Editorials: Don't Work for your Boss, Work for your Company

It’s no secret that businesses today are a bit obsessed with hierarchy. You probably go to work every day and report to someone, who in turn reports to another person...and so it goes up the hierarchical ladder. This traditional structure has established the idea that we’re all just “doing time,” attempting to please our bosses until it’s our turn at the top.

But this standard view of work is creating a huge disconnect between companies and their employees. In a hierarchal structure, you can wind up losing sight of your company’s goals and visions. You may end up feeling like a worker bee with little autonomy, and your passion for what you do, as well as the work you turn out, can suffer as a result. This is a lose-lose situation for both you and your company.

Ranking Of The Top 60 CEOs On Social Media

This is our second global ranking of CEOs on social media. As more CEOs have transitioned into social media, we have expanded it from 30 to 60 individuals. The ranking methodology is set out at the bottom of the article.

Article: The Single Biggest Threat To Your Job

The biggest threat to your job might come from an unexpected place. I believe that there is a hidden assassin lurking in the background waiting to finish you off in your job. Let’s face it, job security is high on everyone’s wish list right now, especially at times of economic downturn when it might not be so easy to quickly find another one.

So how secure is your job? Where is this hidden threat coming from and how can you put yourself into the best possible position to keep your job? I believe the biggest threat to your job, indeed most of our jobs, is coming from from an unforeseen eliminator. I believe that our improved ability to capture and analyse data will allow us to automate most jobs. And I am not just talking about the manual and un-skilled jobs but any job, including the jobs of knowledge workers, doctors, journalists and even sports coaches.

Article: 6 Innovative Companies In Africa

I tried to take my time to work on this list, avoiding been "Biased".
Here I noticed there alot of innovative companies  here in Africa, but here are Six African companies who share a few things in common with the most innovative outfits: They have immense ability to create new businesses and profitable growth. They continually reinvent themselves, setting industry standards and radically changing their sectors. These companies create, then recreate, then innovate. They exploit new ideas, products and services to produce dynamic and lucrative new businesses.

Networking Rules for Job-seekers: the Good, the Bad and the Almost Perfect

"Networking is about meeting people you know who can vouch for your past performance and connect you with people you don't know."

After writing The Best Job-hunting Secrets of All Time, and reading the comments, I can safely conclude that 20% of job-seekers find networking necessary, appropriate, and comfortable. Another 20% find it necessary, but uncomfortable. The rest are either not doing it, or doing it wrong.

As I've stated loud and clear on these pages many times, applying directly to a job posting should represent no more than 20% of your total time looking for a job. Sixty percent should be on networking. The other 20% represents a bunch of clever techniques to help your resume be found and get contacted by a recruiter. This post will focus on the 60% networking piece.

For job-seekers there are some major advantages to networking over applying directly. For one, you'll be able to bypass the gatekeepers. For another, you'll increase your chances of being interviewed and hired by 5-10X. Even more important, candidates who are highly referred are judged more on their past performance and future potential than on their level of skills and experiences. That’s why I tell candidates not to directly apply to a job unless they’re a perfect fit on skills and experience. If not, they need to be referred by someone who can vouch for their past performance and future potential.

Networking is not about trying to meet as many people whom you don't know. This is almost as ineffective as applying directly to a job posting. Networking is about meeting people you do know who can both vouch for your past performance and future potential, and willingly recommend you to others. Here’s how this should be done:

1. Meet 3-4 people who can vouch for your past performance and future potential. These should be your best first degree connections. Younger people can use their professors, advisors, or important church or social connections as their first degree connections.
2. During the meeting review your resume or LinkedIn profile and ask for feedback. Then ask these people if they would be comfortable recommending you to people they know who are connected to others in companies or industries of interest.
3. If the answer to Step 2 is no, find out why, and/or find some better connected people.
4. If the answer to Step 2 is yes, obtain the names of 3-4 people and their contact information. Then ask the person who is vouching for you if they would call the person on your behalf, or send an email introducing you.
5. Research your connection's connections and ask about specific people. In addition to asking people you know who they know, you can turn this around and ask them about specific people they’re already connected to who you'd like to meet. This is possible using LinkedIn, since you’re able to see your first degree connections' connections (at least if they haven't hidden them).
6. Network backwards. Start with a job of interest, and using LinkedIn, find out who you're connected to who knows someone in the company who can refer you.
7. Be direct and be proactive. When you meet these second degree connections be prepared to ask about specific people they know, and about specific jobs at their companies. All of this information is on LinkedIn. Asking to be referred to a specific person or a specific job will result in more connections and more interviews.
8. Don’t be a pest, but keep your network warm by maintaining an active PR campaign. Spend a few hours each week sending emails to those who have helped you in any way. Make them personal.
9. Establish some metrics to stay focused. Treat the job-hunting process as a job, not a hobby. As a minimum, you’ll need to track meetings per week and the number of recommendations per meeting. The overriding goal should by 50-60 people in your job-hunting network within 2-3 weeks.

