Tedded - Business Book Review

In the past month, I’ve written the topics of choice and communication and how can we excel. I’m going to move onto another topic that is equally important; collaboration.

Unless you can collaborate or cooperate with other people in the organisation, you will not be able to put all your strengths to work (I wrote about strengths and career finding here). It is obvious that a company or an organisation requires a great variety of competencies. Everyone needs others.

Online Collaboration

In this twenty-first century, collaboration has evolved more into “virtual” collaboration. People do have teleconference, instant messaging. The virtual communities have erupted, we have facebook and twitter and Second Life, etc

These virtual communities are just the new form of communication and interaction. On the other hand, collaboration is different. The result of collaboration is synergistic. The whole is larger than the sum of its parts. On the Internet, there are places where people (mostly young) are pushing the power to collaborate through the limits; online game.

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People of older generations (especially Baby Boomers) often view online games as childish and a waste of time. The questons have to be asked;

Q: When was the last time you work with new people from different cultures?

A baby boomer might respond: Well, I went to the corporate meeting in Shanghai last week! Lots of people there.

Q: How often do you make snap and quick decision without sufficient information?

A baby boomer: We are in RE-CES-SION! I have to make quick decision, of course.

Q: How often do you change teams and have different colleagues?

A baby boomer: I was promoted to be the head of this division two years ago, why?

Q: In your team, do you swap a role of leadership? Let your subordinate be your boss once in a while?

A baby boomer: Are you insane? Why should I?

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What online games offers the kids of this generation is the opportunity.

The opportunity to engage in a high intensity collaboration with the global teams 24/7 (unless the server is down).

However, the benefit of online games do not always go unnoticed. There is a nice article about it in Havard Business Review (May, 2008); “Leadership’s Online Labs“. The point of the article is that online games are training kids of this generation to be leaders in the business (real) world in the future. Although there are major factors that make online games imperfect analog to real-world business such as stake (which is much lower) and identity (which is through avatars, characters), there are also interesting findings that make online game a sneak preview of tomorrow’s business.

Back to collboration. The pinnacle, the peak, the defining moment of the online game comes when even a maximum ability of a single person cannot either complete a quest, or defeat a boss, or beat the other team. The high intensity virtual collaboration begins.

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What can we learn from collaboration in online games?

Think of a meeting that you participated recently, how long did it last? How many people were there? How many people should have been there? How many shouldn’t? How many people were looking only at his BlackBerry? How many people took a quick nap?

Online game, on the other hand, requires an ultra-effective team to complete a top quest or to defeat the big boss.

1. Who must be in the team?

And equally important, who must not. In the real business setting, there are times when the meeting is filled with people who offer little or no contribution. We compromise. In the online game, it is unacceptable. There are two main reasons 1) an extra person makes the team less agile 2) the reward shared to each member will be less. When a party in the game needs a priest (who can heal other team members), there must be one. When the priest is already there, another priest is unacceptable.

In a real world, when forming a team or inviting people to join whether to tackle a recession or just for a weekly meeting, a higher discipline to select participants is needed. Always ask yourself when you are invited whether you should be present or should not. And also ask yourself when you invite someone.

2. What should you be doing?

In an online game, checking the job or class of the character is not enough. The team leader needs to check other critical factors. Team members need to have the required level and skill. Moreover, sometimes, people check items and posessions. Everything counts. Everyone must know what other people are up to and what will they be doing during the mission.

In business, team members must know what is expected from them and what they can expect from others. Failure to understand the contribution that should be made often led to ineffectiveness, ignorance, or worse, disruption.

3. How to synchronise?

This is the most important part because this is where execution takes place. The briefing before the mission tells the members who to listen to. Leadership is based on experience and skill. However, in online games, leadership is a task, not an identity. And leadership is temporary. People take turn to lead the team if other team members agree. Many times, leadership changes hand during the mission or the quest when a particular spot in the quest is better led by another member rather than the initial leader.

In business, leadership is a title and decision making is made by the person highest on the corporate rank. Collaboration will not be effective without the new leadership. Empowerment is necessary, respect to individuals is necessary, confidence in other team members is necessary, and shared responsibility is necessary.

