“What We Learned in the Rainforest”
By Tachi Kiuchi & Bill Shireman
Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc., 2002
Alvin Toffler (“The Third Wave”) said it a few years ago – that we were then at the threshold of a post-industrial age about to step into the “information society.” Many more social and economic prophets forewarned us to brace up for the expanded role — and rule — of information processing and distribution offices, while they announced the greatly reduced influence of the factory floor.
Side by side, however, with the exciting prospects of super abundant information being delivered with the speed of light through fiber optics, we of the third millennium are also facing the prospects of diminishing resources and increasing wastes.
While the promise of a higher quality of life is within the grasp of the 21st century individual, the specter of extinction hangs over everyone. We are optimistic in one breath, and we are overwhelmed with pessimism the next. Is this the destiny of human life on earth? What about business whose view is to exploit our natural resources so it can grow, as if nature and business cannot pro-exist? More philosophically, we ask: Is there a future for mankind – and for its preoccupations like business?
There is a book, just off the press, titled “What We Learned in the Rainforest,” which provides us a metaphor that illuminates what is actually happening and the lights the way for some definitive steps. That way, we can have the best of both worlds: businesses can continue to grow while Mother Nature remains rich, diverse and plays its role to feed and sustain us all.
“If instead of controlling nature we listen to and learn from it, we can find our way with minimal pain and maximal gain,” say Tachi Kiuchi and Bill Shireman, the authors. These people know whereof they speak. Mr. Kiuchi is chairman and CEO emeritus of Misubishi Electric America, while Mr. Shireman is chairman and CEO of Global Futures.
While this is an easy-to-read book, the concepts are neither simplistic nor shallow — because they actually go against the grain — introducing new mindsets that are short of revolutionary. They start us off with a fundamental point: Business is part of nature, and so it must work like nature with its diversity, collaborative/competitive processes, death and rebirth.
The authors — who have visited a Costa Rican rainforest and who have tried skydiving in order to use two illuminating metaphors — offer seven lessons that must be clear enough to executives like you and me.
The first lesson: Use limit to create value — close the loop. Setting off with the premise that even the rainforest has limits, the authors noted that nature has a way of preserving itself in a give and take universe (a loop). Business, they say, must also find ways to close the loop — meaning, a recovery system, where wastes are re-used in a self-nuturing cycle. The book cites the case of Coors, makers of beer, who gave birth to many other businesses because it learned from the rainforest.
The second lesson: Replace physical resources with information — and learn to do more with less. “Information has a curious quality,” the authors say. “If I give you a physical resource, then you have it, and I don’t. But if I give you information, then you have it, and so do I.” (Actually, Hilarion Henares said basically the same thing when he criticized the Philippines’ export policy almost a decade ago. He said, if I may recall, that the reason we lose in the international trade game is we confine our exports to something physical like bananas and sugar, while the Japanese and other advanced countries export technology. He pointed out that if we sell bananas, we lose the bananas; but if the Japanese sell technology, they don’t lose such knowhow!)
An article in Fortune magazine many issues ago compared the cost of producing a Ford automobile prototype and a Microsoft software — saying that the profit from software is far far heftier than that from a car. The book is illuminating: “Information can be expensive to create, but it is cheap to reproduce and distribute.” The errors of Xerox and Apple are also discussed here, principally for basing their business models “on the illusion that the value was in the hardware rather than the software.”
Five more lessons from nature are offered by the book — from creating a whole new way to profit to inventing an entirely new economy consistent with the ways of nature; from creating diversity of products to knowing the “four seasons of business” — namely innovation, growth, improvement and release. The book recommends that we must also be sensitive to signals when a certain enterprise is at its death’s throes and must, therefore, “release.” Because, they are quick to add, release will be followed by a “rebirth.”
Are these authors offering unrealistic policies, born of their rich imagination? Certainly not. Their observations are rooted in a study of the world’s 20 leading companies who have discovered that they could maximize their business performance “as they become like nature, a complex and dynamic living system.”
