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I’ve written previously about TalkBizNow’s aggressive entry into the business networking arena on August 18th. With claims that the website will be far superior to LinkedIn and hopes to attain over three million users in the first six months, the company loves to generate buzz, regardless of how or why.

I just read a recent interview that BNET conducted with TalkBizNow CEO Martin Warner dating back about a week to Friday September 12^th. Below are some snippets from the interview:

BNET: Who predicted that the company would be five times bigger than Facebook? What’s the basis for the claim?

Martin Warner: Who said that? [What we said was] that the business networking market is going to be five times than the social networking market. It has nothing to do with Facebook. Is that the headline? I’ve not said it.

BNET: Didn’t you vet the release?

MW: I approve or my president approves every press release, but this comes as a complete surprise to us. It’s not good form if someone from our agency released this without being approved.

BNET: The release also claims that Talkbiznow.com is the “world’s first business networking site.” How is that true?

MW: That’s a fair comment. If we think about a couple of the players that are trying to do this in the market, Xing out of Germany and LinkedIn out of California, they’re allowing business professionals to connect with each other, and on that we all agree. The difference is the way we can do peer to peer networking, hosting a webinar, or selling a product. Once you connect, they don’t necessarily say here’s what you do to do business online. Ours may appear to a social network to be a little stout. It may look like a business application – it is a business application. It is a pure b-to-b networking tool. We haven’t seen that on the market. It’s whether you have something that wants to be a b-to-b tool or something that sits in the middle of a business and social network.

BNET: No offense, but the type of over reaching statements in the press release I saw indicated sloppy execution. Might that not come back to bite you?

MW: If you read all the press on us, I think we’ve done very, very well. People have testified how good our press has been. We’ve got enormous amount of buzz around the application. The press campaign, I’m very happy with. We’ve got that coverage and, I’m sure, we’ve got viral targeting based on it. We can put out something that raises more questions and then be ready with answers. That can be effective. We just have to stand up and be counted for our statements.

Alright, so where to begin? First of all, it’s a bit questionable that neither Warner nor his president approved the comment about TalkBizNow being five times greater than Facebook, and yet it somehow made its way into the press release, but I won’t even harp on that point for now. The claim that TalkBizNow is the first business networking website is simply riddled with holes. Judging by the responses to the interview posted on BNET, even if you buy Warner’s argument about LinkedIn and Xing, which I don’t, several other business networking sites that offer similar peer to peer networks have existed for the past couple years. Take a look at WeCanDo.BIZ, Biznik, or Zoodango, just to name a few. It’s one thing to say you’ll be the best, it’s another to claim you’re the first when others clearly already exist.

Because the number of social networks has exploded in the past few years, experts have been studying the mechanisms and ins and outs of this phenomenon. One of the most important aspects of any network’s success seems to be the trust and the relationship between the users and the network. Mark Zuckerberg, for example, is well known as the face behind Facebook, and users are encouraged to contact him if ever they have something to say about the way Facebook works. With the amount of exposure one receives by including so much personal information on the network, it’s no surprise that trust is such an important element.

Dan McComb, the cofounder of Biznik writes, “It seems that anyone who has been in the business networking industry for any length of time knows one thing: successful business networking is all about building trust. In fact, any business getting started in this social media landscape is going to need the trust of their customers, and making overly bold claims isn’t exactly the best way to get it. The fact is [that] “business networking” is a massive potential market, with plenty of room for healthy competition. Adding some project management tools to the application sounds like an interesting idea. I question whether advertising on a social network of any kind will be able to support the model, though…”

I commend the company for adding such software services as blogging, webinar facilities, calendars, free user advertisements, and online stores to the more expected linking with colleagues and business associates; however, I can’t say the same about their marketing strategy.

