When It Comes to Content Strategy, Spreadable Is the New Sticky

Here is a brief excerpt from an article written by Sam Ford for Fast Company magazine. The author of Spreadable Media, discusses why content strategies that focus on keeping conversations artificially contained are outmoded. To read the complete article, check out others, and obtain subscription information, please click here.

Image: Flickr user Doug Wheller

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A few years back, a client came to my agency with a desire to show its “thought leadership” online. A key executive there was a credible source on healthy living, and the company wanted to find ways for him to share his expertise online.

We considered the question from the audience’s eyes, thinking about the company’s content in relation to other online communities and destinations online focused on the same subject, and considering as a goal seeing audiences sharing and engaging with our client’s material in those various destinations.

The company would hear none of this way of thinking. Why, they asked, would they want to pay any mind to discussions about healthy living elsewhere? Wouldn’t dispersed engagement be harder to measure and dilute focus on their expert? No, we needed to launch a corporate blog.

The disconnect between my agency and our client stemmed from contrasting mindsets. The company operated via stickiness, while we were focused on spreadability–a distinction my co-authors and I examine in our new book, Spreadable Media. With stickiness, success is determined by how many individuals come to a centralized location via a uniform experience and how long they spend there. Sound familiar? It should. It’s an attempt to recreate the “impressions” model of traditional media industries.

Meanwhile, spreadability focuses on how content moves through communities and exists at multiple points of contact, with an emphasis on a diversity of audience experiences. Publishers focused on spreadability seek to motivate sharing and encourage audiences to actively engage with content on their own terms.

No matter what we said, the company couldn’t be convinced. Their resulting blog didn’t connect to discussions about healthy living elsewhere–because their system of measurement placed no value on such connections. As a result, the blog today sits like so many other online ghost towns, without an update in more than three years.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Sam Ford is director of digital strategy for Peppercomm and co-author of Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture (Postmillennial Pop) with Henry Jenkins and Joshua Green. He is also a Futures of Entertainment Fellow, a research affiliate of the program in Comparative Media Studies at MIT, and an instructor with Western Kentucky University’s Popular Culture Studies program. Sam was named 2011 Social Media Innovator of the Year by Bulldog Reporter and serves on the Membership Ethics Advisory Panel for the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. He is also co-editor of The Survival of Soap Opera with Abigail De Kosnik and C. Lee Harrington. Follow him on Twitter @Sam_Ford.

Why the Publishing Industry Isn’t Doomed: Readers’ Control In the Future of Reading

Here is an abbreviated version of an article written by Baratunde Thurston and featured in Fast Company magazine. As he explains, the publishing industry thinks it’s the end of days, but the world of words is a growth market. This is the latest in a series of articles that address issues of great importance to readers and those who create content for them. To check out these and other articles and obtain subscription information, and sign up for email alerts, please click here.

Illustration by Kyle Bean

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I loved that the original Kindle let me annotate a book. Being able to add and search for my own thoughts amid the previously locked words of others without physically damaging the original opened up a world of possibilities. What if you could download books that had been pre-annotated? I would pay extra to read Freakonomics with commentary by Paul Krugman, The New Jim Crow with notes from editors at The Nation, or the Bible annotated by the creators of South Park. A book could always inspire new layers of meaning, but now it can host that inspiration and a slew of associated conversations.

Recently, at the Boston Book Festival, I was lucky enough to take part in an amazing conversation about the future of reading and writing. We can mourn the passing of sustained attention, the hermetically sealed author, and, indeed, the publishing industry’s business model. But the networked world of words replacing it could be even better.

First, let’s consider what we’re losing in the transition. Tufts University child development professor Maryanne Wolf laments the loss of what she calls “deep reading.” Long-form reading has become subject to the same multitasking options as TV, radio, movies, and the web. Read a book on an iPad and the distractions are embedded in the physical form itself. Paperbacks do not have pop-up birthday reminders, a global music library, or kamikaze bird games built in. As a result, English professors report that today’s students are unable or unwilling to read lengthy 19th-century novels. Perhaps someone should adapt Pride and Prejudice into an Instagram feed.

Writing too is losing its mystique, as authors are expected to be the chief marketing officers and customer support VPs for their “brands.” One man angrily tweeted me that because I did not tweet him back, he was not going to finish my book. His loss; I already had his money.

But to focus on the negative would be to miss what’s thrilling about all this change. Harvard Library director Robert Darnton, dressed in sweater, slacks, and a tweed blazer, looked and sounded every bit his job title when he reminded our panel that there were more books published in 2011 than ever, due to the democratization of publishing enabled by technology. Add blogs, texts, and status updates, and it’s clear that words are a growth market (though I grant you that revenue per word is declining).

