Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Why Finance Pros Are Turning to Automation

Are financial experts afraid of automation? Not exactly. If you talk to many of them, you’ll hear that technology has actually changed their jobs for the better and has positively impacted how they work in their organization by eliminating manual processes, increasing accuracy and efficiency, and facilitating valuable customer interactions.

I rounded up some of the best thoughts on automation from big timers in the industry. Here’s what they had to say.

“Automation will change how we insure property, loan money, invest money, deliver technology, write research reports, and what professionals in financial services do every day. Every week in the news we read about a new application for artificial intelligence, machine learning, neural networks, or robots — whether it is self-driving cars, AI assistants, predictive models, robots building (or printing) hardware, or how to invest our money. Put these all in the category of automation — and that is what will impact finance the most in the next decade.” David Reilly, CTO of Bank of America, as told to Tina Wadhwa, Business Insider.

“Open digital technologies will continue to support finance transformation. Transformation is accelerating in terms of companies and people needing investment decisions, as well as the development and implementation of new business models. This will require increased automation and simplification to drive process efficiencies, increased analytics to provide high-speed business insight to drive better business decision-making, and, finally, better collaboration so business connects in a much more seamless way.”  Richard McLean, regional CFO, Asia-Pacific and Japan, SAP, as shared on the SAP blog.

“We developed a chatbot named Eno, an automated program that can communicate with the bank’s customers via text message to give them information on their accounts and help them make credit card payments from their smartphone. The gender-neutral virtual assistant uses artificial intelligence to respond to natural language text messages from users about their money. For example, customers might ask Eno to show them their recent account balances or pay off a credit card bill.” Ken Dodelin, vice president of digital product development, Capital One, as told to Anne Irrera, Reuters.

For more insights from finance professionals, check out the full post on the QuickBase Fast Track blog.

How Connectional Intelligence Drives Innovation

The brainchild of leading business strategists and researchers Erica Dhawan and Saj-Nicole Joni, Connectional Intelligence (CxQ) was coined in 2015 in their book: Get Big Things Done: The Power of Connectional Intelligence.

CxQ is a concept that combines traditional and emotional intelligence with the power of connection (via social media, mobile devices and networks). With it people can “quickly, efficiently and creatively enlist supporters, drive innovation, develop strategies and implement solutions to big problems”.  

One example of CxQ in action can be found at the American Transplant Foundation (ATF). It uses an ecosystem of business-built web-based applications to coordinate programs and quickly launch initiatives that bring different communities together—from donors and patients to service providers and community partners. The ATF’s growing Mentorship Program is one such initiative. It matches those in need with past recipients who help them navigate the legal, medical, and emotional complexities of receiving a transplant.  

“It’s wonderful when we can connect the dots and give people a second chance at life,” says Anastasia Darwish, the Executive Director of the American Transplant Foundation.

How You Can Boost Your CxQ to Help You and Your Company Thrive

Find yourself among the different types of individuals highlighted below and learn how you can your raise you CxQ quotient to drive greater success for yourself and your organization.

Dreamers—Dreamers are the heart center of the connectional intelligence universe. They are always engaging with the future, and imagining the possibilities and what might be next. If you’re a Dreamer, increase your CxQ by sharing your ideas with different communities and networks. Keep putting yourself in places where you can see life through their eyes.

Adventurers—Adventurers are people who seek new experiences, uncharted territory and novel undertakings. They reject labels, boxes or constraints of any kind, and accept risk as part of the adventure. Use your mastered skills to get out of the box and up your CxQ. Start with what you know well and think about how you can use it to build and test new ideas.

Seekers—Seekers are people who ask the big questions that move thoughts to action. Considering all options before acting, they pursue knowledge and cultivate the insight to improve life for themselves and others. If you are seeker striving for greater CxQ, keep asking the question: “what if the accepted wisdom/same old assumptions are not true?

