Studyguide for Change to Strange: Create a Great Organization by Building a Strange Workforce by Cable, ISBN 9780131572225 by Cram101 Textbook Reviews (2014-06-09) Paperback

“It’s not just a war for talent out there, it’s a war for the right talent. Cable sheds light on how managers can identify and attract the right people to turn strategy into reality.” —Susan Ashford, Associate Dean for Leadership Programming and the Executive MBA Program, University of Michigan “Change to Strange takes the mystery out of the gap between strategy and strategy execution. Daniel underscores that success is dependent on the quality of your workforce, specific targets, and disciplined measurement. The book provides a useful process and a set of questions that your leadership team needs to address to create a great organization that stands above competitors.” —Stan Kelly, Senior Vice President, Wachovia Corporation “In an era of over-emphasis on best practices and benchmarking, it is so refreshing to see a blueprint for how an organization can invest in its people to truly drive competitive advantage and create uncommon value for its customers and owners. Daniel Cable’s insightful, practical, and rigorous ‘strange workforce value chain’ will help your organization build a workforce with distinctive and compelling capabilities that better serve your customers and beat the competition.” —Christian M. Ellis, Senior Vice President, Sibson Consulting, A Division of Segal “Change to Strange helps you ask the right questions about what will differentiate you in the marketplace and the strange (distinctive, extraordinary) steps you must take to make it happen. Be strange; get Change to Strange and have fun cooking up the special sauce your customers will love and your competition will find tough to imitate.” —Ben Schneider, Senior Research Fellow, VALTERA; Professor Emeritus, University of Maryland; and author of Winning the Service Game. “Cable’s model is highly thought-provoking. The book is full of great ideas for standing out from the competition and getting your workforce fully engaged!” —Sara Rynes, Editor, Academy of Management Journal; Murray Professor of Management, University of Iowa “What a great read! I found plenty of great ideas and examples in this book that I can use at VIF, and now my executive team is reading it.” —David B. Young, Chief Executive Officer, Visiting International Faculty Program “Change to Strange...a fascinating and thought-provoking approach to extracting value from your human value chain. A must read for leaders engaged in reinvigorating enterprises in highly competitive markets.” —Sean Crane, Senior Vice President of Operations, The Fresh Market “You can’t be great if you just do what everybody else does. Dan Cable sheds light on how companies can get extraordinary business results by creating a workforce that consistently ‘wow’ their customers.” —Sven-?ke Damgaard, Vice President Human Resources, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications “At SAS we have our own definition of ‘strange,’ and it has yielded more than three decades of continual growth. What’s your definition? Use Cable’s book to figure it out. Then be prepared to be extraordinary!” —Jeff Chambers, Vice President Human Resources, SAS “One word about this book: Terrific. It’s time for companies to stop saying people are their competitive advantage when they don’t know what it means. Cable’s book is essential reading if you want to do more than hope that your people are your competitive advantage.” —Michael Sayeau, Former Executive Vice President, Nabisco “If you want your organization to attain and sustain a competitive advantage, Change to Strange is a must read. This is the book to help you develop a winning workforce that will impress your customers and overwhelm your competitors.” —Vice Admiral Gerald Hoewing, Retired Chief of Naval Personnel, U.S. Navy “Dan Cable hits the nail on the head with regard to several critical issues facing today’s business leaders. Change to Strange will help you select the right things to measure, which will determine the culture and ultimate success of your organization.” —Jim Parker, Former CEO of Southwest Airlines "Change to Strange is an imperative for those companies that want to grow and create lasting value in their industries. Companies that have the guts to embrace a Strange workforce are the companies that will have the power to lead and generate sustainable differentiation and innovation in their businesses." --Tim Kelly, President/Consumer Division, Sprint Nextel To achieve sustained competitive advantage, you must create and deliver something that’s valuable, rare, and hard to imitate—and you can’t do that with a run-of-the-mill workforce. Your workforce needs to be strikingly different, obsessively focused on delivering on your unique value proposition. Compared with everyone else’s workforce, your people need to be downright strange! This book is about everything it takes to build a workforce that’s strange and extraordinary enough to execute your most powerful strategies and your unique value proposition. It’s about understanding exactly how your workforce needs to be different...creating an end-to-end Strange Workforce Value Chain...implementing workforce systems that support your unique goals...establishing detailed metrics based on what makes you unique...using those metrics to drive clarity throughout your entire organization, and steer it toward success. If you’re tasked with executing strategy through people, and “balanced scorecards” and “strategy maps” just haven’t been enough, take your next and greatest leap