The kinesthetic speaker. Putting action into words

Speeches and presentations offer an interesting catch-22: executives don't want to spend long hours creating them, and people don't want to sit for long hours listening to them. Ultimately, though, executives can't live without them. That's because a good speech or presentation has the power to inspire people to act on the speaker's behalf and create change. Author Nick Morgan, a longtime speech-writer and speaking coach, says what's most often lacking in today's speeches and presentations is what he calls the "kinesthetic connection." Many good speakers connect aurally with their audiences, telling dramatic stories and effectively pacing their speeches to hold people's attention. Others connect visually, with a vivid film clip or a killer slide. Some people do both, but not many also connect kinesthetically. Morgan says the kinesthetic speaker feeds an audience's primal hunger to experience a presentation on a physical, as well as an intellectual, level. Through awareness of their own physical presence--gestures, posture, movements--and through the effective use of the space in which they present, kinesthetic speakers can create potent nonverbal messages that reinforce their verbal ones. In this article, Morgan describes techniques for harnessing kinesthetic power and creating a sense of intimacy with an audience--a closeness that is more widely expected from speakers since the advent of television. For instance, kinesthetic speakers should make use of audience proxies--individuals in the crowd who serve as representatives for the others. Ultimately, the author says, a speech or presentation offers something of great value to business executives: it's the best vehicle for winning trust from large groups of people--be they employees, colleagues, or share-holders.     

The reluctant entrepreneur

Unlike a lot of corporate executives, Ken Veit never longed to be his own boss. But after 30 years on the fast track, he lost his high-powered job at one of the world's largest insurance companies and was forced to take an entrepreneurial leap of faith. In 1989, Veit signed a franchise agreement to own and operate a Cartoon Corner store in a mall in Scottsdale, Arizona. Cartoon Corner was based on the Disney store idea, but it carried hundreds of products featuring cartoon characters from every movie studio. Most important, Cartoon Corner offered extensive training and an elaborate management support system for its franchisees. The company planned to franchise 100 stores over the next few years, then go public. If all went well, its young executives claimed, the Cartoon Corner chain would build a market valuation of up to $100 million by the mid-1990s. In addition, the mall, which was in the planning stages when Veit signed on, was supposed to become a new kind of entertainment mall, with seven movie theaters, a space-flight simulator, and a shark-filled aquarium. It had all sounded too good to be true--and it was. Despite Veit's careful forecasting, he suffered a series of unexpected catastrophes. The mall failed to keep its promises. The franchisor lost its venture capital. The Gulf War dried up retail traffic. But it was too late to back out. Veit went forward on his own, truly alone for the first time in his life. When the mall and his store finally opened in May 1991, they did so in the midst of a recession. Despite the inspirational stories of other former executives, Veit has learned that the life of an entrepreneur is not all it's cracked up to be. As he notes, "I began with well-above-average experience, a proven concept, and excellent capitalization, yet in my case, personal bankruptcy remains a distinct possibility."     

If you want honesty, break some rules

We've all heard, or perhaps even told, the "organizational lie"; We're customer centric; everyone's performance is above average; we're the darling of our industry, coming up with one innovation after another. That last one was true of Advanced Cardiovascular Systems (ACS) in the past, but not when Ginger Graham took over as CEO. From that first moment in 1993, Graham chose to tell the truth about ACS's situation--that R&D was practically at war with product development, yields were down, and customers were disgruntled. And ever since, she's seen the benefits of exploding organizational lies. Truth telling is something that's hard to argue with but difficult to do. And, indeed, ACS instituted some radical practices to create its culture of honesty. Every senior manager was assigned a coach from the ranks who regularly solicited feedback from everyone, high and low, about the executive's performance. To get the truth, though, ACS executives learned that they had to offer it up themselves--the whole truth about the company's financial state, its problems, and its triumphs. When they did, they found that, in return, they could ask their employees for help in solving the problems, and passive complainers became active partners in the company's fortunes. ACS management spreads the word about the virtues of honesty through vivid stories of corporate history and quirky rituals. Every quarter, it holds companywide meetings in which the faults of top managers are examined--to keep them honest and tough enough to go on telling the truth. In fact, in the process of openly owning up to problems and jointly fixing them with employees, the entire company grew more powerful, nimble, and tough-minded, able to respond quickly to change, both internal and external.     

