Everything Is Obvious: A book review by Bob Morris

Everything Is Obvious: How Common Sense Fails Us
Douglas J. Watts
Crown Business ((2011)

“Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.” Voltaire

I chose the observation by Voltaire for the title of this review because I agree with him as well as with an observation made by Douglas Watts when suggesting in the Preface to this book, “the fallacies embedded in our everyday thinking and explanations, which I will be discussing in more detail later, must apply to many of our own, possibly deeply held, beliefs. None of this is to say that we should abandon all our beliefs and start over from scratch – only that we should hold them up to a spotlight and regard them with suspicion.”

For example, Watts examines what he refers to as “errors of reasoning that are every bit as systematic [key word] and pervasive as the errors of commonsense physics. They fall into three broad categories: (1) when thinking about why people do what they do, “we invariably focus on factors like incentives, motivations, and beliefs…we are likely to make serious mistakes when predicting how they’ll behave anywhere outside of the immediate here and now”; (2) “If the first type of commonsense error is that our mental model of individual behavior is systematically flawed, the second type is that our mental model of collective behavior is even worse.” How so? Deference to “they say,” for example, and invoking fictitious “representative individuals” like “the crowd,” “the market,” or “the electorate”: and (3) We learn less from history than we think wee do, “and that this misperception in turn skews our perception of the future.” This commonsense error is precisely what Nassim Nicholas Taleb also discusses in Fooled by Randomness (2001), The Black Swan (2007), and Antifragile (2013).

If I understand Watts’ intentions in this book (and I may not), his primary objective is to convince his reader of the importance of challenging premises and assumptions about human nature (especially those that are cherished) rather than base opinions and decisions on one’s limited experience, on the limited (and perhaps) irrelevant experience of fictitious “representative individuals,” or on what is generally referred to as “common sense.” Recent and extensive research in neuroscience leaves little doubt that we tend to see and hear what we expect to see and hear, frequently fall victim to what I characterize as “the invisibility of the obvious,” and too often fall victim to what Phil Rosenzweig calls “the halo effect”: we trust and defer to those whose reputation exceeds their substance.

These are among the dozens of passages that caught my eye, also listed to indicate the scope of the material that Watts examines:

o The Misuse of Common Sense (Pages 17-23)
o Thinking Is About More Than Thought (37-42)
o We Don’t Think the Way We Think We Think (46-53)
o Circular Reasoning (59-61)
o Cumulative Advantage 72-75)
o The Influencers (91-94)
o History Is Only Run Once (110-113)
o Whoever Tells the Best Story Wins (131-134)
o Predicting What to Predict, and Black Swans and Other “Events” (148-156)
o Trust No One, Especially Yourself (171-174)
o Don’t Just Measure Experiment (196-200)
o Talent Versus Luck (222-227)
o The Individual and Society (235-238)
o Bearing Each Other’s Burdens (241-245)
o Measuring the Unmeasurable (253-261)

As I read this book, I recall an item I encountered in a magazine or newspaper many years ago. The author discusses the tribal wisdom of the Lakota Indians. When someone is astride a dead horse, the Lakota strategy is to dismount. If a major consulting firm were retained to conduct a comprehensive study of the situation, for a substantial fee, what would its recommendations be? Twenty were suggested. Here are the first five: Buy a stronger whip, Change riders, Threaten the horse with termination, Appoint a committee to study the horse, and Arrange to visit other locations to benchmark how they ride dead horses. The Lakota were renowned for having common sense. Watts has no quarrel with common sense but vigorously and eloquently challenges imposters.

As is so often the case in the best business books such as this one, several of the most valuable insights appear in the Preface or Introduction. Here is an excellent case in point, as Duncan Watts observes that “when we challenge our assumptions about the world — or even more important, when we realize that we’re making an assumption that we didn’t even know we were making — we may or may not change our views. But even if we don’t, the exercise of challenging them should at least force us to notice our own stubbornness, which in turn should give us pause…So if reading this book only confirms what you already thought you knew about the world, then I apologize. As a sociologist, I will not have done my job.”

