RSS

Tag Archives: leadership

Stay Away from Workaholics

17 May

workaholicI find writing this post a bit ironic and I am, without a doubt, a workaholic. Between the rapid growth of KidoZen, leading the strategy side of TelIago and some third-party projects I work around 16 hours during weekdays and another 8-10 hours during the weekend. I don’t complain about it. I have the privilege to be at a point in my life on which I enjoy what I am doing more than at any other time in my career and I am convinced that it takes that kind of effort to make a difference in this highly competitive market.

Having said that, I tried very hard to not encourage that type of behavior within our team. At KidoZen, our teams work fairly regular 8-10 hour days and although, occasionally, we end up putting insane hours at the end of each release cycle, we never encourage or reward that type of behavior. At this point in my career, as I am convinced most workaholics are damaging to the team dynamics.

My reasoning here is very simple: If you are going to regularly work insane hours you need a structure to sustain that rhythm and most people don’t even think about. I can work long hours because I meticulously divide my focus during the day on different aspects that help keep me fresh. Contrary to that thinking, I found that most workaholic behaviors are completely triggered as a continuous and disproportioned response to short-term needs with little strategy or structure around it.

Here are some of the reasons why, I think, you should stay away from workaholics:

  • Workaholism is contagious: When someone regularly work insane hours to accelerate certain delivery, their colleagues feel compelled to do the same even if they are not equipped to do so
  • Competitiveness: Related to the previous point, workaholism indirectly foment a level of competitiveness within a team that can be detrimental to the long term goals of a specific project.
  • Long term performance degradation: Unless you take the time to structure a method that allows you to regularly work long hours, your performance will degrade over time as an inevitable consequence of exhaustion.
  • Burnout factor: Being burnout as a consequence of working long hours ends of affecting the overall performance and attitude of the team.
  • Short-term focus: If you are constantly burning hours focusing on short term objectives, it becomes really hard to keep thinking and contributing to the long term strategic vision of a product or company.
  • Working hard for the wrong reasons: Ultimately, I can live with workaholics as long as they are driven for the right reasons but I found out that, more often than not, you encounter people whose only objective with working long hours is not passion or motivation but a selfish desire to score some points with their management team.

Those are just some of the elements why I fundamentally try to not encourage workaholic-type behaviors within our team. I would be very interested to hear your thoughts about it. More about this topic in a future post….

 
1 Comment

Posted by on May 17, 2013 in Uncategorized

 

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Want to Be Creative? Be Happy!

01 May

creativity

Cognitive science has become one of my favorite non-technical subjects during the last year. For the last few months, I have been reading a ridiculous amount of books and research papers about different cognitive science subjects ranging from psychology to neurosciences. It never ceases to amaze me how a basic understanding of human’s reactions can help us to make better decisions in the business world or influence the culture of an organization. A great example of this are some fascinating studies that a good friend sent me about some of the elements that influence creativity.

Creativity is one of the most important aspects of successful entrepreneurs. The ability to make creative decisions can influence different aspects of a company ranging from a product design to the culture of an organization. However, creativity is rarely constant. Sometimes individuals can make incredibly creative decisions but that creativity seems to dissipate at times.

Influencing people’s creativity is not an easy task and certainly not one that has a magic answer. However, cognitive science teaches us that there is a very simple factor that can help to increase creativity: happiness!

Yes, you read it right. It turns out that there is a direct correlation between being happy and what psychologists call “intuitive performance”. By that fancy term, scientist refer to people’s ability of making accurate, intuitive and creative decisions. As a lot of studies prove, when in a good mood, people are more likely to make intuitive and creative decisions. Following that argument, it’s pretty clear that we can influence people’s creativity by fomenting an environment and a culture that makes them happy.

However, some other unexpected things derivate from the effects of being in a good mood. It also turns out that, while undoubtedly creative, people that are in a good become less vigilant, analytical and more prone to logical errors. A good mood, is obviously a sign that things are going in the right direction in certain aspects which makes the brain be at a “cognitive ease” state on which we are more relaxed but also less analytical or vigilant.

