September 15, 2015 by Ken Goldstein - 0 comments

Endless Encores: A Brief Excerpt on Products

With the September 22, 2015 publication of my second book, Endless Encores, I wanted to share a few excerpts to catch your interest. Published by The Story Plant, this is a business parable about People, Products, Profits—in that order. This excerpt is from the chapter about Products.

♫ ♫ ♫

Paul’s phone dinged. It was the text alarm. He was afraid to look, but he knew the Band-Aid had to be ripped off in one pull. He turned over the handset so they could both see it at the same time. The text read: “We’ll talk when you get back.”

“I’m not off the hook,” grumbled Paul. “Not even a little.”

“Did you expect you would be with a simple text?” asked Daphne. “He’s your boss, not your father. How much did your company invest in the sequel?”

“Millions. We’re not going to lose all of it. We may not lose any of it. We just aren’t going to make the kind of money we made on the original. Sequels in my business are supposed to do better than the originals as the brand and market expand. Everything we do can’t be a winner.”

“Would you let Randy or Helen off the hot seat for mediocre performance with just a text?”

“No, of course not,” said Paul. “I would remind them that there is no growth without risk, that we have to be willing to try things and fail, but when we fail we have to learn. It’s not failure if it’s learning, but there has to be learning. You have to capture that learning and harness it.”

“I suppose he’ll say something to the same effect,” said Daphne. “Of course, I’ve never met him, so you never know. He could mop the floor with you to make him feel better.”

“Thanks, I feel so much more chipper,” grimaced Paul.

“You should,” said Daphne. “Think about the opposite spectrum. Suppose you weren’t willing to risk failure and learn. Suppose you devoted all your energy to protecting the status quo. Think of a company that isn’t around anymore that tried that trick.”

“Kodak comes to mind,” said Paul. “I read somewhere that they developed the first digital camera in 1975, but kept it off the market because they were afraid of what it might do to their traditional film processing business.”

“Polaroid missed the shift to digital as well,” replied Daphne. “They didn’t have to stick with mechanical, self-developing prints. That was a choice.”

“It’s amazing how bad the blunders can be,” continued Paul. “Borders Books, Circuit City, Tower Records—they’re gone forever. With all the customers they had, the vast resources, all that talent and cash in the bank, these days they’re just names, empty shells. Businesses become nostalgia.”

“Tombstones, actually, all in the Dead Brand Graveyard,” said Daphne. “No Endless Encores there. The list goes on and on: Palm, Zenith, Blockbuster, CompUSA, Wang Laboratories—all once beloved brands, all now decaying tales of yesteryear. Now think of the once great brands about to fail, the ones you know will soon evaporate. What is their idea of risk?”

“Way too conservative,” answered Paul. “They’re afraid to take risks because they’re afraid of failing, when in fact they’re already failing by refusing to dance a little closer to the edge.”

♫ ♫ ♫

Endless Encores: Repeating Success Through People, Products, and Profits by Ken Goldstein is available in hardcover and as an e-book from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iBooks, Kobo, IndieBound, Indigo, and at independent bookstores near you.

September 8, 2015 by Ken Goldstein - 1 Comment

Endless Encores: A Brief Excerpt on People

♫ ♫ ♫

It was getting late in the evening, and as yet there was no additional update on the flight departures. At this point Paul was sort of hoping it would go that way. To leave this conversation unfinished was not something that held much appeal.

“What don’t I know that I wish I knew?” asked Paul, knowing that didn’t exactly come out right. “We put everything into this new game, everything we had to give, but the end result isn’t flourishing.”

“Seems like we’re making quick progress with that wall,” prodded Daphne. “The truth is, you already know everything you need to know. All I can do is perhaps get you to rethink it in a different context. Take me through the project from the beginning.”

“The good one or the follow-up?” asked Paul.

“Why would I want to retrace the path of mediocrity?” replied Daphne. “The good one, the big winner—where did you begin with the original Ethereal Gaze?”

“We started with a pitch. We’d been kicking around this concept for a few years, the idea of an enormous war game, galactic in scope, but without a lot of weapons—without any bullets, or tactical bombs, or spleens exploding, any of the normal shooter stuff that was leaping off the shelf. We said we’d try to do it with clever ideas of strategy, mind-blowing graphics, a full symphonic soundtrack, and characters that made you believe they were real.”