Decisive: A book review by Bob Morris

Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work
Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Crown Business (2013)

How to make better decisions and help others to make better decisions in all domains of life

Those who have read one or more of Chip and Dan Heath’s previously published books already know that they are master raconteurs as well as keen observers of human nature in general and of the business world in particular. I also view them as anthropologists whose scope and depth of knowledge enable them to create a multi-dimensional context for the information, insights, and counsel they provide. In this instance, as their latest book’s subtitle correctly indicates, they share what they have learned about “how to make better choices in life and work.”

All of those who read this book make several dozen (sometimes several hundred) decisions each week, most of which are based on past experience, custom, habit, etc. However, there are some decisions that are very challenging, perhaps even daunting. What to do? The heaths recommend and explain what they characterize as the WRAP process: Widen Your Opinions, Reality-Test Your Assumptions, Attain Distance Before Deciding, and Prepare to Be Wrong. “We want to make you a bit better at making good decisions, and we want to help you make good decisions a bit more decisively (with appropriate confidence, as opposed to overconfidence). We also want to make you a better adviser to your colleagues and loved ones who are making decisions, because it’s usually easier to see other people’s biases than your own.” The Heaths succeed brilliantly in achieving those objectives.

They ensure that the insights they share are especially sticky by making skillful use of several reader-friendly devices that include a “Chapter X in One Page” section in Chapters 1-12. Also, three Clinics on decision making (“Should a Small Company Sue a Bigger Competitor?” “Should a young Professional Move to the City?” and “Should We Discount Our Software?”, Pages 257-266), each a mini-case study based on real-world circumstances in which the material is provided within this format: Situation, Options, Process, Verification/Authentication, and Reflection/Evaluation. Readers will also appreciate the “Overcoming Obstacles” section following the Clinics in which the Heaths provide eleven Q&As (Pages 267-272) about the common roadblocks to using the WRAP process effectively as well as extensively annotated Endnotes (Pages 273-299) and

These are among the dozens of passages that caught my eye, also listed to indicate the scope of coverage in the material. All of them explain one or more dimensions of the aforementioned process by which to “make better choices in life and work.”

o How to collaborate to generate and consider options simultaneously (Pages 50-67)
o How to find someone who has solved the given problem (68-89)
o How to consider alternative, even opposite options (92-96)
o Roger Martin and the Copper Range negotiations salvaged by evidence-driven decision making (97-101)
o When and how to “construct small experiments to test one’s hypothesis” (135-153)
o How to overcome short-term emotions (156-174)
o How to honor one’s priorities (175-192)
o How to identify and prepare for probable outcomes of a decision that range from success to adversity (194-217)
o How to determine when to increase allocation of resources or cut losses? (218-238)
o How to earn and then sustain trust for a decision making process (239-253)
o How to overcome obstacles and resistance to a decision (267-272)

Recall Chip and Dan Heath’s expressed hope that the material they provide in this book will help their reader to achieve two objectives: to make better decisions, and, to help others to make better decisions. The key is to master each of the four steps of the WRAP process.

I presume to add two points of my own. First, although you’ll never have too much of the best information, there are times when you have to make a decision based on what you do know. No process such as WRAP is infallible because no one who uses it is infallible. Expect to make mistakes and learn from them. Also, more often than not, if at all possible, when in doubt, DON’T. Making no decision is itself a decision. To repeat, if at all possible, continue the WRAP process: consider other options, test your assumptions more rigorously, create a wider/deeper context for the given decision, and finally, embrace each mistake as a precious learning opportunity.

The Start-Up of YOU: A book review by Bob Morris

The Start-Up of YOU: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career
Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha
Crown Business (2012)

How and why start-up mind-sets and skill-sets are essential to achieving and then sustaining success…however defined

The basic premise in Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha’s book is that the same mind-sets and skill-sets that can help to ensure the success of a start-up company’s performance can also (with appropriate modification) help to ensure the success of an individual’s career. In fact, all companies should always be viewed – and managed – as a start-up. This what Jack Welch had in mind years ago when, during a GE annual meeting, he explained why he admired 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.”

