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”

Perhaps the most infamous form of ‘crash’ and burn failure in all of Microsoft mystique is having a demo crash while sharing the stage with Bill Gates. Our internal newsletter in the Microsoft marketing community featured an interview with Craig Bellinson, former Speech Assistant to Billg. Craig is a accomplished story teller, but the anecdotes he focused in on were the trials of adversity which left him better off, even the ones in front of Bill.

“He has also learned that, to some degree, pain is unavoidable, but that it is always possible to learn from it. He remembers how, back in 1995, after honing his skills as a presenter before hundreds of Windows-friendly audiences, he was assigned the task of giving a Windows 95 demo to a hostile OS/2 user group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

"They kicked my hide up and down the hallways for about an hour and a half," he says. "I kind of beat myself up about it for a little while, until I realized what it made me do was really buckle down and understand the competition deeply. So the lesson that I took from it was that if you're not learning, you're not necessarily growing— and sometimes that doesn't happen until something goes wrong. Some people look at that as, ‘Well, I've failed.' While I really try to look at that as a learning opportunity."

It was also an opportunity to toughen his hide, and that would come in handy. Beilinson says he was responsible for the most disastrous demo in Bill Gates's history with Microsoft. With comedian Conan O'Brien accompanying him on stage during the 2005 CES Keynote, Gates endured mishap after mishap. "If we did five demos, all five of them crashed," Beilinson says. "We had an Xbox hit the blue screen of death. The most commonly heard phrase at that CES that year was, ‘I didn't even know an Xbox could blue-screen!'"

And yet, as he notes, Beilinson learned from that nightmarish evening, and went on to do hundreds of keynotes with Gates after that. Failure, he says, "happens to the best of us in the best of circumstances." It does not have to be fatal.”

Contrary to Conan's quip, no one was fired.

If you look in www.dictionary.com under ‘sportsmanship’, I suspect that they have uploaded a new definition and it is this gesture by the Central Washington University software team. It is a remarkable ‘embrace’ of ‘failure’ in more than one way: ‘CWU players carry WOU player around bases after knee injury following HR.’

“ With two runners on base and a strike against her, Sara Tucholsky of Western Oregon University uncorked her best swing and did something she had never done, in high school or college. Her first home run cleared the center-field fence.

But it appeared to be the shortest of dreams come true when she missed first base, started back to tag it and collapsed with a knee injury. She crawled back to first but could do no more. The first-base coach said she would be called out if her teammates tried to help her. Or, the umpire said, a pinch runner could be called in, and the homer would count as a single. Then, members of the Central Washington University softball team stunned spectators by carrying Tucholsky around the bases Saturday so the three-run homer would count — an act that contributed to their own elimination from the playoffs.

“Central Washington first baseman Mallory Holtman, the career home run leader in the Great Northwest Athletic Conference, said, ‘You deserve it, you hit it over the fence,’ and we all kind of just laughed.” As the trio reached home plate, Tucholsky said, the entire Western Oregon team was in tears. Central Washington coach Gary Frederick, a 14-year coaching veteran, called the act of sportsmanship “unbelievable.”

Her home run sent Western Oregon to a 4-2 victory, ending Central Washington’s chances of winning the conference and advancing to the playoffs.”

Sometimes the ‘game’ is bigger than what appears directly in front you and taking a loss means a bigger victory.

Last month, I attended our annual global summit for Microsoft senior management to prepare for the upcoming fiscal year. The time is a chance to reflect on results, challenges and of course the leadership we provide to our respective parts of the company.

The host of the meeting is, like Allan Leighton featured last month, another Walmart executive alumnus, COO Kevin Turner who himself invests a lot of time, energy and thought on the subject of Leadership. At his keynote and later in an internal web-cast symposium he did on the topic, he shared a few choice words many of which focused on the role of adversity…

[Referring to the building of the Windows franchise] “They just refused to fail. Windows took ten years to be profitable.”

[Referring to Sam Walton’s description of looking for the downsides to address] “Divine discontent. No matter how well we did it yesterday, we can do it better today.”

[Referring to the Microsoft culture and values] “One of our corporate values is embracing self-criticism without getting de-motivated.”

