Book Reviews

The Goal

Authors: Eliyahu Goldratt and Jeff Cox

OK, so I’m 20 years late in reviewing this book but I’ve found it and read it now. No harm done, then! This book was first published in 1984 and this review relates to the third edition published in 2000

Quite simply, this is a novel and a form of text book all at the same time. The odd point is that basically it works both as a novel and as an introduction to the Theory of Constraints, Throughput, Cost Accounting, bottlenecks and a whole lot more.

If you are not familiar with this book them you might wonder how on earth a novel on the theory of constraints can be anything other than, well, let’s say, odd: so read it! Eli Goldratt is a serious academic, practitioner and author and he has put together the story of a man, Alex Rogo (how do you pronounce that surname?) with a factory to save from closure. Alex runs into an old university chum, Jonah, who possesses amazing insights into a situation he has never seen when he unloads his burden of what’s wrong with his factory.

Jonah is a physicist now and he uses the Socratic method to walk Alex and his team through their nightmares. The what? Jonah knows all the answers, honest he does, but he refuses simply to tell Alex what to do: he’s a successful consultant who does have the time for hand holding anyway. What Jonah does is to get Alex to appreciate his problems and then work his way through them until he finds the solution. Great: it works very well and Alex and his team do work their way through their problems very successfully. Actually, that’ getting a bit ahead of the game because the final fifth or sixth of the book has the characters reviewing their successes and failures and they find that they didn’t do everything as well as they might have.

I have to say that you probably do need to have a reason to learn at least something about the theory of constraints and so on to want to read this book but it has sold more than three million copies so far. What would draw the ordinary reader into this novel is the private life that Alex has then hasn’t then has again after a struggle: faint heart never won fair lady, don’t forget.

I would like to think that if I ever wrote a novel about cost accounting or the Excel Spreadsheeter, it would be as good and as meaningful as this.

How about this for an opening line, if I might be so bold as to steal it from page 307 of The Goal:

As a matter of fact, I started to have a very good guideline; if it comes from cost accounting it must be wrong.

So, Goldratt’s a successful author, consultant and anti cost accountant so he must have a fair point. Any cost accountant worth his salt knows why Goldratt would think like that and would have to hold up his hand and say, ‘It’s a fair cop, officer.’

The essence of the book, then? Well, there are two threads to it that run in parallel to each other.

Thread one is the factory and the solution to its problem. How our hero not only turns the factory's fortunes around; but those of the whole group. I liked this part as Goldratt built some good and credible characters and took away the potential for building cheesy never get it wrong types. There are some incidents where mistakes are made, there are people making inaccurate assessments and, yes, mistakes.

Thread two is Alex's home life and his wife's reaction to it. Alex is living with his family in home town ... it's not his wife's home town and since they moved there relatively recently, she hasn'tmade many friends and, to be frank, doesn't look as if she's likely to. Out of the blue for Alex, she walks away from him, leaving him with the children.

It's a difficult thing for a woman to walk away like that and I don't think a woman writer would have made Alex's wife do that: men are feral and have less of a problem ... Goldratt got that part wrong, I'd say.

Still, so as not to give anything away and drag out the review too much, there is much happiness by the end of the book.

The factory may be saved; a marriage may be saved; indeed, a company may be saved.

And all because of the theory of constraints!

As I was reading this book, I turned into a salesmen and told a number of people that they ought to buy it and I had a success rate of around 50%. No commission came my way, however! Mr Goldratt ...

If you're in business and commerce, buy this book: practitioners and students will both benefit from it.

Reviewer: Duncan Williamson - see Duncan's courses for OSL Training  here

Six Thinking Hats

Author:Edward de Bono

I read Edward de Bono's first book, Lateral Thinking, when it first came out. I chose it as my prize for something that I was awarded at my school's speech day. I can't remember what the prize was for but I remember the book!

Six thinking hats may well have a similar impression on me, although it is by no means new to me: I haven't reviewed it before, that's all. I have reread this book because I am now embarking on a project that has the six thinking hats idea at its core although it is by no means a six thinking hats book. That's not such a wacky idea as you will see when the project's finished.

de Bono has conjoured up the imagery of six different coloured hats as the back drop to the way that we should think, speak and act. The colours he has chosen are meant to help with the imagery, too. Here's the list of the six hats together with the their role and meaning

• White Hat White is neutral and objective. The white hat is concerned with objective facts and figures.
• Red Hat Red suggests anger (seeing red), rage and emotions. The red hat gives the emotional view.
• Black Hat Black is sombre and serious. The black hat is cautious and careful. It points out the weaknesses in an idea.
• Yellow Hat Yellow is sunny and positive. The yellow hat is optimistic and covers hope and positive thinking.
• Green Hat Green is grass, vegetation and abundant, fertile growth. The green hat indicates creativity and new ideas.
• Blue Hat Blue is cool, and it is also the colour of the sky, which is above everything else. The blue hat is concerned with control, the organization of the thinking process and the use of the other hats.

