Work Matters

  • Small Wins and Wal-Mart’s Sustainability Efforts

    As
    I mentioned in an earlier post, we had conference
    earlier this week at Stanford this week on sustainability, which was hosted by
    our d.school class Clicks-n-bricks: Creating Mass Market Experiences.  After Debra Dunn set the stage, we had a great
    presentation by IDEO’s Bob Adams on the challenges of designing for
    sustainability, and then we had CEO of Wal-Mart.com Carter
    Cast     and Wal-Mart’s Vice-President for Strategy and Sustainability Andrew
    Ruben     do a presentation about Wal-Mart’s Sustainability efforts and goals.  I was taken by how much progress Wal-Mart was
    making and the apparent seriousness of the effort (Andrew was quite open in
    admitting that is started as a PR effort, but once they started looking into
    it, they were completely hooked as they saw how serious he global warming
    problem was and the opportunities to save so much money in so many ways). 

    When
    the conference was over, I was talking to one of my colleagues about how
    impressed I was with the small successes that they have achieved, and what
    seemed to be a continuing strategy that sounds much like Karl
    Weick’s      classic article: "Small Wins: Redefining the Scale of Social Problems,"
    which was published in the American Psychologist in January, 1984. Weick argued
    that when people start thinking about solving a massive problem like sustainability,
    that they can seem so difficult to solve and so upsetting, that “People often
    define social problems in ways that overwhelm their ability to do anything
    about them.”  Weick proposed that a
    constructive alternative is “To recast larger problems into smaller, less
    arousing problems, [so] people can identify a series of smaller controllable opportunities
    of modest size that produce visible results.”  Weick went on to argue that this strategy of “small
    wins” can often generate more action and more complete solutions to major
    problems because it is a path that enables people to make slow, steady
    progress, rather than to be frozen in their tracks by a seemingly unsolvable
    problem.

    In
    fact, some of the most impressive things Wal-Mart has accomplished are what
    they call “Quick Wins.” Andrew Ruben gave us numerous examples; consider just two.
    First, is something called an auxiliary power unit (APU) in Wal-Mart trucks. It
    turns out that when drivers stop their trucks, they often still leave their  engines running so that the heat or air
    conditioning stays on; APUs provide power so that they can shut-off the engine –
    and it turns out that many trucks out there still don’t use APUs. Wal-Mart
    installed APUs in 100% of its trucks during the past couple years, saving them
    25 million a year in fuel costs and reducing carbon output from their trucks by
    100,000 cubic feet per year.

    Or
    to take another example, they are working with suppliers to reduce the size of
    the boxes that their products are placed in – for everything from laundry soap
    to boxes for toys pictured below. Ruben explain that the difference between
    these two boxes don’t look like much, but when you load up thousands of
    shipping containers a year with your product, small changes have a huge impact
    on how many ships and trucks are needed to transport products to the 6500
    Wal-Mart stores in the world.

    Box

    I’ve
    always loved Weick’s article and it strikes me that Wal-Mart’s early successes
    are a perfect example.  I am also impressed
    by how they are using their market power to do everything from pressing
    suppliers to make more condensed laundry detergent to making power supplies for
    laptop computers that cut energy usage by substantial amounts – and in the
    process making some “green” technologies that were not economically viable
    before Wal-Mart ordered them, instantly viable for every company as a result of
    new economies of scale -– which is exactly what happened with the energy efficient
    LED lights that they ordered for the refrigerator display cases.

    My
    colleague, however, made an interesting counter argument that has left my
    wondering if I am overly enamored of Wal-Mart’s small wins, or quick wins as
    they call them, as a route to solving the sustainability crisis. She said that
    she liked the wonderful examples, but also wondered if a more systematic approach
    wasn’t also required, as they needed to think more systematically about how the
    pieces of the system fit together, and the hidden trade-offs associated with what
    seemed like clear wins.

