George Kohlrieser: An interview by Bob Morris

George Kohlrieser is an organizational and clinical psychologist. He is Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behaviour at IMD and consultant to several global companies including Accenture, Alcan, Amer Sports, Barclays Global Investors, Cisco, Coca-Cola, HP, IBM, IFC, Morgan Stanley, Motorola, Nestlé, Nokia, Roche, Sara Lee, Tetra Pak, and Toyota. He is also a Police Psychologist and Hostage Negotiator focusing on aggression management and hostage negotiations. He has worked in over 100 countries spanning five continents.

Kohlrieser is Director of the High Performance Leadership (HPL) Program, an intense six-day IMD program for experienced senior leaders and the Advanced High Performance Leadership (AHPL) for former HPL participants. He completed his doctorate at Ohio State University where he wrote his dissertation on cardio vascular recovery of law enforcement leaders following high stress situations. His research has made significant contributions to understanding the role self-mastery and social dialogue has in helping leaders sustain high performance through life long learning.

He is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology, Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio, adjunct faculty member of Union Graduate School, Antioch, Ohio, adjunct faculty member of Fielding Institute San Francisco, California, adjunct faculty member of Zagreb University, Croatia. He is past president of the International Transactional Analysis Association, San Francisco, California and is also a member of the Society of International Business Fellows (SIBF). He has consulted for the BBC, CNN, ABC, and CBS and his work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, and other leading newspapers and magazines.

He is author of the internationally bestselling book, Hostage At The Table: How Leaders Can Overcome Conflict, Influence Others, and Raise Performance, and, more recently, co-author of Care to Dare: Unleashing Astonishing Potential Through Secure Base Leadership with Susan Goldsworthy and Duncan Coombe.

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

* * *

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

Kohlrieser: This is a very interesting and challenging point. In fact, research shows that people do not naturally resist change – they resist the fear of the unknown and the pain of the change. The human brain actually thrives on curiosity, innovation, new learning, challenge and change to create new neurons until the day we die. This has come to be known as brain plasticity. Followers with a secure base leader will be empowered to successfully navigate the uncertainty, ambiguity, and other unknowns associated with change. James O’Toole is correct: most people are hostages to the “ideology of comfort” and to the status quo. They do not dare themselves to do something new or different. The challenge for leaders is to build trust that enables them to drive change. If leaders are not driving change, they are not really leading. We must dispel the myth that people naturally resist change – it is simply not true.

Morris: Looking ahead what do you think will be the greatest challenge that CEOs will face?

Kohlrieser: The greatest challenge I see is the “paradox of caring” – being able to both care and also dare followers, teams and organizations to achieve their full potential and to be true innovators. How do leaders show enough caring and bonding, even with difficult people and those they don’t like? Giving regular feedback and conveying hard truths unlock the door to the highest levels of performance. Successful leaders challenge their people by inspiring them and building trust, not by coercion, control or threats.

Leaders must drive change. Without change organizations wither and die. Leaders who don’t drive change put their companies in grave danger. The challenge facing leaders is to explain the benefits that change will bring. I use the term ”secure base leader” to describe someone who gives a sense of safety as well as the inspiration and energy to encourage followers to explore and take risk. In other words, you must care enough to encourage daring by shutting down the defensive nature of the brain and invite the mind’s eye to seek opportunity and possibility. This combination is crucial, and it’s why my new book about unleashing astonishing potential is called Care to Dare.

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

Kohlrieser: It comes down to focus and trust. Secure base leaders, referred to in my books, always look for underdeveloped talents and turn delegation into opportunities to stretch people. This means they have to trust people to learn, develop and possibly to fail. Letting go of control is often the most difficult thing for an executive to do. After all, their experience means they often assume they know how to do things better, which may or may not be true. Give people a secure base leader and they will achieve amazing things – delegating is one form of stretching another person to show what they can do. The executive must always be standing behind as a secure base. A good example is flight training. There is a moment when the flight instructor must relinquish the flight controls to the trainee.

Morris: When and why did you decide to write Hostage at the Table?

Kohlrieser: I have been held hostage four times. Early in my career it became clear that hostage negotiators have to establish a relationship with a very unlikeable, even despicable person. They must engage in a dialogue under high pressure and influence the hostage taker to give up their weapons and their hostages knowing that they will likely go to prison. The success rate of hostage negotiators doing this work is an extraordinary 95 per cent. When I described what hostage negotiators do to the executives and other professionals I work with at my IMD High Performance Leadership Program, they wanted to know if the secret of hostage negotiation can be applied to situations when one is being held a psychological hostage.

It is one thing to be a hostage with a gun to your head; it is another to be held hostage by a boss, spouse, situation or yourself. People wanted to know how hostage negotiations applied to everyday situations. So the “hostage” metaphor is a highly empowering concept that I wanted to describe in the book based on theory and actual stories. The fact is even when physically a hostage, you don’t need to feel a hostage. The techniques used to gain freedom in a hostage situation can be used by all of us in everyday life. Warren Bennis and Dan Goleman, my two wonderful mentors, colleagues and friends, encouraged me to formulate these ideas into a book, and I was honored to have Warren Bennis include it in his Leadership series.

