How (48 page)

Afterword

We can be knowledgeable with other men’s knowledge but we cannot be wise with other men’s wisdom.

—Michel de Montaigne, essayist (1533-1592)

Y
ou would expect a restaurateur to understand service, but Danny Meyer, founder of New York City’s Union Square Cafe, one of America’s most successful culinary restaurant organizations, goes further. “We are in a very new business era,” says Meyer in his book,
Setting the Table
. “I’m convinced that this is now a hospitality economy, no longer the service era. If you simply have a superior product or deliver on your promises, that’s not enough to distinguish your business. There will always be someone else who can do it or make it as well as you. It’s how you make your customers feel while using your products that distinguishes you. . . . Service is a monologue: we decide on standards for service. Hospitality is a dialogue: to listen to a customer’s needs and meet them. It takes both great service and hospitality to be at the top.”
¹

Hospitality. How your customers
feel
. These concepts transcend the restaurant business and apply to all business in a world of HOW. Meyer is talking about an
experience
. In a dialogic society, answering the phone on the second ring or always having a smile on your face is no longer enough; a connected, transparent world now looks past the proxies of service and looks to how the companies and people with whom they do business engage and interact with them. Experience matters in a world where interrelationships matter. And not just customer experience, but supplier, employee, colleague, vendor, competitor, regulator, and media experience matters, all the interactions with everyone you encounter throughout the business day. Experience is becoming the great differentiator.

Can you
do
experience? Can you write a guidebook of best practices that deliver a consistent interpersonal experience throughout your organization or team? Is
experience
something you do, or is it something more ephemeral, more dependent on each individual’s ability to act independently and consistently in the group’s best interest?

Let me ask a different question. In their seminal study of the habits and practices of visionary companies,
Built to Last
, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras survey what they call the “core ideologies of visionary companies.”
²
As they define them, core ideologies give “guidance and inspiration to people
inside that company
” (italics theirs). Here are some of the things they list:

• 3M: innovation, tolerance.

• American Express: heroic customer service.

• Citicorp: expansionism, being out in front, aggressiveness, self-confidence.

• Philip Morris: winning.

• Procter & Gamble (P&G): continuous self-improvement.

• Merck: excellence.

These are all amazing companies, each with a long history of success and achievement. But I ask: Can you
do
innovation? Expansionism? Winning? Can you
do
excellence? Can winning or heroic customer service inspire you? Can you be guided in your everyday efforts by aggressiveness and self-confidence? As groundbreaking as was Collins and Porras’s book in its time (and I built LRN on many of its precepts), the world has evolved substantially since then. While
Built to Last
remains a visionary work and its approach fundamentally sound, we can now see more deeply into what lives at the true core of successful enterprises. The new lens of HOW shows us that what Collins and Porras saw as “core ideologies” are not
core
enough for the road ahead. I don’t think you can
do
, be
guided by
, or most importantly, be
inspired by
any of these things. They are results, things you
get
when you innovate in HOW.

You can’t
do
self-improvement, but if in every e-mail, conversation, meeting, and task you are thinking like a leader, you will improve. You can’t
do
tolerance, but if in every interaction you strive to fill the spaces between you and others with trust, you will
get
tolerance, and a whole lot more. You can’t
do
excellence or winning, but, if you believe in a set of core values and you pursue the expression of those values in everything you do, you will deliver more excellence to others and, in a world of HOW, win. We’ve seen this in other areas of business. Human resources long ago learned that you can’t
do
employee retention; employees stay or leave in relation to their inspiration, reward, and fulfillment with their work. The quality movement showed that you couldn’t
do
quality; you
get
quality from a commitment to eliminating inefficiencies in the process of creation. The lens of HOW lets us see more deeply into the true core of what brings perpetual and perennial success, past the
doing
to the values and beliefs that truly form the common bonds and inspiration of group endeavor.

So let us return to the first question: Can you
do
experience? Obviously, no. Great experiences result from great interactions, and great interactions come from getting your HOWs right, from building strong synapses with all those around you, and from inspiring those around you to do the same. Look at some of the big shifts in business today:

• From brand awareness to brand promise.

• From customer service to customer experience.

• From managing reputation to earning reputational value.

All these big shifts result when you get your HOWs right, when you connect to something deeper than ideas, something that unleashes the power to make Waves in everything you do: values. And all these shifts are happening and newly critical to success because the sea change in connectivity and transparency since the beginning of the twenty-first century has brought them to the fore.

Philosopher Henry Sidgwick spoke about the Paradox of Hedonism, the idea that if you pursue happiness directly it tends to elude you, but if you pursue some higher, more meaningful purpose, you can achieve it.
³
The problem with Collins and Porras’ core ideologies is that they are about going at the benefit directly, aiming at just the “IP” (innovation and progress) in TRIP and neglecting what it takes to get there. Like happiness, if one seeks such ends as innovation, progress, and winning, one can best achieve them by pursuing the values that can get you there: trust, honesty, integrity, consistency, and transparency. Values inspire, and are deeper and more powerful than ideologies.

