Category: business

art, business, producer, theatre

Cubby Bernstein

Christa Avampato

You’ve got to hand it to those wacky producers over at Xanadu. They’re young and fearless, and finally they are starting to crack the crusty old wheels of Broadway and the marketing of Broadway shows. My friend, Dan, pointed me to Cubby Bernstein, a fictional character who makes his bones by getting people Tony Awards. Cubby’s about 10 years old though he behaves like a grown theatre promoter with an attitude problem. (Sorry – was that redundant?) While antics like his are often deplored in adults, when Cubby behaves this way, it makes for good comedy in that very Doris Roberts sort of way.

What I love about Cubby is how completely unconventional and creative the entire campaign is, and how little money it cost to produce. I follow him on Twitter, and you can friend him on Facebook. On Broadway, the use of social media is practically unheard of so to step out like this is a big change for the industry. From the creation of Cubby’s character to the episodic nature of his YouTube segments, he is a little man with a plan in a class by himself. And maybe that goes for the brave producers of Xanadu as well. They may prove that being a little bit wacky can get you everywhere.

I haven’t seen the show, and I haven’t heard glowing reviews either, but this campaign has so piqued my interest from a business perspective, that I may just walk myself down to the Helen Hayes. After all, if I’m interested in having the theatre industry do more innovative work , I need to support new thinking. And maybe I’ll get a chance to meet Cubby.

business, career, Fast Company, leader, leadership

Anatomy of a Leader

Christa Avampato

My boss and I had a conversation a few months ago about young, bright people who enter large corporations and often feel stifled. They move around in the early part of their career, making a different where they can, and eventually amassing enough experience to get them their own group to manage. In the process, they have accumulated a lot of frustration and an vow that they will never treat their team members as anything less than true partners. And despite their best intentions, they some times fall short and their own young team members begin to see them they way that they once saw their own over-bearing bosses. 


So what’s a young leader to do to uphold their promise to treat their new teams the way they always wanted to be treated when they were new to the world of work? Bill Taylor of Fast Company took on that challenge in a recent article in the Harvard Business Review. I don’t know how long the link to the article will work and the information in it is so critical for young leaders that I have pasted it below. A word to the wise: take notes on Taylor’s comments and when you get that big leadership job, post them up at your desk. Your team will thank you, and they’ll stick around.


I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about the challenges of talented young people frustrated with life inside big organizations—game-changers who spend much of their time questioning authority . In this post, I’d like to turn the tables and address talented young people who find themselves exercising authority: leading a project team, running a product-development group, starting a new business unit.

If you’re the new boss, how do you make sure that you don’t repeat the bad habits of the old bosses who drove you crazy? My advice is to develop solid answers to five make-or-break questions for aspiring leaders.

1. Why should great people want to work with you? The best leaders understand that the most talented performers aren’t motivated primarily by money or status. Great people want to work on exciting projects. Great people want to feel like impact players. Put simply, great people want to feel like they’re part of something greater than themselves.

Early on in their company’s history, Google’s founders made clear that they considered the talent issue a make-or-break strategic issue for the future. So they published a Top Ten list of why the world’s best researchers, software programmers, and marketers should work at the Googleplex—and never once did they mention stock options or bonuses. Reason #2: “Life is beautiful. Being part of something that matters and working on products in which you can believe is remarkably fulfilling.” Reason #9: “Boldly go where no one has gone before. There are hundreds of challenges yet to solve. Your creative ideas matter here and are worth exploring.”

What’s your version of Google’s Top Ten list? Have you set out the most compelling reasons for great people to work on your team, in your division, at your company?

2. Do you know a great person when you see one? It’s a lot easier to be the right kind of leader if you’re running a team or department filled with the right kind of people. Indeed, as I reflect on the best workplaces I’ve visited, I’ve come to appreciate how much time and energy leaders spend on who gets to be there. These workplaces may feel different, but the organizing principle is the same: When it comes to evaluating talent, character counts for as much as credentials. Do you know what makes your star performers tick—and how to find more performers who share those attributes?

