I went to a great talk by Guy Kawasaki, the author of 9 books including Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition. He’s also a former Apple Fellow, software entrepreneur, and now – among other things – a columnist for Entrepreneur magazine and founding partner of both VC firm Garage Technology Ventures and “on-line magazine rack” Alltop (http://alltop.com/). You can read more about him at http://www.guykawasaki.com/about/index.shtml.
Though in his 50s, Guy looks and sounds like a 20-something – a really smart 20-something – with the kind of optimism, tongue-in-cheek humor and irreverence you generally associate with youth. His talk was kind of off-the-cuff, and I was frantically scrawling notes on a 4×6 notepad with a dull pencil, so this blog entry won’t do it justice… but I’ll try.
The audience was a bunch of MBA program deans and directors at the GMAC Leadership Conference. His topic: “What I wish every new employee knew.” Here’s his list:
- How to talk to your boss. Your boss is not a professor who has to worry about teaching evaluations and rankings. Your boss wants your solutions, not your problems. Come with answers, not questions.
- How to be a boss. Most people look at the softer skills and say, “I’m a natural at that.” They’re not. Guy thinks that bosses don’t need as much of the “hard skills,” but they really need OB and leadership. He put it this way: “the tech guys are hired guns.”
- How to survive a meeting that is poorly run. Guy: “most are.” His advice: “once you get what you need done, relax and turn off your brain.”
- How to run a good meeting. Guy’s rules:
a. Always start on time
b. Invite as few people as possible
c. Set an agenda
d. End on time
e. Send an email confirming what everyone will do - How to figure out everything on your own. This is a corollary to #1, I think. “There are no TAs in the real world.”
- How to negotiate. It’s all about figuring out ways to find “win/wins.”
- How to have a conversation. Guy is a self-professed student of “schmoozing.” His observation: useful conversation starts with the attitude, what can I do for you? Guy: “more useful than ‘sucking up’ is ‘sucking down’ or ‘sucking across.’” In other words, figure out what you can do to develop your own people and to help those who don’t have a reporting relationship to you. That’s how you develop a useful network.
- How to explain what you need in 30 seconds or less. Work on your elevator pitch. Be able to explain your product in 3 words. Guy’s analogy: eHarmony has you fill out pages of information to register with their matching service. Venture Capital is more like the website “Hot or Not?” (http://www.hotornot.com/).
- How to write a 1-page report about anything. This was a requirement at Apple. Guy thinks this is a skill that is being taught inadvertently through text messaging and Twitter.
- How to write an email in less than 5 sentences. “All email should be haiku.”
- How to get along with peers. “People who look out for #1 are the losers.”
- How to leave a good voicemail. We’re seeing a theme here…
- PowerPoint. Specifically
a. No more than 10 slides, and no more than 20 minutes
b. Font size = age of oldest person in audience ÷ 2.
Rule of thumb: 30 point.
c. Be prepared for equipment failure.
That’s the list, but if you look at it closely, it all boils down to something more fundamental. Everything Guy hit on has to do with how you treat people… and most of it, to respecting their time and availability. Some good lessons for all of us!
Jim Olver
