Chapter Three: Lessons from Ruby’s Stone Soup
Over the years, I have often been asked my opinion about how businesses and other organisations can best achieve success. Sometimes I simply answer by relating the folk story of Stone Soup, pretty much in the version that Ruby was told by her grandmother. I have told this story to a sales team that was divided and not working together as well as to many entrepreneurs as a way of illustrating how all the members of a company or organisation need to pull together. I explain how, by working together, they can all achieve a great deal more than any one of them can alone. In this context, the story can easily be adapted to explain how you need to inspire each staff member, including yourself, to put in a bit more when the going gets tough. I also use this story to illustrate the reality that participants in any organisation need to be rewarded for their efforts with tasty “soup” in the form of benefits, and not necessarily always in the form of financial rewards, as I find that the lure of cash as an incentive often makes peoples’ focus too narrow to allow them to succeed. Genuine and personal recognition of efforts made are also very important and will always be warmly appreciated. After all, who likes to feel that they are working hard and doing their very best, to no avail? We all need to know that our productive efforts are being recognised and that they will be rewarded.
I firmly believe that it is only by being inspired to believe in something and then working together and using all the talents available from many different types of people that true success can be reached. When times are difficult, as in a recession or a downturn, the message of Stone Soup is more relevant than ever. It is at times like these that people who can truly work in a spirit of cooperation will not only survive, they will strive, thrive, and prosper. Difficult times can be tough, however, they are also full of opportunity for those with the insight and courage to acknowledge it and work together.
In their book, Waiting for Your Cat to Bark,[1] the authors make the point that human beings behave much more like cats in their commercial habits than dogs. They propose that much of the world’s marketing today fails because, with the Internet as their ally, the average consumer is too well-informed to make purchases solely based on marketing messages, rather they are well-equipped to engage in critical thinking and they will only act and buy if they are connected with on a more direct, emotional level. People cannot be led on a leash, as dogs are; they have to be persuaded, like cats.
One day as I was negotiating with a much larger Japanese firm for an investment into our company, one of our legal team suggested that the whole business process was like herding cats. This was the first time I had heard the phrase and it has stuck with me ever since. A friend of mine, Lionel, once owned a small white Persian kitten with a taste for adventure. One of the greatest feats of cat herding I ever saw was Lionel coaxing this kitten to jump into his waiting arms; not an extraordinary feat until you consider that, moments before, the kitten had been trapped on the rooftop of a five storey block of flats and Lionel was on the ground floor. I realised then that love is a much more potent motivator than fear. Lionel told me that, in his view, love draws while fear pushes.
I feel that I am at my best when I am herding cats in the business world and that these skills allow me to be a catalyst for the companies that I work with. I prefer to be in the background making things work and getting people past their differences than in the foreground giving orders and holding the rudder of the organisation by myself. Some people would call being a catalyst a form of “leadership,” and while it is true, it is also different from what we traditionally perceive to be leadership because, as a catalyst, I prefer to follow a strong leader. I have often found that my skills as catalyst have enabled the leaders I work with to lead even more effectively. I have learned that, in addition to leadership, every successful business or enterprise needs to incorporate one or more catalysts because these are often the people who get things done!
At the time of writing, my family shares its home with two cats, a dog and several goldfish. I have found that, with a green laser dot, I can lead all of these animals around the house (or tank) as they are all attracted to things that glitter. I cannot do more with the goldfish as they are not very bright. Our dog, though wilful, readily accepts commands from the entire family. The cats, unlike the dog, are always difficult to persuade. Cats, as we have already discussed, do not like to do what they are told.
Long ago, I decided that if I wanted to get cats to leave a room I needed to learn how to speak their language or at least a reasonable approximation of it. I tried imitating various cat hissing noises to get them to leave and discovered that they only respond if you can get a lot of emotion into your hiss. In this same vein, the primary tool of a catalyst in business is emotion. Now, for cats that are in the process of doing evil cat things to prove who really owns your expensive new furniture, fear is a pretty much the only appropriate emotion to use. To get people to work together cooperatively and productively requires a set of different emotions and something more - it requires a clear context.
[1] Eisenberg, Eisenberg and Davis, 2006.
Chapter Five: Lessons from a Village Behind Closed Doors
The attacks on New York on September 11th, 2001 are often referred to as a watershed - the end of one era and the beginning of another. We all remember where we were and what we were doing when the attacks occurred, and the political and military decisions taken in their wake continue to impact on our world, as they surely will for quite some time to come. I happened to be in New York on business when the World Trade Centre was attacked. At that time, I was working hard to close a deal that I was quite excited about. I was also excited to be in New York, a city that I love and that I regard as the epitome of the modern world, yet as soon as the planes hit the towers, my worldview shifted. Suddenly, for me, New York was no longer a safe, wonderful, exciting place; it had become an awful trap from which I needed to escape as quickly as possible. I experienced all the symptoms of profound anxiety that many suffered that day and knew that I would not be able to relax until I left the city.
What I was reacting to was not the merely events themselves, dreadful as they were. I was also reacting to my perception of the events. I was affected more by the reactions of the people around me than by what was going on in my own world. Before I could react appropriately, I had to stop and really look around. I realised that, in order to become effective again, I had to accept my situation. In New York, I reconnected with friends and colleagues and we got back to work, during which time I provided support to anyone I encountered who needed it. We decided that if we put our lives on hold, we were letting the terrorists win.
