Book Short:Â Allegory of Allegories
Squirrel, Inc., by Stephen Denning, is a good quick read for leaders who want a refreshing look at effective ways to motivate and communicate to their teams. The book focuses on storytelling as a method of communication, and Denning employs the storytelling method fairly successfully as a framework for the book.
The specific kinds of messages he focuses on, where he says storytelling can have the biggest impact, are: communicating a complex idea and sparking action; communicating identity – who YOU as leader are; transmitting values; getting a group or team to work together more effectively; neutralizing gossip or taming the grapevine; knowledge-sharing; and painting a vision of the future that a team can hang onto.  The book even has a nice summary “how to” table at the end of it.
Thanks to email guru David Baker at Agency.com for giving me the book.
Book Short:Â Not As Deep As You’d Like
Deep Change, by Robert Quinn, is a reasonably interesting collection of thoughts on management and leadership, but it doesn’t hang together very well as a single work with a unified theme. The promise is interesting — that we must personally abandon our knowledge, competence, techniques and abilities and “walk naked into the land of uncertainty” to undergo great personal change that can then lead us to organizational change — but the book doesn’t quite deliver on it.
That said, I enjoyed the book as a quick read for a few of its more interesting concepts. For example, Quinn has a great crystallization of many things I’ve observed over the years called “the tyrrany of competence” where organizations can get paralyzed by people who are technically strong at their jobs but who are either disruptive culturally or who have such a chokehold on their role that they hold back the organization as a whole from growing. Another good concept is a chart and some related commentary about how a person transforms from an individual contributor, to a manager, to a leader — great for any growing company. The last interesting one was a grid mapping out four different types of CEOs — Motivator, Vision Setter, Anazlyer, and Taskmaster. Quinn goes into some detail about the characteristics of each and then circles back to the inevitable conclusion (like most Harvard Business Review articles) that the best CEOs exhibit all four characteristics at different times, in different circumstances.
So not my favorite book overall, but some good tidbits. Probably worth a quick read if you’re a student of management and leadership. Thanks to my former colleague Kendall Rawls for this book.
Book Short: The Anti-Level-5 Leader
The Five Temptations of a CEO, another short leadership fable in a series by Patrick Lencioni, wasn’t as meaningful to me as the last one I read, The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive (post, link), but it wasn’t bad and was also a quick read.
The book to me was the 30 minute version of all the Level-5 Leadership stuff that Collins wrote about in Good to Great and Built to Last. All that said, it was a good quick read and a reminder of what not to do. The temptations are things that most CEOs I’ve ever known (present company very much included) have at least succumbed to at one point or another in their career. That said, you as a CEO should quit or be fired if you have them in earnest, so hopefully if you do have them, you recognize it and have them in diminishing quantities with experience, and hopefully not all at once:
– The temptation to be concerned about his or her image above company results
– The temptation to want to be popular with his or her direct reports above holding them accountable for results
– The temptation to ensure that decisions are correct, even if that means not making a decision on limited information when one is needed
– The temptation to find harmony on one’s staff rather than have productive conflict, discussion, and debate
– The temptation to avoid vulnerability and trust in one’s staff
I’m still going to read the others in Lencioni’s series as well. They may not be the best business books ever written, but they’re solid B/B+s, and they’re short and simple, which few business books are and all should be!
Book Short: What’s Your Meeting Routine?
Patrick Lencioni’s Death by Meeting is, as Brad advertised, a great read, and much in line with his other books (running list at the end of the post). His books are just like candy. If only all business books were this short and easy to read.
This fable isn’t quite what I thought it was going to be at the outset – it’s not about too many meetings, which is what I’ve always called “death by meeting.” It’s about staff meetings that bore you to death. With a great story around them featuring characters named Casey and Will (my two oldest kids’ names, which had me chuckling the whole time), Lencioni describes a great framework for splitting up your staff meetings into four different types of meetings: the daily stand-up, the weekly tactical, the monthly strategic, and the quarterly offsite.
There’s definitely something to the framework. We have over the years done all four types of meetings, though we never had all four in our rotation at once as that felt like overkill. But I think at a minimum, any 2 get the job done much better than a single format recurring meeting. As long as you figure out how to separate status updates from more strategic conversations, you’re directionally in good shape. We have almost entirely eliminated or automated status update meetings at this point at my staff level.
