Zane Safrit

Interview with Dr. Hal Gregersen, Co-Author of The Innovator's DNA - Pt. 2

 Dr. Hal Gregersen co-author of The Innovator's DNA - Mastering the 5 Skills of Disruptive Innovators was a guest on my radio show recently. You can listen here.

You can read the first part of our interview here.

The Innovator's DNA - Mastering the 5 Skills of Disruptive Innovators was the result of an 8-year study to uncover the origins of innovative—and often disruptive— business ideas. They interviewed nearly a hundred inventors of revolutionary products and services, as well as founders and CEOs of game-changing companies built on innovative business ideas. In the process they identified five discovery skills that distinguish innovative entrepreneurs and executives from ordinary managers:

• Associating
• Questioning
• Observing
• Networking
• Experimenting

Bottomline discovery? Being an innovator depends as much on our behavior as our mind. Change our behavior...change our skills as innovators. I loved this book!

I’m stuck here on the point that we need to generate better and better questions. Where in our educational system, our schools and on-the-job training is that skill developed?

Ah! Great question!

In most places, it doesn’t. That trend, that experience for most of us, started as soon as we went to school, who knows how many years ago.

We know that 4 and 5 year olds love to ask questions. They have thousands of questions they love to ask. Why this, why not that, what about this? They are constantly questioning the world.

When we go to school those questions get shut down. And a brake gets pulled on that’s like an emergency brake that gets pulled on a car. They just stop. Educational researchers have tracked when we go into school and start getting evaluated for what we’re doing in school then we care more about the answers the teachers have and the teachers care less about the questions we might have. Then we go to school, then we go to work after we’ve gone to school for who knows how many years and workplaces don’t foster active questioning.

Let me back that up to a company like Amazon where Jeff Bezos is a questioner. And they systematically train and teach and reinforce throughout the organization to ask why and why-not questions. Here’s how you do it, here’s when you do it, here’s why we need to do it; please ask questions. They simply expect that of their people.

But even if my company doesn’t systematically support me being a better questioner, I can still do it myself. What we’ve discovered is it is a simple question. First of all, innovator’s are always thinking of problems or opportunities they are figuring out a solution to. Where I would start out if I wanted to define a question, define a problem, that matters to us. Could be personal, could be professional. All of us have a problem we don’t have a solution to. Then take the next 4 weeks, take 5 minutes a day and buy a book to be your question journal. And every day, right down nothing but questions about your problem.

And I promise you in a week or two you’ll notice the questions are changing. And at some point you’ll notice a very provocative question that will change a person’s perspective on the problem and lead them to a solution they never would have thought otherwise.

That’s so excellent. I like the approach. I’m just envisioning it for some challenges I face now. Just beginning to baby-step your way to finding a solution.

Can I add just another piece? I bet you have sat in meetings like I have where we’re wrestling with a really tough issue. And we’ve been talking about it, 8 of us sitting in a room, going nowhere, hitting the wall. We can’t seem to get the right solution.

When that moment hits it’s time to step back and say:

“Time for questions. We understand the problem. We understand it as best we can.”

What we do with executive teams in these situations is we start question-storming. So it’s a version of brain-storming but it’s all questions. So, as a team you write down one after the other all the questions you can possibly imagine about the problem.

Demand at least 50 questions. It’s gonna be frustrating at first. But, push to get at least 50 questions. What we find is that people are generating new questions about a problem they care about they really can generate questions that can take them to a new place.

Another great example. Thanks so much.

Of the 5 behaviors which is the one you see as weakest among business executives?

Now, that’s a great question! Again.

I would say Associational Thinking. You know when we act differently by observing the world, posing provocative questions, networking for ideas and experimenting...all of that stuff is foundational for the final piece which is Associational Thinking - Connecting the Unconnected. You know it’s putting together things and ideas that we normally wouldn’t put together.

This is where when you get an idea like the original iTunes or iPod which was essentially connecting the unconnected: What if we put music into a store on the internet with iTunes. What if we connected many hard-drives with MP3 music and a computer with the things, we connectedthe unonnected.

That’s how these things happen. We put together things in a novel, new way.

Well, guess what? For 80% of adults, a great researcher at Harvard Medical School, her name is Shelley Carson, she basically has looked at adults doing associational thinking. What she found was 65-80% of adults find associational thinking exhausting. It’s tiring. It wears them out.

Watch people’s faces when you tell them:

“We’re going to do a brainstorming session”

That’s essentially an attempt to think associationally, to connect the unconnected. A lot of people’s eyes roll.

“Do I have to do that?”

By the time we become adults we just get exhausted trying to do this. it’s not that we don’t know, well we do know how, it’s just we have lost the capacity. As adults we just don’t do it very much. And so, when we’re asked to think creatively it’s just exhausting.

What they found in the study was that if people practice associational thinking enough then they become competent at it and confident in their ability to do it. What was once exhausting is now energizing.

“Got a brainstorming session? Pick me. That would be fun. I’d love to do it.”

They would enjoy it because they would be competent at it. There are things we can do as adults to actively build better associational thinking skills.

We have a lot of managers and entrepreneurs and people in startup businesses who listen to this show. They’re looking for solutions for their business and to create a sustainable business model. What are some of those exercises they can do now to begin to strengthen those associational thinking muscles?

A lot of it at the beginning stage is literally forcing associations.

A colleague of mine, a guy named John Hunt, has written an interesting book called The Art of the Idea. He’s the World Creatve Director for TBWA, one of the greatest advertising companies in the world. When they’re working with companies they do a fascinating thing. They drag a big box of hats and T-shirts from some of the most innovative companies in the world.

So, let’s say we’re working with Coca-Cola, one of the most innovative companies in the world and we’re trying to make them even more innovative. Well, we drag a box of hats and shirts in the room. And they shirts and hats in the box are from Apple and Virgin and Google and Pixar. And what we do is we’re talking about a problem. And what do we do to look at it differently and create some new associations? They literally ask someone to put on the Pixar hat and the Pixar t-shirt and look at the problem through Pixar eyes.

• How would they look at it?

• What would their viewpoint on it be?

• How would they fix this?

And by literally putting ourselves into this company and connecting the unconnected, I may be running a boring company, make shingles for roofs of houses. By looking at it from Pixar’s perspective I might generate a new idea.

But it’s essentially forcing myself to create new associations we wouldn’t otherwise. It might be as simple as opening a book and picking the 4th word on a page and what does my problem have to do with that?

I’m looking at a book right now. I look at the first page and the 4th word I come to. And the 4th word is virtual. What does my problem have to do with ‘virtual’. Well, take a few minutes and think of some potential associations.

I have an application on my iPhone called “Idea Generator”. And basically, you shake the iPhone and you get three random words that come up that you could potentially connect to your problem and see it differently.

So, there’s some fun ways to do this. It doesn’t have to be boring.

I think that besides being fun, it’s also an easy way to stretch that muscle, do it in a cost-effective and time-sensitive manner and do it without people getting bored or burned out from learning this new skill especially as we get older.

Again, it’s being able to collect experiences that make us different. We talked about associational thinking. The same thing could be said for Networking for New Ideas. One of the things people do for this is they talk to people very different from them in order to get new ideas.

And we know from research most people pick friends and co-workers who talk, think and believe like we do. That’s why we like them. They’re like us.

But when it comes to getting new ideas they are the worst people. We have to find the opposite. Somebody who’s a different gender; somebody from a different industry; some body from a different country of origin; somebody from a different political persuasion. If I’m 40 I talk to somebody whos 30. If I’m 30 I talk to somebody who’s 70. It’s getting new perspectives and new ideas.

Now. This is not an expensive thing to do. It might be lunch twice a month with somebody I never go to lunch with. Instead of going to lunch with the same people from the same floor I’m on, pick somebody from a different floor. I’m a programmer? They’re a marketer. Go to lunch with them. Go across to the building next door. I’m in direct sales and we’re selling consumer products and across the way is someone selling industrial motors. You know, whatever. Go to lunch with them and see how they look at the world.

These are not expensive things to do. But they help us generate more interesting ideas.

You remind me of a favorite quote of mine. It keeps coming up. It’s from Ronald Reagan back from whenever he spoke at the Berlin Wall. He said:

Tear down those walls.

I keep thinking about all those walls around those functional silos in a company.

What you’re recommending is a doable step to infiltrate through these walls and make and associate with people of different thinking.

Absolutely. And when I hear about these walls in companies...if I were to walk into those worlds where the walls are big and strong in the organization, I would bet next year’s salary for me....we have a self-assessment where people can find where they stand on these skills, I would bet within these walls of these territorial companies, these discovery skills don’t get used very much at all.

Part of what that reflects is when we build these walls in these companies, we forget why we are even there. We forget who are the customers we are really serving. What are their issues. What matters deeply to them.

I’ll never forget working with a company with the senior managers and they were talking about big issues and all of a sudden the founder of the company said

“Wait a minute. Where is the voice of the customer in this conversation? How many of you have connected and taken the time to really understand the consumer’s viewpoint on this thing? How do they look at the problem? We’re just missing the boat completely.

And so, I think a lot of those highly-silo’d-deep-thick-wall type of companies have a lot of people sitting in their offices doing their job and focusing on their little area. And what they also have is a lot of people who aren’t engaging these innovators in these skills. And they’re stuck within their space.

Thank you. Another great answer.

You write in your book about T-Shaped People and how they increase our stock of ideas? Who are these t-shaped people and how do they help us create a lot of these new ideas?

T-shaped people have, they have like a T, the line going up and down which is a deep vertical expertise in some particular area. It might be technology; it might be marketing or finance or whatever. It is a deep, deep, understanding of that domain.

Steve Jobs has a deep understanding of consumer electronics. He goes deep there. He also has breadth. That’s not the only world he lives in. you go back to the different parts of Steve Jobs’ life and you know, living in an ashram in India for awhile taught him the value of silence. Meditation in a very silent space. When they were trying to figure out the Apple II he said:

“ I am completely annoyed with those fans on these original early PCs that sounded like they were engines on airplanes. “

And it’s like:

“How could we do this differently? “

And his experience in the ashram led him to question this experience and why do we have these noisy fans that ultimately led him to a guy named Holtz who found a completely different way of generating power. they could create a computer that didn’t need a fan.

The same thing could be said for his excursion into calligraphy. Who could have guessed that calligraphy and sitting in on calligraphy classes would have led to a WYSIWYG font on a computer screen.

I could keep going. But it’s having clear depth and expertise as an expert. But it’s getting out of that by literally expanding our horizon at the top of that t by exposing ourselves to a lot of different experiences.

Who are Tata and Nano? What role did observational skills and a vuja de experience play with their success?

Ratan Tata is an Indian by birth and had lived in India for quite some time. He’d probably seen millions if not billions of families in his lifetime sitting on and riding one of these small scooters. If you have a chance to get outside the US, it’s really common to see an entire family sitting on a small motor-scooter.

He was sitting in his car on the way to work. Monsoon season is driving the rain down on the car. All of a sudden he finally saw for the first time those people. We’ve all heard of Deja Vu when we think we’ve seen something from the past. But this is Vuja De where we see something for the first time.
That’s what happened to Ratan Tata. He finally saw what we happening with these people.

• Is their lot in life to ride on these motor-scooters in the rain.

• Isn’t there something better we can do?

And he went back to his company that built different kinds of vehicles. And he said:

“We’ve got to find a solution. Let’s create some kind of vehicle that’s inexpensive enough that they can ride in a car instead of a motorcycle and be soaked.”

He scoured the world. Got all kinds of technologies together. Incredible, thousands of innovations to make the Tata Nano car which is a little over $2000 US.

Once they built it they had a problem: now they had to sell it. A low-price point car like that doesn’t get sold through typical dealerships. Most of the scooters for families riding on scooters get sold in little villages. A trucks pulls up. They’ll pull the scooters out. People will buy them and they’ll ride off.

That works fine for a scooter in India. Tata sent people out to get some astute observations about how scooters are sold and how could they sell Nanos. And what they realized was they would have to setup an entire on-site infrastructure to make it work.

When you sell a car you gotta have a driver’s license; most people didn’t. When you sell a car you gotta have insurance different from motorcycles; most people didn’t have car insurance. When you sell a car, you gotta have service and support....

So, essentially they set up a licensing operation, an insuring operation and a teach-you-to drive-the-car operation so that people could drop into that village and get what they needed in terms of skills and certifications and drive away with the car.

It was an incredible experience not only in generating that car but using their observational skills in understanding how could we sell it to people in such a way that they could use it and walk away with it.

You can read part three of our interview.

Twitter Forgets

"We know people are following brands like crazy," says Adam Bain, Twitter's president of global revenue.via www.usatoday.com

Really? Huh.

People don't follow brands. People follow people. And until...now, Twitter was the place to connect with people.

Besides, those who want to follow brands can like those brands on Facebook. And Facebook and those brands can follow, some might say, consume their followers' online activities around the web. ( Consume/follow/track...You know it by its other name cyber-stalking.... 'cause it's done in stealth. Facebook and its partners don't share the details.)

We come to Twitter to connect with each other, what are we doing, what are we reading, what interests us...in real-time. Because we offer it to each other.

