Blogging on Business Update from Bob Morris (Week of 6/10/13)

I hope that at least a few of these recent posts will be of interest to you:

 

BOOK REVIEWS

Stiletto Network: Inside the Women’s Power Circles That Are Changing the Face of Business
Pamela Ryckman

Leadership Sustainability: Seven Disciplines to Achieve the Changes Great Leaders Know They Must Make
Dave Ulrich and Norm Smallwood

The Three Rules: How Exceptional Companies Think
Michael E. Raynor and Mumtaz Ahmed

 

INTERVIEWS

Mario Livio: An interview by Bob Morris
BOB

Michael E. Raynor and Mumtaz Ahmed: An interview by Bob Morris
BOB

Leon M. Hielkema: An interview by Bob Morris
BOB

Paulett Eberhart (CDI) in “The Corner Office”
Adam Bryant
The New York Times

 

COMMENTARIES

“How to Give a Killer Presentation”
Chris Anderson
HBR

“Three Things I’ve Learned From Warren Buffett”
Bill Gates
LinkedIn

“The do-or-die questions boards should ask about technology”
Paul Willmott
The McKinsey Quarterly

“Seven Strategies for Simplifying Your Organization”
Ron Ashkenas with Lisa Bodell
HBR

“What’s Ahead: Is Involvement the New Engagement?”
Dwaine Maltais
Talent Management

“Progress At Work, But Mothers Still Pay a Price”
Stephanie Coontz
The New York Times

“The huge impact that a small liberal arts college can have”
Michael Dirda
The American Scholar

“What great coaches do — and leaders should, too”
Laura Vanderkam
CBS Moneywatch

“The Tyranny of the Micromanager”
Amanda Foreman
The Wall Street Journal

“Toward a Self Employed Nation?”
Wendell Cox
NewGeography.com

* * *

To check out these resources and other content, please click here.

To subscribe via RSS Reader, please click here.

Blogging on Business Update from Bob Morris (Week of 6/3/13)

I hope that at least a few of these recent posts will be of interest to you:

BOOK REVIEWS

The Universe Within: Discovering the Common History of Rocks, Planets, and People
Neil Shubin

Finerman’s Rules: Secrets I’d Only Tell My Daughters About Business and Life
Karen Finerman

Converge: Transforming Business at the Intersection of Marketing and Technology
Bob Lord and Ray Velez

The Essays of Warren Buffett: Lessons for Corporate America, Third Edition
Warren E. Buffett (Author) and Lawrence A. Cunningham (Editor)

12 Disciplines of Leadership Excellence: How Leaders Achieve Sustainable High Performance
Brian Tracy and Peter Chee

HBR Guide to Managing Up and Across
HBR Editors and Various Contributors

Results-Based Leadership: How Leaders Build the Business and Improve the Bottom Line
Dave Ulrich, Jack Zenger, and Norman Smallwood

Mind Code: How the Language We Use Influences the Way We Think
Charles E. Bailey

INTERVIEWS

Ray Attiyah: An interview by Bob Morris
BOB

Lewis Schiff: Part 2 of an interview by Bob Morris
BOB

Jenna Fagnan (Tequila Avión) in “The Corner Office”
Adam Bryant
The New York Times

COMMENTARIES

“Suburbs and Sacred Space”
Aaron M. Renn,
NewGeography.com

“Do You Know Your Worth?”
Emily Bennington

“Great leaders manage expectations”
Laura Vanderkam
CBS MoneyWatch

“’Leaning In’ to a New Career”
Elizabeth Bowling
Talent Management

“Queen Victoria and the Pains of Women”
Amanda Foreman
The Wall Street Journal

“How to lead like Phil Jackson”
Dave Logan
CBS MoneyWatch

“The Graduation Advice We Wish We’d Been Given”
Gretchen Gavett
HBR

“Inside Google’s Secret Lab”
Brad Stone
Bloomberg Businessweek

“When You Can’t Get No Respect”
Charles H. Green
Trusted Adviser Associates LLC

“The defining characteristics of a healthy organization”
BOB

“Motivating people: Getting beyond money”
Martin Dewhurst, Matthew Guthridge, and Elizabeth Mohr
The McKinsey Quarterly

“How to Write an Email That People Will Read”
Management Tip of the Day
HBR

“Why You Should Embrace the Business Model That Threatens You”
Leonard Fuld
HBR

* * *

To check out these resources and other content, please click here.

To subscribe via RSS Reader, please click here.

Gina Trapani on That Old “Design by Committee” Chestnut

Gina Trapani is the lady who has made it to the top 10 richest bloggers of the world and is the owner of Life hacker. The site has always been an inspiration for many people because the main focus is given to how actually one can improve personality. Gina is an active social blogger and the founding editor of her blog. She earns about $110,000 a month with her blogging skills. Impressive!