    I
    guess that this discussion is just a special case of the long running argument
    about whether central planning is possible, or if even if it is possible,
    whether trial and error approaches yield superior approaches to a central plan –
    an old debate in economics and organizational strategy.  I don’t know the answer, but my strong opinion
    at the moment is that Weick is right, and if Wal-Mart executives had framed the
    problem as huge and overwhelming, rather than breaking it into smaller problems
    that they could tackle, then they would not have accomplished so much so fast.  But this is a strong
    opinion that is weakly held    , and I wonder what the limits of a small wins
    approach are in this case — not just for our students who are trying to help
    Wal-Mart a bit with this challenge, but also for Wal-Mart as a whole, and for
    every other company that wants to tackle the sustainability problem. I am of
    course especially curious to see how our students respond to this challenge,
    and if they accept – or challenge – the small wins approach.  And I am equally curious to know what others
    who have thought about and tried to tackle sustainability problems –and other
    seemingly overwhelming problems – think of the small wins approach versus the
    importance of developing an overarching strategy that fits all the pieces
    together.  I suppose one answer is you
    need both, but if you read Weick and some of his followers, you can see that
    some people take a very strong stance against overall strategy, and argue,
    instead, that it is usually just a pretty story that people make after they
    string together a series of small wins (or small loses) to explain what
    happened in retrospect.

  • Bill Moggridge’s Masterpiece

    I made the mistake of opening the Amazon box yesterday.  It contained Bill Moggridge’s brand new 766 page book Designing Interactions. I have several talks to prepare and a bunch of other stuff to do, but I forgot all about them once I started reading the book. Bill has been at ground zero of the design thinking movement for 30+ years, starting has own industrial engineering firm and then joining David Kelley and Mike Nuttall to form IDEO, then the first full service design firm, which has now broadened to become an innovation firm that helps companies develop innovative products, processes, customer experiences and organizational designs.  I’ve known Bill for about a decade and have always been touched by both his grace and brilliance, and range of skills — and they are all on display in this beautiful book. Bill is perhaps best known as the designer of the Grid, the first laptop computer in 1981, but that is just one of the many, many designs he has contributed to developing.

    This book –using interviews with many of the most influential and important people and their stories in the product design and innovation world over the past 30 years or so —  demonstrates what design thinking is and how great people do it.  Read it, study it, talk about it. I’ve read a lot of books on creativity and design, I try to study it, teach it, apply it myself, but while there is a lot of good stuff out there, this is the masterpiece, the top of the pops.

    If you are going to read one book on how to do creative work in the real world, this is it.  The 700 images, the stories, the writing are all relentlessly beautiful and instructive.

    Not only that, the process that Bill used to create the book also is an example of design thinking and action at its best — the process and the product demonstrate why Bill is known as one of the most skilled designers in the world (and I mean both technically and socially skilled). I had heard about the book a bit from Bill, as I was amazed to hear that he was — with help from key people at IDEO and his social network — producing  everything in the book himself, writing all the words, doing all the interviews with 40 or so designers and innovators who are the main focus of the book — everyone from Doug Englebart (inventor of the computer mouse) to Google’s Larry Page to Wil Wright (creator of the Sims) — to designing the layout and cover, to using desktop publishing and video editing software himself to bring it all together.  In fact, I confess that although I have made it through the text, I haven’t even looked at the DVD yet that is included with the book, and as I’ve implied, Bill also produced.

    In the name of full disclosure, I am an IDEO Fellow and have known and admired Bill for along time. But I know and admire lots of people who write books on creativity and innovation.  This is the masterpiece in my view.  This book is published by MIT Press — which has had few if any books at the top of the best-seller list in its history — and it is about 500 pages longer than most books that are slated to be hit sellers.  But it deserves to be a best seller given the current clamoring for creativity and innovation throughout the world.  Designing Interactions only costs $26.37 on Amazon — and it has more useful information and inspiration than any 10 other books you are likely to buy that are vaguely related to the subject — and they don’t have a DVD. 

    Now I have to go back to my other chores and resist the temptation to watch the DVD for another couple days.  It is 100 minutes!

