#91: Employees First, Customers Second

Employees First, Customers Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down, by Vineet Nayar (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2010)

Summary:
"When Vineet Nayar took the helm of HCL Technologies (HCLT) in 2005, the company's legacy of success was threatened by global shifts in the IT services market that left HCLT struggling to keep up with its bigger rivals. Five years later, the company had become one of the fastest growing IT services partners on the planet, world renowned for its radical management practices.

"What did HCLT do to effect such a transformation? As Nayar describes it in this refreshing first-person narrative, the secret to the company's success was to put employees first -- especially those working in the 'value zone,' described as the interface between the customer and HCLT. To do so, the company did not institute any employee-satisfaction programs, undertake any massive restructurings, or pursue any major technology initiatives. Instead, it employed a number of relatively simple catalysts that produced big (and often unexpected) results. The transformation advanced through four phases:

• Mirror Mirror: Nayar traveled around the world, bluntly speaking the truth about the company's situation and turning employees' eyes away from the past and toward a better future.
• Trust Through Transparency: A culture of trust was created by opening the books, sharing information that would make other companies cringe, and enabling employees and managers (including the CEO) to ask questions of each other.
• Inverting the Pyramid: The company redefined processes to make the supporting functions and the management accountable to the employees -- who, as a result, both improved their effectiveness and built new passion for their work.
• Recasting the Role of the CEO: Nayar sought to transform the company into a self-governing organization by transferring the responsibility for change from the office of the CEO to the employees in the value zone.

Nayar candidly admits that he did not have a grand plan when he started out, and that these phases became clear to him only after the transformation, but argues that any of these ideas and practices -- 'the world's most modern management,' according to Fortune -- may be successfully adopted by any company in any industry anywhere in the world, with similar results."

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• 1. Mirror Mirror: Creating the Need for Change
• 2. Trust Through Transparency: Creating a Culture of Change
• 3. Inverting the Organizational Pyramid: Building a Structure for Change
• 4. Recasting the Role of the CEO: Transferring the Responsibility for Change
• 5. Find Understanding in Misunderstanding: Renewing the Cycle of Change

My Take:
Wow. While this isn't my favorite genre, I've certainly read enough in the leadership and management section to have a sense of what to expect, and honestly, my expectations aren't usually all that high. A valuable reminder or two, perhaps even some point I hadn't thought of before, but usually nothing earth-shattering.

Employees First, Customers Second was different, probably in large part because its author isn't some ill-defined management guru but an actual CEO who (if the book can be believed) transformed his company by implementing four simple but revolutionary steps, all of which flow from the premise that a business's true value in the 21st century derives not from the R&D or manufacturing divisions, but from the front-line employees who interact most directly with the customers:

"The conventional wisdom, of course, says that companies must always put the customer first. In any service business, however, the true value is created in the interface between the customer and the employee. So, by putting employees first, you can bring about fundamental change in the way a company creates and delivers unique value for its customers and differentiates itself from its competitors. Through a combination of engaged employees and accountable management, a company can create extraordinary value for itself, its customer, and the individuals involved in both companies."

The Mirror, Mirror section is pretty straightforward and, while it may not be common among new CEOs, it's certainly not unheard of. Remember the old MBWA (Management By Walking Around) fad from 20-some-odd years ago? Well, essentially, this is what Nayar did on becoming CEO: traveled around the world, met with employees at most or all of HCLT's many locations, and told them the truth as he saw it about where the company currently stood. In his case, this meant admitting that the firm that had previously been an industry leader in India had fallen in the early 2000s to the middle of the pack, and continued to lose market share by resting on its laurels. This chapter concludes with an insightful and humorous observation on what it really means to be a great leader:

"I thought about my three heroes -- Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King Jr. -- and how they had created transformation in their societies. ... These great leaders did not formulate strategy by retreating with their top people to a private place and then emerging to make a pronouncement to the masses. No, they walked the roads of their countries, met their people, and talked with them ceaselessly. During that process, they held up the mirror to their societies and helped their people see and articulate what was wrong. The leaders were able to make people intrinsically unhappy with the current state of affairs without demeaning their accomplishments or dishonoring their past in anyway. ... They also worked with their people to create an idea of the future, the point B that made people aspire to change. The resulting combination of dissatisfaction, continued pride, and excitement was a very, very heady potion and difficult to reject."

It's in the next section where things start to really get radical, though. Believing that in order to successfully implement major changes and innovations, all ideas, no matter where they come from within the company, need to be aired and debated, he opened up HCLT's financial information to everyone in the organization. (Exactly what was and wasn't made public wasn't specified, but I'm enough of a privacy-mad American to assume individual salaries weren't published. Hey, who knows?) He also initiated an online Q & A forum different from many others in that questions weren't censored; all questions were visible to everyone, along with all the responses. Interestingly, while the deluge of questions and comments initially made Nayar feel like the company must be in serious trouble, his direct reports indicated that they were seeing a very different picture; now that the company seemed to be acknowledging and addressing its problems, employees were spending much less time gossiping and more time talking about what was being posted, offering one another different ways of looking at situations, working on potential solutions, etc.

