Extreme Question Challenge

The Extreme Question Challenge Video by Liz Wiseman

Leading Like A Multiplier in Detroit

Why do some leaders drain all the intelligence and capability out of their teams while other leaders amplify intelligence and capability? This was one of the questions that led Liz Wiseman, former Vice President at Oracle, to research 150 leaders from around the world.

She discovered that while leaders who drain intelligence (Diminisher) and leaders that amplify intelligence (Multipliers) did many things the same, there are five key behaviors that separate the two types of leaders and the results that their teams achieve. These findings are the focus of her Wall Street Journal bestselling book “Multiplier: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter”.

The research suggests that Multipliers can receive much more from their teams (even twice as much) without adding resources or overhead. Addition information can be found in two of Liz’s Harvard Business Review articles, Managing Yourself: Bringing Out the Best in Your People and Smart Leaders Get More Out of the Employees They Have.

The Man Who Saved the Union: A Q&A with Author H.W. Brands

Pulitzer Prize nominee H.W. Brands’ latest book, The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace, is a masterful biography of the Civil War general and two-term president who saved the Union twice, on the battlefield and in the White House, holding the country together at two critical turning points in our history. Brands is also the author of Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin.

Thanks Mr. Brands for taking time from your busy schedule to answer a few questions.

 

Q. Why did you write The Man Who Saved the Union?

A. I wanted to tell the story of how the Union almost fell apart in the early 1860s and how it was put back together after the Civil War. I also wanted to tell the story of an important American who came to fame for being a soldier. Grant fit my needs on both scores.

A Review of Two Must Read Books for All Parents and Educators

For twenty-five years Jonathan Kozol has followed the lives of many inner-city children and documented their struggles, tragedies and successes in his new book Fire in the Ashes: Twenty-Five Years Among the Poorest Children in America. These are children who live in horrid condition and are placed in disadvantaged educational institutions. The most disturbing part of these stories is that these kids have grown up in the United States.

Meanwhile, conventional wisdom believes that cognitive development and stimulation in children, especially before school age, is the major factor in determining their future educational success. In How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, author Paul Tough has challenged these thoughts and provides awareness of the important role that character plays in the development of children.

Both of these books provide valuable lessons and insight into actions we need to take to ensure all children are able to reach the full potential of their natural abilities.

Project Management Lessons from a Magician

I recently finished reading Alex Stone’s intriguing new book Fooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks, and the Hidden Powers of the Mind in which he traces his steps along his path of becoming a magician while providing interesting insights into the world of magicians and mentalists. I had no idea as to the numerous magic societies and annual magic tournaments held all over the world!

You may be asking yourself how a book about magic could possibly be related to project management. Although I am sure most experienced project managers would agree that at times it seems like magic to make a project come together, there is no magic to project management. In fact after reading this book it is clear that we should never introduce any magical tools or techniques into our project management processes. On the other hand both magicians and project managers need to step back from their tools and techniques and remember it is critical to make their audience care. Let’s start by looking at the technique of misdirection.

The Art of Misdirection
You may not be surprised to learn that magic is not really magic at all, but a series of very clever and well planned techniques. Magicians who perform feats such as making objects disappear and then reappear are practicing the art of misdirection. Misdirection is performed by capturing the audience’s focus on a particular object or other distraction while the true ‘magic’ is happening somewhere else. Many psychological studies have shown that when we focus on a particular task our brains can become blind to the other stimulus, especially visual.

An Economist Gets Lunch by Tyler Cowen

Admittedly I am not and will likely will never be classified as a foodie. In fact I am so far removed from foodies that I did not even know that the term existed. However this deficiency of mine in no way impaired my enjoyment of Tyler Cowen’s new book An Economist Gets Lunch: New Rules for Everyday Foodies. Cowen is a professor of economics at George Mason University and the author of Discover Your Inner Economist and Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World; apparently he also appreciates a good meal!

The book covers a wide range of topics from how to find the best (and most affordable) places at which to dine to the past and future of agriculture. It is very clear that Cowen has a strong appetite for his work and based on extensive research, including traveling to and dining at locations all over the world, has created an essential guide for foodies and an interesting read for the rest of us.

The (Honest) Truth about Dishonesty by Dan Ariely

The good news is that I only recommend Dan Ariely’s new book The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone---Especially Ourselves to those of us who lie or cheat. The bad news is that this immoral group includes all of us, yes even you… and your family… and your co-workers… and your elderly neighbors… and your academic instructors, politicians (how shocking!), dentists, doctors… you get the idea.

