(I also had the chance to ponder “all this” on my recent trip to Korea. The Korean approach to many humongous opportunities is to eschew the master plan, or much of any plan—and just get the hell going, firing full bore on a thousand cylinders at once. I witnessed one act of their show a couple of decades ago, when they leapt, from ground zero, into electronics. From that cold start they built enormous production facilities—and learned on the fly how to make it all work and effectively compete with the best. Their individual and collective success, and the speed thereof, was mind-boggling in aim and accomplishment alike.)
Between my little project and Wendy Kopp’s Richter 8.0 project and Korea, I am wondering about the times when “do it all at once and figure out what ‘it’ is later” is the right answer. There is no doubt that such conditions exist—though the key, beyond the compelling dream, is the raw talent and energy and enthusiasm and obsession and resilience of the participants. It is 99.99 percent (or more) a matter of raw emotion—not a matter of analytically identifying a big opportunity, assigning “good people,” and then proceeding based on state-of-the-art project management software.
Hence my bottom line: If you’ve got a Whopper of an Aspiration and Determination that “this must happen” bordering on Insanity … cut the lifeline and leap in and start flapping around!
Translation for “your world”:
Rather than investing your precious time and energy in dotting every “i” with your current subproject, then moving rote-like to the next logical step, start, in an almost half-assed way, two or three or four other tasks/subprojects just to see how the overall thing “feels.” In other words, toss several balls in the air, and see what the frenzy of action “tells you” and “feels like” on the whole. I also recommend, if the occasion is right and the determination is sky-high, more or less severing the lifeline—letting go of a lot of what you are “supposed to be doing” and plunging into the big deal. By neglecting (!) your “real work,” you raise to the sky your Commitment to the Big New Deal—it becomes an approximation of “do or die,” which concentrates the mind wonderfully.
(For me, in working on a book like this, the approach can mean plunging into the next chapter before I even have a decent rough draft of the current chapter. Then, when I have four or five or eight or nine half-assed chapter drafts in process, I can begin to figure out what the book as a whole is actually about—or, more important, what it might be about that I hadn’t imagined.)
(By the way, I’m delighted we took the “do everything” approach to our landscaping. By cutting the lifeline, we adopted a “go for it” attitude that would never have occurred if we’d taken one measured step at a time. We would never have seen the size of the opportunity for real transformation, and we would have been scared off by the price tag if we’d known what we were letting ourselves in for!)
Action: Look at your work-in-progress project portfolio. Is there some potentially encompassing (“change the world”) “meta-goal” that you might birth if you were to get moving on three or four projects simultaneously? Or what about dropping four of your five active projects—and expanding the scope of the remaining project fivefold … then get going on six or seven aspects of that enhanced fifth project “all at once.”
82. Big Change—in a Short Time.
The story goes that General George Patton turned around a bedraggled U.S. Army in North Africa in a matter of a few weeks upon taking charge in 1943. (Some say a few days.)
Upon taking over a new command, Admiral Lord Nelson would change the attitude of an entire fleet in … less than a week. (!!!)
A close friend began his teaching career at the age of 40, introduced an entirely new teaching style into a stodgy boarding school—and was voted “top teacher” within … 90 days.
The CEO of a giant transportation company completely upended his senior line officers’ responsibility and authority and accountability (all increased by an order of magnitude) almost “overnight.” Literally everyone, including a couple of “hapless bureaucrats,” rose to the occasion, and performance spurted more or less instantly—and then kept going.
AA tells us that it takes but … an instant … to stop drinking. (To be sure, a lifetime to follow through.)
And in 1992, I wrote about a CEO (in Liberation Management) who installed self-managed work teams covering 100 percent of production activities in a famously authoritarian, Teamster-organized factory … over the course of one weekend.
Several expert analysts argue from extensive anecdotal evidence that “big change” is actually “easier” than small change. That is, it’s far easier to get people excited about a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (Jim Collins’s felicitous term) than “incremental improvement.”
My “bottom line” after lots of thought and observation: Change will take precisely as long as you think it will.
If you “think it’ll take two years to do this,” well, that’s more or less what it’ll take. Think “two weeks’ll do it”—and I’d not be surprised if you’d climbed three-fourths of the rugged mountain in those two weeks.
Don’t “aim high.”
Aim very, very high.
The “arrogance of absurdly high expectations” can pay off in very short order if you’ve got the nerve to go for it and the deep-rooted (messianic) belief that … “there’s utterly no reason why we can’t do this in a month.”
(Think about it.)
(Please.)
83. Clever? Never!
“The art of war does not require complicated maneuvers; the simplest are the best, and common sense is fundamental. From which one might wonder how it is generals make blunders; it is because they try to be clever.”
—Napoleon
I make every effort to read—or at least skim—new business strategy books and articles. In 90 percent of cases, I can dismiss neither the author’s thought process nor his or her evidence—but I am always taken aback by the absence of any discussion or consideration of the ability to implement the suggestions made or implied.
