Advice is plainly a highly desirable commodity - if it’s good advice. Everybody will at several points in their careers ask for, or receive gratis, advice, whether professional management consulting or friendly words of wisdom - real, supposed or plain dubious. So it was a great idea of Fortune magazine to ask 29 career stars, mostly business people, to identify the best advice they had ever received; the words that had most influenced them on their several ways to the top.
In fact, advice, like so much else in management, has become institutionalised in recent years. Mentors, coaches and councillors have always operated at the lower levels of business, but paid providers are now to be found advising at much higher levels. The analogy is obvious. If a tournament-winning golf pro, or any other athletic star, employs a full-time coach to improve his brilliant game, why shouldn’t a CEO have the same assistance, as he or she goes about their difficult (but highly paid) task?
There’s nothing new about top hands requiring helping hands. Business history contains several examples of executive suite partnerships in which one of the partners (usually a super-boss) was far more equal than the advisor. One such tycoon (so I recall) called his right-hand man ‘my day wife’, which described the relationship rather neatly. In politics too the concept of the ‘eminence grise’ advisor is well-known - the wise and devious grey eminence who lurks in the king’s shadow and under his protection.
PERSONAL SUPPORT
Many executives have used top management consultants, who are very eminent and often grey, as personal support systems. It’s by no means a bad choice. The people who get to the highest posts in consultancy are highly intelligent, enormously well informed about the practices and pranks of other chief executives, skilled at recognising situations which are repetitive, and quick at getting on to the client’s wavelength. The relationships can last for years – as demonstrated by Peter Drucker, the greatest of mentors.
Two of the Gang of 29 swear by Drucker, including author Jim Collins (who learnt from a day with the grand guru that ‘The real discipline comes in saying no to the wrong opportunities’). And church founder Rick Warren still likes to ‘go sit at the feet of Peter Drucker on a regular basis’. Many business leaders have found those feet (now 95-years old) equally inspiring. Some of Drucker’s great store of wise anecdotes stems from these encounters.
Thus, he used to advise a New York banker once a year at meetings where, no doubt, they exchanged views and ideas about the financial system in general, and the bank’s management in particular, to great effect. But Drucker noticed two odd, extraneous things - that the meetings always lasted exactly an hour and a half, and that they were never interrupted.
When Drucker asked for an explanation the banker replied that experience had taught him that meetings were never useful after an hour and a quarter, because people began to repeat themselves. So at exactly that time he would ask the other party to sum up, which took quarter of an hour.
And the lack of interruptions? ‘While we meet my secretary is under orders only to put through a call if the President of the United States or my wife should ring. The President seldom rings - and my wife knows better’.
Note that here the highly disciplined banker was turning the tables, advising his advisor. Much advice is of this kind - the offer of one person’s experience as a guide to the better performance of other people. There is a very human tendency to believe that if someone else’s success has involved a particular method, that method must have some direct connection with the success, and by repeating the method, you increase your chances of being equally successful, at least within your own terms.
ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL
That argument is appealing, but flawed. Super-tycoon John D. Rockefeller I's habitual pose in meetings was prone - he would lie on a sofa with his eyes shut, saying nary a word, apparently asleep, but listening intently behind his closed eyes.
I don’t suppose for a moment that Rockefeller’s billionaire fortune would have been one cent smaller had he kept his eyes open or sat at the table like the others. But his eccentricity served three purposes: it set the boss apart as an unusual individual whose eccentric ways had to be respected, it reminded everybody there of the sovereign importance of listening, and it kept the great man from dominating the discussion - as great men are wont to do.
So the Rockefeller story is really a parable. What he did was less important than what it conveyed. There are some good examples of parable in the Fortune article. The best advice ever received by Vivek Paul, the brilliant Indian businessman who turned Wipro Technologies into a global force, came from an elephant trainer in the jungle. The elephants were large, but tethered to small stakes. How come?
The unlikely guru explained; ‘When the elephants are small, they try to pull out the stakes and they fail. When they grow large, they never try to pull out the stake again’. Paul drew from this strategy a powerful lesson; that ‘we have to go for what we think we’re fully capable of, not limit ourselves by what we’ve been in the past’.
POWER OF THE PARABLE
Note that the power of the parable doesn’t lie in the story itself, which isn’t especially arresting, but in Paul’s interpretation - and still more in the ambitions he proceeded to form and turn into remarkable deeds. To receive really good advice, in other words, you must be a really good advisee. That requires LLL, PPP, AAA:
1. LLL: Listen, Look and Learn
2. PPP: Priority of Powerful Purpose
3. AAA: Act , Advance and Achieve.
Paul’s story is an especially convincing demonstration of the threefold advisee kit. How many bicycle tourists in that Bangalore jungle would have noticed the size of the stake or questioned the trainer? Every day everybody, metaphorically speaking, walks past an elephant, notices nothing, and asks no questions.
