Surviving the Serengeti: A book review by Bob Morris

Surviving the Serengeti: 7 Skills To Master Business and Life
Stefan Swanepoel
John Wiley & Sons (2011)

A parable for success that sometimes requires a perilous journey of self-discovery

Fables may well be among the earliest forms of storytelling and remain popular among several business thinkers, notably Stephen Denning and Patrick Lencione. Personally, I have little interest in locating cheese or coping with melting icebergs but I always enjoy a tale well-told and that is what Stefan Swanepoel offers in this slim volume. Its protagonist is Sean Spencer, a corporate executive from Los Angeles. He and his wife Ashley are joined by Dave and Mary Johnson from Montana, Anthony and Cecilia Cruz, and Zachariah Makena whom Spencer knew 30 years ago and hasn’t seen since, until now. They begin an African safari led by their guide Raymond. Plot developments are best revealed within the narrative. My focus now is on what I admire most about the material provided.

First, as indicated earlier, Swanepoel is a skillful raconteur. He sets the scene, introduces the characters, sets the plot in motion, and uses both dialog and incidents to illustrate what he hopes his fable will affirm: Everyone can survive his her own personal Serengeti, no matter the challenges. No journey is ever too long. Nothing is impossible.”

Also, I think the seven survival skills “to master business and life” are appropriate to the context within which he examines them, the plains of the Serengeti, and to the animals that exemplify those skills: the wildebeest (“Endurance is the steadfast capacity to hold on for one more day.”), the lion (“Strategy is the road map you need to define and achieve your goals.”), the crocodile (“An enterprising person explores all options and boldly seizes every opportunity.”), the cheetah (“Efficiency is the optimization of all resources to achieve the best results.”), the giraffe (“Grace is more than style and finesse, it’s doing the right thing.”), the mongoose (“Taking calculated risks is an essential part of every journey.”), and the elephant (e.g. (“Effective communication is the art of successfully delivering your message.”). The wildlife certainly provide excellent role models.

Finally, Swanpoel is convinced (and I agree) that life and work lessons can be learned from various animals such as those who appear in this fable but that the value of those lessons depends almost entirely on the extent to which those lessons are then applied. Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton have identified two gaps, “Knowing-Doing” and “Doing-Knowing.” It remains for each reader to determine, first, which needs are most urgently needed and then resolve to master them.

I presume to suggest that the development process be guided and informed by the results of research that Anders Ericsson and his associates at Florida State have conducted for almost 20 years. In brief, peak performance requires about 10,000 hours of “deep” and “deliberate” practice under the strict supervision by a master teacher.

In my opinion, Stefan Swanepoel hopes this book will serve both as a mirror to reflect current realities and as a window to suggest possibilities yet to be realized. I am among those who need both so I thank him for what I have learned from his book and for what (I hope) his book will help to make possible in months and years to come.

The Key Element Your LinkedIn Profile Is Probably Missing

Here is an article written by Jeff Haden 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.

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I think LinkedIn is the most effective social media platform for professional and business purposes.  Based on the amount of email I got from my recent post, How to Create a LinkedIn Profile That Really Connects, most of you agree.

The problem is making connections is relatively easy.  Connecting with the right people is a lot harder, especially if you only apply website- and resume-building strategies to creating your LinkedIn profile.

For example, the Google AdWords Keyword Tool is a great way to find out how many people search for various keywords.  Use the tool to create your LinkedIn profile:  Do a little keyword research and make sure you pack your profile with search-friendly terms so potential clients and connections can find you.

Great — but everyone uses the keyword tool to determine how describe themselves or their businesses.

That means every recruiter, for example, jams hundreds-of-thousands-of-searches-per-month keywords like “staffing,” “recruiting,” “hiring,” “jobs,” “staffing agency,” etc. into their profiles.   By doing everything right they get lost in all the keyword noise.

What can you do to stand out and help the right connections find you?

1. Use popular keywords to build the backbone of your profile for a general audience, then

2.Include specific, highly targeted keywords to stand out to a specific audience

Here’s an example.  I worked in book manufacturing and have extensive experience in productivity, quality, and efficiency improvement.  Pretend I want to build a consulting business around those skills and hope my LinkedIn profile will help book manufacturers find me.

Using the Google keyword tool approach, I should definitely include keywords like process improvement, productivity, efficiency, and quality.  I should also include keywords like Six Sigma, 5S, TQM… processes and programs commonly searched for that I can deliver.

The problem is I don’t really stand out from all the other efficiency experts.  People will find me, and that’s great, but some I’m sure to miss.

[During the remainder of the article, Haden goes deeper: " I’ll identify types of keywords specific to the book manufacturing industry." To read the complete article, please click here.

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Jeff Haden learned much of what he knows about management as he worked his way up the printing business from forklift driver to manager of a 250-employee book plant. Everything else he knows, he has picked up from ghostwriting books for some of the smartest CEOs he knows in business. He has written more than 30 non-fiction books, including four Business and Investing titles that reached #1 on Amazon’s bestseller list. He’d tell you which ones, but then he’d have to kill you. However, you can visit his website at: www.blackbirdinc.com.

Harvard Business Review on Thriving in Emerging Markets: A book review by Bob Morris

HBR on Thriving in Emerging Markets
Various Contributors
Harvard Business Review Press (2011)

“The early bird may get the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese.” Steven Wright

This is one of the volumes in a series of anthologies of articles that first appeared in HBR. In this instance, its ten articles focus on one or more components of a process by which to ”beat the local companies at their own game.” Having read all of the articles when they were published individually, I can personally attest to the brilliance of their authors’ (or co-authors’) insights and the eloquence with which they are expressed. Two substantial value-added benefits should also be noted: If all of the articles were purchased separately as reprints, the total cost would be at least $60-75; they are now conveniently bound in a single volume for a fraction of that cost.

