The byproducts of happy clientele are obvious. Sales rise. Stores fill. Facebook “likes” stream in. These promoters recommend the companies they like to their friends.

The cost of detractors—a company’s “haters”—is less clear to many business leaders. For one thing, they may still do business with you — even though they don’t like it and they make sure their friends and your employees know they don’t. By the time their irritation is evident in traditional metrics—declining sales, failed product upgrades, defections to rivals—the cause of their discontent often has ballooned into a widespread problem.

Detractors are so dangerous for companies that the Net Promoter score — the measure of customer loyalty — weights them more heavily. When asked “How likely are you to recommend our product or service to a friend?” on a scale of zero to 10, those who offer ratings of six or less are deemed detractors. Promoters are only those who respond with a nine or 10.

Why? Detractors are detrimental to a company. They cost more to serve. They’re responsible for 80% of a company’s negative word of mouth, detailing their frustrations on Facebook and Twitter for the world to see. And negative referrals are often far more powerful than positive referrals. How many four- and five-star reviews do you need to see before you dismiss a one-star review on Yelp or Amazon? If someone you knew personally told you their dentist was terrible, how many positive recommendations for the same dentist would it take to get you into the chair?

Successful companies take detractors seriously. They get to the root cause of customers’ anger by listening to complaints, taking them seriously and fixing problems that might be more pervasive. For many customers, that’s where true loyalty begins.

Has a company ever so impressed you with its response to a complaint that it turned you from a detractor into a promoter?

Barbara Stegemann’s entrepreneurial vision was formed after her best friend—a soldier—was severely wounded in Afghanistan. Understanding that supporting Afghanistan’s economy was a key to building stability for its people, Stegemann created The 7 Virtues Beauty—a company that sources organic oils from countries experiencing the effects of war and poverty in order to create change. The Financial Post talks to Barbara about her recent trip to Haiti as a guest of the Clinton Foundation:

Barb Stegemann is excited. The successful businesswoman — she is the Halifax-based founder of The Seven Virtues Beauty Inc., a fragrance business that sources fair-trade essential oils from countries that are rebuilding, and the Ernst & Young Atlantic Entrepreneur Of The Year emerging entrepreneur category winner for 2012 — is just back from a trade mission to Haiti organized by the Clinton Foundation. She was the only Canadian entrepreneur on this trip of 20 hand-selected investors from France, the United States, Ireland and Germany. “I was there because SMEs are economic drivers and I had a long conversation with Bill Clinton about the power of SMEs to innovate and change lives,” Ms. Stegemann says. “We toured farms and factories, travelling across the country in UN helicopters. It was an amazing experience.”

It was also an amazing opportunity for Ms. Stegemann to build her network with influential and successful entrepreneurs and to find a new supplier in Haiti to help her continue to grow her business and, in the process, help the people of Haiti help themselves by building their own successful businesses.

In fact, The Seven Virtues’ four fragrances are carried in each Hudson’s Bay store across Canada and last month it was the sixth-top selling-fragrance among the prestige brands Hudson’s Bay carries. It was the No. 2-selling women’s fragrance in Air Canada’s in-flight duty-free catalogue.

The fragrances, which are sourced from Afghanistan, Haiti, Israel and Iran and are changing lives by creating economic opportunity, just sold out in Lord and Taylor in New York. “I want to be the No.1 fragrance,” Ms. Stegemann says.

It’s exactly that kind of big thinking and big ambition that Ernst & Young wants to foster with the its North American initiative: The Ernst & Young Entrepreneurial Winning Women program. It is a competition and executive leadership program that got its start in the United States in 2008, and it has been extended to include Canada as of April 2. The goal is to help women entrepreneurs navigate what Ernst & Young has coined the missing middle — that point beyond startup where they scale up, achieve significant growth and become market leaders achieving their full potential.

“Women entrepreneurs are a driving force in the North American economy. If you look at the statistics, 46% of all private companies in the United States are at least half-owned by women, and that represents 16 million jobs. In Canada, the number of women-owned businesses grew by an explosive 208% between 1981 and 2001,” says Carrie Marchitto, Ernst & Young senior manager and Canadian program sponsor. “We see that real robust growth in the early stages for women entrepreneurs but then we don’t see them scaling up. Ernst & Young looked at why this is the case because we believe women-owned businesses have the potential to contribute significantly to the global economy. We challenged ourselves to go beyond simply talking about the issue and instead taking action and doing something different to change the game for women entrepreneurs.”

She points out that while there are many resources available at either end of the spectrum — the startup phase and at the point when a company is ready to launch an IPO — Entrepreneurial Winning Women aims to bridge the existing gap on the growth continuum. It targets women-owned businesses that are less than 10 years old with at least $2-million in revenue in each of the last two fiscal years.

Entrepreneurial Winning Women is designed to be much more than a competition. It is a customized, ongoing leadership program that allows participants to continue to engage as long as it benefits them. Among the highlights is an all-expenses-paid trip to the Ernst & Young Strategic Growth Forum in Palm Springs, Calif., which brings together 2,000 of the world’s highest-growth company leaders, investors and advisors.

