The Referral Engine: A book review by Bob Morris

The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself 
John Jantsch
Portfolio/Penguin Group (2012)

First, you must be (or become) worthy of the referrals you seek.

Whatever their source of power (e.g. wind, water, coal, nuclear fission), the most effective engines throughout human history share common attributes: they are well-designed and conscientiously maintained. Moreover, whenever appropriate, they are modified to accommodate the requirements of changed circumstances. For example, steam power enabled British coal companies to remove water from their mines, then remove and transport coal to mills from which steel was transported to harbors at which steam-power ships delivered it to other harbors.

John Jantsch makes brilliant use of the engine metaphor when explaining how to formulate a strategy that drives a system that “compels customers and partners to voluntarily participate in marketing, to create positive buzz about the given products and services to friends, neighbors, and colleagues.” In other words, to create or increase demand for whatever is offered by including within its marketing initiatives the active involvement of what Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba characterize as ”customer evangelists.” The “referral engine” really is a process rather than a mechanism. Despite what this book’s subtitle claims, no business can be “taught to market itself” any more than a piano can be “taught to play Bach.” However, as Jantsch explains, an organization’s leaders can devise and then execute the aforementioned strategy.

He cites five (actually six) of the realities to be accommodated: People male referrals because they need to (“We rate and refer as a form of survival, and, to build our own form of social currency”), All business involves risk (hence the importance of “a trust-building approach to marketing”), Nobody talks about boring businesses (“And you’re probably boring on purpose” to play it safe), Consistency builds trust (“Commitment to a remarkable difference demonstrates that yours is not a gimmick”), and Marketing is a system (However, “there is no one system that works for everyone”; actually, there is another, the most tragic referral reality of all: “How can a business owner know that word of mouth is so powerful and then do so little to take advantage of it?”

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

o Staff as customer, and, Hire for fit (15-18)
o A culture of buzz (23-24)
o Meet the Four Cs of marketing (33-37)
o An expended view of collaboration (49-53)
o Fulfilling the promise (63-66)
o Visualizing the ideal customer (73-76)
o Referral brand elements ( 80-82)
o The secret sauce: TIHWDIH
o Note: This is how we do it here (83-84)
o Your strategy action plan (90-91)
o Content is the most trusted form of advertising (101-103)
o Your content action plan (114-115)
o Hidden benefits of blogging (126-128)
o A social media system example, and, Your convergence action plan (144-147)
o The ultimate measure of marketing success (160-161)
o How to activate your network (179-183)

With meticulous care, John Jantsch presents a framework – beginning with a set-up of [the aforementioned] realities – a set of overarching strategies, high- and low-tech engagement tools, and a methodology for finding the perfect culture of referral in almost any organization, whatever its size and nature may be. That said, he adds, “the ideal referral system, based on a strategy that gets people voluntarily talking about your business, can eliminate the need to ever actually ask for referrals again.” Meanwhile, this book will help you to craft such a strategy so that your employers, friends, and neighbors as well as customers become your ”evangelists.”

World Changers: A book review by Bob Morris

World Changers: 25 Entrepreneurs Who Changed Business as We Knew It
John A. Byrne
Portfolio/Penguin Group (2011)

Exemplars of an opportunistic mindset and acceptance of risk and potential failure, as well as independence and control

John A. Byrne is chairman and editor-in-chief of C-Change Media Inc., a digital media startup that is launching a network of websites for the global business community. C-Change currently has two highly successful sites, Poets&Quants.com and Poets&QuantsforExecs.com. Little more than two years old, P&Q generates more than one million monthly page views and boasts a book imprint division which published its first title in 2012. World Changers is his first book in ten years since the publication of his collaboration with General Electric Chairman Jack Welch. Straight from the Gut (2003). His other books include the recently published It’s All About Who You Hire, How They Lead…and Other Essential Advice from a Self-Made Leader (2013), co-authored with Mort Mandel, a self-made billionaire and highly successful entrepreneur in both the for-profit and non-profit worlds. Also, Informed Consent (1995), The Whiz Kids (1993), Chainsaw (1999), Odyssey (1987), and The Headhunters (1986).

Years ago during an annual meeting, GE’s then chairman and CEO, Jack Welch, explained his reasons for admiring entrepreneurial companies: “”For one, they communicate better. Without the din and prattle of bureaucracy, people listen as well as talk; and since there are fewer of them they generally know and understand each other. Second, small companies move faster. They know the penalties for hesitation in the marketplace. Third, in small companies, with fewer layers and less camouflage, the leaders show up very clearly on the screen. Their performance and its impact are clear to everyone. And, finally, smaller companies waste less. They spend less time in endless reviews and approvals and politics and paper drills. They have fewer people; therefore they can only do the important things. Their people are free to direct their energy and attention toward the marketplace rather than fighting bureaucracy.”

