Ray Attiyah: An interview by Bob Morris

Ray Attiyah is an entrepreneur, innovator, and author as well as founder & CIO of Definity Partners (a training, process and leadership improvement firm who works primarily with mid-sized manufacturing companies). As the son of a math teacher Ray was raised to be a life-long learner, taught to think and not take everything at face value. As exemplified by his parent’s upbringing and careers he learned that anything is possible and one can maintain simplicity in all things done. Ray’s innovative entrepreneurial spirit combined with his passion to share his knowledge and experience with others gave him the boldness to start a company more than 17 years ago, at the young age of 26, and over a dozen additional businesses since then; the ability to create and develop the tools, processes and systems needed to implement his approach known as Run Improve Grow™; the expertise to then adapt his approach to meet the needs of any business; and the creativity to now put into words in his first book, The Fearless Front Line: The Key to Liberating Leaders to Improve and Grow Their Business, the essence of what it will take for any organization to achieve a lifetime of sustainable growth!

Here is an excerpt from my interview of him.

To read the complete interview, please click here.

* * *

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

Attiyah: My dad and my kids. My father was a phenomenal teacher. He never treated me like a child, rather a small person. He taught to how to think, not memorize. My dad’s passion for teaching was evident, he genuinely enjoyed his job, and it had a positive influence on my life. His optimistic outlook, the ability to see the good in everyone, desire to help people impacted me guides my actions daily. As I watch my kids grow I see their curiosity, their unique talents emerge, I have gained a new outlook. They help me grow in ways they will never realize, not just as a father but as a person. Their curiosity, ability to be fearless at such a young age shows me that we all had this capability in us at one point in our life and it is possible to recapture it.

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

Attila: Working for Johnson & Johnson, Endo-Ethicon Surgery division. I had the ability to experience, first hand, an organization grow from a mid-sized family owned business to a global leader by questioning everything. They had a “what will it take” attitude, which allowed them to explore opportunities with a bold and professional approach. This taught me that anything can be done if you can harness the power of people and create an environment to succeed.


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.

Attiyah: My epiphany came when I was a 3rd shift supervisor/engineer at Ethicon. By spending more time developing my top-performers, it increased their performance and enjoyment at work; brining the organization up to entirely new level of excellence. Top-performers have much more potential, more than they even realized, if you can remove their obstacles and roadblocks.

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

Attiyah: My education provided me the foundation for what I do every day. My undergraduate degree is in Industrial Engineering, which is the science that connects people and systems together. I connect management systems; the way we works, the processes, the equipment, and the technology with human talent & their behaviors. As business engineers, we set up the systems that allow people to behave and succeed. When people fail to do this, we must look back at the systems we developed and make adjustments.

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

Attiyah: Too many decisions are made in silos. I have learned that everything we do happens in a system, nothing happens independently. It is important that everyone sees the whole system and is educated on their role and it affects the system. Someone in engineering needs to see how they impact marketing; front line employees see how they impact strategy and so on. It is important to do this in a simple and memorable way that shows them the connection to the work they do and how it affects the customer. I also learned that operational objectives should not be the ultimate objective. The focus should be on making proactive improvements that allow your workforce to be focused on bold and innovative growth.

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

Attiyah: The movie that stands out for me is Hoosiers. The movie is about a new coach that comes in to try to get the current team to work together. The movie focuses on the critical need for team work. The coach is criticized by many but sticks to his principles and does what is right, not popular. He teaches his team to focus on specific behaviors, not the end result. If they execute their specific playbook then the results are just an outcome. He cared about how his players acted and their character and refused to allow individuals to undermine the team’s success.



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

Attiyah: Encyclopedia Brown, Boy Detective. It taught me that you have to be curious. Nothing is as obvious as it appears, you have to dig deeper and get past the surface. When I look at business and am told by someone that they have a problem with something like quality or morale; you have to dig deeper to the root of the problem to discover what is really going on. When you dig deeper on an issue like poor morale you can get to the root cause; like lacking of system for selecting front line supervisors, and you can truly address that issue.

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.”

Attiyah: People take ownership of what they create. When a person takes ownership to something they will work hard to make it work. It may not be perfect in at first but they will take pride in it and perfect it. We all have natural talents. I believe we need to understand what people’s strengths are and build on. I believe the best leaders are those that can tap into peoples individual strengths, bring them together to create something they couldn’t create on their own.

* * *

To read the complete interview, please click here.

Ray cordially invite(s) you to check out the resources at these websites:

www.beyoubefearless.com

www.definitypartners.com

@rayattiyah on twitter

Leon M. Hielkema: An interview by Bob Morris

Leon M. Hielkema has more than 15 years of international experience in developing, executing, and evaluating strategic change projects. He has successfully coached many internal professionals over the years and is a featured speaker and trainer. His book, Strategic Management SPOMP, was awarded finalist in the “Best New Business Book” category of the 2012 USA Best Book Awards, received an honorable mention in the New England Book Festival 2012, and was named a finalist in the Business category of the 2013 Next Generation Indie Book Awards. With his book, he gives new, refreshing insights on how to successfully effect change in complex organizations. It approaches change projects in a fundamentally different way. It does not focus on the project management technique, but on the process of influencing and persuading people. In other words, the focus is on actively creating support and buy-in by “seducing” stakeholders into the change that needs to be achieved.

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

* * *

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

Hielkema: This might surprise you. A very important business principle is expressed in the movie The Karate Kid. Remember that he meets this old Japanese guy whose favorite hobby is growing bonsai trees? He tells Karate Kid to paint his fence and to wax his car…. ”Wax on Wax off.” Karate Kid started doing these chores without knowing “why” he had to do them. After a while he felt like a handyman for the old man. He questioned the purpose of these chores, so he quit his duties. He first wanted to know what it had to do with his quest to learn karate.

This scene shows that people will work for (or with) you if you explain them “why” something needs to be done. Karate Kid needed to do these chores to train his defensive techniques. He learned that this was the starting point for becoming a karate master. After Karate Kid was told the goal, he started waxing and painting even harder, since he was motivated to perform.

