George Kohlrieser: An interview by Bob Morris

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. Making concessions within a negotiation.

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

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To read the complete interview, please click here.

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

His home page

His faculty page

His Amazon page

IMD “Big Think” interview

YouTube videos

The Originality Scale

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

To read the complete article, please click here.

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

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

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To read the complete article, please click here.

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

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

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

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

*     *     *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Metaskills book site  

Strategic Pyramid site 

Amazon page

 

 

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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To read all of Part 1, please click here.

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

Metaskills book site

Strategic Pyramid site 

Marty’s Amazon page

HP, Adding Jobs, Cutting Jobs – But The Question Will Not Go Away, Where Will the Jobs Be?

News item:
“Hewlett-Packard to lay off 27,000 employees,” (John Naughton:  Can mighty Meg Whitman save HP from terminal failure? – Massive job losses have been announced at Hewlett-Packard. Now the ailing computer company needs to put a whole string of expensive mistakes behind it)

In her message she laid the bad news on the line. “At the end of 2009 we reported a workforce of about 304,000. At the end of 2010 we had almost 325,000 employees, and at the end of 2011 that number had ballooned to nearly 350,000. Over that same period we saw year-over-year revenue growth of 10% in 2010, of 1% in 2011, and, so far in 2012, revenues have been declining.
“We’re struggling under our own weight…”

New item:  c, 1999
Carly Fiorina is the first in a series of new leaders of HP who lead the company into acquisitions, and an increase in the number of employees to get the job done for the coming years.

In 1999 HP appointed a glamorous new CEO, one Carly Fiorina.

—————

Meg Whitman says “lets get rid of those jobs we’ve been adding”

So, Hewlett-Packard, beginning with Fiorina and all the way up to Meg Whitman, increased their employees, bought Compaq, gave birth to and quickly scrapped an iPad “competitor” (not so much of a competitor, it turned out), and now the company is in trouble.

And so it goes.

Of all the crises we face, the big one is this – there are not enough jobs.  And I’m not smart enough to figure out where to put the blame, or where to look for the best solution(s).

Yes, it is true that Meg Whitman was brought in to right a pretty precariously sitting ship.  But it is also true that her predecessors also sought the best for the company.  (one side note:  both Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman have run, unsuccessfully, for higher office, as Republicans).

And as company after company keeps trying to achieve or maintain profitability, as company after company seeks to enhance productivity, so that they can produce the same goods or products or services with ever-fewer workers, the overall employment picture keeps looking ever more dismal.

Picture HP over the last decade, or so.  You know exactly what they were engaged in.  They hired people; a lot of people.  In those interviews, and in those company orientation sessions, the HP officials would say, at the direction of their leaders, in one way or another:

“Come work for us and with us.  We are a great company, building a great future.  You will be a part of a company that is poised to even greater days ahead, and we need you to help make that happen.  And, this is a company that will treat you right, give you great opportunity to advance, and take good care of your needs so that you can focus on doing the best possible job.”

I suspect that speech was given over and over again.

And, it didn’t work out, and leader after leader was replaced, and now the new leader comes in, and gets rid of 27,000 employees {read that figure – 27,000 people who had been told that this was the company to build a future with!}…  And now, just imagine the morale of the folks who “survived” this current round of layoffs.

In The Coming Jobs War, Jim Clifton (Chairman of Gallup) quotes Nobel Prize-winning Economist Robert Fogel, writing:

“even if Fogel’s prediction comes almost true, it will be jobs Armageddon in America.  Its unemployment plus underemployment will rise to more than 40% (over the next couple of decades).  Leadership of the free world will not just be lost, but overwhelmed.”

I understand the argument.  A company exists to make a profit.  A company does not actually exist to provide jobs.  Jobs are among the tools companies have to make the products and provide the services that lead to profits.  And without a profit, there is no money to pay for the jobs.  And, if the work that is done by ten people can be done by nine people, and that enhances the bottom line in the profit column, then cut to nine.  (or, cut from 350,000 employees to 323,000 employees, HP’s current situation).

