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Revenue Up 7.6% in Q1 2020 for Medifast

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Medifast (NYSE: MED), the company behind the health and wellness community OPTAVIA®, reported results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2020.

First quarter revenue increased 7.6 percent to $178.5 million from revenue of $165.9 million for the first quarter of 2019. OPTAVIA-branded products represented 79 percent of consumable units sold for the first quarter compared to 73 percent for the same period a year ago.

The total number of active earning OPTAVIA Coaches increased 19.9 percent to 32,600, compared to 27,200 for the first quarter of 2019. The average revenue per active earning OPTAVIA Coach decreased 8.3 percent to $5,333 compared to $5,817 for the first quarter last year.

“We had a strong start to the year, with revenue and EPS exceeding guidance driven by a record number of active earning OPTAVIA coaches,” said Dan Chard, chief executive officer of Medifast. “Our organization has reacted well to the challenges of the global COVID-19 pandemic and we’ve made adjustments to our planned programs to reflect the new operating environment. While the full impact of the pandemic is unpredictable and difficult to forecast, we feel highly confident in our ability to drive demand and deliver effectively for our OPTAVIA Coaches and their clients.”

To read the complete Medifast Q1 2020 financial report, click here.

LifeVantage Reports $56.1 Million for Q3 2020

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LifeVantage Corporation (Nasdaq: LFVN) reported revenue of $56.1 million for its third quarter ended March 31, 2020, a 0.1 percent increase over the third quarter of fiscal 2019.

Revenue in the Americas for the third quarter declined 0.5 percent compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2019 and revenue in the Asia/Pacific & Europe region increased 1.6 percent compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2019. Revenue for the third quarter of fiscal 2020 was negatively impacted 0.1 million, or 0.2 percent, by foreign currency fluctuations associated with revenue generated in international markets when compared to the third quarter of fiscal 2019.

“We continued to generate strong gains in operating income and adjusted EBITDA during the third quarter while holding revenue consistent with the prior year period. While the current global health pandemic has had a modest negative impact on our business activities, our operating model and the recurring revenue base inherent in our subscription model is demonstrating resiliency across our global footprint and our strong balance sheet and robust cash flow position our company very well,” stated LifeVantage President and Chief Executive Officer Darren Jensen.

For the first nine months of fiscal 2020, the company reported revenue of $173.5 million, an increase of 2.2 percent as compared to $169.8 million for the first nine months of fiscal 2019. Revenue in the Americas for the first nine months of fiscal 2020 increased 0.6 percent compared to the first nine months of fiscal 2019 and revenue in the Asia/Pacific & Europe region increased 6.5 percent compared to the first nine months of fiscal 2019. Revenue for the first nine months of fiscal 2020 was positively impacted $0.5 million, or 0.3 percent, by foreign currency fluctuations associated with revenue generated in international markets when compared to the first nine months of fiscal 2019.

To read the complete LifeVantage Q3 2020 financial report, click here.

 

Marco Brandolini Named Tupperware VP of Commercial EMEA

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Tupperware Brands Corporation has announced Marco Brandolini as the company’s vice president of Commercial for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

Brandolini will be responsible for leading the Commercial business in EMEA, addressing sales trends by simplifying business models across the region, enhancing the distributor and sales force experience, and identifying opportunities to expand consumer access to the brand in Europe.

Brandolini joins Tupperware after years of key leadership positions in the direct selling industry. He most recently served as general manager, Italy and the Mediterranean for a UK-based direct seller where he led the business transformation of the region to support year-over-year growth.

Prior to that, Brandolini served as EMEA Vice President of Sales & Marketing, Member Services and Technology for a US-based global direct seller where he led the implementation of new distributor and customer service technologies and creation of marketing processes to drive sales growth. He has also held sales operations and management positions at the British American Tobacco Group, Ente Tabacchi Italiani and Fiat Iveco.

“I am excited to welcome Marco to our leadership team. As we are building a new Tupperware to drive long-term sales and profitability growth, I know from having worked with Marco previously that he has the experience and passion we need to guide our EMEA business to growth,” said Miguel Fernandez, president and chief executive officer of Tupperware Brands. “He is the right executive to complete our Commercial leadership team, and I look forward to his contributions to support our turnaround plans in the near term and growth strategies for the long term.”

Tupperware’s Commercial team is led by Patricio Cuesta, president, Commercial, Worldwide, who joined the company on April 9, 2020. Brandolini will report to Cuesta.

 

Avon Foundation for Women Announces New Grants to Frontline Services, Charities

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The Avon Foundation for Women has announced $1 million in new grants to 50 frontline services and charity organizations across the world.

The emergency grant program was launched in tandem with Avon’s #IsolatedNotAlone campaign, responding to the surge in domestic violence cases in the wake of the coronavirus lockdown.

The funding will provide crucial support for over 250,000 at-risk women and children who are affected by rapidly rising domestic abuse rates. The grants will be shared across 37 countries including Brazil, Mexico, India, Philippines, Germany and the UK.

The Avon Foundation’s $1 million in funding will support women around the world and is aligned with Avon’s campaign to help tackle the crisis of domestic violence surging as a result of abusers who are locked inside together with their partners during the Covid-19 pandemic. Some examples of how the funds will be put immediately to use include:

In the UK, domestic abuse charity Women’s Aid will receive $50,000 to fund their digital support services, including the Live Chat Helpline, Survivors Forum and the Survivors Handbook, in turn helping around 8,000 women.

In Mexico, one of the highest-ranking countries in terms of domestic abuse, funds from the Avon Foundation will help the National Shelter Network provide access to resources and immediate protection for around 3,000 women and children.

In India, the Family Planning Association, will receive $40,000 allowing them to provide essential services in rural communities across the country, including counseling for vulnerable women and children affecting by domestic abuse.

In addition to the Avon Foundation’s grant and in partnership with sister brands Aesop, The Body Shop and Natura, Avon is calling on governments around the world to keep domestic violence front of mind and expand funding and resources to cope with increasing violence. The companies are leveraging their combined global reach to 200 million consumers in 110 countries to ask people to support the campaign.

“Avon has been supporting women for 130 years and our support is needed now more than ever. With this new Avon Foundation-funding we can help make a valuable difference to the lives of at-risk women and children across the globe who urgently need protection from domestic abuse,” said Natalie Deacon, president of the Avon Foundation for Women. “Avon has been supporting NGOs tackling gender-based violence for 15 years and the need has never been so acute. We are proud to be able to contribute and support Avon’s #IsolatedNotAlone campaign to respond to the spike in violence triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.”

Globally, Avon’s 5 million Representatives will continue to provide vital assistance for women and children who are experiencing abuse; embedding helpline and support information into catalogues, signposting where to get help, and donating vital personal hygiene and beauty products to refuges.

More widely, Avon has repurposed production lines to manufacture personal care products needed most by health care and front-line workers, including moisturizing hand gel. Hundreds of thousands of care packs with hand gel and other supplies have been donated to local hospitals and front-line services across the world.

Scentsy Ascends Again

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Scentsy
Founded: 2004
Headquarters: Meridian, ID
Top Executives: Orville Thompson, CEO, Heidi Thompson, CEO
Products: Fragrance and home decor

Through 15 years of gains and a few dips, Scentsy stays the course with a record year of growth.

