How B2B companies talk past their customers

 

 

 

New research shows there’s a surprising gap between the brand messages that suppliers offer to customers and what their customers really want to know.

October 2013 | byTjark Freundt, Philipp Hillenbrand, and Sascha Lehmann

Although the digital-marketing revolution’s clearest ramifications and earliest impact may have come in the consumer arena, it’s also roiling the world of business-to-business (B2B) brand building. Business customers, like consumers, engage with companies through search, online communities, and Web-based video, so these are potentially powerful tools for delivering B2B brand messages and amplifying their impact. Our research suggests a potential stumbling block, though: a marked apparent divergence between the core messages companies communicate about their brands and the characteristics their customers value most.

In our research, we examined publicly available documents of Fortune 500 and DAX 30 companies to develop a list of 13 themes and topic areas that companies use to position their brands. These were broad ranging, from the extremely practical (low prices) to the more elevated (corporate social responsibility). We then selected the top 90 global B2B companies by market capitalization across six surveyed sectors.¹ 1.The selected companies were publicly traded, with dominant share deriving from B2B activities. These 90 companies (by 2012 market cap) compete in six sectors: banking and insurance; machines and components; utility services; IT-related products and services; chemicals, commodities, and basic materials; and telecommunications products and services. The survey questionnaire also included a seventh sector, logistics services, which had to be excluded from this analysis as a result of insufficient answers for brand-strength ratings. We reviewed the public documents of the companies to verify how many of their brand messages were clearly linked to the 13 themes that emerged from the broader sample (3 of them didn’t appear among the 90 companies). Then we assessed the degree to which the companies aligned their brand messages with the remaining 10 themes.

To discover how customers viewed these same themes, we surveyed more than 700 global executives² 2.Executives chosen for the survey, conducted in mid-2012, had a substantial influence on the choice of their companies’ suppliers. across the six sectors, asking how important each theme was to the way they evaluated the brand strengths of their primary and secondary suppliers. We used multiple regression analysis to determine the extent to which a theme influenced the correlation.

The results were revealing (exhibit). Themes such as social responsibility, sustainability, and global reach, which many B2B companies cast in a leading role for brand imaging, appeared to have a minimal influence on buyers’ perceptions of brand strength. The inverse was true, as well: two of the most important themes for customer perceptions of brand strength—effective supplychain management and specialist market knowledge—were among those least mentioned by B2B suppliers. Honest and open dialogue, which customers considered most important, was one of the three themes not emphasized at all by the 90 companies in our sample. In addition to these disconnects, our analysis showed a surprising similarity among the brand themes that leading B2B companies emphasized, suggesting a tendency to follow the herd rather than create strongly differentiated brand messages.³

3.In additional research, we found that companies with brands that survey respondents considered strong often had higher EBIT (earnings before interest and taxes) margins than those with weaker brands. Here are three questions whose answers may point to opportunities for improvement.

Exhibit

The themes that many B2B companies consider important for brand imaging appear to have minimal influence on buyers’ perceptions of brand strength.

 

Are you telling the same story as your competitors?

Given the prevalence of similar messages, this is an important checkpoint for many companies. For example, if both you and your rivals claim that your (and their) products derive from renewable sources, this probably won’t move the needle when customers consider your brand. Contrast that with IBM’s Smarter Planet branding effort, which tells a story emphasizing the company’s special capabilities in the digital economy and guides not just external communications but also product development and other forms of employee engagement.

Does your sales force say it is facing headwinds?

Even in the digital era, our surveys show that personal interactions with sales reps remain the most influential factor—across touch points—for B2B customers.⁴ 4.Face-to-face and phone contact with sales representatives ranked highest among B2B customers considering, evaluating, and purchasing products, as well as in product-loyalty decisions. This was true across all industries and regions in our sample. That makes salespeople a great source of information about the degree to which customers see your products as differentiated or worth a premium. Have an honest dialogue with your sales staff. If you hear about consistent pushback on pricing or an inability to articulate a compelling argument for the value of your products, you’ve got a problem. It could be your product or service, of course. But it also may involve disconnects between what your customers value and the messages you send them in your broader (digital and more traditional) marketing activities. Use your sales force to inform these strategies. Leading companies make extensive use of frontline interaction and market research to stay in tune with customer needs and perceptions. For example, Hilti, a maker of professional construction tools, has its salespeople do double duty as distributors and hands-on market researchers at customer construction sites.

Do you deliver your brand in a consistent way?

Especially at a time when opportunities to deliver brand messages are proliferating as never before, consistency is crucial. If anything, today’s increasingly fragmented environment calls for a more disciplined communication of values and messages across a wider range of channels, including some quite traditional ones, for a longer period of time. DHL’s rebranding effort after its acquisition by Deutsche Post is one example. More than a hundred planes, tens of thousands of trucks, and countless uniforms were repainted or replaced to boost brand visibility. Internal company-wide training was designed to turn employees into brand ambassadors, and a set of binding rules for corporate identity and design govern all campaigns and materials.
Don’t mistake consistency for inertia, though: changes in the market environment should influence brand-messaging priorities. To stay abreast of market shifts, American Express, for example, created Open Forum, a virtual platform that helps small-business owners connect with the company and with one another. Amex acts as an adviser, helping its small- and midsize enterprise customers understand the constant variations in the retail marketplace—and learning, in the process, how it can best differentiate its own offerings. Consistently gathering information such as this and evolving in response are valuable ways of closing any gaps that may be opening up between your brand messaging and your customers’ needs.

 

World Cup, Olympics and royal baby could = supply chain strain

What do the World Cup and the Royal Baby have in common? Supply chain disruption, according to one industry insider, who says that while experts predicted that the birth of the royal baby this year would kick-start a two month retail boom for UK companies, such events can also cause significant strain across international supply chains

 

Written by Denise Oakley, international marketing manager at GXS, an award winning, international B2B e-commerce and integration services company.

Major events such as the Olympics, the World Cup or even the birth of a royal baby capture attention around the globe. These positive world events can result in a tremendous boost for local economies as well as the wider global economy. Companies begin to plan months or even years ahead to ensure that they are prepared. There is one area that businesses often forget though - their supply chain.
An inevitable side effect of increased, changing demand is the impact it has in the supply chain. Most companies do try to prepare for changing demand, but few think carefully enough about the impact of a serious disruption, particularly in the extended supply chain, in areas that are outside their control.

Many companies believe that there is nothing that they can do beyond managing their end-to-end supply chain as best they can. The reality is that most supply chains will experience disruption from time to time, sometimes for reasons that could have been anticipated, but often such disruptions are totally unexpected and a failure to plan can have serious consequences. Many supply chains and transport networks are more global than we realise, forming the backbone of a global economy, fuelling trade, consumption and economic growth. When supply chains get disrupted there can be major repercussions for individual companies as well as the global economy.

