Dispatches from the New World of Work

TomChirp #20

Recommendation: The July 2009 issue of Wired is particularly good.

TomChirp #16

On the way from Boston to Miami to go to São Paulo on the way to Joinville, I read in Newsmax (June 2009) "Cyber Warfare: Could It Bring Us Down." The article is very well packaged—with an interesting set of threat assessments.

[Sorry, this isn't available online; you must subscribe to Newsmax.—CM]

TomChirp #14

I'll report more thoroughly later, but I heartily recommend "The Buck Starts (and Stops) at Business School," by Joel Podolny, in the current (June) Harvard Business Review. Sample: "The degree of contrition at business schools seems small compared with the magnitude of the offense."

As a vociferous 30-year critic of the b-schools, almost every word was music to my ears. Podolny and I share views at the 99.999% level.

[NB: In the same HBR, check out "Relentless Idealism for Tough Times," a terrific interview with Chez Panisse founder (1971) Alice Waters. Among other things, Waters insists that her chefs spend FIFTY PERCENT of their time away from their kitchen learning new stuff!!.]

Science "Fiction"

I can not heartily enough recommend Daniel Suarez's Daemon. A Daemon is a computer program that runs in the background and performs certain system-controlling activities at certain pre-arranged times. In the book, written by a computer guru and gushingly endorsed by the likes of Craig Newmark/Craigslist and Stewart Brand/The Long Now Foundation, a renowned computer scientist-game designer dies and, after his demise, unleashes the Daemon, which disrupts the world as we know it.

There are a few things which boggle the imagination such as fleets of robotic cars acting with amazing intelligence, but all in all the scenarios played out seem terrifyingly realistic—in fact, on a modest scale they are underway as I write. While we know what's going on in the background is frightening, and William Gibson fans have been reading somewhat like material for years, something about this rendition sent chill after chill up (down?) my spine. Indeed, said sad spine is that of a cyber-amateur; but I think even the pros will find the book compelling—incidentally (?) it's teenage gamers who are most adept at dealing with various conundrums, while well-trained but ancient (30s??) FBI-ers and NSA-ers are out of their league.

Oddly enough, the day I finished the book, May 18, the Wall Street Journal ran a page 1 feature titled "Ups and Downs Whipsaw Supply Chain." It describes in gory detail the effect of vast interconnected systems of just-in-time management that have led to all sorts of glitches in manufacturing—a plant running fullspeed is flummoxed by three vendors whose hasty, independent decisions to slash inventory bring the downstream manufacturer to a screeching halt while the manufacturer's market is still robust. Hence the downstream manufacturer cannot meet demand, and the economy takes yet another hit. Of course the Wall Street fiasco was started and accelerated by genius programmers whose programs effectively (and automatically) took over global financial markets.

This book demonstrates, at least to me, that we are in for one wild ride.

TomChirp #1

Not crying at the loss of Portfolio. Some very good writing. Don't need a glossy celebration of business at the moment.

TomChirp #9

The Financial Times' Gillian Tett won "Journalist of the Year 2009" award. I love her financial analyses. Also, her Fool's Gold, about the financial crisis, just published.

Strategic Competence!
Damn It!

In What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful, Marshall Goldsmith proclaims: "I regard apologizing as the most magical, healing, restorative gesture human beings can make. It is the centerpiece of my work with executives who want to get better."

All I can add is:

Amen!
I believe that skill at Apologizing is nothing short of a "strategic competence"!

"Strategic competence"? Absolutely! Customers lost for want of a timely and sincere "I'm sorry. My fault" number in the billions, from restaurant diners to aircraft engine purchasers.

And now there's an entire book on the topic arriving May 1, Effective Apology: Mending Fences, Building Bridges, and Restoring Trust, by John Kador.

Read a whole book on the topic?
Yes!
Damn it!
Stra-te-gic-com-pe-tence!

In addition to being an excellent "how to" guide, the book also captures hard evidence. For example, with a new policy on apologies, Toro, the lawn mower folks, reduced the average cost of a claim from $115,000 in 1991 to $35,000 in 2008—and the company hasn't been to trial since 1994. The VA hospital in Lexington, Massachusetts, developed an astonishing approach to apologizing for errors (forthcoming—even when no patient request or claim was made). In 2000, the overall mean VA system malpractice settlement was $413,000. The Lexington VA hospital settlement # was $36,000—and there were far fewer per patient claims to begin with.

Not only does a sincere apology make you feel much better about yourself (top marks on the "ability-to-look-in-the-mirror" test), but it fattens your wallet in the process (or, rather, keeps said wallet from getting skinny).

