Bennett and Vivian Levin acted on our behalf

As we conclude one year and begin another, we would be well-advised to take a moment and think about the young men and women who defend our freedoms throughout the world.

In that spirit, I now share the following account.

*     *     *

It started last Christmas, when Bennett and Vivian Levin were overwhelmed by sadness while listening to radio reports of injured American troops. “We have to let them know we care,” Vivian told Bennett. So they organized a trip to bring soldiers from Walter Reed Army Medical Center and Bethesda Naval Hospital to the annual Army-Navy football game in Philly, on Dec. 3.

The cool part is, they created their own train line to do it. Yes, there are people in this country who actually own real trains. Bennett Levin – native Philly guy, self-made millionaire and irascible former L&I commish – is one of them.

He has three luxury rail cars. Think mahogany paneling, plush seating and white-linen dining areas. He also has two locomotives, which he stores at his Juniata Park train yard. One car, the elegant Pennsylvania, carried John F. Kennedy to the Army-Navy game in 1961 and ’62. Later, it carried his brother Bobby’s body to D. C. for burial. “That’s a lot of history for one car,” says Bennett.

He and Vivian wanted to revive a tradition that endured from 1936 to 1975, during which trains carried Army-Navy spectators from around the country directly to the stadium where the annual game is played. The Levins could think of no better passengers to reinstate the ceremonial ride than the wounded men and women recovering at Walter Reed in D. C. and Bethesda , in Maryland . “We wanted to give them a first-class experience,” says Bennett. “Gourmet meals on board, private transportation from the train to the stadium, perfect seats – real hero treatment.”

Through the Army War College Foundation, of which he is a trustee, Bennett met with Walter Reed’s commanding general, who loved the idea. But Bennett had some ground rules first, all designed to keep the focus on the troops alone:

No press on the trip, lest the soldiers’ day of pampering devolve into a media circus.

No politicians either, because, says Bennett, “I didn’t want some idiot making this trip into a campaign photo op.”

And no Pentagon suits on board, otherwise the soldiers would be too busy saluting superiors to relax.

The general agreed to the conditions, and Bennett realized he had a problem on his hands. “I had to actually make this thing happen,” he laughs.

Over the next months, he recruited owners of 15 other sumptuous rail cars from around the country – these people tend to know each other – into lending their vehicles for the day. The name of their temporary train? The Liberty Limited.

Amtrak volunteered to transport the cars to D. C. – where they’d be coupled together for the round-trip ride to Philly – then back to their owners later.

Conrail offered to service the Liberty while it was in Philly. And SEPTA drivers would bus the disabled soldiers 200 yards from the train to Lincoln Financial Field, for the game.

A benefactor from the War College ponied up 100 seats to the game – on the 50-yard line – and lunch in a hospitality suite.

And corporate donors filled, for free and without asking for publicity, goodie bags for attendees:

From Woolrich, stadium blankets. From Wal-Mart, digital cameras. From Nikon, field glasses. From GEAR, down jackets.

There was booty not just for the soldiers, but for their guests, too, since each was allowed to bring a friend or family member.

The Marines, though, declined the offer. “They voted not to take guests with them, so they could take more Marines,” says Levin, choking up at the memory.

Bennett’s an emotional guy, so he was worried about how he’d react to meeting the 88 troops and guests at D. C.’s Union Station, where the trip originated. Some GIs were missing limbs. Others were wheelchair-bound or accompanied by medical personnel for the day. “They made it easy to be with them,” he says. “They were all smiles on the ride to Philly. Not an ounce of self-pity from any of them. They’re so full of life and determination.”

At the stadium, the troops reveled in the game, recalls Bennett. Not even Army’s lopsided loss to Navy could deflate the group’s rollicking mood.

Afterward, it was back to the train and yet another gourmet meal – heroes get hungry, says Levin – before returning to Walter Reed and Bethesda . “The day was spectacular,” says Levin. “It was all about these kids. It was awesome to be part of it.”

