Brain Rules for Work

 

Issue No. 498 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Dec. 14, 2021) features a new book with 10 “brain rules,” including this one: “Power is like fire. It can cook your food or burn your house down.” And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), and click here for the Mastering Mistake-Making webpage. (See Mistake #23 below.) The author of Brain Rules cannonballs into the leadership pool—and his one-two punch is noteworthy.  What’s Your Leadership Style: Empathy or Toughness? What’s not to love about a developmental molecular biologist—a brain guy—who is gutsy enough to write a chapter on leadership! Dr. John Medina, an affiliate professor of bioengineering at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, has authored numerous “Brain Rules” books (see Amazon)—and this new one may be his best yet (just released on Nov. 23): Brain Rules for Work: The Science of Thinking Smarter in the Office and at Home. He writes:   “I admit I’m hesitant to write about leadership. And the biggest reason is that I’m a chicken. It takes chutzpah to address a subject with so many uncontrolled variables. I’m not sure that I or my chosen field of study are up to the task. Noted business guru Peter Drucker seems ready to wave a white flag too. Says he: “The only definition of a leader is someone who has followers.” While Medina appreciates Drucker’s “simplicity but not his explanatory power,” the author cannonballs into the leadership pool—and his one-two punch is noteworthy. His leadership Brain Rule: “Leaders need a whole lot of empathy  and a little willingness to be tough.” And get this! To explain his leadership thesis, he cites a study, “A Dual Model of Leadership and Hierarchy: Evolutionary Synthesis”—about the continuum between the Dominance style of leadership and the Prestige style of leadership. To illustrate, he includes scenes from the lovable holiday movie, A Christmas Story. (How’s that for perfect timing this week!) Watch this scene from the movie:   View the epic battle: Ralphie vs. Skut Farkus in A Christmas Story (3 min.). What’s your leadership style: empathy or toughness? Dr. Medina says the difference between Prestige and Dominance “comes down to leading with forearms versus foreheads.” (I think Medina could do stand-up comedy!) DOMINANCE STYLE. “People on this side of the pool obviously derive their power from an asymmetrical distribution of strengths. The strength can be physical—like Farkus’s ability to overpower weaker boys. The asymmetry can be coalitional too, the ability to compel toadies to do the bidding of the leader. This style is mostly leadership by coercion, exploiting combustible mixtures of anger, fear, and distress to maintain control.” Medina cautions that “Joseph Stalin was a leader whose use of dominating tactics showed the extreme side of this leadership style.” Dominance leaders frequently offer loyalty programs with rewards, but they’re “not good at sustaining long-term productivity.” They “can make life miserable for subordinates…and often do.” PRESTIGE STYLE. “To understand what alternatives exist, we have to swim over to the other side of the Dual Model pool, under the sign marked ‘prestige.’” To illustrate this style, Medina turns to the mother’s style in A Christmas Story. In the hilarious scene when Ralphie’s younger brother, Randy, won’t eat his meat loaf and mashed potatoes for his father (“I’ll get that kid to eat. Where’s my screwdriver and plumber’s helper? I’ll open up his mouth and shove it in.”), Mom comes to the rescue with her “Prestige” leadership style. (View the 2-minute clip here.) “Mom had knowledge about what it would take to get her little boy to eat his food, which she implemented—and it didn’t involve a screwdriver. Some would call this wisdom.” Dr. Medina explains, “Prestige leaders posses the skills and knowledge necessary to understand the relational ecologies of the people they lead. To motivate their followers, prestige leaders identify what makes them tick, then use this insight to accomplish their goals.” He adds, “Dominance leaders tend to command; prestige leaders prefer to influence.” (Hmmm. To find out what makes your team members tick, maybe a refresher on the “3 Powerful S’s: Strengths, Social Styles, and Spiritual Gifts” might be helpful? See Mistakes #16, #17, and #18 in Mastering Mistake-Making.) Short pause for a rabbit hole! I’m a reader, not a listener, so this may shock my regular eNews readers. For this book, I double-dipped and LISTENED to the audio book narrated by Dr. Medina (often witty) and then, later, underlined memorable one-liners and sections in my hardback book. This may be a new lifelong learning methodology for me. Apparently, you can teach an old dog new tricks! Honest. I didn’t plan to focus on the leadership brain rule when I read/listened to this book—because there is so, so much more on “the science of thinking smarter at the office and at home.” Nine more rules and dozens of insights, including:  1) MEDINA GRUMP FACTOR. Read why one of Medina’s business clients labeled the author’s skepticism about “what research says (and doesn’t say) about the complexities of human conduct” as the “Medina Grump Factor.” His response: “There’s a lot of high-fructose nonsense out there, especially in the realm of self-help advice.” 2) POST-COVID? Dr. Medina is warning “clients about relying too heavily on people looking at behavioral crystal balls to predict the future of work beyond COVID-19. If past is prologue, most people will get it wrong anyway.” 