To check out her blog, please click here.

Here’s one of her several dozen blog posts that caught my eye:

* * *

It bugs me when technologists automatically blame subpar creative work on “design by committee.” Individuals can make mediocre stuff just as easily as groups can make mediocre stuff. The effectiveness of a group doing creative work depends on whether or not there’s a clear vision and strong leadership. Just because it’s a group doesn’t mean it’s more likely to fail.

Of course, the word “committee” in “design by committee” implies that there is not a clear vision and strong leadership. When you have a group of people with those things, it’s not a committee, it’s a team.

Still, you rarely hear about great design by team. The myth of the lone genius, the brilliant solo auteur, persists. Lone geniuses do exist, but they’re very, very rare. Even Steve Jobs had Woz and Ive.

I don’t work well in groups. I work pretty well solo. I’m at my absolute best in a pair. When facing down a difficult problem, I’m likely to be my most open-minded, persistent, and creative riffing and building and even competing with the right person. In a strong pair—preferably a planner/explorer or mentor/mentee matchup—magic can happen.

I’m tired of hearing about lone geniuses and design by committee. Let’s recognize more brilliant collaborations.

* * *

Here’s Gina’s Amazon bio: “Gina Trapani is the award-winning author, blogger, and programmer whose work translates cutting-edge technology into insights that boost personal productivity. Currently located in San Diego, CA, Gina leads development on ThinkUp, an open source social media insights engine the White House uses. She created Todo.txt apps, a text-based personal task manager, and Narrow the Gapp, a U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data-driven web site about the gender pay gap. Gina was the founding editor of Lifehacker: The Guide to Working Smarter, Faster, and Better, the seminal productivity blog which garnered nominations for Blog of the Decade and yielded the best-selling book, Lifehacker, which is now in its third edition.

“Her writing has appeared in The Harvard Business Review, Wired, CNN.com, PC World, Fast Company, Maximum PC, and Macworld magazines. Profiles of Gina’s work have appeared in venues ranging from The Wall Street Journal to The New York Times. Fast Company named her one of the Most Influential Women in Technology in 2009 and 2010, and Wired magazine awarded her its prestigious Rave Award in 2006.”

Emily Bennington: An interview by Bob Morris

Emily Bennington specializes in two distinct forms of career transition: college students entering the workforce and women leaders entering executive management. Her work deep dives into what Stephen Covey famously referred to as “the space” between stimulus and response where she challenges executives to choose mindful, values-centered action. Emily is the author of Who Says It’s a Man’s World: The Girls’ Guide to Corporate Domination and the coauthor of Effective Immediately: How to Fit In, Stand Out, and Move Up at Your First Real Job, a book she wrote with her first boss and mentor Skip Lineberg. Emily has led training programs for numerous Fortune 500 companies and has been featured in business press ranging from CNN, ABC, and Fox to the Wall Street Journal, Glamour, and Cosmopolitan. She is also a contributing writer for Monster.com and a featured blogger for Forbes Woman.

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

* * *

Morris: Before discussing Who Says It’s a Man’s World, a few general questions. First, who has had the greatest impact on your professional development? How so?

Bennington: Definitely my first boss and Effective Immediately co-author Skip Lineberg. At the beginning of my career, Skip really spent a lot of time coaching and challenging me to be better. One example I’ll never forget was when I had my first performance review and asked for a raise, Skip made me “demonstrate I was worth it” by successfully completing a series of projects ranging from writing a review of How to Win Friends and Influence People to finding a logistical “problem” in the office and solving it using TQM processes. At the time, a lot of my friends and family were puzzled by this, wondering why he didn’t just give me the raise I’d already earned, but I knew better. I saw Skip’s challenge as an opportunity to prove to him that I was not only worth more money, but more responsibility as well. Since then, our relationship has evolved into more of a partnership than a mentor / student connection, but I’m so blessed that we’re still able to work together after all these years.

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.

Bennington: My personal and professional growth under Skip’s leadership made me want to offer a similar experience to others in their career. It truly was the turning point that set the stage for everything I do now.

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

Bennington: I wasted a lot of time in my 20s “looking for the path.” I was constantly planning for a life that would begin 2-4 years in the future when I lived in a particular city, had a particular credential, and achieved particular things. Looking back, I wish I had recognized earlier that I was already on the path. We all are.

Morris: Now please shift your attention to Who Says It’s a Man’s World. When and why did you decide to write it?

