ARCHIVES, BOOK REVIEWS

To locate book in the Archives, enter title or author or publisher name in Search Box upper right, or scroll down.

***

DELIGHT YOUR CUSTOMERS, 7 Simple Ways to Raise Your Customer Service From Ordinary to Extraordinary, by Steve Curtin, Amacom 2013

Excellent customer service is not so unusual that we fall down when we experience it, but customer service in companies that pioneered the concept and then fell down – I can think of one blue airline that now exemplifies a great concept overlaid on a weakened organization structure, for example -  is becoming frighteningly more common.  Can formerly great customer service exemplars recapture their lost pizzazz?  Can they regain the magic even when oil prices and global competitive pressures make everybody scared?

Who knows, really?  But revisiting the seven ways for employees to demonstrate exceptional customer service might be a great starting point:

1.      Express genuine interest. (For starters, remember and use the customer’s name.)

2.     Offer sincere and specific compliments (To lay the groundwork, pay attention to detail.)

3.     Share unique knowledge.  (Captivate customers with tidbits of ‘insider’ information.

4.     Use appropriate humor.  (A little laughter can quickly dispel tension and spark rapport.)

So let’s see, when the Big Blue Airline gate attendant said “there will be five steps” he wasn't talking about a drug and alcohol recovery program -  what he didn’t explain was when you arrive at Boston you’ll be forced, on your first unassisted trip post-hip surgery when your doctor advised “Whatever you do, don’t fall!,” to walk down five steps onto the actual runway because the Big Blue plane couldn't  pull up to the terminal gate – oh, no, that may be what he meant, but just to make a little joke and lighten up the cabin, that’s not what he said.  Just a little customer service joke folks – what he meant to say was you’ll be walking down onto the tarmac and then over in the darkness to yet another set of stairs, are you okay with that Miss Crutches?  See, he even met Guideline Number 1 by remembering to address the not-so-frequent flyer by her name, Miss Crutches. 

5.      Provide pleasant surprises.  (Plan in advance to offer unexpected little extras.) 

Oh wait, perhaps The Mill Girl spoke too soon, and Big Blue Airline was indeed meeting Curtin’s Number 5 Customer Service Guideline by providing this cute little stair, kind of like the chair truck on "Arrested Development" surprise, ah yes, a little extra pleasant surprise, some end-of-the-day bonus exercise..,  Thank you Big Blue for offering passenge rehab in addition to your no-frills service.

6.     Deliver service heroics.  (Go above and beyond the call of duty to solve a customer’s problem – even when the company is not at fault.)

Ah yes, and diverting Miss Crutches’ little black wheelie off to baggage claim instead of letting her calmly roll it off the plane like a normal traveler, up the ramp and into the terminal, was simply heroic on the part of Big Blue.  Impressive.  Well-considered.  Ever so thoughtful. 

Curtin offers a delightful list of pleasant surprises to inspire companies that want to create a lasting positive impression.  They include providing surprise coupons at checkout, taking 15% off an $891 car repair bill in exchange for making Toys for Tots donation, and treating a Target customer to free Starbucks’ coffee! 

“There is no additional cost to provide exceptional customer service.”  Even pleasant surprises like coffee punch cards or go to the front of the line bonuses totaled out cost little. The cost of these little extras cannot be that huge in comparison to potential lost business.  Indeed, had Big Blue airline offered Miss Crutches just a teensy little bit of extra help – certainly not a wheelchair, but maybe advance warning on the steps, or an offer to retrieve her bag – she would have been less inclined to switch a couple thousand dollars of future travel to the Southwest counter.   

 The author even recommends that Pleasant Surprises be offered as a follow-up to your last customer service experience, as a reminder and trigger to reinforce the customer connection.  Curtin cites the Allstate Insurance offer to safe drivers who receive 5% discount for every six months of accident-free driving.  Follow-up customer service, however, may be a little more complicated to remember to maintain says Curtin because of our tendency to no longer exchange business cards as we move on to the next experience.  A good data base of customer contact info works well here for the companies who chose to make use of it. 

Finally, Curtin reminds us that customers don’t remember their interactions with employees, what they remember are moments within their interactions with employees – so like The Mill Girl, the stories that stick in my mind are the little emotional highs and lows I can’t forget – dark stairs in the night, a rainy tarmac – and the few gloriously pleasant surprises that still lie waiting. 

***

Escape the Improvement Trap, Five Ingredients Missing in Most Improvement Recipes, by Michael Bremer and Brian McKibben, CRC Press, 2010

Escape the Improvement Trap could have had another title, something like Get Real, or Sign up For What Really Works Better Than An Acronym.  Nevertheless, the authors assembled a great roster of advisory experts to guide the content, and they created a believable, faux corporation Independence Enterprise Inc.  to illustrate the five ingredients missing in most improvement recipes.

This book has charts and assessments, a great chapter on metrics, and some usable, thinkable statistics, so I would say among the hundreds of business books published annually, this one comes closer to offering executives a look at a whole range of techniques to take organizations several steps up.

In particular, I love the case study on Nissan, a company that nearly, despite its iconic vehicle successes like the Datsun 280Z, dropped out of the auto world.  About 15 years ago everything started to go wrong for Nissan – the look, the designs, their costs, profits and profit margins.  This was a Japanese automaker that couldn’t quite compete with the Hondas and the Toyotas of the world.  Yet, here we are only a few years into Carlos Ghosn’s era and we find not only has Nissan boosted itself up to a respectable market position globally, they have managed to spit out, very quickly, profit margins – 8+% -  that wiped out their earlier rivals who slog along at 1 – 3%.  Ghosn shook up the whole auto industry with his ferocious dedication to a couple of this book’s key ingredients, metrics, customer focus, and executive mindset.  One might say that while Toyota’s obsession is process, Nissan developed a broader global view with Ghosn’s entry. 

Here’s the full list of Bremer and McCabe’s “Five Missing Ingredients”:

1. A meaningful business value proposition and strategy that drives key improvement actions

2. An engaging environment where people can do their best work

3. A focus on meaningful metrics while avoiding irrelevant details

4. Process improvement efforts that maximize cross-functional process performance and foster deeper process understanding, innovation, and execution of best work practices

5. An executive mindset that focuses on customer value, people development, process performance, and business improvement outcomes, not solely on savings

 The book is organized to make each chapter an easy and clear read; there are good summaries to highlight.  Examples from GM, Saturn, Toyota and Lexus, as well as other identified companies help the reader visualize actual solutions.  The authors cover lean methods in depth, although supply management – one of Ghosn’s key strengths at Nissan, for example – are not examined as thoroughly, nor are IT systems, although MRP is mentioned briefly.  The maturity assessment at the back of the book will be a favorite transformation starting point. 

***

Escape Velocity, Free Your Company’s Future From The Pull of the Past, Geoffrey A. Moore, Harper Collins, 2011

When Moore wrote his best seller Crossing the Chasm, he presented a template that made

sense to tech companies wanting to move to the next level.  This time, Moore is offering another fresh approach, a practical plan even the most established companies can use to move beyond past success and drive next generation growth from new lines of business. 

What exactly is “the pull of the past?”  Moore describes it as “a hidden force that is working against your best efforts,” and he asks, “What if this force is able to mysteriously redirect resource allocation so that it never quite gets deployed against the new agendas?”  Pretty scary, but it couldn’t happen here?

Consultants make bazillions wielding unfreeze and refreeze tools against cultures that cling to the past and reinforce their positions with all sorts of stubborn push-backs – the good stock market numbers, the market dominance success factors.  But because change bangs on the door of even our most “mature” organizations, Moore is right to wonder how to pull away from the past. 

I like to think of the United States steel industry as a ripe example.  During the 1960’s the late President Kennedy frightened and antagonized steel industry executives with a perceived threat to invoke the Taft-Hartley act.  This to me signaled the approaching locked-in frozen stage for an industry stubbornly unaware of any serious outside threats.  Japanese steel at that time was regarded as inferior, no threat to the well-established behemoth that was the US industry centered in Pittsburgh.  Yet, as Ken Iverson, founder of Nucor Steel told me, that blindness to new threats blessed him with precious time to move under the radar.  Iverson’s initial product offerings were also laughed off as inferior to anything US Steel could make.  But something happened to the steel production process that shifted the mature cost scale out of the hands of big producers like US Steel, Republic and others – what changed everything was the mini furnace. 

