Principle, bravery, and the x factor

Principle, Bravery, and the X Factor -- adopted from:

Boeing Would you have bet the company on the 747 before a single aircraft had been sold? Boeing agreed to deliver the first 747 to Pan Am by the end of 1969. The delivery date left 28 months to design the aircraft, which was two-thirds the normal time. The schedule was so fast paced that the people who worked on it were given the nickname "The Incredibles". Developing the aircraft was such a technical and financial challenge that management was said to have "bet the company" when it started the project Boeing agreed to deliver the first 747 to Pan Am by the end of 1969.

Pan Am was the first airline to operate the 747.

Apple Would you have bet the company’s reputation on a cellular phone that had no physical keyboard, without having any idea how the world would react to it?

Disney Would you have leveraged the company to its breaking point on something called a "theme park," accessible to most of the nation only by air travel, in an age when air travel was the exception and not the rule? Disney Three Distinct Industries Creative Content Broadcasting Theme parks and Resorts

Disney Theme Parks Disney Time Line 1987- First Disney Store 1988 - Who Framed Roger Rabbit 1989- Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park 1992- Euro Disney Four Theme Parks: Disneyland - 1955 Walt Disney World - 1991 Tokyo Disneyland - 1989 Disneyland Paris - 1991 The Original Park Disneyland, Anaheim CA, 1955 Occupies 185 acres, 100 acres used for Parking

Whole Foods What about opening a grocery store that didn’t contain a single household-brand-name product? Back in 1980, Whole Foods started out with one small store in Austin, Texas. Today, Whole Foods’re the world’s leader in natural and organic foods, with more than 270 stores in North America and the United Kingdom.

Share Our Strength Would you stake your charity’s entire future on a promise that you’re going to end childhood hunger in just five years? Share Our Strength is a national organization that works hard to make sure no kid in America grows up hungry. Share Our Strength® began in the basement of a row house on Capitol Hill in 1984, in the wake of the Ethiopian famine. Bill and Debbie Shore started the organization with the belief that everyone has a strength to share in the global fight against hunger and poverty, and that in these shared strengths lie sustainable solutions.

What Drives Success In studying what drives success, whether in for-profit or nonprofit businesses, most analysis focuses on content: How much was the ad spend, what features does the product have, what was the company's management philosophy, and so on. Context gets short shrift.

Context is Everything But context is everything. What is context? It's the operating framework in which the content occurs — the goal, one might say. For example, the design of the Apollo lunar module was content. The goal of landing a man on the moon in nine years was the context. You will get a completely different result from engineers working on a lunar module if the context is "some day we might go to the moon" than if it's "we're going in nine years."

Content gets generated by context Content gets generated by context. If an enterprise has the X factor — you know, that mysterious je ne sais quoi that creates a whole greater than the sum of its parts — it’s not because of the content. It’s because of the context.

Context is generated by principle Context is generated by principle. In the Apollo example, the principle was to test the limits of human potential — to achieve the impossible. Kennedy said, "We chose to go to the moon, and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard."

Driving principles get created unconsciously All too often, though, organizations' driving principles get created unconsciously, out of some unexamined pathology, and they're driven by fear. Here are a few: Short-term profitability Long-term profitability Look good in the media in the interest of increasing donations Get my parents to love me Don’t do anything that could ever make us look bad Maximize personal gain Don’t lose our jobs

Truly inspiring principles have their basis in possibility — the possibility of a better day, of magic, of the miraculous.

Martin Luther King, Jr. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African American civil rights movement. He is best known for being an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world, using nonviolent methods following the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi.

Steve Jobs I want to make a ding in the universe. Steven Paul Jobs (born February 24, 1955) is an American business magnate and inventor. He is well known for being the co-founder and chief executive officer of Apple. Jobs also previously served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of The Walt Disney Company in 2006, following the acquisition of Pixar by Disney.

Walt Disney Walt Disney to architect Herb Ryman: Herbie, I just want it to look like nothing else in the world. Herbert D. Ryman (1910-1989) was that rare artist who easily bridged both the commercial and fine arts throughout his long career, with work in one sphere inspiring the other. Ryman created the first overall illustration of Disneyland, drawing as Walt Disney described his dream for a new kind of family entertainment, and continued to work on every Disney theme park until he died in 1989.