Networking is how you turn 4-5 great contacts into 50-60 connections in 2-3 weeks. As described above, networking should represent 60% of your job-hunting efforts. It will take about 20-30 hours per week. This is roughly 10-15 new contacts per week via the phone, which should convert into 5-6 one-on-one meetings every week. The rest of the time should be on LinkedIn researching their connections and finding open jobs in their companies. Within 2-3 weeks you’ll start hearing about some real jobs of interest. The person doing the recommending will think it’s a coincidence, but you’ll know it’s a result of your hard work.

Getting referred increases your chances of being interviewed and getting a better job by 5-10X over applying directly. This is a pretty good trade-off since it only takes three times the effort. Even better, some of the connections you make along the way will surprise you, and put you on a path you never even considered.

Lou Adler

EDITORIAL: Microsoft & Nokia: Who's Buying Whom?

When a prosperous company buys a struggling company you have to wonder what they're really buying.

Here's how to think about it. A company is defined as the sum of three values: resources, processes and priorities (RPP). Everything of value can be classified into these three categories.

When one company buys another, it's the equivalent of one set of RPPs trying to engulf or swallow another set of RPPs. The simplest (naïve) interpretation is that an acquisition is the purchase of Resources in terms of customers, sales, profits, etc. It might be of assets like employees, intellectual properties, brand etc. I say this is naïve because Resources are the easiest to value – they can be measured – and valuing only what can be measured while ignoring what can't be measured is deeply mis-pricing.

So most people look for the "R" value or the value of Resources in an acquisition. It may be naïve but it is what markets typically value because it's what they can price. But what happens when the "R" is flimsy or fleeting?

The answer has to be that it's the Processes or even Priorities which are valued by the acquirer.

These are difficult to value which, as I've argued in The Innovator's Curse, is why they are not reflected in a share's price. When there is a price paid for these fuzzy assets, they are often interpreted as a "premium" to the market price. But that may not be the way a buyer sees it.

When buying a set of Processes, a buyer may see a bargain because their costs for building a similar process could be enormous, even infinite. In the case of Nokia, the process of building hardware may be infinitely valuable to Microsoft as they have had dreadful luck doing it themselves. But they're seen as value free to the market because it seems that there are many others who are building hardware.

The trickiest thing to perceive though is the value of a set of Priorities. Priorities are the answers to the "Why" question as much as Resources are the answers to the "What" and processes are to the "How." If you were to think in terms of software engineering, Priorities are the "Specifications" where the Resources are the data and Processes are the algorithms. They determine the direction and reasoning of why a company even exists. If you have bad specs, it never matters whether the algorithm is efficient and you have all the data: you are building the wrong thing.

Acquiring Priorities is also fundamental in that they are usually exclusive. A company typically only has room for one set. If there are conflicting priorities, they need to be sorted out else the company can end up in a state of internal conflict and dysfunction. So if you're acquiring a set of Priorities, it's likely that you'll have to discard your own. It makes most sense when a company which might otherwise be prosperous needs to change direction.

So, in a way, an acquisition of Priorities is almost a reverse acquisition. The acquired is actually "buying" the acquirer. The acquired company's Priorities (and hence Processes and Resources) become the guiding principles in the acquirer. It's what happened when Apple bought NeXT and may have happened when Disney bought Pixar.

Some companies are "Resource-heavy", some are "Process-heavy" and some are "Priority-heavy". Great companies tend to have great sense of priority. They may also have greatness in the other asset classes but it's rare to find a great company without a great sense of purpose.

So the question for the Microsoft Nokia deal is "What is Microsoft buying?"

Resources? Sure, there is IP and a team. But the chances are that not all the team members will be kept on. See what happened to Motorola after it was acquired by Google.

Processes? Absolutely. Microsoft needs device development processes desperately. They may seem a commodity but it turns out that running great hardware businesses is hard, very hard.

Priorities? Here we have to pause. To acquire Nokia's priorities means acquiring its business model – its belief system. Perhaps they will be discarded and they're not valued. Perhaps, as is often the case, the acquirer becomes allergic to the new priorities.

But Microsoft has made it clear that they are now a "Devices and Services" company. As much as Apple changed its name to exclude "Computer," Microsoft is almost changing its name to exclude "software". It will still make software, to be sure, but for it to get paid it needs to integrate that software into hardware and services.

My first thought on this is that Nokia's priorities are not sufficient for the company that Microsoft wants and needs to become, but there are some priorities which are necessary and which it values.

It may be too much to say that with respect to Priorities, Nokia acquired Microsoft, but insofar as Microsoft is having to transform its business model, what Nokia devices bring is an integral component of the new Microsoft.

Horace Dediu

Microsoft acquires NOKIA for 4.6 Billion Pounds

Microsoft has swooped in to buy the handset business of Finland's Nokia, an audacious move that confirms the Redmond software company's intention to compete with Apple and Google head-on as a "devices and services" business.

The deal, for €5.44bn (£4.6bn), gives Microsoft a company which used to dominate the mobile and smartphone market in 2006 but has been overshadowed by the rise of Apple and, latterly, Samsung and companies using Google's Android software.

For Nokia, it means that a decades-long heritage as one of the world's leading mobile phone makers - which had been a source of huge pride in Finland - is over.

