Stanford U. partners with Silicon Valley in new hospital project

Apple cofounded effort to design and build $2 billion New Stanford Hospital

Fascinating project coming out of the Bay Area this week:

This month, Apple joined eBay, HP, Intel, Intuit and Oracle in an "unprecedented" joint philanthropic effort to help Stanford Medical Center build a new $2 billion hospital, designed to use the latest technology available in ways mirroring the innovation of Silicon Valley tech companies.

...

More than just contributing resources, the partners will work with New Stanford Hospital planners to develop innovative new approaches to providing patient access, information, education and navigation, a program that "has the ability to change the face of health care," according to Stanford Hospital president and chief executive Amir Dan Rubin.

When looking at the connection that exists between technology providers and the healthcare industry, we're used to seeing a vendor-customer relationship at work; innovation exists in manufacturer's laboratories and is adopted by hospitals as needed. To have this level of involvement between such a unique body of non-healthcare partners in technology should make for a wonderful case in peeling back the way healthcare works (and doesn't work) in a bubble. This will be a project worth watching.

Take a look at a brief promotional tour of the project, courtesy Stanford. The talking head here is Ron Johnson, Apple, Inc's senior vice president of retail. Johnson is the man behind the Apple Store retail experience. Not that his involvement should be an indicator of what you can expect when you hit the new hospital (healthcare Genius Bars?), but you can't say there aren't senior leaders involved who haven't given any thought to how people interact with service centers!

Dilbert, the Three Pillars, and Manager's Elbow

"Instead of being a pyramid, could I be a two-legged stool, like you?"

We can't let Friday pass without a quick nod to the greatest management consultant: Dilbert. As you wrap up your week today, ask yourself: Do you suffer from Manager's Elbow?

Reed Hastings of Netflix is a "2-in-1" leader worth study

Become Businessperson of the Year - Paul Nunes and Tim Breene - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review

Paul Nunes and Tim Breene share insight on what they call 2-in-1 leadership:

They not only grow their current business but simultaneously develop the next one that, ultimately, will enable a graceful transition from the first. It is one thing for great leaders to successfully confront great challenges. It is quite another for them to rapidly scale a successful business and conceive, grow and manage another at the same time — especially when they know the new venture may cannibalize its parent. We call this change from one successful core business to another "jumping the S-curve" and we're betting that we'll be seeing a lot more leaders like Hastings doing it.

The Hastings they're referring to here is Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix. Hastings is at the center of a quiet media empire, doing his part to shake the foundation of distribution with little red envelopes. But he didn't make "Businessperson of the Year" for the disc by mail program. He made the list for doing everything he can to destroy it.

In the last two years, Hastings has executed the Netflix streaming service across mobile phones and set-top boxes around the world. This new product category directly competes with the core mail-order model that the company is built on. But Hastings had the foresight and guts to take the risk. Whether he knew he'd be at the helm of the ship steering the industry or not, he's doing yeoman's work as a role model for the audacity required for great leadership in the face of great risk.

Nunes and Breene offer some truly interesting thinking in today's post -- absolutely worth reading today.

"Jeopardy" is a platform for challenging our assumptions about people. Seriously.

"Jeopardy!" and man vs. machine: Artificial intelligence will always be a step behind - latimes.com

Steven Baker is author of the up-coming "Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything." If you haven't seen the three-part match, the finale will be broadcast this evening and Baker will be updating this post with real results shortly after.

First, this passage from his op-ed in the LA Times is worth a chuckle (Watson, if it isn't clear, is the name of the computer competitor):

Once, when queried about a famous French bacteriologist, Watson skipped right past Louis Pasteur and responded instead: "What is, 'How tasty was my little Frenchman?'" (the title of a 1971Brazilian movie about cannibals). Even worse, Watson churned away for nearly two hours to come up with such nonsense. Things have changed.

Yes, funny. Funny to a fault, actually. The real message is one of shifting priorities in our offices. We've written much recently on efforts to rethink how we manage our people, how important they are to the way process and technology interact. But the advent of a super-computer that is actually competitive on a show like Jeopardy feels like a more important message than one of simple entertainment.