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To make collaboration ultra-effective, a lesson from online game is worth thinking. Prior to the actual work, we need to make sure who must collaborate. Who must be there and who must not. We need to make sure everyone understand the contribution he/she has to make. And finally, team leader is not a title but a task and it can change when necessary.

“…enjoy your life. You only get one.”

If you have read previous Sir Richard Branson’s books; you have read most of it already. However, this book, “Business Stripped Bare: Adventures of a Global Entrepreneur“, Sir Richard Branson focused solely on the business side of his life. Actually, all his life is about business! Unlike other business book writers, he has the first-hand experience in Virgin. In this book, he covered lots of topics. A quote from the book “So all I can do for you now (and I firmly believe that this is all anyone can honestly do) is map the territory I’ve seen. The good news is, I’ve covered a lot of territory.”

Contents

Introduction

People: Find Good People - Set Them Free

In this chapter, he generally wrote about the culture in Virgin.

Brand: Flying the Flag

Richard Branson wrote exclusively on Virgin Blue in Australia and how he fought hard to beat the competition and established the Virgin brand there.

Delivery: Special Delivery

Among other things, he started the chapter with Virgin Trains and how it reshaped the industry in UK. He moved onto how he run Virgin Records and how he started Virgin Mobile in UK and in the US.

Learning from Mistakes and Setbacks: Damage Report

Failure to acquire the bank, Northern Rock, is the focus of this chapter. Richard Branson is also subjected to mistake and he wrote on how to bounce back.

Innovation: A Driver for Business

Virgin Galactic is going to be huge and tell me after you read this chapter that you don’t want to travel into space!

Entrepreneurs and Leadership: Holding on and Letting Go

He wrote about his experience with Nelson Mandela and how he set up Global Elders to tackle the humanity issues around the world.

Social Responsibility: Just Business

This chapter is fantastically inspiring. He separated it into two parts. The first is about his activities to relieve Africa from HIV and Aids. He also wrote about Bill Gates and how they shared philanthropy to make the difference in the world. The other part is the climate change issue. You heard it all before but instead of pouring fear to you, Richard Branson offers you hope.

Epilogue: Success

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This book is not written as an autobiography. So, I’ll compare it honestly to the ideal business book; a book that is easy to read, distinct, practical, credible, insightful, and provides great reading experience.

Ease of Understanding: 8/10: Richard Branson wrote it in plain language and make the readers follow him easily. The drawback of the book is that sometimes, the issues jump back and forth from mobile to records to airline to health clubs to finance and so on! Anyway, the part on Virgin Galactic (the rocket science) is not rocket-scientifically difficult to understand!

Distinction: 7/10: Although his life experience is one of its kind, there are other books on this already namely “Losing My Virginity” and “Screw It, Let’s Do It” by… Richard Branson…! However, the way he explained the general ideas of people, innovation, brand, etc (the usual business terms) through his experience is unlike those typical business books that litter these contents with figures, theories, graphs, models, metaphors and so forth.

Practicality: 5/10: Richard Branson offers no solid steps to encourage people, enrich brand, turbocharge delivery, foster leadership, and so on. He believes that everyone has his/her own story and way. He did not say that following him is the best approach to business but he made you think of your own. However, his general comments (with his experience as the credentials) are valuable and you cannot really dispute them.

Credibility: 10/10: His ideas are proven; people, brand, delivery, leadership, and so on. He made it work. Where is the better place to find the idea of business and entrepreneurship other than the words of one of the greatest global entrepreneurs?

Insight: 7/10: Although Richard Branson do not describe the ideas of innovation, brand, people, social responsibility with academic researches and scientific findings, he wrote it from his experience which is more valuable than most researches. Not that researches are insignificant but his life should be taught as a module in business schools. But if you already read his other books, this book will offer you only few new contents.

Reading Experience: 10/10: This book is like a journey into one of the most adventurous businessmen in the world. Like he said, the book (his life) covers a lot of territory. If you like reading other people’s life, there is no better person to read than Richard Branson. This book is like an adventure that it starts out with serious business contents with sparks of excitement and ends with good causes and social responsibility that we can make a difference not on but to Earth.

