World Changers: A book review by Bob Morris

World Changers: 25 Entrepreneurs Who Changed Business as We Knew It
John A. Byrne
Portfolio/Penguin Group (2011)

Exemplars of an opportunistic mindset and acceptance of risk and potential failure, as well as independence and control

John A. Byrne is chairman and editor-in-chief of C-Change Media Inc., a digital media startup that is launching a network of websites for the global business community. C-Change currently has two highly successful sites, Poets&Quants.com and Poets&QuantsforExecs.com. Little more than two years old, P&Q generates more than one million monthly page views and boasts a book imprint division which published its first title in 2012. World Changers is his first book in ten years since the publication of his collaboration with General Electric Chairman Jack Welch. Straight from the Gut (2003). His other books include the recently published It’s All About Who You Hire, How They Lead…and Other Essential Advice from a Self-Made Leader (2013), co-authored with Mort Mandel, a self-made billionaire and highly successful entrepreneur in both the for-profit and non-profit worlds. Also, Informed Consent (1995), The Whiz Kids (1993), Chainsaw (1999), Odyssey (1987), and The Headhunters (1986).

Years ago during an annual meeting, GE’s then chairman and CEO, Jack Welch, explained his reasons for admiring entrepreneurial companies: “”For one, they communicate better. Without the din and prattle of bureaucracy, people listen as well as talk; and since there are fewer of them they generally know and understand each other. Second, small companies move faster. They know the penalties for hesitation in the marketplace. Third, in small companies, with fewer layers and less camouflage, the leaders show up very clearly on the screen. Their performance and its impact are clear to everyone. And, finally, smaller companies waste less. They spend less time in endless reviews and approvals and politics and paper drills. They have fewer people; therefore they can only do the important things. Their people are free to direct their energy and attention toward the marketplace rather than fighting bureaucracy.”

Byrne observes, “I’ve been flattered to have had General Electric CEO Jack Welch, an intrapreneur of there ever was one, ask me to work closely with him on his memoir – a collaboration that resulted in my spending more than a thousand hours with him. I envy that unique opportunity as well as Byrne’s conversations with 27 entrepreneurs whose 25 companies did indeed “change business as we knew it.”

Two of them co-founded Home Depot (Arthur Blank and Bernie Marcus) and another pair (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) co-founded Google. During the conversation with Blank and Marcus, Marcus recalls when they “threw GE out” and purchased their light bulbs from Philips. Welch responded, “Why would you do that to us? We’re friends.” Marcus’ reaction? “He was full of crap. His thing was bottom-line oriented and ours was customer oriented and it just didn’t match. It didn’t work. We bought a few things from him, including refrigerators. But he never got the bulb business back. He didn’t deserve to get it back.”

Byrne provides a brief but remarkably informative introduction to each conversation. However different the entrepreneurs may be in most other respects, all of them “share a set of common behaviors and attitudes. Ernst & Young’s own research identified what it calls the essence of an entrepreneur. It is, if you will, the shared DNA of people who are using their life’s work as an expression of self.” There are three core attributes that every entrepreneur shares: An Opportunity Mind-set, Acceptance of Risk and Potential Failure, and Independence and Control.

“To these three core strands, entrepreneurs bring drive, tenacity, and persistence. They live what they believe, building success on the basis of a strong culture and values. They seek out niches and market gaps. They are the architects of their own passionate and focused vision. While being non-conformist, they also are team players. And they are voracious networkers, building an ecosystem of finance, people, and know-how.”

Here in Dallas near the downtown area, we have a Farmer’s Market at which several merchants offer slices of fresh fruit as samples of their wares. In that spirit, I now share a few brief quotations from Byrne’s abundant orchard.

John Mackey, Whole Foods Market: “I do think we have a disruptive business model. But we don’t think about it in those ways. We are not a bunch of business school graduates who are trying to come up with a disruptive business model. We are a purpose-driven business, which is attempting to fulfill its mission. (Page 13)

Howard Schultz, Starbucks: “There was no efficiency at Starbucks. We were flying high without instruments. I say that with a smile but we shouldn’t be proud of that. But growth and success cover up a lot of mistakes. It’s hard to look in the rear-view mirror when you’re looking forward all the time.” (59)

Jess Bezos, Amazon: “The balance of power online moves away from the merchant toward the consumer. This is because customers have been information online. Comparison shopping is just a click away.” (67)

Herb Kelleher, Southwest Airlines: “The business of business is people. In a lot of companies you have to surrender your personality when you show up for work…We never felt that way. We always felt that if you allow people to be themselves at work, they will enjoy what they are doing. They’ll be more productive as a consequence of enjoying it.” (75)

Steve Jobs, Apple: “Picasso had a saying: `Good artists copy, great artists steal.’ We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas. Part of what made the Mackintosh great was the people who were working on it were musicians, poets, artists, historians, zoologists, who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.” (88)

Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn: “The old paradigm of climbing up a stable career ladder is dead and gone. No career is a sure thing anymore. The un certain, rapidly changing conditions in which h entrepreneurs start companies are what it’s no like for all of us fashioning a career. Therefore you should approach career strategy the same way an entrepreneur approaches starting a business.”

Oprah Winfrey, Harpo, Inc.: “How do you know when you’re doing something right? How do you know that? If feels so. What I know now is that feelings are really your GPS system for life. When you’re supposed to do something or not to do something, your emotional guidance system lets you know. The trick is to learn to check your ego at the door and start checking your gut instead.” (159)

Larry Page, Google: “We didn’t start out with a search engine at all. In late 19945, I started collecting the links on the Web, because my adviser [at Stanford's Graduate School] and I decided that would be a good thing to do. We didn’t know exactly what I was going to do with it, but it seemed like no one was really looking at the links on the Web – which pages link to which pages. So it is a huge graph. I figured I could get a dissertation and do something fun and perhaps practical at the same time, which is really what motivates me.” (199)

Phil Knight, Nike: “In the early days, when we were just a running shoe company and almost all our employees were runners, we understood the consumer very well. There is no shoe school, so where do you recruit people for a company that develops and markets running shoes? The running track. It made sense, and it worked. We and the consumer were one in the same.” (240)

Great stuff can be found within all of the 25 conversations. I feel obliged to point out that Byrne is an active participant, indeed an erudite contributor rather than someone who merely tees up questions to which others respond. I hope this brief commentary of mine makes crystal clear that John Byrne was uniquely well-qualified to conduct interviews of 27 entrepreneurs “who changed business as we knew it.” What they reveal and Byrne’s brilliant analysis of their revelations provide a wealth of information, insights, and wisdom in this single volume, published by Portfolio/Penguin Group (December 2011). These exemplars of entrepreneurism do indeed possess an opportunistic mindset and acceptance of risk and potential failure, as well as independence and control.

