Find the 15-Minute Competitive Advantage

from HarvardBusiness.org by Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Just because this is a time of transformation doesn’t mean that it’s easy to sell transformational ideas. Economic uncertainty has reduced the audience for bold, grand rhetoric. Besides, even in boom times innovation is risky. Innovators often have to ease anxieties by sounding conservative while doing something radical.

We all want breakthroughs; it’s just that we can’t know exactly which of the bold new ideas will break through. For every Mustang, there’s an Edsel. For every flip phone, there’s a flop. (Apple’s track record — iPod, iTunes, iPhone — is extraordinary but atypical.) It’s is also hard to get traction for ideas that are so far ahead of their times that the infrastructure or human habits do not yet support them. For every dream of cheap renewable energy, there’s the reality of still-high costs of wind turbines or solar panels.

As many technology companies have seen to their peril, you can leap much too far into the future by seeking revolution, not evolution, leaving potential users in the dust. But steady progress — step by single step — can win internal support and the external race for share of market or share of mind. Especially if you take each step quickly.

Consider Woody Allen’s comedy routine about the first landing of UFOs on Earth and our first contact with an advanced civilization (AKA advanced competitor). Allen wrote that most worries about planetary takeovers involve aliens that are light years away and centuries ahead of us in technology, bringing devices we can’t understand or communicate with, which enables them to control everything. Not to worry, Allen said. If we can’t understand or communicate with their systems, we’ll just ignore them, doing our work the way we always do until they leave in frustration. Instead, he argued, the advanced civilization that we should really worry about is one that is just 15 minutes ahead. That way they’d always be first in line for the movies, they’d never miss a meeting with the boss… and they’d always be first in every race.

Call this the “15 minute competitive advantage”: changing in short fast bursts rather than waiting for the breakthrough that transforms everything. If every proverbial 15 minutes, you learn something and incorporate it into the next speedy step, you’ll continue to be ahead. And a few time periods later, transformation will be underway.

Scott Cook, founder of Intuit, praised the value of cheap, fast experiments at a recent CEO meeting. He recalled watching Toyota’s method of continuous improvement on the shop floor: simplifying, speeding, and taking costs out with each round. Bolt instead of weld, tape instead of bolt, hold instead of tape. Cook’s advice is to turn business concepts into hypotheses to test fast. This is the essence of rapid prototyping, and it doesn’t require total transformation.

Stay a little ahead of the competition while close enough to what customers can understand and incorporate, and the innovation idea is easier to sell. Here are some characteristics of innovations most likely to succeed at gaining support:

Trial-able: The idea or product can be demonstrated on a pilot basis. Customers can see it in action first and incorporate it on a small scale before committing to replace everything.

Divisible: It can be adopted in segments or phases. Users can ease into it, a step at a time. They can even use it in parallel with current solutions.

Reversible: If it doesn’t work, it’s possible to return to pre-innovation status. Eventually you want life to be unimaginable without it, but at least in theory, it’s possible to go back to zero.

Tangible: It offers concrete results that can be seen to make a difference in something that users need and value.

Fits prior investments: The idea builds on “sunk costs” or actions already taken, so it looks like not much change is involved.

Familiar: It feels like things that people already understand, so it is not jarring to use. It is consistent with other experiences, especially successful ones.

Congruent with future direction: It is in line with where things are heading anyway. It doesn’t require people to rethink their priorities or pathways, even though of course it changes things.

Positive publicity value: It will make everyone look good.

These principles leave plenty of room to promote revolutionary ideas under cover of evolutionary change. But to find and grow a market for anything — whether green products or new health delivery plans — means staying close to what users can adopt easily and then leading them to the next iteration.

Innovators who take risks must reduce the risk for others. Think long-term trends but short-term steps —15 minutes at a time.

Bob Sutton’s 15 Beliefs:

Sometimes the best management is no management at all — first do no harm!

Indifference is as important as passion.

In organizational life, you can have influence over others or you can have freedom from others, but you can’t have both at the same time.

