Zane Safrit

Employee Engagement and the Failure Rate of Change Initiatives

Here’s some startling news: More than 70% of change initiatives fail.

Before you write this off as either: 1) Not your problem (“mine don’t fail!”) or, 2) A bunch of bologna (aka — sensationalist, first-line attention-grabbing antics!), let me tell you something: it’s true – only 30% succeed. You don’t need to take my word for it, though. According to both Harvard Business Review’s, Cracking the Code of Change, and Gallup Business Journal’s, Most Change Initiatives Fail – But They Don’t Have To, this 70% failure rate stands as the norm. But, there’s more: the HBR article was written in 2000, the Gallup article written in 2013. What does this tell us? Something hasn’t changed, and it’s not just change initiatives. via switchandshift.com

70%. There's that figure again. 70%.

More than 70% of change initiatives fail.

That is mighty coincidental with the percentage of employees NOT engaged with their work. According to the Gallup organization, that percentage is, drum roll, 70%. Yep. 70% of employees in the US are disengaged, intellectually and emotionally with their work. 

Hard to initiate change, even harder to make it a success, with a group of people you have motivated to be bored, disinterested, and merely going through their paces, that is their routine paces.

Gallup also reports that this disengagement rate has remain virtually unchanged for the past decade.

Though the state of the U.S. economy has changed substantially, the state of its workplace has not. According to Gallup's State of the American Workplace: 2010-2012 report, employee engagement levels remain stagnant among U.S. workers ... Though this figure matches the all-time high since Gallup began tracking the U.S. working population's engagement levels in 2000, U.S. business leaders shouldn't be patting themselves on the back. An alarming 70% of American workers are not showing up to work committed to delivering their best performance, and this has serious implications for the bottom line of individual companies and the U.S. economy as a whole.

That lack of improvement in employee engagement aligns nicely with the lack of improvement in change initiatives' failure rate. A decade of 70% failure rates for both of them.

Now, if they were baseball players and their lifetime batting average was .300 then they might end up in the Hall of Fame.

This 70% figure shows up in another operation of business execution. 71%, close enough, of employees cannot find their corporate mission statement on a multiple choice exam. Pow! That's gotta take the wind out of the corporate communications department.

According to a recent Harvard Business Review article, “When CEOs Talk Strategy, Is Anyone Listening?” only a fraction of our workforce is really clued in. The article cites recent research which says that even in high-performing companies with “clearly articulated public strategies,” only 29% of their employees can correctly identify their company’s strategy out of six choices. -When CEOs Talk, 70% of The Company Doesn't Get It.

It is not that 70% of the company doesn't get it. 70% of the company doesn't care about it.

100% of the people cared on their first day at work. What happened?

 

 

The Power of An Hour a Day

For awhile now, I've had this idea that an hour a day from each of us can solve three big challenges. The idea was crazy simple so I didn't share it, figuring I'd realize why it was crazy and be able to let it rest. But it keeps poking at me when I'm out running or sipping a coffee or mulling over the latest news. I'll share it here. You can tell me what I'm missing.

Let's start with the challenges.

Jobs. There aren't enough.

So, the latest and least uninspiring jobs report came out last week from the Department of Labor. The issue isn’t that these reports are a PR-spin maker’s ... dream. The issue is how long these tales have spun, accepted as meaningful statistics by the other half of the PR industry. That’s the mainstream media that breathlessly reads them as if they are truth with a capital T and sent from the Oracle herself to help us mere mortals understand our world. For the past 10 years it's helped those talking heads, and their audiences, avoid the task of deeper analysis like how come you only count as unemployed those who file for unemployment benefits ‘specially since unemployment benefits stopped for so many...just before Christmas. Nothing shows you care like cutting off benefits and, and, not even counting your misery, our misery as a meaningful statistic.

It’s a bi-partisan issue. When Bush was in office, his haters blamed him for the results and their spin. Now that Obama’s in office, his haters do the same using almost the same words. Weird, huh?

Obesity

Obesity continues to be a problem for us. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, 35.7% of all Americans are obese. An adult is considered overweight if their BMI, Body Mass Index is 30 or higher. Iowa's right at the top. Here’s a link for computing your BMI. To show the nation’s most transparent and open White House how that works, I’ll share my BMI: 23.3.

Employee Engagement

Employee engagement remains a dismal 30%. That means 30% of our colleagues show up and give a hoot. The rest use duck calls to imitate the noises, flapping arms and typing really fast if a manager comes too close.

In summary, the unemployment rate is so high it’s no longer counted using math we learned in high school or we leave out the unemployed in calculating their numbers. Obesity continues to rise. Pretty soon they'll calculate the obesity rate in the same way they calculate the unemployment rate: they'll overlook the obese. Employee engagement is so much a challenge that I see a rising backlash led by serious denial among managers who say 'we're engaged' while looking around to see if their bosses are listening. They're not but that's sorta the problem.

The Idea That Won't Leave Me Alone

What if you offered employees one hour to exercise every day? According to the (cringe) Bureau of Labor Statistics, the same place that provide the jobs report, your employees work on average 8.8 hours per day.

Let’s drop that to 7.8 hours a day. That’s a decline in hourly production of 11.3%. See where I’m going? You might need 11.3% more employees to maintain the current output.

But hold on. A healthy workforce is one that needs fewer sick days. A healthy workforce is also one that is more productive...wait for it...more engaged with their work. Why? Well, because physically and emotionally they’re able to be more engaged. While I'm not a rocket scientist that sounds right; you’re not as engaged with your work if you’re sucking down sudafed and cold medicines and balancing them against high blood pressure meds or anti-depressants from obesity.

Employee engagement would rise. People would be healthier, more energized, more creative. They’d like working again. Think of the cost reductions from lower employee turnover and fewer employee ‘counseling’ sessions.

As your employee engagement rises, you can expect to see growth in these areas: 

• revenues, their growth rate would grow. (That’s like saying a teenager’s going to grow even faster. Fun and scary.)
• profits
• cash flows
• innovations, new products and services
• customer conversions
• customer loyalty
• testimonials
• Good Stuff.

Now, you have a proven model that boosts employee engagement, lowers healthcare costs, raises profits and cash-flows. You might ask:

If these results come from 100 employees, what if we hired...oh, say, 10 more?

Before you ask that question in a meeting you might gather the reports showing the improved KPIs, Key Performance Indicators. Armed with the data you can ask the question while offering data to suggest the correct answer. A smart boss will listen. But, again, that's sorta the problem for many companies. I'm just giving you a headsup that it's not all cookies-and-ice-cream interval training and raw veggies.

Nanny-State and I'm from the federal government and I'm here to help.

Of course a federal mandate, an executive order..., is not the solution. Just imagine the website...or let's not.

DIY - DO IT YOUR SELF.

Figure it out. Walk away from your powerpoint slides. Talk to your employees. Find a way to talk to your employees. Just that step will engage your employees, even isn't looking or listening.

DIO - DO IT OURSELVES

This is an irrevent discussion of serious challenges and a possible solution. One hour of exercise to solve three problems.

It’s a bit cocky to say this, but I haven’t seen a better solution come from the mouths of babies or experts. Consider 5 Promise Zones. Those are as meaningful for creating jobs as a pinkie pledge or trickle down economics. Just look at the data. Besides,  choosing zip codes for economic development programs seems to contradict...what, the program's stated ideal?

...a child’s zip code should never be what determines his or her opportunity.

We have to start offering our own ideas, ‘cause the 'experts' seem to be the ones that brought us here; well them and our abdication of responsibilities that afforded them the permission to take us here.

What's your idea?

WARNING: Self-Promotion.

If you want to know more ways to engage with your employees, my book RECOGNIZE THEM: 52 Ways to Recognize Your Employees in Ways They Value offers 52 ways to recognize your employees, easy exercises to reinforce those habits and skills and inspirational quotes to keep you going.

Which Countries Are Most Welcoming...(Why?)

via twitter.com

Interesting.

I would love to see maps overlaid on this one that show:

* economic growth
* income inequality
* military budgets as percentage of GDP
* wealth distribution among the population

There are more (education, job creation, healthcare metrics), but these are the primary ones.

Recognize the Gate-Keepers, the Routine-Makers

The rage in business today is...change, innovation and disruption. Rightfully so, as every facet of our life faces unprecedented pressures from global competition, economic and social upheavals, the rapid access to information and technology, the increasing pace of technological change. On and on.

We see books, webinars, coaches and programs to teaching us how to celebrate the disruptors and out-of-the-box thinkers, innovators and game-changers, how to guide their creativity into productive, executable, profitable results.

But, as our attention pendulum swings in favor of this newest, shiniest, thing, we risk ignoring those who make innovation and disruption possible. These are the cogs in your machine, the routine-makers.

With their often silent efficiency in executing the mundane tasks of every business they form the foundation upon which you can experiment. That foundation generates the cash-flows that all you to invest in ideas, innovations, risks, skunk works, disruptions, an blue ocean strategies. Their efficient routines, boring and restrictive to some, allow others to experiment. Without their success, you have no foundation from which to leap into a new market or consider a new idea.

Recognize those efficient routines.

Recognize their successes.

Show how new ideas and innovations and solutions are built upon and made possible by this strong foundation of routines and the efficiency to which they are kept.

It’s easy to overlook them. But without them, you have nothing to stand on. Be sure to recognize that, them and their achievements. Then you can venture far from shore knowing they’ve got your back, they’re waiting for you with a solid routine and steady cash-flows.

Can You Solve Your Culture Conflict?

The USDA is the same organization that designates what food is officially organic and how much untreated animal manure is too much for our open waterways. Well, to date, they haven't cried Uncle or Stop or issue standards on how much is too much; we'll keep waiting.

That's quite a range. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote:

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

But, can it be said that the FDA has a first-rate intelligence when it accommodates two opposing principles: approving food as 100% organic while allowing twice as much untreated manure to enter the open waterway from the CAFO’d hogs in one Iowa county as the sewage from the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area. (Iowa has 99 counties.) Link.

While an first-rate intelligence can hold two opposing thoughts, can a consumer embrace the USDA as a trusted source for food safety?

What's all this got to do with your business?

• Where's your culture conflict?
• Where is your culture's bi-polar duality expressed in a dysfunctional manner in the markeplace?
• Where do you say one thing, on your website, and execute another in your rules and tactics?
• Where in your employee engagement do you say 'we love you' or 'you're the most important part of our success 'and then silence or ignore their suggestions or needs?

As a leader you're very likely insulated by org chart and careers from this cognitive dissonance of your company's culture conflict. It happens; it's not personal. We all are constantly re-defining ourselves as we move through life. And since companies are people, too, my friend, companies are re-defining their brand, their culture, their identity.

Joss Whedon* offered this insight at a recent commencement address he gave:

You have, which is a rare thing, that ability and the responsibility to listen to the dissent in yourself, to at least give it the floor, because it is the key — not only to consciousness, but to real growth. To accept duality is to earn identity. And identity is something that you are constantly earning. It is not just who you are. It is a process that you must be active in.

This contradiction, and this tension … it never goes away. And if you think that achieving something, if you think that solving something, if you think a career or a relationship will quiet that voice, it will not.

Every company at one time was personal. Very personal. Every company was built on relationships. And then bureaucracy and rules, departments and titles, creeped in. ( Some of those rules and titles may prefer to handle dissent with a different approach. Rule it out, discourage it, punish its advocates. Ask GM how that approach worked.)

Now you may not even know the name of your most recent hire. It may be months or years since you spoke to a customer, one on one. That's very different than reading a report, even if it's a report of their collective or individual Net Promoter Scores.That's very different than considering personas, too.

That's where the culture conflict arises. In that process, that transition, from a culture of relationships, of knowing and experiencing, of passion, of looking in the eye honesty to one of distanced and nuanced reports, of territories and postures, saying what is thought to be right....for some other audience, for some other reason...you (the corporate and personal 'you') stopped listening to the dissent, to the dissenters and disruptors in yourself (corporate and personal selves).

Somewhere along the line the USDA lost sight of its purpose to protect our  food supply. Its big now. Vast and anonymous. Reports and procedures and unknown decision-makers for unknown, unspoken stakeholders. No one's listening to...dissent. Sound familiar?

What if Tom Vilsack, the head of the USDA and former Governor of Iowa, stopped reading reports and making speeches to Chambers of Commerce, left his/her smart phone turned off. What if he went out to a grocery store and met with the ultimate customer of the USDA: shoppers. Families and kids, grandparent and parents. What if he asked them:

• Do you feel safer?
• Are we helping you make better choices for the health of your family?
• What can we do better?

But for you, what if you walked out of your office, sat on a park bench and called a customer?

• What if you asked the three questions of the Net Promoter Score? Then you could hear the customer's voice as they answered?

What if you just asked them:

• How do we make your life better, easier, simpler, happier?
• Do we?
• What can we do better?

Now. What if you did that with your employees? I don't mean just your direct reports. I mean the newest hire. What if you sat down and asked that person:

• What do you hope to achieve here?
• What could you achieve?
• What would you need to achieve that?
• What stands in your way?
• Where's our culture conflict? Where's the gap between our promise and our delivery?

What if you made this a regular habit? Walked outside that box you've created.

What if you began to reconcile your company's culture now with what it had been, back when it was exciting and fun and crazy and you were growing?

What if?

Would your customers form a kickstarter community with you?

Consider a project like our DIY Spectrometry Kit, which was conceived of just after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill to attempt to identify petroleum contamination. In the summer of 2012, just a few dozen people had ever built one of our designs, let alone uploaded and shared their work. As the device's design matured to the point that anyone could easily build a basic version for less than $40, we set out to reach a much larger audience while identifying new design ideas, use cases, and contributors, through a Kickstarter project. Our theory was that many more people would get involved if we offered a simple set of parts in a box, with clear instructions for assembly and use.

