STRATEGY CENTRAL

Leaders move people from here to there…The first play is not to make there sound wonderful.  The first play is to make here sound awful.  Bill Hybels

Every once in a while I trip across a book that intrigues me right out of the gate and holds my attention to the very end.  I have to say, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation is one of those books.  The newest by Steven Johnson, this one takes a painstaking look at innovation from the vantage point of evolutionary science.  And let me be quick to add, regardless of your first glance reaction to the notion of evolution…this book is packed with great insight to the way innovation happens.

Where Good Ideas Comes From takes a look at seven concepts that can be demonstrated in natural history and illustrated in contemporary innovation.  For example, the first concept Johnson teases out is the idea of the adjacent possible; essentially the principle that every new development puts you into a next space that often makes ideas implementable that weren’t before.  A phrase coined by scientist Stuart Kauffman, “the adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself (p. 31).”

If you’ve followed along here at StrategyCentral.org (or over on MarkHowellLive.com) you might recognize right away the reason I was intrigued by the concept of the adjacent possible.  I’ve written quite a bit about Glen Hiemstra’s three cone model, in fact, it’s become the basis for my talk on getting to there.  One of the concepts in the talk (and Hiemstra’s diagram) is the idea that in handcrafting a preferred future for your organization (a vision):

• some of what you land on comes from the probable future (where your organization will end up if you just keep doing what you’re doing now)
• some will be the fruit of identifying the best of what’s possible and energetically going after that
• and some will actually come from outside what is currently possible

The concept of the adjacent possible gives me a way to think about how some of the preferred future can develop from outside or beyond what’s currently possible.

Where Good Ideas Come From takes a look at six other concepts in addition to the adjacent possible and each one has a number of insights and if you’re like me, your copy will be underlined, dogeared and starred with quotes and references you want to come back to later.

If you’re looking for a book that will help you think outside the box, or step into the adjacent possible, Where Good Ideas Come From should be on your list.

Just worked my way through Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky and have to say, Seth Godin was right.  Shirky’s on to a key insight and does a great job explaining it.

The cognitive surplus Sharky is talking about is wrapped up in the idea that “the buildup of well over a trillion hours of free time each year on the part of the world’s educated population, and the invention and spread of public media that enable ordinary citizens to pool that free time in pursuit of activities they like or care about (p. 27, Cognitive Surplus)” makes possible an entirely different world; a world where media isn’t consumed…but created.

Delivered in the style of Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point or Outliers, Cognitive Surplus is packed with stories that make the point.  Examining the means by which we are aggregating our free time (i.e., contributing to Wikipedia), our motivations in taking advantage of this new resource (to make a difference), and the nature of the opportunities that are being created, Shirky provides an eye-opening resource that is both inspiring and informative.  I found myself re-reading whole sections to be sure and catch key ideas.  Bet you will too.

I had a jaw drop moment while reading Bill Taylor’s most recent HBR blog post, Brand Is Culture, Culture Is Brand.  Although the article is about brands and organizational culture, the story he told about the way USAA employees learn to meet the needs of their customers was very compelling and I realized right away that you’d want to hear about this.

His article highlights USAA (the insurance and financial-services firm that only does business with active or retired members of the U.S. military and their families) and their intense drive to meet the needs of their customer.  They do that by building a culture that seeks to understand the life that our military and their families live.

This is where the article brought me to a jaw-drop moment.  USAA employees are known for their empathy.  They develop that empathy through a series of immersion activities.  For example, when they’re about to start training USAA team members:

• “Get a ‘deployment letter’ like the ones real soldiers get: ‘Report to the personnel processing-facility’ tomorrow, the letter reads, and get your affairs in order beforehand.’”
• “Eat MREs (meals ready to eat) on many occasions during their training, to get a ‘taste’ for the life of a soldier”
• “Walk around in 65-pound backpacks.”
• “Read actual letters from soldiers in the field to their families back home.”

All of this is part of a strategy that “USAA calls it ‘Surround Sound’ — immerse employees in the real life and emotional needs of customers.”  One consultant said, “There is nobody on this earth who understands their customer better than USAA.”

Wow!  Isn’t what we all do worth that kind of immersion?  Wouldn’t we all like to be known as the organization that understands their customers better than anyone else!

What would it have to look like for our teams to really understand our customers in this way?

If you’ve been following the action here at StrategyCentral for any length of time, you know that change is an important topic.  How to help people move from the status quo to what’s next is a huge part of what our conversation has been.  So you’ll understand when I tell you that the newest offering from Chip and Dan Heath is a must read.  If you lead an organization that is doing anything of significance…you need to be reading this book.

Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard is very practical.  On top of practical, it introduces a language that has the potential to permeate your organization and become part of the way your team talks about bringing change.

As was the case with their previous book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, Switch is a very story-driven book.  Written in a style made popular by Malcolm Gladwell (The Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers), the Heath brothers make every point by referring to the example of a research project or case study.  This makes for a very engaging read.

The book takes a core metaphor and teases it out to make three big ideas easy to understand and tempting to act upon.  The metaphor is that while our emotions often spur action or a predictable pattern of response (referred to as The Elephant), our rational side can play a role (referred to as The Rider).  The three big ideas are that:

• It’s possible to direct the rider
• The elephant can be motivated
• The path that rider and elephant take can be shaped

For me, one of the most important aspects of a book is its immediate application.  I ask the question, “How can this be applied?”  Switch is a book that I devoured.  It started out a page turner and got better as the authors began to tie together the concepts.  It’s really marked up.  There were never more than a few pages turned that I wasn’t thinking, “This can be applied to that!”  In addition, it stayed applicable right to the end.  In fact, the last section on smoothing the path might have been the most practical and application oriented part of the book.

