The Three Signs of a Miserable Job
written by Patrick Lencioni

Over the past ten years, Patrick Lencioni has been a prolific writer on a number of business topics near and dear to the hearts of small business owners. His past books have included "Five Dysfunctions of a Team", "Death by Meeting", and "Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars". Each book tells a fable with a critical business prescription embedded into the story.

His newest book, "The Three Signs of a Miserable Job" follows this same model. It tells a story of a successful CEO struggling to determine how to prevent his employees from being miserable. The CEO goes from running a large equipment manufacturing company to a small pizza restaurant and than back to a large regional chain of retail sporting goods stores. In each case, he faces a dysfunctional, demotivated, miserable work force. As expected, in each situation he is able to turn around the employees using a relatively simple set of three human capital strategies.

The strategies Lencioni prescribes are not new. In fact he shares the following with the reader, "The remedy I propose here is going to seem ridiculously simple and obvious at first glance." He goes on to say that the challenge for managers today is not the ability to understand these basic principles of people management, but to put these ideas into practice. The evidence of this exists in nearly every business in America. There are millions of employees who are absolutely miserable in their work. The cost of this collective malaise is billions of dollars to companies in lost productivity and under-performance.

I won’t give away Lencioni’s "Three Signs". I highly recommend this book to every small business owner. It is an easy read with a powerful set of employee-friendly strategies. I believe that if you begin practicing these strategies, the impact on your workforce will be quick and most significant. There may even be an application of these practices beyond your employees with your customers, your vendors, and maybe even family members.

The Discipline of Market Leaders
written by Michael Treacy & Fred Wiersema

Have you ever had a book that you have not read before but you have heard so much about it that you feel that you have read it? This was the case for me with this month’s book, "The Discipline of Market Leaders". For many years I heard many people refer to this book and read many articles that referenced the book. I felt like I had already read it myself. I finally decided to read the book this month and am very glad that I did. I believe that this book is one of the business management classics of our time.

"The Discipline of Market Leaders "was written in 1995. The authors of the book, Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema are both highly regarded business consultants. The book was based on the research and experience of both authors working with both Fortune 500 companies and small businesses as well.

The simple but powerfully important message of this book is that no company can succeed today by trying to be all things to all people. The book suggests that instead companies must find the unique value that it alone can deliver in a target market. The authors identify in the book three distinct value disciplines that each delivers a different kind of customer value. The three disciplines are Operational Excellence, Product Leadership, and Customer Intimacy. Ideally, a company chooses one of these unique disciplines and stakes it’s market reputation squarely on top of it.

Operational Excellence means providing average products at the lowest overall cost to the consumer. Examples of companies that exemplify this value discipline are Wal-Mart, McDonalds, and Southwest Air. For each of these companies it is all about lowering their own cost of doing business through being operationally superior to the competition which than results in offering the consumer the lowest prices and hassle-free service.

Practitioners of Product Leadership concentrate on offering the best products in the market. In addition, these companies are committed to innovating their products on a continual basis. Competition is not about price here but about product performance. Examples of these companies include 3M, Apple Computers, and Nike.

Customer Intimacy focuses on delivering whatever the customer desires. It’s about cultivating lifetime partnerships with clients. It means understanding the unique needs of the customer and doing whatever it takes to exceed the expectations of that customer. I think of companies such as Nordstrom’s department stores, Ritz Carlton hotels, and Lands End mail order in this area.

Which value discipline have you chosen for your company? My experience is that most small businesses try to be all three. They promote themselves as being customer-centric, they position themselves as being innovative, and they compete on price. According to the authors of the book, this is a formula for business failure. One can’t be everything to everybody. Instead, they prescribe that the business leader choose one value discipline and invest resources there to carve out a unique market position. This does not mean that we ignore the other two disciplines. Instead we look to maintain a competitive position in these areas as well.

My own experience as small business owner and consultant is that Customer Intimacy may be the easiest and most powerful value discipline for the small business. It is very hard for a small business to compete with larger businesses on price. Being the Innovator typically requires significant financial resources for research and development, which most small businesses don’t have.

I strongly recommend this book.

'Small Giants' written by Bo Burlingham
review by Tim Fulton

As a young entrepreneur fresh out of college I was focused on one goal in managing my small business: growth. Growth in revenues. Growth in profits. Growth in employee headcount. Growth in market share. It felt like I was in some kind of race. Who was I racing against? Competitors? Insolvency?

