Jay Robb reviews business books

Book review: Corporate entrepreneurship and innovation

2009-12-21T12:51:56-05:00

Grow From Within: Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation

McGraw-Hill

$37.95

Got the entrepreneurial itch?

You might want to hold off on plans to quit your day job and turn your spare bedroom into world headquarters for Your Big Idea Inc.

If your current employer’s smart and forward thinking, you’ll get the greenlight to scratch your entrepreneurial itch and unleash your inner business builder at work.

Lots of us associate entrepreneurship with start-up companies. Or we believe that innovation is driven by a lone wolf entrepreneur who, while toiling away in their garage, has a eureka moment and brings a breakthrough innovation into our world on a shoestring budget and a maxed out credit card.

And we have a hard time believing that big, established companies tightly wrapped in bureaucratic red tape can ever be hotbeds for innovation.

That’s a dangerous misperception, warn authors Robert Wolcott and Michael Lippitz, who focus on corporate entrepreneurship and innovation in their work at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

It’s a misperception that can severely limit the vision and activities of both corporate leaders and frontline staffers who dream of building careers and companies around entrepreneurship-led growth.

“This perceptive bias against large corporations’ contributions to our economy’s new business development success is partly due to a survivorship bias in our sample set: we see only the small companies that succeed,” say Wolcott and Lippitz. “We don’t see the thousands of independent entrepreneurial ventures that fail or languish for years on life support – what some venture capitalists refer to as the ‘walking dead’.”

Unlike start-ups, big and established enterprises have greater bench strength with experienced management teams who know the rules of the game. Established companies also have deeper pockets, with the capital to carry a new venture though its early stages. And big companies already have market access and credibility, which makes recruiting partners and early customers a whole lot easier.

Wolcott and Lippitz define corporate entrepreneurship as “the process by which teams within an established firm conceive, foster, launch and manage a new business that is distinct from but leverages the company’s current assets, markets and capabilities.”

Now, building new businesses inside existing businesses can be easier said than done for a host of reasons. In big companies, there’s a built-in bias against new things and a locked-in focus on efficiency and risk avoidance. There can be an internal bias and a real reluctance to seek out external knowledge or tap into networks beyond the company’s walls. And there’s something called concept myopia. “A company’s existing ways of operating pose the most powerful barrier to a comprehensive vision of what is possible and even of what might be required.”

There’s also a risk of losing strategic focus as big new ideas and bold new opportunities quickly pile up. “People charged with leading innovation initiatives can find themselves pulled in many directions. The most successful corporate entrepreneurs tend to stay focused on the right objectives without losing the big picture.”

While they need to be protected from core business pressures, insulation can quickly turn into isolation and misalignment with strategic priorities. “An isolated corporate entrepreneurship team will find it difficult, if not impossible, to move a new business out of incubation into an appropriate line of business.”

And then there’s the culture change trap. “Many dedicated corporate entrepreneurship teams end up with the responsibility, either intentionally or by accretion, for building a culture of innovation companywide,” say Wolcott and Lipptiz. “What team, no matter how dynamic, innovative and assertive, can transform a company’s culture on its own.”

Culture change has to start and be constantly driven from the top of the house. When it comes to entrepreneurship and innovation, your CEO and senior management team has to walk the talk. If they’re all hat and no cattle, all sizzle and no steak, your culture isn’t going to change. “If the top group fails to model innovative behaviours and make an ongoing, credible case for innovation, real culture change will be a losing game.”

According to Wolcott and Lippitz, corporate entrepreneurship and innovation is essentially a new business design challenge. To meet that challenge, they offer up four models for corporate entrepreneurship and something called the Innovation Radar. “The Radar provides a simple tool for helping corporate entrepreneurs put all of the questions on the table up front, rather than stumbling on them later. Much like a compass, the Radar consists of four foundational dimensions that serve as business system anchors: the customers a business serves, the offerings it creates, the processes it employs and the points of presence it uses to take its offerings to market.”

According to the authors, our best shot at building a better world is through a fundamentally sound, vibrant entrepreneurial sector and big companies have a big role to play. “Entrepreneurship enables people to envision and create the future, something that is perhaps the fundamental path to a prosperous world. It is everyone’s responsibility – business, government, academia, and nonprofits – to create the context in which people can discover and manifest innovative solutions for human needs and desires.”

The good news is you don’t have to quit your day job, stock up on IKEA home office furniture and remortgage your house to imagine and implement those innovative solutions. Your employer may be ready, willing and able to unlock and unleash your entrepreneurial spirit.

Book review: Freedom Inc and transforming from how and why organizations

2009-12-07T15:13:03-05:00

NOTE -- This is a really good book -- the chapter on "how" and "why" organizations alone is worth the read. "How" organizations spell out exactly what employees should do. Not surprisingly, no one makes decisions and the CEO winds up playing the part of surrogate parent and referee. How organizations also tend to manage to the 3 per cent -- focusing on the handful of nonperformers who go rogue and make it their life mission to break every rule. So employers ratchet up enforcement that doesn't faze the 3 per cent and leaves the only 97 per cent of the workforce demoralized and disengaged. "Why" organizations instead offer up a clear, concise and compelling strategic vision that filters and frames all decisions and actions. If an action advances the strategic vision, it's worth doing. And trust that frontline staff who do the heavy lifting will do the right thing.

