Tedded - Business Book Review

• 13Nov

  Are You Ready To Steal?

  Casual Business Thoughts No Comments

  Today, I am reading the same book, Inside Steve’s Brain by Leander Kahney

  There was a line about Steve Jobs who is fond of the quote of Picasso

  “good artists copy, great artists steal.”

  And Steve Jobs add: “And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”

  The chapter is about innovation and Steve Jobs once said “Creativity is about connecting things,”

  …

  I thought of my favourite book, Winning, by my favourite business figure, Jack Welch. Although the context is slightly different; Welch wrote that it is nonsense to say that best practices are not sustainable because they are easy to copy. He wroted that winning companies do two things.

  They imitate and improve.

  …

  The two anecdotes are not particularly identical but one thing we already know is that Jack Welch and Steve Jobs; despite numerous differences, describing them with the word “ego” is beyond understatement.

  So the question is how do these two great egotistical innovators declared that they steal or imitate and improve shamelessly and sensibly?

  Jim Collins, in Good to Great, described Level 5 leader (the leader that can bring a good company to be a great company if employed with other characteristics) as a leader with will and humility…

  We can hardly describe Jobs and Welch as “humble” but another thing that Collins describe is that Level 5 leader is filled with “ego”.

  However, they channel “ego” to the company, not to themselves.

  In other words, if customers adore an Apple’s product and felt the product is original, Apple wins regardless of what people thought of Jobs.

  if G.E. brought a new business model from another company and develop it to another level, G.E. wins regardless of what people thought of Welch.

  …

  On the other hand, there are people who are afraid to steal or imitate and improve because

  1. They channel “ego” to themselves, not the company. They are afraid to be labeled “stealer” at the expense of the future of the company

  2. They have no “ego” or self-confidence or whatsoever believing that they cannot improve beyond the original and reside in their mediocrity, forever.

  Therefore, we might say that stealing or imitating and improving are NOT the characteristics of weak leaders. Quite the opposite, we could hardly find other leaders who are as strong as the two mentioned.

  …

  Are you ready to steal?

  Tags: Innovation, Jack Welch, Steve Jobs

• 07Nov

  How Do You Measure Mediocrity?

  Casual Business Thoughts No Comments

  I’ve been blogging for less than 2 weeks and I find that Seth’s Blog is getting better everyday, I admire his work he has done for years.

  The reason I post about him so much is because I admire his thoughts so much that they are worth discussing.

  His latest post, “The sad lie of mediocrity”.

  I agree with the post but I have one question:

  Question: “How do you measure mediocrity?”

  When you say your employees are mediocre, how do you measure them?

  Do you measure them with your company’s standard or do you measure them with the industry or world standard?

  If you have vigorous recruitment process and training program, your “average” employees might be “excellent” compared with you competitors and everyone else. On the other hand, if your process is lousy, your “top” employees might be less than mediocre in the same industry.

  In sum, I believe that every organisation will have “higher than average” and “lower than average” but mediocrity depends on you.

  Tags: Management, People Management, Seth Godin

• 07Nov

  Hiring and Retaining Top Talent

  Casual Business Thoughts 2 Comments

  It’s not abnormal that I find Seth’s Blog a pool of idea but I find it interesting that Seth’s ideas always make me wonder and think of arguments and supports; I have yet to find another thought-provoking blog like his. And his latest post made me think hard.

  The 90/10 rule of marketing a job

  “It only takes 10% as much effort to hire someone in the bottom 90% of the class.

  And it takes the other 90% to find and cajole and retain the top 10%.”

  Question: “Are your top 10% worth 90% of your effort?”

  From the classic management belief; The Pareto Principle or 80/20 Rule

  In an application, 20% of your employees contribute to 80% of your outcome (or Seth’s 10/90 which will be a bit more to the extreme).

  Does it mean that we should put an equal effort (80% or 90%) to the top 20% or 10%?