While visiting Amazon to get John Kador's formal pub date (Kindle on May 1, too!), I came across a reference to another apparent gem on the topic, On Apology, by psychiatrist Aaron Lazare. Here are excerpts from a couple reviews: "This unique book is sure to set a reader thinking on many levels, but its ultimate message is the meaning and the magically transformative power of what would seem on the surface to be a simple apology. No one who becomes familiar with Dr. Lazare's perceptive interpretations will forget his sensitivity and wisdom."—Sherwin B. Nuland, MD, author of How We Die [TP: Nuland is fabulous]. "This jewel of a book reveals the many facets of the seemingly simple act of apology. ... Drawing on a vast array of literary and real-life examples, from Agamemnon to George Patton to Arnold Schwarzenegger, from the current pope to the machinist who approached him after a lecture, Lazare lucidly dissects the process of apology. ... Everybody on earth could benefit from this small but essential book."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Read two whole books on the topic?
Yes!
Damn it!
Stra-te-gic-com-pe-tence!

Any comments on your experience with apologies?

NB: Tom mounts his Preakness winning hobby horse again! Women are far far far far far far far far better-instinctive at this than we guys! [One of many reasons that women are better salespeople than men.] [Preakness? I was born in Baltimore; we barely acknowledge Kentucky's preliminary race.]

[Above: My notion of hotel room "windows that open wide"—Amsterdam, canal view; not that there are many non-canal views!]

April 21 Is "Rules" Day!

Tomorrow "it" happens!

My brilliant friend and colleague Alan Webber, Fast Company co-founder among so many other things, will witness the publication of his first book! So go buy it! Be the first on your block!

In short, Rules of Thumb, featuring 52 "rules," is a marvel. Practical. Philosophical. Fun. And, above all, wise. Ever so wise.

Here is a sample:

#10 A Good Question Beats a Good Answer. #14 You Don't Know if You Don't Go. #16 Facts Are Facts; Stories Are How We Learn. #20 Speed = Strategy. #23 Keep Two Lists: What Gets You Up in the Morning? What Keeps You Up at Night? #26 The Soft Stuff Is the Hard Stuff. #28 Good Design Is Table Stakes. Great Design Wins. #29 Words Matter. #33 Everything Is a Performance. #42 The Survival of the Fittest Is the Business Case for Diversity. #45 Failure Isn't Failing. Failure Is Failing to Try. #46 Tough Leaders Wear Their Hearts on Their Sleeves. #49 If You Want to Grow as a Leader, You Have to Disarm Your Border Guards. #50 On the Way Up Pay Attention to Your Strengths; They'll Be Your Weaknesses on the Way Down. #52 Stay Alert! There Are Teachers Everywhere.

I would like to have listed all 52—there are no losers in this set. (In fact, I believe Alan's idiot editor sliced about half of them from the first draft, which I saw; damn shame.)

Fact is, I love Alan, and I love his book. Yes, he truly is a wise man.

[The book is available on Kindle, too.—CM]

Must Read!

On his way back from New Zealand, Tom called to say, "You must read 'NoCal vs. OldSouth,' by Ron Brownstein, page A23, in today's LA Times."

Must Read!

This from Golden Bay New Zealand: Believe it or not, I use my couple (okay, three) weeks away from VT Cold to read, as well as hike and hike and hike. This year's pick after 10 days: Fareed Zakaria's The Post-American World. Indian-born Zakaria is as clear-headed an analyst of the state of the world as you'll find. (Niall Ferguson is my alternate in this category.) The book is far from declinist literature, despite the title. As Zakaria begins, "This book is not about the decline of America but, rather, the rise of everyone else." ("Everybody else" is everybody else—not just China and India.)

While the recession, or perhaps depression, seems to relentlessly accelerate, I think there's little doubt that his analysis will stand the test of the current crisis. For those (neo-Marxists?) who think the current situation signals the end of capitalism as we know it, don't bother with this book. Zakaria is clear, per his data and analysis rather than polemics, that this extraordinary rise-of-the-rest is, in fact, fueled mostly by American capitalism.

This "must read" is indeed a "must read"—hopeful but not rose-colored by any means.

Picture above: Black Swans, two, no less, and God help us, in Waimeha Lagoon, Kapiti Coast, north of Wellington. Picture 2 (also Kapiti Coast): And some will rise above the waves!

The Real, Large-scale "Gamechanger" Innovators:

Pioneering Users of Technological Innovations

The term "completely original analysis" is overused—by me, among others. But Amar Bhide's well-received book, The Venturesome Economy: How Innovation Sustains Prosperity in a More Connected World, deserves this accolade.

The argument in a nutshell: The most important innovations are not the highly visible technology breakthroughs. They are, instead, the innovations created by consumers of the breakthrough innovations.

