Book Review: “The Power of Pull”

Review of “The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion” by John Hagel III, John Seely Brown and Lang Davison; Basic Books, 2010.

In the epilogue to the “Power of Pull” the authors write: “As we make our passion our profession, we begin to see that our potential is far greater than we previously believed.” This is a liberating message that runs as a leitmotif throughout the book.
In the Introduction, the authors write: “If we are going to succeed in this rapidly changing world, we face two challenges: making sense of the changes around us, and making progress in this increasingly unfamiliar world. …. This book takes on both challenges–it is our goal to help you make sense and to help you make progress.” The authors further clarify their purpose behind this book in the epilogue: “Our hope, though, is that by exploring the power of pull and providing a high-level road map for all of us as we seek to navigate the difficult journey from the world of push to the world of pull, we can enable our readers to overcome the fear by helping them to understand the real opportunities that lie ahead for those of us who master these techniques.” The book achieves its stated objectives. The book gives a high-level road map and deals with some techniques for moving from the world of push to the world of pull. It also tells us what opportunities lie ahead when we make this difficult, but necessary, transition.

According to the authors, Pull is about pursuing our passion; finding others who share our passion, but bring in different perspectives; and creating conditions, which increase our likelihood of meeting such people. Creating such conditions may be termed as “shaping serendipity”. This is an important insight gained from the book: “serendipity can be shaped, at least within limits.” We can shape serendipity by bringing paying attention to the three elements–environments, practices and preparedness. Being open to serendipitous encounters involves “deep listening” and relationship-building skills.

Another key message repeated throughout the book is about the importance of shifting our focus from “knowledge stocks” to “knowledge flows”. The authors have dealt with this idea in no uncertain terms: “In this second wave, the sources of economic value move from stocks of knowledge to flows of new knowledge. Tacit knowledge becomes more valuable than explicit knowledge as the edge transforms the core.”

To clarify what the authors mean by the second wave, let us look at the three waves they talk about. The first wave of the Big Shift was the development of powerful and affordable infrastructure for computing and communication. The second wave is what the authors call the shift from knowledge stocks to knowledge flows. The third wave is the transformation of institutions as a result of the first two. The impact of the first wave is apparent to all of us. What we need to really grasp now is the importance of shifting attention from knowledge stocks to knowledge flows.

Further on, the authors write: “Many analysts have noted the increasing importance of intangible assets in business, but people often think about these assets in static form–for example, stocks of knowledge, established brands, and existing relationships.” What is more important in the emerging paradigm is to continuously refresh these assets by collaborating with others, not only within organizations, but increasingly across organizational boundaries. That has important implications for the way think about knowledge management and information systems.

Some of my reflections on reading the book are summarized below:

1. What would be the functions of the institution in the emerging world order, particularly in the light of the Big Shift that the authors talk about? May be, organizations would transform themselves as platforms for individuals to connect and collaborate with others, amplifying individual efforts and helping them to pursue their passion. Would organizations leaders have the courage, conviction and humility to put the pursuit of individual passion at the center of the organization’s purpose? Would they, and particularly the investors, be able to tolerate the uncertainty that goes with such a radical change?

2. How should HR policies and practices be shaped in a world in which individual differences and being on the edge are valued? Would HR have the courage to question the assumptions behind current assessment and appraisal systems that are designed to compare employees with one another, and unwittingly encourage knowledge stocks rather than knowledge flows?

3. How will organizational quality initiatives and process models evolve as the emphasis shifts from knowledge stocks to knowledge flows? What would be role for standardization of processes in the service industry?

4. Knowledge management would become the art of facilitating connections and collaborations among people around relevant problems, rather than efforts to lock down knowledge in repositories. Information systems would build in greater capabilities for people to quickly access and collaborate with others over information available in near real-time through multiple channels including the mobile.

5. Training & Development systems, with annual TRA and training calendar is essentially based on a push paradigm. Even just-in-time learning through sophisticated e-learning systems is only an extension of the same paradigm. In the increasingly dynamic environment, such a “basket of programs” and “configurable packages with learning objects” can at best be a supplement to practices that facilitate faster and more relevant learning on the job. What would these new practices be?