Enough of my rambling though… let’s see how the website is doing so you can judge for yourself…

(It’s been exactly one month and remember: the goal is to attain three million users within the first six months)

I just finished reading The Halo Effect by Phil Rosenzweig, and found it to be a particularly practical, candid, and insightful read. Rosenzweig’s book revolves around the concept of the “halo effect” which is defined as “a flawed psychological disposition that causes individuals, generally incorrectly, to align their thinking and evaluations of others across all dimensions based on knowledge of a single dimension”. In English, that means company performance sometimes creates a “halo” that shapes the way we perceive strategy, leadership, people, culture, more. When a company’s sales/profits are up we tend to claim it’s because of a brilliant strategy or a visionary leader. When that same company’s performance falters though, we conclude that the strategy was misaligned or the leader was unfit for the job. As a business student, this is a painfully accurate description of how we are often taught to think.

Rosenzweig cites several real life examples, but I really enjoyed his discussion of Wal-Mart because it was one of our case studies in my management class this past year. We were always discussing Wal-Mart’s “cost leadership” strategy and the company’s sophisticated use of technology, but we never really considered how the corporation grew large enough to have such low margins in the first place. Often a company’s “current” strategy evolves through a strange combination of decisions and luck, and it is difficult to look back and separate the two. Rosenzweig recognizes this fact, and comments that the “link between the inputs and outputs is tenuous”.

I was also fascinated by Rosenzweig’s insight into the ephemeral nature of success. This is one that it seems almost everyone struggles with. It was amazing to read about all the studies that considered “best in class” companies for a given time period and proclaimed that if others followed the examples set by the “best in class” they would be successful too- and then a few years later those “best in class” were under performing the market. Oops.

One of my projects this summer was an extensive M&A Mega-deals Analysis (we defined a mega-deal to be one in which the target was worth over $10 billion). As suspected, a year after the announcement date the majority of the deals resulted in value destruction and on average the deals consistently resulted in negative returns. We explored further and took a look at practical and strategic characteristics of the deals that might help explain the poor performance, such as price bidding, how integration was handled, cost synergies, macro-economic factors, timing, etc. While we did find that unsuccessful buyers and targets often grossly overestimated cost savings, underestimated merger expenses, and didn’t consider the full range of integration issues they might run into (technological, managerial, cultural, etc), even the few deals that outperformed the market usually did so only because of economic factors beyond their control. Basically we found it was often better “to be lucky than good” because even if the buyer and target considered all of the criteria we defined in our framework, it still didn’t guarantee success- and, like Rosenzweig points out, even when companies are successful it is often short lived.

Throughout the book Rosenzweig also describes eight other business delusions. One of my other favorites was “Delusion of Single Explanations”: many studies show that a particular factor, such as corporate culture or social responsibility, leads to improved performance. But since many of these types of factors are highly correlated, the effect of each one is usually less that suggested. This is a huge problem with research because even if the data is perfect, it is very very difficult to differentiate between the effects of several related elements. I think that even recognition of this fact is useful though, and an important clarification to make in reporting results. All too often we confuse correlation with causation or put more emphasis on a single factor than is necessary.

These were just a few points in the book that really caught my attention. In general it was a great read, though a bit repetitive at times. I guess as a student my “concern” is that while I understand what Rozenzweig is saying and though I’ve always agreed that copy cat cultures and celebrity CEO’s don’t work, how do you figure out how to run a company if you can’t really look to best in class and figure out what they did right and go with that? Rosenzweig talks about how chance plays a greater part than we think and yet the best managers act as if chance is irrelevant. I’ve written previously about how important luck is, although the best entrepreneurs are sometimes able to “create luck”. Either way, it’s pretty scary knowing that there’s only so much you can control.

I think more so with business than with many other disciplines there is really only so much you can learn in the classroom, because there aren’t laws and rules like in science and English. I think in business, experience is the only real credential that matters. So no, I’m not suggesting all of us business students drop out, but rather that field work, shadowing executives, and other forms of experiential learning are critical, and that no matter what you do and don’t learn you have to be willing to take some risks.

