Bird's Eye View

Jim Collins and Great By Choice

I'm facilitating an Inner Circle at the NYSE next Monday and the topic is what companies need to do to meet the challenges of this highly disruptive, turbulent world in which we now find ourselves. The tile of our session is "How Leading Businesses are Navigating the Slowdown, the Double Dip, and the New Normal."

First thing we have to acknowledge--and this is tough not only for companies but for individuals as well--is that things will never go back to where they were.  There is no returning to "normal" times.  There is no system reset button that will work here.  This is it.  And it will be turbulent for years.  Years.

And after that--way too long from now to predict exactly when--whatever the world looks like will be different from the one some of us spend way too much time yearning to return to. 

So what's a business to do?  For that matter, what should any of us do, to keep our heads clear and manage the velocity of change that swirls around us, threatening to throw us off balance at every turn?

Jim Collins, the author of Good to Great and other books, has come up with a new one after nine years of research.  He calls this one, co-written with Morton Hansen, Great by Choice.  The argument is that companies--and their leaders--can choose to be great by following several principles, what they call productive paranoia, fanatic discipline, and empirical creativity.

Note that being the most innovative company isn't included here.  Nor being the smartest person in the room.  This is especially interesting to me because the last eight Inner Circles I've facilitated have focused on people's efforts to become more innovative, based on the view that innovation is our way out of this economic downtown and the frozen place we find ourselves with dwindling resources. 

Our attendees at those earlier Inner Circles felt strongly about the need for innovation being paramount.  They worried about how to become less risk adverse, among other things.  Collins' findings turn that a bit on its head.

I'll be interested in what our business leaders attending next Monday's breakfast discussion have to say.  It will be provocative, that's for sure. 

Reading Books Again: Are We Going Back To The Future?

Apparently, much to the surprise of booksellers in the U.S., they are selling many more hard cover books than they had projected for this holiday season.  Who knew?  Books are in demand.  Well, at least in greater demand than we thought they would be.  What's that all about?  Would someone really prefer to carry around the Steve Jobs biography than read it on a Nook or a Kindle?  Apparently, the answer is: yes.  Enough of them to make retail news.

In reading these hard cover book sales reports, I think of my trip to France two weeks ago.  Specifically Paris. What is there to dislike in Paris at this time of year?  (Truth be told, I like just about everything about Paris any time of year...you know the song "I love Paris in the Springtime..and the Fall...and the Winter...and the Summer..."

This time I was again taking the Metro all over the place.  (As my friends know, I'm a public transportation aficionado.  I feel I learn more about a city and what makes it tick while riding their local transportation than any tour can possibly provide.)  And I noticed something that surprised me: people were reading books--hard cover books-- on the Metro.  And they were serious tomes.  Some heavy tomes, as big as the Steve Jobs biography (indeed, one was reading that very biography).  It was surprising.  Especially when you consider that cell service is available in the Metro.  You could be yacking with your friends if you feel like it while getting to and from work or going any place at all.  But I saw few people talking on their cell phones, and none of them seemed to speak on them for more than a minute or two. 

Is this a cultural phenomenon?  Is it considered impolite to expose others in a subway or bus to your phone conversation?  I forgot to ask my French friends about that and intend to next time I am there.  I am certain that if mobile service were available on New York's subways (and, heaven help us, it will be some day) there will be a cacophony of yacking...about unimportant stuff...all around us.  Yegads, I hope that day is held off as long as possible.

There was another thing I noted on the Paris Metro.  Conversations take place, but they are loud and boisterous.  They are confidential, seeming to be acting out the French tete a tete. They are personal conversations and they stay that way; the rest of the subway car is not privy to it.

I don't see such conversations on my New York subway trips.  I see loud public displays of talk.  Different in kind. 

Ah, Paris and its Metro..  For many readers, if they are not in conversation (as opposed to boisterously talking)...they are reading books! 

On top of that they have great food.  And wine.  and style.

Sigh.

Should We Teach Debate In Grade School?

I was talking with a group the other day about the inability of many kids to carry on a verbal conversation.  If they're texting they can communicate...sort of.  But verbally?  They have little to say, don't know the basics about active listening, and generally appear to view conversations as either ways to express agreement, or ways to express anger. 

But that fine line in between, where debates take place, appears to be lost on them.  (Heck, if you look at adults, it seems an equally depressing wasteland of verbal ignorance.  Especially in Congress, where they're supposed to know the ground rules of debate vs. yelling at one another.)

I loved debating in high school.  We were serious about our debate tournaments.  We got to the state level before getting our clocks cleaned by some amazingly well trained debaters from another region of our state.  I taught debate to high school students years later and they loved it too. One of my kids went all the way to nationals, but I can claim no credit, he was naturally gifted and needed little coaching.

Somewhat do you think?  Could we get kids so fired up about debating, there would be cheerleader squads for favorite teams?  School rivalries?  No?  Would be fun, though, and there are no concussions from debate meets.  The kids' heads may hurt but that's from so much exercise of their brains.

Beyond "No email Policy;" How About True Silence?