Iverson was a sharp, gentlemanly figure who kept black swans at his estate in North Carolina.  His headquarters office was on the second floor of a non-descript building housed in a strip mall off the highway. His trim athletic appearance and crisply ironed shirts contrasted with other steel executives whom I had met earlier.  To me, it was the difference between a guy on the come, someone who was hungry and ferociously well prepared to take his share somehow, someway, and the guys who were at this point “only in it for the money.”

Iverson believed that he could melt scrap steel, the detritus of Detroit’s junkyards, in an electric furnace, the first of which came from Germany, and eventually produce steel – non-union, I might add, another problem for big steel – cheaper, and soon of higher quality than others.  Fortunately for Iverson, no one believed, or even knew, what he was about to attempt.

When Nucor’s first furnace was installed, it was missing a critical assembly to get it running.  Somehow that part magically appeared overnight at Nucor’s receiving dock.  It had come, as Iverson told me the story, from U. S. Steel!  And the rest is history – Nucor’s single Alabama plant was supplemented by one in Indiana, which I also visited, a plant run by Iverson’s right-hand man who became the next president.  Because this new operation was also union-free, there was some criticism of it being a “cowboy steel” site – union rules weren’t followed, and workers took liberties with traditionally accepted shop-floor practices.  Having had my first consulting engagement at a Pennsylvania steel mill that ran strictly to union rules, a place where every one was missing fingers or toes, I was more open than many to Iverson’s fresh, non-traditional approach.

I don’t know if you can say that Iverson won – there are still steel mills in the US, and some of them are being periodically refurbished, but its clear that with the entry of Japanese, the Koreans, and the Chinese, the marketplace went global and some traditional, “mature” makers melted back into the earth. That’s a pretty strong argument for escaping the pull of the past!

So let’s look at how author Geoffrey Moore sees it going down.  Moore starts with a model, “The Hierarchy of Powers” which he uses in separate chapters to illustrate how a company can pinpoint and capitalize on its strengths, or powers.  His chapter on Category Powers offers a timely model for reengineering portfolio management, starting with the example of how Businessweek and Newsweek were each sold in the fall of 2010, for $1.00!  3Par, a storage company, was acquired for $2.3B!  Moore attributes the price differential to print media in maturity falling off the end of the category maturity life cycle as digital media displaced them.  Advertising agencies struggle with the same shift.  And Moore conclusion is that it doesn’t matter how good your brand is – think Polaroid or Kodak - when the next technology maturity shift happens, the market moves. 

Moore’s illustration of the Category Maturity Life Cycle summarizes the usefulness of this book when he says,

“Category power, in short, is the number-one predictor of future economic performance.  So if you are going to free your future from the pull of the past,

this is the place to begin.  The exercise goes by the name of portfolio management, and it begins with the category life cycle.”

The entire discussion of short-term objectives buttressed by short-term compensation schemes will continue to be a challenge for American companies.  

Technology life cycles, compensation, recreation.

***

Good and Mad, Transform Anger Using Mind, Body, Soul and Humor, by Jame Middelton-Moz, MS., Lisa Tener, MS., Peaco Todd, MA., Health Communications, Inc., 2012

Do you know why it can be good,  really good to get “good and mad?”  According to the authors of Good and Mad, “Anger is a messenger.  Anger tells you that something is wrong, or that you are being treated badly.”  Further, anger, if we can survive it, will give us a voice, an inescapable signal that we have standards, or that we need boundaries beyond which the world – and other people – cannot and should not go.  Take their excellent list of bad personalities:   Whining Whinnie, Temperamental Tito, Perfect Patrice, Stacy the Stamp Collector, and my favorite, Bullying Boris.  Bullying Boris intimidates every in order to get what he wants.  And a lot of the time it works!  He’s loud, self-righteous, sarcastic, unpredictable and does in fact get his way most of the time. 

Boris is an expert at intimidation.  He wins when he elicits feelings of helplessness in his victims, or when he causes them to lose control of their own tempers because that gives him the opportunity to strike back and take control. 

The authors recommend that targets stand up to Boris but avoid fighting with him.  Stop him from interrupting you;  be direct, and always, always have support at hand.  Although bullies depend on an audience for their power, the authors advise victims to not become members of the “silent majority.”  Tough advice.  When The Mill Girl thinks back on her experience with workplace bullies and family bullies, it’s clear that bringing your own posse for support makes perfect sense, but it’s where victims often fall short.  Tough advice. 

Let’s flip the script and talk recommendations if you yourself are prone to wild, fiery rages!  Hear hear, bring on the bullies.  Seriously though, here is where this book invokes some humor:

                A Safe Way to Express Your Anger

                On the bottom of your shoe, write down the incidents, people or events that anger you.               Enjoy walking around on them all week.  When you feel angry, just walk a bit more.  At the end of the week, think about the difference between walking on the words versus exploding at someone or something.  Was it helpful to have an alternative to raging during certain events?  Is it freeing to have an alternative to raging during certain events?  Is it freeing to see how you can release your anger without hurting anyone?

Patience my foot, when I get furious I wanna kill someone.  A Mill Girl at Blue Heron Journal.

***------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

***

Big Data, Analytics, and Supply Chain Optimization

We talked with Michael Watson, co-author (with Sara Lewis, Peter Cacioppi and Jay Jayaraman) of Supply Chain Network Design, Applying Optimization and Analytics to The Global Supply Chain (FT Press, 2012) about how companies can structure their supply networks for profitability, response, and crisis management and recovery.  Watson, an engineering professor and IBM veteran, believes that “network design is all about determining where a company should have facilities, both production and distribution - typically we’re not talking about headquarters or stores – but distribution  points and factories – they can be your own, they can be co-packers, or suppliers.  …What drives the decision is the need to better service your customer or reduce costs.  Decisions such as whether to put a plant in Mexico, or to locate a transportation center in Ohio, for instance, can be handled through network design.  Optimization will help companies make tradeoffs, weigh the cost of manufacturing and transportation, and help make decisions the systematic way.”  For executives who work hard to manage networks that just grew like topsy, this is why Watson’s book will make sense. 

Supply Chain Network Design optimization, according to Watson, attacks another common problem, dis-integration, or silos.  “In big companies, often whoever makes the decision doesn’t consult with others.  Maybe they don’t talk to the transportation side,” and leaving key parties out of the equation, as Toyota has discovered, leads to delivery and cost challenges. 

But optimization is scary.  Where will the numbers come from to feed the machine, and how hard is it to get started?  Watson agrees, “The exercise of looking at optimization decisions should be ongoing.  Don’t wait 10 years,” he advises.  “Stay on top of it every year, when things change, or new products or leasing decisions come up over where to make product or when to invest.  Worst case,” he says, “is to invest five million in a new plant, but not to look at the rest of the decision factors.”

The best way to understand optimization for supply networks is to look at an example.  Part V, Chapter 15, covers the JPMS Chemicals Case Study, which illustrates how different scenarios produce different network options.  In this exercise the company’s product are aggregated into three product families.  There are four manufacturing plants, and management wants to understand if, given the economic boom in India, whether there is sufficient manufacturing capacity, and whether they needed a new plant, and if so, where and how big it should be. 

Analysts started by development a baseline model of the current network, including inbound materials, using the last 12 months of demand.  This first analysis showed three of the four plants highly utilized with no spare capacity.  Although the fourth plant showed some free capacity, it was located far enough away to be too expensive to ship from there.  A what-if scenario with 20% increase in customer demand was run in profit-maximization mode to meet all expected demand.  As new factors were added to the equation the picture got clearer.  Sourcing constraints were also reviewed.  Based on the models, management was able to look at multiple scenarios to test possible plant locations.  Other non-quantifiable factors – tax benefits, proximity to key customers, skilled labor, etc – that were not included in the equation could be included in management’s overall decision process.

What becomes clear from the author’s approach to this type of systematic decision-analysis is that the information is organized and then released, or built up, layer by layer.  By adding cross-country transportation costs, one can immediately see the impact in the what-if scenario; removing or eliminating that factor can also produce an immediate result, and that exercise of cycling multiple “what-ifs” proves the value of deliberate network design.  It’s important to remember Watson’s advice about not waiting until all the data is available and perfectly scrubbed, to experiment with various what-ifs.  If your company does not have transportation cost history for a particular plant or product, an approximation will do.  The beauty of the software lies, like Excel spreadsheets, in the user’s ability to make soft, instantaneous changes.

But how much does it cost?

The interface, like a spreadsheet behind the scenes, is the optimization module.  The seeds of this network optimization lie with IBM, where the four co-authors worked, and Logic Tools, MIT Professor David Sochi-Levi’s network design brainchild that was acquired by IBM.  The original team helped companies implement, defined the necessary system elements, and trained users.  But Watson wanted to take it one step further and show potential users how important network design is now.

