RW: Most of us work for government agencies or in schools or fire departments, or in private companies perhaps run by the “millionaire next door,” who owns two suits, a 2006 Lexus, stops in the coffee shop on the way to work, and sends his kids to public school or the local private school.
GF: New “virtual organization” forms of doing business; workplaces with hierarchy are “so yesterday.”
RW: Most of us work amid a rather clear “hierarchy” as depicted on a standard organization chart. (Though there are probably a few less layers than there were a few years ago.)
GF: Creative right-brain weirdos, “with it” in these odd times.
RW: The majority of us are not “New Age creatives,” but are occasionally quite clever … and pretty good at “blocking and tackling” in order to “get done what needs to be done.”
GF: The immediate threat, to millions upon millions, of being “outsourced.”
RW: Most of us aren’t especially threatened by the prospect of having our jobs outsourced to India or China or Romania.
GF: Global enterprises “playing in the big league,” in a “flat world.”
RW: Many (most) of us are only marginally affected by globalization, and our firms don’t sell more than a modest share of their products or, especially, services beyond our national borders. (The primary reach of the 18-person accountancy in a midsized city of 84,000 is perhaps three miles.)
GF: A world where “the Web is everything, changes everything.”
RW: Most of us haven’t had our world turned anything like “upside down” by the Web, though the Web has surely had a significant impact. (We communicate with the plumber by BlackBerry email from our car, but he’s still five hours late!)
GF: Our ability to be in instant communication with anyone, anywhere.
RW: We use email, but still practice MBWA—Managing By Wandering Around—if our head’s screwed on right.
GF: An encompassing IS-IT strategy, with everything wired to everything else.
RW: While integrating IS is very important, most of us muddle through, trying to ensure that the IT-enhanced bits (the frontline subsystems) are marvels of simplicity that deliver the goods for those frontline folks and their internal-external customers.
GF: Strategic planners and CEOs desperately seeking “blue oceans.”
RW: Most of us don’t spend much or any of our day making grand plans. Never have. Never will.
“Many (most) of us are only marginally affected by globalization, and our firms don’t sell more than a modest share of their products or, especially, services beyond our national borders. (The primary reach of the 18-person accountancy in a midsized city of 84,000 is perhaps three miles.)”
GF: Thinking “outside the box,” of course.
RW: Most of us obsess on “doing,” pretty much inside the box. (There are enough damn problems IN the box—pissed-off customers of long standing, etc.)
GF: Complex “systemic change.”
RW: Most of us believe in and spend our time doing on-the-cheap, rapid experimentation, picking off the “low-hanging fruit,” muddling our way through to big change.
GF: Imposing words-phrases such as “business models,” “scalable,” “strategic talent management,” “customer-retention management,” and “knowledge-management paradigm.”
RW: Most of us try to use everyday language such as “the way we make a buck” (instead of “business model”), “let’s grow this sucker” (not “Is it scalable?”), “hire good people and treat ‘em well and give ‘em a chance to shine and thank ‘em for the stuff they do” (rather than “strategic talent management”), “bust our asses to keep our customers happy and keep ‘em coming back” (instead of “customer-retention management”), and “share the stuff you learn with everybody ASAP, don’t hoard it” (rather than “executing a knowledge-management paradigm”).
GF: Best database + sexiest algorithms win in our customer-centric enterprise.
RW: Most of us spend our time on “trivial” acts of relationship building with customers, suppliers, leaders in our community, etc.
GF: The relentless pursuit of “synergies.”
RW: Most of us focus, focus, focus in order to stand a chance of succeeding in the marketplace. (Those astounding German Mittelstand companies again, or Larry Janesky, the dry-basement guy.)
GF: Marketing sleight of hand!
RW: Sales! Sales! Sales!
GF: Put the customer first!
RW: Put the frontline employee and the frontline manager co-first! (In order to maximize the odds of repeat business driven by turnedon employees.)
GF: Acquisitions and mergers aimed at expanding our “reach” and “market penetration” and “market share” amid a zero-sum game, thus reducing risk, courtesy of a “diverse” portfolio and smothering (“killing”) the competition.
RW: Play from our strengths, work like hell to enhance those strengths, and survive-thrive via “organic” growth and delivering “stuff that works” and executing very, very, very well.
GF: Totally “new rules for a new game,” dramatic new “management tools” that “change everything.”
RW: Most of us are learning new things, but nothing that’s particularly “revolutionary” as we labor mightily (full-time) “just” to “get stuff done,” improve relationships, find good folks and keep ‘em by showing appreciation and respect, and providing opportunities to get ahead.
GF: A fetish for the diabolically clever.
RW: Most of us know that “relentless” pounding and pounding and pounding, and then pounding some more, on those Golden Basics wins.