Bob Sutton is one of my favorite authors.  His newest, Good Boss, Bad Boss: How to Be the Best…and Learn from the Worst, is just the latest in a long line of thought provoking (and just plain provocative) works and is a great follow-up to his New York Times bestseller, The No A#%&ole Rule.

If you’re a boss, if you lead a team, this is a very good resource to add to your toolkit.  Where The No A#%&ole Rule focused on “the damage done by workplace jerks, what it takes to survive a nasty workplace, and how organizations can screen out, reform and expel demeaning and destructive creeps,” Good Boss, Bad Boss “reveals the mindset, measure and actions of the best bosses–along with lessons gleaned from mistakes that even the best bosses sometimes make (p. 9).”

Consistent with Sutton’s pattern, Good Boss, Bad Boss is a blend of research and rigorous study with true stories…and lots of them.  His earlier efforts (with Jeffrey Pfeffer), Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management and The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action are two of the most readable (and most marked up) books in my library.  Good Boss, Bad Boss has the same feel from cover to cover.

Working his way through some challenging topics, Sutton provides great insight into how to take control, how to link talk with action, and how to do the dirty work in a way that takes advantage of four antidotes (predictability, understanding, control and compassion).  As expected he also includes a chapter on how to squelch your inner bosshole.

Every chapter includes a set of takeaways or a prescription that allows immediate application.  Whether you’ve already been sensing the need to sharpen and improve your performance or you learned it in your most recent review…this is a resource that can help you as you take steps to correct your trajectory.

If you’re looking for a highly readable and very practical leadership handbook…this is a good one and I highly recommend it.  You can order your copy right here.

“What’s the best way to build a brand for the long term?  In a word: culture.  At Zappos, our belief is that if you get your culture right, most of the other stuff–like great customer service, or building a great long-term brand, or passionate employees and customers–will happen naturally on its own (p. 152, Delivering Happiness).”

I know I’ve already mentioned this, but Delivering Happiness is a great read.  Whether you already have a great organization or you’re building it right now…you don’t want to miss the thinking in this book.  It really is the kind of book that makes you want to schedule a tour of the home office next time you’re in Vegas.  Already planning it, believe me!

Picked up my copy of Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh today.  Don’t know if you know the story of Zappos.com but this is a great read!  I really only knew two things about Zappos when I opened up the book.  First, they are well known for their practice of offering new employees a lot of money to quit.  Second, they are known for offering “superior customer service.”

Delivering Happiness is more than the story of Zappos though.  It’s really a look at “the highlights of the path that [Hsieh] took in [his] journey toward discovering how to find happiness in business and life (p. xii, Delivering Happiness).”

You need to know that this is a really fun read!  Some books are packed with helpful takeaways but a pain to work through.  Others are just plain engaging, page turners, that end up being very impactful.  An hour on the front porch and I found myself on page 76 and reluctantly setting it aside for the night.

I’ve got to say there are not many books that I trip across that are as fun to read as this one.  Probably not since Chip Conley’s Peak have I been this captivated by the story itself.  Interesting to me that Peak was also really the story of a superior customer service organization.

Delivering Happiness is a great read.  I highly recommend it.

Like many of us, I am a student of the language of ideas. How to say it in just the right way is the essence of great communication.  Without the right language it can never be more than directional.  For anything to be inspirational…language is an essential element.

Need an example?  Take a moment to read this manifesto.  It was developed by GWP as part of their pitch to secure the ING Direct account as they prepared to launch in the United States.  This kind of pitch must show that the branding company absolutely gets the core idea.  As you read it, listen for how it might apply to your organization:

We are new here.  There has never been a time like this before.  Our name is ING Direct.  Our mission is to help people take care of the wealth they make for themselves in ways that fit this new time.

We will be fair.  We will constantly learn.  We will change and adapt and dwell only in the present and in the future.

We will listen.  We will invent.  We will simplify.  We will never stop asking why, or why not.  We will create wealth for ourselves, too.  But we will do this by creating value.

We will tell the truth.  We will be for everyone, except those who are truly served by the old way (I love that line!)

Because we aren’t conquerors.  We are pioneers.  We are not here to destroy.  We are here to create.

We will never be finished.

We are not a bank.  We will never be a bank.  But we will be what a bank would be if it began tomorrow and asked simply, “What if we started over?” (I really love that line) (p. 77, The Orange Code)

I can’t speak for you.  I don’t know about your organization.  But I do know this…there is an aspirational element in this that’s at the heart of what needs to be rediscovered in many, many organizations.

“We will be what a ________ would be if it began tomorrow and asked simply, “What if we started over?”

By the way, this concept is related to the Andy Grove idea referred to here, here, and here.  And if you’re new to StrategyCentral…you can sign up to get my updates right here.

I picked up The Orange Code: How ING Direct Succeeded by Being a Rebel with a Cause off my stack this week. I can already see why so many have been raving about it. Written by ING Direct founder and CEO Arkadi Kuhlmann and Bruce Philp, founder of GWP Brand Engineering*, this is a really well-written story. Even better, it’s the story of how ING Direct succeeded in dramatic fashion led by a leader with a cause.

The first few pages captivated me as an analysis of “what it takes to be the leader of an organization with a cause:

• It takes a calling. Sound familiar? It ought to. This is already at the very center of how so many of us operate.
• It take the guts to make it personal. Again, isn’t that the way it really is?
• It takes a powerful enemy.
• It takes an inner circle.
• It takes the possibility of failure.

*If you didn’t check out GWP Brand Engineering…you need to do that now, if only to roll your curser over the men’s bathroom drawing in the scrolling images below.