• Preparation 1: Think. Browse my monstrous library. Browse the net. Think again. Pencil and paper, then computer. Draft, write, structure, edit.
• Preparation 2: Mezes with pita, sea bass, rice, salad, dessert.  An army marches on its stomach.
• Preparation 3: Large easel pad, mechanical pencils, small note pads.

The planners bring cold Spanish wine to complement the fish, and discussion begins. Soon the table is covered only with the easel pad, flanked by coffee. We drill down, challenging each other’s assumptions and blind spots, opening new doors, closing others for good reasons. Risks and opportunities, process and content, perspectives and worldviews.

My note pad fills with ideas to be added to my original notes and emailed to my visitors. The easel pad is covered in pencil notes, and (strangely) some pretty good drawings of Batman. The notes will leave with the planners. They will work with other thinkers. The business plan will continue its polishing evolution.

One planner is a professor of Entrepreneurship and the other has a Masters degree in the subject. They were both finalists in SXSW this year. They know the value of sharing diverse and innovative thinking.

I think of the difficulty I sometimes have to get my CPS clients to think innovatively, or even to believe that they can think creatively or innovate. Their profitability and their joy in what they do can be increased so easily, yet the lure of the comfort zone, and the known, can be so strong.

Maybe I should feed them sea bass?

Differentness comes in many forms: age, culture, ethnicity, thinking style, life experience, language, gender, etc. As Vice President of the Tampa Bay International Business Council, I work towards including our many diverse communities into the Tampa Bay economy, because this inclusion is a guarantee of growth and prosperity for the region.

My company, CPS, also trains fluency and inclusion of differentness, culture, generations, and diversity of every kind, because this is a guarantee of growth, innovation, security and development for the businesses and people of the Tampa Bay region.

The facts speak for themselves. More than half of the Silicon Valley companies founded in the past decade were led by at least one immigrant, according to a new study on the contributions of foreign-born entrepreneurs.

Nationwide in the US, about a quarter of technology and engineering companies created from 1995 through 2004 had at least one foreign-born founder, according to the report by Duke University’s Master of Engineering Management program.

The Duke University report expanded on a  study by UC Berkeley Professor Anna Lee Saxenian, which found that foreign-born scientists and engineers played a critical role in the growth of the California economy, particularly in Silicon Valley.

Successful innovators everywhere seek differentness, and invite new perspectives, input, and insights from the different minds in their organizations. They grow a culture of collaboration and critical thinking. They fight homogeneity and group-think as the path to stagnation, same-old-same-old or The Bay of Pigs (the classic case study of similar thinking people, who were not challenged by different perspectives).

Along with seeking differentness, successful organizations learn the ability to hear even soft murmurs from non-mainstream team members. One of Nissan’s most successful designs was created when the entire staff of NDI was brought out to see what was wrong with a model. A shy secretary mentioned quietly that the car looked sad: a simple redesign of the headlight angles was the key requirement.

Great companies walk the walk of growing their people from the (normal, human) position that most people occupy, which is  comfort with their own culture.  It is not easy to take the journey to recognizing, accepting, adapting to and integrating with other cultures or forms of diversity.  Good organizations provide innovative, enjoyable training and coaching that guides their people and supports them on this path. Ultimately, this helps everyone grow, to think in new ways, and to be ready to serve new markets and new customers in a multi-cultural, multi-generational and global world.

Differentness, distance and innovation require a set of thinking tools that are seldom taught in the US education system. However, once they are learned, these become key assets in 21st century business growth, innovation and project success. As they are learned, they also seep into homes and communities, improving the quality of life outside work, and preparing new generations for our ever-more complex world.

Tampa Bay is home to nearly 130 different ethnic and national groups – a wealth of differentness that can fuel an explosion of growth and innovation if we place a solid value on inclusion and diversity.

The Tampa Bay International Business Council is committed to this work – it delivers, but also values all the help we can get.

Competency & Performance Solutions is an innovative, exciting and affordable learning resource that delivers strong, sustainable and measurable  results within the area of differentness, thinking, management and communication. Call us at 813 598 9184.

There are two basic reasons for tackling diversity (seriously) in an organization. Both are valid.

Compliance and liability fall within one category. This is the risk management or ‘away from problems’ strategy.

