I have a stack of books waiting to be read, some I buy and some are sent by publicists for me to review.
Then there is the constantly growing list of books I hear about or see a review and want to read.
But I have only so much reading time and it’s shrinking as we get closer to the launch of our new product (stay tuned).
So I created a new category called Reviews and Recommendations and included MAPping Company Success’ ‘Book Reviews’ and Leadership Turn’s ‘Reading Recommendations’. I hope you find it useful.
Today, I have some interesting recommendations for you.
The first is from Jeffrey Krames, a literary agent who tells the fascinating story of a self-published book that sells for nearly $50 with an unwieldy title that instantly became a top Amazon seller. Whether or not you want to tackle the book you’ll enjoy its story.
Two European authors—Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur—spent years putting together a stunning book on business models entitled BUSINESS MODEL GENERATION. The two authors had a great deal of help with the design and content of the book, as it was co-authored by 470 Business Model Canvas practitioners from 45 countries…Within 48 hours the book ranked as high as #74 on Amazon, an amazing feat for most any business book and especially this one. Since then, the two versions of the book have occupied two of the top 25 slots on Amazon’s list of bestselling management books every single day.
After reading dozens of day-by-day articles and commentary on the financial meltdown, none of the myriad of books written about it really grabbed me. However, when I read a review of Henry Paulson’s newly published On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System in Business Week I was intrigued.
What got my attention (and made me ill) was the following quote.
“All were concerned with excessive risk taking in the markets and appalled by the erosion of underwriting standards,” he writes in his penetrating memoir, On the Brink. Yet they felt forced by competitive pressure to make loans they didn’t like, the former U.S. Treasury Secretary says.
“Isn’t there something you can do to order us not to take all of these risks?” was the gist of a question posed by Chuck Prince, who was still running Citigroup as the bank bumbled toward disaster.
This from some of the most powerful business “leaders” in the country.
Did you watch the new reality show Undercover Boss on CBS Sunday after the Super Bowl?
The opening episode starred Larry O’Donnell, President and C.O.O. of Waste Management.
O’Donnell plays ‘Randy’, a new worker being filmed for training purposes. At one location he jams the trash line by not removing large cardboard; he is fired, for the first time in his life, for not being able to efficiently collect blowing trash at a landfill—unlike the worker he is with who has done the job for 19 years while spending three days a week in dialysis; he cleans porta-potties with a guy who’s attitude is every manager’s best dream; and he rides with a female trash hauler where he learns that to stay on schedule women drivers use cans from the trash as pee-pots.
He meets a 29 year old single mother who overcame five kinds of cancer by age 25, has taken in her brother’s family and her dad, is about to lose her home in foreclosure and is doing three jobs post layoffs for the same money she was getting before, but is still upbeat and even invites the new guy to dinner.
O’Donnell is surprised by the physical and mental exhaustion he experiences his first day, amazed by the people he meets, outraged by what he learns and shocked at the implementation of a policy he personally conceived to raise productivity by which workers were docked 2 minutes for every 1 minute they were late.
At the start of the show when O’Donnell tells his executive team that he is going undercover the reactions vary from surprise to incredulity.
When he meets with them at the end and talks about what he learned and changes he believes are needed and how he plans to use his new knowledge the look on guy’s face said it all—he might as well have rolled his eyes.
Sadly, that is often the reaction from senior leadership regarding intel that comes from front-line, bottom-of-the-heap workers.
The smartest managers listen to their all their people—not just the ones in suits.
The final scene includes and overlay update on what happened to each of the people who worked with O’Donell and changes, both made and ongoing, as a result.
I don’t watch reality shows; I’ve read that many are scripted, but I do believe that there are bosses of large companies who don’t have egos the size of Texas and are capable of learning from unfiltered feedback from the lowest rank and file.
Plus, it seems that changes were actually made.
As big a believer as I am in bosses talking to the troops, there is no way O’Donnell would get this kind of feedback from this level of employee if they knew who he was.
Go ahead and call me naïve, but in spite of everything I’d rather be a chump than a cynic.
And in case you missed Undercover Boss you can watch it here.