Bennington: It all started with dirty Tupperware. Years ago when I was promoted to a director-level position for a corporate accounting firm, I found myself with an assistant for the first time in my career. And I remember being nervous about delegating assignments because she had been with the company for about 15 years and I didn’t want to come off as the bossy new kid. So the first time I went to pass her the baton on a job, I noticed she had some dirty Tupperware from lunch sitting on the corner of her desk. In a flash I reverted back to my waitress days in college. I picked up a few pieces and said, “Can I take this for you?” Turns out, I was SO worried about coming across as too assertive that I overcompensated and made myself look weak. After that, I started thinking about all the “little” ways I was undermining my power at work and I created the survey to see if others were experiencing the same thing. The survey became the foundation for Who Says It’s a Man’s World.

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

Bennington: My first book, Effective Immediately, is full of really prescriptive advice on things you should DO if you want to stand out at work. I assumed this book would follow that same path but – literally in the middle of writing it – I realized that success actually starts with how you THINK. I ended up rearranging a lot of the text, but the end result is definitely stronger for it.

Morris: When formulating questions for this interview, I rejected the phrase “working women” because all of the women in my life since childhood were working…but few were paid — [begin italics] and usually under-paid [end italics] — as was my mother, a single parent. So I use the term “employed women.” Do you have a problem with that? Please explain.

Bennington: I have two young sons so I agree that it’s all work – just some jobs pay better than others. That said, I believe that every woman should have a way to support herself and I learned this first-hand through the hardships of my mother. She never had a career and, as a result, she hasn’t always had the freedom to walk away from situations and relationships that weren’t serving her. I teach career success because I want all women to have the safety – and I mean that literally – that financial independence provides.

Morris: In your opinion, what are the “must-have trade-offs” for employed mothers?

Bennington: For starters, go for the “big money.” In other words, what can you do that will be the most important, the most visible, and have the most impact? When it comes to prioritizing time, your kids aren’t all that different from your boss in this respect. If they are old enough – just ask them. Say something like “I can only make one event this month – either the lunch or the assembly. Which one would you prefer I attend?” The fact that they have a voice in the decision will help them feel better about it – not to mention they’re learning a valuable lesson in time management too. Also, if you’re on a crazy air-tight schedule, don’t allow yourself to get talked into anything behind-the-scenes. You may get a gold star from the PTA for selling the most raffle tickets, but your daughter probably couldn’t care less. So before you commit to anything, think about whether she will notice. If the answer is no, well, there’s your answer.

* * *

To read the complete interview, please click here.

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

http://www.EmilyBennington.com

http://www.amacombooks.org/book.cfm?isbn=9780814431870

http://www.Facebook.com/EmilyBennington

http://www.Twitter.com/EmilyBennington

Maria Konnikova: An interview by Bob Morris

Maria Konnikova is the author of the New York Times bestseller, MASTERMIND: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes. She writes the weekly “Literally Psyched” column for Scientific American, where she explores the intersection of literature and psychology, and formerly wrote the popular psychology blog “Artful Choice” for Big Think. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Slate, The New Republic, The Paris Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The Observer, WIRED, Scientific American MIND, and Scientific American, among other publications. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, where she studied psychology, creative writing, and government, and is currently a doctoral candidate in Psychology at Columbia University. Before returning to school, she worked as a producer for the Charlie Rose show on PBS. She lives in New York City.

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

* * *

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

Konnikova: It grew our of a series of pieces I wrote for Big Think and Scientific American, called “Lessons from Sherlock Holmes.” I stumbled on the idea of using the Holmes stories to illustrate a few psychological concepts—and it clicked into place. The more research I did, the more convinced I became that it would make for a good lens for a book on the mind.

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

Konnikova: I never realized before just how frequently I multitask and how often my focus strays from my writing. Writing MASTERMIND made me confront my media-tetherdness, so to speak.

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

Konnikova: Surprisingly, it doesn’t. I basically followed my initial outline and proposal.

Morris: What are the defining characteristics of “mindful thought”?

Konnikova: Mindful thought is just a way to describe presence of mind: a mind that is focused on the present moment and is able to both acknowledge and dismiss any internal or external distractions that may arise.

Morris: You suggest that for Sherlock Holmes, “mindful presence is just a first step.” Please explain.

Konnikova: To Holmes, mindfulness isn’t an end in itself. It’s a means toward the type of clear thinking that allows him to tackle problems, solve cases, catch criminals. Sure, he gets all of the benefits of mindfulness—mental sharpness, emotional benefits, and the like—but they are by-products and not the end goal. Mindfulness is the prerequisite starting point for the type of thinking he needs to engage in to become—and remain—the world’s best consulting detective.

Morris: In various films about Holmes, especially those featuring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, the character Dr. John H. Watson’s primary function seems to provide comic relief. Sometimes he asks questions that many of those who watch the film have. In your opinion, what is his primary function in the works of fiction written by Arthur Conan Coyle?

