Building true teams

The scientists sought to compare successful teams with less successful ones, and figure out exactly how they differed in composition. They focused on a few academic fields, defining successful teams as those whose papers were most frequently cited. They also looked at the annals of Broadway musicals over the past century and studied how the mix of composers, lyricists, directors and so forth correlated with the success of the production, measured in terms of the number of weeks a production ran before closing.

What they found was that the most successful teams did two things right. First, they attracted a mixture of experienced people and those who were newcomers to whichever field they were in. That's not surprising—the need for fresh blood has long been recognized as an important ingredient in success. The second criterion, though, was far less obvious. What successful teams had in common was at least a few experienced members who had never collaborated with each other. "People have a tendency to want to work with their friends—people they've worked with before," says Luis Amaral, a physicist at Northwestern and a coauthor. "That's exactly the wrong thing to do."

Source: True Teamwork, Fred Guterl, Newsweek International.

What is strategy

If you can touch it it's tactics, if you can't it's strategy.

Quote: Tiha von Ghyczy

City for a newspaper

Usually newspaper "circle" around cities. There's the Boston globe, Washington Post, New York Times, etc. The founder of the Wall Street Journal created a 'city of interest' for his paper. He targets readers that are all somewhat interested in business and economic issues.

That's a classic example for changing "the rules of the game". Which rules can you change?

History doesn't repeat...

… itself but it rhymes.

Source: Mark Twain.

Ants & Algorithms

My friend Martin told me about the Ant algorithm that is used to optimize connections on micro chips. It's a fun approach to solve complex issues like the traveling salesmen riddle:

In the real world, ants (initially) wander randomly, and upon finding food return to their colony while laying down pheromone trails. If other ants find such a path, they are likely not to keep travelling at random, but to instead follow the trail, returning and reinforcing it if they eventually find food (see Ant communication and behavior).

Over time, however, the pheromone trail starts to evaporate, thus reducing its attractive strength. The more time it takes for an ant to travel down the path and back again, the more time the pheromones have to evaporate. A short path, by comparison, gets marched over faster, and thus the pheromone density remains high as it is laid on the path as fast as it can evaporate. Pheromone evaporation has also the advantage of avoiding the convergence to a locally optimal solution. If there were no evaporation at all, the paths chosen by the first ants would tend to be excessively attractive to the following ones. In that case, the exploration of the solution space would be constrained.

Thus, when one ant finds a good (short, in other words) path from the colony to a food source, other ants are more likely to follow that path, and positive feedback eventually leaves all the ants following a single path. The idea of the ant colony algorithm is to mimic this behavior with "simulated ants" walking around the graph representing the problem to solve.

Ant colony optimization algorithms have been used to produce near-optimal solutions to the travelling salesman problem. They have an advantage over simulated annealing and genetic algorithm approaches when the graph may change dynamically; the ant colony algorithm can be run continuously and adapt to changes in real time. This is of interest in network routing and urban transportation systems.

Source: Wikipedia

Strawberries in Virginia

Karen and I went strawberry picking with Ashley and Fred in Crozet just 15 miles from Charlottesville. According the "honor code" I checked with the farm in advance (no kidding!) what the corporate policy is regarding eating while being at work. As you can see it's allowed! It's a lot of fun and believe it or not, those berries taste much better than at Harris Teeter!

The diploma

After two years at Darden I'm taking home much more than the MBA diploma. I keep with me an absolutely incredible professional and personal experience and the friendship to many amazing friends. Those characters have enriched my life tremendously and I'm looking forward to continue the rest of my life with them being part of it.

Learned helplessness

Learned helplessness is a psychological condition in which an animal has learned to believe that it is helpless. It has come to believe that it has no control over its situation and that whatever it does is futile. As a result, the animal will stay passive in the face of an unpleasant, harmful or damaging situation, even when it does actually have the power to change its circumstances. Learned helplessness theory is the view that depression results from a perceived lack of control over the events in one's life, which may result from prior exposure to (actually or apparently) uncontrollable negative events.

Are you really tied to something?

Source: Wikipedia

Graduation picture show

Running and strategy

Favorite readings

These are some of my favorite readings and those that I have collected over time:

General readings
American Law in a global context
Bargaining for advantage
Clausewitz on strategy
Cashflow quadrant
Deals from Hell
First things first
Getting to Yes
Good to great
Mergers and Acquisitions (Brunner)

Business readings
Rich dad poor dad
The five dysfunctions of a team
The paradox of choice
In search of excellence
Principles of General Management
The fifths element
The Winner-Take-All-Society
Why smart executives fail

Stimulating readings
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Blink
Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
The Tipping Point
The end of poverty
The elegant universe
The Evolution of Cooperation