Saying smart things and giving smart answers are important. Learning to listen to others and to ask smart questions is more important.

Learn how to fight as if you are right and listen as if you are wrong: It helps you develop strong opinions that are weakly held.

You get what you expect from people. This is especially true when it comes to selfish behavior; unvarnished self-interest is a learned social norm, not an unwavering feature of human behavior.

Getting a little power can turn you into an insensitive self-centered jerk.

Avoid pompous jerks whenever possible. They not only can make you feel bad about yourself, chances are that you will eventually start acting like them.

The best test of a person’s character is how he or she treats those with less power.

The best single question for testing an organization’s character is: What happens when people make mistakes?

The best people and organizations have the attitude of wisdom: The courage to act on what they know right now and the humility to change course when they find better evidence.

The quest for management magic and breakthrough ideas is overrated; being a master of the obvious is underrate

Err on the side of optimism and positive energy in all things.

It is good to ask yourself, do I have enough? Do you really need more money, power, prestige, or stuf

Jim Maloney is right: Work is an overrated activity

The Little Rules of Action

from zen habits by Leo

“The shortest answer is doing.” – Lord Herbert

Too often we get stuck in inaction — the quagmire of doubt and perfectionism and distractions and planning that stops us from moving forward.

And while I’m no proponent of a whirling buzz of activity, I also believe people get lost in the distractions of the world and lose sight of what’s important, and how to actually accomplish their Something Amazing.

And so today I’d like to humbly present a few little rules of action — just some small reminders, things I’ve found useful but by no means invented, common-sense stuff that is often not common enough.

1. Don’t overthink. Too much thinking often results in getting stuck, in going in circles. Some thinking is good — it’s good to have a clear picture of where you’re going or why you’re doing this — but don’t get stuck thinking. Just do.
2. Just start. All the planning in the world will get you nowhere. You need to take that first step, no matter how small or how shaky. My rule for motivating myself to run is: Just lace up your shoes and get out the door. The rest takes care of itself.
3. Forget perfection. Perfectionism is the enemy of action. Kill it, immediately. You can’t let perfect stop you from doing. You can turn a bad draft into a good one, but you can’t turn no draft into a good draft. So get going.
4. Don’t mistake motion for action. A common mistake. A fury of activity doesn’t mean you’re doing anything. When you find yourself moving too quickly, doing too many things at once, this is a good reminder to stop. Slow down. Focus.
5. Focus on the important actions. Clear the distractions. Pick the one most important thing you must do today, and focus on that. Exclusively. When you’re done with that, repeat the process.
6. Move slowly, consciously. Be deliberate. Action doesn’t need to be done fast. In fact, that often leads to mistakes, and while perfection isn’t at all necessary, neither is making a ridiculous amount of mistakes that could be avoided with a bit of consciousness.
7. Take small steps. Biting off more than you can chew will kill the action. Maybe because of choking, I dunno. But small steps always works. Little tiny blows that will eventually break down that mountain. And each step is a victory, that will compel you to further victories.
8. Negative thinking gets you nowhere. Seriously, stop doing that. Self doubt? The urge to quit? Telling yourself that it’s OK to be distracted and that you can always get to it later? Squash those thoughts. Well, OK, you can be distracted for a little bit, but you get the idea. Positive thinking, as corny as it sounds, really works. It’s self-talk, and what we tell ourselves has a funny habit of turning into reality.
9. Meetings aren’t action. This is a common mistake in management. They hold meetings to get things done. Meetings, unfortunately, almost always get in the way of actual doing. Stop holding those meetings!
10. Talking (usually) isn’t action. Well, unless the action you need to take is a presentation or speech or something. Or you’re a television broadcaster. But usually, talking is just talking. Communication is necessary, but don’t mistake it for actual action.
11. Planning isn’t action. Sure, you need to plan. Do it, so you’re clear about what you’re doing. Just do it quickly, and get to the actual action as quickly as you can.
12. Reading about it isn’t action. You’re reading an article about action. Ironic, I know. But let this be the last one. Now get to work!
13. Sometimes, inaction is better. This might be the most ironic thing on the list, but really, if you find yourself spinning your wheels, or you find you’re doing more harm than good, rethink whether the action is even necessary. Or better yet, do this from the beginning — is it necessary? Only do the action if it is.

