The New "Bold" in Better Business

Every business we remember or think we recall seeing somewhere develops its own personality over time, just like an individual. Its true identity which determines how likely we are to trust it with all that is dear to us, our privacy or secrets, is more than its brand, pipeline, people, or culture it promotes publicly, but simply its consistency in how it does business. There are countless businesses without character nor consistency in its leadership that are tremendously profitable and successful from which we can learn some strategies yet they remain in an abyss of obscurity. On the other side of the token, there are few businesses that withstand the changing times and environment, the approaches of which are taught by leaders, that somehow break rules to innovate yet follow their own code of rules consistently to achieve their mission. These are the consistently bold organizations that many of us seek or aspire to build ourselves that I will define in this issue of "InWeekend".

Building any non-profit or for profit business begins with an idea, a problem and a plan to address it which we consciously propel forward for some variable purpose - e.g. to become independent, make more profit, attract attention, expand our network, enrich our resume, save lives, eliminate barriers for society, create new jobs or economic opportunities for the community, etc. Neuroscience principles explain however that it is not until we truly and consistently research and believe in bringing the plan to life in our mind first and foremost that our idea of the business, no matter how bold, starts to enter our subconscious. That is when we become dangerous to our competition. Because if the business we create is in our subconscious we are most likely to manifest it in real life and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy every single time.

Business is a brutal game with rules that change hands during ownership, evolve with technology, political leaders and societal norms. However, many leaders define being bold by being rogue, becoming predators of their growing competition, or misrepresenting their identity or commitment to others. They pride themselves on "buying" the best talent and "hiring" new technology on which they depend exclusively instead of the opposite. Many of us have grown up associating businesspeople with being calculating, brutal owners who have mastered the art of "communication" and "business" or corporate jargon to leverage every opportunity there is to promote anything, create some need or scarcity, and cleverly avoid responsibility or accountability. This popular approach though sold to us as such, is neither boldness nor brutality. It is at best resourcefulness but most often it is business cowardice. Or rather, merely the perception of doing business.

Unfortunately, the generational gap in business leadership still renders this prejudice of how most conduct business to often reflect reality. Why? Well, businesses still sell their roles and companies "boldly" as "entrepreneurial" when they hire, only to mislead most of their employees penalized with "pettiness" at every attempt for innovation. Organizations still consider "smart business" to engage an outside expert or potential competitor in order to elicit lots of intelligence and critical information misrepresenting its own intentions, not offering clear recognition or compensation, or simply failing to reimburse the individual for the efforts and detailed information they share. Too many companies or associations still commit to a specific agreement for a project or role with a consultant or employee, pressure them towards particular terms that ensure no competition from them within the related scope of the project for some future period of time, evoke them to contribute critical effort in the agreed upon project or job, grow in the process themselves, do not honor their own agreement for public recognition and/or compensation of the employee or consultant, hire a new company that competes with the initial employee or consultant and essentially crowds out the very talent that was essential to the job under the guise of its own self-perceived "indispensability" or "boldness". Businesses still hire critical advisors to serve as experts or "voices of the customer" offering commission in addition to compensation for clients referred without actually disclosing and acknowledging business gained as a result of objectively traceable introductions and referrals. Corporate executives who espouse "boldness" as a part of their cultural values still run global annual anonymous surveys of their employees who provide feedback of their Management and Leadership, and become noticeably defensive publicly when the results are below favorable or expected to them, cutting the jobs of many of its employees shortly thereafter. And smart, misleading, or if you like simply "sneaky" business development leaders still ask for and make formal introductions that convert into millions of dollars of business without disclosing any deal to their referral source, who finds out about the conversion of the deal years later, left without any acknowledgment or compensation according to agreed upon terms.

Many of these leaders still continue to grow in 2023, but their definitions of bold and brutal way of doing business are outdated and incorrect. They call for a system update to break down boldness and consistency in an era of rapid innovation today. Examples above do not inspire business leaders like me, nor millions of others, including the majority of the next generation leaders. They only inspire tougher competition for themselves. So I will explain how I define being bold in business today, and argue why all of us need to challenge ourselves to be bolder to compete against the kinds of organizations and leaders in the case studies above.

BOLDNESS IN TRUST

The truly bold companies today are the ones that give and earn their trust from their customers, employees, and society. At a recent keynote presentation at the Medical Affairs Professional Society (MAPS) Annual Global Meeting, Christopher Fussell , President of McChrystal Group , Best-Selling Author, Leadership Expert, and Former US Navy SEAL Officer reminded the audience of three components of individual or organizational trust which are tested over time.

