Vacation Reading
One of the biggest challenges that I face every vacation is trying to decide what I’m going to read. Usually, I don’t decide and I end up lugging 40 pounds of books with me just in case I might be in the mood for a certain work. (Note: I know that the Kindle from Amazon will solve this problem…I just can’t get beyond my “I don’t buy the first generation of any consumer electronics” rule.) Eventually, I thrift my choices down to a full duffel bag (for driving trips), and when my wife is not looking, I sneak a few additional volumes into someone else’s bag or under the seat. I guess I’m a book smuggler.
Here’s the latest list of great reads that will make it into my traveling book bag this season:
- The Glorious Cause, volume two in the Revolutionary War series by historical fiction writer, Jeff Shaara. If you like historical fiction, you’ll love Jeff.
- The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement, by Eliyahu Goldratt…a classic business novel and something I’ve been meaning to revisit for the last decade.
- Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. I re-read this classic of objectivism every few years and it’s time.
- A biography of one of the founding fathers to match up to Shaara’s book. I’ve always enjoyed pairing a good piece of historical fiction with the real thing. It’s kind of like Stilton Blue Cheese and a glass of vintage port…they just go together.
- Duct Tape Marketing by John Jantsch and Million Dollar Consulting by Alan Weiss…both authors and both books are must-reads for the independent professional and invaluable reference tools for me.
- Marketing Metaphoria by Gerald and Lindsay Zaltman. A review of this one prompted my “Why Don’t Managers Think Deeply” blog posting a few weeks ago.
- The last two issues of Harvard Business Review. In particular, the July/August issue is themed as “Honing Your Competitive Edge” and has some great looking articles.
I’m probably approaching a stuffed duffel bag of books at this point, so I’m pushing my luck (and the limits of my time), but if I can slide a couple under the back seat, they will be:
- Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin, the story of Lincoln’s challenges and successes in managing his less than friendly cabinet.
- Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. I started reading this unique take on the development of cultures and societies last year and got sidetracked. It’s been on my to-read list for some time and it’s time to finish it.
The Bottom-Line for Now:
I’ll keep you posted on my progress and I’ll look forward to the incredible material for blogging that I will gain from the list above. I love great business books, but I’ve always believed that the best leadership and management material is found somewhere other than the business aisle in the bookstore. I look forward to reporting back to you after vacation.
Want to Kill a Few Brain Cells, (Try and) Read a Management Textbook
(Author's note: this post is filled with hasty generalizations and probably a few miscarriages of justice and judgment. If you are in academia, read it at your own peril.)
I suspect that I might raise the ire of a few publishers and professors with this one, but oh well, life is short and some things just need to be said. Of the many things that I am involved in, one of the newest and most enjoyable is teaching at the graduate and undergraduate levels. This has been a long-time goal of mine driven in large part by a number of great experiences and great instructors earlier in life. You know the type of instructor that I'm talking about. The ones we all remember are the educators that both created and satisfied intellectual curiosity, entertained and ultimately left an impression on us.
And while I'm loving the experience, I can't help but observe that the textbooks are some of the most mind-numbing, coma-inducing products ever to emerge from Gutenberg's great creation. In particular, the Management text in my Fundamentals of Management course this Spring is almost certain to drive the most interested of business majors to consider something more exciting like accounting or neurophysiology. What a shame to take a noble and exciting and complicated topic like management and wrap a bunch of dead theories in-between some interesting case studies and let that suffice for something that is supposed to teach the fundamentals of management. (Author's note: I didn't pick the text…it was pre-picked. I won't make that mistake again.)
I confess to being a bit over the top about business education. I've spent a decade attending programs at Kellogg and I've never left a day long, week-long or year-long program without being filled with ideas, excitement and new found energy for the challenges ahead. (And now that I am teaching at several institutions, I aspire to have that impact on the participants in my classes.) I must have missed the memo that said that it is OK to inspire executives, but for undergraduates, we've got to test them by subjecting them to content that is almost certainly non-essential for success and most definitely, boring.
