The Cheerleader

It's been a long time since I was in high school. I've tried to remember whether it was the same then as it is now, whether the 12th graders I just finished teaching Junior Achievement to understand how timeless some institutions are and how much others change.

A lot of the same stereotypes still apply - there were jocks and nerds and shy types, Goth girls and artists, kids trying to get attention and acting like they didn't want it at the same time. Junior Achievement's goal is to raise a financially literate generation. My goal as a volunteer is for these kids to understand what actually happens in business.

We talked about networking and hard skills and cult personalities. We talked about different ways to win. I asked them about the connections they have now, and two girls who were sitting next to each other and played on the same soccer team acted like it was odd to think they might have a connection post-high school. Too many of the students I've had over the years think the opposite, that their connections will last a lifetime. There must be balance.

Which brings us to cheerleaders. I never thought much about them when I was in high school, I was friendly with the ones in my classes and never gave much thought to knowing whether captains of industry need to be able to do roundoffs. They were better athletes than people gave them credit for, and the ones who wiped the floor with me in organic chemistry shattered any myth circulating about their stupidity. My high school yearbooks have been gathering dust in my parents' basement ever since they rolled off the presses, and I think sometimes about all the late nights and long hours I spent selling ads, planning pages and thinking about that book. The cheerleaders were in there, and so was the math club and the Latin society and the soccer team. It was our story - together.

Cheerleaders are still important. I told my Junior Achievement kids a story about a coworker of mine who should have been a competitor. We have the same job, we're on the same team. He's won awards I haven't and even though by other measures I think I may be better, he's more promotable. He came to me confidentially and asked for my help to get a promotion. Not just a promotion to a job that already existed, but a job he wanted me to help create. So I did. We met for coffee a few hours before work. I poked every hole I could in his business plan and gave him my best idea to fix them. We talked strategy. Every opportunity to buy in was good for me.

The best cheerleaders are people who want their people to win. The cheerleaders didn't want to be on the field, just like I didn't want this particular job. But I wonder if it would have made a difference - I wanted this guy to win because that's what he wanted for himself.

Winners in business (and in life) are the people who have enough vision to go around. They have vision for themselves and vision for their friends. They dream big and offer everything they have to give without reservation. Some people are lucky to learn that in a lifetime. The ones who learn how to cheer in high school will find themselves surrounded by winners for the rest of their lives - people who buy into them back. No amount of money can buy sincere vision. And that's a piece of advice that should never gather dust.

How to Get an Entry Level Job

Social networking has made recruiting immeasurably easier and harder for employers. It's easier because the whole world of active and passive candidates are on the table. It's harder because the whole world of active and passive candidates are on the table.

I've placed a lot of executives over the years. They pose their own set of challenges. But that's for another post. For now, I'm interested in helping entry level candidates get the job.

Five Rules For Entry-Level Candidates

1) Present your character, not your skill set.

At age 22, you don't have a ton of useful skills. Speaking Chinese or programming in C# is great. And unusual. The huge majority of candidates have traveled abroad, have decent grades, and were the treasurer of the marketing club at Central Michigan University. What employers are looking for is your ability to step up to challenges and solve problems.

2) Be friendly, polite and professional.

Three recent college grads answered a job ad I put up requesting entry level help. The first intro got my gender wrong, even though I had a picture on the ad. The second intro was somewhat rude and presumptive, asking for my contact info so she could send me a resume and schedule an interview without asking anything about the job or telling me anything about herself. The third candidate was polite. She actually sent me a resume with a misspelling on it (which I pointed out) and she apologized, explained it and fixed it. I asked her for an interview. That's character.

3) Tell the truth.

A candidate I was looking at claimed to have an MBA from the University of Ohio at Cincinnati, which was particularly interesting since there is no University of Ohio anywhere, particularly not in Cincinnati, which happens to be my hometown. Another candidate told me his biggest weakness was perfectionism, which I found interesting since his writing sample had two misspellings and three grammar mistakes.

4) Do as much research as you can, then ask interesting questions.

Job descriptions are often vague and very likely won't give you all the information you need. Find out what the company does, as much history as you can, and as many details about the position as you can. Do your homework. Find someone who works there and ask for a brief informational interview.

5) Understand that the answer to "Could you do me a favor?" is usually yes.

People, if they know what you need and are in a position to help you, usually will. The key here is to follow through. I made that mistake early in my career when a number of people offered introductions and other help and I didn't follow through, or later didn't know what to ask or how to ask for it. Everybody was entry level once and asking for help shouldn't be seen as overly aggressive and annoying. (Note to candidates: Don't be overly aggressive and annoying!)