The business lesson here is that you can get things done if you explain to people “why” they have to change their opinion, attitude, working method, or daily routine. The most important mistake leaders make is to leave out the “why” and tell/order people “what to do.” But just like the old Japanese guy, you will be much more effective if you convince people first of the “why of the change” and subsequently “what you need them to do.”

Why I like this particular scene of the movie is because it manages to explain a complex principle in its most basic form, in just a few minutes. Leadership, running for senate, project managers, CEOs, MBA students, change agents, all thrive on how to explain the “why” and win people over. You need to convince your team “why” their zealous is necessary. And you have to convince your stakeholders “why” they have to change their behavior or attitude. From this point onward you can start telling them “what to do”. Strategic Management SPOMP helps you to strategically design a communications strategy to influence the client, internal users, and other stakeholders and seduce them to follow your lead, or as Lao-Tzu’s Tao Te Ching puts it:

“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.”

Also your quotes from Voltaire: “Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it,” Oscar Wilde: “Be yourself. Everyone else is taken,” and Albert Einstein: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them,” I can very much relate to.

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

Hielkema: Delegating work is complex because it only feels good if you have trust that your subordinates will do as well as yourself. C-level execs are having a difficult time delegating work because they are difficult to support. The C-suite should train their staff to not only come up with a solution, but also with a plan or strategy on how to implement this solution in daily practice. Explain the ‘why” behind it (like a storyteller as you eloquently put it) in order to energize them to change the way they are used doing things. Reach out to your staff members and guide them through this change process. Tell them to SPOMP their projects!

Morris: So I’m right to believe that most of the material could also be of substantial value to residents of the C-Suite?

Hielkema: Can’t agree more. Besides comments on the scope of my book I also received many comments on its applicability to higher management levels in an organization. Furthermore, I received several enthusiastic comments from less experienced project and change managers, saying the five SPOMP strategies should become part of their basic training. In practice the book seems to work for different disciplines, on all levels within an organization.

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

Hielkema: Resistance is indeed cultural in nature. People simply do not like to change their behavior, attitude, or working method. This is because most people do not like to exchange a safe and familiar way of working for an unknown one. Even if you show them the imperfections of the current situation and the benefits of the new situation, the majority of people will still be reluctant to change.

In order to avoid resistance and built support and buy-in, project managers and change managers ought to communicate with stakeholders as soon as the project commences. Communicate about the project’s ultimate goal and via which process the team is planning to reach that goal. This gives stakeholders the opportunity to first get accustomed to the “why” of the change. As soon as they are convinced of the “why,” then you can seduce them to think constructively on “how” to implement this change. Consciously making this U-turn from “why change” to “how to change” with stakeholders will create much more support and buy-in for the change you want to achieve.

Morris: In recent years, there has been criticism, sometimes severe criticism of M.B.A. programs, even those offered by the most prestigious business schools. In your opinion, in which area is there the great need for immediate improvement? Any suggestions?

Hielkema: MBA programs should not only focus on developing the theoretical best solution, but should take it to the next level, that is, strategies and plans to implement this solution in daily practice.

To read the complete interview, please click here.

* * *

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

His homepage

His Amazon page

His blog

.

For interesting tweets on strategic project management, change management, office politics, and how to successfully implement organizational and behavioral change, please check here.

http://www.twitter.com/seducestakehold.

He also invites you to be friends on Facebook, Google, and LinkedIn

He’s looking forward to hearing from you!

Lewis Schiff: Part 2 of an interview by Bob Morris

Lewis Schiff is the executive director of Inc. Business Owners Council, a membership organization for Inc. Magazine’s top entrepreneurs and owners of closely-held family businesses and maintains a blog about behavioral entrepreneurship on Inc.com.

His new book, Business Brilliant: Surprising Lessons from the Greatest Self-Made Business Icons, which focuses on the wealth-creating behaviors and attitudes that work best in the new economy, was published by Harper Collins in March 2013.

Schiff has co-authored two books: The Influence of Affluence: How The Rich Are Changing America charts the rise of America’s growing affluent middle-class through original research and analysis. The Armchair Millionaire describes a wealth-creation system that leverages Nobel-Prize winning methodologies.

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

* * *

Morris: When and why did you decide to write Business Brilliant?

Schiff: I believe that people can be more successful than they already are. They can put themselves in the path of money and luck and success more. They can derive more pleasure by honing in on what they’re best at. They can uplift and educate themselves by cultivating better social networks. But most don’t. They just don’t know how to do it. So, I wrote Business Brilliant with the plainest of intentions and with the simplest of missions: first identify what very successful people do to be successful. Then show “regular” people what they do in the same instances. Then identify the gap between these two behavior patterns and finally show them how they can make changes to their behavior to better emulate the outcomes of successful people. Pretty simple, really.

Look, if you’re a middle-class person today, you have two choices. You can cloak yourself in the narrative shared by most of the middle-class who ask for protection from all the institutions around them (business, government, Wall Street) in exchange for conformity. Or, you can take steps to improve your own situation so you can help your family, your friends and yourself achieve something better, something bigger. In the course of doing so, you may affect the whole world in a positive way. Or maybe just your neighborhood. Either way, there’s value in accurately identifying the macro issues that define your situation but there’s no value in stopping there. Whenever I spend time with entrepreneurs or those just starting out, after we’ve talked and learned something from one another, I ask one question: What are you going to do about it?

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

Schiff: There were a lot of head-snapping revelations but here’s a big one: very successful people have a way of cultivating networks that is very nuanced yet very powerful. They want to know people who know people. That sounds simple enough but actually, within that simple statement comes a premise that leads not only to a lot of their own success but to the phenomenon of luck. It’s hard to explain in any brief way but here’s how the most successful networks work: you have strong relationships with a few people, maybe five to six. And I mean “strong.” (Since these are business relationships, I’ll focus on money…do you know what they are worth? How much they want to be worth in one year or five years? Do you know how much money they want to make this year? If so, how much have they made?).

