Podcast appearances and mentions of Richard Rumelt

The marketing funnel doesn’t exist, suggests RAA CMO, Michael Healy. He thinks “too many marketers get too ideological about how you have to do brand and then awareness and then conversion”. He has an interesting anecdote about a $329 knife, his wife, and Meta, to support the theory. Healy says “the vast majority of marketers that I talk to – from startup to enterprise – don't actually have a marketing strategy.” They just have “a plan and a budget”. He recommends reading Richard Rumelt’s Good Strategy, Bad Strategy – and stop treating brand and performance separately. “It's all performance and it's all brand,” per Healy. “Everything is double duty.” Equally, he urges marketers to focus on the metrics that matter: “What is driving business performance?” Tammy Barton, CEO and founder of MyBudget is the brand, literally. Along with its customers, Barton features in its ads. The one time she changed tack, at the suggestion of “one of Australia’s largest agencies”, it backfired. Results tanked and she had to pull the expensive series of TVCs. She put the old ads back on TV “and leads immediately that week went up 15 per cent”. She shot low cost new versions – still using real customers – “and leads went up another 40 per cent”, says Barton. “So you just do whatever works.” MyBudget’s marketing team looks at “hundreds of metrics”, she says. “But the ones that are really important to us are, what is it costing us per lead? What is it costing us per contract? What is it costing us per acquisition, including our sales expense? And we have to look at our lifetime value … versus what are we investing for that cost of acquisition, and what is that ratio? We track that every month.” Atomic 212° co-founder and Chief Digital Officer, James Dixon, thinks media agencies “have been guilty of metric vomit over the years”, spewing data and numbers at clients. Dixon suggests only one “mother metric” is required: MROI – which can stand for marketing return on investment, or, in the media agency context, media return on investment. To underline how media is delivering returns, Atomic 212° has been “doubling down on MMM” with clients, but focusing on media, rather than broader variables within market mix models. RAA’s Healy thinks Dixon “is onto something”, though, “I just don't think it's applicable in all circumstances”. Either way, he backs MyBudget’s Barton: “Just test everything. Whatever works, do that. And if it doesn’t work, get out of it, fast.”See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ever been in a meeting where an executive decrees: "Engineering needs to go faster!" without any nuance or understanding of the underlying issues?What a coincidence - so have we!!!Listen or watch as Product Manager Brian Orlando and Enterprise Business Agility Coach Om Patel discuss this common yet problematic demand. Join us as we unmask deeper organizational issues, explore how to respond to this request, and discuss the potential causes, constraints, and solutions.Whether you're in engineering, product management, or leadership, this episode provides practical insights for addressing the "go faster" demand in ways that deliver business value quickly, under budget, and right on-time!#EngineeringLeadership #ProductManagement #AgileTeamsREFERENCESGood Strategy/Bad Strategy, by Richard Rumelt (book)Arguing Agile #185 "What Companies Do Instead of Strategy"Arguing Agile #103 "Challenges to Building Product Roadmaps"Inspired, by Marty Cagan (book)LINKS YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@arguingagileSpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/362QvYORmtZRKAeTAE57v3Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/agile-podcast/id1568557596Website: http://arguingagile.com= = = = = = = = = = = =Toronto Is My Beat (Music Sample)By Whitewolf (Source: https://ccmixter.org/files/whitewolf225/60181)CC BY 4.0 DEED (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en)

Substack Week: Engineering Strategy, Bridging Technical Excellence with Business Success With Aleix Morgadas In this Substack Week episode, we explore the critical intersection of engineering strategy and business success with Aleix Morgadas, an engineering strategy consultant focusing on sociotechnical aspects of high-stake business challenges. Aleix shares insights from his experience helping organizations align their technical capabilities with business objectives, while offering practical approaches to developing and implementing effective engineering strategies. The Genesis of Engineering Strategy Personal experience sparked Aleix's journey into engineering strategy when he joined a large company and found himself grappling with strategic decision-making in engineering. He identified a crucial gap: while strategy was well-established in product and business domains, engineering organizations often lacked strategic frameworks for participating in key decisions. This realization led him to start writing about his struggles and insights, helping others navigate similar challenges through his newsletter. "I found that engineering was missing a way to be part of the decision making process, and we needed to be clear on the problems and challenges that engineering organizations face." Breaking Down the Four-Step Process Drawing inspiration from Richard Rumelt's work on strategy, Aleix presents a comprehensive framework for developing engineering strategy. The process emphasizes the importance of understanding organizational context and identifying shared challenges before taking action. "Solve the shared pains - that's why we need to uncover those pains in the first place." The framework consists of four key steps: Context Understanding: Begin by defining your business context, as strategy must align with your specific environment and circumstances Problem Identification: Focus on understanding current organizational pains and creating alignment around which problems to solve Direction Setting: Break down larger goals into manageable increments while ensuring actions don't compete with each other Strategy Execution: Create space for teams to work on strategic initiatives while maintaining autonomy The Power of Bottom-Up Strategy Aleix challenges the traditional top-down approach to strategy development, advocating for a more inclusive process that brings together perspectives from all levels of the organization. This approach recognizes that teams and top-level management often have different visions that need to be reconciled for effective strategy implementation. "Strategy does not need to be designed top-down. Teams and top-level management have different visions, and we need to be able to bring those together." Implementation and Execution Success in engineering strategy requires more than just planning - it demands thoughtful execution and ongoing adaptation. Aleix emphasizes the importance of learning through action and starting with minimal effort initiatives to gain momentum. "By doing you learn, and doing is critical for strategy. Start with the least effort action you have in mind." Recommended Resources For Further Study The book: Good Strategy/Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt The blog post: North Star Framework Template & Activity Library The Jobs to be done Framework TEMPLATE: The engineering strategy template by Aleix VIDEO: Aleix's Engineering Strategy Journey Talk [The Scrum Master Toolbox Podcast Recommends]

In the final episode of the series, Jacob Stoller and Andrew Stotz discuss the difference between typical companies using traditional management and more successful Deming-style companies. If productivity and performance are so much better, why do companies stick with traditional management? TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.3 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we dive deeper into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I continue my discussion and conversation with Jacob Stoller, Shingo Prize winning author of The Lean CEO. And ladies and gentlemen, I just received my copy finally. Productivity Reimagined, it just arrived from Amazon. You can get it there. And that's the latest book that he's come out with. And this is exploring applying Lean and Deming Management Principles at the enterprise level. The topic for today is moving forward with productivity. Jacob, take it away.   0:00:41.7 Jacob Stoller: Oh, thank you, Andrew. Great to be here once again. Yeah. Moving forward. That's really Chapter 13. Whether you consider that, hopefully you consider 13 lucky as I think they do in Italy.   0:00:57.4 AS: We do in Thailand.   0:01:00.4 JS: Oh, really? Wonderful. Okay. Perfect. Anyway, so I wrote in the book, I sort of defined where we're trying to go by describing two companies; a typical company, and then the company that we would aspire to for maximum productivity. So I'm gonna read those, just to illustrate. "Company A follows traditional top-down management practices. Leaders determine how the work is to be done, and give orders to their staff accordingly. Individuals, functional groups and departments are treated as independent entities under centralized control. Pay and promotion are determined by individual performance according to a set of predetermined criteria. Employees are ranked and encouraged to compete with each other." So that's company A, your typical company, which probably comprises what percentage would you say? 90%? 95%?   0:02:03.8 AS: 97.9%   0:02:04.4 JS: Okay. Okay. Let's look at where we'd like to go from there. "Company B is managed as an interactive system where people and functional teams depend on each other. Supervisors aren't expected to have all the answers, and they rely on frontline workers to share their workplace knowledge and take an active role in improving their work processes. All employees know they are part of a team culture pursuing common goals and solving problems together to move the company forward." Okay, so that's really, that's where we wanna be. And the reason you would want to go there is because if you take those two companies and they have similar resources, similar markets, perhaps operating in similar region, company B will outproduce company A 10 times out of 10. It's a more productive model, and it's proven to work. So why don't people do it?   0:03:16.3 JS: Well, there's some thinking that gets in the way, some sort of systemic kinds of barriers that are out there. So even people who aspire to making a company better, and I think there are a lot of people out there that think that, but they run into these barriers, and I'm just gonna review them again because we've gone through them in some detail. But the myth of segmented success, that's the really kind of the exact opposite of a company as a system. It's this idea that all the parts are interchangeable. You can take a department, you can give each department separate goals, and they'll all make their goals and it'll all add up. That's the myth, of course. So the myth of segmented success. We have really stemming out of that the myth of the bottom line.   0:04:11.9 JS: And because of that segmented structure, we believe that we can use finance as a proxy for all the quantitative, all the accomplishments of all these different segments. It all adds up. It's arithmetic. We figure, so why not? We just take, everyone makes their numbers, and then they all make their numbers and they all celebrate together. That's the myth, of course. The bottom line doesn't tell you what's really going on in the company. The top-down knowledge myth they run into, and that's this whole idea that managers are supposed to know all the answers, and their job is to tell people what to do. And it's not just people with MBAs. It's people with degrees in psychology and maybe working in HR. It's engineers, it's any person with professional training, figures that they have not only the privilege, but a duty to actually tell people what to do. And if I'm not telling people what to do, I'm probably not doing my job and somebody's going to be looking over my shoulder. So a big fear around that.   0:05:31.6 JS: Myth number four is the myth of sticks and carrots. And this is this idea of Homo Economicus, the idea that people act in their own financial interest and it's perfectly predictable. Performance is down? Well, let's just pay them more or maybe we need some threats here. Maybe we need to threaten them, or maybe we need to get some competition. So somebody is gonna be a little bit worried looking over their shoulder that they might get fired. Fear is a big factor here, obviously. Finally, there's the myth of tech omnipotence. And this stems right from the myth of segmented success. This idea we can take a process and we can swap out technology, we can put in technology and swap out people. We can reduce head count by 5, 10, 15 people and put in a machine in its place. That's been the business case for technology for decades. And we still have a very strong belief in that. So that's kind of what we're stuck with, those myths. And we really have to crush those myths as we go along.   0:06:42.5 AS: You know, Jacob, I was just at a meeting yesterday with a very senior executive at a very large company in Thailand. And I was just talking to him, it's off the record, so we were just chatting, but he was talking about the challenges that they're facing, and I said, so how are your KPIs? And he said, KPIs are just killing us. They're causing us to be siloed. It's setting up competition in the company. People can't work together. And I asked him this question, like, what can you do about it? He says, not much. What am I gonna do? Remove the KPI system? No. We know...   0:07:31.1 JS: Isn't that interesting?   0:07:34.8 AS: That ultimately that's probably one of the best things that they could do and get people to work together. But it just, you know, he said something to me that just made me think about, for the listeners and the viewers out there who are running small and medium-sized businesses who feel disadvantaged so many times when they're fighting against the big giants...   0:07:53.6 JS: Yeah.   0:07:53.6 AS: Take comfort that you can change your business. But many of these big companies, they just can't. And they won't.   0:08:01.2 JS: Yeah.   0:08:03.5 AS: And they never will. So that's what's so great about these types of principles, both Lean, what you're talking about, Deming, is that if you're a business owner, it's a family business, it's your private business or a group of people that you have real control over the business, you can implement these things. And you can build your business to be great.   0:08:23.7 JS: That's interesting, Andrew. I've talked in my book, I've talked with some smaller manufacturers, and at least a couple of them have said they're getting refugees from large corporations. And he'll interview these people and say, well, I can't give you, you know, you won't have 500 people reporting to you or anything. And they say, I don't care. I said, I really, you know, I've had it with this corporate stuff, and they want to be part of a culture that makes a difference. And so that's maybe catching on. I mean, interesting that the gentleman you're talking with also recognized that.   0:09:00.3 AS: Yeah. And he's just as, his hands are tied in some ways. And, so, but that to me is hopeful for the rest of the businesses that can change. And the other thing I was, you know, I always end with my favorite quote from Dr. Deming, which is that people are entitled to joy in work. Yesterday I was speaking to about 75 students in my Ethics in Finance class, and it's the kickoff day. And so it's a real fun, and I talk about a bunch of things, but the one thing I said is that ever since I graduated from university, all I really wanted was a job that I enjoyed, at a place that I enjoyed doing it, with the people I enjoyed doing it with. That's all I wanted. I wanted joy in work and I got it because I walked away from the places and the people where it wasn't happening, and I walked towards the places where I had the opportunity to enjoy it. Of course it helps that I found my love, which is being a financial analyst. It's just, I understand that so well, but this is where I think I want us to think about hope and potential for happiness in work and all of that. And so I know you've got some more steps that you've got to help people. So maybe we move into that.   0:10:27.7 JS: Sure. Sure. Well, and it would be interesting, this gentleman you talked with, I wonder if he's visited any companies that we would admire that are using Deming principles, or maybe...   0:10:39.1 AS: Well, it may give it away, but this company in the past has fully implemented the teachings of Dr. Deming.   0:10:49.2 JS: Oh, really?   0:10:51.5 AS: But they had a changeover in management, and they completely walked away from this and implemented the KPI system.   0:11:00.9 JS: Yeah. Oh my. Isn't that something? Yeah, that happens. That happens for sure. And we've had, you know, in my last book, The Lean CEO, I found some people, number of companies had fallen off the ladder. And gosh, the Shingo Institute had a real problem with that. People were winning Shingo prizes and then they were falling off the ladder, and they changed their emphasis on criteria now, and now they really emphasize culture. You can't just follow the principles, but you really have to get the culture, and they really grill them on that. So, interesting. Interesting.   0:11:38.2 AS: Yeah.   0:11:41.0 JS: But the first step, the reason I asked you if they've visited anybody is really, I think if you're starting from scratch at company A, I think the first thing is to go visit companies.   0:11:48.6 AS: Yep.   0:11:49.5 JS: I mean, you've got to see what's going on in companies that are different to even appreciate what's possible. And it's...   0:12:00.6 AS: 'Cause it's inspiring.   0:12:00.7 JS: It's not only inspiring, but you see things that you wouldn't expect to see. And I think what they said, what these folks have told me over and over again is that what you see is you actually feel it. There's a culture in there, there's a kind of an atmosphere when you walk in the door. And that's what really wows people. I hear that over and over again. So you have to feel that, you can't write that down, or you can't explain that in a talk. So I think that's really the first step. And fortunately, companies that have gone through these transformations are happy to welcome people to come visit, because it helps them reinforce their culture as well. So it's a reinforcing kind of thing. I think after you've done that, gone the rounds a bit, that's when you really need to assess where you are and what you wanna be. And I think there has to be some honest criticism about the kind of company you are. I don't know if you wanna call it soul-searching, but there's not a realization that we don't wanna go on as we were, you're really not gonna do much. So that's, I think, critically important. You're smiling. Do you have a story there?   0:13:20.8 AS: No, but I'm just, you know, it makes sense. It makes sense. I did actually, you know, in Thailand there was a company that I saw in the newspaper many years ago that it came out in the newspaper that they won the Deming Prize from Japan, from the Union of Scientists in Japan. And so I just called the company and I said, congratulations. And they said, great, thank you. And then I said, and I talked to the CEO of the company, and then I said, could I bring my staff from my coffee, you know, management team from the coffee business to come and see you guys? And he said, yeah. And that started a lifelong friendship with a guy named Srini, who was the guy who won that. He passed away about a year or two ago. And I featured him in my book on Transform Your Business with Dr. Deming's 14 Points. But the idea is...   0:14:11.0 JS: Oh yeah...   0:14:12.7 AS: Go out and...   0:14:14.0 JS: I love that book.   0:14:16.2 AS: Explore and see it, see what's out there.   0:14:16.3 JS: Yeah. For sure.   0:14:17.5 AS: Because you also, when you go out and explore, you also find out, hey, we're pretty good at some of these things and there's things that we're doing well, you know?   0:14:23.5 JS: Of course, of course. So once you've assessed your state, I think it's very, very important, even before you start talking to your people, 'cause it's gonna be a transformation, you're gonna demand an awful lot from your people, you've really got to know where you're going, and you have to establish a vision. And companies have different ways of doing that. But the one thing I would emphasize is that it's gotta be a vision with substance. And I think Dr. Deming would say, by what method? [laughter] You say where you're going. Right? So, for example, a hospital. I saw a hospital that did a very good job of that, establishing a vision, and they wanted to be the safest and most compassionate hospital in their region. They said, well, what would that look like?   0:15:13.3 JS: And they looked at, well, okay, safety would obviously be big. There would be fiscal responsibility. Wait time is a big issue in healthcare, be no waiting. I think there may have been one more as well. But anyway, they established these kinds of what I would call aspirational goals. It's where we, really where we want to be, and it's gotta be something that inspires employees, right? You wanna be a compassionate, safe place for patients to come. I mean, that's what people want. So then what they do is they took it a level down, and they said, okay, well, if we're going to have an exemplary safety record, what would that look like? How would we measure it? And they have safe... The health organizations have safety statistics. So, they have an institution, that third party organization that would report on the numbers, so they could set some targets according to that. And then they go down even further. They say, okay, safety. What are the things that we need to do? What are some of our weaknesses? So they say, well, patient falls was one of them. They have things like medication error, hospital acquired illnesses. So all this goes under the idea of no harm to patients, right?   0:16:44.0 AS: Yeah.   0:16:45.3 JS: All goes together. So, they then started to work on the most pressing one. You know, work on targets, do projects together, PDSA kinds of projects. And they chipped away at it and eventually with a number of projects, they were very successful. But I think the key, of course, is that problems in workplaces and hospitals, maybe especially, are very granular in lots and lots of things, so you need all hands on deck. But they were very, very successful at getting a very high rating just through these efforts. So, that's...   [overlapping conversation]   0:17:28.8 AS: Yeah, the vision with substance is a great one because I think lots of visions are flaky, and we've been working on the vision for Coffee Works, for my company, and that is we supply coffee to every leading brand in Thailand. And that's something that we can visualize, the employees can visualize, they can also see who we don't serve. And also when we lose a customer that's a leading brand, we can say we messed up, but when your contract's up with our competitor, we're gonna be back because we supply every leading brand in Thailand.   0:18:08.0 JS: Right, right.   0:18:10.3 AS: So, substance, vision. Yep.   0:18:13.3 JS: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And I guess you share that, been sharing that kind of vision with your people for a long time, right?   0:18:18.3 AS: Yep.   0:18:21.6 JS: But I mean, would you say, how important would you say vision is? I mean...   0:18:23.2 AS: I think it's critical. And I think that part of what happens is that many companies start with a vision, and then they get, it's just so easy to get distracted. And there's so many, you know, business just grows complex, and then all of a sudden you feel like, we can do all of this, we can do this, we can do that, we can do this, we can do that. The best book on this is Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt. And he talks a lot about what are bad strategies, and he talks about these fluffy visions that really don't help anybody. And so getting a vision with substance, I think is critical.   0:18:58.0 JS: Okay. So we got our vision, it's got real teeth. It's something that we can stand in front of our people and say, here's what we're going to do. And they won't say, oh, this is just another flavor of the month. They'll realize that we're serious and we're gonna do this. The next step, number four, is building trust. And that's extremely important. And one of the manufacturer actually told me a wonderful story about this. He was working in a very... Had a plant in a very rough neighborhood in Baltimore. And when he took over that plant as a general manager, there was terrible culture. People were... He said there was racism and there were just people quitting all the time. And just walking out the door, not showing up to work. You know, the workers hated management.   0:19:56.7 JS: So this guy went in onto the shop floors. I'm your new general manager. And he said he spent the first three or four months just talking to them about their lives. You know, he was committed to the Lean methodology, but he didn't talk about methods, how we're gonna do things different. He just found out what's important to these people. And a lot of 'em were financially strapped. They were in poor neighborhoods. So the direction was really how to make this company more profitable so we can pay you more. And that was kind of a guiding vision and remarkably successful how it did. How he won the people over. And I think there's so many people out there asking people to do things. And, you know, you really have to... Takes a lot of trust. I mean, you're gonna say, I'm gonna admit when I've made a mistake, I'm not gonna cover it up and you're not gonna fire me. You know, that's never happened. So...   0:21:02.9 AS: And I can tell you, for the listeners and the viewers out there, here's a good inspiring movie to get you an idea of thinking about how to get out on the shop floor and understand from the inside what's happening in the business. And the movie came out in 1980, and it's called Brubaker by Robert Redford. And it's the story of a new prisoner warden.   0:21:25.2 JS: Oh, I never saw it.   0:21:27.0 AS: Yeah. Prison warden who goes in as a prisoner, and the governor of the state has sent him in as a prisoner. And so he lives a prisoner's life for, I don't know how long it was, a week, a couple weeks, a month, until eventually he, you know, reveals himself and then takes over. And then he knew all the corruption and all the problems and all the issues, and he went about solving 'em. It's an inspiring movie.   0:21:54.2 JS: Yeah. And more recently, there was a program, I've seen a couple of episodes of Undercover CEO, you know, where CEO actually goes into the workplace in disguise and flips burgers or whatever. And then discovers what's really going on in the company.   0:22:09.2 AS: Yeah, that's a great. That's probably even more applicable.   0:22:11.2 JS: Yeah. Right. So building trust is just... It's very personal. And from that point, you start to make changes. But those changes... My favorite examples, I don't know if this is a general rule, but some of the best examples I've seen are working on safety. You work on safety because improving processes to make them safer is actually kind of like a gateway drug to doing continuous improvement, right? You start to understand what processes are, but first of all, people are improving the process in their own interest.   0:22:50.8 AS: Yep.   0:22:52.2 JS: So you get them very good at making these changes, proposing changes, speaking out, pointing out when other people are not following safety guidelines. Understanding that something has to stop when safety is not there. No, you build on the trust you created and you start to change the culture around that. So that's number five. So you notice I've gone five steps and we haven't introduced any methods or anything. You know, it's...   0:23:23.8 AS: What I noticed from those first five is that they're really all things that senior management need to do before they go out with all their exciting new ideas and start training people and start really bringing that out in a much more aggressive way.   0:23:41.5 JS: Exactly. So really step six is train and transform. And that's when we do all the... That's when we draw the diagrams, and that's when we start the PDSA training or the Kaizen events or whichever type of transformation you're doing. That's when we start to train the workforce and we start to undergo the transformation. So that's all the work, but the transforming work. But we've done enormous preparation before we get there. And I think that's what I've seen is the best way to do it. So we train and transform, and then of course we have to remove barriers as they come. So it might be removing some aspects of the accounting system because they might be holding us back. So you run into the barriers and you take on those barriers as you run into them and you build momentum.   0:24:36.3 AS: Yep.   0:24:38.6 JS: So step seven really is you're building this momentum and you raise the bar. You've done something and now you raise your standards and continue to raise them. And that leads you to a continually improving organization where you're always expecting to get better. People have a joy in work because they know that they're part of making something better. And you continue raising the bar 'cause people like a challenge.   0:25:07.9 AS: Yep.   0:25:08.5 JS: As long as it's a safe environment and as long as it's a team kind of self-supporting workplace. So finally we get to share and learn. So we've gone full circle. You know, you've got... You've gone through a transformation, you're proud of your work, and you start to open the door to visitors because that's where you really reinforce the culture. And, I don't know, you have... You say you have visitors at the coffee place?   0:25:45.9 AS: Yeah. I mean, for me, I just love going to companies that do like to share and learn. And I like to do that too. We get students, a lot of times it'll be like executive MBA students coming to Thailand and others that I'll bring out to the factory, so to get them to see how we do things. But I just personally love to... Well, it's great when you go out to a place, and there's a lot of factories in Thailand for sure where you can just see that they have a vision of what they're doing and they clearly communicate it. I had a company that I saw in the financial data many years ago when I was an analyst that really did something very odd, which was their cash conversion cycle was negative. Normally it's a positive thing for a manufacturing company 'cause they have a lot of inventory and accounts receivable and the like.   0:26:34.9 AS: And so I went out and I met with the CEO and then I said, how did you do this? He said, it took us five years, but we brought our inventory down to seven days of inventory. And how did you do it? And he took me out on the factory floor to meet all the different people doing it. And he said, I put people in teams and they work together and they try to figure out how do we reduce the inventory here? I help them see the overhead cost that's coming from the executives so they could calculate a P&L and understand like, how can they make their section, you know, better? And then he had some of the guys come and speak and explain what they were doing, some of the supervisors and managers on the shop floor. And I was like, wow, this was impressive. So love that sharing and learning.   0:27:22.7 JS: Yeah. No, it's great. And I've had wonderful visits where people are so excited about their work that you think, wow. And of course that means they're really, really productive. I mean, they just... They're doing it because they love it and it's... You can't compare with that kind of creativity that you get from that. So I guess that I'd like to talk a little about the competitive advantages here of taking this journey and, you know, that's the whole point. Productivity becomes your competitive advantage. You outproduce other companies with similar resources. And I believe that the way the world is changing right now, that competitive advantage for company B type companies is going to grow as things... And I have four reasons I cite for that.   0:28:21.0 JS: Reason one is flexibility, adaptability, agility, whatever you wanna call it. You know, we're going with manufacturing and services too much more into high mix, low volume type scenarios. So the mass production machinery approach has just become less and less relevant to manufacturing and also with services as well because it's not... It's less a ones size fits all kinda world. That's one very strong reason. The ability to hire talent. You know, we're just starting to see that. You know, people don't wanna work for these corporations that they feel don't have purpose. And couple of manufacturers actually told me, and this is in the US, I don't know how that compares with Thailand, but in the US he said there's a real crisis not just 'cause people maybe don't have jobs, but because people don't have purpose in their work, so people go home depressed, they take drugs and they've done medical studies on this.   0:29:30.3 JS: You know, if you don't have purpose in your work and you're doing something even though you know it's dumb and you're doing it anyway, just, you know, because to please the boss or whatever, that places huge stress on people. And there are actually medical... They've done medical studies on that, people who work in those kinds of jobs, on the negative effects. So anyway, I think getting the best talent, I hear that more and more anyone I talk to, and I think that's gonna be more and more of a factor. There's a whole deglobalization process going on right now. A lot of reshoring here in North America. People, you know, companies really realizing that sort of the fallacy of having these very, very long supply chains. So it's all about now shortening that supply chain, having immediate suppliers that are close.   0:30:23.9 JS: I mean, that's the only way you're gonna get your inventory turns down to 50 or whatever your friend was talking about. Right? And finally on climate change, that's getting tougher and tougher to deal with. And it's not just about governments not acting, but it's going to be scarcity of resources. It's going to be having to run businesses in difficult climate circumstances. It's gonna be government regulation. It's going to be whether people will come and work for companies that aren't making... Doing their bit to combat this. So those four reasons, I think that's a competitive advantage that's going to grow. And I think it's urgent that corporations act, and Dr. Deming warned that there'd be a crisis coming if companies kept running the way they were, and the crisis is here. We've arrived and, you know, the statistics are terrible. Don't have to bore you with those, but, you know, it's a very rough world and we need, obviously governments will have to act, but we need better companies. Now... Sorry, go ahead.   0:31:48.2 AS: I was... Yeah, that's why he entitled this book Out of the Crisis 'cause there was a crisis then, and the fact is there's still, and it's so many things are harder too particularly in the US with reshoring and that type of thing because education has been decimated also in the US so it's very hard to bring back, you know, engineering prowess and things like that, so. Yep.   0:32:14.1 JS: Yeah, for sure. So I... My sort of wrap up comment would be, answer to your question, not really a question, but your title, you talked about boosting Lean with Deming. So, you know, when we chat about this, but you know what, I was thinking about this, what as a person who wrote about Lean initially and then took a much deeper dive into Deming, what does Deming add, from my perspective? And what excites me the most about Dr. Deming is that I think he was less interested in maybe methods and more interested in fundamental truths. I mean, he really, I think put forward what are really fundamental truths about people, about the physical world and about how people in the physical world interact. And these are, like I say, this is not slogans or anything like this, this is science. I mean, these are proven scientific principles and I think those principles underline any method you use. You know, if you're really following that. And I'm not a Deming scholar enough to be able to say that that's what he meant by profound knowledge. But when you use the term profound knowledge, that's what that means to me. It means just a very fundamental knowledge of the way things work.   0:33:49.8 AS: Yeah. Well, it's exciting to think about how we can learn from what you've written about and what you've talked about. So ladies and gentlemen, the book is Productivity Reimagined: Shattering Performance Myths to Achieve Sustainable Growth. And I've really enjoyed our time, Jacob, to go through all the different myths and to hear the way you look at things which is coming from your direction originally, the Lean direction, and then bringing that thinking together with the teachings of Dr. Deming. So I just wanna thank you and give you the last word. If you'd like to wrap up for the listeners and the viewers to say, what's the main message you wanna get, want them to get out of all the... Out of the book and out of all of our discussion? How would you wrap it up?   0:34:45.4 JS: I would wrap it up by saying, let's look for those fundamental truths. You know, let's not look for slogans, let's not look for techniques. Let's look at what's really true about humans, about the physical world, and let's build our future based on that.   0:35:04.2 AS: Well, Jacob, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion right now and the prior discussions about each part of your book and the myths and the like. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey, and you can find Jacob's book, Productivity Reimagined, at jacobstoller.com. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, "People are entitled to joy in work."

