The Obvious: Everything You Need to Know to Succeed
JAMES DALE
THE OBVIOUS
Everything you need to know to succeed
Dedication
To my wife, Ellen. I was going to make a list of all the things you mean to me, but the publisher said I had to leave room for the book. I love you. Obviously.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction
Part I – Work is a verb
The bottom is a good place to start
There are no shortcuts
Work is a challenge. Or it should be.
Part II – It’s not about you
It is about everyone but you
Go on an ego diet
The credit will find you
Part III – Don’t be a jerk. Be reasonable, kind, decent, fair – in a word – nice.
There’s something to this Golden Rule thing
The bad guys make the good guys look better
Play fair – what a concept
You’re judged by the company you keep
Part IV – Listen more than you talk
Shut up
Listen. Then hear.
You can learn a lot from great listeners. And bad ones.
It’s okay to be ignorant. It’s not okay to stay that way.
Ask. It’s a great way to find out what you don’t know.
Part V – Every job is sales
Don’t sell. Solve.
Give people what they want (not what you want them to want)
Buying is selling
The customer is always right … even when she’s wrong
Part VI – Simple is better than complicated
You can see more clearly from a distance
Ahem. Pay Attention.
Throw out your mental trash
Part VII – Less is more
Extra long is for suits, not meetings
Don’t write in ink (50% of all meetings get changed)
Cut the budget
Cut your losses
Part VIII – Say what you mean
It’s more important to do business than to speak business
A weasel is a rodent
Mean what you say
Part IX – Honesty – the most oowerful weapon in business
There’s no such thing as a good liar
An excuse is not a reason
Apologize
Take responsibility
Part X – Open your mind – let ideas in
Whatever you think, think the opposite
Failure is good
Change happens
Global is the new local
Just because someone is rich doesn’t make him smart
You have to get old. You don’t have to think old.
Part XI – Reality – deal with it
Life isn’t fair. Get over it.
Consistency beats a hot streak every time
Don’t look backward. There’s nothing there.
Most things aren’t as serious as they seem (but some are)
Part XII – Don’t keep score
Envy is ugly
Grudges are stupid
Forgive and forget – or at least one out of two
Ignore titles, especially your own
Money is a tool, not a god
It’s 0–0 tomorrow
Part XIII – Energy – the unfair edge
Show up
Today is a good time to do something
Obsessive–compulsive isn’t all bad
Patience is a virtue. So is impatience.
Don’t take “no.” Press “0.”
Work is not a hobby
Part XIV – Imagine you worked for you
Be the boss. Don’t be bossy.
Take Boss 101. Learn from best and worst.
Hire someone smarter than you
Promote someone who isn’t ready
Trust someone – besides yourself
Firing hurts – or it should
Everyone has a boss – even the boss
Part XV – Take inventory
If you wait for things to be different, you’re in for a long wait
If you have to ask for a raise, quit
Start over tomorrow – but don’t do it the same way
Copyright
About the Publisher
Introduction
The secrets to success in business aren’t secrets at all. They’re beliefs, ideas, values, and strategies most of us already know, but ignore. Tell the truth. Share the credit. Listen more than you talk. Open your mind. They’re in plain sight, staring us in the face, fundamental and familiar – in a word, obvious. Maybe too obvious. They’ve been recited to us by our parents and grandparents. Words to live by. As likely to appear in a fortune cookie as an MBA textbook. In fact, they are so fundamental, they may have been taken for granted or ignored, and certainly not practiced to their highest effect.
They’re simply obvious. Not tricky, sly, clever, or even complicated. Just proven effective, over and over, irrefutably. Not in a hypothetical case or historic analogy or cute parable, but in real life, in real deals, in real business. They work. Regardless of the field of business – from airlines to biotech to apparel to building to marketing to shipping to demolition to design to wholesale to retail to service to security to insurance to entertainment. Regardless of the job – from sales rep to department head to regional manager to HR to CFO to CEO. Same principles, same results, always effective.
If they’re obvious and they work and we’re already familiar with them, why do we ignore them? Maybe because human beings have a weakness for tricks, gimmicks, and schemes – shortcuts to the pot of gold – anything but the obvious. Maybe because we haven’t treated The Obvious with same respect as we treat shortcuts. Maybe because we’ve never looked at The Obvious closely enough to see not only how effective they are, but why, and how best to use them. Maybe they haven’t been assembled and explained in one place where we could see how compelling they are, individually and especially, together.