From here, he went on to do what the book calls inverting the pyramid: making such "enabling functions" as HR and finance, and even the CEO's office, accountable to the front-line employees. Specifically, they instituted an internal service ticket function that works like this:

"An employee can open a ticket for one of three categories of issues -- a problem, a query, or a work request -- and the ticket can be directed to any one of the enabling functions, including HR, finance, administration, training and development, IT/IS teams, transport, and others. Employees can also open a ticket on most members of senior management, including me.

"Once the employee has filled out the ticket, the system automatically assigns it to a support executive in the appropriate department. He or she will investigate the issue and take any action necessary to resolve it. The support executive commits to a set of accountability measures for each ticket, including how long it should take to complete. The metrics are based on a number of factors, including the complexity and urgency of the request. If the support executive does not resolve the issue within the specified time, the ticket is automatically sent to the executive's manager, and so on up the line.

"The entire SSD process is transparent so that an employee can check the status of his or her ticket at any time. Once the issue is resolved, the support executive closes the ticket. If, however, the employee is not satisfied with the resolution, he or she can refuse the closed status of the ticket. It will remain open and the clock will keep ticking. The employee can also rate the quality of service provided by the support executive."

In addition, the company extended the 360-degree feedback process many companies use to allow not just a manager's direct reports, but anyone whose job might be influenced by a manager's actions, to offer feedback on that manager.

The final action step -- recasting the role of the CEO -- was a bit unclear to me, but essentially, Nayar envisioned HCLT as a leaderless organization, as described in Brafman and Beckstrom's The Starfish and the Spider:

"Cut off the leg of a spider, and you have a seven-legged creature on your hands; cut off its head and you have a dead spider. But cut off the arm of a starfish and it will grow a new one. Not only that, but the severed arm can grow an entirely new body."

Perhaps the best summary of the leadership model for which Nayar strives is this one, from the end of Chapter 5:

"The CEO can no longer be the one who scribbles strategy on a paper napkin over dinner. He or she cannot be the one who stands in front of a crowd to motivate it with fabulous oratory. The CEO will not be the one who thinks of the best and the brightest ideas. The role of the CEO is to enable people to excel, help them discover their own wisdom, engage themselves entirely in their work, and accept responsibility for making change."

The book's final chapter addresses some of the more common objections one might have to the EFCS philosophy; namely, that it won't work when times are hard and isn't necessary when times are good; that customers won't see any value as a result; that large-scale changes are needed; or that EFCS has no impact on the company's bottom line. (Needless to say, he suggests that all 5 comments are untrue.)

If it's not already obvious, I really enjoyed this book; it was a quick, easy read with a lot to chew on for a manager or aspiring manager of pretty much any organization.

#49: Good Boss, Bad Boss

Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best ... and Learn From the Worst, by Robert Sutton (New York: Business Plus, 2010).

Summary:
"Inspired by the cries for help and the success stories he received in response to his previous book, The No Asshole Rule, Sutton (management science, Stanford University) describes qualities of good and bad bosses, explains how to be a good boss, and gives advice on surviving workplace jerks. Bosses will learn how their words and actions affect others, the best and worst ways to take charge and make decisions, and when to be quiet and when to speak up. The author writes in an accessible style with a sense of humor, drawing on behavioral science research as well as real-life case studies and the voices of real employees from around the world."

Table of Contents:
Preface: From Assholes to Bosses
I. Setting the Stage

• 1. The Right Mindset

II. What the Best Bosses Do

• 2. Take Control
• 3. Strive to Be Wise
• 4. Stars and Rotten Apples
• 5. Link Talk and Action
• 6. Serve as a Human Shield
• 7. Don't Shirk the Dirty Work
• 8. Squelch Your Inner Bosshole

III. The Upshot

• 9. It's All About You

My Take:
What a pleasant surprise. Due to a strategically-placed library bar code, I didn't realize this was by the author of The No Asshole Rule until I opened the front cover. Loved that book, liked this one just about as well. This one expands on the former, which talked about how to avoid dealing with (ahem) jerks at work, and talks about how not to be a "jerk" yourself when you're promoted to the corner office ... and how, in fact, to be a good, even a great boss. For time reasons I can't elaborate more, but this was a good one -- more meat there than I usually expect from books of its kind.

#48: Who Killed Change?

Who Killed Change? Solving the Mystery of Leading People Through Change, by Ken Blanchard, John Britt, and others (New York: William Morrow/ HarperCollins, 2009)

Summary:
"Every day organizations around the world launch change initiatives -- often big, expensive ones -- designed to improve the status quo. Yet 50 to 70 percent of these change efforts fail. A few perish suddenly, but many die painful, protracted deaths that drain the organization's resources, energy, and morale.

"Who or what is killing change?

"That's what you'll find out in this witty whodunit. The story features a Columbo-style detective, Agent Mike McNally, who's investigating the murder of yet another change. One by one, Agent McNally interviews thirteen prime suspects, including a myopic leader named Victoria Vision; a chronically tardy manager named Ernest Urgency; an executive name Clair Communication, whose laryngitis makes communication all but impossible; and several other dubious characters.

"The suspects are sure to sound familiar and you're bound to relate them to your own workplace. In the end, Agent McNally solves the case in a way that will inspire you to become an effective Change Agent in your own organization.

"A step-by-step guide at the back of the book shows you how to apply the story's lessons to the real world. Key questions help you evaluate the health of your organization's change initiatives, and you'll learn best practices for enabling and sustaining the desired change."

