Category Archives: Culture

In conversation with Sharon Roberts, it is easy to be captivated by her story. The trajectory of her professional life and the impact made by each stop on her journey explains the basis for the specific methodology SBR uses to help clients tackle challenges in the way of their growth and profitability.

With SBR entering its 17^thyear, a look back at Sharon’s career gives insight into how those experiences provide a roadmap to anyone looking for advice on how to build an organization or confidently launch a project.

Foreshadowing began early in her career at Dun & Bradstreet’s (D&B) entrepreneurial, call center start-up division. They garnered an impressive client list: AT&T, Avis, IBM, and even the US Postal Service. D&B offered the perfect training ground to acquire foundational knowledge and experience in managing people, tracking data, streamlining processes, successfully selling, and techniques for consistently providing exceptional service to clients.

SPEED GIVE YOU A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

After working in a variety of roles with increasing responsibility, she was offered her dream job at Oxford Health Plans when the company was in its infancy. It was the ideal innovation incubator where thinking outside the box was de riguer. Sales leaders were pushed to uncover all the possible ways to meet aggressive sales goals while making sure to anticipate and satisfy customer needs.

“Speed gives you a competitive advantage,” was an oft-heard Oxford motto. The idea was to hire highly skilled individuals who could first plan on a “blank piece of paper”, and then swiftly implement.

This approach illustrates how real-time course correction allows for rapid, reality-based adjustments; the way a pilot navigates a plane. In other words, never waste precious time lamenting over every possible issue in advance. Instead, begin implementing as soon as possible and adjust accordingly.

Not only will you unveil innovative ideas while in action, but you can gain a tremendous competitive advantage. Take Amazon for example; they began by selling books out of a garage, but as popularity increased they didn’t think slow or small. Instead, they took advantage of their momentum and eventually grew into one of the most powerful companies on the planet because they didn’t wait to change. They saw opportunities and profited from them.

HOW TO LOSE $450,000

One specific experience that shaped the way SBR approaches consulting engagements came when Oxford had to acquire a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to manage inside and field sales data (and connect with the customer service system). Sharon was part of the team that would create the Request for Proposal (RFP), research the available options, and make final recommendations.

The search team sought out big-name consulting firms as a way to guarantee a successful implementation. When pitches were made to Oxford, they came from each firm’s elite team, implying it would be the seasoned veterans of the selected team who would take control of lead the project.

Sadly, the elite team that made the initial pitch was never to be seen again. After plunking down approximately $450K, the firm they contracted sent in a team of very smart, VERY green college graduates all hailing from well-known target schools. Once they reviewed the system requirements, they would devote hours to program what they thought would meet business needs. But, they never observed any of the sales teams in action.

Although the assigned team of twenty-somethings were very polite, well-groomed, and impeccably mannered, their charm did not translate into results. Months later, the first CRM investment (the equivalent of approximately $750K today) never got off the ground. Sunk costs. The next consulting engagement with another firm suffered a similar fate, and the company lost money again in both the consulting costs and forgone business that would have been retained had there been an adequate CRM system in place.

A FORMULA THAT GUARANTEES SUCCESS

Living through these events and hearing horror stories from colleagues and clients made us determined to create core guidelines and principles that guarantee SBR can always deliver on our promise. Adopt these methods and principles for your next project launch. They really work. Just ask our clients.

1. Observe and Ask. Instead of asking employees what they do and how they do it, use an observational method (SBR uses Rapid Ethnography) to help expose the root cause of growth stumbling blocks. Why? To quote Margaret Meade, a cultural anthropologist, “What people say, what people do, and what they say they do, are entirely different things.” Chalk this up to human nature.
2. Consider Company Culture. Appreciate the organization’s culture so that recommendations will work within the company’s real-world context, not some conceptual organization.
3. Respect Best Practices. Understand best practices, but make recommendations that will work for the organization, not an idealized version of the company. Sometimes best practices can be costly, time-consuming to implement, and not necessary for transformative results to occur.
4. Remember, Everything Looks Good On Paper. Create and document the plan. Share it with stakeholders. Start implementing and continue course-correcting as you move along (the iterative process). You will not only gain a competitive advantage but also come up with innovative solutions along the way.
5. Watch for Human Roadblocks. Work with employees throughout the organization to navigate through the various roadblocks that can be created often by well-meaning employees for a variety of reasons. Remember, everyone is doing the best they can- even when it does not appear that way.

