A year has gone by and we have come to the time that keeps many of us awake even now; the time when Mumbai, India’s cosmopolitan city, was turned into a jungle and the residents of the city were hunted out on streets, restaurants and five-star hotels.

It was naked terror that came via the sea and then walked in without the need for any disguise. The man who became the face of the attacks looked ecstatic in a particular picture and later it became known that the crew was on certain drugs that kept them numb, focused and inhuman. With a global audience glued to the TV screens the terrorists achieved what they had come for.

I’ve seen footage of the Scotland Yard in London and that of the New York Police Department (NYPD) on BBC and CNN and I’ve seen what the CCTV at CST showed when the two terrorists were there; if you’ve seen that you understand the point. The action of the local forces in the first few hours was that of total incompetence and it was this period that made all the difference in what could have been a few lives lost and the threat eliminated in a matter of hours to the fact that the trained terrorists got their hideouts with civilian lives as hostages around them and the situation continuing for what seemed like endless 62 hours of agony. It has now been over 365 days of anger, helplessness and embarrassment.

Hardly anything went right that day or the one prior to that and every machinery responsible to ensure the safety of the citizens and that of the country itself from a terror attack failed. The intelligence community defended itself by saying that the intelligence was provided and the enforcing agencies came out saying that it was not actionable. Three of Bombay’s senior police officers, who could have provided leadership, died around Cama Hospital within the first few hours of the attack when they came in the line of fire of two terrorists who were hiding and had a position of advantage.

William Bratton, the recently retired well-known chief of Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) who has headed NYPD before once said ‘all terrorism is local because ultimately, when it happens, it’s local. It’s on your shores. The police are the first line of deterrence rather than the last. It’s the police who know the neighbourhoods and there has to be some level of effective local intelligence.’ Bratton is a legend and there are enough stories on the Internet that show how crime rates have dropped significantly wherever he has provided leadership.

IBN Live carried a story last year after speaking to US security expert Alex Alexiev who put the blame squarely on India’s poor grasp of terror dynamics and lack of coordination between various agencies. Thankfully the US security expert just used the word poor grasp and did not actually say something downright demeaning because we should have been better prepared living near what is called by the world as the ‘epicentre of terrorism.’ And we’ve had a history of terror acts pointing towards the ISI with the one prior to Mumbai being that on the Indian Embassy in Kabul.

The TV journalists did not know that the live footage was being used by the terrorist handlers but what about people from operations and from intelligence who are trained and were also listening to the intercepts? They should have barricaded the place and briefed the media and better still used it to their advantage. If intelligence and operations people knew that the handlers were passing information of our channels to their men inside the three places, then how much intelligence did they need to figure out that media would have been a perfect vehicle to foil their operations; and I am quite certain the journalists present would have been extremely happy to help. Instead people not authorised to speak were briefing the media about things not needed and we ended up showing the NSG getting into Nariman House and the handler shouting kill everybody, their forces are coming.

Our machinery is not working despite dozens of terror incidents because corruption and incompetence run riot in our systems and that is what needs to be rooted out. I read that the external intelligence agency R&AW has been destroyed by years of abuse by senior officials in a column and that the morale is at an all time low.

The media is not immune from incompetence and bureaucracy. Just sample this incident: A good exclusive story landed in my lap and I called two senior people in a newspaper and one of them said great story and asked me to go ahead and the other wrote in an e-mail copied to me and sent to the concerned section that for such strong stories we should be flexible. The section head was incompetence personified and kept coming back with idiotic questions and, finally, I had no choice but to answer them; now if the person had any shame and the bare minimum professional ethics I would have received some reply. Instead the newspaper pulled its shutters down.

Neither the two senior people who were copied nor the incompetent section reporter have got back to me for about six months now. And before my answer I was getting a mail about the gaps everyday. And I don’t think these three people would even be aware that what they did was wrong because power is not answerable to anyone; in fact I apologised to some of them thinking that perhaps there is something living inside them and they would realise. No accountability, no competence and complete shamelessness; and then these people would go out and ask for accountability from other institutions. What a charade of lies and hypocrisy.

I saw an interview of GE’s Jack Welch where he spoke about four kinds of employees and what the company should do with them. 1. High on skills and high on values: you value them and try to keep them. 2. Low on skills and low on values: you fire them. 3. Low on skills but high on values: you give them opportunities to learn. 4. High on skills and low on values: this is the dangerous category and companies often persist a bit longer with them to their own detriment.

Our culture needs to realise that competence matters at all levels and that we need to value it in every field and then perhaps the right people will find their rightful place and the intelligence agencies will function; may be even the right politicians and the police officers would come to the fore and you’ll also have journalists who can edit or write a copy.

Otherwise five years will pass and we would still be sitting ducks.

(Copyright © 2009)

I trace the fall of natural religion to the removal of the rites of Dionysus from the Greek countryside to Athens early in the sixth century B.C.E. (before current era) when the tyrant Peisistratus founded an official Dionysiac feast. After that, the wisdom of synchronizing human activities with seasonal cycles of dieback and regeneration was replaced by effete, urban reenactments, many echoed in various liturgical calendars of today. Religious rituals persisted, but no longer moored to favorable growing conditions and the cycles of nature, they became matters more of superstition and convention than survival.

In the case of rural Dionysian rituals as transplanted to Athens, earlier ceremonies promoted human sensitivity to fertility and reproductive vigor of crops and soils through the flow of vital juices symbolized in the person of Dionysus himself. He was the embodiment, as W.K.C. Guthrie points out in The Greeks and Their Gods, “of not only wine, but the life-blood of animals, the male semen which fertilizes the female, the juicy sap of plants.” Earlier orgiastic rites mimicking the high drama of the year were replaced in the city by occasions for staging new tragedies, originally in honor of Dionysus, but soon deflecting his creative genius onto mere mortals who were awarded prizes for the fecundity—not of their juices—but their dramatic poetry.

Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides certainly deserved the acclaim, and every mortal should aspire to their level of creative achievement. But when people are content to serve as spectators of rather than participants in events, we run the risk of passively living through other people’s trials and adventures, which is not the same as forging lives of our own. If we do not live on the forefront of our lives, can we claim to be alive anywhere at all?

Migration of the human mind and spirit to urban centers led to a huge change in consciousness as emphasis shifted from the personal to the cultural. Citified human understanding wanted to housebreak the creative enthusiasm exhibited everywhere in nature as a kind of bad habit, so disciplined it to conform with culturally acceptable symbols and ideas. The former personifications of ritual energy released at appropriate seasons (in the guise of Dionysus, Attis, Adonis, Tammuz, Osiris, et al.), became characters in myths and stories rather than forces to be dealt with in everyday life. They served as cultural metaphors for what everyone might feel if they felt anything at all. As Guthrie writes, “The authorities of the Greek states . . . did not accept the barbaric stranger [Dionysus] without, in some cases at least, emptying his worship of its most characteristic content.” You could honor his antics from a safe distance without risking ecstasy, muddy feet, or mussed hair. Guthrie characterizes the result as “emasculation of his worship” by civil authorities in Athens.

In Seasonal Feasts and Festivals, E. O. James writes:

Greek tragedy or comedy began . . . as a religious service held at the festivals of Dionysus, in the country in December, in the city in March, and at the Lenaia in January. . . . But as it lost its seasonal character, by the third century B.C., the drama became secularized, very much as the medieval Mystery and Miracle plays were dissociated from the Church and lost their sacred significance and character when in the secularized versions they were enacted in the marketplace by strolling players.

My point is that when a culture’s practices control the minds of its members rather than the other way around—innate, natural consciousness expressing itself through cultural practices—then the primary purpose of membership in a tribe or larger group striving to live in harmony with its place on Earth has been subverted by top-down authority for the sake of its own power, wealth, influence, and position. We dress this transformation in positive guise as a means of becoming civilized, forgetting the price we pay in putting fetters on personal consciousness. The difference is similar to that between true democracy in opposition to self-serving monarchy, oligarchy, plutocracy, or other schemes by which the consciousness of the many is shaped by the will of a privileged elite.

Speaking of which, consider the case of Jack Welch. In keeping with the violence done to natural values by adoption of a medium of exchange in the form of a particular currency accepted throughout a culture (topic of my last post, Reflection 160: Of Two Minds), David Owen writes of Nell Minow’s realizing the import of the retirement agreement C.E.O. Jack Welch worked out with General Electric:

The agreement gave Welch not only millions of dollars but also free lifetime use of a company Boeing 737 and a helicopter; floor-level tickets for the Knicks; box seats for the Red Sox, the Yankees, and the Metropolitan Opera; exclusive use of a company Manhattan apartment; fresh flowers for the apartment; dry-cleaning and Internet service; tips for his doormen; home security systems for four residences that he owned; numerous golf-club memberships; and dozens of other perks and amenities. . . . Whereas less extravagantly compensated people often take pride in being able to make purchases from their earnings, [Minow] said, ‘If you are super-rich, that thrill is gone’ (“The Pay Problem,” The New Yorker, Oct. 12, 2009).

That’s what spectatorship leads to—a wholly cultural life. Welch’s perks kick-in only upon his leaving the company, proving, for the elite at least, there is life in the hereafter. The very model of a modern tycoon, Welch was gaming his company, his culture, and his planet for all they were worth, playing by city rules the whole time, supporting a lifestyle based not on personal, biological needs and values, but on money (the one value officially sponsored by his culture) to an extravagant degree of degeneracy. Such a life is a caricature of civilized man—all take and no give. With no respect shown the environment (here the Hudson River Valley) that makes life itself possible in the region, the river in this instance receiving G.E.’s waste stream laced with PCBs.

Speaking of cultural devils, members of Congress cease to represent their constituencies when they become members of political parties which intercede between them and their supporters. Here again, the cost of living a cultural existence is the cause, which renders the sound judgment of mere mortals null and void. Every Democrat in the Senate voted to move the healthcare debate to the floor, every Republican voted to keep it safely hidden where it was. As if humans came in two colors—red and blue—with no shades of purple in between. This is a crude example of lock-step consciousness, all members of each party hiding behind the same grimacing masks. Forcing the nuanced values of the people who elected them into either of two molds—pro or con—go or no-go.