Hoffman and Casnocha assert, “To succeed professionally in today’s world, you need to adopt entrepreneurial strategies…In the same way, you need to stay young and agile; you need to forever be a italics] start-up.” Speaking for both of them (as he does throughout the book), Hoffman adds, “The business strategies employed by highly successful [begin italics] start-ups [end italics] and the career strategies employed by highly successful individuals are strikingly similar.” Readers are introduced to several “strategic frameworks” within which valuable (usually counterintuitive) insights are revealed by exemplary entrepreneurs such as Hoffman and Casnocha  (of course) as well as Marc Andreesen, Jeff Bezos, Benjamin Franklin, Reed Hastings, Steve Jobs, Mary Sue Milliken, Marc Pinkus, Joseph Priestley, and Sheryl Sandberg, with insights anchored in their real-world experience.

Although Hoffman and Casnocha carefully identify the “what” of what organizational and individual success requires, they focus most of their attention on how (and how not to) achieve it. For example:

o How to develop a YOUR COMPANY/YOU Mind-Set
o How to develop a YOUR COMPANY/YOU Skill-Set
o How to develop and then sustain a competitive advantage
o How to anticipate and prepare for contingencies with agility and resiliency
o How to bounce back from adversity
o How to establish and then strengthen a network of genuine and appropriate relationships
o How to identify and then pursue breakout opportunities
o How to identify and evaluate “intelligent” risks
o How to navigate professional challenges with network intelligence
o How to synthesize information into actionable intelligence

Each of the Fortune 500 companies was originally a start-up and each of their CEOs was once a career-entry employee.  My guess (only a guess) is that the most successful companies and their leaders understand, appreciate, and affirm the power and value of the start-up mind-sets and skill-sets that Hoffman and Casnocha examine in this book. For them, for all of us, “life is a permanent beta [and] the trick is never stop starting.”

 

Grow: A book review by Bob Morris

Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World’s Great Companies
Jim Stengel
Crown Business (2011)

How and why “maximum growth and high ideals are not incompatible. They’re inseparable.”

Jim Stengel begins the first chapter with two separate but related questions: “What makes a business grow beyond the competition? What powers an enterprise to the top and keep it there?” In response, he offers “a new framework” whose central principle is the importance of having a brand ideal. That is, a shared goal of improving people’s lives. A brand ideal is s business’ essential reason for being, the higher order it brings to the world.”

If this seems a tad idealistic, if not naïve, consider the fact that recent research, including a ten-year growth study Stengel conducted of more than 50,000 [that’s correct: 50,000] brands around the world, revealed the need for the framework that he then devised.  So what? The data from his study indicates that companies with ideals of improving lives at the center of all they do outperform the market by a huge margin. For example, the return on an investment in the top 50 companies in his study would have been 400% more than an investment in the Standard & Poor’s 500.

A key term in Stengel’s book is what he calls the “Ideal Factor,” one that keeps renewing and strengthening great businesses through good times and bad. Having a brand ideal “is the only sustainable way to recruit, unite, and inspire all the people a business touches, from empl9iyees to customers. It is the only thing that enduringly connects the core beliefs of the people inside a business with the fundamental human values of the people the business serves. Without that connection, without a brand ideal, no business can excel”…or survive.

Stengel focuses most of his attention in the book on explaining HOW to achieve a number of specific objectives. They include

o  How to discover an ideal in one of five fields of fundamental human values (i.e. eliciting joy, enabling connection, inspiring exploration, evoking pride, and impacting society)
o  How to build your company’s culture around its ideal
o  How to communicate that ideal effectively to engage employees, customers, and everyone else involved
o  How to deliver a near-ideal customer experience
o  How to evaluate your progress and your people against your ideal
o  How to drive the performance of the highest growth businesses with brand ideals
o  How to center the brand ideals of the highest growth businesses in one of the five fields of fundamental human values (e.g. eliciting joy)
o  How to develop leaders and managers to be business artists whose primary medium is brand ideals
o  How to position business artists to run the highest growth businesses

Other portions of the book that caught my eye include advice from three mini-case studies (i.e. Pizza Hut, Jack Daniel’s, and Crisco, Pages 111-113),  “The Ten Culture Builders” (Pages 159-165), advice on how to begin process to become an ideals-based, ideals-driven, growth inspiring communicator (Pages 227-228), and four principles for measuring a grand ideal to drive sustained growth (Pages 257-273) For those who are curious, the Appendix consists of “The Stengel 50 and Their Brand Ideals.”