As part of the deal Stephen Elop, now Nokia's chief executive, will rejoin Microsoft, which he left in September 2010 to take over the then-struggling Finnish company. Elop, 49, has been tipped as a leading contender to become the next chief executive of Microsoft, after the announcement at the end of August by Steve Ballmer that he would depart within 12 months. A total of 32,000 Nokia staff will join Microsoft, including 4,700 based in Finland.

Microsoft is also providing €1.5bn of "immediate financing" to Nokia, implying that the Finnish company has hit a cash crunch. Its debt has already been reduced to "junk" status. If used, the loan will be repayable when the deal closes.

"For Nokia, this is an important moment of reinvention and from a position of financial strength, we can build our next chapter," said Risto Siilasmaa, chairman of the Nokia Board of Directors, who now takes over as the interim chief executive of the remaining parts of Nokia. Those are Nokia Siemens Networks, which builds mobile phone infrastructure and its HERE mapping platform. The NSN and mapping business are now just over 50% of revenues, and barely profitable. Elop recently completed the acquisition of 50% of NSN that was owned by Siemens.

But even inside cash-rich Microsoft, Nokia's phone business faces serious challenges. Its handset business has slumped in size from a peak in the third quarter of 2010, with revenues of €7.2bn, to just €2.72 in the second quarter of this year, its smallest size in more than a decade. It has also been lossmaking for five of the past six quarters.

While it is strong in the "feature phone" business in the developing world, it has struggled in the all-important smartphone business. Apple's iPhone and handsets running Google's Android together make up over 95% of sales in the US and China, the world's two largest smartphone markets,according to Kantar Worldpanel's latest figures. Windows Phone only has shares above 10% in Mexico and France, according to the company's figures.

Under the deal, Microsoft is buying the "Lumia" and "Asha" brand names that Nokia has used for its smart and intermediate phones. It has licensed the use of the Nokia brand on handsets for ten years, but the Finnish business will retain ownership of the brand. That will probably mean that the Nokia brand disappearing from handsets in the next decade, ending over 30 years' history in the business.

Having started in 1865 with a pulp mill in the Finnish town of Tampere, Nokia reinvented itself repeatedly, shifting to rubber boot production early in the 20th century, and then making its first telephone exchange in the 1970s. Its first mobile phone appeared in 1981.

Rumours that Microsoft intended to buy Nokia had been floated since Elop joined the company. When he chose to dump its home-grown Symbian and Meego smartphone software in favour of Microsoft's newer Windows Phone software in February 2011, a number of Finnish observers accused him of being a "Trojan horse" for Microsoft.

Ballmer said in a statement: "It's a bold step into the future – a win-win for employees, shareholders and consumers of both companies. Bringing these great teams together will accelerate Microsoft's share and profits in phones, and strengthen the overall opportunities for both Microsoft and our partners across our entire family of devices and services."

But the deal could also mean that BlackBerry's best chance of being acquired, by Microsoft, is over. The Canadian handset maker, which has seen its revenues and handset sales plummet, has formed a committee seeking alternatives including a sale. But Carolina Milanesi, smartphone analyst at research group Gartner, commented: "In case there was still hope out there for BlackBerry, this [purchase by Microsoft] is pretty much it. Microsoft will be more aggressive than Nokia in pursuing enterprises."s

5 Things You Have to Unlearn to Succeed at Work

A big theme in my life has been how much I had to unlearn to come to the decision to homeschool my kids.

I had to unlearn all my assumptions about parenting (it turns out that kids don't need teachers, they need love). I unlearned my assumptions about self‑management (well-roundedness is an outdated goal). And I had to change my assumptions about how much respect each child deserves (freedom to choose what we learn is a fundamental right).

Now that I've been homeschooling for a while, I understand that the reason it's traumatic for most young adults to enter the workforce is because they have to unlearn so many things from school in order to survive in adult life.

No matter what age you are, the faster you start your unlearning the faster you can shed the weights that hold you back from moving forward in today's knowledge-based workforce. Here are five things most people need to unlearn.

1. Accommodating forced learning
Gen Y’s latest thing is binge learning, where you become so interested in what you're doing that you don't want to stop until you've learned it all. But the only way that you can binge learn is to know how to find course materials on your own and choose the sequence of those materials that works best for you. This means you can't rely on someone else's syllabus and you can't rely on somebody laying out the steps for you.

In the workplace, to create our own value, we must create our own learning path. You have to unlearn the habit of waiting to be told what comes next in your education if you want to take control of your adult life.

2. Studying for the grade you can get on the test
Adult life doesn't give letter grades. Sometimes adult life gives promotions or if you're good at sales you might win a trip to Hawaii for your family, but in general, the reward of adult life is being able to find a path that's good for you and put yourself on it. There's no letter grade for that because the only person who can judge whether it's a good path or not is you.

The act of making decisions independent of letter grades is completely opposite to everything that school stands for, because if you're doing work that is separate from earning an A, then you're completely uncontrollable in the classroom as you start losing the need to even show up to the classroom.

So school teaches you that you should study what's on the test. Work is the opposite. What matters will never be on the test.

