THE LOVE GURU! YEAH, BABY, YEAH...

Ahuja! That was his name! He was my first boss and the teacher of my most important leadership lessons. He taught me exactly what never to do as a boss; because everything he did was, well, horribly wrong! I called him the Love Guru much before Mike Myers even made his first movie, because Ahuja showed me how much a ‘leader’ could be hated! He evoked that emotion – and much more – in almost everybody in office. I personally considered him the worst leader history had ever seen. And I realised all that one had to do to be a fantastic leader was to never do the things he did! Mr. Love Guru’s biggest claim to fame was that he never used to mix ‘work’ with ‘fun’! And he used to preach how the world’s top corporations reached ‘there’ because of this rule only. Ugghh!

If only Ahuja had even smelt of an imp of a company called Google! The 2008 Fortune 100 Best Companies To Work For list ranks Google at the brilliant position of #1 amongst all the companies in the world. In their in-depth analysis, Fortune writes, “Why is Google so great?... [Apart from other reasons] Google’s employees like to have a lot of fun during the work day – to relieve stress, build camaraderie and fuel creative thinking.” In fact, the “opportunities to learn, grow, travel and have wildly zany fun during the workday” are what sets the Google culture thoroughly apart. Google’s official “Top 10 Reasons to Work at Google” document clarifies amusingly, and in reality, “Work and play are not mutually exclusive.” Interestingly, Fortune writes that Quicken Loans, the 2nd Best Company to Work For, is also up there because of “its fun, family friendly workplace.” And that’s the common thread through the list. Digest this – Fortune’s year 2008 Best Paying Companies list gives the same Google the unbelievable last rank; clearly proving that being the best company to work for has nothing to do with pay!

Katherine Karl (Marshall University) and Joy Peluchette (University of Southern Indiana) perhaps wrote the rule book on this issue, How does workplace fun impact employee perceptions.... Their finding was succinctly put; and they wrote, “Our results showed that employees who experienced fun in the workplace had greater satisfaction with their job!” Renowned international behavioural scientist Robert Nelson comments, “There’s a big difference between getting people to come to work and getting them to do their best work. Making work fun brings out the best in people.” The notoriously likable Herb Kelleher, CEO, Southwest Airlines, quotes about the employees he hires, “What we are looking for, first and foremost, is a sense of humour!” The last century’s most admired CEO, Jack Welch, writes in this issue of 4Ps B&M how you, as a CEO, have to be “dead serious” about managing employee emotions and being passionate about it at every moment! Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple (Yes! With Steve Jobs!!) gave the following title to his 2006 autobiography – How I invented the PC, co-founded Apple and had fun doing it. Of course, work is worship. But fun mixed judiciously with work is what the world’s excellent CEOs recommend if you want the very best out of your people.

And that, unfortunately, is what my first Hitlerian boss never understood... In fact, I still get nightmares of Ahuja. He’s my Vietnam post-war trauma experience. My wife now calls my symptoms the Ahuja Syndrome. I call it the Love Guru’s kiss. Yeah, baby, yeah...

THE LEAGUE OF INCOGNITO MAFIOSI!

This happened to me a few years back. It was my eight-year-old nephew’s annual school sports meet [I call him Kit; he calls me Mama]. And the apt ‘grand’ final afternoon event was a classic seven member 350 metre relay race. There were five teams pitted against each other – three mean looking teams from the sixth grade, one more hooliganish clearly over-aged team from the fifth grade, and the last one, my bespectacled nephew’s motley ‘we-were-better-off-in-the-shade’ three-foot tall team from the fourth grade. I realised right away that their chance of winning was worse than what the term ‘impossible’ could have defined; but still, I was all for cheering them like crazy! Come on, they seemed truly excited, and winning wasn’t everything, was it!? Yeah, right, till the time dear Kit, balancing his spectacles on his nose, ambled over confidently to me and shoved a relay-race baton into my hand, with the quasi-order, “Come fast Mama, the seventh member has to be a guardian, and he has to run first!”