The second approach to diversity is a ‘towards strategy’. Here differentness of many kinds becomes a driver of both short- and long-term profitability. The organization moves towards inclusiveness, innovation and engagement.   Differentness is leveraged as part the strategic vision, sales and marketing strategy, branding, talent development and retention, networks and organizational culture.

If you’ve read Stephen James Joyce’s Teaching an Anthill to Fetch: Collaborative Intelligence at Work, you already have a significant piece of the diversity picture.

Compliance and Liability: A risk management or  ‘away from’ strategy.

Please note: there is absolutely nothing wrong with focusing on differentness as a way of keeping out of trouble and away from lawyers.  The point here is that this is only half the diversity story, and can create a focus on “classic”  or on the more legal issues of differentness.

Compliance is essentially a brand, legal and dollar issue. The law of the land is on the side of previously-disadvantaged classes of employees, who are often still statistically disadvantaged by race, gender, disability etc. Corporate liability discrimination suits run into the hundreds of millions of dollars (e.g. 19 May 2010 award against Novartis AG, in New York: $250 million in punitive damages).

Federal law is maintaining its support for diversity in the workplace and has been expanding the rights of Blacks, Latinos, Asians, women, the disabled and other protected classes in the workplace over the past two decades. This aligns with international trends, such as the new Scandinavian laws which mandate 40% of women on company boards.

Employers may lawfully make decisions about hiring, promotions and access to training, using protected employee classifications. However, the most effective ways to grow successful, diverse cultures are through diversity training initiatives, cultural education, outreach programs, diverse recruitment, mentoring, supplier diversity programs etc.

The law permits companies to take direct action to redress imbalances, but diversity training initiatives are preferable.  One reason for a sophisticated approach is that reverse-discrimination claims occasionally arise. Their dollar liability value is minimal, but this is not only about money. This of Sonia Sotomayor’s firemen’s decision and how that became a public debate.  College entrance cases have also received publicity.  Given a polarized political climate, unionized employees or a conservative brand, it is more effective to improve your diversity culture with education than with the considerable power of diversity law.

Profitability: a ‘towards’ strategy.

In many economic thinkers’ opinions, profitability is the better reason for investing in a culture of diversity or differentness.

A culture of diversity attracts the best and the brightest. Many companies take a very keen interest in diversity because they keep an eye on Vault.com, GreatPlaceToWork.com, Glassdoor.com, Jobvent.com and other websites, that GenX and GenY use when researching companies to work for. High-talented members of these generations generally check cultural diversity as a basic requirement for career plans.

The core challenge of the 21st century is innovation. Competitive advantage lies in new perspectives on the eternal question: how do we create and sell more new products and services, or more of our existing products and services, to new or existing customers? How do we create better processes and higher quality? How do we do this cost-effectively, sustainably and creatively while having at least some fun along the way?

Innovation thrives in an environment of diversity of perspective, experience and input. The numeric-based business case for this is in places like Mobilizing Minds: Creating Wealth from Talent in the 21st-Century Organization, 2007, by McKinsey’s Bryan and Joyce. Richard Florida is more a accessible writer if you prefer something you can browse at bedtime.

Diverse environments widen people’s worldviews, remove people’s blinders, and build cognitive flexibility. People possess many areas of competence, knowledge and insight that remain separated from their working lives by an arbitrary boundary of “this is not work stuff.” Training and experience in differentness dissolve this artificial barrier, and a vast range of skills and knowledge becomes available.

Diverse environments attract many different types of differentness. Once a company culture opens up to different races and ethnicities, languages, gender and gender orientations, generations, religions, disabilities, veterans, parents etc (all the ‘classic’ diversities), this encourages other types of differentness to emerge. The gardener and the part-time artist, the choir leader and the runner, the geek, the writer and the traveller suddenly appear from amongst your people and their idiosyncratic skills, perspectives and experiences become team resources.

A truly diverse culture delivers an emotionally mature workforce with problem solving skills, project management competencies and interpersonal intelligence, and it has many other advantages. Customers, project partners, high-talent colleagues and valuable network members are often from different genders, races, ethnicities, religions or nations.

Many of these people are from diffuse cultures, and it takes time and trust to get to know them. Mainstream Caucasian US culture one of the most specific cultures in the world. The specific/diffuse cultural difference is one of those invisible cultural boundaries that cannot be seen, or truly understood, without either training or long-term interaction with diffuse culture members. The same is true of the individualist/collectivist divide, the universalist/particularist gap etc.