Freedom Inc. Free Your Employees and Let Them Lead Your Business to Higher Productivity, Porifts and Growth

By Brian Carney and Isaac Getz

A customer’s waiting in line to rent a car at O’Hare International and losing his patience. The trainee behind the Avis service counter is struggling to get the job done.

"Will you please hurry up," says the customer. "I’m in a hurry."

"Give me a break, I’m a trainee," says the overwhelmed trainee.

"Would you tell me how on earth a training program could pass somebody as clumsy and as ignorant as you seem to be?" asks the customer.

"Well, if you want to hear something really sick, I’m the president of the company," says Robert Townsend.

When Townsend took the helm of Avis back in 1962, the sleepy company hadn’t turned a profit in 13 years. To turn the company around, Townsend knew he had to change the culture. So he started with his senior management team. His executives had come down with severe case of us versus them. "Us being the geniuses at headquarters and them being the people in the field in the red jackets who were renting cars and paying our salaries and doing an enormous amount of hard work," says Townsend.

So at a Monday senior management meeting, Townsend casually mentioned that they were enrolling in the Avis school for rental agents at O’Hare. Classes started next week. Enrolment was optional although their bonus compensation plans were tied to earning a passing grade. "There were great screams of rage from these busy executive geniuses," recalled Townsend.

Together, they stayed at a motel by the Chicago airport. Wearing big "I’m a trainee" buttons and red jackets, they served customers in the morning. Studied in the afternoon. Wrote tests and did homework at night. And, in the process, gained a new appreciation for frontline staff.

"When we got through that course we were wearing red jackets at headquarters," says Townsend. "The us and them thing was history."

But that wasn’t all. Based on their personal experience at trainee school, Townsend and his leadership team made it their personal mission to eliminate every work practice that prevented agents from doing their best for customers. Townsend constantly asked frontline staff what made them mad, what took too long, what cost too much, what was too complicated, and what was just plain dumb. Townsend then acted on what he heard and by 1965 Avis was one of the fastest-growing companies in the U.S.

"In just three years he liberated Avis and unleashed the initiative and action of its thousands of employees," say authors and Wall Street Journal editor Brian Carney and ESCP Europe Business School professor Isaac Getz. "Townsend and his managers got busy removing the ropes and barnacles that prevented people from showing how fast and how far they could go in their boat. This freed them, too, to adjust their sails on the fly when the wind changed."

Liberating leaders like Townsend turn "how" companies into "why" companies. Instead of telling employees exactly how to do their work with a mountain of policies, procedure, rules, regulations and an army of policing command and control managers, these crusading CEOs ask a single question. Why are we doing the work that we’re doing? And does our work align with our strategic priorities? Asking that question frees up and unleashes the individual initiative and risk-taking instincts of every employee. If you want more innovation, more productivity and more engagement, liberate your people.

And according to Carney and Getz, here’s how you do it.

First, stop telling, start listening and strip away all the symbols and practices that prevent your people from feeling intrinsically equal. Executive privilege is disengaging.

Second, openly and actively share your vision for the company so everyone owns it. "Getting people to emotionally own a corporate vision is a long – indeed, never-ending – task for a liberating leader," say the authors. "Fortunately, in freedom-based companies the vision is always world-class, which facilities its acceptance."

Third, stop trying to motivate staff and instead create a work environment where staff will motivate themselves. "Provide the climate and proper nourishment and let the people grow themselves," says Townsend, the CEO who turned around Avis in the 1960s. "They’ll amaze you."

And lastly, stay alert. Your number one job as a liberation leader is to constantly define, defend and champion the culture and core values of our company. External vigilance is the price of freedom.

The final word on freedom at work goes to William L. McKnight, the legendary CEO of 3M. "If you put fences around people, you get sheep," said McKnight back in 1924. "Give people the room they need."

2009-11-27T15:23:41-05:00

I Have a Story For You: Musings of the Moodivator

By Carole Bertuzzi Luciani

TRI Publishing

$18.95

I've already got my New Year’s Resolution. In 2010, I'm ramping up my speaking engagements. Need a keynote speaker, panellist, master of ceremonies, resident expert, workshop facilitator or opening act? Call me. I’ll be anything you need.

I'll talk to anyone about everything because I want my family to have an extra special Christmas next year. A Christmas they’ll always remember. A Christmas that my great-great grandkids will talk about.

Now, I'm not looking to charter a jet and fly my family to that tropical island owned by business tycoon Richard Branson. Nor do I plan to book a two-week stay at the Grand Floridian Resort in Disney World with the premium meal plan.

I've got a different dream. A dream of hosting the Mother Of All Christmas Games. My grandmother started this family tradition. After we spent all of 15 minutes eating a Christmas dinner that took my grandmother three days to prepare, she got her revenge by having us gather around a pile of wrapped gifts from the dollar store. She'd deal us a deck of cards. When she called your card, you picked a present. When the presents were all picked, you walked over and stole presents from one another. And that's when the kids would start crying and the grown-ups turned nasty.

