Inside Apple: A book review by Bob Morris
Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired Company Really Works
Adam Lashinsky
BusinessPlus (2012)
Why and how a “productive narcissist” created a “giant jumble of contradictions and paradoxes”
If for whatever reasons you have not as yet — and will not — read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, this would be an excellent source for information about the internal operations of a company he founded and headed for much of its history thus far, one that now continues without him. Credit Adam Lashinsky with providing a rigorous, comprehensive, balanced, and insightful examination of an organization and a culture unlike any other.
Here is Dallas, there is a farmers market near downtown at which several merchants offer slices of fresh fruit as samples. In that spirit, I now offer a representative selection of brief passages that caught my eye.
According to Michael Maccoby, Steve Jobs was a “productive narcissist,” as were all the other greats of business history…“visionary risk takers with a burning desire to ‘change the world.’”
Lashinsky adds, “Corporate narcissists are charismatic leaders willing to do whatever it takes to win and who couldn’t give a fig about being liked. Steve Jobs was the textbook example of a productive narcissist.” (Both excerpts from Page 18)
Lashinsky on working at Apple when Jobs was its CEO: “To succeed in a company where there is obsessive focus on detail and paranoid guarding of secrets, and where employees are asked to work in a state of permanent start-up, you must be willing to mesh your talents with those of the corporation. You have to forgo your desire to be acknowledged by the outside world and instead derive satisfaction from being a cell in an organism that is changing the world.” (Pages 91-92)
“In contrast to the way Apple runs roughshod over its partners and competitors is the subtle way it charms, then entraps its customers – even though they, too, must abide by strict rules in exchange for interacting with Apple. Retail discounts for Apple products don’t exist.” (Page 149)
“The biggest pitfall in trying to be like Apple, however, is that Apple’s culture is thirty-five years in the making and bears the stamp of one extraordinary entrepreneur who turned into a shrewd chief executive of a sixty-thousand-person corporation. It won’t be a snap for any company to create its own version of the Apple culture. As well, Apple will find out how strong its culture really is – and how much of its success was attributable to Steve Jobs.” (Page 188)
“Companies, like people, aren’t perfect. Apple in the last fourteen years of Jobs’s life was far better than most, but it wasn’t perfect. Jobs was just particularly good at getting us to focus on the good and ignore the bad.” (Page 207)
With uncommon skill, Adam Lashinsky enables his reader to explore dimensions and to understand factors that may be unfamiliar to at least some people who are – or have been – among Apple’s workforce at its headquarters in Cupertino. For me, the appeal of this book has little (if anything) to do with “insider” revelations. Rather, again, one’s man’s opinion, the great value of the material is derived from lessons to be learned from Apple and Steve Jobs in terms of what should be done – and what should not be done – when attempting to build and then sustain an “insanely great” organization. On numerous occasions, Jobs cited that ultimate goal as a process, as a journey, rather than as a destination. To his credit, Apple has probably come about as close as any organization has to reaching it.
Andrea Kates: Part Two of an interview by Bob Morris
Andrea Kates
Andrea Kates (akates@BusinessGenome.com) is the founder of the Business Genome® project and author of the visionary bestselling business innovation book, Find Your Next (McGraw-Hill, November 2011). As a business strategist, facilitator, and speaker, Andrea has led more than 250 business innovation initiatives for global corporations, entrepreneurs, and organizations including Royal Dutch Shell (Asia-Pacific), Audi, Allstate, Continental Airlines, GM/OnStar, Hewlett-Packard, JP Morgan Chase, KPMG, the Houston Texans (NFL), and P.F. Chang’s. Find Your Next was based on her original research with top leaders of rapidly growing companies including GE ecomagination, IndieGoGo, LunaTik, Autodesk, Cisco, Sharp Healthcare, and Autodesk. Find Your Next reveals the keys to a revolutionary model of business innovation that has the capacity to change business as we know it.
Known to many as the next generation’s “brand whisperer,” Andrea created the Business Genome project to help companies adapt to a rapidly-changing global business environment and to gain a competitive advantage by discovering cross-industry opportunities for innovation. Her hallmark CoLabs immerses organizations in the hands-on application of cross-industry insights.
Andrea is a member of the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) community and featured 2012 TED speaker (short talk).
Here is an excerpt from the first of a two-part interview of her. To read the complete interview, please click here.
To read Part One of my interview of her, please click here.
* * *
Morris: When and why did you decide to write Find Your Next?
Kates: I decided to write it because it needed to be written. Because it didn’t exist. Because I couldn’t find a book to recommend to clients and colleagues that explained how companies were actually finding their way out of feeling stuck—that could actually delineate a process for moving forward and deliver on what everyone was looking for—a path to sustainable revenue growth.