Companies who do not pay attention to differentness suffer “revolving door syndrome” as they lose high-talent minority hires. They are also mystified as their minority, multinational and diverse customers bleed away to competitors.

Similarly, organizations with good differentness programs and real diversity commitment (from recruitment and development to supplier diversity) find themselves making steady profits, and building trust, networks, employment brand and other advantages. They too are sometimes mystified at how powerful diversity values are in delivering dollar-based results.

Away from and towards:

In Teaching an Anthill to Fetch, Joyce observes that an ‘away from’ strategy begins strongly and tails off as it achieves most of its objectives. For instance, if a service desk wants to very few complaints, they will do enough work to get very few complaints , then ease off. A target of zero does not make a good, continuous goal.

A ‘towards’ strategy grows as it moves towards its objectives, because it is not based on avoidance. For example, a “get out the vote” initiative has no limits, a design team goes all out for better designs as an event draws nearer, or an entrepreneur’s dreams grow with success.

Business needs to pay attention to diversity-differentness for many reasons. They are all valid, and there’s no need to pick only one good reason, when you can pick all of them.

But ‘building a vibrant, creative, inclusive and thriving economy” is more fun that “avoiding lawyers” any day of the week.

They do, of course (see links, below*).

Can you harness a significant amount of that power, skillfully and systematically, to build your career and business, in an economy of complexity and information overload?

Can you guide your team to use that power? Can you direct this capacity towards the things that super-computers can’t do: innovation, effective communication, relationship-building, collaboration and results?

Brains are wonderful, but they have two drawbacks.

1. They don’t come with a users’ manual. There is a widespread scarcity of training for leveraging their real capacity. This is serious, because thinking tools are needed for single users, or for those who need to think effectively in collaboration with others.

2. Power in any form is intimidating. Brains are very powerful, and success creates expectations.

Those who think well often acquire new responsibilities for problem solving, conflict resolution, project success etc.

If you have a good toolbox of thinking strategies, you may be expected to guide others through complexity, or show them how to step up to 21^st century challenges.  This can interfere with hobbies, community service or relaxing on the sofa in front of TV. There are many people who are not really interested in learning how to think well, because their comfort zone would be disturbed by their true abilities.

*1: Video: Your amazing brain: http://www.ted.com/talks/henry_markram_supercomputing_the_brain_s_secrets.html

2: Read: We have no computers today that can begin to approach the awesome power of the human mind: http://insidehpc.com/2009/03/12/even-supercomputers-not-yet-close-to-the-raw-power-of-human-brain/

3: Browse: Google “human brain power supercomputer teraflops.”

• Review the work of operational managers in 21st century organizations.
• Consider what competencies make the difference between excellent and ordinary operational managers.
• Define you business objectives (aligning these with your own organizational strategy and objectives).
• Assess how you communicate these, as a concrete, specific game plan of goals and standards, to your team.
• Review and practice two thinking tools (project thinking and problem solving, with risk assessment).
• Carry out an effective operational planning exercise.
• Analyze your delegation techniques (using situational leadership and adding the ‘One Thing’ approach).
• Rethink ways of managing knowledge workers in a 21st century environment, using feedback, co-creation and collaboration.
• Analyze how teams and people work, assess whether yours is synergistic and engaged, and (if not) what needs changing and why.
• Assess the 21^st century manager’s role as a coach.
• Check your diagnostic toolbox, and whether you have the required tools to execute for quality and results (competencies, peer-coaches etc).
• Check yourself against the ultimate measure of a manager: you must deliver.

• Conclusion.

Care for You Business, Care for All Resources

Businesses face soaring energy, operating and facilities costs. The State of Florida struggles with water shortages, damage to Florida’s fragile ecosystem, and the threat of climate change to our low-lying state. Sustainability issues threaten our entire world, economically and environmentally.

The research is conclusive. Green attitudes, thinking and actions are measurably profitable, and have multiple benefits such as employee engagement, process innovation, gains in brand and company reputation, and positive share performance.

The biggest challenge? Employee buy-in. Green thinking only happens one person at a time. It cannot be commanded or legislated.

Competency & Performance Solutions, specialists in accelerated, attitudinal learning, offers a two-hour, collaborative workshop, in which participants discover the many ways that a commitment to sustainability can make their lives and work more rewarding and secure. Every participant is fully immersed in an innovative, interactive group-based, teaching-and-learning process.

