Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't
by Robert I. Sutton
From the jacket... Employees who are insensitive to their colleagues...corporate bullies...bosses who just don't get it. Let's face it, every office has workers who are flat-out rude, selfish, uncivil, mean-spirited, and who really don't seem to care about whom they step on. They're the kind of people who make you exclaim in exasperation, "What an asshole!" Dr. Sutton sheds real analytical light on how this ongoing problem ruins morale, lowers productivity, and can truly devastate a company's culture. Sutton not only confronts this issue directly, but also provides extensive strategies and insights into how your company can pinpoint and eliminate this problem.
My flags...
pg 18 ...companies had learned to ignore job candidates' quirks and strange mannerisms, to downplay socially inappropriate remarks, and instead, focus on what the people could actually do. I first heard this argument from Nolan Bushnell - the founder of Atari, which was the first wildly successful gaming company. Bushnell told me that although he looked for smooth-talking marketing people, when it came to technical people, he just wanted to see their work because "the best engineers sometimes come in bodies that can't talk."
pg 25 These test imply an even more fundamental lesson that runs through this book: the difference between how a person treats the powerless versus the powerful is as good a measure of human character as I know. ... To me, when a person is persistently warm and civilized toward people who are of unknown or lower status, it means that he or she is a decent human being.
pg 40 As the late corporate quality guru W. Edwards Deming concluded long ago, when fear rears its ugly head, people focus on protecting themselves, not on helping their organizations improve.
pg 75 Despite all the trappings, some leaders do remain attuned to how people around them are really feeling, to what their employees really believe about how the organization is run, and to what customers really think about their company's products and services. ...the key things these leaders do is take potent and constant steps that dampen rather than amplify the power difference between themselves and others (both inside and outside the company).
pg 80 At Intel, the largest semiconductor maker in the world, all full-time employees are given training in "constructive confrontation", a hallmark of the company culture. ... Intel preaches that the only thing worse than too much confrontation is no confrontation at all. So the company teaches employees how to approach people and problems positively, to use evidence and logic, and to attack problems and not people.
The University of Michigan's Karl Weick advises, "Fight as if you are right; listen as though you are wrong." That is what Intel tries to teach through initial lectures, role playing, and, most essential, the ways in which managers and leaders fight. The teach people how to fight and when to fight. Their motto is "Disagree and then commit," because second-guessing, complaining, and arguing after a decision is made saps effort and attention - which obscures whether a decision is failing because it is a bad idea or is it a good idea that is implemented with insufficient energy and commitment. People are also taught to delay their arguments until all the key facts are in, because it wastes time and because taking a public stance based on incomplete information leads people to defend and publicly commit to paths that ultimately clash with the best evidence.
pg 90 Manage moments - not just practices, policies, and systems. Effective asshole management means focusing on and changing the little things that you and your people do - and big changes will follow. Reflect on what you do, watch how others respond to you and to one another, and work on "tweeking" what happens as you are interacting with the person in front of your right now.
pg 110 Again, a bit of framing can help. Tell yourself, "I have enough." Certainly, some people need more than they have, as many people on earth still need a safe place to live, enough food to eat, and other necessities. But too many of us are never satisfied and feel constantly slighted, even though - by objective standards - we have all we need to live a good life. ... These wise words provide a frame that can help you to be at peace with yourself and to treat those around you with affection and respect.
pg 113 And after Dell and Rollins began talking openly about their weaknesses, it gave other senior executives "permission" to talk about their own nastiness and insensitivity, and gave their colleagues permission to "call them" on bad behaviour. As one general manger put it, "After someone discloses that he periodically lobs grenades into meetings but intends to stop, we all have permission to call him on it. And we do."
pg 131 Physiologists have found that if you can't escape a source of stress, changing your mind-set about what is happening to you, or reframing, can help reduce the damage done to you. Some useful reframing tricks include avoiding self-blame, hoping for the best but expecting the worst, and, my favourite, developing indifference and emotional detachment. Learning when and how to simply not give a damn isn't the kind of advice you hear in most business books, but it can help you make the best of a lousy situation.
pg 137 As Walt Whitman said, "Dismiss whatever insults your soul."
pg 139 Stockdale and other prisoners survived by finding hundreds of tiny actions they could take each day to take a modicum of control over their lives - like saying a prayer, doing some push-ups, or trying to develop new ways to get a secret message to other prisoners. ... research confirms that the feeling of control - perceiving that you have the power to shape even small aspects of your fate - can have a huge impact on human well-being. Consider a compelling study by Ellen Langer and Judith Rodin with elderly patients in nursing homes. One group of patients attended a lecture about all the things that the staff could do for them; they were given a houseplant and told the staff would care for it, and they were told which night to attend movies. Patients in the other (quite similar) groups from the same nursing homes were given a "pep" talk about the importance of taking control over their lives, and asked to take care of the new houseplant in their rooms, and given choices about which nights to attend movies, when they had meals, when their phones rang, and how their furniture was arranged. These small differences had big effects. Not only did those patients with greater control engage in more recreational activities and have more positive attitudes toward life in general, an eighteen-month follow-up found that they had a 50% lower death rate.
29.8.07
25.8.07
A Year Without "Made In China"
One Family's True Life Adventure in the Global Economy
by Sara Bongiorni
The title describes it - a family embarks on a year long boycott of Chinese products. I picked up this book for two reasons 1) to ensure that out of the typical stream of books I enjoy, I also explore what else is out there for me to learn from and 2) there is a lot about China in the other book I have on the go, The World is Flat, so I thought this would be a neat real-life expedition in the realities of globalization.
However, throughout the whole book I struggled with it's premise. So too, did some of the subjects, and I don't feel it was ever cleared up:
pg 100 Like his father, Wes sees little virtue in a China boycott.
"Do we not like China?" he asks me one day.
I am alarmed by the question.
"Yes, we like China," I tell him.
He presses on.
"Are they not nice to people?"
"They are perfectly good people in China," I assure him. "No different than people anywhere else."
"Then how come we don't buy China things?" he asks.
We've been over this territory before but I stumble every time. Many days I can't quite remember myself why we are doing this, so to explain it in a way that makes sense to a four-year old is beyond my abilities. Still, I suppose it's my duty to try.
"We like China, but it's a very big place, with lots of factories, and we want to give other countries a chance to sell us things," I say.
pg 130 Today Sofie does something that no toddler in America, perhaps no toddler in the world, has ever done. She is trailing after me in the toy aisle at the market when she picks up a box, peers at the underside, mutters "China" as if reading, and then returns the box to its place on the shelf. I should have seen this coming - monkey see, monkey do, after all - but I'm blindsided by her performance. My first thought is: What have I done? My next one is: Can it be undone? What sort of mother teaches her toddler to fear Chinese toys? And if she's fearful of Chinese toys, what's next? Fear of Chinese people?
by Sara Bongiorni
The title describes it - a family embarks on a year long boycott of Chinese products. I picked up this book for two reasons 1) to ensure that out of the typical stream of books I enjoy, I also explore what else is out there for me to learn from and 2) there is a lot about China in the other book I have on the go, The World is Flat, so I thought this would be a neat real-life expedition in the realities of globalization.
However, throughout the whole book I struggled with it's premise. So too, did some of the subjects, and I don't feel it was ever cleared up:
pg 100 Like his father, Wes sees little virtue in a China boycott.
"Do we not like China?" he asks me one day.
I am alarmed by the question.
"Yes, we like China," I tell him.
He presses on.
"Are they not nice to people?"
"They are perfectly good people in China," I assure him. "No different than people anywhere else."