Here are a few of the media reviews cited at Amazon:

"In [Bhide's] view, many analysts put too much emphasis on the production of new technological ideas. Instead, he observes, the real economic payoff lies in innovations in how technologies are used."—Steve Lohr, New York Times.

"Arguments for protectionism are based on fears that are wholly at odds with the evidence. The experience of recent years does not support the idea that millions of jobs will be outsourced to cheap foreign locations. ... [Amar Bhide argues] it is in the application of innovations to meet the needs of consumers that most economic value is created, so what matters is not so much where the innovation happens but where the 'venturesome consumers' are to be found. America's consumers show no signs of becoming less venturesome, and its government remains committed to the idea that the customer is king."—Matthew Bishop, the Economist.

"Innovation everywhere is a boon to America. That's the argument from [Bhide] who sees hidden value in America's unique ability to integrate and consume big new ideas, no matter where they're spawned."—Kirk Shinkle, U.S. News & World Report.

"A rigorously researched and original analysis that challenges much received wisdom about the process of innovation, particularly in the U.S. ... In his analysis of innovation, Bhide distinguishes between cutting-edge scientific discoveries and ideas—what he calls 'high-level' know-how—and the kind of know-how needed to turn these ideas into innovative products and services to meet the needs of specific markets ('mid- and ground-level innovation'). He says not enough attention has been paid to this mid- and ground-level activity, in particular to the commercial and organizational effort needed to turn scientific breakthroughs into useful products, or to how well America does it."—Fergal Byrne, Financial Times.

"[Bhide's] core message is that you need innovative consumers. This, rather than the cutting-edge stuff in the university labs or the research departments of the multinationals, is what gives America its edge."—Hamish McRae, the Independent.

If I am a good judge, I predict you'll never look at the world of innovation the same way again if-after you read this book.

A Penny for Your Thoughts!
A Penny for Your Custom!

How horrid! Recommending that someone buy one's book/s! I avoid self-recommendation like the plague. But, alas, I'm going to make an exception.

While trapped at home during a 2-foot, 2.5-day VT snowstorm and doing an intense winter cleanup, my "brand you" book reared its dust-covered self from underneath a bed. It was part of our 1999 3-book set published under the rubric of "Re-inventing Work":

The Project50: Fifty Ways to Transform Every "Task" into a Project That Matters!

The Brand You50: Fifty Ways to Transform Yourself from an "Employee" into a Brand That Shouts Distinction, Commitment, and Passion!

The Professional Service Firm50: Fifty Ways to Transform Your "Department" into a Professional Service Firm Whose Trademarks are Passion and Innovation!

The idea, as the Age of Outsourcing descended in the late '90s, was that the best & sole defense against a global labor market was: Do Great Work!

That is:

(1) Turn every task into a project of distinction worth bragging about 5 years from now—if not 10. ("Wow Project" was our moniker—and Steve Jobs' "insanely great" was the benchmark.)

(2) Turn your run-of-the-mine "department" into an indispensable, value-adding superstar professional services firm in the tradition of IDEO, Chiat Day, or McKinsey. ("Gamechanging PSF" was our shorthand here.)

(3) Turn yourself into a businesswoman sporting a project portfolio to die for. ("Brand You" was the tag line.)

Fact is, as The Deep Recession deepens by the day, these ideas are more, not less, timely than a decade ago. While nothing will make the current rocky road smooth, the fact is that Truly Inspired Work—the basics and innovation alike—is the best defense and the best offense in very tough times.

So in a departure from tradition, I recommend these three books; and in the name of modesty, I can report that each one is available used at Amazon.com for One Cent!

Must Reading!

Our good friend Trevor directed us to our good friend Tom Asacker's "Nine Predictions for 2009." I agree with Trevor's "it’s brilliant."

It Bogles the Mind

Our renaissance woman-commentator Judith Ellis recently mentioned Vanguard Mutual Fund Group founder John Bogle's Enough. The Measures of Money, Business, and Life. Judith's reference led me to add the 79-year-old Mr. Bogle's opus to my bookshelf. I will simply say that it is one of the best business books ("life" books?) I have ever read, an easy All-time Top 10. And its timing is, well, read it yourself ...

Rather than spend several sentences summarizing the short-but-very-sweet-and-very lucid tome, I'll let the brilliant chapter titles do the work for me. Here's a sample:

"Too Much Cost, Not Enough Value"
"Too Much Speculation, Not Enough Investment"
"Too Much Complexity, Not Enough Simplicity"
"Too Much Counting, Not Enough Trust"
"Too Much Business Conduct, Not Enough Professional Conduct"
"Too Much Salesmanship, Not Enough Stewardship"
"Too Much Focus on Things, Not Enough Focus on Commitment"
"Too Many Twenty-first Century Values, Not Enough Eighteenth-Century Values"
"Too Much 'Success,' Not Enough Character"

As to the overarching theme captured by the book's title, "Enough," Mr. Bogle begins with this vignette:

"At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, 'Yes, but I have something he will never have … enough.'"