While Dishonesty will certainly not be considered the “feel good” book of the summer, it represents a very important work in the field of behavioral economics which is the culmination of dozens of experiments and studies that have been performed by the author and his fellow researchers.

For the very few of you who may not be familiar with Ariely, he is the James B. Duke Professor of Psychology and Behavior Economics at Duke University and the author of two past best sellers; Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality .

In Dishonesty, Ariely answers some very difficult questions such as; why/how do people act dishonestly and how can we prevent these acts. He starts by exploring the Simple Model of Rational Crime (SMORC) which attempts to explain the how we decide if and when we will act dishonestly. The premise of the book is that many factors and situations need to be taken into account to understand when and why people are dishonest and the bulk of the chapters are dedicated to exploring specific situations.

City of Scoundrels: A Q&A with author Gart Krist

Gary Krist's latest book, City of Scoundrels: The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago, masterfully tells the story of 12 volatile days in the life of Chicago, when an aviation disaster, a race riot, a crippling transit strike, and a sensational child murder roiled a city already on the brink of collapse. Krist is also the author of The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche.

You can learn more about this book by reading my review.

Thanks Gary for taking time from your busy schedule to answer a few questions.

Q: Why did you write City of Scoundrels?

A: I wanted to write about a city under extraordinary stress.  The evolution of any city, particularly a city of immigrants, involves lots of conflict, with various ethnic, racial, and class-based groups competing against each other for power and prominence.  Often, this kind of competition works to the city’s advantage, channeling energies in constructive directions.  But 1919 in Chicago was one of those times when the energies of competition turned destructive, and instead of working to build the city, started tearing it apart.

Q: The book opens with a dramatic recounting of the Wingfoot air express disaster on July 21^st, 1919. I think most readers will be as surprised as I was to learn of this disaster. Why do you think this disaster, the first aviation disaster in American history, is mostly forgotten and what impact did this disaster ultimately have on aviation travel in the beginning of the 20^th century?

City of Scoundrels by Gary Krist

Ever had one of those weeks when it seems like everything that can go wrong did go wrong? I am sure most, if not all of us, can answer yes to this question, but it would be very difficult to identify when as many situations went wrong as they in Chicago during July, 1919. These situations are all recounted in Gary Krist’s new book City of Scoundrels: The 12 Days of Disaster That Gave Birth to Modern Chicago. Krist is the also the author of The White Cascade: The Great Northern Railway Disaster and America's Deadliest Avalanche.

Krist opens the book with the dramatic retelling of the crash of the Wingfoot Air Express on July 21^st of 1919. The author provides personal accounts of several victims and survivors and how they came to their fate on that day, including the tale of the unfortunate Carl Otto. As the book unfolds we are taken inside the courtroom during the coroner’s inquiry as representatives from Goodyear arrive to take financial responsibility as they defended against charges of negligence.

Why Nations Fail by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson

For all dedicated macro economists and anyone who wants some good news as to the future of the United State’s economy, Why Nations Fail is a book that I highly recommended for you. Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty is a new book by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. Daron Acemoglu is the Killian Professor of Economics at MIT and James Robinson is the David Florence Professor of Government at Harvard University.

This delightful book is the most extensively researched and easy to follow ‘pure’ economics book that I have read. I classify this as a ‘pure’ economics books as opposed to the recent and popular behavioral economics books, such as those by Steven Levitt (see Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything), which themselves are also well researched and written but focus on topics more familiar to a larger number  of readers. The goal of Why Nations Fail is to explain just that; why some nations fail while others succeed. This goal is obtained by providing very simple concepts supported by an abundance of historical and modern day case studies.

Don’t worry if you are an economics novice, Why Nations Fail does not require any pre-requisite degrees, classes or knowledge of economics!

The book opens with a brief account of the recent events in Egypt. As we are all aware, the citizens of Egypt have not been happy with their plight and have recently risen up to precipitate changes within the government. The interesting question that only time will answer is will a regime change in Egypt lead to any increased prosperity for its citizens? This book explores the factors that will determine the fate of Egyptians.