"Then how come we don't buy China things?" he asks.
We've been over this territory before but I stumble every time. Many days I can't quite remember myself why we are doing this, so to explain it in a way that makes sense to a four-year old is beyond my abilities. Still, I suppose it's my duty to try.
"We like China, but it's a very big place, with lots of factories, and we want to give other countries a chance to sell us things," I say.
pg 130 Today Sofie does something that no toddler in America, perhaps no toddler in the world, has ever done. She is trailing after me in the toy aisle at the market when she picks up a box, peers at the underside, mutters "China" as if reading, and then returns the box to its place on the shelf. I should have seen this coming - monkey see, monkey do, after all - but I'm blindsided by her performance. My first thought is: What have I done? My next one is: Can it be undone? What sort of mother teaches her toddler to fear Chinese toys? And if she's fearful of Chinese toys, what's next? Fear of Chinese people?
24.8.07
The Long Tail
Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More
by Chris Anderson
In a not-so-small-nutshell from the early pages: "In statistics, curves like that are called "long-tailed distributions," because the tail of the curve is very long relative to the head. So all I did was focus on the tail itself, turn it into a proper noun, and "The Long Tail" was born. It started life as slide 20 of one of my "New Rules" presentations. I think it was Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, who convinced me that I was burying my lead. By the summer of 2004 "The Long Tail" was not just the title of my speeches; I was nearly finished with an article of the same name for my own magazine.
When "The Long Tail" was published in Wired in October 2004, it quickly became the most cited article the magazine had ever run. The three main observations - 1) the tail of available variety is far longer than we realize; 2) it's now within reach economically; 3) all those niches, when aggregated, can make up a significant market - seemed indisputable, especially when backed up with heretofore unseen data."
(check out the original article here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail_pr.html)
my flags...
pg 16 People are going deep into the catalog, down the long, long list of available titles, far past what's available at Blockbuster Video and Tower Records. And the more they find, the more they like. As they wander farther from the beaten path, they discover their taste is not as mainstream as they thought (or as they had been led to believe by marketing, a hit-centric culture, and simply a lack of alternatives).
pg 22 Not only is every one of Rhapsody's top 60,000 tracks streamed at least once each month, but the same is true for its top 100,000, top 200,000, and top 400,000 - even its top 600,000, top 900,000, and beyond. As fast as Rhapsody add tracks to its library, those songs find an audience, even if it's just a handful of people every month, somewhere in the world. This is the Long Tail.
pg 23 Venture capitalist and former music industry consultant Kevin Laws puts it this way: "The biggest money is in the smallest sales."
pg 23 When you think about it, most successful Internet businesses are capitalizing on the Long Tail in one way or another. Google, for instance, makes most of its money not from huge corporate advertisers, but from small ones (the Long Tail of advertising). Ebay is mostly Tail as well - niche products from collector cars to tricked-out golf clubs. By overcoming the limitations of geography and scale, companies like these have not only expanded existing markets, but more important, they've also discovered new ones.
pg 24 But what we do know is that with the companies for which we have the most complete data - Netflix, Amazon, and Rhapsody - sales of products not offered by their bricks-and-mortar competitors amounted to between a quarter and nearly half of total revenues - and that percentage is rising each year. In other words, the fastest-growing part of their business is sales of products that aren't available in traditional, physical retail stores at all.
pg 25 One way to think of the difference between yesterday's limited choice and today's abundance is as if our culture were an ocean and the only features about the surface were islands of hits. There's a music island composed of hit albums, a movie island of blockbusters, an archipelago of popular TV shows, and so on.
Think of the waterline as being the economic threshold for that category, the amount of sales necessary to satisfy the distribution channels. The islands represent the products that are popular enough to be above that line, and thus profitable enough to be offered through distribution channels with scarce capacity, which is to say the shelf space demands of of most major retailers. Scan the cultural horizon and what stands out are these peaks of popularity rising above the waters.
However, islands are, of course, just the tip of the vast undersea mountains. When the cost of distribution falls, it's like the water level falling in the ocean. All of a sudden things are revealed that were previously hidden. ... (i.e.) More than 99 percent of music albums on the market today are not available in Wal-Mart.
pg 40 Instead of the office watercooler, which crosses cultural boundaries as only the random assortment of personalities found in the workplace can, we're increasingly forming our own tribes, groups bound together more by affinity and shared interests than by default broadcast schedules. These days our watercoolers are increasingly virtual - there are many different ones, and the people who gather around them are self-selected. We are turning from a mass market back into a niche nation, defined now not by our geography but by our interests.
pg 99 For a generation used to doing their buying research via search engine, a company's brand is not what the company says it is, but what Google says it is. The new tastemakers are us. Word of mouth is now a public conversation, carried in blog comments and customer reviews, exhaustively collated and measured. The ants have megaphones.
pg 109 In today's Long Tail markets, the main effect of filters is to help people move from the world they know ("hits") via a route that is both comfortable and tailored to their tastes. In a sense, good filters have the effect of driving demand down the tail by revealing goods and services that appeal more than the lowest-common-denominator fare that crowds the narrow channels of traditional mass-market distribution.
pg 119 If you've got help - smart search engines, recommendations, or other filters - your odds of finding something just right for you are actually greater in the tail. Best-sellers tend to appeal, at least superficially, to a broad range of taste. Niche products are meant to appeal strongly to a narrow set of tastes. That's why the filter technologies are so important. They not only drive demand down the Tail, but they can also increase satisfaction by connecting people with products that are more right for them than the broad-appeal products at the Head.
pg 167 These are some of the other mental traps we fall into because of scarcity thinking:
- everyone wants to be a star
- everyone's in it for the money
- if it isn't a hit, it's a miss
- the only success is mass success
- "direct to video" = bad
- "self-published" = bad
- "independent" = "they couldn't get a deal"
- amateur = amateurish
- low-selling = low-quality
- if it were good, it would be popular
and finally, there's the notion that "too much choice" is overwhelming, a belief so common and ill-founded that it deserves its own chapter.
pg 185 In 1958, Raymond Williams, the Marxist sociologist, wrote in Culture and Society: "There are no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses." He was more right than he knew.
pg 191 Fundamentally, a society that asks questions and has the power to answer them is a healthier society than the one that simply accepts what it's told from a narrow range of experts and institutions. If professional affiliation is no longer a proxy for authority, we need to develop our own gauges of quality. This encourages us to think for ourselves. Wikipedia is a starting point for exploring a topic, not the last word.
pg 196 Even for those who do own the content, releasing video in ways not anticipated at the original time of broadcast still can be remarkably difficult. Rights are a total hairball, made even more complicated by exclusive regional distribution deals (which conflict with the Internet's global nature) and syndication options. And there there's the music in the video, which is even worse. Want to know why you can't watch old WKRP in Cincinnati episodes on DVD? Because the sitcom was based in a radio station, which had loads of classic rock playing in the background. It's too expensive and difficult to license the music that was used in the show.
pg 217 The secret to creating a thriving Long Tail business can be summarized in two imperatives: 1) make everything available 2) help me find it.
pg 226 Like everything else, tomorrow's Long Tail of Things will be aggregated, efficiently stored as bits, and then delivered to your home via optical fiber. Only then will it be materialized, coming full circle to atoms again at the point of consumption. It sounds like science fiction, but then again so did having an entire music library in your pocket just a decade ago.
by Chris Anderson
In a not-so-small-nutshell from the early pages: "In statistics, curves like that are called "long-tailed distributions," because the tail of the curve is very long relative to the head. So all I did was focus on the tail itself, turn it into a proper noun, and "The Long Tail" was born. It started life as slide 20 of one of my "New Rules" presentations. I think it was Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, who convinced me that I was burying my lead. By the summer of 2004 "The Long Tail" was not just the title of my speeches; I was nearly finished with an article of the same name for my own magazine.