A look at several of the most interesting apps available today reveals strong hints about where those words are headed. Findings is a web app that allows clipping, linking, sharing, and thus deep remixing of segments of text previously trapped within bound volumes. The e-book platform Readmill makes the Kindle look like a stone tablet in the way it lets readers compare content–and have a conversation–about several books at once. The iPhone apps Circa and Tapestry are among the first text experiences on a smartphone that feel built for mobile first.

Yet we’re doing more than digitizing words and adding tantalizing interfaces. We are networking them–and the ideas they represent. What excites me most about the future of reading is the linking, translating, co-creating, and discovering we have yet to do.

During our conversation, MIT Media Lab cofounder Nicholas Negroponte told the story of a previously nonliterate African village whose children were given tablet computers–without instructions or instructors. Regardless, the students figured out how to message each other and use apps; within weeks, they had hacked Android. If 6-year-olds previously unexposed to writing can do this now, losing a few dusty 19th-century novels feels like a small price to pay for the future those kids might create.

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Baratunde Thurston is the author of the New York Times best seller How to Be Black and the founder of Cultivated Wit, a comedy and technology company that tells stories in engaging ways.

8 Rules For Creating A Passionate Work Culture

Photo credit: Flickr user PurpleMattFish

Here is a brief excerpt from an article written by Paul Alofs and featured online by Fast Company magazine. To check out all the resources, sign up for email alerts, and obtain subscription information, please click here.

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Several years ago I was in the Thomson Building in Toronto. I went down the hall to the small kitchen to get myself a cup of coffee. Ken Thomson was there, making himself some instant soup. At the time, he was the ninth-richest man in the world, worth approximately $19.6 billion. Enough, certainly, to afford a nice lunch. I looked at the soup he was stirring. “It suits me just fine,” he said, smiling.

Thomson understood value. Neighbors reported seeing him leave his local grocery store with jumbo packages of tissues that were on sale. He bought off-the-rack suits and had his old shoes resoled. Yet he had no difficulty paying almost $76 million for a painting (for Peter Paul Rubens’s Massacre of the Innocents, in 2002). He sought value, whether it was in business, art, or groceries.

In 1976, Thomson inherited a $500-million business empire that was built on newspapers, publishing, travel agencies, and oil. By the time he died, in 2006, his empire had grown to $25 billion.

He left both a financial legacy and an art legacy, but his most lasting legacy might be the culture he created. Geoffrey Beattie, who worked closely with him, said that Ken wasn’t a business genius. His success came from being a principled investor and from surrounding himself with good people and staying loyal to them. In return he earned their loyalty.

For the long-term viability of any enterprise, Thomson understood that you needed a viable corporate culture. It, too, had to be long-term. So he cultivated good people and kept them. Thomson worked with honest and competent business managers and gave them his long-term commitment and support. From these modest principles, an empire grew.

According to Alofs, “Thomson created a culture that extended out from him and has lived after him.” Alofs then reviews “the eight rules for creating the right conditions for a culture that reflects your creed.” To read the complete article, please click here.

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Excerpted from Passion Capital: The World’s Most Valuable Asset © 2012 by Paul Alofs. Published by Signal, a division of Random House of Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.

Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton: An interview by Bob Morris

Internationally recognized workplace experts Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton are partners in the consulting firm The Culture Works.

Adrian Gostick

Adrian Gostick is the author of several best-selling books on corporate culture, including the New York Times, USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestsellers The Carrot Principle and All In. His research has been called a “must read for modern-day managers” by Larry King of CNN, “fascinating,” by Fortune magazine and “admirable and startling” by the Wall Street Journal. As a leadership expert, he has appeared on numerous television programs including NBC’s Today Show and has been quoted in dozens of business publications and magazines.

 

 

 

Chester Elton

Chester Elton has been called the “apostle of appreciation,” by the Globe and Mail, Canada’s largest newspaper, and “creative and refreshing” by the New York Times. The co-author of All In, The Carrot Principle and The Orange Revolution, his books have sold more than a million copies worldwide. Chester has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Fast Company magazine, and New York Times, and he appears in a weekly segment on CBS News Radio.

Here is a brief excerpt from my interview of Adrian and Chester.

To read the complete interview, please click here.

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

Gostick: We’ve talked about this often. Our parents were our first bosses—they gave us our moral compass, goals, and our first recognition. My dad worked 25 years for Rolls Royce in England. He taught me the value of working someplace where you can make a difference—not chasing money but doing work that you found purposeful.

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.