The most poignant moment for the Levins was when 11 Marines hugged them goodbye, then sang them the Marine Hymn on the platform at Union Station.

“One of the guys was blind, but he said, ‘I can’t see you, but man, you must be beautiful!’ ” says Bennett. “I got a lump so big in my throat, I couldn’t even answer him.”

It’s been three weeks, but the Levins and their guests are still feeling the day’s love. “My Christmas came early,” says Levin, who is Jewish and who loves the Christmas season. “I can’t describe the feeling in the air. Maybe it was hope.”

As one guest wrote in a thank-you note to Bennett and Vivian, “The fond memories generated last Saturday will sustain us all – whatever the future may bring.”

God bless the Levins.

Reading Business Books Is Sort of Like Listening to Good Sermons

I had breakfast with my blogging colleague Bob Morris this morning.  He reads more books than anyone I know.  You cannot talk about a business issue, a business idea, without him knowing the two or three books to read on that specific issue.  And in the midst of the breakfast, I had one of those moments of insight – you know, an “aha”  moment.

So – a little background.  I used to preach (I still do, occasionally, but only as a guest preacher).  I preached at least two new sermons a week – for about 20 years.  If you go to church, then you know the truth about sermons – after a few, they all deal with the same themes, the same issues, repeated a multitude of times, in whatever new and creative ways the preacher can come up with.

One homiletics textbook said that most preachers only have 5 sermons anyway (plus or minus), and then challenged preachers to make sure they were the right 5 sermons.

So what was my “aha” insight?  It is this:  Reading business books is a lot like listening to a steady diet of sermons.

Here’s a simple truth:  people who go to church and listen to sermons learn very little.  They are simply reminded of the basics, over and over and over again.

So it is with business books.  There are about five major themes (or maybe 7, or 10…the number is imprecise).  But the truth is clear.  Business books do more reminding than they do teaching.

Some of the themes that crop up over and over again are:

• be an ethical leader
• have the important conversations that you need to have
• treat your people well
• be a good team leader/player
• be sure that your product/eservice is top quality
• and, though you provide top quality, make it even better next year  (innovate, constantly!)
• and, use your time well (it disappears so very fast)
• study the successful companies/leaders, and emulate them
• study the unsuccessful companies/leaders, and do not repeat their mistakes
• plan well, execute better
• communicate! — openly, often — hide very little!

You could expand on this list.  But…  I think it really is true that after you’ve read a good initial stack of business books, you continue reading not to learn, but to be reminded.  Don’t you think?

So – how many books should you read a year.  It depends – how quickly do you forget to do what you know to do?  I suspect the answer to that question is… pretty quickly.  That is why preachers always encourage their folks to show up at church week after week.  Unfortunately, it takes regular reminders to “love your neighbor” to help you do a good job of actually loving your neighbor.  And, it takes regular reminders to lead well, to treat your people well, to keep getting better at what you do.

So, read more books.  Lots more books.  It takes a “business sermon” a week – just to help you remember.

And, by the way, some books are better than others.  Lots better.  So too, some sermons are better than others.  But it is better to read a mediocre book to help you remember than it is to not keep reading, and thus fail to remember.

The power of “flash foresight”

Daniel Burrus

In Flash Foresight: How to See the Invisible and Do the Impossible co-authored with John David Mann and published by Harper Business, Daniel Burrus discusses a skill that uses “the data of your five sense, as well as that intuitive sixth sense we all have that some call a gut feeling or hunch. But flash foresight goes further, because in using it you synthesize those sensory and intuitive faculties and project them forward through the dimensions of time. A flash foresight is a blinding flash of the future obvious. It is an intuitive grasp of the foreseeable future that, once you see it, it reveals hidden opportunities and allows you to solve your biggest problems – before they happen. Flash foresight will allow anyone to both see and shape his or her future.”

How valuable would someone be to an organization if she or he mastered that skill? How valuable would a team be if all of its members had mastered that skill? How to do that? Burrus explains the process in his book.