When "The Long Tail" was published in Wired in October 2004, it quickly became the most cited article the magazine had ever run. The three main observations - 1) the tail of available variety is far longer than we realize; 2) it's now within reach economically; 3) all those niches, when aggregated, can make up a significant market - seemed indisputable, especially when backed up with heretofore unseen data."
(check out the original article here: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail_pr.html)
my flags...
pg 16 People are going deep into the catalog, down the long, long list of available titles, far past what's available at Blockbuster Video and Tower Records. And the more they find, the more they like. As they wander farther from the beaten path, they discover their taste is not as mainstream as they thought (or as they had been led to believe by marketing, a hit-centric culture, and simply a lack of alternatives).
pg 22 Not only is every one of Rhapsody's top 60,000 tracks streamed at least once each month, but the same is true for its top 100,000, top 200,000, and top 400,000 - even its top 600,000, top 900,000, and beyond. As fast as Rhapsody add tracks to its library, those songs find an audience, even if it's just a handful of people every month, somewhere in the world. This is the Long Tail.
pg 23 Venture capitalist and former music industry consultant Kevin Laws puts it this way: "The biggest money is in the smallest sales."
pg 23 When you think about it, most successful Internet businesses are capitalizing on the Long Tail in one way or another. Google, for instance, makes most of its money not from huge corporate advertisers, but from small ones (the Long Tail of advertising). Ebay is mostly Tail as well - niche products from collector cars to tricked-out golf clubs. By overcoming the limitations of geography and scale, companies like these have not only expanded existing markets, but more important, they've also discovered new ones.
pg 24 But what we do know is that with the companies for which we have the most complete data - Netflix, Amazon, and Rhapsody - sales of products not offered by their bricks-and-mortar competitors amounted to between a quarter and nearly half of total revenues - and that percentage is rising each year. In other words, the fastest-growing part of their business is sales of products that aren't available in traditional, physical retail stores at all.
pg 25 One way to think of the difference between yesterday's limited choice and today's abundance is as if our culture were an ocean and the only features about the surface were islands of hits. There's a music island composed of hit albums, a movie island of blockbusters, an archipelago of popular TV shows, and so on.
Think of the waterline as being the economic threshold for that category, the amount of sales necessary to satisfy the distribution channels. The islands represent the products that are popular enough to be above that line, and thus profitable enough to be offered through distribution channels with scarce capacity, which is to say the shelf space demands of of most major retailers. Scan the cultural horizon and what stands out are these peaks of popularity rising above the waters.
However, islands are, of course, just the tip of the vast undersea mountains. When the cost of distribution falls, it's like the water level falling in the ocean. All of a sudden things are revealed that were previously hidden. ... (i.e.) More than 99 percent of music albums on the market today are not available in Wal-Mart.
pg 40 Instead of the office watercooler, which crosses cultural boundaries as only the random assortment of personalities found in the workplace can, we're increasingly forming our own tribes, groups bound together more by affinity and shared interests than by default broadcast schedules. These days our watercoolers are increasingly virtual - there are many different ones, and the people who gather around them are self-selected. We are turning from a mass market back into a niche nation, defined now not by our geography but by our interests.
pg 99 For a generation used to doing their buying research via search engine, a company's brand is not what the company says it is, but what Google says it is. The new tastemakers are us. Word of mouth is now a public conversation, carried in blog comments and customer reviews, exhaustively collated and measured. The ants have megaphones.
pg 109 In today's Long Tail markets, the main effect of filters is to help people move from the world they know ("hits") via a route that is both comfortable and tailored to their tastes. In a sense, good filters have the effect of driving demand down the tail by revealing goods and services that appeal more than the lowest-common-denominator fare that crowds the narrow channels of traditional mass-market distribution.
pg 119 If you've got help - smart search engines, recommendations, or other filters - your odds of finding something just right for you are actually greater in the tail. Best-sellers tend to appeal, at least superficially, to a broad range of taste. Niche products are meant to appeal strongly to a narrow set of tastes. That's why the filter technologies are so important. They not only drive demand down the Tail, but they can also increase satisfaction by connecting people with products that are more right for them than the broad-appeal products at the Head.
pg 167 These are some of the other mental traps we fall into because of scarcity thinking:
- everyone wants to be a star
- everyone's in it for the money
- if it isn't a hit, it's a miss
- the only success is mass success
- "direct to video" = bad
- "self-published" = bad
- "independent" = "they couldn't get a deal"
- amateur = amateurish
- low-selling = low-quality
- if it were good, it would be popular
and finally, there's the notion that "too much choice" is overwhelming, a belief so common and ill-founded that it deserves its own chapter.
pg 185 In 1958, Raymond Williams, the Marxist sociologist, wrote in Culture and Society: "There are no masses; there are only ways of seeing people as masses." He was more right than he knew.
pg 191 Fundamentally, a society that asks questions and has the power to answer them is a healthier society than the one that simply accepts what it's told from a narrow range of experts and institutions. If professional affiliation is no longer a proxy for authority, we need to develop our own gauges of quality. This encourages us to think for ourselves. Wikipedia is a starting point for exploring a topic, not the last word.
pg 196 Even for those who do own the content, releasing video in ways not anticipated at the original time of broadcast still can be remarkably difficult. Rights are a total hairball, made even more complicated by exclusive regional distribution deals (which conflict with the Internet's global nature) and syndication options. And there there's the music in the video, which is even worse. Want to know why you can't watch old WKRP in Cincinnati episodes on DVD? Because the sitcom was based in a radio station, which had loads of classic rock playing in the background. It's too expensive and difficult to license the music that was used in the show.
pg 217 The secret to creating a thriving Long Tail business can be summarized in two imperatives: 1) make everything available 2) help me find it.
pg 226 Like everything else, tomorrow's Long Tail of Things will be aggregated, efficiently stored as bits, and then delivered to your home via optical fiber. Only then will it be materialized, coming full circle to atoms again at the point of consumption. It sounds like science fiction, but then again so did having an entire music library in your pocket just a decade ago.
20.8.07
Our Iceberg Is Melting
Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions
by John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber
From the jacket... Our Iceberg Is Melting is based on pioneering work that shows how Eight Steps produce needed change in any sort of group. It's a story that can be enjoyed by anyone while at the same time providing invaluable guidance for a world that just keeps moving faster and faster.
pg 73 Louis began the colony's assembly by saying, "Fellow penguins, as we meet this challenge - and we definitely will - it is more important than ever to remember who we really are."
The crowd looked blankly at him.
"Tell me, are we penguins who deeply respect one another?"
There was silence until someone said, "Of course." The others said, "Yes."
Nono was in the middle of the audience trying to figure out what scheme was afoot. It was not obvious yet, which he did not like.
Louis continued. "And do we strongly value discipline?" "Yes," a dozen or so of the elderly birds.
"And do we have a strong sense of responsibility, too?" It was hard to argue with that. It had been true for generations. "Yes," many now agreed.
"Above all, do we stand for brotherhood and the love of our young?" A loud "Yes!" followed.
