Untitled Masterpiece
I devour popular business books like they’re my kids’ Halloween candy. And with the same results.
[Tumbleweed rolls by]
Now that I’ve firmly established my intellectual authority, here are some reflections on how to write a masterpiece on business culture.
Our Three Appetizers
First, I think we can all agree that celebrating successful companies and inspirational leaders is the writing equivalent of filling your entire back yard with rakes, destined to crack you in the face with the sting of survivorship bias and fundamental attribution error.
I’m looking at you Good to Great.
Second-- and I probably should have started with this-- we can all agree that popular business books are pulp fiction, more for entertainment than advice. No need for a highlighter when you’re reading in bed, unless it’s to google the executives’ names with “where are they now” nostalgia.
“She got the CEO gig? Good on her!”
“He’s in… [single. finger. typing.]... prison! Called it!”
Third, we can agree that we’ll want lots and lots of pragmatic, illustrative, colorful examples. But note that when we’re picking our business cases, we should promise the world-- promise future generations…our children really-- that we won’t use the same three stale examples that literally every other business writer in history has used:
1. Blockbuster laughing at Netflix.
2. Blackberry laughing at the iPhone.
3. Everybody laughing at Steve Jobs.
The honorable mention here is the 1986 space shuttle disaster. Enough with the o-rings already. NASA moved on two decades ago. Business writers should too.
Oh and Kodak. Poor Kodak. If we have to read one more account of their having built the first digital camera... while pregnant... with twins... in a horse drawn wagon on the Oregon Trail.... two centuries before Instagram....
We get it.
Exec Summary: let’s agree that the world needs fewer “success” stories (as entertaining as they are... once aged) and more failbooks (which are unavoidably and deliriously hilarious)-- Wally-Lamb-level dumpster-fire business cases that elevate what are essentially self-help books to the rank of classic literature.
Multiple Meat Courses
Ideally, any masterpiece on business culture would start with a framework: here’s how you set the table for culture-- because no one ever uses dining metaphors.
Here’s how you serve the tiniest appetizer ever (the cultural POC).
Here’s how to ladle the mystery soup (the cultural pilot).
Then the main course (cultural adoption at scale): filet mignon wrapped in vegan bacon (just to send a mixed signal).
And then [BAM!] dessert! No joke there as we don't joke about dessert. Ever.
Dessert
The book’s piece de resistance: for each course of the meal, we list some companies with people waaaay smarter than us that messed up their meals. Royally. With a capital R. Like the Queen Elizabeth of fails.
For example:
Did you know that Jack Welch once failed to smoke pork belly long enough and GE’s entire Aviation Division got trichinosis?
Me neither. But I’d buy that book!
Did you know that Steve Case used the wrong mushrooms for his gazpacho, causing the fever dream we call the AOL-Time-Warner deal?
Pre-ordering that one.
Did you know that Jeff Bezos called every cut of beef that was shipped free to his house a Prime cut? [Now, *that* is a quality Dad joke.]
I could go on forever.
Did you know that Jamie Dimon bought Bear Stearns?
Here -- just take my money.
Sample Text: A Riverside View While Dining
Employees need clarity-- or so the thinking goes. They need simplicity. A compelling vision. A north star.
Who would disagree with that?
So... we use the cultural language of “[value] first”… as in “we put our people first” (an emphasis on fairness, diversity, and respect for the individual) or “innovation first” (stressing experimentation, thoughtful risk-taking and agility/failing-fast) or “data first” (grounded in metrics and quantifiability, KPIs and OKRs). The most common one during my lifetime has been client first, a focus on exceptional service, value for money and empathy-driven design thinking.
And recently-- to differentiate their companies-- some leaders have turned their cultural volume up to 11 by replacing the word “first” with “obsessed.” Which makes for great pitch decks but gets me a little queasy. Because business comms should never flirt with mental health words. (But that’s another book entirely.)
[By the way, if it were up to me, we’d all go meta: a Culture First culture. An homage to Bob Loblaw… for the four of us who loved Arrested Development.]
*The* question to ask is: why are there so many [value] first cultures to pick from-- each with its own books, communities and consultancies? The answer: because each one is compelling in its own right.
