Finance Assistance

Post-Facebook IPO wisdom, from one CEO to another

Zipcar CEO Scott Griffith offers a couple of words of advice amid today’s Facebook IPO fanfare.

FORTUNE — Bust out the streamers and party hats, everybody, it’s Facebook IPO Day! The excitement aside, many of us are wondering what it all means.

How, for example, will Facebook actually grow enough to merit its massive valuation? Will the company be able to make money off of mobile? Will it figure out how to sell the massive amounts of user market data it has collected without starting a privacy war? And will this change what happens when I “like” my cousin’s sepia-toned picture of mozzarella sticks?

It’s easy for us, and probably Mark Zuckerberg, to get caught up in the IPO whirlwind. No one knows that better than Scott Griffith, the CEO of Zipcar (ZIP) who took his company public on April 11, 2011 for $ 18.00 per-share, a higher price than analysts expected. The IPO, Griffith says, “was probably the best branding event we’ve ever had.”

Brand recognition isn’t part of Facebook’s (FB) problem. The tech company went public today at a starting share price of $ 38 per-share, which means the company is being valued at about $ 104 billion and could raise more than $ 18.4 billion in proceeds.

MORE: Zuckerberg through the years

Still, in addition to the cash influx and media hype, going public calls for management tweaks. About a year after Zipcar’s IPO, Griffith has been thinking about what he learned after Zipcar’s transition from a private to public company, and he has some words of wisdom for others in the same position.

Welcome to the jungle

Right when you hit the market, you have to have a stronger sense of who you are than ever, Griffith says, and you have to learn how to express it to other people. “I do think you have to learn the art of the sound byte.” You may know who you are, but, he says, “It’s important to simplify the company’s story down to a very few key messages that you say over and over and over again.”

All of a sudden, he says, CEOs need to redirect time previously devoted to running the business towards communicating the business’ purpose and plan to shareholders and the media. At meetings, earnings calls, and press events, the CEO is now the voice of the company. “Certainly when you’re first public, they want the CEO in the room,” Griffith says. CEOs in that position have to shift the hours in their day to become available to the outside world.

MORE: Introverts can be leaders too

That change doesn’t just call for time management skills, it also requires language tweaks that may seem meaningless but do make a difference. “You know, CEOs are famous for making these declarative statements — ‘We are going to, we will’ — that’s what we do for a living. Now I find myself having to say ‘We believe’ a lot. Lawyers want to coach you a little bit on that, and that’s understandable.”

Mind the market, but don’t let it control your every move

Griffith says it’s also important to take the new scrutiny with a grain of salt. Yes, post-IPO CEOs need to be much more careful, but they cannot obsess over the market fluctuations and analyst responses that become part of their daily lives.

This is especially true for companies such as Zipcar and Facebook, Griffith says, which are actually creating a new market. “These are game-changing, iconic companies that are transforming a whole industry — you cannot get mired in the quarter.” Or even the year: Zipcar’s stock has dropped in value by almost 28%, year-to-date.

Amazon’s (AMZN) Jeff Bezos has been able to take the fluctuations in stride, Griffith argues. Bezos is known for making major investments to grow his company even at times when the cash loss may bruise Amazon’s quarterly earnings. Wall Street may ping pong, and that is stressful, but CEOs should stick to their guns, Griffith says.

Meet your new shareholders…

New public companies get plenty of attention from analysts and shareholders, but another crucial shift happens internally after the IPO. Namely, employees who have been busting their butts to get to this point now have stock options that have real value. CEOs have got to be on the ball about discussing those changes with as much clarity as they communicate to outside stakeholders.

MORE: A Harvard MBA’s radical quest to erase his debt

“The real benefit is there’s this incentive and alignment for team members to improve performance of the company, that’s the brilliance of the stock options,” Griffith says. But on the other hand, employees who haven’t had to think about it before now have a huge appetite to learn more about the value of the stock.

To help with that, Griffith says, Zipcar organizes a formal internal quarterly earnings call that takes on a similar tone to that of an analyst call. Griffith says it’s been successful at keeping his employees informed.