The Head Penguin paused. "And tell me...are these beliefs and shared values linked to a large piece of ice?" "NO!"
pg 110 The scouts discussed what they had found. The Professor asked question after question after question to distinguish opinions from facts. His style did not make him popular with all the birds - he could not have cared less - but it was very effective.
pg 117 The next season, the scouts found a still better iceberg, larger and with richer fishing grounds. And through it was tempting to declare that the colony had been subjected to enough change, and should stay forever on their new home, they didn't. They moved again. It was a critical step: not becoming complacent again and not letting up.
pg 123 He talked about Fred's finding that the iceberg was melting, then how they
1) created a sense of urgency in the colony to deal with a difficult problem,
2) put a carefully selected group in charge of guiding the change,
3) found the sensible vision of a better future,
4) communicated that vision so others would understand and accept it,
5) removed as many obstacles to action as was practical,
6) created some sort of success quickly,
7) never let up until the new way of life was firmly established, and
8) finally, ensured that the changes would not be overcome by stubborn, hard-to-die traditions.
pg 133 The Role of Thinking and Feeling
Thinking differently can help change behaviour and lead to better results.
- collect data and analyze it
- present the information logically to change people's thinking
- changed thinking, in turn, can change behaviour
Feeling differently can change behaviour MORE and lead to even better results.
- create surprising, compelling, and if possible, visual experiences
- the experiences change how people feel about a situation
- a change in feelings can lead to a significant change in behaviour
pg 135 Additional Resources
Leading Change by John P Kotter
The Heart of Change by John by Kotter
http://www.ouricebergismelting.com/
http://www.theheartofchange.com/
http://www.johnkotter.com/
by John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber
From the jacket... Our Iceberg Is Melting is based on pioneering work that shows how Eight Steps produce needed change in any sort of group. It's a story that can be enjoyed by anyone while at the same time providing invaluable guidance for a world that just keeps moving faster and faster.
pg 73 Louis began the colony's assembly by saying, "Fellow penguins, as we meet this challenge - and we definitely will - it is more important than ever to remember who we really are."
The crowd looked blankly at him.
"Tell me, are we penguins who deeply respect one another?"
There was silence until someone said, "Of course." The others said, "Yes."
Nono was in the middle of the audience trying to figure out what scheme was afoot. It was not obvious yet, which he did not like.
Louis continued. "And do we strongly value discipline?" "Yes," a dozen or so of the elderly birds.
"And do we have a strong sense of responsibility, too?" It was hard to argue with that. It had been true for generations. "Yes," many now agreed.
"Above all, do we stand for brotherhood and the love of our young?" A loud "Yes!" followed.
The Head Penguin paused. "And tell me...are these beliefs and shared values linked to a large piece of ice?" "NO!"
pg 110 The scouts discussed what they had found. The Professor asked question after question after question to distinguish opinions from facts. His style did not make him popular with all the birds - he could not have cared less - but it was very effective.
pg 117 The next season, the scouts found a still better iceberg, larger and with richer fishing grounds. And through it was tempting to declare that the colony had been subjected to enough change, and should stay forever on their new home, they didn't. They moved again. It was a critical step: not becoming complacent again and not letting up.
pg 123 He talked about Fred's finding that the iceberg was melting, then how they
1) created a sense of urgency in the colony to deal with a difficult problem,
2) put a carefully selected group in charge of guiding the change,
3) found the sensible vision of a better future,
4) communicated that vision so others would understand and accept it,
5) removed as many obstacles to action as was practical,
6) created some sort of success quickly,
7) never let up until the new way of life was firmly established, and
8) finally, ensured that the changes would not be overcome by stubborn, hard-to-die traditions.
pg 133 The Role of Thinking and Feeling
Thinking differently can help change behaviour and lead to better results.
- collect data and analyze it
- present the information logically to change people's thinking
- changed thinking, in turn, can change behaviour
Feeling differently can change behaviour MORE and lead to even better results.
- create surprising, compelling, and if possible, visual experiences
- the experiences change how people feel about a situation
- a change in feelings can lead to a significant change in behaviour
pg 135 Additional Resources
Leading Change by John P Kotter
The Heart of Change by John by Kotter
http://www.ouricebergismelting.com/
http://www.theheartofchange.com/
http://www.johnkotter.com/
Mental Traps
A Field Guide to the Stupid Mistakes that can Ruin Your Life
by Andre Kukla
In a nutshell, this book describes how "our lapses from doing the best thing at the best time and in the best way fall into recurrent and readily identifiable patterns. These are the mental traps."
I'll say upfront that I didn't love this book, and I wouldn't recommend it - it certainly has some wonderful nuggets but overall it wasn't an easy read and I disagreed with some of the material.
(Sidebar.. I am reminded of this quote... "Time in life is short. You can only read so many books, so choose wisely." )
Here are those flags of mine...
pg 11 So we begin to welcome trouble as an ally, and to be fascinated by our reactions to it. And everyday life is transformed into an endless adventure. For what is adventure if not an attitude toward trouble?
pg 18 A useful distinction may be drawn between persistence and perseverance. We persevere when we steadfastly pursue our aims despite the obstacles that are encountered along the way. But we merely persist if we doggedly carry on in directions that are known to lead to a dead end.
pg 50 We we can't do anything useful to advance our aim, we would do better to forget about it and turn to something else - even if the aim is enormously important and the alternative is just barely worth a glance.. Any amount of value is preferable to merely killing time. Until we're in a position to do something constructive about saving the world from a nuclear holocaust, let's have a cup of tea. When we're standing in line, we can observe the other people or enjoy a private fantasy. When we're stuck in traffic, we can do isometric exercises. Periods of enforced waiting are often precious opportunities to indulge in the little pleasures of life for which we can't make a special time in our busy day. Here at last is a chance to take a leisurely bath or an aimless stroll, to throw sticks for a god, to discuss philosophy with a child, to interpret the shapes of clouds. In fixation, we throw away the gift of an empty moment.
pg 56 But we need never wait to become who we are. We are ourselves already, and this is already our life. A prince isn't merely a future king, a little girl isn't just a woman-to-be. Princes, children, students, apprentices, unpublished authors, struggling artists, and junior executives are already something definite and complete. The maximum of life's joys and sorrows is already open to them. ... There are no preliminaries to living. It starts now.
pg 64 Complaining is the more general term, referring to any expression of displeasure with the course of events. Lamenting is complaining about what can't be changed. Complaints that aren't mere lamentations may be instrumental in getting things done. This is why there are complaints departments. But there would be no point in having departments of lamentation, where people go to bewail unalterable fates.
pg 73 Since disappointments are both painful and arbitrarily defined, why don't we arbitrarily define them out of existence? ... What we call a disappointment is no more than a part of the present conditions under which we must act. Not having made money on the market is the same as not having invested. Losing money is the same as never having had it in the first place. What does it matter how we came to be where we are? Here we are.
pg 80 But if a piece of work can be delayed without endangering the chance of its timely completion, then it should be delayed. For we lose nothing and gain the advantage of basing our actions on the latest and best information.
pg 93 Evidently, we suffer from the delusion that we always need to know what's going to happen next. ... If we always try to anticipate what happens next, we can never give our undivided attention to the task at hand. ... There are people who remain perpetually ahead of themselves by only a moment... They're never fully here, never just doing this. Hence they're never fully alive.
pg 98 But the fact that something needs doing does not necessarily mean that it needs to be done right now. Even the most important task in the world can be utterly ignored until its time has come. In time, we may be called upon to make momentous decisions, perform heroic feats, lay down our lives. That time may only be a moment away. But until it comes, there's only this night sky to admire, this cup to rinse. Everything else is a trap.
pg 107 But it's pointless to let opportunity slip away when the present task can be postponed without cost. We're not likely to forgo opportunities that are very large and obvious. But our reluctance to change course often causes us to miss little pleasures. We won't stop to look at a sunset until we've finished our work - and then it's too late.