Overall: 7.8/10: This book is encouraging; it encourages you to go out and start a business. This book is motivating, it motivates you to make your business exciting. This book is inspiring; it inspires you to make you business meaningful and virtuous. This book will not make you want to be Richard Branson but it will make you want to have a great business life. This autobiographical business book is for everyone who loves business. If you have read Richard Branson’s book before, do not expect it to be something totally new. If you have not, I don’t see a reason why shouldn’t you give it a try.

I have quite daunting two weeks. My Amazon order has not arrived after a month, I could not figure out where my six books are at the moment! I could not write a book review because I have not finished “Planet Google” by Randall Stross. I won’t say it is a bad book but I will never pick it up again! Instead, I’m enjoying “Business Stripped Bare” by Richard Branson. The book review will be here next week.

Anyway, I’ve written about communication in the past few weeks. The last week of mine (and this week) are the two weeks of total communication. The reason is that I’m resigning from my job so I had to construct a plan of the division in 2009. The hardest part is how to communicate the plan.

Balance Scorecard

Balance scorecard or the strategy map is a useful business tool to construct a plan or a strategy. It focuses on the alignment of units to the coherent goal. Anyway, I will not go into details of the balance scorecard but I will focus on the communication part. The photo below is the photo from my mobile phone capturing the balance scorecard I wrote on the white board.

Don’t mind the content of the balance scorecard. It is quite confusing without the full explanation. I also have the full explanation and key performance index (KPI) of each box. This thing gave me terrible headaches for several days straight. The construction of this thing is difficult. It started with the workshops (multiple ones) in the division of roughly twenty people. We derived the key theme and goals from the workshop.

However, the most difficult part is to communicate this confusing balance scorecard to other people. I tried hard to make this thing simple. At the beginning, I failed badly. I could not make other people believe in the benefits of the tool and some people even humiliated me. Fine, I tried harder to explain the balance scorecard in depth. No such luck.

At last, I came to conclusion that I was in the pitfalls of communication. The two most common pitfalls in communication.

Two most common pitfalls in communication

1. Curse of Knowledge

Taken from the book, “Made to Stick” by Dan and Chip Heath, this pitfall, the Curse of Knowledge, is horrible. It is dreadful and horrendous. I cannot stress enough hatred towards this pitfall.

Especially when it is the communication pitfall or error that I, far too often, make.

From the book “Made to Stick”:

“People tend to think that having a great idea is enough, and they think the communication part will come naturally. We are in deep denial about the difficulty of getting a thought out of our own heads and into the heads of others. It’s just not true that, “If you think it, it will stick.”

And that brings us to the villain of our book: The Curse of Knowledge. Lots of research in economics and psychology shows that when we know something, it becomes hard for us to imagine not knowing it. As a result, we become lousy communicators. Think of a lawyer who can’t give you a straight, comprehensible answer to a legal question. His vast knowledge and experience renders him unable to fathom how little you know. So when he talks to you, he talks in abstractions that you can’t follow. And we’re all like the lawyer in our own domain of expertise.

Here’s the great cruelty of the Curse of Knowledge: The better we get at generating great ideas—new insights and novel solutions—in our field of expertise, the more unnatural it becomes for us to communicate those ideas clearly. That’s why knowledge is a curse. But notice we said “unnatural,” not “impossible.” Experts just need to devote a little time to applying the basic principles of stickiness.” [emphasis mine]

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Back to me, I read a lot on balance scorecard and strategic planning and have more experience compared to my colleagues. Thus, I became a lousy communicator in strategic planning field.

From the book, “Winning” by Jack Welch;

“It’s not that I don’t understand their [the experts'] theories about competitive advantage, core competencies, virtual commerce, supply chain economics, disruptive innovation, and so on, it’s just that the way these experts tend to talk about strategy — as if it is some kind of high-brain scientific methodology — feels really off to me.”

That was when I was disconnected from the audience. That was when I thought people should automatically know what I say. That was when I was a lousy communicator. That was the Curse of Knowledge.

To make the matter worse, I made the other common communication pitfall.

2. Four Autobiographical Responses

From the famous book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen R. Covey, the four autobiographical responses are evaluate, probe, advise, and interpret.

“Because we listen autobiographically, we tend to respond in one of four ways. We evaluate - we either agree or disagree; we probe - we ask questions from our own frame of reference; we advise - we give counsel based on our own experience; or we interpret - we try to figure people out, to explain their motives, their behavior, based on our own motives and behavior.”

