3 questions Houston business owners should ask themselves as they start the new year

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While adapting your business to better serve and retain your employees, here are three questions to keep in mind and review your business on in 2022. Photo via Getty Images

Many businesses tend to focus solely on tangible metrics during annual reporting, such as revenue, new year budgets and customer satisfaction. What is often overlooked are internal aspects of the business (unless it is a problem), measuring and scoring yourself on employee engagement and happiness.

As you start 2022, we challenge businesses to ask themselves important questions on how they are measuring their businesses, internally. We all know that over the past 20 months, we have witnessed businesses rapidly evolving to make significant changes within their organizations to meet employees' changing demands and expectations. How are they working? Many of these new business practices, such as hybrid work, will benefit employees of all generations and boost employee engagement, but is it what your employees want and need to succeed?

While adapting your business to better serve and retain your employees, here are three questions to keep in mind and review your business on in 2022.

Am I providing a space for my employees to thrive?

The COVID-19 pandemic was a formative experience that caused many, especially the new Gen Z employees, to push their employers outside of their comfort zones and have them truly reassess the need to go back to a traditional office environment. It’s important to keep in mind that many in the Gen Z demographic kickstarted their careers from a “work from home” environment while so many of us were rapidly shifting and getting used to a completely new way of working, they were entering their new norm.

As the conversations of in-office versus work-from-home arise, remember that one size does not fit all. When having these conversations, keep an open mind and be sure to actively listen. Allowing your employees to work remotely may be worrisome, but there’s evidence that some employees do thrive in this environment.

According to statistics gathered by Airtasker, remote employees worked 1.4 more days on average than those working in the office each month. These days were also more productive as remote workers reported only 27 workday minutes lost to distractions while office workers reported 37 workday minutes lost to distractions. Without a need for commuting, employees also increase their productivity by being able to start their workdays immediately.

Talk to your employees who prefer in-office about the changes you can make to improve their quality of life at work, such as new office equipment or benefits in the office like catered lunch or dry cleaning pickup/drop-off. Consider setting new policies that allow for more breaks throughout the day such as a 2-hour window with no meetings or Zoom calls or team walks. According to the Wellbeing Thesis, breaks have been proven to increase employees’ productivity. For example, relaxation breaks can help reduce stress while social breaks help boost camaraderie in a team. Understand what your team needs and most importantly, be flexible when employees who mainly work in-office want to take their work home for the day, and vice versa.

We have decided to offer our distributed employees around the country the option to work from home or from a co-working space, if they are more productive out of the house. We also have a rotating schedule of travel to Houston to spend time with the CEO in our headquarters to get some valuable face-to-face time with the team.

Regardless of the path a business wants to take in terms of work environment, remote work is a growing demand among Gen Z. This may be a scary idea for some employers, but through Ampersand’s rigorous curriculum, we are training the newest generation of professionals how to be productive and effective employees wherever they work. With courses ranging from “how to send a calendar invite” to “how to talk to your manager about a missed deadline,” Gen Z professionals will be prepared to take the world by storm after completing Ampersand’s curriculum. Additionally, Ampersand’s coaches work one-on-one with each young professional to make sure they fully understand and practice each skill, which means that they will have more than enough practice by the time they join your team.

​Am I actively contributing to their growth?

As a leader in your organization, your goal should always be to help cultivate your employees’ skills and transition them into the best version of themselves. Gen Z grew up in a society where the importance of self-improvement and emotional well-being is increasing. They openly receive feedback and advocate for their needs, which can help encourage other generations in the office to do the same.

Determining how to help your team grow individually and fulfill the needs of the company within their role can easily be evaluated during regularly scheduled check-ins. At these check-ins, leaders need to encourage candid, honest conversations with each employee to gain a better understanding of each employee’s individual goals and needs. Carefully listen to the feedback each employee gives and create an action plan catered to that individual. When employees feel that their company cares about them as individuals, in addition to the company goals, they are more motivated to achieve success in their roles.

At Ampersand, we teach young professionals how to have these conversations in a productive way, take the feedback they receive and implement it in their day-to-day growth. While Gen Z may be more upfront about their needs, taking the time to understand what each employee hopes to achieve in their role and career will build stronger ties with each person in the company, regardless of their generation.

Am I giving them space to share their ideas?

Gen Z is energizing all employees to advocate for work-life balance while introducing new tools and tactics that can modernize business practices. For example, newer employees are often seen setting boundaries for themselves and advocating for transparent communication from their employers. While this can seem jarring to some managers who don’t know how to handle the candidness, it can be refreshing to see and something we can all learn from - as long as they still respect their teams and deliver upon the expectations in the role. As Gen Z introduces new ideas to their team, leaders should encourage other generations on the team to listen and research the proposed new opportunities. The fresh new ideas may even prompt employees of other generations to share their wealth of knowledge with Gen Z to create a more collaborative work environment.

