'Early Matters': Creating Value through Operations at Portfolio Companies According to speakers at the 2006 Wharton Private Equity Conference, the most important element of operational performance is getting the right management team, which requires private equity owners to make a swift decision about whether to keep or let go of existing senior executives. After that, they say, private equity firms need to drive returns through management incentives, tight monitoring and forward-focused strategies. http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1457.cfm

General | Career Acceleration | Private Equity Investing

Is It the Fund or the Fund Manager that Fuels Performance? "When it comes to the world of work, mutual fund managers are a respected breed. Yet what part does the fund itself play in a successful outcome? Klaas P. Baks, assistant professor of finance at Emory University's Goizueta Business School, researched this question in his paper "On the Performance of Mutual Fund Managers." Baks' paper separates the fund manager from the fund organization as a means of analyzing performance to determine just how important that star manager truly is. The results are surprising." http://knowledge.emory.edu/index.cfm?fa=viewArticle&ID=964

General | Public Markets Investing | Securities Research

For Job-Hunters: How to Find a Contact Name Inside a Target Company

Job-hunters have a number of hurdles to surmount, but one of the greatest is this: how do you get a name inside a target company? When you want to send a letter of inquiry to a company (about a job), you really want to find the right person's name, in order to contact him or her. If you can't find the right person, you want to find someone who can put you in touch with the person you seek. Here are ten ways to find a name inside a company you are targeting.

More...

General | Social Software | Career Acceleration

I was discussing Phil Wolff's comments on social software in recruiting with John Younger, CEO of Accolo.

He wrote: What I find interesting in the intersection of social networks and jobs is that there is a third party that seems to be completely missed. Specifically, the party that pays the bills – the companies. At the job level the equation gets easier. Use the network for find the right person for the job. Unfortunately, these networks keep on rolling even after the job is filled, and the hired candidate keeps on networking by definition.Two gaping holes: + Free-form networking (liked LinkedIn) actually encourages working around the company approved process, and + employees could be "networked" out of their new job in a relatively short period. The solutions that "giveth and taketh away" will be fired in short order once the companies figure it out, which is a material obstacle to the theories of social networking and recruiting.

 Responding to John's point: I've heard through the grapevine that both Linkedin and OpenBC have been blocked at certain companies, for the same reason that many companies won't let their employees surf Monster/HotJobs/Careerbuilder on company time.

 Of course, the power of LinkedIn, OpenBC, and like companies is that they provide a motivation for people to maintain their public professional profile on an ongoing basis.

By contrast, Monster/HotJobs/Careerbuilder have a relationship of "punctuated equilibrium": a job-seeker uses them heavily for 2 months, and then doesn’t visit the site for 4 years until they start looking for a new job again.

 The average American has been employed at his/her job for only 4.0 years.

You cannot rely on your employer's network or your father's network; you have to build your own flexible, lifetime community to land your next job.

 When you're currently employed, you're only between job searches.

General | Social Software

Maureen Crawford Hentz writes on Phone Interview Etiquette Can Propel You to the Next Step in the Hiring Process.

Leadership and Management | Career Acceleration

Harvard Professor Andrew McAfee writes in his blog:

I have an article in the spring 2006 issue of Sloan Management Review (SMR) on what I call Enterprise 2.0 -- the emerging use of Web 2.0 technologies like blogs and wikis (both perfect examples of network IT) within the Intranet.

The article describes why I think this is an important and welcome development, the contents of the Enterprise 2.0 ‘toolkit,’ and the experiences to date of an early adopter.

 It also offers some guidelines to business leaders interested in building an Enterprise 2.0 inftrastructure within their companies.

One question not addressed in the article is: Why is Enterprise 2.0 is an appealing reality now? It’s not because of any recent technology breakthrough.

Blogs, wikis, and RSS have been brewing since the 1990s, and folksonomies and AJAX since the early years of this decade.