On the one hand, we have classic literature like Michael Porter’s work, but it didn’t focus on discovery and wasn’t written for a world as unpredictable and fast as ours, today
On the other hand, we have books on innovation—by people like Clayton Christensen and Tom Kelley. When you read those books, it’s as if a pure innovation approach is for a particular type of person. An innovator. Born, not made. We can’t all be Steve Jobs (and we shouldn’t try to be).
We needed a book that everyone could relate to, that would help us realize our own innate ability to observe changes in our markets and do something about them. That would help us translate insights into growth.
Morris: Were there any head-snapping revelations while writing it? Please explain.
Kates: I love that phrase, “head-snapping revelations.” Yes. I discovered three about today’s companies that make traditional MBA thinking obsolete: 1.The speed of the market 2. The transparency of today’s business dynamic—we’re connected and social media introduces many new voices into the purchase decision and 3. The globalization of commerce.
With all three revelations in mind, I literally hit myself on the side of my head and realized why we were all so stuck. No process existed for dealing with them. And the book changed as I was writing it.
Morris: To what extent (if any) does the book in final form differ significantly from the one you originally envisioned?
Kates: I was recently on a panel with Sean Moffitt, author of Wikibrands, and he asked me a similar question. He asked me why I hadn’t written the book earlier. I told him I thought I had to crack the code on all of business genomics before I could even get started.
Well, that was never going to happen—I was paralyzed and overwhelmed thinking that I couldn’t write the book until I had all of the answers. I’m sure all authors feel that way when they start out. And we all have to learn when to sit down and just write.
I took a dose of my own medicine. I always tell clients that asking better questions can be the key to unlocking new answers, new opportunities. So, I decided that instead of waiting for the perfect answers to be ready, I would ask the questions with my readers. The power of the book would be the interviews themselves. My asking questions and my readers, or people that represented my readers, answering them. It was the honest telling of the messy stories that didn’t fit neatly into a 7 habits type of list. Conversations with business executives from P.F. Chang’s, GE ecomagination, Placecast, IndieGoGo, EMC Corporation, J&J Global, Korn/Ferry International, GM/OnStar told the real story of how people found their “nexts”—whether it was a multi-billion dollar “next,” like GE, or an entrepreneurial “next,” like Cooper’s Hawk Winery and Restaurant.
Find Your Next went from being yet another academic model or collection of case studies to a very down-to-earth, approachable collection of stories—and the four steps that everyone’s process has in common—whether large or small, business or nonprofit, local or global.
Morris: For those who have not as yet read Find Your Next, to what does the title refer?
Kates: It’s all about taking our organizations from point A to point B. Finding your “next” means just that—how we move toward tomorrow. How we figure out what to do next. When can we see right now? What does it mean about what might happen tomorrow? It’s not as farfetched as it sounds. It isn’t predicting the future, but really looking at the present…and looking at it differently.
How did Nikon see photos changing once mobile phones added cameras, and Flickr and Picasa added photo sharing? Easy.
Morris: What are the core components and major benefits of the business genome?
Kates: You get ahead of the shifts in customer preferences. You evaluate your current performance with creativity, like “trendability”—how well you’re adapting to changes that will affect your company. And your industry.
Morris: Briefly, how can the Business Genome approach help to achieve various organizational transformations? First, of innovation?
Kates: Don’t get seduced into the “let’s create purple tacos” side of innovation. There’s a balance to be achieved between stagnation and pure creativity. The insight here is that innovation can mean recombining things that are in plain sight and accessible, even in another industry—like Zappos customer service.
Morris: Of marketing into a world where customers can be inside?
Kates: Think of your company as an open book or a “glass house” where authenticity rules. We have to observe and listen to our customers—they’re part of our brands now.
Morris: Of talent, culture, and leadership?
Kates: Engagement comes from real buy-in-to ideas. You don’t get buy-in from employee manuals and policies. You get buy-in from real communication with the people you work with.
Morris: Of process by collaboration?
Kates: You need to get all of the players in the room at the same time when you’re designing any new process. The analogy I like is airport design—you can design an airport to streamline baggage handling or make the distance from security to gate the shortest for flyers, but one size doesn’t necessarily fit all.
Morris: Next, the transformation – and proliferation and distribution – of what you call “the secret sauce”?
Kates: Brand is a contact sport these days—everyone (management, front line, customers, competition) has a hand in the molding of your product’s market perception.
Morris: Of the emergence of trendability?
Kates: Business moves at warp speed today. We don’t have to be intimidated by forecast models or wait for the perfect strategy to hit us between the eyes. We can all put “trendability”—the ability to see signs of change before it happens—on our radar screens and build our cultures to respond fast.
* * *
To read all of Part Two, please click here.
To read Part One of my interview of Andrea, please click here.
She cordially invites you to check out the resources at these websites:
http://www.businessgenome.com/
http://www.youtube.com/businessgenome
http://www.facebook.com/BusinessGenome
The Collaborative Habit: A book review by Bob Morris
The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together
Twyla Tharp
Simon & Schuster (2009)
“In the end, all collaborations are love stories”…at least the best of them are, and they must be.
