Reinvention - Linkage, Inc.

PARTICIPANT GUIDE The Linkage Thought Leader Series

Reinvention

Featuring Jason Jennings, Author of The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change

© 2011 Linkage, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Reinvention

Jason Jennings

Dear Participant: Welcome to the Linkage broadcast, Reinvention. This broadcast from Linkage’s Thought Leader Series features Jason Jennings, a leading researcher and one of the most successful and prolific business and leadership authors in the world. As Mr. Jennings shares in his upcoming book, The Reinventors: How Extraordinary Companies Pursue Radical Continuous Change, reinvention is more than innovation; more than change — although both play an integral part. Reinvention means constantly reimagining, rethinking, and reinventing everything you do and how you do it in order to remain relevant. “We must all become reinventors and we better do it quickly. Compare the list of the top twenty-five companies in the Fortune 500 in the year 2000 and the year 2010. The results are shocking. Sixteen of the top twenty-five companies fell off their lofty perches in the span of only ten years. All of these companies failed to constantly evolve, change, grow, and reinvent themselves, and eventually became irrelevant.” The relevance of the topic of reinvention can’t be overstated. The latest IBM Global Marketplace Study found that 67% of worldwide CEOs think their current business model is only sustainable for another three years. It’s clear that in today’s business environment organizations will not thrive — and possibly not even survive — unless they reinvent themselves. It’s time to look to the organizations that are making a difference. It’s time to look at the reinventors. While researching his upcoming book, Jason Jennings searched for the 100 most compelling examples of reinvention. Through interviews with people at all levels of the organizations, Mr. Jennings discovered that successful reinventors continually reevaluate and reinvent what they do and how they do it. Their stories are remarkable and prove that reinvention is a critical key to extraordinary success. Jason Jennings’ unique and in-depth look at how exceptional companies pursue — and achieve — radical, continuous change will convince you that reinvention will take you from ordinary to extraordinary. Mr. Jennings will reveal the secrets of those leaders and organizations that have successfully reinvented and transformed themselves. These organizations run the gamut from technology giants to manufacturing firms. No company can feel safe in today’s ever-changing environment unless they have a plan in place that allows them to constantly change and grow ahead of the needs and wants of their customers. As Jason Jennings will teach you, reinvention is how your organization will stay on top and attain greater success. It is not enough to talk about change, your entire organization — from front-line employees to senior executives — must embrace constant change and growth. Change and reinvention need to be an intentional component of your organization’s culture. Mr. Jennings’ set of principles will guide you as you change, grow, and reinvent.

The Linkage Thought Leader Series

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In this presentation, you will learn: •

Why being open and in control is possible.

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When are we a candidate for reinvention?

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How do we change everything we do to take advantage of technologies that might not even exist yet?

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How and when do we start pulling the plug on the things we’re doing now?

These participant materials have been designed to complement your participation in this broadcast with Jason Jennings. Use the materials before the broadcast to set the stage for the broadcast. Learn more about Mr. Jennings and how the only way to thrive, and perhaps even survive, is directly related to how well you can reinvent your business. Use the materials during Jason Jennings’ presentation to take notes on important concepts. Mr. Jennings will use the 90 minutes to provide some prepared material on the art of reinvention and how you can use secrets of those leaders and organizations that have successfully reinvented and transformed themselves to take your company to the next level. Most importantly, use the materials after the broadcast to help reflect on ways to embrace the principles and implement the tools and techniques Mr. Jennings outlines in his presentation on Reinvention. Use the unconventional wisdom and cutting edge tactics of today’s most successful reinventors to pursue radical continuous change — change that will take your organization from ordinary to extraordinary.


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About Linkage Linkage, Inc. is a global organizational development company that specializes in leadership development. Serving the public and private sectors, the company provides clients around the globe with integrated solutions that include strategic consulting services, customized onsite training experiences, tailored assessment services, and benchmark research. With a relentless commitment to learning, Linkage also offers a full range of conferences, institutes, summits, public workshops, and distance learning programs on leading-edge topics in leadership, management, HR, and OD. More than 100,000 leaders and managers have attended a Linkage program since the company’s founding in 1988. Headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, Linkage has offices in Atlanta, New York, and San Francisco, with operations in Athens, Bangalore, Brussels, Hong Kong, Istanbul, Johannesburg, Kuala Lumpur, Kuwait City, Mexico City, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, and Sydney. On two occasions, Linkage has been named to the Inc. 500, a list of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States.

Other Linkage Programs Linkage’s broadcasts represent the best in leadership and management thinking, providing you with: •

Idea-generating programs by world-renowned and inspirational leaders.

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A convenient, on-site option for educating your leaders and managers.

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An innovative vehicle to deliver and drive the learning.

Check Linkage’s website (http://www.linkageinc.com) for additional programming, details, and updates. Linkage’s featured speakers are available On-Demand via Web cast or DVD: •

David Rock on Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long

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Bill Conaty on Why Smart People Put People Before Numbers

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Steven Johnson on Where Good Ideas Come From

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Charlene Li on Open Leadership: Transform the Way you Lead

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Atul Gawande on How to Get Things Right in a Complex World

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Adrian Gostick on How One Great Team Can Transform an Entire Organization

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Michael Roberto on How Great Leaders Prevent Problems Before They Happen

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Carlos Gutierrez on Leadership from Top to Bottom

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Marshall Goldsmith on The Positive Actions Leaders Must Take to Start Winning Again

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Dan Heath on How to Change when Change is Hard


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Malcolm Gladwell on Why People are Successful

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Sheena Iyengar on The Art of Choosing

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Hank Haney on A Roadmap to Excellence

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Lynda Gratton on Creating Performance Driven Innovation within your Organization

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Les McKeown on Get Your Organization on the Growth Track

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Rosabeth Moss Kanter on Leading a SuperCorp

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David Cooperrider on A Symphony of Strengths

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Richard Boyatzis on Leading in a New World

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Sandra Taylor on The Business Case of Corporate Social Responsibility

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John Maxwell on The Five Levels of Leadership

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Stephen M. R. Covey on Leading at the Speed of Trust

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Randy Street on Using the A Method to Evaluate Talent

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Peter Sheahan on Future Proof: How to be Up in a Down Market

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Marilyn Carlson Nelson on How We Lead Matters

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Tom Peters on Creating the 21st Century Organization

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Michael Treacy on Sustaining Double-Digit Growth in Any Economy

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Doris Kearns Goodwin on Team of Rivals

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John Kotter on Leading Change

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Marshall Goldsmith on Coaching for Leadership

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Patrick Lencioni on Building and Leading a High Performance Team

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Keith Ferrazzi on Relationships for Group Success

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Warren Bennis on The Most Common (and Often Fatal) Failures of Top Leadership

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C.K. Prahalad on Making Strategy Work: The Future of Value Creation

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Ann Richards on Successful Leadership

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Michael Useem on Reaching the Go Point

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Clayton Christensen on Building a Successful Innovation-Driven Organization

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Benazir Bhutto on Diversity

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David Breashears on Vision, Courage, and Passion: Leadership at 26,000 Feet

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Tom Davenport on Maximizing Knowledge Worker Productivity: The Next Generation of Management

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Tony Schwartz on Building Individual and Organizational Capacity in the Age of Overload

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Phil Harkins on Powerful Conversations


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Mareen and Kimball Fisher on Leading High Performance Virtual Teams

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Nick Washienko on Effective Leadership Communication

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Noel Tichy on Judgment: How Winning Leaders Make Great Calls

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Quint Studer on Transforming a Corporate Culture to Drive Sustainable Results

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Marilyn King on Envisioning the Gold: An Olympian’s Challenge to Business Leaders

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Betsy Myers on Authentic Leadership: How You Can Take the Lead

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Marilyn Tam on How to Use What You’ve Got to Get What You Want

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Michael Lee Stallard and Jason Pankau on Fired Up Leadership to Boost Productivity and Innovation

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Gail Evans on The Power of Working Women Working Together

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Pat Mitchell on Leader as Mentor