Table of Contents:

• Scene of the Crime
• Suspect #1: Culture
• Suspect #2: Commitment

Reflections on Culture and Commitment

• Suspect #3: Sponsorship
• Suspect #4: Change Leadership Team
• Suspect #5: Communication

Reflections on Sponsorship, Change Leadership Team, and Communication

• Suspect #6: Urgency
• Suspect #7: Vision

Reflections on Urgency and Vision

• Suspect #8: Plan
• Suspect #9: Budget
• A Vision of Death
• Suspect #10: Trainer
• Suspect #11: Incentive

Reflections on Plan, Budget, Trainer, and Incentive

• Suspect #12: Performance Management
• Suspect #13: Accountability
• Super Cops and Stakeholders
• The Autopsy Report
• Murderer Announced: Invitation Only
• Change Lives!
• Helping Change Thrive in Your Organization
  

My Take:
I knew what I was getting into, I suppose, but Who Moved My Cheese? this ain't. (Or maybe it is; I've probably read Cheese but don't have a clear memory of doing so.) It's your classic short, sweet, and grossly-oversimplified business primer -- not surprisingly, as Blanchard's a master of the genre. Are there some good points here about what's needed for organizational change to succeed? Sure, but probably only a page or two's worth when you cut through the silly whodunit mystery stuff. Oh well. As I said, I expected as much.

REALITY CHECK #000: What They Still Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School

Ended up never finishing this one and returning it half-read after renewing it once. Oh well.

What They Still Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School, by Mark H. McCormack (New York: Bantam Books, 1989).

Summary:
"The key to executive success is innovation, and if you want to keep up with the times in today's fast-paced global economy, you'd better keep up with Mark McCormack. One of America's hottest entrepreneurs and the author of the million-copy bestseller What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School, Mark McCormack is back with an advanced course in street-smart business tactics for the executive headed for the top. What They Still Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School is a book of powerful new strategies designed to help you write your own success story for the 1990s.

"Mark McCormack didn't tell readers everything he knew in What They Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School. In part, that's because the best executives stay open to innovation, constantly seeking out systems and strategies that work better and people who have something new to teach them. Using his proven method of applied people sense, McCormack explodes conventional wisdom and teaches the skills that have contributed to his own stunning success and that of the many senior executives with whom he's worked. The result is a straight-talking practical guide to getting organized, getting ahead, and gaining and keeping the competitive edge. Here are all the winning strategies of buying, selling, managing, and negotiating that will give you the advantage no matter what the situation -- in even the toughest business environments.

"McCormack takes you inside the top corporations to reveal the secrets of supersalesmanchip and match-tough negotiating: how to handle questions you don't want to answer, get more information than you give, and make the kind of offer no one can refuse. Learn how to evaluate a client so that you know what he wants before he asks for it, direct a meeting and set the agenda, write a persuasive memo, and time phone calls for maximum effect -- even how to make business travel easier ... and more productive. What They Still Don't Teach You at Harvard Business School offers telling new insights into:

• How to land your first great job and make a big impact with limited opportunities
• How to get the job done in the office or on the road
• The five attributes of a winner
• Ten ways careers get stalled -- and how to get them started again
• Four ways to prove you're worth a higher salary
• The seven most dangerous people in your company
• The Ten Commandments of Street Smarts
• And much, much more

"Written in hard-hitting, no-nonsense language that echoes Mark McCormack's uniquely successful management style, here is savvy advice for executives and executives-to-be on every rung of the corporate ladder. Now you no longer have to struggle to keep up with the competition -- they'll be fighting to keep up with you!"

Table of Contents:
(OK, this is an abridged ToC. The real one is about 6 pages long and I Just Wasn't Gonna Do It.)
Introduction: The Ten Commandments of Street Smarts
1: Selling
2: Negotiating
3: Managing
4: Getting Ahead
5: Getting Organized
6: Communicating
7: Getting the Job Done on the Road
8: Entrepreneuring
Epilogue: Do I Follow My Own Advice?

My Take:
It's always interesting to read books of leadership and management advice, most of which are aimed primarily at those who work in the corporate sector, and see which pieces of the author's wisdom do and don't apply to colleges and universities (and possibly to other non-profits, too). In this case, it'll be interesting to see which pieces of McCormack's advice seem to have stood the test of time, 22 years on, and which haven't. Clearly, I'm not expecting any discussion of e-mail, the internet, or smart phones, which is likely to make the chapters on organization and business travel rather quaint. I'll admit, though, that the introductory chapter, at least, seems plain-spoken and fairly apropos even today. Stay tuned.

RETURNED: Working with Emotional Intelligence

Working with Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goleman (New York: Bantam Books, 1998).

Summary:
"Daniel Goleman's bestselling Emotional Intelligence revolutionized the way we think about personal excellence. Now he brings his insight into the workplace, a book sure to change the shape of business for decades to come. In Working with Emotional Intelligence, Goleman reveals the skills that distinguish star performers in every field, from entry-level jobs to top executive positions. He shows that the single most important factor is not IQ, advanced degrees, or technical expertise, but the quality Goleman calls emotional intelligence. Self-awareness, self-confidence, and self-control; commitment and integrity; the ability to communicate and influence, to initiate and accept change -- these competencies are at a premium in today's job market. The higher up the leadership ladder you go, the more vital these skills become, often influencing who is hired or fired, passed over or promoted. As Goleman shows, we all possess the potential to improve our emotional intelligence -- at any stage in our career. He provides guidelines for cultivating these capabilities -- and also explains why corporate training must change if it is to be effective."