To my grandmother, nothing said Christmas like fighting over a deceptively wrapped toilet plunger, a package of hair rollers or fruit-shaped fridge magnets. And those were the really good presents up for grabs in the Christmas game.

By hitting the speaker's circuit, I can skip the trip to Dollarama and amass a small mountain of similar yet slightly more upscale gifts. In the past few years, I've received travel mugs, coffee cups, road safety kits, reusable lunch bags, flashlights, pens, pen-flashlight combinations, t-shirts, golf shirts, ball caps, self-published books, a lawn chair, a clock radio paper weight and vinegar in a wine bottle. My favourite all-time gift is a single winter windshield wiper blade that I received after talking with a service club in early May. I was never invited back to get the second blade.

Author and self-proclaimed "moodivational" speaker Carole Bertuzzi Luciani can relate. Back in 1985, the Oakville resident spoke to a sales group from the Mary Kay Cosmetic Corporation. As a parting gift, she got a book on Mary Kay and an empty cosmetic case. On the way out, someone from the audience stopped Bertuzzi Luciani and told her she was a great public speaker and should charge money.

So Bertuzzi Luciani decided to do exactly that. The next request came from the Salvation Army, a group that she'd spoken to for the past three years. She worked up the courage and said she was now charging a speaker's fee. No problem, said the Salvation Army. We'll gladly pay a $15 honorarium. And so began CBL Presentations and speaking engagements across North America for slightly higher fees.

While she describes herself as a talker and not a writer, Bertuzzi Luciani`s put her life stories to paper.

There's the time she spun the wheel on Wintario and resisted the urge to laugh, when she ran in the Olympic Torch Relay and went on her annual volunteer adventures, that have taken her from a Catholic Mission in Belize to the YWCA dorm in downtown Hamilton.

She's drawn on 57 years of watching, listening and participating in life as it`s swirled around her. She says her father used to incessantly nag her and her brother with "if you just stop and pay attention, damn it, you just might learn something.

"So learn I did and continue to do," says Bertuzzi Luciani. "I`ve learned that stuff happens and it`s how you react to it that`s important. And I`ve learned that funny is everywhere. If you look for it, you`ll be sure to find it. It presents itself in a multitude of forms and situations. The key is to stop and recognize it for what it is."

If you're looking for a workplace resolution for 2010, here's one. Instead of inflicting death by PowerPoint or issuing all-staff missives that require a jargon-busting decoder ring, tell us a story instead. Make us laugh. Make us think. Make us pay attention and remember what you said. And if you've forgotten how to tell a good story, give yourself an early Christmas present and buy Bertuzzi Luciani's book.

Book review: Bill Strickland and the Manchester Bidwell story

2009-11-09T09:32:01-05:00

A TALE OF TWO CITIES with guest speaker: Bill Strickland. Nov. 30 at Hamilton Place Theatre Doors open at 6 p.m. Program begins at 7 p.m. Admission is free; tickets are limited or call 905-667-6230.

Make the Impossible Possible: One Man's Crusade to Inspire Others to Dream Bigger and Achieve the Extraordinary

By Bill Strickland

Bill Strickland's coming to town Nov. 30 with a pretty cool story that our business and civic leaders really need to hear.

Strickland is president and CEO of Manchester Bidwell, a community arts education and job training centre. Located in one of Pittsburgh's poorest neighbourhoods, the centre's cracked the poverty-to-prosperity code.

The centre's Manchester Craftsmen's Guild gives at-risk kids after-school courses taught by established artists and skilled instructors.

The private-school calibre courses ignite a creative fire that keeps kids off the streets, in school and on to college. More than 90 per cent of youth at the centre earn high school diplomas, and 85 per cent go on to postsecondary education.

"Our students stop defining themselves by what they can't do and get the first glimmer of what a meaningful life might feel like," says Strickland .

The grown-ups get state-of-the-art training for in-demand and ahead-of-the-curve jobs at the Bidwell Training Centre. Unlike other training centres, Manchester Bidwell steers clear of preparing people for work in stale industries or overcrowded fields where there's stiff competition and few real job prospects.

Instead, the centre develops cutting-edge programs in partnership with companies in need of highly skilled workers. Those partnerships pay off. Nearly 80 per cent of adults complete their vocational training, and 86 per cent get hired for meaningful work and good jobs with paycheques that lift entire families out of poverty.

Strickland calls poverty a cancer of the spirit. He says you can't cure it with an all-too-common approach of defining the poor as people in need of help or by dreaming up social programs to fix everything that's broken in their lives.

"You cure poverty by understanding that poor folk are human beings before they are 'poor' and by providing them with access to the fundamental spiritual nourishment every human heart requires: beauty, order, purpose, opportunity -- the things that give us a meaningful human existence."

