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Great Excerpt from Verne's Insights...

Global Huddle Drives Record Quarter -- Mark Hamill, Global Managing Director of SpenglerFox, huddles on the phone 60 minutes every week with 12 GMs globally from Moscow to Dubai and from London to Istanbul. They rotate among three topics: one week they focus on 90 day priorities; the next week on Client Insights; and the third week on Competitor Insights (novel approach). Notes Hamill, "Our Q1 this year, April-June, since we kicked off the Huddles has elevated our Q1 performance vs. budget @ +25% on revenue and +100% on profit, and that is coming off a very strong Q4."

So Much Juice -- continues Hamill, "I have to say the hour with the whole team on a global conference call is the highlight of my week and we get so much juice out of the calls, it's energising and inspiring...and critical for me to get the rhythm and discipline I need to keep us on a gazelle-like trajectory. Thanks for all the guidance so far!" Mark, congrats on a record quarter!

When to Schedule the Daily Huddle -- speaking of huddles, I received this note from Liz Wiseman (author of Multipliers), "While at the RELC meeting in Fiji (Liz and I both keynoted their event last week), I heard someone say that they changed the time of their daily huddle from 8am to 10am to raving support from the women. They found that many of the female agents were stressed trying to negotiate children's school drops offs and get into the office. People were skeptical at first, thinking the daily huddles had to be first thing, but they found that they got such overwhelming appreciation from the women that it was a huge win." If I ever implied the daily huddle had to be first thing in the morning, I apologize. Schedule it for whenever it is best for the team!

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Lessons from History

In the best-seller Built to Last, Jim Collins explores the factors that led some compa-nies to thrive over the long term by contrasting them to similar companies that merely survived (and in some cases didn’t even accomplish that).

Certainly all leaders want to see their companies in the “built to last” category – who would want to brag about how they led their companies to achieve survival.

Within the past month, we have seen two well known companies celebrate a signifi-cant milestone. IBM turned 100 years old and Southwest Airlines reached 40 during the month of June. Clearly different companies in very different industries – yet both have thrived during some very turbulent times.
Each company learned some vital lessons that we can take to heart. This month we will explore the lessons from IBM and next month Southwest.

Money magazine author Kevin Maney wrote an article offering “5 Lessons from IBM’s 100th Anniversary”, and here they are:

1. “At the start, convince the troops you’re a company of destiny, even if that seems crazy”.

Founded in 1911 as the “Computing – Tabulating-Co” or (CTC), the early days found the company struggling in dramatic fashion when it hired the now infamous Thomas Watson, Sr. in spite of the depression and the “hand writing on the wall” Watson immediately set out to convince the employees that they were part of a large international, high class company of the future. He took the bold move of including “international” when he renamed the company, sending a clear message of his future vision.

2. “Build a cult-like culture that people either buy into, or run away from.”

One of the factors Collins found his research for Built to Last he calls “getting the right people on the bus in the right seats while getting the wrong people off the bus”. Watson understood that and focused on building a corporate culture so strong that those who were aligned bonded and could thrive together and those who were not either left or were asked to leave. One element of that tight culture is the infamous IBM “uniform” of blue suit and white shirt.

3. Bet the company once in a while.

Risk-taking and courage have always been an important characteristic of executive leaders and it was no different for IBM and Watson, Sr. Maney talks about how Watson, dur-ing the height of the depression in 1933, built a new state-of-the-art research facility. He knew that the depression would eventually end and he wanted the company to be ready.

It turns out that the passage of the Social Security Act in 1936 created a massive demand for computing power and IBM was positioned as the only company that could handle the need.
Jim Collins referred to this as a “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” or BHAG for short. The research for the book showed that companies that thrived generally undertook a huge strategic gamble.

4. Make people talk about you.

During the early years, not many people knew or frankly cared about business machines, especially computers. Watson used every opportunity to get his products out into the public eye. Maney talks about Watson funding an “IBM Day” at the New York Worlds Fair.

