“Serving those who serve”, the Exchange is the 47th largest retail organization in the U.S. with annual revenue of $10B and more than 3,000 locations around the world. The Exchange operates department and convenience stores, gas stations, restaurants, theaters, vending and other businesses on military installations in all 50 states, five U.S. territories and more than 30 countries.

Army and Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES)/the Exchange - Dallas Business Journal announcement.

Imagine: How Creativity Works

by Jonah Lehrer

I enjoyed “Imagine: How Creativity Works” by Jonah Lehrer and recommend it based on several important insights.

From blue walls to framing a question differently, there are simple tools to encourage creativity. In a couple of sentences Lehrer explained when it is helpful to focus more versus the times that it is more helpful to get away from the problem you are trying to solve. These are critical insights, specific enough to be useful in practice.

The importance of cross-functional teams, bringing in a mix of new and familiar team members, and focusing on constructive feedback were all specific and important takeaways. This has excellent parallels to the Agile software development methodology.

The “inverted ‘u’ ” of creativity can be avoided if a person makes a diligent effort to branch into new areas, but I was even more excited to consider Lehrer’s point that we know how to create a surplus of great talent. America’s ability to create world class athletes proves it. We have farm teams that begin with little league and a culture that elevates athletes to hero status. Lehrer suggests we take what we learned with football and channel it toward creativity – I would add science, technology, engineering, and math.

In other areas, the book could have been better. Lehrer points out that person-to-person interaction increases creativity. I agree, but Lehrer emphasizes the point ad nauseum and ties that closely to the idea that cities inspire creativity. Consider that the entire Greek speaking civilization had a population of 8-10 million in 400 BC when they were shaping the future of western civilization. Today, the state of Georgia in the US and the cities of Dhaka in Bangladesh, Lagos in Nigeria, and Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo all have populations roughly equal to the entire Greek civilization, yet I doubt as many world history changing ideas will come from those areas. Lehrer acknowledges other factors are involved but keeps driving the point until his bias for cities becomes distracting from other ways to accelerate creativity. We could significantly improve the level to which local communities interact without having to redesign the entire infrastructure of America.

Lehrer relies too much on anecdotes and some of his arguments are circular. At one point he uses venture capital investment as a proxy for innovation and then touts that as proof that the culture of Silicon Valley is superior for creating innovation. Silicon Valley does have a culture promoting innovation, but that is only one kind of innovation. How would Silicon Valley’s place in the ranking change if we added PhD dissertations which, by definition, address a new aspect of a topic? There are amazing mathematical and scientific insights in Russian universities that will not be identified by VCs.

I agree with Lehrer that the Internet, even with Skype video calls or Cisco Telepresence, is a poor substitute for face-to-face interaction and the spontaneous interaction that occurs in life; however, the topic deserves more consideration than he gives it. With MIT and other major universities aggressively moving into online education, collaborative innovation via the Internet is changing fast. Also, it was disappointing that Lehrer didn’t focus more on reading as a means of gaining new perspectives – there is a reason that scientific papers begin with a literature review. This is a case where his bias toward the extrovert ideal limits his creativity in identifying approaches for innovation.

Another circular argument is the use of popularity, financial success, and popular critics’ opinions as a gauge of creativity. In “The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires”, Tim Wu makes the case that the radio, television, and movie industries have been controlled by monopolistic companies and government agencies to homogenize content, making it “safer” and more mainstream. The book, “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business” by Charles Duhigg describes a computer algorithm that has uncanny success at predicting the success of new songs. Rather than being especially creative with “Finding Nemo”, perhaps Pixar has learned the algorithm for popular, mainstream movies.

In life and in business, we need creativity and high performance. In the book “Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else” Geoffrey Colvin explains what is needed for world-class performance. The amazing ability of Tiger Woods and Michael Phelps is much better explained by tremendous hard work and focus from an early age than it is on getting new ideas from other people.

Jonah Lehrer shares important insights in “Imagine: How Creativity Works,” though it only addresses one aspect of creating a successful, high-performance organization and is burdened with a few of the author’s biases.