Those people need similar networks. So, if you have a strong relationship with five people and they have a strong relationship with five people and those five have similar relationships, that puts the number in your network at 125 people. The next part is a function called “transitivity” which is a measure of how many people in your network already know each other. The less, the better.

Put these two together and you have the environment in which “luck” can take place. For example, you hear of a person who wants to open a new store town and you know a person who wants to rent out a retail space. You are now in a position to be the connector between these two people who both need each other but don’t know each other. That’s what luck looks like. Now imagine doing that on a grand scale. Steve Jobs knew the kinds of creative people who wanted tools to take their creativity farther and he knew the engineers who could build those tools. But those engineers didn’t consort with those creative people. Steve Jobs was the nexus. He saw the opportunity and he turned himself and Apple into the tollbooth between these two groups. That’s how the best people network.

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

Schiff: Well, I’m happy to say that when I go into these projects, I really don’t know the answers to the questions the book poses. If we’re lucky, we find those answers and a good book comes out of it. That being said, I started the book coincidentally at the beginning of the Great Recession and it came out as we are (arguably) emerging from that Great Recession. So, the urgency for the book increased considerably. The very trends that were started in the 1970s-90s, such as globalization and technology have been hastened by The Great Recession. Nowadays, most of the innovation capital (people and money) is going towards productivity innovation. That means that anyone who has a good idea which can get work done faster and with fewer resources is going to get a lot of attention. That’s bad for the middle- and working classes. It’s a trend that’s been happening for years but now it’s simply irrefutable. You’d have to have your head in the sand to not realize that becoming Business Brilliant (learning how to emulate the practices of those who have had great success in this extremely disruptive economy) is not only a way to aspire to a great goal, for many, it’s a path to solvency and survival.

Morris: For those about to read the book, who is Russ Prince and what is his special significance to the material that you provide?

Schiff: While I said that I don’t know the answers to the questions before I started Business Brilliant, Russ Prince did. Russ and I spent a lot of time together at the beginning of the book. He tells me — TELLS ME — he doesn’t converse with me — how rich people think. He knows this because he works with them all the time and because his greatest skill set is empathizing with that population. And so, when he tells me how rich people operate and think and think differently than everyone else, I am hearing practically a divine truth (yes, I’m a big Prince fan, Russ Prince!). But what we don’t know when we start the book is how we can successfully tell that story to the middle class. Russ doesn’t think you can. He’s worked with regular people long enough to know that they don’t get “it” — they don’t understand what the self-made wealthy do. He may be right but my aspirations weren’t so lofty. I thought that everyone who reads Business Brilliant could do better financially, professionally, than they are doing. Just a little better. Maybe even more than a little better.

But if you are that just right person who really wants to be very wealthy and is willing to do anything (legal) to get there, you should come to Russ with a briefcase full of cash and ask him to help you. He can do it. For two reasons, he only does it with people who are already wealthy — first, they can afford him and second, they’ve proven they have what it takes to reach a goal. So, for the client who has $200 million and wants $1 billion, Russ can help them because they’ve already tested their mettle. For the person who has $200,000 and wants $1 million? Even if you became a pro-bono client of Russ’ (no such thing exists and here’s why), you’d probably not be able to implement his ideas. You’d probably be too afraid to disrupt or risk what you already have. For Russ’ clients, staying at $200 million is the big risk they can’t afford to take. They have to keep going.

Still, he is the sage of all sages when it comes to wealth creation. And reading Business Brilliant is about as close as most of us will ever get to him.

To read all of Part 2, please click here.

To read Part 1, please click here.

* * *

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

The Inc. Business Owners Council home page

Lewis’ Inc. articles link

His Amazon page

Business Brilliant page

Lewis Schiff: Part 1 of an interview by Bob Morris

Lewis Schiff is the executive director of Inc. Business Owners Council, a membership organization for Inc. Magazine’s top entrepreneurs and owners of closely-held family businesses and maintains a blog about behavioral entrepreneurship on Inc.com.

His new book, Business Brilliant: Surprising Lessons from the Greatest Self-Made Business Icons, which focuses on the wealth-creating behaviors and attitudes that work best in the new economy, was published by Harper Collins in March 2013.

Schiff has co-authored two books: The Influence of Affluence: How The Rich Are Changing America charts the rise of America’s growing affluent middle-class through original research and analysis. The Armchair Millionaire describes a wealth-creation system that leverages Nobel-Prize winning methodologies.

Here is Part 1 of my interview of him. To read the complete interview, please click here.

* * *

Morris: Before discussing Business Brilliant in Part 2, a few general questions. First, who has had the greatest influence on your personal growth? How so?

Schiff: I would have to say that my mother’s entrepreneurial perspective, and that of her father’s, are very evident in my own outlook. I would add a twist to that. As members of a minority, one that was often persecuted, that entrepreneurial perspective was burnished with a sense of “outsider” status–so not only were we committed to finding our own way of achieving success, we also grew up to believe that we’d have to fight to get whatever we wanted.

The thing is, I grew up in a modern business environment and did not experience the kind of prejudice that my mother and grandfather experienced. So, my fighting spirit has often seemed out of place. Still, it formed one of my basic beliefs about success which is this: most of the time, success can be measured in terms of how much more than others you have of something that’s in short supply. This includes money, reputation, respect, etc. So, I’ve always wanted to get my share but, due to my tendency to overcompensate (work harder, push for the win more), I’ve ended up with more than my fair share. These are some of the life lessons I’ve drawn from watching my mother and grandfather struggle in the world compared to my own struggles.