  Nobody knows the most suitable percentage of effort but I have an interesting anecdote from Jack Welch in his book, Winning.

  I’m not saying that Jack knows best! But people management practice from G.E., the talent machine, is worth noticing.

  He divided them into, as you know, Top 20%, Bottom 10%, and Middle 70%.

  I believe that, in the process of “hiring”, there is no compromise, we need to put 100% percent of our effort to select the top talent only. There’s no room for anyone less than the top to join the company.

  And if your hiring process is good enough, there will be no chance for the “lousy” 90%. They must be good, very good, but just not as good as the top.

  Surprisingly, I, personally, do not believe that G.E., or Jack Welch from his book, put 50% of effort on top 20%, let alone 90% for top 10%.

  To paraphase an excerpt from his book: You need stars, the top 20 percent, to win. We stroke and reward them in outsize way. But stroking can backfire, A star’s ego can be a dangerous thing.

  As for the bottom 10%, we need to part ways but it must be “no surprise” and must “minimize humiliation”.

  However, the middle-70 is the hardest to manage and sometimes talented middle-70 leaves because they are in an “awful kind of limbo” not knowing which way to go. We need to train, share, push, and fight good fights with the middle-70. They are the heart and soul of the organization. We need to push them to the top 20%.

  …

  So, back to my thoughts, I believe that we should treat Hiring and Retaining in entirely different ways that is; we should spend 100% of our effort on hiring the top class employees, never spend a percent on hiring mediocre.

  On the other hand, retaining is totally different that we must put most effort in the largest middle group by coaching, pushing, and guiding them.

  Rewarding the top and firing the bottom are much more straightforward than your effort in the group in the middle.

  I agree with Seth Godin on the hiring part, by investing in marketing your job. But on the retaining part, I am not quite sure.

  Tags: Jack Welch, Management, People Management, Seth Godin

• 06Nov

  A Friend in Boom Times

  Casual Business Thoughts No Comments

  Now, I jut found the rhythm of my blog, the discipline I’d keep is to follow Seth Godin’s blog and post as many (related or not). I do think that taking his ideas and build around it would be fantastic.

  So, today’s issue “A friend in need” by Seth.

  With all respect, I disagree with Seth Godin, he stated “No one in particular will remember how you acted during the boom times.”

  I think that his statement is over the top.

  Question: Are good times irrelevant?

  The reason, I believe, that distinguish the chance to remember in good times and tough times is “the point”.

  “What’s your point?”

  “What exactly are you doing?”

  In tough times, “the point” is obvious, it’s the problem, fix the problem, fix it fast. We can concentrate on the problem because that’s the point. When the economic crisis is taking the world back to the past, talking about the national security is not the point.

  In good times, in boom times, the point is less obvious, it’s obscure at best. Finding the point is tough. Most of the times, you lose the point, lose the focus and your “friend” will not remember.

  How do you make them remember you in booms?

  1. Reinforce positive emotions: most businesses and individuals, during booms, mostly focus on “new”, new options, new opportunities, new offering, new businesses, new products, new services, new people, new alliances and so forth. However, to make them remember, instead of finding new offering, we should evaluate the positivity of our friends. Find the positivity, build an experience, then attach yourself into it.

  2. Convince them that this is not a boom time: if trying to find a point in good times is difficult, tell them that this is not a boom time. Tell them the problem and then you’ll have the point, then fix it. I do not recommend this method but starting your point with “Our planet is in peril” seems to work most of the times!

  Tags: Communication, Seth Godin

• 03Nov

  Winning Online Crisis Management

  Casual Business Thoughts No Comments

  I found a post from Brian Solis’ Blog, PR 2.0: “Reinventing Crisis Communications for the Social Web” which mainly talks about how you should communicate (two ways) to the audiences in the time of crisis. The key takeaway of this post is that, you need to

  Listen, Observe, and Converse

  Question: How should you plan to counter the crisis?

  The notable and obvious trend of our generation is “individualism” because we have more freedom namely through technology and we are more exposed to the world with the same technology.