3) TEAMS BRAIN RULE. “Teams are more productive, but only if you have the right people.” He begins this chapter with the boss in the Dilbert cartoon “announcing the team’s less-than-stellar performance.” Dilbert’s boss: “I only brought one teamwork award mug, so you’ll have to take turns drinking from it.” (Or…you could buy a Demotivators® poster from Despair, Inc. that reads: “TEAMS: Together we can do the work of one.”)  Order this hilarious poster from Despair, Inc.  4) HOME OFFICE. Medina offers very practical ideas (based on brain research) on how to be productive in your home office, including: Zoom “staring matches,” procrastination, and how to create a showrunner’s agenda to improve online meetings. His chapter summaries include memorable bullet points and the specific brain rule for each, plus “What to do next Monday” insights.  5) THE BUSINESS OFFICE BRAIN RULE. “The brain developed in the great outdoors. The organ still thinks it lives there.” Wow. This chapter changed my thinking—and should be a must-read for everyone, especially my friends and colleagues serving in Christian camps and outdoor ministries. 6) CREATIVITY BRAIN RULE. “Failure should be an option—as long as you learn from it.” Three cheers for mistake-making and this: “I’m going to begin this chapter by asking you to think of as many new uses as you can for a brick.” Brilliant! And this from tech columnist Michael S. Malone: “Outsiders think of Silicon Valley as a success, but it is, in truth, a graveyard. Failure is Silicon Valley’s greatest strength.” Don’t skip any chapters, especially the Brain Rule on Presentations. “Capture your audience’s emotion, and you will have their attention (at least for ten minutes).” I read and listened to this chapter twice—before facilitating a half-day training session last month. Yikes! To remind you how emotions trigger your brain, Medina begins with “one of the most iconic advertisements of all time.” View Mean Joe Green’s Coke commercial. It won most ad awards in 1979 including the Clio. By the way, Medina also wrote Brain Rules for Aging Well. I do plan to read and review (and listen to) that book down the road—once I’m old enough! To order from Amazon, click on the title for Brain Rules for Work: The Science of Thinking Smarter in the Office and at Home, by John Medina. Are you a listener? Listen to the book on Libro.fm (8 hours, 36 minutes). And thanks to Pear Press for a review copy and Libro.fm for the audio version.                      BOOK                                          AUDIO         YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS: 1) In Dr. Medina’s chapter on conflict bias, he highlights the compelling presentation made by Fred Rogers (Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood) at a senate hearing on PBS funding in 1969. The $20 million subsidy was facing the axe. (View the 7-minute video here.) “The magic in the room became palpable. His gentle kindness and emotional steadiness spread across the assembly as if Rogers were their pastor, and the Senate chambers his church.” Suggestion: watch this at your next staff meeting and facilitate a conversation on what happened in that hearing—and why. 2) The Conflict/Bias Brain Rule reads: “Conflicts can be resolved by changing your thought life. It helps to have a pencil.” Fascinating! Dr. Medina also cautions, “Be wary of any HR training programs that claim to eliminate bias.” OK…team. Who will read and report on this chapter next week?    This will get your attention! “CEOs, on average, have the lowest EQ scores in the workplace.” Authors Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves add, “Considering the mountain of literature about EQ, you’d think corporate executives would be pretty smart about it.”  (See Mistake #23 in Mastering Mistake-Making.) Mistake #23 of 25: Being Overconfident in My Bag of Tricks Insights from Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned John’s Mistake #23: “I was sailing along in my leadership career, overly confident that my ‘bag of tricks’ would serve me in every leadership situation. I had a lot to learn.” John writes, “Without outside help and coaching, I would have continued my dysfunctional ways—to the detriment of my working relationships. Leading in a vacuum, without honest feedback, was a big mistake. What I learned at the Center for Creative Leadership [which included assessments from John’s direct reports and board chair]—was certainly one of the top 10 experiences in my life.” For Mistake #23, John recommends this book and assessment: • Emotional Intelligence 2.0 (The World’s Most Popular Emotional Intelligence Test), by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves (order from Amazon). Click here to view the list of all 25 mistakes and read the introduction to Mastering Mistake-Making. To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned (10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning Workbook), by John Pearson with Jason Pearson. For supplementary resources, click on John's  "Bucket" book and workbook below:                   JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Need help with Brain Rule #6 on Presentations? “Capture your audience’s emotion, and you will have their attention (for at least ten minutes)." Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social). NEXT ISSUE! MISTAKE #24:  Saying “Yes” Too Often. A guest host radio gig was too tempting to turn down. Yikes! Order from Amazon.  MORE RESOURCES: • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE:  Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations  NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here. New book reviews will also be archived at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. Or, click here for John’s recent book reviews on Amazon.

