HINDSIGHT - WRITE SOMETHING WORTH READING ABOUT OR DO SOMETHING WORTH WRITING ABOUT
Monday, December 31, 2018
New Inc Magazine Blog Post by Kaplan Institute Exec Director Howard Tullman
Happy New
Year. Now Stop Trying to Make Everyone Happy.
This
is the time for you to allocate more resources to your winners and kick the
losers to the curb. Good leaders learn to use the word "No" and to
stop propping up mediocre products—or people.
Executive director, Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation
and Tech Entrepreneurship, Illinois Institute of Technology
As you wrap up 2018, and start thinking about your business's
budget for the next year, the toughest single task is always the allocation of
inevitably scarce resources among competing ideas, opportunities and
commitments. The hardest single word to say is "No" -- and also the
most important. Because smart strategy in times like these is all about what
you don't do.
Saying "Yes" is so much easier and a relatively
painless way, at least in the short run, to keep poor projects alive or to try
to do things cheaply. Things that you shouldn't do at all. And saying
"Maybe" when you should just say "No" isn't doing anyone a
service; it merely postpones the inevitable.
Get used to the idea that there's never enough to go
around and you can never make everyone happy or please all of the people even
some of the time. Don't even start down that path. Absolutely the
most important thing not to do is to try to treat everyone
"fairly" - by which I mean equally - because nothing about business
is fair.
Business is all about frankness, not fairness. Telling
your people the truth is the greatest favor you can do for them. Splitting the
baby or trying to give everyone a little something dilutes the overall
enterprise and diminishes everything you're trying to accomplish. It's a proven
formula for stagnation, mediocrity and eventual demise.
This kind of equitable treatment, where every department
gets a similar budget, or every department head gets the same raise and bonus,
feels good in the moment. But it's a stupid plan to try to placate everyone
instead of making the hard choices to assure the survival of your firm. And
it's a lazy and cowardly way out. I understand that no one wants to be the bad
guy in someone else's day and that these messages are always difficult to
deliver, but not only is it a part of every leader's job, if you're not
personally up to the task, then you shouldn't be in the position in the first
place. The buck really does stop with you.
And believe me, survival isn't too strong a term these
days; it's exactly the level of significance and severity that these choices
and decisions deserve. I see businesses every day where the management is
treading water, waiting to retire, and/or afraid to bite the bullet, shoulder
their responsibilities, and take the necessary actions. As a result, time
quickly passes, momentum and opportunities are lost, investors, donors and partners
lose interest, funding disappears, and one day they turn around and there's
nothing left to pursue.
The market for talent, as just one example, is fierce and
unforgiving. If you aren't smart enough to understand that you've got to pay
your best people better than the rest of the team and, if you still think that
it makes sense to be equitable based simply on longevity or titles or job
descriptions, you're living in the past. Those peak performers, who are the
only ones that matter to your future, will soon be hired away. Not because
they're ungrateful or disloyal; because they're not stupid.
It's the same with (1) businesses you're in that are going
sideways, (2) products you're producing that are getting tired and losing
market share, or (3) departments where there's no longer the same demand for or
the value attributed to the services that they're providing.
Spending money or other resources to prop these losers up,
to keep failing operations afloat until they become someone else's problems, or
because you're afraid to shrink them, sell them or shut them down means you're
not doing your job, that you're kidding yourself and a lot of other people as
well. Things only move all by themselves in one direction: downhill. Face the
facts and fix the problems so that you have the funds to invest and bolster the
businesses that are healthy and growing. Facts are stubborn things. They don't
go away or change because you ignore them - they fester.
You've got to have a strict set of metrics (rank 'em or
yank 'em), a clear view of where the future of the firm is likely to be
(winners and losers), and some idea of the path(s) that will get you there.
Every good venture investor will tell you the same thing: you starve your
losers and feed or double down on your winners. This isn't rocket science. Most
of the time, an outsider with even a fraction of the information you have can
tell you which of your people are winners and what parts of the business are
destined to grow dramatically and which ones are already the walking dead. Of
course, if you were being honest with yourself, you'd admit that you also know
who and what has to go. You just need to screw up your courage and get the job
down.
