Dispatches from the New World of Work

Next!
Now!

I love some of Michael Crichton's books. And have real problems with others.

But I heartily recommend Next, just out in paperback. It's called "fiction," but it is already mostly (?) true. The genetic revolution has great promise—and great peril. Some may call this book "alarmist"; I am not among them. How about "instructive"?

Simply the Best!

I am doing more and more work in healthcare. I am not engaging in the policy debate—or at least only marginally. Instead, I am interested in why we spend so much money, and yet trail Bosnia in life expectancy. (Our rank: 45.)

Along the way, and recently, I came across Phillip Longman's Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Healthcare Is Better Than Yours. All I'll say is that it is a stunning book, and the claim holds up.

Consider: "Generally, the more prestigious the hospital you check into, and the more eminent and numerous the physicians who attend you, the more likely you are to receive low-quality or even dangerous and unnecessary care."

Attached you will find some extracts from the book (and from Shannon Brownlee's Overtreated) that I've collected. If you are interested in 1/7th of our economy, let alone your health, read on. (One result of the book is my declining a major test that would have been of marginal value—and since it was intrusive, it would have exposed me to many of the factors that lead to our hospitals unnecessarily killing between 100,000 and 300,000 patients per year.*)

[*"The results are deadly. In addition to the 98,000 killed by medical errors in hospitals and the 90,000 deaths caused by hospital infections, another 126,000 die from their doctor's failure to observe evidence-based protocols for just four common conditions: hypertension, heart attack, pneumonia, and colorectal cancer." TP: total 314,000. FYI: In one evaluation, by the prestigious RAND consultants, the VA system ranked first on 294 measures of quality, compared to other major systems.]

[Now I'm starting on the very new Our Daily Meds, by Melody Petersen—yet another damning treatise.]

The "Little Stuff"

As you know, at the moment I'm obsessed with the "little stuff"—as I have called it here, the "last 98%," that is the heart of implementation-execution. Here, without comment, is another factoid—with which most of you are already familiar. Body language accounts for about 60% to 80% of so-called "verbal" communication. No surprise, women are muuuuuuuuuuuch better at reading body language than men.

My most recent source is the very readable (fun) The Definitive Book of Body Language by Allan and Barbara Pease. [They also authored another of my fun-but-serious favorites, Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps.]

Read It Anyway!

I really dislike the recently released Jacked Up: The Inside Story of How Jack Welch Talked GE into Becoming the World's Greatest Company. I put it down several times. I threw it down several times. Written by Welch's long-time speech writer, Bill Lane, it is a self-serving picture of an organization run by a misogynist egomaniac—you'd have to be nuts or a former male Navy Seal to want to have worked there. Welch comes across as a brutal, soulless, foul-mouthed boss who revels in putting people down in the most demeaning ways.

So why read it, you ask? Because despite the wretched culture Lane depicts, it also tells a remarkable story about one guy wrestling a ten-thousand ton rabid gorilla to the ground. The fact is that, per the hopeless message of the Post immediately above, Welch brought GE back from the dead, removed an astonishing number of barnacles from its hapless hull, circa 1980, and left behind an execution machine, deep in leadership talent, the likes of which is rare beyond measure. (Perhaps he did too well. GE is inherently unmanageable, and probably should have been broken up long ago. Welch kept it together and functioning in a way that I'd judge cannot be sustained—by Jeff Immelt or anyone else. But that's another story for another day.)

On top of all the problems with the book, it's a fact, I'd guess, that nary a single reader of this Post runs a quarter-million person outfit. Still, there is in the end, I decided, a bunch of stuff that we can learn from as we try to deal with Norberto Odebrecht's, "Everything in existence tends to deteriorate." (See above.) Though I hate the idea of putting the royalties into Bill Lane's pocket, I suggest you take a look at the book. You may pick up a tip or two or three from the good parts—and the bad parts are so bad that they have, or had for me, a perverse attraction.

(Fear not, Mr Lane will definitely not, under any circumstances, be a "Cool Friend.")

Changing Organizations-Getting Amazing Things Done

You perhaps remember that in my Charlie Wilson post I recommended Saul Alinsky's community organizing bible, Rules For Radicals, calling it the best book I know on project management and user buy-in. Now, I'm examining another uber-text on community organizing-big scale change-project management. Namely, The U. S. Army-Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual, by GEN David Petraeus, LTGEN James Amos and LTC John Nagl.

By following the manual, I'd say that one of the reasons the surge seems to be working is getting the troops out of the central, visibly protected compounds and into the neighborhoods to provide visible, local security and related services in tandem with the local folks. (The big idea is that "winning hearts and minds" is less about guns and bullets and more about on-the-ground local nurturing of confident and vital communities.)

Not to overstate your and my typical day, isn't that what we try to do, if we're wise, to get organizational buy-in to our projects? And if we fail, isn't it mostly because we hide in our central compounds, guarded by cubicle walls and executive assistants and departmental de facto "do not enter" signs—and toss "brilliant" software, our guns and bullets, over the wall?

I'll let you know what I think.

You, Me, and Charlie Wilson's War

Over Christmas I read George Crile's Charlie Wilson's War, the tale of the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan and the subsequent implosion of the Evil Empire, our undisputed nemesis for the first half century of my life. I can state with some certainty that it was the most incredible non-fiction story I have ever (!!) read. Last night I saw the movie—it was, for me, wonderful, though a pale reproduction of the full 550-page treatment by Crile. Turning to the practicalities of your and my day-to-day professional affairs, the story was peppered with de facto analyses of how Charlie did his amazing thing. He is indeed "larger than life," and yet his practical "can do" tactics have a lot to teach all of us. As I imagine it, 100% of the readers of this Blog are Professional Change Agents, fighting wars against the bureaucratic evil empires that impede success. So what follows is rather (!) lengthy for a Blogpost, but ridiculously short considering the importance of the subject matter:

**Make friends! And then more friends! And then more friends! "The way things normally work, if you're not Jewish you don't get into the Jewish caucus, but Charlie did. And if you're not black you don't get into the black caucus. But Charlie plays poker with the black caucus; they have a game, and he's the only white guy in it. The House, like any human institution, is moved by friendships, and no matter what people might think about Wilson's antics, they tend to like him and enjoy his company." Likewise Wilson's CIA partner, Gust Avrakotos, made friends among the black members of the CIA, becoming the first white guy to win their informal "Brown Bomber Award." ("We want to give this award to the blackest m%^&*$f*$#@& of all.") Bottom line: Your power is directly proportional to the breadth and depth of your Rolodex. Quantity counts almost as much as quantity—you never know from whom you will need a "little" special service. "She/he who has developed the best network of allies wins" is essentially a truism—though not acknowledged by the majority of us and the overwhelmingly useless MBA programs that spawned many of us.

**Make friends by the bushel with those several levels down and with various disenfranchised groups. Gust Avrakotos' strategy: "He had become something of a legend with these people who manned the underbelly of the Agency [CIA]." E.g., Gust apparently knew every executive secretary by name—and had helped many of them out with personal or professional problems. You could almost say he had the "invisible 95%" of the Agency working for him, which allowed him to make incredible things happen despite furious resistance from the top of a very rigid organization. I have spoken and Blogged on this topic before, arguing among other things that the key to sales success is "wiring" the client organization 3 or 4 levels down—where the real work gets done. Most would agree perhaps—but damn few make it the obsession it must be to foster success. One added (big) benefit is that "those folks" are seldom recognized, and thence the "investment" will likely yield long-lasting, not transient, rewards.