“We bring our resources to them with ongoing education, events, programs, access to advisors and investors all with the goal of helping them grow their businesses,” Ms. Marchitto says. In some ways, Entrepreneurial Winning Women is a stepping stone to Ernst & Young’s signature Entrepreneur Of The Year Awards. “While Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur Of The Year program is a celebration of entrepreneurial achievement, Entrepreneurial Winning Women is an endorsement of entrepreneurial potential.”

Most important, it’s working. According to a recent independent study of the program by the Babson College Center for Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership, revenues of program participants’ companies have grown almost 50% each year on average, with a corresponding 25% average annual growth in the number of jobs — and this during and post the global economic crisis.

The program was able to do this because it is built specifically around five critical things all successful entrepreneurs do: think big and be bold; build a public profile; work on the business rather than in it; establish key advisory networks; and evaluate financing for expansion.

“All entrepreneurs face challenges but it seems these five criteria are particularly pronounced in women entrepreneurs, and that’s why we see that missing middle,” Ms. Marchitto says. “The program really helps give women confidence to be bold, tell their story, build strong networks and access financing so they can take their businesses to the next stage.”

Ginny Dybenko, executive director of the University of Waterloo’s Stratford Campus and longtime Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year Awards judge, has been watching and helping the evolution of women entrepreneurs for a number of years. During her time as dean of the Wilfrid Laurier School of Business & Economics she saw the number of women enrolled in business programs grow but she also saw a certain level of conservatism.

“They were less sure of themselves but I saw first-hand that once they had some encouragement and they get over that first hurdle, they are extraordinarily successful,” she says. “That’s why programs like Entrepreneurial Winning Women are so important. We need to create opportunities for women to build their confidence and provide access to the tools and networks that will help them move forward.”

Audrey Mascarenhas, president, CEO and majority shareholder of publicly traded Calgary-based Questor Technology Inc. and Ernst & Young Prairies Entrepreneur Of The Year clean-tech category winner for 2011, and a recipient of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year National special citation for values-based innovation that same year, knows how hard it can be for women in business. A chemical engineer by trade, she was the first field operator at Texaco Canada and PanCanadian Petroleum before she went on to build a successful career in engineering and then become an entrepreneur on a mission to eliminate hydrocarbon emissions in a cost-effective way. She is working to take the business to its next stage of growth. In 2011, revenues were in the $6-million range, and she is hoping to grow them to $10-million plus.

“I believe women make good entrepreneurs. I also know as a woman in a male-dominated industry that I’ve always had to work twice as hard. I think it’s tougher for women to be connected and network, and I know how important it is to have good mentors,” Ms. Mascarenhas says. “I think the Entrepreneurial Winning Women program is wonderful. I also think if women are going to succeed the key will really come down to getting the same opportunities as men so we can show we are just as capable.”

The Financial Post/May, 2013

TWITTER MONITORING: Row Feeder

People mention your brand all the time on Twitter, and if you’re responsible for tracking it, you may have your hands full. RowFeeder does one thing very well — it simply logs every tweet mentioning your brand to a Google Spreadsheet. Once you set it up, it does all the work for you. You don’t need to do anything else! Just log in and view your stats.

It also logs the person’s location (as reported by their bio), the number of followers they have, and the number of people they follow. For a one-time fee, they’ll add the user’s Klout score to the spreadsheet.

You get a limited number of mentions logged per month but can pay for a premium account to get more.

FACEBOOK MARKETING: Edgerank Checker and PostAcumen

These are amazing tools for people who manage Facebook pages for their organization. Facebook’s Insights lets you download a massive spreadsheet full of raw datapoints about likes and engagement. But you’ll spend a day crunching those numbers to make any sense of it. These two tools do that heavy-lifting for you and help your brand’s Facebook posts make it to the coveted News Feed of your fans. This is a paid tool, but you can discover your Pages’ Edgerank score for free, track it over time, and get tips on how to improve visibility.

EMAIL: Boomerang

Boomerang is incredible. This one tool alone saves me about 20 hours per month. I am not exaggerating.

Used to be when I was emailing someone and wanted to make sure they got back to me, I made a little note for myself in my company’s CRM system then manually entered a task in my to-do list. Then on that day, I’d have to load up the email thread and see if there’s been a response.

Boomerang does that for me. Before I hit send, I just click “If nobody replies, return this to me in ____ days.” It works flawlessly. You can even schedule recurring email returns, track when people open your emails, and much more.

PEOPLE NETWORKING: Job Change Notifier

One of the great things about LinkedIn is that, if you add your colleagues, business partners, clients, and suppliers as Connections, you can track when they move jobs, get promoted, and so on. But to do that, you’ve got to log into LinkedIn manually (or use Nimble CRM) to check. Job Change Notifier is a completely free service that will email you once a week with a list of people you’re connected to who have changed jobs or got promoted. It’s a great way to reach out to past clients or colleagues and keep in touch. Simple but awesome.

TRAVEL: GPS Pal mobile app (iPhone / Android)

I do a lot of travelling for business. And maybe I’m just paranoid but I don’t trust cab drivers. I’ve been taken for a ride — literally — more than a few times. I’ll ask to go to the airport and I’ll get there, but by an unnecessarily long and expensive route.