Konnikova: He is decidedly not comic relief—although you must admit, Holmes’s quips at Watson’s expense are fairly hilarious. Watson is a worthy companion; remember, he is a trained medical doctor and not just a random who-knows-what. He helps Holmes clarify and sharpen his thinking, helps him avoid the pitfalls of reasoning to which even the greatest detective is prone, and sometimes even serves as the source of a key insight (or reprimand) that will solve the case.

Morris: What are the most significant differences between System Watson and System Holmes?

Konnikova: For those who have read Daniel Kahneman’s wonderful Thinking Fast and Slow, the difference is simple. Watson is System 1, and Holmes, System 2. System Watson is the fast, natural, largely effortless, reflexive system. System Holmes is the slow, largely effortful, reflective system. The one frees up our cognitive resources for other things; the other, takes them up for deeper reflection.

Morris: Early in the book, on Page 21 to be specific, you observe, “To Sherlock Homes, the world has become by default a pink elephant world.” Please explain.

Konnikova: It’s my way of illustrating a concept that dates back to the work of philosophers like Spinoza and that has more recently been explored by the psychologist Daniel Gilbert. In order to understand something, we must first believe it. Only then can we disbelieve. So, if I say “pink elephant,” you must for a brief instant visualize an actual pink elephant, before your brain jumps in to say that that’s a false statement and pink elephants don’t actually exist. The pink elephant is an egregious case; obviously, it is false. But in real life, false statements get past our correction radar all the time: we believe it and then never take the time to disbelieve. And so, our minds become populated by pink elephants. Holmes is skeptical from the get-go. No matter how innocuous something may sound, he questions it with the same severity.

Morris: I have read most of the research results produced by K. Anders Ericsson and his associates at Florida State University and am aware of the need to supplement mindful motivation with brutal training: deep, deliberate “practice, practice, practice” for (on average) at least 10,000 hours under expert and strict supervision. Here’s my question: Is that what is required to master the Holmes methodology? Please explain.

Konnikova: Yes, that is certainly part of it, as I say repeatedly. Nothing comes without practice, and Holmes has been honing his methodology for years and years. We can’t expect to catch up right away. That said, no, we don’t need 10,000 hours to begin to change the way we think and approach the world. We don’t have to become first-class detectives; just more mindful thinkers.

* * *

To read the complete interview, please click here.

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

Her website

Her blog at Scientific American

Her Amazon page

Matthew E. May: Second Interview, Part 2, by Bob Morris

Matthew E. May is the author of The Laws of Subtraction: 6 Simple Rules for Winning in the Age of Excess Everything, as well as three previous, award-winning books: The Elegant Solution, In Pursuit of Elegance, and The Shibumi Strategy. A popular speaker, creativity coach, and close advisor on innovation to companies such as ADP, Edmunds, Intuit, and Toyota, he is a regular contributor to the American Express OPEN Forum Idea Hub and the founder of Edit Innovation, an ideas agency based in Los Angeles. His articles have appeared in national publications such as The Rotman Magazine, Fast Company, Design Mind, MIT/Sloan Management Review, USA Today, strategy+business, and Quality Progress. He has appeared in The Wall Street Journal and on National Public Radio. A graduate of the Wharton School of Business and Johns Hopkins University, he lives in Southern California.

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

To read Part 1 of this interview, please click here.

*     *     *

Morris: Now please shift your attention to The Laws of Subtraction. When and why did you decide to write it?

May: The Laws of Subtraction is the book I’ve wanted to write for some time. I have broached the subject as a subtopic to higher altitude themes in my two previous books, first with The Elegant Solution and then with In Pursuit of Elegance, in which I devoted a chapter to the laws of subtraction as an element of elegance. I wanted to produce this final treatment on the power of less for two reasons.

First, subtraction is what people want me to talk about in speeches and seminars. They ask me for “rules of thumb” to help them design and deliver more compelling experiences, for themselves, their companies, and their customers.

Second, I was influenced greatly by the work of John Maeda, whose elegant book The Laws of Simplicity I’ve admired. In many respects, The Laws of Subtraction is an acknowledgement of the impact John Maeda’s work has had on my own. Beyond that, it picks up where his book left off, delving into and unraveling his tenth law: “Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.”

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

May: Yes, I gained a new level of storytelling ability by taking a workshop led by Scott McCloud, a well-known comics artist and author of several bestselling books, including Understanding Comics. I learned about the five key choices that make for clarity, whether you’re showing or telling your story: choice of moment, choice of frame, choice of image, choice of word, and choice of flow.

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

May: Well, I hadn’t intended to subtract myself from the book in the way it ended up that I did. I invited a few dozen brilliant folks, you included, to submit short anecdotes or essays on the role of subtraction in their lives and work. I thought I’d get a handful of folks to say yes, so that I could pepper my narrative with short vignettes. I had so many wonderful responses I couldn’t include them all! So I ended up with 54 essays, ”Silhouettes,” as I call them, that account for about a third of the book!