We asked the usual question, “How much does it cost to get into the game?” to which Watson replied, “It varies.  There is the cost to acquire the software, to train users, etc.  But this is not like ERP, one or two people in a smaller company for under 300k/year can get started and running.”  The authors supplemented the book with a website http://optimizationandanalytics.wordpress.com/ where they collected case studies, and new stories like Home Depot and Johnson Controls.    

Big Data is scary

“But how are we supposed to deal with the massive amounts of data?” we asked.  “We talk about techniques,” says Watson, “because it’s important to separate the important from the trivial.  We   build up the model step by step - now let’s add capacity and transportation cost, for instance.  Although you could get stuck at one of those steps – there’s a lot of volume, we’ve learned that there are lots of things available for free, without collecting the data.  Take warehouses for instance, we might already have a rough idea of the fixed costs for warehouse, and those estimations can work in the analytics.

***

Strategic Management of Technological Innovation, Fourth Edition, by Melissa S. Schilling, McGraw-Hill 2012

Analyze.  Formulate.  Implement.  Schilling tackles innovation in a systematic, easy-to-follow method that she illustrates with examples of well-known innovators like Apple and Google.  This is a nicely illustrated and readable book that doesn’t bury the reader with geekish over-enthusiasm or rote strategic dictums.  Plus, the book offers more help at its Online Learning Center www.mhbe.com/schilling4e. 

The book is designed to work for engineering as well as business students, using five short cases to cover up-to-date examples.  Chapter 2, shows how Google, right now tied with Microsoft as the world’s greatest innovator motivates its employees to innovate.  Despite the fact that Google (and Microsoft) cultures are at the far end of the business spectrum, there are lessons here that any business or engineering advocate will find productive to think about.

A second case, Tata Nano, deals with how to create a car in India that has the right mix – the right price point, the right features and performance, and colors – to appeal to India’s mass market.  What’s critical here is the price point Ratan Tata, head of Tata Group, set as his new product development goal - $2200.  That’s right, $2200 – at this figure Tata knew it would be the least expensive car (and almost the least expensive motorcycle or bike!) ever produced.  But what would it take to radically rethink an entire vehicle concept?  Tat’s engineers and suppliers had to start over and reconceptualize everything about what a motor car is supposed to do and how it does it.  Fascinating work.

Chapter 3 covers the argument about smartphone industry disruption which the author claims may prove a serious threat to Microsoft.  Because Microsoft now holds a very mature and dominant position over personal computing, migrating user needs to Droids and other devices may not guarantee seamless success for Microsoft in new markets.  The question of operating systems - Microsoft, Google, or some new contender – is a strategic issue that pops up with every new device.

Social networking – Ah, the social networking buzz!  The author uses the rough and tumble battle over social media – from pioneers like SixDegrees.com and Friendster, through MySpace, down to the tenuous dominance now held by Facebook, to demonstrate the strategic role of timing in an innovation process.  The pioneers in search engines – like AltaVista – and social media – MySpace – are not always the winners, and the strategic and technical issues surrounding what makes successes are great questions the author covers in this chapter and others. 

This book belongs with the other classics of innovation strategy – Clayton Christensen and Michael Porter – because, as I warn potential authors who come to me with yet another strategy book proposal, you can hear publishers and readers’ eyeballs click right back into their heads at the sound of the words strategy and strategic management – it’s just a hard sell, dry, over-cooked and mostly boring.  But Melissa Schilling rescues strategy from the depths of tortured strategic analysis and takes us into the area the US still controls – innovation – and for that single fact this book deserves a careful read followed by further energetic discussions.

Supply Management and Procurement, From the Basics to Best-in-Class, by Robert W. Turner, J. Ross Publishing, 2011

    This book is what the subtitle describes, a not too long look at most of the major points one would need to feel confident about in supply management and procurement.  Although I do see a few areas where I do not agree with the author’s treatment, it’s a good book for beginners or for professionals who work outside of supply management. 

Where Supply Management needs more strength is the area where all supply management, production and logistics operations are now being pressured  - systems that offer powerful and comprehensive technology tools to solve global supply management problems.  I am not talking about ERP here, which is covered adequately, but I would like to see definitions, examples and useful discussions of risk management, network simulation, optimization, engineering new product design etc systems, and Cloud technologies.  Also, I disagree with the characterization of JIT as an inventory control system.  When we started JIT at Briggs and Stratton, we wanted to take out inventory, yes, but the main goal was to run production a different way, smoother flows, less, inventory, etc.  We focused on lowering the water level to see the rocks, yes, but that meant controlling the factors that drove inventory, and that was the most important contribution of many from that project.

Integrating the enterprise, scm, systems

***

The Business of Wanting More, Why Some Executives Move from Success to Fulfillment and Others Don’t, by Brian Gast, Barnegat Press Company 2012

Well, isn’t that what we are supposed to do – want more?  Author Brian Gast reveals how he was an expert on how to become a hugely successful, wealthy and publicly recognized serial entrepreneur, until on another routine flight from LaGuardia back home to Colorado Springs, he found himself weeping uncontrollably.  Hmmm.

But the story doesn’t end there, and if you have the stomach for it – because this book is much harder to read than the somewhat bland “business title” indicates – it gets worse, millions of dollars worse.  For another six years Gast keeps himself on the path, builds even bigger successes, spending even bigger pots of cash on condos, art, trips, stuff.  He makes it to the edge of the Dot.com bust and something happens.  Something that combines with other forces – corporate politics, economics, and a long-suppressed understanding of just why he loved The Game so much that no matter what he continued to rack them up, why his unsatisfied needs – for that’s the best word we can choose to identify these hungers -  took him down.   

This is a useful, albeit horrifying, fall, rebirth and transformation cautionary tale which I hope most of us will never, ever experience.  Gast lived his whole corporate life big.  His epiphanies are big and so is his resolution.  Read Chapter 8 “Burst Your Bubble” to see and feel the real emotional pain Gast carried forward from his childhood, and the counter-balancing ambition his young soul developed to live. 

The Mill Girl can identify with so many pieces of this book and the frankness the author employs to uncover his transformed life is admirable.  There are strong similarities to the crazed book Street Freak, although different endings....Readers will find the steps he recommends to find a true path useful and enjoyable.  If you are open to epiphany and hard personal work …..

The Laws of Subtraction, 6 Simple Rules for Winning in the Age of Excess Everything, by Matthew E. May, McGraw-Hill, 2012

This delightful contrarian look at business and life – taking away to see more, rather than adding and adding more and more stuff, kind of like the headache I get looking through my Android Apps store?, is how author Matthew F. May sees many breakthroughs:

·         Toyota Scion

·         London’s Exhibition Road

·         Lockheed’s Skunk Works

·         FedEx rebranded logo

·         Netflix.

To this list I would add every Apple device that Steve Jobs created, from the first clunky computer, to the most lovely iPad.  Jobs was a master of simplicity and meaningful design.  In an era of packing more and more and more features into smaller packages – i.e. my Droid – his subtraction left only elegance.

May offers six simple rules:

1.        What isn’t there can often trump what is. 

Designers of the Toyota youth brand Scion essentially used this law to create the fast-selling and highly profitable xB model, a small and boxy vehicle made intentionally spare by leaving out hundreds of standard features in order to appeal to the Gen Y buyers who wanted to make a personal statement by customizing their cars with trendy options.  It wasn’t about the car.  It was about what was left out of it.

2.       The simplest rules create the most effective experience.

3.       Limiting information engages the imagination.

Each year over 125,000 people attend Comic Con, the premier event for comic book passionistas.  The magic of comics, however, is not contained within the drawn panels.  Rather, it is in the “gutter” – the white space between the frames – that holds the secret.  There is nothing in the space between.  Yet, it is here that the reader’s imagination is sparked, here that the reader creates and completes the story.

4.       Creativity thrives under intelligent constraints

5.       Break is an important part of any breakthrough.

This law is behind what has become the de facto standard for conducting secret innovation projects, usually labeled “skunk works.”  The term comes from the Lockheed Advanced Development Program, created in 1943 when the War Department gave Lockheed a secret jet fighter project.  Lacking space, lead designer Kelly Johnson broke away from the main operation, taking the best design engineers and mechanics with him, and set up camp in a rented circus tent next to a foul-smelling plastics factory!  Lockheed trademarked the name Skunk Works.  Steve Jobs copies the strategy in launching the Apple Macintosh division.