So, we offer this question: are you using your teams to complete the tasks that are worthy of their capabilities? Your people are (generally) a vastly underused resource. Consider the challenges you are giving your teams and the trust you give them to deliver creative results with minimal supervision. In most cases, getting great results from them will hinge more on giving them challenges that are up to their ability rather than the converse: that you have staff whose collective ability is not up to the tasks they are given.

Baker summarizes:

The rest of us will adapt to the invasion of question-answering Watsons by focusing on work at which the human brain excels — and will leave the rest to machines. We've already outsourced long division, spelling and much of our highway navigation to machines. Now we'll look to them more and more to dig through mountains of data and come up with answers for us. This should free us up to do what remains uniquely human, at least for now: generating fresh ideas.

UPDATE: Wired has a terrific set of pictures inside the Watson facility, if you fancy a tour.

Turns out business analytics is people! It's people!

Business Analytics: My Valentine’s Day True Love Confession

Here's a terrific piece from Gary Cokins on his evolving relationship with business analytics and performance management frameworks:

Until about three years ago, my main interest was explaining the “how-to” of all the methodologies comprising business analytics and the enterprise performance management (PM) framework and mechanism. Examples of these methodologies are forecasting, strategy maps, scorecards, dashboards, correlation analysis, activity-based costing, driver-based budgeting, customer demand management, and so on. I have implemented these techniques. I’m a practitioner. I love explaining to people how things work and inspiring a vision on how those same things can work much better in the future.

What happened to me three years ago? I was smitten. A competing suitor of my “how-to” love appeared. It is my new “why-to” love – explaining the benefits of why to implement and integrate analytics-based performance management methodologies. They both compete for my attention. This is what occurred.

Sounds like you'll be knee-deep in data reading that intro passage, but I assure you, Gary offers a real gem in his piece that is worth reading. He arrives at a conclusion that people people have been pushing onto performance management systems for decades. In short: the barriers to adoption of smart performance management practices are no longer predominantly based on limitations of our measurement systems. They're based on our broad misunderstandings of how people want to be managed!

Thanks, Gary, for the insight!

Working-out-loud to drive out information hoarders

The new compensation: going to anti-hoarders? — Scobleizer Robert Scoble has an absolutely fascinating post on the nature of information sharing in the workplace. The upshot is this: at most companies, the systems we use condition us to become what Robert calls information hoarders -- private email systems, private document folders, etc. But in a recent interview with Yammer CEO David Sacks, Robert asked the executive "when companies would be compensating people based on the value they are pouring into the system."

What a great way to phrase that question!

It helps a bit to know that Yammer is a company that provides what amounts to an internal Twitter -- a place for employees to share their status, resources, links, and more, in real time with the rest of the organization. Salesforce has rolled out a similar tool with their Chatter service. Taking a service inside with something like Yammer or Chatter suddenly makes the potential benefit of a more public, status driven workforce make much more sense. From Robert, the upshot is right here:

So, when I go and ask whether we should compensate people based on the information they SHARE with a company, that’s a topic these new CEOs aren’t quite willing to talk openly about.

Why? It freaks the information hoarders out and makes them less likely to change to information sharers. In such a world old systems like Microsoft Sharepoint stay relevant and new systems like Yammer don’t get adopted. I’m quite convinced though that in the future at least some of big-company compensation will come from whether you have good knowledge sharing skills.

Think about the time and energy you spend transitioning when you lose long-term team members. Does your succession plan deal with all the nooks and crannies of intellectual capital your critical employees have collected in their tenure? Do you have a system that capitalizes on that knowledge for the institution at large?

Conditioning employees to practice more diligence in their approach to documenting their work on these company-public systems is one way to ensure fewer information silos, and soften the blow when key team members move on. Robert's post is absolutely worth reading in full.

Are you prioritizing your people?