Facebook recently announced it would create a design that forces ads onto our page. At all times. And now Twitter's original new idea is to do the same by posting these ads at the top of Twitter feeds.

Sadly, Twitter seems to have forgotten their own legacy. 4-5 years is a long time in social media, I guess. But Twitter's original purpose was to provide a platform where we could connect, in real-time with each other about what really matters to us. Real life. Our life. Brands weren't part of that conversation.

Twitter, don't forget that.

Interview with Dr. Hal Gregersen, Co-Author of The Innovator's DNA - Pt. 1

Dr. Hal Gregersen co-author of The Innovator's DNA - Mastering the 5 Skills of Disruptive Innovators was a guest on my radio show recently. You can listen here.

Dr. Gregersen is Professor of Leadership at INSEAD where he pursues his vocation of executive teaching, coaching, consulting, and research. Before joining INSEAD, Dr. Gregersen taught at the London Business School, the Tuck School at Dartmouth, Helsinki School of Economics, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy—Tufts University, Brigham Young, Thunderbird, and the Turku School of Economics as a Fulbright Fellow. Dr. Gregersen has co-authored several books on leading innovation and change, such as It Starts With One: Changing Individuals Changes Organizations (Wharton, 2008), Global Explorers: The Next Generation of Leaders (Routledge, 1998).

The Innovator's DNA - Mastering the 5 Skills of Disruptive Innovators was the result of an 8-year study to uncover the origins of innovative—and often disruptive— business ideas. They interviewed nearly a hundred inventors of revolutionary products and services, as well as founders and CEOs of game-changing companies built on innovative business ideas. In the process they identified five discovery skills that distinguish innovative entrepreneurs and executives from ordinary managers:

• Associating
• Questioning
• Observing
• Networking
• Experimenting

Bottomline discovery? Being an innovator depends as much on our behavior as our mind. Change our behavior...change our skills as innovators. I loved this book!

Dr. Gregersen, thank you for being on the show and writing a great book.

Delighted to be with you! Thank you!

Now. Who are you, and your two co-authors, speaking to in this book? Describe the reader you had in mind.

The readers we had in mind were everyone at some point.

But, we’re starting at the top with senior management of companies or countries. And basically trying to influence how they behave themselves and how they can change the way they act in order to change what their companies, or countries, are doing.

My friend, Erika Andersen, coined a great phrase in her book Being Strategic. The phrase was reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future. And she asks:

What is your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future?

What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future with writing this book?

At a very fundamental level the innovation skills we write about in The Innovator’s DNA ...everyone o us had as kids. The fundamental hope is that we all get those skills re-ignited at work, at home, in our communities in order to generate better ideas.

At a very fundamental level it is thinking differently by acting differently and at the end making a real difference.

I loved that point you brought up that everyone of us has those skills lively in us as a child. Somewhere along the way we lost them. Somewhere in our conversation I hope we get into a discussion of where we lost those skills. But, I thought it was a fabulous point you brought up.

What metrics will you use to mark your progress towards that hoped-for future?

The hoped-for future, again it comes back to what we were just talking about. We were all once 4-year olds. And we knew how to do these innovation skills and get great ideas. And the oped-for progress or the metrics would be is that a higher proportion of not only Americans but anyone anywhere in the world would restart or re-ignite the use of these skills in order to generate ideas that make a difference.

In our work we notice people making a difference in their workplace. We notice these skills making a difference even in government setting, in community settings and even in home settings.

The metric is really at a personal level that a higher percentage of people will be generating new ideas for ways and products that are simply better than they have been in the past.

I loved your introduction. You had me hooked when you wrote:

A critical insight from our research is that one's ability to generate innovative ideas is not merely a function of the mind, but also a function of behaviors. ...if we change our behaviors, we can improve our creative impact.

At what point in your research did you have that insight? Describe that moment.

It became really clear, for me at least, when we started to interview these incredibly successful innovators, many of whom have disrupted entire industries in the work they do; it became clear as we heard the patterns in their stories.

Part of those patterns were not only the skills they engaged in by questioning and observing and networking for new ideas and thinking differently. But part of it is where those skills came from. And also how they essentially dealth those skills in other people.

Jeff Bezos is a perfect example. He essentially, as he was growing up, he was very committed to generating new ideas. And that partly came from having grandparents who were equally committed to helping Jeff Bezos learn how to solve new problems. So, in the summertime he would go out to their farm in Texas and essentially work with them on the farm. When the tractors broke down, they would fix them. When the animals had problems they would figure out the problem.

They didn’t call mechanics; they didn’t call veterinarians. They tried this; they tried that and after 15 different experiments they finally got something to work.

And what they realized with this or what Jeff Bezos realized was:

“If I experiment enough I can create a solution that will solve a problem.”

What crystallized for me when I heard Jeff Bezos story was it’s the same story I heard from Diane Green who founded VMWare whose parents let her sail across the Chesapeake Bay in a small dinghy exploring the world and experiencing new things.

I heard the same thing with Marc Benioff and parents and grandparents who took him to computer stores to pursue what he was doing. Flew him to work to help him understand how castles look and work so he could build computer programs around castles in the programs.

All of these people, one of the incredible insights, was they had adults around them who fostered these skills and kept them alive as they became adults. Then when they ended up getting these incredible business ideas but the really good ones got the great ideas themselves but these innovators were capable and consistent about teaching other people how to do these same things and how to create similar effects within their companies. They literally imprinted their own innovation skills deeply within their organizations that it’s made this really positive financial difference for their companies.

I love how you outline the relationships of developing, learning these skills but being able to pass on those skills to the next generation of people they can mentor.

What was the response within your group when you began to share that insight? Complete aha acceptance or....some initial skepticism?

I think some of the initial skepticism comes sometimes from wondering can you really teach these skills to someone especially adults. Sometimes people hear the stories I just told about Jeff Bezos and other folks who had the luxury of parents and grandparents who actually paid attention to their innovation skills and fostered and nurtured them as they were growing up. Some folks don’t have that luxury. They become adults and they go to work. And for the most part by the time we get through our education we have lost those skills. And we go to work and most companies we don’t engage those innovation skills and frankly we don’t care about these.

Now I’ll never forget talking about these skills recently in Cape Town, Africa. And after giving the speech, a young man in his early thirties came up and said:

“You know. I didn’t have parents who supported me in being innovative. I didn’t have grandparents who did that or neighbors, either. But about 5 years ago my boss for the first time  who asked me for my ideas. And paid attention. And listened. And cared about them. And helped me nurture them into something that made a difference for the company. "

And over the next several years this man became confident enough in his own innovation that he started an incredible new business called GetAGreatBoss.com. Here’s the fundamentals of his business. He essentially linked want-ads to get a job to 360 degree assessment of great bosses.

For instance if I wanted to get a great job in Poughkeepsie I’d look on the want-ads and I could check Get a great and look at what kind of boss I am looking for.

It’s a fantastic service. And it came from one boss who paid attention to one employee’s ideas and helped him get good at delivering results with those new ideas.

It’s such a simple idea. And it shifts the whole dynamics of that conversation and puts a lot of tools and decision-making resources into the hands of the employee.

A lot of managers may shiver at the thought of those they manage becoming more disruptive. What are they missing?

[chuckle] Those same manners are going to shiver even more because they weren’t able to foster disruptive ideas within their company.

You know, at some point every business starts to decline. The way they do business starts to decline. take for example Dell Computer. It had an incredible run for 20 years. And then it started to go downhill and decline.

So, one of the challenges is that if I shiver at the idea of my employees having disruptive ideas...at some point somebody else who’s note afraid of those disruptive ideas will start a business and build an entirely new way of doing business in our industry. And they will come back into our space and essentially knock us off the top.

That’s the story of disruptive innovation.

For those managers who are afraid of it you might as well get used to it. Either they need to learn today how to create an organization that can at least in part of that company supports and encourages and tries to create incredibly disruptive ideas. Because if they company doesn’t do that somebody else will for them.

You know as you’re talking and I’m scribbling and listening and I’m connecting with what you said about the young fellow in Cape Town...you said the motivator for him to unleash his disruptive talents was he had a manager who finally a little caring, a willingness to invest a little time to listen to his ideas and encourage him to pursue them.

And taking your point a little further, it seems managers who are afraid of disruptive ideas may be afraid of showing that they care or have the skills to show that they are willing to listen to an employee. but nature being what it is people will find someone who cares.

Am I going to far out on this limb?

To me, you’re raising a fascinating angle. These skills, these 5 skills, they’re basically the following in terms of the actions we do:

• Ask provocative questions
• Observe the world like anthropologists
• Network for ideas
• Talk to people who are very different from us
• Experiment and prototype and try new things.

If I move my lens back from innovation and instead focus on just connecting well with my employees...guess what? Those same skills are equally relevant.

If I’ve got a boss who asks me interesting questions and listens to my provocative questions, if I’ve got a boss taking the time to observe me like an anthropologist and understand who I am, what my hopes and dreams are, what my skills are, what I do well, what I could do better at, how do I get better...provides all the stuff I need to become excellent at what I do. If they’re willing to experiment and let me try a different way of doing something and build the skill. Because anything we’re trying to do better by definition we don’t know what we’re doing and me make mistakes; so we have to learn.

Oddly enough these innovation skills are the same skills that great leaders use to develop their people’s capabilities. And when that happens employees check into work instead of checkout when they come to work in the morning.

You list the 5 skills, the 5 behaviors, and we’ll go over them quickly here:

• Associating
• Listening
• Questioning
• Networking
• Experimenting

Was there any priority in their listing? Is one more important than all the others?

They are all critical in their own way. And there is a bit of a sequencing thing that happens with them. And if I was to put my finger on one of these that seems to matter the most, it’s like a beginning point, it’s starting with a great question.

The challenge is that when we’re stuck with a problem and we’re stuck with a solution that is working today and you’re trying to figure out a new solution for tomorrow, the problem is we haven’t asked the right question to change the game and move it to a new place.

And so when companies 15 years ago were running enterprise software systems for big businesses and medium businesses and a few smaller enterprises, when those companies like CISCO and SAP and so-on would sell these massively expensive packages and install them in these organizations and they weren’t thinking of another solution.

Well, you get Marc Benioff who worked at CISCO for 25 years and was trying to figure out better solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises and he steps away from that situation. He takes a year’s sabbatical; he travels the world; he talks to different people. And ultimately he asks a different question. The question is:

“ Why do we have to deliver these enterprise software ticket, big price, packages.”

And then he puts a magical association together:

“Why can’t enterprise software be like Amazon.com?”

He changes the question.

“What if we put enterprise software on the web like Amazon sells books on the web.”

And that then led to Salesforce.com, which when it started 10 years ago was laughed out of the industry. People never believed he could put enterprise software in the cloud, in cloud computing.

But, Benioff changed the question. Then he did his homework. He made some critical observations. He talked to a lot of different people. Tried some experiments and prototypes. refined the idea with people around him. And ultimately his associational thought, or connecting the unconnected enterprise software on the web instead of in a server in a company was a breakthrough idea. That put him and his company, SalesForce.com, in our listing as the most innovative company in the world.

So, I would start with the question. And to do that I have to be generating better and better questions.

Part Two of our conversation will be published here on Saturday, July 30.

Part Three will be published on Tuesday, August 2.

Interview with Dr. Hal Gregersen, Co-Author of The Innovator's DNA

Dr. Hal Gregersen is Professor of Leadership at INSEAD where he pursues his vocation of executive teaching, coaching, consulting, and research. Before joining INSEAD, Dr. Gregersen taught at the London Business School, the Tuck School at Dartmouth, Helsinki School of Economics, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy—Tufts University, Brigham Young, Thunderbird, and the Turku School of Economics as a Fulbright Fellow. Dr. Gregersen has co-authored several books on leading innovation and change, such as It Starts With One: Changing Individuals Changes Organizations (Wharton, 2008), Global Explorers: The Next Generation of Leaders (Routledge, 1998).

Dr. Gregersen joins the show tomorrow to discuss his latest book he co-authored:  The Innovator's DNA - Mastering the 5 Skills of Disruptive Innovators.

This book was the result of an eight-year collaborative study. Its 3 co-authors sought to uncover the origins of innovative—and often disruptive— business ideas. They interviewed nearly a hundred inventors of revolutionary products and services, as well as founders and CEOs of game-changing companies built on innovative business ideas. In the process they identified five discovery skills that distinguish innovative entrepreneurs and executives from ordinary managers:

• Associating
• Questioning
• Observing
• Networking
• Experimenting

What they found gives hope for us all. Being an innovator depends as much on our behavior as our mind. Change our behavior...change our skills as innovators. I loved this book!

We will talk about these behaviors, how to encourage and strengthen them, what is possible from their embrace and mastery, and why managers and executives should encourage those in their organization to develop these 5 discovery skills, be disruptive innovators and ....grow your business.

9:30 AM, Central. Wednesday, July 27.

LISTENING OPTIONS

Live

• Listen in streaming mode at this link

• Call 646-915-9212 during the show's live hour, from 9:30 AM Central to 10:30 AM Central.

Later

• Listen in streaming mode at this link

President Obama: 3 Tips to Take Care of the People Who Matter the Most

Sybil Stershic is the author of the excellent book Taking Care of the People Who Matter Most: A Guide to Employee-Customer Care.