OK, in fairness to this unnamed textbook, words like strategy, management, market forces, Porter's Forces, leadership, innovation, information technology and many others that you would recognize as belonging to the field of management do appear. However, it's downhill from there.
I suppose the best cure is for me to write myself and I may. I already co-wrote a leadership book that I now look at in a new light after struggling through the text's painful treatment of one of my favorite topics. I'll stop my ranting now and offer a few suggestions for anyone considering writing about or teaching management to the future managers of the World.
My suggestions for the ultimate management textbook (versus the one I had to teach from):
- Please skip the history of management theory development or at least condense it down to an interesting few pages. This is a great topic, and likely very important at a more advanced level, but not critical as an initial exposure to management.
- I do want to provide students with some context for the evolution of business and business models and how organizations and leaders have changed over time based on advances in technology and changes in society. Good stuff and important context.
- Leadership…keep it practical and make certain that we do much more to highlight that leadership is a profession and a very complex, challenging and rewarding one at that. You can skip the nonsensical debate and endless pages about the mind of a manager versus the mind of a leader. They are one and the same person…dealing with different topics from tactics and operations to strategy and motivation.
- Speaking of strategy, please portray this powerful tool of leadership and engine for value creation as a dynamic process that involves an entire organization versus something that consists of SWOT and Porter's Forces analyses. And don't forget execution.
- The section on HR reads like something developed by the Politically Correct Committee. Please. HR's role as a critical enabler of strategy through talent and systems and tools is much more exciting than whole sections on diversity and harassment.
- Hmmm, Information Technology as a subset of some other chapter is not going to cut it. Again, we are talking about a critical enabler of strategy and a complex and constantly changing arena.
And so on…
The Bottom-Line for Now:
I'll stop here with a comment that now that I've thought about it, I don't know why a text is needed at all. Staff the program with experienced business professionals and infuse the curriculum with readings and concepts from Welch, Charan, Maxwell, Day, Drucker, Collins, Churchill, Lincoln and Franklin and most issues of Harvard Business Review and call it The Joy of Management. Hmmm, it just might work. Remember, you heard it here first.
The Emerging and Strange Alliance Between Boomers and Millennials
If you are leading a team today, chances are you are dealing with one of the fascinating experiences of our time: how to manage teams increasingly comprised of aging Boomers and newly graduated Millennials. Your first thought might be that you couldn’t find two groups farther apart in terms of values, priorities, interests and capabilities. Well, your first thought is wrong.
On the surface, the evidence seems to support your case that Boomers and Millennials are polar opposites. Consider:
- Millennials were practically born with a cell phone in one hand and a computer mouse in the other. They are the most technologically sophisticated generation ever. While some aging Boomers have embraced technology, for a large number, many of the latest advancements are truly foreign. Ask a Boomer to contact someone and they pick up a phone. While the Boomer is dialing, the Millennial has texted and received an answer, scheduled a social engagement and made small talk about last night’s game, all with their thumbs.
- Boomers have the benefits that accrue from age and experience. They’ve forgotten more than the Millennials know about the big bad world, with much of this experience developed during some tumultuous times.
- Boomers have one eye on retirement and Millennials have both eyes on a bright future.
- Millennials are used to getting trophies just for participating and Boomers are used to working hard at thankless tasks. Boomers have put in hard time in organizations that showed them the door without hesitation. Millennials expect to start a job and be promoted within the first few months.
- Millennials want to work where and when they want and they are adamant that the conditions are right, the work interesting and that it not interfere with their inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. Boomers want….
It’s at exactly this last point that the differences between these two generations begin to melt away with a unique and perhaps surprising alignment developing. Millennials and Boomers share many of the same life and career priorities. Your understanding of this emerging alliance may prove critical as you increasingly deal with managing the generations in the years ahead.
For all of the reasons described above: long years in thankless jobs, falling victim to the lack of corporate loyalty and gaining experience through tough times and hard work, the Boomers can now afford to begin looking at life and career through different lenses. As the tidal wave of demographic change starts to hit the workforce over the next few years, Boomers will increasingly require:
- Opportunities that allow them to work when and where they want
- Interesting assignment that leverage their vast experience
- Engagements that provide psychic and social rewards
- Flexibility driven by a high priority on social time.