Amen!
And thank you, John Bogle!
(And Judith Ellis.)

Design Redux: Beyond Women's Restrooms

Two book recommendations:

From my friend and colleague Richard Farson: The Power of Design: A Force for Transforming Everything. That's a bold hypothesis—and to a great extent what I've staked my own professional career on in the last two decades. The book is well written, and it's well worth your time.

The other, also brilliant by my lights: Do You Matter? How Great Design Will Make People Love Your Company, by Robert Brunner and Stewart Emery. Consider a sample of subtitles from the last chapter, "Building a Design-driven Culture": "Why good design is everybody's job" ... "Why we need risk support instead of risk management" ... "Why risk should be understood—not avoided" ... "How design requires faith and commitment ..." First paragraph: "In 1997, shortly after Steve Jobs returned to Apple, Dell's founder and chairman, Michael Dell, was asked at the Gartner Symposium and ITxpo97 how he would fix financially troubled Apple. 'What would I do?' Dell said. 'I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.'" (As you doubtless know, a scant ten years later Apple's market cap surged past Dell's.)

Another Travesty

The Wall Street Journal (October 29) favorably reviews Who by Geoff Smart and Randy Street. I'm hooked.

In short, if "health care" is a dangerous oxymoron, it is matched, if in a less deadly fashion, by "rigorous interview" in the all-important world of hiring. Mssrs. Smart and Street are said to rip, tear, shred, spindle, mutilate, thrash, and trash the typical prospective employee evaluation process for its shallowness. And the reviewer also reports that the authors provide a ton of solid research and professional experience to support their sorry conclusions. I am disposed to the authors' assessment based on my own, if less extensive, observation—and flawed personal practices.

Smart and Street argue that the hiring process should have the same rigor as the evaluation of a prospective corporate acquisition. "Candidates who appear excellent on a first pass," the reviewer writes, "may fall to pieces on the third or fourth look—others look better and better." If the roster is the heart of team success—then the acquisition thereof could logically be called the most important thing an organization does. Right? (TP opinion: Right.)

LOOK ... THIS IS A BIG BIG BIG DAMN DEAL.

You and I have probably read a dozen, or three dozen, books on "business strategy." (Right?) And perhaps have been to a course or exec course or two or three on the topic.

Have you ever read a full-fledged book on assessing folks for employment?
Have you read a dozen articles on the topic?

My answer to both questions is an embarrassing "no." Worse yet, as best I can remember, I have never written—in 15 books—even a chapter on the topic! Dear God! I can argue that I've "skirted" the topic in many ways—but I'm not sure even that's the whole truth. (I am especially chagrined because I am a graduate of McKinsey & Co, one of the rare "good guys" on the Recruitment Excellence list—it doesn't seem to have rubbed off on my research or writing.)

The reviewer concludes, "In short, hiring is the most important aspect of business and yet remains woefully misunderstood [my italics]."

Ye gads, I think he might well be right.

(If so, what am I going to do about it?)
(If so, what are you going to do about it?)

Book Recommendation

We at tompeters.com are proud to say that Tom is included as one of the heretics of the title in The Age of Heretics, by Art Kleiner, the editor-in-chief of strategy+business magazine. The book's subtitle is A History of the Radical Thinkers Who Reinvented Corporate Management, and leadership expert Warren Bennis, a friend of Tom's, writes in the foreword that "... each of us helped destroy, if not the Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, the soulless organization that stole his labor and his days. And in doing so, each of us contributed to a new organizational reality in which the personal and business are inextricably linked and success is measured in human terms as well as dollars and euros."

The heresies—business theorems that go against the flow of accepted opinion—which are endorsed in the book, include: "Business is always personal." "To change an organization, you must know—and change—yourself." "The purpose of an organization is to change the world." Tom is mentioned in relation to that last one, as you might have guessed, and he, along with Bob Waterman, is credited with moving the heretics out into the open. Kleiner points out, by means of a quote from Thomas Huxley, that "New truths begin as heresies." We think this is a book you'll be glad to take a look at.

"The Word" According To Marshall

Marshall Goldsmith is widely considered to be the premier executive coach, more or less the inventor of the genre. We have been together on several programs, I like him immensely—and I think he does great work.

Well, that was before I read—really, really read—What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful.

That is, the book that I have belatedly fully ingested is virtually peerless. I don't think Marshall "just" "does great work"—as I said, I think his work goes ever so much farther and merits the use of "peerless," literally without peers.