By October 2012, more than 1,600 people had backed the project, raising over $110,000 -- and by the end of December, more than half of them had received a spectrometer kit. Many were up and running shortly after the holidays, and we began to see regular submissions of open spectral data at http://spectralworkbench.org, as well as new faces and strong opinions on Public Lab's spectrometry mailing list.

via MediaShift Idea Lab. How Public Lab Turned Kickstarter Crowdfunders Into a Community

What if you put a new idea or product or tool or resource you're considering for your company where DIY Spectrometry Kit is and you replaced Deepwater Horizon oil spill with the mistake of a major competitor.

And you put that idea out on Kickstarter.

Would 1,600 of your customers or employees...back the project with donations of time and money? 

You're rolling your eyes and thinking that's a crazy idea.

You're right. And that crazy idea just inspired 1600 people to cough up about $60-65 a piece to help make it real. So, the next time you need funding for a crazy idea...ask yourself if it's crazy enough to inspire people and are you crazy enough to ask.

On Stealing Ideas...

via cirquedumot.com

Dig it.

CISPA, SOPA and...US

via luminconsulting.com

Check this out. I think it's a pretty good visual discussion of CISPA, SOPA and US.

That's one reason I shared it.

The other reason was its author, Spencer Belkofer, reached out to me via email, introduced himself, pointed to an embed link...That's cool. Not the vanity, but the smart use of digital resources by Spencer to note my Tweets in the past on CISPA, SOPA, and then when he was ready ping me with his related work. Nice work, Spencer.

Is this your innovation process?

 

A little brutal, but then is that your innovation process?

Is this how your organization handles ideas?

Forget that it's a client, agency, format. Ideas, and their execution (nod to Jeffrey), are the lifeblood of an organization, right? So, if you have no new ideas, if you're always ...killing them off...in favor of the stale ones, the ones a  day away from their expiration date - you know, pick 'em off the shelf, dust 'em up a bit, spray paint a new color on 'em - well, you're left running a marathon while you push a wheelchair and its occupant in front of you.

Video from The #Creativity Daily by Clare Flynn, ClareFly on Twitter.

Concept Vehicles by Chrysler - What Happened?

via mediagallery.usatoday.com

Disclaimer: And it's an obvious one.I only know Chrysler by observation. Not as a customer, just a curious bystander, really. 

I found some of these models dazzling, creative, adventurous. And they were conceived 15 - 20 years ago.

So, I ask the question:

What happened? Some of these designs are so forward-looking...even now. And instead Chrysler chose for its market,  global now, got...Big trucks. Big...gas-guzzling trucks.  Yeehaw! And how did that work out for everybody?

(Ok, in all fairness they also rolled out the Chrysler 300, which...I liked it for its bold design. Granted its MPG was sacrificed for the big bold grill and the big bold engine. But still, it made you look. )

Back to the question. What happened? What happened to those designs?

Where in the design process, the innovation process, the discussions, were these designs killed?

How can that not be repeated?

And since Chrysler, with Clint Eastwood and an excellent ad agency,  announced It's Halftime in America...will the 2nd half find us oooing and ahhing over these models heretofor considered by Chrysler to be...too adventurous. Because, at halftime now, you stand a distant 4th among the Big Three...and that's after a 44% increase in sales, then you really need to be adventurous in the 2nd half.

And will the employees of Chrysler no longer be blamed for producing what they were given? Had they be given some of these designs, instead of Dodge Trucks (Dodge Trucks are Ram Tough...), then questions of their pay and benefits would have been irrelevant. Why? Because consumers would have bought Chrysler models and their cash-flow would have been positive, not negative.

Interview with Richard B. Sanford: Author of Success by Design, Part Two

Richard B. Sanford launched eleven successful small enterprises over a 40+ year career, creating 11 successful companies during that time.

He joined the show recently to talk about how he accomplished this and his new book: SUCCESS BY DESIGN: How to Create Ever-Increasing Income, Profit & Wealth in the World of Small Business.

You can listen here.

You can read Part One of our conversation here.

In his book, Richard compiled what principles, steps, tip and practices brought him this success over 40 years. His book shows the reader how to think and use "SIMPLIFIED STRATEGIC BUSINESS PLANNING" to generate ever increasing income, profits and wealth in the world of small business.

One of the reasons I love your book is you wrote

There are many things out of our control. Customer Service is not one of them.

Dumb question, but it seems no one answers it well: why do so many companies either ignore customer service or control it by minimizing it?

They don’t have a strategic plan. And, in the strategic plan you address an objective about how are we going to treat the people who buy from us, the people we want to buy from us.

How will we consider them?

Why is it important to nurture them and in nurturing them does service play animportant part? Yes.

How will we define our service?

So, in reading these annual reports, it’s so interesting to read them not only in bug business, stock company’s annual reports but in small business. Look at the cars and trucks driving around the advertisements and they talk about service. And most, usually, it’s a joke.

“We’re the best in the valley!”

These big fat claims that are all subjective and not objective. You can’t evaluate them. how do you hold a business accountable, if you’re the customer and you’re buying pool services, which I did this week. And I needed a new pool service company because the company I’m using isn’t getting the job done. And so, I looked at the ads and I finally made a selection.

And I asked them how do you rate your service. And they said:

“Well, we give the best.”

“ I don’t know what best means. Could you define it for me? “

Several of the company stumbled all over themselves. They couldn’t define it. I want an objective statement.

About 25 years ago, I started working on that. I was preparing some sales and marketing materials about our service, which was incredibly outstanding. Finally, I came to the conclusion that you have to make the service statement quantifiable, so it can be measured by the customer. And I came up with a 3-part statement on our service.

And that reflected on my strategic plan about how I would manage effective service in the company. And it worked like magic. And I share that in my book as well. I give it to the world.

That’s such a great answer, especially the quantifiable answer. I see the same stock stuff of world class customer service.

Yeah, how can you hold them accountable for doing that? You say:

“You didn’t give me world-class customer service!”

“Well, what do you mean...?”

“It’s your statement. Define it for me.”

“I don’t know how to do it.”

“ What value is it?”

And right there is an integrity issue.

Your next step is the Action Plan and the Action Planning Process. What are the 5 steps with the Action Planning Process?

Well, first of all, that would be skipping over the next step in strategic planning. It goes Mission to Purpose and then doing your research and development and establishing objectives. And I establish objectives in the 5 or 6 or 7 areas of business function.

What will finance and accounting objective be, our personnel objectives be, our sales objectives be, our marketing and promotions objectives be, our manufacturing process objectives be?

Because in each of those functions of your business needs a values statement or objective. For instance, Finance and Accounting. An objective is:

“Never spend more than we take in.”

Sound pretty simple?

Pretty straight forward.

Secondly:

“Never fail to report every penny of income.”

Why is that important? Well, if you fail to report a penny of income you are defrauding the government. And there’s some pretty severe penalties for that.

Now, on the expense side, Thurgood Marshall - a Supreme Court Justice - wrote a treatise on the fact that you take every business expense you can then you can argue with the IRS is legitimate or not. And that is not breaking the law.

You report every penny of revenue otherwise there are serious penalties for defrauding the government.

And there are others. So, you set up these objectives.

And once you have your objectives then you say, the question comes:

“How will we do it?”

And there in lies your strategies and action plans.

Listening to you talk about the need to report every penny of income, there’s an adage that if you’re going to defraud the IRS on that level then you are likely to defraud your self or your partners on another level.

Exactly. It’s a value.

And that’s going to manifest into defrauding your employees, your customers, your investors.

I had to laugh when you pointed out what I overlooked. I tend to be impulsive and quickly assess what needs to be done and just jump ahead to the action plan.

Yeah. Most entrepreneurs do that.

“Let’s get in there and do some action.”

“Ok. What kind of action? How are you going to measure it? What do you do if it doesn’t work? ”

So, once you have your values in place, your values of business, meaning your objectives, in each of those elements then you can measure your action plan. That starts with a strategy, that’s followed up by the tasks and tactics and the timelines and who’s going to do that.

You have a strateguy. And that is to say Expand our marketing budget and reach this new market. That’s a strategy.

Well, what’s the task involved? Well, Charlie needs to sit down and create some new sales material. And then we need to decide which advertising medium we’re going to use. And what frequency and how will we measure it? And once that’s done, we let the contract. And, our timeline to complete this is 3.5 weeks by this date. And Charlie’s involved in making this happen.

There’s one unit of strategic action. And you write it down.

Well, why do you do that? Because next week you have a business meeting with your leaders or managers and you ask Charlie:

“What’s our progress? Show me.”

Simple.

Does that mean you always make your timelines? No. But at least you know you have to adjust them.

If you have a timeline then everyone can organize and prioritize their day to stay up with it.

Exactly. It stays in the entrepreneur’s head. And then you have people say

“Well, I didn’t know you had to have it done by March 1st. It will take longer than that.”

Then there’s always the discussion of why isn’t it done?

If you lock up the ideas in the entrepreneur’s head and don’t write it down, how can you expect anyone to perform? It gives manager’s confidence. Yeah, it puts them under pressure, but we’re all under pressure. But it gives them exactly what’s expected of them. And then if you have a personnel problem, then you can go back to your plan and ask what our objectives in the human resources area?

"Well, Number One is that we respect each employee.
We expect each employee to respect the responsibilities of the job.
Number three, failure to do so then we are obligated to help them find a job where they can perform, either inside or outside the company."

Where in your 40 years of business experience, where does this process usually break down?

One area where this process breaks down is when an entrepreneur is frightened to share their ideas and their plans for fear that someone is going to steal them and go into competition with them.

What that does is severely limit an entrepreneur’s ability to grow. And I discuss that in the book. Planning meetings where the entrepreneur finally has to say:

You know, if I treat my people right and I reward them for success, I’m not greedy, probably 75-80% of them will stay with me. And those that don’t often become the 80% that fail if they try to go into competition because they don’t pay the price. They’re the short-cutters. Not all of them...

I helped develop managers and several of them I helped go into competition with me in slightly different markets because I wanted the reputation in the company that

“ Work for Dick Sanford and his company. They do a great job, they do it right. They grow. He’s tough as nails sometimes; he expects performance. But boy I sure like making the money and the security of the job. “

That’s the kind of reputation I want.

And that’s another objective I want to have in human resources. We want to create an environment where we’re the best place to work. So, then, talent comes to you. Your employees recommend people to you. We never had a shortage of talent. And if we had a misplaced person, not at the clerical or primary function level, but in the supervisor level...not everybody is capable of performing at the supervisory and management level.

Who’s fault is that? Is that the person’s responsibility because they wanted more responsibility and money? No. It was my fault or one of my executive’s fault.

So, what are we going to do to help this person. Turn ‘em out into the community so they can hate us and say bad things about us? No, no. You call the manager in and ask them:

" Are you happy? Are you happy where you’re at? Because you’re not achieving..."

And they’ll blame everybody else but themselves but finally they’ll come:

“No, I’m not happy. It doesn’t fit here. ”

And you say:

“Well, what can we do? Can we change the job, the responsibilities, maybe outside the company?

They’ll say:

“Oh. You’re trying to fire me.”

“No. Not at all. If you need a job that we can’t fulfill in the company then start looking. I’ll pay. Go look. And we’ll give you a good recommendation.”

And it worked!

So simple. So clear.

I like your Chapter Six. Introducing Your Strategic Action Plan. And in bold you wrote:

You Cannot Do it ALL!

That's a big challenge sometimes for entrepreneurs. Letting go, letting others.

You can’t do it all. You become tired and stressed. Make bad decisions.

Run off the good talent.

Exactly.

He’ll say:

“Dammit. He won’t let me do it. I’ve got a better idea.”

Well, better ideas come out in the strategic planning, in the process. I show them how to do that. HOW. How to think. How to plan. How to execute. And that’s what’s missing out in the marketplace.

That’s what I’ve seen in my research. SUCCESS by DESIGN is the only entrepreneur book on how to do it that’s available.

Chapter 7 is all about the important of reviewing results. This next question may seem like a dumb question, but what’s the importance of frequent reviews?

A lot of our citizens in this country are church-going members. Possibly, you, yourself are.

Why do you go every week? Why do you hear the dogma every week? Why do you say The Lord’s Prayer every week? Why is that?

Why do we pledge allegiance in school frequently? Why do we sing the Star Spangled Banner?

Why?

To remind us of who we are, and where we are, and what we’re doing. Which means just saying it once, let’s say you have a strategic planning meeting and you’re woriking on the mission and you create the mission for a profit-making company I recommend - create ever-increasing wealth- why would we repeat it?

Because you forget it!

Ok, we’re going into strategic planning session. Let’s recite the mission.

Oh, we’ve done it.

No. Let’s recite the mission so the thinking that came up with it can be evaluated.

You come up with an idea...is that going to increase our income? No? Well, then we just don’t do it.

Or, we create increasing income but it won’t create any profit; it creates losses. Oh. So that’s the acid test right up front, isn’t it?

So, you repeat it and repeat it and you have them repeat it to their staff.

But you can’t ever let up or bad stuff comes in and blind-sides you.

I’ve had that happen. Things come in the back door and before we know it we’re losing money.

How did that happen?

Well, we never measured it against our mission. It just wasn’t designed to do that. What a stupid mistake! Not stupid, we’re all human.

Why do you tell people you love them? We need to be reminded every single day, the older you get. Why? You don’t want to forget and you don’t want them to forget.

Calvin Coolidge’s advice on persistence I value:

Persistence. Every day in every way, persevere.

Same way with your values, with your strategic plan. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Polish, improve. Repeat.

**********

Part Three of this conversation will be published Tuesday, November 22.

Interview w/ @MethodMan and @Adam_Lowry, Founders of Method - Part 3

Eric Ryan and Adam Lowry, co-authors of The Method Method: 7 Obsessions that Helped Our Scrappy Start-Up Turn an Industry Upside Down and co-founders of Method home products joined the show recently.

