Coursebook

 

CONTENTS

Unit 1 Business Networking……………………………….….4
Unit 2 Modern Management…………………………………9
Unit 3 Marketing Trends……………………………………..15
Unit 4 Ethical Business……………………………………….22
Unit 5 Managing Finance…………………………………….28
Unit 6 Management Consulting ……………………………..33
Unit 7 Managing Creativity………………………………….37
Unit 8 E-Business …………………………………………….45
Unit 9 Start-Ups …………………………………………..….51
Unit 10 Managing Your Team Effectively…………………..77

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unit 1 BUSINESS NETWORKING

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The phrase: “You never get a second chance to make a first impression” is one that you will hear frequently in the business world; if you want your venture to succeed, it is essential that you take the time to get it right in the first instant.
After all, a bad impression can seldom be remedied. A business runs on personal communication as much as it does on money, and if you want to be successful, it is vital that those who have cause to connect with you receive the very best impression from the outset.
Making a good first impression
First impressions have the ability to make or break a business, and a positive experience can create long-lasting business relationships. For this reason it is essential that you work on that first impression; for example, the way in which you present yourself and your venture in public, how you communicate with colleagues and clients, and the ways you publicise yourself. Making a good first impression is particularly important when it comes to meeting customers, pitching to potential clients, or during interviews. These are the key points at which people will meet you and begin to form an impression of you and the services you’re offering.
There are a few essential components to making a good first impression; namely dressing well, taking care of personal grooming, projecting a friendly manner, and being able to communicate clearly and concisely. Do not ever underestimate the importance of a strong handshake, or manners and etiquette; these can speak volumes.
Getting it right first time
If you want to make a good impression first time round make sure you are professional, and confident in yourself and your business. Take the time to research potential clients or employers, and be clear how your services can be invaluable to them, rather than dwelling on what others can’t do, this will create positivity from the outset. It is also important to constantly evaluate the ways in which your business communicates; practice on others if needs be, and make sure you have confidence in what you’re providing.
A professional website is the perfect way to create a lasting first impression. Your website is the front page of your business online and it is important for it to have a lasting impact that sticks. A professionally designed and managed website by a team of web developers is the best way to build a fully functioning and effective web page. Think about how to best drive targeted traffic to your most important pages. SEO is a broad industry and there are lots of providers. Use this link for a solid seo agency in Bristol.
When it comes to making a good first impression, you must take the time to perfect a look; be sure of the image you want to project, this will depend upon the market in which you circulate. Choose smart clothes that will flatter your shape, and dress for work, rather than play; consider accessories and your personal grooming, as well as the outfit that you’ll wear. If you have a visual impairment, taking the time to consider whether to wear contact lenses or glasses can also go a long way towards helping you make a good impression. Some feel that glasses present a smarter, more professional appearance, while others feel that coloured contact lenses can accentuate some good features, allow clients and potential employers to see your face more clearly, and better judge your facial expressions.
Competition in the world of business is fierce; making a good first impression is vital, and can be the difference between impressing clients and winning contracts, and being left out in the cold. Improving upon your personal and company image is a simple way to enhance a potential employer, colleague, or client’s first opinion of you, and can reinforce your reliability and competence in your field; encourage a little faith in your business and abilities, and you will go far.

Watch the video and make a short summary of it.

 

Case study.

The MITRE Corporation is a not-for-profit organization with expertise in systems engineering, information technology, operational concepts, and enterprise modernization. In addition to managing several Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs), MITRE supports its own independent technology research and application development for solving sponsors’ near-term and future problems. MITRE has approximately 7000 scientists, engineers, and support specialists distributed across many locations and working on hundreds of different projects for various sponsors in numerous domains.
MITRE employees have traditionally relied on email, telephone, and face-to-face meetings to communicate and collaborate with external partners. Artifacts distributed via email get lost or conflicts occur when different copies of materials are edited. Telephone conversations are ephemeral, and face-to-face meetings involve travel and scheduling issues. The company also uses an external Microsoft SharePoint site as a secure document repository, but the strict authentication requirements, the lack of
lightweight functionality, and the limited social aspects of the tool make it difficult for users to connect socially and collaborate. Forming ad hoc group workspaces around topical areas is also difficult with existing tools.
In addition to these problems, individuals want to be able to establish relationships with external parties and manage those contacts as people move from job to job. The recent popularity of tools like LinkedIn and Facebook make connecting and tracking possible, but they are not trusted environments for conducting business and are fraught with overwhelming amounts of personal and extraneous information [24]. As a result, it is currently difficult to capture the business networks and relationships that MITRE staff have with people from other organizations.
To address these and other collaboration issues, a research team at MITRE embarked upon building a trusted environment for MITRE and its partners to connect, collaborate, and share new information. Our goals were to improve MITRE’s ability to establish and maintain relationships, form groups and facilitate multi- organizational collaboration around topics, leverage expertise from industry, and bring broader segments of the community to bear on important sponsor problems. In addition, we wanted to enhance the individual – and enterprise – situational awareness around relationships, activities, topics, and communities.
A specific focus of this project was how to address and mitigate the risks of this new capability. We needed to ensure that the social networking platform – supporting both internal and external access – and its data-level access model were both secure and usable. From a research perspective, we were also interested in exploring and assessing the value of an enterprise networking tool for business use as well as identifying and evaluating emerging business models enabled by social networking tools. Could the enterprise move away from supporting teams to leveraging networks and make the enterprise, as a whole, more efficient? (by Laurie E. Damianos, Donna L.Cuomo, and Stan Drozdetski The MITRE Corporation, 202 Burlington Road, Bedford, MA 01730, USA)

 

Discussion:
- How is business communication different from other types of communication in our everyday life?
- Why is good communication important in business?
- What is a successful act of business communication?
- How to behave during your first networking meeting?
- How to overcome some fears of communication?

Project:
Make a short presentation giving some recommendations on developing your business network.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unit 2 MODERN MANAGEMENT

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Are your management practices long in the tooth?
I think I was lucky that early on, I worked in environments that shook things up and rattled the cage in pursuit of more customer impact, employee engagement, and better organizational performance.
In one of the environments, a manufacturing plant, the management team flipped the typical pyramid of the management hierarchy upside down to reflect that the management team is there to empower and support the production line.
And when I was on the Microsoft patterns & practices team, we had an interesting mix of venture capitalist type management coupled with some early grandmasters of the Agile movement.
An Agile Management Culture
More than just Agile teams, we had an Agile management culture that encouraged a customer-connected approach to product development, complete with self-organizing, multi-disciplinary teams, empowered people, a focus on execution excellence, and a fierce focus on being a rapid learning machine.
We thrived on change.
We also had a relentless focus on innovation. Not just in our product, but in our process. If we didn’t innovate in our process, then we got pushed out of market by becoming too slow, too expensive, or by lacking the quality experience that customers have come to expect.
Many Businesses Still Operate Under an Old World Model
But not everybody knows what a great environment for helping people thrive and do great things for the world, looks like.
While a lot of people in software or in manufacturing have gotten a taste of Agile and Lean practices, there are many more businesses that don’t know what a modern learning machine of people and processes that operate at a higher-level looks like.
Many, many businesses and people are still operating and looking at the world through the lens of old world management principles.
In the book The Future of Management, Gary Hamel walks through the principles upon which modern management is based.
The Principles of Modern Management
Hamel gives us a nice way to frame looking at what he calls the modern management principles, by looking at their application, and their intended goal.
An Alternative View
When I first read these principles, my first reaction was that yes, they do reflect the way a lot of organizations manage people.
But I didn’t think it reflects the future wave of more Agile or more Lean organizations that lead a different way.
These principles look very different from leaner, flatter, more Agile organizations that empower self-organizing teams that use more Agile planning methods and focus on creating conditions for intrinsic satisfaction, while wrapping themselves around their customers.
What are the Principles Upon Which Your Management Beliefs are Based?
Most people aren’t aware of the principles behind the management beliefs that they practice or preach. But before coming up with new ones, it helps to know what current management thinking is rooted in.
“Have you ever asked yourself, what are the deepest principles upon which your management beliefs are based? Probably not. Few executives, in my experience, have given much thought to the foundational principles that underlie their views on how to organize and manage. In that sense, they are as unaware of their management DNA as they are of their biological DNA. So before we set off in search of new management principles, we need to take a moment to understand the principles that comprise our current management genome, and how those tenets may limit organizational performance.”
A Small Nucleus of Core Principles
It really comes down to a handful of core principles. These principles serve as the backbone for much of today’s management philosophy.

Principle Application Goal
Standardization Minimize variances from standards around inputs, outputs, and work methods. Cultivate economies of scale, manufacturing efficiency, reliability, and quality.
Specialization (of tasks and functions) Group like activities together in modular organizational units. Reduce complexity and accelerate learning.
Goal Alignment Establish clear objectives through a cascade of subsidiary goals and supporting metrics.
Ensure that individual efforts are congruent with top-down goals. Ensure that individual efforts are congruent with top-down goals.
Hierarchy Create a pyramid of authority based on a limited span of control. Maintain control over a broad scope of operations.
Planning and control Forecast demand, budget resources, and schedule tasks, then track and correct deviations from plan. Establish regularity and predictability in operations; conformance to plans.
Extrinsic rewards Provide financial rewards to individuals and teams for achieving specified outcomes. Motivate effort and ensure compliance with policies and standards.
“These practices and processes of modern management have been built around a small nucleus of core principles: standardization, specialization, hierarchy, alignment, planning, and control, and the use of extrinsic rewards to shape human behavior.”
How To Maximize Operational Efficiency and Reliability in Large-Scale Organizations
It’s not by chance that the early management thinkers came to the same conclusions. They were working on the same problems in a similar context. Of course, the challenge now is that the context has changed, and the early management principles are often like fish out of water.
“These principles were elucidated early in the 20th century by a small band of pioneering management thinkers — individuals like Henri Fayol, Lyndall Urwick, Luther Gullick, and Max Weber. While each of these theorists had a slightly different take on the philosophical foundations of modern management, they all agreed on the principles just enumerated. This concordance is hardly surprising, since they were all focusing on the same problem: how to maximize operational efficiency and reliability in large-scale organizations. Nearly 100 years on, this is still the only problem that modern management is fully competent to address.”
Awareness is the first step to better management.
If your management philosophy and guiding principles are nothing more than a set of hand me downs from previous generations, it might be time for a re-think. (by JD Meier - http://jdmeier.com/the-principles-of-modern-management/)

Watch the video and make a short summary of it.

Case study.
In 2019, US-based global hospitality company, Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. (Hilton), popularly known as Hilton Hotels, found itself in the top spot on the 2019 Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work for List. In 2018, Hilton had been at the 33rd position in the top 100 best companies to work for in the Great Places to Work for List. In 2018, it was the third consecutive year Hilton had made it to the top list. An impressive 96% of employees surveyed claimed that Hilton was a great place to work with and 97% employees stated that they felt proud to say they worked at Hilton.
Founded by Conrad Hilton (Conrad) in 1919, Hilton Hotel was started in Cisco, Texas, US . As a young boy, Conrad worked in his father’s general store in Socorro County, New Mexico, US . The store was later converted into a ten-room hotel. He followed this up by fulfilling diverse roles that included serving two terms in the New Mexico State Legislature. In 1917, Conrad volunteered in the US Army during World War I. Eighteen months after his enrollment in the army, he returned home only to find that his father had died in a car accident. Soon after he decided to move to Texas and seek his fortune. Once he got to Texas he decided that he would buy a bank. Conrad had been staying at a little known hotel called the Mobley Hotel. He often noticed several long queues of people standing outside the hotel, looking for a room there..
DIVERSITY AT HILTON
The company was committed to building an inclusive workplace, the backbone of which was a multicultural and diverse workforce. At Hilton, Diversity was not just a term but a way of life. Its team members came from 90 countries and spoke more than 40 languages. Diversity was thus at the core of its delivering exceptional experiences to the guests. Over the years, Hilton implemented many programs that inculcated diversity in its employees, community partners, suppliers, and owners. The primary objective of the leadership team was to build a global culture around its mission, values, and vision...
THRIVE AT HILTON
The leadership at Hilton believed that retaining employees was as important as attracting and hiring them This made business sense because these employees would service their guests better. Hilton recognized team members who did great work and treated them well to ensure they stayed longer in the company, grew within it, and took on leadership roles...

DISCRIMINATION
In spite of all the bouquets the company had received from the media on the diversity issues, Hilton faced many brickbats as well. In March 2015, the US Justice Department announced a settlement with Hilton Worldwide for allegations against its discrimination against a foreign national asylee. (by ICMR IBS Centre for Management Resources)
Research the information about the case and provide your ideas.

Discussion:
- What is the role of a modern manager?
- Which managerial skills are relevant today?
- What challenges does a modern manager face?
- Which modern management theories do you know?
- What are the prospects of the management job market?

