Nothing good comes from being in the middle of the road. It’s funny we often take for granted little things that have overarching meanings in our everyday life. Take driving. Learning the rules of the road and using them keeps us and others safe while sending a clear message about the direction we’re traveling. What happens when we forget these rules? Ever seen the person flying onto an on ramp and merging into traffic without signaling? Or the person who wants to straddle the line on a thin dual-direction road? On the road and in life one thing is clear: you cannot both be coming and going at the same time. We can do either but the rules of the road force us to make a choice.
And in our career, what happens when we refuse to choose? Many believe we can straddle the professional line without anyone noticing. With one foot in our current role and the other waiting for the next best thing, we remain unaware that our ambivalence reeks.
It is important that we pick a side.
PICK A STRUGGLE
Adam wrote a blog a while back that was titled Don’t Miss your Bernie moment. The message was in general for leaders of organizations that have gone through major periods of change. The Bernie message was one of transition. It was saying to his supporters that the time has come to move on, united against a common evil, and rally together on a new shared mission. That blog was for leaders at the top of newly merged or fundamentally changed organizations. And it should absolutely resonate for many of you out there.
But there is another message and this is for everyone in the organization under such leaders. And the message is basically that once a leader has articulated the new shared vision for the organization you have a decision to make. Either align with that leader and support the mission, helping to drive the continued success of the organization. Or decide that this mission is simply not yours and move on. You need to pick a struggle. You need to pick a side. Just like being in the middle of the road while driving is not a viable option, being in the middle of the road as a member of a team is unacceptable.
Let’s be clear here. We are not at all saying that adherence to the mission of an organization requires a level of abject acceptance of any decisions that are made and any directions that are delivered. The value you bring to an organization is of course diversity of opinions and the ability to provide input into decisions driving the future of your organization. Never change that. However, there is a base level of acceptance that is required of any player on a major team.
Adam is a very big fan of Arsenal Football Club and anyone who knows the English Premier League teams knows that to some extent each team is fundamentally different than other teams. Their leaders are different and their style of play are also different. If someone joins Arsenal, the expectation is they will bring new talent, new ideas, and new strength to the club. However, they will still play under the style and direction that has been developed over dozens of years. They cannot come in and try to be a rock superstar constantly fighting against the leadership or their fellow team members. It simply does not work.
So, you’re at a Crossroads. You joined the company and you worked for a particular leader for years. You respected that leader and admired his or her vision for the future of the company. You now have been placed under a new leader and you dislike your new mission.
It is time to decide.
Our advice for you:
1) Consider what makes you happy at work. Be very honest and open with yourself. Be sure that you are not letting personal friendships or biases get in the way of sound judgment. I have worked for people who are fantastic people that I truly respected and I liked. But they were not always aligned with me strategically or going in the direction that I actually thought was best for our company.
2) Ask lots of questions and truly get to know the new leader. If you suspect there is a fundamental misalignment with your view of strategic direction for the company, do your research. List out your perceived differences and ask questions that get to a point where you can confirm one way or the other. You may actually be surprised both at your misunderstanding of the misalignment or in your leader’s interest and ability to change based on strong feedback
3) Check the grass on the other side. Research other players in your industry and see if they are going in a fundamentally different direction. It could be that your ideas are not aligned with the way the world is shifting. You could be the one on the wrong side of the road. And hey, we’ve all been wrong sometimes. This exploration of the other side will also help you and your decision to stay or leave for another company. If, after all, other companies in your industry will be going in the same direction, you might be left all alone.
4) Change your way of thinking. Adam wrote a blog on Allies on a Tour of Duty, about investing in talent for the long-term. The concept there was around each role being a different opportunity for you to build on particular skills and learn new ones. Never considering that any would be permanent. Change your way of thinking so that this new strategic direction under this new leader is another Tour of Duty. It’s an opportunity for you to prove that your intellect and your skills are transferable and can be applied under different fields of battle.
5) Determine your time horizon. There is a particular amount of time that you will wait it out and try to make it work before one of two things happens. Either you will become so despondent and disengaged that you will be miserable at work and miserable to work with. Or, your performance will suffer and your contributions will decline and instead of leaving on a high you will leave with an impression a failure. When not happy at work, your performance will suffer and your reputation can as well.
6) Just Leave. If you’ve come to the conclusion that it’s simply not going to work or you don’t want it to then you should do yourself and the organization a favor and respectfully exit. Fortunately, we are not tied to any one company and where we decide to work is a choice. Choose to be solid teammate and manager, productive and most of all happy…elsewhere.