As he explains, there are seven “triggers,” any one or several of which can produce a flash foresight:

1. Start with Certainty (i.e. identify and verify hard trends)
2. Anticipate (i.e. determine degree of probability of relevant contingencies)
3. Transform (i.e. leverage technology-driven change)
4. Skip what you think is your biggest problem (in fact, it isn’t…and never was)
5. Go opposite (e.g. look where no one else does, see what no one else sees, do what no one else does)
6. Redefine and reinvent (i.e. leverage your unique strengths in new and better ways)
7. Direct your future (or have someone else will do it for you)

Zappos offers an excellent example. Its leaders were certain that online sales would continue to increase and that it was probable that the process of purchasing commodities would be more important to the consumer than the products themselves would be. They concluded that the most efficient operations (e.g. order processing) would be driven by high technology and that returns rather than sizing was its biggest problem. They defied conventional wisdom that that selling shoes online could not be profit. Until Zappos, that was true.

As for #6, consider these comments by CEO Tony Hsieh: “We hope that ten years from now, people won’t even realize that we started out selling shoes online, and that when you say ‘Zappos,’ they’ll think, ‘Oh, that’s the place with the absolute best service.’ And that doesn’t even have to be limited to being an online experience. We’ve had customers email us and ask if we would please start an airline or run the IRS.”

FYI, I’ll have a separate post on #7.

Meanwhile, I think that Flash Foresight may well prove to be the best business book published in 2011. Is it that good? Yes.

Clouds, big data, and smart assets: Ten tech-enabled business trends to watch

Here is an excerpt from article co-authored by Byron G. Auguste, Bryan Hancock, and Martha Laboissière and featured by the McKinsey Quarterly online. To read the complete article, sign up for a free subscription (albeit with somewhat limited access), and/or check out other valuable resources, please click here.

*     *     *

Advancing technologies and their swift adoption are upending traditional business models. Senior executives need to think strategically about how to prepare their organizations for the challenging new environment.

Source: McKinsey Global Institute

In this article, the co-authors examine these ten global trends:

Trend 1: Distributed cocreation moves into the mainstream
Trend 2: Making the network the organization
Trend 3: Collaboration at scale
Trend 4: The growing ‘Internet of Things’
Trend 5: Experimentation and big data
Trend 6: Wiring for a sustainable world
Trend 7: Imagining anything as a service
Trend 8: The age of the multisided business model
Trend 9: Innovating from the bottom of the pyramid
Trend 10: Producing public good on the grid

[Here is the introduction, followed by the discussion of Trend #1. To read the complete article, please click here.]

Two-and-a-half years ago, we described eight technology-enabled business trends that were profoundly reshaping strategy across a wide swath of industries.

We showed how the combined effects of emerging Internet technologies, increased computing power, and fast, pervasive digital communications were spawning new ways to manage talent and assets as well as new thinking about organizational structures.

Since then, the technology landscape has continued to evolve rapidly. Facebook, in just over two short years, has quintupled in size to a network that touches more than 500 million users. More than 4 billion people around the world now use cell phones, and for 450 million of those people the Web is a fully mobile experience. The ways information technologies are deployed are changing too, as new developments such as virtualization and cloud computing reallocate technology costs and usage patterns while creating new ways for individuals to consume goods and services and for entrepreneurs and enterprises to dream up viable business models. The dizzying pace of change has affected our original eight trends, which have continued to spread (though often at a more rapid pace than we anticipated), morph in unexpected ways, and grow in number to an even ten.

[Note: Two of the original eight trends merged to form a megatrend around distributed cocreation. We also identified three additional trends centered on the relationship between technology and emerging markets, environmental sustainability, and public goods.]

The rapidly shifting technology environment raises serious questions for executives about how to help their companies capitalize on the transformation under way. Exploiting these trends typically doesn’t fall to any one executive—and as change accelerates, the odds of missing a beat rise significantly. For senior executives, therefore, merely understanding the ten trends outlined here isn’t enough. They also need to think strategically about how to adapt management and organizational structures to meet these new demands.