Byrne observes, “I’ve been flattered to have had General Electric CEO Jack Welch, an intrapreneur of there ever was one, ask me to work closely with him on his memoir – a collaboration that resulted in my spending more than a thousand hours with him. I envy that unique opportunity as well as Byrne’s conversations with 27 entrepreneurs whose 25 companies did indeed “change business as we knew it.”

Two of them co-founded Home Depot (Arthur Blank and Bernie Marcus) and another pair (Larry Page and Sergey Brin) co-founded Google. During the conversation with Blank and Marcus, Marcus recalls when they “threw GE out” and purchased their light bulbs from Philips. Welch responded, “Why would you do that to us? We’re friends.” Marcus’ reaction? “He was full of crap. His thing was bottom-line oriented and ours was customer oriented and it just didn’t match. It didn’t work. We bought a few things from him, including refrigerators. But he never got the bulb business back. He didn’t deserve to get it back.”

Byrne provides a brief but remarkably informative introduction to each conversation. However different the entrepreneurs may be in most other respects, all of them “share a set of common behaviors and attitudes. Ernst & Young’s own research identified what it calls the essence of an entrepreneur. It is, if you will, the shared DNA of people who are using their life’s work as an expression of self.” There are three core attributes that every entrepreneur shares: An Opportunity Mind-set, Acceptance of Risk and Potential Failure, and Independence and Control.

“To these three core strands, entrepreneurs bring drive, tenacity, and persistence. They live what they believe, building success on the basis of a strong culture and values. They seek out niches and market gaps. They are the architects of their own passionate and focused vision. While being non-conformist, they also are team players. And they are voracious networkers, building an ecosystem of finance, people, and know-how.”

Here in Dallas near the downtown area, we have a Farmer’s Market at which several merchants offer slices of fresh fruit as samples of their wares. In that spirit, I now share a few brief quotations from Byrne’s abundant orchard.

John Mackey, Whole Foods Market: “I do think we have a disruptive business model. But we don’t think about it in those ways. We are not a bunch of business school graduates who are trying to come up with a disruptive business model. We are a purpose-driven business, which is attempting to fulfill its mission. (Page 13)

Howard Schultz, Starbucks: “There was no efficiency at Starbucks. We were flying high without instruments. I say that with a smile but we shouldn’t be proud of that. But growth and success cover up a lot of mistakes. It’s hard to look in the rear-view mirror when you’re looking forward all the time.” (59)

Jess Bezos, Amazon: “The balance of power online moves away from the merchant toward the consumer. This is because customers have been information online. Comparison shopping is just a click away.” (67)

Herb Kelleher, Southwest Airlines: “The business of business is people. In a lot of companies you have to surrender your personality when you show up for work…We never felt that way. We always felt that if you allow people to be themselves at work, they will enjoy what they are doing. They’ll be more productive as a consequence of enjoying it.” (75)

Steve Jobs, Apple: “Picasso had a saying: `Good artists copy, great artists steal.’ We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas. Part of what made the Mackintosh great was the people who were working on it were musicians, poets, artists, historians, zoologists, who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.” (88)

Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn: “The old paradigm of climbing up a stable career ladder is dead and gone. No career is a sure thing anymore. The un certain, rapidly changing conditions in which h entrepreneurs start companies are what it’s no like for all of us fashioning a career. Therefore you should approach career strategy the same way an entrepreneur approaches starting a business.”

Oprah Winfrey, Harpo, Inc.: “How do you know when you’re doing something right? How do you know that? If feels so. What I know now is that feelings are really your GPS system for life. When you’re supposed to do something or not to do something, your emotional guidance system lets you know. The trick is to learn to check your ego at the door and start checking your gut instead.” (159)

Larry Page, Google: “We didn’t start out with a search engine at all. In late 19945, I started collecting the links on the Web, because my adviser [at Stanford's Graduate School] and I decided that would be a good thing to do. We didn’t know exactly what I was going to do with it, but it seemed like no one was really looking at the links on the Web – which pages link to which pages. So it is a huge graph. I figured I could get a dissertation and do something fun and perhaps practical at the same time, which is really what motivates me.” (199)

Phil Knight, Nike: “In the early days, when we were just a running shoe company and almost all our employees were runners, we understood the consumer very well. There is no shoe school, so where do you recruit people for a company that develops and markets running shoes? The running track. It made sense, and it worked. We and the consumer were one in the same.” (240)

Great stuff can be found within all of the 25 conversations. I feel obliged to point out that Byrne is an active participant, indeed an erudite contributor rather than someone who merely tees up questions to which others respond. I hope this brief commentary of mine makes crystal clear that John Byrne was uniquely well-qualified to conduct interviews of 27 entrepreneurs “who changed business as we knew it.” What they reveal and Byrne’s brilliant analysis of their revelations provide a wealth of information, insights, and wisdom in this single volume, published by Portfolio/Penguin Group (December 2011). These exemplars of entrepreneurism do indeed possess an opportunistic mindset and acceptance of risk and potential failure, as well as independence and control.