Here they are. The Obvious, a collection of the principles – beliefs, ideas, values, and strategies – that work. Where did they come from? The best sources on earth. From historians, story-tellers, moralists, famous minds like Ben Franklin and Woody Allen, humble minds like our grandparents and parents, from real life, from fairy tales, and from experience, the wisest teacher of all. Their efficacy has been proven; their potency has rarely been realized; they are effective immediately. Every new self-help book would have us believe they’ve discovered the new secret formula for success. It’s not new; it’s not secret; and it’s not a formula. It’s old; it’s well-known; and it’s all here. The Obvious – all assembled in one book, divided into logical categories, explaining why each principle is obvious, how and why it works, and how you can use it. They’re all you need to know. Period.
Work means, literally, “to exert oneself.” Work is hard. It’s demanding, frustrating, stressful, complicated, challenging, even exhausting. It’s heavy lifting, for the body and the mind. No wonder a lot of people don’t like to do it. Or would rather rationalize why they didn’t, can’t, or won’t do it. Who wouldn’t rather point the remote control at the TV?
We live in a world that has named and rationalized virtually every shortcoming and excuse, inside and outside the workplace. People can’t just be lazy. They must be under-challenged, distraction-prone, or decision-averse. Which leaves a lot of work un-done. Which creates enormous opportunity for anyone willing to do it. And reward.
Work is a verb. It’s an action – not an observation. Get to it.
The bottom is a good place to start
There’s no shortage of people willing to sit in an executive office. Gaze out at the city from the 58th floor. Buzz for coffee. Have your own bathroom. But you rarely see that ad on Monster.com. Wanted: Inexperienced, unqualified person to tell everyone else what to do, take long lunches. Obscene salary plus bonus, outrageous perks, possible private plane.
It’s hard to start at the top. The bottom, on the other hand, often has openings.
Consider Mark Shapiro. In 1991, after being turned down by 25 of 26 baseball front offices, Shapiro took the lowliest job in the Cleveland Indian organization, “assistant in baseball operations.” Translation: Pick up players at the airport, do math on player stats for contracts, office gofer. Evidently he did it well because he was promoted from one job to another – marketing, scouting, minor league management – all the way to assistant GM and then to General Manager … in charge of a turn-around, just the kind of unglamorous challenge he loves.
Whatever field you’re in, or want to get in, find the job that needs to be done, that people don’t seem to want to do. Sift the data on domestic production vs. off-shoring to Southeast Asia. Research employee benefits to find ways to attract and retain better staff. Pore over competitors’ profile until you find the market they’re neglecting. An interesting thing about the bottom as opposed to the top: There’s a lot to do down there.
Done well, it shows at the end of the quarter and the year – the times when promotions get passed out. And promotions lead to the top.
There are no shortcuts
Did you ever wonder how overnight business sensations get to be overnight sensations? One thing is for sure, it isn’t overnight. It’s over a lot of nights and weekends and years. Most of them were number 2s or 3s, after being division heads, after being in field offices, after coming out of training programs, after graduate school. They don’t call it a ladder of success for nothing. There are rungs. Climb them.
Case in point: the bio of Alan (A.G.) Lafley, CEO of Procter & Gamble, one of the world’s most successful companies. All he did was his job, over and over, all the way to the top.
1977 – Brand Asst, Joy
1978 – Sales Training, Denver
1978 – Asst Brand Mgr, Tide
1980 – Brand Mgr, Dawn & Ivory Snow
1981 – Brand Mgr, Special Assignment & Ivory Snow
1982 – Brand Mgr, Cheer
1983 – Assoc Ad Mgr, PS&D Division
1986 – Ad Mgr, PS&D Division
1988 – GM, Laundry Products, PS&D Division
1991 – VP-Laundry and Cleaning Products, Procter & Gamble USA
1992 – Group VP, Procter & Gamble Co/Pres, Laundry & Cleaning Products, USA
1994 – Group VP, The Procter & Gamble Company/Pres, Procter & Gamble Far East
1995 – Exec VP, The Procter & Gamble Company, (Pres, Procter & Gamble Asia)
1998 – Exec VP, The Procter & Gamble Company, (Pres, Procter & Gamble N. America)
1999 – Pres, Global Beauty Care and N. America
2000 – President and Chief Executive
2002 – Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive
Sure, now and then someone skips a few rungs by inventing a product, starting a company, or inheriting the family business. But you still have to perform. Ask all the dotcom geniuses whose venture capitalists replaced them with veteran CEOs. Or how about the case of the three partners, John, Paul, and George, who squeezed out the fourth, Pete Best, in favor of a guy named Ringo for a musical start-up called The Beatles. Or Edsel Ford who came within a breath of being forced out of the family automobile business by his father, Henry. In the end, nothing matters but results.
