Frank Luntz on the FRONTLINE
Here is a brief excerpt from an interview of Frank Luntz, part of the FRONTLINE series. Since 1983, it has served as American public television’s flagship public affairs series. Hailed upon its debut on PBS as “the last best hope for broadcast documentaries,” FRONTLINE’s stature over 30 seasons is reaffirmed each week through incisive documentaries covering the scope and complexity of the human experience.
When FRONTLINE was born, however, the prospects for television news documentaries looked grim. Pressure was on network news departments to become profitable, and the spirit of outspoken journalistic inquiry established by programs like Edward R. Murrow’s See It Now and Harvest of Shame had given way to entertainment values and feature-filled magazine shows. Therefore, it fell to public television to pick up the torch of public affairs and carry on this well-established broadcast news tradition.
To learn more, please click here.
Photo: Simon Roberts/Getty Images
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What are you measuring with the dial technology? [A mechanism Luntz uses whereby people in a focus group register their moment by moment responses to a speech or presentation.]
It’s like an X-ray that gets inside your head, and it picks out every single word, every single phrase [that you hear], and you know what works and what doesn’t. And you do it without the bias of a focus group. People are quiet as they’re listening, and they’re reacting anonymously. The key to dial technology is that it’s immediate, it’s specific, and it’s anonymous.
It’s so immediate, it feels instantaneous.
But it is, because politics is instantaneous. Politics is gut; commercials are gut. You’re watching a great show on TV, you now come to that middle break, you decide in a matter of three seconds whether or not you’re going to a) flip the channel; b) get up; or c) keep watching. It’s not intellectual; it is gut.
Is it the same for political decisions about power companies and politicians, though?
We decide based on how people look; we decide based on how people sound; we decide based on how people are dressed. We decide based on their passion. If I respond to you quietly, the viewer at home is going to have a different reaction than if I respond to you with emotion and with passion and I wave my arms around. Somebody like this is an intellectual; somebody like this is a freak. But that’s how we make up our minds. Look, this is about the real-life decisions of real-life Americans, who to vote for, what to buy, what to agree with, what to think, how to act. This is the way it is.
You think emotions are more revelatory than the intellect for predicting these decisions?
80 percent of our life is emotion, and only 20 percent is intellect. I am much more interested in how you feel than how you think. I can change how you think, but how you feel is something deeper and stronger, and it’s something that’s inside you. How you think is on the outside, how you feel is on the inside, so that’s what I need to understand.
And this technology can get at that?
The great thing about dial technology is you can get a small response on the dial, or you can get a huge jump. You watch with your own eyes: At some points, the lines are way up at the top of the screen or even out beyond. People were practically breaking their dials in agreement at certain points, and at other points, they were flat. It measures intensity. And if you want to understand public opinion, if you want to understand public behavior, if you want to understand the way we operate as Americans and as humans, you’ve got to understand that one word: intensity.
It can be anything, then, that you’re selling.
I’m not going to let you twist the words, because if I say to you that you can sell a politician the way you sell soap — and it may even look that way from the outside — that says to Americans that they shouldn’t respect politicians or soap. It really isn’t that way. The way you communicate an idea is different than the way you communicate a product. However, the way you measure [the response of the public in both instances] is quite similar. And the principles behind explaining and educating the product or the elected official is similar, even though the actual execution of it is very, very different.
Are there different techniques you use when working with politics versus corporations?
The technique is a little bit different because politics and corporations are a little bit different. But in the end you’re still using the same focus groups; you’re still using the same dial technology; you’re still using the same quantitative data; you’re still doing split samples where you ask half a sample one way and the other half a different way. You’re still asking and re-asking the questions. You’re still showing them visuals to see what they like the best, and you’re still showing them or having them listen to audio track to see how they respond. So the actual techniques are the same, but how they are applied is different. And that really is the separation; that’s the differentiation between politics and the corporate world.
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To read the complete interview, please click here.
