Plan Your Work, Work Your Plan, and Listen

I have to admit I'm a sucker for a good bibliography and notes sections in a book. The first thing I do when I grab a business text is to scan the notes and bibliography to see what research the author draws from. This provides me a snapshot of the direction of their work, as well as potentially new and interesting research I haven't read.

When I picked up The Way We're Working Isn't Working a few weeks back, I really liked the bibliography because it showed primary research I have seen referenced before in a few other (good) books. But this book seemed to be using it in a different way/context; and sure enough it does.



I love this book. The first chapter title totally resonated with me, (More and More, Less and Less) and typifies how enterprises have somehow forgotten that actual people drive their success and not multi-tasking, data-hoovering, automatons who don't have lives to live outside of work.

The authors, Tony Schwartz, Jean Gomes and Catherine McCarthy do a bang-up job explaining the theory and science behind improving enterprise performance using a multidisciplinary approach that incorporates physical, emotional, mental and spiritual components.

Our Core Needs:

Significance - Spirit
What I stand for and believe in - what gives me a sense of meaning

Self-Expression - Mind
Freedom to develop and express my unique skills and talent

Security - Emotions
Feeling appreciated, cared for, valued for who I am and what I do

Sustainability - Body
Being able to regularly renew and take care of myself, so I'm healthy, fit and resilient

Survival
Material needs and desires

To many, these ideas are going to seem "fluffy" or "touchy feely" or that Schwartz his coauthors are stretching the applicability of this science a bit too far. I would wholeheartedly disagree. Look around and observe. Out-dated management practices are everywhere and people's precious time is being squandered because of it.

As we are preparing to bring our solution to market, we've been searching for a characterization of just what kind of an organization is the "perfect" customer for what we offer. We've batted around the term Authentic Organizations up to this point as we like the dual meaning of "genuine" and "entitled to acceptance or belief because of agreement with known facts or experience," as we are focusing on using the best management science and research to help inform our approach. Authentic therefore combines some of the soft part of the mission with the hard science component.

We are engaged in this enterprise because we hope -- even in the smallest of ways -- to enable "Good Work" to occur more often than it does today. Those who are involved in doing "Good Work" will have better lives both at work and outside of work because of it. We spend an awful lot of time at work as a society, so we believe improving work lives can make a meaningful impact.

But using the term Authentic Organization left a little something to be desired. It was part of the characterization, but not the whole thing. Now I know why.

I've had the good fortune to pick up a copy of a book called The Why of Work, by Dave and Wendy Ulrich and they introduce an idea that is much more fulfilling. They call it the Abundant Organization.

Here's their synopsis:

"An abundant organization is a work setting in which individuals coordinate their aspirations and actions to create meaning for themselves, value for stakeholders, and hope for humanity at large. An abundant organization is one that has enough and to spare of the things that matter most: creativity, hope, resilience, determination, resourcefulness, and leadership.

Abundant organizations are profitable organizations, but rather than focusing only on assumptions of competition and scarcity, abundant organizations also focus on opportunity and synergy. Rather than accepting the fear-based breakdown of meaning in hard times, abundant organizations concentrate on bringing order, integrity, and purpose out of chaos and disintegration. Rather than restricting themselves to narrow, self-serving agendas, abundant organizations integrate a diversity of human needs, experiences and timetables.

In good times and in hard times, abundant organizations create meaning for both the employees who comprise them and the customers who keep them in business. Employees, customers, investors, and society benefit when employees find meaning at work and when companies give meaning to society. This logic applies to small and large organizations, to public agencies and private enterprises, to local storefronts and global conglomerates."

Abundant Organization it is, then. Thank you, Dave and Wendy Ulrich.

If I were to classify the business books I read into two broad categories, they would inevitably fall into "authored by a practitioner" or "authored by a theorist/researcher." If I'm really lucky the author will actually be both, but I find this to be rare.