While our perceptions of events, people and places can be useful, they never provide the full picture. Perceived danger is just that - perceived. It can take over if we let it, as in the example of the secluded nuns in Ruby’s story. In order to make rational, appropriate decisions about the place or situation we find ourselves in, it is necessary to acquire the ability to incorporate our instinctive perceptions into a more complete understanding, rather than relying on them completely, which means recognising that you are being affected by what is going on. In order to see most clearly, you need to stop to take a breath and really listen to your surroundings with a calm presence. It is an oft used excuse to claim that when we are at the mercy of circumstances, we somehow have permission to be stuck in them. This is not the case. I have seen others, as well as myself, be able to transcend circumstances and even terror by taking the time to be more fully aware.
Chapter Seven: Lessons from Wheels with-in Wheels
In the real world, as in Ruby’s story, businesses often reach an impasse when what they are producing, doing or offering is no longer what people are looking for. When this happens, there can be a crisis, or there can be an opportunity. Clearly, there is an urgent need for change. It is important to understand and appreciate that needing to change the way one does things or what one’s products are is not a value judgement on the organization rather it is a reflection of our evolving society.
It is extremely important to recognise when change is needed before not changing becomes a problem. Think about the needs of a growing child. When a baby is just beginning to learn how to crawl, he has no idea that touching something hot will hurt him or that playing with sharp carving knives is maybe not the best idea for someone of his size and stature. Fortunately, you are there all the time to pick him up whenever he starts to crawl towards the fire and to make sure that the sharp knives are stored where he cannot reach. While you can prevent your baby from playing with fire, the cautious approach will not always work - hopefully you will not have to manhandle your eighty kilo teenage son away from the fire before he hurts himself! Somewhere between infancy and adolescence, your child will have learned for himself the importance of staying away from very hot objects and of treating sharp knives with care.
In a talk featured on TED.com[1] Gever Tulley, founder of the Tinkering School, spells out five dangerous things you should let your kids do, including playing with knives. As he says, the young heal faster than the old. In our changing society, smart organisations react to what people need and reorganise or change what they offer in terms of goods or services accordingly. In other words, they take on some risk now so as to succeed later and, just as we are over-allergic to risk regarding our kids and sharp things, companies tend to become more allergic to risk the more successful they become. Change can be stressful and difficult, calling for us to assess and explore our very identities. Imagine the upheavals that must have taken place at lamp makers’ workshops around the world as electricity gradually delivered light to an increasing number of homes. A million lamp makers must have had to think, “Well, if I cannot be a lamp maker, what am I then?” The smart ones will have decided that they could deliver this new-fangled electricity or open the gift shop they had always dreamt of owning and so forth. In the process of making change, one needs to accept that there may be feelings of stress and even grief as old ways of doing things are laid to rest. It is normal and natural to mourn what is gone and fear one’s ability to broach the new and unfamiliar; accepting this as true makes it easier to move forward with a new plan.
Throughout our lives, we learn by comparing new experiences to past experience. A baby will learn to recognise the face of her mum and dad by seeing them every day and gradually memorising the features of their faces and the sounds of their voices. As we grow up, we all refer to what we have experienced to make decisions. The familiar becomes our template for what we should do and how we should do it. In many situations, this works out very well. Indeed the more we use any circuit in our brain the more it gets insulated with myelin and the faster the circuit becomes. However, there are also times when we need to enable ourselves to break away from the old and do something new, even though we know that there is a risk that it will not work out.
You may be sure that when Gutenberg starting printing copies of his Bible on the world’s first commercial printing press back in 1455, plenty of his friends and acquaintances told him that people had been buying hand-written texts since time immemorial and that interest in printed books would be limited. No doubt there were plenty of people at the time who were prepared to stand around and scoff at his foolishness. Conversely, we do not need to go so far back in time to look at business predictions that have been badly off-target such as Bill Gates famously predicting that the Internet would never really take off. While there are certainly many more examples of initiatives that were taken and that did not go anywhere, when something new fills a need that previously went unfilled, success is inevitable.
Often the repercussions of innovations can go way beyond the market and even beyond the imaginations of the inventors. Think, just for example, about the explosion in domestic appliances in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Washing machines, electric ovens, vacuum cleaners and all the other items that are now basic and expected in every home in the developed world were once innovations that made a lot of money for their creators. They also facilitated the revolutionary movement that saw women in many countries begin to take their places in the public forum, thanks in very large part to a reduction in the need for back-breaking work in the home. Although they probably never expected it, those inventors played a crucial role in one of the biggest social revolutions the world has ever seen.
Many innovators fail the first and even the second or third time they try something new. This is normal and even healthy; what is not healthy is never even trying something new. Success nearly always comes because of a series of iterations during which things are refined until they work. It is clear why persistent optimists are better candidates to be innovators (innovation is, incidentally, often the combination of two or more existing ideas that have been “borrowed” and put together in a new way). Pessimistic predictions are rarely useful in innovation, even though they may be essential in other areas. For instance, jet engine mechanics can always do with a dose of pessimism to ensure that all the bad things that can happen have been thought of and accounted for. To really innovate, it is necessary to accept that there will be failure along the way, to understand, appreciate and accept that everything is not going to be completely perfect and flawless the first time it is attempted.
[1] www.ted.com/talks/gever_tulley_on_5_dangerous_things_for_kids.html