But…  but… what if every company cuts, and cuts, and then the total number of people who do not have jobs continues to grow?  Then, where will the demand be for the goods and services of these companies that are now so much more profitable?  Ultimately, the demand will dwindle, thus the profits will dwindle.  The cycle really is vicious, and painful to ponder.

(By the way, this loss of demand is behind Richard Florida’s call for a true increase in the wages of service workers.  He says that without an increase in service wages, demand will remain too low, and the economy will not return to what most of us would view as ”normal”).

Yesterday, there was an intriguing opinion piece in the New York Times:  Let’s Be Less Productive by Tim Jackson:  ”Has the pursuit of labor productivity reached its limit?“

Mr. Jackson basically argues that we scale back the move to doing more with fewer employees.  In some instances, he argues that scaling this back would greatly enhance the service we receive.  For example, we’ve all read about the pressure for doctors to see more patients per hour in the hours of their day.  This cannot be good for the quality of our medical care.

Here are brief excerpts from the Jackson article:

The quest for increased productivity occupies reams of academic literature and haunts the waking hours of C.E.O.’s and finance ministers. Perhaps forgivably so: our ability to generate more output with fewer people has lifted our lives out of drudgery and delivered us a cornucopia of material wealth.
But the relentless drive for productivity may also have some natural limits. Ever-increasing productivity means that if our economies don’t continue to expand, we risk putting people out of work.

So, what is the purpose of this post?  It is to ask, again, as I have asked so often, where will the jobs be?  Jobs are threatened by automation.  Jobs are threatened by the focus on profits, thus productivity.  And, every time we turn around, the number of new jobs created comes up far short of the number of jobs that are being eliminated by these and other factors.

Thus, the need of the hour is the need for jobs.  There is a Coming Jobs War, says Clifton.  From his book:

The coming world war is an all-out global war for good jobs.
…what would fix the world – what would suddenly create worldwide peace, global wellbeing, and the next extraordinary advancements in human development, (is) 1.8 billion jobs – formal jobs.  Nothing would change the current state of humankind more.
The leadership problem is that an increasing number of people in the world are miserable, hopeless, suffering, and becoming dangerously unhappy because they don’t have an almighty good job – and in most cases, no hope of getting one.
A good job is a job with a paycheck from an employer and steady work that averages 30+ hours per week.

Though Clifton writes of a global need, it is clear that we face this challenge right here in our country.

Where will the jobs be?  On this Memorial Day, as we think about patriotism, maybe it would be a patriotic thing for our business leaders, the CEOs of companies, and the stockholders of those companies, to think, collectively, about what they can do in their companies to help move our country forward in this so very important way.

Where will the jobs be?  We need our best minds working on this.  Maybe nothing else is as important right now.

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Read the review of the lift on book by our bloggign colleague Bob Morris here — The Coming Jobs War:  A book review by Bob morris.

Read an interview with Jim Clifton about this book and its importance from Forbes here.

One Step Forward – and Still Stuck in the Mud

At the First Friday Book Synopsis, we have covered many books which have included a reference to “wisdom over knowledge.”  And, there is a strong correlation between wisdom and age.

Maybe not!  I thought a recent article in the Wall Street Journal entitled “The Search is on for Fresh Executive Talent” (April 11, 2011, p. B9) demonstrated otherwise.

The article highlighted two key picks across six industries:  health care, high tech, retail, industrial products, financial services, and consumer goods.

The range in age was very tight:  the youngest were Charles Scharf (age 45), head of retail-banking operations at J.P. Morgan Chase, and Dave Donatelli (age 45), an executive VP at Hewlett-Packard, while the oldest was Eric Wiseman (age 55), CEO at VF Corporation. 

Here is the breakdown by age:

45 -   2

46 -   1

47  -  1

49  -  1

50 -   1

51 -    1

52 -   1

54 -   1

55 -   1

That is a mean age of 49.4 years.  So, you do not have to be old have talent, and perhaps wisdom.  That is promising.

What is disapponting?  Nine of the ten are caucasian.  Nine of the ten are men.

Maybe we have made progress on age, but if these are representative of the pool of “fresh executive talent,” we have not come very far on other aspects of corporate diversity.

What do you think?  Let’s talk about it really soon!