 Is it just that technologists and entrepreneurs needed a bit of time to absorb all of elements and combine them into useful tools?

That’s certainly part of the story, but focusing only on technology components risks missing the forest for the trees. In particular, it misses three broad and converging trends, all of them concerning the changing relationship between those who offer technologies and those who use them.

The trends are:

 1. Simple, Free Platforms for Self-Expression ....

2. Emergent Structures, Rather than Imposed Ones ....

3. Order from Chaos ....

 the technologists of Web 2.0 are providing a third valuable service -- they’re rolling out tools that help us filter, sort, prioritize, and generally stay on top of the flood of new online content.

 As described in the SMR article, these tools include powerful search, tags (the basis for the folksonomies at del.icio.us and flickr), and automatic RSS signals whenever new content appears. ... I’ll end this post with an anecdote that showed me that these three trends are not yet well understood by many business leaders.

 Last week I was teaching in an executive education program for senior executives - owners and presidents of companies.

I assigned a case I wrote about the internal use of blogs at a bank, and also gave one additional bit of homework: I pointed the participants to blogger and typepad, and told them to start their own blogs and report the blog’s URL to me.

What they reported instead was that they had no intention of completing the assignment.

They told me how busy they were, and how they had no time and no inclination to mess around with blogs (whatever they were).

 Out of two classes of 50-60 participants each, I got fewer than 15 total blog URLs. Trying to turn lemons into lemonade in class, I asked some of the people who actually had sent a URL to describe the experience of starting a blog.

They all shrugged and said it was no big deal, took about five minutes total, didn’t require any skills, etc. I then asked why I would give busy executives such a silly, trivial assignment.

 In both classes one smart student piped up to say "To show us exactly how trivial it was." At that point, class discussion became interesting.

via Ross Mayfield What Prof. McAfee is describing *inside* the enterprise is exactly the same sort of phenomenon that we see salespeople, recruiters and other using both inside and outside the enterprise, and explore in The Virtual Handshake. Another person now writing on this area: Paul Gillen. (Via Centrality Journal )

General | Leadership and Management | Personal Productivity | Social Software

I hope that some of our readers will join me at TiECON East, June 15-17, in Boston, MA. With over 1,200 expected attendees, TiECON East plans to become the largest Global Innovation conference on the East Coast.

 The sponsoring organization is TiE, whose members receive roughly 5% of the venture capital investment in the United States.

Speakers include: -

 Howard Anderson, Founder Battery Ventures and The Yankee Group - Nikesh Arora, VP & GM Europe, Google - Clayton M. Christensen, Professor, Harvard Business School, Author, The Innovator's Dilemma - Rajat Gupta, Senior Partner Worldwide, McKinsey & Co. - Ray Kurzweil, Author & Pioneer in Artificial Intelligence - Venkat Ramaswamy, Ross School of Business at University of Michigan - Paul Sagan, CEO, Akamai - Mohanbir Sawhney, Professor, Kellogg School of Management - Howard H. Stevenson, Professor, Harvard Business School - Hatim Tyabji, Executive Chairman, Bytemobile Inc.

 I'll be participating in two panels, one on innovation in social software and online networks, and one on innovation in investment research.

The keynote speaker is Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations (although I somehow doubt he will be talking about innovation, given that's not the UN's strength.) With prices starting at $269 for TiE Members and $100 for student members, the conference isn't expensive. For more information or to register, contact the TiE-Boston office at (781) 272-3875 or visit www.tieconeast.com .