Laura Vanderkam: An interview by Bob Morris

A New York City-based journalist, Laura Vanderkam is the author of 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, published by Portfolio/Penguin Group (2010). She is also the author of Grindhopping: Build a Rewarding Career without Paying Your Dues (McGraw-Hill, 2007), which the New York Post selected as one of four notable career books of 2007. She is a member of USA Today’s Board of Contributors, and her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, City Journal, Scientific American, Reader’s Digest, Reason, and other publications. She specializes in translating complex economic, policy or scientific ideas into readable prose, and making people say “I never thought of it that way before.” A 2001 graduate of Princeton, she enjoys writing fiction, running, and singing soprano with the Young New Yorkers’ Chorus, an organization for which she served until recently as president, and which specializes in commissioning new music from composers under age 35. She lives in the city with her husband and their two young sons.

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

* * *

Morris: Before discussing any of your books, a few general questions. First, please share your thoughts about achieving and then sustaining an appropriate balance of what is most important in one’s life.

Vanderkam: I think we have to look at what we do best and others cannot do for us. For most of us, this is nurturing our careers, nurturing our families, and nurturing ourselves (by which I mean getting enough sleep, exercising, and focusing on personal passions like volunteering). When you devote most of your hours to these priorities, life feels pretty good.

Morris: Given your response to the previous question, in your own life as well as what you have observed in others’ lives, what seem to be the most serious challenges to such balance? How best to avoid or overcome them?

Vanderkam: Many of us make ourselves busy with things that don’t matter. We volunteer for projects that we don’t care about, we spend time on housework or errands that don’t need to be done or don’t need to be done to the standard we’re doing them, or we spend time at work on things that aren’t advancing our careers or our organizations. We also watch a lot of TV.

Morris: As I read several of your articles for various publications, I was struck by the range and especially by the diversity of your interests. You seem to have an almost insatiable curiosity about so many subjects. Is that a fair assessment?

Vanderkam: It is true that I love to learn about new topics. Sometimes that makes my professional life harder, as I don’t achieve economies of scale in my writing, but on the plus side, I don’t get bored. Today I’ve been researching the Korean-American community in New York, environmental issues in lawn care, and the Ramona Quimby series of children’s books. How random is that?

Morris: To what extent has your formal education (e.g. Princeton) had a significant impact on your career thus far?

Vanderkam: I am very grateful for my Princeton education, and I learned a lot in college. I studied with some excellent writing teachers including John McPhee, and I took classes such as art history, and the Bible in Western cultural tradition, which had me reading great works of literature. But, of course, the most useful aspect of my education now is the network. For instance, the executive at Portfolio who facilitated their acquisition of 168 Hours is a Princeton grad.

Morris: Here’s a subject on which opinions are sharply divided. Given the emergence of various electronic reading devices, do you think the bound volume is an endangered species?

Vanderkam: I hope not! I own a Kindle and love how quickly I can get a title and start reading, but I love the feel of turning pages, too, and I like to mark up my books. I like seeing them on my bookshelves, just as I like holding a physical newspaper as I drink my coffee. I think there will be many ways to enjoy books in the future.

Morris: To what does the title of your first book, Grindhopping, refer?

Vanderkam: I made up the word “Grindhopping” to mean those who hop out of the corporate grind to do their own thing. Broadly, the book is about the rise of self-employment among young people.

Morris: The subtitle, Build a Rewarding Career Without Paying Your Dues, certainly caught my eye. Are you suggesting that success (however defined) can be achieved without paying any dues (however defined)? In fact, how do you define “dues”?

Vanderkam: By paying your dues, I mean climbing the corporate ladder to finally get to a place where you can do interesting, creative work. That’s one approach, or you can just start doing interesting, creative work on your own, see if you can get people to pay you for it, and build your career that way instead. That’s what I’ve done. I have nothing against working hard – in fact, I’m all for it! But if you’re going to work hard, why not make sure you reap the rewards of it?

Morris: As I read the book, I was reminded of Teresa Amabile’s admonition, expressed in a Harvard Business Review article almost 20 years ago, that people should do what they love and love what they do.

Vanderkam: That’s great advice. You will have more energy for the rest of your life working 50 hours a week in a job you love than 30 in a job you hate

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To read the complete interview, please click here.

You are cordially invited to check out the resources at her website by clicking here.

