I Like The Way This Guy Thinks…

Anything Worth Doing Well is Worth Doing Poorly At First

So there I was… driving all along FM 1960 [that's a road name, for all you non-Texans] looking all over for the Dunkin’ Donuts that Mapquest told me would be there.  Finally, I called Nancy Johnson, my coffee partner, to let her know that I was late, I had been unable to locate the place, but I was looking.  When she answered, she told me that she was alsodriving up and down 1960, also unable to find Dunkin’ Donuts either.  Darn Mapquest.  So we agreed on Starbuck’s, which we were both somehow near, with another lesson learned about today’s electronic world.

This was a marathon cuppa, not that we noticed until too late, almost three hours, but most enjoyable.  Nancy and I have both been struggling with a bit of “personal” re-invention this last year [see yesterday's blog about re-invention], having been let go from our separate previous employers at the start of the new year, a circumstance not unfamiliar to a great many Americans in 2009.

We are similarly aged, and seeking corporate employment was most often met with the “over-qualified” euphemism, creating quite a bit of angst and anguish.  We were, at our advanced maturity…  well, age, because I certainly cannot consistently claim maturity… having to decide “what we wanted to be when we grew up”.  We had to re-invent how we looked at ourselves, driven by how others looked at us.  Inside, I am still 25, immortal and sporting the body I inhabited while flying fighters and carousing in Korea- I have no idea how that overweight grey-haired guy gets inside my mirror.

We talked about the struggles of learning new skills, particularly the ubiquity and variety of electronic social media – so critical to today’s networking candidate.  Skype, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Naymz… and those are only a few of the myriad options available.  We talked about blogging and what it takes to get into that, and then there is website design and upkeep, and on and on and on.  I had decided simply to jump in, to go get started, but Nancy had found herself a bit more hesitant, wanting to research it “just a little bit more” to “make sure [she] was doing it right”.

That is when a favorite admonition from a friend of mine from long long ago came to mind – “Anything worth doing well is worth doing poorly at first”.  If you want to be “good” at social media marketing, you will have to be bad at first.  You will make faux pas, you will goober up your Twitter account, you will forget the eighty-five new passwords you create [some with caps, some with letters, some not], you will try to make a connection on LinkedIn by signing in to Facebook.  Trust me- I have “been there, done that”.  But all these applications are amazingly forgiving [I can delete the pages I don't like] and the community of users is amazingly supportive and receptive.

So we came around full circle to the adage-esque Nike slogan of “Just Do It“.  Social media is the “new thing” especially to us “boomers”, but it is the new thing. 

We have to become adept at using it. 

Even though we will be poor at using it at first.

And as for Nancy, I like how this lady thinks.

Corporate Re-Invention: Opportunity or Requirement?

Jungian psychology.  Air Force fighter planes and maneuvers.  Bushi-do.  Behavior of teenagers.  Knowledge system optimization.  “Open-book” management.  I love this job.

Although we talked about all of the above topics, when Dick Huiras [www.huirasassoc.com] and I met for another of my “thousand cups of coffee”, the key concept that I chose to report here was that of corporate re-invention in light of today’s economic environment.  Dick had mentioned that, while coaching several of his senior level executive clients in new techniques for managing these stressful times, he would often remind them that this might be a “great opportunity” to re-invent a company.

What does re-invention look like?  It looks like out-of-the-box thinking to expand current revenues in a shrinking marketplace.  Specifically, for Dick’s client, it looked like a plumbing supply store chain that had had significant market share of the housing contractor market before the cards collapsed.  With housing sales tumbling, and building rates along with them, this company was looking at a smaller and smaller buy from fewer and fewer customers as conditions deteriorated.  The old model of “finding more contractors to purchase plumbing”, which had worked famously for the previous five or six years, had to be replaced.  Reinvention meant getting a smaller and smaller number of contractors each to buy more and more supplies from the chain, by adding heating and air conditioning supplies, electrical supplies and roofing materials to the traditional product line.

Was this re-invention optional?  Certainly it was.  To paraphrase Deming, “[Re-invention] is optional; no one need survive.”  Although optional, without re-invention, survival was certainly a questionable outcome.  These are times like no one has ever seen before, and if you find a consultant who tells you that he or she has, grab your checkbook and run, far far away.  We are all “playing this one by ear”, relying on foundational principles and established truths, instead of faddish programs or quick fixes. 

