Bob Sutton

Asian Leadership: A New Book With Dave Ulrich

Last March, I joined Dave Ulrich in Singapore to lead an "executive roundtable" with the CEOs and heads of human resources from seven companies, which was convened by Singapore's Ministry of Manpower. The participants included executives from DBS (a bank),  Far East Organization (a real estate company), Procter & Gamble, MediCorp (Singapore's leading media company, they own everything from newspapers to TV stations), General Electric,  IDEO, and IBM.  We were also joined by three thought leaders: Debashis Chatterjee, Michael Jenkins, and Howard Thomas. 

We had two days of intense conversation about the challenges of leading large companies, with a particular focus on the challenges faced in Asia.  One reason that the conversation was so focused was that those of us at the gathering had committed to produce an edited book, which was to be published by September.  I was of the opinion that this was an impossible task, but Dave Ulrich (a masterful leader) had done it once before, and he assured me it was possible because of the great managerial skill of the folks at the Ministry of Manpower.  I was skeptical, and as regular readers of this blog will recall, I was also distracted because I had open heart surgery in April.  Indeed, I tried to resign from the project a couple times, but Dave, and the amazing Arina Koh and Serene Teh from the Ministry (to whom we dedicated the book) talked me off the ledge. 

To my amazement, not only did we finish this edited volume on time, I think it makes a nice contribution. It is called Asian Leadership: What Works and it is for sale at Amazon in the states.  It isn't destined to change the world, but it does have some nice cases and commentaries.  One of my favorite pieces is "Banking the Asian Way" by DBS CEO Piyush Gupta, which describes the determination of one DBS to meet with an important customer in the middle of a cyclone. I also was quite taken with the pieces by Stuart Dean of GE and Cordelia Chung of IBM on the extreme lengths that these two huge firms go through to develop and assess leaders -- and with how both showed that being a solo superstar doesn't cut it in either place.

The thought leaders also wrote some lovely pieces too; for example, Michael Jenkins' piece on the company vs. national culture was intriguing, especially because we had a lengthy conversation during the gathering where most executives argued that company culture was more important for success than national culture. I was also taken Debashis Chatterjee's piece on change, as he made a strong case that, especially in Asian settings, imagination and taking a long-term time perspective were ore important for success than doing careful analysis and choosing "the best" decision in many cases.

I could go on and on, as the book contains 30 short pieces organized around 8 themes:

1. Creating Customer-centric actions

2. Implementing Strategy

3. Getting Past the Past

4. Governing Through Decision-Making

5. Inspiring Collective Meaning

6. Capitalizing on Capability

7. Developing Careers

8. Generating Leaders

Even after doing this book, I am far from an expert on Asian leadership, but I did learn a bit more about this vexing topic from the process and it also helped me understand a bit more about what it takes to be a good boss in any culture. I also enjoyed working with Dave Ulrich a great deal, as we have complementary skills; he is much better at organizing ideas than I am and is skilled at dealing with my diverse and often disconnected thoughts.  Dave was also enormously supportive of my personal challenges during the production of the book, which I greatly appreciated.

The Better By Design Summit: Cool Things I Heard in New Zealand

  

I had the privilege of speaking at the Better By Design CEO Summit in New Zealand last week, which was a delightful event for 300 or so executives.  It was intended to spread knowledge and whip-up enthusiasm about design thinking among businesses in that lovely country.  Our master of ceremonies was the charming and astute Jeremy Moon (pictured above), who is both the Chairman of Better By Design (a New Zealand government group that develops and spreads design thinking), and is also CEO of a firm called Icebreaker, which makes very cool high-tech wool clothing.   Go here to see the line-up of speakers, here for a press report, and here for their blog.  To give you a biased take on the conference, I thought it would be fun to just list some of the cool things I heard people say, as they said a lot of fascinating things that got me thinking.  If you would like to leave a comment, let me know what especially struck you -- positive or negative -- and why.

Most of these aren't exact quotes, rather they are the product of my lousy note taking.  So I apologize for any errors or misrepresentations.

