1. AIA Vitality Life Insurance
2. Data Driven Healthcare Quality Markets
3. Abu Dhabi Health Authority – Weqaya
Vitality Institute Commission – Recommendation 3 http://thevitalityinstitute.org/commission/create-markets-for-health/
http://unreasonable.is/skills/the-7-emails-you-need-to-know-how-to-write/
The 7 Emails You Need to Know How to Write
Emails are how we communicate with each other in this day and age. Writing them well can be the difference between successfully building a relationship and not. This post includes example emails for how to get meetings, ask for introductions to investors, say no gracefully, and more!
The author of this post, Teju Ravilochan, is co-founder and CEO of the Unreasonable Institute.
When emailing, we do things that we’d never do in real life. Tweet This Quote
Emails are strangely awkward. They give us the ability to start a conversation with anyone in the world, without the social cues of an in-person interaction. So we do things that we’d never do in real life via email. Can you imagine walking up to someone at a dinner party, handing them a large document and saying, “Hey Steve, it’s great to meet you! I’ve heard a lot about you and was wondering if you’d give me feedback on my business plan?” And yet, I get emails like this. A lot of people get emails like this.
So this post is dedicated to effectively writing what I believe are seven of the most important relationship-building emails. I’ve assembled articles and examples for each of the emails below and hope this helps you to start the critical relationships you need to produce extraordinary results!
1. How to get busy people to respond to your emails.
Want to get in touch with Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google? Adam Grant, New York Times best-selling author of Give and Take (which is one of my favorite business books of all time, by the way), lays out six key steps for getting important people to respond to your emails in this post. He includes a story of how a Princeton undergrad sent an email that got a response from then-Google CEO Eric Schmidt! This is a great post!
2. How to ask for an introduction.
This post from Scott Britton, whose company SinglePlatform, exited for $100 million, includes analysis of an email requesting an introduction. Critical elements include:
Another Great Example: Tim Ferriss offers this exceptional example of how someone reached out to him asking for connections to angel investors.
3. How to make an introduction between two people.
LinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman and two-time author and entrepreneur Ben Casnocha explain that there are three ways to introduce people over email. The very best of the three involves:
This might be more work than putting two people’s email addresses in the CC field and saying, “Jason and Brad, consider yourselves connected!” But it is far more effective in ensuring your true outcome: that the two people you are introducing meaningfully connect and build a mutually productive relationship.
Techstars Founder David Cohen receives 50 cold email requests for feedback each day. In the post above, he explains why the featured email brilliantly won his attention and earned thoughtful feedback from him. The core elements include:
Read the post to see how it’s done concretely!
Scott Britton’s elements of a good meeting request include:
Are you noticing some patterns here? A little thoughtfulness goes a long way in getting people to say yes to your requests. Read the post to see an example!
6. How to be politely persistent in getting someone to write you back.
I assume that people I reach out to cold (and even people I get introduced to) won’t respond to my first email. It often takes 2-3 emails to hear back from them. Impact Hub Boulder Co-Founder Greg Berry taught me the best technique I’ve come across for getting responses for folks who haven’t emailed me back. It involves sending them an email about a week later saying,
The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything. Tweet This Quote
I’ve written hundreds of these kinds of emails and received only one clearly negative response (which said, “Stop it. You’re annoying me”). Interestingly, that was the one email where I left out the phrase “friendly nudge” and didn’t ask them to “forgive me for emailing again.” But in other cases, I secured a funder for $1 million (which took several emails over the course of 6 months), and the New York Times best-selling author Chip Heath to serve as a mentor at Unreasonable Institute (which took over a fifteen emails over the course of four years).
7. How to say no gracefully.
In the words of Warren Buffet, “The difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.” Odds are that tons of opportunities are flying your way: invitations to speak at conferences, requests for advice, suggestions to open operations in new locations. You might be excited by many of these, but when some come along that you’re not interested in, here are two examples of how to say no.
The first is a humorous example from author E.B. White, which I found in this blog post by Greg McKeown. It reads:
I must decline, for secret reasons.
Sincerely,
E.B. White”
The second example comes from an email I recently sent:
If there’s something quick I can help you with or if you have a specific question, do send me an email about it and I’ll be happy to get back to you!
My best,
Teju
Master these seven emailing skills and I submit that you will produce remarkable results for your work! Tweet This Quote
In Conclusion: Conclusion: Knowing how to make asks via email, particularly in being considerate to the people you are reaching out to, will go a long way in helping you build the relationships you’re looking to build. And the good news is that you can start practicing right away with everyone you email! If you would like, feel free to send me a practice email anytime at teju@unreasonableinstitute.org.