The bottom line of the autobiographical responses is that we do not understand. We read chapters from our autobiography. We tried to make ourselves understood without understanding.

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When I communicated my plan, I questioned colleagues. I guided them to my conclusion. I made them agreed.

I did not understand.

And I thought they were not capable of understanding the grand plan I presented. Matter of fact, it was me who were not capable of understanding them.

Reset your brain

The two most common communication pitfalls, the curse of knowledge and four autobiographical responses often come together. The root cause is the same, “experience“. And the experience is yours, not theirs. Put your experience away when you try to communicate. Use your experience wisely when you do things on your own.

To avoid the communication pitfalls. Reset your brain. Start from scratch.

(FYI: thank god, I reset my brain and started again and my colleagues understood and supported the plan altogether)

“I can’t understand my kid. He just won’t listen to me at all.”

A quote from the book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Steven R. Covey, states the disconnection in communication. His chapter “Seek first to understand, then to be understood” insists that “listening” must always come before “communicating”. Emphatic listening is the key to understand the other person. According to Steven R. Covey, emphatic listening “gets inside another person’s frame of reference. You look through it, you see the world the way they see the world, you understand their paradigm, you understand how they feel.”

Your Duty as a Listener

I mentioned the role of mitigation in the communication process as a speaker in this post. I listed the checklist that a speaker has to understand before making communication. On the other end of the process, a listener must also be prepared in order to yield the most effective outcome of communication. Similar to the duty as a speaker, a listener must always seek full understanding of the context of the message.

Listener Checklist

There are things that a listener must be prepared prior to the conversation or communication. I take the concept from the article by David R. Gavin, Amy C. Edmondson, and Francesca Gino; “Is Yours a Learning Organization” in Havard Business Review, March 2008. The author wrote about the idea of a learning organization that it requires three building blocks. The first building block is “a supportive learning environment”. The concept is for an organization and for individuals. A duty of the listener is to learn from the other person’s viewpoint as well as understanding the message.

1. Psychological safety

“To learn, employees cannot fear being belittled or marginalized when they disagree with peers or authority figures, ask naive questions, own up to mistakes, or present a minority viewpoint. Instead, they must be comfortable expressing their thoughts about the work at hand.” [emphasis mine]

2. Appreciation of differences

“Learning occurs when people become aware of opposing ideas. Recognizing the value of competing functional outlooks and alternative worldviews increases energy and motivation, sparks fresh thinking, and prevents lethargy and drift.” [emphasis mine]

3. Openness to new ideas

“Learning is not simply about correcting mistakes and solving problems. It is also about crafting novel approaches. Employees should be encouraged to take risks and explore the untested and unknown.” [emphasis mine]

4. Time for reflection

“All too many managers are judged by the sheer number of hours they work and the tasks they accomplish. When people are too busy or overstressed by deadlines and scheduling pressures, however, their ability to think analytically and creatively is compromised. They become less able to diagnose problems and learn from their experiences. Supportive learning environments allow time for a pause in the action and encourage thoughtful review of the organization’s processes.” [emphasis mine]

In sum, as a listener, you must be prepared for differences, new ideas. And you must offer psychological safety to the speaker and time to reflect.

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What Do You Have To Listen To?

75% of the message is non-verbal. When you listen to the other person, there is more than words to listen to. In order to fully understand the speaker, the listener must understand the verbal and non-verbal messages. I take the list of non-verbal elements from an article by Mike King from his blog, “Learn This“. You can have a free pdf of his series “Better Communication” among others, from his blog. The elements you need to listen to and the meaning of those elements I interpret are;

Tone of voice: tone of voice shows “intent” of the speaker. Different tones of voice are used for different purposes, to coerce, teach, cooperate, request, etc.

Speed: speed reflects “urgency” and “importance“. This element is ambiguous, speedy conversation can mean either high urgency or low importance. A listener must understand by listening to other elements.

Body posture and gesture: body posture often symbolises “engagement” a speaker needs. Leaning towards the listener often means that the speaker needs high engagement and interest in the topic while negative body postures such as leaning back in the chair or crosses arms and legs often means “authority” the speaker poses.

Eye moment: eye movement exhibits “certainty“. It is obvious that looking straight to the listener’s eyes often means high certainty in the message. Most of the times, looking high is abstract, looking low is depressive, looking here, there, and everywhere is a lie.