Right now, I'm ripping my way through a book I just happened upon in my favourite local business bookstore that clearly falls into my "authored by a practitioner" category. Predictable Success is not full of jargon. But it's not full of primary or secondary research references either. That's okay if it appears to me that the author has enough first-hand experience to be able to draw-out reasonable and valuable patterns. Les McKeown does this very well in Predictable Success.

I like this book in particular because it focuses on the stages of growth (or lifecycle) of a business. That's been on my mind lately as we're learning from our beta users about who is more/less receptive to doing things differently than they have in the past (and therefore willing to adopt a new approach to executing their plans/work).

Here's McKeown's take on the characteristics company's have that are in a state of Predictable Success:

1. Decision making. The ability to readily make and consistently implement decisions.
2. Goal setting. The ability to readily set and consistently achieve goals.
3. Alignment. Structure, process and people are in harmony.
4. Accountability. Employees become self-accountable, in addition to being externally accountable to others.
5. Ownership. Employees take personal responsibility for their actions and outcomes.

This completely resonates with both my own experience and the research I've done over the years. And strangely, it also fits with an old HBR article I was reminded of (hat tip to Rory Meffen) last week entitled Promise-based Management by Donald N. Sull and Charles Spinosa. This article falls into my "authored by theorists/researchers" category.

"What really drives successful execution? Promises: employee's personal pledges to satisfy concerns of stakeholders within and outside an organization. And when strategy implementation falters, poorly crafted promises are usually the culprits."

Well-made promises are:

Public
Active
Voluntary
Explicit
Mission-based

Good quality work from both parties. Especially interesting when mixed together. Like a good cocktail, I guess.

I was scanning through a stockpile of saved research/articles that I have accumulated on my drive over the past 25 years, and came across Amar Bhide's HBR article from September-October 1986 entitled, "Hustle as Strategy."

While I don't think this is Amar's best work (to be expected as he was a doctoral candidate at the time), it contains a nugget that I love:

"The competitive scriptures almost systematically ignore the importance of hustle and energy. While they preach strategic planning, competitive strategy, and competitive advantage, they overlook the record of a surprisingly large number of very successful companies that vigorously practice a different kind of religion. These companies don't have long-term strategic plans with an obsessive preoccupation on rivalry. They concentrate on operating details and doing things well. Hustle is their style and their strategy. They move fast, and they get it right."

It's a nice idea that you could spend your time as an executive creating and managing strategy. I've even seen fancy titles that suggest someone is the "Chief Strategy Officer." Sounds incredibly cool and rarefied.

In my experience though, it doesn't seem to matter if you've chosen to use a Competitive (Porter), Resource-based (Hamel & Prahalad), Blue Ocean (Kim & Mauborgne), Disruptive (Christensen & Raynor) or Emergent (Hamel, Mintzberg)...it does all come back to execution.

Reminds me of that old saw, "Great ideas are a dime a dozen; only execution counts."

Before I begin, in the very slim chance that anyone of the Lean or Customer Development (CD) gods find their way to this remote corner of the web, I am a big advocate of the Lean movement in it's larger sense (Present capacity = work + waste, in particular), and the ideas espoused by Steve Blank in Four Steps to the Epiphany (product/market fit to be precise). We've been building mercanix in the early days using these ideas as guiding lights; just not as a road map. Why? I wasn't sure in the beginning...just a gut feeling...and I kept hearing the phrase "the map is not the territory," rattling around in the back of my head.

As we've been progressing through the milestones toward launching our public beta (and eventual production release), I couldn't help struggling with this nagging feeling that following the Lean/CD ideals too closely leads to incremental innovation rather than truly disruptive innovation. Innovation that captures the imagination and markets with audacious gestures.

Lean/OODA/CD advocates will likely say I'm totally overlooking [insert pertinent method, idea, theory, practice here] as espoused by [insert Lean/CD god here]. And that's probably accurate -  up to a point. But I'm getting the itchy-scratchy's with where this whole Lean/CD thing is going and how blindly many are following and extending the initial theories/work.