Elton: About 15 years ago now I was working as a consultant with some large organizations in the Northeast. We were working at the time on employee recognition ideas and we were doing some really innovative things. I realized no one had ever written the definitive work on recognition. There were these 101 ways books. Most managers had one on their shelf, but no one ever read them. Just then my firm hired Adrian as its head of communication. We collaborated on our first book in the Carrot line and it really took off. Finally Simon & Schuster contacted us to do a big research book on the subject and that became The Carrot Principle. That book has now been translated in 25 languages and is sold around the world.

Gostick: Over the years since that release our work has taken us to the characteristics of the world’s best teams and now on to culture—something that we are hearing more and more from our clients. They want to know how to build not only a great corporate culture, but effective cultures in each of their smaller teams.

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

Gostick: I was able to study 50 years of leadership theory and practicum in my master’s program at Seton Hall, and it has provided the backbone of the knowledge we use every day. My undergraduate work was in journalism, and my early work as a newspaper reporter taught me how to research, write, and rewrite.

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

Elton: We originally handed in the manuscript for All In to Simon & Schuster in the late summer of 2011. Four months later it went to press. Those four months were some of the hardest in our lives as our editor threw out half the book and demanded entire new chapters. While we had explained our findings well, we think, she pushed us to make the takeaways relevant for real business leaders. We spent so much time on explaining what a great culture looks like, we had neglected to tell readers “how” to do it. So many business books fall into that trap, and we are so grateful to Emily Loose, our editor, for pushing us to answer that paramount question: “I do what?”

Morris: Recent research studies by highly reputable firms such as Gallup and Towers Watson indicate that in a U.S. workforce, on average, fewer than 30% of the employees are actively and positively engaged; as for the others, they are either passively engaged (“mailing it in”) or actively disengaged. How specifically can business leaders increase the percentage of actively and positively engaged employees within their organizations?

Gostick: First, managers should understand there are some simple things they can do tomorrow that will make a big difference in their culture, but so few managers do them. For instance, the great leaders in our study treated their people like partners in the organization. That meant they created for their people a sense of connection by teaching them how their jobs impact the larger organization. And they showed them growth opportunities, how they can grow and develop with the company.

Next, these leaders also created a culture of rooting for each other with much greater levels of recognition and rewards. And finally, managers learned to create a share everything culture, where they honest and openly discussed issues.

Elton: Simple things really, but powerful. It comes down to opportunity, recognition and communication. Three things you can do right way to see results.

Morris: Given your response to the previous question, to what extent will those initiatives also help to retain valued employees who might otherwise leave?

Elton: The number one and number two reasons key performers leave an organization: one—I don’t feel in on things, and two—I don’t feel appreciated. It’s not money, it’s not job growth, people most often leave for things that are absolutely in our control as managers.

Morris: What do you know now about the business world that you wish you knew when you began your first full-time job? Please explain.

Gostick: When I first became a manager, I didn’t realize that there were people who did a good job but who were toxic to the culture. I waited much too long to get rid of those people.

Morris: Here’s a hypothetical question. If there were a monument honoring business leaders comparable with the one honoring U.S. Presidents on Mount Rushmore, sculpted by Danish-American Gutzon Borglum and his son, Lincoln Borglum, which four would you select? Please explain each choice.

Elton: I’ll give you one. One of our favorite leaders is someone most people have never heard of: Scott O’Neal. He’s president of Madison Square Garden Sports, and he’s the best leader we have ever met. One thing Scott does with every new hire: He asks them where they want to be in five years, and then he commits to help them get there if they promise to give 100 percent to him every day. And people do it, and in turn he’s helped business leaders all over the sports world achieve their dreams. He lives up to his promise.

Gostick: Here’s another one: Doria Camaraza. We feature her in chapter three of All In. Doria is the general manager of American Express’ 3,000-person call center in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. She is simply amazing. She seems to know every one of her employees, and spends her days making people included and recognized and wonderful. Her call center has employee turnover that is one fifth the national average and has the best efficiency and productivity numbers in the call center industry. My favorite thing she does is called Tribute, where she gathers all her employees together once a month and the leaders come out dancing to Lady Gaga or Aerosmith and then she recognizes a dozen people for living the core values of American Express. It’s really powerful and there are a lot of tears.

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To read the complete interview, please click here.

Adrian and Chester cordially invite you to check out the resources at these websites:

The Culture Works

Amazon.com

Why Empathy Is The Most Powerful Leadership Tool

Here is a brief excerpt from an especially thought-provoking and informative article written  by Ginny Whitelaw and featured online by Fast Company magazine. To read the complete article, check out others, and obtain subscription information, please click here.

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This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging community and expresses that expert’s views alone.

