Evolving Excellence

History - and Vision - in One Sentence

By Kevin Meyer

A few months ago I wrote how Twitter and haiku can help us create focus and clarity of mission.  Condensing our values, desires, and beliefs into 140 characters or seventeen syllables forces an examination of anything potentially superfluous to peel back the onion to define the core.

I'm not a big fan of Peggy Noonan, but today she wrote an interesting column on Obama and how he may be trying to do too much.  I'll intentionally avoid most of the political aspects.

You can say this is due to a lot of things, and it probably is, most especially the economy, which all the polls mentioned. But I think at bottom his problems come down to this: The Sentence. And the rough sense people have that he's not seeing to it.

The Sentence comes from a story Clare Boothe Luce told about a conversation she had in 1962 in the White House with her old friend John F. Kennedy. She told him, she said, that "a great man is one sentence." His leadership can be so well summed up in a single sentence that you don't have to hear his name to know who's being talked about. "He preserved the union and freed the slaves," or, "He lifted us out of a great depression and helped to win a World War." You didn't have to be told "Lincoln" or "FDR."

Forget 5 Sentences, try one sentence.  That's really boiling it down.  Of course that's looking back, and creating a focus on "one sentence" moving forward is an even more difficult exercise.

There is a persistent sense of extraneous effort, of ambitions too big and yet too small, too off point, too base-pleading, too ideological, too unaware of the imperatives. And there is the depressing psychological effect of seeing government grow so much, so big, so fast. This encourages a sense that things are out of control and cannot be made better.

The same could be said for most bureaucracies, especially those in growth mode, whether government or private or charitable.  The Man on a Mission blog, dormant for nearly two years, still has many examples of mission statements... and almost all of them are several paragraphs long. 

Once again, could you condense your raison d'être into 140 characters... or 17 syllables... or one lonely sentence?  I bet the effort, even if initially unsuccessful, would tell you something.

Bob Nardelli "feels good." Welcome to Bizarro world.

Sigh. Bob Nardelli "feels good."

Those of you with elephantine memories will remember that I'm no fan of Bob Nardelli. The erstwhile CEO of Home Depot drove away customers by cutting back on full-time, experienced staff and replacing them with less knowledgeable part-timers. After torpedoing revenue, he then he spent money on customer service improvement programs (which would have been unnecessary had he just kept the original staff) and tried re-hiring the same sort of experienced staff he sacked earlier. For his efforts in destroying shareholder value, Nardelli was awarded a pink slip -- and a $214 million severance package.

Fast forward to today's Chrysler bankruptcy. In a statement that boggles the imagination, Nardelli told the NYTimes that

“I got us here [into bankruptcy],” he said. “And I feel good about getting us here.”

The article goes onto point out that

In his relatively short time at the top of Chrysler, Mr. Nardelli did fulfill much of the agenda laid out for him by Cerberus. He streamlined the company and significantly lowered its costs, although tens of thousands of jobs were eliminated in the process. 

Hmm.  Sounds a lot like Home Depot, doesn't it? Lowering costs by laying off staff?

Look, I'm no business guru. I've never run a company larger than four people. And now I make my living as a consultant, because I don't have the skills or experience to do a real job like making stuff that people will pay for. Frankly, I can't even begin to comprehend the difficulty of managing a company as large and complex as an auto maker.

And yet.

And yet I do know that there's no secret to cutting expenses. Close a few plants, fire a bunch of people, reduce production, and presto! Your costs have gone down. It's hard for me to fathom how lowering costs is considered to be some sort of managerial brilliance, a leadership tour de force. And in Nardelli's case, it's pretty much the same playbook that he used at Home Depot.

Now, I'm not suggesting that Chrysler was a paragon of efficiency, or that plant closings and layoffs were out of line. When your cars are seriously unpopular and no one is buying them, well, you're going to have to do something about costs. But it's hard to believe that anyone could feel good about steering a company into bankruptcy. Hell, Kiichiro Toyoda resigned in shame when he had to layoff 25% of his employees and his company nearly went bankrupt in 1950. But Nardelli "feels good" about steering the company into bankruptcy? Am I missing something?

Stay tuned for Part III of my Nardelli screed. I'll post that when we read about his severance package in the next month or so. Any guesses on how much money he'll walk away with?