Morris: Obviously, much of the material in the book seems to be based on what you learned from your extensive experience as a police psychologist and hostage negotiator. What were the most valuable lessons learned from that experience?

Kohlrieser: I have learned a number of lessons in my 40-year career. The most powerful lessons for me have been:

1. The power of bonding and the impact dialogue can have on an adversary, a hostage taker, or a person threatening violence.

2. The paradox of caring. Hostage negotiation succeeds because the hostage taker feels genuine care, interest and concern from the hostage negotiator.

3. The power of focusing on the goal and not on the danger or the problem. When facing a gun, the brain will naturally focus on the weapon unless you train your brain to focus on the person and the goal.

4. The power of language, dialogue and of asking questions.

5. Making concessions within a negotiation.

6. The power of loss in motivating people and in driving violence, especially hostage taking. There is always a loss that precedes a hostage-taking situation.

* * *

To read the complete interview, please click here.

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

His home page

His faculty page

His Amazon page

IMD “Big Think” interview

YouTube videos

Happiness Drives Business Results? Not So Fast…

Here is an article written by Dan Bowling for Talent Management magazine. To check out all the resources and sign up for a free subscription to the TM and/or Chief Learning Officer magazines published by MedfiaTec, please click here.

*     *     *

If you are a college football fan, you are familiar with ESPN Gameday, the live show filmed before big games. It’s like a traveling circus rolling from campus to campus. Excitement reaches a fever pitch as game time nears, with thousands of students in strange costumes and inconsistent levels of sobriety gathering around the stage of the hosts. The hosts have some routine shtick. Near kickoff, one of them, Kirk Herbstreit, delivers a serious thesis about who will win the game and why. It is always well-reasoned and founded on solid theory and observation of practice sessions. Then his partner Lee Corso responds with a refrain familiar to viewers: “Not so fast, my friend.” In other words, theories about the game’s outcome might sound good, but only when they are tested on the field do we know if they work.

Recently, it has become common to read bold, unqualified declarations that happiness drives business results.  I have certainly been guilty of hyperbole in this regard. However, during the past few weeks positive psychologist Shannon Polly and I have been preparing an article for a future edition of Talent Management exploring the connection between happiness and business results, and we have found the causal link is not that clear. Although there are exciting and promising things happening in organizations as diverse as Freddie Mac, NYSE Euronext, and PWC-Australia (you’ll have to read the article to learn about them!), much of what we discovered during our research consisted of lab studies, survey results, unverifiable claims from consulting firms or hypothetical musings. Nothing wrong with all of this, but it is like Herbstreit’s pre-game analytics: we have an excellent idea of what should work, but not too many final scores.

Perhaps that shouldn’t surprise anyone, and doesn’t mean happiness at work does not drive results. I certainly believe it does, based upon my years in the Coca-Cola system in both HR and business unit leadership, and I write about it ad nauseum in this blog. Also, the theoretical foundations of “happiness studies” rests upon very sound academic footing with test studies showing robust results.

Indeed, charges of insufficient empirical proof can be leveled against almost any HR-related business initiative, but that doesn’t mean the initiative doesn’t become part of the normative standards and culture of an organization. Take for example, diversity. It might startle younger readers, but 20 years ago few people gave “diversity” little more than lip service, and to the extent it was incorporated in workplace practices it tended to be couched in terms of litigation avoidance. Today, it is impossible to imagine a major corporation that doesn’t trumpet the importance of diversity to its mission, and many organizations have officer-level departments devoted to promoting diversity. When its empirical links to financial performance are probed, however, the water becomes a bit cloudy, but that doesn’t stop – nor should it – its mainstream place in corporate America.

*     *      *

To read the complete article, please click here.

Daniel S. Bowling III is an expert on the science of well-being and work and conducts empirical research on this topic through the University of Pennsylvania. Formerly, he was a partner in a major law firm and later, the global head of human resources at Coca-Cola Enterprises, where he directed all HR activities for more than 80,000 employees worldwide. He currently holds faculty positions at both Duke Law School and UPenn. He also leads a consulting firm, Positive Workplace Solutions, that works with some of the largest institutions in the country showing that well-being enhances not just life satisfaction but productivity and performance, and writes and speaks extensively on these topics. He can be reached at his firm.

Top Executive Recruiters Agree There Are Only Three True Job Interview Questions

George Bradt

Here is an excerpt from an exceptionally valuable article written by George Bradt and published by Forbes magazine. To read the complete article, check out other resources, and obtain subscription information, please click here.

*     *     *

The only three true job interview questions are:

1.  Can you do the job?
2.  Will you love the job?
3.  Can we tolerate working with you?

That’s it.  Those three.  Think back, every question you’ve ever posed to others or had asked of you in a job interview is a subset of a deeper in-depth follow-up to one of these three key questions.  Each question potentially may be asked using different words, but every question, however it is phrased, is just a variation on one of these topics: Strengths, Motivation, and Fit.

