Tag Archives: books/magazines

You Can Lead Employees To Change, But You Can’t Make Them Do It

by on September 11, 2007 in Work

I’ll openly admit that I’m not always the best employee. It all relates to a stubborn streak that I inherited from both my mother’s and father’s sides of the family (though Baileys and Garretts often claim the other is worse). The things is that I like to do things my way. I often bristle if someone tells me what I should do, if they tell me the best way it can be done, if they tell me that my way isn’t going to work. See…telling me just isn’t going to work. I’m just going to have to learn on my own. Sometimes it’s a strength and sometimes it’s a curse. Perhaps that’s why Paul Williams’ recent napkin idea on change resonates with me. He offers this quote from Marty Neumeier:

People do like change.
What they don’t like is being changed.

What I like is the simplicity of this idea. In two sentences, he’s able to clearly define why organizational change initiatives fail. Too often, change initiatives are built in black boxes and then sprung on employees. Executives deliver the news which is laden with directives detailing what we’re doing and how we’re going to do it. Great…now prepare to go down in flames. Why? Because the assumption is that change is a rational process that moves in a linear pattern. But what happens when we consider that change is an emotional process? Usually, fear is the emotion we most often connect with change, but that ignores other emotional responses like excitement, happiness, anger, and frustration. A favorite book of mine that has become a well-thumbed reference for organizational change is The Change Monster by Jeanie Daniel Duck. As the book’s subtitle points out, there are human forces that fuel or foil any organizational transformation or change initiative.

If you’re in the process of planning (or to the point of implementing) change, here are some questions to ponder:

  • What it will take to get your folks ready for the change?
  • How can you help make the decision to change their decision rather than your mandate?
  • Are you prepared for the emotional responses that are going to arise?

Thinking through the human factors of change will be critical if your plan succeeds or crashes.

Corporations Are Social Institutions

by on June 29, 2007 in Business

I don’t know if there’s a secret magic pixie reading WorkPlay, but I found a nice one-year subscription to Harvard Business Review waiting for me in the mail today. Thank you secret magic pixie, whoever you are.

From the latest issue of HBR, here’s some juicy thinking from Henry Mintzberg. It falls under the article title of Productivity Is Killing American Enterprise. Consider that our organizations are organic systems. They exist only because of the people who operate within these systems.

Here’s Professor Mintzberg’s advice:

Treat the enterprise as a community of engaged members, not a collection of free agents. Corporations are social institutions, which function best when committed human beings (not human “resources”) collaborate in relationships based on trust and respect. Destroy this and the whole institution of business collapses.

Take care of the organizational relationships that drive and sustain your business. It’s your people, not your profits, that will define your organization’s success.

Sit On The Same Side Of The Table

by on December 29, 2006 in Business

It’s end of year, which means trying to get my life back into focus. As an example, over this past Christmas holiday, I spent some time getting our new home in order. Interspersed with all the yuletide merriment, I decided to get medieval on all the unpacked boxes and disorganized clutter that had accumulated over the past six months.

The psychic rewards of this end of year cleaning blowout have been great…not only do I know where things are, I found a lot of items I had been searching for recently, including some past issues of my favorite magazines. Last night, with a glass of shiraz in hand and the girls in bed, I sat with the September 2006 issue of Fast Company which happens to be focused on customer service (it’s the one with Lewis Black looking like he’s in the first stages of trying to pass a kidney stone).

Inside the issue is an article on Danny Meyer, a successful New York restaurateur, who believes his winning edge comes down to hospitality. Big deal, right? We might expect a restaurant, as well as a hotel, spa, or even theme park to focus on hospitality. But, take a minute to fully consider Danny’s concept of hospitality:

Virtually nothing else is as important as how one is made to feel in any transaction. Hospitality exists when you believe the other person is on your side.

Danny encourages us to elevate the idea of a transaction beyond the usual impersonal financial payment for a product or service. All that typically gets us on the corporate side is a headache where the customer demands ever-increasing levels of service because they’ve handed over their hard-earned money. And who can blame the customer anyway? Many companies have done their very best to betray their customers’ trust by focusing only on the business’ end of that transaction (read: bottom-line profits). In the end, this narrow view of the transaction simply devolves into the all too-familiar customer/corporation antagonism.