Anything we’re trying to make happen as a leader involves other people, and the fact is, most people don’t have to follow us. They don’t have to believe in our great ideas, buy our great products, or do what we want them to do. Even when we have authority–as parents of teenagers will tell you–our power doesn’t go very far without others believing that what we want them to do is in their best interests. The pull of connecting to others and their interests is far more powerful than the push of control, especially when we find the intersection between their interests and our goals. How do we know what’s truly in someone else’s interests?

“Become the other person and go from there.” It’s the best piece of coaching advice I ever received, coming from Tanouye Roshi, and it applies equally to influence, negotiation, conflict, sales, teaching, and communication of all kinds. To become the other person is to listen so deeply that our own mind chatter stops; to listen with every pore on our body until we can sense how the other’s mind works. To become the other person is to feel into her emotional state, see through her eyes, think like she thinks, and see how she views us, our proposition, and the situation at hand. To write it out or read it in serial fashion makes it sound like a lengthy, time-consuming process, but in fact, deep empathy conveys its insights in a flash, and our ability to empathize deepens with practice, as we learn to quiet our own inner state.

[Whitelaw then explains specifically how and why "becoming the other person" is essential to effective leadership at all levels and in all areas of any organization, whatever its size and nature may be.]

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Dr. Ginny Whitelaw is the co-founder of Focus Leadership, LLC, focusing on the development of the whole leader. A biophysicist by training, she combines a rich scientific background with senior leadership experience, and 30 years of training in Zen and martial arts. For many years she has been an executive coach, faculty member and program director with Oliver Wyman’s Delta Executive Learning Center. She has also served as adjunct faculty to Columbia University’s senior executive program. A seasoned program manager in telecommunications and aerospace, she has more than 20 years of experience leading multifunctional teams and complex change efforts.

Dr. Whitelaw spent 10 of those years at NASA, where she became the Deputy Manager for integration of the International Space Station Program. She led a large-scale change effort to re-align the management of the Space Station program. Her work using cross-functional teams became a model for other NASA programs, and she was awarded NASA’s Exceptional Service Medal for her efforts. She also has small and non-profit organization leadership experience, having founded and run 4 companies, including two major training centers for Zen and Aikido. A Rinzai Zen priest, she holds a 5th degree black belt in Aikido, and teaches Zen meditation alongside her work as a management educator and executive coach.

Dr. Whitelaw is the author of BodyLearning and (with Betsy Wetzig) Move to Greatness: The 4 Essential Energies of the Whole and Balanced Leader. Together with Mark Kiefaber, she has developed the FEBI® (Focus Energy Balance Indicator), a powerful assessment identifying one’s preferences for four energy patterns linking mind and body. She holds a Ph.D. in Biophysics from the University of Chicago, as well as a B.S. in Physics and a B.A. in Philosophy from Michigan State University.

Her latest book is The Zen Leader: 10 Ways to Go From Barely Managing to Leading Fearlessly.

Erik Qualman: An interview by Bob Morris

Erik Qualman

Called a “Digital Dale Carnegie,” Erik Qualman is the author of Socialnomics: How Social Media Transforms the Way We Live and Do Business and, more recently, Digital Leader: 5 Simple Keys to Success and Influence.  Socialnomics made Amazon’s #1 Best Selling List for the US, Japan, UK, Canada, Portugal, Italy, China, Korea and Germany. Socialnomics was a finalist for the “2010 Book of the Year” awarded by the American Marketing Association. Fast Company magazine listed him as a Top 100 Digital Influencer. He also has one of 2010′s most viral videos on YouTube in “Social Media Revolution.” Qualman is a frequently requested international speaker and has been highlighted in numerous media outlets including: BusinessWeek, The New York Times, WSJ, Mashable, USA Today, Financial Times, Forbes, Fortune, CBS Nightly News, and The Huffington Post. He has been fortunate to share the stage with Alan Mulally (Ford CEO), Lee Scott (CEO/Chairman Walmart), Jose Socrates (Prime Minister of Portugal), Lutz Bethge (Montblanc CEO), Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo (Nokia CEO), Julie Andrews, Al Gore, Tony Hawk, and Sarah Palin.

Qualman is an MBA Professor at the Hult International Business School. For the past 16 years he has helped grow the digital capabilities of many companies including Cadillac, EarthLink, EF Education, Yahoo, Travelzoo and AT&T. He is the founder and owner of socialnomics.com which PC Magazine ranked as a Top 10 Social Media Blog. He sits on the Advisory Boards of Manumatix and Bazaarvoice Inc. With regard to his formal education, he holds a BA from Michigan State University and an MBA from The University of Texas. He was Academic All-Big Ten in basketball at Michigan State University and still finds time to follow his beloved Spartans while living in Boston with his wife and daughter.