Can You Do the Job? – Strengths

Executive Search firm Heidrick & Struggles CEO, Kevin Kelly, explained to me that it’s not just about the technical skills, but also about leadership and interpersonal strengths.  Technical skills help you climb the ladder.  As you get there, managing up, down and across become more important.

“You can’t tell by looking at a piece of paper what some of the strengths and weaknesses really are…We ask for specific examples of not only what’s been successful but what they’ve done that hasn’t gone well or a task they they’ve, quite frankly, failed at and how they learned from that experience and what they’d do different in a new scenario.

“Not only is it important to look at the technical skill set they have…but also the strengths on what I call the EQ side of the equation in terms of getting along and dealing or interacting with people.”

Click here for more on interviewing and being interviewed for strengths.

Will You Love the Job? –Motivation

Cornerstone International Group CEO, Bill Guy emphasizes the changing nature of motivation,

“…younger employees do not wish to get paid merely for working hard—just the reverse: they will work hard because they enjoy their environment and the challenges associated with their work…. Executives who embrace this new management style are attracting and retaining better employees.”

Click here for more on interviewing and being interviewed for motivation.

Can We Tolerate Working With You? – Fit

Continuing on with our conversation, Heidrick’s Kelly went on to explain the importance of cultural fit:

“A lot of it is cultural fit and whether they are going to fit well into the organization…  The perception is that when (senior leaders) come into the firm, a totally new environment, they know everything.  And they could do little things such as send emails in a voicemail culture that tend to negatively snowball over time.  Feedback or onboarding is critical.  If you don’t get that feedback, you will get turnover later on.”

He made the same point earlier in an interview with Smart Business, referencing Heidrick’s internal study of 20,000 searches.

“40 percent of senior executives leave organizations or are fired or pushed out within 18 months. It’s not because they’re dumb; it’s because a lot of times culturally they may not fit in with the organization or it’s not clearly articulated to them as they joined.”

Click here for more on interviewing and being interviewed for fit.

*     *     *

George Bradt has a unique perspective on transformational leadership based on his combined senior line management and consulting experience. After his education at Harvard and Wharton, George progressed through sales, marketing and general management roles around the world at Fortune 500 companies including Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, and then J.D. Power and Associates as chief executive of its Power Information Network spin off. Now he is a Principal of CEO Connection and Managing Director of PrimeGenesis, the executive onboarding and transition acceleration group he founded in 2002. Since then, George and PrimeGenesis have reduced the risk of failure fourfold for executives they have worked with – from 40% to 10% – based on their own team, tools and perspective on delivering better results faster.

His published works include Onboarding: How to Get Your New Employees Up to Speed in Half the Time (2009) and The New Leader’s 100-Day Action Plan: How to Take Charge, Build Your Team, and Get Immediate Results  (2011). You can contact George directly at gbradt@primegenesis.com.

 

 

George B. Bradt: An interview by Bob Morris

Geortge Bradt

George B. Bradt has a unique perspective on transformational leadership based on his combined senior line management and consulting experience. He progressed through sales, marketing and general management roles around the world at companies including Unilever, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, and J.D. Power’s Power Information Network spin off as chief executive. Now he is a Principal of CEO Connection and Managing Director of PrimeGenesis, the leading global executive onboarding and transition acceleration group he founded in 2002. George is a graduate of Harvard and Wharton (MBA), author of three books published by John Wiley & Sons: The New Leader’s 100-Day Action Plan (now out in 3^rd edition), Onboarding, and The Total Onboarding Program, as well as of The New Leader Smart Tools iPad app, as well as a weekly column for Forbes.com, “The New Leader’s Playbook,” and the musical “Twitter Pi.”

*   *   *

Morris: Before discussing your books, a few general questions. First, which person has had the greatest influence on your personal growth? Please explain.

Bradt: Got to be my wife, Meg. She is so strong in areas that I’m so weak in that she has helped me to see the value of opposing views and attitudes on a continuous basis over the past 35+ years. Not that I’ve adopted her views and attitudes, and not that I’ve tried to become strong in the areas that she’s strong in, just that knowing and understanding those things has helped me develop into who I am.

Morris: The greatest impact on your professional development?

Bradt: I’m blessed to have the ability to take things in from a wide variety of sources. I’ve learned bits and pieces from the people I’ve worked for, worked with, and had work for me, from suppliers, from customers, from teachers, and thought leaders. I am the sum total of all these bits and pieces.

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.

Bradt: At age 23 I took over a sales unit from my former boss. He was a dramatically better salesman than I was so I knew I couldn’t cycle his numbers by outselling him. I chose to out manage him.

I gave one of my key accounts to each of my four strongest salespeople and spent the next six months training them.