The book centres around the use of the six hats in the context of a series of meetings or part of a meeting. That's useful as it gives us a great deal of insight into how to conduct your self when wearing the appropriate hat.

I have to say that the idea of wearing different hats is something of a turn off for me as I first came across the idea in 1980 when an Insector came to inspect the college I was working at and he was presistently saying things like, I am now wearing my Inspector's het but if I were wearing my teacher's het ... the number of times that man changed his het beggars belief. Notice the spelling of hat, too: he said het and that jarred too!

So it took me a while to bring myself even to think about the six thinking hats: that old fashioned imagery dates the book, by the way in my opinion and that's borne out by the fact that it was first published in 1985.

That's it really: learn to focus you mind and your meetings by employing the six hats thinking methodology and you'll reap the rewards. de Bono makes these claims, however: it takes the emotion out of discussions and decisions as we are only allowed to think and talk in the six hats way. This is a relatively short book that can be read in a couple of hours or so and de Bono provides us with a lot of examples, so there is no need to go astray with it.

In the preface to the book de Bono writes:

• A major corporation (ABB) used to spend 30 days on their multinational project team discussions. Using the parallel thinking of the six has method, the discussions now take as little as two days
• Statoil in Norway had a problem with an oil rig that was costing about $100,000 a day. A certified trainer introduced the six hats method and in twleve minutes the problem was solved ...

Powerful stuff ... takes us well beyond the meetings scenarios that de Bono concentrates on in the book. So you need to make the final leaps yourself: should be well worth the effort if the two examples above are anything to go by. Of course, there could be other reasons for these successes but I'm not in a position to say so with any certainty or any foundation whatsoever!

If you are involved in meetings and decision making, buy and read this book and watch out for my reviews of de Bono's other books in this area: six values, six shoes and a few more.

Reviewer: Duncan Williamson - see all Duncan's courses here

Freakonomics

Author:Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Lubner

Freakonomics has clearly taken the academic community by storm. Are you aware that there is both a teacher and a student guide to this book? Are you aware that it has become the set text for a number of University programmes, in the USA at least? It's all true. Take a look at the authors' web site and see for yourself.

Does the book deserve such plaudits as additional guides and set text adoption? I can see why; but I wouldn't go so far as to make it a set text. Strongly advise some analysts, practitioners and accountants to read it without a doubt, however.

Freakonomics was published, in the UK anyway, in 2005 and although I bought it a while ago I have only just read it. I should advise anyone who starts in the way that I did that you are misleading yourself if you just use this as a book to dip into for the odd fact or figure.

The book is written by an academic economist and a journalist. Not that they should be scarred for life; but I believe that their backgrounds force them into the analyses they make that others wouldn't necessarily make. This is neither a bad thing nor a criticism!

What is Freakonomics, then? Freakonomics is a book for data analysts in my opinion. I say that because every chapter and section of the book begins with an hypothesis or statement or fact that is then tested with reference to one or more data sets. There are six chapters and an epilogue to contend with and the chapter titles tell you something of what you might expect. For example,

Introduction: The hidden side of everything

1. What do school teachers and Sumo wrestlers have in common?
2. How is the Ku Klux Klan live a group of real estate agents?
3. Why do drug dealers still live with their moms?
4. Where have all the criminals gone?
5. What makes a perfect parent?
6. Perfect parenting, part II, or: would a Roshana by any other name smell as sweet?

Epilogue: two paths to Harvard

Where does my data analysis comment come from? Well, many of the arguments and ideas that Levitt comes up with are supported by data or are derived from a data set. Some of the ideas that he discusses are controversial, too: the idea that the legalisation of abortions was the cause of the reduction in the crime rate in the USA 20 years or so later.

Other controversial topics include a discussion of the Ku Klux Klan, the names of African American people versus the names of Caucasian people and the implications of that. Levitt does say at various stages that some readers may be offended by the ideas and the conclusions that the discusses: so don't read what he writes.