[Referring to professional development] “Improvement always requires some degree of failure. Tough times don't make you who you are, tough times show you who you are”

Kevin talked about building on one’s strengths versus fixing weaknesses. It might seem that not focusing fixing weakness would be out of step with ‘embracing failure’, but actually it is the other way around. Fixing a weakness is rejecting that shortcoming and investing sometimes disproportionate resources to overcome it. Embracing failure is accepting it and moving on. Of course, there are limits and contexts to the application of all of these tenets. Glaring or debilitating weaknesses certainly need attention. But, many times one can manage around the weakness typically through partnership. It’s really a variation of the management adage to ‘focus on core business’ (hopefully a strength).

Kevin does demonstrate characteristics of both the ‘Leader’ and ‘Manager’ persona as this blog defines it around upside and downside. His COO role is central to meeting the business commitments and ensuring the smooth operation of the enterprise (ie. a manager averting downside). But, when we talks about leadership, he focuses very keenly on the upside especially around people. His first principle of his leadership talk was about bringing “people from where they are to where they want to be.” He talked about a question he was asked by a manager and now he asks all of his reports when he first met them, “What are your dreams?”

Good piece on MSNBC on thriving after adversity – ‘Resilience can get you through life's trials’: “A growing body of research on those who've survived some of life's toughest trials reveals a handful of traits resilient people share and other people can develop.” The research highlighted a number of traits most common in the most resilient people…

· They take control of their lives. “Experts say she tapped into one of the most important traits resilient people share: They don't see themselves as victims whose fate is in the hands of others. "It's easy to blame other people for your problems and wait until they fix them," says psychiatrist Steven Wolin, MD, coauthor with Sybil Wolin, PhD, of "The Resilient Self: How Survivors of Troubled Families Rise Above Adversity." "But then you never get to rise to the occasion and witness your own strength. If you think of yourself as a problem solver, life goes very differently."

· The forge connections. “Studies of people who don't have a strong family support system find that the most resilient, like Hallowell, seek aid from others. "In research on abused children, those who were resilient as adults had at least one person who stood by them," says Brooks. Some researchers speculate that developing connections to others may be our most important emotional survival skill. Studies have shown that people who had many relationships — with family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, even within church and community groups — actually lived longer than those who had the fewest.”

· They allow pain to spur growth. “Studies of victims of rape and incest, life-threatening illness, natural disasters, and combat, as well as Holocaust survivors and parents of chronically ill children, show that resilient people find the proverbial silver lining by reinventing themselves. Some gain a new appreciation for life; others, a renewed closeness to the people they love. "After overcoming a challenge, you develop a deep self-confidence and sense of optimism: 'I've been here, done that, and I'll survive,'" says Al Siebert, PhD, author of ‘The Resiliency Advantage,’ who has interviewed hundreds of such survivors.”

· They insist on changing the world. “Always give before you take: Helping others may be part of a human self-righting mechanism.” The article looked at Oklahoma bombing rescue workers who despite the traumas inherent in their work still faced no post-traumatic stress symptoms.

I found the last tenet most intriguing since I have long seen Microsoft as an organisation that does embrace failure and its blogosphere alter ego of the ‘Blue Monster’ epitomises this particular trait (“changing the world”) of resilient organisations.

When I first started this blog about embracing failure, I explicitly circumscribed the scope to exclude true ‘tragedies’ focusing more on “smaller failings that make up the lions share of our daily struggles.”  But Professor Randy Pausch, now famous for his Carnegie Mellon ‘Last Lecture’ has taken that positive spirit into even that extreme realm. As introduced by his colleague…

“For those of you who know Randy, Randy brings a particular zest for life and humor even while facing death. To Randy, this is simply another adventure.”

After forwarding the BBC April Fool’s Joke on flying penguins (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dfWzp7rYR4&feature=related) to my family, my Dad wrote back saying that it reminded him of an excerpt from Randy’s book which underscored his buoyant perspective…

“In the virtual reality course I taught, I encouraged students to attempt hard things and not worry about failing.  At the end of the semester, I presented a stuffed penguin—‘The First Penguin Award’— to the team that took the biggest gamble while not meeting its goals.  The award came from the idea that when penguins jump into the water that might have predators, well, one of them’s got to be the first penguin.  In essence, it was prize for ‘glorious failure’.”

Dr. Pausch is truly a hall of famer among the ‘turning adversity to advantage’ role models. ‘First Penguins’ to all those who take risks and see the broader benefits that even failures can bring.