When world events capture the attention, the focus is naturally on those events themselves. But in order to adequately prepare for major events, whether something on the scale of the Olympics, or something smaller, more local but still major for an individual company, a shift is needed from reactive to proactive supply chain risk assessment and management. Even planned for events have unexpected consequences, some good, some not so good. That’s the nature of the supply chain, but with the increasingly global supply chain, unexpected events may have an impact even if a company isn’t aren’t directly involved.

The list of such impacts becomes longer every year; some of the obvious ones include extreme weather or changing weather patterns, social unrest, changing CSR requirements, new legislation, supplier failures, and inflation plus ever changing consumer demand. When an event impacts just one part of a supply chain, there can be unforeseen, unintended consequences and the effect can be felt much more widely than anticipated.

Companies need to take control and create their own plans, thinking through all of the possible disruptions and how they would continue to run their business as a result.  With luck, they will never need to face any of these problems, but they need to be prepared regardless.  However, there are ways to make this less painful than it seems.

Firstly, this is a subject that many are now looking at - supply chain resilience was on the agenda of the World Economic Forum meeting this year and should also be on every CEO’s agenda.  As global economies start to recover from an economic downturn, they need to ensure that they have supply chain recovery plans in place.

There is growing concern around cyber risk, rising insurance and trade finance costs, which is leading supply chain experts to explore new mitigation options. Recent research by Accenture indicates that more than 80 per cent of companies are now concerned about supply chain resilience. Risk management needs to be an explicit, integral part of supply chain governance. Companies should consider taking the following steps:
          Implementing a multi-stakeholder supply chain risk assessment process.
          Introducing a more adaptable, agile supply chain strategy to improve resilience throughout
          their extended supply chain.
          Outsource (or have ability to move w/o notice) critical elements of your B2B integration
process.

 Look to a provider with a global platform and capability for help here.

Supply chain directors need to turn detective and thoroughly investigate their IT infrastructures as well as their operational management.  Implementing changes here can provide significant gains in resilience via improved analytics, data and information sharing and pre-programmed responses. One suggestion here is that the corner stone of IT based resilience is usually data and information sharing.
Business continuity is usually enabled through access to real time data followed by rapid dissemination of data driven supply chain fixes, but information sharing infrastructures depend on a resilient core network and appropriate communication tools.

 These in turn require an IT infrastructure that is flexible, scalable, secure and re-routable if they are to minimise disruptions across supply chains. Cloud based B2B integration solutions can provide a key ‘cornerstone’ towards developing a highly resilient end to end supply chain and this is certainly an approach adopted by many Japanese multinationals in the last couple of years.

However, it’s one thing being able to deploy B2B tools to help with increased resilience, but when disruption strikes in a supply chain there is a need for a co-ordinated approach. Professional networking web sites such as LinkedIn or Xing have noted the emergence and rise of the business continuity manager. This person becomes the go-to employee during a period of disruption, and is responsible for steering a company through a period of supply chain disruption. Sometimes referred to as the ‘Masters of Disaster’, these people are responsible for making today’s supply chains operate efficiently and seamlessly.

But they will only be successful if they have the tools to reach their community and a flexible, re-routable IT platform available. The ability to proactively monitor supply chains during planned and unplanned events has become a key competitive weapon that companies are increasingly becoming aware of. In the same way that a conductor controls an orchestra, the Master of Disaster needs B2B resources to take appropriate actions before major disruption impacts the business.

This is where some of the newer hosted services can facilitate better, faster and easier B2B collaboration between a company’s employees and individuals in the different organisations with which they do business. The ability to centralise and warehouse critical information is essential, and hosted information on your customers, suppliers, logistics providers and financial institutions can ensure that businesses retain access when it’s most needed. Collaboration tools are now available that provide the necessary information to remain in control, with up-to-date partner information to reduce those supply chain risks, enabling informed decision-making, and averting business disruption. Data that’s held can also include details related to e-commerce readiness, regulatory compliance, consumer product safety, and environmental responsibility.

Sometimes companies get plenty of warning of likely supply chain disruption, as with the Olympics and the World Cup, and (some) notice for the birth of a royal baby. But in many other situations there is little or no warning, and either way disruption needs to be planned for. In order to build increased resilience across a supply chain, companies need to address both their physical and digital supply chain issues. They need to ensure that their B2B platform is scalable, flexible, secure and continuously available and deployed proactively for significant competitive advantage. The mere thought of being unprepared for major world events or just responding to disruptions as they occur
will prove catastrophic, so it is time to take ownership and control.

 

U.S.A. August manufacturing growth fastest   in 26 months

 

 

NEW YORK, Sept 3 | Tue Sep 3, 2013 7:30pm IST

       

NEW YORK, Sept 3 (Reuters) - The U.S. manufacturing sector grew last month at its fastest pace in more than two years, bolstering expectations for faster overall U.S. growth in the second half of the year, an industry report showed on Tuesday.
 The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said its index of national factory activity rose to 55.7 in August from 55.4 the prior month, comfortably beating expectations for 54. It was the highest reading since June 2011.

A reading above 50 indicates expansion in the sector.
New orders also marked their best level in more than two years, with that sub-index jumping to 63.2 from 58.3. Employment, however, slipped to 53.3 from 54.4.

The government will release its August employment report on Friday. Economists forecast employers added 180,000 new jobs last month after hiring 162,000 workers in July.

Manufacturing has been hurt this year by cuts in government spending and weaker global demand, causing the sector to shrink in May. But sizable increases in activity in July and August are adding to economists' views that U.S. goods-producing companies are finding their footing as the year wears on.

Data last week showed the economy grew at a quicker-than-expected pace in the second quarter and should continue to gain momentum.

(Reporting By Steven C. Johnson; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

 When Apple bought AuthenTec for its biometrics technology — reported as one of its most expensive purchases — there was a lot of speculation about how the company would incorporate biometrics in its product line. Many speculate that the new Apple iPhone to be announced tomorrow will come with a fingerprint authentication system, and there are several ways it could work, such as swiping your finger over a slit-sized reader to have the phone recognize you.

Apple would be smart to add biometric technology to the iPhone. Fingerprint authentication is a good balance between convenience and security for a mobile device.
Biometric systems are seductive, but the reality isn’t that simple. They have complicated security properties. For example, they are not keys. Your fingerprint isn’t a secret; you leave it everywhere you touch.

Bruce Schneier

Bruce Schneier is a security technologist and author. His latest book is Liars and Outliers: Enabling the Trust Society Needs to Survive.

