ITLP Tuesday Readings

This week's reading is a piece "What Steve Jobs Taught Me About Growth" by Nilofer Merchant. Merchant is a writer for the Harvard Business Review. This piece is part of the HBR Insight Center Growing the Top Line.

The text of this post focuses on corporate growth, and Apple's in particular, and, more importantly for higher education, on how you get to the future. Perhaps the most important line in the piece is "our job ... is to manage the present while inventing the future." It's not an either-or proposition; it's always both-and.

Today, with all the pressures it is facing, higher education is at an inflection point. And, information technology in higher education is at its own inflection point, facing all of higher educations pressures and in addition to that, the pressures of an industry in rapid change. The phrase I just quoted, "our job ... is to manage the present while inventing the future" must be our rallying cry. We must get to the future.

To get to the future, Merchant says you have to do five things well:

1. Master unlearning. We all have to learn how to unlearn. It is all too easy to take the standards, assumptions, and metrics, the way we do things, from today and say that they apply into the future. Not usually so.

2. Augment expertise. The knowledge you need for the future may not exist on your staff today. You need to either acquire staff with the knowledge required or formally give staff the time to acquire the specific new skills needed.

3. Pilot, invest, experiment. Often, you have to try some small experiments to solidify where you want to go. These experiments take time; it's part of "going slow to go fast."

4. Reward learning and cooperation. Think about your recognition and reward/compensation systems. Make sure that your actions recognize good work for the present and reward learning and involvement in creating the future.

5. Know your aspiration. What is your vision for who you serve and why? What is your process for going forward into the future? How do you discern what abilities you have now and how they must change to move forward?

Nilofer Merchant says that moving forward to that new world will make you uncomfortable. It means that you cannot keep doing more of what you did to get you where you are. You have to embrace the risk and discomfort of creating. Nothing could be more true as we think about creating new strategic value for information technology in higher education.

Perhaps you can take time this week to think about the challenge presented here.

. . . . jim

Posted by Jim Hall at 9:18 AM | Permalink

In MOR's several Leaders Programs, we routinely talk about the need for everyone to set aside time on a regular basis for reflection, for work on strategic projects, and for planning. In today's reading An 18-Minute Plan for Managing Your Day, Peter Bregman proposes a very structured plan for planning and thus for gaining control of your day.

Bregman notes that we all regularly experience days where we begin with a vague sense of what we want to accomplish only to have the day highjacked by events we never anticipated. On top of this, we start every day knowing that we are not going to get everything we would like to do that day done. Thus, we need a guide - for example, To Do and NOT To Do lists - and "a trick."

Taking an approach used by Jack LaLanne, the fitness guru who died earlier this year at the age of 94, Bregman suggests we follow LaLanne's "trick" and establish a ritual that we unerringly follow each day. The ritual he proposes for us to follow each day no-matter-what is designed to keep us focused on our priorities throughout the day. It has three steps that can take less than 18 minutes over an eight-hour day:

• STEP 1 (5 minutes): Set the plan for the day. Before turning on your computer, take a blank piece of paper and decide what will make this day highly successful. Consult your calendar, make sure that these tasks are scheduled into time slots that you have deliberately left open (if they are not already scheduled events). Work to get the hardest and most important items at the beginning of the day. (HINT: Arrange your calendar to provide unscheduled time at the beginning of each day for this purpose.) In doing this, you may find that your list won't fit into the time available. Reschedule and reprioritize now.

• STEP 2 (1 minute every hour): Refocus. Every hour, checkin to see if you have spent the past hour productively. Look at your calendar and deliberately recommit to how you are going to use the next hour. Actively manage your time, don't let it manage you!

• STEP 3 (5 minutes): Shut off your computer and review your day. What got done? What worked? Where did you focus? What distracted you? What did you learn that will help you be more productive tomorrow?

Rituals are powerful because they are predictable - the same thing over and over and over again. Bregman concludes by noting that if you choose your focus deliberately and wisely and then consistently remind yourself of that focus you will stay focused. It's that simple.

Give it a try for a couple of weeks and see the value it adds.

Have a great week. . . . jim

Posted by Jim Hall at 3:14 PM | Permalink

"The impossible can always be broken down into possibilities." ~ Unknown

What do you want? Make a list without thinking about reasons why it can't happen. It is what you want! What has kept you from moving forward towards that goal? Write it down and address those barriers.

What steps/actions can you take today, this week, month, year to move closer to your desires? Write them down and do them.

Posted by Jim Hall at 8:48 AM | Permalink

Steve Jobs died last Wednesday.

Since then, tens of thousands of words of tribute and remembrance have been written along with other similar expressions for this man who on one hand was very human - "much more ... a real person than most people knew" (Dr. Dean Ornish) - with a tremendous love for his wife and children, and on the other was an innovator, likely the greatest innovator who has lived or will live in our time.

Steve didn't just lead the development of revolutionary products that changed multiple industries, he also left us many lessons about life and work. In 2005, in his address at Stanford's 2005 June graduation exercises, he stepped out of his role as Apple's chief executive and delivered a mediation on his life and his, and our, mortality. There he said:

• "Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose."

• "I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself 'If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I'm about to do today?' And, whenever the answer has been 'No' for too many days in a row, I know to change something."

• "...the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle."

• "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life."

If you haven't either read or watched this speech, I urge you to take the time now. You can also find the video on YouTube.

Richard Branson captured the feel of Jobs comments in a tribute reported in The Wizard and the Mortal: "So many people drew courage from Steve and related to his life story: adoptees, college dropouts, struggling entrepreneurs, ousted business leaders figuring out how to make a difference in the world, and people fighting a debilitating illness. We have all been there in some way and can see a bit of ourselves in his personal and professional successes and struggles."