And I’ll let you in on a little secret: the original intent was to publish a 12-15,000 word eBook, ala TED Books, or what Seth Godin was doing with his Domino Project. I’m obviously not a master of subtraction, because it morphed into a real book of full length.

But the Silhouettes were so compelling and meaningful that the addition was of the correct kind: value adding.

*     *     *

To read all of this interview, please click here.

To read Part 1 of this interview, please click here.

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

Matt’s homepage

Matt’s blog

Matt’s Amazon page

Matthew E. May: Second Interview, Part 1, by Bob Morris

Matthew E. May is the author of The Laws of Subtraction: 6 Simple Rules for Winning in the Age of Excess Everything, as well as three previous, award-winning books: The Elegant Solution, In Pursuit of Elegance, and The Shibumi Strategy. A popular speaker, creativity coach, and close advisor on innovation to companies such as ADP, Edmunds, Intuit, and Toyota, he is a regular contributor to the American Express OPEN Forum Idea Hub and the founder of Edit Innovation, an ideas agency based in Los Angeles. His articles have appeared in national publications such as The Rotman Magazine, Fast Company, Design Mind, MIT/Sloan Management Review, USA Today, strategy+business, and Quality Progress. He has appeared in The Wall Street Journal and on National Public Radio. A graduate of the Wharton School of Business and Johns Hopkins University, he lives in Southern California.

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

To read Part 2, please click here.

* * *

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

May: Without a doubt, my daughter. She’s 10 now, but she unknowingly helped me get back in touch with that childlike curiosity we’re born with but slowly lose as we make our way through a school system focused not on asking the right questions, but the right answers…for the teacher. And it carries over into our organizations, where boss-centered work is the norm.

She taught me what real learning is all about. Not the absorption of existing knowledge, but rather the creation of new knowledge. We preach and write books about the “scientific method,” but all you need to do is what your child in the high chair throwing food on the floor–you’re watching a learning cycle in action. She’s wondering what will happen if she drops her strained carrots. The problem is how to get them on the ground. She could tip her dish over the tray, flick her spoon or grab a fistful and toss away. She tries the tip. It works. Great feedback: noise from the crash, food everywhere, Mom gets really busy. Works so well she adopts it as her interim best practice. Good little scientist that she is, she confirms her results by doing it again after mom picks it up. Lesson learned, though: Mom doesn’t like it and Dad needs to get involved, which he isn’t really all that happy about. So she launches another experiment with the spoon option.

She taught me what real observation is. Once she was able to walk, I’d need to carve out an hour just to walk to the mailbox in our neighborhood, all of 50 yards. She was a sponge–every twig, bug, blade of grass or crack in the sidewalk held utter fascination for her…looking, touching, smelling, and usually tasting each and every little thing that caught her eye, and everything caught her eye

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

May: Not so much a particular person, but many people…the Toyota organization. I worked as a full time advisor for them here in the U.S. for eight years. The experience changed my outlook, my thinking, and my life. It’s where I learned to think lean, to understand the concept of an elegant solution, and the importance of subtraction. I also learned the Zen aesthetic ideals, all of which are subtractive in nature.

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.

May: Halfway through my tenure with Toyota, I came up against a brick wall in a particularly difficult project that required me to reconcile two completely different ways of thinking. Trust me when I tell you that Eastern and Western ways of thinking are at times at odds with each other. My struggle must have been obvious, because this bit of ancient wisdom found its way to me:

“Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub, it’s the center hole that makes it useful. Shape clay into a vessel, it’s the space within that makes it useful. Cut windows and doors for a room, it’s the holes which make it useful. Profit comes from is there, usefulness from what is not there.”

My first thought was someone wants me gone. I’d be more useful. Then I read it again, and lightning struck.

2500-year-old idea. Not exactly new. But for me, radical. Stopped me dead in my tracks. I woke up to the fact that I had been looking at the problem in the wrong way. As is natural and intuitive for the Western mind—which is hardwired to act and to add—I had been looking at it in terms of what TO DO, as opposed to what to NOT DO, or cease, or eliminate, or subtract.

Once I shifted my perspective, not only was I able to complete the project, but the incident drove me to eventually leave in order to seek out elegant, subtractive ideas all over the world and in many different domains…to study the ideas and write about them.

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

May: Career-wise, it’s been a serial door opener. Had I not attended John Hopkins, I doubt I’d have secured the kind of job that provided the work experience that helped me get into the top tier business schools and select Wharton for my MBA. Had I not received that degree, I wouldn’t have had the entree into prestigious consulting firms for whom I freelanced. Had I not been associated with those firms, I never would have gotten the call from Toyota in 1998.