In praise of middle managers

Middle managers have often been cast as dinosaurs. Has-beens. Mediocre managers and intermediaries who defend the status quo instead of supporting others' attempts to change organizations for the better. An INSEAD professor has examined this interesting breed of manager--in particular, middle managers' roles during periods of radical organizational change. His findings will surprise many. Middle managers, it turns out, make valuable contributions to the realization of radical change at companies--contributions that go largely unrecognized by most senior executives. Quy Nguyen Huy says these contributions occur in four major areas. First, middle managers often have good entrepreneurial ideas that they are able and willing to realize--if only they can get a hearing. Second, they're far better than most senior executives at leveraging the informal networks at companies that make substantive, lasting change. Because they've worked their way up the corporate ladder, middle managers' networks run deep. Third, they stay attuned to employees' emotional needs during organizational change, thereby maintaining the transformation's momentum. And finally, they manage the tension between continuity and change--they keep the organization from falling into extreme inertia or extreme chaos. The author examines each of these strengths, citing real-world examples culled from his research. Of course, not every middle manager in an organization is a paragon of entrepreneurial vigor and energy, Huy acknowledges. But cavalierly dismissing the roles that middle managers play--and carelessly reducing their ranks--will drastically diminish senior managers' chances of realizing radical change at their companies. Indeed, middle managers may be the most effective allies of corner office executives when it's time to make major changes in businesses.     

How to pitch a brilliant idea

Coming up with creative ideas is easy; selling them to strangers is hard. Entrepreneurs, sales executives, and marketing managers often go to great lengths to demonstrate how their new concepts are practical and profitable--only to be rejected by corporate decision makers who don't seem to understand the value of the ideas. Why does this happen? Having studied Hollywood executives who assess screenplay pitches, the author says the person on the receiving end--the "catcher"--tends to gauge the pitcher's creativity as well as the proposal itself. An impression of the pitcher's ability to come up with workable ideas can quickly and permanently overshadow the catcher's feelings about an idea's worth. To determine whether these observations apply to business settings beyond Hollywood, the author attended product design, marketing, and venture-capital pitch sessions and conducted interviews with executives responsible for judging new ideas. The results in those environments were similar to her observations in Hollywood, she says. Catchers subconsciously categorize successful pitchers as showrunners (smooth and professional), artists (quirky and unpolished), or neophytes (inexperienced and naive). The research also reveals that catchers tend to respond well when they believe they are participating in an idea's development. As Oscar-winning writer, director, and producer Oliver Stone puts it, screen-writers pitching an idea should "pull back and project what he needs onto your idea in order to make the story whole for him." To become a successful pitcher, portray yourself as one of the three creative types and engage your catchers in the creative process. By finding ways to give your catchers a chance to shine, you sell yourself as a likable collaborator.     

The best advice I ever got

A young manager faces an impasse in his career. He goes to see his mentor at the company, who closes the office door, offers the young man a chair, recounts a few war stories, and serves up a few specific pointers about the problem at hand. Then, just as the young manager is getting up to leave, the elder executive adds one small kernel of avuncular wisdom--which the junior manager carries with him through the rest of his career. Such is the nature of business advice. Or is it? The six essays in this article suggest otherwise. Few of the leaders who tell their stories here got their best advice in stereotypical form, as an aphorism or a platitude. For Ogilvy & Mather chief Shelly Lazarus, profound insight came from a remark aimed at relieving the tension of the moment. For Novartis CEO Daniel Vasella, it was an apt comment, made on a snowy day, back when he was a medical resident. For publishing magnate Earl Graves and Starwood Hotels' Barry Sternlicht, advice they received about trust from early bosses took on ever deeper and more practical meaning as their careers progressed. For Goldman Sachs chairman Henry Paulson, Jr., it was as much his father's example as it was a specific piece of advice his father handed down to him. And fashion designer Liz Lange rejects the very notion that there's inherent wisdom in accepting other people's advice. As these stories demonstrate, people find wisdom when they least expect to, and they never really know what piece of advice will transcend the moment, profoundly affecting how they later make decisions, evaluate people, and examine--and reexamine--their own actions.     