6.       Doing something isn’t always better than doing nothing.

It’s sad and unfortunate to note, as does author May, that Apple seems to be showing the absence of its iconic leader.  There are questions of stock price, product proliferation, and flawed iphone software.  We are all hoping that the company won’t fall victim to excess, but I believe Mr. Cook is starting to look ragged.  And I think the philosophy that Steve Jobs used to build is company is not one easily adopted or “lived in” by most corporate people – it’s just too special, too difficult, and not something one would have learned in an MBA or engineering program.  So it may be inevitable – although I hope not – that Apple will continue to be hurt by problems of excess.

Given that elegance is hard to develop, May answers the question, “What’s the first step to applying a subtractive mindset?”  He says that the first step is to create a “stop-doing” list to accompany your to-do lists!  Give careful and thorough thought to prioritizing your various goals and projects and tasks, then eliminate the bottom 20% of the list …. Forever!  Hah!

The second is to play “World’s Worse.”  It’s the “anti-elegant solution” game.  Whatever you’re contemplating, whatever experience you’re working on or trying to create, first paint a picture of the world’s worst whatever-that-is  Let’s say you’re trying to create the most effective and engaging new-hire experience at your company.  What would the world’s worst experience look like?  When May does this with clients, they’re surprised not only at how much of that bad experience they presently deliver, but also how easy it is to identify that to eliminate or stop doing. 

For so many years we have assiduously written down performance goals and results, Plan A and Plan B, New Year’s resolutions, and life plans.  How amazing and challenging it is, and how refreshing, to realize the key to creativity is less, clearing off the desk, removing distractions from the line of sight, narrowing down to a single door.  Love this book!

***

The Financial Professional’s Guide to Communication, How to Strengthen Client Relationships and Build New Ones, by Robert L. Finder, Jr, FT Press 2012

Why would The Mill Girl want to review a financial communications book?  How does what financial advisors do relate to manufacturing and supply management?  Aren’t we supposed to stick to lean and reach disciplined consensus on how to make lean and kaizen and 5S and poke yoke work? 

It’s about the numbers, and using the numbers – the financial perspective on an operation – to get what you want.  In this sometimes funny and always clear book author Robert Finder simplifies the approach that he recommends for communicating complex information.   Isn’t that what has stymied so many well-intentioned lean enterprises  - the challenge of communicating and asking for what is truly needed, in one of the most expensive areas of manufacturing and scm, IT? 

Finder says it’s all about listening, but you and I know that as an eager but confused consumer of IT, it can be blindingly difficult and often overwhelming to express exactly what is needed  and then to get it from very powerful software providers.  Just think back on the number of system specifications you’ve seen that somehow were transformed into bigger “solutions,” when all you really wanted was something to examine customer demand, or generate an alert when warehouse inventories dropped. 

Okay, enough of the sympathy for overwhelmed manufacturing/supply chain  people.  For some time The Mill Girl has been growing impatient with single-minded focus on lean tools.  She apologizes for being insistent, but being from New Hampshire, she was overly slow to realize that manufacturing/scm people weren’t  entirely to blame for the big IT problem.  The MRP crusades and the ERP follow-ons allowed well-intended pros to unplug their computers and focus on what they hoped was the achievable.  And of course software vendors were happy to roll-out and knit together more and more solutions. 

So let’s take a breath and look at where we are here.  Blame and mis-steps aside, The Mill Girl feels it’s time for manufacturing leaders to address their needs and wants!  That’s right!  Speak up!  And here’s where Finder’s little book is so refreshingly useful.  His most memorable story, “The Coach Atlas Experience,” pages  33-37, details Finder’s visit to the newest addition to his local gym, Coach Atlas.  Tthe Mill Girl laughed, it all sounded so familiar:

                I used to be a pretty good tennis player…I worked hard at my game and once or twice came close (to winning a “gold ball” championship), but perhaps my shaky nerves – the dreaded “choke” – and my even shakier left leg were just too much to overcome.  If six knee surgeries all on the same leg weren’t enough, I thought I would blow out my Achilles tendon for good measure…Now anyone with common sense would just have packed it in, but the dream of the gold ball remained, and I still believed I could do it with the right help.

                With the Achilles tendon repair, I was non-weight-bearing for several months, but I had the idea that during this downtime I could strengthen my core and upper body so that when I returned to competition, I would be better prepared int hose two areas.   But I realized that in my condition, I needed help.  Enter Coach Atlas.

                I hobbled into the club on my crutches and had a seat.  I propped my leg up on another chair, and we waited for about 10 minutes before Coach Atlas walked in.  He said virtually nothing to either of us, pulled out his CV and started “the pitch.”  He told us about all the club’s new features – the cardio equipment, the stairmaster, the elliptical, the digital analyses, etc.  He explained the Gold, Diamond and Platinum price structures, an unrelenting information dump.  At some point I whispered to my wife, “Does this guy give a damn about why we’re here?”

                Finder made one more communication attempt, “I don’t need and can’t use your stairmasters and glockenspiels or whatever.  Can’t you see?  Don’t you understand I’m non-weight-bearing for three months?  Do you care why we’re even here?”

                After a brief moment of silence, probably to get his wind, Coach Atlas returned to his desk, pulled out two more sheets and offered, “Perhaps you’d be more interested in our nutrition programs.”

                How about that for selling!  Whew, isn’t that just what happens when manufacturing steps inside the software world?  Sure, not every time, but over the years we’ve seen a pattern develop, kind of hard to miss – the need, the pitch, the whine, the walk.  I’d like to think that we can do better.  My mother, the original Mill Girl, the one who worked for seven years in a shoe shop putting heels on shoes – tap tap tap, tap tap tap – always said that, “You can do better.”

                So I’m offering my very firm recommendation of this surprising little book about financial communication.  It’s a great starting point.  I especially like Finder’s lists of non-words and words to avoid, as well as his simple recommendation on defining  how you want to be treated as a buyer – whether it’s a buyer of financial planning services, or IT systems integration, the first point is defining the needs and desired results.  All  else follows.  See page 133, “What can you do for me?”

The Harada Method, The Spirit of Self-Reliance, The Human Side of Lean, by Takashi Harada and Norman Boded,   PCS Press 2012

             Certainly the traditional B-school leadership skills we have all heard  about for years – leadership by consensus, team leadership, empowered leadership, crisis leadership-  have changed and so  those of us seeking  something entirely different, disciplined and a bit spiritual perhaps,  will be intrigued by Mr. Bodek’s latest Japanese method book.  It is worth reading if only to see a different approach to people.

The Harada Method uses sports images to develop a simple process to set and achieve personal and corporate goals.  In some environments this individualized approach will work well because it is not just a methodology, it is a life approach.  If employees are bored or uninspired, Mr. Bodek recommends working on this approach.  The other valuable take-away from this book addresses  a need that has developed as we shifted away from hierarchical organizations that made it easy for workers to understand just exactly what they had to do, to more organic units in transformed enterprises that require a different kind of leader.  I see many newbie lean leaders struggling with their developing leadership styles, their communications and coaching, and I think this book may be valuable to them as well. 

It’s been a long time since we had a simple tool that new leaders and employees can use to thoughfully address and manage their work life.  I have seen some manufacturing operations where technical skills driven by equipment requirements  are not enough for workers to employ.  Perhaps M. Bodek’s latest book will give pause.

***

The Dawn of Innovation:  The First American Industrial Revolution, by Charles R. Morris,    Public Affairs 2012

No one can look at this rich and detailed book without seeing strong parallels between the U.S.’ rise to world economic dominance, some of which was driven by theft of Great Britain’s industrial secrets, and China’s rapid growth from a closed nation, to the next superpower.  Author Charles M. Morris paints a fascinating picture of a handful of innovators – Sam Colt, Francis Cabot Lowell and Paul Moody, Arkwright, Carnegie, etc – who scaled up American production to a level that destroyed Britain’s position as it established new methods for high-volume production in industries that we have pretty much abandoned – textiles and shoes for instance.

Along the way the US enjoyed other facilitating factors that let these innovators work unencumbered.  We had land, water, iron ore, and people to run the new manufacturing sites.  The transcontinental railroad provided critical process linkage.  And at various points during our history, we had sufficient capital to fund these adventures.

Morris makes the point that the shift from agriculture to manufacturing was important.  In fact, in 1500 ¾ of the population of most European countries were in agriculture, but by 1800, thanks to Great Britain’s pioneering industrial progress, that number had dropped to 1/3 of their population. 

