Feedback
There was a great article in last weekend’s New York Times Magazine by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt (of Freakonomics fame) that talks about the role practice plays in becoming truly great at something. They walk through research that suggest that while people clearly have some natural level of ability or affinity towards certain skills, it’s the hard work and dedication they put into the practice of their chosen art that ultimately sets them apart. There’s a feedback loop here – people tend to work harder at those things that they are good at (because they enjoy it more). There was one paragraph in particular that struck me and it relates to something that I’ve been thinking about that every business does, but most in my view do poorly. Deliberate practice entails more than simply repeating a task — playing a C-minor scale 100 times, for instance, or hitting tennis serves until your shoulder pops out of its socket. Rather, it involves setting specific goals, obtaining immediate feedback and concentrating as much on technique as on outcome. If you believe this, then you have to scratch your head at how most businesses and managers offer feedback to employees – through annual or semi-annual reviews. There are two problems with this approach: 1) the feedback is stale (and negative feedback easily rationalized by its recipient as memory fades and more importantly the time for correcting poor performance or reinforcing good performance has long passed); and 2) its generally tied to a conversation around compensation – either an annual bonus, pay increase or both. Rather than limiting the majority of feedback to a review period, try giving more consistent feedback (both positive and constructive) on a more regular basis. Get out of a presentation – talk about what worked and what didn’t; finish a sales call or demo, figure out what seemed to resonate with the customer and what can be improved; feel someone in the company did an outstanding job with a task – let them know why it worked so well. Equally important, reviews should be about reviews (and what I’m describing above shouldn’t replace a more formal review process, it should supplement and feed into it). Comp conversations should be about comp. Obviously they are related, but its much more constructive to review an employees performance when the outcome of that meeting isn’t about money (but rather about the improvement of performance).
May 12, 2006· 2 min read
How do you sign your e-mails?
For some reason I’ve been paying attention lately to how people sign their e-mails and thought I’d throw out a few thoughts. I’d be particularly interested to hear from people on the strangest sign-offs they’ve received. Below is a list of some of the more common sign-offs along with my take on what they really mean. Cheers! – I’m cool! Best – I don’t want to be locked into a specific sign-off – please interpret as you wish (best wishes, best regards, best cheers, etc.) All the best – When “Best” simply isn’t good enough _C_iao! – I’m cool! and trying to act foreign Sincerely – I took this really great business writing class in high school Thanks – I really do mean thanks (when used correctly) / I can’t think of anything else to say (when used incorrectly, for example at the bottom of a flame e-mail) Hope all is well – Please DO NOT write back with details of whether you are well or not – I’m just trying to be polite Warm regards – I’ve just returned from my latest analyst session and am feeling pretty centered [nothing but your name] – S_ometimes less is more_ [not even your name – just your full signature] – I’m so efficient/important/etc. that I don’t have time to even type in my name With my very cheeriest and best thanks and regards. Here’s hoping all is well …
March 29, 2006· 2 min read
Where was that you went to school?
I’ll admit that I have a bit of a complex about business schools. I never went (sorry – no “Seth J. Levine, MBA” on my business card . . . ) – probably because all of the schools I wanted to go to wouldn’t accept me for college, so I don’t see any reason to give them money for business school. Plus it was the rock and roll late 90’s and I still had dreams of getting rich in the internet bubble (which I did not, although I do continue to receive class action notices for various companies whose stock I owned at the time, much to my amusement). So with that as my clear bias, I have a pet peeve to share with you. I understand why many business schools are named after rich donors (in the same way that many cultural institutions have wings or buildings named after people who gave money in support of them), but why is it that someone tells you where they went to business school, they never actually tell you the name of the school the went to? I think it must be like a fraternity handshake – referring to schools in code. Personally, I think it’s annoying. No one went to Dartmouth – they went to “Tuck”; same is true for UVA (“Darden”); ditto Penn (“Wharton” – this one is even used by undergrads who studied business there); the list goes on. Even schools whose name is in the name of their business school name have to use code (does anyone say they went to business school at Harvard? No – they went to “HBS”). My all time favorite is Stanford. No one goes to Stanford business school – they went to GSB (which is short for Graduate School of Business – said in a way to indicate that really, this is the only graduate school of business in the country worthy of having gone to, so why identify the actual school – everyone will understand). I think I’m going to start telling people who ask that I went to BSOTDCB (business school of the dot com bubble), and then look at them with a blank stare when they ask me what that stands for (and in “DUH. Don’t you already know?”).