Now, when I get into a cab, I launch GPS Pal. It tracks and logs the route the cabbie is taking me in real time, using satellite tracking. I can watch it as we go (so that if it’s clear we’re taking a weird route, I can ask them what’s going on) plus it will log the route the driver takes so that I’ve got proof to complain to the cab company if I’ve been ripped off. For the data nerds, it’ll also log your average speed, total distance, time the trip took, and elevation.

This should be a mandatory app for all business travellers.

VOICEMAIL: Phonetag

I really, really hate voicemail. I hate seeing the little “You have a voicemail” light on the phone. I hate logging in. I hate listening to them. The world would be a better place if everyone just sent me an email. With Phonetag, you can get the best of both worlds. You tell your phone to forward all unanswered or out-of-range calls to a special number that Phonetag gives you, and when people land there it sounds like a regular voicemail. They leave a message for you and that’s where the magic begins. Phonetag sends that message to an actual human being who transcribes the voicemail and emails you the text. This is far better than services like Google Voice which relies on automated (and usually flaky) transcription. You can pay by the message (35 cents each) or a monthly plan.

BRAND MONITORING: Mention

Google Alerts used to be a great way to track web and blog mentions of your company name (or anything you want, like your credit card number, your kids’ names, etc.). But Google Alerts has been pretty much useless for the last month. It’s clear that Google has let it grow mould.

Luckily, Mention has stepped up and provides a better service anyway. With Mention, you can track text online but you can also tell it to ignore certain sites (some sites give lots of false positive), get smartphone notifications, and add users to your account. You get a couple of hundred of hits from a month but can get more by referring friends or paying them.

This should be in the toolset of everyone who manages a brand. Or wants to check up on what your kids are saying online.

By Tod Maffin

It’s Sunday morning, and I’m doing what a lot of us do on a Sunday: catching up on Facebook before heading out to eat. Someone has beaten me to it, though, by doing both: catching up on Facebook while at brunch – the diner is Toronto’s Swan Restaurant and she is unhappy with the music that they’re playing. So she’s complaining. To the restaurant. On the virtual wall of its Facebook page. Because, you know, talking to staff while you’re there is so 2008.

Look, I get it: we’re living in the age of social media and our customers get to participate in a two-way experience with us. And for the most part, this is terrific: brands can create meaningful connections with their end users, which is what marketers really want.

But this otherwise welcome trend has also given birth to the whiniest, rudest, most annoying generation of consumers in the history of our economy. These are people who forget basic manners; people who expect the impossible and complain about it publicly when they don’t get it. Guess what, customers: you’re not always right. And even if you are, complaining about a missing Allen Key (integral to all furniture assembly) to Ikea’s Twitter account just makes you sound like a jerk with too much time on your hands (and too few tools in your house).

So it’s turned into this sort of self-perpetuating system. Consumers complain via tweets, like everyone else. Then if they don’t get a response, or one that’s not good enough, they complain about that. Via tweet. Is it reasonable for customers to expect an immediate response? Does having a Twitter presence mean that brands have to respond to customers who are rude or abusive?

I’m not sure that it does. I think there’s a sort of social media narcissism here, too: we’re all just so certain that the combined might of our 300 Twitter followers is enough to scare any brand into listening to us right away. It isn’t, of course. The Kim Kardashians and Justin Biebers of the world notwithstanding, very few of us actually have a social network that we can really leverage to put pressure on a brand. And yet we (as consumers) behave as if we do.

At the risk of sounding naive, if consumers are really supposed to enjoy relationships with brands, they need to treat these relationships with some respect. They tweet angry and expect a result. That might fix the immediate problem, but it won’t actually improve the overall relationship with a brand. Public escalation used to be the last resort for a “wronged” consumer: for many, it’s now the first salvo. That’s not good for any relationship.

And for brand managers, this is where it gets incredibly difficult. Do you respond to people who are angry in the moment? And if so, what do you say when it’s in a public forum? You may just be bringing more attention to what is a temporary problem (or a problem that’s affecting only one person). The speed with which our respective feeds move means that, unless it’s an exceptional situation, negative mentions of your brand will disappear just as quickly as the positive ones.

So as terrible as it sounds, I think we have to train our customers here: public complaining shouldn’t be rewarded.

Rather than trying to fix someone’s problem via a tweet, I think we need to direct him or her to our regular CRM channels and deal with them there.

If we’re continuing to feed the expectation that loud tweeting at a brand turns into immediate response, we’re all going to spend all of our time in 140-character conversations. If we continue to feed the trolls, they’ll just keep trolling.

So if you don’t like the language someone has used when they tweet at you, don’t respond. If someone is disrespectful on your Facebook page, you can feel free to respond, or delete, if they’re too jerky. You can even watch as your community corrects them for you. If you do have a Twitter feed, remember to state very clearly in your bio what the purpose of the feed is. That’s actually a good place to direct people to the best way to get their problems fixed.

Mostly, though, I think we have to start rewarding “good” behaviour (responding to positive conversations), and steering our customers away from the “bad” (placating the whiners).

