Category Archives: Business

The Onion is consistently hilarious. For those who don't know, The Onion is a spoof newspaper with satirical headlines and a few paragraphs of fake quotes and commentary.

The radio show This American Life recently reported on how The Onion does what it does. Bob Sutton picks up on this interesting factoid: to get the 18 quality headlines needed for each week's edition, the writers have to propose 600 headlines in total. That's pretty refined filter, and as Bob notes, not unusual for a successful creative operation. At IDEO's toy group only 3% of proposed product ideas survive.

To come up with good ideas, you need to turn off the self-censor and crank out as many ideas as possible. Most of them will suck. But that's part of the process.

For the more visually inclined, here's what creativity at The Onion looks like:

A loyal reader writes:

How does a fundamentally shy person succeed in business? Most people don’t percieve me as shy, but I started out being introverted. I get along pretty well with people at work, and I’m fine in one-on-one situations. But I don’t say much at team meetings, and still have no clue how to give effective speeches/presentations. Still can’t be in group situations professionally without feeling attacks of paralyzing gut-level fear. What do you think I can do about it?

I forwarded this question on to an experienced businessperson in my network. Below is his very thoughtful and helpful response that you might forward onto to shy people you know in business.

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There is a difference between shy and introverted. Shy means you are uncomfortable interacting with people generally, particularly strangers, whether one-on-one or in a group. Introverted simply means you are more comfortable by yourself or with one other person.

I think it is very possible to be successful in business as an introvert, but shyness will be an obstacle to success. An introvert (to provide a concrete example) might have no trouble closing the sale, as long as it is a meeting with one decision-maker and not a whole team at once. An introvert is often very good at relationship selling. Success in business is not always about being a visible leader – many F1000 CEOs are introverts, and I believe Jim Collins’ work (e.g. Good to Great) shows that introvert CEOs are generally more successful because (among other things) they don’t have the same ego to feed.

However, it *is* necessary to be able to speak in front of larger groups at least sometimes. I think the answer to this is Toastmasters. There, you learn how to do various kinds of public speaking, and you learn how to do it well without being nervous. Like many things, it’s all about getting used to it, and most people do not get the opportunity to speak publicly very often. This does not mean you end up loving it – it will be hard and sap your energy – but it will allow you to do it well enough to complement your generally introverted style of doing business.

Saying your piece in a group setting where you are not the “assigned” speaker is a somewhat different matter. I think the experience of Toastmasters and other public speaking will mitigate the discomfort somewhat, but not entirely. The real problem in this case is a lack of self-confidence. You may be afraid of ridicule, or of being wrong, or of getting into a debate with someone who has a strong personality and a big mouth. The solution consists of two pieces: appropriate filtering and appropriate handling.

Given that you are not inclined to just blurt out what you’re thinking, you should say something in a group meeting only when (a) you are pretty sure you are right, (b) you have something to say that is different than what everyone else is saying (that doesn’t mean you necessarily disagree – it could be additive), (c) what you have to say is important to the discussion. Oh, if only EVERYONE would filter this way, meetings would be a lot shorter. If you filter in this way, people will be less inclined to beat up on you, because they know you only contribute when it’s potentially valuable (they may disagree, but won’t be as harsh). Appropriate handling is how you position your thoughts. First, be explicit about your level of certainty (but don’t understate it just to hedge your bets). Second, don’t try to persuade, just try to explain. This is more objective and less likely to raise anyone’s competitive hackles. Third, as much as possible, position your thoughts as complementary to the preceding discussion rather than in opposition to it. This does not mean you should be Sarah Palin and *ignore* what was said before, and try to make it seem like you’re on the same page when you’re not. It means you should identify the points of common ground before you begin speaking and include them in what you say. Finally, if the bigmouth in the room *does* come back at you, you simply have to have a good response ready. My inclination, which is subtly sarcastic and wouldn’t work for everyone, is something like “why don’t we take it off-line and I can explain my thinking to you better.”