That motivated Strickland to move Manchester Bidwell from a rundown warehouse to a new home back in the early 1980s. Even though meeting payroll was a challenge, Strickland met one of Pittsburgh's leading architects and shelled out $10,000 for a scale model of a $5-million dream home. Strickland then took his model on the road and started selling his dream of putting the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild and Bidwell Training Center together under one roof in a new home complete with a fountain in a courtyard and hallways filled with art.

"Everywhere I went, I met with the same dubious stares," says Strickland. "'You want to build this in Manchester?' someone would say. 'Isn't this a little elaborate for a poverty centre?' someone would ask. 'It's not a poverty centre,' I'd answer. 'It's a centre for success.'"

Strickland persisted, and enlightened corporate and civic leaders bought into his dream. The fountain and the museum-quality art on display throughout the centre was never meant to be window dressing, says Strickland. It was intended to deliver a powerful and much-needed message.

"You can't show a person how to build a better life if they feel no pleasure in the simple act of being alive. That's why I built this place and why I fill it with art, and sunlight, and quilts and flowers. We put them in a beautiful place, give them a small taste of what a decent, dignified future might feel like, and that makes all the difference.

Strickland also fills Manchester Bidwell with jazz. He built a concert hall at the centre in 1987 that brings the world's greatest jazz musicians together with sold-out audiences. The concerts, in turn, have spawned a Grammy-winning record label for the centre.

"Jazz was such an integral part of my life that I knew I had to find a way to make it a part of Manchester Bidwell -- and not just as background music piped in through the PA system. It had to be woven into the cultural fabric of the place so it could do for our students what it had done for me."

Running through the jazz concerts, the arts programs and the job training is an underlying and unifying philosophy.

"Every human being, despite the circumstances of his or her birth, is born full of potential," says Strickland. "And the way to unlock that potential is to place individuals in a nurturing environment and expose them to the kind of stimulating and empowering creative experiences that feed the human spirit."

And Strickland hasn't stopped dreaming. He's looking to build 100 centres like Manchester Bidwell across the United States and another 100 around the world, all fine-tuned to meet local needs.

There are National Centers for Arts & Technology in Cincinnati, Grand Rapids and San Francisco.

Groups in Cleveland, Columbus, Philadelphia and New Orleans have secured the $150,000 US preliminary grants needed to get new centres off the ground. Chicago, Los Angeles, Reno, New Haven and Charlotte are also working hard at getting early funding and moving to the planning stage.

So while Strickland's talk on Nov. 30 at Hamilton Place is free of charge, thanks to the Jobs Prosperity Collaborative, here's hoping a local business leader steps up, parts with some hard-earned cash and makes a down payment on replicating Strickland's magic here in Steeltown.

Book review: Glimmer by Warren Berger (the power of design)

2009-10-26T09:25:47-04:00

Glimmer: How Design Can Transform Your Life, Your Business, and Maybe Even the World

By Warren Berger

Random House Canada: $35

Dean Kamen goes to the mall on a rainy afternoon. On his way in, he sees a young guy trying without any luck to get his wheelchair up and over a curb. Dean lends a hand.

Kamen's walking past a store when he sees the same guy struggling to get something off a shelf. When Kamen goes to the food court, there's the guy in the wheelchair again, waiting to get served, but he's blocked from view and can't make eye contact with the cashier behind the counter.

And then Kamen sees a glimmer of possibility. "I'm looking at all this thinking, what a pathetic lack of progress. I mean, seriously -- with all the incredible things we're doing with technology, what are we doing to improve this 200-year-old wheelchair?" asks Kamen.

So Kamen spends the next few years designing a wheelchair for the 21st century, incorporating dynamic stabilization issues, solid-state gyroscopes, sensors and microprocessors. He designs the iBOT wheelchair. The iBOT climbs stairs and curbs and raises occupants up to a standing position.

Marianne Cusato goes to Biloxi, Miss., after hurricane Katrina hits. She learns that the most pressing need is an alternative to the too-small and depressing FEMA trailers, standard-issue temporary housing provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Trouble is, the trailers aren't temporary for a whole lot of families.

And like Kamen, Cusato sees that same glimmer of possibility. Cusato asks: "can you design temporary housing that is decent and dignified enough to work in the long term?" and comes up with an award-winning answer.

She builds a cottage instead of a trailer for aesthetic and practical reasons. The cottages are designed to be added to with renovations or turned into a guest house or rental unit when a permanent home gets rebuilt.

Cusato builds a 300-square-foot home with a three-metre ceiling, tall vertical windows and a large attached porch, blending the style of a 17th-century cottage with touches of Southern architecture. And she does it all for just $35,000 US.

The U.S. Senate approves $1 billion to build Katrina Cottages all along the Gulf Coast. Cusato wins the 2006 People's Design Award from the Smithsonian Institution, beating out the Apple iPod. And then builders start asking about turning Katrina Cottages into lakefront cottages. "If you have a situation where disaster housing is exactly the same as the housing that rich people choose to vacation in -- well, that's a good thing isn't it?" asks Cusato.

These are two of many solutions that highlight how thinking like a designer can solve some big challenges facing business and our communities.

