I was honoured to have been included on a panel of experts at Singapore Polytechnic to share my experience as an entrepreneur. The students were such a bright and engaging bunch, I really enjoyed talking to them during the Q&A session.

Thanks to my friend George Mathew and his fantastic team at Servolve Singapore for giving me the opportunity to take part in this valuable session with other entrepreneurs, I learned a lot and it was a really fun day.

Here’s the lovely testimonial I received from Roy, the Senior Lecturer who makes these things happen at Singapore Poly:
“We invited Gina to speak at an entrepreneurship workshop conducted at Singapore Polytechnic and she was fabulous from the word go.

I have never seen young students get so interested in pursuing their dreams as wannabe entrepreneurs, as I did after Gina’s amazing pep talk. Gina’s honest, straightforward, from-the-heart answers struck a chord with young Singaporean teenagers and since then we cannot wait to have her back to inspire our students.” ~Sourav Roy, Senior Lecturer, Singapore Polytechnic.

Here’s a short video of me presenting my answer to the question “what makes a succesful entrepreneur?”.

Photo By: aloshbennett
Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial license

"With great power comes great responsibility"

This week is Comic-Con, the annual geek fest in San Diego and a gathering of all things related to the comic book industry. In honour of Stan Lee, the revered Marvel Comics editor writer, this post looks at how his management style revolutionised the creative process at Marvel and how we can use the same method to manage our own teams more efficiently.

Stanley Lieber (later known as Stan Lee) joined the Martin Goodman’s publishing company as an assistant in 1939. By the early 1960s the company now known as Marvel Comics had become immensely popular and Stan Lee had worked his way up to the position of editor writer. As Lee became pressured to deliver several titles a month, he created the Marvel Method to streamline the production process.

Instead of using the traditional technique where the writer scripts the entire plot and dialogue of each story to be drawn by the writers, Stan Lee would give a loose outline of the story and the artist would then complete each scene. Once the pencilled pages were completed and approved the artist would return the pages to Lee to add dialog, captions and effects to the illustrations. While unconventional, Stan and his team not only found that working this way was extremely conducive to the creative process, it also increased productivity allowing the comic to keep up with the demand for new stories while maintaining a lean team of writers and artists.

As business owners and managers, we can learn a lot from Stan Lee & the Marvel Method. While it’s often difficult to let go of control when managing our teams, assuming that we can do everything better than everyone else is counterproductive. It also takes away the opportunity for others to learn and grow.

Here are 7 lessons on collaboration we can learn from Stan Lee:

1) Hire wisely – choose team members who compliment, not replicate existing skill sets and hire on drive and personality. Someone less experienced who is passionate about doing an exceptional job will probably deliver better results than someone more experienced with less enthusiasm.

“When you work with people whom you respect and whom you like and you admire because they’re so good at what they do, it doesn’t feel like work… It’s like you’re playing.”

2) Encourage innovation – is your way the only way or the best way to do things? Continuing to do something in the same way, just because it works is a sure fire way to fail. The best most successful companies out there are innovators. They know when to change something that isn’t working anymore – they also know what must never change.

“All of my life in comics I have worked with artists, so I’ve collaborated with them. . . . I feel, when you collaborate with talented people, they inspire you. I would hope that you spark them also. And I find that working with people whom you respect, and who are as eager as you to do things that will excite an audience, that’s the best way to go.”

3) Trust and respect your people – you hired them for a reason, so don’t hold them back from reaching their full potential. If you don’t trust them to do a good job without constant supervision you may need to consider if they are the right fit for the team.

“All I had to do was give Steve a one-line description of the plot and he’d be off and running. He’d take those skeleton outlines I had given him and turn them into classic little works of art that ended up being far cooler than I had any right to expect.”

5) Give credit where credit is due – giving people the opportunity to share the glory is a great motivator and creates a vested interest in the success of the project.  Stan Lee gave his team written credit for their work where this was previously unheard of in the comic book industry. They were credited on the splash page of each story, naming not just the writers, artists but also the inkers and letterers.