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

Schiff: Harkening back to a story about my grandfather, I was lucky to attend a great high school in New York, Bronx High School of Science, which has produced more Nobel prize winners than any other high school in America. But, I was never going to be one of them. By the time I entered this prestigious high school, my interest in formal education had already been exhausted. In the summer between my freshman and sophomore year, my grandfather got me a job at a local messenger company working on Wall Street. I was lucky enough to have been in the business during a stock market boom but just before the fax machine appeared on the scene, let alone email and the Internet. As a result, the messenger business was booming. I got to carve through the streets of New York’s financial district and discover the awesome feeling of being part of a system where, the harder you worked, the more of those scarce resources you earned! I never looked back. While I did complete high school, I would have to say that it was by the skin of my teeth. My education ever since then has been one that I got “on the job” and I consider myself a very well-educated person at this point!

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.

Schiff: OK, so let me reverse course a bit on my last statement. I did in fact take a couple of classes at my local college here in NYC. But I did it unwillingly and without enthusiasm. That is until a protest broke out in the streets around campus against rising tuition costs. Because my college was a local college, it had a historic role in educating minorities and the tuition increase was viewed as an obstacle to creating more opportunity for minorities. I threw myself info the protests with all my heart. Ultimately, a group of us barricaded ourselves in the school for about three weeks so we brought the running of the campus to a halt.

During that time, I began writing and designing the propaganda that we distributed to the students who we were trying to convince to join us. I found that I loved producing that kind of propaganda and I loved the power that a few students with a Macintosh computer could wield. I was hooked on communications at that point. I went to work at political consulting firms, graphic design and communications firms and ultimately, magazines. Today, my career is in the media business. And more specifically, I’m in the “words” side of the business as opposed to video or music. There is a direct line between the communications work I did to protest tuition increases at my school and what I do today. Plus it had one other benefit…it got me kicked out of college!

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

Schiff: See above (Ha!)

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

Schiff: The answer to this question is the very same question that I explored in the beginning of my book, Business Brilliant. When done right, working is a series of decisions that you make which allow you to refine and refine and refine your highest and best use. Ultimately, if you are lucky, you will find out where you belong. When I started out, I wanted to have everything solved by the time I was 30. That didn’t happen. Instead, I realized that the journey is the destination, that the work I’m doing today gets me one step closer to the work I should be doing tomorrow. And that the way I learn this is by trying, failing, networking and experimenting. I’ll stop doing that when I’m dead.

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

Schiff: I don’t know if you hear this often but I would say The Razor’s Edge (loosely based on a great W. Somerset Maugham novel). This was Bill Murray’s first dramatic role so everyone thought he stunk in this deep character but I thought he and the movie were great. The movie takes place over decades so you see Murray’s character go from goofy playboy all the way to wiser, older person. It’s basically a movie version of the journey I described above in my previous answer. The journey is the destination.

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

Schiff: Because I work with entrepreneurs who own businesses, I have found Doug Tatum’s No Man’s Land to be a really helpful body of working knowledge. It’s very applicable to most businesses that have the usual problems of growing businesses–managing people, capital, markets, etc. On a personal side, I found Bo Burlingham’s Small Giants to be a great window into how business can be an extension of social change and the critical role the entrepreneur plays in creating progress in society.

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.”

Schiff: I don’t buy it. I believe that only a subset of us is meant to lead. The rest want to follow. That being said, everyone of us can move a big step farther towards determining the direction of our own lives. We can all break free from group think. Some more than others. Most don’t. Finding out who is who is great fun.

* * *

To read all of Part 1, please click here.

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

The Inc. Business Owners Council home page

Lewis’ Inc. articles link

His Amazon page

Business Brilliant page

David Wethey: An interview by Bob Morris

After graduating in PPE from Jesus College, Oxford, David Wethey joined AC Nielsen in 1965, where he presented Marketing Research to leading marketing companies. However, the London agency world beckoned and in 1968 David joined Pritchard Wood (the birthplace of account planning). Subsequently he moved within Interpublic to Wasey Campbell-Ewald, and then McCann-Erickson, where he was appointed to various international management posts including MD in Portugal and then Malaysia.

In 1978 he returned to the UK as Deputy MD of Harrison McCann. A year later he left IPG to head Royds, then an independent UK agency with two offices (London and Manchester) in the top 20. In 1981 he set up Wethey Scott Pocock, which had grown to £18 million in billings by the time he sold the agency. In 1988 He set up Agency Assessments International, the first impartial agency search and relationship consultancy in the UK, which he has now run for 25 years.

A frequent lecturer and writer, David has most recently written Decide (Feb 2013), a book on all aspects of decision making — and how to do it better.

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

* * *

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

Wethey: My history teacher at school, John Todd. He told me, ‘just because somebody has written a book, it doesn’t make it true’. That was the point (and I was 16) when I realised that my opinion and views were potentially worth as much as those of the ‘experts’. Now that I write myself, I know just how wise John Todd was!

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

Wethey: My first boss at AC Nielsen, Jimmy Loughray, who taught me to respect data, but not to be controlled by it. He was an academic statistician turned business adviser. He gave me the courage to tell powerful clients unpalatable truths. He also showed me that there ways to do it, and not do it – and also times either to question data or question the interpretation of it.

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.

Wethey: It was literally a car crash. I always planned to teach, and I was on my way to a final interview at a school called Shiplake College near Henley in Oxfordshire when my car skidded and hit a truck. By the time I recovered I had received the offer to compete for a graduate traineeship at Nielsen. That was my entry into the marketing world – and there I have stayed

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

Wethey: Hugely. At school I studied classics (Latin and Greek, with a smattering of slightly more modern languages). This fuelled my desire to travel and communicate. I have been lucky enough to carry out projects and assignments in 40 countries. At Oxford University, I graduated in Philosophy, Politics and Economics – almost literally vocational training for a life in advertising!

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

Wethey: How counterproductive most meetings are. When I came to write Decide I realised that meetings are hopeless as decision making forums, and many meetings are an almost complete waste of time. I am actively engaged today in a serious deconstruct / reconstruct on meetings

Morris: From which books have you learned the most valuable lessons about business? Please explain.