“Talk doesn’t cook rice.” – Chinese Proverb

Great Innovators Spend Less Than Good Ones

from HarvardBusiness.org by Scott Anthony

A story last week about the Obama administration committing more than $3 billion to smart grid initiatives caught my eye. It wasn’t really an unusual story. It seems like every day features a slew of stories where leaders commit billions to new geographies, technologies, or acquisitions to demonstrate how serious they are about innovation and growth.

Here’s the thing — these kinds of commitments paradoxically can make it harder for organizations to achieve their aim. In other words, the very act of making a serious financial commitment to solve a problem can make it harder to solve the problem.

Why can large commitments hamstring innovation?

First, they lead people to chase the known rather than the unknown. After all, if you are going to spend a large chunk of change, you better be sure it is going to be going after a large market. Otherwise it is next to impossible to justify the investment. But most growth comes from creating what doesn’t exist, not getting a piece of what already does. It’s no better to rely on projections for tomorrow’s growth markets, because they are notoriously flawed.

Big commitments also lead people to frame problems in technological terms. Innovators spend resources on path-breaking technologies that hold the tantalizing promise of transformation. But as my colleagues Mark Johnson and Josh Suskewicz have shown, the true path to transformation almost always comes from developing a distinct business model.

Finally, large investments lead innovators to shut off “emergent signals.” When you spend a lot, you lock in fixed assets that make it hard to dramatically shift strategy. What, for example, could Motorola do after it invested billions to launch dozens of satellites to support its Iridium service only to learn there just wasn’t a market for it? Painfully little. Early commitments predetermined the venture’s path, and when it turned out the first strategy was wrong — as it almost always is — the big commitment acted as an anchor that inhibited iteration.

These ingredients are a recipe for sustaining thinking — trying to leap-frog over existing incumbents with cutting-edge technologies. Research shows that market leaders tend to beat back these kinds of attacks, resulting in a lot of squandered resources.

So what should leaders do?

Be frugal with financial resources but generous with human resources. What holds disruptive innovation back in most organizations isn’t a lack of money. It is a lack of committed people, a surplus of inappropriate mindsets, and a whole series of standard operating procedures that run counter to the fast-cycle decision making, in-market learning, and iterative approach to strategy required for disruption.

Freeing people to fully engage in this problem, and having leadership focus their energy on helping to ward off what I call the “sucking sound of the core” can be critical to success.

In an interview with Innosight, Intuit Chairman Scott Cook said that in his experience, the most successful disruptive teams have “an executive that is rooting for them, cheering them, mentoring them, actively spending time with them every week and protecting them from the antibodies of the rest of the companies that are trying to love them to death, or, exterminate them.”

Signing checks is easier than spending time. If you are truly committed to innovation, though, spend less money and more time. You’ll end up making substantially more progress.

Skitt’s Law Applied to Kaizen

I became aware of a truth about lean problem solving and kaizen yesterday while reading an article about ten internet rules and laws.

4. Skitt’s Law

Expressed as “any post correcting an error in another post will contain at least one error itself” or “the likelihood of an error in a post is directly proportional to the embarrassment it will cause the poster.”

It is an online version of the proofreading truism Muphry’s Law, also known as Hartman’s Law of Prescriptivist Retaliation: “any article or statement about correct grammar, punctuation, or spelling is bound to contain at least one eror”.

Language Log quotes the following example, from Paul Ordoveza’s How Now, Brownpau? blog:

“For too long, we linguistic pedants have cringed, watching this phrase used, misused, and abused, again, and again, and again. ‘This begs the question…’ [we hear], and we must brace ourselves as the ignoramii of modern society literally ask a question after the phrase.”