Overall, the book has served the purpose of prodding me to explore further in the areas of management and leadership. I am sure you would gather your own insights and questions by reading this valuable book, and so I would recommend this book. But be prepared to spend some time going through it with patience. Greater attention to the editorial process and honest criticism from a few more of their collaborators could have helped the authors to improve on clarity and simplicity of expression, thereby making the central messages stand out more powerfully.

<< This review was originally posted on Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/review/R1LL51FDR5SAIT/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm >>

Review of “Common Purpose” – Important Lessons on Leadership by Joel Kurtzman

Excerpts from my review of Joel Kurtzman’s book, “Common Purpose: How Great Leaders Get Organizations to Achieve the Extraordinary”

The byline for “Common Purpose” by Joel Kurtzman reads “How Great Leaders Get Organizations to Achieve the Extraordinary”. The book does justice to this claim. It tells us how great leaders get organizations comprising ordinary people to do extraordinary things and achieve excellence. The crux of it is captured in the title itself – they get people to share a common purpose, in which everyone can find meaning and joy.

The insights that the book gives are very valuable for leaders and aspiring leaders at all levels. It tells how the regime of command and control needs to be replaced with the culture of collaboration. Talking about ‘The New Rules of Employment’ in Chapter Two, Kurtzman says, “People have a need to be heard, to be respected, and to control their space. Great leaders–common purpose leaders–grant them their space, give them their trust, allow them responsibility, and present them with opportunities and resources to do their jobs. But great leaders also hold people accountable. In other words, great leaders treat the people they work with as adults, which the current employment compact supports.” I think this short paragraph itself is worth a thousand pages on leadership. What more is there about great leadership? Respecting people’s needs for space and freedom, trusting them as adults, ensuring that they have opportunities, resources and skills to do a great job, and holding them accountable for results.

Full review is available on http://www.amazon.com/review/RNBHBCS46N453/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm

Commentary on "The Power of Pull"

Commentary on “The Power of Pull” by John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison; Published by Basic Books, 2010.

Page 11:  Quote begins: < It used to be that we could rely on “stocks”of knowledge – what we know at any point in time – but these stocks are diminishing in value more rapidly than ever before.  …. In more stable times, we could sit back and relax once we had learned something valuable, secure that we could generate value from that knowledge for an indefinite period. Not anymore.  To succeed now, we have to continually refresh our stocks of knowledge by participating in relevant “flows”of knowledge – interactions that create knowledge or transfer it across individuals. > Quote ends.

What is the significance of this observation for our approach to education and training? Perhaps we must make a conscious effort to give much more emphasis on collaboration skills.  The current paradigm of education limits the opportunities for collaboration, with only an occasional team project or sports activity giving such opportunities.  For almost the entire four years of engineering education at the undergraduate level, a student goes about studying one subject after another to pass exams.  The good student is expected to listen to lectures, read textbooks, submit assignments (mostly individual assignments) and reproduce what he knows in a series of examinations.  They are all tests of “knowledge stocks”.  Hardly anyone bothers about the process of knowing, which is valuable for a lifetime.

Could we have a paradigm, where collaboration skills are given at least as much importance as individual knowledge stocks?  What would be the challenges in moving towards such a paradigm?

Perhaps, the paradigm shift is difficult because we are all conditioned to believe that one succeeds only through individual merit.  And we believe that a series of exams or assessments is the best way to measure such individual merit.  The belief is further reinforced  by corporate cultures that boast about meritocracy.  Meritocracy often becomes a euphemism for rat-race.  Thus, it is hard for us to un-condition ourselves and start looking at the possibility of success through collective merit.  But this is an alternative worth considering and experimenting with.

Risk Management

Many projects fail not due to the lack of effort or commitment, but due to the lack of adequate attention to the potential risks.  Optimism is an important quality of a successful leader; but a healthy dose of pessimism makes the project grounded in reality.  The trick is to be pessimistic without being negative.

Is risk analysis an art or a science?  I would say it is an art.  If it were a science, you probably know the risks pretty well in advance, and then they stop being the really important risks.  The real risks are those whose probability of occurrence and impact are difficult to predict by using analytical models.  What then are the alternatives to discover and cover these potential risks?

