Tsana Associates: Books

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 11:54:06 GMT

Predictably Irrational: Great Book By Dan Ariely.

There have been a lot of books written since Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky's Nobel Prize winning work on the limits of human decision-making, the problems such drawbacks cause, and the steps that people can take to overcome such limits. Max Bazerman's Judgment in Managerial Decision Making is still among the best, and although it is textbook-like, I find it engaging and useful. But there is a new champ in this space. I am just about done with Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational: Hidden Forces The Shape Our Decisions. Ariely not leads us through one fascinating study after another -- such as research that shows why a 1 cent aspirin won't get rid of a headache but a 50 cent aspirin will and a host of other studies that show why we waste money, underestimate risks, and procrastinate. He also shows throughout the book how to overcome or avoid these biases, and for me, the real clincher is that his writing style and charming personality kept me turning pages quickly and smiling throughout. He takes study after study and translates them in an engaging manner, but never distorts the message. This is one of those books that is on par with the Heath Brothers Made to Stick, Robert Cialdini's Influence, and Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point. If you want to learn about behavioral economics, Predictably Irrational is the best place I know to start -- although Bazerman's book is a more useful reference it is more systematic and comprehensive (and it is well-written).

P.S. A lot of people seem to have a similar opinion of Ariely's new book -- it is currently #13 overall at Amazon.

[Bob Sutton]

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 07:50:04 GMT

James March's Quote on Innovation: One More Time.

I don't usually post the same quote twice in a row, but the strong reaction I am getting to my arguments about "Why Creativity and Innovation Suck" have convinced me that ought to put up Jim March's quote one more time. I urge anyone interested in innovation to read it carefully, as it is perhaps the most wise thing I've ever read on the subject. I am also repeating the quote because I fear that I've not made my main point clear enough: Yes, we need innovation and creativity; organizations can't survive without it, and life would be far too dull without a constant influx of new idea and the associated hope of a better future. BUT just as doctors are obligated to tell patients about the risks and side effects of treatments, people who "sell" innovation ought to tell their "customers" about the hazards of living in a creative organization or the financial risks of launching a new product or company. The evidence about such drawbacks is, after all, quite clear -- it helps the system, but many individual innovators suffer in the process. Similarly, I think that people who sell management ideas like Six Sigma and forced-ranking incentive schemes are under a similar obligation to talk about downsides and risks, and few of them talk about the drawbacks --so this isn't just about creativity and innovation.

Back to Jim March. He is arguably the most prestigious living organizational theorist, and as you can see, quite eloquent. Note that what he is saying is supported by a large body of research, and that he does talk about "gains" from imagination -- and there many gains and advantages. But unlike most people who write about innovation and creativity in organizations, he talks about the risks and delusions too. Again, the quote:

"Unfortunately, the gains for imagination are not free. The protections for imagination are indiscriminate. They shield bad ideas as well as good ones, and there are many more of the former than the latter. Most fantasies lead us astray, and most of the consequences of imagination for individuals and individual organizations are disastrous. Most deviants end up on the scrap pile of failed mutations, not as heroes of organizational transformation. . . . There is, as a result, much that can be viewed as unjust in a system that induces imagination among individuals and individual organizations in order to allow a larger system to choose among alternative experiments. By glorifying imagination, we entice the innocent into unwitting self-destruction (or if you prefer, altruism)."

P.S The talk that this quote was taken from was originally given by Jim March at the Academy of Management Meetings in Vancouver in 1995. It was ultimately published as March. J. G., The Future, Disposable Organizations, and the Rigidities of Imagination', in The Pursuit of Organizational Intelligence, ed. J. G. March, (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999): 179-192. The above quote is somewhat different in the final version, but I prefer the original from his conference presentation.

[Bob Sutton]

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 08:42:40 GMT

New Shingo Book out Nov 1. Kaizen & the Art of Creative Thinking: Enna

I just had a nice conversation with Norman Bodek, which I'll be turning into a series of Podcast episodes as time allows.

One exciting tidbit he shared with me is the publication of a previously-unpublished (in English, anyway) a new Shingo book. Norman was involved in the selection and the translation of the book, which is focused on identifying problems and problem solving.

From the publisher's website:

Kaizen and the Art of Creative Thinking is a newly discovered classic from Dr. Shigeo Shingo, the original Lean Manufacturing genius. Never before published in English, Kaizen and the Art of Creative Thinking provides the single most important tool for initiating a Lean transformation, Dr. Shingoâo[dot accent]s own Scientific Thinking Mechanism. For the first time ever, you have access to Toyotaâo[dot accent]s secret model of success; learn how to dissect the status quo so you can address the actual problem, generate innovative ideas in group environments, and learn the best way to implement solutions. This book unlocks the secret to managing creative thinking.

I don't see it on amazon.com, so you have to get it through the enna.com website (link at the top of this post).

[Lean Blog]

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 10:37:49 GMT

Quill Awards on Monday Night in New York.

My wife Marina and I will be in New York on Monday night to attend the Quill Awards, as The No Asshole Rule won in business book category. The event is black tie (not exactly my style), but she talked me into buying a tux for the event.

I bought it at Men's Wearhouse after first going to Nordstrom -- it was not only a lot less money, I liked the customer service better because of their team selling approach. At Nordstrom, because of the incentive system and the norms, the people who aren't "your" salesperson never seem to lift a finger to help each other. At Men's Wearhouse, I was most impressed by how everyone at the store in Redwood City, California, worked together to help me pick what I wanted and to make the process quick and painless.

I am scheduled to be on Fox Business Network at some point between 7 and 8AM on Monday morning, and then am planning on visiting JetBlue to see one of my former students, who is now an executive. Meanwhile, Marina, my wife, is going to meet with people at Girl Scouts headquarters in connection with her new job.

Then we are off to the Quill Awards that night with my editor Rick Wolff, my literary agent Christy Fletcher, and Mark Fortier and Rob Nissen (who both have done a great job publicizing the book). The ceremony itself is at Lincoln Center and takes about 90 minutes. It will be televised on the evening of Saturday, October 27th on NBC stations. Stephen Colbert opens, which should be fun. And I believe that The Road by Cormac McCarthy was selected by popular vote as the overall winner (a choice I applaud), what a book. My speech is limited to 30 seconds..I am thinking about it, but haven't really written it down or started practicing it. AL Gore also won an award for The Assault on Reason -- I hope that he shows up!

[Bob Sutton]

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 08:00:33 GMT

Free Peeks into Taiichi Ohno's Book.

I think I've mentioned this resource before, the free content that is online in Google Books. Even though I own Taiichi Ohno's book, Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production, but it so much easier to search the book online.

You can find major portions of the book here on Google Books, to read online. I'm not sure if the whole book is there, but there are certainly worthwhile snippets. Reading just a few of Ohno's words at the start of your work day may provide some great insight or inspiration. Check it out.

If you find other books on there about Lean, post a comment or let me know. I only have a few titles in my Google "library" but I'll add more over time.

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[Lean Blog]

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 07:55:16 GMT

BNET Book Brief: No Asshole Rule.

