Greatest Hits Blog

The one-sentence summary

Gaps in knowledge, alignment and effects can be closed to create a closer fit between strategy and execution, by using learning from successful military leaders.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• This book is all about how leaders close the gap between plans, actions and results. It contains 10 GBOs (Glimpses of the Blindingly Obvious):
• We are finite beings with limited knowledge and independent wills
• Business is unpredictable-we should expect the unexpected and plan for it
• Within our knowledge constraints we should identify the essentials of a situation and make choices
• For people to take effective action, they must understand what they are to achieve and why
• They should explain what they are going to do and check back with us
• They should assign tasks and specify the boundaries within which they are free to act
• Everyone must have the skill and resources to do what is needed, and the space to take independent decisions when the unexpected occurs
• As the situation changes, everyone should adapt their actions
• People will only show initiative if the organisation supports them
• What has not been made simple cannot be clear and will not get done
• Friction and nonlinearity prevents things happening smoothly in three ways:

1. Knowledge gap – the difference between what we would like to know and what we actually know: leaders need to limit direction to defining and communicating intent

2. Alignment gap – the difference between what we want people to do and what they actually do – allow each level to define how they will achieve the intent of the next level up and ‘backbrief’ – repeat back what they think they are doing

3. Effects gap – between what we expect our actions to achieve and what they do – give individuals freedom to adjust their actions in line with intent)

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• There is a huge difference between stating your higher intent, and people actually doing it. Modern businesses need to set limited direction, and relinquish command and control
• Directed opportunism is mission command in business
• Swing a pendulum above three magnets and it gets pulled in all directions but the pattern is never the same twice – just like business activity
• Top level frustration and lower level confusion usually results in asking for more detail, but this is the wrong thing to do and only makes things worse
• Anti-goals are helpful: ‘whatever you do, do not allow this to happen’
• The best approach is: a short statement of intent; outline of specific tasks; guidance about boundaries

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• It is heavy on military history so you have to wade through that.

The one-sentence summary

We become blind to the truth because we are hard wired to stick to what we know best, and we then unwittingly use a range of techniques to persuade ourselves it’s okay.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• This book is all about why we ignore the obvious at our peril, much like the directors of Enron and many others in business, politics and family life.
• Wilful blindness takes many forms, and includes:
• Affinity – we tend to like people like us, which narrows our perspective
• Love is blind – as shown by the partners who don’t want to admit their partners have done something wrong
• Dangerous convictions – those pledged to a cause (a religion, a company) refuse to accept that anything might be wrong
• Mental limits – we can’t see the obvious if we are tired, or if we are doing too many things at once, such as texting and driving
• The Ostrich instruction – many of us ignore or underestimate the truth, such as taking sun beds that can cause cancer just because we want a tan
• Just following orders – this is the excuse usually given by soldiers when a massacre occurs
• Out of sight, out of mind – if we can’t see it, we convince ourselves it isn’t actually happening

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• We become blind to the truth because we are hard wired to stick to what we know best. We even like our own initials better than other letters, which explains why we love having monogrammed clothes.
• Pandora internet radio (banned in the UK) introduces you to music just like the stuff you have already selected. This is helpful or narrowing depending on your view (see The Filter Bubble).
• Research shows that the more like-minded people are, the more extreme they become
• Using a mobile phone when driving affects judgement more than being drunk – the activity occupies too much of the same faculties you need
• With too many vested interests, organisations can become ‘structurally blind’
• To overcome this, leaders need the ‘unvarnished truth’, and need to encourage ‘structured dissonance’, where people can air their anxieties without fear of recourse – otherwise they become zombie companies
• Cassandra are whistleblowers – they won’t take wilful blindness, and are often rejected as a result of pointing out the uncomfortable truth
• “Do we mean this?” and “Did I understand correctly?” are powerful questions that often expose wilful blindness

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• This is not a business textbook so you have to roll with the narrative to find the headlines and the suggested remedies

The one-sentence summary

Great companies thrive despite uncertainty, chaos and luck by deploying fanatic discipline, empirical creativity, and productive paranoia.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• Some companies thrive despite uncertainty, chaos and luck. This nine-year study from the Good To Great man explains how.
• 10Xers (pronounced Ten Exers) are companies that have beaten their industry by a minimum of ten times over 15 years. Their fortunes are compared with paired companies in the same sector who failed.
• The best leaders were not more risk taking, more visionary, nor more creative – they were actually more disciplined, more empirical and more paranoid.
• The great companies changed less than you would think in reaction to a changing world – in fact fast decisions often lead to poor outcomes. The best question is: “How much time before the risk profile changes?”
• Being more innovative doesn’t always help – 1 successful idea is more productive than 99 unfertile ones.
• 10X companies did not necessarily have better luck. The critical question is what you do with the luck you get, whether good or bad.
• Choosing to be great involves:
• These three characteristics form the 10X triad.

