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Riccardo Tonon

Business and Innovation

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    Posted on September 17, 2019 by admin
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    Why I Encourage My Best Employees to Consider Outside Job Offers

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    Every day we get new reminders of just how tough the war for talent can be. It isn’t enough to attract the greatest employees — you have to retain them. That’s become a bigger challenge with “job hopping” on the rise. One survey found that 64% of workers, and 75% of those under the age of 34, believe frequently switching jobs will benefit their careers.

    Why, then, would I actively encourage even my best employees to pursue outside job offers? The answer is simple, if counterintuitive: It helps the business succeed.

    In my last job, as senior director at HubSpot, and now as CMO of G2 Crowd, I’ve not only encouraged my employees to look elsewhere but also told them that I keep an eye out for potential new jobs for myself as well. Ironically, all this helps me win — and quite often keep — terrific employees. Here’s why.

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    Posted on September 17, 2019 by admin
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    Give Your Team the Freedom to Do the Work They Think Matters Most

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    Since at least the time of Frederick Taylor, the father of “scientific management,” control has been central to corporate organization: Control of costs, of prices, of investment and—not least—of people.

    Control, even a perception of it, can be comforting. Moreover, it feels like what a manager should be doing: Setting targets, monitoring adherence to procedures, directing, shaping the future of the business. Control feels essential—especially if you are the boss.

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    Posted on September 17, 2019 by admin
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    How Self-Reflection Can Help Leaders Stay Motivated

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    We tend to romanticize leadership. When friends are promoted to managerial positions, we slap them on the back, tell them that they finally made it, and congratulate them for their hard work. Our reactions are understandable. Occupying a leadership role often comes with more prestige, financial resources, flexibility, and future employment opportunities. We often forget, however, that there is a flipside to this coin — leadership is hard and exhausting work.

    Leaders have many responsibilities (e.g., budgeting, hiring and firing, paperwork), requiring them to perform diverse tasks and to monitor progress on a multitude of goals. In addition to managing their own performance, leaders are also accountable for their followers’ performance. Employees tend to bring their worries and anxieties to work with them and expect their leaders to manage those too. For example, research suggests that when followers struggle with emotional issues, they approach their leader more often than their coworkers, thinking that it is the leader’s job to help them cope with emotional distress at work. When compounded with getting work done, management of followers’ emotions can exhaust leaders’ own energy, leaving them depleted and unengaged at work. No wonder that survey data suggest that the majority of leaders are exhausted and unengaged at work. For example, in 2017, Gallup reported that only 38% of managers and executives are engaged at work (the number is 29% for middle-level managers). Given these disconcerting numbers, we were interested in developing an intervention that enhances leaders’ engagement at work.

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    Posted on September 17, 2019 by admin
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    Planning Doesn’t Have to Be the Enemy of Agile

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    Planning has long been one of the cornerstones of management. Early in the twentieth century Henri Fayol identified the job of managers as to plan, organize, command, coordinate, and control. The capacity and willingness of managers to plan developed throughout the century. Management by Objectives (MBO) became the height of corporate fashion in the late 1950s. The world appeared predictable. The future could be planned. It seemed sensible, therefore, for executives to identify their objectives. They could then focus on managing in such a way that these objectives were achieved.

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    Posted on September 17, 2019 by admin
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    What to Do If There’s No Clear Career Path for You at Your Company

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    We all know the old script: join a company, work hard, move up the ladder. But it’s been decades since that was a reliable path, and not just because of layoffs or outsourcing or robots.

    These days, the culprit preventing many professionals from identifying a clear career path at their company is simply that one no longer exists. Given that successful companies must often pivot to adapt to changes in the marketplace, and the half-life of many skills is now estimated to be five years or less, companies often have no idea what staffing needs they’ll have in a few years’ time or who would be qualified to fill them.

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    Posted on September 17, 2019 by admin
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    Why CEOs Should Share Their Long-Term Plans with Investors

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    Many people have suggested moving away from quarterly earnings reporting as a way to reduce short-termism. But such a change would probably not change how resources are allocated or businesses operate. Rather than requiring less short-term information, we believe the key to combating short-termism is to encourage companies to share more information about their long-term plans.

    When asked why companies don’t talk more about the long term, CEOs often complain about the short-term orientation of investors. Similarly, investors complain that companies don’t disclose enough long-term information for them to work with. This conundrum is finally being tackled by the Strategic Investor Initiative of CECP, a CEO-level organization where one of us works. CECP has created a framework for CEOs to present the long-term strategic plans for their companies and hosts CEO Investor Forums in which to do so. To date, 19 CEOs of S&P 500 companies — such as Becton Dickinson, AETNA, 3M, PG&E, and Unilever — have presented their plans to institutional investors representing in excess of $25 trillion in assets under management. Tomorrow, another three companies — IBM, NRG Energy, and GSK — are presenting their long-term plans. The expectations for an effective long-term plan are described in SII’s Investor Letter to CEOs. Signed by leading institutional investors, the letter describes the components of a long-term plan that enables a CEO to address enduring issues of investor interest and help plug an unmet market need for information with a long-term time horizon.

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    Posted on September 17, 2019 by admin
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    You Have to Stop Canceling and Rescheduling Things. Really.

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    A friend recently returned to his parked car to find it had been sideswiped. Now, every time he calls the insurance company, he hears a message saying: “Can’t take your call right now. Leave a message. All calls will be returned by the end of the day.”

    So far, he’s called over a dozen times; his calls have been returned only twice.

    Why would an insurance adjuster have a voicemail message assuring callers that “all calls will be returned by the end of the day” and then return only 20% of the calls it committed to returning? Probably for the same reasons most of us promise “to write back to your email on Monday” but don’t, or promise “to send out that memo by Friday” but don’t.

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    Posted on September 17, 2019 by admin
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    A 4-Step Plan to Make Your Q&A More Audience-Friendly

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    The Q&A or fireside chat has become a popular format at events like conferences and employee town-halls, replacing more-formal presentations and panels. The one-on-one format can create a more conversational, interesting, and intimate experience, and has the added benefit that the CEO or luminary being interviewed theoretically doesn’t have to prepare as much.

    Despite how effective interviews can be in theory, however, they are often difficult to execute in practice. As a result, audience members are often left feeling disengaged and unsatisfied while guests struggle to inform and engage in a way that resonates.

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    Posted on September 17, 2019 by admin
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    How to Get Better at Reading People from Different Cultures

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    Body language varies significantly across cultures. What is considered rude or foolish in a Nordic country may be welcomed as warm and friendly in an African one. What a Canadian businessperson would perceive as arrogant, an American executive may see as healthy confidence.

    But what remains consistent across all known cultures are microexpressions. These brief, involuntary flashes of facial expression reveal our true feelings about another person or situation.

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    Posted on September 17, 2019 by admin
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    Protecting Company Culture Means Having Rules for Email

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    A new study out of Virginia Tech University confirms something that just about every knowledge worker already knows: Dealing with after-hours emails produces anxiety that is damaging not only to the worker, but to their family.

    One particularly striking finding of this study is that it’s not just the amount of time taken up by reading and answering emails after work that’s stressing out employees (and their partners). In fact, what’s creating more anxiety is just the expectation that an employee will be available for work outside the office.

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