The Man Without a Face by Masha Gessen

As the 2012 Presidential elections are gearing up consider this scenario; the sitting US Vice-President leaves office and is replaced by an obscure government official about which little is known. The President then steps aside and the relatively unknown VP is now sitting on the Oval Office. The new President begins to methodically revert the country back to less democratic days; say by removing women’s right to vote and eliminating the direct election of Senators until more and more power is concentrated at 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Does this sound like the farfetched plot of a bad movie? Unfortunately not. An eerily similar scenario has played itself out in Russia starring Vladimir Putin according to the new book The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin by Masha Gessen. Gessen, a well-established author and journalist and citizen of both Russia and the United States, has written what is likely her most aggressive and controversial work.

Admitting to myself that I am not at all familiar with the former and now again President of Russia I was interested in learning how unlikely his rise to power truly was. The one shortcoming of the book is that Gessen is not able to fully explain, which is likely due to a lack of clear, reputable information, Putin’s rise from humble beginnings to the leadership of the country. This shortcoming is quickly overlooked because the book paints a very vivid and frightening picture of recent developments in Russia during the Putin regime.

Island of Vice: A Q&A with author Richard Zacks

Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York by Richard Zacks, is also the author of The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805 and The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd.

Island of Vice tells the fascinating and often funny story of when young Theodore Roosevelt was appointed police commissioner of New York City, and had the astounding gall to try to shut down the brothels, gambling joints, and after-hours saloons. See my book review here.

Thanks Richard for taking time from your busy schedule to answer a few questions.

Q: Why did you write Island of Vice?

A: Among other reasons, I wrote it so that I would be paid to research vice in 1890s NYC. I had started a novel and realized that there was a better non-fiction book idea here. I loved finding authentic 1890s details about brothels, etc. and also watching this strange experiment in municipal government: Tammany Hall's pay-as-you-go vs. Roosevelt's righteous by-the-book crusade. Ultimately neither approach in its most extreme form is feasible.

Q: In the book you relate how after Roosevelt left the Police Commissioner position, New York City regressed further back into a world of vice. How much of the blame for this should be placed on Roosevelt’s successors?

Fanatic Risk Acceptance: A Tragic Tale One Century Later

I found it very ironic that last week I was co-facilitating a session on Risk Management as part of the Project Management Institute Upstate New York Chapter’s PMP Exam Prep class. As defined in the Project Management Institute’s Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) one of the inputs to the Plan Risk Management process is Enterprise Environmental Factors.  The PMBOK defines this input as:

“The enterprise environmental factors that can influence the Plan Risk Management process include, but are not limited to, risk attitudes and tolerances that describe the degree of risk that an organization will withstand.”

As part of the exam prep session we review the need to understand which project constraints (time, cost, scope, or quality) organizations and sponsors are most sensitive, to be used as an input in the process of ranking project risks. For example if you are working on a project which your organization’s CEO or state’s Governor has publically announce a date for deployment, your project will be more sensitive to risks that would impact the schedule.

Situations Matter: A Q&A with author Sam Sommers

Situations Matter: Understanding How Context Transforms Your World is the highly acclaimed book by Sam Sommers which provide an exploration of the invisible forces influencing your life-and how understanding them can improve everything you do. I recently had a chance to connect with Sam and ask him a few questions about his insightful book.

Thanks Sam for taking time from your busy schedule to answer these questions.

Q: Why did you write Situations Matter?

A: My goal in writing the book was to bring renewed attention to just how influential context is in our daily lives: the ways in which it shapes how we think, what we do, and who we are as people. I know it seems like an obvious premise-- of course the situations we're in matter. But we don't come close to grasping the full extent to which this is the case or just how far-reaching the implications of this conclusion really are. My argument in the book is that by learning about the science of how contexts shape human nature we become more effective people across a wide range of domains, both professionally (e.g., working in groups, managing people, negotiations) and personally (e.g., parenting, social relationships, how we think about the self). So it's very much a story about the psychology of daily life, which makes it useful as well as fun-- it's an integration of behavioral science, pop culture analysis, personal anecdote, and humor, all in the effort to paint a more complete picture of what makes people tick.

The Start-Up of You by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha

Are you an entrepreneur? Yes you are, or should be thinking of yourself as an entrepreneur if not already doing so is the case that Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha make in their new book The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career.  Hoffman, a former employee of Google and Paypay, is more widely recognized as a co-founder to Linked-In, the largest professional social network on the internet. Ben Casnocha is an accomplished author and entrepreneur.