Sybil is President of Quality Service Marketing, a marketing & organizational advisor with more than 30 years experience helping service providers strengthen relationships with customers and employees. She’s a leading authority on engaging employees through internal marketing, helping build Human Resources connect with Marketing for bottom-line success. She is a frequent conference and business speaker on how managers can maintain a 'high touch' approach in today's 'high tech' workplace.

She was a guest earlier this year on my radio show. You can listen to our conversation here.

Employee engagement, or its lack, is a national problem. And employee engagement, or its lack, has been a national problem for a long time. So, it made sense then to ask Sybil, a solutions-provider for companies seeking solutions to increase employee engagement, this question:

We’ve reached the point in the show called Imagination Moment. Let’s imagine for a moment waiting for you right now is an email from President Obama, sent from his Blackberry. Personal. And he says:

Sybil, he gets all personal because he’s the president and he can, Sybil, our economy reflects our failure to take care of the people that matter the most. I want you to come to the Oval Office and present your three ideas to reverse this trend, nationally.

What would you say to him in that meeting?

And Sybil answered:

Before I respond, I gotta tell you for all the interviews I’ve done I’ve never had a question like this. Wow. How do you put it together?

“What an honor, Mr. President. I suggest that business and industry associations and academia partner with each other.

Collect examples of effective customer care and employee care. They have members and they can collect this information. Get everybody to collect these examples.

The 2nd thing this partnership can do is create awareness...among their members about the positive relationship between engagement and the bottomline.

The 3rd thing and the most important is provide education and training on how to engage their employees and customers."

The lack of management training is cut the first thing in a recession. They are not soft at all. It’s crystal clear they make a bottomline impact.

1. Gather the examples.
2. Make people aware of their importance.
3. Provide training in their skills.

See? Answers like this are what make Sybil a much sought-after solutions provider for companies who recognize two things:

1. the power of engaged employees;

2. they can raise their level of employee engagement;

3. they're willing to ask for help.

Want More from Sybil Stershic?

• Read her blog

• Follow her on Twitter

• Buy her book!

**********

Some may say this is inappropriate.

This is politics! And you never discuss politics at Thanksgiving Dinners, backyard barbecues and on a business radio show.

I disagree.

As long as only politicians can discuss solutions for our country then those solutions and their interested audiences will remain off-limits, political, for those who make this brand, our country, run. And only politicians, these days that's only career politicians, can discuss those ideas and spoon-feed solutions to the public.

I see our times as an all hands-on-deck opportunity and not a crisis. That opportunity is for each of us to lend our hands, our conversations, our ideas to find and share solutions. In our absence those challenges are left to ideologues, vested interests often hidden and politicians of all stripes and partisan persuasion.

We...are the only ones with valid vested interests. And now we have, with social media and the urgency of today, the opportunity to reclaim our place at this table and discuss our ideas to solve our challenges. At the very least, we can listen to a discussion until we are ready to speak up.

Jodi Glickman, What Are You Reading?

Jodi Glickman was a guest on my radio show recently. Jodie is a former Peace Corps volunteer (Southern Chile) turned investment banker (Goldman Sachs) turned communication expert. She received her MBA from the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University, where she was a Park Leadership Fellow and received a full-ride scholarship to business school. Before turning to the world of finance, Jodi was a policy analyst at the U.S. EPA and did brief stints at the White House and Governor’s Office of Illinois. She has a B.S. in Social Policy, Magna Cum Laude, from Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy.

Jodi has trained some of the best and brightest young minds in business—her clients include Harvard Business School, Wharton, NYU Stern School of Business, Kellogg School of Management, BofA/Merrill, Citigroup, Baird & Co., among others.

Now she offers her expertise in her latest book: Great On the Job: What to Say, How to Say it. The Secrets of Getting Ahead.

Wow. Clearly-written, very-focused, usable and doable advice and tips, and it addresses the biggest challenge and opportunity for us all: Communication.

You can listen to our conversation here.

As you can tell from her book, her career and from listening to our conversation...Jodi is a leader.

So, I asked her:

You're a leader. Leaders are readers. Jim Rohn says that. I just quote him. What are you reading?

And for her answer, well, she knew what to say and how to say it....

For the first time, reading for real, it’s been so nice.

I’m reading a great book by Mika Brzezinski called Knowing Your Value. It's about women in the workplace, we are undervalued and underpaid. She’s the co-host of Morning Joe in MSNBC.

On a fun note, I ‘m reading a great book called The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit. It’s about Egypt in the 1950’s.

I just finished another book called The Commoner, it’s about 1940’s Japan.

I don’t know why I’m in this WW2 phase. But both of those are excellent books.

Want More from Jodi Glickman?

• Read her blog

• Follow her on Twitter

• Buy her book!

6 Killer Aps for The West...built on one operating system

There are 6 ‘killer apps’ that set the West apart from the rest: competition, the scientific revolution, property rights, modern medicine, the consumer society, the work ethic. — Niall Ferguson, author of The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World and the six-part BBC series of the same name, free to watch online in its entirety. via curiositycounts.com

Huh. Yeah. I can see it.

Somewhere in this mix, this list of six, is the idea of 'freedom'. It's an idea not an ap.  I'm not going to get all constitutional conservative on you or wave the don't tread on me flag. Nor am I going all University of Chicago/Milton Friedman on you either.

But I think the foundation for these six killer aps, their operating system if you will, is freedom. Freedom with a heaping dose of responsibility and accountability.

I'm good with that at this point.

Review: A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowd-Sourcing

A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing is a guide, a reference book, a how-to, manual. A small orchestra of global expert practitioners of open innovation and crowd-sourcing wrote beautiful music together to create this guide. As such, it is one of the few books on any topic that walks its title's talk or sings its title's tune.

Their work was orchestrated by Paul Sloane. He's listed as Editor. But in this open innovation, crowd-sourcing, endeavor the title Editor is misleading. Paul was an orchestra conductor. And the players in this orchestra were among the best of the best. In creating this book, they created a world-class symphony performance of innovation consultants.

Each chapter was in effect a performance solo from one of these leading experts. There are chapters on:

• What is Open Innovation - Julien Keith Loren, CEO of InnOh
• Open Innovation Trends - Jeffrey Phillips, VP of Sales and Marketing for OVO, Innovate on Purpose
• What is Crowd Sourcing? - Renee Hopkins, senior editor of Texas Enterprise and media relations manager at the McCombs School of Business
• Leadership Issues and Challenges,
  
• The Power...,
• How LG Electronics is Tranforming Itself - Christopher J. Ryu, Senior Advisor & Project Manager in the Collaborate & Innovate Team
  LG Electronics
• Bridging Open Innovation Gaps - Andrea  and Dana Myer, Partners in Working Knowledge
• Soft Skills for Open Innovation - Gail Martino, global Open Innovation R&D Manager at Unilever and John Bartolone, Director of Open Innovation for Unilever 's Skin & Hair Care division
• and more.

I have to stop right now. Otherwise I will resume reading this book and not finish this review (which really does not do justice to the book and the possibilities it opens to its readers).

What is the music from this symphony of innovation star players? Their music is the music of possibilities. It is complete with a guide and resources and examples for you to begin at least humming along. And you can start today.

Think about it.

• What would be possible if you could draw on a global community of experts whose expertise are ones you cannot justify or afford on a permanent basis.

• What would be possible if you could draw on just a few of these experts on an as-needed basis?

• What would be possible if you could have one or two more ideas....each day to pursue? And pursue it with experts who are passionate, skilled and talented?

• Or what if you these experts could help you eliminate these ideas faster so you could focus on the ones that will sustain your business?

• What if you could find inexpensive or even free resources to reach out to the global community of experts?

• What if you could contribute your ideas?

• What if you could openly discuss your challenges with a very targeted, specific group, of people who share your challenges...in business or life or relationships or health or sports or community building...?

See? That's the key first step in innovation. Asking ...what if?

But it's only the first step. And these authors nudge and push, pull and inspire, empower and enable the reader to take the next step and the next and the next.

Innovation is a journey. And on any journey of discovery you still need a guide. And these leading experts in innovation have come together to create a guide that will keep us all smiling, moving forward and humming our own song of progress.

So, buy it, read it and start moving.

G+: Ain't Stealin' Our Stuff

via i54.tinypic.com

I like this. I like its sentiment.

I'm on G+. I'm not sure really what I'm doing with it yet. But...still, I like it, liked the first steps of adding people to circles. The design is clean, simple. 

I like Twitter. But I've noticed a bit of a fade lately with Twitter. Here's a couple of anecdotes:

Spammers. Lots of spammers. Sure, I can block them. But...when it is so obvious they are a spammer (0 tweets, 1500 followers...) why are they allowed?

Brands. Yawn. Brands use twitter now to do what brands do: promote themselves. Yawn, really. I can find that experience anywhere I look, online or not.

And sure, some brands use Twitter to connect with their audience in a personal and meaningful way. Some. That is quantified with the term...few.

Bots. Just automatically retweeting stuff based on...whatever, Keywords or phrases or whatever? Who cares? No one cares. Wanna know why? Because bots aren't people. Bots aren't real (they're really annoying...). People care about people and not bots or brands.

I disagree with Robert Scoble when he says Google + has made Twitter boring. No, it's not boring. Yet. Cluttered, yes. He does share some very good points. And,  if Twitter doesn't realize that some users are gaming the experience, that their behaviors are easily identified, then...the party that has been Twitter will get very boring.

This graphic came from Heather E. Coleman in her Innovative Leadership Daily.

3 Places Where New Jobs Have Disappeared

It is not a mystery why jobs are disappear in our economy. To know where they disappear, all we have to do is follow the money. Like all good criminal investigators.

Except in this mystery, the story is told every day in our major media outlets.

Dividends and Stock Buybacks

Stock buybacks and dividend increases for companies in the S&P 500 Index have certainly been on the mend since the end of the financial crisis in 2009. For the first quarter, and on a year over year basis, dividends are 13.7% higher, buybacks are 62.7% higher and buybacks plus dividends are higher by 39.6%. via www.theinvestingstock.com

Corporate Cash Balances

Companies had a record $ 1.91 trillion in cash and other liquid assets at the end of the first quarter, the report also showed, up from $ 1.86 trillion in the prior three months. Six consecutive quarters of profit growth helped fuel a 96 percent jump in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index from its recession-low in March 2009 through March 2011.via www.dailyforexstock.com

Huge Compensation for CEOs

U.S. workers averaged $46,742 in 2010, up 2.6% from 2009. A June GovernanceMetrics analysis found average compensation among S&P 500 CEOs rose to $12 million in 2010, up 18% from 2009 — and that's not counting the potential multimillion-dollar value of stock or stock options, which are granted at set prices and provide holders profits as stock values rise. via www.usatoday.com

Here's a little math help for the former residential real estate analysts...the average CEO's compensation, not counting the potential multimillion-dollar value of stock or stock options, which are granted at set prices and provide holders profits as stock values rise...of $12 million is roughly 300 times higher than the average salary of those who work at the companies led by these same CEOs.

Back in the day, back before CDOs and swaps, real estate analysts had a rule of thumb. A home's purchase price could not exceed roughly 3 times the total household income of the family applying for a loan to purchase that house. Said another way, a family could not afford a home that was 3 times greater than that total household income for that family.

A fair equivalence of that rule is that companies whose CEOs compensation, not counting the potential multimillion-dollar value of stock or stock options, which are granted at set prices and provide holders profits as stock values rise...is, on average, 300+ times greater than the salary of their employees....is not affordable for that company in the long term.

So, for those looking for and  promising a plan for jobs... Look no further. Just follow the money. You see, jobs cost money. Here are three places where the money is. And the rest of the places, the rest of our economy, is where the jobs have disappeared.

 

President Obama: 3 Steps to Instill Strong Communication Skills in Students

Doug Mitchell, author, successful entrepreneur, geo-arbitrageur and author of the just-published The Multi Thread Marketer: How to Hire One or Better Yet Be One was guest on my radio show recently. You can listen here.

Doug currently is VP of Marketing at BirdDogJobs, an innovative 14 year old company who recently received venture funding to rebrand, relaunch, and dominate.

Doug spoke well and spoke passionately on the power of communication and collaboration in the workplace. And he spoke on the need for better communication skills being developed in our students now. I asked him:

We've reached the imagination moment in our show. Let's imagine President Obama has been listening. And he's calling you right after the show.

Doug, he says on your answering machine. Look, thank you for profiling Mr. Siroker and his success in my 2008 campaign. Another area we might have overlap is our understanding the need for stronger communication skills among our students. You write that your two favorite courses were typing and debating. They developed your strong communication skills that have served you well.

What if you and wife came out to the WH and met with Michelle and I. We'd want to hear your 3 ways we can instill the same strong communication skills in our students today.

What would be those 3 things?

And Doug offered 3 great ideas:

First of all I’d probably have to have it over cheeseburgers. I think the President likes cheeseburgers. So, we’d have some common ground there.

I probably have to say I’d take a little different approach on this one.

Let’s figure out a plan how to get out of the way and let states innovate 100% in education. Forgetting partisan stuff I think we have a big education problem and the feds aren’t going to solve it. That’s number one.