Frank I. Luntz is an American political consultant, pollster, and Republican Party strategist. His most recent work has been with the Fox News Channel as a frequent commentator and analyst, as well as running focus groups after presidential debates. In this interview, he explains what it takes to communicate a message effectively, shares some of the advice that he gives clients, and explains why his testing and field research seeks words that move people to act on an emotional level: “It’s all emotion. But there’s nothing wrong with emotion. When we are in love, we are not rational; we are emotional. When we are on vacation, we are not rational; we are emotional. When we are happy, we are not [rational]. In fact, in more cases than not, when we are rational, we’re actually unhappy. Emotion is good; passion is good. Being into what we’re into, provided that it’s a healthy pursuit, it’s a good thing.”
His published works include Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear (2007) and, more recently, Win: The Key Principles to Take Your Business from Ordinary to Extraordinary (2011). This interview was conducted on Dec. 15, 2003.
Amazon’s Secret – Make it Easy; Make it Fast; Make it Insanely Convenient
I am a convert. As I have written before, I now buy most of my books (all that are available digitally) on Amazon’s Kindle App for my iPad. I get my protein bars though Amazon. I get my ink for my printer from Amazon. And a whole lot more. And my experience on Amazon has made me a more energetic, frequent on-line shopper from other outlets (stores). And, with my Amazon Prime purchase, I get practically everything in two days.
And it is about to get faster.
I have written before about our growing desire/demand for no hassles! (quoting Frank Luntz): We Really Don’t Like Hassles — So, our Agenda: Create “Hassle Free”. And after I presented Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, a participant at our First Friday Book Synopsis said to me: “Here’s what that book said. You’ve got to make the change convenient – you’ve got to make everything convenient.”
Well, Amazon is about to really up the bar on the convenience competition for customers.
We first learned this from Netflix. Their business became more convenient (more convenient than the many, many minutes it took to drive to the local Blockbuster, and browse the shelves). Netflix took off when it became highly likely that you could get your DVD in the mail the day after you ordered it. Convenience! – the day after! (Blockbuster is now bankrupt, by the way). And now, of course, on Netflix you can watch your movie or TV show immediately, streamed onto your computer or your iPad or your iPhone or your Apple TV.
Amazon Fulfillment Center
Well, today, Slate.com reminds us that Amazon has matched the Netflix convenience model on practically everything. They are on the verge of providing same-day delivery for most of the country. SAME-DAY DELIVERY FOR THE WIN! This truly is the win in the Super Bowl of the convenience league. As usual, it is the Slate writer Farhad Manjoo who makes this so understandable in his article I Want It Today: How Amazon’s ambitious new push for same-day delivery will destroy local retail.
Mr. Manjoo describes how Amazon has quietly been making many of its deliveries, promised to Amazon Prime customers in two days, in just one day. A convenience surprise! Now, it is about to raise the bar even higher. Partly prompted by the loss of their “no sales tax” advantage (we started paying Amazon our sales taxes in Texas this month), Amazon is getting ready to do provide “fulfillment” even faster.
From the article:
If Amazon can send me stuff overnight for free without a distribution center nearby, it’s not hard to guess what it can do once it has lots of warehouses within driving distance of my house. Instead of surprising me by getting something to me the next day, I suspect that, over the next few years, next-day service will become its default shipping method on most of its items. Meanwhile it will offer same-day service as a cheap upgrade. For $5 extra, you can have that laptop waiting for you when you get home from work. Wouldn’t you take that deal?
I bet you would. Physical retailers have long argued that once Amazon plays fairly on taxes, the company wouldn’t look like such a great deal to most consumers. If prices were equal, you’d always go with the “instant gratification” of shopping in the real world. The trouble with that argument is that shopping offline isn’t really “instant”—it takes time to get in the car, go to the store, find what you want, stand in line, and drive back home. Getting something shipped to your house offers gratification that’s even more instant: Order something in the morning and get it later in the day, without doing anything else. Why would you ever shop anywhere else?
So, here is the lesson for your business. Make it easy. Make it fast. Make it insanely convenient. This is the level of customer service that we will all come to expect.