And fingerprint readers have a long history of vulnerabilities as well. Some are better than others. The simplest ones just check the ridges of a finger; some of those can be fooled with a good photocopy. Others check for pores as well. The better ones verify pulse, or finger temperature. Fooling them with rubber fingers is harder, but often possible. A Japanese researcher had good luck doing this over a decade ago with the gelatin mixture that’s used to make Gummi bears.

The best system I’ve ever seen was at the entry gates of a secure government facility. Maybe you could have fooled it with a fake finger, but a Marine guard with a big gun was making sure you didn’t get the opportunity to try. Disney World uses a similar system at its park gates — but without the Marine guards.

A biometric system that authenticates you and you alone is easier to design than a biometric system that is supposed to identify unknown people. That is, the question “Is this the finger belonging to the owner of this iPhone?” is a much easier question for the system to answer than “Whose finger is this?”

There are two ways an authentication system can fail. It can mistakenly allow an unauthorized person access, or it can mistakenly deny access to an authorized person. In any consumer system, the second failure is far worse than the first. Yes, it can be problematic if an iPhone fingerprint system occasionally allows someone else access to your phone. But it’s much worse if you can’t reliably access your own phone — you’d junk the system after a week.
If it’s true that Apple’s new iPhone will have biometric security, the designers have presumably erred on the side of ensuring that the user can always get in. Failures will be more common in cold weather, when your shriveled fingers just got out of the shower, and so on. But there will certainly still be the traditional PIN system to fall back on.

So … can biometric authentication be hacked?
Almost certainly. I’m sure that someone with a good enough copy of your fingerprint and some rudimentary materials engineering capability — or maybe just a good enough printer — can authenticate his way into your iPhone. But, honestly, if some bad guy has your iPhone and your fingerprint, you’ve probably got bigger problems to worry about.

The final problem with biometric systems is the database. If the system is centralized, there will be a large database of biometric information that’s vulnerable to hacking. A system by Apple will almost certainly be local — you authenticate yourself to the phone, not to any network — so there’s no requirement for a centralized fingerprint database.

Apple’s move is likely to bring fingerprint readers into the mainstream. But all applications are not equal. It’s fine if your fingers unlock your phone. It’s a different matter entirely if your fingerprint is used to authenticate your iCloud account. The centralized database required for that application would create an enormous security risk.

Enjoy Summer More by Outsourcing

Written by: Melanie Rembrandt August 8th, 2013

 

 

 

 

Hire Outside Experts to Boost Sales
Summer is flying by and August is here. With this in mind, what are you doing to make your life easier during these warmer months?

As a business owner, it’s easy to want to control every aspect of your business. But you can actually save time and accomplish more by outsourcing some of your activities. For example, are you doing your own bookkeeping, transcription, data entry, accounting, SEO copywriting, or other, administrative activities?

These are all tasks you can outsource to professionals. And while you may think you don’t have the funds to do this, can you really afford not to?
If you are entering your receipts, balancing the budget, writing your Website copy, and doing other things like this, are you really spending adequate time focusing on growing sales and customers?

By handing activities over to others, you can focus on what you do best.

Hire a virtual assistant for your administrative tasks. Look for a certified bookkeeper or CPA to help you with your accounting. Find a professional SEO copywriter or content strategist to write your sales messaging, blogs and newsletters. You get the idea.

And if you’re not sure about this, write down exactly how much time you spend each day on different activities. You may be surprised to see how many hours you spend entering numbers into an accounting database, fixing a graphic on a Website page or writing your weekly blog.
If you spent this time on finding new customers and focusing on your core, business strengths, would your business be in a better place?

It’s definitely something to review. And note that it will take some time to find the right people to fit your specific needs and train them accordingly. But once this initial phase is out of the way, you’ll have more time to grow your business. And even more important… more time!

An Underrated Supply-Chain Concern: Cyber Event

By Anya Khalamayzer

May 8, 2013

Two-thirds of cyber events are the fault of third-party businesses that outsource services for the victim, showing that business interruption (BI) no longer solely concerns physical assets susceptible to natural catastrophes and other disasters.

“Physical damage to buildings, machinery and transportation infrastructure is not the only potential cause of supply-chain disruption,” said Rebecca Bole, Advisen’s editor and director of Strategic Development in the Research and Editorial division, during the company’s supply-chain cyber risk webinar.

“Large-scale cyber events hold the potential to be as damaging as a natural catastrophes. From organized crime gangs who use malware to extort money, to politically-motivated hacktivists, all the way through to the amateur teenager in his bedroom and the simple act of an employee leaving a laptop on the train -- all these are potential cyber threats, and should be considered so by risk managers,” she said.
Cyber is the supply chain’s catalyst for efficiency. Whereas small shops used to house information in internally held files, many now delegate website hosting, credit card processing, and other tech processes to other vendors- many of which are located internationally.

Unfortunately, said John Mullen, partner at the law offices of Nelson Levine de Luca & Hamilton, a third of the breach cases that come across his desk have to do with those suppliers losing data.

“On supply side, we’ve seen [cases] as simple as data being shipped from one client to another processor that is going to have some work done to the data, where it was lost by the big mailing company,” he said.

In the usual cases, the experts pointed out, a small-to-midsized company loses customer or medical records due to human error, leading to court entanglements, loss of business partnerships or customer trust, and ends up with a whopping debt. For example, one healthcare practitioner had to pay $1.5 million for 4,000 lost records, which are relatively few in the hacking world.

However, an Advisen whitepaper pictures other probable scenarios such as a virus that infects a key supplier’s order processes, shutting down a commerce hub for days. This may be a transportation company suffering a breach on its logistics or dispatch systems, muddling shipments for its many clients, or even an attack on a large commodities exchange, interrupting the sale of essential parts and causing a ripple of market price spikes.

According to the webinar, controls are key to avoiding costly cyber-related headaches, starting with internal guidelines by the company and employee training on data handling. One simple step to avoid handing off data to burglars, besides encrypting information, is not leaving passcodes and usernames written on sticky notes around the office.

Having a good insurance net is also imperative, says Mullen.
“Don’t waive your right to subrogation; make sure the indemnity clauses that are in the contracts are fair at some level to you,” he advised. “The larger the vendor, the harder it is to get the right indemnity wording. Require that the appropriate insurance is in place and certified directly from the carrier.”

