VEF Momentum Connect: Leadership event – June 24th, 2009

Minna Van is, in addition to being a good personal friend of mine, a very engaged entrepreneur who is very supportive of VEF Momentum. VEF Momentu is targeted towards younger entrepreneurs and startups in the early steps of their career.

Minna and Na’im invited me to their most recent event this past Thursday night at Nuba (the one on Cambie and West Hastings). I have to say that the food AND the service at Nuba are fantastic. The appetizers were abundant, I wish I could have enjoyed more but unfortunately, my stomach really couldn’t take more, because I had dinner like at 4.30pm. The event was really well attended and I had the pleasure of bumping into Paul Hillsdon, with whom I’ve been in touch ever since I started blogging but only met recently in person. Of course, Christy and Minna were there as were other of my friends who like me share offices at The Network Hub.

Jonathan Bixby – CEO and Co-Founder of Strangeloop Networks

The talk revolved around getting results, especially during times like this… how do we prevent ourselves from taking an easy summer.

Jon starts with Michael Jackson. He saw him live in Sydney, Australia (on his History Tour). Going to this concert was unbelievable. The first moment, 100,000 people in the Stadium. All of a sudden, lights went out and all of the sudden, there was a giant screen and in comes, on a rocket ship, Michael Jackson. He starts flying through China, over the Great Wall, through Japan, etc. and he approaches towards Sydney. He goes through the city into the Stadium, there’s a blinding light. The rocket ship lands on the stage, door blows open, he stood there for like 5 mins, and he started doing moonwalking and Billie Jean, and the entire crowd started moonwalking. He is a true legend.

Jon does a quick poll of entrepreneurs. How many want to be entrepreneurs? How many ARE entrepreneurs? Have you written down a goal of how much money you want? How many of those who are waiting have written a date of when you want to be an entrepreneur?

In 1979 Harvard did a study of their incoming MBA class and they asked a very simple question – do you have clearly articulated goals? If you do, have you written them down? 13% of the incoming class had goals, they thought about them but not written down. 84% had not articulated their goal, and 3% of keeners who had a goal, written down.

In 1989 they did a follow up and did a survey of incomes of the incoming class. Those who had done goals were making twice as much money as those who had not. The keeners, the 3% written down were making 10 times more money. What he’d like to talk about tonight is the importance of setting goals and articulate them.

Why don’t people set goals? Jon thinks that people don’t set goals because they are fearful of failing and the rejection that comes with that. I set a goal… did you do it? No, I didn’t.

There’s two other factors. Fear of failure, fear of rejection. Also, people don’t know how important it is to set up formal, quantitative, hard goals. And then the third is “I don’t know how to do it quickly”.

1.- How do you set a goal? When Jon first started as a CEO he started Iron Point, 3 guys in the apartment. They snuck in every day, 6 phone lines. His office was in the bathroom. We needed goals, and not only goals, LOTS of goals. 7 pages of goals with 10 goals in each page. If you have 70 goals they are not real.

- Make it SUPER SIMPLE – Simplify your life. If you’re going to create a goal that is overarching for your business. You can create sub-goals under the larger goal. One goal for time period. You should have a goal for day/week at the most.

- Never create a goal that goes beyond 3 MONTHS – In our business today we have 40 employes, 3.5 into the business, setting goals into the quarter.

- Our goal has to be ideally 2, 3 goals. Example – 3 quarters ago, our focus was on performance. Our goal was “5x” (5 times faster). You want to create a question that anyone in the organization can be asked and/or ask. Is your work/job getting us closer to 5x.

- The problem is what you DON’T do, it’s not what you do. It’s what you are doing going to get me closer to this? We should be focusing on what gets you closer to the goal.

2.- You will get what you measure. Don’t set the wrong goal. Don’t set the wrong goal. It’s very important that you focus on the goals that get you where you want to.

- Overcommunicate your goal - To the point where it’s a joke in the business. Creates the environment that puts in people’s minds that what you really want to see is a grassroots level of that type of communication. Every time we have a new goal we have a new message in the bathroom stall. Half our team changes their email signatures that puts the goal. Someone pasted 5x on their door. If it’s not a joke, you’re not communicating enough.

3.- It’s all about measuring the outputs towards the goal – Jon is a fanatic of measuring outputs, not inputs. He doesn’t care how tough people are, if you are the smartest and most efficient, and you can measure the results and achieve them, then you’re good.

- People are focused on results – We are focused on goals, focused on what people are focusing. Measure the output towards achieving our goal. W

- Accountability agreement- I am accountable in sales for achieving the sales. Only if product can’t get me product, how can I be accountable. We treat people like adults, it goes both ways.

- When you are creating a goal, you have to create something that is transparent. You have to develop something that is transparent. You have to show me an agile, transparent goal. What we focus on is communicating the results of the goals that we set.

The red thermometer of United Way is updated every single day. Every week, detailed results are sent to every employee/investor/advisor of the business. It is absolutely clear where we are in terms of that goal. When you create that clarity in your business, you have created a way to measure that and it is amazing the behavior that you get to achieve it.

CONCLUSIONS.

The message tonight very simply is – I believe what goals get you to results. You have to articulate goals very clearly and simply, can’t be any longer time horizon than 30 days, over-communicate the goal to the grassroots level, and you need to be able to track the results of that goal every single day.

- Exercise – set down your goal – revise it every six months.

- Exercise – when will you be an entrepreneur?

- Exercise – set a personal goal for the next three months. He is going to post this on the VEF Leadership Linked In page. #mygoal a personal goal. Try it on a personal level. Feel free to Twitter it and put it on the LinkedIn and Momentum site.

QUESTIONS

I couldn’t really capture the questions, but Jon made it clear that you don’t want to over-achieve, you can fail, etc.

Minna’s question – how do you overcommunicate without putting stress on your team?
- You over-communicate and you want stress on your team. This is a startup. My company should not be a rent. There is no hard beat. If I am not running as fast as I can so that I can stand in my own feet. If you come work for me and we are hiring is really freaking stressful, but it’s fun and there are rewards.

- How if you are going from a grassroots perspective how do you prevent an easy goal to be set?

The type of people that we hire are the type of people who will fact you to win a sales battle. Competitive, assertive, so those are the type of people who will create stretch goals. In some cases, we have to rein the team in. Sometimes we tell the team “that’s unachievable, something better”.

Minna Van again – How many hours do you work a week?

My number one goal in life is to be a good father and parent. That is my number one goal clearly articulated. He works less than Minna does. How’s that for an answer?

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