The Originality Scale

Here is an excerpt from an article written by Marty Neumeier for the Liquid Agency website. In it, Marty explains why and how, in an age of nonstop innovation, companies and individuals with original ideas have a distinct advantage over those who don’t. Why? Because original ideas are at the heart of innovation, differentiation, and brand transformation. The Originality Scale is a simple way to categorize your ideas according to the knowledge and imagination that informs them.

To read the complete article, please click here.

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Depending on the quality of knowledge and the level of imagination applied to it, an idea can fall into four categories, listed from the least to the most original: 1) an idea adapted from the same domain; 2) an idea adapted from a different domain; 3) an idea that is new to its creator; 4) an idea that is new to the world.

If you apply a small amount of imagination to a small amount of knowledge, you can achieve a small amount of originality by simply adapting an idea from the domain you’re working in. For example, you might “steal” an idea from a competitor, making just enough modifications to create a minimum of difference. This is how most of us learn our professions. We stand on the shoulders of more experienced practitioners.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Marty Neumeier is a designer, writer, and business adviser whose mission is to bring the principles and processes of creativity to industry. His latest book, METASKILLS, explores the five essential talents that will drive innovation in the 21st century. His previous series of “whiteboard” books includes THE DESIGNFUL COMPANY, about the role of design in corporate innovation; ZAG, named one of the “top hundred business books of all time” for its insights into radical differentiation; and THE BRAND GAP, considered by many the foundational text for modern brand-building. He has worked closely with innovators at Apple, Netscape, Sun Microsystems, HP, Adobe, Google, and Microsoft to advance their brands and cultures. Today he serves as Director of Transformation for Liquid Agency, and travels extensively as a workshop leader and speaker on the topics of innovation, brand, and design. Between trips, he and his wife spend their time in California and southwest France.

How Innovative Is Your Company’s Culture?

Here is a brief excerpt from an article co-authored by Jay Rao and Joseph Weintraub for The MIT Sloan Management Review. To read the complete article, check out others, obtain subscription information, and sign up for email alerts, please click here.

Image courtesy of Flickr user reway2007.

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Today’s executives want their companies to be more innovative. They consume stacks of books and articles and attend conventions and courses on innovation, hoping to discover the elixir of success. They are impressed by the ability of comparatively young companies such as Google and Facebook to create and market breakthrough products and services. And they marvel at how some older companies — Apple, IBM, Procter & Gamble, 3M and General Electric, to name a few — reinvent themselves again and again. And they wonder, “How do these great companies do it?”

After studying innovation among 759 companies based in 17 major markets, researchers Gerard J. Tellis, Jaideep C. Prabhu and Rajesh K. Chandy found that corporate culture was a much more important driver of radical innovation than labor, capital, government or national culture. [Note: 1. G.J. Tellis, J.C. Prabhu and R.K. Chandy, “Radical Innovation Across Nations: The Preeminence of Corporate Culture,” Journal of Marketing 73, no. 1 (January 2009): 3-23.] But for executives, that conclusion raises two more questions: First, what is an innovative corporate culture? And second, if you don’t have an innovative culture, is there any way you can build one? This article addresses both questions by offering a simple model of the key elements of an innovative culture, as well as a practical 360-degree assessment tool that managers can use to assess how conducive their organization’s culture is to innovation — and to see specific areas where their culture might be more encouraging to it.

Six Building Blocks of an Innovative Culture

An innovative culture rests on a foundation of six building blocks: resources, processes, values, behavior, climate and success. These building blocks are dynamically linked. For example, the values of the enterprise have an impact on people’s behaviors, on the climate of the workplace and on how success is defined and measured. Our culture of innovation model builds upon dozens of studies by numerous authors.

When it comes to fostering innovation, enterprises have generally given substantial attention to resources, processes and the measurement of success — the more easily measured, tools-oriented innovation building blocks. But companies have often given much less attention to the harder-to-measure, people-oriented determinants of innovative culture — values, behaviors and climate. Not surprisingly, most companies have also done a better job of managing resources, processes and measurement of innovation success than they have the more people-oriented innovation building blocks. As many managers have discovered, anything that involves peoples’ values and behaviors and the climate of the workplace is more intangible and difficult to handle. As one CEO put it, “The soft stuff is the hard stuff.” Yet these difficult “people issues” have the greatest power to shape the culture of innovation and create a sustained competitive advantage.

[Here's the first of the six that Rao and Weintraub discuss.]

Values

Values drive priorities and decisions, which are reflected in how a company spends its time and money. Truly innovative enterprises spend generously on being entrepreneurial, promoting creativity and encouraging continuous learning. The values of a company are less what the leaders say or what they write in the annual reports than what they do and invest in. Values manifest themselves in how people behave and spend, more than in how they speak.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Jay Rao is Professor, Strategy & Innovation, at Babson College. He earned a B.Engg. degree at Indian Institute of Technology( Chennai, India), an M.S. at the University of Kentucky, and a Ph.D. at University of California, Los Angeles. Joseph Weintraub is the Founder and Faculty Director of the Babson Coaching for Leadership and Teamwork Program. He earned a B.S. at the University of Pittsburgh and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at Bowling Green State University

Lina Echeverría: An interview by Bob Morris

Lina Echeverría spent twenty-five years inspiring creativity and accelerating innovation at Corning Incorporated, one of America’s leading technology companies, that provided the world with everything from the optical fiber that enabled the Internet to the tough glass used for iPhones. Echeverría led teams of scientists and researchers that developed everything from ceramic filters for car exhausts, glasses for TV screens, optical glasses, and dinnerware.

At Corning, Echeverría created an environment where scientists were creative and productive; and teams balanced the ability to explore the edges of possibility, while delivering critical new technology on time and on budget. Echeverría was known not just for her ability to effectively lead and manage (and keep happy) creative scientists, but also for her ability to teach those skills to others. During her career, she led teams and organizations in the US and in France.


A native of Colombia, Echeverría was the first woman to seek admission and graduate in engineering geology from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia at Medellín, inspiring a generation of women who followed. She went on to earn a Ph.D. in geology at Stanford.

Echeverría stepped aside from the corporate world to help create cultures of innovation inside companies and organizations. The mother of two children, she is fluent in English, Spanish and French, and lives in upstate New York with her husband, a research scientist. Her last book, Idea Agent: Leadership that Liberates Creativity and Accelerates Innovation, was published by AMACOM (November 2012).

Here is an excerpt from my interview of her. To read the complete interview, please click here.

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Morris: Before discussing Idea Agent, a few general questions. First, who has had the greatest influence on your personal growth? How so?

Echeverría: With a start point of learning about providing constructive feedback, the guidance and dialogues with Dasarath Davidson opened the door to rich concepts on the spirit of leadership, empowerment and, mostly self-awareness. He understood my approach to leading groups and growing people and gave me the tools so the experience would be fulfilling, not frustrating, enriching, not draining. He was deep, demanding, and relentless and taught me much about commitment and courage and, importantly, the practice of balancing passion and detachment, the only way to face tough situations.

