Slack (Tom DeMarco)

- Your Highlight on page 62 | Location 950-953 | Added on Tuesday, November 12, 2019 10:51:02 AM

Only by not thinking about this at all can you persist in the comfortable illusion that overtime extracted from employees will have no effect on turnover. When companies conduct exit interviews of their departing employees, overtime is a frequently cited cause of the departure. When people feel used, when the fragile balance of their lives is upset by increasing pressure on their families, they’d be crazy not to think of moving on.

- Your Highlight on page 65 | Location 987-988 | Added on Tuesday, November 12, 2019 4:51:27 PM

When managers are overworked, they’re doing something other than management; the more they allow themselves to be overworked, the less real management gets done.

- Your Highlight on page 66 | Location 1004-1005 | Added on Tuesday, November 12, 2019 6:56:09 PM

This leads to an unfortunate management dynamic: Reported productivity can apparently be inflated by goading workers into working overtime; managers who extract more overtime from their workers look like more effective managers.

- Your Highlight on page 66 | Location 1004-1008 | Added on Tuesday, November 12, 2019 6:56:25 PM

This leads to an unfortunate management dynamic: Reported productivity can apparently be inflated by goading workers into working overtime; managers who extract more overtime from their workers look like more effective managers. I say this is an apparent inflation of productivity, because the worker is almost certainly less productive during all those extra hours. So we have an approach to productivity enhancement that leads directly to productivity reduction. This may not be immediately evident because the work produced by knowledge workers is not easy to measure. But suppose for a moment that it were …

- Your Highlight on page 67 | Location 1018-1019 | Added on Tuesday, November 12, 2019 7:00:37 PM

For most knowledge work, we have no objective way to measure an individual worker’s meaningful output during a day.

- Your Highlight on page 67 | Location 1020-1024 | Added on Tuesday, November 12, 2019 7:01:34 PM

In the absence of work measurement, a common technique is to assume that real work is a direct linear function of time present. This leads to a truly pathological definition of productivity: It’s not uncommon for organizations to make an explicit calculation of this “productivity” and hold it up in front of managers as a performance indicator.

- Your Highlight on page 68 | Location 1031-1035 | Added on Tuesday, November 12, 2019 7:04:13 PM

When people put in lots of overtime over an extended period of time, their net effectiveness is not just decreased during the extra hours; they begin to limp during the main body of the workday as well, due to built-up fatigue and reduced motivation. That can lead to less total work accomplished in a twelve-hour day than would have been accomplished in an eight-hour day. I made that point in Chapter 9. My additional point here is that the perverse definition of productivity based on the fiction of ignored overtime hours can only increase the likelihood of lowered performance.

- Your Highlight on page 72 | Location 1095-1096 | Added on Wednesday, November 13, 2019 9:17:56 AM

How many of your high-priced managers and engineers and developers and designers are busy being their own clerks as you read these words? How much of your own time is spent that way? I hope you’re asking yourself, “What’s wrong with this picture?”

- Your Highlight on page 73 | Location 1108-1111 | Added on Wednesday, November 13, 2019 9:21:55 AM

In corporations, First Law abuse is a direct result of trying to manage without benefit of talent. Talented managers are largely immune to this stuff; they’re all sense organ, constantly attuned to the effect their leadership is having on their people, constantly adjusting and refining their focus for maximum effect. If something isn’t working, they stop doing it and try something else. Managers without such talent find themselves relying on formulas and “principles” of management

- Your Highlight on page 73 | Location 1108-1113 | Added on Wednesday, November 13, 2019 9:22:16 AM

In corporations, First Law abuse is a direct result of trying to manage without benefit of talent. Talented managers are largely immune to this stuff; they’re all sense organ, constantly attuned to the effect their leadership is having on their people, constantly adjusting and refining their focus for maximum effect. If something isn’t working, they stop doing it and try something else. Managers without such talent find themselves relying on formulas and “principles” of management. They reason, “This thing I’m trying to do should work; the fact that it isn’t working probably suggests that I’m doing it halfheartedly.” And so they do more of whatever they’ve been doing.

