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The EMyth and the myths it dispels


I was so, so very lucky to happen to run into the newest book from Michael Gerber last December, while browsing in a bookstore, entitled EMyth Mastery.

For anyone who is contemplating starting their own business, any of the EMyth books should be required reading as the author does an excellent job of describing what it takes to start a successful company for the long-term. The irony is that very few people truly understand what it means to be an entrepreneur, or what it is that entrepreneurs actually do on a daily basis.

Essentially, most people think that if you do something well, and enjoy doing it, that starting a business doing that thing is a natural next step that should be encouraged.

Knowing what I know now, after 13 years of running my own firm, I would discourage those who think that that is all that is required. Their ignorance will only hurt them.

What most people do NOT appreciate is that there is a distinction between working IN your company and working ON your company that I am only still grappling to appreciate.

Working IN your company means, in the simple example of a roti shop: making and selling rotis.

Working ON your company means setting up the operations processes, policies and turn-key applications that are basically required to make any company successful, and must be customized to make your own company viable over a period of years. For example, the roti vendor would have to develop a standard process, manual and teaching method to standardize the method of making rotis so that

  1. they are made the same way each time
  2. they can be taught and re-taught the same way
  3. they could one day form the basis for expansion

Case in point: it was Ray Kroc’s genius for building a viable, expandable business that turned the store he bought from the McDonalds’ brothers into a multi-billion dollar empire.

The big myth about starting a business is that, for example, it’s the quality of the rotis that will make the business succeed. While that’s important, it’s just not true. Instead, it’s the quality of the business itself (and how it is run) that is much, much more important.

I’ve spent the last month re-tooling my own company and writing manuals for doing just about everything that I think is important. The areas that I have created for Framework Consulting are:

  • Enterprise Leadership
  • Management
  • Financial Leadership
  • Client Fulfillment
  • Lead Generation
  • Lead Conversion
  • Thought Leadership*
  • Marketing

* this is one that I added to the standard set that Gerber recommends.

I had to do quite a bit of reworking of his original ideas to fit my kind of business, but his basic thinking is still the best advice around for small business owners

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An Article that Resonates

A recent article published in Business Week caught my attention. It is entitled “The Secret of Oprah’s Success” and deals with some of the principles of communication that has made Oprah successful.

I found that the article echoes much of what we have been working on in our firm in terms of the kind of communication that is most likely to connect with employees.

One of the books that stuck with me when written years ago, although it is quite outdated, is called “You Are the Message”. The premise was that the best way to communicate was to be authentic, and this article (and the principles we work with) have only built on that idea.

The article is an important one, and makes me think that I should get the book, and this may be the first that actually builds on what Ailes wrote back in the early 1990’s.

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Books I’m “Reading” Now

I have no idea who out there might be reading the books that I’m reading , but I find myself reading lots of different kinds of books, all at the same time. The thing I’m wondering to myself is: who else is reading this stuff?

If you are someone who is reading or listening to the same authors, then I would love to know.

Reading List (paper)

  • Freedom and Authenticity by Koestenbaum and Block
  • Carnival by Antoni
  • Communion with God by Walsch
  • The Voice of Knowledge by Don Miguel Ruiz

Listening List (MuVo Creative mp3)

  • 2 talks by Mariann Williamson
  • Guns, Germs and Steel — Jared Diamond
  • I Need Your Love, Is That True? — Byron Katie
  • Robin Williams’ Famous Friends
  • The Energy of Money — Maria Nemeth

eBook list (Palm Tungsten eReader)

  • She Comes First — Ian Kerner
  • Tomorrow’s God — Walsch

This in addition to about 7-10 newspapers each morning.

What are you reading / listening to / watching?

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Copying and Stealing Ideas

Good artists copy, great artists steal – Pablo Picasso

The other day I had a dilemma. I was looking for Caribbean-based consultants to work with that had something unique to offer. I knew of several firms and individuals, but I wanted to be able to bring some complementary and different skills to the client I was working with.