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

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

Qualman: My parents. They instilled in me the belief that if I wanted anything bad enough that I could achieve it.

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

Qualman: Ralph Bartel, CEO of Travelzoo, taught me the art of simplification and also the art of doing what you are passionate about.

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.

Qualman: Yes, I realize that I had a lot of great ideas, but so does everyone else. The way to separate yourself is to stop dreaming your ideas, and making them happen. That was an epiphany for me.

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

Qualman: The networks of friends and learning I developed outside of the classroom have been invaluable in my success.

Morris: To what extent (if any) have reactions to your book, Socialnomics, surprised you?

Qualman: Becoming the #1 marketing book in 7 different languages/countries really floored me. Also that it was a finalist for the American Marketing Association’s Book of the Year (2010).

Morris: Robin Dunbar has suggested that roughly 150 is the “cognitive limit to the number of individuals with whom any one person can maintain stable relationships.” What do you think?

Qualman: I believe that is true in an analog world, but can be expanded in today’s digital world. That being said I do believe you are best off going deep with a few people rather than wide with many.

Morris: Although the term “social media” is relatively new, people have been gathering in groups since fire was first used for domestic purposes. Here’s my question: What are the most common misconceptions about the nature, benefits, and limitations of social media? What in fact is true?

Qualman: Social Media is simply Word of Mouth on Digital Steroids

Morris: In your opinion, what is the single greatest challenge that CEOs will face during (let’s say) the next 3-5 years? Why? Any advice for them?

Qualman: CEO’s need to learn that in order to learn in this digital world they need to increase their rate of failure. This is difficult for publicly traded companies.

Morris: If there were another monument comparable with the one on Mt. Rushmore for social media entrepreneurs, who would be your four choices? Please explain your reasons for each selection.

Qualman: Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan, Gary Vaynerchuk, Mari Smith

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To read the complete interview, please click here.

Erik cordially invites you to check out this website (http://www.socialnomics.com) follow him on Twitter @equalman.

The 12 greatest entrepreneurs of our time

Here is an excerpt from John A. Byrne’s cover article by FORTUNE magazine. Great ideas are hard to come by. Putting them to work is even harder. Byrne invites you to meet the founders who turned concepts into companies and changed the face of business.

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When Jeff Bezos came up with the idea for what would become Amazon.com, he went on a stroll in Central Park with his boss at the time to share his epiphany.

Bezos, in 1992, was a senior vice president for the New York hedge fund D.E. Shaw. He described his dream to create a company that would sell books on the Internet. His boss listened intently before offering a bit of advice: “That sounds like a really good idea, but it would be an even better idea for someone who didn’t already have a good job.”

Big ideas of the ground-shifting variety are rare — and hard to pull off. But that’s the difference between the dreamer and the doer. It took Bezos all of 48 hours to decide to quit his job and get started. Some 18 years later, he’s still at the helm of Amazon.com, which has redefined the way people buy almost everything, employs 56,200 people, and is valued at more than $80 billion.

Having spent years studying Bezos and others like him as an author, senior writer, and editor at both Business Week and Fast Company, I can tell you that Bezos is one of those rare birds who have made a meaningful mark on our economy and our world. He would certainly be on anyone’s list of the 12 greatest entrepreneurs of my generation. Who else should make that cut? After spending the better part of the past year pondering that question for a new book, World Changers: 25 Entrepreneurs Who Changed Business as We Knew It (Portfolio Penguin), I was asked by FORTUNE who deserves to be on that list — and what we can learn from each of them.

Many are obvious — from the late Steve Jobs, who helped make Apple the hottest and most valuable company on the planet, to Mark Zuckerberg, who will take Facebook public in what is anticipated to be the biggest IPO of all time (at a value of more than $80 billion). But there will be a few surprises too, such as N.R. Narayana Murthy, the visionary founder of Infosys who has built one of the largest companies in India, helping to transform that economy and put it on the world stage.

Another surprise: Not a single woman makes the list of the top 12 — at a time when women have gathered more influence and power in business than ever before. Oprah Winfrey has leveraged her celebrity into a formidable media empire, and the late Body Shop founder Anita Roddick proved that you could market products by being socially and environmentally responsible. They clearly warrant honorable mention but have not, in my view, transformed the face of business or society in as profound a way as those singled out here.

Admittedly this list of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs is subjective. I based it largely on social and economic impact; the world-changing vision of a founder who has inspired employees and other entrepreneurs alike; a record of innovation; and the actual performance of their companies over time. These founders created and then nurtured healthy, sustainable organizations that now have a combined market value of more than $1.7 trillion. They directly employ more than 3 million people, ranging from a high of 2.1 million at Wal-Mart to just over 3,000 at Facebook.

