On Wednesday I met Ram Charan, one of the foremost management consultants and leadership gurus in the world. Here’s the third insight I gained from my time with him.

Invention is the creation of new ideas. You need geniuses for that.

Innovation is converting ideas into revenue and margins. You need leaders for that.

Successful business relies far more on the latter than the former.

I thought this was a very interesting perspective. When we talk about innovation the conversation does usually push toward extreme examples, but business innovation, the kind that helps one company win over others, is often about incremental improvements, a cost saving here, a process improvement there.

Time after time when companies unleash the creative power of their employees (usually doing little more than asking and listening) they uncover numerous innovations. So we can leave the invention to the Einsteins. Ask around for the innovative ideas. Then put our leadership to use selecting the best innovations and converting them to positive business results.

On Wednesday I met Ram Charan, one of the foremost management consultants and leadership gurus in the world. Here’s the second insight I gained from my time with him.

Right before his keynote he made the comment, “I don’t know anything.”

The organizer of the event quickly replied, “You’re going on in a few minutes. Please don’t say that.”

Of course, Ram Charan knows a great deal. But he has also come to terms with what he does and doesn’t know. He seems equally comfortable with both sides of that equation.

This is something I discuss with my coaching clients all the time. It never ceases to amaze me. Whether I am coaching a first time manager or a senior executive, they almost always have the same fear - that someone will discover how little they know. They spend their lives hoping no one will realize that they really don’t belong.

In fact they do belong, as much as anyone does. This isn’t to say that there aren’t differences in competence levels. But it is extraordinary to me how many people share this common anxiety that they really don’t know enough.

Ram Charan seems to have truly embraced and found comfort in Socrates. You’ve seen this quote before, but it is always worth reconsidering.

“True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing. And in knowing that you know nothing, that makes you the smartest of all.”

Yesterday I had a film session with SkillSoft, a company that provides online video training. They were also filming Ram Charan, one of the foremost management consultants and leadership gurus in the world. Over the next few days I will share some of the bits of wisdom I gleaned from my time with him.

I find it interesting that recently I wrote about curiosity being the best trait a salesperson can have, and yesterday Ram Charan told me that Jack Welch was the most curious CEO he has ever seen. Given that Jack Welch is one of the most celebrated CEOs I think there must be something to this.

Ram was very clear that this was an invaluable trait for Welch, but our conversation flowed elsewhere. I never asked the follow-up question - Why is curiosity so valuable for a leader?

So here’s my own take.

Curiosity about your people helps you discover their best ideas. It helps you understand what is happening in their world. It also brings out their best. If they know you are going to ask them questions, they will be more prepared. Your best employees will be more eager to speak with you.

Curiosity about your business helps you discover your strengths and weaknesses and make adjustments. It gets you out of group think and acceptance of status quo.

Curiosity about the world around you helps you discover changes in your industry that will affect your organization. It helps you react quickly to crises, limit losses, and take advantage of opportunities.

My friend Mark Levy sees the world in strange ways, a helpful trait for a marketer. For example, when brainstorming ideas for blog posts he said, “You should write about how blogging isn’t about perfection. Make sure your post is flawless.”

We also enjoy a fair amount of banter, generally centering around his genius and my comparative lack thereof. It is all good natured. Recently he characterized his banter efforts as geared towards giving me a confisectomy - i.e., he sought to remove my confidence.

Now Mark gives me lots of confidence. He seeks me out for advice and praises the work that I do. I’ve never felt hurt or threatened by our joking around. But it got me thinking about the idea of a confisectomy.

Who gives them? How are they delivered? I realize they are actually quite common, sometimes intentional, sometimes not. Consider the following ways to boost or diminish confidence.

We can micro-manage or give stretch assignments (as always, this applies to managers and parents). We can focus on errors or achievements. We can emphasize possibility or risk. We can simply hug the people we love and tell them we believe in them.

On a broader scale marketers and politicians can play to our fears or our egos. Unfortunately, they seem to believe (and maybe they are right) that our fears are stronger than our egos.

We all hold the scalpel every day. We can either perform confidence enhancements or confisectomies. Which surgery will you perform today?

“I just wish we could move forward. The problem is all of these naysayers.”

What is in a name?

Naysayers are problems. They prevent progress. They take your brilliant plans with tons of upside and see only the risks and the weaknesses. They stop you from changing yourself and your organization.

Stabilizers on the other hand are essential. No business can operate without them. They prevent chaos. They cut apart poorly conceived plans and shore up weaknesses in good plans. They maintain the history of an organization. They save you from charging head first into big mistakes.

The way we label coworkers matters. Dismissive or derisive labels amplify frustration, infighting, politicking, and marginalizing. Appreciative labels breed respect, open communication, honest dialogue, strong relationships, and yes, progress - even when the coworkers are stabilizers.

