What does a boss expect?

Yesterday I wrote about what I think it takes to be a boss. Today, I'm going to write about what your boss wants from you.

As I said yesterday, everyone has a boss. Your boss has a boss. His boss has a boss. And so on. There is an unending circle of trust and dependence that encompasses all of us (i.e., we all have a boss).

So, what does your boss want?

1. Solutions

I'm sure you've heard this before, but your boss wants solutions, not just problems. Sure it's your boss' job to help provide solutions, but it's your job too. Why to you think you were hired? How do you like it when someone comes to you with a problem, but no suggestions on how to solve it. Now think about how that would feel if it happened constantly, every day. It IS important that you let your boss know about problems. The flow of information is key, but it's also important that you bring a solution. If your boss is the only one doing the thinking, then what value are you adding to the mix? When you bring a problem, bring a solution with you. It may not be the right one, but it's better than coming in empty handed.

2. Multiple viewpoints

When you talk to your boss, it is important to bring your perspective to the situation. Your boss probably depends somewhat on your eyes and ears. Your insights are important. But you also need to make sure that you can see your boss' perspective on things. If you can't see each situation from both the trenches and from a leadership point of view, you aren't adding any value. Make sure you at least try to see things from your boss' perspective. This will help both of you.

3. Brevity

There is a reason why a document abstract is also called an "executve summary". It's because your boss often needs to get a quick overview of a situation. If your boss needs more information, he or she will ask you questions or read further. It's very important to be able to present a quick overview of the "lay of the land" at first. For your boss, context is often more important than detail.

4. Directness

This may be just another form of brevity, but I'm adding it in to my list anyway. A boss usually wants you to be direct. Worry more about communication than sparing anyone's feelings. Bosses have usually developed a pretty thick skin. If they haven't, they will. If you have a comment. Present it. Don't hold back. If you have a question. Ask. Don't apologize for asking. If you need something to do your job. Make the request. Don't over justify. Every good boss will solicit questions, comments, and requests. Don't be afraid to speak up. Communication is a two way street.

I'm not saying that by following all of these guidelines that you and your boss will always see eye to eye. You probably won't. But remembering these tips can sure help.

What else would you add to this list?

Let me know.

photo credit, shrubby

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How to be a boss.

A lot of people describe going into business for themselves as "being their own boss". But is this really true? Are you ever really your own boss?

Generally, everyone has someone else who has some sort of expectations of them. As an employee, you have a supervisor or manager of someone who expects something from you. Middle managers report to executives. Executives report to the board. The board members often represent investors who they must answer to. Even at home, your family has certain expectations of you as do your neighbors, your friends, etc. It's a never ending circle of responsibility and trust.

So, what is it that defines a boss? And what do people expect from you as the leader of a company?

There are a lot of components to this, but I think a lot of it boils down to being a trailblazer versus being a trail follower. If you are going to start your own business, you have to be ready to make your own path that others will follow.

Trailblazing isn't always creating something completely new. One analogy might be an artist who learned the basics and then tried something new and started a movement. The artist understood all of the basics of the systems and techniques that other artists use and then decided what to change and when to break free of the known path and become a trailblazer. (Think Picasso, Kandinksy, Matisse, Monet, Pollock, Van Gogh, etc.)

How do you become a trailblazer for your business? Learn the systems, rules and techniques that govern your business. See if you can figure out what parts of those systems are useful and what parts need to be changed to create a new path that gets you to where you want to go. Then lead your company through that rough, bumpy ground and make a new trail that others will want to follow.

The great companies and the heroes in popular literature are filled with these type of trailblazers: Jobs and Wozniak, Brin and Page, Gates, Luke Skywalker, Neo. (Yeah, I just put Neo and Gates in the same sentence...cheesy, but you get the point, right?) These are people or characters who understand the systems they exist within and have figured out a way to change, tweak, interrupt or interfere with those systems to create something new.

If you are the boss, you are the one who needs to create the trail that others will follow. And there will be many times when you are left with no choice but to create your own trail. You will be faced with decisions where there are no good choices. You will find yourself put into situations where none of the standard answers you've learned are feasible. You will have to do more with less. And you will be the one that needs to help others understand why the path you chose is one they should be on too.

What trails will you blaze? How will you change systems to create something new?

photo credit, jayriot

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Success feeds on itself.

Last week my daughter got a new game for her Nintendo DS. It was a dreary day outside and so she spent nearly the whole day playing the game. By the end of the day, she had "beaten" the game. The next day, she "beat" the game about 3 more times. Each time she beat it faster than the last time and did a little better. Each success excited her a little more and fed her desire to try again and do a little better still.

This is a great illustration of how success can feed on itself in business too. Each time you close a deal, do a product release, hire a new employee or create a new partnership, you learn a little bit and hopefully you use that knowledge to do a little better and go a little faster the next time.

Visible successes can also be a great motivator for your company. If you've got the right people on your team, they have as much a desire to be part of an organization that succeeds and shows visible results as you do. As employees see the company starting to win and making progress, it helps to create a little more motivation and a little more enthusiasm. Once your employees see that what they are doing generates successes, they will continue to do it.

Of course, you've got to make sure that you are doing the right things to "win" whatever game it is that your company is playing. And you have to think about how you can "win" a little faster or do a little better each time.

Bertrand Russel said, "Most men would rather die, than think. Many do." You can't let your failures drive you into thoughtlessly reacting to try to create a success. If you find that there is something that you aren't doing well, maybe you shouldn't be doing it. Setting up a new task force or tiger team isn't likely to make your company good at something that it has repeatedly failed at.

Once you find what you do well, keep repeating it and do a little better each time. Make sure the results are visible to the rest of your company. Use the momentum and motivation that successes generate to drive more success.

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It's never too late.

A friend of mine had a saying which I've always liked. "It's never too late to become the person you've always wanted to be." It might be a well known quotation from someone famous. I'm not sure, but I've always attributed it to my buddy, Jim.

I admire Jim because he is the kind of person who decides what he wantes to do and then somehow figures out a way to be able to do it. For example, at one point he decided that he wanted to spend a few years in Europe. And he got a job and a flat in the UK. He wanted to become a writer. He studied writing relentlessly. He even attended a writing school. Not every move he made was the smartest (sorry, Jim), but he wasn't afraid to keep trying. And, eventually, he usually got there.

The same thing is true in business. It's never too late. There is no reason you have to keep doing the same thing over and over just because that's what you've been doing in the past. You need to constantly be working to refine your processes and your business.

