Because we receive so many questions from our readers each week, we unfortunately cannot answer every question in the Crucial Skills Newsletter. To help more of our readers with their crucial conversations, confrontations, and behavior change challenges, we’d like to introduce our new Community Q&A column! Each month, we’ll select a reader’s question, post it here on the blog, and invite you to share your advice and ideas. Please share your answers to this reader’s question in the comments below. Dear Crucial Skills, One of my colleagues works ten- to thirteen-hour days, even though her job does not require her to put in that many hours. She is a single, middle-aged woman and also volunteers one evening a week at a food pantry. She complains about how long she stays at work, so I have carefully encouraged her to leave on time. I kindly told her that there are others who can take care of things and that she owes it to herself to get out of work at a reasonable hour. This is always a lose-lose conversation. She says "I know," but her behavior does not change and she continues to complain that she "stays so late," she is "so tired," and "no one ever thanks me for my help." When other employees ask me why she stays so late, I tell them I don’t know and suggest they ask her. How can I help my friend stop playing the victim and see that leaving work on time is actually healthy and reasonable? Full-time Friend Update: We have received many helpful responses to Full-time Friend’s question. Thank you to everyone who has responded! Here are a few comments that summarize our readers’ advice. If you would like to read or share more advice, please do so in the comments below: "This is a difficult question to answer because we are missing an essential piece of information: What is her motivation for working so late? . . . Could it be that she is not a fast worker and is concerned about meeting a productivity standard? Could she be worried about her position and wants it known that she is going the extra mile? She has a need that must be identified and fulfilled in a healthier manner." - Julian Fountain "I see this where I work as well, and also find myself falling into the habit now and then of working extra hours. I am a ‘single middle-aged woman’ - my kids are adults and independent. If I don’t have something scheduled with friends or family it’s very easy to stay at work because there is no one waiting for me at home….a rare occurance because I keep myself pretty busy to avoid this situation, and it’s more likely others complain about my ‘being too busy’. Your ‘friend’ may need a regular afterwork get together or activity in addition to her volunteering. I’ve taken on the task of getting we ‘single middle-aged ladies’ together once a month or so after work to share conversation and the feeling of togetherness and ‘family’ that others get at home in the evening - others (married/male) are also included. Give it a try, my guess is she needs her ‘friends from work’ more than she needs to ‘be at work’ but doesn’t know how to ask." - Linda "What exactly is it that’s bothering you? Is it the fact that she complains about working late, or something else? Whatever it is, I think it’s essential at this point that you address what is bothering you, not her . . . Just remind her that this has been going on for a while with no change. Let her know how it makes you feel, and suggest a brainstorming session regarding how you can help change whatever you or she needs to change to improve the situation." - Dave

Mike Robert Wood's blog post was featuredIf Gummy Bears Could Talk, They’d Whisper Your PasswordA generation is growing up in a world where everything can be obtained at the click of a button, from anywhere, 24/7, in real-time. Missed your favourite TV show? Watch it on catch up. Hate waiting for holiday photos to be developed? Take snaps on your smartphone and instantly upload them to Facebook. Want the new Kings of Leon album but can’t be bothered to go to the high street store? Stream music instantly from Spotify, Youtube or Naptster.Long gone are the days of having to wait for things. In the digital world - what we want is already there and is only a click away. And this applies to things that go beyond social sharing, online shopping and streaming music. But despite the digital DNA of this growing generation and their openness to share personal information digitally, they still expect the same protection of their online identity. Recent research highlighted that online fraud and identity theft were the first and second concern of most UK citizens. Nowhere is this more important than with banking.Enabling differentiation and loyalty by offering a seamless customer experience and protecting customers from fraud, is one of the biggest challenges for financial services in the digital age.Will fingerprint recognition help?As reported recently in Wired, RBS and Natwest announced that they will offer customers the ability to manage their finances on the move, using Fingerprint login instead of the passcode. This is a positive step forward with improving the customer experience for banking. Not only is this hugely convenient for customers, who don’t need to carry around their ‘number