Disciplined curiosity

Citation

Lane Voss, B. (2003), "Disciplined curiosity", Journal of Business Strategy, Vol. 24 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/jbs.2003.28824dae.001

Disciplined curiosity

Disciplined curiosity

Champion chess players report that the key to winning is to start looking for a better move as soon as you have found a good one. Then repeat the process by looking for a still better move until time runs out.

Chess, of course, is a game with rules and play board known to all the players so the only advantage to gain is to be more rigorous and creative in applying the approach. It is not so in today' s business climate. In order to adapt the champions' tactic - to systematically examine potential circumstances - a businessperson must look at those circumstances along many different dimensions in a game with constantly changing rules on a playing field that is ever shifting. Getting a handle on those other perspectives and where the changes are heading is the promise of this month' s Stack Attack collection.

The authors' methods range from project alignment to case study analysis, in tones that veer from pragmatic pessimism to profitable optimism. It is up to the reader to decide if the methods will work in his circumstances and how disciplined to be when executing them. Your move.

Management Stripped Bare: Understanding Business as It Really Is

by Jo Owen. Published by AMACOM, New York, NY (www.amacombooks.org). A previous edition of the book was published by Kagan Page Ltd, London, UK.

Authors' credentials: Management consultant to such companies as AIG, Barclay's Bank, and Procter and Gamble.

Thesis: Eternally true management principles are often obscured by the legerdemain of buzzwords and fads.

Scope: Timeless

File under: The do-it-yourself, commonsense guide to management

Reason to buy/read: The book is the perfect combination of light reading and solid truths. Management Stripped Bare is the author's soapbox. Ostensibly organized as an " A to Z" view of over 150 management issues, terms, and tools, the book ignores that formula almost immediately and gets to yanking back the curtain which veils the truths behind business buzzwords and the like. Owen will have no-nonsense readers on his side after the first line, and have most nodding and chuckling before " A" is halfway over.

The author, for instance, pooh-poohs " Managing by wandering around" (which was extolled as a great route to excellence in In Search of Excellence). Here's Owen's take: " Management by walking away is better: it's called delegation and lets people get on with what they need to do" .

This mix of humor and insight is carried on throughout the book. However, the sum of the parts adds up to more than just a collection of zingers. Between the lines Owen is advocating four key principles: (1) understand the rules of the game; (2) get the basics right; (3) manage people not things; and (4) focus on what is important.

Placement in your life: Great gift for yourself and any colleague from a graduate starting out in business to a retired chairman of the board.

How to read: With a pen in your hand. The author's questions, bulleted lists, exhortations, and asides are likely to spur dozens of ideas in the reader's mind on ways to improve what he and his company are doing.

Since the A to Z formula is loosely followed, there is no right or wrong way to read the book but there is nothing lost reading it straight through. The author talks about what he wants to talk about when he wants to talk about it - he goes on a three-page tangent on " The recipe for success" while still in the " A" section, for instance.

Though the author is a management consultant, he has a pretty jaundiced view of his brethren: " They are in it for the fees" , is one of his kinder remarks. Other adversaries Owen takes on are managers who deny problems and spread blame, planners with an historic trend-line mindset, and certification zealots.

One of Stack's favorite lines, " Fads are often solutions to problems that are not relevant" .

Unintended effect: Owen would make an excellent dinner companion and an irreverent choice for a board seat.

Irresistible miscellanea: When the Great Western railway line was converted from broad to standard gauge, 213 miles of track were replaced in one weekend by 4,000 workers.

You will throw this book across the room if: You think you know it all.

Price/value: $17.95/full value. Buy two and give one away.

Cover ratio: 98/100. The cover image of a legal pad being unzipped is as witty and clever as the author's style. Simple, sans serif, easy-to-read text on a crisp white background is the first hint that this book gets down to business - immediately.

Connecting the Dots: Aligning Projects with Objectives in Unpredictable Times

by Cathleen Benko and F. Warren McFarlan. Published by Harvard Business School Press, Cambridge, MA (www.hbsp.harvard.edu)

Authors' credentials: Global e-Business leader of Braxton (formerly Deloitte Touche www.braxton.com); Senior Associate Dean and the Albert E. Gordon Professor of Business Administration for Harvard Business School.

Thesis: Connecting what the organization is doing (its project portfolio), with what it intends to achieve will " align" a business and give it the best chance for survival.

Scope: 1658 to present

File under: Play the hand you are dealt in a systematic and purposeful way.

