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Oprah Winfrey: Media Mogul

Orpah Winfrey (not a mis-spelling) was born into poverty and hardship in 1954 and rose to become both a celebrity phenomenon and a business magnate. Along the way she made many astute decisions. One of the first was to change her name, recognising that if too many people mis-pronounced Orpah as Oprah, then she may as well go with the flow. Part of her skill has been an adept assessment of the direction of flow.

Oprah Winfrey

Short Biography

There is far more biographical detail available about Oprah Winfrey than most other of our management thinkers, so let’s stick to summarising a few of the facts most relevant to our theme, and leave the more vibrant details to other sources. Many of them have been revealed on her TV shows and in her books – others have emerged through unauthorised tabloid revelations.

Winfrey’s early years in rural Mississippi with her grandmother, urban Wisconsin with her mother, and Tennessee. She experienced much hardship and poverty, including serious abuse, teenage pregnancy, and bereavement.

It was while living with her father for a second time that she started to succeed at school, enter Tennessee State University and land a news job on the local radio station, WVOL in Nashville. This led to a news anchor role at the local TV station, WTVF-TV (then WLAC-TV). She was a television natural and had evident star quality. In 1976, she moved to Baltimore as a news co-anchor at WJZ-TV, which didn’t work out well for her, but the senior executive at the station suggested she co-host a chat show instead.

Although she was reluctant at first, and both she and the station considered it a risk, this was her defining moment: the audience loved her and the show’s ratings rose rapidly. In 1984, she took on a new role as host of WLS-TV’s prime morning talk show, AM Chicago, broadcast head-to-head with the top-rated talk-show, hosted by Phil Donahue. Within a month, it was Winfrey who rated number one.

In 1985, she co-starred in Steven Spielberg’s multi-Oscar-nominated movie, The Color Purple, winning an Oscar nomination herself as best supporting actress. The following year she launched her nationally syndicated show, The Oprah Winfrey Show. Her style of being open and honest with her emotions made her a national hit with many millions of viewers.

Two years later, her astute business sense became evident, as she bought the rights to her own show, set up a production company (Harpo – Oprah backwards), and build a $20m studio in Chicago. After Mary Pickford and Lucille Ball, Winfrey was the third woman to own a major US studio. Hwer business life continued and continues to be a huge success, making her a multi-billionaire.

What Business Lessons can we Learn from Oprah Winfrey?

It is easy to think of Winfrey as a media celebrity: her TV chat show is the foundation of her business empire and she has 22 credits as an actress. But she is producer on half as many again films and TV shows and she is owner of a huge portfolio of media assets including TV networks, production companies, and magazines.

I think there are three principal lessons that any business person or manager can learn from her:

  1. The value of sheer grit and determination. Yes, Oprah surely has talent, but to triumph over the hardships she faced, Winfrey needed hard work and persistence. Throughout her life, she struggled with setbacks, but has always pushed forward.
  2. Recognise your strongest assets, and take control of them. From her earliest exploitation of her talents as a speaker when she went to a local radio station to collect a prize for winning the Miss Black Tennessee beauty pageant, Winfrey has spotted her opportunities well and taken control. The best example is her decision to buy out the rights to her TV show and become its producer. This was a big risk and most hosts are content to stay just that: Winfrey was not. This is what made her a media mogul, rather than a media celebrity.
  3. When rivals start to challenge you, shift ground to differentiate yourself. In the early 1990s, the Oprah Winfrey Show was a huge success and therefore, inevitably, widely copied by other producers. Everyone was interviewing anyone with a tale of woe, and the more salacious the better. Amid this race to the tabloid bottom, Winfrey took a step upwards. She started to produce uplifting shows that she started to call ‘change your life TV’. Instead of wallowing in people’s misery, she offered audiences a choice of improvement… which they loved. In transforming her show, she charted her way to where she sits now as a celebrity: a champion for highbrow self-help (and, to be fair, some practitioners offering advice that is less than empirically validated).

