PROFAIL-PROFAIL USAHAWAN
Tan Sri Anthony Francis Fernandes
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Usahawan pertama yang dipilih oleh saya ialah Tony Fernandes.Beliau dilahirkan
pada 30 April 1964 di Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia.Beliau berumur 50 tahun dan
merupakan pengusaha Malaysia serta pengasas Tune Air Sdn.Bhd.
pada 30 April 1964 di Kuala Lumpur,Malaysia.Beliau berumur 50 tahun dan
merupakan pengusaha Malaysia serta pengasas Tune Air Sdn.Bhd.
Sebab utama saya memilih beliau sebagai rujukan ialah keyakinan diri yang tinggi
serta kebijaksanaan dalam mengorientasikan peluang sedia ada.Beliau berani
mengambil risiko untuk membeli syarikat penerbangan yang hanya mempunyai dua
buah kapal terbang Boeing yang berumur serta hutang sebanyak RM 40 juta.Tony
Fernandes telah memajak rumah dan menggunakan keseluruhan wang simpanannya
untuk membeli syarikat tersebut dengan harga seringgit.Pada masa itu,orang ramai
juga berpendapat bahawa beliau telah menjadi "gila" kerana tempoh pembelian itu
merupakan tempoh masa yang paling teruk dalam sejarah perindustrian
penerbangan perdagangan serta ornag ramai tidak begitu berani menaiki kapal
terbang.
Namun begitu,selepas setahun,AirAsia mampu menjelaskan semua hutangnya dan
tidak lagi mengalami kerugian.Penyusunan semula organisasi AirAsia dengan imej
dan konsep yang baru membawa perubahan yang besar dan memperolehi
keuntungan dalam tempoh masa yang pendek.Beliau yang memperkenalkan
penerbangan tambang murah kepada panduduk Malaysia dengan slogannya,"Semua
mampu naik kapal terbang telah menunaikan impian sesetengah orang yang ingin
menaiki kapal terbang.Selain itu,AirAsia berkembang begitu pantas kerana mereka
bijak menggunakan peluang yang orang lain tidak nampak iaitu mengadakan
kerjasam dengan syarikat luar negara dan beliau yang selalunya dengan perwatakan
topi merah muncul dalam media cetak adalah bertujuan untuk mempromosikan
syarikatnya.
Datuk Wan Mohammad Sani Salleh
Usahawan kedua yang saya pilih ialah Datuk Wan Mohammad Sani Salleh.Beliau dilahirkan pada 24 Julai 1976 di Kuala Ibai,Kuala Terengganu,Terengganu.Beliau merupakan anak yang keempat dari enam adik-beradiknya.Beliau mendapat Diploma Pengurusan Perniagaan Kolej Sunway pada tahun 1994.Beliau merupakan pengarah urusan Sani United Sdn.Bhd yang beroperasi dalam bidang pengangkutan.Beliau telah dianugerahkan sebagai Darjah Indera Mahkota Pahang (DIMP) yang membawa gelaran Datuk oleh Sultan Pahang,Sultan Ahmad Shah dan Anugerah Usahawan Cemerlang Dewan Perniagaan Melayu Malaysia Kuala Lumpur.
