|
TayPrac 11-04-037 |
|
|
|
Practically Radical - Not-So-Crazy Ways to
Transform Your Company, Shake up Your Industry, and Challenge Yourself William
C. Taylor Harper
Collins, 2011, 291 pp. ISBN 978-0-06-173461-8 |
|
Taylor, the cofounder of Fast Company Magazine, offers a collection
of case studies that illustrate radical ideas and practical suggestions to
help leaders "transform their companies, shake up their industries, and
challenge themselves." Introduction Warren Buffet warns that
good ideas go badly wrong in three steps.
The innovators see the new
opportunities. The imitators copy the innovators. And the idiots
undermine the innovations through their avarice. (xiii) Organizations tend to fly
too high during boom times and shoot too low during tough times. But design tends to thrive in hard
times. Economic turmoil provides
opportunities for challengers. The opposing risks are
sinking the boat or missing the boat.
But the opportunities lie in rocking the boat - "searching for
big ideas and small wrinkles, inside and outside the organization, that help
you make waves and change course." (xix) "The
challenge for leaders in every field is to emerge from turbulent times with
closer connections to their customers, with more energy and creativity from
their people, and with greater distance between them and their rivals."
(xix) Part I.
Transforming Your Company 1. What You
See Shapes How You Change - The Virtues of Vuja De "We are
living in the age of disruption. You
can't do big things anymore if you are content with doing things a little
better than everyone else…. The most
effective executives … redefine the
terms of competition by embracing one-of-a-kind ideas in a world filled
with me-too thinking." (13) "Vuja
de is looking at a familiar situation as
if you've never seen it before,
… developing a distinctive point of view on the
future." (13) Clarity and
confidence may come from rediscovering and reinterpreting the past and
uncovering virtues or long-forgotten principles that deserve to be
reborn. The past can become prologue
as you see the future with fresh eyes. "I believe the
attributes that made you great once can make you great again--if you summon
the 'brilliance of your predecessors' as a call to action rather than a cause
for complacency." (36) Look into
your roots. Reclaim the past. 2. Where You
Look Shapes What You See--Of Big Dots, Pit Stops, and Hot Spots Reach beyond the walls of
your organization and your industry.
Look at a wide array of fields for ideas that are working elsewhere. "'In 1912, a curious
Henry Ford watched men cut meat during a tour of a Chicago slaughterhouse. The
carcasses were hanging on hooks mounted on a monorail. After each man performed his job, he would
push the carcass to the next station.
When the tour was over, the guide said, 'Well, sir, what do you
think?' Mr. Ford turned to the man and
said, 'Thanks, son, I think you may have given me a real good idea.' Less than six months later, the world's
first assembly line started producing magnetos in the Ford Highland Park
Plant." (53, quoting Benchmarking for Best Practices, Christopher
Bogan and Michael English) The new logic of innovation
is "lift and shift."
"Search for great ideas in unrelated fields, lift them out of the
context in which they took shape, and shift them into your company."
(54, citing Indra Nooyi) Exposure to other fields
can inspire a whole new mind-set, the ability to reimagine
what is possible in your own industry.
If you search where others don't look, you may find opportunities others
don't see. "Ideas that are
routine in one industry can be downright revolutionary when they migrate to
another industry…" (72) 3. Radically
Practical (I) -- Five Truths of Corporate Transformation 1. Most organizations suffer from tunnel vision. The challenge is to see the organization
with new eyes, to develop a distinctive point of view, to see a different
game that will produce new results.
Rethink and reinvent how you operate.
We kill too many good ideas by rejecting them without thinking about
them. 2. Most leaders see the
same way as everyone else because they look in the same places. Learn from innovators outside your industry.
Apply what is working elsewhere.
Reimagine what's possible. 3. History can be a curse. Break from the past without disowning it.
"The essence of creativity…is figuring out how to use what you already
know in order to go beyond what you already think." (87-88, quoting
Jerome Bruner) The most rewarding path
may be to return to first principles. 4. Summon a sense of urgency and turn it into
action. Stories of possible scenarios
- both positive and negative possibilities - can be very persuasive. 5. Change agents can never stop learning. Part II.
Shaking Up Your Industry 4. Are You
the Most of Anything? Why Being
Different Makes All the Difference Zappos is the example here. If Zappos is out
of stock, the rep will search competitors' web sites and tell the customer
where he can get it! They lose the
sale but serve the customer. Zappos wants to
talk to customers. They encourage
customers to call. [Wouldn't that be a welcome change? DLM] "If you do things the
same way everyone else in your field does things, why would you expect to do
any better?" Think about
banks. When asked why someone should choose
their bank over the competition, bank employees have no answer. Here is an opportunity to do something
distinctive. "It's
not good enough to be 'pretty good' at everything anymore. You have to be the most of something: the
most elegant, the most colorful, the most responsive, the most focused." (107)
There's no more room in the middle of the road. Most companies have tunnel vision, chasing
the same opportunities that every other company is chasing, missing
opportunities hiding in plain sight. "Idea brands"
offer something that is rare, reflect a commitment to a big idea, and are
intensely human. They are not perfect:
they are polarizing, lopsided, skewed.