As is my custom when a new year begins, I recently re-read this book and The Creative Habit while preparing questions for interviews of thought leaders. The insights that Twyla Tharp shares in them are, if anything, more valuable now than when the books were first published.
It would be a mistake to ignore the reference to “habit” in their titles because almost three decades of research conducted by K. Anders Ericsson and his associates at Florida State University clearly indicate that, on average, at least 10,000 hours of must be invested in “deliberate,” iterative practice under strict and expert supervision to achieve peak performance, be it playing a game such as chess or a musical instrument such as the violin. Natural talent is important, of course, as is luck. However, with rare exception, it takes about ten years of sustained, focused, supervised, and (yes) habitual practice to master the skills that peak performance requires.
Tharp is both a dancer and a choreographer and thus brings two authoritative, indeed enlightened perspectives to her discussion of the life lessons for working together. Many of the same requirements for effective collaboration on classic Disney animated films such as Snow White and Pinocchio must also be accommodated when members of an orchestra and of a ballet company collaborate on a performance of Stravinsky’s The Firebird.
Tharp characterizes herself as a “career collaborator” who identifies problems, organizes them, and solves them by working with others. Many of the stories she shares in this book “involve the world of dance, but you don’t have to know anything about dance to get the pint. Work is work.” Her book, she suggests, “is a field guide to a lit of issues that surface when you are working in a collaborative environment.” She proceeds to explain why collaboration is important to her – “and, I’ll bet, to you.” Her narrative is enriched by dozens of memorable anecdotes from her career as dancer/choreographer but almost any reader can identify with her experiences, especially with her struggles.
She addresses subjects and related issues that include
o What collaboration is and why it matters (also what it isn’t)
o How and why collaborations challenge and change us (for better or worse)
o How to work effectively with a “remote” collaborator
Note: Given the latest communication technologies (e.g. Cisco’s TelePresence), “remote” does not mean “distant” but physical separation makes mutual respect and trust even more important to those involved.
o How to collaborate with an institution by overcoming problems with infrastructure, intermediaries, and a “deeply en grained” culture
o How to collaborate with a community (e.g. an audience)
o How to collaborate with friends (there’s both “good news” and “bad news”)
In the final chapter, “Flight School: Before Your Next Collaboration,” Tharp stresses the importance of involving others in our efforts. “By standing in our way and confronting us, talking with us as friends [who care enough to tell us what we may not want to hear] or by collaborating with us, other people can help us grind our flaws to more manageable size. For example, my lifelong collaboration with Frank Sinatra.” I’ll say no more about that. Read the book to learn more.
As is also true of The Creative Habit, this is a book to re-read at least once a year, if not more frequently. Beyond its immense entertainment value, it offers rock-solid advice on collaboration, a human relationship that is more important now than ever before in every area of our society. Thank you, Twyla Tharp, for so much…including the fact that you are Twyla Tharp and share so much of yourself in your books and even more in the art you continue to create. Bravo!
* * *
Twyla Tharp, one of America’s greatest choreographers, began her career in 1965, and has created more than 130 dances for her company as well as for the Joffrey Ballet, The New York City Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, London’s Royal Ballet, and American Ballet Theatre. She has won two Emmy awards for television’s Baryshnikov by Tharp program, and a Tony Award for the Broadway musical Movin’ Out. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 1993 and was made an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1997. She lives and works in New York City. Her books include Push Comes to Shove: An Autobiography (1992) as well as The Creative Habit and, more recently, The Collaborative Habit: Life Lessons for Working Together, also published by Simon & Schuster (2009). The last two are available in a paperbound edition.
Booz & Company’s “Thought Leader Interview” Series: Sylvia Nasar
Sylvia Nasar (Photo: © John Blais)
Here is the introduction to an interview of Sylvia Nasar by Rob Norton as part of “The Thought Leader Interview” series featured by strategy+business magazine, published by Booz & Company. To read the complete interview, check out other resources, sign up for free email alerts, and obtain subscription information, please click here.
* * *
The renowned author discusses how the great economists uncovered the basic truth about progress, prosperity, and productivity, and the reasons you should be careful which ideas you listen to.
Many of the powerful forces that help business, hurt business, and shape our civilization today stem directly from the theories formulated by economists in the past, put into practice in the real world. That is the subject of Sylvia Nasar’s new book, Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius (Simon & Schuster, 2011). And yet, as Nasar would be the first to acknowledge, the field of economics has suffered from a lack of respect since its formative years; Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle dubbed it “the dismal science” in 1849. Today, when economics makes headlines, it’s typically as a whipping boy (“Why Economists Failed to Predict the Financial Crisis”) or as part of a sales pitch (“Prominent Economists Support Changes to Medicare”). Add the fact that economics has been delivered to undergraduates over the past 50 years in an off-putting package of mathematical equations and unintuitive charts, and it’s no surprise that most people tend to see it as a difficult subject producing dubious results.
