Jason Bates (@JasonBates) tipped me off about the concept of “Approximately correct strategy”, from an interview with by Dick Harrington (former CEO of Thomson Reuters) by HBR columnist Anthony Tjan:

Recently, I had dinner with Dick Harrington, former CEO of Thomson Reuters

We talked about his three most significant lessons learned over his very successful 25+ year career as a Fortune 250 executive.

Dick Harrington (DH): First, you have to have an “approximately correct” strategy — you have to know where you are going, but directionally correct is the key. Two, you have to be highly focused and intensely execute that strategy by motivating and aligning the troops you have. And three, it always comes back to the customers and the fact that you have to manically know your customers and drive everything from that.

TT: Nicely done. So let’s start with the first point. People often worry about architecting a perfect business plan or strategy and then get lost in the minutia. How do you know when you are “approximately correct,” as you say?

DH: You want to be approximately correct instead of precisely incorrect. There is a point at which additional information or research will not change the basics of your strategy. When you get your strategy there, you have to “Nike it” – you just do it. If you continue to refine and refine, you’ll never get into action, and the incremental value of research just won’t be worth the time and money. Schedule time frames and be religious about them to launch, get feedback, and see if the strategy is acceptable to the customer or if you need to adjust.  

From: http://blogs.hbr.org/tjan/2009/08/lessons-learned-from-30-years.html

Jerry Weinberg is a legend in Project Management and Consulting circles. Here are his 10 Laws of Trust:

1. Nobody but you cares about the reason you let another person down.
2. Trust takes years to win, moments to lose.
3. People don’t tell you when they stop trusting you.
4. The trick of earning trust is to avoid all tricks.
5. People are never liars—in their own eyes.
6. Always trust your client—and cut the cards.
7. Never be dishonest, even if the client requests it.
8. Never promise anything.
9. Always keep your promise.
10. Get it in writing, but depend on trust.

Conferences That Work | Jerry Weinberg’s ten laws of trust

I am enjoying the podcasts from the American Management Associations (AMA) podcast series Edgwise.

Today I listed to an interesting interview with  Dr. Graham Jones, an world expert on Mental Toughness. Well worth a listen.

What does Lebron James have in common with Warren Buffet? Whether we’re getting ready for the big game or the big meeting, we all deal with high pressure situations; it’s natural to everyone on the job and a reality of the workforce. In his new book Thriving on Pressure: Mental Toughness for Real Leaders, Dr. Graham Jones encourages us to channel that pressure and make the hard decisions.

Dr. Jones is formerly professor of Elite Performance Psychology at the University of Wales in Bangor. An author of 150 White Papers in publications on the subject of high level performance. He is the Founding Director of Lane4 Management Group Limited, which is a leading performance in consultancy that has offices in the U.S. and around the world.

Dr.
Graham Jones on Mental Toughness » AMA Edgewise

Master consultant and all round business genius Gerald Wienberg has sorted the best of Jerry Weinberg’s (no relation) “50 things to improve business”:

2. back up everything

4. Rule: do nothing, revised with 3 caveats: a) don’t do it if there’s someone that can do it better; b) don’t do it if there’s someone that can do it adequately; c) if it makes me really happy, do it anyway; d) if someone can do it 85% as well as I do, let them do it; e) anything not worth doing is not worth doing right; f) if in doubt charge for sales trips

6. make them pay something, with their time, their money — if they don’t pay for it they don’t value it

8. if it’s not on paper, don’t do it

9. listen to what other people are telling you

10. don’t communicate to somebody, but communicate with somebody

11. always have an exit strategy

12. make them feel like your client has a part in the final outcome; make sure they have their fingerprints on it

13. listen for what they’re not saying

14. listen to the “music”, body language, intonation

15. always be ready to sell your product

16. if you find yourself reluctant to sell your product, there’s something wrong with it

17. any successful services company has some fixed priced product to sell

18. given them entry points that they can buy

19. recurring revenue model, e.g. via contract maintenance plans, or follow-through

