What Really Motivates Us, In Work and Life

I've had the opportunity to hear Dan Pink speak twice on his research on motivation, and how motivational science is completely different from what we assume. His best-selling book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, provides further detail on what really propels people to keep moving forward positively in life and business.

Pink makes the case, via a persuasive summary of applicable research, that what propels people forward (gets them to act in any way) has changed dramatically in the last century, and profoundly from what motivated early mankind. If we start at the beginning, what drove humans to do anything had to basically revolve around survival; biological drives ruled human lives, from scrounging for food to procreation.

As human communities progressed, people needed to work together in increasingly cooperative fashions to achieve more complex goals - like building physical infrastructures, conducting commerce, and organizing for warfare. This led to what Pink calls "Motivation 2.0" where people were primarily focused on gaining rewards and avoiding punishments, to meet societal expectations. But while this psychological approach worked for a long time, it started to break down during the last century when so many underpinnings started transforming - causing routine work to be increasingly displaced by creative and intellectual contributions.

New research conducted over the last 50 years convincingly argues that intrinsic motivation now may have the most power over human behavior. In fact most extrinsic motivation (such as rewards for performance) may actually have the opposite effect on desired behavior because it limits/narrows, as opposed to opens/broadens, the focus of one's actions. If the task/work problem is challenging, and hard to solve, then you want people to feel empowered to truly look outside the box not just within its parameters.

Pink sums it up this way: If/then rewards are OK for rewarding straightforward and short-term tasks, and not good for motivating folks to solve more complex and longer-term challenges.

Ultimately, to respond to the new world order and be prepared to solve its complex challenges, people need to be fully engaged to do so. The "technology" for engagement is self-direction, which is fueled by:

1. Autonomy: The freedom-ability to direct one's own life, and work
2. Mastery: The desire and commitment to get better and better at something that really matters to the individual
3. Purpose: The desire to do work that serves a larger, and meaningful purpose beyond ourselves as individuals

It's not that money isn't important, but once a certain threshold is reached (being paid enough and what's deemed fair for the work at hand) it really doesn't drive people. What really matters, and what truly drives us, is making progress in work we deem meaningful.

The Power of Emotional, Attitudinal Brands

I recently spoke at The Conference Board's Corporate Identity and Branding Summit, and had the opportunity to listen to a Landor presentation on brand extensions. Below are some insights.

From this leading brand firm's point of view, there are two primary ways to look at extending brands: (1) line extensions, where you are moving your brand footprint in your existing product or market category - think new beverages from Pepsi or Coke; and (2) brand extensions, where you are moving into new product and market categories outside of the current ones your company operates in - think Google who is known for search moving into Google docs, Google+, Android, etc.

In either types of situation the question to answer is: what is the locus of the brand that you are extending? That is, is your brand based on attitudinal or functional values/attributes? Understanding this orientation, informs the development of the brand architecture/tools that support the development and marketing of brand extensions.

Attitudinal brands are grounded by brand attributes/values that revolve around the company's/products' attitude, ethos, and aesthetic. According to Landor, attitudinal brands have strong, enduring emotional connections with customers and markets; examples include Disney, Virgin, or Apple. Conversely, functional brands center on the company's/products' functions, capabilities, price, and quality; those that fall  into this definition could be Walmart or BMW.

So, why does one brand extension fail and another succeed? To determine when an extension will add meaningful value to the existing brand - a fundamental requirement to success - these questions must be answered:

• Will the brand extension run counter to customer expectations?
• Does the new brand extension provide competitive advantage in new categories?
• Will the brand extension positively reinforce the existing brand's positioning?
• Will the brand extension make money or defend market share?
• Will the brand extension open up a meaningful new market in terms of audience or category?

Landor believes that creating emotional brand experiences are the most effective ways to reach and impact markets. Always start with a simple, clear brand idea. Then, if you have successfully answered the above questions, make sure you have framed your brand idea in emotional/attitudinal ways and extend into new brand categories.

The Board Directorship Quest, for Women

Last night I was invited to join the Washington Technology Industry Association's new "community" -- Executive Women in Technology. The inaugural speaker was Debbie Bevier, Chairman, Coinstar, and Director, F5 Networks, who shared her overall career trajectory to becoming a go-to board director in the Seattle area.

