If You Do This, Your Coworkers Will Hate You

Annoying coworkers top the list when it comes to workplace woes. You know who I’m talking about...there’s the guy one cubicle over who prefers to listen to his music as if he were actually at a concert, and two offices away sits your coworker who refuses to follow basic email etiquette.

What’s even more frightening--consider if the things you do are bothering your coworkers. No one wants to be “that person,” but growing tired of your coworkers is nearly inevitable when you’re stuck in close quarters with them for 40+ hours a week.

If you do these following things, your workers may end up hating you:

You regularly pass off your work. Making a habit delegating your work to other team members or employees is certain to get you noticed. If there does come a time when you have to pass off your work, be sure to return the favor as soon as possible. Offer to lend a hand whenever possible to ensure you’re pulling your weight.

You chase perfection. If you’re the person who constantly refuses to see eye-to-eye with your team on whether or not a product is finished, expect disgruntled coworkers. It’s time to set a new standard for yourself: 80 percent is new 100 percent. Forget perfection and begin focusing on getting projects and tasks to the point where they’re good enough.

You command. There’s a big difference between delegating tasks and ordering others around. Even a management title shouldn’t give way to shouting orders at your employees and coworkers. Establish more pleasant and effective interactions by asking your coworkersfor their input on given situations or projects. This allows them to come up with their own solution, rather than having yours forced on them.

You’re avoidant. When was the last time you attended an event hosted by your company? Avoiding company cocktail hours is certain to set you apart from the crowd--and not in a good way. A survey by Jobsite found that 70 percent of respondents said friends at work is the most crucial element to a happy working life. Being friends with your coworkers isn’t necessary, but putting effort into strengthening working relationships will make for a better work environment in the long run.

You’re just plain unprofessional. While every workplace has its own idea of what’s too casual, there are a few behaviors that should be deemed unacceptable across the board: gossiping, sharing too much personal information, and not using your manners to name a few. Not only will these unprofessional habits turn your coworkers against you, they could also cost you your job. Stay in tune with the casual nature of your work environment, but never drop your level of professionalism completely.

You’re the rain cloud. Positivity and optimism aren’t realistic every day, but consistently exuding negativity will bring your coworkers down. Put a cap on your judgemental and critical nature. Instead, focus on sandwiching your criticism by giving a compliment prior to and after a criticism.

You waste time at meetings. Meetings are the No. 1 productivity killer. If you’re the person who is constantly straying from the presentation, asking unnecessary questions, and circling back on points, you’re wasting both yours and your coworker’s time. Stick to the regularly scheduled programming and keep your information and questions brief and direct.

A more productive work environment starts with a cohesive team of employees. While annoyances happen, it’s best to stay in tune with your own habits to prevent agitating others.

What do you think is the worst habit a coworker can have?

Finding the Hidden Value in Your Network

Last time you really needed help, who did you ask? My bet is that you went to one of your strong ties—someone you know well and truly trust. Whether you’re looking for a new job or some good advice, it makes sense to go to your closest friends, family members, and colleagues. After all, those are the people you can trust to understand what you need and have your best interests at heart.

But in favoring strong ties, you might be overlooking the strength of weak ties. In a classic study, sociologist Mark Granovetter showed that people were 58% more likely to get a new job through weak ties than strong ties. How could acquaintances be more helpful than good friends?

The intuitive answer is that we have more weak than strong ties, so the odds are just higher. If you reach out to a few hundred people looking for job leads, and chances are that most of them will be weak ties. Although this might be true, the evidence supports a more powerful explanation: despite their good intentions, strong ties tend to give us redundant knowledge. Our closest contacts tend to know the same people and information as we do. Weak ties travel in different circles and learn different things, so they can offer us more efficient access to novel information. Most of us miss out on this novel information, filling our networks with people whose perspectives are too similar to our own.

When I share this evidence, people get it, but they’re afraid to act on it. Convincing people to ask weak ties for help is like persuading a man to ask for directions. It’s uncomfortable to admit to near-strangers (and yourself) that you don’t have all the answers. Even if you overcome this barrier, you hardly know them, so why would they be willing to help you?

The good news is that there’s a way to have your cake and eat it too. There’s a third kind of contact that combines the new information that weak ties provide with the trust, comfort, and familiarity of a strong tie. It’s called a dormant tie.