There you have it, happy people are more creative but can also be less analytical!

Hmmm….interesting dilemma…..

Not really!

From a company culture standpoint, I will always pick creativity and happiness every time. I am convinced is a better formula to win in the long run.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on May 1, 2013 in Uncategorized

 

Tags: , , , , , ,

Finding the Foil in Your Story

22 Feb

In literature, the Foil is a character type that used to highlight the qualities of the protagonist by highlighting a strong contrast. Arguably, the most famous foil of all times is Sancho Panza, the famous Don Quixote squire who continuously contrasts with the protagonist both morally and physically and serves as a constant reminder to Don Quixote’s mission. Notice that the foil is not necessarily a negative character.

Just like in literature, missions in startups are better described and accomplished when there is a Foil in the story. In this context, a foil can be a large competitor, a situation in the current macroeconomic context of a particular industry or even a type of customer. Regardless, by presenting the characteristics of your foil you will highlight the benefits and vision of your company, product or service. It’s not that hard, if you are working on something relevant just look around and you will find many many Foils :)

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on February 22, 2013 in Uncategorized

 

Tags: , , , , ,

A Startup is Like Mass “God Gets Mad if You Don’t Show Up”

21 Nov

Ernest Hemingway used to write every day. Obviously, the majority of his writing efforts didn’t translate into the great parts of his novels but he still attempted to write every day. The great writer used to say “Writing is like Mass. God gets mad if you don’t show up” :) In addition to his talent, I think his incredible consistency and perseverance made Hemingway one of the great writers of all time.

Tracing a parallel to the startup lifestyle we can probably say that “Startups are like Mass. God gets mad if you don’t show up” ;) Maybe this seems obvious from the outside but startup founders can agree with me that is not always that easy to show up to work when times are tough.

Perseverance, consistency and resiliency are essential elements in the success of a startup but the first step is always to show up. When times are good, you can’t afford to relax and need to keep pushing your company to the next phase. When times are difficult, you need to show up to continue leading your times through the challenging times.

Realize that most of the big success, ideas don’t come as a sudden inspiration but are rather the result of a series of experiences and efforts to take small footsteps towards the end goal. Regardless of the current status of your startup, remember that the main step to success is to ALWAYS SHOW UP!

 
1 Comment

Posted by on November 21, 2012 in Uncategorized

 

Tags: , , , ,

Is Your Market Position Defensible?

13 Nov

This is a hard but necessary question every founder should think hard about. We all create products that we think are fairly innovative and better than the competition. However, if you are playing in a big market, you are likely to face competitors with stronger financial resources that will be going after your same customer base. In those situations, a startup has to understand the different strategies to defend its market position. Even though you might think that you can always out-innovate your competitors, that’s can rarely be consider a strategy to defend your value proposition

Based on the characteristics of your product and market, there might be different product sustainability models that can be consider to create a defensive and solid market position

IP

IP-based sustainability is the most traditional product sustainability model. If your product provides a very unique IP that is relevant to your customers and target market, that could translate into a very solid market position that will make it hard for your competitors to capture. Contrary to what you might think, IP-based sustainability is really hard to achieve in big markets.

Strong Alliances

Establishing strong strategic alliances and partnerships could result in a very clear product sustainability strategy. A healthy partner ecosystem will not only help to improve your product market presence but it will also make it harder for your other companies to compete in the space.

Stickiness

Is your product or service is able to retain customers once they purchase it? Are they able to switch to a different solution without a significant investment? Sticky solutions with high customer retention levels are more defensible in the long term that solutions without those characteristics.

Solid Exit Strategy

Even If you are not thinking in a short term exit you need to accordingly determine the potential exit strategies for your product and company. Understanding the exit dynamic is important in case you can’t sustain your competitive advantage as a standalone company.

What do you think? What else makes the position product or startup defensible?

 
1 Comment

Posted by on November 13, 2012 in Uncategorized

 

Tags: , , , ,

Does Co-Opetition Work for a Startup?