February 18, 2006· 2 min read
Good point, Jeff
Maybe this is the reason for so many amusing company names.
February 9, 2006· 1 min read
Follow up to “What’s in a name?”
You can see from the comments to my post on company names yesterday that I actually heard from many of the companies listed (a few wrote me directly and don’t show up on the comments roster, but 3 commented directly). I was actually highly amused by the e-mail exchanges I had on the topic – everyone took it in stride (and thought it was extremely funny). It did get me thinking about how fast information travels in a WEB2.0 world. With one exception that I’m aware of, the people who contacted me were not a regular reader of this blog (despite my wishing that my reach was really that far . . .). Still within a few hours, they had all been alerted to the fact that I had posted about them. There are no secrets in a world that connected . . .I suppose the downside to having a made up company name is that no one knows what you do. The upside is that when someone mentions you on the web, its pretty easy to figure it out (not too many cases of someone writing about the wrong “Nuvvo”, I’d imagine).
January 20, 2006· 1 min read
What’s in a name?
At the risk of throwing stones from a glass house, what’s up with the names of next generation web companies? Catching up on some of my TechCrunch reading this morning I was struck by how crazy the company names were. Here are just a few from posts in the last week: YouTube Kaboodle Tinfinger Fleck YubNub Podzinger Eurekster Nuvvo As Charlie Wood points out – say them together and these names sound “like an incantation.” …
January 19, 2006· 1 min read
More information = good
Here’s a great idea: David Jackson has started posting transcripts from company conference calls on his web site (he’s actually been this for a while, but now has pretty extensive coverage of tech company earnings calls). I try to listen to a handful of earnings calls each season, but invariably I get to fewer than I want to, or miss the key moment of a call – even when I’m listening to the replay (which is almost always what I end up doing). I’d much rather peruse the transcripts. Much easier to consume quickly. Much easier to search. Much easier to quote from (if you’re into that sort of thing). …
January 18, 2006· 1 min read
Should you be a good employee?
When I worked at Morgan Stanley there was a running debate among the analysts about whether it was better to be a good analyst or a bad analyst. The theory went that if you were a great analyst you were rewarded with more work (but not much more pay, given how few analysts actually made it to the “outstanding” category at bonus time) and if you were a mediocre or bad analyst you were passed over for projects and had a much much better lifestyle (i.e., you worked 60 hours a week instead of 90 or more). Banks never really fired analysts, so one could pretty easily coast by for the time of their indenture.My own views on this are pretty clear based on prior posts, but there were a handful of people I worked with who went the other route and were rewarded with a social life. …
January 5, 2006· 2 min read
Networking 101 Expanded
Josh Kerbel wrote me with a good question to my Networking 101 post and my follow up post to that one Here’s how you do it that I thought I’d post along with my response (with his permission). Josh Writes: A while back you wrote a post about networking and you referenced Ben Casnocha as an example of a great network, the type of guy who writes people letters and goes out and meets them. …
July 5, 2005· 4 min read
Morality and China
Tony Perkins posted a cautionary piece on China yesterday to AlwaysOn entitled “Chinese Youth, Unite A moral view of China” In it he argues that we (silicon valley) are being perhaps too quick to look past some of the moral and ethical issues with the Chinese government while we give them what he terms a “gigantic money-fisted hug”. My parents just returned from a two week vacation in China and dad sent around his reaction to Perkins piece with his recent on the ground observations as his perspective. I’m printing it here, with his permission. __________________________ I’d like to offer a (limited) bottoms-up view to complement Tony’s top-down view. I strongly agree that the economic, political, and ethical issues are strongly intertwined (or will be in the next decade). I just got back from two weeks of cycling and hiking in China. I didn’t tour factories or get any official presentation about economics or politics. I just met a lot of Chinese people in cities and in the countryside, and I wasn’t restricted in what I could talk to them about. I have three observations: 1. The expansion of the Chinese middle class is real, but superficial so far. Yes, there are a lot of cell phones, and I got excellent coverage everywhere (even on the tops of mountains and on a fairly …
June 9, 2005· 5 min read