What began as a traditional banking career in branch offices, changed dramatically when Debbie was selected to move to her organization's holding company as part of their new diversity initiative in the mid-80's. That is, get more women on the corporate ladder! What seemed initially like a big risk, and departure from customer work that she loved, she quickly was in position to be selected for even greater challenges and the highest level promotions.

As part of her journey, she moved to Seattle and into various CEO roles - and integrated solidly into the community. It was these types of relationships that led to her first board position, and those that followed. Close professional network contacts were the key to Debbie landing board roles; in effect, these contacts became the career sponsors who championed her over time.

Today, Debbie is a full-time director who celebrates life and friends - and thoroughly embraces the flexibility that board director work offers. She's been able to better care for an ailing parent, manage some key personal issues, and still be deeply involved in the companies she helps govern.

She counseled the group to think about why you would want to be a board director, as many times you simply don't know what you are getting into. The job scope requires deep attention to a myriad of details, as well as solid perseverance to get through a wide array of potential political issues. Boards today are dealing with more and more complex challenges in terms of strategic planning, corporate performance, risk and crisis oversight, executive talent development, and CEO succession. In fact, the average board director spends 230 hours/year in role, but that too is highly dependent on the board and issues at hand - it could be a lot more.

So, think about it - is board directorship a responsibility you really want to assume? 
From the perspective of board selection committees, they look for candidates that embody multiple attributes in these priority areas:

1. Corporate leadership experience
2. Specific industry experience
3. Financial acumen
4. Strategy development track record
5. Global expansion experience
6. Risk management

While there is great interest on the part of women to have significant board roles, as Meg Whitman most recently noted "progress in the boardroom has flattened for women." The answers why aren't clear, so clearly this type of dialogue and community effort needs to continue.

The Changing Face of Branding

Recently I have been meeting with a wide range of folks to discuss the shifting foundation of brand management. Whereas many see branding as a superficial marketing function - driven by digital imagery, catchy phrases or splashy ads - dynamic brand management is something much more fundamental to the success of any company, product/service, or individual.

Effective brand management needs to begin during product development. Because strategic branding is based on expressing differentiation and value, brand managers must have a role in actually defining products and experiences. The product/experience is the brand message, and the customer engagement with it needs to be congruent with the desired brand objective.

In short, branding is an action and not a marketing communications deliverable. Brand managers need to act first, and speak later.

Being global - and who isn't these days - also challenges brand managers on how to adapt brands and build consistent experiences. As an example, how wealth is perceived and treated varies greatly by culture and geography. Whereas in some parts of the world the display of wealth (for let's say luxury products) is highly valued and should be featured prominently in the brand, in other places discretion/understatement are the appropriate "brand voices."

So, brand managers must build, with their product counterparts, brand platforms big enough to work across these differences then devise brand segmentation strategies to address different markets. No stock answer works; only awareness, agility, and adaptation.

What Makes Real Talent?

I just heard George Anders speak on his new book, "The Rare Find: Spotting Exceptional Talent Before Anyone Else," where he examined what constitutes the best talent, where to look for it, and how leverage it. Everyone wants top talent, but research shows that hiring successfully is sporadic at best. It's hard to hire strangers, and surprisingly harder still to promote from within.

So, what should you look for in people and how can you improve your assessment process?

For one, traditional interview settings rarely tell us much about the person in front of us. In a face-to-face office interview, you can't really determine a person's core, underlying abilities. You can confirm what's on a resume, and explore conceptually specific scenarios, but these aren't complete indicators of what will happen in real life.

That's why, as an example, the Army Special Forces picks their elite forces based on multi-day, high-risk situations - infused with adversity and ambiguity - where candidates have to actually demonstrate how they confront crises, devise solution strategies, and execute successfully with other team members. Trying to solve the unexpected problem is what uncovers the traits the Army is looking for, especially a person's tenacity and resiliency.

When identifying the top high school athletes to recruit, college coaches gather student athletes together for multi-day camps. Some of the best recruiting coaches say it's seeing the athletes over time, in what is essentially an extended audition, that best informs their decision. These coaches pay close attention to the small stuff, i.e. how does a player handle injury, are they there for the team or themselves, are they demonstrating the attitude necessary for team success? These are the insights that provide the decision-making context for success.