That’s the thing about social media being a public forum: some people will just act out in public. And as tough as it is for our brands, the right answer for us is sometimes just to ignore the problem and watch as it goes away.

Max Valiquette/Strategy Online

Success in any endeavor or business requires constant change. We are creatures of habit and like to be guaranteed a positive outcome yet change always comes with uncertainty. So that means having the willingness to move out of our comfort zone and risking the unknown.

Leadership is really all about change. It is about empowering people to trust the process and envision a better way. It is about inspiring others to move forward and grow despite facing adverse situations. Change is imperative if a business is to thrive yet getting people to embrace it is one of the most challenging tasks a leader can face.

Joanne Beaton is a shining example of a leader who not only inspired change but turned a dying business into a growing enterprise. Joanne was asked to take over Operator Services for TELUS, a large Canadian Telecommunications company. Technology was replacing people for most of the functions and the service center was losing money and losing steam. Engagement and morale were low.  Her leaders told her that the most likely ultimate solution was to outsource the business and cut costs.  But instead of surrendering to what seemed to be the inevitable, Joanne met with every team member at operator services and basically said, “No one else is going to save this business but us.” She began asking people three questions: If you were our competitors what would you do to put us out of business? If you were me how would you turn this around? And finally, how did they (her associates) think they had to change for the business to be successful.  Joanne followed three key principles which may help explain why here people created an amazing turnaround.

Not only did they grow their business by fifty percent, they increased their productivity by 1,000 percent, and became a high-service, low-cost operator. Eventually, they won awards for the best operator services in North America and became a sustainable profit center! They began to benchmark their services against competitors, talked about how to improve the business, and figured out how to raise morale and productivity. TELUS set the example the power of inspiring people to embrace change.

When you want to implement change in your organization, remember the extraordinary story of Joanne Beaton. Here are the top three reasons why people resist change and how you can help them.

#1  People don’t see the reason for change. Unless people understand the “why” and “what” for change, they simply won’t be motivated. As a leader, it is unwise to merely make decisions and announce them without getting input. It is vital to help people understand why and give them opportunities to ask questions.  As one CEO said to me once: “Until you have people on the why, they will argue about the how forever when what they really don’t get is the why!” Joanne helped them understand the need for change and to come to their own conclusions.

#2  People feel like victims when forced to change. No one wants to be changed—they want to be involved in change. They want to make a difference. Just as Joanne did, engage and involve your people. Look for all the ways you can involve them in making a decision. For example—maybe you have to cut 5% off the budget and it’s not negotiable but you can get people to help you decide HOW to make the cuts even if they can’t change the 5% target.

#3 No one can change other people. They have to choose to change. Study after study shows that when people choose to change it makes all the difference. Give people all the facts, ask them what change makes sense to them then ask them what steps they are willing to commit to. Let people come to their own conclusions. As Joanne Beaton said to me: “As leaders we are often afraid to ask people what needs to change because we think they will have a different view but I have found if you give people all the facts, they will often come to the same conclusions.”

It is 5.30 in the morning and I am standing in the halflight, waiting at the intersection of two red dirt paths. It is here that I have arranged to meet a very special group of people. As I watch, a silhouetted figure appears a bit further up the path, approaching with long, effortless strides. Ten metres away from me, the figure slows down. Christopher Cheboiboch, holder of the fourth fastest time ever in the New York Marathon, is out on his first training run of the day. He stops right in front of me and says hello.

I tell him that I am here to find the secret behind the success of Kenyan runners, and that I am waiting for the training group I have been allowed to follow for the day. He eyes me sceptically, then says, ‘People come here from all over the world, convinced that they will be able to suss out the secret behind our runners by lumbering about in the hills with their heart rate monitors, and staying at the our star hotel with a view. But they’re looking in entirely the wrong place.’ ‘Where should they be looking, then?’ I ask.

For a few seconds the air between us is perfectly still. Christopher looks down at the red dirt beneath our feet. ‘There’s only one way to understand the code. Be a Kenyan, live like a Kenyan,’ he says. His glance lingers on me for a moment, before he turns about face and disappears off into the gloom once more.

Alone again on this path 2,800 metres above sea level, I try to imagine what it means to be a Kenyan. I start doing exercises to keep my body warm in the wind. Although I can still feel the aftermath of the long flight in my limbs, it does feel wonderful to be here at last.

It isn’t long before I hear a low thumping through the red earth, which gradually grows louder and louder. Then, down the hill behind me comes my training group: twelve Kenyan men and boys running at full tilt on, their tracksuits slapping audibly in the wind as they head straight towards me.

As they pass I fall in with them, bringing up the rear. Very soon my heart starts to pound. My legs struggle to keep pace even with the rear guard. My fellow runners were all born and bred here in the Rift Valley and are members of the Kalenjin tribe which, numbering three million, constitutes almost 10 per cent of Kenya’s population. On these unprepossessing dirt tracks, an incomprehensibly large proportion of the world’s best long-distance runners are produced, with the apparent efficiency and predictability of a factory production line.

It is a well-known fact that Kenyans occupy the throne of world long-distance running, but it is less well known that more than 70 per cent of all Kenya’s gold medals at international championships have been brought home by Kalenjin athletes. Since 1968, for instance, only one non-Kalenjin runner has succeeded in taking gold in the Olympic steeplechase.