Antara sebab saya memilih usahawan ini kerana kagum dengan sifatnya yang tidak malu untuk bertanya dan belajar dari sesiapa sahaja.Beliau bukan sahaja belajar daripada orang yang berpengalaman malah orang yang gagal juga dia belajar kerana kegagalan itu akan menjadi iktibar baginya.Pada asalnya,beliau memulakan perniagaan adalah atas dasar minat serta mahu ubah kehidupannya ke tahap yang lebih baik.Dulu,fikirannya adalah hidup sekadar untuk cari makan dan hiburkan diri-sendiri.Beliau telah menceburi dalam bidang hiburan selama beberapa tahun dan beliau insaf bahawa bidang ini adalah lebih susah untuk mencapai kejayaan selepas bertemu rakan karibnya yang berjaya,iaitu Pengarah Urusan Federal Malay Holding Sdn.Bhd,Datuk Sharifuddin Musa. Selepas itu,beliau bermula dengan membuka bengkel membaiki kenderaan di Kuala Lumpur dan Kuala Terengganu dan seterusnya cuba dalam perniagaan pengangkutan iaitu bas.Pelbagai cabaran getir telah ditempuhi olehnya apabila beliau memulakan perniagaan pengangkutan.Beliau memulakan perniagaan ini dengan dua rakan kongsi dan selepas kedua-dua rakan kongsi tarik diri ,segala masalah perlu diatasi oleh diri sendiri.Justeru itu,beliau akan fikir 10 kali sebelum membuat keputusan untuk mengelakkan berlakunya masalah serta yakinkan pada diri sendiri tentang apa yang dibuat.
Pada masa ketika itu, beliau hanya ada seorang pekerja dan dengan menggunakan sepenuhnya kudrat dan buah fikirannya, segala perancangan untuk memulakan operasi bas ekspres yang diimpikannya hanya menampakkan hasil selepas tiga tahun bertungkus lumus dan modal daripada institusi kewangan.Salah satu faktor kejayaannya ialah mempunyai seorang rakan karib yang sentiasa sedia untuk membantu dan membimbingnya.Beliau yang cuba mengatasi masalah pengangkutan dari segi kualiti,servis dan sebagainya bergantung pada pandangan sendiri terhadap bas yang sedia ada juga membolehkan beliau lebih berjaya dalam perniagaan ini.Kini, perniagaan telah memberi pulangan jutaan ringgit, membolehkan beliau memiliki bangunan sendiri dan memandu kereta Ferrari F360 Modena bernilai RM1 juta serta mendiami banglo mewah bernilai RM 9 juta.
Lisa Fong
Usahawan ketiga yang ingin saya belajar saya ialah Lisa Fong.Beliau merupakan pengarah urusan OSCAR Footwear Marketing Sdn.Bhd.Beliau seorang yang dilahirkan dan dibesarkan di Seri Kembangan,Selangor.Beliau telah melanjutkan pelajaran di London dalam bidang pembuatan kasut serta bekerja di kedai kasut Bata untuk memperolehi lebih pengalaman yang berkaitan dengan pembuatan kasut.Kini,pelanggan syarikat beliau adalah termasuk syarikat-syarikat besar seperti Petroliam Nasional Bhd,Top Glove Bhd,Fraser &Neave Holdings Bhd,The Federal Land Development Authority,Seagate Industries (M)Sdn Bhd dan The Royal Malaysian Police.Produk syarikat juga telah dieksport ke luar negara seperti Thailand,Singapura,Vietnam,Kanada dan Fiji.Beliau juga merupakan salah satu daripada sepuluh usahawan wanita yang berjaya di Malaysia.
Sebab saya memilih beliau sebagai teladan saya adalah saya sungguh menghayati semangat keberanian beliau untuk menceburi ke dalam bidang kasut yang biasanya didominasikan oleh lelaki serta beralih kepada bidang pembuatan kasut keselamatan selain daripada minat itu sendiri.Perniagaan ini berlaku apabila beliau dan abangnya mengambil alih syarikat bapanya yang bergantung sepenuhnya kepada tenaga kerja menghasilkan kasut.Oleh itu,beliau telah membuat keputusan untuk membeli jentera yang berteknologi tinggi untuk meningkatkan produktiviti syarikat.
Kini,perniagaan yang asalnya bermula di sebuah rumah kedai telah berkembang kepada pembukaan kilang yang dapat menanpung penghasilan kasut sebanyak 1000 hingga 1200 pasang kasut berbanding daripada 500 hingga 700 pasang kasut sebelumnya.