Table of Contents:

I. Beyond Expertise

• 1. The New Yardstick
• 2. Competencies of the Stars
• 3. The Hard Case for Soft Skills

II. Self-Mastery

• 4. The Inner Rudder
• 5. Self-Control
• 6. What Moves Us

III. People Skills

• 7. Social Radar
• 8. The Arts of Influence
• 9. Collaboration, Teams, and the Group IQ

IV. A New Model of Learning

• 10. The Billion-Dollar Mistake
• 11. Best Practices

V. The Emotionally Intelligent Organization

• 12. Taking the Organizational Pulse
• 13. The Heart of Performance

Some Final Thoughts

Appendix 1 - Emotional Intelligence
Appendix 2 - Calculating the Competencies of Stars
Appendix 3 - Gender and Empathy
Appendix 4 - Strategies for Leveraging Diversity
Appendix 5 - Further Issues in Training

My Take:
Not a page-turner like my last few weeks, but one I probably need to read as I'm back on the job market again. Let's see if it proves useful.

OK, folks, this one's on hold for a while. It's wprthwhile reading and all, but with the 3 jobs I'm juggling at present I want to actually be entertained when I can steal a few minutes to read for fun. Let's see if I can get back to it before the library calls it home.

#18: The No Asshole Rule

The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't, by Robert I. Sutton (New York: Warner Business Books, 2007).

Summary: Coming soon

Table of Contents:

• Introduction
• Chapter 1: What Workplace Assholes Do and Why You Know So Many
• Chapter 2: The Damage Done: Why Every Workplace Needs the Rule
• Chapter 3: How to Implement the Rule, Enforce It, and Keep It Alive
• Chapter 4: How to Stop Your "Inner Jerk" from Getting Out
• Chapter 5: When Assholes Reign: Tips for Surviving Nasty People and Workplaces
• Chapter 6: The Virtues of Assholes
• Chapter 7: The No Asshole Rule as a Way of Life
• Epilogue

My Take:
Books like this are why I love the library. The cover caught my eye, the content had a few interesting points to ponder ... but there wasn't THAT much substance there even for a first read, and certainly not enough that I'll want to refer to it again, recommend it, store it, or dust it.

The author's argument? Jerks (I try to keep my own writing PG, though direct quotes that get a bit saltier are OK) at work are bad news. You know the type; the guy or gal who you always walk away from feeling belittled and humiliated, and who seems to take special delight in heaping abuse on those lower down on the food chain. Well, they're bad for workplace morale, bad for productivity, bad for employees' health, bad for client relations, and even a danger to themselves. If you can, don't hire them; if they sneak in anyway, make 'em shape up or ship out; if you're stuck working with a bumper crop, detach as best as you can till you can polish off the old resume and find a new job. Obviously, beating them by joining them should be out of the question.

Probably the most interesting piece of this thesis is Sutton's assertion that, in his words, "assholes breed like rabbits." If nasty, vile behavior is tolerated, even rewarded, well ... people who don't act like that will leave or be corrupted; people who do and are in positions of power will hire others just like themselves, and, well, you get the idea. I've been in a sufficient variety of workplaces to know that our behavior is very much shaped by our environment, so this piece resonated with my own experience. (Vague, yes, but this is nominally a public forum.)

Th-th-th-th-that's all, f-f-f-f-folks.

#103 - Management Challenges for the 21st Century

Doesn't that title just sound like a page turner? There's a story behind it, of course, albeit not a very exciting one: I keep stumbling across Peter Drucker's name in the various tangentially-related-to-business-and-management stuff I read now and again, and thought I ought to just read something of his, in the interest of informing myself about his work. Having been less than inspired by some of the classics of various non-fiction genres which haven't aged well, I took a different approach to selecting exactly what to read: I picked the newest of his books the public library had on the shelf.

The result was, of course, Management Challenges for the 21st Century, by Peter Drucker (HarperBusiness, 1999). In the end, it had some novel, interesting observations that made it worth my time, though there were some style and formatting issues that made it tough to get there without undue distraction. Drucker's purpose is to identify and discuss the "hot" issues and challenges which (he expects) will confront tomorrow's managers, challenges which "[i]n most cases ... are at odds and incompatible with what is accepted and successful today."

He begins with a chapter on "Management's New Paradigms," which frankly, I found a bit wordy and confusing. It doesn't help that the approach -- setting out 7 basic assumptions about what he calls the discipline and practice of management, explaining why each is wrong, and replacing them with new paradigms -- relies on strawman arguments. For example, the first assumption is "Management is Business Management," as opposed to nonprofit management and so on. I don't know that anyone really thought that's all there was to management even in 1999. Nor do I think the paradigm which replaces said assumption -- "Management is the specific and distinguishing organ of any and all organizations" -- is especially useful or informative. To be fair, though, the discussion in between the two does make a valid point:

"There are, of course, differences in management between different organizations -- Mission defines Strategy, after all, and Strategy defines Structure. There surely are differences between managing a chain of retail stores and managing a Catholic diocese (though amazingly fewer than either chain stores or bishops believe); between managing an air base, a hospital and a software company. But the greatest differences are the terms individual organizations use. Otherwise the differences are mainly in application rather than in principles. There are not even tremendous differences in tasks and challenges. The executives of all these organizations spend, for instance, about the same amount of their time on people problems -- and the people problems are almost always the same. Ninety percent or so of what each of these organizations is concerned with is generic. ... In every organization -- business or nonbusiness alike -- only the last 10 percent of management has to be fitted to the organization's specific mission, its specific culture, its specific history, and its specific vocabulary."