Project:
Make a short presentation about one of the famous management experts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unit 3 MARKETING TRENDS

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With the speed at which modern technology is growing and evolving, it is no surprise that everything that relies on it must move at a similarly breakneck pace. Digital marketing is no exception.
With constant updates, new techniques, and changes to algorithms, digital marketers are frequently scrambling just to keep up. Being aware of emerging or continuing trends is a vital part of staying on top of the game.
With a brand-new decade rapidly approaching, here are some of the top marketing trends for 2020.
Shoppable Posts
It’s highly unlikely that you know anyone who doesn’t use some form of social media. Given its ubiquitous nature, social media has understandably become an integral part of online marketing. What may not be as obvious is just how many users shop on social media networks.
This represents a tremendous opportunity for businesses, given that 72% of Instagram users have purchased a product on the app. Even more impressive, a survey of more than 4,000 Pinterest users found that 70% use Pinterest to find new and interesting products.
Fortunately for merchants, these platforms have made it easier for them to use the power of social media to reach their customers. Whether you use Facebook, Pinterest or Instagram, there are now ways for e-commerce stores to create shoppable posts, making it easy for users to shop directly from your post.
Social media offers you the ability to reach new customers quickly and easily, shortening the sales funnel and making it easier for users to shop.
By 2020, shoppable posts are expected to be the norm.
Virtual And Augmented Reality
In recent years, both augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) have become massively popular and are emerging as top trends in marketing. In 2020, AR is expected to surpass VR in popularity, despite VR’s early lead.
Already, many major companies are making use of AR. Ikea, for example, has an app that allows users to visualize what a piece of furniture would look like in their home before making a purchase.
Interactive Content
Today’s buyers are looking for new experiences when they go online, and for many, that means greater interactivity. In fact, a whopping 91% are seeking more visual and interactive content. There are several reasons for this:
• Interactive content is different and new, and as such, it stands out more.
• This type of content serves to keep visitors on your page longer.
• Interactive content is immensely shareable, and when users share this content, it helps to grow awareness of your brand.
• Simply put, interactive content is more engaging. Users enjoy it more than other content.
Personalization
2020 is going to be the year of personalized marketing. Consumers are quite adept at tuning out generic ads that have no real connection to them. Accordingly, traditional means of advertising are becoming much less effective. So, what can be done? Personalize it!
In a survey of 1,000 people, 90% remarked that they found personalization appealing. More important for your business is the fact that 80% admitted they’d be more likely to give their business to a company that offered them a personalized experience.
Email lists are an old standby of marketers, and they lend themselves well to personalization. Segmented lists with personalized email blasts have been shown to perform than generic emails sent to an entire list. Don’t miss this opportunity to connect with your audience in a meaningful way.
Google Ads Smart Bidding
Those involved in digital marketing are already familiar with automation, but now Google has announced Google Ads updates that will likely lead to automation and smart bidding becoming the new normal.
Google Ads makes use of machine learning in order to optimize your bids. This gives you several new abilities to help you maximize your conversion, including:
• The ability to choose conversion action at the campaign level
• The ability to set your bids to change automatically when sales start or stop
• The ability to optimize bids over multiple campaigns with a chosen set of conversion actions
While there are a variety of new trends to keep your eye on, that doesn’t mean that all the old methods have become outdated. In fact, there are several marketing trends that have been big in the past and are expected to continue into 2020.
Content Marketing
For years, “content is king” has been the axiom of digital marketing. As we move into 2020, it continues to be true.
High-quality content allows you to show your expertise and communicate with your customers from a place of authority. Your content is also what search engines provide to searchers online, so continuing to produce high-quality content is a must.
Video Content
Customers respond well to visual content, making video an important digital marketing tool in 2019. It will continue to be important into 2020 and likely beyond that.
Don’t overlook live video. On average, live videos on Facebook Live and Instagram Live keep your audience watching three times longer than recorded ones. The daily watch time for Facebook Live videos have quadrupled in a single year, and they produce six times as many interactions as traditional videos.
SERP Position Zero
Being No. 1 is no longer the goal.
The top spot in SERP is now position zero, a featured snippet of text appearing above the search results. This prime location often provides information relating to the search query, while also providing a link to the page from which the information is drawn.
Position zero is the first, and sometimes only, result that some users will view. As such, it is highly coveted and should be the focus of your efforts.
While many business owners appreciate the fact that marketing continues to change at a fast pace, those who are willing to adapt and evolve will continue to attract high-quality customers in a digital world.
(by Christian Thompson, Forbes)

Watch the video and make a short summary of it.

 

Case study.
Peugeot Germany successfully brings potential new car buyers to its regional car dealers with AdWords ads
The agency OMD implemented an AdWords campaign for Peugeot Germany in less than two months, through which over 140 regional dealers were able to reach potential buyers in their region and entice them into their showrooms. Result: over 7.9 million ad views and 172,000 clicks in the first two months. This corresponds to around 600 visits for each participating dealer‘s virtual showroom per month. The Click-to-Call feature for mobile devices was used approximately 3,000 times and the directions feature in Google Maps was used 1,300 times. This enabled leads to be generated extremely efficiently and be forwar- ded directly to dealers at an average cost in the low double figures.
Increasing competition
The number of car purchases and new registrations has been declining in Germany for several years and competition has become tougher, es- pecially for importers such as the French manufacturer Peugeot. Online communication with customers and new car buyers has also become more and more important. Within a single year, from 2012 to 2013, Internet usage as a source of information for new car purchases increa- sed by 10%. The 2013 Google new car purchaser study revealed that for 87% of potential buyers, the Internet is the most important starting point for researching a new car. Search engines, at 69%, are the most important information source and gateway to other digital sources such as manufacturer websites, beating other starting points such as car dealers or friends and colleagues.
The challenge: creating and managing an AdWords campaign to involve regional dealers
In late 2013, Peugeot decided to make greater use of Google AdWords in order to lead potential new car buyers to their regional dealers‘ websites. Several workshops with Google and OMD paved the way. „We wanted to support our distribution partners in presenting themselves professionally on the web and in being present at exactly the right time when potential buyers in the region are showing interest via search ads,“ says Frederic Renard, Marketing Manager at Peugeot. „The digital channel has become incredibly important in the last few years, espe- cially because we can now get a clearer picture of how the buying decision process happens,“ says Sophie Tharra, Director of Planning for Peugeot at OMD. The agency supports the car importer in Germany and took charge of managing the campaign. „The challenge was that the dealers were only supposed to be seen in their relevant service areas and that this campaign had to be coordinated with the national campaign that ran in parallel,“ explains Sophie Tharra. The devil is in the detail: what if two dealers are in the same area, such as in the Ruhr valley? What about large regions such as the federal German states? The solution: „We allow for a simultaneous presence of dealers and leave it up to the users to click on offers that are interesting to them.“ At the same time, the ad delivery and roll-out had to be designed in a way that
was as straightforward as possible for the dealers. The solution to this: packages at different price points. The dealers also received a manual in which the elements of the campaign were clearly explained.
Complete success: traffic growth of 20% and highly efficient lead generation
An initial test with five dealers was successfully run in late 2013. Subse- quently, more than 140 dealers decided to participate. In just two weeks, OMD created an individual campaign structure. „We use Google‘s infrastructure for this campaign. We individually enter all dealers into an AdWords meta-account and can match them together accordingly. We specify within the account which ads should run in which region, for how long, and for how many euros per click,“ states expert Sophie Tharra. All in all, more than 1,400 mini-campaigns were fine-tuned in this way, generating over 7.9 million ad views and 172,000 clicks in the first two months. „In total we had traffic growth of around 20%, without significant loss of traffic from the national website,“ says the OMD director. „The Click-to-Call feature for mobile devices was used about 3,000 times; the directions feature in Google Maps was used 1,300 times.“ This is the provisional summary made by Frederic Renard, Marketing Manager at Peugeot, as he also states: „We‘re very satisfied with these initial results and are continuing to work on improving the offer for our distribution partners and are planning to roll it out across the whole network.“ Sophie Tharra recommends AdWords to companies „who want to bring their national advertising closer to the market to achieve a stronger connection between advertising measures and
actual sales“. (by ThinkGoogle)

Discussion:
- What are some trends in modern marketing?
- What is the difference of promoting your product online and offline?
- What challenges does a modern marketing specialist face?
- Which consumer behaviour theories do you know? Research the question and organize a talk in class.

Project:
Choose a company and prepare a draft of a new marketing campaign for one of its products or services.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unit 4 ETHICAL BUSINESS

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The participant flips the coin in private (though secretly watched by video cameras), said David DeSteno, a professor of psychology at Northeastern who conducted the experiment. Only 10 percent of them did it honestly. The others didn’t flip at all, or kept flipping until the coin came up the way they wanted.
Trying to become more ethical — or teaching people how to — would seem doomed then. But that’s not true. It’s just that how we teach ethics has to catch up with what we know about how the human mind works.
One area clearly in need of attention is business ethics, especially given the transgressions in the financial world in recent years. Some of the nation’s top researchers think so too. Next week, a group of them — most based at American universities — will officially introduce a new website, EthicalSystems.org. The site is the first to pull together extensive research and resources on the subject of business ethics with the aim of making the vast trove available to schools, government regulators and businesses — especially their compliance officers.
“It used to be business ethics grew out of philosophy, with a focus on the right thing to do,” said Jonathan Haidt, a professor of ethical leadership at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. “In the last 10 years there’s been an explosion of research in behavioral economics” and the underlying reasons people act the way they do.
Those events, in part, “inspired a small group of researchers to develop a more psychologically realistic approach to business ethics,” said Professor Haidt, who spearheaded the website.
This approach — which applies to ethics in general, not just business ethics — incorporates what we now know about how people really act when faced with a moral dilemma and what tools can be used to nudge them toward doing the right thing.
First we need to be more aware of the ways we fool ourselves. We have to learn how to avoid subconsciously turning our backs when faced with a moral dilemma. And then we must be taught how to challenge people appropriately in those situations.
“When people predict how they’re going to act in a given situation, the ‘should’ self dominates — we should be fair, we should be generous, we should assert our values,” said Ann E. Tenbrunsel, a professor of business ethics at the University of Notre Dame who is involved in the EthicalSystems website. “But when the time for action comes, the ‘want’ self dominates” — I don’t want to look like a fool, I don’t want to be punished.
“Our survival instinct is to want to be liked and to be included,” said Brooke Deterline, chief executive of Courageous Leadership, a consulting firm that offers workshops and programs on dealing with ethical situations. “We don’t willfully do bad things, but when we’re under threat our initial instinct is to downplay or ignore problematic situations.”
Most people know the feeling: Something happens that we know is wrong and we mean to speak up or make it right. But we can’t quite figure out how to do it, and the moment passes. And then we justify that it was O.K. that we acted the way we did.
So how do we change this?
Using social and cognitive behavioral psychology as well as neuroscience, Ms. Deterline said, the first step is to become aware of our natural inclinations.
“Think back: When are you vulnerable to not speaking up and not saying what needs to be said?” she said. Is it when authority is present? When it might alienate you from friends? When it might cause subordinates to think less of you?
“We all have automatic thoughts when we feel anxious: ‘I’m going to get fired, I’m going to look like an idiot,’ ” she said. The point is not to listen to those thoughts, but to be aware of them and override them. And to do that, we need to practice.
Like pilots who use flight simulators, people need to work on situations that cause them anxiety before they occur. In her programs, Ms. Deterline has role-playing employees initiate potentially challenging conversations.
“When most of us feel uncomfortable, we shut up,” she said. “But we need to use discomfort to know that that is my signal to be courageous and a cue for action rather than inaction.”
The focus on why people do and don’t act ethically is not, of course, limited to the business world. After all, it takes good citizens to make good employees.
Philip G. Zimbardo, a professor emeritus of psychology at Stanford University, is a pioneer in the study of social power — for good and for evil — and started a program in 2007 called the Heroic Imagination Project. His interest in ethics dates far back; in 1971 he created the notorious Stanford Prison Experiment, where college student “guards” demeaned and humiliated student “prisoners.” The experiment had to be stopped early because it became so abusive.
After studying moral degradation for decades, Professor Zimbardo started wondering about the 10 to 20 percent of people in every situation who resisted. Who were these people he called heroes, and could anyone be taught to be one?
Through the Heroic Imagination Project — for which Ms. Deterline once worked — middle- and high-school and community college students learn about group dynamics, like the bystander effect, in which the more people who are on a scene, the less likely it is for anyone to help.
Using video clips and real-life situations, teachers explain how students can resist such behavior, and help them explore why they have acted — or failed to act — in specific situations.
While students are taught not to be “dumb heroes” and rush into danger, Professor Zimbardo said, “we teach them that knowledge obligates you to do something — to act heroically.”
His nonprofit program has made many of its resources available free and is in the final stages of receiving funding to train a group of teachers in Flint, Mich., starting in the spring. Graduate students at the University of Michigan will assist in the program and, it is hoped, develop longitudinal findings on its effectiveness, he said.
Kristen Renwick Monroe, a professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine, has long studied why some people act righteously and others fail to.
She has found in her research that “the rescuers say, ‘What else could I do?’ ” she said. “The bystander says, ‘I was just one person? What could I do?’ ”
“We have to think, ‘Who am I and how do my actions create who I am?’ ” Professor Monroe added. She recalled interviewing a Dutch woman who stood by and watched while Jews were thrown into a truck and taken away during World War II. But the woman later saved more than a dozen others.
Professor Monroe remembers what the woman told her: “We all have memories when we should have done something, and it gets in the way for the rest of your life.”

Watch the video and make a short summary of it.

