3 Ways to Spot a Liar

3 Ways to Spot a Liar:
A new study out of Harvard offers advice on spotting a liar and they're not what you see in the movies.
It would be nice if every job candidate, negotiating partner, and potential supplier told the truth. But here in the real world, being in business means separating spin from reality.
Police shows and folk wisdom offer suggestions, but these commonly held "tells" aren't useful for spotting deception. For starters, liars aren't always so fidgety. But just because Hollywood gets it wrong wrong doesn't mean that you should.
A new study from the Harvard Business School and University of Madison, Wisconsin, offers some insight on the practice. Researchers asked study participants to play a commonly-used game in economics research in which one person was given a sum of money and asked to decide how much to share with another player. The person on the receiving end could either accept or reject the money if they felt it was unfair, in which case both players got nothing.
For this study, the experimenters tweaked the game to create an opportunity wherein players could lie. The players receiving offers weren't told what their partner had, but were allowed to chat with that player before starting the game. During this time, the researchers determined, the moneyed player would have an opportunity to fib.
In the end, 30 percent of the players either flat-out lied about how much money they had or tried to avoid having the conversation. So could the researchers tell they were lying? Working Knowledge points out three examples:
They talked a lot. "Bald-faced liars tended to use many more words during the ultimatum game than did truth tellers, presumably in an attempt to win over suspicious receivers," Working Knowledge noted. "Just like Pinocchio's nose, the number of words grew along with the lie," Van Sol said. Liars also used more complex sentences than truth-tellers.
They sweared more. Deceptive players swore more frequently than truthful players, the researchers found, particularly when their opposite number voiced doubts about their honesty. "We think this may be due to the fact that it takes a lot of cognitive energy to lie," said one researcher. "Using so much of your brain to lie may make it hard to monitor yourself in other areas."
They avoided "I" statements. No one wants to admit they're behaving unethically, so they'll often shy away from "I" statements and use third-person pronouns like "he" and "she" instead. "This is a way of distancing themselves from and avoiding ownership of the lie," one researcher noted.
As it turns out, lying by ommission is not a good strategy. Bald-faced lies were far more convincing, though the researchers cautioned there are no definitive red flags for dealing with liars.
"It would be a mistake to take the findings as gospel and apply them too strictly," said research collaborator Deepak Malhotra. "Rather, the factors we find to be associated with lies and deception are perhaps most useful as warning signs that should simply prompt greater vigilance and further investigation ..."
Are you good at spotting liars, and if so, what tricks do you use?

Your Company is Great. Your Name Stinks. Now What?

Your Company is Great. Your Name Stinks. Now What?:
Your company name is less important than it's cracked up to be.
A great company name is a wonderful asset.

The word “Twitter” is memorable, fun to say, and conjures images of young birds chirping away to one another in their nest. It’s perfect for a start-up devoted to providing a platform for short 140-character updates to the world.

DropBox is easy to spell and says what it does. Perfect.

DreamWorks is inspiring.

But what if you have the perfect company name and can’t register (or can’t afford to buy) the URL? What if you’ve been in business for a while and you're stuck with a lousy name? Should you change it?

No.

A name, like a logo, is virtually worthless until you start making it mean something to your target audience.

Great names are made, not born.

No one likes being a Virgin, but Richard Branson has made us happy to buy from one.

An apple is a piece of fruit. You’re supposed to eat one a day but I don’t always remember. It happens to also be the name of one of the world’s most valuable companies, but it’s not the name that made it so. It’s what Apple did to define what the company would stand for in the mind of the customer that made it valuable.

Mother is the name of the U.K.’s largest independent advertising agency, and with 400 employees spread across offices in London, New York and Buenos Aires, they’re a big success. If you’ve downed a Stella Artois in the last few years, you may have been seduced by an ad created by Mother. You could argue that everyone has a soft spot for his or her mom, but beyond that, the company name Mother is worthless. It’s just a word that now happens to mean something special to Chief Marketing Officers.