Happy emailing!
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevemeyer/2015/01/09/the-1-reason-why-salespeople-leave-money-on-the-table/
Salespeople talk too much.
In an earlier article, I discussed a study suggesting salespeople would be more persuasive if they relied more on visuals than words. Here we’ll talk about what’s perhaps the most likely point in the selling process where salespeople say too much – and trigger the price bully that lurks in every buyer’s heart.
Courting is a little like sales, right? Imagine you’re a guy who’s been dating a woman for some time and you decide to propose. You want to close the deal. So you buy her a ring and take her to a nice restaurant. As you hand her the ring, you lay out, like bullet points, the five reasons you’re the guy for her.
What she wants is for you to let the ring, and the sincerity expressed in your misty eyes, do the talking. Laying out your value proposition at this point seems like desperation, or doubt. She’s thinking, “After all that courting, why does he think he needs to convince me? Or is he not convinced himself?”
How many times have you seen salespeople, just before a close, try to justify their price by revisiting the key benefits of their product or service? How many times have you succumbed to that urge yourself?
It’s a bad selling tactic. The research suggests you will trigger the same reaction in your prospect that our hapless Romeo triggered in his Juliet.
Justifying your price seems like common sense. If you’re going to ask someone to do something, how could it be a bad idea to remind them of the reasons? There’s actually a landmark study out there that seems to give credence to the idea. Unfortunately, most people completely misread its conclusions.
The study, called “The Mindlessness of Ostensibly Thoughtful Action,” was conducted in 1978. It observed how people waiting in line to use a copier responded when somebody at the back of the line tried to cut ahead. When the person simply asked to go first, 60% agreed. When the person said, “May I use the Xerox machine because I have to make a copy?” 93% said yes – even though the “reason” itself made no sense.
Based on this study, salespeople are often advised that there’s some mechanism in the human psyche that responds to reasons, and that enumerating them will improve close rates.
Problem is, there was a second part to that study. In Part 2 the researchers raised the stakes. They had the line-cutter say, for example, “I need to make 20 copies; can I go first?” Predictably, fewer people said yes, only 24%. When the line-cutter tried again, adding a bogus reason why he had to make 20 copies, the reason had no effect.
So that study showed that reasons work when the stakes are low but provide no benefit when they’re high, which they usually are in selling situations.
A more recent study showed that giving reasons not only doesn’t help, it actually hurts salespeople. Researchers analyzed two negotiations over the price of an apartment. With buyer Group 1, the sellers presented a price, then added justifications, pointing out that the building had an elevator and was in a desirable neighborhood. With buyer Group 2, they simply named the price and remained silent.
Buyer Group 2 didn’t bargain as hard and agreed to a higher price. Why? The researchers said the justifications made buyers in Group 1 feel they were being pushed into a corner, and that the seller was trying to do their thinking for them. And here’s what’s really interesting: The Group 1 buyers responded to justifications by coming up with reasons why the apartment wasn’t so great. “Yeah, that’s all true, but parking is a pain and there aren’t enough washing machines.”
The researchers described this pushback as a psychological reflex to regain control, which is the most powerful insight in this study. Justifications are perceived by the buyer as an attempt to take control. Just stating your price and remaining silent leaves the buyer in control. For whatever reason, buyers who feel they’re in control are less likely to undermine your value proposition and demand a lower price.
All that said, there is of course an appropriate time to lay out your value proposition – early in your discussions as you’re conducting discovery and mapping your product or service to customer needs. Just don’t do it late in the sales cycle when you’re negotiating price.
As hard as it may seem, you’ll get a higher price if you just say, “Here’s what it costs,” and then shut up.
You might want to go easy on the misty eyes though.
