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You’ve got problems if you’re the smartest in the room

Your small business success is directly tied to the talent you acquire and how your leadership molds a culture that enables talent to thrive. Running a small business requires more than just having ideas or giving direction. It requires leadership. This is where we must be honest with ourselves. Not all of us were born leaders. Matter of fact, in most small businesses, the leader started the company with a passion for a craft, trade or product solution. They never intended to have to manage a team and run a business.

People often think that business leaders should be “the smartest person in the room.” After all, they’ve made it to the top — shouldn’t they be the best of the best? Shouldn’t everyone be required to do what they say?

small bsuiness leader

But this couldn’t be further from the truth. What’s worse is when leaders pretend to be the smartest person in the room, even though the team knows they’re not.

You might overhear the chatter in the break room about that morning’s meeting or maybe a brave employee will deliver the bad news directly to you. Either way, it’s not a good feeling to know that people have lost faith in your leadership.

No one can always be the smartest person in the room. Everyone has particular areas of expertise. But when you talk about something you don’t really understand, that’s an instant way to lose the respect of your employees. True leaders draw on the talents of those around them in order to succeed.

small business leader
Leadership Equality is a term that has to do with, the responsibility of leading being evenly distributed among many, as opposed to being concentrated into a few. In organizations today, we are seeing more business models with organizational structures that are moving towards focusing heavier workloads, responsibility for dictating strategic direction, and management responsibility onto middle management. To this end, we have seen more and more middle management positions calling for leadership tasks in a variety of organizations in different industries.
Jack of All Trades

Leaders typically work other jobs before moving up the ladder. For example, you might have been in sales or customer service. You have expertise in those areas and you should use that expertise.

But leaders need to deal with every facet of their business—from finance to human resources to marketing. They can’t afford to be specialists anymore. The professionals who work in those fields will have to educate you on what works and doesn’t work. Great leaders will listen to their employees to find the best way forward.

Advertising legend David Ogilvy once said, “If you ever find a man who is better than you are, hire him.” As a business leader, it’s important that you build a well-rounded team. You should understand your own abilities—your strengths, your weaknesses—and surround yourself with talented individuals who possess the skills you lack.

Unlike software programmers or financial analysts, C-level executives aren’t specialists. They have to be generalists, who can combine each component of the business into a coherent vision. A leader who starts barking commands that the team knows aren’t feasible isn’t going to last long.

Kick Out Your Ego

You’ve made it this far—aren’t you supposed to act confident and brash? Don’t people expect that in a leader?

People do expect you to make final decisions. And they do expect you to help the organization function as a single force. But they don’t expect you to know everything. It’s time to kick out your ego and get down to the serious business of being a leader.

The two things you need to do are ask questions and listen. You can learn about every aspect of the business through the talented people you’ve hired. After all, every successful company is made up of a collection of experts in every department. They have a lot to teach you. By showing them that you’re invested in what they do for the company, you’ll increase employee engagement.

Forget the Politics

Steve Jobs once said, “Do you really want to spend your life selling sugared water, or do you want to change the world?”

Herein lies the difference between leaders and imitators. The imitator is always selling something. They’ve played the political game — shaken the right hands, smiled at the right people — to climb the ladder and now they’re at the top. But they don’t know what to do! They’ve spent so much time on acquiring power that they don’t know how to properly use it.

But leaders are less concerned about obtaining power and more concerned about empowering their team. They believe in their company’s product and purpose. They’re ready to hire the right people, give them the right tools, and then get out of their way. They’re not concerned about being on the right side of an internal squabble or pleasing specific people just to keep their job.

Be Behind the Scenes

Leaders aren’t people who go in front and lecture their team on how to become better. Instead, they’re quietly, steadily working toward making their organizations better.

These are the kinds of leaders who set an example by doing the little things right. When someone comes to them with a problem, they work on a solution. When the company changes a policy, they fall in line. These leaders act like the kind of employees they want on their teams—without being explicitly public about it.

They also spread around credit when a job is done well. These leaders are quick to praise a good job. They’re also quick to provide new, motivating challenges for employees. They have their finger on the company’s pulse and keep the workplace environment stimulating.

Boost Your Self-Awareness

The leader who thinks that they’re the smartest person in the room lacks self-awareness. They don’t truly understand the conditions of doing business in today’s rapidly changing economy.