As we kickoff 2022, we encourage you to really consider how you are retaining and attracting your talent, especially Gen Z. It is up to each individual employer to look inside themselves as to why The Great Resignation is happening and consider these important questions, and be open to evolving and being mindful to provide a space (in person or not!) where employees can thrive, grow and share their ideas. The conscious effort and consideration will lead to an increase in company success and employee satisfaction, across generations.

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Allie Danziger is the co-founder and CEO of Houston-based Ampersand Professionals.

Research from a former Rice University professor linked the size of CEO signatures to ego. CEOs with big egos entered into more risky, unreliable deals. Pexels

Rice research reveals that narcissistic CEOs sabotage their firms

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You've just been named CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Your ego fills the room. The laws of gravity don't apply to you.

And naturally, you want to make an impact. So you pour money into mergers and acquisitions, and when you're not trying to acquire another firm, you guide company resources into research and development. You're a genius, and the world will soon be clinging to your every new product.

The only problem: your company will likely underperform. Research by former Rice Business visiting professor Sean Wang (now at Cox School of Business as SMU), along with Nicholas Seybert of the University of Maryland and Charles Ham of Washington University at St. Louis, reveals the high costs of an out of control CEO ego.

The researchers' first challenge was establishing who could legitimately be called a narcissist. What does the term mean, exactly? While there are varying definitions, Wang's team focused on narcissism as a basic personality trait rather than a mental illness. As a personality trait, narcissism is associated with entitlement, vanity, authority, and a sense of superiority.

To spot narcissists, the team took a novel approach: they examined their research subjects' signatures. Signature size turns out to be a handy measure for egos, because it doesn't require participants to answer direct questions about their personalities — and because participants are unlikely to know that ego can affect something as simple as a signature.

Just having a big ego, though, does not a narcissist make. To validate a link between a person's signature and narcissism, the researchers asked 53 graduate business students to provide their signatures by signing a document, and then to take a personality survey that measured narcissism. The findings documented that indeed there was a strong correlation between signature size and narcissism.

Next, the researchers obtained data from prior psychology research on employee perceptions of 32 technology-firm CEOs. Of the 24 CEOS for whom the researchers also had signature samples, they found a significant correlation between narcissism and signature size.

Armed with these findings, Wang and his colleagues were able to extrapolate the narcissistic traits of thousands of CEOs whose signatures were readily available on proxy statements and other corporate documents. The researchers ultimately studied 741 CEOs from 411 firms during the period between 1992 and 2015, corresponding to 6,361 firm-year observations with a median of eight fiscal years per CEO.

They found a pronounced behavior pattern. Firms led by narcissistic CEOs invested more in high-exposure areas such as research and development and mergers and acquisitions, but shied away from routine capital expenditures for day-to-day productivity. This trend was even more pronounced during periods of financial slack, suggesting that narcissistic CEOs prefer an aggressive management style whenever possible. Financial productivity delivered by these narcissistic CEOs in terms of profitability was lower than their less egotistic counterparts.

The research has multiple implications. Narcissistic leaders, past research shows, are prone to make bad decisions — in part because they are bad listeners. As a result, they often dominate the decision process without incorporating feedback or ideas from others. Ironically, they mistakenly perceive this behavior as a signal of competence and strong leadership.

To counter these bad habits, the researchers say, during periods of financial sluggishness investors and corporate boards should combat excessive narcissist-led investment by pushing for higher dividend payouts. Given that narcissistic CEOs overinvest in R&D, investors also need to closely monitor whether such investments represent real innovation or just vanity. Finally, boards of directors should be aware that narcissistic leaders tend to command higher salaries — and consider whether their CEO falls into this category, and is essentially getting higher pay for inferior performance.

In short, to really be as boss as they see themselves, narcissistic corporate leaders need to recognize their tendencies and rigorously check their egos. Boards, meanwhile, should closely monitor their CEO's priorities in directing firm resources. It could be the writing on the wall.

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This article originally ran on Rice Business Wisdom.

Sean Wang is a former visiting assistant professor of accounting at Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University. He is now an assistant professor at Cox School of Business at SMU.

This Houston business expert has tips on managing change — whatever it is you might be changing. Pexels

Expert answers 5 common questions about change management

Cha-cha-changes

The times they are a changin' and with that comes managing everything from introducing new technology to hiring new senior-level leaders with innovation on the mind. Whether your company is introducing the former, the latter, or a combination of the two, there might be a few questions you have surrounding change management.