In the book Good to Great, Jim Collins (not the Jim from the first paragraph) talks about the breakthroughs that great companies have made. This is the point of transition where a company seemingly pulls itself out of mediocracy into greatness. This is the point where you start to see articles mentioning the company published on a regular basis. This is the point where their stock chart hits the heel of that hockey stick shape and starts to rise rapidly.

The interesting thing is that none of the companies that Collins talks about could point to any one defining moment that pushed them into greatness. The dramatic positive change was simply the result of many previous smaller tweaks that each company had made. At some point, the convergence of all of these tweaks begins to drive the company forward to become something that is more than the sum of it's individual parts.

Just like my friend, Jim, and the great companies that Jim Collins talks about, your company can become what you want it to be. You can't let your short-term obstacles stop you from trying new things and constantly refining your business.

Jim had to pay his bills and feed and clothe himself just like everyone else on the planet. He didn't have a trust fund or a windfall from some dot-com sellout. But he also didn't make excuses. He took action.

Just like my buddy, the great companies Jim Collins talks about all had significant short-term pressures that they had to deal with. But they never lost sight of what they wanted to become and they made the changes necessary to get there in spite of their circumstances and other pressures.

What action can you take today to help your company become the business you've always wanted?


photo credit, iamwahid

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Startup Spotlight: Reza Hussein on Jambool

Recently, I had the opportunity to talk with Reza Hussein, the CTO and co-founder of Jambool about their recent $5 million round of funding and about how Jambool got on the road to success.

Some background on Jambool. It was co-founded in 2006 by Hussein and his business partner Vikas Gupta. Both partners are long-time veterans of Amazon and worked with each other while there. Hussein and Gupta both had a desire to break out on their own and do "something different." Jambool originally produced web-based collaborative research applications and games that run on social networks such as Facebook. Indeed, they have several popular applications currently in heavy use on Facebook. About a year ago, the team decided to move away from the end-user applications space and develop Social Gold, a payments system for use in managing virtual currencies. It was this move that provided Jambool with their greatest success and led to the recent round of funding.

Hussein describes Social Gold as "a seamless in-app payments system for social games and applications with analytics for optimizing your virtual economy" in comparison with some other competitors who he describes as "analytics systems with payments" or just "basic payments systems". The space does seem to be heating up. In fact, there have been a couple of recent acquisitions in the space over the last year or so. Spare Change was acquired by PlaySpan earlier this year and Two Fish was scooped up by Live Gamer last month.

In some ways, even PayPal could be considered a competitor to these micropayment management systems. Hussein explained that while their system is primarily used in online games today, its functionality certainly doesn't limit it to that market. He says that their real target is any site which offers the use of a digital asset or a virtual currency in exchange for real money. The one parameter they insist on is that the virtual currency must be based on a real-world monetary system.

Some games or applications have multiple virtual currencies. Some currencies are "earned" as you gain more experience. Other currencies are purchased with real money. It's the latter of these currency types that Jambool is focused on. Anyone who has played World of Warcraft or used Wii points to download an application to their Wii console has used a virtual currency.

It seems like there is a new type of virtual currency popping up every day on some new application or game on the various social media sites. Hussein predicts that someday virtual currencies may be as reliable and valuable as Dollars or Euros. (Now we just need someone to develop an exchange to help us convert our Green Patch points into World of Warcraft points.)

The prospect of this exploding market could be part of what got Madrona and Bay Partners to dive in on this recent $5 million series B funding round. In addition, Hussein explained some of his other theories about why Madrona and Bay bet on Jambool.

He said that over the past couple of years Jambool has tried to attack several different markets in this area of social or collaborative applications. Each step of the way, they have kept Madrona and Bay Partners in the loop, constantly running ideas by them and getting feedback. They picked their funding partners, in part, because Hussein and Gupta knew people there who were familiar with the their background at Amazon and believed that the combination of Hussein and Gupta made a good team. Their history of working together and having proven that they could deliver is part of what made Jambool a good bet.

In addition to their successes at Amazon, they had shown Madrona and Bay that they had the ability to deliver results on their own. Many of Jambool's apps are consistently ranked in the very top of the pack based on number of users. The team had shown that they were able to take an unknown business, an unproven business plan and create a name in the industry that is now widely recognized by application developers in their space.

Hussein told me that the obstacles that once seemed so large are now small in retrospect. He recalled the difficulty of the days when they were trying to just get their foot in the door and get their product "out there". (Note: stay tuned for more information on marketing and PR for early stage businesses next week when I'll share my discussion with Gail Kent of The Buzz Factory.)

Hussein credits several things with getting over their obstacles. They brought on a full-time person responsible for business development. They also found an advisor who helped point them in the right direction. Hussein insists that having an advisor is paramount to a start up. He explains that it should be someone who isn't like you. You want to make sure that you get a different perspective on your ideas.

The team also made sure they were very "pluged-in" to their industry. They knew the space, in part, because they had worked on payment related software while at Amazon. Many of the people who now work at Jambool worked with them at one time or another at Amazon. They also knew many of the developers of other Facebook applications through their previous application development experience. Staying close to those developers helped them tap into that network. This helped them understand what their customers wanted and gave them insight into features that resonated.

Hussein also said that getting funding was "not as easy as it was before, but we did as well as anyone else." We discussed the fact that the days of getting funding for an idea written on a cocktail napkin are long gone. Today, you need to build something great, keep metrics on your business and then ask for funding. Hussein reiterated how important it is to be able to demonstrate your track record with real metrics.

Additionally, Hussein made one last interesting point. When we talked about Jambool's change from collaborative applications to social gaming to payments, he said that sometimes you have to be willing to throw out some things that you might have worked very hard on for a very long time to focus on what will make you successful.

In summary: get an advisor, build something that resonates, stay tuned-in to your industry, keep good metrics and track your progress. Remember that you need to prove to your funding partners why you are a good bet. A proven track record is the best way to do that. Make sure you keep your partners in the loop.

CrunchBase Information

Jambool

Madrona Venture Group

Bay Partners

Information provided by CrunchBase

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Two's company...three's a community.

Every start up could probably use more resources. One great way to get some help is to outsource work to your community of followers. Whether they are customers or just fans, you can find some great resources out there.

Now, I don't pretend to be an expert in social media or crowd sourcing. There are tons of people who claim to be experts in these subjects, and there are a few people who are really outstanding in this field. I encourage you to read their blogs, follow them on twitter and read their books. One of the best I've seen is Chris Brogan. Read his blog and be sure to check out his new book Trust Agents too.