pg 147 Ultimately the only remedy that will restore our efficiency and our capacity for pleasure is to stop dividing. The technique for achieving this cure is constant practice in doing one thing at a time. Every single affair of the day is a suitable occasion for this important exercise. When we eat, we can practice just eating. When we wash the dishes, we can practice just washing. ... In some traditional approaches to mental development, students spend twenty minutes a day counting their breaths from one to ten and over and over again. Mastery comes when they're not distracted from the count during the entire sitting. The benefit of this activity for everyday life may not be evident to those who don't attempt it. ... When we catch our mind wandering away from the count, we should simply start again with the number one, as though nothing had happened. Every time we do this, we increase our ability to remain undivided as surely as each lift of the barbell improves our physique. After two or three months of daily practice, the increment in our mental efficiency and in the pleasure derived from daily life is so noticeable as to take almost all practitioners by surprise.
pg 150 The Universe never asks more than one thing of us at a time. In the midst of a thousand desperate emergencies, we have only to attend to the most desperate emergency. ... In reality, there's never more than one thing to do. Being busy is always a trap.
pg 164 If our work is infinite - if it will never be at an end - then what's the point of rushing? Expediting the end of one chore earns us only the privilege of beginning the next. Infinity minus one is still infinity. Therefore speed can't improve our condition. We might as well take our time with everything we do.
by Andre Kukla
In a nutshell, this book describes how "our lapses from doing the best thing at the best time and in the best way fall into recurrent and readily identifiable patterns. These are the mental traps."
I'll say upfront that I didn't love this book, and I wouldn't recommend it - it certainly has some wonderful nuggets but overall it wasn't an easy read and I disagreed with some of the material.
(Sidebar.. I am reminded of this quote... "Time in life is short. You can only read so many books, so choose wisely." )
Here are those flags of mine...
pg 11 So we begin to welcome trouble as an ally, and to be fascinated by our reactions to it. And everyday life is transformed into an endless adventure. For what is adventure if not an attitude toward trouble?
pg 18 A useful distinction may be drawn between persistence and perseverance. We persevere when we steadfastly pursue our aims despite the obstacles that are encountered along the way. But we merely persist if we doggedly carry on in directions that are known to lead to a dead end.
pg 50 We we can't do anything useful to advance our aim, we would do better to forget about it and turn to something else - even if the aim is enormously important and the alternative is just barely worth a glance.. Any amount of value is preferable to merely killing time. Until we're in a position to do something constructive about saving the world from a nuclear holocaust, let's have a cup of tea. When we're standing in line, we can observe the other people or enjoy a private fantasy. When we're stuck in traffic, we can do isometric exercises. Periods of enforced waiting are often precious opportunities to indulge in the little pleasures of life for which we can't make a special time in our busy day. Here at last is a chance to take a leisurely bath or an aimless stroll, to throw sticks for a god, to discuss philosophy with a child, to interpret the shapes of clouds. In fixation, we throw away the gift of an empty moment.
pg 56 But we need never wait to become who we are. We are ourselves already, and this is already our life. A prince isn't merely a future king, a little girl isn't just a woman-to-be. Princes, children, students, apprentices, unpublished authors, struggling artists, and junior executives are already something definite and complete. The maximum of life's joys and sorrows is already open to them. ... There are no preliminaries to living. It starts now.
pg 64 Complaining is the more general term, referring to any expression of displeasure with the course of events. Lamenting is complaining about what can't be changed. Complaints that aren't mere lamentations may be instrumental in getting things done. This is why there are complaints departments. But there would be no point in having departments of lamentation, where people go to bewail unalterable fates.
pg 73 Since disappointments are both painful and arbitrarily defined, why don't we arbitrarily define them out of existence? ... What we call a disappointment is no more than a part of the present conditions under which we must act. Not having made money on the market is the same as not having invested. Losing money is the same as never having had it in the first place. What does it matter how we came to be where we are? Here we are.
pg 80 But if a piece of work can be delayed without endangering the chance of its timely completion, then it should be delayed. For we lose nothing and gain the advantage of basing our actions on the latest and best information.
pg 93 Evidently, we suffer from the delusion that we always need to know what's going to happen next. ... If we always try to anticipate what happens next, we can never give our undivided attention to the task at hand. ... There are people who remain perpetually ahead of themselves by only a moment... They're never fully here, never just doing this. Hence they're never fully alive.
pg 98 But the fact that something needs doing does not necessarily mean that it needs to be done right now. Even the most important task in the world can be utterly ignored until its time has come. In time, we may be called upon to make momentous decisions, perform heroic feats, lay down our lives. That time may only be a moment away. But until it comes, there's only this night sky to admire, this cup to rinse. Everything else is a trap.
pg 107 But it's pointless to let opportunity slip away when the present task can be postponed without cost. We're not likely to forgo opportunities that are very large and obvious. But our reluctance to change course often causes us to miss little pleasures. We won't stop to look at a sunset until we've finished our work - and then it's too late.
pg 147 Ultimately the only remedy that will restore our efficiency and our capacity for pleasure is to stop dividing. The technique for achieving this cure is constant practice in doing one thing at a time. Every single affair of the day is a suitable occasion for this important exercise. When we eat, we can practice just eating. When we wash the dishes, we can practice just washing. ... In some traditional approaches to mental development, students spend twenty minutes a day counting their breaths from one to ten and over and over again. Mastery comes when they're not distracted from the count during the entire sitting. The benefit of this activity for everyday life may not be evident to those who don't attempt it. ... When we catch our mind wandering away from the count, we should simply start again with the number one, as though nothing had happened. Every time we do this, we increase our ability to remain undivided as surely as each lift of the barbell improves our physique. After two or three months of daily practice, the increment in our mental efficiency and in the pleasure derived from daily life is so noticeable as to take almost all practitioners by surprise.
pg 150 The Universe never asks more than one thing of us at a time. In the midst of a thousand desperate emergencies, we have only to attend to the most desperate emergency. ... In reality, there's never more than one thing to do. Being busy is always a trap.
pg 164 If our work is infinite - if it will never be at an end - then what's the point of rushing? Expediting the end of one chore earns us only the privilege of beginning the next. Infinity minus one is still infinity. Therefore speed can't improve our condition. We might as well take our time with everything we do.
19.8.07
The Seven-Day Weekend
Changing The Way Work Works
by Ricardo Semler
From the jacket: if you feel like work has taken over your life, The Seven-Day Weekend is for you. It's a manifesto that proves we don't have to be slaves to the hyper competitive, bottom line obsessed American work ethic that has spawned the seven-day workweek. Semco's success show that a company which puts employee freedom and happiness ahead of corporate goals can still achieve growth that far exceed the competition's. Reflecting Ricardo Semler's passion, wry sense of humour, and hardheaded business acumen, this book challenges all of our assumptions about how a successful business should be run.
My flags...
pg 16 The Why Way ... The secret? If we have a cardinal strategy that forms the bedrock for all our practices, it may be this: Ask why. Ask it all the time, ask it any day, every day, and always ask it three times in a row. Employees must be free to question, to analyze, to investigate; and a company must be flexible enough to listen to the answers.
pg 22 We no longer grasp the difference between leisure time and being idle. Western society is highly structured and action-orientated. There's no true opportunity to sit back, relax, and let the mind wander. That's too bad. An idle, wandering mind is not the devil's playground, as the Puritans believed, but a garden of rejuvenation, growth, and contemplation.