31 Oct

Last week, Microsoft made making the Surface tablets generally available in several countries. This release, marks a turning point on the relationship model between Microsoft took and long term OEM partners such as Dell or HP. With Microsoft venturing into the manufacturing of their own tablet, it will start competing directly with the OEMs while, at the same time, expanding their relationship to grow the Windows 8 ecosystem. This is a classic Competition + Collaboration model known in the industry as Co-opetition.

While Co-opetition is very common in different segments of the software industry such as venture capital or private equity investment, it’s certainly not very popular in the enterprise software space. For years, we have seen enterprise software through the lenses of companies like Oracle that foment fierce, “take no prisoners” type of competition. Traditionally, the enterprise software ecosystem has drawn a very clear line between partners and competitors and combining the two was very unusual at best.

However, in recent years, the expansion and diversification of the enterprise software landscape has also changed the collaboration and competition models used by a lot of enterprise software vendors. When thinking about Co-opetition models, it’s important to notice that they can be fundamentally different from the perspective of large enterprise software company than from a startup. While well-established enterprise software vendors can implement Co-opetition mechanisms with other vendors without disrupting its fundamental business model, a startup can be banking its entire future in these type of partnerships.

While conceptually Co-opetition models might appear very compelling, there are a few elements I would recommend any startup to evaluate carefully before establishing a partnership with a competitor. Here are some of the most important ones:

What sides pull the most: Collaboration or Competition?

When entering in a partnership agreement with a competitor, you should very honestly determine which aspect of the relationship is more important to your company: collaboration or competition and if you are going to be able to separate the two. If beating your competitor carries more weight in the strategic plans of your startup then chances are that the partnership won’t be very effective.

Can you be a true partner to a competitor?

Partnerships are only effective if both sides can benefit from it. As a startup, you need to honestly determine if your company can be an effective partner to your competitor or if the relationship is only going to be conditioned to the competitive nature of both businesses.

How important is the partnership?

This might sound like a trivial question but it’s one that results difficult to answer honestly. While any partnership might result appealing as a startup, establishing a Co-opetition relationship with a competitor can result in more trouble that is worth. Is you have doubts if the partnership with a competitor is strategic to your startup, my advice would be avoid it and focus on discovering and building your core business model.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on October 31, 2012 in Uncategorized

 

Tags: , , , ,

Startups are not for People that Think Too Highly of Themselves

17 Oct

I’ve gotten quite a bit of feedback about my past blog post about big-egos and mediocre talent so I figured I will expand a little bit more on it with some specifics. Today I would like to talk about one of the most damaging types of people you will encounter in a startup: the folks that think too highly of themselves.

There are many terms that people often use to refer to people that think too highly of themselves: arrogant, conceited, big-headed, smug, know-it-all, vain, proud, smart-alec etc. One of my favorite terms is based on the Aristotelian philosophy “the golden mean” that refers to the idea that qualities can be overdone and underdone. In that sense, some folks refer to people that think too highly of themselves as the “golden self-esteem” J .

Hiring the right people to build a cohesive and talented team is probably the single most important focus area of a startup co-founder and CEO. Quite often, seasoned entrepreneurs compared the ups and downs of team dynamics in startups to marriages or long term friendships. I try to not use those analogies very often but there are some cases on which it absolutely applies.

One of the mistakes I made as a rookie entrepreneur was too ignore the effects of the “golden self-esteem” syndrome. I really thought that if by focusing on hiring talented people and providing a good culture we could overcome the effects of big egos within our startups. More importantly, I thought that you could leverage “golden self-esteems” as a catalyzer to drive people to achieve relevant things. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Startups are a roller coasters with plenty of moments of failures, rejections, etc as part of your daily life. A good friend of mine and super successful entrepreneur once told me that “if you are not being rejected every day you are not doing your job as a founder”. It’s not a surprised that a lot of entrepreneurs develop a very pragmatic sense of humbleness during their careers: the ones that you can only acquire by failing regularly.