Bottom line: You must read it! (I'd argue that it's another of those "now more than ever" "commands"—knowing yourself as a leader is particularly important at stressful times.)

Here are a few snippets from a big section of the book titled, "The Twenty Habits That Hold You Back From the Top":

Habit #1: Winning Too Much

"Winning too much is easily the most common behavioral problem I observe in successful people. [My italics.] There's a fine line between winning when it counts and when no one's counting. … Winning too much underlies nearly every other behavioral problem.

"If we argue too much, it's because we want our view to prevail over everyone else (i.e., it's all about winning).

"If we're guilty of putting down other people, it's our stealthy way of positioning them beneath us (again, winning).

"If we ignore people, again it's about winning—by making them fade away."

Etc.

Habit #2: Adding Too Much Value

"Good idea, but …

"The problem is you may have improved the content by 5%, but you've reduced my commitment to executing it by 50%, because you've taken away my ownership of the idea."

Habit #3: Passing Judgment
Habit #4: Making Destructive Comments

Etc.

One final quote that I cannot resist adding, doubtless in part because I am 100% in agreement:

"I regard apologizing as the most magical, healing, restorative gesture human beings can make. It is the centerpiece of my work with executives who want to get better."

Read the book!
(Now.)
(Read it in small doses. And ponder what you read.)
(Read it with a colleague or two—digest and practice.)

GOLDSMITH IS NOT ALONE. HE, WARREN BENNIS, AND OTHERS OF THEIR STATURE INSIST THAT SELF-KNOWLEDGE IS THE NECESSARY PRECURSOR TO EFFECTIVE LEADERSHIP OF ALL FLAVORS. SELF-KNOWLEDGE IS NOT SELF-INDULGENCE. SELF-KNOWLEDGE, ACCUMULATION THEREOF, IS THE MOST POTENT MEDICINE YOU WILL EVER TAKE.

Quote of the Day

"If I had said 'yes' to all the projects I turned down and 'no' to all the ones I took, it would have worked out about the same."—David Picker, movie studio exec, quoted in William Goldman's classic Adventures in the Screen Trade (cited by Caltech physics professor and author Leonard Mlodinow in The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives)

NB1: Mlodinow's book gets a 10 out of 10 from me, hanging in with Fooled By Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. (Another fav from Mlodinow: "Mathematical analysis of firings in all major sports has shown that those firings had, on average, no effect on team performance." A dozen or more studies appearing in prestigious academic journals are cited.)

NB2: If Randomness Rules then your only defense is the so-called "law of large numbers"—that is, success follows from tryin' enough stuff so that the odds of doin' something right tilt your way; in my speeches I declare that the only thing I've truly learned "for sure" in the last 40 years is "Try more stuff than the other guy"—there is no poetic license here, I mean it.

This & That ...

1. Freeze-Frame: One Minute Stress Management: A Scientifically Proven Technique for Clear Decision Making and Improved Health, by Doc Lew Childre and Bruce Cryer. I learned this technique at Canyon Ranch/Lenox MA a few years ago. And, improbable as it seems, it works—in even less than a minute, say, 30 seconds—or even 15. There may be more than you want to know in this book, and you may be skeptical—I was—but I will stick my neck out and call "it" "revolutionary;" it's lasted over 5 years for me and gotten better with age. Works in traffic, before a speech, during a meeting when something pisses you off, in the airport when something really pisses you off, in the middle of a delicate phone call, before your next serve, before your next M&M, etc. It's good for your professional life—and your health. (As advertised, it does take practice!)

2. As long as I'm doing "self help" (God help me), there's a lot of wisdom in Gordon Livingston, M.D.'s Too Soon Old, Too Late Smart: Thirty True Things You Need to Know Now. E.g.: "If the map doesn't agree with the ground, the map is wrong." (#1.) "We are what we do." "Our greatest strengths are our greatest weaknesses." "Not all who wander are lost." "It's a poor idea to lie to oneself." "Nobody likes to be told what to do." "Of all the forms of courage, the ability to laugh is the most profoundly therapeutic."

3. While my social views are liberal (I'd call them leave-me-the-hell-alone libertarian), my economics are unadulterated capitalist pig. They may stay that way, and probably will. Yet my entrepreneurial friend Alan Webber (Fast Company founder, TP partner in inventing "the brand called you") got me thinking when we met in Santa Fe last week—and got me reading afterwards. So far: Peter Navarro, The Coming China Wars; and (on order from Amazon) Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Mindless capitalist pig-ism is just that ... mindless. I've been a believer so long (35 years, I was somewhat collectivist in the 60s, not hippie, but a devotee of John Kenneth Galbraith, whom I now call "the man who got everything wrong;" now I'm true blue Hayek-ian) that I need to challenge my beliefs, rough myself up. Will let you know from time to time how it's coming.