**Carefully manage the BOF/Balance Of Favors. Practice potlatch—giving so much help to so many people on so many occasions (overkill!) that there is no issue about their supporting you when the time comes to call in the chits. "Wilson made it easy for his colleagues to come to him, always gracious, almost always helpful." Some would argue, and I think I'd agree, that conscious management of one's "balance of favors" (owed and due) is a very sensible thing to do in a pretty organized fashion.

**Follow the money! "Anybody with a brain can figure out that if they can get on the Defense subcommittee, that's where they ought to be—because that's where the money is." Getting near the heart of fiscal processes offers innumerable opportunities to effectively take control of a system—as long as you are willing to invest in the details that lead to Absolute Mastery of the topic. From the outside looking in, this is another big argument for nurturing relationships a few levels down in the organization—in this case, the financial organization.

**Network! Network! Network! Potential links of great value will neither be possible nor obvious until the network is very dense. The odds of useful connections occurring is a pure Numbers Game. The more hyperlinks you have, the higher the odds of making the right connection.

**Seek unlikely, even unwholesome, allies, or at least don't rule them out. Find the right path (often $$$$) and the most bitter of rivals will make common cause relative to some key link in the chain.

**Found material. Don't re-invent the wheel. It costs too much, takes too much time, and requires too much bureaucratic hassle. Again and again, Wilson took advantage of stuff, such as materials, that was immediately available for use—rather than waiting an eternity for the "perfect" solution.

**Found material II (People). Find disrespected oddball groups that have done exciting work but are not recognized. (E.g., in Wilson's case, a band of crazies in the Pentagon's lightly regarded Weapons Upgrade Program.)

**Real, Visible Passion! "Authenticity" matters—especially in highly bureaucratic environments. Passion also suggests annoying "staying power"—"I might as well support him, he's not going away and he'll hound me 'til hell freezes over."

**Graphic evidence of the source of your passion. Charlie Wilson had one main hurdle to his plan—a crusty old cynic. CW took him to the astounding Afghan refugee camps—and made a fast and emotional friend of the cause in the space of an afternoon. If you've got a cause, you usually want to fix something that is a mess—figure out a way to expose would-be converts to startling, live demos of the problem, replete with testimony from those who are on the losing end of things. Wilson subsequently did such things as creating a little program to treat horrid medical problems in the U.S.—suddenly the demo was next door! (This works for a horrid bureaucratic process that is alienating us from our customers almost as much as in the Wilson case.) Hint: The demo must be ... graphic!)

**Make it personal. On every visit to the refugee camps, Wilson donated blood on the spot.

**Enthusiasm. Charlie and Gust oozed it from every pore re Afghanistan.

**Showmanship. This (any implementation) is a theatrical production, just like political campaigns—every project needs a showman obsessed with creating and moving forward the compelling "story line."

**Visible momentum! The smell of action must be in the air. Think of it as "momentum management"—an aspect of the showmanship theme.

**Perception is ... always ... everything. Play head games with the bad guys. The goal was to create a Vietnam-like sense of hopelessness among the Soviets. The bark was worse than the bite—but demoralization, even in a totalitarian state, is eventually decisive. Wear the buggers out by inducing hopelessness. ("We don't need this.")

**Goal is clear and unequivocal and inspiring ... Victory. Gust: "It wasn't a defeatist attitude [at the CIA], it was positive—making the enemy [Soviets] hemorrhage. But I don't play ball that way. It's either black or white, win or lose. I don't go for a tie." (Mirrors one biographer's conclusion about Lord Nelson's #1 differentiating attribute: "[Other] admirals were more frightened of losing than anxious to win.")

**Repeat: The goal is noble but "the work" is ... Relationships & Networking & Politics. Even if the issue is deeply technical, the "implementation bit" (that all important "last 98%") is all about ... politics-relationships.

**Recruit a politics-networking maestro. Charlie Wilson had this part down, and he needed help with the doing. If you are the doer, then you must find the politician-networker. They are a special breed—and worth as much as the doer. (The legendary community organizer Saul Alinsky pointed out the difference between "organizers" and "leaders." Leaders are the visible ones, out there giving the speeches and manning the picket lines. The largely invisible organizer worries about recruiting the folks who will be on that picket line, settling disputes about who goes where—and procuring the buses to get the picketers to the right place at the right time with the necessary signs and bullhorns. I firmly believe that Alinsky's Rules For Radicals is the best "project management" manual ever written.)

**Think QQ/Quintessential Quartet. Passion poobah and chief storyteller. Anal doer. Financier. Networker-political master-recruiter-in-chief.

**When a project is unusual-risky, never, ever waste time or capital going "up the chain of command." Risk aversion rises as one nears the top ... everywhere. Constantly devise and try and discard and re-revise end runs that build the network, add to knowledge, and create "small wins" that start the process mushrooming. Be polite to your boss (Gust wasn't, there are exceptions to every rule), but do not waste time on him!

**Demo! Demo! Demo! Get some little thing done no matter how grand the goal—you need visual evidence of hope.

**Demo redux. Plant a field of seeds, most will die, a few will grow—and pay special attention to the wildflowers. Fill the air with possibility, energy, action—no matter that 96.3% will come to naught.

**Take chances on unusual talent, regardless of formal rank. Mike Vickers, a junior (GS-11) officer was given enormous responsibility because of his demonstrated skills and tenacity and creativity.

**Recruit peculiar talent with no investment in conventional solutions. Most of what you do won't work—don't spend ages trying to stuff square pegs in round holes. Cultivate a Special Network of Weirdos, often junior, who bring no baggage to the party.

**Create a small, insanely committed "band of brothers" to act as mostly invisible orchestrators. When all was said and done, Gust Avrakotos and his tiny (never more than a half dozen) nerve center in the CIA never got even a smidgen of recognition for what was the Agency's biggest success. But his little team did the work of hundreds—in a true revolutionary mission, the core group must number <10. I've long used the (stolen from Lockheed) term "skunkworks" to describe such small bands of insanely determined renegades.

**The "Band of Brothers"-"Skunkworks" must be physically separated from top management. In Gust's case it was just a few floors of insulation—but even that is essential.

**Think, subconsciously ... long haul. A small act of recognition toward a Major in an ally's military pays off Big Time 15 years later when he is Chief of Staff of the Army—one never knows, but stitch enough of these events together, and the odds of one paying off go waaaaay up. That is, passion for today's action is paramount—but always, always, always think consciously about ... Network Investment. (Remember, R.O.I.R.—return On Investment in Relationships.)

**K.I.S.S. Our Afghan allies drove the Soviets crazy less with "big weapons" (oh, so difficult for an irregular program to acquire) than with an endless and ever-varying stream of "simple" (cheap, reliable, easy to train, easy to transport) weapons such as bicycle bombs (shades of our problems in Iraq).

**Plan for the "real world." Mike Vickers was a genius at understanding the way things really were in the field—his logistics programs reflected that. No pie-in-the-sky assumptions!

**Cut red tape. "What we did in one month with Charlie would have taken us nine years to accomplish." (Approval process in Congress, 8 days for 9-month procedure to get $$ transferred) My longtime definition: Boss = Chief hurdle remover. Which (again) means the boss must be master of the intricacies of the political process. A little known congressman, Tom DeLay, became one of the most powerful people in America by total mastery of the political rules. In a business project, this means, say, total mastery of the client's purchasing process—including total comprehension of the power politics going on at the moment.