Dormant ties are the people we used to know. Think about the people with whom you’ve lost touch for a few years: a childhood neighbor, a college roommate, or a colleague from your first job. In groundbreaking research, Daniel Levin, Jorge Walter, and Keith Murnighan asked hundreds of executives to seek advice on a major work project from two dormant ties. When they compared the value of these conversations to the advice from current contacts, the dormant ties were actually more useful. The executives actually received more valuable solutions, referrals, and problem-solving assistance from people they used to know than their current friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. Why?

Just like weak ties, dormant ties offer novel information: in the years since you last communicated, they’ve connected with new people and gathered new knowledge. But unlike weak ties, dormant ties also bring the benefits of strong ties. The history and shared experience makes it faster and more comfortable to reconnect, and you can count on them to care more about you than your acquaintances do.

But don’t take my word for it; ask the Kevin Bacon of Silicon Valley. His name is Adam Rifkin, and he was named Fortune’s best networker in 2011. When I interviewed Rifkin for Give and Take, he told me that instead of reaching out to strong ties or weak ties, he spends most of his time “going back to people who I haven’t talked to in a while.” Years ago, Rifkin moved to Silicon Valley in the hopes of starting his first tech company. He was seriously lacking current contacts there, and he knew he needed guidance. Rifkin remembered that five years earlier, he had exchanged a few emails with a guy in the Bay Area named Graham Spencer. Rifkin reached out to reconnect, and when they met up for coffee, Spencer offered to connect him with some venture capitalists. One of those venture capitalists funded Rifkin’s startup for $50 million.

When they first corresponded, Spencer was just a college student studying computer science. By the time they reconnected five years later, Spencer was the cofounder of a company called Excite, which he had just sold for $6.7 billion. During the time that they lost touch, he had met some extraordinary people, but several years needed to pass first.

The research shows that dormant ties surprise us in several ways. When Levin and colleagues asked executives to rank ten dormant ties in order from most to least valuable, they failed miserably. The dormant tie they expected to be the least helpful was every bit as useful as the top-ranked tie. When you haven’t seen people in three or five years, you can’t predict what novel ideas and networks they’ll be able to share. And it turns out that the older you get, the more valuable dormant ties become. Along with having more of them, they’ve had more time to meet amazing people and accomplish amazing things.

Of course, it’s easiest to reconnect with dormant ties if you’ve been generous in the past. If you have a history of self-serving behavior, your old contacts are likely to lock the door to their networks and throw away the key—if they don’t use the reconnection as a prime opportunity to punish you. If you’ve given to them without strings attached, on the other hand, they’ll greet you with open arms.

If you decide to tap into this reservoir of goodwill, not all dormant ties will be useful. Levin and colleagues interviewed one executive who groaned about the prospect of reconnecting, noting that some ties “are dormant for a reason.” But most ties don’t become dormant because of bridges burned. The vast majority of the time, we fall out of touch by accident—we’ve moved, changed jobs, or just become busy. This leaves us with hundreds of dormant ties who can provide us with the right blend of trust and novel information. As that executive who originally groaned about reactivating dormant ties put it, the “experience has been eye-opening for me. For one, it has shown me how much potential I have in my Rolodex.”

After learning about these ideas, I added a repeating reminder to my calendar: reconnect with at least one dormant tie each month. This is one of the virtues of LinkedIn: it’s easier than ever to track them down and reconnect. Instead of asking them for help, I’ve been searching for ways to help them—sometimes by sharing knowledge, in other cases by making introductions. In my experience, rekindling old connections has become a source of meaning and happiness. Like renovating an old house, it brings us the best of the old and the new. Our dormant ties can help us revitalize our favorite features of our past selves, while opening doors to new future selves.

Approach Life Like an Entrepreneur

 Growing up, I never understood why anyone would want to become an entrepreneur. Between the long hours, constant uncertainty, and grueling pace of life, it just didn’t strike me as something that I would ever want to put myself through. My father, Vivek Wadhwa, founded several technology companies, and even though I deeply admired and looked up to him, I never quite understood why he had chosen that path.

Instead, my dream was to become a lawyer. It wasn’t that I was particularly attracted to that lifestyle either — I just believed that law was the most direct way to impact the world around me. I thought entrepreneurs only worked on improving small issues, while lawyers focused on solving the big problems. It didn’t take too long for me to realize that I had it backwards.

