As I sit down to write this post I really can’t believe that 2012 is over. These last couple of years, time seems to be accelerating at a quantum pace where it is becoming difficult to keep track of all the things which again seem to be taking place almost all at once! I remember quite vividly this year starting off with us closing one of our biggest deals with British American Tobacco, we have been fortunate to have just built our pace from there. For this review I am going to take a different approach and document all that went well and the areas which need improvement in the coming year.

The Things That Worked out Well:

1. From a business perspective we were able to close some key marquee accounts with the likes of Novartis, British American Tobacco, Telenor and Crescent Steel . Our software is now deployed and running in over 10 countries in Asia Pacific in 4 languages. I am really hoping we can build on this base and have a quantum jump in 2013 in terms of the size of the business.

2. We launched a new product under the name of DiscoverMatch to service the small to mid size segment in September and it has had some great adoption over the last couple of months, we are looking forward to see it become a key driver of growth in the new year.

3. We got offers for IDENTIFI to get acquired this year which led to very interesting discussions and I am happy we took the chance to choose to go for a big win.

4. I greatly improved both my visual and user experience design skills, gave my first talk on interaction design and have laid the foundation to start building my online portfolio on my blog to start talking about the stuff we are building in greater detail.

5. I started to exercise with greater frequency this year and finally fixed my diet, which has had an enormous impact on the amount of increased daily energy .

6. I got to work with some truly great people and I am really thankful to all my business partners and clients. Wishing all of you all the very best in 2012.

7. My family continues to be a great source of strength and support on this journey and I don’t think I could have gotten as far as I have without them. Thank you!

The Things That Didn’t work out as Planned:

1. We need to apply a far more metric driven approach to our business growth. Looking forward to reworking some of the key metrics that we track and really focusing only on those that push the necessary needles forward.

2. I need to delegate a lot more in 2013. I take on too much which slows things down and is a major impediment in gathering the sort of speed of growth we are looking for. We are looking to add more new people to our team in 2013 and I am looking forward to using my time more judiciously.

3. I didn’t read as much this year as I would have liked too. I usually read at-least 2 – 3 books per month at a minimum. I probably read a total of 10 books in 2012 which was not very good. I hope to get back to normal pace in 2013.

4. I have neglected this blog for far too long and being busy is no excuse since some of the people who I look up to like Fred Wilson continue to bang out great posts on a daily basis. Looking forward to writing at-least 2 – 3 times a week.

5. I didn’t travel for leisure at all in 2012. This is something I really want to reverse in 2013. Given my new interest in photography I hope to schedule quarterly short breaks, to reflect and take a break.

All in all 2012 was a very memorable year. I turned 30 this year in great health surrounded by friends and am deeply involved in work that I truly enjoy doing on a daily basis. Wishing all of you the very best in the coming year.

Connecting the right person with a job opportunity I am convinced would be suitable for them, is amongst the things that drives and motivates me! At IDENTIFI we are building a suite of services that helps us scale the rate at which we can make these connections happen. The statistic that more than 77% of people go home daily unfulfilled with the work they do, is a fact that gets me out of bed every morning with a yearning and drive to reverse this statistic!

Generation Y is the major segment of society that we assist and work with. Our research has shown that company culture, people and the workspace are critical components in decisions to take up particular opportunities. In light of this, we are in the initial phases of launching a new service called Discover Match. It provides companies with an attractive platform to display their company culture, people and workspace. This space helps companies attract talent to apply directly as well as follow the company for future updates.

In the last few weeks we have managed to work with companies of all sizes, from SAP to a small startup that is just getting off the ground. If you view both their Company pages, even though they use the same format, you can sense the fundamental differences between them. If a picture is worth a thousand words, videos set the bar a lot higher.

In it’s initial version the page is currently broken up into three separate areas:

The Main Page

This page is built to provide an overview of the company and quickly communicates some key values behind their individual set ups. What we found with existing company websites and other platforms, was the difficulty in getting a quick idea from their pages of what the company was all about. The aim of our page is to help communicate multiple messages in a simple and effective manner. With several exciting additions in the next iteration, this page is going to improve exponentially!

