Reverb Consulting

I take in information in a variety of ways, including watching Charlie Rose religiously. Last week Charlie had an exceptional interview with Chef David Chang that is worth watching, regardless of what business your are in, and regardless of your passion for food. Why? Because David Chang is a man living a vision. He is consciously working toward a big picture. He understands, accepts, and embraces the need to innovate all the time, to change in order to stay the same, which, as he says is his goal over and over again: to be the best. Midway through the interview when the conversation turns to his pricing strategy, Chang easily and comfortably states the guiding vision of his work: let’s make delicious food of value. Chang had already repeated this vision many times over throughout the interview: we try to serve the best food we can; our goal is to make the best food in New York City; good food is not just for fine dining; we try to do something good and do it the right way. Without anxiety, Chang states that he is not sure where he and his restaurants will be in three years, but he knows the goal will be the same: to be the best. Chang exemplifies the importance of knowing the vision and the importance of not letting allegiance to specific strategies and tactics rule the vision. He strives to be dynamic, ever-changing in response to the environment, in order to remain relevant.

Chang is a refreshing mix of humility and ambition. He possesses a clear vision and an acceptance of the ambivalence of the specifics of the future. For a young man, he is full of sage and visionary advice:
Work hard. Stay humble. Try to do it right. Have integrity. Delight in what you do.

Wow!

More about Chef David Chang
The I Chang by Rob Patronite and Robin Raisfeld
Chef on the Edge by Larissa MacFarquhar
The Year of the Pig by Alan Richman

A.G. Lafley has served as the CEO, President, and the Chairman of the Board of Procter & Gamble since June 2000. Previously, Lafley had been President of Global Beauty Care and North America for P&G. Lafley truly rose from within the ranks of P & G which he joined upon receiving his M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1977. With Ram Charan, A.G. Lafley has a new book out titled The Game Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth with Innovation. A quick way to get the gist of Lafley and Charan’s message is to listen to the A.G. Lafley interview at Harvard Business Ideacast.

Lafley attributes much of P & G’s sustained growth and profitability to having developed a culture of innovation that is led by a leadership team that is truly engaged, chronically learning, and takes ultimate responsibility for the sustainability of the organization. These elements, he contends, are crucial to any organization in any industry that wishes to stay viable and competitive, or in my words, relevant. Lafley says, first and foremost, the leader has to be “in the game”. His shorthand for this is “the CEO has to be the CIO (Chief Innovation Officer)”. The leader has to bear the ultimate responsibility for realizing the vision. The leader has to manage the culture of his organization to realize the vision, thus he has to create a culture of innovation.

Lafley outlines the elements of a culture of innovation as being open to new ideas, open-minded as individuals, relational and connection-oriented such that they can take ideas and concepts and meld them to other ideas and concepts, making new breakthrough ideas and concepts. Members of an innovative culture must be able to work collaboratively and transparently for the benefit of the team’s success, or the mission is doomed to fail. And, lastly, true innovators understand that the customer is always at the center of the what, why, and how of everything. An innovator seeks co-creative opportunities with his customer.

Lafley and Charan are re-defining our notion of innovation and its place in business. Their idea is that innovation is a mindset, an everyday habit. The old notion of innovation would be a technological product upgrade. Innovation for the 21st century encompasses the whole ball of wax — the brand, the carefully designed business experience from the customer’s perspective, the functional attributes of the product, the business model, the cost structure, the supply chain, the values of the culture and of the company. Innovation is the belief that status quo ways of yesteryear are not aligned with the needs of the customer or the business in the now.

What do we put at jeopardy when we are not innovative?
If we are not innovative, how do we become so?

These are big questions worth taking seriously, in my opinion, and Lafley and Charan are terrific thought leaders in this area.

“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of
knowledge.”
- Daniel J. Boorstin

Daniel J. Boorstin was a very learned man who did a lot of things in his ninety years. To me this is what is intriguing about him, or anyone - doing a lot of things that have common threads running throughout. Boorstin was a learner and did not shy away from things he had not done before. He was an American historian, professor, attorney, and prolific writer. Boorstin wrote more than 20 books, including a trilogy on the American experience and one on world intellectual history. In 1974 he won a Pulitzer prize in history. Boorstin also served as director of the National Museum of History and Technology of the Smithsonian and as Librarian of Congress.

There is a lot to be inspired by Boorstin and his life of perpetual learning but this bit is my favorite. When President Gerald Ford nominated Boorstin to be Librarian of Congress in 1974, the nomination was supported by the Authors League of America but opposed by the American Library Association because Boorstin “was not a library administrator”. I love that because I get that all the time. Basically, the ALA said “we can’t trust him because he is not one of us”. One of us myopia - it’s a disease. Of course, the nomination was approved by the Senate without debate.

The ALA back in 1974 when faced with a new leader from outside their ranks suffered from the illusion of knowledge. They assumed that to administrate a library you have to have risen from the ranks. Their illusion of knowledge created a trust barrier. The alternative analytical approach in this situation would have been to look at Boorstin’s success in other areas and have deduced that the temperament, qualities, and skills that made him successful in those arenas were transferable to their playing field.

I think the illusion of knowledge occurs because we become complacent and comfortable with the status quo. We stop learning. We become lackadaisical in our work. Lackadaisical means we are without interest, vigor, or determination. We become listless and lethargic. Ignorance develops because literally knowledge passes us by when we stop reaching. Our knowledge becomes irrelevant, a mere illusion of knowledge. And, the result is that we analyze situations and make decisions with old knowledge such that new discovery is off limits to us. A leader who is lackadaisical risks steering his organization severely off course.