You can listen here.

You can read Part One here.

You can read Part Two here.

I'm an avid reader. I read 1 or 2 business books a week. And I found this book one of the best written, most useful, best-organized, most entertaining, imminently doable books I've read in a long time.

How good is it? I haven't finished it yet. Almost every paragraph inspires, ignites, aggravates me to keep writing notes, scribbling them in a notepad or typing them in Evernote.

If you're in a startup, a small company, a mid-sized company, if you're in a department within a big company getting ready to launch something new...you should read this. And make sure you have a notepad handy. Seriously. Even if you just like good writing...you should read this.

You talk about the different types of reasoning and its role in your decision-making process. Two types of reasoning, I’m kind of familiar with, inductive and deductive, I use occasionally in my business. You describe a 3rd. Abductive. And I looked it up on Wikipedia and it describes it as guessing. But I think it’s a bit more than that.

Both: Laughing.

Eric: Awesome. I never looked it up in Wikipedia.

Adam: What counts is that we’re smarter than guessing.

Eric: You blew my entire cover of what everybody thinks I do around here. I have a vision, inspire what can be versus what is...and it turns out all the time I was guessing.

Yeah, this comes from bringing together great business thinking and great design thinking. My career was I grew up working with creatives. And a lot of it rubbed off on me over time and it’s about most people look at something and they’ll explain to you what is. And they’ll have a really hard time what can be. And that is the core skill of a designer or a creative is creating something that hasn’t been. I would argue it’s also the core skill of an entrepreneur who has the ability to like we did, in a wall of sameness in cleaning products and be able to imagine what possibly could be in that place that was there today.

Adam: Otherwise known as guessing.

To be honest, I just looked it up as we were talking and I’d ever heard of it and I thought:

Wait a minute. That is a form of reasoning. And the first sentence in Wikipedia is that sentence.

Why is it so rare, why are you guys so fortunate to have such an active skillset with abductive reasoning. Or why is it so rare in other businesses?

Eric: Because most businesses as they mature and grow, people who naturally get promoted to the top tend to be the best managers who have a really rigorous approach. They’re analytical. They have the ability to create predictability, right - the person who ultimately can deliver predictable results time and time again.

Who gets squeezed out, ultimately, are the individuals who are much more the creators. They’re not going to be the managers. And so, what we try to do is balance that at a leadership team level, that design thinking and business thinking where we have an industrial designer who sits there as a peer to a CFO.

And, it’s rare. But it’s getting much less rare. Apple’s probably the best example where a designer or a creative sits there at the same level as the operations.

We talked a little bit before the show about failure. You guys have failed a number of times. In fact, you devote a section at the end of each chapter to a failure and what you learned from it.

I say this with a big smile...but given the number of your failures, big and small, you guys should be consider big failures. I say that with the utmost respect. But you kept right on failing until you were successful and you had the guts to share many of those failures in your book.

Adam: Well, it starts off with the belief, and I mentioned it before, Eric and I we’re not really into trite things like “striving for perfection” or “striving for excellence” sorta vacuous statements like that.

Instead of focusing on being the best, we’re focused on being the best at getting better. It’s interesting that we’ve learned from stories like the space shuttle disaster. You know that classic NASA story about the fear of bringing the O-ring forward to superiors within that organization and the disaster that occurred there in that organization.

What’s really important is not that you come up with the perfect strategy that can’t fail. It’s much more important to have a strategy that’s just ok and execute it really well. And then learn what didn’t work. And adjust that strategy and execute well again. If you do that, in a couple of iterations you’re going to be by far the best. And that will get you there much more quickly than trying to sit around and think about the perfect solution.

We’d rather get towards doing, learn what works and what doesn’t, and then just keep doing. And it’s sorta painfully simple. But it works.

And what it does is that it means you got to have a company culture that says:

“It’s ok to fail but we gotta learn from it.”

Now that you’re over 10 years old and your quarterly revenues are meaningful, how do you keep that willingness to fail and that openness to it alive and well in your culture?

Adam: I think it’s important to note we’re still a tiny company in the grand scheme of our competitive set. We have competitors that are a 1000 times our size. We’re still really little, even though we’re bigger. But we do believe that small is a state of mind. And it’s about a way of doing things where people remain scrappy and resourceful and focused around making the best of the resources we have.

Eric: Yeah, I think that fear of failure starts at the top and setting examples. When Adam and I screw up, we admit those mistakes. It’s modeling that behavior that’s probably the most important thing you can do as a leader.

You list 3 mistakes, 3 learning experiences with your Bloq product line. Which one proved the most valuable?

Eric: That line taught us a lot of mistakes that we were able to carry forward. I would argue probably the one that is:

“Lack of Alignment”

There were some really simple decisions we made really late in the game that if we had not done that we would be ultimately...none of this would have happened. So, it’s something we push really really hard on...we’ve got complete alignment before we move forward on new decisions.

Early on in our conversation we talked about your principle to aim small and over serve. That sounds so clear for a small startup company. But your muse, Andy, also reminds you that the bigger you get, the smaller you need to act. Now, you're a big company. A bigger company. When did you catch yourself acting like a big company?

Eric: I think probably one of the best examples was when we launched the brand. If you read the copy on the back of the label, you probably would have just laughed out loud. We would go on to make ridiculous claims, like our cucumber dish soap claim, we would say:

“We own the right to the cucumber in all countries except Guam.”

Things would just come out of left field. And couldn’t really be explained but it would be very entertaining. And it would also bring a little bit of fun to the dish soap. I was amazed at the all the letters we would get, some of them arguing with us:

“Guam is not a country, it’s a territory.”

And wanting to keep dialogue going.

And as we got bigger that voice got squeezed out more and more. We started sounding a bit more serious and taking ourselves a bit more serious.

And that’s a lot of what Andy means. The bigger you get the more real you need to be in order to lot lose your connection with those human emotions.

We worked hard with the more recent things we’ve done. If you look at the bottom of our bottles now we’ve started embossing them with little sayings that, for the consumer to discover. Just those little winks, those little quirks, that you don’t typically get from big brands.

Nice. Nice answer.

You sprinkle your book with quick profiles of your favorite muses. Andy Spade, Tony Hsieh, Dan Germain, and others. Was there one muse you left out?

Eric: Yeah, we had a lot of muses we could have done. I would give a couple for me.

Chip Connelly, who’s the well-known hotelier here in San Francisco. His ability to create experiences and elevate those experiences is amazing.

Blake Mycoskie who founded Tom’s Shoes. His ability to create inspire advocates and his leverage of social media for his one-to-one model is just world-class and somebody who I continue to get inspired by.

Adam: Yeah, there are some people who were inspirational to us that we mentioned in the book, not as muses but who served that role. People like Yvon Chouinard founder of Patagonia who’s created a business model unlike any other as it relates to sustainability. People like Michael Braungart and Bill McDonough behind the cradle-to-cradle model of business which we very much build into things.

Those are great inspirations and muses for us. I think there are some very personal ones for both Eric and I. Both of us look to our parents and grand-parents as great inspirations and the reasons why we’ve ended up doing what we’re doing.

We've reached the imagination moment in our show. Let's imagine that President Obama is calling your assistant right now. In fact, they are waving at you and mouthing the words...President Obama, as we talk. You’re laughing and she drops him into your voicemail. He says:

Guys, love what you're doing. You and your company turned an industry upside down. Right now, we've got an economy that remains upside down. I need to hear your ideas on how we can turn it upside down one more time, bring it right side up and start growing, generating jobs. Would you come to the white house, bring some product to keep me and the first lady happy, and talk about 3 things we can do now to bring this economy right side up.

What would you tell him?

Adam: I’m not politician, but since you gave me the liberty to answer when you brought it up I’ll go ahead and jump into it.

The first is I think we really need to invest in the green economy. I don’t know why in political discourse there’s still this weird belief that if we do something good for the environment it will be bad for the economy. That’s just plainly false. In fact, the reverse is true. By making investments in the green economy we can create, by making investments in green things we can make growth happen.

I’m a big believer in that.

The 2nd is education. Education is always something that is critically important for the development of a nation. I think we need to do that at a lot of different levels.

The last one is a little bit political. I believe the issue of campaign finance reform is a critical issue in the United States. I think it’s an apex issue. One of the reasons it’s so hard to invest in the green economy and one of the reasons the deck is stacked against companies like Method that integrate social and environmental considerations into their business model is that our politicians are really run by the people that fund them. And the the people that fund them are big entrenched businesses whose interests are to keep things the way they are. As long as the big corporations, who don’t want things to change, are funding the politicians then we’re not going to get the level of change we seek.

Eric: I guess I would just tell him, like, stop calling me and continue to let me work, so I can make more soap and hire more people.

Readers are leaders. Jim Rohn says that, I just quote him. What are you reading these days in all your free time?

Eric: You know, I’m a magazine junkie. I find it hard to find the time to get into a new book. I had a flight this morning that left at 5:30 AM and in hand I had the Economist, Business Week and Fast Company. But, I’m also, I spend a lot of time on digital media and blogs but I’m still magazine junkie at heart.

Adam: I’m reading two books right now. One’s called The Ripple Effect by Alex Prudhomme and it’s about fresh water and the fate of fresh water in the world going forward. I read a lot of non-fiction, stuff like that, instead of a lot of business books.

The other book I’m reading, Redesigning Leadership (Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life)  is by John Maeda  from Rhode Island School of Design.

Both great books about different topics. One’s critical if business is going to provide more leadership in the world.

Fantastic.

This has been a fantastic conversation. You start your book talking about the importance of a company's culture. And you end your book talking about culture, too. In this case, it's the personal culture. Share with us your conclusion.

Adam: Um, I’m not sure I understand what you mean.

Well, as I’m reading aloud, I’m not sure the question was very clear. I apologize.

Adam: I’m sure it was at the time.

You start the last chapter with a great conclusion:

Sitting down to write this conclusion, we couldn’t help but think,

Shouldn’t you be drawing your own conclusions from the book?

We’ve spent over two hundred pages giving you all of the wit and wisdom we have to offer, and you want more? ...

Really, if there is one thing we want you to take away from this book it’s...buy our soap. Lots of it!...

Ok, if there are two things you take away from this book, here’s the second: Find your own obsessions.

Eric: Success only comes from really understanding and articulating what drives you. And taking that up to a higher purpose in your career and life. It’s such a cliche’, but it’s a true one. It’s hard for most people. We’re very lucky to find early in our careers what really drove us and to be able to lean into it in a big way.

Adam: I’m glad that Eric remembered what we wrote in the conclusion. I remembered it in more general terms in that when we were sitting down to write the conclusion we thought usually a conclusion ties a bow around the end of the book. For us, the conclusion was another introduction into the next step into the thinking of the reader.

We’ve shared this open-sourced business model with people as a way to say:

“Hey, we’ve had some success; we’ve had some failures. We’re certainly not doing it perfectly. But some of this stuff is working. Why don’t you read this? Why don’t you take it and apply it to whatever you do, hopefully for your own personal success, but more importantly to build on a business model to help us create some really positive effect for the world.”

Beautiful. It’s a beautiful way to end the show. I would love to keep on talking but you guys have a tone of things going on. I appreciate you taking the time out to spend an hour talking about your book and what’s driven you to success and helping others.

So, I’m always terrible at ending a show.

I’ll just say Thanks!

Oh, where do we find you on the web?

Adam: I’m Adam_Lowry.

Eric: I am MethodGuy.

Great! Where can we find you on the web?

Eric: Method Home dot com.

I’d say good luck, but it sounds like you have everything under control. And if it’s not under control in the future, you’ll get it. Congrats on your success!

Adam: Thanks for having us!

Eric: Thanks. It’s been great talking with you.

What would you learn?

What would you do if you knew you would not fail?

That presents a great perspective, doesn't it? Every time I see it, read it, consider it...it inspired me.

The other morning I was thinking about it in regards to some dreams, a few potential projects. I changed it slightly:

What would you learn if you did fail?

I'm a big fan of failure. Some would say I should be given my ringing embrace of failure. But way before failure is a path to learning phrase du jour, I always looked back and cherished (that's the word that popped up) my failures. They've been the source of much laughter from crazy stories I've shared with others. They've been the source for a much greater patience and compassion for others. It's all relative, but much greater is much greater than I had. They have been a source of empowerment and engagement for those I've led. I can speak with authority on failing, failure, what it teaches, how it's ok, how we can fix it.

What would you if you knew you would not fail?

What would you learn if you did fail?

I haven't thought this all the way through. But it seems these are two questions that could guide us to do something grand.

And if I'm wrong, if I've failed in connecting these two, what would I learn?

Interview with Eric Ryan and Adam Lowry, Founders of Method - Part 1

Eric Ryan and Adam Lowry, co-authors of The Method Method: 7 Obsessions that Helped Our Scrappy Start-Up Turn an Industry Upside Down and co-founders of Method home products joined the show recently. You can listen here.

With the flood of business books organized around numbered lists, I find it an overworked publishing theme. That being said...this is an awesome book.

I'm an avid reader. I read 1 or 2 business books a week. And I found this book one of the best written, most useful, best-organized, most entertaining, imminently doable books I've read in a long time.

How good is it? I haven't finished it yet. Almost every paragraph inspires, ignites, aggravates me to keep writing notes, scribbling them in a notepad or typing them in Evernote.

How good is it? I won't write notes in the margin, nor will I turn down a corner of a page to mark something. That would touch on sacrilegious. That's almost over the top, but it's not. This is a great book.

If you're in a startup, a small company, a mid-sized company, if you're in a department within a big company getting ready to launch something new...you should read this. And make sure you have a notepad handy. Seriously. Even if you just like good writing...you should read this.

Guys. Adam and Eric. Thanks for your time and writing a great book.

Adam: Thanks for having us, Zane.

Eric: Glad to be here.