Re:Focus: Our Priorities Reveal our Values

Simon Sinek shares a smart perspective today on his blog:

I listened to a presentation given by top executives of a large firm recently. In their presentation, they listed the company’s priorities:

1. Top line growth
2. Enhance shareholder value
3. Focus on global expansion
4. Enhance customer satisfaction
5. Our people

I think it’s safe to say, they don’t really value their people. Or at least they don’t put their people before growth. Ironically, the best organizations I’ve ever seen, the ones that are actually more profitable for the long-term, all put people before growth on their list of priorities.

One of the core principles of our work with clients is to bring alignment to the people, process, and technology that make up complex systems. To those unaware of the Teibel approach to change, it might seem as if we give equal weight to these three broad areas.

While each are critical to overall success, Sinek's observation pokes a fine hole in long-held MBA wisdom, and supports our own experience: without the right people, and the right attention to the experience those people bring to their work, a rich conversation about change that drives results can never really happen.

Where you might be failing by trying to engage best practices for employee success

Making Sure Your Employees Succeed - Amy Gallo - Harvard Business Review

Amy Gallo contributed a fine piece to the HBR Best Practices blog today. Fine really is the word for it -- while she outlines the textbook premise on employee engagement well, I can't help but be left with a longing for at least a bit of discussion around how infrequently the textbook approaches really apply in employee development these days.

Commenter Rick Ross and I are kindred spirits. From his response:

Creating a plan - The formulaic "goal\ objective \ milestone \evaluate risk" method works in the increasingly rare environments where tasks are simple and easily measurable. More sophisticated methodologies are required in environments with higher complexity and where results that are harder to measure. Nothing will deflate motivation faster than being measured in an invalid way.

That last line says it all, and it's the overriding concept I think we are well-served to remember. We deal with great complexity at work, which requires a degree of intellectual dexterity as we try to define the measures of our success. So, what could serve to make a measurement invalid? A) When it doesn't make intuitive sense to the one being measured and, B) When the one being measured had no part in the definition of the metric.

Integrating new processes ends up being a more organic process than we ever expect, and certainly more organic than the textbooks predict. Working with staff to build a planning process that provides clear direction -- and maintains flexibility and adaptability over time -- is key to making change stick in the long run.

Go ahead, use the Force. Eventually, you might get lucky

Happy Monday! If you missed the big game, allow us to kick off the week with a highlight from the Super Bowl 2011 advertising blitz. This entry, which has seen much sharing over the last several days, is a gift from Volkswagon.

Watch it a few times. When mini-Darth turns his head at the end? Priceless. Imagine the look of glee on his face under that mask, and see what you can do to match it when something goes your way this week. Better yet? Be the dad -- what can you do to make someone feel that good in your work today?

Are you still a good leader when backed into a corner?

Authentic Leadership Can Be Bad Leadership - Deborah Gruenfeld and Lauren Zander - Harvard Business Review

In a terrific piece this morning at HBR.org, Deborah Gruenfeld and Lauren Zander lay out the case for authenticity in leadership, and where "hiding behind the authenticity excuse" can go awry. From the post:

In practice, we've observed that placing value on being authentic has become an excuse for bad behavior among executives. It's important to realize that what makes you you is not just the good stuff — your values, aspirations and dreams; the qualities others love most. For most people, what comes naturally can also get pretty nasty. When you are overly critical, non-communicative, crass, judgmental, or rigid, you are probably at your most real — but you are not at your best. In fact, it is often these most authentic parts of a leader that need the most management.

Why is this so important to our work? Because any change initiative, any Lean or shared services integration project, anything that challenges the way people work brings out our most authentic selves. It's this authentic self that is backed into a corner, wary of change, and protective of what we know and understand. When we're backed into a corner responding by emotion, we're unable to process the most difficult tasks which, ultimately, might be the best for us and our organizations.

As leaders, being able to reflect critically on our own behavior when we feel challenged, and being able to listen to others as they describe who they perceive us to be without defense or justification, can be the foundation for far greater change to come. But it takes hard work and an open mind to get there.