But economics has in fact made profound contributions to our understanding of how society functions. Nobody has done a better job of bringing its story to life than Sylvia Nasar. Launching into her narrative via Charles Dickens and Jane Austen rather than Adam Smith and David Ricardo, she shows how some of the most important ideas of modern times came together in London in the mid-19th century, as Britain entered an era of unprecedented economic growth — the first time in human history that the living standards of average people began to rise significantly. The key insight around which the book revolves is that business productivity drives economic and societal improvement, and the book’s narrative shows us how an idea like that can be developed, debated, and accepted over the decades as empirical evidence mounts and the scholarly consensus builds.
Along the way, Nasar rights some perceptual wrongs of conventional economic history. One hero of the tale is British economist Alfred Marshall (1842–1924), who hasn’t always gotten the respect he deserves. Grand Pursuit reveals what Karl Marx was wrong about (practically everything) and why (intellectual laziness); it paints rich portraits of neglected thinkers such as prototypical feminist Beatrice Webb (1858–1943), who formulated the idea of the social safety net in the 1890s, and American economist Irving Fisher (1867–1947), who presciently discovered portfolio theory, countercyclical monetary policy, and index numbers, as well as inventing the Rolodex and founding the company that became Remington Rand. Nasar also provides carefully reported assessments of the achievements of such better-known economists as John Maynard Keynes, Friedrich August von Hayek, and — the last in her line of profiles — Amartya Sen, whose work she sees as pointing to new directions for the field.
In Nasar’s view, economics has progressed to the point where it can explain definitively how to avoid the kinds of economic catastrophes that produced the Great Depression. All the nations that have grown steadily in recent years, she believes, are following the basic economic playbook that began to take shape as Marshall visited the factories of Britain’s Industrial Revolution, whereas countries that ignore those lessons are doomed to failure. But the dismal science has less to say about how to balance the roles of governments and markets or how to determine the optimal level of taxation. As examples, she cites the United States and Sweden, two countries with very different policy and fiscal profiles, but very similar — and enviable — standards of living.
* * *
To read the complete interview, please click here.
Sylvia Nasar, a former economist herself and a writer for Fortune and the New York Times, is the author of A Beautiful Mind (Simon & Schuster, 1998), the best-selling biography of mathematician and game theorist John Nash, later adapted into a hit Hollywood film. She is also the John S. and James L. Knight Professor of Business Journalism at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. She discussed her research and conclusions with s+b at Booz & Company’s New York office in May 2011.
How to Know Which Kind of Mentor You Need
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.
Mentors help you advance in work and life. But don’t wait for someone to take you under his wing. Seek out people who can help you. The first step is to figure out which mentor will best meet your needs:
The co-mentor. This can be anyone—a colleague, a friend—who needs you as much as you need him. Find a co-mentor if you have a specific skill to learn and something to teach in return.
The remote mentor. This is someone outside your organization who can offer objective advice. You may need a remote mentor if you are looking for a fresh perspective and you’ve already exhausted closer resources.
The invisible mentor. You don’t have to have a personal relationship with this mentor. You learn from observing and following her example.
Today’s Management Tip was adapted from Guide to Getting the Mentoring You Need. To check out the 43-page booklet and join the discussion, please click here.
Also, you may wish to check out the new book, Management Tips from Harvard Business Review, by clicking here.
Mass Affluence: A book review by Bob Morris
Mass Affluence: Seven New Rules of Marketing to Today’s Consumer
Paul Nunes and Brian Johnson
Harvard Business Review Press (2004)
Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Customer’s Way
Nunes and Johnson help to increase our understanding of an especially powerful trend in contemporary marketing: creating or increasing demand for customized products or services that have been mass-produced primarily for affluent consumers. This is a complicated subject in that, as recent research clearly indicates, many of these same products and services also appeal to less affluent consumers. This is precisely what Michael Silverstein and Neil Fiske discuss in Trading Up: The New American Luxury in which they refer to “products and services which possess higher levels of quality, taste, and [key word] aspiration than [other] goods in the [same] category but are not so expensive as to be out of reach…[trading up to products and services which] sell at much higher prices than conventional goods and in much higher volumes than traditional luxury goods and, as a result, have soared into previously uncharted territory high above the familiar price-volume demand curve.”
According to Nunes and Johnson, what is needed is “an approach that considers the facts about mass affluence and delivers a comprehensive view of how companies can change their marketing strategies to capture the value created from greater consumer affluence. That is why we wrote this book; that’s what we’re attempting to provide.”
Indeed they do, and with discipline and eloquence. Their material is carefully organized within four Parts: The New Rules of Positioning, The New Rules of Designing Offerings, The New Rules of Customer Reach, and then a final section which responds to the question “What’s Next?” Then in their Epilogue, Nunes and Johnson share their observations and suggestions with regard to “Reenvisioning an Industry” (i.e. the jewelry and watch business), applying to it the “seven new rules of mass marketing” previously introduced and discussed in the first chapter.