20. have a follow-through clause in contract so you can know how you’re doing

21. charge more money if they don’t want you to come back after some time, e.g. 3 months

22. if you just build it they probably won’t come

23. manage expectations, book: Managing Expectations, by Naomi Karten

24. Time spent in reconnaissance is time well spent

25. You can observe a whole lot just by watching (Yogi Berra)

26. Go hard or go home; fully commit all resources needed, or kill it mercilessly

27. Commit enough to learn what you have to learn to find out whether it’s worth pursuing or killing

28. People who work in an Agile/iterative way often fail to do the discovery

29. Ideas by themselves aren’t as valuable as you think they are; don’t guard them too closely

30. Nothing is as dangerous as an idea, esp. if it’s the only idea you have

31. Never rest on your past successes; there is always something more you could be doing; if you’re not learning, you’re dead

32. Sharing competitive advantages brings 10-fold rewards; give it away, it comes back

33. Being able to say ‘no’

34. Research clients as if you were hiring them

35. Recognize that every client is unique.

36. You don’t have to remember everything to succeed.

37. It’s ok to let a client go if it’s not the right fit; you should organize your business such that it’s ok to let a client go, i.e. don’t be over-dependent on any single client

38. The best way to build a business is to stay in business; stay around, build a reputation and credibility

39. Actively solicit feedback from clients; actively extract the feedback, e.g. watch the audience

40. Don’t be alone in your work; have someone to talk to

41. Honor the people who are your sounding board and bring feedback, e.g. life partners, friends, …

42. Anything that’s annoying or repetitive should be automated or stopped

43. Track your budget & cost every month

44. Don’t make mistakes over your budget or your cost.

45. Don’t spend your money on office decoration, esp. if your clients don’t come to your office

46. Always try someone out before you hire them

47. Don’t fall for the big lies: “we’re just about to get funding” “our data is clean” “your check is in the mail” “we’re going to sign it next month, just keep working” “don’t worry about the contract” …

48. Preventing any one of these mistakes will pay for this conference

49. Double your reading speed

50. Choose not to read a lot; don’t read stuff that’s not worth reading

51. Stay off Facebook & Twitter

52. Sometimes you can save money by spending money; and sometimes the reverse. Learn to tell the difference

via 50 more ways to improve your business.

Also see the original 50 ways to improve your business .

From the Economist’s Guru section article on Elliott Jaques:

Jaques (1917-2003) decided that jobs could be defined in terms of their time horizon. For example, a director of marketing might be worried about marketing campaigns for next year, while a salesman on the road is worried about reaching his targets for the week. Jaques also believed that people had a “boss” and a “real boss”. The boss was the person to whom they were nominally responsible, while the real boss was the person to whom they turned to get decisions crucial to the continuation of their work.

The sales manager in charge of a salesforce would not have a longer time horizon than the people in his salesforce. So when a salesman wanted a decision on something affecting his ability to deliver to his clients, he would go over the head of the sales manager for that decision. Jaques called this “level skipping”, and identified it as a dangerous pathology in any hierarchy.

He then looked at the time horizons of people, their bosses and their real bosses, and he found that people with a time horizon of less than three months treated those with a horizon of 3–12 months as their real bosses, and so on up the scale. He identified seven different time horizons, from three months to 20 years, and argued that organisations, no matter how complex, should have seven levels of hierarchy, each corresponding to a different managerial time horizon. Jaques’s theory has come to be known as RO (requisite organisation).