After college I waited tables for a year at a chain restaurant in Kenmore Square Boston. It’s located between Boston University and Fenway Park. So the patrons were a mix of angry sports fans (this was before the Red Sox finally won) and poor college students.

The money was awful. It was physically exhausting work. The customers were obnoxious and demanding. At the time I thought there was nothing redeeming about it.

But I learned more important lessons about work, people, and life in that job than in any other. Here’s a smattering.

1. Always, always be nice to people who will handle your food. (This lesson probably also applies to things like medicine.)
2. Tip well. Very well. They are working harder for a living than you are and getting paid less. (Unless you are a school teacher.)
3. Glass cracks when it goes quickly from hot (fresh out of the washer) to cold (filled with ice and soda) but not the reverse. Who knew?
4. If you are heading somewhere and see something that should go in the same direction (e.g., dirty plates), take it with you. Now. This time. Don’t put it off.
5. Make friends with everyone at work. You never know when your tips will depend on them.
6. Getting slammed (restaurant lingo for suddenly having all 8 tables in your section seated at the same time) shows you what people are made of. (The people here being you, your coworkers, your manager who can either sit at the bar watching or dive in and help, and yes, your customers.)
7. The measure of the quality of a human being isn’t how he treats his friends. Most people are pretty good at that. It’s how he treats the people he will rarely, if ever, see again.
8. Rubber Soul is the greatest Beatles album of all time.
9. Waiters are like piranha when a mistake order of nachos are returned to the kitchen.
10. And never be mean to people who will handle your food. Trust me, it’s worth mentioning twice. (I swear I didn’t do anything, but I’ve seen some things that still keep me up at night.)

What about you? What job taught you the most?

As I wrote yesterday, I have asked job applicants to write guest posts for this blog as part of their application process. Today I offer one of those posts to you. The author is Jonah Cohen, a senior at Brandeis University double majoring in Philosophy and Psychology who has made Dean’s List every semester. (I tried to tell him college is for having fun but I had as much success explaining this to him as I did to my own mother when I was in college.) Without further adieu, here is his post:

I am graduating in three months. And I need to write a blog post. I have no idea what I will be doing next year, nor have I ever written a blog. That is about all I know.

Are you familiar with this feeling of utter uncertainty? Do you like to always know what is about to happen? Do you need to know what’s around the corner?

But what if you don’t know? Or couldn’t know? What do you typically do then?

Kierkegaard wrote, “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily, to not to dare is to lose oneself.”

Most of the time we let the uncertainty in our lives stop us. It is romantic to fill our lives with pleasing illusions; armed with a plan, the world looks a lot less scary. We feel safer, less alone, and further from the nasty thought that we might screw up or get lost. But this is a mistake.

The unknown is motivating. It pushes us to try new things. To explore different options. And the paradox?

Only by immersing ourselves in the frightening unexplored can we rise to our greatest challenges.

So push yourself into the unknown.

Doing this has allowed me to do things that I have never done before.

Like writing this blog post.

On Tuesday I shared an email exchange that went viral and asked you which of the emailers you admire. Yesterday I shared my views on the Professor. Today the kid is up, and in my opinion he does deserve admiration for his actions.

I agree with the professor that the student’s approach to sampling classes was misguided. It was rude and unprofessional. (Though I also think it shows some level of creativity and willingness to experiment outside the established norms.) I agree with some of the commentary I’ve received that the youth of today need to learn manners and discipline.

And so, insofar as the kid’s email attempts to justify his actions as appropriate, I think he needs to learn otherwise. Had he okayed his strategy with the professor ahead of time, fine. If he’d had a flat tire or a death in the family or a subway car ride that stopped underground due to a power failure, those are excusable reasons for showing up late. Sampling classes does not rate as a worthy excuse.

However, when I read the kid’s email I don’t hear the snotty tone of an impudent youth trying to defend his actions. I hear a respectful voice offering reasonable feedback to someone in a position of power. Now, as I’ve written before, I do think this kind of message should be delivered live instead of in written form. However, I think the essence of the email - speaking truth to power - is laudable.

He didn’t attack the professor. He didn’t show undue malice or anger. He expressed the impact the professor’s actions had on him and stated his case calmly and openly.

I can easily teach someone to show up on time. I can explain to this kid why his actions were inappropriate in professional and academic settings. I can convey how his actions were personally unfair to the professors.

I cannot nearly as easily teach someone to speak their minds to authority and to do it in a respectful way.

Yesterday I shared an email exchange that went viral and asked you which of the emailers you admire. There are important implications for what you chose.

Do you admire Professor Galloway as the accounts I have read/heard seem to? Lauding his saying what we have all (everyone over 30) felt at some point? That someone too young (under 30) is acting too youthfully for where they are at that moment. Playing loud music is fine in your dorm room, but not thumping out of your car on a residential street. Texting one of your friends is not something you are supposed to do in the middle of a conversation. And showing up an hour late in a professional setting with no hint of remorse is just unacceptable.