- Your Highlight on page 73 | Location 1118-1121 | Added on Wednesday, November 13, 2019 10:32:17 AM

Looking back over the worst failures of my own and my colleagues’ management careers, I’m struck by the fact that there is one innocent-seeming sin common to them all. It’s something we’ve all done at one time or another. You’ve done it yourself. Second Law of Bad Management Put yourself in as your own utility infielder.

- Your Highlight on page 74 | Location 1124-1126 | Added on Wednesday, November 13, 2019 10:33:03 AM

gone. All the rest of your people are busy as hell; you don’t want to further burden them with another task, particularly not one that upper management found to be of so little importance that they “trimmed ” the person who was doing it. Yet that “whatever” still has to be done. Oh well, you add it to your own burden and do it yourself. On the org chart we now see:

- Your Highlight on page 74 | Location 1124-1126 | Added on Wednesday, November 13, 2019 10:33:07 AM

All the rest of your people are busy as hell; you don’t want to further burden them with another task, particularly not one that upper management found to be of so little importance that they “trimmed ” the person who was doing it. Yet that “whatever” still has to be done. Oh well, you add it to your own burden and do it yourself. On the org chart we now see:

- Your Highlight on page 74 | Location 1130-1131 | Added on Wednesday, November 13, 2019 10:33:35 AM

Assigning yourself to an unfilled position in your domain means that you unassign yourself (at least partially) from the task of managing that domain.

- Your Highlight on page 75 | Location 1139-1147 | Added on Wednesday, November 13, 2019 10:42:03 AM

The little jokes wouldn’t be funny enough to tell if there weren’t at least a germ of truth behind them. The germ of truth is this: Managers don’t perform any of the services or make any of the products that our customers pay for. It’s the people who report to them that do this work. So each time a manager intervenes in a worker’s day, it distracts that worker temporarily from revenue-producing activities. The distraction is probably useful in the long run (because, for example, it effects some new way of doing the work), but in the short run it distracts. In the short term it’s just a bother. The lore may be everywhere, but that doesn’t mean you have to buy into it yourself. To do your job correctly and well, you need to foster an attitude that is quite the opposite. You need to understand that management (the management that you provide) is utterly essential. It is. Good management is the lifeblood of the healthy corporate body. Getting rid of it to save cost is like losing weight by giving blood.

- Your Highlight on page 76 | Location 1154-1155 | Added on Wednesday, November 13, 2019 10:46:54 AM

The challenges of management are daunting: They lead us into the scarily intangible world of people relations, motivation, societal formation, conflict, and conflict resolution.

- Your Highlight on page 77 | Location 1166-1169 | Added on Wednesday, November 13, 2019 10:50:34 AM

We all grapple with Second Law temptations at some time in our management careers. To rise above them, we need to face up to an important truth: Management is hard, and not because there is so much work to do (an overworked manager is almost certainly doing work he/she shouldn’t be doing). Management is hard because the skills are inherently difficult to master. Your mastery of them will affect your organization more than anything going on under you. Running away from the challenge doesn’t help.

- Your Highlight on page 78 | Location 1193-1198 | Added on Wednesday, November 13, 2019 10:54:31 AM

Among the characteristics of the Culture of Fear organization are these: 1. It is not safe to say certain things (e.g., “I have serious doubts that this quota can be met”). And truth is no excuse for saying them. 2. In fact, being right in your doubts proves that you must be the reason that the fondest wishes of those above you did not come true. 3. Goals are set so aggressively that there is virtually no chance of achieving them.

- Your Highlight on page 78 | Location 1193-1202 | Added on Wednesday, November 13, 2019 10:54:49 AM

Among the characteristics of the Culture of Fear organization are these: 1. It is not safe to say certain things (e.g., “I have serious doubts that this quota can be met”). And truth is no excuse for saying them. 2. In fact, being right in your doubts proves that you must be the reason that the fondest wishes of those above you did not come true. 3. Goals are set so aggressively that there is virtually no chance of achieving them. 4. Power is allowed to trump common sense. 5. Anyone can be abused and abased for a failure to knuckle under. 6. The people who are fired are, on average, more competent than the people who aren’t. 7. The surviving managers are a particularly angry lot. Everyone is terrified of crossing them.