Amazon will force us all to make it easier, make it faster, make it even more insanely convenient. And if we fall too far behind, well… we will be left behind.
The Never-Finished Book: Problems with Perpetual In-Progress Revising
One of the most popular books for our CCN on-site presentations last year was The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains” by Nicholas Carr (New York: Norton, 2010). In that book, he discusses how the Internet tinkers with the brain, reamps its neural circuitry, and reprograms the memory. While the mind does not go, it certainly changes, and deep reading and concentration become struggles.
I thought that Carr’s recent essay in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Books That Are Never Done Being Written” (December 31, 2011 – January 1, 2012, p. C3) took these thoughts further. In the essay that I reproduced in its entirety below, he argues that digital text ushers in an era where constant revision and updating is not only possible, but becoming normal, for better and for worse.
Have you ever thought about what can happen with this kind of access? Carr says, “School boards will be able to edit textbooks, and dictatorial governments will be able to meddle, too.” The never-ending story will become a reality.
Editable content strains credibility of sources. We already pooh-pooh Wikipedia for that reason. Even though there are controls within its system, they are not great, and people receive laughter when they cite it as a reference in professional and academic circles. I don’t think it’s entirely bad, but I caution people to use it only to get background information about a topic, and to then use its external source links for additional substantiation and elaboration.
For me, the simple addition of an “afterword” to a subsequent printing suffices. In fact, that is what you will find when you purchase Carr’s book. You will find an additional chapter where he provides reactions and updates to his premises from an earlier printing. The same is true of the famous Words That Work: It’s Not What You Say, It’s What People Hear by Frank Luntz (New York: Hyperion, 2007). Between printings, he added a chapter with seven new “words that work.”
The difference between this approach and the massive digital editing approach is that these are author-controlled, and they are also refereed. Today, anyone can put up an e-Book, and no one has to review or approve its content. And, if it is open to massive external editing, the author will have lost control. Whose words are we really reading? And, how do we know that they are factual and accurate?
This essay by Carr is worth reading and contemplating. Before we just jump into the all-digital era, stop reviewing content for accuracy, cast away professional refereeing, and halt publishing of paper-versions of books, maybe we should all take a deep breath and be sure this is what we want to do.
Technological advances are good, but they are amoral. It all depends in whose hands the advances land, and how they use them.
Read the essay below. Then, tell me what you think! Let’s talk about it really soon!
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BOOKS THAT ARE NEVER DONE BEING WRITTEN
By Nicholas Carr
Wall Street Journal, December 31, 2011 – January 1, 2012, p. C3
I recently got a glimpse into the future of books. A few months ago, I dug out a handful of old essays I’d written about innovation, combined them into a single document, and uploaded the file to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing service. Two days later, my little e-book was on sale at Amazon’s site. The whole process couldn’t have been simpler.
Then I got the urge to tweak a couple of sentences in one of the essays. I made the edits on my computer and sent the revised file back to Amazon. The company quickly swapped out the old version for the new one. I felt a little guilty about changing a book after it had been published, knowing that different readers would see different versions of what appeared to be the same edition. But I also knew that the readers would be oblivious to the alterations.
An e-book, I realized, is far different from an old-fashioned printed one. The words in the latter stay put. In the former, the words can keep changing, at the whim of the author or anyone else with access to the source file. The endless malleability of digital writing promises to overturn a whole lot of our assumptions about publishing.
When Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type a half-millennium ago, he also gave us immovable text. Before Gutenberg, books were handwritten by scribes, and no two copies were exactly the same. Scribes weren’t machines; they made mistakes. With the arrival of the letterpress, thousands of identical copies could enter the marketplace simultaneously. The publication of a book, once a nebulous process, became an event.
A new set of literary workers coalesced in publishing houses, collaborating with writers to perfect texts before they went on press. The verb “to finalize” became common in literary circles, expressing the permanence of printed words. Different editions still had textual variations, introduced either intentionally as revisions or inadvertently through sloppy editing or typesetting, but books still came to be viewed, by writer and reader alike, as immutable objects. They were written for posterity.