Lucas Lovell, VP of Product at Paddle, shares his journey from launching a startup in Australia to scaling a SaaS company in Europe. With a focus on global market expansion, Lucas discusses critical considerations for entering new geographies, leveraging local partnerships, and using payments infrastructure as a growth lever. Packed with actionable insights, this episode is a must-listen for SaaS leaders navigating the complexities of international growth.Key Takeaways:Market Expansion StrategyMarket size and access are key to identifying expansion opportunities.Operational challenges, like legal and regulatory barriers, need thorough evaluation.Localizing for cultural norms and customer expectations is crucial for success.Leveraging Payments as a Growth LeverOffering region-specific payment methods boosts conversions significantly.Partner with payment platforms like Paddle to simplify tax compliance and payment localization.Missteps in payment infrastructure can result in high drop-off rates despite strong intent to purchase.Tactical Entry into New MarketsConduct roadshows and spend time on the ground to understand the local ecosystem.Leverage accelerators, incubators, and local networks for insights and partnerships.Hiring local talent provides essential market expertise and operational efficiency.Balancing Global Consistency with Local FlexibilityUse foundational playbooks but adapt pricing, messaging, and distribution strategies to local markets.Understand cultural nuances, such as Germany's data consciousness or the business formality in Europe.Localization isn't just about language; it's also about tone, style, and relevance.Lightning Round Insights:Work-Life Balance Tip: Set boundaries with notification management to avoid work distractions during personal time.Advice to Past Self: You learn best by doing—don't hesitate to dive in and experiment.Book Recommendation: Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt for mastering strategic thinking.About Paddle: Paddle simplifies payment infrastructure for SaaS businesses, enabling global expansion by handling tax compliance, payment localization, and more. Their platform helps companies turn operational complexities into growth opportunities.Connect with Lucas Lovell: LinkedIn | PaddleChapters:00:10 – Introduction01:00 – Lucas's Journey in SaaS06:30 – Choosing France for Market Expansion10:00 – Operational Barriers to Entering New Markets15:00 – Using Payments as a Growth Lever20:00 – Localization Strategies for Success25:30 – Building Partnerships for Distribution30:00 – First Principles GTM Strategies for New Geographies35:00 – Lightning Round InsightsVisit our website - https://saassessions.com/Connect with me on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sunilneurgaonkar/

John Dues and Andrew Stotz are diving deeper into the improvement model that John is building with his team. In this episode, learn the three ways to think about an improvement frame for your big challenge.  TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.6 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we dive deeper into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today I'm continuing my discussion with John Dues, who is part of the new generation of educators striving to apply Dr. Deming's principles to unleash student joy in learning. And the topic for today is Frame the Challenge. John, take it away.   0:00:23.6 John Dues: Hey Andrew, it's good to be back. Yeah, we're gonna talk about Framing the Challenge today. We kicked off a new series a couple of episodes ago. I introduced this improvement model that we can use to set ambitious goals backed with this sound methodology. Make this disclaimer again, we're sort of building the plane while we are flying it. So this improvement model is new at United Schools where I work. And so again, we're actually letting listeners sort of see it as it's being built and first put to use. And so I think just starting out with a quick recap of the model is a good place to start. So what is this improvement model that we've been looking at? I'll pull up my screen so we can share a visual of the model for those that are watching. Right. Can you see that all right?   0:01:21.2 AS: Yep.   0:01:21.3 JD: Great. Give me one second. All right. So we have this improvement model. Basically the core idea of the model is it gives us the scientific way of thinking. And remember, we talked about we're working to close this gap between current conditions in our organizations and future aspirations. In order to close this gap, we're walking through the four steps on the model. So first, we set the challenge of direction. That's really where we focused our time last episode. The second step is to grasp the current condition. The third step is to establish the next target condition. And then the fourth step is to experiment to overcome obstacles. And that's where we spend most of our time in this four-step process. And then the other thing we've talked about is we do it with this team. The people working in the system, that's one part of the system, one part of the team.   0:02:19.8 JD: And we've talked about this in our case. This can be students, it can be teachers, whoever the frontline people are in your organization. Then there's those with the authority to work on the system, to make changes to the design or the architecture of the system. That could be a teacher in a classroom, or we've said the principal of a school, or maybe the superintendent of a system of schools. And then one of the innovations that we've made to this improvement model is that that third group or that third person on the team is someone that has Profound Knowledge, someone that's using Deming's principles to guide the work. So that's the basic model that we looked at in the first episode and...   0:03:11.8 AS: And I would just highlight... By the way, can you put it on slideshow?   0:03:15.3 JD: Sure.   0:03:15.4 AS: And I've been reading Mike Rother's book, rereading his book on Toyota Kata and stuff. And so this has really got me back to it. But what you're doing is applying this and helping us understand it as you're putting it into action at your school, right?   0:03:35.0 JD: Yeah, we've had an improvement model. And I think... Yeah, so like it says down in the right hand corner, that this model, it's based on Mike Rother's work, the Toyota Kata work. I think one thing that was missing from our model previously was like, how do you set this challenge or direction? How do you do that in an ambitious but reasonable way? And I think Mike Rother's sort of model speaks to this. So that's why I like his four-step model. I also like the four steps because it's pretty simple. It's not 15 steps. It's not 20 steps. It's four steps. Now there are some steps that you have to learn and stuff like that. There are different pieces to each of the steps, but I like that it's four steps. It's sort of easy to remember. It's memorable. And I think the innovation that we've done so far is who is the team that's working through this? And I think to frame it as the people working in the system, the people working on the system, and then someone with Profound Knowledge, I think that's an innovation, from what I've read about Mike Rother's work.   0:04:39.6 AS: Yep.   0:04:40.4 JD: Yeah. And so to continue the recap from last time, I think in the last episode, so we introduced the model two episodes ago. And then last episode, what we said we were gonna do is start walking through each of the steps, episode by episode, and do a deeper dive into each of the steps. And we did that with step one last time. So we did Set the Challenge last time. And just as a refresher, this is that longer range goal that would differentiate us from other schools in our case, if we achieve it. But remember, we also said it seems nearly impossible at the outset. This is something that's off in the horizon. It's probably gonna take at least six months, probably more like two or three years. And then I gave this example at United where I am. So we're a school system. One of the challenges that we've set is to reduce our chronic absenteeism from 52%. So that's sort of the current condition. And we wanna bring that down to 5%. And there's this huge gap between those things. Obviously, we talked about an order of magnitude, and we don't quite know how to get there right now.   0:05:48.7 AS: Yeah, I think that's the point is we don't know how to get there right now.   0:05:57.6 JD: Yeah. Yeah. And I think... And so what I originally had planned to do is to go on to step two. And I think we're gonna do that next. But I wanted to pause because last time we briefly touched on this idea of Framing the Challenge as an improvement goal. And so with this episode, what I wanna do first before we go on to step two is talk about how to sort of think about that framing. And I sort of have studied a little bit of performance management from healthcare specifically. And there's really these three phases of performance management. When you're setting a goal, there's sort of performance measurement that has a research orientation. There's performance measurement that has an accountability orientation. And there's performance management that has an improvement orientation. And I think it's really important to understand the difference between those three types of measurement because I think conflation of those three things can derail and often derail improvement efforts. And in fact, as I was doing some research for this episode, I read this quote in one of the journal articles that I was sort of reviewing. It said, "the problem with measurement is that it can be a loaded gun, dangerous if misused, and at least threatening if pointed in the wrong direction."   [laughter]   0:07:19.6 JD: Right. So, when I read that I was like, this is important enough to take a pause and do a little bit deeper dive into that, you know, the differences between the three that we sort of got into on a surface level last time.   0:07:33.5 AS: One of the things that I like to say these days when I talk to people about measurement is measurement... If the subject being measured, let's say a table, I'm gonna measure the length of a table versus measuring the performance of an individual as an example. If the subject being measured knows, is aware that they're being measured, you're gonna have a problem.   0:08:02.0 JD: Yeah, I think that's very well put. And...   0:08:07.5 AS: The table doesn't care.   0:08:09.3 JD: The table doesn't care, but people always do. No doubt. No doubt. So I thought it'd be... I put together a table for those that are watching 'cause there is a lot of nuance to this and we'll kind of walk through this step by step, sort of the differences between goals or measurement for research, measurement for accountability, and then measurement for improvement. So I think just... I came up with these dimensions in some of the research I was doing. So, what's the purpose of each of those? What questions are you trying to answer? What are some example questions that are answered with that type of measurement? What's actually getting measured? How often is it getting measured? And then why does quality improvement or quality measurement matter in that particular area? So let's start with the purpose first. So when we're thinking about measurement for research, what we're really trying to do is contribute to some knowledge base, right?   0:09:01.8 JD: You know, I think the classic example is, what a university professor is often doing in their research. The second type of measurement is measurement for accountability. And really there, what we talked about last time is the purpose is to determine the application of rewards and sanctions or rewards and punishments. And that's really juxtaposed against measurement for improvement, which is... The purpose there is to learn our way to a system that produces a higher level of performance, right? And so let's look at measurement for research. We talked about the purpose being contributing to the knowledge base. If the questions that we're asking are about constructs or relationships between constructs or theories, then research is probably the direction we wanna go. An example question would be what's the relationship between two conceptual variables and what gets measured is... Could be numerous latent variables, but how often is this measurement happening? Typically once or twice during a study. And what we're trying to do is detect a relationship where they exist, right?   0:10:16.8 AS: So it could be... Like in a school, it could be a relationship between being late, the late rate and the absenteeism rate.   0:10:29.9 JD: Yeah. I mean, you could do research into why is it that student... Why are students chronically absent? You could do research into what's the best way scientifically to teach reading, right? And so you're gonna sort of come up with some answers there, at least answers that are sort of coming out of a lab, right? And a lot of times measurement for research or research goal or research study, that can be helpful to sort of initially point you in the right direction. You might do a literature review when you're trying to come up with solutions in your particular context.   0:11:10.3 AS: And it's important to remember that surveys properly done are a great form of research. So not only going back and seeing what's already been... What is the knowledge base on attendance, but also trying to do some research into what do students or teachers or parents think are root causes as an example.   0:11:33.3 JD: Sure.   0:11:34.8 AS: Okay. Great.   0:11:35.5 JD: Gives you a starting point, right? And so you certainly need measurement for research for sure. In that second bucket, we have measurement for accountability. And this is probably the thing that teachers and educators are most used to because there's accountability systems in all 50 states, right? And remember, we said the purpose is to determine who should be rewarded and who should be sanctioned. That's the purpose of an accountability measure. It's gonna answer questions about merit or status or accomplishment. It could be of someone like an individual teacher in a classroom, or perhaps about a school, for example. It's gonna answer questions like who's performing well and who isn't, who should be considered knowledgeable enough to do whatever, something X, right? But when we're talking about measurements, they're typically end-of-the-line outcomes, usually once per year after the fact. I've given state tests as an example multiple times. That's a very typical accountability measure end-of-the-line outcome. And why it's important to have quality measurement for accountability is that we can assign consequences based on measurement that lacks sufficient technical rigor so.   0:12:56.0 AS: Consequences as in rewards and sanctions?   0:13:00.4 JD: Could be... Yeah, consequences as in rewards and sanctions. And so there's technical guides that go with accountability systems. So how is the state, for example, calculating all of these different measures that show up on a school report card, test scores, value-added progress scores, chronic absenteeism rates? All those things have to be well-defined. Data has to be collected systematically. And it has to be done the same across the entire system so that rewards and sanctions are meted out equally amongst all the districts and schools and classrooms. But those two things are very different than measurement for improvement. And that's where I focus most of my time and where these talks really, really focus. And again, we said the purpose is to learn our way to a system that produces a higher level of performance.   0:13:48.4 JD: So we're talking about questions about specific changes as potential improvements to our systems. So some questions might be, are the changes I'm making leading to improvement? How are my changes affecting other parts of my system? And really, we're talking about outcomes and processes relevant to the object of change in terms of what gets measured. And that's happening... Those measurements for outcomes or processes are happening frequently as the practice or as the process occurs, right? Because we want feedback on a much more frequent basis than once or twice per study or at the end of the school year. That's one of the advantages here of measurement for improvement. And why does quality measurement matter in this particular area? Well, we wanna learn which changes are an improvement without wasting resources or will. Those are both very finite things in organizations, schools are... That's the same in schools.   0:14:55.2 AS: Will as in energy towards this objective, is that what you mean by will?   0:15:01.7 JD: Yeah. So two finite things, resources, which could be time or money. But will, I literally mean the will of the people, the will of the frontline people that you have to get on board with whatever this change is gonna be. And if you're moving between this thing and that, you sort of use up that will for good...   0:15:23.4 AS: It seems you have depleted the will of the people.   0:15:27.4 JD: And that happens all the time, especially where you're in a service business like education, the frontline people are being burned out all the time, teachers, in hospitals it's nurses and other folks in other industries. So that's the basic overview. And then I think one of the key things here is that there are some real measurement limitations when it comes to accountability measures and research measures or goals, when we're thinking about organizational improvement.   0:16:08.5 JD: I think the key limitation for accountability goals is that... The key limitation for improvement is that it does not illuminate why the outcomes occur or what should be done to change them when we're thinking about accountability system. For research, the key limitation for improvement is that it is impractical to administer it and not designed to inform changes in practice. So those are some real limitations. But what often happens, I think... And I should say again, like we said at the outset, that the three types of measurement are complementary. Like we need each of these three different types of performance measurement. But I think what happens is that problems arise when they're not used for their intended purpose. Remember, we said research, we wanna contribute to the knowledge base, that's the purpose. For accountability, application of award and sanctions. And for improvement, there we're actually learning our way to a better system, right? So, I thought it would be useful here. I may put you through like a little quiz here to apply the purposes of measurement to the right scenario. So, I have three situations here. They're unrelated to education. So, there's no pressure there. So, I'll read the three situations and then you're gonna tell me how would you... Which of the measurement purposes would you use?   0:17:47.7 AS: So, research, accountability, or improvement.   0:17:49.2 JD: Research, accountability, or improvement so.   0:17:53.6 AS: And I'm doing this on behalf of our listeners and readers so... And listeners and viewers.   0:17:55.7 JD: Everyone yeah.   0:17:56.7 AS: So, pay attention ladies and gentlemen, 'cause my answers may be wrong, but yours may be right. Okay.   0:18:01.7 JD: This is the check for understanding. This is a true education exercise here. And we're gonna be talking about avocados, right? So, there's no prior knowledge needed. So, I'll read through the first three situations, give you a chance to think, and I can repeat them if necessary, and you kind of think between those three. So, the first situation is rank the grocery stores in Columbus, Ohio, according to the quality of their avocados. So, would you use measurement for accountability, measurement for research, measurement for improvement? That's the first situation. The second situation is understand the relationship between weather, soil, acidity, and the eventual quality of an avocado grown in California. And the third situation is improve the quality of avocados on sale across all stores in Columbus. So, let's go back to that first situation. So, if you're gonna rank the grocery stores in Columbus according to the quality of their avocados, what type of measurement orientation makes the most sense?   0:19:15.5 AS: So I'm thinking accountability.   0:19:20.0 JD: Yeah, that's exactly right. Accountability, it's basically a grading system for avocados. You think how meat gets graded, it's grade A meat. That's really an accountability system.   0:19:33.6 AS: Okay, so listeners, viewers, did you get that one right? These are tough. John's a tough teacher. All right. Next one.   0:19:39.0 JD: You're one for one, and you have A grade schools, right? So you have A grade avocados, and that's an accountability measure. The second one was you're understanding the relationship between weather, soil, acidity, and the eventual quality of an avocado grown in California.   0:20:00.2 AS: Ladies and gentlemen, is this research, accountability, and improvement? Well, we've already eliminated accountability, so it's got to be either research or improvement. And if I get this one right, then I'm gonna get the third one right naturally. And I would say that sounds to me more like research.   0:20:15.8 JD: Yeah, that's exactly right. Research, right? So 'cause you're experimenting to see how the manipulation of variables, in this case weather, like the pH level of soil, acidity, impact the quality of an avocado. So you're basically a researcher trying to figure out what's the best combination of those things that gives you the best avocado. But this experimenting is gonna take probably years as you adjust those variables, right? And the last...   0:20:46.5 AS: Yeah, avocados don't grow so fast.   0:20:50.2 JD: They don't grow so fast, yeah. And then the third situation was you wanna improve the quality of avocados on sale across all stores in Columbus. There's only one left, so it's got to be...   0:21:03.5 AS: Well you used the word improve in it, so I think it's improvement orientation, huh?   0:21:06.8 JD: There you go. That's a giveaway. So aim is the quality of the avocado. So the basic theory of change is something like maybe improving the transport time from the field to the store. So there you can see that it's not like one is bad in terms of a measurement orientation and one is good. It's just... Is it being applied to the appropriate situation?   0:21:35.6 JD: There are certainly appropriate situations for accountability, appropriate situations for research and appropriate situations for improvement. So basically to sort of wrap this up, I mean, I thought it was really important because last time we talked, when you set the challenge and then it's gonna be something like a vision far out into the future, maybe two or three years, it's gonna be really important that that challenge is framed correctly because you're gonna be working on this thing for a long time. So with the model, we now have a way to bridge the gap between conditions and future aspirations. There's always gonna be a gap. We now have this model that gives us the scientific way of thinking and working to close the gap. And then we've said it's the responsibility of upper management to set this overall challenge as a key priority.   0:22:37.5 JD: And then we've said it's really important to understand the difference between these three types of performance measurement because conflation of the three can derail our improvement efforts. So the key takeaway here is you wanna frame this challenge or this far out direction that we're heading in as an organization as an improvement goal. And that's gonna orient the work. It's gonna orient the types of questions that you're asking. It's gonna orient the people, and the outcomes and processes that they're tracking. It's gonna orient your measurement system. You're gonna have to come up with frequent process and outcome measures that let you know how you're doing along the way. And the purpose of all of this is to learn our way to a better system. That's the purpose of measurement for improvement.   0:23:34.1 AS: That's great. A great summary. I wanna ask a question. Recently I've been teaching my corporate strategy course and I've been talking about the teachings of Richard Rumelt, who wrote the book called Good Strategy Bad Strategy, which is such a great book on strategy. But one of the things he complains about when he says his bad strategy is just setting an aspirational goal. Because as we learned from Dr. Deming, by what method? Like now, so there's... You've got to have a vision. You've got to have an aspiration of where you're going. But what he really focuses on... I think we're gonna talk about this in next sections. He really focuses on, have we really identified what the problem is?   0:24:21.7 AS: Like, what is the constraint? What is the thing that is holding us back from getting there? And what ends up happening is, when you clearly articulate the problem, what happens is it focuses... It becomes hard. Because to solve that problem, you need new resources. You need to get rid of old stuff. You've got to make substantial changes. And so it's much more comfortable for people to set strategies that are based upon wonderful visions. But never really deal with the problem. And then the workers in the companies, an employee in a company just looks up and goes, what did management just do for that long weekend? They did a weekend getaway to do their corporate strategy. And then they just came up with a fluffy vision of whatever with no help for us of how do we deal with the hardest problem is that we can't beat our competitor with the technology that we have. And we're never gonna get to that goal if we can't solve that problem.   0:25:28.7 JD: Yeah. And that's really the essence of the steps two, three, and four. I mean, the very next thing that we're gonna talk about is one, what's the current situation on the ground? Now we have this aspiration, but what's actually happening? For whatever data we have, whatever time period, 10 years, five years, whatever it is, we're gonna look at that data in a way that gives us a very firm understanding. And then remember, there's that crack in the model. That's the threshold of knowledge. So right up front, we're acknowledging.   0:25:58.0 AS: We don't know how to get over this. We don't know what's blocking us. We don't know...   0:26:03.3 JD: Yeah. We may have some ideas, but... Some initial ideas, but we do not know how to solve this chronic absenteeism problem. And that's where the experimentation comes in.   0:26:11.4 AS: So let me ask you one last question before we go. This is completely selfish, but also for the listeners and viewers out there, that is, I always ask my students this question in corporate strategy, should corporate strategy be kind of secretive in the sense that you're trying to build a competitive advantage and therefore some of the best battle attacks in war were kept secret. Stonewall Jackson was famous in his Shenandoah Valley campaign for not letting anybody know what he was gonna do the next morning. And then... Or should it be public? Like your number of 50 to five is pretty scary. And I'm just curious, what are your thoughts on that?   0:27:00.4 JD: Well, if you're in war, I think you should keep it secret. But pretty much anywhere else, I think public. Now that'd be my opinion. Now I'm in a school setting. I acknowledge that. But I've also seen...   0:27:11.4 AS: This is my quiz for you, by the way.   0:27:14.7 JD: What's that?   0:27:15.6 AS: This is my quiz for you.   0:27:15.7 JD: Your quiz for me. Yeah. Well, I have seen... And I've had the same thought. I think it was one of the founders of Toyota, or maybe someone that was an early CEO basically said, well, you give away your playbook basically. And he's like, well, just because someone has my playbook does not mean they can do it. And so education is a different orientation. There's not corporate secrets. And we're very open, we often share our practices. But I've often been on the...   0:27:45.2 AS: If you could get from 50 to five, you would want the world to know.   0:27:48.8 JD: I would want the world to know. I want everybody to do it. But I've been on the other side of this where I've gone to school and I've reached out to people get a manual or an artifact or something that they have that they do really well at their school system. And I look at it and I'm like, I don't know what to do with this. Right? So it's something altogether different to have the thing and then be able to do it. In our case, it's gonna benefit kids. We're gonna share it as far and wide as possible. So yeah, I think the setting matters. If I'm... The Union Army fighting Stonewall Jackson, then I'm gonna keep my secrets secret, my battle plan secret. But for most of the things I'm gonna share.   0:28:32.9 AS: Nathaniel Banks taking on Jackson. It was a rough series of battles for him. So I'll close out with my thoughts on this, which is that, yeah, I think ultimately once you've decided on what's your goal, where you wanna be, then I think you've got to make it public. And the reason why is because you need your employees to deliver that. It can't be... Everybody needs to be bought in. But even more importantly from a marketing and a relationship with customers, suppliers and others, they need to feel that vision. And they need to feel that mission. I think another great book is Start With Why. And that is why are we doing this? And I just read a great book on corporate strategy that is called Corporate Strategy Demystified.   0:29:25.5 AS: But it's just great because it was written in 2006. So he's talking about the battle between Apple and Compaq and Dell and all of these and IBM. And he doesn't know the outcome that Apple ends up being this multi-trillion dollar business. And basically his last sentence that I read in the last chapter is, it's over for Apple. They just can't compete in this space. And what he missed... This is what I'm teaching tonight, what he missed was the trusting connection that the customers had to Apple, to Apple's mission. Somehow Steve Jobs was able to create that mission and get it out to the world. And in the valley of death, when they were going through the worst time and it didn't seem like they were ever going to be able to do anything, it was customers that stuck with them because they believed in the mission of what they communicated. And it is that total, let's say intangible, that is very hard to measure and very hard to understand. But this is what I got when I was reading that book from 3:00 AM 'till 4:00 AM This morning, John.   0:30:44.4 JD: Whoever that author is was a small miss, a small miss.   0:30:48.8 AS: Yeah. And he's a brilliant guy. And so it's also a great point that just stick with your vision 'cause people's commitment to Apple and all that is so so strong. So being public about what you're doing and sharing it is critical because the last thing, as you said, even if somebody else has your playbook, I like to tell people that if somebody was working at General Motors and they had all the list of all the parts for Cadillac or whatever it is that they're building, and then they went to Toyota and said, build this, just because you have a list of parts and you have that operating system doesn't mean that they can build it because the product was actually designed for the operating system. And it's that entanglement in the actual process of production that makes that corporate strategy almost impossible to duplicate, even if you have the playbook.   0:31:41.8 JD: Yep. Yeah, that's it right there, I think. That's it.   0:31:46.5 AS: So fantastic. Well, on behalf of everyone at The Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. You can find John's book, Win-Win: W. Edwards Deming, The System of Profound Knowledge and the Science of Improving Schools on amazon.com. This is your host, Andrew Stotz. And I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming. "People are entitled to joy in work" and in school.  

Do you know the difference between a plan and a strategy? To reach your business goals, you need both. Today's guest shares a new approach to growth strategy. As the Founder and CEO of Demand Metric, Jesse Hopps has spent the last 18 years working with senior executives at many of the world's largest organizations to accelerate revenue growth with focused problem-solving. He's on a mission to help 500 clients earn $500K+/year in semi-retirement doing growth strategy work. He is disrupting what he calls the broken growth model of the Strategy Consulting industry, which is largely controlled by Ivy League firms that are being increasingly questioned about the effectiveness and value of their services. Demand Metric has served over 8,000 clients including Microsoft, Salesforce, Apple, Amazon, Fidelity Investments, US Bank, Verizon, and many more!  Building a Marketing Membership Jesse and his partners grew a community of over 250,000 marketing professionals through SEO content marketing and email. Their goal was to provide a productized version of consulting through research-based, customizable tools. Today they have over 670 templates, including everything from case studies to marketing plan presentations, job descriptions, and CRM assessments.  A major turning point for the company came when they started content licensing with large organizations, first the American Marketing Association (AMA) and later the Association of International Product Managers & Marketers (AIPMM). Those partnerships put Demand Metric on the map as a credible brand and industry leader. Soon enough, more organizations began to reach out for research reports and custom content. Plan vs. Strategy Jesse's mission is to disrupt the consulting industry by providing more value to the client. His approach is based on the book Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt, which focuses on challenges over goals. Most business leaders base their strategy on goals: they want to reach a certain revenue number and they have a plan to achieve that goal. But you need a strategy to overcome any potential obstacles on the path to that goal. The first step is to get all the issues on the table that might prevent you from achieving your vision. Then, figure out which problems you need to solve to make achieving your goal inevitable.  Enjoy this episode with founder Jesse Hopps… Soundbytes 12:46-13:20 “They taught me that if you've got emails and people that are engaged and a good audience, you can monetize this. I had no idea, that wasn't what we set out to do in our business. It was always a subscription model, working with these associations. I said, ‘What do people pay for that kind of thing?' They said, ‘We'll give you $5,000 if you send this email out. I said that's probably the easiest $5,000 I've ever made in my life.”  24:13-24:39 “Anyone who's been in consulting knows it can be very lonely if you're an entrepreneur or solopreneur. So having a group of others, going through building their business, bouncing ideas off of them…We've built online communities before. It's hard to get them really active and a great culture in a community, but this one kind of just took off on its own. I think mainly because there was a common purpose and vision for the group.” 31:03-31:24 “The art of strategy isn't so much about setting big goals and then creating a bunch of disconnected initiatives around hopefully all these things added up will equal us hitting the goal. It's about getting all the issues of why you maybe won't hit that goal on the table and figuring out what would need to be true, what would need to be solved, in order to make achieving that goal inevitable.” Quotes “Everything we've built has been based on request.”  “We take theory and turn it into simple, practical tools that are flexible and customizable.” “There was an alternative way to deliver value to a big company that the big consulting don't really do. The client taught me that there's a lot of value in having someone work alongside of them and their team as a coach.” “I want to disrupt the traditional consulting paradigm. I think the McKinseys of the world have been charging a lot of money for nice-looking plans, but a lot of them fail to get executed.”  “The art of strategy isn't so much about setting big goals… It's about getting all the issues of why you maybe won't hit that goal on the table.” Links mentioned in this episode: Demand Metric website: http://www.demandmetric.com  Connect with Jesse on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessehopps  Connect with Jesse on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jessehopps/ 

Seth Godin is back on your podcast for a conversation about Strategy, Time, Empathy, Games & Systems. And his new book "This is Strategy."  Hopefully, it will guide your own compass, decisions and actions today so we can serve those it's for in a way they want remarkably repeatable. Want to get Seths book? https://seths.blog/thisisstrategy   Curious on the Udemy course? https://udemy.com/course/this-is-strategy-with-seth-godin The other book mentioned The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists by Richard Rumelt https://amazon.com/Crux-How-Leaders-Become-Strategists/dp/B09WRTFWNZ   Quote: What am I stalling right now because I'm afraid?

