Someone once said, “You should never tell Babe Ruth how to hold a bat”.

Truer words were never spoken and yet everyday, I work with managers, who have employees with a 1000 batting average, who insist on telling them how to hold a bat.

Process, policy and procedure are critical elements which allow us to consistently replicate desired outcomes.  But once those are memorizialized, routinely reviewed and improved, the employees who work within them should be turned loose and allowed to fly.

 Leaders who insist that employees should perform every task, approach every project, finalize every sale, exactly the way the manager would, is severely limiting the potential of the business and, more importantly, the employee.  If you have an employee who comes to work eager to do their job everyday, who knows themselves well enough to work efficiently and effectively, give them the sign to swing away.

My best advice to managers and leaders - get out of the battersbox today, don’t start coaching until they approach first and give them the room and equipment to knock the ball out of the park, every single day.  I promise you, they will.

Graduation was last Friday. The David Eccles School at the U graduated approximately 1,100 students with bachelor’s, Master’s, and Ph.D. degrees. I love graduation. It is a truly joyous event for everyone involved. Everybody is happy, families and graduates are rightly proud of the accomplishment graduation represents, and we had a huge crowd in the Huntsman Events Center. My guess is around 8,000 family, friends, spouses, in addition to approximately 700 students who attended graduation and approximately 50 faculty who were there to celebrate our graduates accomplishments.

One of the developments this year was a substantial number of graduates who had majored in entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship as a major is subject to debate in entrepreneurial circles. The basic argument is that “appetite for risk” cannot be taught, and this is what it takes to be an entrepreneur. We can teach people how to get financing, how to put together pro formas, the fundamentals of market entry, and help them develop strategic entry plans and at the end of the day — so the argument goes — they are not entrepreneurs if they cannot make the jump off the cliff and start the firm.

There are others who view this slightly differently. Jon Huntsman spoke at the David Eccles School several years ago, and he strongly endorsed the idea of “getting paid to learn the business.” His point was that no one knows enough about their industry and the fundamentals of running a business coming out of school, so potential entrepreneurs should put in a few years really learning the business and industry they hope to enter. From this perspective, take a job, pay attention, and keep developing your business plan until you have the credibility to launch a firm.

These two perspectives on how potential entrepreneurs should launch their careers both have some validity, and they are probably complementary. I have a different take on the entrepreneur major and why it is becoming popular nationwide. The entrepreneur major is the only major in business where students are trained to think about value creation as their core activity in the world of work. Every other major is about mastering a technical body of knowledge necessary to occupy a professional position working for someone else. Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, are grilled from day one on how they are going to create economic value through their business activities, and they have to develop answers that are about running the business, including serving customers, financing operations, and developing the human resources necessary for the firm to grow and prosper.

Entrepreneur majors learn about business. Few of them will start a business coming out of school because they know what they do not know. Will they eventually start businesses? Some will, some will not. I do not see starting businesses as the most important contribution they can make, although I hope the risk takers have the preparation to avoid the more obvious landmines that tank start-ups in the early phases. For the typical graduate who is more risk adverse, I think the payoff is they look for opportunities to generate value, and these are the kinds of employees we all want working for us. They are also employees who advance into leadership roles in the firms where they work.
I think the growth in students majoring in entrepreneurship is going to make a difference for Utah’s labor force over the long run, and I think the students graduating with this major are going to be the contributors to the growth of firms in Utah for a long time. It is great to see students graduating with a business degree who are interested in business, and this is what the entrepreneur major is all about.

Later.

Recently I’ve had to deal with an individual that, while powerful in her own business sphere and very rich, seems to have adopted the idea that because she powerful and rich (notice i did not say successful, because i beleive sucess is far more than money and power) she can be a jerk.  Some, in business have the idea that only the tough and agressive can win, which in the end may be the case (depending on what end you are looking for), but for me I think life is to short and relationships to important to adopt such an approach and propose this approach as taught by Mother Teresa which may really be success regardless of power and wealth:

“People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway. If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway. What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway. The good you do today will often be forgotten. Do good anyway. Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway. In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.” 