IBM stands for International Business Machines, which is about as boring as you can get. IBM is a valuable company today because of the trust the IBM name instills in CEOs and CTOs who outsource their service contracts to Big Blue - nothing to do with a fancy name.

Wal-Mart, one of the world’s most valuable companies, is a mash-up of the plain vanilla surname Walton and the ugly, unimaginative “Mart” suffix.

Phil Knight changed his company name from “Blue Ribbon Sports” to Nike back in 1971. Blue Ribbon Sports is a truly awful name, but unless you’re into Greek mythology and happen to know your goddesses by heart, Nike is not much better. It’s four little nothing letters that Knight & Co. have made to mean something -- along with the swoosh logo they had created for $35.

Google used to be called “BackRub” because the platform used backlinks to verify the influence of a site. Larry Page and Sergey Brin then changed the name to Google, which originated from misspelling the word “googol.” Only geeks know googol is math speak for the digit one followed by one hundred zeros. So stop obsessing over your moniker. The name of one of the world’s most valuable companies is a typo.

Tiny deposits on the brain

Every time you google something and find what you’re after, Google makes a tiny subconscious deposit on your brain that says, “Hey, I found what I was looking for. I like those guys over at Google.” The Nike brand wasn’t built on a $35 logo and a four-letter word. It was the advertising campaign “Just Do It” that inspired the competitor in all of us and made us fall in love with the company behind the name.

A great company name might add value to your business, but having a crappy moniker is not a death knell. What drives your value are customers who seek out your brand -- not because of your name, but because of what it means to them.

5 Ways To Get the Most From Your Ad Agency

5 Ways To Get the Most From Your Ad Agency:
Hiring an ad agency is a big investment for a company. An ad agency insider explains how to get the most out of that investment.
There’s a cynical saying in the advertising business that clients get the work that they deserve. Derisive? Absolutely. Accurate? Unfortunately, sometimes…yes.

Let’s put our cards on the table. Overused though it its, the word “partnership” gets at the core of what makes a successful client-agency relationship. It takes two parties, collaborating and conspiring together to create bold, smart work that makes the cash register ring.

As an agency owner who has worked with dozens of clients and as a brand steward who has hired more than a handful of agencies on behalf of clients over the years, I’ve seen more than my fair of client-agency relationships, at every point along the affinity spectrum. As such, here are five ways that you can get the most from your advertising, digital, public-relations or marketing agency.

1. Be thoughtful.
Whether you’re thinking about a major new campaign or talking about a minor tactical execution, before you pick up the phone or send out an email, ask yourself: What do we really want? And need?
Don’t focus just on “what you seek to make." Rather, spend time truly contemplating what you’re seeking to accomplish, with what funding, with what audience, in what timeframe. Find different ways to define the problem that you’re seeking to solve (or opportunity to exploit) in terms of how you frame it overall as well as how it will be measured. Without a doubt, these are hard questions. But bear in mind that you're fundamentally defining the box in which all future conversations will be held, so take the time to consider the ideal way to start the conversation to get the richest thinking in the areas that can lead to the biggest wins for you and your brand.

2. Be patient.
Great advertising takes time. To the extent that you are able, plan the work well in advance so that both parties can comfortably work the plan. Remember that you are making art--art that fuels commerce, yes--but art, nonetheless. And great art is best served by time, imagination and plenty of room for possibilities.

3. Be open.
So yes, we’re making art. Which can be hard. And scary, as it is filled with a myriad of uncertainties and things that don’t fit tidily into a spreadsheet. Even with the most rigorous and thorough planning process, there comes a time when we enter into a world where objectivity leaves the room and subjectivity plops itself comfortably into the recliner.

Our best work happens with clients who were comfortable staying open in these spaces. Who are not afraid to spend time listening to, playing with, and trying on truly big ideas. So ask your agency to dig deep. To spend time with you. To explain, to persuade, to give a strong point of view. You’re paying them for their opinion. And when you do, work hard to stay open. No one ever talked about the “safe option” around the proverbial water cooler, did they?