The ten seconds of silence that followed, with me looking perplexed, was a lifetime. Me?!! A relay-race runner?!?! The sun was burning down hotter than in a western movie; I could smell the sweat running down the back of my head into my spine. Worse, the cannibal competitors seemed all set to massacre the ‘fourth’ graders. No way could I be humiliated like this in public. Neither was I fit, nor was I on the right side of 30! And my team’s incompetence was more evident than the burning dust on the track. I shoved the baton rudely back into Kit’s hands, ordered him to find somebody else, and shouted, “Anyway, what difference can I make in a team born to come last?” I felt the words hit him like a ton of bricks. His expression changed from eager enthusiasm to sudden disappointment... For a moment, I regretted my words... But then, seriously, can an individual really make a difference? Especially when the team, for the lack of a better word, sucks?

O. E. Graves was born way back in 1811, on a farm near Vermont, to a family in perennial financial trouble. Afflicted with poor health throughout his life, he moved to New York and worked as a mechanic in a railway workshop, where he understood the concept of railway safety brakes. Graves kept wondering why couldn’t such brakes be used in elevators [which had already been invented]. His mechanic teammates kept dissuading him for his inane idea, trying to convince him that elevator lines were practically unbreakable. Despite all negative opinion, Graves conviction grew in his idea and in the belief that he individually could make the change. After years of struggle, and more of financial pecuniary, he invented the first elevator safety brake. In 1853, Otis Elisha Graves founded the world’s first ‘safety’ elevator company, today the world’s largest elevator company.

This man struggled to handle his doomed-from-the-start shoe business for many years. His invention was neither a product or a service. He invented a ‘process’ called General Electric! Neither is he Jack Welch, nor is he Thomas Edison [the founder, on paper at least]. His name is Charles Coffin, the man who convinced Edison that rather than simply having a ‘GE’, the company should depend less on individuals and more on self-replicating processes. Coffin understood that world-class companies can succeed over a long term only if the concept of innovation is not restricted to singular people and only when top performing people find their replacement, and in hordes. Edison made him the first President of General Electric. Renowned management expert Jim Collins quotes, “While Edison was essentially a genius with a thousand helpers, Coffin created a machine that created a succession of giants.” Today, the long dead and gone Coffin is rated by Fortune as Number 1 in the list of Ten Greatest CEOs of All Times!

This man used to see Star Trek like nobody’s business. He was so enamoured by Captain Kirk’s “Scotty, beam me up!” calls that he decided to find out how to invent such a phone. Despite everybody dissuading him [because of the unbelievably high costs involved], this general manager in a tiny electrical company kept working on the concept. On April 3, 1973, from a Manhattan street corner, using an apparatus that had no wires attached, he rang up Joel Engel, Head, Bell Labs research, to tell him, “Joel, I’ve beaten you in the race to make the first mobile phone.” Martin Cooper, the inventor of the mobile phone, individually re-invented not only Motorola’s history, where he worked, but of global telecom.

It is the night of September 25, 2000. This promising 23 year old Boston basketball player, who is a draft member of the ‘NBA bench’, is stabbed ruthlessly by hooligans. Medical reports show 11 lethal injuries to the back, face and neck, enough to kill any man. Doctors work relentlessly through the night to save him. Just when they’ve given up, a do-or-die lung surgery unbelievably gets him breathing again. The man lives, but just... Devastated physically, the chances of his coming back are, like I mentioned before, worse than impossible. Eight years pass. It’s June 17, 2008. The judgement night of NBA Finals history. Banknorth Garden in Boston is more than jam packed. The totally unfancied Boston Celtics, who have never won the NBA Finals in the last 22 years, are playing against the second highest winners in history, Los Angeles Lakers [featuring legends like Kobe Bryant, coaches like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar]. The game finally ends. Lowly Boston Celtics have beaten LA Lakers by a margin of 131-92, the largest margin ever in a championship game. The captain of Boston Celtics is an unknown Paul Anthony Pierce. This is his first NBA Finals appearance in life. Though he scores only 10 points, he is surprisingly named the Most Valuable Player (MVP) of the NBA Finals, because of the openings he creates... Oh yes, they also comment that he’s the same guy who was stabbed many times eight years back...

