Autonomy Enables The Helpful to Perform

Brett Simmons says that if everyone in your organization only did what was written in their formal job descriptions, your business would be mediocre at best. For your business to excel, your workforce from top to bottom needs to be full of good organizational citizens. Good citizens at work go above and beyond their assigned duties to try to help fellow employees and the organization.

Employees help each other by offering advice, lending a hand, resolving conflicts, and celebrating each other’s achievements. Employees that receive trustworthy help from others feel an obligation to reciprocate, which strengthens work relationships. Good citizens in thriving work relationships will be motivated to find ways to perform their tasks more effectively and efficiently. Employees that help each other strengthen the bonds of trust with team members and supervisors, and we know trust has a strong effect on performance.


Unfortunately, good team relationships won’t matter much if employees aren’t given the latitude to improve their jobs. And good team relationships will struggle to develop when employees can’t help each other because they are constrained to “just worry about getting your job done.”

A study by Muammer Ozer recently published in the Journal of Applied Psychology (full citation below) showed how autonomy affected the relationship between organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and job performance. This study of 266 employees, coworkers, and supervisors showed that citizenship behavior improved work team relationships, and work team relationships had a significant effect on job performance.

Those relationships between citizenship behavior, teamwork, and performance are expected. What’s new here is the importance of autonomy in enabling this virtuous chain of behaviors. The study found that the links to performance were enhanced for those with the most job autonomy. Highly autonomous workers were better citizens, had better team relationships, and were better at translating those team relationships into improved performance.

Because autonomy matters so much to most workers, it matters to your business. Constrain your employees’ ability to help each other and work together to improve their jobs and you will likely also constrain the growth of your business. Help yourself by helping your employees help each other.

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Seven Personality Traits of Top Salespeople

If you ask an extremely successful salesperson, "What makes you different from the average sales rep?" you will most likely get a less-than-accurate answer, if any answer at all. Frankly, the person may not even know the real answer because most successful salespeople are simply doing what comes naturally.

Over the past decade, I have had the privilege of interviewing thousands of top business-to-business salespeople who sell for some of the world's leading companies. I've also administered personality tests to 1,000 of them. My goal was to measure their five main personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and negative emotionality) to better understand the characteristics that separate them their peers.

The personality tests were given to high technology and business services salespeople as part of sales strategy workshops I was conducting. In addition, tests were administered at Presidents Club meetings (the incentive trip that top salespeople are awarded by their company for their outstanding performance). The responses were then categorized by percentage of annual quota attainment and classified into top performers, average performers, and below average performers categories.

The test results from top performers were then compared against average and below average performers. The findings indicate that key personality traits directly influence top performers' selling style and ultimately their success. Below, you will find the main key personality attributes of top salespeople and the impact of the trait on their selling style.

1. Modesty. Contrary to conventional stereotypes that successful salespeople are pushy and egotistical, 91 percent of top salespeople had medium to high scores of modesty and humility. Furthermore, the results suggest that ostentatious salespeople who are full of bravado alienate far more customers than they win over.
Selling Style Impact: Team Orientation. As opposed to establishing themselves as the focal point of the purchase decision, top salespeople position the team (presales technical engineers, consulting, and management) that will help them win the account as the centerpiece.

2. Conscientiousness. Eighty-five percent of top salespeople had high levels of conscientiousness, whereby they could be described as having a strong sense of duty and being responsible and reliable. These salespeople take their jobs very seriously and feel deeply responsible for the results.
Selling Style Impact: Account Control. The worst position for salespeople to be in is to have relinquished account control and to be operating at the direction of the customer, or worse yet, a competitor. Conversely, top salespeople take command of the sales cycle process in order to control their own destiny.

3. Achievement Orientation. Eighty-four percent of the top performers tested scored very high in achievement orientation. They are fixated on achieving goals and continuously measure their performance in comparison to their goals.

