Grit & Growth

Collins Dobbs, a lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business and seasoned executive coach, offers insightful perspectives on leadership. He emphasizes the importance of self-awareness and emotional intelligence for effective leaders. The conversation tackles fostering an environment where feedback is welcomed, navigating leadership challenges, and enhancing team dynamics. Dobbs introduces the AIR model for better feedback sessions, and discusses how authentic communication can repair relationships and create a connected workplace culture.

Every entrepreneur understands the critical importance of sales to business success. But often, in the early stages of growth, teams tend to focus on marketing without having a strategic plan or process for how to turn leads into sales. Yann Le Beux, co-founder of a research and design firm in Senegal, and Zia Yusuf, a senior advisor at Boston Consulting Group and Stanford Seed consultant, share their experiences and strategies for building and strengthening your sales strategy.Yann Le Beux’s company, YUX Design, focuses on creating user-centered designs that address the unique needs of African markets, helping their clients to bridge the gap between global tech and local context. But Le had his own gap to bridge — between marketing efforts and sales conversions. Zia Yusuf, who has taught at Stanford’s renowned Hasso Plattner School of Design, lent his expertise in innovation and design thinking to help Le Beux and his team realize that their marketing and sales strategies must be aligned with the needs of specific customer segments. “You don't sell to companies, you sell to human beings,” Yusuf advises. “You're selling to very large organizations, but they're not your client and it's not even the business unit that's your client. It's not even the head of that business unit. There could be actually two, three different roles – and understanding how to sell to those people and individuals was kind of a little bit of a breakthrough as well.”Le Beux admits that his small company didn’t grow quickly because it was  constrained by talent issues. “But as soon as you start growing, you realize you have to feed all these people ready to work and you need to be much more consistent in your approach to business development and stop behaving like a spoiled child where clients come to you naturally,” he says.Le Beux’s process started with creating a strong product-market fit for each of his business units, honestly assessing the competition, and transitioning from targeting companies to connecting with key decision makers. Yusuf also advises entrepreneurs to think about the true cost of sales and the effort required to get something. “When you're at an early stage as a company, you feel that every dollar that comes in is fantastic, but it may have taken 60 percent of the company working for three weeks to respond to an RFP which leads to a small dollar amount of revenue. You want it. So you're excited, but should you have spent those three weeks and 60 percent of your team pursuing a different opportunity in a different way?”Hear how Le Beux and Yusuf worked together to balance marketing and sales while trying to scale, plus stories of partnering with Google and meeting the demands of a tech giant, along with strategic pricing during a global recession.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to Grit & Growth’s masterclass on cross-cultural dynamics with Michele Gelfand, Stanford Graduate School of Business professor in organizational behavior. Gain new insights and strategies for understanding your company’s culture – from tight to loose – and how you can use that knowledge to build cultural intelligence in your organization, navigate interactions, enhance company-wide innovation, and drive business growth. Companies and countries can be a lot like people. Some are tight. Others are loose. Neither is inherently good or bad, according to Michele Gelfand, a leading expert on the impact of organizational culture and the best-selling author of Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World. Gelfand says this important and often invisible force can drive behavior and ultimately performance – which is why she finds the subject so fascinating and why she believes entrepreneurs should pay attention to culture as they build their leadership and business.Key Takeaways Culture matters“If we don't understand culture, we're putting ourselves and our businesses at risk. All cultures have rules, and they're really one of our best inventions because they help us predict each other's behavior and coordinate. They're the glue that keeps us together.”Tight vs. Loose“Tight cultures have strict rules and very reliable punishments for when you deviate from rules. They restrict the range of behavior that's permissible in any context. Loose cultures have weaker rules, their wider range of behavior that's permissible.”Strive for flexible tightness“Loose cultures are more creative, but they don't necessarily scale up. Tighter cultures are better able to implement and scale up, but they're not as good at coming up with these really novel ideas. And so the big trick here is: How do you bring together both of these elements?”Watch out for resistance to cultural change“Try to balance accountability and empowerment, but pay close attention to pushback. Extreme change can be very threatening for people's sense of control, predictability, and order that's really needed in these contexts. And what we know is that we need to manage these sources of resistance.” Listen to Michele Gelfand’s advice to entrepreneurs for creating culturally ambidextrous organizations and learn more about her future research. Don’t forget to take Gelfand’s quiz for determining where you and your team fall on the tight/loose spectrum.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this engaging discussion, Arun Jagannathan, founder of CrackVerbal and Yzerly, and Ethan Mollick, innovation professor at Wharton, dive into the role of AI in entrepreneurship. Arun shares his journey integrating AI into his startups, emphasizing its necessity for growth. Ethan offers practical guidance, posing crucial questions for entrepreneurs navigating AI. They explore the transformative power of generative AI in communication and education, and highlight innovative sales strategies that blend AI insights with human creativity.

