Successful people solve problems. Look at any great fortune, whether it be Carnegie, Ford or Gates and you find that the source of their vast accomplishment was a problem solved. Even more prosaic executives spend most of their time solving one problem or another, with greater or lesser skill.
The contrast in outcomes can be attributed to the scale and difficulty of the problems they tackled. All too often, we get so mired down in day-to-day challenges that the bigger issues fall by the wayside, being left for another day which never seems to come. That, in the final analysis, is the difference between the mundane and the sublime.
So we should pay special attention to those whose ideas had impact far beyond their own lifespan. It is they who were able to see not only the problems of their day, but ones that, although they seemed minor or trivial at the time, would become consequential—even determinant—in years to come. Here are four such men and what we can learn from them.
Business in the digital age has become a seemingly neverending series of “next big things.” Whether it’s e-commerce, search engine optimization, social media, big data or something else, the pattern of firms struggling to adapt is as predictable as Gartner’s hype cycle.
First there is widespread panic, then a rushed effort to get up to speed by hiring consultants who are long on showmanship but short on merit. That’s soon followed by period of disillusionment as key expectations aren’t met and finally the “big thing” in question fades into the background as a fairly routine operating activity.
The problem isn’t that the trends aren’t important or that they lack impact—many have been transformational—but that the short term impact is often overestimated, while the long term impact is often underestimated. What’s needed is what Rita Gunther McGrath calls a shift from “learning to plan” to “planning to learn” and a focus on skills rather than trends.
In the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall, both Russia and Poland embarked on remarkably similar journeys. Using the same western advisors, they privatized state owned companies, implemented free market reforms and transformed their legal systems to compete more effectively in the world economy.
Yet despite the nearly identical programs, the results couldn’t have been more different. Poland today is a well functioning, vibrant society, while Russia has descended once more into chaos. It almost defies logic. How could the same plan, designed largely by the same people, have two such divergent outcomes?
There are myriad ways to evaluate the strength of a nation. Military power, GDP, natural resources and human capital all play a role. Yet what struck me most in my 15 years in Eastern Europe is how vital it is to build a culture of change that can adapt to unforeseen challenges. Now, more than ever, the ability to shift is the ability to compete.
In a column in The New York Times as well as in a popular TED talk, David Brooks has pointed out the conflict between resume virtues and eulogy virtues. Resume virtues, he says, are the ones that are prized by the marketplace, while eulogy virtues are those which fortify inner being, that of ourselves and others.
He further argues that, while most would agree eulogy virtues are infinitely more valuable, we spend the bulk of our time pursuing resume virtues. Our focus on productivity and getting things done—”turning inputs into outputs” as he phrases it—often stands in the way of leading a more fulfilled life.
There is wisdom in what Brooks has to say, but I believe he errs in the assumption that the two types of virtues are mutually exclusive and constantly in conflict. In fact, the underlying theme at this year’s Business Innovation Factory (BIF) Summit was that intrinsic motivation is essential to truly exceptional achievement. You can’t really have one without the other.
Every age is defined by its technology. The stories of Dickens wouldn’t have been possible without the steam engine and the industrial revolution it brought about. For that matter, neither would the those of Vanderbilt or Carnegie. And what would the 20th century have been like without the internal combustion engine and electricity?
Yet we often miss the fact that stories drive technology as well. Steve Jobs, quite famously but not uniquely, believed that the humanities and technology are deeply intertwined and the power of story has a lot to do with it. Technology, after all, doesn’t live in a vacuum but co-evolves with mankind.
That’s why can’t truly understand technology without thinking about the stories embedded in it and those of people who use it. Also, as Fareed Zakaria points out in his book, In Defense of a Liberal Education, innovation often relies on our ability to tell those stories well. Technology, when properly understood, is far more than a collection of soulless artifacts.
In 1997, in a landmark article, McKinsey declared a war for talent. The firm argued that due to demographic shifts, recruiting the “best and the brightest” was even more important than “capital, strategy, or R&D.” The report was enormously influential and continues to affect how enterprises operate even today.
Companies were urged to identify specific traits they were looking for, aggressively recruit and retain the very best performers and move quickly to weed out those who didn’t measure up. Some companies, such as General Electric, instituted a policy of stack ranking, routinely firing the bottom 10% of their workers.
Yet in a new book, Humans Are Underrated, longtime Fortune editor Geoff Colvin challenges this notion. He argues that to compete in today’s world you don’t need the best solo performers, but the best teams. Having the “smartest guys in the room” isn’t much good if they can’t work with others effectively. We need to rethink how we approach talent.
The summer of 1963 is now recognized as a pivotal moment in history. That was when the Civil Rights Movement marched on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr. gave his historic “I Have A Dream”speech, which many credit as turning the tide and led to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Yet as John Lewis describes in Walking with the Wind, an equally pivotal moment occurred a few months before, in an interchange between he and Robert Kennedy. “John,” Kennedy said to Lewis, “the people, the young people of the SNCC, have educated me. You have changed me. Now I understand.”
Marketers tend to like big, bold actions that grab attention and spew off metrics and the March on Washington would definitely qualify as that. Yet, all too often, we ignore the more mundane work that comes before. To market a product or an idea, you have to change minds and that’s the real lesson of the Civil Rights Movement. Marketers need to learn from it.
Successful businesses grow. Through better products and processes, they win the favor of customers, increasing their volume and margins. That success often translates into further advantages as they invest in new and better equipment, develop expertise and gain bargaining power with suppliers.
The typical story for why good firms fail is that they somehow lost their way, but as Clayton Christensen explained in The Innovator’s Dilemma, that’s not really true. Yet while he attributes the problem to disruptive innovation, the broader truth is that the likely cause of your business’s future failure is a factor in its success today. Here are 3 things to look out for:
In the early 20th century science and technology emerged as a rising force in western society. The new wonders of electricity, automobiles and telecommunication were quickly shaping how people lived, worked and thought. Empirical verification, rather than theoretical musings, rose to the fore.
It was against this backdrop that Moritz Schlick formed the Vienna Circle, which became the center of the logical positivist movement and aimed to bring a more scientific approach to human thought. Throughout the 20’s and and 30’s, the movement spread and became a symbol of the new technological age.
In time, the positivist movement came to be widely recognized as a failure, yet still it inspired no shortage of imitators. There seems to be an endless stream of thought leaders and consultants who claim to have engineered a more “scientific” approach to business. Yet they, just like the positivists, always seem to fall short. Unfortunately, the real world defies logic.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), which traces its roots as far back as 1887, has long been the primary driver for medical research in not only the United States, but the world. Work at NIH has led to a host of important cures, from life saving vaccines and miracle drugs to the use of fluoride to fight tooth decay.
Over the past 20 years, research at NIH has been making slow progress against cancer, increasing survival rates by about 1% per year. Yet now, through a new initiative called 21st Century Cures Act, we can accelerate that progress, perhaps drastically, and finally cure cancer as well as other chronic diseases such as Alzheimer’s and diabetes.
As Ron DePinho, President of MD Anderson, told me, “We have a confluence of major discoveries that have occurred across a wide range of fronts, which allow us to understand life and disease at a basic level and use those insights to influence its processes. We are now able to make a decisive assault on the cancer problem, if we have the resources.”
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