3. Can you find great people who aren’t looking for you? It’s a common-sense insight that’s commonly forgotten: The most talented performers tend to be in jobs they like, working with people they enjoy, on projects that keep them challenged. So leaders who are content to fill their organizations with people actively looking for jobs risk attracting malcontents and mediocre performers. The trick is to win over so-called “passive” jobseekers. These people may be outside your company, or they may be in a different department from inside your company, but they won’t work for you unless you work hard to persuade them to join.

4. Are you great at teaching great people how your team or company works and wins? Even the most highly focused specialists (software programmers, graphic designers, marketing wizards) are at their best when they appreciate how the whole business operates. That’s partly a matter of sharing financial statements: Can every person learn how to think like a businessperson? But it’s mainly a matter of shared understanding: Can smart people work on making everyone else in the organization smarter about the business?

5. Are you as tough on yourself as you are on your people? There’s no question that talented and ambitious young people have high expectations—for themselves, for their team or company, for their colleagues. Which is why they can be so tough on their leaders.

The ultimate challenge for a new boss who is determined not to be the same as the old boss is to demonstrate those same lofty expectations—for their behavior as leaders. One of my favorite HR gurus, Professor John Sullivan of San Francisco State University, says it best: “Stars don’t work for idiots.”

So here’s hoping that your team or department is filled with stars—and that they never think of you as an idiot.

The above picture can be found at http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/taylor/2008/05/memo_to_a_young_leader_what_ki.html

business, career, corporation, education, success

How to Be Smarter

Christa Avampato

The definition of intelligence, its measurement, and the belief that it relies more heavily on nature or nurture are all up for debate. In discussions on intelligence, there does seem to be general agreement that there are steps any person can take to make the most of the intelligence they have. 

The New York Times ran an article this week detailing some of the methods of maximizing intelligence: exercise, a pursuit of lifelong learning, sufficient sleep, and challenging ourselves with riddles, puzzles, and mind-bending games. Though my favorite piece of the article involves its reference to the list Conde Nast released of the 73 top brains in business. And you’d think that list would be chocked full of Ivy-educated, fabulously wealthy finance types. And there are some of the those, though their number is surprisingly, and pleasantly, few.

The majority of Conde Nast’s list is dominated by people who go out of their way to think different, be individuals, people who recognize that differentiation, not assimilation, is the way forward in the world of business. The list includes a collection of people who don’t make headline news, but quietly, in their own way are simultaneously changing the world and building wildly successful companies. 

This list gives us some profound food for thought: our education focuses on test achievement, elite school acceptances, and hitting numerical thresholds. Do we need to have a metric in place in our education system that captures a sense of confidence, an ability to look at challenges with new eyes, and have the courage to forge ahead against adversity, naysayers, and others who wish we’d just “be like everyone else”? Current business successes would suggest that the idea is worthy of consideration. 

business, career, culture

Why a corporate culture matters and needs tending

Christa Avampato

No matter how much the culture of a company is discussed during recruiting events or in media, mainstream or otherwise, I am always amazed by how few companies actually actively measure it. I consider the quality of a company’s culture to be as critical, if not more so, that any other business metric. They track sales, margin, expense rate, and investment. I’ve even heard some executives say that those are the only four numbers that a CEO can actively manage. 


But what about culture? It increases retention time, which certainly lowers expense rate. Dollar for dollar,  investing in retaining top talent is the best investment a company can make. And I am a firm believer in the idea that if a company cares for its talent, its talent will care for its customers, increasing sales and margin. If looked at that way, a CEO could possibly focus a sizable chunk of attention on culture and do very well. If he or she takes care of the culture, the culture will take care of the talent, and the other numbers will fall into line.     


The Financial Post ran an interesting article on culture this past week, and it’s worth the short read. It discusses two companies, Maple Leaf and Starbucks Canada, who actively measure culture and adjust accordingly to preserve its integrity. Managing culture is no easy undertaking, though from the perspective of these two companies, the effort pays off handsomely. 