BNET has a new series called Book Briefs, and I recently was filmed for a segment on The No Asshole Rule, which you can find here. I've done a lot of interviews by now on the book, but this one was especially fun because they took a bunch of film, edited it pretty heavily, and inserted all sorts of crazy graphics. A big advantage of this level of editing is that A LOT of the ideas in the book are packed into just a few minutes, especially ideas from the chapter about how to implement the rule.

[Bob Sutton]

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 10:48:13 GMT

SO NOW YOU KNOW. For those of you still unaware, I've also written a book called "Wasting Police Time". I hope you all liked the Panorama documentary and that you weren't too disappointed to find out that after writing about being an ordinary copper in a small English town, I actually turned out to be... an ordinary copper in a small English town. Licence Fee payers across the country will no doubt be pleased to hear that I'm not going to make a career of the being on the telly. Burton itself is probably unusual in only one respect: it was policed by some of the finest men and women in the world. The real heroes are still there and I just hope I wasn't too much of a burden.

There has certainly been a lot of fuss about the book, but before you all start to think that I did it all as some sort of master plan to undermine the forces of law and order, please try and remember that it's only a funny book about the police. Writing it was the second best thing I've ever done.*

I finished in the police at the very end of June this year and did the Pennine Way to celebrate (14 days, camped every night, took all my kit with me every step of the way). Since then I've been sorting out the move and planning media related stuff with my editor.

Finally, here's a picture of me looking incredibly smug after just having passed all the entrance tests for the Edmonton Police Service. I can't profess to be an expert about the EPS, I went on a couple of ridealongs (that weren't filmed as part of the documentary), and they seem like a good bunch. I hope nobody goes away thinking that I'm "disillusioned" with the job, because I'm not, I just happened to answer an advert in Police Review and one thing led to another (a bit like this blog really). The thing about the police is that once you've done it for a bit, it's difficult to imagine doing anything else, so I'm just hoping to be able to carry on with more of the same: it's a mistake to think that policing somewhere else in the world is going to be a paradise, free from the familiar pressures of manning, crime-recording and performance. It's not all about the job either, I'll only be three hours away from my brother, Ed, who's been out there for a few years and it's not too far away for friends and family to visit. I'm also looking forward to getting out into the Rockies and doing some hunting in the season.

So, to Foxy, Monkey Hands, Hess, Spaniels, both the Charleses, Tracy, quite possibly the most respected sergeant in the force and everyone else who had to put up with me, it's been a pleasure.

* The best thing I've ever done? Getting married. Mrs C. thanks for everything. If you didn't want me to do it I'd have given it up in a heartbeat.

By PC COPPERFIELD. [The Policeman's Blog]

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 07:29:09 GMT

The No Asshole Rule Wins Quill Award for Best Business Book.

The winners of the Quill Awards were announced this morning, and to my surprise, The No Asshole Rule won for best book of the year in the business book category. I was surprised because the other four books were so great, and because it still amazes me that respectable sponsors like Publisher's Weekly, NBC, AARP, and Parade Magazine seem to be non-plussed by the rather dirty title. The other four nominees were:

Small Is the New Big: and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas
Seth Godin; Portfolio

Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny
Suze Orman; Random House/Spiegel & Grau

Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home
David Shipley and Will Schwalbe; Alfred A. Knopf

Chocolates on the Pillow Aren't Enough: Reinventing the Customer Experience
Jonathan M. Tisch, Karl Weber; John Wiley & Co

Quite a group! I am honored. The winners were determined by "a Voting Board consisting of more than 6,000 booksellers and librarians." Winners in other categories include Cormac McCarthy for The Road (a stunning book) and Al Gore for The Assault on Reason. Other winners include Amy Sedaris, Nora Roberts, and Walter Isaacson.

The awards will be presented on October 22nd at a "gala ceremony" in New York City. The hosts are NBC[base ']Äôs Ann Curry and Al Roker. The list of presenters of includes Tiki Barber, Lorraine Bracco, Stephen Colbert, Tom Brokaw, Tina Brown, Mary Higgins Clark, Jonathan Groff, Brooke Shields. My 17 year old wants Colbert to present it to me, as he would do such an artful job of insulting me. Lorraine Bracco might be the best choice, because she did a lot of "asshole management" during all the years she played Tony Soprano's therapist on HBO!

The Quills Award are meant to be the most populist of book awards, sort of like the People's Choice awards for TV, movies, and music. As such, the biggest prize of the night, the Quills Book of the Year, is determined by popular vote. You can vote for your choice on the link. And some of my friends have been nice enough to vote for The No Asshole Rule. But it is hard for me to argue -- for example -- that it is a better book than wonderful works like The Road or Einstein. And as I said in my first post when I learned about the Quills nomination, in my biased opinion, the best business book published in the past year is Chip and Dan Heath's Made to Stick. For some reason, it wasn't nominated. Lucky for me, as it would have been tough to beat.

My wife is excited about going to the ceremony, so it looks like we are going to New York in October. And my thanks to all those people in the book business who voted for The No Asshole Rule!

[Bob Sutton]

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 12:33:18 GMT

Leading Lean A-Z.

by Jamie Flinchbaugh, co-author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to Lean

Decades of knowledge in lean have been passed on, written down, turned into curriculums and even documented in the annual reports of some companies. But why do so many fail to achieve the potential of lean? When I speak at diverse industry conferences or programs, I ask who is doing something about lean and who is wildly successful. Unfortunately, both based on those surveys and my own observations, the rate of companies succeeding at lean is probably around 1 %. This is far too low.

What is the differentiator? It is far too complicated to suggest one answer, however if there were one answer, the one that has universal agreement is LEADERSHIP. Lack of leadership, or lousy leadership, can prevent any organization from moving forward, and it can be blamed for many failures beyond lean including the slew of corporate ethics collapses.

Why present Leading Lean concepts in A through Z. Well, if I didn't limit it to the 26 letters of the alphabet, I would probably never finish the project. Here I will actually start with Z. Enjoy.

Z: Be a Zealot

What is a zealot? Defined, it is a person who is fanatical and uncompromising in pursuit of their religious, political and other ideals. If I were to only pick one single leadership trait, it would not be zealotry.

Being a zealot can have both a good side and a bad one. In isolation, zealotry can be narrow-minded, blind, unforgiving and ultimately destructive to the objective. Zealotry must be balanced with pragmatism, partnership and a focus on others' real needs and perceptions. With the right balance, being a zealot is a critical component of leading lean.

The obvious reason for being a zealot is to convince others. But a less obvious reason is that if you're not a zealot, it is too easy to give up. A zealot spends most of his or her days frustrated. Why? Because not everything is the way you think it should be, and not everyone thinks the way you think they should either.

If you are not frustrated, you are probably not working on the right problem. Being a zealot helps you keep your focus and direction through that very frustration. Without it, you may focus on what is easy and doable, instead of the important, right and seemingly impossible things. To accomplish big goals you must be deeply committed to what you are pursuing.

Being a zealot helps you win others to your cause. The passion you show in your words and actions has many benefits. If you were pursuing something just because it was assigned to you, you would find it hard to show real passion. Passion and zeal can be contagious. People want to believe in something. They want passion, and will never jump in with both feet if they donâo[dot accent]t think they'll feel that same passion. And perhaps most importantly, when you become a zealot you never again deliver a canned speech or presentation. You speak from the heart. You speak from experience. You own the idea.