3. Saving self-discovery for vacation
For those of you who don't follow the lives of Prince William and Prince Harry, a gap year is when somebody finishes high school and takes a year off before university study, presumably because you don’t learn about yourself while you are studying, so taking time to learn about yourself is important enough to give it a whole year.

This is actually true that usually you don't learn about yourself when you're studying, because if people tell you what to study, then you gain no insight into who you are. But if you take a year off to learn about yourself, you reinforce the idea that education and self‑knowledge are two completely different things.

However, in the workforce, education and self‑knowledge through work are the twin tickets to adult happiness. If you're not synchronized so that you have them moving together, you will always feel like you're missing something.

4. Saying something even when there's nothing to say
In sixth grade my teacher gave us a list of topics about Mesopotamia for a ten-page paper she assigned. When she got to the topic of medicine in Mesopotamia, she said it was a hard one. I picked that one.

I brought it home to my dad who can win Trivial Pursuit in one turn every time and my mom who was on Jeopardy, and they said, "Medicine in Mesopotamia? There wasn't any. What are you going to write about this?" We did a bunch of research to determine that, indeed, there were not ten typed pages to be written about medicine in Mesopotamia. We did conjecture instead, but that only got us to five. So I learned the art of bullshit by writing ten pages about medicine in Mesopotamia.

Paul Graham, one of the premier investors of college‑age startup founders, talks about how forced yammering on topics about which you have nothing to say end up affecting you negatively in the workforce.

He talks about kids who have great ideas for startups and they think it's time to raise money, so they force themselves to start talking about why it's time to raise money when, in fact, it's not time to raise money. They have nothing to say about raising money. They should just be at home doing their business idea.

Graham points out that the idea that it doesn't matter whether something is relevant or pertinent or necessary is lost on kids who have been forced to talk about nothing for eighteen years.

5. Using video games as a reward for finishing learning
It's fashionable right now for parents to use video games as a reward for having finished schoolwork or, for the really nice parents, as a reward for just having made it through the school day. The thing is that video games actually teach important skills for work. And kids who play video games do better as adults.

I'm really happy to tell you that human resource managers understand this so well that it's been shown that people who play World of Warcraft at work during work hours on the work computer are higher performing employees. There are lots of reasons for this. World of Warcraft is extremely competitive. It requires long‑term commitment and strategy, and it favors people who understand how to shift between different sorts of tasks that require different kinds of thinking.

Parents need to unlearn schooling in order to parent so that their kids don't need to unlearn schooling in order to work.

Penelope Trunk

Editiorial: Stop Using These 30 Phrases At Work!

I reckon every office or workplace has one of those people that are just full of jargon-ridden management drivel. Does this kind of 'management speak' remind you of someone at your work place: "Before going forward we have to touch base and reach out to our key stakeholders so that we can drill down into the key issues that are not yet on our radar and catch the low-hanging fruits..."

Are you surrounded by people who annoyingly can't get enough of the management gobbledygook and who utter one jargon buzzword after another? Are your meetings buzzing with so much management lingo that you find it hard to get to the real meaning of what is being said? The problem I have with these phrases is that they sound so pretentious and often are counter-productive because they irritate people so much and deflect from the real meaning.

Below are my top 30 most irritating and overused phrases we hear at work. I am sure you have others that you can add to this list. Let's make it the most comprehensive list of unnecessary management drivel ever - Please add your ones using the comment field!

For me, these are my top 30 most irritating jargon phrases and words used at work:

1. Going forward
2. Drill-down
3. End of play
4. Touch base
5. It's on my radar
6. No brainer
7. Best of breed
8. Low hanging fruit
9. Reach out
10. Dive deeper
11. Think outside the box
12. Positive momentum
13. Execute
14. Milestones
15. Run the numbers
16. Touch points
17. Keep your eye on the ball
18. Back to the drawing board
19. Get the ball rolling
20. Bang for your buck
21. Close the deal
22. Leverage
23. Shift paradigm
24. Move the needle
25. Game-changing
26. Move the goal post
27. Value added
28. Win-win
29. Across the piece
30. All hands on deck

What do you think? Do you agree? Are these the most irritating phrases? Please let me know which ones you would add to this list!

GTBank announces 2013 half year audited results, reports profit before tax of N57.36billion

Guaranty Trust Bank plc has released its audited financial results for the half year ended June 30, 2013 to the Nigerian and London Stock Exchanges.

A review of the June 2013 result shows positive performance across all financial indices. Gross Earnings for the half year period of 2013 stood at N124.20 billion an increase of N10.68 billion from the N113.53 billion reported for the corresponding period in 2012. Profit Before Tax was N57.36billion, up from N53.64 billion recorded in June 2012. The Bank reported a 2013 half year Profit After Tax of N49.01billion an increase over the N45.55 billion reported in June 2012.

The Bank closed the half year ended June 2013 with Total Assets and Contingents of N2.50 trillion, customer deposits of N1.25 trillion and Shareholders’ Funds of N296.95 Billion. The Bank’s non-performing loans remained low at 3.32%. On the backdrop of this result, Return on Equity (ROAE) and Return on Assets (ROAA) closed at 33.78% and 5.45% respectively for period ended June, 2013. The Bank is proposing interim dividend payment of N7.36 billion to Shareholders (N0.25 per ordinary share of 50 kobo each).