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Jack & Suzy Welch on Producing Results: Winning Through Flawless Execution

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Rick Belluzzo & Jay Conger on Developing Your Leadership Bench Strength

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Mike Krzyzewski & Catherine McCarthy on Coaching to Win: Developing People and Teams Who Excel

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Michael Porter on Creating a Vision for Competitive Advantage

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Phil Harkins & Dave Liniger on Everybody Wins: Proven and Repeatable Guidelines for Creating Unprecedented Growth

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Malcolm Gladwell on The Power of Rapid Cognition for Business Leaders

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Dave Ulrich on Creating Your Own Leadership Brand

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Dan Goleman on Emotionally Intelligent Leadership: Bottom Line Results

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Cokie Roberts on Lessons in Leadership: From the Halls of Congress to Our Founding Mothers

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Bill George on Authentic Leadership: Recovering the Secrets to Creating Lasting Value

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Sherron Watkins & Joseph Badaracco Jr. on Ethics in Leadership

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Richard Branson on Lessons in Leadership

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Rudi Giuliani on Leading in Difficult Times

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Michael Hammer on Managing Without Structure

Future Broadcasts •

December 8: Paul Sullivan on Why Some People Excel Under Pressure and Some Don’t

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March 13, 2012: Douglas Conant

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April 18, 2012: Stephen Shapiro


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

About Linkage ............................................................................................................................................................... 3 Other Linkage Programs ............................................................................................................................................... 3 Future Broadcasts......................................................................................................................................................... 5 TABLE OF CONTENTS.................................................................................................................................................... 6 ON YOUR MARK: PRE-BROADCAST PREPARATION ................................................................................................. 7 Introduction and Basic Premise .................................................................................................................................... 8 Pre-Broadcast Activity: Systematizing Everything ...................................................................................................... 11 GET SET: PRESENTATION........................................................................................................................................... 21 During the Presentation .............................................................................................................................................. 22 Notes........................................................................................................................................................................... 23 GO: ON-THE-JOB APPLICATION ................................................................................................................................. 28 Post-Broadcast Activities ............................................................................................................................................ 29 Materials Written by Jason Jennings .......................................................................................................................... 45 FORMS ........................................................................................................................................................................... 46 Question Sheet ........................................................................................................................................................... 47 Broadcast Evaluation Form......................................................................................................................................... 48


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ON YOUR MARK

PRE-BROADCAST PREPARATION


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Introduction and Basic Premise “A company can operate successfully for 200 years only by continually reinventing itself.” – Charles Holliday Reinvention isn’t innovation. Innovation keeps products and services fresh and exciting while giving customers the next big thing. Reinvention is what organizations must do in order to sustain innovation. As Jason Jennings, authority on leadership, growth, and innovations explains, “reinvention is a top to bottom ruthless review and rebuild of the organization asking and answering the hardest of questions.” Reinvention sounds hard, but like anything of value, the payoff is huge. You can’t afford to become irrelevant in today’s economy if you want to be here — and relevant — tomorrow. As your organization moves into 2012, it’s time to become a reinventor. The excerpt that follows is from The Reinventors and is reprinted with permission from the author, Jason Jennings.

The only chance any of us have for prosperity is to constantly reimagine, rethink, and reinvent everything we do and how we do it in order to remain relevant. Jason Jennings The Reinventors

I broke Thomas Wolfe’s cardinal rule and went back home to the town where I grew up. I parked my rental car a block off Main Street intending to wander through the downtown business district. I remember it being filled with bustling department and clothing stores, drug stores, restaurants, more barber shops and hair cutting salons than you could count, crowded supermarkets, hardware centers, and insurance agencies. It was so jammed with cars and people you had to look both ways before you stepped off the curb to not be run over. But, as I turned the corner, I saw a ghost town minus the tumbleweeds. Boarded up building were covered with grime and graffiti, parking meters were mere stumps, their heads lopped off in hopes that saving a quarter would cause shoppers to return and there wasn’t any place to buy anything. The only things left were a few little bars and a handful of antique and junk stores. As I walked, memories of the people I knew who owned and operated the stores that lined the streets came flooding back. There were the Lowenstein sisters who owned the town’s flagship department store (they were called spinsters back then — a sexist and snide slur for career women who like many of us were simply married to their business). Leah, Rose, and Bertha fought successfully like Patton battled the Germans to keep competitors from gaining ground on their turf and who, in words spoken in a manner designed to permanently quiet the questioner, swatted competitors away with, “there are already enough stores downtown and we don’t need any more!” There was the town’s favorite drug store owner, Joe, who, when asked if he was planning on building a new store out on the highway where some out-of-towners were constructing new stores replied, “No way, they’re all going to go belly-up because nobody’s going to drive all the way to the highway to shop.” For the record, the highway is five blocks from downtown and has become the main shopping area.


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And, I heard the voice of Tony the barber, who I once asked if he wanted to grow his business and get bigger and who replied, “I don’t want any more business and I don’t want to grow. I’m happy with things just the way they are.” I liked and respected these people. They were businesspeople; successful, smart, sophisticated, and I grew up thinking they must know something about business and have most of the right answers or they wouldn’t be running a business. During my trip home I asked around and heard the depressing last chapters of the Lowenstein sisters, our family druggist, the affable Tony, and all their peers. Not one of the downtown merchants ever got a dime from the sale of their business. In fact, as the tsunami of regional malls, discount centers, outlet malls, rapidly changing shopping patterns, the Internet, and shopping on our Smartphone’s chipped away at their business, it was death by a thousand cuts. They were too old, too tired, too set in their ways, or too entitled to ever change anything and they remained stubborn in their belief that because they were there they had a right to be successful. One by one their businesses spiraled into closure. It would be easy to write these people off as small-town simpletons or remnants of a world that no longer exists. But when you read between the lines these people are like a lot of us. The Lowenstein sisters focused on the competition instead of the customer. Joe the druggist had all the answers. And Tony’s business wasn’t broke, so why should he mess with it? It’s all very familiar. My hometown is an apt metaphor for what will happen to you, your job, and your business unless you become a reinventor completely committed to constant radical change and growth. Everyone Must Become a Reinventor Your job as you know it and your business as it is currently run will eventually change. The only chance any of us have for prosperity is to constantly reimagine, rethink, and reinvent everything we do and how we do it in order to remain relevant. We must all become reinventors and we better do it quickly. Compare the list of the top twenty five companies in the Fortune 500 in the year 2000 and the year 2010. The results are shocking. Sixteen of the top twenty-five companies fell of their lofty perches in the span of only ten years. That’s almost two-thirds! Dig a little deeper and you’ll find that since the Fortune 500 list was first published in 1955 more than ninety percent of the companies on it have been mopped up by smaller rivals, gone bankrupt, shrunk so small to have become inconsequential, or simply closed their doors. These companies were once the largest and most stable businesses in the nation. Certainly these thriving organizations had the intellectual and financial resources to insure their continued success. Amoco got merged away, Esmark acquired Beatrice Foods which later got sopped up by ConAgra, Armour got split up into parts, Navistar got delisted from the NYSE, Union Carbide was swallowed by Dow, and Firestone ended up sold to Japanese interests. Only one company — DuPont — has appeared on every Fortune 500 list. The Linkage Thought Leader Series

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All of these companies failed to constantly evolve, change, grow, and reinvent themselves, and eventually became irrelevant.