Choose Your Side
Staying in the middle of the road is not good for any players involved. Your leadership will be disappointed in your performance and your attitude. Your peers will notice your lack of Engagement. And those that do not know you well will brand that as part of your personality and your skill set. And you will be unhappy and feel increasingly disengaged and alone. That is a position that no one wants to be in at work. Therefore, we encourage you to pick a struggle. Pick a side.
Let us know what you think. Have you been in a situation where your colleague was clearly straddling the middle line? Have you managed someone like that?
Be well. Lead On. Adam
This blog was coauthored with Apriel Biggs-Coker. These are our views and not necessarily those of the company.
Adam L. Stanley Connections Blog Technology. Leadership. Food. Life.
Virtual Reality: The New Reality For Real EstateIs virtual reality the new reality for real estate? This brief chat with BuiltWords was part of The Fourth Edition of the Cushman & Wakefield Occupier Edge e-zine, which highlights insights and trends identified and explained by global real estate experts. Check it out for more interesting articles and discussions on technology and other trends impacting the commercial real estate industry, including gamification, mixed reality, artificial intelligence, and alternative talent sourcing. Do you have experience with virtual or augmented reality? Is it a fad or rad? Where do you see this technology going over the next few years?Be well. Lead on.Adam
Please stay safe.
Adam L. Stanley Connections BlogTechnology. Leadership. Food. Life.Follow me on Twitter | Connect with me on Linked In | Comment below.
Technology has made many things about our lives better. As a geeky, technology evangelizing, digital dude, I would say technology has made MOST things better. We have quicker communication (sometimes I wish this was not the case). Some work processes are more effective (sadly not all). We can keep costs down in businesses. Scale happens faster. Connections with clients are richer. Analytics more powerful in decision making. And technology has touched essentially every industry. Customer demand shifts, competition from just about everywhere, and an increasingly challenging operational and regulatory environment mean that every company, from the most “manual” to the most high tech are all in essence technology companies. Every business is a technology business now.
Many companies still hire a lot off of competence metrics. Just peruse a list of openings on LinkedIn and dozens of them still list long bullets that would have been on job descriptions 10 years ago: where you went to school, what you studied, years of experience, how much you know about x or y. Makes perfect sense and may not change anytime soon for a lot of our roles. But competence is becoming overrated as a hiring driving force. We live in a VUCA business environment — volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous — and technology has allowed executives to open up revenue streams they never thought possible. Priorities and objectives can switch on a dime in some companies. We don’t necessarily need the most competent financial guy in history; we need a financial guy who can switch between different approaches as it’s called for.
In short: less bullet points, more real people with curiosity and skills. What skills? I have a short list and welcome your ideas.
2. Accept inevitability of artificial intelligence: It will probably take your job, or a part of your job, someday. But for now we are taking the last major Industrial Revolution and going through another one, but the new one is compressed into the life span of a dog. You can’t hire people right now who have their heads in the sand about this. Maybe they don’t know how to code robots. That is fine. But they need to know this is coming and need to understand what it will mean for business models.
3. Be at least decent presenting: It’s shifting a bit with a more remote workforce, but we still get ideas/pitches across via presentations. Many people are terrible at presentations but techies tend to be even worse than normal. Not every job needs effective presentation skills, but we should be evaluating candidates based on how well they can get across an idea. If you can’t get across a simple idea or advance a concept, what value will you ultimately be to a business? Especially when, again, every business is a tech business.
4. Understand mobile and targeting: You might think this is just for marketing roles. It’s not. The greatest promise of mobile is that you can find specific consumers literally in the palm of their hand. 2017 job candidates should understand the scale/scope of mobile, how mobile works as a targeting device, and what the hiring company’s business model could/should do with mobile. They may not drive the strategy on it, no, but if they don’t understand it, they’re going to enter the role a few steps behind. And this is not limited to consumer businesses.
5. Demonstrate intellectual curiosity: I am amazed at how many people recruiting for roles today are concerned about “job hoppers” and, perhaps related, how many companies do not encourage continuous movement within a company. IBM, despite recent financial challenges, has created a culture that encourages and almost requires regular movement. For those of you who exercise, you know that half the battle is about continuously “surprising” your muscles, switching it up so your body never gets complacent. Your brain is the same and if a company does not commit to providing you opportunities to stretch and grow it, you will get bored. So shouldn’t every interview include questions that probe intellectual curiosity? In an era where 90% of the world’s data was created in the last two years, I want people that are fascinated by change, not just accepting of it. I blogged a while ago about Hiring for Character and Values. And one of the main targets was the curious.