• The first one is the emotional factor of trust which determines how likely a business appeals to and empathizes with its customer based on its values, information, products, or societal needs and advocacy it may support.
• The second one is the intellectual component of trust which refers to the competency, validity or credibility a business earns based on the messages it conveys.
• However, the third most critical element which trumps and tests the others over time is the consistency factor of trust, according to Christopher.

The more consistently a business shares the most relevant, timely, accurate information and addresses the "what's in it for me?" question of its market, the more trustworthy it becomes regardless of any disaster and uncertainty. Similar to the people we call our family or our best friends, it is their consistent and proactive participation in our lives, our best interests, and their best intentions over time that determine if we keep them around. Chris McGoff , a celebrated Fortune 500 Business advisor, mentor, venture capitalist, keynote speaker, whom I had interviewed, refers to this consistency in communication as integrity in ensuring that a request is communicated clearly and differently from a question or a command, and that every agreement or commitment is followed up appropriately every single time.

Since every business is built on people, the person you trust is reflected by something as fundamental as how consistently a person greets us when they see us regardless of whether we succeed, fail, become their competitor or teammate. Greeting is the most elementary form of acknowledgment of another person. Another basic measure of acknowledgment is a public introduction. Our customers, colleagues, and competitors all want us to ultimately respect them as distinct individuals independently of their accomplishments, resources, or talents. Thus, whether or not you greet a person or the manner with which you say hello, or engage in small talk or dialogue over time guides others whether or not to trust you. Similar to simple greetings, the individual that takes the time to introduce you appropriately in public, respond to your text message, voice mail and phone call even if not immediately is the person we are more likely to trust with whom we choose to do business. When people we deal with are unpredictable in how they greet us, acknowledge us, or respond to us, we do not interpret that as their authority, status, or confidence but as their weakness, disagreeableness, degree of respect and honor they grant us, or hidden agenda, making it difficult to fully engage or contribute to their business. So to stimulate more people to trust us, support us, and contribute their efforts towards our in spite of how favorable the terms may be to them, we have to learn how to greet people as business leaders, particularly those individuals who have not given us reasons to doubt their intentions or best interests, no matter how successful we become or busy we may be.

The truly bold organizations today are the ones that build trust among its people, customers as well as its worthy rivals and competitors. Listen to this intriguing podcast episode titled "Why Honesty Pays in Business" with an organizational change expert, keynote speaker, Forbes and Harvard Business Review editor Ron Carucci .

BOLDNESS IN COMMUNICATION CONTENT - TRANSPARENCY

Strong organizations not only acknowledge and apologize in a timely manner, but explain why. Being bold in a world in which data and algorithms reign supreme and expose all our behaviors as well as performance, means daring to share the details that can inspire particular behaviors but also avoid the worst behaviors its company will not tolerate consistently. Transparency of the details required to convey the context for reducing the budget of one department in a company ensures agility, strategic alignment, and invites alternative innovative solutions. Propagating uncertainty only fosters unnecessary competition, withholding information, and lack of communication.

BOLDNESS IN COMMUNICATION STYLE

The language we use often determines our behavior and culture in business and in life in general. As I say on the Alloutcoach podcast, all of our messages we communicate follow simple math and either + add to, - subtract from, x multiply, or ÷ divide people. Business jargon, or corporate speak has evolved in the last two centuries in the U.S. and Charles Krone in the 1980s used it as a tool or even a weapon for Pacific Bell to differentiate it from its competitors in the field as the new jargon became known as "Kroning". Much too often however, we use business jargon to shorten long sentences or complex processes to save time but in the process waste time and lose productivity and clarity.

Using corporate jargon to communicate removes accountability. Business jargon creates an artificial sense of belonging for the select group who understands such language but it leads to perceptions rather than reality and stories difficult to predict which those in the extended audience tell themselves.

Clever storytelling is in vogue, but stories alone that are substantiated by the wrong numbers, metrics, or assumptions alone can leave different interpretations and lead to harmful consequences. Thus, as the renowned global business coach and keynote speaker Andy Henriquez suggests, every story we tell needs to make a point and every point we get across should be supported by a clear story defined similarly by everyone in our audience.