Twitter, Haiku, and the Simplicity of Mission

Unless you've been under an unusually large rock, by now you've heard of the Twitter phenomenon... basically updating the world on your thoughts and activities in 140 characters or less.  There are now something like 100 million users, doubling every few months.  Up until last December I had thought it was rather ridiculous; who cares if I'm now drinking a cup of coffee?  But then I started to experiment, got addicted for a while, however recently have simply run out of time to be active in that community. 

I still tweet maybe once a day, usually with a link to this post or to whatever wine I'm drinking in the evening.  You can follow me at @superfactory, and you can find many of the top lean manufacturing guys by checking my list of followers.

On a similar note, today's local paper included a couple pages of haiku poems written by local students and compiled by our poet laureate.  Yes, our town of 40,000 somehow has a poet laureate.  No lean laureate, but a poet laureate.  Go figure.  Haiku's are also short... 17 syllables arranged in lines of 5, 7, and 5.  Succinct, and definitely more pleasant-sounding than a 140-character tweet, especially mine.

Coincidentally yesterday I received the annual report from a company I own some stock in.  On the inside front cover of the report was their mission statement... all two paragraphs.  I made it through the first sentence or two before I realized they were out to basically do everything to everyone at anytime.  Their stock price, by the way, had already done it to me, and after reading that glorious yet ridiculous mission statement I was pretty much done with them.  But that's beside the point.

It struck me that Twitter and haiku could help us craft better mission statements.  In fact, forcing fluff to be removed to lay bare fundamental simplicity could be a lesson for just about every communication.  There's already a "5 Sentences" movement, or conspiracy depending on your perspective, that seeks to minimize email replies.  I try, but as my colleagues know, I'm not exactly one for brevity.  After some quick research I found that many organizations are already embracing haiku as a way to create succinct mission statements.  Try this one from a public library:

Our mission is to
Collect, share, promote, learn, grow.
Users are foremost.

The Non-Profit Quarterly has also embraced the concept.

Your organization’s mission statement deserves to be elegant, precise, and even poetic because these words embody the reason your nonprofit exists. The mission statement will be your north star when sailing stormy boardroom seas; when discussion gets contentious, we look to the mission statement for clarity. These few words will guide future generations of our organizations’ leaders. Outside the organization, we can use a strong mission statement to communicate the core of our work in just a few lines. To serve these purposes, mission statements must be carefully crafted. History has seen few more exacting wordsmiths than the great haiku poets, and nonprofits can learn much from them.

The Zen Habits blog takes it a step further, and turns haiku into a business productivity tool, effectively extending Zen to Done for your ZTD fans..

The key to haiku productivity is to limit yourself to an arbitrary but small number of things, forcing yourself to focus on the important stuff and eliminate all else.

So how does this apply to productivity? Well, if you think this will allow you to accomplish twice as many tasks, you’re wrong. You’ll accomplish fewer tasks. But you will most likely be more effective, because you will have to choose only the essential tasks — the ones that will give you the most benefit for your limited time.

What are the other benefits of Haiku Productivity, besides increased effectiveness? Besides forcing you to focus on essential tasks that have a large Return on Investment (ROI), it forces you to eliminate the non-essential tasks. No other system forces you to do that. It forces you to make the best use of your time. It forces you to limit the time you spend on things, which means you have more time for other things that are important to you, and you are able to focus on what you want to focus on, instead of everything coming at you.

Hmmm... I could use a little more haiku in my life.  But back to the original premise: simplifying and clarifying mission.  17 syllables.  What could be a mission for Evolving Excellence?  Try this as a first pass.

Challenging the most
Traditional business views.
Think outside the box.

Can you condense your organization's mission, or even your personal vision, into 17 syllables?  Try it.

Management Improvement Carnival #60

We are pleased to once again host the Management Improvement Carnival!  A sampling of interesting posts from various leadership and management blogs over the past couple weeks include:

• Curious Cat takes on the timely issue of excessive executive pay, especially those executives who received lavish pay packages at companies losing money.
• Shmula describes his experience and observations while sitting in a Jiffy Lube waiting room.
• Gemba Panta Rei suggests twelve leader standard work questions to ask while at the gemba.
• Lean Blog author Mark Graban is justifiably proud of winning the Shingo Prize for his book Lean Hospitals.  Congrats!
• TimeBack asks why "thinking time" isn't part of our standard work.
• Lean Six Sigma Academy observes a process change, not necessarily for the better, while dining at a restaurant.
• Got Boondoggle describes how synergy can be a multiplier in a lean transformation.
• Bob Sutton follows the debate on whether business schools are responsible for the financial meltdown.
• Quality and Innovation helps us get our work "mojo" back.
• Process Rants uses some practical examples to show us how simpler can be better.
• Unfolding Leadership gives us some practical words of wisdom in dealing with layoffs.
• Evolving Excellence warns us about the perils of going to China in today's economy.