A self-aware leader also recognizes when they’ve made a mistake. They’re quick to take responsibility and devise ways to prevent future errors. These leaders learn from their failures and are better for them.

They also seek honest input from their team. If you don’t have a way for employees to provide anonymous feedback, that’s a problem. Of course it will appear that you have complete buy-in if you just personally ask every employee what they think about a new policy. Employees will think they’re risking their jobs that if they say anything negative to the boss. Instead, you need to solicit regular employee feedback that allows them to say what they’re really thinking.

Political science expert Richard Neustadt spent his career studying the US presidency. He found that the most successful presidents were those who surrounded themselves with trusted advisors who could provide detailed information about their subject of expertise. Despite the many brilliant men who have served as president, none was an expert in all the various fields that a president needs to be knowledgeable about. These presidents sought counsel from a variety of places and once they had obtained all the information they could, they acted decisively.

A Great Listener

This is the best way to improve a business. Listen to customers and employees. That’s where solutions are found and the next big improvement comes from. Your role as a leader is to take what you’ve heard and decided how you will implement that change in your small business. Just make sure you give credit and show the love with a big thank you.

Strategic Long-Term Success

Katherine Colarelli Beatty writes in Forbes that the role of a leader is to balance day-to-day success with a long-term vision for the organization. Unfortunately, this skill exists in less than 10% of companies. Colarelli writes, “Leaders throughout organizations face tremendous pressures to make short-term numbers and show immediate wins. Operational leadership rules the day. This can lead to a lack of focus–as one executive recently put it,”We’re running fast in many different directions.’ Additionally, leaders who excel at meeting short-term targets and solving functional problems may feel paralyzed and unsure when the challenges in front of them are far reaching and complex–a situation we’ve seen consistently in these recession years. How do we lead in ways that position a business for the future while meeting current demands? It does require a different set of skills from operational leadership. Strategic leadership requires us to think, act and influence others in ways that promote the enduring success of the organization.”
If you think you’re the smartest person in the room, you either have a perception problem or you’ve hired the wrong people. In case you are wondering, yes I too struggle with letting go of my “baby” Viral Solutions, but my team consists of some of the brightest minds in digital marketing today. There are days that the challenges are not unlike herding cats. Balancing cash flow in hyper growth mode while your team has referred the next goddess of search engine marketing for hire – well, that is the role of a small business business consultant.

“Getting things done as a leader is different than getting things done as a doer. Rather than cranking through the to-do list in your Moleskine, you look for people to disciple. Then, you open the Moleskine together. It’s less about a task list and more about empowerment. It’s about defining what the”win’ looks like for your team and accomplishing that”win’ through other people. You see, your goal at the end of the day isn’t to say,”I accomplished this, this, and this.’ Your goal is to say,”Look at these people who were disciples. Look what we accomplished together.’ You don’t have to know everything. You don’t have to be an expert in all the areas you lead.” ~ David Santistevan

Thomas von Ahn

Chief Elephant Slayer for Viral Solutions LLC

Small Business Leadership | You’ve got problems if you’re the smartest in the room

Disney I Creating Content for Snapchat

In Snapchat’s latest deal with a major U.S. media company. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Snap, which is preparing for next year’s initial public offering, has signed a variety of advertising and content agreements this year with Viacom, Comcast’s NBCUniversal and Time Warner Inc’s Turner Broadcasting System Inc. Media companies such as Disney partner with Snapchat in an effort to reach the type of younger viewers the social media company targets, which increasingly eschew traditional television.

The two had previously worked together for a special Live Stories, a Snapchat feature that curates user-submitted photos and videos tied to a specific event, around ABC’s broadcast of the Academy Awards in February. Unlike in Snapchat’s other deals with media companies, where any ad sales responsibilities would be shared across both companies, Disney will control and sell all advertising for the shows it produces for Snapchat.

Just How Dangerous Is Alexa?

The “willing suspension of disbelief” is the idea that we (the audience, readers, viewers, content consumers) are willing to suspend judgment about the implausibility of the narrative for the quality of our own enjoyment. We do it all the time. Two-dimensional video on our screens is smaller than life and flat and not in real time, but we ignore those facts and immerse ourselves in the stories as if they were real.