For the full lecture, check out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo.

I connected with Allan Leighton on the heels of my posts below and he agreed to a sort of online ‘interview’ to follow up the observations taken from his book On Leadership.

• Q: Do you consider there to be a difference between ‘leadership’ and ‘management’ or is it all just a bunch of semantic word games?
• AL: “Leaders "do the right thing".....ie framework ......Managers "do things right" ie execution.”
• Q:  Do you consider yourself a ‘leader who can manage’ or a ‘manager who can lead’?
• AL: “Both”
• Q:  What are the biggest challenges people face in going after upside opportunities?
• AL: “Stretching the imagination....whilst knowing what's real.”
• Q:  What are the biggest challenges people face in averting downside risks?
• AL: “Stretching the imagination....whilst knowing what's real.”
• Q:  What executives or leaders do you hold as paragons of demonstrating and balancing both superb ‘leadership’ and ‘management’?
• AL: “I don't have any one....but copy shamelessly all the good bits I see that fit with my style and personality”
• Q:  What question didn’t I ask that you thought I would or should?
• • AL: “This one.”

Allan is certainly not the type of person to pander to anyone much less a relatively obscure blogger so I think he was sincere with his first answer which echoes my own perspective and in fact the very strap line of this blog. He is certainly direct and to the point in his responses…perhaps an interview more suited to Twitter than MSN Spaces. He is also characteristically balanced with the answers to the first four questions underscoring his balanced outlook. Of course, that is why I blogged on him and is book and invited the interview…because I was impressed by his balance in this subject. His final answer was either cheeky, missing the point (it was a bit of a wild card to give him a chance to share one of his pet reflections) or downright recursively paradoxical.

“Most entrepreneurs have been moulded by at least one failure. Failure is born out of risk and being prepared to break the rules.” – Leighton

Allan Leighton’s book ‘On Leadership’ which I featured last week also highlighted a host of examples of the power of embracing failure to successful leadership…

“I can’t emphasise enough how important it is to create a culture where mistakes are permissible. If a team doesn’t make mistakes, it’s pretty certain they won’t be creating successes either. And it you punish failure, you create a risk-adverse culture, where people believe they’ll be hounded if they get it wrong and get little benefit if they get it right. They’ll never realise their full potential. Moreover, just as a good leader can make mistakes and bounce back, so can the whole team, and they can learn valuable lessons from the experience. Most of the most successful companies in history have been prepared to fail again and again when they enter a new field. Electronics companies such as Sony and Microsoft, for example, have been vilified for poor products, yet their designers have persisted with version after version until they finally succeeded.”

He goes on to share illustrative stories from James Dyson (“fifteen years of development, 5,127 prototypes and rejection by a string of companies”), Fred Smith of FedEx, Sir Terry Leahy of Tesco, and Charles Dunstone of Carphone Warehouse.

“When you are taking a portfolio approach, not all of your decisions will be good. In fact, failure at some point is inevitable: we make mistakes and will continue to make them. I don’t want people too scared to make mistakes, otherwise they can’t make successes.” – Sir Tom Hunter, West Coast Capital

Finally, right at the end of the book, he concludes with a sub-chapter titled “Making Mistakes” in which he recounts his “worst ever mistake ever made.” He talks about a major initiative to revamp about forty MFI home furnishing stores. He recalls being at a low when ASDA CEO Archie Norman stopped by his office and asked what was the matter:

“I told him that I had really screwed up on those stores. I was going to have to undo them and spend another £10 million redoing what I should have got right in the first place. Archie laughed and said, ‘Thank Christ for that. Everyone knows you screwed up. Everyone knows you are going around like a bear with a sore head, but nobody wants to be the one to come and tell you. Just get on with it.’”

Allan learned his lessons, fixed the mistakes and “sales immediately went up.”

I often get asked who the exemplar executives are that excel at both the Leadership and Management dimensions. Frankly, it is a rare breed and so far only a few in my own three year exploration of the subject - Red Auerbach, Richard Noble, Edmund Hillary – have really distinguished themselves with exceptional capabilities on both sides of the spectrum. I would add to this list ‘portfolio’ UK executive Allan Leighton.

I first heard Leighton’s no-nonsense perspectives on Management at Leaders In London a few years back so I was eager to dive into his examination on the subject in his book ‘On Leadership: Practical Wisdom from the People Who Know’.