Strategic stories: how 3M is rewriting business planning

Virtually all business plans are written as a list of bullet points. Despite the skill or knowledge of their authors, these plans usually aren't anything more than lists of "good things to do." For example: Increase sales by 10%. Reduce distribution costs by 5%. Develop a synergistic vision for traditional products. Rarely do these lists reflect deep thought or inspire commitment. Worse, they don't specify critical relationships between the points, and they can't demonstrate how the goals will be achieved. 3M executive Gordon Shaw began looking for a more coherent and compelling way to present business plans. He found it in the form of strategic stories. Telling stories was already a habit of mind at 3M. Stories about the advent of Post-it Notes and the invention of masking tape help define 3M's identity. They're part of the way people at 3M explain themselves to their customers and to one another. Shaw and his coauthors examine how business plans can be transformed into strategic narratives. By painting a picture of the market, the competition, and the strategy needed to beat the competition, these narratives can fill in the spaces around the bullet points for those who will approve and those who will implement the strategy. When people can locate themselves in the story, their sense of commitment and involvement is enhanced. By conveying a powerful impression of the process of winning, narrative plans can mobilize an entire organization.     

Why business models matter

"Business model" was one of the great buzz-words of the Internet boom. A company didn't need a strategy, a special competence, or even any customers--all it needed was a Web-based business model that promised wild profits in some distant, ill-defined future. Many people--investors, entrepreneurs, and executives alike--fell for the fantasy and got burned. And as the inevitable counterreaction played out, the concept of the business model fell out of fashion nearly as quickly as the .com appendage itself. That's a shame. As Joan Magretta explains, a good business model remains essential to every successful organization, whether it's a new venture or an established player. To help managers apply the concept successfully, she defines what a business model is and how it complements a smart competitive strategy. Business models are, at heart, stories that explain how enterprises work. Like a good story, a robust business model contains precisely delineated characters, plausible motivations, and a plot that turns on an insight about value. It answers certain questions: Who is the customer? How do we make money? What underlying economic logic explains how we can deliver value to customers at an appropriate cost? Every viable organization is built on a sound business model, but a business model isn't a strategy, even though many people use the terms interchangeably. Business models describe, as a system, how the pieces of a business fit together. But they don't factor in one critical dimension of performance: competition. That's the job of strategy. Illustrated with examples from companies like American Express, EuroDisney, WalMart, and Dell Computer, this article clarifies the concepts of business models and strategy, which are fundamental to every company's performance.     

The very real dangers of executive coaching

A personal coach to help your most promising executives reach their potential--sounds good, doesn't it? But, according to Steven Berglas, executive coaches can make a bad situation worse. Because of their backgrounds and biases, they ignore psychological problems they don't understand. Companies need to consider psychotherapeutic intervention when the symptoms plaguing an executive are stubborn or severe. Executives with issues that require more than coaching come in many shapes and sizes. Consider Rob Bernstein, an executive vice president of sales at an automotive parts distributor. According to the CEO, Bernstein had just the right touch with clients but caused personnel problems inside the company. The last straw came when Bernstein publicly humiliated a mail clerk who had interrupted a meeting to ask someone to sign for a package. At that point, the CEO assigned Tom Davis to coach Bernstein. Davis, a former corporate lawyer, worked with Bernstein for four years. But Davis only exacerbated the problem by teaching Bernstein techniques for "handling" employees--methods that were condescending at best. While Bernstein appeared to be improving, he was in fact getting worse. Bernstein's real problems went undetected, and when his boss left the company, he was picked as the successor. Soon enough, Bernstein was again in trouble, suspected of embezzlement. This time, the CEO didn't call Davis; instead, he turned to the author, a trained psychotherapist, for help. Berglas soon realized that Bernstein had a serious narcissistic personality disorder and executive coaching could not help him. As that tale and others in the article teach us, executives to be coached should at the very least first receive a psychological evaluation. And company leaders should beware that executive coaches given free rein can end up wreaking personnel havoc.     