While Mr Ordoveza’s point is entirely valid (“begging the question” is a logical fallacy, meaning to “beggar the question”, or assume your conclusion in your premise – not to raise the question), the plural of ignoramus is ignoramuses.

It was apparently first stated by G Bryan Lord, referring to a user named Skitt, on Usenet in 1998.

Skitt’s Law applied to kaizen would be “any action to solve a problem will contain at least one problem itself” or “the likelihood of a problem resulting from a proposed solution is directly proportional to the embarrassment it will cause” to the person who is promotion the particular solution. Just as all standards should be considered temporary until improved, all improvement ideas should be considered provisional until they are not proven to be ineffective. Too many times people approach problem solving or kaizen as a process of championing a favored solution, only to be blinded by its failings. This results in embarrassment when a solution proves ineffective but the organization has already committed too much time and resource, as well as personal reputations, and it is difficult to change course gracefully at that point.

We should keep in mind Skitt’s Law and assume that all kaizen ideas are full of holes, no single countermeasure will solve the problem entirely, and that some countermeasures may solve one problem but cause another. Toyota uses the term “countermeasure” for a reason, rather than “solution” because they understand problem solving to a taking a series of measures to counter root causes of problems, rather than to put so-called solutions in place and moving on.

As with anything, kaizens can contain errors. Many times the countermeasures are the result of solution-jumping and shallow or non-existent root cause analysis. Just like we should run spell check before sending out a piece of writing, we should spell check our problem solving thought process by tracking the solution back through the root cause to the original problem statement using the “therefore” or “so what” test.

The kaizen process must be inherently self-skeptical. While being confident that we can surely solve all problems (the what), we should always be challenging the method or solution itself (the how). The PDCA cycle is all about checking and adjusting our plan, learning from the result of the do phase. The learning is as important, if not often more important, than the solution that is put in place. Remember Skitt’s Law and check your work. Don’t fall in love with your kaizen ideas because love will blind you. Keep a healthy skepticism and be prepared to love and nurture all kaizen ideas.

Speaking of healthy skepticism, there were two other laws also worthy of note:

8. DeMyer’s Laws

Named for Ken DeMyer, a moderator on Conservapedia.com. There are four: the Zeroth, First, Second and Third Laws.

The Second Law states: “Anyone who posts an argument on the internet which is largely quotations can be very safely ignored, and is deemed to have lost the argument before it has begun.”

And to bolster my argument with another quote from the internet,

7. Pommer’s Law

Proposed by Rob Pommer on rationalwiki.com in 2007, this states: “A person’s mind can be changed by reading information on the internet. The nature of this change will be from having no opinion to having a wrong opinion.”

The internet is a dangerous place for a curious mind…

By Jon Miller – October 26, 2009 12:15 PM

Creating sustainable competitive advantage

No successful web company (not eBay, Flickr, Amazon, Facebook…) succeeds because of a significant technological barrier to entry. It’s not insanely difficult to copy what they’ve done. Yet they win and the copycats don’t.

Few organizations succeed in the long run because of proprietary technology. Not Starbucks or CAA or Nike, certainly. Not Caterpillar or Reuters either.

Technologists often tell me, “this product is very hard to build, that will insulate us from competition and protect our pricing.” It might. For a while. But once you’re successful, the competition will figure out a way. They always do.

So, what to do?

• You can own something that’s hard to copy (like real estate).
• You can race down the pricing and scale curve, so it’s cheaper for you to do what you do because you have a head start.
• You can create switching costs, so that the hassle and cost of moving to a cheaper competitor is so great, it’s just not worth it.
• You can build a network (which can take many forms–natural monopolies are organizations where the market is better off when there’s only one of you).
• You can build a brand (shorthand for relationships, beliefs, trust, permission and word of mouth).
• You can create a constantly innovating organization where extraordinary employees thrive.

The reason the internet is such a home to wow business models is that it’s easier to create a network here than any other time in history.