    P.S. Checkout the Designing Interactions Website — you can see video clips from the DVD there and read a sample chapter.

  • Early Comments on The No Asshole Rule

    A couple of interesting things were published on The No Asshole Rule during the last few days. First, Sig at Forthcoming put up a very thoughtful and self-reflective little essay on the book, talking about the situations that drive him to be less than nice (it happens to everyone .. that is why one of my last points are "assholes are us") and I was especially charmed by his report that "…my 15 year old picked it up and started reading it with great interest! And kids should know all about assholes. Even if their "workplace" is less infested with hierarchies."  I first heard about Sig from Diego at Metacool when I was just thinking about learning to Blog — I remember Diego telling me that he doesn’t do a huge number of posts, but all are very thoughtful.

    Second, the folks at Hanser, my German publisher, tell me that Der Arschloch-Faktor got a very nice review in the online magazine ChangeX.  Alas, I don’t read German, But Anna Markgraf at Hanser tells me that it was "really inspired" and they even liked the fact that excerpts from the book had been published in German tabloid Bild (Wikipedia reports it is the best-selling newspaper in Europe), because it is " a sign that you in fact write for everybody."  I will show it to my German-speaking friends. Here is the pdf:

    Download ChangeX.pdf

  • Stanford Conference on Sustainability

    You are all invited to an conference on sustainability that our d.school class — Clicks-n-Bricks: Creating Mass Market Experiences — is hosting this Thursday on the Stanford campus.  The next project that will be tackled by our class focuses on how to create excitement, build networks, and spread knowledge within Wal-Mart about their current sustainability initiatives.

    The speakers will include:

    Debra Dunn, former  HP Executive Vice-President who (among other things) led their sustainability efforts.
    Bob Adams, who leads IDEO’s sustainability efforts.
    Andrew Ruben, Wal-Mart’s VP of Corporate Strategy and Sustainability.

    Debra and Bob are fantastic speakers!  I suspect Andrew will great as well.

    Here are the particulars:

    What is Designing for Sustainability?
    d.school Mini-Conference Fall 2006
    3:30 PM – 7:00 PM
    Hewlett 200

    Please join us!

    Also, I attach a great poster done by d.school Fellow Alex Ko.

    Download d.school mini-conference.pdf

  • Why “Industry Standard” is a Dumb Excuse

    I ordered a PC online from HP last night, as I had bought one for my mother and was quite happy with it. Well, after I ordered it, I realized immediately that it would not ship until November 10th, and I did not want to wait that long. So I started a journey to cancel the order.

    Here is what it entailed:

    1. I spent about 30 minutes going through the emails from HP and their website and found no specific information about how to stop the order before it was shipped — even though I had just ordered it minutes before. Note that after looking for another 20 minutes the next day I eventually figured that the website does address the problem — it says that it is probably impossible to do it, but if a mistake was made, they will try.

    2. I eventually found a number that seemed right and called, after about 15 minutes of going back and forth with the guy on the phone and being left on hold, I was told I would have to call back the next day because I was "8 minutes too late," although I am not sure what I missed.

    3. I called this morning and was on hold 20 minutes or so. Then I was told that I would have to talk to the supervisor. I was put on hold. The person came back and offered me $100 to not cancel, I declined and said that I didn’t want to order something from a company that made it so hard to cancel an order.  I was put on hold again, and then a supervisor told me that he would have to call the factory to cancel the order. I was put on hold and waited for the confirmation, which eventually came through.

    4. I also complained to the supervisor about the fact it was impossible to cancel the order online, there was unclear information about how to cancel it or that it was impossible to do so online, and that it was an incredibly complex process to cancel. His answer was that what HP did was INDUSTRY STANDARD. I am not joking.