“Comic books is a collaborative medium. Had I not worked with artists … my stories wouldn’t have looked as good”

6) Don’t micromanage – create guidelines rather than rules and encourage your team make autonomous decisions that are in line with the vision and values of the business  or project. This promotes responsible decision making and accountability rather than creating a dependence on supervision.

“In the early days, I was writing scripts for virtually all the books, and it was very hard to keep all the artists busy; poor little frail me, doing story after story. So I’d be writing a story for Kirby, and Steve Ditko would walk in and say, ‘Hey, I need some work now.’ And I’d say, ‘I can’t give it to you now, Steve, I’m finishing Kirby’s.’ But we couldn’t afford to keep Steve waiting, because time is money, so I’d have to say, ‘Look Steve, I can’t write a script for you now, but here’s the plot for the next Spider-Man. Go home and draw anything you want, as long as it’s something like this, and I’ll put the copy in later.’ So I was able to finish Jack’s story. Steve in the meantime was drawing another story…..Okay, it started out as a lazy’s man’s device…but we realized this was absolutely the best way to do a comic…..Don’t have the writer say, ‘Panel one will be a long shot of Spider-Man walking down the street.’ The artist may see it differently; maybe he feels it should be a shot of Spider-Man swinging on his web, or climbing upside-down on the ceiling or something.”

7) Allow people to fail - innovation takes risk and while it’s great to reward success, celebrate failure too – it means someone cared enough to take a chance to do something differently. Create a safe test environment for new ideas and encourage your team to learn from mistakes.

“While no one is expected to leap tall buildings in a single bound, our aspiring heroes will be tested on their courage, integrity, self-sacrifice, compassion and resourcefulness – the stuff of all true superheroes.”

Stan Lee who joined the company at its inception in 1939 as an office assistant, led the expansion of Marvel Comics from a small division of a publishing house to a large multimedia corporation.

Although Lee continues to receive credit for his brilliant storytelling and his extraordinary gift to connect with readers, he attributes his success to his ability to select and motivate artists and the process by which he led his creative teams.

How much initiative do you trust your team to take?

Photo by By Daniel Y. Go
Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license

“Don’t become a wandering generality. Be a meaningful specific.” ~Zig Ziglar

How Niche is Too Niche?

Niche, niche, niche. If you are a networker you will hear this a lot. And it’s great advice.

Niching – or catering to a niche market – is simply being very specific about who your target customers are and focusing on providing a product or service which addresses their needs.

This definitely applies to networking. Think about it – would you be more inclined to refer business to me if I told you:

1) I am looking to work with ‘anyone who needs a business consultant’ or, 2) My target market is ‘ladies who would like to launch a small business but aren’t sure where to start’?

Whilst you may know ‘anyone who needs a business consultant’ the target market is too broad to know whether I would be a good match. I can guess that you have thought of at least one person in the second category and if you haven’t you are bound to meet someone matching those criteria soon.  It gives you a crystal clear idea of who I am looking to work with and your brain is now specifically wired to look out for them. Have you ever been thinking about buying a specific car in a particular colour? Suddenly, the exact same model and colour appears everywhere you go, almost as if there are more on the road than ever before. That is because the Reticular Activating System (RAS) of your brain is now tuned in to noticing them.

So the more niche you are, the more memorable you become. The more memorable you are, the easier it is for your network to connect you with the right people. And making it easy for others to recommend you is one of the keys to networking success.

Niching works in product sales too. Marketing mogul Seth Godin points out that Apple did an excellent job of creating a cult following for iPhone by asking ‘How do we make a phone that almost no one will like but a few people will love?’ The iPhone was too expensive and unconventional for most people but Jobs turned it into a mass market and a ‘must have’ item. A great example of how niching a product can pay off.

[Star Wars fans may also note that Tyranus also serviced a mass market from a niche when he used Jango Fett as the genetic template for the clone troopers that formed the Grand Army of the Republic. From one renegade Mandalorian warrior-turned-bounty-hunter, Tyranus  created one of the most efficient military forces in galactic history.]

But how niche is too niche?

I was shopping in our local supermarket yesterday and saw this publication: The Essential Guide for Asian First-time Mums & Dads from Pregnancy to Preschool

In one fell swoop they have eliminated, 2nd (and 3rd, 4^th…) time parents, non Asians, pre-pregnancy and post pre-school parents (not to mention same sex couples!)