ROWE stands for “results only work environment” and it means just that. No set hours, no clock watching, get the job done and be evaluated based on the results and resulted in a 35% jump in productivity
These days Ressler and Thompson run CulutreRx, teaching ROWE to a variety of companies, such as GAP.
ROWE is a business strategy that’s been proven to profoundly improve workforce productivity (as much as 41%) and reduce voluntary turnover rates (as much as 90%). And, ROWE is a magnet for the talent you want to attract.
Best Buy’s culture is one that encourages creativity and good ideas at all levels, so it’s no surprise that another stand out came along a year later.
Julie Gilbert conceived and started the WOLF initiative in 2004 (she was given full ownership rights including the intellectual property and the right to take it outside anytime in exchange for building it first at Best Buy).
WOLF’s focus is to promote and enhance the role of women both inside the company and outside in their role as customers based on three precepts:
Commitment – to the business, customers and other members of the pack
Networking – amongst at all levels internally and externally to nurture and support one another
Giveback – giving back to women and girls in local communities.
Sound all warm and fuzzy to you? Are you fighting back a snicker and thinking that there is no way your company would ever mess with that?
If so, try shrugging off Best Buy’s results.
Revenue
$4.4 billion increase in revenue from female customers (11% increase in total company revenue)
Market Share
Highest ever female market share in company history
Females became the majority of the most “valuable “customers
Brand Reputation
Largest increase in brand perception in company history
Network
Passionate, global, viral customer networks growing market share and innovating new business offerings
Over 40,000 members in 40 plus countries
Performance Outcomes
5% reduction in female turnover resulting in a minimum of $25 million in savings
18% increase in the number of female employees.
100% increase in females in the most profitable business unit
40% increase in female General Managers & General Managers In Training
60% increase in female Operations Managers
30% increase in female Customer Experience Managers
ROWE and WOLF both came from the same company while Brad Anderson was CEO.
His response to the question “Where do you find new business ideas?” says it all.
I believe that some of our best ideas have come from the people who are furthest removed from the CEO’s office – those line-level employees who interact with our customers each and every day.
Without a culture that encouraged and supported innovation from all levels ROWE and WOLF couldn’t have happened.
The MAP that enables that culture can function at any level no matter the company’s overall culture. Yes, it’s more difficult, but you can create an environment in which your people’s creativity blooms.
I have 5 stories for you today about CEOs, two who don’t and four that do.
Pundits (consultants, academics, bloggers) are fond of lauding CEOs for their vision and skill at imparting it to their followers—Richard Fuld, Bob Nardelli, Jeff Skilling, Bernard Ebbers, Dennis Kowalski, the list is long—but after their meltdown you hear only from the Monday morning quarterback crowd.
But if you want to sort the true stars from the others, you need to take a long-term look—not Wall Street’s typical quarter or even a decade—at more than the stock price.
Moreover, you need to look at the down times; the times when the economy sucks, yet the CEO still finds ways to foster a great culture and stoke innovation—not just cut staff and threaten execs with termination if they don’t make their numbers.
For better or worse, it’s not in the vision or the leading, it’s the doing.
Our first story is should be a familiar name to all of you. Remember Sandy Weill? The man who drove the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999 and whose deal making built CITI, the colossus that never really jelled. He was named “C.E.O. of the Year” in 2002 by Chief Executive Magazine, but that was then and this is now.
In today’s cutthroat business world how many CEOs would lift a finger to save their competition? Ted Baseler, CEO of Chateau Ste. Michelle did exactly that when freezing temperatures wiped out the grape harvest in 2004. He didn’t just save his competition; he’s credited with saving the entire Washington state wine industry. Baseler is the quintessential big picture guy.
“We want Washington known. All of it. We’re not about to fight over whose bottle of wine gets sold. We’re competing with Napa, with France. We’re not competing with Washington wineries.”
My last offering is an interview with Pete Peterson, co-founder of Blackstone Group, looks back on s storied career and offers his insights as to what’s needed to “rebuild the American dream.” There’s a video (that refuses to embed) and a PDF of the interview (requires free registration). I think you’ll find it interesting.
