News You Can Use: 9/13/2017

  • Good News for Young Strivers: Networking Is Overrated

    It’s true that networking can help you accomplish great things. But this obscures the opposite truth: Accomplishing great things helps you develop a network.

    Look at big breaks in entertainment. For George Lucas, a turning point was when Francis Ford Coppola hired him as a production assistant and went on to mentor him. Mr. Lucas didn’t schmooze his way into the relationship, though. As a film student he’d won first prize at a national festival and a scholarship to be an apprentice on a Warner Bros. film — he picked one of Mr. Coppola’s.

    Also

    And don’t feel pressure to go to networking events. No one really mixes at mixers. Although we plan to meet new people, we usually end up hanging out with old friends. The best networking happens when people gather for a purpose other than networking, to learn from one another or help one another.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/opinion/sunday/networking-connections-business.html?mcubz=0&_r=0

  • To Get Along With Difficult People, Try This Research-Backed Approach

    When coworkers consider how someone is perceived, or how they perceive themselves, they can highlight certain traits to a group that others may or may not be aware of, potentially finding new ways for co-workers to connect and work together.

    Crucially, says Solomon, considering perceptions can give you a special edge, especially in negotiations, possibly helping you be more persuasive. “The person who has greater insight into an opponent’s identity can, of course, leverage that information in various ways to win.”

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/299595

  • The Surprisingly Practical Career Advice From a DJ That You Need to Hear
  • How AI is revolutionizing recruiting and hiring

    “If we’re really trying to find the best candidate, though, then you’re excluding people with those searches. Doing it this way means you’re actually looking only for the best of the easiest candidates to find. And that’s hard to admit, right? But that’s what is happening here,” he says.

    But using AI and machine learning can help unearth candidates missed by traditional screening, sourcing and recruiting methods. Once these “dark matter” candidates are unearthed, recruiters can focus on the human element of the recruiting process and dig deeper; even if a candidate’s résumé doesn’t appear to be relevant, perhaps they have incredible soft skills, leadership experience or other valuable skills your organization needs, Cathey says.

    https://www.cio.com/article/3219857/hiring-and-staffing/how-ai-is-revolutionizing-recruiting-and-hiring.html

  • Hurricane Harvey Demonstrates Progress In Enterprise Risk Management

    Yet even from a logistics point of view, it would appear that Houston’s largest petroleum and chemical companies (America’s largest) had their workarounds well figured, as unaffected ports are now buzzing with re-routed shipments, and with little to no fanfare. Sure, we consumers are bound to experience some fallout (flooded refineries have already impacted gasoline futures), but most shippers and carriers hedge against events like Harvey, so they won’t be the losers.

    Shippers and carriers also successfully safeguard themselves from potential litigation and surcharges resulting from natural disasters. How do they do it? They apply the force majeure protocols of their supply agreements. Simply put, if it’s a contractual claim stemming from missed deadlines, production goals, deliveries, etc., and it’s due to a natural disaster (nowadays, even terrorism), they’ve got it covered.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulmartyn/2017/09/01/hurricane-harvey-exposing-progress-in-enterprise-risk-management/#4aaa2d271949

Photo: Štěpán Vraný

News You Can Use: 5/3/2017

  • Tech Firms, Cable Companies Take Sides in Net-Neutrality Battle

    Mr. Pai has said he wants to eliminate what he regards as the excesses of the Obama -era rule, while preserving the basic principles of net neutrality.

    His plan—to be announced in a speech to conservative groups—is expected to focus on building a case for rolling back the reclassification of internet providers as common carriers.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-firms-cable-companies-take-sides-in-net-neutrality-battle-1493200800

  • How the most productive CEOs keep email in check

    Brad Smith, the CEO of Intuit, the maker of TurboTax and parent company of Mint, sums up his email approach as “read, act, file, or delete.” By limiting himself to these four options—and requiring that he performs one of them—Smith says he manages to clear his inbox daily without the help of an assistant. It “requires real commitment,” he concedes, but the goal is simple: “Never touch something more than once.” In order to leave time for regular inbox maintenance, Smith schedules meetings that can’t run longer than 45 minutes so he can catch up on emails during the 15 minutes in between meetings.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40407454/how-the-most-productive-ceos-keep-email-in-check