The book is chock full of his own down to earth fundamentals melded with the insights of a distinctive range of British business luminaries. In fact, he offers his own aphorism on the balance of Leadership and Management (which I will add as distinction #17).

“Leaders set the context – the strategy – but managers execute.”

In fact, Leighton has already made the list with another of his distinctions featured in this past year’s Leaders in London event.

“Leaders create the Will, Managers maintain the Rhythm.”

Unlike Warren Bennis who falls into the common trap of downplaying ‘Management’, Leighton extols it in his book on ‘Leadership’…

“We don’t need millions of leaders trying to work out whether we’re doing the right thing, but we definitely need a large number of very, very good managers. It’s the way to make a company stand out and to ensure that you satisfy your customers better than anyone else. Any company that wants to get ahead has to differentiate itself from the competition by getting better managers than anyone else. The problem is that while leaders tend to get all the attention, the managers don’t.”

Leighton is perhaps the most prominent British executive demonstrating doing the right things right.

A fine quote from Geek in Disguise Steve Clayton: “No one should be ashamed to admit they are wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that they are wiser today than they were yesterday.” - Alexander Pope

At our recent Microsoft UK Leadership conference, he heard from Lord Victor Adebowale, Chief Executive of Turning Point. He talked about both the themes of the blog here noting how “Leadership is risky” and shared a number of the big risks he took in building up the organisation. He concluded, “If you don’t make mistakes, you don’t make anything.”

With the American presidential primaries in full swing, headlines around the world have been looking at the subject of ‘leadership’ for one of the biggest ‘organisations’ in the world.  My perspectives on ‘Leadership and Management’ tend to be applied to business although they have also meandered into sport, military and other enterprises.  But how does the model of Upside/Downside apply in the world of political Leadership/Management?

The notion of optimising upside and minimising downside is equally relevant.  The ‘Leaders’ are painting visions of a better life and new possibilities.  The ‘Managers’ are highlighting fears about problems and risks and how they will protect against them.

At a more philosophical level, the notions of upside and downside in politics and government map to a two critical concepts – Rights and Responsibilities.

As an American transplanted in Europe one of the cultural differences I observe is how the two societies approach the balance of Rights and Responsibilities.  The United States is infamously very focused on rights.  What started with the social-political breakthrough of the ‘Bill of Rights’ has now become a near obsession with the concept of ‘rights’ being bandied about indiscriminately for nearly anything someone feels entitled to.  And in America that’s a lot of things.  Also, the pervading notion of the ‘American Dream’ underscores the predisposition of the country to focus on the ‘upside potential’ so linked to ‘Leadership.’

Europe seems to have a more balanced view of rights and responsibilities.  There is a more focus on the people’s responsibility.  ‘Propriety’ in British society.  ‘Savoir faire’ in French society.  ‘Order and discipline’ in German society.  All of these impose a important sense of responsibility on the individuals.

Bias towards Leadership is more appropriate in times of plenty and opportunity while Management weighs in more heavily in times of want and danger.  And in the post-war half-century, America has largely experienced plenty and Europe has had many deprivations as it rebuilt its continent which perhaps explains why the two have set the fulcrum of the balance where they have. Maybe it extends further back than that when America was a nearly barren and untapped continent of resource and potential while Europe had established societies to protect with many threats surrounding her.

Distinction #16:  The Leader champions rights;  The Manager fosters responsibilities.  Both together promote a civic harmony.

Each Friday, Steve Clayton publishes a weekly email…well…’thing’…called, creatively…wait for it – ‘The Friday Thing.’ This week’s (#53) features a delightful piece called ‘20 Things I Wish I Had Known When Starting Out in Life.’ The final lesson of all – embrace failure.

“All these mistakes you’re going to make, despite this advice? They’re worth it. My 18-year-old self would probably have read this post and said, “Good advice!” And then he would have proceeded to make the same mistakes, despite good intentions. I was a good kid, but I wasn’t good at following advice. I had to make my own mistakes, and live my own life. And that’s what I did, and I don’t regret a minute of it. Every experience I’ve had (even the tequila ones) have led me down the path of life to where I am today. I love where I am today, and wouldn’t trade it for another life for all the world. The pain, the stress, the drama, the hard work, the mistakes, the depression, the hangovers, the debt, the fat … it was all worth it.”