"Design thinking opens up new avenues of progress, suggesting fresh answers to old and difficult questions," says author and award-winning journalist Warren Berger. "It is about infinite possibilities. And, perhaps more than anything else, it's about optimism."

Berger spells out 10 design principles grouped into four categories -- universal, business, social and personal.

Ask stupid questions, jump fences and make hope visible are the three universal design principles that anyone can apply to solve pretty much any problem. Asking stupid questions challenges and reframes assumptions in such fundamental ways that you can sound naive for asking.

Making hope visible is about picturing possibilities and drawing conclusions. You're giving shape to an idea and turning it into something real that others can get their heads on.

"Design is really a way of looking at the world with an eye toward changing it," says Berger. "To do that, a designer must be able to see not just what is, but what might be. They take that faint glimmer of possibility and make it visible and real to others."

So let's take a good, long look at our community. Get out of the car. Walk around. Talk with people. Think like a designer. Catch a glimmer of what's possible. And let's start having a conversation about how we can reboot, rebuild and redesign an even better, more resilient and vibrant city.

(This review appeared in the Oct. 26 edition of the Hamilton Spectator)

Book review: Why she buys and the power of women consumers

2009-09-28T07:35:44-04:00

Why She Buys: The New Strategy for Reaching the World's Most Powerful Consumers,

by Bridget Brennan (Crown Business, $32)

Tom came to our house the other night to sell us new doors.

Tom did a great job. Tom knows everything you'd ever want to know about doors. How and where doors get made. How doors get installed. All the features, benefits, options and warranty coverage. And all the ways in which his company's doors are superior to what the competition sells.

Yet, it's what Tom didn't do that sealed the deal. Tom didn't refer to my wife as the "little lady" or the "woman of the house." Tom didn't talk only with me and ignore my wife. Tom didn't slide his quote across the dining room table for my eyes only. Tom didn't tell us that with all the money we're saving, I could lend my credit card to the "little lady" for a Saturday afternoon of shoe shopping while I stayed home and babysat the kids.

Which is a very good thing for Tom. Because if Tom had said or done any of those things, he would have lost the sale even if the doors were going to cost us a buck. And I would have received a sharp, hard kick to the shins under the table.

That's because my wife was making the decision on the new doors. She's the one who lost patience with a screen door the kids can't open, another screen door that flies off the hinges in a stiff breeze and a pair of well-worn, energy-inefficient doors completely lacking in curb appeal. My wife's the one who talked with co-workers for a referral. She's the one who, on her day off, went door shopping in showrooms and booked the sales call. And she's the one who's paying for the doors.

Not everyone gets it like Tom, even in our enlightened age.

"Women not only have money, they have veto power," says Bridget Brennan, CEO of Female Factor. "It's the most powerful one-two punch in the consumer economy."

Brennan cites studies that show women purchase or are the key influencer on about 80 per cent of all consumer product sales.

"To make a massive generalization, men are the sex that manufactures products, and women are the sex that buys them," says Brennan, who adds that men hold down 85 per cent of Fortune 500 corporate officer positions, nearly 70 per cent of chief marketing officers and 90 per cent of top creative directors at ad agencies.

"If the consumer economy had a sex, it would be female," says Brennan. "If the business world had a sex, it would be male. And therein lies the pickle."

So we end up with products dreamt up, designed, manufactured, marketed and sold by men who are too often clueless about what women want and why they buy.

Take the print campaign for the Ford Flex SUV as an example of what happens when men market to women. With seven seats and a fridge, the SUV is obviously intended for families. So how did Ford market the car? With an ad that shows the SUV driving down a deserted road in the dark, with CPR For The Dead Of Night as the headline.

"Perhaps it would be better not to use words such as CPR and dead to headline a campaign for a vehicle in which women are going to be transporting their families," suggests Brennan. "The industry is littered with ads written from a masculine point of view, even though women purchase and influence more than half the car sales."

Callaway Golf gets it. Callaway, a leader in the golf equipment industry, is run by George Fellows, a former Revlon CEO and father of two daughters. "For some reason, our society still hasn't caught up to the fact that women should participate at the exact same levels as men in a whole host of activities, but in order to do that appropriately, they've got to be equipped in the right way," says Fellows.

So instead of coming out with a line of men's clubs with pink shafts, Callaway consulted with women golfers and instructors, put women on product development teams and re-engineered the golf club. Callaway adjusted head design, head size, swing weight, shaft weight, shaft flexibility and grip size. Based on consumer feedback, Callaway rolled out a new Gems line specifically designed for women, and in 2008 rang up the second highest sales level in the company's history.

Brennan says Callaway and other smart, consumer-focused companies such as Procter & Gamble, MasterCard and Unilever are clued in to five global trends driving female consumers. The presence of more women in the workforce changes everything. Delayed marriage means more money spent on "me." Lower birth rates globally mean fewer kids, but more stuff. The divorce economy means two of everything. "The reality of divorce is that it unleashes a torrent of consumer spending, and not just on divorce lawyers."

And the presence of more older women redefines target markets. "Look at enough advertising briefs, and you might think that everyone older than 54 is dead, or at the very least broke," says Brennan. "But that couldn't be further from the truth. The opportunities are as enormous as the population itself."