Mr. Segun Agbaje, the Managing Director/CEO of Guaranty Trust Bank plc attributed the Bank’s success during the half year period to the continued support of its customers, hard work of its dedicated staff and strong corporate governance standards.

According to Mr. Agbaje, a major objective for the Bank this year is adding value to its stakeholders through excellent customer service delivery, innovative products and value adding services. It is the Bank’s beliefs that success on these fronts would enable it deepen its share of market across all sectors and improve profitability, despite today’s extremely challenging business environment. He also thanked the customers for their loyalty and staff for their continued hard work and dedication.

Guaranty Trust Bank plc has always been at the forefront of industry service innovations in markets where it operates, having successfully replicated its culture for excellence in its subsidiaries in Ghana, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire and the UK. The Bank also recently commenced the process of acquiring a 70% stake in Fina Bank of Kenya to enable it extend its reach to East Africa. The acquisition, which is subject to customary regulatory approvals in Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda and Uganda will see us expand our geographical footprint into three East African Countries; Kenya, Uganda and Rwanda.

Locally, the Bank’s most recent service introductions includes; the GTBank social Banking platform; a service offering pioneered by GTBank which allows people on social networks such as Facebook commence banking relationships as well as perform basic banking transactions 24/7, safely and conveniently. Furthermore, the GT-Target account – an interest bearing non-transactional account for people saving towards particular projects was also introduced.

Source: Daily Post

TECH NEWS: Instagram Cracks Down On Connected Apps Using “Insta” And “Gram”

Instagram has updated its brand guidelines to ban apps that feature either the word ‘Insta’ or ‘Gram’ in their names, and it has begun sending emails to existing apps requesting that they change those components  ’within a reasonable period’.

The emails specifically call out a few updates to the Instagram Brand Guidelines that restrict the use of things like logos and the full ‘Instagram’ name. Now, they’re even more specific. An email sent to the Luxogram team, for instance, reads as follows (emphasis ours).

We appreciate your interest in developing products that help people share with Instagram. While we encourage developers to build great apps with Instagram, we cannot allow other applications to look like they might be official Instagram applications or endorsed or sponsored by us.

As we hope you can appreciate, protection of its well-known trademarks is very important to Instagram. For example, it has always been against our guidelines to use a name that sounds or looks like “Instagram” or copies the look and feel of our application. Similarly, as we have clarified in the new guidelines, use of “INSTA” and “GRAM” for an application that works with Instagram is harmful to the Instagram brand. It is important that you develop your own distinctive branding for your applications, and use Instagram’s trademarks only as specifically authorized under our policies.

The two new points that Instagram indicates that Luxogram is treading on are the fact that it uses ‘gram’ in its name, and that (a highly customized variant of) the camera logo is being used. Instagram notes that a response to the email is expected within 48 hours and that a ‘reasonable period’ will be provided to fix these items.

Though the Instagram name itself has always been protected by trademark and by the company’s API guidelines, the terms ‘Insta’ and ‘Gram’ have not. In fact, until the recent changes to the brand policies, use of those terms were actually encouraged by Instagram’s API documentation. You could use ‘Insta’ or ‘Gram’, but not both together in the name of the app.

So the new rules exhibit a pulling back of sorts when it comes to the branding and naming of apps that connect to Instagram. While Instagram, and by extension Facebook, cannot stop apps that don’t use its API from using the terms, the continued use of that connection is now dependent upon apps not using either term in their names. We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment.

And well, that’s most of them. Statigram, Luxogram, Webstagram, Gramfeed, Instadrop,Instagallery and dozens more use either phrase. All of them will need to be re-branded entirely under the new rules. Statigram especially is a very useful tool that offers a host of statistics about your Instagram account that are not surfaced by Instagram itself.

And these aren’t tiny little sites, Luxogram was still serving 1 million people a month and Statigram also appears to do a brisk business judging from the prolific use of its hashtag on both Instagram and Twitter. Luxogram’s creator says that he’s unlikely to make all of the changes that Instagram wants, and will probably shut it down for good. Others could be in the same boat.

So, can you blame Facebook for protecting the valuable Instagram brand name? No, not really. But it does show that there has been a change in posture from the early days when connected apps helped the service to grow, and it welcomed the additional exposure. Now, it has its self-propelling growth curve and it’s reigning in anything it believes might be a point of confusion, driving people to the Instagram apps and web client.

Sounds like another company we know well doesn’t it?

Source: TECHCRUNCH

The Highest ROI Management Tool in Business

This image was recently emailed to one of the senior-most technology executives at LinkedIn. In case you can't read it, the text says:

"Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful."

Contrary to what you might be thinking, the email didn't come from an eternally optimistic employee who cheerleads regardless of outcomes or a feel-good management coach whose office is plastered with posters defining "persistence," "teamwork," or "dedication."

It came from an engineer whose team has worked tirelessly over a period of years to develop and maintain an important back-end technology for the company. It's the kind of technology that just works, and subsequently, makes LinkedIn work. It's also the kind of technology that is so fundamental to what we do that it becomes easy to overlook -- unless, of course, it's not operating as expected. Then the team is inundated with questions about what's wrong, when it will be fixed, and how they can put measures in place to ensure it doesn't break again.