 

Case study.
Chocolate had always been considered an affordable little luxury, associated with romance and celebrations. Therefore in 2000 and 2001, revelations that the production of cocoa in the Côte d’Ivoire involved child slave labor set chocolate companies, consumers, and governments reeling. In the United States, the House of Representatives passed legislation mandating that the FDA create standards to permit companies who could prove that their chocolate was produced without forced labor to label their chocolate “slave-labor free.” To forestall such labeling, the chocolate industry agreed to an international protocol that would give chocolate producers, governments, and local farmers four years to curb abusive practices and put together a process of certification.
The stories of child slave labor on Côte d’Ivoire cocoa farms hit Cadbury especially hard. While the company sourced most of its beans from Ghana, the association of chocolate with slavery represented a challenge for the company, since many consumers in the UK associated all chocolate with Cadbury. Furthermore, Cadbury’s culture had been deeply rooted in the religious traditions of the company’s founders, and the organization had paid close attention to the welfare of its workers and its sourcing practices. In 1908, the company had ended a sourcing relationship that depended on slave labor. Now for the first time in nearly 100 years, Cadbury had to take up the question of slavery again.
By the 2005 deadline, the chocolate industry was not ready to implement the protocols and asked for two years more to prepare. Privately, many industry officials believed that the kind of certification sought by the protocols was unrealistic. Because cocoa was produced on over a million small farms in western Africa, insuring that all of these farms, most located deep in the bush, complied with child labor laws seemed impossible. Furthermore because beans from numerous small farms were intermingled before shipment, it was difficult to track those produced by farms in compliance with labor standards and those that were not.
In 2008, a confrontation between U.S. government officials and the industry seemed imminent. Observers argued that this left Cadbury, a company that had done much to improve its supply chain, in a difficult position. (from Yale School of Management).
Research the case and provide your sollutions.

 

Discussion:

- Is business ethics necessary in contemporary World?
- What are the major ethical issues that business in your country is facing today? Provide examples.
- What are the ethical values that are prevalent in your country?
- Do you know any socially responsible companies in your city?
- How would you recognize an ethical company?

Project:
Prepare a presentation about one of ethical companies from your city.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unit 5 MANAGING FINANCE

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The nation’s small businesses are struggling, and there’s no clear picture of when the current crisis will be over and things will be back to normal. It’s a tough situation for any company to be in, and even a $2 trillion stimulus package won’t be able to alleviate the worries for many small businesses yet.
Ben Richmond, U.S. country manager for accounting-software platform Xero, shares the three financial steps small-business owners should take to get their companies in the best possible position. Read on for his tips.
Optimize cash flow
“We’re in unprecedented times,” Richmond says. “Businesses will really need to put their soft skills to use. A lot of the techniques they need to use — which I’ll call ‘peacetime tactics’ — they need to apply in a tailored manner, because their customers and suppliers are also going through a really tough time.”
When you approach customers about money that’s owed to you, be as empathetic as you can. But just because these conversations are uncomfortable doesn’t mean you can avoid having them.
“When businesses are in a tough spot and owe multiple people money, it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the oil,” Richmond advises. Proactively reaching out to customers and collecting bills that are past due could be the difference between your business surviving or failing right now. Remember, when we do eventually come out of this crisis — which we will — the same customers you’re approaching now will probably be there in the future. Be firm but fair.
Although many parts of the country are shut down, other areas are still open for business, or your business might be deemed essential. If so, you need to rethink your payment terms. Or as Richmond puts it, “As you’re taking on new business, you need to think about their financial positions.You might want to look at requiring prepayment or retainers or shortening your payment terms.”
After you focus on collecting money that’s owed to you, you’ll have a better idea of what type of cash will be flowing your way. That will help you start a collaborative dialogue with suppliers you owe money to. “If a business closes, the suppliers generally don’t get any payment,” Richmond says. “ They’ll want to work with companies that are being open, transparent and show confidence through having a plan.”
Build three forecasts
“If you haven’t done it before, it can be pretty daunting,” Richmond concedes, though he also notes, “There are a lot of great cloud-based bookkeepers and accountants who can work remotely right now.”
Whether you hire someone or do it yourself, you want to create three forecasts: an optimistic, best-case one; a realistic likely one; and a worst-case one that imagines what will happen if customers who owe you money go out of business and that this crisis drags on for several more months.
“It’s an ever-evolving situation,” Richmond says. “This thing is changing almost by the hour. Once you’ve got those scenarios, you’ll be in a position where you can see if you have a surplus or a shortage. Then you can work with your team to see how big [the shortage] is and how you can solve it.”
Plan for a cash flow shortage
As Richmond acknowledges, it’s imperative to make a plan to minimize expenses as much as you can to cover a shortage. Where you can, cut discretionary and capital-intensive spending. “You want to understand what the fixed costs you can’t avoid are, things like rent,” Richmond says. “Have an open conversation with your landlords and see if you can negotiate better terms or rent holidays. Landlords will want to support people who have a plan.”
Although it’s difficult, you need to go through all your expenses and rank them in order of what you can cut first and what you’d like to avoid. “There is a point where you’ll have to impact people,” per Richmond. “And you want to avoid that as much as possible right now and support them.”
Many businesses will be able to cover their shortages through federal funding from the Small Business Administration, which offers low interest rates and generous terms. Applying for these loans does take time and resources, though — Richmond estimates business owners who haven’t done it before could spend up to 30 hours filling out all the paperwork. If you can, hiring a remote accountant or bookkeeper again could help ensure you follow all the rules and don’t waste precious time and resources.
Though SBA loans are the easiest way for businesses to get relief right now, there are other options. “Every business is in a different position,” Richmond says. “Have an open conversation with your bank. Some businesses will have the benefit of family funds. I highly recommend, if you do go down that route, that you look at it commercially and dot all your i’s and cross all your t’s.”
Another option is the Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses, which is authorizing $349 billion in loans that go towards employee retention and covering expenses. Applications opened Thursday, April 2, so prepare to apply as quickly as you can.
The world is in an unprecedented situation right now, but with the right preparation and hard choices, your business should be able to come out of it on the other side. (by Jessica Thomas from the Etrepreneur)

Watch the video and make a short summary of it.

 

Case study.

THE CUSTOMER
Banca Comercială Română (BCR), member of Erste Group, is the largest financial group in Romania.
Founded in 1990, BCR provides universal banking operations (retail, corporate & investment banking, treasury and capital markets), and covers specialty companies working on the leasing market, private pensions and housing banks. Today. BCR is Romania’s number one bank in terms of asset value, client base and savings and crediting.
THE CHALLENGE
Ability to manage cash processes and costs for the growing number of corporate customers, Branch and BCR’s automated devices (ATM, MFM and APT) consumer demand.
With 507 branches, 2,500 ATMs (cash-out, cash-in, multi-functional recycling devices (MFMs), FX exchange services), 1,600 users, cash transactions in 16 different currencies and many processing centers around the country, it become more and more difficult for BCR to monitor and to take control of the overall cost of cash.
As of 2014, the required cash levels for each Processing Center and ATM were forecasted manually for
each denomination, using spreadsheets and legacy applications, based on historical data for cash inflows and outflows.
For Branches, the forecast was performed locally based on cash thresholds and scheduled payments to customers, while the cash requests were sent to Centralized Coordination Office.
The cash pick-up orders for customers were generated automatically, based on pre-scheduled agreements with the customers, while the cash deliveries were generated manually, on customer request.

Discussion:

- How would you evaluate current finance issues in your country?
- What is sustainable banking?
- What are the criteria for an efficient bank?
- What are the ways to manage your personal finance?

Project:
Prepare a presentation about one of the efficient banks in the World.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unit 6 MANAGEMENT CONSULTING

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Introduction
For most management graduates and students in business schools, working for the world famous Big Five management consultancies such as McKinsey, Booze Allen, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Price Waterhouse (PWC), and Anderson consulting is a dream come true. Indeed, the fact that these consultancies are often given the Day Zero or the opening slots in the campus hiring calendar is testament to the brand image and the perceptions among management professionals. This means that it is important to know what these firms do and how they add value to society. For that, we need to understand how they work, what they do, and why they are the management professionals’ ultimate dream.
Management Consulting and Investment Banking
This article introduces the field of management consulting so that the readers would have a fair idea about these consultancies. Before launching into the discussion, it would be worthwhile to note that management consultancies compete with investment banks for the mind space of both the industry leaders as well as the management professionals. As we discuss subsequently, this has a direct bearing on how the business world works in terms of which firm or investment bank is often hired to consult by the business leaders. Indeed, both management consultancies and investment banks consult with the industry to ensure that firms derive value from their operations and the difference between their pitches is often to do with the terms of reference wherein management consultancies encompass a broader swathe and realm of operations whereas investment bankers often focus on the financials as well as the strategies to be put in place to raise capital and ensuring that the firms are competitive on this front.
What Management Consultants Do
Management consultants are hired to suggest and recommend strategies and ways and means of improving the profitability of firms. This can encompass operations, finance, marketing, strategy, planning, human resources, and the very nature and purpose of the firm. For instance, it is not uncommon for management consultants to recommend a complete overhaul of the firms’ operations by restricting the organization and either moving it away from its present focus or refocusing on the present strategies. Indeed, the term core competencies arose as a result of painstaking research and detailed consulting wherein the authors of this term suggested that firms must first identify their core competencies and then refocus their strategies and organization structure around such competencies. Apart from this, the terms such as repositioning, rebranding, restructuring, and rebalancing are all concepts used by management consultants to recommend alternative strategies to the firms. Perhaps the most famous product of management consulting has been the BCG’s growth matrix in addition to the Ansoff Matrix both of whom identify and categorize the position of the firm in the present scheme of things and suggest ways and means to improve profitability.
Do Management Consultants always get it Right?
Of course, this does not mean that management consultants are always right when they consult with industry. For instance, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008, management consultants along with investment bankers drew much flak because either they failed to see the crisis coming or because they were too much like the Ostrich with its head in the sand to alert the firms about the crisis. Even before the crisis, management consultants were being exhorted to be more circumspect and not be carried away by fads, manias, and irrational exuberance as can be seen in their wrong approach to the dotcom boom and the subsequent bust wherein they and their recommendations to many firms were found to be wrong with hindsight. Indeed, if there is a valid criticism against management consultants, it is that they use a lot of jargon and market their suggestions and recommendations in a glib and polished manner some of which when the sheen wears off are found to be wanting.
An On Balance Assessment of Management Consulting
Having said that, one must not dismiss management consultants that easily. For instance, one of the reasons why many CEOs (Chief Executive Officers) hire them in the first place is because they bring in an outsiders perspective as well as can approach the problems being faced by the firms in an objective and fresh manner. Apart from this, management consultants also bring to the table their expertise and experience wherein they are in a position to recommend alternative strategies because of their deep engagement as well as wealth of information and knowledge of business which enables them to spot trends and anticipate changes in advance. Therefore, what we are saying is that management consulting must be evaluated in a balanced manner taking the positive along with the negative.
Conclusion: Knowledge is Power
The discussion so far has provided a bird’s eye view of what management consulting is all about. For those of you aspiring to be a management consultant, our advice is that you should develop a perspective on not only how the business and the corporate world works but also a perspective on life itself so that your insights backed with research into the firms that hire you as well as hard work and due diligence into the minutiae would come in handy. Most importantly, knowledge is power as far as management consulting is concerned and therefore, you must keep abreast of the changing trends in business and society in addition to approaching each piece of analysis as well as reading material with the attitude of how it would help you succeed in making it to the management consulting firms. (from Management Study Guide)

Watch the video and make a short summary of it.

Case study.

Our client had an antique store in downtown Chicago that could not meet the sales targets. Therefore, in order to attract customers, the owners of the antique store (a young couple in their early 30′s) have started to make home made sandwiches and begin selling sandwiches in their antique store.
After a while the home made sandwiches have become more and more popular around the area, so they have increased their profits and they kept going. Currently, they want to expand their business by opening new stores, but they do not know whether it is a good strategy. They want you to develop their strategy to grow regarding the cost and the business drivers. What are your thoughts?
• The Chicago antique store mostly serves sandwiches during the lunch time. 75% of the revenue is generated by lunch with the rest after 1 pm.
• The antique store is fully utilized during lunch and under utilized at other times.
• Sandwiches are 50% of the revenues, desserts 10%, chips 10% and drinks 30%.

Discussion:

- What is the popularity of a consultant’s job in your country?
- How to overcome criticism from the company team towards consultant’s ideas?
- Would you like to become a management consultant?

Project:
Imagine yourselves being management consultants taking up some real company case. Choose a company and prepare the consulting interview guide.