If any b-school kids are reading this (and everyone else too of course), you should take a break from Halo 3 and check out The Halo Effect.

The reason that I had to end my internship at Brilliont a little earlier than the others was because I’m going to be an RA (Resident Advisor) for my College House at Penn this year. To be an RA we are required to attend a three week training retreat/session right before classes begin. Yesterday was the first day, and while I’m not an introvert by any means I can be a little shy when I first meet people. Thus, when I found out our first activity was an Improv Comedy Workshop you can imagine that I got a little apprehensive. Me? Improv comedy in front of people I don’t really know? Sounded a little disastrous.

The session was conducted by Avish Parashar, a former Penn student and the president of Avish Parashar Productions, Inc. (go figure). The company conducts workshops and presentations for several types of audiences to show them “how the ideas and techniques of improve comedy can make [them] more flexible, more effective, and ultimately more successful!” Throughout the session Avish kept reminding us that while the activities we were doing might seem silly, they could actually empower us and help us in several of the roles we play as a Resident Advisor- these include being a mentor, a friend, an advisor, a role model, a motivator, a specialist, a Penn representative, etc. As we discussed his “Four Keys to Creativity” and each of the roles I just mentioned, I realized that many of these ideas also applied directly to being a successful entrepreneur and/or a successful manager:

Focus on the outcome: Here Avish pointed out something that is obvious but often overlooked- that the end goal is usually more important than all the little details. This doesn’t mean detail and organization aren’t important, of course, but that a balanced perspective is necessary. Avish gave us a simple example that I’ll share. He told us to think about a time when we were going out to a fancy or important dinner with our families and the restaurant was overbooked or closed. Some people let this ruin their evening- they complain about it in the car, they complain about it over dinner at another restaurant, and they complain about it on the way home. Others recognize that the point of the evening is simply to spend time with loved ones, and have a great time anyways. At Brilliont I noticed that if I got stuck somewhere along the data collection process or the data analysis process, the team would help me take a step back and look at what our end goal was. Often we found that there was a different, but equally valuable means to the same end. Sounds pretty basic, but sometimes you get so wrapped up or frustrated with what you are doing that you find it difficult to look at the big picture: what do your customers need and want, and how can you effectively, efficiently, and ethically deliver those results in a profitable manner.

Let go: It’s amazing how difficult it can be to grasp the meaning of these two words. I don’t think this means you should leave everything to chance, because as I’ve mentioned before, in my opinion the best entrepreneurs seek out opportunities and occasionally create their own luck. Nor does it mean that you shouldn’t challenge the status quo- because you should. It does, however, mean that you should make a conscious effort to recognize what you can and can’t control and stop trying to fight things that are entirely beyond your reach. Your energy and resources will be better spent if you focus on the areas where you can make the most impact. I view the importance of this personal resource/energy optimization and allocation as similar to the importance of how companies allocate their funds and resources to optimize results and progress. One of my favorite movie quotes comes from Something New: “Let go, let flow” says the lead actress.

Say “yes and” as opposed to “yes but”: This was one of my favorites. It’s not meant to be taken literally as Avish pointed out. Gentlemen, if your girlfriend asks you if she looks fat then “yes and ugly too” is not quite the response she is looking for. More generally though, this key reminds us to be open to new ideas. The thing is that I’ve noticed that pretty much all entrepreneurs like to pride themselves on being open to new ideas. Isn’t that what entrepreneurship is all about? The subtlety here is perhaps in the way we approach and react to new ideas. I know that I can be pretty critical- not because I don’t like new ideas but because I like to consider all of the facts and think about all of the long term consequences before I make a decision or express approval. Sometimes, though, this means that I appear to be negative at first. I’ll say “yea but XYZ”. This limits the conversation and tends to draw our focus to only one element of an idea where as a “yes and did you think about XYZ” tends to encourage more brainstorming and further exploration. Again, this is not to be taken literally because you shouldn’t always agree with people, it just reminds us that sometimes if you are willing to explore a “bad” idea a little further before nixing it completely, a new “good” idea might arise in the process.