All summer we’ve been geeking out on the latest season of HBO’s Silicon Valley. This week’s episode highlights a challenge companies face when looking to simplify their products, sales, and communications. For the unconverted and for the purposes of this conversation: Silicon Valley is about Pied Piper, a file compression algorithm that’s supposed to dramatically free-up storage space without compromising quality.

In this week’s episode, “Daily Active Users”, the guys at Pied Piper have tested their platform with a select group of betas and finally released the app to the public. Although it’s the talk of the town and gaining a high volume of downloads, users aren’t returning on a daily basis to actually use the app. That daily use metric is what determines corporate growth and profitability.

CEO Richard Hendricks has a focus group to figure out why people aren’t using Pied Piper. And the answer is clear. The platform is too complicated and ahead of its time for the average user to appreciate. Hendricks is enraged – he tested a beta version with his friends (other engineers) and got near universal praise. When asked why he only sent the beta to other engineers, Hendricks explains to his VC pal:

I wanted to give it to people who would understand what I’m trying to do, so I could get useful feedback. And with all due respect, I gave it to you – the one person without a computing background – and you said it felt ‘engineered’.

Then the lightbulb moment occurs when he realizes they wanted to market their product to Average Joe, but they never actually tested it with him. And herein lies the brilliance of Silicon Valley. Art imitating business.

We come to the very real question of consumer value during all points of the product development and distribution lifecycle. If you want a “normal” person to understand your product, or how your services work, or why their life will be dramatically improved, don’t just circulate feedback around the internal organization. The audience community can provide a better glimpse into actual market response.

For the most part, technology and CPG companies know this to be true. But others – like financial services, healthcare, and insurance – really struggle to bridge the gap between insider admiration and consumer approval.

Honoring Valentine’s Day is our chance to say how much we ❤ and appreciate our clients, colleagues and friends. We are not alone. With people in the U.S. spending some $18.9 billion on chocolates, extravagant arrangements and the standard Hallmark card, Valentine’s Day is no joke for businesses big and small. Team SBR dug up some interesting factoids about this holiday to consider what it says about consumer behavior and corporate response.

Artificial Affection

A startling 15% of women will send themselves flowers on Valentine’s Day. Which begs the question, why do we care so much about what other people think? In research, we call this “social desirability bias,” the tendency to report more favorably than your behavior or belief actually suggest. This is one reason why we opt to pair survey research with observational qualitative methods like ethnography to marry what people say they do with what they actually do.

Move Over, Friendsgiving
In Finland Valentine’s Day is called Ystävänpäivä, meaning “Friend’s Day” where they celebrate friends more than significant others. It’s with this sentiment that SBR celebrates as well because building engagement in employees is vital for both our clients and within our own company. A Gallop poll found that workplace friendships could improve employee satisfaction by as much as 50%, noting that camaraderie means more than just lunchtime pal-chats. Creating a workforce built upon communal goals, active participation and a broader sense of purpose are integral to this friendship model.

We Just Love Procrastinating
Procrastination plagues the best of us and we reported on how businesses can embrace the human tendency to delay in order to boost sales and better communicate with consumers. It turns out that people procrastinate even for positive things like Valentine’s Day, with nearly half (47%) of men waiting until February 13th or 14th to shop. The relative risk is pretty low when it comes to a box of chocolates (depending on the relative wrath of your significant other). But when you pair procrastination with higher impact items like health insurance, the risk is much greater.

