(p. 46) It was never that layoffs were anathema to Telling as such; he just resented the sloppiness of a 10-percent across-the-board layoff when some areas of the company should have been cut by 40 percent and some built up by half.
Source:
Katz, Donald R. The Big Store: Inside the Crisis and Revolution at Sears. New York: Viking Adult, 1987.
Writing of Ed Telling, the eventual entrepreneurial CEO of Sears:
(p. 488) Slowly, the introverted Field soldier from Danville moved up through the organization. He eventually managed the same Midwestern zone he was once made to ride. He found himself in the decadent city-state called the New York group, and it was there, in the strangely methodical fury with which he fell upon the corruption of the group and the profligacy of powerful store jockeys, that certain individuals around him began to feel inspired by his quiet power, as if he’d touched some inverted desire in each of them to do justice at his beckoning and to even numerous scores. He was possessed of a determination to promulgate change such as none of them had ever seen before, and certain hard-bitten bitten veterans like Bill Bass found themselves strangely moved.
Source:
Katz, Donald R. The Big Store: Inside the Crisis and Revolution at Sears. New York: Viking Adult, 1987.
There are a fair number of case studies and biographies of important new product innovations. Rarer are the case studies of process innovations. Two great exceptions are Marc Levinson’s The Box and The Great A&P. I have recently read another exception, this one by Donald Katz, about how Ed Telling brought process innovations to Sears from the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s.
In the next few weeks, I will be quoting several of the more useful, or thought-provoking passages.
The book discussed, is:
Katz, Donald R. The Big Store: Inside the Crisis and Revolution at Sears. New York: Viking Adult, 1987.
(p. 17) The dominant brand, Harvard Business School, claims to “educate leaders who make a difference in the world.” The University of Michigan’s Ross School does one better, developing “leaders who make a positive difference in the world.” Kellogg at Northwestern develops “brave leaders who inspire growth in people, organizations and markets.” And Duke’s Fuqua says it does what it does because “the world needs leaders of consequence.”
. . .
Which raises the question, once again, of whether leadership can be packaged and taught, rather than accumulated through experience.
John Van Maanen, a professor of management at M.I.T. Sloan who teaches a course named “Leading Organizations,” isn’t so sure it can. “Even today, three-plus decades in, there’s no real definition of it,” he says. “We can make people more conscious of ethical dilemmas in business, of the difficulty of directing people in times of adversity, and the confidence and communication skills necessary to do so. But the idea that such skills can be transmitted so that you can lead anybody at any time, that’s ideologically vacuous.”
For the full commentary, see:
DUFF McDONALD. “Can You Learn to Lead?” The New York Times, Education Life Section (Sun., APRIL 12, 2015): 17.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date APRIL 7 (sic), 2015.)
(p. A1) Originally conceived in 1950s Germany, the open-plan office has migrated from tech start-ups to advertising agencies, architecture firms and even city governments. Now it has reached what is perhaps its most unlikely frontier yet: book publishing.
Few industries seem as uniquely ill suited to the concept. The process of acquiring, editing and publishing books is rife with moments requiring privacy and quiet concentration. There are the sensitive negotiations with agents; the wooing of prospective authors; the poring over of manuscripts.
. . .
(p. B6) Even as the walls of America’s workplaces continue to come crashing down, leaving only a handful of holdouts — like corporate law firms — a number of recent studies have been critical of the effects of open-plan offices on both the productivity and happiness of cube dwellers.
“The evidence against open-plan offices is mounting,” said Nikil Saval, the author of “Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace.” “The idea is that these offices encourage collaboration and serendipitous encounters. But there’s not a lot of evidence behind these claims. Whereas there is a lot of evidence that people don’t like open plans.”
The notion of cookie-cutter cubicles is especially anathema to a certain breed of editors who see themselves more as men and women of letters than they do as businesspeople.
“It’s a world of words that we’re working towards, not an intellectual sweatshop,” said Jonathan Galassi, president and publisher of Farrar, Straus & Giroux and an opponent of open-plan offices.
For book editors, offices provide more than just privacy. They like to fill the bookcases inside with titles that they’ve published, making for a kind of literary trophy case to impress visitors.
For the full story, see:
JONATHAN MAHLER. “Cubicles Rise in a Brave New World of Publishing.” The New York Times (Mon., NOV. 10, 2014): A1 & B6.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date NOV. 9, 2014, and has the title “Climate Tools Seek to Bend Nature’s Path.”)
The Saval book is:
Saval, Nikil. Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace. New York: Doubleday, 2014.