Top Challenges In Electronics Manufacturing

    

by Mike Roberts

 

 

The rate of change and advancement in the electronics industry can be startling, especially over the past few decades. The names at the top of the industry today were brand new companies just ten years ago. To survive, an electronics company needs to be as flexible as it is quick. And to excel, that company must be able to overcome both existing and emerging challenges in the market.
Below, we’ll look into the top 6 Manufacturing Operations Management (MOM) challenges faced by companies in the electronics industry.
Challenges in Electronics Manufacturing
The electronics industry can be broken down into three main categories: semiconductors, Electronics Manufacturing Services (EMS), and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEM). To simplify things, out of these industry subverticals, we'll focus on the challenges faced by EMS and small to mid-sized contract manufacturers:

1. Shrinking Operating Margins: Global competition and new innovations are driving prices down. Companies must continually become more cost-efficient to remain profitable.
2. Complex Global Supply-Chain: More and more, companies have to juggle internal and external resources while staying within international standards. Issues such as traceability and compliance are increasing operational burdens. It is not unusual for components and sub-components to embark on a journey that touches three or more continents before reaching the end-consumer.
3. Service and Warranty Management: Leveraging the global supply-chain is putting more focus on supplier quality management. Having a strong quality and traceability system directly affects warranty reserve and post-production service hours.
4. Short Product Lifecycles: With quickly changing consumer tastes and preferences, EMS companies and contract manufacturers need to have effective New Product Introduction (NPI) processes in place. Closed-loop communication between sales, manufacturing, and engineering is vital to ensure product launches hit time, volume, and quality targets.
5. Uncertain Demand: Aggregately, economic volatility and cyclical demand cause fluctuations in production. On a more granular level, consumer preference can cause spikes in demand for an individual product or company. Efficient lean capabilities must be in place to keep inventory aligned with demand.
6. Sustainability: Emerging regulations and standards are forcing companies to account more and more for Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in decisions. E-Waste, a popular topic today, is driving conversations about the disposal of products and their impact on the environment. Companies must now consider of the complete product lifecycle in decisions.

Manufacturing Shop Floor Drivers
Although these challenges may seem intimidating, companies have been dealing with them at some level for a very long time. We believe that integrating aspects of the value chain with technology can help to battle these challenges, and catalyze shop floor drivers to move companies closer to a model of operational excellence.
In our most recent Research Spotlight, Achieving Operational Excellence in Electronics Manufacturing, we cover each of these topics more in-depth, and provide our thoughts on how companies can leverage MOM capabilities to increase business performance. Additionally, our President and Principal Analyst, Matthew Littlefield, recently gave a webcast on the topic, which can be found here

Why You Should Never Have More Than Nine Browser Tabs Open

Angus Kidman

I often hear people complain that their browser is slow and unstable. It's easy to blame browser developers for using sloppy coding practices and not managing memory correctly, but in my experience there's a more common element: people who insist on having dozens of browser tabs open at once. That's an unproductive and pointless practice and everyone should stop it immediately.

Open enough browser tabs and it doesn't matter whether you're running Chrome or Firefox or IE or Safari or Opera: your system is going to slow down and eventually your browser will crash altogether, quite possibly bringing your entire environment down with it. Quite aside from that performance drama, there are at least four obvious reasons why having multiple tabs open is pointless.

You Can't See What's In Them Anyway

"I want to be able to refer to that later" is the underlying argument of many chronic new tab openers. But when you have so many tabs open that you can't see anything but the favicons, you'll waste lots of time hunting down that one elusive page. With nine open, you can see the page titles easily.

Your Browser History Is a Better Solution

You run into an interesting article and figure you'll check it out later. You don't need to keep it open—your browser is tracking your history. As long as you can remember one or two keywords, you can easily hunt it down when you want it. Your computer is more efficient at searching than you are. Let it do the work.

You Can't Process That Much Information Simultaneously

Dozens of open tabs signifies either procrastination on a truly epic scale or a chronic inability to focus on an immediate task at hand. Either way, it's not the sign of someone working efficiently. I work as a journalist—sourcing information from multiple sources is a big part of the job—but I don't kid myself I need thirty of them open at once. Absorb the data from one place, then move on.

It Wastes Good Keyboard Shortcuts

Those reasons easily justify not having multiple tabs open, but why pick 9 as the upper limit? Simple: every modern browser supports using Ctrl-1 to go to the first open tab, Ctrl-2 to the second, and so on. If you have windows that are constantly open (your mail client, social networking, content management systems), you can keep them in the same location and switch to them instantly using the keyboard. Granted, this still works even if you have 40 open, but it makes sense to match the available shortcuts with your screen real estate. (Control-9 always jumps to the last tab, however many you have open, by the way).

The next time you're asked to support someone who can't control their Control-T-loving fingers, tell them to ease back on the tabs. Life will be better for everyone, I promise.

Q & A with Marta Wilson author of "Everybody's Business"

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Marta Wilson, CEO of Transformation Systems, is the author of “Everybody’s Business: Engaging Your Total Enterprise to Boost Quality, Speed, Savings and Innovation,” her latest book. I asked her about the lessons of her book, namely how companies can build organizations that are successful in a sustainable, long-term way.


Early in the book, the key theme is noted: “Find the smallest step with the biggest return.” How is this bucking the conventional wisdom of strategy and management? Regardless, why is this perspective an improved way of looking at the situation?

In today’s era of big ideas and desire for instant change, it is essential to remember that small steps can produce big returns. My point is that one person taking one action can have organizationwide value. In addition to strategy and management, which are necessary to lead, we need to be continuously looking for the pockets of insight in our organizations. All individuals hold special power to make things happen, and as leaders, it’s our job to unleash their potential.

It’s all about accessing, expanding, uniting and guiding that energy. This puts total systems thinking into action. The first step to unleashing the potential of individuals to improve our total organization is to get some concept of our enterprise as a working system, a total system. This provides a starting point for how one change in one area can affect people and processes throughout the organization. With knowledge of our total system, we can all be transformational leaders who guide others to create real and lasting improvement by engaging people to be individual agents of change.

Taking small steps, even those with big returns, can be difficult for many people, given the human instinct to demand sweeping, instant change. What are the toughest aspects of getting buy-in?

Resistance to change is human nature and a predictable challenge to getting buy-in. So, my advice is: “Communicate. Educate. Elevate. Then, repeat.” By that, I mean be inclusive. Engage diverse interests and activities by establishing goals and fostering shared awareness. Imagine you are the conductor of an orchestra keeping operation of the whole in mind, even as you tend to the particulars of day-to-day work.
As transformational leaders, we must be role models acting in ways motivated by what’s best for the organization and its members, rather than what is easy and expedient. This includes co-creating a vision for the future and a collective sense of mission as well as inviting everybody to take those small steps. Engagement always starts somewhere, and each one of us has the choice and the power to ignite people’s energy. We as leaders can take small steps that engage everybody in achieving big, bold goals.

How important are training and professional development in bringing changes needed for sustainable, continually improving companies? Are there “ready-made” companies, or do they all require some element of training and development?

