10-10-10: A Life-Transforming Idea

10-10-10: A Life-Transforming Idea
by Suzy Welch

Prior to reviewing this transformative new approach to decision making, let me tell you a little bit about the author. Many know her as the wife of former GE CEO Jack Welch and co-author, with her husband, of the number one bestseller Winning.

However, Suze Welch is a noted journalist, author, and speaker as well as a work-life columnist for O, The Oprah Magazine. She also serves as an Executive in Residence at Babson College’s Center for Women’s Leadership and is the former editor of the Harvard Business Review.

While her concept is very simple, it is also a powerful philosophy and very practical guide to decision making in the realms of career, business, leadership, romance, health, friendship, marriage, and family.

Instead of acting on impulse or instinct alone, as so many of us often do, this guide to life management suggests we ask what impact a decision or action will have in 10 minutes, 10 months, and 10 years.

The process is clear, explicit, and distinct. In fact, when you’re facing a dilemma, all it takes to begin are three questions:

  1. What are the consequences of my decision in 10 minutes?
  2. What are the consequences of my decision in 10 months?
  3. What are the consequences of my decision in 10 years?

Every time you use the process, you must start by posing your dilemma, crisis, or challenge in the form of a question. Should I buy a house right now or continue to rent for a while? Is it time for a new car or do I stick with my old ride for another year or two? Do I take that new job offer or play it safe?

The next stage of the process is data collection … in your head, on your computer, with pen and paper, or in conversation with someone you trust—whatever works best for you. Just make certain that you’re totally honest and exhaustive in answering each of the above questions.

To be clear, the first question means “right now”—a minute, a day or a week!

The second 10 represents a point in the forseeable future when the initial reaction to your decision has passed but the consequences continue to play out in ways you can reasonably predict. The third 10 stands for a time in the future that’s so far off that its particulars are entirely vague at the moment.

So, in short, the process is meant to suggest time frames along the lines of: “in the heat of the moment,” “somewhat later,” and “when all is said and done.”

And, finally, the last step of the process is analysis.

Take all of the information you collected in your data collection stage and compare it to your innermost values—your beliefs, goals, dreams, and needs.

In short, this part of the 10-10-10 process requires you to ask: “Knowing what I now know about all of my options and their consequences, which decision will best help me create a life of my own making?”

Your answer to that question is your solution.

Sound simple? Not quite.

The author shares examples from her own life and the lives of many others who use the process, revealing how exploring the impact of our decision in multiple time frames invariably surfaces our unconscious agendas, fears, need and desires—and ultimately helps us identify and live according to our deepest goals and values.

In this revealing book, Suzy Welch explains the power of this transformative idea that can replace chaos with consistency, guilt with joy, and confusion with clarity!

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

The Milkshake Moment

The Milkshake MomentThe Milkshake Moment: Overcoming Stupid Systems, Pointless Policies and Muddled Management to Realize Real Growth
by Steven S. Little

Here’s another author who grabbed my attention by capitalizing on several of my five keys for choosing a book (Tips for Choosing a Great Book) … a catchy title, table of contents and jacket content.

The title “The Milkshake Moment” obviously catches your attention and curiosity, and the picture on the jacket creates an attractive visual with a large scoop of ice cream teetering on the edge of a traditional ice cream scoop over a half glass of milk. I’ll share some of the table of contents a little later in this review.

The author defines “A Milkshake Moment” as a brave individual action, be it big or small, that furthers the cause of growth. The book is about that precise, critical point in time when members of 21st century organizations realize they are allowed to do the right thing—to serve the interests of others in order to grow the organization—instead of following arcane, arbitrary rules, processes, and procedures that actually hinder growth.

Steven Little explains his attempt at ordering a milkshake from room service at a fancy hotel. The hotel didn’t have milkshakes on their menu and the room service personnel didn’t quite know how to handle the request. The author asked if the hotel had milk, ice cream, a bowl and a spoon … the answer was yes. The author ordered these items and made his own milkshake.

Little uses this simple example to point out that the room service personnel were stuck in a process. Just because they didn’t sell milkshakes doesn’t mean they couldn’t have provided one. They simply didn’t have a “process” in place to do so.

“A Milkshake Moment” can only be realized when growth leaders clearly communicate an organization’s true purpose and grant individuals permission to do whatever can be done ethically to achieve it.

As I reread the previous few paragraphs, I have to admit that this concept is nothing more than common sense and should obviously be practiced by any organization striving for true success. However, the more you think about it … it’s more like uncommon sense simply because it’s seldom practiced by anyone and all of us have numerous examples that would clearly demonstrate a philosophy almost opposite of what’s described above.

Organizations (companies) can grow if their leader or leaders encourage creativity, flexibility, and open-mindedness of subordinates. They’ll grow, change, and improve if they have lots of people who have the capacity to recognize and respond to opportunities. That’s the message of this book.