 

 

Unit 7 MANAGING CREATIVITY

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Creativity and Innovation have always been at the heart of every successful organization. Yet until recently, the responsibility of innovating new ideas and products was left to the R&D and Creative Teams. Managing creativity was something of an enigma. How do you manage something so abstract as innovation?
In recent years the role of the Creativity Manager has developed. And as we start to see creative workers replace knowledge workers, knowing how to creatively manage teams and inspire diversity, have become essential elements in the role of today’s team leaders.
Nowadays even the workplaces that are considered most mundane, have the scope to be creative and innovative in their approach. Take the case of the instant soup factory, where the Spice Blenders and Production Line Operators took it upon themselves to increase productivity, by creating their own tempo.
How do we encourage creativity in the modern-day organization? And what are the foundations that propel us to great innovation? There are lots of ways we can innovate in the workplace, and make our workplaces more stimulating for creativity to flow. We just have to give our teams the freedom and confidence to explore ways of doing what they do better.
Follow these seven principles to have your budding designers, scientists and artists, rise up and innovate your next market-leading creation.
Nurture diversity
When teams connect ideas from entirely different contexts, they innovate. The role of a Creativity Manager is to build a diverse team and then nurture its diversity, so the individuals learn to value their originality and gain the confidence to bring their unique perspectives to the table. A Creativity Manager always supports the individualism of her team members and is able to facilitate diverging opinions.
Building a diverse and cross-functional team is easier when you allow team members to take part in the recruitment process of new team members. It allows them to pick candidates who fit in with the team culture and share similar values. Diverse teams take pride in making a positive and joint contribution to the overall goals of an organization.
Create Markets
When you nurture diversity amongst teams and workers and let them explore new ideas and concepts, you’re cultivating a networked organization. Networked organizations are structured on the belief, that every individual has the ability and right to collaborate, innovate and solve the problems of an organization. Creativity Managers motivate teams and individuals to work together, but also to succeed on individual merit. Rather like the Tour de France.
When we replace the traditional hierarchal system, we start to create markets, fostering collaboration and entrepreneurship – or intrapreneurship. In this environment, job titles make way for work profiles, which allow the individual to create the role they want, as long as their outcome, continues to feed the desired objective of the organization.
To sustain motivation and a high level of contribution in a market environment, Creativity Managers must put regular feedback and employee recognition at the top of the priority list.
Rely on Merits
Creativity Managers use various methods to recognise individual achievements and offer regular feedback to their teams of intrapreneurs. They understand that recognition isn’t always the most effective when it flows from the top down. In fact, we appreciate the recognition from our peers more than we do recognition from a management team, who has taken little or no part in the project.
Peer-to-peer recognition encourages understanding and appreciation of the role of individual team players. It empowers innovation and awakens a common approach to finding solutions. Our Happy Melly team successfully uses Merit Money to recognize the great efforts of our team players. Each month we get 100 points to distribute amongst the team to show gratitude for great work, kindness, even just to say thanks for making us smile.
Make no predictions
In a world where the only certainty is uncertainty, distributed organizations must plan for a future without making concrete predictions about what that future might look like, or how they are going to get there.
Strategy planning should allow for multiple scenarios. Creativity Managers who nurture diversity, empower teams to explore scenarios and present multiple solutions to reach the organizational goals.
Update the workplace
The work environment has a considerable impact on creativity. Creating a workspace that doesn’t feel like work, but imitates life outside of the office, can inspire employees and play a big role in the innovation of new products and services. The more space, colour and flexibility you introduce in the workplace, the more likely your creative workers are to feel stimulated and motivated to succeed.
Some companies spend millions of dollars on reinventing their office spaces. You don’t have to go crazy, but there are some fundamental design elements that will go a long way to making your team feel at home:
Open and transparent: Open spaces create a unified experience and support a transparent culture. Too large a space and you might create the feel of a call centre – loud, noisy and difficult to concentrate. To eradicate this issue, incorporate closed off areas for your workers to think, meditate or meet.
Make work colourful: Colour affects your mood and has an impact on behaviour. Get your team involved in decisions on colour schemes and space rearrangement, and allow them to add their personal touches.
Change constraints
So many constraints to deal with on a daily basis – clock in/clock out, sit at your desk, eat lunch at 1pm, catch the train at 5.30pm. Why does everything have to fit into a neat little box? Actually it doesn’t. What if you gave your employees the freedom to work from where they want? Take unlimited vacation time, or spend a couple of a days a month working on another team?
Every work environment has to have some constraints. In fact, esearch shows that creative workers like constraints. The objective of a good Creativity Manager is to encourage experimentation and workplace flexibility; to identify and introduce good constraints, and get rid of the ones that do nothing for productivity and innovation.
Creativity Managers set team guidelines that take into consideration the ‘why’, ‘what’ and ‘how’: Why do we need constraints? What will our team benefit from these constraints? How will it help us reach our higher purpose?
Open Boundaries
The more freedom you allow your employees, the more likely they are to adopt a learning mindset. Good Creativity Managers believe in the value of knowledge sharing, networking and collaboration. Those that fear openness will end up repressing creativity. When organizations open up boundaries, they enjoy an inflow of great ideas.
Creative workers should be allowed to network with like-minded people and organizations, attend cross company conferences and create open innovation networks, sharing ideas and practices. This is a great way to grow a transparent culture, where employees are not afraid to listen, learn and share knowledge. Of course, when we open boundaries, we also have to set constraints to protect product innovation.
Ultimately when we do away with traditional boundaries, we open up opportunities for creativity and entrepreneurship in teams. When we nurture diversity, we create teams that can provide us with multiple scenarios for the future. Through regular feedback and letting our workers invent their own role, we feed enthusiasm and give them a sense of purpose. And when we give them regular time to experiment and collaborate, we spark innovation.
Who will you let create the future of your organization? (from management30.com)

 

Watch the video and make a short summary of it.

 

Case study.
When Silicon Valley robotics entrepreneur Keller Rinaudo visited The Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania in 2014 he discovered a ‘database of death’.
He was there to see a mobile alert system for health workers to text emergency requests for medicine and vaccines.
Thanks to this government system, health workers made thousands of emergency requests – which had never been possible before. But there was no way for the government to fulfil all these requests.
The database was a list of the thousands of names, addresses, ages and phone numbers of people who had died, often for want of a basic medicine or a blood transfusion.
Instead of extending existing conventional solutions – to pave roads and run couriers to remote communities – Rinaudo decided to apply his entrepreneurial and engineering acumen to the problem.
The ‘last mile’
It is estimated that more than two billion people across the world cannot access the medicine they need to survive because of 'last mile' transportation challenges. So with no infrastructure to plug into, an autonomous delivery drone network was the answer – a concept that became Zipline.
“Aid alone won't solve this problem,” says Zipline Chief Executive Rinaudo. “It's not a scalable and self-sustaining solution. Billions of people lack adequate access to medicine. We believe that a mission-driven, private technology company working in partnership with forward-thinking and innovative public officials and health providers can help solve the access problem once and for all.
Rwanda's mud roads are a great example of the obstacles faced distributing medical supplies in the developing world. Rwandan President Paul Kagame has advocated for technology’s role in rebuilding in the aftermath of the Rwandan Genocide and was the first African leader to see Zipline’s potential.
In October 2016, Zipline secured an initial contract to deliver blood to 21 hospitals in Rwanda before it extended the service nationwide, putting most of the country's 12 million citizens within reach of a lifesaving delivery at 450 facilities.
Rwanda’s Zipline network is the world’s first and only national-scale instant drone delivery service.
That is why London Business School has recognised Zipline at the Real Innovation Awards run by the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Zipline triumphed in The Harnessing the Winds of Change category – given to those who spot what’s just around the corner soon enough to take advantage of it.
The Real Innovation Awards is an annual ceremony celebrating business innovation around the world, hosted by the London Business School’s Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (IIE).
“What Zipline have done is remarkable. They are redefining entrepreneurship.”
RIA judges were impressed by the timing of Zipline's innovation and the outsized impact it has created for the communities it serves. It wasn't that what Zipline has done is fundamentally novel, but how skilfully they have brought together a number of burgeoning technologies.
“What Zipline has done is remarkable,” says Julian Birkinshaw, Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship. “They are redefining what entrepreneurship is all about. They are at the cutting edge of drone development at the moment the technology matures.”
What next for Rwanda and Zipline?
Zipline is now delivering more than 75% of Rwanda’s blood supply outside of the capital, Kigali. In addition to its impact on lifesaving emergencies, instant drone delivery has helped ensure that hospitals always have access to blood products, increasing the use of some blood products by 175% and reducing waste and spoilage to almost zero.
In April 2019, Zipline partnered with the Government of Ghana to launch the first of four distribution centres that will serve 2,000 health facilities and a population of 12 million people across the country.
In September of 2019, Zipline announced that it will expand its service to India as a part of a government initiative to put 120 million people within range of instant medical delivery by drone. In December of 2019 Zipline announced a planned expansion into the Philippines.
Zipline has also been working with the US Department of Defense to show how Zipline's logistics network of autonomous delivery drones could help transform emergency medicine and critical care in conflict, as well as in humanitarian and disaster relief scenarios.
The business has attracted investors including Baillie Gifford, Goldman Sachs, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, GV, The Rise Fund, a global impact fund managed by TPG, Katalyst Ventures, Temasek, Toyota Tsusho Corporation, and Stanford University.
Mike Stone, Chief Investment Officer of The Rise Fund, said in May 2019: “Zipline is not just a drone company, but rather a transformative technology business using next-generation logistical solutions to provide lifesaving services. We are thrilled to be partnering with Keller and his team as they bring vital healthcare provisioning to markets all over the world. Zipline is a compelling example of what we search for with The Rise Fund: companies helping to solve our world’s most complex societal problems.”
The investment also saw Rise Fund partner Bono, the U2 lead singer and global humanitarian activist, join Zipline’s Board of Directors.
A solar powered, sustainable future
In the short term Zipline aims to serve up to 140 million people in countries across Africa, India and very soon the United States.
“We've flown millions of miles over three continents and are delivering to hospitals serving over 20 million people,” says Rinaudo. “Our goal is to serve 700 million people in the next five years.”
Drones are among a range of technologies that are set to transform the continent. Solar power is promising to take Africa from dark nights with noisy generators and fumy kerosene lamps straight into a solar powered, sustainable future, skipping the step of building a grid network. Bulbs, batteries and solar panels are now widely available across Africa.
Rinaudo believes Africa and other developing nations can leapfrog more developed nations with legacy infrastructure through technology. It is a similar story to M-Pesa, whose mobile banking platform has overcome people's mistrust of traditional banks through mobile-to-mobile payments. In fact, Zipline uses M-Pesa's off-the-peg mobile systems to handle payments and GPS onboard their 'Zip' drones.
As Rinaudo noted in his 2017 TED talk, the developing world needs entrepreneurs because NGOs and state aid alone are not going to employ hundreds of millions of young Africans. The continent is finding its own solutions. (from London Business School, Real Innovation Awards)

Discussion:
- Do you know any ways to develop your personal creativity?
- Is innovation appreciated in your society/university/home?
- What are the criteria for good innovations ?
- How innovative is your country’s business?

Project:
Prepare and conduct in class a set of exercises for developing creativity.

 

Unit 8 E-BUSINESS

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I dropped out of college to pursue entrepreneurship full-time. My first breakthrough came two years after with an e-commerce business that sold grillz. Through grueling trial and error, I learned everything from product sourcing and customer service to marketing, web design, financial accounting and more.
It’s how I made lifelong friends and met ultra-successful people I never dreamed I’d meet. But, like I mention all the time here, trial and error is a costly and inefficient way to learn. Better to learn from others instead. One great way to do that is by attending conferences. Anthony Mastellone's Digital Growth Summit was the latest one I attended, and what follows are five of my favorite takeaways from that trip on how to supercharge your e-commerce business.
1. Build an attribution plan
For e-commerce entrepreneurs, it’s important to always keep an eye on what’s working (and what’s not). Attribution is how to do it. The Interactive Advertising Bureau's (IAB) definition of attribution is “the process of identifying a set of user actions across screens and touch points that contribute in some manner to a desired outcome, and then assigning value to each of these events.”
Benton Crane, CEO of the Harmon Brothers (creators of the legendary ads for Squatty Potty, Purple and others) was the first to speak at Digital Growth Summit, and he gave a high-level breakdown on how to leverage attribution as you grow your e-commerce business to make smarter business decisions. It advised:
Message testing.
Image testing.
Learning ad blitz. (This is testing all the different features and benefits to see what works together. Examples could include pricing, sizing, portability, function, etc.)
Scale up, i.e. roll all winning elements into one.
Then build your hero campaign and go big.
2. Target smarter
Matt Schmitt of Skup simplified a problem a lot of entrepreneurs have: targeting. They may have a customer avatar in mind, but aren’t sure how best to reach them. Schmitt recommends silos. These are four of his examples that will allow you to get a clearer picture of where to find your target consumer:
What magazines do they subscribe to?
What associations or groups would they belong to?
What celebrities or influential figures would they follow?
And what brands or products are they using?
3. Leverage Campaign Budget Optimization
Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO) is a new advertising system by Facebook. Their machine-learning algorithm monitors targeting and performance of your ad sets, then allocates your budget to the best-performing sets based on the objective or pixel you’ve applied, using real-time data, automatically.
As per Facebook: “CBO uses your campaign budget and your bid strategy — which might be, for example, lowest cost per action (CPA) or highest return on ad spend (ROAS) — to automatically and continuously find the best active opportunities for results across your ad sets. Then we distribute your campaign budget in real time to get those results."
In short, if you’re new to Facebook advertising, this is a great way to get in the game as cost-effectively as possible, without having to micromanage your campaigns.
4. Start using Messenger ads
Harvard Business Review conducted a study back in 2011 on online lead generation and discovered that failure to respond in less than five minutes to a new lead decreases your odds of qualifying them by a staggering 400 percent. Yet, according to Chatmatic founder Travis Stephenson, entrepreneurs shy away from Messenger.
But by leveraging Messenger (the most downloaded app in the world in 2019, FYI) with ads and an auto-responder, you’re doing instant, direct follow-up with potential customers, thus increasing your lead-qualifying and conversions capabilities. Or you can just use them to rapidly capture emails and build a relevant list. Which leads to takeaway five....
5. Use email marketing
Email averages $38 in for every $1 spent according to a Direct Marketing Association 2015 Client Report. For those new to email marketing, it can feel overwhelming at first, but remember this: It costs more to acquire new customers than recapture existing ones. And email is the easiest way to recapture, because the entire process can be automated. Email expert Jess Chan of Longplay recommends you build an automated customer journey. Do this by setting up:
Welcome emails.
Abandoned-cart emails (69.57 percent of online shopping carts are abandoned).
Order confirmation and shipping confirmation emails.
Post-purchase emails (e.g. a thank-you note or letter from the founder).
Upsell and retention emails (e.g. cross-sells, testimonial requests, etc.).
And other email auto-responders.
To capture emails more effectively, use:
Lead magnets (e.g. “Subscribe for our free 14-page social skills guide”).
Quizzes (e.g. “What kind of traveler are you?”).
Discount codes (e.g. “Subscribe for 20 percent off your first purchase").
To wrap things up, use attribution to test your messaging and silos to target smarter, leverage CBOs to spend smarter, activate messenger ads to supercharge your follow-ups and, for goodness sake, stop leaving money on the table by neglecting email marketing. I’m using all of these growth strategies in tandem, and you should be too if you’re serious about supercharging your e-commerce business. (by Brian Roberts from the Entrepreneur)

 

 

Watch the video and make a short summary of it.