To be a zealot you first must become one and then must sustain that role. The first can take some time, but the second takes forever. To become a zealot takes belief, which comes only through experience. Don't attempt to become a zealot without experience because that leads to the kind of unbalanced zealotry that can be dangerous. To become a zealot you have to start with the head. Is getting it into your head the same as experience? You have to get the ideas, language, and knowledge in there. You have to learn it. Then, you must get it into your hands. What about your heart? That is the real test. Lean begins with you.

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[Lean Blog]

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 07:35:10 GMT

Robert Cialdini's Classic Football Fan Study.

Robert Cialdini's book, Influence is the classic text for teaching the art and science of persuasion to students of all kinds and of all ages -- in psychology, marketing, organizational behavior, and political science, and that is just for starters. I've used it to teach groups ranging from undergraduates to CEOs. It is the best place to learn about the psychology of how to persuade people to do what you want them to do AND how to defend yourself against people who are trying to persuade you to do things that you don't want to do. It is filled with great stories and is one of the best translations of research into practice that I've ever seen -- the only thing I've seen in recent years in the same league is the Heath's masterpiece - Made to Stick.

I've been assigning Influence to my organizational behavior students for about 20 years, and when I run into a former student, many will admit that they don't remember much from my class, but they nearly always bring up Cialdlini's book and how useful it has been in careers ranging from sales, to politics, to practicing law, to medicine, and on and on. Mark Twain once said something like a classic is a book that everyone talks about, but no one reads. Influence defies that truism -- people continue to read it and use it.

I was thinking about Cialdini because it is the start of college football season. I am not an especially avid football fan, although I do root vaguely for the Cal Bears (Stanford is my employer, but Cal is my alma mater). My wife and I were in downtown Palo Alto on Saturday night, and I was pretty surprised to see that - although there had just been a Stanford game with UCLA a few hours earlier, played about a mile away, I was seeing few people wearing Stanford colors. There were a lot of UCLA colors. That wasn't a surprise because there were thousands of their fans in town for the game. What surprised me, however, was that I was seeing as at least as many people in downtown Palo Alto wearing Cal colors as Stanford colors (note that Cal is about 50 miles from Palo Alto, and Palo Alto is clearly Stanford territory).

It all seemed a little weird until I remembered the study conducted by Cialdini and five other colleagues in 1976: Stanford had lost that day (walloped by UCLA, 45 to 17) and Cal had won an exciting game (beating Tennessee 45 to 31). Cialdini did years of research on impression management and persuasion before he wrote his wonderful book. And although most social psychologists do all their work in the laboratory where they have full experimental control, but a lot less realism, Cialdini has always been very imaginative about finding ways to study people in "real" settings.

The study is called "Basking in Reflected Glory: 3 (Football) Field Studies." It was published in 1976 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Cialdini wanted to show that when people are associated with a winner, even in most tangential ways, they take steps to "bask" in the reflected glory and when they are linked to a loser, they take steps to distance themselves. Cialdini did this brilliant thing of -- rather than just asking students at football schools how they felt about their teams and so on -- he recruited other colleagues who taught large introduction to psychology classes at six other "big time" football schools (Cialdini was at Ohio State at the time, a school that takes its football very seriously). On the Monday after each game during the football season, these psychology professors simply counted the percentage of students in their seven classes who wearing their school's logo and colors to class.

There was a very strong effect. When their football team had won, students were far more likely to wear school colors to Monday's psychology class than when their team had lost. Moreover, an added twist was that the bigger the margin of their team's victory, the greater the percentage of students who showed-up wearing school colors and logos. Cialdini and his colleagues also did some cool follow-up studies showing that students were far more likely to use the word "we" when describing their team's victory than when talking about their team's defeat. As I once heard Cialdini put it at a Stanford talk, 'Fans say "We are #1" after a victory, but say "they sucked" after a defeat.

This research, to me, not only shows the power of the "basking in reflected glory " phenomenon, where people try to claim status by their (objectively very weak) association with a winner. It shows, following my earlier post on the dangers of quantitative evidence, that a simple count can be very powerful when the researchers does it in a context where the numbers matter. So, counting the number of Cal colors and logos that people are wearing to class over at UC Berkeley this morning means something; and the comparison between Cal and Stanford psychology classes will mean something once school starts at Stanford in a few weeks. Unlike the man that Steinbeck complained about who pulled a dead, evil smelling fish out of a jar to get an accurate count of the number of spines, but in doing so recorded many lies, Cialdini's simple counts do reveal many truths about the phenomenon he is studying.

Meanwhile, in the spirit of Cialdini's research, since Cal won on Saturday, see the logo to the left. Go Bears! We're #1! And all that.

[Bob Sutton]

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 07:47:14 GMT

Book Review: Boeing Versus Airbus. Review by Andy Wagner:

Name of the Book: Boeing Versus Airbus: The Inside Story of the Greatest International Competition in Business

Author: John Newhouse

Publication Date: 2007

Book Description:

Boeing Versus Airbus is not exactly a lean book, but it focuses on two manufacturers that are frequently at the center of discussions here at the Lean Blog, as well as those of our friends across the web at Evolving Excellence. The book by John Newhouse, a foreign policy expert, tells the story of Airbus's rise from an upstart, government-sponsored, international partnership to full competitor in the large commercial aircraft industry. That story is inevitably paralleled by Boeing's fall from holding a dominant 70% market share to today's continuing struggle for number one.

Boeing dominated the large commercial aircraft industry from the introduction of the 707 in 1958 until the mid-1990s, when a perfect storm of competition, arrogance, and poor business decisions conspired against the company. The storm started with the introduction of the narrow-body A320 in 1987, when Airbus entered one of the fastest growing market segments with an aircraft 22 years newer than Boeing's 737-series. Boeing, overstrung and over-budget with its 777 project, declined to answer the challenge with a new airframe, and instead updated the 737 for the second time. This decision left them with a smaller cabin width, no fly-by-wire, and uncompetitive aerodynamics.

Making matters worse, Boeing was determined to maintain market share (ala General Motors), and began heavily discounting aircraft. Rather than putting Airbus in the grave, the discounts backfired. A traditional manufacturing philosophy had put Boeing at a 12-15% cost disadvantage versus Airbus. Despite a token lean effort started in the early 1990s, Boeing's capacity to build aircraft required twice as much floor space as Airbus for the same production volumes. To build the 777, the company added two massive bays to its Everett wide-body assembly facility... only one bay was actually used to assemble aircraft, the second was for parts storage. According to Newhouse, when Boeing CEO Phil Condit received the report on Airbus's cost advantages, he didn't shoot the messenger, but he did bury the message, rather than honoring the threat.

A personal aside, I remember starting training at my first engineering job out of college with a young former Boeing engineer. Although I didn't realize the significance at the time, he told me about Boeing's obsession with Japanese methods of having every thing in exactly the right place on your desk (5S gone "L.A.M.E."). He said that while Boeing frequently used shims to ensure fit of parts, Airbus did not. His role at Boeing? Material Review Board: evaluating the use of nonconforming hardware. (Within 4 years, I was in a similar role at another aerospace company).