Reason to buy/read: The book outlines the author's premise that businesses are suffering from a lack of alignment between their objectives and the projects they have underway. It convinces the reader of that and quickly demonstrates why the typical way of managing portfolios as a collection of projects instead of as an integrated portfolio may have budgetary simplicity on its side but leads to unfortunate consequences on the project level. Typical problems include working at cross-purposes, duplication of effort, and meeting outmoded objectives.

Benko and McFarlan argue for alignment in adaptive ways. Their book is on some levels a call to action. It also offers prescriptive advice on harnessing portfolios of disparate, proliferating projects into an efficient coherent whole - all with an eye to matching the portfolios' objectives and a company's strategies to the actual business environment.

Placement in your life: What to read before you meet with the board on your plans for the company you are taking over.

How to read: Though there is a strong theory underpinning the book, it does not get lost in grand concepts. Connecting the Dots functions more like a guidebook offering sensible tools in a blend of conceptual and practical thinking. In chapters 1 through 3, the authors explore today's business context and outline a framework approach. Chapters 4 through 7 provide in-depth discussion of their alignment prescription through real-life case examples, a detailed composite company illustration, and an industry level study and application. These chapters will appeal to different audiences: Those who want practical details should read straight through. Those that prefer to stay on the conceptual level should read just chapter 4 and 7.

Unintended effect: There is a financial angle to the authors' theory - it may take George Soros to figure it out, but the same concepts of chunking and common threads ought to be applicable to investment management.

Irresistible miscellanea: Steam engines were not invented to power factories or railroads, but to pump water out of mines.

You will throw this book across the room if: The curiously undescriptive and touchy-feely names of the alignment " tools" exasperates you - " trait meters" , " intentions" , and " right brain" .

Price/value: $35/better value if bought with the standard 20 percent discount of an Internet book seller.

Cover ratio: 100/97. The cover is charming and makes the book look like a little Zen garden on the corner of your desk. The only thing misaligned between the book and its illustration is the book's odd names for its " tools" - would that the author had used something as solid and naturally elegant as the stones on the cover.

The Success Case Method: Find out Quickly What's Working and What's Not

by Robert O. Brinkerhoff. Published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, CA (www.bkconnection.com)

Authors' credentials: Professor of Counseling Psychology at Western Michigan University, author of The Learning Alliance: Systems Thinking in Human Resource Development, and consultant with various affiliations including Triad (www.triadperform.com). Companies and agencies that have adopted his " high impact training" framework include Whirlpool Corp and The World Bank.

Thesis: The success case method can provide useful and accurate information about new initiatives.

Scope: 1970s through the 1990's

File under: Look for success, no matter how small or infrequent.

Reason to buy/read: The Success Case Method is ideal for those vexed by the challenge of making change work; it provides an innovative approach that acknowledges that virtually no new initiative ever works completely and so focuses on what does work and why. It advocates finding out the most successful users of an innovation before others who are less successful have a chance to do much damage.

The book advocates a method that balances being rigorous enough to provide believable, credible, and useful information and still is quick and cheap enough to sign off on in today's economy. It has no room for hunches, guesses, and informal bits of information. One scrutinizes the best verifiable examples of successful users and summarizes the barriers and issues nonsuccessful users experienced and does not mess with the murky middle.

In short, the method finds out what stories there are to be told and getting them told in a valid and credible way.

Brinkerhoff shares a range of thorough and descriptive examples of where he and his colleagues have applied the analysis to good effect - and where it has not worked and why it did not.

It appears ideal to analyze product launches, pilot programs, and cases where any new technology or reorganization is working in one area of a company but not another (driving sales, increasing customer retention, increasing revenues-per-customer, etc.).

The method answers four key questions about what it analyzes: (1) what is really happening; (2) what results are being achieved; (3) what is the quantifiable value of the results; and (4) how can it be improved?

The surveys method is to send initial surveys by e-mail and to follow up with verbal interviews. The method is easiest to apply with a large group. It will not work where there are fewer than 50 or so participants because 40-50 is the cut-off sample. For 50 to 100 participants, the author advises to survey them all. For a group of 100-800, one would need to produce a sample of 80-100 to be statistically valid. For groups of 800-plus, one would need a 10 percent random sample. Assuming worst-case response-rate of 50 percent, one still gets the minimum 40-plus responses.

Placement in your life: You have a hunch something's working but cannot prove it; this is the best way to validate your gut feeling.