Selling Style Impact: Political Orientation. During sales cycles, top sales, performers seek to understand the politics of customer decision-making. Their goal orientation instinctively drives them to meet with key decision-makers. Therefore, they strategize about the people they are selling to and how the products they're selling fit into the organization instead of focusing on the functionality of the products themselves.

4. Curiosity. Curiosity can be described as a person's hunger for knowledge and information. Eighty-two percent of top salespeople scored extremely high curiosity levels. Top salespeople are naturally more curious than their lesser performing counterparts.

Selling Style Impact: Inquisitiveness. A high level of inquisitiveness correlates to an active presence during sales calls. An active presence drives the salesperson to ask customers difficult and uncomfortable questions in order to close gaps in information. Top salespeople want to know if they can win the business, and they want to know the truth as soon as possible.

5. Lack of Gregariousness. One of the most surprising differences between top salespeople and those ranking in the bottom one-third of performance is their level of gregariousness (preference for being with people and friendliness). Overall, top performers averaged 30 percent lower gregariousness than below average performers.

Selling Style Impact: Dominance. Dominance is the ability to gain the willing obedience of customers such that the salesperson's recommendations and advice are followed. The results indicate that overly friendly salespeople are too close to their customers and have difficulty establishing dominance.

6. Lack of Discouragement. Less than 10 percent of top salespeople were classified as having high levels of discouragement and being frequently overwhelmed with sadness. Conversely, 90 percent were categorized as experiencing infrequent or only occasional sadness.

Selling Style Impact: Competitiveness. In casual surveys I have conducted throughout the years, I have found that a very high percentage of top performers played organized sports in high school. There seems to be a correlation between sports and sales success as top performers are able to handle emotional disappointments, bounce back from losses, and mentally prepare themselves for the next opportunity to compete.

7. Lack of Self-Consciousness. Self-consciousness is the measurement of how easily someone is embarrassed. The byproduct of a high level of self-consciousness is bashfulness and inhibition. Less than five percent of top performers had high levels of self-consciousness.

Selling Style Impact: Aggressiveness. Top salespeople are comfortable fighting for their cause and are not afraid of rankling customers in the process. They are action-oriented and unafraid to call high in their accounts or courageously cold call new prospects.

Not all salespeople are successful. Given the same sales tools, level of education, and propensity to work, why do some salespeople succeed where others fail? Is one better suited to sell the product because of his or her background? Is one more charming or just luckier? The evidence suggests that the personalities of these truly great salespeople play a critical role in determining their success.

Author:  Steve W. Martin, Harvard Business Review

Debunking 5 Myths on Cloud Computing

For all the excitement and buzz created by cloud computing, the very idea of customers being able to access information in big data centers remotely over the Internet from anywhere has also spawned a fair share of questions, concerns and myths.

But that skepticism, about its security, compliance and visibility, has been widely overblown, says Michael Hugos, a former CIO and a principal of the Center for Systems Innovation, whose newest book is "Business in the Cloud: What Every Business Needs to Know About Cloud Computing" (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2010).

The evolutionary shift toward cloud technology will span several years, even a decade or more, some analysts say. Hugos believes people set the pace of technology adoption, and corporate data centers are filled with people whose skills and livelihood are fundamentally based on older technologies and mindsets.
Here are five myths about doing business on the cloud and why they shouldn't be believed:

Risk 1: Data security issues make cloud applications riskier than in-house applications. According to Hugos, the continuous harping on data security has more to do with threatening IT jobs than it does to any real security issue. This might not comfort companies that see high-profile attacks on companies such as Citigroup and Sony. But that misses a more important point, says Hugos.

"When private companies get hacked, it's rare they even discuss it," he says. "If they're not publicly traded, they don't even have to divulge that information. The notion that a Google or an Amazon isn't as good at data security as some small company is nonsensical. Their systems are being attacked hundreds or thousands of times every day, and they have a highly trained and continuously engaged security force who are learning the latest tricks that hackers are using.

