Tedded - Business Book Review

Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Sergey Brin, and Larry Page started their careers with their passion.

Many more successful businessman started their careers with their strength.

However, the largest proportion of people (at least, from whom I know of) started careers because of money.

Is choosing a career (or a job or a company) because of money a good thing?

Jack Welch started a career because of money. From his book “Winning” (sorry, I don’t have that many books!):

“When I took my first job, I had several offers, but the one from GE was $1,500 a year more than any other.”

Money matters, a lot.

If you consider “money” as a factor to decide which career path you should take. It is easy to say that the higher offer, the better. However, it is always not that easy. Instead of looking at the pay as a snapshot of the first day you start a job. It is crucial that you need to look through time. There are many times that you face “trade-offs”. It can be both money from “salary”, “wage”, “pay” you get from the company you work for or the money you make as an entrepreneur.

Money Trade-offs

The Y Axis is the “money” you get at a period of time. The X Asis is “timeline”; it can be 12 months or 10 years depending on how you project your future. My assumption on this graph is around 5 years. The lines show your money progress during your career.

Please note that the area under the three lines are roughly equal. The total amount of money received at the end of the timeline (say 5 years) are equal. It is obvious to say that if there is a line above all those three with the high slope, you should choose that one!

Option 1: The Hare: The Hare option starts strong. The pay is bigger than other options at the start. Compared to other options, you will enjoy you early career but you might struggle because of the minimal pay rise over the time.

Option 2: The Turtle: The Turtle option starts slow. It might offer a lower pay at the beginning. However, the growth rate of the money from this option is much higher than the Hare option.

Option 3: The Frog: The Frog option has very little or no growth rate over time and the amount of money at the start is irrelevant. However, this option will offer you a pay “leap” at a specific period of time.

So, what does your current career resemble? The Turtle, The Hare, or The Frog?

What is your choice?

What are the advantages or disadvantages of each option.

If you choose The Hare, the option 1, you will get higher pay at the beginning and you will enjoy life at the start. The place (career or company) might be serious but not very competitive. The place is likely to be stable. The Hare option symbolise three things that 1. the career or the company are not for money 2. the industry is not competitive or 3. the culture is bit socialism. The environment should be more secure that The Turtle or The Frog.

If you choose The Turtle, the option 2, you will find life engaging and vibrating. You will feel that you fight hard to justify your pay rise. It is true that over the time, you’ll be richer than the Hare but this career might burn you out. More often than not, the higher growth of your pay will come with the higher risk of your career. The career paths (or companies) with this option will probably have higher turnover rate.

If you choose The Frog, the option 3, you will find that life is unexpected and full of surprises. However, you might have to wait for far too long for a good surprise. The work of this options is often project-based or it is dependent on few big deals. You have to work hard to get to that “leap”. The leap will be rewarding. The problem is whether you can endure the period of time before the leap or not.

…

Jobs, careers, or companies are unlikely to be 100% turtle, or hare, or frog. Moreover, the pattern of the pay does not always reflects the culture, the environment, or the people there. However, it is essential that you take a look at the money now (or no money!) and look at the future as well. We should be able to detect the pattern of the money we will get in the future.

Job change is sometimes inevitable and I believe that as long as your passion and strength are there, you can always change job, for the better. Isn’t it better to start high (Hare) and wait for a job change to higher growth job (Turtle) and the job change will often give you a leap, big or small.

All in all, keep your options open and look further to different jobs. Detect your income pattern and plan for your future.

“There is nothing worse than a guy who has made some money along the way opining that money shouldn’t matter to people who are picking a job. So I won’t do that. In fact, I’ll tell you that of course money matters - it matters a lot” Jack Welch

“I have been asked literally thousands of questions. But most of them come down to this: What does it take to win?”

From the front cover, although a bit overstated, “No other management book will ever be needed.” - Warren E. Buffet, is not too far off the truth.

“Winning” by  Jack Welch, arguably the CEO of the 20th century, with Suzy Welch, the former editor of Haverd Business Review. Jack Welch turned G.E., General Electric, into one of the most competitive organisations in the world and also the most prestigious “talent” machine in the corporate world. Winning is a management book loaded with everything, you name it, leadership, HR, culture, budgeting, strategy, mission, etc.

Contents

Underneath It All:

1. Mission and Values

2. Candor

3. Differentiation

4. Voice and Dignity

Your Company

5. Leadership

6. Hiring

7. People Management

8. Parting Ways

9. Change

10. Crisis Management

Your Competition

11. Strategy

12. Budgeting

13. Organic Growth

14. Mergers and Acquisitions

15. Six Sigma

Your Career

16. The Right Job

17. Getting Promoted

18. Hard Spots

19. Work-Life Balance

Tying Up Loose Ends

20. Here, There, and Everywhere

…

Let’s compare the book the the ideal business book that’s easy to understand, distinct, practical, credible, insightful, and provides great reading experience.

Ease of Understanding: 8/10: The book is straightforward and spot on. On each topic, you’ll quickly say “Yes!” or “No!”. You also do not have to think too much because 90% of the times is about G.E. The only drawback is the structure of the book that different chapters are separated; they are not perfectly tied together. It is just a minor drawback.

Distinction: 7/10: It is just another management book on leadership, HR, strategy, etc. It just happens to be one of the best!

Practicality: 8/10: All of us are not going to turn our companies into G.E. However, the book is practical. You would not be thinking “How will I do this?.” On the other hand, you might think “Will I have the gut to do it?.” All the instructions in the book are very simple for, example; “…strategy is actually very straighforward. You pick a general direction and implement like hell.” He then wrote about the simple five slides needed in strategy making.

Credibility: 10/10: The book gets full mark on “credibility” and I see no reason to take any mark off. If you are playing golf, you’d better listen to Tiger Woods. Reading the words from arguably the CEO of the century is a sure bet. Success of G.E. is not a myth.

Insight: 6/10: Unfortunately, this book is not “deep” enough. Jack and Suzy Welch covered many topics (probably every basic topic on management). They are straight to the point with very little information and basically no research on any topic. However, who we are to ask for “supporting data” from Jack Welch!

Reading Experience: 9/10: Reading the book is like being in the room with Jack Welch and he keeps yelling “Do this! Trust me! Stop that! Stupid! Nonsense!” Reading the book is exciting when Jack Welch tells us blunt but bold techniques on how to make the company win. But if you “hate” Jack Welch, or Suzy Welch, or G.E., or all of them. The reading experience will not exceed 1/10!

Overall: 8.0/10: Winning by Jack Welch with Suzy Welch deserves a place in your bookshelf. It is a no-nonsense management book with practical ways to improve your companies. It is easy to understand and is written by one of the best CEOs in modern history. However, if you dislike this former CEO or his company, skip this book fast. It can be the book that you hate most. Otherwise, read it and follow the winning path.

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?

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.

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)