who are you

the most difficult question that a candidate for a potential job with me and my work is;

"who are you?"

invariably the candidate will answer with an excerpt from her resume.  i am a national merit scholar; i am a Harvard MBA; i am a chief financial officer, i am a business consultant for productivity.

these are or may be statements of fact and they may be what you presently do for a living, but they are far from the answer to the question which was asked.

the question is meant to get at who you are are as a person; what do you value, what are your beliefs, what makes you happy and fulfilled, what makes you run away, what are your current interests.

few of us take the time and apply the intellect necessary to truly know who we are.  yet figuring that out is critical to your long-term success.

during my career i saw myself as smart, committed and sociable, team player.  however, what i didn't know is that my partners saw me as smart, committed professional (possibly only to myself) and a loner.

when they asked me to attend a workshop at the Aspen Institute on self-identity, i believed that it was unnecessary but agreed to attend.

during the first week of the event, we were subjected to 5 tests to measure our sociability and team spirit.  a top score for the tests would have been 5,5,5,5,5, while possible scores ranged from 0 to 5 in each test -- the way that i saw it was all 5s would mean that i new and understood myself and that my partners were incorrect, for i was a real team player.  my score was 0,0,0 1,0.

this meant that not only was i truly a loner and far from a team player, but also that i had long failed to understand myself.  the me that i saw in the mirror each morning was far from the me that everyone else was experiencing.  my dream of self understanding was in actuality located on a distant, far off mountain top -- way out of my current reach.

that very knowledge gap, internal view of me to external view of me, can be a real killer of a career.  self understanding is not only an important driver of a fulfilling life, but also an important driver of career success.

take the time to step outside of yourself and see as others see.  you can do this through tests, training and a class or through persistent meditation and self reflection.  take your choice, but do it.

Brand Proceeds Marketing

as a young consultant at booz allen hamilton inc. i was the luckiest guy in the world.  why?  because i was hired by a guy named joe mallory who immediately became my mentor for all the years that i was with the firm.

joe was brilliant and understood consulting like no one that i had ever met.  he had a renaissance mind, studying many things from knot theory to the mathematics of music (at the Juilliard).  whenever i had a difficult assignment where the recommended answer could go left or right with just as much justification from the research and data, he would ask me one question which always made the way forward very clear.

that question was "what is best for the client"?  not what is best for booz allen revenue, or me, or joe, but what is best for the client.

the other thing that i often worried about was marketing; how do i build my business?  joe's answer was clear there also.  you don't overtly market, your work is your brand and your brand is your marketing.  just do your very best on every assignment to "over-deliver" intellect, creativity, honesty and thoroughness and you won't have to look for clients.  they will look for you.

joe was and is an inflection point in my life -- someone you meet who through their intellect and caring changes the trajectory of your life.

be open to the inflection points in your life.

Shareholder Return

no matter what business or market space you are in, you need to build an understanding of the drivers of shareholder return.  in other words, out of all the things that you do in your business what exactly is it that really drives your return (the dollars in your and your investors pockets).  believe me, it is not everything that you do in a normal day.

take the health care service market space for an example.  total shareholder return within the healthcare market space over the last 10 years has been exceptional.  During the mid-2000s, average annual total shareholder return (TSR) exceeded 40%.  from 2010 to 2013 health care service companies posted an average annual TSR of 18% (Source: Boston Consulting Group)

now why?  what are the drivers of that return?

if you take a hard look at the market space a number of drivers become obvious;

• Growth -- Aging populations and new entrants into the market space due to health care reform
• Value -- the beginning of a focus on patient outcomes and underlying costs which can provide margin expansion.  this is value based health care
• Big data -- the use of big data to identify the best protocol to address specific patient needs
• Genomics -- new and emerging genomic data bases that allow appropriate past history of diseases and protocols to be quickly reviewed
• Patient Empowerment -- use of the internet by patients both within and outside of collective patient groups to find the best provider/protocol for any specific diagnosis -- even at a premium in immediate costs
• Free working capital/current ratio -- the generation of free working capital to fund new products and services as the market space changes around any company
• Statistics -- better statistical analysis of market spaces in total, including the competition

understanding the drivers of TSR in any market space or business segment is critical.

what are your drivers?

Digital Literacy

i am fortunate to spend time in many different companies, governmental organizations, and educational entities.  every time that i visit one of these organizations i listen and learn from every person that i meet. every meeting is a free education for me.

however lately i have become quite concerned with the depth and breadth of knowledge with many of the professionals that i meet.  many seem to fall into one of two camps;  deep and extensive knowledge in a single area (e.g. networking, information security) with little breadth of knowledge in any other areas or superficial knowledge across their specific professional responsibilities, but little depth (especially technical depth) anywhere else.

i find that our colleges can be even worse.  students are taught many business and other subjects, but are left to face a thoroughly digital world with few to no digital skills -- computer science classes alone cannot fulfill this need at the intersection of business and applied technology -- the need represents the merging of business capabilities/competencies and functional technology.

