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5 Tips for Safely Reopening Your Office

Open now? Open later? As the debate rages about restarting economies, one critical element is absent from the discussion. The predictor of our success or failure will have less to do with when businesses open their doors and more to do with how often people open their mouths. Decades of research suggest that the heart of a high-reliability culture is immediate peer accountability. A few years ago, John Noseworthy, CEO of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, proudly told me about a nurse who confronted him when he forgot to use hand sanitizer as he exited an elevator. He said, in effect, “If everyone in our system will speak up to forgetful colleagues, no matter their level or position, we can avoid most incidents of preventable harm.” And he was right. And yet, in late April, at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Vice President Mike Pence entered the Mayo Clinic to learn about their research efforts. During his tour, provided by Mayo leaders who all wore masks, Pence proceeded bare

The Best Teams Hold Themselves Accountable

Want to create a high-performance team? Want to limit the amount of time you spend settling squabbles between team members? It turns out those two issues are closely related: Our research shows that on top-performing teams peers immediately and respectfully confront one another when problems arise. Not only does this drive greater innovation, trust, and productivity, but also it frees the boss from being the playground monitor. I first saw the connection between high performance and peer accountability years ago when consulting with a very successful financial services company. It had an unparalleled return on capital, breathtaking sales growth, and the highest customer renewal rate in the industry. In my first face-to-face meeting with the CEO, whose name was Paul, and his direct reports, I committed a major faux pas. I discovered halfway through the meeting that I was calling the wrong guy, “Paul.” It was an innocent mistake. When it was time to begin, one member of the executive tea

Use Data to Accelerate Your Business Strategy

Thirty-five years after Robert Waterman’s observation in In Search of Excellence that companies were “data rich and information poor,” little has changed. For sure companies are “data richer,” having exponentially more data at their disposal. But they are still information poor, even as leaders have implemented a wide array of programs aimed at exploiting data. Most still struggle to build data into their business strategies and, conversely, to align their data efforts to the needs of the business. There are a host of reasons, from lack of talent to unreasonable expectations to culture. Solving these problems is essential for those that wish to unleash the power of data across their organizations. It should come as no surprise that data is not yet strategic for many organizations. Business is already complex enough: When setting a company strategy, there are customers to satisfy, competitors to fend off, uncertain regulatory environments to accommodate, and skills gaps that must

Is the Next Generation of Your Family Business Entrepreneurial Enough?

The great secret of business families that achieve tremendous wealth and hold onto it for generations is that they persistently promote the entrepreneurial spirit that led to their initial success. That drive — a combination of ambition, sheer will, and the willingness to take calculated risks — is integral to long-term success, particularly in challenging times. One third-generation family CEO we know recently delivered a powerful message to his teenaged next generation when he said, “In times like this, a lot of companies will go bankrupt. But, because we’ve always run our family business on the tenets of entrepreneurial drive and diversification, our family business will survive this crisis and be in a position to prosper in the long term. Learn from this experience and think about what you can do as an entrepreneur.” This is valuable advice, not just for the younger generation as they grow and develop as individuals, but also for the future of the family businesses in gen

Good Entrepreneurs Don’t Set Out to Disrupt

Copying is perhaps the strongest force in the world. We are so predisposed to copy that it infiltrates our most innovative institutions, even the self-proclaimed hub of innovative thinking, Silicon Valley. Of course, those of us in Silicon Valley don’t call ourselves copycats, we call ourselves disrupters. When Clayton Christensen first popularized the disruption concept back in 1997, the idea was novel and interesting. But what Christensen originally called disruptive innovation has now been shortened to just disruption and the oversimplification is profound. I hear pitches every month from start ups wishing to destroy the economics of some existing industry. Hidden— frequently well hidden— inside these pitches is the implication that the invisible hand of the economy will reallocate resources so that we will all be better off and enjoy a more efficient world after the carnage. It doesn’t always happen that way. Jack Dorsey and I cofounded Square back in 2009 with the init

181 Top CEOs Have Realized Companies Need a Purpose Beyond Profit

On August 19 the Business Roundtable issued an open letter titled “Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation.” One of the preeminent business lobbies in the United States, the Business Roundtable (BR) includes the CEOs of leading U.S. companies from Apple to Walmart. Sandwiched between the spare title and 181 signatures was a one-page declaration that ended as follows: “Each of our stakeholders is essential. We commit to deliver value to all of them, for the future success of our companies, our communities, and our country.” On its own, this sentence is indistinguishable from the anodyne commentary that fills the annual reports of many Business Roundtable members. For those actively following this topic, however, it represents a very public rebuke of the Milton Friedman worldview that guides business decisions behind closed doors. Friedman, the renowned University of Chicago economics professor, penned a famous 1970 New York Times essay, “The Social Responsibility Of Business Is to In

It is all about Data Analytics and Data Science

“Everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it.”  This concept applies to a great deal of data terminology. While many people toss around terms like “data science,” “data analysis,” “big data,” and “data mining,” even the experts have trouble defining them. Here, we focus on one of the more important distinctions as it relates to your career: the often-muddled differences between data analytics and data science.  Data Analytics vs. Data Science  While data analysts and data scientists both work with data, the main difference lies in what they do with it. Data analysts examine large data sets to identify trends, develop charts, and create visual presentations to help businesses make more strategic decisions. Data scientists, on the other hand, design and construct new processes for data modeling and production using prototypes, algorithms, predictive models, and custom analysis.