When Scentsy was first founded by Orville and Heidi Thompson in 2004, the company operated out of a 40-foot shipping container at the couple’s small sheep farm in Meridian, Idaho. Today, Scentsy has grown into one of the direct-selling industry’s leading companies. The home-and personal- fragrance market leader boasts nearly 117,000 consultants and more than 1,000 employees who work out of the company’s home office on an Idaho campus of 73 acres.

A lot has changed since Scentsy’s humble beginnings 15 years ago, but what hasn’t changed is the company’s commitment to its mission: To bring value to the world by providing an industry-leading, family friendly business opportunity selling creative, artistic, high-quality products that Warm the Heart, Enliven the Senses and Inspire the Soul.

The words “industry-leading,” “family friendly” and “quality products” aren’t feel-good phrases. They’re company commitments that have endured through Scentsy’s 15 years of operation. “We are very connected to our mission statement, which has been surprisingly resilient for a long time,” says Orville Thompson, Scentsy CEO. “That’s been very consistent through all the different phases of the business that we’ve been through.”

Through the years, Scentsy has demonstrated its agility—the ability of a company to react to changing market forces—in the face of constant change. This agility, combined with the company’s stalwart stability, sets Scentsy apart—since truly agile organizations are both stable and dynamic at the same time.

Last year was a good year for Scentsy, with revenue of more than $472 million—a figure that reflects Scentsy’s second ascension. Scentsy’s revenue went from $140,000 in 2004 to $178.4 million in 2009. Then, in the company’s hyper-growth period during 2011 and 2012, Scentsy climbed to $535 million and $560 million, respectively. But starting in summer 2012, Scentsy’s sales dropped while Glade, owned by S.C. Johnson Company, and others introduced copycat retail products. Since then, Scentsy has steadily climbed upward.

“We have done well in adapting to the changes,” Orville admits. “When we were very small, we dealt with being small. When we tipped and started to go through hyper-growth, we handled fast growth. When we went into a bit of a dip, we dealt with that well. And our renewal since then, we’re handling that well.”

Party Plan’s Personal Touch

As a direct selling company with a party-plan model, Scentsy faces both challenges and opportunities. One of the challenges is they are more susceptible to retail competition, such as from Amazon, where their products have shown for sale. But the biggest challenge of the party-plan model, according to Orville, is the universal sense of disconnection that pervades our culture today.

“People are less interested in gathering together for a party,” Orville says. “So, we have to reinvent what a party means. We have to devise new ways of creating a personal touch in a changing world.”

However, Scentsy Co-CEO Heidi Thompson sees the personal-touch challenge as an opportunity as well. For instance, Scentsy consultants will often personalize and package their customers’ orders themselves—perhaps by including personal notes and candies.

“Our consultants personalize their product orders, which is something Amazon can’t do,” Heidi says. “I think we have an advantage in that personal touch in a party-plan business model.”

Scentsy’s commitment to manufacturing high quality products has also helped them compete with retailers like Amazon. “People can beat us in price, but nobody has been able to beat us in quality,” Orville says. “Nobody can come close.”

Lure of Product Licensing

One of the ways Scentsy has stayed agile is by looking for new business opportunities and partnerships. They found them by licensing their products with major brands such as Disney, Marvel and Lucas Films.

“Our consultants personalize their product orders, which is something Amazon can’t do.”
—Heidi Thompson, Scentsy, Co-CEO

“Over the last few years, product licensing has been very good for us,” Orville says. “It brings in customers whom we have not had before—because those brands have incredible followings.”

As a result of Scentsy’s launch of a new product called the Jeb Skellington Scentsy Wax Warmer, which was part of the Disney Nightmare Before Christmas collection, the company set a record for daily sales.

“The first hour, we sold more of those Jeb Skellington wax warmers than we had sold of any other warmer in its first month,” Orville says. “The two brands—Scentsy and Disney—came together and created incredible energy. That fueled our growth in 2019. It energized our consultants, gave them more hope and excitement, so they went to work. Everything was lifted.”

“The two brands— Scentsy and Disney—came together and created incredible energy.”
—Orville Thompson, Scentsy Co-CEO

As a growth strategy, product licensing is working for Scentsy—boosting revenue and morale among consultants. “Licensing our products gets the consultants excited,” Heidi says. “It builds energy among our consultants. We’ve also signed some licensing agreements that we can’t tell you about yet.”

Culture of Connection

Rather than targeting any particular generation, Scentsy consistently markets to women in their late 20s, a demographic that is currently populated by Millennials but will move to Gen Z in a few years.

“We focus on people in their late 20s—because early millennials are different from late millennials,” Orville says. “We want to give young, stay-at-home moms a valuable means of connecting with their friends and community.”

Scentsy has worked hard to cultivate a family friendly culture and thus stay true to their mission. “Our culture is one of connection, love and kindness,” Heidi says. “We want a place where people feel welcome and can be their authentic selves. There are a lot of people in this world who don’t feel like they’re part of something. We seek to create that space for our Scentsy family.”

The connection, love and kindness in Scentsy’s culture lead to hope in a brighter future, Orville says. “We’re a very hopeful place,” he adds, “not just that the business will do well but that the business will serve as a means of making our lives better.”

One of Scentsy’s challenges is translating that sense of connection, love and kindness into foreign markets and languages. “I think that’s because it’s more difficult to demonstrate connection, love and kindness without being able to speak heart-toheart with one another,” Orville says.

Scentsy’s consultants currently sell products in 12 markets, including (in alphabetical order) Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, United Kingdom and the United States.

“Our culture is one of connection, love and kindness.”—Heidi Thompson, Scentsy, Co-CEO

“We’re growing well in most of our markets,” Orville says. “The United States market is growing so much now. When the U.S. grows, everything gets better. Everything picks up. Europe is also growing very strongly. We could quadruple in Europe quite easily. So, we have a lot of room to grow.” DSN

The Scentsy Mission

To bring value to the world by providing an industry-leading, family-friendly business opportunity selling creative, artistic, high-quality products that Warm the Heart, Enliven the Senses and Inspire the Soul.

What’s the Job Your Customers Hire Your Products to Do?

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The customer is the wrong unit of analysis when you’re trying to innovate.

Flat-line sales of McDonald’s shakes back in the 90s had the fast-food giant looking for ways to innovate. Focus groups convened, data rolled in and product changes were made accordingly. But sales remained the same. Why?

It turns out McDonald’s, like so many other companies, subscribed to the notion that innovation hinged on knowing who your customer was. But as Clayton M. Christensen, Harvard Business School professor, co-founder of Innosight, and author of Competing Against Luck says, “My characteristics and attributes have not yet caused me to buy the New York Times today. There might be a correlation between the propensity I have to buy The Times, but they don’t cause me to do that. Nor do our characteristics or attributes cause us to buy any products or services.”

So Christensen’s colleagues set up shop in McDonald’s. For 18 hours, careful attention was paid to everyone who purchased a shake. Time of day, additional food purchases, dine in or carry out, what were the customers wearing? A clear—yet unexpected picture emerged.

Eighty percent of McDonald’s shakes were sold before 8:30 in the morning, mostly to men. They were always alone, and they took them to go.

 Are You Asking the Right Questions?