- Varying experiences and short-term engagements where they can learn and grow while contributing.
Boomers and Millennials are almost in complete agreement on the above priorities, and while the cynics among us might be quick with “that’s nice, but it’s not reality,” comment, it is most definitely going to be the new reality. The demographic numbers don’t lie and the world is not growing less complex.
Over the next decade, organizations will increasingly struggle to bring the right talent to bear on executing complex and ever-changing strategies in this global world, and both the Boomers and Millennials are the source of that talent. Enlightened organizations get this situation and are already creating systems and approaches to meet the needs of these critical groups. Less enlightened organizations will be clubbed over the head by this issue in the not too distant future.
In the interim (between now and the exodus of the boomers), what’s a manager to do?
Some Suggestions for Leveraging the Strange Boomer/Millennial Alliance:
- Create opportunities to leverage the experience of age and the energy of youth by blending project teams where the respective skills and energies spell success.
- Use judo on the age differences by openly encouraging Boomers to provide mentoring and guidance on career development and any of the broad areas in business that Boomers are experienced at.
- Encourage Millennials to educate Boomers on technology, current trends and social issues, and all of those issues that have changed so radically over the past few years.
- Create and celebrate victories regularly. The Millennials expect the celebrations and the Boomers are overdue for a few trophies.
- Embrace this new project-driven world, and provide Boomers with the flexibility to work when they want on projects that truly interest them. Boomers as contract knowledge workers may be your secret weapon to success in the years ahead.
- Get rid of the last vestiges of “I have to see someone to know that they are working.” There’s still some of this running around and it is silly.
- Challenge the HR functions in organizations to enable this new alliance and to provide the systems and support necessary for virtual teams and projects and contract knowledge workers. Most of this doesn’t fit the old HR model…and the model has to change.
- Quit giving lip service to “people are our most important asset” and start living it. (This is one of the most abused phrases in all of business…stop the abuse.)
The Bottom-Line for Now:
The great news is that for forward thinking managers and organizations, the availability of experienced talent has and will never be better. The trick of course will be how to capture and benefit from all of that talent. In my book, recognizing and leveraging the strengths of Boomers and Millennials is essential for success. The Millennials will moderate over time (as happens with every generation) and the Boomers will ultimately fade into history. However, for the here and now and for the next decade, managing the generations is one key to success.
The Project Management Discipline of Strategy Execution
Filed under: Leadership, Organizational Transformation, Project Management, Strategy
A number of months ago, I wrote about the benefit of applying professional project management practices to help improve strategy execution (Struggling with Strategy? Think Project Management). While many view strategy as something that is transformational (and it often is), the fact is that an organization moves from where it is today to where it has decided to go one project at a time…like a football team marching down the field on a long-drive.
In the June, 2008 Harvard Business Review, in an article entitled The Secrets to Successful Strategy Execution, Gary Neilson, Karla Martin and Elizabeth Powers add considerably to the body of knowledge on strategy execution, with this excellent article, backed by a considerable amount of research gained in surveys of over 1,000 organizations. Their findings seem to support their thesis that: "enterprises fail at execution because they go straight to structural reorganization and neglect the most powerful drivers of effectiveness—decision rights and information flows."
A few key findings covered in the article:
- Employees at three out of five companies rated their organization weak at execution. (Asked: Are Important strategic and operational decisions quickly translated into action?)
- The number one rated trait (by a landslide) that makes organizations effective at implementing strategy: Everyone has a good idea of the decisions and actions for which one is responsible.
- Of the top eight traits (17 were identified), five were tied to having effective and timely information flows and three were related to decision rights.
- Structure as an effective trait for driving strategy execution did not hit the list until number 13, with a relatively low strength index rating.
Fascinating. It's important to see a large body of research dedicated to the execution issue and it is a great learning experience to see how valuable information flows and decision rights are to successful strategy execution.