Those may be fair critiques, but sometimes we unleash our frustrations on the wrong object. While I can’t come up with any good reason for the thumping music in a residential neighborhood, I can think of many legitimate reasons why someone could be late to a class or any business meeting. I’ve seen a lot of Executives and CEOs give speeches and conduct meetings. I’ve never seen one force a late arriving attendee to leave.

Yes, it is the professor’s job to teach his students decorum. It is also his job to teach them leadership. How do you respond to employees who act outside the bounds of what you expect or desire? Do you publicly criticize them? Do you pass judgment without examining the facts?

And when you are confronted with a critique of your own actions as the student’s email offered to the Professor, what is the leaderly response? Defending yourself and your position? Attacking the one giving you feedback?

No. I think the Professor took a potentially rich learning opportunity - a situation with implications for business conduct, feedback, and leadership - and turned it into a stage for showing off his power.

“I get to choose who stays and who goes.”
“I get to make the rules.”
“Don’t mess with me, because I am the BMO this C.”

We are all teachers - to our kids, coworkers, students, managers, direct reports, friends, family members. Every time we critique someone else, we are teaching. But there are many lessons that go beyond the explicit message of what we say.

I hope my explicit message is a positive one. Just as important, I hope I have treated Professor Galloway with the professionalism and respect he deserves.

Tomorrow I’ll address the student’s actions and why you might just wish you had him on your team.

There is an email exchange that occurred last month between a Stern School of Business professor and a student that has now gone viral. The background is that the student arrived an hour late to the first class of the semester and was asked by the professor to leave. Afterwards they exchanged emails. My question is which email (if any) is admirable and why? (My own opinion on this tomorrow.)

Here’s the student email:

Prof. Galloway,

I would like to discuss a matter with you that bothered me. Yesterday evening I entered your 6pm Brand Strategy class approximately 1 hour late. As I entered the room, you quickly dismissed me, saying that I would need to leave and come back to the next class. After speaking with several students who are taking your class, they explained that you have a policy stating that students who arrive more than 15 minutes late will not be admitted to class.

As of yesterday evening, I was interested in three different Monday night classes that all occurred simultaneously. In order to decide which class to select, my plan for the evening was to sample all three and see which one I like most. Since I had never taken your class, I was unaware of your class policy. I was disappointed that you dismissed me from class considering (1) there is no way I could have been aware of your policy and (2) considering that it was the first day of evening classes and I arrived 1 hour late (not a few minutes), it was more probable that my tardiness was due to my desire to sample different classes rather than sheer complacency.

I have already registered for another class but I just wanted to be open and provide my opinion on the matter.

Regards,

XXXX

And here’s the professor’s response:

Thanks for the feedback. I, too, would like to offer some feedback.

Just so I’ve got this straight…you started in one class, left 15-20 minutes into it (stood up, walked out mid-lecture), went to another class (walked in 20 minutes late), left that class (again, presumably, in the middle of the lecture), and then came to my class. At that point (walking in an hour late) I asked you to come to the next class which “bothered” you.

Correct?

You state that, having not taken my class, it would be impossible to know our policy of not allowing people to walk in an hour late. Most risk analysis offers that in the face of substantial uncertainty, you opt for the more conservative path or hedge your bet (e.g., do not show up an hour late until you know the professor has an explicit policy for tolerating disrespectful behavior, check with the TA before class, etc.). I hope the lottery winner that is your recently crowned Monday evening Professor is teaching Judgement and Decision Making or Critical Thinking.

In addition, your logic effectively means you cannot be held accountable for any code of conduct before taking a class. For the record, we also have no stated policy against bursting into show tunes in the middle of class, urinating on desks or taking that revolutionary hair removal system for a spin. However, xxxx, there is a baseline level of decorum (i.e., manners) that we expect of grown men and women who the admissions department have deemed tomorrow’s business leaders.

xxxx, let me be more serious for a moment. I do not know you, will not know you and have no real affinity or animosity for you. You are an anonymous student who is now regretting the send button on his laptop. It’s with this context I hope you register pause…REAL pause xxxx and take to heart what I am about to tell you:

xxxx, get your shit together.

Getting a good job, working long hours, keeping your skills relevant, navigating the politics of an organization, finding a live/work balance…these are all really hard, xxxx. In contrast, respecting institutions, having manners, demonstrating a level of humility…these are all (relatively) easy. Get the easy stuff right xxxx. In and of themselves they will not make you successful. However, not possessing them will hold you back and you will not achieve your potential which, by virtue of you being admitted to Stern, you must have in spades. It’s not too late xxxx…

Again, thanks for the feedback.

Professor Galloway