Inspired Leaders—Inspired leaders help team members build an architecture to achieve ambitious goals and use their influence to make a difference in people’s lives. They take risks and assume responsibility for the group’s risks. Raise your CxQ by breaking or reversing rules or processes that hold progress back. Encourage collaboration between teams and communities. Promote an environment that fails forward and fast, knowing that taking chances and learning lessons is the path to agility, innovation, and success.

Advocates—Advocates are motivated to act on behalf of others. Advocates are automatically engaged when they see a way to make a difference and bring about change. As an advocate, what issue would you like to see resolved? Elevate your CxQ by picking a cause that matters to you and focus on what it means to the people you want to serve.

For more from Erica and Saj-nicole, head over to the QuickBase Fast Track blog.

How to Prevent Organizational Drag

In their new book, TIME | TALENT | ENERGY: Overcome Organizational Drag and Unleash Your Team’s Productive Power, Bain & Company partner Michael Mankins and his co-author Eric Garton identify the specific causes of organizational drag – otherwise known as the collection of institutional factors that slow things down, decrease output and performance, and drain people’s energy.

The book claims that the average company loses more than 25 percent of its productive power to organizational drag. This is often an inevitable complication of companies getting larger and instituting more processes and procedures. According to Harvard Business Review, organizational drag costs the economy more than $3 trillion each year in lost output.

As Mankins told writer Stephanie Vozza at Fast Company, the most common processes relate to expense management. “At most companies, there are spending limits and audits, and employees are tracked,” he says. “At Netflix, however, there is no expense policy. The only policy is, ‘Act in the best interest of Netflix.’ The company is telling employees, ‘We assume you are not here to rip off the company, and we’re not going to put in place processes that consume human capital, waste time, and zap energy.’ They tell employees to assume their best judgment, and they can be more productive if they’re not held back.”

This, Mankins claims, is why companies like Netflix are 40 percent more productive and have profit margins that are 30 to 50 percent higher than industry averages. Apparently, most organizations start off with roughly the same number of high performers, but organizations with less drag produce far more every day – and the difference compounds every year.

One secret of companies with less organizational drag involves putting a majority of star performers on mission-critical projects that are essential to the business. Another relates to the development of inspiring leaders. As Mankins says in the Fast Company piece, Dell recognized the productivity difference between inspired and average teams. “Sales teams led by an inspiring leader are 6 percent more productive than those that have an average leader. If you extrapolate that 6 percent it accounts for an extra $1 billion in annual revenue.”

For more on organizational drag, check out the full post on the QuickBase Fast Track blog.

Making a Good Decision with Limited Information

Leaders do not always have the luxury of time when making a critical business decision, yet research shows that quick decisions are often remarkably solid despite time pressures. Here are six strategies for coming to the best conclusion in a non-ideal situation.

Strategy 1: Define Your Result

Consider why you must make a prompt decision now. What is the most pressing problem, and what do you need to have happen as a result of the decision? If everything worked out the way you hope, what would be the outcome? Don’t get too caught up in a detailed list of pros and cons, because inevitably, some listed won’t be as important as others. Recognize that every option will likely have a downside as there is rarely a 100 percent perfect decision. You simply have to do the best you can with the data you have available at the time.

Strategy 2: Look Both Short and Long-Term

Envision how your decision will play out immediately, and how it will play out down the road. Understand your organization’s short and long-term goals and evaluate your decision in relation to both of those. Suzy Welch’s 10-10-10 method is one way to employ this strategy: think about the implications of your decision 10 minutes from now, 10 months from now, and 10 years from now!

Strategy 3: Reduce Your Risk with a Trial

If you are uncertain about the best path forward, can you test the impact of a particular decision on a small scale? For instance, can you implement a new process in a single department, or company-wide for only one month? Trials give you an out if a decision isn’t working, and also provide opportunities to modify your approach based on feedback.