I would say, the ability to listen keenly is the most important attribute required to manage risks effectively.  Listen to the subtle messages, often half-spoken.  Amplify and explore them in depth to bring out the nuances of the perceived risks.  Ask questions, and listen without rationalization. If you have a choice, go to the HR department and ask for a list of people who got the least ratings in the last performance appraisal. Randomly choose a few of them to be part of your project team. They will tell you more about what the real risks are, than your star team members!

In a recent book titled What You Don’t Know: How Great Leaders Prevent Problems Before They Happen, Michael A. Roberto narrates how William LeMessurier, the famous structural engineer of Citicorp building in Manhattan responded to a seemingly innocuous question by an engineering student and eventually discovered a flaw in his structural design for the building. The book also describes how LeMessurier took personal responsibility to rectify the error.  (For excerpts from the book, see: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=2285)  The way LeMessurier responded to the potential risk, though it was discovered rather late (after the building was completed), is a case study in the ethics of engineering and project management.

It would also be helpful to use system dynamics modeling as a method for risk analysis.  With system dynamics modeling you bring out various assumptions and mental models regarding the interplay of various parameters and inter-relationships that comprise the system.  In reality, the technical and social/organizational dimensions are very much inter-related.  As a first level of analysis we may analyze them separately; but to get the complete picture that reveals the greater risks, we need to see the interplay of various dimensions.  This is facilitated by system dynamics modeling.  The use of system dynamics modeling for risk management in complex engineering systems, with reference to NASA projects is given in a research paper by an MIT team: http://www.informs-sim.org/wsc05papers/160.pdf Also, see excellent study material on system dynamics, developed under the guidance of Prof. Jay Forrester, available on MIT OpenCourseWare:  http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-School-of-Management/15-988Fall-1998-Spring-1999/CourseHome/index.htm

Giving and receiving feedback for performance improvement

Core Idea: Feedback is perhaps the most important process that we have for improving performance – our own, and that of our team members.  Skills in giving and receiving feedback are indispensable for every manager, leader, educator and parent.

How do scientists at ISRO or NASA put a satellite in its correct orbit and orient it with such precision?  How does a missile intercept moving targets in mid-air?  These feats of high performance become possible through a system of sophisticated feedback control.

Why do some organisms survive and thrive, while others perish and become extinct?  Again we see that feedback systems are in operation in nature.  Some organisms receive feedback from the environment and develop the needed abilities to adapt.  They survive.  Others do not take feedback or are too slow to react to the environmental changes.  They perish.

We see companies which are in constant touch with the market and their customers.  They adpat quickly to changes in the economic, political, legal, social and demographic environment.  They track changing customer preferences.  They are in constant dialogue internally and externally to give and receive feedback.  Such organizations thrive.

Some companies cut themselves off from the environment.  They sink in their own brew.

The same is the case with teams as well. Teams (as well as departments in organizations) which are constantly in touch with other teams and operate as part of feedback loops perform much better than others which are too internally focused.  Many teams comprising of bright individuals, who also work in harmony with each other, fail because they lack the constant dialogue with those outside the team – their customers and other stakeholders.  (This is an idea expressed very forcefully in a book that I am currently reading – “X-teams: How to Build Teams That Lead, Innovate and Succeed Teams” by Deborah Ancona and Henrik Bresman.)

What about individuals?  How important is feedback for their performance and personal development?  No doubt, we agree that it is absolutely important.  Without feedback, individuals stagnate.

Recall the basic concepts that we might have learnt through the famous Johari Window.  There are a few things about us, which we know and others know.   Then there are a few things that we know about ourselves,  but others do not know.  We were too shy to share them with others, out of a sense of modesty or shame.  If these are things that others should know, we better tell them.  There are also a few things that others know about us, but we may not be aware of.  They might never have told us, and we never bothered to ask if they had something to tell us.  This quadrant offers high potential for personal growth and development.  By being willing to seek feedback and listen without defence, we get valuable insights about ourselves – both our strenghts and areas for improvement.

