Book of Directors
We cannot move linearly on an exponential trajectory. These were my last words after reaching a tipping point of disagreement, which was followed by an aggressive, exhausting, and argumentative debate. The boardroom rotated around two distinct viewpoints: “Doing things right” vs “Doing the right things.” The urgent business situation left no room for any possible mutual understanding. Steve, Alex, and Eric voted for ‘Efficiency’, while on the other hand, Ray, John, and Sangeet voted for ‘Effectiveness’.
Being in the middle of this intellectual colosseum, I decided to freeze my casting vote; instead, I suggested in an ad hoc fashion, to change our voting structure by applying Ray’s believability approach in decision-making “believability voting.” Thankfully they all agreed.
The moment that we dismantled the situation, it was apparent to all that the core of the case rotates over financial orientation. I guess if anyone faces a financial dilemma, s/he will be grateful to have Ray by her/his side. As such, the voting power inclined towards the ‘Doing the right things’ team.
The above imaginary episode is a true resemblance of the title of this post “Book of Directors”. With this title, I am trying to introduce a new ritual “inviting a book into boardrooms” — or more accurately, inviting the book’s spirits into boardrooms. Who knows, one day the ritual might invite the author himself into a boardroom.
Apart from the imaginary element of the above episode, isn’t it a fantastic to have such leaders on your company’s board? Now, what if I told you that I figured out a way to bring them on board and with unrestricted access (i.e., a 24/7 basis)?
A decade ago, I received three golden lessons from three mentors with whom I was blessed to learn from (Mr Khalid Hamad, Mr Abdulbasit Al Mahmood, and Mr Adnan Al Mahmood). The reason their lessons had the most significant impact on me is because they were teaching me in a “leading by example” way. I embraced their lessons, combined them, and created a proprietary reading ritual.
This ritual always starts with a reason, with a purpose. The best way to explain it is to borrow a metaphor — “Jobs to be done” — from professor Clayton Christensen, who theorizes that we “We Hire Products to Do Jobs for Us.” I, too, buy a book for a job to be done.
Then I enter a complex imaginary mental visualization journey. The process of buying a book gets transformed into a living interaction. The moment I hold the chosen book in my hand, my brain visualizes it as an act of handshaking with the author of the book. I start a new respectful relationship. As such, every time I open the book, I envision myself being in a meeting with the author.
Then the ritual disciplines and humbles me to treat every single paragraph with respect. Every paragraph turns out to be a living dialogue between the author and me. Sometimes we agree, and other times we do not. Respectfully, authors and readers can disagree. Yes, I speak out loud my disagreement with the author. Please don’t do it in public. Society is not ready for such a ritual. Sometimes, we drag our disagreement through the book’s chapters until we resolve it. You cannot imagine how this practice can cement the knowledge in your brain. To me, a paragraph is not merely a combination of letters and words. I envision a paragraph as a linguistic derivative of the author’s hard work.
This ritual taught me to engage with books reciprocally. How? The author is entrusting me with his finest knowledge. At the same time, I am paying him back with my single most valuable asset: my time. We are exchanging two precious commodities: knowledge and time. We are all familiar with the “Time Value of Money” concept. As such, we tend to measure the value of time with financial lenses. The above ritual taught me a new perspective, allowing me to experience time from intellectual and knowledge lenses. “Time Value of Books” — which means that the knowledge embedded in a book within your reach at the present time is worth more than an identical knowledge in the future — depends on how you will act upon it (i.e., whether or not you turn such knowledge into a competitive advantage).
My primary objective with this ritual was to crack the codified knowledge in books. With time (i.e., years of practice), something else emerged — namely, a sense of intellectual gravitation. At first, I felt that the authors’ pearls of wisdom were gravitating my curiosity to dig deeper. Then a new layer evolved. I started feeling that I can anticipate how an author might think in a relevant situation. Following this, I was able to gravitate, mix, and match the authors’ way of thinking toward addressing an issue at hand.