Recent articles in the New York Times and elsewhere talk of urban professionals who are taking extended silent retreats. Like a week, two weeks, even a month.  And by silent retreat, they mean not just turning off their iPhone and iPad and going cold turkey on email. They mean SILENT as in no talking. To anyone.  By any means, offline and on-line.

The return of an ad agency executive who returned from a month of silent retreat in Colorado is chronicled in the New York Times. He is said to have rethought his career, his commitments and his life during the retreat when he had only himself to engage in dialogue. The result?  He came back and shut down the bricks and mortar business of his agency.

More than ten years ago I went on a weekend silent retreat, run in Darien, Connecticut by a convent of
nuns who all seemed to hail from India.  They have no other involvement in the United States and are here only because a woman who became enamored of the nuns she met in Italy at one point in her life, left her Darien estate to the nun's order so they took it as a sign of divine providence that they should send a team of nuns to run a retreat house here.  (I just looked them up.  Still there in Darien, the Order of St. Birgitta (founded in the 14th Century) is still open for business at Vikingsborg, their lovely retreat house in Connecticut.)  Maybe I need to go back there.

I went to two different retreats there and found them magical.  And that was before the proliferation of email.  Now, I think I'd find it even more refreshing.  I can still hear in my head the sound of their chanting in the chapel.  I loved that.  No need to attend anything, talk to anyone, go anywhere.  You do what you wish and show up for meals if you feel like it.  As far as the sisters are concerned, you can stay in your room the entire time.  It's a little bit of heaven. 

 

 

 

 

 

There is one problem, though.  How do you deal with all those online conversations that were initiated by others during your absence?  It's tempting to say you send them all the same email upon your return to life--as--you--knew--it--before--the--silent--retreat: "I'm back in civilization and ask that if whatever you sent me was important and still needs my attention, you resend it.  Otherwise...I'll assume I can live without it.  Doesn't that sound liberating?

One might wonder why someone who loves conversation so much thinks silent retreats are a good idea.  It's that I value conversation so much that I value the chance to get away from any and all communication with others so that I can determine what conversations are the most valuable to pursue.  What topics of are real interest?  And with whom do I most want to discuss them?  It's a way to step back and simplify the conversation pool, so that you can more deeply engage with those who add something to your life, and disengage from those that don't.

Is email being Eclipsed?

From Hong Kong today I was sent a link to an article on ABC news website about the action taken by Thierry Breton, CEO of the French technology company called Atos.  Noting that entirely too much company time was spent digging through spam to get to the few messages (he estimates less than 10% of all emails received by Atos employees) that are useful, he has essentially eradicated internal emails for 18 months, forcing the company's 74,000 employees to communicate with each other by instant messaging and a Facebook-style interface. 

   

Note this is not about external emails, sent between employees and customers, for example.  It's all about internal chitchat and company spokespeople say that they are seeing results.  And the results are positive.  Breton says that he personally has not sent an email in the three years since he became chairman and CEO of Atos. 

It's all about eliminating, as much as possible, the unneeded and useless communications and giving breathing space to the conversations that matter.How much time do you spend culling through communications that are unneeded, unwanted and wastes of your time?  What if your own company eliminated internal emails?

 

Is This The New Normal?

Since last writing here, I've spent time in Paris and London, co-hosted an Inner Circle in London on the topic of Innovation, co-hosted an evening event in London at the Georg Jensen store on Bond Street to celebrate Maria Pinelli's move from New York to London where she is heading Global Strategy for Ernst & Young, attended TEDx Women at two different locations here in New York last week,and  I am now preparing for an Inner Circle at the New York Stock Exchange on December 19 here in New York.  The topic is "How Leading Businesses are Navigating the Slowdown, the Double Dip, and the New Normal." 

I borrowed this Inner Circle topic from Laurie Coots, who used it to introduce a live portion of the TEDx Women event that she hosted at TBWA's offices here in New York.  I was taken by the unanimity of response to that title among the attendees.  Yes, there is no turning back to the way we used to do business.  Whatever it was that made us successful will probably not work in the same way now.  This turbulent, unpredictable, frightening, and globally unsettling time is the new normal and we'd better get used to that, rather than wax nostalgic about how it used to be.  And we can't afford to waste time waiting for things to return to "the way they were."  Ain't gonna happen.

The conversations in Paris, London and New York are pretty much the same: the world is in a new time and there don't seem to be easily applicable ground rules for how to navigate our way through them.  That's true of countries, of companies, of communities and, certainly, of individuals.

What's clear to me is that more than ever we need to collaborate with others.  And we need to talk.  Seriously converse with others in order to get as many smart people as we can to help us move past simple survival to a place where we can thrive. 

In our Inner Circle conversation and elsewhere as well, there was a divergence of opinion as to whether we should be optimistic about the future or concerned that things are tough and don't look like they'll get better soon.  For my part, I'm betting on the positive folks. They could be wrong, but at least we'll be smiling our way to the future rather than wringing our hands.  We've got to navigate the slowdown, the double dip and the new normal and I'd prefer to think that this is time to consider the glass half full.