IPO advice from someone who has been there boils down to some fairly universal principles: keeping a clear head, communicating well to the outside world but not obsessing over its reactions, and speaking clearly to your home team.

“What I’ve found,”Griffith says, “is that most companies are not as good as their highest stock price would say they are, and they’re probably never as bad as their lowest stock price would say. Wall Street has trouble finding truth in the middle.” Fanfare aside, the middle is likely where even the most-hyped companies truly live.

Filed under: Management, Strategy
From:Management and Career

Why Daniel Boulud still lives above the store

The celebrated chef describes his favorite parts of the job and why he chooses to literally live above his signature restaurant in Manhattan, Daniel.

FORTUNE — Chef Daniel Boulud has a beautiful office. The walls sport pictures of the chef with celebrities, the wooden shelves are full of perfectly spaced awards and trophies, and, perhaps most importantly, its huge windows allow whoever is inside to monitor the bustle of his flagship venue, Daniel, in Manhattan.

The restaurant is Boulud’s home, quite literally. He has an apartment above it. And though he has opened several other restaurants in Manhattan, this one is the heart of his prestigious culinary career. The restaurant has received three coveted Michelin stars and a four-star rating from the New York Times, among other awards. Boulud, 57, has also won recognition for his talents as a chef and restaurateur from the James Beard Foundation and the Culinary Institute of America.

Because of his prowess in the kitchen, his job titles have grown and now include entrepreneur, book author, consultant, and celebrity. But here, he talks to Fortune about the basics and why he can still fillet a fish with the best of them.

Fortune: What goes through the mind of a top-tier chef?

Daniel Boulud: I believe that a great chef has to worry about more than cooking. I mean I may have to worry about other things in the business but still, cooking remains the thing that will give me the most comfort and happiness. It is my refuge.

After all this time, you still love it?

Yeah, well, what else am I going to do? I hate accounting. I do like service, taking care of the customer, the guest relations, and the public relations. But, I mean, I do it because someone has to do it and because I’m the brand and the image, but I’d rather stay in the kitchen all the time and not bother.

MORE: Coke CEO Kent’s leadership lesson

I do it so my chefs can keep cooking. I could do their job any time, except I have other jobs to fulfill.

How do you manage such a full kitchen, full of smart people with different ideas?

Everybody has talent, for sure, to be associated with us and to work at this level. We definitely share our ideas, but I can veto everything. Sometimes I love it, and sometimes I hate it. And if I hate it, it doesn’t mean that it’s not good, it’s just not me, that’s all.

We are control freaks, we are organized and we have a lot of discipline among the staff. We spend a lot of time in training, communication, and establishing rules in order for the organization to be well oiled and for everybody to understand what the person next to him is doing.

That’s why the kitchen is divided into four major areas: the meat, the fish, the entrée, and the cold station. There’s a chef for each area. The executive chef makes sure that everybody functions well.

MORE: A Harvard MBA’s radical quest to erase his debt

Sometimes there are eight cooks involved in one plate. We know right away if the chef is not a player, it’s like a soccer team. If the guy can’t score, I mean, ça va, get rid of him.

That’s tough love. The back of the house can be such a stressful environment.

I know, but that’s the problem with food. I mean, I’m redoing my apartment now, and it’s such an agony of time to get each detail done. But with food, you cannot wait. With food, it has to be cooked and go. If we are talking about fish that is perfectly cooked at the perfect temperature, you cannot just reheat it every five minutes. It’s all about the science of timing.

But can’t modern kitchen equipment help with that?

It’s nice to look at technology, it’s nice to look at progress, it’s nice to take advantage of it, but a cook should still learn how to cook first and foremost.

For me, putting food in a bag is not cooking, but it’s delicious and it works and we use it. But besides that, we try to teach the cooks how to cook as well — how to cook a fish perfectly on the bone.

If I were you, and I had all these trophies and that giant shoe over there…

The giant shoe is not mine, it’s Shaq’s shoe.

Ah. Well, if I had those accolades, it would be easy for me to rest on my laurels. Don’t you ever want to just let the machine you created run?