From  Marty Neumeier, author of the The Designful Company:

Design thinking helps close the gap between knowing and doing, which I call "dragon gap:" When the old map makers wanted to represent uncharted territory, they drew pictures of dragons to represent the scary unknown.

"We intend to keep innovating" (How Steve Jobs reportedly answered a question about how Apple plans to keep growing.)

Design is like a sound that only dogs can hear.

Business keeps speeding-up, but our brains aren't getting any faster.

A wealth of information creates a paucity of attention.

Even the lone ranger didn't work alone.

From Dick Powell, Co-founder Seymourpowell, a UK-based design firm:

Anthropolology before technology.

Slow is the new fast.

The never ending now.

You can't make a massive change all at once.  The smartest people and companies find ways to keep winning a little bit along the way.

From Adam Lowry, Co-founder and Chief Greens Keeper, Method Products

Design is the first signal of human intention (quoting William McDonough)

Design advances slowly but not gradually -- there are long periods where not much happens, punctuated by periods of rapid and dramatic change.  It is like the theory of punctuated equilibrium from evolutionary biology; change happens in fits and starts, in step functions.

Good design creates good stories.

We got a lot of free PR, including on Jay Leno's show, for writing advertising copy claiming that our products make your stuff "fricken clean."

We are in "a constant state of make" at Method.

We are "people against dirty" and one of our primary challenges is to "Keep Method weird."

When asked why Method keeps innovating, he answered "our people give a shit."

We had over 300 SKU's in 2007; now we have about 110.

I have a veto, but the most powerful thing I can do is to never use it."

We would rather have a hole (an unfilled position) than an asshole at Method.

From a panel of who described their design thinking study tour to Silicon Valley, which was composed of executives from New Zealand firms and was sponsored by Better By Design -- and was led by Perry Klebahn and Diego Rodriguez:

Think big, but make it happen step by step'

To fail is not shameful.

Teams that do beat teams that talk.

I am going to get rid of my office and sit with my people.

Keeping  and growing good people, and strengthening the culture, those are our biggest business risks.( Heard at Method and Google).

Its hard.

At Google, they told us "above all, we try not to hire bullies."

We started out last and finished first in a tire changing competition -- that was a wake-up call.

We were way ahead in the tire change competition, so we started resting on our laurels and we didn't question our assumptions. So the the team that started out worst beat us in the end.  (The tire changing exercise is something I have written about here at HBR.org) 

Alan Webber, co-founder of Fast Company, author of Rules of Thumb, and Global Detective:

 This conference keeps going back to a pair of themes I hear everyplace I go now, leadership and change.

I went to a conference recently where two CEOs of big companies told their people, essentially, that everything will be fine, there is no need to worry.  They pretended to be for change but were really against it.

The best changes preserve the best of what is already there and get rid of the rest. 

If you want to change things, make hard things easier. Or raise the cost the cost of the status quo. Or do both.

Design thinking plays important roles including serving as a problem poser, problem solver, a sensemaking tool, a source of differentiation. It also can be a source inspiration and aspiration.

When I worked for the City of Portland, Oregon, my boss defined a strategy as anything that solves more than one problem at a time.  That was part of the philosophy that helped transform the city into one of the best places to live in U.S.

The world is thirsty for difference.

Design is too important to be left to designers .

You don't have to it all in one bite (talking about change)

 Rob Fyfe, CEO of Air new Zealand, is a national hero for leading the airline from financial ruin, deep despair, and shame to a place infused pride and excellence -- not just among its employees but among every New Zealander I talked to about the airline (which was dozens, as everyone from taxi drivers to teenagers brought it up).  It was just named ATW Airline of the Year, the industry's most prestigious award.

The airline suffered from a loss of self-belief and pride.

All the smiling people had left.

My challenge is to bring people to life.

It would be like going to a Greenpeace rally in a Hummer (on the challenge of claiming that an airline is green)

We had delusions of global dominance.   Yet, in the end, we realized that all we had was our New Zealandes --  not so much the beauty of the country, but the charms and quirks of our people.