Taking the "Gen" out of "Genchi Genbutsu"

Well, GM is in the news again, this time for refusing to cancel its program that gives a company car and company-paid gas for about 8,000 white-collar employees. It's almost too easy to work myself into a righteous wrath over a perk that costs the company $12 million a year, at a time when GM has already received $13 billion from taxpayers and is looking for $16 billion more. But in the grand economic scheme of things these days, it's pretty much a rounding error.

GM claims that the perk, which is formally called the "Product Evaluation Program," is an important tool to improve vehicle quality, because employees can immediately report problems. But Walter McManus, a former GM economist during most of the 1990s, questioned the program's value:

I'm not aware — when I was in market research or in product planning — of anyone at GM ever using the information for any sort of analysis or any product development decisions. No one that I knew took it seriously.

Okay, so we've got some waste here: a program that certainly costs money to administer but doesn't do a damn thing to benefit customers. But to me, the real problem with this program is the way it isolates GM executives from the reality faced by its customers. The principle of genchi genbutsu ("actual place, actual thing," where "gen" means "actual") is designed to ensure that workers (and especially) managers get out their bubbles and see the reality of a situation. Yuji Yokoya, the Toyota chief engineer for the 2004 Sienna minivan is legendary for driving 53,000 miles around North America while developing the minivan, all in an effort to experience the reality of the US market.

You'd think that it would be easy -- even unavoidable -- for GM execs to experience the "actual thing" faced by their customers. All they need to do is simply drive their cars -- you know, to the store, to work, back home -- just like their customers. But leave it to GM to keep their execs in the bubble. What's the long term effect of these twice-yearly free cars twice and free gas? After all, if you're getting it for free, can you really understand what it's like for a consumer to own an SUV that gets 9 mpg when gas costs $4 a gallon?

GM insists its employees appreciate the impact of high fuel prices, but one current GM staffer interviewed for this story said the perk does blind some people. He recalled that when gas spiked last summer, a colleague complained. It wasn't because of the cost. It was because he had to swipe his credit card twice to fill up the tank of his big SUV.

Somehow, I don't think that the inability of gas pumps to register over $100, and the extra effort of the double swipe was the biggest problem facing consumers last year. When you're getting the car and the gas for free, you're not really experiencing the "actual" anything.

So, given the cost and questionably utility of this program why not end it?

GM has talked about ending the program, but a spokesman said employees have built their lives around it. It allows many to live far from their offices and commute at little expense. The spokesman said killing the program now would be "extremely" disruptive.

Ah, now I understand: 8,000 execs who are high enough up the corporate food chain to warrant (and I intentionally don't use the word "merit") free cars and gas can't afford to drive to work? Do they really make so little money that they can't afford to pay for the commute out of their own pockets? Did they really "build their lives" and choose where to live based on the assumption that they'd have free cars and gas in perpetuity? Are they really that asinine? If so, that explains an awful lot about how they can so seriously, and so regularly, misunderstand the customer.

Leave it to GM to take the "gen" out of genchi genbutsu.

Consultant Heal Thyself!

A short post today, but sweet.  Some stories will be fun to watch this year.  At the bottom of a list of companies that may not survive 2009 is consulting firm BearingPoint.

BearingPoint. (BGPT; about 16,000 employees; stock down 21%). This Virginia-based consulting firm, spun out of KPMG in 2001, is struggling to solve its own operating problems. The firm has consistently lost money, revenue has been falling, and management stopped issuing earnings guidance in 2008. Stable government contracts generate about 30 percent of the firm's business, but the firm may sell other divisions to help pay off debt. With a key interest payment due in April, management needs to hustle - or devise its own exit strategy.

So I wonder what their consultants are doing now.  Telling others how to manage?  Hmmm...  And government contracts are a major part of their business?  Double hmmm... in more ways than one.  A failing company providing guidance to a failing bloated bureaucracy which is providing funds to failing companies.

Got that?

Does Your Organization Need a Truth-o-Meter?

The other day on CNN I came across the "Truth-o-Meter" which is actually part of the St. Petersburg Times.  There are sub-sections for a "Flip-o-Meter" and "Chain Mail Truth" and even an "Obameter" that tracks all 510 promises President Obama made while campaigning.  No this isn't some right wing conspiracy; on the home page there's an analysis disputing one passionate assertion by the right.

