Building Stunning Teams and Smart Machines: Insights from Dscoop Edge Long Beach
"The best predictor of how a team performs is not how great the best performer is or what the average member is like. Most often it comes down to what the worst team member is like."
— Will Phelps, associate professor at UNSW Sydney
Phelps' quote, shared by Erin Meyer, embodied the theme of her opening keynote at Dscoop Edge Long Beach last week. Meyer, a company culture expert and author of "No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention," took the stage to share her experiences working with Netflix CEO Reed Hastings to find out how the legendary company reinvented itself multiple times throughout its history. She took that example as a backdrop to explain to attendees how to build a company culture that attracts and retains "stunning" employees.
One of the keys, she said, is to avoid "absolute positives" when it comes to setting company value statements.
Erin Meyer, company culture expert and best-selling author, shared keys to a successful company culture during her keynote speech.
"We want to avoid talking about our culture as a set of absolute positives," she said. "What I mean by that is, for example, the word 'integrity.' While integrity is a great word, there's no good, credible option to integrity. Never have I come across a company that said, 'In this organization, we are all about corruption.' Because of that, instead, if you really want to form your employees' behaviors, you want to think about how to articulate your organizational culture, or your team culture as a set of dilemmas."
She explained that if a company is transparent about how it addresses particular dilemmas, it leads to growth of company culture more effectively.
She continued on through her keynote session by pointing out that at Netflix, the company evolved to invest in highly productive employees, focusing on talent density to enable freedom among those employees, rather than a higher density of low-talent employees. The more driven and capable an employee is, the more freedom they can be given to make decisions that are in the best interest of the company.
She offered attendees "The Keeper Test," which asks: "Which of my people, if they told me they were leaving for a similar job at a peer company, would I fight hard to keep?"
By asking that question and being truthful, a company can increase talent density on their teams by being more selective in hiring and compensating top performers; as well as gradually being able to give the team more freedom and autonomy in decision-making, while providing clear context and direction.
Applying Skateboarding to Business
Legendary skateboarder Tony Hawk also took the stage for a keynote session during the event. At first, it might not be evident how skateboarding and printing share common ground, but as Hawk relayed the challenges he faced from childhood to becoming a skateboarding icon, it became clear that the lessons he imparted are applicable to any business.
He explained that while he had a passion for skateboarding at a young age, he found he needed to push himself, take risks, and grow his confidence in order to stand out and make a name for himself in the skateboarding world. He described an experience that stuck out for him as a defining moment in building the confidence that he needed to take him to the next level. It was at a time when he was new to the sport as a child, and just beginning to attend competitions. He debuted a trick he had been working on to some attention from the crowd. However, after the competition he saw Eddie Elguera, an already established skateboarder and someone Hawk looked up to, practicing the trick.
Tony Hawk, legendary skateboarder, gave a moving keynote speech about perseverance and confidence.
"Little did he know it, but that was the boost of confidence I needed in that moment in my life to keep chasing this," he said.
Hawk then delved into his journey with launching his own skateboard brand, being an integral part in the launch of X Games, and his venture into video games with Tony Hawk Pro Skater, which has become one of the most popular PlayStation games of all time.
At the end of the keynote session, Hawk took questions from the audience. One stood out in particular. Someone asked if there was one business lesson Hawk had learned throughout his life, what would it be?
"Control of your brand," he said. "As cliche as that sounds. ... I was actually offered a buyout of royalties from our video game just before the first release. They called me and they said, 'Hey, would you be willing to take half a million dollars?' That would be the royalties going forward. That would be the royalties forever. When they said that to me, saying half a million dollars was like saying half a gazillion dollars. In my life, I'd never heard any of the numbers like that, but I thought, 'You know what? I believe in these projects and I finally feel secure enough in my finances, I'm going to let it run. Because I want to own this, and I want it to be part of me.' And if I had taken that, it would have still been my name, I probably would have still been involved, but they would have had control."
HP Focuses on Technology and the Future
As is customary during the HP user group conference, HP took the stage throughout the event to share some of the company's strategies for growth and view of the future. On the first evening, Haim Levit, senior vice president and division president of HP Industrial Print, opened the keynote session by providing attendees with a glimpse of the global landscape and the road ahead for integration and automation. He noted that software and automation driven by artificial intelligence (AI); robotics; end-to-end solutions; production and efficiency; and sustainability are primary focuses of the company.
Haim Levit, senior vice president and division president of HP Industrial Print, addressed attendees and shared HP's vision for the future.
"Artificial intelligence will revolutionize the world of print as we know it today — opening a new era where presses become autonomous, and workflows are connected, automated, and orchestrated from creation to delivery," Levit said.
To walk the walk, during the event, HP announced its newest AI agent, HP NIO.
“For the first time, AI advancements enable us to automate what was previously impossible, pushing the boundaries of automation in print”, Joan Perez Pericot, vice president and general manager of HP Industrial Print Software & Solutions, said in the press release. “Today’s announcements reflect our commitment to delivering on our vision to better automate and control the entire production floor end-to-end with less human intervention”.
Noam Zilbershtain, vice president and general manager of HP Indigo, kicked off the keynote session on day two by describing the future of the industry as he sees it.
"The future of commercial printing will be an HP Indigo press near every offset press," he said.
Echoing the sentiment that HP believes it is the future of the industry, Barbara McManus, vice president and general manager of HP PageWide Industrial, said " Your next offset press is digital."
To drive home the message that digital is the future and HP is an integral part of that future, Levit mentioned on opening night more than 4,500 Indigo presses have been installed worldwide in the commercial space, with 465 PageWide devices. Beyond the commercial space, Levit noted that HP sees the flexible packaging space as a standout segment for the company, with further growth in the corrugated and folding carton segments.
"Our vision for the next 20 years," Levit said. "What's needed to unlock digital printing? It's probably a $1 million question. Our goal is to unlock and push pages to the installments. We are not trying to be a software company. That's not our goal. At the end of the day, everything that we are doing is to really unlock pages into our presses around the world. And how we will do it? We will streamline our connection with brands."
Ashley Roberts is Content Director of Printing Impressions.