No, no. I look forward to creating new things. We have two restaurants opening this year in Montreal and Toronto. Every city is very different and even every neighborhood is very different. In New York, opening a restaurant in downtown is totally different than uptown.

MORE: After Yahoo: Why do powerful people lie?

Do you have a favorite?

This is my home base. I live above it. I have my office here and I have the kitchen downstairs. This, Daniel, represents everything I worked for all my life. The other restaurants, you might see me there often, but at the same time, at Daniel, you might see me much more often.

You said you’ve been working all your life for this, what are you working for now?

I’ve been working 80 hours a week for the past 40 years.  After 40 years plus of cooking, I deserve to take a weekend. Is that asking too much?

Filed under: Beyond the Boardroom
From:Management and Career

Why you probably can’t win an age discrimination suit

A recent Supreme Court decision made proving age bias even tougher than before.

FORTUNE –  Dear Annie: When I returned to work after a short medical leave a few weeks ago, my employer told me that my management job had been eliminated. However, he offered me a sales position that comes with a major salary cut. Also, at the same time they eliminated my old job, they created two new positions, one of which is practically identical to what I was doing before. When I asked my boss about that, he told me not to bother applying for it.

It’s pretty obvious they wanted to trade me in for two 30-year-olds (I’m 74, but in very good shape.), and I can’t afford to retire now because I have a child who just got admitted to an Ivy League school. So what are my options here? Should I hire a lawyer and sue the company for age discrimination? Or just take the sales job (and the pay cut), be grateful I wasn’t laid off, and shut up about it? — Demoted in Dixie

Dear D.D.: Whoa. Your boss told you “not to bother applying” for the job that is “practically identical” to your old position? Before you decide whether or not to involve a lawyer, here’s the first thing you should do: Apply anyway.

“Make sure your resume and application have all the keywords, and highlight all the relevant experience, that the job requires,” suggests Brian Jackson, an employment attorney at Fisher & Phillips (no relation to yours truly) in Chicago. “Then, if they hire someone younger than you instead, and the only difference between you and that person is age, you may have a case.”

There’s nothing illegal about an employer eliminating a job, or dividing it into two jobs. “However, if your employer is not even letting you compete for the new position because of your age, there may be a legal issue,” Jackson says. “But until you actually apply and get turned down, you have nothing — because the guy who told you not to bother applying will never admit that he said that, and it will be impossible to prove.”

In the meantime, he adds, there is no reason to reject the sales job the company is offering: “Even if you end up suing the company, or filing a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, you can still be working there, and the employer can’t legally retaliate against you in any way” — by firing you, for instance. “If a corporate client tells me they fired someone who sued or complained to the EEOC, my answer to that is, ‘Okay, get out your checkbook,’ because I know we are going to lose that case in court, so let’s settle right now.”

Speaking of settling out of court, a bit of background: The number of age discrimination complaints filed with the federal EEOC has been climbing steadily for years (up 50% since 2000, and 17% since 2007), but it’s hard to say whether lawsuits have increased as well. That’s partly because age bias is the only kind of employment discrimination where a plaintiff can file a lawsuit without first waiting for the results of an EEOC investigation, so the number of suits may actually be far greater (or, conceivably, fewer) than the number of EEOC filings.

The number of suits is hard to track, Jackson notes, because many such actions are settled, in the plaintiffs’ favor, on the courthouse steps: “If an employer thinks a jury is likely to side with the plaintiff, [the employer] is much more likely to offer a settlement” than to let the suit proceed.

That’s not to say that plaintiffs hold all the cards — far from it. When these lawsuits do get as far as a courtroom, employers usually prevail. A 2009 Supreme Court case, Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc., raised the bar for proving age discrimination. Instead of merely showing that age was a contributing factor in an employer’s decision to fire or demote them, or to refuse to hire them in the first place, plaintiffs now have to come up with convincing evidence that age was the only factor.

“That is a lot harder,” Jackson observes, “because of course employers may have several different reasons for making any given decision, not just one.” If, for example, the company can persuade a jury that you lost your job because you just weren’t that great at it — whether you’re 30 or 80 — then your chances of winning may be slim to none. And in an era of constant cost cutting, almost any company can point to many money-saving moves and contend that your dismissal or demotion was a simple matter of dollars and cents.