The Score Takes Care of Itself: A book review by Bob Morris

The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership
Bill Walsh with Steve Jamison Craig Walsh
Portfolio/Penguin Group (2009)

“But here’s the lesson I learned….”

Note: I remembered this book when I recently began work on material for a workshop on development of middle management and re-read it, curious to know how well the material has held up since initial publication. It has held up very well indeed.

* * *

Whenever a list of the NFL’s greatest coaches is formulated, Bill Walsh’s name is usually included with those of other Hall of Famers such as Paul Brown, George Hallas, Tom Landry, Vince Lombardi, Chuck Noll, and Don Shula. I was especially eager to read this book, written with Steve Jamison and his only surviving son, Craig, because I wanted to gain a much better understanding of Bill Walsh’s leadership style and management preferences during an illustrious career as a head coach in the NFL: a record of 102-63-1 with the San Francisco 49ers, winning ten of his fourteen postseason games along with six division titles, three NFC Championship titles, and three Super Bowls. He was named the NFL’s Coach of the Year in 1981 and 1984.

Especially in recent years, there have been many articles and books written about how to develop peak performers. (Some of the best observations and insights are provided by Erika Andersen in her book, Growing Great Employees.) The most highly-admired CEOs tend be those who were especially effective developing high-impact leaders among those in middle management. At GE, Jack Welch devoted at least 20% of his time to mentoring high-potential middle managers and his successor, Jeff Immelt, continues to do so. Given that, now consider the fact that a total of 24 head coaches in the NFL were once an assistant coach on his staff at one time, and many of them led teams to victory in the Super Bowl (e.g. Brian Billick, Jon Gruden, Mike Holmgren, George Seifert, Mike Shanahan). Some of Walsh’s greatest skills were those of a teacher. Many who recalled their association with him after his death (from leukemia in 2007) made it a point to praise his intellect, energy, scope and depth of knowledge, enthusiasm, insatiable curiosity, and especially his passion to help others to understand what great success required and how to achieve it.

In the introductory essay, “A Leader’s Book for Leaders,” Craig Walsh identifies five “key” players in his father’s life: Joe Montana (the first quarterback he drafted who led the 49ers to all of their Super Bowl victories), John McVay (vice president and director of the 49ers’ operations while Walsh was head coach), Mike White (a long-time personal friend and a fellow assistant coach at U. Cal Berkeley), Bill McPherson (a defensive assistant coach while Walsh coached the 49ers), and Randy Cross (“a great offensive lineman [and a] member of the San Francisco 49ers for thirteen years including his first three, which were pre–Bill Walsh seasons”). All of them accepted an invitation to “contribute their analyses of the leadership philosophy of Bill Walsh and expand on the comprehensive lessons my father offers [in this book]…these five were asked and kindly accepted the invitation to more fully explain the `genius’ of Bill Walsh.” Their contributions are substantial. Nonetheless, this is still Bill Walsh’s book.

In the Foreword, “His Standard of Performance,” Montana praises Walsh’s ability “to teach people how to think and play at a different and much higher, and, at times, perfect level.” How? Three ways: sharing a tremendous knowledge of all aspects of the game, assembling a highly competent staff as well as coaches “who knew how to coach” and who complemented the intensive instruction that Walsh provided on and off the field, and finally, developing a hatred of mistakes. “He was extremely demanding without a lot of noise…great at making people great students” and “ran a pretty tight ship, but he knew when to let us. He didn’t beat up players mentally of physically.” On the contrary, he assembled teams whose players who had to be highly intelligent to understand the immensely complicated strategies and game plans for which Walsh was noted throughout his career. He may have been the most cerebral head coach in the league’s history. That said, Craig Walsh also reveals that his father “Dad was an outsider; he wanted to be an insider. What he found along the way professionally, starting in his days as an assistant coach, was an unwillingness by others to `let him in.’ He didn’t have the pedigree -and athletic résumé from a big-name school or assistant coaching credentials from a big college program.” Nonetheless, what he accomplished as a coach was eventually considered sufficient for election to the NFL Hall of Fame.

I was fascinated to learn that Twelve O’clock High was one of Walsh’s favorite films and that he identified with the lead character, General Frank Savage (portrayed brilliantly by Gregory Peck) who commanded the 918th Bomber group during World War II. “My father loved that movie because it told the story of what he did in football, and what happened to him as a result, in the context of something he loved – the military.”

The account of Walsh’s career in enlightening. There are important business lessons to be learned from his leadership and management during periods of failure as well as success. This is what his son means when referring to “his ferocious competitive instinct, and his singular brilliance as a strategist, organizer, and team builder,” who “produced historic results.” However, what I found riveting is the multi-dimensional portrait of a profoundly human Bill Walsh that emerges in the book, an “outsider” obsessed with “proving them all wrong.” He did that and, with what he so generously shares in this book, can continue to help others learn “how to be as great as they can be.”

