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Posts Tagged ‘business’

Making Excuses for Your Management Team?

Posted in business, entrepreneur, management, tagged , , , , on July 16, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

Management teams say a lot about any company. Effective leaders surround themselves with great people. Such leaders understand their weaknesses and know how to augment those inadequacies by hiring accordingly. Real leaders are not afraid to hire people who will challenge them intellectually.

An effective CEO also knows when someone on his/her management team will not make the team better, and does something about it decisively. Inaction often has as much, if not more, consequences than making an ineffective decision with the right intentions.

When building an executive team and personalities are involved, a young CEO and entrepreneur may not be able to decipher who on the management team is effective and who is not. Other times, he/she do understand the shortcomings of the team but is too inexperience or immature to move quickly to fix the problem.

I’ve met with a lot of young companies and their management teams. I can usually tell within a couple of minutes whether the team has the right chemistry or not, whether the individuals push each other constructively, or whether the team is dysfunctional.

In one company, many made excuses for one of the top executives before I even met him. That was not an effective management team. Recently, I met another management team where everyone comfortably contributed to a meeting. No one person dominated, including the top executive. I knew right away that this group headed for success.

Be honest now, how effective is your management team? Are you making excuses?

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Three Core Components to a Great Work Environment

Posted in business, tagged , , , , , , on March 7, 2010 | 3 Comments »

There are three core components to creating an attractive and compelling work environment.

The first and most critical component is business success and stability. Many see being “too” focused on financial numbers as somehow not complementary with creating a great work environment. It is only through financial stability that a company can protect its work culture. I’ve seen some of the most creative and fun work environments crumble from the strain of financial instability.

The second most vital component is the work culture. Often people confuse work culture with work place personality. The work culture are the underlying principles that govern how employees interact, how success is measured, and how people are held accountable. The work culture reflects the overall value system of the company. Therefore, I believe strong emphasis on mutual respect, accountability, collaboration and individual empowerment will help create substantive and successful work cultures.

Some work cultures protect processes more than actual results. Others reward creativity and risks. A lot of the elements of work culture aren’t even written in any employee handwork. Yet, they strongly influence how people behave with one another, or whether deadlines are likely to be met, or whether everyone is aligned to the same vision.

The last component is the work place personality. This is the most obvious of the three components but the least important. Leaders, however, spend most of their time focusing on the work place personality as a way of influencing the work environment.

The work place personalities can take many different forms. In the digital marketing space, many offices have open work areas without cubicles for better collaboration. In a call center, there might be a sales scoreboard in the middle of the room measuring individual successes for the day. In many startups, video game consoles are a common part of the office equipment for developers during breaks. At one of my companies, we used to run remote control car races as a team building exercise.

Too often, executives put too much emphasis on the personality of the work place, and not enough on the work culture. A fun work place personality can only be effective with a foundation of a solid work culture that encourages collaboration, accountability, mutual respect and individual empowerment. And that solid work culture can only be successful if the company is enjoying business success and financial stability.

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Globalizing Business Perspective

Posted in business, tagged , , , on February 2, 2010 | 2 Comments »

Bi-lingual people usually learn a third or fourth language easier than an adult just learning a second language. Being raised in a bi-lingual family, I know this to be true. The fact that my “words” interpreting reality can be formed from two different language perspectives is a huge advantage in learning yet another language.

One of the best parts of speaking multiple languages is knowing that certain words in one language cannot be easily explained in another. In other words, understanding a second language potentially enriches the clarity and broadness of perception.

In today’s world, businesses also benefit from a multi-cultural, multi-lingual perspective. Innovation, for example, happens predominately out of necessity. In India, solar-powered ambulance trucks have been deployed to reduce the cost of fuel for the vehicles as well as to provide energy for its medical equipment. Such innovation would be highly unlikely in North America or Europe. Companies should consider having components of their innovation centers in developing countries as a competitive advantage.

Another example of thinking more multi-dimensional (“multi-lingual”) for businesses is to consider the world-wide human resource pool in providing services. Of course, much of web development, call centers and other such work have been already off-shored from the US and Europe to Asia and Eastern Europe. Now, the knowledge and ability to implement an effective off-shoring model is considered as a core tenant of a CIO’s job.

None of this is black and white, and that’s also the great thing about learning more than one language: The broader one’s perspective, the larger the gray area becomes. So, a business has to learn how to integrate the varying perspectives of its international operations into one cohesive vision to be successful. If done correctly, such a company obviously would enjoy compelling advantages.