Boeing's 1997 merger with McDonnell Douglas was the last blow against Boeing in the 1990s. Despite being the surviving company, Boeing' s largest individual shareholders became James McDonnell and McDonnell Douglas CEO Harry Stonecipher. McDonnell and Stonecipher, the folks who managed their own company right out of the commercial aircraft business, were about to be in charge of the largest commercial aircraft company in the world. At the moment when Boeing most needed a strategic investment in new airframes and technology, the company fell into the hands of management that simply did not believe in commercial aviation as a business. Stonecipher and McDonnell were comfortable with the cost-plus military world and had done well there. (Later Defense contracting scandals might give us some insight into how that happened.) They did not, however, relish the notion of risking billions of the company's own dollars on a commercial aircraft that might or might not have a market and did not come with a government-guaranteed profit margin.

So how is it that 35% of the 787 was developed in Japan? Simple: Stonecipher, a graduate of the Jack Welch school of management, was unwilling to invest in a new commercial aircraft, but the Japanese government was. Others took the risks that Boeing's leadership wasn't willing to. Boeing survived the perfect storm of the 1990s and early 2000s in many ways despite itself and despite its top leadership. Although Newhouse mentions only peripherally the "Toyota-ization of Boeing", I would argue that lean philosophy withing Boeing Commercial has played a key role in Boeing's current position in the industry.

What about Lean?

Over time, Boeing's lean manufacturing efforts have paid off for the company's bottom line. The 787 will be built in that extra bay in the Everett plant, cleared of 777 inventory. The 737 Next Generation is succeeding against the A320 using deep discounts and lean production to maintain margins, despite the age of the basic design. That said, Boeing's greatest lean success isn't on the production side, but on the product side, seeking to add value and reduce waste for their customer's customer. This is something most lean critics of Boeing have missed. While Airbus focused its efforts on the airlines' measure of success, cost per passenger mile, and built the massive A380 for hub-to-hub flights, Boeing talked to the air traveler. Air travelers don't want to be stuck in airports that are not their final destination, especially when they fly internationally. When they are spending big bucks, they want direct flights, better air quality, inviting spaces, and bigger windows. Airlines can charge more for direct flights, and with the 787's composite construction, their fuel costs are less. Boeing found a win-win by eliminating the wastes of the airline hub, the extra processing, the batching, the motion, and so forth, that every airline passenger routed through a hub endures. The airlines are buying it to the tune of 700 firm orders before the 787's first flight, an order book filled through 2012. Meanwhile the Airbus "batch and queue" A380 is only 3/5th of the way to the 250 orders needed to break even, and the word on the street is that the aircraft has been deeply discounted to get that far. Expected engineering and production delays mean that break even is further away. As I have said before, Boeing has a long way to go on its lean journey, but not as far as most of the aerospace industry. So long as they are willing to take risks and keep putting their end customer first, they can't help but succeed.

About the Book

Through interviews with key individuals in the industry, Newhouse has gathered a treasure-trove of inside information about the great competition between Boeing and Airbus. He's background in foreign policy doesn't hurt the book, but it shades it differently than a business background, an aviation background, or a knuckle-dragging manufacturing bent would. The organization of Boeing Versus Airbus is the book's weakest aspect. The first few chapters lay out the current state of the competition in a rambling way that distracts from the story. By focusing on topical chapters, rather than a pure chronology, Newhouse makes the relationships between events more difficult to understand. Some readers might have minds that work this way, but it took this reviewer some time to get used to it. Again, Boeing Versus Airbus is not a lean book per se, but as the subtitle indicates, it's about "The Greatest International Competition in Business". We spend so much time blogging about American imports, it seems appropriate to tell the story of America's largest exporter and its worthy European competition.

(DISCLOSURE: I do not and have not ever worked for Boeing, nor does anyone in my immediate family. However, I was taught from a young age, by my Ford retiree father, that two things were sacred in this world: Ford cars and Boeing airplanes. I drive a Toyota today, for obvious reasons, but only until Alan Mulally fixes things in Dearborn.)

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[Lean Blog]

There's no escape from the corporate Catch-22

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 07:59:54 GMT
Simon Caulkin revisits one of my favourite management books - Catch 22 - and makes some interesting and amusing points. There's nothing I would wish to add other than to recommend you read both Joseph Heller and Simon Caulkin. "'There was only one catch and that was Catch-22. 'Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause ... "That's some catch, that Catch-22," he observed. "The best there is," Doc Daneeka agreed... "...In real life, as in the book, Catch-22 is alive and well today in bureaucracy, provisos and small print. Corporate risk-management systems are sophisticated forms of it, being designed not to eliminate but to pass on risk. But the apotheosis of its diabolical reasonableness is undoubtedly numerical targets. Targets seem hard and tangible, the stuff of modern management. But the instant they are used to manage by, they melt: the figures can no longer be relied on, since people whose only control is over the numbers will instantly find ways around them. Hence a paradox of an elegance that Heller would have loved: targets are necessary and should be used, but in use they are useless and should be abandoned." That's some catch, that Catch-22. Click here to view the complete article from the Observer.

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 13:36:05 GMT
No Mercy, Please, They’re English. The British critic A. A. Gill loves the English language but detests the English people. By MICHIKO KAKUTANI. [NYT > Books]

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 09:25:16 GMT
Management books.
I'm reading two very good management books right now.

The first is a classic: Up the Organization, by Robert Townsend. Apparently this book first came out in 1970, was widely admired, and slowly fell off everyone's radar, until Wiley republished it last month. Townsend ran Avis back in the day, and when you start to read a management book written in the 1960s, you expect to find secretaries, two-martini lunches, executive golf club memberships, etc. What you find instead is rather refreshing even by today's standards. On Mergers:

If you have a good company don't sell out to a conglomerate.... Conglomerates will promise anything for your people... but once in the fold your company goes through the homogenizer along with all their other acquisitions of the week, and all the zeal and most of the good people leave.

PS for Y Combinator kids: Don't be smug because you think that conglomerates went the way of the dodo. "Conglomerate" is just an old word for what you call "Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google." Oh and CondÃ©-Nast.

Anyway. Townsend on management consultants:

[They] waste time, cost money, demoralize and distract your best people, and don't solve problems. They are people who borrow your watch to tell you what time it is and then walk off with it.

It sounds like a clichÃ©, right? Townsend probably invented that clichÃ©, boychik. And it's still true, and the jibe at Booz Allen later on in the book is still 100% on the money.

Even better is his disdain for marketing departments:

Marketing... is the name of the game. So it had better be handled by the boss and his line, not by staff hecklers. Once or twice a year for three or four days the boss takes ten, twenty or thirty of his key people... away to some secluded spot. On average they spend twelve hours a day asking unaskable questions, rethinking the business (What are we selling? To whom? At what prices? How do we get it to him? In what form?), four hours a day relaxing and exercising, and eight hours a day sleeping. It's hard work. But more good marketing changes will come out of such meetings than out of any year-round staff department of "experts" with "marketing" signs on the door.