The book has some other good stuff in it, though, about the role of conflict in staff meetings, which I’ll save for your own read of the book!
So far the series includes:
- The Three Signs of a Miserable Job (post, link)
- The Five Temptations of a CEO (post, link
)
- The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive (post, link)
I have two more to go, which I’ll tackle in due course and am looking forward to.
Book Short:Â A Brand Extension That Works
Usually, brand or line extensions don’t work out well in the end. They dilute and confuse the brand. Companies with them tend to see their total market share shrink, while focused competitors flourish. As the authors of the seminal work from years ago, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, Jack Trout and Al Reis would be the first people to tell you this.
That said, The New Positioning, which I guess you could call a line extension by Jack Trout (without Reis), was a fantastic read. Not quite as good as the original, but well worth it. It’s actually not a new new book – I think it’s 12 years old as opposed to the original, which is now something like 25 years old, but I just read it and think it’s incredibly relevant to today’s world.
Building on the original work, Trout focuses more this time on Repositioning and Brand Extensions — two things critical to most businesses today. How to do the impossible, to change people’s minds about your brand or product mid-stream, whether in response to new competitive activity or general changes in the world around you. And how to think about brand extensions (hint: don’t do them, create a new brand like Levi’s did with Dockers).
The book also has a very valuable section on the importance of sound and words to branding and positioning, relative to imagery. Trout has a short but very colorful metaphor about women named Gertrude here that’s reminiscent of the research Malcolm Gladwell cited in Blink.
If you haven’t read the original Positioning, that should be on your wish list for the holidays. If you have, then maybe Santa can deliver The New Positioning!
Book Short:Â It Sounds Like it Should be About Monkeys, Doesn’t It?
The Long Tail, by Chris Anderson, is a must-read for anyone in the Internet publishing or marketing business. There’s been so much written about it in the blogosphere already that I feel a little lame and “me too” for adding my $0.02, but I finally had a chance to get to it last week, and it was fantastic.
The premise is that the collapsing production, distribution, and marketing costs of the Internet for certain types of products — mostly media at this point — have extended the traditional curve of available products and purchased products almost indefinitely so that it has, in statistical terms, a really long tail.
So, for example, where Wal-Mart might only be able to carry (I’m making these numbers up, don’t have the book in front of me) 1,000 different CDs at any given moment in time on the shelf, iTunes or Rhapsody can carry 1,000,000 different CDs online. And even though the numbers of units purchased are still greatest for the most popular items (the hits, the ones Wal-Mart stocks on shelf), the number of units purchased way down “in the tail of the curve,” say at the 750,000th most popular unit, are still meaningful — and when you add up all of the units purchased beyond the top 1,000 that Wal-Mart can carry, the revenue growth and diversity of consumer choice become *really* meaningful.
The book is chock full o’ interesting examples and stats and is reasonably short and easy to read, as Anderson is a journalist and writes in a very accessible style. You may or may not think it’s revolutionary based on how deep you are in Internet media, but it will at a minimum help you crystallize your thinking about it.
Book Short:Â Two New Ones from Veteran Writers
I’m feeling very New York this week. I just read both Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell, and Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution – and How It Can Renew America, by Tom Friedman. Both are great, and if you like the respective authors’ prior works, are must reads.
In Outliers, Gladwell’s simple premise is that talents are both carefully cultivated and subject to accidents of fate as much as they are genetic. I guess that’s not such a brilliant premise when you look at it like that. But as with his other two books, The Tipping Point (about how trends and social movements start and spread) and Blink (about how the mind makes judgments), his examples are fascinating, well researched, and very well written. Here are a couple quick nuggets, noting that I don’t have the book in front of me, so my numbers might be slightly off:
- Of the 200 wealthiest people in human history, 9 were Americans born within 5 years of each other in the 1830s – far from a normal distribution for wealth holders/creators
- Most Silicon Valley titans were both within 2 years of each other in 1954-1955
- 40% of great hockey players are born in Q1; 30% in Q2; 20% in Q3; and 10% in Q4, as the “cutoff date” for most youth leagues is January 1, so the biggest/oldest kids end up performing the best, getting the best coaches and most attention that propels them throughout their careers
Also, as with his other books, it’s hard to necessarily draw great and sweeping conclusions or create lots of social policy, both of which are quite tempting, as a result of the data. Scholarly, comprehensive research it might not be, but boy does he make you think twice about, well, lots of things.
In Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Tom Friedman makes a convincing case that two wrongs can make a right, or more to the point, that fixing two wrongs at the same time is a good way of fixing each one more than otherwise would be possible. What I like best about this book is that it’s not just another liberal journalist trashing America — Friedman’s whole premise here (not to mention language) is fiercely optimistic and patriotic, that if we as a country take a sweeping global leadership role in containing CO2 emissions, we will both save the planet and revive our economy, sustaining our global economic leadership position into the next century at a time when others are decrying the end of the American empire.
His examples are real and vivid. Like Gladwell, one never knows how unbiased or comprehensive Friedman is, but he covers some of these topics very poignantly:
- The very strong negative correlation between control of oil supply and democracy/freedom
- A comprehensive vision for the energy world of the future that’s very cool, apparently has already been piloted somewhere, and feels like it’s actually doable
- The startling numbers, even if you sort of know them already, about the sheer number of people who will be sharing our planet and consuming more and more resources in the coming decades
- How too many years of being a privileged nation has led to politics he brilliantly calls “dumb as we wanna be”
Friedman calls his mood sober optimism — that’s a good description. It’s a very timely book as many Americans hold out hope for the new administration’s ability to lead the country in a positive direction and also restore American’s damaged image in the world come January 20. I have to confess that I still haven’t read Friedman’s The Earth Is Flat, although I read him in the New York Times enough and have seen enough excerpts (and lived in business enough the last 5 years!) to get the point. And actually, Hot, Flat, and Crowded has enough of the “Flat” part in it that even if you haven’t read The Earth is Flat, you’ll get more than just the gist of it.
Book Short:Â Are You Topgraded?
I read a decent volume of business books (some of my favorites and more recent ones are listed in the left hand column of the blog). I have two main pet peeves with business books as a rule: the first is is that most business books have one central idea and a few good case examples and take way too many pages to get where they’re going; the other is that far too many of them are geared towards middle and upper management of 5,000+ person companies and are either not applicable or need to be adapted for startups.
Anyway, I thought I’d occasionally post quick synopses of some good ones I’ve read recently. Topgrading, by Brad Smart was so good that this post will be longer than most. It’s a must read for anyone who’s doing a lot of hiring (fellow entrepreneur blogger Terry Gold is a fan, as well).
The book is all about how to build an organization of A players and only A players, and it presents a great interviewing methodology. It’s very long for a business book, but also very valuable. Buy a copy for anyone in your company who’s doing a lot of hiring, not just for yourself or for your HR person. I think the book falls down a little bit on startup adaptation, but it’s still worth a read.
There’s been much talk lately about “the importance of B players” in Harvard Business Review and other places. I share the Topgrading perspective, which is a little different (although more semantically different than philosophically different).
The Topgrading perspective is that you should always hire A players — the definition of which is “one of the top 10% of the available people in the talent pool, for the job you have defined today, at the comp range you have specified.” I absolutely buy into this. Don’t like what you’re seeing while screening candidates? Change one of the three variables (job definition, comp, or geography) and you’ll get there.
The corrolary to the A-player-only theory is that there are three types of A players — the author calls them A1, A2, and A3. A1’s are capable of and interested in rapidly rising to be leaders of the organization. A2s are promotable over time. A3s are not capable of or interested in promotion.
I think what the HBR article on B players is talking about is really what Topgrading calls A3 players. A3 players are absolutely essential to an organization, especially as it grows over time and develops more operational jobs that leverage the powerhouse A1s and A2s that make up such a big percentage of successful startups. You just have to recognize (perhaps with them) that A3 players may not be interested in career growth and promotion and not try to push them into more advanced roles that they may not be interested in or capable of doing well.
I’m a huge believer in having a healthy balance of A1s, A2s, and A3s, but I will always want to hire A players per the above definition. Why would you ever settle for less?
Book Short:Â Why Not Both?