This reminds me of the Tolstoy quotation from C.S. Lewis’s “The Inner Ring”:

“When Boris entered the room, Prince Andrey was listening to an old general, wearing his decorations, who was reporting something to Prince Andrey, with an expression of soldierly servility on his purple face. “Alright. Please wait!” he said to the general, speaking in Russian with the French accent, which he used when he spoke with contempt. The moment he noticed Boris he stopped listening to the general who trotted imploringly after him and begged to be heard, while Prince Andrey turned to Boris with a cheerful smile and a nod of the head. Boris now clearly understood-what he had already guessed-that side by side with the system of discipline and subordination which were laid down in the Army Regulations, there existed a different and a more real system-the system which compelled a tightly laced general with a purple face to wait respectfully for his turn while a mere captain like Prince Andrey chatted with a mere second lieutenant like Boris, Boris decided at once that he would be guided not by the official system but by this other unwritten system.”

Steve Roesler of All Things Workplace, one of the most dependable book recommenders I know of, gives “Rules of Thumb” a rave review in a recent post on his blog.

The subtitle lives up to its words: “52 Truths For Winning At Business Without Losing Your Self”.

You
don’t see many book reviews here even though we receive many
promotional copies. I do look hard at each one but, given my own
business and personal priorities, I only write a review when it’s a
raving recommendation, like: Rules of Thumb: 52 Truths for Winning at Business Without Losing Your Self

Get it over at: Amazon.com

A recent theme in my reading and writing has been what we in business – consultants, managers and project managers – can learn from other disciplines, like pilots, doctors or soldiers.

I a recent post – The lessons pilots can teach surgeons -  I reviewed the positive impact that use of checklists and briefings/debriefings were having on emergency health care.

Since then I came across Frontline Leadership from Harvard Business:

Frontline Leadership is a conversation about innovative leadership and what business leaders can learn from today’s military.

Join young veterans making the transition from Iraq and Afghanistan to
B-school and the private sector, experts on leadership, and
HarvardBusiness.org readers in what we hope will be a brisk and
enlightening debate.

The series has articles like “Why the Military Produces Great Leaders” and “Leading Effectively in Chaos and Uncertainty“.

One of the best books this subject is “Corps Business” by David H Freedman. He outlines 30 Management Principles used by the US Marines to achieve organisational and battlefield mastery. 

THE MARINE CORPS MANAGEMENT PRINCIPLES

1. Aim for the 70-percent solution. It’s better to decide quickly on an imperfect plan than to roll out a perfect plan when it’s too late.

2. Find the essence. When it comes time to act, even the most complex situations and missions must be perceived in simple terms.

3. Build a capability-based organizational mission. Focusing on developing organizational talents creates opportunities; focusing on particular products and services invites obsolescence.

4. Orient to speed and complexity. The ability to react quickly and effectively in chaotic environments usually trumps other competencies.

S. Organize according to the rule of three. In times of stress, most people can efficiently handle exactly three key responsibilities.

6. Build authority-on-demand into the hierarchy. Retain a strong management pyramid, but encourage people even at the lowest levels to make whatever decisions are necessary to accomplish the mission when management guidance isn’t at hand.

7. Focus on the small team. Most of the organization’s critical tasks are accomplished by the lowest-level managers and their subordinates, so anything done to make them more effective will have a large payoff 8. Task-organize. The size and make-up of groups within the organization should be changed according to the needs of each specific mission.

9. Hire via trial by fire. Challenging a prospective employee makes it easier to determine the fit, and initiates a bond between the hiree and the organization.

10. Employ extreme training. Situations faced on the job shouldn’t seem more daunting than those faced in training.

11. Breed decision by analogy. Managers can’t be briefed on every possible situation, but they can be trained to recognize similarities between novel and familiar situations.

12. Cross-train. Running through different jobs creates versatile managers who understand all aspects of the organization, even if at a cost in efficiency.

13. Manage by end state and intent. Tell people what needs to be accomplished and why, and leave the details to them.

14. Distribute competence. Obsessively and ceaselessly educate and train people at all levels of the organization.

15. Reward failure. Someone who never fails probably isn’t pushing the envelope.

16. Make personnel functions stepping-stones for stars. The development of the most promising managers should include taking responsibility for hiring, training, promoting and transferring people. 17. Glorify the lower levels of the organization. The higher the manager, the harder he or she should work at making it clear that the rank and file are the heroes.