“Sounds visionary, heck of an agenda for a library of program code,” lauded Daphne. “You even went against the grain and tried to build something that wasn’t a proven big seller. But tell me, and I sort of asked you this before but it is worth repeating, who is we?”

“We, the team,” answered Paul. “The core design group, the people I see every day who completely know this stuff, who come up with the ideas that make it happen.”

“Cool, got it, then let me ask you, which came first, the concept, or the talent to create it?”

“Why do I think this is another trick question?” asked Paul.

“The last time you thought I asked you a trick question it wasn’t, so go with your instinct. Which comes first, the idea, or those who offer the idea? This is a key starting point, kind of like the chicken and egg thing, only we’re going to solve it.”

“You can’t have an idea without someone expressing it,” said Paul, hoping he hadn’t said something too obvious.

“There you have it, bulls-eye,” declared Daphne. “Not just someone expressing it, someone with the ability and training to express it, and then be able to deliver on it. A team or an individual, it doesn’t matter, the foundation is the same. Let’s talk a little about talent.”

“I’ll try to keep up with you,” remarked Paul. “You have a lot of big ideas.”

“Too many people I’ve encountered over the years in business think it’s solely the big idea that matters,” continued Daphne. “Don’t get me wrong, big ideas are critical to success. You need spectacular concepts when you envision new products and services you want to bring to market. We’ll talk about that shortly. But before you can even think about creating, marketing, distributing, and selling anything of value, you have to have the right people in place to get the job done. Desperate leaders spend too much time worrying first about output. Long-term leaders spend the majority of their time thinking about talent.”

“I don’t know about that,” replied Paul. “I live in a world where customers need to be hugely excited, almost frothing at the mouth, standing in line overnight outside the store, waiting for the product to release before it’s even on the shelf.”

“Don’t flatter yourself, in one way or another, we all do,” countered Daphne. “Great ideas can be thrilling, but they don’t make payroll. Ideas get the ball rolling, but they are overrated. We worry too much about those who would steal them. Getting a product to market that embodies a great idea is what matters, and that is extraordinarily difficult. Products don’t build themselves.”

♫ ♫ ♫

August 12, 2015 by Ken Goldstein - 0 comments

Rotten Choices, Rotten Jobs

Maybe I’m getting a tad older. Or maybe with a few added laugh lines I can see a tad more clearly. Here’s what I see:

Too many people leaving too many jobs much too quickly.

What might that mean?

When I look around, I see way too many folks I know pushing themselves to perspiration to land a job, then in the first few weeks discovering they don’t like it (or it doesn’t like them). They leave in a year or less, maybe two years, three becomes a stretch. Then they leave and step on the conveyor belt anew.

What’s going on here? Is it generational? Is this a millennial thing?

Afraid not. It’s an epidemic. I am seeing it across the board, people of all ages and levels of experience. We might like to believe the way of the world now is job-hopping and we should get used to it, but I would like to suggest it’s more than “internet time” that’s wasting these human cycles. I think too often we bring it on ourselves and then make excuses for it.

Perhaps all this casual turnover is a symptom of a more pernicious ill—the unstructured, undisciplined application of choice.

Rotten choices. Rotten jobs. Crappy bosses treading in goo. Crappy performances by individuals biding their time before they get caught dialing it in.

Gee, Ken, there’s a dose of optimism! So glad I stopped by the open door.

Don’t worry, the optimism is coming, down in the punchline at the end. First let’s look at why these jobs are so short-term. I’ll give you four legs of the stool (metaphor intended):

1) Mediocre Products: Seriously, how can anyone do a great job jamming a me-too knock-off? On my weekly radio spot with Barb Adams last week we talked at length about the failure of Google Plus. Imagine working that hard on a death march with all the resources of a powerful company behind you, only to release a weak knock off of your rival, Facebook. A very quick way to burn up the employee-employer relationship is to sound the rallying cry of importance, then have to explain why it was all words and little action. Solution: Think strategy before you think deployment of resources. Ask What and Why before How and When—what customer problem are you solving, and why are you the right company to solve it. Then grind!