Number two and number three, I’d say just repeat number one. Here’s why. Nobody knows what really is happening at the state level and they can’t move quick enough for me here in the state of Iowa. If there’s anything I’d magically transform I’d take it down to the current Governor here in Iowa and say

Make your administration about education. Get a group of people who are doing, executing. Not thinking and writing academically and trying to make decisions for everybody. And then let’s run with it.

At the end of the day our kids are so much smarter than we give them credit for, right? My kids could do 100x more than the classes are teaching him. It’s not the classroom’s fault. It’s the system. But I think it’s our responsibility as parents and concerned citizens to create greatness in our economy and children.

We have to dismantle our system and learn how to create and think. So, if I had to craft a list of three, I’d probably have to say:

Here’s my book. I think these are the skills that people need to compete today. I don’t even touch on the things like innovation and creativity. There are hundreds of books on that.

I’d say let’s share the cheeseburger. And get out of the way of the state and see what we can do.

Want More from Doug Mitchell?

Follow him on Twitter at MitchGroup

Read his blog

Buy his book!

Read transcripts from our conversation here.

**********

Some may say this is inappropriate.

This is politics! And you never discuss politics at Thanksgiving Dinners, backyard barbecues and on a business radio show.

I disagree. As long as only politicians can discuss solutions for our country then those solutions and their interested audiences will remain off-limits, political, for those who make this brand, our country, run. And only politicians, these days that's only career politicians, can discuss those ideas and spoon-feed solutions to the public.

I see our times as an all hands-on-deck opportunity and not a crisis. That opportunity is for each of us to lend our hands, our conversations, our ideas to find and share solutions. In our absence those challenges are left to ideologues, vested interests and politicians of all stripes and partisan persuasion.

We...are the only ones with vested interests. And now we have, with social media and the urgency of today, the opportunity to reclaim our place at this table and discuss our ideas to solve our challenges. At the very least, we can listen to a discussion until we are ready to speak up.

Richard Troxell, What Are You Reading?

Richard R. Troxell is President of House the Homeless, an educational and advocacy group that was founded in Austin, TX in 1989. Their mission is education and advocacy surrounding all issues of homelessness.

Richard has been striving to end homelessness since he first saw it come into existence as a mortgage foreclosure preventionist in Philadelphia in the 1980s. His work has been recognized by HUD, Texas Governor Ann Richards, the Pennsylvania Senate and the United Nations. He has also received the Five Who Care Award and the JC Penny Golden Rule Award, among countless others. Having designed a paradigm change for homeless service delivery, he secured $100,000 from former Texas Governor George Bush for the jobs component.

He’s the author of Looking up at the Bottomline: The Struggle for the Living Wage, an intense personal, political, and educational guide through the last 30 years of homelessness in America.

Richard's an obvious leader. Obviously, I had to ask him:

Leaders are readers. Jim Rohn says that. I just quote him. You're an inspiring leader. What are you reading, serious or for fun?

And he generously answered:

I just put down John Grisham's Ford County: Stories. This was interesting to me. It was about Ford County in Mississippi where he immerses us in the workings of a small town. This was a series of short stories. That was fun.

I’m looking at Short Story Masterpieces with Faulkner and James Joyce, the classics. I’m having fun getting through there.

I’ve been looking at Doris Kearns Goodwin. She wrote the Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. It's a fascinating read. He had some really stiff competition as he headed towards his election. So, he made him his cabinet. He’d rather have them working for him rather than against him. They were the smartest people he knew. That’s call The Team of Rivals.

I’m working on American Lion which is about Andrew Jackson in the White House.

You mix these things with the daily newspaper and you see it going on.

**********

That reading list, that behavior, is common among leaders. They jump around a lot. The books on their reading list reflect a diverse set of interests and curious minds, minds always seeking to learn and learn from other experts in other areas outside their area of expertise.

That is how you create a culture of learning as Gary Harpst talked about in an earlier show. That culture of learning is critical if you want to continually learn new tools and resources and skills and master more talents. That is how you discover new solutions for the new challenges that your growth will bring.

That is also how you develop a culture of leaders. Learners are leaders. Reading is one way you learn. Reading what leaders read is one way you accelerate that learning, accelerate that leading for yourself and your company.

Notes from Rajeev Peshawaria, Author of Too Many Bosses; Too Few Leaders

Rajeev Peshawaria was a guest on my radio show recently. You can listen here.

Rajeev Peshawaria is currently CEO of the ICLIF Leadership & Governance Centre based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, which provides executive education and advisory services to organizations in Asia, Middle East and Africa.

Prior to joining ICLIF in April 2010, Rajeev worked at AMEX, HSBC, Goldman Sachs, Coca-Cola, and Morgan Stanley. He was Chief Learning Officer and Head of Talent Management at Morgan Stanley, where he founded Morgan Stanley University, a global earning and Chief Learning Officer of The Coca-Cola Company, where he created and headed Coca-Cola University.

We wanted to talk about his new book: Too Many Bosses, Too Few Leaders: The Three Essential Principles You Need to Become an Extraordinary Leader.

My reading list today includes fewer and fewer books from leadership experts. But, I made an exception for Mr. Peshawaria based on his journey of discovery with some of the world's leading organizations. And how well and with such clarity he shares the steps of this journey in his book. And by doing so, he points his readers in that same direction of discovery that will lead them towards being an exceptional leader.

An exceptional leader is, he writes:

one who not only runs the company but creates a cadre of supporters who understand the company’s goals and missions and work to embody them every day.

Leadership, can neither be learned in a classroom, nor automatically acquired by accepting a big title or position of authority. Leadership needs to be discovered, and there is no shortcut to the discovery process.

The book outlines the discovery process itself, offering steps for creating a leader who can tap into unlimited emotional energy, align the energy of a powerful few and galvanize the energy of the masses to create sustainable success.

Rajeev. Thank you for being on our show!

Thank you for having me, Zane.

Your book was published this year. What's been the response so far?

Well, the response has been humbling. I was a bit worried initially. This is not your typical self-help book that prescribes 3-step formulas or a personality test or best-practice role plays to become a better leader.

If anything, I start by saying no one can teach leadership. And that leadership is a hard, lonely, unpopular pursuit with no guarantees of success.

I’m actually glad to find that people appreciated the truth. The most surprising thing has been the number of people who have told me:

“ I wanted my kids to read this. “

I had never imagined this book would be for teen-agers or 20-somethings as well.

That’s excellent! That must be so inspiring when somebody says I enjoyed your book and I’m going to follow some of its practices. But I want my children to read it.

When did you notice that response?

Almost immediately when the book came out. I started getting emails or people I met telling me. And initially I thought it was a one-off. But, it’s been consistent for about a month and a half now.

Writing a book like this is a labor of love. As you write in your book to sustain that energy you have to be very clear on your purpose. What was your purpose for writing this book?

I wanted to tell the truth about leadership. Leadership training, globally, is about a $60-90 billion industry. And, yet, as you said earlier you can hardly find a good leader anywhere.

And this is because most of the advice is prescriptive and formulaic. It is based on copying and practicing the behavior of famous leaders. Well, last I checked the dictionary copying somebody else’s behavior is an act of followership not leadership. My purpose was honoring that truth.

But honestly to discover one’s own leadership agenda. That is if somebody wants to do it anyway.

I love that quote:

Copying somebody else’s behavior is an act of followership not leadership.

I like that a lot.

How will you grade yourself on your progress? What metrics or milestones will mark your progress towards that purpose?

You know, that’s a great question, Zane.

What happens at the end of my programs or seminars I do all the time is 4 or 5 people will walk up to me in a very emotional state and tell me how moved they were and that they will commit to finding their own purpose and values. Or commit to implementing the system to energize others.

To me that is the ultimate reward.

I cannot actually track the progress of every leader. But if it makes them think and makes them want to become a better leader and live a more meaningful life that is the reward.

And I get this reward every day. I feel very fortunate.

Who is your intended reader? Describe this reader for us? Where's he work? What's he do? What's his day like?

Originally I thought the reader would be a typical manager in a large corporation. Or a division head o a CEO. But, now I’m learning that it appeals to CEOs and students alike.

While it is categorized as a business book, I believe it is a book about life. So, anyone who wants to make their life a little bit more meaningful can read it.

You know, as I always do, whenever I have a great guest giving great answers I tend to start scribbling. I love this point you made that it is a book about life. And I love that point that you make that we can be leaders in your own life.

Exactly right.

You mention in your book's introduction that US companies spend $134 billion per year in employee training and 25 - 30% or $35- $40 billion in leadership training. What's missing from all that leadership training?

Like I said earlier, most of that advice is formulaic and based on copycat role plays.

I don’t profess, as you yourself said earlier, to close that gap. All I suggest are three principles which if taken seriously will make a huge difference. Reading the book will not solve anything. It is what the reader does with the ideas after reading that determines the success.

So, firstly, I offer 6 questions to clarify one’s purpose and values which together become the leader’s long lasting source of emotional energy. And given the number of obstacles and resistance that every leader faces they are going to need that energy. You know money or threat only gives you temporary energy. You’re gong to need real solid energy and that only comes from clarity of purpose and values.

Next I discuss the notion that leaders must share leadership at the top and treat their direct reports as co-leaders. That’s a hard thing for people to do because you are used to being in control all the time. Now, in today’s complex world you have to enlist co-leaders. Share leadership.

And, finally, the book provides a framework for how do you energize the rest of your organization. You may have tens of thousands of people working in your organization together with your senior leadership team, together with your co-leaders. How do you energize, what do you focus on?

I lay out a little system there called Brains-Bones-Nerves which basically refers to the strategy, the organizational structure and the culture of an organization.

How should leaders shape that in order to energize everybody. That’s something that people have to think about really hard. What does it mean for them.

And then choose the parts they like and implement it. It’s very practical and will make people think.

Great answer! Thank you.

Let’s go over those 3 principles and six questions.

I liked that your first principle to become an extraordinary leader was Energize the Self. How does energizing the self lead to leader marked by passion and constant renewal?

Seems sorta obvious. But clearly we’re not doing it.

Well, when you feel deeply about the inadequacies of current reality AND decide to do something about, both those things have to be together, feeling deeply about the inadequacies of current reality AND deciding to do something about it...that’s when you found your purpose and values.

For me, passion comes from purpose. And it is normal to feel demoralized or deflated at times. This is the time you need renewal. And the best way to renew one’s self is to close your eyes and imagine that better future you want to create with your better purpose and values.

I'm a big sports fan. One of the common behaviors of great players is they emulate the earlier stars, they try to copy their moves.

Why does that, copying someone else's behavior, not work in becoming a better leader?

Well, because the work of leadership is to create a better future. You first have to imagine it and then you have to create a better future.

We call someone a leader when they create something that does not yet exist. Or when she significantly improves something that already exists. And this comes from original thinking, not copying.

By copying behavior you can become an expert at something. But you cannot become a leader.

You’ve got some great comments here!

You list 6 questions that help us gain clarity on our personal sources of energy. Unfortunately we don't have time to go over all 6. But what's the most important one?

If I had to choose just one I would choose:

“What values will guide your behavior?”

To find your purpose, you first need to know your values. Values determine emotions. And emotions decide what you feel, how you feel, about the current inadequacies of current reality. if you feel deeply moved by them you will decide to do something about them.

So, the first thing is what makes you feel the way you feel in the first place. And that is the values question.

So, I would call that the most important one.

Which of those 6 are most overlooked by bosses or aspiring leaders? What's the impact?

I think the purpose question is the most often overlooked. When I was researching this book I asked many big bosses to tell me what their purpose was fully expecting to get a well-crafted answer.

But, you know, the answer I got quite often was:

“Hmm. That’s a deep question. I haven’t thought about that. Nobody’s asked me that before.”

I don’t ask them the followup question. But I want to ask them:

“ You lead 20,000 and you’re waiting for somebody to ask you? ”

I think it’s the purpose question that is most overlooked.

The impact? Well, without clarity of purpose you simply cannot lead.

Now a common cliche' about leadership is that it's lonely at the top. Your 2nd principle seems to expose that cliche' as groundless for extraordinary leaders. What is that 2nd principle?

You’re right. The best leaders reject the notion of it being lonely at the top. They enlist co-leaders and willingly share both authority and responsibility. It’s based on the fact that they realize they need those co-leaders to create the better future that they have in mind.

In today’s complex world they cannot do it alone. And they’re not alone. They treat their direct reports as their co-leaders.

What is the RED that all of us care about?

Ok. RED is a simple neumonic.

Basically, everyone goes to work with a set of expectations that must be met in order for them to be fully energized. Those three expectations are:

• What is my Role?

• What is my work environment like?

• What are the prospects of my future development?

So, RED is Role, Environment, Development.

My expectations in each bucket may be different from yours, all of us have expectations of some kind in all of these three buckets in order for us tobe fully energized.

So, the trick for managers is to find out what they are for their subordinates. And do their best job possible to align those individual preferences with the work at hand. So, RED gives you a very quick way to have a conversation if you are trying to understand what motivates someone.

Given the low percentage of employees who could be categorized as actively engaged in their work....which one of those three do companies fail to deliver?

Zane, it’s hard for me to generalize which one.

However, here’s the billion-dollar mistake that I see all the time. Most companies teach their managers to do what it takes to motivate their staff. So, the onus is on the manager.

