Sooner or later all good things come to an end. Winners stumble, the mighty are fallen. People are at the top of their game for only so long. Companies that are the biggest, bestest, fastest growing one year are in the toilet the next.

Literature is filled with stories that teach this lesson. Shakespearean tragedies like Lear and Macbeth detail the challenges faced by those in positions of power.

In contrast, the message of the motivational speakers and books in the modern business world teach how to win, win, win. It’s all upside, baby. They ignore, or minimize, the downside.

So it is refreshing to read Stall Points: Most Companies Stop Growing–Yours Doesn’t Have To by Matthew Olsen and Derek van Bever. This book examines the fundamental reasons why revenue growth often stalls in successful companies. They identify four main reasons:

1. “Premium position captivity” – when a market leader fails to respond to a low-cost competitor.
2. “Innovation Management Breakdown” – where new product development fails to deliver an ROI.
3. “Premature core abandonment” – where growth opportunities in the core franchise are not exploited or new competitive challenges are ignored.
4. “Talent bench shortfall” – where a company withers due to a lack of leaders and staff able to execute strategy.

It’s interesting to review the history Silicon Valley companies and spot candidates for each of these mistakes. I would suggest that, in turn, we can see Sun Microsystems’s failure to anticipate the effect of Linux (#1); Xerox PARC’s famous inability to capitalize on everything from the mouse to the GUI (#2); MicroPro’s failure to hold on to the WordStar franchise in the 1980’s (#3); HP’s decision to go outside the company for the last two CEO’s (#4). In the latter case it can be argued that the stall resulting from the actions of the first candidate has been amply rectified by the actions of the second. The company Board learned from their mistakes.

(Full disclosure: I have not worked for Xerox PARC; at the others I had a ringside seat.)

What’s fascinating to consider are some of Olsen & van Bever’s prescriptions to avoid these all-to-common errors. These include:

• Being willing to review “belief’s that are so obvious and accepted that it is no longer politic to debate them.” Something most business cultures are loath to do.
• Writing a “pre-mortem analysis” – a newspaper account five years in the future describing why the company succeeded, and another account detailing why it failed. Not a prescribed activity by the power-of-positive-thinking brigade.
• Setting up a high-level “Shadow Cabinet” to discuss alternatives to current strategy and look for red flag indicators.

These are challenging ideas. One wonders if the mainstream American attitude of winning at all costs can stomach the process. In many organizations it’s considered career suicide to point out when the Emperor has no clothes. Think the DoD and Department of State. Likewise, East Coast financial institutions at the core of the current credit market melt-down seemed to lack anyone with this ability. They don’t hand out no stinkin’ bonus packages down on Wall Street for pointing out how things could go pear shaped. But at least they have the option to short the future and make a dime in the process.

Fortunately, it’s more in the nature of Silicon Valley to encourage and reward disruptive innovation. Out here, companies don’t stall as much as crash and burn. Out of the ashes, new ones are built. In the current wave of consolidations around the high-tech landscape there’s plenty of people making a good living catching the guys who are in stall mode and revving up the engines. In doing this, they often implement many of the solutions Olsen and van Bever proscribe: reviewing core assumptions; testing alternatives; scenario planning; zero-sum budgeting.

Driven by the relentless pace of technological change, business models learn from failure and reinvent. This is the competitive advantage of Silicon Valley.

I took time out this afternoon from my overflowing email inbox, endless string of to-do’s and overwhelming number of projects, to sneak into a Senior Leadership seminar at Hewlett-Packard. Since I’m neither senior (well, not in the terms the organization uses that term) nor a leader, I was flying under the radar. But it was a risk well-worth taking.

The speaker was best selling author and personal productivity guru, David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity.

Allen spoke for 90 minutes about the powerful methods he has created to vastly increase personal organization, efficiency and ways to achieve creative results. It was apparent that he is a masterful professional speaker in his own right, as well as an author and executive coach. Some of my favorite quotes from his talk:

• Good executives are like Teflon – nothing should stick to them. But it’s apparent in most organizations that the boss is the bottleneck.
• Stuff should not lie fallow in the upper levels of an organization until the heat is on. Then it spews through three levels of the organization creating stress and unreasonable deadlines for everyone. Managers should not let things blow up, they should take action when things first show up.
• To sit there and have the same thought twice is not productive.

I was curious if the systems Allen teaches are as applicable to entrepreneurs and individual contributors as they are to managers in large organizations. To hear what he told me about this, click on the podcast icon below.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 8:04 — 1.8MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Sci-Fi legend Bruce Sterling (Heavy Weather, The Difference Engine, Distraction and other great novels) is one of the cyberpunk gang of authors who have seen through the more pollyanna views of ‘cool new technology’ to warn that innovation can potentially create disruptions in everything from the climate system to the social system.

I’ve been a fan of his since coming across Heavy Weather in the mid-1990’s. Climate change was not cool back then. We’re so much older than that now and the planet is so much warmer.

I was delighted, and honored, when I ran into him earlier today at the FiRE Conference in San Diego and he agreed to be interviewed for Professionally Speaking.