Stop Blabbing About Innovation and Start Actually Doing It

Here is an excerpt from an excellent article written by Aaron Shapiro and featured online at the Fast Company magazine website. To read the complete article, check out other resources, and obtain deep-discount subscription information, please click here.

*     *      *

These days, every established company is at risk of having its industry–and its own business–disrupted by a startup. Cognizant of this, companies devote a lot of time to talking about how important it is to innovate. But here’s the truth: most companies can’t innovate because everyone is paid to maintain the status quo.

This is the single biggest reason companies fail to do anything new or exciting. You and everyone else are maxed out making sure your company is doing what it’s supposed to do; innovation is what the weekends are for.

Despite the real risk involved, this actually makes sense. Companies are set up to do one thing very well. That’s the business they’re in. All of the roles in the company are defined and structured to create the best environment for doing that one thing as efficiently as possible. The number of people employed by the company fluctuates with the workload. More work, more people. Too many people and too little work means layoffs or mismanagement. Success is doing the same thing you’ve always done, just a little bit better, achieving just a few more sales or shaving a hair off of costs. Change is discouraged by time constraints and the stifling number of approvals needed. Failure is punishable by pink slip. Every day is the same.

Yet, today, your entire industry can change in the space of a headline. If your business can’t innovate, it won’t survive when the startup in the garage across town that doesn’t have to answer to your shareholders does all the things legal has been telling you that you can’t do, all the things that you don’t have time for. It’s never been more urgent to stop talking about innovation and actually start doing things differently. And, with digital, the opportunities have never been greater. Instead of innovating on your weekends, overcome the structural impediments and time constraints to real change by approaching innovation from two directions: outside-in and inside-out.

“Outside-in,” when not based on acquisition, often comes in the form of a skunkworks project. It’s colloquially defined as a startup funded by the parent company, but kept separate from the dysfunction and sluggishness of the whole, in order to incubate great technological advancements. I’ve referenced this tactic before, as the first step big businesses should take to evolve their organizational structures. Google, JetBlue, NBCUniversal, and News Corp. have all used the strategy.

[Here’s a portion of the recipe. To read the complete article, please click here.]

Set the right goals. A skunkworks project should be tasked with developing a new, specific tech product or service.

Give the team freedom to create. Bureaucracy, office politics, and the aforementioned requirement to keep the ship sailing straight ahead all slow down and inhibit big advancements. To succeed, the skunkworks team must be kept free from these deterrents.

Appoint separate senior management. Management by committee is not an option. The quickest route to failure is slow decision making. The skunkworks team should report directly to a senior-level executive who is authorized to green-light initiatives that are separate from the company’s main purpose and to implement these new solutions.

Choose a separate location. The team should not be housed in the corporate headquarters. Ideally, it should live nearby, but in some cases, it needs to be in a completely different location to be able to access the right talent. When Johnson & Johnson decided to build a unit oriented to design, creativity, and technology, the division planted a flag in an old industrial building in a trendy neighborhood in New York. Its corporate headquarters are in suburban New Jersey.

Mix up the staff. The staff should be a healthy hybrid of high-performing internal employees and newbies, so that some participants are familiar with the company’s core business while others have an open mind and fresh ideas.

*     *     *

The risk involved in these changes is less than the risk of not making them. Innovation is outside the comfort zones of most businesses–but so is Chapter 11.

*     *     *

To read the complete article, please click here.

Aaron Shapiro is CEO of Huge, a global digital agency based in Brooklyn, and author of Users, Not Customers: Who Really Determines the Success of Your Business, published by Portfolio/Penguin Group (2011). To read the complete article, please click here.

Power Listening: A book review by Bob Morris

Power Listening: Mastering the Most Critical Business Skill of All
Bernard T. Ferrari
Portfolio/Penguin Group (2012)

How and why the difference between great and mediocre managers is the ability to listen

In Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain suggests that there is much of value to be learned from those who are primarily introverted by nature and/or preference. For example, when engaged in conversation, they listen intently and purposefully to what another person has to say. In this book, Bernard T. Ferrari explains how to master “the most critical business skill of all,” one that I believe is also the most critical social skill of all. “The key to good listening is to develop a filing system in our heads, and to ask questions that get those folders and cabinets adequately filled.” Ferrari devotes a separate chapter to each of the following categories of situations in which feedback is obtained:

o Get to the mandate: Focus on the question to answer, the problem to solve, etc.
o Understand the plan: How to get from A to B (small picture) and from A to Z (Big Picture)
o Know who is on the team: Who will do what by when? With whom?
o Be aware of how you are executing: What is working, what isn’t, and why?
o Be mindful of the personal: Take defining characteristics of each source into full account.