How do you feel when you read something presented as a unique insight into a subject and it turns out to be the same old tire stuff that you’ve seen for years?
I’ve been hearing the term ‘leadership gap’ for years, yet Ryan writes that his company just coined it.
Based on our [global] survey, there are four skills that executives all over the world believe will be most important just five years from now: leading people, strategic planning, inspiring commitment, and managing change.
Most important starting 2015?
Good grief, I haven’t done a survey, but I’d say those four skills have been important for decades hundreds of years, more actually.
I’m sure Attila the Hun found them critical when he conquered the known world. In fact, odds are that they were on the mind of the first Cro-Magnon clan chieftain when he fought his neighbor.
Pity our poor world when the people running global enterprise think they have five years before they need to master these skills.
One of the comments was especially perceptive; in part it said,
Various management gurus from the 1950’s have said the same thing over and over again. Yet despite this each generation of corporate leaders repeat the mistakes off their predecessors in that they fail to invest in leadership and management development. I believe the answer lies firstly in a change of mindset. –John Coxon
Before and after 2015 it will be the executives and managers who get it; who understand that these skills need to be embedded in the company’s DNA; they are not CEO skills, but core competency requirements to thrive in the 21st Century.
Sports has long been used as an analogy to various business practices—the best sales training film I ever saw was done by Vince Lombardi explaining how selling was akin to the plays in football.
But using good business practices to motivate a sports team isn’t heard of as much, except when it comes to ‘leadership’, a subject that, in its current ascendancy, annoys me no end.
A couple of years ago I read a post by Mike Kavis in which he focused on how Giants’ coach Tom Coughlin turned around his own career and his team using best practice leadership techniques.
“He listened to the constructive criticism of his bosses and players and decided to make some changes. What he found was that his vision was not fully understood by all of the players on the team. So he formed a leadership committee made up of various players on the team who could help him clearly communicate the vision. Better yet, he let the players select the leadership team. Since the players participated in forming the leadership team, it gave them a sense of ownership in the process…”
The creation of the leadership team accomplished the following:
In his summary of what happened, Mike says, “If you want people to change, first change yourself.” which gave me a chuckle, not because it’s inaccurate, but because it’s so true that it’s the tag line of my company—To change what they do, change how you think.
A winning team is the goal of every person ever put in charge of an endeavor.
“Coughlin had a very rigid methodology that he followed to a T. It wasn’t working but he kept following it because it worked when he was with the Jaguars several years ago. By listening to his players, he made some minor tweaks to his methodology and the team responded.”
Those who are truly successful understand the importance of putting their egos in their respective pockets in order to listen and change themselves as needed.
The rest will continue to go their merry way, listening to no one, issuing edicts, and complaining when their people don’t buy-in or perform.
A few weeks ago I reviewed The Levity Effect and wrote a series of posts about levity to go with all the stuff I’ve written about the necessity of fun in the workplace, especially when it comes to innovation.
And just as fun/levity/happy juice a culture of innovation, they have the ability to affect what people do and increase desired actions.
I love reading Steve, besides his undoubted smarts, he often leads me to stuff I wouldn’t find on my own—like thefuntheory.com “an initiative of Volkswagen.”
This site is dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behavior for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or for something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better.
Best it’s a contest that you can enter.
Find your own evidence for the theory that fun is best way to change behavior for the better. For yourself, for the environment or something entirely different.
The site offers 3 examples of how fun got people to pick up trash, recycle more and even take the stairs instead of an escalator (as shown here).
Check out the site, get some friends together, brainstorm and submit ideas by December 15, then come back and tell us what you did.
You have as much chance of winning as anyone else!
A few weeks ago I told you about my client who “acquires houses out of foreclosure, rehabs and rents the properties, then sells the properties to investors” and the consequences of the unintended craziness involved in the auctions in Texas.
Unintended consequences sometimes seem to be the primary result of human actions. It is safe to assume that no one planned to cause global warming or the current economic meltdown.
These are just unintended consequences, but each one is much, much larger than the sequence of intentional human actions which led up to it. Given that we do not have perfect foresight, unintended consequences appear to be truly unavoidable. But they don’t have to be tragic.