- Your Highlight on page 81 | Location 1240-1242 | Added on Thursday, November 14, 2019 11:17:08 AM

It’s tempting to say that overstressed organizations are always understaffed; that that’s where all the stress comes from in the first place. It’s tempting, but it isn’t entirely so. There are also situations where overstaffing is the problem, where overstaffing is both the cause of the stress and part of our response to it.

- Your Highlight on page 86 | Location 1310-1312 | Added on Friday, November 15, 2019 11:46:57 PM

Healthy companies know that they have to allow people to fail without assessing blame. They have to do that or else no one will take on anything that’s not a sure bet. Healthy companies know that, but Culture of Fear companies do not. In a Culture of Fear company, failure must be rewarded with punishment.

- Your Highlight on page 87 | Location 1325-1328 | Added on Friday, November 15, 2019 11:59:46 PM

The chemistry of Culture of Fear organizations seems to call for a fixed minimum amount of blame. In some companies, this minimum may even be written into policy. Consider, for example, G.E.’s policy that all managers be evaluated every year and the bottom 10 percent be fired. Prospering in such an environment can take two forms: Either you have to do relatively well, or some of your peers have to do relatively badly.

- Your Highlight on page 87 | Location 1325-1329 | Added on Saturday, November 16, 2019 12:00:09 AM

The chemistry of Culture of Fear organizations seems to call for a fixed minimum amount of blame. In some companies, this minimum may even be written into policy. Consider, for example, G.E.’s policy that all managers be evaluated every year and the bottom 10 percent be fired. Prospering in such an environment can take two forms: Either you have to do relatively well, or some of your peers have to do relatively badly. Any failure by managers beside you on the org chart thus has the effect of reducing pressure on you. In such an environment, there is a natural inclination to view with suspicion anything that would constitute a big win for any other manager.

- Your Highlight on page 88 | Location 1343-1349 | Added on Saturday, November 16, 2019 12:38:12 AM

You may understand why Buyer would enter into such a contract, but what about Seller? In order to understand Seller’s motives, we need to look well below the corporate level to the subordinate organization that will perform the work. Under the gun to show profit and growth (perhaps in a weakening market), this organization is encouraged to best its competition by offering lower price or earlier delivery. Someone within the organization is responsible for getting the work done, for actually building the Somethingorother on time and on budget. He/she tries to say the unpalatable truth that the time and money allocated for the work are plain insufficient. In a Culture of Fear organization, such doubts are stifled or shouted down. “Don’t tell me it can’t be done, goddammit. It will be done. If you can’t do it, I’ll get

- Your Highlight on page 88 | Location 1343-1349 | Added on Saturday, November 16, 2019 12:38:22 AM

You may understand why Buyer would enter into such a contract, but what about Seller? In order to understand Seller’s motives, we need to look well below the corporate level to the subordinate organization that will perform the work. Under the gun to show profit and growth (perhaps in a weakening market), this organization is encouraged to best its competition by offering lower price or earlier delivery. Someone within the organization is responsible for getting the work done, for actually building the Somethingorother on time and on budget. He/she tries to say the unpalatable truth that the time and money allocated for the work are plain insufficient. In a Culture of Fear organization, such doubts are stifled or shouted down. “Don’t tell me it can’t be done, goddammit. It will be done. If you can’t do it, I’ll get somebody competent in here who can.”

- Your Highlight on page 88 | Location 1343-1349 | Added on Saturday, November 16, 2019 12:38:26 AM

You may understand why Buyer would enter into such a contract, but what about Seller? In order to understand Seller’s motives, we need to look well below the corporate level to the subordinate organization that will perform the work. Under the gun to show profit and growth (perhaps in a weakening market), this organization is encouraged to best its competition by offering lower price or earlier delivery. Someone within the organization is responsible for getting the work done, for actually building the Somethingorother on time and on budget. He/she tries to say the unpalatable truth that the time and money allocated for the work are plain insufficient. In a Culture of Fear organization, such doubts are stifled or shouted down. “Don’t tell me it can’t be done, goddammit. It will be done. If you can’t do it, I’ll get somebody competent in here who can.”

- Your Highlight on page 91 | Location 1381-1385 | Added on Monday, November 18, 2019 1:01:01 AM

A good contract requires slack. If a vendor commits to × by a given date, you act to your own peril to accept that commitment unless you can see that the vendor has left itself sufficient slack. If there are two competing vendors with different prices and the difference is explained by the fact that the cheaper one has cut all slack, then you court the disaster of litigation by choosing the low bidder. Similarly, if you are bidder, you need to know there is sufficient slack in the contract terms to cover reasonably expected risks.