4. Be consistent.
It goes without saying, but it’s hard to hit a target when it’s constantly moving. (And if it is moving, it’s always helpful for everyone to mutually acknowledge the aforementioned movement.) We get it. Things change. Every organization has its own dynamics that are constantly swirling and shifting. No one tries to be inconsistent. That said, prepare your agency for what lies ahead. If you keep them outside of the “circle of trust,” it’s hard for them to give you good counsel. And keeping everyone on the same page means you will spend less, get more, and both parties will feel better about the deliverables and results alike.

5. Never underestimate the power of cheesecake.
Yes, you read that right. At the risk of being inelegant: Say “thank you.” Appreciate good and hard work when you receive it. Yes, we are being paid a fair and honest wage for our work. But people are people, you know the drill. After the launch of a major campaign years ago, a client sent cheesecake as a thank you to our team. The campaign? Most successful in company history. The relationship? One of our best ever, to this day.

If we’re doing our job right, both clients and their agency partners want the same things: Dynamic, breakthrough work that fuels brand equity and sparks short-term sales alike and a process that is efficient, effective and enjoyable, if not downright fun. It's a commonsense approach that, frankly, isn’t all that common any more.

Randi Zuckerberg on Her Next Act

Randi Zuckerberg on Her Next Act:
The ex-Facebook executive and TV producer explains her plan to shake up the content business--and make her own mark on the Web.
The name Randi Zuckerberg might conjure visions of nepotism, but the Facebook founder's sister is doing her best to carve out her own space on the Web--and elsewhere.
Speaking with The Financial Times' Emily Steel Wednesday during the Internet Week conference, Zuckerberg spoke about everything from from curated content and distribution to what she playfully dubbed "tech-life balance."
When asked what compelled her to launch Zuckerberg Media, her latest foray into the online video space, Zuckerberg replied, "When I looked around at the landscape, I saw you have all these companies investing more in original content, but there were very few places for makers, for content creators."
The company, which she called her second start-up after newborn son Asher, is meant to function as a Hollywood studio for Web-produced films.
"The Bay Area has a great content history--Pixar, Lucas Film," she noted, but "getting data and insights is becoming more important to creating great content, and you have to know your audience."
It's a perspective that Zuckerberg surely picked up at Facebook, where she created and ran the social network's marketing campaigns. Specifically, she says, she got a good idea of "what a TV network built on social media might look like" when she "commandeered a broom closet" and started interviewing engineers right on the spot.
The Web series took off, and "the next day, Katy Perry called asking if she could announce her tour on Facebook Live," said Zuckerberg. Soon she was getting calls from other celebs--including President Barack Obama, who asked to host a town hall on Facebook. "That was the moment I thought, 'Someone else is going to do this. Why shouldn't it be me?'"
Flash forward three years, and Zuckerberg is busy trying to make her mark on the content business. She's been nominated for an Emmy for her 2010 coverage of the mid-term elections on Facebook Live. She produced a Bravo show called "Start-Ups: Silicon Valley," though it was panned by critics and cancelled after one season due to low viewership. Now, she says, she's on a mission to serve up quality, curated content that people will actually want to watch online.
"There is so much noise, there's so much content," she said. "You need to give someone that curator's stamp of approval," especially when it comes to TV. That medium "is still the main cultural driver of influence in this country and that stamp is important."
Recalling her experience producing "Start-Ups" she added, "You can't really just walk into a room in Hollywood and say, 'I make videos for the Web, pay attention to me!' Hollywood wants to see credibility."

Apply to attend the IGNITE Enterprise and Employability Training in Lagos, Nigeria

Apply to attend the IGNITE Enterprise and Employability Training in Lagos, Nigeria: Applications open
The After school Graduate Development Centre (AGDC) in collaboration with the Lagos State Government has launched the Ignite Enterprise and Employability Project to proffer a lasting solution to youth unemployment. The initiative will create an enabling environment which ignites an enterprise culture and optimal professional performance amongst youth in Lagos ...