1. What is the definition of change management? Isn't it just about communications and training?
Change management is a process by which you engage the workforce in involvement in the change as well as identify where the resistance is, reduce it, and increase the ownership and buy in of the change process with support of the leadership. Communications and training are enablers of change.

2. What has been the biggest challenge companies face in implementing the management of change? How do successful companies overcome this issue?
Resistance to change always shows up whenever you ask people to do something they have not done before. Organizations that think ahead will deploy a short readiness for change survey and run a few focus groups to identify where potential resistance is. Quite often two issues usually rise to the top: "What is in it for me to go along with the change?" and "What will not change?"

Both of these issues require good communications before any change effort is begun. Several companies have set up hotlines to address rumors and also ran town hall meetings, email blasts, electronic bulletin boards, and newsletters with frequently asked questions, before any major change work in is undertaken.

Once the effort is underway it also makes sense to make random call to employees to gage how well the workforce is aware of the change and understanding its impacts.

Being proactive with your communications is key to ascertain the effectiveness of on-going communications, clarity of key messages, frequency of communications, and getting feedback if the right people are communicating at the right time to the right audience.

3. What do companies report to be the biggest failure in applying a change management process, what are the lessons learned from that experience?
Failure of Leaders, managers, and sponsors to go through training first in order for them to be role models for supporting the change. When they failed to do this, the workforce do not believe the leaders and management team are committed to the change. The lesson learned from this is to not only train leaders and managers first, but also have them kick-off training sessions and also teach some aspect of it.

4. What role does stewardship and governance play in a successful change process?
What we are really talking about is sponsorship for change. Sponsorship must exist at various levels of the organization. These are stewards who champion the change process even when progress runs into road blocks. And you must provide sponsors with tools to identify change issues and provide them with change intervention techniques to address whatever comes up; turning problems into opportunities, how to be an active listener, how to ask open-ended questions, etc.

Sponsors also need to report biweekly how they see the change is progressing as listening posts to the organization, and how to process the information from the workforce to ensure that everyone see's first hand that communications and feedback is a positive part of the effort.

5. How do organizations successfully measure change?
It's important to use some form of a balanced scorecard that uses data from survey's and focus groups. Metrics for calibrating, awareness, understanding, buy in, engagement and involvement, as well support are important stages of change that require tracking. These metrics need to be established early on and tracked monthly throughout the change journey. If you can't measure it, you probably cannot change it.

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Mark Hordes is principal at Houston-based Mark Hordes Management Consultants LLC, an organizational consulting advisory.

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Houston scientists develop breakthrough AI-driven process to design, decode genetic circuits

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Researchers at Rice University have developed an innovative process that uses artificial intelligence to better understand complex genetic circuits.

A study, published in the journal Nature, shows how the new technique, known as “Combining Long- and Short-range Sequencing to Investigate Genetic Complexity,” or CLASSIC, can generate and test millions of DNA designs at the same time, which, according to Rice.

The work was led by Rice’s Caleb Bashor, deputy director for the Rice Synthetic Biology Institute and member of the Ken Kennedy Institute. Bashor has been working with Kshitij Rai and Ronan O’Connell, co-first authors on the study, on the CLASSIC for over four years, according to a news release.

“Our work is the first demonstration that you can use AI for designing these circuits,” Bashor said in the release.

Genetic circuits program cells to perform specific functions. Finding the circuit that matches a desired function or performance "can be like looking for a needle in a haystack," Bashor explained. This work looked to find a solution to this long-standing challenge in synthetic biology.

First, the team developed a library of proof-of-concept genetic circuits. It then pooled the circuits and inserted them into human cells. Next, they used long-read and short-read DNA sequencing to create "a master map" that linked each circuit to how it performed.

The data was then used to train AI and machine learning models to analyze circuits and make accurate predictions for how untested circuits might perform.

“We end up with measurements for a lot of the possible designs but not all of them, and that is where building the (machine learning) model comes in,” O’Connell explained in the release. “We use the data to train a model that can understand this landscape and predict things we were not able to generate data on.”

Ultimately, the researchers believe the circuit characterization and AI-driven understanding can speed up synthetic biology, lead to faster development of biotechnology and potentially support more cell-based therapy breakthroughs by shedding new light on how gene circuits behave, according to Rice.

“We think AI/ML-driven design is the future of synthetic biology,” Bashor added in the release. “As we collect more data using CLASSIC, we can train more complex models to make predictions for how to design even more sophisticated and useful cellular biotechnology.”