Innovation has gained an unflattering and inaccurate reputation for being messy, imperfect and unknowable. Some companies look at innovation as a necessary crapshoot. They sink a lot of money and time into ideas they throw out into the proverbial universe—a few win, most lose—then the company figures out how to mitigate the damage and live with the fallout.

Even when innovation is more strategic, it often follows a customer discovery route that may teach companies a great deal about their customer base but doesn’t accurately predict which innovations will increase sales or productivity.

“The customer is the wrong unit of analysis when you’re trying to innovate.”
– Clayton Christensen, author and professor Harvard Business School

It is little wonder innovation is such a daunting task within direct selling companies. Think about it. The full budgetary and data mining weight of McDonald’s built a quintessential customer profile, and the fast-food giant still couldn’t convert that knowledge into increased shake sales. It wasn’t for lack of resources or effort. It was because they were asking the wrong questions. Maybe you are too.

 Successful Innovation Lies in Finding Answers to the Right Questions

“The customer is the wrong unit of analysis when you’re trying to innovate…Rather than the customer, you need to understand what it is the customer is trying to accomplish. What’s the job the customer is trying to get done?” Christensen says.

Within the direct selling industry, this can mean searching for the job that not only your end-user customer is trying to accomplish, but also the job the distributor is trying to accomplish. They likely aren’t the same job. This means direct selling innovation needs to be two-fold—bringing new products to market that the company can sell and creating better incentive programs for distributors. So what job is your customer or your distributor “hiring” your product or business opportunity to do?

Jobs to Be Done

The Jobs to Be Done Innovation Theory says we all have numerous jobs to be done every day of our lives. Some are small, like passing time while waiting in line. Others loom large, like finding a more fulfilling career. They spring up unexpectedly like lost luggage on a business trip and can be as routine as packing healthy food for your daughter’s school lunch.

These jobs cause customers to get out of the house, get online and ask their family and friends for solutions. Customers essentially “hire” products and services to do the job. And if that product or service completes the task well, they will re-hire it. If not, that product or service gets fired and customers re-evaluate their options.

And jobs are stable things over time. If Julius Caesar needed to get something from here to there, he hired a horseman. Queen Victoria hired a telegraph or railroad. Churchill hired an airplane. We hire FedEx or the internet. The job has always been there, whether or not there was a product or service available to do it. Innovate the product or service, then a market emerges.

Direct selling companies can transform their understanding of customer choice with Jobs Theory, in ways that no amount of data ever could. At the heart of Jobs Theory are the causal drivers that lead customers to invite products, services and opportunities into their lives. Jobs Theory can tell you precisely “why” a customer is or is not purchasing your product, and it comes down to whether or not your product is doing the job they need it to do.

Back to McDonald’s

So what on Earth were these guys trying to accomplish buying a shake that early in the morning? Christensen sent his team back to McDonald’s to figure that out, and they pulled innovation clues from McDonald’s shake customers.

Rather than simply ask why they selected a shake, Christensen’s team re-shaped the inquiry around Jobs Theory. “What job were you trying to do that caused you to come here to McDonald’s at 6:30 in the morning and hire that shake?”

The customers were a bit confounded and struggled to answer. So they asked them to think about the last time they were in a similar situation and needed to get the job done, but didn’t come to McDonald’s to hire the shake. “What did you hire?”

A pattern emerged. Those men all had the same job to do that morning. They needed something to do while making a long, boring commute to work. They needed to be engaged in life, and they needed to stay awake. They weren’t hungry yet, but they wanted to stave off that mid-morning stomach rumble.

So what did they hire when they didn’t hire the McDonald’s shake? One guy hired a banana, but it was gone in three minutes, and he was hungry by 7:30 a.m. Another turned to doughnuts, but they were crumbly and gooey, and it was a fiasco if the phone rang. Spreading the cream cheese on bagels was problematic, and the guilt from hiring a Snickers bar was nearly unbearable.

“The customer rarely buys what the company thinks it’s selling him.”
— Peter Drucker, Management Consultant, author and educator

“When I have this job to do and come to McDonald’s and hire this milkshake, it is so viscous it takes me 23 minutes to suck it up the thin, little straw. Who knows what the ingredients are and I don’t care because I know it’s still in my stomach at 10 o’clock. And it fits right in my cup holder, and if I forget what I’m doing and turn it sideways, it doesn’t flow out,” Christensen summarizes.

Utilizing Jobs Theory showed McDonald’s new competitors and differing priorities. Suddenly innovation options to get the job done better became clearer. In essence,  thicker shakes would last longer, chunks of fruit or chocolate could improve engagement, or a self-serve, lobby shake machine with a card swipe might speed transactions.

Peter Drucker said, “The customer rarely buys what the company thinks it’s selling him.” This was true for McDonald’s.

“They realized they had been improving the shake on dimensions of performance that was irrelevant to the job to be done. But once they understood what it was, they could improve it in salient dimensions so that it would be successful every time,” Christensen says.

All you have to do is look to the successful innovations efforts of Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Scott Cook’s work with Intuit, eBay and Procter & Gamble to see Jobs Theory in action. Maybe you’ve used the services of Airbnb?

Christensen reminds us that you don’t need a bunch of luck to be innovative. “You need the right mindset, a disciplined focus on improving a specific experience for someone and the skills to bring that experience to life.”

Jobs to Be Done Innovation Action Steps

  1. Find a job that needs to be done. Understand why someone would want to pull a product into her life. Think beyond functional dimensions; explore emotional/social reasons. Think less like an entrepreneur and more like a psychologist to find out what people care about.
  2. Document the journey. Do the work of a documentary filmmaker, find out where, when, and what they are doing the moment they hire a product. Create a storyboard or map of the experience and focus on the obstacles and moments of frustration.
  3. Remove the obstacles and frustrations to create a better experience. Make the new experience twice as good as the current one to avoid customer anxiety over hiring something new. People tend to avoid loss and maintain the status quo, so show them what they are gaining so they don’t miss what they are losing.

We Are People Who Need Talented People

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Our industry needs to be constantly innovating and reflecting on how it attracts, manages and inspires its people.

The Coronavirus is sending our global economy on a detour that will likely be longer than most of us would have predicted six months ago. The effects on production, revenue and employment are already significant, and we may not know the extent of the pandemic’s damage for a while.

The market will eventually recover. It always does. And companies will need quality employees to ensure that the recovery is strong. While quarantines and closures drastically changed our daily routines, they didn’t alter the fundamentals of finding and keeping those quality people.

“Make compassionate but objective assessments of how people are performing and how they fit into your culture.”

In the context of knowing that your immediate priorities are the well being and safety of your current team members, we give you this primer, for later, on how to find talent who will sustain and grow your organization.

Retention First

Retaining the employees and distributors you already have will almost always bring you the best financial and organizational return.

There are lots of studies out there on the cost of employee turnover. Some often-cited figures come from the Center for American Progress (CAP), which calculates that the cost to hire a new employee can range from 5.8 percent to 213 percent of that employee’s salary, depending on the position. The average is about 20 percent of a worker’s salary, according to CAP.

Not everyone on your team is a keeper, however. Make compassionate but objective assessments of how people are performing and how they fit into your culture. For example, you may have an employee you like personally, but if you are constantly trying to coach that person up to par, you’re probably taking time away from employees who would soar even higher with just a fraction of that help from you. On the flip side, you might have a salesperson who’s killing it with the numbers but doesn’t share your company’s values and is creating a toxic environment for other employees. Those people’s high numbers aren’t worth it in the end, either.

