Win an Unfair Game

How can a small company without enough resource to win over a big giant? In MLB, Oakland Athletics had proofed it under big competition from all-stars teams. And when I look back to where I had worked for in both big and small companies, it's quite interesting to make a comparison on how to survive in an "unfair" game.

In 2002, Oakland Athletics won 103 games, same as Yankee did, but A's spent only 1/3 of Yankee's player payroll. Led by team manager Mr. Billy Beane, A's kept having great winning record in 2002-2006 with very low spending than other MLB teams. Described in "Moneyball" by Michael Lewis's , while most MLB teams still traditionally trusted their sense, and were superstitious on high-pay superstars, Billy trusted "statistic numbers" and recruit low-wages players to fill in the positions he needed, and use the statistics to plan for pitcher-hitter match games. He is also a great negotiator to recruit great players under low tide, who was released by other team, with much less spending. (Even Today in this season, TB Rays with lots of young low-pay players takes lead in his league and will get the play-off ticket for sure, while all-stars Yankee is still struggling.) You might need to fight with giant with less resources, however you still have high chance to win this unfair game if you play the game differently.

Find out what is neglected

MLB team managers usually neglected those statistics by STATS because they thought luck affects a lot in the game, so statistics were useless. Billy took the advantage of the neglect and lead the low budget team to continuous success. Another well-known case of Southwest Airline, they successfully lowered their budget by using uniform aircraft and targeted only 2nd cities to make them become one of most profitable airline for 35 consecutive years.

Back in 1999 before .com burst, Internet Data Center(IDC) is booming for every ISP's, but lack of knowledge to build world class IDC in Taiwan because no any vendor can provide whole solution. I was then in a 4 staffs Cabletron Taiwan office with very limited marketing budget, and Cisco was just like Yankee to me that we had no visibility at all, but our UK team won a British Telecom project and they had some know-how. Learning from customer that Cisco hadn't yet a solution, we boldly held a big IDC solution exhibition event to attract 1200 attendees, and most importantly, sponsorship from 36 different vendors. We not only hosted the opening, key speech sessions, and publicity to get great awareness, but also we actually spent not a dime in the end due to those sponsorship.
At the same time, Cabletron released new L3 switch in the market and Cisco had trouble on his new L3 switch 8600, so we chose a small platform to target mid-size company market and then Taiwan became best selling in AsiaPac, which market was not a focus of Cisco at that time. After I joined Cisco and learnt that Cisco actually has lots of resources, alliance partners and great technology, but not every Country had support for new emerging technology and Taiwan then wasn't the 1st priority to support on IDC market.
From 2003, Cisco started focusing on Mid-size and SMB market, which was quite new and very price-sensitive market that it was really tough to penetrate into this blooding market; it seems an unfair game to me. However by leveraging existing channel system, business intelligence and well-planned sales coverage, Cisco had great growth rate during these years.

Wait for timing or leader's mistake

This year's new PGA champion and the 1st European winner since 1930, Mr. Padraig Harrington mentioned in the press conference after the game that, when he was still in 3rd place and there are only 3 holes left, he kept his pace to play steadily and waited for leader's mistake. The pressure of leader is usually higher than the followers. He played as he planned, and fortunately the leaders made several mistakes, so Padraig won.
There were once, while I was in Cabletron, Cisco channel team had a new policy that they would leave accounts open to every channel and offer same discount. Then I knew our opponent might make some mistake and it was our chance, so aggressively engaged with their 2nd tier resellers and had enjoyed several great quarters afterwards. Few years after, when I joined Cisco, the rule is changed to "Preferred Partner" policy to give favor to whomever invested, which luckily is what I believe. To change every one's mindset, it took me quite some time to write down "the rule of engagement" in details and communicated to our internal Sales and Channels. It would be easier for a small company to adopt new policy and ask everyone to execute accordingly. Internal communication and collaboration become very important in bigger organization to make things happened efficiently and effectively.