Nghe trọn sách nói Chiến Lược Bứt Phá Từ McKinsey & Company trên ứng dụng Fonos: https://fonos.link/podcast-tvsn --Về Fonos:Fonos là Ứng dụng âm thanh số - Với hơn 13.000 nội dung gồm Sách nói có bản quyền, PodCourse, Podcast, Ebook, Tóm tắt sách, Thiền định, Truyện ngủ, Nhạc chủ đề, Truyện thiếu nhi. Bạn có thể nghe miễn phí chương 1 của tất cả sách nói trên Fonos. Tải app để trải nghiệm ngay!--"Thỉnh thoảng, một cách tiếp cận thực sự mới mẻ đối với chiến lược kinh doanh lại xuất hiện" - Giáo sư kinh doanh huyền thoại Richard Rumelt, Đại học UCLAĐây được xem là cuốn sách cấp tiến nhất, rõ ràng nhất và khác thường nhất của McKinsey & Company về chiến lược, cuốn sách mà hàng nghìn giám đốc điều hành đang sử dụng, cuốn sách phải đọc đối với tất cả các giám đốc điều hành C-Suite đang muốn tạo ra các chiến lược công ty thành công.Chiến lược Beyond the Hockey Stick đang dẫn đầu một cuộc cách mạng thực nghiệm trong lĩnh vực chiến lược. Dựa trên phân tích sâu rộng về các yếu tố chính thúc đẩy hiệu quả hoạt động lâu dài của hàng nghìn công ty toàn cầu, cuốn sách này đưa ra một công thức mang tính đột phá cho phép bạn đánh giá khách quan khả năng thành công thực sự của các chiến lược."Cuốn sách này chứa đựng những nguyên tắc cần thiết. Các nguyên tắc được trình bày ở đây, cùng với dữ liệu hấp dẫn, là một cách tuyệt vời để giải quyết những cạm bẫy xã hội trong quá trình phát triển chiến lược." - Frans Van Houten, Giám đốc điều hành Royal Philips N.V.--Tìm hiểu thêm về Fonos: https://fonos.vn/Theo dõi Facebook Fonos: https://www.facebook.com/fonosvietnam/

Send us a Text Message.Most OKR frameworks focus on what you want to accomplish, but not how. They're great for setting strategy and direction, but they don't help you identify the tactical tasks that will get those things done. The real stumbling block ain't the strategies or the OKRs, it's how they align with daily tasks. That's where most OKR frameworks fall short.In this episode, I share how you can make OKRs work better for you and your team. To come up with a framework that works in real life, we borrowed some elements of Andy Grove's OKR model and Richard Rumelt's kernel of good strategy and then connected them to the projects and daily work.I work you through the key sections including a shared diagnosis, a clear strategy, measurable objectives, and a practical roadmap. This simple structure then syncs daily activities with overarching goals and helps your team connect the big-picture strategy with the daily grind.You can get our Notion OKR Template here: https://stunandawe.gumroad.com/l/strategy-okr-notion-template Here's what I cover:The Problem with Traditional OKRsBuilding a Better OKR Framework with NotionDiagnosing Your Current RealityDesigning Your StrategySetting Objectives and Key ResultsCreating a Roadmap and InitiativesImplementing with Sprints and TasksWhere to find Michel:Newsletter: https://www.stunandawe.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/micheljgagnon/X: https://twitter.com/michelgagnonSupport the Show. Do you have a question you'd like me to answer on the podcast or feedback to share? Leave me a message here. You'll find all the show notes, transcripts, and past guests at stunandawe.com Up your growth game with our hands-on Growth Marketing Course For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email marketing@stunandawe.com. Support the show on Patreon Follow us: LinkedIn Twitter

Roger Martin is one of the world's leading experts on strategy and the author of Playing to Win, one of the most beloved books on strategy. He's written extensively for the Harvard Business Review; consulted for dozens of Fortune 500 companies, including P&G, Lego, and Ford; and written 11 other books. In our conversation, we discuss:• The five key questions you need to answer to develop an effective strategy• Why most companies get strategy wrong• How to avoid “playing to play” instead of playing to win• Real-world strategy examples from Procter & Gamble, Southwest Airlines, Lego, and Figma• How to think about differentiation vs. low cost• Shortcomings of current strategy education• Much more—Brought to you by:• Webflow—The web experience platform• WorkOS—Modern identity platform for B2B SaaS, free up to 1 million MAUs• Cycle—Your feedback hub, on autopilot—Find the transcript at: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-ultimate-guide-to-strategy-roger-martin—Where to find Roger Martin:• X: https://x.com/RogerLMartin• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roger-martin-9916911a9/• Website: https://rogerlmartin.com/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Roger's background(02:20) The importance of strategy(07:00) Challenges in developing strategy(08:30) Critique of modern strategy education(14:00) Hamilton Helmer and Richard Rumelt(17:40) Defining strategy(19:12) The Strategy Choice Cascade(23:20) Playing to win vs. playing to play(24:57) Examples of strategic success(30:49) Differentiation and moats(40:23) Applying strategy to real-world scenarios(43:47) Customer-centric strategy(44:45) Defining the market and product(45:59) Value chain and distribution(48:28) Cost leadership vs. differentiation(53:16) Capabilities and management systems(57:14) Competitive advantage and market positioning(01:02:41) Counterpositioning and fault lines(01:05:53) Adapting to AI and market changes(01:14:11) Betterment over perfection(01:18:42) Final thoughts on strategy—Referenced:• Nearly 10% of S&P 500 CEOs are alumni of Procter & Gamble: https://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/news/2023/02/06/10-of-s-p-500-ceos-pg.html• FigJam: https://www.figma.com/figjam/• Figma: https://www.figma.com/• What Is Resource-Based Theory?: https://www.igi-global.com/dictionary/the-impact-of-technological-governance-and-political-capabilities-on-firms-performances-under-economic-turbulence/67915• Michael Porter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/professorporter/• Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors: https://www.amazon.com/Competitive-Strategy-Techniques-Industries-Competitors/dp/0684841487• VRIO Framework Explained: https://strategicmanagementinsight.com/tools/vrio/• Business strategy with Hamilton Helmer (author of 7 Powers): https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/business-strategy-with-hamilton-helmer• Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/good-strategy-bad-strategy-richard• 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy: https://www.amazon.com/7-Powers-Foundations-Business-Strategy/dp/0998116319• Boston Consulting Group: https://www.bcg.com/• Bruce Henderson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Henderson• Lego: https://www.lego.com• Vanguard: https://investor.vanguard.com/• Southwest Airlines: https://www.southwest.com/• How Amazon Managed to Dethrone Walmart: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/20/technology/how-amazon-beat-walmart.html• GM Lost a 10-Year Battle with Tesla, Pulling the Plug on a Long Line of EVs: https://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2023/07/09/gm-killed-its-electric-cars-and-lost-a-10-year-battle-with-tesla/• Westlaw: https://www.westlawinternational.com/• What Is an Economic Moat? Why Warren Buffett Says It Matters for Investors: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/economic-moat-why-warren-buffett-160046125.html• Salomon Brothers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salomon_Brothers• US Airways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways• Four Seasons: https://www.fourseasons.com/• Michael Dell on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mdell/• Bill Gates on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamhgates/• Mandarin Oriental: https://www.mandarinoriental.com/en/• Continental Lite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_Lite• Ted (airline): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_(airline)• Case Study: Oil of Olay: https://www.studocu.com/es/document/universidad-de-murcia/estrategia-de-marketing/case-study-old-of-olay/95079369• AG Lafley on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ag-lafley-2381b3201/• Jack Bogle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_C._Bogle• Seven Ways Windows 95 Changed the World: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ianmorris/2015/08/24/windows-95-changed-the-world/• Where to Start with Strategy? Focus on Betterment: https://rogermartin.medium.com/where-to-start-with-strategy-bae40506304c• Brick by brick: The man who rebuilt the house of Lego shares his leadership secrets: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2016/12/08/brick-by-brick-the-man-who-rebuilt-the-house-of-lego-shares-his-leadership-secrets/• A New Way to Think: Your Guide to Superior Management Effectiveness: https://www.amazon.com/New-Way-Think-Management-Effectiveness/dp/164782351X/• Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works: https://www.amazon.com/Playing-Win-Strategy-Really-Works/dp/142218739X• The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking Is the Next Competitive Advantage: https://www.amazon.com/Design-Business-Thinking-Competitive-Advantage/dp/1422177807• The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking: https://www.amazon.com/Opposable-Mind-Successful-Integrative-Thinking/dp/1422118924• When More Is Not Better: Overcoming America's Obsession with Economic Efficiency: https://www.amazon.com/When-More-Not-Better-Overcoming/dp/1647820065—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

In this episode of China Manufacturing Decoded, Adrian and Renaud discuss the evolving role of software in the development and manufacturing of electronic products. They explore how software has become a significant source of competitive advantage, often surpassing hardware in importance. Using examples from smartphones to cars, they illustrate how software drives innovation, user experience, and brand differentiation. The discussion also highlights the strategic shift from hardware-centric to software-centric designs, inspired by insights from Richard Rumelt's book, "Good Strategy, Bad Strategy." Whether you're a manufacturer or a tech enthusiast, this episode offers valuable perspectives on the critical balance between hardware and software in today's electronic products.   Show Sections 00:00 - Introduction to the Importance of Software in Electronic Products. 05:38 - Evolution of Chip Design at Intel. 10:14 - Transition from Vertical to Horizontal Structure in Computers. 13:19 - Challenges and Expenses of Hardware Modifications. 15:24 - Advantages of Software Updates over Hardware Changes. 19:19 - Increasing Importance of Software in the Automotive Industry. 22:48 - Utilizing Software for Differentiation in Products. 26:06 - Building Brand Recognition through Software Interaction. 26:55 - Wrapping up.   Related content... Purchase the book referred to: Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters 8 Must-Follow Tips for Software Companies Developing a New Hardware Product Can Sofeast develop our electronic product's firmware or mobile app?   Get in touch with us Contact us via Sofeast's contact page Connect with us on LinkedIn Subscribe to our YouTube channel Send us an X @sofeast Prefer Facebook? Check us out on FB  

Welcome to Growthmates. This is Kate Syuma, Growth advisor, previously Head of Growth Design at Miro. I'm building Growthmates as a place to connect with inspiring leaders to help you grow yourself and your product. Here you can learn how companies like Dropbox, Adobe, Canva, Loom and many more are building excellent products and growth culture. Get all episodes and a free playbook for Growth teams on our brand-new website — growthamtes.club, and press follow to support us on your favorite platforms. Thanks for reading Kate's Syuma Newsletter & Growthmates! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.Listen now and subscribe on your favorite platforms — Apple, Spotify, or watch on YouTube (new!).In this episode, I met Bruno Berger — a VP of Design and Product Management who worked in companies like Google, Metabase, and now he's teaching “Design for PMs” on Reforge. We discuss Bruno's career journey, the integration of design and product management, and best practices for improving collaboration between designers and PMs. We also explored Bruno's strategies for combining design and product management to enhance team collaboration and project success.By the end of this episode, you can learn how to make your PM and Design collaboration better by adjusting the ways of working, building trust, and how to align faster to make it the most rewarding thinking partnership.This episode is supported by Appcues — the platform that helps you design, deploy, and test captivating onboarding experiences.Appcues created the Product Adoption Academy to help you level up your product adoption for free. Check out the template that I created to help companies uncover meaningful improvements. Find an example of Dropbox Onboarding inside and apply it to review any growth flows: appcues.com/growthmatesKey highlights from this episode that you can implement right away

How do you know that the learning you and your colleagues are doing is leading to changes in behavior? In this episode, Bill and Andrew discuss little tests you can do to see if the transformation you're working toward is really happening.  0:00:02.0 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussion with Bill Bellows, who has spent 30 years helping people apply Dr. Deming's ideas to become aware of how their thinking is holding them back from their biggest opportunity. Today is episode 22, and the title is, Test for Understanding Transformation. Bill, take it away.   0:00:30.7 Bill Bellows: Hey, we've been at this podcast for about a year now, right?   0:00:36.6 AS: It's incredible how long it's been.   0:00:39.8 BB: And in the beginning you said, I've been at this for 30 years, right?   0:00:43.7 AS: Yeah.   [laughter]   0:00:46.7 BB: Maybe we should change that to 31.   0:00:48.3 AS: Oh, man, there you go.   0:00:51.2 BB: All right.   0:00:53.0 AS: That reminds me of the joke of the janitor at the exhibition of the dinosaurs and the group of kids was being led through the museum and their guide had to run to the bathroom. And so they were looking at this dinosaur and they asked the janitor, "How old is that dinosaur?" And he said, "Well, that dinosaur is 300,032 years old." "Oh, how do they know it so exactly?" He said, "Well, it was 300,000 when I started working here 30 years ago."   [laughter]   0:01:28.8 AS: So there we are.   0:01:31.4 BB: That's great.   0:01:33.3 AS: Thirty-one years.   0:01:34.0 BB: All right, all right, all right. So first thing I wanna say is, as you know and our listeners know, I go back and listen to this podcast and I interact with people that are listening too, and I get some feedback. And in episode 19, I said the Germans were developing jet engines in the late 1940s. No, it turns out the Germans were developing jet engines in the late 1930s and they had a fighter plane with a turbine engine, a developmental engine in the late '30s. They didn't get into full-scale development and production. Production didn't start till the tail end of the war. But anyway, but I was off by a decade. In episode 21, I mentioned that checks were awarded within Rocketdyne for improvement suggestions and individuals who submitted this and it could be for an individual, maybe it was done for two people, three people, I don't know, but they got 10% of the annual savings on a suggestion that was implemented in a one-time lump sum payment.   0:02:36.1 BB: So you got 10% of the savings for one year and I thought, imagine going to the president of the company and let's say I walk into the president's office and you're my attorney. And I walk in and I say, "Hey, Mr. President, I've got a suggestion. You know that suggestion program?" He says, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Come on in, come on in. And who's this guy with you?" "Well that's Andrew Stotz." "And who's Andrew?" "He's my attorney, and he and I have been thinking about what this is worth." "Well, tell me about it." "No, well, before we get into it, we've got this form to sign here."   0:03:10.9 AS: Andrew.   0:03:11.1 BB: "Right? And you wanna see the idea or not? But we don't have to share it." But I thought, imagine people going to great length and really taking advantage of it. Well, a few of us that were involved in our InThinking Roadmap training, what we started to propose is we want a piece of the action, Andrew. So the proposal we had is that, Andrew, if you come to one of our classes, a study session on The New Economics or Managing Variation of a System, we'll have you sign a roster, right? And so if you are ever given a check for big numbers, Andrew, then we're gonna claim that our training contributed to your idea and all we ask is 10%, right?   0:03:58.1 AS: Of your 10%.   0:04:00.9 BB: I mean, I think that's fair, right? But imagine everybody in the organization becoming a profit center.   0:04:08.7 AS: Crazy.   0:04:10.4 BB: That's what you get. All right.   0:04:14.5 AS: And the lesson from that is focus on intrinsic motivation. People wanna make improvements, they wanna contribute.   0:04:23.8 BB: You start... You go down the slippery slope of incentives, which will be part of what we look at later. There's just no end to that. All right?   0:04:31.4 AS: Yeah.   0:04:32.2 BB: So I mentioned in a previous podcast that I had an interaction, met the army's first woman four-star general, and I just wanna give you some more background and interesting things that happened with her relative to this test for understanding transformation. I don't know April, May, 2008, someone on her staff reached out to me and when they first... When the guy got a hold of me, I said... From the Pentagon, he called me, I think it was like 8:00 or 9:00 o'clock at night here. Whatever it was, it was after hours in LA so it was after hours in DC. I remember saying to the guy, "How did you find me?" He says, "There's a lot of stuff on the internet." So he says, "I came across a presentation you did for Goodwill Industries." And he says, "In there you talk about... " He says, "There's some really good stuff in there."   0:05:29.0 BB: And I said, "Like what?" He said, "You have a slide in there about you can minimize loss to society by picking up nails in a parking lot." And that was an example of what I used Dr. Taguchi's work, minimizing loss to society. I said, "Yeah, I remember that slide." He says, "We don't do enough of that in the Army." And he says, "Hey, we've got a conference next week, late notice. The keynote speaker bailed out." And he's calling me on a Monday. The presentation's a week from Wednesday and he says... And also he said that the Army had an initiative called Enterprise Thinking and Enterprise Thinking was part of what we called our effort within Rocketdyne. We used the terms Enterprise Thinking, organizational awareness, and that InThinking personal awareness. We were using those two terms. So he did a search on that, found my name, and he says, "What do you think?" And he says, "We're gonna... "   0:06:24.3 BB: If I agree, we'll have a follow-up vetting call the next day. So he calls me up the next day and it's him and a two-star general. There are three people in the room, all senior officers, and he says, "Okay, so, but tell us what you do." So I shared the last... It sounds funny, is what seems to have been the last straw in their interest was having me speak, was my last straw story. Remember the executive from the European airline and... Right? So I tell that story about my efforts within Rocketdyne and Boeing about this airline executive and how this deeply resonated with this executive of this customer of this company that buys a lot of Boeing airplanes that we focused on the one cause, not the greater system.   0:07:13.2 BB: And within minutes of sharing that story, they started laughing, leading to it a few minutes later to them saying, "you're the one."   0:07:19.2 AS: [laughter] That's very interesting.   0:07:21.3 BB: You're the one. So for our listeners, I'd say, let this be a reminder of how a personal story guided by insights on how Dr. Deming's System of Profound Knowledge can open doors for you. And you can use that story, come up with your own stories, but you just never know when you're gonna be in a situation where you need a really simple story. So as an aside, they contact me, like I mentioned, 10 years later, and I think I shared with you offline that the speaker I was replacing was the great Richard Rumelt, the strategy professor from UCLA, who for whatever reason needed to bail out. And then when this podcast is posted, I'll put a link to the slides of the presentation.   0:08:05.7 BB: It's about 45 minutes long. What was not covered... I went back and looked at it earlier to say, what did I share with them that got them so excited? All I know is it fit into 45 minutes to an hour. What was not covered was the trip reports, whether Red Pen or Blue Pen, Last Straw/All Straw, Me/We organizations. But after it was done, as I'm coming off the stage, General Dunwoody in uniform comes up to me. She was thrilled. Her exact words were, "You hit it." She says, "Bill, you hit it out of the park." And I thought, well, I had help from a lot of people. She then says something to me that I'll never forget. So we're face-to-face, right? Let me just... Right?   0:08:45.1 BB: And she says to me, "Bill, you've got a real challenge on your hands. Bill, you've got a real challenge on your hands." So prompted by that, I held my hand out, my right hand, which is what you do to initiate a handshake, and then she reaches out to shakes my hand and I said, "General Dunwoody, we have a challenge on our hands." [laughter] And she erupted in laughter. And my only regret, even though we went out for drinks for the next couple of hours, but my regret was not having a photo of her and I doing a double high five as she laughed. So then I remained in touch with her for the next six to eight months when she was promoted to four-star and she looked for opportunities to get me to the Pentagon, which she did. And I was trying to get her or somebody on her staff to come to Rocketdyne to learn more about what we're doing.   0:09:38.1 BB: But I say I share this anecdote as an example of a Test for Understanding of a transformation. So what is a TFU, test for understanding? This is something I got exposed to in my Kepner-Tregoe Problem Solving and Decision Making training, which I talked about in one of the first episodes. And in our training to deliver what was then a five-day course, we were coached on how to interact with seminar attendees, including how to answer questions and how to ask questions. And one of the things we got our knuckles wrapped for was saying, are there any questions? Because no one answers that. There is... And if I had said that when I was being certified, I'd have failed. So instead we're coached on how to ask questions or make comments, which serve as a test for someone's understanding of what I presented.   0:10:27.9 BB: For example, for me to reply to General Dunwoody with we have a challenge on our hands was to test her understanding of what I said and her laughter is a response that I could be expecting with something short. As an aside, an appreciation, we've talked about Ackoff's D-I-K-U-W model data, raw data information. You turn that into what, where, when, extent, knowledge. If we convert that to how does something operate looking inside of an automobile, how do the pieces work together? Remember he said understanding is when you look outward 'cause knowledge looking inward, Russ would say, doesn't tell you why the car is designed for four passengers. That comes from looking outward. And then wisdom is what do we do with all this? Well, the Kepner-Tregoe training was Test for Understanding and now that I'm inspired by Ackoff, well in my university classes, I ask "Test for Information" classes. I have them watch videos and say, what company was Russ working for?   0:11:31.1 BB: This anecdote, that's information. Nothing wrong with those questions. I can ask for "Test for Knowledge" questions asking how something operates. So what I don't know is like, why are they called Test for Understanding? They could be Test for Knowledge, Test for Information, Test for Wisdom. And obviously TFI test for information could be true, false, multiple choice and test for knowledge and understanding could be short, but then I want to go deeper. And so what I wanna share is in one of my university courses, I share the following, true, you can't make it up news stories. It says, once upon a time a national airline came in dead last on on-time performance one month even though it had offered its employees everything from cash to pizza to finish first in the US Department of Transportation's monthly rankings. Does that sound like incentives, Andrew?   0:12:33.0 AS: It's all there.   0:12:33.8 BB: If we finish first, pizza parties. Now if they got exposed to Rocketdyne, they'd be handing out checks for $10,000. So in one of the research essays, for a number of the courses, every week, every module, I give them a research essay very similarly, giving them a situation and then what's going on with the questions is having them think about what they've been exposed to so far. And so question one in this assignment is given this account, list five assumptions that were made by the management team of this airline? And so I just wanna share one student's response. He says, "assumption one..." And also let me say this comes from the second of two Deming courses I do. So these students have been exposed to a one, one-semester course prior to this. So this is not intro stuff. This is getting deep into it.   0:13:34.3 BB: And so anyway he says, "assumption one, offering incentives like cash and pizza would motivate employees to prioritize on-time performance." Okay? That's an assumption. "Assumption two, employee morale and satisfaction directly correlate with on-time performance. Assumption three, the issue of on-time performance primarily stems from..." Are you ready? "Employee motivation or effort. The incentives provided were perceived as valuable by employees." And you're gonna love where this goes. "Assumption five, employees have significant control over factors that influence on-time performance such as aircraft maintenance, air traffic control and weather conditions."   0:14:20.2 AS: Good answers.   0:14:23.0 BB: Again, what I think is cool and for our listeners is what you're gonna get in question two, three, four, and five is builds upon a foundation where these students have, for one and a half semesters been exposed to Deming, Taguchi, Ackoff, Gipsie Ranney, Tom Johnson, the System of Profound Knowledge, hours and hours of videos. And so this is my way of Testing their Understanding. And so if you're a university professor, you might find interest in this. If you're within an organization, this could be a sense of how do you know what people are hearing in your explanations of Deming's work or whatever you're trying to bring to your organization? So anyway, I then have them read a blog at a Deming Institute link, and I'll add this blog when this is posted but it's deming.org/the insanity of extrinsic motivation. All right. And they've been exposed to these concepts but I just said, "Hey, go off and read this blog." And it was likely a blog by John Hunter.   0:15:32.0 AS: Yep.   0:15:32.2 BB: All right, question two. All right. Now it gets interesting, is that "in appreciation of Edward de Bono's, "Six Thinking Hats"," which they've been exposed to, "and the Yellow Hat, which is the logical positive, why is this such a great idea? Listen, explain five potential logical, positive benefits of incentives, which would explain why they would be implemented in a ME Organization." And so what's seen is I have them put themselves in a ME Organization, put on the Yellow Hat and think about what would be so exciting about this. And so logical, positive number one. "Incentives can serve as a powerful motivator for individuals within the organization, driving them to achieve higher levels of performance and productivity. When employees are offered rewards for their efforts, they're more likely to be motivated to excel in their roles," Andrew. Logical positive number two, enhanced performance. Explanation, "by tying incentives to specific goals or targets, organizations can encourage employees to focus their efforts on key priorities and objectives.   0:16:46.9 BB: This can lead to improved performance across various aspects of the business, ultimately driving better results." Number three, attraction and retention of talent. Oh, yeah. Explanation, "offering attractive incentives can help organizations attract top talent and retain existing employees. Attractive incentives can serve as a key differentiator for organizations seeking to attract and retain skilled professionals." Now, let me also say, this is an undergraduate class. As I mentioned, this is the second of two that I offer. Many of these students are working full-time or part-time. So this is coming from someone who is working full-time, probably mid to late 20s. So these are not... They're undergraduates but lifewise, they've got a lot of real-world experience.   0:17:44.0 BB: All right. Logical positive four, promotion of innovation and creativity. Explanation, "incentives can encourage employees to think creatively and innovative in their roles. By rewarding innovative ideas and contributions, organizations can foster..." Ready, Andrew? "A culture of creativity and continuous improvement, driving long-term success and competitive advantage." And the last one, positive organizational culture. "Implementing incentives can contribute to a positive organizational culture characterized by recognition, reward and appreciation. When employees feel valued and rewarded for their contributions, they're more likely to feel engaged, satisfied, and committed to the organization." But here's what's really cool about this test for understanding, I get to position them in the framework of a ME Organization with the Yellow Hat.   0:18:40.9 BB: Now question three, in appreciation of Edward de Bono's, "Six Thinking Hats" and the Black Hat, what Edward calls a logical negative, list and explain five potential aspects of incentives, which would explain why they would not be implemented in a WE Organization. And this is coming from the same person. This is why I think it's so, so cool that I wanna share with our listeners. The same person's being forced to look at it both ways. Negative number one, potential for... Ready, Andrew? "Unintended consequences." Oh my God. "Incentives can sometime lead to unintended consequences such as employees focusing solely on tasks that are incentivized while neglecting other important aspects of their roles. This tunnel vision can result in suboptimal outcomes for the organization as a whole."   0:19:30.7 BB: "Number two, risk of eroding intrinsic motivation. Explanation, offering external rewards like incentives can undermine intrinsic motivation leading employees to become less interested in the work and more focused on earning rewards. Number three, creation of unhealthy competition. Explanation, incentives can foster a competitive culture within the organization where employees may prioritize individual success over collaboration and teamwork. This competitive atmosphere can breed..." Ready? "Resentment and distrust among employees." Can you imagine that, Andrew? Resentment and distrust? That seems like it would clash with my previous positive thought, but it really just points out how careful management needs to be.   0:20:19.0 AS: Yes.   0:20:19.2 BB: All right. Cost considerations. "Implementing incentive programs can be costly for organizations, particularly if the rewards offered are substantial or if the program is not carefully managed. Organizations may be hesitant to invest resources and incentives, especially if they're uncertain about the return on investment if budget is of concern." And then number five, "short-term focus over our long-term goals." Explanation, "incentives often improve short-term gains rather than long-term strategic objectives. Employees may prioritize activities that yield immediate results, even if they're not aligned with the organization's broader goals or values."   0:21:02.7 BB: And then question four, here's the kicker. "In appreciation of your evolving understanding of the use of incentives, share, if you would, a personal account of a memorable attempt by someone to use incentives to motivate you, so that so many pizza parties or bringing a small box of donuts or coffee in for working a weekend I was supposed to have off." And then question five, "in appreciation of your answer to question four, why is this use of incentives so memorable to you? They were very ineffective. I often felt insulted that my boss thought that $20 worth of pizza or donuts made up for asking me to give 50% of my days off that week."   0:21:55.5 AS: Here's a donut for you.   0:22:00.6 BB: Here's a doggy bone, here's a doggy bone. I just wanted to share that this time. Next time we'll look at more.   0:22:09.3 AS: One of the things that...   0:22:10.6 BB: There are other examples of Test for Understanding. Go ahead, Andrew.   0:22:12.3 AS: One of the things that I wanted to... What you made me think about is that you and I can talk here about the downside of incentives but we have to accept the world is absolutely sold on the topic of incentives.   0:22:27.2 BB: Absolutely.   0:22:27.8 AS: A 100, I mean, 99.999% and if you're not sold on it, you're still gonna be forced to do it.   0:22:34.5 BB: Well, you know why they're sold on them, 'cause they work.   0:22:39.7 AS: It's like a shotgun. One of those pellets is gonna hit the target but...   0:22:47.7 BB: That's right.   0:22:48.4 AS: A lot of other pellets are gonna hit...   0:22:50.6 BB: And that's all that matters. And then what you get into is, you know what, Andrew, that that one person walks away excited, right? And that's the pellet that I look at. And I say, yep, and what about those others? You know what I say to that, Andrew? Those others, you know what, Andrew, you can't please everybody.   0:23:07.8 AS: Yeah.   0:23:07.9 BB: So this is so reinforcing. There's one person that gets all wrapped up based on my theory that this is a great thing to do and I hone in on that. And everything else I dismiss as, "ah, what are you gonna do? You can't please everybody." But what's missing is, what is that doing to destroy their willingness to collaborate with the one I gave the award to?   0:23:33.1 AS: Yeah, I'm picturing a bunch of people and laying on the ground injured by the pellets but that one black, or that one... Let's say the one target that we were going after, that target is down but there's 50 other people down also.   0:23:50.6 BB: No, but then this is where I get into the white bead variation we talked about early, early on, is that if all I'm doing is measuring, have you completed the task and we're looking at it from a black and white perspective and you leave the bowling ball in the doorway for the next person, meaning that you complete a task with the absolute minimum requirements for it to be deemed complete. Does the car have gas? Yes. You didn't say how much but when people then... When those people that were summarily dismissed didn't receive the award, when they go out and don't share an idea, don't give somebody a warning of something or not even maliciously leave the bowling ball in the doorway but believe that the way to get ahead is to do everything as fast as possible, but in doing so, what you're doing is creating a lot of extra work for others, and then you get promoted based on that. Now you get into... In episode 22 we talked about, as long as there's no transparency, you get away with that. And then the person at the end of the line gets buried with all that stuff and everybody else says, well, my part was good and my part was good. How come Andrew can't put these together?   0:25:26.8 AS: In wrapping this up, I want to think just briefly about how somebody... So we're talking about understanding transformation, but we're also talking about incentives.   0:25:39.8 BB: Yes.   0:25:40.5 AS: And I would like to get a takeaway from you about how somebody who lives in a world of incentives, how do they, after listening to this, go back to their office and how should they exist? It's not like they can run away from a structure of incentives. Maybe when they become CEO, they decide, I'm not gonna do it that way, but they're gonna go back to their office and they're gonna be subjected to the incentive system. Obviously, the first thing is we wanna open up their mind to think, oh, there's more to it than just, these darned employees aren't doing what I'm telling them, even when I'm giving them incentives. But what would you give them as far as a takeaway?   0:26:27.1 BB: Well, I'll give you some examples of what some brilliant colleagues did at Rocketdyne, as they became transformed, as they became aware, and one is politely decline. Say, I don't, I don't need that. Just again you have to be careful there. There could be some misinterpretations of that. So you have to be...   0:27:03.2 AS: What if you're required to put an incentive system on top of your employees?   0:27:09.5 BB: Well, first, if it's coming down to you to go off and implement this, then one thing you could do is create a system which is based on chance. Everyone who contributed an idea, their name goes into a lottery for free lunch the first Wednesday of the month, and everybody knows. So then we're using the incentive money but using it in a way that everyone deems as fair. So that's one thing. And you just say, I'll... So then if your boss asks, have you distributed the incentive money? You say, yes, but you're distributing it based on a system of chance of which everyone realize they stand an equal chance of winning.   0:27:56.9 AS: Okay. So let's address that for a second. So your boss believes in incentives. They ask you to implement this system. Now you proposed one option, which is to do something based upon chance, but now let's look at your employees under you that have been indoctrinated their whole life on the concept of incentives. And you give them a system of chance and they're gonna come back and say, wait a minute, you're not rewarding the person who's contributing the most here? Now obviously you have a teaching moment and you can do all that, but is there any other way that you can deal with this?   0:28:33.7 BB: No, it could be tough. You've got to... You may have to go along until you can create a teaching moment. And what I did with the colleagues, when there are these a "great minds doing great things" events, and an announcement would go out as to who are the privileged few that got invited to these events, and I would tell people that if you go to the event, then that's what I would say. You can decline, you can politely decline. There's some things you can decline.   0:29:17.4 AS: I guess the other thing you could do, you could also... When you have to, when you're forced to reward, you can celebrate everybody's contribution while you're also being forced to give that incentive to that one person that has been deemed as the one that contributed the most.   0:29:36.9 BB: Well, I'll give you another example that a colleague did, a work colleague. He didn't do it in a work setting. Not that it couldn't be done in a work setting, but he signed up to be as a judge in a science fair in a nearby school. It was a work-related thing. And as it got closer, he realized... It was a... It would involve... What is a science fair without the number one science experiment? And my theory is you can't get a bunch of adults and a bunch of kids together in any organized way without giving out an award that just, it's like, oh, we got everybody together. We got to find a way to single somebody out. So when he realized what was going on, instead of not going, what he did, he took it upon himself to interact with every kid whose science experiment he watched and asked them lots of questions about it, about what inspired them? What did they learn?   0:30:30.6 BB: So what he wanted by the end of the day was that they were more intrigued that someone came and really wanted to know what they learned and less inclined to listen to who won the award. And I've seen that in a work setting, again, where we had events and the next thing you know there's an award and I thought, well, what can we do? Well, we can go around and really engage in the people who's got tables set up for the share fair knowing at the end of the day, we have this. We just can't break this, we just can't break this.   0:31:08.2 AS: Yeah. All right. So...   0:31:10.3 BB: But the other thing I've seen, I've seen people who received rewards, use that money. Literally, one guy in the quality organization at Rocketdyne received an award. It might have been for a $1000. He used the money, Andrew, to buy copies of The New Economics for everyone in the organization.   [laughter]   0:31:31.7 AS: Well, that brings us to another possibility, is that you convince your boss that you at least want to give... You want to reward the whole department.   0:31:40.5 BB: Yes.   0:31:40.9 AS: Any reward that you do, you want to reward your whole department. And so that could be something that your boss would say, "Okay, go ahead and do that." And they're not gonna go against it as opposed to trying to, say, no, I won't do it this way, but...   0:32:02.1 BB: Well, towards that end, I've seen people that are rewards crazy. At Rocketdyne, there's one guy in particular in a machine shop manufacturing environment and some big program wanted to thank five out of the 50 people in his organization with t-shirts. And he said, "You either give me 50 t-shirts or no t-shirts."   0:32:27.6 AS: Yeah.   0:32:28.8 BB: And I thought that was really cool 'cause this... And I don't know to what degree his exposure to what we were doing, but I thought that's what we need more of. Come back with 50 shirts and we'll take them.   0:32:44.1 AS: Okay. Let's wrap this up by doing a brief wrap-up of why you're saying... Why you've titled this Test for Understanding and what can the listeners take away.   0:32:56.6 BB: The idea is again, if in a seminar learning event situation is one thing, but if you're involved in leading in a transformation within your respective organizations, what I'm suggesting is that you think about how to Test the Understanding of that transformation's progress with your audience. And we talked in the past about leaving a coffee cup in the hallway, see if it's still there. That's a Test for Understanding of the culture of the organization. And that's what I'm suggesting here, is there are simple things you can do such when somebody says, come see what my son did. You can say, your son? Or is it, was there a spouse involved? And just as you become aware of the nuances of this transformation, you could be looking at somebody look at two data points and draw a conclusion and they're just a day out of some seminar with you about understanding variation and they're looking for a cause of one data point shift.   0:34:13.0 BB: So it's just, what can you do day in and day out, just your little things to test the organization or test an individual's understanding of this transformation process that we're talking about, which is, how are you seeing things differently? Are you becoming more aware of incentives and their destruction, more aware of theories? That's all. What just came to mind is... And the other aspect of it was this idea that very deliberately with the foundation of ME and WE, Red Pen/Blue Pen, then you can build upon that by saying to somebody, how might a Blue Pen Company go off and do this? How might a red pen company go off and do that? And that's not a guarantee that either one of them is right, but I find it becomes a really neat way on an individual basis to say, as you just pointed out, Andrew, so how would I as a manager in a Blue Pen Company deal with that awkward situation?   0:35:19.2 BB: Well, if I was in a red pen, this is what I would do. And so it's not only testing for understanding, but also the power of this contrast. And that's what I found with a group recently, especially the students. If I give them the contrast, I think it's easier for them to see one's about managing things in isolation and all that beckon such as belief in addition and root cause analysis, and one's about looking at things as a system. So it's not just Test for Understanding, but a test of both foundations is what I wanted to get across.   0:35:57.0 AS: Okay, great. Bill, on behalf of everyone at The Deming Institute, I wanna thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. If you wanna keep in touch with Bill, hey, you can find him on LinkedIn and he listens. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming. I mean, I say this quote every time until I will be bored stiff of it, but "people are entitled to joy in work."