http://www.iedp.com/Blog/Ten-Predicaments-Facing-a-New-CEO
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10 Predicaments Facing a New CEO |
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Finally the day arrived, when Peter was appointed as the CEO of the multinational technology giant. After months of speculation, apprehension and expectation; all came to a logical conclusion and everyone sighed with relief. Stakeholders were satisfied, the board were confident of having made the right choice, and the outgoing CEO felt that he was leaving the company in safe hands. When a week long ceremony and celebrations were over, Peter got some reflective moments to himself. That night, he could not sleep. He wondered, ‘what next’? Where does he go now, from here onward? Who to look up to, where to escalate and where does the buck stop now? Unfortunately, the buck now stops with him. Peter knew that from now onwards, everybody including customers, stakeholders, employees, the market and board will look to him for direction; looking for those ‘Pearls of Wisdom’ that he had been craving to apply or holding on to reveal now that he had reached this stage. This a usual scenario in most companies, where succession has happened or is likely to happen in the near future. CEOs are always in the ‘Hot Seat’, irrespective of whether their businesses are struggling due to competition, context or capability; or doing exceptionally but where the continual drive for aspirational growth continues. They have to deal with a number of predicaments that put a strain on their time, energy and decision making. Either way, here are 10 top dilemmas new CEOs will do well to know in advance and brace their organizations to deal with effectively:
Finding business coherence amidst the randomness of internal and external events is a perpetual dilemma for the CEOs. A lot will depend upon, how he marshals his resources in new and innovative ways to discover that elusive growth orbit for which he has been appointed as the CEO. Discovering new ways of value creation and building conviction around them will help him deal with above predicaments, effectively. Each and every dilemma must be dealt with a filter of Staying Relevant – Proactive Disruption and Building case for Strategic Change. Finally, not everyone will understand the path undertaken by CEO but as long as these paths enable him and the company ‘Stay Relevant’ to its customers, they must be pursued with conviction. Illustration: King Arthur. Fresco (detail) in the Corridor, Trinci Palace, Foligno, Italy Further Information
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https://hbr.org/2014/11/how-to-make-health-care-accountable-when-we-dont-know-what-works
Accountable care organizations (ACOs) are widely regarded as part of the solution to a fragmented health care system — one plagued by duplicative services, avoidable errors, and other impediments to efficiency and quality. But 20 years of reform efforts have led to a wave of provider consolidation that has made little headway in efficiently coordinating care. Providers continue to follow a strategy that has shown minimal evidence of success.
We should admit that we don’t know what works and, instead, test a variety of potential solutions that could address fragmentation. Before I explore the concrete steps we can take to encourage that kind of innovation, let me provide some important historical context.
Payment Reform’s First Life
Early efforts to promote coordinated care emphasized payment reform. Toward that end, managed-care and health maintenance organizations used payment schedules and gatekeeper physicians to create provider networks. In addition, the Clinton administration introduced proposals to implement “pay for performance” and dedicated quality-improvement initiatives, suggesting that financial pressures might force the coordination and rationalization of care. But Congress rejected payment-focused reform, and market preferences eliminated managed-care pressures.
Commentators then suggested that payment reform could happen only in conjunction with provider-based reforms, and the Institute of Medicine later issued a series of reports calling for pairing payment solutions with structural reform. Then, when the Affordable Care Act instituted Medicare’s Shared Savings Program in 2010, it invited providers to create ACOs and to accept changes in reimbursement that allowed them recoup part of any savings they generated. Eventually, however, prospective ACOs were given the option ofcontinuing under Medicare’s traditional fee-for-service payments. In other words, providers were encouraged to pursue structural reform while being permitted to avoid any constraint from payment reform.
The Disappointments of Provider Reform
The continued failure of payment-driven reform has sadly given provider-based reform a blank check. The U.S. health sector has been in a merger-and-acquisition frenzy for nearly 20 years, and much of the integration has been justified as an effort to construct ACOs. Buzz phrases such as “clinical integration” and “eliminating fragmentation” are routinely paraded before regulators who scrutinize proposed mergers.
The problem, of course, is that after waves of acquisitions, most hospital markets are now highly concentrated and lack meaningful competition. And, consistent with basic economic theory, hospital systems that acquired dominant market shares dramatically increased prices for health care services. Perhaps even worse is that these large entities have shown little capacity for achieving the efficiencies they promised through coordinated care. Newly integrated delivery systems retain their inefficiencies and bring higher prices without any evident reduction in costs or errors.
We don’t know exactly why efforts at integration have not yielded efficiencies, and it seems we simply didn’t think very hard about it. The health reform debate focused primarily on a handful of success stories we all can repeat in our sleep: Kaiser, Geisinger, Intermountain. The plan was to have other hospital systems mimic them. That is like instructing all high-tech companies to mimic Apple, as if what makes Apple successful is an easy-to-follow cookbook for large-scale structural change.
It is a curiosity about the U.S. health system that producers with better outcomes and lower costs than their competitors cannot dominate the market. Kaiser, for example, has tried but failed to enter more local markets. But it is foolhardy to think that the systems that have not achieved Kaiser’s success can replicate it simply with the help of government regulators. This duplication strategy at best seems mindless, and at worst smacks of a Khrushchev-era economic policy.