The two-hour workshop includes:

• Green workplaces, systems and work-styles
• Energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly business options
• Sustainable transit and transport
• Green homes and families

Workshops are available, on or off-site, by arrangement, for groups of up to 50 participants.

Second Prize: Engaged staff, increased retention, teamwork and trust.

First Prize: A long-term, company-wide culture of awareness of the importance of respecting and protecting corporate information. Employee-driven emphasis on its role in trust-based business relationships, legal obligations to business partners, competitive advantage etc.

In CPS’s Managing Millennials workshop, we suggest many ways to give your Generation Ys some variety in their work, to engage their interest and loyalty, and to offer some outlet for their creative minds, as they focus on routine tasks. Most of these suggestions leverage their technological and generational-specific skills, for the well-being of the organization.

We have recently added another interesting task. Please consider adding it to your list.

Large amounts of proprietary information, including details of prospective contracts and other material that falls into the area of “stuff that shouldn’t be out there” is getting onto the web through blogging, social networking and other breaches of privacy.

Let us assume:

1) that you have trained your Generation Ys, as covered in the workshop, on privacy guidelines and confidentiality.

2) that you are working towards a collaborative and trust-based relationship with your people, because you know the business need for this and the bottom-line values of engagement and retention.

3) that you know the size of the threat of the web-based privacy problem and the numbers involved (look at things like www.websense.com)

You could take a Big Brother approach to protecting your valuable information, and sign up with an information monitoring service. You could take a collaborative, team-based approach and rotate the task amongst your GenYs and GenXs. This will a) get the job done, b) give them some fun, varied tasks (and you know what that’s worth!) and c) create a deep and lasting culture of awareness of the importance of protecting corporate information. And culture change is always the first prize.

It’s not hard to do. [Remember that other generations might be interested - do not exclude them, especially if you are a small enough organization.]

• Call a meeting (remember that pizza!) or send out an email (using E-writing, people…  not 20th century Composition 101!)
• Present the problem of information security, and some information about what various companies are doing about it.
• Put your people into groups or a group to discuss approaches. (You know the drill – a time limit or 24 hours to email group leader and 24 more for the synthesized group responses).
• Take feedback and let them map most of the plan. Review your Marshall Goldsmith rules, and don’t hijack the project because you know more than them. Don’t let them run amok – provide clear guidelines like time off the main job for any one person.
• The end product must have clear objectives and metrics, clear time frames, and must be high on direction, with strong structure from a good executor. No fuzzy edges, no dependence on a “big vision with minimal direction.” The whole thing must run on a system, with short goal spans, not on people remembering things. The check-ins, check-ups and assessments must all be put in the system at the very beginning.
• Encourage your team towards continuous improvement, and ownership of the project. A Ning-based or intra-net based discussion forum for the team (with senior management on the group) would be a great idea.
• Remember to give feedback to your praise-hungry young talent. And any other generations involved. Remember? You said you kinda also like feedback, and you enjoy being praised too!

Let CPS know how you’re doing Glynis

In July 2009, the BBC World Service reported a $180 million cost to United Airlines, when Dave Carroll’s viral video “United Breaks Guitars” led to a share price drop of approximately 10%. www.longislandexchange.com

Carroll’s band and other passengers witnessed guitars being thrown on the tarmac by careless baggage handlers before take-off, and reported this to United staff. Three people showed no interest in their plight, and United dodged his $1200 claim for a $3,500 guitar for a year before denying it completely. Carroll’s song (complete with the badly-mutilated guitar) is apparently destined to become a United training tool. Enjoy it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

Disengagement is a major business problem, with many causes. These include a lack of skillful management, selection/succession procedures that do not put the right person in the right job, and inattention to climate and culture. And, of course,  measurable, affordable and effective learning interventions.

CPS is privileged to work with some truly excellent companies, who drive engagement from the top, and have a strong awareness of the cost of disengagement, and its consequences.  They have put the real numbers on retention,  productivity, service, quality, innovation, on-going process improvement, collaborative intelligence and the on-going development of competitive advantage.

Those who want to drive change in the engagement issue do best when they produce the numbers. No one gets out of their comfort zone without a compelling case for action, and many of the people who make key decisions have a background of thinking in terms of numbers, not on whether their people bring their whole selves to work.