Goals, Judgment, Flexibility, and Transparency
We can reduce the negative effects of unavoidable consequences.
Consider a sailor navigating a sailboat into a harbor marked by a lighthouse. Unfortunately, this sailor does not have GPS or an electronic autopilot, so he has to steer the boat manually, using the tiller. He sets the boat on a course to the harbor, using the lighthouse as the marker. Almost immediately the wind, waves, and tide push the boat off course. The sailor constantly corrects the boat’s heading to keep it on course for the harbor. Sometimes the boat has to change course to avoid larger ships heading into port. Most of the time the boat is off course, but due to the sailor’s constant corrections it makes progress toward the goal.
Passengers on the boat may not know how to sail, but they can see the lighthouse and can use the radar screen to track the progress of the boat amidst other ships. They can tell, for themselves, that the boat is on track and making progress.
The sailor has a clear goal and uses his judgment and flexibility to keep the boat heading to port. The analogy to our economic situation is obvious—while the sailor is guiding the boat to a safe harbor; our economy feels like it is careening out of control, heading toward the rocks.
Things to Think About
Given that most of us cannot significantly influence the government or the national economy we need to look closer to home.
How do you guide your business?
How does your team set goals?
How do you encourage transparency?
How much freedom do you allow your employees to use their own judgment?
Do your policies look like the US Constitution (only 4,440 words) or like the US Tax Code (over 400 volumes)?
One More Consequence
Recently I have found a new opportunity, much too interesting to pass up. To pursue this new opportunity with the attention it deserves, one unintended consequence is that I must let go of this blog. With great appreciation for you readers and with many thanks to Miki Saxon, who gave me this opportunity to speak directly with you.
I close with the heartfelt wish that you follow your dreams all your life; that you may fulfill your dreams and that they may fulfill you.
Richard is still in Houston, but he thought that this case study detailing the unique problem facing a company with no competition and a radically new product would be of interest to you.
A Case Study of Customer Mapping
With the massive shifts in the economy, your customers are moving. Your sales and distribution channels are moving. Do you know where your customers and channels are now; where they are going tomorrow? Do you have a new product that is so that it is not just a matter of competing, but of evangelizing?
Giftventures, Inc. was facing many of these problems. Recently I worked with them to map their customers and channels.
Challenge—Find the Customers
The target market for Giftventure is parents with children in the 4-12 age range. The product is clearly a discretionary consumer product, a significant sales challenge in this environment. In addition, Giftventure is a new concept, which requires some explanation and investigation by the parent before making a purchase. How can an emerging company, with little cash to invest, gain recognition and traction with a discretionary product in a crowded consumer market?
Giftventure needed a compelling, proven go-to-market strategy in order to complete its initial fundraising, so this exploration had to be thorough, fast, and low-cost.
The results had to be conclusive and compelling, so Giftventure could focus its scarce resources in the channel that would produce large results, quickly.
To do that they needed to identify a channel that would produce large results, quickly.
The three keys:
In starting a new product or service line, and especially in starting a new venture, you do not know where your “sweet spot” lies in the market. Don’t rely on opinions–embrace your ignorance. You must test.
Be thorough. It can also be fast. Plan a comprehensive market exploration to test many possible channels, even in spite of your internal biases.
Only actual market results, supported by wide outreach and in-depth contact with potential customers, can direct you to the sweet spot for your product.
The winning combination is always to
Test many market channels.
Test wide and deep.
Let actual results lead you to your sweet spot.
To read a detailed explanation of Giftventure’s customer mapping download the PDF.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
I have a stack of books waiting to be read, some I buy and some are sent by publicists for me to review.
Did you watch the new reality show Undercover Boss on CBS Sunday after the Super Bowl?
Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson started changing the work world in 2003.
How do you feel when you read something presented as a unique insight into a subject and it turns out to be the same old tire stuff that you’ve seen for years?
Sports has long been used as an analogy to various business practices—the best sales training film I ever saw was done by Vince Lombardi explaining how selling was akin to the plays in football.
Unintended consequences sometimes seem to be the primary result of human actions. It is safe to assume that no one planned to cause global warming or the current economic meltdown.