But what's really fascinating, is that the most interesting and ultimately successful candidates may have "jagged" resumes - backgrounds where they may not have finished college, may have had several different types of jobs, may have resume time gaps, or may have explored several different fields. So, instead of focusing simply on conventional achievements and a straight/narrow path, it's imperative to look at the "whole" of a background and evaluate how individuals rank in terms of these types of competencies:

• Resiliency
• Efficiency
• Self-reliance
• Desire to improve
• Curiosity
• Creativity
• Ability to influence others without having full control

Making Your Network Work for You

Last week I led a career development roundtable at Microsoft on effective networking based on a number of sources, including a Harvard Business Review article from Rob Cross and Robert Thomas on "Smarter Networking." While this was more of a facilitated discussion, to engage the group in mutual exchange, I did highlight some key insights from this discovery process that impacted me and are causing me to rethink my approach to networking.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that research has found that truly effective networks only have a core size of between 12-18 people. While this may make immediate sense to some, I really had to stop and think about this conclusion. Larger network numbers don't provide more value and, in fact, actually decrease the value your network provides. You can so easily dilute your impact by expanding your outreach, versus maximizing the mutual exchange between a more limited set of committed network members.

Makes you think about your LinkedIn/Facebook/Twitter connections. Is all that time well spent?

So, what really matters is your network structure: those 12-18 primary connections that bridge all kinds of smaller groups and cross all sorts of geographies, functional, and hierarchical lines. Additionally, interactions with these core relationships need to emphasize more mutual learning, committed engagement, and personal growth, and less transactional exchange. Maybe most importantly, this newly defined network should be comprised of positive, energetic, and authentic contacts - because if your closest connections exhibit these traits, so will you.

To get started, or revamp your network approach, it's important to ground your commitment to real outcomes that you want to achieve. You can't just network for networking's sake, or in some vague hope that a new contact is going to land you that dream assignment/job/promotion. Be realistic - what do you want to achieve in a six month, 12 month, and 24 month time frame. Then you can more effectively think about your network structure.

Here are some good steps for re-thinking, re-configuring, and living a smarter network:

1. Analyze who is in your network today by categorizing: (1) who provides new information or expertise; (2) those in other groups/locations who share best practices; (3) those who inspire innovation, especially those outside your current environment; (4) people who previously held "powerful" positions who can mentor you, offer political support, and help you analyze big issues; (5)folks who have informal power who can help provide direct and indirect influence; (6) those who help with professional or personal developmental counsel; and (7) people who provide personal support and promote your well-being.
2. Determine who in your network you should "de-layer" by categorizing: (1) people who are energy drains; (2) folks who have too much of you; (3) people who are in a category with too many other people, hence just repeating the same value; and (4) folks who don't provide real value back, or don't really care about the relationship with you beyond being transactional.
3. Connect your network to your professional and personal goals: (1) first, spell out three business outcomes you want to achieve over a year with your network; (2) categorize the "de-layered" or new network connections against your business objectives, by evaluating who can lend appropriate experience, resources, or support.

The Meaning of Visionary Leaders

Like so many I have been deeply saddened by the passing of Steve Jobs. When I heard the news late in the evening at my desk, after a day of battling with attorneys, I bowed my head and cried.

Part of my reaction stems from the fact that I started my career at Regis McKenna where I did Apple PR, and I remembered the promise and light of that bright and often challenging young man. But something else has been at play, and I've been thinking a lot about that.

Visionaries mean a lot to people at large - they inspire excitement, and hope, with their communications. They create a sense of new possibilities not previously imagined. But so very often visionaries come and go - like presidents or corporate leaders come and go. Here today with their promise, gone so very soon after their "terms" end.

What moves us deeply is what endures. Visionaries that can hold on to their big ideas and keep working at realizing them are those that are truly inspirational. And yes, Steve Jobs was absolutely one of those people with his 30+ year vision of making computing easy. Bill Gates, with his profound vision of philanthropic  impact and global computing empowerment, is clearly another. They were competitors and compatriots in the truest sense.