Fair enough: no one makes us read these things and of course we don't have to agree with them. Whether the legalisation of abortion was the cause of the fall in the crime rate is, in my opinion, a matter of opinion although I do think there is some strength in the argument. We should remember that whilst talking about abortions and crime rates, Levitt also talks about regression and correlation analyses and one key aspect of such analyses is that they are suggestive and not conclusive.

What this means is that whilst Levitt has made a good argument for links between abortion and crime I don't think it's the perfect conclusion. One weakness of the book is that he doesn't provide us with his data set and having visited his web site I didn't find any data there either. However, I did look around for the data and came up with the following graph. Now I am not suggesting the Levitt is hiding anything by not providing the data; it's just that I like to play with these things!

This graph is based on data taken from this site; and the American Bureau of Justice.

Maybe you can see that the crime rate really does fall from the mid 1990s following the legalisation of abortion in the USA in the early 1970s. Convinced by that? Possibly; but isn't there something missing from the analysis? What about replicating the experiment? Isn't that one of the keys of such experimental work? In other words, is this result obtained wherever else abortion was legalised? Levitt doesn't mention this.

Levitt also pretty well dismisses the impact of increased spending on the police and on improvements in policing methodologies and so on. They must have a role to play, surely? Maybe not that dramatic but some role I think.

Please note, since I wrote this review I have come across a paper written by Levitt that does contain some of the data and so on that I was looking for. Click here to get that paper (from the Jurnal of Economic Perspectives of Winter 2004, Vol 18 No 1pp163 - 190).

If you become Levitt obsessive, you can download many of his papers from his page at the University of Chicago.

I was much more convinced by the arguments surrounding the analysis of why drug dealers still live with their mothers. That's also a perfect lesson in free market capitalism, short termism and executive pay and incentive schemes for anyone who is thinking about using this book. The student's guide provides us with a table of data emanating from this chapter and it includes data relating to total costs, fixed and variable costs, average total costs and marginal costs. Draw more graphs here, to your heart's delight! I did!

I thought that the chapter on names of different races was gratuitous and not in the least bit convincing. I think that if Levitt had asked me to review his book before publication I would have advised him to get rid of this chapter. His conclusions are interesting but just so difficult to support and so easy to ignore. At the end of it all, don't we all know that names go in and out of fashion? Aren't some people prime movers in choosing names for babies and so on? Look at our own chase to name our babies after the latest addition to the Royal Family. Sad isn't it?

Read about cheating teachers, Sumo wrestlers (I didn't know any of that and am surprised by part of it but not all) and estate agents. Some interesting data and analysis there I must say.

I thought his chapter on perfect parenting was especially weak: chapter 5. Levitt discusses the ideas surrounding what the perfect parent needs to do or to avoid in order to provide little Johnny or Jenny with the perfect start. How does he do this? He does it at least in part by discussing the impact of 16 variables on the ECLS (the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study from the US Department of Education). What this boils down to is that successful parenting is measured by the mark that a child earns at school: I'm sorry but I don't know the ECLS testing system; but it strikes me as being equivalent to saying that if your child had passed the 11 plus exam, then you can be congratulated as being a perfect parent.

Having said that, considering the 16 variables Levitt does discuss is a useful thing to do. Basing his analysis and conclusions on a data set in this is, in my opinion, extremely limiting.

There is no doubt that this is an interesting book and of course don't we all wish we'd written it or something like it? It is possible just to dip into and out of this book as I initially did; but having done that I then read it properly and realised that it is a very serious book both for economists and data analysts alike. Moreover, there is an extensive notes section at the end that is well worth reading if you are interested in using this book as more than just a good read: it's around 20 pages long.

Bear in mind that you will need to concentrate when reading this book and then bear in mind that it's entertaining and a serious data analysis book and you can enjoy it. Some of the topics are controversial however and that might cause you some concern. Finally, if you agree with everything Levitt says, then I suggest you read it again.

Reviewed by Duncan Williamson, one of our Trainers

The Undercover Economist

Author:Tim Harford

The Undercover Economist has some ringing endorsements: Steven Levitt says it is 'Required reading' (cunningly he doesn't say for whom it is required!); and David Bodanis says that 'Harford writes like a dream - and is also one of the leading economic thinkers of his generation ... reading The Undercover Economist is like spending an ordinary day wearing X-ray goggles.'