In 2003, Michael Moore wrote that Oprah should run for US President. That would be a shift, and it would take grit too. Will she do it?

Hear Oprah Winfrey in her own words

For more about her career and her advice to listen to your instincts, here is an interview (c.65 min) she gave at Stanford’s Business School in 2014.

 

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Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: In the Flow

Pronunciation: Me-high Chick-sent-me-high-ee

 

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a US psychologist at forefront of the field of positive psychology; the study of human strengths and how we can have a happy, flourishing life.

His research into flow states has made a famous figure among specialists and interested general readers alike, with several books including his two best-sellers: Flow: The Psychology of Optimum Experience and Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

 

Brief Biography

Csikszentmihalyi was born to a Hungarian family in a city long disputed by Hungary, Italy and Croatia – now called Rijeka and part of Croatia; it was, at the time of his birth in 1934 a part of Italy, named Fiume. He emigrated to the United States at the age of 22, and got a BA and PhD from the University of Chicago, going on to become a a professor and chairman of the Department of Psychology. He is the founder and a co-director of the Quality of Life Research Center – a non-profit research institute that studies positive psychology.

Flow, in a Nutshell

Csikszentmihalyi’s signature research was into Flow States – those states of mind when we are totally absorbed in an activity, and can therefore want nothing else in the world, at that time, than to continue uninterrupted. He describes these Flow States as the optimum states for a human being, and catalogues the three conditions under which they arise:

  1. The task has a clear and worthwhile goal
  2. The task is sufficiently challenging to stretch us to our limits (and maybe a little beyond) but not so challenging for us that we find ourselves anxious and hyper-alert for failure
  3. The task offers constant feedback on our progress and performance levels

For more details on Flow, see our earlier blog: Flow and Performance Management.

Contribution to Management Thinking

It would be easy to write a long blog about Csikszentmihalyi’s contributions to positive psychology, but from a management perspective, I want to focus on his work on creativity, in documented in his book: Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention.

In the book, he relates interviews with over 90 creative people from many fields of the arts, sciences and humanities. From those, he distils a great many lessons. For me, one of the simplest is most valuable, his five steps to creativity:

  1. Preparation
    Becoming immersed in a problem that is interesting and arouses curiosity.
  2. Incubation
    Ideas churn around at an unconsciousness level.
  3. Insight
    The “Aha!” moment when the answers you reach unconsciously emerge into consciousness.
  4. Evaluation
    Evaluating the insight to test if it is valuable and worth pursuing.
  5. Elaboration
    Translating the insight into a workable solution – Edison’s ’99 per cent perspiration’.

This to me explains why we seem to get our best ideas when out walking, sipping a coffee, or in a shower. These are not the times when we solve our problems: they are the times when our conscious mind is sufficiently unoccupied to notice the answers that our unconscious has developed.

What does this mean for managers?

If you want creative thinking from your team, I think it tells us four things:

  1. You need to give people time to understand and research the problem, making it as interesting and relevant to them as you can.
  2. You need to let people go away and mull, allowing a reasonable period for ideas to incubate.
  3. You need to bring people back together with no distractions and pressures, so that the ideas can naturally emerge.
  4. You need to create separate stages of your process for evaluating the solutions and then for implemental thinking, when you hone the preferred solution into a workable plan.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi at TED

Here is an excellent video from 2004 of the man himself…

[ted id=366]

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Ingvar Kamprad: Resilience, Thrift and Buns

Ingvar Kamprad is not a familiar name… but his initials, and those of the farm and village where he grew up, are. Ingvar Kamprad grew upon  the family farm, Elmtaryd, near the  village of Agunnaryd. And in 1943, the company he started at the age of 17, which sold a random mixture of goods by local delivery and, later, by mail order, was called IKEA.

Ingvar Kamprad

 

The story of how Kamprad went from pens and picture frames moving around locally on a milk van, to one of the richest people on the planet is instructive: not just for entrepreneurs, but for anyone who manages a part of an organisation.