Morris: The greatest impact on your professional development? How so?

Echeverría: My advisor at Stanford, Bob Coleman, had a great impact in giving me wings, while raising the bar for every thing I did. He would put me on center stage of interesting challenges and opportunities, new to me and significant to him, and never failed to trust in me. He gave me a sense of empowerment that is still priceless—and terrific approaches, like his demand for “three options” for every challenge one faces.

Morris: To what extent has your formal education been invaluable to what you have accomplished in life thus far?

Echeverría: I believe the greatest value of a formal education is that it surrounds you with people who are sharper than yourself, forcing you to bring out the best in you; it opens doors to fields and people and ways of doing things that enlarge your own. One has no idea if the field that you train for is going to be applicable to future activities. For many that is indeed the case: they keep and going deeper and deeper to become the world’s experts in one fields. But not for all. I went into geology because I fell in love with rocks, in the field and under the microscope with the puzzle of mountain building. I had no idea that it would lead me to glass chemistry and on the corporate world.

Morris: Here are several of my favorite quotations to which I ask you to respond. First, from Lao-Tzu’s Tao Te Ching:

“Learn from the people
Plan with the people
Begin with what they have
Build on what they know
Of the best leaders
When the task is accomplished
The people will remark
We have done it ourselves.”

Echeverría: Funny you should start with one of my very favorite quotations, from the sixth century BC Lao Tzu—though I have known it in a different form:

A leader is best when people barely know that he exists,
not so good when people obey and acclaim him,
worst when they despise him.

“Fail to honor people,
they fail to honor you.”
But of a good leader, who talks little,
when his work is done, his aim fulfilled
the people will say, ‘We did this ourselves’ “

It is a timeless and compelling description of authentic leadership. It talks about things that are essential to authentic leadership such as empowerment and leadership as service (as opposed to self-aggrandizement).

Morris: Next, from Voltaire: “Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.”

Echeverría: This one takes us back to the previous one, as often those who “have found the truth” believe themselves to be superior, hence the fallacy of their own position.

Morris: And then, from Oscar Wilde: “Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.”

Echeverría: The genius of Oscar Wilde is hard to match. So is his sarcastic humor. And in this one, he pairs them both.

Morris: From Albert Einstein: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

Echeverría: An earlier version of the need for “out of the box” thinking. Or “paradigm shift”. Too bad the concepts have become clichés, rather than understood and truly used, as Einstein extols us. Perhaps this is simply proof of how hard it is to break old habits.

Morris: Finally, from Peter Drucker: “There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.”

Echeverría: Efficiency is often the great enemy of significance. But it has a lot of clout, and often takes first place in initiatives.

Morris: In Tom Davenport’s latest book, Judgment Calls, he and co-author Brooke Manville offer “an antidote for the Great Man theory of decision making and organizational performance”: organizational judgment. That is, “the collective capacity to make good calls and wise moves when the need for them exceeds the scope of any single leader’s direct control.” What do you think?

Echeverría: I read this as a call for empowerment, a concept that I resonate with, that I have relied on, and that I have seen produce amazing results. Empowerment is about distributing authority in a group, it is about encouraging accountability to release the full power of its members, and about delivering BIG. Rather than weakening and debilitating the influence of a leader, as may be feared, in reality this commitment between organization and leader has compelling sway in unleashing and driving high performance.

Morris: Here’s a brief excerpt from Paul Schoemaker’s latest book, Brilliant Mistakes: “The key question companies need to address is not ‘ Should we make mistakes?’ but rather ‘Which mistakes should we make in order to test our deeply held assumptions?’” Your response?

Echeverría: I would have a hard time predicting which mistakes one should aim for. It is just as hard as predicting which ideas will succeed and which will fail. They are both exercises in futility. What I would advocate is that space for mistakes be made, the safety nets below the tall branches where the daring need to climb. If one needs to test the organization’s and leader’s deeply held assumptions, just give space to the members of the organization to define best practices; to think the un-thought of, to come up with ideas and push them through. As they do so, give them space to question. Their questioning will uncover those deeply-held beliefs and assumptions that, as your Peter Drucker quotation suggests, often point in directions better left untouched.

Morris: In your opinion, why do so many C-level executives seem to have such a difficult time delegating work to others?

Echeverría: Delegation is an important component of empowering others. The empowering stand of leading to bring out the best in others is about believing in people and being committed to their success and well-being. It is about seeing their potential—even before they do—and developing it, creating opportunities for them to walk into and grow, raising the bar and challenging people to stretch and expand. But it is also about raising the performance of an organization to achieve unprecedented results. Unfortunately, empowering is often interpreted as lack of authority and inability to control.

As to their reasons for not delegating, leaders are often beleaguered by desires identified with leadership—success, acclaim, influence, authority, control, fame, fortune, relationships, status—and their leadership experience becomes one of repeating actions that result in the pleasing reaction. Furthermore, at other side of the coin of desire appears the fear of not having what we desire. The mirror image of what we desire is what we often fear. If we desire authority and control, we dread delegation and empowerment. Leaders who desire control and authority are seldom those who are willing to delegate and empower.

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To read the complete interview, please click here.

Lina cordially invites you to check out the resources at her homepage.

Blogging on Business Update from Bob Morris (Week of 2/18/13)

I hope that at least a few of these recent posts will be of interest to you:

BOOK REVIEWS

Success Under Stress: Powerful Tools for Staying Calm, Confident, and Productive When the Pressure’s On
Sharon Melnick

The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership
Bill Walsh with Steve Jamison and Craig Walsh

Who Says It’s a Man’s World: The Girls’ Guide to Corporate Domination
Emily Bennington

The Genius Machine: The Eleven Steps That Turn Raw Ideas into Brilliance
Gerald Sindell

The Art of Explanation: Making Your Ideas, Products, and Services Easier to Understand
Lee LeFever

This Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World Works
John Brockman, Editor

INTERVIEWS

Lily Kanter (Serena & Lily) in “The Corner Office”
Adam Bryant
The New York Times

Lina Echeverría

Achim Nowak

David Goldsmith: Part 2

COMMENTARIES

“7 Tips for Handling Criticism”
Gretchen Rubin

“How Companies of All Sizes Are Moving Beyond Command and Control Cultures”
David C. Forman and Friso van der Oord
Talent Management

“Tim Ferriss: How to develop ‘reality distortion field’ charisma”
Jessica Stillman
CBS MoneyWatch

“Why the Best Managers Ask the Most Questions”
Nadia Goodman
Entrepreneur

“Top 10 Famous Stutterers”
El the erf
Listverse

“Death To Core Competency: Lessons From Nike, Apple, Netflix”
Austin Carr
Fast Company

“Making Star Teams Out of Star Players
Michael Mankins, Alan Bird, and James Root
HBR

“How to Defuse Difficult People”
Management Tip of the Day
HBR

When It Comes to Content Strategy, Spreadable Is the New Sticky
Sam Ford
Fast Company

“The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data
Alon Halevy, Peter Norvig, and Fernando Pereira
iEEE iNTElliGENT SYSTEMS

“The startling cost of inefficient collaboration”
Editors
MIT Sloan Management Review

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To check out these resources and other content, please click here.