Case study.

Lorna Leeson of Stride for Success
Elevator Pitch: Audio horse riding lessons that you can download and listen to, via your phone, while riding your own horse. Five new twelve-minute lessons every week. Your own time, your own arena, your own horse. Horse riding lessons as flexible as you need them to be.
Website: http://stridesforsuccess.com
Founded: January 2014
Business archetype: Teacher
Revenue in the last year: $2,400
Unique visitors in the last year: 6,294
Email subscribers: 671
Entrepreneurial motivation: I’ve had an offline business for ten years now, a small riding school in South Africa. I am limited to grow that business due to location and I wanted to create something that I can a) scale and b) help other people who are location challenged to get sound horse riding instruction.
Why Lorna loves SPI: Pat shows the ups and downs in—what appears to be—a truthful and transparent manner. Focusing on creating more time for the important things by putting the hours in now. Smart Passive Income’s content is a good indicator as to where to invest those hours now.
Fizzle Breakdown: Lorna’s business is off to a great start, with more than 500 email subscribers and close to $2,500 in income. Hitting the 500 subscriber mark and earning money from that audience means that Lorna has two important pieces in place: her minimum viable audience and her minimum viable product. The combination of those two should get her to her minimum viable income, or the level of income necessary to pay her most basic bills.
Lorna has built her teacher archetype business with a membership site model, which means her business has the potential to make recurring revenue from customers, month after month. The pricing today is $32.95 per month.
In a membership site model, there are some metrics that matter. First is customer lifetime value (LTV), or how much money a given customer will spend at Strides for Success over time. So, if Lorna’s members stay for six months, her LTV would be $198.
To grow her business, Lorna has a few levers to pull. She needs to:
increase website traffic,
increase conversion to email subscribers,
increase conversion to customers, and
increase customer retention, which increases LTV.
Because Lorna’s business is still in the early stages, we would recommend focusing entirely on traffic for the next three–six months. Her content strategy and other marketing channels should focus entirely on finding new horseback riders wherever they already spend time online, and bringing them back to her website.
As her traffic grows, Lorna should start to focus on conversion to email subscribers and customers. Once her conversion numbers are satisfactory, she can turn her attention to increasing LTV. One way to do this might be to offer a discounted annual membership for 75 percent of the cost of twelve monthly payments or lifetime membership for three–five times the cost of an annual membership.
Lorna should be able to reach her minimum viable income within twelve–eighteen months by focusing on increasing traffic and signups.(from https://www.smartpassiveincome.com/3-online-business-case-studies-inspired-by-the-spi-community)

Discussion:
- What are the advantages and disadvantages of a online business compared to an offline one?
- What online business niches are popular in your country?
- What are the criteria of a successful online business?
- What are some of the future trends in e-commerce?

Project:
Prepare a presentation of an online business company from your country.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unit 9 START-UPS