Related posts:

1. Call for Application: Free Human Rights Training for Young Professionals
2. Register to attend DARC’s Employability and Soft Skills Training in Nigeria
3. Apply to attend Bali Youth Multistakeholders Meeting on the Post- 2015 Development Agenda

How to Lead Great Leaders

How to Lead Great Leaders:
Leading has its challenges, but when your followers are powerful leaders you need to step up your game. Here are six helpful tips.
As a boss or team leader, you have to lead people every day. It makes life easier when you have established authority and your followers are generally compliant. But someday you may find yourself leading powerful leaders, perhaps for a board meeting, a nonprofit, or even a high-level management team. These focused and dynamic people create completely different challenges for a facilitator.
This was my exact challenge this week in London. I was honored to moderate a panel for the G8 Young Summit (G8YS) and was quickly recruited to help facilitate 35 young leaders to create an important, detailed communiqué for the heads of state from G8 countries, all in 24 hours. These young leaders, from more than 14 countries, many of whom had never before met, were described at the event by keynote Matthew Bishop of the Economist as the people who will control the world in 2030. They are all strong-willed, successful, passionate entrepreneurs with healthy egos, varied points of view, and independent agendas.
I am happy to say that after an intense and spirited discussion we achieved our goal, but only because of agile facilitation practices, some of which I knew well and some of which I had to improvise along the way.
1. Prepare
At G8YS, much of the attendee list was in flux until the day we started, so we had to work on the fly. If you are blessed with advance time, give attendees plenty of information to ready them for the discussion. Use subject matter experts to help frame the conversation in writing, preferably days in advance. Send the attendees a bulleted e-mail with key points and objectives so you don't waste valuable meeting time while preparing them for discussion.
2. Manage Expectations
Make sure your attendees are absolutely clear and aligned on both the objectives and the deliverables. Strong leaders will likely have varied views of the level of depth and detail required in a solution or document. Your job is to make sure you are all working toward the same goal. You also have to make sure the deliverables can be completed within the available timeframe or you will take the blame. Take a little extra time initially to determine a clear and appropriate scope. Then constantly remind everyone in case they stray to their own standards.
3. Keep Everyone Equal
In a free discussion, some people will dominate and others will hang back, letting others talk. Your job is to bring everyone's ideas to the forefront so all can be heard. When soliciting input, start by having everyone take a few minutes to jot down specific ideas on paper. Give them tight structure, such as asking for only two or three responses. If there is time, each person can read his or her notes. Or if consensus is close, simply vote with hands and ask if anything was missed. Don't be afraid to cut someone off if they are hogging the conversation. They might think you are a little rude and bossy, but the other people at the session will appreciate you keeping time and input in balance.
4. Maintain Clear Priorities
Passionate people will follow their passion especially when it's coming out of their mouth. Strong advocates can derail a discussion by constantly dragging it back to their own agendas. Your job is to keep the focus on the objectives and deliverables. Write down the discussion focus at the top of the whiteboard so you can simply point to it when correcting a digression. Guide the group toward expansive thinking early and then tighten the boundaries to refine and get to consensus. You have to own the conversation or your leaders will push you aside and take it their own direction.
5. Step Out of Situational Conflict
It's not your job to make people play nice. Spirited debate and healthy conflict can add to the depth of the result. When flare-ups happen, let them go, at least for a bit. Otherwise your participants will feel stifled or unresolved. Let them express enough to verify they have been heard without overusing the time required to complete your task. Of course, recognize that strong advocates may never feel fully heard if the group agrees to go a different way. In this case, make sure that you acknowledge the issue and focus the advocate on the need to meet objectives and deliverables within time constraints.
6. Be Firm but Gracious
When facilitating leaders you have to show strength and self-confidence. You may or may not have time to build trust, but you still have a job to do and you are accountable for completing the task. Many in the group may feel they could do better and they indeed may be right, but this is your session and you must take absolute ownership even if it means politely rejecting the people you admire and respect. As long as you keep a sense of humor and advocate for the priority, most leaders will respect your approach within the context of a difficult challenge. Make sure at the end you acknowledge the participation and patience of each member of your group. Show appreciation and grace; voice your pride in the successful accomplishment of the team deliverables.
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4 Reasons to Become a Mentor