Facial expressions: facial expression is directly related to the “mood” of the speaker. Facial expressions are automatic and biological response of the speaker. Together with the eye movement, they are elements that are difficult to manage or forge.

Hand gestures: hand gestures of the speaker is the “intensity” of the message the speaker is trying to convey. They are often used to amplify the context of the message.

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These are the non-verbal elements that you need to understand during the conversation. Non-verbal elements work both ways. A listener must also convey the non-verbal elements to the speaker appropriately.

Happy listening!

“Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise!”

This is a brilliant book by a brilliant man. “Call Me Ted” is one of the must-read biographies. Ted Turner wrote about his childhood and early life with his father and hardship he had when he was young. He told us how he helped his father in the billboard company which later moved into radio business and, as we all know, to television broadcasting. Ted Turner’s CNN story is amazing on how he started it with pure determination. His other successes are TNT and Cartoon Network. Later chapters on AOL Time Warner are pretty much painful to read but it tells us that every man is vulnerable to failures, Ted Turner is no exception.

His personal life is not as successful as his businesses and he told us about the darker side of Ted Turner. He also wrote quite a lot on his fascinating sailing career.

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I cannot use my reviewing system for this book.

Ease of Understanding: N.A./10

Distinction: N.A./10

Practicality: N.A./10

Credibility: N.A./10

Insight: N.A./10

Reading Experience: 10/10: This book is simply motivational; you can’t put it down. Ted Turner’s life is a great journey of a man who has no fear; who knows no boundary. The book is enriched by the stories from other people’s views. You will not only read what Ted Turner thinks but also what other people think about it. And they confirmed the character of Ted Turner. The stories of Ted Turner in the book have lots of ups and downs. It is difficult to imagine how a normal person can live a rough life like this. But Ted Turner have done it amazingly.

Overall: N.A/10: Who should read this book?

If you say “I’m stuck here in my career life”, you need to read this book because Ted Turner has no boundary. He has no rule. He will tell you how ambition and reality go together.

If you say “I’m good at what I’m doing, but I’m not that good”, you need to read this book. Ted Turner will make you believe that determination alone will not make you succeed; it’s perspiration. He is a hard-working ball of fire spreading energy everywhere he went.

If you say “I’m not really delirious at where I am but I don’t think I should risk it for a higher goal”, you need to read this book. Ted Turner never settled, he aimed for the top. And when he was at the top, he moved on to find another top. Most people may settle at the no.1 billboard company in Atlanta. And that ends at chapter 7 of Ted Turner’s biography and most people will probably write “And I live happily ever after” at the end of the chapter. But Ted Turner’s life carries on to chapter 33 (and still going wonderfully).

If you say “I’m a workaholic but my family is shattering”, you should read this book. Ted Turner will not give you a good example on that but you can learn from his mistakes. His work usually comes first and he ended up with three divorces.

Or if you are just looking for a good book on a brilliant person, you should read “Call Me Ted“.

I would like to continue writing about communication and one of the most boring things in the corporate communication is presentation (and it shouldn’t be!). I know it because I have also been the one with the ugly slides. It has been a norm in some organisations that you need ugly slides for your presentation.

Ugliness

Worse, my current company uses slides to explain things from vision, strategies, action plans, etc. instead of formal written reports. People in the room struggle to stay awake. They brought labtops to the room and mind their own business. When audiences try to listen, they don’t have a clue because those ugly slides always make simple points complicated. The presenter sit (yes, sit!) in front of the laptop connected to the projector and narrate (read) the slides.

Most of the times, the presentation takes an hour or two and it contains around fifty to hundred slides (or more).

Rules

I read the article by Guy Kawasaki in his blog, How to change the world. The article is “The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint“; it is one of the most popular articles in one of the most popular blogs. You can read from his blog and get the full and simple concept on how to construct effective slides. I’ll explain to you in ten slides paraphrasing Guy Kawasaki with his ten topics you ONLY need in your slides!

1. Problem

2. Solution

3. Business Model

4. Underlying magic/technology

5. Marketing and sales

6. Competition

7. Team

8. Projections and milestones

9. Status and timeline

10. Summary and call to action

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I hope they are self-explanatory