While he was always supportive of my decisions, my father liked to tease me that I was wasting my time with law. He would often tell me I was meant to be an entrepreneur and one day I would realize it, and I would reply, “There’s no way!” Now, as an adult with a startup in the privacy and cyber-security space, I am incredibly grateful that I was learning from him the entire time. The lessons themselves had little to do with business. It was the outlook on life that he instilled in me that has really taught me the skills I’ve needed to know. He showed me that entrepreneurship is not a profession, it is a mindset — and it shapes the way you interact with the world around you.

For example, one of the most unique traits of entrepreneurs is the way they approach a problem. My favorite thing about the many that I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know is a shared disregard for authority. As a group, they are relentless. They rarely accept no for an answer, and are always looking for a way to work around obstacles. Where most people would give up and move on, they try to think outside the box and develop creative solutions. Even if they ultimately are unsuccessful, it is often when they fail that they learn the most.

My father would always push me to ask for things – even, and especially, when I was completely embarrassed and afraid to. As a kid, I cringed whenever he did this – I hated it. But as an adult, I’m thankful he showed me value of getting out of my comfort zone. It is difficult to do this sometimes, because it should be; you grow much less from doing things that are easy or that come naturally. The fear of being rejected will stop many people from asking for what they want, but being told “no” rarely ever lives up to the anguish of the worst-case-scenarios we think up in our minds.

While convincing others to help you achieve your ends is great, it is far more important that you are treating people in an empathetic and respectful way. My father has always gone out of his way to mentor other entrepreneurs, even to a fault. He always cherished these experiences though – he’s told me many times that in life we’ll have people who lend a hand to us without expecting anything in return, it’s important that we do the same for others. As a child, I have vivid memories of the times near the holiday season when my mom would take me to a local toy store and let me pick out all kinds of different gifts. But the toys weren’t for me — we were buying presents for all of the company employees’ children. The simple act of having me decide what other children would want forced me to step out of my own world, and into theirs, even if it was for just a few moments.

However, not every lesson he taught me was positive. When I was in eighth grade my father suffered a massive heart attack, partially due to the fact that he was working constantly. I saw firsthand that one of the most important things you must do as an entrepreneur is to remember to invest in yourself. You can’t sacrifice your health for the sake of business. It’s not worth it.

Approaching life like an entrepreneur isn’t about ruthlessly exploiting opportunities or constantly seeking out new ventures: it’s about being bold, creative, and mindful in your everyday actions. Like running a business, living a life with an entrepreneurial outlook is all about balance and priorities. This Sunday, I will spend some time reflecting on what my father has taught me through his words, actions and decisions – and I will give thanks that my role model in life has shown me some of the keys to living a more fulfilling, challenging, and empowered life.

Free Speech and Facebook's Rape Pages; Is Apple Working on a Wearable Wrist Device?

It took two years, but a campaign to make Facebook aware of its failure to ban misogynistic pages -- when it has pulled pages where women have posted breastfeeding or mastectomy photos -- finally hit critical mass this past week. Those 5k+ emails, 225k signatures on a change.org petition and 60k Twitter posts with the hashtag #FBrape convinced Nissan and a dozen other advertisers to pull their Facebook ads.

On today's "This Week in Startups" news roundtable with author and investor James Altucher (@jaltucher) and LittleBird CEO Marshall Kirkpatrick (@marshallk), I said I believe Facebook's inconsistent enforcement of its "no hate speech" policy lies squarely with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg -- specifically his lack of any understanding of human decency.

Marshall disagreed, pointing out that Facebook has people throughout the company "working in good faith" and that they are dealing with a lot of complexity and subjectivity. To him it sounds like a mistake, and he hopes they will deal with it well.

James noted a legal precedent dating back to the 1990s (anti-Semitic posts on Prodigy): if you pull down one thing, you pull down everything. Facebook is trying to straddle the middle, but they have 1B users -- a clear scalability issue. "You can't straddle the middle line here, there is no easy answer here," he said.

We also talked about Apple working on what I call an "iBangle" (hint: see Wonder Woman) and how checking your wrist would be so much less offensive than wearing Google Glass. And yes, I ranted.

Sharing Some Learning – Observations from D11

This past week the 11th All Things DConference, D11, was held. It is such a great opportunity to attend and to learn from a great combination of interviews, speakers, demonstrations, questions, and attendees. Attending this conference has been a very valuable learning experience for me over the years and I’ve always made it a point to reflect and share some observations or learnings that stuck with me. This year is no different.