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Depending on whom you ask, 2012 represented the apex, the inflection point, or the beginning of the end for Silicon Valley’s startup scene—what cynics called a bubble, optimists called the future, and my future co-workers, high on the fumes of world-historical potential, breathlessly called the ecosystem. Everything was going digital. Everything was up in the cloud. A technology conglomerate that first made its reputation as a Web-page search engine, but quickly became the world’s largest and most valuable private repository of consumer data, developed a prototype for a pair of eyeglasses on which the wearer could check his or her e-mail; its primary rival, a multinational consumer-electronics company credited with introducing the personal computer to the masses, thirty years earlier, released a smartphone so lightweight that gadget reviewers compared it to fine jewelry.
Technologists were plucked from the Valley’s most prestigious technology corporations and universities and put to work on a campaign that reëlected the United States’ first black President. The word “disruption” proliferated, and everything was ripe for or vulnerable to it: sheet music, tuxedo rentals, home cooking, home buying, wedding planning, banking, shaving, credit lines, dry-cleaning, the rhythm method. It was the dawn of the unicorns: startups valued, by their investors, at more than a billion dollars. The previous summer, a prominent venture capitalist, in the op-ed pages of an international business newspaper, had proudly declared that software was “eating the world.”
Not that I was paying any attention. At twenty-five, I was working in publishing, as an assistant to a literary agent, sitting at a narrow desk outside my boss’s office, frantically e-mailing my friends. The year before, I’d received a raise, from twenty-nine thousand dollars to thirty. What was my value? One semester of an M.F.A. program; fifteen hundred chopped salads, after taxes. I had a year left on my parents’ health insurance.
I was staving off a thrumming sense of dread. An online superstore, which had got its start, in the nineties, by selling books on the World Wide Web, was threatening to destroy publishing with the tools of monopoly power: pricing and distribution. People were reeling from the news that the two largest publishing houses, whose combined value pushed past two billion dollars, had agreed to merge. In the evenings, at dive bars, I met with other editorial and agency assistants, all women, all of us in wrap dresses and cardigans, for whiskey-and-sodas and the house white. Publishing had failed to innovate, but surely we—the literary, the passionate, lovers and defenders of human expression—couldn’t lose?
One afternoon, at my desk, I read an article about a startup, based in New York, that had raised three million dollars to bring a revolution to publishing. It was building an e-reading app for mobile phones which operated on a subscription model. The pitch—access to a sprawling library of e-books for a modest monthly fee—should have seemed too good to be true, but the app was a new concept for publishing, an industry where it seemed as if the only ways to have a sustainable career were to inherit money, marry rich, or wait for our superiors to defect or die.
My interviews with the e-book startup were so casual that at a certain point I wondered if the three co-founders just wanted to hang out. They were younger than I was but spoke about their work like industry veterans, and were generous with unsolicited business advice. I wanted, so much, to be like them. I joined at the beginning of 2013.
The job, which had been created for me, was a three-month trial run. As a full-time contractor, I would be paid twenty dollars an hour, with no benefits. Still, the annual salary amounted to forty thousand dollars. On my start date, I arrived at the office, a loft a block from Canal Street, to find a stack of hardcover books about technology, inscribed by the founders and stamped with a wax seal of the company logo: a mollusk, unavoidably yonic, with a perfect pearl.
The e-book startup had millions of dollars in funding, but the app was still in “private alpha,” used by only a few dozen friends, family members, and investors. For the first time in my career, I had some semblance of expertise. The founders asked for my opinions on the app’s user interface and the quality of the inventory, and on how we could best ingratiate ourselves with the online reading communities, the largest of which would soon be acquired by the monopolistic online superstore. One afternoon, the C.E.O. summoned the other two founders and the staff of three to a conference room to practice his presentation to publishers. He opened by saying that this was the era of the sharing economy. Music, movies, television, retail, and transportation had been disrupted. Apparently, the time had come for books. He flipped to a slide that displayed the logos of various successful subscription platforms, with ours at the center. “Hemingway” was misspelled in the pitch deck: two “m”s.
After the first few weeks, it seemed that the founders were paying me mostly to look for new office furniture and order them snacks: single-serving bags of sliced apples, tiny chocolate bars, cups of blueberry yogurt. “She’s too interested in learning, not doing,” the C.E.O. wrote. He meant to send the message to the two other co-founders, but mistakenly posted it in the company chat room. He apologized sincerely, while I looped the words in my head. I had not understood that the founders hoped I would make myself indispensable. I had never heard the tech incantation “Ask forgiveness, not permission.”
Soon afterward, the co-founders informed me that the areas where I could add value would not be active for some time. They assumed that I wanted to continue working in tech, and I didn’t disabuse them of this notion.
One of the e-book startup’s co-founders helped arrange an interview at an analytics startup in San Francisco. The role was in customer support, which I was not particularly excited about, but it was an entry-level position that required no programming knowledge. As a sociology major with a background in literary fiction and three months of experience in snack procurement, I assumed I was not in a position to be picky.
The night before the interview, in a bedroom I’d rented through a millennial-friendly platform for sleeping in strangers’ bedrooms, I read puff pieces about the analytics startup’s co-founders, now twenty-four and twenty-five, with one Silicon Valley internship between them and a smart, practical dream of a world driven by the power of Big Data. A renowned seed accelerator in Mountain View had offered funding and connections in exchange for a seven-per-cent stake, and the C.E.O. and the technical co-founder left their college in the Southwest to join. The startup had twelve million dollars in venture funding, thousands of customers, and seventeen employees.
In the office, the manager of the Solutions team, a hirsute man with a belly laugh, presented me with a series of questions and puzzles. A wiry sales engineer showed me how to write a function that rearranged the characters in a long string of letters. The technical co-founder watched me complete a reading-comprehension section from the LSAT.
The offer included company-paid medical and dental coverage and a starting salary of sixty-five thousand dollars a year. The Solutions manager did not mention equity, and I didn’t know that early access to it was the primary reason people joined startups. Eventually, the company’s in-house recruiter recommended that I negotiate a small stake, explaining that all the other employees had one.
Friends at home told me that they were excited for me, then asked whether I was sure I was making the right decision. The media tended to cover tech as a world of baby-faced nerds with utopian ambitions and wacky aesthetic preferences, but to my friends it was a Wall Street sandbox. I stuck to the narrative that working in analytics would be an experiment in separating my professional life from my personal life. Maybe I would start the short-story collection I had always wanted to write. Maybe I would take up pottery. I could learn to play the bass. I could have the sort of creative life that creative work would not sustain. It was easier to fabricate a romantic narrative than to admit that I was ambitious—that I wanted my life to pick up momentum.
Startups in New York were eager to create services for media and finance; software engineers in the Bay Area were building tools for other software engineers. The analytics platform enabled companies to collect customized data on their users’ behavior, and to manipulate the data in colorful, dynamic dashboards. I’d had some guilt about the opportunism of the e-book startup, but had no qualms about disrupting the Big Data space. It was thrilling to see a couple of twentysomethings go up against middle-aged leaders of industry. It looked like they might win.
I was employee No. 20, and the fourth woman. The three men on the Solutions team wore Australian work boots, flannel, and high-performance athletic vests; drank energy shots; and popped Vitamin B in the mornings. The Solutions manager assigned me an onboarding buddy, whom I’ll call Noah—employee No. 13—a curly-haired twenty-six-year-old with a forearm tattoo in Sanskrit. He struck me as the kind of person who would invite women over to listen to Brian Eno and then actually spend the night doing that. I spent my first few weeks with Noah carting around an overflowing bowl of trail mix and a rolling whiteboard, on which he patiently diagrammed how cookie tracking worked, how data were sent server-side, how to send an HTTP request. He gave me homework and pep talks. Our teammates handed me beers in the late afternoon. I was happy; I was learning. The first time I looked at a block of code and understood what was happening, I felt like a genius.
We treated the C.E.O., a twenty-four-year-old with gelled, spiky hair, like an oracle. The child of Indian immigrants, he mentioned, not infrequently, his parents’ hope that he would finish his undergraduate degree. Instead, he was responsible for other adults’ livelihoods.
On Tuesdays at noon, we would roll our desk chairs into the middle of the office and flank him in a semicircle, like children at a progressive kindergarten, for the weekly all-hands. Packets containing metrics and updates from across the company were distributed. We were doing well. An I.P.O. seemed imminent. The engineers had built an internal Web site to track revenue, which meant that we could watch the money come in in real time. The message was clear and intoxicating: society valued our contributions and, by extension, us. Still, the C.E.O. motivated us with fear. “We are at war,” he would say, his jaw tense. We would look down at our bottles of kombucha and nod gravely. At the end of the meeting, the packets were gathered up and shredded.
Camaraderie came easily. We all felt indispensable. Failures and successes reflected personal inadequacies or individual brilliance. Slacking off was not an option. Research did not necessarily support a correlation between productivity and working hours beyond a reasonable threshold, but the tech industry thrived on the idea of its own exceptionalism; the data did not apply to us. We were circumventing the fussiness and the protocol of the corporate world. As long as we were productive, we could be ourselves.
I did not want to be myself. I envied my teammates’ sense of entitlement, their natural ease. I began wearing flannel. I incorporated B Vitamins into my regimen and began listening to E.D.M. while I worked. The sheer ecstasy of the drop made everything around me feel like part of a running-shoe ad or a luxury-car commercial, though I couldn’t imagine driving to E.D.M. Was this what it felt like to hurtle through the world in a state of pure confidence, I wondered—was this what it was like to be a man? I would lean against my standing desk and dance while pounding out e-mails, bobbing in solidarity with the rest of the team.
Each new employee, regardless of department, was required to spend a few days at the Solutions cluster, answering support tickets––like working the mail room in Hollywood. The C.E.O. believed that this experience built empathy for our customers. It did not necessarily build empathy for Support. The engineers and salespeople tossed off replies to customer inquiries and rolled their eyes at developers who did not understand our product. The engineers had been hired at two or three times my salary, and their privileged position in the industry hierarchy should have exempted them from such tedium. It wasn’t exactly that they harbored contempt for our users; they just didn’t need to think about them.
In theory, the tool was straightforward. But when users—engineers and data scientists, almost all of them men—encountered problems, they would level accusations and disparage the company on social media. My job was to reassure them that the software was not broken. Looking at their source code or data, I explained where things had gone haywire. Some days, helping men untangle problems that they had created, I felt like a piece of software myself, a bot: instead of being an artificial intelligence, I was an intelligent artifice, an empathetic text snippet or a warm voice, giving instructions, listening comfortingly. Twice a week, I hosted live Webinars for new customers. I asked my parents to join, as if to prove that I was doing something useful, and, one morning, they did. My mother e-mailed afterward. “Keep that perky tone!” she wrote.
After two months, the Solutions manager took me for a walk around the neighborhood. We passed a strip club, a popular spot for parties during developer conferences, which my co-workers claimed had a superlative lunch buffet. We circumvented people sleeping on steaming grates. He looked at me with kind eyes, as if he had given birth to me. “We’re giving you an extra ten thousand dollars,” he said. “Because we want to keep you.”
The simplest way to solve users’ problems was by granting the Solutions team access to all our customers’ data sets. This level of employee access—some of us called it God mode—was normal for the industry, common for small startups whose engineers were overextended. It was assumed that we would look at our customers’ data sets only out of necessity, and only when our doing so was requested by the customers themselves; that we would not, under any circumstances, look up the profiles of our lovers and family members and co-workers in the data sets belonging to dating apps and shopping services and fitness trackers and travel sites. It was assumed that if a publicly traded company was using our software we would resist buying or selling its stock. Our tiny startup operated on good faith. If good faith failed, there was a thorough audit log of all employee behavior. The founders tracked the customer data sets we looked at and the specific reports we ran.
of 2013, news broke that a National Security Agency contractor had leaked classified information about the U.S. government’s surveillance programs. The N.S.A. was reading private citizens’ personal communications, crawling through people’s Internet activity by gathering cookies. The government had penetrated and pillaged the servers of global technology companies. Some commentators said that tech companies had, essentially, collaborated, by creating back doors that the government could access. Others defended the tech companies’ innocence. In the office, we never talked about the whistle-blower—not even during happy hour.
I was making seventy-five thousand dollars a year. It felt like getting away with something. Even so, when I ran out of work to do on nights and weekends, I felt free, invisible, and lonely. The city’s green spaces overflowed with couples jogging next to each other and cycling on bikes with matching panniers. I spent hours in bed, drinking coffee and thumbing my phone. On a dating app, I made plans with two men, both of whom seemed boring and benign, before deciding that I couldn’t go through with it. I deleted the app. A few days later, one of them messaged me on a social network everyone hated. I tried to reverse engineer how he’d identified me, but couldn’t.
Noah took me under his wing. He had grown up in Marin, and had moved back to California after college, hoping to live a bohemian life. Meeting his friends was like swinging open the gate to a version of the Bay Area I thought no longer existed: Here were chefs and social workers, academics and musicians, dancers and poets. Everyone was inventing a way to live. Some women instituted gender reparations with their partners, redistributing the housework to compensate for decades of patriarchal control. Atheists bought tarot decks and went to outposts in Mendocino to supervise one another through sustained, high-dose LSD trips. They went on retreats to technology-liberation summer camps, where they locked up their smartphones and traded their legal names for pseudonyms evoking berries and meteorological phenomena. I attended a spa-themed party at a communal house and wandered the grounds in a robe, avoiding the hot tub—a sous-vide bath of genitalia.
At a birthday party north of the Panhandle, Noah’s roommate, Ian, sat down beside me and struck up a conversation. Ian was soft-spoken and whistled slightly when he pronounced the letter “s.” He had static-electricity hair and a sweet, narrow smile. He asked questions and then follow-up questions, a novelty. It took a while for me to steer the conversation to him. He worked in robotics, I eventually learned, programming robotic arms to do camerawork for films and commercials. The studio where he worked had recently been acquired by the search-engine giant down in Mountain View. One of the founders had been sent a set of three-hundred-thousand-dollar speakers as a welcome gift; when a pallet of electric skateboards arrived at the studio, Ian and his co-workers knew that the deal had closed.
Noah had been with the startup for a year, and was preparing for his annual review. Before the meeting, he sent me his self-assessment and a memo he had written, asking what I thought. As an early employee, Noah was often the recipient of grievances and concerns from teammates and customers. In the memo, he pushed for changes to the product and in the company culture. He asked for a title change, more autonomy, a raise, and an increase in stock options. He presented the number of hires he’d referred, the profits of the accounts he and his referrals had acquired and nurtured, the amount of money he calculated he had generated for the company. He wanted to become a product manager and run his own team. He wanted equity commensurate with his contributions, about one per cent of the company. He framed it as an ultimatum.
Giving the chief executive an ultimatum was unprofessional, crazy, even for one of the best employees at the company. On the other hand, it was a company of twentysomethings run by twentysomethings. I read Noah’s memo twice, then I wrote and said it was risky but not unreasonable. I hoped they would give him everything he wanted. A few days later, on my way to work, I got a text message from Noah telling me that he had been fired.
At the office, the cluster felt like a funeral home. “They didn’t even try to negotiate with him,” a sales engineer said. “They just let one of our best people go, all because nobody here has any management experience.”
The early members of the Solutions team were corralled into an unscheduled meeting with the C.E.O. He told us to sit down, standing at the front of the room, arms folded. “If you disagree with my decision to fire him, I’m inviting you to hand in your resignation,” he said, speaking slowly. He looked around the table, addressing each of us individually.
“Do you disagree with my decision?” he asked the account manager.
“No,” the account manager said, raising his palms as if at gunpoint.
“Do you disagree with my decision?” the C.E.O. asked the sales engineer.
“No,” the sales engineer said. His eyelids fluttered. He looked ill.
“Do you disagree with my decision?” the C.E.O. asked me. I shook my head, face hot. Of course not, I lied.
Later, the C.E.O. denied that this meeting had taken place—it wasn’t something he would do, he said. At the time, it had seemed perfectly in character.
Ian and I biked through the city, drinking seltzer and eating avocado sandwiches on the seawall. We walked to the top of Bernal Hill and watched the fog curl around Sutro Tower; we skinny-dipped in Tomales Bay. In the winter of 2013, Ian took me to a party at the offices of a hardware startup operating out of an ivy-clad brick warehouse in Berkeley. Drones buzzed over a crowd of young professionals wearing sensible footwear. Ian disappeared with a co-worker to investigate a prototype line of self-assembling modular furniture, leaving me in a circle with a half-dozen other roboticists. The men discussed their research. One was trying to teach robots to tie different kinds of knots, like Boy Scouts. I asked if he was a graduate student. No, he said, squinting at me. He was a professor.
Talk turned to self-driving cars. How plausible were they, really? I asked. I had finished my beer, and I was bored. I also wanted to make sure everyone knew that I wasn’t just an engineer’s girlfriend who stood around at parties waiting for him to finish geeking out—though that’s exactly what I was doing. The group turned toward me, the Scout leader looking amused.
“What did you say you do?” one of them asked.
I said that I worked at a mobile-analytics company, hoping they would assume I was an engineer.
“Ah,” he said. “And what do you do there?”
Customer support, I said. He glanced at the others and resumed the conversation.