For the first six trends, which can be applied across an enterprise, it will be important to assign the responsibility for identifying the specific implications of each issue to functional groups and business units. The impact of these six trends—distributed cocreation, networks as organizations, deeper collaboration, the Internet of Things, experimentation with big data, and wiring for a sustainable world—often will vary considerably in different parts of the organization and should be managed accordingly. But local accountability won’t be sufficient. Because some of the most powerful applications of these trends will cut across traditional organizational boundaries, senior leaders should catalyze regular collisions among teams in different corners of the company that are wrestling with similar issues.

Three of the trends—anything-as-a-service, multisided business models, and innovation from the bottom of the pyramid—augur far-reaching changes in the business environment that could require radical shifts in strategy. CEOs and their immediate senior teams need to grapple with these issues; otherwise it will be too difficult to generate the interdisciplinary, enterprise-wide insights needed to exploit these trends fully. Once opportunities start emerging, senior executives also need to turn their organizations into laboratories capable of quickly testing and learning on a small scale and then expand successes quickly. And finally the tenth trend, using technology to improve communities and generate societal benefits by linking citizens, requires action by not just senior business executives but also leaders in government, nongovernmental organizations, and citizens.

Across the board, the stakes are high. Consider the results of a recent McKinsey Quarterly survey of global executives on the impact of participatory Web 2.0 technologies (such as social networks, wikis, and microblogs) on management and performance. The survey found that deploying these technologies to create networked organizations that foster innovative collaboration among employees, customers, and business partners is highly correlated with market share gains. That’s just one example of how these trends transcend technology and provide a map of the terrain for creating value and competing effectively in these challenging and uncertain times.

1. Distributed cocreation moves into the mainstream

In the past few years, the ability to organize communities of Web participants to develop, market, and support products and services has moved from the margins of business practice to the mainstream. Wikipedia and a handful of open-source software developers were the pioneers. But in signs of the steady march forward, 70 percent of the executives we recently surveyed said that their companies regularly created value through Web communities. Similarly, more than 68 million bloggers post reviews and recommendations about products and services.

Intuit is among the companies that use the Web to extend their reach and lower the cost of serving customers. For example, it hosts customer support communities for its financial and tax return products, where more experienced customers give advice and support to those who need help. The most significant contributors become visible to the community by showing the number of questions they have answered and the number of “thanks” they have received from other users. By our estimates, when customer communities handle an issue, the per-contact cost can be as low as 10 percent of the cost to resolve the issue through traditional call centers.

Other companies are extending their reach by using the Web for word-of-mouth marketing. P&G’s Vocalpoint network of influential mothers is a leading example. Mothers share their experiences using P&G’s new products with members of their social circle, typically 20 to 25 moms. In markets where Vocalpoint influencers are active, product revenues have reached twice those without a Vocalpoint network.

Facebook has marshaled its community for product development. The leading social network recently recruited 300,000 users to translate its site into 70 languages—the translation for its French-language site took just one day. The community continues to translate updates and new modules.

Yet for every success in tapping communities to create value, there are still many failures. Some companies neglect the up-front research needed to identify potential participants who have the right skill sets and will be motivated to participate over the longer term. Since cocreation is a two-way process, companies must also provide feedback to stimulate continuing participation and commitment. Getting incentives right is important as well: cocreators often value reputation more than money. Finally, an organization must gain a high level of trust within a Web community to earn the engagement of top participants.

Further reading:

Jacques Bughin, Michael Chui, and Brad Johnson, “The next step in open innovation,” mckinseyquarterly.com, June 2008.

Michael Chui, Andy Miller, and Roger P. Roberts, “Six ways to make Web 2.0 work,” mckinseyquarterly.com, February 2009.

Josh Bernoff and Charlene Li, Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, first edition, Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2008.

Clay Shirky, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, reprint edition, New York, NY: Penguin, 2009.