Additional Thoughts on Strategy Execution:
Structural changes, properly implemented at the right time and for the right reasons can go a long way towards addressing and improving the information flow, decision rights and collaboration issues that are so critical to strategy execution. Don't write off structure as a powerful tool in strategy execution, however as the authors highlight, don't jump to structure as the solution. It's one part of many pieces to the solution.
Back to my strategy execution as project management thesis, the best performing project teams are characterized by clear structure, unambiguous roles, detailed communication plans and clear accountability for decisions and results. Top notch Project Managers ride herd on these issues, seeking out points of confusion or gaps in information flows and fixing them in process.
The fact that the authors are able to cite as a research finding that 3 out of 5 surveyed managers believe that their organizations do not quickly translate strategic priorities into action tells me that most of those organizations have not adopted a robust project management discipline for strategy execution. And while strategy is arguably more complicated than creating a new product or constructing a building, it is very possible to structure and manage your execution program using the same approaches.
The bottom-line (for now):
Strategy execution is where value is created. The best plans are worthless unless they are backed by a group of people that understand their roles and accountabilities and that have the information they need when they need for rapid decision-making. Execution never takes place in a straight line and without setbacks. In fact, the setbacks are powerful learning experiences that a good team will leverage as it adapts and responds to internal and external factors.
A large part of the solution in my opinion is treating execution like a high-order program comprised of a series of projects to be managed. Ask a good Project Manager how to successfully pull of an execution program and I suspect they won't need to interview 1,000 companies.
Yeah, “Why Don’t Managers Think Deeply?”
Filed under: Leadership, Leading Change, Middle Management, Organizational Transformation
There's an interesting post today in the Harvard Business Review Working Knowledge newsletter entitled "Why Don't Managers Think Deeply?"
Professor James Heskett highlights GE CEO Geoffrey Immelt's recent pronouncements that he is: looking for managers to think deeply about innovations that will ensure GE's longer-term success. He has vowed that he will protect those working on the breakthroughs from the "budget slashers" focused on short-term success. (Professor Heskett also reviews the book Marketing Metaphoria and the perspectives of the authors: Gerald and Lindsay Zaltman on why managers don't think deeply.)
As I leader, I've wrestled with this topic for years, and have worked around and with many individuals perfectly content to let their days unfold in a transactional nature, with no time to think deeply or even strategically. Days pass into months and months to years, and still these individuals prefer conquering the issue of the moment versus wondering whether they are even working on the right issues.
I look forward to learning more about what the Zaltmans have to say about this issue above and beyond what Professor Heskett highlights in his post when I read their book. For now, here are a few of my perspectives on why managers don't think deeply:
- Personal characteristics: some people are not great strategists but excellent operators and they focus on where they are most comfortable making a contribution.
- Poor leaders above them that don't create the forums and opportunities to think big. This fits with my strategy-fueled theme where in my opinion; the best leaders involve everyone in sharing insights and developing ideas for strategy. This provides ample opportunity for individuals to contribute and teaches otherwise task-oriented people that it is OK to get out of the moment once in awhile.
- Bad personal time management habits. Some managers like crossing off a bunch of lower-level, "C" priorities than focusing on one "A" priority. This can be corrected.
- Fear of being accountable for something. I worked with a sales manager that absolutely hated to work on anything beyond the deals of the month. While his focus on results created some good outcomes for us, as the business changed and evolved, his ability to contribute dropped dramatically. When it was said and done, he admitted that he was uncomfortable considering big changes when it was so hard to drive short-term results.
- Frustration with impediments to change. If Immelt is imploring his people to innovate, the GE culture better darned well be willing to turn ideas into actions or the creative flow will shut down quickly. I've observed cultures where the leader preaches change as the rest of the team nods and then proceeds to do nothing.
The bottom-line for now:
It's hard for most of us to think creatively on command. Moving from a transactional model to a state of lateral or divergent thinking requires making and taking time. As leaders, we can help improve and support Mr. Immelt's suggestion (hard to argue with the intent) by creating opportunities for the right types of discussions and by supporting the movement of ideas into actions, products and services. Try holding your leaders accountable for creating a culture of innovation and then let them loose. The results may surprise you.
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