These incredible statistics are the reason that I endeavour to keep pace with the group on this morning in Iten. The morning sun has now awoken and its first rays are falling on the pack that I am a part of as it pushes its way over the top of the hill. It’s hard going; my pulse is thumping and my tongue is hanging out of my mouth.

I’m here searching for the answer to one question: how can it be that a single tribe has won such a huge number of gold medals and toppled a succession of long-distance world records?

Closer scrutiny reveals that the mystery of the Kalenjin tribe is not unique. In five other places in the world we find a similar phenomenon – places which produce results that seem inexplicable at first sight.

How did one athletics club, which trains on a diesel-scorched grass track in Kingston, Jamaica, manage to win nine sprint medals at the 2008 Beijing Olympics (five of them gold), one a world record and an Olympic record?

Why do 35 of the world’s 100 best women golfers come from South Korea which, with its inhospitably cold climate and astronomical green fees, scares off the vast majority of golfers? How did it happen than one Ethiopian village in the middle of nowhere won four gold medals in middle distance running at the latest Olympics? How can it be that in just a few years Russia has developed from a mediocre tennis nation into one that occupies 25 per cent of the world women’s top 40 ranking list? Why is it that every other year since 1993 a Brazilian has been named the world’s best footballer? And how can it be that in 2010, 67 Brazilians played in the world’s premier championship, the Champions League, compared to only 25 Britains and 26 Germans, even though not one Brazilian club participated?

Like the Kalenjin tribe, these other Gold Mines of elite performance leave us with a multitude of unanswered questions. With their outstanding results, they challenge our most ingrained convictions as to how elite athletes are created, and they confront us with mysteries that have preoccupied people for generations. What is talent? Why are some people so successful while others fail so miserably?

Is there a code we can crack in order to unlock the secret of outstanding performance? If answers to these questions can be found then their application will reach far beyond the world of sport – into the boardrooms, classrooms and homes of the world.

Scientists, journalists and coaches are trying to come up with such answers all the time. The problem is that their ideas are based on observations they have made at a physical distance from the Gold Mines. They therefore present conclusions characterised by oversimplification and rigidity, and unfortunately it’s often on the basis of these oversimplifications that coaches, talent scouts, athletes and parents pursue high performance. If we really want to understand why the Gold Mines are such crucibles of talent it is hardly satisfactory to study them from afar. That’s why I decided to travel the world to find the answers I was looking for –talking, studying, eating, training and living with people in these places which have apparently cracked the code of high performance.

Over a period of seven months I visited the six Gold Mines to feel for myself what it means to grow up in a Brazilian favela (shanty town) with the dream of becoming one of the world’s best footballers; to understand how much is actually at stake for a young runner in the Kenyan Rift Valley; to find out what it takes to make a world-class sprinter in Jamaica; and to learn how Russian and South Korean parents push their children to the limit so that they make it as elite professional tennis players and golfers.

This book presents my findings regarding the ingredients needed to create a Gold Mine, and shows how anyone can use this information to create their own Gold Mine of world-class performance. Perhaps you’re sitting there right now wondering how you can put the ideas and principles behind the Gold Mines to good use if you are not involved in sport?

Well, take a moment to read this list. A top performer:

• Must perform under conditions of intense pressure
• Must understand that numbers drive everything
• Is constantly under pressure from ambitious new competitors from all over the world
• Realises that last year’s record becomes next year’s baseline
• Constantly grows and reinvents themselves in order to stay at the top
• Is subject to brutal accountability: you win or you lose – nothing in between
• Must have sustainable drive, or achieving performance goals becomes difficult.

My guess is that these prerequisites and requirements are almost identical to those you have to perform under in your own industry, whatever it is. At heart, the Gold Mines are about far more than just golf, running or football. They are about the underlying mechanisms which orchestrate world-class performance, and regardless of whether we work in sport, the arts, business or science, we have to understand that all journeys towards realising potential have a great deal more in common than we might first imagine.

I have set down my conclusions in eight Gold Mine concepts, each of which delivers a decisive lesson in creating and sustaining top performances.

The eight concepts are:

➊ The secret is not a secret
➋ What you see is not what you get
➌ Start early or die soon
➍ We’re all quitters
➎ Success is about mindset, not facilities
➏ The Godfathers
➐ Not pushing your kids is irresponsible
➑ Who wants it most

Let us return to that morning in Iten. In no time, the Kenyans’ fast pace in the thin air so high above sea level almost suffocated me, pushing my body way into the red zone. Out of politeness to the new white guy in the group they slowed their pace, but in spite of this concession, just 35 minutes after I had joined them it was all over. I stood bent double with the taste of blood in my mouth, spitting onto the verge, while the twelve Kenyans disappeared effortlessly out of sight.

I reflected on Christopher Cheboiboch’s words: ‘If you want to understand, you must be like a Kenyan, live like a Kenyan.’ I suddenly I understood his message much more clearly.

