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The Universal Requirements for a Visionary Company

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From Jim Collins’ Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies:

A company must have a core ideology [core purpose plus core values] to become a visionary company. It must also have an unrelenting drive for progress. And finally, it must be well designed as an organization to preserve the core and stimulate progress, with all the key pieces working in alignment.

These are universal requirements for visionary companies. They distinguished visionary companies a hundred years ago. They distinguish visionary companies today. And they will distinguish visionary companies int he twenty-first century.

However, the specific methods visionary companies use to preserve the core and stimulate progress will undoubtedly change and improve. BHAGs [huge, audacious goals], cult-like cultures, evolution through experimentation, home-grown management, and continuous self-improvement — these are all proven methods of preserving the core and stimulating progress. But they are not the only effective methods that can be invented.

Companies will invent new methods to complement these time-tested ones. The visionary companies of tomorrow are already out there today experimenting with new and better methods. They’re undoubtedly already doing things that their competitors might find odd or unusual, but that will someday become common practice.

And that’s exactly what you should be doing in the corporations [and organizations] you work with — that is, if you want them to enter the elite league of visionary companies. It doesn’t matter whether you are an entrepreneur, manager, CEO, board member, or consultant. You should be working to implement as many methods as you can think of to preserve a cherished core ideology that guides and inspires people at all levels. And you should be working to create mechanisms that create dissatisfaction with the status quo and stimulate change, improvement, innovation, and renewal — mechanisms, in short, that infect people with the spirit of progress…. Use the proven methods and create new methods. Do both.

Don't Win the Fight but Lose the Customer

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A good post from Seth Godin on the true meaning of “the customer is always right” and how not to fire your customers:

Does it really matter if you’re right?

Given the choice between acknowledging that your customer is upset or proving to her that she is wrong, which will you choose?

You can be right or you can have empathy.

You can’t do both.

It’s not the nature of capitalism to need to teach people a lesson, it’s the nature of being a human, we just blame it on capitalism. In fact, smart marketers understand that the word ‘right’ in “The customer is always right” doesn’t mean that they’d win in court or a debate. It means, “If you want the customer to remain a customer, you need to permit him to believe he’s right.”

If someone thinks they’re unhappy, then you know what? They are.

Trying say this to yourself: I have no problem acknowledging that you’re unhappy, upset or even angry. Next time, I’d prefer to organize our interaction so you don’t end up feeling that way, and I probably could have done it this time, too. You have my attention and my empathy and I value you. Thanks for being here.

If you can’t be happy with that, then sure, go ahead and fire the customer, cause they’re going to leave anyway.

What Needs to Be Done?

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From Drucker’s The Effective Executive:

The first practice [of an effective executive] is to ask what needs to be done. Note that the question is not “What do I want to do?” Asking what has to be done, and taking the question seriously, is crucial for managerial success. Failure to ask this question will render even the ablest executive ineffectual.

Why Talking About the Weather is Smart

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While we’re on the subject of small talk, it’s worthwhile to say a few words about the biggest small talk cliche around — talking about the weather.

Oscar Wilde said that “Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”

It turns out that Oscare Wilde was wrong. Talking about the weather is not lame. It’s actually a really good idea.

Here’s why:

  1. The weather affects everybody.
  2. Talking about the weather leads into a whole lot of other subjects. But if you never get started with a “basic” topic like the weather, you might not get a conversation going at all — and thus you’ll never get to other more substantial topics at all.

I first came across this realization in a chapter from The Big Moo: Stop Trying to Be Perfect and Start Being Remarkable, edited by Seth Godin. The book is a collection of insights from 33 different minds. I’m not sure who wrote the chapter “Talking About the Weather,” but they said it well:

Until I was thirty-five years old I thought talking about the weather was for losers. A waste of time, insulting even. No one can do anything about the weather anyway. I believed that any comment that doesn’t offer new insight or otherwise advance the cause of humanity is just so much hot air….

Then something happened. Alone for the first time in a long time, living in challenging circumstances, experiencing a cold winter in New England, I noticed the weather. It affected me deeply and directly, every single day. Slowly it dawned on me that the weather affected everyone else, too. Maybe talking about it wasn’t totally vacuous after all.

I started with the cashier at a gas station….Years of cynicism made me almost laugh as I said, “Sure got a lot of snow this year so far.” “Yep,” was her reply. Then she said, “I could barely get my car out of the lot, be careful driving!”

Talking about the weather was easy, even effortless. An entree to at least one person on the planet who apparently cared about me, at least enough to share her small challenge and want me safe on the road. Wow.

Next I tried it at work. It turned out to be even more effective with people I already knew. Talking about the weather acted as a little bridge, sometimes to further conversation and sometimes just to the mutual acknowledgment of shared experience.

Whether it was rainy or snowy or sunny or damp for everyone, each had their own relationship with the weather. They might be achy, delighted, burdened, grumpy, relieved, or simply cold or hot. Like anything of personal importance, most were grateful for the opportunity to talk about it.

Then something else happened. As talking about the weather became more natural, I found myself talking about a whole lot more. Cashiers and clients and suppliers and colleagues all over opened up about all kinds of things. I found out about people’s families, their frustrations at work, their plans and aspirations.

Plus, I found out that the weather is not the same for everyone! And it’s only one of many factors dependent on location that you’ll never know about without engaging in casual conversations.

For a businessperson, there may be no better way to make a connection, continue a thread, or open a deeper dialogue. Honoring the simply reality of another person’s experience is an instant link to the bigger world outside one’s self. It’s the seed of empathy, and it’s free…. Talking about the weather is a baby step on your way to making change.

Breaking the First Rule of Small Talk

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Keith Ferrazzi, author of Never Eat Alone, has a good post on making small talk more effective (and authentic) that makes the simple point: be yourself. But to do this, you have to ignore conventional wisdom’s first rule of small talk:

Small talk experts claim that when you first meet a person, you should avoid unpleasant, overly personal, and highly controversial issues.

Wrong! Don’t listen to these people! Nothing has contributed more to the development of boring chitchatters everywhere. The notion that everyone can be everything to everybody at all times is completely off the mark. Personally, I’d rather be interested in what someone was saying, even if I disagreed, than be catatonic any day.

There’s one guaranteed way to stand out in the professional world: Be yourself. I believe that vulnerability—yes, vulnerability—is one of the most underappreciated assets in business today. Too many people confuse secrecy with importance. Business schools teach us to keep everything close to our vest. But the world has changed. Power, today, comes from sharing information, not withholding it. More than ever, the lines demarcating the personal and the professional have blurred. We’re an open-source society, and that calls for open-source behavior. And as a rule, not many secrets are worth the energy required to keep them secret.