All about white papers: An interview of Michael A. Stelzner by Bob Morris

Michael A. Stelzner

Stelzner is author of the popular book Writing White Papers:  How to Capture Readers and Keep Them Engaged and has written more than 100 white papers for corporations such as Microsoft, HP, SAP, Motorola, FedEx, Monster and Cardinal Health. He is also the executive editor of the 20,000-reader WhitePaperSource Newsletter. Click here to visit his website.

Note: The following interview was conducted two years ago.

Morris: What’s the background on white papers? Were they not originally government documents?

Stelzner: That is correct.  They started in Parliament way back in the early 1900s.  The most popular white paper was the Winston Churchill white paper.  It addressed political conflict in Palestine.  Here’s how the phrase “white paper” came about.  When political figures needed to rush an argument to the floor, they had no time to bind it in a traditional hardcover.  Rather, they simply wrapped these urgent documents in white paper.  Today, most white papers still take a persuasive stance or position on a topic, idea or theory.

Morris: At what point did business applications of the white paper seem to begin? Why?

Stelzner: They became very popular with the advent of technical products.  By the 1990s, most engineers would have been familiar with the term white paper.  Analysts firms such as IDC and Gartner Group adopted the term to describe the reports they were publishing.  More recently, say since 2000, many white papers were designed to describe the business advantages of adopting a new idea or product.

Morris: How do you explain their popularity in the business world?

Stelzner: Most businesses use white papers to cut through the marketing noise.  White papers are often sought after to help people make decisions.  Because they are typically used in the research stage of a sale, they are excellent lead generation tools.  The need to establish credibility and trust is also accomplished with a white paper.  The latest research about white papers and how businesses use them can be found on my blog by clicking here.

Morris: What are the most common business uses of white papers?

Stelzner: There are really three primary uses.  To establish thought leadership (positioning a company or product as the lead dog), to generate leads (providing quality prospects for salespeople) or to help close a sale (by describing how a product or technology works).

Morris: Now let’s focus on your brilliant book, Writing White Papers. In your opinion, what are the essentials of an effective white paper?

Stelzner: The standard business benefits white paper starts with a quick introduction of the problem and solution faced by the ideal reader.  A market driven discussion typically follows and examines trends in the market that reveal a need. A problems section should address the challenges faced by the ideal reader when he or she does not have a solution similar to yours in place.  When introducing a solution, it is best to use generic concepts.  Rather than mentioning a product name, introduce the category it falls in.  For example, rather than “Motorola’s Bluetooth Car Kit,” lead with something like “wireless automotive solutions.”

A “what to look for” list could be used to focus on key considerations when seeking a solution.  The specific solution should only touch on the high-level advantages of your solution, rather than hitting the reader over the head with excessive details that belong in a different document.  The conclusion should include a clear call to action, such as a web address that readers can visit for additional information.

Morris: Here’s a related question. What qualifications are required of those who write white papers?

Stelzner: A white paper usually persuades AND informs.  It is a cross between an article and a brochure.  This means the ideal writer has mastered the art of persuasion AND informing.  On the dichotomy of writers, the white paper writer sits between the ad copywriter and the manual writer.  This is an art that can be learned.  My book, Writing White Papers, spends a lot of time educating folks on how to master this form of writing, regardless of their background.

Morris: In recent years, much has been written about the business narrative that utilizes various elements of “storytelling.” To what extent (if any) are these same elements relevant to white papers?

Stelzner: Honestly, white papers are really not close to stories.  They differ from the case study.  Rather they are documents that are typically skimmed.  This means the reader need not read the entire document to get the essence of its message.   For writers that are used to verbose styles of writing, they will need to work on making their messages crisp and relevant.

Morris: How do white papers differ from other forms of communication such as newsletters and so-called “e-zines”?

Stelzner: White papers share very little in common with any other forms of writing.  They are the longest document in the marketing arsenal and they are the least understood when it comes to crafting them well.

Morris: To what extent (if any) should white papers that appear only in print differ from those that appear only online? Are there situations in which the same white paper is featured both in print and online?

Stelzner: The same theory applies to white papers regardless of the medium.  Today, white papers are predominately distributed as electronic documents.  The value here is fast delivery and the ability to be quickly passed around.  Because readers have a few seconds to decide to read a white paper, a compelling title and opening paragraphs are critical.