In rural areas, people are generally taken as they are; in cities, they spend much of their time posing because, with their individual values stripped from them, they can only go through the motions of trying to make themselves attractive. Now over half of America lives in cities removed from the land, removed from personal values, removed from the mental acumen they began acquiring at birth. There are few self-made men or women left. It is easier to open yourself to your culture and let it take your soul. That is, let the aggressive, arrogant, and over-confident elite—the Jack Welches of the world—take over your mind so you come to believe in them and the values they serve. Where Dionysus stood for getting with nature’s program because human life depended on it, demigod Welch tells G.E., “Get with my program because my lifestyle depends on it!” and G.E. sees its duty and goes along, paying Welch by picking the pockets of its customers, shareholders, and workers.

Whatever your price, buy in to the system and let the magic happen. Pledge proper allegiance, sing the proper national anthem, pray to the proper gods and celebrities, buy the right clothes, mumble the right slogans, go to the right schools, root for the right teams, see the right films, vote the right ticket—you are one of Us! All it will cost is a lifetime of your personal earnings, originality, and self-respect. The main thing is to pay your dues to your culture. To be its creature so you don’t have to deal with the anxiety of thinking for yourself. If you live up to others’ expectations, your culture will see to it that Jack Welch gets his retirement package, leaving you free to live vicariously the rest of your days.

The alternative is to raze the corporations and cities where culture rules every thought and gesture. Visualize the scene. Smell the lust. Savor the greed. Then send everyone back to the country to become bumpkins again—fallible human beings who have to discover who they are the hard way without being sold the answer in advance. Ease back on culture, strive for individual integrity and personhood. Define your own projects and challenges for yourself. Come up with your own answers and solutions. Live your own life. Don’t subscribe to the same old views, don’t keep sending the same checks; forget paying your dues. Aspire to be more than just another member; be your own person. Become conscious again.

That way, when you die, it will be your own life you lose, not someone’s whose mind you have paid for, stolen, or enslaved.

El mundo social

Expomanagement es un evento organizado por HSM México en el que se congregan los más altos ejecutivos del país para oír a algunos líderes mundiales y descubrir nuevas ideas para sus empresas. Desde Premios Nobel hasta lo más selecto de las mentes de negocios puede ser oído cada año en este evento inigualable en el pais.

Disclaimer: fui invitado a bloggear el evento en un esfuerzo por aumentar su alcance y distribuir el conocimiento a través de los medios sociales, pero no recibí dinero alguno, ni estoy obligado a hablar positivamente o promocionarlo como tal, lo hago de buena fe y, porque soy gran fan de los eventos organizados por HSM.

Este año no fue la excepción en la calidad tanto del evento, la logística y sobretodo, los exponentes del evento. No hubo una sola plática por parte de los 9 conferencistas que no causara revuelo, comentarios y emoción en mi y me atrevo a decir en todos los asistentes; hasta cobertura nacional de la prensa se llevó uno que otro. La lista de expositores principales la pueden ver aquí.

Además de las conferencias magnas, el área de negocios era impresionante, con participación de grandes empresas dándole un gran valor agregado al evento dado que no solo estaban ahi para promocionar productos sino que también se ofrecieron más de 50 pláticas en los 4 auditorios extra al cual podía ir el equipo de trabajo de los directores que atendían las conferencias magnas. Y en una buena táctica por parte de HSM se ofrecieron entradas gratis a través de Twitter. Me pude encontrar con varios conocidos de ese medio en el lugar y todos salieron con muy buen sabor de boca de las conferencias que vieron.

Los temas fueron desde estrategia, economía, creatividad y filantropía y cada personaje, aportó gran valor a las ideas de los empresarios presentes.

Creatividad, Innovación, Tema recurrente.

Thomas Frey, Gary Hamel, Venkat Ramaswamy concordaron todos en el tema de que el país, y las empresas en él, requieren mayor creatividad e innovación, pero no solo hablando de productos o servicios. La innovación más importante está en el modelo mismo de administración, en lograr que tu empresa cambie y se adapte a la misma velocidad con que está cambiando el mundo. Llevar nuestra cultura a una cultura emprendedora, de colaboración, sin jerarquías y con amplía libertad y reconomiento y “empowerment” para el empleado. Son temas claves de las nuevas tendencias de administración. Llevamos manejando nuestros negocios con los mismos métodos creados hace 100 años, cuando la tecnología y el cambio en el mundo han rebasado ya por mucho lo que veían esos pioneros del management.

Por otro lado Jack Welch, complementó el tema con sus ideas acerca de cómo debes dejar al empleado crecer, hacerle saber que te preoucpas por él y que es parte de una familia y de esa forma fomentar en él la pasión para que, sin necesidad de supervisión, cree cosas nuevas, haga crecer a la empresa y busque el bien de todos.

Pleito Económico entre Premio Nobel y Carstens

Otro gran punto fue por parte de Joseph Stiglitz, premio Nobel de Economía quien afirmó que no cree que México haya enfrentado la crisis como debiera, sus comentarios fueron tomados por la prensa y usados para atacar al secretario de Hacienda Agustín Carstens, quien replicó que el Nobel de Economía estaba equivocado por “no conocer méxico”.

¿Estamos listos para no ganar dinero?

Premio Nobel de la Paz, Muhammad Yunus, empresario de Bangladesh nos habló de cómo creó el sistema de microcréditos en su país y después como lo ha hecho crecer en un nuevo modelo de negocios llamado “Negocios Sociales”, presentándolo como una nueva opción al único modelo de negocios existente: el de hacer dinero. Simplemente nos pide entender que háy más allá del dinero, el comenta: “Hay más cosas en la vida que nos pueden dar satisfacción, les presento una opción de blanco contra el negro que ya existe, y se vale buscar grises”.  Una fantástica experiencia oír sus palabras y motivarnos a buscar un problema social y más allá de simplemente fundar una organización sin fines de lucro, crear una empresa que solucione el problema con productos baratos y sin ganancias.

Finalmente, los expresidentes de Colombia y España nos dieron sus perspectivas respecto al futuro de Latinoamérica. De notar fue la plática de Andrés Pastrana, quién en su tiempo a la cabeza de Colombia le tocó enfrentar a la FARC y a Pablo Escobar de frente. Le tocó ser secuestrado cuando era alcalde, y nos platicó cómo está de acuerdo en las acciones que toma hoy México contra el narcotráfico pero sin dejar pasar las alternativas de legalización como opciones viables de enfrentarlo, pero con una principal idea necesaria: la coordinación entre todos los países, tanto productores como consumidores como los de tránsito para poder realmente llevar a un nivel satisfactorio esta batalla.

En conclusión, un gran evento, con los speakers al nivel de lo prometido, la asistencia fue a Full tanto en las magnas así cómo en el área de negocios, me dicen que cerca de 6,000 personas asistieron y no creo que nadie haya quedado decepcionado.

“Put that coffee down! Coffee is for closers.”

I haven’t taken any time this week to do anything but watch TV I downloaded. Hours upon hours of it: Band of Brothers, Brotherhood, 30 Rock, Sons of Anarchy and more.

How did I manage to score all this time, you ask? I got canned, fired, released, let go, booted.

I’ve been sitting here, clearing my brain of all the crap that has been filling it over the past 18 months or so, all the negativity, all the self doubt.

There’s irony in this; one year ago (November 26th, 2008, to be precise), I was packaged out from TELUS corporate. I was let go last week (Friday, November 13, 2009) by Rogers. I’ve gone a year, supposedly moved ahead, but I’m back almost exactly where I’ve started. Funny how things go, isn’t it?

Here’s my chance to get away from what Zig Ziglar would call “stinkin thinkin”. Start out fresh, make good decisions, move on with my life and put the negativity behind me.

So that’s what I’m doing, starting today….

Meet Tubesteak’s dreamgirl, Michelle Thompson, above. What makes her Tube’s top babe? She has a rare medical condition called Persistent Sexual Arousal Syndrome. Her condition forces her to constantly crave some loving. She has 300 orgasms a day! Her recent plight is noteworthy, though. She has dated men on and off but has never found one who can satisfy her endless cravings for sex. But don’t pity her, she has found a new man and is thrilled about it. Apparently, her neighbor is the man of her dreams. She says they do it 10 times a day and she constantly has a smile on her face. That would make me smile. … People say the recession is over, but tell that to all the unemployed guys out there. Well, I just might have a part-time gig that is fun and pays pretty decently for you jobless fellas out there: Become sperm donors! Here’s how it works: Walk into a sperm bank, answer some questions, meet with some administrator and jack off in a cup. The lab will test it, and if your count is high enough and you don’t have AIDS or any other disease, they will ask you to sign a contract asking you to come in twice a week to whack off in a cup. When your six-month agreement runs out, the lab will save the samples and sit on them for six months for more testing. At the end of the six months, head back in and collect up to $50 for every jack-off session. That’s roughly $2,500 for flogging the dolphin a few times a week. The Sperm Bank Directory has more information and a map to find a bank in your area. There’s one in Cambridge for all you Boston fellas. … Three links for your enjoyment this Thursday: 1) Moviefone offers its best disaster movie scenes. I vote for NYC getting tidal-waved in Deep Impact; 2) Got a shitload of extra cash lying around? Here’s seven outrageously expensive things no rich asshole can do without; and 3) Newsweek takes a look at the 10 worst predictions of the decade. No. 8 still pains me to think about. … Want more proof that Gerard Butler, aka Leonidas from “300,” is the man? He admitted on a British TV show that he has more threesums that twosums. … Today would have been Miss Elizabeth’s 49th birthday if she didn’t die of a drug overdose in 2003 at the home of Lex Luger. Miss Elizabeth, whose real name is Elizabeth Ann Hulette and was married to Randy “Macho Man” Savage for many years, was in a relationship with Luger at the time of her death. She ended up working at the front desk of a gym Luger owned after she couldn’t cut it in the wrestling business any longer. … Happy 74th birthday to Jack Welch, also known as the Father of Management. He is arguably the most influential American businessman in history and his works are mandatory reading for business students at many universities around the country. Did you know that Welch, the former CEO of General Electric who is worth $750 million, teaches a class at MIT to hand-picked business students focusing on leadership. …  Thursday Ramblings will not appear next week because of the holiday and will return to Decent Community on Dec. 3.