Skills-wise, it helped me develop a rigorous critical thinking ability, a left brain, if you will, which I needed, because I’m essentially a right-brain guy.

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?

May: That the most effective problem-solving always begins with a child’s question: why? That the question of “what are my options?” must never come before the question of “what is possible?” All too often in business, we reverse the order, then somewhere down the road, after we’ve invested time, money and effort, we wonder why the problem never got solved.

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

May: Moneyball. It was, of course, adapted from Michael Lewis’s great book. We read it at Toyota, and immediately asked Billy Beane to come speak to us. It points out the power of achieving the maximum effect with the minimum means. It points out the power of discovering and exploiting undervalued elements overlooked by the mainstream market. It points out the power of disrupting the status quo, the conventional “wisdom.” It points out the power of developing a portfolio approach–singles and on-base percentage–versus the ever sexier “killer app” approach of seeking grand slam home runs.

Think about it: how many baseball teams are made up entirely of home run hitters? None. What do we know about home run hitters? Average or below batting average, and high strike out rate. That translates to high carrying cost and dangerous risk in business.

* * *

To read the complete interview, please click here.

To read Part 2, please click here.

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

Matt’s homepage

Matt’s blog

Matt’s Amazon page

Blogging on Business Update from Bob Morris: Week of 11/19/12

I hope that at least a few of these recent posts will be of interest to you:

BOOK REVIEWS

Managing Global Innovation: Frameworks for Integrating Capabilities Around the World
Yves Doz and Keeley Wilson

Leading at the Edge: Leadership Lessons from the Extraordinary Saga of Shackleton’s Antarctic Expedition (Second Edition)
Dennis N. T. Perkins with Margaret P. Holtman and Jillian Murphy

INTERVIEWS

“John Nottingham and John Spirk (Nottingham Spirk) in ‘The Corner Office’”
Adam Bryant
The New York Times

COMMENTARIES

“Resilience Quotations: Part 1″
Blogging on Business

“How and why bowling has become the chameleon of contemporary metaphors”
Blogging on Business

“How to Energize Your Network”
Management Tip of the Day
Harvard Business Review

“Six skills to creating sustainable relationships”
Mark Hordes
Organizational Excellence Journal

“Must-Have Job Skills in 2013″
Ruth Mantell
The Wall Street Journal

“Will our minds also become miniaturized?”
Blogging on Business

“Why character really matters”
Paul Tough
WeAreTeachers

“10 Reasons Why Employees Resign”
Jacqui Barrett-Poindexter
Glassdoor

“Restarting the US small-business growth engine”
John Horn and Darren Pleasance
The McKinsey Quarterly

“Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch”
Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton
The Culture Works

“How to get the donkey out of the well?”
Beliefnet

“10 TED Talks About Being [More] Creative”

“Yet still another baker’s dozen of memorable quotations”
Blogging on Business

“Thanksgiving Tips: 9 Great Business Skills Entrepreneurs Can Learn from the Pilgrims”
Alan E. Hall
Forbes magazine

“How can I recognize a golden opportunity from fools gold?”
Donald Sull

“Must See” Programs: The Bloomberg Game Changers

“Grow Your Company as Big as Zappos.com: 7 Tips From Tony Hsieh”
Inc. magazine

* * *

To check out these resources and other content, please click here.

To subscribe via RSS Reader, please click here.

Richard Florida, Second Interview, by Bob Morris

Richard Florida is author of the global best-sellers, The Rise of the Creative Class and Who’s Your City? A more recent book, book, The Great Reset, explains how new ways of living and working will drive post-crash prosperity. Other works include The Flight of the Creative Class and Cities and the Creative Class. His previous books, especially The Breakthrough Illusion and Beyond Mass Production, paved the way for his provocative looks at how creativity is revolutionizing the global economy.

Richard is senior editor for The Atlantic and a regular CNN contributor. He has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Economist, The Globe and Mail and The Harvard Business Review. He has been featured as an expert on MSNBC, BBC, NPR and CBS, to name just a few. Richard  is Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute and Professor of Business and Creativity at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. Previously, Florida held professorships at George Mason University and Carnegie Mellon University and taught as a visiting professor at Harvard and MIT. Florida earned his Bachelor’s degree from Rutgers University and his Ph.D. from Columbia University. His research provides unique, data-driven insight into the social, economic and demographic factors that drive the 21st century world economy.

His latest book is The Rise of the Creative Class, Revisited: 10th Anniversary Edition–Revised and Expanded, published by Basic Books (June, 2012).

Here is an excerpt from my second interview of him.

*     *     *

Morris: To what extent is The Rise of the Creative Class, Revisited a sequel? To what extent does it plow entirely new ground?