Yet those numbers only touch the surface. Each of their companies sits at the nucleus of a thriving ecosystem that has cultivated and nurtured dozens if not hundreds of other enterprises. Small companies have thrived as suppliers, for example, to Whole Foods, which, among other things, buys produce from more than 2,000 local farms. So the power of each of these organizations extends far beyond its own walls.

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To read the complete article, please click here.

John A. Byrne is Chairman & Editor-in-Chief at C-Change Media Inc. John A. Byrne is the chairman and CEO of C-Change Media Inc. Until recently, Byrne was editor-in-chief of BusinessWeek.com and executive editor of BusinessWeek. He holds the distinction of authoring a record 58 cover stories in BusinessWeek magazine and is also the author or co-author of eight business books, including two New York Times‘ bestsellers. Byrne had also been editor-in-chief of Fast Company magazine. He founded C-Change Media, a digital media company, to take advantage of the sea change that is roiling the traditional media business. C stands for content, curation and community, the three common attributes of each C-Change web venture.

How To Play Beane Ball

William Lamar ("Billy") Beane

I recently saw the film based on Michael Lewis’ bestselling book, Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, and starring Brad Pitt as the general manager of the Oakland Athletics. It is not necessary to be a baseball fan and/or knowledgeable about analytics to appreciate both the book and the film, although that helps somewhat, as is also true of another of Lewis’ books, The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game, and the film based on it.

Here is an excerpt from an article by Keith H. Hammonds that was published in FAST COMPANY magazine (December 19, 2007). To read the complete article, please click here.

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“I was up at 4:30 this morning, on the Net. I love going to Stetson University’s site, or James Madison’s, to see what their ball teams did last night. That’s the fun part of this game — that’s the foundation. To me, that’s why we’re in this game — because we love it at the grass roots, where it’s still at its most pure.”

William Lamar Beane — Billy Beane — the 41-year-old general manager of the Oakland Athletics baseball club, perches his sandaled feet on the desk before him. He is a former ballplayer — not a great one, but fair enough to have made it to the big leagues and stayed awhile — and he still looks like a ballplayer. Both of his shoulders are shot, but he is tall and fit, with a sweep of brown hair over jock-rugged features.

Today is a great day to be a baseball guy. It’s February in Phoenix, and the first morning of full-team workouts is taking place. Outside, the Arizona sun pokes past wispy clouds. It feels like spring. It smells like spring — like freshly mowed grass. Warning-track gravel crunches underneath the spikes of coltish pitchers loping through their warm-ups in emerald jerseys. Sluggers grin when kids yell their names.

Spring training is an annual ritual celebrating the reemergence of hope — and, hell, these days, there’s nothing wrong with hope. But something else is going on here at the Papago Park Baseball Facility. For the Oakland A’s, the start of the baseball season honors the careful admixture of mathematics and economics, of regression models and market analyses. Which is to say that for the Oakland A’s, there is an air of certainty along with the scent of hope. Fans dotting the bleachers are witnessing the fine-tooling of a team that almost certainly will win a lot more games than it will lose this season. The statistics bear this out.

Just as surely, this season, Billy Beane will be called a genius again. He will be compared, as before, to Branch Rickey, legendary mastermind of the St. Louis Cardinals and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Some will predict his inevitable election into the Hall of Fame. Beane, it will be said, has changed baseball forever.

More accurately, Beane has discovered a way to succeed in a sport already changed. He has perfected a formula for competing and winning both on the field and in the books. Over the past decade, professional baseball has devolved into an increasingly dysfunctional, sharply divided game of big-time haves and small-time have-nots. A few big-market teams like the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers lever fat television contracts to acquire top talent at top salaries. Clubs in smaller cities, relegated to miserly budgets, scrap for what’s left and hope — there’s that word again — for the best. The big-market teams win and make money; the rest live hand-to-mouth.

Except for the Athletics. Bound to playing for a city of just 410,000 and to playing in the aging Network Associates Coliseum, the A’s averaged just 26,787 fans per game in 2002. That put the A’s at a dismal 18th in a league of 30 clubs. Oakland’s player payroll this season will total $49 million, roughly one-third of what the Yankees spend on big-name talent.

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Sidebar: The Beane-Ball Handbook

Over the past five years, general manager Billy Beane has made the Oakland Athletics one of pro baseball’s most consistent winners — and he has done so on one of the sport’s most meager budgets. Here’s how Beane turns a double play, making one into more.

The real highlights don’t happen on the field. “It used to be, general managers just evaluated players on their ability. Today, the economics drive every decision. You have to evaluate talent not just on playing ability, but also on economic feasibility — and not just a player’s current feasibility, but also his future trend. Every single decision, down to drafting a kid out of high school, has economic ramifications.”