We have also learned the “conventions” of each medium. While we watch a movie or a video, we don’t yell to the characters on the screen “Duck!” or “Look out!” when something is about to happen to them. We just passively enjoy the show.

The Willing Suspension of Our Privacy

We apply similar concepts to our online lives. Most of us are willing to give up our data (location, viewing, purchasing or search history) for our online enjoyment. We can call this the “willing suspension of our privacy” because if you spent a moment to consider what your data was actually being used for, you would refuse to let it happen.

The Willing Suspension of Our Agency

Which brings us to the next level of insanity: the willing suspension of our agency for our own enjoyment. This is past the point of giving up a “reasonable amount” of data or privacy to optimize the capabilities of our digital assistants. Suspension of our agency exposes our normally unmonitored physical activity, innocent mumblings and sequestered conversations. Some people believe this is happening with Alexa, Google Home, Siri and other virtual assistant and IoT systems. It may well be.

First, Let’s Give It a Name

Since we are discussing a combination of automatic speech recognition (ASR) and natural language understanding (NLU) engines that enable a system to instantly recognize and respond to voice requests, for this article, let’s call the interface an intelligent voice control system (IVCS).

How It Works

You activate most commercial IVCSs with a “wake word.” For an Amazon Echo or Echo Dot, you can choose one of three possible wake words, “Alexa” (the default), “Amazon” or “Echo.” Unless you turn off the microphones (the Echo has seven) and use a mechanical button or remote control to activate its capabilities, Alexa Voice Service, the system that powers the Echo and Alexa, and other IVCSs are always listening for their wake word.

In Amazon’s case, it keeps approximately 60 seconds of audio in memory for pre-processing so the responses can be situationally aware and “instant.” Amazon says the listening is done locally, on the device, not in the cloud. So technically, the audio does not leave the premises.

Always Listening Does Not Mean Always Transmitting!

Yes, an IVCS is always listening AND recording. Which raises the question, “What does it do with the recordings it does not use?” In Amazon’s case, the official answer is that they are erased as they are replaced with the most current 60 seconds. So while the system locally stores approximately 60 seconds of audio preceding your wake word, it transmits only a “fraction of a second” of audio preceding your wake word, plus your actual query and the system’s response. For Alexa, you can find a record of your query on the Home screen of your Alexa app.

What About Hackers?

Seven microphones! Could a hacker tap into one or all of them and eavesdrop on me? The official answer is no, and specific technical reasons are cited. However, at The Palmer Group we have several theses for 2017 including, “Anything that can be hacked will be hacked.” Anyone who believes otherwise is simply naïve.

“It’s the Profile, Stupid!”

Data is more powerful in the presence of other data. It is an immutable law of 21st-century living, which in this case means that the most serious threat to each of us is the profile that can be created with the willing suspension of our agency.

Most people have no idea how much information about them is available for sale. The willing suspension of agency has the potential to take us right up to the line that separates where we are now from an Orwellian future. (Many people believe we already live in a surveillance state. We’ll explore this in another article.)

We Must Deal with This Sooner or Later

Alexa is NOT dangerous. The data it collects is NOT dangerous. Nothing about an Amazon Echo is dangerous. It’s awesome. I have one in the kitchen, in the living room, in my home office, and on my night table. It’s an amazing controller, great alarm clock, spectacular Spotify and Amazon Prime interface, an exceptional news and weather reporter, and it does lots of other stuff you can look up online. I love it.

I also love my Google Home. Its ASR/NLU system is second to none! Let’s face it: Google is “the” repository of publicly available knowledge. When I’m on my handheld, I rely on “OK Google,” and while I think Siri is audio impaired and database challenged, sometimes I use it too.

But …

The world will be a very different place when Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and other AI-empowered players have assembled 1st-party profile data that includes our agency. It will make what they do with our current behavioral profiles look like primitive data processing.

We are predisposed to pay for convenience. We happily do it with cash and with data every day. However, we should not suspend our judgment about the implausibility of this narrative for convenience or for the quality of our enjoyment. Though this is a story we have been told before, there are no conventions of this medium. So let me be the first to scream: “Look out!”