In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives

by Steven Levy

“In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives” by Steven Levy provides interesting insight into the thinking and culture that drive Google. Levy comes across as a fan, yet reasonably open minded and willing to point out Google’s mistakes – think China.

I didn’t need quite as much information as Levy shared, but I enjoyed the book and came away with a few insights.

Levy repeatedly talks about the stunning intelligence, incredible technical skill, and passion of the people at Google and, frankly, I believe him; however, that leaves me a bit baffled. Given all that brain power, how can it be that some Google products are remarkably mediocre. Google Apps on an iPad is the first example that comes to mind. The recently launched Google Drive is another. Google Buzz could go without saying. Of course, other Google products are astounding.

It was fascinating to see the balance Google achieved in being driven and focused by the unifying force of the founders’ vision while also providing an environment in which people can spend time on whatever they think is most important. It is also interesting to hear specific examples of making decisions based on data. Thinking through these examples would be helpful to a broad range of organizations.

Levy is convinced that Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s Montessori education shaped Google’s culture of letting people focus on what interests them. He also suggests it is responsible for many of their great products and achievements. I will have to consider to what extent I believe that is true for Google and to what extent that could be leveraged at other companies. In “What Is Strategy” Michael Porter makes the point that strategy cannot easily be copied because it must be integrated with many aspects of business and the business model. For example, Porter says Delta can’t just decide to follow Southwest Airlines’ low price strategy without considering impacts to other aspects of their business and customer service model. Could Walmart use a Google-like culture? Could they use it in all areas of their operation? If they used it only in some areas, such as merchandising, would that create other problems?

Overall, “In the Plex” is a good book and worth reading for anyone interested in Google or seeing one way that a “web generation” corporate culture can work.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

by Charles Duhigg

“The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business” by Charles Duhigg is a wonderful blend of business, science, and personal improvement. The three major sections of the book cover the habits of individuals, organizations, and societies.

The first section was the most clear and actionable. Understanding the habit loop provides a framework to see how we slip into habits and how those habits can be disrupted or replaced. Surrounded by the Internet, TV, and radio 24×7, understanding how our habits are created and exploited is important for the consumer. Likewise, understanding the power and issues of building our products into customer habits has become critical to Corporate Marketing. For me, this also reinforced the critical partnership between Marketing and IT.

The second section had a great discussion of Tony Dungee’s focus on training football players with new habits and to focus on perfect execution of habits rather than improvising. These lessons could be relevant to IT leaders as they implement new methodologies – whether ITIL for operations or Agile for development.

After that, the book got a bit fuzzy. The fact that there are keystone habits which open an organization to more significant change is reasonable, but there are no hints for identifying keystone habits. For example, it is not intuitive how, as the new CEO of Alcoa, Paul O’Neill was able to identify safety as a keystone topic. I suppose recognition of the problem is the first step to improvement, but I would like to have heard Duhigg’s advice on how to take the next step.

The third section had interesting general ideas, but again, it is not clear what we do with the information about habits of societies. I also found the discussion of a woman struggling with a habit of gambling to be a bit tedious.

Perhaps most important, Duhigg convinced me that habits are central to life (and business) and that habits can be changed. For that alone it would be worth reading.

Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from EverybodyElse

by Geoff Colvin

Talent is Overrated dispels the myth that some people are born with natural talent for things like playing piano or playing chess. The reality is that years of deliberate practice are required for best-in-the-world performance. Overall, this is a good book and I largely agree with Geoffrey Colvin’s major points.

Colvin does a solid job of justifying his position, explaining deliberate practice, and giving a few examples outside of sports and music. He also makes an interesting point that there is an ever increasing expectation of performance that makes understanding talent critical.

As for opportunities to improve, Colvin spends too much time talking about studies having found no gene for playing piano. Of course they haven’t. There may be a combination of genes impacting fine motor skills, hearing, and timing that allow a person to play piano better, but it doesn’t make sense to discuss a single piano gene or chess gene or a single gene for pretty much any other complex, modern activity.