However, I discovered that there is a significant reticence among people in my profession in the region to share ideas, or opportunities, or clients. I think the same is true for other professionals, including lawyers, doctors, engineers and architects.

The stories I’ve heard go something like this: “I wrote an article in the newspaper on topic X and the next thing I heard was that my consulting colleague was out there selling the exact same thing, using my ideas and calling it theirs.”

Bitterness and hard feelings follow shortly after… along with a promise to themselves to “never let it happen again.” With that promise, follows a contraction. The consultant stops the free flow of ideas that commences from that bottomless, mysterious place that ideas come from, through the consultant’s mind and into the world expressed in either spoken words, written pages or projects.

The result is that the consultant is unable to become known as an expert, and deeply honed expertise is what clients are willing to pay a premium for.

I can’t say that this point of view has come to me easily – it’s taken some lessons in trust on my part to get here. Until recently, I also saw ideas as something to be defended, hidden or kept to oneself in some way to ensure that the maximum revenue could be made from them.

But that is a little like trying to grip beach sand in one’s palm. Sand that is scooped up in one’s hand stays safely in the hand when the grip is loose. Once the grip is tightened, the sand begins to leak out through the fingers, and as the grip is tightened into a fist, more and more sand escapes.

From my very recent experience this year in which I’ve written and published far more than ever before, I’ve learned that the more ideas I put out into the public, the more ideas I’m able to generate.

Now, who would have thought that?

I certainly did not think that way, and instead would “sit on” small innovations for months and even years, trying to “get them right” and afraid that someone would steal them. Now it seems that the opposite is true. Getting the ideas out of my head and into the public domain (such as this blog) has freed up my mind to come up with more ideas than I have time to put into words.

Recently, a friend of mine (Andre Bello) wrote a book that clearly established his expertise in the area of negotiations with some innovative ideas, presented in the form of a medieval fable (see the blog entry entitled “A cool book on negotiating with sword and spirit.”) The book established him in my mind as the “go-to guy” in the field, not just in the region, but also internationally.

That led me to think about the best consultants in the world. The fact is, they are masterful in not just coming up with ideas, but also in generating the courage required to continue to put them out there. I recently wrote a blog entry about Peter Block, a consultant who has taken gigantic strides in defining a unique area of interest. What’s interesting is that there is almost no connection between his first book and his most recent tome – the earliest book had to do with consulting skills, while the latest has to do with philosophical management. He’s shown a willingness to abandon his public and probably profitable area of expertise, in order to develop (and take a risk on) an entirely new area of interest.

I am rapidly becoming a proponent of people stealing my ideas.

In short, here is my invitation.

Go ahead. Use them. Take and give as much credit as you feel. Let me know what you do with them, or keep it to yourself. Repeat ideas word for word, or use only their essence. Make a ton of money, or make no money whatsoever. Come back for more. Or don’t.

As I mentioned on my website, A Course in Miracles makes the point over and over that ideas are strengthened when they are shared. Consultants are at their best when they are sharing ideas with wide audiences, and I, like most of my colleagues, want to be at my very best. I prefer to have my ideas (if they are any good) strengthened through actual use, than to just have them take up valuable real estate in my mind.

So, if you’re a consultant, and are inspired, send me what you’ve got, and I promise that I will steal it. Then, if you have not done it already, steal what I’ve got. Only then can we really talk about working together!

PS
An interesting link : How to (Legally and Ethically) Steal Ideas

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Freedom and Accountability at Work


I’m a lucky guy

After a hiatus of several years, I picked up a book that I had started some time ago by Peter Koestenbaum and Peter Block called “Freedom and Accountability at Work.”

The book itself is a revelation, and I’m glad that I picked up the book after so long, and didn’t give it away. I’ll have some more to say on the book when I’ve finished reading it, and have gotten some time to digest it.

But the “lucky” part is that I visited Peter Block’s website (click here) and read a couple of his most recent papers, in the form of an interview and a speech.