But back to your business. If you want, you can really get a lot out of a community of followers for your business. Social media is more than just a marketing tool. Let's look at some other ideas.

Product Innovation

Find a way to engage your community of users in the development of new ideas for your product. Build a gated online presence for your power users and let them suggest ideas or vote on ideas that you come up with. Get them engaged in helping you determine the direction of your product. There is an awesome tool called Ideascope that can help you manage this type of community. But you can also use just about any content management system if you are clever and have a plan.

When getting product feedback from a community, remember that you don't necessarily need to do everything in exactly the way that your community suggests. Look for trends and themes. Figure out what problems your users are trying to solve with their suggestions. And when you put some of their ideas into your roadmap and get them into your product, be sure to let them know. Show them that you listened and foster a trust relationship.

Product Development

There are a lot of ways to access a community of developers and engage them. The most obvious way is to create an open source product or a set of open source tools to customize your product. This can be risky and you need to have all of your ducks in a row before you open up a codebase to the public. Make sure you have your licensing set the way you want. And make sure you have some experience in managing an open codebase. Once you let this type of beast out of the cage, it's almost impossible to get it back in. If you do it right though, you can reap some huge rewards. Check out Coupa as one example of a company who has had some success using this model.

Another great way to engage a community of developers is to have a great API that allows the development of third party tools and products that can use your product. There are tons of great examples of this. Twitter is probably the most often cited recent example of a web-based product that has a rich and open API allowing developers to create really great products and services around the core application.

If you do decide to develop an open API, make sure it's meaningful and not just a toy. If all you can do with your API is create web page widgets that provide a data feed, it might be interesting; but you won't see the type of innovation that a fuller, richer API can generate.

Product Support

Create a forum where users of your product can share ideas and help each other. Let them ask questions. Let them answer each other's questions. Let them post about their own experiences and how they have solved some problem using your product. Your support desk probably provides solutions to some of the same problems over and over. Get that information into a forum where other users can access it too.

If you can use your product to solve some problem that is common to many of your users, don't tell them one-by-one, have your subject matter experts tell everyone in your user community at the same time. This type of community can also be used as a forum to explain new features in upcoming releases and how they can be used as well. There are a lot of great forum management tools out there that are very inexpensive and easy to manage.

Manage your community

Getting your community engaged is more than just setting up a server and letting it run. You need to do some planning. It's probably a good idea to have someone dedicated to managing and maintaining the community. Figure out what the goals are for each of your communities and then put together a plan for getting from ground zero to your target. Spend some time thinking through the stages you will need to go through and what you think it will take to get through each stage. Don't make your plans overly complex though. If they are too complicated, you probably won't be able to sustain it. Keep it simple and sustainable.

When choosing the tools you want to use to manage your community, make sure you choose the tool that fits your goals. Don't try to force your goals onto a tool not designed for it just because you think the tool is cool.

You also need to put some plans in place to keep things civil in your community. I don't really like the word "police" when talking about managing a community, but you do need to set some rules and make sure you enforce them. Maybe "govern" is a better word. Either way, make sure you have guidelines and have thought about ways to ensure that conflicts that might arise don't destroy the benefits that a community can bring.

Be sure to watch other communities to see what the trends are. Those same trends are likely to affect you as well. Look at how Wikipedia is managing the "noise" generated by requiring more moderation as their community grows. Look at communities of different sizes. What percentage of the users are generating the content? Does that change as the communities grow? How do people like to interact with communities? Do they like to go to the website? Do they want to get daily summary information in their inbox? Watch the trends and adapt.

When you're ready to go, market your community just like you would the rest of your company. A great community can be just as much of a value-add as anything else your company does.

How have you used crowd sourcing to help your start up?

photo credit, michelini

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Do you have enough gas to get there?

Measuring progress is something that has been on my mind a lot recently. I've been looking at a couple of different businesses that don't really measure very much about themselves other than their revenue. To me this is sort of like measuring a car trip only by looking at your speedometer. You might be ignoring things like: Are you on the right road? Are you getting closer to your destination? Is your engine overheating? Do you have enough gas to get there? All of those things are important, but so many businesses don't do a very good job at measuring them.

I'm a big fan of metrics and I know it will make me sound like a huge geek, but I love to pick apart systems and figure out how they work and what could make them work better. Yesterday I wrote about some lessons I learned in my career. In a recent post about how to measure your growth, (Size Matters--part 2), I talked about some specific metrics to gather and how to incorporate those into a feedback loop to refine the process of growing your company. Both of those posts are really about the same thing: Tweaking your systems to achieve the results you want. Today I wanted to just mention a few other ways to measure your performance.

Win-loss reports

After a sales cycle, you should do a win-loss report with the customer to figure out why you won or lost. You are making a big investment in sales and marketing. Why would you continue to invest in something if you don't understand the return? Win-loss is the best way to understand this.

Project post-mortems

After an implementation or software development project, do a post mortem. What helped your project? What hurt it? How good were your estimates of time or resources needed for different tasks? Why were they incorrect? How can you improve next time? No matter how well, you think you are doing, there is always room for improvement.

Employee Reviews

Do you conduct annual employee reviews? Most high-tech companies spend a very large portion of their annual budget on people. In addition to your other systems, you can tweak the performance of each individual. Have their managers work with them to figure out what they are doing well and where they need improvement. Give them some feedback.

Audits

There are a lot of different kinds of audits: financial, security, tax, etc. Do you do them just so you can comply with regulations? Or do you use them to understand where your problems are and figure out how to correct the problems? Audits are a great source of real data.

Often looking at data generates more questions than it answers. If that's the case, don't reject the data as useless, figure out how to get the data you need and then continue. Don't let that stop you.

Also, remember that you don't have to have all of your measurement systems in place to show improvement. It takes time to build up to a place where you are able to do all of these things effectively. If you can't do a full post-mortem of your project this time, take your team to lunch and spend 30 minutes talking to them about what went right and what went wrong. Any data is better than no data.

Constant improvement depends on understanding your process, figuring out how to measure your success or failures and then modifying your process to achieve better performance the next time you go through that process.

What sort of things do you measure about your business? How do you use that data to improve? I'd love to know.


photo credit, mbylow

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Lessons Learned

"When things get tough, the tough get going." That's what you always hear people say. It's a trite, but sometimes true. Are they talking about just doggedly slogging through whatever comes their way or is it something else? In my life, when times got tough, I always been able to get through them one way or another. Sometimes I end up with more scars than others.

