When I was an engineer starting a new job my focus was always on the technology. I almost always came into companies that were launching new products. In this respect I was really fortunate. I was part of the team that was defining the design, and a lot of times the technologies that were being used. That didn’t mean that there wasn’t anything new and different to learn right up front. For example – almost every company that I have ever worked for used a different code management system. I’ve used proprietary, PVCS, Clearcase, CVS, and Perforce. On the bug tracking side I’ve used ddts, bugzilla, and devtrack. I’ve utilized a number of programming language environments, and dealt with a lot of different processors and operating systems. The good news is that unless you’re coming in as the architect of a large project the scope of what you need to learn is rather focused. You will own something specific and hopefully manageable.

As a manager the scope of the things to learn is much greater. Not only do you need to have a high level understanding of the technology and the product you are building, you need to understand some of the more amorphous details.

Who are you managing? Did any of them aspire to the job you were hired to do? Are any of them unhappy and looking to leave? Any performance problems to suss out? How do you build trust? When you lead them, will they follow?

But this is just the beginning. Who are you peers? How do you need to interact with them?

Still not enough – what other groups are stakeholders in the technology you are managing? Project managers. Product managers. Sales. Marketing. Consulting.

It’s time to drink from the fire hose.

Some parts of this book feel a little bit outdated due to the primary case study that is used: sustaining vs disruptive changes in the hard drive industry from the 1970s until the 1990s and how the companies in the industry coped with the changing business landscape. However, the messages that are represented are still valuable.

Key points for me include:

” Most managers learn about innovation in a sustaining technology context because most technologies developed by established companies are sustaining in character. Such innovations are, by definition, targeted at known markets in which customer needs are understood. In this environment, a planned, researched approach to evaluating, developing, and marketing innovative products is not only possible, it is critical to success.

What this means, however, is that much of what the best executives in successful companies have learned about managing innovation is not relevant to disruptive technologies.”

In a nutshell, if you are going after the same customer base or market segment you always have – with a known set of needs you won’t get any market research information to help you create disruptive technologies. In reality this data will discourage your attempts.

-and-

… the vast majority of successful new business ventures abandoned their original business strategies when they began implementing their initial plans and learned what would and would not work in the market. The dominant difference between successful ventures and failed ones, generally is not the astuteness of their original strategy. Guessing the right strategy at the outset isn’t nearly as important to success as conserving enough resources so that new business initiatives get a second or third stab at getting it right. Those that run out of resources or credibility before they can iterate toward a viable strategy are the ones that fail.”

Here, the message is that no one gets disruptive technologies right on their first attempt. Make sure to conserve resources and iterate repeatedly until you find that market or that strategy that works.

-and-

Not only do you need the right people to be able to develop your disruptive technologies, you need the right processes, and you need the right values or priorities. This is what makes it so hard to succeed in large companies which have qualified people and the money for the resources. However, the bigger the company, the more rooted in existing processes it is, and the more likely that the priorities of the organization as a whole are tied to large percentage gains in revenue which a new disruptive technology in a nascent industry is unlikely to provide.

He still hasn’t changed. He is funny, he uses great stories to illustrate his points, AND he brings in a lot of published experts to help him make his case. Hence my realization that I will be reading more books – many many more books. This is a fantastic book for anyone who wants to start or run a company. A bit of the content in here can be found on his blog as well as some in the presentation “The Art of the Start” which you can find on my twitter feed.

One of my favorite quotes is “If the two most popular words in your company are “partner” and “strategic,” and “partner” has become a verb, and “strategic” is used to describe decisions and activities that don’t make sense, it’s time for a reality check.” This is so true. If the partnership doesn’t enhance BOTH of your bottom lines in some way then it isn’t worth doing!

Other concepts that I have seen in real life before include:

• For a new product – add 6 months to a year to your scheduled ship date depending on the status of your prototype.
• For new product sales – take your “conservative” top down estimate and divide it by 100!

Yep, sounds crazy but I’ve worked for companies creating very complex new products that were well over a year late! One was a startup, one was a big company that should have known better.

I’ve also been in all hands meetings where month after month the sales pipeline looked so huge, but nothing ever managed to close. Because the sales projections were so high we all felt like a bunch of losers. It takes a lot of time to sell a new product if you are an unproven startup!

This book is great. It talks about raising money, planning and executing, innovating, marketing and much much more. I highly recommend it.

I do think that one thing really bears repeating. Extensive studies show that positive communication is critical to high performing teams. As in marriages, the ratio of positive comments (approval, praise, support, compliments etc) to negative ones was one of the highest predictors of success or failure for a team effort. The best performing teams received positive-negative feedback in a 5-1 ratio. The worst performing teams received 1 positive for every 3 negative comments. As a leader you have a lot of control over that. You set the stage. You are the role model that the team follows.

Have you ever worked for a leader who was critical of everything that you did? I have. That sure didn’t make me want to work harder because it really didn’t matter what I did, it was wrong, bad, not good enough. Maybe I am a little sensitive, but it made me want to curl up into a ball and go into protective/defensive mode. On the other hand, when I had a leader who recognized the difficult things that I did, or pointed out specific – very concrete – behaviors and accomplishments that they appreciated I would double my effort to help them be successful.