But read any of that content closely and you quickly realize that whatever that first value is, the next ten are all a very close second. No one is “client, client, client... and our people are a distant second.”
So why write about it?
Life is less about what's first and more about finding balance-- between competing, equally-valid, equally-compelling priorities. Navigating that complexity and ambiguity-- the C and the A in VUCA-- is hard.
The reason we love the language of [value] first is simple: it’s a heuristic -- an approach to problem solving that gives today’s employees-- many of whom still struggle with VUCA-- a practical method to get past never-ending talk-a-thons.
Remember: a heuristic like this never guarantees the best outcome; but-- it does increase the probability of action. It also helps avoid the constant escalation of useless noise up the management chain-- the kind that frames you as passive and your team as being stuck in analysis-paralysis.
[Value] first changes that narrative to “Figure it out! Ask yourself: what would a Client First or a Data First person do? Do *that* instead of having endless meetings; instead of using escalation as your path to action.”
In other words, calling one of your equally-compelling-but-competing values the first is just a mental shortcut to get to as-right-an-answer-as-possible as-quicky-as-possible.
And that’s good for business.
As for the employees of tomorrow-- I’m sure that they’ll appreciate clarity as much as we do today but hopefully they won’t need it. Same with simplicity, vision, a north star. Because the employees of tomorrow-- like many of us today-- will be adept at swimming daily in the River VUCA.
The After-Dinner Mint
The outline at the beginning of this piece-- along with the bibliography that follows as inspiration-- should get us started and keep us going for a while.
If we start to lose momentum, we should just remember the words of Kautilya-- the author credited with writing The Science of Wealth (circa 280 BC) (also called "Arthashastra" in Sanskrit)-- a treatise on economics as a specific element of statecraft... and the first business book ever.
He wrote “Revel in your mistakes, for they are yours and no one else’s. The nobles might laugh-- the gods might laugh-- but remember that they also laughed at Steve Jobs.”
--
Bibliography: The Antacids (or Blogs to Mug for Fun and Profit)
1. The only piece I’ve written that actually makes me laugh: Inspired
2. Some light bathroom reading on office culture:
Our Post-Pandemic Return to the Office of the Future
3. Slightly more serious-- although... let’s be honest-- some of us are not built for serious:
And the only piece that (still) makes me tear up: No One Dies Alone
4. Some thoughts on engineering
Plus a poorly titled Five Part Series on Innovation
5. Some reflections on coaching that make me sound like Mr. Rogers (not a bad thing):
Which Managers to Pack for the Journey
Don’t be a tourist. Live there.
6. Two interviews, thematically linked:
7. One podcast from American Banker on Return to Work.
8. A poster to inspire the entrepreneur in you.
9. A piece too cheesy to admit that I actually wrote it:
Lessons from a Life (Long Ago) in Stand-Up Comedy
10. And of course, an untitled masterpiece.
LinkedIn Tease:
Despite my best efforts, the readership of this blog has extended past my teams in #India, #Poland, #Israel and the #US... so a quick primer for newer folks might be helpful.
Three bits you need to know:
* While my writing is mostly a meditative exercise for myself, I try to publish one “substantive” article per month. I’ve been writing for about a year so altogether I think I have about 3 substantive pieces... proving that I’m good at both planning and math.
* If you knew me in real life, you’d know that I write exactly the way I speak. So when you see words in quotes (i.e., “substantive”), it would be wise to imagine me miming air quotes like some spoiled 12 year old. I also use a terribly immature, mocking tone, and not just for quotes. That’s actually how I landed in senior management. #MentorAlways
* I also publish short posts-- usually mid-month, generally amateurish, and many times cringe-worthy in retrospect. Think of them as filler in between the longer pieces-- which I think we can all agree are instant classics. [Glances fondly into distance, fist on chin]
Today’s piece started as mid-month filler but the writing dragged on and on.
And like all great writers, I chose not to edit.
Note: I ended this piece with a bibliography of sorts-- links to all my “substantive” pieces over the last year-- which, oddly enough, made sense given the subject I was covering and the need for a primer. #LuckyIGuess
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