To subscribe via RSS Reader, please click here.

Simon Pont: An interview by Bob Morris

Simon Pont is a writer, commentator and brand-builder. Hollywood movie studios, Icelandic investment banks, British chocolate bars and Middle Eastern airlines figure amongst his time on the inside of Adland.

He is the author of The Better Mousetrap: Brand Invention in a Media Democracy, and a novel, Remember to Breathe.

His next project, Digital State: How the Internet is Changing Everything, is scheduled for worldwide release (June 2013) through Kogan Page.

Simon is also Chief Strategy Officer at agency network Vizeum, though when asked, he has always wanted to say he is a spy.

He has never been a spy.

He is however married and has three children.

Here is a brief excerpt from my interview of him. To read the complete interview, please click here.

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Morris: Before discussing The Better Mousetrap, a few general questions. First, who has had the greatest influence on your personal growth? How so?

Pont: It has to be family. Family: in the true multi-generational sense of the word. My parents set the moral compass, and I’ve always felt myself hugely fortunate to have been brought up with an emotional safety net that was unconditional, that was always there. I’m now a parent, and parenthood is the most incredible, off-the-chart seismic shift, as far as life-stages go. At least, it has been for me. My future personal growth will inevitably be defined by my children and the positive role I want to try and play in their lives.

Morris: The greatest impact on your professional development? How so?

Pont: You know, there’s never been one stand-out Mr. Miyagi type figure in my career, radiating warmth and charisma and setting the standard. There have been a couple of Buddy Ackerman types – and there’s no need to name real names – but what I am very conscious of is that overall, I’ve actually been very fortunate. There’s been a sizeable cast of characters, mostly very good and only a few questionable, who I’ve learned from. And that’s been hugely instructive in helping me decide what kind of professional I want to be, and the kind that I don’t. But to name a few names for all the right reasons, I’d happily cite Moray MacLennan, Hans Andersson, Jon Wilkins, Greg Grimmer, and Hamish Davies. In each case, and each in their own way, we’re talking about hugely impressive, inspiring, and fundamentally very decent human beings.

Morris: Years ago, was there a turning point (if not an epiphany) that set you on the career course you continue to follow? Please explain.

Pont: I don’t think there’s ever been just one! I think careers are twisty-turny things full of great highlights, 50-50 judgements calls, and a few near-disasters. Along that road, with hope, you bump into a fair few moments of revelation.

Morris: To what extent has your formal education been invaluable to what you have accomplished in life thus far?

Pont: For me, a formal education’s been very important. It’s a good, solid grounding, but it’s also been the necessary series of experiences – from which I now understand how I work, think about things, explore ideas, investigate themes, and then, put those thoughts together. Quite simply, you have to read a lot of words, and put a lot of words down, before you get to a place where you find your own process and writing approach.

Morris: What do you know now about the business world that you wish you knew when you started working full-time? Why?

Pont: Stop playing at being a grown-up and just be a grown-up. I think that’s fair advice to anyone in the early days of their career. By definition, when you start out in business, you’re naive, because your only former points of reference are academia and being a student; in most respects, being a “kid”. And it’s only experience that takes the edge off that immaturity. But there is a ‘but’. Once you’ve entered the business world, you’ve entered it, so you might as well stop “pretending”, stop play-acting, drop the pretence, and go at it full-tilt. I think real credibility and success comes from believing in yourself and what you’re capable of, even if you don’t have so much “experience” to draw upon. It’s not an easy message, of course, but self-doubt only gets in your way. So don’t have any. Or at least, work on editing it.

Morris: Of all the films that you have seen, which – in your opinion – best dramatizes important business principles? Please explain.

Pont: That’s a terrific question. I’m a big film fan. Swimming with Sharks and Wall Street are brilliant yesteryear windows on the working world. Margin Call, from 2011, is another great snapshot on a particular moment in time – but that’s not what you’re asking. Citing movies about the work-place isn’t the same as a movie that necessarily dramatizes business principles.

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To read the complete interview, please click here.

Simon cordially invite(s) you to check out the resources at this website:

www.simonpont.com

Joey Reiman: Part 2 of an interview by Bob Morris

Joey Reiman is CEO and founder of BrightHouse. Over the past 25 years, Joey has worked with leadership at The Coca-Cola Company, Procter & Gamble, McDonald’s and Newell Rubbermaid, and has emerged as one of the nation’s foremost visionaries and leading authorities on thinking and marketing. He is the best-selling author of several books, including Thinking for a Living and, more recently, The Story of Purpose: The Path to Creating a Brighter Brand, a Greater Company, and a Lasting Legacy. He is also a world-renowned speaker who provides listeners with the inspiration and foresight needed to become leaders of the future.

A graduate of Brandeis University, Joey has won more than 500 creative awards in national and international competitions, including the Cannes Film Festival. He also teaches a course on “Ideation” as an adjunct professor of the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. Joey is a librettist, author, soul man, professor, iconoclast, screenwriter, speaker, and jump roper. He is a father, husband and Famillionaire who lives in Atlanta with his wife and two sons.

Here is an excerpt from Part 2 of my interview of him.

To read all of it, please click here.

To read Part 1, please click here.

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Morris: When and why did you decide to write Thinking for a Living?

Reiman: The world was ad rich and idea poor. I was making some if the best ads on the planet, winning hundreds of awards and having a great time. But something was wrong. I was getting paid to execute my ideas rather than come up with them. The advertising model was always based on media spend. Then the creative was thrown in free. What kind if model is that? I thought, what if I were to be paid for raw but vital ideas. Ideas that as Steve Jobs would later say, “put a dent in the universe.” and what if I sold these idea to visionaries rather than ad directors? I shuttered my multi-million dollar ad agency and built a consultancy with nine of the nest thinkers on the planet. Thinking For A Living tells this story and lays down the tenants of great thinking.

Morris: Were there any head-snapping revelations while writing it? Please explain.

Reiman: Yes, that what I was writing about was truly revolutionary. I remember sitting with the head if one of the largest agency group on earth. After I told him about this idea I had called “ideation” he looked at me as if my cheese had fallen off the cracker. He feels very differently about me today as many of his biggest clients seek BrightHouse counsel.

Morris: To what extent (if any) does the book in final form differ significantly from what you originally envisioned?

Reiman: Writing a book allows you to write new chapters in your own life. While writing Thinking For A Living, I realized that some ideas were indeed bigger than others–the largest being purpose. That insight would set my course and career for the next eighteen years.

