The pitfall of traditional management is the expectation of deterministic cause and effect behavior, and this is reflected in the most popular business books. I look at the problems with these issues and how we can see the business landscape in a realistic and practical fashion, while still trying to achieve a happy workplace.

1. Reinventing Business:
Audacity and Humility
• Bruce Eckel
• Blog @ Reinventing-Business.com
• Slides on slideshare.net under my name
• Video will be on web

2. If there were two jobs:
1: You get paid a lot,
work is not great, or
just OK
2: Paid a lot less, work
environment is
wonderful,
stimulating, joyful,
inspiring
• Which one would
you take?

3. This presentation
• Different versions on
the web, each reflect
my continuing and
rapid evolution on
the subject
• These are my talking
points; images are
sometimes just there
to keep you
entertained

4. When I Was Young
• I had some jobs
which made me
decide all companies
were terrible

5. So
• I became an independent consultant, author,
speaker, put on seminars and workshops, etc

6. Eight Years on the C++ Standards Committee

9. • We learned that
open-source
languages are
always a better
choice!

10. www.AtomicScala.com
• Free First 25%
Kindle, ePub, PDF,
HTML

11. Magazines
• Published
over 150
articles in
print
magazines
• Regular
blogging

12. Started to realize
• There was only so much I could
do on my own
• I am a social creature -- I like to
work with other people
• Co-leading seminars is relatively
easy because it's short and
focused
• Co-authoring books is at the
complete opposite end of that
spectrum
• My disastrous internship
program
• Discovery of open-spaces

13. What If I Need to Do Something
Bigger?

14. How
• Do we work together
in better ways?

15. Management

16. Frederick Winslow Taylor
• For some alternative-universe
definition of "science"
• One of the first management
consultants :-(
• "The Principles of Scientific
Management" is still on many
business book "best" lists
–Despite his charlatanism
–Nobody wants to pull that thread...
• His gift: the unconscious mindset
that "People are Lazy and Stupid"
Father of
Scientific
Management
1856-1915

17. Mindset
• "If you don't have an
innate 'talent', give up"
vs:
• Your Brain is a Muscle

18. 11,000 management books published/year
• Doesn't even seem to be
agreement on that number
• Motivation: to become a
management consultant like
FWT
• The only metric of success in the
management world is whether
people buy it
• Actual value added to the field of
management: Probably less than
.1%
–I've learned how to make up
numbers just like a real management
consultant!

19. Books you need to read
• Before wading into
this morass
• The Management
Myth and The Halo
Effect
• Walks you through
the utter and
complete
fabrications in the
management world

20. "Success" in Management
• Not science, but
story
• Tell a happy story
and your book sells
• Let's look at the
three most popular
self-help ... er ...
management books
ever

21. In Search of Excellence
• by Peters and
Waterman
• First Mega-blockbuster
management book
• First "management"
book I ever read

22. For Excellence
• A bias for action, active decision making
–'getting on with it'
–Facilitating quick decision making & problem solving
tends to avoid bureaucratic control
• Close to the customer
–Learning from the people served by the business
• Autonomy and entrepreneurship
–Fostering innovation and nurturing 'champions'

23. For Excellence (2)
• Productivity through people
–Treating rank and file employees as a source of
quality
• Hands-on, value-driven
–Management philosophy that guides everyday
practice
–Management showing its commitment

24. For Excellence (3)
• Stick to the knitting
–Stay with the business that you know
• Simple form, lean staff
–Some of the best companies have minimal HQ staff
• Simultaneous loose-tight properties
–Autonomy in shop-floor activities plus centralized
values

25. A Couple of Years Later...
• 1/3 of the
"excellent"
companies were in
financial trouble
-- Business Week, "Oops! Who's
Excellent Now?"
• DEC no longer exists
• See my "Fake
Science" blog post

26. Good To Great (Jim Collins):
• Level 5 Leadership:
–Leaders who are humble, but driven to do what's best for
the company
• First Who, Then What:
–Get the right people on the bus, then figure out where to go
–Finding the right people and trying them out in different
positions
• Confront the Brutal Facts:
–The Stockdale paradox:
–Confront the brutal truth of the situation
–At the same time, never give up hope

27. Good To Great (2):
• Hedgehog Concept:
–Three overlapping circles:
–What lights your fire ("passion")?
–What could you be best in the world at ("best at")?
–What makes you money ("driving resource")?
• Culture of Discipline:
–Rinsing the cottage cheese

28. Good To Great (3):
• Technology Accelerators:
–Using technology to accelerate growth
–Within the three circles of the hedgehog concept
• The Flywheel:
–The additive effect of many small initiatives
–They act on each other like compound interest

29. Built to Last (Collins):
• Preserving a core ideology
• The BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal) concept
• Owning a cult-like culture
• Trying new things
• Refusing the idea of a "great idea" to start a
company
• Consistent innovation
• Embracing evolution