Long ago, Warren Buffett suggested that price is what we charge and value is what the buyer thinks it’s worth. I was reminded of that as I read Part One in which Nunes and Johnson explain “The New Rules of Marketing.” These are not their rules nor are they even rules per se. Rather, they are strategies that the competitive marketplace has already determined are more appropriate to new realties. For example:
Old Rule: Avoid middle-market positions between low-cost and premium.
New Rule: Seize the new-middle-ground position, above the rest of the conventional offerings and below the ultrapremium solutions. (Please see Figure 2-1 on page 33.)
Old Rule: Produce less-expensive versions of luxuries to sell to the masses.
New Rule: Introduce new models of ownership that make a wealthy lifestyle, and even real luxuries, affordable to the masses.
According to Nunes and Johnson, traditional mass marketers can “play by the new rules” (i.e. can capture the spending of the moneyed masses) without sacrificing the former core mass market. How? Give customers the chance to spend more by offering new premium versions, adding on product upgrades and differentiated service levels to existing offerings. Also, honor customers with the recognition they desire by creating status levels that richly reward willing-to-spend customers in all of the ways they wish to be recognized. Also, offer the right price to each customer by using effective pricing to achieve differential margins based on qualities that aren’t intrinsic to the offering. Customers may not always be right but, ultimately, their perceptions ARE market realities.
They are asking different kinds of questions now. For example, “What does this [watch, handbag, dress, set of golf clubs, etc.] say about me?” Moreover, they are less concerned about a luxury item’s purchase price than they are about ROI that includes enhanced self-esteem in their own eyes as well as in others’. New realities do indeed require different (if not “new”) strategies by which to respond to them. Nunes and Johnson offer several in this book, anchoring each within a context of relevant information and appropriate examples. Well-done!
Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine’s Markets of One: Creating Customer-Unique Value through Mass Customization, the aforementioned Trading Up, James B. Twitchell’s Living It Up: America’s Love Affair with Luxury, Virginia Postrel’s The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness, Gerald Zaltman’s How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market, Joseph Epstein’s Snobbery: The American Version, and Bill Stinnett’s Think Like Your Customer: A Winning Strategy to Maximize Sales By Understanding and Influencing How and Why Your Customers Buy.
“Don’t Be So Stupid, Stupid” – A Reminder For Those Seeking Talent
Bumblers keep creating crises that didn’t need to happen.
George Anders, The Rare Find: Spotting Exceptional Talent Before Everyone Else
—————-
Have you ever done anything stupid? OK – maybe you haven’t. But I have. And, I suspect, if your answer is not “yes,” then you are either a liar, or you’ve got a pretty unrealistic view of your own life history.
I think that one way to describe the challenge of life is this: quit being so stupid!
As I read The Rare Find, my mind drifted back to an idea I read from Neil Postman. (Postman is probably best known for his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death). In his essay The Educationist as Painkiller, he ponders the purpose of education. And his conclusion, simply, is that education can’t make a person smart — but it can keep a person from being so stupid. (The essay is available in pdf format here).
Neil Postman
Here are a few quotes from Postman’s essay:
This is the strategy I propose for educationists—that we abandon our vague, seemingly arrogant, and ultimately futile attempts to make children intelligent, and concentrate our attention on helping them avoid being stupid.
The educationist should become an expert in stupidity and be able to prescribe specific procedures for avoiding it…
…everyone practices stupidity, including those who write about it; none of us is ever free of it, and we are most seriously endangered when we think we are safe. That there is an almost infinite supply of stupidity, including our own, should provide educationists with a sense of humility and, incidentally, assurance that they will never become obsolete.
stupidity is reducible…
Stupidity is a form of behavior. It is not something we have; it is something we do.
So, why did I think of this essay as I read The Rare Find? Partly because of this: after massive amounts of money spent developing processes for finding and hiring the right people, every book and article I read seems to say that we have not gotten very good at it. And that includes hiring all up and down the organizational ladder. (As I write this, RIM {BlackBerry} just replaced its two CEOs with a new “savior.”) And the statistics pretty much prove this. Here’s a brief summary from Anders’ book:
In 2010: only 18% of HR Managers say they are “winning the war for talent.” All the rest stated they were either “losing ground” or “stuck” with a process that was not successful in identifying exceptional talent.
So, we make stupid hires; and then those people hired do stupid things. Avoiding such stupidity would be a great, massive step forward, and save a boatload of money and a whole lot of anxiety and despair. And as the quote at the top of this post affirms,
Bumblers keep creating crises that didn’t need to happen.
The Rare Find provides one remedy: part of this stupidity is that we trust our “gut” way too often, when our minds, if we could simply focus them, would scream out some much needed warnings. The Rare Find describes just how hard it is to actually listen to a job candidate, to actually look at work and life history, and then to avoid being “wowed” by the pizazz of a person’s personality.