The truth is, despite a glut of business press and how-to manuals, we still understand very little about why certain organizations succeed and others do not. With all the complexities of delivering medical care, we should expect even more variation among health care providers than among manufacturers. We likewise should be very hesitant to claim we understand what works and prescribe nationwide structural reforms.
Concrete Steps for the Future of ACOs
Precisely because we don’t know what works at this juncture, we cannot continue encouraging the formation of vast integrated systems that are difficult to disentangle. Until we have more evidence that integration yields efficiencies, regulators should continue to halt mergers that harm competition.
But scrutinizing mergers will only prevent further damage. We also must improve our delivery system, and we cannot give up on the ACO as a potential source of innovative configurations. Specifically, we should:
Not every solution we try will work, but we’re likely to have more success letting providers figure out what works than telling them how to do it.
The future of traditional journalism, particularly at a regional level, is “fucked”, as are legacy publishers and even agencies, with all becoming obsolete in the digital age, according to a media commentator.
Veteran US journalist Bob Garfield painted a picture of near-armageddon with out of work journalists, a defunct advertising model and agencies who are no longer relevant.
He also had strong words for creatives who “like to give trophies to one another for their creative genius and parade like Tony the Tiger down Madison Avenue every Fall during ad week,” warning “if they think people love their ads they are sorely, tragically mistaken”.
Speaking at the Association of Data Driven Marketing and Advertising (ADMA) conference in Sydney yesterday, Garfield, a columnist for Media Post, said the Internet has spawned “billions of journalists on the ground and camera phones in hand in search of a story”.
“I represent the last generation of journalists whose vocation was a handsome livelihood,” he told delegates.
Asked about the future for a 30-something journalist, he said: “You are fucked,” adding that a journalist friend with years of experience now waters plants in offices for a living.
“Many say we are in the golden age of content. Which is true unless you want to discuss journalism, particularly local journalism which has suffered greatly at the hands of digital chaos,” he said. “Except for search, gaming and porn, nobody is making mony of any consequence online.
“As audiences fragment the amount of revenue coming in for any particular piece of content goes down eventually to the point when the publisher or broadcaster can no longer afford to produce the thing.
“So if you were looking forward to a great career in media and marketing it might be a good idea to remove your belt and shoelaces.
“This isn’t about digital verses legacy it’s about the growing obsolescence of the advertising supported media model.”
While accepting that “more choice is wonderful”, Garfield warned that the impending demise of the large media companies and proliferation of amateur journalists will lead to a splintered industry and reduction in quality reporting.
“What will be lost is critical mass, the ability for anyone to have a strong enough voice to make a difference amid all the deafening noise of the crowd,” he said.
Traditional media organisation commanded the attention of, and held to account, governments, industry and other institutions, he continued.
“We can have a separate discussion about how responsible and intrepid the media were with this power, but that power was undeniable,” he said. “In general, those organisations attracted the best talent with the most professionalism and the greatest access. In a word, they had clout and professionalism mattered.
“We didn’t offer perfection but we came with a frame of reference.”
Overall, the newspaper industry is “tragically circling the drain”, with asset values decimated, profit margins eradicated and print subscriptions plummeting.
“The result has been vastly diminished journalism, and increasingly desperate measures by publishers such as so-called native advertising, which we can discuss later provided you want to talk about prostitution,” he said.
Garfield said the traditional advertising model has fallen apart in such a fragmented, digital market, while viewers fast forward through adverts like never before.
“Why do they they skip past the commercials? For the same reason he puts spam filters on his computer and refuses to click on any banner ad ever for any reason at any time,” he said. “Advertising people like to give trophies to one another for their creative genius and parade like Tony the Tiger down Madison Avenue every Fall during ad week. But if they think people love their ads they are sorely, tragically mistaken.
“For more than three centuries consumers have put up with ads. Some ads are funny and clever and some even worm their way into our heads and popular culture. But they are and have always been a nuisance. To most people all advertising is spam. The proof being that the moment technology afforded us the ability to skip them, skip them we have.”
He said the “next bloodbath will be in TV”.
Agencies did not escape the gloomy outlook with Garfield predicting they will become obsolete in such a changing media landscape.
“The agency business is toast because no matter what anyone tells you, it derives its income from creating and placing large ad campaigns . The larger the more lucrative but mass is going away and the agency business does not adapt to micro.
“The entire media universe is in chaos.”
Steve Jones
“The main thing here is for people to recognize that what we’re doing is creating the foundations of the future in a very fundamental way.
I mean we’re building the future that we all might want or all might not want, depending on our current vested interests.
I think it takes a really crummy ancestor to want to maintain his current business model at the expense of his descendant’s ability to understand the world around them.
