The Obvious: Everything You Need to Know to Succeed. James Dale
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The secrets to success in business aren’t secrets at all. They’re beliefs, ideas, values, and strategies most of us already know, but ignore. Tell the truth. Share the credit. Listen more than you talk. Open your mind. They’re in plain sight, staring us in the face, fundamental and familiar – in a word, obvious. Maybe too obvious. They’ve been recited to us by our parents and grandparents. Words to live by. As likely to appear in a fortune cookie as an MBA textbook. In fact, they are so fundamental, they may have been taken for granted or ignored, and certainly not practiced to their highest effect.
They’re simply obvious. Not tricky, sly, clever, or even complicated. Just proven effective, over and over, irrefutably. Not in a hypothetical case or historic analogy or cute parable, but in real life, in real deals, in real business. They work. Regardless of the field of business – from airlines to biotech to apparel to building to marketing to shipping to demolition to design to wholesale to retail to service to security to insurance to entertainment. Regardless of the job – from sales rep to department head to regional manager to HR to CFO to CEO. Same principles, same results, always effective.
If they’re obvious and they work and we’re already familiar with them, why do we ignore them? Maybe because human beings have a weakness for tricks, gimmicks, and schemes – shortcuts to the pot of gold – anything but the obvious. Maybe because we haven’t treated The Obvious with same respect as we treat shortcuts. Maybe because we’ve never looked at The Obvious closely enough to see not only how effective they are, but why, and how best to use them. Maybe they haven’t been assembled and explained in one place where we could see how compelling they are, individually and especially, together.
Here they are. The Obvious, a collection of the principles – beliefs, ideas, values, and strategies – that work. Where did they come from? The best sources on earth. From historians, story-tellers, moralists, famous minds like Ben Franklin and Woody Allen, humble minds like our grandparents and parents, from real life, from fairy tales, and from experience, the wisest teacher of all. Their efficacy has been proven; their potency has rarely been realized; they are effective immediately. Every new self-help book would have us believe they’ve discovered the new secret formula for success. It’s not new; it’s not secret; and it’s not a formula. It’s old; it’s well-known; and it’s all here. The Obvious – all assembled in one book, divided into logical categories, explaining why each principle is obvious, how and why it works, and how you can use it. They’re all you need to know. Period.
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.
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.
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,