Welcome to Grit & Growth’s masterclass on going global – a guide for expanding your business beyond borders. Steve Ciesinski, Stanford Graduate School of Business lecturer in entrepreneurship, walks you through the pitfalls and possibilities of making the move from local venture to global enterprise.It goes without saying that having an outstanding product or service is key to business success. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg when you want to expand your business – regionally and/or globally. According to Steve Ciesinski, scaling introduces additional challenges, including cultural and regulatory differences, economic and political risks, language barriers, supply chain struggles, and more. However, he believes that entrepreneurs who plan carefully and execute flawlessly can create value on a global scale.Steve Ciesinski has had plenty of experience advising entrepreneurs on global expansion. He’s a Stanford GSB lecturer in entrepreneurship, past president of SRI International and other Silicon Valley firms, and an investor and board member of growth-oriented tech companies and mission-based organizations. Three Key Takeaways for Going Global:Your product market fit might not fit in a different market“Things are very, very different and very subtle sometimes as you get into a marketplace. You have to be very agile. You have to be super flexible.”Find the right person for the right place“If you're going to go to another country and you're not going to be there personally as the founder, then who's going to run that country for you? You have to have somebody there that you completely, 100 percent trust, because things will go wrong.”Regulatory compliance is a tricky businessYou have to be very, very careful. You have a choice. When you have a new thing, do you try to cooperate with the government? How long will that government be in place? You have some choices early on as to what you do in whatever country. You may be successful in Nigeria, but in Kenya, or if you were trying to go across the pond to Mexico, you may not be so successful with your product.”Listen to Steve Ciesinski’s advice on what to keep in mind when entering new markets so you can scale with less friction and more success.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Ethan Mollick, an associate professor at the Wharton School and AI visionary, discusses the rapidly evolving impact of artificial intelligence on business, society, and education. He encourages entrepreneurs to embrace AI as a co-founder, aiding in idea generation and innovation. The conversation explores practical strategies for integrating AI into workplaces, stressing hands-on experimentation. Mollick also highlights the transformative potential of AI in enhancing customer insights and addresses the ethical considerations needed as this technology reshapes various industries.

Meet Acha Leke, senior partner and chairman of McKinsey Africa and co-founder of the African Leadership Academy. Leke has been analyzing the economic prospects of the continent for decades, so he’s the perfect person to share insights on its future, from productivity and digital transformation to the impact of Africa’s youth boom and how to plan proactively for job growth. The economic landscape in Africa has shifted dramatically in recent years. In 2010, McKinsey's "Lions on the Move" report, co-authored by Leke, showcased the continent's incredible growth potential. But now in 2024, the story has changed, and the outlook is a bit more pessimistic. Still, Leke notes that there is no “one Africa” or one “sub-Saharan Africa,” so economic growth trajectories can vary widely between countries.“The reality is the last 10 years have been tougher. There's some bright spots, but growth has slowed down considerably from 5.1 percent in the 2000s to more like 3.4 percent in the last 10 years, in a continent that, on average, population grows at 2. 7 percent. So net-net, we're not seeing much per capita growth,” Leke says.Leke believes digital technology is the single most important lever to transform productivity in Africa across public, private, and social sectors. But he advises that more needs to be done to achieve widespread impact, emphasizing the role of political leadership and regulations.Key Insights:Africa's productivity lags behind other regions across sectors like agriculture, manufacturing, and services. Boosting productivity is critical. Large African corporate champions play a vital role in driving growth and innovation and in supporting SMEs in their supply chains.SMEs are critical as they provide 80-90 percent of jobs. Enabling them to thrive is paramount.  With the world's largest and youngest workforce, Africa has a chance to be a leading exporter of digital services talent globally. But it will take proactive efforts to develop skills at scale.With the right focus on productivity, skills development, infrastructure, and leadership, Africa stands on the cusp of rewriting its economic story for 2024 and beyond. Listen to Leke’s honest assessment of Africa’s economic challenges as well as an optimistic take on the path forward.Additional Resources:“The path to greater productivity and prosperity in Africa,” McKinsey & Company, August 2023Reimagining economic growth in Africa: Turning diversity into opportunity, McKinsey & Company, June 2023.