An analysis of some 900 CEOs' results shows they like magenta -- and are less dominant and confident than the rest of the population.To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, the CEOs are different from you and me. A panel of 900 CEOs organized by USA Today participated in an online 60-second color personality test, and the results were striking: The bosses don't like yellow or red, but they're big fans of magenta - at least compared to the rest of the population.
To most of us, that sounds like fun trivia that may (or may not) suggest a good color for the drapes in the corner office. But psychiatry professor Rense Lange said the CEOs' results - compared with the answers provided by some 750,000 others who've taken the online test - reveal that the CEOs are wired differently than everyone else. How?
Dewey Sadka, who's spent 15 years developing the test, said the color choices paint a picture of...
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Wading into the fast-moving flow of social media can be daunting to a small business owner with very little time on his hands. Here's Inc.'s comprehensive social media cheat sheet for the time-strapped entrepreneur.
1. Offer a peek behind the scenes.
Offering a sneak preview of new products, services, or features online can help build demand and provide critical feedback to help smooth the launch. For instance,...
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Does a 15 to 30 percent reduction in operating cost interest you? Thought so.
For the past two decades the pursuit of growth has created massive complexity in companies, and with it, massive complexity costs. The only good news about this weakness is that your competitors may be carrying as much or more complexity cost as you are-and hence the opportunity: Learn how to effectively remove
complexity, and you can regain competitive footing by creating a cost advantage over your competitors. In fact, we've found that it's possible for companies to reduce costs by 15 percent to 30 percent in significant portions of their business by waging war on complexity costs. However, while many CEOs will intuitively grasp
the magnitude of the issue and the opportunity, what to do about it has been a different story. Companies have generally been thwarted by the sheer scope and size of the issue. Moreover, traditional approaches to tackling complexity have generally fallen short. In our recent book, Waging War on Complexity Costs
(McGraw-Hill), we therefore provide new insights on the nature of the issue and innovative and effective battle strategies that the CEO can leverage to finally grapple with the issue. As a primer, here is our memo to the CEO - five key points that every executive needs to heed in order to win the war on complexity:..
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With the economy on the mend, it's time to revisit your pricing strategy.
Pricing is one of the most important strategies available to managers. Illustrating the power of pricing, a study by McKinsey & Company of the Global 1200 found that if companies raised prices by just 1 percent, on average their operating profits would increase by 11 percent. Using a 1 percent increase in price, some
companies would see even more growth in percentage of profit: Sears, 155 percent; McKesson, 100 percent; Tyson, 81 percent; Land O'Lakes, 58 percent; Whirlpool, 35 percent. The good news is that better pricing is not exclusively about increasing prices. Instead, it's about offering a variety of pricing choices to
attract as many customers as possible. Most companies set prices by marking up costs. While easy to implement, this cost-plus pricing method has no correlation to what consumers are willing to pay for a product (or service). The key to better pricing is to set prices that capture a product's value. Value-based pricing
involves thinking like...
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How senior leadership teams can make—or break—an organization.
The colossal business failures of the past few years underscore the fact that the conduct of a company’s leadership team is directly correlated with the organization’s long-term performance. Once-venerable institutions such as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Royal Bank of Scotland paid the ultimate
price for the behaviors of their leadership teams. Merrill Lynch & Co. offers an illustrative case. It has been widely reported that former CEO Stanley O’Neal, who was dumped in October 2007, thwarted debate, ignored feedback from other firm leaders and fired people whose views didn’t mesh with his own. These behaviors sent
a loud message to the rest of the company that differences of opinion would not be tolerated. Observers pointed out that the breathtaking losses suffered by the firm (later taken over by Bank of America) might have been minimized had O’Neal not
marginalized or fired those who tried to warn him about overexposure to credit risk in the subprime market. A similar situation played out at...
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Toyota's ever-widening problems are a tragic case study in how not to lead in crisis.
Under the media spotlight, Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda, grandson of the founder, went into hiding and sent American CEO Jim Lentz to make apologies. (Editor's note: Toyoda has agreed to appear before a Congressional inquiry this week.) Meanwhile, he let serious product quality issues spiral out of control by
understating safety risks and product problems. This left the media, politicians, and consumers to dictate the conversation, while Toyota fumbled the responses. Disingenuous quasi-apologies and disjointed plans for resolution have been Toyota's substitute for crisis response. As accounts pour in about declining
quality, the company parades out relatively unknown mid-level managers to quell the firestorm. It won't work...
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What's the best way to make careful decisions? The value of intuition is discussed comparing concepts from these two books; Blink by Malcolm Gladwell and Think Twice by Michael Mauboussin.
Summing Up
What is the right mix between intuition and analysis? Several clear themes characterized responses to this month's column.
Dominant among these was that the best way to reach a decision depends on a number of factors, including the nature of the decision, the nature of the decider, the information available, history, experience, the number of deciders, and so forth. Nevertheless, several comments reflected an uneasy fondness for a good
dose of intuition in the mix. Guy Gould-Davies' comment was particularly insightful:...
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What were the management trends in 2009?
Fascination with social networking and rethinking common wisdom about goal setting. Here are the Top 10 articles and Top 5 working papers that appeared in HBS Working Knowledge in 2009. Enjoy!...