Wethey: I’ll name two: Hammer and Champy’s Re-Engineering the Corporation, and Russo and Schoemaker’s Decision Traps. I was very engaged in the 90’s on a big (and frustratingly unproductive) quest to persuade ad agencies to re-engineer. I think agency re-engineering is finally going to happen in this decade. From 2002 I embarked on a voyage of discovery in decision science, which has taken me to where I am today. I could not have found more inspiring books to get me going.

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.”

Wethey: Very appropriate as we move in advertising from the traditional post-military command and control model to what is politely known as ‘orchestrating consumer conversations’. It is heady stuff, but still scary for marketers, admen and humble consultants who grew up in the old world

Morris: Next, from Voltaire: “Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.”

Wethey: I’m not sure Voltaire would say that today. In the eighteenth century when writing consisted largely of sitting at a desk and thinking, truth was a relative concept. It was difficult to prove it or disprove it. Now with Google, Wikipedia and a billion sources of information on the web, there’s no barrier to discovering the truth – or what passes for it

Morris: And then, from Oscar Wilde: “Be yourself. Everyone else is taken.”

Wethey: So true. But I do worry about the narcissism in Facebook, LinkedIn, and other social networking sites. Wilde was a stand-out character in a world where most people never travelled more than a few miles from their birthplace, and were only known in a tiny milieu. In 2013 in big countries like the US and UK there are literally millions of “people brands” jockeying for prominence on the freeway, mass transit or airport check-in. ‘Be yourself’ is in danger of being redundant advice

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

Wethey: That is a very subtle point. Strictly speaking we don’t create problems so much as self-diagnose them. Of course he’s right. Solving problems requires creative and often lateral thinking

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

Wethey: I don’t remember if Drucker is credited with inventing the procurement function! But he might have been referring to it here. Of course I am being unfair, but advertising has always been, and will remain, a risk business. Marketing procurement is in danger of treating ideas and campaigns as commodities they can classify and value. It really doesn’t work like that

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?

Wethey: I’m not familiar with the authors, but I totally agree. I actually believe leadership is greatly overrated now almost everyone in an organisation has unlimited access to data, facts and figures. I’m also a big supporter of the ‘ask around’ philosophy. Sadly though the “Great Man” theory is assiduously maintained by journalists who are fascinated by the cult of personality in and about organisations. It makes much better copy to credit a CEO with success or damn him or her for failure, as opposed to recognising the unfortunate truth that a management team of clever people can effortlessly share either glory or ignominy

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

Wethey: Again – how true. Babies only learn to stand up by falling over, and we never get off that iterative learning curve. We just have to hope that our mistakes and those of our bosses and colleagues are recoverable and not fatal

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

Wethey: Three main reasons:

o Fear of being seen not to be in charge
o Fear that others might not be competent enough to be delegated to
o A primitive belief that the buck stops here

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

Wethey: True of entrepreneurs. Not so true, I believe, of managers. In Saras Sarasvathy’s analysis (How Great Entrepreneurs Think) she calls entrepreneurs “effectuals,” and managers “causals.” Entrepreneurs tell stories – it is one of the defining characteristics. I’m not sure her causals are natural storytellers, but it doesn’t stop them from being good leaders

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

Here’s my question: How best to avoid or overcome such resistance?

Wethey: I suppose it is worth asking whether it is universally true that change is good? Often yes. Sometimes no. Comfort is probably a bad reason for opposing a change initiative, but adhering to custom may sometimes be both admirable and a good idea. Equally it can constitute a totally unacceptable degree of conservatism. Taking resisters out of their comfort zone is often essential, because they may be putting their selfish interests ahead of the common good. But is it always justifiable to tell people they have to change, when they want to maintain a status quo on the grounds that ‘we have always done it this way’? Maybe there is a good reason for that particular custom. Ethicists would argue that many values are timeless.

Morris: In recent years, there has been criticism, sometimes severe criticism of M.B.A. programs, even those offered by the most prestigious business schools. In your opinion, in which area is there the greatest need for immediate improvement? Any suggestions?

Wethey: I really regret not having done an MBA. I would have learned a great deal, and probably would have been far more successful – particularly financially, corporately and personally. Having said that, I guess I am biased in believing that MBA courses should spend more time on decision making than they do

Morris: Looking ahead (let’s say) 3-5 years, what do you think will be the greatest challenge that CEOs will face? Any Advice?

Wethey: I don’t think we have to wait 3-5 years. The challenge is there now. It’s called conflict between duty to the shareholders and a score of other pressures within and outside the organisation. I would go so far as to say that the duties and loyalties of a CEO have to be redefined. This is a huge subject. Not a day goes by without some unfortunate CEO being arraigned by the media for a decision that apparently endangers the environment, infringes the tax laws, breaches sustainability guidelines, or offends minority groups. Politicians have had to deal with trial by media for years. But they offered themselves for election, and knew that the public would be their judges. CEOs simply applied for a job and got promoted. Now they have to get used to kangaroo courts as well as scrutiny by non-executive directors, shareholders and analysts.

* * *

To read the complete interview, please click here.

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

Agency Assessments International home page

David’s blog

Marketing Society blog

Amazon UK page for Decide

You can follow David on Twitter: @davidwethey

What You’re Really Meant to Do: A book review by Bob Morris

What You’re Really Meant to Do: A Roadmap for Reaching Your Unique Potential
Robert Steven Kaplan
Harvard Business Review Press (2013)

To paraphrase Walt Whitman, “We are large, we contain multitudes.”

Self-improvement initiatives or, if you prefer, self-fulfillment or self-actualization initiatives, are best viewed as an on-going journey, not as an ultimate destination. Many authors of books about that process invoke the map or road map metaphor, and rightly so, because it implies and (yes) enables all manner of appropriate dimensions of internal as well as external exploration and discovery. This seems to be what Robert Steven Kaplan has in mind when observing, “I have come to believe that the key to achieving your aspirations lies not in ‘being a success’ but rather in working to reach your unique potential. This requires you to create your own definition of success rather than accept a definition created by others…This approach takes courage and hard work. It does not yield easy answers or get you to a final destination. It is, instead, a multistage, lifelong effort. It involves developing a different mind-set and a new set of work habits.”