As part of my preparation for teaching and speeches, I conduct about 800 telephone

Today, a combination of stagnant western markets, former third world nations embracing technology and becoming manufacturing powerhouses with middle classes larger than that of the US, technology that makes everything increasingly transparent, and customers who believe that they can get exactly what they want when they want it at a price they’re willing to pay all add up to a game-changing business environment. Anyone who thinks that they’ll get a free pass and that they don’t have to constantly reinvent their business has their head in the sand.

interviews annually with business owners, senior

The Research

leaders, executives, and CEOs. Two questions I ask each of them are, “What’s keeping you awake at night about business,” and, “what are the stumbling blocks or challenges that could get in the way of your business achieving its full economic potential?” As the Great Recession

Initial research yielded more than 22,000 stories, articles, and blogs published in the past ten years in which the search’s keywords were reinvention, reinvent, and reinventor. By reviewing the first few paragraphs of each article we were able to discard almost ninety percent of them either because of age (too old), size (too small), and repetition (lots of stories about the same companies). Most of our rejections were due to the zealous misuse and overuse of the word reinvention. I studied the remaining several thousand stories in search of the 100 most compelling examples of reinvention by asking the following questions: had the company truly demonstrated a significant reinvention, were they doing well financially with a seemingly bright future, would it be an interesting company to study, was it of a size that both entrepreneurs and leaders of large organizations could learn from, and was I likely to learn something I didn’t already know? Next, came interviews with the companies in an effort to identify the most compelling cases for reinvention followed by in-field research and interviews with people at all levels of the organizations.

of 2007-2009 came to a close, people stopped answering my questions by sharing their worries about simply staying alive and started responding with their concerns about the

A Surprising Finding I undertook this project with the vague notion that reinvention was about moving a business from point A to point B. But, that’s not what I found. We discovered that in the process of moving from A to B these businesses developed new skill sets and values that allowed them to quickly progress to C, D, E, and beyond. They all became serial reinventors and embraced constant radical change.

need to reinvent their business model. Jason Jennings The Reinventors


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Pre-Broadcast Activity: Systematizing Everything The excerpt that follows is from The Reinventors and is reprinted with permission from the author, Jason Jennings.

If the ability to function while holding two opposing ideas in your mind at the same time is the test of high intelligence, then embracing change and reinvention is the ultimate measure of business IQ because here’s the list of opposing ideas that successful reinventors say you need in your head: •

Hold on tight and freely let go.

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Be hard-nosed and soft hearted.

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Focus on a clear destination and search for new horizons.

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Take big risks and make small bets.

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Be frugal and still splurge.

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Think big and act small.

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Be highly creative and obsessively down to earth.

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Thoughtfully work your plan and improvise without thinking too much.

Can’t you almost hear the naysayers whining “Would you puhleese just make up your mind and pick one or the other?” We’re about to test your reinvention IQ to the limit by asking you to wrap your head around the two polar opposite mindsets of the successful reinventor, the two thoughts they’re able to keep in their heads, and that you need to keep in yours, the yin and yang of constant reinventing, “leading change means systematizing everything.” One of the findings for my 2002 book, Less is More, was that the most productive companies in the world routinely systematized everything. The research for this book turned up the same finding: companies that do the best job of embracing constant change, growth, and reinvention make it look easy because they’ve systematized and scaled all the core business practices. Systematizing means determining the best way to do something (step-by-step), making certain everyone does their part the same way (without significant variation) and then using the system as a baseline for continual improvement. Many people hate the thought of the functions they perform being systematized. Almost universally they complain that it will stifle their imagination, destroy their creativity, and take away their freedom. These are all weak excuses for the two real reasons they don’t want any part of a systematized process: they’re either too inflexible to learn a new way of doing things or they’re scared to death of the accountability that systematization will bring. I want to tell you a story about a woman — an immigrant to the United States from Germany — who held those two opposing thoughts in her head — leading change and systematizing everything — and built a business that she sold for three quarters of a billion dollars. The Linkage Thought Leader Series

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“I was a toddler when my father died, just a month before WWII ended,” Christel DeHaan recounted. “Our life in postwar Germany was very, very, very difficult.” The family lived in a small four hundred year old stone house in a walled village that was founded in the middle ages. Christel carried water home from a nearby creek, stocked the basement with coal and the attic with apples. Meat was so scarce and unaffordable that her mother Anna at times turned to a horse butcher. “I wouldn’t trade my upbringing for anything,” says DeHaan, adding, “my mother had very high expectations for my sister and me to be honorable human beings and be very persistent, hard working, and to never give up. I was very fortunate. She inspired me and gave me a love for my life.” The test of intelligence is indeed the ability to hold two opposing thoughts in one’s mind, appreciate both, and still function. But you don’t have to be the be-all, end-all expert in your business at one side or the other. In fact you can be the one who doesn’t excel at either. You could be the one that can appreciate both and creates the conditions for both sides to flourish. Jason Jennings The Reinventors

DeHaan went to England as a nanny after high school and then got hired by the US Army because of her language skills. She married a man from Indiana and they moved to Indianapolis. While her marriage did not last, DeHaan was again very fortunate. “I met Jon DeHaan and fell in love with him and later his great idea for a new business,” she said. Jon was intrigued by a new idea that allowed motor home owners the ability to exchange the pads they purchased in RV parks with owners from other parks all over America. For example, if one bought a space for their Winnebago near Yosemite they could trade it for a week near Disneyland. Jon DeHaan reasoned that if someone created a similar reciprocal system for vacation condominium owners it would help the developers and builders of recreational resorts sell more units by adding a unique selling feature: the ability to trade weeks with other owners in other desirable location. For example, you might own a vacation condominium in the Finger Lakes region of New York and exchange a week or two to stay at another owner’s condominium near Disneyland. No one would have to buy another place or rent hotel rooms in all the destinations they wanted to visit. They could buy one unit and an annual low cost membership in RCI — Resort Condominium International — and exchange weeks with other owners in other locations. In order to make it work the DeHaan’s would first have to convince resort owners that an exchange would make them more successful. At the same time the systems would have to fairly value each condominium realizing that times of the year were not all equal, unit sizes and amenities came in every possible configuration, and while customers desired kept changing too. It would take an equation worthy or a rocket scientist to tame all the variables. “How do you cope with all that and put it into a tight functioning system that everyone could trust and find satisfactory,” DeHaan asked. She was steadfast in her core belief that “you have to be honest and your word must be honored.” The answer was to marry the detail oriented with the creative, the outgoing marketer with the inside analyst, the visionary with the process engineer, Jon and Christel. Proving again that great companies are seldom born of unlimited resources, the frugal, first headquarters of RCI was an antique roll top desk in the DeHaan’s Indianapolis living room. Christel did it all through the US Postal Service, keeping track on index cards organized in The Linkage Thought Leader Series

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shoeboxes and obsessed with creating a tight, well functioning system that was fair, accurate, consistent, and predictable. Trust was paramount and any action that would cause distrust was her foe. “At the end of our first year we had about twenty resorts that had signed up,” says the extraordinarily well spoken Christel DeHaan, “I spent all my time on building and systematizing the exchange structure.” But the sheer complexity of a fair exchange was greater than the best minds and manual systems. Thank God it was 1977 and the desktop computer had recently been invented. DeHaan recreated her manual system on a Wang system and Wang software and then reinvented it again for the IBM platform. It’s important to remember that in those days “user friendly” was still decades away. Converting manual systems to software code took tedious hours of painstaking effort — reading technical manuals, writing equations, inputting data, and debugging all the spreadsheets. But Christel (and by extension the business) was fortunate. She had a great head on her shoulders. Not only could she work her way through the unfriendly software to craft a solution, not only could she persist until her process was fair, accurate, consistent, and trustworthy, not only could she take apart the system every two years and reengineer it for bigger, better, faster computers in a business that began growing geometrically from its first year revenues of $14,000, but still she could show respect and deep admiration for the entrepreneurial, marketing, emotional, chaotic, innovative other side of the business. This is rare. Every office and cubicle in business runs with blinders on, seeing their specialty as very important and underappreciated while under-appreciating all the others. Sales gets snarky about accounting, accountants roll their eyes at flamboyant sales types, front-line managers and HR can’t stand each other, and the boss…well he’s the reason The Office is a world-wide hit for Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. “I so admired Jon DeHaan for the yeoman’s work of landing the developers and handling the outside. I think that’s what set us apart (from the copycats who followed RCI’s lead). Other companies push the visionary and business development goals while the operating side doesn’t deliver what’s been promised. I believe commitments must be honored and the consumer must be protected. So we invested in both sides and created our systems with the same tenacity and the same sense of urgency, with the same spirit of innovation — as we sold ourselves.” Shortly after forming RCI which allowed condominium owners to exchange weeks with other owners the DeHaan’s were the beneficiaries of some very good luck if you agree that the best definition of “luck” is when preparedness meets opportunity. Timeshares were beginning to really take off and the DeHaan’s realized that they represented a potential goldmine for the company. A standard timeshare allows a customer to buy as little as one week or as many weeks as they wish in a resort property. The weeks belong to the buyer forever. Buying a timeshare locks in and prepays someone’s vacation perpetually but the downside is that with a traditional timeshare you have to go back to the same destination every year.


