Posts in category: Articles

Article originally published in the American City Business Journals on January 30, 2018

Paul R. Staley, former president and CEO of PQ Corp., passed away on Jan. 5 at the age of 88. I dedicate this article to his memory and the profound influence he had on my thinking about challenging my paradigms and pushing technology forward.

Effective leaders teach others to think out of the box. This was Paul Staley. I look back to an article I wrote in August 2014 headlined “Breaking paradigms to achieve breakthrough results” in which I describe how Staley inspired me and my team to advance the state of the art of our manufacturing technology with the construction and operation of a new plant. What Staley taught us has influenced me from that time forward.

On this occasion, I would like to offer here several excerpts from that earlier article:

Breaking paradigms and thinking “out of the box” is crucial for achieving breakthrough results. As a business unit general manager, I was taught this lesson by the CEO of our company, Paul Staley, who challenged the design of a micro-plant my business unit was trying to economically justify. The return on investment was initially below the hurdle rate for this type of project.

Strategically, we wanted to build the plant because it would open a new geography in a growing market for the company and protect that market from the entry of a competitor, but we needed a higher return on investment to get the board’s approval. We didn’t want to justify the plant just on a strategic basis, but on an economic basis as well.

When I told Staley that the internal rate of return of the project was insufficient to present to the board, he asked that every aspect of the plant design be reviewed with the goal of building the plant at a lower capital cost and running it at a lower operating cost.

This type of plant would normally be staffed by three people on a one-shift operation, led by a plant manager. Staley asked if it would be possible to design the plant to operate with a two-shift self-managed crew without a plant manager — one person on the first shift and one on the second shift, something that had never been done before. My response was, “So, you want a more-efficient plant built at lower capital cost run by fewer people and with no management? These objectives are mutually exclusive!” Staley just smiled and said, “Break your paradigms. I know you and your team can do this.”

Working with our engineering and plant-operations team, we broke every paradigm we ever had about this type of plant. Through brainstorming, out-of-the-box thinking and open dialogue, we reoriented equipment and scaled down the capacity of the plant to lower the initial capital investment but left it expandable if and when the demand justified additional capacity. We raised the qualifications of the operators hired to run the plant, ensuring they had the capability to self-manage.

There was much skepticism within the company that the plant could run with a self-managing crew of only two people. For political reasons, I added the cost of a third person to the cash-flow projections. A third person was added a few years later after demand grew, requiring operation on the third shift.

After the plant design was revised and staffing reduced, the return on investment rose significantly, and we received board approval to build the plant. Because of its new design and the way it operated, it was the lowest cost plant of its type in the industry and became our company’s model for future plants.

A competitor chose not to enter the geography because of our plant’s low-cost operation; they couldn’t match its low costs.

A few years later, we built a replica of the plant to serve another geographic market. We operated the plant at even lower cost with one individual on the day shift and a local retiree who filled in when the individual took vacation or a sick day.

How do you create a paradigm-breaking mindset so it becomes part of the culture of your organization? I believe you need a catalyst and an initiative where existing paradigms can be challenged. For us, Staley served as that catalyst, and the initiative was the need for a new lower-cost design and staffing plan for this new plant.

You also need an organizational culture where the opinions of all employees on how to achieve break-through improvements are valued, and where the status quo can be questioned. The organization that accomplishes this will build competitive advantage.

Rest in peace, Paul. Thank you for teaching me to break paradigms.

Stan Silverman is founder and CEO of Silverman Leadership. He is a speaker, advisor and nationally syndicated writer on leadership, entrepreneurship and corporate governance. Silverman earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering and an MBA degree from Drexel University. He is also an alumnus of the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School. He can be reached at Stan@SilvermanLeadership.com.

Article originally published in the American City Business Journals on January 23, 2018

Sunday, Jan. 28, marks the 32nd anniversary of the space shuttle Challenger disaster. On that date in 1986, the Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff due to a leak in one of the O-rings of the solid rocket booster, resulting in the death of all seven crew members and the loss of the shuttle.

On this occasion, I would like to look back to an article I wrote two years ago, on the 30th anniversary of the Challenger disaster, that emphasizes the importance for all leaders of surrounding themselves with and listening to independent thinkers who will help them face the brutal facts of reality.

The engineers at Morton Thiokol, the contractor responsible for the design of the solid rocket boosters, were concerned about the cold temperature on launch day and the effect the cold would have on the solid rocket booster O-rings. The O-rings were designed to operate at an ambient temperature of not less than 40 degrees Fahrenheit.