Jim Stengel is convinced, and I agree, that “maximum growth and high ideals are not incompatible. They’re inseparable.” Those who question that are asked to consider the fact that most of the companies annually ranked among the most highly-regarded and best to work for are also annually ranked among those most profitable and having the largest cap value in their respective industries. That’s no coincidence.

Human Competence: A book review by Bob Morris

Human Competence:  Engineering Worthy Performance
Thomas F. Gilbert
Crown Business (2007)

How and why the behavior engineering model “is really an outline of a performance troubleshooting sequence”

Note: The comments that follow discuss the “Tribute Edition” (2007) of a book first published in 1996, after its author’s death. It is now widely viewed as a “classic” and should be.

Disclaimer: Although I re-read this book before beginning to compose this review, I do not claim to understand all of the material that Gilbert shares. I am by no means an expert, nor even a serious student of human engineering and performance technology, viewed as separate but related sciences.

As his brief bio provided by Amazon points out, Thomas F. Gilbert (1927–1995) was a psychologist often considered the founder of the field of performance technology, also known as Human Performance Technology (HPT). Gilbert himself coined and used the term “Performance Engineering.” He applied his understanding of behavioral psychology to efforts to improve human performance at work and in school. He is best known for this book, Human Competence: Engineering Worthy Performance. Gilbert devised HPT when he realized that formal learning programs often only brought about a change in knowledge, not a change in behavior. (Years later, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton characterized this as “The Knowing-Doing Gap.”) Gilbert asserted that other techniques were needed to bring about a lasting change in behavior. He spent a year on a post-doctoral sabbatical working with the behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner at Harvard University and then with Ogden R. Lindsley in Lindsley’s laboratory at Metropolitan State Hospital in Waltham, MA. In brief, that is his background

The primary focus in Human Competence is on the behavior engineering model to which I refer in the title of this review, a model that — Gilbert suggests, on Pages 91 and 93 — “is really an outline of a performance troubleshooting sequence…merely a way to organize empirical data” That is, as he explains, “The system this book describes is based on three theorems summarizing my major assumptions about the nature of human competence [as opposed to human performance: ‘we often confuse behavior with performance. And that is the main problem of investigating human competence.’]. I call them Leisurely Theorems using leisure as a synonym for human capital, which is the product of time and opportunity.”

With meticulous care and uncommon clarity, Gilbert addresses business subjects, areas, and issues such as these:

o  The nature and extent of “the great culture of behavior”
o  And of its subcults (work, knowledge, and motivation)
o  Worthy competence
o  Measuring human competence
o  The “performance matrix”
o Troubleshooting performance

Note: Gilbert observes that the performance matrix and the behavior engineering model are simplifications of the ways in which we view performance.” He discusses all this in Chapters Four and Five which comprise Part Two, ”Models of Performance Analysis.

o  The correlations between information and competence
o  Knowledge policy at work (Chapter Seven) and at school (Chapter Eight)
o  Knowledge policies, strategies, and tactics

Note: Gilbert asserts, “Nowhere are the separate issues of policy, strategy, and tactics more readily confused than in education and training.”  Table 9-1 (on Page 254) does much to clarify several key issues of education  and training insofar as policy, strategy, and tactics are concerned.

o  Motivation and human capital
o Performance engineering in perspective (e.g. differentiating the behavioral and physical worlds)

Readers will appreciate Gilbert’s provision of “An Application of Performance Engineering” as an Appendix. It is in the form of a case study of “Savory Snacks” during which Gilbert rigorously examines Policy Level Analysis (consolidated in Table A-3 on Page 359) and Strategy Level Analysis (Table A-6, Page 367). He includes a Schematic Knowledge Map (Table A-7, Page 368).