So there you have it. Whether you feel the need to feign love, celebrate friends with the Finns or simply love to procrastinate, we think dedicating an entire day to amour is so worth it.

“Mad Men” came to a close last May but we still find ourselves referencing the series whenever we think about business life in the days of yore. The show had a revolving door of characters that seemed to require a lung or liver transplant as much as new business accounts. But when it comes to its portrayal of the business world, and specifically, the business worker, we ask ourselves: How much has really changed over the past few decades?

We decided to pose this question to Dr. Stephen Byrum, Ph.D., CEO of The Byrum Consulting Group and foremost expert on the Hartman Value Profile. Dr. Byrum has been using the Hartman Value Profile since the 1960s, happened to study under its creator Dr. Hartman and consults for educational institutions, corporations and startups. But before we delve into the details of our conversation, it’s important to mention the basic tenets of the tool. (If you are new to the Hartman Value Profile, you may want to check out an earlier post about the assessment, how it works and why we keep introducing it to clients.) 

In simplest terms, the Hartman Value Profile measures a person’s value judgment on three different dimensions: (1) Systemic or “big picture” judgment; (2) Intrinsic or people judgment; and, (3) Extrinsic or task-based judgment. It analyzes the inextricable correlation between a person’s innate personal attributes and their ability to apply those characteristics to the workplace.

Dr. Byrum helped provide clarity on the moving dynamics of worker culture over the past few decades from thousands of Hartman Value Profile test results fielded in nearly every major industry:

• “Mad Men” era favored leaders with excellent people skills. Decades ago companies put a premium on leaders that had high Intrinsic scores (good judgment when it comes to people). Just think of how much time Roger Sterling and Pete Campbell spent schmoozing clients. “If you went into the agency in Mad Men”, Dr. Byrum explained, “Everything was so very dependent on people being able to be socially acute and establish really good social relationships.” But this social IQ doesn’t necessarily lead to the next big invention. “That emphasis on social skills made people individually successful”, Dr. Byrum cautions, “But was not something that contributed to a person’s ability to predict what the next horizon was going to be.”

• The best leaders connect the dots. What Dr. Byrum knows from administering the Hartman Value Profile is that great leaders actually have consistently high Systemic scores. Meaning, they can scope out a situation and forecast the bigger implication. Strong leaders often have an uncanny ability to piece together seemingly unrelated items to achieve an overall goal. Some of the best leaders we know take time to investigate a challenge and predict implications of their decisions on the whole of the company, not just themselves or their direct reports. They work for the betterment of the brand and the business, and consider consumer engagement an absolute necessity, not just a catchphrase.

• Companies wanted rank-and-file workers with high task management skills; today they expect it from everyone. Companies often sought out employees that had the grit and dedication to complete a specified set of tasks. “In the late 1960s through the 1980s,” Dr. Byrum recalled, “Powerful Extrinsic abilities would carry you through the day if you were in an area that involved a lot of process and tact”. This same trend applies today and is arguably a bigger requirement of everyone in business. It makes sense when we consider that there are fewer people expected to accomplish more work in less time. One of the problems is that being a strong producer of work can cost us in other areas, “Oftentimes is at the expense of social skills and Intrinsic abilities”. Our brains have trouble contemplating implications, seeing big picture dynamics and coming up with creative solutions when we are so overloaded with to-do lists. We look for ways to be better producers but we’re not skilling ourselves for leadership roles and other innovative tracks.