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Starting a business and growing it are challenging enough. But expanding globally, across the entire African continent with 54 very different countries,  increases the difficulty exponentially. That’s what Taha Jiwaji, CEO and founder of Beem, is experiencing first hand. Hear what it takes to create a Pan-African business and gain strategic insights on going global from Steve Ciesinski, who teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford Graduate School of Business.After attending college in the United States and working as a consultant in Los Angeles, Taha Jiwaji left his safe corporate job and moved back to his home of Tanzania to become an entrepreneur. He had no idea what he was in for. But 20-plus years later, he’s built Beem, a Pan-African cloud computing platform that helps businesses create lasting relationships with their customers through their mobile phones. Beem is currently in 30-plus countries … and growing. On a continent where only 36 percent of the population has broadband internet, reaching customers on their phones through SMS is a huge win. And as connectivity across Africa increases, the opportunities for Beem and their customers expand, too.“You know, there's 54 different countries on the continent. Each one is different in terms of language, policies, etc. So you need to spend time in them, on the ground, to really learn about them,” Jiwaji explains.Steve Ciesinski is both a Stanford GSB lecturer in entrepreneurship and past president of SRI International and other Silicon Valley firms. As an investor and board member of growth-oriented tech companies and mission-based organizations, he’s had plenty of experience advising entrepreneurs on global expansion.What's the country like? What's the culture in the country? How do they do business? These are the very first questions you need to ask, according to Ciesinski. Then you need the right people. “You need to have somebody very, very close who's been with your company, understands your culture  — and is going to move there. And then find somebody there who eventually can become the general manager of that business because you're expecting that business to grow,” he advises.Jiwaji did just that, focusing on building relationships, on the ground, in person, getting customers and partners to sign up. When it comes to giving advice to other entrepreneurs, Jiwaji suggests “grit and persistence. Things take a long time, government regulation, people move very slowly across these markets. And sometimes it takes years for a relationship to finally come to fruition.”Get more insights and advice on going global from Jiwaji and Ciesinski, including how to create differentiation, establish your value proposition, handle regulations, and, most important, find and retain global talent to help you expand.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome back to Grit & Growth from Stanford Graduate School of Business. In Season 4, you’ll hear tales of entrepreneurial trials and triumphs, obstacles and opportunities, and, of course, plenty of grit and growth. Plus, we share insights from Stanford faculty and global experts on how to avoid the pitfalls of growth and achieve success.We’ll talk to entrepreneurs from Africa and South Asia and hear their impressive stories of business growth despite a host of challenges, including poor infrastructure, unpredictable regulations, and limited access to finance. This season, we explore what it takes to expand your business across multiple countries, revisit the 4 Ps of marketing, and tackle the difficulties of both scaling and downsizing your workforce.Season 4 is coming soon. Tune in!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Meet Mir Shahrukh Islam, cofounder and CEO of Bondstein Technologies Ltd. in Bangladesh. He created his IoT, or internet of things, company at a time when very few in Bangladesh even knew the term. Today, that future-focused, risk-taking spirit still defines and inspires his entrepreneurial journey.Taking bold risks is part of almost every entrepreneur’s DNA. Shahrukh demonstrated that trait from the get-go when he chose his company name, Bondstein, a mashup of James Bond and Einstein. “Daring and smart” is how he strives to approach business challenges. The company he created generates actionable intelligence by connecting assets to the internet for SMBs and enterprises, including tracking vehicles, solving customers’ operational efficiencies, and reducing costs.While risk taking conveys confidence to many, Shahrukh admits that doubts always remain. “Whenever I am taking a big decision, doubts always come. Will it work? Will it not work? Will I be able to convince my partners? Will I be able to convince my customers? Will I be able to convince my suppliers? But you never know until you take that decision, until you take that leap of faith. So it's always important to just trust the process, take that leap of faith,” he advisesGetting feedback — positive and negative — is essential for Shahrukh’s growth as a leader. “I constantly challenge myself with people who are more capable than me to deliver. I always meet with individuals who have achieved something that I aspire to achieve someday,” he says.According to Shahrukh, taking a break to recharge is how he stays motivated through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. He says, “Whenever I am very much cluttered or very much tired, I always take a break, go on a drive, talk with random people on the roadside, and try to understand different philosophies.”Hear how Shahrukh is navigating the entrepreneurial journey and finding success and happiness along the way.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.