Fight a smaller field

As a leader, you're competing to yourself, but not competitors. Even resource are relatively big, you still need to focus on most important battle to have best return. So it would be hard for sales to focus on every product lines, and such it could become a weak point. Small company can find their smaller field to fight against giant, either certain product line or market, for example, the 2nd city market as Southwest chose to fight and focus on.
It was also same kind of unfair game for Cisco to get into telephony market, where the existing competitors had invested for 20+ years with big installed bases, whose market is usually quite close and conservative. We kept pushing with IP Telephony benefits( the only we have) and focused on Mid-size company market, who may appreciate Cisco branding and can make quicker decision than large enterprise, so we doubled our revenue in an year to a certain significant market share.
There are always many unfair games you have to face. Even for big company, they have to deal with more flexible, more dynamic, lower price competitors. Find out what has been missing and you'll find your winning points, then play the game differently. Read more!

Learn to be a Great Coach Manager

Manager has short goal to attain and coach job seems to be a slow, long-term process, even we know coach skills can help manager to grow his team and do better team collaboration. How can manager play a good coach and achieve his short goal efficiently?

Coaching process can be Solution-focused and effective as well to match the fast pace managers are dealing with everyday. Before we start the journey, 2 mindsets have to be changed for managers:
1. Coachee himself is the best expert to solve his problem.
Everyone has his own "tips" which is most effective for himself.
2. Less talking.
Both are difficult and that's why we need to learn and practice.

WAIT...Not the way your way

You're a well-experienced manager, had seen same kind of situation thousand times, and you know right away what action should be taken. Isn't this the value of manager to resolve problem that your staff cannot do?
The time is changed; the economy, environment and lots of things are also changed when time moves on. Your glory past and successful experience might not work out perfectly as before. But we just cannot help to instruct and command, which seems the most efficient way. If you can transform your experience into "smart questions" to stimulate your staffs, then you will save lots of great ideas you are not even aware of.
This part is really hard for Managers. One tip I learnt from my career coach Miss Paulina Chu that she kept reminding herself while doing coach with "WAIT" - "Why Am I Talking?". So coachee can be stimulated to talk and think through the whole issue the same time; then he will find his own way out that you don't bother to persuade. You need to learn how to coach and one book you may refer to is "Brief Coaching for Lasting Solutions" by Insoo Kim Berg , in which the author uses many office case studies to demonstrate how to coach effectively.

Even a Super Sales need to be Coached
We all know what to do. A good coach keeps reminding you to do what needs to be done.

Sales are all well trained on how to win by doing account plan or project plan, but very few can always follow the bible along the selling cycle. It happens all the time, especially while the sales is so engaged in the project, and even forget his "winning strategy". Sales Manager plays a key role here to coach his sales with some simple basic questions, for example:

"What makes you believe the other person(i.e. your contact window's boss, the Owner, the Board...etc) is not the decision maker?"

I'd dealt with many channel conflict issues that different channel sales actually thought their contact window is the key person, but most of time, one channel covers the project manager, the other channel covers the GM, while a new comer has relationship with the board director who jumps out the last minute to turn all final decision.

"How do they proceed their purchasing procedure?"

Under many circumstances, after Sales offered his bottom line quotation to the decision maker, then he found out their Procurement dept needs to cut 5% more as normal practice; or sales are stunned that customer needs to post for open bid.

"What will be your competitor's winning strategy? what makes you think you can win?"

Many put together their winning strategy based on their own wishful thinking, and it became vulnerable while simulating competitor's winning strategy. In many occasions, we lost project due to "unexpected" reasons, those reasons might be minimized or eliminated if we thought of being in the position of competitors.

Above example questions are all sales 101. Good coach knows what question to ask in right occasion to help super sales to avoid his blind spots.

Coach Skills
To help you do your manager job easier

"Why did you make this mistake?" - You want to know his thinking logic behind to prevent from happening again next time.

"You didn't achieve your goal, why is that? - You want to know the problem to help.

"You mentioned you'd done your best but the economy is just bad...How come others can achieve their goal instead of you?" - You want him to know there must be something missing in his "best-effort", and you want to help.

I'd also seen a fighting between field Country Manager and HeadQter VP in office with loud emotional words followed by door slam. The Country Manager just felt this VP kept picking him up during the review meeting. When gone into emotionality, nothing will be accomplished or improved.

When you are so eager to help, you might make your staffs become defensive. Can we all do them a little bit better?

"Why does it matter?"

In the book of "Leading with questions" by Michael Marquardt, he encouraged managers to keep asking why, and usually the solution are in those questions, but he also mentioned you must be very careful while asking "why" because it usually makes people uncomfortable.

