6 tips for interviewing with me...

If you are interviewing with me, read this, it should help.

These tips are based on my experience interviewing more than 3,500 people over more than two decades (an average of about 3 per week). As simple as these pointers seem, a majority of the people I interview struggle with some of them:

Tip #1: Tell me about how you are going to create value for our shareholders. I'm much more interested in how you can help us than I am in what you've done before (we'll check on that in other ways). That means: research our company, our web businesses, and bring us specific new ideas that drive value creation.

Tip #2: Tell me specifically how you would help implement those ideas. We love "hands-on" leaders with specific skills. We mostly avoid people who need lots of support to get things done.

Tip #3: Tell me honestly how working with us fits into your long-term career plans. I hear a lot of baloney; be authentic.

Tip #4: Quickly teach me something new-- about technology, business models, competitors, suppliers, or customers.

Tip #5: Ask great questions.

Tip #6: Be transparent about your needs and concerns. We're looking for self-aware people who can accurately assess whether our company is a good fit for them. Brutal honesty scores points with us and avoids misunderstandings later.

And, of course, relax and be yourself.

If you already work for us, these tips apply to almost any good meeting with me. I expect a great job interview to approximate actual work conditions as much as possible. I always want to discover how you really approach creating value.

Sense and Respond in the Acceleratron

For years we have implemented the concepts of sense and respond, in the context of a learning organization. For new web services, we reduced the time of market trials from months to weeks. We dramatically lowered the actual costs of experiments to the point of immateriality. And we improved forecasting accuracy.

In short, we were better, cheaper, and faster.

But we were still a bit too slow. By stringing together waves of testing, it might take many months to extract major learnings. And being slow is very expensive.

We've recently begun to solve this problem through massive parallelization of sense and respond techniques. Rather than waiting for the results of a wave of testing, we continually launch new, overlapping waves. While we are unable to incorporate learning from one wave into the next sequentially, we have multiplied the speed of individual insights. We then reconcile and apply the learnings "on-the-fly".

Our new process is less scientific, a little more costly, and a bit chaotic. But it is faster, creates far more value, and leads to higher quality. It is consistent with Kaizen, helping us to better meet the challenges of the acceleratron.

What is Passion?

Passions are strong emotions that motivate us.

These emotions are deep, authentic, and powerful. These emotions are what drive us to achieve, to excel. Think of anyone who has achieved some measure of greatness and you will find great passion.

Mastery is high achievement. And it flows when passions are pursued with discipline over time.

As long as we hold our passions, we invest time, energy, and resources in the progression and pursuit of goals. If we hold our passions long enough, we give ourselves the opportunity for mastery. Malcolm Gladwell writes about the 10,000 hour rule, a shorthand expression for the 10 years of devoted practice typically required for true mastery. He says, "what we call talent is mostly a desire to persist".

Passion is the door to mastery. Passion is the prerequisite for talent.

I've now written about why passion wins, how passion wins, and what passion is. That leaves the biggest questions ahead. Where do passions come from? How long do passions stay? These topics become more intangible, more philosophic, and more spiritual-- but I may make an attempt down the road.

How Passion Wins

Passion wins. But only when passion is aligned to goals, to purpose, and to governance structures that create great teamwork.

Pure passion catalyzes and transforms. It inspires, innovates, and invents. Pure passion is a spark, a fire, sometimes an inferno.

But passion alone, without alignment mechanisms, without discipline, is often not productive. It careens, distracts, and ultimately burns itself (and others) out.

The triumph is to align passion to purpose to people.

This aligning is a process, and a demanding one. Passion fights process. Passion hates to be patient. Passion tramples teamwork.

True leaders align passions through process, without dousing the fire. Unfortunately, there is little training about how to balance. In fact, our educational systems tend to polarize. Most formal training tends to dampen creativity and passion. On the other hand, many managers are taught to coddle creatives/passionates as if subjecting them to rigorous process would irreparably damage their mystical skills.

How true leaders balance passion with process is high art. And a topic I will write more about.

“If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.” -Ben Franklin

Also see my post: what is passion?

Passion Wins

I've been a management consultant, run companies for nearly two decades, and worshiped at the altar of competitive advantage. But I might boil a lot advice down to:

Strategy and execution are absolutely essential.
But passion wins.

Passion wins because it's the foundation upon which all other pillars are built.

Passion ignites plans.
Passion drives action.
Passion pursues.
Passion perseveres.
Passion overcomes.
Passion wins.

Twenty years of learning and much of it distilled into two words.

In the last four years, we've completed more than 100 acquisitions. I recently spoke about the six common characteristics that these successful internet businesses share and indicated that the transformational ingredient for each business is passion. Each of these entrepreneurs won their spaces by applying more passion to their businesses than their competitors.