- Your Highlight on page 93 | Location 1414-1421 | Added on Monday, November 18, 2019 8:59:47 AM

The standards we depend on to give us choice in our lives are all product standards. Almost without exception, they are used to constrain the interface characteristic of a product, not the way that product is built. So Fuji is obliged to respect the ISO standard for size and shape of its film containers, for film width and light sensitivity, sprocket hole positions, edge smoothness, and a thousand other characteristics of the product. If they don’t, they can’t sell that film as 35mm, ASA400, or whatever. The standards do not tell Fuji how to make the film, only how the product has to present itself after it’s made. The particular recipe for the film—the series of steps it passes through on the production line—is left entirely to the maker. If Fuji decides to spray-paint the markings onto the canister before the film is inserted, while Kodak prints its markings onto its canister after insertion, that’s their business. The standard doesn’t touch on the how-tos of film making;

- Your Highlight on page 93 | Location 1414-1421 | Added on Monday, November 18, 2019 8:59:53 AM

The standards we depend on to give us choice in our lives are all product standards. Almost without exception, they are used to constrain the interface characteristic of a product, not the way that product is built. So Fuji is obliged to respect the ISO standard for size and shape of its film containers, for film width and light sensitivity, sprocket hole positions, edge smoothness, and a thousand other characteristics of the product. If they don’t, they can’t sell that film as 35mm, ASA400, or whatever. The standards do not tell Fuji how to make the film, only how the product has to present itself after it’s made. The particular recipe for the film—the series of steps it passes through on the production line—is left entirely to the maker. If Fuji decides to spray-paint the markings onto the canister before the film is inserted, while Kodak prints its markings onto its canister after insertion, that’s their business. The standard doesn’t touch on the how-tos of film making; only on the character of the end product.

- Your Highlight on page 96 | Location 1470-1471 | Added on Monday, November 18, 2019 2:17:19 PM

When the new automation is in place, there is less total work to be done by the human worker, but what work is left is harder. That is the paradox of automation: It

- Your Highlight on page 96 | Location 1470-1471 | Added on Monday, November 18, 2019 2:17:24 PM

When the new automation is in place, there is less total work to be done by the human worker, but what work is left is harder. That is the paradox of automation:

- Your Highlight on page 96 | Location 1470-1473 | Added on Monday, November 18, 2019 2:17:47 PM

When the new automation is in place, there is less total work to be done by the human worker, but what work is left is harder. That is the paradox of automation: It makes the work harder, not easier. After all, it was the easy stuff that got absorbed into the machine, so what’s left is, almost by definition, fuzzier, less mechanical, and more complex. Whatever standard is now introduced to govern the work will dictate (often in elaborate detail) how the few remaining

- Your Highlight on page 96 | Location 1470-1473 | Added on Monday, November 18, 2019 2:17:50 PM

When the new automation is in place, there is less total work to be done by the human worker, but what work is left is harder. That is the paradox of automation: It makes the work harder, not easier. After all, it was the easy stuff that got absorbed into the machine, so what’s left is, almost by definition, fuzzier, less mechanical, and more complex. Whatever standard is now introduced to govern the work will dictate (often in elaborate detail) how the few remaining mechanical aspects are to be performed.

- Your Highlight on page 97 | Location 1484-1486 | Added on Sunday, November 24, 2019 2:40:33 PM

Setting a standard for the process establishes ownership. If I am your boss and I impose no standard on you, I’ve effectively let you own the process. But wait a minute. Who’s boss here? I am. So don’t I need to own the process? I certainly need to be in control, don’t I?

- Your Highlight on page 98 | Location 1488-1489 | Added on Sunday, November 24, 2019 2:45:16 PM

Ownership of the standard should be in the hands of those who do the work. That is an ideal, one that you will probably never be able to attain completely, particularly in big companies. But it is always worth striving toward.

- Your Highlight on page 98 | Location 1492-1492 | Added on Sunday, November 24, 2019 2:47:27 PM

Empowerment always implies transfer of control to the person empowered and out of the hands of the manager.