"Security is part of how these companies make money," he adds. "When was the last time that a private company enthusiastically invested a whole bunch of money in something like data center security? Quite the opposite."

Risk 2: Cloud applications are less reliable than running systems in-house because you can't fix them in the event of a crash. This is another myth created by the idea that having a data center on premises gives a company more sense of control. Not true, says Hugos.

"Most companies are continuously trying to reduce data center expenses because they are a cost center, not a profit center," he says. "When you're a cloud vendor, your data center and your IT infrastructure is how you generate money, so you are always investing more money in it. For most other companies, it's the opposite. Its overhead and data center budgets are being relentlessly cutback."

Risk 3: The main reason for companies to move to cloud computing is to save money. Reducing IT costs certainly sounds great, but the most compelling incentive to move to the Cloud is to switch from a fixed cost capital intensive business model to a variable cost pay-as-you-go operating expense model, says Hugos.
"When you invest in a lot of new IT infrastructure and software, that's typically a big upfront capital expense," he says. "You might put down several millions of dollars in a new ERP system and then just hope that that system will actually still be relevant to your business and not become technically obsolete before you've even finished depreciating it."

A harsh reality of IT investment today is that technology with a supposed shelf life of five years can be obsolete in less than half that time. That element of risk is removed with the Cloud. If a company wants to pull the plug on a vendor after two years, there's minimal penalty, which counts for a lot in an unpredictable, volatile economy.

Risk 4: It is cheaper for big companies to run their own application systems in-house than in the cloud. Large corporations often compare the cost of provisioning a server in the cloud for three years and assume the spend is practically equal to just buying and owning their own data center. In truth, that's only the most surface form of comparison.

"What they forget to do is add in all of the indirect costs," explains Hugos. "You need more people to run those additional in-house servers. What is the additional cost of insuring those additional servers? What is the additional cost of the energy to run them and the air conditioning to cool them?"

Risk 5: It requires a whole new set of skills for companies to make good use of cloud computing technologies. This is arguably the most hot-button topic regarding the Cloud because entire departments within companies are now fearing for their jobs. According to Hugos, certain skills that have been traditionally dominant in most in-house IT groups will be threatened, such as system administrators, those who patch servers and install new operating systems and install new software.

"Those traditional skills have made up about 70 percent of any in-house IT group," says Hugos. "Those people will be much less in demand, but there are a lot of other skills that have been around for a long time such as business analysts, enterprise architects who know how to integrate different systems together."
What gets lost is that companies will not move their entire infrastructure to the cloud—only pieces. Because of that, there will still be the need to integrate cloud based systems with in-house systems.
No one in IT stands to gain from this more than business analysts and those who specialize in enterprise architecture.

"They will become more prominent," says Hugos. "Their skill sets will evolve, but it won't be entirely new. Business analysts have had a checkered career over the last 30 years. In many companies, business analysts have been reduced to being a glorified note taker. That person is suddenly going to become much more important because they're the ones who translate business needs into technical solutions. When I no longer have to worry about systems administration stuff, then all of a sudden the business analyst and solving the business problem becomes much more important than solving a technical problem."

Author: Peter Alpern of Business Finance

7-TIPS to Punch-up Your Next Presentation!

Sharlyn Lauby says there appears to be some noticeable trends when Microsoft PowerPoint is concerned. The first is elimination. Obviously, there’s a big problem with this option – with what do you replace it? The other trend is creating a deck of nothing but beautiful photos with no text!

While both of these techniques might have their advantages in the right situation, there are times when you have to create a PowerPoint presentation with words and bullet points. Call it old school, but in some highly regulated professions or certain educational events, traditional PowerPoint slides are de rigueur.
That doesn’t mean slides have to be boring.

