Good Morning Thinkers!

Design for a “Think Week?”

I have long been fascinated by Bill Gates’ legendary Think Weeks which he takes twice a year to read and reflect on the world around him. After his Think Week in 2005, Robert Guth, reporter with The Wall Street Journal, wrote an article that included this statement:

Four days into this Think Week, Gates had read 56 papers, working 18 hours straight some days. His record is 112 papers.

"I don't know if I'll catch my record, but I'll certainly do 100," he said. Among the unread papers: "10 Crazy Ideas to Shake Up Microsoft."

I was curious about the ten crazy ideas and delighted to find them listed on the blog, Mini-Microsoft I’m not sure what I expected but it definitely wasn’t what I saw. (list shown at the end of this post). I only want to talk about #1-- Schedule Unscheduled Time into Performance Reviews.

Think about it. The number one "crazy idea" from one of the most successful companies in history is the same thing I hear from companies large and small: more time to think. Obviously whoever suggested this at Microsoft thought the only way it would happen would be to make it an official part of the performance review process ... but that if it could be done, this change would "shake up" the company.

Across the world, the demand for innovation has reached a fevered pitch. But, the universal fuel for innovation -- time to think -- appears to be the most elusive resource of all.

What Would a "Think Week" Look Like?

After thinking about the time issue for several years now, I don’t think that trying to find time to think within the normal context of our over-busy, down-sized and outsourced working environments makes a lot of sense. Urgent always bullies its way past important.

We take time to respond to an email from our customers or managers even when it means putting a strategic project on hold. So, we probably need to do what Gates does and get away somewhere.

So, here’s the question: if you were going to design a Think Week for yourself, what would you do to create the most productive, thought-stimulating week possible? We thought this would be an interesting survey question ... and might also help you think through what would be most helpful to you. So please click this link and share your thoughts -- We’ll summarize the results in a 3-4 weeks.

Microsoft’s "Ten Crazy Ideas to Shake Up the Company"

1. Schedule Unscheduled Time into Performance Reviews

2. "Break Up" the Company

3. Encourage Loose but Prominent Couplings

4. Exile and Empower Incubation Projects

5. Offer Super-exponential Rewards

6. Offer Different Risk-Reward Compensation Profiles

7. Cut Back on Bureaucracy

8. Review Cost Cutting

9. Reduce Headcount on Large Dev Projects

10. Eliminate Exec Reviews

Sam Walton's 10 Rules

Sam Walton's 10 Rules for Success

Not much need for an introduction, explanation or commentary. (ed.)

The basics ...

Rule #1
Commit to your business. Believe in it more than anything else. If you love your work, you’ll be out there every day trying to do the best you can, and pretty soon everybody around will catch the passion from you - like a fever.

Rule #2
Share your profits with all your associates, and treat them as partners. In turn, they will treat you as a partner, and together you will all perform beyond your wildest expectations.

Rule #3
Motivate your partners. Money and ownership aren’t enough. Set high goals, encourage competition and then keep score. Make bets with outrageous payoffs.

Rule #4
Communicate everything you possibly can to your partners. The more they know, the more they’ll understand. The more they understand, the more they’ll care. Once they care, there’s no stopping them. Information is power, and the gain you get from empowering your associates more than offsets the risk of informing your competitors.

Rule #5
Appreciate everything your associates do for the business. Nothing else can quite substitute for a few well-chosen, well-timed, sincere words of praise. They’re absolutely free and worth a fortune.

Rule #6
Celebrate your success and find humour in your failures. Don’t take yourself so seriously. Loosen up and everyone around you will loosen up. Have fun and always show enthusiasm. When all else fails put on a costume and sing a silly song.

Rule #7
Listen to everyone in your company, and figure out ways to get them talking. The folks on the front line - the ones who actually talk to customers - are the only ones who really know what’s going on out there. You’d better find out what they know.

Rule #8
Exceed your customer’s expectations. If you do they’ll come back over and over. Give them what they want - and a little more. Let them know you appreciate them. Make good on all your mistakes, and don't make excuses - apologize. Stand behind everything you do. ‘Satisfaction guaranteed’ will make all the difference.

Rule #9
Control your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage. You can make a lot of mistakes and still recover if you run an efficient operation. Or you can be brilliant and still go out of business if you’re too inefficient.

Rule #10
Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom. If everybody is doing it one way, there’s a good chance you can find your niche by going exactly in the opposite direction.

---

Sam Walton's 10 Rules For Success - from Sam Walton: Made in America, My Story, co-authored by J. Huey, Doubleday.