every professional in your company must understand that digital and business depth of knowledge is not an option, but a mandatory criteria for promotion and success.  in today's world there is no security except what is in your mind.  any company can go away, any job or role can go away, anyone can be fired.  it is Me Inc.
and your only tool kit to move on is what is in your mind.

i bring this up because of a talk that i am preparing on global trends and the core technologies that will shape our world for the visible future.  those technologies as i see them are the following:

as i see it these are the drivers of our economy over the next five to seven years.  knowledge and expertise in these areas is our survival kit for an uncertain future.

for example take the medical care industry.  wearable small digital devices will monitor our key vital signs while nanotechnology will enable small devices to look and explore within the body.  synthetic biology will enable bacterial (E-Coli and others) and other newly created synthetic lifeforms to assist in delivering cancer treatment and other medications to specific organs or cells within our bodies.  bioinformatics will allow us to better predict up front what protocols might work best for our specific genomes and networks and security will allow us to share the resulting information with our doctors no matter where we and they are in the world.  the results and all other pertinent information will be digitized and stored in our personal information data base.

almost any other industry that you can select will also be impacted in a similar way by the use of these and other emerging technologies.

if you are a professional, set aside time each week to explore technology areas that are out of your normal business domain.  read everything that you can get your hands on and continuously listen and learn from others.  if you are a CEO, insist on ever growing digital literacy within your company and its professionals. digital literacy and the cross pollination of it among professionals is the future of your company.

if you are in an educational institution, develop classes specifically focused upon broad digital/business literacy.  graduate digital citizens of the world, citizens who not only understand technology but have experienced the application of it in multiple countries of the world.

The World Is Lumpy

we have all heard that the world is flat.  many have accepted the premise, but in my opinion it is just plane incorrect.

yes we now have communications that allows us to connect with and reach people around the world.  so there is some flat terrain.

but the truth is that no matter where you are in the world you are encapsulated within your own unique culture, belief systems and lenses through which you see the world -- on a global basis these make the world lumpy, rough and challenging.

therefore even if i can technically reach you, i likely cannot reach you intellectually and emotionally without understanding your encapsulated environment.

so the world is far from flat -- it is downright everest-like in russia, north korea and china and merely mountainous in other parts of the world.

corporations and companies are no different.  in 20+ years of business strategy i have never been able to use exactly the same business strategy development process in any two companies.  each company has its own personality and opinions on how to do things and what is appropriate to accept.  each is unique with the lenses it has developed to see the world in its own way.

people are no different.  we all have developed lenses through we see the world.  lenses which shade and color our view and beliefs.

more difficult yet, the blind are not limited to those who cannot see.  there are those who see the world only in a polar perspective; good/bad, beautiful/ugly, democrat/republican, safe/deadly, hopeful/hopeless

our challenge is not to accept the flat paradigm, but to see the lumps and bumps and begin to understand each in a different way.

Corporate DNA and Business Expansion

i am a strong believer in corporate DNA.  so what is corporate DNA; it is the essence of your business; the organizational culture and strategy.

Corporate DNA includes;

• mission
• vision
• personal and professional values
• key company goals
• strategy
• structure
• core competencies
• core capabilities
• core processes
• roles and responsibilities
• unwritten rules
• decision rights
• professional hiring criteria
• career models
• motivating factors
• knowledge management/information access

yes that's a huge list and not something that most small to mid-size companies want to address. yet in the longer term ignoring your corporate DNA is the most common cause of small to mid-business failure that i see in my consulting practice.  

you might say that the above list just gets in the way of doing real work, but the truth is that sooner or later the real work will fail for a significant client without addressing these components of the soul of your company, the corporate DNA.

i have spoken to a number of companies lately that are surviving or even thriving in Charleston.  with success seemingly in their pocket they set their eyes on broader, more lucrative geographic areas, such as other cities or states.   if the corporate DNA is well defined, this expansion may well be warranted and successful. without clear and well defined corporate DNA, the risk is extremely high and crisis may very well be starring you in the eyes.

so i ask, what is the condition of your corporate DNA?

Simple Thoughts for Hiring and Creating a Powerful Team

• Begin with character, intelligence and industry as a starting place

• Pick the cream of professionals for your leaders and partners

• Seek those who know what they don't know

• Test for unstructured problem solving

• Test understanding by asking them to explain in three sentences or less the essence of a complex project that they worked or a personal interest of theirs

• Covet global citizens, not exclusively U.S. thinkers

• Hire diversity, from the arts, engineering, history, science, and other fields and also across schools, not all Ivy League

• Avoid ego, some wear it like clothing

• Seek those who are smarter than you -- hire your boss

• Reward professionals for specific success, not for just being present

• Be always willing to listen and help young professionals

• To multiply; lead, lend and merge ideas with others

Is Your Company Adaptive

in a world where the lifecycle of cunsumer technology is under 12 months and often for business infrastructure technology under 24 months,  your company must continually adapt or die.  it is just that simple.

to be effective, adaptive corporations must understand the difference between change for the sake of change and intelligent change ...

... all corporate parts are moveable -- corporations are challenged daily to intelligently personalize the meaning of "adaptive".

darwin was correct -- adaptation is the key to survival.