How to read: The book is organized into eight chapters in classic ''book end'' fashion, the beginning and the end carrying the best overview material for readers in a hurry. Chapter 1 provides an overview of how the success case method works, its rationale and basis in scientific inquiry, and the benefits it provides. The second chapter provides a more detailed step-by-step look at the method and is followed by six chapters that give how-to guidance and example for each of the steps, telling readers how to proceed with their own inquiries.

The middle area may be too granular for those who only want a big picture view of the method though this level of detail is valuable for the reader who sees areas in his company where the method could be adapted, adopted, or applied. Chapter 8 and 9 finish up the book; they provide guidance for using the method in typical organizational settings, discuss strategic applications, and conclude with a complete example of an actual case study which, though " sanitized" , is easily identifiable from a careful reading of all the earlier real examples in the book.

Unintended effect: One of the few books written by a consultant that actually gives away the entire formula to what he (and his company) comes in and does.

Irresistible miscellanea: One of the author's first survey experiences was to collect data on high schools in a poor, tough, inner city neighborhood. The final survey showed " no problem at all" when measuring the severity of " any drug problem" - because the participants interpreted the question to mean problems in obtaining illegal drugs.

You will throw this book across the room if: You do not believe a success story can be based on hard data that has not been gathered by a quantitative analysis model.

Price/value: $24.95/appropriately priced; the reader who is interested in the method should not waste time trying to borrow it or get it cheaper than market price.

Cover ratio: 82/94. The blue-print hodge-podge as the base cover image indicates the use of cheap, stock images and comes off as a school book for business students. The book is clearly written for those in the trenches and not the ivory tower.

The Ultimate Competitive Advantage: Secrets of Continually Developing a More Profitable Business Model

by Donald Mitchell and Carol Coles. Published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, San Francisco, CA (www.bkconnection.com)

Authors' credentials: CEO, chairman, co-founder of Mitchell and Company (www.mitchellandco.com), a consulting firm with clients from Aetna to Xerox, and co-founder of Leading Executive Organizations 100 Inc.; COO, President, and co-founder of Mitchell and Company

Thesis: Business model innovation is the key to corporate success.

Scope: 1909 to 2000

File under: The most fundamental concept of progress is that of continual learning.

Reason to buy/read: The Ultimate Competitive Advantage was ten years in the making and based on rigorous analysis of 70 corporations and numerous small companies and nonprofits that, by the authors' criteria, have performed at least two successful business model innovations with the same CEO and in the same business during the 1990s.

The message that comes out of this analysis is to develop and implement a superior management process that continually improves an organization's business model - its ways of serving customers and outperforming competitors.

Placement in your life: Start a new shelf. What strategy was to the 1970s, quality was to the 1980s, and reengineering was to the 1990s, business model innovation is likely to be to the 2000s.

How to read: By the time the reader is through with the forward, preface, introduction and prologue, he will have an excellent grasp of what the Mitchell and Coles are proposing - a perfectly valid and useful concept - along with a taste of the downfall of the book: the authors' attribution of all successful moves companies make to their pet theory of business model innovation. Where someone else might see evidence of flexibility, adaptability and originality in actions a corporation takes, the authors' eyes only see a change in a business model.

It is worth at least skimming on through the first third of the book. The early chapters are the strongest and zero in on the most productive areas for business model innovation which are to increase value without raising prices and costs, adjust prices to increase sales profitability, and eliminate costs that reduce customer and end-user benefits.

Fortunately, the reader will soon intuit the real gist of the authors' theory: almost every business has the potential to be innovative - so be looking for the opportunity and do something about it.

The balance of the book rehashes the earlier material though most chapters conclude with " key questions" which are useful for those with the will to continue reading.

Unintended effect: While the authors have an interesting theory that will certainly be seized upon by professors doing case studies, they are so in love with it they see it applying to everything under the sun. Stack gave up hope when it was applied - extensively - to the example of a child's lemonade stand.

Irresistible miscellanea: The Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, owned 90 percent by its depositors, makes a profit providing unsecured microcredit (US$100/loan or less) to borrowers.

You will throw this book across the room if: You are expecting the natural successor to Reengineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution by Michael Hammer and James Champy.

Price/value: $36.95/worth looking at a library copy, but do not waste your hard earned cash on what's essentially been covered by the authors in their business magazine articles published over the past two year.

Cover ratio: 83/77. The hackneyed image of the tug-o-war with combatants in business suits is your clue that once the book makes its main point, the rest of it is going to be an indiscriminate application of that point to anything that is not nailed down. The broad, uninspiring horizontal bands which house the cover's text and images reinforce the repetition of material being padded out to make a book.