**Don't document it! Charlie Wilson and Gust Avrakotos cut corners—to succeed against the powers that be, you will too. Keep documentation to a minimum—watch your emails!!

**Luck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Never deny the reality of lucky (or unlucky) breaks; realizing that allows you to "stay in the game," playing hand after hand until your cards come in—or the time comes to fold.

**The Game Ain't Over Until the Fat Lady Sings. I call them the "yoiks," which actually stands for un-intended consequences. After the Russians had withdrawn from Afghanistan, the U.S. once again returned to benign neglect—the result was, indirectly, 9/11 orchestrated from Afghanistan by some of the people we had supported a decade earlier. As to not finishing the chore, Charlie Wilson said that the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan, their first in the Cold War and a spur to the unraveling of the Evil Empire, was a "glorious accomplishment that changed the world. And then we f&*^ed up the end game." I'm with Wilson, regardless of today's threats; as one who lived through the entire Cold War, we are indeed now free of the not particularly low odds threat of planetary extinction. (See my Post of 1231.07 on Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov and the imminent end of the world on 26 September 1983.) But that's not the point, either—instead, it is the more general axiom that you never know what new can of worms you are opening—which to me, of course, makes the linear, logical approach to planning and life so laughable. Well, I guess we all need our illusions, and if plans can provide such comfort, ridiculous as they are, it's fine by me.

Concluding reminder: Any project worth doing is worth doing because in some small or large way it challenges "the way we do things around here." Moreover, it is a given that bosses are primarily hired to be cops who make sure that we do things "the way we do things around here." I'd guess that 98% of projects fail in terms of even near-total implementation. And 98% of the 98% failures are the results of lousy political and networking skills—not selection of the wrong project management software package. Hence "the work" of projects is the political implementation of ideas and processes, which necessarily engender emotional resistance by the powers that be. We who would change things are insurgents. Charlie and Gust were insurgents who fought, for years, an inch at a time through the corridors of power from Congress to CIA headquarters in Langley VA to the presidential palaces in Pakistan and Egypt—and even Israel.

Happy hunting!

Relationships!
Relationships!
Relationships!

As I, to some extent, resurrect things past, I have been murmuring & shouting ...
Relationships!
Relationships!
Relationships!

Big brains!
Logical thinking!
The heart of the human difference!
Right?

Wrong!
The heart of the "human difference"?
Gossip!

The human brain is about nine times bigger, on a body-size-adjusted basis, than that of mammals in general. Obviously, or so I think, the reason, therefore, is of interest. But let's take a step back first. Humans were a long, long way from the strongest of the species. So how did we win out over the Truly Big Beasties? Answer: Joining together in groups and outwitting and out-organizing the brutes. And how did that come about?

Gossip!

Or as British evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar put it, our brains expanded to store social information. (Relationship stuff!) To make a long, long story short, this "relationship stuff" allowed us to join together in bands, maximize what we now call "organizational effectiveness" ... and become Kings & Queens of the jungle and more.

My point here is to suggest that anyone, as so many do, who dismisses or diminishes "relationship stuff" and "communication stuff" as "the soft stuff" is not only a fool (per me), but also denying the essence of what it means to be human—and the reason we have ruled the planet, for better or for worse, for ever so many years.

(Source for most of this: No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality, by Judith Rich Harris.)

Ask 'em!

Don't remember where I was among the many stops during my just completed mega-trip. But I do remember the exchange, more or less. It went like this:

Exec: "But Tom, how do we find out what it is that people really want?"
Tom (after a long pause and a lot of thought—and I'm not kidding): "Ask 'em."

Of course I acknowledged that it's not so easy as that. If you are a close-to-the-vest sort, folks will wonder what your true agenda is—or what seminar you're just back from. So you'll just have to practice and be persistent. (And actually care about what you hear!) I recalled this little exchange when, last night at Georgetown's Barnes & Noble, I happened across Listening Is An Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project, by Dave Isay.

Isay, MacArthur Fellowship winner among many other things, started StoryCorps in 2003. Guiding principles are:

• "Our stories—the stories of everyday people—are as interesting and important as the celebrity stories we are bombarded with ...
  
• "If we take the time to listen, we'll find wisdom, wonder and poetry in the lives and stories of the people all around us.
  
• "We all want to know our lives have mattered ...
  
• "Listening is an act of love."

I probably bought the book because I randomly opened it at page 60, a 5-pager titled "Ken Kobus, 58, tells his friend Ron Baraff, 42, about making steel." It was wonderful, in the truest—filled with wonder—sense of that wonderful, if overused, word. (An equally compelling 2-pager on Samuel Black, a Cincinnati public school teacher, followed. Etc.)

I loved the stories—and truly loved the "Listening is an act of love" idea. To "get" the idea, I think you must truly ponder the meaning of "love" as used here. Listening is probably-doubtless the premier "act of love." True for the husband or wife or preacher or doctor*—and, I'd contend, equally true for the IS project leader heading a 6-person team. (*Docs are notoriously lousy listeners, but that's another day's comment.) In fact it seems to me that "listening is the ultimate leadership skill" ("listening with love"?) is an idea, and a practical idea at that, well worth pondering—and operationalizing.

As I say all this, I am of course mostly parroting Matthew Kelly, author of The Dream Manager and our recent Cool Friend. He contends that we are all driven by our dreams, and if leaders make a "strategic" commitment to discovering the dreams of their followers, and then provide opportunities to pursue those dreams (shape the organization's culture around the pursuit of those dreams), "organizational effectiveness" and "customer satisfaction" will vault to the top of the league tables.

So: the Six Big Words I take from the above are:

Ask.
Listen.
Story.
Dream.
Universal.
Love.

I'll say more later, but for now, write the Six Words on a 3X5 card, stick it in your pocket, read it before—and after—your next meeting or phone call or even email, and ponder it.

Lemme know if it makes sense-works.

Two More Recs

Per the topic just above, I've got two more reading recommendations. And you know I must be serious, because they are from the Harvard Business Review (12.07), not normally on my "Top 1000 Sources of Inspiration" list.

• "The Four Truths of the Storyteller," by Peter Guber. ("The stories that move and captivate people are those that are true to the teller, the audience, the moment, and the mission.")
  
• "Making Relationships Work," an interview with John Gottman. ("Good relationships aren't about 'clear communication'—they're about small moments of attachment and intimacy." PLEASE RE-READ THAT. NOW. BIG "DUH": IT'S AS IMPORTANT AT WORK AS IN MARRIAGE OR CHILD-REARING. It also reminds me of one of my favorite related quotes, from the great American statesman, Henry Clay: "Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart.")

Whoops! One More Recommendation

A Leader's Legacy by my good friends and colleagues Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner was in my enormous "welcome home pile" last week. As always with this dynamic duo, the research is sound, the ideas first-rate, and the stories (stories—remember?) fabulous. But what leaped out from the Contents page was this chapter title: "Leaders Should Want to Be Liked." Hooray! I have always thought the "You don't have to be liked, but you have to be respected" Macho Crap was just that—Crap! Moreover, dangerous crap. The Big Idea here ... ta-da ... is that we'll work harder for someone we like than someone we don't. Alas, it is indeed a "big idea." (K & P cite some very "tough" bosses in support of this topic.)