18. Demand to be questioned. Subordinates should feel free to openly disagree with their managers, up until it comes time to carry out a final and legitimate decision.

19. Instill values that support the mission. The ability to get the job done can be a function of shared character.

20. Cultivate opposing traits. Success often requires combining seemingly contradictory approaches.

21. Establish a core identity. Everyone in the organization should feel they’re performing an aspect of the same job.

22. Match strength to weakness. Find ways to tilt the playing field to the competition’s disadvantage.

23. Surprise and disorient the opposition. A confused and offbalance competitor can be routed with fewer resources.

24. Make tempo a weapon. Controlling the pace of competition can exhaust and demoralize the competition.

25. Keep plans simple and flexible. It’s better to have a few options that can be easily adapted to changing situations than to try to make specific plans for every contingency.

26. Make organizational doctrine a living thing. It’s good to standardize practices, as long as one of them is to continually refine and occasionally change the practices.

27. Experiment obsessively. Even the most successful organization will eventually stop winning if it doesn’t explore radically new approaches.

28. Build new tactics around new technology. Fully leveraging technology requires new styles of competing.

29. Don’t depend on technology. Train to be effective regardless of which technologies are available.

30. Get an outside perspective. Insights into organizational improvement can often come from people in seemingly unrelated fields.

Do not be carried along by cowardly conventions and self-interested arse covering. The best operations teams consist of highly motivated free thinkers who are not afraid to admit to mistakes so they can be fixed systemically before they add up to anything serious.

[Update1: This was my submission to Executive Rockstar's Best Career Advice competition ]

[Update2: This book look promising "Know What You Don't Know: How Great Companies Fix Problems Before They Happen" By: Michael A. Roberto]

[Update3: Why Systems Fail and Problems Sprout Anew]

The best career advice that I ever received was from Steve O’Donnell, currently SVP IT Infrastructure & Operations at First Data International, celebrity blogger and former Global Head of Data Centre & Customer Experience Management at BT (where we worked together):

One day he said:

“Jonathan, I will never fire you for an honest mistake but if you lie to me, ever, you will be out the door in a minute. There is no mistake that you can make that I cannot figure out how to fix IF you tell me about it immediately. Be honest with me and you are safe, lie to me and you are gone.”

This is a golden rule in effective technical operations. It creates a culture of honesty and safety – not being afraid of reporting errors or lapses – that leads to true Kaizan:  genuine self-correction and organisational self-improvement because you are able to deal with errors systematically (i.e. by tweaking systems) and without the damage of the blame game and deferred responsibility.

His advice is particularly important in environments where errors are rare but extremely serious when they do occur – like executive boardrooms or aircraft maintenance hangers or hospitals.  The behaviour or practice of telling the truth about minor errors is central to the precursor-based error detection system (i.e. spotting the warning signs early)  which is in turn at the center of truly effective operations management (and every other system).

Kevin Kelly explains the issue in a  brilliant post about “Looking for Ugly“:

How do you prevent major errors in a system built to successfully keep major errors to a minimum?  You look for the ugly.

The safety of aircraft is so essential it is regulated in hopes that regulation can decrease errors. Error prevention enforced by legal penalties presents a problem, though: severe penalties discourages disclosure of problems early enough to be remedied.  To counter that human tendency, the US FAA has generally allowed airlines to admit errors they find without punishing them. These smaller infractions are the “ugly.” By themselves they aren’t significant, but they can compound with other small “uglies.” Often times they are so minimal — perhaps a worn valve, or discolored pipe — that one can hardly call them errors. They are just precursors to something breaking down the road.  Other times they are things that break without causing harm.