Curiously, from the start in so many new American industries, the focus from Day One was on getting to scale, producing, as Lowell and Moody envisioned, at one single fully integrated location raw cotton to finished fabric, at very high volumes.  Despite the availability of good workers, first in the Yankee mill girls (see The Lowell Offering and Robert Dalzell’s The Enterprising Elite), later followed by waves of European immigration, the drive was always to scale and speed.  Specific technically superior inventions improved the American’s chances of reaching scale every time – the “breast fed” waterwheel, Moody’s new carding machine, his leather pulley connecting looms and power sources, by which he eliminated the awkward and temperamental British design, and Lowell’s evolution from water-wheels to turbines.  American innovation and intellectual property theft took the US to heights that knocked out its competition.

The question Morris leaves us with is what will happen with China, given the obvious parallels to the growth and decline of our own textile, shoe, machinery, gun and other industries.  Morris looks at all the elements that built American success, most especially the dynamic personalities of the entrepreneurs and capitalists that built the machine.

No large country with a deeply controlling, top-down government has ever successfully accomplished a middle-income transition.  The struggles of Russia, with its vast natural resources, its world-class kleptocracy, and the quiet wars between the new industrial oligarchs and the silovikie – the Putin-linked Party stalwarts – are similar to the struggles in China with the difference being that the Chinese have a much more entrepreneurial society.  The recent history of China suggests that when the government makes mistakes, they tend to be doozies. It hadn’t been that long since the Maoist Cultural Revolution.  It will likely take at least another decade or so to see whether China can accomplish the national transition to a true middle-income society.  The rest of the world can only hold its breath.

***

The Little Book of Leadership Development by Scott J. Allen, Michael Kusy, Amacom 2011, 132 pages

I’m a little disappointed – little is an opportunity, little books are so convenient, even though they are infinitely harder to write.  They even fit on iPads better.  Although I am a little disappointed, this little book is very useful, and since the hardcover is littler than Blue Heron’s first issue review of Bingsop’s Fables, another perfectly giftable little book, The Little Book is easily carried.  I stuffed this book in my backpack and read it on the bus all the way to New Hampshire (“Get on the bus!”) and digested its pithy pages little bite by little bite. The authors are academics, but they thankfully dispense with the polemics at the end of the Forward and Introduction.  Curiously, they suggest a very smaht way to read it:  “Don’t feel the need to read the book from cover to cover – put the book down and reflect…To remove yourself from the notion of having to read all of this book at once, read the last few tips, some in the middle, and then some at the beginning.  This will help you get out of the mind-set that leadership development is a recipe.”  Brilliant, I’m liking The Little Book of Leadership Development more already!

Let’s take a look of a couple of my little favorites:

#5, Provide Challenge and Support

I love this word about safety.  …a supportive working environment develops trust and lets people know that they will be safe when they are placed in situations outside their comfort zones.  Few people take risks in an environment where they don’t feel supported.  Have you ever worked in a place like that?  Oh yeah, sure have.

Better still, have you ever lived in a place like that?  How about gone to school in a place like that?  That constant knowing of being in an unsafe place does something to you….

 #9, Use the Pygmalion Effect – People who are led to expect that they will do ell will be better than those who expect to do poorly…. People tend to confirm rather than disconfirm positive belies that others have about them.

Here the authors recommend trying this approach out with your “stars” first, to “sculpt” their performance.  How delightful!  And here comes the best part:  Leaders tend to spend far too much time with their poor performers and not enough time with their stars.   Finally, somebody had to say it.  What Rimbaud called “la nostalgie de la boue,” the yearning for the mud, or the gutter.  Our fascination with all colorful bouelike stuff detracts from what the achievers are trying to accompish.  There, I said it…. Achievers!

#16 Stretch Your Team – Always

At any given time, all team members should be working on at least one project that is taking their skills to the next level – a project just outside their comfort zone. 

    Given the risks involved, it seems to me that handing out the big scary assignments to unknown performers is a lot more anxiety-inducing for managers than team members. I’m not persuaded to try this personally, although when I think back, I did let my daughter, who is a great, smart driver, start out on my Lexus.  The Volvo came later.  I think it made her think ahead.

#17, Switch it Up

If you’re a shipping foreman, try being a marketing queen for a day!  How about moving the cost accountant onto the assembly line!  Whoa, let's take a webmeister and let her greet visitors! 

I don’t know about this one …. I liked the movie, but the book didn’t quite live up to the drama.

EXCEPT for this one gaping chasm that Emu will discuss later, and that is a switch up between manufacturing lean zealots, and supply management money guys.  The big black gaping chasm between these two professional cults is so wide and deeply chiseled into the corporate landscape, I’m tired of pencilling in the bridges.  I want to see the whole damn enterprise integrated.  I don’t care if it means putting all that work under one Uber Leader – lean manufacturing, transportation and logistics, procurement and the entire supply chain, maybe even engineering.  Running with two separate cults on two parallel, non-touching career ladders guarantees underperformance, and we can’t afford the stupidity any longer. 

#27, Host a Book/Article Club

    Must happen during work hours, must be fun, must be short, and must be relevant…. Or not.

Although the authors recommend a blog post or article from Fast Company or HBR, I’m intrigued with other outlets, ideas that stretch our brains and leave us with new synapses.  How about a Leonard Bernstein lecture on Mozart, followed by quiet listening?  How about Harold Burnham, the wooden ship builder, or Bradford Story, the wooden ship builder turned sculptor, both from Essex, Massachusetts?  These guys look at problems and execution and design in many different ways, and I think we can learn from their struggles and failures – what they both produce is heavenly beauty. We need more of it. 

#28, Foster A Friendly Debate

Although this may be an extension of Switch It Up, and it scares up images of Angry Badger Newt Gingrich going after Rick Perry, preparing your team to defend positions at the other end of the spectrum from their natural position might illuminate that big black gaping chasm I mentioned in #17.

#32, Remain Focused on the Solutions, Not the Barriers

Whining, complaints, snickering, bickering and gross procrastination are all effective delay techniques, until they are consistently met with the challenge, “What would you suggest?”  Laminate it and paste it on your forehead, “Well, what would you suggest.”

#50, Capture the Learning from Hardships and Failure

The authors cite five types of organizationally related hardships and the lessons each may teach an individual, including business mistakes and failures, career setbacks, personal trauma, problem employees, and downsizing.  But I believe their recommended response will be difficult for many of us, despite the fact that they cite the book Breaking the Code of Silence as showing how leaders have spoken about and recovered from devastating blows.  It’s so hard for successful achievers to discuss setbacks openly – many of us would prefer after having recovered and moved on to see and reflect on the troubled time from a great distance.  One of my Depression/World War II- era uncles, a self-made millionaire we nicknamed Old Money Bags, suffered an enormous career setback when having worked his way into the top sales slot, he realized the job he really wanted and had spent eight years tracking, was going to the paper company owner’s doofus son.  After the invasion of Anzio, Uncle Bob had been sent to Japan with the Army of the Occupation, stationed among the ruins of Hiroshima.  The photos he brought back from Japan were as horrific as those from the Holocaust in Europe, and I always guessed that a large dose of undiagnosed post-traumatic stress syndrome combined with a ferocious drive that was denied outlet caused the “nervous breakdown” and shock treatments he suffered in the early 1950s.  Yet some sixty years later he described it all quite simply, from a distance.  “I got myself some used machines – the specialty ones that weren’t profitable enough for the corporation, and I modified them.  And that’s how I built my company.”

    Finally, the authors offer an LD50 Snapshot Assessment, fifty questions ranked on a beginner to expert scale.  They recommend that after taking the quiz, leaders revisit and check out their responses with  colleagues.

***

The New Deal, A Modern History, by Michael Hiltzik, Free Press, 2012

Just the chapter titles tell the heart-struck story of America’s journey through The Great Depression, from the 1920s up into World War II.  Despite this book’s numerous footnotes and numbers describing the catastrophe – not unlike many of the numbers we are seeing posted today – it is the emotional chapter titles that drew me into this book –

“Action Now,” A Good Crisis, A River Out of Eden, Wall Street in the Dock, Agony on the Land, So Many Sinners, Pied Pipers, The Cornerstone, Black Monday, The Most Forgotten Man, Backlash, Nine Old Men, Roosevelt’s Recession, Purgatory.