When dealing with business problems, we should dig out the root causes, but while it involved with personal, "why" question usually close the communication door. If we can simply change the question "Why do you lose the deal?" (Your staffs might hear the question between the lines - "are you nuts?"), to "How come you lose the deal? Please help me to understand." ("I believe you're good; there might be something wrong; Let's work it out together..")

What does matter is "How to make things better?". Your discussion should focus on solution. Your staff might did something dumb. Do not dig into this psychology why, 'cause it won't help your conversation. We don't play as a psychic or shrink.

"What did you do well before? and is it helpful to keep doing it?" to empower what coachee is familiar with and good at.

"Since current method didn't work out, alternatively, what can we do differently?"

Most important, "State your expectation(objective) clearly and make it small." so you can see the progress one at a time, but not something like "over-achieve your goal.", which you don't have actions to trace and improve at all.

Dealing with Conflict

This could be the last situation Managers would like to touch. 2 staffs keep complaining each other to your face, and both are right-hand men to you that you wish them can cooperate well together. However, they all want to win your support and you're under big pressure to take side.

I had a situation back 8 years ago in a small office. 2 of best staffs kept knocking my door, one after the other in a week, complaining each other. They were all devoted to this company by doing their job - one covered operation with full of process and regulation, and the other handled marketing, who required a bit flexibility to deal with dynamic marketing issues. Initially I only tried to comfort them by helping them see the other's good side, and of course it didn't work at all, and then realized I needed to pay more attention with more coach skills.

To deal with the situation, below conversation might help a bit:

"George, Both of you are my best team members. I need you two to cowork together, which is very important to our team. Would you like to try?" (State your expectation clearly and stay away from finding the causes or what happened, that will only make things worse.)

"If you two did put effort and co-work well, what do you think I might see the difference?" (Use "what if dreams come true" skill to sketch the beautiful future after the effort.)
"We will report to you our current working status and bother you less."

"Great! Then, what you might have done to make Mary feel you're willing to cowork with her?" (Use "Simon says" to simulate how the other party sees her change.)

"Well... I might go to her office personally to ask for her opinion on the topic before the group meeting..." (Coachee is always the "expert" to his problem.)

"Sounds good. What would you see her reaction while she saw you come to her office with smile?"
"I think she will listen calmly and smile back." ("Dreams come true" skill)

"Does that make you feel good?" "Yeah...I think."

"From 1-10 to describe your relationship, what will you score current situation and what will be after you'd done that?" (Scaling skill to make things measurable and see the progress step by step.)

"Current situation is about 2, and after that may increase to 5.

"Perfect! so what do you plan to do before our next conversation?".....(Actions before closing)

In my situation, things didn't work out as smooth. Their relationship is fragile that I had to pay more attention on their moves to make positive impression to the other. Trust and respect have to be built with their every small step.

One more tip that you may consider to assign them another easier job they have to work together to get it done in short time.

PS. Some told me "coaching" thing is not suitable to oriental world. Harsh and disciplinary management style is most effective. Just told them what to do accurately and don't waste time on this "psychology" thing.
I don't see conflict here and I'd like to elaborate more on management style in my next post. Read more!

Coaching Organization

Even Tiger Woods needs a swing coach after a series of world championship. He, of course, plays a lot better than his coach, but he needs a coach to remind him what he neglected from time to time. Manager in an organization needs not be a super sales or expert, but he needs to know how to coach to make his team better. Everyone, just like Tiger, needs a coach to reach greater success.

Coach vs Teach
I carefully choose the word "coach" instead of "teacher", because "Teachers tell, and students just listen and learn.", while "Coach proactively listen, and coachees tell, inspired and learn.". Coach proactively listens by asking open questions to help coachee self-conscious the solution. In my interpretation, teach offers solution while coachees get their solution by their own with coach's help. Students don't like the assignment from teach, but coachee will do what he thinks he should do. For sure, the latter is more powerful and effective.


Coach Culture
to become Better Learning Organization

Most Executives agree their staff is their greatest asset, and wish each one of them can be as good as his manager or even better. "Training" is one general solution to it, but it's always hard to measure the ROI. Let's get back to the basic, you do have one precious asset - the managers, who are the best men to train up your staffs. If you can build up the coach culture in your company, it then becomes most effective learning organization, and cost less.