While large and many mid-sized companies have been successful at going international, most small companies don’t even consider this as an option. I believe, however, that a business is never too small to start thinking globally, whether in resourcing, innovating, or market expansion. Even if a business may not be ready to execute on becoming a multi-national, by thinking in global terms right away the company will be driven to a more ambitious perspective.

So, start learning another language.

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Understanding the Stair Step Pattern Of Company Growth

Posted in business, entrepreneur, tagged , , , , , , on January 23, 2010 | Leave a Comment »

Company building is a unique experience. An entrepreneur can experience a huge gyrations of emotions in any given day: ‘Wow, we’re going to do this!’  ’Oh, we’re going to crash and burn’.  ’My employees hate me’.  ’My customers love me’…

With experience, however, you come to expect these twists and turns. In fact, you kind of get some enjoyment out of it. Despite these varying emotions, certain principles are generally true. Growth, for example, is almost never represented by the infamous hockey stick graph.

Growth for a startup usually happens in stair steps. A startup moves along a horizontal line (with some variances) until hitting a wall. That wall represents the barrier to the next plateau for the company. It could be that a startup has launched and found some anchor clients. The principles in the business are so occupied by the demands of the anchor clients that they cannot focus on business management. Yet, the word of mouth effect from servicing those clients is putting some pressure to expand. Well, you’ve just hit that wall leading to the next plateau. The company can only take the next step in growth by addressing these pending issues. Once resolved and perched on the next plateau, the same pattern will most likely be repeated with a new set of challenges — the next level of company development.

Understanding the ‘stair step’  pattern of growth will help start-up companies understand why everyone seems to be running faster but the company is not still growing properly.

I’m always wary of business plans that have a linear growth projections. That sounds logical in a business school classroom or it looks good on a spreadsheet, but I haven’t really experienced such growth in my past. Things are difficult to start, then you get in a rhythm with your first customers. Eventually the business beat changes. There are new and unfamiliar pressures on the business. It takes leadership at that point to scale to the next level and return to a comfortable (but more sophisticated) rhythm.

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Life A Continuous String of Events of People Impacting People

Posted in business, People, Uncategorized, tagged , , on November 30, 2009 | 2 Comments »

Looking back on one’s life, you quickly realize that it was other people who brought you to your current place in life. The way of the world is meeting people through other people. You impact people’s lives and people impact yours — sometimes even in ways you don’t realize. Here’s one personal string of events that clearly demonstrates why it’s important to value your contacts. I’m sure you have your own stories.

Back in the early 90′s, ARIS was growing rapidly and needed an immigration lawyer to help with some of our recruiting efforts. So, I called a young attorney I met at a social event for KAPS (Korean American Professional Society). He had just moved to Seattle and was looking to start a law practice. When I asked if he could help, he responded that he had the “certifications” to help. We were his first corporate customer and first immigration case.

The Bae Law Group later became one of the largest local immigration law firms. After 14 years, Davis Bae recently sold his practice to Jackson Lewis LLC, an international law firm.

As ARIS grew in the 90′s, we hired an in-house lawyer who took over the relationship with The Bae Group. Bert Sugayan was an international attorney working in Seoul when I first met him. Fate had him moving to Seattle shortly after my return to the area. Since ARIS, we’ve remained close. Last week, Bert and I met to catch up at Caffee Umbria in Pioneer Square. There, I showed a sample of Lift9′s output on social media intelligence. He called me later that evening saying he might have a customer for Lift9. We signed up his referral three slides into the presentation the very next day.

While Bert and I were in Korea in the late 80′s, we had a tight-knit group of expatriates as our support network. One good friend, Charlie Rim, was as competitive as me. We played a lot of sports together, trash-talking all the while. After I left Seoul, we lost track of each other until Facebook brought us back together recently. It turns out he works for Google on their Merger & Acquisition team.

It was through Charlie that I met Phil Yun, who was working in Seattle when I had moved back from Korea. When President Clinton won his first term, Phil was appointed to work in the US State Department. Phil brought up ARIS’ successful story to President Clinton when the US government was appointing three representatives to ABAC (Asian-Pacific Business Advisory Council), a subgroup to APEC (Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation). Later, my brother Paul Song (ARIS CEO), was nominated to represent US interests within ABAC along with the CEO of General Motors and CEO of Fidelity.

It was through an ABAC/APEC event in Vietnam that Paul first became interested in moving to Ho Chi Minh and starting a business with his son. This company’s infrastructure, along with Paul’s experience starting a business in Vietnam, was a critical part to how Lift9′s business plan came together this past summer.

