John Caddell's blog

Strategy + Business, the business magazine from Booz & Co, has put out a free e-book entitled “Capturing the People Advantage: Thought Leaders on Human Capital,” which features interviews with innovative HR executives on their practices for improving workforce performance.

The interview with Royal Dutch/Shell VP for learning, Garmt Louw, is particularly enlightening. Louw talks about how Shell’s successes sharing learning with partners create a competitive advantage for landing new deals.

Interesting learning approaches seem to come frequently out of the Netherlands, far out of proportion to that country’s size. Any idea why that might be so, Paul Iske or Jochum Stienstra?

learning, innovation, business development

Malcolm Gladwell has been getting some unsurprising backlash in the wake of his latest book, “Outliers.” But I find myself thinking about David Leonhardt’s interesting opinion in the New York Times Book Review, where “Outliers” is looked upon not as a business self-help book, but as a political essay–in other words, according to Leonhardt, Gladwell is focusing on how environment and context matter in success and excellence, and is making a pitch to society to create more situations where “outliers” can grow.

Gladwell takes up this theme again in this recent New Yorker article. Comparing the process to find great teachers (who, he says, improve learning of their students by 50% over the average) to that of locating great NFL quarterbacks, he points out the fallacies inherent in a system of university certification when teacher excellence cannot be shown other than by demonstrated competence in the position. Gladwell argues against tenure and for, instead, seeding lots of teachers into the system, winnowing them to the very best, and paying them accordingly.

Which connected with Sunday’s NYT magazine article (”The Two-Tier Teacher Contract“) about a similar process being tried by the new chancellor of the Washington, DC, school system.

So, perhaps “Outliers” has done its job. It’s got us talking and writing about something important.

I love David Foster Wallace’s writing, and am sad that he is gone. The New York Times Magazine yesterday contained an article about Wallace’s philosophy that was at once a heartfelt tribute and a window into the soul of a fascinating person. This was my favorite passage from the article:

Wallace was especially concerned that certain theoretical paradigms — the cerebral aestheticism of modernism, the clever trickery of postmodernism — too casually dispense with what he once called “the very old traditional human verities that have to do with spirituality and emotion and community.”

It didn’t surprise me to learn that Wallace, in an undergraduate paper, provided a mathematical proof to refute a chilling fatalistic argument that had gained notoriety at the time. His systematic deconstruction and illumination of the phenomenon that is talk radio (”Host” from his last book, “Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays“) is uncompromising and utterly engaging.

I wonder what he would be writing about these days.

philosophy, human nature

It’s a week for lists and music, so the other night when I put on Neil Finn’s “7 Worlds Collide” live album it inspired thoughts about why Johnny Marr is a genius.

On the Finn album Marr plays his own “Down on the Corner,” and then Neil does his best Morrissey impersonation on The Smiths’ “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out.”

One of the fun things about bands breaking up is that you hear the creative folks individually, and you can tease out what each member contributed. Usually your impressions of the group overvalue the contributions of the lead singer. Once I heard Morrissey’s first solo album (not a bad album, mind you), it became crystal-clear what Marr had contributed to the Smiths.

In general, Marr is the great counterexample to the “singer as major contributor” mindset. He never sings (until his turn on the Johnny Marr & the Healers album). But he is sideman extraordinaire. He is without a doubt the greatest rhythm guitar player ever, and a great composer. Listen to these five songs he contributed to and let me know if you agree:

1. The Smiths, “Girlfriend in a Coma”

2. Electronic, “Get the Message”

3. Bryan Ferry, “The Right Stuff”

4. Johnny Marr & the Healers, “Down on the Corner”

5. Modest Mouse, “Dashboard”

And for those who haven’t had enough Johnny Marr by the end of this post, here is a transcript of a lecture he gave recently at the University of Salford. (It does deal with innovation, so this is not just a lazy Friday post!)

best of, music, randomness

Helping Companies Increase Revenues a Zillion Different Ways

1. Customer attraction/loyalty programs
   - improving telesales effectiveness
   - the “values” proposition
   - uncovering opportunities & threats in your customer service
2. Commercializing innovations
   - packaging & pricing
   - market & sales strategies
3. New venture implementation & launch
   - Project/program management
   - Business development
   - Client management
   - Temporary executive assistance
4. Partnerships & alliances
   - strategy
   - negotiations
   - implementations

Sample engagements:

• Devised/documented a reseller program for a startup enterprise software company. Also helped them with pricing & structuring of their offering to cover the entire market, from SMBs to large enterprises.
• Performed an analysis of telesales effectiveness for an insurance company–unearthing key insights of why prospects bought & didn’t buy, identified which best practices were effective and how they were used/not used; used this data to suggest experiments and programs to increase close rates.
• Helped a UK Information Technology company start up operations in the US and implement their first US customer. Established key partnerships and assisted in account management. Provided sales support and temporary operational management. Led effort to hire permanent operations manager.
• Helped an online services company gain a deeper understanding of why key customers buy & continue to use their services. Established, through research and collective sensemaking, underlying customer values, and identified opportunities and threats within their customer relationships. Worked with client to identify possible repositioning strategy to better align marketing messages with key customer values.

email: inquiry@caddellinsightgroup.com
telephone: +1 717 576 5026
twitter: @jmcaddell
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jmcaddell

OK, OK, off topic, I know. But there was some great music out there, and with me working out of a home office most of the time, the iPod shuffle is an important part of my work environment. With no further ado, then, here are the best albums I heard this past year.