    I am very loyal to HP, the current scandal pains me because I’ve known so many lovely and smart people who have worked there.  And as a faculty member in the Stanford School of Engineering, the generosity of Bill and Dave has made my life better in many ways — Packard donated the funds for the building I work in, and they each donated two other buildings, and the Packard Children’s Hospital was where my daughter Eve was born.  I have met many lovely and caring people from that hospital. I also am a big fan of Mark Hurd, who I think has done a great job of implementing the merger (who knows if it was the right strategy, but he did a great job with the cards he was dealt) and cleaning up Carly’s mess in other ways.  It is my hope that they get past this scandal and return to making the company even greater

    BUT this excuse and the practice itself are bad business and represent failed logic. It also possibly a dishonest claim, as it easier to cancel orders for computers that are bought online elsewhere.

    1. The justification that everyone else does it, so it is right, is irrational: Just because everyone else in an industry does something stupid, does that mean you should do it as well? You may recall the famous 1994 testimony to congress when 7 CEOs of major tobacco companies each stood up and asserted that they did not believe that nicotine was addictive — telling that lie was industry standard too!

    2. As we’ve shown with both evidence and examples in The Knowing-Doing Gap and especially Hard Facts, mindless imitation of what has always been done in an industry or a company is one of the surest paths to destruction.  And even great companies — and Dell and HP are still great companies in many ways — often do many stupid things. Think of the most successful people you know — many do unwise and destructive things, and they succeed despite themselves.

    3. Breaking out of a dumb industry standard is how newcomers — or reformed old-timers — come to dominate an industry. Look at the iPod, Google (they were told that a technologically superior search engine wasn’t worth it, it was all marketing), and the Men’s Wearhouse.

    4. This also reminds of AOL’s PR fiasco a few months back where they got in enormous trouble for arguing with and refusing to cooperate with a person who wanted to cancel his subscription (See Bad Behavior at AOL). The people at HP were very polite and never argued with me, but like at AOL, are just trapped in a bad system and are apparently trained to say dumb things.  It also smells like one of those cases where, to hit short-term numbers, a company puts in place a system that can cause long-term damage to customer relationships — like AOL.

    5. Finally, the supervisor’s claim that it was "industry standard" — which I infer means making it impossible to cancel the order online, making it unclear how to cancel it at all, and to use a time consuming and friction-filled process for cancelling it — turns out to be not quite the truth. At least if you define online sellers of computers as part of the same industry. It turns out that if I order an HP computer online from Amazon, and decide I want to cancel it before it is shipped, it is actually possible to do online, clearly explained, and easy to implement. Again, perhaps industry standard is a codeword for Dell. I would also add that this is yet another reason that I remain faithful to Amazon. They aren’t perfect, but they do seem to value customers and put us first.

    I usually try to avoid personal rants on this blog, but there are too many lessons in this one. There are general lessons about how imitation can become a substitute for thinking, about the damage done by copying misguided competitors, and how training people to say really dumb things can be bad PR. 

    There are also specific lessons about things that HP needs to do:  I urge them to more clearly explain "How to cancel your order before we ship it" and even eventually put in a path for "Cancelling your order online."  Note the first change could be done in a day.

  • Continuous Improvement at Evidence-Based Management.Com

    Jeff Pfeffer and I launched evidence-basedmanagement.com less than two months ago, and it keeps better, thanks in large part to the relentless effort and creativity put forth by Daphne Chang and Paul Reist at the Stanford Business School Library.  We have been running a new guest column every two weeks or so, so far by Professor Denise Rousseau of Carnegie Mellon, John Domurad of the Carey Group, and a two-part series by John Zanardelli, who is CEO of the United Methodist Services for Aging.  Plus we expect future columns from Michael Dearing (former senior eBay executive and now a d.school faculty member) Webb McKinney (former EVP at HP who, among other things, managed the HP-Compaq merger integration), and Iowa Sociology Professor Michael Lovagila. We also have a blog, a section with teaching materials (including my course outline Organizational Behavior: An Evidence-Based Approach), and one of the best parts, which keeps growing as a result of Daphne and Paul’s persistence and curiosity, on other evidence-based movements.