Here in Dallas, there is a Farmers Market near the down area at which several merchants offer slices of fresh fruit as samples. I now provide what follows in that spirit.

In New Business Models in Emerging Markets, Matthew J. Erying, Mark W. Johnson, and Hari Nair suggest and explain four ways to uncover unmet needs:

1. Study what your customers are doing with your product.
2. Look at the alternatives to your offerings that consumers can buy.
3. Watch for compensating behaviors (e.g. adjustments to unsatisfactory jobs).
4. Search for explanations.

“The ability to conduct rapid experiments inexpensively and use what you learn from them to hone the business model is essential to success.”

In The Battle for Female Talent in Emerging Markets, Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Ripa Rashid explain how to attract and keep talented women.

1. Fine talent early. The best place to start looking is in universities.
2. Help your women recruits build networks to fight isolation and gain visibility while achieving their business goals.
3. Give them international exposure, but provide plenty of support for families in the host countries.
4. Build ties outside the company – to clients, customers, and communities.

In Strategies That Fit Emerging Markets, Tarun Khanna, Krishna G. Palepu, and Jayant Sinha share their thoughts about how to select the right strategy.

• Adapt your business model: Ensure that changes to your model preserve your competitive advantage.
• Change the institutional context: A powerful company’s products or services can force dramatic improvements in local markets.
• Stay away: If adapting your business model is impractical, avoid investing.

“We have learned that successful companies work around institutional voids. They develop strategies for doing business in emerging markets that are different from those they use at home and often find novel ways to implementing them, too. They also customize their approaches to fit each nation’s institutional context.”

My take on this volume: An emerging market is by nature a market of opportunity. More often than not, much of it remains unexplored and undefined. Although opportunities and competition to exploit them can be assumed, it is difficult (if not impossible) to anticipate fully (a) the perils that await, (b) their nature and extent, and (c) how best to prepare for them.

There is much to be said for Steven Wright’s observation, “The early bird may get the worm but the second mouse gets the cheese.”

40 Business Lessons to Learn from Southwest Airlines.

Here is an excerpt from an article featured in the July issue of Southwest Airlines’ Spirit magazine. These are the first five business lessons and the last two. To read the complete article, a “must read,” please click here.

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Whether you’re founding a company or just want to look brilliant, take some cues from this airline.

1. Keep the idea simple enough to draw on a napkin.

In 1966, Rollin W. King sat with his lawyer, Herb Kelleher, in San Antonio’s St. Anthony Club and drew a triangle on a cocktail napkin. And lo, the napkin begat an airline. Rollin, owner of a money-losing commuter airline, wanted to start an intrastate carrier so the airline wouldn’t fall under the aegis of the Civil Aeronautics Board. Hence the triangle. He labeled the corners “Dallas,” “Houston,” and “San Antonio”—The Golden Triangle of Texas.

2. A legend is an asset.

That cocktail napkin became a whiskey-stained version of the Magna Carta. It summed up the infant Company’s personality: informal, pragmatic, and a little bit naughty. Imagine if the airline had been formed by a dozen lawyers
in a Manhattan boardroom. Not the same thing. More important, Rollin and Herb recognized the drama. Here was the stuff of legend. Now all they had to do was form the most successful airline in history.

 3. Hire a good lawyer.

The good news was, they already had a top-notch lawyer in Herb. A graduate of Wesleyan University and New York University Law School, he kept a law office in San Antonio. Herb was no stranger to litigation, which was a very good thing: he was about to face the litigation storm of his life.

4. Raise more money than you think you need. Now double it.

The partners—now four men, including Rollin’s brother-in-law and a businessman-politician named John Peace—figured they needed a quarter-million dollars just to start the Company. Herb decided to raise twice that amount. That was prescient; the lawsuits would ground the airline for another four years.

5. Crazy is no liability.

Not always, anyway. If an idea immediately sounds good, chances are someone—many people—thought of it already. Rollin had no idea how to raise the capital for his new airline. “Rollin,” Herb said, “you’re crazy. Let’s do it!”

39. Never rest on your laurels or you will get a thorn in your, um, butt.

We stole that almost verbatim from Herb. (Being Herb, he used spicier language.) Southwest continues to take that wisdom seriously. The just completed $1.4 billion purchase of AirTran gives the combined airline a powerful presence in Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, the world’s busiest. The acquisition also expands Southwest’s operations at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, New York’s LaGuardia, as well as in Charlotte and Memphis. Plus Miami, Des Moines, and Wichita. Southwest will enter 38 new airports, and is working to open AirTran’s international routes to its network.

The merger will fly more than 100 million Customers each year to more than 100 airports.

So much for resting on laurels.

40. It’s OK to be unprofitable for a year.

Just be sure to be profitable for at least the next 39.

3 Ways to Think like a Designer

Here is another valuable Management Tip of the Day from Harvard Business Review. To sign up for a free subscription to any/all HBR newsletters, please click here.

Good designers see the world differently.

Their unique views enable them to come up with new products and innovations that leave the rest of us envious. Here are three ways you can approach innovation like a designer:

Think about people, not customers. No one asked for the iPod or texting in a customer survey. Move beyond asking what customers want to thinking about what they need, or don’t know they need.

Observe. Get out in the world and watch what people do. Don’t rely on what they say about their behavior — see it first hand.

Look at what might change. You can’t be too focused on today. Think instead about what the future might bring.

Today’s Management Tip was adapted from “How Good Designers Think” by Simon Rucker.

To read that article and join the discussion, please click here.