February 11, 2014February 26, 2014 karencatlin

Risk? What risk?

About a year ago, with our daughter entering the second half of her junior year in high school, many of our family dinner conversations began to touch on college planning. What colleges to visit? When to sign up for standardized tests? When was the next meeting with the college counselor?

During one of these conversations, my daughter asked me how I chose which college to attend. Before I tell you what I said next, you have to understand something about me: I grew up in a small town, in the same small town where my father was raised, and where his father was raised. I don’t exactly come from adventurous stock. So, at age 17, when deciding where to go to college, I chose the best school within a 50 mile radius of my home. Fortunately, it was an ivy league university, and to this day, I’m thankful they accepted me.

Back then, I evaluated opportunities by thinking of things that could go wrong, the potential downsides. What if I went far away to college, got sick and needed my mom? What if I didn’t have enough money to travel home for Christmas? Would I find a safe place to store my things over the summer break? You get the picture.

However, I’ve changed since then. Over the course of my career, I’ve seen the positives that can come from risk, and I now evaluate opportunities by looking at all the things that could go right. And I’ve found myself saying yes to things that my younger self would have talked herself out of. One example from the past year? Joining Athentica, an early-stage startup, as the CEO. When I was being recruited, I looked at the impact we could have with our first product, the business we could build, what I would learn, and the ways I would grow my network. Sure, there was the risk that we wouldn’t be successful, but I didn’t let myself focus on that. Instead, I looked at the upside and said yes.

Well, it turns out things didn’t go according to plan; I recently made the difficult decision to leave the startup. Did I fail? That’s not how I’m looking at it. I learned a lot about early-stage startups. I made strong connections with the venture capital community and with people working to improve online education. I led the development of the initial product offering. I worked with great people. So much good came from it.

Perhaps most importantly, my kids saw me take this professional risk. And, they know I’m doing just fine, even though it didn’t work out. I hope they’ll think back on this time when they need to evaluate options in their future careers. I want them to be able to take a risk—to take on a stretch assignment, to move internationally, to switch jobs—and not be held back by the fear of all the things that could go wrong.

In other words, I want them to be able to transform risks into opportunities.

–Karen

(Photo credit: BigStock.com)

January 23, 2014February 26, 2014 karencatlin

I could’ve done more…or not?

My daughter is in her final year of high school and will be off to college in the fall. Eight months to go, and I’m already mentally preparing myself, curious about how our lives will change.

Only eight months left of her childhood. I find myself wondering if I could’ve done more for her over the years. I wonder if she should have gone on an exchange program or overnight camp. I wonder if she should have had more dance lessons or gone to more concerts and plays. The list goes on.

Yet, there were only so many hours in the day and a budget to stick to. As a result, I set priorities. And while I’m proud of the daughter that my husband and I have raised, the feelings of guilt—that I could’ve done more—keep creeping into my mind.

This morning, I came across an interesting blog post: How Leaders Can Avoid Shiny Objects, Black Holes, Fire Drills and Other Dangerous Distractions. Terry “Starbucker” St. Marie writes that one of the greatest challenges of leadership is managing time. He explains the need to spend this limited resource on the most important issues, and to avoid the distractions that can jeopardize projects, teams, and entire companies. I appreciated how he described the three most dangerous distractions: bright shiny objects, black holes, and fire drills.

What I find interesting is that each of these distractions can also show up in parenting:

Leadership*		Parenting
The Bright Shiny Object
A new product, project, or partner that’s generating a lot of buzz. The problem is, it’s not really right for the company, or it’s a long shot. But it’s really cool! Should you devote time to it, at the expense of other, more viable and profitable things?		The latest and greatest after-school activity. The problem is, your child is already pretty busy. But, you’re concerned that your child will not get into insert the name of your favorite college unless they do this activity. Should you figure out how to pay for it, juggle the schedule, and organize carpools to fit it in?
The Black Hole
The company has approved an expensive project, but about 25% of the way in you know you’re going to be over budget. Do you pull the plug now, or ask for more money and trudge on?		You enrolled your child in a new sports program, but they’re disappointed because they aren’t as strong as the other players. Do you pull the plug now, or invest in private coaching?
The Fire Drill
Your boss saw a complaint from an unhappy customer. It was a bad one, but when you dug into it the day before it appeared to be an isolated case that could be routinely handled by customer service, following the protocol for cases exactly like this one. Your boss sees it as a complete breakdown of customer service. Should you start the fire drill – two days of phone calls, e-mails, and meetings involving all of your team, devoted to that single complaint?		Your child has known about a school project for over a week, and the night before it’s due she panics because she doesn’t have all the needed craft materials. You’re not too worried because you can think of other things she can use. She sees it differently. Should you start the fire drill of running around town to pick up the supplies?
* Many thanks to Terry “Starbucker” St. Marie for these leadership examples.

It’s not easy to avoid these distractions. It takes courage to say “no”, to be the bad cop, to step back and not get swept up in it all. But, by avoiding them, parents and leaders can spend their time and money on the things that really matter.

So, as my daughter heads off to college, I’m not going to allow myself to feel guilt over the things I could’ve done as a parent. Most would have distracted me from more important activities. Instead, I’m going to feel good about the things I did that made an impact and helped her become an incredible young woman.

–Karen

(Photo credit: BigStock.com)

July 9, 2013July 9, 2013 karencatlin

The $100 Test

Each week, Startup Edition poses a single question to a group of bloggers from the startup community. This week’s question is “How do you discover what people really want?” My answer? Use the $100 test, whether you’re creating software or planning activities with your family.

Picture of a Hundred Dollar Bill — Image courtesy of nuchylee / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Every software development team has a long list of features they want to build into their product. At the same time, they are constrained by how much time or money they can spend writing and testing the code. To meet most of their customers’ needs, they end up identifying a “minimal viable product” of the most important features.

When I worked on the Dreamweaver team back in the late 1990s, we used a technique called the “$100 test” to help us prioritize our backlog of feature ideas into an MVP. Here’s how it worked: we gave the members of our customer advisory board an imaginary stack of 100 dollar bills and asked them to spend their money on the list of features we were considering. They could spend all $100 on one feature that they were passionate about, or $50 on two features, or any dollar amount on any number of features. They could even put their money toward new features. Any combination was fine, as long as it added up to $100 and represented what they wanted to see in the next release of Dreamweaver.

Today, many software teams use this test, or something similar, to discover what their customers want. I’ve also seen it used in brainstorming sessions to prioritize ideas that merit further investigation. It’s an effective way for a group to prioritize things when they have more ideas than their resources can support.

Does the $100 test have a role to play in parenting? I think it can! Let’s look at my family as an example.

My family consists of my husband, our two teens, and myself.

Do we want to do more than we can given our free time and our budget? Always.

Do we have an effective approach to prioritize things? Not really. After consulting with everyone, I make most of the decisions. While efficient, it’s not exactly effective, and I often feel burdened by it.

Coincidentally, we have a vacation coming up, and we haven’t yet decided what to do each day. I think we need a family brainstorming session to come up with loads of ideas, and then use the $100 test to figure out what activities we’ll do. It will be a great way to discover what we really want and to get everyone engaged and excited about the vacation.

What do you think of the $100 test? Have you used it outside of product development to discover what people want? Please leave a comment; I’d like to hear from you.

–Karen

NOTE: This post is part of Startup Edition, weekly wisdom from founders, hackers, and designers who answer a single question each week. Click here to see other answers to this week’s question: “How do you discover what people really want?”

July 2, 2013 karencatlin

When was the last time you made someone feel smart?

drawing of a light bulb — Image courtesy of bplanet / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Are there some people you enjoy spending time with because they make you feel good about yourself? My husband and I know an older couple who have a knack for asking questions that make us feel like we are the most interesting people in the world. (Believe me, we’re not.) This couple refers to conversations we had years earlier, complimenting us on our achievements since then and encouraging us to stretch ourselves in new ways. Given their advanced years, I’m pretty sure they must keep a diary of their activities, and read it before seeing us to be able to remember what we’ve told them. Whether this is their secret or not, they make us feel great every time we visit them.