“What should I do to motivate my people?”

Well, the fact is no matter how much you try you cannot motivate another person. Each person already comes pre-motivated. So, instead of asking “What can I do to motivate my staff?” I think one should ask:

" What is my staff already motivated by and how best can I utilize that pre-existing motivation?”

And that’s what RED enables you to do.

Your answer reminded me of a situation where I came up with what I thought was a series of motivations for everybody in my company. I thought it was brilliant. And when I presented it to them it generated a resounding ‘yawn’., not in actuality. But I could tell they were unimpressed.

Fortunately we had a culture where everybody could speak up. And they came back with a counter offer. I was glad they did and also embarrassed that I was so presumptuous. From that point I always asked first.

That’s absolutely the right approach. We put too much on ourselves as managers in saying “What can I do?”

And then we do a one-size fits all approach. Friday pizzas or Friday casuals. That kind of stuff which is good but not great.

You talk about BBN in your book. And googling that term I find a subsidiary of Raytheon, a baltic business news network and a religious radio network. What do you mean by BBN and why should our listeners care?

You know, in its simplest terms BBN is a prioritization framework. If your life is like any overworked executive it is something like this. you wake up at 6 in the morning wanting to go to the gym but you’re too tired. You say:

“Oh well, I’ll go in the evening.”

Your first meeting starts at breakfast and you get there at 7:30 for that breakfast meeting. Then you’re in meetings all day long. And then you have a dinner meeting. And by the time you get into your car or your train to go home and switch on your blackberry you have 200 emails waiting for you.

This what everybody complains about today.

BBN, which stands for Brains Bones and Nerves, is what every executive should be worrying about. The Brain in the BBN stands for the strategy and vision of your organization. Have you clarified it in such a way that everyone in your organization can understand and accept it. The Bone is the organizational architecture. Do you have the right people, the right processes, the right organizational structure. The Nerves is the organizational culture. The culture being what your people do when no one is looking.

I generally try to tell people who work in large organizations:

“Spend most of your time trying to shape these pillars of sustainable growth and delegate or de-prioritize everything else and you’ll be fine. “

It’s clarity of these three things that harness the energy of thousands towards a shared purpose.

Your friend and mentor, Steve Kerr, described a classic management phenomenon. You wrote about it in your book. What's that phenomenon?

Steve describes what he calls the oldest equation in management science. It’s called QxA = E. Q stands for Quality; A stands for Acceptance; E stands for Effectiveness.

He says for anything to be highly effective both quality and acceptance must be very important.

The fact is anything multiplied by 0 = 0. I know this is very complex math. It must be because most bosses don’t do enough about the A. They focus mostly on improving the quality of the argument or the quality of the project and not worrying about whether people are accepting it or not. They forget the complex math and that anything multiplied by zero is zero. And thereby end up with very low or no effectiveness.

So, the idea being that QxA = E if you have A is the smaller number then work on the A and not the Q and you’ll get higher effectiveness.

Why is that common oversight among managers to overlook the A?

Because most of us are A-Type personalities that try to convince the world with math and reasoning and logic behind our proposal.

Whether we’re engineers or doctors, we say:

“The math is very clear why is there any doubt about it?”

We habitually don’t focus on the A which calls for a higher amount of emotional intelligence.

I was just about ready to ask a stupid question because I think you have already answered it. It sounds like managers aren’t trained to elicit that higher emotional intelligence.

Um. Maybe so. Emotional intelligence in my view is more a matter of self-reflection. Simple things like putting your self in the other person’s shoe. Things like that.

Here’s the thing. Most human beings overestimate their communication skills. You mention Steve Kerr. He has another rule that he calls the 80/30 Rule. And he says:

80% of the people think they’re in the top 30% when it comes to communication skills. Simple math will tell you only 30% can be in the top 30%.”

Just because I understand my own proposal fully, I make the mistake of the assumption that you understand it too. And I never stop to pause and think what would be your reaction to that. If we could do that we would do very well on the A.

Most busy people don’t do that.

In your research for this book did you find a company that consistently over a long period of time address this phenomenon and formula with success?

I have seen quite a few. Starbucks is one that comes to mind. The Motley Fool is another company I wrote about. A lot of acceptance is placed on the Acceptance and how people are feeling. The Acumen Fund...out in NY is another one.

What were their key principles that helped the achieve this sustained success? What were some of the habits which they integrated into their operations to achieve a high degree of Acceptance.

You know, I don’t take a lot of credit for it because they have been doing it for a long time. They in their own way, shape and form all three followed the principles in my book.

The leader at the top is clear about his or her purpose.

They willingly share leadership with their co-leaders and don’t take it all upon themselves.

And, finally, together with their management they proactively shape the Brains-Bones-Nerves of their companies almost on a daily basis, rather than making that somebody else’s responsibility.

The world changes so fast on a daily basis, faster than ever before, and you have to focus on those three things.

I think it’s the personal involvement of the top leaders that creates that culture of high acceptance.

I want to encourage everyone listening to go out and buy your book. You do an outstanding job profiling those companies and how they practice these principles. I found your case studies fascinating and incredibly useful.

One of my favorite chapters was Chapter 7: Common Threads, Individual Paths. Tell us about that chapter? Which individual path was your favorite?

I love any leader who practices authentic leadership in the way I describe in the book.

However, if I were to pick one from chapter 7 I would pick Allen Mulally from Ford. It is a great example of what great authentic leadership can achieve. Leader after leader tried to fix the problems at Ford and here comes somebody who’s not even an insider in the automotive industry and puts in place what he believes are simple truths about good leadership. Look what he’s doing with that company.

Another of my favorite corporate leaders are Kiran Bedi who was the first woman in India to become a police officer in the 1970’s. What she achieved in a male-dominated and highly corrupt society, and continues to do, is highly remarkable. I’m not sure if you read the part where she managed to do what she did to an over-populated disease and violence infected prison in New Delhi and turned it into a place of healing and renewal. I’ve yet to see a more powerful story of leadership.

And in both cases, whether Allan Mulally or Kiran Bedi, they derived their energy from their own laser-like clarity from their own values and purpose.

You know, in reading your book I did read her example, and my favorite would be hers as well. It’s tough enough to go about it but then when you’re going about it in such a structured environment, in a prison environment, was incredibly inspiring.

You know, it is. And because of her work they changed a 100-year old act and brought about reform. And many countries around the world followed her vision of prison reform.

They won the Asian equivalent for the Nobel Peace Prize for her work.

It’s truly remarkable.

What is she doing now?

Well, she’s currently leading a movement in India called India Against Corruption. And you can read in the papers all that is going on and try to weed out corruption and come up with a new anti-corruption bill...she’s right at the forefront of that along with a few others, non-political leaders.

Speaking of an individual path who is Jacqueline Novogoratz?

Jacqueline Novogratz is the founder of the Acumen Fund. She created the new way to address the challenges of extreme poverty.

Typically if you address extreme poverty around the world you address it with charity and aid. But, charity and aid, according to Jacqueline make individuals dependent and governments corrupt.

So, instead of giving away money in the form of charity and aid what Acumen does is invest in Patient Capital or companies that work to solve the world’s problems of extreme poverty. Besides giving them funds for a long time at below market rates, hence Patient Capital, Acumen also helps by way of management consulting and skills training.

Hers is an absolutely amazing story as well.

She’s another example of a leader who lives all three examples of the book.

In your book you describe her story with so much passion and clarity. It made me consider how I could follow in her steps.

Yes. That’s right. She is like that.

You know when I walked into her room to interview her I had to go past about 50 people to get to her office in the corner and I could actually feel the energy of all those people. They were truly energized by the work they were doing. And it had nothing to do with what they were getting paid. I suspect that their salaries were not extraordinary. But the belief and the passion they had for the work was all over the office. It was very very powerful.

When you were visiting with her did you have the chance to meet with others with her in her organization?

Yes I did get to talk to other people! The passion they had to describe what they are doing was absolutely amazing.

If you talk to soldiers, if you talk to nurses, if you talk to rehabilitation workers you find their pay is pretty ordinary. Maybe the prestige is also ordinary. But the kind of dedication these people bring to their work! You wish the people that work with you had any kind of that dedication to their work.

And that’s the kind of dedication that I saw at the Acumen Fund with all the young people there at work.

You’ve had a chance with your career and preparing this book to work with and interview and study and research some outstanding leaders and organizations. What does Jacqueline do that is unique to her that continues to inspire and motivate in her work?

She, first of all she walks the talk. She’s very clear about her purpose and her values. She doesn’t lecture about those; she walks the talk. Her actions speak louder than her words.

Secondly, she regularly and proactively shapes those three pillars, the Brains-Bones-Nerves of the organization. In fact, she tells me that:

“I tend to call myself the Chief Culture Officer of Acumen. Because now that I have a good team in place they know how to raise money, to fund the projects. I have to maintain the energy and culture of the place. “

Those are the kinds of things she does.

We've reached the imagination moment in our show. Let's imagine that our President Obama is calling you after this call.

Rajeev, he says, could you come to the WH or at least join a secure conference call with myself and Vice-President Joe Biden. We seem to be drowning here in DC from too many bosses and too few leaders. What are three things our country can do to create a culture of extraordinary leaders?

What would you tell him?

Well, I think when he ran for President a couple of years ago he painted the picture of a better future. And that’s what won him the presidency.

Most of us related to his purpose and his values and voted for him. So, to continue to use the terminology from the book:

“We like the brain of his campaign and the promises he made.”

However, I think we’ve fallen just a little bit in the Bones and Nerve section. To take just one example, and this is just my view, many people liked his opposition to the Iraq War and that’s why he appealed to a lot of people. Now a lot of the same people are questioning his support for the struggle in Libya.

So, my humble advice would be to lead by example and stick to your values. It is impossible to say what are the three things the country can do to create a culture of leadership. In many ways America already has a culture of leadership. So, if Obama and Biden can re-articulate a vision and lead with values and keep the courage to do the right thing I think they will inspire a whole generation to do the same thing.

Let history judge their actions. For now, they should lead with values rather than their position of power.

Those would be my two cents.

Readers are leaders. That's a quote from Jim Rohn which I quote with every quest. You're a leader. What are you reading these days?

I just finished reading a great book called New York, The Novel by Edward Rutherford. I call it ‘unputdownable’. This work of narrative fiction takes the reader through a captivating journey of New York City. I simply loved it. Somebody, like me, who didn’t grow up in the United States this was very informative in a very very captivating way.

I recommend it for anyone who likes narrative fiction and is interested in New York history.

And, I just started reading V.S. Naipul’s A Bend in the River. It’s set in Africa. I don’t have an opinion on it as I just began reading it.

If you were asking about leadership books, I’m a big fan of Bill George’s writing on leadership and Steve Kerr’s work on rewards.

So, those would be some of the one’s I would highlight.

One of my biggest challenges I faced was finding each page of your book had enough for us to talk about for this hour. Thank you for that challenge and headache trying to condense your book into a one-hour conversation.

I’m an avid reader anyway. I read a lot of books for this show. I tend to not read very many leadership books; I find few as exemplary as yours.

Thank you for writing this book and hopefully inspiring many.

Thank you for those kind words. Having been Chief Learning Officer for a number of years and been a user of all the advice out there, my attempt was to tell the truth. I hope some people get some benefit out of it.

Let’s say we talk a year from now and I hope we do. What would you see as your biggest accomplishment from this book?

Well, again, as I said earlier for me I have very humble goals here. If just a handful of people decide to become better leaders, i.e., they decide to make it their life’s work to bring out the best in others then I will have achieved my life’s work. Doesn’t have to be many, just a handful, and for me that would be reward enough.

So far I am very pleased with how things are going.

For me, the company where I work Leadership and Governance Center in Malaysia, we provide our programs all over Asia, Middle-East and Africa. Our participants are liking what they see. So, hopefully, a few will be convinced.

And how long has your consulting firm been practicing?

This program is only a few months old because the book is just out. The firm has been around for 8 years.

And who is your typical client?

Our typical clients are large corporations all over the Asia, middle-east and Africa. They work for multinational corporations, a lot of them are American corporations, Asian corporations. A lot are from government and non-profit organizations. Anybody who manages people in an organization is typically a client.

Have you found their challenges are quantitatively different than the leadership challenges here in the US?

You know I just wrote a blog on that subject on Harvard Business Review. Leading Across Borders? Don’t Change a Thing.

And I argue in that, contrary to conventional belief, good leadership looks exactly the same no matter where you are in the world and no matter what the context and industry may be. I know that sounds strange because there are so many cultural differences between here and Asia.

But, you know, at the core what people really expect from their leaders or bosses or managers, or whatever you want to call them, is to be fully energized is exactly the same. What we want from our bosses is innately human:

• We want to be treated with respect.

• We want to be able to relate to our leader’s purpose and values.

• We want people to care for us in such a way that it brings out our best.

• And that doesn’t change whether you are in Tokyo, Japan or Washington, D.C.

Excellent. Where can we find you on the web and where can we find this blog post?

To read a sample chapter or two of my book, you can go to my website. It’s a bit of a difficult name to remember. But I’ll spell it out for you. It’s www.rajeevpeshawaria.com.

