Adam Menter’s Blog

I recently came across the “We Are What We Do” movement, started in the UK (http://www.wearewhatwedo.org/) . I wholeheartedly believe in the ethos of this movement and site, and wanted to post it here.

Looking through the items on their “Do Something” list reminds me of Saatchi & Saatchi S / Walmart’s Personal Sustainability Programs (PSP). To me, that’s one of the best case studies in business for ‘Small Actions X Lots of People = Big Change’.

I do struggle with this type of project though… something about tracking the nice things you do on a website seems a bit contrived to me. The site seems more like a flash in the pan than a community that has staying power. And if we really are what we do - I’m not sure I want to glue myself to a computer screen any more than I have to. The books they’ve published are a bit more my speed.

Ghandi’s aphorism, “Be the change you want to see in the world,” just can’t be beat.

I recently read Innovation to the Core: A blueprint for transforming the way your company innovates by Peter Skarzynski and Rowan Gibson. It is probably the best book I’ve read about managing innovation. When folks ask me what I do at Jump, it usually takes some explaining. This book is a really good primer in a lot of the work I find myself doing on a daily basis - and attempts to answer many of the questions I find myself wrestling with.

The book provides good examples (primarily from Strategos’ work with Whirlpool) as well as concrete advice/tools. Their basic premise is that successful innovation can be made repeatable by making it more “core” to a company’s DNA and distributing innovation capacity throughout the organization. They are trying to do for innovation what Six Sigma did for quality…putting a flexible process around it, institutionalizing an innovation training program and job architecture, and making innovation a core value that everyone feels empowered to participate in.

The book is also a great example of affordance in design. Affordance is when an object’s form really conveys its function and method of use. A handle that begs to be gripped in a certain way. A latch that is in exactly the right spot and snaps open and shut intuitively. In this case, the book has wide margins on the edges of the page that invite note-taking and mark-ups. In addition to just being handy, this also messages that the book is meant to be engaged with, absorbed, and referenced back-to.

Influence: Science and Practice by Robert B. Cialdini

My review on Goodreads

rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is the best book I’ve read in a really long time. It is interesting, very useful, and chock-full of great examples.

Basically the book lays out all of the various ways that people can influence the thoughts, behaviors, and decisions of other people. Cialdini calls folks who do this professionally “compliance professionals”. These are salesmen, Hare Krishnas, and even con-men.

It is essential reading for anyone in management, sales, and business development. And, really, anyone who is curious about how people make decisions - and how those decisions, in aggregate, describe how society works.

View all my reviews.