There is total silence around the subject.
(I started to add “more or less” to the prior sentence, then changed my mind; the “total” actually needs no modifier.)
I did a quick analysis of the Index of one “famous” strategy tome circa 2007—words like “people” and “customer” and “leadership” and “implementation” and “execution” were literally missing. Take my bugbear, which you doubtless have figured out by now—cross-functional coordination, or full-scale cross-functional teaming to add value. There’s no mention, not a hint—and yet it’s the failure of such coordination or opportunism that humbles strategic initiative after strategic initiative. (90 percent?)
So my battle continues to rage. Since my Ph.D. days at Stanford, now 35 years ago, I have been a more or less lonely voice shouting …
But what about implementation?
It does sometimes get old. It is always frustrating.
It is also the cause of anger bordering on fury.
It pisses me off—especially at B-schools.
(But, then, pretty much everything about B-schools pisses me off.)
Companies die of implementation fiascos—rarely of un-clever strategies.
Napoleon tells us to beware of the overly clever ones. To trust only the simple plans that can be understood and accepted by one and all; and that by their simplicity and clarity are far more readily implemented. I am a rather serious student of Admiral Horatio Nelson and General Ulysses S. Grant. (They are the only military leaders with whom I’ve been totally preoccupied.) Either Grant or Nelson could have penned, exactly, the kickoff quote above. Both were known for the clarity and simplicity of their plans—and the clarity and simplicity and compelling nature of their communication of those plans to their admirals and generals and privates and seamen.
Warren Buffett said recently that if you need to analyze a company’s financials on a computer—don’t buy the stock. From investment to implementation
of a marketing plan to the fields of battle or the high seas on which they occur, tame “cleverness” and seek clarity and simplicity and a compelling story in all you do.
The “Implementation Mind-set” Exam:
(1) Can you describe your current project and its benefits and points of differentiation in a single, compelling paragraph?
(2) Can you explain your project and why you are doing it to your 15-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son to the point that they can “get it” and ask intelligent questions about it and perhaps think it is “cool”?
(3) Can you give a spur-of-the-moment 9-minute presentation, without PowerPoint, to the CEO upon immediate request? (Less than 10 minutes prep time.)
(4) Can you go to an end user of your project, at the first level of job classification, and create some excitement on her part about the project and its benefits?
(5) Can you reconstruct the bare bones of your financials on the back of an envelope without booting your computer?
(6) Can you explain in a compelling fashion why you think you’ve got the talent to pull off the strategic direction you have chosen?
(7) Do your project plans and presentations devote at least … twice … as much space–time to the Details of Implementation as they do to market analysis and positioning or benefits?
(8) Can you list the five biggest implementation hurdles expected down the pike—and exactly how you plan to overcome them?
(9) Can you explain precisely how you plan to foster cross-functional communication and excitement about your project throughout the organization as a whole?
(10) Could you please tell me the principal implementation hurdles you have faced and overcome in your last two projects?
(11) What two big things have you learned about implementation in your last two projects?
(12) Etc.
(13) Etc.
Presumably you get the drift. These questions are obviously not written in stone—but the direction thereof is.
Put Napoleon’s quote on your wall or use it as a screensaver—or chant it at the beginning of every review meeting!
Is there a more important recitation of what’s essential for success between these covers? Maybe a few are as important, but none could surpass it.
(NB: I gave some thought to not including any commentary here, just letting Napoleon’s quote stand alone on the page. I dearly do not want to dilute in any way the power and clarity of his words.)
NO POLITICS. NO IMPLEMENTATION.
In early October 2009, several cover reviews appeared of Neil Sheehan’s A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon. It’s a “one guy against the world” story of the first order. Schriever either did a very good thing or a very questionable thing, depending on the reviewer. But what he did was clear, and a BIG BIG Thing, to paraphrase myself. Against very powerful forces, such as bomber maniac and Strategic Air Command boss Curtis LeMay, Schriever proposed and developed, more or less single-handedly, America’s ICBM capability—mainstay of our national defense ever since.
Fiery Peace is a story of a “good strategic idea” (in the real-world context of the nearly hot Cold War) and overcoming immense technicalengineering challenges.
But that’s not why I’m writing this.
As most of you know, I think political skill is as important or more important than “strategic brilliance.” And Schriever, a talented engineer, was an … ÜUber-master Politician. The forces lined up against him amount to a list as long as your arm, with most of those named carrying far more rank than Schriever. Yet he prevailed—eventually convincing one of the most pragmatic people ever to reside at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Dwight David Eisenhower.
Want to accomplish something, any-damn-thing?
Sharpen your political skills!
(And this holds for a 24-year-old non-manager working on her small part of a project almost as much as it did for Bernard Schriever.)
(Relationship to Napoleon: The engineering may have been complex, but Schriever’s idea was straightforward—describable in a sentence, not even a full paragraph was needed. The “last 99+ percent” was bulldog determination and relentlessness.)