Morris: Please share your thoughts about the use of white papers as a marketing resource.

Stelzner: Often a white paper will work its way across the desks of an organization in a way that no other document could ever hope to achieve.  White papers are able to fly under the radar and penetrate most organizations’ anti-marketing defenses because they are sought after and brought into the organization by decision-makers.  If they are well-written, white papers will not only reach their target, they will influence them. White papers can be very persuasive marketing tools.  When a good white paper lands in front of the right person, it is a highly effective lead generation and sales instrument.  Research indicates that IT executives examine an average of 30 white papers each year, that nearly 90 percent of executives find white papers helpful or extremely helpful and more than half claim white papers influence their buying decisions.

Morris: You have carefully explained what a white paper is. What is it not…or at least what should it not be expected to be?

Stelzner: A white paper is not an ad.  A white paper is not a manual.  White papers do not fully substitute for direct human contact.  While many businesses produce white papers to create virtual salespeople, it is important to remember that a good white paper must be combined with a well-planned marketing plan.  White papers are super-weapons for marketing.  However, if they are simply posted on your website, they will have no value.  Be sure to get your white papers in front of prospects.

Morris: One final question. Looking ahead (let’s say) 3-5 years, do you think the popularity of white papers will increase, decrease, or remain about the same? Why?

Stelzner: The use of white papers is exploding.  In 2001, a Google™ search on the phrase white papers returned a mere 1 million responses.   By 2006, that number was a whopping 329 million!  I expect as it becomes harder to persuade people, white papers will become even more popular.

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Those who wish to obtain a free booklet from Stelzner about writing white papers are invited to click here.

 

Five Beliefs that Inhibit Good Design

Deepa Prahalad

Here is an excerpt from an article written by Deepa Prahalad for the Harvard Business Review blog. To read the complete article, check out other articles and resources, and/or sign up for a free subscription to Harvard Business Review’s Daily Alerts, please click here.

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There are plentiful examples today of companies using design to create value for consumers and shareholders. Despite the growing interest in design across industries, there are also persistent misconceptions that keep many business leaders from realizing its potential in their organizations. Here are the most common ones:

1. Quality is more important than design in my business. Quality is important in every business and always will be. However, quality is the price of entry in many industries and it’s rarely enough to win market share and loyal consumers.

There’s a persistent belief in a trade-off between style and substance. In reality, design is a way of conveying quality. Data suggest that companies gain the luxury to focus on design when they have mastered quality, distribution, and understand their markets well enough to create a relevant offering. Google, Coca Cola, HP, Procter & Gamble—are just a few examples of firms that are high design and high performance.

What’s true in the lives of individuals applies to companies as well—when you’re exhausted, overwhelmed or confused about what to do next, you never look your best. Consumers look at a dirty store, picked-over merchandise and bad service and come to the same conclusions. Good design is like putting on a suit for an interview—it shows the other person that you care about the relationship.

2. It is more important for me to offer a great price than a great design. Some great designs and brands do cost more, but there is no absolute correlation between price and design. Great design exists at all price points. Some of the best-known examples are companies such as Target, IKEA and LEGO that offer goods in a budget-conscious segment. The pattern continues with the Top 20 global brands, which include luxury retailers but also accessible goods and services like Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Google and Gillette.

More importantly, some of the most innovative designs today were created with affordability and scarcity in mind. The Tata Nano, the award-winning portable ECG machine from GE and One Laptop per Child were just a few notable efforts that challenged assumptions about price-performance relationships and generated design buzz. The push for sustainability across industries is likely to amplify this trend.

3. I would like to have a great design, but I have to launch on time. Design by definition must include execution. Focusing on design forces an organization to test ideas, synthesize feedback, and generate new concepts at a rapid pace. Historically, designers were brought in at the end of the launch process—and creating concepts under intense pressure is still the norm.

Look at the many of the companies that are strongly associated with design today. Apple, P&G, Target, Amazon, LEGO and others expand their portfolios and launch products more frequently than their peers. Design efforts don’t slow down product launches. Indecision does. A widely shared set of decision criteria around design can make the process more efficient.