I really had no idea what he’d talk about. The last thing I expected was a discussion on the Mafiosi-like features of the European Union bureaucracy in Brussels. In fact he’s planning to set his next book in Europe. To hear him explain why he finds modern “post-national” Europe so fascinating, and why he predicts the view from across the Atlantic will soon “return to the slightly paternalistic attitude of American’s as poorly educated hay-seeds,” click on the podcast icon below.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 9:47 — 2.2MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

I first met Hank at a Northern California National Speakers Association meeting in September 2007. I posted a podcast interview with him at that time, partly to demonstrate how easily podcasts can be created and posted. Since then Hank has signed up for the NSA/NC Pro-Track class and this podcast is part of the ongoing series of Pro-Track Profiles. So, for the first time ever, here’s a second Professionally Speaking podcast with the same person!

Hank’s passion for outstanding customer interactions – or Touchpoints – was born in the food and beverage industry. As a waiter and restaurant manager during collage, Hank experienced first-hand the financial benefit of consistently delivering outstanding customer experiences.

In 2002 Hank co-founded the pioneering research consultancy, Touchpoint Metrics. Hank served as its President/CEO, co-invented their Touchpoint Mapping methodology, and led Customer Experience Management (CEM) engagements with organizations large and small, including with GE, Microsoft, and AT&T.

Now known as the “Touchpoint Guru,” Hank is currently working on his first book, The Touchpoint Principle, How to Dominate Your Market Touchpoint by Customer Touchpoint.

Visit www.TouchpointGuru.com to sign up for Hank’s “Touchpointer” newsletter and for more information regarding CEM, Touchpoints, and how he can help as a speaker or consultant.

I caught up with Hank at a break in a recent Pro-Track class. To hear my interview, click on the podcast icon below.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 3:54 — 912.7KB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

One of the five themes of newly re-branded HP Labs is ‘content transformation’ – digitizing analog content from books and other printed matter into files stored on computers. Then transferring these digital files between devices (laptop, Kindle, iPAQ, iPod) and, finally, transforming the digital files (documents, photos) back to analog via digital printing technology.

Sounds marvelous. What’s not to like?

Well, the hubris of the high-tech industry is exposed by a telling comment in a book review in this weekend’s Financial Times. Lavinia Greenlaw, in reviewing The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel, discusses the joy of “tumbling over authors” in libraries. The great libraries are, barring disaster such as fire (as famously happened at Alexandria), places where books endure for centuries. This has not been so with digitized content. Manguel notes:

In 1986, the BBC created a multimedia edition of the Domesday Book that is now unreadable as the technology with which it was made is obsolete. The actual book, almost 1,000 years old, is still perfectly legible.

Moreover, the Web, in contrast to physical libraries, delivers ephemera; 70% of its communications are destroyed after four months. “On the Web, where all texts are equal and alike in form, they become nothing but phantom text and photographic image.”

It’s been noted that the world will produce more content in the next five years than in all recorded history to date. Are we any the wiser for the flood of emails, instant messages, structured and unstructured data that this represents? Are we capable of absorbing the relevance of this digitized distraction?

The challenge for those who will provision the virtual libraries of the future, which could easily contain every book ever published for instant download and printing on demand, will be to ensure that the storage is as timeless as the shelves of the great libraries of history. No small feat in a world where uncertain supplies of energy power the vast datacenters where these digital records will be archived.

Robert Swan: Boy’s Own Hero

Robert Swan is a modern hero cut in the cloth of Shakleton, Scott and the larger-than-life characters of the Victorian Era. His story is impressive. He’s the first person to walk to both the South and North poles. Given the effects of climate change on polar ice he’s quite likely also the last person as well – the melting of the ice means it’s now not possible to undertake the journey’s he completed twenty years ago – today you’d have to swim part of the way. The land of ice he traveled in his youth is now, literally, melting under his feet as global warming takes hold.

Since traveling to the Poles, and observing the effects of climate change and man-made pollution first-hand, Swan has dedicated his life to the preservation of Antarctica by the promotion of recycling, renewable energy and sustainability to combat the effects of climate change.

This is detailed on his website www.2041.com.

Why 2041?

2041 is the year of the review of the Environmental Protocol of the Antarctic Treaty. Swan’s aim is to work towards the protection of this treaty, so there is never a need to exploit the last great continent on Earth for minerals and fossil fuel.

Following his success in removing 1,500 tons of rubbish from Antarctica and with the foresight and support of the Russian Antarctic Division, Robert Swan stood at the Bellingshausen Russian base on King George Island looking down on the beach that had been cleaned. From that moment he believed that an education station in Antarctica, where the world could see the beauty of this incredible continent, would inspire and educate people around the world about climate change and play a crucial role in promoting renewable energy, preservation and conservation for future generations.

He’s established an educational facility in Antarctica. The E-Base is a sustainable green building operated in an environmental and resource efficient manner.

Public speaking for the greater good

Swann is now traveling the world meeting with students in colleges and universities presenting the opportunity to join his campaign to help rescue these pristine wildernesses from the effects of climate change. He’s a compelling and fiery public speaker.

I caught up with him after a presentation to a small group of leadership coaches from Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto. He told me about the importance “telling it like it is”; about the urgency of his work; and how college kids are receiving his message.