Good literature
All I could get
The namesake
Never let me go

Managerial Psychology readings
Authentic Happiness
A user’s guide to the brain
Choice theory
Level three leadership
Man’s search for meaning
Primal leadership
Social Intelligence
The principles of psychology
The evolving self
Why we do what we do
Why we buy

Graduation pictures

Salt the organization

1) Use old staff - only "salt" a little bit with own people
2) This transfers culture
3) Bring people early on together (in seminars, training, leadership development sessions)

Source: Charles Cooley


1) Treat everyone the same no matter how long with the company (10 minutes or 10 years)

Source: Hugh McColl

Identify talent in acquisitions

Charles Cooley:

1) Who is in charge of what?
2) Just a small group discusses (e.g. 4 people)
3) Who is critical in the new organization?
4) Then those people do the same with the people beneath them... (this quickly creates a working team)
5) Do Talent planning (right at signing the deal)
6) Background, results, can they relocate?, interviews with key people
7) Lock people in
8) Don't be arrogant in hiring & firing people

Negotiation

Advice from Hugh McColl:

1) Price is there but its about the positions of directors and board members
2) What can we afford? What does it take to get there?

Tactis:

1) Don't let get Investment Bankers get in between the party
2) Wonder of it all approach: try to figure out what is in for everyone
3) Deal with everything about what they care (price, pride, people, etc.)
4) Don't include an offer
5) Sit next to people not across people (except for lunch and dinner)
6) Use less hostile language
7) Use artifacts (like a baseball hat) to make a negotiation special and to "pitch"

Give and Take

1) Gave up chairmanship title to other and give him the same salary! (= keeps pride)
2) Don't give up CEO
3) Give up all other titles (=costs nothing) but keep the CEO - this removes a barrier
4) Kee Surviving, Control and Profitability
5) If they want higher price then they have to give up something, e.g. have to find more earinings in the target
6) One always has to give up board seats. Have criterias in place for replacement.
7) Grow board members like accordeon but then shrink over time again.
8) Board always grew with more and more mergers

If you have no plan

...any road will bring you there.

Quote from ?

Networking advice

-- Never keep score. If your interactions are ruled by generosity, your rewards will follow.
-- Your relationships with others are your finest, most credible expression of who you are and what you have to offer.
-- Give your time and expertise freely. It is like Miracle-Gro® for networks.
-- The best time to build a network is before you need it.
-- Do your homework. Never pick up the phone or plan an introduction before knowing as much as possible about your contact.
-- There's no need to ponder who picks up the lunch check. Generosity is the key to success. -- With networking, it's better to give before you receive.
-- Don't come to the party empty-handed. You're only as good as what you give away.
-- Social scientists are proving that people who are more connected with other people live longer and are healthier.

Source: Never at alone

Toyota Production Process (3 Steps)

Consider what the Toyota people are attempting to accomplish. They are saying before you (or you all) do work, make clear what you expect to happen (by specifying the design), each time you do work, see that what you expected has actually occurred (by testing with each use), and when there is a difference between what had actually happened and what was predicted, solve problems while the information is still fresh.

Source: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/3512.html

Installments in negotiations (Source HBR)

There are other reasons to make concessions in installments. First, most negotiators expect that they will trade offers back and forth several times, with each side making multiple concessions before the deal is done. If you give away everything in your first offer, the other party may think that you're holding back even though you've been as generous as you can be. The manufacturer who offered a 3 percent wage increase to the employees' union up front faced exactly this problem.

Installments may also lead you to discover that you don't have to make as large a concession as you thought. When you give away a little at a time, you might get everything you want in return before using up your entire concession-making capacity. Whatever is left over is yours to keep—or to use to induce further reciprocity. In the real estate example, you might discover that the initial $30,000 increase in your offer was all that you needed to sign the deal!

Finally, making multiple, small concessions tells the other party that you are flexible and willing to listen to his needs. Each time you make a concession, you have the opportunity to label it and extract goodwill in return.

All of the above strategies are aimed at guaranteeing that the concessions you make are not ignored or exploited. It is important to note, however, that when someone refuses to reciprocate, the refusal often hurts her as much as the party who made the concession. Nonreciprocity sours the relationship, making it difficult for negotiators to trust each other or risk further concessions. Thus, effective negotiators ensure not only that their own concessions are reciprocated but also that they acknowledge and reciprocate the concessions of others.

Negotiation tip

Which of these scenarios would make you happier?

Scenario A:

While walking down the street, you find a $20 bill.

Scenario B:

While walking down the street, you find a $10 bill. The next day, on a different street, you find another $10 bill.

The total amount of money found is the same in each scenario—yet the vast majority of people report that Scenario B would make them happier. More generally, extensive research (beginning with the work of the late Stanford University professor Amos Tversky and the Princeton University professor and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman in the 1970s) demonstrates that while most of us prefer to get bad news all at once, we prefer to get good news in installments.