When no news is good news

For as long as can be remembered, BestBaby Corporation, a manufacturer of baby equipment and furniture, has enjoyed a solid reputation with retailers, a good track record with consumers, and a supportive relationship with stockholders. But then the child of a celebrity is injured when her stroller tips over because its brakes failed. The media go wild, and CEO Greg James finds himself in uncharted territory. The morning after the accident, Greg calls an emergency meeting of his executive staff. As he searches his memory to prepare for it, he thinks about Arzep Enterprises, BestBaby's main provider of parts and materials. He remembers his COO, Keith Sigismund, telling him that Arzep had switched suppliers at some point in order to cut its own costs. Nevertheless, Keith had assured Greg that the new material, although not quite as sturdy, hadn't affected the quality of Arzep's components. By the time the meeting is set to begin, several employees have threatened to quit, and stories are surfacing in the press and on the Web about other consumers who have had problems with their strollers. Then in the meeting, Keith drops a bombshell: he reads from a year-old memo sent to him by an employee in manufacturing stating that the new brake fittings delivered by Arzep don't grab the front brakes as well as the ones previously supplied. The same employee, and others, had complained in the past that Keith hadn't adequately attended to concerns they brought up to him. In this fictional case study, four commentators offer advice to Greg on how BestBaby should respond to the victim's family, the media, the public, and the company's own employees during this PR crisis.     

It's so hard to be fair

When employees believe they are being treated fairly-when they feel heard, when they understand how and why important decisions are made, and when they believe they are respected-their companies will benefit. Research shows that practicing process fairness reduces legal costs from wrongful-termination suits, lowers employee turnover, helps generate support for new strategic initiatives, and fosters a culture that promotes innovation. What's more, it costs little financially to implement Yet few companies practice it consistently. Joel Brockner examines this paradox, exploring psychological and other reasons that cause managers to resist embracing process fairness. The fact that it's relatively inexpensive to implement, for instance, may be why some numbers-oriented executives undervalue it. Many managers believe that they practice process fairness, but 360-degree feedback tells another story. Some corporate policies actually undermine it--such as when the legal department won't let managers fully explain decisions for fear that disclosure could expose the firm to lawsuits. And, frequently, managers simply follow the all-too-human tendency to avoid uncomfortable situations. But the good news is that organizations can take concrete steps to promote greater process fairness. Many studies have shown that training programs make a big difference, and the author describes the most effective format. In addition, warning your managers that they may experience negative emotions when practicing fair process will help prepare them to cope with those feelings. Finally, role modeling fair process on the executive level will help spread the practice throughout the organization. The fact is, process fairness is the responsibility of all executives, at all levels and in all functions; it cannot be delegated to HR. The sooner managers realize that and work to make it a company norm, the better off the organization will be.     

How to identify your enemies before they destroy you

We've all heard the stories about corporate giants who ignored disruptive innovations and paid a steep price: Think what the personal computer did to Digital or Japanese economy cars did to the Big Three automakers. Big companies now spend a lot of time and money trying to make sure they don't get blindsided by their smaller, leaner counterparts. But it's not easy to distinguish genuine threats from also-rans as they emerge. Most of the nascent technologies that typically bombard executives will not amount to competitive threats and deserve to be ignored. As a result, disruptions are usually not taken seriously until they become obvious--when it's often too late. A disruptive innovation is a technology, product, or process that creeps up from below an existing business and threatens to displace it. Usually, the disrupter offers lower performance and less functionality at a much lower price. The product or process is good enough to meet some customers' needs; others welcome the disruption's simplicity. Gradually, it improves to the point where it displaces the incumbent. But, the authors argue, disruption isn't inevitable. They have developed a tool that can help companies detect potential disruptive innovations while management still has time to respond effectively. The tool's decision-making methodology harnesses the organization's collective wisdom to determine how likely it is that a particular innovation will seriously damage an incumbent's business. The methodology has two components: an analytical instrument and an organizational process. There's nothing magical about it--but it gets managers to think systematically about identifying and addressing threats to the core business. And the tool's rigorous approach can spell the difference between flailing around and acting effectively in the face of a serious competitive threat.     