I call all these singular people The League of Incognito Mafiosi. We never knew their names, yet they kept working, steadfast in their beliefs, never giving up in the power of their individual self... Kit was still standing there, not letting his three foot persona stoop in front of me, his face grim, yet not stoic. He hadn’t moved an inch. I knew Kit had been practising with his friends for a long time for this race. But I had no idea that the reason he had invited me so fervently to attend the finals was to make me participate as the lead runner! And he had even promised his team members I would be there. The sun seemed to be mercilessly burning my face. The heat was unbearable. The silence, more than that. Kit kept standing there, not moving, and I wasn’t sure but I thought I saw his eyes turning moist, when he looked at me totally teary eyed, and commented in halting words, “Mama, you can make a difference. We don’t have anybody else... and I believe in you.” [The baton felt too heavy when I ran the lap; oh yes, we lost the race; ...and we won too; Kit made sure we didn’t come last; he was our MVP! And this time, I’m practising with them for the next year... An individual does make a heaven of a difference... Kit was that individual... Yes, ‘I’ believe!

Hypenotized by Apple

Watching the cloud of hype around last week's release of the new iPhone, I was struck by the way Apple's psychological influence over the tech industry continues to grow. I'm having trouble thinking of any recent technology product, let alone a smartphone, that got such heavy coverage for both its announcement and its initial shipment.

Apple's PR miasma is also starting to twist the thinking of people in the tech industry who ought to know better. Apple's gradually becoming the yardstick against which other tech companies are measured -- and since Apple is such a unique company, it's almost impossible for anyone else to measure up.

Case in point: A recent commentary by a CNET reporter, writing about RIM (link):

"There is no RIM hype machine and when a new BlackBerry is released, hardly anyone in the major media outlets care. And if they don't care, neither will the average consumer who doesn't know too much about the tech industry and won't read columns like this; they rely on the NBCs of the world to get by. So if RIM wants to more effectively compete against Apple, it needs to do everything it can to follow the Steve Jobs formula: secrecy, compelling products, and a great PR team. If it does, look for RIM to not lose as much ground as you may think. But if it doesn't, Apple will run amok."

Problem number one with this thinking is that Apple and RIM don't sell to the same markets. RIM's core is middle-aged business professionals; Apple's is hip twentysomethings. I'm not saying there is no overlap, but I've spoken to plenty of RIM users who would be embarrassed to carry a music-playing, video-watching hunk of eye candy like the iPhone into a business meeting. It's like announcing to a client, "I spend my work time on YouTube."

The second problem is that Apple's skill at PR has somehow turned into an excuse for reporters not to do their jobs. The implied message in the CNET article is, "if you don't put on a spectacle, the press will ignore your products." Excuse me, but isn't the press's job to dig out the real value and separate it from the hype? Don't we pay you (or sit through your ads) to look past the PR and fancy speeches and advise us on what really matters? If we just wanted someone to echo the latest hype, we could get all our news from blogs.

But the third problem is the one that worries me the most. Apple is almost uniquely good at marketing. Its communication power is a combination of longtime company history, Steve Jobs' personality, and a culture that values perfection in marcom. Any tech company that makes its goal to match Apple's flash is going to look bad by comparison.

If anyone from RIM is reading this, please listen to me closely. I beg of you, don't be chumps. You're Canadian, for God's sake. You don't do sexy. You do humble and inoffensive.

Steve's from California. He's a pop culture icon from the '70s; the Madonna of technology. If you try to imitate him, you're going to look like mom and dad pogo-dancing when Rock Lobster comes on at a wedding reception.

Not pretty. Not pretty at all.

Which brings us to Microsoft's latest marketing plan.