Career Acceleration | Events | General | Leadership and Management | Personal Productivity | Private Equity Investing | Public Markets Investing | Securities Research | Social Software

Katharine Hansen discusses how to maximize your internet job searches: http://www.quintcareers.com/maximizing_net_job_search.html

General | Personal Productivity | Leadership and Management

One of the questions Scott Allen and I are frequently asked, and that comes up as a recurring topic of debate, is, "Which online tool is best for me to meet and sell to the right people?" In our latest Fast Company column, Of Hammers, Wrenches, and Screwdrivers, we take a side-by-side look at online networking communities, blogging, and LinkedIn, and compare and contrast them based upon the Seven Keys framework we introduced in The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online. While the boundaries between the application of these tools is somewhat fuzzy and they tend to cross over each other, this is a handy, concise overview of the predominant models and how they relate to each other and to your activities. Professor Constance Porter wrote more on this topic at Centrality Journal. See Blogs, Social Networking Sites or Virtual Communities: Alternative Paths to Building Relational Equity with Customers (Part 2)

General | Social Software | Personal Productivity

Courtesy of Mike Lorelli, President and CEO of Latex Foam International, the only U.S.-based Talalay latex foam producer, and largest supplier of latex mattress components and pillows in North America. (Full disclosure: I edited the first two bullets.)

13 Little Things About Resumes and Emails

1. Cover Letter File Names: recruiters prefer: Lastname-Firstname-2006-cover-letter.doc
2. Your resume file name: recruiters prefer: Lastname-Firstname-2006-resume.doc
3. NEVER send your resume as ‘resume.doc’ If a recruiter downloads ten emails, and half the people use ‘Resume.doc’. . . you’re dead (and should be!)
4. Your ‘Subject Line’ must signal that this is not a spam message.

   Use ‘CEO-NJ Fragrance Co- Mike Lorelli’ to concisely signal your purpose.

5. Don’t use "PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE," unless you plan to list prostitution or other “NON-PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE."
6. Don’t complicate things with the name of the parent corporation, or division name, or whether or not the firm is incorporated. List the parent only if it’s a recognized Fortune company and thereby enhances the Division name.
7. Don’t waste space explaining that PepsiCo is “A leading food and beverage conglomerate with operations in 97 countries." If the company is recognized, save the space.
8. Omit the STATE, if 99% of the readers will know in what state cities like Boston or Atlanta, Indianapolis, Chicago, etc. are. Ditto for Foreign Cities. Paris, Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Montreal.
9. Avoid grid-type fill-in-the-box styles. When viewed electronically, you look like a college senior.
10. Resumes are two pages in length. Anything longer signals that you have poor summarization skills. Alexander Haig’s resume is one page, and he accomplished more than I have.
11. Over 50? Don’t make the mistake of leaving off your year of college graduation. You look pretty silly when (100%) of the people figure it out. In fact, do the opposite! On my cover letters I add a ps that says:

    ps: I am 52, have an MBA from NYU, 1973, and am an active outside director and trustee

    It’s my way of signaling “52 and proud of it!"

12. Have a ‘PERSONAL’ section at the end of your resume. Show some personality and some color. People prefer to work with humans, not machines. Below is my section.

    PERSONAL

    Married. Two precious daughters. Author of childrens’ best-seller, "Traveling Again, Dad" with profits donated to childrens’ charities. Have traveled to 44 countries. Avid runner. Active private pilot. Excel at no sport. Member Business Executives for National Security. WPO.

    I get a lot of comments on the “Two precious daughters" and “Excel at no sport" lines.

General | Career Acceleration

In between various meetings in London last week, I dropped into the Third AQ Research Conference, to attend a panel on "Rewarding Corporate Access: What Does the Buyside Value?"

My notes follow:

Speakers:

Ralf Frank, Chair, German Association of Investment Professionals. Hosts 250 events / year where corporates present in one-on-ones. Moderator.

Alex Barr, Aberdeen Asset Management

Vikas Nath (spelling?), North South Capital

Jennifer Morris, Manager, Governance and Engagement, Hermes.

Largest pension fund in the UK. $63B sterling under mgmt. Looks after passively managed portfolio. Hermes well-known for corporate governance and engagement work. Frequently talks with underperforming portfolio companies.