I knew the labor shortage was acute when I started seeing signs out on the street advertising for employees. The University’s parking services as signs in all the parking lots describing “great jobs” for students on campus, retail stores are trying to persuade customers to become workers, and companies are using signs out by the road and on the highways hoping someone driving by will decide it is a good day to apply for a new job. The shortage of qualified job applicants is particularly severe in many professional areas. It has gotten to the point that CEOs are approaching me at events and whispering: “Got any accountants you can send me?”

One approach to managing recruiting — and it is the approach most often used in Utah — is to let the market dictate the hiring process and just roll with the situation. This, however, can be a problem. When the business cycle is down and there is a labor surplus, firms can hire outstanding people, often at a bargain. But what about when business is expanding and there is a labor shortage? The difficulty is growth is impeded by an inability to hire qualified employees, and failure to grow in the good times means the company never grows to its full potential. Sure, some companies grow during when the general economy is in a slowdown, but even this growth tends to be during the transition from start-up to mature company, so at some point every firm needs to be poised to take advantage of the “good times.”

There is another hiring strategy that is based on establishing relationships in the job market, and this strategy yields the very best employees in good and bad times. In one sense it is more expensive because it incurs some costs that market-driven firms do not incur, but it is much more effective because it ensures firms have access to top employees when there are labor shortages and they need to take advantage of growth opportunities. Plus, these firms are not putting clowns in sandwich signs on the sidewalk out front trying to hire right now, which I have to believe is not the image you want to project for your business.

Firms that emphasize relationship building in human resources recruiting have a strong presence on university campuses with two types of programs, internships and campus recruiting. Companies with internship program are incurring costs with the pay for interns and some marginal costs for supervision of the interns, but they are saving an enormous amount by not making bad hires that take months to unwind and by hiring individuals who they know will be immediately productive, which can save months of learning investments in a new professional employee who is likely to make a lot more while they are learning than three interns. Plus, interns can be highly productive individuals who can be let loose on lingering problems that need fresh ideas and creative solutions. Finally, the management effort necessary to run an intern program is an excellent management development opportunity for a young manager who needs experience managing complex projects and running professional teams, i.e., every manager who is working up to higher level responsibilities.

In addition to the “preview” an internship provides, the internship program is a point of interaction with an emerging professional labor pool that is going to be working in Utah for the next 40 years. This group is not very experienced at age 22, but they may be just the people a firm hopes to attract when they are 42 and well established in professional careers. Internship and recruiting programs are an opportunity to establish a human resources brand in the labor market, and for some firms this is also an important opportunity to establish their services brand as well. The professional accounting firms “get it,” understanding presentations on campus to potential interns and as part of their recruiting effort are also an opportunity to tell the firm’s story as a service provider to a group who will need to hiring accounting firms in the future.

The second practice that defines excellent hiring is recruiting on campus. I have had several CEOs tell me, “Recruiting on campus is too much trouble. We just put an ad in the newspaper and your students apply.” Forget all the issues around labor shortages and the fact that newspaper ads do not seem to work right now and consider the possibility that “students apply” might just be the individuals who did not successfully interview with the companies that come to campus, i.e., you are getting the lower tail of the distribution. A president of a large national financial institution with a local office was stunned when I shared this comment with him, so he decided to do some “campus screening” to see how recruiting on campus might work. He told me he did not expect to hire, but he thought I had good points about having a campus presence. He ended up hiring two individuals from the first interview pool and is now on campus every year.

In addition to adopting the simple steps of establishing an internship program and recruiting on campus, firms with excellent hiring practices sustain their programs even when they are not hiring a lot of employees. First, most firms need to hire a few replacements for positions that are vacated by retirements and normal turnover every year, and excellent hiring practices are about getting the very best employees every year. Second, “employer of choice” is an investment worth sustaining, and like all investments, it is best made in advance of when the business needs the resources to grow and prosper. In the scheme of the investments most businesses are making every year, excellent hiring practices are a trivial cost with a high return. They just require a commitment to excellence.

And the answer is, “No, I do not have any accountants.” They all had offers in November to start jobs when they graduate in May. About all I can suggest is a clown with a sandwich sign down on State Street.

Later.