Word on the street is that Microsoft is planning a huge advertising campaign this fall to pimp its image. Microsoft executives say they have finally tired of taking all that abuse from the Mac vs. PC ads, and they're going to fire back with their own cool advertising this fall.

Remember what I said at the start of this post about Apple twisting the minds of tech company managers? They have done an incredible number on Microsoft, the sort of thing I used to dream about when I worked at Apple.


Welcome, Microsoft. Seriously.

When I was at Apple, one the competitive team's central goals was to goad Microsoft and Intel into targeting us in public. We used all sorts of tactics to irritate them. We printed bumper stickers that read "Honk if your Pentium has bugs." We hounded them in online discussions. We did press and analyst tours demonstrating all sorts of annoying flaws we'd found in Windows.

The whole idea was to get them so pissed off that they would lash out at us in public. Because we knew that when a market leader attacks a challenger, it just makes the challenger more credible.

So what is Microsoft doing? It's attacking the challenger. Microsoft VP Brad Brooks specifically called out Apple in a recent speech (link):

"There are a lot of myths out there in the marketplace today, a lot of myths around Windows Vista...we know the story is very different than what our competitors would like our customers to think.... Windows Vista is the safest OS in terms of security vulnerabilities in its first year of operation, safer than any other commercial or Open Source OS in its launch. Now, I don't hear Apple making claims about security around a product that is that great.... The other big thing that's different this time around is that we've got a pretty noisy competitor out there. You know it, I know it. It's had an impact, been a source of frustration for you, but today, that line, we're going to start to challenge. We're going to get our story back out into the marketplace.... We've got a highly vocal minority out there in Apple. They kind of look at this and say, hey, you know what, you're kind of boring with the mundane message; it's not cool. They tell you it's the "i-way" or the highway. Well, you know what--we think that's kind of a sad message."

Macintosh share is still just a small fraction of Windows' share, but Microsoft is treating Apple like not just a challenger, but as the opinion leader. Microsoft is responding to Apple's marketing, and what's worse, it's bragging about it in public. What an incredible turnaround from Steve Jobs' first days back at Apple, less than ten years ago, when Bill Gates appeared on the big screen and Jobs publicly kowtowed to him.

It's easy to say what Microsoft shouldn't do, but a lot harder to say what they should do. They do have an image problem, and they do need to do something about it. Here's my take: Apple has always been the cool one, and always will be. Microsoft has traditionally been the safe one. Not as flashy as Apple, but dependable and prudent; the choice that'll never get you fired. That's why 80% of the public has chosen Windows over the years. Rather than trying to act cool, which is destined to end in embarrassment, I think Microsoft should apologize for the problems with Vista, give a timeline for fixing them (I think many of them actually are fixed by this point), and then move heaven and earth to make sure people see them deliver on that promise.

The ironic thing is that Brooks actually did some of that in his speech:

"We had an ambitious plan. We made some significant investments around security in this product. And you know what, those investments, they broke some things. They broke a lot of things. We know that. And we know it caused you a lot of pain in front of your customers, in front of our customers. And it got a lot of customers thinking, and even yourselves and our partners thinking, "Hey, is Windows Vista a generation that I want to make an investment in?" "

That's not a bad start, but in today's Apple-soaked industry atmosphere, the snide comments on Apple dominated the coverage. The best example was the Wall Street Journal's business and technology blog, which headlined its article, "Microsoft Ready to Hit Back at Mac Guy" (link).

So now every Microsoft ad in the new campaign is going to be judged on whether or not it's as clever and cool as an Apple ad. I'd like to ask for a show of hands -- who thinks Microsoft can out-cool Apple?

Anyone?

And as for RIM, well, I'm sure you could do a better job of PR than you do today. But don't try to be sexy. A message more like, "real men use a thumb keyboard" is probably the ticket for you.

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Thanks to mjelly.com for featuring Mobile Opportunity in the latest Carnival of the Mobilists.

WHY WOMEN LIE, CHEAT AND CAN NEVER BE TRUSTED!