I thought of these friends when I read “7 Tips for Making Other People Feel Smart and Insightful,” a blog post by Gretchen Rubin. (Gretchen is the author of the best-selling books “Happiness Project” and “Happier at Home.”) She writes

We all want to get along well with other people, and one way to do this is to help people feel good about themselves. If you make a person feel smart and insightful, that person will enjoy your company. The point is not to be manipulative, but to help other people feel good about their contributions to a conversation.

She goes on to share some suggestions, including taking notes about what others are saying, referring back to comments that they made earlier in a conversation, and asking someone to finish a thought if they got side-tracked. Each allows you to show respect for their ideas and their experience, and that you are paying attention to what they’re saying. My favorite is asking for advice and acting on it. As Gretchen points out, we all love to give advice, and we feel smart when someone seeks our counsel. We may even feel brilliant when that person follows our recommendations.

Not only will Gretchen Rubin’s tips help you make others feel good about themselves, they can also help drive engagement. Are you a leader who wants to increase employee engagement with your company’s mission and future? Or, perhaps you are a parent who wants to improve your teen’s engagement with your family? Think about making them feel good about the contributions they’re making to any conversation, and making them feel insightful when you seek their advice.

Professionally, I ask others for advice frequently. I’m a collaborative person, and I appreciate learning from others and including people in my decision making process. But, do I do this at home? Turns out not nearly enough.

When I asked my kids if I looked to them for advice, they both shook their heads “no.” Whether they realize it or not, I learn from them all the time. Yet, learning from someone is different than asking them for input. When we seek advice, we’re trying to sort something out; we’re gathering perspectives to help us understand a broader picture. By default, we reach out to people whose opinions we respect and trust, and this, in turn, makes them feel smart and insightful. With teens who are still developing a sense of who they are and the adults they will become, seeking their advice gives them the opportunity to practice sharing their ideas and to develop confidence in their opinions. Chances are, they’ll also teach us a thing or two.

So, I’m making a resolution to include my kids in my decision-making process more often. Please share your ideas, or your stories about when you’ve sought your kids’ advice. I’d love to hear from you.

–Karen

January 14, 2013 karencatlin

Never try to teach a pig to sing

Photo of a pig — Photo via sneakerdog via Flickr Creative Commons

The best leaders can spot natural talent and provide opportunities for employees to be outstanding. How do they do this?

First, let’s look at parenting. Everybody has natural talents to nurture, hone, and strengthen into life-long skills, hobbies, and even vocations. To uncover these talents, parents help their young kids explore lots of activities: sports, dance, music, art, and so on. Over time, children learn about themselves, what they find enjoyable, and what they’re good at.

But, what if a parent wants a child to be good at something that simply isn’t a natural fit? I know I’ve been guilty of this. For example, I didn’t learn to ski when I was young and always wished I had. I took lessons as an adult, but I never invested enough time to feel comfortable on the slopes. Wanting things to be different for my two kids, I made sure that they took lessons when they were little. Now that they are teenagers, however, it’s clear that one of my kids likes to ski and one doesn’t. My daughter just doesn’t find skiing fun.

I love this quote by the author Robert Heinlein: “Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig.” If I had insisted that my daughter keep taking skiing lessons every winter, she definitely would have been annoyed. (For the record, I’m not comparing my wonderful daughter to a pig!)

This quote also makes me think about leadership and times I’ve tried to fit employees into roles that aren’t good fits. I once worked with a man who is a talented story teller. I remember introducing him at an all-hands meeting. Thinking he would enjoy sharing a few stories about himself, I invited him up on the stage and asked him to say a few words. However, he was not at all comfortable with public speaking, and it didn’t go very well. He felt uncomfortable, and so did everyone else. During the next year or so, I encouraged him to give demos or other talks at meetings, and he kept making excuses why he couldn’t do it, always delegating to someone else. While public speaking is an important skill to practice and hopefully master, he just wasn’t interested. And I bet he was getting annoyed with me.