Strategy 4: Talk to People Who Have Been There

Seek out those (either inside or outside your company) who have been in a similar situation and probe them about their learnings. You might also ask the opinions of those who will be directly affected by the decision, and those who are truly impartial. The more perspectives you can get, the better informed your decision will be. However, in order to protect yourself from analysis paralysis, don’t leave your inquiry open-ended. Instead, commit to a concrete decision after collecting points of view for a specified period of time.

For more strategies, head over to the QuickBase Fast Track blog.

How to Keep Your Business Relevant in the Age of Automation

Much has been made about human jobs that will potentially be replaced by automation and artificial intelligence in the coming years. But where does that leave businesses that base so much of their success on intimate, human connections? And how can owners who are already struggling to stay in business today contend with the prospect of having to future-proof their companies? 

I reached out to three owners, Ben Landers, CEO of internet marketing firm Blue Corona in Rockville, Maryland; Laura Mignott, co-founder of DigitalFlash, an integrated branding agency in New York City; and Brendon Schrader, CEO of marketing agency Antenna Consulting in Minneapolis for their opinions on how they future-proof their companies.

How did you decide where to focus your business and how did present and future marketability play into that decision?

Ben Landers: Blue Corona wasn't launched in a startup lab with someone else's money. We bootstrapped the company based on a market need observed first hand. When you're in this process, you don't have the luxury of spending too much time worrying about the future marketability of it.

Laura Mignott: DigitalFlash is a brand elevation agency. We know that technology would always be there, but we are in the connecting people business. Technology is just another tool to help foster communication and one-to-one social interactions.

Brendon Schrader: My decision on where to focus both my business and our service offerings was based on an in-depth review of the marketplace and the identification of where we could bring innovation to a stagnant industry. This allowed us to identify the whitespace in market and ultimately influenced how we created a firm that could be unique now and into the future.

How might the rise of AI and automation affect your business? How do you keep abreast of these trends?

Schrader: There will always be new technologies and trends. What matters is that you pay attention to these trends early and clearly understand the impact they could have on your customers and business. My strategy is to set aside time every week to read, research and stay current on the issues facing our industry.

For the rest of the interview, take a look at the AMEX Open Forum.

From Small Potatoes to Big Ones: The Question of Expansion

The decision to expand your business from a small, mom-and-pop operation to a larger organization is a milestone many business owners want to achieve.

But expansion can be scary—not to mention risky—and it's important to approach it with a significant amount of forethought and strategy. In this roundtable interview, I spoke to three business owners—Bryan Bedera, CEO of PR firm Amplify Relations in Reno; Richard Kershaw, CEO of web design firm Quality Nonsense in London; and Jean-Michel Lebeau, CEO of software development firm Cortex in New York City—about how they came to the conclusion that it was the right move for them, and the steps they took to help ensure they were successful.

What led to your decision to expand your business?

Bryan Bedera: We were too reliant on a small number of clients and thought expansion would provide long-term stability for the business. It's much easier to get good deals when three or four clients aren't providing the bulk of your revenue.

Richard Kershaw: Like many entrepreneurs, I wondered if we could take everything we'd learned, clone it and double our revenue.

Jean-Michel Lebeau: We look at growth as a strategic tool, not a way to survive or hide imperfections and problems through speed. We decided to grow and expand to the U.S. market because our goal is to generate as much impact as possible through technology, and to do so, we need to work with people who are looking to create this kind of impact. Top companies are all around the world, and if we're to attain our objectives, we need the right structure to support those clients and help them with their technological challenges.

What did your initial expansion entail? Did you expand your business again later on?

Lebeau: The first four years were very hectic, to say the least. We rented our first office when we had two people and had to move several times as we kept adding staff. We doubled in sales and headcount every year or so, so we tried to predict our needs in terms of human resources and real estate two to three years ahead and did our best to remain agile.

Kershaw: We spent nine years focused almost exclusively on one project. We made the decision two years ago to launch new websites, leveraging our existing team and processes. That turned out to be the wrong strategy, and we are about to expand again with a different approach.