And it's at budget time that things really come to a boil
because the choices couldn't be clearer or more immediate. Are you really going
to fund a flailing business for another year when every metric is headed in the
wrong direction because things might get better? Are you
really gonna lose a couple of your superstars just because you were afraid to
pay them what the market made clear they're worth in order to keep the rest of
the team happy? And, worst of all, are the people who once bet on you tiring of
the same sad stories and mediocre results and getting ready to put their money
and their attention to better and more productive uses elsewhere?
PUBLISHED
ON: DEC 31, 2018
Sunday, December 30, 2018
Friday, December 28, 2018
Illinois Tech Magazine: Howard Tullman Interview
T
he phrase “rock-star hire” seems tailor-made for Howard Tullman’s arrival at Illinois Tech, where he serves as executive director of the university’s new Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship. Tullman, 73, has the credentials: he’s a veteran entrepreneur, investor, and academic administrator who spent the last five years leading Chicago tech hub 1871, which in February was named the world’s top business incubator. He also brings plenty of rock-star vibe, gliding around campus in a black Mercedes with a “Howie T” vanity plate and casting a bold vision for the Kaplan Institute’s future. We asked him what drew him to Illinois Tech and about his plans for the Kaplan Institute.
Illinois Tech Magazine: Why did this opportunity appeal to you?
Howard Tullman: There were a couple of things that converged. One, I was constantly having conversations at 1871 with people saying, “If we could only get more diverse technical talent,” and I’m like, “Well, do you know that there’s a tech school 10 minutes south of here on the Red Line that has thousands of engineers and 30 percent of the incoming class are the first in their families to attend college?” Honestly, as a major tech school, it’s been largely invisible to the Chicago business community to a staggering extent.
Two, this particular learning environment is a lot different than 1871 in terms of the focus and the stakes. At 1871, I felt like, if you were a kid from a northern suburb and your parents didn’t have anything better to do with you, they’d send you down to fool around for a year trying to invent a pet-dating site. At Illinois Tech you’re here to get a real set of skills that will turn into a real job. The idea behind the Kaplan Institute is to bolt entrepreneurship training and innovation-technology skills onto a set of technical skills, to really make you a more complete and valuable employee.
Illinois Tech Magazine: It’s interesting that you stress employability, considering that the Kaplan Institute is focused on innovation and entrepreneurship.
Howard Tullman: Well, you’re starting to see more conversations about who is the real customer [of a university]. The truth is, we serve the students, but our customer to an increasing extent is also the employer. You best serve the students by preparing them and helping them get great jobs.
From day one, I said that the Kaplan Institute can’t just be the student union for techies. There are plenty of those. And I think that’s a risk; most universities that have incubators are not sufficiently focused on turning out talented and qualified students who can hit the ground running and immediately help their employers. We don’t do [our students] much long-term good if we give them this wonderful education in a vacuum. If I can’t give you the skills you need for tomorrow and if I can’t get you a serious job upon graduation so that you can support yourself and repay your student debt, then we haven’t prepared you and fully equipped you with the skills you’re going to require not simply for graduation but to go on and build a successful future.
Illinois Tech Magazine: How does entrepreneurial training fit the needs of employers?
Howard Tullman: The big companies just don’t have a clue how to address innovation and rapid change. They just don't have the time, the resources, or the methodology to do six alternative versions of a project and see which one wins. They’re scared to death because if they hire people and launch a bunch of new projects (most of which will fail), then 90 days from now their CFO is going to say, “How’d we do? Did we discover oil? No? Okay, well, fire those people.” When you’re building a space and a program and an interdisciplinary environment like Kaplan, you’re building it to turn out people for jobs that haven’t been invented yet, to use technologies that we’re just now working on, and to address problems that we don’t yet know are going to be problems.
Illinois Tech Magazine: The Kaplan Institute isn’t the first time you’ve been in charge of a sparkling, new, high-tech facility; you had a similar opportunity at 1871 and also when you were leading Kendall College and Tribeca Flashpoint College. How do you approach breaking in a new program in a new space?
Howard Tullman: You have to build a culture and a rigorous discipline that you explain, promote, and enforce consistently. We know that you can explain things to people all day long, but you can’t understand things for them. They have to see it and live it and adopt it and believe it. You can’t talk a culture into changing. It only changes when you take the actions necessary to bring about those critical changes. If you aren’t rigorous and aggressive, the necessary changes won’t happen by themselves. Change isn’t easy and it’s always easier to keep doing things the same old way.
