Archive : Leadership

I stayed with my Uncle on a business trip to OH the last couple days (we save money wherever we can! :-). He used to be a C130 pilot in Vietnam, a Colonel in the Airforce, a program manager at Rockwell/Boeing, and is now an MBA professor. In the Airforce he managed a team that acccepted 8,000 page, $5B proposals, and when he went to Boeing he created these proposals. Obviously a $5B project in any organization brings about a tremendous amount of change, on either side. In our many discussions he...

I’m proud to announce that our company, Bazaarvoice, has achieved profitability! See our release below. I wanted to share this with my personal blog audience because part of this achievement is practicing many principles and suggestions I’ve shared over the years here. I’ve even been called a "Cheap Ass Marketer" to help achieve this goal….but I take this as a compliment because it’s really about hitting the marketing bulls-eye! At the highest level, this achievement...

I was reading a great blog entry today called "How to Sell an Idea". Within the article there was a hot tip highlighting questions C-level execs will ask. I think that part alone deserves highlighting. Remember that any idea that ultimately rolls up for approval at the C-level should START with a primary points that meet the objective and challenges of the C-level audience. This is a helpful checklist to run any presentation or idea through: Chief Executive Officer: Will it increase the...

Weeds are growing in the yard…so I’ve scheduled the lawn mower to trim the yard.My wife told me the toilet is leaking at its base. I called a plumber to keep things running.And we’re in the middle of working with a pool contractor to extend our patio to change the usefulness of our backyard. It takes a lawn mower, a plumber and a contractor to run and increase your house investment. It struck me these are also the ‘jobs’ – in essence –to run and grow a business. There are always...

Yesterday I was on a panel for a Forrester bootcamp on Social Media. One of the common questions was how to convince senior management to agree to and resource these new emerging channels and marketing strategies. What moves consumers to action? Emotion. It’s not much different than with executives and managers…you just use data to create those emotions! In my experience, there are three emotions I’ve seen drive executive action: Fear – show the competition is having success with a strategy...

Do you have a great PowerPoint presentation? Slideshare is hosting "The World’s Best Presentation" contest. My father, Bert Decker, and friend, Guy Kawasaki, are two of the four judges. As such, I don’t think I can enter…but you can! Just upload your best PowerPoint presentation and you could win an Alienware PC. Of course, for the Mac loyalists who know guy that aren’t excited about Vista, you can hope for 2nd or 3rd prize…an Xbox. This contest does not...

This concludes my series of career tips, which was prompted by a few friends reaching out to me for advice. I’m sure I could think of more, but these are the first 15 that came to mind…and 15 is a good place to stop. Here’s the list with links: Find and Follow Your Passion and Strengths Create Soundbytes for Your Personal Brand It’s WHO You GET TO Know Choose Who Your Work For Take Initiative Outside Your Triangle Inform Others Connect to a Visible Brand Learn, Challenge,...

Stealing the Keith Ferazzi’s book title and principle by the same name, Never Eat Alone is a great principle for career growth (in addition to personal growth). Early in my career I took inter-office relationships for granted, eating lunch at my desk during those busy dot com days in South-of-Market San Francisco. However, one of my peers always ate lunch with others, and was inviting groups of people to lunch. I had two or three key relationships and she had 20. The relationships she built...

Once I was in a meeting at Dell, and someone said the company could stop on a dime. A colleague retorted, We’d stop because of a dime!” As funny as that is, this kind of agility is only possible in a metrics-oriented culture. Friends who have left Dell for new companies are amazed at how metrics-deficient their culture is. They are shocked how employees don’t understand the basics of a P&L, and so they work to add KPIs into the business that feed the P&L. As a result, these new employees...

A reader commented and agreed that taking risks (Career Tip #12) would be great, but wondered how he could take bigger risks. I think he’s asking how to manage the career risk / reward ratio in a rigid organization. Notwithstanding apathy, I think people avoid risks due to lack of confidence and/or lack of comfort and knowledge in the organization which has to accept their initiative. So how do you accelerate both of these? As I thought back to how I developed the confidence to propose bigger changes,...