Let me know what you think. What do you view as key to hiring in this digital era? How do you build the best teams around different types of team members?
Be well. Lead On. Adam
Adam L. Stanley Connections Blog Technology. Leadership. Food. Life.
Make your Uber driver feel good. He may not be making much money. And you’re really not “sharing” anything with him.
The ALS 5-Star Uber Service
Recently, I decided to do a little experiment.
Several people in my circles talk regularly about the sharing economy. I have read dozens and dozens of blogs on the model — and actually work with accelerators and incubators that are also very much focused on the topic.
Here’s the issue I’ve always seen, though: many of us experience the sharing economy as users, not as providers. If we’re not exposed to both sides of it, it’s hard to really understand what’s going on and how it’s going to impact business and growth (and yes, politics and society too) in the next decade and beyond. Most of my friends have stayed in an AirBNB, for example — but only 1 or 2 have rented their place out. Almost all my friends and colleagues have used an Uber, but none have driven one.
So, I decided to sign up. I wanted to see what it was like to be an Uber driver.
Signing up
The first step — signing up — is surprisingly easy. The process involves a background check which is done by a third party and the collection of several documents that verify that you are legally licensed to drive that vehicle. The process for me took approximately one week including the time to go to a local Jiffy Lube for relatively simple car inspection. Because of the vehicle I drive, I was also able to request the ability to drive as an Uber Select driver, which merits higher rates per mile and a different clientele. (You’ve probably ordered a Select once or twice.)
This was getting real now — I was signed up — and once stuff gets real for me project-wise, I go whole hog. The next step was preparing the car. I bought some mints and candies for the armrest, and I put magazines in the back that passengers could read. I set up in-vehicle Wi-Fi and provided chargers for Android and iPhone devices. I made a brochure about everything I was doing and stuck it in the back. I was aiming for five-star service every time out.
I got my mounting device for the dashboard, installed Waze, and started taking rides. I was now on the other side of the sharing economy. I had crossed the chasm.
So, what did I learn?
Basic economics
About half my rides were Uber Select; the other half were UberX (the most common). A large percentage of my UberX fares were surge, i.e. 1.1-2x the traditional fare via demand, but most Select were base fares.
It’s hard to make money. In one trip, I drove a passenger through traffic for 21 minutes and my take home was about $4 adjusted for income taxes. I cannot for the life of me figure out why someone would be a part-time UberX driver. I get the flexibility element — also heard of an Uber driver who has six kids once, and I get maybe using Uber as peace and quiet — but it’s not a true revenue generator in any real sense. My question is whether or not the average driver tracks mileage to and from pickups, uses the tax code to his full advantage to deduct expenses, and has a car where the cost of depreciation is lower than the benefits of Uber fares.
Uber has recently decided to allow drivers to accept tips in certain markets. As a reaction to lawsuits, the stipulation allows tips as long as they use as a separate transaction or via cash.
People are condescending
A lot of times, they don’t even realize it. You might be in this boat without realizing it. I constantly got questions about why I do Uber and/or how else I really make money. There were also dozens of comments implying “Oh, you’re smart for an uber driver” or act shocked that I was “a better conversationalist than I expect from an uber driver.” It was really amazing to see this in real-time, ride after ride.
Drunk people are awful
Some people really never do grow up after high school or college. When drunk people spilled into my car, it’s all crass and racism and ridiculous, no-context comments. No one puked in my car (I’ve seen stories about that from Uber drivers), but verbally, almost all the drunk people puked everywhere. Obnoxious at 20. Ridiculous at 40.
Uber has begun piloting means of protecting drivers from drunk passengers, or at least minimizing impact of the distraction. Drivers get a $200 cleaning fee when someone throws up in your car and several expert drivers have posted blogs with tips on avoiding the worst offenders and managing the other drunk passengers. The dilemma for Uber is that it touts its services as a drunk-driving solution to generate political juice. This is Uber’s pitch to Upstate New York. If too many of Uber’s part-time drivers begin refusing to service drunken passengers, this claim will lose effectiveness.(see article)
Spilling the Beans
Absolutely shocking how many secrets were revealed in conversations between passengers, including — not even kidding here — people working as consultants or investment bankers on confidential matters. I started thinking: if someone drives an Uber at a major U.S. airport and it takes about 30 minutes to get downtown in whatever city, how easy would it be for Uber drivers to basically do real insider trading off what they hear? Or simply to ruin a deal by tweeting or posting it on Facebook.