On the day of the launch, the ambient temperature was 30 degrees. Concerned about the brittleness of the O-rings, Thiokol told NASA that the launch needed to be postponed.

NASA objected to the recommendation to delay the launch. The launch had already been delayed a number of times for various reasons. One NASA manager is quoted as saying, “I am appalled by your recommendation.” Another NASA manager said, “My God, Thiokol, when do you want me to launch – next April?”

NASA made unrealistic launch frequency commitments to Congress to secure increased funding for the space program. Thiokol management, facing pressure from NASA, eventually acquiesced and agreed that the launch could proceed. The rest is history. The United States lost the Challenger and its crew due to the catastrophic failure of an O-ring.

On January 28, 2016, columnist Howard Berkes wrote an article for the NPR publication “The Two-Way” headlined “30 years after explosion, Challenger engineer still blames himself.” For his article, Berkes interviewed Morton Thiokol engineer Robert Ebeling, who told the story of how he and four other engineers did not want the Challenger to be launched due to cold weather conditions. In spite of their concern, NASA launched the shuttle anyway.

Ebeling told Berkes, “‘I was one of the few that was really close to the situation. Had they listened to me and wait[ed] for a weather change, it might have been a completely different outcome. … [NASA] had their mind set on going up and proving to the world they were right and they knew what they were doing. But they didn’t.’”

For the remainder of his life, Ebeling blamed himself for not being able to convince NASA to delay the Challenger launch. I had the privilege of speaking with Ebeling shortly after the 30th anniversary of the Challenger disaster. I told him that he and the other Thiokol engineers who warned against the launch were American heroes. Ebling passed away two weeks after my conversation with him.

Many times, a decision will come down to assessing the risks of various courses of action. When the possible result of a course of action is catastrophic even if the probability of it occurring is low, one should not take the risk. Unfortunately, the NASA decision makers who moved ahead with the Challenger launch did not think in these terms. They were more worried about their unrealistic launch schedule commitment to Congress.

Leaders need to create an environment and institutional culture that welcomes and encourages individuals to share their opinions. A courageous independent thinker should voice their opinion and try to convince everyone of the validity of the organization’s reality. The views of the independent thinker may not be ultimately adopted, but at a minimum, those views provide a different path, a path against which the majority opinion can be tested and either confirmed or changed. Under this type of process, the best decisions will emerge.

In the words of renowned Brazilian novelist, Paulo Coelho, “If you want to be successful, you must respect one rule: Never lie to yourself.” Leaders: Remember this when one of the independent thinkers on your staff reminds you to face the brutal facts of your reality.

Stan Silverman is founder and CEO of Silverman Leadership. He is a speaker, advisor and nationally syndicated writer on leadership, entrepreneurship and corporate governance. Silverman earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering and an MBA degree from Drexel University. He is also an alumnus of the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School. He can be reached at Stan@SilvermanLeadership.com.

Article originally published in the American City Business Journals on January 16, 2018

During his presidential campaign and throughout his first year in office, President Donald Trump has promised to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants, further toughen the already onerous immigrant vetting process and significantly restrict the number of new immigrants to be admitted to the United States.

On Jan. 11, at a White House meeting with both Republican and Democrat legislators to discuss a bipartisan DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) deal along with broader immigration reform, it was reported by a number of attendees that Trump commented, “Why are we having all these people from sh-thole countries come here,” insulting the people of El Salvador, Haiti and the countries of Africa.

It was reported that Trump also said we should bring in more immigrants from Norway and Asia because they would help the economy.

Both comments conger up inappropriate discriminatory imagery. A White House staffer did not deny that Trump made these comments.

A day later, after a firestorm of criticism from both Republicans and Democrats, Trump denied making the disparaging comment. He tweeted, “The language used by me at the DACA meeting was tough, but this was not the language used.”

Trump’s anti-immigrant comments further legitimize and give license to some Americans to openly express their prejudicial views of all immigrants, legal and undocumented. His comments also undermine the standing of the United States on the world stage, to our detriment. These comments, however, are what his political base wants to hear, however misguided.

Trump and those who support his policies are ignoring the economic importance of immigrants from all countries — those countries not so well off as well as those with a high standard of living and a highly educated population.

Some of the immigrants that Trump was referring to in his unfortunate comment harvest our vegetables, landscape our lawns, build our houses and are nannies for our children, all in the honorable pursuit of making a better life for themselves and their children, as many generations of immigrants have done before them. They buy goods and services, pay taxes, and have a positive impact on our economy.