Morris: I commend you on your skill with regard to formulation of chapter titles. They evoke questions that alert readers to your key points. For example, how did the most money you “never made” teach how to think for a living? (Chapter 1)

Reiman: In advertising, you win business by presenting great ideas but you are only paid when you execute them. The most money I never made was about winning the Days Inn business with a big idea. Though I won the business, the hotel’s leadership wanted a different agency than mine. They asked if they could buy the idea for a lot of money. But my ego got the best of me and I said no. They acquiesced and I got the account. A year later my CFO told me that we had made about 100k on the account. If I had let them pay just for the idea, my agency would have made a fortune. From that day forward I would have no reservations about a hefty idea fee from another hotel company.

Morris: Here’s another: How did the “scariest experience” of your life teach you “thinking is about a lot more than thought”? (Chapter5)

Reiman: As I lay in a hospital room in Rome, I learned about the power of ideas—that thought had wings. My thinking would lead to my first book SUCCESS.THE ORIGINAL HANDBOOK. In this work, I shared my journey to recovery with 5 tenants that correlated with your five fingers. Br THUMBS up. POINT at to your purpose. Give your MIDDLE FINGER to fear. March FORTH and LITTLE things mean a lot.

Morris: And another: How best to create a “thinking company”? (Chapter 7)

Reiman: Here I outline what it takes to build a more thoughtful company. They say that money talks. But people think. And that’s your real asset. I think the term “human resources” is an obscenity. People are not resources to be used up. We should rename our HR function: HUMAN RESOURCEFULNES

Morris: I agree wholeheartedly with you about “the centrality of creative ideas in modern life and how to nurture and foster and create ones that will revitalize” one’s business, family, and being, “and in the most profound way, our whole society.” To what extent is your book a “road map” for that proces

Reiman: THINKING FOR A LIVING is more a compass. The roadmap would come in my next book, THE STORY OF PURPOSE.

Morris: With all does respect to Archimedes, I agree with Isaac Asimov: “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ (I found it!) but ‘That’s funny…’” Your own thoughts about all this?

Reiman: With all due respect to Issac Asimov, I believe in celebration of thought. Yes, all eurekas are preceded with a ‘that’s funny” but the elation I feel occurs when I find that the missing thought is so overwhelming that I have to walk away from what I have just discovered.

Morris: You devote Chapter 2 to a discussion of what your characterize as “The Golden Age of Ideas.” When was it and what are its defining characteristics?

Reiman: Machines ran the Industrial Age. The industrious Age of Ideas will be run by our minds.

Morris: However different great thinkers throughout history may be in most respects, they do share certain characteristics in common. You suggest nine. Which of them can almost anyone acquire or develop? Please explain.

Reiman: BIG THINKERS ARE ON FIRE: Find your purpose and you will ignite your passion. Once lit, fan it and your ideas will catch fire. BIG THINKERS NEVER LOSE IN THEIR IMAGINATION: Worry is a form of atheism. Use your faith. BIG THINKERS BET THE FARM: Creativity is the destination but courage is the journey. What’s the worst that can happen if you take a risk? Whatever your answer, its no where near as bad as not taking the risk. BIG THINKERS MARINATE IN THOUGHT: Wonder? Leads to Wonder! Remember in grammar school when you got the points for how you got to the answer rather than the answer. Life till works that way. BIG THINKERS THINK BETTER TOGETHER: No one has ever done something great alone. You need two people in your life—a soul mate for life and a goal mate for business. BIG THINKERS DON’T TAKE NO FOR AN ANSWER: Meet every no with a yes. It’s a bigger word. BIG THINKERS TURN REALITY INTO FANTASY. Imagine the way the world ought to be. Now move there. BIG THINKERS LIVE THEIR LIVES ON PURPOSE. If you have a why, you can deal with any what, who, where or when. BIG THINKERS THINK WITH THEIR HEART: the brain runs everything but the heart runs the brain.

Morris: In your opinion, what has been the single most significant change in workplace culture since Thinking for a Living was first published in 1998? Please explain.

Reiman: Respect for ideas and the people who have them.

Morris: In your opinion, what will be the single most significant change during (let’s say) the next 3-5 years? Please explain.

Reiman: Today’s currency is the idea but tomorrow’s ideas will be the currency.

Morris: When and why did you decide to write The Story of Purpose?

Reiman: I wrote THE STORY OF PURPOSE so that people would never have to work again. Instead of getting a job they could heed their calling. If enough people did this the world would be a lot happier.

Morris: In the Introduction, Phil Kotler refers to “the societal benefit that organizations are capable of delivering when they believe they have a greater responsibility in the world.” For example?

Reiman: When Sony founder, Akio Morita was presented a strategy for his fledgling company, it read “to be the best technology company in Japan.” He changed it to “Japan being the best technology country in the world.” If you want to find your purpose, look beyond yourself.

Morris: Please explain your reference, in the Preface, to “the most exciting time and place in business

Reiman: For the first time in history, business is part of every human endeavor. As the largest sector on the planet business has a responsibility to protect and nurture those living on it.

Morris: In September of 1978, after Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat agreed to several accords during meetings at Camp David, they were asked to explain why they were able to reach those agreements, given the fact that their respective countries had been bitter and bloody enemies for thousands 0f years. Prime Minister Begin replied, “We did what all wise men do. We began at the end.” In my opinion, Prime Minister Begin offers excellent advice to leaders of organizations that need to become purpose-driven. Do you agree?

Reiman: Prime Minister Begin is correct in that to begin in the end is to return to the beginning—both are states of peace. As I like to say, “the fruits are in the roots.”

Morris: Throughout history, organizations (what6ever their size and nature may be) have been “purpose-driven.” For example, to become the largest, most profitable, and dominant in their competitive marketplace, etc. In your opinion, are these self-serving purposes and social responsibility mutually exclusive or, in fact, [begin italics] interdependent [end italics]? Please explain.

Reiman: Bigger is better. Google, Apple, Whole Foods and GE are all big companies with purpose whose leaders also believe that better is bigger.

* * *

To read all of Part 2, please click here.

To read Part 1, please click here.

Joey invites you to check out the resources at these websites:

Joey’s website

BrightHouse homepage

Amazon page

Goizueta faculty page

LinkedIn page

Marty Neumeier, The Second Interview (Part 2) by Bob Morris

Marty Neumeier is a designer, writer, and business adviser whose mission is to bring the principles and processes of creativity to industry. His latest book, Metaskills, explores the five essential talents that will drive innovation in the 21st century. His previous series of “whiteboard” books includes The Designful Company, about the role of design in corporate innovation; Zag, named one of the “top hundred business books of all time” for its insights into radical differentiation; and The Brand Gap, considered by many the foundational text for modern brand-building. He has worked closely with innovators at Apple, Netscape, Sun Microsystems, HP, Adobe, Google, and Microsoft to advance their brands and cultures. Today he serves as Director of Transformation for Liquid Agency, and travels extensively as a workshop leader and speaker on the topics of innovation, brand, and design. Between trips, he and his wife spend their time in California and southwest France.