generator’ keypads, passwords or pins, it’s also a more secure way of ensuring that the person is who they say they are. However, despite this, there are flaws to this approach for which some customers may be concerned.Single authentication isn’t reliable. If your phone should get compromised, or your account gets hacked, you can quickly change your password to prevent fraud. But you can’t change your fingerprint. So does that mean you need to buy a new phone and start the process again? Or wipe your phone of all its data? All of a sudden fingerprint banking doesn’t seem so convenient now.In addition, the iPhone Touch ID allows multiple enrolled fingers. So, if my five-year old daughter got hold of my phone, she could in effect access all the data on the phone, including my bank account - which could be potentially very damning and expensive!On the flip side, having a second factor of authentication such as a finger-print is definitely more secure than using ‘contactless’ payments cards, which only require a single touch to authenticate up to £20 transactions, should the phone also be used as a digital wallet.There are no silver bullets here. Finger readers, like many forms of authentication, can be spoofed. There are already numerous existing workarounds on YouTube, demonstrating innovative uses of what look like Gummy Bear sweets to replicate fingerprints in order to fool finger print readers. Whilst this is an unlikely move for a fraudster to make, it can happen.So what is the answer?The answer is simple - take a holistic approach to include biometrics as part of a multi-layered solution which also offers customer choice. Biometrics will be a greater part of banking, so it’s important to get the customer experience right to ensure adoption. Gartner predicts that 30 percent of organisations will use biometric authentication for mobile devices by 2016, but again this alone isn’t bulletproof.Aspects such as location, timing, behavioural information, cognitive data and social networks can all be bought into play to support a solid authentication process. For instance, these tools can detect whether someone accessing their account is doing so from a regular location or IP address, such as home or at work. If this location falls outside of the norm, banks have the confidence to intercept and challenge.Similarly, using biometric behavioural solutions, you can tell whether a person is using their device differently (e.g swiping differently to how they usually would) or spot the robotic behaviour of malware. Individual customers may react differently to biometric step-up challenges each with their own preferences, so offering customer choice is important to grow adoption and confidence. For example, some may be comfortable and more able to speak into the phone (using biometric voice recognition), some are happy with the concept of a ‘selfie’ (using biometric face recognition) and others may still perceive greater security with PINS and passwords.Building on these behaviours enables banks to create a profile of the customer based upon a confidence factor or risk-score. It also reduces the frustration felt by customers when they forget their password and are locked out. Furthermore, it gives financial institutions the tools to intelligently detect fraud with more ease than ever before. It’s win-win.Mike Robert Wood is helping to address fraud and security issues with creative solutions for Unisys customers.See More

ABOUT THE AUTHOR   Joseph Grenny is coauthor of four New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything, Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer. READ MORE Dear Crucial Skills, I am having a hard time dealing with a coworker/friend. She has a big heart and will do anything to help anyone. The problem is her temper. If something does not go her way or someone does something she does not agree with, she throws a temper tantrum like you have never seen before. She yells and cusses like a sailor and does not care who hears her. She is constantly on the backs of the people who work here and rips into the other managers weekly. We all really like her and know she gets stressed easily, but we can’t handle her temper tantrums anymore. We have all tried to talk to her about this but nothing seems to sink in. She thinks it is funny and will tell you quickly that it is our fault not hers. Now people and even her friends are shying away from her, and it is getting harder and harder to work with her. How can we get her to stop throwing a fit and still keep a good working relationship and friendship? Signed, Punching Bag Dear Punching Bag, Okay, buckle your seatbelt, because I have a strong dose of feedback for you to hear. Please know that all I want to do is give you a perspective that will help you solve your problem. I don’t want to offend and especially don’t want to "blame the victim." But one thing I need to do is challenge your "victim story." Here goes. Ready? The biggest problem here is that you and your colleagues are playing the victim when you have actually been enablers. If this has been going on for a long time, if she is truly behaving as abusively as you describe, and you’ve not ratcheted up your response—then you are rewarding her behavior. If