Give them the real, hard numbers, plus the basis on which those numbers were derived (c-psolutions has things like how to calculate the cost of turnover etc if anyone needs them). Show them the hard research on why people go through the motions at work or leave their jobs. Give them valid metrics on the impact of disengagement on sales, service and customer retention.

Theory speaks to some people, but the business case is the best and most compelling reason to take the action needed to engage our workforce.

And to stop people breaking those poor guitars.

CPS is eligible to provide custom solutions to clients with state funding assistance, and helps our clients to source these. As a values- and ethics-based small business, CPS specializes in affordable, lasting solutions to people and business challenges.

CPS now has permission to publish a highly entertaining MiIllennial’s perspective. Paul exemplifies many of the characteristics of the 21st century GenY knowledge worker: massive technical knowledge, a graduate education, and a history of entrepreneurship. Born in Tampa, he is an experienced, multi-lingual global traveler and married to a physics PhD student.  Enjoy!

Then go on www.glassdoor.com (or something similar) and see whether your organization also needs to think seriously about collaborative management, collaborative thinking, and the competitive and innovative edge your Millennials bring to the table..

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Almost all of the places I’ve worked (including some rather large companies) treat their programmers like highly trained plumbers they’ve hired to install a new toilet.. “I want all of your technical skills, and no independent thought. Just put it over there where we’ve drawn the circle on the ground.”

“Er, are you sure you want it there? I think that it would be better if-”

“No buts! See the circle? Toilet goes there. We did a user requirements study, paid the consultants (experts, all of them) tons of money for it, and this is where a toilet is optimally situated.”

“I think there might be some mistake, shouldn’t it go-”

“Damn programmers! You think you’re so smart! But you don’t know anything about BUSINESS™! I have an MBA! I’m smart! Smarter than you! I just choose not to bother with petty technical details. Now shut up and get to work!”

“Ok, you’re the boss..”

Two weeks later, when it’s done they say: “WTF, why did you put a toilet in the kitchen?”

“Well, you told me to shut up and put it where you drew the circle. You drew the circle in the kitchen, so that’s where I put the toilet.”

“AAAAH! This is horrible! Who puts a toilet in the kitchen! Programmer, this is your fault!”

“But I tried to tell you-”

“Fine, whatever, we don’t have time for this, it’s deliverable in a week! Take it out and move it to the bathroom!”

“You mean that cube over there on the side of the house with the wooden frame and no roof, electricity, or water access, because you forgot to put those things into the blueprints?”

“AAAAH! My 12 year old nephew is really good with plumbing. He changed a washer in my kitchen sink once when it was dripping AND he’s read at least 3 of those Time-Life home plumbing guides. He knows much more than you! And he’ll work for $10 an hour! Why am I paying you? You didn’t even get someone to install electrical wires a roof in the bathroom.”

“Er, I’m not a general contractor, I’m a plumber. Plumbers install pipes, not wires and roofs. And anyway, your architect drew the blueprints without those things, and you yelled at us when we pointed that out, so we all figured you just didn’t want them there for some reason.”

“OMGWTF! You’re lying!”

“No, I’m not, see, I have a copy of the e-mails right here where we discussed this…”

“*reads for a moment* Hm. ok, it’s true, you’re right. Architect! You’re fired! Plumber, you will now perform both plumbing and architectural duties (for the same pay, and with the same deadline as before.) And install some electrical wires, too.”

“But .. making blueprints takes weeks, and I’m not an electrician or an architect or a general contract-”

“Tut tut, you’re smart, I’m sure you’ll manage. Now I’m going to my club to get drunk before meeting my friends at a strip club later. Oh, and we need the house ready to go by tomorrow, the client just called
(actually 3 weeks ago, but I’m just telling you now) and the timetable has been sped up.”

“Er. I can’t just magic things up faster because the client decides to move numbers on a timetable.”

“They’re running out of money, so we have to get it done. Now get cracking, I’m off….”

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CPS thanks Paul for permission to use the above text on www.c-psolutions.com. Paul, you’re far from being the only person who has told us a story like this, but you have to be the funniest.

Paul also contributed: If Architects Had to Work Like Web Designers

Please design and build me a house. I am not quite sure of what I need, so you should use your discretion. My house should have somewhere between two and forty-five bedrooms. Just make sure the plans are such that the bedrooms can be easily added or deleted. When you bring the blueprints to me, I will make the final decision of what I want. Also, bring me the cost breakdown for each configuration so that I can arbitrarily pick one.