4. Design and aesthetics are too subjective—I need data to make decisions. Although great design speaks to a consumer’s needs and emotions, there is no single aesthetic that companies must drive toward. Consistency between the brand values and the physical design is what creates a superior consumer experience. BMW, Honda and Hyundai have deep consumer loyalty with very different looks and features. Moreover, design priorities are based in actual data. Consumer testing and feedback can be achieved at low cost today with the Internet and social media.

5. I will create the product or service; I trust the advertising experts to tell the story. The worlds of brand, advertising and design are rapidly converging. Well-crafted marketing and branding can boost the impact of a great design, but unless the message is reinforced by real-world experience, the effect is usually temporary.

In the best cases, the design itself can become the advertisement. Some familiar success stories—Dyson, FlipCam, the iPod, Method—illustrate this point beautifully. These designs fuel demand and propel brand loyalty. It’s no accident that great companies often have great ad campaigns and use social media effectively—they are leveraging the same deep understanding of the consumer.
Business leaders don’t need to go to design school to bring great design into their companies. They need to remember bring their own core skills—listening to consumers, asking questions, and openness to new ideas—into the design process. Design doesn’t work in a vacuum—it’s the alignment with the right business model and service that creates a compelling consumer experience. Getting to great design requires looking at consumers, not competing products, more thoughtfully.

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Deepa Prahalad is a strategy consultant and co-author (with Ravi Sawhney) of Predictable Magic: Unleash the Power of Design Strategy to Transform Your Business, published by Wharton School Publishing (2010).

Interview: Andrew Hargadon

Andrew Hargadon

Hargadon is the Charles J. Soderquist Chair in Entrepreneurship and Professor of Technology Management at the Graduate School of Management at University of California, Davis and a Senior Fellow at the Kauffman Foundation. Prior to his academic appointment, he worked as a product designer at IDEO and Apple Computer and taught in the Product Design program at Stanford University. His research focuses on the effective management of innovation, and he has written extensively on knowledge and technology brokering, the role of learning and knowledge management in innovation, and the strategic role of design in managing technology transitions. His research has been used to develop or guide new innovation programs in organizations as diverse as the Canadian Health Services, Silicon Valley start-ups, Hewlett-Packard, and the U.S. Navy. His most recent book is How Breakthroughs Happen: The Surprising Truth About How Companies Innovate, published by Harvard Business School Press in 2003. At UCal Davis, he teaches corporate executive programs and gives lectures on the creativity, design, and the management of innovation.

Morris: You co-authored with Robert Sutton an article, “Building an Innovation Factory,” that appeared in the Harvard Business Review. Can innovation be manufactured?

Hargadon: No single innovation can be manufactured meaning specified in advance and built to spec but the process of innovation can, like the process of manufacturing, be systematized and, as a number of companies have demonstrated, result in the continuous production of innovations. The challenge for anyone interested in organizing for such continuous innovation capabilities is in looking past the “novelty” of the innovation process and its association with great ideas and heroic inventors. In the same way that craft production and a reliance on individual artisans gave way to industrial production 200 years ago, we’re finding ways to make the process of generating innovative ideas less dependent on the individual genius. Or, more accurately, we’re finding ways to appreciate how the innovative process depends less on individuals and more on the networks that surround them.

Morris: In the same article, you and Sutton discuss what you characterize as a “knowledge brokering.” What specifically does this on-going process consist of?

Hargadon: The knowledge brokering process describes how breakthrough innovations are put together in organizations. More specifically, it describes how those innovations that revolutionize product and service categories, markets, and even entire industries, are rarely built from scratch. Indeed, they are rarely the first appearance of a new technology. Instead, such breakthroughs are the result of moving existing ideas from where they were known to where they are not. From Edison to Ford to modern innovations coming from 3M, HP, and Apple, revolutionary products and processes come from the recombination of existing ideas. The research that identified the knowledge brokering process revealed how these innovations came from the deliberate cultivating of networks that enabled firms to see what technologies already existed, even in vastly different industries and applications, to recognize the opportunities to bring them together, and to build the new networks in which these new combinations could thrive.