As with all events these days, so much of what happens at the event is tweeted, live blogged, re-blogged, etc. That makes it challenging to offer more by way of learning. If you’re interested in the details of the sessions, by all means watch the videos or see the official coverage on the All Things D, D11 Conference site. All the interviews are done by one or both of Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher. There you’ll also find some behind the scenes “KatieCam” videos shot by WSJ writer Katherine Boehret in a more relaxed setting as speakers left the stage and other behind the scenes videos and articles by the ATD writing team. Definitely check out the amazing photos from Asa Mathat (and team) that really capture the unique qualities of the conference.

“The Dialog”

For me what separates D from other events, if you had to pick one thing, is the dialog that takes place. While the format is an interview, I see it as more of a dialog. There are no slides, no setup, and after the interview the dialog continues with audience questions and then even more in the hallways during breaks (not to mention the electronic dialog). I feel sometimes in an effort to report the event as news, the back and forth or the dialog itself can get a bit de-prioritized. The dialog is important because the timing of the conference is the same every year. That means not every speaker has something to announce or launch. In fact some speakers have announcements already scheduled for the future and even with a lot of pushing they still aren’t going to preempt their organization’s efforts. This means that speakers sign up to attend knowing there are definitely questions they will get that must go unanswered. I think that speaks volumes to the appreciation for the dialog and participation that speakers share. Still, that can be a tiny bit frustrating for folks reading about the accounts—you are hoping for news but don’t get any.

There is a slightly different tone “in the room” which I am hoping to convey through these notes. The tone is very much about the nuance and subtlety of the topics being raised. So even if there is not news, the conversation is interesting. It is an important part of innovation and convergence of industries (the original and ongoing theme of the conference was how media, entertainment, and digital technologies are coming together). There are gems in most every session if you watch the video—not necessarily news gems, but articulation of challenges and tradeoffs that everyone is facing as they do their work. Making products is never a stark either/or set of choices and capturing these tradeoffs on stage, in the "hot seat" as it is called, is something I appreciate very much.

Big picture

There were 25 speakers along with demo sessions. The breadth of topics discussed delivers on the promise of the conference. Through the lens of product development there were a number of “themes” that surfaced for me:

• Mobile “era” – No one doubts the era we are in as an industry and across industries. The tech folks were “mobile first” from apps to advertising, not as a place to port to or also support. The entertainment folks see mobile as a place to enjoy entertainment or as the screen that accompanies entertainment, not as a competitor to television. Even attendees were mostly seen on their mobile devices most of the time. While this might not seem newsworthy, observing the changing perspectives over the years of the conference provides a neat context for this change.
• Disruption – Most tech conferences are about disruption in some form or another. This conference came about during a time when disruption was really happening (and to be fair, the WSJ and ATD are/were both part of disruptive dialogs over the years—and the topic of conversation at the show). The interviews always do a good job of confronting speakers who are viewed as participants in a potential disruption.
• Sensors – The role of sensors as part of the baseline experience for computing is front and center. There was a lot of discussion around form factors, wearables, and scenarios but all of this is rooted in devices that know about surroundings, which means products can be designed knowing the computers will have these capabilities.
• Consumerization – Walt Mossberg has always taken the non-techie, consumer approach to looking at technology which, as he said during the show, was somewhat heretical when he first started his column. These days the notion of consumers driving the experience and setting the bar does not seem so far-fetched. You know that is the case when the CEO of Cisco says “bring your own device trumps security”.
• Embrace of digital – In past years the “content” attendees appeared more on the defense than the offense. While the business challenges remain in some parts of the content space, I think there is far more of a sense of embrace and partnering going on between the tech and content parties. In general it felt to me like much more of a healthy dialog rooted in respect than in past years, which is a positive evolution.

Sessions

As mentioned, the sessions are all available on the D11 site along with live blogs done by WSJ/ATD reporters. Check those out for sure. I just wanted to offer some additional observations from a small set of sessions that hit close to home from a product development perspective. Inclusion / omission or number of points below are not indications of quality or importance!