Here is an excerpt from Part 2 of my second interview of Marty. To read all of Part 2, please click here.

*     *     *

Morris: When and why did you decide to write Metaskills?

Neumeier: I started the book three years ago to explore the future of work. The book I’d just published, The Designful Company, was intended as roadmap for business transformation. The premise was, if you want to innovate, you’ve got to design. Design and design thinking are the processes that result in purposeful innovation. These have to be baked into the culture, not bolted on. Any other kind of innovation is an accident.

In writing that book, and in leading a number of workshops on design thinking, I realized there was a missing component—something like personal mastery. When I asked people to imagine a new organizational structure, for example, or sketch out a new business model, many of them would stare back at me as if to say, “We didn’t learn that in school.”

Morris: You call the book Metaskills. What are metaskills, and why don’t we have them?

Neumeier: Well, we do have them, but in an untutored form. The five talents are feeling, seeing, dreaming, making, and learning. Feeling is about empathy and intuition; seeing is systems thinking; dreaming is applied imagination; making is the process of design; and learning is autodidactics, or learning how to learn. Most of us are born with the makings of these, but traditional education has focused more on tactical skills, many of which are brittle, meaning that they don’t easily transfer from one kind of work to another.

Morris: Were there any head-snapping revelations while writing it? Please explain.

Neumeier: Many, many revelations. What’s wonderful about writing a book is that you really stretch your understanding. For example, I learned that over the course of human evolution the hand was highly instrumental in creating the brain, which in turn helps us to extend our biology with machines. I learned that consciousness is a subjective experience, a kind of magic theatre in which we represent the world to ourselves. I learned how aesthetics operates in real life, and why simplicity and complexity aren’t opposites, but partners. These may seem like philosophical nuances, but when you relate them to the workplace of the future, they become key underpinnings.

Morris: To what extent (if any) does the book in final form differ significantly from what you originally envisioned?

Neumeier: I first imagined the book as another volume in my series of “whiteboard overviews.” I was planning to call it The Designful Mind as a follow-up to The Designful Company. It became clear after working through the material, though, that this book had wider implications. So I renamed it The Five Talents, using the human hand as a metaphor. In the writing process I came to believe that Metaskills was a more useful title. I was on the fence until the last minute.

Morris: What are the core components of “The Innovation Mandate”?

Neumeier: The premise of the book is that innovation is no longer an option. I see the world as caught in the messy middle between two paradigms—a dying Industrial Age and a new era that we haven’t yet defined. I think it explains why we have so many huge, hairy problems: epic pollution, global warming, failing schools, political gridlock, persistent recession, and so on. And the reason we can’t get our heads around these problems is that we’re using outdated principles. The models and skills we developed for the Industrial Age are inadequate for this next phase of our evolution.

Our new era is not the Information Age. It’s the Robotic Age. Information is to the Robotic Age as oil was to the Industrial Age. By calling it the Robotic Age I’m hoping to capture the excitement—and the implied mandate—of a future in which humans and machines will blend. It’s already happening in thousands of tiny ways, in artificial intelligence, prosthetics, the industrial Internet, self-driving cars, pervasive computing, an always-on mobile culture. Our increasing use of smart machines suggests that we’ll need higher-level skills if we want to remain human and creative.

Morris: What is a “Robot Curve” and what is its special significance?

Neumeier: The Robot Curve is what I’m calling the constant waterfall of obsolescence and opportunity that’s driven by innovation. At the top of the curve is creative work, which is unique and valuable. As creative work becomes better understood, it turns into skilled work, which is more standardized and slightly less valuable. As creative work becomes better understood, it turns into rote work, which is interchangeable and outsourceable. Finally, rote work becomes robotic work, which can be done more cheaply by machines. The Robot Curve is relentless, so the only way to remain fully human is to keep moving back up the curve where the most creativity is.

Morris: You discuss Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs.” What is its relevance to the development of metaskills?

Neumeier: Maslow believed that individuals tended to work their way from physiological needs such as air, food, and water, at the bottom of the pyramid, up to self-actualization, including spontaneity and creativity, at the top of the pyramid. He also envisioned the pyramid operating at a societal level. The Industrial Age, it seems to me, brought society to the brink of self-actualization. The Robotic Age has the potential to lift us the rest of the way. The Greeks called it eudaimonia — the joyful fulfillment of one’s potential, or the pursuit of higher-level goals.

Morris: What are the six drivers of change in “the workplace of tomorrow”? How do they differ most significantly from the incumbent drivers?

Neumeier: This comes from the experts at The Institute of the Future. They predict that the workplace of 2020 will be driven by (1) extreme longevity, suggesting we’ll have more jobs in our lifetime; (2) the rise of smart machines, accelerating what I call the Robot Curve; (3) a broad computational infrastructure, populated with sensors and processors to make the world “programmable”; (4) a new media ecology in which people will need design skills to create and communicate; (5) superstructed organizations, meaning that social technologies will spawn both very large and very small business units; and 6) increased global connectedness, calling for increased adaptability and diversity in the workforce.

I think the most significant take-away is that workers in the near future will rely much more on design thinking and creativity. We’re already seeing this in Silicon Valley, and we’ll see it soon in emerging countries like Chile, Brazil, and China, which aren’t saddled with the baggage of the Industrial Age.

Morris: What are the most significant differences between traditional business thinking and design thinking?

Neumeier: Traditional business thinkers make decisions in a two-step process: know and do. They know something—from a case study, a previous company, a past experience—and they do something. Quick and simple. But always too timid. After all, anything you already know is also known by your competitors. There’s no way to innovate using know-and-do thinking.

So design thinkers insert a step in between knowing and doing, called making. Instead of accepting knowledge at face value, they say: “Do we really know what we need to know? What if there’s another way of approaching this opportunity that hasn’t been tried before? So they imagine, prototype, and test new ideas that weren’t on the table before. They start from a position of not knowing and end in a position of knowing. There’s no purposeful innovation without making.

Morris: Which question had you hoped to be asked during this interview – but weren’t – and what is your response to it?

Neumeier: Well, here’s the question I feared you would ask: “Why is an innovation/design/brand consultant talking about evolution, consciousness, and aesthetics?” I can’t give you a logical answer for this. I just had an intuition that it was necessary to paint a bigger picture.

* * *

Marty cordially invites you to check out the resources at these websites:

Metaskills book site  

Strategic Pyramid site 

Amazon page

 

 

Joey Reiman: Part 1 of an interview by Bob Morris

Joey Reiman is CEO and founder of BrightHouse. Over the past 25 years, Joey has worked with leadership at The Coca-Cola Company, Procter & Gamble, McDonald’s and Newell Rubbermaid, and has emerged as one of the nation’s foremost visionaries and leading authorities on thinking and marketing. He is the best-selling author of several books, including Thinking for a Living and, more recently, The Story of Purpose: The Path to Creating a Brighter Brand, a Greater Company, and a Lasting Legacy. He is also a world-renowned speaker who provides listeners with the inspiration and foresight needed to become leaders of the future.