There are no shortcuts. It just seems like there are if you’re looking in from the outside. If your job description is “respond to and resolve customer care issues,” if you actually do it effectively every day, pretty soon you’ll be in charge of hiring and training, then setting up an out-sourced customer care unit in Bhopal, India, then overseeing global Customer Relations, then Sales and Marketing, then …
Work is a challenge. Or it should be.
Push yourself. When you master something, take on a tougher task. Not more of what you already do, not another job at another company that’s just a clone of the one you have. Sure, you can coast and do fine. But over time, you’ll get stale and tired and probably lose your edge. It’s like only playing par-three golf courses.
You perform at your best when you’re tested. So, if you’re good at what you do, if you can almost do it blind-folded, stop. Walk away. Raise the stakes. Do something you want to do even if you’re not sure you can do it.
Do what Andrea Jung did. After earning her degree from Princeton, Jung’s high-achiever family was likely less than thrilled that she passed up law school to go into the crass world of retailing. But she rose through the ranks of Bloomingdales and Neiman Marcus to become a star in luxury merchandising. About the time her family might have acknowledged her success, she walked away from what had become relatively easy, to see if she had what it took to re-energize venerable, but aging, make-up marketer, Avon.
It wasn’t like her last job, repeating what she knew; it was taking on a challenge. Jung invested in research to develop new lines of skin cream, opened up overseas markets, and found celebrity endorsers to attract younger buyers. Sales climbed 45%. Avon stock rose 160+%. So did Andrea Jung’s stock. After doing the non-glitzy job of remaking a traditional company, she’s been chased for lots of bigger, glitzier jobs.
Take on a challenge. Even if you fail, you failed at something hard, not easy. And you learn something you didn’t already know.
Don’t expect applause, a raise, the admiration of your peers, or even your boss, when you accomplish something at work. No one else is excited that you made your monthly quotas. Wow! Look at me! Your peers are worried about making their quotas. No one is going to slap you on the back because your orders shipped early, your clients paid their invoices, or you were wooed by a competitor. Wow! Look at me some more! Those things are nice, but they’re expected to happen.
And by the way, no one really cares that you were late because your toddler threw up on your suit on the way to daycare. Or that you need a new transmission. Or that your paycheck doesn’t go as far as it used to.
Because it’s not about your quotas, your orders, your suit, your transmission, or your paycheck. It’s just not about you. It’s about the bottom line – market share, profit and loss, earnings, the stock price. That’s why it’s called business … not Wow! Look at me! Help the company do better and you’ll do better. It’s an old cliché, but clichés get to be clichés by being true.
It is about everyone but you
So, if it’s not about you, then how do you get ahead? Concentrate on what does matter: Results. After you’ve made your quotas, help somebody else make theirs. Find new customers, even for other divisions. Read up on industry trends. Study your competitors. Help young hires find their way. Stay late and re-write presentations. Don’t try to be a hero. Be a problem-solver.
Take the Apollo 13 approach. When we all heard the words, “Houston, we have a problem,” and the mission seemed doomed, who was the hero that saved the day? Was it the commander, Jim Lovell? Or the flight director, Gene Kranz? One of the other astronauts, Fred Haise or John Swigert, or member of the ground team like Ken Mattingly? No, it was not any one of them. It was all of them. They all collaborated to solve the problem, to save the day, and the mission. One of the great rescues of all time, and not one hero … or all heroes.
The best way to lead is to feed. When you’re not just a team member but the one in charge, whether it’s of a meeting, a project, a division, or a company, put everyone else ahead of yourself. Retired General Electric CEO Jack Welch said, “The day you become a leader, it becomes about them. Your job is, walk around with a can of water in one hand and a can of fertilizer in the other hand … and build a garden.”
Go on an ego diet
Cut the “I” out of your thought process and your vocabulary. Also “me” and “my” and “mine.” Starting tomorrow, try to consciously remove the first person from all communications. Literally. Imagine a buzzer goes off every time you invoke yourself or your self-interest. No sentences with “I thinks …” or “the way I see it …” or “I said …” iNo memos or messages with “get back to me” or “that job is mine” or “my department.”