• Between the 1960s and 2015, stress has increased precipitously in every industry and at every level. In the closing scene of “Mad Men”, the fictional McCann Erickson agency created the groundbreaking Coca-Cola “Hilltop” advertisement following a serene shot of Don Draper meditating. The focus on the search for deeper meaning and balance is perhaps one of necessity today. The Hartman Value Profile looks both at an individual’s work-side and self-side judgments, as well as the balance between the two. Dr. Byrum has analyzed thousands of results and witnessed a notable dip in people’s self-side scores across the board. In short, we have become more off-balance and more stressed in our personal lives. About 80% of people have lower self-side scores than work-side scores today, compared to about 60% with the same lack of balance in the 1970s. Dr. Byrum suggests that if we dropped Don Draper in 2015, his life and transgressions would not be that much of a shocker today because our lives are so out of balance: “I think if you went back to that period, most people’s lives were not like that. But if you come forward to present-day, you have large numbers of people whose personal lives have gotten as troublesome to the point where I don’t think Don Draper’s character would be much of an aberration in my neighborhood today.”

It is difficult, if not impossible, to keep your personal life from spilling over into your work life. The fact that our personal lives have become more stressed means that our work performance has been impacted as well. Consider the Harvard Business Review’s recent take on the impact of long work hours: chronic overwork diminishes productivity in the long term. The fact that the article mentions an 80-hour workweek is very telling of the dramatic shift towards work-side dominance.

Team SBR periodically takes the Hartman Value Profile to identify movement between the three dimensions of judgment. We love when the results show greater equilibrium amongst the three dimensions (System / Extrinsic / Intrinsic). It is usually a welcome sign that getting a good night’s sleep, taking an extra Yoga class and respecting our own personal time actually makes us better stewards of success for ourselves and our clients.

To learn more about Dr. Byrum, visit Judgment Index and the Robert S. Hartman Institute. 

There are a number of creations from the 1980s that we would prefer to keep locked in the antiquity closet (shoulder pads and side ponytails come to mind). But our heart still sings for a simple video game brought to the U.S. in 1984: Tetris. Something about stacking those mini-blocks into cubed corners keeps us hypnotized for hours.

The simplicity of Tetris is actually based on a more complex phenomenon from human psychology. Scientists have found that the game can help in numerous ways, everything from keeping you on a diet to helping with cognitive capacity (which in turn impacts learning and development). But we were curious about Tetris’ scientific suggestions when it comes to breaking through procrastination plateaus.

The answer lies in something called the Zeigarnik Effect. In the 1930s, Russian psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik observed that waiters remembered customers’ orders until the moment they delivered their food and drinks. Conversely, they forgot the orders once delivery was complete. This observation and the studies that followed concluded that humans have an unconscious need to finish what we start. Our brain basically hangs onto the information until it’s completed.

Tetris plays off the Zeigarnik Effect by creating an inherently unending pursuit. Its addictive nature has to do with the simple fact that there is a constant delivery of new blocks, increasing in speed, feeding our unresolved need to stack them. Whether or not we are aware of it, the re-feeding of blocks keeps us attuned and engaged, what one psychologist called, a “World of perpetual uncompleted tasks”. In the most simple terms, tasks stay in our minds until complete.

From a productivity standpoint, this is great news. We are much more likely to move towards work resolution just by getting started rather than contemplating when and how we will begin. This shows that getting started is not just half the battle, it is the battle. Our mental demand for conclusion will do the work to move us towards resolution.

Consider for a moment walking into your office on a Monday morning and opening up your to-do list for the day. You read through your list, feeling a little less confident than when you walked in a few minutes before. So much to do! Where to begin?

Instead of becoming stalled in a formidable list of tasks, taking on just one at a time will more likely help you complete your tasks. What’s more, just getting started with one small task (e.g. respond to an email, return a call to a colleague, etc.) can help you work through the broader list as a whole.

If you are stuck in procrastination hell and feel like you cannot get out, open Tetris to retrain your neurons towards enhanced performance. Just watch the clock so you don’t squander the entire day trying to beat your highest score.

The great philosopher Cicero reminds us that, “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.” On November 26th, nationwide we will gobble 51,150,000 turkeys and devour 2.4 billion sweet potatoes. As we’re digging in, we have abundant reasons to be grateful: the opportunity to collaborate with many talented people, super smart colleagues, and the company of a dynamic team. But above all, amazing clients like ours make the job worth doing and top our list.