For every brilliant move I've made, there have been ten other situations that I've stumbled through. Some of them are funny. And come are painful. I can either lock those stumbling, scarring, embarassing experiences away in the closet and hope they never surface again or I can dissect them and try to figure out what lessons they are teaching me. Today I'd like to share a few lessons I've learned from some tough experiences.

Let's get started...

Be humble -- ask questions

If you're used to being the student at the head of the class--the one who knows all the answers--sometimes its tough to step back and admit to yourself (and others) that you just don't understand what's going on. As much as you may want it to seem like you know everything, that's impossible. And nobody really expects you to know everything--except possibly you.

Years ago a friend and mentor once told me, "Even a fool can teach you something." I always liked that saying and it's a good one to remember when you are confused. The best thing you can do when you don't understand something is to ask questions and learn. That's not to say that everyone you ask questions of is a fool. The point is that nobody knows everything, but everyone has some morsel of knowledge to share.

It's up to you to ask the right questions and to listen to the answers, though. The second half of this lesson is to keep on asking questions until it makes complete sense to you. Don't just take the first answer you get. Keep digging until you are completely satisfied and feel like you have a complete grasp of the situation. Make yourself teachable. And ask. Ask. Ask.

Details are important -- have a plan

You've probably heard people say, "I'm a big-picture guy." Well, I'm here to tell you that a big picture is always an incomplete picture. There's a reason that the saying, "the devil is in the details" is so popular. It's true. Don't rush into something without doing the necessary detailed planning. It doesn't mean that you, as a leader, have to come up with the all of the plans for your company all on your own, but you need to make sure that you understand them. You may not be the one executing the plan, but you are definitely the one responsible if the plan fails.

Once you have a plan, you also need to make sure that it's executed properly. Part of the plan should include ways to monitor the progress. You need to be able to figure out how well the plan is working and whether or not you will have to make adjustments along the way. There's a crude saying that I've found to be rather true in business. "Crap rolls uphill." That means, that if your team fails to deliver, it's your fault. Don't make excuses for failure by citing someone else's mistakes. Make a plan. Understand it. Monitor it. Details ARE important.

Don't be "religious" about your arguments - learn to "let it go"

Sometimes, in the course of business, arguments about certain topics can get passionate and heated. That shows that people have a lot of ownership of their ideas and genuinely believe in what they are doing. This is type of zeal can be a great motivator and can really help you harness your energy to accomplish great things. But zeal doesn't win arguments.

Just because you are passionate about something doesn't mean that you are right. Whether you are an Intern, a Developer, a Director or the CEO, you have someone to answer to and someone who will argue with you about your ideas or plans. Sometimes you just won't win an argument. For me, it was tough (and still is sometimes) to learn when to stop arguing. Once you've lost (or won), let it go. Move on. Get back to work. If you find yourself stewing about it, take a walk. Play a game. Do something different to get your mind off of it. Just. Let. It. Go.

Be open to alternatives - YOUR plan may not be the best

Sometimes I've come up with what I felt was a great solution to some problem at work, but when I present the solution my boss or the customer they seemed skeptical or just weren't as excited about it as I was. Sometimes you can feel like you KNOW that you have the best solution (I know I feel like this sometimes), but it's not well received. It may be difficult for you to understand why everyone else isn't as excited as you are.

At times like these, you need to take a step back and take a second look at the problem you are trying to solve. Instead of putting all of your effort into trying to convince others that you have the answer, sometimes you have to take a look at what problems you are trying to solve and realize that there may be another way to solve them. Remember, it's not YOUR solution that's important; it's solving the problem that's important.

Whether or not your plan is the most efficient or makes the most sense to you may be irrelevant in some situations. As part of a team, you sometimes have to compromise. Don't settle, but do compromise. The best solution is the one that both solves the problem and has buy-in from your team. Always keep an open mind.


Thanks for taking the time to read this. I hope that some of these thoughts resonate with you in some way. I've always found that learning that someone else who has the same problems I do, makes them seem smaller and easier to get around somehow. What are some of your obstacles? What have they taught you? I'd love to learn from you.

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Who's going to eat your lunch?

Do you ever feel like you have are constantly fighting for your business? Business can be cut-throat sometimes. You have to keep your attention focused on delivering results to your customers while keeping one eye on your competitors. Here are a few suggestions on how to keep your competitors from encroaching on your territory.

Make friends with your enemies.

You know the old saying, "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer." Well, one of the best ways to understand your competitors is to get close to them. The closer the better. Just because you spend time in the boxing ring with someone doesn't mean you can't be friends.

Usually, competitors don't compete in every area of your business. There are often significant areas where your business doesn't overlap. One way to get closer to your competition is to find ways to partner with other companies. Figure out how to address business that neither of you would otherwise be able to address on your own.

Another way to get close is to find a common enemy and work with to overtake that target. You see this happen all the time in business. A recent notable example is Yahoo and Microsoft joining forces to take on Google. There are even more opportunities for smaller businesses.

Trade shows or industry conferences are also great venues to talk about business with your competitors. Don't focus all your energy on your customers or the presenters. Make sure you walk around and meet the competition. Talk to them. Make friends. I guarantee that relationship will come in handy one day.

When you talk to the competition, don't just focus on the things that you can see from afar such as product features or their marketing campaigns. Ask about their partnerships, their sales strategy, their hiring practices, their funding activities. What is working for them? What isn't? They won't tell you everything, but you never know what they might say until you ask.

When you talk to your competition, reciprocate. Share some things about yourself too. Don't share anything that's confidential, but if you get a little, give a little. Sharing ideas can help both of you attack the market more effectively and grow business for both of you. You might have wondered if advertising in a certain publication would be worth it or not. Maybe your competitor can share his insights about it.

Sharing information with the competition is especially helpful in small or emerging markets where everyone is still trying to find their way. Even if the competition behaves like they have it all figured out, many of the same things keep them awake at night.

Make sure you have good peripheral vision.

You can only mitigate risks that you know about. If you're smart, you will think about the risks to your business and plan around those risks as much as possible. Whatch for the things that come out of left field. It's like the Donald Rumsfeld quotation, "there are unknown unknowns." Those are the things that will kill you.

How can you protect yourself from the unpredicatble? You can't. The secret is to constantly learn as much as you can. Minimize those unknowns as much as possible. Don't be afraid to ask questions. Ask your customers and potential customers what other ways they might have thought about solving the problems that you are trying to solve for them. Maybe there is something out there that you didn't know about.

Find others in similar lines of business. Ask what sort of risks they see for your market. Try to learn something new about your market every day.