I've got no beef with Eric Ries or Steve Blank or anyone else riding the Lean/CD bandwagon. In fact, most of them seem like pretty cool guys. But the hype is getting a little nauseating (not their fault I don't imagine) to me, and stopping people from using critical thinking.

The ideas of low burn, fast iteration, product/market fit, etc...prior to scaling is all good...but it seems be crowding out some other perspectives. And god forbid that your opinion should differ from one of the gods or apostles...there's no room for dissension or debate among some of these people. It all feels rather religious to me know, where 18 months ago these were just touted as "interesting ideas," even by their creators.

Apologies for the slight digression. I am coming back on point now. But with an alternate opinion.

The Lean/CD approach seems to lend itself better to Incremental Innovations rather than Disruptive Innovations (see Christensen, et al); as it appears to focus on User Centered Design/Design Thinking (see Tim Brown and IDEO, etc) processes versus Design-Driven Innovations (see Roberto Verganti as one example).

What does that mean? It means that you are primarily using the customer perspective to drive your product development rather than creating something entirely new (dare I say radical). Products that defy categories and introduce new propositions to customers. Let's look at a couple examples.

A marketing manager for Apple described its market research as consisting of "Steve looking in the mirror every morning and asking himself what he wanted."

Or,

"Market? What Market! We do not look at market needs. We make proposals to people." Ernesto Gismondi, chairman of Artemide.

These two companies in particular have been responsible for some very disruptive and successful products. And not just once. They didn't look to their customers to come up with product ideas. They created "proposals" for their clients. Higher risk to be sure. It would appear higher reward as well. Perhaps there is a way to do Lean/CD AND Design-Driven Innovation? We think so.

The Lean/CD revolution is like any other revolution; they rarely deliver on their promises. That's not the fault of their main proponents, but their devout followers may want to broaden their perspective a little and mix in some other ideas. I know we are, and we're feeling good about it as we travel the path to scalability. 

Have a read of this excerpt from Gary Hamel's excellent WSJ blog. I highly recommend you read his blog regularly.

"Consider the recent "Global Workforce Survey" conducted by Towers Perrin, an HR consultancy. In an attempt to measure the extent of employee engagement around the world, the company polled more than 90,000 workers in 18 countries. The survey covered many of the key factors that determine workplace engagement, including: the ability to participate in decision-making, the encouragement given for innovative thinking, the availability of skill-enhancing job assignments and the interest shown by senior executives in employee well-being.

Here's what the researchers discovered: barely one-fifth (21%) of employees are truly engaged in their work, in the sense that they would "go the extra mile" for their employer. Nearly four out of ten (38%) are mostly or entirely disengaged, while the rest are in the tepid middle. There's no way to sugarcoat it--this data represents a stinging indictment of the legacy management practices found in most companies."

"Good Work" as defined by Howard Gardner, Mihaly Csikszentmihaly and William Damon includes all three meanings of the word good: excellence, engagement, ethics. Why do we settle for less at work?

Maybe you're like me. Or maybe I'm about to disclose yet another freakish personality trait...but I like to read several books at once. My group of books typically includes 2-4 business-focused books plus a fiction, plus one spiritually focused book (primarily Buddhism-related or ancient philosophy). In the past couple years I've also noticed I've been adding a neuroscience/behavioural science tome into the mix.

If you've been counting, that means I'm regularly bouncing among 7-ish books. The reason is twofold: I'm too impatient to wait until I'm finished one book before moving to the next; and I like the interplay of ideas created when reading multiple books.

I've been carrying on this process for about 20 years. I've read some great books, and I've read a pile of garbage. Every once in a while, two or more books will strike me as having a great synergy. Surprisingly, this just happened with Predictably Irrational and Drive.