Some might argue, why not just tell the staffs how to do? Isn't this what we pay for managers?

I myself loved to help my staffs by sharing my experience, and liked to do things "efficiently" even during "coaching" session. I used to jump to the solution after few minutes conversation and help proactively to write down the to-do action list for our next "conversation"...well..."Review" could be the better word here. So staffs are also used to hear and act without too much thinking.

Everyone follows the old steps, then who can come a new trick?

Knowing that I might kill some great ideas, I changed and always asked their proposal or solution first. It did improve a bit, but in many occasions, they just didn't have any clue, then I told them how. Do I make myself a perfect coach now? Not exactly, I realized later that I should guide them to think through what they might be missed to come out a solution "by their own". Process is even more important than your solution.

Coach skill can also improve team communication and collaboration. You will see the positive attitude in your organization. We might need to change our old fashion way:

"You shouldn't do this...You should do that... I need to see your improvement next time." (You might already hurt your staffs' self-esteem, though they will obey reluctantly.)

How about a new "coach" way,

"If you did this again. what would you do differently...What would be different for the result?...How will you do to be better next time?".

Then the communication will be more positive, joyful and more important, acceptable by coachee.

However, from my observation, most Managers didn't do coach at all. One reason is because of time comsuming, the other reason is not knowing how. To build the culture, Executive needs to emphasize the proposition that spending time on coach is evenly important as pushing number to achieve goal. Managers also need to know how to coach, which I'll spend more time in my next post.

Coach Outsourcing

In some occasion, you might need to outsource coach service because there will be "trust" issue due to "interest conflict". Your staff definitely doesn't want to have "record" in company profile. In my 1st job I was broken up with my girl friend after 8 years relationship. You can image how tough it would be for a loving young man. I remember clearly the 1st 3 days life after the separation. I was like a walking corpse sitting in my sad cubic everyday starring at my PC screen, but everything was just blurred and my head was full of paste. I am now still wondering why my boss didn't find out my abnormality and left me unproductive for 3 whole days. Naturally I did not look for my boss's help neither. What if I had a life coach to talk to, so I can let my hard feeling out and maybe took some days off to put myself together again. That would help me to recover sooner and definitely would help the company to have his employee kept in better condition.

Those happen all the time. Your employees might be severely affected by their personal life or relationship with colleague or his boss, or some obstacle they couldn't break through on their job. Either that affects his productivity or he choose to leave the company that both the Company and himself might regret. IBM has a EAP program ( "Employee Assistance Program") that they outsource to coach consultant group to help their employee to get through those tough time, and as a result, they effectively lower the turnover rate.

Summary

"Coach"(bus) brings a bunch of people from one point to another point and usually it's long distance. So Coach usually has a very clear destination or objective and requires continuous coach practice to get to that point. This is exactly what a manager should do to bring your team to the next level, and the executive should do to build the culture. Again, it requires practice and practice, and of course, a coach to help you. Why don't you start with your peer to be coach of each other and enjoy the journey. Read more!

Measurement Beyond Numbers - Organization Value

Most are convinced, measure by numbers is the most effective way to drive individual toward organizational goal, and I do too. But very few have emphasized on individual "organization value" besides numbers, which "intangible asset" somehow could be the most valuable part for the whole organization. So many successful stories from Web 2.0 and World Cafe prove the power of "group intelligence", and have we ever think of utilizing the power within our organization?

Every year when it comes to annual employee performance ranking, I starts to search my memory to recall what my team members had done and performed, and in the end, most likely I'll use their number achievement to be the key reference, because it's the easiest way, or a lazy way to me, to review with team members. From my observation, number-driven-only culture impacts organization's behaviour severely that every one cares nothing but his own numbers, which is no good at all to build a learning organization environment. Even a super sales had gone through high time and low time that number achievement is affected heavily by many things you might not be able to control, such as the goal set by your boss; sudden economic changes; your collaboration team's help, or your customer's budget plan...etc. However, besides hard numbers, what value to the organization also include the initiated ideas, the best practices, team members' actively participation, which are not measured in the performance review at all. So many people would rather spending time in fighting for juicy accounts internally, than devoting ideas to help the team. We keep emphasizing "team collaboration", but the design of measurement doesn't lead the organization toward the way.