Gender, says Brennan, is the most powerful determinant of how a person views the world and everything in it, more powerful than age, income, race and geography. To help us guys bridge the gender divide, Brennan offers insights and strategies on how to market products and services to women, whether in a store, on the web or around the dining-room table during a sales call for new doors.

Book review: Creating innovatoin, profits, growth & social good

2009-09-14T07:02:43-04:00

Super Corp: How Vanguard Companies Create Innovation, Profits, Growth and Social Good

By Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Crown Business, $32

You and I have only one reason to go to work this morning. And it has nothing to do with spending our day in meetings and talking amongst ourselves.

We're going to work to change the world.

To make a real difference in big and small ways.

To make someone's life better and easier.

To right a few wrongs.

Sound a little too idealistic?

Seems to work pretty well for IBM, Procter & Gamble and a host of companies that put social purpose front and centre.

"Innovation that matters, for our company and the world" is one of IBM's three overarching values.

Back in 2003, and early in his tenure as chair and CEO, Sam Palmisano invited 350,000 IBMers from 170 countries to join a conversation about what the company stood for and believed in. Through a 72-hour onlineValuesJam, staff gave Palmisano a metre's worth of feedback.

Making the world a better place was a recurring theme.

And then there's P&G with a purpose to provide branded products and services of superior quality and value that improve the lives of the world's consumers, now and for generations to come.

IBM and P&G are among a select group of what author Rosabeth Moss Kanter calls vanguard companies that are ahead of the curve and the wave of the future.

"For years, lip service has been paid by many corporate leaders to achieving high performance and being a good corporate citizen," says Kanter, chair of Harvard University's Advanced Leadership Initiative and one of the 50 most powerful women in the world according to the London Times.

"What I have discovered in my research, however, is that the two issues, business performance and societal contributions, are, in fact, intimately connected. Service to society, guided by well-articulated values, is not just 'nice to do,' but an integral part of the business models for companies that I call the vanguard."

Embedding social purpose in your mission, vision and values and then walking the talk gets you engaged employees, a hotbed of innovation and exceptional customer service.

"The point is not the exact words themselves but the living process: to open a dialogue that keeps the sense of social purpose in the forefront of everyone's mind and then to use that as a guidance mechanism for business decisions," says Kanter.

A higher purpose drives higher performance.

Your best and brightest want to be part of something bigger than a paycheque. They want to be part of a winning organization that makes a real difference close to home and around the world.

Anyone who's lucky to work for an employer who puts people and purpose first, knows exactly how it feels and they're proud to play a part in a vanguard organization.

You start the week by jumping out of bed and saying thank God it's Monday.

"People more readily stretch to solve problems that have never been tackled before because they care about serving society and also because they believe in social progress," says Kanter. "The vanguard model is not only good for business and society, writ large, but is also good for individuals. The newer generation of professionals and managers want satisfying work and a paycheque certainly, but they also want to be members of an institution that contributes to the common good."

A social purpose also reminds us to quit navel-gazing and keep looking outside our organization for problems to solve and needs to be met. You won't find any inspiration for innovation in a meeting room or in a 50-slide PowerPoint.

Chances are, your most innovative and engaged colleagues are the ones who are well connected and networked to the outside world.

Kanter predicts that big societal problems will be the next frontier for innovation. Smart, sustainable and successful organizations will figure out how to shorten the loop between challenges in society and innovative solutions.

"At each phase of the innovation process -- generating ideas, selling others on those ideas and executing the projects to turn ideas into realities -- purpose-driven companies gain advantages," says Kanter.

"When you bring society inside the organization, the possibilities increase for success at every point in the innovation process."

So dig up -- and dust off -- your organization's mission, vision and values. If there's no mention of social purpose, start a conversation and keep talking. You'll make your organization better and you'll make our community stronger.

Book review: Customer service in the age of consumer generated content

2009-08-31T11:17:43-04:00

Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000

by Pete Blackshaw

(Doubleday, $25)

I'm reliving happy childhood memories yet having serious second thoughts.

Maybe it's because of heat stroke after a day at Long Point Provincial Park or the hour that's left until our daughter's soccer game.

Whatever the reason, my health-conscious wife suggests doing something we've never done in all our many years of dating and marriage. "Let's pick up a bucket of fried chicken on the way home," she says.

Smelling those secret herbs and spices sends me back to family get-togethers, crowded around the kitchen table in my grandparents' bungalow on Stevenson Avenue. Although my grandmother would spend the better part of a week cooking enough food to feed the neighbourhood, my grandfather would insist on adding a bucket of chicken to the bounty. To aid in his great escape from the house for a half-hour of solitude, my grandfather would recruit me as co-pilot on his chicken runs. "Helen, the boy wants some chicken," my grandfather would announce as we slipped out the side door and made a break for his Golf Rabbit. Once at the store, we'd pilfer a year's supply of wet naps, salt and pepper packages, and plastic utensils. And at dinner, I'd skip the mixed vegetable gelatin salad and instead make a meal out of congealed chicken skin donated by the grown-ups.