Presuming that the publishers want to achieve high sales targets, does being this specific make it easier or harder to achieve their goal? Or is creating a niche this tight simply the only way to enter a market that is already saturated?

I would love to hear your comments.

Photo by By JD Hancock
A New Era under a Creative Commons Attribution license

I Love Heineken

How refreshing, how Heineken is one of my all time favourite ad campaigns. This ad in particular has, in my opinion all the elements of a brilliant advert – it grabs attention, holds interest, is culturally relevant and appeals directly to the target market.

The result – a clever message wrapped up in British tongue-in-cheek humour with a great punchline, finishing up with a memorable campaign slogan that ties it all together.

Moral Dilema

I recognize in thieves, traitors and murderers, in the ruthless and the cunning, a deep beauty – a sunken beauty. ~ Jean Genet

In business misplaced trust comes at a high price and being open and transparent is a vulnerability. On the other hand, how many opportunities have you lost to fear?

So do we need harden up & close ourselves off over time, building an inpenetratable forcefield to protect us from potential risks? Must we become ruthless and clinical to survive and succeed in the dog-eat-dog business culture? Do we stop sharing and collabourating out of concern that someone will steal our idea and do it bigger and better?

Bad experiences may hurt us but they do not need to change us – unless for the better.

Steve Jobs summed it up beautifully when he said:

“.. almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

So I choose good faith over paranoia, vulnerability over cynicism and integrity over self preservation. And if this means I end up as the dog chow of the business world then so be it.

Teamwork

Any self respecting World of Warcraft fan (and a fair few who have never played the game) would have heard of the Leeroy Jenkins phenomenon.

World of Warcraft is a Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (or MMORPG), which isn’t as geeky as it sounds – in fact it is a serious game of strategy and execution, much like chess.

Anyway, players can create characters and play as Gnomes, Night Elfs, Undead or other fantasy creatures and battle, in real-time Lord of the Rings style, against other online characters. Which really isn’t as geeky as it sounds.

Just like in real life, as you progress through the levels, success is based on the ability to build teams & collaborate with others.

One aspect of the game is the dungeon raids, which become increasingly hard and team work is more of a necessity than a nicety as you advance through the levels.

A famous legend in the World of Warcraft community is that of Leeroy Jenkins – an in-game ‘incident’ where:

*thanks to a video of the game that circulated around the Internet, has since spread beyond the boundaries of the gaming community into other online and mainstream media.

The video features a group of players discussing a detailed battle strategy for the next encounter while one of their party, Leeroy, is away from his computer. Their plan is ruined when Leeroy returns and, ignorant of the strategy, immediately charges headlong into battle shouting his own name as a battle cry. His companions rush to help, but Leeroy’s actions ruin the meticulous plan, and all of the group members are killed. Leeroy’s response to the other players chastisements, “at least I have chicken,” was much parodied.

The point is that despite the painstaking strategic planning that we carry out in business, the delivery is often out of our hands and dependent on all team members contributing and performing effectively.

Whether you play for Alliance or Horde as Goblin, Blood Elf, Human or Draenei, “the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray” (Robert Burns).

The lesson? Always have a Plan B.

In-game footage of Leeroy Jenkins in action (contains some emphatic swearing):

Image: Teamwork
By PaDumBumPsh available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license

Tribes

Once we were tribes. Whether we were a township in Dorset or a village in Africa. We were tribes and life was hard yet uncomplicated, there was less confusion, less noise. Skills passed down generation through generation. Life was simple and choice limited.

With the birth of the Digital Revolution and the Internet, the natural barriers were broken down and all of a sudden our world grew smaller yet more immense at the same time. While we were privileged with the ability to communicate vastly with our global peers, it diluted our tribal culture and in a sense made our world a more isolated place than ever.

Man however, is a great problem solver and although the online culture has existed without the boundaries that our tribal nature longs for, Social Media is evolving in a way that allows digital man to reclaim his tribal heritage. Communities are rebuilding at the speed of thought, in a way that is different to anything we have ever experienced before.