Hiltzik demonstrates repeatedly throughout The New Deal how many pre-WWII problems remain with us today, perhaps dressed in different clothing with different voices, but here in front of and around us:

Civil Rights imbalances (and that would include women as well as minorities) -   Hiltzik says that “In the 1932 election, back voters in the industrialized cities of the North and Midwest gave Herbert Hoover a majority in some places as large as 82 percent”!  and “Issues of race or racial justice had no place in the Democratic platform and no part in the candidate’s speeches.”    Despite these deficiencies. Black voters and other disadvantaged groups generally supported Roosevelt’s optimism.  Could it have been the image of the man – crippled, but not in our sight disabled; a family man partnered with a strong wife, yet a man with many extra-marital interests – that carried the hopeless? 

The numerous programs Roosevelt’s team created and enacted are impressive, even with our current big government activities.  The WPA, the Civilian Conservation Corps, bonus payments (economic stimulus), Social Security with a payroll tax of 2%, banking reform, gold management, etc.  changed the way we live, but experts now disagree on just exactly when the Depression ended, and whether or not Roosevelt’s programs and policies prolonged or ended it.    In one of his radio Fireside Chats the president “reminded his listeners how far the country had come from the dark days of 1932.  ‘Your money in the bank is safe; farmers are no longer in deep distress…; dangers of security speculation have been minimized; national income is almost 50 percent higher than it was… And government has an established and accepted responsibility for relief.”  He knew that many Americans, in fact, a good percentage of The Greatest Generation, were still unemployed and that it was important for the country to not end his intervention policy.

We can ask our elders what they think about our current situation, but their recollections will be colored by their youth or their own optimism.  Or we can look at the numbers Hiltzik presents that paint a picture of a depressed and disabled economy lifted and changed.  There are indeed parallels between that very long decade of the 1930s and our current unemployment and banking stats.  But what we don’t have now is a terrible end-point like the one that marked the “official” terminus for The Great Depression, Pearl Harbor.  None of us wants to look forward to a series of catastrophes marking yet another rise in government and military spending….. Or do we?

The Power of Presence, Unlock Your Potential to Influence and Engage Others, Kristi Hedges, Amacom, 2011

“It has nothing to do with becoming someone you’re not; rather, it’s about being more of

     who you are.”  Kristi Hedges.

    So you feel you’d rather lead quietly by keyboard from your cubicle than step to the podium before a flock of grumpy customers.  Or you’ve noticed that somebody else – that woman in the red suit with the stupid hair, or the guy with the funny shoes – always draws the kudos, or worse yet, that ugly post-middle aged sales representative always seems to make it past the first line of defense to become a trusted ally.  So what have they got that I don’t have?  An MBA?  Breath mints? Fairy dust?

No, it’s more than that.  According to leadership coach and corporate psychic Kristi Hedges, it’s more than that…. And less.  Each one of these lucky dogs has first of all an authentic, well-grounded, attractive presence that works.  “But none of us is born with ‘Presence’ stamped on our foreheads!” you say, and that’s right.  We all carry a whole long list of impediments, obstacles, painful histories, laziness, learning disabilities, old tattoos, baggage the size of a 747, broken opportunities that can’t be wiped off the resume – in short, we’re not perfect, like the guys who have…..”presence.”

Well, starting with negative language and body awareness, let’s talk about the systematic acquisition of this lucky charm called “Presence.”  We’ve landed men on the moon, we’ve accelerated product design schedules beyond expectations, we’ve put up and taken down numberless enterprise software systems, so we outta be able to transform ourselves into happy, blessed, shining examples of …”Presence” … right.

This is a book about hope, and in a time when Busby Berkley-like musicals about plucky stars making it on stage are enjoying a bizarre revival, its what many of us need most.  Are you with me? 

Step 1.  Assess

Step 2.  Set expectations

Step 3.  Try it

Step 4.  Confront and recover from failure

Step 5,  Stand out, while simultaneously fitting into a culture

Step 6.  Seize opportunities to be memorable, interesting, and even strategically shocking

Step 7.  Wield the power of language

Personal development, comeuppance, personal branding, transformation, hope.

***

The Power of Reputation, Strengthen the Asset that Will Make or Break Your Career, Chris Kmoisarjevsky, Amacom 2012

Quick, name the worst five CEO’s you can think of.   Bernie Madoff, Ken Lay, Dennis Kozlowski, Dick Fult and maybe John Mitchell,  Nixon’s Attorney General. 

Now, if you ask me to name well-loved, ethical CEO’s who have lived their integrity,  I discover that I’m fortunate to be able to name a couple of the good guys –

1  Romey Everdell, Sr. VP of Rath and Strong, winner of the Navy Cross, and known as Father of Master Scheduling, a great guy to work for and travel with, a compassionate man;

2.  James Burke, J & J former CEO, who practiced what author Komisarjevsky urges leaders to do when the unthinkable happens – tell the truth, apologize, and promise to fix it.

Life is short.  But reputations and memories are long.  I’ll never forget the alcoholic manager who rose to become a VP, and then fell – hard – when his addiction could no longer be ignored.  John left dozens of professionals angry and eager for revenge.  But he did his own self in, and when he died of sudden cardiac arrest at his summer home in New Hampshire, the word spread quickly, and people applauded.  Can you imagine looking back on a life that caused rejoicing upon its sad termination? 

Komisarjevsky offers solid advice about how to build and safeguard your treasure, your reputation and character.    His Chapter 12, “When You Make a Mistake,” offers specifics that are especially valuable in a web-based world.  Check out page 184, Twelve Hours or Else:

                We have seen nothing like this before.  The speed with which reputations are damaged – if not

Destroyed – is incredible.    Your reputation hangs in the balance.  So does your career.  If you are too slow in your response, what others hear and read take over.  Perception becomes cast in stone as if it were reality, all without a fair hearing.  And of course, bed news, gossip and criticism win the day. 

                The rule of thumb is this:

First, you  must seriously  consider a response if there is a crisis in which social media have voiced criticism of your values, your decisions, your integrity and your reputation, ,thereby putting your career in jeopardy.

Second, if you do respond, you must respond within twelve hours or you will be burned.

Wait too long and social media will take over.  Whatever facts you might like to share or whatever information you have that could put a balanced perspective on the situation will be of little avail.  It is too difficult to chase the story when in the world of digital technology where nano seconds count – it has had a long head start.

So remember…. You have twelve hours or less within which to take responsibility and say, I am sorry.  And within that same time, you will have to commit to a fresh start, assuring those around you that nothing like what happened will happen again.

Not all our revealing moments, however, arise during a manageable crisis.  There are ordinary moments that Komisarjevsky lists as precious opportunities to build and communicate character.  He advises that we think of our work life as a long continuum that can for the most part be well-managed and conducted ethically.  Having been to the heart of the beast, I question the concept that all business leaders play the game with that end in mind.  They are hard to avoid, and incredibly dangerous.  But for those of us who see beyond “the end justifies the means” approach, this book can be a valuable tool for dealing with public image, communications,  role models, and dealing with crises and mistakes.

***

TOYOTA KATA, Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness, and Superior Results, by Mike Rother, McGraw-Hill 2010

The new word in this book is Adaptiveness, and Toyota methods and Japanese words aside, I wanted to hear how what some readers call Toyota’s top-down, somewhat rigid approaches to its methodology would deal with unforeseen and extremely dynamic events such as the earthquake and tsunami that besieged the company’s supply base and later its profits.  In fact Rother addresses adaptiveness at three or four single points in this book, including page 161 where he says:

Toyota does not really have any solutions to offer us, but rather a means for us to sense situations and develop appropriate, smart responses.  Toyota’s executives, managers, and leaders are operating on the basis that organization survival arises from adaptation to unfolding events, on the way to a desired condition.  They do not think of good versus bad situations, but of problems as something to be expected and as opportunities to more deeply understand and further develop our work processes.  Toyota’s strategy for moving toward a vision is target conditions plus PDCA; which is to say, the improvement kata.. 

Certainly sounds flexible enough.  But what does this dynamic vision of Toyota strategy say about people?  Here Rother takes a longer view, one that envisions how an organization like corporate Toyota will survive and thrive hundreds of years out.  And he seems to point us in the direction of learning to become coaches, mentors, even wisdom-holders, vs. technicians.  It’s an intriguing thought, especially for companies who may have spent the last thirty or so years focusing on reducing the human contribution to shop floor costs.  It’s a great puzzle, one that watchers and manufacturing innovators would be pleased to contemplate.