On the train home, I leaned into Ian and recounted the interaction. What sexists, I said. How dare they be so dismissive, just because I was a woman—just because I did customer support and was considered nontechnical. Ian cringed and pulled me closer. “You’re not going to like this,” he said. “But you were trying to talk shit about self-driving cars with some of the first engineers ever to build one.”
In the spring of 2014, the analytics startup released a new feature, a chart called Addiction. It displayed the frequency with which individual users engaged, synthesized on an hourly basis. Every company wanted to build an app that users were looking at throughout the day. Addiction, which quantified this obsession, was an inspired product decision by the C.E.O., executed brilliantly by the C.T.O.
Our communications director had left for a larger tech company with family-friendly benefits and policies, and was not replaced. With her departure, I became the de-facto copywriter. To promote Addiction, I ghostwrote an opinion piece for the C.E.O., published on a highly trafficked tech blog, that described the desirability of having people constantly returning to the same apps. “If you work for a SaaS”—software as a service—“company and most users are lighting up your Addiction report by using your app for 10 hours every day, you’re doing something very, very right,” I wrote, like the careerist I had become.
The novelty of the product was exciting, but the premise and the name made me uneasy. We all treated technology addiction as though it were inevitable. The branding vexed me, as I told a friend. It was as if substance abuse were an abstract concept, something that people had only read about in the papers. The friend listened while I ranted. “I hear you,” he said. The question of addiction, he told me, was already a big thing in gaming: “It’s nothing new. But I don’t see any incentive for it to change. We already call customers ‘users.’ ”
One evening, a group of us stayed late at work to watch a science-fiction movie about hackers who discover that society is a simulated reality. It was the C.E.O.’s favorite film, released the year he turned eleven. The movie didn’t just make the hackers look sexy—it glamorized circumvention, the outcast’s superiority, and omniscience. The C.E.O. sat with his laptop open, working as he watched.
At the beginning of my tenure—a decade earlier, in startup time—the C.E.O. had invited me and an entrepreneur friend of his for late-night pizza in North Beach. The walls of the pizzeria were covered in stickers, like a laptop. We ordered grandma slices and cups of water, and perched on stools in the back, chatting, almost like friends. The men insisted on getting me home safely, and hailed a cab. I started saying my goodbyes, but they got into the back seat. Seeing me home would add another hour to their trip, I protested. They buckled their seat belts. As we glided through the city, I wondered if the cab ride was an act of chivalry or a test. I felt like a prop in their inside joke. At my apartment steps, I turned back to wave, but the car was already gone.
The employees tried to be the C.E.O’s friends, but we were not his friends. He shut down our ideas and belittled us in private meetings; he dangled responsibility and prestige, only to retract them inexplicably. We regularly brought him customer feedback, like dogs mouthing tennis balls, and he regularly ignored us. He was expensive to work for: at least two of my co-workers met with therapists to talk through their relationship with him.
Still, I was reluctant to entertain the idea that the C.E.O., who’d been under scrutiny from venture capitalists and journalists for years, was egomaniacal or vindictive. I was always looking for some exculpatory story on which to train my sympathy. By the time I started looking for other jobs, I considered my blind faith in ambitious, aggressive, arrogant young men from America’s soft suburbs a personal pathology. But it wasn’t personal at all; it had become a global affliction.
In the summer of 2014, I went for an interview at a startup that hosted a platform for open-source software development, housed in a former dried-fruit factory by the ballpark. A security guard wearing a shirt with the company logo and the words “secret service” showed me to the waiting room, a meticulous replica of the Oval Office. The wallpaper was striped yellow and cream. An American flag stood to the side of the Resolute desk, behind which an animation of clouds passing over the National Mall played on a screen. The rug, a deep Presidential blue, was emblazoned with the startup’s mascot, a tentacled, doe-eyed octopus-cat crossbreed, holding an olive branch above the words “in collaboration we trust.” The company had attracted a hundred million dollars in venture funding, and appeared to be spending it the way most people would expect three men in their twenties to spend someone else’s money.
The offer letter arrived. “We’re expecting big things from you, ourselves, and for the company,” it read. “You should be justifiably proud.” Mostly, I was burned out. The open-source company was famous for its culture, which atypically emphasized work-life balance. For years, in emulation of the tenets of open source—transparency, collaboration, decentralization—the organization had been nonhierarchical, and the majority of employees worked remotely. Until recently, employees had named their own compensation, determined their own priorities, and come to decisions by consensus, including some related to interior design. As my host gave me a tour through the office, I noted juggling balls on a desk cluster, a children’s play area, and a barefoot employee playing video games. People shook cocktails at the company bar. There was an indoor picnic area with Adirondack chairs and plastic grass, an orange shipping container—a visual pun on “shipping code”—with a gaming room inside, and a row of so-called coder caves: dark, cushioned booths designed for programmers who worked best under the conditions of sensory deprivation.
The job was a customer-support role, but the title listed in the offer letter was, in homage to the company mascot, Supportocat. I set that humiliation aside. My co-workers at the analytics startup had made fun of me for considering a “life-style job”––it entailed a ten-thousand-dollar pay cut––but I liked the company’s utopianism. The open-source startup hosted the largest collection of source code in the world, including a public Web site with millions of open-source software projects. Excitable tech journalists sometimes referred to it as the Library of Alexandria, but for code. It was six years old, with two hundred employees and no serious competitors. The social network everyone hated and the United States government both used its tools.
For years, it had seemed that the company could do no wrong, but in the spring of 2014 the first woman on the engineering team—a developer and designer, a woman of color, and an advocate for diversity in tech—had come forward with a spate of grievances. The startup, she claimed, was a boys’ club. Colleagues condescended to her, reverted and erased her code, and created a hostile work environment. She described a group of male employees watching female employees hula-hoop to music in the office, leering as if they were at a strip club. The developer’s story was picked up by the media and went viral. The company conducted an investigation. An implicated founder stepped down; another moved to France.
For the first time, tech companies were beginning to release internal diversity data. The numbers were bleak. The people building the world’s new digital infrastructure looked nothing like the people using it. There was an ongoing fight about the “pipeline problem”––the belief, apparently divorced from conversations about power or systemic racism, that there simply weren’t enough women and underrepresented minorities in stem fields to fill open roles. The situation at the open-source startup wasn’t the first instance of sexism and racism in the tech industry, but it was among the first to receive national attention. It made me wary, but I wondered if there might be some benefit to joining an organization forced to confront discrimination head on. Call it self-delusion or naïveté; I considered these calculations strategic.
During my first month in the job, there was a lot of chatter in the office about a group of Internet trolls who had mounted a harassment campaign against women in gaming. The trolls had flooded social networks, spouting racist, misogynistic, and reactionary rhetoric. They had been banned from nearly every platform, and had responded by citing the First Amendment and crying censorship. On our platform, they thrived.
The trolls maintained a repository of resources and data on women they were targeting—photos, addresses, personal information. The trolls’ identities, meanwhile, were impossible to trace. My co-workers debated how seriously to take the campaign. A popular narrative about trolls was that they were just a bunch of lonely men in their parents’ basements, but this looked like a coördinated effort. The repository included e-mail templates and phone-call scripts. It was, my teammates agreed, unusual to see them so organized.
In October, I flew to Phoenix for an annual conference of women in computing, established in honor of a female engineer who had helped develop military technologies during the Second World War. I was not really a woman in computing—more a woman around computing; a woman with a computer—but I was curious, and the open-source startup was a sponsor. The company put employees up in a boutique hotel with a pool and a Mexican restaurant.
On the first night, my co-workers, having flown in from Portland, Toronto, Boulder, and Chicago, gathered over margaritas and bowls of guacamole. Many hadn’t seen one another since the startup’s gender-discrimination crisis. I hovered on the periphery, hoping that the engineers would adopt me. Some of them had unnaturally colored hair and punk-rock piercings, signalling industry seniority as much as subcultural affiliation. I had no idea what it would be like to be a woman in tech whose skill set was respected. I was disappointed to learn that it wasn’t dissimilar from being a woman in tech whose skill set wasn’t.
For the most part, the other women at the open-source startup were glad that the years-long party seemed to be winding down. Leadership was scrambling to tidy up after the discrimination scandal: installing a human-resources department; disabling the prompt “/metronome,” which dropped an animated gif of a pendulous cock into the all-company chat room; rolling up the “in meritocracy we trust” flags. In retrospect, the adherence to meritocracy should have been suspect at a prominent international company that was overwhelmingly white, male, and American, and had fewer than fifteen women in engineering.
For years, my co-workers told me, the absence of an official organizational chart had given rise to a shadow chart, determined by social relationships and proximity to the founders. As the male engineers wrote manifestos about the importance of collaboration, women struggled to get their contributions reviewed and accepted. The company promoted equality and openness until it came to stock grants: equity packages described as “nonnegotiable” turned out to be negotiable for people who were used to successfully negotiating. The name-your-own-salary policy had resulted in a pay gap so severe that a number of women had recently received corrective increases of close to forty thousand dollars. No back pay.
In the convention center, I felt out of place among the computer-science majors, then ashamed to have impostor syndrome at a conference designed to empower women in the workforce. At a Male Allies plenary panel, a group of engineers circulated bingo boards among attendees. In each square was a different indictment: “Refers to a feminist as aggressive”; “ ‘That would never happen in my company’ ”; “Asserts other man’s heart is in the right place”; “Says feminist activism scares women away from tech”; “Wearables.” Wearables: the only kind of hardware men could imagine women caring about. At the center of the bingo board was a square that just said “Pipeline.”
The male allies, all trim, white executives, took their seats and began offering wisdom on how to manage workplace discrimination. “The best thing you can do is excel,” a V.P. at the search-engine giant, whose well-publicized hobby was stratosphere jumping, said. “Don’t get discouraged,” another said. “Just keep working hard.” Women bent over their bingo boards, checking off boxes.
Going into work was not mandatory, but I still wanted to be a part of something. In the office, I staked out an unclaimed standing desk among a cluster of engineers and left my business cards next to the monitor. I took meetings in an area atop the indoor shipping container, on couches where an engineer was rumored to have lived for several months, before being busted by our secret service.
I was employee No. 230-something. I had no trouble identifying the early employees. I saw my former self in their monopolization of the chat rooms, their disdain for the growing sales team, their wistfulness for the way things had been. Sometimes I would yearn for their sense of ownership and belonging—the easy identity, the all-consuming feeling of affiliation. And then I would remind myself, There but for the grace of God go I.
I stopped going into the office. Support met once a week, for an hour, over videoconference. I prepared for these meetings by brushing my hair, closing the curtains to the street, and tossing visible clutter onto my bed and covering it with a quilt. I would log in and lean into my laptop, enjoying the camaraderie and warmth of a team. For an hour, my studio apartment would fill with laughter and chatter, conversation tripping when the software stalled or delayed. Then I would stand up, stretch, replace the tape over my laptop camera, and open the curtains, readjusting to the silence in my room.
Some days, clocking in to work was like entering a tunnel. I would drop a waving-hand emoji into the team chat room, answer a round of customer tickets, read e-mail, process a few copyright takedowns, and skim the internal social network. In the chat software, I moved from channel to channel, reading information and banter that had accumulated overnight in other time zones. After repeating this cycle, I would open a browser window and begin the day’s true work of toggling between tabs.
Platforms designed to accommodate and harvest infinite data inspired an infinite scroll. I careened across the Internet like a drunk: small-space decoration ideas, author interviews, videos of cake frosting, Renaissance paintings with feminist captions. I read industry message boards and blogs, looking for anything to hold my interest. I learned that the e-book startup had been acquired by the search-engine giant, which had shut down its app. I watched videos of a xenophobic New York City socialite, whose greatest accomplishment was playing a successful businessman on reality television, launch a Presidential bid. I watched marriage proposals and post-deployment reunions and gender reveals: moments of bracing intimacy among people I would never know. I searched for answers, excuses, context, conclusions: “Text neck.” “Vitamin D deficiency.” “Rent calculator.” “What is mukbang?” Time passed, inevitably and unmemorably, in this manner.
By the beginning of 2016, corners of the open-source platform had become increasingly vicious and bizarre. People posted content claiming to be members of a terrorist organization; people posted content to dox government employees and stalk our staff. The company received a note so menacing that the office closed for a day.
A far-right publication ran a blog post about our V.P. of social impact––the woman responsible for managing diversity and inclusion programs—zeroing in on her critique of initiatives that tended to disproportionately benefit white women. The post was accompanied by a collage of octopus-cats, under the headline “anti-white agenda revealed.” The article sparked a furor in the comments section, which filled up with conspiratorial statements about Marxism and Hollywood, liberal victimhood, reverse racism, and the globalist agenda. The comments snowballed into threats. Some of the threats were specific enough that the company hired security escorts for the targeted employees.
Later, I mentioned to a co-worker that all Internet harassment now seemed to follow the same playbook: the methods of the far-right commenters were remarkably similar to those of the troll bloc that, eighteen months earlier, had targeted women in gaming. It was bizarre to me that the two groups would have the same rhetorical and tactical strategies. My co-worker, a connoisseur of online forums and bulletin boards, looked at me askance. “Oh, my sweet summer child,” he said. “Those groups are not different. They are absolutely the same people.”
San Francisco was tipping into a full-blown housing crisis. Real-estate brochures offered building owners enticements to flip. “Hi, neighbor!” they chirped. “We have considered and ready buyers eager to invest in your neighborhood.” There was a lot of discussion, particularly among the entrepreneurial class, about city-building. Everyone was reading “The Power Broker”—or, at least, reading summaries of it. Armchair urbanists blogged about Jane Jacobs and discovered Haussmann and Le Corbusier. They fantasized about special economic zones. An augmented-reality engineer proposed a design to combat homelessness which looked strikingly like doghouses. Multiple startups raised money to build communal living spaces in neighborhoods where people were getting evicted for living in communal living spaces.
There was a running joke that the tech industry was simply reinventing commodities and services that had long existed. Cities everywhere were absorbing these first-principles experiments. An online-only retailer of eyeglasses found that shoppers appreciated getting their eyes checked; a startup selling luxury stationary bicycles found that its customers liked to cycle alongside other people. The online superstore opened a bookstore, the shelves adorned with printed customer reviews and data-driven signage: “Highly rated: 4.8 stars & above.” Stores like these shared a certain ephemerality, a certain snap-to-grid style. They seemed to emerge overnight: white walls and rounded fonts and bleacher seating, matte simulacra of a world they had replaced.
Scale bred homogeneity. Half the knowledge workers I encountered had the same thin cashmere sweaters I did, and the same lightweight eyeglasses. Some of us had the same skin tints, from the same foundation. We complained of the same back problems, induced by the same memory-foam mattresses. In apartments decorated with the same furniture and painted the same shades of security-deposit white, we placed the same ceramic planters, creating photogenic vignettes with the same low-maintenance plants.
In the late fall, I went home to Brooklyn, reporting into work from my childhood bedroom, making myself available between six in the morning and early afternoon. New York held my life, but the city I had grown up in no longer existed. I had been gone for almost four years, and there were now so many co-working spaces and upscale salad shops; so many anemic new buildings with narrow balconies. I wondered if anyone actually wanted these things, and, if so, who they were. Whenever I asked, friends gave the same answer: finance guys, tech bros. It was the first time I had heard the two groups referred to in the same breath, not to mention with such frequency.
Being in New York compounded a feeling I had been experiencing, of profound dissociation from my own life. I knew, as I wandered through museums with friends and video-chatted with Ian, that I needed to leave the tech industry. I was no longer high on the energy of being around people who so easily satisfied their desires––on the feeling that everything was just within reach. The industry’s hubris and naïveté were beginning to grate; I had moral, political, and personal misgivings about Silicon Valley’s accelerating colonization of art, work, everyday life. I could not have anticipated––three weeks before a Presidential election that would convince me it was safer to have a foothold, however small and tenuous, inside the walls of power––that leaving would take me more than a year.
I went with my friends to see a performance in Fort Greene by a musician and choreographer we knew. I had met him shortly after my college graduation; he was the first person I knew who was building an artistic life from scratch. The show, years in the making, had a four-night run. Onstage, dancers and musicians guided large slabs of foam into architectural arrangements, surrounded by instruments, pedals, and wires. The choreographer slipped an electric guitar over his shoulder. Light followed him as he stepped delicately across the stage, singing—hair flopping across his brow, concentration and joy all over his face. I had forgotten what it felt like to want something; to feel that what I had, or was, mattered. I cried a little, wiping my nose on the program, stung by an old loss that suddenly felt fresh.
Afterward, the performers stood in the theatre lobby, radiant, receiving bouquets wrapped in butcher paper. People in structurally inventive clothing lingered over plastic cups of wine. We offered our congratulations, then shuffled past to let in other friends who had been waiting on the periphery. Outside, we flagged a taxi. It rumbled across the Brooklyn Bridge, toward a restaurant where others were waiting. The city streaked past, the bridge cables flickering like a delay, or a glitch. (by Anna Wiener from the New Yorker)