By Rasmus Ankersen/The Gold Mine Effect/HarperCollins Canada, 2013

Strategic Innovation Expert Vijay Govindarajan advises senior executives on how to achieve ambitions in a world of constant flux. In a recent column for The Harvard Business Review blog, Govindarajan turns his attention to leadership:

Here is a leadership lesson: Be selfish. Be very selfish.

For this message to be an effective leadership tip, we need to understand what selfishness is. Selfishness is typically defined as “concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself.” If someone hears that the CEO is being selfish, the thought that is likely to come to mind is, “The leader is maximizing personal financial rewards even at the cost of the company’s interests.” If that is the case, it is unfortunate and unacceptable. But there is a fundamentally different way to view selfishness. If leaders selfishly take care of their feelings, it will benefit not only them, but also everyone around them, including the companies they lead.

In order to achieve this, leaders must stop harming themselves and, instead, start benefiting themselves. Consider these questions: What are the mental aspects of selfishness that will help us as leaders? What are the mental states that cause us harm that we should reduce or eliminate, and the mental states that will give us benefits that we should acquire or increase?

The first step in becoming a selfish leader is to remove the harmful emotions and negativities that distract us from clear and effective decision making. Take anger, for example. Anger releases neurotransmitter chemicals known as catecholamines that give us a burst of energy. Our heart rate accelerates, our blood pressure rises, and our rate of breathing increases. Our attention narrows and becomes locked onto the target of our anger, and we can’t pay attention to anything else. We are now ready to fight or flee. In the jungle, all this would have been very helpful, but in the modern world where it gets bottled up behind a desk, it has nowhere to go and thus gets tangled within — or worse, spent outwardly toward our employees. The adrenaline-caused arousal that occurs during anger lasts many hours, sometimes days, and lowers our anger threshold, making it easier for us to get angry again later on. In other words, we can easily get trapped in the vicious circle of anger. Just ask yourself a simple question: “As a leader, have I ever made a good decision when I was angry and out of control?”

All negative states of the mind have similar effects. They create a tendency to suck us into a vicious circle. This list of negative states includes hatred, ill will, revenge, fear, ego, entitlement, jealousy, restlessness, anxiety, and depression. The chemicals that cause these feelings can build up over time, and the result is a whole host of psychosomatic diseases. By realizing that we are harming ourselves through these feelings and attempting to stop them for our own good, we are in effect helping ourselves and helping others at the same time. After all, we distribute what we have, magnified many times over. What you feed grows. If you feed anger, it grows. So when we have these negative states, we spread those negativities to others around us. This saps morale and reduces productivity. In other words, the most selfish thing we can do — for ourselves and for others — is to reduce or eliminate negative states.

The second step is to selfishly benefit oneself, and the biggest benefits we can give ourselves are positive states of mind: empathy, kindness, compassion, goodwill, pardon, egolessness, and gratitude. These positive states of mind release serotonin, oxytocin, and other related chemicals that reduce stress, improve our immune system, and drastically reduce our tendencies for psychosomatic diseases. As leaders, when we have positive states of mind, we start distributing those to others around us. We distribute what we have, magnified many times over. This creates a more congenial atmosphere, and improves morale and boosts productivity.

Equally important for leaders and decision makers is the fact that these chemicals improve the clarity of the mind (PDF) significantly, and help us to connect the dots and be creative, understand problems from multiple perspectives, get to the depth of problems quicker, and make quick decisions that are good for us and good for others. Who would have thought that focusing on yourself first can do so much?

There are many ways we can master this level of selfishness. One such approach is a meditation technique called vipassana, which means to see things as they really are (and not as they appear to be, as we want them to be, or as we imagine them to be). Business judgment of leaders is all about getting to quickly decipher what is not so evident at the surface level. When a leader is selfish, there is nothing clouding his or her understanding of the current reality as it is — not as he or she would like it to be, as it appears to be, or as the media describes it to be.

A word of caution: This is easy to understand, yet difficult to practice. But it’s incredibly worthwhile. Awareness of the fact that negative states harm us — whether or not they harm the person the negativity was targeted at — opens the doors to change.

We spread what we have within. When we are angry, we don’t limit that anger to ourselves. We magnify it and throw it on others. Similarly, when we have compassion, we spread that compassion. So as leaders, it is particularly important for us to be selfish — to care for our own state of being over anything else — so that we can then spread the selfishness far and wide.

By Vijay Govindarajan and Srikanth Srinivas/Harvard Business Review Blog/May, 2013

As Bob McDonald, the host of CBC Radio’s Quirks & Quarks, wrote, the capsule and its crew went through a rapid deceleration as they hurtled back to Earth. “When they hit the air, they’re like a stone hitting water,” he described. But it isn’t just the journey back to gravity that effects astronauts–re-adapting to life back on our planet is often a journey in and of itself.

In 1992, Dr. Roberta Bondar was the first Canadian woman to fly in space. An astronaut, physician, and photographer, Dr. Bondar expanded the horizons of millions when she joined the space shuttle Discovery for its mission. Now also celebrated as a powerful speaker, a champion of the environment, and for her incredible photographs which showcase the wonder of the natural world, Dr. Bondar described to CBC Radio’s Matt Galloway what Hadfield may experience as he re-acclimatizes to life on Earth:

Listen: Roberta Bondar – Metro Morning – 14-5-13.VSP

The final segment of Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield’s mission, the return to Earth on Monday evening, will be the most difficult of all.