Every once in a while I would stop to catch a breath and ask myself, 'Why growth?' Seemed like a reasonable question. I could never reach a good answer, and hence would resume my race for growth not ever sure of my ultimate destination.

As I have worked with many like-minded small business owners over the past decade, I have found that I was not the only one obsessed with growth. It seems to be a very common condition of many entrepreneurs. And like me, few are able to answer the question of 'Why growth?'

Author Bo Burlingham has recently written a book, Small Giants, that profiles fourteen companies that addressed the 'Growth' question head on and proactively decided to resist growth in favor of becoming 'Great'. They became great employers. They provide great customer service. They make great contributions to their community. The lead great lives outside of work.

Just as Jim Collins best-selling book, 'Good To Great', describes how big companies become great, Burlingham describes in his book how small companies become great. For each company, the author writes in great detail how the organization created their own unique 'mojo' and the lessons other business owners can learn from their experience. Each of the businesses had opportunities to grow fast whether it was thru an IPO or a merger or an acquisition. Each business after careful consideration chose to reject the opportunity for hyper growth and instead focus on becoming great.

I strongly recommend this book to every business owner. At the very least, it will cause you to address the 'why growth?' question. I look forward to working with more 'small giants' in the future.

Book Review, by Tim Fulton

This is the fourth book (Death by Meeting, Five Dysfunctions of a Team, The Five Temptations of a CEO) I have read and reviewed by best-selling author Patrick Lencioni. Each book is written as a management fable with a powerful leadership message embedded into the story. His books are favorites of my CEO clients as they are short, easy to read, and very prescriptive in nature.

In Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars; Lencioni writes about the barriers that exist in all organizations that stifle individual and group performance. The main character in the book, a management consultant, is tasked with trying to fix organizational issues at several different companies all of whom are suffering from the 'Silos' effect. He is ultimately successful after his own personal experience in a hospital emergency department and than applying the principles that worked so well there into his client companies.

In the book, Lencioni gives the reader a prescription for overcoming organizational barriers that starts with defining a 'thematic goal' for the team. Such a goal causes employees from sometimes competing departments to want to work together to achieve this company-wide objective. While this sounds like a simple answer to organizational strife, the reality is that the determination of the goal and then the execution of a plan to achieve the goal can be very difficult for any organization.

I strongly recommend this book to any leader. While it will not eliminate 'turf wars', it will certainly help the reader be better prepared to lead their team out of this organizational state and moving towards leading a high performing team.

Book Review, by Therese Padilla

I eagerly awaited the delivery of my pre-ordered copy of "Tough Choices” by Carly Fiorina. Within moments of its arrival, I was reading the memoir of what will arguably be a very hot topic in the coming weeks. I wasn't disappointed. This book is her turn to talk, and from my perspective she does a fine job of framing the past and the effect she had on HP. Even more importantly she shows the importance of being earnest.

To many readers, this book will be dismissed as simply an opportunity for Fiorina to take undue credit for the positive financial results at HP since her firing. In baseball, the relief pitcher gets credited with the save if, by the prescribed ending of the game, they erased the deficit. In business, there isn't a prescribed ending. Companies, if they manage to avoid bankruptcy, don't have endings. They have curves, ups and downs mixed with flat line steady years. When Fiorina, the relief pitcher, came in the team was in a deficit. Under Fiorina, a number of initiatives drove the steady rise of HP stock since mid-2004. It’s been up to Mark Hurd, current CEO to continue the winning streak.

The press and investors like to talk about leadership but in reality many don't like what it really means. Leadership means saying no as well as yes. Critics can remember every time a leader said no to an idea. Fiorina recounts a number of instances where she was told, not asked, to make a choice she didn't agree with, but she held her ground and said no. The real lesson in her book is how people reacted to her saying no. And I think it was all her "nos" that ultimately got her fired. But she also said yes. For example, the Compaq acquisition which interestingly was not her idea. She embraced it only after much discussion with the board.

In her own words (she insisted on no editing of her memoir) the values that comprise Carly Fiorina are revealed. Her recollections of college paint the picture of an over-achiever who was always unsure of herself. - directionless at first then a moment of sheer clarity in the midst of angst. In one particular instance, while in the shower, Fiorina made the decision to drop out of law school. She felt that a career in law was too confining because it always relied on the past for decisions. A prophetic sign of her actions to come at HP.

