Everyone makes mistakes. If you aren’t making mistakes in your life/career then you are either:

A) Not a human being

or

B) Not taking enough risks

The problem is when small, benign mistakes escalate into massive mistakes. It happens quite frequently. History has proven that with the collapse of multinational corporations like Enron, and the intelligence failures correlated with 9/11. In
Will Your Next Mistake Be Fatal?, Robert E. Mittelstaedt Jr, provides a systematic approach to managing mistakes. His approach, called M3 (M to the 3rd power), or Managing Multiple Mistakes, proposes that if you can break the chain of mistakes early on, then you can prevent potential disasters.

“The objective is to learn to recognize the patterns of mistakes that precede most business disasters and take actions to eliminate the threat or to reduce the incident to something that does not require full-scale crisis management” - Will Your Next Mistake Be Fatal?




Through detailed examples of businesses that have failed in the past, the author points to where each disaster began, and ways to establish ‘check points’ which will help to prevent similar disasters from happening. Critics may argue that ‘hindsight is 20/20′, but his M3 method, if incorporated into your work culture, can prevent small mistakes from snowballing into large disasters. Although, the book highlights big corporations such as McDonalds and Johnson & Johnson, small businesses aren’t neglected. The author has dedicated a chapter to those running small businesses, and provides his expertise on ways to prevent disasters.

Small talk.

Many dread it. They’d rather run in the other direction then have to strike up a conversation with a stranger. This fear prevents people from taking the risk (albiet a minute one) of meeting new people. You’ll never be able to meet people who could potentially be your next best friend, a business contact, or even future husband/wife!

You need to replace that fear with confidence and arm yourself with knowledge of ’small talking’. That knowledge can be gained though Debra Fine’s The Fine Art of Small Talk.



The author herself was once overcome with shyness, so she understands the difficulty some have with starting converstations, and keeping the conversation moving. She broke out of her shell to become a guru on ’small talk’. Throughout the book she dispeals some ‘conventional wisdom’ that society has come to associate with small talk. Don’t expect others to:

• Start the conversation (You have to be the one to make the initiative!)
• Make you feel comfortable with small talk (You have to make whoever you are with feel comfortable!)
• Keep the conversation rolling (You can prevent ‘pregnant pauses’!)

After reading through The Fine Art of Small Talk you’ll be able to conquere all of the above and more. It’s never too late to break out of your shyness, and become the master conversationalist that is within.

Be sure to check out Debra Fine’s site which highlights her book, articles, and contact information to book her for training!

‘Job security’ are two words which don’t exist together in today’s job market. Managers being pressed to keep the ‘bottom line’ out of the red continuously find layoffs and outsourcing as the only answer. This weeks headline out of Dearborn, MI proves this as Ford plans to lay off 30,000 workers over the next six years. Workers now have the task of distinguishing themselves; making themselves stand out among their peers.


As author, Chairman, Chief Evangelist & Co-Founder of Cignex Rajesh Setty explains in his book Beyond Code: Learn to Distinguish Yourself in 9 Simple Steps, you have to ‘de-commoditize’ yourself. There is a wealth of tips, which if you implement in your own job, will provide you with the advantage over other co-workers. Some tips which I think are worth extra mention are:

• Care as if it is your own company
• Give more effort at your job than what you are paid for
• Stay positive in thoughts; It helps keep things in perspective
• There are either ‘reasons or results’; become dependable

It’s these small but powerful acts that will set you apart. Read the book, adopt it’s advice, and you definitly will benefit from it. Be sure to check out the Life Beyond Code blog. The advice doesn’t stop with the book.

In times where we find ourselves questioning the work we do, and wishing we could find our true calling in life, Dave Smith has provided his guidance. His book, To Be of Use: The Seven Seeds of Meaningful Work, takes a critical look at working for big corporations and the loss of self identity that is associated with being employed by one.


The author stresses that there is a urgent need to inject our society with human values, values which aren’t inward focused. The book focuses on the seven seeds of meaningful work:

Faith

“Any successful company, large or small, is successful because its leaders have put their faith and trust in a great many other people who are also responsible for the overall success of their company. They respect others as people, not chess pieces.” - Chapter 1 Faith: True Belief

Hope

“Without hope in the future, we wander, lost and without meaning – and without the energy to make the positive changes necessary for meaning to come alive.” - Chapter 2 Hope: Soul School

Justice

“We haven’t yet taken the final step in becoming a true democracy that ensures the balance needed for a true equality of power. The step includes economics democracy along with a more participatory political democracy. In the modern, undemocratic corporation, voting is based on “one dollar, one vote” rather than “one person, one vote.” - Chapter 3 Justice: Action Heroes