Becoming Trader Joe

 

Issue No. 494 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Nov. 11, 2021) is just an appetizer to inspire you to partake of the full meal: Becoming Trader Joe. It’s a leadership and management feast! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), and click here for the Mastering Mistake-Making webpage. (See Mistake #19 below.) Trader Joe’s founder, Joe Coulombe, organized the central management’s operation around the “skunkworks” concept popularized by Tom Peters. Coulombe’s title: “Chief Skunk.” See the Operations Bucket. (Photo credit: Becoming Trader Joe.) Chief Skunk! I’ve rarely met a Trader Joe’s customer who is not a Trader Joe’s raving fan. How about you? This past June, HarperCollins Leadership published a fascinating read by the founder of Trader Joe’s. And yes—it’s a leadership book, but you’ll also be fascinated by the delightful discoveries down every aisle of this memorable treat, Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys, by Joe Coulombe with Patty Civalleri. Joe Coulombe (he died at age 89 in February 2020) gifted us with MBA-level thinking in leadership, management, retailing, economics, history, and humor—all in 288 fast-reading pages. Imagine Renaissance Man meets Peter Drucker meets The Galloping Gourmet. (And thanks to my long-suffering wife, Joanne, I taste-tested snippets from the book with her in recent evenings—and she agrees: this is a stunningly delicious read.) Becoming Trader Joe checks the box in all 20 management buckets (core competencies) and the three arenas of Cause, Community, and Corporation: THE CAUSE #1. The Results Bucket. Trader Joe’s financial growth and results were stunning—but, as you’ll read, it was not about the money. When asked a product pricing question—“What percentage margin did you aim for?”—this inquiry launched Joe Coulombe into his “tirade about how you pay your bills with dollars, not percents.” #2. The Customer Bucket. Trader Joe’s niche customer: the overeducated, underpaid, and well-traveled person. Not “the masses who willingly consumed Folger’s coffee, Best Foods Mayonnaise, Wonder Bread, Coca-Cola, etc.” Joe Coulombe adds, “…I saw an opportunity to differentiate ourselves radically from mainstream retailing to mainstream people.” He notes, “I believe in the wisdom that you gain customers one by one, but you lose them in droves.” #3. The Strategy Bucket. Coulombe creatively names the three versions of Trader Joe’s: Good Time Charley (1967-1970), Whole Earth Harry (1971-1976), and the final version—Mac the Knife (1977 and beyond). Note: Joe Coulombe and Russia gave up Five Year Plans in the same year, 1988! #4. The Drucker Bucket. Greatly influenced by Peter Drucker, Coulombe notes Drucker’s “seminal piece in the July 25, 1989, Wall Street Journal called ‘Sell the Mail Room.’” This was six months after Coulombe left Trader Joe’s—but he reminisces about his good and bad outsourcing decisions. (“We never took mainframe computing inhouse…” Another rule: “Never buy a computer you can’t lift.”)          #5. The Book Bucket. Ironically, Joe Coulombe names the “best” book on management—but he actually lists three of them! (Even better!)    • The Guns of August: The Pulitzer Prize-Winning Classic About the Outbreak of World War I, by Barbara Tuchman – “It’s the best book on management—and, especially, mismanagement—I’ve ever read.” (p. 14)    • The Winning Performance: How America's High-Growth Midsize Companies Succeed, by Clifford and Cavanaugh – He notes his favorite quote “from my favorite book on management.” (p. xiv)    • The Mythical Man-Month, by Frederick P. Brooks Jr. – “…one of my favorite books on management.” (p. 204)    • And one more: Coulombe said “the best economics book I ever read” was Seven Kinds of Inflation, by Richard Dana Skinner (1937). #6. The Program Bucket. Coulombe was thinking supply chain and logistics well before our current crisis! Chapter 13, “Virtual Distribution,” includes two lists of products carried in 1976 versus 1988—and the percentage of sales for each product. The 1976 list included 19 categories. The top-four sellers: dry groceries, milk and ice cream, and cigarettes at 10% each. Wine was fourth at 8%. The 1988 list: wine (22%), dry groceries (12%), nuts and dried fruit (12%), and frozen foods (11%). The 1988 list was pared down to 14 categories. Read the fascinating rationales for every yes/no buying decision. This chapter reminded me of the book, Nonprofit Sustainability: Making Strategic Decisions for Financial Viability. THE COMMUNITY  #7. The People Bucket. “…the most important single business decision I ever made was to pay people well.” Coulombe adds, “At a time when the minimum wage was $4.35, we often paid $13.00 per hour because these people were worth it. A distinction between full-time and part-time is a false dichotomy when it comes to productivity.” Plus, to enrich product knowledge of Captains (aka the top manager in each store), Trader Joe’s sent every Captain and spouse to Europe “to make a three-week grand tour of the wine and cheese regions in Germany, Switzerland, and France.”  #8. The Culture Bucket. “…as Trader Joe’s became famous, the employees began earning something else: prestige. To be part of Trader Joe’s brought them instant recognition from their friends and families.”    