ARTIKEL-ARTIKEL YANG BERKAITAN DENGAN KEUSAHAWANAN
During the last couple weeks, I visited with several technology start-up businesses in San Francisco, Boston and Las Vegas. I’m particularly interested in how start-ups build a culture in their organizations and whether or not it occurs by default or if it is deliberately designed by the entrepreneurial team.
What is culture? It is pattern of basic assumptions and beliefs, the learned behaviors, shared values and norms that define the work in an organization (Schein, E. 2006, Organizational Culture and Leadership, Jossey Bass: San Francisco, CA ). The visible artifacts of culture have to do with stories, ceremonies, symbols, events, the way people dress, and layout of an office. But the roots of culture have to do with beliefs and assumptions that underlie how work is done in the venture. For example, beliefs about time- do people work 24 hours or do they work 9-5? Beliefs about space- no walls or closed offices? Beliefs about people- are they inherently good and work for intrinsic rewards or inherently lazy and have to have be motivated with punishment? Culture is “learned” in a venture from events, and what the entrepreneur pays attention to, measures, and controls.
Why is culture important in a new company? The failure or quit rate of new ventures is around 50-60% during the first 2 years. When a business closes their doors, one of leading causes is leadership or management which is often stated as poor team composition, incompetence (living too high for the business or emotional decision-making), all of which can be linked directly to culture.
In San Francisco, I had the opportunity to participate in a panel sponsored by the Silicon Vikings where we talked about culture in start-ups.
One of my co-panelists was Risto Lahdesmaki, founder of IDEAN, a design firm founded in Finland but later located Palo Alto, Calif. The purpose of the company to develop elegant user interface designs for customers and they do this by providing a fun, learning environment for employees that favors both diversity and flexibility. In a word, the culture of IDEAN is “awesome.”
Risto Lahdesmaki, founder of IDEANThe founders intentionally created an environment that met both diversity, learning and flexibility needs of its employees. Notably, the company maintained its culture even in the face of an economic downturn, maintaining its “awesomeness”.
Besides intentional design by the founder, they may be strongly influenced by influenced by where they are located. I participated in a Tech Cocktail event that immerses visitors in the ecosystem revitalization project inspired by Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos. The Downtown Project is investing in small businesses and tech start-ups as part of a larger project to transform downtown Las Vegas.
New ventures locating in downtown area of Las Vegas fit dimensions of “culture” designed by the project “commitment to collectiveness, co-learning and collision.” How is this manifested? Small businesses, tech start-ups and other organizations participating need to demonstrate their commitment to community as much as they need to show how their business model will be sustainable. For instance, Ticket Cake, a company that helps event organizers market and effectively track promotions and increase revenues, originally started in Utah, moved to Las Vegas because of the start-up community and collaborative environment.
Founder Joe Henriod notes that symbolically, the “cake” in the company name represents a positive image of fun and celebration, which aligns directly with the core values of the Down Town Project. TicketCake is explicit about its culture, deliberately connecting it to strategy for growth.
I have two main take-aways.
1. Intentionally defined culture should be linked to the mission and the values of the company- but they also have to be communicated, memorable and “lived”. This can provide the glue helping a company to sustain during the dynamic ups and downs of the start-up process. At IDEAN, culture is “lived”.
2. Culture is a “strategic” resource leading, invested in and central to growth and expansion. It is strategic, just like technology, brand, or people. At TicketCake, it is core to strategy.
For entrepreneurs starting new businesses, the tendency is to focus on developing the product, and working on the technology. But, culture needs investment and intentional creation just the same.
How The Most Successful People Treat Everything--Including Problems--As An Asset (A Case Study)
From Dilbert to Office Space to the revival of How to Succeed inBusiness (without really trying)management clichés are always good for a knowing chuckle. In a world of limited resources, the idea of “win-wins” doesn’t happen often. “Giving 110%” is just, well, “fuzzy math,” and as for “we have to push the envelope,” have you ever actually tried to push an envelope? It’s a lot like “pushing string” or “herding cats.”