I don't spend a lot of time on spreadsheets; I spend it  with my people or thinking about my people.  Several members of my board thought that was all wrong and I should be spending most of my time on financials, but they have come around.

I spend a day each month doing a job on the airline -- working as a flight attendant, a baggage handler, anything but a pilot!

We use real words, not business language or jargon.  That other stuff sounds fake.

One of our most successful campaigns featured our people "body painted;" it started with one of our pilots on a billboard and the motto is that our "staff have nothing to hide."

This isn't meant to be a linear post that makes a clear and integrated point-- rather it is a kind of like a Rorschach Test, one of those projective tests where personality and hidden conflicts are allegedly revealed when a person is asked to describe what he or she sees in abstract pictures, images, or artwork.   But I can say that the main thing I was left after the conference and my other social activities with was that the people in New Zealand are an intriguing mix of proud and modest, and competitive and cooperative, and as Diego Rodriguez pointed out, they have a can do attitude in combination with a no asshole rule.  So New Zealanders are well-suited to the design mindset and methods and are a lot of fun to work with.

Finally, a big thanks to my hosts from Better By Design including Judith Thompson,  Vijayan Kutta, Miriam Wilkins, and Nicky Toresen.  They were fun and extremely competent -- and I appreciate their tolerance of my various quirks.

 

More on Hard Times and Friendly Bosses

I wrote a post a couple weeks back about some intriguing (although flawed) surveys that suggest the downturn may have resulted in better relationships between employees and their bosses.   An article just came out at Human Resource Executive called "Is the Recession Making the Boss Friendlier" that digs further into these rather surprising findings and quotes some of my arguments about why relationships may have improved better, especially that incompetent bosses of all kinds may have been shown the door as part of the workforce cuts that so many organizations have made.  I was rather disturbed, however, by an argument at the end of the article by a management consultant that seems to be arguing for the virtues of tough bosses -- and that downplays the importance of compassion, treating people with respect, and treating them with dignity.  The article says:

But Alan Weiss, an organizational development consultant, author, and president of Summit Consulting Group Inc. in East Greenwich, Conn., says the results of the two surveys won't change one simple fact.

"The role of a boss is not to be friendly, but to direct, give instruction, lead and make hard decisions. You can't give honest and tough evaluations to friends," he says.

The lesson for HR is simple, he says: "Help managers to manage, not to merely try to influence; help employees understand that a tough boss who helps them succeed is far better than a friendly one who just wants to be 'one of the crowd.' "

Alan's last line bugs because it sets up a false choice, sort of like arguing that it is better to be kicked in the head than to have your eye poked out.  Yes, all good bosses need to do tough things -- negative feedback, giving people assignments they don't want, and implementing firings and layoffs when need be.   But as I have written here before, write in Good Boss, Bad Boss, and talk about at the McKinsey site, there is a difference between what a boss does and how he or she does it,  The best bosses do the dirty work with humanity and compassion. And providing support to people to help them succeed includes a big dose of emotional support. 

Bosses who push for performance above all else and don't give a hoot about the dignity and respect of their people do a poor job of developing their people and -- as much research shows -- will be condemned to have subordinates who are less likely to make an extra effort to work harder and longer and who leave for new jobs at higher rates,   Yes, I agree with Alan that your boss isn't always your friend (but sometimes this does happen, and it can be a good thing) -- but I get sick and tired of people who celebrate tough and heartless bosses.  I don't want to work for one and, as much research shows, most employees don.t want to either. And, as I have suggested here before, a hallmark of such bosses who do succeed is that they pair up with a "toxic handler" or two to soothe those they damage and to clean up the messes they leave in their wake. 

Fast Company Slideshow: A Boss's Guide to Taming Your Inner Jerk

Kevin and the gang at Fast Company asked if they could publish a second excerpt from Good Boss, Bad Boss.  They picked my list of 11 Bosshole Busters from Chapter 8 and tuned it into a slide show. You can see it here (that's the first slide above and I like the picture they used below for one of the slides, although I would not want to be that woman).  I confess the slideshow is a lot more fun than the black and white list in the book.