Before you get your hackles in a tizzy, my point isn't the political side of the Truth-o-Meter; in fact I'm going to purposely stay away from that.  But I am intrigued by the use of technology to track commitments and promises at this level of searchable detail, and available to the general public.

Now take a look at your organization.  There are probably hundreds of projects in the works, visions, goals, missions, and somewhere between zero and a bazillion metrics.  When your chief says "we're going to invest in becoming the best in the world in x technology" what do you do?  Move forward and then wake up a year later trying to remember what was said?  Do you even know what the key metrics are?  The key goals?  Your organization's vision?

More enlightened organizations have gone a bit further, with wall charts showing metrics, articles in the company newsletter, and perhaps even project review boards.  If they're lucky, some supervisors might know what certain key metrics were during the previous month, or at least they could find the nearest wall chart to answer the question.

If there are some technology geeks on the bus, then you might have a dashboard.  A home page that shows key metrics and projects.  That comes pretty close to a Truth-o-Meter. 

But when do you give full information to the entire company, holding the leadership staff fully accountable?  When is a scorecard kept and the shop floor folks get to determine the compensation, and perhaps even employment status, of their leader?  Yes, we often hear that "a business is not a democracy."  Could it be?  Or are we just scared of accountability?

The Conundrum of Executive Pay

Executive pay, especially so-called "excessive" executive pay, is once again getting quite a bit of press. Companies that receive bailout funds have pay restrictions placed on them as part of the package, although that still doesn't prevent them from buying new jets.

On one hand I think companies, and their shareholders, should have the freedom to pay whatever they like.  If they feel they need to pay more to get someone of exceptional caliber or with a unique background, then so be it.  They still need to look out for the health of the business, in both directions.

On the other hand, the reality is that those those same boards often aren't looking out for the health of their businesses, and hire people the drive poor performance, and even give them massive sums for leaving the mess they created behind.

Executives that can manage massive global companies are a rare breed, especially those willing to make the personal time and family sacrifices to do so.  Executives that can create transformative value at much smaller companies are also a rare breed.  One example would be the likes of Steve Jobs, who nearly single-handedly resurrected Apple, and even now causes the value of that company to change by billions on news of his health issues.  Or is that an indication of lack of leadership depth at Apple?

We are quick to complain about the lavish incomes of CEO's, but don't begrudge movie stars, book authors, athletes, and pontificators like Al Gore and assorted ex-Presidents.  When you compare value delivered versus income received, is there a difference?  Here's a video that asks a similar question, although my next paragraph also describes the problem I have with their presupposition.

Yes, in many cases there is.  For some reason boards continue to hire, and hold onto, executives that produce poor results.  A movie star that turns in a poor performance is given maybe one or two more chances before their star is tarnished and their asking price plummets.  NFL coaches are fired on just the inkling of short-term poor performance, athletes traded, TV shows cancelled, and ex-Presidents... well, never mind.  Bad example.

Executives should be measured on a bit longer time scale, but they should still be measured and held accountable.  Golden parachutes for pathetic performance isn't exactly accountability.  At the same time, if someone like Jobs creates billions of wealth of main street shareholders should we cap the limit of his income?  Probably not, but hard questions should be asked about leadership depth.

Boards, and the shareholders they report to (if we have to remind you...), are becoming more active.  More and more companies are providing for shareholder votes on executive compensation plans, the most recent being Intel.  These range from votes on the detailed dollar specifics to a vote on general ranges.

Intel Corp. has become the latest company to let shareholders vote on its executive-compensation policies, showing that more big corporations are reacting to concern about high executive pay and indications that Congress will take action. The computer-chip maker will give shareholders a nonbinding vote on its pay policies -- a "say on pay" vote -- at its annual meeting in May, said Intel Corporate Secretary Cary Klafter.

Bingo-hall operator Littlefield Corp. last year asked shareholders to vote on whether its CEO's and directors' total compensation was "within 20% of an acceptable amount." [it was supported]

There are some holdouts, including my example of Apple.

Many U.S. companies, including Walt Disney Co. and Apple Inc., argue against the move.  Opponents say it's hard for shareholders to parse complicated compensation schemes and difficult for companies to know what such votes mean.