We cannot and should not forget these special people - when alive, and after they are gone. But more importantly, each of us should reflect on what our personal visions are and what we can do to work at them for a lifetime. We may not have the universal impact of these more high-profile and broad impact visionaries, but we certainly can make a difference in the lives of those we commit to.

Great Marketing Requires Experimentation, Not Just Analytics or Perceptual Studies

I just heard Ducan Simester, professor at MIT Sloan School of Management, speak on the critical role of experimentation in the marketing decision process. He presented fascinating research that states that most marketing decisions are made pretty badly because marketers rely too much on perceptual information/insights or past analytics, without enough real-time customer input when forming plans to positively impact demand/buying behavior.

Unlike with operational data, analyzing customer data is just too hard for most organizations to get value out of it - even the largest corporations - per Simester. It takes the best people around - top Ph.Ds - to make sense out of the complexities typically presented. Corporations simply don't have the capabilities to pull this off.

Perceptual research - think focus groups, interviews, conjoint studies - is just customers' take on how they are going to behave in the future. It isn't their actual behavior. So, perceptual studies are good for generating hypotheses on what to experiment on, but not for basing strategic marketing portfolio decisions.

So, the underlying principle for making the best marketing decisions is to determine the best behavioral customer experiments - with feedback mechanisms - to enable business units and marketers to vary what they are doing with customers and their channels. Measuring everything that makes a behavioral difference in the purchasing equation during these experiments is critical.

It's also crucial to keep these experiments simple and small, because you have to implement marketing experiments real-time, with real people in the "field. " If experiments aren't simple/small, your people unfortunately will have high degrees of failure.

Here are some core guidelines for conducting effective marketing experiments:

• Behavior: The key measurement
• Simplicity: So experiments can be implemented by people in their jobs
• Customer Acquisition: The target

The CXO Reading List

After spending time evaluating a comprehensive set of books that would appeal to the broad business, economic, social, and cultural interests of the CXO audience, here are some titles that shot to the top:

Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh
Overview: Zappos CEO Hsieh offers a compelling account of his transformation from Harvard student entrepreneur through his years as a dot-com wunderkind to the creator of a formidable brand. Delivering Happiness explains how Zappos employees actually apply their "Core Values" to improving their lives outside of work, proving that creating happiness and record results go hand-in-hand. A true personal journey into what it takes to create, build, and sustain a modern working corporate culture.

Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It by Richard Clarke
Overview: Cyber War is a powerful book about technology, government, and military strategy; about criminals, spies, soldiers, and hackers. This is the first book about the war of the future, cyber war, and it presents a convincing argument that we may already be in peril of losing it. Once again Richard Clarke lays out a cyber scenario that is chilling in the extreme.
“Will strengthen Clarke’s claims as one of the founding fathers of cybersecurocracy.” -Financial Times
"Clarke and Knake are right to sound the alarm.” -Wall Street Journal

The Next Convergence: The Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World by Michael Spence
Overview: With the British Industrial Revolution, part of the world’s population started to experience extraordinary economic growth—leading to enormous gaps in wealth and living standards between the industrialized West and the rest of the world. Michael Spence, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, explains what happened to cause this dramatic shift in the prospects of the five billion people who live in developing countries. Spence clearly describes what’s at stake for all of us as he looks ahead to how the global economy will develop over the next fifty years
“Rarely does one find a book that is so powerful in its analysis, timely in its topic, relevant in its thinking, and clear in its exposition.”-Mohamed A. El-Erian, CEO and Co-CIO of PIMCO

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Nial Ferguson
Overview: Civilization takes readers on their own extraordinary journey around the world, and is the story of sailboats, missiles, land deeds, vaccines, blue jeans and Chinese Bibles. It is the defining narrative of modern world history. Frankly, I can't wait for it to be published.
“A dazzling history of Western ideas.” - Economist
“Ferguson is the most brilliant British historian of his generation ... he writes with splendid panache.” - The Times