 Words like behavior change, transformation leaders and culture change are overused.  But carefully constructed examples of improvement methods accompanied by little case examples are useful and they present a very different image of Toyota as a teaching/learning organization.  This is refreshing in light of Toyota’s unbeatable long-term successes despite recent bumps in the road.  The Mill Girl in me would like to think that “the new, adaptive Toyota” will have solved its daily engineering/production/supplier issues, and will have developed THE formula for creating The Perfect Workforce.  Someone predicted ten years back that Toyota would become the U.S. biggest employer; as of 2013 Wal-Mart at 1.8M workers still holds the position of biggest US AND world employer – IBM (329K), GM (327k), GE (316K) are next in line.

Read Toyota Kata if you are looking for a refreshingly different take on Japanese production methods – it’s okay to ignore the buzzwords and go for the wisdom.

***

Visual Teams, Graphic Tools for Commitment, Innovation, & High Performance, David Sibbet, John Wiley and Sons, 2011

When I opened Visual Teams, I was delighted with the fresh smell of the heavier paper, the

rectangular notebook shape and I was drawn in by the sketches.  Sure, there are lots of words in this book, but it is more a demonstration of the power of pictures to shape and lead ideas, and to help people move.  How refreshing.

Sibbet lays out his approach and rationale for being visual on page xi, “…I’ve found that working like a designer broadens my repertoire of tools when it comes to starting, improving, collaborating on work that requires shared commitment, innovation and high performance.”

The author references several hard-core starting points – The Drexler/Sibbet Team Performance Model (TPM), and the Theory of Process formulated by Arthur M. Young, which the author credits as having been developed by one of his heroes in the 1970s.  But grounding aside, what the reader will find most persuasive and fun – yes fun, why shouldn’t work be fun – are all the expressive, creative, designerlyish tools offered by Sibbet.  For word freaks it’s unnerving but exciting.

Take the list of new tools that you will delight in, starting with a “Graphic Gameplan for New Team Start-ups,” a diagram of the Group Learning Process, the chart on page 8 that illustrates the difference between Pushing and Pulling in an organization, and my hot favorite, “Visual Teams Get Results by… Imaging together,” etc. (page 20).

Chapter 5, “Managing Four Flows of Activity  - Attention, Energy, Information, & Operations” offers in detail a look at the internal work you will need to do to become a high-performance visual team leader, and I suppose it might be a guide to aspirants.  It’s a different way of looking at leadership, one formed by the web, Skype, Blackberries, video, all things digital.  This type of work, of course, requires different tools, and page 84 shows the layout and contents of a fully equipped Team Room – smooth walls, large plotter paper, sticky notes, markers, templates, digital cameras, decision-support software, projectors, and rolling chairs and movable tables.  Posted Storymaps remind teams of why they are working together, and like Youtube and viral videos, they tie teams together.

Who will love this book?  The author’s target audience includes new team leaders, team members wanting better results, managers wanting to support team environments, leaders wanting to support creativity and innovation, young people learning about groups, people interested in collaboration, coaches, human resources managers, human resources development professionals, consultants who with with teams, nonprofits working with volunteers – so, just about every business person working today! 

A couple areas in this book can only be proven to me in person, on-site, however.   The section on creating trust, focus and commitment, for instance is not clear to me.  I would have to see how this  improved approach to human work builds trust any better given our basic tribal tendencies, but I am certainly open to persuasion and would love to see it in action.

Other amazing tools:

Page 140, The Decision Strategies Matrix

Page 159, The history of Re-amp Infrastructure Team

Page 170, What True Artists know

Visual Teams explores how any kind of team can draw on the principles and practices of creative design teams in the software, architectural, engineering, and information design professions. The Drexler/Sibbet Team Performance™ Model and related tools are credited to usage in companies such as Nike, Genentech, Becton Dickinson, Chevron, and others.

Teams, innovation, large-scale culture change, fun.

Note:  Another visual book that readers will want to explore: Work That Makes Sense, Operator-led Visuality, Creating and Sustaining Visuality on the Value-Add Level, by Gwendolyn D. Galsworth, Visual-lean Enterprise Press, Portland, Oregon, 2011. 

The translation of Information into Behavior.

***

My favorite of all time best-in-class book cover - and the words ain't bad either.

WAIT, The  Art and Science of Delay, by Frank Partnoy, PublicAffairs, 2012

Quick, before you read another word about this marvelous book, look at the cover!  Emu voted this the best book cover ever, followed by Kurzweil’s silver holograph gem, but “this book jacket, “ says Emu in one of his nightly Skypes from the Australian Outback, “says it all.  If canines, that poor excuse for a survivor species, can be led by the tips of their ugly black noses to “Wait!” then there is hope for your human species!”

What difference does a second make? asks  author Partnoy, a reformed investment banker and corporate attorney. In sports, a good return of serve, like what Partnoy picks out of Jimmy Connors' and Chrissie Evert’s game, is a matter of nanoseconds’ preparation of the feet and the body, but also, the eyes.  A good return of serve player knows not just where the serve is going to land, he also knows, in less than half a second, where he is going to put the return.  It’s possible to spend hours drilling serve and return of serve, and that changes the mind’s concept of time.   Wait….. see the ball…. Wait and prepare….  Hit.

But how do we teach players in fast sports like tennis – and businesses like the stock market – and life – how to wait?  Partnoy argues that important research on the vagal nerve network in our highly evolved bodies controls all our responses to threats and changes - everything we do -  in two very different ways.  Part of the vagal nerve network is ancient and reptilian, but the other part is what we might call higher-order thinking, calculating, cerebral, and less instinctive.  Is that how we learn to Wait?  By retraining our nervous system?

Scott Harrison believed that a faster stock trading system would spell more profits.  On a new and faster trading platform UNX started to beat the big boys – Lehman, UBS - and winning.  So Harrison, eager to edge ahead of the competition even more, decided that moving headquarters from Burbank to the center of the trading universe, NYC, was the next step.  But cutting the transfer time from the 65 milliseconds it took for a trade to transfer three thousand miles coast to coast, proved, as Harrison is quoted explaining, “Things got weird. When we got everything set up in New York, the trades were faster, just as we expected.  We saved thirty0five milliseconds by moving everything east.  All of that went exactly as we planned.”  But not exactly as they had hoped!  “But all of a sudden, our trading costs were higher.  We were paying more to buy shares, and we were receiving less when we sold.  The trading speeds were faster, but the execution was inferior.  It was one of the strangest things I’d ever seen.  We spent a huge amount of time confirming the results, testing and testing, but they held across the board.  No matter what we tried, faster was worse.”

The solution?  “Finally,” says Harrison, “we gave up and decided to slow down our computers a little bit, just to see what would happen…. And when we went back up to sixty-five milliseconds of trade time, we went back to the top of the charts.  ..  there we were in the most efficient market in the world, with trillions of dollars changing hands every second, and we’d clearly gotten faster moving to New York.  And yet we’d also gotten worse.  And then we improved by slowing down.  It was the oddest thing.  In a world that values speed so much, you could be slower, but still be better.”

Partnoy contends that slowing down our response time when making almost any decision consistently yields better results – and that there is indeed both a science and an art to mastering delay.

Reminds me of advice from my own most venerated lawyer friend, Molly Sherden.  Whenever I was reaching the panic stage on a book contract or a Collaboration Agreement gone so awry that I felt like throwing in the towel, she slowed me down with her  Suppuku story of the Japanese character who was always on the brink of hari-kiri, but Waited, just one more second, one more event, one more turning.  And never managed to stick the knife in.  What she was saying is that if you’ve done your part, you need to wait….. and see what the next movement…. Which will inevitably arrive….. brings.  Wait……

***

WHAT MANAGEMENT IS:  How It Works and Why It’s Everyone’s Business, by Joan Magretta with Nan Stone, Free Press 2012

I’ll admit it, the title put me off.  Just how elementary we want to go, I thought to myself.  And if you don’t know what management is, then you’re probably in another world or maybe you’re a post-hard edge geometric painter or a web poet, far removed from the mechanics of making money. 

But I was wrong.  This is a book designed and written for high level professionals as well as newbies.  First published in 2002, and reissued with a new Preface by Magretta, WHAT MANAGEMENT IS presents the basic principles of management simply, but not simplistically.  The book answers questions like “Why did an eBay succeed where a Webvan did not?  Why do you need both a business model and a strategy?  Why is it impossible to manage without the right performance measures, and do your pass the test?”

