Take Two Before Bedtime: The New Wonder Drug From Bain & Company

[My Amazon.com review of DECIDE & DELIVER by Marcia W. Blenko, Michael C. Mankins and Paul Rogers]

Your organization…can be the standout, the one that people point to, the one where everyone wants to work, the one that decides and delivers. Your organization can accomplish great things – beginning with its next decision.

What this book’s authors and their colleagues have done is fascinating. They’ve taken everything Bain has ever learned about [1.] making great decisions and [2.] the makings of great companies – synthesized them – and come up with a nifty, logically consistent and easy-to-digest approach that (they say) pretty much ensures Complete & Total Organizational Good Health.**

I really, really like the central premise: that a company can learn over time to increase the effectiveness of the decisions it makes, and, in the process, get all its moving parts working together to produce great results. I highly, highly recommend reading all about it.

Having said that…

I’d still feel compelled, if I were a business doctor, to offer a few words to the wise to those considering a decision-centered approach.

• First thing I’d say is you probably shouldn’t let the fact that it’s been boiled down to a 5-step process (in just 146 pages) mislead you to believe your company could master it overnight. Depending on your current state, you might still need to tackle lots and lots of sub-steps.
• I’d say, too, that it couldn’t hurt to keep in mind that the authors work for a gigantic consulting firm and there are no regulatory restrictions (like the ones placed on giant pharmaceutical firms, for example) on what they can say.

Whoa. What’s that about? Only that a small handful o’ their statements caused my b.s. meter to blip, statements to the effect that “other attempts to reshape organizations” and “traditional approaches to organization” – i.e., competing approaches – are inferior in one way or another to theirs. Those struck me as vague and not well substantiated. Just not up to the high quality standards of the rest of the book.

I like it best when the language is careful and understated. Take my favorite line as an example: “And decisions offer a practical point of entry into what would otherwise be a large and potentially overwhelming task.” That, to me, is the big selling point. That’s their ingenious contribution.

That’s a pill, if you will, I could confidently prescribe.

**when used as directed, of course!

Vroom, Vroom!

And we’re off.

Did you know there are specific approaches you can take to: turbocharge your company’s productivity? drive performance breakthroughs? harness the power (of “pull”) to negotiate today’s tough business terrain and set big things in motion?

Well, there are…

And – apart from the fact that their authors like automotive analogies – the approaches I have in mind, while distinctly different from one another, share lots of things in common. Each one, for example, represents a comprehensive and holistic way to create value. Each is essentially a formula for success. “This is how you, Mr. or Ms. CEO, should manage your company; this is how to systematically and continually make things better” is what they’d say if they could talk. Each is well-conceived, well-developed and real-world tested.

Le’ me throw some names at ya: John Hagel. Ram Charan. David Allen. Robert Kaplan. Tony Schwartz. David Norton. John Seely Brown. These are some of the authors / leading thinkers I’ve been following like a detective the past few years.

What I’d like to do (in this here blog) is explore various aspects of their work. I’m especially interested in the common grounds: Where do their approaches intersect and overlap? How complete are they? Could they be merged in helpful ways?

WHY EXPLORE THIS STUFF?

Let’s just say for now there’s a learning intention on my part, and an equally big teaching intention. If there are management tools leaders can reliably use to get and keep their firms on track, i.e., if there are shortcuts to business success, I want to know about them. And I want to pass them on –

Especially to leaders of smaller businesses. Smaller businesses are responsible for most of the growth in the U.S. but many fail because, in the words of Dick Harrington, the former head of Thomson Reuters, “they have poor basic business practices.” I'd like to help speed up the adoption of good basic practices amongst this group.

Just how to do that is another matter. Is it even possible to pass these approaches (that typically originate within academia or at top consultancies and Fortune 500 companies) down to the little guy? What kinds of messaging and media are most effective?

The latter is a subject I’m keenly interested in. It’s where elements like storytelling, dramatization and visual presentation could come into play…and where I hope to head soon!