Passion does not substitute for other key ingredients, such as a clear strategic focus or a differentiated offering. But passion is what makes it happen.

I highly recommend a recent fabulous piece by John Hagel about passion in business.

John raises the issue about how to create or maintain passion in larger corporate settings. I think it starts at the top. Leaders must be risk-taking, idea-pushing, energy-enhancing, passion-propogating believers in the cause-- not just process leaders. If that sounds like a fine line between insanity and success, such is the nature of passion.

The key is to balance passion with process; see my post: how passion wins.

Six Keys to a Great Internet Business

Only 1 in about 5,000 attempts at building websites results in a successful business (more on these stats in following posts). At our PubCon keynote I outlined the five primary factors that determine the winners:

1. Focus
2. Uniqueness
3. Monetizability
4. Content
5. Community

And the transcendent ingredient:
6. Passion

I'll begin to break these down:

Focus
Target one niche or application (at least to start). The more precise the better. Examples: not travel, but cruises. Not hobbies, but scrapbooking. Not students, but colleges (think of Facebok's start). Focus forces you to understand the target better and to build better solutions. Win a single type of audience, only then expand.

Uniqueness
At the onset, the business should either be unique or do something much better than everyone else. Over time, competition tries to replicate the success of others, but the best businesses preserve aspects of their uniqueness by continuing to innovate (like Amazon).

Monetizability
Follow the money trails, the commercial trails. Audience alone is sometimes not enough. Not all audiences monetize very well.

Content
Deliver the highest quality content to your target audience. It's the most efficient way to build brands.

Community
Try to build strong community around your site. Good content gets much better when a community interects with it.

Passion
Passion is the secret weapon. Beating the competition requires intense energy, perseverance, discipline, and ambition-- attributes that are driven by passion.

I'll have more to say about these ingredients, especially passion, in subsequent posts.


PubCon Las Vegas Keynote, Nov 12, 2009. Photo thanks to Dave Dugdale.

PubCon Business Model Reviews

Is your business model optimized? Might you be missing key growth and/or monetization strategies?


If you would like our view, please tweet me. For sites we choose, our multidisciplinary PubCon team of 5 execs will give you our assessment during our Thursday morning session (immediately following my keynote).
Our advice is free-- and hopefully worth more than that.

Social Media Marketing - Part I

Social media marketing is a red hot topic amongst brand managers and ad agencies.

Is the attention and hype deserved?

Unequivocally yes. Here's why:

First, it's likely that at least 50% of consumer info on the internet about your brand originates from users. We've been reporting that user generated content (UGC) now accounts for more than 50% of all internet content and traffic.

At the brand level, we see similar results. We analyzed first page search results for 100 leading national brands, representing automotive, consumer products, health care, finance, retail, technology, and travel. We found that user generated results (forums, blogs, user review sites, etc) account for:

-- 63% of results for product name reviews
-- 59% of results for company/brand reviews
-- 26% of results for products overall

Second, consumers are strongly influenced by other consumers online. Data from recent studies indicate:

-- 84% say they are influenced by online feedback
-- Online feedback is second only to personal advice in terms of influence
-- Consumers are willing to pay an average of 20% more for better reviewed services

So, as many as 80% of your brand's potential new customers are influenced by social media. And that influence extends not only to the purchase decision, but pricing as well.

In our next post, we will begin to address the most effective ways we've seen for using social media.

UGC Revolution- Part II

In my last post, I shared our statistic that 51% of all U.S. internet site visits are now to URLs created by UGC.

That stat includes social networks.

If we "zoom in" on content sites only, the result is the same: UGC sites also account for about 50% of visits to content sites.

For now, the sectors not becoming dominated by UGC are commerce and search.

% of total U.S. internet visits------------->% UGC

31% Social Networks---------------------->100%
30% Content Sites-------------------------> 50%
28% Commerce sites--------------------> 15-20%
11% Search---------------------------------> ~0%

Content is rapidly becoming a UGC dominated world.

We will share more at PubCon.

See UGC Stats Part I.

UGC Tops 50% -Part I

The Media Revolution may have reached a new level.

By our estimates, a majority of U.S. internet visits, about 51%, are now generated from UGC (user generated content). If you exclude searches, the metric rises to about 56%. On a page view basis, higher still.

While most web pages now include UGC features (such as comments), our definition includes only pages that are created by users. On a visitation basis, the UGC world is roughly composed as follows:

61% Social Networks
11% Forums
11% UG Content Sites (like Urban Dictionary)
10% UG Marketplaces (like Craigslist)
3% Blogs
1% UG Reviews (like ApartmentRatings)
1% Wikis
2% Other

The distinctions between these types of sites are rapidly blurring. But there's no doubt that UGC domination is growing. If you consider the top 25 English language sites, seven of them did not make the list only five years ago: facebook, youtube, wikipedia, myspace, blogspot, wordpress, and twitter.