Business leaders all over the country, and around the world, are struggling to make sense of the economic climate, to try to predict with any degree of reliability what the future might look like, and how soon.  In meeting these challenges, they are having to draw upon internal reserves, energy to sustain them through the difficult decisions and implementations [hence, the Jungian psychology].  They are looking for new systems to manage and direct knowledge within their enterprise to make sure that the right people have the right knowledge at the right time in the right format [hence, the knowledge systems optimization].  They have to know, exactly, “On which day of the month, each month, does your business begin to make money?” [hence the open-book management].  The fighter pilot stuff and bushi-do were just for fun.

What struck me through the course of the conversation, though, was Dick having positioned “re-invention” as an option or an opportunity.  I happen to believe that it is no longer an option, that re-invention is a requirement for survival. 

It was no easy task getting into this mess, and it will be a slow and laborious extraction.  In the meantime, it is back to the basics of good business, for all of us. 

And that will mean re-invention.

And as for Dick, I like how this guy thinks.

The Rush To “How”

I knew I would pay a price, and I certainly did.  My system is so sensitive to caffeine that my six o’clock early evening coffee kept me awake until almost two in the morning, but what a gift I received in exchange!  I was meeting with one of my favorite [regular] cups of coffee, Dave Guerra, CEO of Corpus Optima and author of books centering on the concept of “Superperformance”. [See link at right]

He was telling me about a recent visit to a major manufacturer to discuss his concept of superperformance, integrating process and culture, to a rather senior crowd.  Habituated as they were to interrupting speakers, they began hurling demands before Dave had “cleared” his first slide.  “Tell us how to do it!” was the frequent refrain.  Skipping any analysis of “what” needed to be done, let alone the necessary “why” foundation, these sharks were only interested in being told “how to do ‘superperformance’ “. 

What could ever have been their rationale?  When Dave asked, the answer was [and I am not making this up]: “Anything has to be better than what we are doing now”.  What a terrible indictment of American business, were this to be a widespread case.  Unfortunately, it is.  Dave’s experience is borne out by my own, which we share with a great number of other practitioners.

In today’s environment of uncertainty and upset, businesses [and more correctly their leaders] are grasping at any solution that even seems somewhat practicable.  What a field day for consultants, should they choose to exploit this.  And many of them do.  But also, what a reminder for all of us more dedicated to our craft and to the well-being of our clients.

These are complicated times, and no one has been “here” before, no matter what you might be told.  In times like these, the foundational elements will persist and succeed; as Deming said, “There is no instant pudding”.  I want to thank Dave for his reminding me to stick to the truth, and to defend the reality: before embarking on “doing“, be sure that you have first completed “knowing“.  Action for action’s sake can be devastating.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but imitation without understanding is death.

 And as for Dave Guerra, I like how this guy thinks.

Have a Happy Holiday!!!

Kids [and grandkids] start arriving tonight, so I’ll be off the air until Monday- thanks for reading; see you then

A Message to Garcia

At another of my [now becoming infamous] cups of coffee, I had occasion to remark to my guest about the story you find linked here [http://www.birdsnest.com/garcia.htm].  It concerns an assignment by President McKinley during the Spanish-American War over 100 years ago, but its message is, to me, even more appropriate today.

It concerned the need to communicate a specific message to a General Garcia, fighting somewhere in the hills of Cuba.  Please read it, in order better to understand the remainder of this post.

Throughout American businesses today, I find the same lamentation: the want of decisive, self-driven leaders; people willing to take on initiative and to deliver results.  We find many pretenders to this title, many people willing to carry the message to Rowan, but no one to take it to Garcia. 

How many of our newly-minted MBAs, products of the very best business schools, insist on gathering more data, on running more analyses, before handing the ultimate decision back to the person giving them the assignment?  How many “leaders” in the business world are more concerned with not making the wrong decision, with looking good, than with taking strong decisive action?

In my work on Knowledge Sytems Optimization, I am constantly asked by “decision makers” whether I can’t get them “more information”.  It is not enough to have information sufficient to make the necessary decision- they want more information; they want the risk of failure reduced to miniscule proportion. 

Many of them want “all the information“.  They demand, and expect, “perfect” information.  Perfect information is never available; if there were perfect information available, there would be no need to make a decision.  The perfect information would simply play out to the correct outcome. 

This is where the executive makes his or her money, in making accurate decisions based on incomplete information faster, and carrying out the intentions of the stategy by adapting to circumstances as they arise.

We have become to enamored of the “plan”, believing that all steps and all eventualites need to be contemplated and specified before embarking.  Companies gladly endure paralysis by analysis in the name of “gathering more information”.

Oh, for such a man as Rowan.  Would you carry a message to Garcia?  Could you carry a message to Garcia?  There will always be a place for such a hardy soul in business.

As for Rowan…  I like how this guy thinks.