I have to say at the very outset that those two reviews have grossly oversold this book. The Undercover Economist is riddled with inconsistencies, with amateur analyses and with things that are just not true. As for Harford being a leading economic thinker, I don't think so.

I should also say that there are passages in the book that are reasonable and one or two that are good. Harford is a dreadful name dropper too: never a good sign in an author I would say.

The language in which this book was written got on my nerves and there is a section on this at the end of this review.

The basic idea behind the book is that an economist, Harford, wanders through life on our behalf looking at things from an economist's point of view. Since we mere mortals are not blessed with the insights of the economist, Harford feels that we will then bow down in awe and wonderment at what he uncovers.

Take chapter one: Who pays for your coffee? A passably interesting opening chapter; but in his haste to begin the name dropping very early on, he says this, when talking about the mark up (profit) that a coffee shop might make on a cup of coffee:

"According to economics professor Brian McManus, mark ups on coffee are around 150% ... "

Harford needed a professor of economics to do that kind of calculation? We can all do that Tim: I remember at school, the metalwork teacher giving me the self same lesson on the cost of the bag of crisps I had bought and that he was tucking into, uninvited.

To be fair, Brian McManus is listed in the notes at the end of the book: he's an assistant professor at the Olin School of Business in Washington Missouri and he has written an extensive, albeit theoretical, paper on coffee shop pricing. The url for that paper is given in those notes. Still, we could all have had a stab along the lines of my metalwork teacher!

The rest of chapter one takes us into the realms of economic rent and David Ricardo: a topic that I studied many years ago and I didn't think that Harford dealt with very convincingly.

Chapter one could have been much better with much more under cover information in it: how about the Starbucks ambiance and their penchant for providing WiFi Hotspots and how they are shuffled into the pricing/profit mix?

Chapter two: what supermarkets don't want you to know. I have to say that I found very little economics in this chapter; but there was a lot of marketing. Maybe economics has borrowed a lot of marketing jargon in the years since I last studied economics. This chapter starts with, erm, talk of coffee bars ... wasn't that in chapter one? Ah, well, yes! Then there's a lot of talk about scarcity that I found passibly useful but passingly interesting!

By the time I got to chapter five I had the distinct feeling that very little of what Hartford had done was anything other than theoretical. Much talk about statistics and economic theory but I don't think he'd get a job in many organisations as a practical economist on the strength of this. If he does, then there's hope for us all.

Chapter four: crosstown traffic has two points that caught my eye. Now I know that we can't all know everything but I would have thought that every economist would have learned that there had been a window tax in the 17th to 19th centuries here in England. I'm sure Harford has seen a building like this on his travels around England:

http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/parade/hq69/Pages/newbig.html

Why is the centre top windown of the house above not a real window? It's painted to look like a window in order to minimise the occupants' window tax levy; but to maintain the symmetry of the Georgian design.

Read the point he makes about the London congestion charge on page 98: has he reported the truth or is it the case that since the charge was introduced, the counting of vehicles has improved? Just asking.

Chapter five: the inside story, starts with a quote from one of my favourite authors, Jermoe K Jerome. That's fine! Then he says something crass about picking up a phone and buying some insurance. I think Harford would tell you that it's a joke; but I' sure some people might beleive it. Read it and see! About half way through this chapter, page 120 to be precise, Harford discusses the obtaining of a degree in philosophy and, being an economist, he makes a sweeping assumption: that in order to obtain such a degree one must be smart and diligent since such a degree is difficult to obtain. He dropped three names on the previous page, by the way: Akerlof, Spence and Stiglitz.

Harford mentions that it's not possible to insure against being sacked ... not true any more.

I will make just a couple of other points now since I think I have set the tenor of my opinion of this book: could do much better.

I thought the chapter that is largely set in Cameroon was a waste of print: Harford spent three weeks in the country and then wrote such a glib chapter that doesn't do anyone any favours. My understanding of the situation in Cameroon is limited to what Harford has written. I am still not very well informed. Let me throw in the point, though, that experts are often found wanting. I once discussed the agricultural situation in Malawi with someone from the FAO: we were both at a party in Blantyre Malawi at the time and he had jetted in from Rome for the weekend, I was living and working there. Having observed local smallholders in Malawi for a while, I suggested that they could profitably be taught how to use a plough, meaning a hand driven plough. This FAO chappie responded by talking about the problems of supplying and looking after sufficient numbers of Oxen. I didn't feel it was worth continuing the conversation with him.