 

The Happiness Project is Selling Like Crazy

A couple week's back I wrote a rave review for Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project, which I called "I Hate Self-Help Books But Love This One."  The marketplace seems to agree, the book just started shipping a couple days ago and it is already #21 at Amazon. Wow!  Congratulations to Gretchen, it is a great book and I suspect we will be seeing on the bestseller lists for months and months. Also check out her blog, which is wonderful and constantly updated.

Workers Who Chew Gum Report Less Stress

I was disappointed by this study as I have a pet peeve about chewing gum. Everyone else in my family chews it now and then but I have always found it a bit gross.  And my dislike for it was amplified when my young kids would get in the carpet and other tough places to remove.  They were all delighted to hear about this study and my 13 year-old suggested that if I chewed gum I wouldn't be so uptight about other people doing it. As with many great research summaries, this one comes from the BPS Research Digest Blog. Here is a key paragraph from BPS:

Andrew Smith at Cardiff University surveyed over 2,000 workers and found that the 39 per cent of respondents who reported never chewing gum were twice as likely to say they were extremely stressed at work, compared with gum chewers, and one and a half times as likely to say they were very or extremely stressed with life in general.

So, does this mean that bosses who are leading tense teams ought to pass out the Wrigley's or -- worse yet -- bubble gum?  I hope not, but there seems to be a hint here that this is an evidence technique.

P.S. The reference is: Smith, A. (2009). Chewing gum, stress and health Stress and Health, 25 (5), 445-451.

Switch: The Heath Brothers Have Another Awesome Cover

I just started reading an advanced copy of the Chip and Dan Heath's new book Switch: How to change things when change is hard. So far, it is at least as good as their last book, Made to Stick,which was a bestseller and has rapidly become the standard handbook for anyone who wants to design an idea that will spread and endure -- people in almost every field I know now use it, marketing, public health, political campaigns, organizational change efforts, and on and on.  I will write a more detailed post on the content of the new book as the publication date of February 15th approaches, but I wanted to devote this post to the cover of Switch, which I think is magnificent and perhaps even as good as the amazing Made to Stick --which even included textured and realistic feeling duct tape on the cover.   I include it below, followed by the Made to Stick cover. What do you think?  Do you agree with me that the Heath brothers have perhaps the best pair of book covers ever on two business books? Or am I being overly biased because I like these two guys so much? 

 

The Happiness Project: I Hate Self-Help Books But Love This One

I wondered out to look at the mail, and there it was, the result of Gretchen's Rubin's year long quest to make herself happier. "The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun."  Frankly, perhaps because I was a psychology major for ten years (through my PhD in Organizational Psychology), most self-help books make me want to vomit.  But once I started reading Gretchen's book, I couldn't stop because -- unlike all those books that seem to tell fake stories about others or promise too much or are too sappy -- Gretchen's compelling voice, great stories, and first person-perspective (and brutal self-assessments at times, few of us are as aware or as open about our imperfections) make the book simply irresistible.

I cheated and read the first and last chapters and have now worked through most of the rest of the book (I am supposed to be writing several letters of recommendation right now and doing some work on my book, but this is making me much happier).  This is the rare book that is remarkably conceptually and empirically sound (she really knows research on happiness well), linked to great literature and other writings, but somehow at every stage is tied to her experience in a way that made me introspective, but I thought in a constructive rather than selfish way. 

I don't want to give away too much, as really, you deserve to give yourself the gift of reading the book.  I first put in a few quotes from the book in this post, and then decided to take them out, as I think that presenting them out of context undermines the flow of emotion and logic that hit me as I read paragraph upon paragraph. I would also add that her voice is similar to her blog, but in reading her book, you can see why the daily rhythms of writing a blog can never replace a great book (even one based partly on a blog)-- it comes across as a complete and emotionally satisfying story, and ends with a set of lessons (and a lovely twist about the effect of the project on her husband) that both sides of my brain believe will make me -- and those I care about --  happier as we travel through life.  