I agree with Ferrari that in a business setting good listening is a critically important (albeit strenuous) activity, one that must be purposeful, under control, with total focus and engagement, and most active at the front end of decision making. As for poor listeners, Ferrari identifies and discusses six familiar types: the Opinionator (often wrong, never in doubt), the Grouch (everyone else is wrong), the Preambler (wind bag filled with digressions), the Perseverator (self-serving blah blah blah), the Answer Man/Woman (hair-trigger problem solver), and the Pretender (really could not care less). It is difficult to respect those such as these six who have no respect for you or for anyone else. This is a key point, given the much greater need now for collaboration than at any prior time that I can remember.

For me, the greatest value of this book lies in how skillfully Ferrari poses clusters of questions (in Chapters 4 and 7-11), to accomplish two separate but interdependent and immensely important purposes: To sharpen the inquiry skills of his reader (i.e. how to learn what needs to be known), and, to provide a context within which his reader can apply those skills. For example, in Chapter 4 (“How to Keep Quiet – Most of the Time”), Ferrari explains why, whenever possible, he avoids interrupting another person but when appropriate, “any interruptions or responses I make as questions. If I disagree with a statement, I’ll package my disagreement in a probing question.” In advance of discussion of key issues, he formulates a few questions that he may need “to guide the conversation into areas that will be more useful for me and CP.”

Note: CP refers to “conversation partner,” the person with whom one is speaking. The term is significant. Whereas a listener is a recipient (sometimes a target), a partner is a collaborator in a process to increase each participant’s understanding.

Ferrari brilliantly achieves his stated objectives: To review the common pitfalls in conversation and explain how to avoid or correct them; to explain the basic principles of “Power Listening” and the basic tools needed to possess and apply it; and explain also how to develop techniques “for harnessing what you hear in service of a leaner and better-informed decision-making process.” The techniques he discusses in Sections Two and Three can be adopted by almost anyone who is determined to become a Power Listener and is well along in mastering the skills discussed in Section One.

These techniques include being fully aware of everything “that their idiosyncratic filing system already contains or needs to contain; also they “rapidly shuffle and recombine any or all of the stored information, constantly adding to the options and alternatives available for consideration.” I presume to add that the “idiosyncratic filing system” to which Ferrari refers must be managed as a work in progress, one to which updated information is constantly added and from which outdated information is systematically removed. The quality and value of each judgment are determined by the quality and value of the information on which it is based.

 

A fine-grained view of the sources of growth

In this especially lively as well as informative video, the authors of The Granularity of Growth explain why the best strategies begin with a precise understanding of market and product opportunities.

Companies need to look beyond averages when making decisions about when and where to compete. McKinsey’s Sven Smit and S. Patrick Viguerie, along with Alchemy Growth Partners’ Mehrdad Baghai, discuss “the granularity of growth.”

To watch this turbocharged conversation, please click here.

You may also wish to check out their book, The Granularity of Growth: How to Identify the Sources of Growth and Drive Enduring Company Performance, published by John S. Wiley (2008)

Mehrdad Baghai is the co-author with James Quigley of a more recent book, As One, published by Portfolio/Penguin Group (2011).

Judgment: A book review by Bob Morris

Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls
Noel M. Tichy and Warren G. Bennis
Portfolio/Penguin Group (2007)

Why a great leader “is the Copernican pivot at the center of the decision-making process”

This is the first book on which Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis have collaborated. Separately, each has already authored or co-authored several of the most influential business books, including Tichy’s The Cycle of Leadership: How Great Leaders Teach Their Companies to Win and The Leadership Engine as well as Bennis’ Geeks & Geezers (later reissued as Leadership for a Lifetime) and On Becoming A Leader: The Leadership Classic.

In the first chapter, Tichy and Bennis assert that what really matters “is not how many calls a leader gets right, or even what percentage of calls a leader gets right. Rather it is important how many of the important ones he or she gets right.” They go on to suggest that effective leaders “not only make better calls, but they are able to discern the really important ones and get a higher percentage of them right. They are better at a whole process that runs from seeing the need for a call, to framing issues, to figuring out what is critical, to mobilizing and energizing the troops.”

Of special interest to me are the different perspectives on the decision making process preferred by a number of exemplary CEOs who include Brad Anderson (Best Buy), Steve Bennett (Intuit), A.G. Lafley (Procter & Gamble), James McNerney (Boeing), and David Novak (Yum! Brands). For example, Immelt’s “Boom, I make the decision” comes after he has obtained all the input needed. “There is a moment when, based on his view of time horizon for the judgment and sufficiency of input and involvement, the leader makes the call.”