I haven't followed up on this one but I did make a note to ask how Abba Lerner had "proved in 1936 that a tax on imports is exactly equivalent to a tax on exports". See page 210 where it says this.

I have to confess that although the chapter on China, chapter ten, was put together in a similar way to the one on Cameroon, I thought this one was much better. I genuinely felt better informed after this one. I also learned the word autarkic, which I hadn't come across before.

I would also like to share a similar experience to the one in chapter ten, page 253. Harford writes about an outraged letter in the Guardian Weekly newspaper following the review of Martin Wolf's book Why Globalisation Works. I took part in a discussion on an internet based discussion board populated largely by A level students and a few teachers. As part of the discussion on socialism or some such I wrote that I had met a number of people in the former Soviet Union who hankered after the Stalinist regime because at least in those times, they remembered, everyone had a job and everything worked.

You will not believe the torrent of abuse that I unwittingly unleashed. Why didn't I go back to live with the communists then? I was reviled as scum ... all I did was to report what had actually happened, that some people who lived through some or all of Stalin's period in power, told me face to face that they had enjoyed their time during it. Killing the messenger isn't in it.

That discussion became distasteful and one young gentlemen who was a first year student at Oxford University at the time wrote and told me that if ever he saw me walking around Oxford he and his friends would beat the living **** out of me. His precise words. I replied and said that as I live near Oxford and am frequently to be found walking the streets, I was genuinely now in fear of my safety and that if he didn't withdraw that threat then under common law I could pursue him though the courts for the tort of assault. I knew which College he was at so I said I might also involve his College Master as well as his parents. I told him I wanted a full, written and unconditional apology or I would follow up on my intention.

He apologised in full.

Another young man wrote to tell the discussion that he had spent the previous summer working in an office in Washington DC on foreign aid project documentation so he KNEW that I wasn't telling the truth!

These people were all at really good universities: Oxford, Durham and the LSE but their thought processes were astonishing. I found the private email address of the Durham University wallah and asked him what on earth he was objecting to and he told me that what I'd said didn't make any sense. He was reading English!

The book finishes with a section of notes if ever you felt like following up on some or al of the points that Harford has to make.

The Language of the Book

I am a member of the breed of people who finds the modern trend towards using what I call TV talk less than helpful and so now I turn to this aspect of Harford's book: his language.

I appreciate that this book has been written in a semi informal style to make it easier for the non professional economist to read. However, in the very early part of the book Harford thanks the editors of the American edition of the book: to me, this looks like the American edition.

In fact, there might be an economist sitting near you right now.
... and some of them are after the money in your pocket right now.
In the end economics is about people ... what does that mean?
Economics is all about Yang Li's choice: what a meaningless sentence.
'My God,' I said
My God,' said Fran
Estimates of the death toll from the famine range from 10 million to 60 million, roughly the entire population of England, or of California and Texas combined: what does that mean?

This book cost me £12.99 but I reckon it was around £6 too much; and you clearly need to read it with a very critical eye.

Reviewed by Duncan Williamson. See our Economic resources by registering here

       

Six Sigma for Managers

Author:Greg Brue

      

So you've heard of six sigma but you don't know what it is: here are the answers to many of the questions you might need to have answered.

So you've heard of six sigma but as far as you can see it's just a mass of statistical analysis and data: read this book and learn that it's a lot more than that.

This table is the fascination built into six sigma for me:

Probability of defects of different sigma levels
Sigma Level (Process Capability)	Defects per Million Opportunities
2	308,537
3	66,807
4	6,210
5	233
6	3.4

You do need to understand such things as standard deviations to appreciate this table (see my page on standard deviations for help!)

What that table shows you, though, is this: if you take care of quality and so on at a fairly easy, low level (just within two standard deviations) then for evey one million units or events, there is the possibility that there will be 308,537 rejects.

On the other hand, if you aim at controlling your operations at the level of six sigma, then there should be no more than 3.4 rejects per million.

That might still be an abstract idea for you so read this book and read the author's example relating to six sigma and airline baggage handling ... you'll soon see the relevance of the idea!

Black belts and Green belts: this is an idea that had me puzzling when I first started to learn about six sigma. Is six sigma based on people fling long chopping their way to quality perfection?! Not at all: six sigma embodies the fundamental improvement and development idea which is that if the person at or near the top of the organisation doesn't believe in something then that something just won't work. In my own cost systems work, I always start at CEO level and determine their commitment. If the CEO doesn't like it, no one else will.