GF: Built to last.
RW: Most of us muddle through, trying to make it to the end of the week while keeping our customers content—and if it lasts, Thank you, God.
GF: “Changing demographics,” “the new Gen X world,” as many discrete market segments as there are customers.
RW (I wish): Our primary customers (85 percent of the time) are women—find the right team (lotsa and lotsa more women in senior management) and go for it. We also, to make a buck or fifty, oughta aim more at boomers and “geezers” (who collectively have pretty much all the dough), and less on callow, so-called trendsetter youth, mostly penniless.
The biggest implication of “all this,” which is the thrust of this book, is that if you are … really really really really really really really really really good … at “basic stuff” like taking care of people, listening intently, overreacting to even the tiniest screw-up, and apologizing like crazy when you make even a wee boo-boo, a lot of good things will come your way—in good times and bad!
Which is not to denigrate the wild and wacky stuff—but, rather, to put it in perspective.
Crisis
9. That Which Goeth Up and Up and Up Doth Not Goeth More Up and More Up and More Up Forever and Ever and Ever.
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
—Mark Twain
“As I see it, the economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth.”
—Paul Krugman, economist, Nobel laureate
“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.”
—Sir Isaac Newton
As I write (in April 2009), there’s damn little to smile about in the world financial markets. And yet … it’s hard not to giggle, in a perverse way, at all that’s transpired in the last couple of years.
Just watching these Wizards of Wall Street (the ones with the 168 IQs who had the likes of Paul Simon and the Jonas Brothers performing at their kids’ kindergarten graduation parties) pissing on themselves and on one another is such an incredible spectacle.
First, pissing on themselves: Former Citigroup chieftain John Reed celebrated the 10th anniversary of the mega-mega-mega Citicorp-Travelers merger he crafted by calling the deal a “mist
ake.” As Reed told the Financial Times in April 2008: “The stockholders have not benefited, the employees certainly have not benefited and I don’t think the customers have benefited.” (Thanks, Johnny boy.) Mr. Reed and his partner in crime, Travelers honcho Sandy Weill, on the other hand, BENEFITED—all caps.
Then, pissing on each other: Weill, after deposing Reed and hand-picking Chuck Prince to take the helm of Citigroup, later blamed the mess on Prince’s “poor management” rather than questioning the recipe for disaster he and Reed cooked up—a recipe that can be boiled down to: “Huge-er is better than merely huge.” (Prince “retired” in 2007 but still walked away with BIG BENEFITS—all caps.) Speaking of partners in crime, the Financial Times also reported in April 2008 that former Merrill Lynch boss of bosses David Komansky had called the work of his chosen successor, Stan O’Neal, “absolutely criminal.” Not a whole lot of restraint, or even vaguely adult behavior, there.
But as I said, it’s all rather amusing, or would be, absent the global economic chaos that will bequeath a hangover that’ll last a decade. (Or two. Or …) As an avowed enemy of almost any giant consolidation in the name of either “synergy” or the provision of “one-stop shopping,” I am drowning in smugness. Also, watching these geniuses turn out to have feet of maggot-infested barnyard shit (I live on a farm) is also chortle-worthy to one who has always had trouble with the whole Superstar-CEO/Leader-as-God phenomenon.
There’s such a bizarre element of “obviousness” to this fiasco that it makes me think we need some new ground rules for business:
(1) That which goeth up and up and up doth not always goeth more up and more up and more up forever and ever and ever. (You might want to write that one down!)
(2) Thou shalt not (even if thou art an economist or mathematician) buy or sell the derivatives-of-derivatives-of-derivatives if you have no idea how to value said derivatives-of-derivatives-of-derivatives.
(3) Thou shalt not believe in false prophets who proclaim that undecipherable financial instruments can banish risk from the face of the earth “forever and ever and ever and ever, Amen.”
(4) Thou shalt not offer to lend money for a home to a person who showeth no proof of income, credit, or employment.
(5) If thou art tempted to lend money for a home to a person who showeth no proof of income, credit, or employment, thou must dial down the greed meter immediately. (Of course, history and the biosciences alike tell us that the greed meter is never dialed down in the slightest—never has been, never will be.)
(6) My favorite: In 9 cases out of 8, big mergers … sucketh. In 9 cases out of 7, they provideth very little imagined “synergistic value” and destroyeth lots and lots (and more lots and more lots) of “actual value” along the way—along with thousands upon thousands of jobs.
(7) Optimism, even “unwarranted” optimism, is of the utmost value for those pursuing innovation. I lived in Silicon Valley for 30 years, and if there hadn’t been “unwarranted” optimism, there’d have been no Apple or Intel. But you darn well ought to have a pessimist in the office next door, or an older mentor, for whom you have the utmost respect.