  • Why It’s Good to Think You’re Bad at Your Job

    In this video, Entrepreneur Network partner Chris Haddon sits down with Mike McDevitt, CEO of Terra’s Kitchen and former CEO of Medifast. In the interview, McDevitt talks about Terra’s Kitchen, a Baltimore-based food delivery service, why he thinks retail grocery is the last “fat and happy” retail industry and how his company is tapping into an unmined industry.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/video/293136

  • How Juicero’s Story Set the Company Up for Humiliation

    Their moment came this week, after some Juicero investors who received the product noticed something strange. The pouches didn’t require a $400 piece of equipment to yield juice. They required something less proprietary—fingers. Two Bloomberg reporters, Ellen Huet and Olivia Zaleski, performed their own test. They found that squeezing Juicero’s pouches in their hands for 90 seconds yielded as much juice from the bags as the industrial strength machine, which actually took 30 seconds longer to produce a similar amount of liquid. It appeared that Juicero’s vaunted product, which had so beguiled Silicon Valley, was basically a simple press—functionally the equal of a waffle iron, except one that can’t make waffles.

    https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/04/juicero-lessons/523896/?utm_source=feed

    I am calling this story out because this is what happens when hype goes unchecked.

  • The Best Place to Stand at Networking Events for Better Schmoozing

    Aim for the social zone, usually around the bar, so that you can catch people once they’ve settled in and grabbed a drink to relax. Now people are in networking mode and ready to find someone to meet. As they walk away from the bar, there you are! Once you start chatting, you have a couple techniques to keep the conversation flowing and make a good impression: ask questions rather than just making small talk, focus on the other person’s passions to make things more interesting, or follow the FORD technique. And since networking events are about connecting with more than one person, have an exit line ready so you can gracefully move on after a few minutes.

    http://lifehacker.com/the-best-place-to-stand-at-networking-events-for-better-1794610102

Photo: Frances Gunn

Good to Great Review (Jim Collins)

  • Joey’s Book Report: Good to Great by Jim Collins
    In an effort to do more than just regurgitate URLs from other websites, I will share my thoughts from books from time to time.

    Good to Great essentially shows the difference between companies that exceed solid market performance and are able to grow in value 3 to 4 times over their other successful competitors.

    The major theme of the book is that these companies did well because they had strong (and generally humble) leaders that had a singular vision and stuck with it and that they developed solid succession plans.  The term the book uses is Level 5 Leadership.sn_level5leader

    The singular vision morphs into the Hedgehog concept.  It is one thing you are really good at and can defend from all angles.  Other might come and attack, but they will keep being deterred due to strong strategy and defense.

    In his essay, he argued that foxes are sleek and shrewd animals that pursue many goals and interests at the same time. Because of this wide variety of interests and strategies, their thinking is scattered and unfocused, and they are limited in what they can achieve in the long run.Hedgehogs, however, are slow and steady, and people often overlook them because they’re quiet and unassuming. But, unlike the fox, they are able to simplify the world and focus on one overarching vision. It’s this principle that guides everything they do, and helps them succeed against all odds.

    I enjoyed this book.  It belabors some ideas way too much and most of the companies Collins calls out as great have completely destroyed themselves since 2001 (Circuit City, Fanny Mae). But the book itself says it isn’t about the companies, it is about the idea of having solid leadership and strategies – principles that these companies abandoned over the years and paid for it dearly.

  • Accel Bets Big On Startup-To-Startup APIs

    Developers are constantly posed with the question of whether to buy or build. You either pay for a specialized API or you spend the resources trying to replicate them. But as the cogs get more complex, and the talent wars rage on, in-house development keeps looking slower and more expensive.

    http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/18/battle-for-the-building-blocks/

  • Industries where network matters and where it does not:
    Computing and gaming is really high, cosmetics and textiles are low
    http://blog.linkedin.com/2015/03/09/industries-where-your-network-matters-more-than-you-think/

Productivity Bulletin: 1/16/2015

Photo: Sean MacEntee, Flickr