The assembly line was once the icon of the industrial age. We thought the microchip is the apt trademark of the information age. Read this book when it reaches the book stores — and you will conclude that the verdant, lush rainforest is the better icon for the first century. After all, we have already gone full circle. We are all going back to nature!
Sunday, April 21, 2002
Sunday, April 07, 2002
Recruit top guns, then shoot for No. 1
“The War for Talent”
Ed Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones
And Beth Axelrod
Harvard Business School Press, 2001
On the need to prevent another Enron-like collapse, my friend Glendon Rowell of Boyden Global Executive Search pointed out that “more professionalism in recruitment is more important than tighter regulation and governance.”
(Enron, erstwhile much-admired corporation in Maerica, suddenly collapsed, throwing thousands out of a job, sending shock waves to markets around the world, and prompting government regulators to look for other organizations or practice to blame.)
What Mr. Rowell is saying is that executive talent is a very important factor in defining and directing an organization’s future, and in making it adhere to ethical principles.
An organization’s executive pool also influences a firm’s competitiveness – and therefore, viability.
The book, “The War for Talent,” declares: “Talent is now a critical driver of corporate performance.”
Based on extensive research and case studies from 1997 to 2001, the authors – all from McKinsey & Company – summarizes their findings thus: “What distinguished the high-performing companies from the average-performing was not better HR, but the fundamental belief in the importance of talent.”
Are there leadership gaps in your organization that adversely affect its performance? Are you constrained by the policy of “promoting from within,” giving more premium to seniority than outstanding performance?
Read about an overworked executive who witnessed the plunge of his company from a glorious history – because he settled for mediocre executives. And then follow him, after he heeded the advice of Jack Welch of General Electric and Wayne Callaway (then of Pepsi Co) – including Stephen Spielberg. What gospel truth did he stumble on?
They told him that they spend half of their time on people: recruiting new talent, picking the right people for particular positions, grooming young stars, developing global managers, dealing with underperformers and reviewing the entire talent pool.
The guy is Les Wexner, CEO of The Limited who built a retailing and marketing marvel which included “Victoria’s Secret,” Bath and Body Works, et al. In 1990, his stocks plunged.
But after three years hiring and using top guns, the company’s profits have grown from $285 million to $445 million, and his stock price has almost doubled.
A “new business reality” has entered the corporate scene, says the book. What happened? The authors observe that companies’ reliance on talent increased dramatically over the last century. In 1900, only 17 percent of all jobs required knowledge workers; not over 60 percent do.
The book quotes Cisco CEO John Chambers, who put it this way: “A world- class engineer with five peers can outproduce 200 regular engineers.”
What “business reality” is staring us in the face? For one, the book says, we had the belief in the past that “people need companies.” Today, “companies need people.”
Two structural forces are fueling the war, the book says. First, the power has shifted from the corporation to the individual. Second, excellent talent management has become a crucial source of competitive advantage.
In the past, executives looked at a 30-year horizon, good salary and retirement package. Now, their horizon is only five years, and retirement is remote possibility.
The old recruiting strategy of advertising for job hunters has given way to the aggressive effort to tap passive candidates. “We now reach people who are not looking.”
Something else is also happening in companies in more developed economies. They are now breaking away form the traditional “hire-from-within policy.” Even if the failure rates of senior external hires hover around 30 percent, companies still think it’s well worth the risk.
“The War for Talent” is a useful resource book, not only for CEOs needing to infuse new blood – and, perhaps, new energy in their firms – but also for all leaders who want to keep the best, train those with great potential – and deal with mediocre performers “with an iron hand and a velvet glove.”
The book also reveals the emergence of a new profession. It’s public knowledge that today’s intermediaries for recruitment are executive search professionals. Now enter “talent agents” – who are not any different from agents of superstars.
Close on the heels of the collapse of Enron (which, curiously is featured glowingly in the book – probably to the regret of the authors), Boyden’s Rowell volunteers that – aside from vision and superior strategy – organizations need leaders of integrity.