The general agreement in the industry is that a policy of unpunished infractions encourages quicker repairs and reduces the chances of major failures. Of course not punishing companies for safety violations rubs some people the wrong way. A recent Times article reports on the Congressional investigation into whether this policy of unpunished disclosure should continue, which issued the quote above. The Times says:

“We live in an era right now where we’re blessed with extremely safe systems,” said one panel member, William McCabe, a veteran of business aviation companies. “You can’t use forensics,” he said, because there are not enough accidents to analyze.

“You’re looking for ugly,” Mr. McCabe said. “You ask your people to look for ugly.” A successful safety system, he said, “acknowledges, recognizes and rewards people for coming forward and saying, ‘That might be one of your precursors.’ “

Looking for ugly is a great way to describe a precursor-based error detection system. You are not really searching for failure as much as signs failure will begin. These are less like errors and more like deviations. Offcenter in an unhealthy way.  For some very large systems — like airplanes, human health, ecosystems — detection of deviations is more art than science, more a matter of beauty or the lack of it.

Come to think of it, looking for ugly is how we assess our own health. I suspect looking for ugly is how we will be assessing complex systems like robots, AIs and virtual realities.

So, in short:  Create a professional environment that enables and encourages your team to detect, report and deal with the “ugly”.

[Update: I mailed Steve my submission and I was delighted to see he blogged about it on his Hot Aisle blog]

John Boyd was a USAF colonel, legendary military strategist and thinker.

He is perhaps best known for his OODA Loop (for Observation, Orientation, Decision, Action), a concept worth knowing about. Here is Wikipedia on the OODA Loop:

Boyd’s key concept was that of the decision cycle or OODA Loop, the process by which an entity (either an individual or an organization) reacts to an event. According to this idea, the key to victory is to be able to create situations wherein one can make appropriate decisions more quickly than one’s opponent.

Boyd hypothesized that all intelligent organisms and organizations undergo a continuous cycle of interaction with their environment. Boyd breaks this cycle down to four interrelated and overlapping processes through which one cycles continuously:

• Observation: the collection of data by means of the senses
• Orientation: the analysis and synthesis of data to form one’s current mental perspective
• Decision: the determination of a course of action based on one’s current mental perspective
• Action: the physical playing-out of decisions

This decision cycle is thus also known as the OODA loop. Boyd emphasized that this decision cycle is the central mechanism enabling adaptation (apart from natural selection) and is therefore critical to survival.

Boyd theorized that large organizations such as corporations, governments, or militaries possessed a hierarchy of OODA loops at tactical, grand-tactical (operational art), and strategic levels. In addition, he stated that most effective organizations have a highly decentralized chain of command that utilizes objective-driven orders, or directive control, rather than method-driven orders in order to harness the mental capacity and creative abilities of individual commanders at each level. In 2003, this power to the edge concept took the form of a DOD publication “Power to the Edge: Command…Control…in the Information Age” by Dr. David S. Alberts and Richard E. Hayes. Boyd argued that such a structure creates a flexible “organic whole” that is quicker to adapt to rapidly changing situations. He noted, however, that any such highly decentralized organization would necessitate a high degree of mutual trust and a common outlook that came from prior shared experiences. Headquarters needs to know that the troops are perfectly capable of forming a good plan for taking a specific objective, and the troops need to know that Headquarters does not direct them to achieve certain objectives without good reason.

In 2007, strategy writer Robert Greene discussed the loop in a post called OODA and You. He insisted that it was “deeply relevant to any kind of competitive environment: business, politics, sports, even the struggle of organisms to survive”, and claimed to have been initially “struck by its brilliance”.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Boyd_(military_strategist)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_Loop

http://www.powerseductionandwar.com/archives/ooda_and_you.phtml

http://boyd2008.ning.com/video/video/show?id=2171602%3AVideo%3A23

Really enjoying the new blog – Lateral Action – from the guys behind CopyBlogger .

Here are some starter posts to give you an idea of the themes and style:

Tyler Durden’s 8 Rules of Innovation | Lateral Action

Foolish Productivity: The Hobgoblin of Creative Minds

Beyond Getting Things Done: Lateral Action