Dr. Deming developed his philosophy over time and in conversations with others, not in isolation. As learners, we tend to forget that context, but it's important to remember because no one implements Deming in isolation, either. In this conversation, Bill Bellows and host Andrew Stotz discuss how there's no such thing as a purely Deming organization and why that's good. TRANSCRIPT 0:00:02.2 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm continuing my discussions with Bill Bellows, who has spent 30 years helping people apply Dr. Deming's ideas to become aware of how their thinking is holding them back from their biggest opportunities. Today is episode 20, entitled, System of Profound Wisdom. Bill, take it Away.   0:00:31.6 Bill Bellows: But not just for 30 years. I forgot to say I started when I was 12.   0:00:36.6 AS: Yes. [laughter] Yes. And you've got the hair to prove it.   [laughter]   0:00:43.7 BB: All right. Now, actually, I was thinking the proposal and the title, I thought... I mean, System of Profound Wisdom is cool, System of Profound Questions. Either one of those is good. Let's see which title comes out.   0:00:57.6 AS: Yeah. And I think we'll have to also understand that may some listeners that may not even know what System of Profound Knowledge means, they've been listening. They do. But if today's their first episode, we also gotta break that down, just briefly.   0:01:10.9 BB: Yeah. Okay, let's do that. All right. Well, let me give an opening a quote from Dr. Deming from chapter three, and then we can explain this SoPK, System of Profound Knowledge, thing. But in chapter three of Dr. Deming's last book, The New Economics, the last edition, edition three, came out in 2018. And chapter three, Dr. Deming says, "We saw in the last chapter, we are living under the tyranny of the prevailing style of management. Most people imagine that this style has always existed. It is a fixture. Actually, it is a modern invention a trap that has led us into decline. Transformation is required. Education and government, along with industry, are also in need of transformation. The System of Profound Knowledge to be introduced in the next chapter is a theory for transformation." So you wanna...   0:02:15.4 AS: That's good.   0:02:16.7 BB: So let's say something. Let's just say something about SoPK. How would you explain that?   0:02:23.1 AS: Yeah. Well, actually, I wanna talk very briefly about what you just said, because it's just...   0:02:27.1 BB: Oh, sure.   0:02:29.6 AS: At one point, I thought, "It's a system of knowledge." But he just said it was a system of transformation.   0:02:38.7 BB: It's a theory for transformation.   0:02:40.1 AS: A theory for transformation. Okay, got it. I see. And one of the things that I... I look at Toyota so much just 'cause it's so fascinating and how they've survived all these years, the continuity in the business, the continuity and the profitability of the business, the continued march to become the number one auto producer in the world, and having faced all the ups and downs and survived. And I just think that what they have is a learning organization. No matter what the challenge is, they're trying to apply learning tools, like System of Profound Knowledge, like PDSA, to try to figure out how to solve this problem. And I think that many companies, including at times my companies, [chuckle] we sometimes will scramble and we'll lose knowledge and we won't gain knowledge. And so the System of Profound Knowledge, to me, is all about the idea of how do we build a base of knowledge in our business and then build upon that base of knowledge rather than destroy it when the new management comes in or when a new management idea comes in.   0:04:00.7 AS: And that's something I've just been thinking about a lot. Because I do know a company that I've been doing some work with, and they basically threw away a huge amount of work that they did on System of Profound Knowledge and stuff to go with the prevailing system of management, is like going back. And now, they just produced a loss in the first quarter, and I just think, "Interesting. Interesting."   0:04:27.6 BB: Well, a couple things come to mind based on what you said. One is I would propose that Toyota, I'm in agreement of "Toyota's a learning organization." And that'll come up later. I've got some other thoughts on learning organizations. And we know that they were influenced by Dr. Deming. To what degree, I'm not sure of. Shoichiro Toyoda, who is one of the sons of the founder of the Toyota Motor Car Company, was honored with a Deming prize in 1990. And I believe it came from JUSE, as opposed to the American Society for Quality. One or the other. He was honored with a Deming Prize.   0:05:32.0 AS: Yep.   0:05:33.5 BB: Again, I don't know if it's Deming Prize or Deming Medal. But I know he was honored. What's most important, the point I wanna make is, upon receiving it he said, "There is not a day that goes by that I don't think about the impact of Dr. Deming on Toyota." But, if I was to look at the Toyota Production System website, Toyota's Toyota Production System website, which I've done numerous times, I'd be hard-pressed to find anything on that page that I could say, "You see this word, Andrew? You see this sentence, Andrew? You see this sentiment? That's Deming." Not at all. Not at all. It's Taiichi Ohno. It's Shigeo Shingo. I'm not saying it's not good, but all those ideas predate Deming going to Japan in 1950. Taiichi Ohno joined Toyota right out of college as an industrial engineer in 1933, I believe. The Japanese Army, I mentioned in a previous episode, in 1942, wanted him to move from Toyota's loom works for making cloth to their automobile works for making Jeeps. This comes from a book that I would highly recommend. Last time we were talking about books. I wanted to read a book, I don't know, maybe 10 years ago. I wanted to read a book about Toyota, but not one written by someone at MIT or university. I didn't wanna read a book written by an academic. I've done that.   0:07:15.1 BB: I wanted to read a book by somebody inside Toyota, get that perspective, that viewpoint. And the book, Against All Odds, the... Wait I'll get the complete title. Against All Odds: The Story of the Toyota Motor Corporation and the Family That Changed it. The first author, Yukiyasu Togo, T-O-G-O, and William Wartman. I have a friend who worked there. Worked... Let me back up. [chuckle] Togo, Mr. Togo, born and raised in Japan, worked for Toyota in Japan, came to the States in the '60s and opened the doors to Toyota Motors, USA. So, he was the first person running that operation in Los Angeles. And it was here for years. I think it's now in Texas. My late friend, Bill Cummings, worked there in marketing. And my friend, Bill, was part of the team that was working on a proposal for a Lexus. And he has amazing stories of Togo. He said, "Any executive... " And I don't know how high that... What range, from factory manager, VPs. But he said the executives there had their use, free use, they had a company car. And he said Togo drove a Celica. Not a Celica. He drove a... What's their base model? Not a...   0:08:56.2 AS: A Corolla?   0:08:57.7 BB: Corolla. Yes, yes, yes. Thank you. He drove a Corolla. He didn't drive... And I said, "Why did he drive a Corolla?" Because it was their biggest selling car, and he wanted to know what most people were experiencing. He could have been driving the highest level cars they had at the time. Again, this is before a Lexus. And so in this book, it talks about the history of Toyota, Taiichi Ohno coming in, Shigeo Shingo's contributions, and the influence of Dr. Deming. And there's a really fascinating account how in 1950, a young manager, Shoichiro Toyoda, was confronted with a challenge that they couldn't repair the cars as fast as they could sell them. This is post-war Japan. They found a car with phenomenal market success. Prior to that, they were trying to sell taxicabs, 'cause people could not... I mean, buying a car as a family was not an option. But by 1950, it was beginning to be the case. And the challenge that Shoichiro Toyoda faced was improving the quality, 'cause they couldn't fix them as fast as they could sell them. And yet, so I have no doubt that that young manager, who would go on to become the chairman, whatever the titles are, no doubt he was influenced by Dr. Deming. But I don't know what that means.   0:10:23.4 BB: That does not... The Toyota Production System is not Deming. And that's as evidenced by this talk about eliminating waste. And those are not Deming concepts. But I believe, back to your point, that his work helped create a foundation for learning. But I would also propose, Andrew, that everything I've read and studied quite a bit about the Toyota Production System, Lean, The Machine That Changed The World, nothing in there explains reliability. To me, reliability is how parts come together, work together. 'Cause as we've talked, a bunch of parts that meet print and meet print all over the place could have different levels of reliability, because meeting requirements, as we've talked in earlier episodes, ain't all it's cracked up to be. So I firmly believe... And I also mentioned to you, I sat for 14 hours flying home from Japan with a young engineer who worked for Toyota, and they do manage variation as Dr. Taguchi proposed. That is not revealed. But there's definitely something going on. But I would also say that I think the trouble they ran into was trying to be the number one car maker, and now they're back to the model of, "If we are good at what we do, then that will follow."   0:11:56.8 BB: And I'm gonna talk later about Tom Johnson's book, just to reinforce that, 'cause Tom, a former professor of management at Portland State University, has visited Toyota plants numerous times back before people found out how popular it was. But what I want to get into is... What we've been talking about the last couple episodes is Dr. Deming uses this term, transformation. And as I shared an article last time by John Kotter, the classic leadership professor, former, he's retired, at the University... Oh, sorry, Harvard Business School. And what he's talking about for transformation is, I don't think, [chuckle] maybe a little bit of crossover with what Dr. Deming is talking about. What we talked about last time is, Deming's transformation is a personal thing that we hear the world differently, see the world differently. We ask different questions. And that's not what Kotter is talking about. And it's not to dismiss all that what Kotter is talking about, but just because we're talking about transformation doesn't mean we mean the same thing.   0:13:10.6 BB: And likewise, we can talk about a Deming organization and a non-Deming organization. What teamwork means in both is different. In a Deming organization, we understand performance is caused by the system, not the workers taken individually. And as a result of that, we're not going to see performance appraisals, which are measures of individuals. Whereas in a non-Deming organization, we're going to see performance appraisals, KPIs flow down to individuals. [chuckle] The other thing I had in my notes is, are there really two types of organizations? No, that's just a model. [chuckle] So, really, it's a continuum of organizations. And going back to George Box, all models are wrong, some are useful. But we talked earlier, you mentioned the learning organization. Well, I'm sure, Andrew, that we have both worked in non-Deming organizations, and we have seen, and we have seen people as learners in a non-Deming organization, but what are they learning? [chuckle] It could be learning to tell the boss what they want to hear. They could be learning to hide information that could cause pain. [chuckle] Those organizations are filled with learners, but it's about learning that makes things worse. It's like digging the pit deeper. What Deming is talking about is learning that improves how the organization operates, and as a result, improves profit. In a non-Deming organization, that learning is actually destroying profit.   0:14:51.8 BB: All right. And early, spoke... Russ, Russ and Dr. Deming spoke for about three hours in 1992. It got condensed down to a volume 21 of The Deming Library, for which our viewers, if you're a subscriber to DemingNEXT, you can watch it in its entirety. All the Deming videos produced by Clare Crawford-Mason are in that. You can see excerpts of volume 21, which is... Believe is theory of a system of education, and it's Russ Ackoff and Dr. Deming for a half hour. So you can find excerpts of that on The Deming Institute's YouTube channel.   0:15:37.0 BB: And what I wanted to bring up is in there, Russ explains to Dr. Deming the DIKUW model that we've spoken about in previous episodes, where D is data. That's raw numbers, Russ would say. I is information. When we turn those raw numbers into distances and times and weights, Russ would say that information is what the newspaper writer writes, who did what to whom. Knowledge, the K, could be someone's explanation as to how these things happened. U, understanding. Understanding is when you step back and look at the container. Russ would say that knowledge, knowledge is what you're using in developing to take apart a car or to take apart a washing machine and see how all these things work together. But understanding is needed to explain why the driver sits on the left versus the right, why the car is designed for a family of four, why the washing machine is designed for a factor of four. That's not inside it. That's the understanding looking outward piece that Russ would also refer to as synthesis. And then the W, that's the wisdom piece. What do I do with all this stuff? And what Russ is talking about is part of wisdom is doing the right things right. So, I wanted to touch upon in this episode is why did Dr. Deming refer to his system as the System of Profound Knowledge? Why not the System of Profound Understanding? Why not the System of Profound Wisdom? And I think, had he lived longer, maybe he would have expanded. Maybe he would have had...   0:17:28.4 BB: And I think that's the case. I think it's... 'Cause I just think... And this is what's so interesting, is, if you look at Dr. Deming's work in isolation and not go off and look at other's work, such as Tom Johnson or Russ, you can start asking questions like this.   0:17:45.7 AS: One thing I was going to interject is that I took my first Deming seminar in 1989, I believe, or 1990. And then I took my second one with Dr. Deming in 1992. And then soon after that, I moved to Thailand and kind of went into a different life, teaching finance and then working in the stock market. And then we set up our factory here for coffee business. But it wasn't until another 10 years, maybe 15 years, that I reignited my flame for what Dr. Deming was doing. And that's when I wrote my book about Transform Your Business with Dr. Deming's 14 Points. And what I, so, I was revisiting the material that had impacted me so much. And I found this new topic called System of Profound Knowledge. I never heard of that. And I realized that, it really fully fledged came out in 1993, The New Economics, which I didn't get. I only had Out of the Crisis.   0:18:49.9 BB: '93.   0:18:49.9 AS: Yeah. And so that just was fascinating to go back to what was already, the oldest teacher I ever had in my life at '92, leave it, come back 10, 15 years later and find out, wait a minute, he added on even more in his final book.   0:19:10.4 BB: Well, Joyce Orsini, who was recruited by Fordham University at the encouragement of Dr. Deming, or the suggestion of Dr. Deming to lead their Deming Scholars MBA program in 1990. Professor Marta Mooney, professor of accounting, who I had the great fortune of meeting several times, was very inspired by Dr. Deming's work. And was able to get his permission to have an MBA program in his name called the Deming Scholars MBA program. And when she asked him for a recommendation, "Who should lead this program?" It was Joyce Orsini, who at the time I think was a vice president at a bank in New York. I'm not sure, possibly in human resources, but I know she was in New York as a vice president.   0:20:10.0 BB: And I believe she had finished her PhD under Dr. Deming at NYU by that time. And the reason I bring up Joyce's name, I met her after Dr. Deming had died. Nancy Mann, who is running a company called Quality Enhancement Seminars with, a, at the beginning one product, Dr. Deming's 4-Day seminar, when Dr. Deming died, and I had mentioned, I was at his last seminar in December '93, she continued offering 4-day seminars. And I met her later that year when she was paired with Ron Moen and they were together presenting it, and others were paired presenting it. And at one point, as I got to know Joyce, she said, "His last five years were borrowed time." I said, "What do you mean?" She said, "He started working on the book in 19'" evidently the '87, '88 timeframe, he started to articulate these words, Profound Knowledge.   0:21:11.0 BB: And I know he had, on a regular basis, he had dinner engagements with friends including Claire Crawford-Mason and her husband. And Claire has some amazing stories of Deming coming by with these ideas. And she said, once she said, "What is this?" And he is, she took out a napkin, a discretely, wrote down the, "an understanding of the difference between intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation. Difference between understanding special causes versus common causes." And she just wrote all this stuff down, typed it up. When he showed up the next week, she greeted him at the door and said, and she said, he said, This is Claire. And Claire said, he said, "What's that?" He says, "Well, I took notes last week."   0:21:54.2 BB: And he says, "I can do better." [chuckle] And so week by week by week. And as he interacted with the people around him, he whittled it down. And I'm guessing it put it into some, there's a technique for grouping things, you, where on post-it notes and you come up with four categories and these things all go over here. There's one of the elements of that, one of the 16 had to, or 18 or so, had to do with Dr. Taguchi's loss function. So that could have gone into the, maybe the variation piece, maybe the systems piece. But Joyce said, basically he was frustrated that the 14 Points were essentially kind of a cookbook where you saw things like, "cease dependence on inspection" interpreted as "get rid of the inspectors." And so he knew and I'd say, guided by his own production of a system mindset, he knew that what he was articulating and the feedback were inconsistent.   0:23:01.9 BB: And I've gotta keep trying. And she said, "His last five years on borrowed time as he was dying of cancer, was just trying to get this message out." So I first got exposed to it 19, spring of '90 when I saw him speaking in Connecticut. And I was all about Taguchi expecting him to, I didn't know what to expect, but I knew what I was seeing and hearing from Dr. Taguchi when I heard Dr. Deming talk about Red Beads. I don't know anything about that, common cause and special cause, I didn't know anything about that. And so for me, it was just a bunch of stuff, and I just tucked it away. But when the book came out in '93, then it really made sense. But I just had to see a lot of the prevailing style of management in the role I had as an improvement specialist, become, [chuckle] a firefighter or a fireman helping people out.   0:24:01.5 AS: I noticed as I've gotten older that, I do start to connect the pieces together of various disciplines and various bits of knowledge to realize, so for instance, in my case, I'm teaching a corporate strategy course right now at the university. Tonight's, in fact, the last night of this particular intake. And my area of expertise is in finance, but now I see the connection between strategy and finance, and how a good strategy is going to be reflected in superior financial performance relative to peers. And of course, I know how to measure that very well. So I can synthesize more and more different areas of things that I know things about, that I just couldn't do when I was younger. So I can see, and he was always learning, obviously. So I can see how he, and also I can also see the idea of, I need bigger principles. I need bigger as you said, theory for transformation. I need, I need to be able to put this into a framework that brings all that together. And I'm still feeling frustrated about some of that, where I'm at with some of that, because I'm kind of halfway in my progress on that. But I definitely can see the idea of that coming later in life as I approach the big 6-0.   0:25:37.3 BB: The big 6-0, [chuckle] Well, but a big part, I mean, based on what you're talking about, it ended up... Previously we spoke about Richard Rumelt's work, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, and I mentioned that I use a lecture by Richard Rumelt, I think it was 2011 or so. It was right after his book, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy came out. He spoke at the London School of Economics, and our listeners can find it if you just did a Google search for Richard Rumelt, that's R-U-M... One M. E-L-T. Good Strategy/Bad Strategy. LSE, London School of Economics. Brilliant, brilliant lecture. And I've seen it numerous times for one of my university courses. And he is like Deming, he doesn't suffer fools. And, it finally dawned on me, Deming organizations, if we can use this simple Deming versus non-Deming or Red Pen versus Blue Pen, and as, George Box would say, all models are wrong, some are useful. If we can use that model, I think it's easy to see that what frustrates Rumelt is you've got all these non-Deming companies coming up with strategies without a method.   0:27:00.0 BB: What Rumelt also talks about is not only do you need a method, but you have to be honest on what's in the way of us achieving this? Again, Dr. Deming would say, if you didn't need a method, why don't you're already achieving the results? And so it just dawned on me thinking the reason he's so frustrated, and I think that's one word you can use to describe him, but if he is talking to senior staff lacking this, an understanding of Deming's work, then he is getting a lot of bad strategies. And organizations that would understand what Dr. Deming's talking about, would greatly benefit from Rumelt's work. And they would be one, they'd have the benefit of having an organization that is beginning or is understanding what a transformation guided by Dr. Deming's work is about. And then you could look up and you're naturally inclined to have good or better strategy than worser strategies.   0:28:02.2 BB: And then you have the benefit of, profit's not the reason, profit is the result of all that. And, but next thing I wanna point out is, and I think we talked about it last time, but I just wanted to make sure it was up here, is I've come across recently and I'm not sure talking with who, but there's this what's in vogue today? Data-driven decisions. And again, whenever I hear the word data, I think backed in Ackoff's DIKUW model, I think data-driven. Well, first Dr. Deming would say, the most important numbers are unknown and unknowable. So if you're doing things on a data-driven way, then you're missing the rest of Dr. Deming's theory of management. But why not knowledge-driven decisions, why not understanding-driven decisions And beyond that, why not, right? How long... [laughter] I guess we can... Part of the reason we're doing these Andrew is that we'd like to believe we're helping people move in the direction from data-driven decisions to wisdom-driven decisions, right?   0:29:13.1 AS: Yeah. In fact, you even had the gall to name this episode the System of Profound Wisdom.   0:29:24.0 BB: And that's the title.   0:29:24.9 AS: There it is.   0:29:28.9 BB: But in terms of, I'll give you a fun story from Rocketdyne years ago, and I was talking with a manager in the quality organization and he says, "you know what the problem is, you know what the problem is?" I said, "what?" He says, "the problem is the executives are not getting the data fast enough." And I said, "what data?" He says "the scrap and rework data, they're just not getting it fast enough." So I said, "no matter how fast they get it, it's already happened."   [laughter]   0:30:00.0 BB: But it was just, and I just couldn't get through to him that, that if we're being reactive and talking about scrap and rework, it's already happened. By the time the... If the executives hear it a second later, it's already happened. It's still old news.   0:30:14.7 AS: And if that executive would've been thinking he would've said, but Bill, I want to be on the cutting edge of history.   0:30:23.1 BB: Yeah, it's like...   0:30:24.6 AS: I don't want information, I don't want old information, really old. I just want it as new as it can be, but still old.   0:30:32.9 BB: Well, it reminds me of an Ackoff quote is, instead of... It's "Change or be changed." Ackoff talked about organizations that instead of them being ready for what happens, they create what's gonna happen, which would be more of a Deming organizational approach. Anyway, we talked about books last time and I thought it'd be neat to share a couple books as one as I've shared the Against All Odds Book about Toyota.   0:31:08.8 AS: Which I'll say is on Amazon, but it's only looks like it's a used book and it's priced at about 70 bucks. So I've just...   0:31:16.2 BB: How much?   0:31:16.8 AS: Got that one down? 70 bucks? Because I think it's, you're buying it from someone who has it as a their own edition or something. I don't know.   0:31:23.8 BB: It's not uncommon. This is a, insider used book thing. It's not uncommon that you'll see books on Amazon for 70, but if you go to ThriftBooks or Abe Books, you can, I have found multi-$100 books elsewhere. I don't know how that happens, but it does. Anyway, another book I wanted to reference in today's episode is Profit Beyond Measure subtitle, Extraordinary Results through Attention to Work and People, published in 2000. You can... I don't know if you can get that new, you definitely get it old or used, written by, H. Thomas Johnson. H is for Howard, he goes by Tom, Tom Johnson. Brilliant, brilliant mind. He visited Rocketdyne a few times.   0:32:17.1 BB: On the inside cover page, Tom wrote, "This book is dedicated to the memory of Dr. W. Edwards Deming, 1900-1993. May the seventh generation after us know a world shaped by his thinking." And in the book, you'll find this quote, and I've used it in a previous episode, but for those who may be hearing it first here and Tom's a deep thinker. He's, and as well as his wife Elaine, they're two very deep thinkers. They've both spoke at Rocketdyne numerous times. But one of my favorite quotes from Tom is, "How the world we perceive works depends on how we think. The world we perceive is the world we bring forth through our thinking." And again, it goes back to, we don't see the world as it is. We see the world as we are. We hear the world as we are. I wrote a blog for The Deming Institute. If our listeners would like to find it, if you just do a search for Deming blog, Bellows and Johnson, you'll find the blog. And the blog is about the book Profit Beyond Measure. And in there, I said, “In keeping with Myron Tribus' observation that what you see depends upon what you thought before you looked, Johnson's background as a cost accountant, guided by seminars and conversations with Dr. Deming, prepared him to see Toyota as a living system,” right? You talk about Toyota.   0:33:53.9 BB: He saw it as a living system, not a value stream of independent parts. And that was, that's me talking. I mean, Tom talked about Toyota's living system. And then I put in there with the Toyota Production System, people talk about value streams. Well, in those value streams, they have a defect, good part, bad part model that the parts are handed off, handed off, handed off. That is ostensibly a value stream of independent parts 'cause the quality model of the Toyota Production System, if you study it anywhere, is not Genichi Taguchi. It's the classic good parts and bad parts. And if we're handing off good parts, they are not interdependent. They are independent. And then I close with, "instead of seeing a focus on the elimination of waste and non-value added efforts, Johnson saw self-organization, interdependence, and diversity, the three, as the three primary principles of his approach, which he called Management By Means." And so what's neat, Andrew, is he, Tom was as a student of Deming's work, attending Dr. Deming seminars, hearing about SoPK, System of Profound Knowledge, and he in parallel developed his own model that he calls Management By Means. But what's neat is if you compare the two, there's three principles. So he says self-organization.   0:35:31.0 BB: Well, that's kind of like psychology and people. So we can self-organize interdependence, the other self-organized, but we're connected with one another. So that's, that's kind of a systems perspective there as well. And the third one, diversity. So when I think of diversity, I think of variation. I can also think in terms of people. So that what I don't see in there explicitly is Theory of Knowledge. But Tom's developing this model in parallel with Dr. Deming's work, probably beginning in the early '80s. And part of what Tom had in mind, I believe, by calling it Management By Means, is juxtaposing it with that other management by, right? You know the other one, Andrew, management by?   0:36:33.8 AS: You mean the bad one or the good one, Management By Objective?   0:36:37.8 BB: Or Management By Results. Or Dr. Deming once said, MBIR, Management by Imposition of Results. But what's neat is, and this is what I cover and with my online courses, Tom is really, it's just such insight. Tom believes that treating the means as the ends in the making. So he's saying that the ends are what happen when we focus on the means, which is like, if you focus on the process, you get the result. But no, MBIR, as we focus on the result, we throw the process out the window. And so when I've asked students in one of my classes is, why does Tom Johnson believe that treating the means as an ends in the making is a much surer route to stable and satisfactory financial performance than to continue as most companies do? You ready, Andrew? To chase targets as if the means do not matter. Does that resonate with you, Andrew?   0:37:44.1 AS: Yes. They're tampering.   0:37:46.8 BB: Yeah. I also want to quote, I met Tom in 1997. I'm not sure if this... Actually, this article is online and I'll try to remember to post a link to it. If I forget, our listeners can contact me on LinkedIn and I'll send you a link to find the paper. This is when I first got exposed to Tom. It just blew me away. I still remember there at a Deming conference in 1997, hearing Tom talk. I thought, wow, this is different. So, Tom's paper that I'm referencing is A Different Perspective on Quality, the subtitle, Bringing Management to Life. Can you imagine? “Bringing Management to Life.” And it was in Washington, DC, the 1997 conference. And then Tom says, this is the opening. And so when Tom and his wife would speak at Rocketdyne or other conferences I organized.   0:38:44.0 BB: Tom read from a lectern. So he needed a box to get up there and he read, whereas Elaine, his wife, is all extemporaneous. Both deeply profound, two different styles. So what Tom wrote here is he says, "despite the impression given by my title, Professor of Quality Management, I do not speak to you as a trained or a certified authority on the subject of quality management. I adopted that title more or less casually after giving a presentation to an audience of Oregon business executives just over six years ago. That presentation described how my thinking had changed in the last five years since I co-authored the 1987 book, Relevance Lost, the Rise and Fall of Management Accounting, and the talk which presaged my 1992 book, Relevance Regained." And this is when he... After he wrote, Relevance Lost, he went on the lecture circuit, he met the likes of Peter Scholtes and Brian Joiner, got pulled into the Deming community.   0:39:45.4 BB: And then he wrote this scathing book called Relevance Regained and the subtitle is... I think our audience will love it, From Top-Down Control to Bottom-Up Empowerment. Then he goes on to say, "in that I told how I had come to believe that management accounting, a subject that I had pursued and practiced for over 30 years." Over 30 years, sounds familiar. Then he says, "could no longer provide useful tools for management. I said in essence that instead of managing by results, instead of driving people with quantitative financial targets, it's time for people in business..." And this is 30 years ago, Andrew. "It's time for people in business to shift their attention to how they organize work and how they relate to each other as human beings. I suggested that if companies organize work and build relationships properly, then the results that accountants keep track of will what? Take care of themselves."   0:40:50.8 AS: It's so true, it's so true.   0:40:54.1 BB: Yeah, it sounds so literally Tom was writing that in 1999, 2000. Well, actually no, that was 1997, that was 1997, but the same sentiment.   0:41:03.4 AS: It just makes me think of the diagram that we see and that Deming had about the flow through a business, it's the same thing as of the flow from activity to result.   0:41:20.6 BB: Yes.   0:41:21.9 AS: And when we focus on the result and work backwards, it's a mess from a long-term perspective, but you can get to the result. It's not to say you can't get to the result, but you're not building a system that can replicate that. But when you start with the beginning of that process of how do we set this up right to get to that result, then you have a repeatable process that can deliver value. In other words, you've invested a large amount in the origination of that process that then can produce for a much longer time. Um, I have to mention that the worst part of this whole time that we talk is when I have to tell you that we're almost out of time 'cause there's so much to talk about. So we do need to wrap it up, but, yeah.   0:42:09.3 BB: All right. I got a couple of closing thoughts from Tom and then we'll pick this up in episode 21.   0:42:21.3 AS: Yep.   0:42:22.9 BB: Let me also say, for those who are really... If you really wanna know... I'd say, before you read The New Economics... I'm sorry, before you read Profit Beyond Measure, one is the article I just referenced, “Bringing Quality to Life” is a good start. I'd also encourage our readers to do a search. I do this routinely. It shouldn't be that hard to find, but look for an article written by Art Kleiner, Art as in Arthur, Kleiner, K-L-E-I-N-E-R. And the article is entitled, Measures... The Measures That Matter. I think it might be What Are The Measures That Matter? And that article brilliantly written by Kleiner who I don't think knows all that much about Deming, but he knows a whole lot about Tom Johnson and Robert Kaplan, who together co-authored "Relevance Lost" and then moved apart. And Tom became more and more Deming and Kaplan became more and more non and finally wrote this article.   0:43:35.6 AS: Is this article coming out in 2002, "What Are The Measures That Matter? A 10-year Debate Between Two Feuding Gurus Shed Some Light on a Vexing Business Question?"   0:43:46.4 BB: That's it.   0:43:47.2 AS: There it is and it's on the...   0:43:47.4 BB: And it is riveting.   0:43:50.8 AS: Okay.   0:43:50.8 BB: Absolutely riveting. Is it put out by...   0:43:54.0 AS: PwC, it looks like and it's under strategy...   0:43:58.5 BB: Pricewaterhouse...   0:43:58.8 AS: Yeah, strategy and business.   0:44:00.2 BB: PricewaterhouseCooper? Yeah.   0:44:01.3 AS: Yeah.   0:44:03.1 BB: And 'cause what's in there is Kleiner explaining that what Tom's talking about might take some time. You can go out tomorrow, Andrew, and slash and burn and cut and show instant results. Now what you're not looking at is what are the consequences? And so... But... And then... But Kleiner I think does a brilliant job of juxtaposing and trying to talk about what makes Kaplan's work, the Balanced Scorecard, so popular. Why is Tom so anti that?   0:44:37.9 BB: And to a degree, it could be for some a leap of faith to go over there, but we'll talk about that later. Let me just close with this and this comes from my blog on The Deming Institute about Profit Beyond Measure and I said, "for those who are willing and able to discern the dramatic differences between the prevailing focus of systems that aim to produce better parts with less waste and reductions to non-value-added efforts," that's my poke at Lean and Six Sigma, "and those systems that capitalize on a systemic connection between parts. Tom's book, Profit Beyond Measure, offers abundant food for thought. The difference also represents a shifting from profit as the sole reason for a business to profit as the result of extraordinary attention to working people, a most fitting subtitle to this book."   0:45:35.9 AS: Well, Bill, on behalf of everyone at The Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for the discussion and for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. If you wanna keep in touch with Bill, just find him on LinkedIn. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming, "People are entitled to Joy in work" and I hope you are enjoying your work.    