Figure out what the barrier to entering your market. That can help give you an idea of the types of people or companies who might have the desire and the ability to become a competitor. Keep your eye on those companies too. Just because someone isn't a competitor today, doesn't mean they won't be a competitor tomorrow.

Know your customers.

Risks don't just come from competitors. Things happen inside your customers' companies that create risk for your business with them. Don't ever let yourself get into a situation where a customer move surprises you. Make sure you know your customers intimately.

Don't limit your scope of interest in your customer to just the users of your product or to the problems that your company helps them solve. Try to figure out what other challenges your customers may have. Maybe there is someone else solving a different problem for your customer that will eventually overlap with your business. You should be able to predict what sort of relationship your customers will have with your company at least a year in advance. If you can't see that far out, it's a good sign you don't know that customer well enough.

If your customers are consumers be sure to connect with them too. Encourage feedback. Show them that you listen. Customers are great sources of knowledge about the competition. Talk to them and let them help you find ways to make your product "stickier" and foster loyalty.

How do you figure out who's going to eat your lunch?


photo credit, januszek

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Tech Friday Cheers

Today I'm going to mention a couple of notable start-ups that have recently received funding. Congrats to them. It's tough out there. I'd love to hear your opinions on these start ups too.

Lijit

Lijit Networks makes a search engine that works within your own social network. You add a Lijit search "wijit" to your web page or blog and give it some feeds from the social networking services that you use, from your blog, from your friends' blogs, or from blogs or other sources of information that you follow. So, when someone searches for something, it returns targeted search results from those selected sources.

Plus, if you do a search using Lijit from my site and then click on a link that takes you to the content on one of the sites in my social network, it does what's called a "research" from the "Lijit wijit" on the target site as well. This is basically an automatic search on the same keyword, but across the target site's social network.

It's sort of like asking a friend a question and having that friend tell you what they think and then point you to other friends who might have more information. And then you ask each of them the same question and you get their answers too. And so on...'

In addition to the nice functionality, the "wijit" itself is highly customizable and fits nicely into just about any website. Installation is also a breeze and they even automate most of the process for popular sites out there. Oh, and did I mention that there are analytics for both site visits and search already built in? Awesome.

Lijit recently received their series C financing of $7.1 million in funding led by the Foundry Group.

Linksify

Linksify is an address book service that can synchronize multiple contact lists including those on some mobile devices (iPhone, BlackBerry, and Windows Mobile device for now). It also has the ability to present different "faces" to different people. You can put people in your contact list into three catagories: acquaintances, personal contacts, and work contacts. These different faces are called "webcards". You can present different information about yourself as well as share different contact lists on each of these "webcards".

In addition to basic contact information, it also can provide links to your presence on to many of the popular social network sites and blogs.

One interesting feature of the service is the "passkey". It's a code that you can select and share with individuals or groups which provides a pre-authorization for that user to connect with you on the service.

Linksify recently received $500,000 in funding from an angel investor, Jon Fisher.

Check out these companies. Let me know what you think about them. What other up-and-coming start ups do you see out there?

CrunchBase Information

Lijit

Foundry Group

Linksify

Jon Fisher

Information provided by CrunchBase

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Size Matters (part 2 - measure your progress)

Metrics are a critical part of any business. For early stage businesses, they are even more critical. In a recent conversation with Reza Hussein (one of the co-founders of the successful startup, Social Gold), he credited good metrics as one of the key factors that was critical to his business receiving its recent funding round.

In part one of this series, I mentioned that you should be measuring your growth in a number of different ways. Today I'll give you some ideas for a few different metrics you should use when measuring your progress.

Think about your metrics in terms of a feedback loop. You want to convert your idea into a product, build it, acquire customers, get feedback and use that feedback to generate more ideas which you then build into a product, etc. You need to conduct measurements at each stage of this cycle. There are tons of different numbers that you can look at, and the right ones to use will be different for each business. So you will have to put some analysis into what you need to track. The concepts I'm outlining here probably apply in many cases though.

Find your market

This is all about attracting potential customers. If you are providing a web-based business, this would be the number of people who visit your site. In this case, you should measure things like how many visitors you get (this is the no-brainer metric) and where they come from (this helps you figure out what channels help drive traffic to your site).

If you sell through more traditional channels, you need to think in terms of how many potential customers you have developed some sort of a connection with. For example, it could be as simple as the people you have met at a trade show. Presumably, those people were there because they were interested in something like what you have to offer and you made some sort of contact with them.

Get a customer

This may seem like an absurdly over simplification of something you know you need to do. But the important thing here is to figure out what your conversion rate from your market to your customer base is. Did your customers come from those people who visited your website? Did they come from people who you met? Some other source? What is the rate of conversion of a potential customer into a customer. How efficient are you at converting? Are there trends in customer acquisition based on the channel from which you acquired customers? (In other words, did 95% of your new customers come from contacts at that recent trade show? Or from clicking on a recent Google adwords campaign?)

This metric helps you determine which marketing campaigns are most lucrative. You can also figure out nifty things like the cost of acquiring a customer.

There is also something that is a little bit in between your market and your customers. These are people who you tried to close a deal with, but for one reason or another, you lost the sale. On a website maybe it's someone who went part way through your registration process, but didn't finish. Maybe its someone who abandoned their shopping cart. Maybe its someone who you sent a proposal to, but you never got that contract. See if you can figure out why. Were your terms and conditions problematic? Was the price too high? What the product not what they thought it would be? This is sort of the opposite to your acquisition rate. I just call it the rate of failed sales. This data is gold.

Keep that customer

Again, this seems like a no-brainer, but you need to measure it. How many customers come back again and again? How many customers buy once and walk away? What makes the ones who return time after time keep coming back? What made your one-timers lose interest? You may not be able to figure out the reasons why each and every customer left, but higher retention rates are, of course, better. (Hint: see if you can correlate this data to the channel you used to acquire your customers.)

Get referrals

If you have a great product that resonates in your market, you will get referrals. See if you can figure out how much of your business came from referrals. Start an affiliate plan. Have customers fill out a survey. Maybe just ask them and keep track. Who referred them? Why?

You should also ask your current customers if they would be willing to be a referral for you to other potential customers. (Hint: If you do ask and a large percentage of your customers say "no", you have a problem.) You can then use these willing referrers to provide feedback to the rest of your market and specifically to the potential customers who are in your current sales pipeline. Think of this as your own personal social network. Use it to your advantage. It's like having people pay you to sell your product.

Make money

Another "duh" item on your corporate task list. But there is probably no more important metric you need to keep track of. Are your revenues growing? At what rate? If you have seen spikes or troughs in your revenue, see what internal or external events you can match those up with. What are the trends? Can you accurately predict your future revenue?