4 Reasons to Become a Mentor:
No one says you have to help out a fledgling fellow entrepreneur once you've found success. But there are some pretty compelling reasons to do so.
One of the enduring mysteries of human nature is why a very successful business person would give away his time to help an up-and-comer. After all, given the mentor’s success, he easily could charge the protégé $500 an hour for the valuable advice and contacts that he has pulled together during his career.
And yet mentoring is a widely accepted practice. To figure out why, I spoke with Mike Bergelson, CEO of Everwise, a service that connects mentors and protégées. It’s a mentoring company that benefits from being near a key mentor. Bergelson--who started Audium, a software company in New York City that Cisco acquired in 2006--ended up moving to California as a Cisco executive.
He left Cisco and pulled together the team from the software start-up to work on business ideas. But Everwise did not gel until 2012 when Bergelson discussed these ideas with Maynard Webb, his mentor, whose Webb Investment Network (WIN) offers “young entrepreneurs seed capital, mentorship, and on-demand access to experts.”
Thanks to his conversations with Webb, Bergelson decided to focus solely on mentoring. As he explained, “Maynard asked questions that made me realize that I had a passion for creating a way for corporate protégés to find mentors and that addressing that need could be a big opportunity.”
Bergelson knew first-hand how commonly big companies miss the opportunity to match protégés with mentors. That’s because when he was working for one of those big companies, he was given the name of his mentor. That person never responded to Bergelson’s email suggesting a meeting. A few weeks later, the mentor had quit and the company never gave Bergelson another.
Still, Bergelson believes mentoring is a great way for big companies like his former employer to develop talent. A study by a former Sun Microsystems executive found that employees who received mentoring were five times more likely to be promoted. And a study of successful people like Warren Buffett found that the second most important reason they believe they’ve been successful is great mentors (Buffett’s was Benjamin Graham).
Everwise has developed an algorithm that has contributed to a “96 percent match satisfaction rate.” Assuming that’s true, Bergelson should be an authority on why people agree to serve as mentors. Here are his four top reasons.
1. Give Back
Successful people I have interviewed often say that they were helped early in their career by someone who had achieved greatness. Now they believe that they should “pay it forward.”
But why do they feel that way? Some feel that they are repaying a debt to future generations; others believe that if their advice helps a younger person, it will make a little piece of them immortal; still others see mentoring as going back in a time machine and giving a younger version of themselves the advice that they wish they had received.
This last reason highlights the importance of matching the right mentor and protégé. After all, if a mentor finds a young person with similar life experiences--such as emigrating from Chile or competing in triathlons--it will strengthen the feeling of giving back to a younger version of herself.
2. Learn From Process
Many mentors claim that they learn by teaching. This observation brings to mind the Seinfeld episode about mentoring. In case you missed it, George Costanza needs to learn about risk management so he asks his protégé to record herself reading the book to him. (Naturally, Costanza took the idea of learning from mentoring and turning it on its head.)
Bergelson said that many mentors learn through the process of teaching others and they find that mentoring makes them better leaders. He said that 94 percent of mentors agree to repeat their experience because they “take away a lot from the process.”
3. Meet New People
Mentors also like the idea of meeting new people whom they can add to their “I knew when” list. After all, who doesn’t like the idea of bragging to associates that they knew [currently famous person X] before they became successful?
For mentors with this motive, there is also a potential financial benefit. The protégé might offer the mentor an opportunity to invest in an early-stage venture. And if that happens, the mentor may not only get bragging rights but a big slug of cash when he sells stock in the now successful venture.
4. Get Exposed to New Ideas
Protégés also expose mentors to new ideas. For example, the protégé might discuss how her company is using a new approach to innovation, pricing, or customer service. Mentors may be able to apply some of these best practices to their own activities.
People are willing to mentor for free because they already have--in the context of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs--met their physiological and safety needs and now seek esteem and self-actualization. Mentoring is a way to get there.