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The DeHaan’s quickly determined that if a timeshare developer was able to offer an annual membership in RCI, which would allow people who purchased timeshare weeks to exchange them for weeks at other properties, there’d be no stopping them and that it would provide a valuable sales tool for the developers of timeshare properties. Christel DeHaan, motivated by twin guiding principles of the need for organization and to never disappoint a customer, realized that the company’s customer service experience had to be

“It simply took off,” says Christel DeHaan. “In the first decade we doubled our revenues every year. Good economy or bad, recession or recovery, real estate market up or down it didn’t matter; it just kept growing and never dropped.” Jon and Christel DeHaan eventually divorced in a courtroom struggle that lasted 18 months in the late 1980’s during which Jon claimed he was entitled to eighty percent of the company and Christel only twenty percent. The judge eventually ruled that the couple should split the company 50/50 and because Christel was willing to pay more for his half than he for hers, she quickly arranged to borrow 80 million dollars and bought his half in 1989. By then her love of learning and a mind that was incessantly systematizing everything was ready for the challenge. The business continued to grow fast and just nine short years after buying Jon out, Christel and her team made the company worth ten times what she paid to Jon.

fair, transparent, reliable, and completely systematized. Still, like in a good marriage she maintained a heartfelt appreciation for the other side (the entrepreneurial, constantly seeking change) of the business. Appreciation is another of the soft skills that consistently drive the hard results we all want to achieve. Jason Jennings The Reinventors

“Over the years I’d had many offers to sell the company,” she says, “people were knocking on the door all the time wanting to buy the company but I just wasn’t ready yet. I wanted to climb even steeper mountains and help lead the company to new destinations.” In 1996 Christel got a call from Henry Silverman, a Wall Street entrepreneur, best known for cobbling together the various travel reservation services, hotels, car rental companies, and real estate brokerage companies that eventually became Cendant Corporation and DeHaan said to herself, “maybe it’s time to listen.” “My mother always told me that it was better to leave a party five minutes early rather than one minute too late and I realized it was time to leave. The company had lots of oxygen left,” she says, “and there were all kinds of dynamics with everything else Cendant owned that would allow everyone to prosper,” so Christel DeHaan took the money and set out on her next global reinvention effort. From index cards stored in a shoebox on a kitchen table RCI now serves over four million clients, 4,400 resorts, and is in over a hundred countries. RCI somewhat lost its way and stumbled a bit after Christel DeHaan left. Instead of balancing the two opposing ideas of constant change and systems for everything, the new managers were mesmerized by the idea that the latest fad was going to deliver a big score, a new pot of gold to chase, the brilliant idea that was going to be the next killer app and, of course, that didn’t happen. Enter new CEO Geoff Ballotti. Ballotti, who at age 27 was already a top gun at the Bank of New England (with a half a billion dollar loan portfolio) and then became a six sigma executive at Starwood Resorts, had been a fan of RCI for over a decade. “It was one of the most innovative business ideas I’d ever seen,” Ballotti says, “but it was the culture that attracted me the most. DeHaan had created a culture that was always continually innovating and everyone was always looking at the horizon, where it wasn’t just about this year but the next year and the year after that. I loved that her whole team had embraced her style of being disciplined, organized, methodical, and systematic. I was psyched to join the team.” Ballotti also saw the error of the previous manager’s ways.


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“We saw that as the credit markets dried up and real estate got tight, developers would stop building at the double digit pace that had fueled our growth. We had to figure out a way to come up with big innovations, embrace change, and invent new services and products that would differentiate us from our competition and would let us grow faster than our industry. We were waiting for big ideas instead of using a system to innovate.” Ballotti also took a hard look inside the organization. “The team was exceptional,” Ballotti explained, “but millions of our members were frustrated with us. Our search wasn’t great, our website wasn’t great, and our ‘sold out’ messages were infuriating clients.” Ballotti went to work like a black belt; disciplined, persistent, aggressive, focused, and systematic. First he launched a radical reinvention of RCI’s currency that allowed the company to do far more than facilitate trading weeks. “Gordon (RCI President Gordon Gurnick) had this idea and it was brilliant,” says Ballotti. “He created a system where every day, every timeshare at every resort owned by every member is valued in increments called RCI points.” “It was one of the most complex mind-benders, requiring an army of so-smart-they’re-scary PhD’s, using revenue management formulas and supercomputers. Their algorithms ran every night valuing each piece of the puzzle. It was like ‘creating the New York Stock Exchange for vacation time’ which allowed people with Starwood, Hilton, Hyatt, Marriot, or Disney Club memberships to enjoy 4,000 additional resorts all over the world, plus hotel stays, airplane tickets, golf outings, five star dinners, everything. This innovation attracted new developers, made our members even happier, and delivered more revenues business and earnings.” Next Ballotti turned the search function upside down. “Members might want Waikiki Beach at Christmas but own Branson, Missouri during the rainiest time of the year. Well there’s no way they’d have the currency for that exchange. When they’d try to do an exchange the system would come back saying ‘sold out’ or ‘unavailable.’ People would get mad because the salesman sold them the idea that the exchange would put them in Paris or Disney World. And the member would be mad at us instead of the salesperson who’d promised the moon for peanuts.” “So we asked, ‘What if all our members deposited the time they own and rather than tell us where and when they’d like to go, we gave them a list of all the places they could go? We’ve got millions of options at any one time so we could give them thousands of choices and a chance to drill down to their heart’s desire. So instead of getting a ‘sold out’ message, they get choices like Maine or Cape Cod.” This reinvention improved member satisfaction and increased online transactions 500%. Now, as Ballotti has the next big reinvention underway, he’s still guided by the head and heart of Christel DeHaan. “To wake up every day with one objective in mind: to make our four million members and the owners of our 4,400 affiliated resorts happy they’ve chosen us to make their dreams come true.”


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The story of RCI holds many valuable lessons about why systematizing everything that can be systematized is a key piece of reinvention. These lessons are a starting point for you and your organization as you think about how you can use systemization to reinvent and remain relevant. Review the lessons from RCI below in preparation for the activity:

Every business must be constantly and quickly changing, growing, and moving forward or they’ll eventually find themselves in a downward spiral that will ultimately result in their demise. Stalled

•

Appreciate all sides of the business.

•

Systems allow for successful scaling.

•

Systems allow you to solve problems and take advantage of new opportunities faster.

•

Good systems generate great customer service experiences.

True reinventors take the time and effort to look at their organizations from every angle to see where they can systematize. It’s critical to put into a place an action plan that systemizes and scales all your core business practices. By doing this, you will ensure your organization will do the best job of embracing constant change, growth, and innovation Using the lessons from RCI and Jason Jennings’ Systematizing Everything Action Plan in the table below, create an action plan that will get you started on systematizing the functions and processes of your organization.

companies historically lose almost 75% of their market value and often see their CEO and senior team kicked to the curb. Their replacements get

Systematizing Everything Action Plan

Action #1: As you work with a small team composed of leadership, management, and workers, make a list of every function in your business from answering the telephone to making sales calls to the final delivery of a product or service that can be systematized. A correct list will include almost every task within the department or company. The following people are critical to have on my “systematize everything” team: •

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against them. Not even

•

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one out of two stalled

•

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companies find its way

•

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back to a healthy (4% or

•

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saddled with long odds

more) top line growth. Jason Jennings The Reinventors

Every function in my business must be examined and systematized, but the top three tasks my team will examine are: •

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•

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•

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Action #2: Work with your team to prioritize the order for systematizing each task. As you plan for this action with your team, be prepared to answer the following questions to make the most of the prioritizing session: •

Which functions are most critical to systematize?