Tap your creativity: Finally, we discussed how difficult it can be to apply or call upon your creativity. We’ve all experienced writer’s block at some point or another. Somehow it seems that we are most creative when we’re not trying to be… like right before we go to sleep, or in the shower, etc. Avish basically pointed out that we often have trouble because we analyze and critique ideas as they come and this can hold up the process. One thing we’ve always used on the Wharton Dean’s Advisory Board is the “Parking Lot” method of brainstorming. We allot ourselves a small amount of time to get as many ideas on to sticky notes as possible. We don’t discuss the ideas until after everyone has had a chance to write them all down and put them up on the board (when all the Post-its are on the board they look like a parking lot, thus the name). This is just one way of doing things, but the gentle time pressure and the momentum that builds when you aren’t giving yourself a chance to think about how silly or crazy an idea might be are extremely powerful tools in fostering fruitful brainstorming sessions.

There were of course some great (slightly embarrassing) games associated with each of these keys but I won’t get into detail about those here as you should probably hire Avish to come out and run a workshop for your organization if you’re interested. Overall though it was an extremely fun way to put yourself out there and think about how to harness your own creative powers. It put everyone at ease and enabled us to comfortably interact and collaborate right from the start. One other theme I noticed throughout the improv workshop was that the more willing one was to fail, the less likely failure became. Within reason, I think this is very true of entrepreneurs as well. I think it’s a great idea for corporations (small or big) to give improv a try. In addition to getting a few laughs at the CEO, the team might find it very effective.

The end of August is one of my favorite times of the year. Not because it signals the end of the summer, but because it signals the start of football season! I just finished watching my Jacksonville Jaguars dominate the Atlanta Falcons, and I’m looking forward to some exciting upcoming games. During halftime and commercials I was also checking out other news in the NFL realm. Major highlights include the fact that Brett Favre just officially signed with the Jets as their new quarterback and how terrible it might be for the Colts that Peyton Manning has been out during their training camp (because he is recovering from a knee injury). Whether I go on NFL.com or flip to ESPN on TV, I see one of two images- mobs of reporters fighting to speak to Favre or mobs of reporters trying to speak to Tony Dungy (Colt’s head coach) and other members of the team.

I love Peyton Manning, so much so in fact that I wrote about him in my college admissions essays two years ago, but sometimes the celebrity status that QBs achieve is over the top, and worse, harmful to the team’s dynamic. Furthermore, it’s not always the QBs that attract the attention, but rather the media (who needs content to engage viewers/readers) that often creates too much hype.

Well, the same thing happens with celebrity CEOs. There is absolutely no doubt that a great CEO, or QB, is extremely important to the success and development of any company, or football team, but importing someone just because of their “celebrity status” can often be detrimental. In the case of the CEOs, one of several problems seems to occur frequently:

1) Celebrity CEOs come in feeling like they must immediately change or raise the stock price- but if they don’t recognize the environment within which they are working, they end up harming the long-term returns of the very company they set out to strengthen in return for ephemeral short-term gains. They are so intent on making their own mark that they forget the importance of conserving or nurturing key aspects of the organization’s culture.

2) Celebrity CEO’s all too often try to impose a copycat culture by attempting to replicate the strategies of a current market leader, their last firm, or a contemporary favorite (today’s include Google, Apple, Toyota, etc). They forget that the mission, values, and practices that form the core of an organization’s culture should be unique to afford competitive advantage and value creation. This may be a terribly shallow analogy, but to me this is similar to when girls see a sexy black dress on a celebrity or model and assume it will look just as good on them. In either case, the result is usually not so “hot”.