The picture above can be found at: http://grivina.ru/i/ill/049.jpg

business, corporation, design, marketing

The goal of all designers: create conversations

Christa Avampato

Tim Lebrecht at frogDesign wrote a post earlier this week about the earliest stage of ideation. In this age of user-generated design, he questions whether designers are really going about their work in the correct way. He challenges designers of all levels to consider that whatever the end product of their design, they should seek to create conversation.

I was a bit confused by this for a time until I considered an art exhibit I saw a few years ago at the Phillips Collection in DC. The exhibit featured works by Joan Miro and Alexander Calder. The created their art as a conversation; this is largely because they did not have a common fluent language. Miro would create a piece; Calder would answer it, and then add another idea for Miro to comment on. And so it went, for many, many years. Across decades, across oceans. They transcended language with design.

So what if companies like Coca Cola or Target took the design POV that they were creating conversations with their customers, rather than creating products? How much richer and more relevant could their designs be? How much loyalty to their brands could they generate?

Pictured above is Joan Miro’s “Garden”

business, choices, corporation, environment, retail, shop.org

Living in an ecosystem

Christa Avampato

A few nights ago I went to a dinner co-sponsored by Shop.org (a retail trade organization) and Demandware, an e-commerce platform provider. They were kind enough to host a soft sell dinner for 50 retailers in New York City at Ruth’s Chris. While the dinner and networking were terrific, a researcher from Jupiter Research, Patti Freeman Evans, gave a brief speech on e-commerce, though her insights had much broader-reaching applications.


I have written often about the act of curation – in writing and in life. As a retailer, there is also a curatorial aspect to my company’s work. In our brick-and-mortar stores, we are constrained by the size of the box. Even on our website, there is just so much merchandise that any one Guest is willing to click-through. Navigation must be easy. Content must be relevant. Frustration, confusion, and wait time must be held to an absolute minimum from parking in our parking lot all the way through the Guest exit. As retailers, we are curators. Yes, the content matters, though the thoughtful edit matters even more. Or point-of-view and clear expression of it is mission critical. There’s no room in retail for “wishy-washy”.


It’s easy to have a POV about a store, or a chain or stores, or a website. But what about an enterprise POV? Much more difficult when there are parties of conflicting interest. Our business, like so many others, is currently siloed beyond belief. Many people see an ecosystem within their own microcosm. And you can’t build a brand that way. I am surprised every day at how many people drive their respective buses with blinders on. This is only complicated by the fact that we are a turn-around, so we are, as my boss likes to say “driving the bus at breakneck speed while also trying to paint it.” Again, if only I could draw…


What Patti Freeman Evans asked us to do, as retailers, is consider our entire business and indeed our entire industry, as an ecosystem. What we do in one store, one chain of stores, or on one site has an incredible effect on many other people and companies. And her thought provoking analogy of businesses being living, breathing entities offers us a chance to reflect on the question, “what would we do, in our businesses, if we were conscious at every moment that our decisions profoundly effect the lives of everyone we reach for years to come?”

business, corporation, social media, technology, Twitter

Twitter: microblogging and its business implications

Christa Avampato

I have some friends who have started blogs and find them to be so much work to update that they simply abandon them after a while. To be certain, it takes discipline to writer regularly, and at the heart of it, if you don’t enjoy writing, you won’t enjoy blogging. But if you like the idea of sharing what you’re currently working on and giving people updates in short snippets is more your speed, Twitter might be for you. And that’s especially true if you are a company, as many user are likely to this connectivity tool to log a company’s missteps in customer service. 


Twitter is about two years old and the only question it asks is “What are you doing?” in 140 characters, or less, you answer the question, from IM, from the twitter site, or by text messaging from your phone. I usually put up the URL of my latest blog post, and use it as a way to get the word out about my writing. 


Rob Pegoraro wrote an article this past week in the Washington Post about Twitter, and other short update services available on sites like Facebook. Towards the end of the article, he mentioned that companies like JetBlue have a presence on Twitter and respond appropriately to customer comments posted there about the company. 