The Black Swan Snaps!*

Any semi-regular reader of this Blog knows I can't say enough and enough that's laudatory about Nassim Nichols Taleb's two books, Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan—they capture my world view with incredible clarity.** Black Swan came at exactly the right moment—it offers a more or less 100% explanation for our deeply disturbed financial markets. I was around Bill Sharpe, the Nobel-holding, more or less father of contemporary portfolio theory, engine of our current woes, when he did the work that won the prize—I was mostly ignorant of what was up, but appalled by the apparent arrogance of Sharpe and his devotees. It was clear—to them—that risk would be tamed, once and for all.

[*Swans do indeed snap—I have them on my farm, or at least their kindred Chinese geese.] [**Gawd, do people get upset when one dwells on the "significant" role of luck in life—stunning and troubling and amusing at once.]

I now eagerly refer you to NNT's 24 October (sorry for the delay) magical, terse piece in the Financial Times, "The Pseudo-science Hurting Markets." The pull quote goes like this: "Medicine used to kill more patients than it saved—just as financial economics endangers the system by creating risk."

The "pseudo-science," per NNT, is" 'Nobel-crowned' methods of modern portfolio theory." Aiming to erase risk, the quants' house of cards has increased said risk immeasurably and is blowing us all away—just ask Mssrs O'Neal/Merrill and Prince/Citi about their week—decidedly more harrowing than mine. NNT really rubs it in—and I literally rubbed my hands with glee, tough to do while reading a paper, but possible if the glee-meter was as high as mine—when he pointed out the little known fact that the economics Nobel ain't the real thing; instead it's the "Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Science in Memory of Alfred Nobel."

Selfishly, I don't want the world to go to hell in a handbasket—but a part of me believes that the arrogant quantocracy deserve a serious public thrashing; some, like O'Neal, will just have to learn how to live off their tens of millions of severance pay.

Go, Coach!

I must admit that, though a fanatic football fan, I find that most coaches' books leave me cold. Not so the recent offering from legendary Michigan coach Bo Schembechler: Bo's Lasting Lessons (with John Bacon).

Consider: "I can't tell you how many times we passed up hotshots for guys we thought were better people, and watched our guys do a lot better than the big names, not just in the classroom, but on the field—and, naturally, after they graduated, too. Again and again, the blue chips faded out, and our little up-and-comers clawed their way to all-conference and All-America teams."—from the chapter, "Recruit for Character"

I'm also 97.23% behind this one: "I've always believed eye-popping innovation is not as important as perfect execution." (Not a bad reminder in these days when it seems as though there is but one word in the manager's dictionary—innovation. Have we already forgotten Larry Bossidy's Execution?)

The Basics II:
All You Need Is Love,
Not Tom Peters or Gary Hamel

I have recently come across reviews of two books that sound pretty good: Mass Career Customization, by Cathleen Benko and Anne Weisberg, and The Future of Management, by my friend Gary Hamel.

The premise of both is that the nature of work and job satisfaction and careers is changing—so much so that Gary insists we must re-invent the whole idea of "management." There's no way I could be critical, since I have been preaching from the same pulpit for over a decade—my "invention," if that's what it was, of "Brand You," and touting of the Professional Service Firm "model" of work is testimony to my intimate involvement in this issue.

But, as I ponder it all, I'd have to take strong exception to Hamel and Benko and Weisberg and Peters—especially the notion that management must be "re-imagined." Nothing wrong with what we said—except that it misses the Foundation Principle, which presumably dates back thousands of years.

In a nutshell, it doesn't mean a thing to talk about "mass career customization" or "brand you"—if the Guiding Axiom is anything other than an Abiding Respect for and Belief in one's Fellow Human Beings.

"Respect" and "appreciation" and "trust" are not exactly novel ideas—but they are precisely what's often-mostly absent from the workplace of the past or present or, doubtless, future.

You know by now of my immodest admiration for General Ulysses S. Grant and Admiral Horatio Nelson. Nelson's respect for his sailors and officers was manifold—biographer after biographer use the same word, "love," to talk about Nelson's relationship with his men, and vice versa. As to Grant, his humanity is illustrated graphically by this quote from the diary of a Confederate private, following a bloody defeat:

"The [Union senior] officers rode past the Confederates smugly without any sign of recognition except by one. When General Grant reached the line of ragged, filthy, bloody, despairing prisoners strung out on each side of the bridge, he lifted his hat and held it over his head until he passed the last man of that living funeral cortege. He was the only officer in that whole train who recognized us as being on the face of the earth."

You may say I'm exaggerating, but I give you my word that I'm not when I say that I tear up whenever I read this passage. Nelson wished to "annihilate" the French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar; U.S. Grant was known as Unconditional Surrender Grant. That is, both were tough as nails and then some—but they also deeply respected their fellows, friend or foe.

Add, as well, these gems to your "keeper quotes" list:

"It was much later that I realized Dad's secret. He gained respect by giving it. He talked and listened to the fourth-grade kids in Spring Valley who shined shoes the same way he talked and listened to a bishop or a college president. He was seriously interested in who you were and what you had to say."—Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Respect

"I wasn't bowled over by [David Boies] intelligence. … What impressed me was that when he asked a question, he waited for an answer. He not only listened, he made me feel like I was the only person in the room."—Lawyer Kevin _____, on his first, inadvertent meeting with David Boies, from Marshall Goldsmith, "The Skill That Separates," Fast Company

"What creates trust, in the end, is the leader's manifest respect for the followers."— Jim O'Toole, Leading Change

"Either love your players or get out of coaching."—Bobby Dodd, legendary football coach. (Vince Lombardi reportedly said, "I do not need to like my players, but I must love them." Couldn't confirm those exact words from Google, but did find many examples of Lombardi on loving one's players.)

"I have always believed that the purpose of the corporation is to be a blessing to the employees."
—Boyd Clarke

"The deepest human need is the need to be appreciated."—William James

"We behaved as if we were guests in their house. We treated them not as a defeated people, but as allies. Our success became their success."—"How One Soldier Brought Democracy to Iraq: The Mayor of Ar Rutbah" (MAJ James Gavrilis/USA Special Forces)

"No matter what the situation, [the excellent manager's] first response is always to think about the individual concerned and how things can be arranged to help that individual experience success."—Marcus Buckingham,
The One Thing You Need to Know

I don't suggest that you blow off Hamel or Benko or Weisberg, or Peters, but I do suggest that you put First Principles first. Read and ingest these books before you turn to the nouveau "with it" ones:

Servant Leadership—Robert Greenleaf

The Human Side of Enterprise—Douglas McGregor

The Manager's Book of Decencies: How Small Gestures Build Great Companies—Steve Harrison

The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything—Stephen M.R. Covey and Rebecca Merrill

Re-imagine management? Not by my lights. Instead, put the eternal but seldom practiced verities first and create a workplace that is constructed on a base of trust and respect and decency and commitment to personal growth and one another, and, yes, love.

A Warehouse Full of Hats Off ... To the Ones Who Never Yawn!

On the Road was 50 in September. I wish I'd said it, for I surely believe it:

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn."—Jack Kerouac

????????????

I found at a bookstore here Flip: How Counterintuitive Thinking Is Changing Everything—from branding and strategy to technology. On the front cover was an endorsing quote from one Warren Hart. It read like this: "EDWARD DE BONO MEETS TOM PETERS ... ESSENTIAL READING."

My question (and I eagerly await your answers) is: What the hell does that mean?

(FYI, neither De Bono's name nor mine is in the Index.)
(FYI, the book looks pretty good—I shall at least skim.)

Mr Chairman

I never expected to be blogging Alan Greenspan's autobiography, The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World. (I never expected to read it, frankly.) But I am thoroughly enjoying it—and for me it's actually a page-turner. The book is divided in two—the personal bit, and essays on basic principles of Capitalism, a global world that is mostly beyond the control of the Fed, and the like.