Fiorina and I are the same age. We both read Camus' “The Stranger” in High School and were affected by it. However, we both came away with different meanings. Fiorina’s interpretation was that it was “about a big idea and how a philosophy can motivate action”. And I understood it to be about the absurd -that life, science and religion have no meaning and that meaning is assigned by the assignor.

One of the reasons for this disparity of understanding between Fiorina and I might be the fact that she read the book in French, and I read the English translation. But I don't think that is the reason. What I think it is that it reveals Fiorina is clearly an optimist. How else can you explain that she found this quintessential book on the meaninglessness of life to be "difficult, absorbing and rewarding" especially when the Stranger ends like this:

"As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself - so like a brother, really - I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate." (Excerpt from Matthew Ward's translation)

Again, oddly prophetic. Weren't the cries after her departure from HP cries of hate? Weren't the actions of the board to decide to fire her a blind-sided execution? But just as Fiorina chooses to revere Camus, she ultimately reveres the actions of everyone at HP. She looks at the entire process of the rise to being CEO of HP as a series of choices. Tough ones. Smart ones. Bad ones. Easy ones. And ultimately a gift.

Speaking of choices, it’s apparent that Fiorina chose the role of CEO of HP despite some serious warning signals in order to ultimately fulfill the prophecy of her dying mother. This turns out to be one of the more touching parts of the book, actually. Her mother was a couple of months away from death and casually mentioned the idea that Carly might move back to California and assume the helm of HP. It was an idea that came from nowhere because they had never spoken of the company and Fiorina was firmly entrenched at Lucent in New Jersey.

The chapter on the HP hiring process points to a number of the "dysfunctional" aspects of the HP Board of Directors. The story of her CEO candidacy interview with board member, Richard Hackborn, sheds the first light on the ultimate insight into the problems at HP. In that interview, Richard admits that the board was willing to go along with ousted CEO, Lew Platt's restructuring plan out of sheer exhaustion. They were tired of trying to “out-argue” Platt on the matter. They figured, he would be gone soon anyway, so let him do it. "..If we have to, we will fix it later," Hackborn told her. Interesting corporate strategy, and in a manner, the new HP Way. Rather than allow leaders to lead, the board of directors often second guess from the cheap seats. Hindsight is the only measure here.

Besides the personal story of the book, this is a business advice book. Fiorina doesn't directly give advice, but the stories of colleagues and events certainly left my book with yellow highlighted one-liners. The rise through AT&T then Lucent and ultimately HP are filled with conversations and specific insight into the strategy behind several key decisions at these companies.

The biggest impression I got from this book was that product managers have to work like CEOs. It isn’t new to say product managers are the CEOs of their products, but it is a tough job for product managers to have to work with so many conflicting departments. Even if the CEO can fire everyone who drags their feet when given direction, it isn’t going to happen. Despite being called “Chainsaw Carly”, Fiorina outlines some of the agonizing she did when trying to figure out how to motivate people to get things done. The product manager’s bane in life.

This book is timely in regards to the criminal charges that have been levied against Patricia Dunn and the other three involved in the HP scandal. It is clear in Fiorina’s book that the Boardroom meeting leakers were known at the time of her firing, and the leakers used the press to usurp Fiorina's authority. It's as much a business advice book as it is a primer on corporate espionage and tale of modern day Machiavellianism.

Book Review, by Tim Fulton

The most talked about book among small business owners and in the business trade magazines this month seems to be Malcolm Gladwell's new book "Blink". Gladwell's most recent bestseller was "The Tipping Point" which received much critical acclaim and is quoted quite often by many business gurus.

I have just finished reading ?Blink? and found it to be very interesting. Here is the book review from the TEC Library:

At the unconscious level, the human brain can make astonishingly fast and complex decisions based on very minimal information.

Even more amazing, those lighting-fast decisions often prove more accurate than conscious decisions made with much more information and more time to analyze it.

Consider the case of the J. Paul Getty Museum kouros, an extremely rare type of ancient Greek sculpture, of which only about 200 are known to exist.

In 1983, an art dealer offered to sell a kouros to the museum for $10 million dollars. Given the huge size of the investment, the museum proceeded with great caution when examining the statue to determine its authenticity.