The headhunter’s comment enriches, not contradicts, the book’s thesis that the right (from ethical and precision standpoint) executives talent truly drives organization well into the future.
Ed Michaels, Helen Handfield-Jones
And Beth Axelrod
Harvard Business School Press, 2001
On the need to prevent another Enron-like collapse, my friend Glendon Rowell of Boyden Global Executive Search pointed out that “more professionalism in recruitment is more important than tighter regulation and governance.”
(Enron, erstwhile much-admired corporation in Maerica, suddenly collapsed, throwing thousands out of a job, sending shock waves to markets around the world, and prompting government regulators to look for other organizations or practice to blame.)
What Mr. Rowell is saying is that executive talent is a very important factor in defining and directing an organization’s future, and in making it adhere to ethical principles.
An organization’s executive pool also influences a firm’s competitiveness – and therefore, viability.
The book, “The War for Talent,” declares: “Talent is now a critical driver of corporate performance.”
Based on extensive research and case studies from 1997 to 2001, the authors – all from McKinsey & Company – summarizes their findings thus: “What distinguished the high-performing companies from the average-performing was not better HR, but the fundamental belief in the importance of talent.”
Are there leadership gaps in your organization that adversely affect its performance? Are you constrained by the policy of “promoting from within,” giving more premium to seniority than outstanding performance?
Read about an overworked executive who witnessed the plunge of his company from a glorious history – because he settled for mediocre executives. And then follow him, after he heeded the advice of Jack Welch of General Electric and Wayne Callaway (then of Pepsi Co) – including Stephen Spielberg. What gospel truth did he stumble on?
They told him that they spend half of their time on people: recruiting new talent, picking the right people for particular positions, grooming young stars, developing global managers, dealing with underperformers and reviewing the entire talent pool.
The guy is Les Wexner, CEO of The Limited who built a retailing and marketing marvel which included “Victoria’s Secret,” Bath and Body Works, et al. In 1990, his stocks plunged.
But after three years hiring and using top guns, the company’s profits have grown from $285 million to $445 million, and his stock price has almost doubled.
A “new business reality” has entered the corporate scene, says the book. What happened? The authors observe that companies’ reliance on talent increased dramatically over the last century. In 1900, only 17 percent of all jobs required knowledge workers; not over 60 percent do.
The book quotes Cisco CEO John Chambers, who put it this way: “A world- class engineer with five peers can outproduce 200 regular engineers.”
What “business reality” is staring us in the face? For one, the book says, we had the belief in the past that “people need companies.” Today, “companies need people.”
Two structural forces are fueling the war, the book says. First, the power has shifted from the corporation to the individual. Second, excellent talent management has become a crucial source of competitive advantage.
In the past, executives looked at a 30-year horizon, good salary and retirement package. Now, their horizon is only five years, and retirement is remote possibility.
The old recruiting strategy of advertising for job hunters has given way to the aggressive effort to tap passive candidates. “We now reach people who are not looking.”
Something else is also happening in companies in more developed economies. They are now breaking away form the traditional “hire-from-within policy.” Even if the failure rates of senior external hires hover around 30 percent, companies still think it’s well worth the risk.
“The War for Talent” is a useful resource book, not only for CEOs needing to infuse new blood – and, perhaps, new energy in their firms – but also for all leaders who want to keep the best, train those with great potential – and deal with mediocre performers “with an iron hand and a velvet glove.”
The book also reveals the emergence of a new profession. It’s public knowledge that today’s intermediaries for recruitment are executive search professionals. Now enter “talent agents” – who are not any different from agents of superstars.
Close on the heels of the collapse of Enron (which, curiously is featured glowingly in the book – probably to the regret of the authors), Boyden’s Rowell volunteers that – aside from vision and superior strategy – organizations need leaders of integrity.
The headhunter’s comment enriches, not contradicts, the book’s thesis that the right (from ethical and precision standpoint) executives talent truly drives organization well into the future.
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