May you also be in great company and savor delicious eats.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Team SBR

As Thoreau tells us, “It is not enough to be busy…the question is: What are we busy about?” Lately we have been busy on our clients’ most active season leading up to the end of the year when sales outcomes can make or break their goals for the next year. For our health insurance clients locked in the middle of their Annual Enrollment Period (AEP), October through December is game time. Not really fun “game time”, more keep your nose to the grindstone and get the job done time.

While we all love accomplishing tasks, sometimes crossing items off of our Basecamp list becomes too much of the focus. If you are anything like us, you even add completed to-dos just to get the satisfaction of crossing them off.

Studies continue to suggest that it is not good to be busy all the time. In fact, it’s bad: “Constant stimulation is registered by our brains as unimportant, to the point that the brain erases it from our awareness,” said University of Illinois psychology professor Alejandro Lleras who led a study on how taking mental breaks improves performance in the long run.

Athletes live by this rule. Any coach worth their weight will tell you that recovery time is invaluable for performance. So why is it that businesses still value busy above break time?

We’re intent on breaking this trend at SBR.

Not All Breaks Are Created Equal
It turns out that what we do during our downtime is just as important if we want those breaks to have a meaningful impact on performance. Exercise, meditation and naps have all been shown to produce optimal outcomes.

Sharon enjoying Shuffleboard

Researchers studying brains through fMRI scans confirm that the areas associated with problem-solving are actually highly active when we are daydreaming. This was once a shocker to us because we believed that only rigorous, focused attention led to results. But after years of working on simplifying complexity, we have seen some of our brainiest innovations come about during non-work time.

Sharon, our fearless founder and leader, believes some of her best ideas come in the shower. In fact, it was in this very locale that she came up with an idea to extend the call center hours until midnight (while our client’s competitors were closed) to maximize on a condensed shopping period. This was a simple, albeit profitable, concept that helped one client significantly increase membership.

Whenever we feel stuck we immediately try to switch venues or activities. In the adjacent picture you can see Sharon enjoying a game of Shuffleboard, a perfect diversion during the workday.

Taking breaks and doing something relaxing has undoubtedly improved our happiness at work.

SBR’s Break List
In our office, we have a growing list of possible breaks to get a mental reboot. So without further adieu, here is our list of short-but-sweet breaks that you can enjoy too…

• Take a walk at Todd’s Point
 (lucky us, our office is near the water)
• The office coloring books always need some attention!
• Grab a coffee and a magazine at Espresso Neat
• Whip out the yoga mat or head over to Kaia Yoga, our neighborhood studio
• Plug in your headphones and head over to the SBR Soundtrack on Spotify 
• When in doubt, step away from the computer and catch up with your co-workers (they’re pretty cool people)!

Companies frequently use new hire assessments as a way to predict a candidate’s potential performance. Over the years we have come across many assessments, from behavioral to personality and IQ tests. But most have missed the mark when it comes to making the inextricable correlation between a person’s innate behaviors, persona or intelligence level and their ability to apply those characteristics to the workplace. For example, being seen as a “nice” person can be a great thing, but there are many “nice” people that struggle to produce work in a timely fashion, to collaborate with their colleagues or to work under mutable conditions. A good assessment tool has to bridge the gap between who we think we are and how we really act.

Several years ago we were introduced to the Hartman Value Profile assessment which looks at a person’s value judgments as an indicator of how they will perform at work. The assessment helps to answer questions like, “When faced with a challenge, will this individual collapse under pressure or determine creative ways to approach it,” “Can this individual generate results amongst cross-functional teams,” and “Does this individual have a tendency to look at long-term implications of their decisions or only focus on what’s directly in front of them?” What makes the Hartman Value Profile different

1. It’s not a personality or psychological test. The Hartman Value Profile measures a person’s ability to judge situations and act upon those judgments. As employers of the ethnographic method (the study of culture) we know firsthand that an individual’s personality is only a piece of the puzzle, oftentimes grounded in their response to a particular environment.