Most of the press has featured Greenspan's less than complimentary views of the Bush White House. That may well be, but not only is that not the page-turner part for me, but I am simply skipping it.

The surprise and delight are that the book is wonderfully written and hence moves along with style most unusual in autobiographies. But my true interest is the more general parts; that is, how Greenspan came to acquire his free market views (Ayn Rand was an important influence), and then the details of his deeply held beliefs about Capitalism and the like.

For me, this is a superb book—and it will be my companion on tomorrow's loooooong flight from Sydney to LAX. It beat out another book worthy of superlatives—Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton. The Hamilton biography is, yes, another page-turner; the drama (exactly the right word) surrounding Hamilton's establishment of the economic order that is in many ways with us today is as tense as any thriller—in fact, it is the ultimate thriller. It is also perfect to accompany Greenspan—their views are very much in accord.

The Dreamy Enterprise

Ken Blanchard is a very close pal—we were for a year more or less roommates in a fraternity. Moreover, I deeply respect his work and its intellectual integrity and its ability to connect with busy people. Those who denigrate it are often de facto snobs who criticize it because it is clear and uses short words. (But then I'm the kind of guy who thinks you can learn more management-leadership from The Little Prince, which I bought and re-read Sunday, than 95% of Biz Books, doubtless including my own.)

All that said ... I admit that I have trouble with management books presented as parables.

Usually.

While at SFO before leaving for Sydney, I thumbed briefly through "one of those" parable books—and was, to my utter amazement, captured in a flash.

Okay, I’m gonna say it—I think Matthew Kelly's The Dream Manager is magnificent. Furthermore, I think that if you, Mr/Ms Manager-Executive,* don’t "get it," you've got a big-time problem. (Well, that's harsh, unnecessarily so, but it does seem like patently obvious "stuff" ignored 89% of the time—and I'm being generous.) (*I almost dropped the "Ms," but thought I'd be accused of bias. Fact is, I think women "get" this sort of thing better than men—which, of course, is why they are typically better managers. Axiom #1: Humane workplaces make more money—believe it. Axiom #2: Humane workplaces are not "soft"; in fact, accountability is usually higher where people are treated well—believe it.)

Herewith, a couple of quotes from The Dream Manager, which may give you a flavor of the main argument (these are also on the slides in the "show" I just offered up in the prior Post): "An organization can only become the-best-version-of-itself to the extent that the people who drive that organization are striving to become better-versions-of-themselves." "A company's purpose is to become the-best-version-of-itself. The question is: What is an employee's purpose? Most would say, 'to help the company achieve its purpose'—but they would be wrong. That is certainly part of the employee's role, but an employee's primary purpose is to become the-best-version-of-himself or -herself. ... When a company forgets that it exists to serve customers, it quickly goes out of business. Our employees are our first customers, and our most important customers."

A Black Swan Moment

I've mentioned and recommended Nassim Nicholas Taleb's book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, perhaps a half dozen times in recent months.

And here I go again, with both urgency and amusement.

We are muddling through a Black Swan moment—and paying the price for overconfidence in the likes of mathematical models that encompass our financial infrastructure. Market turbulence is at a high pitch, and may get higher. The mathematically-based derivative markets, accounting for trillions of dollars, are getting whacked. And Nassim Nicholas Taleb, I suspect, is laughing his a#^ off.

In The Black Swan, he tells us that most of our professional efforts are aimed at understanding and mastering phenomena that are explainable. (Duh.) But such efforts are positively useless, nay, dangerous, when that nutty outlier drops down for a landing. His data, in fact, show that in case after case (e.g., the stock market) the lion's share of long-term variation is attributable to a tiny number of Black Swan events—perhaps 5 in 50 years.

So our boy (girl) mathematical geniuses have bet the farm—gajillions of farms—on models that have almost zero immunity to Black Swans; in fact, their and their bosses' naïve (stupid!) overconfidence is a primary cause of their under-preparedness and the subsequent impact.

Rudy Giuliani may well become president. If so, it will be because of a Black Swan—his reaction, in a very lengthy career of public service, on a single day to a Very Black Swan.

Can you prepare for a Black Swan? In one sense, no, at least not specifically; that's the whole point. But you can, at a minimum, consider the degree to which your actions and procedures concerning damn near everything, and likewise those of your organizations, rest on assumptions of continuity. (Hint: They do.) Of course China is a "shock to the system"—but, in fact, it has taken and will take decades for its impact to unfold. I'm talking about the events of a day or a week that could unravel a life's work—or make you president of the U.S.A.

Your life most probably will be made or unmade by the arrival of one, two, or three Black Swans.

So ...

Recommendation

I cannot recommend strongly enough Seymour Hersh's New Yorker article "The General's Report: How Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, became one of its casualties." (June 25, 2007)

(This also provides another opportunity to push-as-hard-as-is-humanly-possible Philip Zimbardo's The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil.)

Speaking of Capitalism …

I've enjoyed The Clean Tech Revolution: The Next Big Growth and Investment Opportunity, by Ron Pernick and Clint Wilder. It is a marvelous tour d'horizon of the many experiments underway and funded in areas such as energy efficiency and pollution reduction. The "content" is enlightening, but the "context" even more so. That is, "intractable" problems effectively are embraced and ameliorated—often in surprisingly short order—only when the Giant called "market forces" is awakened. The economic tipping point has arguably been reached—and the likes of the Silicon Valley V.C.s are moving in for the "cleantech" kill-killing. Will there be a burst bubble that wipes out the bank accounts of thousands? Of course! And like Web 2.0 today, it inevitably will be followed by more experimentation of new flavors—and doubtless more burst bubbles. But the race is on, and progress, I confidently predict, will be astonishing in the next 5, 10, 20 years.

(All hail Joseph Schumpeter redux.)

Iconic Books

I'd never had in one place that list of books I offered yesterday. For me it is a very big deal, like publishing the Source Code for Tom. Hence, I put together this little PowerPoint version of the list, with a couple of additions that speak to the issue of non-rational factors in "life's little outcomes."

Packing Light(?)

Packing for Mauritius, Sweden, and misc American destinations. Thanks to British carryon restrictions, pruning of my normal load is mandatory.

Bummer!

I am really & truly uncomfortable unless I am accompanied by my "bibles," or a hearty subset thereof.

As I've said many times before, all my training and observation cause me to throw oceans of icy water on the idea of linearity, rationality, and plans that matter.

Hence my biblical/iconic books, several mentioned before:

#1, no contender for the spot, Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. It starts this way: "This book is about luck disguised and perceived as non-luck (that is, skills) and more generally randomness disguised and perceived as non-randomness. It manifests itself in the shape of the lucky fool, defined as a person who benefited from a disproportionate share of luck but attributed his success to some other, generally precise reason." "We underestimate the share of randomness in just about everything, a point that might not merit a book—except when it is the specialist who is the fool of all fools." "Mild success can be explainable by skills and labor. Wild success is attributable to variance."

Mr Taleb, a Wall Street trader among other incarnations, has favored us with a companion: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.

Mr Taleb waxes poetic about the work of Philip Tetlock. My tome of Tetlock's is Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? Experts take a beating (thrashing is more like it) in these insanely well researched pages. A sample from the dust jacket: "A fox, the thinker who knows many little things, draws from an eclectic array of disciplines, and is better able to improvise in response to changing events, is more successful in predicting the future than the hedgehog, who knows one big thing, toils devotedly within one tradition, and imposes formulaic solutions on ill defined problems."