3) Some celebrity CEOs get caught up in the “fame” and find themselves interacting with the press more than the organization. Conducting a few town-hall meetings and being interviewed for business magazines and newspapers unfortunately does not lead to success for the company. They state and restate the “importance of” the company’s strategies and values so often for the media that employees end up thinking the speech is just for the sake of investors and analysts and not actually aimed at the people that make up the core of the organization.

These are just a few examples of how the CEOs themselves can wreak havoc. Other times, when something goes wrong just because of changes in market trends or macroeconomic factors beyond the control or predictive powers of the company, people find it easier to blame celebrity CEOs instead of focusing on the real problems at hand. Also, people begin to doubt the capabilities of the firm without it’s “fearless leader” even though there are often others who could do just as good a job if given the opportunity.

I’m not proposing that it’s bad for a company to find its CEO in the public eye often, but rather that too much idolizing can be harmful. There are several that I idolize myself; but as CEO, one must always be cognizant of this potential pitfall. Basically, if you can’t handle the heat, get out of the kitchen.

 As you can probably tell, every week I basically wait around for Sunday’s Dilbert like it’s my job.

Anyways, as usual, this past Sunday’s comic highlights another very important aspect of management and that is performance feedback. Now I’ll admit that I’m not quite old enough and haven’t worked long enough to have people work for me, but I have been on the receiving end, and I have directed a summer camp for the past few years, have been a Co-Chair of the Hindu Students Council at Penn, and have generally held other leadership positions that required me to give feedback to my counselors, my fellow board members, etc. Performance feedback is critical to the growth and success of any organization, and yet it is often handled very poorly. I guess this makes sense though, because it is often very difficult both to give and receive feedback (especially when it is negative). In large organizations it seems that people are pawned off to each other and that each boss will sometimes pass the difficult feedback situations up the ladder as to avoid awkward confrontations with their employees. It will always be a touchy subject, but in my opinion there are a few important measures both parties can take to ensure that feedback is constructive and useful as opposed to hurtful or discouraging.

If you’re on the feedback giving end…

• Lay out clear objectives, expectations and deadlines right from the start. It may take a little extra effort at the beginning to be thorough but it makes it much easier to evaluate someone objectively and fairly at the end. Be willing to discuss these expectations and deadlines and make changes as appropriate, because sometimes the work flow may go in a direction that you didn’t expect.
• Set up regular times to chat. This helps the employee/counselor/etc. organize and schedule their work and helps both parties to catch mistakes or oversights along the way. A second set of eyes is always refreshing, and when you have to explain what you’ve been doing to someone else it forces you to clear things up for yourself first.
• If you are going to be critical, give specific examples. And, this might be a little silly, but it helps if you offer examples of when you’ve made the same mistake in the past. It makes you more human, and makes the criticism seem less harsh. Also, outline some specific steps one can take to make amends. And mentioning a general time line for improvement is useful too.
• Don’t try to sugarcoat your comments or make a bunch of disclaimers. This usually just makes someone feel worse.
• Write down what you want to say before you go into it! It’s a lot easier to think about what you want to say when you’re not face to face with someone. If you plan ahead, it prevents you from forgetting or neglecting to say something “in the heat of the moment”.
• Formally invite the other party to give you feedback. Just saying “if you have any questions or feel like you aren’t getting enough instruction just let me know” won’t cut it.
• Finally, be careful to avoid falling prey to the fact that we gravitate towards people like ourselves. Just because someone has similar interests, style, or sense of humor as you, or as Dilbert points out is particularly attractive, doesn’t mean their work is better (although it’s great if it is!). Be sure to separate these characteristics from your objective feedback session. This doesn’t mean that you can’t extent a special invitation to spend time together outside of the work environment or take on an elevated mentor role for the person as I’m sure this will be greatly appreciated. The relationships we develop at work or in any organization most certainly give it meaning. In fact, sometimes they even give us a greater sense of accountability, and that is always good news.