This ritual respectfully disagrees with the notion of reading a book per week. As mentioned above, it turns reading into a reciprocal, living relationship, a form of coaching and mentorship. It is not logical to have a mentor every single week. In fact, I think it is an act of disrespect to do so. Who do you think you are to believe that you can grasp years of an author hard work in a few days? I apologize if I offended you, but not all of us are Bill Gates.
The ritual allowed me to bring the spirit of a book into meeting rooms. For example, if the item on the agenda is about innovation. the discussion will not merely go around the conceptual and theoretical boundaries of (e.g. Alex Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas or Exploitation and Exploration Concept, Eric Ries’s Lean Startup and Startup Way, John Hagel’s Big Shift Theory & the power of pull, Clayton Christensen’s Disruptive Innovation & Jobs Theory, W. Chan & Renee Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy and Shift, Sangeet Paul Choudary’s Pipe to Platform Theory, Steve Blank’s Customer Development Process, etc.) The discussion will anticipate what they might think and do if they were facing similar situation, (i.e., understanding disruptive innovation is one thing, and being able to predict how Clayton might behave and act when encountering disruptive situation, is another thing).
This precisely what happened in the above introductory imaginary episode. I was facing a challenging situation that demanded an immediate decision. As a hedging technique, I stress tested the case by exposing it to the knowledge of the above leaders, and then I tried to anticipate how they might act based on their teaching and thinking framework (i.e., to see the situation with their eyes).
So let us unpack the title of this post “Book of Directors” in actionable steps. The first step starts by embracing a firm belief of the importance of reading (i.e., cutting edge reading which has direct and even indirect relevance to your field).
Second, invite books into your meeting rooms. Let’s not get too ambitious at this early stage. Our initial objective is to set the tone at the top. Don’t expect that you will “blue ocean” your company by merely introducing Blue Ocean Shift into the meeting room.
Third, place a relevant book on the agenda of your quarterly board meetings (i.e., a brainstorming session). Why is it important to invite books to your meetings? Business leaders must realize that technological development is not merely changing the way we interact with end-products and services. The entire economic landscape (i.e., business concepts, theories, rules, processes, etc.) is shifting from the grassroots. A board of directors must realize that merely seeing what is happening will make you aware of your current surrounding, Reading, on the other hand, will enable you to envision what might happen tomorrow.
Such a ritual requires a noticeable amount of time to yield fruit. The good news is that I developed a shortcut toward this endeavor. Don’t get too excited. The shortcut will magically reduce the time horizon, but will painfully amplify the needed efforts — way beyond your comfort zone.
I will exemplify the shortcut approach in an illustrative method based on real-life interaction with Sangeet Paul Choudary. The shortcut typically starts by selecting an author, then buying his/her books. Next, follow the clockwise steps.
You must evolve from one step to the other. Some steps are one-directional interaction, while others are cross-directional interaction, where you get a chance to enter a new learning territory, as defined by John Hagel “Scalable Learning”. With the shortcut, you are “platforming yourself”. With such a technique, you can be a consumer of value as well as a producer of value. How? If the author tweets a query (i.e., he is becoming a consumer of value), he is inviting you to become a producer of value. Accept such an invitation, and it will pay off in the long run. The more effort you are willing to invest, the faster you will master the ritual.
As usual, my posts suddenly reach a juncture. My son Faisal calls it the Platform Destination Juncture. And yes, we are at the juncture. Do you remember somewhere above, I mentioned that one day the ritual might invite the author himself into the boardroom? Let’s see how.
But first, let me certify the above ritual. Do you recall when I told you that I treat every paragraph with respect? This is exactly what happened with the below-extracted paragraph, which was written almost 21 years ago by John Hagel in his book Net Gain.
My ritual forced me to stop at this paragraph and to start thinking about what John’s thinking was, when he wrote it. With the help of platform thinking, I took a deep dive into John’s paragraph. We certainly need Amazon’s help here.