Two others in this genre:

Scott Page's The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies. Consider: "Diverse groups of problem solvers—groups of people with diverse tools—consistently outperformed groups of the best and the brightest. If I formed two groups, one random (and therefore diverse) and one consisting of the best individual performers, the first group almost always did better. ... Diversity trumped ability."

The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki. More of the same ... I can never get enough.

My oldest friend in my iconic stack, perhaps read (cover to cover) at least a half dozen times, is Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin, Stephen Jay Gould. Once more, at the heart of the matter are discussions of various sorts of statistical distributions. I fell in love all over again, dare I admit it, with the importance of standard deviations in a set of observations.

Whoops, I lied. My oldest pal is Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, by Nobel Laureate (economics) Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky. The distortions in our perceptions of events is the subject of this pioneering, seminal, and thoroughly researched work, which arrived in 1982, the same year as In Search of Excellence.

Along those same lines as Kahneman et al., I am taking with me Cordelia Fine's spanking new A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives. "Your brain has some shifty habits that leave the truth distorted and disguised. Your brain is vainglorious. It's emotional and immoral. It deludes you. It is pigheaded, secretive, and weak willed. Oh, and it's also a bigot." (What's not to love about that as a starter?)

Along the same vein, my core approach to innovation is to examine the real world, the messy stories about how new stuff really arrives on the scene. Such as:

An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States—Charles Beard (1913)

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger—Marc Levinson

Tube: The Invention of Television—David & Marshall Fisher

Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World—Jill Jonnes

The Soul of a New Machine—Tracy Kidder

Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA—Brenda Maddox

The Blitzkrieg Myth—John Mosier

Indeed, I can hardly jam this set into a bag that must accommodate the climates of Mauritius, Sweden and California over the course of the next ten days or so. Nonetheless, the spirit of these works will, as always, color my observations beyond measure.

Heeeeeeeee's Back!

Crusty & curmudgeonly former Chrysler boss and almost presidential candidate Lee Iacocca is back with ... Where Have All the Leaders Gone? The political commentary is pointed—to say the least. Here are a couple of the business quotes, FYI:

#1: "It's the Cars, Stupid!"

"Make [as auto boss, circa 2007] sure your top team includes top talent in design, engineering and manufacturing, because that's your only priority—to build cars people want to buy. Hot styling sells them and quality keeps them sold."

"These days, everybody wants to merge. Too often they're just blindly gobbling up as many players as they can, in the false belief that bigger has to be better. It kind of makes you wonder if merger-mania isn't really ego-mania. Or something even more destructive. If you look at it objectively, most mergers do not revitalize companies. Rather, they provide short-term gains for a relatively small group of people, usually Wall Street bankers and lawyers."

Trip Reading

Off to Ankara and Dubai this afternoon. Non-fiction reading:

On water: Blue Gold, by Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke; Water: A Natural History, by Alice Outwater (My ignorance on this critical issue is infinite.)

The Summer of 1787, by David Stewart. (The idealism and realpolitik behind the writing of the Constitution.)

The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, by Phil Zimbardo. (Reflections on the famous-infamous Stanford prison experiment—effectively random citizens drawn from the streets of Palo Alto were abusing "prisoners" (other randomly selected Palo Altoans) within about 72 hours, and the experiment had to be cancelled.)

Thoughts: No Ifs, Ands, or Buts

You must read—cover to cover—the Forbes 90th Anniversary Issue. Title: "The Power of Networks."

Cheeky Rebelliousness

Walter Isaacson, on Albert Einstein, from his new book, Einstein: His Life and Universe: "His slow development was combined with a cheeky rebelliousness toward authority, which led one schoolmaster to send him packing and another to declare that he would never amount to much."

Three loud cheers to "cheeky rebelliousness"—a trait shared by approximately 99.99% of those who make it into the history books.

(Alas, many of those who might, these days, make it into the history books have been dosed early and often with Ritalin.)

Books I

Just perused The New CIO Leader: Setting the Agenda and Delivering Results, by industry experts Marianne Broadbent and Ellen Kitzis. Here's a typical blurb from the back cover: "Taking time to read The New CIO Leader was the most valuable few hours I've spent looking after my career."—CIO, Sainsbury.

I think it's a fine book because it's a fine book that evaluates the "missing 90 percent"—the part of the "staffer's" job that's not technical but involved with actually getting the work implemented and into the corporate culture, and using the work to enhance or even redirect the enterprise vision and strategy. But I also like it because, as you know, I think "the PSF/Professional Service Firm idea" is central to value added in the age of success based on creative intellectual capital. And this is one of the rare books on running a "PSF," such as, in this case, the IS department. I wish there were dozens more like it for HR groups, Purchasing departments, R & D, etc.

Books II

I love those rare books about how professionals actually go about thinking about pertinent stuff. Hence, I'm mesmerized by How Doctors Think, by Jerome Groopman, M.D. The book does not beat up on docs per se, but it surely explores in detail the nonrational-human side of diagnosis and decision making and case management. Consider: "On average a physician will interrupt a patient describing her symptoms within eighteen seconds." 291 pages of this? My answer is a wholehearted "yes," at least for me. It's fun, useful in my extensive work in healthcare, and indicative of individual-organizational decision making in general.

(Speaking of non-rational evaluations and decision-making, I just reread Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases, by Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky. Though 25 years old, it remains the timely bible on nonrational thought processes. Kahneman won an economics Nobel for his work here. I read the book when it appeared in '82, and reread it every few years—it keeps me in touch with my roots. Hence, the odd success strategy below.) (FYI, Judgment under Uncertainty sits with Gould's Full House and Taleb's Fooled by Randomness in my "iconic pile"—the books that more or less "spiritually" guide my work—LOVE THE MESS!!)

Notes from the Road: Wondrous WikiWorld

It is possible that Wikis will "change everything." On the way to Manchester I re-read the profoundly important book by Don Tapscott & Anthony Williams, Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. (Blogged previously.) If possible, it had greater impact the second time 'round. Hence, I created a little presentation that I used in Manchester—which we've attached. With typical understatement I told our participants, "You must not 'read' this book, you must 'ingest' it."

Hint: I meant it.

A few WikiWords:

Wikinomics
WikiWorld
Weapons of Mass Collaboration
CrowdSourcing
Smart Mobs
Linux
Human Genome Project
InnoCentive
YouTube
Second Life
Wikipedia
MySpace

Notes from the Road: As the Page Turns

Thriller writers don't get much better than Charles McCarry (latest, Secret Lovers) and Robert Littell (I'm reading Legends—about a former CIA officer who becomes confused about who he is. Apt reading in "Scooter" week?).

Highly recommended, a surprising "page turner": The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World, by John O'Sullivan. Obviously about Reagan, John Paul II, and Thatcher. It is doing no less than changing my perspective on three decades of my life.

Some Pile of Books!

A few days ago I mentioned a new-to-me book, One: The Art and Practice of Conscious Leadership, by Manpower Inc. founder Lance Secretan. Recall: Consider: "What would happen if we looked at a customer and saw the face of God in them? To most people it sounds like a lofty idea. But if you see the face of God in a flower, why wouldn't you see it in the face of a customer?" (My interpretation, by the way, was that "God" per se need not be/is not the point—but, more generally, the idea that each person we come in contact with is an extraordinary & precious human being in his or her own right.) (More Secretan: "What is important is not whether I'm remembered, but that I do my best every day. I want to be the person my dog thinks I am.")