During two internships at investment banks, feeling uncomfortable having ESPN.com open on my company’s computer all day, I found myself in the Bloomberg sports section quite frequently. One of the main writers in this section was Scott Soshnick. Nearly every article I read of his was filled with nonsense. Making ludicrous claims, random anecdotes and idiotic conclusions were just a few of his specialties. But with no outlet to vent I was stuck frustrated in my cubicle. Now that I have my blog I get the chance to break down his articles FJM style. His latest disaster is below in bold with my hysterical responses in between.

Nov. 18 (Bloomberg) – Bill Belichick’s hoodie provides cover from more than inclement weather.

It also complements his beautiful eyes?

It also serves to block the periphery, the noise, the distraction.

Oh. I wonder where the Patriots get their cotton from.

Belichick can only see what’s in front of him. Perfect for a man with tunnel vision.

He must get some serious neck pains coaching his team every week. That or he runs the sidelines very quickly.

Belichick, coach of the National Football League’s New England Patriots, has always seen things in concrete terms. Black. White.

Not only is he partially blind, but he’s racist too. I knew I had a good reason to hate him.

In professional sports that means winner and loser. There’s no middle ground.

If only there was a name for a situation where the game ends and both teams have the same score. Just one of those mysteries of the universe I guess.

Belichick finds no comfort, gains no solace, from workmanlike effort or oh-so-close. There are no moral victories in the NFL, not to Belichick, only the euphoria of his team scoring more points in the allotted time.

Euphoria [I was going to link to a “euphoric” picture of Bill Belichick, but there isn’t a single one in the google universe of him smiling].

Belichick went for it for two reasons: 1) he thought it gave his team the best chance to win and 2) his three Super Bowl rings give him enough clout with ownership that he doesn’t have to worry about what anyone thinks.

3) He had the Colts in a 3 game teaser.

Not newspaper columnists. Not babbling sports radio hosts. Not even his former player Rodney Harrision, who called it “the worst decision” he’d ever seen, or former coaches like Tony Dungy, he of one Super Bowl victory, who told NBC’s audience that punting was the only option.

Funny off topic tid-bit that really got absolutely no media play: Jim Caldwell was never shown on camera speaking into his headset during that game. Dead silence, the entire game. My roommates and I have come up with the notion that Payton Manning is actually the coach, and that Jim Caldwell is some homeless dude that they found on the street, stuck a headset on, and called “coach” when Dungy left. Just a theory, I’ll probably devote an entire post to it if I watch another Colts game.

I like what Belichick did against the Colts. So, by the way, did former General Electric Co. Chief Executive Officer Jack Welch, who tweeted as much. Passing on the punt, passing up the safe, certainly beats boring.

This made me laugh. Listen, I know you write for a financial news organization, but really? Mentioning Jack Welch once in a post and not referencing it again makes no sense. Jack Welch is not a trusted source when it comes to football. If you are, however, interested in gaining advice about giving your wife half of your net worth after a messy divorce, hit this fellow up.

This time, though, it didn’t beat the Colts, who, behind Peyton Manning, took over and found the end zone.

Colts won. Patriots lost.

Jack Welch sad.

I could bore you with the statistical analysis, all of which, by the way, says Belichick, percentage-wise, did the right thing. I won’t.

Oh how borrrrring. How ludicrous it would be if in a post defending a risky decision by Bill Belichick you referenced fairly accurate statistics breaking down the possible outcomes. Thank goodness you picked other ways to back up your argument.

Instead I offer Yankees manager Joe Girardi, who was second-guessed plenty for his decision to use a three-man rotation in the World Series.

Like a baseball manager.

/hand slap to the forehead.

“The interesting thing about what people were calling second-guessing is they don’t know if their idea would have worked,” said Girardi, who, oh yeah, won the World Series. “We base our decisions on a lot of preparation. We don’t do anything where we just pull something off the wall. Every decision is not going to go according to plan, and you have to deal with it and you have to answer for it.”

Thank you Joe Girardi…for vaguely summarizing everything that happened?

Belichick dealt with it. He answered for it. Now you can bet he’s forgotten about it. New England hosts the Jets on Sunday.

Ugh, don’t remind me.

Don’t be surprised if, somehow, someway, unconventional wisdom emerges from the hoodie.

Bill Belichick’s hoodie projected stats:

23 carries 167 yards rushing 2 TDs

[He’s starting for my fantasy team]

On the merits of an enthusiastic recommendation by a friend, I read a few pages of Winning by Jack Welch, with Suzy Welch, at the bookstore. Pragmatic tidbits, such as “lack of candor blocks smart ideas, fast action, and good people contributing all the stuff they’ve got,” convinced me to buy a copy. It’s a nice counterpoint to vague management theory and leadership flavor-of-the-month.

I look forward to reading it.

“If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.” Scientist Sir Isaac Newton, in a letter to his colleague Robert Hooke, February 1676.
Have you ever pictured yourself as being an entrepreneur? Have you ever wanted to be your own boss and determine your own annual income and worth? Have you ever wanted to get away from the office more and spend additional time with your family or close friends? The fact is you can become an entrepreneur. You can even flourish as one much more easily than you might think. Find a mentor. A mentor is someone with more experience than you who serves as a trusted confidante over an extended period of time. In business the mentor is someone who has more entrepreneurial business experience than you and is also a trusted confidante over an extended period of time, usually free of charge. In other words, a mentor is not just an advisor, a mentor is someone who has been there and done that and is best suited to guide you along the path of profitability in your business.

Types of Mentoring
Mentoring is often divided into two types (Buell, 2004):
• Informal mentoring relationships develop on their own as when a person approaches a possible mentor and that person agrees to form a mentoring relationship.
• Formal mentoring relationships refer to assigned relationships, in which the organization oversees and guides the mentoring program in order to promote employee development.
Note that this does not mean it is black and white; rather it is more of a continuum with formal on one end and informal on the other end. For example an organization may guide and oversee a mentoring program, in addition to providing learning opportunities to both the mentors and protégés, but may not assign the relationships.

These two types of mentoring can further be divided into two forms:
• Traditional Mentoring in which there is a long-term relationship where a mentor guides the protégé’s career.
• Special Project Mentoring in which a mentor helps to guide a protégé’s short-term project (a few weeks to a few months).

Benefits of good mentorship
Why is mentoring important in business and life generally?
• In this economy, you need to take advantage of every available resource to propel your career. Finding a mentor-and preferably a network of mentors-is a critical and smart way to get started. And, it won’t set you back financially the way hiring a career coach would.

• Mentoring is a way of giving back to the community and to society at large. It’s a way to develop various skills as a teacher, manager, strategist, or consultant. And a true mentoring relationship also works in both directions-they learn about new ideas from you just as you learn timeless wisdom from them. Jack Welch, one of my mentors, of General Electrics is famous for his belief that you must be either number one or number two in your industry or you must get out and concentrate your resources where becoming number or two is possible. If you don’t the critical tool of competitive advantage, don’t compete.

• A good mentor can provide you with the necessary competitive advantages you will need to be at the top of your field and lead your business into the realm of profitability.

• Your mentor, being an experienced businessperson, is likely to have an extensive network, and can offer you access to far more senior decision-makers than you currently have. And they will be far more willing to open that network up to you than some casual acquaintance from a networking meeting.

• A good mentoring relationship allows both mentor and mentee to develop new talents and build self-awareness. In business settings, the mentee can become more in-tune with a corporate culture and the mentor can hone leadership skills.

Finding a good mentor can often be difficult, if not almost impossible as good mentors are normally very good at their work, thus they already have high demands for their skills and time, thus they might be reluctant to take on a new protégé. To increase your chances, it sometimes helps to be specific about what you want from a mentor. The more certain you are about your needs, the more likely you will find a mentor to meet those needs.

When beginning your search, consider these tips:
Know yourself:
Consider your strengths and weaknesses, and define how a mentor might guide you through your growth.

Be proactive:
Develop a deliberate course of action to find a mentor.

Ask for referrals:
Networks to expand your reach. When requesting referrals, be clear about what you’re looking for and why.

Keep an open mind regarding who this person might be:
A mentor is someone who will help you grow in the area(s) most important to you, so look for someone who exemplifies the traits and skills that you want to adopt.

Identify where you may find a suitable mentor:
Good sources of mentors include your management team, industry associations, online communities, your clergy and/or congregation, and professors. Also consider people in your non-workplace communities, such as retirees, local business owners, and people associated with your hobbies. (Note: Some personal coaches advise against choosing your supervisor as a mentor because of a possible conflict of interest.)

Know what you want to achieve from the relationship:
A clear understanding of your purpose and desired result will ensure that you find a suitable mentor, and that you and your mentor find value in the relationship. This clarity also eliminates any future confusion regarding roles and expectations.

Think about people who have been your mentors in the past:
Whether deliberately or not, each of us has had mentors in our lives. Think about the people who have mentored you and the qualities that you appreciated most about them. Use these traits as barometers to finding a new mentor.

GOT VIRTUAL MENTORS?
Imagine having management guru Peter Drucker as your business mentor. As it turns out, many CEOs do and you can. By reading books, listening to tapes and attending seminars these leaders in various fields of business, entertainment etc., can become your mentor too and guide you to personal and business growth. Below is my list of ten most favorite virtual mentors:

Bill Gates-
Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates is perhaps the most famous entrepreneur of this era. He had the vision to predict the evolving importance of the personal computer. This allowed him to top Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s wealthiest individuals, with a 2006 estimated net worth of $50 billion.

Mary Kay Ash – Most Outstanding Woman in Business in the 20th Century
The founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics created a business that has helped some half a million women fulfill their dreams of business ownership. A best-selling author and powerful motivational speaker, Lifetime Television named her the Most Outstanding Woman in Business in the 20th Century.