(p. A1) EASTON, N.Y. — Something strange is happening at farms in upstate New York. The cows are milking themselves.
Desperate for reliable labor and buoyed by soaring prices, dairy operations across the state are charging into a brave new world of udder care: robotic milkers, which feed and milk cow after cow without the help of a single farmhand.
Scores of the machines have popped up across New York’s dairy belt and in other states in recent years, changing age-old patterns of daily farm life and reinvigorating the allure of agriculture for a younger, tech-savvy — and manure-averse — generation.
. . .
The cows seem to like it, too.
Robots allow the cows to set their own hours, lining up for automated milking five or six times a day — turning the predawn and late-afternoon sessions (p. A19) around which dairy farmers long built their lives into a thing of the past.
With transponders around their necks, the cows get individualized service. Lasers scan and map their underbellies, and a computer charts each animal’s “milking speed,” a critical factor in a 24-hour-a-day operation.
. . .
The Bordens and other farmers say a major force is cutting labor costs — health insurance, room and board, overtime, and workers’ compensation insurance — particularly when immigration reform is stalled in Washington and dependable help is hard to procure.
The machines also never complain about getting up early, working late or being kicked.
“It’s tough to find people to do it well and show up on time,” said Tim Kurtz, who installed four robotic milkers last year at his farm in Berks County, Pa. “And you don’t have to worry about that with a robot.”
The Bordens say the machines allow them to do more of what they love: caring for animals.
“I’d rather be a cow manager,” Tom Borden said, “than a people manager.”
For the full story, see:
JESSE McKINLEY. “With Farm Robotics, the Cows Decide When It’s Milking Time.” The New York Times (Weds., APRIL 23, 2014): A1 & A19.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date APRIL 22, 2014.)
(p. D2) Introverts’ nervous systems are more sensitive to stimulation than extroverts’ are, according to Susan Cain, author of “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.”
“When introverts get too much stimulation, they feel overwhelmed and jangled,” she said.
With no privacy or way to shield themselves from the commotion, introverts, estimated to make up one-third to one-half of the population, can feel exposed in the modern workplace. Being on display is imposing and distracting to them, Cain said.
Office furniture maker Steelcase Inc. is trying to give the left-behind introverts some love. Its new set of “quiet spaces,” designed in collaboration with Cain, aims to help introverts relax and focus away from the eyes of their coworkers.
. . .
Part of Steelcase’s pitch to potential customers: this is a talent issue. Why spend so much time and money recruiting employees if they can’t focus and work well in your space?
For the full story, see:
RACHEL FEINTZEIG. “How to Avoid that Sinking Feeling When in the Fish Bowl.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., June 3, 2014): D2.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 2, 2014, and has the title “For Office Introverts, a Room of One’s Own.”)
The book mentioned in the passage quoted is:
Cain, Susan. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. New York: Crown, 2012.
(p. A22) Beginning in 1992, Mr. Zambrano bought up far-flung producers to create the third-largest cement company in the world. He remade each new acquisition, introducing high technology and logistical efficiencies that made Cemex the subject of business school case studies at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
From his own computer Mr. Zambrano could monitor any Cemex operation in more than 50 countries, said Rossana Fuentes-Berain, a Mexican journalist who wrote a 2007 book about Mr. Zambrano, “Grey Gold.”
What distinguished him was “the technology, the management and the hunger to prove that you can be as good as anybody in the market,” Ms. Fuentes-Berain said.
For the full obituary, see:
ELISABETH MALKIN. “Lorenzo Zambrano, 70, Leader of Cemex, Dies.” The New York Times (Thurs., May 15, 2014): A22.
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date MAY 13, 2014, and has the title “Lorenzo H. Zambrano, Head of Cement Giant Cemex, Dies at 70.”)
The biography mentioned above, as of this posting, is only available in Spanish:
Fuentes-Berain, Rossana. Oro Gris: Zambrano, La Gesta de Cemex y la Globalizacion en Mexico. Aguilar, 2007.
(p. B4) A study published this year in the journal Experimental Brain Research found that measurements of people’s heart rates, hormonal levels and other factors while watching a boring movie — men hanging laundry — showed greater signs of stress than those watching a sad movie.
“We tend to think of boredom as someone lazy, as a couch potato,” said James Danckert, a professor of neuroscience at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, and a co-author of the paper. “It’s actually when someone is motivated to engage with their environment and all attempts to do so fail. It’s aggressively dissatisfying.”
It’s not just the amount of work, Professor Spector said, also but the type. . . .
“You can be very busy and a have a lot to do and still be bored,” he said. The job — whether a white-collar managerial position or blue-collar assembly line role — also needs to be stimulating.