Temperance

“Temperance means quality rather than quantity. The more stuff we make and have, the less each item is honored in and of itself. Ready access to the zillions of this and that, cheaply made on industrial assembly lines, lessens our ability to want and treasure, or even afford, that which is carefully and honorably made.” - Chapter 4 Temperance: The Briarpatch Way

Prudence

“An empowered middle class, those who do the work and build the capital, demands too much of the pie according to those who have way more than their own share already, and they will forever use their part of the pie to keep grabbing more of it, no matter what the consequences are to our common ground and common wealth.” - Chapter 5 Prudence: Reclaiming the Soul of Business

Courage

“The heroic heart may be revealed through a lifetime devoted to a great cause, such as standing up and fighting for the rights of the downtrodden.” - Chapter 6 Courage: Creative Action Heroes

Love

“Meaningful work comes alive from the love of others as well as ourselves. And that requires you and me.” - Chapter 7 Love: Useful You

Through the retelling of his experiences in life, and inspiring examples of people making changes in the world, we are able to see these seven seeds at work. The author lets us know that change is possible in the world. It just has to start with you and me.

Check out the To Be of Use website. There is a wealth of imformation pertaining to the book and the message it’s trying to spread.

Imagine yourself being promoted to a new position. This new position carries greater responsibility than your previous position. You’ve been view by management as someone who is a leader, someone who as they say, “has what it takes”. The opportunity is exciting, and you’ve wanted this job since you started working, but you’ve never held a position that requires these new skills. You’ve shown your leadership at the project level, but never experienced it at a manager level. You realize that the impression you will make in your new position is critical to your success in the future. How are you going to transition into the new position?

The scenario above is faced by thousands each year. Unfortunately those who are promoted receive no guidance or coaching. This traditional ‘sink-or-swim’ approach to managing transitions is costly to companies, and can severely hinder the success of the newly promoted individual. There is a solution to the antiquated approach though.



In The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins, the author presents a systematic approach for managing the transition to your new position. Through research and his own expertise the author was able to create a framework with the goal of making the transition smooth and beneficial to both the newly promoted and their employer. This framework will essentially enable you to reach your breakeven point (the point in which you have contributed to the company as much as you’ve ‘consumed’) faster than the traditional transition methods. Consider this book the roadmap for navigating your first 90 days on the job. With your 90 day plan, you will be able to successfully manage the challenges faced with a new position. Each chapter provides the tools to aid you in:

• Accelerating your learning
• Matching your strategy to your situation
• Securing early wins
• Negotiating success - Shape the game, don’t just play it
• Successfully aligning stategy, structure, skills, systems, and culture
• Building your team; getting the ‘right people’ on the bus as Jim Collins would say
• Creating coalations so you are able to succeed more easily
• Learning the keys to keeping a balance in your life

and much more…

“The goal of this book is to move you – and your organization – beyond the sink or swim approach to managing transitions.” - Michael Watkins, author

You would think that this book would be limited to those in managerial positions, but it’s not. Anyone that plans on taking a leadership role, or even at the onset of a new job you should read this book, and then read it again before you start your managerial position. You may even impress your boss and suggest this book as a read. Any attempt at helping your company be more productive and run effectively should be praised!

Check out the Michael’sFirst 90 Days website which compliments the book.

Author Robert E. Mittlestaedt recently realeased a new book titled Will Your Next Mistake be Fatal? I’ll be reviewing it in the coming weeks. He has provided an article which he wrote that is based on the theme of the book. Check it out:

Breaking Chain Of Mistakes Prevents Business Disasters
By Robert E. Mittelstaedt, Jr.

The Ancient Greek tragedies invariably told the story of a character who came to grief through a series of mistakes that all started with a failure to heed strong warnings. The Titanic, Three-Mile Island (TMI) and NASA’s space shuttles Challenger and Columbia are all modern examples of “corporate tragedies” that occurred because of assumptions that were incorrect, systems that were misunderstood, and actions that exhibited extraordinary lack of preparation and insight. Above all, they were the result of reckless disregard of alarming information.

Almost every business disaster is the result of not one mistake, but a succession of mistakes. At many points along the road to ruin, that chain could have been broken and the situation corrected—if only people had seen and believed the evidence that sat in front of their noses.

The great fault lies not in making mistakes, but in repeating them, and not learning to catch them early. Organizations are like individual people. They make the same mistakes over and over, unless they do something definitive to try to stop. They are shortsighted. They don’t always learn from their own mistakes, or from others’. They also don’t always learn from their successes. They often neglect to ask, “What did we do right?”

Anyone in a management or executive position needs to learn how to recognize the patterns of mistakes that precede most business disasters, and to reduce a mistake (or above all, a series of mistakes) to something that does not require full-scale crisis management.