The People

Most companies have a people section. In 98% of websites this may or may not include a picture and a professional bio, overall, nothing that really communicates who this person is, how they got here and what excites them. Our goal with this page is to communicate all these factors. I believe these are some of the most important pages for a company. You do not always need to have a fancy office or perks, working with a group of smart and dedicated individuals is definitely a most important factor.

The Office

This is the most clicked-through section on our pages. Workspaces say a lot about a company and its culture. It is like walking into someone’s house, you immediately start forming an opinion about them. This page was built to not only display the office, it also talks about the culture and perks at the company.

Having just started this process we are aggressively looking to initially cover companies in Singapore. Other markets around Asia will be starting up in the very near future. At the moment we are looking for all the feedback we can get on these pages. We are interested in gauging that when you are looking for a job and you view these pages, whether it does help you to make a better decision? What would you want to add or take away from these pages?

Are you part of a Singapore based company that wants to get covered? If so please get in touch with me at usman(at)discovermatch.com

Looking forward to getting all of your feedback and thoughts!

“Controlling your direction is better than being controlled by it.” Jack Welch

An entrepreneurs’ journey is riddled with potholes and unexpected events at every turn. Controlling your direction is not as easy as charting a plan and then sticking to it irrespective of what happens along the path. However, having a clear idea about the direction you are going in and why, is mandatory.

It is critical on this path that the entrepreneur is adept and adaptable enough to be able to maneuver the direction of this ship. The word “pivot”  is fast becoming a word with over usage in startups. Many of them seem to be controlled by events, the reason for this is, I believe, that they are not certain about why they are on the journey in the first place.

There are two factors entrepreneurs need to be aware of, understand and have down pat before they head out on this journey:

1. If you succeed on this journey, what is the change you want to see and help towards in the world.

2. Why is bringing about this change important to you?

These two factors should become pivotal guiding lights to enable you to chart a path. They bring to the fore your true motivations and reasons for starting on your journey. Many of those starting  on the path of entrepreneurship these days, do so for the wrong reasons…such as earning lots of money, gaining power or trying to be the next quick flip.

For the betterment of your team and yourself, please put a little more effort into crafting the ‘why’ behind your startup before you take your first step.

A recent article in Fortune by Jack and Suzy Welch in which they say:

“Soft culture matters as much as hard numbers. And if your company’s culture is to mean anything, you have to hang — publicly — those in your midst who would destroy it. It’s a grim image, we know. But the fact is, creating a healthy, high-integrity organizational culture is not puppies and rainbows. And yet, for some reason, too many leaders think a company’s values can be relegated to a five-minute conversation between HR and a new employee. Or they think culture is about picking which words — do we “honor” our customers or “respect” them? — to engrave on a plaque in the lobby. What nonsense.

“An organization’s culture is not about words at all. It’s about behavior — and consequences. It’s about every single individual who manages people knowing that his or her key role is that of chief values officer, with Sarbanes-Oxley-like enforcement powers to match. It’s about knowing that at every performance review, employees are evaluated for both their numbers and their values.”

After yesterday’s post I got a couple of questions regarding office politics playing out when you get people competing against each other. I think that could definitely become a possibility. Just look at the latest news from Oracle “Cut-Throat Sales Culture Is Hurting Its Hardware Business“.

However what differentiates companies who do not fall into this trap is those who have a well defined culture and set of core values. Making sure you have the right people on the bus is just as important as optimizing your workforce’s performance. Failure to attend to either one of these two will have consequences.

When people on your workforce go against the culture you are putting into place and do not share core values, it is important to let them go as soon as possible. This is to ensure and protect the long term sustainability of your organization.

Great leaders have an inherent ability to distill complexity into simplicity. A great story which reflects this talent is attributed to steel magnate Charles M. Schwab. One day one of his floor managers came to him complaining about varied schemes he had attempted in order to increase the average output per shift, without any luck. After having listened to his strategies Mr. Schwab simply asked him one question “How many heats has the day shift completed?”. When he got “6″ as the answer he simply took a piece of chalk and wrote a big “6″ on the entrance door!