you and others are shying away, then you’ve allowed her to bully you. This has to stop if her behavior is going to stop. You and your colleagues need to take responsibility for announcing and enforcing your own boundary. You have two options. One is to turn this over to HR or her boss immediately. If this is truly an issue of abuse and you either don’t want to or can’t handle what I suggest below, then the way to take responsibility is by asking those who should be handling this to handle it. If, on the other hand, you think it’s something you and your colleagues can and should attempt to address first, here’s how you might prepare for and hold this crucial conversation. First, get clear in your mind that these are not "requests" or "suggestions" for her. These are absolute and inviolable boundaries you will hold her to—with associated consequences. Here are some steps to follow: 1. Gain commitment. Meet with your friends. Help them see the role you have all been playing and commit them to holding her firmly accountable. 2. One voice. Meet with her as a group. You may not need everyone to come, but you should invite someone else to meet with her so she isn’t able to minimize the points you make or rationalize her way out. Now, going in with more than one person violates safety so invite as few colleagues as possible but as many as necessary—perhaps two or three. 3. Compassion and courage. Open by explaining the reason for the discussion. Be sure to create safety, but be firm. For example, "I know this may seem kind of dramatic, but it is very important to us. We’re sorry if this seems like we’re ganging up, but since a number of us have been affected, we needed you to hear from more voices. We need you to hear us out about a concern we want to address. If we can’t address it here, we will be meeting with the boss or with HR instead. Our preference is to work it out between us. Can we have your commitment to hear us out without interruption?" After she agrees, create a bit of safety. "We think this problem is solvable and we want to solve it. We love you and we want to continue working with you, but not under the conditions we’ve been working under. If we can solve this one problem, we hope to work with you for many years. The problem is . . ." Now lay out facts—not generalities—share the pattern, then describe two or three instances of her behavior and the effect on your relationship. Share natural consequences so she’ll understand why you’re motivated to address this. For example, "To you this may seem like we have thin skin, but you need to know that the three of us have found ourselves shaking in our cubicles when we’ve thought about approaching you with a concern. We feel sick and I even have a hard time sleeping when . . ." Whatever the effects are, share them. Keep it brief so she’ll have a chance to respond, but be clear on how you want to move to action. For example, "We want your agreement that you will never yell or swear at us again when you are not getting your way. We want you to take an anger management class, and if things improve, we would like to keep this between us. But if there is another infraction in the next month, we will turn this over to the boss or HR. I know that might sound like a threat—and I’m sorry if it does—but it isn’t. It’s just us taking responsibility for our actions. I feel ashamed that we’ve allowed this to go on for so long. That’s our fault, and you’ve gotten the wrong message that we think this is okay. It’s not okay. It must stop." I hope I don’t come across as anything but sympathetic with your plight. It’s so easy to let things slide for so long that you get used to them and lose perspective on how things really should be. Trust me, you deserve a different work climate than the one you appear to have. Give it to yourself and your colleagues by holding this crucial conversation. Sincerely, Joseph Related Material:Employee Temper Tantrum Confronting a Gossiping Boss

Dan Salmons's blog post was featuredWhat Miyagi-San Teaches Us About PCI DSS Compliance"Polish on, polish off", "brush up, brush down". Thus begins Daniel LaRusso’s training in the martial arts in classic 1980s kid’s movie The Karate Kid. Instead of learning kicks and throws in the dojo, Daniel found himself redecorating his teacher’s house, and even then, Miyagi-San makes him do each job in a very specific way - but not necessarily the easiest way.Daniel ends his first day of training angry and disappointed, but then the Japanese sage delivers his real lesson. All of a sudden the tedious movements he’s had to use all day become powerful defensive manoeuvres. And, of course, the movie ends with Daniel defeating his nemesis.This is a bit like what digital security means for any organisation processing card payments. The rule book we must all follow, PCI DSS, lays down in great detail exactly what organisations must demonstrate to achieve compliance. But doing what you need to achieve compliance won’t make your customers secure - just like knowing all the moves won’t necessarily make you great at karate.Payment security is hugely important today, as the market for stolen cards is vast and lucrative. It was recently revealed that 183 million accounts were