So let’s look at Magretta, a former Bain partner and Harvard Business Review editor, asking the leading question, “When everything changes, what stays the same?”  So many management books preach a single formula or a single fad – kaizen, for instance, or poke yoke.   Magretta identifies change as the single management challenge that all managers must deal with and develop strategies around today.  “…Globalization, the Internet, capital market innovation, social media  - each of these, as it arrived, felt like a major earthquake that would forever change the business landscape.”  She believes that in times of great change, we stick to time-tested fundamentals to make sense of what’s happening around us.

Magretta’s examples that illustrate sticking to management fundamentals will be useful to readers.  Most interesting, however, are the current examples, although in her Preface, she points to Dell as an example of a 30 year success story that flattened out.  Magretta argues that even though Dell’s success has shifted and profit margins are tougher, the business model that they built became part of our business toolbox and will be studied long after the company has moved on.    Their ability to bill customers as they built product was historic; their supply chain moves were game-changing, but they inevitably fell victim – and here The Mill Girl disagrees with the author – as has every other computer company, to Moore’s Law.  Moore’s Law is a technical plot that predicts profitability and growth projections over time.  The longer a company like Dell stayed in its core business – computer hardware – the more likely it would eventually hit its peak and flatten.  That’s when companies go offshore, or get acquired for their brand name and customer base – think DEC, Prime, Gateway, etc. 

A good management primer, short, well-written, good examples. 

What Your Body Says (And How to Master the Message):  Inspire, Influence, Build Trust, and Create Lasting Business Relationships, by Sharon Sayler, John Wiley and Sons, 2010

What happens when a manager wants to deliver this message -  The report is fine -  but his voice says something else:

·          Unconcerned:  “I think the report is fine.”

·         Shocked:  “I think the report is fine.”

·         Happy:  “I think the report is fine.”

·         Worried:  “I think the report is fine.”

This book is not about body language, although some of what we might have heard about how to read body signals crops up.  Instead, What Your Body Says is a short guide divided into ten easy read chapters and Cheat Sheets (the Appendix).  Imagine that, Cheat Sheets! 

 Author Sayler disassembles how we really convey messages during meetings, interviews, presentations and other interactions, and offers up a list of physical elements that we can control for deliberate and maximum effect.  She says that we want our verbal and nonverbal signals aligned for maximum impact.  But what is interesting is that there are signals and communication devices that most of us would never think of, that have enormous impact on our audience even when no one is aware of these subtle elements. 

Take breathing for example.  As a singer I was always taught to support my breath from my gut, tightening up the gut to take a good long breath.  Sayler’s Breathing Exercise takes this tip much further, however.  She says that a normal inhalation and exhalation cycle is 12 – 14 times a minute when awake, and 6 – 8 times a minute while asleep.   But here is the amazing statement she makes:

Relearning to breathe naturally is a letting-go process.  The more you experience the calming effect that low, abdominal breathing has on your body, brain, and voice, the easier it is to do in all situations.  The goal is to maintain balanced breathing even while others around you do not.

Our breath supports all our nonverbals, most importantly, our voice.  It is our breathing to which people react when they hear our voice patterns.  How we breathe at the time determines if our credible voice pattern sounds definitive or angry…. friendly or pleading.  When your audience is breathing low and comfortably, you are in rapport.  If they are breathing shallow or rapidly, there has been a break in rapport, a distraction, or threat.   Remember the asset-liability scale:  all behaviors including breathing and voice patterns are useful.  Train yourself to breathe both shallow and low while using both voice patterns.  You might as well expand your toolbox to contain them all.

And for the Cheat Sheet!  This section is worth laminating and hiding in your briefcase, I’m not kidding!

…2.  How to Look Intelligent

… Pause longer and more frequently than ou normally would

    Be slow to smile (No Stepford wives here!)

    When seated, keep your forearms comfortably on the table, hands resting together but not    clasped.

      7.  How to Handle the Heckler with the voice, hand gestures and eye contact

    10.  How to Diffuse a Situation with breathing, listening, eye contact, a visual placeholder, use     the other person’s words, speak in the third person about the event but speak in first-person about the relationship, and speak only when the outburst is over, indicated by a change in the other person’s breathing. 

    12.  How to Deliver Bad News and Survive.  Using steady breathing, limit eye contact for bad      news, control voice pattern, pause, no elbows on table if seated!, and position body at 90 degrees  – not face-to-face or across from each other as if seated at desk. 

These and the other tips and illustrations in What Your Body Says take practice, whether the intent is to use them for business meetings, or presentations, or family “discussions.”   If nothing else, this book enables the reader to be a better observer of human behavior, to better understand the importance of nonverbal to convey intention, relationships, information, influence and expectations, and true emotions. 

***

Who Says It’s A Man’s World, The Girls’ Guide to Corporate Domination, by Emily Bennington, Amacom  2013Who Says It’s A Man’s World, The Girls’ Guide to Corporate 

Domination, by Emily Bennington, Amacom  2013 

Kicking and screaming, foot dragging, a promise that “you’re feel better after,” the idea that maybe since my mother’s real Mill Girl generation everything is different, none of these 

were enough to force the Mill Girl to sit down and review what she calls a “salt in the wound” book, not that is, until 

Leaned In.  I’m leaning already.  Just give me a minute, I need to stand up straight here.  

It may be serendipitous that Who Says appeared the same time as Lean In.  The financials behind Lean In and 

Harvard/Facebook/Zuckerberg/Sandberg speak for the CEO’s successful rise to power. But Emily Bennington’s 

book is more fun to read.  She’s packed the book with self-assessments, war stories, clips from real women working through challenges – in short, it’s more usable at many levels.  For instance, the Section 5 Roundup, How to Handle 

Tricky Situations, covers:                

                                                           When:  You have a staffer who thinks he should be leading the team.                             

                                                 You Should:  Stand your ground. Next Bennington prescribes just exactly the kind of conversation you will be having, down to the last comma.                  When:  You can dish out constructive criticism but you can’t take it.                You Should:  Get over yourself.  Don’t you just love it!  There are hours and days and dozens of projects’ distance between good teamwork, even team leadership, and the kind of leadership that gets a contributor stock options and a seat at the table.  For many women and younger workers, reaching for authority is a scary and potentially risky subject.  Bennington offers concrete actions that can be thought out and diagrammed in advance, as part of a general work plan that of course everyone has!    Chapter 15 covers the authority subject well – “having authority is like having a gun in your closet – there if you need it, but hopefully you won’t have to pull the trigger.”                  As entertaining and well-presented as Bennington’s book is, remember it comes from facts, from surveying more than 700 executive women, including many covered by Forbes, and getting to know some of them personally.  The author warns “before you decide what to do in your career, it’s important to understand the kind of professional you want to be.”  Your life path may not include the more glamorous C-level positions – you may in fact want to put in 5 years as a manager and shift to consulting.  Or you may want to hit the ground running and go for big money, big compensation and bonuses on Wall Street, and as Bennington emphasizes that takes a different skill set and a new map.  What’s amazing about this book and others in the same general topic area is – and this is hard for The Mill Girl to admit – it is not salt in the wound.  What’s even more amazing is how many great disciplines and positions are completely open to women now – all it takes, well almost all it takes, is making the choice and developing A Plan. 

                                                   When:  You can dish out constructive criticism but you can’t take it.

                                                   You Should:  Get over yourself.  Don’t you just love it!

There are hours and days and dozens of projects’ distance between good teamwork, even team leadership, and 

the kind of leadership that gets a contributor stock options and a seat at the table.  For many women and younger 

workers, reaching for authority is a scary and potentially risky subject.  Bennington offers concrete actions that can 

be thought out and diagrammed in advance, as part of a general work plan that of course everyone has!   

 Chapter 15 covers the authority subject well – “having authority is like having a gun in your closet – there if you need it, but hopefully you won’t have to pull the trigger.”

As entertaining and well-presented as Bennington’s book is, remember it comes from facts, from surveying more than 700 executive women, including many covered by Forbes, 

and getting to know some of them personally.  The author warns “before you decide what to do in your career, it’s important to understand the kind of professional you want to be.” 

 Your life path may not include the more glamorous C-level positions – you may in fact want to put in 5 years as a manager and shift to consulting.  Or you may want to hit the ground

 running and go for big money, big compensation and bonuses on Wall Street, and as Bennington emphasizes that takes a different skill set and a new map.  What’s amazing about

 this book and others in the same general topic area is – and this is hard for The Mill Girl to admit – it is not salt in the wound.  What’s even more amazing is how many great 

disciplines and positions are completely open to women now – all it takes, well almost all it takes, is making the choice 

and developing A Plan.   As my PT coach says, "No more whining!  You can do this!"

***