30. Halo Effect's Nine Delusions
• The Halo Effect
–If a company is profitable, all the things it's doing
must be good
• Correlation-Causation fallacy
–The foundation of "In Search of Excellence" and
others
• Single Explanations
–X might improve performance by causing Y

31. Halo Effect's Nine Delusions (2)
• Connecting the Winning Dots
–Looking only at successful companies and finding
their common features (In Search of Excellence)
–Without comparing them against unsuccessful
companies
• Rigorous Research
–Lots of data doesn't make the research valid
• Lasting Success
–Achievable if only managers will follow their
recommended approach

32. Halo Effect's Nine Delusions (3)
• Absolute Performance
–Market performance is affected by what
competitors do as well as what the company itself
does
–A company can do everything right and yet still fall
behind
• Wrong End of the Stick
–Getting cause the wrong way round
–E.g. successful companies have a Corporate Social
Responsibility policy. Should we infer that CSR
contributes to success, or that profitable companies
have money to spend on CSR?

33. Halo Effect's Nine Delusions (4)
• Organisational Physics
–The idea that business performance is non-chaotically
determined by discoverable factors, so
that there are rules for success out there if only we
can find them
–(Taylor's idea that business is "science")

34. Net idea: Determinism
• Two-body problem in physics
• Three-body problem wasn't solvable
in closed form, only computationally
• Business is a many-body problem
–Bodies with minds of their own
• Determinism tells a comforting story
–"Rags to Riches"
–"You're in control of your destiny"
–People buy that book
• Even "Evidence-Based Management"
expects deterministic behavior

35. It's Not Deterministic
• Should we give up?
• There's still something
there
• It's probabilistic
–There are tendencies,
and if we look at them we
can make our own
serendipity
–Nicholas Taleb's "Black
Swan" and "Antifragile"

36. How to be Successful in Business
• There's no guarantee
of success, so treat
everything as an
experiment
• Assume most
experiments will fail
• Assess the risks on
each experiment
–Make sure that if the
experiment fails, it
won't take down the
whole enterprise

37. How to be Successful in Business
(2)
• Realize that even if an
experiment is
successful,
environmental (market)
conditions might not
favor it
• Sometimes you will
experience serendipity,
when an experiment
succeeds and positive
market conditions
produce a popular
product

38. How to be Successful in Business
(3)
• Thus: Look for
experiments that have a
very positive upside
with a non-disastrous
downside
• Do as many of these
experiments as you can
manage
• Audacity and Humility
• Fits with Eric Ries "Lean
Startup" approach,
which is all about how
to do experiments

39. BUT ...
• This doesn't have
anything to do with
happiness in business
• A financially successful
business is a neccessary
condition, and that's as
far as most companies go
(it's a great
accomplishment!)
• That's not sufficient to
produce a lasting, robust
and innovative business

40. Profit
• You must make a
profit to stay in
business
• That doesn't mean
profit is the reason
to be in business

41. Customer
• Externally, a
business is defined
by how it serves the
customer
• Making employees
suffer doesn't help
the customer

42. New world
• In some business
sectors, hiring
employees is really
hard
• Google, Facebook,
etc. pay more and
more
• For everyone else, if
you can't pay you
lose

43. Maybe
• We need to think outside the money box

44. If there were two jobs:
1: You get paid a lot,
work is not great, or
just OK
2: Paid a lot less, work
environment is
wonderful,
stimulating, joyful,
inspiring
• Which one would
you take?

45. Does #2 even exist?
• I've visited companies
that try, but the results
are fragile
–Usually change when the
company "grows up"
• I've seen companies
pitch that they're a
great place to work
–Free food! Scooter Races!
–Seems like an afterthought
–Ungenuine

46. How
• Do we even begin to
create #2?

47. My Manifesto
• A work in progress
• Feelings
• Beliefs
• Hypotheses
• Might not be
evidentially
supportable

48. Manifesto (1)
• Inspiration produces
much better results
than compulsion
• People want autonomy,
mastery, and purpose in
their work
–Book "Drive" by Dan Pink
• Transparency produces
robustness and agility in
an organization
–Being honest is faster,
better and cheaper

49. Manifesto (2)
• Organizations should be
flatter
–Invert control or remove it
when possible
• Prefer goals to controls
• Your culture IS your
organization
–Align your culture with
your organizational values
(and vice-versa?)

50. Manifesto (3)
• Practice consistency and
enlightened self-interest
–What we say and what we
do are consistent
–No trickery or lying is
tolerated
–We respect everyone:
coworkers, customers,
vendors, etc
–Acting in the best interest of
the organization also acts in
your own interest

51. Create This
• And good people will
want to work for you
even if you can't pay
much
• Management &
associated costs will
be minimized
–People will want to
sustain and maintain
the organization

52. Not Enough
• Starting an organization
with those values isn't
enough
• What happens when it
grows and you start getting
people whose values
conflict?
–e.g. MBAs are trained to
maximize quarterly profits
without regard to the impact on
the rest of the company
• The structure and culture
must be able to push back
and maintain its values
"Organizational Hierarchy of Needs"

53. Discussion