The engineer who sent the image to the executive added his own short message:

"This is what I feel after reading [your] email."

Other members of the engineer's team sent emails with similarly effusive sentiments. If you've ever worked closely with a team of highly talented, hardcore engineers you know that this show of unbridled happiness can be a bit unusual (to put it mildly.) So what had gotten them so enthused? An email written by the executive explaining how important the team was, how much value they had created, and his appreciation for their consistent diligence, perseverance, and excellence. Essentially, they were responding to a simple "Thank you."

The highest ROI management tool I know is one that is available to everyone, costs essentially nothing, and is a proven driver of workplace productivity. That tool is gratitude.

As obvious as this may sound to some, it is oftentimes overlooked, particularly in companies and among teams for whom seemingly no results are good enough and no bar is ever set high enough. Yet, developing a high-performance culture and one that encourages the expression of gratitude shouldn't be at odds. To the contrary, recognition can be an invaluable source of motivation and subsequently inspire people to do their best work. Looking back on my career, I've seen and experienced this dynamic more times than I can count, and conversely, have witnessed the negative repercussions of managers who take their teams for granted.

Here are a few things to consider the next time you're inclined to show your appreciation for a job well done:

1. Be thoughtful

Not all thank yous are created equal. Be thoughtful about the how. Sometimes it's best to do it in person, in the moment. Other times, an email or call might make sense, especially if the person is remote. Some of the most memorable thank yous I've received were handwritten notes (a few of which I still keep on a table behind my desk in the office).

Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, has elevated this kind of recognition to an art form. For example, mention offhandedly to him that you like dark chocolate, and don't be surprised if several months later, he returns back from his latest trip to Europe with a few specialty bars he purchased for you, inevitably delivered with a resounding thanks for the positive difference you're making to the company.

2. Be genuine

More often than not, the words you communicate are not nearly as important as the thought and energy behind them. The person on the receiving end can tell the difference between someone going through the motions and deeply heartfelt appreciation. When it comes to expressing gratitude, always be 100% genuine.

For example, the next time an email thread starts up congratulating a team on their most recent win, try to refrain from adding the fifth or sixth "Great job!" and give some thought to why you're appreciative for their specific accomplishment. Conveying the latter will make all the difference.

Recently, I was asked to join one of our teams in celebrating their recent launch of a major product initiative. In addition to the standard t-shirts, cupcakes, and group photo, the team member who organized the event also asked another exec and me to share the best compliment we had heard about the product, and some of the key learnings we took away from the launch. The team was so appreciative of the positive feedback that we ended up receiving thank-yous for our thank-yous.

3. Pick your spots

When thinking about when to give thanks, make sure to apply The Goldilocks Principle: Compliment someone too often and your words will ultimately ring hollow; don't say thank-you enough and your top talent will ultimately feel so under-appreciated you'll potentially face retention issues. However, express appreciation at just the right time and you'll make a huge difference in the way that person thinks about their role and what it means to be a part of your team.

For those more quantitatively inclined, there has actually been research done on the optimal ratio to achieve when communicating positive vs. negative feedback. It's called the Losada Ratio (and the answer is 2.9x.)

4. Solicit suggestions

When your organization is smaller, and everyone is located in one place, it's fairly easy to be aware of who is doing what and is most deserving of praise. However, as a successful organization inevitably scales to larger numbers of employees and multiple offices around the world, it can become more challenging to stay on top of the day-to-day progress of the team. One way of overcoming this dynamic is by making sure you remain in the flow of information regarding their wins, e.g. dashboards, wikis, weekly updates, etc. At LinkedIn, we conduct a global all-hands every other week which provides a natural channel to identify and recognize some of the team's most important accomplishments.

Another effective technique is to just ask. From time to time, remind your directs to mention individuals or teams you may have less direct exposure to, but who they feel are deserving of a special call-out. The further away from headquarters they sit, and the more junior they are, the better. You'll be amazed at how appreciative the people on the receiving end of those calls and emails will be.

5. Learn how to take a compliment

The better you are at receiving a compliment, the more effective you'll be at giving one. Many people struggle when on the receiving end of a kind word, inevitably looking down at their shoes, shuffling uncomfortably, and mumbling something about how it was truly a team effort. While humility is a highly valued trait, disconnection is not, yet the latter is typically what happens when these scenarios play out.

The next time someone compliments you on a job well done, try grounding yourself from the feet up, look the person straight in the eye, and let them know how much it means to you. That sense of recognition and connection is what we're all trying to achieve. It's also what ultimately makes the difference between a perfunctory thank you and an expression of gratitude the recipient won't soon forget.

One last note: Every now and again, the same senior tech executive I mentioned earlier will remind me of the first time I shared my views with him on the importance of gratitude. Despite the fact that conversation took place nearly eight years ago, he thanks me every time. The most recent example occurred just a couple of weeks ago. It was ultimately the reason I wrote this post.