I am grateful, deeply grateful to Thomas Gilbert for all that I have learned from him about human engineering and performance technology, in general, and about his system for studying, measuring, and engineering human competence, in particular. He calls his system “teleonomics,” combining the Greek words “teleos” (the ends or objectives) and “nomos” (the laws). Whatever he calls it, the system proposed certainly would be a significant improvement over the haphazard, insufficient, and/or obsolete systems that many organizations now use…if indeed they use any system at all.

The Lean Startup: A book review by Bob Morris

The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
Eric Ries
Crown Business (2011)

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

I selected this observation by Drucker (1963) because it continues to suggest caution when deciding what to do, how and when to do it, etc. Michael Porter also offers a helpful reminder: “The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.” This is especially true of those who are either planning to launch a start-up or have only recently done so. Given the number of Four and Five Star reviews of this book featured by Amazon as of this moment (136 of a total of 153), Eric Ries has clearly attracted and rewarded the attention of those who share his determination to “improve the success rate of new innovative products worldwide.” He offers a method by which to achieve that objective, based on five separate but interdependent principles best revealed within the book’s narrative, in context.

Ries suggests two primary reasons for the failure of most startups. One is trusting indicators of likely success that are either inappropriate or unreliable such as a good business plan, a solid strategy, and thorough market research. A startup is by nature and unknown quantity, Ries points out, as are its prospects. Also, many entrepreneurs and their investors become impatient, then frustrated, and abandon traditional management practices.  I agree with him that all startups must be managed and only those that are managed well have a chance to survive. It is also important to keep in mind that, at one time, each of the “Fortune 500” was a startup, launched by one or more entrepreneurs who would not be denied.

Credit Ries with pursuing what Jim Collins and Jerry Porras characterize in Built to Last as a Big Hairy Audacious Goal or BHAG:  To provide “a new discipline for entrepreneurial management” that takes into full account “the chaos and uncertainty that startups must face…I believe that entrepreneurship requires a managerial discipline to harness the entrepreneurial opportunity we have been given.” Here’s the BHAG: “change the entire ecosystem of entrepreneurship.”

The Lean Startup movement’s size and impact seem to be rapidly increasing as entrepreneurs worldwide embrace the tenets of a manufacturing revolution that Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo are credited with developing at Toyota. These tenets by no means preclude traditional functions such as vision and concept, product development, marketing and sales, etc. Rather, what Ries advocates (if I understand him correctly) is a new way of looking at the development of innovative new products by accepting a new way of looking at the management process by which that will be accomplished.

As I re-read this book, I realized that despite all the attention that Ries devotes to startups, much (if not most) of the material in his book is directly relevant to almost all organizations, whatever their size, nature, and birth date may be. This is what Jack Welch had in mind when explaining his reasons for admiring small companies. Here is a brief excerpt from his remarks at a GE annual meeting about 20 years ago:

“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.”

As Eric Ries concludes his book, he wonders what an organization would look like “if all of its employees were armed with Lean Startup superpowers.” What indeed.

 

 

The Sorcerers and Their Apprentices: A book review by Bob Morris

Illustration from around 1882 by S. Barth

The Sorcerers and Their Apprentices: How the Digital Magicians of the MIT Media Lab Are Creating the Innovative Technologies That Will Transform Our Lives
Frank Moss
Crown Business (2011)

How and why “individuals empowered with radically new technologies…can succeed in transforming society”

Note: The title of my review is taken from one of the observations made by Frank Moss in the Preface: “I am convinced now that individuals, empowered with radically new technologies that you will read about in the pages ahead, can succeed in transforming society” from the bottom up where our institutions have dismally failed. This has greatly increased my sense of optimism for the future, and I hope it will do the same for you.”

As Moss’s background clearly indicates, he is eminently well-qualified to discuss these and other issues. Currently, he is managing partner of Strategic Software Ventures, LLC, and a part-time professor of the practice at the MIT Media Lab, where he heads the New Media Medicine group. He has spent his career developing innovative technologies and bringing them to market. He was director of the MIT Media Lab from 2006-2011, where he held the Jerome Wiesner Professorship of Media Technology, and before that he had a 30-year career as an entrepreneur in the software and computer industries. Moss holds a BSE from Princeton University in Aerospace and Mechanical Sciences and a PhD from MIT in Aeronautics and Astronautics. He serves on Princeton University’s board of trustees

I agree with Oliver Sacks: “We must humanize technology before it dehumanizes us.” I also agree with Pogo: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” That is to say, technology will dehumanize us only if we allow it to. Hence the delicious as well as daunting relevance of this book’s title, one that can be traced back at least to one of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s poems, Der Zauberlehrling, written in 1797.