Your book cover includes many testimonials. My two favorites were one from Tony Hsieh, bestselling author of Delivering Happiness and CEO of Zappos, one of my favorite companies. And the other was a joint testimonial from Pam Ryan, Pat Lowry. How did you convince your moms to give you a testimonial for your book, other than the obvious that it's a great book?

Eric: It was not easy, particularly since my mom spent a lot of years probably pestering me to do my grammar homework, so, uh, despite that we finally proved to our moms that we were worthy of their endorsement.

Who were you writing for as you put this together? Describe the reader you had in mind, what do they do, what are they facing, where do they sit in an organization?

Adam: Yeah, Zane, we really wrote this book for anyone who is trying to change the way business is getting done - both as someone running a business or somebody within a business, ie, any entrepreneur or any intrapreneur.

We also wrote it as a way for any business to create positive social change in the world. The book is really, it’s our open-sourced business model, written and provided for people to examine and hopefully use the best of, learn from our mistakes and build something better.

Perfect. What's in it for them, why should they care about these 7 obsessions and your method method?

Eric: What is very unique about our business and it’s pretty typical for an entrepreneur to take on a goliath...we’re basically foolish enough to take on multiple goliaths in our space. The soap industry has been dominated by the same players for the last 100-plus years. And, so, coming into these categories we had to change the game, not just one level but on multiple levels. And the way that we tapped into what we call our obsessions which essentially is our competitive advantages we strongly feel are relevant to any business today because they are all grounded in macro-trends.

Who would MacGyver have written this book for? How would he have organized it? Did you ever get stuck and have to ask yourself "What would MacGyver do?

Adam: Well, Zane, as you read in the book MacGyver is a big value at Method and it’s about being scrappy and resourceful when you need to. We have to do that in order to compete against the big companies we compete against in the household cleaning space.

For us, there were many MacGyver moments in the writing of this book because Eric and I are busy every day with our jobs, our day jobs. We’re not authors by profession. So, there are a lot of times when we were trying to figure out how to get this done and there are a lot of times when we examined:

“What are the ways we’re going to MacGyver this book to be the most useful to those intrapreneurs and entrepreneurs I just mentioned.”

One of the most interesting ways we did that that I think was interesting as well was sharing our mistakes. And, the error-autopsies. And as you read in the book, each chapter ends with an error-autopsy which is an examination, a case-study we made that others can learn from and try to avoid.

What we’re trying to do has never been done before. And if you’re going to do that you’ve got to learn from your mistakes.

I think that’s one of the many reasons I loved your book was you were so forthcoming with your mistakes and their value in helping you grow.

Eric: Absolutely. We really do feel that Richard Dean Anderson would write a killer business book if he would just decide to do so.

My friend, Erika Andersen, wrote a great book titled Being Strategic. She asks the reader to define their reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future. What was yours, what was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for future, when you wrote this book?

Adam: For us, it was about making it clear for people that business is the largest and most powerful institution on the planet has the opportunity and we believe the onus to create positive change in the world.

That’s a very lofty aspiration. But the way that you get that done is the everyday tactical things and learning from your mistakes.

And that’s really what we hope people get out of this book. You can take on really big industries and succeed and in the process do something meaningful and purposeful.

Love that answer! Having founded a successful consumer goods company, I know metrics are important to you. But let's talk about the metrics for this book. What metrics are you using to measure your progress towards that hoped-for future with your book?

Adam: Most of them are soft metrics. As I mentioned before, Eric and I are not professional authors. We’re not writing this book to try to maximize the number of copies sold the way an author might.

Really, what we’re trying to do, we’re going to measure this with how effective was this book in changing people’s minds about the role that entrepreneurs play in creating positive change in the world and to a lesser degree how is this book increasing people’s understanding of the real mission behind Method. This business is very deep in its commitment to social change and that might not be something, when you’re shopping grocery store shelves, is immediately obvious to you.

We hope that a lot of people, by reading this book, understand the deeper story behind Method.

We've all heard about the 7 sins and the 7 virtues. You guys, on the other hand, have 7 obsessions. We could spend an hour on each of them, I'm sure, but let's run through them. What are those 7 obsessions?

Eric: Yeah, just to set this up with this is not something we put together to write a book. This is the way we operate our business. And they were part of the business plan from very early on. Writing the book was fairly easy when we were just reporting on what we have done already.

Number one: Create a Culture Club. At Method everything starts with culture. And we really believe in culture as a competitive advantage and this idea that you build a brand from the inside out.

Obsession Two: Inspire Advocates. We just don’t want to have customers. We want to create advocates who help us build a brand.

Three: Be a Green Giant and really personalize sustainability to inspire change on a grand scale as Adam just talked about.

Four: Kick Ass at Fast. If you’re not going to be the biggest, you better be the fastest.

Obsession Five: Relation Retail. Today, it’s no longer enough to have a shallow relationship with a lot of retailers. You need to have deep relationships with fewer.

Six is Win on Product Experience. At Method, we’re very much a product centric organization that is focused on delivering amazing and remarkable product experiences.

Obsession Number 7 is Design Driven and really building design leadership into your DNA.

Fantastic.

I ask the next question with the usual disclaimers and caveats.

Let's say God likes sins and virtues, but not obsessions. Still, he likes you guys, so he’s willing to compromise. You can have one obsession. Consider this an exercise in detachment and pick one obsession and let the others go... Which one do you hold on to? Why?

Eric: For me, I would hold on to Design Driven because I am so passionate about design. Its a big part of why I jump out of bed every morning to use design to make the world a more enjoyable place.

Adam: Yeah, and I’ll not surprisingly pick Be a Green giant. That’s my half of the founding vision.

I think it goes without saying that it is a slightly unfair question that it is a slightly unfair question. I think what Eric and I each brought to this business was multiplied many times by the other. So, individually they are a lot less interesting than they are put together.

Absolutely. You’re right about it being an unfair question. But I wanted to see which one was a personal favorite.

Adam: Yes, And those are the reasons we put the business together.

Of these 7 which is the one most companies lack?

Eric: I would argue that it’s culture. It’s one of those intangible things that is hard for companies to get their arms around. And, it’s about human behavior. It’s how we treat each other. And it’s so hard to name companies that you know that have great cultures.

True. Very true. I don’t know any that come to mind.

Eric: Yeah, and in the book we always pick out a muse. A muse is someone who does something better than us. And our muse for culture is Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos. We definitely consider ourselves to be a very weird, unique, human place. And then I go to Zappos and I go:

“Oh, my god. We are so corporate.”

They do a great job with it.

How can customers or prospects, even employees, tell a company lacks this important obsession? I mean in some respects so few companies have a culture worth championing. We’ve become number to it. Maybe we should ask if a company has good culture?

Adam: I think there’s one easy way to measure our culture. And that’s:

“Is there any different way that people are at work and the way they are at home?”

If people are exactly the way they are at work as they are at home, you’ve pretty much got it right.

That’s an excellent answer. I was not expecting you to describe it like that. It’s a great way.

One of the first ways I knew your list of seven was going to be excellent was when I saw you made Culture your number one obsession. We’ve already spoken about it a few times. But I think it’s so important that we talk a bit more about it. Why is culture so important, especially since it’s ignored so much?

Eric: I think so much of a culture is the emotional aspects of it. Again, we’re dealing with human behaviors. There are absolutely ways to measure in an analytical way, a rational way, to understand a culture whether it’s working or it’s not working.

But, it’s one of those things that it’s really hard for companies to understand and measure because it’s based in emotions.

That’s that squishy stuff that businesses like to avoid.

Eric: Absolutely. You typically see the values of an organization’s mission. It’s usually put on an ugly walnut plaque in the wall. They tend to be such watered-down meaningless words, you can tell their words by committee. You know great cultures are about language and having a point-of-view that is unique and that everybody can rally behind. That’s hard to do as a group It takes a real kind of leadership and vision.

Adam: Yeah, think about the word “culture” outside of business context. It’s really about a shared set of values, a shared set of traditions. Things like that. If you then think about culture in a business context, you realize that there’s very little done in most businesses to actively cultivate culture as a shared set of things, values, that people subscribe to.

Now, is this attitude, this lack of attention to culture a relic of our manufacturing, economies of scale, mass produced business environment?

Adam: You know, I’m not really sure. I think it’s probably a function of not enough attention and recognition that with the right culture as the underpinning of a business and you can actually make a business far more productive and innovative.

Perhaps, it’s a luxury that we’ve had at Method in having to innovate in order to survive. We’ve realized that we can’t innovate unless we have a culture that allows us to collaborate, clash and resolve tension, all in a productive and creative way so that we can produce stuff that’s unique and different.

If we don’t do that, we’re nothing. So, for us, culture is very important, obviously a critical piece of our success.

Maybe, businesses have been around so long and been analyzed so hard that people in the name of efficiency or whatever just decide it’s not that important. I think you lose something really important when you do that.

You wrote and I’m quoting:

You've got Procter & Gamble ..which spent $2.4 billion on advertising in the US alone. Unilever spent another 1.3 billion. It's safe to assume these guys have a toilet-paper budget that's bigger than our entire marketing budget...Method didn't have a dollar to spend at launch.

Right there, coupled with your success, is The Big Shift as you call it. And it' a huge shift, a huge opportunity for small businesses. What is The Big Shift?

Eric: So, what we call The Big Shift is the transition away from interruptive media. The brands in our space, these are the first multinationals, the Lever Brothers, Proctor & Gamble. these companies were built from the rise of mass media. They were the first ones to do a great job of positioning themselves for that entire shift towards interruptive media, which is you’re watching TV and you’re interrupted for a 30-second spot.

And, of course, The Big Shift is getting us away from that because it’s getting easier and easier to avoid these interruptions as we’re shifting towards social media and media that you choose to participate in. And along that shift is an opportunity for a new brand to be born and an old brand to die.

Baseball is a great example of how sports even shifted as the different mediums have changed. Baseball was America’s favorite past-time as the radio was the biggest medium. And it’s a beautiful sport for the radio. And as television took center stage we saw the rise of football.

For entrepreneurs these shifts are wonderful opportunities to exploit to your advantage as all the rules start changing.

Now, if you don’t mind, I want to drill into this Big Shift present such a significant opportunity for startups and disruptors and small businesses? How do these take advantage of this transition away from interruptive media to earned media?

Eric: Well, obviously the rise of online in itself, which is a whole different topic, from Facebook to Twitter, completely... businesses have been born on that rise.

But, if you get away from technology, I think the opportunity for the entrepreneur is that it puts greater emphasis on good content and good products. We now live in a world where a good product can easily get discovered and get shared among peers through social media in ways where you needed that muscle to be able to buy the advertising to interrupt somebody to get that message out there on a mass scale.

For me, that’s the real opportunity is that we can focus on putting a truly better product or service or better content out there and having a better chance of succeeding than somebody who is doing a very efficient but mediocre way.

Excellent. Excellent answer.

**********

Parts Two and Three of this interview will be posted on Thursday, November 3 and Friday, November 4 Saturday, November 5.

Ray Schwemmer, Co-Author of Dynamic Collaboration: Part 3

RAY SCHWEMMER is the president, CEO, and co-founder of CollabraSpace, a software company that has focused on secure collaboration solutions for industry and government customers since 1998.

He just co-authored an excellent book for anyone who now considers how to unleash the power of collaboration within their organization and on a secure basis. His book is Dynamic Collaboration: How to Share Information, Solve Problems, and Increase Productivity without Compromising Security.

He joined the show recently to talk about his book, his company's solutions and the changing dynamics and expectations in the collaboration conversation.

You can listen to our conversation here.

You can read Part One of our conversation here.

You can read Part Two of our conversation here.

You talk a lot in your book about Cloud Computing. Big topic, it’s a hot topic. Great opportunity there for startups who lack the resources for an enterprise solution. Great opportunity for lost data. Where's the balance? What are some steps you recommend in your book for a company to consider to best balance those risks?

Yeah, the cloud is big today, a big buzzword of the day. Big technology out there. So, a lot of large companies are as well. We deal with a lot of large companies and large organizations. Smaller ones and larger ones are really looking to go to the cloud.

What we really talk about for those customers who want to go to the cloud and there’s people offering all sorts of services in the cloud today. Just like in your internal architectures, you need to make sure that you control the data and the data stays internal to your organization.

So, if you’re outsourcing that make sure you know where the data’s being stored. Some companies have, maybe if you’re in the medical field you will have government regulations that say it must be stored in the U.S.; it’s not allowed to go overseas - so you need to make sure you know where that data center is being stored.

I would make the assumption but you need to check that that data is redundant in case of failure of some sort. But you need to know where your data is going.

In addition, a lot of these data centers they’re standing up a separate collaborative tool. That’s what we talked about and said that’s not really the best way to do it. We kinda encourage people that if you want to go to the cloud, ask them how their collaboration tool fits into the other services that they’re provding you. So, if you’re getting your HR system from a cloud, or your getting your accounting system from a cloud, are they also offering you collaboration in both of those so that my HR department and accounting departments can talk to each other. If not, you’re kinda going down that previous path of:

“I’m standing up a separate collaborative system and all my departments are going to have to go that system to collaborate.”

Cloud has some great advantages but you want to make sure what you’re purchasing in there is fitting the needs of your organization.

Let's talk about the cart and the horse, social media and enterprise collaboration. Which one is the cart, which one is the horse?

I wish I knew.

Depends on the day.

You know, social media is all the buzz today. Maybe, it’s not the horse but, maybe, it’s the carrot you’re leading the horse with.

Social media is just the buzz. Everybody’s looking at how do they take Facebook and Twitter, LinkedIn, and how do I get all these things internally and have my employees all working together just like they do at home.

So, that’s probably, that’s the carrot out in front of the horse and the horse is pulling another thing. That’s definitely the buzz out there today. Organizations are figuring out how do they do that. But if they bring in a social networking tool that let’s them see who all is online and be friends with them and I still want to be able to do my web conferencing and share my documents because we’re really not sharing our kids’ soccer photos with each other; we’re trying to do work here.