Recruiting Always 

Regardless of how well you retain your best people, turnover is still inevitable. So is growth—especially in the direct selling industry, where rising companies often generate exponential revenue increases that demand capacity increases. We need to be constantly filling our pipelines with candidates for all levels, from the front lines to the C suites.

You have more control over who fills your corporate teams than you do over who self-selects to be a distributor. So let’s start the discussion about recruiting at the home office.

Don’t assume that who or what worked in the past will work now. Every new hire search is an opportunity to refine or redefine what your goals are for a particular role and to fill it with someone who can exceed or at least build on the accomplishments of the person who held the role before.

Our industry needs to be constantly innovating and reflecting on how it attracts, manages and inspires its people. For example, because our industry is prone to criticism, we tend to hire people—executives, especially—who’ve worked in our channel before. It feels safer to stick with people who get us and trust us. But it also keeps us from the kind of positive disruption that an outsider could bring.

Companies across industry lines believe that increasing diversity is critical to staying competitive. According to a recent study by Pearson Partners International, a global executive search and leadership consulting firm: “Organizations have realized the business imperative for diversity and … they are seeking talent beyond the usual suspects who can bring new perspectives and fresh thinking to their businesses and better connect with diverse customers and shareholders.”

That same Pearson study indicates that identifying future leaders is another top priority for organizations in the next five years. You might feel that you have a gut instinct for leadership potential in other people. Perhaps you do. Still, it’s wise to measure candidates against tangible criteria, too.

Consultant and author John Maxwell encourages companies to pay attention to a leadership candidate’s soft attributes, like passion for the company’s vision, emotional and psychological resilience and an apparent drive to take smart risks. But companies also should ask questions that will give them more concrete data: Does this future leader always complete jobs? Does he or she explicitly take ownership of goals and the outcome, whether it’s a success or failure? Do all eyes naturally fall on this person when it’s time for the group to make a decision?

Distributor Profile 

You’re directly recruiting only a small percentage of the people who keep your company vital. Distributors—most of whom you’ll never meet—are the driving force in our industry. Attracting and keeping them when they basically hire themselves means we have to be as transparent and specific as possible about the type of person who succeeds in direct selling.

“Organizations have realized the business imperative for diversity and … they are seeking talent beyond the usual suspects.” —Pearson Partners International

Harvard Business Review recently did a study of gig workers, looking for characteristics that make people successful in a highly decentralized, self-driven channel. HBR found that gig workers have “an intense preoccupation” with being productive and are deeply invested in the outcome of their work. They do this because their income and reputation depend on it and because it wards off the “precariousness” that most independent contractors feel.

The research also shows that successful gig workers:

  • crave routine
  • tend to choose work that connects them to a larger purpose (something direct selling is great at providing)
  • are likely to find motivation in the combination of uncertainty and limitless possibilities inherent in working independently

Direct selling companies also can help potential distributors make the right decision for themselves by being clear about earnings potential and what it will take to reach certain levels within our organizations. And, of course, we need to make sure we’re attracting people who love the sales process and have not just a talent for but a deep desire to connect with others and determine how our products can improve their lives.

‘A Human Focus’

The talented, innovative people you’re looking for are searching for companies with strong people-centered cultures. They want to be part of an organization that is committed to making life better for everyone it touches. These are the companies that will have the first pick of the best and brightest, according to the 2019 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends report.

“The pressures that have driven the rise of the social enterprise … are forcing organizations to move beyond mission statements and philanthropy to learn to lead the social enterprise—and reinvent themselves around a human focus,” the report’s authors wrote. “Leading a social enterprise is about recognizing that, while businesses must generate a profit and deliver a return to shareholders, they must do so while also improving the lot of workers, customers, and the communities in which we live.”

“Businesses must generate a profit and deliver a return to shareholders … while also improving the lot of workers, customers, and the communities in which we live.” —Deloitte

The Pearson researchers agree: “Organizations may miss what it really means to have an authentic employment brand—not just in words and images but in overall work environment and culture. This should be key in both attraction and retention. Understanding culture and how it can drive attraction, retention and innovation is a critical opportunity.”

Always Searching

The search for top talent is never done. Successful organizations recognize that even when they’ve got a dream team, they need to have a dream bench. Identify and work hard to keep the talented people you have, and keep an eye out for those who will get you even closer to your vision.

“Good to Great” author Jim Collins famously said, “Get the right people on the bus.” He also said, “Great vision without great people is irrelevant.” DSN

Need some fresh ways to evaluate employment candidates?

These tips can help you change up your next new-hire search.

Recruiting experts advise you to edit your job descriptions to remove language that might have an inherent bias. For example, “Words like ‘ambitious’ or ‘driven,’ can be seen by female candidates as too masculine,” writes New York Times columnist Adam Bryant.

Online recruiting platform Glassdoor says many job descriptions are cold and inaccessible: “The typical boilerplate description simply won’t attract the talent you’re looking for. Job descriptions need to be thought about as if they are a personal interaction that you’re having with each candidate.”

When it comes time for the interview, Bryant suggests taking a candidate to lunch and making note of how he or she treats the wait staff. Or take an applicant on a tour of your office and pay attention to how curious he or she is about your organization and the people you meet along the way.

And trade publisher Recruiting Daily offers up creative recruiting examples from major companies like Apple and Google, each of which has challenged potential programmer applicants with coding mysteries to solve on its website.

A Foot in Both Worlds

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DUOLAB, an innovative startup of L’OCCITANE Group, selected direct selling as the platform to launch their latest innovation in beauty. Could this be a game‑changer for the retail market? Is a hybrid mixture of direct selling and retail the future?

Novelty is hard to come by within the crowded skincare category. With so many brands vying for customers’ attention, how does a company stay competitive? For natural beauty giant L’OCCITANE, innovation is key, and not simply where their products are concerned.

Alain Harfouche, who has worked for L’OCCITANE for the last 16 years, recalls how the company stood out as a trailblazer when it opted to diversify its sales across multiple channels upon its launch two decades ago.

“There were very few brands that did retail on one side and wholesale on the other, e-commerce and business-to-business,” he says. “Twenty years ago, we were one of the few global brands present in six to seven different channels.”

That foundation of fearless diversification was countercultural to what the mainstream luxury brands they shared the market with were accustomed to. “All the luxury brands said we couldn’t be in retail and wholesale at the same time,” Harfouche says. “We were one of the few brands who could grow successfully in two channels.”

That visionary broadening of their sales strategies laid a foundation for the launch of their newest innovation and set the stage for a leap into an additional channel that the leaders of the L’OCCITANE Group believe will be a move many competitors will soon seek to emulate.

Innovation by Example

That investment in innovation is paying off during this time of global uncertainty and instability. While retail stores are being forced to close their doors to the public and desperately scrambling to build their online connection with customers, L’OCCITANE’s early choice to diversify is setting the stage for the company to flourish in ways that traditional brands can’t tap into.

Like many of its competitors, L’OCCITANE’s sales are roughly 80 percent retail and 20 percent e-commerce with variations occurring dependent upon region. To strengthen and expand the digital side of the brand, they needed to encapsulate the in-person benefits of retail while combining the consistent and far-reaching connections of e-commerce.