To complete this story, the first H1B visa that The Bae Group secured for ARIS was for Chris Lwanga, an ambitious young man from Uganda. He is very talented in technology and business and now works for Microsoft. He also is a gifted athlete who played on the ARIS flag football team. He was actually quite dominate.

Recently, we, the Song family, lost in a touch football game to some incorrigible friends. Guess who’s playing with us on the rematch? Staying in touch pays off again.

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Focusing Too Much on Managing Up Can Bring You Down

Posted in business, management, tagged , , on November 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

Some people are viewed as being better at managing “up” than managing “down”? To me, this is a contradiction.

On a short-term basis, executives may be impressed with a manager “managing” up to them and their priorities. Ultimately, however, all executives are looking for outstanding output from their staffs. By focusing too much on managing up, a manager will eventually fail at his/her job.

Being a manager means being a leader to his/her staff. A leader is someone who is more focused on the team’s success than his/her own individual success. However, people who focuses more on their bosses than the team, tend to be “me-focused”. So, they will care more about what the bosses think than what the team thinks. They are not good advocates for the team, and cave in too quickly to unreasonable executive demands. They don’t know how to motivate the team to work together. They tend to be quick in blaming team members for failures. In the end, they lose credibility and loyalty of  the team members.

Eventually, the executive leadership will  recognize them as a problem.

Given today’s typical work environment, we actually DO need some element of upward management from middle managers. After all, how can someone be an effective advocate for a group without understanding the political environment within a company culture? The fact is that someone who is only interested in downward management can be just as ineffective as someone just interested in upward management.

The most important job of a middle manager, however, is leadership that can produce outstanding output from his/her employees. A team will not be cohesive and successful if members don’t think the manager cares about them.

In the end, the outstanding output by a well-managed team is required for long-term success in managing “up”.

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Simple Risk-Aversion Test to See if You can Make it as an Entrepreneur

Posted in business, entrepreneur, tagged , , , , , on November 20, 2009 | 6 Comments »

Often I meet people who tell me about their dreams to start their own business. They don’t want to work for the man all their lives. They ask me what it takes to start your own business.

It’s a difficult question to answer because there are so many elements to being an entrepreneur. First, you need to be passionate about something. It has to be in your core. For many immigrants, they are passionate about their children and providing an opportunity for the next generation that they themselves never had. That drives many to amazing accomplishments. For others, the passion is about green energy, mobile technology, global health issues, and so forth.

Entrepreneurs also need a good support network of family and friends because owning your own business is not easy. It’s extremely time-consuming and emotionally draining.

Another very important component is the right personality. An entrepreneur cannot be risk-averse. In the type of businesses I’ve been involved with, I hire many very bright individuals with great business ideas. Some of them want to start their own businesses, and I know they have the intelligence and skills to be successful entrepreneurs. Yet, they lack the personality to actually be entrepreneurs. They are too risk-averse. And that’s fine because they can have fulfilling and financially rewarding careers within the corporate environment.

One time, a friend who is successfully climbing up the partner latter of a prestiguous consultancy asked me about entrepreneurship. I could tell he was thinking about possibly doing something on his own. Then, one night while driving together he started to panic because the gas gauge needle had just started touching the red empty mark. I laughed, and told him that making partner at his firm is a fantastic goal for him.

Since then, I’ve used that example with others who ask me about entrepreneurship. And a few have smiled and admitted they would panic as well. Entrepreneurship is not for everyone. Unfortunately many find out after an unsuccessful venture. Just do the “am I comfortable running on empty test” first.

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Developing Appropriate Work Culture — In Vietnam

Posted in business, social media, tagged , , , , , , on September 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment »

Vietnamese fish hot pot

Vietnamese fish hot pot

I just spent a week at our Ho Chi Minh office, aligning our company’s vision with the research team there. It was fun and rewarding.

First of all, young people all around the world understand the potential marketing power hidden inside the walls of social media sites. Social media is intuitive to all people exposed to it. That’s why its adoption is growing at such a phenomenal global rate.

The Vietnamese team needed just some clarification to be fully aligned. Having all employees who believe in a shared vision is a huge step toward our eventual success.

Research work, however, can be demanding and at times somewhat tedious. Building a work culture that is conducive to creativity, collaboration and high production requires some thoughtful planning and constant tweaking.

