Jim Hake's Blog

Spirit of America

My focus since summer 2009 has been on Spirit of America - a great organization that helps our troops help the local people in Afghanistan, Iraq and Africa

Favorite or Underdog?

Today's LA Times story on Oakland Raiders QB JaMarcus Russell touches on the question: Is it better to be the favorite or the underdog?  Better to be the #1 draft pick or not?  

It's a question of psychology as being the favorite doesn't actually make you better. Short answer is that it most likely depends.  In sports, in individual games the favored team usually wins.  Russell, the 1st draft pick in the 2007 NFL draft, hasn't been impressive in his first two seasons.  The story talks about the pressure on Russell going into this season.  

It's hard to argue with the salary and guarantees a #1 pick gets. It's also hard to argue with the added pressure that brings. Some seem to respond, some don't.  In Russell's case, if he performs well, we'll never know if the pressure helped or hindered. If he responded well to the pressure or if had the talent all along, needed time to develop it and simply endured the pressure. On the hand, if he fails, we'll never know if it was the pressure that did him or if he didn't have what it takes for the NFL.  What is likely is that some mythology around JaMarcus Russell and pressure will be created.

The QB position is especially interesting.  It's probably the most difficult and demanding position in sports. The skill required is extraordinary.  So is the confidence.  Lose your confidence as a QB and you are close to being finished.

So, if you were an NFL QB prospect, would you want to be the #1 draft pick or would you prefer to be somewhere in the Top 10?

Serial Entrepreneurs

Was talking with Al Schneider, head of the LA chapter of the Tech Coast Angels, about serial entrepreneurs.  Are serial entrepreneurs more successful than first-time entrepreneurs?  The assumption seems to be yes and there are reasons why that would be the case. But is it really true?  There should be some good data on this.

If you know of data, please let me know.

More later.  

Our are children lazy? Problem with summer vacation.

Paul Kedrosky notes a piece from the Economist that highlights the differences in hours of education children in the US get versus children in other countries/regions. Especially interesting to me is the impact of summer vacation:

Americans also divide up their school time oddly. They cram the school day into the morning and early afternoon, and close their schools for three months in the summer. The country that tut-tuts at Europe’s mega-holidays thinks nothing of giving its children such a lazy summer. But the long summer vacation acts like a mental eraser, with the average child reportedly forgetting about a month’s-worth of instruction in many subjects and almost three times that in mathematics.

Malcolm Gladwell was the first I saw to make this point in his outstanding book OUTLIERS.  He noted that a primary difference (maybe THE primary difference) between higher-scoring children and lower-scoring children was not what happened in the classroom during the school year but how they spent their summers.  Gladwell found that kids did much better when they had parents who made sure they spent less time on computers and TV and more time reading, visiting museum, going to camps with some academic component, etc. Children who were left unattended during the summer (who could do whatever they wished) started the school year with such a learning deficit (compared to others) that they could never make it up. 

I don't have OUTLIERS handy.  More on Gladwell's data and analysis when I do.

Wishes & Goals

Seth Godin makes a similar point to mine about goals (except with a more colorful metaphor).

For Google, the one thing was a big thing, "we need to be the place people come to search." But for many sites, many companies, there isn't a thing. They can't articulate it. They have no wish. If you have no wish, how can it possibly come true?

In other words, if you don't know what the target is, how can you hit it?  A lot of times people confuse process with desired results.  They focus on process without being clear on the results.  Confusing motion with progress. 

Hitting the Target: Metrics

In ventures, as in pretty much anything, you are trying to "hit the target" ... to achieve specific goals.  Improving your ability to hit the target is a crucial, but never-ending, process.   The first step is being clear on your goals.

Let's assume you are clear on your goals.  For each goal there are steps to achieving it, specific actions and results that lead to achieving the goal.  For example, if your goal is sales related, you know that to make a sale requires identifying prospects, contacting them, interacting (meeting, phone, email), etc. You can then track those metrics to get a better idea of how sales are going, or are likely to go, then if you only track the ultimate sales number.

Knowing what metrics matter and following them in real time can help improve results. With Internet-based businesses this is very doable and enormously useful.

I heard Scott Painter of online auto retailer Zag talk about how everyone in the company tracked, and managed to, specific metrics that were key to Zag's growth and profitability: e.g., site visits, conversions and so on.  As important as the metrics themselves, Zag makes those metrics, and how well the company is doing against those metrics, visible to employees and and investors.  Everyone has a dashboard that highlights the metrics on which they should be focused. The metrics are updated in real-time.  Scott showed an example of the dashboard.  It was brilliant. You get what you measure and the Zag dashboard makes it clear how people are being measured and how they are doing.

When I was at SOFTBANK Forums and Ziff-Davis (after selling Access Media to SOFTBANK) the companies were managed according to defining and achieving goals - similar to Zag in some ways but with a different focus.  Each week every employee would list their principal goals for the week - usually between 7 and 10 goals.  At the end of the week, they would report how well they did (using a % of goal achieved and comments if helpful) and listing the goals for the following week.  This was a remarkably effective management system.  It focused people on goals.  It helped people avoid "confusing motion with progress."  It helped managers see where people needed help. And, over the course of a year it provided a clear record of progress and priorities.

Currently, we're working on defining the metrics that matter at Spirit of America.

Relentless, Fearless Effort

Malcolm Gladwell’s  excellent piece in the New Yorker -  How David Beats Goliath - is highly relevant to entrepreneurs and new ventures.  Gladwell studies underdogs. Entrepreneurs are underdogs. The odds are stacked against them. 

Gladwell highlights two factors that help underdogs win. The first, relentless effort:

“We tell ourselves that skill is the precious resource and effort is the commodity. It’s the other way around. Effort can trump ability … because relentless effort is in fact something rarer.”

The second, a willingness to do what is “socially horrifying:”

Insurgents work harder than Goliath. But their other advantage is that they will do what is “socially horrifying”—they will challenge the conventions about how battles are supposed to be fought.

Doing what is “socially horrifying” requires risking rejection, risking criticism, risking failure.  It means an underdog has to be fearless.

Here is my nutshell for new ventures: relentless, fearless effort. Repeat.

Gladwell is one of our finest intellects and authors.  Read the whole thing.