As I suggest in the title of this post, The Happiness Project might be the perfect self-help book for people like me who hate self-help books. 

P.S. The book comes out December 29th.  Reading it strikes me as a great way to start the year.

Born to Be Good -- A Compelling Book

I have written about research by UC Berkeley's Dacher Keltner quite a bit here, including his essay on the power paradox and his research (with others including Debra Gruenfeld) that shows how giving people a little power over others turns them into self-centered jerks. 

I am reading his new book Born to Be Good, which argues that people are "good," that being cooperative and generous, is part of how humans are selected and wired.  Many of Kilter's arguments are grounded in his research on the microdetails of facial expressions and bodily movement, as he was trained by renowned psychologist Paul Ekman in this theory and method.  But he pulls in research and stories from diverse places to make his arguments, for example, turning the assumption from many corners of economics that people are naturally selfish greedy on its head by presenting evidence that,when it comes to emotional-being (rather than the pure dollar count), it is in our best interest to give rather than receive.  So spending 20 dollars on someone else or giving it to charity boosts happiness more than spending on yourself --even though most people predict the opposite effects. 

There has been a lot of talk and disagreement about the assumptions that economists make about how people will behave over at the Harvard Business Review site, and although many (although far from all) economists will bristle at the notion that greediness isn't the natural human condition, Keltner does a nice job of presenting the opposing case. Indeed, while my argument is that greedy selfishness is a norm that varies across social groups and may operate more or less strongly depending on the cues in a situation -- Keltner is implying that were are actually selected and wired to tilt toward goodness.  And that it is in our best interests to do so -- citing research that engaging in five acts of kindness to others a week (e.g., donating blood or buying someone a sundae) elevates our well-being.  Keltner's writing style is great fun, and I am learning a lot from this gem.

P.S. I also like the simplicity of the title and the cover of this book.

Publication Day: For Both The Peter Principle and What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20

The two HarperCollins books I've been blogging about are both officially published today, and are shipping at Amazon.  The first is 40th Anniversary edition of The Peter Principle, which as I wrote a foreword for and inspired a BusinessWeek editorial on The Virtues of Simple Competence.  The second is Tina Seelig's delifghtful What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20.  If you live near the Stanford campus, please join us at the launch party at Kepler's bookstore on this coming Friday at 7:30.  It should be some party, as Tina is so widely known and widely loved. I will be introducing her and am going to buy a copy of the book for my teenage son and ask her to sign it.

The 100 Best Business Books of All Time Is Published Today

I blogged earlier about Jack and Todd's new book, The Best 100 Business Books of All Time.  Today is the publication date, so it is shipping from both Amazon and Jack and Todd's own company, 1800CEOread.  We had a great little gathering last night at the d.school to celebrate the book, which was led by Todd (and organized by Kate from CEOread).  There were about 50 people, and Todd led a little panel composed of authors of three of the books on the list: Randy Komisar of Monk and the Riddle fame, Chip Heath for Made to Stick, and Jeff Pfeffer and me for The Knowing-Doing Gap.

It was really fun, and I just loved hearing all the great stories, such as how Randy -- who is an amazing blend of charming, self-deprecating, and brilliant -- explained that when he agreed to do the book, he didn't know what it would be about and didn't know how to write a book -- and expressed some confusion because it is not really a business book, even though it now has been honored as being among the 100 best!  Chip was entrancing as usual, that guy can really tells stories.  And he is scary smart.  My favorite one was about how his mother gently intervened to help Chip and Dan deal with some brotherly tension during the writing process.  Jeff and I teased each other as usual, and enjoyed telling the group how we fought so hard with our publisher against the title they wanted instead of The Knowing-Doing Gap -- Louder Than Words.  I sure am glad we fought for that one.