But this happy memory's fading fast, and I'm losing my appetite, thanks to the customer at the head of the line. Seems he bought a bucket a few weeks back, sat the family down for dinner and found not one but four pieces of finger-licking chicken with feathers still attached. The customer says he called the manager to complain and was promised four featherless wings.

Only the cashier isn't buying the story. She's flipping through a binder, reading page after page of handwritten notes and finding no record of the phone call. The customer asks the cashier if the manager's around. No, but the supervisor's working the deep fryer. So the supervisor comes out, hears the same story, flips through the same pages and comes to the same non-decision. The supervisor tells the customer to call back tomorrow. But no free chicken today, so sorry.

Now, if a customer has a lousy experience yet still comes back for more, wouldn't you be grateful? Wouldn't you gladly throw in four pieces of chicken that must cost all of 50 cents? And if that customer is telling and retelling the gory details in a store full of customers, wouldn't you shut down the story as fast as you possibly could by serving up a free order of chicken with jumbo orders of green coleslaw and macaroni salad? And if you were the manager and took that call, wouldn't you get in your car, drive over and personally deliver a bucket yourself?

The store caught a lucky break. The customer could've posted a picture online of his feathered chicken. He could've taped his call with the manager, videotaped the cashier and supervisor delivering spectacularly lousy customer service and posted it on YouTube.

Welcome to the age of consumer-generated media, says author, Planet Feedback founder and Nielsen Online senior executive Pete Blackshaw. The days of lousy service and shortchanging customers is over. Thanks to social media such as blogs, Facebook and Twitter, customers are finding each other online, swapping horror stories and causing some serious grief.

"Throughout the history of commerce, consumers have been at the mercy of business," says Blackshaw. "Consumers have traditionally had limited access to one another and few outlets for feedback and communication. But the Internet has changed that."

Consumers are the new centre of the universe. Some web-savvy customers have more influence and power than ever before -- and more power than what your advertising and marketing budget can buy. And you need to listen obsessively to customers if you have any hope of protecting your organization's most valuable asset.

"Credibility may not be on your balance sheet, but it's the best asset you've got," says Blackshaw. "Credibility is the only valid currency in this vast and noisy marketplace." Credibility is the product of six key drivers - trust, authenticity, transparency, listening, responsiveness and affirmation. Ignore or fail to live up to any of these six drivers and customers will make you pay a steep, brand-damaging price.

Thanks to the Internet, consumers now own your brand. They own your messages. And they own the conversations about how, where and if they'll invite your brands into their lives.

I won't be inviting a bucket of fried chicken back into my life. I checked obsessively for feathers. Didn't eat the skin. And I decided this was one happy childhood memory I wasn't passing on to my kids.

Book review: Leadership skills for an uncertain future

2009-08-17T08:08:12-04:00

Leaders Make the Future- Ten New Leadership Skills for an Uncertain World

By Bob Johansen

(Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., $26.95)

So here's a cheery thought.

What if, in 2019, we look back on today and reminisce about the good old days? Days that, in retrospect, were kinder, gentler and simpler. Days when job losses and bailouts were our biggest worries and we still had some idea as to which end was up.

Author Bob Johansen thinks that's what could happen. Johansen is a distinguished fellow, past president and board member of the Institute for the Future. The institute, formed in 1968 by engineers and mathematicians from RAND and the Stanford Research Institute, issues 10-year forecasts and works with clients such as Procter & Gamble, Disney, Kraft Foods and Hallmark.

Brace yourself for stormy weather. "We are entering a threshold decade: our natural, business, organizational and social systems will reach tipping points of extreme challenge and some of those systems are likely to break," says Johansen.

We'll all be living in a VUCA world, marked by unprecedented volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. Climate change and a host of other factors will create unprecedented displacements, making this the Age of Diasporas. The gap between rich and poor will widen further, and food security will prove to be the flashpoint for redistribution and retribution. Expect to be confronted with local to global dilemmas to which there are no solutions and no way to duck and cover. As former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger once said, dilemmas can't be solved. They can only be survived.

The need for strong leaders to make hard choices in tough times will never be greater. But don't lose faith. Johansen says smart leaders can also create a better future.

"Leaders need not be overwhelmed and pummelled by the world of VUCA. The future will also be loaded with opportunities. Leaders must have the skills to take advantage of those opportunities, as well as the agility to sidestep the dangers."

Here are the 10 new leadership skills Johansen recommends we develop now to make the most of what's coming our way.

1. A maker instinct with the inner drive to build, grow and make things better with a do-it-ourselves approach to leadership.

2. Clarity to cut through the confusion and contradictions of a VUCA world and chart plans and paths that are precise and prescient.

3. Dilemma flipping to reframe unsolvable challenges as opportunities.

4. Hands-on, first-person, real-world immersive learning.

5. Bio-empathy and seeing the world from nature's point of view where everything's connected

6. Constructive depolarization to calm tense situations, bridge differences and find common ground in an uncertain world.