Beyond giving writers a spur to eloquence, what the historian Elizabeth Eisenstein calls “typographical fixity” served as a cultural preservative. It helped to protect original documents from corruption, providing a more solid foundation for the writing of history. It established a reliable record of knowledge, aiding the spread of science. It accelerated the standardization of everything from language to law. The preservative qualities of printed books, Ms. Eisenstein argues, may be the most important legacy of Gutenberg’s invention.
Once digitized, a page of words loses its fixity. It can change every time it’s refreshed on a screen. A book page turns into something like a Web page, able to be revised endlessly after its initial uploading. There’s no technological constraint on perpetual editing, and the cost of altering digital text is basically zero. As electronic books push paper ones aside, movable type seems fated to be replaced by movable text.
That’s an attractive development in many ways. It makes it easy for writers to correct errors and update facts. Guidebooks will no longer send travelers to restaurants that have closed or to once charming inns that have turned into fleabags. The instructions in manuals will always be accurate. Reference books need never go out of date.
Even literary authors will be tempted to keep their works fresh. Historians and biographers will be able to revise their narratives to account for recent events or newly discovered documents. Polemicists will be able to bolster their arguments with new evidence. Novelists will be able to scrub away the little anachronisms that can make even a recently published story feel dated.
But as is often the case with digitization, the boon carries a bane. The ability to alter the contents of a book will be easy to abuse. School boards may come to exert even greater influence over what students read. They’ll be able to edit textbooks that don’t fit with local biases. Authoritarian governments will be able to tweak books to suit their political interests. And the edits can ripple backward. Because e-readers connect to the Internet, the works they contain can be revised remotely, just as software programs are updated today. Movable text makes a lousy preservative.
Such abuses can be prevented through laws and software protocols. What may be more insidious is the pressure to fiddle with books for commercial reasons. Because e-readers gather enormously detailed information on the way people read, publishers may soon be awash in market research. They’ll know how quickly readers progress through different chapters, when they skip pages, and when they abandon a book.
The promise of stronger sales and profits will make it hard to resist tinkering with a book in response to such signals, adding a few choice words here, trimming a chapter there, maybe giving a key character a quick makeover. What will be lost, or at least diminished, is the sense of a book as a finished and complete object, a self-contained work of art.
Not long before he died, John Updike spoke eloquently of a book’s “edges,” the boundaries that give shape and integrity to a literary work and that for centuries have found their outward expression in the indelibility of printed pages. It’s those edges that give a book its solidity, allowing it to stand up to the vagaries of fashion and the erosions of time. And it’s those edges that seem fated to blur as the words of books go from being stamped permanently on sheets of paper to being rendered temporarily on flickering screens.
Dan Roam: Second Interview, by Bob Morris
Dan Roam
“I believe that any problem can be solved with a picture. And that anybody can draw it.”
Dan Roam is the author of two international bestsellers, The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures and Unfolding the Napkin: The Hands-On Method for Solving Complex Problems with Simple Pictures, both published by Portfolio Trade, a Penguin imprint. The former was selected as Business Week and Fast Company’s best innovation book of the year, and was Amazon’s #5 selling business book of 2008. The Back of the Napkin has been published in 25 languages and is a bestseller in Japan, South Korea, and China. Portfolio also published his latest book, Blah Blah Blah: What To Do When Words Don’t Work (November, 2011) Roam has helped leaders at Microsoft, eBay, Google, Wal-Mart, Boeing, Lucas Fims, Gap, Kraft, Stanford University, The MIT Sloan School of Management, the US Navy, and the United States Senate solve complex problems through visual thinking. Dan and his whiteboard have appeared on CBS, CNN, MSNBC, ABC News, Fox News, and NPR. His visual explanation of American health care was selected by BusinessWeek as “The World’s Best Presentation of 2009″. This inspired the White House Office of Communications to invite him in for a discussion on visual problem solving.
Here is an excerpt from my second interview of Dan. To read the complete interview, please click here.