A graduate of Brandeis University, Joey has won more than 500 creative awards in national and international competitions, including the Cannes Film Festival. He also teaches a course on “Ideation” as an adjunct professor of the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. Joey is a librettist, author, soul man, professor, iconoclast, screenwriter, speaker, and jump roper. He is a father, husband and Famillionaire who lives in Atlanta with his wife and two sons.

Here is an excerpt from Part 1 of my interview of him. To read the complete interview, please click here.

*     *     *

Morris: Before discussing Thinking for a Living and then The Story of Purpose (in Part 2), a few general questions. First, who has had the greatest influence on your personal growth? How so?

Reiman: St. Jude. He is the catholic Saint of the impossible. While in Rome, I was a passenger in a car accident where I was paralyzed. In the hospital, I was inspired by his spirit and recovered 100%. From that moment forward, I would know that nothing is impossible. As movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn once wrote, ” I’m possible.”

Morris: The greatest impact on your professional development? How so?

Reiman: The advertising legend, Al Hampel, who made me at 29, the youngest EVP of a billion dollar ad firm. My first big job was to build the Atlanta, Georgia office. I was to spend a year building it up. That was nearly 30 years ago.

Morris: Years ago, was there a turning point (if not an epiphany) that set you on the career course you continue to follow? Please explain.

Reiman: Yes in 1994, I realized that any gifts I had were being squandered in advertising selling stuff to people. It was easy because people can’t get enough of what they don’t need. I leveled my 200 million dollar ad firm and built BrightHouse, the world’s first ideation consultancy. Our purpose was to think for a living.

Morris: To what extent has your formal education been invaluable to what you have accomplished in life thus far?

Reiman: Brandeis University taught me t think large and to be the best Joey I could be, not someone else.

Morris: What do you know now about the business world that you wish you knew when you when to work full-time for the first time? Why?

Reiman: That if we are not in business to improve life, we have no business being in business. Too many organizations are focused on the life of the business versus the business of life.

Morris: Of all the films that you have seen, which – in your opinion – best dramatizes important business principles? Please explain.

Reiman:  The best is The King’s Speech as it teaches consultants that they must lead even if their clients are Kings. If you tell your client only what he wants to hear you are not the King’s counselor but a jester.

Morris: From which [begin italics] non- [end italics] business book have you learned the most valuable lessons about business? Please explain.

Reiman: The Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell as it is [begin italics] the story [end] of every company and leader on a quest to bring a boon to society.

Morris: Here are several of my favorite quotations to which I ask you to respond. First, from Lao-Tzu’s Tao Te Ching:

“Learn from the people
Plan with the people
Begin with what they have
Build on what they know
Of the best leaders
When the task is accomplished
The people will remark
We have done it ourselves.”

Reiman: If all teachers took this as an oath, our civilization would be far ahead of where we are today. Modern education pushes aspirations into our heads rather than pull our dreams out from our hearts.

Morris: Next, from Voltaire: “Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.”

Reiman: Finding the truth is no less miraculous than discovering the Holy Grail. Though the prize is elusive, the gifts we find along the way are immeasurable. I searched for truth in advertising and could not find it but my journey took me down a path of questioning the basic tenants of business.

Morris: And then, from Oscar Wilde: “Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.”

Reiman: And then from Mark Twain, ” the two best days are the day you were born and the day you find out why.”

Morris: From Albert Einstein: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

Reiman: BrightHouse enlists over 300 luminaries–subject matter experts– outside the arena of business to solve the problems of business.

Morris: Finally, from Peter Drucker: “There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.”

Reiman: Many business people are classically trained for a world that does not exist. It is not enough to be precise, we must also be passionate. Passionate efficiency is an oxymoron.

Morris: In Tom Davenport’s latest book, Judgment Calls, he and co-author Brooke Manville offer “an antidote for the Great Man theory of decision making and organizational performance”: organizational judgment. That is, “the collective capacity to make good calls and wise moves when the need for them exceeds the scope of any single leader’s direct control.” What do you think?

Reiman: Business needs to be capable of more responsible action than it has collectively achieved to date.

Morris: Here’s a brief excerpt from Paul Schoemaker’s latest book, Brilliant Mistakes: ”The key question companies need to address is not ‘Should we make mistakes?’ but rather ‘Which mistakes should we make in order to test our deeply held assumptions?’” Your response?

Reiman: There are mistakes made because we have not learned to avoid them and then there are mistakes made avoiding them. The former gets us fired. The latter gets us fired up

Morris: In your opinion, why do so many C-level executives seem to have such a difficult time delegating work to others?

Reiman: Too many C-Suite leaders are alpha-male, steely-eyed, autocratic-know-it-alls who have been taught leadership means control. Just the opposite. Purposeful leadership is about guardrails for associates to experiment within rather than guidelines to follow as rules.

Morris: The greatest leaders throughout history (with rare exception) were great storytellers. What do you make of that?

Reiman: Human beings are meaning seeking creatures which is what why story tellers Moses, Jesus and Buddha emerged as the world best storytellers. Our greatest American President was also Washington’s best story teller-Abraham Lincoln.  Every business leader today needs a “once upon a time” if they hope for a “happily ever after.”

Morris: Most change initiatives either fail or fall far short of original (perhaps unrealistic) expectations. More often than not, resistance is cultural in nature, the result of what James O’Toole so aptly characterizes as “the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom.”

*     *     *

To read the complete interview, please click here.

Joey invites you to check out the resources at these websites:

Joey’s website

BrightHouse home page

Joey’s Amazon page

Goizueta faculty page

LinkedIn page

Marty Neumeier, The Second Interview (Part 1) by Bob Morris

Marty Neumeier is a designer, writer, and business adviser whose mission is to bring the principles and processes of creativity to industry. His latest book, Metaskills, explores the five essential talents that will drive innovation in the 21st century. His previous series of “whiteboard” books includes The Designful Company, about the role of design in corporate innovation; Zag, named one of the “top hundred business books of all time” for its insights into radical differentiation; and The Brand Gap, considered by many the foundational text for modern brand-building. He has worked closely with innovators at Apple, Netscape, Sun Microsystems, HP, Adobe, Google, and Microsoft to advance their brands and cultures. Today he serves as Director of Transformation for Liquid Agency, and travels extensively as a workshop leader and speaker on the topics of innovation, brand, and design. Between trips, he and his wife spend their time in California and southwest France.

Here is an excerpt from Part 1 of my second interview of him. To read all of that interview, please click here.

* * *

Morris: Before discussing your latest book, Metaskills (in Part 2), a few general questions. First, who has had the greatest influence on your personal growth? How so?