*     *     *

About the Authors: Jacques Bughin is a director in McKinsey’s Brussels office; Michael Chui is a senior fellow of the McKinsey Global Institute; James Manyika is a director in the San Francisco office and a director of the McKinsey Global Institute.

The authors wish to acknowledge the important contributions of our colleague Angela Hung Byers.

Leadership by Walking, and Twittering, Around – Exhibit A, Cory Booker

Superhero with a Shovel

I’m delivering the diapers now. We will get her street soon RT @tmhester: @CoryBooker Highland Ave b/w My sis can’t get out to get diapers. 2:09 PM Dec 27th

“Just dug a car out on Springfield Ave and broke the cardinal rule: “Lift with your Knees!!” I think I left part of my back back there,” wrote @corybooker on Monday night.

Special thanks to: emergency workers, my chief of staff, sanitation workers & Dir of Neighborhood services 4 great work over the last 24+hrs

(Tweets from Cory Booker)

————

It’s been over 40 years since my family survived Hurricane Beulah in South Texas.  And though I have seen snow in Dallas, I have never been through anything like the Snow Emergency of 2010 on the East Coast.  But out of this emergency comes one shining example of leadership.  Take a look at Cory Booker, Mayor of Newark, New Jersey.

Cory Booker heading out to work

He is demonstrating the characteristics of leadership in one massive moment of crisis.  He is out in front.  He is working with the people.  He is literally leading by walking around.  And he is using Twitter to describe what he is doing, what the workers for the city are doing, what neighbors are doing…  And he is responding to DMs (“Direct Messages”) on Twitter to send snow plows to specific streets, and hospitals – all while personally helping some of the people who ask for it, shoveling snow, and even delivering diapers.

Yes, the news reports are a PR dream for a mayor of a city in the midst of cutbacks.  But through it all, you get the distinct impression that Cory Booker actually wants to help real people in the midst of a very real crisis.

Leaders, most of all, show up to the people they lead in moments of need.  Leaderhip by walking around, now with the added tool of Leadership by Twittering around.  Not a bad model of a modern day leadership moment.

Here are just a few excerpts/descriptions:

On Wednesday, Mr. Booker ventured out in between meetings for another sweep of the streets, with a videographer from his political team and reporters in tow. He ordered his driver to pull over several times to help shovel out or push cars.
“Now that’s a mayor!” said David Roman, a mailman, as he watched Mr. Booker help Raffele Albanese, 80 years old, on Roseville Avenue.
(from the Wall Street Journal)

Newark mayor the ‘Hero of Snowpocalypse’
“I will dig you out. Where are you?” Those words were typed – Tweeted, rather – by Newark Mayor Cory Booker to a resident asking for help during the snow storm, one of the many examples of why Booker is being named the “Hero of Snowpocalypse” for his off-beat social media approach to handling the weather crisis.
(from MSNBC)

Sore-backed Newark Mayor Cory Booker uses Twitter to rescue citizens, dig out cars, deliver diapers
(from the New York Daily News)

And a couple of headlines — there are so many…

Social Media mayor becomes ‘superhero with a shovel’

Mayor Cory Booker: The Snow Storm Hero of Newark

How to Achieve a Winning Attitude in 6 Easy Steps

Geoffrey James

Here is an article written by Geoffrey James for BNET, The CBS Interactive Business Network. To check out an abundance of valuable resources and obtain a free subscription to one or more of the BNET newsletters, please click here.

*     *     *
A positive attitude – optimism, expectancy and enthusiasm – is the key difference between a top sales performer and an average one.  The reason is simple: if you don’t have the energy to get out there and sell… you won’t.

Even so, many sales professionals find it difficult to approach selling with a positive attitude each and every day.  This post explains exactly how to tune your attitude so that it creates more success — every time you go out there and sell.

CLICK here for the first step.

NOTE: This post is based upon a conversation with the dynamic Jeff Keller, author of the huge bestseller Attitude is Everything.

