The Obvious

Everything You Need to Know to Succeed

James Dale

• Publisher: HarperElement
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9780007261390
• eBook ISBN:
  9780007369454
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Entrepreneurship
• Index: Business

The secrets to success in business aren't secrets at all. They are simple and obvious, but we overlook them. This life-changing book offers the short-cut road to success – in business and beyond giving digestible and effective advice that actually works, served up with inspirational anecdotes in a humorous style.

'The Obvious' is a refreshingly simple and original business book. Business guru James Dale shows how the principles, values, and strategies that make businesses successful are those simple ideas that apply to life.

Listening opens up worlds to you, paying attention puts you at an advantage over people who don't even show up, and telling the truth beats lying ten times out of ten. Try the simple – it's almost always more effective than the complicated.

You'll find this book not only a sharp, cut-to-the-chase career book, but also an handbook of engaging wisdom that will bring you fast solutions to problems in any area of your life. 'The Obvious' reveals the eight core lessons you need to remember – each full of humour and fascinating anecdotes about the world's most successful movers and shakers. You'll find compelling real-life examples of the 'simple=success' formula from companies such as Apple and IBM, Ikea and Starbucks, as well as innovative people from Thomas Edison and Bill Gates, to Woody Allen and Steven Spielberg.

Some 'Obvious' life-lessons that work:

• Simple is Better Than Complicated – ask if you don't know; shut up and listen; be nice – it gets results.
• Be Honest – the truth is powerful; apologies work; an excuse is not a reason; take responsibility – 'I will do it' gets you noticed.
• Open Your Mind – failure is a good teacher; bosses are not all idiots – learn from them.
• Energy Gives You the Edge – patience is a virtue; so is impatience; 'Do it today' – the key to effectiveness.

Readable, fast-paced and entertaining, 'The Obvious' is for anyone's business bookshelf, from the CEO to the postroom, HR director to the entire sales force – or anyone wanting to be successful in life.

Part I

WORK IS A VERB

The bottom is a good place to start

There’s no shortage of people willing to sit in an executive office. Gaze out at the city from the 58th floor. Buzz for coffee. Have your own bathroom. But you rarely see that ad on Monster.com. Wanted: Inexperienced, unqualified person to tell everyone else what to do, take long lunches. Obscene salary plus bonus, outrageous perks, possible private plane.

It’s hard to start at the top. The bottom, on the other hand, often has openings.

Consider Mark Shapiro. In 1991, after being turned down by 25 of 26 baseball front offices, Shapiro took the lowliest job in the Cleveland Indian organization, “assistant in baseball operations.” Translation: Pick up players at the airport, do math on player stats for contracts, office gofer. Evidently he did it well because he was promoted from one job to another – marketing, scouting, minor league management – all the way to assistant GM and then to General Manager … in charge of a turn-around, just the kind of unglamorous challenge he loves.

Whatever field you’re in, or want to get in, find the job that needs to be done, that people don’t seem to want to do. Sift the data on domestic production vs. off-shoring to Southeast Asia. Research employee benefits to find ways to attract and retain better staff. Pore over competitors’ profile until you find the market they’re neglecting. An interesting thing about the bottom as opposed to the top: There’s a lot to do down there.

Done well, it shows at the end of the quarter and the year – the times when promotions get passed out. And promotions lead to the top.

There are no shortcuts

Did you ever wonder how overnight business sensations get to be overnight sensations? One thing is for sure, it isn’t overnight. It’s over a lot of nights and weekends and years. Most of them were number 2s or 3s, after being division heads, after being in field offices, after coming out of training programs, after graduate school. They don’t call it a ladder of success for nothing. There are rungs. Climb them.

Case in point: the bio of Alan (A.G.) Lafley, CEO of Procter & Gamble, one of the world’s most successful companies. All he did was his job, over and over, all the way to the top.

1977 – Brand Asst, Joy

1978 – Sales Training, Denver

1978 – Asst Brand Mgr, Tide

1980 – Brand Mgr, Dawn & Ivory Snow

1981 – Brand Mgr, Special Assignment & Ivory
Snow

1982 – Brand Mgr, Cheer

1983 – Assoc Ad Mgr, PS&D Division

1986 – Ad Mgr, PS&D Division

1988 – GM, Laundry Products, PS&D Division

1991 – VP-Laundry and Cleaning Products, Procter & Gamble USA

1992 – Group VP, Procter & Gamble Co/Pres,
Laundry & Cleaning Products, USA

1994 – Group VP, The Procter & Gamble
Company/Pres, Procter & Gamble Far East

1995 – Exec VP, The Procter & Gamble Company,
(Pres, Procter & Gamble Asia)

1998 – Exec VP, The Procter & Gamble Company,
(Pres, Procter & Gamble N. America)

1999 – Pres, Global Beauty Care and N. America

2000 – President and Chief Executive

2002 – Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive

Sure, now and then someone skips a few rungs by inventing a product, starting a company, or inheriting the family business. But you still have to perform. Ask all the dotcom geniuses whose venture capitalists replaced them with veteran CEOs. Or how about the case of the three partners, John, Paul, and George, who squeezed out the fourth, Pete Best, in favor of a guy named Ringo for a musical start-up called The Beatles. Or Edsel Ford who came within a breath of being forced out of the family automobile business by his father, Henry. In the end, nothing matters but results.