So, what we look at in that case is social media running the buzz, the hype. But when we talk to people we tell them:

“You need to make sure that capability is connected with your other collaboration capability.”

Again, all this should be embedded with the tools you a re currently using. So, it would be great to come into work one day and tell me:

“You might want to be friends with Suzie, who’s in the Chicago office because you have these things in common. “

And, maybe that’s a good thing.

Social networking is driving it. Maybe, it’s the horse in your analogy.

We have reached the imagination moment in our show. Let's imagine for a moment that on line 2 is President Obama. He's leaving you a message from his Blackberry that works this week. He says:

Ray. After reading your book and listening to you, I think you might have some solutions we need to hear. The country seems to have a problem right now collaborating, dynamically or sluggishly. And we see the results in our economy and our education...Can you come to the White House, bring your co-author Rick Havrilla. I'd like to you to talk about 3 ways we can create some dynamic collaboration, share information, solve problems, and increase productivity...on a nation-wide basis.

What would you tell him?

I thought we were focusing on jobs...

No, I would say, first off within the government agencies, we talked at the beginning about what is collaboration and what is secure collaboration. I think a lot of government agencies in the past have been tasked with ‘standing up collaborative environments.’ I would say they have checked that box and said:

“Yes. We have stood it up.”

How many people are using those systems? I would argue that it’s a very small percentage of the workforce.

So, I think the first thing I would say is the government agencies should be asking is:

“ What percentage of my people are online?”

And if it’s not 100%, you have a problem. Because you should be able to look at what tools your people are using today. If you integrate collaboration into those tools then by definition you are going to have 100% of your people online and able to work with others.

That would be step number one: Stand up these internal collaborative tools and make the government more efficient.

From the external piece, we had talked about customers being able to get in, so, you know maybe instead of calling the IRS you can set up a chat room with them and share documents. My tax return vs what they have and work through our issues. That might be more complicated. So, that would be Phase Two of how to do that.

On the other hand, I see if you look at it even broader, the White House and others are having talks and things like that on Twitter and LinkedIn and things like that. I think they are adopting some of these social media tools to share information with users, the US population. So, from that point I think they are doing something. But I think they could do a lot more internally for efficiencies and probably offer a lot more online capabilities for constituents and interact with their elected officers.

Leaders are readers. Jim Rohn says that, I merely quote him. You're a leader. What are you reading in all your free time.

I didn’t know I had free time.

I just finished Power of An Internal Franchise which Marty O’Neill had written.

I’m in the middle of one of Zig Ziglar’s books. I think it’s the Secrets of Closing the Sale. I think it’s probably the 3rd time I’m reading it. I just always pick up something different whenever I read it.

I’ve been busy with the book and work recently. I haven’t had as much time to read as I’d like.

I’m a big fan of Marty O’Neill and I’ve had him on the show to talk about his book: The Power of an Internal Franchise. That’s a great book.

Yeah. Yeah, I enjoyed it. There’s a couple of things in it I need to implement here.

At the end of your chapter on The Future of Collaboration, you write:

...there will soon be a time when instead of a query result returning a list of over 1000 documents for you to read, it will instead return the names of 5 people whom you should talk with to be answers. In addition, the system would report that two of the five are online now and provide links to collaborate with them.

Love that. That's what collaboration is all about. Or I should say that's who collaboration is all about, isn't it? People.

Yes! And again, it’s where I go back to a lot of people in the past have seen to stand up, I take the consumer model, and they stand up a Facebook and get millions of users and to stand it up and they will come mentality. For every successful system out there I think that there are hundreds or thousands of systems that have failed.

Our approach in the corporate world is bring the collaboration capabilities, the tools the users have on their desktop, are currently using on a daily basis.

Why make ‘em switch context to collaborate? People want to collaborate. We’ve collaborated for hundreds of years before this technology came along. Whether it’s the pone or traveling, whatever it took to get the job done, technology just makes it more efficient. But, it’s all about bringing the tools to the user to make their lives easier.

So, yes, it’s all about the users, the people.

Fantastic.

Where can our listeners connect and collaborate with you in an online, unsecure setting?

I’m around quite a few places.Obviously they can get to us with email. They can go to Collabraspace website. We also have a website for the book. There are links there to follow us on Twitter and Facebook; we have a blog there. They can get in touch with me, Ray dot Schwemmer at Collabraspace dot com.

Ray, this has been a great show. I appreciate your time and your patience here with this show.

Thank you for having me on. You asked some very good questions, a few I’ve never heard before. It’s always nice to have to think about them before answering. I appreciate your time in having me on.

President Obama: 3 Ways Open Innovation Returns Us To #1 Innovator

Jeffrey Phillips joined the show recently. You can listen to our conversation here. You can read parts one, two and three of our interview.

Jeffrey is VP of Marketing and a lead consultant with OVO Innovation. Jeffrey’s led innovation projects for Fortune 5000 firms, academic institutions and non-profits all based on OVO Innovation’s trademarked Innovate on Purpose method.

He was one of the 34 innovation experts who contributed a chapter for the excellent book A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowd-Sourcing: Advice from Leading Experts. Jeffrey’s chapter is Open Innovation Typology.

And after reading Jeffrey's chapter it's clear there is a type of innovation that can fit any organization, for-profit or not, global giant or mom-and-pop brick-and-mortar and as importantly a type that fits anyone's budget.

It made sense to ask him how Open Innovation and the right type of Open Innovation would help us with this pressing problem of innovation, our economy and jobs.

I asked him:

We've reached the imagination moment in our show. Let's imagine President Obama had a few moments this week. He finds your book, reads your chapter. And calls you.

Jeffrey, he says because he's the President. At this point in our declining ratings as a nation of innovators any type of open innovation will work. The challenge for us is to find one and move forward.

What if you came up to the White House and met with myself and Vice-President Biden. We want to hear your thoughts, maybe 3 things that we as a nation can do to identify the type of open innovation that can return us to being number one, generate some new businesses with new jobs.

What do you tell him?

And, he answered:

Let say the first thing, I didn’t know you were going to ask me this question specifically. I write a blog called Innovate on Purpose. Yesterday, I wrote a blog post called Innovate Anywhere and I riffed off the poem of The Ancient Mariner. You know:

Water, water, everywhere and not a drop to drink.

We live in a society and a time when we are literally awash in a time of ideas. And the interesting thing is our government is really dead-locked. And it seems stagnant. At a time when there are so many good ideas out there it seems it’s really more about having the political will to change perspectives and adopt or at least ask people for their ideas as opposed to trying the same tired solutoins over and over again.

I’ll direct your listeners to my blog.

But I think there would be three things.

First, the government can’t just be willing to listen to these ideas. They have to be willing to adopt those ideas and to demonstrate that:

“We listened and here’s the results from that action.”

So, the first one I would suggest are philanthropic contests. Can we create a contest much like BP had with the oil spill. What’s one thing you would change in the Department of Commerce. And if you recommended it how would, what would it change and how would it change people’s every day lives in creating jobs. And I use the Department of Commerce as an example. It could be any of the departments.

But, what we should be able to do is suggest very specific ideas that might drive jobs or help the government spend more money effectively or ways to cut costs or abuse and those kinds of things. And be very specific about ways with each agency of allowing people to make ideas.

The government has already started this with Challenge.Gov. But it needs to go a lot further. And it needs to demonstrate it through lots of small experiments. So, as we get these ideas we start kicking off very small experiments.

2nd idea you asked about was If President Obama asked me...was clearly here in the US we’re pretty smart. But we don’t have a lock on the best ideas. Are there places in other countries, other companies, other non-profits, where a problem we’re facing is solved better some place else. This would allow other people, other organizations, other countries, other companies, to submit ideas to the government:

“We see you have this problem. We think we have a better solution than you have.”

That would mean we would have to open up our minds and our political processes to be willing to listen and look at other ideas and accept those ideas.

The 3rd thing I would tell from an open-innovation perspective would be to merely opening up to new voices. I think that our government may be just a bit locked into 535 members of Congress and maybe I don’t know 15 or 20,000 lobbyists on Capitol Hill. That means those are the voices that get heard. There’s 300 million of the rest of us whose voices aren’t getting heard. Are their ways we can begin to compound our voices and get behind specific initiatives and ideas that can then be communicated to our government agencies.

What we’re really talking about is true democracy is true open innovation. If you think about it, it’s people with great ideas trying to press their will on the majority that eventually hopefully many in the majority will accept and it becomes a law.

I think we’ve lost a little bit of our democratic process in allowing ideas to bubble up. And it would be interesting to see if there were different ways to allow open innovation platforms or purely democratic platforms, democratic with a small d, to allow us to bubble ideas back up, bubble legislation, as well into the federal government.

So, those are 3 things. All those are pie-in-the-sky. We’re in the imagination phase as you said. I can be a bit imaginative and hope for the best.

Want more from Jeffrey Phillips?

Follow him on Twitter at OVOInnovation

Read his blog: Innovate on Purpose.

**********

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.

Jim Clifton, Author of The Coming Jobs War, Interview: Part 2

From the site The Coming Jobs War:

What everyone in the world wants is a good job.

Today, this statement makes vivid sense.

In a provocative book for business and government leaders, Gallup Chairman Jim Clifton describes how this undeniable fact will affect all leadership decisions as countries wage war to produce the best jobs.

Under Clifton's leadership, Gallup has expanded from to a worldwide organization with 40 offices in 30 countries and regions.

Clifton is also the creator of The Gallup Path, a metric-based economic model that establishes the linkages among human nature in the workplace, customer engagement, and business outcomes. This model is used in performance management systems in more than 500 companies worldwide.

Mr. Clifton joined the show recently to talk about the book, his book, and what it means for us. You can listen here.

You can read Part One of our conversation here.

So, in some respects the coming jobs war is the coming small business war.

Yes.

The country where small business can survive and thrive is the country that wins the coming jobs war.

If that war started today, and in some respects it already has, what country would win?

Well, I’m very very optimistic. I am very confident that the US will get back on track. We are so far off track right now.

China has a big advantage now because Deng Xiaoping and whoever else is running it now has done a great job of creating some kind of market-based communism. They’ve done a far better job than India or Brasil; they’re really booming. So, people are putting their bets on that horse. China has huge, huge, barriers coming up that they have to get through.

I think that the US, a lot of it has to do with the feeling of freedom. You have to have a feeling of great independence before people will start these companies. We’re losing a little bit of that just because of the economic situation, a lot of the policies. There’s a wet-blanket over small and medium-sized businesses because they have lost their confidence. Boy, when you lose your confidence, the turtle puts its head back in the shell, and nothing’s going to cause that head to come back out until they have confidence in the future of economics in their country.

But I think we will win the coming jobs war. But, we are, you have to have a lot of optimism to believe America is going to come back because the numbers are not good.

Now, as dire as you write, and your research shows and other studies show as well...we, here in the US, have been here before. Describe that time.

Yes. I turned 60 here in August. And it was about 35 years ago and I was watching TV and they had liberal and conservative economists on. And they all talked about how America’s GDP would fall to 3rd in the GDP race.

Now, remember that GDP is just everything. They give you money to afford militaries and all kinds of development and equity and things. But, anyway, because of Japan’s superior production thing and Germany’s, we would fall to 3rd in 30 years. Our demise was, this is “deja vu all over again” as Yogi Berra said.

And, so, they said that Japan would be at about $5 trillion right now and Germany would be at about $4 or $4.5 trillion; they would have overtaken us. They hit Japan and Germany accurately. But we bowed clear up to $15 trillion. We had, we outperformed expectations by $10 trillion which is really one of the great moments in the evolution of humankind. They don’t really write books about it or anything; I don’t understand why.

So, yeah, we’ve been right here before. Everybody counting us out. And, so, yeah that that history can give us confidence.

What's the potential secret weapon in this coming jobs war?

Well, I think there are a couple of secret weapons.

Secret weapons are unusual entrepreneurs. They can be any age. But, they’re probably created differently. They have an unusual amount of optimism and determination. They were blessed with that. And the secret weapon is to find as many of those as we can and we get mentors around them, development around them, good bankers around them and make sure that they grow. That’s one secret weapon.

Another secret weapon the US has is that we tend to attract the best talent in the world. If you look at the really colossal technology built in the last 10 years, where the genesis of that is San Francisco. Another guy and I counted back and there’s only about 1000 people that made that whole miracle come about out there and that’s even stretching it.

If you look at who the people were, more than half of them weren’t Americans; or they weren’t before. And most of the 600 were Indians. What happens for most reasons is the US is a beacon for entrepreneurs and innovators from the world. That’s been, that’s probably the secret weapon over the last 30 years and we rose up.

If that was a football game then we won 80 to nothing.

But, it probably was because we attracted unusually talented people from around the world to the US. And especially to San Francisco, NY, Boston, Austin. But, those secret weapons in this war are people and they are unusually talented and gifted entrepreneurs.

We’ve been trying to study this and it’s really hard to study. It looks to us, it’s kinda like a LeBron James in basketball, he’s not that good of an example anymore. Michael Jordan. For these rare entrepreneurs, it looks to us like it’s 3 in a thousand.

You know, it’s always interesting to me that if you have 1000 kids in an auditorium...high school kids or college graduates, you can bring in an educational psychologist and they can perfectly rank them in order by IQ. Somebody’s smartest, somebody’s dumbest. They can rank them in perfect order. But, if you say:

“Hey, would you rank and order them by their ability, their talents, as entrepreneurs. “

Then it’s a great big argument. Someone will say it’s untrainable and someone will say it’s as easy to change as changing your oil. But we gotta get better at figuring out who these stars are.

Let’s talk a little bit more about the solution. You write that the spawning ground for this next and necessary wave of innovative, entrepreneurial, breakthroughs will be a combination of three forces. What are they? Which one is the most important?