Florida: A great deal of the book has been rewritten or rearranged—this is not so much a revision as a full-blown revisiting of the original book. My team and I brought all the statistics up to date, provided new ones, and incorporated a decade’s worth of new research. I took advantage of the opportunity to address my major critics, too. Finally, there are five completely original chapters, covering the global effects of the Creative Class, quality of place in our cities and suburbs, the widening—and increasingly damaging—role of class and inequality in society, and the political challenges and opportunities that the rise of the creative class represents.

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

Florida: One big insight is the worsening inequality and underlying class divide that plagues not just nations but cities and metro areas.  You can see it in US cities and metros and also in London and even in Toronto where I now live.  That said, the rise of the creative class and post-industrialism needn’t exacerbate wage and income inequality. In fact, the wages and salaries for working and service class members are higher in metros with greater concentrations of the creative class.  Interestingly enough, the US is something of an outlier when it comes to post-industrialism and inequality across the advanced nations. In many of them, especially in Scandinavia and North Europe, post-industrialism and the rise of the creative economy has been accompanied by higher living standards and far less inequality that in the US.  In the revised edition, I look in detail at inequality across US metros. I find that the class divide accounts for about 15 percent of income inequality, a significant amount for sure, but more is at work. Income inequality across US metros has a lot to do with entrenched poverty, race, weakened labor unions, and an unraveling safety net than it is the result of the Creative Class’s relative prosperity. The solution, in other words, isn’t to roll the Creative Class back—it’s to lift up the classes that aren’t doing as well.

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

Florida:  Books always turn out different than expected. When I started the idea was to update the data (which was ten years old) and revise and update the existing chapters.  But that’s where my research and thinking took me.  I certainly did not expect to write five entirely new chapters The whole issue of the creative class going global and the need to include more data and information on the creative class around the world; and also widening inequality and the growing class divide – those are things that needed to be treated in detail.  The last chapter – “Every Single Human Being is Creative”— discusses the need for a new Creative Compact based on harnessing the creativity and talent of every single human being. We are at such a critical turning point: our society is changing as fundamentally as it has since the shift from agriculture to manufacturing. The old industrial order of relentless production and consumerism, of brute growth, has proven itself unsustainable; it’s left us with a degraded environment, a broken financial system, and a sclerotic political culture. We have an incredible opportunity to remake ourselves in a better way—for maybe the first time ever, to align human and economic development. But to do that, we need to create new institutions that will both help to develop and utilize everyone’s innate creativity.  It won’t happen by itself, and no Invisible Hand is going to guide it.

The University of Chicago economist Raghu Rajan said it well: “The advanced countries have a choice. They can act as if all is well except that their consumers are in a funk, and that ‘animal spirits’ must be revived through stimulus. Or they can treat the crisis as a wake-up call to fix all that has been papered over in the last few decades.” I’m trying to sound that wake up call.

Morris: Please explain the reference to “the key underlying forces that have been transforming our economy and culture” for several decades.

Florida: Our economy is shifting from an industrial to a post-industrial basis—our most valuable products are no longer the natural resources we scour out of the ground, or the durable goods that we manufacture in factories but the things that spring from our creativity: software, movies, medicines, applications. Human beings have always been creative, of course, but now creativity itself—“the ability to create meaningful new forms,” as Webster’s Dictionary has it—is what powers our economy.

As creativity has become more fundamental, it’s given rise to a whole new social class that works in creative fields (the sciences, education, medicine, technology, media, the arts). Many of them have embraced a new ethos and a new set of meritocratic norms that in turn have shifted our whole society.

If anything Creativity is an even more powerfully transformative force than it was a decade ago. The Creative Class has come through the last decade—and through the economic crash of 2008—stronger and more influential than ever.

Morris: In your opinion, why have we not as yet unleashed “that great reservoir of overlooked and underutilized human potential”?

Florida: If a third of our most fortunate workers belong to the Creative Class, the other two great classes are not faring anywhere near as well. The working class, our blue collar sector, has lost a third of its members in just the last decade—it represents just 20 percent of the workforce today, about the same share that farmers held at the turn of the last century (they are less than one percent of the economy today). About half of the workforce belongs to the Service Class—the people who serve our food, cut our lawns and our fingernails, take care of our elderly. Most of them are paid terribly and there are very few opportunities for advancement.

Class and geography have a huge impact on your destiny in the US—if your parents don’t have good jobs and good educations and you live in a state that has a smaller Creative Class share, the odds are that you’ll be poorer, travel less, and receive a worse education than your peers in more creative states. That’s not snobbery or elitism—that’s just statistics. Poorer states have shorter life expectancies too—there is more smoking and obesity, more gun violence, and worse health outcomes across the board.