- Your Highlight on page 98 | Location 1493-1501 | Added on Sunday, November 24, 2019 8:49:15 PM

The power you’ve granted is the power to err. If that person messes up, you take the consequences. Looked at from the opposite perspective, it is this capacity to injure the person above you that makes empowerment work. It leaves the empowered person thinking, “Oh my God, if I fail at this, my boss is going to look like a chump for trusting me.” There is little else in the work experience with so much capacity to motivate. Process standardization from on high is disempowerment. It is a direct result of fearful management, allergic to failure. It tries to avoid all chance of failure by having key decisions made by a guru class (those who set the standards) and carried out mechanically by the regular folk. As defense against failure, standard process is a kind of armor. The more worried you are about failure, the heavier the armor you put on. But armor always has a side effect of reduced mobility. The overarmored organization has lost the ability to move and move quickly. When this happens, standard process is the cause of lost mobility. It is, however, not the root cause. The root cause is fear.

- Your Highlight on page 103 | Location 1567-1570 | Added on Monday, November 25, 2019 10:16:11 AM

Real quality has little to do with defects, but our so-called quality programs have everything to do with defects. The corporate Quality Program, at its heart, is a mechanism for driving out defects. When it succeeds, it will help you produce products that are defect-free, or nearly so. But are those products good for anything? Maybe yes and maybe no, but either way, it’s not due to the Quality Program.

- Your Highlight on page 103 | Location 1578-1579 | Added on Monday, November 25, 2019 9:53:21 PM

Defect prevention and removal efforts may add sufficient overhead to the overall process so that it is too slow and unresponsive to market needs.

- Your Highlight on page 105 | Location 1601-1603 | Added on Monday, November 25, 2019 10:00:33 PM

This relationship suggests a daring strategy for quality improvement: reduce quantity. Whatever it is that your organization makes, make less of it. Make less and choose much more carefully what it is that you make.

- Your Highlight on page 108 | Location 1643-1647 | Added on Monday, November 25, 2019 10:10:31 PM

THE OVERSTRESSED ORGANIZATION is so busy making itself efficient that it has clean forgotten how to be effective. The two are not at all the same. You’re efficient when you do something with minimum waste. And you’re effective when you’re doing the right something. It’s possible to be one without the other: efficient but not effective, or effective but not efficient. Of course it is also possible to be both. Possible, but not easy. You ought not to be obliged to choose strictly between the two, but suppose you were. Which one would you choose? Efficiency or effectiveness?

- Your Highlight on page 108 | Location 1647-1651 | Added on Monday, November 25, 2019 10:15:11 PM

An effective but not efficient organization moves steadily (though maybe not quickly) toward its real goals. How much progress it makes in that direction is a matter of how inefficient it is. An efficient but not effective organization, on the other hand, is moving in the wrong direction. The more it optimizes, the more progress it makes away from its real goals. Such an organization could say of itself, in Yogi Berra’s words, “We’re lost, but we’re making good time.”

- Your Highlight on page 109 | Location 1667-1670 | Added on Monday, November 25, 2019 10:22:54 PM

All this suggests that a lot of companies are not really led at all. If that’s true, why isn’t it more apparent? Why don’t they seem leaderless? That is the direct result of what I call the Easy Executive Option. Directing an entire organization is hard. Seeming to direct it, on the other hand, is easy. All you have to do is note which way the drift is moving and instruct the organization to go that way.

- Your Highlight on page 110 | Location 1672-1675 | Added on Monday, November 25, 2019 10:25:30 PM

In addition to being flat-out hard to do, building effectiveness into an organization often comes into direct conflict with increasing efficiency. This is an unfortunate side effect of optimization, first noted by the geneticist R. A. Fisher, and now referred to as Fisher’s fundamental theorem: “The more highly adapted an organism becomes, the less adaptable it is to any new change.”

- Your Highlight on page 110 | Location 1677-1678 | Added on Monday, November 25, 2019 10:27:11 PM

The more optimized an organism (organization) is, the more likely that the slack necessary to help it become more effective has been eliminated.

- Your Highlight on page 114 | Location 1741-1743 | Added on Tuesday, November 26, 2019 8:29:57 AM

After five decades of experience with MBO, its believers are still refining and redefining and still waiting for results. I’m ready to call MBO’s constant failure intrinsic. MBO is to an organization what Soviet-style central planning is to an economy: an idea whose time has passed.