Oprah Winfrey -Most Admired Entrepreneur
The unmistakable queen of daytime talk and voted the most admired entrepreneur among her peers.  Oprah Winfrey stood out head and shoulders above the rest.

Madame C. J. Walker – First Female African-American Millionaire
The daughter of former slaves, orphaned at the age of seven, Walker built a thriving beauty products business in the early 20th century, eventually employing over 3,000 people. Her hard work, honest business dealings and quality products led her to become the first self-made female African-American millionaire.

Richard Branson – The Rebel Billionaire and the Ultimate Multipreneur
A Most Admired Entrepreneur. While perhaps less well known outside of his homeland of England, Richard Branson wins the Editor’s Choice for Most Admired Entrepreneur. Learn and the ultimate multipreneur  who has succeeded perhaps most of all at “engineering a breathtaking life for himself.

Donald Trump – Billionaire Real Estate Tycoon and Host of The Apprentice
With a long list of accomplishments and assets in real estate development, hospitality and entertainment, the outspoken star and producer of “The Apprentice” is one of the world’s most famous entrepreneurs. With his rollercoaster track record, he demonstrates one of the most important entrepreneurial traits: the ability to stand back up when you fall down.

Henry Ford -Founder of Ford Motor Company and Manufacturing Assembly Line Innovator
Henry Ford was not the inventor of the automobile, but his innovations in assembly-line techniques and the introduction of standardized interchangeable parts contributed to making the United States a nation of motorists and produced the first mass-production vehicle manufacturing plant.

Michael Dell: Innovator of the Personal Computer Industry
Michael Dell, born February 1965, started the road to success out of his University of Texas dorm room in with just $1000 and an idea in 1984. Michael Dell is both Chairman and CEO of his company with a net worth of over $30 billion. Dell sells directly to the customer so to avoid middleman mark-ups.

Walt Disney – The Man behind the Mouse
Disney is one of the most recognized brands in the world, but few know as much about the man behind the Magic Kingdom, not to mention the hundreds of animated cartoons, countless feature films and endless toys that bear his name. An influential innovator and entrepreneur in the mid 20th century, Disney went from sketching a rabbit (yes, a rabbit) to running a multi-billion dollar empire.

Evan Carmichael
Evan is an entrepreneur and international speaker. At the age of 19, he became an owner and Chief Operating Officer in Redasoft, a biotechnology software company. The company quickly grew to over 300 organizations as clients, including NASA and Johnson & Johnson, in 30 countries. He started Evan Carmichael Communications Group and created EvanCarmichael website with the goal to give entrepreneurs the motivation to follow their passion and the strategies they need to succeed. Evan has also delivered over 100 keynote presentations to entrepreneurs in North America, Europe, and Asia.

Como ya mencioné estaré de blogger en el evento de HSM: ExpoManagement 09 (#expomngt09). Para ser sinceros me siento un poco tonto nervioso pues de repente no sé qué le preguntaría a líderes de este calibre. En el post pasado me dieron una buena y valiosa idea: recopilar preguntas del público en general en caso de que pueda hacerle algunas a alguno de los panelistas.

Así que les pido en este post dejar en los comentarios preguntas serias y relavantes para los speakers del evento. Las más interesantes a mi juicio ( y dado que tenga la oportunidad pues no entraré a un par de las conferencias) serán hechas durante el evento. Para hacerlo más interesante y divertido les digo que a las primeras dos preguntas, serias e interesantes, que seleccione también les regalaré un Invite para Google Wave (Disclaimer: el invite no es automático ni seguro queda a la discresión de Google el que se seleccione a la persona sugerida)

Aquí están los speakers del evento:

“I’m here to pimp my wife’s book” were the first words spoken by Jack Welch, when he presented alongside his wife, Suzy Welch, to an audience at the Indigo book store at the Manulife Center in Toronto, on April 27, 2009.

Jack was referring to Suzy’s new book, 10-10-10: A Life-Transforming Idea. (As an aside, 10-10-10 received poor reviews. I believe reviewers compared the book to Suzy’s first book, Winning, which she co-wrote with Jack. 10-10-10 is nowhere near the caliber of Winning, though I think Suzy targeted the Oprah Book of the Month Club audience with 10-10-10.)

Kevin Kane in Croatia, holding the Croatian edition of one of his favorite books, Jack and Suzy Welch's Winning

When I heard that Jack was coming to Toronto, I just *had* to meet him. This is Jack Welch, the man who was named “Manager of the Century” by Fortune magazine in 1999; who during his 20-year tenure as CEO of General Electric, from 1984 to 2004, increased GE’s market capitalization from $14 billion to more than $410 billion, making GE the largest and most valuable company in the world.

So what’s it like to meet the man in person? Jack entered the store with his wife, the much younger and stunning Suzy Welch. Suzy is the former Executive Editor of one of my favorite magazines, the prestigious Harvard Business Review. Suzy speaks with considerable authority and presence, and has a vivaciousness that initially made me wonder if she might actually upstage her husband.

But once Jack started answering questions, the words of Warren Buffett came to mind when Warren said, “When you talk with Jack about management, his energy and passion fill the room.”

Though Jack genuinely tried to let the evening be Susie’s show, he couldn’t help but oblige the audience by answering a few of their questions. Here are, at random, a few thoughts which Jack shared:

• Jack was challenged on whether his admonition to “follow your gut” might lead people to not consider important data in the decision-making process. Jack responded by relating “gut intuition” to “pattern recognition”: your gut identifies patterns of experience you’ve seen before, and intuitively hints you toward a correct decision based on your previous encounters. Jack advised us: “Don’t ignore your gut. Your gut is a legtimate data point. But combine your gut with additional data to make a better decision.”
• People naturally dismiss ideas from people they dislike, regardless of the merit of those ideas.
• Two questions Jack asked himself during his life and career: “What do you want people to say about you when you’re not in the room?” and “What would make you cry with regret on your 70th birthday?”
• On the economy, and the US government’s plan to “spend its way out of the recession”: “How are we going to pay back the debt incurred, when realistically, the US will grow at only 4-percent, we have more global competition than ever, and people have fundamentally become more frugal?”

I approached Jack after the question and answer session and asked, “Which idea is tougher to sell inside organizations – candor or boundarylessness?” (These are two concepts Jack strongly endorses in his books.) Jack’s eyes widened and he responded, “They are both as tough as nails to sell!” He looked at me intently and stated emphatically, “You have to reward these behaviors.” Discussing these ideas really got Jack fired up, and we shared stories about them for some length of time.

Then Jack started asking questions about me and my career. He took a keen interest in me, and he is very encouraging. He maintains a relaxed but focused attention when he speaks with you, and he projects a down-to-earth warmth and sincerity. He frequently makes funny remarks, and he even laughed at all my jokes. Even my girlfriend doesn’t get all my jokes, so clearly Jack is a very enlightened person from my perspective. Meeting Jack Welch reminded me of how gratifying an experience it is when you discover that a celebrity whom you have admired from afar turns out to be just as impressive and likable when you meet them in person.

18 y 19 de Noviembre estaré ante algunas mentes brillantes de nuestro planeta. Compartiendo con ustedes  todas sus ideas y experiencias. Me han invitado a ser parte del Blogger Hub para ExpoManagement 09. Un honor y una gran emoción para mí.

http://hsmmexico.blog.com/2009/11/10/conoce-al-blogger-hub-luis-fer-martinez/

Expomanagement es un evento organizado por la reconocida empresa HSM, atrayendo el talento de grandes líderes mundiales en los negocios, la política y el mundo creativo; mezclado con conferencias de negocios de gran contenido. Un evento donde líderes de todo ámbito de negocio se reunén para oír, aprender y compartir grandes experiencias.

He tenido el gusto de asistir a un par de eventos de HSM, y siempre me ha dejado un grato sabor de boca la calidad de sus eventos, su logística y el contenido que se comparte tanto dentro como fuera del salón de conferencias. Si tiene por ahí el tiempo y el poder de convencer a su jefe de soltar un poco de dinero del presupuesto para un excelente training: esta es una gran oportunidad (desde mi muy humilde opinión, no crean que les estoy vendiendo nada, yo no tengo ningún beneficio económico de esto).

Chequen la página para mayor información pero de entrada les puedo comentar que habrá 9 grandes expositores entre los que destacan para mí: Joseph Stiglitz (Premio Nobel Economía); Gary Hamel (Estrategia); Andrés Pastrana (Ex-presidente de Colombia); Thomas Frey (Genio del diseño). Aparte, habrá conferencias en el área de negocios con diferentes tópicos: Uno de ellos acerca de Web 2.0 y redes sociales, y varios más

¿Qué vas a hacer?

Básicamente estaré comentando todo lo que vea en el evento y en las conferencias (que seguro será mucho): puntos importantes de los conferencistas, datos, referencias, fuentes de información, chavas guapas y chismes de negocios jeje. Lo trataré de hacer a través del mayor número de canales que pueda sin perder la concentración de lo que se está diciendo (oigan, tambien quiero aprender!). Mi principal canal será twitter con el hashtag: #expomgnt09. De ahí posiblemente envíe algunas copias a facebook y si puedo, a linkedin, aunque tambien trataré de dar contenido original en estas redes, quizá fotitos o audio. Dentro de “está en planeación” me gustaría intentar usar Google Wave para comentar también en el momento cada conferencia ( a ver si así le encuentro un uso a la cosa esa)  y quizá hacer un live blog. De no ser posible trataré de postear varias veces en el día mis impresiones de cada conferencia y evento al que asista. Es mi primera vez haciendo algo así ¿Cómo ven? ¿Sugerencias?

Le aplaudo la iniciativa a HSM de abrir, sin restricciones,  las puertas de su evento a personas fuera de su staff para generar mayor contenido en las redes sociales y generarse mayor atención y publicidad al respecto. Creo que es una propuesta de valor que deben de tomar como ejemplo todos los congresos y conferencias del país y Latinoamérica. Además es un marketing con mucho valor: A mí me ganan la lealtad al motivarme con esta invitación a seguir echándole ganas al blog y además tener la entrada al evento. Y creo que hay mucho valor para todos los que sigan el evento desde social media de poder ver no solo la opinión “oficial” sino también la de varias personas independientes y sus seguidores. Y finalmente, ellos conhttps://gawed.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.phpsiguen un equipo de periodismo y RP con bajo prespuesto, es un win-win situation.