About Shelly Palmer

Named one of LinkedIn’s Top 10 Voices in Technology, Shelly Palmer is CEO of The Palmer Group, a strategic advisory, technology solutions and business development practice focused at the nexus of media and marketing with a special emphasis on augmented intelligence and data-driven decision-making. He is Fox 5 New York’s on-air tech and digital media expert, writes a weekly column for AdAge, and is a regular commentator on CNBC and CNN. Follow @shellypalmer or visit shellypalmer.com or subscribe to our daily email http://ow.ly/WsHcb

SLP Productions, Inc., PO Box 1455, New York, NY 10156-1455 (212) 532-3880 info@shellypalmer.com

This article originally appeared at: http://www.shellypalmer.com/2017/01/just-dangerous-alexa/?utm_source=Daily%20Email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=170101.

There’s a reason some drinks give you worse hangovers than others

You’re not imagining it: Some mornings after parties are worse than others—even if you drink the same amount.

Hangovers, or veisalgia, as scientists refer to it, are our body’s way of telling us that we’ve overindulged on alcohol. Scientists aren’t sure exactly why we get them, but they have a few ideas: “Addiction specialists have often noted that a hangover is technically a form of alcohol withdraw at its most benign,” Laura Veach, a counselor and professor of surgery at Wake Forest University, told the New York Times. Usually, hangovers start when the alcohol in our bloodstream begins to decrease, and hit their peak when we’ve reached zero.

Additionally, alcohol makes us urinate more than usual, which flushes out our usual electrolytes and leaves us dehydrated (assuming you’re not matching each drink with a glass of water). But what’s worse is the buildup of a chemical called acetaldehyde in our blood, which is a byproduct of processing alcohol. Acetaldehyde is much stronger than alcohol, and is responsible for excess sweating, nausea, and vomiting, according to Smithsonian. Because the body is already parched, there’s less water available to expel the extra acetaldehyde.

Dark congeners

The kind of alcohol you drink may have an effect on the severity of your hangover. All booze is fermented, which creates alcohol and other byproducts, like carbon dioxide (responsible for harmless bubbles), and chemicals called congeners, or fusil oil impurities, which are a type of alcohol our bodies can’t process and make us feel sick. These congeners are also responsible for some of the distinct tastes in darker drinks, like whiskey, red wine, or brandy. A 2006 Dutch study on college students found that darker alcohol with more congeners tend to cause worse hangovers. (It also found that liquors were more likely to cause hangovers than beer or wine, likely because liquor has higher alcohol concentrations.)

Cheaper drinks are more likely to have more congeners, too. As Gizmodo explains, congeners can be filtered out through the distilling process, but cheaper alcohol isn’t distilled more than a couple of times; higher-quality booze, like Tito’s vodka, is distilled six times.

Sweet, bubbly mixers

It also appears that carbonation can actually make you more drunk (and, presumably, give you worse hangovers). One 2007 study found that when participants drank vodka mixed with soda, their blood alcohol levels were higher than those who drank straight vodka (or vodka mixed with water). In this case, the researchers hypothesized that this was because the added drink volume from the bubbles caused the stomach to release its contents to the small intestine, where alcohol is absorbed into the blood stream, sooner. Another study found that people who drank flat Champagne had lower blood alcohol levels than those who drank it with its bubbles.

And sugar may also play a role in the rate of absorption. “Commonly used mixers, such as lemonade, contain high levels of glucose, which have been shown to affect gastric emptying and therefore alcohol absorption rates,” the authors of the 2007 study write.

However, both of these studies involved 21 and 12 participants respectively, which is too small to define a relationship between carbonation, sugars, and resulting drunkenness.

No real cure

The only real tried and true hangover cure is time—which is an annoying thought to have when you’re sick in bed the next day. But eventually, your body will rid itself of acetaldehyde, and you can replenish your water and salt supply with a good meal (like brunch. Just saying.)

To avoid hangovers, the obvious answer is don’t drink to excess, and keep drinking water throughout the night. But, if you plan on partying hard, you could try eating pears ahead of time. In 2015 Manny Noakes, a nutritionist at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization in Australia, reported that in a small trial, people who drank Korean pear juice before drinking had less severe hangovers, and were specifically better at concentrating the next day. Although those results were not published in a peer-reviewed journal, it probably wouldn’t hurt to try.

This article originally appeared at: http://qz.com/876026/theres-a-reason-some-drinks-give-you-worse-hangovers-than-others/.