Brilliant Management – “you put in the details”

Quote

It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out where the strong man stumbled, or where a doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man in the arena whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, and who comes up short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause. The man who at best knows the triumph of high achievement and who at worst, if he fails, fails while daring greatly, so that his place will never be with those cold timid souls who never knew victory or defeat.

– Teddy Roosevelt

The 14 Keys of Employee Engagement

from Employee Engagement: Results That Matter by David Zinger

“You sort of smell it, don’t you, that engagement of people as people. What goes on in meetings, how people talk to each other. You get the sense of energy, engagement, commitment, belief in what the organisation stands for,” is how Lord Currie, former Chair of the Office of Communications (Ofcom) and Dean of Cass Business School, puts it. From the United Kingdom MacLeod Report: “Engaging for Success: Enhancing Performance through Employee Engagement”.

Employee Engagement, as a term, has been around since the 1990’s and has recently gathered exponentially increased attention. The United Kingdom just released the above-mentioned MacLeod Report: Engaging for Success: Enhancing Performance through Employee Engagement to bring engagement to the top of everyone’s agenda. The United States government released two reports entitled The Power of Federal Engagement and Managing for Engagement.  A Google search of employee engagement 2 years ago found about 300,000 resources while a Google search of employee engagement today revealed 1,640,000 resources.

So what is engagement? Employee engagement is a lot like love. You don’t have to wear a ring and always love your job but employee engagement and love are defined in so many different ways. Each consulting company seems to have their own definition. Some seem to define it as feeling good about your company, some define it as getting more discretionary effort from employees and some define it as a high response to 12 questions that include having a friend and getting feedback.

The Zinger definition of engagement.

Employee engagement is the art and science of engaging people

in authentic and recognized connections to strategy, roles, performance,

organization, community, relationship, customers, development, energy, and happiness

to leverage, sustain, and transform work into results.

Let’s look at a couple of case studies on employee engagement.

Case study #1:

Tina works at a local gas station as the cashier. Tina is fully engaged. She offers welcoming teasing/banter with each customer, she is the most efficient person I have seen on a cash register, she engages the other employees and has them providing more efficient service, and she uses the word ‘we’ when she talks about the company she works for. I will go out of my way to get gas when Tina is working there.

Tina is an exceptional model of employee engagement. She doesn’t know what the term means; she has never been surveyed. When I asked her about her approach to work and her level of engagement,  she was surprised by the question and took it for granted that everyone should be engaged.

Case study #2:

Bob is the antithesis of Tina and was chronically disengaged on the job before finally retiring. He even built a spreadsheet to determine when his last day of work would be and couldn’t wait till the day arrived. He hated his job, he hated the people he worked with, and he didn’t care for his company. When I asked him if there was something he did like, he replied, “golf.”

I bumped into Bob a year after he retired and he still looked miserable. I asked him about golf and now he hated golf. He told me it was like a job to him and exhibited how disengagement at work can seep into the rest of our lives outside the company.

The ‘key’ to successful employee engagement

Whether you’re a Tina or a Bob, when it comes to employee engagement, I believe there is value in the plethora of perspectives to show the richness of the concept and that it is necessary to give space for each company, organization, and individual to play engagement in their own key.

I have been immersed in the subject for the past 5 years and recently created a comprehensive model for engagement focusing on results, work, self, and other. I believe engagement must contribute to results while being of benefit to all. Engagement helps employees remain valuable while ensuring the organization is viable. CARE is at the core of engagement and engagement is demonstrated externally while also being experienced internally. Engagement is not only how we approach work but can also act as a compass to powerful leadership, management, and performance.

The Zinger Model on Engagement for Results

1. The Core of employee engagement is CARE: Connection, Authenticity, Recognition, and Engage. We need robust connections between all the engagement keys. These connections must be authentic. Recognition of each other and the keys is central. Engagement is not a noun but a dynamic verb — engage!
2. The green arrow represents results and growth.  We must determine the results we are trying to achieve, determine a strategy to achieve those results and enliven our work roles while excelling at performance.
3. The top part of the model  in blue signifies others and the outer part of engagement. Engaged employees are a part of their organization — not apart from their organization. The organization strives to create authentic community while building relationships as everyone engages in serving the customer.
4. The yellow, lower part of the model outlines the benefits and requirements for employee engagement to help each individual employee develop personally and professionally, to manage, master, and leverage their energies in the service of engagement, and to experience genuine happiness through their work.

