I listened to this book three years ago, and all I remember was his obsession with cash flows. Which isn’t particularly relevant to a guy who has no plans on going back into private practice.

However, in updating this draft, I was reminded about his last chapter on “synchronization”. It sounds like a gem to revisit. This section is all about sharing information so the team can work together in unity.

Charan emphasizes the concept of a “social operating mechanism”. It could be a regular update letter, some sort of webtool, or a recurring meeting. The key is that important information is shared and that people walk away energized to tackle the key issues in their responsibilty.

Charan identifies four key aspects for a good dialogue:

• Openness – be honest in the search, don’t pre-decide, listen to everyone.
• Candor – be willing to speak and be honest about the conflict.
• Informality – encourages candor. don’t be stiff and prepackaged
• Closure – once done, be disciplined to ensure that follow through happens.

I’ve tried to adopt this attitude during my time as OPM. With some folks it can be difficult, but I find that acting otherwise just makes it even harder. Social lubrication is real and has earned good feedback from my project mates (admittedly they are all financially incentivized to butter me up).

However, this past year, I had gotten lax about the regularity of these meetings. I had a few projects with long lead times where I skipped the recurring meetings until things got started in earnest. Unfortunately, I found out on the back end that things just slipped through the cracks until we started meeting regularly.

So until I find a better solution, I’m resorting to requiring regular (virtual) meetings on my projects. I hate the distraction of having a meeting on the calendar, even if they are for a few minutes. However, I don’t know of a better way to ensure my teams are keeping pace on their jobs.

Even if I can’t recommend this book as essential, I’m a fan of Charan’s Leadership Pipeline which I have recommended multiple times.

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Some Links

A few years ago, CGP Grey went on an information diet to reset his attention habits. My purge won’t go two years like Project Cyclops, but I started July by unsubscribing from news podcasts and YouTube channels.

One immediate side effect of this cull is that the algorithm has been feeding evergreen comedy, such as British comedy skits. One of my new favorites has Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie as competing psychiatrists analyzing each other.

Weston Parker is a (mostly retired) carpenter who has been sharing lovely poems on A Carpenter’s Point of View. It’s fun to find other industry folks who are practicing the arts. A recent poem includes the line “with good drainage”. I feel seen.

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Thanks for reading!
Justus Pang, RA