•

What resources are necessary to systematize the function? Are they available immediately?

•

What is the time expectation for systematizing the function? Can it be accomplished in a reasonable amount of time?

Use the space below to capture some thoughts and ideas triggered by the above questions.

______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________


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The remaining steps of the Systematizing Everything Action Plan require the input and effort of the entire team. As you return to your organization, use the remaining steps of the action plan in the table below to complete your action plan. Systematizing Everything Action Plan

Action #3: With input from the team, the people performing the task or function, and your customers, determine the best practice for each function or task and begin the process of systemization. The end goal of systemization is to deliver what’s been promised in the most efficient, productive, and cost effective manner.

______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ Action #4: Put in place mechanisms designed to constantly improve what’s been systematized through the input of all partners involved.

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Action #5: Don’t underestimate the power of appreciation and constantly strive to acknowledge people for their contributions; the payoff will be immense.

______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ Action #6: Systematize each leader’s first hour of the day. The first hour should be a purposeful, walk-around-talk-around to/with each core result center with an agenda to review workload, possible problems, and speed bumps of the day.

______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ Action #7: Consciously work to develop an appreciation for the other parts of the business. This one bucks human nature and must become intentional.

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Question Preparation for Q&A Session Jason Jennings will devote the last portion of the broadcast to answer your questions. Complete the Question Sheet found on the next to last page of this participant guide and: If you are participating in the live presentation of this program, you can submit your questions directly from your webcast viewing window. You can also submit your questions through e-mail using the instructions on the Question Sheet. Your program coordinator may collect your questions and send them in collectively. Email to: [email protected] If you are participating in a recorded presentation of this program, share your questions with your program coordinator to be used during your post-broadcast activities. Twitter Linkage will now be accepting questions through Twitter. To follow the conversation online or to submit your questions/comments during a live broadcast using Twitter, please use the hash tag #LinkageInc.


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GET SET

PRESENTATION


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During the Presentation •

Participate! Listen actively — question concepts and “try them on” to see how they may apply to you and your situation.

•

Take notes on the pages that follow. Capture key thoughts and ideas.

•

Be bold! Identify one thing to do and vow to take action.


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Notes Please use the following pages to take notes. The speaker has declined to include his slides in these participant materials, but will be making the slide deck available after the broadcast for all participants on his website. _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ Two of the primary responsibilities of a

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business leader are to keep a highly motivated team of people together and make certain the team stays ahead of a growing base of customers who have constantly changing

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wants and needs.

_______________________________________________________________ Jason Jennings The Reinventors

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More Notes _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ Instead of accepting personal responsibility and addressing the root cause — an unwillingness to

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embrace radical change — for their lack of growth, many business leaders spend their time finding excuses for their poor performance and their questionable explanations get retold so frequently by so many that they receive de facto validation. Jason Jennings The Reinventors

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One of the best examples of a company that has created a culture of growth, embraced change and reinvention, and where everyone is aware of the culture is Apollo Tyres of India. According to the

More Notes _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________

company’s young Managing Director Neeraj Kanwar, “Once you’ve made a commitment to constant growth and you’ve gotten everyone on board and you’ve

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agreed to the principles that will guide your journey the things that need to be reinvented

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become obvious…reinvention isn’t something you do once or twice or now and then. It’s something you do on a daily basis and leading a business that embraces constant radical change is a lot more fun than listening to a phonograph with a stuck needle.” Jason Jennings The Reinventors

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More Notes _______________________________________________________________ In extensive research for their book, Egonomics: What Makes Ego Our Greatest Assest (Or Our Most Expensive Liability), authors David Marcum and Steven Smith discovered that fifty-three percent of businesspeople estimate that ego costs their companies between six and fifteen percent of their annual

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revenue while an additional twenty-one percent say the total is closer to twenty percent.

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Ego inevitably leads to arrogance and arrogance leads to

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blindness and an inability to recognize good opportunities for growth.

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Jason Jennings The Reinventors

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Colin Powell, the former US Secretary of State put added perspective on the frequently uttered phrase, “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it,” when he No matter what their added that those words collective commitments are, “a slogan for the are called, the concepts complacent, the are similar in the arrogant, or the scared.” breakthrough teams we

More Notes _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________

studied. These basic How can such a ground rules hold sway commonsense maxim in hundreds of teams be so insidious and around the world. We disastrous? It’s have culled the best and because of an have come to refer to immutable law of them as the Rule of 3: business; by the time wow, no surprises, and you figure out it’s broke, cheer. it’s been broke for a

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very long Jason time. Jennings

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The Orange Revolution “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix

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it” is a death knell for

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any organization hoping to change. The net effect of not challenging or changing anything until it is obviously broken is that a culture is created where workers and managers

_______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________

become firefighters instead of proactive

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change agents. Jason Jennings The Reinventors


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GO

ON-THE-JOB APPLICATION


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Post-Broadcast Activities Activity 1: Self-Reflection and Discussion 1. What in Jason Jennings’ presentation struck a special chord with you? Why? _______________________________________________________________ Businesses that do the

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best job of constant radical change and reinvention simply don’t get blinded by fairytales of the biggest bets generating the biggest paydays. They realize that successful strategy

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is discovered by doing, and that doing has to be learned from taking lots of small bets. Making lots of small bets sends a signal that something is always happening and there’s a good reason to show up for work. Jason Jennings The Reinventors

_______________________________________________________________ 2. Reflect on what you have learned about reinvention. As you consider the reinvention of your organization, how will you use the guiding principles and cutting edge tactics shared by Jason Jennings to accomplish continual growth? What steps can you take to embrace constant change and become a serial reinventor? _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ Continued on the next page.


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The fact is that most people come to work with a spark of creativity and desire to help the cause. But along the way, that spark gets extinguished. The solution is to adopt a “no skunking” principle among managers and senior personnel.

Jason Jennings

3. One of the things that can stop reinvention in its tracks is hesitation. As Jason Jennings explains, “Until people are able to figure out how to deal with the natural tendency to hesitate and drag their feet — because of fear of the unknown — no meaningful reinvention will occur.” How can you counteract your natural tendency to hesitate? What specific ways can you make the move(s) necessary to start the reinvention process? _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________

Skunking is defined as spraying negativity on the creative spark in a coworker or subordinate. It can be an impatient look that says, “That’s a dumb question,” or a

_______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ 4. What are YOUR leadership lessons? How will you become a reinventor who inspires and challenges your team and/or organization to follow your lead and embrace a mindset that promotes reinvention? _______________________________________________________________

conversation killing shot like, “We tried that and it didn’t work.” “Nothing will extinguish the flames of innovation more rapidly than a punitive [negative]

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response to ideas or

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actions.” Jason Jennings The Reinventors

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Activity 2: Pick a Destination “Constantly communicate the destination of the business to everyone in a way that is clear, concise, and easily understood.” “Once you’ve selected a destination it’s time to begin making lots of small bets to figure out which one(s) will get you there.” – Jason Jennings Business 101 teaches that businesses must have a vision, a goal, or as Jason Jennings calls it, a destination. All of today’s successful reinventors have a destination which lets employees, stakeholders, and customers know what the organization does and where it is going. Sounds simple, yet most organizations rely on a corporate vision — and an archaic vision statement — that is vague and has no clear purpose. Jason Jennings points out that “not having a clear destination means never knowing the steps you need to take to get to where you want to go, never knowing if you’ve arrived, or if you’ve achieved what you set out to accomplish.” Unfortunately, many of today’s organizations have a vision that is convoluted, and at closer inspection, really means nothing. Before you can become a reinventor, you need a vision that is clear, concise, and easily understood. It must be a vision that everyone can rally around, a destination that everyone wants to arrive at. At closer inspection, it is really why your people are working on what they are working on. It’s the common goal that everyone is trying to achieve. When it is clear and concise — and most importantly fully embraced and accepted — you are ripe for reinvention. The excerpt that follows is from The Reinventors and is reprinted with permission from the author, Jason Jennings.