Immigrants from less-developed countries populate many of our inner cities and bring needed economic life and vitality to areas long abandoned by factories and blue-collar residents. They start small businesses within their communities and create jobs.

Immigrants work long hours, are hungry for success and want to achieve the American dream. Many hope to send their children to college. They are no different than the millions of immigrants who have come before them and have built this county.

In an April 2013 article in Forbes magazine headlined “40% of the largest U.S. companies founded by immigrants or their children,” author Robert Lenzner writes that between 1995 and 2005, 25 percent of the high-tech companies founded during this period had at least one immigrant founder. These immigrant entrepreneurs did not all just come from countries like Norway. They also came from developing countries.

These entrepreneurs have created millions of jobs, improved our world competitiveness, changed how we live and put the U.S. on the forefront of the information technology industry. We should remember and appreciate their contributions every time we send or respond to an email or text message, access an app, take a photo with our cell phones, or use social media.

Andy Grove, founder and former chairman and CEO of Intel, was born in Hungary. Elon Musk, founder, chairman and CEO of Tesla, was born in South Africa. Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo, was born in Taiwan.

Steve Jobs, founder and former chairman and CEO of Apple, was the son of Syrian immigrants, and Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, was born in Russia. The current CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, was born in India, as was Google’s current CEO, Sundar Pichai.

I could go on and on. These are just the leaders of companies within the high-tech information industry. I could have listed many more immigrants who are the founders or the leaders of other companies within other industries important to our economy and our standard of living.

An article by writer Adam Bluestein in the February 2015 issue of Inc. magazine headlined “The most entrepreneurial group in America wasn’t born in America” points out that immigrants start more than 25 percent of new businesses in this country, even though they represent only 13 percent of the population. These immigrants create jobs, a top priority on Trump’s agenda.

When asked about Trump’s comment, Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), Speaker of the House of Representatives, said the remarks were “unfortunate” and “unhelpful.” He then spoke of how immigrants from Ireland, where his ancestors came from, were looked down upon at one time. Many job opportunities were closed to Irish immigrants.

Ryan proudly described how successive generations of his ancestors worked hard to make a better life for their families. Ryan said, “It is a beautiful story of America … and it is what makes this country so exceptional. It is a thing to celebrate. It is a big part of our strength, whether you are coming from Haiti … [or elsewhere].”

Presidents are supposed to bring people together, not tap latent prejudices that drive us apart. To the contrary of his signature campaign slogan, Trump is not making America great again by restricting immigrants from certain countries. He is doing just the opposite.

Stan Silverman is founder and CEO of Silverman Leadership. He is a speaker, advisor and nationally syndicated writer on leadership, entrepreneurship and corporate governance. Silverman earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering and an MBA degree from Drexel University. He is also an alumnus of the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School. He can be reached at Stan@SilvermanLeadership.com.

Article originally published in the Philadelphia Business Journal on January 9, 2018

Visit a college entrepreneurship fair, and you will interact with students developing the skills of a CEO.

This was my recent experience attending the two-day Startup Fest of the Charles D. Close School of Entrepreneurship at Drexel University, the first free-standing, degree-granting school of entrepreneurship in the United States.

Since the Close School of Entrepreneurship was founded five years ago, its faculty has taught some 3,000 students majoring in nearly every course of study from across the university.

At Startup Fest, students from throughout Drexel showcased the businesses they were building. These students are not only learning entrepreneurship skills, but also important skills as the leaders of their fledgling businesses.

These entrepreneurs are honing their elevator pitches, developing business strategies, choosing partners, hiring their first employees, building their teams, raising funds from investors, protecting their intellectual property, choosing channels of distribution and dealing with customers. They also are learning how to de-risk their decisions and manage a P&L statement. These are the skills and responsibilities of all CEOs.

I asked these entrepreneurs to describe the market they were aiming to penetrate, how they would compete with other companies currently in the market, and how they would differentiate their product or service so their business would attract customers. Asking, “Why will people want to buy from you” focuses entrepreneurs on the most important question that will determine the success or failure of their business.

Students starting businesses are learning to be leaders in an environment where their decisions have real consequences — much different than learning from case studies sitting in a classroom. Many graduates do not get the opportunity to lead people or experience these wide range of responsibilities until well into their careers.

Entrepreneurship training teaches you the importance of focus, perseverance and tenacity in pursuing a goal, getting out of your comfort zone, and how to pivot to another course of action when it appears you are proceeding down a dead end. It also teaches how to overcome or go around obstacles.