So black and green belts are otherwise known as champions: people at or near the top of the organisation whose job it is to lead and drive the six sigma system. Not just rubber stamping; but someone whose job it really is to make it work.

The contents page of this book reads like this:

1. what is six sigma
2. why do six sigma
3. setting business metrics
4. implementing six sigma
5. roles and responsibilites
6. the core of six sigma
7. quick overview of  six sigma tools
8. selecting six sigma projects
9. how to sustain six sigma
10. six sigma proof positive

There: isn't that all you need to know? The author is keen for us to know that six sigma is more of a set of ideas and philosophies than just a set of statistical analyses: much more than total quality management too.

That's not to say that statistics and statistical analysis isn't important, it is, they are; and this book does introduce such tools (chapter 7) as

• process mapping
• XY matrix
• multivariate studies
• failure mode effect analysis

Greg Brue has written a good quality introduction to six sigma: it really is raedable and it contains a large number of tables, diagrams and real life examples that will help even the most timorous reader to get to grips with something that companies such as Motorola claim has saved them billions of dollars over a ten year period.

• at General Electric, six sigma added more that $2 billion to the bottom line in 1999 alone;
• Motorla saved more than $15 billion in the first ten years of its six sigma efforts;
• AlliedSignal reports saving $1.5 billion through six sigma.

See, it's a powerful set of ideas and unlike many management fads, along the lines of those touted by people like Tom Peters, six sigma is real, long lasting and valuable.

There you are: follow what Greg Brue has to say and it will lead you into greater things and who knows, maybe you will learn to become a statistical genius at the same time.

Reviewer: Duncan Williamson - see the courses he runs here

Tilt!: irreverent lessons for leading innovation in the new economy

Author:Louis Patler PhD

On the cover of this book it says Named Management General Top Ten Business Book of 1999 and Louis Patler is to change what Mark McGwire is to baseball Jay Condor Levinson (author Guerrilla Marketing series of books)

Firstly, and perhaps unfairly, who is management general to make such a pronouncement and secondly, is it a compliment that Louis Patler is to change what Mark McGwire is to baseball? I mean, if I said Michael Howard is to politics what Cyril Smith is to hang gliding, many people would be in the dark as I am over Mark McGwire.

My first comment stems from the fact that on page 217 of the book, Patler provides a link and lots of kind words for Management General … so, cynically, perhaps it’s a bit of mutual back slapping?

A more telling test is this: have you heard of Thoughtware; and have you heard of !eadership? The wacky spelling, !eadership, is intentional.

You may well have heard of another book that Patler co wrote, If it ain’t broke - BREAK IT! That phrase has certainly reverberated around the world. Curiously, that book is billed as being a New York Times best seller. Do they mean that it isn’t a best seller by any other definition than theirs? Just curious!

Well, to this book: it’s really a lot like lots of other management guru, how I done good, I am filthy rich on the back of this sort of stuff, are you? A lot like Tom Peters’ slop basically: lots of quotations from books, articles and television programmes. Lots of pithy sayings from himself or people he has met; and lots of down to earth philosophy that we really should appreciate that we cannot live without.

The book is an eclectic mix, therefore, of all sort of things: huddled together under these section and chapter headings:

• attitude!
• attitude
• the future
• service
• “good lucky”!
• perspective
• ideas
• innovation
• strategy
• perspective
• leadership
• talent
• retention
• globalism
• !eadership
• appendix A: the new tiltset
• appendix B: the new Thoughtware

The book starts with a prologue: here’s the start of it

My assistant, Ann Luckiesh, has a sharp eye for business wisdom. A few days ago she sent me an email from home with the heading: “If your horse dies, dismount!” Seems like a rather obvious and simple statement. Unfortunately, in business we have the tendency to delay, skirt or complicate matters, and employ a few too many strategies. As the rest of her email illustrates, too often when the horse dies, we:

1. buy a stronger whip
2. change riders
3. say things like, “This is the way we have always ridden a horse.”
4. appoint a committee to study the horse
5. arrange to visit other sires to see how they ride dead horse

You get the idea: this sets the tone for a lot of the rest of the book: Patler himself says that

The tone I have tried to set in the pages that follow is somewhere between that of the Harvard Business Review and an email to a good friend or mentor.