John’s granddaughter, Emelia Pearson (18), discerned that the Trader Joe’s crew member “uniform,” was such a unique and prestigious outfit—that she wore it for Halloween this year! (Note: she is not a crew member.) All Trader Joe’s employees continue to wear Hawaiian shirts, provided by the store (different shades to match the seasons, per Coulombe). #9. The Team Bucket. Coulombe was not a silo thinker. Chapter 18, “Double Entry Retailing” is a crash course for every manager on what matters and the interrelationships of key areas. Team members influence and impact a whole system—with five variables on the “Demand Side” and 10 variables on the “Supply Side.”    • Demand Side: assortment of merchandise, pricing, convenience, credit, and showmanship.    • Supply Side: merchandise vendors, employees, “habits” and “culture,” systems, non-merchandise vendors, landlords, governments, bankers and investment bankers, stockholders, and crime. Coulombe’s vision of teamwork found inspiration from Pierre Monteux, the conductor of the San Francisco Symphony (during Coulombe’s years at Stanford University). Much later, he read this in the Los Angeles Herald Examiner: “Monteux never tried to get a performance out of an orchestra. He was always giving one with them.” #10. The Hoopla! Bucket. No surprise—it was a hoot (and still is) to work at Trader Joe’s. He writes, “There was a particular angle to the naming of our products. I wanted to create a silent conspiracy among the overeducated, underpaid people in town, so that as they moved down the aisles they would read secret messages on the products.” Examples: Brandenburg Brownies, Sir Isaac Newtons, The Bagel Spinoza, The Peanut Pascal. “My favorite of all the private labels was Heisenberg’s Uncertain Blend of coffee beans.” (I had to google it. See the “uncertainty principle.”) Another Hoopla! seasoning: “Showmanship” is defined as “the sum total of all efforts to make contact with the customer. It’s the most ephemeral, the most difficult, and the most important of the Demand Side activities.” #11. The Donor Bucket. As of 1988, Trader Joe’s was receiving 300 donation requests per year from nonprofit organizations. Coulombe had five policies that guided their giving, including: “1) Never give cash to anyone. 2) Never buy space in a program. That is money thrown away. 3) Give freely, give generously, but only to nonprofits that are focused on the overeducated and underpaid.”  In 2020, Trader Joe’s also donated nearly $345 million dollars of food and beverages, which equates to approximately 69 million meals, through their Neighborhood Shares program. Every nonprofit fundraiser should read “Promoting through Nonprofits” in Chapter 9. #12. The Volunteer Bucket. This is stunning! Joe Coulombe—personally—volunteered his time to write and record a one-minute broadcast for a Los Angeles classical music radio station. The opening line, “This is Joe Coulombe of Trader Joe’s with a word on food and wine.” He writes, “We needed the publicity in those days, and KFAC was right on our target of overeducated and unpaid people.” He recorded 3,300 unique scripts (as in…no repeats!) for “Words on Food and Wine” and he would record 50 or 60 broadcasts in a session that left him “pretty well burned out.” Oh, my. This discipline “forced me to study the field of food and wine.” #13. The Crisis Bucket. “Hairballs” is the title of Chapter 10—and the first line cautions, “All businesses have problems.” Coulombe’s favorite management quote is from Tex Thornton of Litton Industries: “If all the facts could be known, idiots could make the decisions.” The author writes, “Early in my career I learned there are two kinds of decisions: the ones that are easily reversible and the ones that aren’t.” This must-read chapter includes the section, “The Worst Hairball of My Career: The United Farm Workers’ Secondary Boycott.” Whew! The boycott of Trader Joe’s—just before Thanksgiving in 1971—was actually organized by young seminarians from Union Theological Seminary in New York. THE CORPORATION #14. The Board Bucket. When he retired from Trader Joe’s, Coulombe served on the board of directors of several companies. He also consulted with companies, but didn’t have the highest view of consultants! He found board work and the writing of this book, “satisfying, challenging, and appropriate to my age.” His succession plan (selling the company, continuing to lead it for a few years, and then exiting at age 58) is instructive for board members and CEOs. #15. The Budget Bucket. Did you know that Trader Joe’s is the largest retailer of maple syrup in the United States? Ditto wild rice. That—and more—is from the introductory chapter, “A Trader Joe’s Sampler.” While financial steps (and missteps) are discussed throughout the book, budget-minded leaders will find the list of “Some of the Best Deals We Ever Made” absolutely fascinating. That topic was asked and addressed during a lecture he gave in 1998 for the Culinary Historians Society—“a lecture that led to this book.” (You’ll also appreciate the author’s pre-modern references to adding machines and slide rules!) #16. The