*     *     *
Geoffrey James has sold and written hundreds of features, articles and columns for national publications including Wired, Men’s Health, Business 2.0, SellingPower, Brand World, Computer, Gaming World, CIO, The New York Times and (of course) BNET. He is the author of seven books, including Business Wisdom of the Electronic Elite (translated into seven languages and selected by four book clubs), and The Tao of Programming (widely quoted on the Web as a “canonical book of computer humor”.) He was also co-host of Funny Business, a program on New England’s largest all-talk radio station.

The Top Six Innovation Ideas of 2011

Michael Schrage

Here is an excerpt from an article written by Michael Schrage for the Harvard Business Review blog. To read the complete article, check out other articles and resources, and/or sign up for a free subscription to Harvard Business Review’s Daily Alerts, please click here.

*     *     *

That’s right. 2011. These six ideas emerged in 2010 as powerful “innovation invitations” and seem sure to intensify in power and influence. They’ll increasingly be a source of, and resource for, innovation differentiation in 2011, if not for your organization, then for the firm you most dread competing against.

[Here are the first three. To read the complete article, please click here.]

1. Contestification

Whether Google Demo Slam or Sprint’s App Competition, digital media has become an innovation battleground for customers, clients, prospective partners, and young talent. Frito-Lay has already made competition the cornerstone of its Super Bowl advertising, and Toyota, desperate to remind people what a wonderful corporate citizen it can be, invites aspiring innovators to suggest how the firm’s technology can be used for good in unexpected ways.

Crowdsourced contestification is becoming institutionalized as a way firms can grow their own innovation nations. If you’re not running an innovative innovation contest to invite participation and build brand, then you’re reacting to your competitor’s competition. Will your contest be competitive with their contest? Who’s running it? Who’s judging it? Who’s winning it?

2. Keep Touching Me and I’ll Screen!

Anyone who has an iPhone, iPad, or Kindle knows that media are no longer created merely to be viewed — content is designed to be touched, tapped, stroked, fingered, fondled, and pinched. Interfaces have gone tactile and haptic. The keyboard isn’t dead or dying, but it’s lost pride of place in defining onscreen interaction. Where professionals once wrote memos to be read, 2011 begins an era in which documents are written with touch both in mind and on fingertips. Designing documents to be a sensual physical experience and not just a visually cognitive one demands different aesthetics and sensibilities. This nascent transition will be as profoundly important for future interpersonal communications — and branding — as the transition from radio to television. Having the right touch to get the right touch will become a desirable communications competence.

3. WWWabs

If you explore their websites, you’ll find American Express, Google, Intuit and scores of others have “labs” — not-quite-ready-for-prime-time alpha and beta versions of apps to explore and test. These innovation playgrounds vary wildly in quality, creativity and breadth. A few of these test-tube innovation babies are quirkily weird; others have the glimmer of interactive genius. These WWWabs will undoubtedly be reshaped by the seemingly irresistible rise of Facebook as an advertising and promotional vehicle.

Indeed, Facebook’s role as a third-party innovation platform is still a work in process. However, the economics of experimentation for both customer-facing and internal WWWabs is undeniably favorable. It’s easy to marry a WWWabsite with a contest, for example. More important, WWWabs symbolize the substantial shift in one of the dying innovation anachronisms of the post-industrial era. That is, the importance of “research & development” to business innovation. WWWaboratories are about the real future of virtual value creation. Instead of R&D, what matters is E&S — Experiment & Scale. WWWabs go mainstream worldwide next year.

This is my call for the top six ideas to watch next year. Which two of these six themes will matter most next year? What would make it on to your list of top ideas in 2011?

*     *     *

Michael Schrage, a research fellow at MIT Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business, is the author of Serious Play and the forthcoming Getting Beyond Ideas.

Social Networking Has Changed Business

Bill George

Here is an excerpt from an article written by Bill George for the Harvard Business Review blog. To read the complete article, check out other articles and resources, and/or sign up for a free subscription to Harvard Business Review’s Daily Alerts, please click here.