There are also aspects of our personality that are still unknown to us as well as others.  They remain in the mystery of the unconscious.  I am not going to deal with this quadrant right now.  I may just hint that we get to know our unconscious by a variety of means such as paying attention to our dreams, observing our mood swings, taking note of something that we say or do without much thought and by observing other people’s reaction to our words and body language.

Coming back to the subject of feedback it would be useful to keep in mind a few guidelines for giving and receiving feedback.  The following guidelines would help us to give feedback more effectively:

1. Describe your observations, rather than pass judgements about intentions or motivations behind the behaviour.
2. Point out specific instances of behaviour, rather than generalize across different behaviours.  By being specific about your observation, you ensure that subjectivity is minimized in the feedback process.  You also do not leave too many things to the imagination of the receiver.  Giving generalized feedback may be easier for you, but it leaves the receiver wondering what it is that he or she has to correct.
3. Separate feedback from advice and suggestions.
4. Give feedback only if you are genuinely interested in a behavioural change in the receiver of the feedback.  This may be because you love the person (as in a family relationship) or you expect improvements in product or service quality (as in a customer-supplier relationship).  Whatever the case may be, avoid giving feedback only to show how powerful you are, or how much better off you are than the other person. Feedback should never be an ego trip.
5. Refrain from giving feedback if there is hardly anything that the receiver can do about it.
6. Ensure that you build trust and convey respect by expressing gratitude and giving feedback about things that you appreciate.  Do not limit the power of feedback by using it only for correction of undesirable behaviour.
7. Word negatives as areas for improvement.  But do not camouflage it as positives and leave the receiver confused.
8. Give feedback at the earliest appropriate occasion.
9. Chek to ensure that the receiver of the feedback has clearly understood what you wanted to convey.

Receiving feedback is harder than giving feedback.  But there is nothing that is as useful as honest feedback when it comes to your own personal development.  We must count ourselves as lucky if we are in the company of people who give us feedback on a regular basis.  If we are not that lucky, we must take the initiative to ask for feedback.  We can ask for feedback from different people – our family members, friends, colleagues, customers, suppliers, teachers etc.  Taking feedback and acting on them is one of the most effective ways of improving our performance and developing our capabilities to higher levels.

The following guidelines would be useful in receiving feedback:

1. Withhold judgement, until you have got all that the person giving feedback wants to tell you. If the feedback comes to you in a conversation, ensure that you apply all the skills of being a good listener.  Be willing to listen, and also demonstrate your willingness through appropriate body language. If the communication is in writing, read carefully, looking not only for the factual content, but also the emotions behind what is expressed in writing.
2. Ask questions for clarification without becoming defensive.  Ask for additional data if required; but do so politely.
3. There is hardly any point in telling the giver of feedback how wrong he or she is.  If you honestly feel that you are right, and that the person giving the feedback has misunderstood you, of course you need to make it clear to him or her.  But wait until you have listened to the whole story.  Then take a few minutes to compose yourself.  Respond without aggression or excessive modesty.
4. Do not brood over negative feedback.  Take it and process it rationally, segregating the more important points from the less important ones.  This type of a ‘thinking approach’ helps you to retain perspective and prevents over-correction.
5. Do not belittle yourself by recounting the negative feedback given by others.  It is for you to act on, not for public confession.
6. Develop some understanding about various psychological defence mechanisms that come in the way of receiving feedback.  These are behaviours such as aggression, withdrawal, denial, displacement, rationalization, suppression, sublimation, projection etc.  We need not be professional psychologists, but we all need to constantly work on increasing our self awareness.  We must identify our recurrent patterns of defence.  This will help us to get out from our own unhealthy behavioural traps.
7. Develop a network of development partners (trusted friends and family members), who are interested in your welfare.  Ask them for their honest feedback.  When you receive feedback, which you are not sure about, verify with your trusted partner.

Feedback is a communication process, and so it can suffer from all the common problems in communication.  Constantly work on improving your communication skill to be effective in giving and receiving feedback.

Reflections on co-creation

Dr. C.K. Prahalad observes that value is not created by the organization and sold to the customer; rather value is co-created along with the customers. In the new paradigm, organizations will have to learn to adapt and be agile to the emergence of new possibilities which are beyond the vision of the founders, and the strategies of the executive team.