Delegation Bucket. You don’t grow from one store in Pasadena, Calif., to 530 stores nationwide by being inept at delegation. I could write an entire review—just on Trader Joe’s delegation competencies, but I’ll spare you. Just this: “We fundamentally changed the point of view of the business from customer-oriented to buyer-oriented. I put our buyers in charge of the company.” See more in Chapter 11, “Mac the Knife,” and how reducing the number of products—and requiring every product to pay its own way—put the authority and the responsibility on the buyers. Fascinating. #17. The Operations Bucket. Taking a cue from the skunkworks concept by Tom Peters (see In Search of Excellence), Joe Coulombe created three major skunkworks projects in his central management: Skunkworks I: Buying, Skunkworks II: Sales, and Skunkworks III: Accounting. “I had signs made with these titles to be hung in each department." Over his door was this sign: CHIEF SKUNK! By the way, the Trader Joe’s approach to operations (especially the art and science of selecting store locations) should be required reading in seminaries for Church Planting 101. (Hint: Trader Joe’s locations are situated closest to their niche customers: the overeducated and underpaid.) #18. The Systems Bucket. Fascinating! (Have I used that word yet?) “Every full-timer was supposed to be able to perform every job in the store, including checking, balancing the books, ordering each department, stocking, opening, closing, going to the bank, etc. Everybody worked the check stands in the course of a day, including the Captain.” Note: When I met Jason Addy this week (a 21-year employee, and the new Captain at the San Clemente, Calif., store), he was working the check stands! The Trader Joe’s “system” builds upon “the medieval French verb, retailer, which means to ‘cut into pieces.’” #19. The Printing Bucket (aka the Communication Bucket). Trader Joe’s launched the Fearless Flyer newsletter in 1970 (now also online here). They synchronized promotion with purchasing—similar to one of my Printing Bucket axioms to “use publication deadlines to fine tune organizational decision-making.” Coulombe writes that “the Fearless Flyer was an educational medium and hundreds of customers kept three-ring notebook collections of the issues so they could refer back to the articles. For years, we printed three rings on the cover.” Three cheers for three-ring binders! (See my Operations Bucket and read, “Bless Bob With a Binder: A three-ring binder will usher in world peace. Almost.”)   #20. The Meetings Bucket. Your approach to meetings (with staff, board, vendors, and others) spotlights your organizational culture—but retailing is unique. When to meet? Coulombe hosted two employee parties every year (summer and Christmas), but planned two nights for each—to accommodate those who worked nights. Perhaps the focus on buyers is best illustrated with this: “Whenever a vendor claimed to be truly desperate, we offered to meet him 6:00 p.m. on Friday night. That separates the wheat from the chaff!” (For more on the culture of meetings, read Made From Scratch, written by the founder of Texas Roadhouse restaurants.) Sorry. I got carried away—this book is so good, but my review is way too long. Sorry, again! Suggestion: after you read Becoming Trader Joe, read the new book on creating superb customer experiences. Read my review of From Impressed to Obsessed: 12 Principles for Turning Customers and Employees into Lifelong Fans, by Jon Picoult. To order from Amazon, click on the title for Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys, by Joe Coulombe with Patty Civalleri. Are you a listener? Listen to the book on Libro.fm (7 hours, 32 minutes). YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS: 1) Trader Joe’s founder, Joe Coulombe, was the classic Renaissance Man. His book oozes with insights and quotations from Scientific American, Smithsonian, Albert Camus, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Peter Drucker, Jim Collins, and others. What do you read—or who do you listen to—to inform your leadership and management decisions? 2) When John Pearson reads a killer quotation or a memorable chapter, he mentally files it under one of his 20 management buckets/core competencies from Mastering the Management Buckets. What’s your mental filing system for all things leadership and management?   Chuck Girard wrote the worship song, “Slow Down,” and notes: “Even today, this song receives more mail and comment than any other song I have ever written.” Read more. (See Mistake #19 in Mastering Mistake Making.) Mistake #19 of 25:  Experiencing Infrequent God Moments Insights from Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned John’s Mistake #19: “I believe Almighty God wants us to experience more frequent God moments, but I often moved way-too-fast on my own—and didn’t slow down for God to intervene.” When John and Joanne celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in 2019, they began with a family breakfast at Dana Point Harbor. But halfway through the celebration, they were unprepared for a stunning “God moment” when their son, Jason, revealed what the Lord had orchestrated that morning—seemingly coincidental, but not really!  