Quick Biography

Kamprad was born on the family farm in 1926, in the southern Swedish province of Småland. His first retail goods were matches, which he resold to his neighbours when he was five. He moved on to catching local fish and picking local lingonberries, and sending them by bus to his buyer. He founded IKEA in 1943 while working at a full time job, and it was only in 1946, when he completed his national service, that he saw the opportunity to move IKEA towards being solely a furniture retailer.

By the 1970s, IKEA had stores across Europe, and by the end of the century, it was in 30 countries, with a mailing list for its famous fat catalogue, of 100 million. Now retired and a tax exile in Switzerland, Kamprad eats modestly, flies economy, and haggles with market traders.

It would be wrong to ignore what Kamprad has described as “The Greatest Mistake of My Life” – his early association with Swedish pro-Nazi fascists. The extent of his involvement and the degree of his remorse is something for historians and Kamprad to consider. In 2001, IKEA opened for business in Israel.

Five Defining Ideas

In reading a story of Kamprad’s life, I have spotted five defining ideas that seem to me to have made all of the difference. None of them is exclusive to the retail industry, much less to the furniture trade. If only my father (a near contemporary of Kamprad’s and also in the furniture trade)… But then, we are who we are, and I wouldn’t swap for a moment.

Principle 1: Customer’s Shoes

IKEA is famous, among other things, for its cafes. On the first day of opening his first furniture warehouse, Kamprad promised every customer coffee and a bun. To get there, they would have to travel a long way, in harsh, cold weather conditions. When he opened the door on that morning, there were over 1,000 people patiently waiting.

Principle 2: Thrift

IKEA is also famous for self-assembly, self-service, and minimal packaging. Each of these is designed to reduce costs to IKEA and so to their customers. Kamprad was always, and still remains, conscious of every last Krona, Euro, Pound or Swiss Franc.

Principle 3: Resilience

In the 1950s, Kamprad’s competitors became jealous of IKEA’s growing success. They struck back with unsavoury tactics that would have crushed a less determined person. They pressured suppliers to not serve IKEA, and they got the company banned from trade fairs. Kamprad’s resilience and ingenuity turned these potentially fatal setbacks into triumphs: he started to design and build his own furniture, owning the whole supply chain, and he bought his own exhibition centres.

Principle 4: Brand Identity

It is easy to think of the distinctive blue and yellow colours and block capital font of the IKEA logo as its brand. Kamprad did not. He said that the product range was the company’s identity. And I think he was right. Whether it is the distinctive simplicity of the Billy bookcase or the cutesy accessories like the Spöka nightlight, we recognise IKEA products whenever we go visiting.

Principle 5: Innovation

IKEA has not stood still. Not only is their product range frequently refreshed and the showrooms re-dressed often, but IKEA has constantly innovated in the way it goes to market and delivers its services.

 

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Same Job: New Job

Last week we looked at some tips if you want a new job.  But what if you want to stay in your current job, but want it to feel like a new job?

If only there were some way to revitalise your current job.  Well maybe there is.  And it all starts with the Flower Model of Job Satisfaction.

Flower Model

Lets take each petal at a time and see what you can do to boost your job satisfaction.  Effective action on two or three of these could transform the way you feel about your current job.

Motivation

What is it that really motivates you in your work?  David McClelland’s theory of ‘Motivational Needs’ can help you here: You may be motivated by:

The Need for Power: a desire to be in control – of yourself, yes, and others maybe. Certainly you will look for respect.

The Need for Affiliation:  a desire to be part of a team and to relate to other people, working together and being recognised for your contributions.

The Need for Achievement: a desire to do things, do them well, see results and sense progress.

Whatever you discover motivates you, look for ways to get more of it in the balance of your work.

Effectiveness

If getting things done and making a difference matters to you, then look for ways to take a more strategic perspective on your work.  What choices and decisions have you been pretending you can’t make?  It is time to be more precise in what you choose to do, and to seek more responsibility for making a difference.  So start with ‘what is the purpose of my job?’  and work towards focusing more on that and less on the trivia.