You can’t, of course, follow up every elephant and cross-examine every trainer. In my latest book, Seven Summits of Success, co-written with the famous mountaineer Rebecca Stephens, she tells a parable about filling a bowl with stones of various sizes. An Eastern guru uses this humble operation to put across a high lesson: Put the important things first. They have to be important to you, well worth doing, and purposive; that is, they convert into the third stage, the AAA of Act, Advance, Achieve.
People like Paul, of course, have the Triple A built into their genes. Jack Welch, the 20-year hero CEO of GE, must have told many others about his habit, on landing in New York, of imagining that this was his first day in the chair, succeeding ‘a real dud’. Like all the others who heard this, Paul listened to the Welch questions; ‘What would I do that was different from the guy before? What big changes would I make?’ But how many others, having heard Welch, promptly decided, as Paul did, ‘to zero-base myself’ every Christmas?
Welch’s own best advisor, a business acquaintance, told him to ‘Be yourself’; that is, remember how you got where you are, and don’t pretend to be someone else, especially when you get all the way to the top. The background of your best adviser, to judge by the Gang of 29, is most likely, like Welch’s, to be business. That may be coincidental; fathers or bosses are obvious and frequently excellent sources of advice; the former are often in business, the latter, of course, always. Both types are likely to be father-figures, even when there is no parental connection.
LOVE THAT JOB
However, the authentic father-figures are no use if they act the domineering, prescriptive parent of fact and fiction. Rather, the good ones encourage offspring to do what they really want. Anything else would contradict an attractive theme that runs through the 29, epitomised by TV anchor man Ted Koppel (‘Do what you love’) and ad-man Donny Deutsch (‘If you love something, the money will come’). The burden of Drucker’s invaluable advice to author Collins was to give up any idea of starting his own organisation and concentrate on what he would enjoy most.
There are other wise and pragmatic counsels among the 29 - one of them in reverse. Warren Buffett stepped on the road to the world’s greatest investment fortune by disobeying, not one mentor, but two: his guru and teacher, Ben Graham, and his own father. In 1951 both men advised young Warren that the stock market was too high, and that he should stay clear. He disobeyed - but in doing so followed their most important advice, which most people find exceptionally hard.
‘You’re right not because others agree with you, but because your facts are right’. The words are Graham’s, but the thinking is fundamental. In management, as in all life, there is at any given moment an accurate, factual description of events which can be discerned and described by logical analysis. The nearer you can get to that truth, and the closer your actions to what the truth demands, the better you will do - in anything.
Andy Grove, Intel’s genius CEO, followed this faith when his life was threatened by prostate cancer. Experience as a trainee engineer had taught him, in his professor’s words, that ‘When “everyone knows” something to be true, it means that nobody knows nothin’. That was the case with Grove’s cancer; he did all his own research - and survived.
Reduced to one-liners, some of the other advice received by the 29, while sound as a bell, hardly ranks among the World’s Great Thoughts. ‘Balance your work with your family’: ‘Let others take the credit’: ‘Have the courage to stick with a tough job’: ‘Don’t listen to nay sayers’: ‘You can learn from anyone’. You might find these in a cracker, but you couldn’t build a career on them - not even ‘Recognise the skill and traits you don’t possess, and hire people who have them’.
That sounds like a statement of the obvious, even when you know that, uttered by the leadership guru Warren Bennis, it had a great influence on Howard Schultz of Starbucks - who has used Bennis as a (presumably paid) adviser for many years. Enough of the 29 have such relationships to confirm, as noted earlier, that having a professional mentor is no fad. As your career matures, the frank advice of someone you trust is an antidote to arrogance, prejudice, inability to face uncomfortable truths and perplexity.
SPECIFIC ADVICE
Professional advisors can also be superb mentors. Sumner Redstone, the omnipotent boss of Viacom, has known and used Ace Greenberg of bankers Bear Stearns for over 15 years. But I’m sure that Greenberg’s specific advice on Redstone’s deals was more valuable than this; ‘Follow your own instincts, not those of people who see the world differently’. Redstone is an exemplar of common traits of the 29. They know who and what they are, trust their instincts, and rarely need any second bidding to follow them. Nor should you.
Two thoughts stick out, though. Klaus Kleinfeld, the new head of Siemens, always envisions the outcome of his proposed actions two years on. He’s right to do so.