Imagine you don’t exist alone, only as part of something larger. Replace “I” and “me” with “we” and “us” and “ours” instead. “What can we do?” “It’s up to us.” “The challenge is ours.”
It’s not that you don’t count. It’s that the best way to look out for you is to look out for everybody else – the “we” – the sales force, the audit group, the engineers, the designers, R&D, your supervisor, her supervisor, the CEO, the guy in the next office, the whole team, even your arch-rival. If they, we, us survive, you survive. If they, we, us thrive, you thrive.
On the other hand, if you beat your chest, you just get a sore chest.
The credit will find you
If you consistently accomplish things that help the department, division, company, or team, you won’t have to worry about the credit. Success doesn’t hide. Want to be a real star? Don’t shine the spotlight on yourself. Let the results do it for you.
That’s what Phil Jackson taught the Chicago Bulls to take them from playoff bridesmaids to league champions. He invoked poetry, the Grateful Dead, and Zen Buddhism (hey, whatever works) to convince a collection of NBA-sized egos they’d garner more glitz, glamour, money, fame – a.k.a. credit – if they did their jobs together, than if they pursued the credit on their own. He even had to persuade a guy named Michael Jordan he’d be a bigger star if he passed the ball than if he shot it. In the 1991 playoffs, with the entire L.A. Laker team keyed on Jordan, a last-second pass from Jordan to John Paxson resulted in the winning basket … and the first of three back-to-back-to-back championships. Passing the ball isn’t glamorous, just effective.
Think of yourself as a movie producer. You didn’t write the script; you aren’t the lead actor, or the director, or even the special effects expert. You just quietly keep the whole production going. No one asks for your autograph. But if it’s a hit, you make the most money. You’re the one they come to when they want the next hit. That’s more than enough credit. That’s a real star, not a shooting star.
The world has enough jerks. They’re everywhere, especially in business. People who think being tough makes you a better boss. Or who refuse to give a good deal because it might show weakness. Or who can’t compromise. People who yell, demand, intimidate.
Let’s say being a jerk and being nice were equally effective. Which would you rather think of yourself as? Which would you like your children to think of you as? If it were a toss up for efficacy, you’d be nice. But here’s a surprise: Being nice can actually be more effective than being a jerk.
Ron Shapiro is a lawyer/sports agent. Nobody, it would seem, needs to be tougher or more demanding than a sports agent. But Shapiro and his partner, Mark Jankowski, practice, and conduct seminars, in a negotiation philosophy called The Power of Nice. The basic premise is: The best way to get what you want is to help the other person get what he or she wants. Shapiro took that approach to the bargaining table to cut deals for Hall of Fame ballplayers Jim Palmer, Brooks Robinson, Eddie Murray, Kirby Puckett, and (future Hall of Famer) Cal Ripken, Jr., to settle a symphony orchestra strike, to intercede during the baseball shutdown of 1994–1995, and to help the Major League umpires work out their differences with the team owners in 1999–2000. If an agent can be nice – and succeed – so can you.
There’s something to this Golden Rule thing
If you’re unreasonable, unkind, indecent, unfair or not nice to your co-workers, employees, vendors, associates, clients, investors, or partners, they’ll pick up the cues and respond just as badly. Then you have two or more jerks trying to out-jerk each other. On the other hand, if you’re nice, people will be nice back to you, to each other, and to customers, clients, and the outside world.
The J.M. Smucker Company, the jam and jelly giant, believes that being nice, even in little ways, makes everyone happier, which makes the company better.
The company serves all of their many employees complimentary bagels and muffins every day (along with a selection of jams and jellies, of course).
Wegmans, the innovative grocery chain, believes so strongly that being nice is contagious, and good for business, they’ve incorporated the idea into their motto, “Employees first, customers second.” The Wegman family’s rationale: When employees are happy, customers will be too.
You don’t have to own the company or be the boss to be nice. You can pick up an extra mocha grande for your fellow IT guy, acknowledge the innovative thinking of another space designer, encourage an entry-level research assistant, or even tell your supervisor you thought the meeting was productive (if it was.) Guess what? They’ll be nice back.
Being nice is selfish and contagious … in a good way.
The bad guys make the good guys look better
There are a lot of jerks in the world, and unfortunately, many have gravitated to the world of business. Some people can’t help it. Others do it on purpose under the misguided notion that acting tough or demanding or perpetually dissatisfied equates to power and intimidation. The good news is all those jerks make you look better.