At this point in my brief commentary, I want to express appreciation of Kaplan’s previous book, What to Ask the Person in the Mirror. Its title refers to anyone who seeks both knowledge and wisdom that will improve quality of life as well as standard of living. What Kaplan offers in abundance is assistance with framing questions that can help to achieve those worthy objectives. Those who read the book will be much better prepared to ask them; better yet, they will be much better prepared to obtain the right answers to them. In this book, as its subtitle suggests, he offers “a road map for reaching your potential,” one that is accompanied by a wealth of information, insights, and counsel as well as self-diagnostic exercises to help his readers determine what they are really meant to be and to do. As Oscar Wilde so wisely advised, “Be yourself. Every one else is taken.” But as Darrell Royal once observed, “Potential” means “you ain’t done it yet.”

These are among the dozens of passages that caught my eye, also listed to indicate the scope of Kaplan’s coverage.

o Who Defines Your Success? (Pages 18-22)
o Five Suggested Rules of the Road (24-30)
o Assessing Your Strengths and Weaknesses (31-37)
o You Don’t Have to Be Good at Everything (56-57)
o The Pursuit of Passion, and, Understanding Your Passions (63-66)
o The Power of Narrative: Three Steps (85-97)
o Being at Your Best (102-105)
o Dealing with a Painful Setback, and, Dealing with Injustice (126-129)
o A Star Wants to Realize His Potential (138-142)
o The Power of an Ownership Mind-Set (149-150)
Note: Our lives tend to be the result of our decisions. There is also great power in taking personal ownership of accountability for those decisions.
o Values, Boundaries, and Your Philosophy, and, Character and Leadership (156-162)
o Try Building Your Relationship Muscles (173-175)
o Creating Supportive Relationships (181-182)
o This Book: It’s About You (196-198)
o Next Steps (201-203)

While reading and then re-reading this book, I was again reminded of many of the observations shared by other authors in their books, notably Rick Warren in The Purpose Driven Life, Bill George in True North, James O’Toole in Creating the Good Life, Randy Pausch in The Last Lecture, and Clayton Christensen in How Will You Measure Your Life? However different they and their works may be from Kaplan and his, all of them — they and he — stress the importance of continuous self-improvement to serve purposes and to achieve goals worthy of our very best efforts. For the title of this review, I chose a paraphrase of Whitman’s line in “Song of Myself” because it correctly suggests almost unlimited potentialities for personal growth and professional development. Robert Steven Kaplan wrote this book to help each of us to fulfill as many of them as we can.

When concluding his book, he observes, “If you follow your own path, I don’t know how much money you will accumulate, how much stature you will achieve, or how many titles you will garner. But if you’re true to your convictions and principles, I know you’re far more likely to feel like a big success. In the end, that feeling will make all the difference.”

Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams: A book review by Bob Morris

Smart Leaders, Smarter Teams: How You and Your Team Get Unstuck to Get Results
Roger Schwarz
Jossey-Bass/A Wiley Imprint (2013)

“Sticks in a bundle are unbreakable.” Kenyan Proverb

The last time I checked, Amazon offers 52,820 books for sale in the category “business teams.” Ironically and paradoxically, we now know a great deal about effectively selecting and leading members of what become high-impact teams and yet most teams either fail or fall far below original (perhaps unrealisitc) expectations. Why? Reasons vary but, more often than not, cultural resistance – especially to change initiatives – proves insurmountable. In Leading Change, James O’Toole suggests that such resistance is usually the result of what he so aptly characterizes as “the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom.”

In this volume, Roger Schwarz shares everything he has learned — from decades of experience — about how to help readers and their teams “get unstuck to get results”…high-impact results. More specifically, he introduces what he characterizes as the “Unilateral Central Mindset” that many team leaders adopt and exemplify. Its values: Be right; Minimize expressions of negative feelings; Act rational; and Win, don’t lose. Its assumptions: I understand the situation and those who disagree don’t; I am right, those who disagree are wrong; I have pure motives, those who disagree have questionable values; I am not contributing to the problem; and My feelings and behavior are justified. Those who possess this mindset are obviously advocates of the Command and Control approach to leadership.

What do to do? Schwarz recommends the “Mutual Learning Approach.” Its values: Transparent Curiosity, Informed Accountability Choice, and Compassion. Its assumptions: I have information but so do other people; Each of us sees things that others don’t; Others may disagree with me and still have pure motives; I may be contributing to the problem; and Differences are opportunities for learning. Those who possess this mindset are presumably advocates for leadership that combines authenticity, intellectual curiosity, humility, and transparency; moreover, it demonstrates highly developed emotional intelligence, moral courage, and integrative decision-making and problem-solving skills.

Whatever their size and nature may be, all organizations need such leadership at all levels and in all areas of the given enterprise. In this context, I am reminded of Tom Davenport’s latest book, Judgment Calls, in which 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.”

These are among the dozens of passages in Schwarz’s book that caught my eye, also shared to suggest the scope of his coverage:

o Why Leaders Stay Stuck (Pages 6-8)
o Changing an Unproductive Mindset (9-17)
o Why Unilateral Control Gets Results You’re Trying to Avoid (26-31)
o Unilateral Control Behavior (33-35)
o Values of the Mutual Learning Mindset (49-67)
o Extending Mutual Learning to the Whole Team (81-85)
o Behavior 5: Focus on Interests, Not Positions (109-115)
o Behavior 8: Discuss Undiscussable Issues (131-140)
o Watch Your Mindset as You Design [a Team] (144-147)
o Team Structure (153-159)
o Team Process (159-164)
o Team Context (165-175)
o Giving Feedback (184-188)
o Beginning the Team Journey (216-222)

I appreciate Schwarz’s skillful use of several reader-friendly devices that include an extensively annotated “Contents” section, Figures (e.g. 2.1, “Core Values and Assumptions of the Unilateral Control Mindset” and 5.3, “Lowering Your Ladder of Inference”), and brief insights throughout the narrative (what I call “business nuggets”) such as “When you operate from the mutual learning mindset and you’re working with people who see things differently from the way you do, the essence of the mindset is simple: I understand some things. So do you. Let’s learn and move forward together.” (Page 23) and “Mutually learning teams expect that when the team makes a decision, everyone agrees to support it through their actions and their voices. Mutual learning teams also encourage members to share their concerns with their direct reports.” (Page 196) Readers will also appreciate summaries of key points at the conclusion of most chapters. These and other devices permit seamless transitions in the narrative flow and will facilitate, indeed expedite re=frequent review of material later.