Richard Rumelt is a legend in the world of strategy. He's the author of Good Strategy/Bad Strategy and The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists, both of which are often recommended by guests on this podcast. From his early days teaching in Iran at a Harvard-sponsored business school to teaching at Harvard Business School itself to over four decades teaching at UCLA's Anderson School of Management, Richard's impact resonates globally. His strategic insights are sought after by major corporations including Microsoft, Shell, Apple, AT&T, Intel, and Commonwealth Bank and by governmental organizations such as the U.S. Army Special Operations Command. In this episode, we discuss:• The essential components of a good strategy• The importance of coherence in strategy• Common pitfalls that create a bad strategy• How “power” plays into strategy, and common sources of power• The value of knowing history when developing effective strategies• Why a strategy should simply be called an “action agenda”• The need for one decider in an organization—Brought to you by:• CommandBar—AI-powered user assistance for modern products and impatient users• Miro—A collaborative visual platform where your best work comes to life• Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security.—Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/good-strategy-bad-strategy-richard-rumelt/—Where to find Richard Rumelt:• Email: richard@generalimagination.com• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-rumelt-18520828/• Website: https://thecruxbook.com/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Richard's background(04:29) What is a strategy?(06:23) The essential components of a good strategy (the “kernel”)(15:04) An example of good strategy(16:55) Bad strategy(25:17) The importance of focus and power(28:19) Identifying and utilizing power(34:38) Types of power(41:13) Implementing power(48:15) The importance of historical knowledge(55:23) How to write an action agenda(01:02:47) The crux(01:10:40) Challenges to executing a strategy(01:15:44) The need for a decider(01:20:39) Strategy for startups(01:26:04) Richard's “value denials” exercise(01:31:01) Closing thoughts(01:33:57) Lightning round—Referenced:• China's Xi says ‘reunification' with Taiwan is inevitable: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/31/chinas-xi-says-reunification-with-taiwan-is-inevitable.html• The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists: https://www.amazon.com/Crux-How-Leaders-Become-Strategists/dp/1541701240• Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters: https://www.amazon.com/Good-Strategy-Bad-Difference-Matters/dp/0307886239• Fundamental Issues in Strategy: A Research Agenda: https://www.amazon.com/Fundamental-Issues-Strategy-Research-Agenda/dp/0875843433/• Strategy, Structure, and Economic Performance: https://www.amazon.com/Strategy-Structure-Economic-Performance-Richard/dp/0875841090• There's more than the CIA and FBI: The 17 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community: https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-17-intelligence-agencies-20170112-story.html• Programme for International Student Assessment: https://www.oecd.org/pisa/• Gerstner: Changing Culture at IBM—Lou Gerstner Discusses Changing the Culture at IBM: https://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/gerstner-changing-culture-at-ibm-lou-gerstner-discusses-changing-the-culture-at-ibm• Marvin Lieberman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marvin-lieberman-2a6b72/• S&P 500: https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/indices/equity/sp-500/#overview• Battle of Tora Bora: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tora_Bora• Milton Friedman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Friedman• The Louvre: https://www.louvre.fr/en• How does SpaceX build its Falcon 9 reusable rocket?: https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/how-does-spacex-build-its-falcon-9-reusable-rocket• Charles Darwin: History's most famous biologist: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/charles-darwin-most-famous-biologist.html• Donald Rumsfeld: https://www.defense.gov/About/Biographies/Biography/Article/602800/• Bush: The Decider-in-Chief: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bush-the-decider-in-chief/• Woodrow Wilson: https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/woodrow-wilson/• How the Sinking of Lusitania Changed World War I: https://www.history.com/news/how-the-sinking-of-lusitania-changed-wwi• Nokia: https://www.nokia.com/• The Rise and Fall of Nokia: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=46041• Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/• These New Windows Let the Summer Breeze In, But Block the Street Noise: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/these-new-windows-let-the-summer-breeze-in-but-block-the-street-noise-7906121/• Stop it! (Bob Newhart): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvujypVVBAY• The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business: https://www.amazon.com/Innovators-Dilemma-Revolutionary-Change-Business/dp/0062060244• Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works: https://www.amazon.com/Playing-Win-Strategy-Really-Works/dp/142218739X• Steve Jobs: https://www.amazon.com/Steve-Jobs-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1982176865• Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company: https://www.amazon.com/Only-Paranoid-Survive-Exploit-Challenge/dp/0385483821• Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr.: https://www.amazon.com/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller-Sr/dp/1400077303/• Yellowstone on Paramount+: https://www.paramountnetwork.com/shows/yellowstone• Smart telescopes: https://milehighastro.com/collections/smart-telescopes• Cassandra Clare: https://cassandraclare.com/—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

This week, we went meep meep past Contagious HQ to catch an ACME wielding Alex Jenkins.  As Managing Partner at Contagious, Alex's industry knowledge encompasses a treasure trove of past campaigns, current narratives, and future predictions. Part editorial, part consultancy, part research, Contagious believes in the best version of our industry, one where creativity wins.  After trying to crush us with a Greco-Roman catapult, Alex talks to us on his wonderfully wiggly career path, having his marketing budget poached by Girls Aloud, feeling like Wile E. Coyote after education, Contagious as a triaging function, walking around a problem, the current state of creativity, anti-creative forces, Most Contagious 2023, David Lynch, and French supermarkets.  That's not all folks, he also explains what we've always known deep down...that Les Binet and Peter Field are one of your 5-a-day.   Follow Alex on LinkedIn and Twitter  Here's Contagious  Get your tickets to Most Contagious (use promo code "GASPMOCO" for 30% off the full price of a ticket)  Go gorge on our episodes with Bob Hoffman and Richard Huntington Here's the ad by Ruavieja  And a clip of Angelo Badalamenti explaining how he wrote the Twin Peaks soundtrack  Timestamps (01:44) - Quick fire questions (03:04) - His first jobs, music, creativity, and feeling like Wile E. Coyote after  (09:25) - Having his marketing budget stolen by Girls Aloud  (10:45) - His role at Contagious, triaging, and how they stay objective  (16:49) - The state of creativity in advertising, anti creative forces, and why Les Binet might be one of your five a day  (30:40) - Most Contagious 2023  (38:40) - Listener questions  (46:46) - 4 pertinent posers  Alex's book recommendations are:  R.U.R. by Karel Capek  The Human Use Of Human Beings by Norbert Wiener  Essays by George Orwell  Invisible Ink by Brian McDonald  Lynch on Lynch by David Lynch  Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt 

In the ever-evolving landscape of professional development, I've noticed that the term "strategy" is frequently thrown around, often without a clear understanding of its true meaning. Unfortunately, this misunderstanding often leads to the formulation of ineffective strategies, a topic explored by Richard Rumelt in his book Good Strategy/Bad Strategy. In that ancient conflict, Hannibal faced a Roman army much larger than his own. So, how did he emerge victorious? What crucial lessons can we draw from Hannibal's strategic brilliance? Now, why does this historical tale matter to you and me in the modern professional landscape? In today's short episode, I delve into the intricacies of strategy, shedding light on common misconceptions and providing valuable insights. Strategy is not just a buzzword; it's crucial for individuals and organizations alike. It provides a decision framework, guiding actions, aligning efforts, and paving the way for success. Join me while I break down the lessons using three key elements:

In this episode, I talk about the shift from being solely goal-oriented to embracing problem-based strategy, inspired by the insights shared by strategy guru Richard Rumelt. Rather than solely focusing on goals and visions, it is essential to diagnose and address the sticking points or challenges that are holding you back. By identifying the key problems, you can develop effective solutions that align with your overall vision.Don't fall into the trap of relying solely on positive thinking or vague aspirations. Instead, emphasise action and focus on actionable steps to solve the identified problems. By shifting the conversation from goals to problem-solving, you empower your team to take meaningful action towards achieving your shared vision.Remember, true strategy lies not just in setting goals, but in addressing the problems that hinder your progress.Key Lessons from the Episode:1. Strategy doesn't have to be complicated and full of jargon.2. Vision and goals are important, but we shouldn't focus on them too much.3. Precision and detailed visioning may not always be necessary.4. Focusing solely on goals and aspirations without taking action is not enough.5. Positive thinking alone won't guarantee goal achievement.6. Action and problem-solving are crucial for strategy execution.Episode linksFind out more about working with Juliet: www.consultjuliet.co.ukContact Juliet: hello@consultjuliet.co.ukSign up at www.consultjuliet.co.uk/signup to receive an email each Thursday morning about the week's new podcast episode.Thank you so much for listening to The Independent School Podcast. I would be grateful if you could spare a couple of minutes to send me some feedback here. This helps me make the podcast as helpful as possible to listeners. Thank you!

Dear listeners, this week we celebrate our 100th episode. We want to take this opportunity to thank you for your support and listenership, as we treat you to a compilation of some of our favorite insights over the past years. Below you'll find a highlights reel broken down into clips in four categories:CLASSIC STRATEGY: Featuring Rita, McGrath, Richard Rumelt, John Hagel, and Mike Tushman who each share with us timeless ideas around strategy.LEADERSHIP, CULTURE & WORKFORCE: Featuring Adam Bryant, Ajay Banga, Sally Susman, Johnny C. Taylor, Tiffani Bova, and Elizabeth Altman, who each share critical insights into leadership, our employees, and the quickly changing landscape of the workforce.VALUE CREATION: Featuring Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Thales Teixeira, Pete Fader, and Mohan Subramaniam, who each share alternative and modern views around value creation.INNOVATION, TECH & THE FUTURE: Featuring Alex Osterwalder, Rob Wolcott, Vivek Wadhwa, and Faith Popcorn who each share with us insightful ideas around innovation, upcoming trends in tech and society, and the future of business._________________________________________________________________________________________Episode Timeline:00:34—Special Introduction to 100th Episode from KaihanCLASSIC STRATEGY2:57—Highlight from Rita McGrath: Strategic Planning Amidst Uncertainty5:24—Highlight from Richard Rumelt: Finding the Crux of Your Strategy7:01—Highlight from John Hagel: Why You Should "Zoom Out, Zoom In," and Scale From the Edge9:01—Highlight from Mike Tushman: Why Ambidextrous Organizations Outperform OthersLEADERSHIP/CULTURE/WORKFORCE10:52—Highlight from Adam Bryant: Good vs. GREAT CEOs—500 Interviews Reveal What Makes the Difference12:58—Highlight from Ajay Banga: Insights from a Former CEO with Ajay Banga of MasterCard15:11—Highlight from Sally Susman: Insights from Pfizer's Chief Corporate Affairs Officer in Crafting Public Discourse17:27—Highlight from Johnny C. Taylor: Trends You Need to Know About the Workforce19:27—Highlight from Tiffani Bova: Elevating Your EX to Improve Your CX21:01—Highlight from Elizabeth Altman: Rethinking the Definition of a Workforce in the Modern EraVALUE CREATION23:24—Highlight from Felix Oberholzer-Gee: Applying a Value-Based Strategy to Drive Your Business26:11—Highlight from Thales Teixeira: Decoupling the Customer Value Chain for Competitive Advantage28:36—Highlight from Pete Fader: Becoming a Customer-Centric Business30:49—Highlight from Mohan Subramaniam: The Future of Competitive Strategy and the Evolving Role of Data, Customers and Digital EcosystemsINNOVATION, TECH & THE FUTURE33:46—Highlight from Alexander Osterwalder: How Investing in Culture Ecosystems Leads to Innovation35:57—Highlight from Rob Wolcott: The Power of Proximity in your Strategy38:31—Highlight from Vivek Wadhwa: Harnessing Tech for an Innovative Future40:24—Highlight from Faith Popcorn: Predictions to Know From a Leading Futurist42:34—Closing and Thank you

Build your confidence and knowledge about strategy with this episode of HR Coffee Time. Fay talks you through the key takeaways from Richard Rumelt's modern business classic, “Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The difference and why it matters.”Not only will this help you create more powerful People and HR strategies, but it will also help you understand how to craft and contribute to the overarching strategy for the whole organisation you work in.This episode will be helpful for you, no matter which role you're ultimately aiming for, but it will be especially useful if you'd like to move into a Board-level role (or are already in one).Ideas shared in the episode, include:The kernel of good strategy is made up of:A diagnosis that defines or explains the nature of the challengeA guiding policy for dealing with the challengeA set of coherent actions designed to carry out the guiding policy9 sources of power:LeverageProximate objectivesChain-link systemsUsing designFocusGrowthUsing advantageUsing dynamicsInertia and entropy Useful LinksConnect with Fay on LinkedInFay's website: Bright Sky Career Coaching Buy the Book Recommendation(Disclosure: the book link is an affiliate link which means that Fay will receive a small commission from Amazon if you make a purchase through it)Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The difference and why it matters, by Richard Rumelt Other Relevant HR Coffee Time EpisodesEpisode 26: How to be strategic in your new HR leadership roleEpisode 61: The 4 pillars that will help you be strategic in your HR roleEpisode 77: How to create an effective DEI strategy, with Metra RoweEpisode 98: HR insider insights: how to create a powerful people strategy for an SME, with Kelly VincentLooking For the Transcript?You can find transcripts for all episodes on the HR Coffee Time section of the Bright Sky Career Coaching website. Rate and Review the PodcastIf you found this episode of HR Coffee Time helpful, please rate and review it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. If you're kind enough to leave a review, let Fay know so she can say thank you. You can always reach her at: fay@brightskycareercoaching.co.uk. Enjoyed This Episode? Don't Miss the Next One!Be notified each time a new episode of HR Coffee Time is released and get access to other free career tips, tools and resources by

Dear listeners, this week we celebrate our 100th episode. We want to take this opportunity to thank you for your support and listenership, as we treat you to a compilation of some of our favorite insights over the past years. Below you'll find a highlights reel broken down into clips in four categories:CLASSIC STRATEGY: Featuring Rita, McGrath, Richard Rumelt, John Hagel, and Mike Tushman who each share with us timeless ideas around strategy.LEADERSHIP, CULTURE & WORKFORCE: Featuring Adam Bryant, Ajay Banga, Sally Susman, Johnny C. Taylor, Tiffani Bova, and Elizabeth Altman, who each share critical insights into leadership, our employees, and the quickly changing landscape of the workforce.VALUE CREATION: Featuring Felix Oberholzer-Gee, Thales Teixeira, Pete Fader, and Mohan Subramaniam, who each share alternative and modern views around value creation.INNOVATION, TECH & THE FUTURE: Featuring Alex Osterwalder, Rob Wolcott, Vivek Wadhwa, and Faith Popcorn who each share with us insightful ideas around innovation, upcoming trends in tech and society, and the future of business._________________________________________________________________________________________Episode Timeline:00:34—Special Introduction to 100th Episode from KaihanCLASSIC STRATEGY2:57—Highlight from Rita McGrath: Strategic Planning Amidst Uncertainty5:24—Highlight from Richard Rumelt: Finding the Crux of Your Strategy7:01—Highlight from John Hagel: Why You Should "Zoom Out, Zoom In," and Scale From the Edge9:01—Highlight from Mike Tushman: Why Ambidextrous Organizations Outperform OthersLEADERSHIP/CULTURE/WORKFORCE10:52—Highlight from Adam Bryant: Good vs. GREAT CEOs—500 Interviews Reveal What Makes the Difference12:58—Highlight from Ajay Banga: Insights from a Former CEO with Ajay Banga of MasterCard15:11—Highlight from Sally Susman: Insights from Pfizer's Chief Corporate Affairs Officer in Crafting Public Discourse17:27—Highlight from Johnny C. Taylor: Trends You Need to Know About the Workforce19:27—Highlight from Tiffani Bova: Elevating Your EX to Improve Your CX21:01—Highlight from Elizabeth Altman: Rethinking the Definition of a Workforce in the Modern EraVALUE CREATION23:24—Highlight from Felix Oberholzer-Gee: Applying a Value-Based Strategy to Drive Your Business26:11—Highlight from Thales Teixeira: Decoupling the Customer Value Chain for Competitive Advantage28:36—Highlight from Pete Fader: Becoming a Customer-Centric Business30:49—Highlight from Mohan Subramaniam: The Future of Competitive Strategy and the Evolving Role of Data, Customers and Digital EcosystemsINNOVATION, TECH & THE FUTURE33:46—Highlight from Alexander Osterwalder: How Investing in Culture Ecosystems Leads to Innovation35:57—Highlight from Rob Wolcott: The Power of Proximity in your Strategy38:31—Highlight from Vivek Wadhwa: Harnessing Tech for an Innovative Future40:24—Highlight from Faith Popcorn: Predictions to Know From a Leading Futurist42:34—Closing and Thank you