The reason: 15 years ago, trustees of BT pension scheme argued: when you're a passive investor, you can't sell the underperforming companies, so you should work on fixing them. Clearly, access is important to them.

Unbundling doesn’t change corporate access that much, at least in the UK. It's rare mgmt. turns down their request for a meeting. In the UK, it's not necessary for them to go via a broker, so they wouldn't pay for that service. Overseas it's different---they're not as well known overseas, so an intermediary is more important.

Risk of double-counting/double-paying. One of the roles of a corporate broker (in the UK) is that a company pays the corporate broker to set up meetings for that company with investors. (This is not as common a model overseas.) Why should Hermes pay the corporate broker to set up meetings when they're ALSO being paid by the company to set up those meetings?

Ralf: How important is written research?

Morris: The demand for maintenance research will drop under unbundling. We're going to have to be able to tell the FSA why it's worth our clients' while to pay for these particular services----regurgitation. She's interested in longer-term perspective research, that draws on not-yet-financial issues. Issues on the horizon. More original research, drawing on issues investors haven't yet focused on. Interested in work that helps us engage with investors in a more meaningful way.

Alex Barr, Aberdeen Asset Management. Until recently a small buy-side organization. By recently buying Deutsche Asset Management London, but has become a much larger organization.

Charles Scott of Morgan Stanley talked about how alpha generation is most important issue. Hard for buy-side to ascribe value to research, when the sellers of research can't do it themselves. Research remains a small part of total execution cost for client.

Aberdeen is interested in investing in long-term. "Impatience is the enemy of outperformance." We have a duty to minimize total transaction costs.

Corporate access is the most central part of investment process.

Sell-side never drives investment decision. We meet mgmt. team of every company in which we invest. We use brokers to set up majority of corporate meetings, and post-Deutsche acquisition we're doing more of that. We rank market counterparties on their ability to provide corporate access.

We are paying for 3 things:

- execution

- corporate access

- Research (we use only a limited amount)

They generally don’t use broker analysts. Corporate access is embedded within total research cost.

Vikas Nath, North South Capital

We are one of the 2000 hedge fund startups in London, mostly managing $30-$500M with commission buckets of $2-$10M. Maybe 5-10 professionals.

Strategy: Global emerging markets equity long/short.

The regulatory burden is as heavy on them as a much larger firm, but they don’t have the same infrastructure to deal with that burden.

We have very limited time to deal with everything that we'd like to do.

We don't have time to do primary research.

When we call a company to set up a meeting, "Their answer begins with an F and the last word begins with an F" because they don't know us. (laughter)

Very relationship driven.

It's more convenient for them to pay for research + execution in one single fee.

Morris:

Outside of the UK, we do roadtrips, meet with foreign companies when they're visiting the UK.

Barr:

We are increasing the number of meetings we organize ourselves. Corporate access is the lion's share of the residual after commission.

Nath:

If we have to, we will pay for corporate access. A lot of the commission we pay is for structured products, so we don't know where bid-ask starts and ends/commission starts and ends.

We see 10-15 companies a week between 3 investment professionals.

Frank:

Could sell-side be out of business, because buy-side is making their own investment decisions, setting up their own meetings…what's left for them to do?

Barr:

Sell-side won't let that market go away very quickly. Vast amount of buy-side firms (excl. Aberdeen). who will be very heavy users of sell-side research. If sell-side vaporizes, we have a more imperfect market, which is good for us.

Morris:

Good sell-side research providers don't have to worry.

Every few days I get a call from yet another research provider who wants to talk about what they're offering.

Vikas:

I'd be happy if Aberdeen/Hermes set up more meetings themselves, because that gives me more one-on-one meetings, and fewer group meetings. (laughter)

Audience member:

What is the value-add you extract from company meeting.

Barr:

Corporate meeting is the single most important part of our investment process. Our process has worked very well for us, based on that foundation stone.

Mgmt. is not going to meet with every investor.