Espero me acompañen en mi estreno en este tipo de cosas y me ayuden a demostrar que sí sirven porque sí me gustaría seguir haciendo este tipo de cosas para más eventos en el futuro. Recuerden: 18 y 19 de Noviembre, ahí estaré en el Centro Banamex.

UPDATED: NUEVOS BLOGGERS AÑADIDOS

Otros miembros distinguidos del HSM Blogging Hub:

Jorge Contreras .- http://hsmmexico.blog.com/2009/11/10/conoce-al-blogger-hub-jorge-contreras-navarro/

Jesus Hoyos .- http://hsmmexico.blog.com/2009/11/10/conoce-al-blugger-hub-jesus-hoyos/

Elisa Nájera .- http://hsmmexico.blog.com/2009/11/10/conoce-al-blogger-hub-elisa-najera/

Luis Maram .- http://hsmmexico.blog.com/2009/11/10/conoce-al-blogger-hub-luis-maram/

Edgar López .- http://hsmmexico.blog.com/2009/11/11/conoce-al-blogger-hub-edgar-lopez/

Claudia Margain.- http://hsmmexico.blog.com/2009/11/11/conoce-al-blogger-hub-claudia-margain/

Rubén García.- http://hsmmexico.blog.com/2009/11/11/conoce-al-blogger-hub-ruben-garcia-diaz/

Me gustaría tener un apartadito para que me propongais libros interesantes al mismo timpo que yo iré citando algunos. En estos momentos estoy acabando de leer ”Winning” de Jack Welch y está muy bien cita algunas claves de éxito profesional, habla de la motivación, del liderazgo, del equilibrio entre lo profesional y lo laboral, os lo recomiendo.

The famous chief executive has started a management institute at Chancellor University that will offer an affordable, rigorous M.B.A. program. Can a high-profile program backed by a legendary business magnate lure students?

[Source: Chronicle of Higher Education]

Fierce Leadership

Fierce Leadership: A Bold Alternative to the Worst “Best” Practices of Business Today
Susan Scott
Broadway Books (2009)

With regard to the meaning of “fierce,” it is the same when used in the title of Susan Scott’s previously published book, Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time. The word usually connotes being aggressive, confrontational, perhaps even hostile when in fact Pierce notes that it can also be used when expressing affection, loyalty, appreciation, and perhaps even love. However it is used, whatever is expressed should be honest, real, genuine, frank, candid, and in all other respects authentic. The subtitle of this book refers to a “bold alternative to the worst ‘best’ practices of business today.” This is a subject of great interest to me because much nonsense has been written about how the best practices of a GE, for example, can help other organizations succeed. The fact is, that best practices are not core values. They must be modified, sometimes replaced entirely as changing circumstances demand. It is worth adding that GE’s best practices during Jack Welch’s last year (2001) as chairman and CEO have changed significantly since then.

Ernest Hemingway once observed that all great writers have a “built-in, shock-proof crap detector.” Scott suggests that fierce leaders also have one as well as what she characterizes as a “squid eye.” That is, as Paul Lindbergh explains, “Seeing squid means you are seeing many things that others cannot and do not see. It means having sight in the presence of the blind. It means that you are a selective and efficient information gatherer. This is what ‘squid eye’ really means, and when you apply it to other aspects of your life, you will have, metaphorically, more tuna in your net and fewer guppies and old rubber boots. And if you can see one ‘tell’ [i.e. an indicator that what you seek is nearby], you automatically get others. It’s almost like beginning to understand the nature of a tell or the nature of signs left behind for our eyes and senses to use.”

Following on from my last post; I wrote this article for an Institute of Directors publication a few years ago.  The series was entitled, ‘The Best Advice I Ever Got’;  and here’s an excerpt of what I wrote at the time.

“I am a self taught manager and have over the years been something of an informationholic; reading books, journals and now websites to learn as much as I can.  Consequently I always think of ‘The Best Advice I Ever Got’ as being something I’ve read, written by someone I admire and respect.

There are many nuggets that I have picked up over the years, but the one that I repeat almost daily in my current role is something that the great Jack Welch talks about. 

“Have a positive attitude and spread it around, never let yourself be a victim and for goodness’ sake have fun.”

What I have found by preaching this message to young people joining our organisation is that it is infectious.  Positive people can infect those around them, try being depressed in a room full of others who are smiling and laughing.  Their positivity becomes energising and can genuinely make a difference to colleagues, managers and customers.

Individuals who become victims are clearly part of the problem rather than part of the solution and their negative influence can also be infectious.  Clive Woodward refers to these people as ‘energy sappers’ in his book Winning! and there is no place for them in a winning team.

Having fun is not just about playing hard outside of work but about making the job and working environment enjoyable.  It is also about celebrating, as Jack Welch says, ‘Work is too much part of life not to recognise moments of achievement.  Grab as many as you can.  Make a big deal out of them.’

We have now turned this into an art form.  We enter awards, and win them, we celebrate customer testimonial letters, we celebrate exceptional performance, we give out staff awards, we want everyone to be part of the story of the business and for that story to be colourful and engaging.

The power of a positive attitude remains as strong as ever.”

Reading it back now, several years on, the advice is just as relevant.  Approaching the end of a tough year for many of us, I am sure that positive attitude is what has carried us forward and continues to motivate those around us.

Jack Welch – On Differentiation: Or, making winners out of everyone

On Differentiation by Jack Welch

If there is one of my values that pushes buttons, it is differentiation.

Some people love the idea; they swear by it, run their companies with it,and will tell you it is at the very root of their success. Other people hate it. They call it mean, harsh, impractical, demotivating, political,unfair—or all of the above.

Obviously, I am a huge fan of differentiation. I have seen it transform companies from mediocre to outstanding, and it is as morally sound as a management system can be. It works.

Companies win when their managers make a clear and meaningful distinction between top- and bottom-performing businesses and people, when they cultivate the strong and cull the weak.

Companies suffer when every business and person is treated equally and bets are sprinkled all around like rain on the ocean.

UNDERNEATH IT ALL

A company only has so much money. Winning leaders invest where the payback is the highest. When all is said and done, differentiation is just resource allocation, which is what good leaders do and, in fact, is one of the chief jobs they are paid to do. A company has only so much money and managerial time. Winning leaders invest where the payback is the highest. They cut their losses everywhere else.

If that sounds Darwinian, let me add that I am convinced that along with being the most efficient and most effective way to run your company,differentiation also happens to be the fairest and the kindest. Ultimately, it makes winners out of everyone.

DIFFERENTIATION DEFINED

One of the main misunderstandings about differentiation is that it is only about people. That’s to miss half of it. Differentiation is a way to manage people and businesses.

Basically, differentiation holds that a company has two parts, software and hardware. Software is simple—it’s your people. Hardware depends. If you are a large company, your hardware is the different businesses in your portfolio. If you are smaller, your hardware is your product lines.

Let’s look first at differentiation in terms of hardware. It’s pretty straightforward and a lot less incendiary.

Every company has strong businesses or product lines and weak ones and some in between. Differentiation requires managers to know which is which and invest accordingly.

To do that, of course, you have to have a clear-cut definition of“strong.” At GE, “strong” meant a business was No. 1 or No. 2 in its market. If it wasn’t, the managers had to fix it, sell it,or as a last resort, close it. Other companies have different frameworks for investment decisions. They put their money and time only into businesses or product lines that promise double-digit sales growth, for instance. Or they invest only in businesses or product lines with a 15 percent (or better)discounted rate of return (DCRR).

Now, I generally don’t like investment criteria that are financial i nnature, like DCRR, because the numbers can be jiggered so easily by changing the residual value, or any other number of assumptions, in an investment proposal. But my point is the same: differentiation among your businesses or product lines requires a transparent framework that everyone in the company undestands. People may not like it, but they know it and they manage with it.

In fact, differentiation among businesses and product lines is a powerfu lmanagement discipline in general. At GE, the No. 1 or No. 2 framework stopped the decades-long practice of sprinkling money everywhere. Most GE managers in the old days probably knew that spreading money all around didn’t make sense, but it’s so easy to do. There’s always that pressure—managers jockeying and politicking for their share of the pie.  To avoid warfare, you give everyone a little slice and hope for the best.

Running your company without differentiation among your businesses or product lines may have been possible when the world was less competitive. But with globalization and digitization, forget it. Managers at every level have to make hard choices and live by them.

THE PEOPLE PART

Now let’s talk about the more controversial topic, differentiation among people. It’s a process that requires managers to assess their employees and separate them into three categories in terms of performance: top 20 percent, middle 70, and bottom 10. Then— and this is key—it requires managers to act on that distinction. I emphasize the word“act” because all managers naturally differentiate—in their heads. But very few make it real.

Top 20%

When people differentiation is real, the top 20 percent of employees are showered with bonuses, stock options, praise, love, training, and a variety of rewards to their pocketbooks and souls. There can be no mistaking the stars at a company that differentiates. They are the best and are treated that way.

Middle 70%

The middle 70 percent are managed differently.  This group of people is enormously valuable to any company; you simply cannot function without their skills, energy, and commitment. After all, they are the majority of your employees. And that’s the major challenge, and risk, in 20-70-10—keeping the middle 70 engaged and motivated.

That’s why so much of managing the middle 70 is about training,positive feedback, and thoughtful goal setting. If individuals in this group have particular promise, they should be moved around among businesses and functions to increase their experience and knowledge and to test their leadership skills.

To be clear, managing the middle 70 is not about keeping people out of the bottom 10. It is not about saving poor performers. That would be a bad investment decision. Rather, differentiation is about managers looking at the middle 70, identifying people with potential to move up, and cultivating them.But everyone in the middle 70 needs to be motivated and made to feel as if  they truly belong. You do not want to lose the vast majority of your middle 70—you want to improve them.