As he plunges into the atmosphere, he will transform from a free floating body to a heavy prisoner of gravity.

For five months, Chris has not sat in a chair, slept on a bed and barely touched his feet to the floor. His home in space, the International Space Station, is a weightless world where everyone and everything is in a constant state of free fall.

Astronauts and cosmonauts float around like Peter Pan in any direction they choose, performing slow motion acrobatics with just a slight push of the fingertips.

Now, after almost five months of this freedom of movement, he and his two crew mates, Tom Marshburn and Roman Romanenko, will don their Russian space suits and cram themselves, shoulder to shoulder, into a small Soyuz capsule only three-and-a-half meters in diameter. It’s so small, they can’t straighten their legs.

After departing the station, they will take pictures of the complex from the outside, then spend the next three hours adjusting their orbit into an elliptical shape, with a low point over Kazakhstan.

A Soyuz landing is very different from those of the American space shuttles, which have now been retired. The shuttles had wings and flew into the atmosphere as hypersonic gliders, touching down gently on a runway. For shuttle passengers, the transition from weightlessness to normal body weight was gradual and smooth throughout the entire landing.

A Soyuz falls from space like a meteor.

Beginning on the other side of the planet, an upper section of the Soyuz, called the orbital module, is detached and sent off to burn up in the atmosphere.

Then the craft is turned around with its rocket engines facing forward. The engines are fired for a precise amount of time to slow the spacecraft down, so it begins a long descending arc towards the ground.

Then the propulsion module is discarded, leaving the three crew members flying backwards in their small insulated capsule.

Eight thrusters on the outside of the capsule steer the vehicle and make sure it is on course, but basically, the craft is falling to Earth like a stone from a great height at 28,000 km/h, or 10 times the speed of a bullet.

For the next half hour the crew will remain weightless, as they were on the Space Station, but then things quickly start getting rough.

The first sign of hitting the atmosphere is dust and any free-floating objects in the cabin settling to the floor behind their backs. Then they feel their bodies being pushed into their custom-fit seats.

That pressure quickly increases, as the capsule plunges into thicker layers of the atmosphere.

Air around the spacecraft begins to glow as its molecules are torn apart by the friction from the tremendous speed, until a flaming fireball – thousands of degrees hot – completely engulfs everything.

From the ground, a long, bright, flaming streak is seen racing across the early dawn sky.

Cocooned inside, the crew feels the strange sensation of weight returning to their bodies. But then that weight continues to rapidly grow, surpassing their normal weight, and reaching up to four-and-a-half times what they feel on Earth.

If the guidance thrusters didn’t do their job, the capsule could fall on a much steeper ballistic trajectory that creates more than eight times the force of gravity on the crew, almost to the point of blackout. Friction with the atmosphere slams the brakes on hard.

Organs of balance inside the ears, which have not experienced gravity for five months, are suddenly overwhelmed with the powerful g-forces, creating sensations of dizziness, disorientation and nausea.

Once through the fiery part of the re-entry, the astronauts receive a hard jolt into their seats as the first two of four parachutes pop out to slow their descent further.

Under the chutes, the capsule may start swaying and spinning, generating more dizzying sensations for the crew’s overloaded balance systems. The crew must keep their heads still, eyes straight ahead, to fight the nausea.

Then, there is a short drop and another jolt as the final main parachute is deployed – the most reassuring sight to the crew as it brings them all the way to the ground.

Well, almost. Since these capsules come down on land rather than water, as the Apollo moon capsules did, a parachute landing is pretty hard. So just before touching down, when the capsule is only a metre above the ground, six engines (actually explosive devices) fire straight down to create a cushion of air that softens the landing. Shock absorbers built into the seats absorb the final thump onto planet Earth.

Astronauts have described a Soyuz landing as similar to surviving a train wreck. It’s rough, but it is the most reliable system that has been working since the beginning of the space program.

With heads that feel like bowling balls and arms that feel like logs, the three crew members remain seated, until bright sunlight and cool morning air rushes in when the hatch is opened, and smiling faces of Earthlings welcome the space travelers back to their home planet.

They have to be carried out, placed in reclining chairs and covered in blankets to greet their comrades. Walking will come later and it will take weeks to fully regain their balance and return to a life where gravity rules.

Chris Hadfield will be home – but Peter Pan no more.

By Bob McDonald/CBC.ca

Tasteful humor is a key to success at work, but there’s a good chance your co-workers aren’t cracking jokes or packaging information with wit on a regular basis–and your office could probably stand to have a little more fun.

“Humor, by its nature, tends to have an edge to it, so people typically tone it down at work,” says Laura Vanderkam, author of What the Most Successful People Do at Work (Portfolio, 2013), and What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast (Portfolio, 2012). “It’s hard to do well and easy to do badly. Plus, we all have a tendency to take ourselves way too seriously.”