That seems to be Drucker in a nutshell: brilliant observations, but often well-padded in terms of verbiage. (Yeah, I guess if you're 90 and have written 30 books over the course of your 65-year career, you're allowed to ramble a little.)

It's in the strategy chapter where the book overcomes the worst of the rambling, and really nails down the author's key points in words even a mere layperson like me can understand. Here, he outlines 5 key political and social "phenomena that can be considered certainties" which management strategists will need to grapple with: the collapsing birth rate in the developed world (and, equally important, the increased percentage of older people in the age distribution); the concentration of growth in economic sectors -- government, health care, education, and leisure -- which don't behave according to typical free market/ supply and demand rules; evolving definitions of "performance" (shareholder return? commitment from knowledge workers?); the need for all industries to be globally competitive (in Drucker's words, "'Protection' no longer protects, no matter how high the custom duties or how low the import quotas"); and the growing incongruity between economic and political realities.

I also particularly enjoyed (OK, maybe "enjoyed" isn't quite the right word here -- would you believe "found valuable"?) the "Change Leader" and "Information Challenges" chapters. Similar in format to those which precede it, both offer a handful of deceptively simple maxims. The former starts off discussing when and how products, services, markets, etc. should rightfully be abandoned -- something I know my own late employer could stand to look at more closely, but I digress. There's also a valuable section on how to create and support change, but also, how and what not to change: specifically, pursuing "an innovation opportunity that is not in tune with the strategic realities," "[confusing] 'novelty' with 'innovation,' and "confusing motion with action." The latter veers off a bit too far into the historical, but nonetheless offers solid points about how to approach communications, and on what Drucker sees as an emerging shift in information technology:

"[F]or fifty years, Information Technology has centered on DATA -- their collection, storage, transmission, presentation. It has focused on the 'T' in 'IT.' The new information revolutions focus on the 'I.' They ask, 'What is the MEANING of information and its PURPOSE?' And this is leading rapidly to redefining the tasks to be done with the help of information and, with it, to redefining the institutions that do these tasks."

Subsequent chapters talk about how to think about productivity with reference to knowledge (vs. manual) workers, and managing oneself. The above quote, though, illustrates my chief quibble with the book: the editing and formatting are distracting. Lots of words CAPITALIZED for EMPHASIS; lots of indented paragraphs that look like they should be quotes or citations but aren't. I can forgive the occasionally muddied writing because the content itself is pretty darned good, but the weird formatting really seemed out of place. I found myself wondering if Drucker had become such a venerated figure in his field that others shied away from editing his work, or if he just plain forbade it. His right, I guess, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

A decent introduction to Drucker? Probably, though I'm not enough of a management scholar to say for sure. Good ideas applicable in pretty much any line of work or organization, even if the writing seemed technically uneven.

#89 - Built to Last

Can you tell I've been on a business and leadership kick lately? Next up in the non-fiction zone will be child development and parenting. Yeah, I have some weird ideas about what's a good time, but we knew that already.

Anyhoo, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, by James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras (HarperBusiness, 1994) is unusual in the genre for two reasons: one, it's pretty old (considering) and still on the shelf; and two, it's got a fair bit of substance. The book is the result of an extensive study the authors, both Stanford professors, conducted on 18 visionary companies: companies which had been in business at least 50 years, premeir institutions in their industries, and widely respected by businesspeople In The Know. Their intent was to determine what set these companies apart from others in the same industries with similar longevity, but without quite the same stature or financial returns.

The companies selected are all household names, and they're a pretty varied lot, including 3M, Merck, Citicorp, Walt Disney, Marriott, Wal-Mart, and Hewlett-Packard. Borrowing from my last review of Never Eat Alone (partly because I find it darned hard to really review books on topics outside my area of expertise, and partly because this one, too, was interesting enough for me to want to take notes), I'm going to do less of a review here and more a summary of the key characteristics Collins and Porras found which were common to the companies they studied.

1. Clock building, not time telling. In short, a "visionary company" doesn't need to have its genesis in a single, brilliant idea -- Hewlett and Packard went into business together knowing only that they wanted to start a company that had something to do with electrical engineering -- or a charismatic leader. Rather, it's the company itself and what it stands for that is and isn't visionary. This theme of "clock building," which recurs throughout the book, is explained as follows:

"Imagine you met a remarkable person who could look at the sun or stars at any time of day or night and state the exact time and date: 'It's April 23, 1401, 2:36 A.M., and 12 seconds.' This person would be an amazing time teller, and we'd probably revere that person for the ability to tell time. But wouldn't that person be even more amazing if, instead of telling the time, he or she built a clock that could tell the time forever, even after he or she was dead and gone? Having a great idea or being a charismatic visionary leader is 'time telling'; building a company that can prosper far beyond the presence of any single leader and through multiple produce life cycles is 'clock building.'"