Over time, businesses become the behaviors they tolerate. If we start out at Kaplan and say, “Everybody can do whatever they please and you can have piles of scraps and material spread out everywhere,” then you’ll end up with a mess that sends the wrong message to everyone—students, faculty, supporters and donors, and especially employers. That’s not going to be how it is at KI. Order, organization, control, and discipline are all components of being proud of what you’re doing and paying attention to the details, and it’s absolutely contagious. Our entire team will model the behaviors that drive success and lead by example.
Illinois Tech Magazine: You’re 73. Have you given any thought to the length of your tenure here?
Howard Tullman: If I’m here three to five years, that’s essentially the timeframe that I do almost everything in. That’s enough time to point things in the right direction. 1871 went from zero to number one in the world in five years. I think the Kaplan Institute can be as powerful in its own way as what’s going on at Carnegie Mellon or MIT. We have a window and a unique and special opportunity to really build our story and get on the map.
Thursday, December 27, 2018
Tell Your Kids the Truth about Work.
Tell Your
Kids the Truth about Work.
You
May Work Hard for the Money, but It’s Not Really About the Benjamins.
Executive director, Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation
and Tech Entrepreneurship, Illinois Institute of Technology
I’m sure one of your most fervent New Year’s resolutions which
you duly and promptly shared on social media was the annual "work less and
spend more time with the family" promise - maybe with a kicker this year
(thanks to Arianna Huffington’s incessant whining) that you’ll also get more
sleep and thereby become a far more effective and infinitely better person
overall.
Every entrepreneur (and anyone else building a business) knows
how these things go, especially today when we're all working longer and harder,
spending less time with our families and loved ones, and
feeling guilty about it. The fact that there are often good reasons for the
extra time away or because the jobs we're doing are important, not just to
ourselves, but to others as well, doesn't make that discussion any easier or
less emotional. The truth is that there's always more work, but you've only got
one family.
Very often in our familial conversations about work, we find
ourselves explaining and trying to justify our efforts and our absences,
especially to our kids. And, unfortunately, for lack of a better or more
straightforward explanation, we often seize upon a particularly unfortunate
turn of a phrase and a pretty lousy excuse. We say, in so many different
ways and words, that:
I work to make money to buy you (fill
in the blank); or
I work to make money to provide you with (insert
here); or
I work to make money so we can do or go (destination
please).
Sound familiar? Maybe it's a spouse, but most often it's our
kids. And just what are we telling them?
We're telling our kids that we work for money -- that money is
what matters-- and that money is to buy things, places, people, etc. That
"getting" is really the be-all and the end-all for our work.
And that's too bad. Because it's a lame explanation, a dishonest excuse,
and an awful message -- probably the worst message possible. This explanation
is quick and easy, and we all fall into this trap from time to time. But we can
do better and, frankly, we need to do better because our kids are already
drowning in media messages that say -- a million times a day -- that life is
all about the bucks.
So, I have a modest suggestion for the next time you find
yourself in this particular fix. Change the context -- change the
conversation -- and tell your loved ones the truth (or maybe what we hope the
truth should be) whenever we're asked about why we work. I’d suggest
spending a little time thinking about your own answer before the fat's
in the fire.
What is the truth? What's an honest answer? It starts with
being honest with yourself. When you're dragging, feeling a little sorry for
yourself, can't take another day of work (and it's only Wednesday), and you
find yourself mumbling and grumbling to yourself that "we need the
money" or "I have no choice" or "I've got bills to
pay", you're just kidding yourself just like we've all been kidding our
kids for years.
If you don't know why you're working and what you're working
for, or you can't think of a good reason to come to work, then do yourself and
everyone else a favor and find something else to do. If you’re not interested
and at least a little bit excited about what you’re doing -- most of the time --
leave it.
O.K. you say, but what is the right answer when the kids ask, as
you're sneaking out the door on Saturday morning to spend the day at the
office: "Hey Dad, how come you never come home?" Or maybe:
"Why is work so important all the time, don't we come first?"
The truth and the best answer is that we work for two basic
reasons: (A) to make ourselves proud and (B) to help other people. We don't
really work for money. We work to be productive and creative. We work to make a
difference in our lives and the lives of others. We work because we secure real
satisfaction from what we achieve with our hands, our hearts and our minds.
There's no price tag on this stuff. Money isn't even a good way
to keep score. Does anyone really think that a rock star's contribution is
millions of times more valuable than a teacher's? That's just more media
bullshit. We work to accomplish things that move our lives forward, that matter
in meaningful ways, and that we can feel honestly and sincerely good about it.