You can also get information on my company website which is easier to remember. www.ICLIF.org.

Are you Twitter?

I am on Twitter at RajeevPeshawaria.

I’m also on LinkedIn

That’s usually how people stay in touch with me.

Leave us with one parting thought on becoming an extraordinary leader.

I would say stop focusing on copycat role plays in the name of best practice. Stop looking for those one size fits all approaches in terms of becoming a great leader. because there is no such thing.

Start asking those tough questions about your purpose and your values. Once you get some answers for that you will get the energy you needed to move forward in a decisive way.

And you know what? Not everybody needs to be a leader. Being a great leader is not easy and there’s no guarantee of success. It’s like parenting. All those sleepless nights and those terrible twos and the hard work to make a child into a responsible citizen. All of that is worth it if indeed you want to be a parent. Then the reward is in the journey itself. If you became an accidental parent, it’s terrible both for the parent and the child. Same goes for the leader and leadership.

To be very clear: Do you even want to be a leader? A lot of people don’t want to be and they can achieve a lot of greatness through individual endeavor.

I would say start by asking those questions.

You’ve been a great guest. I have thoroughly enjoyed the conversation. Your clarity and conciseness in your answers have been a delight. I do appreciate you taking the time.

I hope we talk next year when you probably come out with another book.

I would just encourage our listeners to follow and connect with you on:

• Twitter

• LinkedIn

• Your website

• Get your book

• Your company’s website

Why we don't have a debt deal

via today.yougov.com

Hat tip to Stowe Boyd at UnderPaid Genius

Update: I thought about this graphic some more.  What it shows is so simple, so clear.

It's what it doesn't show that is important, too. See it? See what's missing? 

• A leader.

There is no leader. A leader unites. A leader leads. A leader communicates a vision, a value, a direction, a goal and plan to get there. Everyone falls in line. We align with that vision, those values, that direction, that goal and plan and our roles in that journey.

Then again, leadership is deserved, isn't it? We get the leaders we deserve.

Deserve and then desire. Deserve better leaders, get better leaders.

"A searing passion to make a positive, tangible difference"

A searing passion to make a positive, tangible difference. The impertinence to question the status quo. A heaping bucketful of empathy. A sweep of vision that makes "five year plans" look like a daily laundry list. The resilience to weather the mightiest of storms. Deep creativity — the ability to do what your rivals think is not just impractical, but impossible.

You probably wouldn't ask your customers to believe that Freddy Krueger was really a ballerina just because you asked him to wear a tutu and do a pirouette. Here's my guess: in the 21st century, if you're playing by the rules of industrial-age business and trying to dress them up with the saccharine sugar-coating of marketing as usual, that's pretty much exactly the bet you're making.

via blogs.hbr.org

Questions?

Infographic: President Obama's Twitter Town Hall

via www.webinknow.com

Thanks, David.

Two Kinds of Companies: Which One Are You?

"There are two kinds of companies — those that work to raise prices and those that work to lower them." Jeff Bezos, founder & ceo of Amazon

Mucho kudos to Todd Sattersten for the quote.via www.brandautopsy.com

Which company are you?

Mucho kudos to Brand Autopsy and Todd Sattersten.

President Obama: 3 Steps for A More Favorable Environment for Entrepreneurs

Scott Gerber is a syndicated columnist (WSJ, Entrepreneur, Inc.), a serial entrepreneur, author of Never Get a "Real" Job: How to Dump Your Boss, Build a Business and Not Go Broke, and founder of the Young Entrepreneur Council, an advocacy group made up of many of the world’s top young entrepreneurs that works to help young people overcome the devastating effects of youth unemployment and underemployment by teaching them how to build businesses.

He recently shared an hour of his time on my radio show. We talked about his book  (great book!) and his thoughts on entrepreneurs and startups and the challenges faced for their success. You can listen here.

I asked him, during the show,  his thoughts on what steps could be taken to create a more favorable environment for entrepreneurs and startups. I asked him:

Imagination plays a big role with entrepreneurs. And we've reached the imagination moment in the show. President Obama's on line 2 for you now. He's leaving you a message inviting you to the White House. He wants your list of three things he can do right now to create a more favorable environment for entrepreneurs and startups and the jobs they create. What do you tell him?

And, as you'd expect, he offered a great answer:

I think number one is the ability to ramp up not just high growth entrepreneurship exercises but also small business exercises. You know, we talked a lot about building the next billion-dollar business which of course is going to have a tremendous effect if we can move the amount of billion-dollar enterprises in the US from where it is now to 3 to 4 times that....However, when you look at what is creating the most jobs is the top creator is in fact small businesses that hire 1 - 10 employees or 1 - 50 employees. So, we need to incentivize them more.

We need to stop bailing out big business and bailing out small business which unfortunately now is a big cliche, but it’s the truth.

The 2nd thing I’d say is we need to invest more time and resources into backing incubators and other startup accelerator programs. I think it’s time we put government dollars into real innovation and not just simply buzzwords like clean-tech. While clean-tech represents a massive opportunity, it can’t be the only thing just because it’s a hot word. I think you need to always be experimenting with many different pots and putting money into many different areas. I think that it’s time we figure out a way for government to support that level of entrepreneurship acceleration.

The last thing I would say is regardless of what’s going on right now in terms of budget cuts and obviously right now we’re facing deficits that are just insane... but, entrepreneurship education is truly something that I belive should not just be an afterthought. It can’t be just some one-liner in a speech. It has to be something that is real, something that is added to curriculum, something that the Department of Education is not only condoning but is bringing in top experts and figuring out how to replicate successful programs. We need to figure out how to teach people not just how to be employees but to rather teach them how to make a choice. On the college level we need to be sure that people are very much understanding that the paradigm shift we are seeing is here to stay and if we don’t educate properly we don’t begin to support people properly. Even on the kindergarten to grade 12 level we’re in for a long, long, haul that will not be pretty and will not make the US the greatest country in the world when it comes to innovation.

Want More from Scott Gerber?

Follow him on Twitter at AskGerber

Read the posts at Young Entrepreneur Council

Buy his book!

Read transcripts from our conversation here.

**********

Some may say this is inappropriate.

This is politics! And you never discuss politics at Thanksgiving Dinners, backyard barbecues and on a business radio show.

I disagree. As long as only politicians can discuss solutions for our country then those solutions and their interested audiences will remain off-limits, political, for those who make this brand, our country, run. And only politicians, these days that's only career politicians, can discuss those ideas and spoon-feed solutions to the public.

I see our times as an all hands-on-deck opportunity and not a crisis.That opportunity is for each of us to lend our hands, our conversations, our ideas to find and share solutions. In our absence those challenges are left to ideologues, vested interests and politicians of all stripes and partisan persuasion. We...are the only ones with vested interests. And now we have, with social media and the urgency of today, the opportunity to reclaim our place at this table and discuss our ideas to solve our challenges. At the very least, we can listen to a discussion until we are ready to speak up.

Matthew May! What Are You Reading?

Matthew May joined the show recently to talk about his excellent new book: The Shibumi Strategy: A Powerful Way to Create Meaningful Change.

You can listen to our conversation here. You can read full transcripts here.

Matt's a leader. It made sense to ask him:

You’re a leader. Leaders are readers. Jim Rohn said that. What are you reading for work or play?

And he generously answered:

I just finished reading a great book by Steven Shapiro, an innovation consultant. It’s called Personality Poker and it comes with a deck of cards.

Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson...by the way I review books on a weekly basis for Open Forum.

Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences, by Nancy Duarte. It’s about how you craft a story for presentation. Just a great book that everyone should read because all of us have to pitch an idea sometime.

I Live in the Future & Here's How It Works, by Nick Bilton, NY Times blogger.

Those are some of the books I’ve been reading that I get inspiration from.

**********

Leaders are readers.

That is how you create a culture of learning as Gary Harpst talked about in an earlier show. That culture of learning is critical if you want to continually learn new tools and resources and skills and master more talents. That is how you discover new solutions for the new challenges that your growth will bring. That is also how you develop a culture of leaders. Learners are leaders. Reading is one way you learn. Reading what leaders read is one way you accelerate that learning, accelerate that leading for yourself and your company.

Highlights from Talking with Oren Klaff - Author of Pitch Anything

Oren Klaff shared an hour of his day with me recently as a guest on my radio show. You can listen to our conversation at this link.

Oren pitches deals for a living. And judging from his success, he pitches them very well. As Director of Capital Markets for investment bank Intersection Capital, he is responsible for managing their capital raising platform with both direct capital raising and deal syndication. Oren oversees business and product development and is responsible for the firm’s flagship product, Velocity. He has been a principal at Geyser Holdings since 2006. During the previous five years, Oren supervised and assisted in the placement of over $400 million of investor capital.

He also has written one of the better books on pitching, selling, presenting I have read. Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Pitching, Presenting and Winning the Deal is the work of one who loves his work, has achieved outstanding results with his work, and desires to share how he works, how he achieves his success, with others.

Look at our economy. We need to be able Pitch Anything.

Oren. Thanks for being on the show. Thanks for writing a great book.

Yeah. I will take that appreciation seriously because that is a long, hard, road to get a piece of work like this done.

When did you start writing it?

Well, I mean, started writing early 2009. I mean coming out of the private equity business out of 2008-2009 basically our business was dead. So, you know you had a bunch of dealmakers sitting around with no deals to do.

And I spoke at a conference and some people came by and said:

“That material is about pitching. That material is fantastic.”

And they took it to McGraw-Hill who said:

“Hey. Would you write a book about it, the method that you use?”

And we said:

“No. We’re not interested in doing that.”

But then we didn’t have anything to do for 2 years. It’s like you’re the center of a football team and no one is playing center.

It was something that came about during the downturn and private equity was at the center of the downturn; we just didn’t have any work.

My larger point is, you know, if the downturn hadn’t of happened this method would never have come to light. We’re way too busy; we’re way too busy again. I mean, if you asked me to write a second book today it would not happen.

So, the only way this method could come to the market is because there was that space in the downturn where private equity guys could relax and do something more creative and fun.

Your book's cover has some very powerful testimonials. Which one was your favorite or had the most meaning?

I think, the first one from Joe Sullivan.

Joe Sullivan’s a guy who took Flextronics to a billion dollars. And then it was sold. And the new owners, the private equity guys, drove it into the ground. And Joe came back in and built the company back up to its original size.

That’s a guy who’s done it twice at the highest levels of Silicon Valley. So, for him to say something like that? It’s not trite. It’s not some friend I can call in a favor.

So, when Joe says “Fast, fun and immensely practical” he means it. This guy does not say anything without reason.

Going back to those testimonials they all appear to be from executives from the VC or equity investing group or have been funded from them. A casual browser might think it's only for them. But it's not is it? it's for anyone pitching an idea for someone's investment of previous capital whether it's financial, emotional, intellectual.

You know, that’s the interesting thing. When I turned the first chapter in to my agent and McGraw-Hill and the publishing industry everybody went nuts.

“Holy smoke. This is not a finance book. My sister can use this; she’s trying to get a job. My mom can use this; she’s trying to refinance her house.”

Everybody started sending around this first chapter. The Navy Seals called us when they read it. We went all the way from venture capital to Navy Seals to people’s moms.

And so, it is humanistic; it’s built around the experiences we had in finance. But this is something that everybody can use in their every day lives. That was very interesting to discover that.

When you were writing...describe the reader you had in mind in those 2 years where you know you had not a lot to do but you had to have a person in mind because it’s so personal and as you say humanistic.

So. The person I had in mind was the entrepreneur, the small business person, the dealmaker who is not so much in a corporate safety environment; someone who lives and dies by the sword.

It’s the difference between selling and pitching. The book is not called “Sell Anything”.

In fact, in venture capital we don’t get the chance to sell anything. Everyday we walk into a boardroom and stare at 3-4-5-6 guys who are looking abck at us with some sour faces and we have about 20 minutes to ...show them and get them compelled about the deal.

What’s the difference between selling and pitching? When we leave that room it’s a yes or no.

When you sell, you can build a relationship. If you sell paper, right? And the customer says:

“Ahhh. We’re not ready to order a couple of pallets this month. Call us in 6 months.”

You know, when you go int a bank for a $20 million equity loan or an investment they never say:

“We kinda like that. Why don’t you come back in 6 months...we’ll see what you have.”

It’s always do or die.

I wrote the book for people who go into these do or die situations where it’s binary. You either win the deal, get the job, convince the other person of your point of view or you don’t.

My friend, Erika Andersen, coined a great phrase in her book Being Strategic. The phrase is reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future. And the question is:

What is your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future.

What was yours? What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future with writing this book?

So, in the world we’re in, we have a fund. We go out and raise money for projects. We’ll put, let’s say it’s a $30 million project. We’ll put 2 in. And we’ll go out and raise the other money. So, we’re both investors and capital raisers on every deal.

We look at deals every day. For me, the art form of pitching deals has got to come up. To me, it’s embarrassing the way deals get pitched to us.

I just want the art form of being able to pitch a deal to generally rise up to the market.

I think people are, and no disrespect to the people intended, but people are still in the Anthony Robbins - Zig Ziglar - Tom Hopkins and you can still see those books. Those methods are really from the ’80’s and early ’90’s. And everyone is aware of them and they’re not effective today.