In other words, if we could focus our minds, we might not make such stupid decisions – in hiring, and in our own life, at work, and everywhere else.
Maybe “don’t be stupid, stupid” should be our mantra…
Harry West (Continuum) in “The Corner Office”
Harry West (Photo credit: Marilynn K. Yee/NYT))
Adam Bryant conducts interviews of senior-level executives that appear in his “Corner Office” column each week in the SundayBusiness section of The New York Times. Here are a few insights provided during an interview of Harry West, C.E.O. of Continuum, an innovation design consulting firm, says that many companies’ Web sites and office lobbies proclaim their past successes, but that leaders must encourage employees to think in new directions, too.
To read the complete interview as well as Bryant’s interviews of other executives, please click here.
* * *
Bryant: What were some early influences on your leadership style? What about your family?
West: I’m the eldest of six kids, and I think that may have some significance. One of the main groups in our company is the strategy group, and we once looked at the family position of most of the people in the group, and they’re pretty much 100 percent the eldest kid. So I think there’s some correlation between maybe being the eldest and wanting to blaze a trail. I think that probably helps in some way. But I think that’s just one type of leadership, which is the type I have: the need to find a new way and take responsibility for other people.
Bryant: I’ve been surprised by the number of C.E.O.’s I’ve interviewed who come from big families.
West: Well, there’s probably a good reason for it — you’re surrounded by other people all the time. And you have to take responsibility if you’re the eldest or one of the older siblings, and you’re constantly communicating in a way that perhaps you aren’t if you’re in a smaller family.
Bryant: What about lessons from your parents?
West: My father builds homes. So I grew up around the idea that you can take a piece of land, and you can bulldozer it and build new homes on it. You can create something new. My parents both left school at 14, but my parents are incredibly smart, successful, thoughtful people. So one of the lessons I learned from my parents is that the fancy degree is just a foot in the door, and there are a lot of very smart people out there who don’t necessarily have the fancy degrees. And given the opportunity, they can do amazing things.
But the only explicit lesson I got from my father was when I was not doing very well in school, and he had a little chat with me and said, “You know, there are people who work for me who dig trenches, and there are people who are professionals, and if you keep going the way you’re going, you’re going to be digging trenches for the rest of your life.” So that shook me up.
Bryant: How would you describe your leadership style to a new hire who’s going to work with you every day?
West: I trust people, and I respect their areas of responsibility. People who work for me know that they have a lot of autonomy. I like to know what’s going on, and I’ll offer my opinion, but I want people to feel that they can say to me, “That’s great that you have that opinion, but, no, we’re not going to do that.” I really appreciate it when people say “no” to me. I want people to understand that I’m totally supportive of what it is they’re trying to do as long as we’re all on the same team.
Bryant: That can be a tricky balance to strike.
West: I have to trust those people. There’s no system of controls that can replace trust, so I need to reinforce that trust, and part of reinforcing trust is making sure that people feel accountability, and with accountability comes some degree of autonomy. You don’t have one without the other.
Bryant: What other lessons have you learned over the years as a manager and leader?
West: Pacing is really important in an organization. When you’re leading, you’re generally trying to lead change, and I think it was Roy Amara, who said about technology, “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” And I think the same applies to change within an organization.
I have in the past tended to overestimate the amount of change I can affect in the short run and then not fully appreciate the change I can affect in the long run. And so I’ve learned that it’s critical to think carefully about the pace of change, and it’s something that I’ve learned the hard way. It’s important to manage that carefully, because it’s not just about the pace of change that certain people in the company can manage.
It’s about the pace of change that the company as a whole can manage. You can push and push and nothing seems to happen, and then suddenly it takes off and you’re sort of running to catch up.
Bryant: And why is that?
West: I think in most companies you’re surrounded by the past. This is true for most of the companies that we consult with. And, to some extent, I’ve realized it’s true for us, too, because you can look back and see what you have done. You may have a Web site or archives or a lobby that sort of shows off your work of the past. The future is not as tangible. It’s not as clear, and so there’s always a tendency for people to go: “Well, I know the business we’re in because I can see it. I see it every day. That’s the business we’re in, right?” Well, that was the business you were in.
Right now we are in the process of inventing the business we will be in. When people see that, it takes off. But until people can see it, until it’s in some way real and relevant to them, they don’t know what they can do to be part of it.
* * *
Adam Bryant, deputy national editor of The New York Times, oversees coverage of education issues, military affairs, law, and works with reporters in many of the Times‘ domestic bureaus. He also conducts interviews with CEOs and other leaders for Corner Office, a weekly feature in the SundayBusiness section and on nytimes.com that he started in March 2009. In his new book, The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEOs on How to Lead and Succeed, (Times Books), he analyzes the broader lessons that emerge from his interviews with more than 70 leaders. To read an excerpt, please click here. To contact him, please click here.