compromised in Q3 of 2014 and credit-card hacking has been found to be America’s top crime worry. As the owners of the 56 million credit cards that were compromised from Home Depot found to their cost, card details are hot property at the moment - with each card worth an estimated £8. For criminal gangs trading in thousands, if not millions of stolen accounts, that’s a very profitable line of business.Yet a large number of payment providers see the compliance process as a necessary evil of doing business - a bit like fire-drills and employer liability insurance - and less of a business opportunity to keep and win new clients. Indeed, there are plenty of ways organisations can meet the spirit of the standards without actually baking them in to every part of their operations. For example, many organisations only allow auditors to examine data and conduct penetration tests on ‘sandbox’ systems, unconnected to the provider’s online systems. That’ll get them the tick in the box, but will it be a hallmark of total security? There’s no way of knowing until it’s too late.As Miyagi-San taught Daniel LaRusso, truly defending yourself requires you to think far more fundamentally about what you do and how you do it. The hard part is to practice it day in and day out. But if organisations are using a service that’s ‘compliant by design’, they are far better placed to defend their customers’ data robustly. For us, this means embedding PCI DSS-friendly processes into the code base of our core applications - rather than rushing to compile paper trails by hand when audit time comes. It means giving auditors access to live data on our production systems, which in turn requires a culture of sustained compliance and continuous improvement that all employees need to embrace. It also means we plan our businesses around audits - allowing plenty of time for preparations. It’s for these reasons we marked 10 years of Level 1 PCI DSS compliance in August last year.Finally, compliance by design demands that executives run their business with security uppermost in their minds and as a business opportunity - not the other way around. PCI DSS audits generally require many business functions, especially finance, IT and operations, to go into lockdown for several weeks a year. Rolling out new products and integrating new customers simply takes much longer during audits - if they happen at all. But with products that are compliant by design, the thousands of merchants and millions of consumers for whom we process payments each year have true peace of mind.It’s worth reminding ourselves why PCI DSS exists: because consumers demand and expect protection! Research we commissioned in May 2014 found that security is more important among consumers than convenience when deciding how they pay. Moreover, over half of UK consumers (55%) viewed the security of payment methods as the most important factor in deciding how we pay - while only a quarter (26%) believed convenience to be the most important deciding factor.This is why simply doing the basics isn’t enough. In spite of its length, PCI DSS should really be seen as merely the status quo, not the benchmark. Organisations need to go beyond the ‘box ticking’ to secure their customers’ card data. It only takes one breach to risk the ire of customers whose card details are compromised, and their faith in your ability to protect them may never be restored. For this reason, it’s absolutely crucial to get the security side right. Though compliance by design may at times feel like waxing the auditor’s car or painting their fence every day in a tedious fashion, it means your customers can rely on your "powerful defensive manoeuvres" to keep their data safe.Dan Salmons is Managing Director of Mobile and Online at PayPoint.See More

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Cricket Buchler is a Master Trainer. READ MORE How do I appropriately respond to participants’ fears and concerns about participating in the training? Several have expressed fears around role playing—one was even in tears. They have even expressed fears around mixing up teams for activities, and these are intact teams!What a great question! As you suggest, it is very common for our participants to be anxious about ‘performing’ in front of their colleagues. Because of this, I consider it my primary goal, as a facilitator, to create safety in the learning environment. I’ve found that if I can front-load the conversation in class by acknowledging participant fears and assuaging them, it goes a long way in preventing some of these kinds of reactions. And in my mind, if I can prevent the fear from ever creeping into the classroom in the first place, everyone’s job gets easier!When introducing the concept of deliberate practices for the first time, I always say this: "Now we’re going to practice with some scenarios. Before we start, I’m wondering, ‘Would any of you say you are generally not a fan of role-playing in a training classroom?’" (While asking this, I raise my hand as if to demo an invitation for them to raise their own in answer to that question). Participants will raise their hands, giving you a good sense of people’s comfort level in the room. I try to remember who raises their hand so