What Moss offers in this book is a personal and extended tour of the MIT Media Lab where “digital magicians” (modern day “sorcerers”) are “creating innovative technologies that will transform our lives.” In fact, several already have or are now in the process of doing so. He carefully explains the process by which the Lab’s capabilities are developed, who have been centrally involved in that process, and what lessons can be learned that increase our understanding of what the probable relationship will be between “sorcerers” and their “apprentices” in years to come.

Here are a few of the dozens of passages that caught my eye, then engaged me within Moss’s lively as well as eloquent narrative:

“Media Lab [isn’t] just a place where you dream up inventions. Here, you are expected to actually build, test, and demonstrate them.” (Page 13)

“Sometimes designed serendipity can lead to inventions that are quite literally magic. To see how, press the rewind button back to 1967 when fourteen-year-old Tod Machover, now a world-renowned composer of ‘Hyper’-symphonies and robotic operas, inventor of electronic instruments, and head of the lab’s Opera of the Future group, first heard the Beatles’ album, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. (Page 98)

“How close are we, you might be wondering, to having a sophisticated robot housekeeper like the Jetsons’ Rosie (only less clumsy, who helps you cook the family dinner, does the dishes, and then helps the kids with their homework? [Matt] Berlin concedes, ‘We’re not there yet.’” (Page 171)

John Moore. MD, a PhD student in the Lab’s New Media Medicine group, takes an approach that enables ordinary people to take control of their own health. It is based on the conviction that “if given access to in formation about their health, and the deep understanding of what it means, patients can collaborate better with their physicians and play a much more proactive role in their own health care.” (Page 195)

These are but a few of dozens (hundreds?) of passages in which Moss examines very real people involved in a wide range of experiments at the MIT Media Lab whose common purpose is to improve the quality of human life with new or better, more effective applications of radically new technologies.

I cannot recall another book that I enjoyed reading more while learning so much about so many different subjects about which I knew little (if anything) previously. Also, I appreciate having had the pleasure of Frank Moss’s company and I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to meet so many of his colleagues.

The Innovator’s Manifesto: A book review by Bob Morris

The Innovator’s Manifesto: Deliberate Disruption for Transformational Growth
Michael Raynor
Crown Business (2011)

How and why disruption “provides an explanation of creative creation

Frankly, I was unable to fully understand (much less appreciate) the significance of what Joseph A. Schumpeter shares in his masterwork, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, when I first read it in 1975. Only much later, after several re-readings, have I begun to “get it” in terms of what “creative destruction” is and isn’t. I mention all this by way of introducing my gratitude to Michael E. Raynor for what I have learned from him in The Innovator’s Manifesto as well as from books written or co-authored by Clayton Christensen, who wrote the Foreword to this book. For me, one of the most valuable “lessons” is that “creative destruction” is the means and “creative creation” is the ultimate objective. Whereas Charles Darwin explains evolution as a process of natural adaptation and elimination, what Raynor examines in this book are deliberate efforts to survive and then thrive. He asserts, and I agree, that “deliberate disruption” is the key to “transformational growth” by both individuals and organizations.

As he explains, “The first objective of this book is to demonstrate that Disruption has true predictive power…Second, I will make the case for Disruption’s unique and superior explanatory power…Finally, I will offer some thoughts on how one can go about applying these concepts to greatest effect at the least expense.” Raynor carefully organizes and then presents his material as follows:

In Part I: Prediction (Chapters 1-2), Raynor describes the design and results of carefully controlled experiments testing “the predictive power of Disruption’s central claims” while explaining why, for a theory that seeks our allegiance, “there must be evidence that it improves our ability to predict future outcomes.”

In Part II: Explanation (In Chapters 3-5), he makes the case for “generalizing beyond the experimental sample and suggests that Disruption can be used to do more than merely `pick a winner,’” although that is obviously a substantial benefit.