Little does a great job of explaining why so many organizations, both big and small, continually find ways to shoot themselves in the foot. By sharing a series of engaging stories, Little encourages organizations to get out of their own way by scrapping arcane processes and procedures that do little to serve the customer, frustrate employees, and hinder growth.

Here are some of those enticing chapter titles I promised to share:

  • This Is NOT a Customer Service Book
  • Toddlers and Trust
  • Lessons from the Cubicle Farm
  • The Wizard of Westwood
  • NoClu Motors
  • Peeves from Below
  • The People Problem Polka
  • Why People Work
  • Home Team Drops the Ball
  • The Big Secret to Great Customer Service
  • The Future Is Already Here … Some Folks Just Aren’t Getting the Memos

(This book review was originally published in 2009 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 19.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

The Black Swan

The Black SwanThe Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Let me begin by stating right up front that this book isn’t for everyone. Check the following list to see if you should even bother reading on.

  • Are you comfortable operating “outside the box”?
  • Are you a risk taker?
  • Are you willing to extend your comfort zone?
  • Are you comfortable with the unknown?
  • Can you foresee opportunities?
  • Can you imagine the “impossible”?

If you’re not comfortable with the above questions or feel you must honestly answer “no” to any of them, do yourself a favor, save yourself some time and money, and find another book. This one won’t interest you.

If you can honestly answer yes to the above questions, you’ll find this book interesting and useful in advancing your career and successfully dealing with anything life may hold for you in the future.

Now, let’s begin by learning more about a “Black Swan” as defined by the author Nassim Nicholas Taleb:

A Black Swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics:

  • It is unpredictable;
  • it carries a massive impact;
  • and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was.

Why the term “Black Swan”? Relatively simple. People in the Old World were convinced that all swans were white. Pretty hard to argue that point as no one had ever seen a swan of any other color. The sighting of the first black swan was obviously quite a shock to everyone.

However, that is not where the significance of the story lies. It illustrates a severe limitation to our learning from observations or experience and the fragility of our current knowledge. One simple observation can invalidate a general statement derived from a thousand years of confirmed sightings of millions of white swans. All you need is one single black swan. Need examples? No problem.

  • The astonishing success of Google, which propelled two young college students into the realm of billionaires, was a Black Swan.
  • 9/11 certainly falls into that category. Can you imagine gathering with a few friends on the evening of September 10 to discuss the possible odds of 19 terrorists high-jacking four major U.S. commercial airliners and directing them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. and a vacant field in Pennsylvania? Unimaginable!
  • How about the rise of Hitler and the subsequent war?
  • How about the precipitous demise of the Soviet Bloc?
  • How about the rapid growth of the Internet?
  • How about the rise of Islamic Fundamentalism?
  • How about the market crash of 1987 and the more unexpected recovery?
  • How about the fads, epidemics, fashion, ideas, the emergence of art genres and schools?

All follow these Black Swan dynamics. Literally, just about everything of significance around you might qualify. Take just a minute to look closely at your own existence. Count the significant events, the technological changes, and the inventions that have taken place in our environment since you were born and compare them to what was expected before their advent. How many of them came on a schedule?

Now look into your own personal life, to your choice of profession or meeting your mate, your exile from your company of origin, the betrayals you faced, any sudden enrichment or impoverishment. How often did these things occur according to plan?

For the author, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives. Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to the author, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don’t know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate opportunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the “impossible.”

See the critical importance to our society of creative entrepreneurs, daring dreamers, and those who thrive on thinking out of the box? Let’s go back to 9/11—an event that has impacted millions of people world wide. Had the enormous risk been deemed conceivable prior to that historic date, it never would have happened! Fighter planes would have been in the air above New York City, all commercial airliners would have had locked bulletproof doors as they do today, no one would have been able to board a plane with box cutters, no one could have requested flight lessons less the take off and landing instructions without raising suspicions. In short, the attack would not have take place, period!

Now dare to relate that Black Swan to our business environment. It’s mind boggling when you consider the present state of the economy, trade balance, immigration, the energy crisis, the stock market, health care, education, social security, Afghanistan / Iran / Russia / China, home mortgages, an election year, and the list goes on. Is anyone in any organization considering the possible Black Swans awaiting us and how we should deal with them with they appear? Few, if any!

I can think of a number of corporate Presidents, CEOs, board members, and leaders at every level that should read this book in hopes of creating a “Black Swan” mind-set and encouraging their employees to do the same. Instead they will continue to concentrate on things they already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what they don’t know, what they might do, what potential new approach might entirely change their operation. They continue to play it safe. They will suffer the consequences later.

And yet, we envy and respect those that have and do contemplate the potential Black Swans of our past, present and future. We call them creative entrepreneurs, daring dreamers, out of the box thinkers, and yes, even nuts. We should certainly be thankful that these characters keep emerging to aid our evolution.