The mere mention of death is sufficient to remind most of us of our own mortality and most business authors would think twice before writing about the funeral business. But, there’s a story of constant radical reinvention that’s taking place in that industry in the southern US that’s worthy of setting aside our fears about dying and learning some important lessons about picking a destination and the benefit of constant radical reinvention from a funeral home (of all things) in St. Petersburg, Florida. Each year more than 2.5 million people die in the US. Aside from the minute percentage whose bodies are willed to medical science, all others pass through a funeral home. The business of dying is hugely profitable. More than 11 billion dollars are spent each year with funeral homes and some estimates argue that if all the peripheral monies like flowers, food, music, and car processions are factored in that it’s probably closer to 15-20 billion. Unfortunately, one of the absolute laws of free markets is that there’s no such thing as a goose that keeps laying golden eggs forever…[eventually] someone figures out a way to steal your goose (by doing things better, faster, and cheaper than you). The real game changer confronting the [funeral home] industry are the vast numbers of customers choosing cremation over traditional services. Considering that a customer can buy a cremation for as little as $295 as opposed to the $6,000 to $10,000 average cost of a traditional funeral threatens to potentially take away more than 95% of the typical funeral’s yearly revenues. The Linkage Thought Leader Series

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Bill McQueen, owner and CEO of Anderson-McQueen Funeral Homes, is an attorney and CPA, who took over the family business in 1987 when his father died unexpectedly. “You have to understand,” says McQueen, “this is a business that was and is ripe for reinvention. When I took over everything was done the way it had always been done because if it was good enough for Dad and Granddad it was supposed to be good enough for me. The real reason things had to change,” he says, “was because we had to be able to offer the quality of life that talented people wanted and that we wanted to provide them.” “Every business,” McQueen says, “needs to turn what they do into a sufficiently memorable experience that people would be willing to pay admission to be a part of it. The experience must appeal to all our senses and be participatory. You don’t need a Mission Statement for a business,” he asserts, as much as you need a theme that so resounds with customers that if they were interviewed after leaving your place of business they’d give you a broad smile and a thumbs up.” Jason Jennings The Reinventors

Besides making changes designed to attract and keep the right people, the big challenge facing McQueen is the issue of the already growing number of cremations affecting the company’s revenues. The breakthrough for McQueen and his brother and sister came from studying cremations in other societies around the world and realizing that in many societies cremation isn’t just about dealing with a person’s remains, but about ceremony as well. That observation led them to the opening of a cremation Tribute Center on one of their campuses. McQueen says that first move provided him and the staff with something tangible to get their heads around and talk about. The success of their first Tribute Center led McQueen to the realization that they weren’t really in the business of handling bodies but instead in the business of educating and helping people understand the value of ceremony, ritual, and the telling of one’s life story. “We weren’t going to be in a business that was about caskets, hearses, and cemeteries anymore but instead about helping people transition through loss and come out the other side in a state of peace.” Once they’d selected a destination the radical reinvention became easy. The first thing to go at Anderson-McQueen was the dark, heavily draped and somber motif. “When you come onto our campuses,” says McQueen, “the first thing you’ll notice is there are no drapes; just lots of windows and natural light. We want our environments to be uplifting. We got rid of the carpeting and furniture and replaced it with hardwood floors, Martha Stewart furniture, and baby grand pianos.” The next step in nonstop radical reinvention at Anderson-McQueen was the creation of legacy cafes. “Our cafes look just like a Starbucks,” says McQueen, “and we brew complimentary Starbucks coffee and Otis Spunkmeyer cookies in order to create a familiar environment that’s warm, relaxing and a place where people want to stay and share conversation and family memories.” In rapid succession the company adopted social networking, a presence on Facebook, and the latest video technology and began producing slide shows and videos for the grieving families. “We create legacy films that tell a person’s life story, has an opening like a great movie, are professionally narrated and include family members sharing their memories. When you walk into out buildings,” says McQueen, “all the lights are on, there are large monitors running videos everywhere in stark contrast to most funeral homes where everything is turned off when it isn’t being used.” One of the biggest and most radical reinventions occurred in the area of the people the company hired. “When I took over we were totally a male only organization,” says McQueen, adding, “It’s almost as though there was an unwritten rule that in order to be a funeral director you had to be a The Linkage Thought Leader Series

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man.” Today, the organization’s Funeral Directors are 80% female and most under the age of thirty. “I think that women are naturally better caregivers than men and overall do a better job of nurturing clients.” McQueen says there was a lot of pushback from staff who didn’t agree with the destination and constant reinvention he and his family had in mind for Anderson-McQueen. “Look,” he says, “there were a lot of older, long term employees who didn’t like it and they aren’t here anymore. Either they opted out or we opted them out.” How have constant radical change and reinvention affected top line revenues and profits at McQueen Anderson? According to McQueen, “as recently as seven years ago when we really embarked on reinvention efforts we were handling about 900 funerals each year. Today, he says, “we’re doing more than 2,000 and in the process grown our market share from 9% to more than 18%.” The proper selection of a destination is vital. A business owner or manger can rely on the following in order to help him or her select a destination for the enterprise: 1. Data and analytics. Know everything there is to know about your customers, their past shopping or purchasing habits and employ technology to forecast likely future purchases and constantly experiment with steps that can be taken to build their loyalty and increase their intent to repurchase. 2. Careful listening to customers. Develop an institutionalized program of listening to your customers and potential customers. All workers should be taught the skills needed to be more interested than interesting. Employees at every level should be engaged in the listening process. 3. Big bright ideas that are far ahead of what the customer thinks they need or want. Encourage and reward big bright ideas. The reward should be proportionate to the economic value the idea generates.


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Reinvention is only possible when you pick a destination and fully commit to reach it. Think of your organization’s vision. How well does it describe the destination of the business; what you do, where you are going, and why the organization is headed that way? Can everyone in the organization recite the business destination? Are they committed to reaching it? Remember Mr. Jennings’ three vital destination planners as you appraise how clear your vision is to your people, your stakeholders, and your customers. Use these destination planners and the questions below to evaluate the destination of your organization. If you are not satisfied with where you are at, it’s time to reassess your vision and set a course for a destination that supports constant, radical change and reinvention. For each of the three destination planners, describe in detail how you will implement each one as you pick the destination. Use the questions posed to get you started.

The main job of the leader is to be a destination expert, to let everybody know where we’re going and make certain that everyone understands and is willing to embrace constant change in

Data and analytics: True reinventors rely on data and analytics to pick their next destination. Data, facts, and proof can lead the way to terrific and profitable business decisions. What data and analytical systems do you currently have in place to ensure your destination will keep you ahead of the competition? What changes can you implement to guarantee you have all the data, facts, and proof necessary to reinvent your business? _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________

order to get there.