• Month 1:  They came with me on the key account calls and didn’t do or say anything.
• Month 2: I let them do the paper work after the call.
• Month 3:  I let them prepare the presentation – which I gave.
• Month 4: I let them give the presentation – but not answer any questions.
• Month 5: I let them give the presentation and answer the questions – with me there as back up
• Month 6: I had them meet me before the call, take me through their presentation, explain how they were going to answer questions.

Then I let them make the sales call while I waited outside.

Then we debriefed immediately after that

Then, I took a one-week vacation and went to a one week sales management meeting. When I came back, these guys were 150 percent of the month’s target – through two weeks. They knew what to do and owned their results.

It changed me. I know the leverage of a team vs. an individual. Since then, I’ve always put my first, best efforts into developing others and building the team.

Morris: To what extent has your formal education proven invaluable to what you have achieved thus far?

Bradt: I look good on paper and that gives me some credibility. Many of my best friends and business colleagues are people I met either at school or through post-school networking groups.

The real value is in the basics. My elementary school, St. Bernard’s, is remarkable. Had the most extraordinary teachers and students. Anyone that spent more than a few years there has a discipline around the use of words that is rare in the world. That was my foundation that allowed me to get the most out of Choate, Winchester, Harvard, and Wharton – though some of those were pretty good too!

Morris: What do you know now about business that you wish you knew when you left the classroom to begin a full-time job?

Bradt:

1)  Defining your own win. Must, must, must define your own professional and personal goals – and understand the trade-off choices you are going to make across those two. Everyone is different. Everyone needs to understand what’s really important to them and what’s not.

2)  The importance of a long-term view. It’s very hard to look way down the road at age 22. There’s so much power in thinking about what you want to be later on and what knowledge and skills you choose to acquire to get there. Steve Jobs says you can only connect the dots backwards. I buy that. But you can make choices about which dots you want to put on the paper.

3)  The applicability of where to play/how to win my own career. One of the most important choices people make is which industry to play in and then which company to play in within that industry. Choose wisely and the rising tide helps. Choose less wisely and your fighting the trend the whole way. The second part of that is choosing how you’re going to differentiate yourself to win within your industry.

*     *     *

To read the complete interview, please click here.

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

www.primegenesis.com

www.newjobprep.com

www.onboardingprogram.com

www.newleadersmarttools.com

[1] Bradt, George, and Vonnegut, Mary, 2009. Onboarding: How to Get Your New Employees Up to Speed in Half the Time. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

[2] Attributed to Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms, 1521, when asked to recant his earlier writings.

[3] Neilson, Martin, and Powers, “The Secrets to Successful Strategy Execution,” Harvard Business Review (June 2008):

Expect the Unexpected (or You Won’t Find It): A book review by Bob Morris

Expect the Unexpected (or You Won’t Find It): A Creativity Tool Based on the Ancient Wisdom of Heraclitus

Roger von Oech
Berrett-Koehler Publishers (2002)

The fact that von Oech draws heavily upon the “ancient wisdom of Heraclitus” in this book correctly suggests what a creative mind such as von Oech’s can accomplish when seeing direct and useful correlations between an ancient Greek philosopher (other than Plato and Aristotle) and intellectual challenges in the 21st century. Von Oech describes Heraclitus as “the world’s first creative teacher.” He recalls being “infected” (happily) with the Heraclitean “bug” while studying in Germany 30 years ago. Now von Oech has written a book in which he brilliantly and entertainingly examines concepts such as symbol, paradox, and ambiguity in relation to creative thought. He offers 30 “Creative Insights” of Heraclitus which include, for example, these five:

#2. “Expect the unexpected or you won’t find it.”
#4 “You can’t step into the same river twice.”
#12 “Many fail to grasp what’s right in the palm of their hand.”
#26 “Donkeys prefer garbage to gold.”
#29 “Your character is your destiny.”

Individually and even when clustered with the other 25, these “Creative Insights” may incorrectly seem unworthy of careful consideration. In fact, von Oech provides a brief but insightful analysis of each which effectively demonstrates the wisdom of #12. Truly creative thinkers are always alert to what I call “the invisibility of the obvious.” They are not threatened by or even uncomfortable with symbol, paradox, and ambiguity. On the contrary, their minds are stimulated by them.

Throughout his book, von Oech inserts a number of brief puzzles for the reader to solve. (The correct answers are included and explained within the “Final Thoughts” section.) These puzzles are fun to grapple with, of course, and presumably most readers will solve them of them. My point is, the answers to the unsolved puzzles are no less obvious than the answers to the others, no matter which specific puzzles the reader is unable to solve.

Frankly, when I began to read this book, I really did not know what to expect. What of value could I possibly learn from a relatively obscure Greek philosopher? However, von Oech had already convinced me of the value of an occasional “whack on the side of the head” and “kick in the seat of the pants” so I gave him the benefit of the doubt. (See #12.) As always, von Oech is immensely entertaining. He has superb writing skills. And of course, he is an immensely creative thinker in his own right. I strongly recommend this little (in length) book to literally anyone who wants to put white caps on her or his gray matter. Those who share my high regard for this book are strongly urged to read all of von Oech’s previous books as well as those written by Guy Claxton, Edward de Bono, Lynne Levesque, and Michael Michalko.