The ratings game
I nailed my five-star rating. During my 19 trips, 15 passengers gave me ratings and all of them scored me a 5. I believe Uber now requires ratings on every fare. When I did my experiment, this was not the case. After every fare, I would find myself anxiously awaiting my rating. I wonder whether my perfect score would be different had Uber required ratings when I drove. Perhaps the people who did not rate me were not as impressed with the quality of my service and would have rated me lower.
After about 20 fares, it does become increasingly easier to maintain that high rating. In the first 20 fares, it’s a little bit more a situation where every fare (and subsequent rating) makes a huge difference. As a passenger, I had just ok rides with 4.9 rated drivers that had taken hundreds of fares. But I also had amazing rides with newer drivers with 4.5 that had only 10-20 fares. One or two passengers in a bad mood can ruin a starting driver. New drivers are given some slack on their rating, but a rating below 4.6 puts you at risk of being deactivated.
Getting Lost
I don’t know Chicago as well as I thought. Certain neighborhoods were a total mystery to me — even sometimes 6-7 minutes from places I do business all the time. If I had turned off Waze, I’d be totally lost. That was surprising to me. This is a major differentiator for taxis. If you want to get good ratings, you need to really get to learn the streets of the city in which you live.
No Dates or Mates
It’s not really a networking tool. I heard people classify Uber as a networking tool often, but that’s not really true. I ultimately did 19 rides. No one hit on me — although maybe that’s my issue. No one encouraged me to hit on them. And I didn’t start any business partnerships or friendships, no. I thought about the term “sharing” within sharing economy a lot when I was doing this. Most of the passengers are basically paying less — and getting it faster — than they would with a traditional taxi. They’re not sharing anything. It’s an economic exchange at the micro level. (more on that here)
To Uber or not to Uber
I wouldn’t recommend Uber to people looking to make extra cash. I don’t actually feel the economics are there. There are a couple of situations where it could be advantageous, though. For example:
● If you have a nice leased car and you don’t drive more than the allowable mileage on a regular basis, it makes some sense.
● If you’re interested in human psychology or think it could benefit you professionally to understand people a little bit better — and you have the time — then it’s valuable.
● If you’re a person who would otherwise be sitting home downing Doritos and not interacting with other human beings, do it.
● Short-term need for cash for a trip? Definitely consider it.
● You’re just a curious person.
If you are going to drive, here are a few blogs with independant tips on optimizing your experience:
For now, though, I would love to hear your perspective on the sharing economy. And if you get a chance, hit on your next Uber or Lyft driver. Might make ‘em feel better… Just saying.
I don’t use the term “big data,” which long ago became an overused buzzword anyway along with its cousin “The Cloud”. It’s not that I dont think data is important. Its just that Big Data by itself is like a basket of whole wheat flour without eggs, butter and milk. Just like you can’t eat just the flour, you can’t consume Big Data. You need a recipe to take the raw ingredients and a means to transform it into something yummy.
Recently, the Altus Group CRE Innovation Report showed that 89% of the firms surveyed faced major impediments to collecting and utilizing data to drive improved asset and investment management decision-making. This is in line with previous research that big data may actually be slowing down decision-making, as opposed to making it more effective.
The No. 1 goal of any CIO right now shouldn’t be achieving some big data-tied deliverable. It shouldn’t be implementing a massive data warehouse or finding a big data platform that can gather millions of information points for future analyses. Rather, it is about being smarter. One of my mentors, another executive at Cushman & Wakefield, says that an organization is often like a large brain using about 10% of its capacity. Harnessing the power of the rest should be the goal of any analytics program. So much of the information you really need for effective decision-making lies in the heads of thousands of professionals in dozens of different offices (or homes … or coffee shops … or cars) all over the globe.
The primary goal of a CIO, then, is finding ways for those professionals to come together, share the information they have, and solve complex problems. That may well involve a platform approach, but it’s not necessarily a big data platform.
I prefer to start with the questions, as most good strategy does. In our business, it all begins with: What are some of the models we might be able to build that help our clients more effectively manage their real estate assets? Once we have the right questions defined, we build the data models and refine existing — or create new — data collection mechanisms. In this way, instead of “big data” we can focus on “information-based analytics” that more immediately drive value in decision-making.
Silos are a large part of the problem
The Altus report found a lack of integrated data approaches. 80% of firms surveyed said their business could eliminate or reduce data silos through better integration and standardization. Four out of every 5 people complaining about silos, especially in an era where firms compete largely on data, is a very telling number. But it is also a sad reality. Many organizations are formed from a series of acquisitions. Over time, legacy systems build up and a patchwork quilt of interfaces is developed to keep them humming in unison.