Organizations operate as networks of stakeholders. Possibilities are discovered when members of the network engage in dialogue. They may not have the same vision, but they become ready to share, and even go to the extent of being selfless, because in some mysterious way that establishes a connection with their deeper aspirations.

Management in the co-creation paradigm is mutual and collaborative. The focus moves to management of relationships rather than resources.

Co-creation does not happen through restructuring or re-engineering. In fact often there is no need to tinker with the organization structure or hierarchy. Even flattening the organization may not be required. What is required for co-creation to happen is an openness to working together. It is mutual respect. Look at how a parent and child co-create a sand castle on the beach. See how they enjoy it! In the process they both derive value — an enjoyable evening on the beach.

Co-creation is not customization. Customization is getting a different dressing for your sandwich. But it would be co-creation if you could get into the kitchen and stand by, occasionally giving your suggestions for the recipe, or tasting the item and giving feedback. In fact traditional kitchens are the best places of co-creation.

Co-creation is not choosing a different set of options when you buy a Dell computer. But it is co-creation when a child walks into a Build-a-Bear Workshop, builds her own teddy bear and walks out with unspeakable excitement. It makes her the happiest person on earth.

Choosing a different elective for your University course is not co-creation. But it would be co-creation if you had opportunities to collaborate with the teachers and make use of the resources at the University to put together a course for you as an individual learner. Co-creation is not choosing from a menu, it is creating the menu.

Business fails when unpredicted events occur at the point of capacity constraint

All business failures are accidents. All business successes are results of planned execution coupled with effective response to the unpredicted opportunity.

Business success and failures are result of a large number of forces acting simultaneously, in a complex system of inter-dependent events. But they can probably be simplified (at the risk of oversimplification) to two factors – capacity for execution and ability to respond to the unpredictable events.

Let me explain. I would first explain why I think of business failures as accidents. I disagree with the opinion that the number of business failures are more than the number of business successes. True, the number of failure stories may be more than the number of success stories. That’s probably because most people outside the business circles find failure stories more interesting than the success stories. There’s hardly anything juicy in the success stories, whereas the failure stories can be spiced up with anecdotes and third-party opinions. A business shutting down may not really amount to business failure. A business that has served some purpose is not a failure even if it shuts down.

However, I agree that there are some genuine stories of business failure. They are businesses which shut down before they have been able to serve any purpose. What leads to such failures? I mentioned earlier that all business failures are accidents. Accidents occur when unpredictable events of significance occur at the points of capacity constraint. Businesses fail when they are taken by surprise by events that occur in conjunction with resource constraints.

Intuition and Impulse

What is the difference between an intuitive decision and an impulsive decision?  The difference can of course be known from the outcome.  Intuitive decisions lead to success, impulsive decisions lead to failure.  That is fine; but is there a way to tell beforehand whether your decision is an intuitive one or an impulsive one?

An intuitive decision is a well thought out decision.  Contrary to popular notions, it is not one that is made on the spur of the moment. It is based on the gut feel answer to a question that had been in your mind for quite some time.  The gap between the question and the intuitive answer is often a few days, or in some cases it may be only a few minutes.  But in any case there is a time delay between the question and the answer, or the dilemma and the decision.  Intuition is not related to speed of decision making.  It is just another way of decision making.  Intuitive decisions may sometimes be arrived at quickly, but more often they take time.

Leaders are good at the art of intuitive decision making.  Why?  Because their job is to make decisions in the absence of enough data.  They are dealing with things about which there cannot be enough data.  They are dealing with the future state of things.  They have to put together all the disparate pieces of information from various sources, connect the dots and arrive at a decision by intuition.  There is hardly a way to explain how they arrived at the choice. There are often explanations in retrospect, but they are given only to satisfy our need to make things fit neatly into a logical structure of decision making.

As contrasted with intuitive decision making, impulsive decision making is deciding on the spur of the moment.  There is hardly any time gap between the question and the answer.  In management, speed of decision making is often considered to be a virtue.  Thus unwittingly, we praise the impulsive decision maker.