David and Andrew discuss the three types of power that leaders have: authority, knowledge, and persuasion. David also explains where the current style of "command and control" management comes from and what a nearly failed family vacation can tell us about power. 0:00:02.7 Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz, and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today I am continuing my discussion with David P. Langford, who has devoted his life to applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to education, and he offers us his practical advice for implementation. The topic today is the Three Power Rangers and Their Sources of Power for Improvement. We are now on item number seven on the list that was given to us by Dr. Deming in the book, The New Economics. It's called, the title of the list is called Role of a Manager of People. This is the new role of a manager of people after transformation. For those of you who have the third edition, this is on page 86, and for those with the second edition, it is on page 125. 0:00:56.7 AS: So now let's get into number seven. So we're talking about the manager after transformation. He has three sources of power. Number one, authority of office. Number two, knowledge. Number three, personality and persuasive power or tact. A successful manager of people develops number two and three, that is knowledge and personality. He does not rely on number one, which is the authority of office. He has, nevertheless, obligation to use number one, as this source of power enables him to change the process - that's the equipment, materials and methods to bring improvement, such as to reduce variation in output. Dr. Robert Klekamp says "He in authority but lacking knowledge or personality must depend on his formal power. He unconsciously fills a void in his qualifications by making it clear to everybody that he is in a position of authority. His will be done." David, take it away. 0:02:02.5 David Langford: Okay, that's great. So this is one of my favorite points, which has three subset points or Power Rangers, sources of power for improvement. And I've used this with managers around the world for the last 40 years. And in some cases, they just drop their jaws and they're just amazed at how simple this is. But the more you think about it and realize what people, managers of people are not doing, it gives a roadmap about: what do you do? How do you do something? And I get that question all the time from superintendents and principals in my field of education, and people that do have a formal position. Then they wanna know: well, how do I get these people to do stuff, make things happen? 0:02:58.2 DL: So, before we get into each of the three Power Rangers, I wanted to give a little bit of context too, because I wanna remind everybody that, Deming lived through World War II and was a part of the quality improvement effort for World War II. And what happened during World War II is that a lot of the manufacturing was being done by women in the United States especially. And so when the war ended, you had all these military people coming back to corporations and moving into top management positions, and basically the management style that they brought with them was military. And so that's where you got phrases like, "My way or the highway," and, "You're not getting paid to think. You just do what I tell you to do and everything will be fine." 0:03:51.5 AS: Attack that hill. 0:03:53.1 DL: Yeah, right, which was totally opposite to the whole manufacturing thing that had been going on during the war and was really the key to the war machine was being able to produce huge amount of military items in a very short period of time. 0:04:09.3 AS: Well, and also when you think about that, David, it's interesting to think about the patriotism and the commitment to a cause that those women went into those factories to do. And so when it was all done and the cause was met, the challenge was met, then to be faced with that, it's like, "Wait a minute, we lost something here." 0:04:30.9 DL: Yeah, and then I remember Deming talking about it one time at a conference and stuff and talking about, basically, in those factories, women liked to get together and talk about what was going on, and their performance and everything that was happening in the factory. And then when the men came back in, they said, "No, we're not gonna have groups or teams or anything like that. You're just gonna do what I would tell you to do, and if you don't like it, then find someplace else to work." One of the phrases I always remember Deming used to say was that: "pretty soon you're left with only the people who can't get a job someplace else." 0:05:14.0 DL: And I've found that to be so true in every profession that I've worked in or helped people with, etcetera, and have... So it leads us to number one, your formal position. So yeah, you have a job. You're the CEO, you're the principal of a school, you're a headmaster, you're whatever it might be. You got the job, right? And so with that comes formal position that you need to be able to...you have to do stuff and you have a job to do. And you may even be given goals by a board or something that it's your job to make this happen. Well, the question is, how do you make it happen? If it was just so simple that a new boss could come in and just start bossing people around and tell them what to do, and then they all do it and things get better, then we wouldn't actually need any of this Deming stuff, right? 0:06:13.6 DL: But it's not so simple as being able to do that. And basically what Deming is saying in this point too, is that if you act like that and you use your formal position to make change, basically, you're not gonna be around long, because pretty soon the people that work for you are gonna start to kind of revolt, and either they'll find other jobs or the pressure will become on you to get out and get somebody else in there. This is also the reason that some boards think improvement means, we'll just hire somebody else. Well, that doesn't work either. I'll never forget a superintendent of a huge school district that I worked with, and I had asked him, when we started working with him, I said, "Well, what's been your method of improvement?" And he very looked at me very clearly and just said, "Well, we fire people." 0:07:17.3 AS: That's the Jack Welch School. 0:07:19.8 DL: Yeah, exactly. 0:07:20.3 AS: Take the bottom, bottom half or the bottom quarter or the bottom 10% and make sure you're firing them often. 0:07:25.8 DL: Yeah. But that's means that you're also in that category too, right? To improve your position, all we got to do is fire you and find somebody else in that position. But are you finding somebody else with the exact same philosophy or are you actually looking for somebody else that has a different philosophy? And I think that's really what Deming is talking about here, is that, hey, if you want to stay around a very long time, yeah, it might be your formal position, but don't use that unless you absolutely have to. I often tell managers, if suddenly there's a fire in a building, you're not gonna get a bunch of people together and have a meeting and say, "Okay, what do we do? And which way should we go?" And things like that. You're probably gonna use your formal position to take charge and say, "Let's get out of the building," etcetera. But then very quickly, you should get people together to say, "Okay, how could we have done that better? And how could we work through that and improve that whole process?" 0:08:31.6 DL: And so that's where I think point number two really comes in, is that, do you have knowledge of a different way to manage, different way to think? And that's all Deming, about statistics and understanding process analysis and understanding how people work together, and do you understand how to do Plan-Do-Study-Act - the PDSA process - to improve something? And so you're using your knowledge of theory and background to improve something. And the irony of that is, when you concentrate on using your knowledge to do stuff, you actually gain authority. Just 'cause people start to look up to you as, oh, he or she, they have a process of improvement and they just stick with it. Anytime that something comes up, it's never blaming people. It's always looking at what is the process? What's happening? Let's use a few tools. Let's analyze what's happening. Let's look at a flow chart of the process and let's improve the process. That's knowledge. 0:09:40.4 AS: So the people want to follow you rather than people must follow you. 0:09:46.6 DL: Yeah, that's a good way, it's a good way to put it. Exactly. So, I think of the three, probably that's most important, right? 0:09:57.9 AS: Yeah. 0:10:00.6 DL: And the other thing about these three points is that, maybe you're working in an organization, maybe you're just a teacher. I say just, maybe you're a teacher in a school, and there's maybe 200 teachers, and you see that things are not going well. What can you do? Well, you're not the person in charge, right? And if you just march into the headmaster or the principal or whoever and start telling them what to do, you're probably not gonna be around. But what can you do? You can use your knowledge of improvement. And through that process, you actually become very powerful, because lots of people wanna work with you, 'cause every time we do, we get things done and we look at problems differently. And then pretty soon, your boss is coming to you when problems arise or when process improvement is necessary and saying, "Hey can you help here? Help us work through this problem?" And that's a level of power that's for change or improvement that is significant, if you think like that. 0:11:14.2 AS: I was thinking about, if you're a young person going into the workforce, you don't have authority. I mean, you may be given it in a small position. I was a supervisor at Pepsi when I first started, so I had a certain level of authority, but there's no way I could use it when all of my work... All the guys working for me had been there 20 years or whatever. 0:11:33.7 DL: Yeah, exactly. 0:11:34.8 AS: And do it would be foolish for me to do that. And so, I definitely used my personality and I didn't have much knowledge, so I had to try to acquire knowledge, which was making me...I took a note and just thought about, to be able to use knowledge as an a form of management, you've gotta acquire it, and it comes through your own acquisition plus also hiring people who...you can acquire knowledgeable people that are around you that can help to solve things. And then as I started, and in my case, David, what we were doing was we were filling Pepsi trucks every night, and they were all wrong. So the drivers in the morning would come in and they'd have to waste a lot of time counting their trucks, counting what's on their trucks, and then going back and getting what was missing. 0:12:24.3 AS: And I had to then develop...I had to then acquire knowledge of why were we making these mistakes? Which one on my staff was doing really well? How could we learn from that? And how could we do it so that we could lock those trucks and guarantee those drivers that that truck was accurate? And it took me many months to get to the point where I acquired enough knowledge to be able to then have the authority to go, "All right, now we've done all of this. Now, this is the way we're doing it from all that we've learned." So anyways, this is just me rambling, but that was just something that I thought about. 0:13:00.9 DL: Yes. No, that's a good... That's a really great example. That's a great, great story about that. And I'm sure that it took a while for the drivers to trust that it was actually right. 0:13:14.7 AS: I mean, I had to negotiate with them, and I'd tell them, "Look, if you find a problem out there, we're gonna fix that," and blah, blah, and all that, but then they were like, "Well, if I find a problem out there, I don't have the product to sell, so it has to be right," which basically it was, there's a lot of teaching actually involved in that to help everybody understand. 0:13:33.9 DL: Yeah, exactly. So then point number three is about personality. And so, you probably have worked for people, if you've had several jobs, everything from delivering papers on up to a current job you may be in now, you probably worked with people that are just really great people to get along with, right? And that's a source of power. I mean, they get things done because they're just really nice people and supportive, and they just have a really great personality about how to work and what to do. And I can visually see people in my mind that I worked with over the last 40 years that, just great people like that. But it's not enough, because you might be a really great person to work with. "Joe is really a great person to work with, and he's really fun and everything else, but he never gets anything done." Because he doesn't have the knowledge of basically the Deming philosophy about how to get stuff done, right? 0:14:45.7 DL: So what Deming's talking about here is that these are the three Power Rangers, the three sources of power, that if you wanna get something done and move forward and improve something, really you have to think about it as an inter-relationship of parts to the whole, of these three areas working together. So if you start concentrating...and the explanation in the following paragraph, he talks about, well, you don't have any knowledge and your personality stinks, and so what you rely on is your authoritarian position just to tell people what to do, you won't last long and also you're not gonna improve things. Things are not gonna get better when you do that. So you may have a formal position, but he talks about concentrate on two and three, your knowledge and your personality, and you will start to see a major transformation. 0:15:44.8 DL: Everybody knows you're the boss. You don't have to go around and tell people you're the boss. By virtue of the formal position, you have that. And I always take these things down to a teacher in a classroom. A teacher, that's a formal position that a teacher has. I have authority over these students during this time period, right? And I've known teachers that that's all they concentrate on, is the authority. And again, we've talked before about oftentimes, especially in like grammar school or primary school or elementary school, you're physically bigger than them and so you use that as part of your authority, that, "I'm the boss here. You do this, out you go." Well, even very little kids don't respect that. 0:16:42.1 DL: I think I told a story one time of 5-year-olds testifying for a state board of education, and they were so amazing explaining all these wonderful things that they were doing in their classroom and collecting data and improving stuff. And one of the board members said, "Well, where's your teacher when all this is going on?" And this 5-year-old, without hesitating, grabbed the microphone and said, "The teacher's not in the closet, you know." And as soon as I heard that, I thought of these three points. That little person knew they had been coached and mentored and taught a process of how to work together and improve that classroom, and the person that he looked up to was the teacher. So even at 5 years old, these things come in to play in a very real way, so. 0:17:41.6 AS: I would like to bring this back to constancy of purpose for a second, because...and I wanna think about, there's a book I recently read by Richard Rumelt, which is called Good Strategy Bad Strategy, and it's an excellent book about setting corporate strategy. But he talks about how businesses kind of move in waves, where you have a decentralization period of time where you're expanding and your giving authority. And then, basically the organization can lose focus, and then it's gonna require the authority of the senior management to say, "Okay, we have to, at some point, restructure and refocus this," and then you rely on more centralized, and he was just talking about the waves of that. And then I was thinking about the authority, from a positive perspective, is the role of the leaders of an organization, of the school, of a business, the role of those leaders is to set that direction. 0:18:37.5 AS: And you do have to claim authority or else you can't...that's what I also liked about what I learned from Deming when I first started learning, is that you can't just go, "Okay, what do you guys think our direction should be?" I mean, that is a fun question, but ultimately, as a leader, you got to really make sure that the constancy of purpose and the aim is there, and that sometimes requires what I would call good authority, authority coming from a knowledgeable and experienced perspective, but there must be authority. 0:19:07.3 DL: Right. Well, you could be the manager that comes and says, "Look, we need to reestablish our constancy of purpose. So let's talk about some ideas about how we can go about that and that are different than what we've done before, because obviously that's not working. So let's work together to figure out a good pathway that we can make that happen." So that's using your personality to run a meeting and get what you need to have happen, but you're bringing people with you instead of doing stuff to them, so. 0:19:39.2 AS: Yeah, I have one little story to tell about this authority concept, is that in our coffee factory many years ago, my business partner Dale was sitting in the office up above the roasting area and he started to smell smoke. And roasting coffee has... We have roaster fires that happen in the roasting machine. And basically, he went rushing down to realize that a fire was raging in the roasting machine, particularly in the chimney, and was getting down into the machine. And so the first thing he did is he just started yelling, "Everybody out!" And he got everybody out of that building first thing, except for one or two men that were there working. And with one of the guys, he said, "Grab that little hose," and he's got this little hose that they had to try to cool down the plate that he had to unscrew all these screws on. And he told the other guy, "Get up to the top of the building and start pouring water down the chimney of this roaster to start putting this fire out." 0:20:49.6 AS: And then they eventually got the whole thing out. But it required authority at the time to save the factory and to save the lives of the people. And so authority is necessary. It's just that that authority came at a time of emergency. Also, the other question is, is it good authority? There are people that give really bad advice in the middle of an emergency. And so, you know... 0:21:14.2 DL: Yeah, but then, points two and three come into play, personality and knowledge, because the very...soon as that crisis is over, the very next thing that guy should have done is bring everybody in and say, "Okay, what do we do to make sure this never happens again?" 0:21:31.8 AS: Which is exactly... 0:21:31.9 DL: Yeah, and if it does happen, what's going to be our process? 0:21:38.7 AS: Which is exactly what happened. And they analyzed why it happened and it was because they hadn't been maintaining the machine by the schedule that they had set. So they had to set up a better schedule to make sure that all of the husk that's coming off of the coffee, the chaff, is taken out on a daily basis and all clean. And so, we've never really had a major fire like that, and that's been, probably be 15 years ago. 0:22:00.3 DL: Wow. No, that's really a great example. So if you have a crisis, my advice to managers always is get through it. And then as soon as you get through it, bring everybody together to just say, "Okay, how do we make sure this never happens again?" 0:22:15.6 AS: Yeah, it's the balance between short-term and long-term. Last thing, I want to just highlight something that you talked about at the beginning that many people may not really understand is that, that workforce change that happened after World War II. And this is something that shaped a lot of Dr. Deming's observations. And that is, the estimates are that there was about 4-5 million American men who came back from Europe after World War II. And we know that there was a large amount of women in the workforce there. And so about 4-5 million men was about 3-4% of the 140 or so million population of the US. So, it wasn't a small number, but if you actually look at the labor force of the US, it was roughly 50-60 million of that 140 million that were in the labor force at the time. So we're talking about 7-8% of the labor force. 0:23:11.4 AS: And so this wave of command and control men who had been trained through boot camps and all of that, of command and control, it kind of explains why Dr. Deming railed against what then started happening was that all of a sudden, the joy was just destroyed. The aim that the women in particular that came to these factories producing, that aim was kind of demolished by these marching men that came in. So any thoughts on that, David? 0:23:43.3 DL: Well, in wartime, it's just constant crisis management. That's all it is. And that's why the military relies so heavily on chain of command and who's in authority and who's in command here and all those kinds of things, because you're just trying to survive a situation. But when you're not in wartime, that's the time to actually improve processes, get things done, understand a different way to work and operate. But even in those kinds of situations, military commanders that concentrated on two and three, knowledge and personality, got a lot more done and saved a lot more people than just "do it my way" kind of thing, so. 0:24:29.9 AS: Yeah. Well, in wrapping up, let's just now revisit what we've been talking about, and that is, ultimately, it's authority, knowledge, and personality. And these are the three factors that Dr. Deming is talking about. And ultimately, we want to develop personality and knowledge, and then ultimately that leads to higher authority. And the idea of command and control type of authority is only really useful in times of emergency, but most of the time, you need to use the others. Anything you would add to that? 0:25:10.0 DL: Yeah, that's a perfect way to think about it. That's a great, great wrap up to it. And Deming talked a lot about business, but I always gonna wanna bring it back that this applies to anything, a classroom, a family. If you're treating your family like that, you have a different kind of problem. And I don't know if I've told this story, but I have five children and I live in Montana. And so we had a really bad snow year, one year, and there was, just terrible in February, just so much snow and everybody's sick of it and everything else. So my wife and I dreamed up this scheme that we would get tickets to take all the kids to California and go to Disneyland and all these great things, but we wouldn't tell them. We would just get up in the morning like we're getting ready for school. 0:26:01.9 DL: And so we're sitting around the table and my wife says, "I'm sick of this snow. I'd like to get out of here, and who else would like to get out of here?" And the kids are all like, "Yeah, I would like to get out of here. When can we do that?" And she said, "Well, our plane leaves today at 11 o'clock, so here's a list. Go pack these kinds of things." And they were like "Wow, where are we going? What's happening? This is so exciting." And we didn't tell them anything, so they had to figure out when they got to the airport, where the plane was going. And then they said Orange County, and they, "What? Orange County? What's in Orange County?" 0:26:39.6 AS: Oranges. 0:26:39.8 DL: So, they figuring all that out. So we just thought we were so clever using our position of authority to do this. And after about three days, we are sitting around a dinner table and the kids are all kind of moping and we'd been taking and spending money going to Disneyland and all this great stuff in Southern California and all these wonderful things, and they liked it, right? And I said, "Gee, what's going on? You guys are just tired or just all kind of silent and kind of moping and everything else? And didn't you like what we did to today?" "Oh, yeah, that was okay," and da, da, da. And then finally, one of my daughters said, "You know, we talked about it and we just want to go to the beach," because they'd never seen the ocean. 0:27:29.3 DL: And I was like, "Oh, these three points," right? Yeah, I had the position of authority as father and I could make this decision and spend all this money to do these wonderful things, but if I just used some personality and knowledge and asked them to begin with, "Hey, if we go to California, what would you really like to do?" "Hey, we'd like to go and hang out at the beach 'cause we don't have an ocean." I could have saved thousands of dollars and lots of headache if I just had a little bit of personality and knowledge certainly in the situation, so. 0:28:02.5 AS: What a great story. And kids can play on the beach for weeks. I know. 0:28:03.9 DL: Oh, yeah. 0:28:04.1 AS: I was young, so yeah, that was crazy. 0:28:09.1 DL: That's what we did. The rest of the trip, we canceled everything and we just went to the beach every day, and they were happy as could be. 0:28:13.5 AS: And it's easier on you. 0:28:15.7 DL: Yeah. 0:28:17.7 AS: Yeah. Well, David on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussion. And for listeners, remember to go to deming.org to continue your journey. Listeners can learn more about David at langfordlearning.com. This is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming. "People are entitled to joy in work."

You're going to want to listen to this episode today I interview Sam Fenton-Elstone, who is the co founder and CEO of Anything Is Possible and there's so much to listen out for. They are in the media, creative and technology space, which is a very competitive market space, but they've carved out a really strong position and they've grown over the last five years to 50 people.  So from a standing start to 50 people, 5 million pounds in turnover, looking to open up their third and fourth offices very shortly.  So they've grown very rapidly and I want you to listen out to how clearly Sam can articulate what makes them different from the other agencies that are out there. And also how clearly he can articulate the source of their competitive advantage and I think that's really key.  We talk quite a lot about strategy and culture, Sam keeps coming back to those things. It's clear that they've got a lot right in their strategy and have been very, very clever. And they're also very focused upon culture. In fact, so much so that their fundamental belief is that anything is possible, which they made the name of the company and it flows through everything that they do, right through from recruitment to how they manage the team and the business and how they deal with clients – so it is embedded throughout the business. This discussion is full of great insights, great advice from somebody that's built a 50 people business within a five year period including that time over lockdown, and actually I want you to listen out to his approach as to how they how they handled the pandemic.  So let me not spoil any more. Let's go straight over and listen to the rest of Sam's story.   Sam can be found here: linkedin.com/in/samfentonelstone https://aip.media/ sam@aip.media   Resources: Rebel Ideas by Matthew Syed - https://www.waterstones.com/book/rebel-ideas/matthew-syed/matthew-syed-consulting-ltd/9781529348408 Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt - https://www.waterstones.com/book/good-strategy-bad-strategy/richard-rumelt/9781781256176 Audible - https://www.audible.co.uk/ OS Maps - https://shop.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/apps   Scaling up your business isn't easy, and can be a little daunting. Let ScaleUp Radio make it a little easier for you. With guests who have been where you are now, and can offer their thoughts and advice on several aspects of business. ScaleUp Radio is the business podcast you've been waiting for.   If you would like to be a guest on ScaleUp Radio, please click here: https://bizsmarts.co.uk/scaleupradio/apply   You can get in touch with Kevin here: kevin@biz-smart.co.uk   Kevin's Latest Book Is Available!    Drawing on BizSmart's own research and experiences of working with hundreds of owner-managers, Kevin Brentexplores the key reasons why most organisations do not scale and how the challenges change as they reach different milestones on the ScaleUp Journey. He then details a practical step by step guide to successfully navigate between the milestones in the form of ESUS - a proven system for entrepreneurs to scale up.    More on the Book HERE - https://www.esusgroup.co.uk/

Rock climbers call certain boulders “problems” and the toughest part “the crux.” Richard Rumelt, in his new book The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists, uses this term to describe a three-part strategic skill: 1) judgment about what is important and what's secondary; 2) judgment about the difficulties of dealing with these issues; and 3) being able to focus. Join Ed and Ron as they discuss the essentials of strategy.

Rock climbers call certain boulders “problems” and the toughest part “the crux.” Richard Rumelt, in his new book The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists, uses this term to describe a three-part strategic skill: 1) judgment about what is important and what's secondary; 2) judgment about the difficulties of dealing with these issues; and 3) being able to focus. Join Ed and Ron as they discuss the essentials of strategy.

Rock climbers call certain boulders “problems” and the toughest part “the crux.” Richard Rumelt, in his new book The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists, uses this term to describe a three-part strategic skill: 1) judgment about what is important and what's secondary; 2) judgment about the difficulties of dealing with these issues; and 3) being able to focus. Join Ed and Ron as they discuss the essentials of strategy.

Richard Rumelt has been described by no less than McKinsey as a "giant in the field of strategy." He's also a dear friend and an enormously influential thought leader. We're going to chat about his latest book, "The Crux" in which he illustrates the principles of challenge-based strategy. The idea is that strategists need to identify the main obstacle to overcome, and do so again and again - a very dynamic approach. Rita McGrath is a best-selling author, sought-after speaker, and longtime professor at Columbia Business School. As one of the world's top experts on innovation and growth, Rita's work is regularly published in the Harvard Business Review. She is consistently ranked among the Top 10 management thinkers in the world and was ranked #1 for strategy by Thinkers50. Get in Touch, Keep in Touch! https://www.ritamcgrath.com/You can follow me on Twitter (@rgmcgrath), on Instagram (@ritamcgrathofficial), on LinkedIn and here on YouTube. For access to the archives, ability to make comments and to be part of the community, subscribe. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thoughtsparksritamcgrath/message

: Have you ever wondered what happens to the health data that you collect on your phone or wearable device? Who uses it, how is it used and how does your data stay private? To answer these questions, I asked Christine Lemke, co-founder and co-CEO at Evidation Health to join me.   Evidation is a health tracking platform that rewards users for healthy actions while contributing real-world data to important research projects. As part of my due diligence, I enrolled and it was a simple and easy experience. I have also enrolled to participate in a few research projects as well and I am looking forward to learning more.   Christine was a pioneer in machine learning and the use of personalized health data and I am looking forward to hearing more about the power of personalized health data and what Evidation Health is doing with that data and how Evidation is contributing to important health research.   A favorite book: Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters by Richard Rumelt

Business environments are rapidly becoming more complex.Now, skill stacks that focus on deeper and more multidimensional thinking are becoming hot commodities in sales.But where are businesses finding salespeople with this unusual skill combination?Find out in today's episode with our host Sammy and guest, Christian Kurtenbach, Director of Enterprise Sales at Monta.You'll learn:1. The advantage of being a consultant first and then moving into enterprise sales2. How Christian leverages his consulting skills to drive sales3. Why you should consider inviting UX researchers into your sales meetings4. How the energy crisis is affecting the adoption and sales of electric vehiclesAbout Christian:Christian is Director of Enterprise Sales at Monta, helping large partners & customers find the right angle to electric vehicle charging. Prior to Monta, he spent most of his career as a Management Consultant focused on the energy transition before moving into a more operational role in eMobility together with E.ON, one of Europe's largest utility companies.Find Christian on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ckurtenbachChristian's favorite business book:Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The difference and why it matters - Richard Rumelt https://amzn.to/3CB0h4TChristian's favorite podcasts: Deutschlandfunk - https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/interview-100.htmlThe Times Podcasts - https://www.thetimes.co.uk/podcasts/OMR Podcast - https://omr.podigee.io/The Guardien Science Weekly - https://www.theguardian.com/science/series/science__________About Monta:Monta is the operating platform powering the electric vehicle (EV) charging ecosystem serving drivers, companies, cities, and the electricity grid. With Monta you can launch, manage, and scale all your EV needs and operation with one integrated software built to EV better. We believe that accelerating and democratising the adoption of EV technology is key to fostering the sustainable future we so desperately need.Website: https://monta.com/Industry: IT-Services und IT-ConsultingCompany size: 200Headquarters: Copenhagen, DenmarkFounded: 2020__________About the host Sammy:Sammy and SAWOO enable you to drive recruiting & employer branding via your hiring managers on LinkedIn. We can help you:- Speed up hiring - Reduce hiring costs - Create an authentic Employer Brand- Create a Talent Pool that you can tap into any timeGet in touch with Sammy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sammygebele/__________Past guests on the GROW B2B FASTER Show include: Justin Welsh, Ian Koniak, Jamal Reimer, Mike Troiano, John Kaplan, Greg Alexander, and many more. 

We laid traps of tactics before strategy to lure Mark Ritson (and Ritdad) as he was reintroduced to mainland UK to unleash his Tasmanian devilish take on the industry, for Call to Action's 100th episode.   He's spent 25 years working as a marketing professor, has been a columnist at Marketing Week for over a decade, is a world-class speaker and has built, presented, and demolished marketing plans for some of the world's biggest brands. Through his Mini MBA courses in Marketing and Brand Management, Mark has trained nearly 30,000 marketing marsupials across 60 countries, including 83.7% ish of …Gasp!     Mark chirps on being the rarest breed of marketing professor who loves (and actually does) marketing, getting aroused at Wacker Drive, being lured to la Maison LVMH, how the Mini MBA became his AirPods, what to do with woolly briefs, planning cycles, Pot Noodle's purpose, pricing, and more, before piling on praise for the grumpy Byron Sharp in our feast of listener questions. So get your ears out and listen in. ///// Follow Mark on Twitter and LinkedIn  Become a better marketer with the Mini MBA in Marketing and Brand Management  Read Mark's Marketing Week column  Here's the Tone of Voice work …Gasp! did for the Mini MBA series  Thank you to everyone who has lent their ears and their brains for 100 episodes of the Call To Action® podcast. It's a real privilege. Please do share and review the podcast to help more marketers feel better about marketing.     Timestamps (02:21) - Quick fire questions (05:50) - First ever job (08:45) - Professor or Marketer?  (11:10) - Getting aroused at Wacker Drive (13:30) - Landing the role at LVMH  (17:49) - Is marketing changing for the better?  (23:15) - Marketing Twitter vs the silent majority  (27:34) - Problems in marketing academia (36:19) - Why he isn't really Mr Anti-Purpose  (37:54) - How to plan your marketing  (49:52) - Listener questions  (57:53) - A masterclass in pricing  (1:00:22) - 4 pertinent posers  Mark's book recommendation is: Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt  /////

Welcome to an episode with Emeritus Professor at UCLA Anderson, Richard Rumelt. Get Richard's book here: https://amzn.to/3OrNfuK In this episode, Richard iterated the real meaning of strategy, which many companies today confuse with a list of their goals and ambitions. Strategy is problem-solving – a clever way of dealing with a challenge, opponent, or problem. It also involves selecting which battle you fight because you cannot fight them all. As a great strategist, you need to select battles that you can win.  Richard also explained the crux or the biggest challenge that companies need to identify, emphasize, and concentrate their resources on until it is fixed or solved. As Richard mentioned in this episode, “the primary thing about strategy is that it is about a concentration of resources. It is about focus.” Richard Rumelt received his doctorate from the Harvard Business School in 1972, having previously earned a Master of Science in electrical engineering from UC Berkeley. He worked as a systems engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories and served on the faculty of the Harvard Business School. He joined the UCLA faculty in 1976. He also served as a faculty at INSEAD, France for three years. At INSEAD, Rumelt headed the Corporate Renewal Initiative, a research-intervention center devoted to the study and practice of corporate transformation. Rumelt was president of the Strategic Management Society from 1995 to 1998. He received the Irwin Prize for his book Strategy, Structure, and Economic Performance. In 1997, he was appointed Telecom Italia Strategy Fellow, a position he held until April 2000. He has won teaching awards at UCLA and received a best paper prize in 1997 from the Strategic Management Journal. Get Richard's book here: The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists, Richard Rumelt: https://amzn.to/3OrNfuK Enjoying our podcast? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

"A great deal of strategy work is trying to figure out what is going on. Not just deciding what to do, but the more fundamental problem of comprehending the situation." — Richard Rumelt

In this episode, we hear from Richard Rumelt. Richard has been called, “A giant in the field of strategy.” He is the Harry and Elsa Kunin Chair Emeritus at the UCLA Anderson School of Management and a founding member and former president of the Strategic Management Society. He is also the author of Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why it Matters, and in this episode he'll explain how to circumvent what he calls, “the contagion of bad strategy.” His reflections are based on his latest book, The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists. Richard is joined by our communications director, Sean Brown, and Yuval Atsmon, a senior partner based in our London office. Learn more about Richard's book: https://thecruxbook.com/ Join our LinkedIn community: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/mckinsey-strategy-&-corporate-finance Explore more Inside the Strategy Room podcast episode transcripts: https://www.mckinsey.com/itsr See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

In this episode, we hear from Richard Rumelt. Richard has been called, “A giant in the field of strategy.” He is the Harry and Elsa Kunin Chair Emeritus at the UCLA Anderson School of Management and a founding member and former president of the Strategic Management Society. He is also the author of Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why it Matters, and in this episode he'll explain how to circumvent what he calls, “the contagion of bad strategy.” His reflections are based on his latest book, The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists. Richard is joined by our communications director, Sean Brown, and Yuval Atsmon, a senior partner based in our London office. Learn more about Richard's book: https://thecruxbook.com/ Join our LinkedIn community: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/mckinsey-strategy-&-corporate-finance Explore more Inside the Strategy Room podcast episode transcripts: https://www.mckinsey.com/itsr Read more > Listen to the podcast (duration: 44:16) >

In this episode, we hear from Richard Rumelt. Richard has been called, “A giant in the field of strategy.” He is the Harry and Elsa Kunin Chair Emeritus at the UCLA Anderson School of Management and a founding member and former president of the Strategic Management Society. He is also the author of Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why it Matters, and in this episode he'll explain how to circumvent what he calls, “the contagion of bad strategy.” His reflections are based on his latest book, The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists. Richard is joined by our communications director, Sean Brown, and Yuval Atsmon, a senior partner based in our London office. Learn more about Richard's book: https://thecruxbook.com/ Join our LinkedIn community: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/mckinsey-strategy-&-corporate-finance Explore more Inside the Strategy Room podcast episode transcripts: https://www.mckinsey.com/itsr Join 90,000 other members of our LinkedIn community: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/mckinsey-strategy-&-corporate-finance/See www.mckinsey.com/privacy-policy for privacy information

Part 2 of our interview with Richard Rumelt, strategy professor at UCLA Anderson and author of Good Strategy/Bad Strategy.

Part 1 of our interview with Richard Rumelt, strategy professor at UCLA Anderson and author of Good Strategy/Bad Strategy.

MLOps Coffee Sessions #112 with Xiangrui Meng, Principal Software Engineer of Meng, MLX: Opinionated ML Pipelines in MLflow co-hosted by Vishnu Rachakonda. // Abstract MLX is to enable data scientists to stay mostly within their comfort zone utilizing their expert knowledge while following the best practices in ML development and delivering production-ready ML projects, with little help from production engineers and DevOps. // Bio Xiangrui Meng is a Principal Software Engineer at Databricks and an Apache Spark PMC member. His main interests center around simplifying the end-to-end user experience of building machine learning applications, from algorithms to platforms and to operations. // MLOps Jobs board https://mlops.pallet.xyz/jobs MLOps Swag/Merch https://mlops-community.myshopify.com/ // Related Links Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters book by Richard Rumelt: https://www.amazon.com/Good-Strategy-Bad-Difference-Matters/dp/0307886239 --------------- ✌️Connect With Us ✌️ ------------- Join our slack community: https://go.mlops.community/slack Follow us on Twitter: @mlopscommunity Sign up for the next meetup: https://go.mlops.community/register Catch all episodes, blogs, newsletters, and more: https://mlops.community/ Connect with Demetrios on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpbrinkm/ Connect with Vishnu on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vrachakonda/ Connect with Xiangrui on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mengxr/ Timestamps: [00:00] Introduction to Xiangrui Meng [00:39] Takeaways [02:09] Xiangrui's background [03:38] What kept Xiangrui in Databricks [07:33] What needs to be done to get there [09:20] Machine Learning passion of Xiangrui [11:52] Changes in building that keep you fresh for the future [14:35] Evolution core challenges to real-time and use cases in real-time [17:33] DevOps + DataOps + ModelOps = MLOps [19:21] MLFlow Support [21:37] Notebooks to production debates [25:42] Companies tackling Notebooks to production [27:40] MLOoops stories [31:03] Opinionated MLOps productionizing in a good way [40:23] Xiangrui's MLOps Vision [44:47] Lightning round [48:45] Wrap up

¿Qué hace de nuestra estrategia una BUENA estrategia?¿Cómo detectar con facilidad si estamos actualmente gestionando una MALA estrategia?En este episodio analizamos Buena Estrategia. Mala Estrategia (Good Strategy. Bad Strategy, 2011), de Richard Rumelt, consultor de grandes empresas y gobiernos, y que nos explica los 9 factores que puedes aplicar para crear una buena estrategia para tu empresa o emprendimiento.Aquí puedes conseguir este libro:AQUÍ TIENES EL LIBRO "Good Strategy. Bad Strateggy": https://geni.us/goodstrategy En esta página encuentras las notas del episodio y todos los enlaces mencionados:https://librosparaemprendedores.net/258 ¿Quieres saber cómo aumentar tu velocidad de lectura? Mírate este vídeo y quizás hasta la dupliques en sólo 20 minutos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0VqCZlLuEc¿Cómo conseguir levantarse temprano? 10 consejos... también apps útiles, para conseguirlo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJPmqy6Qi1c En Youtube y en Instagram estamos publicando también contenido exclusivo. Suscríbete ahora:Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/c/LibrosparaemprendedoresNetInstagram: https://instagram.com/librosparaemprendedores Esta es nuestra página oficial de Facebook: http://librosparaemprendedores.net/facebook Además, recuerda que puedes suscribirte al podcast en:- Nuestra página: http://librosparaemprendedores.net/feed/podcast- iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/mx/podcast/libros-para-emprendedores/id1076142249?l=es- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0qXuVDCYF8HvkEynJwHULb- iVoox: http://www.ivoox.com/ajx-suscribirse_jh_266011_1.html- Spreaker: http://www.spreaker.com/user/8567017/episodes/feed- Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=81214 y seguirnos en Twitter ( https://twitter.com/EmprendeLibros ) y en Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/EmprendeLibros/ ). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

¿Qué hace de nuestra estrategia una BUENA estrategia?¿Cómo detectar con facilidad si estamos actualmente gestionando una MALA estrategia?En este episodio analizamos Buena Estrategia. Mala Estrategia (Good Strategy. Bad Strategy, 2011), de Richard Rumelt, consultor de grandes empresas y gobiernos, y que nos explica los 9 factores que puedes aplicar para crear una buena estrategia para tu empresa o emprendimiento.Aquí puedes conseguir este libro:AQUÍ TIENES EL LIBRO "Good Strategy. Bad Strateggy": https://geni.us/goodstrategy En esta página encuentras las notas del episodio y todos los enlaces mencionados:https://librosparaemprendedores.net/258 ¿Quieres saber cómo aumentar tu velocidad de lectura? Mírate este vídeo y quizás hasta la dupliques en sólo 20 minutos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0VqCZlLuEc¿Cómo conseguir levantarse temprano? 10 consejos... también apps útiles, para conseguirlo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJPmqy6Qi1c En Youtube y en Instagram estamos publicando también contenido exclusivo. Suscríbete ahora:Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/c/LibrosparaemprendedoresNetInstagram: https://instagram.com/librosparaemprendedores Esta es nuestra página oficial de Facebook: http://librosparaemprendedores.net/facebook Además, recuerda que puedes suscribirte al podcast en:- Nuestra página: http://librosparaemprendedores.net/feed/podcast- iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/mx/podcast/libros-para-emprendedores/id1076142249?l=es- Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0qXuVDCYF8HvkEynJwHULb- iVoox: http://www.ivoox.com/ajx-suscribirse_jh_266011_1.html- Spreaker: http://www.spreaker.com/user/8567017/episodes/feed- Stitcher: http://www.stitcher.com/s?fid=81214 y seguirnos en Twitter ( https://twitter.com/EmprendeLibros ) y en Facebook ( https://www.facebook.com/EmprendeLibros/ ). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Strategy Skills episode 253, an episode with Emeritus Professor at UCLA Anderson, Richard Rumelt. Get Richard's book here: https://amzn.to/3OrNfuK In this episode, Richard iterated the real meaning of strategy, which many companies today confuse with a list of their goals and ambitions. Strategy is problem-solving – a clever way of dealing with a challenge, opponent, or problem. It also involves selecting which battle you fight because you cannot fight them all. As a great strategist, you need to select battles that you can win.  Richard also explained the crux or the biggest challenge that companies need to identify, emphasize, and concentrate their resources on until it is fixed or solved. As Richard mentioned in this episode, “the primary thing about strategy is that it is about a concentration of resources. It is about focus.” Richard Rumelt received his doctorate from the Harvard Business School in 1972, having previously earned a Master of Science in electrical engineering from UC Berkeley. He worked as a systems engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories and served on the faculty of the Harvard Business School. He joined the UCLA faculty in 1976. He also served as a faculty at INSEAD, France for three years. At INSEAD, Rumelt headed the Corporate Renewal Initiative, a research-intervention center devoted to the study and practice of corporate transformation. Rumelt was president of the Strategic Management Society from 1995 to 1998. He received the Irwin Prize for his book Strategy, Structure, and Economic Performance. In 1997, he was appointed Telecom Italia Strategy Fellow, a position he held until April 2000. He has won teaching awards at UCLA and received a best paper prize in 1997 from the Strategic Management Journal. Get Richard's book here: The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists, Richard Rumelt: https://amzn.to/3OrNfuK Enjoying our podcast? Get access to sample advanced training episodes here: www.firmsconsulting.com/promo

Big brands have large budgets that allow them to harness the power of multiple marketing channels, from digital marketing to mass media. Small businesses rarely have this same advantage, so how can they leverage their limited budgets to compete with industry giants? Ian Barnard believes the answer lies in targeting future customers.  Ian is an experienced marketing strategist and the Strategy Director at Creative Business Company, a marketing agency that helps businesses accelerate growth through the power of brand marketing.   In this episode, Ian explains how big brands succeed by targeting both current and future customers, ensuring they maintain consistent demand for their products. Small businesses, on the other hand, tend to focus solely on in-market consumers. Ian reveals how small businesses can restructure their budgets to mimic the marketing strategies of big brands. According to Ian,  “The optimal split for your marketing budget is to spend 60% of your money on online video brand-building campaigns. These are wide-reaching campaigns with broad messages that target future customers. Spend the other 40% on digital marketing campaigns targeting existing customers who are in-market.” We also discuss how to create effective storytelling in modern advertising campaigns, how to maintain authenticity on social media, and the changes Ian foresees in the marketing landscape in the coming years. If you want to level up your marketing without breaking the bank, then this is an episode you don't afford to miss out on! Topics Discussed in This Episode: Ian walks us through his marketing journey and what he's working on today (02:42) The main marketing advantage that big brands have over smaller businesses (04:20) How small businesses can chase future customers on a limited budget (07:45) Ian walks us through the 2-4-5 digital media framework (11:41) How to create great storytelling in a modern advertising campaign (15:48) Do consumers have lower attention spans or is advertising not entertaining enough? (18:38) Why focusing on organic social media is a waste of time for small businesses (22:13) How people can leverage paid ads to boost sales (25:25) Marketing elements small businesses can put in place on a small budget (30:50) How Creative Business Company helps small businesses with their marketing (33:32) The changes Ian foresees in the marketing industry over the next few years (35:30) Mentions: Empire Flippers Podcast Empire Flippers Marketplace Creative Business Company Creative Business Company whitepapers Born Social whitepaper Ogilvy on Advertising, David Ogilvy (1986) JWT Planning Guide, Stephen King (1974) Scientific Advertising, Claude Hopkins (1923) Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, Richard Rumelt (2011) Sit back, grab a coffee, and learn how to build a big brand on a small marketing budget.