Michael Kerr, an international business speaker, president of Humor at Work, and author of the upcoming book, The Humor Advantage: Why Some Businesses are Laughing all the Way to the Bank (Dec. 2013), says the amount or type of humor you’ll find in any given workplace depends almost entirely on the culture. “In workplaces that encourage people to be themselves–that are less hierarchical and more innovative–people tend to be more open with their humor,” he says. “Even people who aren’t always comfortable sharing their humor tend to do so in more relaxed environments where the use of humor becomes second nature with everyone’s style.”

Then there are workplaces with employees who tone down their humor, often with the desire to be taken more seriously, he adds. “Yet, this can backfire as people who take themselves overly seriously are often, ironically, taken less seriously by the people around them.”

Lynn Taylor, workplace expert and author of Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant, believes employees are much more comfortable using humor with colleagues than they are with their bosses. “You face a higher risk factor when joking around with your boss because you just don’t know how your lightheartedness may be taken. So, you generally find greater reticence to use humor with senior managers.”

Other reasons workers might hold back: A fear of offending someone; a fear of not being funny—that their humorous attempts will crash and burn; or the unwillingness to “get the ball rolling.”

“Many leaders, especially introverts, don’t know how to safely encourage the use of more humor at work and are unsure how to express it in their own leadership style,” Kerr explains. “Many of my clients also simply cite a lack of time as a key dampening factor.  The desire is there, but they simply don’t know how to bring more humor into their busy work life.”

Whatever the reason may be, if you or your colleagues tend to be dry and dull in the office, you’ll want to work on injecting more humor into your workday.

Kerr says dozens of surveys suggest that humor can be at least one of the keys to success. A Robert Half International survey, for instance, found that 91% of executives believe a sense of humor is important for career advancement; while 84% feel that people with a good sense of humor do a better job. Another study by Bell Leadership Institute found that the two most desirable traits in leaders were a strong work ethic and a good sense of humor.

“At an organizational level, some organizations are tapping into what I’d call ‘the humor advantage,’” Kerr says. “Companies such as Zappos and Southwest Airlines have used humor and a positive fun culture to help brand their business, attract and retain employees and to attract customers.”

Taylor says humor demonstrates “maturity and the ability to see the forest through the trees.” You don’t have to be a stand-up comedian, she adds, “but well-placed humor that is clever and apropos to a business situation always enhances an employee’s career.”

Here are 10 additional reasons why humor is a key to success at work:

People will enjoy working with you. “People want to work with people they like,” Vanderkam says. “Why wouldn’t you? You spend huge chunks of your waking hours at work, so you don’t want it to be a death march. Humor–deftly employed–is a great way to win friends and influence people. You need to be funny, but not snarky (that’s not good for team building) and you can’t offend anyone.”

Humor is a potent stress buster. “In fact, it’s a triple whammy,” Kerr explains. “Humor offers a cognitive shift in how you view your stressors; an emotional response; and a physical response that relaxes you when you laugh.”

It is humanizing. “Humor allows both employees and managers to come together, realizing that we all seek common ground,” Taylor says.

It puts others at ease. Humor is a way to break through the tension barrier, she says.

“Research shows that humor is a fabulous tension breaker in the workplace,” Kerr adds. “People who laugh in response to a conflict tend to shift from convergent thinking where they can see only one solution, to divergent thinking where multiple ideas are considered.”

Ha + ha = aha! “Humor is a key ingredient in creative thinking,” Kerr says. “It helps people play with ideas, lower their internal critic, and see things in new ways.” Humor and creativity are both about looking at your challenges in novel ways and about making new connections you’ve never thought about before, he adds.

Taylor agrees. She says humor “establishes a fertile environment for innovation because people are more inspired when they are relaxed.”

It helps build trust. “You can build trust with the effective use of humor because humor often reveals the authentic person lurking under the professional mask,” Kerr says.

He explains that numerous studies suggest that people who share a healthy, positive sense of humor tend be more likable and are viewed as being more trustworthy. “Humor is also viewed as sign of intelligence,” he adds. “All of these characteristics, as well as the fact that humor is a fabulous icebreaker and can tear down walls, can help people build relationships in the workplace, and especially these days, relationships are critical to success.”

It boosts morale. Humor boosts morale and retention while reducing turnover because employees look forward to coming to work, Taylor says. “Employees like to work for and with others who have a sense of humor. We all prefer to have fun at work. It should not feel like an indentured servitude environment.”

People who use humor tend to be more approachable. The more approachable you are, especially as a leader, the more honest and open people around you will be, Kerr says. “And the more honest and open people tend to be, the more successful and innovative teams tend to be.”

Humor can allow your company to stand out. “It can help companies stand out and go beyond with their customer service, garnering them a huge loyal following,” he says. If you want to stand out from the pack, using humor with your service is an effective way to do that.

It can increase productivity. “Humor creates an upbeat atmosphere that encourages interaction, brainstorming of new ideas, and a feeling that there are few risks in thinking outside the box. All that leads to greater productivity,” Taylor explains. “It also stands to reason that if you’re in a more jovial atmosphere, you’ll have more passion for what you do. Your work ethic will increase, and your enthusiasm will likely be contagious. It’s a win-win for you and your employer.”

By Jacquelyn Smith/Forbes.com/May 2013