Many businesses have fallen due to the impulsive decisions made by their managers.  Intuition helps a manager to take moderate, calculated risks, whereas impulse lead to foolhardiness.  However much the sage of Omaha may use data and analytics, in the end his decisions are intuitive.  His success is phenomenal.  Likewise is the case with Bill Gates, whose intuition led him to invest himself in the business of PC software.  On the other hand there is Nick Leeson whose impulsive decisions led to the fall of Britain’s oldest merchant bank.  Leeson did not use his intuition.  Rather he blocked his intuition, from interfering with his impulse.  He bet his bank on impulse, wiping out close to a billion Dollars in trading loss.  Barings had to fold up due to impulsive decisions, not intuitive decisions.

How much of the recent economic turmoil can be attributed to people in responsible positions taking impulsive decisions?  I believe, quite a lot.  In fact most of it is the result of impulsive decision making by individuals who distrusted their own intuitions and relied on impulse.  In a complex inter-related system of economic entities, impulsive decisions wreak havoc.  Impulsive behaviour is mob behaviour.  Intuition is nature’s gift to individuals, not to mobs.  Economic recovery is the result of individuals paying attention to their intuitions, without being guided by their impulses.

Designing organizations nature’s way

These are questions to myself and fodder for some reflection.  I’m jotting them down so that I do not forget these important questions.  I hope to come back to these questions later and begin to answer some of them.

1.  How can we design  organizations nature’s way?

Modern organizations are artifacts of human intelligence.  Can we create better organizations by learning from the way nature organizes herself?  The question was inspired by reading about Biomimicry as a design paradigm.  Biomimicry is already influencing design in many ways, for example, in architecture and designing solutions for technical problems. But perhaps we need to apply it with even more rigour to the design of organizations which design these products that attempt to mimic nature.

One implication of learning from nature would be that we should rely less on the efficiencies of compartmentalization.  Nature does not operate in silos or departments.  Boundaries of disciplines are our creations.  Once we have created them, we tend to believe that they are really important, and organize all our activities around them.

Progressive organizations have already recognized this as a problem, and are addressing it by organizing themselves around workflows required to deliver customer value.  They organize themselves around whole processes with clearly defined outcomes in terms of value to customers.  But many of our major institutions, particularly the government and academic institutions, still operate with strong departmental boundaries.  They focus more on efficiencies of isolated functions, rather than on the overall efficiency of delivering value to customers.

2.  Does nature manage by the bell curve?

I disagree with the use of the bell curve in managing human performance.  I agree, there are many measurable parameters that approximate the bell curve (normal distribution curve), but human performance does not fit in there.  I shall write later in more detail about my objection to the bell curve in performance management.  I am a strong supporter of the use of the bell curve on the production floor for managing the performance of machines.  But I do believe that applying it to manage human motivation and performance does more harm than good.  All it gives it is an explanation to ourselves that we are being more scientific in performance management, without any assurance that such a scientific approach would produce any improvements in performance.

Vision and Execution as the two dimensions of leadership

Consider vision and execution as the two dimensions of leadership. Leaders score high in both vision and execution. They have clarity of vision, think out of the box, see what exists only as a possibility to be realized in the future. They are able to work out strategies to convert the possibility into reality. They also have the discipline to work out detailed plans, delegate responsibilities, ensure resources, review progress and follow through to completion.

What about people who are effective in executing plans, even if it calls for moving the mountains? Yes, they are the movers of the world. They make things happen, and that too pretty quickly and on budget. They are the traditionally efficient managers.

You would also remember someone who deeply influenced you by a very articulate presentation of a vision for the future. He or she could be a manager, a teacher, a politician or from any other profession. Yes, that person literally shook you up. Such people are the shakers of status quo.

For the sake of completion, let me also refer to another type, who neither move nor shake. They may be called laggers. The word may not be in the dictionary. But you know it means someone who lags behind. (Laggers may not be laggards, and so I am using a different word.)

Vision and Execution as the two dimensions of leadership

Footnote: The term ‘movers and shakers’ appears in the following poem by Arthur O’Shaughnessy. The poem is titled ‘Ode’

We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems.


You may like to read the entire poem. It is on http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Ode_(O’Shaughnessy)