*     *     *

Social networking is the most significant business development of 2010, topping the resurgence of the U.S. automobile industry. During the year, social networking morphed from a personal communications tool for young people into a new vehicle that business leaders are using to transform communications with their employees and customers, as it shifts from one-way transmission of information to two-way interaction. That’s one reason Time magazine just named Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg Person of the Year.

A year ago, many people poked fun at Facebook as a place where kids shared their latest party news. Today more than 600 million users worldwide are active on the site. The most rapidly growing demographic is people over forty. More than 300 million people spend at least one hour a day on Facebook. Approximately two hundred million people are active on Twitter in spite of — or because of — its 140-character limitation. Another 100 million use LinkedIn. None of these social networks even existed at the beginning of the decade.

Leaders like IBM’s Sam Palmisano, PepsiCo’s Indra Nooyi, Apple’s Steve Jobs, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Carlson’s Marilyn Nelson, and Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria

are all active social network users. Why? Because these social networks are a unique way of broadly communicating real-time messages to the audiences they want to reach. They can write a message anywhere, anytime, and share it with interested parties without any public relations meddling, speech writers, airplane travel, canned videos, or voicemail messages. Now their words are much more authentic and can be remarkably empowering.

Social networking is also flattening organizations by distributing access to information. Everyone is equal on the social network. No hierarchies need get involved.

The biggest threat presented by social networks is to middle managers, who may become obsolete when they are no longer needed to convey messages up and down the organization. The key to success in the social networking era is to empower the people who do the actual work — designing products, manufacturing them, creating marketing innovations, or selling services — to step up and lead without a hierarchy.

Consumer marketing companies are lining up to use these networks to reach their tailored demographics with highly personalized messages. Already they are revolutionizing marketing by shifting dollars from purchased media advertisements to building their own outlets and content. Kraft Foods, for example, is now one of the largest publishers of food-related materials. IBM is launching thought leadership communities. PepsiCo uses social networks to reach millions of social entrepreneurs in lieu of advertising at the Super Bowl. From a leadership perspective, social networking is making authentic leadership a reality and a necessity for 21st century leaders. You can’t hide on your social network when you’re revealing who you are and what you really believe. Transparency is essential here.

Even more important, this new phenomenon is enabling business leaders to regain the trust and credibility they have lost over the last 10 years. That’s why social networking is the most important business development of the year.

*     *     *

Bill George is Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School and author of Authentic Leadership: Rediscovering the Secrets to Creating Lasting Value, True North: Discover Your Authentic Leadership
with Peter Sims, and Seven Lessons for Leading in a Crisis.

Designing for Propensity

John Seely Brown and John Hagel III

Here is an excerpt from an article written by John Hagel III and John Seely Brown for the Harvard Business Review blog. To read the complete article, check out other articles and resources, and/or sign up for a free subscription to Harvard Business Review’s Daily Alerts, please click here.

*     *     *

Compare a standard company org chart with a network analysis of the day-to-day relationships and interactions in the same company.

The contrast is striking. On the one hand, clearly delineated boxes with a few set relationships driven by formal authority; on the other, a bewildering array of rapidly evolving connections. The two representations are so different that one might question whether they in fact are focused on the same organization. Such is the chasm separating two mindsets.

Mindset matters, and we each need to make explicit, and challenge, our most basic assumptions about what is required for personal and business success. Business today requires a mindset that is fundamentally different from the dominant existing mindset, and we have, so far, considered two specific dimensions: short-term versus long-term and fixed versus growth. A third dimension is control versus propensity.

This aspect of mindset addresses how to get results and reduce risk.

In a control mindset, the assumption is that we need to own resources and tightly direct them in order to achieve objectives with the minimum amount of risk.

A propensity mindset focuses on the intrinsic development paths that characterize all resources and the dynamic relationships across resources that are continually shaping those paths. From this perspective, the best way to reduce risk is to understand these paths and find ways to leverage them.