Neumeier: My mother and my wife have been hugely influential. They convinced me I could do anything.

Morris: The greatest impact on your professional development? How so?

Neumeier: I have to credit Dr. Seuss. In the 1950s, he was about the most creative person a six-year-old was likely to encounter. His drawings, rhymes, wordplay, and storytelling were so good they were nearly edible—like stuffing your head with candy. Later on, subversive fare such as comic books and Mad magazine held my attention, and eventually these were replaced by “grownup” stories like those by O. Henry and Ray Bradbury. But Dr. Seuss set the bar for creativity.

Morris: Years ago, was there a turning point (if not an epiphany) that set you on the career course you continue to follow? Please explain.

Neumeier: Yes, and it came as a surprise. By the time I was seven, I’d already decided to become a “commercial artist.” This may seem unusual at an age when other kids were setting their sights on the fire department, but my mother was trained as a designer, so I knew a little about it. I never strayed from that ambition until I was 55. It was then that I realized that design, in some ways, was too important to be left to designers. In 2003 I started to address a wider audience, writing books, speaking, and leading workshops on brand strategy, design, and innovation.

Morris: To what extent has your formal education been invaluable what you have accomplished in life thus far?

Neumeier: I had a great Catholic education in English, although other forms of creativity—art, music, theatre—had already been stripped from the curriculum by the 1950s. History, geography, math, and science I found mildly interesting, but they didn’t stick. My teachers considered me an underperforming B student until I got to design school. There I was a wildly inconsistent A-C-F-A-D-A sort of student. I had made the decision to focus on learning instead of grades, even if it meant failure. Which it often did.

Morris: What do you know now about business world that you wish you knew when you when to work full-time for the first time? Why?

Neumeier: That you have to bring your best self to the job. Any job, even one that isn’t your dream job, has something to teach you about collaboration, perseverance, time management, problem solving, or something else.

That’s the first thing. The second thing is that business doesn’t have to be boring. I had the false impression that business skills were set pieces, carved in ivory by previous generations, which had to be copied and used the same way they’d been used forever. Now I know that business skills can be reimagined and personalized, which makes the whole endeavor much more exciting and alive.

Morris: Of all the films that you have seen, which – in your opinion – best dramatizes important business principles? Please explain.

Neumeier: I could say The Godfather, but that’s really about old-school business. I learned more from Local Hero, the tale of an unfulfilled CEO discovering the magical possibilities in business. He’s a second-generation oil exec who sends his jaded M&A man to a seaside village in the north of Scotland. His task is to buy the whole community so it can be turned into the “petrochemical capital of the free world.” First, his M&A man is transformed the village, then the CEO is transformed. What the movie underscores for me is that business, at bottom, is a human endeavor, not a balance sheet.

Morris: From which “non-business” book have you learned the most valuable lessons about business? Please explain.

Neumeier: Probably the Sherlock Holmes series, which showed me that specialized mastery could create a huge competitive advantage. He made Scotland Yard look like a herd of clueless zombies. No offense, Inspector Lestrade.

Morris: Here are several of my favorite quotations to which I ask you to respond. First, from Lao-Tzu’s Tao Te Ching:

“Learn from the people
Plan with the people
Begin with what they have
Build on what they know
Of the best leaders
When the task is accomplished
The people will remark
We have done it ourselves.”

Neumeier: That’s good. It’s about the power of leading though collaboration. Lao-Tzu was no slouch.

Morris: Next, from Voltaire: “Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.” And then, from Oscar Wilde: “Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.”

Neumeier: The first is about the danger of getting stuck in mental models. Seekers are always in a state of grace, while finders are subject to temptation. For example, there’s some truth to the notion that markets are self-correcting. But it’s a dangerous notion because it absolves us of responsibility. A greedy leader can leverage a half-truth into a mental model that does a great deal of harm. It pays to question leaders and the models they use.

The second quote, which I use all the time in brand workshops, is about the power of having a differentiated mission. We all learn by imitation, but we need to grow beyond the example of others and become more of who we really are. The path to personal success is a journey to yourself. The path to business success is a voyage out into the uncharted waters of the marketplace. In both cases, you can’t be a leader by following a leader.

Morris: From Albert Einstein: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.”

Neumeier: This comes close to being a tautology, since a process that created a problem can hardly be the solution to the problem. We have to start at a different point with a different idea, then work from there.

Morris: Finally, from Peter Drucker: “There is surely nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.”

Neumeier: It’s worse than useless. It’s a waste of energy and resources. Just walk up and down the aisles of a supermarket and look at all the unhealthy, over-packaged, shrill, me-too products on the shelves. Most of these are creating jobs and modest shareholder returns, but not much social value.

Morris: In Tom Davenport’s latest book, Judgment Calls, he and co-author Brooke Manville offer “an antidote for the Great Man theory of decision making and organizational performance”: organizational judgment. That is, “the collective capacity to make good calls and wise moves when the need for them exceeds the scope of any single leader’s direct control.” What do you think?

Neumeier: I’m a great believer in the organizational knowledge that comes from clarity of purpose. When a company has a clear purpose, mission, and vision, employees can make decisions with more confidence and autonomy. You end up with a culture of innovation in which employees can act with reasonable assurance that their efforts will be appreciated and rewarded.

Morris: Here’s a brief excerpt from Paul Schoemaker’s latest book, Brilliant Mistakes: “The key question companies need to address is not, ‘Should we make mistakes? but rather, ‘Which mistakes should we make in order to test our deeply held assumptions?” Your response?

Neumeier: Mistakes are the rungs of invention. Every mistake is a learning experience, so the goal is to make educational mistakes instead of repetitive mistakes. We need to “fail forward.” One of the cul-de-sacs organizations find themselves in is “infectious repetitis,” a downward spiral in which people say “we do it this way because we’ve always done it this way.” The question CEOs should ask about failure isn’t “What went wrong?,” but “What did we learn that we didn’t expect to learn?”

Morris: In your opinion, why do so many C-level executives seem to have such a difficult time delegating work to others?

Neumeier: Two reasons, I think. First, leaders are accomplished individuals who find it easier to dictate or micromanage than to suffer failure. Second, they forget that failure is necessary to learning. The problem with micromanaging is that it robs the company of experience, so it creates the need for further micromanaging. Leadership is stronger when it provides direction and support instead of answers.

Morris: The greatest leaders throughout history (with rare exception) were great storytellers. What do you make of that?

Neumeier: A business—or even a country—is a kind of story, with an arc that describes its progress. Every employee or citizen wants to know what’s next, what are we headed, what’s my role? How a leader presents that narrative makes a huge difference. In the post-industrial age, employees are volunteers, not draftees. Each one is looking for fulfillment more than a paycheck.

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To read all of Part 1, please click here.

Marty cordially invites you to check out the resources at these websites:

Metaskills book site

Strategic Pyramid site 

Marty’s Amazon page