Education, training and development are critical for every enterprise. I call this the “learning front.” When other fronts such as planning, measurement and technology get out ahead of the learning front, the lifeblood of the organization starts to wilt and wither. Are people learning? This is an important question and an important metric. If other indicators, such as profitability, efficiency and productivity, are measured and managed exclusively with little or no attention to the “learning front,” chaos unfolds.
As transformational leaders, we are responsible for putting learning systems in place in our organizations. With a sound system of learning, each time individuals choose to master new levels of skill or grow in new areas, they venture out and conquer new frontiers for themselves, which inevitably benefits the organization. Learning is the way we evolve as people, as leaders and as organizations of excellence.

Manufacturers talk often of a skills gap in the U.S. In your view, do nonmanufacturing service or knowledge industries face a skills gap that could leave them unable to instill the bottom-up, empowered workforce for which your book advocates? How can we avoid such a problem?

Yes, and I see it as an opportunity instead of a problem. If we want individuals to be agents of change, we must give them the knowledge and the tools to be change agents. To close the gap, we can educate and train our workforce to develop personal, interpersonal and enterprise mastery. This requires us to be transformational leaders and provide the resources to promote growth.
We must encourage everybody to achieve more than what’s thought possible by communicating high but realistic standards, as well as inspire folks to think for themselves, question their own assumptions and approach problems in innovative, collaborative ways. Also, we must pay special attention to people’s personal needs for achievement, providing caring, compassion and empathy. In Chapter 5 of “Everybody’s Business,” titled “One: Developing the Workforce Individually,” I address this key leadership issue and share solutions for building an empowered workforce.

Corner Office

The First Rule of Brainstorming: Suspend Disbelief

By ADAM BRYANT

Published: January 19, 2013

 

This interview with Kon Leong, co-founder, president and chief executive of ZL Technologies, an e-mail and file archiving company, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant.

Enlarge This Image

Earl Wilson/The New York Times

Kon Leong is co-founder, president and chief executive of ZL Technologies, an e-mail and file archiving company based in San Jose, Calif.

Corner Office

Every Sunday, Adam Bryant talks with top executives about the challenges of leading and managing. In his new book, "The Corner Office" (Times Books), he analyzes the broader lessons that emerge from his interviews with more than 70 leaders.

Q. Tell me about some important leadership lessons you’ve learned.

A. One of my early jobs was selling computer hardware. What I learned about selling was probably more valuable than my M.B.A. I had seen selling as a process just about logic. Then I realized that has nothing to do with it.

      

Q. What was the insight?

A. You have to present your story in their context, not yours. They don’t really care if you’re standing on top of a robot and quoting equations. If they’re in the deep part of the forest, you’ve got to talk the language of the deep forest. Salesmanship is more like a language unto itself. There is no right or wrong. It’s what you make of it, and what’s black can be gray, and what’s gray can be white. It depends on your framework. The challenge is to share the same framework so that you’re seeing the same page in the same way.

      

Q. How do you hire? If you were interviewing me for a job, what would you ask me?

A. I would want to know your goals for the job. Is it money? Learning? Fulfillment? What is it? I would try to figure out if our environment suits your goals. I would not try to sell you to get you to take the job. I also will ask, “How curious are you?”

      

Q. I imagine that most people simply say, “Very.”

A. But then I’d ask, “Outside the headlines, what were some of the most interesting things you’ve noted in the last couple of weeks, and tell me why, and what did you do about it?” That would reflect what you think is interesting, and that tells me a fair bit. If you can cite many disparate topics, that’s a step in the right direction. The point is, we’re trying to find the right fit. In a fast-changing environment, you need to learn more and more and more. There’s so much to learn, and you can’t be taught all the permutations and combinations of the answers, so you have to learn on your own. And to learn on your own, you need curiosity.

      

Q. What other questions?

A. I’ll ask: How willingly do you accept stuff, and how willing are you to question things? How creative are you in finding your own answers? For example, everyone knows in school that you cannot divide by zero. Why? I try to find if they’ve actually questioned things like that at any time. The point is, we’re usually handicapped by our own borders, and we will not think beyond them. I think there’s one rule of thumb in creativity: when you’re brainstorming, you have to suspend disbelief. That’s a key ingredient. There’s time enough to challenge it and poke holes, but not at the time of generation.

 

I’ll also change the subject to one where they have some expertise. So I’ll ask what their passions are, and then I’ll ask questions. If it’s ornithology, I’ll start talking about the evolution of birds and ask questions like, “How do you think reptiles got feathers?”

       

Q. What else do you look for when hiring?

A. Brains and drive. Those are the basics. Without them, it’s probably going to be a long shot. After we work through that, then it’s curiosity and attitude.

      

Q. How do you get at the question of attitude?

A. Are you willing to learn from your mistakes? Do you do that automatically? Are you willing to set the bar higher? Are you able to deal with failure? Can you bounce back from it?

      

Q. What’s your take on the standard interview question about strengths and weaknesses?

A. I never really ask about weaknesses, because it’s meaningless. I ask more about strengths, but I ask it from a different angle. I’m more interested in the answers from a more personal perspective as opposed to a professional environment. I’ll typically ask: How would you describe yourself in three words outside the work environment? And then: What do you consider your natural strength? What do you do that comes without any effort, that your peers struggle with and can’t even match? What is natural for you? Other skills emanate from that natural core. Someone once answered that question by saying, “People tend to just come and talk to me.” That really intrigued me.

      

Q. What’s your natural strength?

A. I can zoom in, zoom out.

      

Q. What’s it like to work for you day to day?

A. Certain aspects of my management style are extremely frustrating. There are many, many questions posed to me, many decisions asked of me. I try not to make them. I respond with more questions, because I want them to find the answer. It can be very frustrating to my employees, but I’m trying to get others to scale up and learn. They understand and accept my approach, but many still feel frustrated because they just want the answer.

      

Q. What is your advice for students who are graduating from college?

A. I tell all of them two things, and that goes for both undergrads and M.B.A.’s. First, experiment. If you’re 22 years old as an undergrad or if you’re 27 just out of your M.B.A., in both cases you’ve got a clean slate. You can go in any direction. So experiment. That can also mean taking a lower salary in order to experiment.

This is all in hindsight, of course, because I didn’t do it. I went to Wall Street after getting my M.B.A. If you experiment in different jobs and functions in those two or three years out of school, you will have a much better shot at finding your sweet spot. And the sweet spot is the intersection between what you’re really good at and what you love to do. If you can find that intersection, you are set. A lot of people would kill for that because, at 65, they’re retiring and never found it.

 

So don’t put so much emphasis on initial compensation. Don’t listen to all the harping from the family. Try to find your sweet spot and, once you find it, invest in that. You don’t want to get degrees just to do work you don’t really like. If you’re miserable, even if you make a lot of money, that’s still 40 years of your life.

