Finding the Jobs

The truth about how elite runners succeed may come as a surprise to most of us.  We all probably think that we already understand why certain runners can achieve elite status, and that it has everything to do with sheer skill. They become elite runners because they’re simply faster that everyone else.

But no.

In a fascinating article by Gina Kolata in today’s Health section of The New York Times, experts on elite athletes and marathon runners tell a decidedly different story.   Instead of sheer physical skill, elite athletes’ success depends much more on mental capacity.  While physical capacity is very important, apparently what separates those who become champions from those who don’t is the same factor that helps determine who becomes a successful entrepreneur, business leader or careerist:  attitude.

According to sports medicine physician, physiologist and elite athlete Dr. Jeroen Swart, although the rest of us may think “elite athletes have an easy time of it,” that’s not the case.  “[I]t never gets any easier, you hurt just as much.”

So how do elite athletes manage?  Dr. Swart suggests that “elite athletes are able to motivate themselves continuously and are able to run the gauntlet between pushing too hard–and failing to finish–and underperforming.”

New Zealand elite runner Kim Smith concedes that she possesses “some sort of talent toward running…[and that] there “are a lot of people out there who were probably just as talented. You have to be talented and you have to have the ability to push yourself through pain.”

Do you find ways to push through the “pain” of business setbacks?  What are they?  Please share them with Money Matters and More readers by commenting below.

(To read the complete story, check out http://tinyurl.com/2559l3c)

(Photo: http://tinyurl.com/2cc29h3)

Is Starbucks’ new effort to offer a wine, beer, and cheese-filled menu at a few of its Seattle stores borrowing from the Avis playbook?

It certainly sounds like it.  Like Avis, Starbucks seems determined to “try harder.”

Decades ago, Avis hit a home run with its, We Try Harder campaign.  The company knew that Hertz was the leader in car rentals.  Avis’ reaction?  In a brilliant ad campaign, it willingly conceded the point.  To earn business, Avis proclaimed, the company was willing to try harder.  “We try harder because we have to,” was their motto, (shortened simply to “We try harder.”)

Success quickly followed.  According to the Avis website, “prior to the campaign, Avis had just $34 million in revenue and losses of $3.2 million. One year later, revenues had jumped to $38 million and for the first time in thirteen years, Avis turned a profit of $1.2 million.”

It’s no secret that Starbucks is getting intense competition from the likes of McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts.  And, not unlike plenty of other companies, Starbucks still feels the effects of a slow economy.  With its new launch, Starbucks looks like it isn’t standing still.  It’s testing something new.  Again.

So the question is, will customers warm to this new transformation, complete with new “green” renovation, more individualized surroundings and the option of regional wine and beer, plus local cheese offerings?

Will it work?  The verdict won’t be in for awhile.  If it does, Starbucks will certainly deserve the praise (and profits) showered on Avis for its “try harder” approach.

Is Starbucks on to something?  Would you patronize one of its new stores in the evening for the new fare?  How have you shaken things up in your own business?

Please leave a comment below or email me at heathertaylormedia@gmail.com

Messy success is a good thing.  Really.

You know the kind.  It’s the stop and start, begin and end kind. Messy success is successfully launching a business, but the path to get there involves lots of detours along the way, including the fact that it takes alot longer than you thought it would to become profitable.

Or it’s when you work really hard to get a new job, but it doesn’t really live up to your expectations.   And you have to figure out what to do next.

But maybe what deserves our attention most is what happens in-between these successes and less about the final results. Maybe it’s how we land after the small, medium-sized and even enormous failures that count most.

That notion of the in-between time, the period between successes, as well as the successes themselves crossed my mind as I discovered a recent column in AARP, The Magazine (November-December 2010.)  Written by veteran journalist, author and former Today television correspondent Jane Pauley, the column explores the connection between setbacks and opportunities.  Regarding her short-lived daytime talk show in 2004, she says, “Before The Jane Pauley Show even started, I told my kids that its odds weren’t great but that my definition of success was having the courage to try.”

That willingness to try is on display in Pauley’s current latest effort, Your Life Calling part of a Today-AARP collaboration. Her monthly show segments include interviews with people who are reinventing their lives.