It may be a team sport — but there’s only one boss. “We have a pretty tight inner circle. First and foremost, it’s my responsibility what happens here. I give my directors a lot of autonomy, because they’re good at what they do. But that’s a small group, and ultimately, in critical decisions, I want to be involved. We don’t have a lot of bureaucracy here. We don’t get together for huge organizational meetings. We don’t have a lot of patience for four-hour meetings and a hundred opinions. That’s my worst nightmare.”

Hit ‘em where the big guys ain’t. “We can do some things that the Yankees can’t. We can trade for a guy like Corey Lidle and make him our fifth starter, even though he was a middle reliever who hadn’t done much. I kid with [Yankees general manager] Brian Cashman all the time: He can’t do that, because New York demands higher-profile players. When Jason Giambi left us [in 2002, for the Yankees], we could sign Scott Hatteberg, a backup catcher, and put him at first and get away with it. We’re allowed to take what are perceived as risks.”

Sweat the details — but remember that it’s a long season. “This is an intense job, because you’re being judged every day. It’s not like being a CEO, where you just have to give a conference call once a quarter. Every day, we play a game, and it’s in the paper. All the data is on the Internet. Everything is public. And I’m guilty of it too. This sport is an emotional business, and I have to be careful not to make sound-bite decisions.”

Even an MVP can’t do it all. “Getting to the play-offs isn’t random: Over 162 games, if you have the right team, the odds work out. But once you get to the postseason, everything becomes random. In a 5-game series, you can flip a coin five times, and you might come up tails five times. In our market and many others, we can’t build a team that’s specifically geared for 162 games and also for a 5-game play-off. That I don’t think we’ll ever overcome.”

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To read the complete article, please click here.

Keith H. Hammonds (khammonds@fastcompany.com) is a FAST COMPANY senior editor and a die-hard Yankees fan.

 

 

How Do You Know a Great Person When You See One?

Here is an excerpt from an article written by William C. Taylor for the Harvard Business Review blog. To read the complete article, check out the wealth of free resources, and sign up for a subscription to HBR email alerts, please click here.

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In the still-raging debate over my two posts about why “Great People Are Overrated,” the one (and perhaps only) question that went under-discussed might be the most important question of all: How do you know a great person when you see one?

Is “greatness” purely a matter of raw brainpower and technical virtuosity, or is it impossible to discuss individual talent without thinking about the team, the enterprise, and the very mission of the organization?

The front page of a recent issue of The New York Times offered an in-depth account of how innovators in one industry are wrestling with that very question. The piece reports on the radical new admissions policy at Virginia Tech Carilion, the country’s newest medical school. The process “has enormous consequences” not for just for aspiring doctors, the Times says, but “also for the entire health care system.”

Here’s what the fuss is about. Rather than evaluate candidates strictly on grades, scores on standardized tests, and how they present themselves in an interview, Virginia Tech Carilion now subjects candidates to nine brief interviews “that [assess] how well candidates think on their feet and how willing they are to work on teams.” The technical term for the process is the M.M.I., or the multiple mini-interview. The Times calls it “the admissions equivalent of speed-dating”: nine eight-minute conversations about an ethical dilemma, on-the-spot decisions, even health-care policy that aim to capture who candidates are, not just how smart they are.

“We are trying to weed out the students who look great on paper but haven’t developed the people or communications skills we think are important,” said Dr. Stephen Workman, the school’s associate dean for admissions and administration. “Our school intends to graduate physicians who can communicate with patients and work in teams,” added Dr. Cynda Ann Johnson, the school’s dean. “If people do poorly on the M.M.I., they will not be offered positions in our class.”

Finally, medical schools are catching up to what best companies have known (and practiced) for years: Being a star performer is about more than just individual star quality. Indeed, companies that are incredibly selective about whom they hire — companies that have their pick of the best talent in their field — have learned to make their selections based on character as much as credentials. For these companies, who you are as a person counts for as much as what you know at any point in time, and you capacity to work in a great team is as important as your drive to be an individual star.

[Taylor goes on to discuss in detail how Southwest Airlines selects people to fill positions. To read the complete article, please click here.]

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William C. Taylor is cofounder of Fast Company magazine and author of Practically Radical: Not-So-Crazy Ways to Transform Your Company, Shake Up Your Industry, and Challenge Yourself, published January 4, 2011. You can follow him at twitter.com/practicallyrad.