Craig Hickman’s Mind of a Manager, Soul of a Leader talks about how tapping the natural tension between managers and leaders allows an organization to achieve its best. It covers dozens of topical areas and for each compares how a prototypical manager handles the area (practical, reasonable, decisive) vs. how a prototypical leader handles it (visionary, empathetic, and flexible). Of course, the book describes the ideal organization as “balanced an integrated” between the two extremes.
My take for startups, a topic not addressed in the book, is that the job of the entrepreneur CEO is to be both manager and leader, and try to do both roles effectively without driving the team nuts. The book says that “managers wield authority, leaders apply influence.” Entrepreneurs have to be comfortable with both styles. Thanks to my colleague Stephanie Miller for giving me a copy of this one.
Book Short:Â Wither the Team
I keep expecting one of his books to be repetitive or boring, but Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team held my interest all the way through, as did his others. It builds nicely on the last one I read, Death by Meeting (post, link).
I’d say that over the 9 1/2 years we’ve been in business at Return Path, we’ve systematically improved the quality of our management team. Sometimes that’s because we’ve added or changed people, but mostly it’s because we’ve been deliberate about improving the way in which we work together. This particular book has a nice framework for spotting troubles on a team, and it both reassured me that we have done a nice job stamping out at least three of the dysfunctions in the model and fired me up that we still have some work to do to completely stamp out the final two (we’ve identified them and made progress, but we’re not quite there yet.
The dysfunctions make much more sense in context, but they are (in descending order of importance):
- Absence of trust
- Fear of conflict (everyone plays politically nice)
- Lack of commitment (decisions don’t stick)
- Avoidance of accountability
- Inattention to results (individual ego vs. team success)
For those who are wondering, the two we’re still working on at the exec team level here are conflict and commitment. And the two are related. If you don’t produce engaged discussion about an issue and allow everyone to air their opinions, they will invariably be less bought into a decision (especially one they don’t agree with). But we’re getting there and will continue to work aggressively on it until we’ve rooted it out.
There’s one other interesting takeaway from the book that’s not part of the framework directly, which is that an executive has to be first and foremost a member of his/her team of peers, not the head of his/her department. That’s how successful teams get built. AND (this is key) this must trickle down in the organization as well. Everyone who manages a team of group heads or managers needs to make those people function well as a team first, then as managers of their own groups second.
At any rate, another quick gem of a book. I’m kind of sorry there’s only one left in the series.
So far the series includes:
I have one or two more to go, which I’ll tackle in due course and am looking forward to.
Book Short: The Most Rapacious Guys in the Room
I just finished The Smartest Guys in the Room, by journalists Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind. This is the story of Enron, and what a tale it is! The book is a good quick business novel read. It reminded me a lot of Barbarians at the Gate, except that it made me far angrier. I’m not sure if that’s because I’m at a different place in my career now than I was 10 years ago and therefore have a different appreciation for what goes on in companies, or if the Enron guys were just far worse than anyone surrounding RJR Nabisco. But in any case, as my Grandpa Bill would have said, this one certainly raised my hackles.
Anyway, I can’t even get into the details without working myself into a frenzy about these crooks, but suffice to say there are lots of “what not to do” lessons in this book, starting with CEO Ken Lay’s wuss-like, disconnected approach to leading the company and ending with CFO Andy Fastow’s insane rationalizations for using the company as his own piggy bank. Anyway, I thought it would just be easier to just list out a few simple things to look for in your own company if you’re concerned you might be having some financial scandals within. You know you have a problem if…
– Your company has 3,000 off-balance sheet special purpose entities, including 800 in the Caymans
– Your CEO has waived your company code of ethics twice so that the CFO could negotiate deals for his own profit against the company
– Your President combatively calls an analyst an asshole on an earnings call when asked why the company couldn’t produce a balance sheet and cash flow statement with its income statement and earnings release
– Your staffers meet someone from your auditor and say “oh, you’re the guy that won’t let us do something”
– Your accounting department becomes viewed as a major profit center because of its treatment of revenue
It’s truly astonishing what these bozos thought they could get away with. Thank God they’re going to jail. Thanks to my colleague Patty Mah (a friend of the author) for this book.