How do you measure success? By how much money you have? How many awards you win? How much respect you earn from peers? What you contribute to the world? The love of your family and friends? How many things you own? How many lives you save? If you are like most people, it is probably some mix of these things and others, in varying degrees and proportions. But when does it all add up to success? Early on in the book, we spoke about the paradox of journey, how sometimes you must struggle with new ideas and new perspectives until you internalize them and make them an “artless art,” and how this period of struggle often signifies effort beyond easy knowledge and competence. When you put this book down, you may have that experience with these ideas as well, for though this book nears its end, your journey into the world of HOW just begins.

Before we part company, I want to leave you with one more paradox, the paradox of success, and it’s a corollary to the paradox of happiness. You cannot
do
success; you cannot achieve it by pursuing it directly. Success is something you get when you pursue something greater than yourself, and the word I use to describe that something is
significance
. All measures of success share one commonality: They signify the value of your passage through life. You can go on a journey of significance—a journey to do, make, extend, create, and support value in the world; and I believe, in the spirit of the Johnson & Johnson Credo, it is this journey that
should
bring you success, however you measure it

Pursuing significance, in the end, is the ultimate HOW.

Hows Matter

The world moves faster than books. As of the moment we went to press, these pages had managed to catch my best thinking and the most current information at my disposal. But at almost every stage of the writing process—draft, revision, polish, proofreading, and publication—our hyperconnected, transparent world continued to add new dynamics and issues to consider.

That is as it should be. HOW is a lens, a way of seeing and understanding these changes as they happen. And so, the journey continues.

Please join me and many of the thought leaders who have contributed to this book in an ongoing online discussion of all things HOW at

www.HowsMatter.com

Our online effort will attempt to capture in real time the lively multidisciplinary conversation embodied in these pages. We’ll also seek to provide useful tools—a downloadable color version of the Leadership Framework, interviews, and more—to help augment and deepen your understanding of HOW.

We hope to see you there.

DOV SEIDMAN

Acknowledgments

Writing a book is a journey unlike any other I have ever taken, and, as with most journeys, it would not have been possible without the love, support, encouragement, feedback, and tireless efforts of the many people who made the journey with me. I know I will have the chance to sit down with each of them and express my profound gratitude for what their contribution has meant to me. In the meantime, I’d like to thank them here.

Joni Evans, originally my agent at William Morris and now a dear friend. You gave me the belief and confidence that I had a book in me, and that it would prove useful to others. Your ongoing mentor-ship and guidance, substantive help, enthusiasm, and inspiration have provided a rare form of encouragement. You have been there every step of the way. I’m deeply grateful. The world needs more like you.

Jennifer Rudolph Walsh and Jay Mandel. Along with the team at William Morris, you stepped into the project and embraced it with the same passion and commitment, and saw me through to the finish line. I feel fortunate to have you both in my corner.

Pamela van Giessen, my editor at John Wiley & Sons. You believed in me, and more important, had a vision for this book far more significant than the one I brought you. You saw that HOW is for people, not just the institutions for which they work. You felt the resonance of this material, shaped and formed it as we went along, and then kept me from running off the track. Perhaps most important, you promised to blue-pencil the word ethics if I ever put it on the page, forcing me to think about these issues in deeper and more universal ways. You were, in a word, visionary. Thanks also to the whole team at John Wiley & Sons, especially Jennifer MacDonald, Nancy Rothschild, Alison Bamberger, and the extraordinary Mary Daniello, for their care and efforts in seeing this book onto the shelves.

Nelson Handel made unique editorial contributions throughout. You helped me better tell the story and lay out the ideas. Our collaboration—intellectual and literary—was intense, and the book is much better for it. No one argues with me like you do. Thank you.

No book that attempts to cover this much ground would be possible without a resourceful and enthusiastic team of researchers. Your passion for the message and relentless digging brought to light many gems that helped the story shine. Liza Foreman, Lisa Derrick, Maureen Brackey, Brian Hong, and especially Diane Wright for her meticulous efforts, I am grateful to each of you for your contributions. I’d also like to thank Catherine Fredman and Mark Ebner for your additional editorial contributions; Adam Turteltaub for your thoughtful research and support; Caroline Heald, thank you for your caring assistance; and Dave Lambertsen for your illustrations.

I am fortunate to have benefited from the uncommon intellect and erudition of Eric Pinckert. At the beginning, when the book was taking shape, and at the end, when it needed to stay in shape, you were invaluable. Mark Detelich, thank you for your unique enhancements. Rob Shavell, thank you for our various collaborations, especially the last one, which resulted in the subtitle of this book.

Ideas never come in a vacuum, and I have been honored over the years for the inspiration and challenges of many brilliant thinkers. Steve Kerr, you are foremost among them. We have been on an intellectual journey together for years, and you have had a profound influence on me. If anything times zero is zero, than anything times you is nearly infinite. You are one of those rare people with whom nascent ideas begin and bloom. When this book came about, you became an active participant, helping me refine and extend the work, make each idea more precise, and make each principle more grounded. I’m proud to call you friend.