For Mistake #19, John recommends two resources: • Option #1: The One Year Bible (the entire Bible arranged in 365 daily readings – New Living Translation, by Tyndale) – Note: this edition was just published Oct. 19, 2021, by Tyndale. (Order from Amazon) • Option #2: “Slow Down” (listen to this worship song written and sung by Chuck Girard) – Listen on YouTube   Click here to view the list of all 25 mistakes and read the introduction to Mastering-Mistake Making. To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned (10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning Workbook), by John Pearson with Jason Pearson. For supplementary resources, click on John's  "Bucket" book and workbook below:                   JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Does your organization need a deep dive into your customer niche again—or a 2021 version of Trader Joe’s popular Fearless Flyer? Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social). NEXT ISSUE! MISTAKE #20:  Trying to Fix Workaholism on My Own.  I should have asked a counselor for help much, much sooner. Order from Amazon.  MORE RESOURCES: • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE:  Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations  NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here. New book reviews will also be archived at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. Or, click here for John’s recent book reviews on Amazon.

Collision Course - Carlos Ghosn

 

Issue No. 488 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Sept. 17, 2021) asks: is CEO Carlos Ghosn, the rockstar CEO who fled Japan, guilty or falsely charged by Nissan? And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for the new book John wrote with his son, Jason, Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned. See Mistake #13 below. Former Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn escaped from Japan in an equipment storage box, “the kind used to transport clunky but delicate audio equipment.” (Apparently, not every plan requires out-of-the-box thinking.) Rubber Stamp Boards & Lapdog Auditors Leaders and readers—where do I start? This page-turning book has it all: international intrigue, cultural and governmental shenanigans, backroom deals and self-dealing, draconian detentions, a Green Beret’s illegal scheme to whisk Japan’s most famous foreigner out of the country, allegations, indictments, hubris, boardroom dysfunction, narcissism, and dozens and dozens of even more juicy, jaw-dropping disclosures. This is a Top-10 book for 2021 and we’ll be talking about it for years to come! Read or listen to Collision Course: Carlos Ghosn and the Culture Wars That Upended an Auto Empire, by Hans Greimel and William Sposato. You’ll remember the worldwide breaking news on Dec. 30, 2019, when Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Nissan and Renault escaped from Japan—hidden in a large black box! With meticulous Green Beret-experienced planning, this clandestine and illegal operation loaded Ghosn-in-a-box onto a private jet at the smaller, Osaka airport. Seven time zones later, after a stop in Istanbul, Turkey, Ghosn landed in Beirut, Lebanon. (And you guessed it. Lebanon has no extradition treaty with Japan.)  How did Carlos Ghosn escape Japan? View the 6-minute video, “Carlos Ghosn's Great Escape” (CBS Sunday Morning, Jan. 12, 2020). Shocking Japan and the world (“Ghosn Shock” in the Japanese media), this high profile auto kingpin was arrested upon arriving in Tokyo on Nov. 19, 2018. Instead of facing trial in Japan for alleged financial misconduct (“Defense attorney Takano estimated the whole affair would drag on for at least five years”—typical of Japan’s reputed “hostage justice” system), today Ghosn is a relatively free man in Beirut, where he is a Lebanese citizen.  The story behind the story is skillfully weaved, colorfully painted, and sliced and diced by two Tokyo-based journalists with stunning street cred and international credentials. Why should business leaders, managers, board members, pastors, and nonprofit CEOs read this book? 9 REASONS YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK: #1. LEADERSHIP COMPLEXITY. Imagine—you’re the CEO and/or chairman of not one, not two, but three major companies (Nissan, Renault, and Mitsubishi). Does it really work? Was Ghosn’s rock star status a one-off risky experiment, or is this the new global leadership trend? Ghosn was “the first person to serve simultaneously as the CEO of two Fortune 500 companies.” (How many organizations, formally or informally, do some megachurch pastors lead? Does it really work? What might go south fast?) #2. AN INNER CIRCLE OF ENABLERS. In 1999, after Renault (France) gambled $5.4 billion to rescue Nissan (Japan) from bankruptcy and had a 43.4 percent stake in the company, Renault dispatched Carlos Ghosn to Nissan. The turn-around expert became Nissan’s CEO in 2001—and the two companies and two countries lived happily ever after. (Not!) Per the authors, Nissan claimed Ghosn orchestrated “a web of self-dealing, both of the illegal variety and the merely unseemly kind, because he had concentrated so much unchecked power in himself as chairman and CEO and an inner circle of enablers. No one could tell him no.”  #3. GOOD LUCK WITH THAT. Carlos Ghosn (at various press conferences from Lebanon) claims he is not a fugitive of justice, but a “fugitive of injustice.” True or False? Authors Greimel and Sposato quote a former defense lawyer in Chapter 11, “Justice Japan Style,” that “Japanese judges are very overconfident of their ability to find the truth. They are trained not to admit that they have made a mistake, even when there is a miscarriage of justice.” (Perhaps Mastering Mistake Making should be taught in Japanese law schools?) And...that “the US concept of client-attorney privilege is largely absent” in Japan.  Ghosn had been confined to jail twice for a total of 130 days (with no calls to family or friends permitted). He was facing up to 15 years in prison. And according to his attorneys, Ghosn “was questioned [without his attorney present] for an average of seven hours daily, including on weekends and holidays. Prosecutors dispute those figures.” Per the authors and other sources, this intense interrogation leads to an extreme rate of “confessions.” About just one percent of cases in Japan end in acquittal—a stat that the Japanese, apparently, are quite proud of. The authors add, “One former prosecutor said that if he were to lose just two cases, his career in the prosecutor’s office would effectively be over.”  View the deep dive video on the rise and fall of Superstar CEO Carlos Ghosn. View “Carlos Ghosn: The Rise and Fall of a Superstar CEO” from the Financial Times, July 26, 2021 (21 min.). #4. DICTATOR OR DECISION-MAKER? How does one create—and hold together—a global automotive alliance of three major auto makers—featuring 10 brands now in 2021? Click here for the Renault Nissan Mitsubishi corporate website. With national interests and loyalties impacting every decision, how would you orchestrate the governance of this alliance—termed a “strategic alliance” that in 2017 sold 10.6 million vehicles worldwide, making it the leading light vehicle manufacturing group in the world? Ghosn’s own words: “Between 1999 and 2018, you never heard about any problems, because, obviously, I was the final decision maker, I installed a spirit of cooperation against the extremes. But we knew that the extremes were always there. They were always going to take advantage of any situation to have their opinion prevailing.” He added, “They accused me of being a dictator, but I was a decision-maker.” Are you working on a strategic alliance? What’s your governance model? What’s your style? #5. CULTURE CLASHES (AND INSIGHTS). Reason #5 why Collision Course is a must-read: you’ll be reminded again that deeply held values and biases in other cultures loom under the surface to create catastrophic clashes, often fueled by basic mistrust. In Chapter 14, “Foreign Entanglements,” the authors include a laundry list of mergers and investments gone bad (Vodafone took a $8.6 billion loss) often due to “culturally insensitive expat executives who had little knowledge of the market, another classic mistake.” Hans Greimel and William Sposato humorously note what sometimes happens whenever “foreign bosses and Japanese midlevel staff are brought together, when even routine meetings run into language issues and cultural differences about expectations.” One foreign boss showed up unexpectedly at his office on Saturday “only to see the entire Japan management team holding a meeting.” They were “plotting the venture’s strategy,” they said. Yet the non-Japanese boss reminded them that they had just worked on that earlier in the week. The response: “This is the one that we’ll really be following.” Yikes. I have been in Japan and France multiple times (for business and pleasure), but Collision Course dramatically upped my cultural savvy in the nuances of competing cultural norms. In later years, I’ve been more intentional in widening my lifelong learning lanes by reading outside my culture (See Mistake #3 and Mistake #11 in Mastering Mistake Making.) Read The Great Successor (North Korea) and Money Games (South Korea). See also Leading Across Cultures.  #6. GOVERNANCE DYSFUNCTION. “Until 2018, when Nissan finally appointed its first independent outside directors, board meetings averaged less than twenty minutes long, it claimed.” In March 2019, “Nissan’s governance task force came back with its report on the Ghosn scandal.” The report “outlined how Ghosn allegedly maneuvered with few checks or balances in a world of rubber-stamp board meetings and lapdog auditors.” #7. THE VOLVO TRUST FACTOR. One former Nissan exec, who left during the tumult, targeted the trust factor—top to bottom. “If you can’t trust people on corporate governance, how can you trust them to build the car you’re going to put your family in? Do you really want to take a gamble with your family? Or are you just doing to be done with it and buy a Volvo?” (Delete “car” and insert your company’s product, program, or service. Do customers and clients trust you? Do they trust your governance?) #8. FIRED IN 15 MINUTES! In Chapter 16, “Scandalous Affairs,” the authors chronicle the stunning whistle-blower story of Michael Woodford (a Brit), who served just two