In my other ventures, our teams had built employee-driven work environments that resulted in high retention rates and high output. At ZeroDash1, for example, we had competitive video game matches to break up the days. Because the staff enjoyed those matches, they made sure that deadlines were always met, so that the matches would continue. However, in other cultures, trash talking video matches with one’s manager may be counter productive, as “saving face” and respecting elders trump an appreciation for  ”fun-loving” bosses. This would certainly be the case in the Korean culture, for example.

In the Vietnam office, we want to bring over the “spirit” of our headquarters in Seattle. But we also want a local favor to creating a nurturing, collaborating, and rewarding environment.

I don’t have all the answers as how to create such an environment in Vietnam yet. Acknowledging that, however, is the first critical step. We expect to turn to our local employees for input. They will be the ones to create such an environment WITH our support.

On this trip, I learned a lot spending time with the team. I know that they believe in our vision and have the same passion for life and work as I do.

On my last day, we went out to a group dinner at a “local” restaurant, owned by a friend of one of the team members. It’s a covered patio-style restaurant that specialized in a certain fish (looked like smelts). The place was packed with loud chatter of people enjoying meals with their friends and family. It excited me to be off the beaten path of tourists and in such an authentic environment.

We first got some deep-fried fish (smelts), then some grilled ones. We topped off the meal with a delicious community hot pot of fish soup.

I’m certain that I would not have wondered into this restaurant alone. The experience is one that I will keep for a lifetime. In the end, the meal symbolized how we can learn so much from each other. We are not there thinking we will be only teaching our business methods, but that we will be learning much as well and tasting the local culture.

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Tips for Making the Most of Business Networking Events

Posted in business, tagged , , on June 4, 2009 | 2 Comments »

Most people do not like networking events, a few do.

Ever been to an event where you don’t know anyone and you awkwardly look for an opening to engage someone in a conversation? Then, you see someone familiar and you go directly to that person and spend most of the rest of the event talking to someone you already know? Yeah, been there, done that.

I’ve learned, however, that networking is very important in the business world. All things being equal (or even when it’s not), people want to do business with someone they know. That’s our human nature. It’s not right or wrong, it’s just the way things are and have always been.

The Seattle business community is pretty small. Whenever I’m out at an event, most people and I have two degrees of separation. We can usually find a mutually common contact point. Nonetheless, meeting people and moving that two degrees of separation to a direct contact can be a powerful thing. Eventually, you will get good at networking and actually start enjoying such events.

Just a few thoughts for your next event:

  • Body Language: 70% of human communication is body language. Are you giving off the right signals to be approachable and interested? It may not be your body odor keeping others away, it could be your body language.
  • Be Yourself: You don’t need to be too clever to make yourself interesting. Be genuine, be honest.
  • Be Curious: If you are interested in others, they will be interested in you.
  • Please, not your Life Story: It’s not dating. You are networking. Get vital information and determine a common ground. If you want to tell more, set up a followup meeting.
  • Mingle, Don’t Monopolize: Don’t monopolize anyone’s time, even if you think you’re extremely interesting. By moving along, you leave some intrigue and open the door for more intimate follow up conversations.
  • Wandering Eyes: Getting tired of the conversation and looking at other name tags passing by? Rude. Better to wrap up the conversation and move along.

See you at the next event.

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A New Start in a Time of Opportunity, Risks

Posted in business, entrepreneur, tagged , , , on June 1, 2009 | 5 Comments »

So, it begins anew for me once again.

Last Friday was my last day with Ascentium.  Today is my first day working on what I consider my sixth potential venture.

My experience at Ascentium was wonderful for the most part. Ascentium bought my company, ZeroDash1, in March of last year (2008). We were excited about being part of a larger digital agency, and thought that our expertise in Analytics and Optimization could be a big difference maker in Ascentium’s projected growth.

Reality of integration and change management issues (Ascentium had acquired various companies before us) had slowed our impact a bit at first. However, over time, we became the full analytics arm of Ascentium. Times have hit hard the agency market and there will continue to be adjustments moving forward. I’m convinced, however, that Ascentium will maneuver successfully through the economic environment and emerge someday as a leading voice in the industry.

For me, I’ll have to watch Ascentium’s success from the sidelines.

Having been involved with five previous startups, the prospect of being on my own doesn’t seem  all that daunting. I guess I’m a risk taker at heart. I think that the drastic change in the economy over the last nine months offers up new opportunities. So many companies are struggling to survive with the wrong DNA — one that was born of another time. That opens up opportunities for companies developed for today’s environment to emerge and thrive. Yes, change always equals opportunities for those who can think and move fast.

Who knows where the road of life will lead me now? But somehow, that thought of uncertainty puts a big smile on my face. I’m ready to find out.

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