Future bosses may say “Don’t tell me it can’t be done. Find a way to do it.” You learn to exhaust all possibilities as an entrepreneur before deciding to pivot. One learns how to handle inevitable failure, and how to recover and try again. The adage “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new” is true. Mistakes are inevitable. What is important is what you have learned from them.

These students also gain a certain mindset and skills that are useful whether they start a business, work for a startup or work for an established company. A future boss will want to know what they have accomplished in their previous positions. Entrepreneurial skills and mindset will help differentiate them within their current company when going for a promotion or when applying for their next job at a different company.

Starting a business teaches students how to sell their ideas to others, both verbally and through graphical presentations, something all of us will be doing our entire careers, regardless of position within an organization. Entrepreneurship students get real-life feedback on whether their selling skills are effective and can adjust them based on feedback.

Entrepreneurs learn networking skills due to the numerous interactions they have with a variety of people. These skills are critical to career success. Future jobs are most likely come from one’s network, and the ability to effectively expand that network will help one land that next job.

My advice to all college students who someday want to have P&L responsibility and eventually become the CEO of a company: If you can obtain entrepreneurship training, do so. It will differentiate you among your peers, which will make you more attractive to future employers.

Stan Silverman is founder and CEO of Silverman Leadership. He is a speaker, advisor and nationally syndicated writer on leadership, entrepreneurship and corporate governance. Silverman earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering and an MBA degree from Drexel University. He is also an alumnus of the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School. He can be reached at Stan@SilvermanLeadership.com.

Article originally published in the American City Business Journals on December 19, 2017

People often share with me the real and perceived limitations they face in pursuing their goals. As we are about to enter 2018, I would like to share with you this look back at an article I wrote in December 2015 headlined “Advice for the New Year: Push through your self-perceived limitations“:

Why do people experience various degrees of success over the course of their careers? During my career, I have observed many successful people and those wanting to achieve success. There are those who succumb to their self-perceived limitations, and those who find a way to push through them.

The proverb “Whether you think you can or can’t, you’re right” is ascribed to Henry Ford. Your attitude and your ability to push through self-perceived limitations play key roles in how successful you will be.

A friend at my gym drove this home for me about 18 months ago. I had been doing assisted chin-ups on an exercise machine that uses counterweights because I believed I did not have sufficient upper-body strength to do a chin-up without them. My friend came up to me and said, “I know you can do chin-ups unassisted.”

I told her that I hadn’t done unassisted chin-ups since high school and I couldn’t do them now. She egged me on, challenging me to do just one. By now, a crowd was gathering, and I felt huge peer pressure to try to do one chin-up. I walked over to the machine without counterweights and, with my friends watching, nervously jumped up six inches and grabbed the chin-up bar. To my surprise, I was able to do two!

I never used the counterweight machine again. Over the subsequent three months, I pushed hard and worked my way up to three sets of 10 unassisted chin-ups. I learned a valuable lesson from my friend: You are only limited by your own self-perceived limitations. Thank you, Patti Morris!

Sometimes it takes a friend, colleague, coach or mentor to inspire you to the next level. When you move to that next level, you never look back – you only look forward. As leaders, our job is to inspire others around us – to help them move to that next level.

To me, one such individual is Seth Godin, the author of “The Icarus Deception,” who writes about Icarus, the character in Greek mythology who flies too high and too close to the sun. His wings melt off and he crashes into the sea.

Godin writes: “It is far more dangerous to fly too low than too high, even though it might feel safer to fly low. You settle for low expectations and small dreams, and guarantee yourself less than what you are capable of. By flying too low, you also shortchange not only yourself, but also those who depend on you, or might benefit from your work.”

People fly too low due to fear and self-perceived limitations. If you fly too low, you are not preparing yourself for a time that may come when your job or profession becomes obsolete and you must re-launch your career. So, during your career, be sure you don’t fly too low. Take risks and fly high, and if you crash, you will pick yourself up and fly again.

Get out of your comfort zone and take on new challenges. Albert Einstein once said, “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” You differentiate yourself among your peers by trying new things, sometimes failing, but moving on and continuing to try something new. This trait will help you land your next job. Employers hire those who are embrace change, rather than those who don’t.

The type of company at which you want to work values employees who are not afraid to innovate, embrace change and, yes, occasionally make mistakes and learn from them.

Your attitude, which is apparent to everyone you interface with, plays a significant role in your success. Be a person who sees a world of abundance and possibilities, not one who sees a world of limitations and scarcity. Push through self-perceived limitations. You never know what the future holds or where it will take you.