On the wall beside my desk sits a small bronze plaque.  It was a gift, purchased in Italy, from one of my partners.  On it are engraved just four words:  I am still learning. 
What’s unusual about that simple, seemingly mundane, statement is that is was spoken by the renowned Renaissance artist, Michelangelo – in his 87^th year. 

Given the scope of his achievement in painting, sculpture, poetry and architecture, this humility is striking and strongly reminiscent of another quotation attributed to the Greek philosopher Socrates.  He said, “The wise man knows that he knows nothing.”
Beside the Michelangelo quote is taped another gem, this one from the best-selling business book, Leading Quietly.  It’s a three-word motto that I also try to keep top-of-mind.  It reads, “Modesty. Restraint. Tenacity.”  I don’t think Michelangelo would mind that the two sit side by side on the wall.
At one point in my career, I helped create and produce advertising for Major League Baseball.  One spring it was my assignment to write and record a series of radio spots featuring Cal Ripken and his brother Billy, who happened to be his teammate on the Baltimore Orioles.  For those not so passionate about baseball as I am, Cal Ripken, now retired, was a perennial All-Star infielder who broke Lou Gehrig’s record for consecutive games played in the Major Leagues.  He’s hailed as the modern-day “Iron Horse” for that feat.  He won batting titles.  He won fielding titles.  He was a team captain, an MVP, a hero.  He had every reason to be proud, cocky and aloof.
His brother, on the other hand, was mediocre, as professional baseball players go.  He never earned any of the accolades that his older brother had.  Yet, during our recording session in an announcer’s booth high above the baseball field where their team was about to play a pre-season game, Billy was disruptive and foul-mouthed.  He acted how I imagined a superstar like Cal was more likely to act.  At one frustrating point, Cal, anxious to get back down on the field for more batting practice, looked Billy squarely in the eyes and firmly said, “Billy, it’s time to shut up.”  The session went smoothly after that.
For the most part, all of the seasoned baseball stars with whom I worked over a several-year period were well-mannered, humble and earnest about improving their skills.  They were, to use words from my wall quotations, tenacious about learning, and tempered with modesty. 
How much time do you set aside for learning?   How much money do you set aside for the training and teaching of your employees?  Since when did you know it all?  Since when can you rest on your laurels?  It’s a very competitive world, as you’ve no doubt discovered.  Resting leads to losing. Businesses can fail for any number of reasons, even if their products or services are unique and their leadership is charismatic.  All you can rely on, when all is said and done, is your own set of skills.  And skills at any level of the corporate heirarchy dull quickly without constant sharpening.

One of my neighbors is a successful, self-employed real estate salesman.  He works primarily by himself.  No one else is responsible to train him, teach him or motivate him.  Recognizing that fact, he’s wise enough to take two, self-imposed “feed the fire” trips each year.  He leaves home, kisses his family goodbye, and heads for a rented condo in Park City.  He then focuses for several long days on learning how to improve his performance.  Tapes, books, magazines, videos and fresh air are all part of his curriculum.  He readily admits that those one-man, learning soirees contribute mightily to his annual success.
A well-respected leader by the name of Thomas S. Monson once said, “Can we not appreciate that our very business is life is not to get ahead of others, but to get ahead of ourselves?  To break our own records, to outstrip our yesterdays by our todays, to give as we have never given, to do our work with more force and a finer finish than ever – this is the true idea: to get ahead of ourselves.”
And somewhere, Michelangelo is still studying sculpture.

The Intrepid Group regularly conducts media training sessions for clients. We focus on teaching, training and preparing them to present key messages effectively and professionally to the media. There’s usually a large focus on crisis in our training, where we assist them in dealing with the media in high-stress, demanding and often the most critical environments. Training includes an overview of media outlets, a discussion on communication techniques and then delves into message preparation and interview simulations. It’s intense. Our clients hate us during the process; they love us when they put the training to use. 

I’ve been conducting media training sessions for about four years and have never been interviewed on camera – I’ve done plenty of print, radio and phone interviews, but have always stood behind the camera while my clients went on air. I prefer it that way. My expertise comes from my education, from my experience under the auspices of Ari Fleischer while at the White House, from watching countless media interviews, and from conducting these training situations. 