Then I came across "just another manuscript" ... but wait. I was hooked (hook, line, and sinker) by the title alone. Adecco exec Steve Harrison offers The Manager's Book of Decencies: How Small Gestures Build Great Companies.

Yes!
Yes!
Yes!

As I said in the fawning blurb I provided, the book is worth twice the cover price for the title alone! The innards live up to the outwards. Stories galore, suggestions galore. Among many other things, Mr Harrison insists, correctly in my view, that you can "smell" a "culture of decency" (or the absence thereof) in but a moment.* He adds that it's one helluva competitive advantage—and if you don't pull it off, at the very least you'll feel better about yourself.

[*This holds for a job interview—both ways. And for a 3-person team or solo contributor as much as for an enormous corporation. And for ... And for ...]

Decency as the heart of managing.
Yes!
Yes!
Yes!

Add to the pile my very recent rediscovery of Robert Greenleaf's Servant Leadership ... and you have a trend!

The face of God in a customer.
Decency.
Chief as Servant-in-Chief.

More Jim

Check out www.jims.net. Here are a few of Jim's companies (Jim, recall, was one of my three MVP Companies for 2006):

Jim's Mowing Canada
Jim's Mowing UK
Jim's Antennas
Jim's Bookkeeping
Jim's Building Maintenance
Jim's Carpet Cleaning
Jim's Car Cleaning
Jim's Computer Services
Jim's Dog Wash
Jim's Driving School
Jim's Fencing
Jim's Floors
Jim's Painting
Jim's Paving
Jim's Pergolas
Jim's Pool Care
Jim's Pressure Cleaning
Jim's Roofing
Jim's Security Doors
Jim's Trees
Jim's Window Cleaning
Jim's Windscreens

The common thread is obvious: "help out"—in many respects still "blue ocean," and very in tune with our incredibly busy lives. The "help out" are my words, not Mr Penman's. FYI: You can also download—free—Jim's book: What Will They Franchise Next? The Story of Jim's Group. I plan to read it on my (long) trip to Athens.

Good Reading

I was mesmerized by Malcolm Gladwell's "Open Secrets: Enron and the Perils of Full Disclosure" in the 8 January New Yorker. While it doesn't let Mr Skilling off the hook, Gladwell does argue that the info needed to declare Enron a house of cards had been long (and pretty much fully) available via public filings. Gladwell's intriguing point is that this is in part a byproduct of, as the title suggests, too much data available—the problems were hidden amidst thousands upon thousands of pages of filed info—and no one "saw it."

Tom's Notable Books 2006

"Notable Books 2006" invariably means books published in 2006. Well, the hell with that. Probably 60% or more of my "turn on" books in a given year come from previous years or are galleys for the coming year—I just happen to catch them (more accurately, they catch me) in that year. Hence Notable Books that I have first read in 2006 (furthermore, in no particular order):

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything, Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams, 2007—available now (must read #1, 2007—period)

The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger, Marc Levinson, 2006 (messy innovation)

Touched with Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, Kay Redfield Jamison, 1993 (creatives are often freaky—and always necessary)

The Lovemarks Effect: Winning in the Consumer Revolution, Kevin Roberts, 2006 (think "passion-added revolution"—from the master)

Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think, Brian Wansink, 2006 (health, plus the power of managed behavior change)

Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins: The Paradox of Innovation, Richard Farson and Ralph Keyes, 2002 (wonderful—still an "oddball idea" for some reason)

The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress, Virginia Postrel, 1999, (messy road to progress)

FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS: THE HIDDEN ROLE OF CHANCE IN LIFE AND IN THE MARKETS, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2005 (this will be on the list every year—chance and life; don't "read it," ingest it)

The Richness of Life: The Essential Stephen Jay Gould, collected by Steven Rose, 2006 (good for the mind, good for the soul, thinking about life as it really works—SJG always enriches me directly and indirectly)

Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships, Daniel Goleman, 2006 (Goleman is back, EQ et al. is all by many measures)

Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, 2002 (EXECUTION!!!—THE "BIBLE")

PrimeTime Women: How to Win the Hearts, Minds, and Business of Boomer Big Spenders, Marti Barletta, 2007—available (Duh! When will "they "get it"??)

50+: Igniting a Revolution to Reinvent America, Bill Novelli, 2006 (best yet on the all-powerful, wildly expanding Boomer-Geezer tsunami)

Grant, Jean Edward Smith, 2001 (U.S. Grant made my year—"a bias for action," Mr Execution)

Grant, John Mosier, 2006

Personal Memoirs: Ulysses S. Grant, U.S. Grant (they still read this at West Point)

Free Your Breath, Free Your Life, Dennis Lewis, 2004 (another perennial)

Gotta Read It

Okay, it's last year's book. But I just found it in Logan airport at the start of my current Madrid-Paris-L.A. trip.

Wow!
Fantastic!
Amazing!

The book: The Travels of a T-shirt in the Global Economy: An Economist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade, by Pietra Rivoli. The complex issues of trade, globalization, market-power, and market imperfections are brilliantly told via the life of a single T-shirt. Made in China? Obviously! Sorta. How about "Teksa"? The T-shirt "maker," Chinese, patiently explained to the author that this saga starts in Teksa. That is, West Texas, where the cotton is grown. And why is Texas-the U.S.A. still tops in the global cotton market? Um, our markets are not quite as open as we'd like to make the rest of the world believe. There is no "big political message" here. As a professional economist, the author began the story with a very "open markets" bias. It's not that she lost that bias, but that the can of worms (T-shirt) she opened turned out to be, well, full of worms. Nothing is as it seems; think of this as a product of the John LeCarré School of Economics. Though published in 2005, this is my 2006 "book of the year." No issue.

Head Jolt

My brain feels like it's caught in one of Nikola Tesla's high-voltage experiments. In Logan on the way to Chicago, I finally picked up Bob Woodward's State of Denial. I soured on Mr Watergate several books ago, but this one has gotten amazing raves from the likes of Peggy Noonan. I laughed when brilliant friends said they couldn't read more than 5 or 10 pages at a crack, because of the intensity. Well, I joined that club. The saving grace: Carl Hiaasen has a new book, Nature Girl—which lives up to his insanely high standard. (Though I have many friends—e.g., my wife—who are turned off by brother Carl.) At any rate, Woodward on Iraq and Hiaasen on South Florida shenanigans is a jolt to the head. On the other hand, both stories are about equally surreal.

Carly Fiorina and Me

I've put off commenting on Carly Fiorina's book, Tough Choices: A Memoir, because I've had so many confused thoughts. I've decided that's not going to change, so I instead offer you the following dis-jointed, ever-so-partial assessment:

(1) I liked the book. I thought it was a helluva read—not easy when you know the ending. And best of all: She wrote it herself!!!!!

(2) I thought Carly's recounting of her life saga was nothing short of captivating and amazing—worth the price of admission alone. Courage, conviction—all those good words are merited.

(3) In particular, I liked the AT&T part as much as the HP part. I've consulted to AT&T (of old—very) and Western Electric. Other than old Chase Manhattan Bank, it is home to the most brutal organizational politics I've experienced. (And, hey, I worked in the Nixon White House.) Carly, Carly-the-woman, survived and thrived. She is doubtless a Master Politician (all top players, public and private sector, must be) ... but her bottom line performance was exceptional+.