The Talent Masters: Why Smart Leaders Put People Before Numbers by Bill Conaty, Ram Charan
Overview: Talent is the leading indicator of whether a business is up or down, a success or a failure. The talent masters know how to accurately judge raw human talent, understand a person’s unique combination of traits, develop that talent, and convert what supposedly are “soft” subjective judgments about people into objective criteria that are as specific, verifiable, and concrete as the contents of a financial statement. As always, Ram demonstrates why he is the top management consultant of his time.
“…The definitive guide to the art and science of talent development.”—Andrea Jung, chairman and CEO of Avon Products

Tell to Win: Connect, Persuade, and Triumph with the Hidden Power of Story by Peter Guber
Overview: Former chairman of Sony Pictures and current CEO of Mandalay Entertainment Group, Guber illustrates how powerful storytelling—about yourself or your product—can be the ultimate tool to get the meeting, engage the listener, and close the deal. It's truly a testament to why everyone should invest in becoming a riveting storyteller.
“I hope this book inspires you to create your own "never-ending story" to help take your business to the next level.” - Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos.com, Inc.

10-10-10: A Fast and Powerful Way to Get Unstuck in Love, at Work, and with Your Family by Suzy Welch
Overview: A transformative new approach to decision making, 10-10-10 is a tool for reclaiming your life at home, in love, and at work. The process is clear, straightforward, and transparent. Suzy shares some clear insights on how to move forward, quickly and with clarity.
"If you're wondering what to do, which path to follow at the fork, whether to stay or leave -- no matter what it may be -- 10-10-10 will help you find your way." - Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence

Younger Next Year: A Guide to Living Like 50 Until You're 80 and Beyond by Chris Crowly, Henry S. Lodge M.D.
Overview: The authors base their plan on the idea that instead of looking forward to decades of pain as the body slowly deteriorates, it's possible to live as if you were 50, maybe even younger, for the rest of your life. Funny and amusing, it gives an accurate idea on what to expect from age 50 on. One of the most personally motivating books I've read in a long time.
“It is easy to read, the science is right, and if one follows Henry Lodge’s and Chris Crowley’s recommendations, both mental and physical aging can be delayed.”- K. Craig Kent, M.D., chief of vascular surgery, New York–Presbyterian Hospital

Learnings from Fortune Brainstorm Tech

I made my annual sojourn to Fortune Brainstorm Tech last week in Aspen, and once again had another terrific experience connecting with industry insiders and hearing insights from an impressive speaker slate. Throughout the conference I regularly tweeted, and below are some further highlights I captured to pass along:

Bob McDonald, P&G:
-  P&G is focused on having 1:1 relationships between all its brands and every consumer in the world
-  It's important to dismantle the hierarchy of any organization so managers don't have time to micromanage

Dick Costolo, Twitter:
-  We want Twitter to be the world in your pocket
-  Ads are just tweets, and advertisers can now drive real-time marketing campaigns
-  We plan to provide the Twitter experience on all platforms

Jeffrey Katzenberg, Dreamworks:
-  It's unbelievable how bad movies have been recently
-  The bloom is off the rose in 3-D
-  Social media will force Hollywood to make better products
-  If you love your work, love coming to work, you will do great work
-  TV business is on fire

Trip Adler, Scribd:
- The digital reading landscape is fragmented
-  Get people reading again by providing a more immersive experience

The New Consumer Conversation-Dan Rose of Facebook, Susan Lyne of Gilt Groupe and Stephen Gillet of Starbucks:
- Facebook is about helping companies take advantage of what's on the web, which is really about people
- Marketing in a social world is more like a conversation
- If you do a lot of little social experiments, you find the big thing that scales
- Social media was more about creating fans in the beginning, now it's more about engagement

Business vs. Government-Glenn Hutchins of Silver Lake, Gary Shapiro of CEA, and Christine Varney of U.S. Dept. of Justice:
- If you don't like the anti-trust laws, repeal them
- Technology moves so rapidly that the market has moved beyond the big anti-trust battles of the last 20 years
-  Need a national competitive strategy for our government

Frank Quattrone, Qatalyst Partners:
-  It feels like a new era of IPOs
-  LinkedIn is the Netscape of its era
-  Facebook has done a marvelous job of creating a platform people live on

Workshop: Publishing and Broadcasting--Who Survives?:
-  Digital has enabled the direct relationship between the brand and the consumer
-  You are not your distribution channel, you are your content