During the summer I spend a lot of time traveling, meeting new people in new places. Inevitably one of the first topics of conversation is the proverbial what do you do? I usually ease my way into the conversation by saying I am a consultant. As expected, the comeback is what do you consult about? Sometimes I have trouble explaining what I consult about because working to improve the effectiveness of a group of people that work together is different at each place, with each group, within each different industry. I don’t really have my two minute elevator speech down. The other day I came across this poem by Robert Bly, and I think I shall adapt his first line to create my answer from now on because it is really the key to doing differently, to doing new things, and to doing same things with a renewed spirit.

I teach people that work together to think in new ways — simple, to the point, under two minutes, authentically descriptive. I like it!

Things To Think by Robert Bly

Think in new ways you’ve never thought before.
If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message
Larger than anything you’ve ever hear,
vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,
Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose
Has risen out of the lake, and he’s carrying on his antlers
A child of your own whom you’ve never seen.

When someone knocks on the door, think that he’s about
to give you something large: tell you you’re forgiven,
Or that it’s not necessary to work all the time, or that it’s
Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

Questioning is powerful. It is subversive, bold, and not always welcome. In years of working with business leaders, I have found the simple question why? to be an effective tool to fetter out assumptions and beliefs that need to be challenged, re-considered, dispelled, or retired. I am amazed by the number of times when asked why he/she did something in a certain way, I am told the person before me did it this way or it’s just the way it is done around here, or simply, I don’t know, I never thought about it. For me, this is a huge red flag because it tells that the person-in-charge has not thought for himself and does not really take ownership of what is being done. That person-in-charge is a disengaged, not-reflective conduit, more of a manager than a leader.

A leader is reflective. A leader is hyper-aware of what she is doing and how she came to make the decision that she made. A leader is aware of all of the perspectives that he has considered in reaching a plan. A leader uses the power of questioning to reach full, expansive decisions that are as void as possible of faulty assumptions and myopic thinking. A good leader uses the power of questioning to push himself and his team to new heights. A good leader welcomes being questioned because it creates space for reflecting, re-grouping, and re-committing oneself to a course of action.

Notice the questions being asked around you, of you, out of your earshot. Do they question authority? Do they question outcomes? Do they question assumptions and priorities? Do they question process? Notice what questions are there but not voiced. Notice who questions after the decision is rendered. Notice who never questions. Notice who is defensive upon being questioned, and who welcomes a question. Notice how elucidating noticing is. Why does your group behave like this? What is lost due to lack of questioning? What would be possible if everyone valued questioning?

Sir Ken Robinson was the keynote speaker Thursday, February 28 in New York at the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) Annual Conference. For those of us who got to hear him, what a delight! His dry wit and humor balances the gravity of his message. His basic message in is briefest form is this:

-the future is upon us right now and what we do about it matters.
-creativity is a critical skill for 21st century competence.
-Kids are naturally creative; schools seems to drain kids of their creativity.

As a beginning place to start to the process of changing schools and the environment they engender, Sir Ken suggests we alter how we think in the broadest sense about our schools; he suggests we change our school metaphor from the factory to the living, dynamic, ever-changing organism. It seems like a simple thought, perhaps even a simplistic thought. But, with some reflection and with effort to fill in some thought gaps, let me add something connecting thoughts and guiding questions.

How are factories in general faring in today’s economy? Think about GM and all of its integrated production facilities and its current state of affairs, for one.
How quickly do factories adapt to evidenced need in the marketplace?
What mindset and basic assumptions govern the culture and systems at factories?
What new factory business is present in today’s culture and marketplace? Where is factory business migrating to?
Are the prominent, energetic companies today less product-oriented and more idea and information oriented? Think about Google, Yahoo, Facebook, My Space, the whole “Wikinomics” boom — is there much likelihood that this type of industry (information and idea production) is a passing fad?
Are we teaching our kids to produce ideas?
Of what use is a new metaphor or a new way of thinking about our schools? How does a new metaphor expand our thinking and understanding?

Let me offer the words of Peter Senge, social scientist and philosopher, author of Presence, to introduce the power of the living organism as a apt metaphor.

How does a tree come from a tiny seed?

It’s common to say that trees come from seeds. But how can a tiny seed create a huge tree? Seeds do not contain the resources needed to grow a tree. These must come from the medium or the environment within which the tree grows. But, the seed does provide something that is crucial: a place where the whole of the tree starts to form. As resources such as water and nutrients are drawn in, the seed organizes the process that generates growth. In a sense, the seed is a gateway through which the future possibility of the living tree emerges.

Changing the way we think as individuals and organizations about the future and how best to prepare for it is the first action step needed. Leading our thoughts and the thoughts of the people we work with in schools — asking new questions, developing new metaphorical understanding — is the seed that begets the possibility of the future. The seed, or school leadership, is crucial in directing our organizations to sustainable futures. But, as Senge describes, the seed is only half of the process. The seed cannot survive and grow without a seedbed that accepts and nurtures it. To me, this is our big dual challenge. To re-consider and re-fine the needs of the future. Quantifying that forms the seed. Then, we must plant that seed with its powerful ideas and their potential into a culture that is accepting, embracing, and nurturing. The seed is activated by the nourishment and caretaking of the culture. A toxic seedbed does not hold the future possibility of a living thing.