There are no head-snapping revelations, nor does Roger Schwarz make any such claim. What he does offer are rock-solid information, insights, and counsel that can be of incalculable value to individuals but also to project teams and (especially) to those who lead them. Bravo!

Keith Sawyer: An interview by Bob Morris

Keith Sawyer is one of the world’s leading scientific experts on creativity and innovation. In his first job after graduating from MIT, he designed videogames for Atari. He then worked for six years as a management consultant in Boston and New York, advising large corporations on the strategic use of information technology. He’s been a jazz pianist for over 30 years, and performed with several improv theater groups in Chicago, as part of his research into jazz and improvisational theater.

Previous to Zig Zag: The Surprising Path to Greater Creativity, his books include Group Genius: The Creative Power of Collaboration and Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation, and he has published over 80 scientific articles. Sawyer is a professor of education, psychology, and business at Washington University in St. Louis.

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

* * *

Morris: Who has had the greatest impact on your professional development? How so?

Sawyer: I had so many wonderful mentors and advisors that introduced me to creativity research. When I arrived at the University of Chicago as a doctoral student, I had long been interested in musical and artistic creativity, but I had no idea this was a field of scientific research. When I applied to grad school, I wanted to study conversational dynamics, and I went to University of Chicago to work with the famous linguistic anthropologist, Michael Silverstein. Just by coincidence, my first Fall term on campus, Mike Csikszentmihalyi was teaching a class called “Psychology of Creativity,” and I signed up for it, basically as an elective.

Mike was the one who introduced me to the field and showed me that it was possible to do rigorous empirical study of the creative process. His own dissertation, also at the University of Chicago in the early 1960s, was a study of the creative process of MFA students at the Art Institute of Chicago. For the term project in his class, I interviewed several jazz musicians about their own creative process. Mike liked the paper, and suggested that I revise it and submit it to the Creativity Research Journal. After revision it was accepted, and became my first published journal article, in 1992.

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.

Sawyer: I didn’t start graduate school until I was 30. My undergrad degree was in computer science at MIT, and I worked eight years after college in information technology and software development. My first job, I designed videogames for a small company in Cambridge, MA that did many of Atari’s hit videogames, under contract. Then, I worked six years doing management consulting for big money-center banks. At the age of 29, I was really ready for a change; I had always wanted to return to grad school and become a professor, and the time was right. But I didn’t know what I wanted to study or even what departments to apply to. I knew I wanted to study how people communicate through language; I discovered that scholars study this in linguistics, anthropology, sociology, and psychology.

And as a matter of fact, throughout my career since then, I’ve continued to be very interdisciplinary and this is my own approach to creativity research.

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

Sawyer: I am not one of those people who thinks that schools kill creativity. Teachers and schools taught me so much that I needed to know to do the work I’ve done. My two degrees are from two extremely rigorous environments, MIT and the University of Chicago. What both of these places share is a deep commitment to ideas and inquiry. People really care about getting it right, about what is the truth about a phenomenon. Sometimes people argue, and I mean shouting…just because they really really care about ideas.

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

Sawyer: I knew nothing! I was just a nerdy computer science graduate. And the videogame design company was not corporate at all; it was a small startup company that had all of the features we now associate with Internet startups. In 1982, we had a gourmet chef, we had company-paid vacations to Disneyworld…I got my real education about the business world when I started consulting for big companies like Citicorp and AT&T and US West. My mentor was the company founder, Kenan Sahin, who had been a professor in business at MIT. Thanks to him, I essentially received an MBA education on the job.

* * *

To read the complete interview, please click here.

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

His home page

His blog

Keith’s Amazon page

The Zig Zag page

Huffington Post link

To Save Everything, Click Here: A book review by Bob Morris

To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism
Evgeny Morozov
PublicAffairs/Perseus Books Group (2013)

How and why the inefficiency of “solutionism” is compromising advanced technology

I agree with Evgeny Morozov that a never-ending quest to ameliorate, what Tania Murray LI characterizes as “the will to improve,” has created problems whose disruptive and (yes) destructive impact has been exacerbated by various technologies. Morozov calls this pathology “solutionism.” In Chapter One, he observes, “It’s not only that many problems are not suited to the quick-and-easy solutionist tool kit. It’d also that what many solutionists presume to be ‘problems’ in need of solving are not problems at all; a deeper investigation into the very nature of these ‘problems’ would reveal that the inefficiency, ambiguity, and opacity — whether in politics or everyday life — that the newly empowered geeks and solutionists are rallying against are not in any sense problematic. Quite the opposite: these vices are often virtues in disguise. That, thanks to innovative technologies, the modern-day solutionist has an easy way to eliminate them does not make them any less virtuous.”

Morozov probably knew that this book would generate a great deal of controversy, and it has because he almost gleefully challenges the assumptions and conclusions of what James O’Toole (in Leading Change) characterizes as “the ideology of comfort and the tyranny if custom.” “On the odd chance that this book succeeds, its great contribution to the public debate might lie in the redrawing the front lines of the intellectual battles about digital technologies.”

Morozov seems to divide Internet thinkers (or at least those claim to have thought about it) into two groups. “Those front lines will separate a host of Internet thinkers who are convinced that ‘the Internet’ is a useful analytical category that tells us something important about how the world really works from a group of post-Internet thinkers who see ‘the internet,’ despite its undeniable physicality, as a socially constructed concept that could perhaps be studied by sociologists, historians, and anthropologists – much as they study the public life of ideas such as ‘science,’ ‘class,’ or ‘Darwinism’ – but that tells us nothing about how the world works and even less about how it should.”