The “golden self-esteem” people can’t operate within the down times. They need someone else to blame for the apparent failures because psychologically they can’t accept the emotional side-effects that come with accepting that the down-times are just part of the process of building something relevant. The “golden self-esteem” people make lousy employees because they will always be more focused on themselves than on the entire team. They will make lousy partners as they can never think on anybody by themselves during the down times and, most likely, they will make lousy husbands, wives or friends as nurturing their narcissism will always more important than the happiness and success of their loved ones.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on October 17, 2012 in Uncategorized

 

Tags: , , ,

A Recipe for Failure: Big Egos and Mediocre Talent

11 Oct

A lot has been written about how big egos are one of the most harmful aspects in teams and companies. Typically, people associate big egos with individualisms, selfishness and all sorts of other elements of not team players. In my experience, the truth is a little more complicated than that.

While I agree that big egos can almost always be somewhat harmful to team dynamics, I think they can be used as a catalyzer for many aspects of the team if they are backed by the right level of talent and accomplishment. On the other hand, I’ve always find that the most harmful and vicious type of big-egos are the ones coming from mediocrely talented and not accomplished people.

My reasoning here is very simple: For the most part, talented and accomplished people have high aspirations and don’t get let their egos get on the way of small things that might impede them to accomplish great things (that can in turn bust their egos even more J ). Under the right conditions, highly talented folks can use their egos as a motivator and drive the rest of the team with them.

Contrary to this group, you will often encounter people that are not very talented, haven’t built or accomplished anything worth talking about in life but still manage to nurture a big ego related to some minor achievements that, sometimes, are relevant to people that share their same limited vision of the world. I find these types of people the most harmful in a team environment. As anyone with big egos, the mediocrely-talented folks would love to be successful and accomplished but lack the talent or vision to do achieve that by themselves and also the character to rely on more talented people to lead them. Instead, mediocrely-talented people operate in a sort of small distortion field and always try to drive attention to themselves related to not important things.

If you are working on a team environment, you are likely to easy identity the mediocrely-talented people with big egos. They are the ones arguing about the non-important things and constantly highlighting how hard they are working on that problem that nobody cares about. They are the people that think that everyone else around them is an idiot but still can’t manage to deliver anything great and always have someone else to blame for their failures (most likely the rest of the team). I’ve certainly encountered a few of those in my professional career and so have you.

Whether you are building a business or delivering a great project that you care about, my advice would be to, without hesitation, get rid of the mediocrely-talented big egos around you. They will only cause harm and, like any other mediocre soul, they will always find pleasure working on some other non-important thing that they can take all the credit for.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on October 11, 2012 in Uncategorized

 

Tags: , , , , ,

When Comes to Enterprise Software Markets Old and Hot is Better Than New and Hot

27 Sep

A few days ago, I blogged about the tangible benefits an enterprise software startup can experience by operating in a competitive market. While competition is certainly good, it can take different shapes or forms depending on the characteristics of the target market. Probably two of the most distinctive types of competition an enterprise software startup can experience are determined by the maturity of the specific markets related to the product.

While is always sexy and exciting to try to provide interesting solutions in brand new markets, an enterprise software startup stands significant better chances of being successful and differentiating from its competitors by operating in an established market going through a transformational process.

Let me try to explain….

Any new hot enterprise software market will, by definition, produce an initial number of that will not only provide software solutions in the space but will also influence the direction of the market. In a new enterprise software market, any startup will face the challenge of competing against new and innovative companies, convince customers about the relevance of the new market and the value proposition of their new enterprise software product.

Despite of the fact that any new enterprise software market produces early adopters, most enterprises are typically cautious when investing in a new technology space. Traditionally, enterprises acquire technologies based on customer references, analyst researches and all sorts of other elements of a well-established industry segment but that are really hard to establish in a new and emerging technology market. From the competitive standpoint, there are no legacy players in a new market; every solution is, by definition, innovative and customer will make decisions based on a somewhat immature understanding of that specific industry segment. All those factors combined make the task of competing in a new enterprise software market an incredible challenge for most startups. The good news is that the rules apply to every player in the space and typically the best team-product-execution combinations will end up dominating that market.