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Morris: Before discussing Blah Blah Blah, a few general questions. First, for those who have not as yet read one or both of the “napkin” books, please explain why using relatively simple drawings can have great impact when we attempt to answer a question, solve a problem, persuade others to agree, or to express the essence of an important concept.
Roam: When we see an idea clearly illustrated right in front of us, much more of our mind lights up than if we were just talking about it. With simple and clear pictures, we see more, understand more, and share more than words alone ever could. As humans, we are essentially walking, talking “vision” machines. Three-quarters of all the sensory neurons in our brain are dedicated to processing vision, and in the first four months after we’re born almost all brain development in takes place in those areas that process vision and movement.
From the time we are infants, we know how important sight is to understanding the world around us and guiding us safely through it. What is a shame is how quickly we forget that once we enter school. We spend years perfecting the tools of spoken but we don’t spend two days learning to understand how we SEE. The essential point is this: if we really want someone to understand what we’re talking about, we should actually talk less – and draw more.
Morris: The hieroglyphics on cave walls pre-date the earliest attempts at a verbal language. So the insights you share in the two Napkin books have been common knowledge for at least several million years?
Roam: The oldest drawings ever found are located deep in the Chauvet Cave in south-central France. These paintings of horses, bison, and bulls date back 32,000 years. In the entire sweep of recorded human history, these beautiful images represent the beginning of the “whoosh.” We don’t know anything about the early humans that created these images, but we do know they could draw extremely well. These are the earliest markings ever made by humanity, and they are sketched more wonderfully than most of us could do today.
Morris: Relatively simple drawings can be a great resource for brain storming sessions because almost anyone can draw without possessing highly-developed drawing skills. However, what Tom Kelley characterizes as “ideation” [begin italics] does [end italics] require them. Don’t people have to have something worth communicating, first?
Roam: We all have ideas we believe are worth communicating, and we have them all the time – which is precisely why so many of us talk so much. Those ideas may not be fully developed, we may be uncertain of them, and they may be complex or controversial, but we typically have no shortage of them. And that is why drawing them out – even in the most crude circles-boxes-and-arrows manner – is such a great idea. Drawing out our thoughts forces us to clarify them, look at them from multiple perspectives, and think them through in a vibrant way.
Morris: Since the publication of the two Napkin books, presumably you have received a blizzard of feedback from those who read one or both of them. Of all that you have learned from what your readers have shared, what do you consider to be most valuable? Why?
Roam: I have received thousands of comments from readers over the past three years. The most frequent involve a reader sharing a moment of pictorial discovery, either in a meeting that was saved when someone went up to the whiteboard and drew the idea that clarified everything, or when they completed a difficult sale by drawing out the solution for all to see. Without a doubt, I have learned the most from readers who had never drawn and, thanks to my books, decided to give it a try. The sense of discovery and enthusiasm that permeates these notes illuminates visual possibilities that I had never considered myself. I always knew pictures made things clearer to me; it is electrifying to see how common that is even among people who never considered themselves “visual.”
Morris: From which sources did you learn the most about what the mind is and does, in general, and what the verbal and visual minds do, in particular?
Roam: I have read, studied, participated in, and discussed with experts three different approaches to understanding the mind. First, I took an academic approach to understanding the mind: in university I studied biology and I was fascinated with the evolutionary development of the human brain, and more recently I consulted with vision scientists and neurobiologists at leading universities. Second, I took an applied approach: I studied meditation for four weeks in a Thai monastery (including spending one week in silent isolation), I participated in cognitive behavioral therapy sessions to see how my mind reacted to various situations and I participated in extensive psychodynamic therapy sessions to try to see why. Third, I took an intuitive approach: I simply monitored myself in hundreds of business meetings and noted when I and other people seemed to be understanding each other and when we did not – and then noted what we were talking about and how we approached it.