*     *     *

Roger von Oech is the founder and president of Creative Think, a California-based consulting firm that specializes in stimulating creativity and innovation. He has given seminars and presentations to corporations worldwide, including Coca-Cola, GE, Disney, Intel, MTV, Microsoft, NASA, Apple, Citigroup, and the United States Olympic Committee. He is the author of two previous creative-thinking books, A Whack on the Side of the Head and A Kick in the Seat of the Pants, as well as the popular Creative Whack Pack card deck. He lives with his wife and children in Atherton, California.

A Kick in the Seat of the Pants: A book review by Bob Morris

A Kick in the Seat of the Pants:
Using Your Explorer, Artist, Judge & Warrior to Be More Creative
Roger von Oech
Harper Paperbacks (1988)

This book should be read in combination with A Whack on the Side of the Head…preferably after you have read that book. At least that’s my suggestion. In Kick, first published in 1986, von Oech introduces four stereotypes: The Explorer, The Artist, The Judge, and The Warrior.

Von Oech devotes a separate chapter to each. Also, he assigns to each quite different values, priorities, mindsets, predispositions, and parameters relative to creative thinking. This is a brilliant conceit. In varying proportions, each of us is (simultaneously) an Explorer, an Artist, a Judge, and a Warrior. Each plays an important role in the creative process. Von Oech explains how and why.

As in A Whack on the Side of the Head, he provides various exercises in combination with a rigorous analysis of each of the four stereotypes. As is true of Whack, Kick will be immensely valuable to executives in any organization that needs a culture within which to generate and then nourish fresh ideas and new perspectives. The same is true of all self-employed people (especially independent consultants) whose customers or clients expect them to address the same need. Finally, I think that school, college, and university classroom teachers can devise all manner of appropriate applications of von Oech’s ideas.

I strongly recommend both Whack and Kick. Also von Oech’s Creative Whack Pack card deck and the more recently published Expect the Unexpected (or You Won’t Find It): A Creativity Tool Based on the Ancient Wisdom of Heraclitus. Read and then re-read all three. Absorb and digest the material. Let the ideas percolate for a while. (The material in all three is remarkably cohesive…and intellectually combustible.) Then try this experiment the next time you and others in your organization get together to brainstorm. Whoever chairs the discussion is designated the Judge. Depending on the size of the group, designate one or two others to be (respectively) the Explorer, the Artist, and the Warrior. Require everyone to think and comment ONLY within the strict limits of each assigned role. After about 15-20 minutes of brainstorming, re-assign all roles. Same requirement: each must think and comment only within the strict limits of her or his role. No exceptions.(Once you read Kick, you’ll know exactly what I am suggesting…also why.) I’ll bet you a beverage of your choice that the results will surprise and delight everyone involved. Also, and more to the point, it will prove to be the most productive brainstorm session that anyone in the group had as yet participated in. Just think (creatively, of course) how much more will be accomplished at the next session!

In addition to von Oech’s A Whack on the Side of the Head, there are other excellent books also worthy of your consideration. They include those written by Edward De Bono, Guy Claxton, Michael Michalko, and Joey Reiman.

*     *     *

Roger von Oech is the founder and president of Creative Think, a California-based consulting firm that specializes in stimulating creativity and innovation. He has given seminars and presentations to corporations worldwide, including Coca-Cola, GE, Disney, Intel, MTV, Microsoft, NASA, Apple, Citigroup, and the United States Olympic Committee. He is the author of two previous creative-thinking books, A Whack on the Side of the Head and A Kick in the Seat of the Pants, as well as the popular Creative Whack Pack card deck. He lives with his wife and children in Atherton, California.

 

A Whack on the Side of the Head: A book review by Bob Morris

A Whack on the Side of the Head: How You Can Be More Creative

Roger von Oech
Business Plus, 25th Anniversary Edition  (2008)

Note: When preparing for some interviews, I re-read several books on the creative process and remain convinced that all are still among the best. This  one is indeed a business classic.

This book should be read in combination with A Kick in the Seat of the Pants…and preferably read first. Just a suggestion. Von Oech demonstrates in his thinking and in his writing the same principles he advocates so eloquently. In Whack, first published in 1983, he identifies ten “locks” which that (if not preclude) creative thinking:

 

• The Right Answer
• That’s Not Logical
• Follow the Rules
• Be Practical
• Play Is Frivolous
• That’s Not My Area
• Avoid Ambiguity
• Don’t Be Foolish
• To Err Is Wrong
• I’m Not Creative

How does each limit (if not preclude) creative thinking? How can each be “unlocked”? To what extent are these barriers interdependent? Von Oech devotes a separate chapter to each of the ten, answering these and other questions while providing various exercises in support of his explanations.