And in Part III: Application (Chapters 6-8), he discusses how and why non-Disruptive innovations can succeed and some revolutionize an industry; then in the final chapter, takes a process perspective on the application of Disruption. By now, Raynor has made a compelling case for the unique power of deliberate Disruption, explaining how it fully utilizes creative destruction to achieve creative creation, “the how, if, when, and how long of the kinds of innovations that have repeatedly remade the economic landscape in the service of the general weal.”

Demand: Another book review by Bob Morris

Demand: Creating What People Love Before They Know They Want It
Adrian J. Slywotzky with Karl Weber
Crown Business (2011)

How to create a demand-creating culture

Many books published in recent years offer excellent advice on how to create and then sustain what I call a hyphenated culture: quality-driven, customer-driven, innovation-driven, results-driven, etc. The given objectives are eminently worthy and I have no quarrel with any of them, nor does Adrian Slywotzky. The fact remains, however, that an organization must have compelling appeal to those on whom it depends for success: employees at all levels and in all areas with talent and skills as well as character and commitment who create great value for customers. That’s precisely what Herb Kelleher always stressed when asked to explain the extraordinary success of Southwest Airlines: “We take great care of our people, our people take great care of our customers, and our customers then take great care of our shareholders.”

Demand: Creating What People Love Before They Know They Want Slywotzky’s latest book is a “must read” for business leaders in organizations that are struggling to answer any/all of questions such as these:

• “How can we get our customers to buy more of what we sell?”
• ”How can we convince more of our competition’s customers to buy from us?”
•  “How can we convert fence-sitters into buyers of what we sell?”
• “How can we attract, hire, and then retain the people who will create the greatest value for our customers?”
• “Meanwhile, what must we do each day to improve the quality of life in our workplace and increase the appeal of what we produce there?”

In each instance, the challenge is to create and then sustain demand.

Whatever its size and nature may be, every organization must be led by what Slywotzky characterizes as “demand creators,” people who “spend all of their time trying to understand [begin italics] people [end italics]…They try to understand our aspirations, what we need, what we hate, what gives us emotional charge – and, most important, what we might really love…They seem to know what we want even before we do. They wind up creating things people can’t resist and competitors can’t copy. Yet they almost never succeed on the first try…These demand creators recognize the huge gaps between what people buy and what they really want – and they use those gaps as the springboard for a process of reimagination that you might call the demand way of thinking.”

There are hundreds (thousands?) of books now on sale that offer advice on how to increase sales, how to market with “a bigger bang for the buck,” how to improve customer relations, etc. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first book – certainly one that is most cohesive, comprehensive, and cost-effective – to explain “how to create what people love before they know they want it.” Dozens of real-world examples are provided to illustrate key points. They also suggest all manner of practical applications. It should also be noted that the wealth of information, insights, and recommendations that Slywotzky provides are relevant to almost any organization, whatever its size and nature may be. Moreover, after reading and then (preferably) re-reading this book, almost anyone can become a highly effective demand creator.

As Slywotzky explains, “Demand creators have a hidden advantage. Many of their rivals are ‘anti-demand’ organizations – organized in disconnected silos. Focused on meeting yesterday’s demand, and often remarkably immune to the signals that customer behavior is trying to send us…Great demand creators are special, in part, because they understand that the things we buy and the things we actually want aren’t always the same…Great demand creators eliminate or reduce the hassles that make most products and services inconvenient, costly, unpleasant, and frustrating.” With relatively minor modifications, these attributes of demand thinking insofar as marketing and customer relationships are concerned could also be said of recruiting, hiring, and training the talent needed as well as of creating what Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba characterize as “customer evangelists.” It is no coincidence that employees of the most highly admired organizations, “the best to work for,” are also their evangelists and refer to themselves as such.

Adrian Slywotzky has written a book in which all this is explained so well that the reader is well-prepared to become an effective demand creator. Then, after reading this book, I think that one of the first tasks at hand is to convince one’s associates to develop a sense of urgency about knowing whatever is required to help create “what people love before they know they want it.” Demand creators cannot do that alone. They build and excite great teams that effectively reach thousands or millions of customers. And by doing so, they seem to have a lot more fun in their business than many of their rivals do. Meanwhile, highly-valued workers do not leave; on the contrary, they are among the primary reasons why other peak performers and high potentials are eager to work with them.