The authors open the book by describing how much the world of work has changed in the last generation. Because company pension plans are now rarer then unassisted triple plays, more and more senior employees are postponing retirement which ultimately results in fewer opportunities for managers to continue their climb up the corporate ladder. Additionally fewer companies are able to provide their employees with training they need to make them more marketable.

Island of Vice by Richard Zacks

Who is “Ted-dy” Roos-e-velt?

First in war, first in peace.

First to reform the New York Police.

This is how Theodore Roosevelt, then a New York City Police Commissioner, was greeted by a thousand University of Chicago students before giving a speech on George Washington’s birthday. The ironic revelation of this greeting, as noted by Richard Zacks in his new book Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt's Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York, is that at this time Roosevelt was more popular outside New York City than within the city he was cleaning up. Zacks is the author of several books including; The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805 and The Pirate Hunter.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

How much thinking is involved when you get into your car and drive back out of your driveway? Unless it is one of your first few times performing this activity then you are not likely to be pulling up memories of other times you have backed out of your driveway nor are you consciously making various decisions such as opening the car door, turning the key, pressing on the break and so on. Instead our brains are running on auto-pilot because these activities have become habits. This is one of the most important concepts regarding habits that readers will come across in The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, which is the highly acclaimed, bestselling book by Charles Duhigg.

Don’t Get Fooled Twice

Much has been written regarding how to conduct post-project assessments with the goal of gathering best practices and lessons learned. In future blogs I will add my own ideas and experiences regarding this critical process as well. But before we get there, I don’t think near enough has been written (or has stuck with us) regarding how to make sure an organization doesn’t learn the same lesson multiple times. Unfortunately I have seen this happen on too many occasions in the past, so here are some of my tips to prevent an organization from getting fooled twice.

Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World's Greatest Companies by Jim Stengel

Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World's Greatest Companies is a new book by Jim Stengel that provides a detailed review of how creating a stong brand ideal is correlated with long term organizational success, along with providing steps for implementing and maintianing a strong brand idea. I found this book to be an intriguing meeting of Jim Collins’ Good to Great (business success factors) and Martin Lindstrom’s Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy(study of neuromarketing). Unlike the Collins’ “Great” series of books which identify successful companies and then draws conclusions on what made them great, Stengel set out to prove that building a strong brand ideal is correlated to organizational success. The author approaches this goal by providing results of his research and several case studies which show the dramatic impacts of building or re-building a strong brand ideal.

Multipliers: A Q&A with author Liz Wiseman

Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman demonstrates how Multipliers can have a resoundingly positive and profitable effect on organizations—getting more done with fewer resources, developing and attracting talent, and cultivating new ideas and energy to drive organizational change and innovation. I recently had a chance to connect with Liz and ask her a few questions about her bestselling book.

Thanks Liz for taking time from your busy schedule to answer these questions.

Q: In the "Instill Ownership and Accountability" section of Multipliers, you recommend letting people remain accountable for their actions and experience consequences. This is a message I experience difficulty in applying since typical management training says that managers should protect their staff. Under what situation, if any, do you believe managers should attempt to protect their staff from the consequences of their actions?

A: This question is at the heart of the art of good management.  It is certainly naive to suggest that managers should just let their people fail and experience the sting of real learning.  But, I find that in working with management teams on this question, they find that there is far more room for experimentation that they initially thought.  Here's a quick mental exercise:   Take out two pieces of paper.  On one, make a list of everywhere it is OK to let someone live out a mistake or fail. On the other, make a list of where it isn't OK and you need to intervene.  Focus on the criteria.  Challenge yourself by making the second list no more than half as long as the first list.  My guess is that two things will happen:

1. You will see that there is a lot more room to experiment that you might feel and

2. You will develop a short set of criteria that you can use to recognize when you need to step in. 

Typically this criteria is something like, "when it is business ending, life ending, or career ending (for them or you!)."  Often the criteria for when it is OK to let failure happen sounds like this: "when the opportunity for learning is bigger than the cost to the business." 

Doing this exercise as a management team can be a powerful way to shape the culture and the environment for learning and performance.

The art of management comes in finding this right balance.  When is the mistake too costly and might seriously jeopardize the business or the person?  I like to think of this as finding the right size wave — one where someone will learn from their mistake and not be swept out to sea!  Check out my new Right Size Wave video for the full story.