This is why I’m so passionate about the need for change—for a new Creative Compact, as I put it, that will do for our own epoch what the New Deal did for its own generation.

Morris:  What are the defining characteristics of the Creative Class?

Florida: I define the Creative Class by what people do—by the kinds of jobs they hold. What I call the Super-Creative Core of the Creative Class are scientists and engineers, university professors, poets and novelists, artists, entertainers, actors, designers, and architects, as well as the thought leadership of modern society: nonfiction writers, editors, cultural figures, think-tank researchers, analysts, and other opinion shapers. I define the highest order of creative work as the production of new forms or designs that are readily transferable and widely useful—such as designing a consumer product, coming up with a theorem or strategy that can be applied in many situations, or composing music that can be performed again and again.

The Creative Class doesn’t just solve problems—it finds problems that we didn’t know we had. It invents the iPod and then it figures out a better way to organize its music library—and to combine it with a telephone, and an e-book reader while giving its battery longer life.

Beyond this core group, the Creative Class also includes “creative professionals” who work in a wide range of knowledge-intensive industries, such as high-tech, financial services, the legal and health professions, and business management, who engage in creative problem solving. Creative Class people are smart and skilled; they’re often (but not always) highly educated. Three quarters of degree holders belong to the Creative Class, but less than 60 percent of the Creative Class has degrees.

I talk a lot about “creatifying” jobs that are not considered Creative Class, but could be, such as retail sales. With the addition of creativity such jobs can become more productive and earn higher and higher salaries.  Services can be creatified too, as their providers become more entrepreneurial.

*     *

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

http://www.creativeclass.com/

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/

To read the complete second interview, please click here.

To read  my first interview of him, please click here.

To read my review of his latest book, The Rise of the Creative Class, Revisited: 10th Anniversary Edition, please click here.

Richard Florida “revisits” his perspectives on “the key underlying forces that have been transforming our economy and culture” for several decades

Those who have read any of Richard Florida’s previously published books know what to expect in each new one: Rock-solid, research-driven content; brilliant analysis; and passion to enlist his reader in efforts to help complete a “transition to a post-materialistic politics – a shift from values that accord priority to meeting immediate material needs to ones that stress belonging, self-expression, opportunity, environmental quality, diversity, community, and quality of life.”

What we have in this volume, The Rise of the Creative Class–Revisited: 10th Anniversary Edition (June, 2012), is a major revision and updating of material first presented in a volume first published in 2003. All of the original chapters were revised; five new ones were added; and two pair of original chapters (2 and 3 as well as 7 and 8) have been combined into one chapter (Chapter 2 and “No Collar”). Florida devotes two of the new chapters to “the persistent and deepening economic, social, and geographic divides that continue to vex our society.”

These are a few of the several dozen passages that caught my eye:

o  The Ultimate Source of Creativity (Pages 23-25)
o  Defining the Creative Class (38-44)
o  What Creatives Want at Work (69-81)
o  Where the New Work Comes From (94-97)
o  The Unraveling of the Social Contract (97-99)
o  How SAS Manages Creativity (117-121)
o  Pitfalls of the Experiential World (153-156)
o  The Real Legacy of the 1980s (169-175)
o  Working Class Enclaves (218-222)
o  The Creative Class Around the World (268-274)
o  The University as a Creative Hub (309-312)
o  Building the Creative Community (339-349)
o  “The Geography of Inequality” (Chapter 16, Pages 353-365)
o  The Creative Class Comes of Age (398-400)
o  “The Creative Compact”: 45 Core Principles (384-398)

Revising and updating the Original Edition was a major project for Florida and his associates. All of the original chapters were revised; five new ones were added; and two pair of original chapters (2 and 3, 7 and 8) have been combined into one chapter (Chapter 2 and “No Collar”). Florida devotes two of the new chapters to “the persistent and deepening economic, social, and geographic divides that continue to vex our society.”

These and other major writing and editing initiatives correctly suggest how much importance Florida gives to helping to “unleash the great reservoir of overlooked and underutilized human potential,” resources without which the human race cannot finally achieve and then sustain “a better, more meaningful, and more fulfilling way of life.”

I agree with Richard Florida that “every single human being is creative” or at least can be creative if (HUGE “if”) economic opportunity and human development are not only in alignment but, in fact, interchangeable.

*     *     *

Richard Florida is author of the bestselling The Rise of the Creative Class (2003) and Who’s Your City? (2009) as well as a regular columnist for The Atlantic. He has written for the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and other publications. His multiple awards and accolades include the Harvard Business Review‘s “Breakthrough Idea of the Year.” He was named one of Esquire magazine’s “Best and Brightest” (2005) and one of BusinessWeek‘s “Voices of Innovation” (2006). He lives in Toronto, Canada.