Barbara Roche from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania offered recommendations during her session at the American Society for Training & Development’s 2011 International Conference & Exposition in Orlando, Fla. Her approach is to have PowerPoint complement your spoken presentation, not compete with it. Some of her suggestions:

• Use a 50-50 ratio. Design your session in such a way that you are speaking half of the time, with PowerPoint only half of the content. Not every thought needs a slide. Too many words will take participants off what you are saying and focus on slides.
• Distinguish between displays and handouts. There might be detailed information contained in the presentation. Use a handout instead of a PowerPoint slide to cover the information.
• Incomplete sentences are allowed. A good guideline is six words per line and no more than six lines per slide. Omit pronouns in your wording. Try using only two fonts, and keep with large sans serif fonts (at least 32 points).
• Put information on multiple slides. If you’re in an industry in which you have to show a full sentence or paragraph on a slide — for example, a regulation — break up the information into multiple slides. Consider having a visual slide to introduce the idea, then a slide with a high-level overview and finally slides that go into detail.
• Highlight key take-aways. Use a kicker box, a framed text box in a different color, to emphasize an important point. If you need more space, try a jolt slide, which has a different background. When placed in the deck, it will jolt or stand out to viewers. It’s a great way to break up visuals.
• Animation can be your friend. Instead of using animation on every slide, use it to make a central point stand out. It also breaks up visuals for the audience.
• Pay extra attention to slide headers. Roche said they should contain messages versus topic titles and serve as an outline of key take-aways.

As much as we might want to rid ourselves of PowerPoint, when done properly, it can enhance the session experience.

Keeping Supply Chains Open

As thousands of exhibitors and buyers converged in Hong Kong for the HKTDC Spring Electronics Fair earlier this month, the impact of last month’s devastating earthquake in Japan continued to reverberate within the industry. Japan is a major supplier of electronics parts and components, accounting for about 20 per cent of the global supply semiconductors. 

"We are not affected at the moment, but there will be some indirect impact from the earthquake,” said Eddie Ng, President of Speed Digital Ltd. The Hong Kong-based multimedia, audio-visual manufacturer sources some material in Japan for their products. 

"For example, we've seen prices surge for some internal memory storage camera components in the first week after the earthquake. But since then, prices have been declining because everybody knows there are other places to go," Mr Ng said, noting that his company has identified places such as Taiwan and South Korea as places to source for material.    

Korean electronics giant Samsung, likewise, believes there will be no adverse impact on its business. “We have very strong supplementary management and all key division and core technology are located in our headquarters in South Korea,” said Alex Chung, Chief Operating Officer of Samsung Electronics Hong Kong. “A lot of our manufacturing is dispersed in the United States, Europe, China and Southeast Asia, so I believe the impact for us is limited.” 

Global Supply Chain


For Japan, though, economists expect the country’s economic growth could fall between two to three per cent, with the full effects of the disaster to be felt in the second quarter. The impact of rolling power shortages and damaged factories, as well as crippled domestic supply chains, are forecast to cut Japan’s industrial production for March by at least 10 per cent. 

In its initial assessment of the impact of Japan’s earthquake to the global supply chain, a Hong Kong Trade Development Council study forecasts that a protracted economic disruption would overshadow global economic growth and international trade, especially in light of Japan’s significant role in the global supply chain. 

A major supplier of electronics parts and components, Japan produces about 20 per cent of the global supply of semiconductors, more than 40 per cent of the worldwide NAND flash memory used in many laptops, smartphones and iPad. NAND supplier Toshiba alone produces about one-third of the global supply. While production has been affected by power shortages and other factors, many of the production facilities are not located in the most severely damaged areas. The overall supply, therefore, is expected to be affected only modestly once the situation returns to normal.


Hong Kong companies, as well as manufacturers in neighboring economies including South Korea, Taiwan and the Chinese mainland, depend on Japanese supplies such as LCD glass, chip equipment, silicon wafers and other items, which are used to produce semiconductors and panel displays. The impact on those companies will become acute once their inventories run out. Other affected items include optical films, laser diodes, and lithium-ion rechargeable batteries. The watch and clock industry stands to be affected as well as Japan is a key supplier of watch movements.