Boy, I sure wish I had learned that one a few months ago. Two years ago, Seth Godin wrote essentially the same thing.

Anyway, that's just a few of the M's. The whole book is full of great advice like that, albeit focused on larger corporations.

If you're looking for something a little more, er, contemporary, Michael Lopp and his alter-ego Rands have just published Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager, which originated with some essays on his excellent blog Rands in Repose. (You can do that?)

Lopp has worked at Netscape, Borland, and Apple. He's the quintessential Silicon Valley middle manager. I hope he doesn't find that term insulting: he's probably the best Silicon Valley middle manager there is. He's brilliant, charismatic, and a poet-philosopher, and I could imagine no better boss.

You'll find that an awful lot of his book is about managing managers, big company politics, and the human side of getting technical teams to work together. And he has a style quite his own. You can get a taste of it from his classic Incrementalists & Completionists:

What was intriguing about my email repartee with the co-worker was that we weren't disagreeing about whether or not we should do something about the problem. We're arguing about how much we should do. The disagreement reminded me there are two distinct personalities when it comes to devising solutions to problems: Incrementalists and Completionists.

Incrementalists are realists. They have a pretty good idea of what is achievable given a problem to solve, a product to ship. They're intimately aware of how many resources are available, where the political landscape is at any given moment, and they know who knows what. They tend to know all the secrets and they like to be recognized for that fact.

Completionists are dreamers. They have a very good idea of how to solve a given problem and that answer is SOLVE IT RIGHT. Their mantra is, "If you're going to spend the time to solve a problem, solve it in a manner that you aren't going to be solving it AGAIN in three months." I used to think that architects were the only real Completionists in an organization, but I was wrong. Architects are the only RECOGNIZED Completionists in the company, but the personality is hiding all over the place.

Finally. One more book.

The same publicist who sent me Up the Organization also included a copy of Ben Casnocha's new book My Start-Up Life. Ben is a charismatic, energetic, brilliant 19 year-old who founded a successful software company, Comcate, at age 14. It's all very adorable. He's the Doogie Howser, MD of software startups, except for the fact that he probably has no idea who Doogie Howser is, given that the show went off the air when he was 4 years old, and, frankly, at age 4 he was probably too busy working on his second IPO to watch much television.

Ben is a seriously cool 19 year old. He's very smart. He's quite a good writer.

But.

But but but.

His book, unfortunately, tells you almost nothing about starting a company. It's really, really thin on stories of what the actual company did and how things worked. Worse, the book is padded with really, really embarrassing sidebars in which Ben gives you jejune Great Thoughts about business management.

Great entrepreneurs show up, take small risks (and sometimes, large risks), raise their hand when they're confused, and try to figure out what's going on and how a situation could be made better.

When you show up and raise your hand, you've already outperformed 90 percent of the crowd.

And:

The person on the receiving end of the mentoring relationship should work hard to insure it's not totally a one-way street.

Ben Ben Ben.

Yes, you're smart and good looking. Yes, you know more about starting a software company than practically any other 19 year old. And sure, I'll be happy to invest in your next startup, or hire you, or adopt you, whatever.

But. Mark my words. You're going to reach the ripe old age of 23, and you're going to look back on this book you wrote, and you're going to say, "how on earth did anyone let me publish such self-important crap," and you're practically going to die of embarrassment. Trust me: I'm in my 40s, and I'm still morbidly embarrassed by the pompous, arrogant, self-important crap I write on this site here, up to and including this very sentence.

Feel free to skip this book.

Not loving your job? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.
By Joel Spolsky. [Joel on Software]

Toyota Talent - Book review.

Tue, 01 May 2007 16:48:17 GMT
I had the pleasure of reading a pre-publication version of this new book from Prof. Jeffrey Liker and David Meier. You know Jeff from The Toyota Way (and my Podcasts with him) and David from his co-authorship (with Jeff) of The Toyota Way Fieldbook (and my Podcast with David. Toyota Talent is refreshing in that it really adds to the Lean literature in the important area of Standard Work and the development of people. The book probably has a less broad audience than The Toyota Way, given its more detailed treatment of the topic, but this book will be invaluable if you are working with actual Lean implementation on a daily basis -- in manufacturing or healthcare. There are examples from multiple industries included, in fact, so this isn't just a book about Toyota.

From the back cover:

Leading Toyota authorities Jeffrey Liker and David Meier give you the keys to growing top performers from within through a detailed process of preparation, training, and follow-up. Drawing upon Liker's detailed study of Toyota's manufacturing, technical, and service organizations across the globe, and Meier's deep experience gained from working with some of Toyota's best sensei, the authors bring the company's proven practices to life through insight and exercises, enabling you to:
Define your organizational needs and objectives
Create development plans for all employees
Grow your top talent from within
Analyze routine work and ancillary tasks
Break down a job for effective training
Break the cycle of poor training and results to create a cycle of continuous learning and improvement
There are many helpful tips, including this one from page 135:
"The "real world" of the nurse's job requires flexibility and the ability to respond to the ever-changing situation. We hear this same objection in manufacturing or other fields where the work appears to be highly variable. It is assumed that the nurse's job must be made routine like an assembly line job. Herein lies the mistake. It is not the intent of standardized work to make all work highly repetitive; it is the intent to define the best methods and to reduce variation in the work method as much as possible."
That is outstanding advice for applying Standard Work to different healthcare environments. People say they don't want to be turned into robots. I think this book will show you a practical approach to Standard Work development and training that respects people as living, thinking, creative humans.

Update: The book shows as pre-release on Amazon still, eventhough it shows a publication date of April 29. Should be out soon. By Mark Graban.

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 09:07:27 GMT
SKIN by Lee Varis
skin: The Complete Guide to Digitally Lighting, Photographing, and Retouching Faces and Bodies Written by Lee Varis

Achieving accurate skin tones is one of the most challenging tasks in digital photography. Master this challenge with professional photographer Lee Varis as he covers a range of skin: women and men, young and old, various tones, in-studio and outdoors, tattoos, and more.

Lee’s step-by-step tutorials and before-and-after illustrations demonstrate various techniques for topics such as digital-specific lighting challenges and what can and cannot be done in post-process.

A free CD-ROM accompanies the book and contains sample image files to use while following the tutorials, plus equipment recommendations and technical reference materials that enhance and reinforce the instruction.