    If you are interested in teaching, learning about, or practicing evidence-based management, you might find the site useful. And please make suggestions about topics, information, or news items that we should add to make it more useful and easier to use.

  • Dilbert Likes the Title

    Kent Blumberg not only only was kind enough to write a nice review about The No Asshole Rule, he also suggested that I contact a few other of his favorite bloggers to see if they were intersted in the book.  One suggestion was Scott Adams of Dilbert fame — who has a blog as many as you know. I met Scott briefly a few years back at IDEO right after they had designed "Dilbert’s Ultimate Cubicle" for him. So I contacted him on whim, but didn’t really expect a response.  To my amazement, Scott wrote back a very nice note, commenting that "I love that
    book title. I’m glad you held firm on it. It’s brilliant."      It made my day, as Scott is certainly an expert on workplace assholes.  And Dilbert — actually Scott — appareently agrees with my post on Why I  Call The Assholes.

    P.S. Kent’s blog just won the "You Get It Award" from Jibber Jobber for the month. Check it out!

  • A New Asshole Metric: The Starbucks Test

    I got this from Snopes.com from a list of New Rules for 2006.  They apparently debunked the claim that is was from George Carlin and instead show (or claim to show) that is from Bill Maher’s HBO show.

    New Rule: The more complicated the Starbucks order, the bigger the
    asshole. If you walk into a Starbucks and order a "decaf grande
    half-soy, half-low fat, iced vanilla, double-shot, gingerbread
    cappuccino, extra dry, light ice, with one Sweet-n’-Low and one
    NutraSweet," ooh, you’re a huge asshole.

    Whatever the source, I think it contains a lot of truth because when people get this picky, it is sign to me that they are oblivious — or worse yet take great glee — at acting like petty tyrants, at imposing difficulty and complexity on someone with less power, at showing everyone in the store how skilled they are at pushing around the poor clerk, and at slowing the flow of the line.

    Of course, bad cell phone behavior is worse. I was in a long line at a small Post Office in Menlo Park (October 16th was the final day to pay 2005 taxes in the U.S., so the line was long), and was amazed by a woman who spent a full 30 minutes shouting into her cell phone about her experiences on jury duty. OK, I understand a short quiet conversation, but she was talking very loudly and didn’t seem to notice the TWO large signs that asked customers not to talk on their cell phones.  I suspect that there is an entire book to be written on "Cell Phone Tips for the Complete Asshole."

  • An Asshole in Advertising

    I have been sent a lot of "workplace asshole" stories lately.  I appreciate the time that people take to send them, learn something new from each one, and continue to be amazed by the varied means that assholes use to demean others (and in doing so, often demean themselves).

    I was sent an especially strange, sick, and well-written story tonight about an asshole boss in the advertising industry.  I reprint the email below (with the author’s permission –I always ask), and invite your comments as always:

    Hi Bob,

    I was hired by an asshole in the advertising industry who was so threatened by the relationships I created within the creative department, that she asked me NOT to leave my office and go visit with these employees. She was such a control freak that one time when I told her I was going to bathroom, she followed me in, because she didn’t trust where I was headed, and actually stood in front of the stall I was in and peered down to check out my footwear.
    By this time I was onto her – and lifted my feet.

    Asshole, huh!
    (insecure and pathetic, but really an asshole!)

    Cheers,
    Ally

    Yes Ally, sounds like an asshole to me.  And one that was clearly driven by deep insecurity.     

  • To Do Lists at Metacool: A Way to Link Knowledge to Action

    Diego at Metacool has an instructive and inspiring new post. He has a picture and a great discussion of a "To Do" list that was publicly displayed by the staff at the Denver Art Museum, which showed the things that they still needed to get done on a new addition.  I love this because it not only advertises to donors what things they need money for, it also creates public pressure on the staff to get things done.  As research on commitment shows, public proclamations are far harder to reverse than those that are made in private.  Perhaps this is the kind of thing that they suggest at the Department of Doing.