Author: Jeff Weiner

Foster a Culture of Gratitude

In the movie Remember the Titans, Coach Herman Boone takes his high school football team to the battleground of Gettysburg. Having inherited a fractured and divided squad, Coach Boone implores the players to "take a lesson from the dead. If we don't come together, right now on this hallowed ground, we too will be destroyed, just like they were." Coach Boone then establishes the primacy of an important team virtue: "I don't care if you like each other right now, but you will respect each other."

In every workplace and on every team, all people have the innate desire to feel appreciated and valued by others. Like Coach Boone, leaders of teams — and team members themselves — should work to foster a culture of value and appreciation.

High performing teams have well-defined goals, systems of accountability, clear roles and responsibilities, and open communication. Just as importantly, teams that foster cohesion with a sense of appreciation and gratitude among the team members maximize performance on a number of dimensions. Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith, authors of the Wisdom of Teams, define a high-performing team in part by members' strong personal commitment to the growth and success of each team member and of the team as a whole.

Research on gratitude and appreciation demonstrates that when employees feel valued, they have high job satisfaction, are willing to work longer hours, engage in productive relationships with co-workers and supervisors, are motivated to do their best, and work towards achieving the company's goals. Google, which sits atop many best-places-to-work lists, fosters feelings of employee value through an open culture that promotes employee input, routinely rewards and recognizes performance, and encourages personal growth. In a recent interview, CEO Larry Page stated, "My job as a leader is to make sure everybody in the company has great opportunities, and that they feel they're having a meaningful impact and are contributing to the good of society."

And consider the consequences of not fostering a culture of gratitude: A study of over 1,700 employees conducted in 2012 by the American Psychological Association (APA) indicated that more than half of all employees intended to search for new jobs because they felt underappreciated and undervalued.

Several recent articles point out the importance of saying "thank you" and giving specific praise to employees when earned in genuine, honest, and heartfelt ways. Mark Gaston's blog on How to Give a Meaningful Thank-you is full of great advice such as sharing with employees how their contributions had personal significance for the leader and team.
In addition to these very important gestures of thanks, recent research suggests that a leader can enhance a culture of gratitude in the following ways.

1. Help others develop. Interestingly, the APA study indicated that 70% of employees feel valued at work when they have opportunities for growth and development. While promotion opportunities within companies may sometimes be limited, you can still invest in team members' professional development through training, assignment to new and interesting projects, participation on task forces, and exposure to new and interesting different areas through cross-training. Employees frequently have skills that extend beyond the position for which the company hired them. Additionally, they typically grow their skills over time. Leveraging these broad skill sets can lead to greater engagement and satisfaction.
2. Involve employees. Team members feel valued when they have an opportunity to take part in decision-making, problem-solving, and to use their skills to benefit the organization. A 2012 study by the Society of Human Resource Management (SHRM) showed the importance of employees' opportunities to use skills and abilities, with 63% of respondents listing the ability to use their skills as the top driver of their job satisfaction.
3. Support camaraderie and collegiality. I conducted a study many years ago on the positive benefits of friendship in the workplace. Camaraderie in the workplace can lead to greater job satisfaction and commitment to the organization and doing a job well. Leaders should foster collegiality, help to eliminate toxic and dysfunctional team behaviors, and create opportunities for team members other than on work projects. At Google, the games/toys the company provides allow for entertaining and informal interactions among colleagues. These positive and fun feelings carry over when the colleagues work on projects together. The SHRM study in 2012 found employees' relationships with their co-workers was the second highest factor related to their connection and commitment to the organization. Team leaders may also consider using social contracts, explicit agreements on how team members interact, to help shape positive behaviors within their teams.

Taking the time and effort to create a culture that values and appreciates the diversity and similarity within a team can reap great rewards in terms of performance and satisfaction of the entire team. At the end of the day, this principle is really very simple: we all want to feel valued and appreciated. So, in addition to overt recognition to employees, use a variety of ways to build a culture of gratitude.

Article by CHRISTINE M. RIORDAN

Jumia, Nigeria: How a local e-commerce startup became a multimillion dollar company in less than a year