But these patchwork quilts do not have to constrain or define your analytics strategy and practices. Instead, I try to think like a startup. Startups often gain that disruptive edge because their decision-making is better and faster, and they can move to market (and refine once there) quicker than an enterprise, legacy company. In the course of this happening, startups are often building their own analytic systems — as opposed to relying on third-party vendors. Why can’t this happen in legacy companies? The reason you hear most is “process”. And that is in fact a major problem. Sometimes we let process overwhelm actual notions of productivity, which is a bad play for all involved. Process should only exist to better business performance, not to hinder it or run your people in circles.
Data integration and standardization is obviously a challenge for firms, but the bigger challenge is a concept we don’t discuss as much: data model and taxonomy standardization. If one business unit thinks in terms of cost per square utilized foot and another one thinks cost per square gross foot but both simply refer to their data as cost per square foot, the analysis will be off because the data is off. Disparate systems with a common data taxonomy can get you pretty far. On the other hand, one global system with multiple data taxonomies can lead to bad analysis. You may have won the battle but you will lose the war.
This may sound corny, but it’s totally true: data is power, but only if used for good. Stephen Dubner, famous from Freakonomics, has been discussing this idea for years. We have a tendency in business towards more, more, more, but in this case it doesn’t work. That’s another reason I don’t like the term big data. Just collecting data essentially for the sake of having it, with no end goal in mind around improved decisions or processes, is complete folly.
The challenge for our industry is this: how do we take the lessons of the investment shops, insurance brokerages, and even the residential real estate business and translate it into what we do, while at the same time not losing the connection with tremendous local leaders?
I think we’ll continue to see more approaches around data — look at a model like Zillow and the amount of data they crunch — but my hope is that this idea of “big data” fades into buzzword obscurity and we focus on the right things at the CIO level. We should be connecting stakeholders and moving towards information-based analytics.
4) Change your way of thinking. Adam wrote a blog on Allies on a Tour of Duty, about investing in talent for the long-term. The concept there was around each role being a different opportunity for you to build on particular skills and learn new ones. Never considering that any would be permanent. Change your way of thinking so that this new strategic direction under this new leader is another Tour of Duty. It’s an opportunity for you to prove that your intellect and your skills are transferable and can be applied under different fields of battle.
Technology has made many things about our lives better. As a geeky, technology evangelizing, digital dude, I would say technology has made MOST things better. We have quicker communication (sometimes I wish this was not the case). Some work processes are more effective (sadly not all). We can keep costs down in businesses. Scale happens faster. Connections with clients are richer. Analytics more powerful in decision making. And technology has touched essentially every industry. Customer demand shifts, competition from just about everywhere, and an increasingly challenging operational and regulatory environment mean that every company, from the most “manual” to the most high tech are all in essence technology companies. 
1. Analytics: All businesses are running on data now, or trying to. Unfortunately, the talent for understanding, analyzing, and presenting data 
4. Understand mobile and targeting: 
5. Demonstrate intellectual curiosity: I am amazed at how many people recruiting for roles today are concerned about “job hoppers” and, perhaps related, how many companies do not encourage continuous movement within a company. IBM, despite recent financial challenges, has created a culture that encourages and almost requires regular movement. For those of you who exercise, you know that half the battle is about continuously “surprising” your muscles, switching it up so your body never gets complacent. Your brain is the same and if a company does not commit to providing you opportunities to stretch and grow it, you will get bored. So shouldn’t every interview include questions that probe intellectual curiosity? In an era where 90% of the world’s data was created in the last two years, I want people that are fascinated by change, not just accepting of it. I blogged a while ago about 
About half my rides were Uber Select; the other half were UberX (the most common). A large percentage of my UberX fares were surge, i.e. 1.1-2x the traditional fare via demand, but most Select were base fares.
I nailed my five-star rating. During my 19 trips, 15 passengers gave me ratings and all of them scored me a 5. I believe Uber now requires ratings on every fare. When I did my experiment, this was not the case. After every fare, I would find myself anxiously awaiting my rating. I wonder whether my perfect score would be different had Uber required ratings when I drove. Perhaps the people who did not rate me were not as impressed with the quality of my service and would have rated me lower.
I don’t use the term “big data,” which long ago 
This may sound corny, but it’s totally true: data is power, but only if used for good. Stephen Dubner, famous from Freakonomics, 