Not too long after that, my company ran an employee engagement survey. It asked the usual questions…how long do you expect to work here, how likely are you to recommend our company to a friend, and so on. It also asked, “Do you have skills that are not being utilized?” When I saw that the results for my direct reports were lower than I’d expected on this question, I decided to follow up with each of them individually. I wanted to identify opportunities I could open up so that they would be applying all of their skills. I wanted to leverage all that they had to offer.

When I talked to the man who didn’t want to speak in public, he told me that his favorite days at work were when he was invited to meetings to help solve problems. He loved being inquisitive and brainstorming solutions. He loved using his brain. As he shared this, I realized that this was his natural talent. I’d seen him in action in these kinds of meetings, and he was truly outstanding. I then made a resolution to get him invited to more meetings where we needed someone with his capacity for creative problem solving. As you might imagine, each time he attended one of them, he loved it. There was a new bounce in his step.

You can observe someone and think you know them, but you may still find yourself teaching them to sing when they don’t have that skill. To help spot natural talents in my employees or my kids, and to look for opportunities for them to be outstanding, I try to:

Look for passion. Pay attention to how they spend their free time. Talk to them about what they like to do or something they’re interested in exploring. Chances are, you’ll see the passion come alive.
Complement the “how.” Tell them that you liked how they accomplished something, and then keep giving them tasks, stretch assignments, or extra-curricular activities to exercise that ability. By doing so, you will let them know you see their talent, recognize it, and want them to do more with it.
Ask about underutilized skills. For employees, ask if they have skills that aren’t being used. Talk to your children about what they would do if they could squeeze in another after-school activity. You may be surprised by the answer.

Even with these best practices, we may still try to teach a pig or two to sing. Has this happened to you? In hindsight, what would you have done differently? I’d like to hear from you!

–Karen

November 26, 2012December 22, 2012 karencatlin

When is it okay to play favorites?

I think most of us would bristle if we were accused of playing favorites with our kids. I love my children deeply and unconditionally, and I would never intentionally hurt them. I want them to grow up to be happy, successful adults. And I certainly don’t want to give one of them an advantage at the expense of the other. I do my best not to play favorites.

But what about at the office? I was once accused of playing favorites by a member of my staff. I am sure I denied it at the time; it was so hard to hear that feedback. But, as I reflected on it, I realized there were some elements of truth to it. While the work this person was doing was important to the company, I was giving more of my time, more resources, and more opportunities to another staff member who was making a larger impact to our business. Before I started feeling too guilty, I remembered reading in First, Break All The Rules…What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently that the best managers do play favorites.

It turns out that many managers spend most of their time on their least productive employees, wanting to help them improve. They feel they don’t need to spend as much time with their most productive employees, because they can already do their jobs well. Sounds sensible, right? But, as First, Break All The Rules points out, it’s a mistake. The greatest managers spend time with their best employees, figuring out what they need to be even more productive and more engaged in the business. For example,

Do they need more budget?
Do they need to be introduced to someone who can help them with an assignment?
Do they have skills that are being underutilized?
Are they working on highly-visible projects that could lead to promotions?
Do the company’s leaders know about them?

Not only is it okay to play favorites at work, it’s a best practice. In hindsight, I wish I had agreed with the employee who accused me of playing favorites. If I could do it all over again, I would have told why I was giving more of my attention to another employee, hopefully in a way that was not hurtful, but honest and even motivating to him. If a group within a department has the opportunity to wildly exceed expectations, the entire department will benefit from an improved reputation. There will be more opportunities, more budget, more trust, and more respect. Just as all boats rise at the same rate with the tide, so do groups within a department.

By contrast, I don’t think the same rules should be applied at home. While I certainly make decisions about how to spend my time and money on music lessons, club sports teams, and other extra-curricular activities for my kids, I do so to help them discover and hone their individual talents. When one of my kids sees me spending more time with a sibling on homework on any given night, I hope they know that I will be there when they need help. I don’t ever want to play favorites with my children.

I write this blog to explore the intersection of leadership and parenting. But, on occasion, I will find areas where they don’t align. I think this is one of them. Do you agree?