Morris: What are the defining characteristics of “vivid thinking”
Roam: “Vivid Thinking” is a mnemonic. Vi-V-id stands for Visual-Verbal-Interdependent thinking. It is a simple idea that says we haven’t really thought through an idea until we have both talked about it and looked at it, and that we can’t really explain an idea until we can both write about it and draw it. Vivid thinking does not accept that an either/or verbal-vs-visual approach ever fully illuminates an idea; on the contrary Vivid Thinking demands that we must exercise both our verbal and visual minds in concert if we really wish to understand an idea. Talk + look; write +draw = Vivid.
Morris: By what process can vivid thinking be strengthened?
Roam: Like anything we do, Vivid Thinking becomes strengthened through practice. For all its successes, our educational system has in fact allowed us to become lazy thinkers. By relying almost entirely on our verbal mind, we have taught ourselves to shut our visual mind down and to denigrate its importance. My goal in “Blah-Blah-Blah” is to introduce a set of simple tools and rules that reawaken our visual mind and kick it back into gear.
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Here is an excerpt from my second interview of Dan. To read the complete interview, please click here.
He cordially invites you to check out the resources at these websites:
http://www.slideshare.net/danroam
http://www.slideshare.net/danroam
I also urge you to check out these videos:
Why Frank Luntz Needs To Wash His Mouth Out With Soap
I tried to think of the nicest way to say this – the best way. The “wash his mouth out with soap” was one such way. Another might be, “Mr. Luntz, you’re too smart for this, so please just shut your mouth.”
Here is what the wrote – page 271, in his newest book, Win:
“No one trusts the government to get anything right. So if all you’re doing is complying with minimum standards, they you immediately wrap yourself up in the government’s shroud of ineptitude. You must go higher.”
I am offended by this paragraph. And I call it for what it is – untrue, and petty.
Where shall I start? I could talk about the past: how I have driven from Florida to California using the Interstate Highway system, a project that the government got right. I could talk about the times I have needed something delivered to me, or sent elsewhere, and it showed up, as expected, through the United States Postal Service. I promise you, they did it at a higher percentage of success than my dry cleaners does in getting my shirts just right. (And, yes, of course, I know that the post office is in very big financial trouble – but I suspect e-mail, and all of those companies who ask me to go paperless, have something to do with that).
Or, I could take some pretty recent stories: recently, I have called two different government agencies, seeking information and help in two specific areas. In each case, a human being talked to me, in a cordial and informative tone, and each sent me requested material which arrived faster than I would have expected – within a couple of days.
I could talk politics – it is tempting. Mr. Luntz believes the view (he helped shape the view) that is the dominant view of many Republicans: “we need less government. Government is inept.” But I think such a view is wrong.
I remember reading about Bill Clinton’s insistence to put a genuine professional in charge of FEMA when he was president. And, while he was president, FEMA got some pretty high marks in some incredibly difficult circumstances. President Clinton put a genuine professional in that position, unlike his successor who put a political supporter in the same position. And that did not turn out so well.
Here’s what I think… We need people who lead government who believe in the validity of what government can do well.
And Mr. Luntz needs to change his words – these did not work for me.
Anyway, I am a fan of Frank Luntz. I have read his three books, and after Friday, will have presented synopses of all three. I have recommended them, and will recommend this book. It is a good book.
But Mr. Luntz, I trust the government to get a lot of things right. And so should you. So, please keep your cynicism, your ridicule, to yourself. The people who work so diligently deserve your appreciation and praise, not your ridicule.
The 15 Universal Attributes Of Winners – Insight From Win by Frank Luntz
In Win: The Key Principles to Take Your Business from Ordinary to Extraordinary, the third book I have read and presented (after Friday) by Frank Luntz, we read his “conclusions” at the very beginning of the book. Here they are:
• The 15 universal attributes of winners (Luntz’s summary of his “conclusions”)…
1) the ability to grasp the human dimension of every situation
2) the ability to know what questions to ask and when to ask them
3) the ability to see what doesn’t yet exist and bring it to life
4) the ability to see the challenge, and the solution, from every angle
5) the ability to distinguish the essential from the important
6) the ability and the drive to do more and do it better
7) the ability to communicate their vision passionately and persuasively
8) the ability to move forward when everyone around them is retrenching and or slipping backward
9) the ability to connect with others spontaneously
10) a curiosity about the unknown
11) a passion for life’s adventures
12) a chemistry with the people they work with and the people they want to influence
13) the willingness to fail and the fortitude to get back up and try again
14) a belief in luck and good fortune, and
15) a love of life itself
The book is a practical overview of the characteristics of those who “win,” and, I think, a valuable book for those who seek success, those who want to move forward.