Another thing that I thought was valuable and too infrequently used is leader visibility. If you want to drive certain behaviors in your company you need to walk the talk and you need people to see that you do that. There should be no double standards for you versus them. Hold all hands meetings and be transparent to your employees. Allow them to interact with you and answer the tough questions honestly, don’t dance around issues. Practice management by walking around. Talk to your employees, show and interest in what they are doing, ask how they are. If your organization is divided across multiple locations – visit – FREQUENTLY. Out of sight = out of mind. A visit from a leader can have a strong positive motivational impact. Of course this depends highly on the leader’s behavior while in the remote office. Even though you are the leader, you are still a guest in that office. Show up on time based on the local conventions – do not force the entire office to bend to your whims and time frames when you are there. Be a true role model.

This book gets my dander up for a lot of different reasons. Some are logical and some are a little irrational. My first issue with the book is that the world has changed so much since it was published. (2001) I like the concepts and all, but when I am reading about Fannie Mae, Nucor, and Wells Fargo as great companies there’s this little voice in the back of my mind saying “these guys all *screwed* up – does this research make ANY sense anymore???” Funny thing is that in the Epilogue the author addresses questions about his research. This was one of the questions – what about the companies that aren’t so great anymore? He acknowledges that it never is easy for companies to stay great and sometimes leaders let their egos get involved to cause this. I wish he would have put this in an introduction instead. That would have made reading this book a lot more pleasurable for me.

This book is also going to make me revisit my “Are you a hedgehog or a fox” post at some time. Clearly I need to do more research in this area because when it comes to leading a great company, being a hedgehog (albeit in a slightly different context than my previous post) is a GOOD thing. Companies who are singlemindedly driven toward a goal they are passionate about and that they can be the best at in the world are successful. None of that namby pamby running from idea to idea trying to jump start success happens in great companies. This hit home for me and it made me really angry. I’ve worked for those companies (more than one!) that tried to buy success in this way. What they ended up doing was frittering away millions of dollars of money that could have been used to build what they were really strong at and had people that were passionate about(and actually could be very successful selling). Instead, their leadership went on a huge ego trip and there was a flavor of the week idea that had to be implemented “now”! Talk about crazy.

The final thing that I appreciated is the concept of a Level 5 leader. We surely could use more of them running our companies in this country. Humble, modest, “we” focused, not “I” focused, has a goal of being the best, driven to succeed. This leader is not your charismatic leader. They don’t have to be. Their job isn’t to motivate their staff, but to make sure that they have the right people in the company who are willing to confront the circumstances – “the brutal facts” – and work to be successful despite of them.

“Now, you might be wondering, “How do you motivate people with brutal facts? Doesn’t motivation flow chiefly from a compelling vision?” The answer, surprisingly, is, “No.” Not because vision is unimportant, but because expending energy trying to motivate people is largely a waste of time. One of the dominant themes that runs throughout this book is that if you successfully implement its findings, you will not need to spend time and energy “motivating” people. If you have the right people on the bus, they will be self-motivated. The real question then becomes: How do you manage in such a way as not to de-motivate people? And one of the single most de-motivating actions you can take is to hold out false hopes, soon to be swept away by events.” Amen brother.

“The key to building trust in both good and bad times is to realize that none of us is as smart as all of us. There are companies that have embraced this simple truth and used it to maintain trust before, during and, we’re sure, after this economic downturn. All these companies seem to have two characteristics in common.”

You can find the video here.

The most fascinating aspect of this book to me was related to how culture (corporate as well as geographic) drives the attitudes of the individuals involved in sharing information and knowledge. Subtle management behavior and attitudes can foster knowledge transfer or it can create a competitive environment in which knowledge is hoarded.

If you are looking for an in-depth guide to applying knowledge management to your organization I would not recommend this book. However, if you are interested in becoming conversant in the topic and are looking for a starting point to learn more this is a good book.

The question is – how do you get someone to take on additional responsibility and reliably finish things?  Well, first of all there has to be a desire on their part to do this. If you have someone on your team who likes to experiment, come up with some cool new ideas and then turn over the job of finishing it to someone else – you have the wrong person.  If that person is good at coming up with ideas that are useful for the business, you need to nurture that. If they are someone that just wants to play and what they are interested in isn’t business relevant it is time to have a long conversation about their place in the organization. They might be a great person to have: in another company or another department where they can follow their passion. Having the expectation they will be a finisher will only end in disappointment for both of you.

If the person you are dealing with genuinely wants to drive projects to completion but hasn’t be successful you need to determine why.  They might not have the tools to do it successfully. They might need to improve on their attention to detail. They might need some help in project management and estimation. They might need to learn how to identify when a situation is spiraling out of control and to ask for resources before it becomes a problem. They might just need encouragement or a good old fashioned kick in the pants to get them started.  You also have to be careful and make sure that the reason they aren’t able to finish isn’t because your expectations of what can be accomplished are unreasonable. Take a look at yourself  and your demands first. Second, figure out how best to motivate and coach your employee.  All advice tells employees to modify their style to suit their manager’s in order to get ahead. Here is the time where you need to modify your coaching style to suit how your employee learns best.

Second, they dealt with problems in their organization  up front. This was one area where they definitely were proactive. They didn’t chicken out or hide from the issues.

Third, they were honest communicators.

As a manager I’ve found that doing these things can really make a difference between people that are engaged and stay with the company or the team and those that look to jump ship. These 3 items sound simple enough but at times they are very difficult to do well. Sometimes they are just plain uncomfortable for a manager.