Over a period of 14 months, a team of experts scrutinized the sculpture from head to toe, conducting everything from core sample analysis to mass-spectrometry and X-ray diffraction tests to determine when and where the kouros was made. Based on the initial scientific evidence, the kouros appeared to be authentic.

Just prior to finalizing the purchase, the museum invited an art historian and an expert on Greek sculpture to assess their prized possession. Within two seconds of seeing the sculpture, both pronounced it a fake.

The Power of Rapid Cognition

 "Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking," Malcolm Gladwell delves into the fascinating and perhaps least understood part of the human mind -- the unconscious.

In particular, he examines how we make snap decisions, how those near-instantaneous decisions influence our behavior, and what happens when the rapid cognition mechanism malfunctions and leads us horribly astray.

Gladwell begins the book by offering three fundamental principles:

?  Rapid cognition decisions (those made unconsciously and instantly) can be every bit as good -- and in many cases, better -- than those made cautiously and deliberately at the conscious level.

?  The unconscious mind is a powerful, but fallible, force.

?  Snap judgments and first impressions can be controlled.

He then proceeds to offer examples from all walks of life -- from military war game simulations to selling cars t...

Review by Tim Fulton, Publisher SMALL BUSINESS MATTERS

Where has this book been for the last thirty years of my life? If I had a dime for every time someone has recommended this book to me I would be a wealthy man. When I finished reading the book I was reminded of the saying: ?When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.?

?How to Win Friends & Influence People? is a business classic and an international best-seller. First published in 1937, the book has over 15 millions copies sold. The author, Dale Carnegie, wrote the book to be used as a textbook for the courses he taught in public speaking and human relations. Never did he realize that the book would have such a profound impact on so many people.

Carnegie?s book provides the framework for achieving better business results with the people around us including customers, employees, and vendors. Just as important the book?s content will enhance the reader?s relationships with family, neighbors, and even complete strangers. In the book the reader will learn:

• The Six Ways To Make people Like You
• The Twelve Ways To Win People To Your Way of Thinking
• The Nine Ways To Change People Without Arousing Resentment

One of the most powerful and yet most simple concepts in this book I found to be the following: ?So the only way on earth to influence other people is to talk about what they want and show them how to get it.? Most of us do the exact opposite. We are laser-focused on what we want for ourselves and can?t wait to talk about it with anyone that will listen. When was the last time you spent time with an employee and carefully asked what they want most from their work? How many of your customers do you truly understand their real needs and have explored ways with them to help them achieve these goals?

This book is filled with many of the simple truths we tend to take for granted in our day-to-day interaction with people. As a business owner I recommend this book for anyone that comes into contact with other humans including sales, customer service, and any level of management. As a father, this may be the best parenting guide any mother or father could ever hope for and the greatest gift you could possibly give to your child. For married couples, it should be required reading before the wedding day. It might have saved me on several occasions from sharing space with my dog Rocky in his outside domain.

I continue to highly recommend this book.

Book Description

Mass Market Paperback: 304 pages
Publisher: Pocket; Reissue edition (February 15, 1990)
ISBN: 0671723650
Amazon.com Sales Rank: #75 in Books

Review by Tim Fulton, TEC Chair

Being a CEO is not an easy job. There is enormous pressure to maximize return on investment for all the company's key stakeholders including the owners, customers, and employees. The CEO must achieve these results with limited capital, intense global competition, and a �free agent� labor force. While there are CEOs that rise above these challenges and lead successful enterprises, there are also even more business executives that don�t. What separates these two groups?

Best-selling author Patrick Lencioni has written a very good book, The Five Temptations of a CEO, which helps to explain why many CEOs fail to achieve the levels of success they expect. Lencioni explains to the reader that many CEOs complicate their work by succumbing to one or more of the �temptations� he describes in the book. Once that happens, no matter how hard the CEO works to rise above this leadership flaw, he or she is almost certain to fail.

The book is written as a fable as it seems so many business books are these days. The focus of the book is a young, ambitious, and overwhelmed CEO by the name of Andy. As a result of a dream the night before his big annual board of directors meeting, Andy discovers that he has fallen victim to all five of the �temptations� and resolves to turn himself around. Like all good fables the book has a happy ending and Andy keeps his job while leading the company through a turnaround.