Alan M. Webber: An interview by Bob Morris

Alan M. Webber

Alan M. Webber is an award-winning, nationally-recognized editor, author, and columnist. In 1995, he launched Fast Company magazine, a fresh, dynamic entry in the business magazine category. Headquartered in Boston, MA, the magazine became the fastest growing, most successful business magazine in history. Fast Company won two national magazine awards—one for general excellence, one for design—and Webber was named Adweek’s “Editor of the Year ” in 1999, along with co-founding editor William Taylor. Most recently, he wrote Rules of Thumb: 52 Truths for Winning at Business Without Losing Your Self. He has also been active at local, state, and national political levels, serving as policy advisor for the mayor of Portland, Oregon, writing speeches for several governors, and working as special assistant to the United States Secretary of Transportation.

Morris: Before discussing Rules of Thumb, a few general questions. First, when and why did you decide to pursue a career in journalism?

Webber: I’ve always been interested in reporting, writing, and the purposes that good journalism can serve. When I was in high school, I was editor of the high school newspaper, and we wrote editorials calling for our school (a private all-boy’s–and at the time all-white–prep school) to integrate, to accept black students. In college I became the chairman of our college newspaper. This was during the Vietnam War, and we used the newspaper to cover student attitudes to that war, but also to explore the issues on campus that went more deeply into the purposes of a liberal arts education. So I’ve always seen journalism and activism as closely linked.

Morris: Since then, what do you think have been the most significant changes i magazine publication that includes both HBR and Fast Company?

Webber: The world of publishing, in general, has been changing dramatically for the last decade or more. It’s not just the web–although the web has served to disrupt the traditional business model of publishing. It’s also reading habits of different generations, attitudes toward the media and other large institutions, and the overall pace of change that people have to contend with in their daily lives. Obviously, HBR enjoys a privileged position in the magazine world, by virtue of its relationship with the Harvard Business School. The issue there is less one of economic survival, and more of relevance and impact with a business community that will always respect the HBR brand. But will the HBR brand be in touch with and in synch with the changing concerns and composition of the business community? Fast Company, because of its unique DNA as a business magazine devoted to the them of change and innovation, should be relevant forever! But it has to face the changing economic demands of publishing.

At the moment, I’m happy to say, both magazines seem to be meeting their respective challenges head-on.

Morris: Back to HBR, for a moment. What are your fondest memories of that association?

Webber: It’s always the people. When I took over as managing editor under Ted Levitt, we went about the work of re-inventing HBR. Ted was a brilliant marketer, mentor, and writer, so he provided the leadership and the vision to guide us. Then we recruited an almost entirely new team of people to re-invigorate HBR, to re-design the look and feel of the publication, to re-engineer the architecture, the structure of each issue, to bring in new ideas for presenting business thinking to the audience. For quite a few years, we had a terrific team that was excited about creating a new conversation about the direction that business was headed in. In many respects, I think those days helped foster an innovative culture at HBR and re-connected the publication with the larger business audience that was eager to be part of a fresh dialog about how business was changing, how the world was changing, and how the pieces fit together.

Morris: Please explain the process by which you and Bill Taylor co-founded Fast Company in November, 1995.

Webber: Bill and I met at HBR; I was the managing editor and he was the most talented, brilliant, energetic editor on the staff. We began exploring the idea for a new business magazine some time after I got back from a 3-month trip to Japan in 1989-90, where I was exposed to a set of powerful forces that were transforming the world of work. Some of the things I saw could be integrated into HBR, but because of the institutional limits of HBR, some were simply outside the legitimate boundaries of the publication at that time. So in the early 1990s Bill and I started talking informally about what a new magazine could be like. Bill left HBR first, and then when I left around 1993, we got serious about what a new magazine would be like: what it would look like, how it would perform as an editorial product, what we could create that would be exciting and useful, and speak to the dramatic changes going on in business: globalization, technology, the new opportunities for individuals to make a difference in work and through their work. We raised about $550,000 from a fantastic group of first round investors, and in 1993 we put out a “beta” issue. From the feedback we got from that issue, we wrote up a second-round business plan and then showed our work to different publishing companies, looking for a business partner with whom to launch Fast Company for real. Finally we were fortunate to make a deal with Mort Zuckerman and Fred Drasner, who owned U.S. News & World Report and The Atlantic Monthly at that time. The Atlantic was in Boston, where Bill and both lived, so to launch Fast Company we borrowed office space from The Atlantic and ad sales and business staff from U.S. News, making our launch very economical. We hired a small, dedicated staff to put together our first issues, and the first “real” issue of Fast Company came out in 1995. The rest, as they say, is history!

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To read the complete interview, please click here.

Alan Webber invites you to check out these websites:

http://www.rulesofthumbbook.com/about_the_author.html

http://rulesofthumbbook.blogspot.com/