Lean in Higher Ed is maturing

In 2005, Bob Emiliani wrote "Lean in Higher Education" -- a fascinating dissection of the state of service in higher education at the time, and a snapshot of the then-strikingly brisk evolution of the for-profit education system. From Emiliani's piece:

University administrators – even those at top-tier U.S. schools – should be alarmed, because what could happen to higher education is no different than what has already happened to the U.S. steel, electronics, automotive, furniture, and textile industries. And the same thing is now happening to service industries such as customer support, financial analysis, and drug research. While it is true that market dynamics often provide a useful and necessary culling of the weak players, it also offers compelling opportunities to improve and become even stronger.

Indeed, we were seeing just such a transformation, due in no small part to the for profit expansion; new players were applying new tools of efficiency across departments. Enrollment teams were becoming more streamlined. Marketing and lead generation became more aggressive. Program definition more convoluted, leading to new programs which flew in the face of long-held academic tradition, all in an effort to drive the business bottom line.

This was a new reality for those of us working in higher education, one of an uneven playing field; we struggled to find the rulebook to teach us to engage this market effectively. Old processes could not hold up in a space ruled by a breed of educational institutions that had turned the model of delivering higher education on its proverbial ear.

The concepts that the for-profits were applying came from Lean manufacturing. For those not yet initiated in Lean, it was originally a production practice that carefully considered the cost of any expense in production. Any cost not directly related to delivering benefit to the customer is typically considered to be waste, and would be a target for cut.

From the perspective of a customer -- or student, in our case -- anything a student would be willing to pay for serves as a benefit to the Lean relationship. Any process or service the student receives that does not benefit the ongoing relationship, which that student would not be willing to pay for, becomes a target for cut as well.

The bottom line of the Lean approach to efficiency: how can we preserve customer value and decrease the burden of work on the organization.

Flash forward five years and we've settled into a new new reality. As it turns out, the application of Lean principles in education makes a lot of sense. In April, 2010, Michael Sinocchi interviewed William K. Balzer on this very subject. Balzer did, in fact, write the book on Lean in higher education (Lean Higher Education: Increasing the Value and Performance of University Processes), and currently serves as Dean at Bowling Green State University.

In their brief interview, Balzer had this to say regarding Lean Higher Education (LHE):

In fact, a growing number of applications of LHE demonstrate significant improvements in college and university processes that result in better service to students, reduced costs for the institution, and greater employee ownership over how their work is done. Overall, LHE holds great promise for improvements in higher education at a time where resources are declining, greater accountability is expected, and higher education’s role in economic development and quality of life is increasingly important.

Further ...

LHE strikes a balance between the long-term needs of the institution and its employees. The elimination of unnecessary steps and activities that add expense and no value to the university saves resources, and it also allows overburdened employees to redesign their work so that it is more meaningful and satisfying.

If we walk away with nothing else from an evaluation of Lean in higher education, we have to walk away with this: reducing waste in the work we do every day brings into alignment the processes, technology, and people on our teams. Lean provides a framework, one that has been applied to great affect across industries for many years. Our job now is to use this framework to diagnose the waste in our operation and build a culture of continuous, competitive improvement.

Japan struggles to activate and accept the changing culture of youth at work

Japan Blocks the Young, Stifling the Economy - NYTimes.com

This is a fascinating piece in the Times on the struggles of the youth of Japan as culture runs head-on into a struggling economy.

As this fading economic superpower rapidly grays, it desperately needs to increase productivity and unleash the entrepreneurial energies of its shrinking number of younger people. But Japan seems to be doing just the opposite. This has contributed to weak growth and mounting pension obligations, major reasons Standard & Poor’s downgraded Japan’s sovereign debt rating on Thursday.

“There is a feeling among young generations that no matter how hard we try, we can’t get ahead,” said Shigeyuki Jo, 36, co-author of “The Truth of Generational Inequalities.” “Every avenue seems to be blocked, like we’re butting our heads against a wall.”

Consider this a brief coda to last week's post on millennials at work; the lesson we can learn from the struggle of Japan comes in how we appreciate those who foster change in our organizations. Have we trained our selves to identify those who drive us toward new horizons? Or do we thank them for their initiative with a kind request to get-back-to-work?