To check out the next segment, tune into Today on Tuesday, October 19th between 8 and 9 a.m. Eastern.  Previous broadcasts can be found at aarp.org/jane.

What’s your “messy success” story?  Did you learn anything about how to be successful from a setback?  Leave a comment below, or email me at heathertaylormedia@gmail.com.

That question quickly came to mind while reading Justin Fox’s interview with Robert C. Pozen, in the Harvard Business Review. And although you may have never heard of him, Pozen has alot of useful advice to offer the rest of us when it comes to being more productive, to getting things done. (To read the interview in its entirety, check out http://s.hbr.org/ded4S.)

Pozen used to have two full time jobs, one as chairman of an investment management company and as a senior lecturer teaching a full class load at Harvard Business School. Now he’s become the chairman emeritus of the company, but still teaches at HBS, takes on alot of writing and speaking assignments, serves on corporate boards and provides support to a variety of non-profit groups.  (For argument’s sake, let’s call Pozen wildly successful.)

What I found so fascinating about the interview is how Pozen, clearly a very intelligent and professionally accomplished person, relies so heavily on preparation.  It’s as if he’s decided that intelligence and competence can take you only so far if you don’t plot out your path and make it routine.  He behaves like someone who views preparation and routine like a driver who’s chosen to put his car on cruise control or a pilot who chooses to put her plane on autopilot to ensure that he or she gets the desired outcome.  No leaving things to chance.

And it’s nothing complicated.  “Every night I look over a schedule of exactly what I’m going to do the next day…I’ll write down a few words about what I want to get accomplished,” says Pozen.  “Then, on the same page as the schedule, I’ll compose a list of tasks that I want to get done that day, in order of priority.  As the day goes by, I check off the tasks that are completed.  At the end of the day, I review the ones not done and decide when I should do them in the future — or to delete them if circumstances have changed.”

Those are the basics.  Pozen also describes how he adapts when his schedule changes unexpectedly and how including a 30 minute nap in his daily regimen improves his performance.  (To hear another advocate of napping at work, check out the Tony Schwartz interview from the Money Matters & More radio show.  Click on the media player on the right side of this page.)

What do you think?  Is Robert Pozen’s approach too simple to work for you?  If so, let us know what’s missing in his plan of action?

(Photo:  readyaimorganize.com)

If the GAP’s new logo really was a contender for the company’s new look, and was abandoned almost as quickly as it was rolled out, one question has to be asked:

Was it really serious?

Phrases like “focus groups,” “dry run” and “market research” come to mind, as in Why didn’t GAP use them effectively?

And because those phrases came so readily to mind from someone who’s not a marketing expert leads me to conclude one thing:  the GAP was pulling our leg.  The company perpetrated a brilliant stealth campaign to  get us to pay attention.  And guess what?

We did.

That said, the folks from the GAP viewed it somewhat differently:

“Since we rolled out an updated version of our logo last week on our website, we’ve seen an outpouring of comments from customers and the online community in support of the iconic blue box logo.

At Gap brand, our customers have always come first. We’ve been listening to and watching all of the comments this past week. We heard them say over and over again they are passionate about our blue box logo, and they want it back. So we’ve made the decision to do just that – we will bring it back across all channels.”

Hmm.

Do I hear the sound of the New Coke campaign jingle music of yesteryear, the music that heralded the launch of a new version of Coke, one that like the GAP logo, was also roundly rejected by the public?

And is there some significance to the fact that the lead villian, Mark Zuckerberg (played so brilliantly by the actor Jesse Eisenberg) wore a GAP hooded sweatshirt it in the new movie, The Social Network.  And now after having gotten our attention, does GAP hope to revitalize its image with the logo fiasco?

And is that similar to way critics have suggested Mark Zuckerberg did get our attention by announcing that he was giving New Jersey public schools $100 million dollars?

Talk about product placement.

What do you think?  Stealth campaign or genuine flub?

Leave a comment below, or email info to me at heathertaylormedia@gmail.com.

Page Six, the gossip column of The New York Post, a newspaper that’s been publishing almost continuously in the U.S. since the 19th century, picked up on the Tom Brokaw interview aired on Money Matters & More radio this past Friday.