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I've learned a few things about selling a house.
I know, for instance, that much depends on timing (economic timing as well as the time of year you put the house on the market), and of course, the mantra "location, location, location" is still paramount. I've also learned a property needs "curb appeal." That is, it needs to make a special, positive, and instant impression when
prospective buyers first see it. So when I read Drew Westen's fabulous book, "The Political Brain" (about the role of emotion in politics), I wasn't surprised to learn curb appeal also is crucial in political campaigns. Of course, Westen is referring to personal curb appeal. According to Westen, "One of the main
determinants of electoral success," he explains, "is simply a candidate's curb appeal. Curb appeal is the feeling voters get when they 'drive by' a candidate a few times on television and form an emotional impression." Research shows personal curb appeal can be assessed quickly. [How's your personal curb appeal? When your
co-workers, clients, and business partners "drive by" you, how do you come across? If you'd like to improve, here are five tips to keep in mind:...]
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Four years ago, we launched a study of sixty extraordinary groups. We were curious about what makes some groups fantastic while most are ordinary. Or worse. Our study led us to a number of conclusions and a book. We will share some of what we learned here.
We focused on extraordinary groups of two to twenty people and what makes them so wonderful. We interviewed members of great groups, figuring why not learn from people who have lived through an extraordinary group experience. Four years later, we reached conclusions based on hearing stories from one to two members in each of
sixty groups. We learned about what motivates them to participate, how they feel about that, and what they actually did. This article describes eight performance patterns common to great groups. The more of these eight patterns are present, the more likely the group is to deliver amazing results...
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For many employers, e-mail has long been the preferred method of communication about anything and everything — but certain things should never be said electronically.
Scary thought: More and more courts are accepting e-mail as evidence — and that means your company can easily end up on the hook for seemingly innocuous e-mails by managers and supervisors. To be safe, remind managers they should always avoid having the following types of conversations via e-mail:...
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Have you discovered all the shortcuts buried within Excel?
Try zipping around Excel spreadsheets using these keyboard techniques:...
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Do yourself a favor and don't believe them.
In my two decades of work with executives on their communications, I've seen some myths come up over and over again about how best to succeed at speaking in public. The three most common are: "I want to begin with a joke"; "Too much rehearsal is bad for me"; and "It's better to go right to Q and A." Let me debunk each one in turn, in the hope I may save executives and their audiences from future mishap...
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Body language decoded The polite body language skills that girls are often taught do not work well in the business environment. Take time to learn the body language skills you should be using.
Every twirl of your hair, crossed leg or micro-expression gives off a message. Learn how to take control over how people view you.
Say please and thank you. Don't raise your voice. Sit up straight with your legs together and hands on your lap. Don't draw attention to yourself. And never ever brag. These are the lessons many parents teach their daughters. And while these attributes--politeness, deference, humility--and the way they are projected through
our gestures, gait and self-presentation can certainly help in the classroom and certain social settings, they could be holding many of us back professionally...
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The Boston Consulting Group is publishing a far-reaching diagnosis of the global economic crisis and an in-depth analysis of what leading corporations need to do in order to excel in a postrecession slow¬-growth world, in a new book titled Accelerating Out of the Great Recession: How to Win in a
Slow-Growth Economy (McGraw-Hill, February 2010).
The authors, David Rhodes and Daniel Stelter, senior partners at BCG, argue that companies face ongoing and long-term challenges brought on by global trade imbalances, unstable financial institutions, and overleveraged consumers who can no longer be counted on to drive economic growth. "There will be no return to the
'old normal,' and, just as we won't be able to count on the consumer-especially the U.S. consumer-to rescue the global economy, it's unlikely that the growth of emerging economies such as China and India will be enough to generate a return to pre-2008 global growth," says Stelter. Rhodes adds, "Business will have to adapt to...
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Gaps in Knowledge About Their Customers Are Hampering the Efforts of Some of the World’s Top Companies to Pull Out of the Recession, Says The Boston Consulting Group.
Nearly 90 percent of blue-chip companies are not making the most of their market-research efforts, according to a new report released today by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG). The report, titled The Consumer’s Voice—Can Your Company Hear It?, offers stark evidence that even large blue-chip companies lack basic
knowledge about their customers. In a survey of more than 800 executives based at 40 global companies with sales of $1.5 billion or more, only...
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iPhone apps you won't find on iTunes Are you looking to "jailbreak" your iPhone? Check out Cydia where you can find unauthorized iPhone App downloads, but beware the risks!
An online store called Cydia allows users to download iPhone apps that Apple doesn't sell. In a long-running series of TV commercials for Apple's popular iPhone, a genial voice proclaims, "There's an app for just about anything." Well, not anything. "The iPhone would be a great market for us," says Bhaskar Roy, "but Apple won't let us do live video yet." Roy is co-founder of Qik, a Redwood City,
California, company that makes an app (also called Qik) that lets people broadcast live video on the Internet using their cell phones. Qik's software works on dozens of phones, including the HTC Touch and the BlackBerry Curve, and Qik's users include the actress Demi Moore and the political website Talking Points Memo. But so far,
Qik has been unable to get the software approved for sale at iTunes's App Store. That hasn't kept Qik off the iPhone. For the past year, the company has offered its software on a rogue iPhone app store called...
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