as to avoid pairing those individuals up with each other later, finding it better to match the Nervous Nellies with others in the room who are more comfortable with this practice.Then I say (with a healthy dose of sarcasm and a hearty smile) "Ok! Well you’ll be happy to know that we won’t be role-playing in here. We’ll be doing deliberate practice. You’re going to LOVE these!" And right then, people begin to relax—because they feel validated. Then, I go on by saying "Ok, I’m playing with you a little bit, but let me tell you how they really are different. I feel like with role plays, we always feel we have to get really creative and make life difficult for our partners, then we switch roles and it comes right back to us. That is NOT what we are doing here. These are meant to feel super safe. We don’t expect anyone to be perfect at this (you’ve never done this before!) We’ll give you a coach to jump in and help you, even feed you lines. You can call a time-out and ask for help at any point, and you can ask for a do-over any time you like. Just say, "I think I can do that better. Let me try again!"After creating safety in the room, I move into reading over the directions in the toolkits. Then, I find it helpful to walk through a large group demo of how to do the structured rehearsals before putting them into groups of three and assigning roles (taking care not to pair together those who expressed anxiety in the beginning). The demo allows people to get comfortable with the practice and often alleviates anxiety for participants.For a large group demo, you as the facilitator can take on the role of the initiator. Explain the role of the respondent, and then ask for one volunteer to play the part of the respondent. Then ask the rest of the class to play the role of coaches—asking them to tell you what you should be saying each step of the way as you walk through the situation. You can essentially walk through the first structured rehearsal as an entire class before asking folks to practice the second and third situations on their own in groups of three. I’ve found this approach to significantly reduce anxiety in the room. Related Material:How can I help participants better understand and benefit from the summary questions at the end of each section of training? How can I help participants who are creating their own change plan in Influencer Training create an actual results statement? What if participants don’t like the term "violence" being used in the training?

Thomas Clarke posted a blog postHow Service Automation Got Us Out of Email JailAt NetApp, we take pride in giving our customers great service, which is one of the main reasons why we’re successful. We put a lot of emphasis on driving sales through strong customer relationships, but we also know that our backend fulfillment processes are just as important. Every link in our customer service chain has to be strong - or the chain will break.Our quote-to-invoice (Q2I) process is a critical part of our customer service commitment. It’s how we fulfill our customers’ needs. It’s also key to our financial performance, since fast quote-to-invoice times let us recognize revenue more quickly.However, like many other enterprises, our entire Q2I process was driven by emails from customers, partners and field sales. Thousands of emails arrived at a single shared inbox and were handled manually by the Q2I team. Everyone had to scan the same emails to decide which ones belonged to them, which was incredibly inefficient.Despite heavy oversight, emails kept slipping through the cracks. We had no effective way of tracking customer requests, so we often didn’t know when things got stuck in the queue. And, since email didn’t really drive a process, we had no clear way to measure and improve our performance.Putting a Method Behind the Email MadnessAbandoning emails wasn’t an option. Changing customer, field sales and partner behavior would have created chaos. Instead, we needed a way of turning an exploding volume of unstructured emails into structured information. After looking at what was available, we decided to go with a service automation solution from ServiceNow and their services partner, Cloud Sherpas. They developed a system of conditional logic to automatically analyze our incoming emails, extracting key information based on the sender, subject and email text. They used this information to populate standard request templates, which were then automatically sent to the right team member using the solution’s built-in workflow engine.From Reactive to ProactiveAs a request makes its way through our Q2I workflow, we can now see its status at every point along the way. Requests are routed throughout the process, and we can automatically manage approvals and other required actions. Instead of reacting when a customer complains, we’re able to unblock individual requests before the customer knows there’s an issue. The case histories we get from ServiceNow are particularly useful - these give our team members the context they need to come up to speed quickly on a case and hit the ground running.Measure It, Manage ItNow that we have a service automation solution in place, we understand what we’re doing right - and what we can do better. We