Keep in mind that the house I ultimately choose must cost less than the one I am currently living in. Make sure, however, that you correct all the deficiencies that exist in my current house (the floor of my kitchen vibrates when I walk across it, and the walls don’t have nearly enough insulation in them).

As you design, also keep in mind that I want to keep yearly maintenance costs as low as possible. This should mean the incorporation of extra-cost features like aluminum, vinyl, or composite siding. (If you choose not to specify aluminum, be prepared to explain your decision in detail.)

Please take care that modern design practices and the latest materials are used in construction of the house, as I want it to be a showplace for the most up-to-date ideas and methods. Be alerted, however, that kitchen should be designed to accommodate, among other things, my 1952 Gibson refrigerator.

To insure that you are building the correct house for our entire family, make certain that you contact each of our children, and also our in-laws. My mother-in-law will have very strong feelings about how the house should be designed, since she visits us at least once a year.

Make sure that you weigh all of these options carefully and come to the right decision. I, however, retain the right to overrule any choices that you make.

Please don’t bother me with small details right now. Your job is to develop the overall plans for the house: Get the big picture. At this time, for example, it is not appropriate to be choosing the color of the carpet. However, keep in mind that my wife likes blue.

Also, do not worry at this time about acquiring the resources to build the house itself. Your first priority is to develop detailed plans and specifications. Once I approve these plans, however, I would expect the house to be under roof within 48 hours.

While you are designing this house specifically for me, keep in mind that sooner or later I will have to sell it to someone else. It therefore should have appeal to a wide variety of potential buyers.

Please make sure before you finalize the plans that there is a consensus of the population in my area that they like the features this house has. I advise you to run up and look at my neighbor’s house that he constructed last year. We like it a great deal. It has many features that we would also like in our new home, particularly the 75-foot swimming pool. With careful engineering, I believe that you can design this into our new house without impacting the final cost.

Please prepare a complete set of blueprints. It is not necessary at this time to do the real design, since they will be used only for construction bids. Be advised, however, that you will be held accountable for any increase of construction costs as a result of later design changes.

You must be thrilled to be working on as an interesting project as this! To be able to use the latest techniques and materials and to be given such freedom in your designs is something that can’t happen very often.

Contact me as soon as possible with your complete ideas and plans.

PS: My wife has just told me that she disagrees with many of the instructions I’ve given you in this letter. As architect, it is your responsibility to resolve these differences. I have tried in the past and have been unable to accomplish this. If you can’t handle this responsibility, I will have to find another architect.

PPS: Perhaps what I need is not a house at all, but a travel trailer. Please advise me as soon as possible if this is the case.

But your Millennials are finding out a great truth about business – that risk takers and innovators are a good thing in theory, but in practice they usually receive a very cool reception.

”You should not wonder why innovation doesn’t happen in most organizations. For much of the journey, innovation is hard work rewarded by bad headlines” says Rick Porras et al in “Success Built to Last” (2006, Wharton School Publishing), which explores the work of successful people who have achieved extraordinary results for at least 20 years.

Porras et al define the best strategy for innovators as “tolerate the risks, feel the fear, take the brickbats, learn from failure and do what matters to you anyway”. Oh yes? GenYs may be more likely to blog bitterly about how their ideas are being ignored, and then look for another employer, or get some start-up capital and become entrepreneurs.

What your managers need to know:

Managing the Millennials is not simply an intuitive process which can be done without specific thought about the challenges which this demographic group presents.

Embedding this principle in the organization’s knowledge:

Organizations themselves can learn to become progressively more agile in response to differentness. Generational differentness is merely one part of the spectrum of human diversity.

You don’t help your organization learn to cope with heterogeneity because it is a compliance issue. You do this because it creates competence and confidence in the organization’s ability to respond easily and fluently to cultural, lifestyle and generational differences. And the result is trust, communication, agility, innovation and good business – on the bottom line. This is the kind of competitive advantage which companies like Genentech have been leveraging for years!

Great read: Dov Seidman’s How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything…in Business (and in Life). Probably more for the serious reader of business and management books, but a great explanation of the need for reputation and trust in a transparent business world (which tech-savvy GenYs live in).

You can safely dismiss Publishers Weekly’s comment that Seidman does not explain exactly how this can be done. I wondered whether those guys live under a rock if they haven’t seen any of the last 15 years of literature and research on exactly how these strategies can be implemented!