If you’re on the feedback receiving end…

• Prior to the feedback session from your employer/director/etc. do your own self evaluation- even if it’s not required. Often this helps you to predict what the other party will say even before you start. This means you are better prepared to respond and have already had a chance to think about how you might make changes in the future or figure out any questions you might have.
• Accept praise elegantly. Nothing annoys me more than people that reject compliments, and I end up not complimenting them anymore. Confidence in your abilities is appealing and puts the feedback giver at ease. This doesn’t mean you should be arrogant of course.
• Accept criticism as a learning opportunity and be aggressive in understanding exactly what the problem was. Sometimes we brush past these things and avoid details because we don’t want to think about it. That makes it difficult to fix in the future.
• Be as thorough and thoughtful in your feedback of your supervisor as you’d expect them to be in yours. This encourages open communication and reminds managers that their actions and behaviors really do matter! Don’t be afraid to give compliments because you feel like you are sucking up. As long as you are genuine, it will be appreciated. They are, after all, only human- and we all enjoy some encouraging praise every once in a while. You’d be surprised at how nervous feedback sessions make managers/directors too.

This is by no means an exhaustive list (although my earlier post on lists might lead you to believe it is). Several stem from my recent experience at Brilliont (I can assure you they do everything right!) and I hope it is somewhat insightful.

If you have feedback for me about this list, please feel free to post a comment. That’s about as formal an invitation as I can arrange for on here

We’ve always known that people with titles like Chief Executive Officer, Chief Financial Officer, and Chief Operating Officer are important. Recently we’ve also become accustomed to reading about the significance of the Chief Technology Officer, the Chief Marketing Officer, and perhaps even the Chief Innovation Officer.

As I’ve been exploring innovative companies for a project at Brilliont, however, I’ve come across Chief Talent Officers, Chief Cultural Officers, Chief Diversity Officers, Chief Privacy Offiers, Chief Sustainability Officers, and Chief Reputation Officers. At some companies they even have Chief Blogging Officers, Chief Apology Officers, and Chief Hacking Officers. The winner so far: Chief Beer Officer. Wait- rewind- did I just type Chief Beer Officer?! Clearly a very essential position at Sheraton’s Four Points Hotel…

Several outlandish contemporary titles have cropped up in both large and small companies alike. Whatever happened to corporate hierarchies where top management encompassed only those at the top? This appears to be “title inflation”- an overabundance of C-Suite jobs that is cheapening the prestige and achievement that top titles once signaled.

Some say this may simply be a reflection of corporate restructuring and the fact that several organizations are “flattening out”. In a flat organization there is less hierarchy and therefore less opportunity to be distinguished and thus this leads to “title inflation”. Even if this is the case it’s not very good news. At least in a hierarchy there is some higher point to reach, a corporate ladder to climb so to speak. If employees want to get promoted but have no where to get promoted to, some companies seem to believe that they can just start inventing titles for the people they want to keep. Basically by offering a little more money but a lot more “ego capital” they figure they can alleviate employees’ itch to get recognized and even instill more loyalty.

These titles and others are obviously often tied to recent events or trends. Indeed it seems that the reason many companies give out chief titles is to signal the importance of that particular issue to the corporation. And the way to signal that is to create a C-level job to implement it. I think this may also suggest that there is something “strategic” about the role, further elevating it. The problem of course is that if several companies are doing it, then everyone and everything becomes “strategic” and at some point companies will have to distinguish themselves and their employees in a different way. In big companies it seems that too many title promotions might lead to cynicism about what these new titles really mean. Luckily they’re capped at 26 as there only so many letters in the alphabet.

One exception is startups and smaller companies. Here it may make more sense to have several chiefs because each employee often actually has real strategic responsibilities and because there are far fewer employees. Also, if used correctly, chief titles do motivate some people to work harder. Even so, there is probably no reason for very outrageous positions.

I was recently “dubbed” as the “Chief Google Officer” at Brilliont because I supposedly am good at finding information. It’s a funny enough joke, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this position really does appear at large companies soon!