Realizing that particular customers and the market is demanding and communicating information via different channels, the bold "rebels" and businesses are those that customize their message or mission and begin to live stream information by involving and educating others, regardless of how regulated their industry is.

BOLDNESS IN BUILDING INCENTIVE

One of the largest issues every leader faces today in this new world of work is how to fully engage the people that make its business sustainable every day. Regardless of the scarcity of resources and level of uncertainty, the stories we share as business owners about our purpose, goals, strategy, and performance metrics with our own team members whom we are dependent on to grow as an organization, need to clearly link activities and outcomes to some specific incentives, recognitions, acknowledgments and opportunities. For example, unlike the various real world case studies above, strong leaders that engage their business contacts with the intention of gaining new business as a result of a referral incentivize their peers, and always follow up to compensate them transparently in accordance to the agreement, and recognize them publicly in front of their new client soon after closing the deal.

In addition, no matter how qualitative or abstract the contributions of a department, we have to find a way to break down performance into its individual parts of activities, rank them by priority, convert them into impact points, track the ultimate outcomes in order to quantify and communicate the relative contributions of every single member and department to the overall success of our organization boldly and transparently.

Remember, our character as adults does not change much after childhood, and we are driven by ambition, inclusion, and shared experiences socially. One way I defined the abstract concept of the word "behavior" to my children when they were about 2 - 3 years old was through an ongoing long-term contest in which they all started with 10 points at the beginning of the day. I began to reduce points throughout the day consistently, explaining to them the reason and equivalent number of points lost due to something they did or did not do. At the end of the day, if they maintained 10 points, I added $10 to their "piggy bank" which they could only open on their next birthday. As a result, this is how I taught them the abstract word "behavior" and kept this "behavior point" game consistently over the years which enabled them to compare their behavior improved based on the amount of money they earned on their birthdays.

Continuously creating incentives, measuring and communicating them transparently even among business units that do not directly generate revenue whom we nevertheless invest in, creates a sense of belonging to the overall organization on a global level. When we are able to clearly trace how business insights or activities of an individual translate into follow up action or relative success globally, we can visualize our individual contributions, and therefore feel like we belong. We no longer stimulate cynicism about the ultimate impact of every single individual and their contribution. Thus, bold organizations of today and tomorrow gamify and quantify the contributions of all their individuals through economic or alternative incentives and public recognitions to increase engagement in any disaster, crisis, and uncertainty.

BOLDNESS IN COMPETITION

Recognizing unprecedented level of competition, courageous leaders embrace and study its rivals, and demonstrate their boldness by designing the kinds of internal or external contests that inspire higher quality effort and productivity. They phase out the implicit competition that exists invariably, and remove the artificial pressure of such vague and subjective competition to instead make competition transparent, judged objectively and consistently to elevate their companies and their fields. The truly bold business leaders that have one mission they consistently follow which sits in their subconscious and are willing to create economic and learning opportunities even for their competitors, because they are confident that the competition itself will elevate the vision they have for their field or industry at large.

BOLDNESS IN INNOVATION

You may argue that it is difficult and even unrealistic to be transparent, consistent in how we conduct business, yet agile and innovative at the same time in a high-stakes environment with tremendous pressure to differentiate ourselves. It is true that when resources are limited, and the commitment to the Board to innovate is high, the speed or scalability of innovation may often slow down in many organizations which resort to questionable tactics to save costs and generate the semblance of progress. However, there is a type of business code or corporate social responsibility (e.g. responsible AI, etc.) to which we boldly hold ourselves and our legacy accountable on a consistent basis which has no bearing on how likely we are to innovate. This consistent standard can be summarized by self-accountability on an organizational level to honor what our business agrees to and commits to at all costs even at its detriment regardless of the milestones it reaches. Ultimately, the truly boldly innovative companies, like individuals, are naturally resilient and know how to reinvent themselves because they are confident that if all the technology, communication resources, and records were taken away from them one day they would still find some inspiration that would drive them to create new momentum.

Sometimes it takes courage to accept a temporary loss of profit to pursue a specific cause or purpose in which you believe. That is the decision CVS made about years ago when it became the first of the most popular American pharmacy chains to stop selling cigarettes. This case study is highlighted by Simon Sinek in his book "Infinite Game". Just imagine the lost profits from cigarette sales CVS Caremark abandoned.

