Leadership and Management / Turning Adversity to Advantage

Following up this week’s earlier post ‘Throwing Away Ideas,’ Toby Moores also referred to Guy Kawasaki’s assertion that the conventional notion of ‘Release, Test, Build’ should be turned on its head and become ‘Release, Test, Build’ in the world online world of community feedback and input. Guy goes through this notion in one of his keynotes in the section ‘Ship Then Test’ or what he colourfully refers to as ‘Don’t Worry, Be Crappy’. In clip above, Guy relate this concept to the Macintosh, but for the context of the whole presentation, it is best to go to his ‘The Art of Innovation’ presentation (24:14 in the index on the right hand column) where he says the following…

“It is my experience that entrepreneurs that succeed…Don’t worry, be crappy. By this I mean, when you have a revolution, when it is literally the next curve, it is 10 times better, it is okay to have elements of crappiness. The first laser printer was too slow. It only printed one side. It only printed on 8 ½ by 11. $7000. It was a piece of crap. But it was a revolutionary piece of crap. It was 10 times better than the best daisy wheel printer. If you wait for the perfect world where chips are fast enough and chips are cheap enough…and with the Macintosh if you wait for the perfect world where there are big hard disks, and there bigger monitors, and there’s slots and there’s colours, and there’s wireless and there is all these perfect things, you will never ship. The way it works is ‘ship then test’. ‘Ship then test’. (except life sciences). That’s the way it works. Windows users are going to find out about this with Vista. Ship then test. Don’t worry be crappy. I’m telling you that if you have something truly revolutionary, it’s okay if your first laser printer has elements of crap to it, it’s okay if your first online bookstore has problems with it. But you have to be revolutionary. People will accept a lot of stuff if you are truly changing the world.”

Today’s blog stemmed from an event I’ve started going when schedule permits where real flesh and blood blogging folk get together face to face for human interaction – the London Social Media Café. Started by veteran UK digerati Lloyd Davis, the LSMC meets on Friday mornings at what is becoming the Guerbois of the London social media scene, the Coach and Horses pub.

A few weeks ago, Toby Moores of Sleepydog led a discussion about the influence that bloggers play which led onto a discussion on various dimensions to the creative process. Toby talked about his business whose focus is generating creative ideas and noted, “We need to have 200 ideas to get one good one.” To which one of the group commented, ‘If you have enough ideas, then you can be prepared to throw away quite a few.’

Willingness to come up with the failed ideas you won’t use gets you to the good ones that change your business and more

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A nifty feature of LinkedIn is the ability to raise questions to the community. Recently, Vassilis N. Siakos asked the question: “A good Manager does things right, while a good Leader does the ...right things. What does it take to do the right things right?” The question prompted 9 pages of responses.

The lion’s share seem to articulate the model that ‘Leaders initiate direction and Manager follow process to get there’ or more simply the ‘what’ versus the ‘how’, the ‘ends’ versus the ‘means’. An example is Yasushi Suenaga’s ‘Managers cook following recipe created by Leaders.’ This articulation maps somewhat to the upside/downside model of leadership if one interprets the ‘direction’ as the opportunity and upside, and one sees ‘following process’ and insurance to avoid not getting there.

The second most common characterisation was the parallel with ‘Effectiveness and Efficiency’. As Jerome Jewell outlined, “Doing things right = Efficiency. Doing the right things = Effectiveness. The combination of the two = Productivity.” I’m not a fan of this model applied to Leadership and Management. I think effectiveness and efficiency are more applicable to Blanchard ‘Situational Leadership’ which describes different leadership proficiencies required along the lifecycle of a project or undertaking.

Some of my other favourite responses included…

"A good leader asks the right questions, whereas a good manager finds the right answers." – Peter Nguyen

“Leaders produce dramatic significant change, help an organisation to adapt in a changing environment. Managers create and maintain order and predictability, help an organisation to be on time and on budget” – Rod Makin quoting John Kotter

This week I celebrated perhaps the most notable milestone a Harvard graduate can have in marking the successes and failures of their life…the 25th Reunion. The event is a five day affair complete with cocktails, games (the rowing team convened for a ceremonial row down the Charles River), presentations and assorted gatherings. The university produces an 1,134 page “25^th Anniversary Report” where everyone in the class submits an update on their life’s journey usually replete with quite humbling achievements.

And in and amongst this celebration of success and accomplishment rang out J K Rowling’s sterling Commencement Address espousing the embrace of failure (video link above and excerpted highlights below)…

“On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure…

Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools. What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure…

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment. However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all ­ in which case, you fail by default. Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.”

Speaking with classmate Gwen Knapp about how the address was just as apropos to the 25^th reunion class (which is honoured by processing into the ceremony and given their seats actually on the stage with Rowling) noting, “At this point everyone has experienced some sort of loss, and it has made them better people.” It was an inspiring week between Rowling’s wizardly words and reconnecting with so many long time friends in the prime of their lives coloured by both proud accomplishments and enriching failures.

        
Fellow housemates and crewmates at joining in the 25th celebrations

We had a sales review meeting yesterday with Austen Mulinder, Microsoft’s worldwide VP for Enterprise Sales. A relatively new executive at Microsoft having been with the company just about a year, he still had many quite fresh perspectives on our approach to sales.

“Sales is both art and science. And you need to have both. The thing is that you can’t win a deal with science. You win deal through the art. But you can lose deals if you don’t get the science right.”

Austen went on to describe the critical role of sales leadership to ‘create the science and hire/nurture artists.’ The ‘art’ is that intangible and often indescribable understanding and connection people have and can forge with other people and in the sales context those people are customers. The ‘science’ is the ‘dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s’, having smart account plans, good CRM systems, etc.

Having spent a good deal of my career in sales, what he talked about really hit home and aligned to the leadership model of upside/downside I talk about in this blog and it inspired leader/manager Distinction #18…

"Sales Leaders in sales create art; Sales Managers build the science. Both together build long-term mutual value”