The Two-Second Advantage: A book review by Bob Morris

The Two-Second Advantage: How We Succeed by Anticipating the Future — Just Enough
Vivek Ranadivé and Kevin Maney
Crown Business (2011)

The power of prediction-based talent: Intuition on “the other side of complexity”

At least a century ago, Oliver Wendell Holmes observed, “I don’t care a fig for simplicity on this side of complexity but I would give my life for simplicity on the other side of complexity.” I was again reminded of that observation as I began to read this brilliant book in which Vivek Ranadivé and Kevin Maney explain how and why we can achieve success (however defined) by anticipating the future “just enough.” The book’s title refers to what is often the difference between success and failure. However, with all due respect to the co-authors’ intentions, I do not think the greatest value of this book can be measured in terms of time; rather, in term of proceeding through the simplicity of raw impulse through the complexity of probable implications, multiple perspectives, and potential consequences to “the other side of intuition” at which correct decisions can be made almost spontaneously. The U.S. Airways pilot, Chesley Burnett (“Sully”) Sullenberger III, who successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River off Manhattan, New York City, on January 15, 2009, offers an excellent case in point. Once aware of the circumstances, he made the correct decision with little (if any) consideration of options. The same is true of countless other airline pilots as well as diagnostic surgeons (especially in hospital emergency rooms) and military leaders in combat who quite literally must make life-and-death decisions.

Long before Malcolm Gladwell published an article in The New Yorker that later was developed into a book, Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking (2005), Michael Kami (in Trigger Points, 1988) and then Andrew Grove (in Only the Paranoid Survive, 1999) explained how and why, as Ranadivé and Maney describe it, “judgments made in two seconds are often more accurate than those made after months of analysis.” For decades, we have known – as revealed by a wealth of research in psychology and behavioral economics on the adaptive unconscious — that mental processes can work rapidly and automatically from relatively little information.

However, there is an “if” (a HUGE “if”) and it is this: Those who wish to develop a more predictive brain, one that can quickly process huge chunks of information, and then act upon that information, must be willing to commit the time and the attention required. That’s what Sullenberger demonstrated when deciding to land the plane on the river. Wayne Gretzy always claimed that his advantage was knowing where the puck would go. Larry Bird describes his advantage differently but makes the same point: “When I’m playing basketball, everybody else seems to be moving in slow motion.” It probably took all three about 10,000 hours of highly disciplined, iterative practice under strict, expert supervision to develop that capability…plus some luck such as being in the right place at the right time, with the right support, while developing various skills under the right conditions.

That said, the fact remains that few people are prepared to make such a commitment of time and effort and even if they did, it is possible but unlikely that they could achieve success comparable with what super talents such as Gretzky, Bird, Bobby Fischer, Michael Jordan, and Yo Yo Ma have. However, Ranadivé and Maney are convinced (and I fully agree) that many of those who read this book with appropriate can, over time, work their way through the complexity to a point at which they have increased their predictive talent. How? By increasing their knowledge and understanding of previous efforts (i.e. what works, what doesn’t, and why), by strengthening their ability to recognize early-indicators of imminent probabilities (e.g. a quarterback “reading” a defense to know what to do next), and sharpening their ability to identify root causes after recognizing symptoms (e.g. an ER physician diagnosing a stranger who is near death after an automotive accident). The process of personal development that Ranadivé and Maney explain can be completed by almost anyone, anywhere, whatever the given circumstances may be.

A brief commentary such as this can hardly do full justice to the wealth of information, insights, and wisdom that Ranadivé and Maney provide. I also wish to commend them on the lively style with which they present their narrative. To those who read this commentary, I offer two assurances. First, any limits on your development – one that is guided and informed by the material in this book — will be self-imposed. The two-second advantage must be earned and there are no short cuts. Also, the opportunities for applying what Vivek Ranadivé and Kevin Maney offer throughout any organization are unlimited, whatever the size and nature of that organization may be.