And what advice does Peter Drucker, mentor of mentors, value most? That of his first editor, who told him, in effect, ‘Get good - or get out!’ Advice learnt in youth thus stays a long, long time - but it’s the value of how you use it, not the advice, that truly counts.
In fact, advice, like so much else in management, has become institutionalised in recent years. Mentors, coaches and councillors have always operated at the lower levels of business, but paid providers are now to be found advising at much higher levels. The analogy is obvious. If a tournament-winning golf pro, or any other athletic star, employs a full-time coach to improve his brilliant game, why shouldn’t a CEO have the same assistance, as he or she goes about their difficult (but highly paid) task?
There’s nothing new about top hands requiring helping hands. Business history contains several examples of executive suite partnerships in which one of the partners (usually a super-boss) was far more equal than the advisor. One such tycoon (so I recall) called his right-hand man ‘my day wife’, which described the relationship rather neatly. In politics too the concept of the ‘eminence grise’ advisor is well-known - the wise and devious grey eminence who lurks in the king’s shadow and under his protection.
PERSONAL SUPPORT
Many executives have used top management consultants, who are very eminent and often grey, as personal support systems. It’s by no means a bad choice. The people who get to the highest posts in consultancy are highly intelligent, enormously well informed about the practices and pranks of other chief executives, skilled at recognising situations which are repetitive, and quick at getting on to the client’s wavelength. The relationships can last for years – as demonstrated by Peter Drucker, the greatest of mentors.
Two of the Gang of 29 swear by Drucker, including author Jim Collins (who learnt from a day with the grand guru that ‘The real discipline comes in saying no to the wrong opportunities’). And church founder Rick Warren still likes to ‘go sit at the feet of Peter Drucker on a regular basis’. Many business leaders have found those feet (now 95-years old) equally inspiring. Some of Drucker’s great store of wise anecdotes stems from these encounters.
Thus, he used to advise a New York banker once a year at meetings where, no doubt, they exchanged views and ideas about the financial system in general, and the bank’s management in particular, to great effect. But Drucker noticed two odd, extraneous things - that the meetings always lasted exactly an hour and a half, and that they were never interrupted.
When Drucker asked for an explanation the banker replied that experience had taught him that meetings were never useful after an hour and a quarter, because people began to repeat themselves. So at exactly that time he would ask the other party to sum up, which took quarter of an hour.
And the lack of interruptions? ‘While we meet my secretary is under orders only to put through a call if the President of the United States or my wife should ring. The President seldom rings - and my wife knows better’.
Note that here the highly disciplined banker was turning the tables, advising his advisor. Much advice is of this kind - the offer of one person’s experience as a guide to the better performance of other people. There is a very human tendency to believe that if someone else’s success has involved a particular method, that method must have some direct connection with the success, and by repeating the method, you increase your chances of being equally successful, at least within your own terms.
ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL
That argument is appealing, but flawed. Super-tycoon John D. Rockefeller I's habitual pose in meetings was prone - he would lie on a sofa with his eyes shut, saying nary a word, apparently asleep, but listening intently behind his closed eyes.
I don’t suppose for a moment that Rockefeller’s billionaire fortune would have been one cent smaller had he kept his eyes open or sat at the table like the others. But his eccentricity served three purposes: it set the boss apart as an unusual individual whose eccentric ways had to be respected, it reminded everybody there of the sovereign importance of listening, and it kept the great man from dominating the discussion - as great men are wont to do.
So the Rockefeller story is really a parable. What he did was less important than what it conveyed. There are some good examples of parable in the Fortune article. The best advice ever received by Vivek Paul, the brilliant Indian businessman who turned Wipro Technologies into a global force, came from an elephant trainer in the jungle. The elephants were large, but tethered to small stakes. How come?
The unlikely guru explained; ‘When the elephants are small, they try to pull out the stakes and they fail. When they grow large, they never try to pull out the stake again’. Paul drew from this strategy a powerful lesson; that ‘we have to go for what we think we’re fully capable of, not limit ourselves by what we’ve been in the past’.
POWER OF THE PARABLE
Note that the power of the parable doesn’t lie in the story itself, which isn’t especially arresting, but in Paul’s interpretation - and still more in the ambitions he proceeded to form and turn into remarkable deeds. To receive really good advice, in other words, you must be a really good advisee. That requires LLL, PPP, AAA:
1. LLL: Listen, Look and Learn
2. PPP: Priority of Powerful Purpose
3. AAA: Act , Advance and Achieve.
Paul’s story is an especially convincing demonstration of the threefold advisee kit. How many bicycle tourists in that Bangalore jungle would have noticed the size of the stake or questioned the trainer? Every day everybody, metaphorically speaking, walks past an elephant, notices nothing, and asks no questions.