can measure how well each part of our Q2I process is performing.This makes it easy to spot bottlenecks, and to identify when mistakes are made. Not only do we have overall strategic metrics, we can aggregate issues by type to find root cause.For instance, with this data-driven process, we now know how long it takes to complete requests, and we can tie this back to the request type. We’ve even identified types of requests that can be handled automatically - and zero touch means zero delay. It’s also much easier to manage workloads, since we can see who is overloaded and who is underutilized.The Bottom LineWhen we launched our project, we had clear ROI objectives. What surprised us, however, was that the reality far exceeded our expectations. The investment paid for itself in nine months, despite a limited initial rollout. Since then, we’ve extended the solution to handle 68,000 requests a year, giving us a total savings of $650,000 annually - or $1.8 million over our three-year projection period. At that rate, a single month’s savings pays for the entire project.While it’s easy to focus on the return on investment alone, the business intelligence we get from our ServiceNow solution helps us understand our process and how we can change, grow and evolve to adapt to customer needs. But equally important is the impact the solution has had on our employees. Rather than view it as a way to measure their productivity, they view it as a tool to better serve our customers and to measure and improve the overall process. What we’ve learned is not to stay locked in email jail for enterprise services. A choice for freedom is one of the best investments we’ve made.Thomas Clarke serves as Director, Quote-to-Invoice PMO & Performance Measurement at NetApp.See More

Jason Bloomberg's blog post was featuredStreaming Analytics: Terminator or Star Trek?Since the dawn of enterprise digital computing, managers have been looking to computer operators to run data processing jobs on those original workhorses of computation. The goal: to generate reports that the managers would use to make decisions on how to run their companies or government agencies.Today, those large binders filled with perforated pages striped in glorious green and white may be long gone, but the batch job - paper report - human decision pattern remains engrained on our managerial consciousness, for better or worse.Cut to half a century later. We now have big data. Cloud computing. A wholly revamped notion of digital that is mobile-centric, omnichannel, and customer-focused. And yet, old habits are slow to die.Take, for example, the first version of Hadoop. It was a batch job processing platform that would generate reports (paper optional, thankfully) that managers might attempt to interpret in order to make better decisions.Yes, today the hardware is faster, the software is better, the data sets bigger - but the human context for data analytics in many ways remains ensconced in the Mad Men days.Fortunately, this perception is changing. Real-time analytics technology is now a reality. Analysis of data about the past is still important, but insight about what’s happening right now is increasingly available to the decision maker, and it is thus up to that decision maker to understand how to leverage such insight to make good decisions - right now.The True Value of Real-Time AnalyticsThe reason that it has taken so long for real-time analytics to become a useful tool is because of the bottleneck problem: every step in the data lifecycle must perform in real-time or the end result falls short.Today all the pieces are finally falling into place. From data collection to movement to aggregation to processing to analysis to visualization, vendors and open source communities are stepping up to the plate and solving each bottleneck on this path to insight.The end result - when everything works properly - can be astounding. A simple example: imagine moving the "buy" button to different positions on a live ecommerce web page while watching real-time purchasing data go up and down until you find the optimal location.Now do the same thing for every other aspect of your business. That’s the power of real-time analytics.Sounds good, right? But if that example leaves you scratching your head, you’re not alone. Only in certain still-rare circumstances are the benefits of real-time analytics so cut-and-dried. It’s one thing to shift a button around, but quite another to deal with the broad complexities of an enterprise business environment.Perhaps the greatest challenge in the simplistic ecommerce example above is establishing the feedback loop. The traditional batch job/report/decision pattern ends with a human decision, not with an automated decision leading to an action that changes the data in real-time. That part of the real-time analytics pattern is still uncomfortably unfamiliar.From Real-Time Analytics to Streaming AnalyticsOn the one hand, the importance of a feedback loop indicates how we must shift our thinking away from the traditional batch job/report/decision pattern to the real-time pattern in order to maximize the value we can squeeze from our analytics.On the other hand, the feedback examples above reveal one remaining