There are no shortcuts. It just seems like there are if you’re looking in from the outside. If your job description is “respond to and resolve customer care issues,” if you actually do it effectively every day, pretty soon you’ll be in charge of hiring and training, then setting up an out-sourced customer care unit in Bhopal, India, then overseeing global Customer Relations, then Sales and Marketing, then …

Work is a challenge. Or it should be.

Push yourself. When you master something, take on a tougher task. Not more of what you already do, not another job at another company that’s just a clone of the one you have. Sure, you can coast and do fine. But over time, you’ll get stale and tired and probably lose your edge. It’s like only playing par-three golf courses.

You perform at your best when you’re tested. So, if you’re good at what you do, if you can almost do it blind-folded, stop. Walk away. Raise the stakes. Do something you want to do even if you’re not sure you can do it.

Do what Andrea Jung did. After earning her degree from Princeton, Jung’s high-achiever family was likely less than thrilled that she passed up law school to go into the crass world of retailing. But she rose through the ranks of Bloomingdales and Neiman Marcus to become a star in luxury merchandising. About the time her family might have acknowledged her success, she walked away from what had become relatively easy, to see if she had what it took to re-energize venerable, but aging, make-up marketer, Avon.

It wasn’t like her last job, repeating what she knew; it was taking on a challenge. Jung invested in research to develop new lines of skin cream, opened up overseas markets, and found celebrity endorsers to attract younger buyers. Sales climbed 45%. Avon stock rose 160+%. So did Andrea Jung’s stock. After doing the non-glitzy job of remaking a traditional company, she’s been chased for lots of bigger, glitzier jobs.

Take on a challenge. Even if you fail, you failed at something hard, not easy. And you learn something you didn’t already know.

Work means, literally, “to exert oneself.” Work is hard. It’s demanding, frustrating, stressful, complicated, challenging, even exhausting. It’s heavy lifting, for the body and the mind. No wonder a lot of people don’t like to do it. Or would rather rationalize why they didn’t, can’t, or won’t do it. Who wouldn’t rather point the remote control at the TV?

We live in a world that has named and rationalized virtually every shortcoming and excuse, inside and outside the workplace. People can’t just be lazy. They must be under-challenged, distraction-prone, or decision-averse. Which leaves a lot of work un-done. Which creates enormous opportunity for anyone willing to do it. And reward.

Work is a verb. It’s an action – not an observation. Get to it.

Part II

IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU

It is about everyone but you

So, if it’s not about you, then how do you get ahead? Concentrate on what does matter: Results. After you’ve made your quotas, help somebody else make theirs. Find new customers, even for other divisions. Read up on industry trends. Study your competitors. Help young hires find their way. Stay late and re-write presentations. Don’t try to be a hero. Be a problem-solver.

Take the Apollo 13 approach. When we all heard the words, “Houston, we have a problem,” and the mission seemed doomed, who was the hero that saved the day? Was it the commander, Jim Lovell? Or the flight director, Gene Kranz? One of the other astronauts, Fred Haise or John Swigert, or member of the ground team like Ken Mattingly? No, it was not any one of them. It was all of them. They all collaborated to solve the problem, to save the day, and the mission. One of the great rescues of all time, and not one hero … or all heroes.

The best way to lead is to feed. When you’re not just a team member but the one in charge, whether it’s of a meeting, a project, a division, or a company, put everyone else ahead of yourself. Retired General Electric CEO Jack Welch said, “The day you become a leader, it becomes about them. Your job is, walk around with a can of water in one hand and a can of fertilizer in the other hand … and build a garden.”

Go on an ego diet

Cut the “I” out of your thought process and your vocabulary. Also “me” and “my” and “mine.” Starting tomorrow, try to consciously remove the first person from all communications. Literally. Imagine a buzzer goes off every time you invoke yourself or your self-interest. No sentences with “I thinks …” or “the way I see it …” or “I said …” iNo memos or messages with “get back to me” or “that job is mine” or “my department.”

Imagine you don’t exist alone, only as part of something larger. Replace “I” and “me” with “we” and “us” and “ours” instead. “What can we do?” “It’s up to us.” “The challenge is ours.”

It’s not that you don’t count. It’s that the best way to look out for you is to look out for everybody else – the “we” – the sales force, the audit group, the engineers, the designers, R&D, your supervisor, her supervisor, the CEO, the guy in the next office, the whole team, even your arch-rival. If they, we, us survive, you survive. If they, we, us thrive, you thrive.

On the other hand, if you beat your chest, you just get a sore chest.

The credit will find you

If you consistently accomplish things that help the department, division, company, or team, you won’t have to worry about the credit. Success doesn’t hide. Want to be a real star? Don’t shine the spotlight on yourself. Let the results do it for you.

That’s what Phil Jackson taught the Chicago Bulls to take them from playoff bridesmaids to league champions. He invoked poetry, the Grateful Dead, and Zen Buddhism (hey, whatever works) ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I: Work is a Verb
• Part II: It’s Not About You
• Part III: Don’t Be a Jerk. Be Reasonable, Kind, Decent, Fair – in a Word – Nice
• Part IV: Listen More Than You Talk
• Part V: Every Job is Sales
• Part VI: Simple is Better than Complicated
• Part VII: Less is More
• Part VIII: Say What You Mean
• Part IX: Honesty – The Most Powerful Weapon in Business
• Part X: Open Your Mind – Let Ideas In
• Part XI: Reality – Deal With It
• Part XII: Don’t Keep Score
• Part XIII: Energy – The Unfair Edge
• Part XIV: Imagine You Worked For You
• Part XV: Take Inventory
• Copyright
• About the Publisher