There's no shame or false pride in that. There's nothing to be
embarrassed to tell your kids about. If you love what you do, let them know and
pray that someday they'll have a similar experience and privilege.
Is it foolish, or do we sound selfish, if we admit that we work
because it makes us feel good and fulfilled? I don't think so and I think
it's a much more constructive, effective, and appropriate answer for everyone --
kids and grownups too. Don't tell your kids you work because you have to, or
worse, that you work to buy them Christmas toys or other goodies. We work
because work is important and that's what grown-ups do. Your career is something
to be unashamedly proud of and to share with your kids and others. We're
building things to make the world a better place.
And that's where Part B comes in. We're not isolated
islands and in this thing all by ourselves. Everything we do or don't do
impacts many others -- especially those of us who teach. So, it's just as
important to understand, acknowledge and have our kids appreciate that, apart
from the selfish motivation of making us feel good, we all work as well for a
greater good and to help others by making their lives better and fuller as well
as our own. Hard work and commitment is how life moves forward and how the
world gets better. A lot of tiny steps by millions of people, a little bit at a
time, and mountains move.
And that just leaves the matter of money. What should we say
about money? I hope that the message I've shared with my kids is pretty simple.
Money, beyond life's necessities, is for charity and for giving back. Money is
not an end in itself or a game of running up the score. Money is not a
worthwhile goal because there's no finish line and there's always someone with
more. At best, it's an enabling and an ennobling tool to make valuable,
important, and charitable things happen.
The bottom line: work hard and be proud of the work you do; love
what you do or do something else; try to make a difference in this world every
day in large and small ways; and use all of your talents, energy and resources
to help others to better their lives. And lastly, hug your kids much too much,
far too often, and until they squeal.
Have a Happy, Healthy, and Prosperous New Year.
Wednesday, December 26, 2018
New INC Blog Post: Family Holidays Can Be Fraught. Here's One Way to Make Them Productive
Family
Holidays Can Be Fraught. Here's One Way to Make Them Productive
Rather
than settling scores with your siblings, or overeating, use this time to get
serious about how you're going to take care of your aging parents, a problem
made more difficult by our broken-down healthcare system.
Executive director, Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation
and Tech Entrepreneurship, Illinois Institute of Technology
The holidays are always a
very complicated time for families. Most of us look forward to the annual
gatherings and grudgingly try to forget the imagined affronts, drunken insults,
petty squabbles and painful debacles of the past. I realize that this sounds a
lot like most of the office parties we've all recently suffered through. The
big difference, though, is that you can't really bail early when
you're stuck at your parents' home for the evening, trying to hide out in your
old bedroom and staring at decades-old debate trophies gathering dust on
shelves you ineptly installed sometime in the 60s or 70s.
This wave of mass selective memory that carefully edits
unfortunate prior episodes blankets the country at this time of year as we try
to be of good cheer. It's one of the greatest examples of how fantasy and
fiction, along with abundant optimism, continue to triumph over memory and
bitter experience. That doesn't include politics, where everything remains a
bitter experience.
So, we soldier on each year and hope for the best. Certain
delights and dilemmas are recurring. Seeing distant, but not distant enough,
relatives once a year is as much a regular December ritual as avoiding Uncle
Arnold's questionable creme brûlée, which he serves in an old Folger's coffee
can. And don't get me started on Frieda's fruit cake which, if inadvertently
dropped, would easily crack concrete never mind the dentures of anyone
foolhardy enough to bite the beast.
But these trials and tribulations pale in comparison to the
newest and toughest Christmas conversation, which is no fun for
anyone. This happens when the brothers and sisters of a certain age who
are lucky enough to have living parents gather to have "the talk"
about Mom and/or Dad's health, happiness, financial condition, and, most of
all, their future care. This is tough because the subject is so difficult to
address (with or without your parents in the room) and very timely because we
are the very first generation that is discovering in mass that we're going to
have to become our parents' parents. Millions of us are going to be required to
unexpectedly comfort and care for our parents for many years at the very same
time when we're facing the financial challenges of getting our kids into and
out of college/grad school and launched into the working world-- so we can keep
them from moving back home. Others, a little older, may have thought they
were on the cusp of a blissful and stress-free retirement, only to realize that
they're about to confront a bundle of new responsibilities.