The art form of pitching has got to come up and improve.

Looking at our economy, I would have to agree.

Numbers and metrics are a key part of your day and are part of the analyst frame you describe in your book. What metrics will you use to measure your progress towards reaching that hoped-for future with this book?

So, I think that’s pretty easy. I would say, out of every day I help small companies. And every day I spend an hour or an hour and a half helping small companies because I believe in this material and it changes immediately how these guys approach the capital raising and pitching business.

So, out of every 10 guys I talk to, today I would say half of them come back to me and say, and I have at this point hundreds of these emails:

“Oren, this method changed how we approached our customers, our lenders and investors. Thank you.”

Now, if that rate continues and grows, so out of every 10 companies I talk to, 5 or 6 come back and say:

“This completely changed the way we approach our customer and investor facing business.”

That’s how I measure how I’m doing.

You write a lot in your book about the three parts of the brain, particularly the amygdala. Very clear, very concise.

But at the same time that description brought to my mind the scene from Abbott and Costello called Who's on First? Except here it's Who's running our show?

Which part of the brain is running the show for the audience of a pitch?

I’m going to try not to get technical here. I want to give a little background here. What I did was and I’m not a neuroscientist here, but because we had this incredibly powerful experiences and you’re walking in and pitching these deals for $100 million dollars, $200 million dollars, at the highest seats of power in Washington D.C. and Silicon Valley and LA and New York.

I went and sat down with a cognitive psychologist at UCSB, Nicholas Kristenfeld ...and I said:

“Hey. These are the experiences I’m having in the board room. Tell me what’s happening inside my head and inside the heads of the other people in the room.”

And he said:

“Look. Oren. The guy across from you, you think you’re talking to his brain. His brain is made up of 3 pieces.

" There’s the neo-cortex. And that’s what everybody thinks is the mind. The neocortex is the linguistic, smart, problem-solving, capable, thoughtful, mathematical part that gets you up in the morning and let’s yo make coffee and drive your car and go to work and interact with people and get home safe. That’s what the neocortext does. It’s incredible.

" But there’s other parts.

" The 2nd part is a little bit more fundamental. It’s the social part of the brain. And that figures out that the dad is the most important figure and that’s the CEO. I have to be nice to the manger above me. I have some ownership of the employees. They can tell them what to do. Understanding these very large social environments.

" And then below that piece is the crocodile brain. That is the part that keeps you alive. If your crocodile brain is injured, you can’t make fundamental decisions about safety."

So, the discovery we had was when you pitch, you give a pitch or you want to pitch something, that comes from the smart part of your brain. That’s the neocortex.

But, it’s not like an Excel file and they open it up in Excel. When you pitch from your neocortex, it goes straight to the other person’s crocodile brain. And the crocodile brand takes information in very, very, differently. It only cares about safety. It only thinks:

• Should I eat it?

• Should I mate with it?

• Should I kill it?

And that’s what you’re dealing with your message. It has to get past these very blunt filters.

And, beyond that, if you can get past the Should I eat it?/Should I mate with it? /Should I kill it? screen then it’s the Is it safe/Have I seen this before/Could I guess what it is? filter.

So, you’re entire idea, your business plan, your financing, your proposal to get a job...anything gets whittle down to the other guy thinking:

• Should I eat it?

• Should I mate with it?

• Should I kill it?

• Is it safe?

• Have I seen this before?

• How can I get rid of this?

So, the reaction in the brain of the other person to whatever you have boils down to

How can I get rid of this?

That’s what the method is: not assuming you are communicating to a logical thoughtful linguistic problem-solving person but to the safety part of the person who’s thinking:

“How can I get rid of you?”

And that’s what the method is really built to do. Get past the initial filter that governs every first interaction:

“How can I get rid of you?”

That’s the fundamental thing that we learned from the cognitive guys. And once we incorporated that into our business then things became much easier in our business life.

Oren, as I hear you describe it, and you describe it so clearly, I’m thinking a lot of entrepreneurs are pitching to VCs who they assume are very analytically minded.

But they are more crocodile-brained. That’s because they have so many deals coming across their desk that they are really looking for ways to get rid of this presentation and go on to the other 100 deals waiting for their attention.

Let me be super-clear about the basic principles of pitching to any private equity, a bank, venture capital...I’m not sure that this is in the book, so you get this kinda fresh material. When you are pitching me or any investor capital, what’s racing through the mind of this safety dialogue is:

“What is this like that I have seen before.”

The second the investor goes:

Oh, I know what this is like. This is like x-y-z deal but with a little bit of top spin but with pink hue...”

then he’s done it.

We’re pattern makers as humans. There’s all sorts of examples and maybe we can do it at a different time. But take it at face value. As humans, we are pattern-makers and we seek out patterns. Rats, for example, are so much smarter than us. As humans we look to find patterns when there aren’t ones. Rats don’t look for food; they just try to get the food quickly.

When humans face problems of what’s the right button to get to the food, the rats do it 100 times faster. They are not pattern seekers; we are.

The private investor, banker, venture capitalist, sitting in front of you...his neocortex is racing to find a pattern. And once he finds it...Boom! He checks out and he’s gone.

So, if you look like something he’s already seen, if you sound like 3 other deals, and your whole experience is not differentiated and keeps his mind on its toes then you’re done.

I sit on the investment committee at a hedge fund. I sit on the investment committee at a private equity group. This happens to me. It’s not that venture capitalist are machiavellian or they all think this way. Human beings are pattern makers and if you look like an established pattern...you are gone.

One of my favorite parts of your book was your Framing techniques and the need to control the frame of the pitch. I think that’s what we’re leading into here with the discussion of the three areas of the brain.

What is framing and why does someone making a pitch need to control it?

Sure. So, I think the experts at framing and the really easiest thing for people to access are the Republicans. Democrats tend to not be very good at framing information and ideas.

The Democrats, their general view is give the people the information and the people are smart enough to organize the information and see how valuable it is.

The republicans don’t leave it up to the people to interpret it and they put a frame around it to interpret it for them. So you’ll see terms like “collateral damage” and “Friendly fire”, things related to them. Every Republican program has a name in which they’ve framed it. And then these frames become strong and they become very difficult to break.

A frame is a perspective on a social interaction. In every social interaction and every business interaction two people come together and the frame is their perspective, their belief, their values and the data. It’s all kinda boiled into the frame.

What’s interesting is no conversation, two frames do not exist in the same social interaction. When two perspectives come together, one is always stronger and it absorbs and breaks apart the other. Eventually there will be one governing frame for a social interaction.

I’ll give you a very simplistic situation. If you have a 3-year old who comes to you 20 minutes before dinner and says:

“I want ice cream.”

Your frame is:

“No. No. It’s dinner time. We are um, you have to wait. You can have ice cream after dinner.”

And so you have the frame of “it’s not the right thing to do”.

But the 3 year old has the “I want ice cream” frame.

And in almost every case I’ve ever seen, that’s the stronger frame and it wins. The stronger frame wins every social interaction.

We’ve been investigating the strength of our frames. And we realized the stronger the frame the stronger the more likely the other person’s facts and arguments will bounce off of our frame and our frame will be the governing point of view for the interaction.

This is very powerful stuff. And people come back after reading the book and say:

“Framing, understanding how to frame social interactions has been the biggest change in my life. And now I frame everything in my life.”

There’s lots of free stuff on the website. McGraw Hill complains that I don’t market this book at all. But if anybody wants to see the world in a different way then got to the website and look up the piece we have on framing.

I have your book open sitting beside me. I’m thinking there is so much more I would love to ask. The website is Pitch Anything. I encourage everyone to get the book, make some successful pitches and be successful.

You have a six step process to correctly frame a pitch. The steps spell the acronym STRONG. Tell us about STRONG.

The website is Pitch Anything Dot net.

The STRONG method is humanistic. It doesn’t tie down to the old Anthony Robbins Step, Step 2, Step 3. But it’s a nice way to remember the most important elements of the method.

So, STRONG number one is:

Setting the frame. If you go in to a presentation with a weak frame you will be absorbed. They will control the social interaction. So, very quickly how do you know if you are controlling the frame. If you are reacting, to the other person. If you are reacting to the other person, they are controlling the frame. If they are reacting to you, what you say, how you are, then you control the frame.

If you want to learn about who’s controlling the frame, then look at who’s reacting to who?

That’s the essence of Setting the frame.

T is Telling the Story. I’ll touch on this quickly. What we see way too often in pitches is guys putting on slide decks. And going through it methodically. The Problem. The Solution. The Market. The Value Proposition. The Management Team. The IP. TheSize of the investment, the ideal customer. They go through it sequentially. That’s not a story. That’s an information dump. And we hate to get that.

What is driving the narrative of this deal? Get OUT of this going through the sequential of the slides. There’s a very powerful way to help people put together the narrative.

R is for Reviewing the Intrigue. Most of the time, 9 out of 10 times when guys come to pitch us and within 30 seconds they have told the whole story with no narrative arc. Once we know it, we can make a decision. So, literally we can make our minds up in the first minute. So, there’s gotta be some intrigue in this so you gotta hold back. You can’t dump everything in the first minute. So leave some intrigue in there.

O is Offering the Prize. This is really important to me. Most of the time people go into a pitch and they view the money or the deal or the job as the prize. Forget about that. YOU are the prize. There’s so much money out there. Money is a commodity. Money is the ultimate commodity. It’s more of a commodity than rice or oil or gold. You can get money anywhere. If you have a deal, there’s a 100,000 investors right now near the west coast of California who will look at the deal. Money is the commodity and you are the prize.

So, Prizing is incredibly important.

Nailing the Hook Point. We discovered in every deal there is this hook point where you, the investor or the person you’re pitching ...their body language capitulates. And they say:

“ You know what? I like this thing.”

And, at that point you can stop pitching and you can start calibrating and just talking to them without the pitch. Once you reach the hook point you need to spend some time with them as individuals talking about the deal. And you’re no longer pitching.

So, feeling when you’ve reached the hook point and you actually feel it if you look for it is important.

And then the funny thing is G, Getting to the Decision. We have almost no closing techniques. We are the worst closers. My basic closing technique is:

“So, uh, you send us the paperwork or we’ll send it to you? Just try and call.”

Zig Ziglar would fall out of his chair. Tom Hopkins would say:

“It’s not possible to close with that.”

Anthony Robbins would say:

“You’ll never make a dollar with that kind of close.”

When we get to the close there’s nothing to do. When you do the rest of the, when you set the frame, give a narrative, hold the intrigue, keep your self as the prize and look for the hook point there is no closing to do. Because at that point you can basically use the time constraint and leave.

Most of the time our closes are we just leave the room and mumble something.

You list 4 frames a pitch is built around. Which one is the most powerful? Why?

For me, and everyone is going to be different, for me the intrigue frame is the most powerful.

Human intrigue is the most powerful connective element. And we always try to leave something unknown but interesting. And that will always keep someone in the deal.

Your ability, every pitch and every deal encounters the analyst frame. We want more information. If you’ve ever encountered a venture capitalist it’s always:

“Hey, We like your deal. But could you run some financial metrics on the competition and the landscape and the market growth.”

And we call that:

“Great. You gotta go fetch a red rock.”

And you go off and run this analysis. And you bring it back and they say:

“Oh. This is fantastic! We’re just looking for a deep dive on your technology and if you could run some metrics on how your IP competes in the marketplace.”

Great. Now we’re fetching a blue rock.

You always will encounter the analytical, we-want-more-information, framework. And the best way to get past it is with intrigue. And the intrigue way to me is extremely powerful.

I think that the moral frame can beat the intrigue frame. But it’s more tricky to use. If you want a nice easy useful everyday-use frame, it’s the intrigue frame. Create some unknown and only reveal parts of it along the way.

Why is that so powerful in overcoming the VC’s crocodile brain and work overload and get out of this meeting? How is the intrigue frame able to overcome all of that?

So, what happens is I told you before:

“VCs are human pattern makers. “

And if you highlight a huge missing piece of data that they believe will solve the pattern then they will chase it.

Let’s bring it down to specifics. If you show a revenue pro forma, how what you project customers will buy and you say:

“Oh and by the way, we have a customer that we haven’t shown here that is a Fortune 40 company that themselves can increasae revenues 35% and we’re inking that deal now.”

That investor cannot evaluate that deal until he knows that information. So, now that sets the intrigue hook. Fortune 40? Who is it? Is it Pepsi? Is it Coke? Wal-Mart, BestBuy?

• Who is it?

• What’s the nature of the contract?

• Is this contract something I as an investor will make this deal really amazing for me?

So, until I’ve solved that intrigue, that piece of intrigue, I as an investor don’t want to make that decision about the deal.

So, now you’re under the intrigue umbrella and you can continue to push your deal for as long as you can under this intrigue umbrella. You can’t hold it open forever. But it’s very useful for keep moving it forward.

The 2nd thing is someone who’s being analytical about your deal is going to give up their analytical inquisition in order to figure out who’s this big customer and what’s this big piece of business. That’s the juicy part of the deal I want to get to.

Hopefully that will give you the sense of power the intrigue frame can give you in that situation.

You’ve spoken about three frames: Moral, Intrigue, Analytical. What’s the fourth frame?

So, we talked about power frames.