Jesus Christ! If I had made this statement in the US, I might have been flogged in public! But think about it, is there any woman in this world who doesn’t lie all the time, who doesn’t cheat people every moment, and who can ever be trusted even for a nano-second? Well, if you’ve reached this part of my editorial, you’ve fallen into the trap I laid for you like sweet unsuspecting daffy duck! The fact is, neither do I believe in my own statement above, nor do I care a hoot about the answer. But I care a billion hoots about ensuring people read my editorials. And if that factor is the critical measure of my performance, I, dear Angelina, have succeeded like nobody’s business. Controversy begets performance! Reputation has no correlation with success.

Shocked? Gulp down the air stuck in your pipe, for indisputable research from across the globe proves this a thousand times over. Check it out! The most path breaking research globally was the one by noted Professors Chung, Eneroth and Schneeweis of the reputed University of Massachusetts. In their paper titled Corporate Reputation and Investment Performance, the stalwarts prove, “There exists little relationship between high corporate reputation rankings and a firm’s equity performance. It is primarily a firm’s equity market performance...that affects published reputation ranking, and ranking has no impact on the firm’s future returns.” To that effect, even Professor Hungtao Tan of Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, in 2007, thumpingly concluded in his report Corporate Reputation & Earnings Quality, “I find no evidence to support that companies with good reputation share superior earnings relative to the corresponding industry levels.”

To the utter consternation of doubting Thomases, global authorities S. Brammer (University of Bath), C. Brooks (Cass Business School) and S. Pavelin (University of Reading), in their classic international December 2005 report, Corporate Reputation and Stock Returns, electrifyingly state, “There is no such thing as bad publicity. We find that those firm’s whose [reputation] scores have fallen substantially still exhibit positive abnormal [stock] returns in both the short and long run!” Famed Doctors Rajiv Sarin and Brit Grosskopf from the Department of Economics, Texas A&M University, in their world class August 2006 thesis, Is Reputation Good or Bad? An Experiment, ruthlessly devastate past notions and establish, “Reputation is not bad, but neither is it as good as previously thought... as long run players are able to do equally well without having reputations.”

And it’s not just about controversies or reputations per se, but even about the pathetically manipulated agendas that ranking agencies globally have. In their universally published covenant (The Reputation Quotient), Dr. Charles J. Fombrun, professor of management at Stern School of Business, and Dr. Christopher B. Foss, Associate Director of the Reputation Institute, state, “Measures of reputation proliferate, encouraging chaos and confusion... Some are arbitrarily performed by private panels... Some are carried out with private information and are unverifiable.” And now, report after report [NYSE CEO Report 2008, SMU Cox CEO Sentiment Survey 2007, PwC Global CEO Survey] proves that CEOs don’t give priority anymore to reputation or to published rankings, but only to performance. Moving ahead, Authorities G. Chen and Dean Tjosvold of Tsinghua University, Beijing, in June 2006, analysed that “participation and people values, coupled with constructive controversy, provide a foundation for effective CEO leadership!”

And why not! The most successful of global CEOs – Steve Jobs, Jack Welch, Steven Ballmer, Larry Ellison, Lee Scott – have been those who have been most controversial. The most successful of global companies – WalMart, Chevron, GE, BoA, Citigroup – have been the most controversial. If you thought the amazingly successful movie, Erin Brockovich, ran full house because Julia Roberts ‘controversially’ revealed more than her usual self, you perhaps forget, 30 sickening million gallons of oil spilt in Brooklyn, New York, that led to a historic never-before seen $58 billion class action suit, was targeted at a company that is now the world’s most profitable company ever, Exxon-Mobil (with 2007 sales of $373 billion and profits of $41 billion)! Quick, answer my questions. Most controversial book? You said Da Vinci Code, did you? Or The Satanic Verses? Both historic best sellers. Most controversial brand? Coke? It’s the most valued brand ever! And of course, most controversial group of people? Ah, women, obviously! Aren’t they the very best!!! :-) And don’t we love them like crazy :-)