7. Quiet transparency, with the ability to be open and authentic about what matters to you without advertising yourself.

8. Innovating through rapid prototyping with a focus on failing early, often and cheaply.

9. Connecting with business and social-change networks through the wonders of smart mob organizing. "Leaders are what they can organize. They make connections and draw links."

10. Focusing on commons creating to foster collaboration and achieve mutual success.

Apply these leadership skills in a VUCA world, and Johansen says volatility will yield to vision, uncertainty to understanding, complexity to clarity and ambiguity to agility.

"Leaders will make the future, but they won't make it all at once, and they can't make it alone. This will be a make-it-ourselves future," says Johansen. "The space between judging too soon (the classic mistake of problem-solvers) and deciding too late (the classic mistake of academics) is a space leaders of the future must love -- without staying there too long."

So if you care about the world our kids and grandchildren will inherit from us and the dilemmas they'll be forced to confront, it's time to get up, stand up and start making the future.

Book review: Strategy for Sustainability

2009-08-04T08:00:11-04:00

Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto

By Adam Werbach

Harvard Business Press ($25)

Contrary to what consultants love to tell us, you don't actually have to lose sight of the shore to discover new lands.

Just book yourself a Sunday afternoon cruise on the Hamilton Harbour Queen. The captain and crew do a great job in welcoming you aboard and offer a running commentary on Hamilton Harbour's past, present and future.

About halfway into your cruise, you'll hear the perfect pickup line for an image-conscious city that's forever searching for a better way to sell itself to strangers. You'll learn that Hamilton is home to North America's largest inland harbour. Now, there's something to actually brag about and build a brand around.

And it gets better. If we do our homework and stay focused on the big picture, our city's best asset could also be Hamilton's sustainability showcase to the world. All the key components of sustainability -- economic, environmental, social and cultural -- are already in play all along 45 kilometres of shoreline.

There's a pretty cool mash-up of residential and recreational, industrial and commercial uses happening at the harbour. And from the upper deck of the Harbour Queen it's easy to imagine what's possible. An outdoor amphitheatre, bandshell and skating rink. A field of cricket pitches. Bicycle, canoe and kayak rentals. An outdoor farmers' market. Mixed housing, a cluster of cafes and restaurants and a hotbed of small businesses with an entrepreneurial flair. And underpinning it all would be sustainable, job-creating industries contributing to and benefiting from the economic, environmental and social health of the harbour.

So if we get it right, everyone driving over the Skyway will look over and see a harbour and a community that's internationally recognized and celebrated as a leader in sustainability.

The timing couldn't be better. Smart businesses, organizations and communities are realizing sustainability is the only sure bet for thriving in perpetuity in a fast-changing world, says author Adam Werbach, Global CEO of Saatchi and Saatchi S (CCT) and a former president with the Sierra Club.

"Sustainability is bigger than a public relations stunt, bigger than a green product line, bigger even than a heartfelt but part-time nod to ongoing efforts to save the planet," says Werback. "Imagined and implemented fully, sustainability drives a bottom-line strategy to save costs, a top-line strategy to reach a new consumer base, and a talent strategy to get, keep and develop employees, customers and your community."

Werbach's come up with a framework to help organizations develop and implement sustainability strategies. It starts with STaR mapping, a quick and dirty analysis of societal, technological and resource trends and changes that could help or hurt your organization. Do you know what's going on in the world outside your walls, what's on the horizon and whether you're ready, willing and able to seize the opportunities?

Drawing on your analysis, you then set what Werbach calls a North Star goal. Make your goal big, bold and overarching. Play to your organization's strengths and link directly back to your core mission and reason for being. Set an ambitious, inspirational and achievable goal that everyone in your organization will believe in, contribute to and help make happen within the next five to 15 years.

With your analysis done and your North Star goal set, it's now time to get your organization's TEN cycle firing on all cylinders. For a sustainability strategy to succeed, Werbach says you'll need to commit to complete transparency of information and communications, earn the full engagement of staff and management and build a stronger and ever-growing network of internal champions and external partners.

"Sustainability provides a fresh conversation for soliciting employee input, unleashing employee creativity, surfacing and recognizing leadership talent and driving innovation -- all of which further engage employees."

Werbach highlights the work Wal-Mart is doing around sustainability. The company's set North Star goals of producing zero waste and running on 100 per cent renewable energy.

To make sustainability real and relevant to its two million associates, Wal-Mart introduced the personal sustainability project.

The voluntary project encourages associates to adopt repeatable, enjoyable, small-scale nano-practices that support and advance a culture of sustainability. Day-long workshops for associates and managers from every store offered primers on sustainability, grassroots enrolment techniques and a whole lot of inspiration. Within six months, the personal sustainability project spread to more than 4,500 stores across the United States, with more than 500,000 staff adopting and following through personal sustainability practices at work and at home.

"Small steps matter," says Werbach. "Instead of focusing solely on the game-changing win, the small steps prepare your organization for the turbulence facing our world. When a situation seems too complicated to grasp, grasping it isn't always entirely necessary or even possible -- so do what you can, when you can. Act now."

You can act now and take the first step by reading Werbach's book and spending a Sunday afternoon cruising around Hamilton Harbour.