bottleneck: the human itself. As long as the goal of big data analytics insight is to fuel human decision making, then all-too-human limitations will continue to be our limiting factor.Once we establish a fully automated feedback loop, however, then we take this final remaining bottleneck out of the equation, unleashing a new level of speed and performance.We’re not just talking real-time analytics at that point. We’ve moved to streaming analytics.The field of streaming analytics takes as its starting point not simply large data sets, but a never-ending, 24 x 7 fire hose of data. All of a sudden, making sure we have no bottlenecks simply becomes the price of admission.We can’t even begin to deal with streaming data if we have to pause even for a moment to move it, store it, process it, or analyze it. The fire hose just keeps on streaming.Today’s technology is finally piecing together the end-to-end components that make streaming analytics a reality. And yet, making sense out of the results of our streaming analytics - in real-time, without introducing a bottleneck - presents perhaps the greatest challenge of this approach.Rising to this challenge is the field of cognitive computing - a way of analyzing streaming data that are multistructured, ambiguous, and in a constant state of flux.The advantages are profound. Fraud detection and prevention, dynamic product pricing, Internet-of-Things (IoT) data analysis, electronic trading, customer promotion triggering, and compliance monitoring are some of the early examples of the power of streaming analytics - bolstered by cognitive computing to establish real-time, machine learning-based feedback loops that drive business value with no bottlenecks.And you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.Putting the Human Back into the Streaming Analytics PictureMost people’s exposure to cognitive computing consists of watching IBM Watson trounce the world’s best players at Jeopardy! The same kind of technology is the key to fully automated streaming analytics - technology that gets smarter and smarter by itself.If the notion of an intelligent, constantly learning, Jeopardy!-playing computer running the largest companies and governments in the world doesn’t frighten you just a bit, then you probably never watched the Terminator movies, or any number of other dystopian AI-run-wild flicks.Well, you can relax - at least for now. Establishing fully automated streaming analytics feedback loops won’t take humans out of the picture. Rather, it raises the role humans play to a new level. Instead of Terminator, think Star Trek.People, after all, must still build and manage the entire kit and caboodle. And for all its power and velocity, streaming analytics is still just a tool - a tool in human hands.In order to play at this new level, however, we must learn new skills. Just as we’re struggling to move from batch job/report/decision thinking to real-time thinking, we must now take the next step: working with never-ending torrents of multistructured, dynamic data.Thinking at the Meta-Insights LevelIn other words, we must raise the insights we obtain from streaming analytics to the meta level. The insights we gain aren’t simply about how best to run our business, as we’re automating how we use those insights. Instead, the insights we humans must gather are meta-insights: insights into how to leverage the ongoing insights the technology provides us.Most people aren’t working at this meta-insight level. Our technology is advancing so quickly that we’re still struggling to move from batch thinking to real-time thinking. The result is increased turbulence, both in the business and technology domains. After all, change is ubiquitous and accelerating across the digital spectrum. It’s virtually impossible to keep up.Dealing with change as the fundamental business constant, after all, is what the Agile Architecture Revolution is all about. As we remove the bottlenecks from our data processing and leverage the fire hose of real-time, streaming analytics, this revolution becomes an unavoidable business reality. Get ready for warp speed!Jason Bloomberg is President of Intellyx.See More

Like many of us, Maureen Winningham didn’t grow up in a home where family members practiced crucial conversations regularly and well. Rather, she grew up in one of those households where he who yells the loudest gets his point across. The worst culprit of all was her father whom she labeled "Mr. Blow-and-Go" for his explosive temper and anger-filled communication style. Many years later, after one particularly dreadful Christmas dinner, Maureen used her skills to hold a long overdue crucial conversation with her father in which she recognized her role in the problem, explained the damage her father’s communication style had caused in her life, and asked him for a way to repair their relationship to a healthy level of love and respect. Watch as Maureen describes how that one conversation literally changed her life and helped her build a special relationship with her father before it was too late. Related Material:How do you hold a crucial conversation via e-mail? Facing a Crucial Conversation? How do you handle a crucial conversation with a really difficult person?