How scalable is your model?

Now that you know how much money you are making, figure out how much it costs you to deliver your product or service. If your model relies on a user paying a subscription fee, you may want to look at things like cost per user and how that metric changes as you acquire more users. How much money will you make when you have 100 users. 1,000? 100,000? How does the rate of return change at each tier?

Use these metrics when looking at your feedback loop. See what you can learn from your metrics. Use them to tweak your processes, your product, your marketing and even your entire business model. The only way to be successful without using metrics is to be lucky. Most banks won't invest money in luck.

What metrics do you use?


photo credit, nkzs

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The Great Communicator

Different CEOs have different communication styles when talking to their employees. Each style has pros and cons. Which style does your company fit into? What do you think the pros and cons are?

Style 1: The Dick Cheney

Definition: Everything -- and I mean EVERYTHING -- is a secret. Nothing should be shared with anyone unless you have at least two NDAs and a "need to know".

Anything you are told should be kept to yourself. Discussing ANYTHING with ANYONE is immediate grounds for termination (and we're not talking just getting fired here).

Ok, so that definition was a little overkill. I don't really know anyone who is like that. (Well, maybe one person.) But you get the idea. This type of leader doesn't want to share information. It's not that he doesn't have any information to share, it's that he wants to protect ideas and keep people focused on what they are doing. The thought is that information that could be construed as negative might cause employees to leave the company out of fear or that one of the employees might leak that information to an outside source and it could be used against the company by competitors. This CEO also believes that some negative information might cause some customers to lose faith in the company and thus the company could lose business.

Pros: This communication style definitely prevents any information that shouldn't be shared from leaking.

Cons: The biggest problem with this communication style is that misinformation is often more damning than real information. Employees, customers and analysts can all tell when something is wrong. There are usually other signs that can't be kept secret. As soon as anyone starts to notice these signs, they start trying to figure out what the reasons are. If they aren't given the real reason, they will inevitably start thinking about what the reasons might be. Just like nature, information abhors a vacuum, and stories will be made to fill the void. Most of the time, these stories will be much more dramatic than the truth. These fabricated stories will get shared and will often cause more disruption and damage than the real stories.

Style 2: The Fairy Tale Teller

Definition: No matter what this CEO says, it always has a happy ending. Everything is sunshine and clear skies. No matter what the truth is, the CEO tells everyone that the company couldn't be doing better and everyone will probably be millionaires in a couple of years. No matter how bad the news is, there is always some sort of hopeful message presented even when there is no hope. This is the sort of leader whose employees will come in to work one morning and be shocked to learn that the company just went out of business.

Pros: People naturally like to believe good news. It seems to be somehow ingrained into human nature to believe a happy story. It makes people feel good and happy employees are generally productive.

Cons: Often, this communication style comes from a leader who not only wants to keep employees productive, but is also afraid of confronting real problems. If you only give your employees good news, they won't understand what they might be doing wrong as a company. They won't know what to do differently to fix some of the very real problems that might need fixing. Most employees WANT a company to be successful and they want to contribute to that success. But they can't help fix things if they don't know what the problems are.

Style 3: The Under Communicator

Definition: This CEO tries to communicate, but doesn't do an effective job. She will make a statement, but not provide a complete explanation. This person might walk into a room and make a statement such as, "I have to go call our accountant about a problem now." And leave it at that. Everyone else is left wondering if the company is going to be able to meet payroll while the truth might be that she just wanted to make sure that the wads of extra cash in the company's bank account are invested properly.

Pros: At least the employees get SOME information about what's happening.

Cons: This communication style is almost as bad as The Dick Cheney. Information that is left unsaid will be filled in by employees overactive imaginations. It often leads to rumors or unfounded worry. The lesson here is that if you are going to say something, you need to provide sufficient context for everyone in earshot to have a complete understanding. They can't read your mind and often won't know what you mean unless you back up and tell the whole story.

Style 4: The Great Communicator

Definition: There is a reason that Ronald Reagan was called the Great Communicator. A CEO like Reagan will explain his thoughts, provide context, back up statements with facts, won't pull punches and will provide praise when it's due. When times are bad, he will fully explain the problems to his employees and will have confidence that they will help the company do what is needed to surmount those obstacles. When times are good, he will provide praise, celebrate and then challenge the company to achieve even more.

Pros: Good communication is one key to making sure you have engaged, hard working, committed employees who feel like they are a valued and trusted part of the company.

Cons: This communication style does not come naturally to most people. You have to work at it. It means setting aside time that you dedicate to thinking about what you will say to your company and making the effort to communicate with your employees. It means being thoughtful about what you say and how you say it. It means knowing your employees well enough to provide the useful context that will engage and encourage them.

What kind of communicator are you? What will it take for you to become a great communicator? Its never too late to become the kind of communicator you should be. Take some time today to communicate with your staff. They'll appreciate it.

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Size matters (part 1 -- growing your business)

A common mistake in start ups is not expecting to succeed. I'm sure you want to succeed and that you hope you will succeed. But if you don't plan to succeed, you will -- at the very least -- have some troubles later on. At the worst, your company could suffer irreparable damage to its reputation as you try to scale your company.

It's worth going through the exercise of looking at each functional area in your company as you think about how to scale a start up.

Product Management - Sure, your first idea was great. That's why you started the company, but how do you ensure continued success? How do you know that your next idea or the next version of your product will be as good?

Software Development and Delivery - Your developers created platform that works great when you have 1,000 users, but what happens when you have 100,000? 1,000,000? 10,000,000? Will your platform continue to work? Will you just have to add more hardware? Or will you have to do a wholesale re-write of your system?

Customer Support - You have developed intimate relationships with your first few customers. They love it. You understand them and their needs. When they call you and ask for help, you may even know them by name. How can you make sure that you still provide excellent customer service to all your customers as you grow?

Sales - The first few sales were probably done by the founders. They may even have been to people the founders know personally. What happens when you need to sell more? How can you ensure that every sales person understands the product well enough to sell it effectively? Are they all selling the same thing? Are they selling at the right price?

Marketing - You made a kick-ass website to show the world you are a real company. What else should you do? What do you say to the analyst community? How do you share a complete and consistent message to the world?

The Executive Team - When it was just you and your buddy, everything was very clear. Who else should be on your executive team? How do the executives connect to marketing, sales, development, operations, etc? What contributions should you expect from an executive? Should you still be running the show as your company grows?