When the night shift workers came in and enquired about the significance of the number “6″, they were told that the boss had enquired about the output of the earlier shift and had written that on the wall. That night, the night shift beat the day shift and demonstrated this by erasing the number “6″ and writing “7″ there instead. Over the next couple of weeks output from each shift surged.

Stimulating competition has a powerful effect in getting individuals to push themselves harder. To get optimal results, it is important that performance tracking is not only tracked on an individual basis, but also done in relative terms to others in the group. By using relative performance gauges we are able to push ourselves further or then simply acknowledge another’s edge by bowing out when we think we are out of a given league.

Understanding the importance of core values is something that I have been fascinated with ever since I read Jim Collins book, Good to Great. Core values form the foundation for businesses that persevere through time and major changes. An apt analogy is that of the growth of a tree; some trees have a quick growth spurts and on the surface seem majestic and beautiful. However, these trees have roots which do not support their level of growth and this impacts their ability to persevere over extended periods of time.

Core values act as roots for companies, laying the foundation as it were. In an ever changing world where the word ‘pivot’ has become synonymous with most startup companies, it has become of even greater importance that these core values are established as early in the growth cycle as possible. Without this, companies and people tend to drift. Their choices are then governed by external factors rather than an internal compass.

Discovering your Core Values

Core values are not a result of an afternoon brainstorming session. They originate from who you are as a person and a team. In your company right now, there will be a way of how things get done, how you communicate with one another and what factors are ‘non-negotiable’ deal breakers. They may not seem clearly apparent at first, however, with continuous searching they will always manifest themselves.

Clarity and simplicity are paramount when discovering your core values. They have to be simple messages that resonate with who you are and the people you want to work with. Unfortunately many companies setup these core values but pay nothing but lip service to them. These are often only the result of an intellectual pursuit paying heed to what would look ‘good’ rather than being representative of them.

There is no deadline as to when you need to establish these values. The important factor is that you make a concerted effort towards developing them over time. The key here is that you clearly define them since they will act as guiding principles. They will determine your hiring decisions, product decisions and just about every critical decision that needs to be made.

Running a Values Driven Company

Once you have your core values clearly outlined it is critical to incorporate them into everything you do. There are three major components where your core values play a critical role:

Hiring: The smartest and the brightest people have the ability to work wherever and with whoever they choose to. They don’t work for a company because of the salary or benefits plan. What they look for are companies who are aligned with their core values. This is what separates the great companies from the good ones. When a company does not have established core values where it can determine fit, you will end up hiring individuals who most likely will not have a shared work ethic. This is where companies breakdown, where communication suffers and everything comes falling down. Integrating your values into your recruitment process is a critical component to enable you to uphold the culture and values you want to live by.

Customers: We live in a very competitive world today. Edges and advantages that were previously derived from processes, intellectual property and size are no longer enough. The people whom we sell to, need to know why they should buy from you as compared to the next company who has a nearly identical offering. In most situations it comes down to who you are as a company and what you stand for. This is where your core values help you to stand out from the rest. If you truly live by them on a daily basis, this will be communicated to your prospects. When they find a shared sense of purpose in the way you conduct things, you make a far more authentic and lasting connection. This is what you need to strive for.

Internal Communication: As mentioned earlier, it is paramount that your core values become the basis of how you operate as a business. This requires us to integrate them into our regular activites such as performance reviews, employee recognition and internal communication. When evaluating the performance of an employee it is critical to see whether they are demonstrating the company’s core values alongside hitting tangible targets. When employees display these core values at work, they should be “recognized” as an example of how to live by these values. Lastly, all internal communication should have your core values as the underlying principle.

Running a “values driven” business is much harder than running one which only pays lip service to it and may cause short term loss of profits and growth. Hiring will be much harder and you will have to remove people whose values are not aligned with the company’s. However, optimizing for the short term always has long term repercussions, these will always outweigh any immediate gain. Hence, if you are committed to building and running a business for the long term, I would strongly advise and encourage you to make a decision to run a “values driven” company, sooner rather than later!