These are among the dozens of passages that caught my eye, also listed to suggest the scope of Morozov’s analysis of “the folly of technological solutionism”:

o Against the Internet Grain (Pages 21-25)
o Recycle the Cycle (57-62)
o The Perils of Information Reductivism (85-89)
o Future Perfect — Democracy Isn’t (107-110)
o Drowning in the Algorithmic Sea (146-153)
o The Rise of Unethical Critics (173-180)
o The Perils of Preemption (202-208)
o The Great Unraveling (238-243)
o Hunches and Fractured Pelvises (264-267)
o Madeleine: There’s an App for That! (276-281)
o Phantoms and Backpacks (286-290)
o Monkeys, Sex, and Predictable Duress (305-309)
o Mad Men, Faded Denims, and Real Phonies (313-317)
o Radios, Caterpillars, and Lamps (325-328)
o On Frictionless Traps (344-350)

Before concluding his book, Morozov affirms, “Technology is not the enemy; our enemy is the romantic and revolutionary problem solver who resides within. We can do nothing to tame that little creature, but we can do a lot to tame its favorite weapon: “‘the Internet.’ Let’s do it while we can – it would be deeply ironic if humanity were to die in the crossfire as its problem solvers attempted to transport that very humanity to a trouble-free world.” Who will prevail, the Problem Creators (i.e. Solutionists) or the Problem Solvers? Stay tuned.

*     *     *

Meanwhile, in the comment below, Randy Mayeux recommends checking out “a fascinating back-and-forth between the author, Evgeny Morozov, and Farhad Manjoo.”  To do so, please click here.

Rain: A book review by Bob Morris

Rain: What a Paperboy Learned About Business
Jeffrey J. Fox
Jossey-Bass (2009)

Note: I read and reviewed this book when it was published about four years ago and recently re-read it in combination with Secrets of Great Rainmakers as I now complete a revised marketing plan for the balance of this calendar year. Rain is my personal favorite among all of Fox’s books, although he published several other bestsellers after this one. I identify with the central character because I had two newspaper routes when I was Rain’s age. Also, I needed to reconnect with Fox’s unique insights on how to create rain, especially during a drought such as the current one that began years ago. If you need to generate some rain, check out this review I posted in 2005.

* * *

Portrait of a Young Entrepreneur

This is one of the most recent of ten books that Jeffrey Fox has written and is, in my opinion, his most entertaining. In the first part (Pages 1-128), Fox presents a business narrative in which a fictitious youth named Rain embarks on a brief but productive career as a newspaper boy. (Presumably Rain is Fox’s surrogate.) Like Forest Gump, he encounters a series of adventures but unlike Gump, he seems to have more “street smarts.” Fox cleverly introduces a number of challenges and opportunities to dramatize several basic business lessons. Then in the second part of the book (Pages 129-192), he shifts his attention to his reader whom he invites to compete “a series of analytical exercises anchored in each of Rain’s adventures. The exercises are designed to illuminate Rain’s entrepreneurial thinking and his rainmaking principles.” Actually, completing the 29 brief exercises does more than illuminate those principles: It also enables the reader to make direct application of most (if not all) of them to her or his own circumstances.

I must say, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book because when doing so, I recalled many of my own experiences when I was Rain’s age and growing up on the South Side of Chicago. I had one paper route that I completed in the morning and later added another in the afternoon. After two years, I also began to work three days a week (4-8 PM) at a newsstand near my home. After about another year, when summer vacation began, I stopping delivering papers but continued to work at the newsstand Monday through Friday, 4-8 PM, and caddied at a local country club each weekend. I certainly did not have Rain’s entrepreneurial inclinations. I was simply determined to earn as much money as I could. I also encountered slow pays and no pays, hostile dogs, and customers impossible to please. I also hated getting up mornings when the temperature was near zero and the winds off Lake Michigan nearby were howling or when I was delivering papers afternoons when the heat and humidity were each 90º or more.

How many boys and girls today deliver newspapers? I have no idea. Most of the newspapers in Chicago when I was growing up no longer exist. It seems that in most other major metropolitan areas, there are no evening newspapers and only one morning newspaper. Presumably child labor laws now limit the employment opportunities for those in the 10-15 age range. So, where can they have the experiences and learn the lessons that Fox portrays in this book? I have no idea. However, although younger readers may not be able to identify with many of the situations in which Rain finds himself, I think that they will enjoy reading this book. I hope that many of them also get a clearer sense of the importance of meeting obligations (e.g. being on time, completing tasks), keeping promises to others, being alert to learning opportunities, and meanwhile making whatever personal sacrifices may be necessary.

As I read Fox’s book, I also recalled several life lessons that Robert Fulghum shares in his first book, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Play fair, Don’t hit people, Put things back where you found them, Clean up your own mess, Don’t take things that aren’t yours, Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody, Wash your hands before you eat, When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together, and Be aware of wonder. Simple? Of course. Naïve? I don’t think so. Fox and Fulghum affirm many of the same values that can also be found in the world’s most venerated holy works. In my opinion, there is no other business principle that is more important than The Golden Rule. It is central to the culture of the world’s most highly admired companies. Moreover, it is no coincidence that – year after year — these same companies are also among the world’s most profitable and most valuable.

Those who share my high regard for Jeffrey Fox’s latest book are urged to check out several of his others, notably How to Get to the Top: Business Lessons Learned at the Dinner Table (2007). I also highly recommend his How to Become a Rainmaker (2000) and then Secrets of Great Rainmakers (2006) as well as Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography, Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People, and Fulghum’s aforementioned book. To those in need of additional suggestions, I recommend these: David Whyte’s The Heart Aroused, Michael Ray’s The Highest Goal, James O’Toole’s The Moral Compass and then Creating the Good Life, and Bill George’s Authentic Leadership and then True North.