As a TEC Chair working with two groups of CEOs, I see evidence of each of the �Five Temptations� almost on a daily basis. They represent a safe haven for CEOs who chose not to want to lead their respective enterprises forward. One example of a �temptation� from the book is the desire to be popular. Being at the top of an organization can be very lonely. You feel isolated. As a result, some CEOs reach out to their direct reports and develop friendships. Others just hire their friends to be their direct reports. In either case, these relationships can significantly undermine the CEO�s ability to hold these friends accountable for their work and to provide the type of leadership necessary to manage their performance.

Many CEOs also struggle in their decision-making. Before making a tough decision, they want more information�better information�different information. They than begin to drown in their own data. Lencioni refers to this �temptation� as the desire to make �correct� decisions, to achieve certainty. The most successful CEOs rely more on their gut than their brain to make decisions. They learn to trust their instincts rather than worry about making intellectually sound decisions. Yet it is very tempting to accumulate mounds of information and data before making a tough decision.

I enjoyed reading this book and recommend it to any CEO or consultant who works with CEOs. As a business owner, a parent, and a coach; I have fallen prey to each of the �Five Temptations� more often than I care to remember. I caught myself looking in the mirror several times as I read the book. The author, Patrick Lencioni, has also written several other best-selling business books including �The Five Dysfunctions of a Team�. The temptation to read this book is not one to avoid.

Review by Tim Fulton, Publisher SMALL BUSINESS MATTERS

I am convinced that the success or failure of a small business owner hinges on the relationships that individual has with his key stakeholders including customers, vendors, employees, investors, and family. The cornerstone of those relationships is the conversations that do or don't take place between the owner and these individuals. I wish I had a nickel for every conversation I know that I needed to have with an employee or customer and avoided or conversations that did happen that failed miserably.

Susan Scott's book, Fierce Conversations, addresses this very issue. Scott ran think tanks for executives through TEC International for fourteen years. TEC is a CEO membership organization dedicated to increasing the effectiveness and enhancing the lives of CEOs worldwide. She conducted over 12,000 conversations with CEOs over this time period. Her book is based on this experience.

What are Fierce Conversations? According to Scott, "a Fierce Conversation is one in which we come out from behind ourselves, into the conversation, and make it real."

Her book is based on "3 Big Ideas". First, she tells her readers that "our lives will succeed or fail one conversation at a time. While no single conversation may change a relationship, or a company, or a person; it's possible that it can". I can think of conversations that I have had over the years that have had a dramatic impact on my relationship with that person in either a positive or negative way.

The second "Big Idea" in Fierce Conversations is "The conversation is the relationship". This makes a great deal of sense to me as I consider relationships I have had with customers over time. My best customers were individuals that I had on-going and open conversations with. Customers that I lost were ones that I did not have timely conversations with or the conversations were not open and honest.

Scott's third Big Idea is my favorite: "All conversations are with myself and sometimes they involve other people." This statement can be interpreted in a variety of different ways. For me, it relates to the conversations I am having with myself all the time every minute of the day. Sometimes I choose to share these conversations with others. More often, I keep them to myself. I am having these mental conversations as I am also conversing verbally with someone else. These conversations shape the way that we see ourselves, those around us, and the world as a whole.

My job as a consultant is often times to get my clients to verbalize the critical conversations they are having with themselves so that I can help them better understand the realities of those thoughts, the implications of those ideas, and a process for moving forward with them.

In Fierce Conversations, Susan Scott shares her "7 Principles of Fierce Conversations". My two favorites are "take responsibility for your emotional wake" and "let silence do the heavy lifting". We tend to forget that everything we say has the potential to cause "emotional wake". Scott suggests that we need to take responsibility for that occurrence in each conversation that we have. Silence in a conversation seems to be very rare these days yet so very powerful. Instead, we often have two or more people talking at the same time instead of taking a moment to digest what is being said and to carefully consider our own response.

The backbone of Fierce Conversations are Susan Scott's prescriptions for having such conversations on a one-to-one basis and in groups. She also provides a model for when you may need to confront an individual relative to their behavior or a situation. This model will come in very handy the next time I need to have such a conversation with one of my sons. I am now armed and dangerous!

I continue to highly recommend this book.

Book Description

ISBN: 0425193373 Paperback: 320 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.84 x 9.12 x 6.20
Publisher: Berkley Pub Group; Reprint edition (January 6, 2004)