In the Q & A with the veteran broadcast journalist and best-selling author, Brokaw recommended that  young people who are just starting out and looking for work in media and/or journalism to cast their net widely, to look overseas.

To hear a link to the interview, click on the media player in the white rectangular box to the right of this page, where it says, “Listen to Money Matters and More on Blogtalkradio.”

Delightful.

That’s a great way to describe interviewing Tom Brokaw.

In a fascinating interview in late August, the Emmy and Peabody award-winning broadcast journalist and best-selling author of The Greatest Generation reflected on how his career was shaped by the experience of growing up in a working-class community on a prairie in South Dakota.  A defining moment in his life, living out West is where he began to devour the printed word, (a habit no doubt shaped by the fact that he didn’t see a television until he was fifteen years old.), and where he began his successful path through the television broadcast industry.

What advice does he have for anyone interested in carving out a career in the media these days?

– Be mobile.

– Be willing to travel overseas, if that’s where the jobs are.

– Learn everything you can about changes in media.

To hear the interview in its entirety, be sure to check out tomorrow’s Money Matters & More interview at 1:00 p.m. on Blogtalkradio.com/money-matters–more.

Got questions about the broadcast?  Email me at heathertaylormedia@gmail.com, or leave a comment below.

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Can your business really be a success without the right combination of team players?

And can one business leader alone possess all the necessary qualities?

Not really, on either count, according to Paul Maritz, CEO of VMware, a software company.  In an interview for the Sunday’s New York Times business section, Maritz makes the case that few leaders possess more than one or two of the strengths they need to perform at the highest level.

To get the most out your company, Maritz advises that a company’s leadership team members should consist of the  following four types:

The strategist or visionary, “who sets the goals for where the organization needs to go”;

The classic manager, “who takes care of the organization, in terms of making sure that everybody knows what they need to do” and how the work performed will be measured;

The customer champion, “who empathizes and understands how customers will see [the product or service]“;

The enforcer, who says, “We’ve stared at this issue long enough.  We’re going to deal with whatever conflict we have.”

How does your team measure up, based on Maritz’s approach?  Did Maritz miss other essential types that a successful business needs?

(To read the interview, check out nytimes.com/businessday.)

Between the recent bad news on women’s wages (still unequal to men’s wages, in nearly every industry category) and the research from business expert Sharon Hadary in The Wall Street Journal this summer that found that women’s businesses are far smaller than men’s overall, the following news out of  the White House suggests that the Executive Branch is trying to turn things around on that score:

The White House Women’s Entrepreneurship Conference is being held on Monday, October 4th and “will bring together a mix of business owners, leaders from the women’s community, administration officials, academics and lenders to discuss the critical challenges, opportunities and solutions needed to move the women’s business agenda to the next level.”  Participants include Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC’s Morning Joe and Bobbi Brown, Founder of the cosmetics company, Bobbi Brown.

The White House will be broadcasting the Conference live at www.whitehouse.gov/live from 12:30 -1:30 p.m., for the opening panel and 3:30 p.m. for the closing remarks.

Are you invited to attend?  If so, please let Money Matters and More readers know what you thought of the event, by commenting below.

Why  should companies insist that employees take naps?

It’s just one of the many questions to be answered by Tony Schwartz, President & CEO of The Energy Project tomorrow on Blogtalkradio.com’s Money Matters & More at 9:30 a.m.

The author of the best-selling book, The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working and a Harvard Business Review blogger, Schwartz recently wrote about the value of companies encouraging their employees to take naps as a way of increasing their productivity.  In the Money Matters & More interview tomorrow, Schwartz will explain how high-performing companies like Ritz-Carlton and Google understand how better meeting the needs of their employees ultimately improves the bottom line.  Schwartz presents compelling scientific evidence from recent studies on pilots and others about why aspects of the old corporate climate need to change.

To hear the Money Matters & More radio show, click onto Blogtalkradio.com/money-matters–more at 9:30 a.m. (Eastern) tomorrow, Tuesday, September 28, 2010.

In the meantime, want to get a sense of your own well-being?   Check out The Energy Project’s free “energy audit,” at theenergyproject.com.

Let me know what you learned, by commenting below, or by emailing me at heathertaylormedia@gmail.com with your results.