And if you really want to figure out which side you’re on, ask yourself what’s going to make you a better ancestor?
John Perry Barlow
Co-founder, Electronic Frontier Foundation
Interviewed in the feature documentary “Downloaded” aired on SBS.
Thanks CT.
This is bang on. Good to see some good people agreeing. I don’t feel nearly as mad.
http://www.afr.com/Page/Uuid/1fec72e4-07d2-11e4-a983-9084720e3436
PUBLISHED: 8 HOURS 13 MINUTES AGO | UPDATE: 2 HOURS 3 MINUTES AGO
The discussion of necessary reforms is dominated by special pleading by vested interests. Photo: Gabriele Charotte
ROSS GARNAUT AND PETER DAWKINS
Australia needs rigorous, independent economic policy debate and analysis to inform economic policy. The Melbourne Economic Forum seeks to contribute to meeting that need by bringing to account the considerable analytic capacity in economics based in the city.
A joint endeavour of the University of Melbourne and Victoria University, this new forum will bring together 40 leading economists, from or with institutional connections to Melbourne to discuss the great economic policy issues confronting Australia and the world.
The forum is independent of vested interests and partisan political connections. It will not support the position of any political party or campaign of any group. It will focus on analysis of policy in the public interest. Almost any policy proposal has implications for the distribution of incomes and wealth and income amongst Australians. Our objective will be to make these implications explicit and to point out their implications for wider conceptions of the public interest.
It would be surprising if high quality analysis of policy choice for Australia does not, from time to time, earn the criticism of participants from all corners of the political contest and from many groups with vested interests in particular uses of public resources and government power. The test of the forum’s value will be its success in illuminating the consequences of policy choice and not its immediate and direct influence on government decisions.
Through the final four decades of last century, dispassionate economic analysis and debate played a major role in illuminating government decisions on economic policy. Rational economic analysis became more important in underpinning serious discussion of policy choice. It emerged from interaction of economists in some of the universities with the predecessor to the Productivity Commission, the national media and later the public service and some parts of the political community. This interaction gradually built support for an open, competitive economy. The ideas preceded their influence, but eventually were of large importance in guiding the reform era under the Hawke, Keating and Howard governments. The resulting reform era laid the foundations for 23 years of economic growth without recession.
Business organisations and the trade union movement joined the consensus and joined the discussion in constructive ways. The Business Council of Australia was formed to develop policy positions that were in the national economic interest, though not necessarily in the commercial interests of every one of its members.
Both rational economic analysis in the public interest and Australia’s high standard of living have been weakened by developments in the early twenty first century and are now under threat.
As mineral prices fall, productivity growth languishes and our population ages, Australia needs a new program of economic reform. Yet the discussion of necessary reforms is dominated by special pleading by vested interests.
Of course there is room for disagreement about the size of the challenge Australia faces if it is to maintain high levels of employment and prosperity. And different policy prescriptions will have different consequences for the distribution of the burden of adjustment to a more sombre economic outlook. A lazy policy response would shift the burden onto the shoulders of those Australians who lose their jobs or cannot find one.
Yet a budget that is viewed by the community as unfair is inimical to the task of building a consensus for reform.
The Melbourne Economic Forum will contribute to these debates, starting with a session on the economic outlook for Australia and the impacts of alternative policy responses. In September we will take on the international policy challenges most pertinent to the G20 meeting in Australia later in the year.
In November, we will venture into the hazardous territory of tax system reform and federal-state financial relations.
Bi-monthly forums in 2015 will tackle issues such as infrastructure, investment, foreign investment and trade policy.
Reviving the tradition of rigorous, independent policy thinking is not a hankering for the past but an essential precondition for a new wave of economic reform to secure employment growth and rising prosperity for all Australians in a far more challenging global economic environment.
Professor Ross Garnaut is professor of economics at the University of Melbourne. Professor Peter Dawkins is vice-chancellor at Victoria University. For more details on the Melbourne Economic Forum see melbourneeconomicforum.com.au.
The Australian Financial Review
Me: If you can’t get inside the head of your client or adversary, then you have already lost
VIEWPOINT: No career move is more profound than the step up to CEO. 
Himanshu Saxena is a thinker, writer and speaker on concepts such as Big Picture, Reimagination, Strategy & Innovation and Leadership@Top Level. He is currently enabling TCS BPS in aligning strategy, coaching and developing leaders of tomorrow.
Vijay Govindarajan is the Coxe Distinguished Professor at the Tuck School at Dartmouth and the author of NYT and WSJ Best Seller, Reverse Innovation.