Well, one really important thing and I hope this makes as much sense to everybody out there as it does to me; I just don’t know. But these forces lie within cities, not nationally. If you look at where the variation is in GDP growth and success is in this country. Like unemployment and GDP growth, the variation among cities is just huge.

And so, if you take, take Detroit. Detroit was one of the world’s greatest cities 40 years ago. It might have been the highest per capita income 40 years ago. Huge center of all kinds of arts, sciences, music, not just Motown. It was the best city in the world. Now, it’s turned into the city from hell.

As rugged as that city is, let me look out to San Francisco and the Valley, Silicon Valley and San Jose and all that. The variation is unbelievable. Look at Austin, Texas and Albany, New York. Those are kind of twin cities. Big states, no strategic location at all, no seaports, no beautiful weather, no beaches, no nothing. And Albany is a troubled city. And Austin just doesn’t stop growing.

Out there where you are, Zane, if you look at Sioux City and Sioux Falls. Those are like twin cities separated at birth. Researchers love that. Sioux City is struggling. I mean casinos and slaughter houses and whatever, that just hasn’t worked. But up the river in Sioux Falls, the town even has about the same name. That’s like a little Austin, Texas up there. Big breakthroughs in healthcare and things are popping.

One of the most important pieces is cities have to take responsibility for GDP growth. They shouldn’t look to Washington.

The next thing is, when you follow these great inventions back, boy so many of them have roots back to universities. All of these cities have universities. That’s sort of the petri dish. You have professors and students, there. But, you have bank presidents coming over and the local CEOs. The 2nd is universities.

The 3rd one is these great American cities, all of them have what I call ‘shadow governments’ and ‘local tribal chiefs’. They’re not the mayor. They are the legacy wealth city fathers and mothers. If they’re not involved, your city tanks. They’ve gotta look and say:

“It’s up to us.”

The local tribal chiefs, those men and women, typically have a lot of financial resources. They have networks to other players. There’s usually more talents rolling around in that than city councils and state governments, with all due respects. It’s really up to them. I would say that’s the 3rd one.

So, the top 100 cities, I would say the local universities and then the 10 -20-30, depends upon the size of the city, of the local chieftains, sorta behind the scenes and make things happen. Those are good people. And boy do they care a lot about their cities.

I think the fix to America lies city by city, not national solutions, democrats and republicans.

That’s a long answer. But that’s what our research shows.

It’s a long answer and it’s a great answer. Thank you so much.

You also talk about Super Mentors. And I loved your first example. That was your dad. Would you share that story of your dad, as all dads should be, as a super mentor?

Well, he was teaching at the University of Nebraska and he was doing research. He had a tweed coat and soft rubber shoes as professors tend to do, professor glasses. But what he’d done is he’d made a discovery about selecting talent and he could select ROTC students and predict which ones would be good team leaders. You know, future generals and those that couldn’t lead, they were too individualist. That was an assignment and he really loved doing it.

But the Chancellor of the university, his name was Cliff Hardin, he was a huge hero was watching his work. He said to him:

“Could you select salesmen and sales managers?”

And my dad said:

“Well, I guess I could.”

And the Chancellor said:

“Well, if you could then you could start a company.”

And Dad, I always asked him what was the thing that was the trigger. It said it was the Chancellor, a very powerful person in his life saying:

“You could start a company.”

Excellent. He went on to start a very successful company.

Yes, he did.

Let’s talk about innovation and entrepreneurship. You wrote what for me was a psychic head butt. You wrote that Innovation is not rare in America; neither is creativity.

Now, if innovation is not rare then why are we declining in global rankings for innovation?

Well, if you look at global innovation, you can find them in the annual almanac. If you look at them over the last 200 years, America gets half of all the global innovations. Maybe, it’s 1/3. We’ve done real well with that.

But you have to remember that’s probably what helped us build 25% market share for all business in the world. We’re obviously way better in the world in innovation.

What is causing us to decline in global rankings for innovation?

Well, there’s a couple of things.

The rankings for global innovations? I don’t believe in them. Because I don’t really count innovation as innovation until it has a customer standing next to it. And so, there’s all kinds of rankings for innovation. I was just quoting where we get 20-30% of them.

I’m talking about inventions like the telephone, the airplane, the transistor, the satellite; those kinds of things. So, we still lead the world in innovation where it actually has a business around it and customers.

So, that leads us to my next question. I agree that innovation is in abundance here in the US. But, what’s missing from companies in our economy to take advantage of this innovation?

I think that we have the cart before the horse on this innovation. And I’m sure that this is right. We keep pushing all of our chips into innovation.

“Oh my gosh. We don’t have enough jobs. Push more to innovation. Push more to innovation!”

Has anybody ever considered that we might have an oversupply of innovation and an undersupply of entrepreneurship? That’s my point.

If you’re having an innovation, let’s say you’ve invented some incredibly imaginative fantastic thing. So you don’t have any entrepreneurial talent or so you need somebody like Bob or Sally to come over and make a business model and imagine a customer. So, even if you have a great invention, it is a long way from being a company.

I’ve been CEO for Gallup for 23 years and I can tell you I always have more innovations swirling around, big ideas, in the company, than we can ever deal with. People come in and say:

“Hey, why don’t we do this?”

It is a great idea, I’ll tell them. There’s no question. But who’s going to make it work? Who has the determination? There’s going to be times when it will crash and the entrepreneur will keep thinking through that. Entrepreneurs tend to be open-field runners, not planners. You know they can make it up on the fly. They’re probably wired differently.

What we should probably do is rather than look for more entrepreneurs and business models is spend billions and billions on innovation. Innovation has no value at all without a customer standing next to it.

Where do we create more entrepreneurs?

I don’t think we have a national excitement about them.

You know I was down in Texas at dinner. And I’ll make this short. I was sitting with a very sophisticated guy, our CFO and he was talking about a football player he thought would play for the Dallas Cowboys and his upper body strength and his 40-yard speed. It was getting kind of annoying because we wanted to talk about making an acquisition. I could tell it was a really unusual player.

He was talking about a guy that was in 7th grade. Because down in Texas they are so excited about finding a good quarterback, the whole place is hunting for them.

But imagine if we looked for entrepreneurs the way they hunt for quarterbacks. You know in Canada, they can spot the hockey players, the high potentials when they are 7 years old.

Entrepreneurs start so early. They’ll start mowing yards and another yard. Pretty soon, in the modern world they’ll start figuring out how to sell things over the internet.

The trick has got to be that somebody has got to be excited finding them. They also oughta have more or equal status as finding a good quarterback or a good point guard.

That’s such a great example. I’m a big fan of college basketball. I follow all the recruiting. I’m thinking what if there was a whole recruiting program and a website that tracked entrepreneurs that tracked them from high school through college.

What you just said, if we could pull that off, build it systematically, I think that what the US... if we could make the development of entrepreneurs as systematic as we do football or as we do just regular intellectual growth. We can really spot, even in poor communities, those people who test well and how they’ll end up in University of Chicago or Yale or Stanford or whatever.

If we had that same kind of a thing for entrepreneurs; so, it’s intentional.

What we have now with the development of athletes and intellectual strengths is intentional but entrepreneurship is not.

It’s all a matter of intention.

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Part Three of this conversation will be published Friday, September 30.

President Obama: 3 Tips to Move from One Idea to Its Impact, Again and Again

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.

I published notes from our conversation in three parts:

• Part One here

• Part Two here

• Part Three 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

We, as a nation, seem to have challenges moving from one idea to its impact, again and again. You know? Innovating on a sustainable basis.

I asked Dr. Gregersen:

We've reached the imagination moment in our show. Let's imagine President Obama has a few moments this week. He finds your book. . He picks up his Blackberry and calls you.

Hal, he says. He gets all personal because he is the President. We're facing some disruption these days. But, we're not finding a way to move progressively from one idea to its impact. Again and again.

What if you and your two co-authors join up with myself and Vice-President Biden. We want to hear your thoughts, maybe 3 things that we as a nation can do to move progressively from one idea to its impact. Again and again.

What would those three things be?

And he answered with all the clarity and precision you would expect:

I would tell you the following if I was talking to him.

I would say:

“Look. When we look at innovative companies it starts at the top. Every one of these companies who create sustainable ideas that make a difference they are led by CEOs and senior managers who actually innovate themselves. They engage these skills in an every day way. And so, if I were to look at a country it would be the same thing.

Here’s the challenge. But, let me step back for just a moment to me being a teenager again. When I was a teenager I wanted to be the President. I pursued it enough that I actually ended up working later in college, I worked a couple of times in Washington DC for two senators. What I learned working on the staffs of those two senators was when you work in Washington D.C. and you live within the Beltway you end up living within those buildings that are around the capital and the White House. And what then happens is it becomes extremely easy not have a silo built in your world and your way of working with the world that is not extremely incestuous. And that comes from talking to people who look like you and think like you even if they are on the other side of the political spectrum. They still are politicians.

My suggestion is I would get every single policy make out of their offices and into the field where people are facing these challenges. I don’t mean promotional opportunity to get votes for the next election.

I wonder how many people who are stuck in this budgetary grid-lock, how many of them have spent two days not pitching their views or their party, but how many of them have spent two days maybe living with a family that is struggling with the burdens of living in this economy for the past two years? I would be hard pressed to find even a handful of politicians making these policy decisions who have a good grip on what it’s like right now for people that they are making the decisions for.

It’s easy for me to step back and say this. I don’t have the answer but. But I look back to the financial crisis in 2009 and wonder how many of the CEOs and executives of the major banks in the world ever took the time to get out of their offices to walk down to their home loan making office and just watch the process of how these loans were being made?

I bet if they had they would have sniffed something ugly really fast. And they would have done something.

For me, the first recommendation is get policy-makers out of their offices and into the real world and using these observational and other skills of being an innovator to generate some better solutions.

2nd policy suggestion? Do everything we possibly can to invest in the next generation of innovation leaders. These are the kids and the young people who are growing up who are not just going to solve today’s problems but they are going to be the solvers of tomorrow’s problems that will probably be bigger than the ones we’re facing today.

And what I mean by investing in them is on one level creating educational learning experiences that foster these skills. And another investment and again I would ask those policy-makers to pay attention to the world around them. Look in your neighborhood, identify some families that you will foster their innovation skills so that some day they might be the next president and they might be better at solving the problems we face tomorrow.

Want More from Dr. Gregersen?

• Visit the book's website 

• Follow him on Twitter

• Buy the book: The Innovator's DNA - Mastering the 5 Skills of Disruptive Innovators

**********

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.

Notes from Bill Seidman, CEO of @Cerebyte - Part 3

Dr. Seidman is also CEO & co-founder of Cerebyte, which gives organizations the ability and the confidence to dramatically improve their performance. Their pioneering technology, based on the latest science of how we think and learn, enables them to quickly capture top performers' "secret sauce" and raise the performance of everyone else to that same high level. Their solution has been adopted by companies such as Intel, Jack in the Box, American Family Insurance, Nike to name a few.

Aligning with the latest research in positive deviance, fair process, neuroscience and mass customization, their solution makes it possible to quickly capture your top performers' expert knowledge, approach and values, and then systematically help everyone else apply them in theit work.

And he is the co-author of Strategy to Action in 10 Days: Creating High Performance Organizations.

From his website:

Strategy to Action provides a groundbreaking approach that quickly infuses any organization with the skills, attitudes, behaviors and culture vital to extraordinary performance. This practical, step-by-step approach guides readers to create a highly predicable, scalable and engaging environment that will have everyone in the organization performing like a superstar.

After reading it, understanding his principles and his methodology and as important the science behind it...I would have to agree:

This practical, step-by-step approach guides readers to create a highly predicable, scalable and engaging environment that will have everyone in the organization performing like a superstar.

You can listen to our conversation here.

You can read Part One of our conversation here.

You can read Part Two of our conversation here.

Part Three:

I’m loving everything you’re telling me here, if only because there’s no powerpoint involved in this whole training method.

We always say:

We’re a power-point free zone.

But also the way you have set this out, this isn’t a disparaging phrase, in these baby-steps of exercises where they begin to embrace the new way of thinking, the new way of doing. It seems such a natural process that as you say “before they even know it, they’re doing it.”

First off, we say this to people all the time:

“There is no Twitter version of greatness.”

You may want it; but it doesn’t exist. Greatness takes work. Doesn’t take a lot of work, it turns out. But it does take work and it’s mainly about consciousness.

So, we were working with a bunch of people in a very transactional, high-intensity call-center. And we had a great quote from one of the people.

“When I first looked at this list of exercises I thought to myself the last thing in the world I needed was more tasks. But, you know I was required to do the tasks so I tarted to do the tasks. I realized that after a little while the tasks were casing me to think differently about my job. And then I realized a little bit later I was really doing my job a little bit differently and the whole concept of it was different.

" And then I realized a little bit later that I really was doing my job a little bit differently, and the whole concept of it was different. And then I realized a little bit later that I was doing my job completely differently and that I had translated it, or transitioned it, from my old transactional perspective into something completely new, higher performance, more effective and that I liked a lot better. And I actually didn’t know I was doing it until I was pretty much there."

That’s so excellent.

Now, one of the advantages in your model is moving from strategic planning to action in 10 days. That’s an obvious cost-benefit.

But, the other one you talk about and you talked about it in the science and motivation aspect of it is you don’t encourage companies to emphasize financial incentives for your Positive Deviants and their role in bringing their secret sauce to the organization.

Why not? That seems like such a common mistake companies make.

Correct.

That comes out of the old-world industrial model. A great book by Dan Pink called Drive, came out about a year and a half ago. Drive basically is the best summary of what we had seen in the previous years. But, we didn’t really have the scientific research to support it.