Bedera: Our expansions have included more office space, a 30 percent increase in staffing to further fill out roles, bringing services we had previously subcontracted in house and a larger investment in marketing.

For more where this came from, visit the full interview on the AMEX Open Forum.

20 Years Later, Much Career Advice Still Applies

In the summer of 1996 after my sophomore year of college, I started an internship at a nonprofit technology association in downtown Washington, D.C.

Until that point, I’d only worked in retail and had no idea what to expect. I asked my father and a professor for advice. Remarkably, 20 years later much of that guidance still resonates.

Doors open based on who you know

In the late 90s, these were physical doors rather than virtual ones, but the concept is the same. When applying for a job or looking to connect with someone, name-dropping would increase your odds of getting a positive response. Today, although we have exponentially larger networks thanks to social media, deep, in-person relationships still provide the greatest networking benefit. 

As you build your network of contacts, remember to follow up

Meeting a contact once is a wasted opportunity unless you periodically remind him or her of who you are and take steps to grow the relationship over time. In the 90s, I was encouraged to send snail mail holiday cards to former bosses and colleagues, and even to pick up the phone occasionally. Twenty years later, it’s all about LinkedIn.

In a new situation, aim to assimilate

Corporate culture used to be “one-size-fits-all.” If you worked in a business office in any city in the world, you were expected to behave professionally, adhere to hierarchies, and generally do what you were told without making waves. Individual company cultures may be more unique today (conservative versus liberal, strict versus playful) but the need to examine and then fit into a new culture – whatever it may be – remains.

For the rest of the piece, head over to my new Mashable column.

 

Why You Don't Need to Save the World

I once knew a guy named Brian. Brian was a recent college graduate and he wanted to work for an environmental nonprofit, but he couldn’t find a job. All of the organizations that interested him could only offer volunteer roles, and Brian needed to pay his rent.

Brian received a job offer in pharmaceutical sales. At first, he was resentful – Big Pharma wasn’t what he signed up for when he went to college. But after thinking it over, he decided to take the job and make the best of it. 

Brian used the huge company as his personal training ground. He talked to people in every department to learn about different functions of the business. He mastered the process of how new drugs were invented, approved, manufactured, and sold, and learned essential transferable skills including finance, marketing, IT, customer relations, and of course, sales.

Brian quickly became one of the top-ranked salespeople in his division and was promoted to manager. At this point, he was more marketable to the nonprofits, so I asked if he’d leave Big Pharma. “Why would I do that?” he said. “I want to do work that matters, and I’ve found a way to do that here.”

Sound good so far? Check out how you can do the same at my new Mashable column.

How to Prevent Business Tech Overload

Technology for technology's sake can hurt. We are so inundated with new solutions that it's difficult to assess what's truly important. I discussed this issue with Amber Anderson, CEO of organizational advisory firm Kayson in Phoenix; Rebecca Devaney, CEO of Hunter Creative Labs, a pro-social product development lab in Boston; and Thomas Smale, co-founder of online business brokerage FE International in London.

What business technology do you need to run a successful company?

Amber Anderson: It totally depends on the business. Every business is different, and the technology that you need to run YOUR business successfully depends on a variety of factors including what your business does, your team's capacity, your budget and your goals. 

But for the most part, you'll find all businesses nowadays should be using email, cloud storage, and a well-designed, easy-to-navigate, mobile-friendly and -functional website. Also, you need a list and email marketing tool, as well as a bookkeeping [and] accounting system.

Rebecca Devaney: In addition to the obvious needs such as computers and hardware, there should be software systems in place to address casual project conversations, such as Slack, and project management systems, such as Project, Wrike, Basecamp or Zoho Projects. 

The PM software you choose depends on a few things, including time-tracking and task dependencies. In addition, you will need bookkeeping software, such as Botkeeper or Quickbooks, and then a shared file service such as Dropbox or Google Drive. No document should ever live on a staff member's desk.