Giorgio Armani I believe that my clothes can give people a better image of themselves — that it can increase their feelings of confidence and happiness. Giorgio Armani (born 11 July 1934) is an Italian fashion designer, particularly noted for his menswear. He formed his company, Armani, in 1975, and by 2001 was acclaimed as the most successful designer to come out of Italy, with an annual turnover of $1.6 billion, and a personal fortune of $5.3 billion.

Principle, in turn, comes to life out of bravery.

So the next question is, is there someone at the helm brave enough to stick to an inspired principle, even when everyone else is doing their best to focus the organization on something more immediately measurable? is there someone holding on to possibility when everyone else is bound by fear? and is there someone who cares more about principle than anything else?

… legend has the answers of the questions… Legend has it that Einstein had a sign in his office at Princeton which read,

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. The famous Golden Gate Bridge was the largest suspension bridge in the world at the time of its completion in 1937. Joseph Strauss, the chief engineer who designed the bridge, demanded extremely rigorous safety precautions that were not normally used in those times. Some of these, like using a safety net, are now amongst today’s most basic safety standards. During those times, "one life lost for every million dollars spent" was considered normal and acceptable. Since the bridge cost $35 million dollars, the fact that only 11 people died during its construction was hailed as an all-time record, and a magnificent achievement. Indeed, 11 deaths resulting from the project instead of 35 could be considered a good reduction. Does this achievement matter to the families and friends of those 11 people? What might have been done differently if the accepted standard was (like today) that nobody should die?

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. In the mid 1990s, during the peak of the Internet boom , one fellow was working for a promising startup involved in making graphic chips for computers. One day, during final qualification tests, the fellow noticed that the images on the computer screen often showed a few missing pixels (empty spaces), while similar chips from competitors showed smooth images with no defects. He recommended against shipping the samples to customers, and asked that the problem be fixed. The fuming engineering head (who was also the founder of the company) walked into this fellow’s office. He told this fellow "What do you mean by saying our chip is not good? We have the best algorithm on the market. Do you realize how many man hours we spent on developing it and how many lines of code have been written?" Replied the fellow "But we are not selling lines of code and man hours, we are selling the thing that is supposed to create smooth images on the screen." A week later, the fellow was released from the company for not having enough technical depth required to understand the complexity of the company's products. Sometime later that company, not being able to gain customer acceptance, vanished and was never heard from again.

Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts. Some time ago, a top executive had asked me "What were the most memorable consultation or presentation moments of your life?" Knowing about my track record and reputation, perhaps he was expecting to hear about the number of ideas that I had presented, how many new ideas he had delivered, the number of deals I had done, or the amount of money I made from consultation fee. Then, I opened a ‘ slideshare ’ site. Inside, there was a note from a very technical presentation that is viewed by more than 7 thousand people in less than 10 months, below my capability to deliver a presentation in the office.

The enterprises that we love remain true to an inspired principle, and they consistently act bravely in pursuit and defense of that principle, even at the risk of personal reputations, futures, and the entire enterprise. The long-term payoff of that dynamic isn't easy to count in the short-term.

And here’s the paradox… The principled players aren’t in it for the money. Now, they’re not not in it for the money, but money isn’t what drives them. As a result of that detachment, they attract money, customers, and success.

In business school, we teach finance, marketing, public relations, and management. What are we doing to teach people about the power of inspired principle, and the power of sticking to it, no matter what? What are we doing to teach them what it means to be brave? How to be brave? To have some knowledge basis to inform them when they are feeling weak?

Watch out for the kid who’s majoring in courage, with a minor in principle. She’s the one who’s going to change the world.

Thank You For Staying With The Presentation A. H. G

Principle, bravery, and the x factor

More Related Content

What's hot (20)

Similar to Principle, bravery, and the x factor (20)

More from Arief Gunawan (20)

Recently uploaded (20)

Principle, bravery, and the x factor