UGC domination changes everything. For the first time since Guttenberg, the primary medium of mass information is controlled by...the masses.

In the very early years (pre-web), the internet was also dominated by UGC of a different type: communication amongst scientists, academics, and enthusiasts. But that was before the internet was a mass medium, before almost 2 billion people were connected.

Now the most powerful medium in the history of the world (as measured by ubiquity, utility, and influence) is controlled by the people. Increasingly, the winners are successful UGC sites-- social networks, forums, blogs, niche publishers, and the like. The winners also include some UGC "infrastructure" providers, such as ad platforms (Google), marketplace platforms (Amazon), payment platforms (PayPal), and social platforms (Facebook).

I will explore more about how to capitalize on the revolution in future posts and during my keynote at PubCon.

See more stats like these: UGC Revolution Part 2.

PubCon Keynote

I am excited about delivering a keynote talk at Pubcon on November 12 in Las Vegas. (See press release.)

I will tackle the topic of Internet valuation, drawing in part from the experiences of acquiring 100 web businesses in the last 5 years. Specifically, I’ll address issues such as:

-- Who has really made the most money on the internet so far?
-- What types of sites are the most valuable and the least valuable?
-- What can you do to make your site more valuable? What mistakes should you avoid?
-- What's ahead for the next 5 years:
>> Who's likely to make the most in the future?
>> Which risks should you really worry about?

My team and I will also be sharing some of the best website management ideas we have ever seen. These will include ideas about monetization, community management, content origination, and more. Maybe we will share some of the worst ideas we’ve seen as well.

We’re planning to make our presentations insightful, fast-paced, and interactive. We’re doing some original research for the sessions and will “tease” some of the findings in advance on this blog.

If you have suggestions for topics for us to discuss, please leave comments below.

We’re looking forward to PubCon.

Kaizen Your Growth Rate

"Do not trust people. They are capable of greatness."
--Stanislaw Lem

I just attended a great training class on Kaizen management techniques. The management philosophy helps people achieve breakthrough success-- results beyond what they might have thought possible. Kaizen is a Japanese philosophy of continuous improvement that has been used in the Toyota Production System. The philosophy focuses on radically eliminating wasteful work and improving productivity, while maintaining work/life balance.

How does Kaizen work?

By breaking down improvements into many small steps (hundreds or thousands), which are collectively transformative.

While Kaizen is famous for eliminating defects and cutting costs, it also drives growth by improving quality and freeing resources for reinvestment.

For sucessful internet businesses, a Kaizen-type approach of sense and respond is a way of life. Since the costs of product experimentation on the internet are very low, you can continually imporve your value proposition. It might be worth continually asking:
-- What small changes in your products and services could unlock large value for your customers?
-- How do you rapidly and constantly test these changes?
-- How do you make this approach a fundamental part of your business?

I am most grateful to Danaher executives who graciously hosted our training.

Focus.

Why do our eureka moments arise from quiet contemplation and even sleep?

Research suggests focus allows the brain to cast a broader net and recruit more neurons for the problem at hand. In physics and brain research this is known as phase shifting. For brain purposes, think of phase shifting as the period of time when neurons are released from one task and available for the next. A slightly longer phase shift allows the brain to recruit more available neurons for a new task, dramatically increasing processing power.

Research shows that people who have longer phase shifts demonstrate higher IQs. The effects are both subtle and powerful. A 1 millisecond increase in phase shifting can result in a 20 point increase in IQ.

I'm not aware of research (yet) that directly measures an individual's ability to lengthen phase shifting through mind focusing techniques. But there's a lot of indirect evidence demonstrating that the brain is operating differently and more creatively in a position of calm-- suggesting you can amplify your intellectual effectiveness through focus.

Research seems to be slowly but surely verifying what the ancients have known.

True Leaders

I find that true leaders step-up when everyone else is scared or confused. True leaders delight in clarifying the ambiguous, in accelerating into the unknown, in reconciling controversy, in tackling the daunting, and solving the complex. True leaders know little fear, they are propelled by challenge.

These are times for true leaders. Most of us have never seen more uncertainty. Will the economy recover soon? Or, as Gary Shilling asserts with 23 powerpoint slides, is the economy more permanently broken?

The truth is: no one knows.

But for true leaders there is no dilemma. They do what they always do, including:

-- being relentlessly resourceful
-- taking calculated risks
-- igniting passions, while balancing process
-- fueling the vision
-- striving for the best, while planning for the rest

These are the times when it become obvious who are the true leaders. Leadership reveals across many seasons.

Tough problem? Sleep on it.

Research shows you're twice as likely to solve a difficult problem by sleeping on it. And it's not necessarily because you are rested.