The term intrapreneurship isn't used nearly as often as it should be. In some organizations, it's labeled a joke. But it represents a powerful concept: "Intrapreneurship refers to employee initiatives in organizations to undertake something new, without being asked to do so." (PDF) It's about people coming together, activated by a culture aware of the energy that comes from teamwork, inspired to create, no matter the bureaucracy that may otherwise stand in their way.

In Japan, the roadblocks for youth in traditional careers are far stronger than forces that welcome and foster intrapreneurs. Working together, we can do better.

Brad Power talks cross-functional success with tips for encouraging collaboration

How to Help Process Owners Succeed - Brad Power - The Conversation

Brad Power with the Lean Enterprise Institute offers six terrific tips on bringing teams together to help encourage end-to-end thinking and beat silos. Of note:

Help employees get comfortable thinking in terms of end-to-end activities that together generate value to customers. Encourage cross-departmental activities that solve customer problems, and reward cross-departmental teamwork.

In reviewing the progress of its reengineering initiative, an insurance company shifted from traditional town hall meetings organized by department, to cross-departmental meetings led jointly by the leaders of two departments. The meetings trumpeted successes such as a reduction in customer service inquiries, the teamwork for which cut across a half-dozen departments.

A key to driving toward this sort of integrative approach to delivering customer value is simple, bull-headed persistence. It takes time and attention to steer teams in a new direction, not at all unlike a u-turn in a battleship. But it can be done. In addition to Power's tips around accountability and authority (both instrumental), consider process performance milestones as key indicators for success early on. For example, it might be difficult to track successful outcomes of your first month of cross-departmental meetings. But the simple fact that you held cross-departmental meetings for a month can be reason to celebrate!

Are you ready for millennials at work? Apparently they're already here

How Millennial physicians will impact disease management

Jaan Sidorov, MD a deceivingly bullish post on millennial physicians over at kevinmd.com:

The Millennial non-attitude about status or rank has implications for the hierarchical command and control that, up until now, has has been overseeing health system. No longer will a VP for Medical Affairs be able to assume young physicians will readily agree to taking “call” in evening outpatient clinics to off-load unnecessary emergency room visits. If a Grand Rounds speaker lacks sufficient eye-candied edutainment in PowerPoint, all the more reason for those young docs to skip out, grab some tofu and surf some YouTube. White coats will be optional and these docs will default to a first-name relationship with their patients.

Why deceivingly bullish? Reading the above passage you might think Sidorov's position is staunchly boomer, deeply rooted in the old myth that whatever generation comes next can't possibly be as hard working, determined, focused as those that came before.

To be sure, there's some of that in his post. So much of the flow of practice in a hospital depends on all parties buying in to the historic framework of how things have always been. Shake that up with med students that don't buy that line on some level and the status quo breaks down, falls apart, disintegrates. When patient care hinges on a status quo student and staffing process that is so fragile, it's no wonder the old school medical community is a touch on edge.

All that said, the millennial transformation at work offers several key benefits for organizations always at the ready for change.

They are technical, and they don't even know it. Millennial employees have an understanding of technology and communication tools which they didn't have to learn, they simply absorbed. They understand email, twitter, social networking and collaboration online at the genetic level, and have experience first hand how these tools make them more efficient communicators. No, they don't communicate the way we do, but don't mistake that for a lack of insight on their part

They are expert collaborators. Fueled by their technical experience, millennials have an innate understanding of what it takes to work together to achieve their objectives. While they might be stymied by an empty cubicle, give them a integration problem and a conference room, and their natural team dynamic takes hold with great positive results.

They have much to teach. If it were 1995, I would be able to make a joke about an 8-year-old setting the clock on the VCR right here. I haven't seen a VCR in years, but the millennials have the same experience to offer today as that 8-year-old of the 90's. They're quick studies, they love to play in the most constructive fashion, they are quick to the point and, most important of all, they really do work to live. There are reminders in the millennial work ethic that can make work better for all of us, if we're willing to listen.