What Drive says is that if you have a highly procedural job, where there isn’t much judgment involved then financial incentives work fine. But, if you have a job tat really requires judgment and thought and innovation you need a certain amount of financial security, if you will. Your compensation has to be at a certain minimum level to be secure or else it becomes a problem. But above that the research shows that, overwhelmingly, financial incentives actually back-fire. They reverse, and they actually cause a degradation in, performance.

What you find interesting with the Positive Deviants, the Positive Deviants really focus on creating the social good. They are about adding value all the time. They are about doing the right thing the first time, all the time. They get their efficiencies and they’re very inexpensive in that sense. And, they measure themselves. They absolutely pay attention to how they’re performing.

But, the money to them is secondary. They figure that if they do the right thing then they will be compensated appropriately. And, to a phenomenal degree, that’s the case.

And that aligns with Pink’s work where Pink says there are 3 elements that drive fundamental motivation for anybody that has any kind of intellectual elements to a job, thoughtful elements. He actually describes them in an order that I think is backward. So, I’ll give you his order and then switch them around on you.

He says the first element is Autonomy. That you have control over your environment that tends to motivate you.

The second thing is you have Mastery. You’re really good at what you do.

And the third thing is you have Purpose, the Social Good. For your listeners who want to use this idea to produce higher performance in your organization, the actual process works the other way around. And it kinda shadows what the Positive Deviants do.

You start with Purpose, this Greater Social Good. And that produces all this neurological effect, the endorphin releases, the dopamine. All these things come into play so you have this high energy impact.

That drives Mastery. Because when you are really committed to doing something great, you will beat yourself up. You will do whatever it takes to become really good at it because you are incredibly committed.

And once your organization sees that you are really aligned on purpose, so you are doing the right thing, you’re really good at doing the right thing, then they are perfectly good at giving you Autonomy. If you’re not aligned with the purpose, if you’re not good at it, then they probably shouldn’t give you autonomy. Right?

When you start to see where this type of motivation comes in relative to financial incentives, financial incentives really are like Pink says :

“really old world.”

He calls that motivation 2.0 and we’re in motivation 3.0 when it’s driven by these larger understandings of neuroscience and what motivates people.

Excellent answer again.

Now as I’m thinking about, we’ve addressed management and leadership and their concerns and possible barriers, the role of Positive Deviants in bringing their secret sauce to the masses. And now it’s beginning to hit the masses.

Unfortunately the masses in corporate America are either disengaged or actively disengaged, actively sabotaging the work of their colleagues and co-workers in the creation of a brand experience. Last week the guest shared the results of their research with the Gallup organization that showed as much as 80% of employee describe themselves as prisoners. Average engagement levels of US companies are around 30%, 15% of employees may be actively disengaged or actively sabotaging co-workers. And yet, this Positive Deviants and their ability to share their secret sauce depends on the employees willing to accept it.

But you have them going beyond merely accepting it. You have them begging for it. What is it about your persuasive technology that inspires employees to actually beg for this change?

I think there are multiple elements. The technology itself, and by the way a quick definition of persuasive technology...Persuasive Technology is defined as technology that changes what people believe even do. So, it’s right at the core of attachment, motivation, commitment, things like that. Right?

What we do is we take the Positive Deviant content and we put it into the technology. The technology simulates the experience of having a great personal mentor. That’s someone who’s guiding you to something that’s learned. That means they have a real strong sense of purpose; they care about you. They also hold you accountable; so, this isn’t a free ride. And they really kinda make a commitment to you.

It may be hard for people to imagine how a technology can look and feel like a mentor. But that’s what persuasive technology does.

There’s a lab at Stanford called the Persuasive Technology lab whose done some of the work in this. They’ve been mainly in the marketing area. We’ve been loosely affiliated with them. We’ve been pioneers in the organizational aspect of it.

The idea is this, though. You take the idea of the positive social good. There’s a very specific way it needs to be written. And you put it in the technology. And in a team setting with a trained facilitator, usually a direct manager, who we’re teaching to be a transformational leader in a transactional world guides a discussion of the content that is being displayed in an interaction where they are talking about key ideas. Their purpose, they’re writing it in their own words, they’re bouncing ideas off each other and so on. And it’s all written in the first person. And as it’s being written they are literally creating a personal story.

And it has the same effect as you’re sitting down with somebody who’s really excited. So, let me ask you:

Have you ever sat down with somebody who’s really excited?

Yes.

What happens to you?

I get excited, too!

How about somebody who is depressed?

I walk away.

Yeah. Or you get depressed. You sealed yourself.

Turns out there’s a bit of a biological basis for that called the “ mirror neuron”. In very, very, loose terms it’s a brain function designed to send and receive empathetic signals.

So, what we’ve found is it doesn’t necessarily need to be in a person. It can be on the level of purpose. You can actually take the Positive Deviant purpose as the excited person, if you will. Present it to people in a particular way in the technology. And they experience the same thing as though they were sitting with that excited Positive Deviant.

And they get excited and they start to embrace it.

Now, going back to the executive point of view, suddenly you feel much more engaged.

Even if the executive isn’t there you’re not relying on it. It came from the highly respected people. It’s not from some outside source. It’s not from corporate.

We had this example with an insurance company where the Vice-President was introducing this program and he said to a bunch of agents, all of whom were sitting in this room very hostile. I had to be sitting in the back of the room and I overheard one agent say to the other:

“More garbage from headquarters.”

And the Vice-President said:

“This isn’t more garbage from headquarters. This is from this person and this person...”

And he actually names a bunch of the names. And this group of agents say:

“ You’re kidding me? This is what so-and-so did? “

And they said:

“ Yeah. This is his kind of “secret sauce.”

And then about three minutes later somebody else said:

“This is what these people did?”

And they said:

“ Yeah."

And as one this whole group leaned forward and said:

" What did they say? We want to know that! "

And in the system you are actually capturing that, having to actually write that.

But, it’s going to go farther. We’re going to have the Positive Deviants break that down into an organizing structure and these learning tasks. And people are going to work with them and they’re going to understand them and then they’re going to actually say:

“ How do I apply that learning to me?”

It gets very person. The system sends a reminder every Monday morning that:

“ This is what you are going to practice this week. "

And if they don’t practice it, they send them a reminder Friday morning which says:

“This is for you. You said you wanted to practice this.”

And so it drives both the initial motivation and the sustained behavior because it’s absolutely aligned with all this neuroscience about learning and motivation. It’s delivered in this team environment with this technology.

And literally 98% of the people respond to it; 2 % don’t. And they don’t because they don’t agree with the purpose.

Excellent. That’s fantastic.

I’m looking at the clock and the hour has just blown by. We might go over a few minutes. Will that work on your schedule?

Yeah. That’s great.

There are so many questions I want to ask but I don’t want to carry this too long.

We’re at the imagination moment of our show. Let’s imagine for a moment that President Obama is calling you right now. Line two. And he leaves a message.

Bill, he says. Our economy shows a lingering malaise. The whole country needs to see our economy deliver some high performance results. Right now. What can we do to put Strategy to Action in 10 Days and create a High Performing economy again?

Would you come up to the White House and meet with myself and Joe Biden and share with us three things we can do?

What would you tell him?

Ok. Well, I’m flattered that he called me.

And there are certainly some challenging political times right now.

The first thing I would say is, really out of the neuroscience again this whole notion of purpose. I believe in many ways our country has lost its sense of confidence. There have been a series of conditions that have been pretty tough to deal with. He really needs to focus on and talk about, and be committed to a rather articulate notion of greatness. And almost create, what one of my colleagues calls, a culture of greatness.

And he needs to then back that with investment. And this is going to come back to Pink. Purpose is a greatness. Mastery is getting great at it.

And in that sense he really needs to ignore a lot of the naysayers. We need to invest in education, Pell Grants; things are critical. We need to invest in our infrastructure.

I’ve traveled throughout the world and in Asia. Anyone who thinks our infrastructure is competitive hasn’t experienced what they’ve got going.

Um, we really have to fix our healthcare. Healthcare reform didn’t go nearly far enough. I’ve had the misfortune to have several healthcare incidents in different parts of the world. I’ve gotta say they were way better than what you could get in the US.

We really need to have that vision of greatness. It’s almost Kennedy-esque. We’re going to be on the moon at a certain time regardless of the competition and his motivation for doing that. That was the sense of purpose and there was real strong investment.

And finally he needs to do this with great intensity. One of the things that starts to come out with the research is what happens if you put a negative person with a positive person? Who kinda wins that debate? And it’s the same sense of who you sit down with.

And you made a comment well you walk away from it. Well in this case we can’t walk away from it.

What emerges is the people who are more focused, more tangible, more concrete, more energized by it, tend to ultimately dominate the debate. They tend to cause the positive release of neuro-chemicals in others.

I would say to him tha: 

You really have to focus on the greatness of the country. You cannot be defeated by the cost-reduction stuff. You have to find a way to pay for it. And that probably means raising taxes for investing in our future.

In the past, by the way, when we had a call to greatness we had no problem paying for it. We’re very ok.

You’ve gotta be really intense and focus on it and not take no for an answer.

And those are the three things I’d say.

And by the way, those will then ripple into the economy because the executives will sense their uncertainty will go away. they in turn will start to function that way and they’ll start to spend cash on these same kinds of things where they’ll have purpose and invest in mastery and they’ll use our model, I hope. And really boost their companies and organizations beyond imagination.

Excellent. Thank you.

You’re a leader. I use this quote every week. Jim Rohn says that Leaders are readers. What are you reading these days... in all your free time?

Yeah, in all my free time.

So, I must confess that some of my friends, I have a doctorate from Stanford and they say:

“ How could a doctorate from Stanford read some of the junk I read?”

I always read two books. I read junk. I’m reading a Clive Clussler book right now.

I also read a lot on the neuroscience. I’m reading a book called You Are Not Your Brain by Jeff Schwartz. Part of what we’re talking about is the response to Obama. You Are Not Your Brain shows that certain portions of the brain, particularly the pre-frontal cortex enable you to feel empowered, to feel energized and to quite literally educate the nay-saying, the negative, the fear-driven portions of your brain and make them less important.

It’s a very powerful book for how to become, the technical term is self-directed neuro-plasticity. In the best sense a continuous self-learner for whatever your purpose is in life. And it can absolutely enhance the quality of your life.

Fantastic.

Leave us with one quote about creating high-performance organizations.

I think the quote is this:

" New science has made performance, has made levels of performance possible that literally two years ago people didn’t imagine were possible. Anyone who really wants to make an impact on themselves and others is going to want to take advantage of these and is going to be successful and is going to be great. "

That’s excellent!

Than you for reaching out to me on Twitter to connect. Your book is brilliant, you work is brilliant and clearly your clients think the same thing, too. I hope you have great success.

And if there’s anything I can do to help promote your message, let me know.

Thank you for having me on your show. I absolutely love listening to your show. When I was listening to your shows particularly on innovation I thought it was phenomenal. I tell everybody about it.

Thank you for that.

When are you going to come out with another book?

Oh, it’s in the works right now. It’s basically applying these same concepts to leadership. I mean if you look around you and see all the books and all the leadership programs and still how much these leaders struggle, we’re missing something. Something’s not right.

We had the opportunity to apply our change model to leadership. Working with Positive Deviant leaders. What came out of that was there’s a lot of real-world conditions that they cope with like limited information and uncertainty, conflicting agendas and resource shortages and time-pressures that really aren’t reflected all the other leadership programs. And we have had great success.

And we call the model Affirmative Leadership because it’s about positive images, it’s about Positive Deviants, it’s about this great positive energy. And we’re in a proposal stage; we’ve got a proposal pretty well done. We’re looking for a publisher. And we’re optimistic. We’ve got a great literary agent who’s also optimistic. We hope to have it out in the next 6 - 8 months.

Fantastic. When that comes out I’d love to have you back on the show to talk about!

I’d love to come back and talk about it. I’d love to have you read it in manuscript form.

Ok. I’d be delighted.

We’ve got to go. I know you're busy. There’s never a nice way to end these shows. I feel like I’m interrupting dinner.

Thank you again so much. It’s been a blast.

Next Guest: Julie Steelman, author of The Effortless Yes!: Demystify the Selling Process and Discover: Your Selling Archetype, Your Natural AskingStyle, Your Bankability

Notes from Bill Seidman, CEO of @Cerebyte - Part 2

Dr. Seidman is also CEO & co-founder of Cerebyte, which gives organizations the ability and the confidence to dramatically improve their performance. Their pioneering technology, based on the latest science of how we think and learn, enables them to quickly capture top performers' "secret sauce" and raise the performance of everyone else to that same high level. Their solution has been adopted by companies such as Intel, Jack in the Box, American Family Insurance, Nike to name a few.

Aligning with the latest research in positive deviance, fair process, neuroscience and mass customization, their solution makes it possible to quickly capture your top performers' expert knowledge, approach and values, and then systematically help everyone else apply them in theit work.

And he is the co-author of Strategy to Action in 10 Days: Creating High Performance Organizations.

From his website:

Strategy to Action provides a groundbreaking approach that quickly infuses any organization with the skills, attitudes, behaviors and culture vital to extraordinary performance. This practical, step-by-step approach guides readers to create a highly predicable, scalable and engaging environment that will have everyone in the organization performing like a superstar.

After reading it, understanding his principles and his methodology and as important the science behind it...I would have to agree:

This practical, step-by-step approach guides readers to create a highly predicable, scalable and engaging environment that will have everyone in the organization performing like a superstar.

You can listen to our conversation here.

You can read Part One of our conversation here.

I do have a couple of questions. Let’s look closer at this concept of positive deviants. I love that concept. Most people don’t consider deviants in a positive manner. You turn that whole concept on its head. And if I’m hearing you right, the concept of positive deviants and the proven methodology for unleashing it in an organization allows your clients to consistently and efficiently obtain the secret sauce of the experts, the stars, in their organization.

Now, first off I believe you. But at this point, it's a faith-based endorsement.

