As a manager, look at your team members.
Some questions to consider:
What is their nature? Are you using their nature to achieve the best results?
Lets talk about border collies by way of illustration. Border collies are sheepherding dogs.
This info about border collies comes from a border collie breeder that I talked to at the Scottish Games on 9/3/16.
Border collies are very intelligent. Intelligence and physical endurance are the ONLY characteristics that are selected for by border collie breeders, not looks, not elegance: intelligence and endurance.
A border collie:
- can have a working life into 12-14 years;
- takes 2-3 years of training;
- are only good when they are 4 years old;
- want to do a job WITH you;
- are eager to please by doing a job.
However, border collies:
- need a meaningful job;
- are not dumb like greyhounds (border collie breeder’s words :-);
- are not content with being stuck in the house during the day.
Border collies can become OCD if trapped in a house. They can decided that their job is to “solve the couch” problem. or obsess about a corner. [Side note: My sibling had a border collie and man oh man did that dog fixate on its ball]
One border collie cannot train another. It annoys the old dog and frustrates the new dog.
Dogs are trained to go clockwise / counterclockwise around animals. (i.e. not left/right when compared to owner)
Basic commands are:
- clockwise, counterclockwise around the dog’s focus ( the owner or the stock ),
- lie down: which means stop and pay attention to what the owner is asking – but it also relieves the “pressure” on the sheep
- get back: advanced command the dog backs off
Two dogs working together are called a brace. To give commands to 2 different dogs: might use name followed by command OR have 2 different sets of verbal commands.
In this sheepherding competition there was:
- a three minute timed course with three sheep
- The dog needed to bring the 3 sheep around the handler;
- up through the center gates then back down through the side gates;
- into the Maltese cross getting all the sheep to turn through the correct exit for this course.
With the Maltese cross, the hard bit is that if dog waits too long to turn the sheep: the head sheep goes the wrong direction. too soon and the back sheep scatter.
The handler can make themselves “big” with shepherds crook but can not actually push the sheep.
When watching the competition, the difference between the winning team and the other teams was clear. On the winning team, the collie was making the move almost before the handler called out the command. The collie knew what the next command was and was just waiting for the signal. On the losing teams, the collie was leaning the wrong way; or took a fraction of a second to understand the handler’s command.
Lets look at this competition as an analogy for managing a team.
With sheepherding, the handler needs to manage the vision and direction of the border collies.
As a manager, your job is similar. Your team is smart and capable. The manager can’t function without a team. The team needs the manager’s vision of the future. The border collies are the eager senior+ team members. They are eager to go. They are capable and want that next challenge. They are better at their job than the manager.
In a well-functioning team, the handler and the collies know each other. They are not interchangeable. A team and a manager are a single unit. The team knows the manager and can anticipate the manager’s next actions. The team can see the challenge ahead and they know the desired goal. The team is always set up for the next action.
In a out of step team, the team has no foreshadowing from the manager. At every decision point, the team is in the dark about what are the next steps. This is a sign of fundamental differences in communication style. The manager thinks they are communicating successfully, however, the team is not hearing the direction in a consistent way that makes sense to them. The border collies and the handler sense the world differently – yet they still coordinate to successfully herd the sheep. Similarly, the team senses the world and situation in a way different than the manager does. As a manager your job is to bridge your vision to the world that the team sees.
LinkedIn has lost its Vision
The Promise
A few years ago, I worked at LinkedIn. At that time, Reid Hoffman had a very clear vision for LinkedIn.
LinkedIn was “Resume 2.0” for the middle managers and the professional individual contributors who really make businesses function. LinkedIn would enable those people to highlight and show off their abilities.
Through LinkedIn, outside recruiters would see the LinkedIn members’ professional competency. The invisible professionals would get more economic opportunities.