So, when L’OCCITANE Group readied to roll out its latest innovative startup called Duolab, a beauty technology system that they believed would revolutionize the industry, they looked to the example of a L’OCCITANE Partner, LimeLife by Alcone. This cosmetics and skincare-centric direct selling company supercharged its sales through independent distributors, and after launching in 2015, is now 30,000 distributors strong.

“I’ve seen the power of how direct selling works for LimeLife in the U.S. and I really had conviction that it would be more powerful for the product to leverage the direct selling channel rather than retail,” says Harfouche, who is now Duolab’s Global Managing Director. “E-commerce has been growing a lot but it has a limitation in that it does not help you have the full experience. In direct selling, you have someone who can give you the full translation of the product and full trust, which is sometimes missing in a pure e-commerce approach. It’s the perfect link between traditional retail and online for us.”

For LimeLife by Alcone CEO and Founder Michele Gay, this move by such a giant brand serves as an incredible endorsement of the direct selling industry she champions. “Our partners L’OCCITANE are launching one of the most exciting new concepts in beauty and chose the direct sales model to do the launch, as opposed to having it go into L’OCCITANE’s retail stores exclusively,” she says. “Having a major beauty brand make this choice is really an amazing acknowledgment to the power of direct selling but also the new future of retail. I am constantly screaming ‘direct selling is the future!’ and this is one big piece of proof that it is!”

What is Duolab?

Duolab’s concept is built on three pillars: personalized skincare, highly natural and clean ingredients that are preservative-free and efficient, and a freshly blended formula. To meet those initiatives, Duolab introduced the Duolab device, which receives capsules of highly concentrated ingredients and then blends them to create an on-demand fresh blend of skincare. Customers purchase the device and then are able to personalize their skincare on a daily basis with individual capsules that can be blended each day at the moment of application.

“I really had conviction that it would be more powerful for this disruptive innovation in beauty to go through direct selling rather than retail.”
– Alain Harfouche, Global Managing Director, Duolab

For now, all capsules have been developed in partnership with L’OCCITANE en Provence brand and its experts in natural skincare, but the company has plans to expand through partnered innovation, which will invite other beauty brands internal but also external to the L’OCCITANE Group to offer their own line of capsules for use with the Duolab device. Also included with the Duolab device is a small ceramic bin and a postage paid envelope for customers to use as a catch-all for their spent capsule packets. When the bin is full, customers just need to fill their pre-stamped envelope and ship their used capsule packets directly to a recycling center. The idea is to improve skincare regimens without creating harm for the environment. “Our researches demonstrated that the bathroom is the room in the home where we recycle the least,” Harfouche says. “We only decided to move forward with Duolab the day we had the right solution for recycling.”

Category Creating Through Innovation

Duolab is just getting started, having launched in the UK mid-February of this year, with plans to launch in the U.S. in early 2021, but Harfouche is already seeing signs that their groundbreaking technology will be an incredible fit for the direct selling industry. Customer transactions are currently averaging between £300-400, and with such a high transaction rate, distributors are developing exciting visions for their earnings.

That earning potential couldn’t come at a more opportune time for those who have lost jobs or income due to the mandatory lockdowns across the world in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Government assistance will be a helpful Band-aid, but not a long-term viable solution, which is why many retail companies and employees who previously viewed work-from-home opportunities as inferior are now actively seeking ways to generate income from home. For Duolab distributors and the many active direct sellers across the globe who serve as the voice and face of the brands they represent, this unique moment in time will serve as an opportunity for them to help their neighbors and friends by providing a solution for their building financial crises.

“I am constantly screaming ‘direct selling is the future!’ and this is one big piece of proof that it is.” – Michele Gay, Limelife by Alcone CEO and Founder

L’OCCITANE’s competitors scoffed in those early days when the company chose to take a unique approach to their sales strategy, but their early adaptation to a hybrid model approach is reaping great benefits in an era of global remote and homebound work structures that could not have been predicted. Duolab’s leveraging of the original influencers—direct sellers—who serve as the trusted voice of their brand while using technology as their main connector, is simply a successful extension of the innovative and visionary example set by their parent company two decades ago. DSN

The Duolab Device: 90 Seconds to Skincare

Forget preservatives. With Duolab, customers can select the skincare dose that matches their needs on a daily basis. The Duolab system includes a device, a range of capsules—including three moisturizing bases and five targeted concentrates—and a skin diagnostics tool. The tool assesses the customer’s skin requirements, resulting in a personalized care protocol. Cycle after cycle, the protocol recommends different combinations of capsules for the morning and the evening, considering every customer’s specific needs. A patented emulsification process delivers a freshly blended mono-dose in 90 seconds. The Duolab thermo-cosmetic technology warms the cream to the skin’s natural temperature, thereby boosting its penetration and efficacy.

Four Direct Selling Companies Leading the Innovation Charge

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If necessity is the mother of all invention, we can expect a mother lode.

The direct selling industry has never faced the likes of a crisis that we are all going through with COVID-19. Still, companies are rising to the occasion—sending employees home to work virtually, conducting meetings through video conferencing, holding distance events and more, all the while continuing to provide service, support and encouragement to the distributors who depend on them. When the coronavirus finally has been contained and eradicated, we’re likely to be left with innovations that were a direct result of these unprecedented times.

Make no mistake: This crisis will leave a lasting mark on our industry. Our adaptability and innovation skills are being tested. But we can use this opportunity to examine our business practices, devise creative solutions and come back stronger. This month’s cover story explores how a variety of direct selling companies have leveraged technology to propel themselves forward in a market in which we’re sharing space with several formidable gig economy and e-commerce giants.

In January, The Wall Street Journal reported the $2 billion all-stock acquisition of Avon Products, Inc. by Brazilian cosmetics company Natura &Co. Avon is just one example of our industry’s efforts to adapt our business model to an evolving consumer landscape. Tupperware also has struggled to adapt its traditional home-based parties to a digital format. At the same time, it faces growing competition in the reusable storage container space from brands like Rubbermaid and Glad products and outlets like the Dollar Store.

Innovate, or Be Left Behind

Companies in every sector are well aware of this call to action. Still, direct sales organizations have had to walk the line between a legacy of home parties, house calls and personalized service, and a future defined by mobile devices, convenience, speed and sometimes even customer anonymity.

Relationships and technology aren’t mutually exclusive. Direct selling companies have closely monitored trends and invested the resources necessary to develop marketing and tools that blend personalization and convenience. For legacy companies, some of which count older and quite vocal distributors among their demographics, venturing into increasingly digital territory can bring growing pains. Are hybrid models the best approach, or is it best to close the door on the past and jump into the future with both feet?

“Our distributors are microinfluencers. What we need to do as an industry is build our reputation and help them develop theirs.”
—Chris Stubbs, SVP Global Sales & Operations, Nu Skin Operations, Nu Skin

Successful innovation requires a climate that allows freedom to experiment and room to fail. Here are five direct selling companies that are leading the charge in innovating for the future.

Prüvit

Founder and CEO Brian Underwood used to think innovation was about having the newest, the best, the fastest technology in the world—and then his perspective shifted. “The root of innovation is bringing value that people didn’t have before,” he says. “If I can educate you on something you didn’t know, I just brought value to your life without you even having to buy anything. In today’s world, the marketplace is very fickle. As consumers, we’re professional buyers, and as humans, we want value, so we focus as a company on what we can give, not what we can get.”