Creativity

Get involved in projects, take part in change, review how you do things or what else your organisation could do to serve your clients or customers.  Take time out to think, experiment and play.

Enjoyment

Start to look for the fun in the things you do day-to-day: maybe a robust argument about the next marketing campaign, perhaps a chance to design a new window display, possibly a decision to learn new techniques that will make you better at your job.  With the right attitude, discussion, design and learning are all fun – and so is just about anything.

Efficiency

Focus on one thing and look at how you can do it as well and efficiently as you possibly can.  Flow states are the optimum state of pleasure for humans. We reach them when we stretch ourselves to the limit of our capability, so transform a dull repetitive task to a striving for efficiency and not only will you free up time for creativity or relationships or enjoyment, but you will have more pleasure doing the task.

Relationships

The average worker spends more of their waking hours with work colleagues than they do with their family.  So make the most of it.  Look for new ways to enjoy the company of your colleagues – or look for new colleagues within your organisation whose company you can better enjoy.

Please Note:  This is in no way a recommendation to try out an inappropriate workplace relationship.  Far more often than not, it will end badly and make things a whole lot worse!

Management Pocketbooks you may enjoy

The Positive Mental Attitude Pocketbook will give you a heap of hints how to transform your attitude to a job you are starting to tire of.

The Management Models Pocketbook has a chapter on David McClelland’s model of motivational needs.

The Improving Efficiency Pocketbook will give you a load of ideas for… improving efficiency.

The Working Relationships Pocketbook will..  well, you get the idea.

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Who is getting in your way?

Do you ever find yourself held back by doubt about your capabilities?  Have you ever known the right thing to do, with absolute certainty, but lacked the courage to suppress the voice of caution in your head?  Did you ever want to get on with things but find yourself over-analysing every detail – almost against your will?

Me too.

Split Personality

It is almost as if there are two people inside your head, competing for control: an inner you, who knows the truth, and some sort of gate-keeper, trying to protect you from disappointment; even harm.

Timothy Gallwey has names for these two characters: Self 1 and Self 2.

Self 1 and Self 2

Self 1 is the critical argumentative voice in your head, which is giving instructions, offering warnings, and expressing doubts to Self 2, the inner you.  Self 1 is the interference that stops you from achieving your true potential.  There are other sources of interference, but Gallwey sums his whole attitude to coaching up in a simple equation:

Performance = potential – interference

The Father of Modern Coaching

Timothy GallweyI regard Gallwey as the originator of our modern ideas of coaching: be it management, executive, performance, life or any other form.  It was he who took coaching out of the sports context and gave a really solid base to some of the ideas that now dominate coaching.

Overcoming Self 1

Self 1 is a know-it-all who does not trust Self 2 and therefore tries to control it. Self 2 represents all that we are and all that we can be – our present and future capabilities, our unlimited potential.  Our best performance comes when we can quiet Self 1 and let Self 2 take control. Self 1 distorts our perception and interferes with our results.

Based on his observations that “should” and “shouldn’t” instructions get in the way of learning, and that learning takes place within the learner, Gallwey developed three principles for coaching.

  1. Non-judgemental awareness is curative
    The clearer your perception is, the better you can adapt yourself to the situation.  The role of a coach is to raise our awareness, and to help us to perceive without judging.
  2. Trust Self 2
    Your intuition is powerful, and your potential is immense.  The coach’s role is to help us to listen to Self 2 and hear its wisdom.
  3. Leave learning choices to the learner
    The fundamental difference between coaching and other forms of learning support like mentoring, training or teaching, is that the coach will help you to find your own solutions, rather than give solutions to you.

How can you get Self 1 out of your way?

All that Self 1 is, is a voice in your head.  It may sound simplistic, but you need to pay more more attention to Self 2.  Teach Self 2 to be more assertive and listen to it more carefully.  Find counter arguments to Self 1’s assertions and demand a higher standard of proof, when all Self 1 does is criticise.

Management Pocketbooks you might like

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