2. More than profits: While profits are important and necessary to all the visionary companies studied, they're not the end in and of themselves. Rather, these companies tended to focus on earning a good profit or a fair profit in a manner consistent with their core ideologies, rather than on making the maximum profit possible, regardless of how they got there
3. Preserve the core/ stimulate progress: While having a core, unchanging ideology is important, that doesn't mean these companies refuse to change. On the contrary, "[a] visionary company carefully preserves and protects its core ideology, yet all the specific manifestations of its core ideology must be open for change and evolution."
4. Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs -- pronounced "Bee-Hags" -- for short) -- clear, daunting goals that everyone can remember and understand -- are a great way to focus effort and stimulate team spirit.
   
5. Along with the fervently-held core ideology, visionary companies tend to have cult-like corporate cultures. Those who fit with the ideology and enjoy working somewhere where everyone's expected to be gung-ho about their work tend to love it and stay a while; those who don't tend to leave or be fired quickly.
   
6. Try a lot of stuff and keep what works. Sure, BHAGs are important, but evolutionary progress is equally so. Since you never know exactly where the next big thing is going to come from (witness the accidental invention of Post-It Notes at 3M, and, much earlier, of talcum powder and Band-Aids at Johnson & Johnson), it's best to give employees and departments a fair degree of freedom -- a/k/a "let a thousand flowers bloom" -- and, when you find something that works well, spread it around and/or run with it.
7. Home-grown management. This was a surprise to me, but actually, only 2 of the 18 companies ever brought in a new CEO from the outside. Rather, part of how these companies preserved their core ideologies and stimulated progress was through extensive succession planning and a long-standing practice of promoting from within. Lest you think this means big, revolutionary changes are all but impossible, note that Jack Welch at GE was a home-grown CEO.
   
8. Good enough never is. True visionary companies don't rest on their laurels; instead, they build in mechanisms to keep them from getting too comfortable, and seek constant improvement.

Another good book, and an interesting companion to Never Eat Alone (which espouses many similar principles on an individual level). I'm ready for some good fiction now, though.

#88 - Never Eat Alone

OK, time to whittle down the non-fiction stack a bit. I'm currently reading Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time, by Keith Ferrazzi (Currency, 2005). It's been on my list so long I've forgotten how it got there; for all I know, it's something I saw in an airport and found intriguing. Interesting, as it's essentially a book on networking, that it percolated up just as I'm kicking off my job search in earnest. Sometimes karma works in mysterious ways.

Ferrazzi's premise, drawing from his own experience as a working-class but ambitious kid from a small Pennsylvania town who nonetheless attended elite schools, graduated from Yale and then Harvard, and achieved impressive success in the corporate sector, can be summed up as follows:

"[I]n some very specific ways life, like golf, is a game, and that the people who know the rules, and know them well, play it best and succeed. And the rule in life that has unprecedented power is that the individual who knows the right people, for the right reasons, and utilizes the power of these relationships, can become a member of the 'club,' whether he started out as a caddie or not."

From there, he goes on to outline principles for building strong professional relationships (a/k/a your network) and (presumably) therefore achieving whatever goals you've set for yourself. Specifically, these principles are as follows:

1. Don't keep score. Ferrazzi argues that if he had to sum up the key to success in a single word, it would be "generosity." You need to both accept it and ask for it. You also need to be willing to introduce your contacts to each other. Here, he cites a former prep school headmaster who, in his words, "build an entire institution on his asking people not 'How can you help me?' but 'How can I help you?'"
2. What's your mission? According to the book, the folks most likely to succeed are those who not only have goals, but write them down and build a concrete action plan that will get them there. He further breaks this down into the following steps: finding your passion (both by looking inside yourself and seeking friends' and colleagues' advice); putting your goals down on paper (ideally, both a three-year goal, and then three-month and one-year mini-goals that will help you get there); and identifying people who can help you on your way to each of these goals.
3. Build it before you need it. In Ferrazzi's words, "people who have the largest circle of contacts, mentors, and friends know that you must reach out to others long before you need anything at all." The piece that really spoke to me in this chapter was the following:

"Too often, we get caught up efficiently doing ineffective things, focusing solely on the work that will get us through the day. The idea isn't to find oneself another environment tomorrow -- be it a new job or a new economy -- but to be constantly creating the environment and community you want for yourself, no matter what may occur.

"Creating such a community, however, is not a short-term solution or one-off activity only to be used when necessary. The dynamics of building a relationship is necessary incremental. You can only truly gain someone's trust and commitment little by little over time."

4. The genius of audacity. Frankly, networking (oops, sorry, relationship building) doesn't come naturally to anyone ... but on the other hand, "nothing in [your] life has created opportunity like a willingness to ask." In other words, you need to introduce yourself to new people, even if it's uncomfortable and you'll probably get rejected sometimes.
5. The networking jerk. Don't be That Guy (or Gal) who loves to schmooze and gossip, but treats underlings poorly and/or is only in it for what they can get.
   
6. Do your homework. Pretty self-explanatory; essentially, find out as much as you can about people before you meet them, and find some common ground ASAP afterwards.

There's much more -- the above notes only take me about halfway through the book -- but all in all, it's an excellent reference and provides some good food for thought and action, whether you're on a job-hunt like I am or just interested in such stuff.