Sometimes that means unearthing value from something that’s already there. “Ketones weren’t leading-edge—we commercialized them and became a megaphone through community-based marketing. We don’t want to be on the bleeding edge of technology—I’ve been there before, and it’s a very slippery slope.”

A virtual company of 45 employees, Prüvit’s lean structure enables it to stay nimble and in the trenches. “Flexibility is important. A lot of companies, as they see growth, they over-employ and lose effectiveness.

We want to stay plugged into the conversations already happening with customers, promoters, and experts. That’s where collaboration and innovation should take place. We can’t innovate by theory—we have to be in conversation. Our core philosophy for the last 12 years is that collaboration is currency.

“There’s the business you’re in, and the business you’re becoming,” Underwood continues. “If you constantly manage both of those businesses, you won’t ever have to pivot because you’re always innovating. We want to use technology to improve our delivery system and provide a better product experience that addresses what consumers are looking for.”

Scentsy

Culture is critical to innovation. Co-Owners and Co-CEOs Orville and Heidi Thompson applied their entrepreneurial backgrounds to the creation of a direct selling company with a DNA, and a culture more agile and dynamic than its age might suggest, says Chief Marketing Officer Mark Stastny.

Orville Thompson has encouraged the concept of “yes, if,” which Stastny defines as “the understanding that virtually anything can be done if certain circumstances exist.” Sometimes those circumstances aren’t feasible, but they’re almost always worth exploring. Several years ago, for example, as the company continued to introduce new fragrances and discontinues others, it was hearing from customers who didn’t want their favorites to go away. What would have to happen for the company to continue to make those favorites available to those who loved them? Orville asked. The result was Scentsy’s “Always Get My Bar” subscription. Even after the company has discontinued a fragrance, it will keep making it exclusively for Scentsy Club members who request it in their product subscriptions.

Another one of the company’s fundamental innovation philosophies: Don’t let perfection be the enemy of good. “The field learned early from us … that we’re perfectly willing to take ideas and programs and capabilities to market that aren’t perfect and haven’t been completely tested, but they’ve also learned that we’ll listen intently to them. If there are aspects of the program that aren’t working for them, we’ll work tirelessly—at times moving heaven and earth—to make it right,” Stastny says. “Ultimately, this is an industry of energy and momentum. You have to have structure around your plans and roadmaps, but your culture needs to be willing and able to listen and have the finger on the pulse of the market of your consultants and then be nimble and frankly humble enough to move and change when appropriate.”

LifeVantage

Long before Ryan Goodwin was Chief Marketing Officer at LifeVantage, he ran his own advertising agency. Among his clients was a direct sales company reluctant to go out on a limb with innovation, the likes of what his Fortune 500 clients were embracing. Some direct selling executives, he says, are under the impression that our business model is radically different from others and that what works elsewhere won’t work in our industry. Besides, if the field seems to be doing well with their sales and recruiting efforts, why rock the boat? With that mentality, companies expect innovation to come from the field.

To compete in this marketplace, though, direct selling companies have to take ownership of innovation—and LifeVantage is focusing its efforts on two key areas: establishing a strong visual brand and enhancing distributors’ and customers’ digital experience. Driving innovation with your visual brand, Goodwin says, “sends the signal that this is an innovative company flying an innovative flag, and everyone can see it.” As for digital innovation, “we think it’s one of the biggest macro trends that direct selling hasn’t been adjusting to fast enough—and that can create a competitive advantage for us.” In a nutshell, “we want to be as close to Shopify as possible, but with no weird hoops because it’s network marketing.” The objective is an integrated strategy that makes it as simple as possible for anyone, at any age or level of technical proficiency, to start and grow a LifeVantage business.

“I think there’s lots of opportunities for direct selling companies to leverage their unique distribution channel through human beings, through unique products, and delivering those to customers in a delightful way.” – Vince Han, Founder/CEO, MobileCoach

As the basis for comparison, Goodwin points to Uber—specifically, the ease with which one may start driving for the company. “I’ve asked hundreds of people, and the answer is always the same: Have you ever wanted to drive for Uber but couldn’t figure out how to do it? Uber has used technology to tell them turn by turn how to service their customers.” The challenge for our industry, he says, is to use technology to make it as easy as possible for distributors to build relationships. Goodwin believes we can do this with the aid of machine learning and a simple interface, enabling a distributor to log into an app when she has the time, “and we tell her the next thing she needs to do to build her business. We have to crack that path—if we don’t, it’s going to be hard to keep the distributor pipeline full.” The future of direct selling, Goodwin adds, belongs to those who figure out how to leverage technology at all points in the cycle: company to distributor and company to customer, “strengthening each touchpoint as a team versus working against one another. Ultimately we all want same thing—to help people be healthier.”

Nu Skin

The empowered customer rules the current marketing landscape. Chris Stubbs, Senior Vice President of Global Sales and Operations, defines that customer as “someone who has an abundance of choice, or the ability to get what they want, when they want it, and where they want it. The way we compete in an opportunity and gig economy landscape that is social-commerce and e-commerce enabled is by understanding our customers, focusing on what they want and meeting them where they are at.”

Perhaps that’s why social media influencers have become so, well, influential. They’ve figured out how to connect with customers on a personal level, they’re accessible, and we trust them. Here’s some great news: Direct selling companies already have built-in armies of influencers. “Our distributors are micro-influencers,” Stubbs says. “What we need to do as an industry is build our reputation and help them develop theirs, so when consumers are looking for products, they can go to one of our distributors as a trusted source who provides that personal service. One of our competitive advantages as an industry is community and relationships. With millions of micro-influencers sharing products they love with people who know and trust them, this combination is very powerful.”

“Innovation comes from data-driven insight, a clear understanding of consumers’ needs and an always-learning mindset,” says Kevin Fuller, Senior Vice President of Global Product and Brand. “If direct sellers aren’t engaged in continuous innovation for the future, they won’t have one.

It’s the lifeblood of direct selling, in my opinion. The products and services we offer have to be top shelf to inspire both the distributor force and the consumer.” He adds that consumers can see right through ‘innovation for innovation’s sake’. The difference is that real innovation is highly relevant because it connects with real needs. “Real innovation is messy and takes time—there’s no such thing as a 100 percent success rate,” Fuller continues. “Top management needs to embrace that, then the tone at the top will filter through the culture. If your innovation teams feel like they’re not allowed to fail, they will never deliver game changing products or services. It will drive them to be inherently conservative because they will work only on what they are certain they can deliver. It’s easy for non-visionary management teams to deprioritize the substantial, consistent investment that real innovation requires.” DSN

Technology’s Disruption to Direct Selling

Vince Han founded Mobile Coach, a Provo, Utah-based technology platform for designing, deploying and managing chatbots, or computer programs that simulate human conversations.