Selling the brand inside

When you think of marketing, chances are your mind goes right to your customers--how can you persuade more people to buy whatever it is you sell? But there's another "market" that's equally important: your employees. Author Colin Mitchell argues that executives by and large ignore this critical internal audience when developing and executing branding campaigns. As a result, employees end up undermining the expectations set by the company's advertising--either because they don't understand what the ads have promised or because they don't believe in the brand and feel disengaged or, worse, hostile toward the company. Mitchell offers three principles for executing internal branding campaigns--techniques executives can use to make sure employees understand, embrace, and "live" the brand vision companies are selling to the public. First, he says, companies need to market to employees at times when the company is experiencing a fundamental challenge or change, times when employees are seeking direction and are relatively receptive to new initiatives. Second, companies must link their internal and external marketing campaigns; employees should hear the same messages that are being sent to the market-place. And third, internal branding campaigns should bring the brand alive for employees, creating an emotional connection to the company that transcends any one experience. Internal campaigns should introduce and explain the brand messages in new and attention-grabbing ways and then reinforce those messages by weaving them into the fabric of the company. It is a fact of business, writes Mitchell, that if employees do not care about or understand their company's brands, they will ultimately weaken their organizations. It's up to top executives, he says, to give them a reason to care.     

What's your story?

When you're in the midst of a major career change, telling stories about your professional self can inspire others' belief in your character and in your capacity to take a leap and land on your feet. It also can help you believe in yourself. A narrative thread will give meaning to your career history; it will assure you that, in moving on to something new, you are not discarding everything you've worked so hard to accomplish. Unfortunately, the authors explain in this article, most of us fail to use the power of storytelling in pursuit of our professional goals, or we do it badly. Tales of transition are especially challenging. Not knowing how to reconcile the built-in discontinuities in our work lives, we often relay just the facts. We present ourselves as safe--and dull and unremarkable. That's not a necessary compromise. A transition story has inherent dramatic appeal. The protagonist is you, of course, and what's at stake is your career. Perhaps you've come to an event or insight that represents a point of no return. It's this kind of break with the past that will force you to discover and reveal who you really are. Discontinuity and tension are part of the experience. If these elements are missing from your career story, the tale will fall flat. With all these twists and turns, how do you demonstrate stability and earn listeners' trust? By emphasizing continuity and causality--in other words, by showing that your past is related to the present and, from that trajectory, conveying that a solid future is in sight. If you can make your story of transition cohere, you will have gone far in convincing the listener--and reassuring yourself--that the change makes sense for you and is likely to bring success.     

The World Bank's innovation market

Large, tradition-bound organizations can make space for radical, low-cost (and therefore low-risk) innovations. Just ask executives at the World Bank. The story of this best practice begins in 1998, when a young new-products group at the international funding agency proposed holding an Innovation Marketplace to capture novel ideas within the Bank for alleviating poverty. The forum, which eventually was opened to external participants, let people informally present their antipoverty ideas to potential funding sources. Funders could move among hundreds of booths and evaluate proposals for, say, a program that would provide postdisaster reconstruction insurance in developing countries or a vaccination development initiative. The marketplace truncated the Bank's standard project-review processes, which often stretched to a year or more, and gave funders permission to make commitments in the tens of thousands of dollars, rather than in the tens of millions more typical of Bank-financed projects. The marketplace concept met with some skepticism at the beginning. Some senior executives at the Bank felt no group had the right to spend the agency's money without following its well-established resource allocations process. But the marketplace team believed an open process for allocating grants would produce more breakthrough ideas in the long run than a centralized one. In this article, the authors describe how the new-products team brainstormed to create a market for ideas, how it got senior management's support, and how it has expanded on the original concept for these innovation marketplaces. The program's success, they contend, offers hope both for the world's poor and for business leaders looking to find new ideas under the hard crust of corporate dogma, conformance, and bureaucracy.     