Imagine if Amazon introduced the “Book of Directors” as a new service. They can bridge the gap between corporations, start-ups, and business leaders (or, in this case, authors). If Amazon looks at selling books from the “jobs to be done” lenses, then Amazon will immediately realize that they are not targeting corporations and start-ups as a distinct customer segment. To bring them onboard as a viable customer segment, Amazon must upgrade their value proposition. Instead of merely selling physical products (i.e., books), why not add new value proposition (i.e., contractual advisory and consultancy engagement)? With this concept, Amazon would be on the verge of democratizing and “blue oceaning” the advisory and consultancy services. This would be like what Twitter did with the news industry.
Instead of only targeting individual readers, Amazon can target corporations and start-ups by encapsulating their core value proposition with another value proposition. Customized contractual agreement package (e.g., unlimited access to selected books plus xx minutes of live engagement and xx minutes of follow up via chat services). The packages may vary in terms of scope, duration, cost, etc. to suites the type of customer (i.e., established corporation, startups business, professional individual, etc.)
As a start-up, if you want to construct your business with a solid business model, most probably you will buy Alex Osterwalder’s book Business Model Generation. Wouldn’t it be amazing if you can get customized contractual access to Alex to discuss with him how you might apply his concept?
In the below imaginary illustrative, my kids Faisal and Reem want to hire Clayton’s book Competing Against Luck to complete a job. With the help of Amazon’s new service “Book of Directors”, they can contractually engage with professor Clayton to explore how they might apply the “jobs to be done” concept with their Lemonade Factory. Accordingly, they bought the standard “Start-up Business Contractual Agreement” package (i.e., access to three recent books, a 45-minute conference call, and over 500 words of chat service). I entrust your imagination in venturing this example.
Maybe this is what John was envisioning 21 years ago. The point is that the ritual will give you a rich space to unleash your imagination. In this example, the ritual allowed us to depart from traditional print to live virtual interaction. In fact, it can be a viable value proposition to Amazon.
Dear Jeff, I did the minimum viable platform on Amazon’s behalf. Its your call to take it to the next level. Its time for Amazon to move beyond bridging the gap between the written content and readers (i.e., merely selling books). They must envision how to bridge the gap between passionate readers and the source of their inspiration. By enabling passionate readers from all domains (e.g., cooking, personal training, fashion etc.) to enjoy an unprecedented pathway to engage with their admired authors in an efficient, effective, productive, and affordable way. One day, we might witness Alexa performing such ritual.
We are almost done, I am only left with one final concluding remark. Such ideas (i.e., the above imaginary platform) cannot merely be attained by relaying on technological and algorithm supremacy. You need to look deeper. In this regard, I would like to introduce a new tool, the Platform Governance Canvas (“PGC”) which acts as an MRI test to help you visualize what is happening behind the scenes and to provide you with a vivid picture of your platform’s health and a diagnostic signal to areas that need immediate surgical intervention. The more that the MRI looks like a star, the healthier the platform is. Further elaboration will soon be provided in a white paper.
The above PGC will help in bridging the gap resulted by the conventional inclination towards defining and understanding platforms merely from the technological point of view, which tends to discount the importance of the underlying governing building blocks. Rest assure that merely focusing on a surface-level understanding, will directly corollate with platform’s failure. Accordingly, I hope that the above PGC, along with below four-dimensional platform definition, will help toward scratching the surface level.
A Platform is an architecture that GOVERNS the:
- Mobilization and matching of the RIGHT Supply and Demand (i.e., GOVERNING Interaction Enablement)
- Gravitation and aggregation of the RIGHT Resources (i.e., GOVERNING Interaction Enrichment)
- Creation, curation, and consumption of the RIGHT Value (i.e., GOVERNING Interaction Facilitation)
- Assignment and enforcement of the RIGHT Authority and Responsibility (i.e., Interaction Governance)
In the above definition, I am trying to emphasize that governance is not to be considered as a separate phase or stage. You start with it and then live with it.
It’s that simple. And yes, you can immediately apply the above ritual, just press on the clapping icon, which can be seen below. To master the ritual clap 50 times. See you soon…
You are most welcome to connect via https://twitter.com/KhalidiAlmadani or https://www.linkedin.com/in/khalid-al-madani-2009a1160/