Whack will be immensely valuable to executives in any organization which needs a culture within which to generate and then nourish fresh ideas and new perspectives. The same is true of all self-employed people (especially independent consultants) whose customers or clients expect them to address the same need. Finally, I think that school, college, and university classroom teachers can devise all manner of appropriate applications of von Oech’s ideas. When you listen to Richard Feyman’s lectures on physics (now available on CDs and videos), you suspect that he has read all of von Oech’s books. He probably didn’t. Nonetheless, he and von Oech are kindred spirits.

In addition to von Oech’s A Kick in the Seat of the Pants, there are other excellent books also worthy of your consideration. They include those written by Edward De Bono, Guy Claxton, Michael Michalko, and Joey Reiman.

*     *     *

Roger von Oech is the founder and president of Creative Think, a California-based consulting firm that specializes in stimulating creativity and innovation. He has given seminars and presentations to corporations worldwide, including Coca-Cola, GE, Disney, Intel, MTV, Microsoft, NASA, Apple, Citigroup, and the United States Olympic Committee. As indicated, he is the author of A Whack on the Side of the Head and A Kick in the Seat of the Pants, as well as the popular Creative Whack Pack card deck. He lives with his wife and children in Atherton, California.

The Essential Advantage: A book review by Bob Morris

The Essential Advantage: How to Win with a Capabilities-Driven Strategy
Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi
Harvard Business Review Press (2011)

The strategic power of coherence

According to Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi in the first chapter, to achieve and then sustain a competitive advantage, a company “must be resolutely focused and clear-minded about three critical elements: its market position (it’s chosen ‘way to play,’ if you will); its most distinctive capabilities, which work together as a system; and its product and service portfolio. In a coherent company, the right lineup of products and services naturally results from conscious choices about the capabilities needed for a deliberate way to play.” There are no head-snapping revelations in this book, nor do Leinwand and Mainardi make any such claim. Their purpose is clearly stated: to help their reader to take deliberate steps — “to reconsider your current strategy, overcome the conventional separation between your outward-facing and inward-facing activities, and bring your organization into focus.” After briefly identifying the “what,” they devote most of their attention to the “how” and “why” of formulating and then executing a capabilities-driven strategy.

For example, in Parts I and II, they explain:

•  The essence of competitive advantage
•  How to achieve it
•  How to sustain it
•  The three elements of coherence
•  How to develop each
•  How to coordinate all three
•  What the “coherence premium” is and why it is so valuable
•  The right “way to play” (i.e. compete)
•  The structure of the capabilities system
•  The elements of a capabilities-driven strategy
•  How to achieve and sustain a product and service fit

They continue the same approach throughout the remainder of their lively and eloquent narrative. In Part III, they explain how to create value; in Part IV, they explain how to “live coherence every day.” As noted earlier, Leinwand and Mainardi establish and then maintain a direct, personal rapport with their reader. They cite dozens of real-world examples of capabilities-driven companies that include Coca-Cola, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, Apple, P&G, Herman Miller, Nordstrom, IBM, and Whole Foods. I was especially interested in what they have to say about the leadership qualities are required.

The word “coherent” is one word that comes to mind when CEOs such as A.G. Lafley (P&G) are mentioned: “They have learned to generate excitement and inspiration in a world of ruthless choice…When they go, they leave behind a company that is stronger, more capable, and more coherent than it was before; a company with a solid way to play and a capabilities system that enables people to grow; a company that is primed to create value, wealth, and quality of life for decades to come. In business, this is the most powerful legacy.”

As Leinwand and Mainardi would be the first to point out, it would be a fool’s errand to attempt to adopt or even adapt all of the information, insights, and recommendations they provide in this book. However, I am convinced and do not hesitate to suggest that the leaders of almost any organization (whatever its size and nature may be) can use their system framework to select a set of integrated capabilities that are most appropriate for their organization, one that will enable it to create value in the path it has chosen. Leinwand and Mainardi cannot make those decisions for them. However, they – and do, in this book – offer guidance to assist that decision-making process.

One final point I presume to add: Capabilities improvement is a never-ending journey, not an ultimate destination. An increase of capabilities must be accompanied by an improvement of the talents, skills, and resources needed to apply those capabilities. The most effective strategies are results-driven as well as capabilities-driven. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the road to failure in business is paved with “nice tries.” I agree with the Jedi Master, Yoda: “Do or do not. There is no try.”

Note: If you click here, you can to check out a wealth of resources that include a BBC World Business videotape of a conversation during which Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi talk to Peter Day about their book, The Essential Advantage.

Adam Bryant: An interview by Bob Morris

Adam Bryant

Adam Bryant is the deputy national editor of The New York Times, 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 Sunday Business section and on nytimes.com that he started in March 2009. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller, The Corner Office: Indispensable and Unexpected Lessons from CEO’s on How to Lead and Succeed, which draws out the broader themes and lessons from interviews with more than 70 CEO’s.