IT “BOGLES” THE MIND
Vanguard Mutual Fund Group founder John Bogle wrote the best “business” (LIFE!) book I’ve read in years. The (BRILLIANT!) title: Enough. Rather than expend several paragraphs summarizing the short-but-very-sweet-and-very-lucid tome, I’ll let some chapter titles do the work for me:
“Too Much Cost, Not Enough Value”
“Too Much Speculation, Not Enough Investment”
“Too Much Complexity, Not Enough Simplicity”
“Too Much Counting, Not Enough Trust”
“Too Much Business Conduct, Not Enough Professional Conduct”
“Too Much Salesmanship, Not Enough Stewardship”
“Too Much Focus on Things, Not Enough Focus on Commitment”
“Too Many Twenty-First-Century Values, Not Enough Eighteenth-Century Values”
“Too Much ‘Success,’ Not Enough Character”
For the book’s overarching theme, Mr. Bogle begins with this vignette:
“At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, ‘Yes, but I have something he will never have … enough.’”
Enough said.
10. Good Things (Especially in Bad
Times?) Come in Threes.
Although historians will long debate the initial response to the financial market’s collapse, an article in the Washington Post on September 19, 2008, “In Crucible of Crisis, Paulson, Bernanke, Geithner Forge a Committee of Three,” offers a fascinating analysis of Hank Paulson’s management style:
[Former Treasury Secretary John Snow] closed the Treasury’s monitoring room, where staff members keep an eye on global stock, bond and currency markets around the clock, to save money. Snow’s contact with Bernanke, then in office just six months, was mainly limited to formal weekly breakfasts. There was little communication between Snow and Geithner.
That changed rapidly with Paulson. A creature of the financial markets prone to firing off rapid phone calls to any potential source of information, he took to calling Geithner and Bernanke at all times of day, to bounce ideas off them or discuss the latest trouble spot in the markets.
“Overcommunication never hurts,” Paulson said. “If it is something significant, I would just pick up the phone and call Ben. One of the things I do is I create an atmosphere where I am so direct and so open and collaborative with people I trust that it brings out the same in them.”
(NB: In the power-mad D.C. environment, such casual back-and-forth is essentially unprecedented. This apparently innocuous sentence—“If it is something significant, I would just pick up the phone and call Ben.”—is as BIG a “little” thing as one could imagine.)
Assessment of final outcome notwithstanding, this analysis—blended with my own observations over the years—yields a few tentative lessons on how to deal with emergencies:
(1) Concoct an authoritarian control group that numbers three. (Yes, good things, or at least useful things, do come in threes.) I am anti-authoritarian to the core, but there are rare exceptions to that rule.
(2) “Over” communicate. (!!!)
(3) Drop all pretense of formality.
(4) Park egos at the door. (Boot egoists from the inner circle if they don’t shape up very quickly.)
(5) Ensure that the group is diverse. (The Post points out that the troika of Paulson, Bernanke, and Geithner consists of a Wall Street titan, an academic, and a career civil servant.)
(6) Ensure that each member of the group has a Towering Competence—and is perceived as having such.
(7) Foster a predilection for … rapid trial and error. First, that creates the perception that “they aren’t dilly-dallyin’”—motion matters. Second, the cure is anything but sure—so one must get moving if for no other reason than to see what happens when the system is perturbed. Third, there must be a willingness to admit error and stop a failed experiment ASAP—rather than holding on as a way of not admitting the experiment was a bust.
(8) Each member must have widespread Credibility. (Snow had virtually no Wall Street credibility and would have been impotent in the fall of 2008.)
(9) Also “over” communicate beyond the group.
Summary message:
Communicate.
Communicate.
Communicate.
Communicate.
Communicate.
Communicate.
Communicate.
Communicate.
11. Get China on Your Mind!
Get India on Your Mind!
Study up on China. (And India.)
Read books.
Troll the Web.
Talk to people.
Initiate a study group.
Visit China. (And India.)
Make “meditation” about China (and India) part of your day’s ritual.
This is not a “call to action” so much as a “call to awareness.” Ignorance about China (or about India) is … Simply … not acceptable.
Not acceptable … regardless of Age.
Not acceptable … regardless of Profession.
Not acceptable … regardless of Industry.
Not acceptable … regardless of Company size.
Not acceptable … regardless of Education.
Not acceptable … regardless of Wage level.
Not acceptable … regardless of Any Other Damn Variable You Can Name.
Hint (per me):
China is not a “problem.”
China is not a “threat.”
China may or may not be an “opportunity.”
China (India) is a … Reality … a Part of Our Lives. (Period.)
Act accordingly.
Opportunity
12. Tough Times?
The Little Big Things Page 4