NEW BOOKS ON THE SHELVES

I discovered a few good books during my recent visit to National Bookstore. In particular, 4 new titles caught my attention and these are: The Set – Up to Fail Syndrome by Manzoni and Barsoux; Marketing to Women, How to Increase Your Share of the World’s Largest Market by Warti Barletta; The Edge of Evolution, The search for the Limits of Darwinism by Michael Behe; and lastly, The Woman’s Advantage, 20 Women Entrepreneurs Show What It Takes to Grow Your Business by Mary Cantado. The first book, The Set – Up to Fail Syndrome talks about the findings of Drs. Manzoni and Barsoux, both are psychologists studying boss – employee relationships. In particular, both discovered a curious phenomenon, the Set – Up to Fail Syndrome wherein almost always the performance of under – performing employees (“laggards”) never seemed to improve but in fact deteriorated even further when their bosses intervene in their activities just to “help” them out. It is a puzzling find albeit one that holds great importance for people in leadership position be it the CEO, the floor supervisor, or even the team leader. It is puzzling since one would naturally expect that with intervention from “higher ups” in a under – performing employee’s activities, these under – performing employees would easily make the grade but the truth of the matter is, not only these under – performing employees fail to make the grade, their performance went from bad to worse. According to the authors, the culprit is pressure. Under – performing employees are under great deal of pressure to succeed and the constant “look over the shoulder” type of supervision puts an even greater pressure on them. As such, they are prone to commit even more mistakes. Furthermore, the close supervision and constant scrutiny will likely uncover more mistakes, mistakes that are previously glossed over. The solution according to the authors is to back off from “helping” these under – performing employees and instead, motivate them and coach them. In short, don’t micro – manage, maintain distance, keep your trust on them, give them a chance to redeem themselves, and let them do what they do best. It is a hard thing to do especially when you have your own performance to take care of but this is according to them, the best way to do it. The second book, “Marketing to Women” is a fairly obvious book. I mean it is general knowledge that women and shopping are inseparable and hence, it is only logical for someone to think of ways to “convince” women to shop even more (as if women need convincing)! My only reaction to the book is that what took Barletta this long to come up a book like that. It should have come out years ago. Well, better late than never. The third book, The Edge of Evolution is a very provocative book. Here the author, Michael Behe explores the common misconception about Darwinian evolution through scientific research and experimentation. His thesis is that evolution do exists but it is not as random or chaotic as what is first perceived by Darwin. In fact, according to him, evolution followed a “logical” path, which signifies intelligent design. In other words, he “seemed” to suggest that there is an intelligent being behind all the grand design in this universe but instead of popping out of nowhere, all things evolved according to a master plan. Haven’t read it though but it do make me wonder, why evolution and not straight forward creation if his thesis would so suggest? Anyway, the last book that I saw is “The Advantage of Women”, which is probably a collected anecdotes of successful women entrepreneurs on their “their secret of success”. Not that I have anything against the concept of women entrepreneurs as my mom being one of them but I am just wondering what “advantages” does a woman entrepreneur have over their male counterparts? Female intuition? I guess not. I haven’t read the book yet and I might not but I do have a few ideas about women entrepreneurs based on experience with my mom and a few customers (who happened to be women entrepreneurs) I’m dealing with. Based on my observation on Filipino businesses (and a few Filipino – Chinese businesses), women are natural accountants regardless whether they took up accounting courses or not. Probably, this has to do with a woman’s training to become a homemaker during their youth. Most of the time, I encounter women purchasing my products. By purchasing, I meant that they look for the product they need, they canvass the price and later on, negotiate the price, haggle for terms and services (alternatively speaking, this may have to do with a woman’s inborn affinity with shopping). Furthermore, in most husband and wife team engaging in business, it is the woman who handles the funds, i.e., the payment of dues, the disbursement of petty cash, the receipt of incomes, and the control of expenditures. Except for Ilocanos, I always collect the dues from the wife, rarely from the husband. I contact the husbands for purchase orders. I deal with the husbands and I shook their hands but at the end of the day, I face their wife and receive from their wife’s hand the payment for their purchases. Always, in a husband and wife business team set – up, it is the wife who handles purchasing (the canvassing and price negotiating aspect), accounting and finance. The husband on the other hand does the dirty work of the actual operations (manufacturing etc) and logistics, which generally refers to the pick of raw materials from suppliers and the delivery of finish products to the customers. The HR or human resources development and marketing functions can either be handled by the husband or the wife but generally, in my experience, if the wife is the “dominant” partner in the business tag team; both functions (HR and marketing) are also performed by the wife. For Ilocanos, the wife’s role in business is usually limited to operations. So what’s the advantage of a woman entrepreneur? Well, I guess for Filipino family businesses, it is the ability of the woman to control and regulate the cash flows of the business. Cash is the life blood of any business. I mean it doesn’t matter if the business is earning tremendous profit or actually making a killing in sales but if it runs out of cash, it is going to shut its door tight because it can’t pay its bills and most importantly, its people. I’ve seen companies (clients of mine) with tremendous potential went belly up because they mismanage their cash flow. And this is where women entrepreneurs spell the difference. This is the “advantage” of women entrepreneurs, Filipino women entrepreneurs.
I also happen to come across a nice business quote of wisdom if I may say. I got this from the book, “The Three Tensions” by Dodd and Favaro. This is actually a business book on finding a “solution” to the age old business problem of balancing sales revenue and profitability, of balancing short term success and long term viability, and of balancing investment and financial health. The quote goes like this; one day, a divisional manager approaches his CEO and complains about the tasks put forth on him that of growing the revenues through increase in sales and at the same time, maintain a certain margin. The divisional manager complains that if he wants to attain a certain revenue growth objective, he had to somewhat cut down the price in order to generate demand but in doing so, he inevitably won’t attain his profit goals. The divisional manager is in a bind on what to do. The CEO then told him the story of a mud hut. In olden times when there is still no electricity, the only way for the people living inside the mud hut to see what they’re doing is to punch a hole in the walls of the hut. To maximize daylight, more holes are needed but the problem is, air; cold air invariably got into the room full of holes. Logic dictates that in order to maintain the warmth inside the hut, there should be no holes on the wall but that would deprive the occupants of the light. So what’s the best solution? According to the CEO, it is not determining the number of holes in the wall needed to maintain just enough warmth in the hut as well as provide the minimum amount of light needed but to discover glass that could allow light to pass through and at the same time shut out the cold air. The moral of the story, never waste your time trying to decide the trade – offs needed to satisfy multiple objectives. Instead, focus your effort in thinking out of the box for a genuine solution to the problem – inventing the glass.