture come to the party prepared to excel in certain areas and struggle in others.

Understanding that talent is somewhat hard-wired in people leads to the second key take away.  That is focus on enriching key talents inherent in the people you manage and make sure they are put in roles that are the best fit for those talents. Don’t waste your time trying to “round out” your people trying to make everyone the same type of player across the board. That’s just not realistic. Instead, embrace the different talents and spend your time putting your “players” in the right positions on the field (to steal a bit of sports metaphor).

And finally, the glue that connects all of this for managers is making sure to be clear on defining the right outcomes for your people. Again, these outcomes or goals may be different for each person on your team — based on their role, function and talents — but ultimately all of the individual outcomes point toward a single set of goals for the business.

At this point it’s important to note here that once you’ve laid out the goals for your team members, your job as a manager is to do everything you can to clear a path that allows them to utilize their unique talents to achieve these goals.  This last piece is typically most challenging for managers who feel that they need to control the methods or process by which their people achieve the defined outcomes.

My advice here is simple. If you aren’t comfortable with the notion that you pick the team, put the players in the right positions, layout the goals for the team and each player, and then let your players “play” to the best of their abilities, then you will find managing an almost impossible endeavor.