Those of us who have become part of this collective consciousness, seek solace among our enlightened peers who can see the truth as we see it. The more we use Social Media and understand its benefits, the more of an advocate we become -evangelical, fanatical even – like perhaps many of you reading this post.

But where does this passion come from? Erik Qualman Author of Socialnomics (Social Media Revolution) explains it like this:

“As human beings, we have the dichotomous psychological need to be our own individual, yet we also want to feel like we belong to, and are accepted by, a much larger social set”. I believe the fascination runs deeper than the need for validation and connection and stems from a primeval survival instinct.  The need to rebuild the tribes that were broken down when the internet opened the floodgates of the Information Era.

The death of the Dodo

In his book ‘Tribes’, permission marketing guru Seth Godin defines a Tribe as ‘a group of people connected to one another, connected to a leader, and connected to an idea that inspires their passion.’

His philosophy is that humans need ‘to be part of a tribe, to contribute to (and take from) a group of like-minded people’. With the emergence of the Social Media phenomenon, we are at the forefront of a cultural revolution.

Just like the discovery that the world is round, the non-believers are unaware of the paradigm shift taking place or are afraid of the new concepts so prefer to cling to the notion that they will fall off the edge if they travel too far.

And just like the companies who once claimed that they didn’t need a website because ‘their customers have been finding them without one for the last 20 years’, they will get onboard now or get on board later. Or perhaps they will become extinct like all other species that either refused to change or were unable to evolve with the cultural landscape.

Silent Uprising in the Face of Conformity

Whatever path we end up on, we all have expectations to fulfil, a certain image or reputation, to be supplemented by suitably matched exterior packaging.

Smart, reliable, trendy, corporate, respectable, successful, sophisticated. Our personal brand evolves, all too often defined by how we would like others to perceive us.

I have lived a life of pseudo-uniformed compliance, forever in awe of tattooed mutants, human canvasses of living art, their unique existence punctuated with bull-like nostril piercings.

So few follow a path in life that allows them to be 100% authentic. For the rest of us, they invented comedy socks.

You see some bright spark saw the need for the drab masses to reclaim a molecule of originality in the face of corporate tedium.

Animal from The Muppets in mad drumming frenzy, Homer Simpson’s oafish form drinking Duff beer, cartoon duck bound and gagged with the caption ’shut the duck up’. Our secret unseen declaration of independence.

Comedy socks, the smug existence of which gets me through my day with a smidgen of rebellion. A silent uprising in the face of conformity.

The market for comedy socks appeals to the small child in us, who despite being suited and booted – briefcase in one hand, phone poised ready for deal-making action in the other – reminds us of who we were before we became the person we were pretending to be.

So I gaze curiously at the Goth on the train, with the green spiked hair and studded dog collar, warrior for the subculture of self expression. And I wonder if under the uber cool exterior of the artistically radical fashionista, hides a pair of M&S navy blue wool blends.

Stupidity - If your dumb enough, we'll bill you for it

Following on from a previous post ‘7 Tips for Delivering a Perfect Rant‘, my all time favourite Absolutely Fabulous epidode is when Eddy goes off-on-one in court and rants about Stupidity Tax.

Pretty funny right? In actual fact though, we pay Stupidity Tax every day.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.
Albert Einstein

Here are 10 examples of how we pay for our stupidity:

1 ) Link machines – you take the kids bowling but forgot to draw out cash from a proper bank beforehand. So now you’re forced to use the link machine that charges you £1.50 to withdraw your own money.

2 ) Parking tickets – great big double yellow lines say NO. You thought you’d be clever and stick it to the man (and besides you only needed to buy a pint of milk) so you park, look shiftily around and leg it into the corner shop. When you come out you’re surprised & appaulled that you have a ticket on your windscreen. Surprised? Really?

3 ) Late credit card payments – you know what day the bill is due and you know they’ll tax you if the payment’s late. On the other hand, they’re in the right business - they earn more when people don’t pay.

4 ) Getting pregnant by accident – hmmm, another kid. One you didn’t budget for. Do you know how much those things cost? Not so clever unless you can find a way to make it pay for itself & quick. “Darling, how would you like to be a beauty queen?”