  Individuals in the past did not have the same “privilege” as we do today. Crisis is our main theme in this post so, we regard that “privilege” as negative!

  There is an insightful instruction of how to deal with crisis by Jack Welch in his book, “Winning”.

  “But hey! that’s G.E., G-E-N-E-R-A-L  E-L-E-C-T-R-I-C !   I’m an average Joe the Blogger”

  Well, so am I. What I want to portray is how similar an average actively online person is to one of the biggest corporations on earth.

  First, in preventing the crises, Welch suggested that we need… (the brackets are mine)

  1. Tight Control

  (control your anger, don’t comment the post abruptly that you’ll regret doing so, if you have a problem with your anger management, try this game)

  2. Good Internal Processes

  (check out Brian Solis’ Conversation Prism and have a wise selection of where you want to be and contribute. Pick your choices wisely, pick the ones that you can contribute, control, and develop good perceptions with others)

  

  3. A Culture of Integrity

  (it comes with good habits, my recommendation is meditation to develop mindfulness, concentration, tranquility, and insight within “you”)

  …

  Despite a good prevention, a crisis can still occur, Jack Welch stated Five Assumptions to keep in mind when a crisis happens… (still, the brackets are mine)

  Assumption 1: The problem is worse that it appears

  (When you are busy answering your negative comments on YouTube.com whether you posted it yourself or someone post a video clip of you for you!, you shouldn’t be surprise that there are same negative comments on Metacafe or Google video or worse, people wrote negative posts about it (you!) on their blogs (with the video embedded, of course!).)

  Assumption 2: There are no secrets in the world, and everyone will eventually find out everything

  (Type your name in the google and tell me there is no negative thing in it, unless there is no search result of you at all!. Search my name and there is still an anti-government evidence of mine 3 years ago even though I’m supporting them (at least not anti-ing) them now.)

  Assumption 3: You and your organization’s handling of the crisis will be portrayed in the worst possible light

  (respond less that you should, respond to the negative comment wisely and truthfully, or you’ll just become scrutinized for your knee-jerk reaction)

  Assumption 4: There will be changes in processes and people. Almost no crisis ends without blood on the floor.

  (It’s obvious, but in an online community, blood on the floor of processes can be changed easier than that of people; you can just terminate your facebook account, delete your blog, etc. But “you”, and people around you are still there on the Web, you can’t just “fire” your negative comment spammer.)

  Assumption 5: The organization will survive, ultimately stronger for what happened.

  (”You” will survive, you will know what’s good and what’s bad for you, starting a new account portraying yourself in a new spotlight is just a click away)

  Tags: Jack Welch, PR

• 03Nov

  How Do You Initiate?

  Casual Business Thoughts No Comments

  This is another gem by Seth Godin, his latest blog on “Reacting, Responding & Initiating”

  So, basically, what do you spend your day doing?

  Reacting to external situations

  Responding to external inputs

  or

  Initiating new events or ideas.

  Seth’s closing comment stated that initiating is the best one, obviously.

  …

  Questions

  1. How do you initiate?

  2. If you can’t initiate, how should you react and respond?

  …

  How do you initiate?

  There are only two possible answers: One is to NOT do uninitiative activites, and two, to do initiative activities

  Steven Covey gave us an intriguing matrix in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”

  The Quadrant II

  

  (matrix from www.quadrant2.com.au)

  In a nutshell, minimise your quadrant 1 (firefighting, meeting deadlines, and reacting to crises) activities.

  “As long as you focus on quadrant I, it keeps getting bigger and bigger until it dominates you.” stated Covey in the book

  Quadrant II is the heart of effective personal management, things that are important but not urgent; things like building relationship, capability, writing a personal mission statement, lond-range planning, exercising, preventive maintenance, preparation, and so forth.

  The results will be vision, perspective, balance, discipline, control, and few crises.

  The results from the Quadrant II activities do not directly affect the initiativeness but they are, apparently, significantly influential to initiativeness.