You can’t, of course, follow up every elephant and cross-examine every trainer. In my latest book, Seven Summits of Success, co-written with the famous mountaineer Rebecca Stephens, she tells a parable about filling a bowl with stones of various sizes. An Eastern guru uses this humble operation to put across a high lesson: Put the important things first. They have to be important to you, well worth doing, and purposive; that is, they convert into the third stage, the AAA of Act, Advance, Achieve.
People like Paul, of course, have the Triple A built into their genes. Jack Welch, the 20-year hero CEO of GE, must have told many others about his habit, on landing in New York, of imagining that this was his first day in the chair, succeeding ‘a real dud’. Like all the others who heard this, Paul listened to the Welch questions; ‘What would I do that was different from the guy before? What big changes would I make?’ But how many others, having heard Welch, promptly decided, as Paul did, ‘to zero-base myself’ every Christmas?
Welch’s own best advisor, a business acquaintance, told him to ‘Be yourself’; that is, remember how you got where you are, and don’t pretend to be someone else, especially when you get all the way to the top. The background of your best adviser, to judge by the Gang of 29, is most likely, like Welch’s, to be business. That may be coincidental; fathers or bosses are obvious and frequently excellent sources of advice; the former are often in business, the latter, of course, always. Both types are likely to be father-figures, even when there is no parental connection.
LOVE THAT JOB
However, the authentic father-figures are no use if they act the domineering, prescriptive parent of fact and fiction. Rather, the good ones encourage offspring to do what they really want. Anything else would contradict an attractive theme that runs through the 29, epitomised by TV anchor man Ted Koppel (‘Do what you love’) and ad-man Donny Deutsch (‘If you love something, the money will come’). The burden of Drucker’s invaluable advice to author Collins was to give up any idea of starting his own organisation and concentrate on what he would enjoy most.
There are other wise and pragmatic counsels among the 29 - one of them in reverse. Warren Buffett stepped on the road to the world’s greatest investment fortune by disobeying, not one mentor, but two: his guru and teacher, Ben Graham, and his own father. In 1951 both men advised young Warren that the stock market was too high, and that he should stay clear. He disobeyed - but in doing so followed their most important advice, which most people find exceptionally hard.
‘You’re right not because others agree with you, but because your facts are right’. The words are Graham’s, but the thinking is fundamental. In management, as in all life, there is at any given moment an accurate, factual description of events which can be discerned and described by logical analysis. The nearer you can get to that truth, and the closer your actions to what the truth demands, the better you will do - in anything.
Andy Grove, Intel’s genius CEO, followed this faith when his life was threatened by prostate cancer. Experience as a trainee engineer had taught him, in his professor’s words, that ‘When “everyone knows” something to be true, it means that nobody knows nothin’. That was the case with Grove’s cancer; he did all his own research - and survived.
Reduced to one-liners, some of the other advice received by the 29, while sound as a bell, hardly ranks among the World’s Great Thoughts. ‘Balance your work with your family’: ‘Let others take the credit’: ‘Have the courage to stick with a tough job’: ‘Don’t listen to nay sayers’: ‘You can learn from anyone’. You might find these in a cracker, but you couldn’t build a career on them - not even ‘Recognise the skill and traits you don’t possess, and hire people who have them’.
That sounds like a statement of the obvious, even when you know that, uttered by the leadership guru Warren Bennis, it had a great influence on Howard Schultz of Starbucks - who has used Bennis as a (presumably paid) adviser for many years. Enough of the 29 have such relationships to confirm, as noted earlier, that having a professional mentor is no fad. As your career matures, the frank advice of someone you trust is an antidote to arrogance, prejudice, inability to face uncomfortable truths and perplexity.
SPECIFIC ADVICE
Professional advisors can also be superb mentors. Sumner Redstone, the omnipotent boss of Viacom, has known and used Ace Greenberg of bankers Bear Stearns for over 15 years. But I’m sure that Greenberg’s specific advice on Redstone’s deals was more valuable than this; ‘Follow your own instincts, not those of people who see the world differently’. Redstone is an exemplar of common traits of the 29. They know who and what they are, trust their instincts, and rarely need any second bidding to follow them. Nor should you.
Two thoughts stick out, though. Klaus Kleinfeld, the new head of Siemens, always envisions the outcome of his proposed actions two years on. He’s right to do so.
And what advice does Peter Drucker, mentor of mentors, value most? That of his first editor, who told him, in effect, ‘Get good - or get out!’ Advice learnt in youth thus stays a long, long time - but it’s the value of how you use it, not the advice, that truly counts.
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