LinkedIn members were members to be helped, not users to be exploited. This was a unique social bargain, unmatched by any other social network. LinkedIn members would keep their professional profile updated with their performance and skills. In exchange, LinkedIn would use that profile to help the members find new and better opportunities.
LinkedIn also built a member’s professional network: LinkedIn became a place to do reference checks in a quiet way. A place to find people without posting a job. A place to do business. A LinkedIn profile became a professional necessity: an electronic business card.
LinkedIn became the dominant business social network to conduct business.
In exchange, LinkedIn would then sell access to those members’ profiles to recruiters looking to hire the professionals. A win-win for all.
For a many years LinkedIn enjoyed their success with rich stock P/E multiples.
Complacency Today
Earlier in 2016, LinkedIn lost its bloom. A year ago LNKD was at $269, today it is at $110. What happened?
LinkedIn has forgotten the unique “fuel” that powers the money machine: the members and their willingness to keep their profile up to date.
This exchange I had with a college senior is typical:
But is more telling are these snapshots from LinkedIn’s own employees:
LinkedIn’s own employees don’t see the value of updating their own LinkedIn profile!
Amongst my friends, the general attitude for not updating their LinkedIn profile is one of the following:
Which then leaves the very pointed question:
Remember an up-to-date profile is the LinkedIn’s key asset that powers LinkedIn Talent Solutions:
LinkedIn Revenue breakdown
62.5% of LNKD’s revenue depends on members keeping their profile up-to-date.
Outside recruiters still use LinkedIn as part of their recruitment process, however in-house recruiters that I have talked to get better results with Indeed.com. With Indeed.com, recruiters know a person is actively looking, the resume is actively updated, and there is much more detail when compared to a LinkedIn profile. (Please note: I am a LNKD shareholder and I have no financial interest in Indeed)
If LinkedIn was demonstrating its true potential, the resume would be a subset of the LinkedIn profile. And Indeed would not be valuable to recruiters.
LinkedIn’s Misaligned Focus
Yet, LinkedIn’s focus is on… Sales Solutions and the Talent Solutions.
Lets take a look at the Sales Solutions product. Sales Solution depends on members having a quality network. It depends on members willing to keep their important business connections in LinkedIn.
With Talent Solutions and the members’ profile, the promise was members will get better jobs, more career advancement opportunities and more money-a direct, measurable, economic benefit to the members.
LinkedIn over the years has become a business card proxy. LinkedIn users hand out their Linkedin member url at conferences. They connect to people that they may not have an actual business relationship. Over the years, the LinkedIn network accumulates with people that are little more than distant memories.
There is even less value to members to prune and update their network. LinkedIn offers minimal tools to members to annotate and get personal value from the LinkedIn member information. For me personally, I have to refer to my email history to figure out how and why I know a person in my LinkedIn network.
And now in 2016, LinkedIn wants to sell access to members network with Sales Solutions. Sales Solutions’ benefit to members is the opportunity to be lukewarm called instead of cold called.
This is not an incentive for members to use LinkedIn-they are now being a product that is being sold.
LinkedIn forgot to ask: what is the economic value to a member to keep their network up-to-date?
What LinkedIn needs to change: Future focus
As of today, members’ LinkedIn profile is all about the past: past job titles, past companies, past education.
What is completely missing is any sense of the future. As they say in the stock market reports, “past performance is not a guarantee of future results” What a LinkedIn professional has done in the past is not a guarantee of what they see in their future:
LinkedIn does not help members prepare for the future:
Not eating the dog food
You may agree or not agree with me. If you choose to disagree, you need to ask and answer the “dog food” question.
Fundamentally, LinkedIn needs to look to their own employees and ask:
In startup land there is the term: “Eat your own dog food”-prove that your startup’s product is valuable by using it internally.
If LinkedIn’s own employees’ don’t find LinkedIn valuable-investors are right to question LinkedIn’s value as a company.
Some discussion happening here
Posted in great ideas, management, social commentary.
19 comments
By pat – March 26, 2016