Baloney.  Yes there are a bunch of "complicated schemes" out there, usually including such complicated provisions as paying a $30 million payout if the executive is fired for poor performance.  I can understand why it would be "difficult to parse"... or difficult for the company to explain.  It should be.  And a shareholder vote of "that's too complicated" or an outright "that's nuts"... means "that's nuts."  Deal with it.  That's part of the root of the problem itself.

Don't cap compensation, but don't hide behind a screen of complexity either. 

Even 3rd Graders Get Leadership

Consultants, analysts, academes, and pretty much every assorted pontificating polemic seem to spend countless hours trying to dissect that beast called "leadership."  As Bill wrote a couple years ago,

To be a leader, a manager should master Accountability Leadership, Collaborative Leadership and Contagious Leadership. He should get his or her arms around the Tao of Leadership and learn how to Lead From the Front and know Leadership That Works. There is Zen Leadership (perhaps this is the 102 version of the Tao of Leadership?), Spiritual, Ethical, Inspirational and Moral Leadership - all separate approaches. There is a 5th Wave of Leadership to master (no first through fourth, however), along with Thought Leadership, Facilitative Leadership, Systematic Leadership and, most important, I would imagine, Grown Up Leadership.

In order to keep all of this straight, leadership has been organized into 4 E's, 5 Personalities, 6 Priorities, 7 Zones, 8 Keys, 9 Lessons, 10 Common Sense Lessons (apparently the 9 Lessons defy common sense), 21 Principles, 50 Basic Laws, 124 Actions and 180 Ways - each a separate tome.

For help along the way, the would-be leader should read up on Abraham Lincoln, Attila The Hun, Santa Claus and basketball coach John Wooden.  Jesus, the Founding Fathers and the US Army Rangers all have leadership lessons to teach, as do Teddy and Eleanor Roosevelt (not Franklin, though), Alfred Sloan, Martin Luther King and Six University Presidents (the rest of the academic folks are not leadership examples - just 6 of them). Jack Welch, the old rebel Robert E Lee and TV characters the Sopranos are leadership paragons to study. George Patton, Ronald Reagan, Alexander The Great, the Navy Seals and arctic explorer Robert Shackleton have leadership principles, practices and secrets to adopt, as does Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi - better known as Mahatma.

It's really not that hard.  Perhaps they should just run down to their nearest elementary school and ask a third grader.  From my small-town paper this morning, which asked a bunch of schoolkids "what are the qualities of a good leader?"  I won't give the names so they don't get an internet bio even before they become teenagers, although who knows... maybe we should keep an eye on them.

I think that a good leader is smart, courageous, kind, and funny.  I think of people that are leaders as kind, caring people and that anyone can be a leader as long as they have the right attitude and knowledge.

A good leader needs to have patience but be firm.  They need to be open to listen.  They can't be bossy.  When I think of a good leader I think of my mom.

I know one person that is a great leader and that is my mom.  She is nice, trustworthy and strong.

A good leader should be able to change things and have the will to do it.

A good leader knows what's best for his or her people.  They help you learn, the do what's best to help you have a great future.  My teacher is a great leader.

My basketball coach is a good leader (otherwise known as my dad).  He never puts people down and he always encourages us if we're losing.  He always says that we can come back and beat the other team.

Notice a common theme?  An understanding of people and a desire to get the best out of people by supporting and teaching.  Not pound suppliers into the sand, not shave a few cents of "cost" by eliminating "headcount."  These kids get it.  Perhaps more of us should spend time with kids instead of supposed gurus.

$20 Billion Company CEO... Takes the Bus

With all the talk of corporate jets and massive bonuses for the CEO's of failing companies, here's a jolt of true leadership inspiration.  Haruka NIshimatsu, CEO of JAL (Japan Air Lines), is featured in this YouTube clip, and there are many lessons.  Perhaps this clip should be forwarded to the likes of Wagoner, Mulally, and Nardelli.  Take two minutes to watch this, then we'll return to discuss a bit.

Great story, eh?  Let's see, here's a CEO of about a $20 billion company undergoing some tough times.  Let's count the leadership examples:

• He takes the bus to work (and not even a private bus!)
• He works in a large open office area with his staff
• He eats in the same cafeteria, standing in the same long lines, as his entire office building
• When he was forced to cut jobs, he cut "every single one" of the executive perks
• He slashed his own pay to $90k, less than most of his pilots
• He understands that "businesses that pursue money first, fail"

True leadership is humble.  How many of you see your CEO, let alone eat with him... or even make more than him?  Do you have the guts to forward this to him?