About Lee Varis
Lee is a Hollywood photo-illustrator and has been involved in commercial photography for three decades. His images have been featured in National Geographic, Newsweek, and Fortune magazines, and both his writing and photography have been featured in trade journals such as PDN, New Media, and others. His pictures have appeared on movie posters, video box covers, and CD covers, and in numerous brochures and catalogues. He has been a seminar instructor with APA, PPA, Julia Dean Photographic Workshops, and Apple Computer. Check out his web site Varis Photomedia

skin: The Complete Guide to Digitally Lighting, Photographing, and Retouching Faces and Bodies

Lee Varis

ISBN: 978-0-470-04733-0

Paperback

432 pages

October 2006

Download a sample chapter: Beauty Retouching (PDF - 1.4 MB)

- PSN Editorial Staff [PhotoshopNews]

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 07:49:42 GMT
We Got Gamed.
A somewhat recent experience prompted me to re-read portions of Donald Wheeler's outstanding book, Understanding Variation: The Key to Managing Chaos, with its section on the three ways people can improve a metric or a target (he gives credit to Brian Joiner):

They can work to improve the system
They can distort the system
They can distort the data

I've always observed that people are incredibly clever in figuring out how to game a system to their advantage. I've seen it (in a very positive and worthwhile way) while observing an outpatient cancer treatment center, where repeat patients learned which appointment slots tend to get delayed the least (patients learning how to NOT waste time waiting for cancer treatment, you can't argue with that). The patients' actions aren't purposely delaying other patients, so nobody is being harmed.

In most cases, though, somebody or some organization is being harmed by more selfish gaming of the system. It's sometimes easier for people to distort the system or to distort the data in order to get rewards, be it a pat on the back or an annual bonus check.

One time, with a client, we were measuring the batch sizes of specimens being delivered to the laboratory. Batching of specimens (drawing blood from 10-15 patients before sending it to the lab) was a big contributor to 'turnaround time'? (cycle time) for the lab. We thought we had explained how we wanted specimens delivered in smaller batches, even if that meant it took more time to do the blood draws and specimen collections. We were measuring the size of the batches for a while until somebody tipped us off to the distortion.

Some of the phlebotomists (employees who draw blood) were taking a batch of 12 patients' specimens and shipping it down to the lab in four sequential batches of 3 patients each. This made the metric look good, but the lab was still essentially getting a batch of 12. How embarrassing, I thought. I was embarrassed that we hadn't done a better job of explaining WHY we needed smaller batches. Since employees were gaming the system, I felt like there was a failure on my part.

Before jumping to the conclusion that people are being malicious or donâo[dot accent]t care, I try to stop and think how their actions might be reasonable. Someone on our team said, "maybe they didn't understand that it was a turnaround time issue, maybe they thought the tube system physically couldn't handle large batches?"?

Rather than beating up on the phlebotomists, here are our next steps:

Re-iterate to them WHY we need smaller batches,
Explain what 'true'? small batches really are and how that benefits the patients
Change our measurement system so we track not only the sizes of batches that arrive, but who they came from and at what time they arrived (so we can detect 'fake small batches'
Emphasize to the phlebotomists that they need to make the extra trips to the tube station to send the smaller batches. We need to make sure that the lab will pay for enough resources to get the job done with the desired cycle time.
Do more direct process observations and Standard Work audits to directly see if phlebotomists are following the correct process or not.
One of my own "kaizen" steps for the future will be to "FMEA" a new metric, to think through how people might game or distort the metric so we can avoid that kind of behavior.
Please check out my main blog page at http://www.leanblog.org Check out the new LeanBlog Podcast at http://www.leanpodcast.org
By Mark Graban. [Lean Blog]

Mon, 23 Apr 2007 11:42:39 GMT
Lean Killed Rover? Driving on the wrong side of the road -- the myth of Japanese efficiency in car manufacturing

A new book is out attacking Lean. Or maybe the book is actually attacking "L.A.M.E.", or "Lean as Misguidedly Executed" at Rover. This is Rover, the car company that failed and went out of business in 2005 after earlier being taken over by BMW. This is not the Range Rover brand, that was purchased by Ford from Rover previously. Ford also then bought the Rover name and intellectual property after their failure. It sounds like the company had a number of long-standing marketing and quality problems in their attempts to compete with Jaguar, BMW, Mercedes, and the like.
The book, The Myth of Japanese Efficiency by Dan Coffey, says the "just-in-time" supply system at Rover destroyed its manufacturing flexibility, increased its production costs, and fueled hostility within its factories towards its marketing plans. Its publication will reopen the debate over the collapse of Rover just as car production resumes at its Longbridge factory under Chinese ownership.

The findings are based on the authorís extensive field research including independent and detailed participative research carried out within Rover Group itself.
"Lean" shouldn't decrease flexibility. Toyota plants are incredibly flexible, as the BBC also wrote about.

Lean shouldn't increase production costs. Toyota is a low cost producer, which leads to very high profits.

The researcher did "extensive" research within the Rover Group. Does that mean this book is helpful only for those within Rover? Or is there something transferable to those outside?

Without reading the book (it's $100, so it's not a high priority purchase for me), it's hard to see what conclusions the authors are drawing. Is it a problem with HOW Lean was implemented at Rover or does it highlight problems inherent to Lean?

I'd guess it's the former (HOW "lean" was implemented). Too many of us have had first hand experience with successful Lean implementations to want to blame Lean for Rover's problems. We also know that Lean Failures are far too common, even the most vocal Lean proponents (such as Jeff Liker) will admit that.

The book isn't just trying to point out what went wrong at Rover, they are trying to expose a "myth" of Lean production. It's hard to understand how somebody can take something very visible and call it a myth. Toyota is measurably more successful than the rest of the automakers, including the Detroit Three. Toyota does things measurably different and manages people in a different way. This is a "myth?"

I don't have a problem with people questioning Lean practices, but I do have a problem with people calling Lean a "myth." This isn't Bigfoot we're talking about, it's a proven management and process improvement methodology that has been very successful outside of Toyota and outside of automotive manufacturing (and outside of manufacturing!)
The book will force academics to review the findings of the 1989 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) survey of the global car industry, which gave birth in the first instance to the notion of ëlean productioní.

The MIT survey found Japanese plants enjoyed much higher labour productivity advantages than could be explained by investment in automation.

Dr Coffey shows the methodology for this revered research project was flawed both because of how the data was interpreted statistically and because it omitted overtime work in the index of labour used.
As a real-world Lean practitioner, I could honestly care less that "academics" might have to re-think Lean. The Lean cow is out of the barn, it's been proven in the real world.

I emailed Jim Womack and asked him about this book. Jim had heard of the book, but didn't know any details about the case it was making. I then asked Jim about the claim of omitting overtime data and I haven't heard back from him yet.
As Japanese imports made significant in-roads into Western markets in the 1970s and 1980s, this was more easily explained by finding a fictional manufacturing revolution.
This really makes me wonder if the researchers visited Toyota, to compare Rover and Toyota, or if they visited any sites of Lean success stories. This is not a "fictional" revolution. That sounds like the excuse-making talk of people who failed in their lean implementation and the researchers who parroted their claims.
The book has received praise from academic experts from across the world. Writing from the world-leading Stanford University in the US, Professor Sarah S. Lochlann Jain describes the book as "of exceedingly high calibre" and predicts it will make a "critical contribution to the literature on the automobile industry".
I'm not sure professor Jain knows about manufacturing or Lean. She's a cultural anthropology professor. Now, Jim Womack was a Political Scientist, but it's easy to argue he has made quite an effort to learn about manufacturing. I'm not sure if Professor Jain did anything other than read the "Myth" book.