However, there is one much overused phrase we do think has merit: “There are no such things as problems; just opportunities.” Indeed that is the starting point for the business environment we now find ourselves.
The world, which has always been unpredictable, is becoming increasingly more so. That means your odds of moving smoothly from A to B are going to steadily decrease over time, creating more and more situations that you simply could not anticipate. That means more problems—but more opportunities, if you view those challenges in a different way.
The world, which has always been unpredictable, is becoming increasingly more so. That means your odds of moving smoothly from A to B are going to steadily decrease over time, creating more and more situations that you simply could not anticipate. That means more problems—but more opportunities, if you view those challenges in a different way.
The key is to focus on your goal and not on the plan that you initially drew up to get there.
With this approach, your objective doesn’t change, but you accept the fact that how you may get there might. For anyone who has put together a five year plan or even an annual budget, this is going to require thinking differently, something which is never a walk in the park. But it can be done.
To see how we need to begin by taking a step back.
In the world we grew up in, we were taught either to avoid the unexpected, or to overcome it. It was all about efficiency. Optimizing. Achieving the objective quickly with as few deviations as possible. That’s understandable. Before beginning anything new we usually spend a lot of time trying to figure out what is going to happen (predicting) and once we get underway it is all about making that prediction a reality. So, not surprisingly, people get upset when something unexpected appears in their path and their reaction is the deviation from the plan needs to be eliminated or overcome ASAP.
However, in today’s world, it is all about exploiting the contingencies and leveraging the uncertainty by treating unexpected events as an opportunity to exercise control over the emerging situation. (Don’t believe me? Think of the last time you drew up a plan to accomplish something and it went off without a hitch.)
Those who are successful in starting companies, or creating anything new for that matter, learn not only to work with the surprise factor, but also to take advantage of it.
Plan B can be good, too
In most contingency plans, surprises are bad; the “what if?” scenarios are usually worst-case ones. But people who accept the world is much more complex today do not tie themselves to any theorized or preconceived market, strategic universe, or fixed path for making their idea a reality. For them, problems are a potential resource, as opposed to a disadvantage. They very often do something with the things that surprise them, treating those surprises as a potential asset.
How do you get creative with a surprise? Well, if the surprise is a good one, you take full advantage of it. For example, you thought the world would love your new iPhone accessory. But you have been overwhelmed by demand. The logical thing to do is to ramp up production, add distributors (perhaps worldwide), and think about creating additional products not only for the iPhone but for all other smart phones as well.
If that surprise was a negative one—i.e., your actions did not go as you thought they would; you encountered a problem or even a setback—it is then time to figure out a way of using that negative to your advantage. Problems and even setbacks are resources to be employed to your advantage.
Problems = Advantage
Running headlong into a problem and then solving it can give you a barrier to competition, or at least a remarkable head start in the marketplace. Why? Because you acted, and the competition didn’t. As a result, you know something they don’t.
Isadore Sharp, founder of the extremely upscale Four Seasons hotel chain, serves as a case in point. When he started out, he assumed that the only thing that would matter for him was to be in the best locations. The problem he ran into was that every other hotel chain had the same idea. That was a huge negative surprise. If you are doing what everyone else is, you don’t have an advantage.
In solving that problem, he stumbled on what turned out to be the Four Seasons’ ultimate competitive advantage. He created a two-pronged barrier to entry, as he explains in his autobiography, Four Seasons: The Story of a Business Philosophy. “One was our inventory of hotels . . . the largest group of authentically first-class hotels in the world, a physical product no other company had to the same degree.”
The advantage was that he could offer the frequent traveler who wanted luxury one-stop shopping when it came to staying in any of the world’s major cities. The other advantage was his people. “Three decades ago, we had decided that what our customers most desired was whatever would make time away from home most pleasurable and productive, so we set about raising service levels to match our first-class decor, an historic judgment call that had made superior service the major determinant of hotel profitability and competitiveness, and while finally recognized now by every hotel company in the world, we had a long head start, so that all our staff in all our hotels were service-oriented, and every employee was focused on delivering service no other company could match.”