2. It is based on science. Dr. Robert Hartman, Ph.D., created the Hartman Value Profile and was nominated for the 1973 Nobel Prize (the year Henry Kissinger was awarded). Dr. Hartman used mathematics to measure how our value system defined our behavior, ability to work with others and how we make decisions.

3. The “big wigs” use it. We hate to name drop, and as a point of reference, we don’t believe that high profile associations always equate to value. But in this case we can understand why the Hartman Value Profile has been used by different governments and institutions like Yale, Harvard and Pentagon, to name a few.

Judgment is a fairly new term for businesses interested in an empirical performance assessment (as we mentioned it’s not nearly as common as personality or IQ tests). As it turns out, judgments, and our ability to make good ones, might be the next frontier for HR. Take the example of teaching a child how to properly cross a busy intersection. You’ll show them to take notice of road signs, changing lights and to look both ways before stepping onto the road. Eventually, you hope they grow up to be watchful adults that heeded your instructions. But someone who doesn’t display the common indicators for common sense might choose to text on their phone as soon as they see the “Walk” sign without looking for remaining traffic in the intersection. (Spend a weekday afternoon in Midtown Manhattan and you’ll observe these text-walkers firsthand.) The very same judgment indicators that show common sense in life spill over into work behavior as well.

Over the past seven years we have introduced the Hartman Value Profile to dozens of clients with uniquely high rates of success. When it comes to building stronger collaboration amongst teams or matching a person’s skills and experience with how they will function in a particular role, we believe it is the best tool out there. Recently we helped a software client vet candidates for a B2B field sales representative position and the client mentioned how happy she was that we introduced them to the Hartman Value Profile (they now use it to staff all of their positions). Another client said that he is constantly astounded at how accurate the test is, so much so that he thinks the consultant who analyzed the results and provided insights into his team’s performance must be a part-time psychic.

This brings us to a final note on assessment tools. When it comes to using any empirical test, it’s critical to balance the results with an employee’s experience, background, interview and any other factors in the hiring process to score the right people.

To learn more about the Hartman Value Profile, contact us at info@consultsbr.com.

As a company constantly on the move, SBR relishes every opportunity to visit San Francisco – and what trip to the Bay Area would be complete without wine tasting in Napa Valley? Boasting over 400 vineyards with onsite tasting, you need knowledgeable friends or Yelp to help sift through all the options. Flora Springs was recommended by an uber generous client who shipped us a bottle of his top pick, a pricey Rennie Reserve. He insisted we book their wine tour (in his estimation, the best in the Valley).

Lady Luck paired us up with Scott, Flora Spring’s expert host, for the two-hour tasting. Scott showed us that grapes often produce better wine during years of drought and struggle because they are forced to concentrate their flavors. Sure the grapes are smaller but the resulting concentrated flavor produces some exceptional wine. Who knew grapes were so smart!

That got us thinking. When faced with a significant challenge, we can recoil in fear and frustration or be the grape that struggles to produce something brilliant. In corporations, times of duress can often separate the consummate professionals from the rest of the pack. Consider the old adage, “Pressure makes diamonds”. The greatest work, ideas, and streams of creativity and innovation can come in the face of adversity and trial.

Moving about from one meeting to another leaves little to no time to put your next great idea into action. From a business prospective, our rigorous schedules make time for reflection and inspiration seem near impossible. Challenges like meeting sales goals or gaining market share, improving customer service ratings or engaging new audiences with minimal marketing dollars abound and must be solved.

SBR uses various methods to help cultivate this healthy tension and focused attention without the risk of bringing the operation to its knees. Interested in learning more about our strategic approach? Contact us and we can discuss the steps the SBR team takes to embrace a challenge and create exceptional results.