1. Fanatic discipline – considered decisions with clear constraints
2. Empirical creativity – as opposed to uncalibrated cannonballs
3. Productive paranoia – this is not the same as being paranoid (see next)

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• The 20 Mile March is a good concept. Amundsen beat Scott to the pole by consistently marching 20 miles a day. In bad weather he did it anyway, and in good he stopped at 20 to save energy for the next day. Scott either stayed in his tent or overshot and wore himself out. Companies should go for similar consistency (fanatic discipline).
• Fire bullets, then cannonballs is good too. Instead of blowing all your resources on one initiative, try a small (low cost, low risk, low distraction) bullet shot at something first, make adjustments from learning, and save ammunition for a better-informed attack (empirical creativity).
• Leading above the death line. This involves building cash reserves (oxygen canisters) and remaining hypervigilant by constantly zooming in and out (detail v. big picture). This level of attention reduces surprises and the impact of unhelpful developments (productive paranoia).

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• The book is only half as long as it looks. This is good because you can grasp it fast, but a swizz if you expected 300 pages of content for your £25.

The one-sentence summary

Be aware that your brain has two systems – fast intuition and slower conscious thought – and allow for these when looking at decisions.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• This is the first book for a non-specialist audience from the Nobel prize-winning psychologist – effectively the father of Behavioural Economics.
• He divides the mind into two systems:

System 1: makes fast, intuitive decisions based on associative memory, vivid images and emotional reactions.

System 2: slower, conscious, hard thought – more rational but frequently overridden.

• Collected here are hundreds of examples of how we make a lot of surprising mistakes in thinking – conscious and unconscious.
• In the Halo Effect, we assume that if a person is good at one thing, they are good at another.
• Loss aversion makes us dislike losses much more than gains of an equivalent size.
• WYSIATI (What You See Is All There Is) involves jumping to conclusions based on limited evidence and is crucial to System 1 thinking.
• The affect heuristic involves people making judgements based on their emotions: (How do I feel about?) becomes a surrogate for a much harder question (What do I think about it?).

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• The idea that rationality is a restrictive idea is interesting: so-called Econs would operate without emotion and purely based on win/lose criteria, whereas Humans are susceptible to priming, framing, loss aversion, WYSIATI and much more.
• The mental shotgun means that we often compute more than we need – not something that we can do much about.
• The anchoring index can be applied to any situation in which a fact is offered in advance of a question – responses are almost always framed in that context.
• An availability cascade is a self-sustaining chain of events based on emotion (rather than fact) that can become policy – one isolated event becomes a national phenomenon.
• The premortem is a good concept. Just before committing to something important, imagine you are a year later and that it has been a disaster – write a short history of what happened.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• This could be the most intelligent and complicated book you will ever read – at over 400 pages it is not for the faint-hearted. On the other hand, it probably covers almost every decision-making circumstance you are ever likely to face.

The one-sentence summary

Strategic visual tools can help simplify any problem and suggest steps towards a decent decision.

WHAT THE BOOK SAYS

• The authors have gathered together fifty models for strategic thinking in one small book. Whether you need to plan a presentation, assess someone’s business idea or just get to know yourself better, the visual tools will help simplify any problem and suggest steps towards a decent decision.
• There is a wide range of material, from MBA courses and lighter business reading to personal improvement.
• In one diagram that performs the role of the contents page, they show how the models cover me v. others and thinking v. doing, which generates four quadrants: how to improve (myself/others), and how to understand better (myself/others). Highlights from each section are:
• Improve yourself: the Eisenhower priority matrix, the rubber band model (what is holding or pulling you?), the feedback model ((advice, compliment, criticism, suggestion), and the conflict resolution model (flight, fight, give up, evade responsibility, compromise, reach a consensus).
• Understand yourself better: the flow model (under/over challenged, or ‘in the flow’?), the Johari Window (what I know about others and what they know about me), the energy model (are you memory-, dream-, or reality-driven?), and the personal performance model (have to, able to, want to).
• Understand others better: the Swiss cheese model (in the analogy, mistakes only happen when all the holes in every slice line up and something slips through the layers), double loop learning (learning properly from your mistakes), long tails and black swans.
• Improve others: the Hersey-Blanchard model of situational leadership (adapt your approach from instruct to coach, support, delegate), and the Drexler-Sibbet team performance model 9they never seem to have normal names do they?). This one takes you from orientation to renewal in 7 steps.

WHAT’S GOOD ABOUT IT

• You should be able to select a model for almost any situation to provide a different perspective, or to get some structure round all the variables.
• There is a “Now it’s your turn” section at the back that encourages you to draw a range of possible solutions. Most models are inherently visual, and the authors believe it is good to draw while you talk, and use pictures to articulate what words cannot.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO WATCH

• You need to keep an eye on the old chestnuts and decide whether they are any good, not very helpful, or just plain overused: SWOT analysis, Maslow’s pyramids, thinking outside the box, the Pareto principle (80:20) rule, de Bono’s hats, and several others.