How do we break the mistake sequence, or prevent it before it starts? You’ll generally find two forms of opportunity for early intervention. The first is a matter of heeding early warnings of specific danger, and detecting patterns in operations.

• Other ships had warned the Captain of the Titanic that his proposed route was full of icebergs.

• A 1990 study had shown the potential for damage to the heat shield of the space shuttle Columbia.

• Consumers were quick to complain about the flawed chip in Intel’s Pentium processor.

• Ford was aware of early failures of Firestone tires on its Explorer vehicles in Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

In each of those cases, the people at the top knew that something was wrong, and simply pooh-poohed it—or didn’t attend to the problem until it had gotten out of hand. Ignoring early warnings allowed the mistake to slow or reverse the “business flywheel.”

The second way to intervene is to quickly detect and halt dangerous patterns of action in operations and strategy.

• Several top executives were aware that Enron was highly leveraged and was involved in far too many high-risk deal structures.

• Kodak knew that digital technology was coming in, and that other companies were developing it, but Kodak continued to focus on chemical-based technologies, giving their competition a head-start in digital.

• Webvan made a series of ill-founded and ill-tested assumptions about its on-line grocery-shopping system.

The problem with a warning is that it is not always clear that it is a warning at all, or that the source of the information was reliable. How to detect and react to warnings? Here are situations that should raise red flags and warrant further analysis:

• credible customer complaints that “your product isn’t working”;

• situations you have not seen before;

• operating experience different from that of your competitors;

• unusual or rapidly changing data about operations or customers;

• results off-plan;

• results on-plan—but only through luck;

• constant revision of plan/budget;

• failures of control systems;

• need to re-train significant numbers of personnel because they are not performing;

• frequent operational problems that are not addressed by standard procedures;

• problems caused by communications issues;

• problems where help was available but not used.

When you do see warning signs, you’ll find several ways to stop a mistake sequence.

• Adopt a customer-focused operating culture, from top to bottom. Everyone knows the customer, everyone improves quality, everyone markets and sells.

• Delineate responsibilities, standard operating procedures, and metrics. Paramount to avoiding mistakes is knowing who has primary responsibility for each important task and objective.

• Implement training, simulation, and devised safety. Do not move safety limits to accommodate your clients, as Enron’s, WorldCom’s, and HealthSouth’s auditors did. Imagine disastrous scenarios, and ask your employees, “What would you do if…?”.

• Believe your indications, never ignore customer data, and communicate. Instead of trying to explain bad news, try to understand why something is happening as indicated. Act on your indications even if you don’t like them. In particular, listen to customer data—because by the time it reaches your desk, the problem will have been going on for a while.

• “Fly the airplane.” Focus on the primary mission, and don’t be distracted by non-critical problems.

• STOP is your last line of defense. Train your employees to understand that they have a responsibility to exercise this option when the situation warrants it.

Author
Robert E. Mittelstaedt, Jr. is Dean and professor of the W.P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University, and former, Vice Dean and Director, Aresty Institute of Executive Education, The Wharton School. He has consulted with organizations ranging from IBM to Weirton Steel, Pfizer to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and is a member of the board of directors of three corporations in electronics and healthcare services businesses. His book Will Your Next Mistake Be Fatal? Avoiding the Chain of Mistakes That Can Destroy Your Organization is published by Wharton School Publishing September 2005;$25.95US/$36.95CAN; 0-13-191364-6

For those of you who haven’t read The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman, go read it.

This book received high accolades last year as it brought the highly relevant issue of globalization to the world’s attention. The book also dispels many myths that are attached with the word ‘globalization’.


The meat of the book lists the ten defining moments/companies/events which made the world ‘flatter’. It’s important for anyone who wants to have a understanding of what has happened in the past 8 years or so, and what may lie ahead, to read this book. The authors strength is the ability to explain a complicated topic in a easy to understand style. It definitely is one of the best books I’ve read. You can pick up a cheap copy on Amazon for under $17, but then again, there also is your public library, which is free!

You’ve seen that line before.

Or maybe it was: “15 steps to simplify you life”.

Most of the time these are just filled with empty advice, a bunch of hot air.