Follow these steps and you'll be on your way!

Where MLMs Went Right

My first experience with a multi-level marketing (MLM) operation was an invitation to an "interview" for a marketing job when I was 20. On arrival, I was promptly carted into a room with 50 other people, spoken to by a guy with brilliant white teeth whose hair probably wouldn't have moved under any circumstances. He could have written the book on presenting, making eye contact, using names, asking the appropriate number of questions. The whole thing seemed about as sincere as a game show host's desire to see an overweight housewife win a new car. I didn't want to be rude and walk out in the middle of it, but there was no way I was going to sign up to be in somebody else's down line. The gentleman who invited me to the religious cult gathering, er, intro session sat me down in an overstuffed leather chair and shoved a clipboard at me. "I've already filled in part of it for you." I stood up, thanked him for his time, and let him know I wasn't interested. He put his hand on my shoulder, pushed me back into the chair, and said "That's great. We'll go ahead and get you signed up. What I need from you today is $200."

I was mad. He wasn't listening. It felt manipulative. And there was one thing about it I've never been able to shake for all these years. I've never seen any organization with members who bought in as completely as the stakeholders of an MLM. They were mobilized, committed. They had their pitches down. They had their materials. They learned how to market. They were fearless!

I've been part of some really great churches, political groups and social clubs. The membership is often largely attracted by a handful of members, or in some cases a single person. I've learned how to be the connector. I recruit for my company, not in any official capacity, but because it's a great place to be and I want other people to have the opportunity.

There's an unmatchable excitement around recruiting. I love talking about intangibles with people. I want them to buy into the idea of what I'm doing. I want to learn what they're excited about. I love sharing ideas, vetting my own, seeing how we can all get better. I think every employee should get in the habit of recruiting, every club member, every congregant. If you don't love what you're part of enough to tell other people, why are you doing it?

I scan my company's website for open positions on a regular basis. I can rattle off a dozen reasons why people should want to work for us. I love my church, and one of the highlights of last week was having my best friend with me. I'm part of a political women's group that I started inviting friends to after the first meeting.

If you're not part of an incredible church, a vibrant company or a dynamic club, join one. There's no day like today!

The Foot

A rose is a rose is a rose. A foot in Portland, OR is a foot in Portland, ME. This common set of measurement standards is useful in everything from recipes to building construction. So, when and why is uniform standardization a good idea?

When start up companies start, the president may also be in charge of everything from building the website to mailing packages to collecting accounts receivable. Companies rely on their institutional memory - we do things the way we've always done them, and if you have a question about that process, feel free to ask your neighbor. As companies evolve, employees need to standardize and document exactly as much information as will be used again, no more, no less.

Documentation can run out of control. If a process is likely to only be repeated once by the same user, or not at all, documentation is unnecessary. A speech written by its deliverer doesn't need stage notes. Companies trying to track down every process and generate report after report after report can find their production grinding to a halt.

How is your end user going to interact with your information? Do you have a strong sense of who your end user actually is? If not, or if you want to check, ask another department in the company who you interact with how they need the information presented. I like standardized abbreviations in marketing material I'm trying to find. When the word international is sometimes written out in full, sometimes written int, sometimes written intl and sometimes written int'l, it can be easy to think a piece is missing or was never created. When your company is 25 people with low turnover, it's easier to learn any system and stick to it. When your company is 25,000 people with high turnover, a non-intuitive system can create a significant source of mistakes and frustration.

How far does this go? Teachers rebelling against the No Child Left Behind Act claimed it neutered their ability to teach the material and forced them to "teach to the test." Children's education has huge variability depending on the wealth of the district, the involvement of the parents, the quality of the teachers the district is able to attract. Standards are good, so how do you account for variability when you can't control the input? Companies can hire the people they want and fire the ones they don't. To a large degree, schools don't have that option.

A solution: require all Master's of Education candidates to meet KIPP standards for teaching, and integrate the program into America's schools over a 5 year period. KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) is a national network of free, open-enrollment, college-preparatory public schools with a track record of preparing students in under served communities for success in college and in life. There are currently 82 KIPP schools in 19 states and the District of Columbia serving around 20,000 students (from their website, July 2009). Their program is rigorous, requiring attendance from 7:30 am to 5:30 pm, with hours of homework afterward and significantly shorter breaks and days off. Their mandatory curriculum includes music and foreign languages. And their results are impressive: teachers and administrators are lined up to teach and start new schools, and although they serve primarily at risk communities, they proudly boast 25 to 100% better results in math and reading. In many cases, their graduates are the first member of their family to go to college.