They are remarkable pieces of work and will take me a good long while to digest both of them fully. Here are my first cuts, both of which are

A Time to Heal

This paper almost seems as if it were written for the Caribbean workplace. It starts in the following way:

Nursing, more than almost any other profession, defines the meaning of service. The nurse is the front line, what we might call the touch labor, of the U.S. health care system. The job represents the heart and soul of authentic health care.

Why, then, is there a shortage of nurses and why do so many nurses find the job so stressful? The crisis is not about the work itself, but how to create more fulfillment in the work. The problem is not primarily lack of skill or motivation, but the context in which the work is done.

Block goes on to address a theme that runs through his book — that employees are best related to as adults, and as equals to management. Although this path is more difficult, it is much closer to one that empowers our potential as human beings in the workplace.

Leading the Way

This excerpt was taken from his interview with How magazine.

What are the traditional leadership models that businesses have embraced?

“Leadership” is a well-developed misconception. The dominant belief is that the task of leadership is to set a vision, enroll others in it and hold people accountable through measurements and rewards. It’s a patriarchal system used to create high performance through centralization of power. Most leadership training focuses on how to be a good parent. We teach how to “develop” people, as if they were ours to develop.

We do a lot to create the notion that bosses are responsible for their people. All that parenting has the unintended side effect of creating deep entitlement and having employees stay frozen in their own development. Most management techniques are ways of controlling people so they feel good about being controlled.


Yikes. Now that’s what I call “telling it like it is.” For me, it’s almost scary to admit that there is a lot of truth in what he’s saying, because there are many, many careers that are riding and depending on the premise that he is dismantling.

So I’m lucky to have found what Block has been thinking, and been writing about. Both papers, and his book, are leading the way to an entirely new way to relate in the workplace.

Incidentally, his newest book “The Answer to How is Yes” seems to be an exposition of the ideas presented in these 2 papers. I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

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A cool book on negotiating with sword and spirit

I just finished reading a book called The Sword and the Spirit written by a good friend of mine, Andre Bello (www.andrebello.com)

Written in the form of a medieval fable, the book is actually a brilliant exposition and description of the underlying principles and distinctions that make for powerful negotiating. I just read it through in one sitting, and really enjoyed not only the story, but learning what I did wrong in past negotiations.

I even started looking forward to my next negotiation, which would be an opportunity to put to use what I’ve learned!

The book is divided into two parts. The first part is the story of a kingdom that is under threat of attack by a neighbouring country. If you’ve read other business “stories” such as The Goal by Eli Goldratt, you’ll recognize some of the same kinds of characters — there is the young thinker, the wise sages, the gradual awakening to the new knowledge, the dilemma to be resolved etc.

The second part of the book lays out the principles that are contained in the book, written in linear fashion. Andre assures me that there is more to the book than he put in the principles, but that remains to be discovered by the ardent practitioner!

Congrats to him on an excellent exposition, and one that I hope is used widely across our region, as we have our fair share of unresolved disputes that have lead to loss of jobs, profits and benefits to our economies.

Andre is a Trini who is living in Jamaica (and loving it from what I can tell…)

The Sword and The Spirit by Andre Bello
ISBN 976-8194-57-X

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Illusions in the Workplace 1

Lately, I’ve been reading the book Communion with God by Neal Donald Walsch.

The author talks about the usefulness of illusions — 10 in all — that are part and parcel of the human experience. The illusions are actually meant for us to re-experience who we really are and who God really is, and life is about working through them and arriving back at where we started, i.e. the Truth. However, once we’ve come back home to the truth, we return with a new experience, which actually adds to what God knows of himself.

This is a powerful, grand concept.

Perhaps that same concept can be expanded to include the workplace, and that there are illusions that we maintain in the working world that are useful, but only to a point.

The First Illusion I’d like to explore is that of competition.

It is an illusion to think that out and out war exists between companies. In fact, there is far more cooperation than there is competition.

We are taught that business is about the survival of the fittest, and that companies are fighting with each other to survive, and that their focus should be on the destruction of their competitors.

Let’s look at some examples of what also seems like competition, but it actually a carefully crafted case of cooperation.

Athletic Competition

In sports such as boxing and track and field, at one levels it’s all about the competition between the competitors. Obviously, one person is out to “beat” the others.).)