Instead, what would happen if we think of the transaction as a binding force for a relationship? How would our business change if we acknowledged that a transaction is not only a financial exchange, but also an exchange of feelings, hopes, and dreams? What if instead of sitting across from our customers at the table, we chose to sit on the same side? A fella isn’t just buying a new silk shirt, he’s buying an image that makes him feel more attractive. A group of friends aren’t just eating dinner, they’re paying for an experience that accentuates their time together. A non-profit organization isn’t purchasing for a new piece of software, they’re buying a tool that will help them be more successful at delivering on their mission. There’s so much more to the customer’s side of the transaction, but it’s up to the business to learn what it is and make the attempt to fulfill it (fully bearing in mind that this ideal isn’t always possible).

As you begin plotting out business goals for 2007, consider the impact of sitting on the same side of the table as your customers. If you have a disgruntled customer or client, ask what it would take for them to believe that you are on their side.

What are you doing today to create an active spirit of hospitality?

Reading Anything Good Lately?

by on March 13, 2006 in Media

I came across this article from the UK-based Guardian Newspaper online. Turns out I might not be as well-read as I thought.

Museum, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) in Britain asked librarians around the country, “Which book should every adult read before they die?” At the top of the list was To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee, followed by the Bible and then The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J. R. R. Tolkien.

Here’s others – both classics and contemporary fiction – that made the list:

  • 1984 by George Orwell
  • A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
  • Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
  • Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
  • All Quite on the Western Front by E. M. Remarque
  • His Dark Materials Trilogy by Phillip Pullman
  • Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
  • The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
  • The Lord of the Flies by William Golding
  • The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
  • Tess of the D’urbevilles by Thomas Hardy
  • Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne
  • Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
  • The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham
  • Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
  • Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
  • The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
  • The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
  • The Prophet by Khalil Gibran
  • David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
  • The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
  • The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
  • Life of Pi by Yann Martel
  • Middlemarch by George Eliot
  • The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
  • A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
  • A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzenhitsyn

Review Of “To Be Of Use” by Dave Smith

by on February 22, 2006 in Business, Career, Media

Rosa Say has given me just the nudge that I need to do something that’s been floating on my to-do list for a while. This is Talking Story’s 2nd Annual Love Affair with Books where folks in her Ho’ohana Community have been encouraged to submit a book review. Well, I’ve been meaning to write a little about a powerful book that was actually sent to me by a publisher’s rep who actually has a pretty neat blog herself (visit Kim and her blog, Skip On!).

In the fall of last year, I received To Be of Use: The Seven Seeds of Meaningful Work, by Dave Smith. The title certainly was compelling and intimately related to my own philosophy toward work. The book is not only an autobiography of a man dedicated to making this world a better place, but a field guide for all of us to use to connect our work to something greater than ourselves. Dave Smith was the original founder of Smith & Hawken, a company dedicated to organic gardening (sadly, Smith & Hawken was bought up by Scott Seed and changed into the kind of empty Pottery Barn-like store that Dave fought against).

It has seven chapters with each one focused on a particular value or seed. And the chapters flow easily from one to the next: faith, hope, justice, temperance, prudence, courage, and love. In each, he offers his own personal experiences as a testament to what an individual can do with their life. He writes of how he left his high-paying job as a computer programmer to work for Cesar Chavez and five dollars a week. He speaks candidly about his spiritual wandering from a fundamentalist Christian upbringing toward Quakerism.

What I found most refreshing is his take on business and entrepreneurism. His story is an inspiring account of how business can be a force for good in the world and that a successful business can be measured by such ideals as responsibility, compassion, and service to the common good. At a time in our history when many companies are better known for their greed and maliciously competitive actions, we need more men and women to follow the path of Dave Smith.

A final quote, which I believe sums up the main theme of To Be of Use:

Meaning comes most naturally when we find and fulfill our purpose. This implies that there is an overall higher purpose, one beyond simply surviving and satisfying our own selves on what someone once called our separate little islands of commodities. We find our purpose in responsibility and service to others, living our values – making things better, fairer, happier for others.