Back to standardization. Where does the funding come from? KIPP, while an important movement and one I fully expect to continue to grow in the following years, serves only 20,000 students. If that number grew to 2,000,000 students, funding options for the independent schools would be vastly lacking and space for students would be even more of a premium.

The only solution is to make KIPP, which already seems to have figured out the answer, the new standard and for government to get out of the way. If we removed teacher tenure and the vacation schedule and raised the pay to the demands of the job we now require them to do, every school could be a KIPP school and America could take her place as the world's foremost intellectual leader.

Standardization is good, but only by standardizing at the highest level and not the lowest.

The Will

Sitting in my apartment in sunny Denver, CO, I'm thinking of Bangladesh, a country with the population density equivalent to half the US population in an area the size of Wisconsin without clean water or clean toilets. Disease, infant mortality and despair run rampant across the countryside.

My question to America is "Do you care?" or, more importantly, "Would you be more likely to care if you knew you would be able to make a difference that you could see and measure?"

Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the father of micro-lending, may have already given us the answer to the latter. In his two NY Times bestselling books Banker to the Poor and Creating a World Without Poverty, he outlines what it looks like to have a system where capital is A) recycled, and B) put directly in the hands of the people who can use it to generate business. His argument (with 30 years of success to back it up) is that the poorest of the poor have some skill that they've used to survive, and their need isn't for training, it's for capital and a market.

People have with in them the will to survive. But more than that, they have the will to dream big, to the will to change their circumstances and the will to change their family trees, one branch at a time.

So how does this work?

A micro-loan, at least in this context, is a loan of as little as $25 that is given to a person who belongs to a community of borrowers, without collateral, that they agree to repay on a fixed schedule with interest. It's different from charity in several significant ways.

1) These are loans, not gifts. They're on a fixed schedule, including interest. Once the borrower has repaid, both borrower and lender may enter other deals with each other or other borrowers/lenders.

2) These are loans to generate income producing businesses. Whatever the borrower's skill, whether making baskets to sell or anything else, must produce income. The goal is for every borrower to become financially self-sustaining, and possibly even a lender some day. There are no loans for simple consumption.

3) The target borrower for these loans are women, to empower them and eventually their children/families.

For thirty years, he's taken the concept of micro-lending across the countryside of his native land. He's helped his fellow countrymen help themselves, and lowered the poverty rate from a mind-numbing 62% to under 25%. While their current state is still roughly the same as the Great Depression, the progress is phenomenal.

His argument seems to eliminate the obstacle all charitable organizations face - how do you finish the mission before you run out of money? By making the structure a loan that gets repaid, people can willingly invest significantly larger sums and, with the promise of their money back (Yunus boasts a 98% repayment rate among the poor), the capital can be redeployed again and again. Further, it instills in the organization the need to function with business efficiency to become self-sustaining and to eliminate the need for continuous fundraising.

By reaching out through a person-to-person network, establishing local accountability and a systematic way to empower people, we have the ability to end poverty in this lifetime.

Are you in, America?

Everywhere in the world and right next to you.

UBS, the world's most successful investment bank, claims to only have two locations - everywhere in the world, and right next to you. Their tag line "You & Us - UBS" is supposed to convey thoughts of global size, strength, resources, trust and ability. I like their marketing schtick, but it made me ask myself another question:

When is universality a good thing?

Does a client in Manhattan need the same thing as one in Arthur, NE? What about a client in Athens, OH vs. one in Athens, Greece? How important is specialization? When thinking about a global enterprise, how do you achieve economies of scale and compatibilities of message while being responsive to the needs of the local business?

Can any business exist by being truly universal?

The world's most transcendent business is probably McDonald's. Many economists point to the Big Mac Index, a weekly published list of the price of the world's most popular sandwich here and in countries around the world as a quick take on the relative value of the dollar against 33 foreign currencies. There are few icons in the world that are as broadly recognized as the Golden Arches. But, even within this country, there are variations in local offerings. In heavily Catholic areas, the Fridays during Lent offer a great opportunity to push fish sandwiches. In the deep South, you're more likely to see barbecued options. In certain parts of the burbs, McDonald's are more likely to have playgrounds.

Do these regional differences hurt the brand?