1. Nomo, “Ghost Rock.” Bleepy analog synthesizers, plinky homemade instruments, killer brass section. Funky as all get out. This album sounded like nothing else I heard last year. It has remained in my car CD stack since summertime.

NOMO Live session from Svetlana legetic on Vimeo.

2. The Helio Sequence, “Keep Your Eyes Ahead.” I never figured out why I rarely heard any of these songs on the radio. They rock. Plus, there’s a great countrified tune and a swampy-sounding song thrown in for good measure.

3. The Gaslight Anthem, “The ‘59 Sound.” Driving power-pop, great lyrics, allusions to Tom Petty, Miles Davis and (of course) Springsteen, this Jersey band will be around for a long time.

Old White Lincoln

4. The Cat Empire, “So Many Nights.” Quieter than their prior effort, less of a party album, more serious. But still a great listen from top to bottom. This Australian band effortlessly combines genres and keeps the foot tapping.

No Longer There

5. Fleet Foxes, “Fleet Foxes.” A hint of Crosby, Stills & Nash; a taste of The Beach Boys. On one track they out-My-Morning-Jacket MMJ themselves.

White Winter Hymnal from Grandchildren on Vimeo.

Honorable mentions: REM’s “Accelerate” (the best thing they’ve done since “New Adventures in Hi-Fi“), My Morning Jacket’s “Evil Urges” (wanted to like it better than the last two great ones, but simply didn’t), “Secret Machines” (ditto), “Vampire Weekend” (a few really catchy pop songs, and some filler. Will look forward to their next one), “Grand Archives” (ditto).

Tags:
best of, music, 2008

The Shop Talk Podcast – an occasional program featuring conversations with inspiring figures in marketing and business.

Mini-Podcast with Robert Wiesheu – using in-country agents for selling (2:21)

#19 – Roberto Verganti on “Design-Driven Innovation” (39:41)

#18 – Todd Mittleman, update on Honda’s green vehicles (24:37)

#17 – Sydney Finkelstein on “Think Again” (19:34)

#16 – Robert Wiesheu on Selling in Different Cultures (15:51)

#15 – Scilla Andreen on the Independent Film Industry (30:02)

Mini-Podcast – (From The Mistake Bank: A meeting in Boston goes awry (5:00)

#13 – Jill Konrath on selling to big companies (20:27)

Mini-Podcast – Jill Konrath Mistake Story, “Mr. Prospect”

Mini-Podcast – John Quelch on the dim view some people take of marketing

Mini-Podcast – Ross Kramer’s mistake story

#12 – Ross Kramer on common mistakes in email marketing (21:38)

Mini-Podcast – Fran Ten on Music Filesharing

#11 – (Not) Raising Prices – a mistake

#10 – John Quelch on Marketing and Democracy (22:09)

#9 – Fran Ten of West Indian Girl on today’s music business (35:31)

#8 – Ford Harding Mistake Stories (Five Good Things and Five Bad
and Joe’s Lesson)

#7 – Ford Harding on Rain-making (17:04)

#6 – Todd Mittleman part 2 – the first mass-market fuel cell car (15:13)

#5 – Todd Mittleman of Honda on Green Vehicles (17:20)

#4 – Tony Ulwick on Gathering User Input for Innovation (13:16)
#3 – Traci Fenton on Democracy in the Workplace (16:48)

#2 – Barbara McFadden on “Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement” (17:21)

#1 – Gordon Adams on “Time Kills Deals”

If you don’t know what Christmas gift to get for that hard-to-buy-for businessperson, here’s your answer. It was a great year for business books. There were five or more additional books that I’d recommend to others. Communicating via story was a theme this year (or perhaps that’s what I was looking for!), as you’ll see.

1. “Working With Stories,” Cynthia Kurtz (free e-book). I read this book three times, cover to cover. A clearly-written, highly practical book that illuminates a new tool for companies to attack intractable problems–gathering, looking at, thinking about, and acting on the stories that customers, stakeholders and employees hold in their minds. (Photo shows my rather beat-up copy!)

2. “A Sense of Urgency,” John Kotter. A timely book, full of stories, about the imperative for companies to develop a mindset to “move, and win, now” in order to effect lasting change.

3. “The Opposable Mind: How Successful Leaders Win Through Integrative Thinking,” Roger Martin. Describing great innovators’ ability to simultaneously hold and reconcile two conflicting ideas. Notable, among other things, for highlighting success stories outside the US–in Canada, to be precise.

4. “The Knack: How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up,” Norm Brodsky & Bo Burlingham. A great book discussing how successful entrepreneurs share many common attributes–the including the ability to listen to advice and yet, when necessary, to ignore it. Full (full!) of stories.

5. “Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies,” Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff. A prescient guide for companies to understand and utilize social media to reach customers and gain insight into markets.

Related Posts:
Best books of first-half 2008
Best books of 2007

Tags:
reading list, best of, business, 2008