People should be encouraged to rearrange their week, drop the traditional notions of a workweek and a weekend, and divide the seven days among company time, personal time, and idleness (free time). Then they should look for more efficient ways to manage their time. Instead of wasting it in rush hour traffic, rearrange your schedule to work when most other people don't. Run errands on a quiet Monday, particularly if you've spent your Sunday answering email.
It's in your best interest, and your company's best interest, to understand this. Anyone who can eliminate the stress of an overbooked schedule, arrange a workweek to sleep according to biorhythms rather than a time clock, and enjoy a sunny Monday on the beach after working through a chilly Sunday, will be a much more productive worker.
Human beings thrive on being productive, on working toward goals, on providing for their families, on building a future - just don't ask them to do it all the time and without the freedom to say, "Now, I need time for me."
pg 47 ... I spent many years dealing with everyday stress by setting my watch five minutes fast. Luckily I've come to my senses. I recommended that everyone set back their watches. You may accuse me of being cavalier about making other people wait, but I'm very rarely late any more. Punctuality is a mind-set that's cultivated by the seven-day weekend. It really has no relation to watches. There are always plenty of clocks around, or people with watches to consult. I stand by my point that stress is the difference between your expectations and reality. You feel stress because of something left undone or a place not reached. With a seven-day weekend you feel there's time to do what needs to be done and to get to where you need to be.
pg 68 Few are as fulfilled and satisfied with their jobs as Roberval, which explains why companies campaign so relentlessly to motivate employees. Maybe they wouldn't have to campaign so hard if they made an effort to talk to their employees, find out what they wanted to accomplish, and then gave them the freedom to pursue their ideas. But that rarely happens.
pg 113 Few can avoid pious platitudes when formulating a mission statement. What is left then, if mission and credo are bullshit? Quite a lot, starting with what we stand for, the way we do things, the facts on the ground, the way we are perceived, and the satisfaction and success of those involved. In other words, judge us by what we do, rather than what we say we do. Judge us by standards drawn from a peaceful, civilized, cooperative, and human society of equals, not those of a highly efficient killing machine that is designed to slay enemies, wreck property, and capture territory.
sidebar: I could have flagged nearly every chapter in this book. It had ideas such as employees occupying a seat at the board of directors, being able to sign up to attend various meetings (no matter what position you occupy), offering incentives for employees to move around to different jobs and departments, that it's a disservice to expect all workers to feel passion for their jobs. A great read!
by Ricardo Semler
From the jacket: if you feel like work has taken over your life, The Seven-Day Weekend is for you. It's a manifesto that proves we don't have to be slaves to the hyper competitive, bottom line obsessed American work ethic that has spawned the seven-day workweek. Semco's success show that a company which puts employee freedom and happiness ahead of corporate goals can still achieve growth that far exceed the competition's. Reflecting Ricardo Semler's passion, wry sense of humour, and hardheaded business acumen, this book challenges all of our assumptions about how a successful business should be run.
My flags...
pg 16 The Why Way ... The secret? If we have a cardinal strategy that forms the bedrock for all our practices, it may be this: Ask why. Ask it all the time, ask it any day, every day, and always ask it three times in a row. Employees must be free to question, to analyze, to investigate; and a company must be flexible enough to listen to the answers.
pg 22 We no longer grasp the difference between leisure time and being idle. Western society is highly structured and action-orientated. There's no true opportunity to sit back, relax, and let the mind wander. That's too bad. An idle, wandering mind is not the devil's playground, as the Puritans believed, but a garden of rejuvenation, growth, and contemplation.
People should be encouraged to rearrange their week, drop the traditional notions of a workweek and a weekend, and divide the seven days among company time, personal time, and idleness (free time). Then they should look for more efficient ways to manage their time. Instead of wasting it in rush hour traffic, rearrange your schedule to work when most other people don't. Run errands on a quiet Monday, particularly if you've spent your Sunday answering email.
It's in your best interest, and your company's best interest, to understand this. Anyone who can eliminate the stress of an overbooked schedule, arrange a workweek to sleep according to biorhythms rather than a time clock, and enjoy a sunny Monday on the beach after working through a chilly Sunday, will be a much more productive worker.
Human beings thrive on being productive, on working toward goals, on providing for their families, on building a future - just don't ask them to do it all the time and without the freedom to say, "Now, I need time for me."
pg 47 ... I spent many years dealing with everyday stress by setting my watch five minutes fast. Luckily I've come to my senses. I recommended that everyone set back their watches. You may accuse me of being cavalier about making other people wait, but I'm very rarely late any more. Punctuality is a mind-set that's cultivated by the seven-day weekend. It really has no relation to watches. There are always plenty of clocks around, or people with watches to consult. I stand by my point that stress is the difference between your expectations and reality. You feel stress because of something left undone or a place not reached. With a seven-day weekend you feel there's time to do what needs to be done and to get to where you need to be.
pg 68 Few are as fulfilled and satisfied with their jobs as Roberval, which explains why companies campaign so relentlessly to motivate employees. Maybe they wouldn't have to campaign so hard if they made an effort to talk to their employees, find out what they wanted to accomplish, and then gave them the freedom to pursue their ideas. But that rarely happens.
pg 113 Few can avoid pious platitudes when formulating a mission statement. What is left then, if mission and credo are bullshit? Quite a lot, starting with what we stand for, the way we do things, the facts on the ground, the way we are perceived, and the satisfaction and success of those involved. In other words, judge us by what we do, rather than what we say we do. Judge us by standards drawn from a peaceful, civilized, cooperative, and human society of equals, not those of a highly efficient killing machine that is designed to slay enemies, wreck property, and capture territory.
sidebar: I could have flagged nearly every chapter in this book. It had ideas such as employees occupying a seat at the board of directors, being able to sign up to attend various meetings (no matter what position you occupy), offering incentives for employees to move around to different jobs and departments, that it's a disservice to expect all workers to feel passion for their jobs. A great read!
Revved!
An Incredible Way to Rev Up Your Workplace and Achieve Amazing Results
by Harry Paul & Ross Reck
From the co-author of FISH!, this book reads in a similar way: an easy to digest fable about a supervisor who's struggling to rekindle the enthusiasm and support of her team at work.
Here is the Five Day Revved Action Plan:
Day One: Winning Them Over - Be Positive and Upbeat
Smile
Say something positive - cheerfully greet everyone you come into contact with and have something positive to say to them. Also use the phrase "thank-you" whenever you can.
Day Two: Winning Them Over - Show a Genuine Interest
Actively engage - in addition to smiling and saying something positive, eg ask them how things are going.
Actively listen - stop what you're doing and focus solely on what these people have to say and nothing else. As a few questions about what they are saying. Do the same when people come to you with a question or problem.
Day Three: Blowing Them Away
Singling them out - identify those people who have just gone the extra mile for you.
Blowing them away with your expression of appreciation - eg send a thank-you note to the person's boss and boss's boss, copy the person who went the extra mile. Do it with hard copy, not email.
Day Four: Keeping Them Revved
Practice Winning Them Over and Blowing Them Away with everyone you come into contact with, not just the people at work. (grocery clerk, sales staff, tellers, neighbours)
Day Five: Enjoy!
Take note of how great all this makes you feel and how much easier your life has become. You'll begin to hear those magical words is there anything else I can do for you?. Keep doing what you're doing and watch your personal army of advocates begin to grow.
For more info on getting your team Revved visit http://www.revvedbook.com/
by Harry Paul & Ross Reck
From the co-author of FISH!, this book reads in a similar way: an easy to digest fable about a supervisor who's struggling to rekindle the enthusiasm and support of her team at work.
Here is the Five Day Revved Action Plan:
Day One: Winning Them Over - Be Positive and Upbeat
Smile
Say something positive - cheerfully greet everyone you come into contact with and have something positive to say to them. Also use the phrase "thank-you" whenever you can.