If you are near the DFW area, come join us this Friday morning for our June First Friday Book Synopsis. Click here to register.
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You can purchase my synopses of his first two books, Words that Work and What Americans Really Want…Really, with audio + handout, from our companion web site, 15minutebusinessbooks.com. I will present his latest book, Win, this Friday, and the synopsis will be available on the site in a couple of weeks.
Win: A book review by Bob Morris
Win: The Key Principles to Take Your Business from Ordinary to Extraordinary
Frank Luntz
Hyperion/Harper Collins (2011)
A brilliant recycling of valuable business material
Frank Luntz identifies what he characterizes as “The 15 Universal Attributes of Winners” (on Page 2) and then “The Nine P’s of Winning: What It Takes to Get to the Top” (on Page 13) before sharing this definition: “Winning is about getting to the top and making things – great things, unprecedented things – happen. It’s about transfo0rming and completely revolutionizing products, processes, and even people. It’s about making an impact that endures long after you have gone.” An 11th century monk, Bernard of Chartres, once observed, “We are like dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants.” Those on whose shoulders Luntz stands are duly acknowledged (Pages ix-xi) and countless others are listed within the Index.
I admire the skills that he must have summoned to locate, evaluate, and then organize material from hundreds of different sources. He presents it within a series of chapters whose framework is provided by eight principles that, he claims, can take the reader’s business “from ordinary to extraordinary.” That’s Luntz’s vision and presumably he realizes that, in Thomas Edison’s familiar words, “vision without execution is hallucination.” Much of the insights and advice he has appropriated as well as what he contributes focus on “how” to achieve the given goal or objective.
Most of his contributions focus on the nature and components of effective communication (i.e. message creation and image management). For example, the “Luntz Language Lesson” (on Page 99) as well as 12 clusters of “Luntz Lessons” elsewhere in the narrative. I am curious to know the sources of the self-audits (e.g. Are You Self-Centered?” on Page 37) as well as the material provided on Pages 111, 222, 232, and 272. Perhaps each is a consolidation of key points that Luntz has selected from a combination of sources. All are eminently sensible.
There is an abundance of information, observations, insights, aphorisms, and recommendations in this book. Obviously, it would be a fool’s errand to attempt to adopt everything that Luntz provides.
Here’s what I presume to suggest. As you read the book, keep a notebook of some kind handy and, as you work your way through the narrative, rate yourself on a 1-10 scale (with 10 = Outstanding) on the various skills that are discussed. (Here’s where the self-audits and the sets of questions will be most helpful.) Record notes including page references when you rated yourself in the 1-6 range, then compile a list of what you rated yourself in the 1-3 range and check the page references you’ve noted to focus on the relevant material that Luntz provides. Then proceed to what you rated 4-6.
In other words, convert this hybrid (i.e. anthology/self-help narrative) into a workbook that you customize to accommodate your specific needs and interests. I also suggest you check out the wealth of resources at http://www.luntzglobal.com/. Finally, I wish you great success with your efforts to achieve great success.
Suggested readings for leadership development in 2011
Awaiting you....
Randy Mayeux has already shared his choices and all are eminently worthy, to which I presume to add a few others.
Please keep in mind that this list is (as are Randy and I) a work in progress.