2) Amateur Leadership: I’ve said it many times in these articles—people don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses. If you’ve never had a good boss, you probably will repeat the cycle and stink at it. It’s wonderful to see so much young energy driving the latest wave of startups, but as these New World startups get momentum, they take on many of the same problems as Old World companies. Battlefield promotions abound, and you can’t fake it in front of an army of grizzled veterans no matter how clever you think your quips are. Solution: Mentorship! If you never had a good boss, find one of those grizzled veterans who was a good boss and surgically attach yourself to him or her. You can do this privately or publicly, but don’t be afraid to ask innumerable questions, and whatever you may ultimately choose to do, be sure you LISTEN! Also remember that anytime you choose to have a boss you are leaving some money on the table (the value you create pays your boss’s salary), so if you are giving up income, you should be getting something for that, and it’s called LEARNING. Ask for this benefit upfront. If you’re not getting better at what you do because of your boss, you’re getting burned.

3) Hiring by SEO: Indeed I Love LinkedIn, but if the primary reason a manager makes a hire is because of the keyword overlap between what they need and what someone else has done (evidenced by lots of highlights in the overlay), start the countdown clock. This cuts both ways, company and applicant. Solution: Hire and accept a position for character and compatibility as well as competency. Every company has a culture (and if you think your company doesn’t have a culture, that’s the company culture). A hiring manager needs to Think Different as a team expands. A star individual achiever may not be a consensus player. Legendary companies begin and grow through culture, and that comes from people. And don’t forget diversity. Without it, your products are going to be mighty ordinary.

4) Job Application without Roadmap: If you the hiring manager don’t know what is going to light your fire, what makes you think the person with the offer letter has flint? You must have a notion of what you need now as well as where that relationship can evolve before you begin interviewing. A candidate also has to evaluate not just whether he or she is a fit today but where this position might lead over time. If you think of the opportunity as a relationship, you’ll know you need to leave room to let it expand. Solution: Get clear about yourself first, then start to think about soliciting or fielding offers. If you’re thinking short-term, don’t be surprised if the results are short-term. The immediate need before you is not an end in itself but a launching point. If you’re not thinking that way, the revolving door will soon be spinning.

There’s no question the employment landscape has changed significantly with the generational shift. There is now little stigma associated with short job tenure on a resume. Few pensions remain to hold people in place. Headhunters comb online profiles for middle management as well as senior positions (sometimes entry-level positions!). Self-employment and consulting are becoming increasingly viable alternatives to third-party employment. Many people now value lifestyle over career achievement and will dump a job if it underperforms their personal expectations. Yet even with all that, I hear one heartbreaking story after another about talented individuals departing gigs before they could make a lasting contribution or feel proud about their productivity. You can switch jobs all you want, but you still get one life. What do you want it to be about?

About that punchline and a scoop of optimism—try this on for size: Anyone can change the world, but few people will. You can change the world. That’s not a slogan and it’s not hyperbole. It’s the fuel of innovation, the only true gas in the tank of the companies we admire. Decide how you want to change the world, at any scale large or small, and connect that vision to an employer’s honest promise to let you have that chance. Do you think anyone could pry you out of that job with a flame-heated crowbar? Fat chance. You’ll stay where you’re wanted, and where people let you do the best work of your career. Find that, and the words “rotten” and “crappy” will be replaced by more upbeat adjectives than exist in any vocabulary.

Stop whining. Start growing. Stop offering and accepting dead-end gigs you already know are terminal. Our time is precious, and you’re running out of it. Change the world.

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This article originally appeared on The Good Men Project.

July 8, 2015 by Ken Goldstein - 6 Comments

It’s All Getting Personal

It’s a bit weird, this Author thing. Let me try to explain.

For as long as I can remember, putting words on paper has been an integral part of my life. It started when I was a kid, with little plays and poems. Then in high school it became short stories and full-length plays. Then in college some more plays, some student films, and the occasional joke for a journeyman standup comic. When I was done with school, I wrote about a dozen screenplays, and then when the Writers Guild strike hit, I wrote an epic story for one of the very first movie-like computer games.

Shortly after that I moved to the business side of the computer software publishing model, only occasionally penning a bit of dialogue here and there for a certain Carmen Sandiego. My life became focused on technology, marketing, sales, finance, and team leadership. As I’ve said before, I really didn’t write much for a couple of decades, other than business plans and PowerPoint decks, which I was later told might have had saleable option rights for media exploitation given my need to always tell a story (if only I then had an agent!).