Day Two: Winning Them Over - Show a Genuine Interest
Actively engage - in addition to smiling and saying something positive, eg ask them how things are going.
Actively listen - stop what you're doing and focus solely on what these people have to say and nothing else. As a few questions about what they are saying. Do the same when people come to you with a question or problem.
Day Three: Blowing Them Away
Singling them out - identify those people who have just gone the extra mile for you.
Blowing them away with your expression of appreciation - eg send a thank-you note to the person's boss and boss's boss, copy the person who went the extra mile. Do it with hard copy, not email.
Day Four: Keeping Them Revved
Practice Winning Them Over and Blowing Them Away with everyone you come into contact with, not just the people at work. (grocery clerk, sales staff, tellers, neighbours)
Day Five: Enjoy!
Take note of how great all this makes you feel and how much easier your life has become. You'll begin to hear those magical words is there anything else I can do for you?. Keep doing what you're doing and watch your personal army of advocates begin to grow.
For more info on getting your team Revved visit http://www.revvedbook.com/
On The Beach
by Nevil Shute
I remember reading this book as a teenager and would consider it one of my favourite books. I came across it recently and had a chance to re-read it. Why do I enjoy this book? It's a sad but also beautiful story: there is a nuclear war in the northern hemisphere that has wiped out the world's population. As the radiation drifts southwards, city by city are dying. Those left in Australia are living out the last days of their life, knowing the end is coming.
I remember reading this book as a teenager and would consider it one of my favourite books. I came across it recently and had a chance to re-read it. Why do I enjoy this book? It's a sad but also beautiful story: there is a nuclear war in the northern hemisphere that has wiped out the world's population. As the radiation drifts southwards, city by city are dying. Those left in Australia are living out the last days of their life, knowing the end is coming.
Choosing Happiness - Keys To A Joyful Life
by Alexandra Stoddard
I didn't have a chance to read this book before returning it, but I would like to revisit it when I have a chance. The pages are filled with quotes, anecdotes, and creative ideas about the small but significant changes you can make in your mind, heart and surroundings to be happier day by day.
I didn't have a chance to read this book before returning it, but I would like to revisit it when I have a chance. The pages are filled with quotes, anecdotes, and creative ideas about the small but significant changes you can make in your mind, heart and surroundings to be happier day by day.
18.8.07
Mavericks at Work - Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win
by William C. Taylor & Polly LaBarre
Excerpted from the intro: This book talks about the strategies, practices, and leadership styles of 32 organizations - giants and pip-squeaks. They are rethinking competition, reinventing innovations, reconnecting with customers, and redesigning work.
This sums it up best: "Maverick companies aren't always the largest in their field; maverick entrepreneurs don't always make the cover of the business magazines. But mavericks do the work that matters most - the work of originality, creativity, and experimentation. They demonstrate that you can build companies around high ideals and fierce competitive ambitions, that the most powerful way to create economic value is to embrace a set of values that go beyond just amassing power, and that business, at its best, is too exciting, too important, and too much fun to be left to the dead hand of business as usual."
I loved this book!! Here are my flags...
pg 44 "Southwest flourished because it reimagined what it means to be an airline. Indeed, Spence insists that Southwest isn't in the airline business. It is, he argues, in the freedom business. Its purpose is to democratize the skies - to make air travel as available and as flexible for average Americans as it has been for the well-to-do.
There is, Spence argues, a direct connection between the economics of Southwest's operating model, the advertising it aims at its customers ("You are now free to move about the country"), and the message it sends to its 30,000-plus employees ("You are now free to be your best"). Spence explains the connection this way: "Business strategies change. Market positioning changes. But purpose does not change. Everybody at Southwest is a freedom fighter."
pg 63 The story of Rob McEwen and Goldcorp, Inc, using theories from the open source world of Linux etc, realized that people didn't have to work for his company to work with his company. His idea was to "use the internet to post all of its data on the mine - 50 years of maps, reports, and raw geological information - along with software that displayed that data both in two dimensions and three dimensions. It would then invite scientists and engineers from anywhere in the world to download the data, analyze it as they saw fit, and submit drilling plans to Goldcorp. There would be a reward - prize money of $500,000 to be divided among 25 semifinalists and 3 finalists chosen by the judges."
pg 120 "The real magic of open-source innovation is not just that lots of people will offer ideas but also that lots of different kinds of people will offer ideas. Don't limit participants to specialists in your home country, your industry, or your product categories. ...love to emphasize, the most amazing ideas often come from the most surprising places. Be sure to maximize the chances that you'll be surprised by maximizing the range of people who participate.
You don't always need to tap the Internet or aspire to reach the farthest corners of the globe. You can start by recognizing what happens when people who don't normally have a voice in your business are invited to offer their point of view."
"Unfocus groups... That's the lesson for open-minded leaders. Lots of different kinds of people, all looking at the same thing, tend to generate the most penetrating insights. Your job is to bring those different kinds of people together.
pg 142 about Commerce Bank "...when asked why more banks don't keep their branches open for as long as his stores are open. "It's the simplest idea in the world," he says. "Let's be open when the customers want us to be open. But to this day, it's heretical in banking. People think we're crazy. The first question bankers ask me is, 'How do you staff on Sunday?' You know my answer? 'Walmart stays open. The malls stay open. Every fast food joint in the country stays open. How hard can it be?' We don't copy the stupid banks. We copy the great retailers."
...copy of Built from Scratch, the business autobiography of the founders of the Home Depot. "We learn more from these people than we do from anyone else."
(love this idea - all stores open 15 minutes before and close 15 minutes after their posted hours, another small way to exceed expectations.)
(and this one - at Commerce, funds from all deposited checks are available the next business day, no questions asked. "The float is a rule that no bank can explain to its own people, let along its customers, so we keep it simple.")
pg 200 "John Sullivan is a colourful character who has devoted his career to explaining the connection between how great organizations compete for talent and how they compete for customers. He runs the human resources management program at San Fran SU, advises some of the world's best known companies (Nike, Starbucks, Microsoft) on HR strategies, and issues a stream of books and polemics that challenge the conventional wisdom of his all-too-conventional colleagues. ... website www.drjohnsullivan.com"
pg 207 Libby Sartain, Yahoo "Sartain labels the phenomenon "branding from the inside out." There is, she argues, a direct connection between the values that motivate a great Yahoo employee and the values that animate Yahoo's best, most loyal, most satisfied customers. Sartain calls those attributes the "Y Gene" ... hunt for the Y Gene in every candidate."
pg 208 "Ask yourself: why would great people want to be part of my company? How do I know a great person when I see one? Have I established a great fit between the customer's experience and the work experience? Then ask one more question: do I know where and how to find great people in the first place? ... "The first rule of recruiting is that the best people already have jobs they like, so you have to find them; they're not going to find you. It's amazing that so many companies still use job fairs to recruit talent. Who goes to job fairs? People without jobs! All you get are worthless resumes and lots of germs. Recruiting has to be clever, fast-moving business discipline, not a passive, paper-pushing bureaucracy."
pg 233 About Pixar University...every employee is encouraged to devote up to four hours per week, every week, to their education. ... specialists are more likely to work well together if they appreciate the fundamentals of the work the company does. "The skills we develop are the skills we need everywhere in the organization. Why teach drawing to accountants? Because drawing class doesn't just teach people how to draw. It teaches them to be more observant. There's no company on earth that wouldn't benefit from having people become more observant."