The Right Values
True North by Bill George and Peter Sims
MY ADDITIONS:
The Executive’s Compass by James O’Toole
The Highest Goal by Michael Ray
The Heart Aroused by David Whyte
The Right Strategy
The Opposable Mind by Roger L. Martin
Mastering the Rockefeller Habits by Verne Harnish
MY ADDITIONS:
The Art of War by Sun Tzu
Unstoppable by Chris Zook
Enterprise Architecture as Strategy by Jeanne Ross, Peter Weill, and David Robertson
Effective Leadership
Fierce Leadership by Susan Scott
Encouraging the Heart by James Kouzes and Barry Posner
MY ADDITIONS:
Maestro by Roger Nierenberg
True North by Bill George and Peter Sims
Effective Communication
Words that Work by Frank Luntz
Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
MY ADDITIONS:
Influence by Robert Cialdini
The Back of the Napkin and Unfolding the Napkin by Dan Roam
Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler
Functional & Effective Teamwork
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
MY ADDITIONS:
Organizing Genius by Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman
Collaboration by Morten Hansen
Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Cultivating Creativity and Innovation
The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp
Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson
MY ADDITIONS:
Freedom, Inc. by Brian M. Carney and Isaac Getz
The Idea of Innovation and The Ten Faces of Innovation by Thomas Kelley
Six Thinking Hats by Edward De Bono
Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind by Guy Claxton
Successful Execution
Execution by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan
MY ADDITIONS:
Reality Check by Guy Kawasaki
The Other Side of Innovation by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble
Open Innovation and Open Business Models by Henry Chesbrough
Plus two additional categories:
Leadership Development
MY RECOMMENDATIONS:
Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice co-edited by Nitin Nohria and Rakesh Khurana
The Talent Masters by Bill Conaty and Ram Charan
The Center for Creative Leadership Handbook of Leadership Development co-edited by Ellen Van Velsor, Cynthia D. McCauley, and Marian N. Ruderman
Extraordinary Leadership co-edited by Kerry Bunker, Douglas T. Hall, and Kathy E. Kram
Employee Engagement & Talent Management
MY RECOMMENDATIONS:
A Sense of Urgency and Buy-In by John Kotter
The Art of Engagement by Jim Haudan
Engaging the Hearts and Minds of All Your Employees by Lee J. Colan
Growing Great Employees by Erika Andersen
Do You want to Communicate Clearly? – Economize words! (“The Future Belongs to the Best Editors,” says Jason Fried)
My colleague Karl Krayer teaches eight principles in his sessions on writing skills. One principle is this: economize words. It is a valuable principle.
Jason Fried (37Signals; co-author of Rework), recently put this up on his blog. (I first read it through Andrew Sullivan, here).
I recently took some Q&A. The last question was asked by a guy in the front row. He said “What’s your take on the true value of a university education?” I shared my general opinion (summary: great socially, but not realistic enough academically) and ended with a description of a course I’d like to see taught in college. In fact, I’d like to teach it.
It would be a writing course. Every assignment would be delivered in five versions: A three page version, a one page version, a three paragraph version, a one paragraph version, and a one sentence version.
I don’t care about the topic. I care about the editing. I care about the constant refinement and compression. I care about taking three pages and turning it one page. Then from one page into three paragraphs. Then from three paragraphs into one paragraph. And finally, from one paragraph into one perfectly distilled sentence.
Along the way you’d trade detail for brevity. Hopefully adding clarity at each point. This is important because I believe editing is an essential skill that is often overlooked and under appreciated. The future belongs to the best editors.
I do think this is right; good; useful.
On the other hand, the details matter too. “You’d trade detail for brevity,” said Fried. Yes, you would. So, study the writing of both Michael Lewis and Malcolm Gladwell. I think they both have learned how to provide great detail, with few words.
So – learn what Fried suggests, then work on getting detail back in, in few words. Economize words, even in your details.
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And remember this from Frank Luntz. Provide the “perfectly distilled sentence.” Then the one-page executive summary. Then, for those who want more, in a click away, provide the three pages of details:
(A Luntz Lesson) The number one priority: information. More is better than less. Details are better than generalities. Comprehensive is better than simplistic. Long term is better than immediate… Summarize the material for those who want to read less, but provide the fine print for those who want to know more.
(from What Americans REALLY WANT…REALLY: The Truth about our Hopes, Dreams, and Fears)
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