Don’t misunderstand me: in general, I do like books like Tilt!, although I find Peters as unreadable as I do Michael Porter’s work. I know, that’s my problem as they are two highly respected people in their respective fields and who am I?

The best approach to reviewing a book like Tilt! is to dip into it: at random, this is what I have found worthy of sharing:

Service: The “ABCD” awards: above and beyond the call of duty Patler recalls the day he was the facilitator at a Food service Summit Leadership Conference and the COO of McGuffey’s Restaurants told the story of how a waitress of his had won an ABCD award for solving a problem with a four year old waaaaaaa, waaaaaa boy who didn’t want anything other than a Big Mac. Awful end to the story in my opinion but definitely good service! (see pages 41 and 42!)

Innovation: the Monty Python Interview Exercise: M-PIE … whenever I have an issue or topic that puzzles me and find myself at an impasse, I find the smartest, zaniest person I know and ask them to interview and push me on the topic … in this case … I am trying to make a distinction between “creativity” and “innovation”.

Patler then relates the transcript of his interview with Rick Crandall PhD … questions only, here:

• why isn’t the average business creative?
• so what is the difference between creativity and what you mean by innovation?
• so, it’s a major change, not just a variation on a theme?
• what can the average employee to if they’re not in a creative -  let aloe innovative - environment?
• tell me more about people maintaining their own enthusiasm, creativity, morale, in an organisation in which they’re underpaid, overwhelmed and under appreciated
• could an individual change the culture of an organisation by planting the first grain of sand that irritates the organisation to create a pearl?

and so on, see pages 82 - 90 for the rest of the questions and Patler’s answers.

I’m sorry Mr Patler but either Rick Crandall PhD is not in the least bit wacky or you’ve edited his wackiness right out of what he did and said!

!eadership: This CEO earns a dollar a year! Netscape Communications chief executive Jim Barksdale … said he would accept only $1 in salary one year, counting instead on the company’s stock to increase his personal fortune …In a document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Netscape said that Barksdale will forgo his salary and bonus because he “believes that his compensation should be linked to the long term interests of the company’s stockholders.”

In this case, let me contrast Barksdale’s apparent altruism with something from Alfred Rappaport from an article in the Harvard Business Review (How to Link Executive Pay With Performance March-April 1999):

As the Stock Market began its ascent in the mid 1990s, executive pay always the subject of heated debate, mounted along with it. That's because among the largest US companies, stock options now account for more then half of total CEO compensation and about 30% of senior operating managers' pay. One problem became particularly clear during the bull market's astonishing run: even below average performers reap huge gains form stock options when the market is rising rapidly.

The sad and stark reality is that stock options are so popular because even a moderate set of performances can be more than amply rewarded if only because of inflation. The FTSE 100, for example, is 20 years old now and has risen from 1,000 to around 5,000 in that time … we can see what a 20 year share option would, therefore, on average do for the CEO even if s/he hadn’t really performed that well.

Moreover, Rappaport also points out that any rise in the share price says nothing of the performance of competitors … it says nothing about the CEO’s performance relative to his benchmarked peers.

As another aside and as a matter of interest, I took at look at Jim Barksdale’s page on Netscape’s site and I have to say it suffers from some astonishing lapses:

• Want to write to Barksdale? Can't, no link given
• When did Barksdale put his personal page together? No idea, undated
• How do you navigate out of that page to other pages in the site? Can't, unless you follow one or more of the hyperlinks that litter the page. Some links go to other Netscape pages but others go to external sites.
• Want to click on the buttons/links to the Annual Report or Awards? Can't because they give you an error on page message!

More than that, the page has been optimised for Netscape but in Internet Explorer it looks a real mess and is an advertisement for no one!

I don’t want to be too unkind but is there a link between such a terrible page and Netscape’s overall performance in the Browser Wars? What price stock options with this performance?

Finally, appendix A is called the new tiltset and comprises a set of to, by, for exercises. To, by, for? Yes, for example:

3 The Fishbowl

TO: to keep meetings moving, to open up new lines of discussion when there are lulls.
BY: Ask participants to write out their biggest concern the largest barrier faced and/or the toughest question/topic they want addressed. All are written on small pieces of paper and dropped in a fishbowl. At random times or as needed … someone reaches in and, bingo, a new topic emerges.
FOR: The purpose is to keep involving new and important issues, to encourage discussion and communication.