- Your Highlight on page 114 | Location 1744-1751 | Added on Tuesday, November 26, 2019 8:31:09 AM

“Fourteen Points” leading to organizational transformation.2 In point 12 of the Fourteen Points, Deming takes aim at MBO in all its forms. MBO, Deming writes, provides artificial, extrinsic motivators—the objectives—which drive out workers’ intrinsic motivators. So a salesperson, for example, driven by the extrinsic motivator of selling to a quota, will set aside the intrinsic motivator to assure customer satisfaction. The result is likely to be increased sales of marginally needed goods to a narrowing base of increasingly disenchanted customers. Deming’s advice on MBO: Get rid of it. 1

- Your Highlight on page 114 | Location 1744-1751 | Added on Tuesday, November 26, 2019 8:31:16 AM

I am not the first to rail against MBO. The first was, I believe, W. Edwards Deming, famous for his “Fourteen Points” leading to organizational transformation.2 In point 12 of the Fourteen Points, Deming takes aim at MBO in all its forms. MBO, Deming writes, provides artificial, extrinsic motivators—the objectives—which drive out workers’ intrinsic motivators. So a salesperson, for example, driven by the extrinsic motivator of selling to a quota, will set aside the intrinsic motivator to assure customer satisfaction. The result is likely to be increased sales of marginally needed goods to a narrowing base of increasingly disenchanted customers. Deming’s advice on MBO: Get rid of it. 1

- Your Highlight on page 114 | Location 1744-1750 | Added on Tuesday, November 26, 2019 8:31:31 AM

I am not the first to rail against MBO. The first was, I believe, W. Edwards Deming, famous for his “Fourteen Points” leading to organizational transformation.2 In point 12 of the Fourteen Points, Deming takes aim at MBO in all its forms. MBO, Deming writes, provides artificial, extrinsic motivators—the objectives—which drive out workers’ intrinsic motivators. So a salesperson, for example, driven by the extrinsic motivator of selling to a quota, will set aside the intrinsic motivator to assure customer satisfaction. The result is likely to be increased sales of marginally needed goods to a narrowing base of increasingly disenchanted customers. Deming’s advice on MBO: Get rid of it.

- Your Highlight on page 115 | Location 1763-1764 | Added on Wednesday, November 27, 2019 7:59:40 AM

I suspect they treat it as the second of their two big problems: (1) can’t change and (2) can’t grow. They tend to miss that the second is a direct result of the first.

- Your Highlight on page 115 | Location 1761-1764 | Added on Wednesday, November 27, 2019 7:59:51 AM

can’t grow if you can’t change at all. This may not sound like a revelation to you, but I frequently come across organizations that frankly admit they can’t change, that they are stuck in stasis, but nonetheless consider growth a normal expectation. It’s a big surprise to them when growth fails to happen. I suspect they treat it as the second of their two big problems: (1) can’t change and (2) can’t grow. They tend to miss that the second is a direct result of the first.

- Your Highlight on page 115 | Location 1761-1764 | Added on Wednesday, November 27, 2019 7:59:54 AM

can’t grow if you can’t change at all. This may not sound like a revelation to you, but I frequently come across organizations that frankly admit they can’t change, that they are stuck in stasis, but nonetheless consider growth a normal expectation. It’s a big surprise to them when growth fails to happen. I suspect they treat it as the second of their two big problems: (1) can’t change and (2) can’t grow. They tend to miss that the second is a direct result of the first.

- Your Highlight on page 115 | Location 1761-1764 | Added on Wednesday, November 27, 2019 8:00:00 AM

You can’t grow if you can’t change at all. This may not sound like a revelation to you, but I frequently come across organizations that frankly admit they can’t change, that they are stuck in stasis, but nonetheless consider growth a normal expectation. It’s a big surprise to them when growth fails to happen. I suspect they treat it as the second of their two big problems: (1) can’t change and (2) can’t grow. They tend to miss that the second is a direct result of the first.

