How - Dov Seidman [30]
Look at the kinds of business behaviors we have seen in the past few years. Who could conceive that the founder of the job-search web site Monster would embellish his own resume? That the former executives at Tyco would turn a publicly traded corporation into their personal piggybank to pay for, among other things, an ice-sculpture cherub spouting vodka from his private parts?16 On the other side of the coin, look at Angel Zamora, the UPS driver I met who went the extra yard to deliver not only an important package, but also a great experience. Or the pilots of Southwest Airlines. I recently flew to Phoenix to visit a client and I noticed that when it was time to board the plane, the pilot appeared at the gate to help the ground personnel take tickets. Later, as I was exiting the aircraft after we landed, the co-pilot appeared on the ramp carrying a stroller for a mother and her child deplaning ahead of me. How extraordinary, I thought. It certainly isn’t in the job description of the pilot to help board the plane. And I can’t imagine the Southwest Pilots Association union rep negotiating a clause requiring the co-pilot to carry strollers. There is no rule that says, “To stay employed here you must help board the plane and hand out baby strollers.” It seemed as though there was something bigger than a job description or a rule guiding those Southwest employees.
Of course, you still need great products and great business models. You still cannot succeed, thrive, or become number one without having good WHATs. But those WHATs used to be enough to excel; now you need them just to stay in the game. To thrive, you need something more. “Anything times zero is zero,” said Steve Kerr. “If you do something useless in a really elegant way, it is no more profitable than if you do something important in an inefficient way. The reason to emphasize the HOWs now is that they are the underattended part of the equation. They can take you to a different place.” It is not that HOW is necessarily more important than WHAT, Steve was telling me; it is that we live in an A-times-B world, and HOW is the X-factor. The greater your command of HOW, the greater are the results of your efforts.17
The world today, powered by vast networks of information, connects us and reveals us in ways we have only just begun to comprehend. Through it all, one thing has become crystal clear: It is no longer WHAT you do that makes a difference; it is HOW you do it. Not every team gets to win. Not every employee becomes an executive. Many do not even get to survive. Some last, some end, some outperform others. The emerging trend among leading-edge businesses today involves delivering not so much a better product, but a better experience to their customers. The opportunity to differentiate by outbehaving the competition is the central raison d’etre for both this book and my life’s work. This concept, applied broadly to company/customer/supplier relationships and worker/boss/team relationships, is what I mean what I talk about innovating and winning through HOW.
HOW WE GO FORWARD
Human behavior always mattered in the way we conducted our affairs and pursued personal fulfillment but, unquestionably, it now matters in a new way. In 2005, Merriam-Webster reported that the