I argue no. While standards can be highly beneficial, they must be viewed in context of what the business needs are. Rigid conformity to absolute standards minimizes the ability of your front line to respond. So, how does a business find a balance?

An interesting survey would be to ask your customers, vendors, employees and senior management to answer these questions:

What do you love about our company?

What do you hate about our company?

What do we do better than our competition?

What does our competition do better than us?

How similar do you think the answers would be? What information could you get by taking that regionally as well as by respondent segment? Would you get the same answers from IT and Marketing? What about Legal and Sales? While no business can (or probably should) allocate its resources identically across all categories, it's interesting to think about the penetration of the message. Does your senior management think you have a stellar website that your customers think is a joke? Are middle managers empowered to make unusual concessions if it benefits the overall bottom line?

One of my favorite examples is an engineering firm who needed a special project done and was considering American labor, foreign labor, or importing foreign labor. They settled on the latter, and brought five gentlemen in from India. Culturally, they preferred to work without shoes and for their wives to be able to cook them their favorite dishes. The manager's solution? Rip up the carpet and reinstall it with extra thick padding, and add a special oven to the kitchen. The price? 30% less than it would have cost to outsource to a local firm.

So, when are floating standards a bad thing? When should standards be set?

First, legally. Rules on document retention, etc. must be followed even when annoying. However, giving employees some discretion on how to improve compliance may be a good thing. Changing from a paper to electronic filing system (assuming that satisfies regulations), color coding files, sending out reminders may all be good ways to make it easier for employees to integrate standards into their process.

Second, brand wise. While a franchise owner may think Big Macs taste better with spicy mustard than special sauce, the brand's overall value is likely to be harmed if Corporate is broadly promoting a traditional product. A better solution may be to insist on certain standards, but give franchise owners a small amount of discretion to try new products. It might even be a great test market with rewards for success.

Third, ethically. Chick-Fil-A, a self-proclaimed Christian company, insists on all sites being closed on Sundays so their employees can attend church and be with their families. Locations that want to be open on Sundays must not be allowed to violate the company's overall ethical standard or the overall credibility will be damaged.

Finally, universality must be evaluated in multiples. Best Buy is a great example of having strings of different types of stores - some known for great service/personal shopping, others for low prices, others for technical expertise. While the general brand is the same, there's a great opportunity for mini-brands based on local markets.

The best opportunity for a company to establish a universal brand is to decide on which elements truly need to be universal, and leave everything else to local taste.

"...and when you get done with all of the forevers, then AMEN!"

The subject, for those of you who might not recognize it, is the last line of Rev. S.M. Lockridge's famous six minute description of Jesus, commonly known as "That's My King!" for Lockridge's use of the phrase throughout.

It's available on YouTube. It's available in its original entirety, spliced together with other songs and beats, preceded and/or followed by other messages. It's been heard by thousands, if not millions, of people.

Lockridge inspires me. But far more, Jesus inspires me. I can't think of anything better than a message I truly believe in wrapped up in a flawless delivery.

Who inspires you?

More specifically, once you have the answer to that question, do you make a point to listen to them as regularly as you need to live in a state of inspiration?

Printed speeches are good also, but don't have the same emotion and power as the spoken word. Some of the most moving words of our time put a face on civil rights, a man on the moon and tore down the Berlin Wall. Our leaders have boldly declared us victorious in the war on terrorism, then kept us safe for 8 years after the first attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor. They've rallied us to raise money for charitable causes and inspired us to new heights of success inside corporations.

So... who then is the face behind the face?

Even the most famous speechwriters are largely unknown to the general public. (Although if you take Jay Leno's JayWalk as a sample of the common man, our highest leaders are also largely unknown.)

The essential part of a good speech is 2-fold, first a concisely constructed idea and second a delivery with strength, conviction and power. Lockridge, although a seasoned minister and public speaker, delivered his most famous address off the cuff. Some say he was simply seized by the Holy Spirit, others say he was infused with a lifetime of preparation beforehand.

Candy Lightner, the founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), was so angry at the lax treatment of the driver who killed her 13 year old Cari that she started a grassroots campaign that eventually became a national movement. She passed out leaflets. She held meetings. And eventually, she testified before Congress.

What are you convicted about? And, given the opportunity, could you deliver it with strength and power?

If the answer is no, join a Toastmasters Club and start practicing! Buy a camcorder and start critiquing yourself on film. Learn to convince people both in writing and in person. Follow strong leaders with strong values. Make inspiration as necessary a part of your life as food and water.

Conviction + Action = Purpose

Who and what are you living for?