- Your Highlight on page 117 | Location 1784-1786 | Added on Thursday, November 28, 2019 9:12:08 AM

The most common sign of absent vision was the sense of not knowing “who we are.” One particularly depressing example was a top-level meeting at a new Valley dot-com where the company’s only apparent reason for existing was to make millionaires out of everybody in the meeting as quickly as possible so they could all retire. Nobody really wanted to be there two years later.

- Your Highlight on page 117 | Location 1789-1790 | Added on Thursday, November 28, 2019 9:12:42 AM

“What was missing from that meeting, ” Sheila observed, “was someone who was willing

- Your Highlight on page 117 | Location 1789-1790 | Added on Thursday, November 28, 2019 9:12:47 AM

“What was missing from that meeting, ” Sheila observed, “was someone who was willing

- Your Highlight on page 117 | Location 1789-1791 | Added on Thursday, November 28, 2019 9:12:50 AM

“What was missing from that meeting, ” Sheila observed, “was someone who was willing to say, ‘Auction might be nice, but it just isn’t us.’”

- Your Highlight on page 117 | Location 1793-1795 | Added on Thursday, November 28, 2019 9:14:10 AM

Vision implies a visionary. There has to be one person who knows in his or her bones what’s “us” and what isn’t. And it can’t be faked. Employees can smell an absence of vision the way a dog can smell fear.

- Your Highlight on page 118 | Location 1795-1796 | Added on Thursday, November 28, 2019 9:15:06 AM

Vision is the sine qua non of constructive change.

- Your Highlight on page 118 | Location 1795-1796 | Added on Thursday, November 28, 2019 9:15:10 AM

Vision is the sine qua non of constructive change. Without vision, a company can react, but it can’t pro-act.

- Your Highlight on page 118 | Location 1799-1802 | Added on Thursday, November 28, 2019 4:14:13 PM

Successful change can only come in the context of a clear understanding of what may never change, what the organization stands for. This is what Peter Drucker calls the organization’s culture. Culture, as he uses the term, is that which cannot, will not, and must not change.

- Your Highlight on page 118 | Location 1804-1806 | Added on Thursday, November 28, 2019 4:14:37 PM

If nothing is declared unchangeable, then the organization will resist all change. When there is no defining vision, the only way the organization can define itself is its stasis. Like the human creature that fights wildly to resist changing whatever it considers its identity, the corporate organism without vision will hold on to stasis as its only meaningful definition of self.

- Your Highlight on page 119 | Location 1812-1821 | Added on Friday, November 29, 2019 12:54:08 AM

definitional. The successful visionary statement will typically have the following characteristics: 1. There has to be an element of present truth to the assertion. The challenge “Run a four-minute mile because that’s what we are all about ” would not inspire most of us because we wouldn’t see the present truth of the “what we’re all about” part. 2. There is always an element of proposed future truth in the statement. Though it masquerades as “what we are all about, ” it is at least partly urging us toward “what we could be all about.” 3. When the statement walks perfectly between what is and what could be, and the could-be part is wonderful but not impossible, acceptance by those listening is almost assured.

- Your Highlight on page 119 | Location 1813-1821 | Added on Friday, November 29, 2019 12:54:12 AM

The successful visionary statement will typically have the following characteristics: 1. There has to be an element of present truth to the assertion. The challenge “Run a four-minute mile because that’s what we are all about ” would not inspire most of us because we wouldn’t see the present truth of the “what we’re all about” part. 2. There is always an element of proposed future truth in the statement. Though it masquerades as “what we are all about, ” it is at least partly urging us toward “what we could be all about.” 3. When the statement walks perfectly between what is and what could be, and the could-be part is wonderful but not impossible, acceptance by those listening is almost assured.

- Your Highlight on page 121 | Location 1845-1847 | Added on Friday, November 29, 2019 8:12:28 AM

Leadership is the ability to enroll other people in your agenda. Meaningful acts of leadership usually cause people to accept some short-term pain (extra cost or effort, delayed gratification) in order to increase the long-term benefit. We need leadership for this, because we all tend to be short-term thinkers.

- Your Highlight on page 121 | Location 1847-1852 | Added on Friday, November 29, 2019 8:13:08 AM

There is no easy formula for real leadership (if there were, we’d see a lot more of it), but it seems clear that the following elements always need to be present: Clear articulation of a direction Frank admission of the short-term pain Follow-up Follow-up Follow-up