Cloud computing users are losing data, Symantic finds...

Cloud computing is a ticket to losing data for two in five companies, a new study finds. "It's really kind of astounding," said Dave Elliott, a cloud marketing manager at storage and security company Symantec.

The company polled more than 3,200 organizations to gauge hidden costs of the cloud and ways to mitigate problems. "Forty-three percent of respondents have lost data in the cloud and have had to recover from backups," Elliott said. And the recovery process has failed at least once for most.

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Internet cloud and cloud computing these days means most any services obtained over the Internet or obtained from potentially remote data centers, instead of the old-fashioned kind of on-premises computing where you knew exactly what machine your data were on.
The issues Symantec's cloud study pinpointed are arising as more companies gravitate to using the cloud for cost savings and arguably easier computing. The survey results suggest that more than 90% of companies and other organizations are at least discussing cloud computing, vs. 75% a year ago.

Problems encountered in cloud computing run a gamut.
"It's not just that your cloud service provider had a fire or a rack fell over and they destroyed your data," Elliott said. "That's a part of the problem and the other is management. Can you go to your cloud service provider and find it?

Say someone deletes it or moves it to the wrong folder and there's terrible search functionality." Symantec's study identified several hidden costs of moving to cloud use. One is the risk of rogue cloud use in a company, where staffers are using services without the information technology department in the loop.

"A classic example IT has seen now for years is cloud file sharing — somebody wants to move a very large file and signs up for a public cloud file sharing service," Elliott said. It could be anything like Dropbox, Box, YouSendIt or other popular services. Or even in the IT department, he says, somebody might spin up an instance of Amazon's (AMZN) EC2 to get a server up and running.

"The survey showed this is a significant issue — 77% saw it in the last 12 months, and many don't think it's going to get better," Elliott said. Of those who saw a rogue deployment, Symantec's survey notes that 40% said they suffered exposure of confidential information in some way.

The other issues identified by Symantec are faulty cloud backup — that's the one tied to the data loss statistic — inefficient use of the amount of cloud storage purchased, not toeing the line with corporate regulatory compliance requirements and issues with data in transit.

How can you improve your business presentations?

By Beverly Flaxington on January 15th, 2013 |                    

It may have been a few years since you graduated from B-school. Since then, you’ve done dozens, maybe hundreds, of formal and informal presentations to employees, investors, managers, clients, and others. Now ask yourself, “How effective am I really? Do my presentations motivate others to action? Are they inspiring?”

If it’s been a while since someone congratulated you for a stupendous presentation, perhaps you could use a mini refresher in presentation pointers. It never hurts to revisit some fundamentals. Here are six of them:

1. Identify the “why” of the presentation. Many presentations aren’t appropriate for the timing or for the material. And often, one is asked to present to someone but really isn’t sure of why or what the desired outcome should be. Why now? What’s the significance of this timing? Why this audience? What does the listener hope to know, and why? Why are you presenting this information at this time? Outline what you hope to accomplish before you begin.
2. Identify the “who.” Connect with your audience. What do you know about this audience? What matters to them? What do they hope to get out of this? What do they know, and not know? It’s a common mistake for the presenter to work hard on the message but then fail to modify it for this audience. In a one-on-one presentation, you can ask the listener to answer some questions first, such as, “What’s most important to you?” You may also say something like, “Before we start, there are six key items I’ve been asked to focus on in this presentation. Has anything changed, or do you have anything to add?”
3. Chunk the information. Many of us are guilty of trying to pack information and data into one continuous flow. Instead, look at your information and ask yourself, “What are the themes?” Organize the information into a handful of topics. Then categorize the information under each heading. When you present, your audience will be better able to take in the details after you give them an overview of the segments — as in, “I have three key points.” Open and close each section so the listener knows which information they’re hearing.
4. Make it matter; provide context. How can you bring your information around to address the needs of this audience at this time? Why does this matter to them? Don’t leave it up to chance that the listener will understand why this information matters. Keep asking yourself, “So what?” Why does this concern your audience, why does it help them, why might they need to know it? Make it clear. If you can’t give context and clarify the meaning of what you’re presenting, then that information shouldn’t be there.
5. Match behavioral style. Particularly in one-on-one meetings and in small groups, a presenter needs to listen and watch for others’ preferred style before he or she engages. Style is our tone of voice, our pace, the words we use and our body language. What’s the communication style of your audience? How can you shift your approach to make the person or audience feel most comfortable? Excellent presenters use different tones, styles and communication in response to different audiences.
6. Bring closure. Circle your audience back around to what you started out with as the objective. What did you want to happen — sharing of information, need for a decision on some data, the “close” of a sales process? This is where you ensure that the listeners received what they need. Before you leave the presentation, reconfirm the desired outcome: “As a result of this presentation, I wanted you to understand three things” — then list them. “Next step, I’ve asked each member of this audience to …” Vote? Give me a business card? Buy my product? Be sure when you end the interaction, whether one on one or in a group, that you’ve confirmed what you hope will happen next.

5 strategies for engineering a refreshing business perspective in 2013

                        

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Baron Christopher Hanson

The election is over. The holidays are over. It’s back to the business of working and living and learning in the new year. Last year was a tragic year, a stormy year, and an uncertain year politically and fiscally. To forge ahead positively, here are five strategies toward re-engineering a fresh 2013 business outlook:

Attend advanced industry summits.
Each year, the best of the best from elite professional, cultural, academic or industry communities gather to listen to, learn from and speak openly with each other. What makes advanced summits of all kinds so refreshing is the intellectual firepower of the speakers and the engagement with other attendees socially or privately during these intimate events.

The key is to identify where and when the most crucial, high-powered and relevant industry summits are being held this year. Decide, and just go. Cavorting with a concentrated roster of the best in your field challenges you and will overwhelm you with fresh 2013 perspectives.

The takeaway here is to proactively gather among the best in your industry. This will accelerate your relationships, knowledge and competitiveness. You might even become a summit speaker yourself one day.

Reinforce your cash register.
To be clear, the term “cash register” means any space, counter, equipment, staff, system, queue or online portal whereby your business transacts with paying customers. Some cash registers are quick, efficient and high tech; others are comfortable, luxurious or exciting. Still others are dull, slow or unattractive.

Whether law firms, restaurants, tech startups, art galleries, nonprofits or manufacturing facilities, each have their own methods of “cash registering” their place of business. In the consulting world, cash-register security is a busy practice area.
Beyond credit and collections after the sale, evidence of predatory or manipulative customers before the sale is beginning to overshadow the ongoing problem of dishonest employees or partners. Not only must your cash-register strategy exude a spry, inviting and expert customer experience, your transaction procedures must also protect your business from any malfeasance, theft or loss.