Caring for our folks for a decade or so may not have been
foreseen or properly prepared for and, in some respects, this responsibility is
far from fair. But it's a fact today and one which more and more families will
need to deal with. And truthfully, most of us aren't prepared for the prospect
that our parents are living one misstep away from misery and the near certainty
that their care, problems and concerns will then become ours as well.
If this dawning realization wasn't frightening and painful
enough, it's compounded by the fact that their trials and tribulations are
merely a glimpse into the futures that we too can all expect. All the more
reason, by the way, to begin right now being exceedingly nice to your own kids.
And to consider three very disturbing lessons that our parents never bothered
to share with us; lessons you will learn quickly as you attempt to assist them
in navigating their golden, if somewhat tarnished, days.
(1) Hospitals aren't
places you go to get well. Get out ASAP.
Hospitals don't make you feel better. They're
insensitive and unfeeling factories focused on figuring out how quickly they
can get you out the door. The sooner, the better. And actually, that's the only
real favor they do for you because the whole process is a game of Russian
roulette, where limited, overworked and under-trained staffs try to keep you
from getting the newest staph infection before they send you home with a pile
of papers, incomprehensible discharge instructions, and a hearty slap on the
back.
Leaving your loved ones at the mercy
(hopefully not MRSA) of one of these medical bureaucracies is heartbreaking for
all concerned. But there's not much choice, unless you move into their
room and try to act as their advocate. Needless to say,
no one in the hospital likes that notion, in part because you might quickly see
that the call buttons are placebos-- no one really comes when you call-- and
that, because of severe personnel shortages, there's a new duty nurse almost
every day who knows practically nothing about your Mom or Dad. It's not that
they don't care -- the good ones clearly do. The problem is that they're
just prisoners along with their patients in a system that optimizes everything
but caring and curing.
(2) Insurance
"benefits" benefit the insurers, not the insureds.
The "can't-be-bothered" clerks and
sloth-like cretins who work for the nation's insurers are similarly
mis-incented. They get paid to first say "No" all day long
and hope that (after waiting an hour to speak to an alleged human) you'll take
their word for it, so they can get you off the phone. When you
squeal and appeal, you often get paid, but they still make it as slow and
painful as possible because they know time is on their side and that
you're probably tired, in pain, and on drugs.
And, by the way, they do the same scummy
things to your doctors. Some useless creep in Omaha decides what tests and
procedures your insurer will pay for and dictates the acceptable diagnoses to
the doctor-- not the other way around. Even the best physicians face barriers
to helping you get well when these people won't pay for the proper tests to
determine what's wrong with you in the first place. This is the kind
of support and these are the "benefits" for which you paid premiums
religiously for most of your life. You've become lost in the land of loopholes,
shabby excuses, clever clauses, and everything short of the simple
truth. If there's an industry with more scumbags per capita than
health insurance, I can't imagine what it would be.
(3) Social Security is
neither social nor secure, but it's unsettling for sure.
Parents planning to rely on Social
Security for much of anything will be shocked to find what a pittance they'll
be paid after a lifetime of work and contributions. Don't think of
it so much as a question of imminent insolvency--that will be our kids'
concern. Instead, with Social Security the greater insult is to be offered
peanuts with a straight face by a bureaucracy and a bunch of useless
politicians still set on squandering our financial future while lining their
own pockets at the same time. They don't need to depend on Social
Security, so what do they really care?
Trying to understand what you and your
spouse should be paid each month is an invitation to recurring torment, jumbled
jargon, and double-talk by people who can't even seem to read the mechanical
scripts set in front of them. This mess is made even worse (if that were
possible) by an immediate and unstoppable deluge of written notices,
indecipherable calculations, after-the-fact adjustments and everything but a
simple explanation or an answered phone call. This seems to be a plan to
further punish you for the audacity you initially exhibited by being so brash
as to ask a question. And the Social Security swamp is only a poor cousin to
the utter morass of Medicare or "Mini-care" as we like to call it,
since anything of importance to your health and every material cost seems to be
mysteriously uncovered.
So, be forewarned. This is
not a journey to be lightly undertaken or traversed by the faint-of-heart.
Nevertheless, it's a journey we will all need to navigate for our parents and
thereafter for ourselves and there's no better time than now to get the
conversations started.
Monday, December 24, 2018
Attitude adjustment needed by your demanding, miseducated workers
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