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Careful listening to customers: Today’s most successful organizations excel at listening to their customers in order to proactively meet their wants and needs. At Honda, executives are expected to connect with customers and see the actual product being used by the customer. Executives at fashion retailer H&M work in stores and visit clubs and events to interact with customers. What is your process for listening to the customer? What steps can you take to include your customer in your reinvention process? _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ Big, bright ideas that are far ahead of what the customer thinks they need or want: The challenge for reinventors is to figure out — before your customers and competitors — what products and/or services they need or want. The most effective way to do this is to see your business and your products and/or services through the client’s eyes. As you think of your current product/service, what would your customer change, add, or eliminate? What can you do to reinvent what you offer that be far ahead of what they think they want or need? _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________


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Activity 3: Who Stays, Who Leads, Who Goes “All of a sudden, all the experts are saying that people are your most important resource and I like to point out to them that they’re dead wrong. When I tell them that people aren’t a company’s most important resource they go, ‘you can’t say that, that’s heresy!’ I let them argue with me for a little while and then I tell them what I really think. People aren’t your most important resource — the right people are your only resource.” – Dan DiMicco, CEO of Nucor

Decisions about who goes and who stays, who leads and who follows will determine any enterprise’s ability to embrace constant change, growth, and reinvention. Making the right decisions about people is a huge challenge. Jason Jennings The Reinventors

By definition, reinvention requires that organizations constantly reimagine, rethink, and reinvent everything they do and how they do it in order to remain relevant. An organization’s ability to reinvent rests largely on a workforce made up of extremely talented people with strong skills and leadership characteristics who are willing to single-mindedly commit to the destination of the organization. Who are these people? But perhaps most importantly, are they in your organization? As Jason Jennings shares, “Buildings and plants don’t matter because anyone can build them, processes and efficiencies don’t count because they can be copied, and anything that any company makes, sells, or produces will eventually be done better, faster, and cheaper by someone else.” In the past decade there’s been a change of epic proportions as most business owners and executives have come to understand that they don’t stand a snowball’s chance on a hot day of ever embracing change and growth without the right people who are focused and motivated every day at every level.” The concept of the right people being your most important asset is not breaking news and certainly not a source of debate. Businesses spend millions on finding and hiring the right people for the right positions in their organizations, yet the challenge to hire smarter is still high on most leader’s list of critical responsibilities. It’s no longer a luxury to have the right people in place — people with initiative and drive, people who you can count on for ideas for constant change and improvement — it’s a necessity. But the struggle continues and it could be because making the tough decisions about people is, well, tough. It is not easy to decide who gets hired, who stays, and who gets let go. At some level it is a gamble — after all until someone has been on-board for a significant amount of time, how can you determine if they fit into your culture and become a key, productive cog in your workforce wheel? What if you had a laundry list of traits to look for as you become an organization dedicated to reinvention? Well, it’s your lucky day!


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Jason Jennings’ research for The Reinventors found that companies committed to constant radical change and growth recruit and retain workers who exhibit the following six traits: •

Basic smarts and eager lifelong learners. It’s important that a potential hire has sufficient intelligence to play a role in an organization that’s going to call for nonstop learning. But basic smarts are just half of the necessary mindset. The second half is the ability to learn new things, something that a surprising number of people find incredibly difficult. Leaders can promote their workers eagerness to learn — a key skill for reinventors — by encouraging and supporting creativity, even at the risk of mistakes or failure.

•

A good work ethic. A good work ethic means taking the initiative to get the job done, delivering as agreed without excuses or blame, the willingness to make personal sacrifices for the good of the organization, and being loyal to the company and the people with whom you work.

•

They truly like your company and want to climb some mountains. While having a destination is critical to reinvention, it may play a less integral part when you consider who should be a part of your organization. Your people should be as committed to the journey as they are to the destination. Reinventors know it is all about the journey, overcoming doubts, bravely going into the unknown, accepting your constraints without letting them overcome your goals, and recognizing the accomplishments along the way.

•

Optimistic. Companies that are committed to nonstop change and growth have no place for people who aren’t able to imagine and see the possibility of better results tomorrow despite the problems and challenges of the moment. You need to look for people who are optimistic by nature instead of pessimistic.

•

Think like the owner. People will think — and act — like an owner when they understand that what they do creates economic value. When they embrace the idea that they will be constantly measured and evaluated on how they create value, and that they stand to share in the profits, thinking and acting like an owner becomes very easy.

•

It’s a place they belong. One leader’s misfit is another’s creative driver. For some people, fitting in is hard to do and some organizations don’t appreciate the special talents they bring to the table. Microsoft’s VP of Asia put it best when he said, “You have to understand we’re basically a company of misfits and people who didn’t fit in anywhere else…that’s what makes the company so great. We were all lucky to find the place we belonged.”

It’s clear that the right people for your organization must possess these six critical traits. Finding the right people is not an impossible task, but it is challenging and requires a firm commitment to getting it right (hiring) and keeping it right (retaining). Reinventors make the tough decisions that equate to a workforce filled with people who embrace lifelong learning, possess a determined work ethic, who are looking for a journey — not just a destination, who are optimistic, think like owners, and act like they belong in your company. “A workforce made up of people who share these traits will always be prepared for constant change and growth.” Reinventors won’t settle for less.


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What are YOU doing to ensure you have the right people in place to support your culture of reinvention? Is your workforce made up of people who demonstrate what Jason Jennings has identified as the six traits essential for constant radical change and growth?

If you have workers who don’t possess the [six] qualities it’s time to do yourself a favor, do some serious housekeeping, begin getting rid of them and replace them with workers who have a strong work ethic, who want to climb some mountains with you, who are optimistic, think

It’s time to make the tough decisions and a good place to start is with the hiring process. Mr. Jennings is clear on the importance of who you put in place — from front-line employees to senior leadership. “Hire hard and manage easy, meaning put more time, money, and thinking into the selection process and you’ll save money and make your management life easier” and create an environment ripe to support reinvention. Working in small groups, create a new and innovative recruitment program designed to attract and retain the right people: workers who demonstrate Jason Jennings’ six essential traits. As you brainstorm, consider the following questions: •

What are some of the processes you would put in place to determine that your potential candidates have these traits?

•

What would your interview process look like?

•

What aren’t you doing now that would be critical to implement as you move toward reinvention?

Use the space below and on the following page to capture your thoughts, ideas, and recruitment program highlights. Be prepared to share with the large group. _______________________________________________________________

like owners, and act like they belong in your company. A workforce made up of people who share these traits will always be prepared for constant change and growth.

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_______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ After twenty years of systematic observation

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I’ve decided the most common mistake is for one to get stuck “on the plains of hesitation.” The plains of hesitation are a metaphorical place where the laid best plans and good intentions expire (on the plains of hesitation bleach the bones of countless millions who on the dawn of victory paused to rest, and while resting died). The bones of bookseller Borders Group Inc. are currently bleaching there alongside others

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like Wang Laboratories, Arthur Anderson, Polaroid, and innumerable others — all who knew enough to make the right moves but hesitated to do it. Jason Jennings The Reinventors

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Activity 4: WTGBRFSTM? “Do more with less” is a common mantra in the majority of today’s organizations. From the most successful to those on the brink of failure, budgets are tight and leaders must constantly ask themselves WTGBRFSTM (what’s the good business reason for spending this money)? As you strive to reimagine, rethink, and reinvent, you may think it is close to impossible without the availability of a limitless budget. As Jason Jennings discovered in his research for The Reinventors, nothing could be farther from the truth. Some of today’s brightest examples of reinvention reject the urge to throw money at their challenges and have discovered that all you need to accomplish great things is “a problem and not nearly enough money.” The excerpt that follows is from The Reinventors and is reprinted with permission from the author, Jason Jennings.

When companies haphazardly throw money at what they perceive their problems, challenges, and opportunities to be, the

In 1975 a small startup airline was bleeding cash profusely. The company’s first President and his VP of Operations realized their new company was between a rock and a hard place. “Do we accept defeat or do we find a way cut our expenses by 25 percent overnight,” they wondered. At the time the airline had four aircrafts flying around 300 flights a week. If they cut flights or destinations it would mean disappointing their new customers and if they ordered layoffs it would mean breaking promises to new employees. So the pair searched for another solution.

real answer(s) that could solve the real problem(s) or allow them to embrace radical change and take advantage of the real opportunities are seldom found. Jason Jennings The Reinventors

“If we could find a way to make three planes accomplish the work of four we could sell off one plane and still keep our commitments to both our customers and employees,” President Lamar Muse suggested. At the time each of the airline’s flights averaged 50 minutes in the air and 25 minutes at the gate unloading, cleaning, refueling, and loading again. When Muse crunched the numbers he found that, “if we could cut our turnaround time by sixty percent (from twenty-five to ten minutes) we could keep our current schedule and even add nine more flights.” The President asked his VP, “Do you think our teams could make these quick turns?” “We can and we will,” Ops VP Bill Franklin replied. Over the next two days the Op’s team reinvented the ground operations while the chief dispatcher and Muse rearranged all the schedules. All the supervisors and employees pitched in, coming up with a plan to create greater cooperation and coordination from all twelve different job functions that have a critical impact on airplane turn times. It’s something other airlines had thought about but decided was impossible; getting everyone from flight crew to baggage handlers doing whatever was necessary to meet a ten-minute quick turn goal. By the end of the weekend crew routings and assignments were rescheduled and everyone was on the same page. After several days of successful ten-minute turns of three aircraft, everyone was able to breathe a sigh of relief. They sold the fourth airplane and stopped the bleeding. The airline’s cash crisis was averted and profits soared from the increased productivity. That’s the real story about how a small, upstart airline reinvented themselves, got a new lease on life and prepared themselves to fly high and become America’s largest airline (in terms of domestic passengers). You now know them as Southwest Airlines.