In most turnaround or growth-strategy cases, evidence leads us to recommend a brief forensic accounting and review-of-contracts engagement –– to improve all transactional language, cash-low security and risk-aversion policies. It is stunning how many small businesses in the $500,000 to $5 million space operate without any of these security measures in place.

The takeaway here is that by examining “cash register” procedures carefully, business owners can gain a fresh perspective as to whether they are actually making money or being beaten up economically by specific types of anti-customers.

Ask your entire company to read a strategic book together.
What I learned most after 16 years as a rugby player is that the team who communicates, mobilizes and executes in the same directions as a cohesive unit for 80 minutes will win. This feat is both physically demanding and rare.
After 21 years of consulting experience, recommending that an entire company –– usually from three to 300 employees –– read the same book from cover to cover in 30 days has been one of the most effective methods for initially turning a company around, increasing baseline revenue and mobilizing everyone in the same direction.

Classics I’ve assigned include “Blue Ocean Strategy,” “Financial Intelligence,” “The Phoenix Effect,” “Good to Great,” “Lead, Sell, or Get Out of The Way,” and “Analytics at Work,” among many others. Choose own your top four to six titles, and then read one as a company every two to three months. The cohesion, result trajectories and company alignments can be stunning — if marshaled well.
The secret is for leadership to select the precise book and then listen carefully to employees during and after they’ve completed each read. Don’t lecture. Just listen.

Employees who love their company, appreciate their job and care about their career will dive right in. Almost immediately you can see their minds, their work, their passion, and their ideas improving exponentially. Everyone in the company is guaranteed to have something in common to talk about going forward.

We’ve especially applied this “old school book assignment” to creative companies in need of relief from their chaotic, lifestyle-driven, outdated, or rural business model. Uniform communication helps reduce chaos and steer toward operational alignments.
However, those employees (or partners) who make excuses, complain or refuse to read the book typically exude similar attitudes and behaviors on the job. While companies and employees often claim they are on the same page, this old school book assignment strategy proves it — literally.
The takeaways here are:

• Group book reading journeys initiate company alignment.
• A fresh perspective as to who should (and should not) remain “on the bus” going forward will emerge quickly after two to three book assignments.

Capture stunning photography and video footage.
Marketing, PR, and social media success today is driven by distinctive, high-quality photography and video production. For-profit and nonprofit organizations large and small each have paying customers, sponsors, members, or donors to reach.
Expert photography and video is the undisputed kernel of today’s marketing content value and reach, simply because people are not taking the time to read beyond headlines unless visually enticed upfront. Increase one line item in your PR budget — photography and video — then hire the best of the best to record and disperse your brand narrative.

The most successful media, blogs, and magazines have always had absolutely gorgeous photography and compelling video content online, inviting potential customers to read in greater detail after being impressed visually or interactively.
Are your core visual elements stunning and fresh? The good news is that modern innovations in photo and printing quality also allow for more colorful graphics on billboards, commercial vehicles, mass transit and even boats. Innovations in video camera techniques enable company offerings, messages or news to be viewable anytime via handheld, desktop or on social media.

The shocker is that organizations still spend upwards of millions of dollars hiring expert event planners, adventure travel companies, motivational and leadership speakers, or tired advertising agencies — yet they still fail to capture the footage of their true, inspirational and explanatory narrative.
The takeaway here is that compelling footage of your people, your events, your workplace or culture, and how your organization gives back must be captured more frequently and aired more thoughtfully than ever before.

Consider mobility.
Qualified, nice and professional customers who will pay you well are out there. However, they may be more dispersed or more challenging to connect with in today’s economy. Modern mobility enables entrepreneurs to visit new customers, as opposed to waiting for old customers to reappear less often.
To be clear, mobility or executive travel varies in relevance for every business model and budget. In my experience, confident economic exploration into relevant new markets breeds growth. Online file uploads, design proofing and modern shipping technologies allow rural craftspeople and large materials suppliers to transact business from anywhere without a single airline ticket. Other fields require face-to-face interactions.

Quick case study: A modern art gallery was enduring both the economic dip and an abrupt end to their posh storefront lease (sale of building). Once relocated in a larger, more chic space, we re-engineered the company “cash register” and increased inventory quality and valuation.

Our next recommendation was for the gallery owner to embrace a more mobile schedule, including international art dealer events and elite shows. Elevated PR and marketing strategies spurred new client purchases to exceed collector transactions in terms of overall percentage of sales.

Sure there were growing pains, lessons learned, car trouble in Mississippi and all kinds of parking fines. Yet the gallery owner now transacts in New Orleans, D.C., Berlin, Miami, Chicago and other top art markets. Gallery revenues have tripled within seven months and are projected to reach a 580% all-in sales increase within 13 months.
The takeaway here is to determine which cities or regions you might best acquire new customers, expert employees or fresh resources. Akin to attending industry summits, obtaining a more profitable concentration of customers and partners — at new altitudes — is perhaps the freshest perspective to embrace this coming year.

Baron Christopher Hanson is the principal of RedBaron Strategy, a boutique growth, turnaround management, and revenue acceleration advisory firm based in Charleston, S.C., and Washington, D.C. A Harvard graduate and former rugby player, “The Red Baron” can be reached for client engagements via

Why Kirk beats Spock at Innovation

Why Kirk beats Spock at Innovation

There's a mistake being played out in your organization when it comes to staffing innovation projects. You are likely staffing them with a bunch of "Spocks", people who know a lot about the subject and have deep expertise. While this may look like a dream team, I can assure you that staffing a bunch of Spocks is not helpful and can be harmful. You need at least a few Kirks in the mix to create a balanced team capable of generating interesting innovation.

For those of you born before the TV Show that started it all, James T (for Tiberius) Kirk was the commander of the Enterprise, a spaceship out to "boldly go where no one had gone before". Spock was the chief science officer, a Vulcan who is (supposedly) devoid of human emotion and who makes all decisions based on logic and reason. Kirk and Spock make a great team because they complement each other. Kirk makes decisions based on his emotions, his instinct and his gut. Spock counters with the reasons why Kirk's planned actions are "illogical" or don't fit the data.

Kirk experiments, creates problems with impulsive decision making and usually wins the day by doing something Spock (and Kirk's adversaries) didn't expect him to do. Kirk demands more than his people and his ship should be able or willing to offer. Kirk rejects the rules and tries to apply his own rules to any situation. And yes I know there were other spin-offs and other Star Trek series and movies, but they pale in comparison to the original.