Apple / Tim Cook

• Measuring what counts – There was a strong focus on measuring usage as a way of looking at success. This contrasted with the recent debate about market share (units or revenue). The depth usage of iOS devices is significantly more than competing devices. It is super interesting to think about how to inform product development when balancing existing depth usage, new users, and growth – very interesting.
• Relative to Android – The dialog turned to defining “winning” along the lines of usage, customer satisfaction, and even the amount of commerce done on iOS devices.
• Magic – There was a good discussion about how working across the team needs to focus on the intersection of hardware/software/services as being where the “magic happens”. Everyone in the product space knows that wherever seams exist there is an opportunity to innovate or for there to be challenges--seams can be found all over the place, especially as a product gets larger or an ecosystem around the product develops.
• Tradeoffs – As an example of the nuance/subtlety that is hard to capture, Cook tried to walk through some of the tradeoffs that go into making different sized devices for different “segments” (Walt’s description). He talked about color correctness, white balance, battery life, brightness, and more. A favorite expression from Cook was “customers expect Apple to weigh all these factors and decide things” along with the humble notion that deciding means shipping and learning. I personally love when the dialog turns to these types of issues at this “level” in an organization and also externally—real engineering stuff that is worth talking about in an open way.
• Openness and control – In talking about the difference between iOS and Android (using keyboards as an example), Cook was asked about opening up more. He talked about the challenges and tradeoffs involved in “putting the customer at risk” with some times of APIs and openness but committed to more openness at the upcoming WWDC. Again there was a very interesting and subtle discussion about the tradeoffs involved.

Facebook / Sheryl Sandberg

• Mobile is good for Facebook – There were a lot of numbers and support for how much engagement there is from both users and advertisers on mobile.
• Increasing engagement – Sandberg shared some numbers that were counter-intuitive for many (as evidenced by the reaction in the section I was sitting) when she talked about the increase in engagement. Five years ago 50% of people visited every day. Now 58% visit every day and the number of users is much higher.
• Priorities – I loved when she talked about how they have 5000 people to build and operate a service for a billion people. That puts the product development challenge in perspective.
• Mobile first – There is a strong “pivot” in the development team around mobile first. Whereas the browser used to be the primary target and the mobile teams would be playing catch-up, now nothing gets done without it being mobile first.
• Facebook Home – The challenges of doing an offering that is polarizing for sure. She cited that customer reviews are either 1 star or 5 stars. Home is a V1 and expect to deliver on the commitment to frequent changes/updates.

Disney Parks and Resorts / Tom Staggs

• My Magic Plus – This session was about a new way to enjoy a WDW (Walt Disney World) theme park visit—essentially you wear a “magic band” around your wrist (like a Jawbone Up or Fitbit). As someone who grew up in Orlando watching WDW go from the Magic Kingdom surrounded by orange groves to what it is today, I think the revolution that is going on with this innovation is amazing and far-reaching.
• Features – Wearing the band provides an experience with reduced anxiety, less waiting, more fun, and far more personal. And it is just starting. An amazing example I loved was how you could order the food you want and when you get to the restaurant you sit down and what you ordered just shows up. Neat. But what is really neat is that the employees can focus on being “hosts” and not the transactional elements of ordering and getting things right. Super cool. It certainly makes that summer job at Disney a lot more fun!
• Senses and sensors – Of course this is all about location aware, cloud experienced. But the way Staggs described it was “360-5” as a 360 degree experience for all 5 senses—you’re immersed in the experience beyond the rides. In general, this was a demonstration that unfolded super well—as I thought of questions they got answered moments later. So much opportunity on this platform.

Twitter / Dick Costolo

• “Social soundtrack” – Twitter was described as the second screen for television. It is viewed as a complement to broadcast. This was a statement that gets broadened to mean that Twitter is not itself thinking about making content or distributing it.
• Global town square – The way they think of Twitter is to think about both planned/unplanned events and to provide an unfiltered/inside out platform for the people “the event is happening to”. This town square is public, real-time,conversational, and distributed. From a product point of view, the clarity of this framework is incredibly valuable.
• Advertising – Costolo discussed how advertisers are coming to understand that being part of the conversation is important and how the idea of having a conversation as the canvas versus the ad itself as the canvas is important.
• Design – Another subtle part of the dialog was around where the openness of the Twitter platform will be. The idea is that Twitter does want to own the timeline experience for customers but still be open to thousands (100s of thousands) of developers with fairly lightweight rules. Simplicity is a major focus on the design of the timeline experience.