According to Sharp, “Location was no longer foremost in getting and keeping customers, it was people, people, people. This was now the decisive factor in our two-fold barrier to entry.”
That negative surprise you encounter can ultimately become a barrier to competition, if you treat it as an asset as Sharp did. He accepted the problem that what he thought was going to be an advantage—location—wasn’t. (Everyone else could build in the same place.) He then took that fact (we have terrific locations, but many other people do too) and asked what he could do with that. His conclusion: We can provide excellent service at these superior locations. That has given him a terrific edge in the marketplace.
Coming full circle
We began by talking about business clichés. Let’s end the same way. The takeaway from this post is clear. If you come across lemons—otherwise known as business problems/obstacles—do indeed make lemonade.
Try this approach next time you encounter something unexpected. Despite how unpleasant it seems, say, “This is really good news,” and then try to make it so.
The big idea here is you want to develop the ability to turn the unexpected into the profitable. That means your default position should be that there is never a problem without a potential profitable/pleasant solution lurking somewhere. The understanding that a) not all surprises are bad, and b) surprises, whether good or bad, can be used to create something new, is a central to the way we need to think going forward.
The thing is to do something positive with those surprises.
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Paul B. Brown is the co-author (along with Leonard A. Schlesinger and Charles F. Kiefer) of Just Start: Take Action; Embrace Uncertainty and Create the Future recently published by Harvard Business Review Press.
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Why is the firm overlooked as a contributor when we identify the drivers of globalization? Geoffrey Jones discusses his new book,Entrepreneurship and Multinationals: Global Business and the Making of the Modern World.
BY SEAN SILVERTHORNE
In a new book on the origins and impacts of globalization, Harvard Business School’s Geoffrey Jones focuses on the role played by a vital but often ignored actor in this conversation: business entrepreneurs and the multinational enterprises they create.
“There has been remarkably little concern with the role of firms in creating markets, shaping policies, and diffusing globalization,” says Jones, the Isidor Straus Professor of Business History, and Faculty Chair of the School’s Business History Initiative.
In this interview conducted over e-mail, Jones discusses the book, Entrepreneurship and Multinationals: Global Business and the Making of the Modern World, and his views on subjects ranging from whether globalism has been a force for good to what Nazi Germany tells us about the difficulty in planning for political risk.
Sean Silverthorne: Why did you write this book and what are its major themes?
Geoffrey Jones: I have long been interested in the causes of globalization and its impact on societies. Both questions are best answered by looking at lengthy periods of time, and this has been my focus. I have often published in the scholarly journals or academic conference volumes, and in the spirit of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts, I sought to pull together my research and conclusions in this book, in the hope of reaching broader audiences.
I address three key themes. First, I show that entrepreneurs and their firms have been important actors in the making of the global world over the last two centuries. Individual entrepreneurs and managers invented new products and shaped consumer demand. Firms created and diffused technologies and products, alongside the values in which they were embedded. They lit up the cities of the world with electricity and turned India into the world’s largest tea producer during the nineteenth century. They built automobile industries in Latin America after World War II. And so on.
Second, I wanted to demonstrate the relative importance of business compared to governments and other institutional actors in building global capitalism. In both the historical and economics literatures, firms are typically black boxes responding to exogenous factors such as government policies, institutions, or resource endowments. I show that firms have agency. When governments attempted to reverse globalization during the interwar years, firms redesigned their international businesses rather than abandon them. Multinationals preserved dimensions of globalization even as governments closed down flows of trade and capital across borders. Yet firms were rarely able to wholly dictate events. Their ability to transfer technology was constrained by the institutional, educational, and cultural conditions of host economies. Certainly after 1914, I show that governments were persistent constraints on the autonomy of firms. The book has several case studies that explore this issue. The instances when firms could really dictate to governments, as when the United Fruit Company orchestrated the CIA overthrow of the government in Guatemala in 1954, were exceptional.
Third, I explore whether, if business was a shaper of global capitalism, it was a force for good, or otherwise. I show that the heterogeneity of business enterprise renders this question challenging to answer, and perhaps misleading even to ask. In the broadest sense, the growth of global capitalism has been associated with enormous increases in wealth, as well as dramatic rises in the longevity, of humanity. Yet capitalism too has had its dark side. The book contains multiple examples of the amoral nature of global capitalism, from opium trading in nineteenth century China to the willingness of large networking firms in the United States to sell equipment enabling the Chinese government to censor the Web and identify political opponents. As the economist William Baumol has argued, entrepreneurship can be productive, unproductive, or destructive, and this is certainly evident in the history of global capitalism.
Silverthorne: You note that as the history of globalization continues to be written, the importance of the role of businesses enterprises in the process “has tended to be written out of the script.” Why is this so?
Jones: This odd situation results from the idiosyncratic nature of academic disciplines which develop their own norms and conventions about interesting research questions and how to answer them.
For several decades mainstream academic historians, especially those based in the United States, have devoted almost no attention to business as such, as the profession focused on the role of culture, race, gender, and religion in historical developments. Economic historians, often in recent decades trained in economics, have done pioneering work in quantifying historical trends in the integration of world markets. However these scholars have been far more interested in markets and institutional structures than firms. Political scientists, although more interested in firms, have focused primarily on the politics and policy decisions which impacted and drove globalization. Sociologists, who have approached the subject of globalization from the perspective of organizations, have primarily focused on states and intergovernmental organizations.
The upshot has been that there has been remarkably little concern with the role of firms in creating markets, shaping policies, and diffusing globalization.
Silverthorne: An interesting paradox is that even as the West successfully created multinational enterprises around the world after the industrial revolution, an increasing wealth gap or “great divergence” between the West and the rest of the world, continued to widen. Why weren’t developing countries more able to benefit from trade and to learn entrepreneurial skills from the West, which could have helped them bridge this divide?
Jones: The drivers of the stickiness of modern economic growth is one of the most important questions in economic history. The leading explanations focus on so-called institutional failure, inadequate human capital development, or a lack of value systems conducive to modern entrepreneurship. The particular focus in this book is why multinational firms were not better transferors of innovation and entrepreneurial capabilities from the West to the Rest.
The historical evidence makes clear that multinationals in general have never been a panacea for growth. During the nineteenth century, most multinational investment in developing countries went into natural resources and related services. These were often enclave investments, like mining towns, with few links to the local economy. Firms employed expatriates in skilled and managerial positions. Worse still, many businesses were based on concessions from local dictators. This had the effect of reinforcing local institutional constraints on domestic entrepreneurship rather than removing them.
There was the more general issue, still as relevant today, that the ability of multinationals to transfer technology was constrained by the institutional, educational, and cultural conditions of host economies. Multinationals do not do things to countries and societies; they interact with them. For better or worse, they have not transformed national institutions or radically shifted societal norms. Multinationals had their most positive impacts on countries which already had sufficient educational levels and developed institutional structures to benefit from them.
I recently spoke to Warren Berger, who is the author of A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas. Berger has studied hundreds of the world’s leading innovators, entrepreneurs, and creative thinkers to learn how they ask questions, generate original ideas, and solve problems. His writing and research on questioning and innovation has appeared in Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, and Wired. His previous book, Glimmer, was an in-depth analysis of creative thinking that was named one of Business Week’s “Best Innovation & Design Books of the Year.” In the following interview, Berger talks about how questioning can lead to new innovations, what the process of questioning is, why they fear the challenge of trying to get to the hard answers and shares his best advice to you.
Warren Berger
Dan Schawbel: How does questioning help entrepreneurs come up with their next great ideas?
Warren Berger: Questioning is often the starting point of innovation. I studied the origins of many breakthrough products and disruptive startup companies—and it’s amazing how often breakthroughs can be traced back to someone formulating (and then tackling) a question no one else was asking at the time. For example, Airbnb’s founders asking, Why are so many people unable to get a hotel room in San Francisco, while so many other people have an extra room in their home they’d love to make money off? What if we could connect these two needs?
The reality is, these kinds of opportunities are all around, but most people don’t notice them or take the next step, which is to inquire deeply about them. The successful entrepreneur is the one who “steps back” to question what others ignore or take for granted. Why does this situation or problem exist? What’s the opportunity here? How might I apply my own capabilities and imagination to take action on it?
Schawbel: What is the process of questioning and do you think you can take it too far?
Berger: As I learned from a research group called The Right Question Institute, questioning is a mental process that “enables us to organize our thoughts around what we don’t know.” And if we talk about innovative questioning—the kind I focus on in the book—to do that, we must marshal our intellectual resources to 1) understand a problem, 2) imagine and consider possible solutions, and 3) turn those ideas into reality. All of that tends to happen via questioning—typically starting with “Why” questions, then moving to “What if” idea-generating questions, and finally working through the “How” questions (as in, How do we actually get this done?).
Most innovation stories I studied went through some version of this inquiry progression. Not to suggest there is a formula for questioning—there isn’t—but there are stages in the innovation cycle when some types of questions work better than others. As to whether questioning can go too far? Yes—if you get trapped in those early stages of wide-open questioning, and you don’t keep moving ahead to more practical questions; i.e., if you’re stuck in “Why” and “What if,” and never get to “How.” To me questioning without action is not innovation—it’s philosophy. (Not that there’s anything wrong with philosophy!).
Schawbel: Why are entrepreneurs often reluctant to ask the right questions? Is it because they fear the right answers?
Berger: I don’t think they fear the answers, I think they fear the challenge of trying to get to the truly hard answers—and so they don’t ask the hard questions. Because if you dare to ask a big question, you are, in effect, issuing a challenge—to yourself or your company. And if you feel deep down you’re not up to that challenge, you’ll just avoid asking such questions. It’s much easier to ask more proscribed, practical questions—How can we move the sales needle by 2% this quarter—as opposed to asking, Why are we still doing things the way we’ve done it the past 20 years? How might we re-invent this process, this company, or this whole category?
Schawbel: Can you share an example of a CEO that has used questioning to their benefit and explain how?
Berger: One of the CEO’s featured in the book is Ron Shaich of Panera Bread, who uses questioning to keep moving the company forward and expanding its scope. Panera tackles questions like, What does the world need most… that we are uniquely able to provide? That “mission question” guides their new initiatives. Nike’s Mark Parker is another example of a great questioner: For years, he’s been asking, in effect, What is this company really about, beyond athletic apparel? What business are we really in? That has helped Nike become an active-lifestyle digital companion to its customers.
I also think Reed Hastings of Netflix is a great questioner; he started Netflix with a question (Why should I have to pay these Blockbuster late fees?) and he’s been questioning ever since, and in the process, continually expanding what Netflix does. And to this list I would add Jack Dorsey, whose credo is “Question everything,” and whose newest venture Square began with the question, Why can’t everyone accept credit cards?
Schawbel: What are your top pieces of career advice?
Berger: First, everyone says to “lean in” and “go for it”—but it’s also important to take time to “step back” and question. Why are you choosing that particular mountain to climb? Is it the best use of your strengths? What do you imagine awaits you at the top? What are you leaving behind, down below? How might you better enjoy the climb itself? Ask yourself a lot of questions—then go for it.
Second: Try to avoid becoming a “comfortable expert”—better to remain a “restless learner.” Nowadays, expertise tends to become outdated and obsolete. A questioner keeps adding to (or rethinking) what he/she “knows.” As Einstein said, “never lose a holy curiosity.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/danschawbel/2014/03/04/warren-berger-how-asking-questions-can-make-you-a-better-entrepreneur/