Wal-Mart launches massive change project -- healthier foods on every aisle

Wal-Mart Gives Boost to Push for Healthier Food – TIME Healthland

Last week, Wal-Mart announced that it will change the "thousands of store-brand products to reduce sodium and sugar and push its suppliers to do the same." That's big news, given the sheer size of Wal-Mart and the footprint it has on the US Economy alone:

Wal-Mart's size, however, gives it unique power to shape what people eat. The grocery business of the nation's largest retailer accounts for about 15 percent of the industry in the U.S. and is nearly twice the size of No. 2 competitor Kroger.

"This is a game changer," said Michael Hicks, associate professor of economics at Ball State University and author of a book on Wal-Mart's economic impact. "If Wal-Mart could reduce the prices on healthy food and provide access to them in more places, you could have a measurable effect on incidences of diabetes and heart-related ailments."

Many have commented on the impact this change could have on the U.S. diet -- a dramatic change that has the potential to affect a significant portion of the nation over a short period of time. That's great news for eaters everywhere, even if food is not a typical topic for this site.

Reflect for a moment on the scale of the Wal-Mart announcement as a change project, though. What Wal-Mart has announced amounts to a fundamental change that affects every team and staff member -- at some level -- across the organization.

• Research and development must come up with the quantifiable standards to measure partner performance as they retool their food products.
• Outside partners must retool their products to meet new Wal-Mart standards to maintain visibility on store shelves -- the list of partners in the TIME piece that have already committed to this project indicates the scale: "Bumble Bee Foods, General Mills Inc., Campbell Soup Co., PepsiCo Inc. and Kraft Foods Inc."
• Merchandising must orchestrate sell-through of existing products and drive adoption of new products on local store shelves.
• Marketing must drive a new years-long campaign promoting not just a new product, but a new way of understanding food, with messaging, design, and interaction with consumers in a most sacred space: at their dinner tables.
• Program and project managers must orchestrate activities across inside and outside teams to deliver new food products on time and on budget.

And they have to do it all in a way that inspires buy-in to a new way of working at Wal-Mart. As we've been discussing this week and last, the importance of buy-in can't be understated: it's what allows people to challenge current work habits, and make room for positive, inspired change.

Hats off to Wal-Mart for taking the hard road, the road of change. In an era of tough news in the headlines, it's refreshing to see this sort of consumer advocacy approach with one market-driven solution to our national health crisis.

Jackie Gilbert, Jeff Cornwall take on honor in negotiation, offer insight into team behavior

Eight ways to save face for someone else | Organized for Efficiency

Jackie Gilbert is a professor of management at Middle Tennessee State University. This weekend she posted her thoughts on the importance of saving face for others in negotiations with some good tips that serve to remind us all how we're perceived in negotiation. It's a good post and worth a quick read.

From Gilbert's post:

Although in theory we appear to espouse the values of mutual respect and democratic management, how often are these values forgotten when we are faced with an annoying situation? Our desire then to embellish our ego, to trounce an opponent, or to vindicate ourselves at another’s expense may take precedent over conducting ourselves with a sense of decorum. In these moments of self-righteousness indignation, we seem to forget the Golden Rule, or as Tony Alessandra so eloquently coined the term, the Platinum Rule® – treating others as they wish to be treated.

The good Jeff Cornwall picked up her lead in a terrifically interesting direction: entrepreneurial bullying.

Sometimes entrepreneurs just can't help themselves. They get so wrapped up things like making the business model work and growing their ventures that they can lose perspective on their actions. They may talk about the importance of acting ethically and building a positive culture, but the pressures of the entrepreneurial journey can lead to behaviors that do not match their words and their intentions.

When we focus on our individual needs first and only, we loose sight of potential horizons still clouded to us. This becomes critically important in process, system, or departmental integration projects; as soon as you open the door to bringing service centers together you're begging for critical examination of what's good, what's bad -- what to keep, what to trash. This involves judgement, and people hate to be judged.