Why this is pertinent to innovation

I suspect if we look long and hard enough, every science fiction tale has insights for innovation. In this case it is evidently true. Kirk and Spock represent the manifestation of the two sides of our brain - the left side, analytical and rational, scientific, and the right side, creative, impulsive. The problem in many organizations is that we overly emphasize the scientific, rational and logical at the expense of imagining new unexpected or unanticipated products or services. The scientific approach seeks to break down the problem into small morsels and solve for each small incremental solution, always keeping in mind what is "logical" reasonable and possible.

Your competitors, at least the competitors you understand and know from your industry, also do this. They seek reasonable, rational, logical solutions and technologies to existing problems. The gap in this thinking is that your unlikely competitors, the new entrants, those with nothing to lose, those who seek to disrupt the market, don't care about logical or rational. They don't care about the existing order - in fact they'll be happy to disrupt it. Their actions on the surface may seem, well, illogical. Why would anyone give away software for free? Who would create a website with a revenue model based on ads? What seemss logical to us is just what seems familiar or reasonable in a given context, not necessarily in all contexts or under all conditions.

The Spocks in your company want to approach innovation as a science. They want to examine all the data, review all the technologies and make the most logical decision possible. Their ideas are likely to be very well defined, very reasonable and often very incremental. The Kirks of your company think differently. They want to understand the problem, want to create unusual solutions that may defy existing logic. They recognize that it may be necessary to suspend disbelief for a while in order to get to the right solution. They work from instinct, from their gut and may not be able to justify their approaches to the Spocks, or worse, to the executives.

Balancing Kirks and Spocks

Given that Kirks find it hard to justify their outlooks and approach, it's rare you'll have a team full of Kirks. In fact, it's often unlikely that you'll have any Kirks on an innovation team at all, because innovation looks risky and uncertain and dangerous. Who better to staff an innovation activity than a bunch of Spocks, who demand data, expect to be able to predict all of the outcomes and are scientifically based? But the world according to Spock (had to do it) doesn't exist. The world is far more unpredictable, capricious, fickle than Spock expects. The world shifts in its expectations and demands, and what was impossible only yesterday is currently completely possible.

What was unthinkable yesterday is now an accepted reality. Five years ago the US was completely dependent on foreign oil, and the amount we imported each year was growing. In the next decade we may become an EXPORTER of oil and natural gas. Things change, and change quickly. Kirks get this, but may get it wrong. Spocks understand it but discount it.

Your innovation teams will have more Spocks than Kirks. That's understandable, but can become a real limiting factor if the whole team is Spocks. You need some Kirks to make the activity more instinctual, more illogical, more messy. Without Kirks your innovations will be practical, safe, predictable and ultimately very incremental.

However, to create something interesting, with real value, to disrupt the status quo, you need some Kirks. And while you are reading this and thinking, wait, was Jobs a Kirk or a Spock, I'll offer this: Jobs was probably the rare being who could be both. While he ran Apple like a Spock, he understood the markets like a Kirk. You don't have to be both to be successful, but you need to understand what value each offers, and right now Kirks are undervalued for innovation.

By Jeffrey Phillips

Want that promotion?  Then, practice your job.

As the new year approaches – and with it the inevitable wave of self-improvement plans–we’ve identified 10 strategies for advancing your career in 2013. (Read them all here.)
From recovering from an office blunder to learning why it doesn’t pay to be Mr. (or Ms.) Nice Guy, this ten-point plan offers daily tips on what to do and how to do it.

Mike J. is a venture capitalist who works on Silicon Valley’s famed Sand Hill Road. He’s good at his job–rising from intern to principal in only two years. His secret? An Excel spreadsheet he uses to track how he spends every hour of his workday.

To understand the importance of this spreadsheet, you should first understand the difference between working hard and actually getting better at your job.

Most knowledge workers—a group that, I suspect, includes just about anybody reading these words—don’t differentiate among their activities; any time spent at the office counts as “work.” Mike, by contrast, embraces a conclusion that’s well supported in the field of performance psychology, the discipline that studies how people become great at what they do: Not all work is equal.

Simply put, there’s a difference between doing things you already know how to do and doing things that force you to stretch and improve your skills. Psychology professor K. Anders Ericsson, a leader in this field, explains that a person in a new job usually spends some time training or shadowing someone else to get up to speed, but after that, his or her abilities tend to plateau. Beyond this point, they don’t get much better at their job, though they grow more experienced.

To get better—and win the promotions and opportunities most of us dream about—we must set out to intentionally improve our performance. In studying why some people develop remarkable careers, this is a key unheralded distinction between the average knowledge worker and the stars at most companies: the former work hard while the latter systematically train hard skills. Ericsson called this type of structured activity deliberate practice, and in his decades of research on the topic he’s found it to be the key for expert performance in every field he has studied—from elite scientists to elite jugglers.

This brings us back to Mike. His spreadsheet tracking forces him to spend a certain number of hours each week not just working but instead deliberately improving his skills. In the spreadsheet he shared with me, he spent around 60% of his time pushing himself, performing difficult, and ultimately crucial training tasks such as calling potential investors or polishing due diligence reports.

Here’s how to integrate this strategy into your workday:

Deliberate practice requires clarity. Set a clear goal slightly beyond your current abilities, but not too far beyond, and list specific actions that advance you toward your goal. In Mike’s example, a specific goal might include increasing the rate at which potential investor calls prompt follow-up conversations. The specific actions might include making a certain number of these calls each week (regardless of whether he feels like it) and giving his full focus in each call toward deploying his best pitch.

Deliberate practice requires feedback. Assuming you don’t reach your goal on the first try, you need a source of objective feedback so that you can improve on your next iteration. Without frank, even harsh, feedback, your progress will likely stall. Returning to Mike’s example of investor calls, he could keep careful notes on what differentiated the successful and non-successful interactions, or he could ask a partner at the firm to listen in and then offer thoughts.

Deliberate practice is unpleasant. You have to stretch yourself beyond where you’re currently comfortable—not a pleasant feeling. Most knowledge workers inadvertently end up avoiding deliberate practice-style activities because they retreat to checking email the moment a task gets too difficult. To make deliberate practice work, you must not only tolerate unpleasantness (and stick with the task, regardless of your urge for relieving distraction), but learn to seek it, like a bodybuilder seeks muscle burn. Mike recognized that, if left unchecked, his instinct would be to reply to e-mails all day, so he used his time-tracking spreadsheet to force himself to engage in unpleasant, though ultimately rewarding work. If you don’t have a similar strategy in your schedule, it’s unlikely to happen.

Success in knowledge work requires more than simply showing up early, staying late, and responding quickly to every email. True standouts systematically develop rare and valuable skills. Building these skills requires practice, and it is not something that you gravitate toward naturally. Like Mike, you must take a rigorous approach to improve your workday.

Cal Newport is an assistant professor of computer science at Georgetown University and the author of So Good They Can’t Ignore You.