Thomas Smale: A good portable laptop and smartphone are essential to keeping up on the go. I always carry a portable charger to ensure that I don't have battery issues. 

Tell me about a business technology you've employed for your business that hasn't been worth the time, money and energy. 

Smale: We tried to make everyone have a smartphone, tablet, laptop and desktop PC. We found that some people preferred using two or three devices and almost no one used all of them. 

Individually, each can be incredibly useful, but when you have them all, the benefits are mitigated. If your people work in an office with permanent desks, get them PCs with dual monitors and a smartphone. That's really all that most will need.

Devaney: Several years ago, we built a 16 terabyte, fiber-optic storage system to produce and share videos. It was great, except that there were about three people in the world who could fix the system. It broke all the time, and we couldn't upgrade our computers or add any new software to it. It would have been better to pass hard drives around old school!

Anderson: In the beginning stages of my business, we implemented a customer relationship management (CRM) system. The system was complicated and expensive, and we weren't ready. We didn't have the team in place to manage it, nor the processes to make it useful. CRMs and other automated systems are amazing, but only when implemented at the right time and the right place.

For the rest of the interview, head over to the AMEX Open Forum.

Disruption 101: How to Ignite Change in Your Company

As a general rule, human beings fear change and will often fight to maintain the status quo. If there are individuals within your organization who are either not interested or downright hostile toward a focus on disruptive scenarios, there are several steps you can take to bring them into the fold.

Open a dialogue

Before you attempt to persuade colleagues to jump right into a specific initiative, provide a safe space to discuss disruption in general. Organizational change consultant David Hofstetter suggested posing questions such as: Where and how could disruption impact your business? How will your skills and those of your employees be impacted? Are you embracing change, shying away from it, or ignoring it? What are your competitors doing that you are not? What the newest trends in your industry?

Attend forward-thinking industry events

The sessions and conversations you and your colleagues will have at conferences centered on innovation will take your thinking to another level. Encourage your colleagues and employees to see for themselves what disruption means and what it can do for growth and profit. Appropriate events may vary by industry, but some good ones are Tech Crunch Disrupt, World Business Forum, and Fortune Growth Summit.

Hire an outsider

Sometimes, an internal person can repeat the same message dozens of times, but no one really hears it until it comes from the mouth of an external consultant who is perceived as an expert. When it comes to embracing disruption, you might make greater headway by bringing on a single or team of advisers who can offer an objective picture of your organization’s status compared to the larger market, and can provide direction and next steps.

Conduct periodic market disruptor analyses

Often, disruptive innovations (<<interview with Guy Kawasaki) are considered far away, irrelevant, and optional. There is no better way to make a case to in-denial executives than to regularly monitor and explain how disruptive competitors are threatening your business TODAY. “As the barriers to entry in businesses get lower and easier, competitors and new ways of doing things will appear fast and more often,” said Hofstetter.

Change your tone to one of urgency

As I mentioned before, human beings prefer to support existing ways of doing things. For this reason, companies tend to be conservative, reactive, and focused on immediate business fires rather than the ones that threaten to burn from miles away. Use the data from your market disruptor analyses to connect the dots for your leaders – why is disruptive change something that requires attention this instant? Speaking in terms of lost profit or customers is more likely to resonate with some leaders than “we should really try this new thing.”

Fight the temptation to be insular

While being laser focused on your own daily operations is more comfortable, putting on blinders is dangerous in a business world that changes rapidly. Therefore, you should make sure that your company has a pipeline to receive guidance from a variety of sources. For instance, an advisory council that taps people in different roles in different fields will provide a fresh perspective that is impossible to get otherwise. When it comes to understanding where your market is going, often you can take cues from other industries that are a year or two ahead of yours.

For more where this came from, check out the QuickBase Fast Track blog.