Based on feedback from Hong Kong companies in various industries, parts and components supply for high-end electronics, as well as toys and watches requiring electronic input, will be affected in varying degrees. Although it may not be easy to find identical supplies from other sources, some commonly used parts and components alternatives may be found, but will require more time and money.

Shift from Consumer to Capital Goods

Business as usual: Christopher Fellner, Filter Products Group, Mitsubishi Paper Mills Ltd, which was among several Japanese companies that  exhibited at the HKTDC Hong Kong Electronics Fair earlier this month

With reconstruction estimated by the Japanese government to cost no less than US$300 billion over the next few years, Japan’s demand composition will likely shift in favour of capital goods, which will come at the expense of consumer goods.


Hong Kong companies expect Japanese importers to slash the size of buying orders and to delay procurement as they assess the quake’s effect on domestic demand. Demand for imported capital goods and raw materials may also be cut due to disruptions on business and manufacturing activities, but will increase once massive reconstruction gets underway.

Production disruptions in Japan will negatively affect Hong Kong’s re-export business over the next few months, given the uncertainty over electricity supply and interruptions to the supply chain, in particular parts and components. This means that many factories may not be able to quickly resume production to their normal capacity. Hong Kong's exports of consumer goods to the market would be most affected, followed by imports of electronic parts and components from Japan for re-exports.  

Still, Japanese suppliers are intent on keeping the supply chains open. At least half a dozen Japanese exhibitors participated in this month’s Electronics Fair, including Mitsubishi Paper Mills Ltd. The paper manufacturer sustained minor damage in three of its factories in Japan. The worst hit, in Aomori Prefecture, is expected to be back in operation as early as the end of this month. 

“We’re going back to full production step by step,” said Christopher Fellner, who’s with Mitsubishi’s paper filter products division. “It’s pretty much business as usual. Our filter papers are manufactured in our factory in Shenzhen. For other paper products, Mr Fellner said there’s still plenty of stock, “so we don’t expect any shortage.” 

Mr Fellner pointed out that despite the tragedy, it was important to carry on with operations. “We’re not that hard affected by the earthquake, so we need to assure our stakeholders, our customers that everything is business as usual and we’re happy to be in Hong Kong.” 

For more details on the impact of Japan’s earthquake on Hong Kong industry, please see the HKTDC research report “Assessment of Japan’s Earthquake on Hong Kong’s External Trade.”

Financial Pros Cautiously Optimistic About the Economy!

A new survey of 841 financial professionals by SmartBrief and the international polling and market research firm Ipsos has found that most (67%) think that stock prices will rise in the next 12 months and the country’s economic output will increase (65%), and 59% said they expect unemployment to decrease slightly in the next 12 months.

The new SmartBrief/Ipsos Leadership Index found, however, that even such modest optimism among financial professionals is tempered by expectations of rising health care costs (88%); higher fuel prices (85%); rising prices for durable goods such as appliances, automobiles and consumer electronics (72%); and slightly higher interest rates (59%).

Overall, 44% of the respondents said they “think that things in this country heading in the right direction,” compared to 31% of Americans at large, and 56% said they are “going in the wrong direction.”

“Financial professionals are cautiously optimistic about economic prospects in the near term; indeed, they think that the overall scenario will improve, and they’re making business decisions on that basis, such as increased investment and hiring,” said Ipsos Managing Director Cliff Young. “That being said, there are still concerns in the short to medium term about the increased costs of inputs such as fuel and durable goods.”

In addition, 43% of the 841 respondents said they expect home prices to continue declining, while only 21% said they expect them to rebound, and 34% said they expect no change. By a margin of 70%-30%, they were opposed to allowing states to declare bankruptcy, and while 77% said they expect the nuclear disaster in Japan to drive greater investment and funding into renewable energy, they were evenly divided on whether it will funnel more money into development of fossil fuels.