Guest:  Ian Mann | Regular Book Reviewer and MD at Gateways Business Consultants  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What's the difference between good strategy and bad strategy? Why is understanding strategy as a theory of success so powerful? What is a framework for good strategy? And how grand is grand strategy? Dr. Van Jackson sits down with Dr. Jeff Meiser (University of Portland) to discuss. They also talk about Richard Rumelt's classic book, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy.

In 1907, pioneering psychologist William James wrote this: 'The human individual lives usually far within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use. He energizes below his maximum, and he behaves below his optimum.' That insight reflects the message of my guests on this podcast recently, and inspired the title of this episode: we CAN do hard things. This isn't just about writing a book – although writing a book is a damn hard thing to do – but more generally about the things that simply feel beyond us, too big, too far out of our comfort zone. Prepare to be inspired by insights from: Tim Bradshaw, Richard Rumelt, Corinne Sawers and Eric Lonergan, Graham Eisner, Daniel H. Pink, Catherine Sandland, Louise Third, Brian Moran and Michael Lennington, and Peter Elbow.

Richard P. Rumelt is one of the world's most influential thinkers on strategy and management. McKinsey Quarterly described him as “strategy's strategist” and “a giant in the field of strategy.” He is the author of Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters, reviewed by the Financial Times as “the most interesting business book of 2011” and by Strategy + Business as “the year's best and most original addition to the strategy bookshelf.” Richard received his doctoral degree from Harvard Business School and is the Harry and Elise Kunin Chair Emeritus at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. His new book, The Crux, goes on sale May 3, 2022, from PublicAffairs. In this podcast, he shares: Why so many organizations practice “Bad Strategy” and how to spot it when you see it Why strategy is fundamentally about solving problems How the secret behind the strategies of SpaceX and other breakthrough companies rests on finding the “crux” of the problem and how to choose a crux that others are not paying attention to Why we see so much vertical integration today and when that will change The three skills of: figuring out what is critical, constraining what is critical vs. what is controllable, and focusing energy on that __________________________________________________________________________________________"."-Richard Rumelt__________________________________________________________________________________________Episode Timeline:00:00—Introducing Richard + The topic of today's episode1:46—If you really know me you know that...2:20—What is your definition of strategy?6:38—What are some of the ideas or concepts you are most well-known for?9:17—How do you recognize bad strategy?10:39—Could you explain the concept of "crux"?14:50—How to narrow down on actual challenge being solved16:40—Do you think you've seen a rise in vertical integration, and what is your opinion on it?18:48—Where can people find you and connect with you?__________________________________________________________________________________________Additional Resources: Faculty Page: https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty-and-research/strategy/faculty/rumeltNewest book: https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/richard-p-rumelt/the-crux/9781541701243/Last book: http://goodbadstrategy.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-rumelt-18520828/

Richard P. Rumelt is one of the world's most influential thinkers on strategy and management. McKinsey Quarterly described him as “strategy's strategist” and “a giant in the field of strategy.” He is the author of Good Strategy/Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters, reviewed by the Financial Times as “the most interesting business book of 2011” and by Strategy + Business as “the year's best and most original addition to the strategy bookshelf.” Richard received his doctoral degree from Harvard Business School and is the Harry and Elise Kunin Chair Emeritus at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. His new book, The Crux, goes on sale May 3, 2022, from PublicAffairs. In this podcast, he shares: Why so many organizations practice “Bad Strategy” and how to spot it when you see it Why strategy is fundamentally about solving problems How the secret behind the strategies of SpaceX and other breakthrough companies rests on finding the “crux” of the problem and how to choose a crux that others are not paying attention to Why we see so much vertical integration today and when that will change The three skills of: figuring out what is critical, constraining what is critical vs. what is controllable, and focusing energy on that __________________________________________________________________________________________"."-Richard Rumelt__________________________________________________________________________________________Episode Timeline:00:00—Introducing Richard + The topic of today's episode1:46—If you really know me you know that...2:20—What is your definition of strategy?6:38—What are some of the ideas or concepts you are most well-known for?9:17—How do you recognize bad strategy?10:39—Could you explain the concept of "crux"?14:50—How to narrow down on actual challenge being solved16:40—Do you think you've seen a rise in vertical integration, and what is your opinion on it?18:48—Where can people find you and connect with you?__________________________________________________________________________________________Additional Resources: Faculty Page: https://www.anderson.ucla.edu/faculty-and-research/strategy/faculty/rumeltNewest book: https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/richard-p-rumelt/the-crux/9781541701243/Last book: http://goodbadstrategy.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-rumelt-18520828/

'The basic failure of strategy work is a failure to define the challenge that you're trying to meet.' Richard Rumelt is one of the world's leading authorities on strategy. He's also a keen rockclimber, and it was climbing that gave him the inspiration for his new book: The Crux.  In this wide-ranging conversation we talk about why strategy is such a controversial concept in business, and also why writing is such an important discipline for business thinkers. 

In dieser Folge widmen wir uns dem "Product Field", einem sogenannten "sense-making Framework für Produktinnovationen". Mit-Autor Klaus-Peter "KP" Frahm erläutert im Gespräch mit Oliver diesen spannenden Ansatz für ein sinnvolles Vorgehen im Rahmen der Produktstrategie und -innovation. Schaut man sich zunächst die Herleitung des Begriffs an, dann steht 'sense-making' für das Herstellen eines besseren Kontextverständnisses, indem man vorliegende Informationen im jeweiligen Zusammenhang besser einordnen kann. Mit Framework ist hier kein Prozess-Framework, sondern eher ein Bezugsrahmen gemeint, der es allen an der Produktentwicklung beteiligten Personen erlaubt, ein gemeinsames Verständnis herzustellen. Bei Produktinnovation geht es laut KP Frahm immer sowohl um die "Herstellung von etwas" und um das "Herausbringen nach Draußen", also z.B. in den Markt. Grundlage für die Erstellung und Nutzung des "Product Field" im Kontext der Produktstrategie ist die Schaffung eines gemeinschaftlichen Verständnisses. Dabei kann man das "Field" seines Produktes zunächst entlang der einzelnen Dimensionen durchlaufen ("Observe") und später auch die Konsistenz seiner Überlegungen überprüfen ("check"). Es lehnt sich daher eng an das auch von uns bevorzugte Strategieverständnis von Richard Rumelt an: erkenne den Kontext, entwickle Guidelines und fokussiere dann auf kongruente Handlungen. KP und Oli diskutieren im Verlauf der Podcast-Folge den Aufbau von "The Product Field", die Prozessschritte und die aktuellen Überlegungen der Autoren.

Hoy hablamos de estrategias de las buenas y de las malas estrategias.Para reflexionar recordamos el libro de Richard Rumelt titulado “Good Strategy, Bad Strategy”.A día de hoy podemos reflexionar sobre las estrategias que se han aplicado con la pandemia con esta última crisis mundial que hemos vivido.Estrategia es un concepto sencillo que no se acaba de entender bien. Me explico, una buena estrategia estás constituida por un buen diagnóstico de los problemas o retos a los que se enfrenta una organización y un diseño coherente de acciones que nos ayuden a superar ese mismo reto o problema.Pese a ello, las malas estrategias abundan por organizaciones proyectos y empresasVamos a repasarlos !!!

Scott Trench is the CEO and President of BiggerPockets. Scott has Dedicated his Career to Helping ordinary Americans Build Wealth in Part through Real Estate Investing. Since joining BiggerPockets in 2014, Scott has Authored the Bestselling Wealth-building book “Set for Life” and joined Mindy Jensen as Co-host of the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. In this episode we talked about: Founding a tiny Startup called BiggerPockets Scott's first real estate purchase Scott's Professional Development The Evolution of Scott's Investing Career 2014-2021 Partnerships Publishing with BiggerPockets Life as the CEO The Money Podcast 2021-2022 Outlook Mentorship, Resources and Lessons Learned Useful links: https://www.biggerpockets.com/users/scotttrench Instagram @scott_trench Transcriptions: Jesse (0s): Welcome to the working capital real estate podcast. My name is Jesper galley. And on this show, we discuss all things real estate with investors and experts in a variety of industries that impact real estate. Whether you're looking at your first investment or raising your first fund, join me and let's build that portfolio one square foot at a time. All right, ladies gentlemen, welcome to working capital the real estate podcast. I'm Jennifer galley and my special guest today. As usual as Scott trench, Scott trench is the CEO and president of bigger pockets.    Scott has dedicated his career to helping ordinary Americans build wealth in part through real estate investing. Since joining BiggerPockets in 2014, Scott has authored the bestselling wealth building book set for life and joined Mindy Jensen as cohost of the bigger pockets, money podcast, Scott, how's it going? Hey,    Scott (52s): It's going great. Thanks for having me.    Jesse (54s): Yeah, my pleasure to have you good to finally connect. I don't know if, if you were at BP con last, was it now two years ago when we were in Austin, Texas, where are you at that event?    Scott (1m 5s): I was at, well, I, I w we had one in Nashville, Tennessee. That was that. Yeah, it was, I was at that one    Jesse (1m 11s): Nashville. Now I'm mixing them up. I was in Austin for another real estate thing. Yeah, absolutely. It was a national first thing I did. I got off the plane. Just see you guy holding a guitar. I'm like, I'm in Nashville.    Scott (1m 21s): Yeah. I went to school there and it's a wonderful city, you know, maybe might've influenced that as the choice for the, the conference back then, but awesome.    Jesse (1m 30s): So, yeah, I guess I probably would have crossed paths with you at that point, but I didn't realize that you were with the organization for, for such a long time in 2014. So back then, how did, how did you get your start with, with that organization?    Scott (1m 45s): Yeah, so I joined BiggerPockets, well, I started my career as a financial analyst at a fortune 500 company, and immediately decided I wanted to become financially free rather than climb the corporate ladder. And so I found a company called BiggerPockets and their podcasts and started listening to it and thinking about real estate investing and early retirement, the fire movements. And so I kind of combined the two spent as little as I possibly could and bought a house hack one year out of college after saving up my, my funds and simultaneously, you know, I started my career in August, 2013 by August, 2014.    I was simultaneously under contract on my first duplex and a new employee at a tiny startup called BiggerPockets as the director of operations. I'm working alongside Brandon Turner and Josh dork and the founder    Jesse (2m 32s): Right on. So you were basically you're in school in a, was it a Vanderbilt? A university? I think last time I checked this online. Yep. Go doors. There you go. And so you buy your first property. Tell us that. Tell us that story. What was, what was your first foray into, into real estate investing?    Scott (2m 50s): Sure. It was a duplex in a, the Northeast corner of Denver called Cole Clayton, and it was a up and coming area and I bought a duplex for $240,000 needed some work, rented out each, each unit and, or rent out. The other unit lived in half, had a roommate. And that was kind of the start to my career. I put down 5%, $12,000 as a, as the down payment. Other side rented for like 1150 mortgage was 15, 50 roommate, five 50 in rent. So I'm barely breaking even, maybe it's paying a little bit to live, but certainly a lot better than paying rent.    Jesse (3m 26s): Yeah, absolutely. It's not a, it's funny, it's very similar to, to my first investment and it was 248,000, something like that, but it was a somewhat similar to a host hack. I just saw a bunch of guys in, in college that were basically buying properties and renting out to us. And I was like, what's going on? I'm missing something here. So in terms of, in terms of how you progressed through real estate and just in general with the bigger pockets show, so you're in there, you start in bigger pockets at that time. Yeah. I mean, was, it was bigger pockets, the impetus for you to invest in real estate or did invest in investing in real estate, uncover bigger pockets for you?    Scott (4m 4s): I was a fan of the idea of real estate. So when I started my career in 2013 in August, and I wanted to invest in real estate, it probably around December of that year, January. So six months after I started working, I just ran into a very simple problem, which is I didn't have the down payment. So I just needed a few more months. And so I was listening to BiggerPockets while saving up that down payment for that first duplex house hack. And in the process, I was, I drank the Kool-Aid. I joined the cult, whatever you want to call it and became a huge fan. That's when I met Josh Dworkin through kind of a networking thing in, in, in Denver is a guy I was meeting to take to lunch, a local real estate event.    Josh and Brandon on the podcast told me, go meet local real estate investors in your local market. And that's how you can get into this. So I did, and I took one of them and I joined a, an entrepreneur group, a mastermind at seven o'clock on Thursday mornings and took each one of the guys in that mastermind group out to lunch. One of them happened to work in the same co-working space as Josh Orkin. And so I was like, oh my God, you're my hero. You changed my life. I'm doing all this stuff. I'm going to get my first house, like by the end of the year, which I did.    And that's how I met him. And he paid that turned into a job interview after me, pestering him a few more times,    Jesse (5m 16s): Right on. So I mean, a bunch of our listeners have either, you know, members of bigger pockets or have seen the community online for context. Cause I remember it back then. It is not anywhere near what it is today. What was that like being part of, part of that at such an early stage in its development?    Scott (5m 38s): Well, well, for me, what was it like being at an early stage? I mean, you did everything right? So we were, I was, I was learning as much as I possibly could about operations, about growth hacking, which is, you know, internet marketing, as much as I could about real estate investing. I was trying to as much time as I could in the forums and meeting people, meeting users, posting, building my own portfolio, all that kind of stuff. So I mean, my days would be, I would bike in to save money, of course, you know, show up at around eight and then work until five or six and then Josh would go home and then I would be allowed to write for the blog and my after hours.    So that was my day for a lot of these weeks is doing that kind of stuff. And, and you just learn everything. And gradually, I think I'm just kind of the type of person who's going to stick my hand up and volunteer for every opportunity, even if it kind of begins to get a little overwhelming. And so gradually I kind of did more and more of the work that maybe some other folks didn't want to do, like managing, you know, teams and, you know, dealing with the problems and the finances and the, you know, data and those kinds of things. And so I began to take over more and more of an operations capacity over time, but yeah, the early days were just really fun, lots of creative ideas, you just thought of something and did it, you know, created a lot of problems of like, we have all these little ideas that we thought of 15 years ago or seven years ago now, and they're not really well-maintained anymore.    We've got other parts of the site that exploded like the podcast and those kinds of things. And so there's a whole bunch of history here. I think that was created then. And, and, and in the time proceeding my arrival to the company. So it was, I think it was just really exciting, but there was a sentiment like this is inevitably going to be huge, this, this deck, because we're helping people and it's a cult. And, you know, you can see how much value that people are getting from this and their net worth and their wealth and their freedom is just constantly evolving. And we've got so many success stories and so many people who are doing all the right things and everyone's debating all of the, the nuances of this and really intelligent and exciting way that is just, you don't see anywhere else.    And so that was, you know, that, that was, I think the sentiment or how I felt at the time about it at least.    Jesse (7m 53s): Yeah. It's really cool to hear that, that feeling just the, you know, this is going to be something big for me. I had somebody on the podcast a few weeks ago and for myself, just based in Toronto, I would say about 60% of the listeners are US-based the balance. I would say the majority of the balance are, are Canadians. And then, you know, a few over the pond here and there, but somebody was on the show talking about resources. And I was like, you know, if you're not using the, you know, key words, Canada, us cross border, like just things like that, where you can actually get into articles where people are talking about something so specific to what you're talking about, that you, anywhere else on the internet, even if you type in Reddit or forums, you don't get that same level of granularity that you do with bigger pockets.    Scott (8m 37s): Yeah. I think that's what makes the company special is as you get this nuance, there, there are people making money in every type of real estate and directly disagreeing with each other about the right way to make that, that money. Should you allow pets in your enter and your rentals? Heck no. Heck yes. Right. Like AB I only, I only read the pets. Yeah. Yeah. Like the pet, you know, I bought the I'm on the side of definitely allow the pets that increases your applicant pool and you get way more qualified applicants for that. But, but you know that that's a nuance that's debated heavily on a lot of these things, right.    The 1% rule, you know, like all of these different topics are, I think you can get that nuance and you can get it locally, which I think is pretty cool.    Jesse (9m 17s): Hmm. So how was it for you from, you know, 2014 up till today? So you're, you're doing operations, you're, you're kind of dealing with this real estate startup. What is your investing career looking at? Looking like during that time and, and how was that navigating, you know, the day job with, with investing as well?    Scott (9m 37s): Yeah, so I, I took a little bit different approach than say, Brandon did, Brandon Vernon is now doing incredible stuff with these, these mobile home parks and all that kind of stuff. But at the time he was buying kind of like 40, $50,000 units in rural Washington and that kind of stuff. And that was how he was building his portfolio. And, you know, the properties I'm purchasing here in Denver, one unit might be $300,000, right. And so it's a completely different price point and different type of investing. And so my, my activity set with real estate investing has been much less intense than maybe some other investors or maybe like Brandon Turner's, for example, because I've been buying, you know, about a duplex, then I got another duplex.    Then I got a quad Plex. Now I'm buying my fourth property in seven years, which is another duplex. And the asset value across this is going to be close to like $3 million across those 10 units. And, you know, that's, there's a different appreciation, potential and rent inflation and that kind of stuff that's been going on. And my goal, my philosophy is I'm going to buy slow and steady once every year, once every 18 months, that kind of range and just pile up the portfolio over 50 years and through the ups and downs of the market, I think I'm going to benefit from Denver rent and price appreciation in a way that will really carry a lot of my portfolio.    So it's a little bit more of a passive approach. It's not a get rich quick, but it has produced incredible results for me so far with us. And, you know, really allows me to spend most of my attention on my job here at BiggerPockets. So I also invest in some syndications and I dumped a lot of money into index funds. So I've got rentals, index funds, BiggerPockets, you got the portfolio there.    Jesse (11m 23s): So for, for investing, I mean, that's not dissimilar to, you've heard, probably heard this on the podcast or in the forums where everything right now, every market that's a downtown market is incredibly hot and it's very hard to, to break in to different markets in terms of the way you're investing. It sounds like you're basically, you're not jumping on anything. If you find something that makes sense and it works, then you'll potentially invest in it in terms of how you're purchasing these, that you mentioned, you invest in some syndications, but for your core real estate, is that stuff that you typically do on your own, you partner with, what does that look like?    Scott (11m 57s): Yeah, so I, I partner on those deals with a business partner here in Denver and we kind of, it's a, it's a great relationship. We've been friends for a long time and we kind of both jointly manage things as we're, as we're able to, we have a property manager as well now with that. And yeah, I mean, we just kind of handle those problems as they come up right. On    Jesse (12m 18s): One thing I've, I've at least seen just having people on the podcast where, you know, I've mentioned either before or after the show, we'll mention bigger pockets. And if they're larger podcasts, you know, I've had people be like, you know, I, I don't want to mention them. They're they're competitive hours. So, and if the first time I'd be like, first time, I felt like our community I've always felt it's been extremely inclusive, but the reason I bring it up is I'm curious to task you. What, what do you, what have been some of the challenges that you've had as you grow as you grew from a smaller company to a pretty dominant real estate company in your space?    I, you, you know, the metrics probably better than anybody, but just at the level you're at would have been some of the biggest challenges getting to the space that you're at or, or while you're here.    Scott (13m 2s): I think it's really defining who we are and who we want to be when you grow up as a business, I think is really the big challenge. I think we've done a really good job of, of building I think a great brand. I think we've got, I think we've genuinely helped. A lot of people get started and build their, their, their real estate portfolios and all that kind of stuff. And I think it's, it's, what's, what's next here. How do we more formalize this and professionalize it? Because I think what you get with bigger pockets is a choose your own adventure free for all deep dive into the world of real estate investing.    And that's great for a lot of people, but it's maybe not what some people want where they want more of like a here's what to do. You know, here are the options you pick one, here are the pros and cons and, and go with it. Right. And I think that there's a big market of people out there. Like what, what does the user of bigger pockets do? Right? What they do is they spend 500 hours, literally listening to podcasts, reading books, engaging in our forums and Facebook groups following that are our hosts and guests and bigger pockets on Instagram, joining, you know, joining the community.    And then, and then a moment comes when you want to buy real estate. Okay. I'm ready to put that investment of hundreds of hours of work into actually transacting on my first, your next property with that. And I think that's the challenge is, is that is not for everyone. There's a certain component of, of folks out there who like that and want to do that. But that, that in-depth dive, I think is not really for as many people. And, and so how do we kind of help those people invest in something more passive or succeed without having to commit to that huge learning curve there that I think it, I think it does take to be a successful, you know, owner operator of a real estate business.    Jesse (14m 59s): Yeah, for sure. It's almost like multiple funnels. Like, you know, where, where is it, like you said, choose your own adventure. Because I think with one of the things I've always admired about brand and with the podcast with Josh and Brandon and something I've tried to do with this podcast is, you know, somebody says a term and you don't necessarily know, like you said, host hacking early, and then you kind of described it where, you know, somebody says something that your listener base may not know that he would always be very quick to be like, okay, this, can you define that? And that's great.    But to a certain extent, once you get to a point where there's a level of sophistication that you're talking about, you know, I don't know, like a waterfall structures for limited partnerships, it'd be very challenging to have that podcast or that show with having to explain every single thing. So I can only imagine for bigger pockets that, you know, multiply that by X and in that, that complexity. Yeah.    Scott (15m 52s): Well that, yeah, that's, that's the big challenge, right? And so how do you, you know, on, if you come to the BiggerPockets website, I can, I can create an experience there based on your information that drives you towards those goals. But the challenge is that the website is like one tiny corner of the bigger pockets experience, right? Because it's no bigger or smaller and a lot of ways than our podcast, our YouTube channel, our Facebook groups, our Instagram, you know, other parts of the book publishing business, you know, it's, and so that's one corner of the, the BP universe.    And so what we've decided to do is to begin building what we call sub brands of bigger pockets. And so that's where we have bigger pockets, money, and real estate rookie. And we're hoping to launch one more over the course of 20, 21. I'm still debating a couple of things, but I think there's a place for more advanced investors. And what, what the current approach has done is the personal finance piece and the rookie piece allow our core real estate, the bigger pockets, real estate podcast, to go a little bit more advanced and move away from that to a certain extent and get into some of that bigger business mindset there.    So in our new investors, our rookies can really learn about, you know, what cashflow is and how to analyze the deal and the basics of that on the rookie podcast. And so that's kind of been the idea. We think there's still yet another level of advanced discussion that could be had in another corner. So that that's kind of the highest level framework. We see a world where if you come into bigger pockets, you join in there in the real estate rookie universe. And that's how you get your first deal. And you're surrounded by peers, but led by experts with that, with, with our, our hosts and guests and those types of types of things.    And then over time, you move into the business building phase or the, the investing phase on our core, bigger pockets platform. And then maybe at a future date, you move into a advanced situation. Maybe if you're a professional flipper or professional syndicator, or you're an accredited investor and invest passively, there's a place to learn how to, how to do that and that all y'all and make sure that you're, you're doing a good job with the money and all that kind of stuff.    Jesse (18m 2s): Yeah. That's a great point. You mentioned the, the book publishing side of it. I I've always wanted to ask, you know, one of the members of the team, how did that, how did that start? Because you, you you've kind of teamed up with, with subject matter experts. And the first time I ever saw that, I don't, I can't remember which, you know, which individual it was, but, you know, it was bigger pockets as, as part of, so is that first of all, how did that, how did that begin? And secondly, is the, is it self-published or published by bigger pockets?    Like the entity bigger pockets?    Scott (18m 34s): Well, mechanically we have a wholly owned LLC called BiggerPockets publishing. So it's published by BiggerPockets publishing. So how did the book business come about? I think it, before I got to bigger pockets, Jay Scott had written the book on flipping houses and the book on estimating rehab costs. And, you know, I think it would be fair to say that I really pushed the publishing side of the business as a big opportunity for us with this brand and published the book on investing in real estate with no money down next.    And everyone was debating what we should write next. And I was like, how about the book on rental property investing that one? Right. And so, so we have a, a long standing tradition now of launching books, largely with very obvious titles, I could call them SEO titles. That was not, I don't know if that was the intent at first, but we were just like the fuck that rental property investor let's look at flipping houses, the book and estimating rehab costs, book and investing in real estate with no one looking low money down, buy rehab, rent, refinance, repeat, you know, and so that's, that's kind of our fleet there that has kind of transformed over time.    We found that people love the books. We have a really high, and, you know, you can judge whether your product is doing well in the mind of the consumer by what's called an NPS score. So that's a net promoter score, and you can think of this more or less along the lines of a star rating on Amazon, five stars. People love it. Four stars. People are neutral three and below people are detractors. And our books really, really seem to have high ratings, high NPS scores among the, among our customers with that. Because I think that they're a low cost way to really digest a lot of information.    And I think our publishing team is super consistent about finding a, a true expert. Somebody, you know, we'll talk about Jay Scott here. I know you just, you just interviewed him right before me, I think earlier today, actually. Right. You know, Jay, I can't gush enough about Jay Jay's. Jay Scott joined BiggerPockets. I don't know, 15 years ago, 16 years ago, he posted 17, 18,000 times to our forums over the course of that period, he completed 150 fix and flip projects, right? Maybe the guy is playing some underhanded game with no way.    Jay Scott is a genuine human who's proved his reputation over and over and over again, who has debated the nuance of every point. That every problem that you can conceivably come up with across 17,000 online discussions, God only knows how many other discussions he's had with people on an individual basis. And the guy can write, and he runs a successful business and has a track record for it. What, how can you find a better author than that? And that I think is a reflection on Jay Scott's character and expertise, but also a reflection of the power of BiggerPockets is we can find that person who is not just, you know, a recent just came out of nowhere, kind of person who, who knows what's gonna happen.    We can find people who have really embraced our values and, you know, seen success and like to help people and understand the problems that folks. And they're the ones who are kind of writing a lot of our, our books and content. So that's been a really powerful draw for us. People who are interviewing people day in and day out in the podcast. You get to know the challenges of that.    Jesse (21m 45s): No know Scott, it might be the long con with, with Jay.    Scott (21m 48s): Yeah, that's right. Well, if he doesn't listen to this, sorry, Jay.    Jesse (21m 53s): It was funny. He, he mentioned because we said we were talking about BB cotton, Nashville. The, so I, you know, I thought I assumed it was the official first one. And he's like, nah, it was the officially was, I spoke at the one in 2012 when there was four of us. But yeah, it was like, I don't know where there was one back then. So, you know, one thing I like, I'm curious, I think anybody in our space is curious that there gets a point where you put out content and you're trying to figure out if there is a way to monetize this content. And you know, one thing for me, I've been really fortunate to be a contributor for bigger pockets on the commercial real estate side.    I learned so much just, you know, doing, even though I live in the space of commercial real estate, I learned so much by putting that information out there. And I'll tell you the first time you have, you know, 70,000 views on something, and you're looking at comments, you start sharpening your pencil really quickly and try to make sure you know, what you're talking about. So it's been really beneficial from that point of view. But when you start putting out content and you start trying to figure out where is the monetization, and I find with, you know, we're not selling a product, we're not selling a, you know, mugs where you see a lot of people in our space go the coaching route or go into the, you know, substantative relationship.    And then they invest eventually with, with the company, is that, are you trying to fire on all cylinders? Are you trying to, are you picking certain avenues? And just on the idea of coaching will, will bigger pockets grow to a point where it's kind of like a rich dad, poor dad, where you have a brand, you have somebody that has, you know, drunk the Kool-Aid and they are, you know, the, the evangelists for BiggerPockets.    Scott (23m 30s): You know, I think, I think you begin to lose competitive advantage if you move in that direction. Right? So here's how I think about, you know, because one of my jobs is to make money for the, for our shareholders, right? That's, that's a goal for every CEO, right? With here's how I think about it. The moment that we deliver value to our customer is the moment that they transact on an investment property that they believe and have good reason to believe is likely to advance their financial position.    And my, my belief is that our business, we are in the business of helping people dive in, but then ultimately take action in buying real estate and they need to do it healthfully. As part of that transaction, there are four stakeholders who make a lot of money. One is the real estate agent. The second is the lender. The third is the insurance provider and the fourth is the property manager. And these are the people, the core four that, you know, a lot of investors need, right?    I guess a contractor instead of the insurance broker, but I will get to contractors later. I believe that it is very hard to find an investor friendly real estate agent right now. W where do you go to look for that? And I think we've got a lot of agents who would love to do business with BiggerPockets investors and a lot of investors who do not want a referral from their mom or their brother or their best friend. They want an investor friendly real estate agent. So I think, you know, what, what we've built and we've already launched in 10 markets and things are off to the races with this is a marketplace that you can go to biggerpockets.com/agents and find really high quality investor friendly agents.    Many of whom have grown up through bigger pockets and post a million times on our forums. Many of whom we've, you know, there's, there's more folks that are entering the game and trying to prove themselves as investor-friendly agents. And we can match folks with that. And I think that's a really big opportunity for us, if we can help people connect, get ready. And when they're ready after the time that they spend to, to, to, to learn about this, actually move down the steps toward the transaction and connect with an agent and a lender and that kind of stuff.    I think there'll be plenty of opportunity to make money in that process. As long as we do a good job, making sure that you're actually getting a good professional with that    Jesse (25m 47s): On that note, because you know, my world is in commercial brokerage, those type of realtors or agents that you're connecting, are they in the commercial space and more in the single family multifamily, where do they, where do they lie on the, in that world?    Scott (26m 4s): Well, I think you bring up a good point, the bigger pockets we, you know, the, the market that we're most heavily concentrated, we have a forum and community that can talk about every conceivable aspect of real estate investing. But I would say the majority of our users are going to be folks that are buying single families, duplexes, triplexes, and quads, a minority 10% have a great discussion about buying larger properties with, with those types of things. But the majority of our, of our users are doing that.    And 90% of single family rental properties in this country are owned by investors with 10 or fewer units. And 50% are owned by investors with just one or two units. So that is really kind of like the user of bigger pockets. Now, the folks that you interact with and you have on your podcast completely different profile than the average investor, right. But the, the typical person is, is fitting the description that I'm I'm describing here. The guy who likes to talk about real estate all day long is going to have a different profile than that, right. Is that that's where the voltage is more prominent anyways.    So what were you asking about?    Jesse (27m 12s): Basically, it sounds like that is the space it's it's the, the singles to quads is where you're connecting those types of agents where we're now for me, the reason I asked that is because when I was younger or sorry, earlier in my career, when I was in single family or student rental, it was really challenging finding the, see the link between residential broker commercial broker, and then in the middle there there's this investor centric broker that will do deals like you're discussing.    Scott (27m 41s): Yes. And we think that's the opportunity for us to in the next, you know, year or so to really solve a lot of problems. I would love to also do a marketplace for the more serious commercial brokers who are brokering apartment complexes. But I think we got to bite off one thing at a time as a business and, and concentrate our focus on the biggest challenge facing the majority of our users, which I think is transacting on single family, duplex, triplex quadplex long-term rental investments.    And one of the biggest things we can do to help them with that is help them find an investor friendly agent instead of an agent where they're going to have to figure out and drive all that process.    Jesse (28m 19s): Yeah. Well, I mean, you would have the data there. So I mean, if that, if that is the majority of, of the individuals, that just, that makes sense. And I think like from, I think there's a misnomer, or there's just a misunderstanding of, it's not the commercial brokers, aren't, don't want to do deals with, with a variety of different people. It's it's that ultimately, without getting into the granularity of it, it's the, the fee split or the, the commission split structure is just it's, it's, it's in such a way that doing deals less than 5 million, 3 million, it just, it becomes something where it's, you can't wait.    It literally is a waste of time that you can't spend your time doing that. And that's why they're, you know, there is a great place. I know in most major markets between 1 million and $5 million deals, that is a really great spot that I think a lot of agents aren't capturing and are starting to make that their niche of, of what they focus in.    Scott (29m 14s): And I'll bring you down just one more level from there, a single family rental home costs the same as a single family home, right. More or less than that. But, but the, the, the realtors and the agents, the local agents who are helping investors do that, do not understand things like the 1% rule or a cash and cash return, or the fact that, Hey, I care if it's a good school district, but that's like a fourth or fifth or seventh bullet point for me after the rent to price ratio that this property can command the longterm.    Other long-term factors around appreciation, whether it has amenities that are going to be that the tenants are going to like whether I can convert that office into another bedroom, those types of things. That is the level. Those are the, the, the more, I guess, accessible things that we're, we're, we're building, we're building a marketplace for investors to meet agents who can help them transact on residential real estate. 1, 2, 3, and four unit properties, probably in most cases, less than a million dollars, but in some cases they'll get, they'll get to that, that value    Jesse (30m 21s): Right on, well, we can talk in new Orleans, we can talk about some ideas to get those commercial and monetize those commercial brokers. I think from that point of view, it's really going to be on the listing side. Everybody has a buyer listings are where it's at. I want to be respectful of your, of your time here. I'm really curious to know about how you spun off the original podcast to the money podcasts. I I've, I've listened only admittedly to a few episodes, but it seems like there was a pivot to basically get the ideas of that were already ingrained in the initial podcast, financial freedom, money, personal finance, and move it in that direction.    Can you talk a little bit about how that process took place?    Scott (31m 2s): Yeah, sure. So, so the mission of bigger pockets and emission I share is how you enable financial freedom for as many people as possible as early in life as possible, because that is how you unlock human potential. And my belief is that there's a lot of people who want to invest in real estate, but just don't have a financial position capable of responsibly sustaining real estate investment. And this can be anybody from having debt and needing to rebuild their position to we've had millionaires on the podcast who have no wealth outside of their primary residence and their retirement accounts, $10,000 in cash and nothing else.    And they're not in position to invest either. And so the point of the money show is to help folks move toward financial freedom and a financial position, a strategy with their money that allows them to make on a repeated basis investments in assets like real estate and other businesses on a regular basis with that. So it's a, it's a very different bent on personal finance with that. And we've talked, we talked a lot of people, we have two major SEG well, so that's the reason for the show is to, is to really bring in the personal finance aspect of this and say, here's how real estate investors build a position capable of sustaining real estate investment investing and how they move toward financial freedom with that as part of their portfolio.    Jesse (32m 21s): Yeah, it's a, you mentioned it earlier. It seems like there is that there is that real estate avatar that you do enough of these podcasts where you're listening to, you're listening to a lot of the same stuff. You're reading books like crazy. You're, you're digesting as much information as you can, but you start seeing the same, even on YouTube, you start seeing the same pop up. And then you're like, you know, I didn't expect BiggerPockets have this guest on. I saw him in some totally different, you know, field or, or podcasts, but it seems like there is that a specific individual that, you know, multiple Venn diagrams, I think we all share.    Scott (32m 55s): Yeah. I mean, like right now, bigger pockets is a real estate investing platform, right? That's our, that's our core focus, but in 20 years, maybe that begins to shift gradually over time because the goal is financial freedom right now is financial freedom through real estate. But how do you just make that more accessible to more people? Cause that's, that's how you unlock. Like I said, human potential in ways that you can't predict those people who become millionaires in their thirties or forties, go on to start businesses, change the world, all that kind of stuff. And real estate is the nominal tool for a lot of people, but especially people making between 50 and $200,000 a year, when you make less than that, you can't really get to the starting point in real estate responsible.    You're going to take, you're going to take some big risks, you know, likely unless you, unless you're a really good saver for example, and you can make much more than that. You're probably not going to put in the 500 hours that I articulated before, because you'd be better spent just earning that money and dumping it into something more passive for like, you know, a syndication or something rather than buying the, the, the duplex. So you've got that sweet spot, but there's a whole bunch of opportunities for lots of billions of folks in that category who don't want to do real estate and other folks out there who want to achieve financial freedom through other means.    Jesse (34m 7s): Yeah, no, that's a really good point. The a 50 to 200 interesting to think about it that way for the future here, we're going to come up to a few questions. We ask every guest, but before we do Scott 20 21, 20 22, I think we talked a little bit before the show. It's been a insane last 18 months, it's it hasn't been easy for a lot of individuals, a lot of companies from a positive note, what do you see for opportunities down the line? You know, what is 20 21, 20 22 look like for yourself and the team?    Scott (34m 41s): Oh, for myself and the team. I think we're going to, I think we're going to be able to really create a world-class network of investor-friendly real estate agents, and maybe also investor-friendly lenders who understand the different types of loan products that you need for a duplex triplex or single family rental investment, those types of folks. I think we'll be able to build that those marketplaces. I think we are going to, I try to launch another podcast perhaps in that syndication space.    I want to let the team beat me up on that. We're not sure if we're actually going to do that quite yet, but that's, that's something that we're, we're noodling on. We have our conference coming up October and we've got a couple of good books lined up that we'll be releasing in the next 12 months as well. So I think we've got a lot of exciting stuff in the pipeline for bigger pockets over the next year. Awesome    Jesse (35m 32s): Man. Excited for it. All right. I got four for ya. Rapid fire. If, if you're ready to I'll, I'll sell them over. Let's do it. All right. Scott, first question, something that you know now in your career with bigger pockets that you wish you knew when you started out there,    Scott (35m 50s): You know, I, I'm going to get, answer your question very generally. I think there's a ton of mental models that a CEO needs to have around what good looks like looks like, especially from senior executives, whether that's finance, technology, marketing, HR, those types of things. And, you know, I don't know if there's a way I could've gone back and given them to myself, but developing those as the core responsibility of a CEO. And I think that's been the biggest challenge for me is understanding what are the essential outputs? How do I articulate them? How do I performance manage against those    Jesse (36m 21s): On that point of development? Again, it's, it's great to have you in this seat because it's something I asked a lot of people, and I think you see it from a, from a closer point of view, your view on mentorship for younger people that are getting into our industry or any industry for that matter. What would you say on that point? And maybe just with the added piece of what to watch out for what to be careful for, because I mean, you, you see it all on the, on the forum as    Scott (36m 50s): A hiring manager, as a men, as looking for a minute. Sure.    Jesse (36m 53s): I think for people in a real estate, trying to get in to the industry, your view on mentorship and, and you know, what will you would recommend or, or w what's been beneficial?    Scott (37m 3s): I think the informal mentorship is a really good approach. Like you're not looking if you're paying a lot of money for the mentorship, you better know what good looks like. And you know, here, here's a good framework. If, if you, you know, that you're probably getting on the right track to and begin investing, when you can meet with 10 investors who all outwardly appear successful and say, these two are really sharp. These guys are, are four formulaic, and these two are successful. They're really gonna they're, they're, they're really doing something crazy here. I don't understand it, or they're not doing it.    It doesn't make any sense or they don't seem smart to me. So I think when you can begin meeting with people that outwardly see more advanced than you, and kind of pick out the nuance in their approach, you're probably onto something there. And that might help you begin to spot that mentor. If you do want to engage in something more formal. Awesome.    Jesse (37m 53s): What is one resource? It can be a book podcasts that you are listening to right now that you would recommend to listeners. And I'll just put the caveat out also with this one, I'll give you one from BiggerPockets and then a, and then one outside of your space.    Scott (38m 9s): Yeah. I always, by default have the bigger pockets things. I almost never reference them. Cause I feel like that'd be a shameless plug. No, I I'm listening to good strategy, bad strategy right now. And I think that's a fantastic book. I I'm listening. I'm halfway through it and I can't remember the author's name, but    Jesse (38m 25s): We'll put it in the show notes. Good strategy. Bad strategy.    Scott (38m 29s): Yep. Richard Rumelt. Yeah.    Jesse (38m 34s): All right. Well, wasn't Scott. It's been a, it's been a real pleasure. Thank you for, for spending the time here for those out there. I say this all the time. Everything's a Google search away, but for those that want to reach out, connect, be part of this community, or just learn more, where can, where can they go?    Scott (38m 52s): You can find me on BiggerPockets. You can just search in the nav bar there. And my name will come up or you can email me@scottatbiggerpockets.com. You can find me on Instagram at, at Scott underscore    Speaker 2 (39m 2s): Trench. My guest    Jesse (39m 4s): Today has been Scott trench. Scott, thanks for being part of working capital.    Speaker 2 (39m 9s): Thank you for having me.     Jesse (39m 17s): Thank you so much for listening to working capital the real estate podcast. I'm your host, Jesse for galley. If you like the episode, head on to iTunes and leave us a five star review and share on social media, it really helps us out. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me on Instagram, Jesse for galley, F R a G a L E, have a good one. Take care. 