According to Tichy and Bennis, there is a framework of three “critical domains” within which all decisions are made. Judgments about people are the most difficult, and most critical; the others involve strategy and crisis. They stress that good judgment calls are a process, not an event. Each begins when a leader recognizes a need and frames the decision to be made, with the process continuing through execution and adjustment. They also stress the importance of possessing sufficient self-knowledge because making a right call “isn’t a solo performance; support teams are vital.” I appreciate the fact that Tichy and Bennis employ a framework of their own when presenting the material concerning the “framework of leadership judgment.” Specifically, they anchor several exemplary, real-world decisions in terms of their storyline and then their preparation, judgment, execution, and evaluation phases.

For example, Tichy and Bennis provide this excerpt from CEO Magazine in which A.G. Lafley explains the storyline for the future success of P&G, one that created the stage to make critical judgments:

“Everything begins here with our purpose. It’s very simple. We provide branded products that improve everyday lives. The values of the company are integrity, trust, ownership, leadership, passion for service and winning…Then we turn to strategy which is choices. Our whole focus has been to grow and profit from the core – and that means core businesses, core capabilities, core technologies…Then (the other piece of this) is selecting, developing, training, teaching, and coaching the leadership team. They are the leadership engine…It’s one team with one purpose and one dream and one set of strategic choices.”

Many of those who read this book will especially appreciate a substantial value-added benefit: the “Handbook for Leadership Judgment” that follows the concluding chapter. In it, Chris DeRose and Tichy provide what I view as an operations manual that will enable a reader to apply what she or he has learned in ways and to an extent that are appropriate to achieving her or his own organization’s specific objectives. DeRose and Tichy make an important distinction between judgment and decision making. “Much of the academic literature and popular notions of decision making culminate in a single moment when the leader makes a decision. In this handbook, we focus on judgment as a process that unfolds over time.”

Noel Tichy and Warren Bennis have provided a brilliant explanation of how winning leaders make great calls and suggest that the greatest among them also help others to do so. (It is worth noting that Immelt spends approximately 25% of his time helping to develop leadership skills in GE’s middle managers.) Although their book will be of interest and value to C-level executives, I think it will also be of substantial benefit, especially to others now preparing for a business career or who have only recently embarked on one. It is imperative for them to understand as soon as possible that the process of making “great calls” requires a parallel, on-going process of increasing knowledge about one’s self, one’s social network, one’s organization, and finally, about the context within which each “call” is made.

The framework that Tichy and Bennis provide gives structure to the process of knowledge acquisition and evaluation; they also suggest a frame-of-reference within which to consider various options when making a decision. As the dozens of real-world examples they citer clearly indicate, all decisions have consequences. Obviously, the more difficult a decision is, the more serious its consequences can be…and usually are. The great leader possesses the judgment to make the “right call.” That is why she or he “is the Copernican pivot at the center of the decision-making process.”

The Joy of Housework

Laura Vanderkam

Here is another post at Laura Vanderkam’s “Just a Minute” online newsletter. She is the author of 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, published by Portfolio/Penguin Group (2010).

To check out all the resources that Vanderkam offers, please click here.

To read my interview of her, please click here.

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Much has changed in the last 50 years. Perhaps most notably? Our relationship with our brooms. While American men are spending more time tidying (a more than 100% increase from 1965 to 2000), American women are spending a lot less.

Back in 1965, married mothers spent around 35 hours per week tending their homes. Labor market economists consider 35 hours the definition of a full-time job. These days, it’s under 20 hours per week, and among women who work full-time, it’s down to 14. 
 
I ponder these statistics every time my raft of April magazines arrives, many celebrating spring cleaning in vivid detail. Real Simple in particular is prone to creating artful spreads on cleaning your grout with lemon; this April’s issue features a stack of neatly folded towels (and a fluffy chick) on the cover.

In her monthly letter to readers, editor Kristin van Ogtrop has an explanation for this rather retro obsession: Olympia Snowe likes to clean! At a Fortune conference not long ago, Snowe (the senator from Maine) mentioned that she cleans to relax. Van Ogtrop viewed this as a sign of progress. “It’s perfectly all right for a powerful, accomplished woman to admit that she likes to clean — no one will bat an eye.” Of course, “perhaps the only reason a U.S. senator likes to clean is because she doesn’t have to.” I kind of buy this explanation myself. When you don’t have to clean, you can turn it into a luxurious experience, buying high-end Caldrea products that have more in common with aromatherapy than Mr. Clean.
 
Or perhaps there’s more to it than that.