Adam has been editing at The Times since May 2006, and was a business reporter at the paper through the 1990s, when he covered a number of beats, including airlines, aviation safety, executive pay and corporate governance. From 1999 to 2006, he worked at Newsweek magazine as a senior writer and then as business editor. Before moving to the national desk in 2010, he was deputy business editor. Adam was the lead editor of a series on the dangers of distracted driving that won a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. Please click here to send an email to him.

*    *     *

Morris: I read your article featured by The New York Times (“Corner Office – The 5 Habits of Highly Effective C.E.O.’s,” May 17, 2011) in which you suggest that all great leaders share these habits in common: battle-hardened confidence, passionate curiosity, team smarts, a simple mind-set, and fearlessness. What about charisma?

Bryant: Good question. Charisma can be tricky, as many of the CEOs I’ve interviewed have noted. Several have acknowledged that that their hiring mistakes include being won over by a charismatic personality, only to find out later that their charisma was not backed up by performance. Certainly, many leaders are charismatic. But I would say this one of those examples where it can be easy to mistake correlation for causation. Some successful CEOs are charismatic, but charisma is not necessary to be a successful CEO.

Morris: Here’s a follow-up question. Jack Dempsey once observed, “Champions get up when they can’t.” Is this what you mean by fearlessness?

Bryant: It’s part of it, certainly. That’s a great quote, by the way, which I think speaks more to the second quality I’ve identified as essential to high-performance – Battle-Hardened Confidence. That speaks more directly to this notion of facing adversity and powering through it.

Morris: In Geeks & Geezers, Warren Bennis and Robert Thomas have much of value to say about what happens to leaders who experience severe, perhaps even traumatic stress. In a word, they experience a “crucible.” My own opinion is that a crisis does not create character, crisis reveals it. What do you think about all this?

Bryant: I think it’s tough to parse the two, since they’re related so closely that they create a chicken-and-egg kind of debate. But I think it is important to note how many CEOs I interviewed told vivid stories about how they were tested in such moments, and the profound effect it had on them and their leadership.

Morris: In your opinion, is rigorous scrutiny of leaders by the media and others today better, worse, or about the same as it was (let’s say) five years ago? Please explain.

Bryant: I think it has gotten better. If you take a longer view of this than just five years, I think it’s fair to say the treatment and scrutiny of leaders have swung at times from one extreme to another. But the business press is getting smarter and more skeptical and reasonable about CEOs and their roles.

Morris: Based on what you’ve experienced as well as what you’ve observed, what is the single area of greatest need of immediate improvement among business schools, even those most highly regarded?

Bryant: More focus on leadership, communication, teamwork (not just my opinion – many of the CEOs I interviewed volunteered similar thoughts). Several top business schools, recognizing the importance of these issues in today’s environment, are starting to build more courses on these topics into their programs.

Morris: I recently learned that in April, Coca-Cola had 22.5 million visitors on Facebook and only 270,000 to its website—over 80 times as much traffic. To what extent (if any) has the emergence of social networks and their media such as Facebook had a significant impact on how people lead organizations?

Bryant: Many CEOs I’ve interviewed have added social media to their leadership toolkit. They blog, they hold virtual town halls. It helps flatten organizations, and makes the CEOs more accessible.

Morris: Most change initiatives either fail or fall far short of original expectations. Reasons vary but, according to James O’Toole in Leading Change, much of the resistance is cultural, the result of what he so aptly characterizes as “the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom.” What do you think?

Bryant: I agree. That is why the CEOs I interviewed speak with such reverence when they talk about people on their staffs who embody this quality of fearlessness. They want people with a bias toward taking action, toward taking calculated risks, to doing things. So they do what they can to send the message: they reward and promote and praise people who do these things. They hammer the point that their organizations have to be continually evolving and improving. They solicit everyone’s opinions. They set ambitious targets to get people out of their comfort zones. And they try to create a sense of mission so that people invest more of their passion and commitment to the workplace, rather than seeing it as just a place to show up and collect a paycheck.

Morris: To what extent (if any) is it still possible for what Jean Lipman-Blumen characterizes as a “toxic” leader to become CEO of a major corporation? Please explain.

Bryant: I think it is still possible. There is still some percentage of companies – though it is difficult to guess what that percentage is – that still operate with command-and-control, top-down hierarchies. And it’s inevitable that some people will achieve positions of great power, like the CEO role, and abuse the power they are granted. But on an optimistic note, I think such leadership styles get exposed more quickly now, and boards have lower tolerances for them. Why? Because, at the end of the day, it’s all about performance, and the quickening speed of business means that companies that wait for and follow only the orders of the boss at the top of the organization will be left behind.

Morris: What do you know now about business that you wish you knew when you sent to work in your first full-time job?

Bryant: I’ve come to appreciate – with my own experience, and hearing about the experiences from the CEOs I’ve interviewed – that it’s important to reach out and make connections with all sorts of people in your organization, not just those in your own department. They payoff of doing this is immeasurable, in so many ways.

*     *    *

To read the complete interview, please click here.