  The other way is to do something initiative…

  I grabbed a book called “Group Genius” by Keith Sawyer

  The concept of the book is that: most innovations come from the collaborative power of many people, directly or indirectly, intentionally, or unintentionally.

  The idea from this book that I admire most is the “improvisation”. Improvisation leads to innovation because there is no script (improvisation can be planned, though) on how might it turn out to be and creative power of more than one person can bring out powerful and new innovations. Examples are improv theatre groups, jazz bands, or an orchestra without a conductor.

  Apart from “improvisation”, you need “group flow”. Think of a high tempo basketball game where they are improvising and flowing with the rhythm of the game. To achieve “group flow”, you need ten conditions:

  1. The Group’s Goal

  2. Close Listening

  3. Complete Concentration

  4. Being in Control

  5. Blending Egos

  6. Equal Participation

  7. Familiarity

  8. Communication

  9. Moving It Forward

  10. The Potential for Failure.

  …

  The next question is

  2. If you can’t initiate, how should you react and respond?

  I just read an article from Havard Business Review (October 08) “Shaping Strategy in a World of Constant Disruption” by John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison.

  The article encourages you to be the “shaper” or the one driving the industry ecosystem. The article focuses on how to become a shaper but the most interesting bit I found from the article is that…

  “Not a Shaper? Be a Participant”

  The authors offer three roles available to participate in other firms’ (or persons’, to be related to Seth’s blog!) shaping strategy if you are not cut out to be, or not ready to be, or do not want to be the shaper. You can be… (full quote onwards)

  Influencer

  Commits early and prominently to one shaping strategy

  Benefit:An influencer increases asset efficiency, builds capabilities, and gains a strong market position by influencing the shaper.
  Risk: The supported platform may not become the industry standard.
  Example: Bank of America’s early influence on the Visa shaping platform.

  Hedger

  Develops its products or services to support multiple shaping platforms

  Benefit: A hedger’s eggs are spread across several baskets—in several competing platforms.
  Risk: Higher costs can be incurred if effort is duplicated to meet multiple platform standards.
  Example: Advertisers that participate in both Google and Microsoft advertising platforms.

  Disciple

  Commits exclusively to one shaping platform

  Benefit: A disciple has a clear strategic focus and direction; it does not invest in competing shaping strategies.
  Risk: The supported platform may not be adopted. If the exclusive bet fails, an investment in another shaper must be tried.
  Example: Dell’s exclusive commitment to the Wintel platform.

  (/Quote)

  …

  Therefore, if you want to initiate, focus on “quadrant II” and spend times with a group “improvising” and fostering “group flow”. If you can not initiate (or don’t give a #$*&), before reacting or responding,… pick your role.

  Am I reacting or responding to Seth’s blog too much? I sure did! But I picked my role

  Tags: Innovation, Seth Godin

• 02Nov

  FastCompany’s Economic Survival Tips: Cut The Right Waste

  Casual Business Thoughts No Comments

  I’m trying to follow the FastCompany’s blog, Economic Survival Tip by Dan Adams. The first tip is: Cut the Right Waste. I couldn’t agree more with the idea;

  Focus on you most wasteful units; in most companies, they are product development and R&D. Adams suggested that we should turn to our customers to identify which projects have potential to be flops and which one might come good by;

  “you need to uncover all the most important outcomes that the customer would like. Then ask them two questions about these outcomes: 1) How important is this outcome on a scale of 1-10, and 2) How satisfied are you with what you’re getting in this outcome today on a scale of 1-10?

  When you multiply the importance times the dissatisfaction (or 10 minus satisfaction), you get the Market Satisfaction Gap. A high Gap (over 30%) indicates the customer really wants you to work on delivering this outcome with your new product,”

  …

  However, Tedded believes, it is not sufficient to cut the waste solely from the product development and R&D.