That's where Cornwall's insights ring so true. When you're asking people passionate about processes they've created to give up those processes for something different, the success of implementation becomes deeply rooted in how you collectively arrive at that decision.

Eric Schmidt to leave Google, offers object lessons on leadership in transition

Eric Schmidt's Days at Google Always Seemed Numbered - Adi Ignatius - Harvard Business Review

Adi Ignatius has been writing about leadership of Google for many years, and comes with some authority to this discussion of leadership in transition at the company. CEO Eric Schmidt announced yesterday plans to step down, to be replaced by founder Larry Page. This bit, from Ignatius' latest post over at HBR, illustrates much of the compelling consternation that has come from the Schmidt-Page-Brin trio over the years.

At another point, I sat down with the three over a table of Legos — Brin and Page are constant tinkerers — and asked them the question that all of Silicon Valley wondered: whether Schmidt actually played a substantial role in the company, or if he was brought in primarily to calm shareholders. "That's been the buzz since I joined. My answer is simply to let the company's results speak for themselves," Schmidt answered. "Good answer," Page quickly added.

A big leadership transition is tough, no matter how you slice it. But we can learn a few key object lessons from Google's story which may apply to our own collective stories down the road.

First, leaders are people, too. At Google, Schmidt might not have been brought in specifically to provide adult supervision, but his presence brought to the organization a sense of maturity that his background as CEO at Novell had earned him. His purpose was to bring a new level of focus and attention to the business of Google, as distinct from the technology of Google. His work there, in spite of the grand variety of his public relations gaffs over the years, has shone him to be an able manager who should be remembered fondly for integrating these two areas. Now, his work is done.

Second, leaders can be developed. Larry Page was a smart guy, a founder of a deeply smart company, and had some terrific instincts about setting up a culture that motivates and drives innovation (the legendary Google "Innovation Time Off," aka "20% time" is just one example). Take this brief bit of wisdom widely attributed to Page:

“We don't have as many managers as we should, but we would rather have too few than too many.”

But Page was not a CEO. Schmidt's experience and perspective, his successes and gaffs, all served to support and develop Page as a leader. Whether that professional development was always part of the plan at the outset isn't really the question; Page wasn't ready to lead the enterprise then, and he is today. As Adi points out, even Schmidt echoed this angle in his announcement-day tweet: "Day-to-day adult supervision no longer needed!"

Julia Kirby puts a slightly different spin on this relationship in her own response to the transition. Her comparison is of Facebook, where young titan CEO Mark Zuckerburg brought in Sheryl Sandberg, with her key strategic experience as a senior executive at -- ahem -- Google, to provide him executive guidance in his own role. Sandberg is, however, COO. Comparing Schmidt as CEO to Page, and Zuckerburg as CEO to Sandberg, says Kirby:

Those are not subtle distinctions. In a learning situation, it matters very much whether the dynamic you have set up is the relationship of equals, of sensei to student, or of advisor to king.

Third, smart organizations can weather any transition in the eyes of the public. Did you see what happened in the market when Google made this announcement? That key executive leadership was shuffling? Leadership which may indicate a shift in strategic direction? A new focus for the search and advertising behemoth?

Nothing.

The reaction was monumentally even-headed. The stock market was neutral. The pundits used the opportunity to recount a few laughs at Schmidt's expense. But overall, the market's collective yawn over the event indicates more than anything that even though no one really saw it coming, we were ready.

This is an organization that understands the importance of the bench. There are key leaders across the company that have been encouraged through culture and directive to grow their people into tomorrow's leaders.

As high profile a change as this is for Google, it provides a great opportunity for us to take a step back and look at our own bench. Who are your future leaders? Take the challenge and find the department heads, managers, and team members that are ready to step up and take over so deftly as not to miss a step. Do everything you can to encourage, inspire, and develop that talent on your own teams.