Best of all, the log of follow-up by the company is available for viewing by anyone on the system – essentially a diary and timeline of how JetBlue has handled a customer issue that a customer felt strong enough to tell the world about. Afterall, when you’re given lemons….  

You can follow me on twitter. Name = christanyc

blogging, business, corporation, technology

Blogging the competition: adver-blogging

Christa Avampato

On frogblog today, Tim Leberecht discusses a small group of corporate blogs that we are now seeing pop up. Brew blog is one example. It’s run by Miller Brewing Company, and rather than promote Miller, the writers spend their time chronicling the fumblings of its biggest rival, Anheuser-Busch. Ick – is this what we’re going to do with our new connectivity tools? Use them and spend our time bashing one another? I’d be disappointed in any company who engaged in this kind of activity, and what’s more, I’d stop patronizing the brand doing the adver-blogging.

The theory of glass houses applies. I understand wanting to keep tabs on your competition. I understanding wanting to your own horn to drum up business. But just as it does so often with political campaigns, I think the people and companies doing the bashing will ultimately get bashed themselves, with a vengeance.

I hope that we don’t see this emerge as a growing trend. I’m much more interested in hearing a company’s own stories in their own words. See Tim’s original post at http://www.frogdesign.com/frogblog/adversarial-blogging-the-brew-blog-and-co.html

business, live blog, social media

BlogHer Business Conference 2008 – Closing Keynote: You Can’t Manufacture Buzz…or can you?

Christa Avampato

4:30-5:30 PM

Closing Keynote: You Can’t Manufacture Buzz…Or Can You?

Synopsis: Admit it: You work with people who think social media is like magic, don’t you? If you build it, they will come; you will leap to #1 in search rankings, and everyone who checks out your blog will want to write about it in theirs. The truth is that that elusive brass ring, “buzz,” is usually not magic or an accident, but the result of thoughtful strategy and effective execution. Hear about a variety of ways that you, too, can become an “overnight sensation.” 

BlogHer co-founder Elisa Camahort Page moderates this discussion with some women who have a pretty clear idea on exactly how much work goes into creating the effortless, viral spread of a message:

Melissa Anelli is the webmistress behind prominent Harry Potter fan site, The Leaky Cauldron. She has overseen the site’s development as the premier source for Potter info, community and fanfic, and as a validated media outlet that gets the same access and treatment from the publisher, author and studio as more traditional outlets (if not better!) Lots of fans have started and maintained sites, but what has allowed this one to become the sensation it is? Content, community, charitable tie-ins…and an absolute passion doesn’t hurt.

You may know Kathryn Finney as The Budget Fashionista. She has leveraged her “love of fashion and lack of cash” into a book and into features and mentions in over 300 major print publications (New York Times, InStyle, Redbook, Wall Street Journal), and over 50 television segments including multiple appearances on NBC’s TODAY Show, Good Morning America, and CNN. Now, that’s some buzz!

Kerry Miller leads a double-life. By day she is a BusinessWeek reporter, covering small businesses and start-ups…many of them web-based. But she is also the proprietress of PassiveAggressiveNotes.com. A side project that she has grown to a million page views a month by concentrating on content, community…and by getting some well-timed bumps in traffic from influential sources. Kerry believes we all need that devil’s advocate who will ask: If you build that, will anyone really want to come?

Live Blog Post Begins:

Elisa – some think blogs are magic. But it needs attention. Hat’s underneath that success?

Melissa – Leaky Cauldron is focused on meeting the insatiable appetite for Harry Potter. The site started in 2000. A couple of friend who realized how popular HP would be. She was trying to be a reporter. But she wanted fans to do their own reporting. In her spare time, she would nag everyone in the HP franchise to talk to them. Media companies eventually saw that this collection of fans was powerful. 

Then started becoming a general purpose site as well. Can’t ever fill the customers’ wants. 