The decision led to a decrease in cigarette smoking and an increase in the sales of smoking cessation patch. As a result, this unpopular business decision at the time to forego profits in the name of improving the health of its customers and community led to the company's differentiation of its brand, character, and to novel types of new customers and client organizations who began to do business with CVS. Such companies included Irwin Natural and New Chapter vitamins and supplements available at Whole Foods and other specialty health stores. While CVS stock performance suffered over the short term with the EPS (earnings per share) dropping during the quarter of the announcement, EPS came back to baseline within a quarter and rose by 70 percent over the next years!

Innovation is difficult to prioritize for most businesses because their workforce most commonly believe it is reserved for only certain people in the organization who are the decision-makers, they have no time or budget to prioritize to innovation as they are trying to do more with less in the era of inflation or uncertainty, that they are already successful and therefore do not need to change, or that innovation is not part of their current strategy. Well, the same strategy that drove current success for a given business cannot be expected to maintain or reach new heights in the future or even stay in business in the unprecedented rate with which change takes place today. Thus, bold organizations today focus on innovation as a continuous cycle rather than an episode rewarding consistent ideation or promotion of ideas and causes which their businesses support regardless of owning a particular enterprise software technology. As a result they develop an identity with which any current or potential partner or investor will associate themselves regardless of their capital. These organizations also deliberate partner with other agents of innovation including in adjacent markets and technologies.

Every leader, investor or startup accelerator urges business owners to research the current needs or problems and explain how its product addresses them. The boldest organizations, however, address not strictly what their customers say or believe they need to solve their problems, but what they themselves are confident their customers should believe. Such companies analyze the underlying root causes, the network maps as well as their corresponding incentives to interpret the rationale behind the research data of their customers' assumptions or status quo. They correctly anticipate the needs because of their deep observations and perspectives, and as a result generate new evidence that turns into a movement or philosophy rather than a product alone.

Thus, the most boldly innovative companies according to Gary Hamel (global organizational change researcher, professor at the London Business School, innovation expert, author, and keynote speaker) address those unspoken or 1) unarticulated needs, 2) underappreciated trends, 3) underutilized competencies, and 4) unchallenged orthodoxies - watch the video summary below.

BOLDNESS IN TRAINING

Finally, courage, boldness with consistency and corporate social responsibility, as well as innovation can all be trained. A Japanese-born doctor, Dr. Tadataka Yamada, had emigrated to the United States, and single-handedly transformed the conscience of an entire global pharmaceutical company and others in the same industry.

He reminded his company that was considering a lawsuit along with 38 other companies against the government of South Africa for drug price controls during the early 2000s that the organization cannot make medicines that save lives yet patients cannot access. The lawsuit was dropped, more patients with HIV were able to access and afford the drugs for this disease, a new non-profit research center was opened focused on tuberculosis and malaria, the Doctor's company GSK became known as a global health leader in the industry as well as its partner Sanofi and its CEO.

The boldest organizations today will invest substantially into training their talent to create a constant learning and development community of their team members. They will operationalize debate and diversity in opinion in addition to diversity of their team members - Netflix example of the Socratic method it used to drive ownership and justification of decision-making from an interview with Michael Rubin on the @Alloutcoach Podcast. And these businesses will leverage the rising thirst for informal, self-driven and self-paced education in our society across private and publicly available resources. Business executives will incentivize mentors and sponsors to transform their companies and increase retention in any world of work or environment.

After I co-founded my performance analytics agency for life sciences Amedea Pharma several years had passed until I made the first steps to bring it to life and begin promoting it. Yet every time I look back to that initial stage of my company, I remind myself that I am not only fulfilling the mission on which I embarked but I am staying committed to a consistent code of respect and honor with which my company will always do business. As a result, I intentionally designed this company to redefine "boldness" in modern business, holding ourselves responsible as an organization, as well as transparently communicating its evolution from a business in the making with a purpose to its transformation into a maturing organization that creates new momentum and opportunities for innovation and quality in healthcare.

Companies such as Amedea Pharma willingly choose to be truly bold, transparent, and persistent while knowing the various short-term consequences of this approach. They do not leave business unfinished because they envision and demonstrate their results as they make progress, consistently building new evidence and making connections to their previous experiences. There are many others who are transforming not just the technology, products and market but the philosophy of doing good business with transparency while creating communities in pharma and biotech today such as Sheila Mahoney at LifeSciHub for example. So let's challenge ourselves to be bolder, more transparent, and consistent with our responsibilities as individuals and organizations to our society and community!

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