If we all believe it's better to include those factors in measurement, then how to make it measurable?

I remember during my primary school, teachers used to give us award tags from time to time to encourage what we did well every day, so we learnt immediately the right behavior. Why don't we bring back this simple and direct method to design a "organization value" award bucket to each employee to collect points, so the management can have active, transparent and frequent communication with his team members during the year; and in the annual performance review, it becomes a easy reference measurement (against your memory), then you just need to put weights to this organization-value performance for your rating reference. So if the team member has a valuable idea that his management can give him award points immediately, or the team member can ask for recognition points from his boss by submitting reference like thank-you letter from other team, or best performance in a training or group discussion...etc.

Personal "Organization Value" needs to be inspired and encouraged. Maybe the management can host an "Organization value CAFE" to brainstorm more great ideas ;-)
Read more!

Brainstorm "inside the box" at "World Cafe"

Have you ever been exhausted from a brainstorming session? What's even worse, those "exciting" ideas are not helpful to you at all, because you're lack of resources or budget.

People usually encourage to think "outside the box" and expect to have great ideas if they are lucky. It might work sometimes, however if it's applied in a team discussion, usually it cannot lead the team to a solid conclusion or a feasible solution. In a HBR (Harvard Business Review) article - "Breakthrough thinking from inside the box" by Kevin Coyne (http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/hbsp/hbr/articles/article.jsp;jsessionid=5DJ0JBUEO3W0AAKRGWDR5VQBKE0YIISW?ml_action=get-article&articleID=R0712E&ml_page=1&ml_subscriber=true), it highlights why brainstorming doesn't work, and suggest the process to be effective and fruitful. Bottom line is to set the "boundary" of the brainstorm session beforehand, such as how long to see the impact, how much the budget, and what resources we have.

Talking about process, it reminds me a book read recently, called "The World Cafe" by Juanita Brown, which is highly recommended by Dr. Peter Senge, author of "Fifth Discipline", as a very good practice for learning organization. Both articles elaborate in very detail on the process to help meeting host to have better brainstorm session. Nevertheless, I think the most critical part is not the process, but "asking the right question".

Take an example from "inside the box". If you set your topic as "How to decrease the cost?", then it might lead the team nowhere with too many possibilities. However, if you prepare your homework and change the question to "What services can be eliminated to cost down 50%?", focus and specific, then you can expect to have most creative conclusion from the meeting that can be put in actions immediately. In "World Cafe", it suggests to have pre-meeting with several key persons to come out "right questions" for the meeting, that I think we should pay more attention to, instead of process itself. Interesting enough that I found out most of examples in "Inside the box" article serve "good to great" purpose by using negative questions such as "What prevents certain group from using our products?", so to improve the process to attract that neglect part of customer set.

Team member selection is another important step for preparation. You will need members with different talents/responsibilities who can initiate new ideas or had experience to share. One successful Sales experience helps a baby food company find a big potential elder market. I also had hosted a meeting with Sales sharing their successful selling of a new technology, then found a potential mid-market segment suitable for this technology, so successfully grew that business 110% in one year.

Both articles will be very helpful and can stimulate more new ideas. Enjoy your reading and kindly share with me your thoughts.
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Learning from SMB/SOHO vendor: D-Link

Separating his OEM/ODM BU since 2005, D-Link focus 100% on building his branding and in the coming years, grew gross margin from 13% to 61%; doubled EPS the same time. I, by chance, took a peak on his website lately and found several interesting initiatives that would like to share with you, including D-LinkTV and Partner Reward MasterCard.