Glow / Max Levchin

• Demonstration – this was a demonstration of a new product that brings data and mobility to the challenges of procreation and fertility.
• App – The app is focused on being a beautiful source of telemetry and information for both the man and woman planning together to conceive a child.
• Data – Turns out that there is tons of data which is hard for people to get hold of and include in their planning and efforts. Glow is a way to bring this data to the solution space for people.
• Funding – The data shows that with the right use of data “infertility” can drop way down and thus the overall cost to the healthcare system is much lower. To support this the way the product will work is essentially to create a pool for people who are still unable to conceive after using the tool, which is a much smaller number than would be using less data-informed tools.
• Innovation – This is truly innovative when it comes to the problem space--hearing Levchin describe a typical way physicians handle this sounds almost like "country medicine" compared to using the data, telemetry, and an app. Combining data, mobility, and more into this app shows how empowering all the technology can be. We’re all able to start experience this notion of being in so much more control of our lives with these technology tools.

Box / Aaron Levie and Cisco / John Chambers

• What fun – This was such a fun pairing as the contrast between the people and companies was so interesting. Yet at the same time, both organizations are developing products for a new world where individuals are far more empowered. While no one is going to go out and buy their own router, the IT pros that do want to have the capability for you to use the router when you bring in your own device. A fun part of D in general is when you can see widely different perspectives in a dialog about a problem space each is approaching.
• IT control – Chambers asserted that the ability for IT to “say no” really changed 4 or 5 years ago and now enterprises need to catch up to consumer technologies and support them. Chambers even said “BYOD trumps security”.
• Disruption – Levie offered a wonderful example of how companies are handling disruption. He said that the three biggest Box customers are companies formed in the 1800’s. This speaks to how much change is going on among IT pros.

Disney Media / Anne Sweeney and Producer / I. Marlene King

• Twitter integration – It was fascinating to hear the content developer view of creating content knowing that Twitter is part of the viewing equation. There’s a clear perspective that Twitter is contributing to the experience and enjoyment of the show.
• OMG moments – I loved hearing about the way they essentially create the show to support “OMG” or “jump off the couch” moments, and how that plays into Twitter.
• Time zones – Turns out that the audience is pretty self-governing when it comes to spoilers and time zones, which was interesting to think about.

Pinterest / Ben Silbermann

• First appearance – Ben doesn’t often appear or do presentations. It is great to see him.
• Framing – Another great example of framing the goals of the product: Pinterest aims to help people “discover things they really love and inspire them to experience them in real life."
• Early users – From a product development perspective, he spoke about how early users ended up setting the tone of the product when it comes to passion.
• Last web app? – Kara asked if Silbermann thought that Pinterest might be the “last web first app” or not. The answer focused on starting off where people were but now today of course the goal is to be able to use the service wherever you are and of course a ton of that is mobile which overtook the PC along the lines of industry trends.

Tesla, SpaceX, Hyper Tube / Elon Musk

• Along with everyone at D11 and online, this was an incredible treat.
• “Mars is a fixer upper” – as far as planets go, Musk said Mars is our best bet for life on another planet since it can be fixed up relatively easily.
• Every tech takes 3 or 4 generations to get it to mass market. He walked through the original Tesla plan (high price/low volume, mid-price/mid volume, low price/high volume). He framed this as competing with a hundred years and trillion dollar investment in gas combustion. This is a great example of how disruption gets talked about in early stages – all the focus on whether electric cars can displace gas cars using the criteria gas cars developed over all this time. From a product point of view, this perspective is super interesting.

Why Silicon Valley’s Heyday Might be Over

In 2002, PayPal, the online payments giant, was sold to eBay for a cool $1.5 billion. Overnight, many of PayPal’s core employees got very rich. Rather than calling it a day, however, the so-called PayPal mafia went on to found and invest in a wave of new start-ups. You may have heard of some: Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Yelp, Zynga and Kiva . . . to name just a few.

From one buyout, an entire ecosystem of wildly successful tech companies was spawned in Silicon Valley. In fact, over the last decade, the PayPal Mafia’s track record has been nothing short of extraordinary, with one promising start-up after another propelled to billion-dollar status and well beyond.

So what’s their secret? Was there something in the water? Did PayPal co-founders Peter Thiel and Max Levchin teach employees some Jedi entrepreneurial magic? Maybe. (Thiel does believe humans can live forever.) But the likeliest explanation is a bit more mundane: The PayPal buyout gave some very young, very ambitious people the confidence to try for another big win and an experienced network to fund them.

If that’s all there is to it, then I’ve got a question. Why does Silicon Valley get to have a monopoly on innovation? Why aren’t new tech mafias springing up elsewhere? The Internet radically decentralized information and ideas. So why is start-up success still confined mainly to one corner of California?