The team at Rice also worked with Pankaj Mehta’s group in the department of physics at Boston University and Todd Treangen’s group in Rice’s computer science department. Research was supported by the National Institutes of Health, Office of Naval Research, the Robert J. Kleberg Jr. and Helen C. Kleberg Foundation, the American Heart Association, National Library of Medicine, the National Science Foundation, Rice’s Ken Kennedy Institute and the Rice Institute of Synthetic Biology.

James Collins, a biomedical engineer at MIT who helped establish synthetic biology as a field, added that CLASSIC is a new, defining milestone.

“Twenty-five years ago, those early circuits showed that we could program living cells, but they were built one at a time, each requiring months of tuning,” said Collins, who was one of the inventors of the toggle switch. “Bashor and colleagues have now delivered a transformative leap: CLASSIC brings high-throughput engineering to gene circuit design, allowing exploration of combinatorial spaces that were previously out of reach. Their platform doesn’t just accelerate the design-build-test-learn cycle; it redefines its scale, marking a new era of data-driven synthetic biology.”

Axiom Space wins NASA contract for fifth private mission, lands $350M in financing

ready for takeoff

Editor's note: This story has been updated to include information about Axiom's recent funding.

Axiom Space, a Houston-based space infrastructure company that’s developing the first commercial space station, has forged a deal with NASA to carry out the fifth civilian-staffed mission to the International Space Station.

Axiom Mission 5 is scheduled to launch in January 2027, at the earliest, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crew of non-government astronauts is expected to spend up to 14 days docked at the International Space Station (ISS). Various science and research activities will take place during the mission.

The crew for the upcoming mission hasn’t been announced. Previous Axiom missions were commanded by retired NASA astronauts Michael López-Alegría, the company’s chief astronaut, and Peggy Whitson, the company’s vice president of human spaceflight.

“All four previous [Axiom] missions have expanded the global community of space explorers, diversifying scientific investigations in microgravity, and providing significant insight that is benefiting the development of our next-generation space station, Axiom Station,” Jonathan Cirtain, president and CEO of Axiom, said in a news release.

As part of Axiom’s new contract with NASA, Voyager Technologies will provide payload services for Axiom’s fifth mission. Voyager, a defense, national security, and space technology company, recently announced a four-year, $24.5 million contract with NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston to provide mission management services for the ISS.

Axiom also announced today, Feb. 12, that it has secured $350 million in a financing round led by Type One Ventures and Qatar Investment Authority.

The company shared in a news release that the funding will support the continued development of its commercial space station, known as Axiom Station, and the production of its Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) under its NASA spacesuit contract.

NASA awarded Axiom a contract in January 2020 to create Axiom Station. The project is currently underway.

"Axiom Space isn’t just building hardware, it’s building the backbone of humanity’s next era in orbit," Tarek Waked, Founding General Partner at Type One Ventures, said in a news release. "Their rare combination of execution, government trust, and global partnerships positions them as the clear successor-architect for life after the ISS. This is how the United States continues to lead in space.”

Houston edtech company closes oversubscribed $3M seed round

fresh funding

Houston-based edtech company TrueLeap Inc. closed an oversubscribed seed round last month.

The $3.3 million round was led by Joe Swinbank Family Limited Partnership, a venture capital firm based in Houston. Gamper Ventures, another Houston firm, also participated with additional strategic partners.

TrueLeap reports that the funding will support the large-scale rollout of its "edge AI, integrated learning systems and last-mile broadband across underserved communities."

“The last mile is where most digital transformation efforts break down,” Sandip Bordoloi, CEO and president of TrueLeap, said in a news release. “TrueLeap was built to operate where bandwidth is limited, power is unreliable, and institutions need real systems—not pilots. This round allows us to scale infrastructure that actually works on the ground.”

True Leap works to address the digital divide in education through its AI-powered education, workforce systems and digital services that are designed for underserved and low-connectivity communities.

The company has created infrastructure in Africa, India and rural America. Just this week, it announced an agreement with the City of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo to deploy a digital twin platform for its public education system that will allow provincial leaders to manage enrollment, staffing, infrastructure and performance with live data.

“What sets TrueLeap apart is their infrastructure mindset,” Joe Swinbank, General Partner at Joe Swinbank Family Limited Partnership, added in the news release. “They are building the physical and digital rails that allow entire ecosystems to function. The convergence of edge compute, connectivity, and services makes this a compelling global infrastructure opportunity.”

TrueLeap was founded by Bordoloi and Sunny Zhang and developed out of Born Global Ventures, a Houston venture studio focused on advancing immigrant-founded technology. It closed an oversubscribed pre-seed in 2024.

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