Bottom 10%

As for the bottom 10 percent in differentiation, there is no sugar coating this—they have to go. That’s more easily said than done; It’s awful to fire people—I even hate that word. But if you have a candid organization with clear performance expectations and a performance evaluation process—a big if, obviously, but that should be everyone’s goal—then people in the bottom 10 percent generally know who they are. When you tell them, they usually leave before you ask them to.

No one wants to be in an organization where they aren’t wanted. One of the best things about differentiation is that people in the bottom 10 percent of organizations very often go on to successful careers at companies and in pursuits where they truly belong and where they can excel.

I learned it on the playground

That’s how differentiation works in a nutshell. People sometimes ask where I came up with the idea. My answer is, I didn’t invent differentiation! I learned it on the playground when I was a kid.

When we were making a baseball team, the best players always got picked first, the fair players were put in the easy positions, usually second base or right field, and the least athletic ones had to watch from the sidelines. Everyone knew where he stood. The top kids wanted desperately to stay there, and got the reward of respect and the thrill of winning. The kids in the middle worked their tails off to get better, and sometimes they did, bringing up the quality of play for everyone. And the kids who couldn’t make the cut usually found other pursuits, sports and otherwise, that they enjoyed and excelled at.

Not everyone can be a great ballplayer, and not every great ballplayer can be a great doctor, computer programmer, carpenter, musician, or poet. Each one of us is good at something, and I just believe we are happiest and the most fulfilled when we’re doing that.

REASONS TO HATE DIFFERENTIATION—AND NOT

So here are the criticisms of people differentiation. Some have truth in them, but more often than not, they don’t! Here’s what I mean:

1. Differentiation is unfair because it’s always corrupted by company politics—20-70-10 is just a way of separating the people who kiss the boss’s rear from those who don’t.

It is true, without question, that at some companies, differentiation is corrupted by cronyism and favoritism. The top 20 percent are the boss’s head-nodders and buddies, and the bottom 10 percent are the outspoken types who ask difficult questions and challenge the status quo. The middle 70 are just ducking and getting by. That happens and it stinks, and it is a function of a leadership team lacking in brains or integrity or both.

The only good thing I can say about a merit-free system like this is that eventually it destroys itself. It collapses from its own weight or has to change. The results just won’t be good enough to sustain the enterprise.

Luckily, cases of “differentiation abuse” can generally be prevented by a candid, clear-cut performance system, with defined expectations and goals and time lines, and a program of consistent appraisals. In fact, differentiation can be implemented only after such a system is in place, a process that we will discuss more specifically in the chapter on people management.

2. Differentiation is mean and bullying. It’s like the playground in the worst possible way—weak kids are made into fools, outcasts, and objects of ridicule.

I’ve heard this one a hundred times, and it really drives me crazy because one of the major advantages of differentiation is that it is good and fair—to everyone!

When differentiation is working, people know where they stand. You know if you have a strong shot at a big promotion or if you need to be looking for other opportunities, inside or outside the company. Maybe some information is hard to swallow at first, and yes, “bad” news often hurts, but soon enough, like all knowledge, it’s power—in fact, it’s liberating. When you know where you stand, you can control your own destiny, and what is more fair than that?

Corollary: I’m just too nice to implement 20-70-10.

Usually, people with this complaint about differentiation assert that differentiation, as a managerial system, does not value people who add intangible things to a business, like a “feeling of family” or“humanity” or “a sense of history.”And we all know of organizations that continue to employ under performers for a long time mainly because they are really nice individuals.

I fully understand not wanting to manage out somebody nice.

But the fact is protecting under performers always backfires. First of all,by not carrying their weight, they make the pie smaller for everyone. That can cause resentment. It’s also not what you could call fair, and an unfair culture never helps a company win; it undermines trust and candor too much.

The worst thing, though, is how protecting people who don’t perform hurts the people themselves. For years, they are carried along with everyone looking the other way. At appraisals, they are vaguely told they are“great” or “doing just fine.” They are thanked for their contributions.

Then a downturn occurs, and layoffs are necessary. The “nice”under performers are almost always the first to go, and always the most surprised, because no one has ever told them the truth about their results, or lack thereof.

The awful thing is that this often happens when the underperformers are in their late forties or fifties; they’ve been carried along for most of their careers. Then suddenly, at an age when startingover can be very tough, they are out of a job with no preparation or planningand a kick in the stomach they may never get over. They feel betrayed, and theyshould.

As harsh as it may seem at first, differentiation prevents that tragedy because it is based on performance measures that really count. That’s whyI believe you are never “too nice” to implement 20-70-10, only too cowardly.

3. Differentiation pits people against one another and undermines teamwork.

Try telling that to Joe Torre!

The New York Yankees function perfectly well as a team (much to the dismay of Red Sox fans like myself, I might add) with a highly transparent system of differentiation in place. Stars are lavishly rewarded; under performers are shown the clubhouse exit. And if that’s not enough to make a system of differentiation perfectly clear, the players’ salaries are very public! You can have no doubt that differentiation is going on when some team member smake $18 million a year, and others wearing the same uniform make the MajorLeague minimum of $300,000.

And yet everyone pulls together for the team to win. Alex Rodriguez love sthe thrill of hitting a grand slam home run, but I’m sure it feels a lot better to him when the Yankees win. In July 2004, Derek Jeter made the catch o fthe year, diving into the stands and coming up with a black eye and a cut face,a photo of which graced every newspaper in New York. A  lot of the pain had to be relieved when the Yankees won, coming from behind in the thirteenth inning,in one of the great baseball games of all time.

In business, there probably would be pandemonium if companies started publishing everyone’s salary, and I’m not advocating that here. And yet, people always seem to know what their coworkers are making, don’t they? That’s why they get mad when everyone on a team gets rewarded the same way when only a few people have done the work. They feel cheated and wonder why management can’t see the obvious—that not every team member is created equal.

Differentiation rewards those members of the team who deserve it. By the way, that annoys only the under performers. To everyone else, it seems fair. And a fair environment promotes teamwork. Better yet, it motivates people to givetheir all, and that’s what you want.

4. Differentiation is possible only in the United States.

I wish I could implement it, but because of our cultural values, the people in mycountry simply won’t accept it.

I have heard this critique of differentiation since its earliest days at GE,when one of our managers explained that 20-70-10 couldn’t be implemented in Japan because in that culture politeness was valued far more than candor. Since then, I have heard the national-culture excuse from people in hundreds of companies in dozens of nations. Recently, managers in Denmark told us that their country values egalitarianism too much for differentiation to be widely accepted. We’ve heard that case made in France too. A manager at a meeting in Amsterdam told us last year that there was too much “Calvinismin Dutch bones” for the system to work in the Netherlands. I guess the manager believed all rewards come only in Heaven, if you’re chosen to get there! And in China we heard that differentiation is a long time coming because in most state-owned enterprises—still more than 50 percent of the economy despite market reforms—many of the best jobs and rewards go to the most loyal members of the party whether they are the most talented or not.

Basically, I think the excuses we hear about differentiation’s cultural obstacles are just that—excuses. At GE, we couldn’t have a company where differentiation existed only in our U.S. for differentiation and performance appraisal did in Ohio. Once we made the case we linked it to a candid system, it worked as well in Japan as it operations. First of all, we just believed too much in differentiation’s effectiveness. But we also knew that having differentiation only in the United States would have been unfair and confusing,especially for the businesses with both U.S. and global divisions, and for the people who moved around the world for us. We decided early on that we would push through differentiation everywhere we did business, dealing with whatever cultural issues that confronted us.

5. Differentiation is fine for the top 20 percent and the bottom 10 because they know where they are going. But it is enormously demotivating to the middle70 percent, who end up living in an awful kind of limbo.

Again, an element of truth in this complaint. The middle 70 percent is the hardest category to manage in differentiation. The biggest problem comes with the individuals in the top tier of the 70 percent because they know they aren’t a whole lot different from the top-20 performers, and often a whole lot better than the bottom tier of their own “guard.”And yes, that can be enervating, and sometimes talented middle-70 people leave because of it.

The silver lining to this difficult situation is that the existence of a middle 70 forces companies to manage themselves better. It forces leaders to scrutinize people more closely than they would ordinarily and to provide more consistent, candid feedback. It pushes companies to build training centers that really make a difference. For instance, before differentiation, our Crotonville, New York, training center was often used in the 1970s as a warehouse where businesses could afford to send their under performers. It wa slike a way station on the road to early retirement.

The rigor of 20-70-10 helped us change that. We turned Crotonville into a place where the top 20 and the best of the middle 70 talked about ideas,debated our approach to business, and got to know and understand one another a lot better. And since senior management spent several hours with each class, it also gave us a rough idea as to just how rigorously differentiation was being practiced in the field.

Another piece of silver lining is that while being in the middle 70 percent can be demotivating to some people, it actually revs the engines of many others. For the people in the top 20, for instance, the very existence of  amiddle 70 gives them yet another reason to pull out all the stops every day.They have to keep getting better to keep their high standing—what a rush that can be! After all, most people want to improve and grow every day.

For a lot of people in the middle 70, getting better is energizing too.Getting into the top 20 gives them a tangible goal, and having that goal make sthem work harder, think more creatively, share more ideas, and, overall, fight the good fight every day. It makes work more of a challenge and a lot more fun.

DIFFERENTIATION

I don’t know if it’s good or bad, but the world generally favors people who are energetic and extroverted. That’s also something you learn young, and it’s reinforced in school, at church, at camp, in clubs, and usually at home too.  By the time you get to work, if you are still shy and introverted and somewhat low in energy, there are professions and jobs where those characteristics are advantageous. If you know yourself, you will find them. This criticism of differentiation, which I hear now and then, is not really about differentiation, but about society’s values.

I might add that in business, energetic and extroverted people generally do better, but results speak for themselves, loud and clear. Differentiation hears them.

If you want the best people on your team, you need to face up to differentiation. I don’t know of any people management system that does it better—with more transparency, fairness, and speed. It isn’t perfect.

But differentiation, like candor, clarifies business and makes it run better in every way.