5. Hand off to a successor who is better than you.

Like most leaders, Watson understood the value of a strategic succession plan. It turns out he didn’t have to look far. A strong willed and visionary leader, Watson led the company for almost 40 years. Following his successful era, his equally strong willed and powerful son took over and continued the tradition begun by his father in ushering IBM into the electronic age.

In his article, Maney offers the following closing:

“Obviously, it's not easy to be a vibrant company for most of 100 years. It takes a cultural foundation at the start, some big bets and luck along the way, and a great second act when it's time for the first successor to take charge. Keep those things in mind, and it might be possible to guess which of today's companies will be around at 100.”

So perhaps it would be worth spending some time contemplating these five lessons in your business. Is there an area or areas where your leadership is in line with Watson’s…how about a factor or factors you might learn from for your business?

The Comfy Status Quo

During the decades following the industrial revolution, businesses concentrated on how to get better doing the same thing over and over to maximize efficiency. In that world, the way to keep costs low and churn out low cost/high quality products was to develop effective routines and ensure they were followed to the letter. Frederick Taylor became rich and famous (well at least famous) introducing his “scientific management” theory to factories across America. His message, enthusiastically bought into by leaders at that time, was to find the one best way to perform a series of tasks then ensure people followed that method all the time. Workers became simply cogs in the manufacturing ma-chine. This approach worked well in a world of stability and low expectations. Most em-ployees were happy just to have a job and customers were more than delighted to con-sume the new products at a reasonable cost. Stability and sameness reigned. Through some recent advances in neuroscience we now know that this approach also resonated with the human mind that tends to be averse to change without a compelling vision of a better future.

For decades people that managed and worked in companies became highly proficient at sameness.

Fast forward to the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s and think about how the world began to change rapidly. The foundation of stability and sameness was turned upside down. The turbu-lence of those decades created what Pater Vaill referred to in his 1996 book “Learning as a Way of Being” as “permanent whitewater” – an apt metaphor for what was happening. So the challenge became how to change from a culture of sameness where the focus was on “doing things right”. Employees began to demand flexibility and a say in how their jobs were done and in some cases input into major business decisions. Leaders who grew up and were rewarded for ensuring things were done “right” were being challenged. Con-sider the business environment that has evolved over the past few decades (and that con-tinues to evolve and change at a rapid pace):

•  More demanding customers with much higher expectations

• Most employees with a strong desire to be more involved in business decisions, creating friction with the longer term employees that recall and long for “the good old days”

• A global economy

• Multiple generations with diverse needs, desires and values

• Technology changing a an astronomical pace

Speaking of this in 1999, leadership “sage” Peter Drucker said:

 "The most important, and indeed the truly unique, contribution of management in the 20th Century was the fifty-fold in-crease in the productivity of the MANUAL WORKER in manufacturing. The most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st Century is similarly to increase the productivity of KNOWLEDGE WORK and the KNOWLEDGE WORKER."

He went on to describe six significant factors that were needed to determine “Knowledge Worker” productivity:

1. Knowledge worker productivity demands that we ask the question: "What is the task?

2. It demands that we impose the responsibility for their productivity on the individual knowledge workers them-selves. Knowledge workers have to manage themselves. They have to have autonomy.

3. Continuing innovation has to be part of the work, the task and the responsibility of knowledge workers.

4. Knowledge work requires continuous learning on the part of the knowledge worker, but equally continuous teach-ing on the part of the knowledge worker.

5. Productivity of the knowledge worker is not - at least not primarily - a matter of the quantity of output. Quality is at least as important.

6. Finally, knowledge worker productivity requires that the knowledge worker is both seen and treated as an 'asset' rather than a 'cost'. It requires that knowledge workers want to work for the organization in preference to all other opportunities."


Effective organizational change begins with individual change – it is impossible to have one without the other. Fur-ther, individuals in senior leadership roles must be the role models and “show the way”. They must facilitate change and be able to articulate the duality that Jim Collins talks about in “Built to Last”: a clear, compelling core ideology partnered with a motivating envisioned future.

Think about how much “industrial age” residue may be lurking in your business? What might that be costing you?