Kathryn – loved fashion, lacked cash. Mom was earliest audience and the only one who logged on. Started using Grey Matter platform. Then diverse audiences started finding her. Mature fashionistas started logging on. Everyone was sort of broke and couldn’t spend so much on clothes and accessories. Remembering your roots is important. Core message is the same – fabulous for less. How to shop a Target, for example. Started in 2003.

Elise – blogs have exploded since 2000. Is the blogging world different? Can you stand out? 

Kerry – started blog in 2000. Media day job. New to blog space. She found a niche very recently that helped her stand out. Passiveaggressivenotes.com is a photo blog of a collection of notes from people. Funny, read between the lines kind of notes. Grandmother sent her a note with cookies “Enjoy, but don’t eat too many!” Had been a blog reader for a while. Had a Diary Land page back in 1998. Started her note on a lark. Was on a bad date. Autopilot conversation. Roommates had gotten so bad that they only communicated through post-its. Started it as a joke and mentioned to her date that she should put these notes on-line. And the date said she should. So she did. 

Elise – attribute some of the success of these blogs through luck. 

Kathryn – well, it was luck and SEO. First big break was in January of 2004. AP reporter contacted her after finding her on Google. And then the article was in 150K newspapers. Husband is in tech field. Google wasn’t as huge anymore. Put in key words like “sample sale” increased her traffic ratings on Google. 

Elise – blogs are good for SEO, but keywords and hyper-linking are the keys to making blogs successful. 

Kathryn – content is key. Don’t change it so much that it effects your ability to relate to the audience. 

Melissa – Community helped create the lucky moment. Didn’t know what SEO was until a year ago. Summer before the first HP film was going to be released. Didn’t even have comments on the blog yet. A community member leaked the trailer to the first movie. Their blog was the first to post it. It catapulted the blog. Now there are tons of HP blogs. 5 – 10 minutes can make a difference in who gets the best hits. 

One morning before one of the books was released, they were the first by a few minutes to get a news story and that helped them get quoted in many of the morning papers. Being obsessive about email helps. 

Kathryn – early last year they heard last year that Sarah Jessica Parker was doing a line for Steve and Barry. They got some photos of the clothes. Held the info until they knew that the article was coming out in the newspaper the next day. So they scooped them. But it was just another celebrity with a line. Readers weren’t so psyched. 

Then a few days later, Steve and Barry’s asked for the photos. It became a big issue for them. So the put the question to the readers about whether to take down the photos. Turns out the photos were promised to Oprah and O Magazine. They did take the pics down. When SJP went on Oprah, the blog came up as the number one Google hit, all because of SEO. 

Kerry – also had a lucky moment. A lo of user generated content – she curates it. Less than a 100 page views on May 20th, to 150K then next day once the site was featured on Boing Boing. She knew she wanted to get on there. She had a list that she wanted to get on there. The content is really what’s key. It’s not the technology. 

My site is something that people go to when they’re bored and they want a break, a quick laugh without too much investment.

Melissa – doesn’t post too often anymore. She does other administrative work now. The HP culture is everywhere. We keep the average HP fan informed. 

Kathryn – my site is to let people know where the sales are. Balance the need to want fashion regardless of age, shape, color and not pay a ton for it. We started before the budget trend was big – same year as Isaac Mizrahi went to Target. She also like the forum part and she loves the readers. She’s learned more from them than they learn from her.

  

Kerry – does one post every week day. Have a backlog of 2000 notes to post. But wants to post slowly. One new thing per day. Don’t want to go crazy and burn out. Have people want more; don’t overwhelm them. 

Jory – there is a pressure on curating, editing, selecting. 

Kathryn – my blog became bigger than me.  Teaching people how to live great lives for less. Truthful, honest opinions. For them, it is all about the readers. 

Melissa – when she allowed the staff to build and let go a bit, it runs like clock work. No one person can do everything. 

Kerry – blog has changed and her writing has adapted to what works and what doesn’t. Hidden jokes. A little intro for each. People come back for the comments. First, had a bar with the most frequent posters. Now, she highlights the best comment every day. 

Question – a good blogger is someone who tends to be hard-headed. What lessons have you learned. 