We can find a current example of this phenomenon in the enterprise big data technology space. While big data is one of the hottest enterprise software trends, the space is overly crowded and there are no clear dominant players. Customers are really confused in terms of which technologies to adopt startups are fighting really hard to standup in a large group of innovative technologies and solutions.

Contrary to playing in a new and hot enterprise software market, I firmly believe that enterprise software startups have better chances of succeeding when tackling a well-established market going through a transformational process. A classic example of this model could be the emergence of the CRM online space with players such as Salesforce.com or SugarCRM a few years ago. From a competitive standpoint, the CRM online players were mostly battling against the traditional on-premise CRM vendors such as Siebel, PeopleSoft, etc. In that sense, the incumbents were tackling a well-established market with customers that clearly understood the value proposition and capabilities of CRM technologies but that needed a simpler and more effective delivery model.

In a well-established enterprise software market, startups have the opportunity to differentiate themselves against the legacy technologies in the space; they have access to a mature customer based and they can build on the experiences of the previous market leaders.

As an enterprise software startup, it is important to clearly understand if you are playing in a brand new market or in an existing market going through a metamorphosis. Regardless of the scenario, competition in the enterprise software space is always brutal. However, if you are playing in a hot and large market, sometimes old is better than new ;)

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on September 27, 2012 in Uncategorized

 

Tags: , , , , , ,

My Meeting with Ashok Soota: What a 70 Years Young Taught Me

18 Sep

Last week I had the privilege of spending a few hours with Ashok Soota (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashok_Soota). For the ones of you not familiar with the name, Ashok is one of the living legends of the IT services industry and one of the most important figures of the Indian IT revolution. Among his major accomplishments, Ashok served as 15 years as CEO of the Wipro (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wipro) which is currently valued at over $8.5B. After Wipro, Ashok started another crown jewel of the Indian IT industry: MindTree(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MindTree) which went public in 2006. Now 70, Ashok is making another attempt trying to revolutionize the IT industry by starting Happiest Minds, an IT services organizations exclusively focused on big enterprise trends such as enterprise mobility, big data, cloud computing, natural user interfaces among other technology movements that are redefining the IT landscape.

I’ve been a big fan of Happiest Minds and they have been great partner to both Tellago and Tellago Studios. However, since reading the first press releases about the company, I was always intrigued by its mission. Are the new technology movements such as social, mobility, cloud, data consumption strong enough to lay out the foundation for the next generation of IT services organizations?  What can possibly motivate a 70 year old with a huge legacy to protect to go back into startup mode? The answer to both questions became apparently clear during my conversation with Ashok.

We spent hours debating the enterprise software market, the IT service industry, new technology areas and many other topics. Every step of the way, Ashok showed a deep knowledge of the different technologies we were debating, the key players in the ecosystem, current market dynamics and how they can influence the IT services business. I didn’t need to ask his recipe for staying so technically current after so many years in the industry as the answer was totally obvious: Ashok has a deep passion for learning new technologies and for exploring ways to leverage those technologies in the enterprise.

The same passion that causes Ashok to stay current in the technology space is what caused him to start Happiest Minds. “These are the most exciting times in the last 20 years of the tech industry” he says. Without hesitation, he firmly states that there is never been a time in the IT industry on which so many revolutionary technology movements are colliding together and therefore the opportunity of disrupting the IT industry is tremendous. Did I mention he is 70?

I’ve found myself revisiting my conversations with Ashok many times over the last few days and, since our last meeting, we have exchanged a few emails expanding in some of the topics we discussed. Despite the many aspects we discussed in terms of technology, the market and even the history of the Indian IT industry I took home a very simple lesson: Passion and knowledge and are not only qualities that can drive your professional career but they can become a way of living. Passion and knowledge can certainly be the forces that disrupt entire industries or that can cause you, at 70, to still get excited debating a geeky technology or to dream about changing the world.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on September 18, 2012 in Uncategorized

 

Tags: , , ,

← Older posts
 
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.