Today I found myself on the other side of media training when a local news producer that I work with regularly called and asked if I would be a source for a story she was working on. The issue was easy and uncontroversial – she simply wanted to talk to me, on camera, about how my family’s financial savings situation. It would be brief – 10 minutes at the most – and she would only be using one or two soundbites from the entire interview. Cake, right? I agreed. 

An hour before the interview I was surprised at how nervous I was. Not because of the interview, but because I was testing my own expertise. I regularly conduct these training sessions where I tell clients exactly what to do when talking to the media and today I found myself in this exact situation. I was nervous because I had such high expectations for myself. I turned to my mentor and boss, Chris Thomas. Chris has been interviewed countless situations and under the toughest circumstances. He has been a spokesperson on national TV such as The Today Show, Good Morning America and CNN, as well as local broadcast news. I couldn’t have had a better expert at my disposal. 

Chris simply revisited the key media training points I’ve given so many times before. Since they’re fresh in my mind, I thought I would share them with you in case you find yourself in front of a news camera in the near future: 

1. What’s your objective? What are you trying to accomplish with this interview? What are you trying to avoid? 

2. What are your key messages? Have two or three prepared, know them well, and keep them short. 

3. Brainstorm possible questions – what could the reporter ask you? How will you respond? How can you tie your key message into each question. 

4. Ask the reporter ahead of time for as much information as possible. Know what the reporter’s objective is so you can help them accomplish their goal for the story, but also figure out how your objective and messages tie in. 

5. Don’t go off the record. EVER. 

6. Practice outloud. 

7. Practice Some More. 

8. Speak in soundbites. The average television quote is 12 seconds or less, so keep your messages short and simple. 

9. Look the reporter in the eyes and talk to them as they’re a friend and an equal, not a stranger or an enemy. 

10. Breathe, have some water, and stay calm. 

The world’s best athletes have coaches or trainers who work with them consistently to improve their technique, learn new skills and maintain their game. It should be the same with media preparation. Just because you had a media training session three years ago (or conducted one last month) doesn’t mean you’ll be ready when called upon by the media for an interview, especially in a crisis situation. The game is constantly changing. We highly recommend our clients continuously refresh their techniques and practice their messaging so when they do get the chance to be on national or cable television, they use that opportunity to their advantage. 

My interview went fine, although I’m sure I’ll hate how I look when the story runs. Such is the life of being a woman. But today I understand better what it’s like to have that bright light in your eyes, a camera and microphone right in your face, and the solid gaze of a producer questioning you and only you. It’s nerve wracking even under the kindest of circumstances. Luckily, I was ready for it. Are you? 

Today is 23 MAR 2007.  As the first quarter of the new year comes to a close you are probably monitoring pipeline progress as closely as we are.  When you examine the rest of the month do you know how many days you have left to sell?  Does your team?

A breakthrough moment occurred for us some years ago when we starting monitoring this number, and making sure our reps were too.  In case the number was not right in front of you here is some data that will help you maximize selling efforts day-by-day. 

There are 6 selling days left in this month AND in this quarter.

In Q2 there are 64 selling days; 21 in April, 22 in May, 21 in June.
In Q3 there are 63 selling days; 21 in July, 23 in August, only 19 in September.
In Q4 there are 62 selling days;  22 in October, 20 in November and 20 in December.  (if you can get prospects to buy in December)

We started 2007 with 251 selling days available to us.  We have burned through 56 … we have 195 left.  

They say sales is a numbers game; one of the most important may be the time left on the clock.
 
PS - we create a ’sales day’s sticker’ every year.  We post them on our monitors and phones.  We have a stack of extras; if you would like one shoot me an email with your contact info and I’ll happily send you one.

It seems like just about everything is ranked these days. Best dog park, best 10 all night diners, and best sweaty workouts seem to appear weekly in every news outlet. Of course there are also best and worst dressed at the Oscars, what is in and what is out listings, and all manner of ratings of food, song, movies, people, and ice creams that invariably get turned into a ranking by someone. Some rankings matter to those being ranked. Take the BCS in college football, for instance. This matters to the colleges whose post season depends on it. But does it really matter if Indian cuisine is ranked a notch below Thai cuisine by those stopping for gas in Levan?