Yet, in order to have a competition, until the boxers step into the ring, or the athletes step onto the track they must cooperate in order to allow the competition to proceed. They must show up at the same time and the same place. They must allow each other to train, and to do so with the best resources possible. They must follow the rules, even the seemingly meaningless ones. They better they are at getting people interested in the competition, the more tickets will be sold to the event.

In other words, they must cooperate to assist the other athletes in showing up as prepared as they can be to engage in the competition. Why?

To put it simply, a boxer needs an opponent. He or she cannot show up for the fight and claim victory when their opponent either fails to show or does so in poor condition.

Also, in the case of the athlete, he or she needs top class competition in order to do well, and to break records. Even if the athlete is good enough to break records on his/her own, no-one would show up to see them compete with themselves, and that would be the death of that sport.

Clearly, the destruction of one’s opponents is not in the best interest of an athlete, which is why competition only makes sense against a background of broad cooperation.

The same is true for corporations that compete in business.

Monopolies, or companies that have the least competition, are probably the most inefficient companies. They are despised the most by their customers (witness TSTT in Trinidad and other Cable and Wireless companies across the Caribbean, before the advent of competition in the cellular market). Their employees (anecdotally) appear to be the least motivated (after all, if you don’t like it here, then “tough luck” to you).

The demise of one’s competitors, or absence of the same is simply bad for business and leads to a propensity to fool oneself (no-one at Cable and Wireless believed that a competitor with no history in the Caribbean would gain 60% market-share in 3 years in the way the Digicel has).

It is much wiser to have competitors, and to foster their entry into markets, and to hope that they prosper. When there is broad cooperation, everyone can win, and do so at a much increased level.

In the airline business, it is an article of faith that one should never advertise one’s safety record or compare it against one’s competitors. Why so? The reason is that reminding the flying public that fling carries with it some risks, is a sure recipe to reduce overall flying, which would reduce the profitability of each airline.

Airlines, therefore, must cooperate in what they use in their advertising (even while not appearing to do so).

This is not to say that competition is not a useful illusion. It’s very useful when trying to serve customers better than the shop down the street. It’s useful in coming up with new ideas and product innovations. It’s also quite useful when it comes to treating stockholders and employees well — in some countries, awards are given to companies that are able to create extraordinary work cultures.

But executives need to understand that competition is actually an illusion, which exists to teach us an important lesson — there is much more to be gained from broad cooperation, and competitive impulses are only useful when everyone can remember this bigger truth.

An acquaintance of mine is an “ultra-competitor”. When she plays any board game, she plays to win, and if she loses she is prone to throwing nothing short of 4-year old tantrums (including cursing, stamping feet, throwing game pieces, etc.) The net result of this behavior is that no-one wants to play with her… She doesn’t get that competition is just an illusion, and that the real enjoyment comes from elsewhere.

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Books I’m Reading

I don’t know about you, but I always have several books going at one time…

  • A Course in Miracles– I just finished up the year-long Workbook
  • The Energy of Money (audio, and paper) — deep, excellent thinking. Not light reading (for me anyway) as the topic brings with it a lot of baggage that must be dealt with for me and maybe most people
  • I Need Your Love — Is that True — (audio and paper) — follows up on one of my all-time favorites, Loving What Is… amazingly simple process to use that brings moment to moment peace
  • The Power of Now — (audio and paper) the perfect companion to the former, and focuses more on the end result
  • Freestyle Made Easy — DVD/paper — swim training for the next IronMan starts in earnest
  • some other novel — on audio — haven’t gotten into it yet
  • Large Account Sales — on paper
  • Unlock behaviour, Unleash Profits — I wish I had this book 5 years ago (before it was written…)
  • Going Long — IronMan training book

In general I try not to carry around too many paper books due to how much I travel — if it’s available on audio, I get it there first and load in onto my mp3 player. But now and again, the book is either not available on audio, or after listening to the audio book I want to read it also in print.

There are so many good books out there right now, and so little time to read them all… sigh.

Francis