4. Taxachusetts. On my way back to my part-time Boston home yesterday, after a root canal, I was struck by the obvious—how damn many colleges and universities there are in this town. After the procedure I stopped at a Starbucks inside the Boston University Barnes & Noble. A few blocks later I dropped into another bookstore (true addiction), this one associated with Berklee College of Music. (Walked out with a Berklee Hockey bball cap—bball caps another addiction.) Then an optometry college. Then etc. All in the space of a 45-minute walk.

It may be Taxachussetts, but once again—three in a row since it started—Massachusetts, underpinned by Boston-Cambridge, ranked #1 on the Milken Institute's very sophisticated evaluation-index of the U.S.'s "top technology incubators." (FYI, Maryland, Colorado, and CA were #s 2, 3, & 4.) Tax rates or not, the joint is a/the hotbed of profitable, high-growth intellectual activity. (MA & CA account for 50% of the World's Top Ten universities.) (Interestingly, and perhaps contrary to conventional wisdom, MA also gets very high marks on many-most social indicators, such as 2nd lowest divorce rate in the U.S.—FYI, D.C., PA, and IL #s 1, 3, 4.)

5. Kluge. Nudge. Sway. All terrific books. The world ain't rational my friends! (Duh.) (Even the economists now agree; God may not be dead as Nietzsche predicted, but "rational man" is in the ICU and a thunderstorm just knocked out the respirator's power.) (Godfathers of all this: Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. See: Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases by Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky.) (My pick of picks, as you probably know by now, are Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Fooled By Randomness and The Black Swan.)

Believe It or Not: An Original Take on Leadership

Dov Frohman is a pioneer in the semiconductor industry. Among (many) other things, he started Intel Israel and was largely responsible for the growth of Israel's potent high-tech sector. With Robert Howard, he has written a truly original book on leadership, Leadership the Hard Way: Why Leadership Can't Be Taught—and How You Can Learn It Anyway.

A few of the provocative chapter titles are: "Insisting on Survival," "Leadership Under Fire" (literally, Israel remember), "Leveraging Random Opportunities." In a chapter titled "The Soft Skills of Hard Leadership," Frohman astonishes as he insists that the leader-manager must free up no less than 50% of his-her time from routine tasks. To wit:

"Most managers spend a great deal of time thinking about what they plan to do, but relatively little time thinking about what they plan not to do ... As a result, they become so caught up ... in fighting the fires of the moment that they cannot really attend to the longterm threats and risks facing the organization. So the first soft skill of leadership the hard way is to cultivate the perspective of Marcus Aurelius: avoid busyness, free up your time, stay focused on what really matters. Let me put it bluntly: every leader should routinely keep a substantial portion of his or her time—I would say as much as 50 percent—unscheduled. ... Only when you have substantial 'slop' in your schedule—unscheduled time—will you have the space to reflect on what you are doing, learn from experience, and recover from your inevitable mistakes. Leaders without such free time end up tackling issues only when there is an immediate or visible problem. Managers' typical response to my argument about free time is, 'That's all well and good, but there are things I have to do.' Yet we waste so much time in unproductive activity—it takes an enormous effort on the part of the leader to keep free time for the truly important things."

Yet another surprising idea from the same chapter is "daydreaming":

"The Discipline Of Daydreaming": "Nearly every major decision of my business career was, to some degree, the result of daydreaming. ... To be sure, in every case I had to collect a lot of data, do detailed analysis, and make a data-based argument to convince superiors, colleagues and business partners. But that all came later. In the beginning, there was the daydream. By daydreaming, I mean loose, unstructured thinking with no particular goal in mind. ... In fact, I think daydreaming is a distinctive mode of cognition especially well suited to the complex, 'fuzzy' problems that characterize a more turbulent business environment. ... Daydreaming is an effective way of coping with complexity. When a problem has a high degree of complexity, the level of detail can be overwhelming. The more one focuses on the details, the more one risks being lost in them. ... Every child knows how to daydream. But many, perhaps most, lose the capacity as they grow up. ..."

And so on. I admit to having some quarrels with Frohman, yet every idea in the book performed that most valuable of services: challenged my long-held and thence hard-and-fast views.

Two Thumbs Up.

Economic Growth Insulates Against International Violence?

I've been "one of those" who has blithely proclaimed that globalization and the more general spread of wealth and modernity (China, India plus) is the most probable path to more or less universal peace and stability, instability in the Middle East notwithstanding.

Maybe.
Maybe not.