Higher education used to operate in a world where potential students came to campus, met an advisor, met the professors, took a look at a dorm room, went on a campus tour, and looked at the catalog to see what courses were offered. Potential students weighed programs of study, talked to current students, and looked for a campus that was the right challenge and the right opportunity. There was a sense of prestige associated with each campus, but the rankings were high, good, and they will let me into the program. Mostly, students looked for a “good fit” and an engaging campus experience. The research showed individuals generally matriculated at a campus they had visited, and students were happy with their choices.

It is a totally different world when it comes to applying to college today. First, you can hire a consultant to help you manage the application process. Does this strike anyone who actually went to college as strange? Second, applicants need “a strategy” made up of aspiration schools, target schools, and fallback schools. Looking over the advice on application strategies is strangely reminiscent of the portfolio allocation advice that comes with retirement planning materials. And do not even get me started on the financial planning that needs to accompany the college application process. I hope you started before conception.

There are quality differences across educational institutions, but the differences that matter for students are the programs offered and the range of learning opportunities. But these are not what the rankings measure. Most rankings are devised to sell magazines, who are the great rankings proliferators, and the people doing the rankings have a story to write on deadline, which precludes any type of serious effort to evaluate the actual education offered. So instead of evaluating schools based on actual education offered, the rankings predominantly use “beauty contests” that are little more than asking a bunch of people who do not know the answer what they think. Ask enough people to pretend the results are “significant,” put the data into a statistical meat grinder to produce some variance, and you have yourself a ranking. But of what? And does it matter?

The other twist on this that never ceases to amaze me is when individuals talk about going to a school, taking a job, or pursuing a career based on “prestige.” We talk about these choices as if prestige is something an institution bestows on us. A few years ago I had an epiphany that continues to serve me well: prestige is something an institution gets from me. It is the work I do, my accomplishments, and my dedication that is the institution’s prestige, and I bestow it on the institution every day. The same is true for students who attend any university. “Prestige” is what alumni achieve based on the quality of programs and the educational experience, not something that comes with every sweatshirt sold at the bookstore.

The rankings game is reality for everyone in higher education, and we live with it. But being in the game does not require playing the game. If we focus on providing great programs and an exceptional learning experience, I figure the rankings will take care of themselves. Yes, it is possible to put funding into PR and marketing efforts to affect the rankings, but what does this accomplish in terms of the educational mission of a university? True quality is enduring, it is what matters, and it is what we do in the classroom, not what we put in the brochure.

Picking a college is a major life choice. It is a commitment of a significant chunk of lifetime and a major investment of financial resources. It is a choice that should be informed by an understanding of what the experience is going to be and what the student will learn. It should be about the program and the education, because this is what students take into careers and adult life. I fear for the young person who is picking 12 over 34 for the “prestige” as if the college choice was all about the logo apparel once wears to the gym.

Later.

I presented to a community group Friday evening on technology/innovation and economic development, and during the Q&A someone asked a question that used to come up frequently but has fallen off the radar in the past couple of years: What are business schools doing about the terrible state of business ethics in America? During the Enron/WorldCom years, this question came up every time I addressed an group, and I suppose it is making a comeback now because of the options back dating scandals that are in the news.

While public interest seems to change with the latest news, I see a lot that gives me confidence in the future of American business in today’s students. First, they care. The students who are in business school today have a much greater sense of social responsibility than any group I have seen in my 30 years in higher education. There is a recognition of the public leadership role of business leaders, and our students are interested in programs that prepare them for community service. Our Board Fellows Program, which places students in internships with local non-profits, was created by students interested in getting more community experience and has 25 students placed this year. Our non-profit consulting group serves 5-8 non-profits in our community every year by providing business consulting designed to make these organizations more effective in the delivery of services, and we are currently working on a social ventures fund that will help develop sustainable non-profit organizations in our community through the provision of one-time investment capital. And the service learning programs at all the universities in the area are experiencing record student participation.