And, innumerable others have also talked about the lessons they learned from him:

• "You do not cut corners. You make sure the customer gets an experience that is an absolute delight." (Tony Fadell, a former Apple executive who led the iPod and iPhone development teams from 2001 to 2009)

• "When Steve believed in an idea, he was both passionate and patient, scratching away over the years until he got it right." (Michael Hawley, former faculty member at MIT's Media Laboratory, and concert pianist)

• "Don't dwell on your mistakes." (Michael Capps, software designer for the 1984 Macintosh)

• "Always follow your heart. He [Steve] believed that the only way to do truly great work is to adore what you are doing." (Andy Hertzfield, member of the original Macintosh team, now an engineer at Google)

(See also "The Power of Taking the Big Chance" by Steve Lohr, who regularly reports on technology, business, and economics for the New York Times, in the Sunday, October 8, 2011 New York Times.)

In the October 5, 2011 issue of Forbes, Eric Jackson, Forbes contributor who covers technology, published a piece "The Top Ten Lessons Steve Jobs Taught Us". The lessons he singles out are worth all of us considering:

1. The most enduring innovations marry art and science.

2. To create the future, you can't do it through focus groups. Customers don't know what they want if it's something they've never seen, heard, or touched before.

3. Never fear failure.

4. You can't connect the dots forward only backward. As much as we plan our lives, there is always something that is totally unexpected.

5. Listen to that voice in the back of your head that tells you if you're on the right track or not.

6. Expect a lot from yourself and others.

7. Don't care about being right. Care about succeeding. It is not important that the approach you advocate is right or wrong. If it is wrong change it, and succeed for your client.

8. Find the most talented people and surround yourself with them.

9. Stay hungry, stay foolish. Don't become so comfortable with your status quo that you are not willing to take risks.

10. Anything is possible through hard work, determination, and a sense of vision.

And finally from the current Bloomberg BusinessWeek "Steve Jobs: The Beginning, 1955-1985" (the print version has a beautiful photo essay that I did not find online), which was devoted in its entirety to Steve and to Apple, without any advertising:

"Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple."

Whether we knew Steve Jobs personally, worked with him, or only experienced him through the products he guided into existence, we will miss him and his innovative presence. As Randy Krotowski, CIO of Global Upstream, Chevron Corporation put it: "He drove innovation to deliver brilliant and elegant solutions that captured the hearts (and wallets) of consumers and set the standard for what the CIO will have to deliver in the future." Harry McCracken, creator of Technologizer and columnist for Time.com, adds to this by telling us that the durability and consistency of his vision, more so than the specific blockbusters of his career, were what was really astonishing.

So, no matter how we remember him, he would want us to go forward, working hard, succeeding for our customers, making it simple, and, at least as important, deeply caring about those close to us.

. . . . jim

Note: Some other valuable insights can be found in

• "Keep It Simple" by Steve Tobak

• "6 Lessons We Could Learn from Steve Jobs" by Margaret Heffernan

• "Steve Jobs, 1955-2011: Mourning Technology's Great Reinventor", by Harry McCracken, Time Magazine

• "Steve Jobs: Remembering the Dissatisfied Man", by Harry McCracken, Time Magazine

Posted by Jim Hall at 11:41 AM | Permalink

"Praise is like sunlight to the human spirit: we cannot flower and grow without it." ~ Jess Lair

Do you spend more time focusing on what went wrong than what went right? Do you notice when someone is doing a great job and tell them? When you think something good about someone, do you tell them?

What do you think is a better motivator? Criticism, silence or praise?

Posted by Jim Hall at 2:03 PM | Permalink

Over the past several weeks I've seen many reviews of Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer's new book "The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work." Today's reading "How Small Wins Unleash Creativity" from Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge is a summary of that book.*

Amabile and Kramer's research indicates that the single most important factor in engaging people at work is for each individual to sense that he or she is making progress on meaningful work. That is, that they regularly achieve small wins. And, similarly, the worst days were characterized by setbacks, a sense that they have lost ground on their work.

Research for the book involved analysis of daily diary entries from 238 white-collar workers at seven diverse companies. The diary entries charted the perception, emotions, and motivations that individuals experienced as they related to and made sense of their work day. Analysis of these diary entries identified seven major catalysts for progress:

1. Set clear goals. "People have to understand what they're doing and why." To get frequent small wins, it is necessary to structure a project in terms of smaller goals attainable in shorter time.

2. Allowing autonomy. Staff need to know the goal they are working on. But, they also need to have autonomy, space, to get there.

3. Providing resources. Starving a project does not enhance creativity, it reduces the effectiveness and leads to missed milestones.

4. Provide enough time for the work; neither too much or too little. Deadlines, and how they relate to the overall project plan, are key.

5. Offer help. Giving the team autonomy is not the same as having them work in isolation. Stay in contact.

6. Learn from goth problems and successes. Always take the time to debrief the work after the goals are attained.

7. Let ideas flow. Know when to listen.

Research for "The Progress Principle" also identified four actions that nourish staff: respect, recognition, encouragement, and affiliation, all actions that help develop strong positive, supportive relationships among co-workers.

So, as you review your present work and plan for the future, do structure the work in a way to enable small, regular wins.

. . . jim

• LEARN MORE

NYTimes, September 3, 2011 - Do Happier People Work Harder

Bob Sutton's blog (faculty member at the Stanford Business School)

Authors @ Google

Posted by Jim Hall at 9:43 AM | Permalink