5 ) Novelty gifts – yes the robot dog was very cool. And the remote control speed boat. Drum kit. Talking brain thing. It didn’t take long for the novelty to wear off though huh? Fun depreciates. Even eBay can’t help you with that.

6 ) Fast food – it’s not actually chicken so what did you just pay for?

7 ) Hotel mini bars – when you’re too lazy or drunk to go to a proper shop.

8 ) Late night shopping on QVC – also known as boredom tax or you-should-have-gone-to-bed-after-that-last-glass-of-wine tax. Do you really think that just 5 minutes a day on the Ab-Shaper got him that bad boy six pack?

9 ) The gym that you never go to – yup once you realise that the Ab-Shaper isn’t the miracle worker you was hoping for, you sign up for 12 months at the local gym. And go twice.

10 ) Silly iPhone apps. Sure ‘Rate a Fart 2.0′ was only £0.59p and amused you and your geek friends over pizza and beer, but all those .59p’s add up you know.

Can you think of any more add to the list?

Dee Uzoka says:

November 13, 2009 at 7:28 pm

Oh Gina, this made me laugh out loud, literally! Very funny but true observations. We’ve all been guilty of them at some point. I won’t say which ones I’ve paid :p

Gina Romero says:

November 15, 2009 at 1:47 pm

I’m glad you enjoyed the post Dee! And ha ha yes all but 2 of these are actual things I have done I won’t own up to which ones either lol. Feel free to add any others you can think of…

Someone misplaced his helmet this morning ....

Mediocrity. It has spread through industry and society like a plague and it seems that standards are universally low. Hospitals are criticised for hygiene levels that would cause Florence Nightingale to weep, the mantra of manufacturing for the most part appears to be ‘faster, cheaper, more’.

I admit to being an over thinker, borderline perfectionist and habitual tweaker. This blog post will probably take me no more that 20 minutes to write, then I will waste at least an hour laying out the line spacing to my satisfaction.

It seems that perfectionism is all too often subject to negative connotations and bad press, however I am a firm believer that the pursuit of perfection inspires innovation.

But do the perils of perfectionism lead to greater evils than those of mediocrity?

Let’s use Darth Vader as an example.

As we follow his epic journey in search of perfection and power, beginning with his ascent from modest roots as pod racing engineering prodigy to supreme commander of the Galactic Empire, perfectionism could be blamed for Vader’s intolerance of weakness and merciless leadership style. After all, perfectionist dictators have neither time nor inclination to stand for incompetence or mediocrity – particularly in themselves.

Of course this behaviour could also be attributed to stress, only to be expected when working under an authoritarian master with the associated threat of death by Force Lightning.

Either way, Vader displays certain positive traits synonymous with perfectionism that would be not go amiss in a leadership role i.e. his ‘failure is not an option’ attitude, meticulous attention to detail, determination to succeed and propensity for self motivation (fear of grisly death aside).

Steve Jobs is another example of ‘a tyrannical perfectionist’. Obsessed with fine detail Jobs has managed to deliver technology that is near perfect in simplicity and elegance. For many years now, the Steve Jobs perfectionist approach to product development has been an experience enjoyed exclusively by MacHeads. Now we, the lowly PC’s, can also taste this very special flavour of Apple perfection.

Jobs maybe a perfectionist, but he had the vision to move computing away from the stereotypes of spectacled Microsoft geekiness to bring us the sleek, shiny must have gadgets of the uber-cool masses. Apple’s products have de-geekified the love of gadgetry and turned Apple into Silicon Valley’s most valuable company, with Jobs being named by Fortune Magazine as “CEO of the Decade”. Like Vader, his climb to the top has been a tough one, subject to criticism and negative press.

What we can learn from this, is that while perfectionism can drive success, it can also be a lifelong struggle ending in self-sacrifice and death. Admittedly, we have yet to see this kind of weakness in Steve Jobs.

Mediocrity – It takes a lot less time and most people won’t notice the difference until it’s too late. ~ Larry Kersten

Photo by By JD Hancock
( Maybe He Won’t Notice ) under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license