Consider these confident assertions from Europe, just prior to World War I, from The Guns of August, by Barbara Tuchman* (*I just finished a re-read):

"By impressive examples and incontrovertible argument [Norman] Angel [in his book, The Great Illusion] showed that given the present financial and economic interdependence of nations, the victor [in a war] would suffer equally with the vanquished; therefore war had become unprofitable; therefore no one would be so foolish as to start one."

[NB: Tuchman reports that Angel's book was published in 1910, four years before the Great War, translated into numerous languages, and studied by the highest level statesmen from the UK and all of Europe to Japan, with almost uniform nods of agreement.]

"New economic factors clearly prove the inanity of aggressive wars. ... Because of the interlacing of nations, war becomes every day more difficult and improbable."

[Lectures in 1910 by Viscount Esher, chairman of the UK's "War Commission" and senior advisor on foreign policy and the military; he believed that the Angel doctrine was as accepted in Germany as in the UK.]

This from Niall Ferguson, The War of the World, on the 1900s, the bloodiest century in human history by far: "The hundred years after 1900 were a time of unparalleled progress. In real terms, it has been estimated [that] average per capita global domestic product increased by little more than 50 percent between 1500 and 1870. Between 1870 and 1998, however, it increased by a factor of more than six and a half."

TP remark: Hmmmm.

Great Read! Important Read!

I've rarely seen such raves as for Amanda Ripley's The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes—and Why.

Read it!

The idea, told almost exclusively through compelling stories, is that we can do better than we imagine when shit hits the fan—and that it's up to you and me, not the pros, to do most of the work for ourselves and others. If there is a "secret," and there more or less is, it is practice. Fullscale drills, among other things, but little stuff is at least as important. For example, the office worker who walks down the stairs (many floors) to lunch once every couple of weeks—it's a way to train the body, when virtually paralyzed by fear, to do the right-useful thing.

Here are a few one- or two-liners from the book:

"Regular people only feature into the [standard] equation as victims, which is a shame. Because regular people are the most important people at a disaster scene—every time. ... The vast majority of rescues [are] done by ordinary folks."

"Since 9/11 the U.S. government has sent over $23 billion to the states and cities in the name of homeland security. Almost none of that money has gone to intelligently enrolling regular people like you and me in the cause. Why don't we tell people what to do when we are on Orange Alert against a terrorist attack—instead of just telling them to be scared?"

London 2005: "Emergency plans had been designed to meet the needs of emergency officials, not regular people."

"Without too much trouble, we can teach our brains to work more quickly, maybe even more wisely, under great stress. We have more control over our fate than we think. We need to stop underestimating ourselves."

"Realistic practice brings out our faults—and then makes us stronger." "Abilities we think are innate almost never are." "Skill is my ability to do something automatically, at the subconscious level. How do I get that? I do that by repetition, by practicing the right thing. The only way you learn it is to program it."

The idea here is not to scare the hell out of you or me. Or to turn us into fanatic Exit sign watchers. It's to tell some useful stories, and to provide us with some useful strategies. When it comes to the terrorism bit, anyone who thinks we have seen the last of it is living in la-la land.

Great beach read?
Whatever.

When The "Enemy" Really Wins

"Lose Your Nemesis": "Obsessing about your competitors, trying to match or best their offerings, spending time each day wanting to know what they are doing, and/or measuring your company against them—these activities have no great or winning outcome. Instead you are simply prohibiting your company from finding its own way to be truly meaningful to its clients, staff and prospects. You block your company from finding its own identity and engaging with the people who pay the bills. ... Your competitors have never paid your bills and they never will."—Howard Mann, Your Business Brickyard: Getting Back to the Basics to Make Your Business More Fun to Run*

*Mr Mann also quotes Mike McCue, former VP/Technology at Netscape: "At Netscape the competition with Microsoft was so severe, we'd wake up in the morning thinking about how we were going to deal with them instead of how we would build something great for our customers. What I realize now is that you can never, ever take your eye off the customer. Even in the face of massive competition, don't think about the competition. Literally don't think about them."

On the Other Hand ...

The impact of the 50-year-old Web is staggering. But is it "more staggering" than, say, the arrival of railroads? I've been doing a bit of railway reading, and I think it's either a dead heat, or the railways may win by a nose.

Consider:

"[The railways] turned the known universe upside down. They made a greater and more immediate impact than any other innovation before or since. ... The shock was both sudden and universal ... With the railways came the development of modern capitalism, of modern nations, the creation of new regions from the American Midwest to Lake Victoria to the pampas in Argentina."—Nicholas Faith, The World the Railways Made

I like this one even better—written at the time of inception, 1844, and using extremist language of the sort that's also commonplace regarding the Web:

"... Time and space are annihilated by steam. ... Oh, this constant locomotion, my body & everything in motion. Steamboats, Cars, & hotels all crammed & crowded full the whole population seems in motion & in fact as I pass along with Lightening speed & cast my eye on the distant objects, they all seem in a whirl nothing appearing permanent even the trees are waltzing, the mind too goes with all this, it speculates, theorizes, & measures all things by locomotive speed, where will it end."—Asa Whitney, first to formally propose transcontinental railroad to Congress, diary entry, 1844, from David Haward Bain, Empire Express: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad

"Time and space were annihilated"—that's the ticket.