Cleaning is “so satisfying because it usually has a clear beginning, middle and end,” van Ogtrop writes. “There is a direct correlation between effort and reward. The results are measurable and almost immediate.” There is a striking parallel with cleaning out one’s inbox. When you delete an email, or file it, or answer every note, you feel like you’ve done something.
 
But have you? It’s tempting to slake our desire for accomplishment with easy wins.

But at the end of your life, will you be proudest of your clean house and empty inbox, or the non-profit you managed, the books you wrote, the children you nurtured?

Women actually spend more time interacting with their children these days than they did in 1965, even though far more of us participate in the labor force as well. Our declining devotion to housework was a big factor in making this possible. An April scrubbing may be nice. But a romp in the spring mud with your kids might be better. 
 
All the best,
 
Laura

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As noted, Laura Vanderkam, a New York City-based journalist, is the author of 168 Hours. She is also the author of Grindhopping: Build a Rewarding Career Without Paying Your Dues. She is a member of the USA Today board of contributors, and her work has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, Reader’s Digest, City Journal, Whole Living, Good and other publications. She enjoys running and singing soprano in the Young New Yorkers’ Chorus, and she lives with her husband and two young sons.

Ten Steps Ahead: A book review by Bob Morris

Erik Calonius

Ten Steps Ahead: What Separates Successful Business Visionaries from the Rest of Us
Erik Calonius
Portfolio/Penguin Group (2011)

Dreamers think about it…visionaries see it and then make it happen, at whatever cost

The material in Ten Steps Ahead is based on what Erik Calonius learned during his research (including interviews of various business visionaries) from which he gained a much better understanding of “what separates successful business visionaries from the rest of us.”

The word “successful” is critically important, reminding us of Thomas Edison’s observation, “Vision without execution is hallucination.” No one can deny what Walt Disney, Edwin Land, Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, and Jeff Hawkins accomplished, not only within the business world but also in terms of the global impact they and their respective companies have had. Calonius also focuses on other visionaries such as Orville and Wilbur Wright, Henry Ford, Albert Einstein, and more recently, Richard Feynman whose achievements also indicate that the brain is a visionary device whose primary function is to create pictures.

Throughout human history, innovator thinkers can usually be divided into two classes: dreamers and visionaries. Those in either group tend to be “ten steps ahead of others” in terms of what their brains “see” but only the visionaries are driven (by forces that Calonius explains brilliantly) to make what they “see” become a reality.

Readers will appreciate Calonius’ strategic insertion of insightful comments throughout his narrative. For example:

Former Apple CEO John Sculley: “Both of them [i.e. Edwin Land and Steve Jobs] had this ability to – well, not invent products but discover products. Both of them said these products have already existed, it’s just that no one had ever seen them before. We were the ones who discovered them.”  (Page 52)

Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer on a term they defined: “Emotional intelligence involves the ability to perceive accurately, appraise, and express emotion; the ability to access and/or generate feelings when they facilitate thought; the ability to understand emotion and emotional knowledge; and the ability to regulate emotions to promote emotional and intellectual growth.” (Page 64)

“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, one that heralds the most discoveries, is not Eureka! (I found it!) but, ‘That’s funny.’” Isaac Asimov (Page 73)

Andy Hertzfeld on Steve Jobs’s “reality distortion field”: “It’s a confounding mélange of a charismatic rhetorical style, and indomitable will, and an eagerness to bend any fact to fit the purpose at hand. If one line of argument failed to persuade, he would deftly switch to another. Sometimes he would throw you off balance by suddenly adopting your position as his own, without acknowledging that he ever thought differently…We would often discuss potential techniques for grounding it, but after a while most of us gave up, accepting it as a force of nature.”

Time and again, Calonius cites an example of a visionary business leader who is willing to suffer and struggle, to put everything at risk, when pursuing a dream that Jim Collins and Jerry Porras would probably characterize as a commercial-strength BHAG (i.e. Big Hairy Audacious Goal). There are countless situations in which visionaries see what no one else sees but are oblivious to the serious dangers that are obvious to everyone else.

Few of those who read this book are or ever will be a successful business visionary (“ten steps ahead”) but all who read it can learn valuable lessons from the material that Calonius provides and be 3-5 steps ahead of where they were before. There are lessons about how to overcome what I characterize as “the invisibility of the obvious” in order to recognize – having developed imaging skills – the opportunities and possibilities that would otherwise be missed. Also, how to overcome resistance, rejection, and ridicule with courage and conviction. Like Tennyson’s Ulysses, they are determined “to strive, to seek, to find…and not to yield.” And as Calonius points out, one factor in success is under our control: “the number of at-bats, the number of chances taken, the number of opportunities seized.”

I congratulate Erik Calonius on a brilliant achievement. To those who read it, I presume to suggest that there are still lots of fat juicy dragons out there roaming around. Go get ‘em!