The question isn’t just academic. I’m CEO of a growing social media company headquartered not in the Bay Area but 1,000 miles north in Vancouver, Canada. The city has a solid cluster of new and legacy tech companies, from Electronic Arts to mobile game developers. We’ve got tech entrepreneurs. We’ve got tech incubators. We’ve got world-class universities.

So what’s standing in the way of a brand new tech mob - a Maple Syrup Mafia - taking hold right in my backyard and turning Vancouver into the next global tech hub?

Well, to be honest, there are a few hurdles.

The Seduction of Selling Out

Money comes to mind first. Right now, cities all over the world are home to start-ups with billion-dollar potential. But it’s the nature of the tech industry today that promising companies are spotted fast and bought cheap by the Googles and Twitters and Microsofts of the world. Having been a struggling entrepreneur for most of my life, I understand the allure of selling out. You’ve got a good idea but limited revenue and often significant debt and - suddenly - someone shows up with a few million dollars.

But maybe it’s time we took Sean Parker’s lines from The Social Network to heart. A million dollars isn’t cool anymore. A billion dollars is cool. It’s critical that tech entrepreneurs grow their companies, develop steady revenue streams and only then think about an exit. It seems worthy to note here that a young, Vancouver-based Flickr - one of the Internet’s first real photo-sharing sites - was sold to Yahoo for a paltry $35 million in 2005. $35 million may not sound paltry. But a similarly promising photo-sharing site called Instagram sold to Facebook for $1 billion last year. And it’s only when we start talking about 10-digit exits that the prospect of creating a true PayPal-style mafia becomes a reality.

Which is why I plan to hold out. Four years ago, I developed a tool that lets you access different social media accounts - Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. - from one interface. Simple concept. But it took off. Today, HootSuite has over 300 employees and six million users, and it’s used by three-quarters of Fortune 100 companies. We’ve had tempting offers, not to mention requests to move to San Francisco, and we’ve turned them all down.

We’re committed to growing an amazing, billion-dollar-plus company in Vancouver. In fact, the dollar value isn’t as important as the legacy of the company and the culture of homegrown innovation it inspires. When (and if) a liquidation event happens, the HootSuite team will be left with financial resources, network and a lot of expertise - key ingredients for a Maple Syrup Mafia.

Another Missing Link: Tech Education

But it’s not quite that easy. The PayPal mafia thrived not only because it was well funded but because it had ready access to tech talent. This is where lots of global cities - Vancouver included - come up short. The reality is that we’re contending with a major shortage of developers, engineers and programmers. Universities are simply not turning out enough grads with the requisite tech skills. (If this seems absurd in a climate of global recession and mass unemployment, it should.)

And the magnetic allure of Silicon Valley means that people with qualifications are migrating en masse to the Bay Area. An estimated 350,000 Canadians alone currently live and work in the Valley - an entire lost generation. It’s no exaggeration to say that much of the world is in the midst of a global brain drain of engineering talent.

Case in point: Next month, Facebook is scheduled to open a temporary satellite office in Vancouver, whose express purpose is to attract and groom software engineers for an ultimate move to company headquarters in California. The lifespan of the project is one year: roughly the amount of time needed for Canadians to get a permit for full-time work in the U.S.

For a Maple Syrup Mafia to flourish, universities here need to counter this loss of talent by exponentially increasing the number of tech grads - and fast. Consider this an open challenge to the ivory tower. In a few years’ time, Vancouver will be flush with tech capital, and some smart people will be gunning to build the next Facebooks and Instagrams. Will entrepreneurs have to import talent from elsewhere or - worse still - be forced to pack up for San Francisco because they can’t fill jobs? The answer depends on how effectively the educational system is able to funnel students into engineering programs now and send the message that the jobs of tomorrow are in tech.

Rise of the Maple Syrup Mafia?

But enough of the doom and gloom. It’s important to note that a Maple Syrup Mafia - and other tech families like it - would have a few key advantages over the vaunted PayPal Mafia. It’s not exactly a secret anymore that Silicon Valley is the place to be if you want to ride tech’s next gravy train. As a result, promising start-ups are swamped with offers from venture capitalists and angel investors, which drives up the price of investing dramatically. Bargains aren’t likely to be found, and busts are as common as booms. Meanwhile, competition for engineering talent is fierce. Add to that an extremely high cost of living, and you’ve got a climate that’s not entirely conducive to business investment and growth.