Kerry – don’t get discouraged by the tyranny of the minority.

Melissa – there is a poll on the blog. Polls are changed fairly often. The comments on the poll are like a chat room. And we just left it alone. And then we changed it so you had to refresh the whole page, not just the comment section and people went nuts. Stay calm. Don’t defend yourself. Don’t engage in the anger. Step back and just let it go. 

Kathryn – now some guys want to get into this space. We had to learn how to communicate to different groups. Fashion bloggers know each other, we’re friends.   

Jory – As you get bigger, there’s a bigger financial interest. What are the pressures that have come along with that? Have people wanted to take advantage of your audiences?

Kathryn – I always put my readers first. They get an opinion. Readers want you to be successful, especially if you are true to who you are. Make money, sure, but be consistent with who you are and what you write about. TJ Maxx sponsored my book tour. Great! If Saks had sponsored it, that wouldn’t make sense. I am about budget fashion. The people who read my blog made me who I am. 

Melissa – No one who works for the site is rich. Everyone has day jobs. We only added ads recently.

Elise – how did you ever grow these sites that allows you to make money to keep supporting them? Content, community, and technology working together. Can you rank the importance?

Kerry – can’t separate them out. You need all three. Get the word out as cheaply as possible, adapt, and be fast to react.

Melissa – Content and community are even. Technology is after those two. 

Kathryn – Content and community are the top two. Blogging platform can come from anywhere.

Kerry – started blog anonymously. Didn’t put name up here because of work at first. Assumed she was a man at first. Because it’s a humor site, people assume it’s a man. Putting her name on the blog has been a positive thing. 

Melissa – put out donation drive when server got so crazy. In one day we got $12,000 from our readers. And then we put up ads. 

Kerry – I didn’t start my blog to make money. Some friends are blogging because they want to show that they have web experience or because they want a book deal. Saying that you know social media can have a value. That changes the ROI.

Kathryn – got book deal in 2004. Did blog and book at the same time. Gained 30 pounds and didn’t sleep. It affected my health. Assess how much your voice is needed on the blog. Writing a book is not an easy process. Probably need to cut down on writing the blog while you’re writing a book.

Melissa – when she was writing a book proposal, she also wrote the blog and had a day job. She quit her job. The day before she left her book sold. 6 -7 months lead up to book, I wrote in the blog, and then as it got closer I stopped writing in the blog.

Elise – passion and dedication and commitment is critical, too.     


business, nostalgia, Starbucks, tradition

Go to the mattresses through your roots

Christa Avampato

Starbucks, the king of coffee, is in the midst of learning a very hard lesson, and we should all learn right along with them. Dazzled by the all the glitz of selling media and other brand extensions in their stores, they let go of what made them great: the best cup of coffee in town. They took a humble commodity and made it a fashion accessory, a brand someone can hang his hat on. And while they were off doing exclusive album releases and making deals with Apple, the enemies were encroaching: McDonald’s and DD being the two most noticeable ones in my neck of the woods. Howard Schultz said on Wednesday, “We are going to fight to the death and not allow any company to take our (coffee authority) position away from us.” They’re moving forward by going back.

Losing focus on what initially brought success is a dangerous trade-off. To be honest I can’t think of a single example of a company that moved successfully moved away from its roots. I also can’t think of single person that fits that mold either. Where we come from and where we initially place our stake in the ground is a critical consideration because everything else we ever become largely builds on that decision. It’s the only way to be genuine. It’s where our passion and creative sensibilities are born.

Thank goodness for the return of Howard Schultz. I am a fan of the company and I was growing a bit sad seeing the baristas fumble around to deliver an “okay” coffee drink. I used to be one of them – as a recent undergrad I worked at a Starbucks in Georgetown part-time to make ends meet. I was pleasantly surprised on Monday afternoon when I stopped into one of my local stores and was greeted with, “Here’s your grande chai. Let me know if it’s not perfect – I’ll remake it for you.” I think they’re successfully finding their way back to their roots.

The photo above was taken by By Marcus R. Donner, Reuters.