Good strategy, bad strategy: The difference, and why it matters By Richard Rumelt Key insights Strategy =/= ambitious goal setting, vision, charisma Around the 60's, many authors started ascribing leader's success to their vision, combined with their charisma. This has resulted in a lot of bad strategy, based on ambitious goal setting. Example: 20/20 plan - 20% growth with 20% profit margin. Often a goal or a vision can be a perfectly fine starting point for a strategy. However, the strategy itself must include precise information on how these goals will actually be achieved. Example: warzone Every good strategy has the same foundation: a diagnosis, a guiding policy and a set of coherent actions Diagnosis: What is the challenge to be overcome? Often requires focus on critical elements to simplify complex realities A guiding policy is an overall approach chosen to cope with or overcome the obstacles identified in the diagnosis. Like the guardrails on a highway, the guiding policy directs and constrains action in certain directions without defining exactly what shall be done. A set of coherent actions dictate how the guiding policy will be carried out. The actions should be coherent, meaning the use of resources, policies, and maneuvers that are undertaken should be coordinated and support each other (not fight each other, or be independent from one another). A good strategy demands that you make a choice, based on your diagnosis (strengths, weaknesses). Example: Bonsai Good strategy vs bad strategy -Good strategy identifies the key challenge to overcome. Bad strategy fails to identify the nature of the challenge. -Good strategy includes actions to take to overcome the challenge. Actions are not “implementation” details -Good strategy is designed to be coherent – all the actions an organization takes should reinforce and support each other. Leaders must do this deliberately and coordinate action across departments. Bad strategy is just a list of “priorities” that don't support each other, at best, or actively conflict with each other, undermine each other, and fight for resources, at worst. Good strategy is about focusing and coordinating efforts to achieve an outcome, which necessarily means saying “No” to some goals, initiatives, and people. Developing a strategy is not a one-time-exercise. The only constant in any situation is change. Your action points, and maybe even your strategy will need to adapt to this change. Change can come from technology, industry trends or competitors. Next to adapting to change, it is also possible to use change to your advantage. Example: The author once asked Steve Jobs how he was going to compete against the Win-tel standard in the personal computer industry. His answer was - ‘I'm not going to, I'm going to wait for the next big thing in the tech industry, and take it'. A good strategy maximises your competitive advantage by limiting your rivals' opportunities and maximising your resources. Approach strategy like science, start with a hypothesis and continue to test your hypotheses. Once in a while, it pays off to stop doing and reflect on your priorities, example: interview of the CEO.

This week, we talk about how to become a more strategic designer: what should you be doing day to day, or thinking about more often? In The Sidebar, we talk about the downsides of using metaphors to describe the role of designers in building software.Golden Ratio Supporter:AroundThank you to Around, a better way to video call. The product is designed specifically to make it easier to gather small groups to collaborate in real time, without all the distracting and frustrating interfaces that comes with most video chat software. We love the small floating heads and emphasis on making it easy to work alongside the video call, rather than constantly having to app switch.You can get started for free by signing up at Around.co!Latest VIP Patrons:Tim NoetzelCollin HadleyKristin AuCamden GabaGabriel LibermanJosh HoubenPreethi ShreeyaEdward LakeNick GiordanoCaleb HillJames Molyneux-BirchThe Sidebar:The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to bonus content going forward! Sign up at patreon.com/designdetails.Tweets:Nejat Seçkin Oral tweeted: I’m pretty sure I said this multiple times before but @designdetailsfm manages to answer questions that I’m seeking at that particular time. Almost every episode. I don’t know what magic it is but I’m here for it.Main Topic:Jessica Tong asks on GitHub: I work at a small startup with less than 15 people and I'm the only designer. Recently, I've had a performance review and my manager, who is the Head of Product has recognised that I am lacking in "strategy skills". I seem to mostly come up with short term ideas. eg. we have a problem regarding X, so i am able to come up with multiple solutions, etc. I've also been to a job interview where they said I was lacking high level, strategy skills. I am unsure as to how to develop this skill and think of my work more in the long term and plan for the long term. My manager has suggested a book called "Good Strategy/Bad Strategy" by Richard Rumelt but other than that, he does not know how to help - probably because he is from a product management background, and I should be developing a UX strategy skills. Do you have any advice, or resources you can point me to where I can grow in this area as a product designer?OKRs: Objectives and Key ResultsSpotify acquires Locker RoomStratecheryCool Things:Brian shared Readng, a beautiful app for tracking what you read, and following other people’s book recommendations. It’s like Letterboxd, but for books! And it’s beautifully designed, and a joy to use.Design by Aziz Firat – follow!Marshall shared Quadeca – From Me To You, a music video. Quadeca also comes from the YouTube world, alongside his own music productions, so dive into the backlog of videos.Design Details on the Web:

Peter Mahoney is the CEO of Plannuh, a SaaS company that provides cloud-based tools to help marketers build, manage, and share their marketing budgets. Peter has over 30 years of marketing experience and has worked in a variety of CMO roles. He is also a passionate supporter of the rights of people with disabilities. Join Peter as he discusses his journey from CMO to CEO, how to embrace your nerd status, and the inner workings of building a company on your money vs. on investors’ money.   Key Takeaways: [1:45] For 30 years Peter was a CMO, now he considers himself a “recovering CMO” as he takes on a CEO role. Why has his marketing journey been like thus far? [5:00] What makes a good CEO? [7:55] Is there a lot of friction when it comes to a CMO taking on a CEO role? [11:35] What were some of the surprises along the way that Peter encountered as a new CEO? [13:05] Peter shares the differences going from a $2B company to a startup. [16:15] Network is hugely important in both your success and your growth. [17:25] Peter had to learn for the very first time how to raise money. [19:15] What has Peter enjoyed the most about running his own company? [21:00] What keeps Peter up at night? [28:45] Peter learned an important lesson as a CEO about how his team sees him. [30:20] Why should more people unleash their inner nerd? [32:40] Why did Peter decide to write a book for CMOs? [39:05] People often confuse goals with strategy. [40:35] Without getting alignment with your peers and CEO, you’re always going to have to be justifying budget spend. [43:15] No matter who you are, your marketing plan has changed dramatically. [45:25] What investments are people making in their technologies right now? [46:25] As a board member, Peter shares what he has been up to in this arena. [50:25] How does Peter structure his day and get the most out of his time? [54:00] The pandemic has changed the way Peter works, and for the better. They’re a remote company right now. [57:05] What advice would Peter give to his younger self?   Mentioned in This Episode: Plannuh.com Peter on LinkedIn The Next CMO: A Guide to Operational Marketing Excellence, by Peter Mahoney, Scott Todaro, and Dan Faulkner Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters, by Richard Rumelt

What is bad strategy? What is good strategy? How did Steve Jobs save Apple? How did David beat Goliath? What is the reason behind Walmart's success? Was Kennedy's goal of landing a man on the moon, actually a strategy? How does IKEA excel? Why is the Disney brand so strong? How did software help Cisco rise to the pinnacle? What could be the future for newspapers? How did Nvidia become a superpower? How did Starbucks become a giant? All this and more in Good Strategy Bad Strategy, by Richard Rumelt. This episode is a review of this book, focusing on one very significant story - of Hannibal's victory over the Romans, making him the Father of Strategy. Please rate & review this podcast here: https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/the-31-5-guy-podcast/id1528897344 You can find me at https://rounakbose.in Links: https://www.instagram.com/the31point5guy/ https://twitter.com/The31point5Guy https://medium.com/the-31-5-guy https://www.linkedin.com/in/rounakbose1997/ ~ The 31.5 Guy

Chris and Rifa's continuing bitesize adventures in the world of arts, culture, tech and diversity. This week our intrepid duo check out the iconic new installation at Tate Modern's enormous Turbine Hall, Kara Walker's powerful reflection on slavery and empire Fons Americanus. We also watch Eddie Murphy's sweet new Netflix film Dolomite Is My Name – a biopic of blaxploitation / comedy / hip hop pioneer Rudy Ray Moore. In What You Reading For? Chris is trying to read Under The Radar poetry magazine from Nine Arches Press, while Rifa is digging into Richard Rumelt's business guidebook Good Strategy/Bad Strategy. Though we've mistakenly called him 'Rumlet' throughout the podcast – and even taken the piss out of his name, though it's wrong. Sorry, Richard. Find us on Insta, Twitter and Facebook. Please give us a nice review and 'like' and subscribe etcetra etcetra.

Katrina first told us about her rocky start that had nothing to do with science or programming. She described the detours she took and how she finally woke up earning a living as a programmer some day. She explained how her first job in a fashion startup was a forming experience and how she picked her next job afterwards. We touched on her debut in public speaking and how it started an avalanche that led her -through hard work- to working for Github nowadays.Katrina is an ecosystem engineer at GitHub. She accidentally became a developer while pursuing a degree in molecular biology. When programming, her focus is on automation, workflow optimization, and refactoring. She works primarily in Go and Ruby, contributes to several open source projects, and is the creator of exercism.io, a platform for code practice and programming mentorship.Here are the links of the show:https://www.twitter.com/kytrinyxhttp://exercism.iohttps://exercism.io/bloghttps://events.codemotion.com/conferences/berlin/2019/Book: "99 Bottles of OOP", book that Katrina co-authored with Sandi Metz https://www.sandimetz.com/99bottlesBook: "Good Strategy / Bad Strategy: The difference and why it matters" by Richard Rumelt: https://amzn.to/2NoqY5oCreditsMusic Aye by Yung Kartz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.Your hostSoftware Developer‘s Journey is hosted and produced by Timothée (Tim) Bourguignon, a crazy frenchman living in Germany who dedicated his life to helping others learn & grow. More about him at timbourguignon.fr.Want to be next?Do you know anyone who should be on the podcast? Do you want to be next? Drop me a line: info@devjourney.info or via Twitter @timothep.Gift the podcast a ratingPlease do me and your fellow listeners a favor by spreading the good word about this podcast. And please leave a rating (excellent of course) on the major podcasting platforms, this is the best way to increase the visibility of the podcast:Apple PodcastsStitcherGoogle PlayPatreonFinally, if you want to help produce the podcast, support me on Patreon. Every cent you pledge will help pay the hosting bills!Thanks!Support the show (http://bit.ly/2yBfySB)

Enjoy the episode - Happy Marketing! www.marketingstudylab.co.uk https://www.linkedin.com/in/petersumpton/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/marketingstudylab/ https://twitter.com/cousinp81(@cousinp81) Intro We all seem to be focusing on the Digital elements of not only our Marketing, but our business and social lives as well. Sometimes it’s easy to forget the real world in all of this and how Physical Evidence can play a huge part in your Marketing Mix. More on that later. First, it’s time to chat with Michael Field about all things B2B (business to business). It’s so easy to focus on the B2C (business to consumer) elements of Marketing as they are all around us and impact us every day, but the majority of us will ply our trade within the B2B sector and Michael is the perfect person to guide us through what we should be doing here. Michael, who was also a guest lecturer at Edith Cowan University for a number of years, now focuses on developing competitive strategies for medium sized businesses for EvettField Partners. Michael specializes in helping his clients gain market share, build compelling value propositions, identify value drivers and develop meaningful, evidence-based and actionable strategic plans. Now this may all sound very buzz-wordy but believe me, when Michael talks, you listen as there is theory and analysis behind what he offers, building the solid foundations of Marketing that are so badly missing in many organisations Strategy.   Takeaways - Why is marketing important. As Michael points out, it can help companies grow and break through that plateau that other functions, such as sales cannot do alone. But it needs careful consideration backed by proper analysis. Basically, its more than just your logo, literature and a website – what are the strategic implications.  - This leads on nicely to not forgetting about the fundamentals of marketing. These are the bits that people can’t see, or don’t want to see. The research and analysis that is required to base any type of Marketing tactics on top of. These are the foundations of good Marketing. - When thinking about the various channels we now have at our disposal, it doesn't mean we should be on all of them or spread ourselves to thin. No, we go where the market is. Consumer buying behavior has driven our need for Digital Marketing, Digital Marketing didn't drive the need for customer to be on these platforms. It is down to us as Marketers to understand where our customers are and be there when they need us.   Top Tip- 7 P's - Physical Evidence Within the extended or digital marketing mix sits physical evidence. What do we mean by this and why is it a consideration? After all, for many businesses e-commerce is the only platform and thus, physical evidence is an non-entity…. Wrong. Yes, physical evidence is far more prevalent within the service industry. Take a salon or a butchers for example, the smells, sound, décor, ambiance, cleanliness, colours, clothing and even equipment is vitally important as an indicator to the quality of the service that will and is provided. But even for those organisations with very little by way of physical evidence, it is an important factor as including the physical in what is a none physical landscape can be a game changer. What the heck am I talking about. Take Amazon for example, their physical evidence is exceptional irrespective of their digital presence, lets take a look at some key elements: Packaging – usually branded and even the tape they use to seal the packaging is either branded or utilised in some promotional way Warehouses – Those massive things you see on the side of the road, yep, they play their part as an indicator to the vast delivery network that can get a packaging to you in under 24 hours Drones – They may not be quite there yet, but the fact that this is even a possibility highlights that the company is a thought leader in their industry, pioneering new technology and looking at ways to better serve their customers I’m off to order Good Strategy, Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt as I need it tomorrow…. No, NOW! By drone please!   LinksMichael Field: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelfieldcom/ https://www.evettfield.com Books:Good Strategy, Bad Strategy – Richard Rumelt: https://amzn.to/2ZEC2ha App:Slack: https://slack.com/intl/en-gb/ Music Featured on this Podcast: Sleepy in the Garden Lobo Loco www.musikbrause.de Creative Commons License

Too often leaders substitute good strategic planning with vision statements and goals. While these are useful tools for alignment, they miss the mark on guiding people towards a successful outcome based on a deep understanding of the reality a business is in. In this episode, Ryan and Ethan dive into what makes a good strategy and how it fits into the overall alignment management framework.

Simplest definition of strategy: "Finding the crucial leverage points where the smallest effort unleashes the greatest effect. In this Episode, I talk about the 3 key components of a Good Strategy and how you can formulate your own strategy. Need Strategic coaching to help you grow your business? Apply for my coaching here: https://www.2000books.com/apply

I read this book by Richard Rumelt called Good Strategy Bad Strategy and it completely changed my ability to develop a strategy for our business. https://www.slideshare.net/Michaelcmcdermott/a-rumelt-perpsective-on-good-strategy

Episode 24 of the Modern Agile Show features an interview with Karl Scotland, veteran agile/lean leader, focused on helping to build learning organizations. Karl discusses how to work with agile strategically. He recognized that four statements I'd written in the first Modern Agile blog were actually strategies and he observed that they might be a better guide than even the four values of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. He observes that strategies are generative and enable constraints rather than govern us. He explains what the phrase, “Don't be a tabby cat trying to be a cheetah” means. He mentions the importance of Richard Rumelt's book, Good Strategy Bad Strategy. Finally, Karl discusses his work on what he calls the X Matrix.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-jenkins-0183a617/ https://www.contagious.com/ The Regional Accounts Director of Firetop Mountain https://www.amazon.com/Regional-Accounts-Director-Firetop-Mountain/dp/0593062078 Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion Roberto Baldin https://www.amazon.co.uk/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Business-Essentials-ebook/dp/B002BD2UUC/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1521569960&sr=8-2&keywords=influence%3A+The+Psychology+of+Persuasion Good strategy / Bad strategy - Richard Rumelt https://www.amazon.co.uk/Good-Strategy-Bad-difference-matters-ebook/dp/B005331U7Q/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1521570007&sr=1-1&keywords=Good+strategy+%2F+bad+strategy+- Invisible Ink - Brian McDonald https://www.amazon.co.uk/Invisible-Ink-Practical-Building-Resonate-ebook/dp/B06W5KC2ZR/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1521570072&sr=1-1&keywords=Invisible+Ink+-+Brian+McDonald

Geoff McDonald Simple Strategy Guide GeoffMcDonald.com Most strategy is not strategic. That’s the view of world strategy expert Richard Rumelt in his bestselling book Good Strategy, Bad Strategy. At best most strategic is merely a good plan – whilst this might be useful it might also undermine your chances of success if you believe is strategic. In this episode of the…