Second, I think we know a lot more about preparing students for the ethical challenges they are going to face in the course of their careers. Early ethics courses focused on the “rules,” but knowing the rules did not really prepare individuals for the conformity pressures and incremental “legal” activities that often lead to unethical practices in the real world of business.

Seventeen years ago, the David Eccles School of Business took on the challenge of preparing students for business leadership by starting their training with a course that challenges each student to translate personal values into a credo of business conduct that will define their business career. I did a short piece for an alumni magazine that details this approach, and I think it remains timely. Take a look.

Business news was seldom carried on the front page in the past. This has changed dramatically in recent years with one corporate scandal after another. The amounts involved are staggering, and the resulting impact on stock markets and pension accounts has made most Americans innocent bystanders.

The impact of these crimes on how business is conducted is wide ranging. Recent federal laws demand a much greater level of business accountability in financial reporting, and appropriately so. The change in attitudes towards business was captured in a recent movie mini review in Entertainment Weekly: “The Perfect Score. A movie about high school students trying to steal SAT answers. So they can go to business school and learn how to steal millions.” (pg 16, February 6, 2004)

As a business educator, it is bewildering to see business education included among the presumed rotten apples. Still, we do not want to dodge questions about ethics and business education, they are valid and challenge our assumptions about the effectiveness of what we are doing to prepare our graduates for business careers.

“Ethics” in Business Schools

My experience teaching in a number of business schools has convinced me most are getting business ethics wrong. I think the elite business schools might be even worse at teaching this subject than others. One recruiter recently characterized a visit to a prestigious Ivy League business school as a “walk in the Land of the Velociraptors.” It was not a compliment. Students can walk out of an ethics class and not see a connection their next class, even when the organizational behavior case is about corporate fraud.

The core problem is business schools tend to teach business ethics as a set of rules, typically the law. Students too often conclude it is okay to walk the boundary of the law as long as the do no stumble into illegal behavior. This is the opposite of what we want our students to learn, because the boundary of ethical behavior is typically crossed well before one gets to the boundary of illegal behavior.

There has to be a better way.

David Eccles School of Business faculty started struggling with the problem of teaching business ethics about fourteen years ago. As we better understood the failure of traditional approaches to preparing people for ethical leadership, we started to understand two issues we needed to address:

1. In cases of illegal behavior, individuals cross the boundary of unethical behavior long before they start engaging in illegal acts. The difficulty is ethical dilemmas are subtle shades of gray, and the boundaries are hard to see. What our students seemed to need was a much better grounding of their business behavior in personal values and “gut instincts.” This approach is not about externally defined rules, it is about understanding core personal values and how they relate to business decisions.
2. The second feature of ethical business dilemmas is they occur in complex social systems with concentrated authority, distributed responsibility, and diffuse accountability. In many instances of illegal activity, hundreds of people are involved, yet no one raises an alarm. It is in understanding the complexities of “being ethical” when one lacks authority that we found personal attributes like courage, skills like effective dissent, and the importance of career preparation matter, leading to the quip, “Six months salary in the bank is the key to integrity.” There is no textbook on courage. We do not have easy answers when it comes to teaching our students how to act with integrity, but we are asking the right questions.

The David Eccles School did something extraordinary twelve years ago, replacing introductory business with Foundations of Business Thought, a course examining personal values and business practice. David Eccles School students begin their business studies with questions about the community responsibilities of business, the moral obligations of leadership, and market economy values. More than 2,000 students a year take the class, and just 60% are business majors.

The Foundations of Business Thought course now enrolls over 2,500 students a year and 50% are pursuing majors other than business. We were ten years ahead of everyone else on this, and we will be here with the same focus year after year because we know this is the right kind of education for every student who will eventually work in large organizations with a concentration of economic, social, and political power. And as I said in the beginning, I am confident because today’s students care.

Later.

Any business owner should think about doing a cafateria plan, it saves the employer money by reducing their share of payroll taxes (less wages paid out) and it allows employees to pay all their medical expenses (the IRS list of authorized expenses continues to grow and expand) on a pre-tax basis.  These plans are easy to set up, easy to run and definatly worth it for both employer and employee.