The concept of propensity is richly developed by Francois Jullien, a French sinologist, in his book, The Propensity of Things.

Jullien explores the Chinese concept of shi, a term whose multiple, related, meanings often confound Westerners but is central to the way Chinese view the world. Although it may be described as position or potential, Jullien translates shi as “propensity” — “a tendency that stems from a situation” and “which, once set off, cannot be arrested.” In this understanding of shi, the only countervailing force is a natural tendency towards balance; when a propensity plays out to an extreme, it tends to self-correct and reverse course. Thus, we are still contained within some range.

Shi initially emerged in the realm of strategy and politics but evolved to have a much broader philosophical meaning. In the widely quoted The Art of War, the legendary warrior, Sun Tzu, draws heavily on the concept of propensity: a battle may be won even before the fighting begins if you understand and act upon the propensities of the opponent and the battlefield. By understanding and leveraging these forces, you can avoid direct confrontation and achieve your objectives with minimum effort.

This idea of propensity reinforces the differences between Eastern and Western views of the world so powerfully described in Richard Nesbitt’s The Geography of Thought .

In thinking about mindset, propensity has two key components:

• A dynamic verses static view of the world: everything is in a state of becoming.

• A focus on relationships versus objects: the process of becoming is shaped by context and relationships to others.

This mindset focuses our attention on the dynamics that continually shape the tendencies and potential of the people and resources around us. One cannot understand their propensity by examining them in isolation. Everything exists not just in bilateral relationships, but in complex webs of relationships among people, objects and the broader environment.

Propensity is not abstract; it is shaped by a specific context. For example, years ago Stewart Brand wrote a marvelous book called How Buildings Learn. His point was that buildings are constantly evolving in response to the needs of owners and inhabitants, not to mention weather patterns. The same structure may evolve along very different paths depending on the specific location, owners and inhabitants.

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John Hagel III and John Seely Brown are co-chairmen of the Deloitte LLP Center for the Edge, and have written several books focused on technology and innovation. Their most recent is The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion, published by Basic Books (2010).

We Eat What We’ve Always Eaten – Subtle Change vs. Massive Innovation; Maybe it Depends on the Industry

We are what we eat, so they say.  And, here’s the really interesting/surprising/not-so-surprising news.  We eat what we have been eating, over the very long haul.  Here are a number of excerpts regarding the 25^th anniversary of the study of what we eat, from Sylvia Rector (Detroit Free Press): Trendy though we think we are, pop, burgers and fries still No. 1.

As founder and director of the NPD Group’s annual Eating Patterns in America study, Harry Balzer probably knows more about what we eat than anyone else in the country.
So when Chicago-based NPD announced that this was the study’s 25th anniversary, I called Balzer to find out what he considered the biggest changes in our eating habits in the past quarter century.
“In the long run,” he says, “the top three foods we ordered in 1978, when I first started — were (in order) carbonated soft drinks, french fries and hamburgers.
“And yesterday, the top three foods we ordered at restaurants were carbonated soft drinks, hamburgers and french fries. … We’ve changed so much!” he joked.

What we eat: Pop, Burgers, and Fries

So, where is the change?  Primarily, it is found not in the “what,” but in the “where.”  We get our “staples” from different places. Again, from the article:

We still order all those burgers and fries, but new players keep arriving to sell them. The fastest-growing restaurant chain in America, Balzer says, is Five Guys Burgers and Fries, which didn’t open its first store until 1986.
As he puts it, “It’s not whether you’ll eat pizza or not eat pizza, but about what brand of pizza you’ll eat.”
We’re so predictable, he adds, “I already know that in 2020, the things we’ll order most in restaurants will be soft drinks, hamburgers and fries,” even though he can’t say now where we’ll buy them.

The column concludes with this, which is reminiscent of findings in Switch:  How To Change Things When Change is Hard, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath:

The force of habit is indeed strong — something to remember if you, like me, are planning to change the way you eat in the new year.