With all that in mind, taking the sales job you’ve been offered and making the best of it is certainly your simplest option. But let’s say you apply to get your old job back, someone younger and less qualified is hired instead, and you decide you want justice.

“At that point you could consider contacting an employment lawyer, who will send a letter to your employer that lays out all the facts,” says Jackson. “It will probably say something like, ‘Before we start litigating, let’s discuss the situation.’” That, of course, is not so subtle code for, “My client will consider letting this whole thing drop in exchange for a check big enough to cover the pay he lost when you demoted him.”

Good luck.

Talkback: Have you encountered age bias in a job hunt, or a job? What, if anything, did you do to counter it? Leave a comment below.

Filed under: Ask Annie
From:Management and Career

Can a side gig help your career?

Certain kinds of moonlighting may actually help you in your main job, and wise organizations can embrace, rather than squelch, entrepreneurial zeal.

FORTUNE — Moonlighting has always been part of American work culture, though it’s not a lifestyle many managers have encouraged. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only about 5% of workers officially hold more than one job. Some organizations have policies against extra hours work, both for liability and productivity reasons. There are 168 hours in a week, and time you’re spending at a second job or on your own side business is time you’re not dreaming up new ideas for your employer.

But changes in technology and the way people work are leading some to rethink this idea. Certain kinds of moonlighting may actually help you in your main job, and wise organizations can embrace, rather than squelch, entrepreneurial zeal.

The key insight is that while the term “second job” conjures up an image of commuting to a second site after a long day at the first, these days “I don’t have to move my atoms around,” says Paul Kedrosky, a venture capitalist and senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation. Platforms like Etsy (where people sell crafts), eBay (EBAY), Zazzle (where people hawk designs) or Quirky (a crowd-testing site for manufactured products) allow people to do creative work from their home computers.

MORE: Introverts can be leaders too

Bloggers can make money from ads and people with special expertise can teach virtual courses. There’s no real difference from an employer’s perspective between someone sitting in front of a computer until 2 a.m. and a television until 2 a.m. — which managers have never been able to ban. These side businesses, which Kedrosky calls “fractional entrepreneurship,” should be of “no more concern than having hobbies.” Indeed, modern moonlighting often involves things that might once have been hobbies.

By day, Martin Cody is a vice president of sales at a medical software company. By night (and early mornings and weekends), he’s the president of a business called Cellar Angels, which uses a Groupon-type model to get members discounts on wines from small wineries while bundling donations for partner charities. He and his wife also own a retail wine store in Chicago. Because he’s two hours ahead of his partner wineries in California, he can work on Cellar Angels from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. while preserving the hours of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. predominantly for his day job. While the combined 70 or 80-hour workweeks are long, he notes that he and his wife don’t have children, so they can work on their side venture during the time that other people are carting kids to soccer practice. And plus, “I don’t watch ‘SportsCenter.’ I don’t watch football games,” he says. He’d rather be thinking about wine.

Some people even find that a second gig offers synergies with the first. Beth Henary Watson is the executive director of the Mineral Wells Area Chamber of Commerce in Texas. She and her husband recently bought a hair salon called All Star Clips in Weatherford, Texas. In her day job, she advises small businesses on problem solving and growing profits. Now that she owns a small business for the first time, her advice has real world experience behind it. One example: Watson knows that most of the All Star Clips clients are male. “Clearly that’s who we should be trying to reach more of. I use this knowledge acquired first-hand to tell our chamber members that they should target, target, target, and ignore, politely, everyone else.”

“It makes a lot of sense for someone who works to help businesses to have owned one before,” she says.

MORE: 20 weird reasons to quit your job

People who develop social media skills to promote their side businesses can put that knowledge to use in their main gigs. Content knowledge is also useful. Martin Cody has a lot of conversations with his physician clients about wine; Jennifer Teates, a firm manager of a small Annapolis, Maryland law firm, finds that her freelance work as a personal finance writer has given her more confidence during 401k discussions at her main job. “I am more confident in asking questions and offering opinions,” she says.