Roadmap to Revenue: A book review by Bob Morris
Roadmap to Revenue: How to Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy
Kristin Zhivago
Bristol & Shipley (2011)
How to determine what, when, and how prospective buyers wish to make a purchase
In a sales environment in which consumers now have much more information — and thus have much more control – during the purchase decision process than ever before, those who sell must be much more aware of what is most important to each prospective buyer. The challenge is to obtain that information. How? In this book, Kristin Zhivago offers a “system” by which to do that. This system (best explained within the book’s narrative, in context) is based on this premise: Previous and current buyers buyers will reveal to sellers what they need to know in order to increase the chances of a sale to prospective buyers. Up to a point, I agree. That is, if approached properly, many prospective buyers will also reveal what they know or think they know about their preferences. That is the core premise of Neil Rackham’s approach, “SPIN Selling.”
However, as revealed in recently published books such as Martin Lindstrom’s Buyology and then Brandwashed and in Adrian Slywotzky’s Demand, it is also true of many prospective buyers that they (a) do not know specifically what they want although claim they “will know it when they see it”, (b) often make emotional rather than rational decisions, (c) many of those decisions are made subconsciously rather than consciously, and/or (d) they can be manipulated by an environment within which sensory experiences can be a decisive factor.
All that said, Zhivago offers a cohesive, comprehensive, and cost-effective system that consists of three steps: Discover (i.e. find out what buyers want and how they want to go about buying it), Debate (i.e. resolve the differences between what buyers want versus what you offer for sale as well how they buy versus how you sell), and Deploy (i.e. document a buyer’s buying process so that you can support them every step of the way, then build an action plan). She identifies the “what” of the process involved but devotes most of her attention to explaining its “how” and “why.”
Note: In the version of this review that was first published, I questioned the appropriateness of the word “debate” and I still do, much preferring a word such as “Resolve” to suggest what the second step of the process involves. Zhivago provided a clarification that I now quote in part: “the ‘debate’ in the meeting is not at all ‘against’ the customer. On the contrary, everyone in the room is united in an effort to match their own decisions and activities to the preferences and needs revealed in the interviews and the resulting Conversation and Summary/Recommendations reports.
“The only exception to this, in my experience, is any die-hard jerk in the room who has no respect for customers and who does not have a helpful character. I avoid doing business with jerks, so this usually isn’t a problem, but every so often there may be one jerk in the room who drags down the meeting.”
Her comments prompted me to re-read the relevant passages in the book and I now defer to her clarification. Read the book and decide for yourself. Her key points, and I do agree, are to (a) know what you need to know about a buyer’s purchase preferences (even if she or he doesn’t know), (b) formulate an appropriate plan based on that information, and (c) execute the plan, committing whatever resources and taking whatever action(s) may be necessary to ensure its success.
Zhivago devotes a separate chapter to each of these strategic objectives:
o How to support a customer’s buying process
o How to support the “light scrutiny” buying process
o How to support the “medium scrutiny” buying process
o How to support the “heavy scrutiny” buying process
o How to support the “intense scrutiny” buying process
o How to keep an organization on its road to revenue
Like any other map, The “Buying Process Roadmap” defines parameters, suggests distances (e.g. information gaps), identifies options, and facilitates, indeed expedites completion of a journey. In this case, the objective (obviously) is to complete a series of sales transactions in ways and to an extent that a buyer has an on-going relationship that will result in (a) additional purchases and (b) endorsements to others within the buyer’s realm of influence. In a phrase, to become what Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba characterize as a customer “evangelist.”
More a quibble than a complaint, an Index is needed and there is no acceptable excuse for its absence. Other than that, those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out the aforementioned books as well as Fred Reichheld’s The Ultimate Question 2: How Net Promoter Companies Thrive in a Customer-Driven World (Revised and Expanded Edition).
How to make the most of uncertainty
Here is an excerpt from another “classic” article featured online by The McKinsey Quarterly, published by McKinsey & Company, and written by Hugh Courtney. To read the complete article, check out the abundance of other free resources, obtain information about the firm, and sign up for email alerts, please click here.
* * *
In extremely uncertain environments, shaping strategies may deliver higher returns, with lower risk, than they do in less uncertain times.
Shape or adapt? For years, executives have regarded the question as perhaps their most fundamental strategic choice. Is it better for a company’s competitive position to try to influence, or even determine, the outcome of crucial and currently uncertain elements of an industry’s structure and conduct? Or is the wiser course to scope out defensible positions within an industry’s existing structure and then to move with speed and agility to recognize and capture new opportunities when the market changes?
As globalization, digitization, and unfettered capital markets raise levels of uncertainty and rewrite definitions of opportunities and risks, this basic strategic choice has morphed into a more complex and high-stakes dilemma. The right strategic bets can return far higher payoffs, far more quickly; the wrong ones carry a much higher risk of systemic failure. Betting big today may fundamentally reshape a market on a global scale to the advantage of a company or quickly produce losses that can throw it into bankruptcy. A company may avoid foolhardy mistakes by waiting for uncertainty to diminish, or it may squander the chance to lay claim to first-mover advantages.
