Cracking the Code

The Creator’s Code: The Six Essential Skills of Extraordinary Entrepreneurs – Amy Wilkinson (Simon and Schuster)

Imagine…you have spent countless hours accessing and interviewing some 200 successful entrepreneurs; in the process generating mountains of transcripts and information. Working your way through this mound of information you start to see trends emerge that you can boil down into an easily accessible list that aspiring entrepreneurs can put into play.

That, in a nutshell, is what Stanford lecturer and business advisor Amy Wilkinson has done with her book The Creator’s Code: The Six Essential Skills of Extraordinary Entrepreneurs.

 

Wilkinson’s Six Essentials list includes:

1. FIND THE GAP: By staying alert, creators spot opportunities that others don't see.
2. DRIVE FOR DAYLIGHT: Just as race-car drivers keep their eyes fixed on the road ahead, creators focus on the future.
3. FLY THE OODA LOOP: Creators continuously update their assumptions. In rapid succession, they observe, orient, decide, and act.
4. FAIL WISELY: Creator set failure ratios, place small bets to test ideas, and develop resilience. They hone the skill to turn setbacks into successes.
5. NETWORK MINDS: Creators bring together diverse brainpower to come up with breakthrough solutions.
6. GIFT SMALL GOODS: Creators unleash generosity by helping others, often by sharing information, pitching in to complete a task, or opening opportunities to colleagues.

Working my way through Wilkinson’s list, it made sense that there was a level of interconnectivity between the pieces of the code puzzle. These six essentials tend to match nicely with business principles I have been a fan of for a long time; notably number one which matches well with my aspiration to Blue Ocean Strategy and creating new market space.

Is The Creator’s Code an Earth shattering business breakthrough…probably not, but it is a nice, concise volume that deserves a place on your business bookshelf.

Sweat The Small Stuff

Small Data: The Tiny Clues That Uncover Huge Trends – Martin Lindstrom (St. Martin’s Press)

For years we’ve been told “don’t sweat the small stuff.” Now bestselling author and business consultant Martin Lindstrom makes the case that if you want to be a successful business owner that you should be doing the exact opposite; that you need to focus on the small things because the devil is in the details.

With his new book, Small Data: The Tiny Clues That Uncover Huge Trends, the author of Buyology, makes the case that while so-called big data can tell you what people are doing, it is the small data that reveals why they are doing what they are doing.

Through his up close and personal observation of consumers in their environment, rather than in a sterile hotel conference room focus group, Lindstrom manages to drill down to the nuts and bolts of consumers and their behaviors based on methodologies that are rooted in ethnography (the scientific descriptions of people’s cultures and customs) and anthropology.

While hard core data scientists may blanch at some of Lindstrom’s gut level hunch approach to consumer science, it really is hard to argue with a guy who spends 300 nights a year traveling the globe and staying in the homes of those he observes. Consider it consumer science and marketing Airbnb- style.

 

Shift to What Fits

Under New Management – How Leading Organizations are Upending Business as Usual – David Burkus (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

David Burkus’ bona fides include; business school professor, bestselling author, contributor to Harvard Business Review and Forbes, speaker and consultant to Fortune 500 companies. With his latest effort Under New Management – How Leading Organizations are Upending Business as Usual, Burkus serves up an overview of a series of paradigm shifting business practices that have been put into play at a variety of business.

As with many dynamic shifts in long held business practices, these business practices will likely be met with some serious push back because they fly squarely in the face of “how we do things.”

 

While Burkus gives plenty of examples of companies who have put these shifts into practice things like pay people to quit, ban email and lose the standard vacation policy have a radical ring to them. Therein lies the rub; while at places like Zappos, Amazon and tech firms these kinds of things might make sense, the reality is, most businesses aren’t like those companies, which make these changes difficult if not impossible to implement.

The trick is to find which of these management shifts that makes sense for your business and you can implement in your company. One that is an easy starting place is the hire as a team concept. Rather than centralizing the hiring process with a human resources leader, why not involve those frontline staffers who will be working side by side with the potential new hire in the selection process? It’s those folks who are best attuned to the needs of their departments and what it takes to be a part of their team.

While banning email might not work, understanding the negative impact that high volumes of email have on your productivity and working to limit how you use email might be a better fit for your business. Burkus isn’t suggesting a one size fits all approach, but rather utilizing and adapting what works best for you.