{"id":229,"date":"2011-06-03T14:25:38","date_gmt":"2011-06-03T18:25:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/?p=229"},"modified":"2011-06-04T21:00:08","modified_gmt":"2011-06-05T01:00:08","slug":"how-to-make-good-choices-from-ivory-towers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.duck9.com\/blog\/how-to-make-good-choices-from-ivory-towers\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Make Good Choices from Ivory Towers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Larry Chiang helps engineers graduate with street-smarts. What they don’t teach in b-school they now do teach in engineering schools and via the Bloomberg BusinessWeek’s channel \u201cWhat They Don\u2019t Teach You at Business School\u201d. He holds a JBA (Jedi in Business Administration). After Chiang\u2019s Harvard Law keynote, Harvard Business wrote: \u201cWhat They Don\u2019t Teach You at Stanford Business School<\/a>\u201c (the same title as his NY Times bestseller). If you read his scandalously awesome “How to Hack at AfterParty<\/a>“, \u201cWhat a Supermodel Can Teach a Stanford MBA<\/a>\u201d and \u201cHow to Get Man-Charm<\/a>\u201d, you will like his latest post:<\/p>\n

How to Make Good Choices from Ivory Towers<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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By Larry Chiang<\/a>
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I get to go to board meetings.<\/p>\n

A lot of them border of the cliche of an Ivory Tower meeting.<\/p>\n

Ivory Tower meetings imply
\n– disconnection with reality
\n– elitism to the n-the degree
\n– general pompousness of upper management dictating ludicrous commands to troops in the trenches<\/p>\n

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Ivory Towers are not exactly in tune with reality
<\/b>Art credit: HideYoshi<\/a>
<\/h3>\n

Well, here is actually some insight as to how to actually make good choices from the tower of ivory:<\/p>\n

-1- Location Aware<\/p>\n

Selecting a meeting location at the Four Seasons Palo Alto when you’re discussing micro-loans to inner-city  is silly<\/p>\n

At UCMS when we would do QBRs (quarterly business reviews) we would have them on a college campus versus a banks headquarters.<\/p>\n

-2- Rotate in a Board Observer<\/p>\n

The same people tend to make the same decisions.<\/p>\n

Just like a TV show, rotating in a guest star spruces things up.<\/p>\n

-3- Pay Some Commission<\/p>\n

Cash as commission is tough.<\/p>\n

Board members may be seasoned executives but they still like the same stuff that kids like.<\/p>\n

Meetings go better with sugar so use cupcakes and cookies to incentivize<\/p>\n

-4- Message from the Front Lines<\/p>\n

Make board members think they know what the front lines are like is ok. Make them really visit the front or actually bring in front line battle weary soldiers is a big, big gamble.<\/p>\n

-5- Customer Feedback<\/p>\n

Nothing brings an ivory tower down faster than having it come into contact with real customers.<\/p>\n

Nurture your boards’ fragile egos by not bringing in real customers, but instead a board member from the customers board. If they don’t have a board, find some senior person who advises them who is similarly disconnected from reality.<\/p>\n

Board members tend to speak board-ese.<\/p>\n