A stronger social network may be a plus too. “For example, if you’re involved in a nonprofit or community organization, your good works may provide some kind of benefit-by-association for your employer,” says Marci Alboher, author of One Person/Multiple Careers. “A side business can work the same way if it helps you make new connections that can help your main employer.”

But even without these obvious synergies, tolerating or even supporting employees’ side gigs has another upside, notes Chris Guillebeau, author of the recently published The $ 100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love and Create a New Future. You attract entrepreneurial people with lots of energy. This is one thought behind some organizations giving unlimited vacation time so people can pursue whatever projects they want outside of work. “Think about it — most employees are [at their jobs] out of dependency,” says Guillebeau. Those that have other options — such as side gigs they could do full-time if they wanted — are there out of choice. “Those are going to be the employees you absolutely want,” he says.

MORE: MBAs gone wild: Have B-schoolers gone too far?

There are limits, to be sure. Working to launch a competing product on the side is a no-no, and blogging about your employer’s flaws is not a good call. And if someone aims to start a really big business, eventually that needs to become the day job. “The key in all instances is to make sure that your side business isn’t so consuming that you neglect your day job, and that it doesn’t present any conflicts of interest,” says Alboher. But if designing jewelry on weekends can make an employee happy (and potentially less pushy about asking for a raise) it’s hard to see why an organization wouldn’t get on board.

Filed under: Careers, Contributors
From:Management and Career

Introverts can be leaders too

Former Campbell Soup CEO Doug Conant uses his shyness to forge close relationships and build trust with employees.

By Caitlin Keating, reporter

FORTUNE — The Myers-Briggs test doesn’t lie. Doug Conant is sure he’s a born introvert, especially after taking the personality test half a dozen times. Running an organization of nearly 20,000 employees wasn’t easy for someone who would rather stay behind the scenes. Conant says it takes honesty, discipline, and necessary alone time for him to lead. Now, when he’s not busy fending off takeover bids on Avon’s (AVP) board of directors, Conant has perhaps the least-introverted job out there: He often stands in front of a roomful of people and tells them how they, too, can be leaders. His advice:

Don’t change who you are

All of us introverts aspire to be more outgoing, but it’s not in our nature. When I was nearly 50, I discovered that the best thing to do was to tell everyone I worked with that I’m just shy. People are not mind readers — you need to let them know. Eventually, I developed this little talk that became an orientation to who I was and what I was trying to do. I’d tell it to new employees right off the bat. I do this so that everyone around me knows who I am, where I come from, and what I expect everyone to do in order to succeed. I have been doing it now for 20 years, and it really does build a strong sense of trust and get beyond all of the little superficial dances people do.

Say what’s on your mind

At one point in my career, the CEO of Nabisco wanted me to be president of the sales organization. “You have got to be kidding me,” I said: “(a) I’m an introvert, and (b) I can’t play golf.” Still, I was put in that position. Emotionally, it was by far the most challenging job I’ve ever had, but I had to get it done. I’ve met so many leaders who realize that telling your colleagues something that is on your mind is so much easier than keeping it in. Sometimes the things we make up in our heads are not nearly as big a deal as we think.

Know who you work with

Most people think of leaders as being these outgoing, very visible, and charismatic people, which I find to be a very narrow perception. The key challenge for managers today is to get beyond the surface of your colleagues. You might just find that you have introverts embedded within your organization who are natural-born leaders. Extroverts may get places faster, but for introverts it’s all about working at the pace you need and, at the end of the day, performing at your best.

Find alone time

For the better part of my career at Campbell Soup (CPB), I had a driver for my two-hour commute each way to work. I could sit and think. When I worked at Nabisco, I had a 10-minute commute, so I got up very early in the morning and had a cup of coffee at home in my garden. Introverts get more energy by having quiet time, compared with extroverts, who find energy by being around people.

This story is from the May 21, 2012 issue of Fortune.

Filed under: Contributors, Management
From:Management and Career