Harry Kraemer posted a blog postLaunching a Startup From a Foundation of 'Best Team' ValuesAt the very beginning, a startup company may consist of only an entrepreneur and a partner or two. There is no infrastructure or formalized process; sometimes there isn’t even an office. At some point in a startup’s life cycle that small team—the powerful nucleus of the founder and a couple of other people—has to grow in order to turn an idea into a company.As that startup grows from 2 people to 10 to 50 and so on, the team must have more than passion and skills. A "best team" must be formed, built on a foundation of values.Without alignment around core values that define the company, it will be difficult to bring together and grow a cohesive team. Consider the recent leadership upset at Snapchat when Emily White, the chief operating officer of the messaging app company, left after less than two years. That was reportedly due to rising tensions with CEO Evan Spiegel.At the very beginning of a startup’s life, so much attention is paid to the "idea"—the concept, technology, app, or other marketplace proposition. A startup rises or falls, however, on the strength of its people. If a best team, aligned in their values, is in place, the chances of success increase greatly.Consider the example of Fieldglass, founded by Jai Shekhawat in 1999, which offers a vendor management system for the procurement of contract labor and services. Fieldglass, which was sold to SAP in mid-2014, reportedly for more than $1 billion, started with a small team chosen on the basis of the "whole person"—people who had the right attitude, a passion for the business, and a willingness to do the work that needed to be done.Shekhawat credits a model he described as servant leadership and "subordination of ego." The leader serves the team, and together they devote themselves to service of the customers. These attitudes and behaviors are fundamental to values-based leadership, which can be practiced at any level and in any organization, large or small.I have practiced values-based leadership throughout my career, from my early days in a cubicle through my tenure as CEO of Baxter International, a $12 billion health care company, and now as a professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. As I have seen in large companies and small startups, building a world-class valued-based organization begins with a core team of individuals committed to becoming their "best selves." This group of individuals who think and act as their best selves can then come together as a "best team" aligned with the values and vision of the organization.When the team is small, fit is crucial. If one person is not aligned with the values and the culture, the negative impact is exponential. Values create cohesion as people take on multiple roles that have nothing to do with their training or specific skill set. At the earliest stages of a startup, the finance guy or the head of engineering may end up packing boxes for a customer. This is not just teamwork; it is best-team work.As a startup moves from its initial phase to its first years of growth, there will be changes: some people will move up, some will move on, and others will come onboard. Through all these changes, values alignment remains the No. 1 priority. As Shekhawat told me, "Everyone needs to contribute to the DNA of the firm… A person who is contributing and feels that they’ve helped shape the company will treat it like their child. These are the roots of loyalty."These core values also shape the culture of the enterprise as it grows, such as by determining the values-driven "best partners" with which the company does business, influencing interactions with stakeholders as a "best investment," and finally putting forth a vision of how to make a difference in the world as a "best citizen."There is no limit to the ideas that will emerge in our digital world. Bringing these ideas to life requires a best team of people acting and interacting as their best selves, in service of a bigger purpose and a grander mission and vision.Harry M. Jansen Kraemer Jr. is the author of "Becoming the Best: Build a World-Class Organization through Values-Based Leadership" (Jossey-Bass, 2015), and the best-selling "From Values to Action: The Four Principles of Values-Based Leadership". He is the former chairman and CEO of Baxter International Inc., and is now a professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and an executive partner with Madison Dearborn Partners.See More

A dear friend and long-time mentor, Stephen R. Covey, died this week. In the coming weeks, many will write about his enormous influence in the business world, in families, and on the international political stage. Rather than add to that well-deserved chorus, I’ll express my personal gratitude and remembrance. In 1984, I heard Stephen speak at a business conference. His speech opened up a whole new field to me that redirected my professional plans. Prior to that speech, I had never heard of the Organizational Behavior field. I changed the course of my studies, joined him in his fledgling company, and began a career that has enabled me to be part of work that I find immensely meaningful. In 1990, I left Stephen’s company to begin a new one and to study more carefully how to influence profound and sustainable behavior change in large human systems. While Stephen would have preferred that I stay with his company, he was abundantly generous in wishing me well—and even went out of his way to endorse our work on many occasions. I have no doubt that his foreword to Crucial Conversations was an important part of its success. Stephen R. Covey has had as great an influence on who I am and what I do as anyone else in the world. His consecrated life, his principle-centered approach to our field, and his fundamental faith that true principles will bear up to scientific scrutiny in organizational success have blessed my life and my work. I thank God for bringing this good man into my life. - Joseph Grenny, cofounder of VitalSmarts and coauthor of Crucial Conversations Related Material:Joseph Grenny Introduces Crucial Conversations Second Edition Help! My Friend is Unfit for a Referral Coping with the Loss of a Loved One