And everybody has encountered the power frame coming at you. That is somebody coming at you from the other side of the room. That’s a big guy, usually a government official, the CEO or general manager and he’s used to having all the power. And people acquiesce to him and do his bidding. And when he snaps his finger or barks an order then everyone jumps. That’s the power frame.

These other frames, the morality frame or the intrigue frame are needed to overcome it. If you don’t have, if you can’t reframe the power frame into something different, it is very difficult to live under. And we’ve all had it coming at us. Guys or gals who are bulls in a China shop and they blow everything out of their way.

Give you an example. If you have ever been in a courtroom for a traffic ticket you know the judge has a power frame. You can barely open your mouth. You’ve got to process a $400 fine and get out the door. And all your schemes for explaining it are gone. It’s insurmountable.

But in social environments when those power frames come at you without the law behind it or the political power behind it then you can deal with it? You deploy a moral frame or an intrigue frame. Or you deploy a different kind of power frame quite easily.

What are the signs a pitch's frame is on a collision course?

Are there tell-tale signs?

I would go back to this. Every social interaction is on a collision course. If you are going to give a presentation and in my world its for money. but everybody pitches for something. It could be for a job or family vacation. These are binary decisions. Whenever you go into a boardroom or meeting or social interaction two frames collide. Count on it.

Every interaction involves a collision of frames. The power frame meets the analyst frame. We give a list of these 4 or 5 basic frames. But every social interaction involves the collision of two frames and the stronger frame always wins.

Let me reframe the question. How will they know when their frame is collapsing?

When you are reacting to the other person, scrambling to come up with another answer, nervous, flushed. And they’re asking you questions and you feel a need to justify yourself. You are colliding and they are winning.

So, that’s when you want to come in with another frame, reframe and you’ll literally feel it. They’ll start answering to you. They’ll start explaining to you why and how and when they do things. That’s when have taken back ownership of the frame.

I had this assumption, maybe incorrect I see now, that when an audience starts asking for details...it's a sign of engagement, of excitement. And in that incorrect assumption, answering their questions...would feed their excitement.

But you say something different.

So. This is something I’m very sensitive to. For me, detailed questions in a, now look all this material is about the first 20 minutes or 30 minutes of a social interaction. I’m all about creating the wanting of a the deal. Right?

At some point you have to give people information. At some point you have to answer questions, provide due diligence. I mean no deal is going to happen without lots and lots of due diligence.

But none of that will happen until somebody wants the deal. All this material is about creating the wanting of the deal.

When people are asking detailed questions of me, it’s not a sign of engagement. I know guys who can do that in their sleep. Powering through, asking detailed questions, it’s a way to get through and all these questions are almost automatic.

Questions, to me, are not a sign of engagement.

I’ll tell you whenever I get these detailed questions, I think that one potential way to deal with it is to say:

“Obviously, in order to decide on this deal, in order to decide on hiring me, in order to decide on this issue, you’re gonna need all these details.

" But there’s no point in investigating these details until we decide do you like me and do you like this deal. And we haven’t got there yet.

" Assume for a minute all the details are in place, we’ve got binder, we did not come here to pitch this because we forgot to take care of these things. It’s all in the deal binder. If you want to blow this out and do due diligence, no problem. But before we do this, let’s decide do we like each other. Does this basic deal make sense for you. Let’s invest our time figuring out the important things. And then once we’ve got that done, we’ll do due diligence and answer questions until we’re blue in the face.”

What I do think shows engagement, the hook point, are not the questions but the really insightful statements. Not analytical questions. Thoughtful, deep, connected questions about the business.

So, if we’re pitching a software company, if somebody says to us:

“What version of sequel server does the system run on and how many engineers do you have working on development? “

To me that’s analytical fishing. And I don’t feel like I’ve got engagement.

Where I know I would be close to a hook point or engagement if they said:

“Hey, you know, we have another company and we’ve faced some issues with the cost of engineers.

We’re wondering if you’re experiencing higher costs and with those costs do you know where you’re going to get additional engineers from? that’s something we’ve seen before in other deals.”

That’s a thoughtful related to the deal, non-investigative question. You’re really trying to puzzle out some deal elements.

And, when people ask multi-threaded questions like that we know they are engaged and interested in it.

Beautiful. What is a wanting evaluation and why does it have to rest in the old part of our brain?

Look. To me, other than frames and prizes, this is probably the most important concept in business today. You cannot have somebody go for your deal, invest in your deal, hire you, buy your product, until they want it.

So, I believe everything you’re doing in these social and business interactions is to create wanting. Nobody marries someone, nobody buys a car, people don’t take a job because they like it or need it. They take it because they want it.

Until you create wanting you have nothing. If you say:

“Hey, Oren. What’s this 50,000 foot view on this whole method?

It’s create wanting. Until you have wanting it’s all going to be detailed, analytical, disconnected, argumentation, confrontation. You got to create wanting.

Nobody does anything because they like it; they do it because they want it.

Another great answer. Thank you!

You tell some great stories in your book. I read a lot of books with or without this show. Very few of them make me smile resonate in one of my brains the way yours does.

One of my favorite stories was the story of Mother Teresa and the doctors at Scripps Clinic in LaJolla, California. Can we take a minute and run through it here?

Yeah. I mean in some ways it is the centerpiece of the book and I’d love to have people to experience the writing of it. Right?

The basic premise of it is Mother Theresa was checked into a hospital here in LaJolla. Scripps Clinic. Some years ago for a treatment.

And what happens is when a celebrity comes the doctors are used to having all the social power when anyone comes into the hospital. They own the frame. When you go see the doctor and he says “Stand up” then you stand up. He says “Cough”, you cough. He says "Take your clothes off", you take your close off. He says “Bend over turn around”...he says “Bend over turn around” and you do it. Is there anyone anywhere where you’ll do it? No. The doctor’s frame is so strong it’s almost unbreakable.

But when Mother Theresa checked in none of this stuff works on her; these power frames of the doctors.

The only way they could impress her was to give to a charity she had opened up. She put a sign up by her desk and it filled up with...these physicians are busy. She had a signup list by her desk and it turned out the only way they could have any impact on her was to sign up for her charity.

And, so we kinda call that the Mother Theresa frame. I encourage anyone who has the chance to check it out. It’s about a 4-minute read.

I’ll jump in with my own endorsement. I was reading the book preparing for the show. I was liking everything I was reading. And I got that part of the book and I thought Where are we going with this Oren. I realized it’s such a crisp, clear, as you say heart of the book, I encourage everyone to read it.

What's the number one behavior for killing deals?

To me. To me, and I’ve looked at this and I’ve been in hundreds of deals, the absolute death knell to doing a deal is needing us. When you behave needy it triggers fear in the other person’s crocodile brain.

Just think about it as basic humans. We all dropped out of the trees into the African savannah. And ran through the grass 8-12 miles a day trying to find something to eat. Shivering at night. Everything was about survival.

And so, when another person came to you and they were needy and they were not part of your social group and there was not enough resources to go around then they immediately created fear.

Neediness is a display that the other person is going to need to take care of you. And it generates an immediate reaction of fear. In some ways, it’s the restaurant principle. If a restaurant’s parking lot is busy and you’re looking in the window and people are laughing and it’s full...you get a sense that that’s a safe place for other people to go in because other people are using it.

When you go by a restaurant that is empty and there are only 2 people in it and not much going on...that’s a sign of neediness. They need business and you’re worried to go in there.

I put it that way because you internalize the feeling of that empty restaurant and they say

“Yeah, I am afraid to go in there.”

When people see a needy entrepreneur:

• we need this money
• we need this deal
• we don’t have any other options
• we’ll stay as long as you need us to
• if you need us to fetch another rock
  
• we’ll fetch another rock
• oh, Mr. Investment Banker, we’ll run the numbers; we have plenty of time.

That strikes fear.

For me the number on thing is if you can eradicate fear then you are on your way to getting these deals done.

You write that reality isn’t waiting to be discovered; it’s waiting to be framed. That’s such an interesting twist to give power back to the individual.

Why is that important to understand for those preparing a pitch?

Yeah, I think in the same way you can ask the question:

“What is a narrative arc?”

Right? I’ll explain what I mean. When people come to pitch us they dump the information on us. And really, we have to frame and understand what’s really going on.

So, they’ll say:

• Here’s the product.
• Here’s the solution.
• Here’s the problem.
• Here’s the market.
• Here’s the competition.
• Here’s who we are with our revenues.
• Here’s our costs.
• Here’s out customer acquisition cycle.
• Here’s how we market.

But what is that? That’s delivering the pieces of the frog. It doesn’t give us a frog.

We need to know what is the living, what’s the narrative arc. What’s happening in the market. How does it all tie together. You can’t just deliver the information to them and expect them to frame it for you.

You need to frame it yourself.

People come to us and say:

“Aw, I framed this up.”

And I say:

“ Really? I think you should take a 2nd look.”

Cause I see a lot of deals. And one after another they come and dump the data on us and leave it to us to assemble a narrative arc or a storyline.

Give the storyline.

The magic is that everybody could do this if given enough time. The magic is give the information underneath the pitch, the business or the idea, and also the narrative arc or the story in about 20 minutes.

That’s where it gets hard.

We've reached the imagination moment in the show. This may be an awkward moment as we talked in depth about the hard realities presenting, persuading and winning the deal. Still, let's imagine President Obama has called your offices. Your assistant waves at you now, mouthing the words It's President Obama. She's nodding vigorously, too.

You graciously end this interview, pick the up the phone and say Mr. President.

And Mr. President say:

Oren. I love your method. I've read your book. It's excellent. I think our economy reflects our national inability to win the deal.

Do you have some time to come to the White House? Talk with me and Joe Biden about three things we can do to rebuild our nation's ability to win the deal.

What would those three things be?

Yeah.

Number one for me: Prizing. The United States of America is the most technically advanced, has the highest moral authority...has the entertainment industry that drives the entire world... the financial markets that drive the entire world, the internet infrastructure and innovation that drives the entire world. Silicon Valley.

We need to recognize that. There are some things, we are a massive country, 300 million people. We do most things very very well. We need to prize ourselves well.

And we give too much credit to the things we do wrong or slip through the cracks.

We need to get back to framing ourselves and prizing ourselves as number one in the world because we are.

I don’t think we have to be judicious in the way we describe ourselves to the rest of the world. You know, fair and balanced kinda point of view. We really are the dominant nation on earth. I say ‘dominant’ not in the most forceful but in the way we do things.

I think we need to begin talking about ourselves, prizing ourselves more than we do.

The second thing? The Democrats need to look at how the GOP is so good at framing issues. And begin building frames that can stand up to the Republican’s frame.

The third thing is use our moral authority right. We have Harvard University. We have Silicon Valley. We have Hollywood. There are some things we don’t do right. Abu Ghraib and things we screw up. But in the international conversations and our own internal conversations around the world recognize that we have the moral authority.

When you have the moral authority frame, it’s the highest position. I think Obama and our government and us as a nation need to recognize really how high our standards are.

I’m not a political guy. You could come in and say “Norway” or “Switzerland”...does things better than us. But, they have no scale. We’re 300 million people. We have the highest moral standards in the world for something that has that scale.

We have the ability to use the moral frame more often than we do.

That’s excellent! I ask this question from nearly every guest. These are excellent points! Thank you so much.

You're a leader. Jim Rohn says Leaders are readers. What are you reading with all free time?

It may be cliche’ but I have 2 books that kinda never leave my desk. One is my own book...I’m just kidding.

Jeffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm. I read and I re-read.

Michael Porter’s book on Competitive Advantage. I read and re-read.

And in some ways that question is

“Hey. What’s all the new stuff coming out.”

The new stuff to me...you know there hasn’t been any investment since 2008 - 2010 by the publishers in really good writing. I know the publishers. They’re going with known names who have existing platforms. It’s kinda like saying X-man 2-3-4-5. There hasn’t been an investment in great new writer. So, you’re not seeing a ton of great new stuff coming out.

There’s one third book I would add to that. And it’s not new either. Joseph M. Williams wrote a book called Style: Towards Clarity and Grace. If you write or need to communicate, that’s just a great book.

Those are the things I’m reading now.

Fantastic. I thought you might say you weren’t one of those people who read a lot. But I can tell you’re a discerning reader.

Thank you.

Where can our listeners follow you on the web, social media?

Pitch Anything, there’s a lot of material there for free. As I said before my publisher gets mad. I’m not promotional. When I go to speak I don’t bring boxes of books, we don’t sell them, we don’t have a DVD. And I have a day-job. I’m not going out on speaking tours. I speak maybe once a month. I’m at Google speaking in their author’s program in two weeks. And that’s my July presentation.

Go to the website. There’s a lot of material that supports the conversation we’ve been having today. And I want people to have that.

So, at Pitch Anything you can see a lot of this stuff. And if you go to Intersection Capital you can see examples of this work in action. When you combine these two things you go:

“ Wow. Now I see some powerful things happening!”

You can understand both the method conceptually and see it in action. So Pitch Anything and Intersection Capital.

Fantastic!

Again, I hope everybody goes to Pitch Anything and downloads that free material. It’s fabulous!

Thanks for writing a great book and taking the time for the show.

You’re welcome. Thanks for a great show and great questions.