Last year, Han penned a guest blog post, “How Technology Will Disrupt Direct Selling—Are You Ready?,” in which he stated “incumbents and established entities are blind to what’s coming until it’s too late.” The trends on the horizon that direct sellers should be watching carefully—if not leading the charge—he says, include frictionless (read: fast with minimal clicks or delays) user experiences, multisensory user experiences, and artificial intelligence and chatbots. So what’s stopping some of us? For starters, some basic human psychological biases:

  • CONFIRMATION BIAS: seeking out proof to confirm the validity/effectiveness of our current strategies)
  • SUNK COST LOSS AVERSION: sticking to your guns because you’ve already sunk so much money into your present strategy
  • GREED: robbing the future to pay for the present, or reaping everything you can at the moment without concern for where you should be headed
  • HERD MENTALITY: the assumption that because nobody else is doing it that way, you shouldn’t try it

This isn’t to imply that embracing innovation should be easy for direct selling companies. “Amazon is a tech company first, and everything else second. The challenge for direct selling companies is that they haven’t had a legacy of technology first. From my observation, even for the ones trying to embrace technology, there’s a learning curve,” Han says.

While it might seem as if legacy companies face a steeper learning curve than younger organizations, however, “I would put my money on legacy companies,” he continues. “They’ve got a brand and a loyal customer base and the time, if they chose, to implement technology in the right way by leveraging that bank account of trust that they have with their customers.”

To gain the support of their distributors and customers, Han adds, companies must be transparent with their plans and timetable, “and I think their customers would embrace that.”

All of this said, many legacy companies have legacy technology. Han uses a term called “technical debt” to describe how even the best companies cut corners because of business pressures. Some of those larger legacy companies have incurred a huge amount of technical debt, “so that even the simplest change on a website takes a Herculean effort.” Newer companies, meanwhile, are relatively unencumbered with debt and can debut with a slick website.

It Should Always Be Day One

Jeff Bezos wrote his shareholders a letter in 2017 in which he declared that it would always be “Day 1” at Amazon. In other words, Amazon would maintain the optimism, nimbleness and focus of a first-day startup, always thinking ahead, and refusing the temptation to slide into Day 2 complacency. One of Bezos’ core philosophies in support of that mantra was that decisions should be made with 70 percent of the information; waiting for 90 percent would put you behind in the race.

Over the last decade, technology organizations have taken that mindset to heart—and it requires an openness to failure as a natural step toward learning and improvement. Take, for example, agile development, an incremental, sprint-style approach to software development that replaces a traditional cycle that required months in product requirements, followed by months of writing code. By the time organizations would deploy their sites one or two years later, their requirements were already out of date. With Agile, developers are pushing out new features every couple of weeks, Han says, and while it’s a great way to mitigate large-scale failure, “you’re still going to fail—you’ll still be late, you’re going to have bugs. You need an executive team committed to technology—a technology roadmap, being transparent about it, and being able to attract the talent needed to handle it … it’s important to have someone with technology chops at the table making the decisions,” Han says.

There’s an important distinction between innovation and innovation theater. Innovation theater is focused on creating buzzwords, but there’s no real substance behind the scenes—and consumers can tell the difference. Ultimately, they’re going to go “where it’s most frictionless, and where things are most private, solid and secure and that’s stuff that you can’t theater away—that’s real infrastructure you have to understand how to put in—and it’s also something you can’t do overnight.”

Whether our industry will ever be able to compete with the speed of Amazon delivery remains to be seen. In the meantime, what we do know is that our distributors are our greatest strength—and perhaps the best innovation will come from determining how to capitalize on their service and the convenience of technology.

“I don’t know if anyone’s really cracked the code yet,” Han says, “but I think there’s lots of opportunities for direct selling companies to leverage their unique distribution channel through human beings, through unique products, and delivering those to customers in a delightful way. Amazon really can’t duplicate that. I think there can be lots of wonderful innovations that have yet to be discovered.”

What Will the Post-COVID “New Normal” Look Like?

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(The following was written by Rodger Dean Duncan and appeared on Forbes.com.)

Steve Jobs, the genius behind much of Apple’s ramp-up to become one of the most profitable companies on the planet, said innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity, not as a threat.

Another really smart guy named Steve has plenty to say on the subject. He’s Steve Brown, author of The Innovation Ultimatum: How Six Strategic Technologies Will Reshape Every Business in the 2020s.

This Steve is the former futurist (an interesting combination of words) at Intel Corporation. Today he runs Possibility and Purpose, a consulting business that helps leaders imagine and build for the future.

In a previous column he talked about the innovation hyperdrive that’s frequently spawned by challenging circumstances. Here he discusses what he expects in the next “new normal.”

Rodger Dean Duncan: All the disruption associated with COVID-19 is causing people to challenge their basic assumptions about careers, the workplace, their use of technology, and many related issues. When the health crisis passes, what do you expect the “new normal” to look like?

Steve Brown:  As a recent piece of graffiti in Hong Kong proclaims: “We can’t return to normal, because the normal we had was precisely the problem.” COVID-19 has been called “the great pause,” a time for reflection and introspection.

With clear skies over Los Angeles for the first time in 30 years, existential threats felt by many for the first time in generations, and enforced quiet time at home, people everywhere are reassessing their values and what’s truly important to them.

Stripped of the comfortable illusion of being in control, consumers will move to reassert control over their lives in ways big and small. Pantries will be kept stocked. Savings rates will increase. Consumers will ask more questions about where products come from, how safe food is to eat, and what it took to produce and ship goods to their homes. Business travel will drop, perhaps permanently, and digitization efforts will rapidly accelerate, as the increased use of telehealth, online education, and home grocery shopping have ably illustrated.

Duncan: What can we learn from the current crisis to help us prepare for the next major disruption in our lives?

Brown: We need to build a far more resilient world. Bill Gates has warned us to expect pandemic perhaps every generation. Our ability to cope with and respond to challenges like COVID-19 is woefully inadequate.

We must strengthen global institutions and build a pandemic-ready healthcare system and pandemic-ready industries that can adapt rapidly and continue to operate under stress. For example, manufacturers should embrace the hyper-flexible Industry 4.0 approach, both to compete globally and so they can retool rapidly to deliver emergency equipment at scale when needed.

Duncan: Are you optimistic about the future?

Brown: My answer is an emphatic “Yes!” Before COVID-19 turned the world upside down, we were already on track for an incredible decade of innovation and business transformation—more in the next decade than the last 40-50 years. The pressure cooker effect of pandemic will accelerate this pace.

Six technologies—artificial intelligence, blockchain, sensors, autonomous machines, augmented reality, and 5G and satellite constellation networks will combine to create incredible new products and services, revolutionize business operations, elevate human work, and serve customers in new ways. We are a resilient, adaptable, and innovative species.

Our future remains bright. And, working together, we will make it so.

 

Plexus CEO Robinson Donates Remainder of 2020 Salary, Bonuses to Employees

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Plexus Worldwide® CEO Tarl Robinson announced he will donate his salary and bonuses for the remainder of 2020 as an extra bonus to the 400+ Plexus employees.

Robinson made the announcement to forgo his compensation as an extended commitment to Plexus Worldwide employees amid the COVID- 19 pandemic. As an essential business, Plexus has not furloughed any employees as a result of the global crisis. Robinson shared that he recognizes employees have significant others, families and friends who have been financially affected by the crisis. With this added financial support, Robinson hopes they can help their families or pay it forward to those in need.

“I am sincerely grateful to Plexus employees across the organization, especially those who continue to show up every day to ensure products are being shipped on schedule,” said Robinson. “Good nutrition is so critical right now and we continue to get our products to customers doorsteps on time. Their commitment not only allows us to sustain our business, but also allows Plexus to continue our philanthropic initiatives, such as Nourish One.”