The book is fun and useful, and when you are done with it, you will feel as if you have read 100 books! The endless argument, of course,  is about why some books were put on and others were left off.  Hardy Green over at BusinessWeek write a pointed column, and the responses are fun -- I added one too.

So, to ask the question, what is your favorite business book of all time? For me, it is Orbiting the Giant Hairball.  My second favorite is Made to Stick, both of which Jack and Todd did pick.

Sizzle vs. Substance

I've been fretting about this lately, and ranting at Jeff Pfeffer and an anonymous business reporter about it. My question is whether there is a trade-off between producing writings and advice that managers will BUY versus what they need. Sometimes, it seems as if managers-- to reverse the old Rolling Stones line -- get the advice they want but not the advice they need (at least if they care about building more profitable and humane organizations).

To argue with myself, I can point to the way that the market seems to respond to my little set of four management books. I can argue that as much as I love The No Asshole Rule, and believe that it has valuable – and evidence-based – content, that this book is much easier to create excitement about than the more serious and exacting work I've done, like Hard Facts ­-- and that is not a good thing. I could take the argument further, and claim that there is so much crap out there partly because the market for business knowledge -- the customers and the sellers -- routinely rejects serious, deep, and important stuff. And the anonymous reporter from the famous business magazine did resonate to this sentiment, commenting on the how stories such as the "management secrets of Martha Stewart" seem to get snapped-up.  The One Minute Manager, Who Moved the Cheese, and the like fit this story, and -- and although part of me protests and part of me wishes it to be so -- perhaps the The No Asshole Rule will join this list of "light" best-sellers.

On the other hand, a case can be made that the market actually does respond well to rigor when it is packaged in a readable and convincing package. Malcolm Gladwell is one of the champions here as is Steve Levitt with Freakonomics.  And Dan Gilbert's intriguing Stumbling on Happiness is doing well (although he doesn't actually give much advice, but the book is fascinating) . So the argument seems to be that if you write a book that is both based on serious ideas and evidence and is accessible, it will be snapped-up -- or at least have the potential. And I could argue that I am trying to do that in The No Asshole Rule, perhaps despite that rowdy title.

I still am not sure where I stand on this, although at the moment, my view is that, as authors, we have several key responsibilities when we write for managerial audiences, no matter how popular or unpopular our books might be (and that is impossible to predict that in advance anyway). First, to write stuff that is based on sound logic and evidence.  Second, to come clean when we base our advice on biased opinions, purely personal experiences, case studies, or deeply held beliefs.  Third, I believe we should give readers enough information about the limitations of our work so they can understand the drawbacks before they take actions that affect people and profits.

I am starting to believe that this means that they very worst books are those that claim to be based on rigorous evidence, but that don't come clean about their limitations.  This is why I have such a negative reaction to The War for Talent, as I wrote in earlier post, and why -- although it is more forthcoming about the drawbacks -- Good to Great bothers me because there are many limitations that ought to be acknowledged but are not.  For example the sample is very tiny (e.g.,firms with Level 5 leaders that weren't great companies weren't sampled -- perhaps there were thousands and it is something that only rarely helps a tiny percentage of the time as it was seen in 11 out of 1400 or so cases), the evidence about the difference between good and great companies is heavily retrospective, and Collins mentions almost no prior research other than his earlier book Built to Last, even though there are literally hundreds – I suspect thousands – of articles published in peer reviewed journals that are more rigorous than either book and that have direct implications for his advice. I still love reading Good to Great, and it is written beautifully and much of the advice is supported by other research. But I do wish that the book had come more clean about its limits. I believe it would have been just as big a hit, and a better model for future management books.

Unlike many of my posts, this one raises more questions than it answers. I love things that are true and honest, and meet the highest standards of rigor. I also love writing and talking about things that people get excited about and want to use.  There are times when I feel like I've done both, but I confess that there are also times when I am so tempted by the sizzle that I forget about the substance.

I am not sure if this is true dilemma or just a challenge that a skilled business writer or consultant can overcome with the right training and experience. I'd appreciate your thoughts.