 How did a 30-year old Nigerian and a Ghanaian – Tunde Kehinde and Raphael Afaedor – grow their local e-commerce startup into a multimillion dollar company in less than a year?
I was chatting with a colleague, as we drove to Jumia's Lagos corporate office, when he asked rhetorically: “Why would JP Morgan be so interested in a 5 month old Nigerian startup as to invest millions in it?” Well, I was eager to know too.
Africa, home to six of the world’s fastest growing economies, has caught the entrepreneurial bug but an ubiquitous lack of funds has kept its entrepreneurs from marching. Minutes into meeting Jumia co-founder Tunde Kehinde, he would have me know having an amazing powerpoint business plan isn’t the key to investor funds.
“With the little crowd funding you can get, test your business concept and prove it makes money,” he tells me. “That way you become irresistible for investors.”
His partner, Raphael Afaedor chips in: “We had to quit our jobs and put all our effort in what we believed. Often, working 16 hours a day, sometimes more.”
Raphael was laid back, but spoke with rare speed. Spitting an average of 3 words per second, he would give Eminem a run for his money. His business-like countenance, tucked-in white office shirt and black trousers, made him look like the boss at the Jumia office.
Tunde on the other hand, with the rest of the Jumia team appeared youthful and casual.
At the online retailer’s office, dozens of under-30 year olds carrying Jumia tags could be seen in jeans and sneakers or fashionable clothing. Self expression is uninhibited, ideas are encouraged. It’s the kind of place a millennial would love to work. It isn’t the conventional Nigerian work setting – for a second, I thought I was in some sort of Google workspace.
Hanging on the walls at the lobby are two aluminium frames. One reads: “Best People for the Best Team.” The other, a sort of guideline for interaction between the staff, reads: “Challenge ideas but Respect everyone.”
When Raphael and Tunde first conceived the idea of building an enduring online ‘shopping mall’ for the Nigerian market, they had never met. Raphael was Head of Marketing and Sales (West, Central & North Africa) with Notore Chemical Industries while Tunde Kehinde was in the UK assisting alcoholic beverage multinational Diageo, to acquire valuable African brands. Both had also studied at Harvard Business School (and Tunde had tried his hands on Bandeka.com, a dating site for young African professionals) so they had received some training for their impending entrepreneurial pursuit.
Word got around about two guys talking about e-commerce opportunities in Nigeria and by a stroke of fate they met through a mutual contact. 10 days later, the pair started building their first general merchandise store; only this time, the store was to be online. The name was Kasuwa. The strategy was simple – boycott difficulties associated with shopping at the mall – traffic, long queues, stress, time constraint – by providing a user friendly online store with competitive prices, thereby making shopping convenient.
“Why wait till weekend before going to the mall when you can shop at the press of a button and have your purchase delivered to your doorstep?” Tunde wore a wide grin as he made the statement.
The business of delivering electronics, computers, fashionable items, et al across Nigeria’s 36 states is not an easy task. The boys had to quit their jobs and take a risk. Little did they know Rocket Internet, a german internet Venture Capital was seeking opportunities in Nigeria. Like the American billionaire Paul Getty who struck oil at an early age, the young men had struck gold. Rocket Internet, also owners of South Africa’s leading fashion online retailer Zando, met the duo and decided to invest in Kasuwa. June 2012, Kasuwa.com was officially launched.
“It’s not just getting money that matters,” Tunde explains. “Get smart money.”“Investors that can add value to you, open doors and help you network, will help you run faster against competition.”
Not only does Rocket Internet funds Kasuwa, the group also shares with Raphael and Tunde its network, expertise and vast experience operating e-commerce, including a billion dollar business, in several continents.
An introduction of the German group on its website reads: “Rocket is much more than a venture capital firm or an incubator. We bring together all key elements required to create great companies: team, concept, technology, and capital.”
It’s one thing to have all that support though, it’s another to understand the market and rightly execute market entry strategy in a peculiar one like Nigeria. The first four months were really rough for Kasuwa. Just two months after launch, reports of a brand name change from Kasuwa to Jumia “due to legal issues” filled the online media. Subsequently in September, Jumia and Sabunta – a Nigerian online fashion store, also supported by Rocket Internet – downsized and merged, shedding off around 50 employees, some earning as much as 6.5 million naira ($41,000) per annum.
Raphael says, “the name Kasuwa wasn’t catchy. We wanted a name that could sell, even in other African countries.”
And Jumia sold. With a workforce of less than a hundred, a 12,000 sqft warehouse, omnipresent Google ads, effective marketing campaigns, and countless overtimes, the new brand quickly gained wide acceptance, recording about 40,000 site visits daily – more than Amazon’s site visits from Nigeria – and receiving orders from every state in the country. “The early acceptance surpassed our expectations. We emerged 7th most trafficked site in Nigeria, the number one player in the country’s ecommerce space, and the business was profitable,” Raphael says with a hint of excitement.
It was only natural for J.P. Morgan Asset Management to grab some equity in the company. As hard as I pressed, Tunde wouldn’t disclose the amount of the JP Morgan investment but he was kind enough to tell the cash was “significant enough” for him to feel “very confident about growing the business to a really really large scalable platform for a long time.”
Analytics of top internet searches and inquiries (for products) from Nigeria informs the decision of which category and product is sold on Jumia. Now, the online store gets 70,000 visitors daily. A March statistics report by global web information company Alexa, says roughly 34 percent of visitors to the site are one page views. The remaining 66 percent of visitors spend an average of over 9 minutes per visit. If a-tenth of this group purchases an item (comprising mostly of electronics, mobile phones, fashion items) and Jumia makes a meagre $7 on each sale (the retailer receives products on wholesale), it is safe to assume the company generates $32,340 daily, approximately a million dollars per month.
“Our staff has grown to over 300 and we are expanding into a 66,000 sqft warehouse, only 4 months after we moved into our current 12,000 sqft warehouse,” Raphael discloses.
With Nigeria’s middle class growing tremendously, and consumer buying on the rise, Jumia’s investors seems to have struck another goldmine of the Nigerian economy.
Tunde says: “We don’t want to just make profit. We don’t want to be here just a few years. We want to establish something enduring, help develop e-commerce in Nigeria and provide that talented fashion designer with no shop, a platform to sell across Nigeria.”

This article by Oyeniyi Adegoke