The book's table of contents includes:
Introducing the Myth of Japanese Efficiency
Wide Selection / a Myth Encountered
Production Malapropisms: the BMW-Rover Group Controversy
Lean Production: the Dog That Did Not Bark
Back to the Future - the Reorganization of Work at Toyota
Rivalrous Asymmetries and the Japanese Myth
Rethinking Lean Thinking: Substance and Counterfeit
The Totalising Myth: Japanese Efficiency as a Cultural Fiction
Fair and balanced? If someone has $100 to throw around and wants to read this book, please report back to us.
Please check out my main blog page at http://www.leanblog.org Check out the new LeanBlog Podcast at http://www.leanpodcast.org
- Mark Graban [Lean Blog]

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 12:12:12 GMT
'New' Tolkien novel on sale. A book by the late Lord of the Rings author JRR Tolkien goes on sale after being completed by his son. [BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition]

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 15:31:42 GMT
The Sacred and the Profane
I have not been surprised that some people have reacted negatively to the title of The No Asshole Rule. I wrote about a few of these complaints in <a href="http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2006/10/why_i_call_them.html";>Why I Call Them Assholes and in <a href="http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/03/you_cant_please.html";>ìamusing poetic vitriol,î about the wonderful nasty letter that a reader sent to the San Francisco Chronicle. I also am not especially surprised that, in response to Lisa Cullenís Time Magazine <a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1601864,00.html";>column and <a href="http://time-blog.com/work_in_progress/2007/03/in_defense_of_office_assholes.html";>blog about the book (in which she sung the praises of assholes, and used the word in uncensored form), that at least one person threatened to cancel his 25-year subscription to Time (although other people told him to ìget over it.î). And I wasnít surprised -- but was amused -- when a woman recently wrote me that her boss asked her to take the book home because the title might upset her co-workers (She implied that his overt justification was the title, but the real reason probably was because he is a nasty boss.)

I was a little more surprised to learn that Josh Quittner, the Editor of Business 2.0, predicted to my friend and frequent co-author (an 2.0 columnist) Jeff Pfeffer last December that my dirty title would ìseverely limit sales.î I just learned of this prediction in an ìI told you soî e-mail that Jeff that sent Josh recently (Jeff has an excellent memory and is usually right, a dangerous combination). Of course, we havenít done the alternative experiment -- trying to sell the same book with a clean title -- but the dirty title does seem to be attracting people more people than it is repelling. It is on a number of best seller lists: Fridayís Wall Street Journal listed it as the #3 business Book and #14 non-fiction book, and as <a href="http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/10/you_have_to_lov.html";>Guy Kawasaki discussed on his blog, I wouldnít accept offers from a publishers who wanted the book, but didnít want the title, because I believed in it so strongly.

A bigger surprise, however, is how many positive reactions I have received from religious people, especially devout Christians, about the book. The first time this happened was in January, when I got an e-mail from an editor at <a href="http://www.chrismon.de/index.php";>Chrismon, a magazine published by the Lutheran Church in Germany (and mailed to 1.5 million Germans). He wanted to interview me for a story about <a title="Available now!" href="http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/3446407049/302-8142998-4376032?v=glance&;n=299956&s=gateway&v=glanc">Der Arschloch-Faktor. I frankly thought, at first, that either it was a joke, or he was going to write a negative story. But he explained to me that, in his view, The No Asshole Rule was really quite closely related to the Golden Rule, and that if you looked closely at the teachings of Christ, the main points of the book were was quite consistent. A positive story appeared in the March issue.

I have since received at least 20 emails from people who make a similar point, including several from a woman who suggested that we work together on a version of the book that contained footnotes to biblical sources that supported the assertions and advice -- and that contained a bible study guide to go with the book. Finally, a few weeks back, Richard Beck wrote a post on his blog, Experimental Theology, called <a href="http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2007/03/1-corinthians-and-no-asshole-rule.html";>1 Corinthians and the No Asshole Rule. Beck started out by saying:

Two weeks ago it was my turn to teach my adult bible class at church. We are going through 1 Corinthians and I was up to teach the famous Chapter 13, "Love is patient, love is kind..."

And I thought to myself, "Richard, what are you possibly going to say in class that hasn't been said before about 1 Corinthians 13?"

Then it hit me. I started the class by doing a book review and reading selections from Dr. Robert Sutton's new book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Asshole-Rule-Civilized-Workplace-Surviving/dp/0446526568/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-2640272-0578552?ie=UTF8&;s=books&qid=1174525841&sr=8-1">The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't.

Beck went to say argue that my two tests for determining if a person is an asshole are in direct agreement with 1 Corinthians, and ended the post by saying:

So, we reflected on all this in my Sunday School class. And after reflection on the No Asshole Rule, I read these famous words:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs...

Basically, don't be an asshole.

I confess that I like his logic, but I donít trust my reaction. If anyone can help me sort this out, I would appreciate it ñ talking dirty in a way that seems to please at least some religious people is quite a shock!

P.S. I also should confess that I stole this heading from an <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=CMSUINPN2E4HYQSNDLPSKH0CJUNN2JVN?articleID=192204854">InformationWeek article about the work done by our d.school students to spread Firefox. They used this title because one team developed a website called<a href="http://www.firefoxies.com/";> Firefoxies.com, where models posted their sometimes sexy pictures. In contrast, the "sacred" website, <a href="http://faithbrowser.com/";>Faithbrowser.com, is a tool for customizing your Firefox browser so that it has Christian graphics and presents an ever changing set of quotes from the bible.

- Bobsutton [Bob Sutton]

Mon, 02 Apr 2007 09:45:16 GMT
True North: Economics and Humanity are Compatible
<a '_blank', 'width=169,height=248,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false" href="http://bobsutton.typepad.com/.shared/image.html?/photos/uncategorized/2007/04/01/true_north_2.jpg";><img width="150" height="220" border="0" src="http://bobsutton.typepad.com/my_weblog/images/2007/04/01/true_north_2.jpg"; title="True_north_2" alt="True_north_2" style="margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; float: left;" /> Today's New York Times has a glowing review of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0787987514?ie=UTF8&;tag=trunordisyoua-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0787987514">True North, by Bill George (Former CEO of Medtronic, a Jim Collins "Good to Great" leader, and now a Professor at Harvard Business School teaching leadership), with help from Peter Sims. The book is based on interviews with 125 other leaders and executives like Starbuck's Howard Schultz and Xerox's Ann Mulcahy. These cases -- in combination with George's accomplishments -- show that leaders who create humane organizations that really care about their people and their customers -- and don't just view them as units that exist for the purposes of extracting "as much economic value as possible" every minute of every day -- not only can thrive financially, they do it in such a way that people can travel through their days with dignity. And as George shows with his cases of successful leaders, they can also have a life outside of work.

I find this book so encouraging because it defies the assumption in so many companies that the key to success is squeezing everything you can out of your people (and customers) RIGHT NOW and then discarding them the minute that the return on investment goes south. I saw these assumptions in action at a professional service firm that I spoke at about five years ago in Baltimore. I had a couple phone conversations with the Chair of the firm where he was abrupt and -- although he had signed the contract already -- didn't want to talk about the content of the talk, he just wanted to continue negotiating the terms of the deal in his favor. Then, when I arrived, I sat next to a partner who had been with the firm over 30 years, and -- although we had barely met -- one of the first things out of his mouth was, "This used to be a place where we prided ourselves on striking a balance between humanity and economics; now it is all economics all the time. It is a cold heartless place that sees people and clients as units of production, and nothing else." Perhaps 30 minutes later, when I spoke to the head of the firm, all he talked about was how important he was and about pushing profits higher and higher as quickly as possible.