#69 - Winning Nice

OK, not only are all my library books save one due back tomorrow, but if I don't catch up on blogging soon, I'm going to forget what I read ... which kinda defeats the purpose.

So, my 69th book of the year was Winning Nice: How to Succeed in Business and Life Without Waging War, by Dawna Stone (Center Street, 2007). I have a weekness for books about leadership and management even when I'm not on the job market (yeah, I really know how to have a good time, I know), which is why this one jumped out at me. Overall, it was a better than average specimen of the genre. The author, a successful entrepreneur and executive (among other things, she founded Her Sports + Fitness magazine -- now Women's Running, and was the winner of The Apprentice: Martha Stewart), argues that not only does one not need to be an S.O.B. or a bee-with-an-itch to be successful, but being a nice girl (or guy) actually reaps significant professional dividends.

The book is divided into two main sections: "Build Your Foundation," which outlines seven interpersonal skills key to personal success and making a difference to others, and "Build Your Future," which discusses how to apply these skills in one's own personal and professional life. Specifically, the skills she champions are as follows:

1. Believe in yourself - i.e., believe that you can truly make a difference.
2. Learn to communicate, because essentially, all interaction is communication, and the higher you go in your career, the more of it you need to do.
3. Give recognition. The key to genuine, inspiring leadership (not to mention retaining the best employees) is effective recognition.
4. Take an interest in others -- treat everyone as a potential customer, client, or friend, because hey, you never know.
5. Help others help themselves, whether that's by encouragement, mentoring, or just plain listening.
   
6. Be part of the team -- go the extra mile, do what you say you will, and show some enthusiasm.
7. Exude professionalism. Here I was afraid this would be all about dressing for success, but it's not -- appearance and attire are mentioned, of course, but so are punctuality (which won points with me right there), communication, and sensitivity.
   

Once you've mastered everything in the tool box, Stone urges readers to kick it up a notch by doing the following:

1. Find your passion. This seems to flow logically from believing in yourself; if you do this, you can and should find a line of work that you truly love and are committed to.
2. Promote yourself. This isn't about (or advocating) bragging, so much as communication ... which darned well better include making sure your bosses know what you've done and that you want to advance beyond your current position one day. I'd personally always thought this was obvious, but it's actually not -- especially in the non-profit sector, where I work -- but that's a whole 'nother conversation.
3. Learn the art of managing nice. This one's a bit tough to summarize, but basically -- be approachable, set clear goals, and build trust.
   
4. Become a great leader. Stone argues that what sets true leaders apart from mere managers is "the vision thing" -- seeking out opportunities, changing the rules, and so on.
5. Build lasting relationships. Again, this seems like a pretty clear parallel with taking an interest in others. Networking may be a cliche, but it really is the name of the game.
6. Embrace your customers and clients. The book argues that we all have customers, whether they're people who walk into our store, our employees, advertisers, vendors, and so on. Whoever they are, if you don't make their experience a good one, they won't want to do business with you.
7. Give back. Just as you should ideally do something for a living that you're passionate about, you should find a cause outside your primary job to support, with time and/or money.
8. Be your best (yeah, this one sounds a little Oprah-ish): Focus on what you really want to do, and put in the effort you need to do it well.
   

As is often the case with books of this ilk, much of this isn't rocket science -- but Stone does include enough details and anecdotes to both make for interesting reading and provide some useful ideas for most early- and mid-career professionals. Definitely worth a read, though probably not a hardcover purchase.

A Brace of Business Books

So much for this not being a particularly personal blog; somehow, it seems all the weird quirks of my personality are leaking out in what I read. Today, you get to see yet another of my strange habits: my weakness for self-help/ "how to" books. Once upon a time, when I was young and (more) foolish, I really did believe that each one I checked out of the library or picked up at the corner bookstore was Really It -- this was The One that was finally going to help me lose weight, make more friends, succeed professionally, you name it. (Several years ago, Jennifer Niesslein poked some less-than-completely gentle fun at the self-help industry that promotes these attitudes in her book Practically Perfect in Every Way: My Misadventures Through the World of Self-Help and Back -- which I found pretty amusing, at least until I got fed up with the author's recurring comments about how her own life really is the next best thing to perfect that I opted not to finish it.)

Anyway, those optimistic-bordering-on-delusional days are long past now, but I do still enjoy a good self-helper now and then -- mostly as cultural artifacts, to see how the authors define problems or conflicts, who they seem to be targeting, and what they're proposing in terms of solutions. Soo ... without further ado, I bring you:

#13 - Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, by David Allen. OK, yet another true confession: I'm a big sucker for these "how to manage your time, your work, and your life" advice books. I love, love, love me some lists, calendars, and spreadsheets. I get a rush from my Saturday morning housecleaning blitz. I start my workday with a cup of coffee in one hand and a to-do list in the other, and probably end it with a revised, color-coded, prioritized to-do list and an empty but still unwashed cup. (Yes, my friends & family remind me often that there's a word for people like this.)

But no matter how many time-management/ organization books and articles I read, I can't seem to help myself; a new one crosses my path, and before I know it, I'm a few chapters in. This one was a good start, if you're looking for some basic advice on how to manage your time and work, but certainly not the comprehensive life-changing system it purports to be, and of limited use for folks whose work leans heavily toward complex, long-term projects. Allen's main thesis seems to be that if you gather everything that's currently on your radar screen -- projects, paperwork, reading material, stuff to file -- and process it using his decision tree, you'll gain control over your work and reduce your stress level. The decision tree looks something like this:

Is it actionable?