A new inspiring book landed in my hands today and it was such an interesting read that I have to post it here! Even though it was first published in 2001, there are still a lot of management principles that are hidden neatly between its dusty pages that I truly believe that is a MUST-READ!

It’s in fact pretty interesting to learn more about Jack’s youth. How he was a golf caddie and how he sent the evening newspapers around the neighborhood. How he worked to be promoted and the way he set his goals was just amazing! The energy was so high that I have to admit that I’m far from that level – time to do some self-reflection and self-motivation!

Anyway…

What’s interesting though is that in line with my frugal living, the book is ‘purchased’ from My Reading Place, a corner bookshop at Anchorpoint, for $16 with the option to return and refund of $10. That translates to $6 per read which I think is my best resource allocation activity so far.

Small in price but big in value! The pinnacle of ROI and living frugally!

Go economics! (exam in a week’s time)

OK.  This post might be the one you show your unemployed spouse…or maybe not.  Do you have a 50-something or 60-something spouse who is in a job / career transition and just not doing enough? 

What does that mean? It means that job hunting or career changing or job transitions may get even harder in the near future and extra effort or sacrifices may be required. It means people may have to make some sacrifices about what jobs they may or may not consider or accept. Some “experts” are predicting that 2010 won’t produce a hotter economy for job creation than 2009.

That could mean that some of the “chronic” unemployed may have to make some sacrifices. I am not referring to the sacrifices typical of a newly laid off person. Most laid off people immediately trim the family budget to the bone.  

No, I am referring to “the T word.”  T is for tradeoffs. We all have them. Maybe we sacrifice by working in a field or company we prefer to be in but do so at the cost of lower compensation. Maybe we chose a job we dislike but stay in it because of the pay. Maybe we commute a total of four hours a day in exchange for stability.

What tradeoffs are you making or ready to make? Is it time to consider doing some other kind of work while you wait for your dream job to come in? This question is practical for both working people and non-working people. In his book “Winning,” Jack Welsh the former General Electric CEO says most all workers make some kind of tradeoff. 

Using Jack’s famous philosophy of candor (with yourself) may help you to assess what internal tradeoffs you are willing to make in order to achieve progress in your career or work. 

But remember, you only need ONE job…and you CAN find it!

* * *

News:  Keep checking back with this blog as an announcement should be coming in a week or so about an exciting event which will benefit one lucky reader/contributor!

America’s Job Coach

The New York Times had an interesting article last week related to the profusion of talent in the market right now – “Tables Turned, Former Hires Can’t Get Hired“  We all understand that there are lots of people on the street right now looking for jobs; what’s different, though, is that a lot of those people are really really good.  It’s easy to think that the lowest performers get let go first, but that’s definitely not true in an environment where the factors driving workforce reductions are dynamic, widespread, and to a large extent uncontrollable.  The other big difference: no one is picking this talent up as quickly as they used to ’cause there’s nowhere to put them.  Or is there (Vincent Price cackle in the background)?  And that’s where my deviousness comes in…

Take a look at your under performers…or your marginal performers…or even your sub-optimal performers and see if now’s the time to upgrade.  Yes, that means involuntarily separating people from the organization simply for the fact there are better people out there to take their place.  This would be the epitome of the “up or out” approach to talent management – Jack Welch would love this.  One of the guys referenced in the article was a former SVP at PNC Bank responsible for providing Human Resources to 3,500 employees.  The guy can’t find a job.  Tell me he wouldn’t be the perfect candidate for that organization where the HR Director just can’t seem to get up the curve, can’t get to the table, can’t play a more vital role in directing the success of the business.  Get rid of that guy already.  And a lot of these guys are willing to take a pay cut just to get back on the playing field.  Why would you drive the Chevy Malibu when you could have the Saab 93 Turbo for close to the same price (I know, I’m the king of mixed metaphors)?  Here’s what the naysayers will throw at me:

1. You’ll say, “Yeah, but they’ll leave when they find something better.”  And I say, “Maybe…if there’s something better…ever.”
2. You’ll say, “There’s some employment law risk here.”  And I say, “Maybe, but the decision is based on legitimate business criteria  – we found someone who could do the job better.”
3. You’ll ask, “But how do you know whether that person is really better?”  And I’ll answer, “my screening process is thorough, my performance management system is reasonable, and I’m a bettin’ man.”
4. You’ll say, “but that just isn’t nice.”  And I’ll say, “Maybe not, but you know where nice guys finish.” 

Tough times call for tough measures and I say it’s all fair play.  Get that former SVP of HR, who the board squeezed out, to be the new HR Director for your fledgling organization.  Find that HR Manager, who was on the fast track only to be tossed aside during a downsizing, and put them into an HR Generalist role.   Get rid of the laggards, who are doing your HR Team a disservice, and give yourself a makeover.  Your (new) HR Team will thank you, the leadership team will respect you, and your employees will love you.

Cuando Thomas Edison fundó General Electric en 1878, no pensó que llegaría a ser a una compañía tan diversificada: desde bombillas a motores de aviación.

General Electric creció y creció, pero en  1981 estaba al borde de la quiebra cuando la comenzó a dirigir el directivo más mítico entre los míticos:  Jack “neutrón” Welch.

La reestructuró de arriba a abajo y con su gestión, General Electric  multiplicó sus beneficios por 7 y su valor por 30.

Welch  había creado más valor para el accionista que nadie en la historia. General Electric era la empresa con más valor del mundo y Welch fue elegido en 1999 por la revista Fortune “Manager del  siglo”.

…

Ahora Expansión, nos cuenta que después de 30 años de éxitos, comienza la siguiente reestructación: reverse innovation

General Electric da la vuelta a su negocio

“Hasta ahora, GE materializaba sus productos en casa y los adaptaba para otros mercados en todo el mundo, una estrategia que ha tocado fondo con el parón económico. Lo que la corporación tiene ahora en mente es aprovechar oportunidades en los Bric (Brasil, Rusia, India y China) y echar mano de lo que ha denominado reverse innovation: desarrollar productos en estos países y distribuirlos después globalmente.”

El artículo es indispensable para cualquier estudiante de Economía de la Empresa, y está relacionado con lo que estudiamos el tema pasado de adaptación local y “aguas arriba y aguas abajo”.

Teoría de estrategias de internacionalización

Las economías emergentes: BRIC (Brasil, Rusia, India y China)

Pero lo que me ha llamado más la atención, es la ruptura de dos tópicos que tenemos sobre los países emergentes:

“El nuevo modelo industrial de la corporación ha empujado a los directivos a cuestionarse dos principios que hasta hace poco eran inamovibles en los negocios y que ya no tienen vigencia. El primero, que las economías emergentes evolucionarán siguiendo el mismo camino que los mercados ricos. La realidad es que los países en desarrollo son más que felices con productos de bajo coste y alta tecnología, lo que los ha transformado en centros exportadores de productos. Además, apuestan por las energías limpias y un crecimiento sostenible, al contrario que las áreas de la órbita occidental.

El segundo principio que ha perdido su validez es que los productos elaborados en los Bric no son competitivos en los países desarrollados. La verdad es que GE ha constatado que los artículos chinos e indios están teniendo mucho éxito en Europa y EEUU por su bajo coste y sus aplicaciones pioneras.”

Nos hace replantearnos muchas cosas…¿verdad?

CANDOR – THE BIGGEST DIRTY LITTLE SECRET IN BUSINESS

Jack Welch,  former CEO of General Electric

I have always been a huge proponent of candor. In fact, I talked it up to GE audiences for more than twenty years. But since retiring from GE, I have come to realize that I underestimated its rarity. In fact, I would call lack of candor the biggest dirty little secret in business.

What a huge problem it is. Lack of candor basically blocks smart ideas, fast action, and good people contributing all the stuff they’ve got. It’s a killer.

When you’ve got candor—and you’ll never completely get it,mind you—everything just operates faster and better.

Now, when I say “lack of candor” here, I’m not talking about malevolent dishonesty. I am talking about how too many people—too often—instinctively don’t express themselves with frankness.

They don’t communicate straightforwardly or put forth ideas looking to stimulate real debate. They just don’t open up. Instead they withhold comments or criticism.

They keep their mouths shut in order to make people feel better or to avoid conflict, and they sugarcoat bad news in order to maintain appearances. They keep things to themselves, hoarding information.

That’s all lack of candor, and it’s absolutely damaging.

And yet, lack of candor permeates almost every aspect of business.

In my travels over the past few years, I have heard stories from people at hundreds of different companies who describe the complete lack of candor they experience day to day, in every type of meeting, from budget and product reviews to strategy sessions. People talk about the bureaucracy, layers,politicking, and false politeness that lack of candor spawns. They ask how they can get their companies to be places where people put their views on the table,talk about the world realistically, and debate ideas from every angle.

Most often, I hear that lack of candor is missing from performance appraisals.

In fact, I hear about that so often that I always end up asking audiences for a show of hands to the question “How many of you have received an honest, straight-between-the-eyes feedback session in the last year, where you came out knowing exactly what you have to do to improve and where you stand in the organization?”

On a good day, I get 20 percent of the hands up. Most of the time, it iscloser to 10 percent.

Interestingly, when I turn the question around and ask the audience how often they’ve given an honest, candid appraisal to their people, thenumbers don’t improve much.

Forget outside competition when your own worst enemy is the way youcommunicate with one another internally!

THE CANDOR EFFECT

Let’s look at how candor leads to winning.  There are three main ways.

First and foremost, candor gets more people in the conversation, and when you get more people in the conversation, to state the obvious, you get idea rich. By that, I mean many more ideas get surfaced, discussed, pulled apart,and improved. Instead of everyone shutting down, everyone opens up and learns.Any organization—or unit or team—that brings more people and their minds into the conversation has an immediate advantage.

Second, candor generates speed. When ideas are in everyone’s face,they can be debated rapidly, expanded and enhanced, and acted upon. That approach—surface, debate, improve, decide— isn’t just an advantage, it’s a necessity in a global marketplace. You can be sure that any upstart five-person enterprise down the street or in Shanghai or in Bangalore can move faster than you to begin with. Candor is one way to keep up.