  There are wastes everywhere. Although they might not be as obvious as product development, they can be taken out. I’d like to borrow the process of Toyota’s TPS (Toyota Production System) (I read from the book The Toyota Way by Jeffrey Liker).

  Three things you need to cut in EVERY process are

  1. Muda (Waste): by distinguishing “process” and “operation”; keep value and cut wastes which are: defects, overproductions, conveyance, waiting, inventory, motion, and overprocessing.

  2. Mura (Unevenness): mura is eliminated by Just-In-Time system employing Kanban and Heijunka

  3. Muri (Overburden): through standardised work and standard condition

  All Toyota’s principles are based on “people” and if you got it right, you’re ready to cut anything.

  Enjoy cutting

• 02Nov

  How Many Percent Are You Free?

  Casual Business Thoughts No Comments

  I’m reading The Future of Management by Gary Hamel and Bill Breen. Actually, I finished it already, this is my second time doing my personal summary. It is already in my all-time favourite list.

  I’d like to talk about the two companies you know, one is in this book (in details), the other is the world-famous in its practice already.

  1. Google’s 70/20/10

  2. 3M’s 15 percent rule

  Google allows its employees to dedicate 70% of their time to core business tasks, 20% to projects related to core business, and 10% to “fringe ideas”. To cut the story short, the 20% and 10% work absolutely fine and generate lots (you know? Google’s “lots”) of profits to both the firm and the teams developing them. You can find a (very) brief explanation here and a bit longer here (2005).

  As of 3M, it’s too obvious, the 15% gives the world Post-It note. Type “3m 15 percent” in Google and you’ll find some good explanations but I recommend Built to Last by Jim Collins. If you read the book already, like most people, then good!

  …

  What I want to ask you is “How many percent are you free?”

  I’d like to give you a bad example here, it’s my company, duh. Currently, I’m more than 70% percent free (after I told my boss I’m going to resign). In the past, my freedom range somewhere between 50% to -50% (meaning it consumed my personal life!)

  This is ridiculous.

  It is even more ridiculous when you notice people having different percentage of free time leading to an innovation drain.

  A: “Hey! I have the new idea!”

  B: “What? Well, later alright?, I’m busy”

  A: “You wouldn’t believe it!!”

  B: “You wouldn’t believe how much work I have”

  .

  .

  .

  B: “What did you say again?”

  A: “Whatever, I have a meeting right now, later, beeseeguy”

  It is like in a blackhole, no light, innovation is a taboo, free time is a sin.

  I tried to start an HR project last year. I tried to draw many hungry young employees who want to change the company by having discussion sessions every Friday’s afternoon. Our issues were mostly about recruiting new staffs, interviewing, coaching, and probation period. We faced a seriously high employee turnover rate (not a surprise, by the way!).

  HR thought we were rebels

  Managing Director turned down our first project proposal (on tests especially personality test before an interview session in the recruitment process); he said something like “I don’t need it, I can see through the person during an interview”

  yeah right

  He did encourage us to continue though, but his initial reaction is anything but encouraging.

  At first, there were 17-20 of us and after the reject from M.D. we were reducing to around 13 to 10 to 5 and I gave up. I might be wrong but our company has nothing, zero, zip, nil, process promoting free time innovation.

  So, in short, in order to allow your employees to spend “systematic” free time innovatively we need lots of factors but the most important ones are

  1. Democratic Management (or non-management): Command and control are poisonous to innovation

  2. Reward and Recognition: People do it for fun but they must be rewarded for their contribution

  3. Systematic Process: Innovation and system?? yes, we need a systematic process to keep innovation a journey, not a fad

  4. Passionate Teams: This is, by far, the hardest part to achieve.

  An army of robots is beyond powerful following orders

  An army of robots for innovation;

  >> critical failure

  >> all functions terminated

  >> shut down

  …

  Tags: Freedom, Google, Innovation

• 01Nov

  Badge of You

  Casual Business Thoughts 1 Comment

  Obviously, lately I’m obsessed with Seth Godin. His blog is influential and inspirational and often triggers my business curiosity with his examples and new ideas.