That’s where the rest of the world has an edge. While Silicon Valley may enjoy a formidable concentration of capital and talent, it hardly has a monopoly on ambitious ideas and capable entrepreneurs. Investors willing to bet on opportunities outside the Valley will discover it’s far easier to get in on the ground floor. Margins are considerably higher. There’s far less hype and spin to wade through, making it easier to identify real gems. Plus, local governments can be very helpful with tax breaks and other subsidies for companies committed to high-tech jobs.

And let’s not forget about lifestyle. With all respect to Palo Alto, life in a semi-arid industrial park isn’t for everyone (even if you can get some really good tacos). I have a feeling that my hometown - which just so happens to be one of the world’s most liveable cities, chock full of mountains, ocean, progressive politics and some exceptional street food of its own - might make an attractive alternative.

There’s room for more than one family in the tech mob. PayPal’s kingpins may rule Silicon Valley. But the Maple Syrup Mafia - and others like it - are gathering steam elsewhere. Will the years ahead bring a sweeter brand of Canada-based innovation to the tech world? I hope so - Our team is banking on it.

8 Things Productive People Do During the Workday

Forget about your job title or profession – everyone is looking for ways to be more productive at work. It’s time to set down your gallon-sized container of coffee, toss out your three-page to-do list, and put an end to those ridiculously long emails you’ve been sending.

Experiencing a highly productive workday can feel euphoric. But contrary to popular belief, simply checking tasks off your to-do list isn’t really an indication of productivity. Truly productive people aren’t focused on doing more things; this is actually the opposite of productivity. If you really want to be productive, you’ve got to make a point to do fewer things.

Recently I spoke with project management and productivity genius Tony Wong to find out the secret to a more productive workday. He provided me with some excellent insight into what he and other like-minded productive individuals do during their work week.

Harness your productivity by taking note of these eight things:

1. Create a smaller to-do list. Getting things accomplished during your workday shouldn’t be about doing as much as possible in the sanctioned eight hours. It may be hard to swallow, but there’s nothing productive about piling together a slew of tasks in the form of a checklist. Take a less-is-more approach to your to-do list by only focusing on accomplishing things that matter.

2. Take breaks. You know that ache that fills your brain when you’ve been powering through tasks for several hours? This is due to your brain using up glucose. Too many people mistake this for a good feeling, rather than a signal to take a break. Go take a walk, grab something to eat, workout, or meditate – give your brain some resting time. Achieve more productivity during your workday by making a point to regularly clear your head. You’ll come back recharged and ready to achieve greater efficiency.

3. Follow the 80/20 rule. Did you know that only 20 percent of what you do each day produces 80 percent of your results? Eliminate the things that don’t matter during your workday: they have a minimal effect on your overall productivity. For example, on a project, systematically remove tasks until you end up with the 20 percent that gets the 80 percent of results.

4. Start your day by focusing on yourself. If you begin your morning by checking your email, it allows others to dictate what you accomplish. Set yourself in the right direction by ignoring your emails and taking the morning to focus on yourself, eat a good breakfast, meditate, or read the news.

5. Take on harder tasks earlier in the day. Knock out your most challenging work when your brain is most fresh. Save your busy work – if you have any – for when your afternoon slump rolls in.

6. Pick up the phone. The digital world has created poor communication habits. Email is a productivity killer and usually a distraction from tasks that actually matter. For example, people often copy multiple people on emails to get it off their plate – don't be a victim of this action. This distracts everyone else by creating noise against the tasks they’re trying to accomplish and is a sign of laziness. If you receive an email where many people are CC'd, do everyone a favor by BCCing them on your reply. If your email chain goes beyond two replies, it’s time to pick up the phone. Increase your productivity by scheduling a call.

7. Create a system. If you know certain things are ruining your daily productivity, create a system for managing them. Do you check your emails throughout the day? Plan a morning, afternoon, and evening time slot for managing your email. Otherwise, you’ll get distracted from accomplishing more important goals throughout the day.

8. Don’t confuse productivity with laziness. While no one likes admitting it, sheer laziness is the No. 1 contributor to lost productivity. In fact, a number of time-saving methods – take meetings and emails for example – are actually just ways to get out of doing real work. Place your focus on doing the things that matter most as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Remember, less is more when it comes to being productive during the workday.