SPECIAL SECTION
You, Me, and Charlie Wilson’s War
George Crile’s* Charlie Wilson’s War, the tale of the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan (which led directly to its subsequent unraveling), is quite simply the most extraordinary nonfiction potboiler I have ever read. Turning to the practicalities of your and my day-to-day professional affairs, the saga is peppered with de facto analyses of how Texas congressman Wilson, pretty much solo, coaxed the U.S. House of Representatives into backing the Afghan mujahideen in their resistance to the Soviets. Wilson is, to be sure, “larger than life,” yet his practical “can do” tactics—and those of his CIA cohort, Gust Avrakotos—have a lot to teach all of us in far more ordinary settings.
(*NB: The late Mr. Crile was a longtime CBS 60 Minutes producer—legendary for winning a First Amendment court battle against William Westmoreland, U.S. Commander in Vietnam; Crile called out Westmoreland over the Vietnam “body count” fiasco.)
1. Make friends with the … “Invisible 95 percent.”
“He had become something of a legend with these people who manned the underbelly of the Agency [CIA].”
—George Crile on Gust Avrakotos, Charlie Wilson’s man in the middle ranks of the CIA
Gust Avrakotos apparently knew every “top floor” CIA executive secretary by name—and had helped many of them sort out personal or professional problems. The folks in the mailroom and in the bowels of the computer operations affairs were also the subject of Gust’s intense and affectionate attentions. In effect, you could say that Gust was “Commander in Chief of the Invisible Ninety-Five Percent” of the Agency—which allowed him to make extraordinary things happen despite furious resistance from his bosses and bosses’ bosses enthroned at the top of a very rigid hierarchy.
This story reminds us in Bold Print: 99 percent (96 percent minimum—I’m not joking) of the important work of the organization is done far, far out of the limelight. While Ms. Big may be “the decider,” she is working from analyses and recommendations made by a host of largely invisible, largely unappreciated junior folks—two or three (or four) levels “down,” even in today’s connected, streamlined organizations.
Implication: Have I consciously invested time and significant (overwhelming!) attention and care and engagement throughout the organization? Measure it! (Damn it.)
2. Create a Networker-Doer partnership.
Congressman Wilson had the networking part down, but he needed help with the doing. Conversely, if you are the doer, then you must find the politician-networker. The legendary Chicago-based community organizer Saul Alinsky pointed out the difference between “organizers” and “leaders.” Leaders are the visible ones, “out there,” giving the speeches and manning the picket lines. The largely invisible organizer, on the other hand, spends her time recruiting the folks who will be on that picket line, settling disputes about who goes where—and procuring the buses to get the picketers to the right place at the right time with the necessary signs and bullhorns.
THREE TO GET READY
I believe that every project team with more than a half-dozen members in fact needs/must have three flavors of leaders: (1) The Visionary, who “lives”/embodies the project’s scintillating promise—and sells it “24/7” in every corner of the impacted world. (2) The Networker, who creates and oversees the “political ecosystem” and actually knits people together in order to make things happen. (3) The Mechanic, who loves and lives for the budget, the schedule, and the 1,000 admin details that are the lifeblood of day-to-day team efficiency. Remove any of the three, and the project team implodes. Also, you must acknowledge that these are three very different types of people, and all three dispositions rarely (or never) come in the same package—this issue is paramount even for the one-person project “team,” where the solo wil
l need some sort of help, on the cheap or not, with the things that are not her natural fare.
(NB: Among other things, I firmly believe that Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, which for years I used as my sole text in project management training, is the best “project management” manual ever written; it focuses on the “missing 98 percent” of project management effectiveness—the politics of implementation—that the traditional, technical project management texts willfully ignore.)
3. Carefully manage the BOF/Balance of Favors.
Practice potlatch—giving so much help to so many people on so many occasions (purposeful overkill!) that there is little issue about their supporting you when the (rare!) time comes to call in the chits. “Wilson made it easy for his colleagues to come to him,” Crile wrote, “always gracious, almost always helpful.” Some would argue, and I think I’d agree, that conscious and organized management of one’s “balance of favors” (owed and due) is a very sensible (if Machiavellian) thing to do—a mentor of mine, exceptionally successful in California politics, literally had a “little black book” of favors “given” and “owed” that others would have died to get their hands on.
(The tools are different and the reach is far greater in the Age of Social Networking—but the raw essence of trading favors is as it has always been.)
4. Follow the money!
“Anybody with a brain can figure out that if they can get on the Defense subcommittee, that’s where they ought to be—because that’s where the money is.”
—Charlie Wilson
Getting near the heart of fiscal processes offers innumerable opportunities to effectively take control of a system—as long as you are willing to invest in achieving Absolute Mastery of those processes. From the outside looking in, this is yet another big argument for nurturing relationships a few levels down in the organization—in this case, the all-important-everywhere financial organization.
The Little Big Things Page 18