  His latest post in the blog, The same cigarrette as me, talks about “badge”. Basically, when a badge represents a tribe, you sell a lot of your product to that tribe (an insider).

  I thought this idea rings a bell in my head and I thought of “personality”.

  We’ve always understood that customers are likely to choose a product or service that has similar personality to the customer.

  Is it true? Is it not?

  If we give examples of personalities of the product and their main customers, there will be hundreds of examples, iPod, BMW, Seth’s blog (I’m a bit over-obsessed already), Barack Obama, Gucci, Sony Vaio.

  These examples can represent the personality of the product and the personality of the users.

  Are they badges?

  .

  .

  Maybe, maybe not.

  I recall when I read Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, a great book indeed.

  In part I, the first chapter, “The personality and character ethics”

  Speaking of personality, Covey wrote

  “Success became more a function of personality, of public image, of attitudes and behaviors, skills and techniques, that lubricate the processes of human interaction. This personality Ethic essentially took two paths: one was human and public relation techniques, and the other was positive mental attitude.”

  “Other parts of the personality approach were clearly manipulative, even deceptive, encouraging people to use techniques to get other people to like them, or to fake interest in the hobbies of others to get out of them what they wanted, or to use the “power look,” or to intimidate their way of life.” [emphasis mine]

  Strong words

  On the other hand,

  “…Character Ethic as the foundation of success - things like integrity, huility, fidelity, temperance, courage, justice, patience, industry, simplicity, modesty, and the Golden Rule. Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography is representative of that literature. It is, basically, the story of one man’s effort to integrate certain principles and habits deep within his nature.”
  

  “The Character Ethic taught that there are basic principles of effective living, and that people can only experience true success and enduring happiness as they learn and integrate these principles into their basic character.“ [emphasis mine]

  So, what I do believe is that the difference between a badge and a wannabe is the “character”.

  A company needs to develop its character, breath it, and live it in order to be a badge especially in the times that Google makes everything transparent, you can’t fake here.

  Personality, in this era, is irrelevant. No matter how hard you try to make yourself look good, everyone can see it through.

  No more “Brand Personality”, embrace “Your Character”

  Tags: Branding, Marketing, Seth Godin

• 01Nov

  Wanna Go Supersized?

  Casual Business Thoughts No Comments

  I talked to my girlfriend today. She said she hated it when authors refer to any management or business practices by symbols

  Things like:

  Blue Ocean
  Black Swan
  Spider and Starfish
  Purple cow

  etc, etc.

  To name a few.

  A hedgehog and a fox in Jim Collins’ Good to Great pissed her off.

  She pissed me off.

  I did try to give her the reason, I couldn’t.

  So, I thought of the book Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath who laid out the the six elements making your idea stick (SUCCES)

  1. Simplicity

  2. Unexpectednedd

  3. Concreteness

  4. Credibility

  5. Emotions

  6. Stories

  …

  I told her that ideas need to be “concrete”, you need to get the picture of what you’re talking about!

  Do you know a “pomelo”? Chip and Dan Heath hinted it is a supersized “grapefruit”. And you get the idea right.

  I tried to ask my girlfriend this but…

  Thai people don’t know grapefruit! We know pomelo! (And both me and my girlfriend live near Nakhon Prathom, the city of pomelo itself!)

  

  (image source: www.domesticthai.com)

  (I got the idea of the grapefruit when Heath brothers wrote that a supersized grapefruit is a pomelo)

  Trying to communicate that a grapefruit is a pomelo mini-me was confusing and it was all messed up…

  And she told me that she does believe in things like matrices, graphs, and models… Not the metaphors

  Mind you, we argued back and forth for like 30 minutes.

  I came to a conclusion that she’s far too scientific and systematic and I, on the other hand, am unstructured and intuitive.

  The question is: “Is Business a science or an art?”

  Tags: Business Metaphor

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