Appendix... Essential Reading:
Karaoke Capitalism: Daring to Be different in a copycat world (we live in a world where the best rapper is white, the best golfer is black, France accuses the US of arrogance and Denmark sends a mini-submarine to a desert war.")
Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Marketplace and Make the Competition Irrelevant
The New Pioneers: The Men and Women Who Are Transforming the Workplace and the Marketplace
Jim Collins on the web www.jimcollins.com
Leading the Revolution by Gary Hamel
Google's letter from the Founders http://investor.google.com
Is Grameen Bank Different? www.grameen-info.org
Why Craigslist works www.changethis.com/13.craigslist
www.gsdm.com
http://tim.oreilly.com
The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations
Democratizing Innovation
www.bankstocks.com
Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable
The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre & Every Business Is a Stage
A Brand New World: 8 Principles for Achieving Brand Leadership in the 21st Century
Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There
Shackleton's Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic Explorer
Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men www.taoyue.com/stacks/articles/brilliant-men.html
How to be a Start at Work: 9 Breakthrough Strategies You Need to Succeed
Weird Ideas that Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation
A Manager's Orientation Toolkit: Tools that Get New Employees and Transfers Productive Faster www.drjohnsullivan.com/publications/orient_ebook.htm
Excerpted from the intro: This book talks about the strategies, practices, and leadership styles of 32 organizations - giants and pip-squeaks. They are rethinking competition, reinventing innovations, reconnecting with customers, and redesigning work.
This sums it up best: "Maverick companies aren't always the largest in their field; maverick entrepreneurs don't always make the cover of the business magazines. But mavericks do the work that matters most - the work of originality, creativity, and experimentation. They demonstrate that you can build companies around high ideals and fierce competitive ambitions, that the most powerful way to create economic value is to embrace a set of values that go beyond just amassing power, and that business, at its best, is too exciting, too important, and too much fun to be left to the dead hand of business as usual."
I loved this book!! Here are my flags...
pg 44 "Southwest flourished because it reimagined what it means to be an airline. Indeed, Spence insists that Southwest isn't in the airline business. It is, he argues, in the freedom business. Its purpose is to democratize the skies - to make air travel as available and as flexible for average Americans as it has been for the well-to-do.
There is, Spence argues, a direct connection between the economics of Southwest's operating model, the advertising it aims at its customers ("You are now free to move about the country"), and the message it sends to its 30,000-plus employees ("You are now free to be your best"). Spence explains the connection this way: "Business strategies change. Market positioning changes. But purpose does not change. Everybody at Southwest is a freedom fighter."
pg 63 The story of Rob McEwen and Goldcorp, Inc, using theories from the open source world of Linux etc, realized that people didn't have to work for his company to work with his company. His idea was to "use the internet to post all of its data on the mine - 50 years of maps, reports, and raw geological information - along with software that displayed that data both in two dimensions and three dimensions. It would then invite scientists and engineers from anywhere in the world to download the data, analyze it as they saw fit, and submit drilling plans to Goldcorp. There would be a reward - prize money of $500,000 to be divided among 25 semifinalists and 3 finalists chosen by the judges."
pg 120 "The real magic of open-source innovation is not just that lots of people will offer ideas but also that lots of different kinds of people will offer ideas. Don't limit participants to specialists in your home country, your industry, or your product categories. ...love to emphasize, the most amazing ideas often come from the most surprising places. Be sure to maximize the chances that you'll be surprised by maximizing the range of people who participate.
You don't always need to tap the Internet or aspire to reach the farthest corners of the globe. You can start by recognizing what happens when people who don't normally have a voice in your business are invited to offer their point of view."
"Unfocus groups... That's the lesson for open-minded leaders. Lots of different kinds of people, all looking at the same thing, tend to generate the most penetrating insights. Your job is to bring those different kinds of people together.
pg 142 about Commerce Bank "...when asked why more banks don't keep their branches open for as long as his stores are open. "It's the simplest idea in the world," he says. "Let's be open when the customers want us to be open. But to this day, it's heretical in banking. People think we're crazy. The first question bankers ask me is, 'How do you staff on Sunday?' You know my answer? 'Walmart stays open. The malls stay open. Every fast food joint in the country stays open. How hard can it be?' We don't copy the stupid banks. We copy the great retailers."
...copy of Built from Scratch, the business autobiography of the founders of the Home Depot. "We learn more from these people than we do from anyone else."
(love this idea - all stores open 15 minutes before and close 15 minutes after their posted hours, another small way to exceed expectations.)
(and this one - at Commerce, funds from all deposited checks are available the next business day, no questions asked. "The float is a rule that no bank can explain to its own people, let along its customers, so we keep it simple.")
pg 200 "John Sullivan is a colourful character who has devoted his career to explaining the connection between how great organizations compete for talent and how they compete for customers. He runs the human resources management program at San Fran SU, advises some of the world's best known companies (Nike, Starbucks, Microsoft) on HR strategies, and issues a stream of books and polemics that challenge the conventional wisdom of his all-too-conventional colleagues. ... website www.drjohnsullivan.com"
pg 207 Libby Sartain, Yahoo "Sartain labels the phenomenon "branding from the inside out." There is, she argues, a direct connection between the values that motivate a great Yahoo employee and the values that animate Yahoo's best, most loyal, most satisfied customers. Sartain calls those attributes the "Y Gene" ... hunt for the Y Gene in every candidate."
pg 208 "Ask yourself: why would great people want to be part of my company? How do I know a great person when I see one? Have I established a great fit between the customer's experience and the work experience? Then ask one more question: do I know where and how to find great people in the first place? ... "The first rule of recruiting is that the best people already have jobs they like, so you have to find them; they're not going to find you. It's amazing that so many companies still use job fairs to recruit talent. Who goes to job fairs? People without jobs! All you get are worthless resumes and lots of germs. Recruiting has to be clever, fast-moving business discipline, not a passive, paper-pushing bureaucracy."
pg 233 About Pixar University...every employee is encouraged to devote up to four hours per week, every week, to their education. ... specialists are more likely to work well together if they appreciate the fundamentals of the work the company does. "The skills we develop are the skills we need everywhere in the organization. Why teach drawing to accountants? Because drawing class doesn't just teach people how to draw. It teaches them to be more observant. There's no company on earth that wouldn't benefit from having people become more observant."
Appendix... Essential Reading:
Karaoke Capitalism: Daring to Be different in a copycat world (we live in a world where the best rapper is white, the best golfer is black, France accuses the US of arrogance and Denmark sends a mini-submarine to a desert war.")
Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Marketplace and Make the Competition Irrelevant
The New Pioneers: The Men and Women Who Are Transforming the Workplace and the Marketplace
Jim Collins on the web www.jimcollins.com
Leading the Revolution by Gary Hamel
Google's letter from the Founders http://investor.google.com
Is Grameen Bank Different? www.grameen-info.org
Why Craigslist works www.changethis.com/13.craigslist
www.gsdm.com
http://tim.oreilly.com
The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations
Democratizing Innovation
www.bankstocks.com
Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable
The Experience Economy: Work is Theatre & Every Business Is a Stage
A Brand New World: 8 Principles for Achieving Brand Leadership in the 21st Century
Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There
Shackleton's Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic Explorer
Why I Never Hire Brilliant Men www.taoyue.com/stacks/articles/brilliant-men.html
How to be a Start at Work: 9 Breakthrough Strategies You Need to Succeed
Weird Ideas that Work: 11 1/2 Practices for Promoting, Managing, and Sustaining Innovation
A Manager's Orientation Toolkit: Tools that Get New Employees and Transfers Productive Faster www.drjohnsullivan.com/publications/orient_ebook.htm
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