I’m always seeking ways to simplify my life. Who wants chaos and disorder in their life anyways? Unless you are insouciant (read: carefree), you want to make your life simple. Simplifying your life allows you to be more productive and spend time on things that hold greater value to you. Productivity tools, applications whose goals are to help you be more productive, can be found throughout the web. The top names in technology, such as Intel, Microsoft, and Apple, are just some players in the productivity tools market. A quick Google search of ‘productivity tools’ returns 73,200,000 results. Try searching through that many results for a good tool! Although many of these companies claim their tools boast productivity, they don’t. They either miss the point, or aren’t simple to use. You can quickly forget the 73,199,999 of the results because there is one company that gets ‘it’: 37signals. Who you ask? Although their company name may sound like a site you’d see on the web which proclaims ‘we will tell you the 37 signals that a girl is interested in you for only $19.95’, they are a serious about productivity. 37signals offers simple, web-based applications which enable you to get things done. Basecamp (project management tool), Backpack (personal information manager), Writeboard (collaborative writing), Ta-da List (to-do list sharing) are the tools they offer for free, and for a fee.

Check ‘em out. Use ‘em and be more productive in ‘06

Here are some books that will be covered here in the near future:

The Undercover Economist by Tim Hartford
Married To The Brand by William L. McEwen
Live What You Love by Bob and Melinda Blanchard
Steal These Ideas by Steve Cone
To Be of Use by Dave Smith
The Big Moo by Seth Godin
The Ten Faces of Innovation by Tom Kelley
Grapevine: The New Art of Word-of-Mouth Marketing by Dave Balter & John Butman
Beyond The Brand by John Winsor
The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
The Number by Lee Eisenberg
How to Spot a Liar by Hartley and Karinch
Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
A Whole New Mind by Daniel H. Pink
The Millionaire Real Estate Investor by Gary Keller
The Google Story by David Vise and Mark Malseed
Trend Following by Michael Covel

and the list continues to grow everyday…..

Customer loyalty, as a goal or principle, can typically be found in mission statements and objectives.

Take a look at Hewitt Packard:

Customer loyalty

To provide products, services and solutions of the highest quality and deliver more value to our customers that earns their respect and loyalty.
Underlying beliefs supporting this objective:
• Our continued success is dependent on increasing the loyalty of our customers.
• Listening attentively to customers to truly understand their needs, then delivering solutions that translate into customer success is essential to earn customer loyalty.
• Competitive total cost of ownership, quality, inventiveness, and the way we do business drives customer loyalty.

Or

Shangri-La-Hotels:

We will make customer loyalty a key driver of our business

Presumably the companies want customer loyalty to provide positive effects for their business. But what happens when the programs attempting to spur loyalty don’t work? What happens when these programs, whose initial goal was to profit your business, end up costing you millions of dollars? What happens when loyalty beliefs are actually myths?

Hopefully you won’t have to learn the lessons the hard way.



In Loyalty Myths : Hyped Strategies That Will Put You Out of Business and Proven Tactics That Really Work by Timothy L. Keiningham, Terry G. Vavra, Lerzan Aksoy, and Henri Wallard, we are shown the 53 most common beliefs (myths) of customer loyalty. You’ve heard them before. For instance, the universally accepted myth that it costs more to obtain new customers then to retain them. Through anecdotes, examples, and researched data we are shown that when customer loyalty is initiated from these myths, your business will suffer. The authors don’t stop at letting us know what these myths are; they guide us around the myths. They provide the correction to the myths and how to manage loyalty in your business so that it will positively affect your company, not hurt it.

After just finishing Loyalty Myths: Hyped Strategies That Will Put You Out of Business and Proven Tactics That Really Work, I wasn’t surprised when I opened my email this morning and saw this email fromIndependence Air:

Today is a sad day for Independence Air. Today we must announce that we will be ceasing scheduled service operations this Thursday evening, January 5. The financial pressures in the industry have prevailed. We have run out of time. It has been an amazing 18 months. We set out to challenge the status quo and to re-set your expectations about air travel. We set out to introduce you to lower fares and a new level of service delivered by employees who care. Currently ranked #2 in customer satisfaction among all US airlines, we are proud that we did indeed earn your respect and loyalty. We are proud that we built a brand so universally praised by over 8 million customers. We are proud of the mark we have made.

Customers with reservations whose trips are completed between now and Thursday evening should expect the same great service for which we have become known.

…

Additionally, we are seeking bankruptcy court approval to automatically provide refunds to customers holding reservations on flights occurring after our shutdown of operations on January 5th. No refunds will be offered for free tickets or vouchers.

Today is a sad day for Independence Air. Today is a sad day for our customers who have gotten used to tender loving service and paying less for air travel. We will miss serving you. Thank you for your vigorous support.

I enjoyed flying Independence Air and will miss their service, but was their focus placed too much on loyalty & customer service?

Did management miss the bigger picture of building a sustainable business with “true values”: profits, ROE, ROA, ect?

In the end customer service and loyalty will only get you so far. By attempting to separate themselves (with customer service, loyalty, and cheap flights as their main selling points) from other carriers they put themselves in a bad position. They had been running in the red since they began and depended on a ‘loyal’ customer base to help them overcome competition and rising fuel prices.