To hear the interview, click on the podcast icon below.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:37 — 1.3MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

I’ve noted before that there are precious few women engineers in most American companies. This, despite women being in a majority on campuses, as they beat out their male counterparts in the increasingly competitive college admissions process. Indeed, women are substantially represented on the lower rungs of the career ladder in technical and engineering departments.

But the story changes as they reach their mid- to late-thirties. Over half of all women voluntarily quit their jobs. What gives?

Monday’s Financial Times has a detailed analysis by Columbia University economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett who identifies five factors forcing out female engineers:

1. Many are turned off by male behavior. A reported 63% of women in science and engineering experience sexual harassment.

2. Women feel isolated.

3. Many lack role models and no-one to mentor their career progression.

4. They prefer not to embrace risk-taking career gambles.

5. Finally, they are caught between a rock and hard place when it comes to maintaining 70+ hour work weeks AND managing child and elder care.

Hewlett offers some sound advice for companies who wish to maintain their pool of qualified female engineers and scientists past their 30’s. Failure to do so, she points out, is a national issue:

“In the US alone, reducing female attrition by one-quarter would add 220,000 qualified people to the science, engineering and technology labour pool.”

Please come to Boston in the springtime
I’m stayin’ here with some friends and they’ve got lotsa room
You can sell your paintings on the sidewalk
By a café where I hope to be workin’ soon
– Joan Baez

I was on a business trip to Boston last week. It’s where I lived on arriving in the USA 34 years ago to study at Tufts. I used to walk through Harvard Square on my way from Somerville to catch the bus to Medford.

Harvard Yard in Springtime

Harvard is beautiful at this time of year.

Everyone hears about New England foliage in the Fall. But the Spring time is wonderful. The trees in Harvard yard were full of blossom.

There were no students in sight. Studying for Final Exams must keep them all inside.

Channeling Paul Allen and Bill Gates

Stepping outside the walls of Harvard Yard and into the Square I suddenly recalled my “there but for the Grace of God go I…” moment. It was January 1975. Paul Allen was visiting his friend Bill Gates who was an undergrad at Harvard. Allen is browsing at the news stand in the center of the Square. He spots a copy of Popular Electronics with the Altair 8800 computer on the cover. He buys a copy and rushes over to Gates’s dorm saying “It’s happening, the home computer is here!”. Gates drops out of Harvard to write the BASIC compiler for Altair and MicroSoft is born.

Now, for all I know, I was browsing at the same news stand that very afternoon. I used to stop there most days to check out the UK newspapers. I could’ve chatted with Allen, offered to help out with his new idea. See what happened. Of course, I didn’t. Nor could I have. I was a sociology grad student who loathed the DEC mini-computer I had to use for my Statistics course. And it was probably too cold for any small talk.

But in honor of the missed opportunity I decided to buy a copy of Popular Mechanics (since Popular Electronics merged with another magazine and is no longer available) from the same news stand. Call me superstitious, but you never know…

And in one of the most weird and geeky things I’ve ever done in my blog, here’s my proof of purchase!

One of the rules National Speakers Association (NSA) members must abide by is an agreement not to discuss fees or fee ranges – as with many professional associations this prevents members forming a price fixing cartel. So it is sometimes difficult for people to realize how lucrative the professional speaking business actually is.

Not so with speakers who have not joined NSA.

This Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle features an article describing the career, and fees charged, by Alison Levine. She is a San Francisco-based motivational speaker who overcame a childhood heart condition that prevented her climbing flight of stairs to a become a world-class mountaineer. She uses business principles she picked up in a career at Goldman Sachs and put them into the context of mountain climbing. Combined this with personal stories (such as how a woman takes a pee on Everest) makes her a compelling keynote speaker. Audiences love her.

Levine reveals that she charges $15,000 for a keynote speech and the speaker bureau that handles her bookings takes around 20%. But with a grueling schedule that has her delivering 100 speeches in a year, she is on track to make $1 million in fees.

One can only speculate what Alison’s earnings could be were she to come in from the cold and join our local NSA Chapter. Here, she’d learn how to parlay her keynotes into a range of products that, for many speakers, represent 50% or more of their income. We’d also be able to connect her with top speakers in the industry who could share their combined experience of decades on the road delivering speeches. A diet of cashews and gummy bears will get you in the end, Alison!

Carlos Cruz is a life and business coach, corporate, community and personal motivational speaker, and trainer. Carlos, a former member of the US Navy, founded A Path to Success, and he is an experienced small business owner and consultant.

Carlos believes there are three essential leadership qualities to look for when choosing a speaker, coach, and trainer: life experience, professional training, and an ongoing commitment to rigorous self-examination and self-development. With his continued, sincere committment to developing and integrating these leadership qualities for himself, Carlos has built a firm foundation, and he is seriously dedicated to earning and maintaining your trust.

He is a member of the National Speakers Association 2008 Pro-Track class for emerging speakers. I caught up with Carlos at a recent meeting and asked him about his business and what he is getting out of Pro-Track. To hear what he told me, click on the podcast icon below.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:50 — 1.3MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS