Good morning,
My apologies, reader(s), for the utter dross posted in this space just a month ago. I do not know what possessed the BB to make him think renaming these lovely ‘reading reviews’ was a good idea! And to a self-congratulatory label like ‘The Business Bro Book Club’! I will speak with him shortly and let him know the next time he renames a long-running feature will be his last!
I do, however, admit I was a little intrigued by some of the content in his post. So, I picked up a copy of The Hard Thing About Hard Things for myself. And as is custom around these parts, the books I read, I review.
One up: I was impressed by how often Horowitz tossed aside irrelevant details, concerns, or narratives to get right to the core of a particular situation. His common sense approach to explaining his rationale underlies much of the advice found in the book. His ability to explain himself so plainly is one reason why the insights in this book resonated immediately with me.
One example comes from when he describes the dynamics involved in hiring a top employee away from a friend’s company. There are many ways to rationalize such a hiring decision and the situation is easy to dismiss as ‘complex’. But the basic message to your soon to be former friend is this: our friendship is not worth more than this employee!
Another example comes from his thoughts about how to change someone’s role without making it seem like a demotion. Instead of hemming and hawing about titles, transitions, or explanations...just offer the person more money! There is no other way to show an employee how you see their value to the organization. And if it isn't possible to reasonably offer the employee more money, well, that's a pretty good indicator about the employee's value, no?
Horowitz points out a general tendency among people to respond to leading indicators of good news while seeking alternative explanations to dismiss bad news. This is especially prominent among people who build things. But when customers are buying a competitor’s product, there is only one explanation: the other product is better. If you want to win in the market, stop explaining why you are losing and go build a better product!
A final insight I thought fit well here was about the relationship between trust and communication. When the demand for communication increases, it is not a sign of ‘the growing pains’ in an expanding organization or a signal of rising complexity in the work. Rather, it almost always means trust is eroding among the teams in the company. Do you demand explanations from people you completely trust? Or to put it another way, would any amount of explanation convince you to believe a wholly untrustworthy person?
One down: It occurred to me while reviewing my notes for this book that most management techniques seem designed for managers who are unable to tell the truth. In some business situations, this reality is perfectly understandable. Those working in healthcare, for example, know not to share a patient’s health information beyond what is required for a colleague to do his or her job well.
But in many other cases, the inability to simply and plainly state the truth reveals a manager’s shortcomings. Just think about all the different ways managers learn to ‘give feedback’. All this training just to state an observation! These managers would be better off just offering to write guests posts for TOA.
Managers who operate as ‘truth machines’ are going to fare far better over the course of their careers than those who cannot.
Just saying: I think it is pretty common to hear people complain about the ‘politics’ making life worse for everyone at their organizations. But it is rare to hear people define or explain exactly what ‘politics’ means in this context. In fact, I cannot recall a single such explanation in my entire life. Most people who bring up their office’s ‘politics’ problem do so with an assumption of being fully understood.
Horowitz takes a stab at defining the word. Politics, he writes, is advancement by means unrelated to merit. If promotions start being doled out based on seniority, nepotism, or even outright discrimination, then the organization is fully committed to office politics.
One thing this definition forced me to consider was the consequences of poor performance measurement. If an organization is unable to assess performance accurately, the logical conclusion is an environment becoming increasingly political. I suppose when someone complains to me in the future about ‘office politics’, what I will probably ask is if the company is capable of accurately measuring employee performance.
