In October I covered the World Business Forum at Radio City Music Hall. As a high-tech blogger I wrote about my experiences in a series of blog posts that can be found here.
One of the speakers during the forum was Patrick Lencioni. He was an engaging speaker. I wrote a post about the message that he gave that day.
Earlier this year Amy Packard (Twitter: @apackard) sent me a direct message asking if I would review a copy of Pat’s new book: “Getting Naked: A Business Fable”. I said yes. My co-blogger from the WBF (Stu Miniman) immediately instructed me to attach the “full disclosure” graphic that can be found at the end of my review.
It was an easy read. I was not aware that Pat uses a fable approach to get his point across. Instead of using the traditional “business book” template of chapters, charts, and graphs, the author chooses to tell a story instead. The story describes a consultant (Jack Bauer) who works at a prestigious international management consulting firm (Kendrick and Black). His company buys a smaller consulting firm (Lighthouse Partners) that has been winning deals against K&B. Jack Bauer is assigned to enter into the culture of Lighthouse Partners and learn how their business operates. (Clearly the book’s version of Jack Bauer has a boring job compared to the soon-to-be-big-screen Jack Bauer).
The story serves as an in-depth analysis of what the author believes is the “right way” to do management consulting. This “right way” is known as Naked Service. The quote I found most applicable to the description of Naked Service can be found at the end of the book:
“…naked service boils down to the ability of a service provider to be vulnerable – to embrace uncommon levels of humility, selflessness, and transparency for the good of a client.”
I found the book interesting on two levels. Both of these levels have to do with my own personal position at a large, multi-national corporation (EMC).
1. The merging of acquired companies (spoiler alert)
The fictional account of K&B’s acquisition of Lighthouse Partners offers an interesting contrast to the factual accounts that I have personally witnessed in the last 10 years (EMC has acquired over 40 smaller corporations). In the book, the smaller company’s culture of vulnerability clashed with the larger; as a result Lighthouse Partners was re-sold to another buyer.
I found myself wondering how common this is. I’ve seen a variety of different corporate cultures merge into EMC’s larger population using a variety of different approaches. During the recent acquisition of Data Domain, for example, the incoming team was essentially given the keys to a large portion of EMC’s business (several existing business units now report into the Data Domain personnel). During the RSA acquisition of 2006, RSA essentially kept its culture of strong industry research and became known as “The Security Division of EMC”. This “preservation of identity” allowed RSA to strongly influence EMC’s research directions (as I wrote about last year). And finally, the EMC acquisition of VMware was handled much differently. VMware continues to run their business in a way that is most beneficial to them. VMware employees, for example, are not badged EMC employees (RSA and DataDomain are).
2. Customer Loyalty above Customer Satisfaction
The acquisition storyline within the fable is secondary, of course. It serves as a vehicle for describing a level of service where consulting is initially given away for free. Consultants that practice “Naked Service” techniques put themselves at risk of being taken advantage of. Naked service providers must overcome their fears of 1) Losing the business, 2) Being embarrassed, and 3) Feeling inferior.
The theory of naked service espouses that overcoming these three fears will result in a level of client loyalty so strong that the clients enthusiastically recommend the consultants to their peers.
There is a touch-feely aspect to this type of theory, and the book does a good job at confronting this issue head on.
My overall impressions of the book leave me with one compliment and one critique.
The compliment: This book is relevant. At EMC’s last quarterly review, President Joe Tucci stated that one of the key corporate goals for 2010 is to move beyond customer satisfaction to new levels of customer loyalty. The new measure of customer loyalty will be characterized by customer reference selling (as in “I love and recommend EMC’s products/services”). Naked Service is a timely book, regardless of the techniques described within.
The critique: My company does a TON of consulting, but we are also a VENDOR. I would have liked to seen more discussion of Naked Service while Selling Products. This is an interesting dynamic which the book does not address (and in all fairness, never aspires to address). For those of you that have read the book, I’d be interested to hear your comments.
If you are a person interested in growing customer loyalty, I do recommend the book. You will be challenged trying to roll Pat’s ideas out in your organization.
If you are a person that just likes to read a good story, don’t buy the book. While the story itself is quite exemplary in its highlighting of naked service, it is by no means a thriller.
You’ll need to watch the real Jack Bauer to get that kind of rush.
Steve
http://stevetodd.typepad.com
Twitter: @SteveTodd
EMC Intrapreneur