Shyness itself is simply a manifestation of low self-esteem. You can’t cure it by going to Toastmasters or anything else. Therapy, perhaps, can help with this. But you won’t be successful in business if you are shy. You could be successful as a worker bee, but not as a business person. Beyond a certain point of technical knowledge, business is all about dealing with people. We have different preferences with regard to how we deal with people (some people need to be in a group, some prefer one-on-one; some prefer to write and send email, others find it necessary to talk on the phone or in person). But if one is uncomfortable dealing with people, and in many cases in business they *will* be strangers, then I just don’t see how you can make that work. You have to believe that others will get value out of dealing with you – or they won’t.

I hate Jim Cramer. His stock picking mania on TV horribly misleads individual investors who think they can beat the market. Heck, even he admits that, yet that hasn’t changed his behavior on CNBC.

But I have to say that this clip of Cramer about one year ago saying, "Bernanke has no idea how bad it is out there" and predicting the demise of Wall Street firms and the nuttiness of the mortgage market is remarkably prescient. Of course, Cramer being Cramer, the emotional outburst behind such prediction proves highly entertaining:

Speaking of the Wall Street crises, here are a few links (American Scene, Freakanomics, Daily Dish) that are excellent brief summaries of what is going on.

I just got off a videoconference with some executives in New Zealand and among other things we discussed creativity. I argued that too many people buy into the “analytical vs. creative” dichotomy of cognitive strengths. When I ask rooms of people, “Raise your hand if you consider yourself creative,” usually about 60% raise their hand. I’m always astonished at how few people self-identify as “creative.” I think it’s because of the stereotype that a creative person must be the ripped-jean starving artist type. If you’re a human being, I think you’re well within your right to call yourself creative, as humans are the most creative creatures on this earth. In any event, if you don’t consider yourself a creative person, you’re not likely to realize creative bursts.

It’s a fascinating topic. Ed Catmull, President of Pixar, has a great essay up today on how Pixar — one of the most successful movie studios in the business — fosters creativity. Pertinent especially for larger organizations. He starts with this:

A few years ago, I had lunch with the head of a major motion picture studio, who declared that his central problem was not finding good people—it was finding good ideas. Since then, when giving talks, I’ve asked audiences whether they agree with him. Almost always there’s a 50/50 split, which has astounded me because I couldn’t disagree more with the studio executive. His belief is rooted in a misguided view of creativity that exaggerates the importance of the initial idea in creating an original product. And it reflects a profound misunderstanding of how to manage the large risks inherent in producing breakthroughs.

Right on. Anyone who says finding good ideas is harder than finding good people is delusional. Everyone I talk to, in any size organization, for profit or non, all say that finding top flight talent is one of if not the hardest challenge they face. On the other hand, ideas are everywhere.

I also couldn’t agree more on what he calls “the exaggerated importance of the initial idea.” Here’s my original and follow-up posts on the myth of the eureka moment.

Other nuggets. Here’s how they’ve designed their buildings:

Most buildings are designed for some functional purpose, but ours is structured to maximize inadvertent encounters. At its center is a large atrium, which contains the cafeteria, meeting rooms, bathrooms, and mailboxes. As a result, everyone has strong reasons to go there repeatedly during the course of the workday. It’s hard to describe just how valuable the resulting chance encounters are.

On the challenge of being a successful company:

Systematically fighting complacency and uncovering problems when your company is successful have got to be two of the toughest management challenges there are. Clear values, constant communication, routine postmortems, and the regular injection of outsiders who will challenge the status quo aren’t enough. Strong leadership is also essential—to make sure people don’t pay lip service to the values, tune out the communications, game the processes, and automatically discount newcomers’ observations and suggestions.

(thanks to Ramit’s delicious tag of this piece)

My blog-friend Tim Sullivan, when he was an editor at Princeton University Press, every so often sent me a book he had finished working on, including Scott Page‘s book The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies. It’s been sitting on my bookshelf for awhile, unread. Bryan Caplan just took a look and came away impressed:

Contrary to many slanted summaries, The Difference doesn’t show that "diversity is good"; it carefully analyzes the conditions under which diversity lives up to the hype.

News flash: It turns out that one of the key conditions is individual competence. If you gather a diverse group of smart, informed people, they make each other better in a long list of ways...At the same time, however, Page shows that gathering the world’s ninnies and predicting "collective wisdom" is wishful thinking.

Sounds fascinating. I’ll be reading it soon.

On a somewhat related note, Bob Sutton has written interestingly on the ups and downs of group brainstorming.