> No -- well, then, do one of the following:

-->Trash it

-->File it for reference

-->Put it in your maybe/ someday tickler file, for possible future action

> Yes -- in that case, will it take less than 2 minutes?

-->If yes, just do it.

--> If no, do one of the following:

---->Delegate it

---->Defer it, for action at some later time

Not rocket science, but the basic premise makes some sense. Allen also offers a few isolated tips that did seem like they'd be broadly applicable. These include using your calendar only for meetings and tasks that really need to be completed on a certain day, rather than for writing and rewriting the same list of things you'd like to do over and over each day when they don't all get done; keeping separate lists of calls you need to make and items on which you're waiting for a response or action from someone else (the former so you can crank through them all when you're near a phone; the latter so you don't lose track of things you've farmed out elsewhere); and keeping your list of action items separate from your reference/ stuff to read file and your maybe/ someday file. I also appreciate that his system can be pretty low-tech; you can use a computer- or PDA-based list and calendar system if you want, but it works just as well with pencil and paper.

IMO, the major shortcoming of Allen's approach is that it doesn't address how one juggles multiple, constantly changing priorities (a hallmark of every place I've ever worked), and doesn't really offer much for the person whose work mostly involves getting assigned lots of complex projects which are defined only in broad terms, and having to figure out the details on their own. To be fair, he does concede the latter point to some extent: there are many project-management guidebooks and software packages out there, most of which are far too technical to be of use to the majority of people who use them, and this book isn't intended to be one. In most middle- to upper-level management positions, however, even after you've weeded out everything that isn't an action item (because it's waiting for someone else's response, reference materials, done and gone in 2 minutes, or relegated to the tickler file) -- you're still left with a long and largely undifferentiated list of actions, and Allen doesn't offer much in the way of how to prioritize these or whether and how to plan the intermediate steps of a longer project (e.g., implement document imaging system) beyond the first "next action" on your list (e.g., search the internet for vendors and prices).

In summary, the book may be useful to someone who's either new to the workforce (or to the white-collar, office-based workforce) or who's totally clueless about time and workflow management, but doesn't really offer much for folks at a higher level and/or who do a lot of project work. 2 out of 5 bookmarks.

#14 - One Person/ Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success, by Marci Alboher. Here's another one that would probably be shelved somewhere in the same ball park as the above, based on LoC or DD classification (disclaimer: I am not a librarian), but with a different focus. Specifically, if you have a passion in life that isn't what you do to earn a living, and have mused about finding a way to better integrate the 2, this book is a decent place to start. However, it's short on concrete advice, and what it does offer is probably only realistic for a privileged few. The thesis consists mostly of anecdotes of a variety of people working in what Alboher calls slash careers: a psychotherapist/ violin maker, computer programmer/ theater director, teacher/ male model, lawyer/ minister, and so on. She uses their experiences, coupled with some fairly vague take-home points, to suggest that almost anyone with a passion that's not their day job can create a "slash life" for themselves if they're flexible, determined, and have a touch of entreprenurial spirit.

Certainly an interesting idea, and I can certainly see that if you've been starting to burn out on your 9-to-5, and wishing you could somehow be as excited about your job as you are about your [painting/ dancing/ horseback riding/ insert your hobby here], this book might be the spark you need to start thinking about whether and how that might be possible. And some of the advice did seem fairly broadly applicable; for example, the suggestion that almost everyone can teach, speak, or write about their passion, especially if you start small and for little or no pay; and the illustrations of how several different people kept a hand in a primary job to pay the bills while they got a second off the ground. That said, my own "will it play in Peoria?" test for business/ cultural advice like this is, will it fly for the working class? Alboher, herself an attorney/ writer/ speaker, doesn't really address this point, but I think the answer is no. Granted, she does offer several examples where half of someone's slash is a blue-collar profession: a longshoreman/ filmmaker, police officer/ landscaper, and so on. However, the vast majority of her examples are folks with at least one career that's both lucrative and offers a lot of opportunity for private practice/ self-employment -- law, computer programming, medicine, and so on. And frankly, the few blue collar slashes she includes are not a representative sample of the jobs available to folks without college degrees; they're concentrated in the few remaining bastions of strong unions, overwhelmingly male, and offer/ require extremely flexible schedules. Trust me, as the sister of two firefighter/ housepainter/ bartenders, one of whom can also add / lawyer to that list (yes, you read that correctly), I get how a cop's or firefighter's schedule is very conducive to picking up a second or third job ... but I also don't think it'd work for someone who stocks the shelves at Wal-Mart or cleans bathrooms in the local Econo-Lodge. Heck, I've got a master's degree, and it wouldn't work for me ... my field is pretty much 9-to-5, year-round, and especially if you need health insurance or other benefits, part-time options are pretty darned slim.

All right, that's a bit of a tangent. Bottom line, One Person/ Multiple Careers is a conversation starter, even if that conversation may initially be with yourself. If you're fortunate enough that you either aren't financially dependent on a single full-time job (or more), or work in a field that's not always Mon-Fri 9-5, it's worth considering ... though this book alone won't tell you much about how to get there if you do decide that's what you want. 2 out of 5 bookmarks.