weeks as the CEO of the Japanese camera company, Olympus Corp. The board fired him after just a 15-minute discussion—when “he started to question hidden losses of $1.6 billion in speculative investments” by the company. The chapter discloses the cultural implications of “the narrow viewpoint of employees who live in the world of their life-time employers.” These issues, certainly, played into Ghosn’s long run as CEO of Nissan. But no spoiler alert here. Read Collision Course to decide for yourself if the charges against Ghosn are legit or not. But more importantly—how effective is your organization’s whistleblower policy and culture? #9. NYT AND WSJ AGREE! The authors note that “Remarkably, the case and Ghosn’s escape from Japanese justice found the editorial pages of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal in unlikely agreement.” The question: “Are foreign executives in Japan safe from capricious prosecution?” In addition to business executives, I would add: international travelers, missionaries, and tourists. As a result of reading Collision Course, I’m now thinking differently about international travel. They quote a long-term foreign exec, “It has clearly put a chill on executives from abroad taking a senior job with a Japanese company. It’s a much riskier proposition than it was a year ago." Yikes. Whew! Many commentators suggest Carlos Ghosn’s story will become a Hollywood movie (“based on a true story”). If so, I’ll watch it—but there’s no way it will be as good as the book. To order from Amazon, click on the title for Collision Course: Carlos Ghosn and the Culture Wars That Upended an Auto Empire, by Hans Greimel and William Sposato. Are you a listener? Listen to the book on Libro.fm (12 hours, 54 minutes). And thanks to Harvard Business Review Press for providing a review copy. YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS: 1) From his safe perch in Lebanon, Carlos Ghosn has been interviewed numerous times about his daring escape from Japan. “As the Alliance wobbled without him, Ghosn seemed to relish in sniping at its troubles from the sidelines. He derided the group’s new consensus-based approach as ‘Santa Claus’ management.” How would/should your CEO and/or board spokesperson respond to a former CEO’s sniping? 2) Check out the classic CEO bios of yesteryear like Iacocca (1924-2019), who led both Ford (the Mustang!) and Chrysler (1978-1992). Or read more about the “Peter Drucker of the United Kingdom,” Charles Handy, in my review of Myself and Other More Important Matters.      Peter Drucker’s classic, The Effective Executive, is John’s recommended book for Mistake #13. Have you read Drucker’s wisdom on mistakes and risk-taking?     Mistake #13 of 25: Every Leader Needs a Coach—Except Me! Insights from Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned John confesses, “I squandered way too many years treading water without a coach.” In Mistake #13: “Every Leader Needs a Coach—Except Me!” John notes that while he often coached others and often encouraged others to have a coach, sadly he often neglected his own counsel. He credits $1-a-year CMA (CLA) Senior Adviser George Duff with helping him over many rough patches! According to Milestone Leadership, “92% of executives who received coaching said they would be willing to be coached again.” (Milestone offers coaching at $750 for a 90-minute session. Whew! The $1-a-year compensation for George Duff was John’s bargain of the century!) George Duff told John that every year he re-read Peter Drucker’s classic, The Effective Executive (the featured book in Mistake #13). Click here to order the 50th anniversary edition (2017). Click here to read the foreword by Jim Collins, “Ten Lessons I Learned from Peter Drucker.”   Click here to view the list of all 25 mistakes and read the introduction to Mastering-Mistake Making. To order this book from Amazon, click on the title for Mastering Mistake-Making: My 25 Memorable Mistakes—And What I Learned (10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning Workbook), by John Pearson with Jason Pearson. For supplementary resources, click on John's  "Bucket" book and workbook below:                   JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Do your communication strategies need more out-of-the-box thinking or in-the-box thinking? Need fresh messaging? Contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social). MORE RESOURCES: • BLOG: Pails in Comparison • SUBSCRIBE: Your Weekly Staff Meeting eNews • JOHN'S BOOK REVIEWS: on Amazon  • WEBSITE:  Management Buckets • BLOG: Governance of Christ-Centered Organizations  NOTICE! Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being moved to a new website here. New book reviews will also be archived at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. Or, click here for John’s recent book reviews on Amazon. "HOW TO MAKE MISTAKES WELL" Click here to listen to “How to Make Mistakes Well” as George P. Wood interviews John Pearson, author of Mastering Mistake-Making. As host of the Influence Podcast, George poses a dozen questions to John including, “What are the top two or three professional mistakes you see pastors and other ministry leaders make on a regular basis?”