This is an entertaining and enlightening book, and fairly easy to read. It has an important message regarding how the world works; that the world is governed not by the predictable and the average, but by the random, the unknowable, the unpredictable―big events or discoveries or unusual people that have big consequences. Change comes not uniformly but in unpredictable spurts. These are the Black Swans of the title: completely unexpected and rare events or novel ideas or technologies that have a huge impact on the world. Indeed, the author argues that history itself is primarily driven by these Black Swans.

(This book review was originally published in 2008 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 17.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.

Broken Windows, Broken Business

Broken Windows, Broken BusinessBroken Windows, Broken Business: How the Smallest Remedies Reap the Biggest Rewards
by Michael Levine

This is one of those books promoting a theory that appears to be extremely obvious, easy to support, and somewhat difficult to argue with. Common sense, if you will. Or maybe uncommon sense better describes this theory. I say that because we see resounding evidence every day in every industry across the country that would suggest that a large number of organizations either don’t believe or choose not to practice this philosophy.

The theory itself was first published in 1982 but is probably more relevant 26 years later than ever before. The message is very clear and, indeed, simplistic. The author’s premise is one that we have espoused many times as a result of our research, consulting and training experience. Sweat the small stuff!

Levine’s premise suggests that what you pay attention to determines what you miss as well. If you only “focus” on the major issues in your business, you neglect the minor issues, and the neglect of the “small stuff” is a path to organizational demise.

Essentially, Levine is “challenging” the 80/20 MBA B.S., and invoking a new mantra, which probably should be called the “100/0” rule … EVERYTHING MATTERS!

In all honesty, every organization has “broken windows” in one form or another. They are inevitable. Think about those you yourself have witnessed in a typical day.

  • Litter on the grounds.
  • Improper or impolite telephone procedure.
  • Confusing web site.
  • Dead plants in the lobby.
  • Filthy rest rooms.
  • Dimly lit rooms.
  • Poor signage.
  • Peeling paint.
  • Long lines.
  • Poorly maintained restrooms.
  • Incompetent personnel.
  • Lack of follow through.
  • Poor communication skills.
  • Poor employee appearance.
  • Dirty windows.
  • Worn carpets.

Levine’s key point is that organizations whose culture demands perfection in all operations and cordiality in all relationships will (a) minimize the number of their “broken windows” and (b) immediately repair those few which occur.

Too many managers are trained, like dogs, to robotically look at spreadsheets, improve metrics, and number crunch regularly. Of course, numbers do matter.

Levine’s emphasis is to get beyond just the numbers, open your eyes, and LOOK, really NOTICE the details, because it doesn’t matter what your current numbers show, if you are missing the big picture which is CUSTOMER PERCEPTION!

There is compelling evidence that problems in business, large and small, typically stem from inattention to tiny details! And you can be certain that customers spot those details every time!

In March 1982, criminologists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling introduced the “broken windows” theory. Social psychologists and criminologists who agreed that if a window in a building is broken and left unrepaired, soon thereafter the rest of the windows will be broken—and the perception will build that crime in that neighborhood is out of control. The same principle applies to business. Constant attention to detail not only demonstrates corporate competence, but also shows that the company cares about what the consumer wants. A company’s metaphorical “broken windows,” whatever they may be, send the opposite signal: that the business doesn’t care and this obviously repels customers!

So what does the author recommend to remedy this very serious situation? His advice is fairly routine:

  • Deploy mystery shoppers to ferret out shortcomings.
  • Remember that first impressions are lasting.
  • Strive to “exceed expectations.”
  • Request, respond to and appreciate customer feedback.
  • Cultivate “the obsessive, compulsive, almost violent need to find the flaws.”
  • Refuse to tolerate employees who don’t smile or are otherwise “coasting, doing their time, merely existing” and infecting other workers with their “virus.”
  • Communicate clearly the Broken Window theory to your staff along with your expectations of them and the role they play in this philosophy.
  • Seek out and immediately repair every “broken window” throughout your organization.

Almost everything Levine recommends should require little (if any) expenditure of hours or dollars.

I read of a man and wife who would patronize only one local car wash. The pricing was competitive. What differentiated it from its competition? Those who work there were friendly, the interior and exterior waiting areas were always impeccably clean as well as well-lit, and most important of all, every car was always thoroughly cleaned inside and out. One final point, just before the attendant waved his or her towel, the side windows were rolled down an inch or two so that no water line is left. An insignificant detail? Not to this couple and obviously many others. No broken windows here! And the employees played an intricate part of supporting this theory.

Using dozens of corporate “broken window” case studies, including McDonalds, Kmart, Google, JetBlue, and more, the author argues that by integrating the solutions to small problems into a much larger plan, the resulting combined solution can stimulate overall business growth and keep customers coming back for more.

Again this theory is obviously true. It is indeed simple. Experience proves it to be advantageous for everyone involved. Then why don’t we see more organizations practicing this theory? Could there possibly be a knowing-doing gap here? More than likely.

If so, indifference may well be the largest “broken window” in need of repair.

(This book review was originally published in 2008 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 17.)

About Harry K. Jones

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of professional speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management. For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2629 or fill out our contact form.