In all areas of your company, you can look at growth a few different ways. The first thing you usually think about with growth are the metrics. How should you measure your company's growth? Revenue? Number of subscribers? Number of licenses sold? Number of end users?

Another way to look at growth is bottlenecks. What are the things that will prevent you from growing? Is your company very dependent on people to execute your service? Will the number of employees be a limitation to growth? Will location limit your ability to grow? Is there simply not enough of a market in the type of customers you have been targeting? Do you need to start looking at selling to new industries? Do you need to make tweaks or wholesale sweeping changes to your product to access a larger market? Do you need more funding? If so, what will you use it for?

In future posts in this series, I'll talk about each of these areas and will use as many specific examples of real-life companies as possible. There are companies out there who have done all of these well. There are also some companies who have failed -- and sometimes recovered -- from these mistakes.

Why not spend some time thinking about the growth of your company today? What does growth mean for you? How will you get from where you are today to the next stage in your company's evolution? It's easier to make plans now than to correct mistakes later.


photo credit, monomatt

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Use the "AND Formula" to Hire the Right People

Your company won't be successful if you don't hire the right people. Sometimes people think that by hiring a bunch of smart people, they will be successful. Or they think that by hiring a lot of people who can simply execute the leader's grand vision, they will be successful. Those may seem like good theories, but in reality they just don't work. You need to have the RIGHT people in your company, not just the smart ones or the ones who have the right skills to execute your vision.

There are a lot of components to hiring the RIGHT person, but today I'm just going to focus on the "BUT formula" vs. the "AND formula" for describing an employee.

I've heard managers make excuses for some employees. Those excuses usually fit the following "BUT formula":

There is this bad trait about this person, BUT there is some redeeming trait.

Usually, managers use the redeeming trait to excuse the bad trait. Or they think that they need the good trait, so they put up with the bad trait.

If there is any doubt about whether a person is someone you want to be a part of your organization, then that person probably doesn't belong in your company. When going through a list of potential hires, if you find yourself describing someone using the "BUT formula," the best thing you can do is NOT hire that person. You will spend so much time managing around those bad traits that you won't be able to focus on actually running your business.

Now for the "AND formula." You should be able to use the following formula to describe everyone in your company:

This person has this good trait, AND he/she provides great value to the company.

You need people who don't just execute your vision or people who are smart. You need people who help you understand the direction your company should be heading and who can help point it in that direction. You don't need a group of followers. Followers don't provide value to a company.

You do need people who will rigorously evaluate every detail of your company and who will take action to correct any mistakes that the company is making. You need people who don't require you to manage them or to lead them. You need people who will manage themselves and will help provide leadership to the company as a team. Those are the people who will provide value to your company.

It's up to you to find the RIGHT people. When hiring someone, make sure you can use the "AND formula" to describe that person. When evaluating your existing employees, if you find yourself using the "BUT formula" to describe someone, don't make excuses. Take action. Replace that person with the RIGHT person.


photo credit, clix

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When All Else Fails, You Can Fall Back On Perseverance

One of the hardest things to do when starting your own company is to keep going when everything is against you.


No matter how enthusiastic you are, or how dedicated your employees are, there will be times when it seems useless to continue down the path you so enthusiastically started down at the beginning.  If it can be said about gambling that you need to know when to quit, the reverse is true about running a business.  You have to know when NOT to quit.

There are a few things you need to learn to just accept as fact:

1. You can't please everyone.
   
   There will be times when no mater what decision you make, someone will think you are an idiot.  Here's a great example.  You'd think that any employee would be happy to receive a bonus, right? I have literally had the experience of an employee complaining about receiveing a bonus.  (His argument was that we should have put the money back into the business.)  My business partner couldn't understand this.  The advice I gave him was to remember the incident, grow some thick skin and get over it.  Move on.
   
   
2. You will make mistakes.
   
   Everyone makes mistakes.  You will too.  The best thing you can do when you make a mistake is to learn from it and figure out how to prevent yourself from making the same mistake again.  Don't beat yourself up for it.  Don't obsess about it.  You have a business to run.  THAT is what you need to focus on.
   
   
3. Money will be tight.
   
   You will probably never have as much money as you want or need to do things the "right" way.  So figure out a way around this obstacle.  You don't let other obstacles get in your way.  Presumably, you are a smart person.  Figure out an alternative solution.  Focus on your cashflow.  Focus on growth.  Cut your costs.  Do whatever it takes.

Franklin D. Roosevelt said, 

"When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on." 

I'd like to add to that, 

"...and then start climbing back up."

Don't quit.




photo credit, BrittneyBush

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Top 3 Must Read Books for Start Ups

As an entrepreneur, one of the best things you can do is to learn from others.  Here are three books that I have found immensely useful and that I have continually referred back to throughout my career.

1. The Goal by Dr. Eliyahu M. Goldratt
   
   This is not your typical business book with MBA-style case studies.  Don't let your eyes glaze over when I tell you that it's an explanation of the Theory of Constraints model for systems management (which was, incidentally, developed by the author).  The Goal is written as a novel about Alex Rogo who runs a metal working factory with many of the typical problems you might see in any business.  The main plot is about the insights Alex has when pondering these problems, how he overcomes them and how he gets the business running smoothly again.  In typical novel fashion, there are sub-plots dealing with Alex's personal life.  This book is an easy, enjoyable read and would fit easily into a leisurely weekend reading schedule.
   
   
   
2. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't by Jim Collins
   
   Good to Great may be the most thoroughly researched book I have ever seen.  It is the result of years of research on over 1,400 companies by Jim Collins and a team of 21 others.  They looked for companies that made significant and consistent improvement over a long period of time.  After finding 11 companies that met all of their criteria, they compiled extensive research and interviewed numerous people within the companies.
   
   Collins and team found several core concepts that were consistently evident across all of these eleven companies.  He boils down these ideas into easy to understand language with many real-life examples and gives them memorable names such as: "Hedgehog Concept" and "The Flywheel".  (There are also lots of great resources on Jim Collins' website.)
   
   
   
3. Tuned In: Uncover the Extraordinary Opportunities That Lead to Business Breakthroughs by Craig Stull, Phil Myers, and David M. Scott
   
   Tuned in explores why some products (such as the Apple iPod) become great successes while other similar products fall flat.  The book takes you through a six-step process to help tune your company in to the market, establish the trust and loyalty of your customers and build products that resonate with them.  It is based on the Pragmatic Marketing framework.  This book is also a quick read with lots of real-life examples.  Be sure to check out the resources on the Pragmatic Marketing website as well.