Sure.

The hurdle is the idea that...I'm a basketball fan, from NC no less. So the idea is that you have a proven methodology to consistently and efficiently obtain the 'secret sauce' of Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan and his greatness. You’re going to be able to distill it and share it and then instill it in everyone around them. Is that understanding correct?

That is correct, yes.

Let me expand on that a little bit. For professions like basketball where there are true physical limitations...I mean I was a high school basketball player. I’m 6-3. I dreamed of the NBA. But I wasn’t big enough and I wasn’t fast enough. So regardless of my mental skills and my mindset, I wasn’t going to make it.

But, having said that, what we’ll find is that Michael Jordan brings a different mental model of the game, to the game. Like what we were talking about with the other positive deviants. What we would find, if we ran him through our process, is that he literally conceives of basketball differently. He conceives of mastery, he conceives of what he’s doing differently. He conceives the underlying principles differently.

And in our process we can figure out what his mental model is and what he did to build his mastery. And, by getting other people to embrace through the motivational part, and eventually we’ll get to how you sustain it and how you touch thousands of people at once with this, once you have people basically framed correctly, in other words thinking about it correctly, the ability to master things just soars.

And so for Michael Jordan we can find that he literally conceives of the game differently.

Making parallel...Phil Jackson and some of the work he did. John Wooden, some of the works he did, literally talked about how they framed the game differently than other coaches.

Beautiful. That’s a great explanation. Thank you.

Again, I love it. But the cynical part of me can see a lot of political infighting and jealousy being a barrier to employees embracing this idea. Their territory.

I’m a star and you’re not. I’ve got all sorts of perks and privileges, you don’t.

Either the stars may not want others to shine or the others may be too disengaged to want to shine.

How does your methodology overcome that?

I’m sorry. I think there’s two different components or parts to this.

The first one is:

How do you have positive deviants in a highly politicized organization?

And secondly, well, maybe 3 parts:

How do you get the positive deviants to willingly participate?

And thirdly:

How do you the other participants to willingly participate?

So, the first question is, and we get this question a lot:

“We’re a highly fragmented organization. We’re kinda dysfunctional; we’re having all of these struggles. How do you, are their positive deviants here?

Pretty much all organizations have positive deviants? We’ve never found one organization that had none.

The way you find them is you ask a very simple question of the management team for a particular function like store management or chip design or restaurant management or emergency room case management for co-morbidity conditions. These are ones we’ve dealt with already. You could say:

“ Who are the people in your organization who consistently and systematically outperform others, who you really respect for their ability to be great in their functions. “

And this notion of respect, turns out, to transcend politics. It transcends metrics. It transcends all sorts of other stuff.

Positive deviants are great at metrics. Positive deviants have figured out a way to cope with the politics of an organization and still be successful.

If I can I can give you a concrete example. So, we’re working with big-box retail organization. And one of the problems that happens is there’s a real disconnect with corporate marketing and what was actually in the stores. What would happen is the Sunday flyers would come out advertising their specials. And very often the stores didn’t have the stock. And people would come in and would say:

“ Well, this special is on discount. “

You wouldn’t be able to fulfill that expectation. You would have this constant conflict about how to actually satisfy the customer in this way.

So, most of the store managers were fairly passive. They’d say:

“Oh, well, we’ll give you credit when you come in.”

The positive deviant store managers would read the flyers, they would call up through an informal network the people handling the distribution and supply. And they would get that shipped to them. They would basically find a backdoor into the system to satisfy their customers.

Now, the smarter companies we’d work with would say:

“That’s a systemic breakdown. Let’s go fix that systemic breakdown.”

Quite a number of companies go and improve their business processes because they respond to the positive deviants’ approach and recommendations. Not all do. But the positive deviants consistently find a way to transcend those kinds of conditions.

So, does that respond to your first question?

Yeah, it’s great.

Now, the second part of the question is:

“How do you get them to participate?”

Particularly in a knowledge management world people will say:

“You can never get the experts to share their knowledge.”

And we never, ever, have that problem.

And you can say:

“ Why not?"

Positive deviants can sort of function in a different way. And we’ll say to them:

“How much of your time do you spend doing something that isn’t very interesting or very energetic for you?”

And they’ll say:

“About 80% of our time.”

We’ll ask:

" How do you like that? "

They’ll say:

" Um, not so great. "

We’ll ask:

" What do you do with the other 20% of the time?" 

They’ll literally say:

We do the fun things. We invent this. We do this and do that.

We’ll ask:

" If you had the chance to literally switch those situations around, would you be willing to do that? "

And they say:

" Yeah. Yeah."

And we’ll say:

“ We’re going to invite you to a Wisdom Discovery Session.”

And the language is very precise.

We’re you’re going to spend 3 days talking with the few people who are your peers in defining what greatness is in your function.

So, listen to the way this is defined. The few people who are your peers defining what greatness is.

What do you think their next question is:

Are you kidding?

Why would you say they would ask that?

Well, because they must be thinking this is so incredible, the opportunity, this is always what I’ve always wanted to do, so I have to ask you:

Are you kidding?

Yeah, ok. So you want to guess what the next question is?

No. Yes, but ...

The next question is:

" Who are my peers?"

And it turns out that positive deviants have almost these mythical qualities. When we were working with a fast-food chain where 1400 restaurants organized into 11 regions. We asked the regional managers to name a dozen positive deviant restaurant and district managers. Turns out they named the same managers across the country even if they weren’t in the same region.

It tends to transcend this geographical limitation; it’s like there’s really, true, hotshots.

We asked them to name their peers and they said:

“Oh, I’d like to meet them.”

And then it turns out they can’t help themselves. They immediately talk about their image of what greatness means to them.

" Here’s what I mean to say you’re great." 

And we have to say:

Hold off on that. We’re going to do this with your peers.”

They become highly energized.

What’s interesting is that the positive deviants generally are pretty humble people. They are successful in organizations. They’re well-compensated; they’re recognized. They don’t really have a lot of these ego issues. They’re wonderful to work with.

Them being experts in sharing their knowledge, they love it. The discovery process itself is based on them being coaches. A certified professional comes in and says:

“ We are your disciple. We are intelligent, competent, motivated. We are completely motivated to doing this job right. But we don’t know a thing about it. Will you positive deviants coach us on how to do it right?”

And, they love it. They can’t NOT coach you.

And so, at the end of 3 days of them having coached you in how to be great. And it all jells very very tightly.

Now. That’s a great answer.

And the vision of possibilities with what you’re describing and what I’ve seen are so very exciting!

But then I come back and go but the Six Sigma and Lean Manufacturing and economies of scale and cost-cutting are all worshipped for their ability to eliminate deviation and reinforce the 80% of the work that is routine and boring. That’s why there’s 80% of it.

How have you helped organizations take the positive deviants in their midst and overcome their predisposition for routine, constancy and even boring?

Yeah. Great question.

We’ve had the good fortune to do a number of lean programs and one or two six sigma programs and some of that actually comes back to a, I would believe, a misunderstanding of what Deming was talking about with the Toyota prodction system. We had the good fortune to work with a man who is very elderly right now who worked with Deming and was at Toyota and understood what was meant by these things.

The key thing he always said was:

In the US, Six Sigma and Lean got kinda reduced to a transactional approach. It was about eliminating deviation. It was about eliminating waste. And the transformational aspects, literally thinking of your culture differently, which was what drove Toyota, were largely lost.

The main thing that was lost was this emotional quality that Toyota had a fanatical commitment to quality. And it was the fanatical commitment to social good, if you will, that drove all the other processes rather than the other processes we Americans kinda glommed onto: the other types of analytic processes and the removal of deviations.

But, let’s take this notion of removing deviants. The underlying issue is you do that because deviations create waste. But, you have to step back and ask the question:

“Waste relative to what goal? And over what time period? "

When you start to ask the question What constitutes efficiency? you had people who were in Lean and Six Sigma doing this analysis without actually knowing what they were trying to get efficient at doing. It was this very sorta narrow tactical view.

And when you step back and say:

" Ok. Look. This stuff is mentioned in Six Sigma and Lean but it’s not emphasized. It’s the analytic tools that are emphasized. "

If you step back and say:

What is the greater social good? What is the purpose you are trying to achieve?

And if you ask the Positive Deviants how they are going to achieved these things you find they are vastly more efficient than Lean and Six Sigma because they have honed all their behaviors to specifically and directly support the social good. So, in a sense they do eliminate deviance but they eliminate it by grounding it very specifically to this purpose.

And when we do Lean implementations and Six Sigman programs, we actually start with the notion of:

“ Purpose relative to what? "

So, for example, we did a Lean program that was doing new product planning which was basically how to take new products coming out of a manufacturing environment and basically blast them out to the market in different kind of ways.

Turns out the Positive Deviants, they’d done a bunch of Lean things before we got there. And they’d eliminated a bunch of things that the Positive Deviants were doing; they didn’t know about Positive Deviance at the time. And they’re having all these downstream problems. Months later things were cropping up that didn’t seem to fit the model.

Well, then when we came in we taught the Positive Deviance model. Turns out the Positive Deviants would do something, let’s say 6 months before launch that because of their experience set up say a customer environment, a distributor environment, even some things in manufacturing that showed up some elongated period of time downstream. So, when you start to think about these kinds of behaviors you still get enormous efficiencies but you get them more completely grounded to the social good.

And what you find out is you don’t have to do have the stuff that is in Lean or Six Sigma. And you actually end up with a more motivated, more effective, system.

That’s probably more of an answer than you thought you were going to get.

No. No. I am smiling and nodding my head. And if I was in church I’d be raising my hand up and shouting:

Testify!

I always knew there was something in the Lean and Six Sigma acolytes as wonderful as they are and as much value as they brought to American industry that they had lost something somewhere in the translation. A process for constant improvement had now become a source for creating barriers to innovation and change. What you explained there just outlined it beautifully.

Thank you.

Turns out the Positive Deviants are the ones creating a disproportionate amount of innovation within an organization.

We wrote an article in an IT journals titled: Positive Deviants Rule. And, what you find is that a tremendous amount of innovation comes from the positive deviants. So, if you just go listen to your Positive Deviants you can adjust this ratio. It’s a resource that already exists; it’s already being paid-for. You can get these enormous performance improvements and it really doesn’t cost too much at all.

Now, we’re coming back to the cost thing. But let me back up with one more thing on the resistant corporate culture. Those companies who are fortunate to have those very efficient routines created with black belt experts. The other companies, their leaders and managers and Positive Deviants are often too busy putting out the daily or hourly fire.

How have you helped organizations step back and begin to embrace the Positive Deviants and their role after they’ve had the Wisdom Discover workshop?

How do you get them to internalize it, sustain it, under the daily pressures?

First of all, there’s a property in the Positive Deviants that helps with that. That is Positive Deviants ground to the sense of social purpose. And it really doesn’t change with the circumstance around them. They all have a set of underlying principles about how to think about their environment correctly, that don’t change much; they’re incredibly robust. By the way, there’s some great neuroscience research done with special forces soldiers compared to regular soldiers right in this domain about why are special forces soldiers so good regardless of the combat. It’s because they literally think differently.

This can be applied and shows up in the Positive Deviants. So, part of the Positive Deviants ability is this profound stability. So when new things come in, when transactional pressures get really severe, they actually ground more in the fundamentals and less in the sorta short-term transactional fires.

And again we wrote an article about this published in the OD Practitioner journal called Transformational Leadership in a Transactional World. And it’s exactly this issue.

So, how do you then get organizations to actually change when they’re getting just slammed to get more short-term? Total quality, the Lean stuff, is driving more short-term metrics. Many of them are missing the cultural values where you have stock market analysts looking for these short term profits. And all these pressures to be short-term and transactional.

And yet at the same time markets are changing around people. Competitors are evolving if you’re in a global environment. You better be looking over your shoulder at China and India because they are incredibly dynamic places.

So, how do you do that?

It comes back to the neuroscience again and the Positive Deviants. You say to the Positive Deviants:

“You’ve always had these conditions and these issues. What were the set of experiences you had that caused you to become a Positive Deviant, that allowed you to process all this information? “

And they’ll list all these real-world things. They’ll say

• I had this mentor.

• I had this awful project that I had to deal with.

• I went to this course.

They’ll list these things.

And we’ll ask:

" Well, how did you put it all together? "

And they’ll say:

" I kinda sorta synthesized it naturally. "

Turns out the neuroscience research on learning has produced this fundamental notion that neurons that fire together, wire together. The notion that whenever you learn something from birth to the time you die your brain changes by neurons firing together and becoming more and more densely packed. And long-term sustained learning is packing these things so tightly that they become densely structured.

So, in the face of transactional pressures, how then do you get people to become good at something else when all the reinforcement is for something else.

These neurons that fire together, wire together, give us the key. Because what causes them to wire together permanently is repetitive practice in very realistic personal kinda ways. You don’t put people in a training class and give them a bunch of powerpoint slides. You give them short exercises. Typically they are about an hour a week. They talk about it and they practice it with the support group.

But, the practice is actually doing something in their job but with a new consciousness. You can’t actually separate the practicing from the doing the job.

It’s this long-time migration that occurs. And that’s why it occurs over some months. The initial impact literally occurs in minutes or hours. You start to see some initial change in the first 10 days. That’s in the title of the book. There’s a conflicting trough at about 6 weeks. And at about 8 weeks you start to see people internalizing the new behavior. And at a typical program, at about 6 months these transactional people have without them even knowing it converted from being completely transactional to transformational in the new mode and then back to transactional in the do mode.

And it’s this very very subtle process of little drip method of a little bit of practice on a little -bit related idea, a little bit of mental repitition, realistic, personal every single week

I’m loving everything you’re telling me here, if only because there’s no powerpoint in this training method.

We always say:

We’re a power-point free zone.

**********

Part Three of this conversation will be published Saturday, September 3, 2011.