Scientists Develop The First Biological Pacemaker From Stem Cells

These stem cells activate electrical impulses that trigger the contraction of the heart!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG-IBGTIXL4

Custom engineered health is quickly becoming a reality where scientists take your own stem cells from one area of the body and then reintroduce them to another area of your body where they have stopped working or were destroyed (for example, skin stem cells in burn victims).

This article originally appeared at: https://futurism.com/videos/scientists-develop-the-first-biological-pacemaker-from-stem-cells/.

Canada declares”high-speed’ internet essential for quality of life

Canada has recognized the obvious and declared high-speed broadband internet access a “basic telecommunications service” that every citizen should be able to access. Previously, only landline telephone services had received this designation from the country’s national telecoms regulator, CRTC, and the change is supported by a government investment package of up to $750 million to wire up rural areas.

“The future of our economy, our prosperity and our society — indeed, the future of every citizen — requires us to set ambitious goals, and to get on with connecting all Canadians for the 21st century,” said CRTC chair Jean-Pierre Blais at a news conference. “These goals are ambitious. They will not be easy to achieve and they will cost money. But we have no choice.”

A download speed of 50 Mbps is about the same as the US average

As part of declaring broadband a “basic” or essential service, the CRTC has also set new goals for download and upload speeds. For fixed broadband services, all citizens should have the option of unlimited data with speeds of at least 50 megabits per second for downloads and 10 megabits per second for uploads — a tenfold increase of previous targets set in 2011. The goals for mobile coverage are less ambitious, and simply call for “access to the latest mobile wireless technology” in cities and major transport corridors.

The CRTC estimates that some two million Canadian households, or 18 percent of the population, do not currently have access to their desired speeds. The $750 million government fund will help to pay for infrastructure to remedy this. The money will be distributed over five years, with the CRTC expecting 90 percent of Canadians to access the new speeds by 2021.

The new digital plan also touches on accessibility problems, with CRTC mandating that wireless service providers will have to offer platforms that address the needs of people with hearing or speech disabilities within six months. Blais said this timeline was necessary, as the country “can’t depend on market forces to address these issues.”

This article originally appeared at: http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/22/14052368/canada-broadband-internet-essential-service.

French startup Agricool to grow fruits and vegetables in containers

French startup Agricool has raised $4.3 million (€4 million) from newly launched VC firm Daphni as well as Parrot founder Henri Seydoux and Captain Train (acquired by Trainline) co-founder Jean-Daniel Guyot. Agricool’s product is quite unusual as the company wants to grow strawberries and later other fruits and vegetables inside shipping containers.

With many people moving to mega-cities, it has become increasingly difficult to provide good food to people living in these cities. In just a few decades, there will be many, many cities with tens of millions of people living there. It’s a logistical and environmental challenge.

That’s probably one of the reasons why processed foods have taken off. It’s so much easier to ship across great distances instead of relying on perishable goods.

And yet, many cooks are trying to reverse this trend, looking for fresh and local ingredients for their recipes. It’s a good trend, but it also means that you’re limiting your options, especially in places with a hostile weather.

Why do we keep seeing the same bright red tomatoes that never go bad and don’t taste like anything? Intensive farming has been great to fight hunger issues, but it’s time to look further — in this case, it means going back to what makes food tastes great in the first place.

Agricool is trying to do something about this and started with strawberries. Instead of relying on trucks filled with strawberries coming from Turkey, Germany, Spain or Italy, the startup tried to produce strawberries right where they were, in Paris.

If you can control the light, the water, the substrate and other factors, the startup noticed that you can grow strawberries anywhere — including in a shipping container.

Then, it’s a matter of optimizing all these factors so you can produce more strawberries from a single container, or cooltainer as the company calls them. The company doesn’t want to use any pesticide and my guess is that it’s going to take a while to make these strawberries as cheap as existing strawberries.

The company is now renting a big warehouse to fill with containers. There’s probably a fair share of A/B testing going on, but with fruits and not website designs. With today’s funding round, Agricool wants to create 75 containers in 2017 and install them around Paris — the goal is to produce 91 tons of strawberries.

The startup also wants to test other crops soon. Maybe some vegetables and fruits will be harder than others when it comes to growing them in a container. It’s going to be a long, capital-intensive venture to iterate on those containers. But it’s an interesting take on the food industry.

This article originally appeared at: https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/22/agricool-harvests-43-million-to-grow-fruits-and-vegetables-in-containers/.