Third, candor cuts costs—lots—although you’ll never be able to put a precise number on it. Just think of how it eliminates meaningless meetings and b.s. reports that confirm what everyone already knows. Think ofhow candor replaces fancy PowerPoint slides and mind-numbing presentations and boring off-site conclaves with real conversations, whether they’re about company strategy, a new product introduction, or someone’s performance.

Put all of its benefits and efficiencies together and you realize you justcan’t afford not to have candor.

SO WHY NOT?

Given the advantages of candor, you have to wonder, why don’t we have more of it?

Well, the problem starts young.

The facts are, we are socialized from childhood to soften bad news or to make nice about awkward subjects. That is true in every culture and in every country and in every social class. It doesn’t make any difference if you are in Iceland or Portugal, you don’t insult your mother’s cooking or call your best friend fat or tell an elderly aunt that you hated her wedding gift. You just don’t. What happened at a suburban cocktail party we attended recently is classic. Over white wine and sushi rolls, one woman standing in a cluster of five others started lamenting the horrible stress being endured by the local elementary school’s music teacher. Other guests chimed in, all agreeing that fourth-graders were enough to send you to the insane asylum. Fortunately, just before the music teacher was canonized,another guest entered the conversation, saying, “Are you guys crazy? That teacher gets fifteen weeks off a year!” She pointed to the doctor standing in the circle, who had been nodding away in agreement.“Robert,” she said, “you make life-and-death decisions everyday. Surely you don’t buy this sad story, do you?”

We are socialized from awkward subjects. Talk about killing polite chitchat. The new guest sent everyone scattering, mostly toward the bar.

CANDOR JUST UNNERVES PEOPLE

That was a light hearted example, of course, but when you try to understand candor, you are really trying to understand human nature. For hundreds of years, psychologists and social scientists have studied why people don’t say what they mean, and philosophers have been reflecting on the same subject for literally thousands of years.

A good friend of mine,Nancy Bauer,is a professor of philosophy at Tufts University. When I ask her about candor, she tells me that most philosophers have come to the same conclusions on this topic as most of us laypeople do with age and experience.

Eventually, you come to realize that people don’t speak their minds because it’s simply easier not to. When you tell it like it is, you can so easily create a mess—anger, pain, confusion,sadness, resentment. To make matters worse, you then feel compelled to clean up that mess, which can be awful and awkward and time-consuming. So you justify your lack of candor on the grounds that it prevents sadness or pain in another person, that not saying anything or telling a little white lie is the kind,decent thing to do. But in fact, Nancy says, classic philosophers like Immanuel Kant give powerful arguments for the view that not being candid is actually about self-interest—making your own life easier.

Nancy tells me that Kant had another point, too. He said that people are often strongly tempted not to be candid because they don’t look at the big picture. They worry that when they speak their minds and the news isn’t good, they stand a strong chance of alienating other people. But what they don’t see is that lack of candor is the ultimate form of alienation.“There was a huge irony in this for Kant,” Nancy says. “He believed that when people avoid candor in order to curry favor with other people, they actually destroy trust, and in that way, they ultimately erodesociety.”

I tell Nancy the same could be said about eroding business.

FROM THEN TO NOW

The make-or-break importance of candor in U.S. business is relatively new, actually. Up until the early 1980s, big companies like GE and thousands of others operated largely without it, as did most companies regardless of size.These companies were a product of the military-industrial complex that grew up after World War II. They had virtually no global competition, and, in fact,companies within industries were so similar to one another that they could often seem more collegial than competitive.

Take the steel industry. Every three years or so, union workers acrossseveral companies would demand higher pay and benefits. The steel companies would meet those demands, passing their increased costs on to the automotive industry, which would pass their increased costs on to the consumer.

It was a nice party until the Japanese arrived at the door with their average-quality, low-cost imported cars that within a few years became high-quality, low-cost cars, many of them made in nonunion U.S. factories.

But until the foreign threat spread, most American companies had very little to do with the kind of frank debate and fast action that characterizes a candid organization. They had little use for it. And so countless layers of bureaucracy and old-fashioned social codes of behavior led to a kind often forced politeness and formality throughout most organizations. There were very few overt confrontations about strategy or values; decisions were made mostly behind closed doors. And when it came to appraisals, those too were conducted with a kind of courteous remoteness. Good performers were praised,but because companies were so financially strong, poor performers could beware housed in a far-flung department or division until retirement.

Without candor, everyone saved face, and business lumbered along. The status quo was accepted. Fake behavior was just a day at the office. And people with initiative, gumption, and guts were labeled troublesome—or worse.

You would predict, perhaps, that given all its competitive advantages,candor would have made a grand entrance with the Japanese. But Japan didn’t make it happen, nor did Ireland, Mexico, India, or China, to name a few of the big hitters in the global marketplace today. Instead, most companies have fought global competition through more conventional means:layoffs, drastic cost reductions, and in the best cases, with innovation.

Candor, while inching its way in, still remains a very small part of the arsenal.

IT CAN BE DONE

Now for the really bad news. Even though candor is vital to winning, it is hard and time-consuming to instill in any group, no matter what size.

Hard because you are fighting human nature and entrenched organizational behaviors, and time-consuming, as in years and years. At GE, it took us close to a decade to use candor as a matter of course, and it was by no means universal after twenty.

Still it can be done. There is nothing scientific about the process. To get candor, you reward it, praise it, and talk about it. You make public heroes outof people who demonstrate it. Most of all, you yourself demonstrate it in anexuberant and even exaggerated way—even when you’re not the boss.

Imagine yourself for a second at a meeting where the subject is growth and how to get it at an old-line division. Everyone is sitting around the table,civilly talking about how hard it is to win in this particular market or industry. They discuss the tough competition. They surface the same old reasons why they can’t grow and why they are actually doing well in this environment. In fact, by the time the meeting ends, they’ve managed topat themselves on the back for the “success” they’ve enjoyed“under the circumstances.”

Inside your head, you’re about ready to burst, as you tel lour-self, “Here we go again.I know Bob and Mary across the room feel the same way I do—the complacency around here is killing us.”

Outside, all three of you are playing the game. You’re nodding.

Now imagine an environment where you take responsibility for candor. You, Bob, or Mary would ask questions like:

“Isn’t there a new product or service idea in this business somewhere that we just haven’t thought of yet?”

“Can we jump-start this business with an acquisition?”

“This business is taking up so many resources. Why don’t we get the hell out of it?”

What a different meeting!  What a lot more fun, and how much better for everyone.

Another situation that happens all the time is a high-growth business with a self-satisfied crowd managing it. You know the scene at the long-range planning meeting. The managers show up with double-digit growth—say 15 percent—and pound out slide after slide showing how well they are doing.  Top management nods their approval, but you’re sitting there knowing there’s a lot more juice in that business. To compound matters,the people presenting the slides are peers of yours, and there’s that age-old code hanging in the air: if you don’t challenge mine, Iwon’t challenge yours.

Frankly, the only way I know of to get out of this bind—and introduce candor—is to poke around in a nonthreatening way:

“Jeez, you’re good. What a terrific job. This is the best business we’ve got. Why not put more resources into it and go for more?”

“With the great team you’ve put in place, there must be ten acquisitions out there for you. Have you looked globally?”

Those questions, and others like them, have the power to change the meeting from a self-congratulatory parade to a stimulating working session.

TRUTH AND CONSEQUENCES

Now, you may be thinking, I can’t raise those questions because I don’t want to look like a jerk. I want to be a team player.

It is true that candid comments definitely freak people out at first. In fact, the more polite or bureaucratic or formal your organization, the more your candor will scare and upset people, and, yes, it could kill you.

That’s a risk,and only you can decide if you’re willing to take it.

Needless to say, you’ll have an easier time of installing candor in your organization if you are closer to the top. But don’t blame your boss or the CEO if your company lacks candor—open dialogue can start anywhere.  I was speaking my mind when I had four employees at Noryl, the smallest, newest unit of a hierarchical company that had a very dim view of straight talk.

It is true that candid comments definitely freak people out at first.

My bosses cautioned me about my candor. Now my GE career is over, and I’m telling you that it was my candor that helped make it work.  I was too young and politically clueless to notice at the time, but I was covered because our business was growing by leaps and bounds.

If we had the guts to be candid, it didn’t feel that way at the time—we didn’t know enough to know what candor was. It just felt natural to us to speak openly, argue and debate, and get things to happen fast.If we were anything, it was crazily competitive.

Every time I got promoted, the first cycle of reviews—be it budgets or appraisals—was often awkward and unpleasant. Most of the new team I was managing wasn’t used to wide-open discussions about everything and anything. For example, we’d be talking about a direct report at a personnel review, and in conversation, we would agree that the guy was really awful. His written appraisal, however, made him look like a prince. When I challenged the phoniness, I’d hear, “Yeah, yeah, but why would we ever put that in writing?”

I’d explain why, making the case for candor.

By the next review,we’d already be seeing candor’s positive impact with a better team in place, and with each successive cycle, more and more people made candor’s case with me.

Still, it wasn’t like I was singing with the whole chorus.

From the day I joined GE to the day I was named CEO, twenty years later, my bosses cautioned me about my candor. I was labeled abrasive and consistently warned that my candor would soon get in the way of my career.

Now my GE career is over, and I’m telling you that it was candor that helped make it work. So many more people got into the game, so many voices, so much energy. We gave it to one another straight, and each of us was better for it.

It’s really very simple—candor works because candor unclutters.

Yes, yes, everyone agrees that candor is against human nature. So is waking up at five in the morning for the 6:10 train every day. So is eating lunch at your desk so you won’t miss an important meeting at one. But for the sake of your team or your organization, you do a lot of things that aren’t easy. The good thing about candor is that it’s an unnatural act that is more than worth it.

It is impossible to imagine a world where everyone goes around saying what they really think all the time. And you probably wouldn’t want it anyway—too much information! But even if we get halfway there, lack of candor won’t be the biggest dirty little secret in business anymore.

It will be its biggest change for the better.