. . .
In a 2011 paper based on the doctoral dissertation of his student Kari Bruursema, Professor Spector and his co-authors found that the stress of boredom can lead to counterproductive work behavior, like calling in sick, taking long breaks, spending time on the Internet for nonwork-related reasons, gossiping about colleagues, playing practical jokes or even stealing. While most workers engage in some of these activities at times, the bored employee does it far more frequently, he said.
For the full story, see:
ALINA TUGEND. “Shortcuts; The Contrarians on Stress: It Can Be Good for You.” The New York Times (Sat., OCT. 4, 2014): B4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date OCT. 3, 2014.)
The Experimental Brain Research study mentioned above, is:
Merrifield, Colleen, and James Danckert. “Characterizing the Psychophysiological Signature of Boredom.” Experimental Brain Research 232, no. 2 (Feb. 2014): 481-91.
The article mentioned above, that is co-authored by Spector, is:
Bruursema, Kari, Stacey R. Kessler, and Paul E. Spector. “Bored Employees Misbehaving: The Relationship between Boredom and Counterproductive Work Behaviour.” Work & Stress 25, no. 2 (April 2011): 93-107.
(p. C3) Not long after I first met Warren Buffett back in 1991, I asked him to recommend his favorite book about business. He didn’t miss a beat: “It’s ‘Business Adventures,’ by John Brooks, ” he said. “I’ll send you my copy.” I was intrigued: I had never heard of “Business Adventures” or John Brooks.
Today, more than two decades after Warren lent it to me–and more than four decades after it was first published–“Business Adventures” remains the best business book I’ve ever read. John Brooks is still my favorite business writer. (And Warren, if you’re reading this, I still have your copy.)
. . .
One of Brooks’s most instructive stories is “Xerox Xerox Xerox Xerox.” (The headline alone belongs in the Journalism Hall of Fame.) The example of Xerox is one that everyone in the tech industry should study. Starting in the early ’70s, Xerox funded a huge amount of R&D that wasn’t directly related to copiers, including research that led to Ethernet networks and the first graphical user interface (the look you know today as Windows or OS X).
But because Xerox executives didn’t think these ideas fit their core business, they chose not to turn them into marketable products. Others stepped in and went to market with products based on the research that Xerox had done. Both Apple and Microsoft, for example, drew on Xerox’s work on graphical user interfaces.
I know I’m not alone in seeing this decision as a mistake on Xerox’s part. I was certainly determined to avoid it at Microsoft. I pushed hard to make sure that we kept thinking big about the opportunities created by our research in areas like computer vision and speech recognition. Many other journalists have written about Xerox, but Brooks’s article tells an important part of the company’s early story. He shows how it was built on original, outside-the-box thinking, which makes it all the more surprising that as Xerox matured, it would miss out on unconventional ideas developed by its own researchers. (To download a free e-book of “Xerox Xerox Xerox Xerox,” go to GatesNotes.com.)
For the full review, see:
BILL GATES. “My Favorite Business Book.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., July 12, 2014): C3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the last quoted sentence is in the location, and has the wording, of the printer version, not the online version.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date July 11, 2014, and has the title “Bill Gates’s Favorite Business Book.”)
The book being reviewed is:
Brooks, John. Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street. pb ed. New York: Open Road Integrated Media, Inc., 2014.
(p. A13) Why are large tech companies losing the ability to innovate? Entrepreneur and author Salim Ismail studies the new generation of “exponential corporations,” enterprises that grow 10 times faster than the average rate. He believes that established companies simply aren’t structured for this kind of speed. So their only choice is to buy those companies that can still innovate rapidly.
If Mr. Ismail is correct–and the current dynamic in Silicon Valley suggests that he may be–we’re on the brink of a major restructuring of business strategy, venture capital and almost every part of the high-tech world. It may be time to stop waiting for famous tech companies to roll out the hottest new product and start investing in startups that can sell their innovations to big companies. Tech appears to be evolving into a different kind of field: one that is, paradoxically, more static at the top but also more dependent on entrepreneurship than ever before.
For the full commentary, see:
MICHAEL S. MALONE. “An Innovation Slowdown at the Tech Giants; Seen anything new and big lately from Cisco, Yahoo or even Twitter?” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., July 2, 2014): A13.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date July 1, 2014.)
The Ismail research mentioned above, is discussed further in:
Ismail, Salim, Mike Malone, and Yuri van Geest. Exponential Organizations: Why New Organizations Are Ten Times Better, Faster, Cheaper Than Yours (and What to Do About It). New York: Diversion Books, 2014.