(4) When we get to HP, we get to the tricky part for me. Premise: The "Fabled HP Way" (always the ... Fabled HP Way) was busted. My problem is that one of my very closest friends was the final pre-Carly presiding officer—the late Lew Platt. He and I lived next door at Cornell, nerdy engineers both, and he was my best friend's best man. "All business is personal," someone said—whoops, it was me who said it. Carly arrived and started screwing with the HP Way—for which I can never forgive her. (No matter at all that she was very, very right ... if occasionally somewhat hamhanded in execution. Look, I lived in the Palo Alto area for 30+ years—"one nation, under HP" was our schoolroom substitute for others' "one nation, under God.")

(5) I hate, hate, hate big mergers. But at the time—and today—I vigorously support/ed the Fiorina-driven HP-Compaq merger: (a) Dick Hackborn supported it. (b) HP-as-mini-Xerox/printer company was a travesty. (Don't get me started on the Hewlett boy; among many, many stupid things, he claimed "operating experience" at VTel; that's my local VT phone company—all six subscribers—bet Little Hewlett couldn't find Vermont on a map.) (c) Compaq is a lot, lot more than a PC company. (d) The culture clash bit was destined to be easier than normal. The primary ingredients were: Rod Canion's Compaq, Jimmy Treybig's Tandem, Ken Olsen's DEC and Bill & Dave's HP. (e) The merger mostly worked.

(6) Carly had a tougher job than Welch ay GE or Gerstner at IBM. Jack and Lou were resurrecting Grand Old Cultures that had run aground. (Both did magnificent jobs.) Carly needed to find a new culture to some more or less great extent.

(7) The Board political crap I found boring as hell. All boards are political nightmares, especially as the days of CEO-and-10-golfing-buddies become a distant memory. Shareholder activism (I'm a great Boone Pickens fan) and then post-Enron board-independence-or-Sing Sing adds much fuel to the fire. (It'll only get worse. Wait 'til Spitzer's President.)

(8) My biggest problem with the HP-Carly story is too much "vision," not enough "execution." (I am revealing decades-old biases here.) People mis-read the hell out of me. I was never, never, never a "vision guy." In fact Bob Waterman and I wrote In Search of Excellence almost solely because we were pissed off at McKinsey's (and corporate America's) worship of strategy and vision. (I.e., we Americans had "vision." The Japanese "made cars that worked.") It's no accident that "a bias for action" was the first of our "eight basics." (Still is today.) One critical, as I see it, thing Gerstner did at IBM was to contemptuously dismiss the constant calls for "vision" until he got the operating bugs ironed out. And don't I remember (oh, I do!!) that Bush I was constantly accused of being light on the "vision thing." Not true of Bush II. (B II of course has had some "implementation problems.") (To inject the personal, I am told I was the first Stanford B.School PhD candidate to write a dissertation on Implementation. Cool if true, great urban legend if not.)

(9) I have a little riff I call "4/40"—the only 4 things I claim I've learned in the last 4 decades, that began with me as a platoon leader in Danang Vietnam. And #1 is DECENTRALIZATION. (#2 is Implementation.) I full well understand that life, personal or professional, is a "matrix" of some sort. But if you read Tom Peters, from 1975 to about 1985, I lived only to put the God-awful matrix organization out of its misery—lots of things helped, but I had some non-trivial success. (#3 is Accountability—"accountable matrix" is an oxymoron! Period!) I understand why Carly built the structure she did; cross-functional coordination is a must, was a must in her (and today's) HP. But, put simply, you gotta find another path to achieving that coordination—the matrix ain't it.

(10) Despite my dismissal of "vision," I think the "direction" Carly laid out was fundamentally right, very right—and is a key reason HP is now moving pretty swiftly in the right direction. On the other hand, I don't think her successor, Mark Hurd, walked into an easy situation. Maybe Carly should have stayed as CEO and Mr Hurd would have made an excellent COO. Who knows? Frankly, my "HP Dream Team" in that regard would have been Carly as CEO and Larry Bossidy (Mr Execution) as President.

I liked the book. A lot. I like Carly. A lot. (*And I think her husband Frank is one of the most decent human beings I've ever met.) I think she did 75% of a dirty job that needed doing. And if hell freezes over, she'll never move me a millimeter away from my Adoration of Decentralization-Implementation-Accountability. (BTW, #4 on my 4/40 list is "get up earlier than the other guy—not a C. Fiorina issue; she has as much energy, not said lightly, as Mr Energy, Jack Welch.)

Whatever ...

A $5-Grand Price Tag!

The "SF Post" is going to end up costing me $5,200 plus mailing.

Last Friday, my monthly "Bauman Rare Books" catalog arrived. Upon rare occasion I collect mint First Editions—e.g., Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, from which I read to Susan at our wedding. Item 25 in the current issue, priced $5,200: "ADAMS, John, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (1797)." This is a First Edition of, per the catalog, "Adams' important work on the separation of powers in the Federal government." NB: Adams, our first "conservative," was, as the word "conservative" suggests, maniacal on the abiding importance of separation of powers.

I'll order it this morning.

15 Words

The "right" 15 words can reframe a major issue. And I found 'em, for me, relative to one of my "Top 10" strategic business concerns. New (and damn good) book from AARP boss Bill Novelli, 50+: Igniting a Revolution to Reinvent America. Stop the clucking, already. Of course it's institutionally self-serving. But that doesn't keep it from being damn good.

And here is the turn of phrase I love: "People turning 50 today have more than half of their adult life ahead of them."

That's it!
Listening you teen-obsessed weenies [oops, marketing "geniuses"]?
Trillions upon trillions of bucks.
Lots and lots of time.
And energy.
And: Eager to spend.

Repeat: MORE THAN HALF!

The "Simple" Tools of Behavior Modification

Bob Waterman and I had only one chart in all of In Search of Excellence. It's on page 221, and it reports the work of MIT's Tom Allen on space and communication. The compelling chart we appropriated shows that if you and I are separated by 5 yards or less, the odds of us communicating at least once a week are nearly 100%. At 10 yards of separation, the odds plummet to about 9%; and said odds are almost constant at 3% if we're 30 to 100 yards apart. Among other things, such research led me to argue that the management of physical space is one of the most powerful tools that a boss has. There's a ton of evidence, including my own research, that demonstrates, for instance, that intermingling project teammates from various functions is an astonishingly potent device for increasing project effectiveness. (Incidentally, I believe this is just about as true in the "virtual-electronic communication age" as it ever was.)

Which—of course—leads me back to diets. Cornell researcher Brian Wansink's book, Mindless Eating, has just appeared. He claims we make about 200 dietary decisions a day. The self-manipulation of the most trivial ones can lead to perhaps a 200 calorie a week reduction—which adds up to a delightful 10 to 20 pounds a year.

These "trivial" tactics include using smaller plates and keeping the serving dishes (seconds!) in the kitchen rather than on the table. Reminiscent of Tom Allen's work, briefly reported above, Wansick tested the results of office workers with jars of Hershey's Kisses on their desks, versus candy located 6.5 feet away and not visible from anyone's desk. The six-and-a-half degrees of separation and invisibility led to a 63% reduction in kiss consumption!

There is a lot of evidence accumulating on the topic of obesity that touts such wee changes as the most powerful interventions. At Sprint's new HQ, for example, planners put the parking lot a quarter-mile from the office. (There is a van, but it is annoyingly infrequent.) The elevators in the low-rise building are irritatingly slow. The food court is as far away from the centers of frequent gathering as possible.

There is no limit to the application o