Morris:

Very often investors don't want to meet with company mgmt.---it's too much work. I usually talk with underperforming companies. I'm looking for reassurance.

Private Equity Investing | Public Markets Investing | Securities Research

Do your clients and colleagues constantly say your email went into their spam filter? So much that you're worried your domain might be blacklisted? There's a quick, easy way to check. Go to http://www.completewhois.com/rbl_search.htm and enter your mail server address. For example, mine is 207.174.139.198 (you can get this from your ISP if you're unsure). After you press GO, the tool will query ALL the 25 major RBLs (real time blacklists). Once you confirm you aren't on any of them, you will feel much better. Better yet, you'll know it's actually the receivers of your email who aren't training their spam-blocking software correctly, and you can ask them to add you to their "safe senders" list.

via Laura Stack, via Speakernetnews

General | Social Software | Personal Productivity

Are you being pushy if you contact an employer after submitting a resume? The opposite may be true, suggests a new survey from Robert Half International. Eighty-two percent of executives polled said job seekers should contact hiring managers within two weeks of submitting application materials. Only five percent said professionals should refrain from communicating once a resume has been sent.

More

General | Career Acceleration

"Don't work too hard," wrote a colleague in an e-mail today. Was she sincere or sarcastic? I think I know (sarcastic), but I'm probably wrong. According to recent research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, I've only a 50-50 chance of ascertaining the tone of any e-mail message. The study also shows that people think they've correctly interpreted the tone of e-mails they receive 90 percent of the time.

More at Wired News

General | Social Software | Personal Productivity

Research Finds That Success Might Be Related Not Just to Whom You Know but to How You Communicate with Them

Nathaniel Bulkley, a doctoral student working with assistant professor Marshall Van Alstyne at the University of Michigan School of Information, won the first annual Visible Path Graduate Student Award for new research on social networks and professional performance, the International Network for Social Network Analysis announced (INSNA) today.

Bulkley analyzed how white collar workers use social networks to improve professional performance. The hypothesis that success is related not just to whom you know but how you communicate with them was supported by key findings including:

-- Professionals' use of social networks evolves over the course of their career from accumulating relationship capital to exercising it

-- Frequent, short communication outperforms lengthy, infrequent communication in efficiently moving information through a social network

 -- A central position in an organizational social network is consistent with higher individual performance For his research, Bulkley conducted surveys and studied six months of email data and accounting records from an executive recruiting firm representative of professional services firms organized around client practices.

An unexpected finding was a lack of relationship between a recruiter's private rolodex and network size or job performance.

 ... More information on this year's winning paper, "An Empirical Analysis of Strategies and Efficiencies in Social Networks," is available at http://www.centralityjournal.com/.

Career Acceleration | General | Social Software

(From "Remember Every Name Every Time" by Benjamin Levy.)

In the book, Levy describes two methods for remembering names.

First, the verbally-oriented, "basic" technique:   FACE. FOCUS on the name. ASK again. COMMENT to them and yourself about the name. EMPLOY the name in conversation.

 Second, the visual, "advanced" NAME system. It's "advanced" because it doesn't depend on you working the person's name into conversation, and it does take a lot of practice.

But Levy remembers hundreds and hundreds of names using the four steps below. NAME stands for... NOMINATE - Survey the face, then choose a feature, any feature! [Ex. Bob's nose.] ARTICULATE - Describe the feature to yourself so you know it.

 [Ex. Bob's nose...it's large in proportion to his face, and the nostrils are very prominent.]

MORPH - Names don't mean much, so transform them into nouns! [Ex. "Bob" becomes..."bobsled!" Visualize the famous Jamaican bobsled team.] ENTWINE - so that... NOMINATED feature + MORPH = a lasting memory [Ex. Dozens of bobsleds shooting out of his nose!] Via Keith Ferrazzi's newsletter

Career Acceleration | General | Leadership and Management | Personal Productivity