Nobody Owes Me a Dime…

I just enjoyed a virtual cup of coffee with a long-time friend of mine from Wichita, Kansas, the other evening.  He and I first met in 1984 when we initiated a professional organization for strategic planners, a local chapter of The Planning Forum. 

Ken Lerman [www.kenlerman.com, or go to his link in the right sidebar] is, quite honestly, my kind of guy.  A Vietnam veteran and a successful brand manager for many of the largest names in the business, he was also a kind and supportive mentor for me as I “earned my stripes” at Boeing.

We talked at length about how our businesses had evolved over the years, and we commiserated on some of the same things and we exulted over many of the same things.  But Ken gave me an insight that evening that I have taken deeply to heart and adopted for my own practice: a theory of engagement that builds on all the values that you will see in this blog.

When Ken engages with a client, there is no long-term contract and there is no detailed proposal.  First of all, there is no business unless he likes you.  There will be a personal bond before there is a business relationship, but you have seen that before on my site. 

What there will be is a meeting or two to accomplish one single outcome: to get both people to agree on the answer to two very different questions.  The potential client needs to answer “Can Ken help me?” and Ken needs to answer “Do I want to help this person?”.  Once that agreement is reached, work can begin.  And it is simple: the “work” will only be for a short time and for a specific outcome, normally six weeks to ninety days.  The client pays a monthly rate, regardless of the time needed to complete the assignment. 

And here’s the novelty- anywhere along the way that the client decides that Ken is not delivering as expected, the client simply does not pay him for the coming month.  No contract, no lawyers, no argument about “he said/she said”.  As Ken himself says, “We part friends, and nobody owes me a dime.”

This belief and this practice reflects a confidence and a trust that often is lacking in today’s world, but would be such a refreshing change were it to re-appear: where a handshake means everything, and the bond is respect.

If you ever do business with me, expect this to be the model.

And as for Ken Lerman, I like how this guy thinks.

Business is a conversation…

I had an amazing “cup of coffee” the other morning with a very bright fellow named Dan Prosser.  Nothing onerous or heavy – just a cup of coffee, for which he paid - bonus!  Thank you, Dan.

Dan is one of those guys that you want to sit next to, just so you can get some of the energy that emanates from him like some kind of aura.  We talked for a little over an hour about all sorts of things: his website [www.thebestplacestowork.com], his upcoming book due out in April, his system of Promise-Based Management, and his coming ski vacation in Colorado.  It was in the middle of all this that he let slip the observation that titles this post, and it was such a validation of my recent experience that I wanted to pass it on to all who read this [so that you, in turn, can pass it on].

I am sensing more and more a trend in business away from the cutthroat, hard-nosed bare-knuckled image of businesspeople into a Servant Leadership, relationship-based approach.  While the “old school” of command and control, and of sales forces like Glengarry Glen Ross and “The Tin Men” are still out there, I think that even they see “their day” as nearing its twilight.

In its  place I see high-trust, open discussions emerging, giving before getting, and establishing personal bonds before creating legal, contractual ones.  Face it- we all like doing business with people we like, and we dislike [although we will do it out of necessity] doing business with people we dislike. 

How’s this for a business strategy: become a likable provider in a disliked industry?  Talk about distinctive competence.  Make consuming/securing an unlikable service into a pleasurable event: painless, friendly, trusted.  Nothing magic here – this is not brain science or rocket surgery.

But have conversations.  Everywhere.  You high pressure sales guys: just sit down with someone and simply talk about what they are facing on a day-to-day basis.  Be sincere.  Listen.

My goal is to have “a thousand cups of coffee” next year.  I hope that you are one of them.

And as for Dan Prosser: I like how this guy thinks.

A Brave New Day

See?  I learned something already about blogging.  Kind of.  It seems that a post and a page are different, and that what I thought I was posting, I was actually setting into a page.  Darn!!

So here it is again…

And so we BOTH embark on a new adventure: I, on blogging, and you on reading my posts.

I will do all that I can to keep things hopping around here.  Expect unconventional ideas and sometimes contrarian positions.  Expect vigorous dialog, and expect respectful challenges.  Expect a variety of topics and a wide range of moods.  But always expect good honest company.

Consider this to be a safe intellectual meeting place, where ideas can flow, concepts can be tried and rumors can be quashed.  I am by declaration an intellectual capitalist, believing in the power of both the human intellect and a capitalist economy.  I crave your commentary and feedback on my postings, and I  hope to engage in many conversations through this medium.

Also, please follow the links that I have recommended for further insightful and stimulating contributors across the blogosphere.

Until next time, what are you thinking?