 

How to Lead Better Remote Meetings

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(The following was written by Mary Mesaglio and appeared on gartner.com.)

COVID-19 changed the way so many people work. Although Gartner offers a lot of great advice about the technical challenges of remote work, I’d like to offer something a little bit different: How to work from home successfully as a human.

It happens that Gartner employs over 2,000 experts, the vast majority of whom have been working from home for years. I myself have been working from home for 20 years. And in case you’re wondering, I don’t like to work in monastic seclusion. I am a deeply collaborative worker and find it difficult to get work done unless it’s with someone else. This is all possible in a remote work environment.

“All meetings are not created equal.

Each type of meeting requires a different approach.”

On my team, collectively, we have centuries of combined experience working from home. (Out of kindness to my colleagues, I won’t tell you how many centuries, but it’s a lot.)

What we’ve learned over our centuries is a lot about remote meetings and how to make them effective. And all meetings are not created equal. Each type of meeting requires a different approach. For example, a team meeting requires one approach and a 1:1 quite a different one. Below we have gathered some of our best practices.

Caveat: One size does not fit all

One important caveat before we begin: everybody’s different. That sounds obvious, but here’s why it’s important. It’s our experience that remote working tends to exacerbate personal and cultural differences. Leaders need to be cognizant of that.

“Working remotely tends to expose in-person

practices that are already problematic.”

 

Let me provide a few examples of how this plays out, using my own experience: Many of my colleagues swear by having multiple monitors; I hate having more than one screen. Some colleagues love standing desks; I don’t. Some colleagues thrive on a really structured day. But some others among us need to mix it up, as routine messes with our creative brain.

So take the tips below and expect to personalize and change them according to what you and your team need. One size definitely does not fit all in remote work environments. 

Remote meetings 101: Examine the culture

In a remote environment, meetings are your lifeline, your connection, your glue to the rest of the team. You don’t need in-person meetings to create social cohesion as long as you run fun, un-soul-destroying remote ones.

A good rule of thumb is that if the in-person meeting is terrible, the remote version of the same will be exponentially more so. This means that, in a remote working environment, the way you run meetings becomes crucial to the productivity and cohesion of the team.

If you’re thinking, “Yes, but this has always been true,” you’re right. But as noted above, working remotely tends to expose in-person practices that are already problematic. If there is one thing you should do right now, it’s to examine your meeting culture, and your assumptions about what good looks like.

Here’s some advice from our team on how to run good meetings remotely:

  1. Consider if you even need a meeting.Even in real life (IRL), I have never heard a client lament, “I just wish I had more meetings.” The opposite is almost always true — many people find that group meetings, whether remote or in person, interfere with their real work, are boring and unproductive, and are too numerous.
  2. Make meetings shorter and plan for distractionsincluding, but not limited to kids, pets, spouses or technical glitches.
  3. Consider unconventional meeting lengths.Make meetings 50 minutes long instead of an hour, or 20 minutes rather than a half an hour.
  4. Reduce the meetings that include a dozen attendees or more.Stop the “invite everyone just in case” mentality and invite only those willing to work on a specific task and use the meeting time to get something done.
  5. Eliminate “admire the problem” meetingswhere everyone gets together to talk about the problem but not do anything productive. This looks something like a meeting where you state the problem, comment about why it’s a problem, lament the fact that it is a problem and move on to the next problem.
  6. As a leader, be cognizant of the fact that cultural differences get significantly exacerbated in remote situations; for example, how long a certain culture is comfortable with silence. As one teammate put it, “Leaders need specific handling/training/orientation. Especially in large global organizations, leaders may need to revisit the whole cross-cultural training paradigm if working from home continues for a while.”

Different kinds of meetings are affected in different ways by remote work. Let’s examine those.

The team meeting

Team meetings are a different breed than generic group meetings because they provide the team glue when you cannot rely on casual conversations, shared lunches or water cooler conversations.

As a leader, your goal in a team meeting is not only to inform. Your job is to make the team meetings as valuable as possible, which means making them a vector for social cohesion, as well as a place where hard decisions are made, especially now.

So use team meetings to cement relationships, get people talking and provide a space for all-way communication, especially during a time of crisis. But in addition, decide as a team that you are going to disagree, talk about the elephant in the room, make tough decisions and keep moving forward through this crisis.

Also, have at the ready ways to encourage people to talk. A good rule of thumb is to make the team meeting 50/50, whereby the leader of the meeting talks for no more than 50% of the time (at the outside limit, less if possible), and the other 50% is reserved for collaboration, conversation and discussion by your people.

If the team isn’t used to speaking up, try changing your approach. For example, encourage people to use the chat function to ask questions or rotate who leads the meeting. Use humor and informality to get people talking, but just like in-person meetings, don’t force anyone to speak or put anyone on the spot.

Other ways to improve team meetings:

  1. Consider adding a ritual or ceremony to your team meetings, like a fun way to start or end a remote meeting. For example, everyone might begin the meeting by saying what they can see out their window every day. This works best for geographically distributed teams, where one person is looking at snow and another at a palm tree. Any light-hearted way to start the meeting can help set the tone of exchange and feedback that you want.
  2. Given the current state of the world, many meetings will begin with everyone touching baseabout what’s going on. But be aware of the fatigue that can create in certain geographies. Check in and make sure everyone is okay.
  3. It’s your job as a leader to ensure everyone gets heardand dominant voices don’t overshadow the introverts on your team. This is just like in-person meetings, but this situation can be exacerbated on remote working channels.
  4. Don’t forget about the appreciation and motivationthat should keep coming from managers/peers, even for small acts of success. Recently, one of the teams at Gartner celebrated an achievement by organizing a virtual party where the manager got everybody on a call, sent them a Starbucks gift certificate to get their favorite drink, and played music on the call so everyone could chill and unwind.
  5. Depending on the culture at your place of work, you might need to set some rules about videoand what people should wear.

Individual meetings

In this time of crisis, employee isolation is a real worry. Make sure you have meetings with each of your team members often. Let them set the cadence. Some people find more than once every two weeks is invasive and unnecessary, and others need multiple calls per week. Especially now, you might need to increase your individual meeting cadence to ensure everyone is okay and feels included.

Avoid jumping into business as usual

Work might not be what’s occupying your employees’ psyche at a given moment. More likely, employees are wondering if they are going to lose their house or their job, or whether an elderly loved one might fall sick. Instead of jumping into business as usual, copy the approach of a colleague at Gartner: Start by asking about their health, then their families and how everything is going, and only then their work.

If you’re geographically distributed around the globe, the chances are that different teammates are experiencing different circumstances, some in total lockdown, others emerging from it and still others yet to experience COVID-19 directly.

Consider that remote work is hardest for new employees

They cannot rely on casual encounters or lunch in the cafeteria to cement new relationships. Pay special attention to anyone who is new to the team and is suddenly working remotely. You might need to have more meetings with new workers or set up meetings between them and teammates proactively.

Remote work can be difficult, and remote work during a pandemic has its own set of needs. Ensure that your meetings are inclusive, effective, and well-run to reduce frustration and build team camaraderie during challenging times.

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Click here for 4 Actions to Be a Strong Leader During COVID-19 Disruption.