The truth is that no dominant solution exists. You might argue that any good strategy should attempt to shape and adapt by specifying actions designed to increase the probability of some outcomes while simultaneously preparing for others. That approach may work in some cases. Yet the actions a company must take to shape the market are often inconsistent with those needed to adapt. Consider Qualcomm. For the past few years, it has been trying to move the wireless-telephone industry toward its CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) technology. CDMA, a technical standard that determines how information travels and communicates through a wireless network, is competing with other technologies to become the industry standard for next-generation mobile phones.
Qualcomm realizes that if it wants to shape the industry, it must build a coalition of supporters around the CDMA technology. This approach involves cutting deals with wireless companies to get them on board and convincing consumers that CDMA is superior. To win the standards battle, Qualcomm must be totally committed to the cause or at least look as though it were. If the company tried to hedge its bets by producing chips for a competing technology as well—something an adapter might do—it would undoubtedly undermine its shaping efforts. How could Qualcomm convince its potential partners that CDMA was superior if it simultaneously invested in competing standards?
As the story of Qualcomm illustrates, under uncertainty, shaping actions are often at odds with adapting ones. Shape or adapt is therefore a real choice for most companies most of the time. But how, amid rising uncertainty and ever-greater risks, can a company nail down the right strategic choice?
The different shapes of shapers and adapters
An essential starting point is understanding your alternatives. Shaping and adapting strategies may take many different forms. Shapers generally attempt to get ahead of uncertainty by driving industry change their way. Some, like Qualcomm, aim to increase the probability that a preferred technology or business process will become an industry standard. Others grapple with uncertainty by introducing fundamental product, service, or business-system innovations intended to redefine the basis of competition in an industry: think of the low-price, point-to-point air travel model of Southwest Airlines, Dell Computer’s direct-sales approach, or Netscape Communications’ breakthrough Internet browser, Navigator.
Other shapers try to restructure unstable industry environments by making bold mergers and acquisitions, as BP did in the oil industry, or by breaking up integrated companies, as AT&T did in 1996 by spinning off its equipment provider, Lucent Technologies. Other companies, such as McDonald’s in the 1990s, shape nascent markets by replicating business systems in new geographies. Still others focus on shaping the conduct of competitors; in the 1970s, for example, DuPont built its capacity in the titanium dioxide industry ahead of market demand, thus influencing its competitors’ expansion plans.
Adapters, by contrast, take the existing and future industry structure and conduct as given. When a market is stable, adapters try to define defensible positions within the industry’s existing structure. When high uncertainty prevails, they attempt to win through speed and agility in recognizing and capturing new opportunities as the market changes. They might quickly follow a potential shaper’s lead, as Compaq Computer did when it bet on Microsoft and Intel with early alliances in the 1980s. Other adapters hedge against future market uncertainty when they can identify a limited, discrete set of paths the market may follow. In the late 1980s, for example, software companies could hedge against uncertainty about which PC operating system would emerge as the industry standard by developing products for each of the contenders, notably DOS, Macintosh, Windows, Unix, and OS/2.
Still other adapters build their strategies around constant experimentation in products, services, and business systems. In the credit card industry, Capital One Financial conducted 27,000 tests of products, prices, features, packages, marketing channels, credit policies, account-management approaches, customer service methods, and collection and retention procedures in 1998. [Note: Capital One Financial Corporation, The Innovation Imperative, 1998 annual report, p. 4.] Finally, some adapters manage uncertainty by building flexible organizations designed to respond to changing market needs. Many professional-services firms, for example, focus on recruiting and developing people with general-management skills that will be valuable to clients regardless of how the market evolves.
With such a broad range of approaches, no wonder business strategists can’t agree on a dominant answer to the shape-or-adapt problem. In fact, even individual companies may not consistently choose one alternative across all issues, business lines, and times. Nor do the data support a one-size-fits-all answer. McKinsey research suggests that 86 percent of the biggest business winners from 1985 to 1995 followed predominantly market-shaping strategies. [Note: This research analyzed the 50 "stars" with the greatest sales, profit, and market capitalization growth during the sample period. The stars included not only some computer and retail giants (such as Best Buy, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, The Home Depot, and Wal-Mart) but also lesser-known industrial companies (M. S. Carriers), business-services firms (Omnicon), health care companies (Biomet), and financial-services firms (Advanta).] Yet the research clearly shows that adapters too can win big.
* * *
To read the complete article, please click here.
Hugh Courtney is an associate principal in McKinsey’s Washington, DC, office. This article is adapted from his book, 20/20 Foresight: Crafting Strategy in an Uncertain World, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2001.
Subscribe
Subscribe to blog feed
-
- Site created and maintained by Dallas website design company
bigDwebsites.com