The Zinger Model offers 14 keys to engagement while putting engagement into a new key.  They are:

1. Strengthening connections
2. Maintaining authenticity
3. Ensuring recognition
4. Acting in a fully engaging manner
5. Achieving results
6. Crafting strategy
7. Enlivening work roles
8. Excelling at performance
9. Identifying with the organization
10. Fostering relationships and community
11. Serving customers
12. Developing professionally and personally
13. Leveraging energies
14. Attaining  genuine happiness

Here are a few additional points about creating employee engagement in a new key:

• Employee engagement must be for all, and managers and leaders must see their own roles as employees of the organization.
• Employees must know and experience the personal benefits of engagement. It cannot be an effort to merely get more work from already taxed employees.
• Most surveys results in some version of the bell curve. I encourage you to survey less and intervene more. If you do survey, ensure employees have a role in creating the survey and the results are returned to employees ASAP.
• Managers and leaders play a strong role in engagement initiatives – ensure they understand the benefits and importance of engagement while also being energized and engaged.
• Engagement implies action. I encourage you to work on your own engagement while promoting the engagement of others.

To further your study of engagement, here are 5 simply excellent resources:

1. The Free and Freeing Employee Engagement Network – Over 1570 members engaging in over 400 forums on employee engagement.
2. The Free PDF Book on 300 Keys for Engagement – A practical resource based on alphabetical keys to engagement from 12 different authors.
3. 21 Points on The MacLeod Report and a Link to the Free Report –A well-written and expansive report from the United Kingdom on the importance of creating more focus on employee engagement.
4. Managing for Employee Engagement – A major report for the United States Federal Government.
5. David Zinger Associates Website – Over 800 eclectic blog posts related to employee engagement.

Take a small and significant step towards fuller engagement. Determine the smallest and most significant engagement steps you can take today. Start moving forward…small is the new significant!

David Zinger’s original version of this post can be viewed at Simply Communicate.

Two ways to hire (and a wrong way)

The wrong way first: interview someone for an hour. If you like them, have them interview three or four other people in your organization for an hour each.
You’ve invested five hours of your team’s time, but really you only were looking for approval, because you’d already decided you liked the person enough to work with them for years.
All the evidence we’ve seen shows that this is a lousy predictor of future performance. And, let’s tell the truth… if the first three people love the guy, are you really going to let the fourth, junior person veto him? Or is it just an annoying courtesy?
There are two approaches you can use as an alternative.
First, you can work with someone for months before you offer them a job. Your pool is smaller (freelancers, joint venture partners, interns) but the exposure to how they work is spectacularly different. You don’t get the thrill of finding a pearl in the oyster, the ‘wow, I found the most incredible hire!’ bragging rights. Instead, you get exactly what you expect. Organizing for this sort of hiring isn’t particularly difficult, particularly in a down economy. Not surprisingly, I’ve had 100% success doing this.
Second, and with some controversy, you can admit that an hour interview is actually a five minute sniff test followed by 55 minutes of wasted time, multiplied by four colleagues. Tell the truth and switch to five minute interviews.
If you do five minute initial interviews, you can interview 12 times as many people for each job opening. This initial filtering takes precisely as much time as your wasted one-hour approach, but dramatically increases the chance you’ll find someone you actually have good pheromone and body language connection with. After the screening, I can only encourage you to do the projects, reference checks and other serious diligence you’re probably too exhausted to do after spending all those hours with one person…
This process takes a lot of work, but it definitely works. If you can interview 60 people in a day or two and then have the three best fits do projects, presentations and freelance work for you, you’re way ahead of a company that interviewed only three people and fell in love with one.