Watch the video and make a short summary of it.

 

Case study.

As David Spinks said in a recent Twitter chat: The magic of community happens when members create value for each other. Sure, people can tweet at you or double tap on your latest Instagram post, but the real a-ha moments often come when someone else with a similar pain point offers up a new solution or when someone shares a resource they think will benefit the community at large. Knowledge-sharing, FTW.
So how do you best facilitate that?
For an increasing number of community professionals, the answer to this question is initiating a Slack community. Slack is a real-time messaging platform in the same vein as GChat, which has seen exponential growth since its inception in 2014. In fact, a recent VentureBeat article cited a daily active user count of four million. Slack brings back the best of old-school online chat rooms with more control over who gets in and what they can access. People can create public channels based on a certain topic, talk privately in a group, or send direct messages to each other — all for free.
As Head of Community at Trello, a visual collaboration tool based in New York, it’s my job to explore new ways to connect and serve the group of folks who are passionate about our product. Our users care about the product and they care about productivity, and they love seeing how other people organize their workflows. For me, Slack stood out as a potential solution to allow them to share advice, ask questions, and connect with each other in meaningful ways.
But before diving into any new tool or platform, doing your research and laying the proper groundwork is paramount. Here’s our playbook of steps to take before launching your own external Slack community: Questions to consider, how to secure internal buy-in, how to create guard rails for members, pitfalls to avoid, and much more.
In The Beginning
This is the time to analyze yourself and the community you run.
The first and most important question to ask is: Do you really need Slack (or any community platform, for that matter) to achieve your goals? A Slack community is a time commitment, and you don’t want to stretch yourself too thin.
Secondly, think about whether or not a presence on Slack will provide value to your user base. What will they get from Slack that they can’t get from, say, your Twitter feed or your help forum?
This is also the time to evaluate user demand and potential size. At Trello, we knew that even a small percentage of our 19 million users meant we could connect a meaningful amount of people. Even more significantly, we knew that many of them were looking for ways to get the most out of the tool and that, at the time, other than the information we provided, there wasn’t a way for them to bounce ideas off other users. Problem, meet Solution.
In addition, I found it useful to observe the habits and best practices in active Slack communities I was already a part of — CMXand Buffer are two great examples.
Talk to Your People
Launching an external Slack community not only impacts you as a community professional. It will also inevitably begin to involve other departments within your organization. You must educate internal members of your team on the goals of the project and given the chance to ask questions, voice concerns, and, most importantly, feel excited about the opportunity.
To allow for this, I scheduled meetings with key departments in the planning stages, including:
Support: If people bring up support issues in Slack, what’s the best way to route those requests? Should we have someone from the team always on-call?
IT: Are there any security concerns? Who should set it up? Who should be an admin on the team?
Product: How do developers feel about members being able to provide real-time feedback? How can we best filter and elevate user requests and questions about the product?
After all of my discovery conversations, I created a document with best practices and rules of engagement because I knew many Trello team members would want to observe and participate in the Slack community. Key items in that document included:
Nomenclature for usernames: We wanted members to easily identify Trellists, so each person was asked to include the company name in their handle (i.e. erica-trello).
Discretion when sharing information: Our Slack community is public-facing, so it was important for the team to understand that anything shared there could then be posted on Twitter for the world to see. A good rule of thumb: If you wouldn’t want it printed on a billboard in Times Square, don’t share it.
When to jump in: To help foster an environment in which members help each other, I asked the team to let general comments or questions sit for awhile in order to allow other people to jump in with their insight and experiences.
Stay Organized
I’m biased, but keeping myself and relevant stakeholders on track is key for this project, and the tool I use is Trello. On my project board, I have a To-Do list, an In-Progress list a Done list and a Reports list. If a certain task requires help from a team member, I add them to the relevant card. If a task is timely, I add a due date. This board is also the best way to provide my manager with a bird’s eye view of what is being worked on and what is done. As a side benefit, it helps expose any holes or missing information.
Create Guard Rails for Members
The mark of a healthy community is one in which expectations are clearly defined and rules are adhered to. I used HubSpot to quickly set up a guidelines page that included answers to anticipated questions, things we value, and things that would not be tolerated. (Props to CMX member Margot Mazur at Wistia for the inspiration!)
An important note: I wanted to establish from the get-go that the Slack community was not a place to receive typical support help. It was established as a way to learn and grow, and, therefore, we explicitly stated that the best place to receive individual help for technical issues and beyond was through the traditional support channels (email or contact form).
Establish KPIs
Before launching any major initiative, you always want to establish metrics that will help you gauge whether or not what you’re doing is working. Even in the free version of Slack, they provide a weekly summary of your team’s activities, including how many messages were sent (publicly and privately), how many people became inactive, and how many people joined.
At Trello, our goal was to get folks in the door, encourage discussion and track clicks on the content we shared there, so we decided our three KPIs would be:
Number of total messages sent
Clicks on content shared (using Bitly)
New users joining each week
I knew I would also track any anecdotal wins, such as folks sharing resources with each other, expressing positive sentiment about the community, or anything else that might demonstrate its impact on brand sentiment and user engagement.
Setting Up Your Team
There are a few housekeeping items that should be taken care of before you start inviting people in.
Secure a name and URL: Don’t complicate this one. Our name was simply Trello Community and our URL was trellocommunity.slack.com.
Select channels and create descriptions: There are certain channels that every Slack community should have (think: #general, #announcements and #introduce-yourself), but also consider adding your own. For us, we added a handful based on Trello use cases (think: design, engineering, and marketing), as well as a #good-reads and #best-practices channel. Add short, quippy descriptions for each channel so that members know what’s relevant to share.
Consider copy for greetings in each channel: Channels feel more welcoming if someone from your team sends out a hello and a short blurb about who they are or what they’re working on. Example: “I thought I’d help get this party started — my name is Jessica, and I work on the content team here at Trello. I am responsible for showcasing how our awesome users, well, use Trello! I do this through blog posts, case studies and other types of content. I live in Boston (go Red Sox!) and love to travel, go hiking and Instagram (@jessicawebbica). So excited to meet you all!”
Invite People To Your Party
Often the best way to build excitement is to offer early access to a select group of people. For our first round on August 30, 2016, we invited a list of about 1,700 people — a combination of active Trello users and those who had been some of our biggest cheerleaders on social media.
The button linked to a form where they filled out their name, email, company name, and job title. Submitting the form would trigger a follow-up email with instructions for signing into Slack (remember: not everyone uses it every day), a copy of the guidelines and a directive to say hello in the #introduce-yourself channel. Those who didn’t respond to the initial invite received one more friendly reminder.
When we felt like we had given that initial group time to sign up and explore the space a bit (about three weeks), we wrote a post for our Medium blog that encouraged people to join, followed by a post on the main Trello blog a month after that, which was then promoted on social.Our final big push came with our email newsletter in late October, which is distributed to millions of Trello users. From there, our only promotion has been through occasional social media posts.
Not so fast.
We did have a few unanticipated roadblocks that popped up along the way. Most notably: Despite the fact that we were only adding people who had requested to join, at one point very early on, Slack prevented us from inviting any more people until those who had unaccepted invites signed in. They do this, presumably, to prevent spammers from bulk-adding a large list of email addresses.
Thankfully, Slack has an amazing support team, and shortly after sending them a note, the ban was lifted and we were back in business.
Something else to think about: Similar to Buffer’s Slack, we decided to keep our #announcements channel comment-free, meaning only folks with admin privileges can post there. Why? It keeps it clean, and as new members join, they can visit that channel and see all recent announcements without any of the back-and-forth. We made it a point to explain this to the community (after all, we didn’t want them to think we were trying to stifle the conversation!) and encouraged them to move any related comments to the #general channel.
What content has worked well for us to grow and engage the community? Content exclusive to the Slack community. We heard from members early on that a big value-add is learning about features or updates before the general public, as well as direct access to our team members. We took this access one step further by hosting a monthly “Ask Me Anything” session, first with our CEO and then our director of product. The conversations proved to be lively and a great snapshot of the questions and ideas that are top of mind for our members.
Reasons to Love It
Many of us choose the path of community because we live for those lightbulb moments in which we’re able to connect the dots in some meaningful way for our members. With Slack, you get to experience them in real time. Here are just a couple of examples of what we’ve heard:

Feeling warm & fuzzy yet? Me too. These stories are just as important — if not more important — than the number of users we’re adding per week.
Next Steps
The bottom line here is that a Slack community isn’t right for every company. It requires a healthy level of homework, internal buy-in, adequate promotion, and a roadmap for maintaining momentum.
However, when executed properly, it can be one of the most effective ways to bring folks together around a common interest and then get the heck out of their way. (from SMXhub.com)

Discussion:
- Is it a trend in your country to have own start up among young people?
- What advantages and disadvantages do you see in having your own start up or working at a state job?
- What are the criteria of a successful start up?
- What are some of sources to secure funding for your start up? Analyse advantages and disadvantages of each.

Project:
Prepare a presentation of a recent start up from your country (pitching style).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unit 10 MANAGING YOUR TEAM EFFECTIVELY

Read the text

Even if your job title doesn’t include “manager,” there’s a good chance you’ll have to handle some management duty sometime in your career. And, as an entrepreneur, you're already a manager, because almost every one of your responsibilities has some management element to it.
In short, your employees are the ones making your vision a reality, and your job is to make sure they do it efficiently.
But being an effective manager is about more than just driving your employees to work harder -- or more efficiently. Forcing employees to work a certain way can breed resentment, even disloyalty, while being too soft can lead to bad habits, laziness or boredom. There’s no “right” management style, as each employee and company is going to have an individual perspective.
But there are some universally “wrong” ways to manage. Avoid them by following these 10 “golden” rules of effective management:
1. Be consistent.
This is the first rule because it applies to most of the others. Before your management approach can be effective, it must be consistent. You must reward the same behaviors every time they appear, discourage the same behaviors when they appear and treat every member of your team with an equal, level-headed view.
2. Focus on clarity, accuracy and thoroughness in communication.
How you communicate to your team can dictate your eventual success. When relaying instructions, recapping meetings or just doling out company updates, strive for the clarity, accuracy and thoroughness of your communication. This goes for any other medium, whether that means in-person communication, email or a phone call. Clarity, accuracy and thoroughness are the best way to avoid miscommunication and keep your team on the same page.
3. Set the goal of working as a team.
If you want your team members to work together, have them work for something together. Setting goals just for the department or one individual breeds a limited mentality and forces team members to remain isolated. Instead, give staffers a unified focus and purpose, to inspire them together.
4. Publicly reward and recognize hard work.
When a member of your team does something exceptional, reward him/her -- with a bonus, a small trophy or even just a vocal recognition. Do this in front of the group; it will make the intended recipient feel good and show the rest of the team that hard work is rewarded. The only caveat goes back to rule one: Be consistent in your rewards so you won't be seen as playing favorites.
5. Be the example.
As the manager and leader, you should set an example in terms of your behavior. If you show up late, your team will be less punctual. If you lose your temper easily, others will be amiss in keeping their emotions in check. Strive to be your own ideal of the perfect worker, especially in front of the team.
6. Never go with 'one-size-fits-all.'
Your team is comprised of individuals with unique preferences, strengths, weaknesses and ideas. Never use the exact same approach to motivate, encourage or mold all of them. Focus on individuals, and customize your approach to fit each one.
7. Remain as transparent as possible.
Transparency shows your integrity as a leader, and builds trust with the individual members of your team. If you lie about something, or withhold information, you could jeopardize your relationships and the respect you command as a leader.
8. Encourage all opinions and ideas.
The more people you have actively participating in discussions and attempting to make improvements to the organization, the better. Never chastise a team member for voicing an opinion respectfully -- even if it goes against your original vision or isn’t well thought out. Cutting someone down for voicing an opinion builds resentment, and discourages people from sharing their own new thoughts.
9. Help people enjoy work.
You don’t need a pool table or dress code abolition to make work fun. You can make the workday more enjoyable with such new elements as surprise lunch outings, a dedicated break room or even just casual conversations with your workers. Help your people enjoy coming to work, and they’ll do their best work for you.
10. Listen and ask questions.
If someone doesn’t agree with your management style or doesn’t like the direction of the company, don’t silence that person. Listen. And ask questions of your entire team: What do you think of this? How do you feel about that? This open dialogue makes it easier to proactively identify problems and work together to create a mutually beneficial environment. It will also make your employees feel appreciated and acknowledged.
As you’ll notice, these rules leave plenty of wiggle room to apply your own personal “brand” of leadership and management. They stand as fundamental truths, considerations and principles that govern an effective management role rather than a strict instruction manual to success. Stay true to these principles in addition to your own, and you’ll unify your team in a rewarding and enriching environment. (by Jason DeMers from the Entrepreneur)

Watch the video and make a short summary of it.

 

Case study.
Laura is the associate director of a nonprofit agency that provides assistance to children and families. She is the head of a department that focuses on evaluating the skill-building programs the agency provides to families. She reports directly to the agency leadership. As a whole, the agency has been cautious in hiring this year because of increased competition for federal grant funding. However, they have also suffered high staff turnover. Two directors, three key research staff, and one staff person from the finance department have left.
Laura has a demanding schedule that requires frequent travel; however, she supervises two managers who in turn are responsible for five staff members each. Both managers have been appointed within the last six months.
Manager 1: Kelly has a specific background in research. She manages staff who provide research support to another department that delivers behavioral health services to youth. Kelly supports her staff and is very organized; however, she often takes a very black and white view of issues. Upper level leadership values Kelly’s latest research on the therapeutic division’s services. Kelly is very motivated and driven and expects the same from her staff.
Manager 2: Linda has a strong background in social science research and evaluation. She manages staff that work on different projects within the agency. She is known as a problem solver and is extremely supportive of her staff. She is very organized and has a wealth of experience in evaluation of family services. Linda is very capable and can sometimes take on too much.
The managers are sensing that staff are becoming overworked as everyone takes on increased responsibilities due to high staff turnover. Staff have also mentioned that Laura’s "glass half-empty" conversation style leaves them feeling dejected. In addition, Laura has not shared budgets with her managers, so they are having difficulty appropriately allocating work to staff. Laura said she has not received sufficient information from the finance department to complete the budgets. The finance department said they have sent her all the information they have available.
As staff become distressed, the managers are becoming frustrated. They feel like they are unable to advocate for their staff or solve problems without key information like the departmental budget. (from CYFAR University of Minnesota)

Discussion:
- How to manage a team effectively in your country?
- What pitfalls might be expecting a modern manager?
- What are the criteria of a successful team management?
- Are great managers born or taught?

Project:
Prepare a presentation of a team management model in one of the companies in your country.

 

 

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 06.06.2022

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