There are 11 to, by, fors in appendix A and they are probably useful for teacher and trainer alike: number 2 (paper aeroplanes) will appeal to the smart aleck in you and number 9 (backcasting) appeals to me!

So I might have given the impression that this is not a good book and that it was a mistake to publish it. Well, I bought it at a huge discount six years after it was first published. I doubt that many people will remember thoughtware and tilting either. However, there are snippets in the book, lots of them too, that rattle a few brain cells and may cause people to pause for thought from time to time. That’s not a bad thing.

What is thoughtware, though? Mindset, Skillset and Toolset … read the book to see exactly what Patler is thinking here but I imagine you can work it out from this review.

Why tilt? That’s more awkward and here’s what Patler says in the preface of the book:

… given today’s business environment. there is no such thing as “a level playing field.” … If you want to “tilt the field,” simply tilt your head.

Let me finish with a niggle: on the back cover of the book it says Capstone Publishing www.capstone.co.uk Well, take a trip to that site and you’ll find that you end up at Capstone Finance who, it seems, are ready to lend you anywhere from £30,000 to £3,000,000 …

Reviewed by Duncan Williamson - see all the courses Duncan runs for OSL Training

A Bee in My Bonnet - a review of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion

Have you ever turned the page of a book borrowed from the library and encountered someone else’s scribbled notes in the margin? Irritating, isn’t it? I really objected to being (sub)liminally told what to think in all those books I had to study last year. So it was a foolish choice to buy Richard Dawkins’ latest book, The God Delusion. Although its author is a Fellow at my undergraduate college who used to write quite engagingly, and it seemed to be a relief not to have to wade through acres of marginal notes to distract me, I soon realised my mistake.

The relentless tone of tub-thumping fundamentalism infesting this book really set the bee buzzing. I found myself scribbling my reactions to Dawkins in the margins! He is often wrong in his claims, but since others more qualified than I have already answered many of them,  here I will share only some of my reactions.

“Do not seek to understand in order to believe, but believe that you may understand”

Dawkins is a scientist. In Latin “scientia” means knowledge, and an honest scientist or academic researcher tries to acquire knowledge by analysing something observable, and drawing conclusions. But this is only one way to achieving knowledge, as Saint Augustine tells us above. Dawkins dismisses as irrelevant any routes to wisdom other than his own, confusing faith in a personal God with faith in the Flying Spaghetti Monster for example, because such beings cannot be observed. He arrogantly discounts miracles for the same reason:

“… miracles, by definition, violate the principles of science.”

Not by my definition! Every miracle was observed by someone. But perhaps Dawkins doesn’t consider these observers good enough scientists? Or more probably their evidence does not fit his hectoring thesis, so he conveniently ignores them and arrogantly hijacks miracles to deny faith.

Similarly he tries to deny the Gospels’ evidence:

“… the gospels are ancient fiction while the Da Vinci Code is modern fiction.”

Again, I beg to differ. Fiction consists of a plotline and characters designed to entertain the reader. The Gospels are eyewitness accounts of Jesus’ time on earth, albeit muddled in their plotlines. Clearly their muddle demonstrates that they were not written as entertainment but to reveal the word of the Creator.

The major omission Dawkins consistently makes is any reference to the divine Jesus whose actions are motivated by love for mankind. The examples of religious violence and hatred he adduces in his first chapter to belittle religion are all drawn from fundamentalist groups which do not admit of Jesus’ historical command to “Love one another”.  On the contrary, by constantly haranguing the reader to consider the vapid blandishments of atheism, Dawkins conveniently avoids mentioning all the good Jesus and his followers have done over the centuries.

But there is some light relief. Dawkins sends himself up in the shrill rhetoric with which he defines the God of the Old Testament, at the start of Chapter 2:

“In public readings of The God Delusion this is the one passage that is guaranteed to get a good-natured laugh”

I found the passage offensive actually. Dawkins is deluded to expect a good-natured reaction. This ineffective attempt at humour just isn’t funny and destroys any hope of an intellectually honest discussion.

It certainly isn’t a book I would recommend for anybody honestly curious about God, be they a trained scientist or not. One wonders, with McGrath,  whether the real reason Dawkins is so insistent on pushing atheism in this book is because atheism itself is undergoing a crisis of belief. He would be more convincing if he admitted that the only thing atheism is any good for is predicting the weather.

And now that my copy has all these irritating notes in the margins, I would rather burn it than give it away or sell it. Thank God I only wasted my money on the cheap and nasty paperback edition!

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