–Karen

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November 21, 2012 karencatlin

No Kids? No Promotion!

I heard the most fascinating story over dinner last week. Earlier in her career, a friend of mine worked for a large, successful software company (which has since been acquired by a larger, even more successful software company). A management position opened up on her team, and my friend, who wanted to move into management, applied for it. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out. Afterwards, she heard from a colleague that there were concerns about her ability to manage people because she did not have children. Apparently, this interview team believed parenting skills were an important part of leadership training. Wow.

I’m curious….has anyone else witnessed this kind of bias? I’d like to hear from you.

–Karen

October 29, 2012December 22, 2012 karencatlin

When it’s time to kill the sled dogs

One of my favorite books is “Endurance,” Sir Ernest Shackleton’s story of his attempt in 1914 to cross Antartica via the South Pole. After his ship became stuck in ice, Shackleton led his crew on a two year journey to safety. Along the way, he showed incredible leadership. One example is when he made the difficult decision to kill the sled dogs, who were a drain on their precious supplies. Shackleton, knowing that his men were fond of the animals, talked about how much the dogs consumed for a few weeks before announcing his decision. By socializing the idea that they may need to kill the dogs, he gave everyone time to come to grips with it.

As leaders, we are faced with difficult decisions all the time. I remember a particularly challenging hiring process for a manager in my department. I was looking for someone with a specific technical expertise who could also chart an inspiring, strategic direction. After reviewing many resumes, I found an ideal candidate and brought him in to be interviewed by the team. Afterwards, I led a debriefing session to gather everyone’s feedback. To my surprise, they gave a collective thumbs-down. I couldn’t believe it! He was more than qualified and an all-around nice guy, but still the team didn’t think he was the right person to hire. Over the next couple of days, I muddled over this feedback, consulted with some of my trusted members of the team, and ultimately decided to hire him. My gut told me he was the one. When I announced my decision to the team, I made sure I did three things:

I acknowledged that I heard their feedback,
I told them I was going against their recommendations and explained why, and
I asked them to keep an open mind as the candidate joined us.

Even though my decision was unpopular, I heard later that the team appreciated how direct I was. They were open-minded as they welcomed their new manager, and he became both successful and well-respected. I would make that tough decision again in a heart beat.

The decisions we face as parents can be just as difficult and seem to be never ending. What pediatrician will we choose for our baby? Do we spend the extra money for organic food? Do we trust this caregiver? What school option is right for our child? Should we get a dog? Does our preteen need a cell phone? Is our 16-year old responsible enough to get her driver’s license? The list is endless.

Even with years of experience as both a leader and a parent, I still find it hard to make tough decisions because:

I may not have all the information to make the decision. So, I have to trust my instinct.
I may make the wrong decision. I don’t have a crystal ball that shows me the impact of my decisions. If and when I make a mistake, I own it. I take responsibility for the decision and how to handle the fallout.
I may be less liked. Tough decisions are rarely popular.

Given that making difficult decisions is a fact of life, I have found these best practices helpful:

I reflect my personal values. I do my best to be genuine and transparent, and to share my thoughts about the decision in a way that is respectful to those that will be impacted. I try to empathize with anyone who will be impacted by a decision.
I often socialize a decision before it is final to gather more input and to give others time to deal with it. I explain why I need to make the decision, and how I am going to make the decision. I listen to what others have to say about it, and decide if I should reflect their input in my decision. I make note of concerns that I want to address when I explain what decision I have made.
I don’t procrastinate. Tough decisions rarely get easier to make over time. If there is no obvious deadline, I choose one and stick to it. I strive to give myself enough time to evaluate options and the impact on my business or family, but not to the extreme that I can’t make a timely decision.
I am definitive. When I share the final decision, I don’t second guess myself. I make sure others know the decision is final. At home, where my husband and I share the decision making process, I use words like, “Dad and I have decided…” At work, I say direct things like, “This decision is final.”

While I hope you and I never have to actually kill any sled dogs, we will continually face tough decisions at work and at home. What best practices do you follow? I’d love to hear them and learn from you.

–Karen

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