Strategy under uncertainty

At the heart of the traditional approach to strategy lies the assumption that by applying a set of powerful analytic tools, executives can predict the future of any business accurately enough to allow them to choose a clear strategic direction. But what happens when the environment is so uncertain that no amount of analysis will allow us to predict the future? What makes for a good strategy in highly uncertain business environments? The authors, consultants at McKinsey & Company, argue that uncertainty requires a new way of thinking about strategy. All too often, they say, executives take a binary view: either they underestimate uncertainty to come up with the forecasts required by their companies' planning or capital-budging processes, or they overestimate it, abandon all analysis, and go with their gut instinct. The authors outline a new approach that begins by making a crucial distinction among four discrete levels of uncertainty that any company might face. They then explain how a set of generic strategies--shaping the market, adapting to it, or reserving the right to play at a later time--can be used in each of the four levels. And they illustrate how these strategies can be implemented through a combination of three basic types of actions: big bets, options, and no-regrets moves. The framework can help managers determine which analytic tools can inform decision making under uncertainty--and which cannot. At a broader level, it offers executives a discipline for thinking rigorously and systematically about uncertainty and its implications for strategy.     

Impact of heterogeneous managerial productivity on executive hedge markets in an asymmetric information environment

Using the standard principal-agent framework, we show that the existence of executives with different levels of productivity introduces a so-far-unexplored channel through which managerial effort incentives are sustained in a setting in which executives are allowed to trade away their stock-based compensation. Due to the presence of asymmetric information, high-productivity executives end up diversifying away a smaller fraction of their performance-based compensation than they would under perfect information or if they were the only type of executive in the market. As a result, they exert a higher effort level in equilibrium and thereby increase the value of the firm relative to the uniform productivity case, thus bringing the results closer to the outcome observed in a model with no hedging.     

毕凌峰“另类”法则

作为一家2007年成立的新兴基金,行健资本(Stepstone)不同于传统的FOF基金"一揽子"的投资策略,而是针对不同的大型基金,根据该基金的特点、需求、定位等要求提出针对其一家公司的投资组合策略,这在私募股权市场上无疑是一种新的尝试。这种新的尝试很快通过了市场的检验,在行健资本成立短短的4年时间,创造了管理330多亿美元的神话。而之所以取得如此的成绩,都在于其创始人在基金成立之初对于行健资本的规划。     

When to trust your gut

Many top executives say they routinely make big decisions without relying on any logical analysis. Instead, they call upon their "intuition," "gut instinct," "hunches," or "inner voice"--but they can't describe the process much more than that. What exactly is gut instinct? In this article, author Alden Hayashi interviews top executives from companies such as America Online and Johnson and Johnson to find out how they make decisions. Hayashi also presents the research of leading scientists who suggest that our emotions and feelings might not only be important in our intuitive ability to make good decisions but may actually be essential. Specifically, one theory contends that our emotions help us filter various options quickly, even if we're not consciously aware of the screening. Other research suggests that professional judgment can often be reduced to patterns and rules; indeed, truly inspired decisions seem to require an ability to see similar patterns across disparate fields. A CEO who possesses that ability can craft a perfect strategy by detecting patterns that others either overlook or mistake for random noise. But various traits of human nature can easily cloud our intuitive decision making. One potential pitfall is our tendency to see patterns where none exist. Thus, continual self-checking and feedback are crucial, and some organizations have made these processes part of their corporate culture.