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Since those early days Southwest has reached the top of everyone’s list of inspiring and innovative organizations. They are global icons of high quality, superior customer satisfaction, unparalleled productivity, and total teamwork in an industry infamous for finger-pointing management and “it’s not my job” employee attitudes that leaves scores of customers dissatisfied and disloyal. Without a doubt founder Herb Kelleher’s passion for building a people-focused culture was crucial to the airline’s success, but imagine for a moment that back in 1975 instead of facing a cash crisis, that Southwest had deep pockets filled with venture capital. They may have never discovered their innovative solution to quickly turning airplanes based on coordination and cooperation among every job function from pilot to gate personnel. They could easily be a footnote in aviation history like People Express, SkyBus and scores of others. “Not enough” money was certainly the catalyst, the mother of Southwest Airline’s first reinvention. Frugal reinvention is possible and it begins when organizations make asking the question “What’s the good business reason for spending this money” a part of their culture. In his book The Reinventors, Mr. Jennings shares some guiding principles for frugal reinvention: •

Make everything simple. Don’t let anyone make your business proposition too complicated. If it’s already complicated, keep simplifying until you can explain it to a child without their eyes glazing over.

•

Edit every “to-do” list. Leaders at “above average” companies manage an average of 21 different objectives as opposed to the 372 different objectives managed by “average” companies. Editing your list of objectives won’t be easy, but the payoff is huge. Time and money get tightly focused on the crucial activities that drive the firm’s competitive advantage and everyone has a clearer idea what to do and no problem deciding who’s accountable.

•

Celebrate frugal reinventions. Make yours a culture of problem solving by regularly acknowledging, celebrating, and generously rewarding those who advance your business by identifying the complex problems that are driving your customers crazy that you can solve.


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For this activity, think about a recent opportunity, problem, or challenge that required your organization to make a radical change. Was there a cost associated with this change? As you think of the cost, remember it can be tangible (increased spending, additional resources/people, etc.) or intangible (loss of morale, loss of staff, etc.). Imagine you could go back in time and reimagine, rethink, and reinvent the change. How will you implement Mr. Jennings’ guiding principles and make your change a frugal reinvention? Use the space below to capture some ideas around each of the three guiding principles. As you work through each principle, remember to ask yourself, “What’s the good business reason for spending this money?” Entrepreneurs…have great qualities. They are highly creative,

Make everything simple. _______________________________________________________________

blessed with awesome gut instincts, are charismatic leaders, and possess the uncanny ability to attract scores of talented people and great customer relationships. That’s because the very best don’t do what they do just for money. They

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have a dream.


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Edit every “to-do” list. _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ “Jugaad” started as the Hindi word for an ultracheap vehicle first fashioned by rural Punjabi carpenters. Having nothing but empty pockets and a problem to solve, the local craftsman took an old diesel irrigation pump and attached it to a wooden frame, added

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wheels, and the discarded steering system from a broken down jeep. The called this jalopy “Jugaad,”

Celebrate frugal reinventions. _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________

roughly translated as “using few resources and a lot of determination to find an innovative solution to a problem.” Jason Jennings The Reinventors

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Final Activity: Action Planning

The beauty of having everyone on the same page is that it doesn’t matter who is on the team — aggressive people, collaborators, creative types, bean counters, senior execs, front-line workers, old

Now is the time to get moving. Everything in today’s broadcast supports the need to take action and start implementing the lessons shared. Picture yourself six months from now. You’re reflecting with a sense of pride and satisfaction on how you have implemented the strategies and principles shared by Mr. Jennings. You’ve fully embraced the premise that organizations need to constantly reinvent their business in order to stay relevant and ahead of the competition. What have you done to foster the mindset of a reinventor throughout your organization? How will your leadership inspire a sense of excitement around the continued pursuit of reinvention? _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________

hands, or new hires — the most diverse groups overcome any obstacles and maintain their momentum. Over and over the leaders interviewed have candidly shared the obstacles faced in their reinvention. Each time they successfully cleared those hurdles the back-story included incredible morale that made it easy for everybody to maintain their momentum.

Back to the present. With the above goal set for six months from now, what intermediary steps do you need to take to reach that goal? •

What do you need to do within three months?

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What do you need to do by the end of this month?

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What do you need to do by the end of this week?

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What do you need to do tomorrow?

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Materials Written by Jason Jennings Books Jennings, Jason and Haughton, Laurence. It’s Not the Big That Eat the Small…It’s the Fast That Eat the Slow. HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2000 Jennings, Jason. Less Is More: How Great Companies Use Productivity As a Competitive Tool in Business. Portfolio, 2002. Jennings, Jason. Think Big, Act Small: How America’s Best Performing Companies Keep the Start-Up Spirit Alive. Portfolio, 2005. Jennings, Jason. Hit the Ground Running: A Manual for New Leaders. Portfolio, 2009. Website You may also benefit from visiting the following website associated with Jason Jennings: •

jason-jennings.com


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FORMS


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Reinvention

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Question Sheet Use this form to write your discussion question for Jason Jennings. Please write legibly. Name (optional): _______________________________________________________________ Organization: _______________________________________________________________ Location: _______________________________________________________________ Your question (25 words or fewer): _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________________ Email to: [email protected] Twitter: use the hash tag #LinkageInc


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Reinvention

Jason Jennings

Broadcast Evaluation Form We invite your feedback on this presentation: Reinvention. Please return this completed form to your site coordinator or fax it to 781-402-5556. NAME________________________________ TITLE ___________________________________________ ORGANIZATION ________________________________________________________________________ Please indicate functional area (only check one):  Finance  Human Resources/Organizational Development  Marketing

 R&D

 Manufacturing/Operations

 Sales  Other (specify) ___________________________________________

How many people do you have reporting to you (include all levels)? Number: _______________________ Please indicate your job level (only check one):  President or Officer  Vice President  Director  Manager/Supervisor  Individual Contributor –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––1) Please indicate a rating for each of the statements below by checking the appropriate box. Strongly Disagree

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Somewhat Agree

Strongly Agree

The length of the presentation was ideal.

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As a result of participating in this program, I will be more effective in my role.

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The participant materials were useful.

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The Q&A session was valuable.

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2) Please give a general overall comment about the program: ____________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ 3) How can we improve these broadcasts? ___________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________ 4) May we use these comments for promotional purposes (including name and org.)? Y N 5) On a scale of 1-10 (10 = Outstanding), how would you rate this session?

Rating: _________________

6) From the Linkage Thought Leader Series lineup, which speakers are you most excited to see? (Please rate your top three, “1” being most excited.) ___ Adrian Gostick

___ Charlene Li

___ Jason Jennings

___ Atul Gawande

___ Steven Johnson

___ Bill Conaty

___ Paul Sullivan

___ David Rock

7) For future lineups, which speakers would you be most interested in seeing? (Please rate your top five, “1” being most interested.) ___ Ram Charan

___ Indra Nooyi

___ Stephen Shapiro

___ Robert Knowling

___ Tim Sanders

___ Robert Gibbs

___ Linda Hill

___ Chip Conley

___ Doug Conant

Other:________________

8) Which types of speakers are you most interested in seeing? (Please rate your top two.) ___ Former C-Level Executives

___ Thought Leaders/Management Gurus

___ Political Leaders

___ Athletic Leaders/Coaches

___ Military Leaders

___ Other _________________________________________


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