David A. Aaker: An interview by Bob Morris

David A. Aaker

In his own words:

“My passion is understanding brands and helping firms build brands and brand portfolios. My first brand book, Managing Brand Equity defined brand equity and set forth its value to a firm and its customers. The second, Building Strong Brands, described the “brand identity” model that many firms use to manage their brands and also introduced the Brand Equity Ten measurement structure. The third, Brand Leadership extended the brand identity model and adding material on brand building programs. The fourth, Brand Portfolio Strategy, introduces models and concepts that allow a firm to sort out the complexities of brand portfolios and the priorities and relationships that define them. The fifth, Spanning Silos presents research showing the problems that product and country silos organizations pose to those who would build brands and create effective marketing and what some firms have done to create cooperation and communication to break down the silo barriers.

“My latest book, not counting my autobiography, is Brand Relevance: Making Competitors Irrelevant that shows success in dynamic markets involves creating offerings so innovative that they create new categories or subcategories making competitors irrelevant.

“I am a part of Prophet, a global brand and marketing consulting company that is on the forefront of branding issues, professor emeritus of the Haas School at UC Berkeley, and an advisor to Denstu. I live in Orinda, California near my three daughters and seven grandchildren and try to do a lot of biking and just enough golfing.”  My biography “From Fargo to the World of Brands,” elaborates.

Morris: Before discussing Brand Relevance, a few general questions. At one time, marketing was defined as a process by which to create or increase demand. To what extent is that still true?

Aaker: It is still true and good message for those that think that marketing is selling and that brands are logos.  Marketing over the last few decades has struggled with some success to be perceived as strategic and to have a place at the executive table.

Morris: Obviously, “going to market” has certainly become much more complicated in recent years. Of all the changes that have occurred, which do you consider to be the most significant? Why?

Aaker: One is the importance of brand equity and the brand portfolio as a foundation for business strategy and strategic options.  Another is the proliferation of media including social media that has made brand building more complex and introduced new ways of relating to customers.

Morris: Which business thinker has had the greatest influence on your own thoughts about marketing? How so?

Aaker: In one of my blog postings on davidaaker.com I note the three books that influenced me the most.  The one at the top was Peter Drucker’s Managing for Results–among other things he talks about critical result areas and categorizing businesses as tomorrow breadwinners, today’s breadwinners, among several other categories.  Drucker was the most influential business management writer in the last century to me.  The other authors were Ted Leavitt [The Marketing Imagination] and Alfred Sloan [My Years with General Motors].

Morris: In your opinion, which company has sustained the most effective marketing initiatives, year-after-year, and how do you explain its success?

Aaker: Apple has created a new subcategory at least five times in the last decade.  The reason is Steve Jobs, who, in my mind, is the top CEO of our time.

Morris: Years ago during dinner in San Francisco, I asked a venture capitalist how he decided which funding proposals to focus on among the hundreds that arrived on his desk each month. “I always ask three questions: Who are you? What do you do? And then the ‘killer question,’ Why should I care?”

David, my own opinion is that these are questions that all marketers must ask and then answer, especially the third one. What do you think?

Aaker: I like to pose the following two questions to employees of a firm.  What does the brand stand for?  Do you care?  If the answer is not positive to both questions, brand building will be difficult.  With respect to customers I would want to know if they know anything about the brand, why they would buy it if purchasing something in a particular category, and if they would recommend it.

Morris: When and why did you found your firm, Prophet? Also, please explain its name.

Aaker: Prophet was formed in 1990 by two Haas graduates.  I and Michael Dunn, its CEO, joined in 1999 when it had 18 employees and local clients.  It now has nearly 200 employees and offices around the world.

Morris: To what extent (if any) has its mission changed since then?

Aaker: It has expanded from a base in brand and brand portfolio strategy to now include innovation, design, analytics, and social media strategies.

Morris: What do you know now about business that you wish you knew then?

Aaker: Michael and a terrific team run Prophet, I am the guru in the corner.  But in watching their progress, I am struck by how many dimensions have to be right, offering development, offering delivery, staff hiring, staff evaluation and motivation, staff retention, culture, finance, accounting, country specific issues and more.

Morris: I was astonished, frankly, to learn that Coca-Cola had 22.5 million visitors on Facebook last month in contrast with only 270,000 to its website…more than 80 times as much traffic. How do you explain this?

Aaker: I think it is a choice that most companies need to make, based on what they are attempting to accomplish. Coke drives people to its Facebook page because so many are on Facebook.  But many other brands like Pampers, General Mills, or Harley have the website as the centerpiece.

Morris: In your opinion, what will be the single greatest business opportunity within (let’s say) the next 3-5 years. Please explain.

Aaker: To create offerings so innovative that they create new categories or subcategories.  The future of winners will be about innovation and growth.  Innovation is not easy.  It is not just brainstorming. It is creating the right organizational culture, processes, and people.

*     *     *

To read the complete interview, please click here.

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

http://www.davidaaker.com

http://www.prophet.com/about/leadership/aaker

http://www2.haas.berkeley.edu/faculty/aaker_david.aspx