It's because you solve problems differently while sleeping, engaging other parts of the brain. After sleep, you're twice as likely to arrive at a "non-linear", creative answer. These findings are consistent with other research I discuss in my post: the muse comes quietly.

When I'm struggling with a really tough problem, I deliberately utilize my overnight problem solving machine (also known as sleep). It works. And I feel more rested, because I can remove the difficult problem from my to do list.

Often the good ideas like to be invited, not chased.

Welcome to the Acceleratron

Amidst the worst economic crisis in generations (which conceivably may not be over), it’s easy to lose sight— not of the recovery, but of what’s really going on. The “new normal” is likely not a hopelessly stuck economy, but a technologically-fueled pace of change that’s far more dramatic, a future that delivers a constant stream of surprises, both “good” and “bad”.

The “new normal” seems to be an acceleration of change driven by red-hot technological innovations that interact with each other exponentially on a truly global scale, as Moore’s Law meets Metclafe’s Law meets learning curves. The result transforms the pace of scientific research, creative destruction, and cultural evolution.

Two recent articles highlight the change. John Hagel’s and John Seeley Brown’s research on the “The Big Shift” illuminate and quantify the impact on businesses and the economy. Their work is detailed, thoughtful, and ongoing. George Colony’s blog post about “The Gateway Recession” explains some of the ways we need to think about business having forever changed.

As I have been reflecting on what’s happening, I begin with a look back. In the last fifteen years we have witnessed and experienced massive changes, such as: the rise of the consumer internet, adoption of cell phones by more than 3 billion people, completion of the mapping of the human genome, and cloning of the first mammals.

But do you believe that the next 15 years will produce changes that are very likely to exceed these? Do you believe that the rate of technological change is continuing to accelerate? Do you believe that no other period of history is remotely close to what we are about to experience?

This thinking stretches me, but I believe it. Here’s why: information technologies now in place globally are feeding on each other, creating an accelerating wheel of advancement and creative destruction. The technologies fall into (at least) three categories, the dynamics of which are individually mostly understood, but which collectively are creating new dynamics that are difficult to fully grasp since they are evolving in real-time. Three of the powerful technological forces are:

1. IT Infrastructure— Moore’s Law type effects. This includes computing power, storage, bandwidth, and all of the derivative devices, such as an increasing array of personal computing devices (such as tablet computers) and massive scale cloud computing. These powerful effects have been running strong for decades and will continue.

2. Meta Tools-- fueled by acceleration in open source software, meta-tools continue to accelerate the pace of software development. Building on the shoulders of those that came before them, software engineers in healthy situations can be 3-5X more productive than 10 years ago.

3. Collaboration and radical network effects—Metcalfe’s Law type effects are combing with learning curve effects to create viral adoption of new methods, a catalyst for the next ratchet-up of the speed of change. John Hagel and John Seely Brown have called this effect the “collaboration curve”, when traditional learning curves are multiplied by massive scale collaboration. While not limited exclusively to the IT sector, the best examples are companies like Apple, Google, and Facebook, who often have more third-party (external marketplace) engineers working on improving and extending aspects of their software technologies than they employ themselves. They’ve opened critical parts of their systems and toppled market leaders.

These three mega-trends— simultaneous radical improvements in infrastructure, tools, and collaboration— work together to create a constant flow of discontinuous change, an “acceleratron” that may be only beginning.

The acceleratron enables developments such as:
- iphone applications being written at the rate of 25,000 to 50,000 per year, essentially none of those by Apple itself
- Google becoming a $100 billion market cap company in under a decade, while old media dies
- Amazon becoming one of the most valuable retailers in the world in just over a decade
- Wikipedia becoming the world’s largest database of actively curated and moderated content with only a few employees

The acceleratron speeds up all industries and processes. You can find examples in agriculture, education, energy, healthcare, manufacturing, and retailing.

The acceleratron's reach will remake industries in small fractions of the time it took to create them (see newspapers); it will unleash even more fantastic scientific progress (see genetics); and it might remake a “have/have not” world order to a “know/know not” world order (which will bring new issues).

Are we ready for all of this change? As companies, countries, cultures, and citizens, are we prepared? Absolutely not. The changes will test us, strain us, and push us in entirely new ways.

Will our essential humanity, our fuzzy brains, our cultural proclivities, and our basic desires for the simple things, provide a “natural brake” to the full effects of the acceleratron? Will some communities do a better job of digesting and moderating the pace of changes than others? In my view, yes and yes.

I’m optimistic about our ability to harness the acceleratron, unlocking an exciting period of advancement and understanding, while holding on to things most dear.

I know not how to end this post. Perhaps, with this: more to come.


Credits: Joe Rosenblum, INET’s CTO, helped shape my thoughts on “the acceleratron”.