I say surprisingly because I wasn't expecting much from Daniel Pink's new book Drive. As I've mentioned before, I was a little let down by his last book, A Whole New Mind. I'm sure it was a good book, but it didn't resonate with me in any way. It seemed too superficial to get my attention. So, I was completely taken aback when Drive was an absolute grand-slam of a book for me. I say for "me," because it really depends on when you read a book - what stage or period of your life. You can have completely different assessments of the book if you are receptive to the message or unreceptive at that particular point in your life.

I loved these books together because they both attack (in their own way), the gap between what science tells us about people and organizational behaviour, and what people and organizations  actually do. Great stuff. Very different writing styles, but both very appropriate for the subject matter. These both might just vault onto my top 25 list...check them out.

You can also get more information at http://www.danpink.com and http://www.predictablyirrational.com

There's a great paragraph from the Preface to Gary Hamel's book the Future of Management:

"Management is out of date. Like the combustion engine, it's a technology that has largely stopped evolving, and that's not good. Why? Because management - the capacity to marshal resources, lay out plans, program work and spur effort - is central to the accomplishment of human purpose. When it's less effective than it could be, or needs to be, we all pay the price."

Are you up to the challenge?

There are a lot of things business people take for granted. Those things that are so deeply engrained in our operating philosophy that we just accept them without any critical judgement whatsoever. Let's add another suspect to the list; goals.

Sacrilege you cry? Preposterous? WTF!? Perhaps, but the evidence is mounting.

Firstly, Pfeffer and Sutton introduced an interesting idea in the Knowing Doing Gap:
"The foundation of any successfully run business is a strategy that everyone understands coupled with a few key measures that are routinely tracked."

They go on to say, "the dictum that what is measured is what gets done has lead to the apparent belief that if a company measures more things, more will get done. But that is not at all the case. Southwest Airlines focuses on the critical measure of lost baggage, customer complaints and on-time performance - the keys to customer satisfaction and therefore to success in the airline industry."

Even one of my all-time favourites, Peter Drucker, is famous for saying something like, "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it."

Notice the word "measures" was used rather than goals. Is this a frivolous distinction, or is it meaningful? I don't honestly know. But like the movement toward approaches like Beyond Budgeting, it appears that measuring something isn't bad, but perhaps setting a hard goal or target just may be.



From the book Drive, by Daniel Pink, there is a suggestion that goals should be preceded by a warning label: "Goals may cause systematic problems for organizations due to narrowed focus, unethical behaviour, increased risk taking, decreased cooperation, and decreased intrinsic motivation." Ouch.

In the chapter summary, Pink summarizes the most compelling research with the following bullets:

Carrots and Sticks: Seven Deadly Flaws

1. They can extinguish intrinsic motiviation.
2. They can diminish performance.
3. They can crush creativity.
4. They can crowd out good behaviour.
5. They can encourage cheating, shortcuts, and unethical behaviour.
6. They can be addictive.
7. They can foster short-term thinking.

This has interesting implications for enterprises of all shapes and sizes. Especially, for those companies trying to build products to help enterprises reach their potential; like us.;)

After seeing this book referenced in a few online articles, I've decided to give it a read. Since one of my nasty habits is only buying hard cover business books, I was a little nervous that Pink would lay another egg with this book and I'd be out my $33.50. I read a Whole New Mind (okay, I didn't finish it completely), but I found it a little unsatisfying.

I'm happy to report that Drive is much better than a Whole New Mind. Certainly the main thesis resonates with me; that what science has known for years about motivation is not applied in business. This is a theme that has been trumpeted by Pfeffer and Sutton for some time, and I'm glad to see it picked up by Pink and backed-up with seemingly credible research.

In addition, this work seems to be a nice complement to Teresa Amabile's research I've noted in a previous post.

What's the short story? That the traditional Carrot-and-Stick approach to motivating employees is just plain out-of-date and doesn't reflect what science knows about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. I'm sure you intuitively knew this already.

We are intrinsically motivated purpose maximizers, and not just extrinsically motivated profit maximizers. People need to be free to be creative and self-directed in order to let them flourish at work. Yes, easier said than done. But knowing and acknowledging it is the first step...