Stan Silverman is founder and CEO of Silverman Leadership. He is a speaker, advisor and nationally syndicated writer on leadership, entrepreneurship and corporate governance. Silverman earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering and an MBA degree from Drexel University. He is also an alumnus of the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School. He can be reached at Stan@SilvermanLeadership.com.

Article originally published in the American City Business Journals on December 12, 2017

There hasn’t been a day that’s gone by recently without sexual harassment accusations unfolding against a celebrity or government official. The most prominent people recently accused are NBC “Today” host Matt Lauer, actors Kevin Spacey and Danny Masterson, U.S. Senator Al Franken, U.S. Representative Trent Franks, and Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore.

NBC fired Lauer. Spacey and Masterson were fired by Netflix. Franken announced his intention to resign “in the coming weeks,” while Franks announced that he would resign from the House of Representatives immediately.

Moore, denying allegations of sexual misconduct that have been described by prominent Republicans as credible, continues to run for the Senate with the full support of President Donald Trump. It will be up to the voters to decide during the special election today, Dec. 12, whether Moore becomes the next senator from Alabama.

On Dec. 6, Time Magazine named “The Silence Breakers” as its Person of the Year, recognizing the many courageous women who have publicly named powerful men whom they accuse of sexual misconduct. The cover page of this edition of Time shows actress Ashley Judd, singer Taylor Swift, lobbyist Adama Iwu, former Uber engineer Susan Fowler and Isabel Pascual, the pseudonym of a woman who asked that her name not be used so as to protect her family. The photo also shows the right arm of a sixth woman, visible at the bottom right of the photo, representing those women who have not yet come forward.

Prior to the sexual misconduct accusations against Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly of Fox News and Harvey Weinstein of The Weinstein Co., women were hesitant to go public. They feared that they would not be believed, would damage their careers, or would be accused of purposely putting themselves in risky situations for personal gain.

The accusations against Ailes, O’Reilly and Weinstein gave critical mass to the issue and emboldened women to publicly make accusations against powerful men with whom they worked or interfaced. The #MeToo social media movement was launched, providing a place for women to express solidarity and write about their own experiences of sexual harassment. It was as if the dam broke.

The question is, Will there be a cultural change and women be treated with respect?

In a New York Times article on Dec. 6 headlined, “5 harassment takeaways from Ashley Judd and Times reporters,” columnist Katie Rogers noted that, “Reporting on the abuser is just the first step.”

“When [The New York] Times reporters [Emily] Steele and Michael Schmidt dug into settlements surrounding O’Reilly,” Rogers wrote, “they came to understand that the culture that protects abusers — and, in some cases, enables them to harass or assault multiple people — can be institutionalized by human resources departments and the internal legal teams that draft such settlements.”

In exchange for financial settlements, accusers sign non-disclosure agreements that prohibit them from going public. Unfortunately, this enables the accused to continue their practice of sexual misconduct.

Ailes, O’Reilly and Weinstein were terminated by their employers when adverse publicity seriously threatened their companies’ reputations, or advertisers abandoned the accused celebrities. Absent these factors, one wonders how long these three would have continued to have been employed.

When the boards of companies feel it is more important to protect employees from sexual harassment and abuse instead of protecting an accused celebrity who generates tens of millions of dollars in profits, things will change.

What has not received much press are the relatively smaller number of cases in which false accusations of sexual harassment or misconduct against men by women (and, occasionally, accusations against women by men) who feel they were wronged in some way.

The CEO of an organization shared with me that he had been accused of sexual harassment by a direct report after the performance review he gave her indicated her work was not satisfactory. Her sexual harassment accusation would protect her from being terminated. The board of the organization followed due process and hired an outside, independent law firm to investigate and found her accusations were without merit. The executive’s reputation, however, was damaged, even with due process.

The accusations became “public” within the workplace because the investigation required speaking with other employees who work closely with both parties. Even though the accusations were found to be baseless, the reputation of the executive was tarnished and the ability to do his job was undermined.

Anyone who has ever been accused of sexual misconduct but found innocent of the accusation has had their marketability for future employment significantly diminished. Society has not yet caught up with how to treat these types of accusations in a manner which is fair to both the accuser and the accused. How to ensure fairness to the accused and accuser in these cases is a question that society must grapple with.

Stan Silverman is founder and CEO of Silverman Leadership. He is a speaker, advisor and nationally syndicated writer on leadership, entrepreneurship and corporate governance. Silverman earned a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering and an MBA degree from Drexel University. He is also an alumnus of the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School. He can be reached at Stan@SilvermanLeadership.com.