No grand purpose here other than amusement—and a reminder that we've lived through and survived such "everything-has-changed" upheavals in the past. Just ask the spirit of your great great grandfather!

Good News! Everything Matters!

I am badly remiss for not heartily, vigorously, unabashedly endorsing for your immediate and intense attention the relatively new Nudge, by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. I must admit I've been enamored of late with the following from former PepsiCo CEO Roger Enrico, "Beware of the tyranny of making Small Changes to Small Things. Rather, make Big Changes to Big Things." Which is odd, given that it goes against the grain of "look for the little levers," which was my signature approach to implementation for years and years—and the centerpiece of my 1977 dissertation.

Well, I've come full circle. The hell with the big stuff (most of which most of us can't do anyway), let's seek out the little levers—with very high impact. Now along comes Nudge (fabulous title), which chronicles such an approach, digesting in a readable (entertaining, actually) fashion three decades of research in what's called "behavioral economics." Don't be put off by the term that sounds like typical economists' gibberish. (To me, anyway.)

The point is that if you put the good stuff (fruit, say) before the bad stuff (high-carb goop) in a cafeteria display line, you'd be amazed at the impact—e.g., a hundred diet books' worth.

As Mssrs Thaler and Sunstein say, "everything matters"—and nothing is neutral. They even give a lovely, not-like-an-economist title for conscious practitioners of this art:

"Choice architects."

The book is loaded with practical examples of enormous behavioral changes that stem from subtle manipulation of wee levers. (I've long argued that the manipulation of physical configuration is the most powerful more or less invisible tool in a manager's arsenal—put the chief designer's office next to the CEO's office—and watch a thousand people become obsessed with design more or less overnight.)

It is indeed "manipulation" (the authors discuss this at length), but then everything a manager does is manipulative!

At any rate, the book is well worth a careful read. At one level its principal thesis is obvious (except, as the authors point out, for economists who are obsessed with the mythical "rational man," of which there is none on earth), but the power of the ceaseless examples is likely, I think and hope, to grab your attention.

(One powerful attraction, hinted at above, is that it empowers "lower level" managers—who in fact actually have a boatload/supertanker-full of "little levers" at their command—talk about empowering! It simultaneously deprives them of their standard "powerless" excuse.)

"Best Business Book 2008" (Hands Down)

If business's true bottom line is people & relationships (What else???), then I offer my, hands down, 2008 Biz Book of the Year:

The Cellist of Sarajevo, by Steven Galloway.

Fact is, it's the best book I've read in years. It is a short fictional account of the lives and personal and moral trials of a handful of people during the civil war in the Balkans.

I, like 99%+ of you, am/is a spoiled brat—I (you?) cannot imagine what it means to have life, every assumption associated therewith, turned upside down and inside out.

How would I react? No idea!

If you don't buy my "biz book" label, read it anyway.

(*Also on my list of fiction that applies to biz life is another recent read, The Dream Life of Sukhanov by Olga Grushin, 2005, an amazing tale of bureaucracy and moral trials. Together, this pair tops my reading list going back a long, long time.)

"Best Business Book of the Decade" (Hands Down)

Okay, two years left in the decade. No problem, this one'll stand the test of time—at least as far as I'm concerned. Just thought I'd remind you, as I've talked about it before:

The Black Swan, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

My short take: A couple, at most, waaaay out of the blue events ("black swans"), beyond the grasp of planning or direct preparation, will define your professional career. (Think Ben Bernanke and the sub-prime crisis, or more specifically Bernanke and Bear Stearns. Or Mayor Giuliani and 9/11. Or the 1962 Cuban missile crisis—I'm re-reading Graham Allison's classic Essence of Decision, said re-reading triggered by The Black Swan. Or the Latin American debt crisis-default; collectively, our big banks lost more money in 1982 than they had made in the prior 200 years.)

The Best Link Ever

Any of you who read this blog know how much Tom loves books, and you know how much all of us who work for Tom love books, and we think you probably love books as much as we do. Therefore, we think you should go immediately to this YouTube link and watch the best post ever. Do not be put off by the 7-minute length of the video; get through the intro and you'll be entranced. We guarantee it.

[Tom says that if you are not in love with this video, please let us know, and we'll take you off all our mailing lists.]

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."