I was shocked by how widespread the asshole poisoning was in the company. During the time I was around, I only had two kinds of interactions with people:

1. Either they expressed hurt or fear (like the woman -- a senior partner -- who told me how hard it was for her to succeed because the "model" partner had a wife who did all the child care, and her husband also worked. Even though she was "highly profitable," the senior management of the firm viewed her children as a black mark against her).

2. Or they people expressed hostility -- putting down people in nasty ways. At first, I thought they didn't like me, as nearly every conversation wasn't just an argument, it was like talking to Simon Cowell on the American Idol. People didn't just put down my ideas, the disagreement was also peppered with personal insults. I then realized that this was exactly how the Chairman interacted with everyone else in the firm, so it was an interaction norm that everyone followed and enforced.

True North is such an important book because -- in sharp contrast to this nasty firm -- it shows that leaders who authentically care about their people and customers not only create more humane places, but that caring translates into greater commitment and loyalty. And it has other more subtle effects too. If you care about people, and are humble and wise enough to listen to them and hear what they actually say, you end-up focusing on what they need to succeed emotionally and financially. Not on getting as much money out of them this minute as much as possible. At the <a href="http://www.stanford.edu/group/dschool/big_picture/our_vision.html";>Stanford d.school, we call this the human-centered design process, and Bill George's words and (more importantly) his actions show that such understanding translates into better leadership because you can end-up giving employees and customers what they need -- not what you believe they should have or what is best for you in the short-term.

Let me give you a specific example from Bill George. I have met Bill a couple of occasions and seen him speak twice. When Bill took over as CEO of Medtronic, which is a medical device company, he had no prior experience in the industry. As Jeff Pfeffer and I show in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1578511240/bobsutton-20";>The Knowing-Doing Gap, leaders who are brought in to operate a business that they don't understand often get in big trouble -- too often, they ride into town and make massive changes, without taking the time to learn the business. I asked George how he dealt with his lack of knowledge of the industry. He told me that he spent 70% of his time during the first nine months that he was CEO in hospitals, watching surgeons install Medtronic devices in people and talking to doctors, hospital administrators, nurses, and patients about their view of the company and it's products.

I believe that most boards of directors and stock analysts would balk at a CEO who did this and complain that he or she wasn't spending enough time running the company. But George's understanding of the human impact of his company's products appeared to pay off in the long run -- during the decade that he led Medtronic, it's market capitalization rose from about 1 billion to about 60 billion. Not bad for a guy who puts people first and believes that employees need a balance between life and work.

To return to the difference between the leader of that professional services firm and the leaders that Bill George wants to select and breed, as The New York Times says, "That's a common thread in the strongest leaders, Mr. George argues: they have a deep desire to serve a greater goal beyond making money."
- Bobsutton [Bob Sutton]

Tue, 27 Mar 2007 12:52:40 GMT
What’s new in Photoshop CS3 for Photographers
To coincide with the official announcement of Photoshop CS3, Martin Evening has released a sample chapter from his forthcoming book: Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Photographers, published by Focal Press.

The new edition of this best selling book should be hitting the streets in Spring of 2007, shortly after the official release of Photoshop CS3.

As a special perk for PhotoshopNews readers, Martin has made his Chapter 1: Whatís New in Photoshop CS3 available for free download.

The 21 page PDF, outlines all the new features of Photoshop CS3 and Bridge 2, written from a userís perspective. It offers an honest appraisal of what will be on offer in this new version of the program, if you really want to know whatís NEW!

Click here to download the PDF (3.56 mbs)

Martin, if you donít know, is a London based advertising photographer and noted expert in both photography and digital imaging. As a successful photographer, Martin is well known in London for his fashion and beauty work. Check out Martinís web site.

Martin also works with the Adobe Photoshop engineering team consulting on new feature development and alpha and beta testing. He worked alpha & beta for Photoshop CS3 and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and was influential with the new Adobe Bridge 2.0 and Camera Raw 4.0.

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book by Martin Evening is shipping (in fact, it’s already gone into a reprint because of large initial sales). Through special arrangement with Martin and his publisher, PhotoshopNews has a free PDF download of Chapter 1. (click HERE to download-4.6MB PDF)

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book describes Lightroom’s features in detail and with photographers in mind. Photographers who routinely work with raw (and even jpg & tiff) images will find Lightroom–and The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book–an indispensable tool in their digital darkroom.

Mark Hamburg, Adobe Fellow & Lightroom founder says of Martin’s book: ìFor a product that had simplicity as one of its goals, a book of this heft might seem to suggest that we went astray somewhere. The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book, however, is filled with useful information, extensive imagery, and great examples that really explore the power of Lightroom while maintaining a clarity of presentation that had me routinely thinking ëI couldnít have said it better myself.íî

The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Book
by Martin Evening
Publisher: Adobe Press
ISBN-10: 0-321-38543-8; ISBN-13: 978-0-321-38543-7
Copyright 2007
Dimensions 7-1/2 X 9-1/8; Pages: 352
Edition: 1st.
List Price: USD $40.00

In addition, Martin is also a principal of PixelGenius where he designed and was product manger for the recently released PhotoKit Color 2. PhotoKit Color 2 applies precise color corrections, automatic color balancing and creative coloring effects. PhotoKit Color offers a comprehensive set of coloring tools for Photoshop 7.0, CS, CS2 (and soon CS3) for both Macintosh and Windows.
- PSN Editorial Staff [PhotoshopNews]

Tue, 06 Mar 2007 18:55:48 GMT
Old clues, new training.
One reason The Cluetrain Manifesto still sells is that it's required for coursework here and there. Take JMC163: New Media in Journalism, at the School of Journalism & Mass Communications at San Jose State University. (Which I see has a blog.) You can buy the book by clicking here

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 08:02:34 GMT
Terence McKenna's library destroyed in fire. Mark Frauenfelder: This is very un-wonderful news: the late Terence McKenna's library of rare books and personal notes was destroyed in a fire started in a Quizno's sandwich shop in Monterey, California.
Terence's brother Dennis owns an index of Terence’s collection, which will at least give us an overview of his library—sorta like a playlist without the MP3s. But even this valuable document will not replace the body of knowledge itself—a body that had become, in the weird ways of the memetic world, a kind of second body for Terence’s fabulous and fascinating mind. No budding head will ever be able to poke through this collection again, with its faintly perfumed volumes on Chinese alchemy and butterflies and hash. And the world has one fewer 1659 folio of Isaac Casaubon’s A True and Faithful Relation of what passed between Dr. John Dee and some spirits, and one fewer old-school copy of Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy, which Terence swapped for a pound or two of yummies back in the day. The content of these books, at least, is reproducible; Terence, of course, was one-of-a-kind.
Link (Thanks, Jennifer!)
[Boing Boing]