But they can be very attractive to many. Winning organizations are
driven by clear, simple, and original defining ideas that describe the impact
they seek and the legacy they will leave.
"Mental models are what
separate organizations that are the most of something…" (119) "They
transform the sense of what's possible in their fields." (119)
"They are successful precisely because they don't look, talk,
behave, or compete like other companies in their fields. They are outliers, extremists, game
changers." (126) 5. Different
on Purpose -- Motivation, Inspiration, and The Heart of Innovation "The
companies with the strongest emotions
win." (144) How much time did you spend this month
checking on your values and creating a sense of empathy among your
leaders? Do senior executives spend
any time on the front lines? It is
easy to lose touch with what happens in the trenches, to disconnect from the
day-to-day struggles. "Sustaining
performance…is as much about cultivating a spirit of grassroots energy,
enthusiasm, and engagement as unleashing a set of game-changing ideas." (146) Caring
more about your customers than your competitors do is a key factor in
long-term success. It also holds you
together in the workplace. And the
tougher the times, the more important the emotions. Workers committed to the customers are
committed to their work. Behind every great brand is
a clear statement about the difference you are trying to make in the
world. You can evaluate your current
and proposed practices by whether it is the right thing for your purpose. "Marketing is a tax you pay for being
unremarkable." (155, quoting Robert Stephens) "Companies
continue to behave in ways that drive their customers crazy: outlandish
baggage fees from airlines, rigged overdraft charges from banks…. Many
companies depend on their most dissatisfied customers for so much of their
profits. … Sometimes all it takes to drive mass defection is the appearance
of a customer-friendly competitor."
(158-59) "The critical
variable…was neither the lowest price nor the highest quality, but the depth
and consistency of the human interactions between a company and its
customers." (165) How would your
customers describe their feelings about your organization: confidence? integrity? pride? passion? Can your
customers imagine a world without your organization? London Drugs is "more concerned with
being part of people's lives than with maximizing each
transaction." (168) 6. Radically
Practical (II) -- Five New Rules for Starting Something New 1. Become the most of something. Be the driving force for transformation in
your field, rather than a lagging indicator.
2. Be unique.
This does not mean that you cannot do lots of different things. Zappos is about
the very best customer service and customer experience. 3. Care more than the competition does. "You cannot provide this [outstanding]
level of service without people deeply committed to the
organization." (178) 4. Engage customers emotionally. 5. You don't have to start from scratch to
embrace a blank-sheet-of-paper mind-set.
"Challenge middle-of-the-road thinking and develop strongly felt
opinions that respond to fast-changing markets, fast-moving technologies, and
fickle customers." Part III.
Challenging Yourself 7. Leadership
Without All The Answers--Ambition, Humbition, and
the Power of Hidden Genius "Innovation
emerges from the bottom up, unpredictably and improvisationally,
and it's often only after the innovation has occurred that everyone realizes
what's happened. The paradox is that
innovation can't be planned, it can't be predicted; it has to be allowed to
emerge." (198, quoting Keith
Sawyer) "The
most effective leaders…recognize that the most powerful ideas can come from
the most unexpected places: the quiet genius buried deep inside the
organization; the collective genius that surrounds the organization; the
hidden genius of customers, suppliers, and other constituencies who would be
eager to share what they know if only they were asked. That's the difference between success and
failure today…." "Motivate
people by your passion, by your insights, and most importantly, by your
willingness to listen to them." (199)
"The
most successful leaders are the ones who make it their business to get the
best ideas from the most people, whatever their background, job title, or
position in the hierarchy." (200) "Creativity at most
organizations is a blip when it needs to be a heartbeat." (214) 8. Hidden
Genius at Work--From Shared Minds to Helping Hands "Most companies are
surrounded by customers, suppliers, fans, advocates, and interested parties
of all kinds who are passionate about what they do, bursting with ideas, and
eager to be more involved. Why not
invite them to demonstrate their creativity to you, share their best ideas
with you, and collaborate to solve your toughest problems or deliver on your
most promising opportunities?" (223) "The best way to work
on hard-to-solve challenges is to challenge conventional ideas about what
kinds of people can work with you to solve them." (227) 9. Radically
Practical (III)--Five Habits of Highly Humbitious
Leaders [Humbitious
means a balance of humility and ambition.] 1. Don't pretend to know everything. The most powerful ideas often come from the
most unexpected places. 2. Leverage the virtues of collective genius
to evaluate the ideas they attract.
Someone has to pick the best ideas.
Give others a voice in the decision-making process. 3. Get good at rejecting the bad ideas without
demoralizing the people who submitted them.
Demonstrate that everyone's ideas get a fair hearing. 4. Share your ideas with outsiders just as you
desire outsiders to share their ideas with you. Those most eager to learn often become the
best teachers. 5. Go beyond personal leadership and make this
an organizational way of life. Allow as
many participants as possible to emerge as leaders. Appendix. Ten
Game Changer Questions
|
|
*******