IBT on joint exec MBA from Brown, IE Business Schools

MBA, Meet the Liberal Arts

The International Business Times reports on a new joint Executive MBA program from IE Business Schools in Madrid, and Brown University. From the outset, this appears to be just the sort of program that provides best in class curriculum focused on the rapidly evolving needs of business leaders. Of note:

As Professor Bach points out, traditional management education has always emphasized how managers need to be fast, how they need to be able to hit the ground running; but as one becomes more senior, it is imperative to know when to apply the brakes or shift or turn around and go in a different direction. The most able managers of the future will be people who possess, along with technical aggression, the judgment to stop, reflect, connect and put things in context. That is what a liberal arts perspective can bring to the MBA.

Interesting to note Brown's approach to the new degree as a partnership akin to shared service centers we've been discussing of late. The whole concept of sharing educational services in a way that highlights Brown's exemplary humanities with IE's critical business skill development programs illustrates terrific creative thinking in curriculum development; it is the same creative thinking sure to be at work in administration that is in place to make this program happen.

The first class launches in March, 2011.

Atlantic's James Fallows on 2011 Economy at NPR.org

Year In News: Volatile Politics, Economic Crisis, Tablets : NPR

Apologies for the out-of-date link, but James Fallows is always interesting commentary and in this Christmas Day interview with Guy Raz on NPR, Fallows takes on the economy, the political landscape, and tablet computers vis his world predictions and how they played out from last year, with a few bits of prognostication for the year to come. Of some note:

And now it's striking how the economic crisis mainly means unemployment with the sort of corollary issue of the housing markets, where financial markets are up, corporations are having big profits. And so, the kind of all fronts sort of depression era feared, many people had in late 2008 and much of 2009, that for many people has been buffered and contained, and we're left with this very, very significant problem of chronic, very high unemployment for, you know, almost 10 percent of the public. For better or for worse, it concentrates our minds on unemployment as being the economic crisis, you know, as we look ahead.

The debate rages on the overall value of higher education in an underemployed economy. While notable for-profits continue to be challenged in the courts on this very issue, take a walk down history lane in this paper from the San Jose State College Senior Seminar in Economic Research: Higher Eduction and Unemployment: Some Paradoxes (PDF Link). Thanks to the amazing link economy of the 'net, we uncover that yes, we've been having this discussion since at least 1966. Enjoy!

Fallows will be the plenary speaker at the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges National Conference on Trusteeship, April 3 - April 5, 2011.

Tony Schwartz on Change, Habits, and Will at HBR

Six Keys to Changing Almost Anything - Tony Schwartz - Harvard Business Review

This morning's post from Tony Schwartz has great fodder for discussion. Of most interest to us is number 4:

It's also easy to go to the other extreme, and take on too little. So you launch a 10-minute walk at lunchtime three days a week and stay at it. The problem is that you don't feel any better for it after several weeks, and your motivation fades.

The only way to truly grow is to challenge your current comfort zone. The trick is finding a middle ground — pushing yourself hard enough that you get some real gain, but not too much that you find yourself unwilling to stay at it.

We see all too often organizations tepid on making the ultimate commitment to change play in the extremes. Going too far and thrusting teams into change beyond their readiness can signal both poor planning, and a back-pocket attempt to ensure change efforts fail at the will of the status quo. Not going far enough can signal a team that isn't ready to make big change, and most likely doesn't fully understand the goal of change initiatives.

Schwartz calls this the danger of "Competing Commitments." From number 5:

Here's a very simple way to surface your competing commitment. Think about a change you really want to make. Now ask yourself what you're currently doing or not doing to undermine that primary commitment. If you are trying to get more focused on important priorities, for example, your competing commitment might be the desire to be highly responsive and available to those emailing you.

For any change effort you launch, it's key to surface your competing commitment and then ask yourself "How can I design this practice so I get the desired benefits but also minimize the costs I fear it will prompt?"

By our experience, he's vastly underplaying the point. The biggest danger that lies in uncovering competing commitments is the subconscious unwillingness to veer off the path of the status quo. Integrating teams across functions, units, service centers, and so on, counts on our collective ability to show benefits powerful enough to lead those with deeply entrenched habits that may fly in the face of our objective. It takes great leadership and skill to navigate those waters; Schwartz's is a great piece to continue our thinking here.