Whether you are a founder, a CEO or a summer intern, put these on your reading list.  Let me know what you think about them.  What other books have you found helpful?


photo credit, vierdrie

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Negotiating a Raise (Part 4 -- What NOT to do.)

In the last few posts, I've been talking about ways to think about your salary and how to determine what you should be paid. Today, I'm going to talk about a few topics to avoid when discussing salary with your boss.

Let's look at some tactics that I've seen employees use and talk about why they aren't effective.

"The cost of living has gone up, so I need more money."

While it is important that you be able to provide a certain standard of living for your family, you have to remember that the value that you provide to your employer isn't necessarily tied to the cost of living. It is common for some employers to give "cost of living raises", but they certainly don't have to. If it has been a number of years and no one in the company has received a salary increase, you certainly could ask for this, but cost of living is something that affects everyone equally and so this is really an argument that your company's standard is too low in general. This may be true, but unless you are voluntering to be the union rep for your co-workers, this argument won't get you a raise.

"It's been years and I haven't gotten a raise, so I deserve one now."

You get paid for the value you bring to your company, not for the number of years of service you have provided. Significant tenure with a company may have helped you learn a number of skills that could add value to the company (as we talked about in part 3 of this series). If that is the case, then stick to those facts. (For example, "Over the last two years, I've learned how to do customer implementations and I often fill in for our implementation staff.") But it's the skills and eperience you've added over those years that your employer will pay for, not the number of years. This is one case where time doesn't equal money.

"I'm the only person in the company who knows how to do X, so you better give me a raise."

First, shame on your employer for creating a single point of failure and letting it be you. Second, shame on you for allowing it to stay this way. Saying this to your boss is basically a threat -- nobody likes to be threatened. It also indicates that you are not a team player and really only looks out for yourself with little regard for the company and your co-workers who must depend on you for the company to continue to function. If it sounds like I'm being harsh, you're right. There is no place for this kind of nonsense in any company.

If you find yourself in this position, you need to point out the issue to your employer and either offer to train someone else, offer to create documentation on this task, or suggest another solution that doesn't depend only on you. Helping your company solve this sort of problem, makes you much more valuable than being an employee who hordes information and won't teach others because they somehow think it adds job security.

"I am the best person in my department, so you should pay me more than everyone else."

This statement breaks a couple of rules. One, its really none of your business what the other people in your department make. Two, your salary isn't determined by comparing how well you perform compared to others. If you really do outperform other people in your department, gather some statistics and use those to cast a positive light on yourself without dumping on everyone else in your group. For example, "Over the last year, I have consistently processed an average of 25 help desk tickets per day. That's 40 percent of all the help desk tickets in our group."

"I work harder than anyone else in my department."

This statement has all the same problems as the last one, plus it focuses on the wrong thing -- how hard you work. Focus on the value you deliver instead of how hard you work.

"So-and-so is making $X, and I should be making at least that much, too."

Whether "so-and-so" is a cousin, friend, or acquaintance, this doesn't really mean anything to your employer. You need to focus on the value that YOU deliver to YOUR company. If you are talking about a coworker, be warned -- it really isn't a good idea to talk salary with your co-workers. Trust me, no good can come of it. Remember, your pay is based on your market value and the value you provide to your company. Using the data from one other person to determine what you should be paid would be like a politician declaring he was going to win an election based on the result of polling a single person. It's just one data point -- and it may be irrelevant anyway.

"If you don't pay me $X, I'm going to quit."

This is equivalent to the classic line of "take this job and shove it..." It's a threat. It's poor business etiquette. And it burns a bridge. If you truly believe you should be paid more, but you can't come to terms with your employer, perhaps it is time to move on to another job. But stating it like this does nothing positive. If you are going to quit, do it politely and if your employer really wants to keep you around, they might offer you more money, but don't count on it.

Remember, when discussing salary with your employer, stick to facts that are relevant to your value and the value you provide to the company. What do you think is the best way for you to express your value to your employer?

Photo credit, Lara604

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Negotiating a Raise (Part 3 -- Your Value to the Company)

At the risk of sounding like Lumbergh from Office Space, today we're going to talk about the value you can add to your company above and beyond the things listed in your job description and how you can use this to add dollars to your paycheck.

In a recent post on project management, I talked about how start-ups usually have a small number of very focused people who all pitch in to make sure that everything gets done. As a company grows, jobs tend to get more specialized. Everyone doesn't do everything any longer. This is a necessary evolution in the life of a company, but sometimes employees go a little too far in this direction. The last thing any manager ever wants to hear from an employee are the words, "That's not in my job description."

Often, there are tasks that need to be done or tasks that should be done that aren't really part of any job description at a company. One great way to make yourself more valuable to a company is to make those tasks part of your job description. Of course you need to make sure you get all of your regular work done too. But if you see something that needs to be done, and you can do it, pitching in to get things done makes you that much more valuable.

If you are one of those underemployed people I talked about in part two of this series, adding value is a great way to help make your replacement value closer to your market value. (Read part one to learn about your market value.)

Another factor to added value is the amount of experience that you may have at a particular task or piece of technology. Most companies have some sort of esoteric process or technology that really isn't used anywhere else. The people who know this technology very well are more valuable to a company than anyone else out there who has an otherwise similar skill set.

One thing to beware of here is the temptation to horde knowledge. Being the only person who knows how to do some specific task or run some certain piece of technology constitutes a huge risk for a company. If you think that not training anyone else or making management aware of this problem means you have greater job security, you're wrong. From a manager's point of view, you look like someone who is not a team player and someone who can't be bothered to help the company manage a serious risk. The best thing you can do is help your company manage this risk by offering to train others, create documentation others can follow or suggest an alternative solution that doesn't require such specific knowledge.

Another great way to add value is to learn a new skill that can be used at your job immediately. Learning a new skill that makes your more marketable and adds to your market value, but doesn't necessarily make you more valuable to your current employer.

Here's a great example. One company I worked for, needed a back-up person to handle some implementation tasks, but we couldn't quite justify the cost of hiring a new employee. Another employee volunteered to get the training needed and be the backup until we had enough business to justify hiring a new person. That added value.

As a manager, I have always thought about added value when determining salary increases. It's not something you start thinking about the day before you ask for a raise though. It's something you need to think about every day of your career.

In the next post, I'll talk about some things not to say when asking for a raise and then I'll wrap it all up in one final post on the subject.

In the mean time, I want to hear about how you add value to your company as an employee. I'd also like to hear how managers think about added value in their employees. What's the best example you have seen of added value in your career?

photo credit, Karyn Rachtman

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