All through these periods of business creativity and innovation, I never had much trouble calling myself a writer, because I felt pretty good about my ability to form pithy sentences and get other people to take an interest in them. Even when I wasn’t writing per se, people would call me a writer, and I would show up at writerly events and schmooze with writers because I could keep up with the banter and liked most of it. I felt fine about this. It never felt stuffy, arrogant, pretentious, or the least bit weird.

Then I hung up the spreadsheet programs for a while and wrote my first novel, This Is Rage. Suddenly I was an Author—at least that’s what my publisher called me. I fell into silence at that descriptor. That was weird. In that same window, one of my most valued mentors introduced me at lunch as a Novelist. I looked at him in fear and more silence. “No, it’s just me, Ken, the writer.” It was and it wasn’t. That’s when things started to change.

You can go online and look up all the different uses of Writer vs Author vs Novelist vs. Schmuck Who Types and Prays for Good Reviews and Modest Royalties (that last one is harder to find in search, so I think I’ll tag it). Here’s the really hard part, especially for me: Once you decide you want to sell books and do public readings and speak at lunches and conventions, you have made the implicit decision to transform yourself from Writer to Author. What’s hard about that? You now find yourself being public about things you never thought were your job to expose. Take, for example, this blog post. It’s a little different from most of my others, huh? It’s getting personal.

In the publishing world, they call this “building your platform.” It’s not a platform you stand on in Hyde Park and it’s not a platform you adopt as a political candidate. It’s the sum total of all your networking outreach, private and public. You gotta go light up Twitter (@CorporateIntel) with clever BRIEF memes your soon to be amassed Followers can follow. You gotta have an Author Page on Facebook that gently steers people toward buying your new book without being too crass about it. You gotta pump up your LinkedIn Profile so your business associates know what you’re doing but don’t think you’ve gone completely rogue. You gotta get busy on Google+ which means you have to figure out how Google+ works and learn to repost everything there to get it scraped into the index.

Why in tarnation do you need to do all this? Can’t you just write the dang book (that’s hard enough!) and toss it over the wall to your publishing team? Well, I suppose you can if your name is Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, or Malcolm Gladwell. The rest of us quickly learn our real name is more like P.T. Barnum. When you are deemed an Author, you are also deemed Promoter-in-Chief, because if you won’t get out there and rally people behind your work, why on earth would anyone else? The introverted tendencies of writing reverse themselves into Living Out Loud! If you don’t think you can do it, you can always go back to being a Writer. In this day and age, writing for an audience is putting yourself out there, and no matter how uncomfortable it is to type the word Author after your name as some bizarre form of professional title from The Bloomsbury Group, you really have no choice other than to accept obscurity without a fight.

Okay, two more points and then I’ll wind down. First, if you know me, you know I’m a lousy introvert, and second, if you know me, you know I ain’t going down without a fight. Publisher says build the platform, I’m building the platform. Please don’t leave me out here on the ledge in the clown suit alone. Like me or something.

Here’s how I am reconciling this weirdness, this discomfort, this near unholy demand to say please pay attention to me. I’m going back to my business roots. It’s all about mission statement. It’s all about brand promise. Writer, Author, or Schmuck, that’s my job.

Sometimes the simplest ideas are the easiest to forget, and the ones most worth remembering. Two years ago I wrote a post on the importance of a mission statement in a business. What I emphasized was that it only mattered if it was more than words. At the top of this blog you see the words:

Ideas. Business. Stories.

That has been my brand promise to you, the underlying essence of this whole Author mishigos. You buy that, you buy me. I’m pretty sure the rest is arts and crafts.

Rolling deeper into my non-Author roots, as I was driving to a meeting last week, I heard a snippet of a radio interview with Dane Ban, the CEO of much-beloved Trader Joe’s. He was asked what advice he most often gives emerging entrepreneurs. He replied that a business has to be about a mission. Rather than leave it at that, which already resonated with me, he went on to quote the esteemed Peter Drucker in The Practice of Management:

“There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.”

Simple. Relevant. Profound. Try to challenge it. Very, very hard.

So as weird as it feels to me, as uncomfortable as it is being made for me, I am building that platform in advance of the launch of Endless Encores. Its subtitle is not coincidental: “People, Products, Profits—In That Order.” That also appears near the top of this blog in my mission statement. It all comes around. Like I said, it’s all getting personal.

Come along for the ride, will you, please? Don’t force me to come to my senses and claw my way back in. That might make me a writer again. How scary would that be?

_____

This article originally appeared on The Good Men Project.