A quick look back: In 2003 while D-Link decided to separate his OEM/ODM BU, there were big argument internally and organization changed later on. At that time, D-Link was a $400M company, about same size as Accton with 11-13% gross margin for both companies. 2 years later, D-Link separated OEM/ODM Company, AlphaNetworks went IPO, so D-Link became fully own brand company. Comparing to Accton Today, D-Link grew operational margin to 34% and Accton is minus for recent 2 years. I am not in the position to comment what's the right move here. This article is about some interesting initiatives I see after D-Link eats, sleeps only his brand name.1. D-LinkTV: (http://www.d-linktv.com/) when there is a new article in several different formats, I personally would prefer to "see" the video clip, than "listen" to it, than "read" it, well... if I have time. I'm very impressed with their initiative to put almost everything in "video", including new product launch, channel program, news...etc. Interesting enough that not only it provides Share Video, Podcast, and RSS functions, D-Link makes it even more YouTube-like to "rank" each video, add "comments", and open to video submission about user experience on using their products. I am not sure how they can build the community, but at least they "ease" the way to learn more about them. But after browsing through several videos, it bored me with too much "talking", and too less "scene". At least they can switch to some PowerPoint slides or close look at the products to make it more vivid. Even more important, there is no "fun" seeing those video that I might not want to come back and see more again. I personally love the way Cisco CDO has done to put a funnyman part in the serious demonstration. One video you can try to see how they put your favorite "skin" to home-used network device, say, Big New York Yankee...etc. http://www.dlinktv.com/?vid=2372. Partner Reward MasterCard (http://www.dlinktv.com/?vid=9) we had done lots of partner reward programs and there are always arguments on where the incentive goes to? The reseller company's margin or the Sales pocket? But they all complaint one thing - the reward has too many limitations and comes too late, say 3 months or 6 months after I'd done my part of work. D-Link puts the partner reward to the "credit" of MasterCard, that owner can use it anywhere and anytime, and even cash it out from ATM. Not only it benefits to the sales directly, they also owns the most complete Sales personal information for their future design of target marketing.I can feel how hard they try to differentiate themselves in the market, and believe they are on the right track that takes effect on their finance performance as well.
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Don't take your customer as end-user

Product should be designed for end-users. Go-To-Market strategy should be designed for your customers who buy from you, not end-users. Toy is designed for kids to be safe, colorful and interesting, however it's their Parents who pay the bill, so you might need to emphasize "educational" to attract your customer and set the stores where Parents are easy to access.

I am personally quite impressed with Cisco SBR (Smart Business roadmap) to penetrate into SMB (small medium business) market. The product lines are designed to be smart, secure and simple, which is exactly what SMB end-users would like - to be scalable and secure as the enterprise network should be, and easy to manage/debug. To differentiate in the SMB mass market, Cisco product team might need to sacrifice some switch features to be "simple", and add some proprietary features to be "smart" in SBR architecture. This is exactly the right decision.While selling into the market, who will be your customers? According to IDC's survey, SMB users have no strong brand preference and, most of time, due to lack of IT expert in house, trust their SI's recommendation, who is able to provide them "all" solution including Networking, Cabling, Server, PC's and Printers. In this case, you can easily identify who is your customer and who can really make the decision and buy from you instead of buying from other vendors. Your GTM strategy won't be the same if you mistake your customer as end-user.So you need to satisfy your "customer's" interest and help them to sell to their customers - end-users. In this case, your customer might be PC resellers or small SI's, who has no many networking techie. Many would say "margin" is the 1st consideration of resellers, but I have different view on this. $10 and $11 has only $1 difference, but it is 10% increase in price, so the margin ratio. I believe resellers can "manage" their margin their way. Cheapest product in the market won't be always their choice because their credit and service effort are above all. This also implies "brand" still mean something in reseller's mind. If you're not the brand leader, then you need to consider actions to increase the familiarity and profitability of them.
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Bigger Event with Less Money or even Making Money

A small company held a big exhibition to attract 2000 attendees without spending a dime afterwards and even make money in the end.

Back in 1998-1999, while Internet is hot and ISP started to build IDC (Internet datacenter), how to build an IDC became a hot topic in the industry. Cabletron Taiwan at that time is a small company with 5 staffs, comparatively small than his components. Before separating into Enterasys and Riverstone, Cabletron developed and integrated new IDC solution, which was quite new in Taiwan market. The total solution required many different solutions from different vendors, which is one reason the IDC solution is so complicated. To build our reputation on IDC, we boldly host a 2 days IDC exhibition to invite 2000 attendees in the industry and 30+ different sponsors including some ISP's, Server vendors, and networking solution vendors. In the end, we reached our target attendees and sponsors no., so we not only get awareness, but also make more marketing fund out of it. It was quite good experience that we need to find target customers and attract other vendors to take money out of their pocket. I recalled the key successful reason is because of the "heat" of Internet, and we just rode on the wave. Can this practice be replicable? Yes, as long as you feel the "heat" and take bold move. Haha..
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