The other callout is that Colvin argues for the need to develop absolute best-in-the-world talent to be competitive in a global economy and only discusses examples of historically great talent. Then, in the closing chapter, he points out that “oh, by the way, many world class performers are kind of weird and have given up the rest of their life for their achievement.” So we better train ourselves and our kids to be the very best in the world, but we have to sacrifice having a life to do it. I understand why Colvin focuses on the historic examples of the best talent in the world – those are the people that others say must be born with a natural gift and it makes it easier for Colvin to make the case for deliberate practice. That said, most organizations are not interested in developing an entire employee base of absolute best-in-the-world performers and most employees are not interested in sacrificing their lives and, frankly, haven’t been positioned from a young enough age to reach that level. Helping people to understand what it takes to be in the top 10% of global talent might be more realistic and useful.

A final comment is that more work is needed on applying deliberate practice to skills used in the business world. Colvin gives some examples and pushes hard for the use of coaches, but more is needed to turn these ideas into action for most of what most people do at work. Of course, a final comment is that in the dynamic and unstructured “real world” it may be difficult to prove that one person is really better than another – rather than just being lucky – and therefore hard to know how to achieve that. Read “The Drunkard’s Walk” by Leonard Mlodinow for more on that.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking

by Susan Cain

Outstanding book for both introverts and extroverts that gives insights as to how we can create more powerful teams by understanding the strengths and weaknesses of all the members.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

by Patrick Lencioni

I agree with the many readers who find this book a good reminder of basic but important dysfunctions that cause teams to operate less effectively:

1) Absence of trust
2) Fear of conflict
3) Lack of commitment
4) Avoidance of accountability
5) Inattention to results

The book does a good job of demonstrating how these effects can be masked by excuses such as not hurting teammates’ feelings. I personally found the parable style a little tedious, but many others say it is easy to read. It is definitely worth the effort.

Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries
by Peter Sims

People often think of creativity as a big bang event in which a creative genius spews out a great new idea. Peter Sims suggests that is not usually the way creativity works and certainly is not a basis on which you can design a creative organization or repeatable creative process. Instead, making many small bets and investing more in those that take off – perhaps in unexpected directions – is a way to more consistently produce creative results. Experimentation sounds clinical and antithetical to creativity, but the opposite is true. Another important point is that breakthrough ideas are often discovered through serendipity which is another side of the argument to let a team try new ideas – even some you may not initially agree with.

Sims gives enough examples from comedians to software companies that the reader will walk away with specific ideas for his own scenario

Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done
by Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan, Charles Burck

Ram Charan is one of my favorite authors and speakers. He has an amazing ability to bring complex down to the basic principles. Some reviewers comment “that is Business 101″ but I suspect more businesses fail because basic mistakes than fail because of miscalculations in rocket science. In any event, I greatly enjoyed this book by Ram Charan and Larry Bossidy.

A key point is that a system is designed to produce some result, whether that design was conscious or not. If the system consistently produces errors, the system is designed wrong and it is the leader’s job, rather than a technician’s, to fix it. To diagnose the problem and correct it, the leader must be in the details. The leader’s job is to get the people, strategy, and operation connected in a system that produces results.

Simple but powerful

The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

by Leonard Mlodinow

The Drunkard’s Walk is a wonderful blend of statistics, psychology, business, history, and everyday life. Mlodinow’s slightly dry sense of humor makes the book fun and easy to read.

He gives powerful examples of subtle, yet critically important, errors in the way statistics are used in law, medicine, investing, and sports. Another theme is that many extraordinary performances are not unbelievable long shots but the inevitable result of a large number of people trying for a long time. Talent is an important factor – Tiger Woods is much more likely to get a hole in one than I am – but among professional golfers, holes in one likely follow a random distribution.

Mlodinow points out that compensation for investment analysts and film industry executives is based on the premise that winners can be picked despite repeated demonstrations that actual performance is random. Most businesses are afraid to take a chance on a new approach, but significant savings are possible with a new compensation model that sacrifices nothing in results.

His advice for winning in a world heavily influenced by random factors? More “at bats”. Just keep trying