forward: make the Change to Strange. · Why “normal” workforces just won’t cut it anymore Everyone says their people make the difference. Most everyone’s wrong. · Create your strange workforce in four steps Imagine, pinpoint your gaps, prioritize, and act. · What your customers must notice for you to win Link your real performance drivers to specific workforce deliverables. · Rearchitect your workforce to break from the pack Organize to get strategic results from the right people. · Leverage the magic of measurement Implement metrics that work—and keep them working. Create a workforce that’s obsessed about delivering your company’s unique value proposition: one that’s so willing and able to execute, it’s downright strange! Why you need a “strange” workforce, and how to build one: practical techniques and real-world case studies An end-to-end framework for architecting people and business systems that help you break from the pack Way beyond benchmarking: implementing workforce metrics that are unique to your company and strategies Preface xix Chapter 1: Be Strange. Be Very Strange. 1 Chapter 2: Shine a Flashlight into the Black Box That Exists Between Your Workforce and Beating Your Competition 17 Chapter 3: Organizational Outcomes: How Do I Know I Am Winning in the Way I Want to Win? 31 Chapter 4: Performance Drivers: What Must Customers Notice About Us So That We Win? 53 Chapter 5: Strange ... Cover......Page 1 Contents......Page 10 Preface......Page 20 1 Be Strange. Be Very Strange.......Page 24 Strange Mechanics......Page 25 People as Competitive Advantage......Page 27 How Can a Workforce Give an Organization a Competitive Advantage?......Page 28 Where Will I Get My Strange Workforce?......Page 31 When Strange Turns Normal......Page 32 Winning Through Measurement......Page 33 Goals of This Book......Page 36 I’m Not a CEO. Should I Stop Reading Now?......Page 38 2 Shine a Flashlight into the Black Box That Exists Between Your Workforce and Beating Your Competition......Page 40 Get on with It. Introduce the Strange Workforce Value Chain Already!......Page 45 Fortunately, This Stuff Is Hard to Do......Page 50 3 Organizational Outcomes: How Do I Know I Am Winning in the Way I Want to Win?......Page 54 Don’t Confuse Means with Ends......Page 55 Sticky Situation......Page 56 Have a Good Fight......Page 59 Question Set 1: The Customer and the Marketplace......Page 61 Question Set 2: Competitor Awareness......Page 63 Question Set 3: The Change to Strange......Page 66 Dumb and Dumber......Page 67 Question 4: Winning Your Way......Page 71 4 Performance Drivers: What Must Customers Notice About Us So That We Win?......Page 76 Games People Play......Page 77 Question 1: Producing the Result......Page 81 Question Set 2: Customer Beliefs......Page 84 Back to School......Page 85 Question Set 3: Deciding Which Game to Play......Page 87 Tears and Fears......Page 89 Linking It All Together......Page 91 Where Do We Go from Here?......Page 93 5 Strange Workforce Deliverables: What Our Workforce Does to Make Customers Notice and Love Us......Page 94 Play Your Own Game......Page 96 But That’s Just Baseball, Right?......Page 98 Hot Dog!......Page 99 Building Strange Means “Good” People Will Quit......Page 100 Workforce-Wide Strange Deliverables......Page 103 Question Set 1: Distinctiveness......Page 105 Question Set 2: Strange Changes......Page 106 Question Set 3: Measurement and Metrics......Page 108 Possible Hope for Winning Through Generic Workforce Characteristics......Page 110 The Catch......Page 111 6 Job-Specific Strangeness: Different Deliverables from Different Jobs......Page 112 Let Me Guess.........Page 113 Question Set 1: Job Leverage......Page 115 Question Set 2: Outsource It?......Page 118 Question Set 4: Measurement and Metrics......Page 120 Getting Better......Page 123 Deposit This......Page 125 Fine Lines and Grounded Strategy......Page 127 Fine Lines and Grounded Strategy at Home Depot......Page 128 Summary......Page 129 7 Strange Workforce Architecture: What Systems Will Produce the Deliverables I Need From My Workforce?......Page 130 What’s Up with the Word “Architecture?”......Page 132 Workforce Architecture Does Not Always Mean “Formal HR Processes”......Page 133 Welding a World-Class Workforce......Page 135 Strange Architecture→Strange Workforce→Extraordinary Results......Page 139 Don’t Be So Darn Attractive to Everyone......Page 140 “But We Already Have People Systems in Place”...and Other Fine Whines......Page 142 Institutionalizing Entrepreneurship Through Strange Workforce Architecture......Page 144 8 Strange Workforce Architecture: Breaking Out From the Pack......Page 148 Create a Caricature of Your Workforce Architecture......Page 150 Make Your Architecture Conform to the Strange Elements......Page 152 Hire the Best and the Strangest......Page 155 Strange Foods......Page 159 9 Strange Workforce Architecture: Taking the Next Step......Page 166 Do I Need a Different Workforce Architecture for Different Jobs?......Page 168 Reason #1: Specific Deliverables of Jobs May Require a Different Workforce Architecture......Page 169 Reason #2: Return on Investment May Require Different Architecture......Page 170 Reason #3: Structure of Jobs May Require Different Architecture......Page 172 Build in Measurement......Page 173 Just Do It (and Then Just Measure It)......Page 174 10 The Magic of Metrics: Creating and Implementing Measurement Systems......Page 178 Are Performance Metrics a Fad?......Page 180 Metrics Koan......Page 181 Clean Competition......Page 184 Who’s Afraid of Measurement Error?......Page 190 Antagonistic Concepts: Get the Balance Right......Page 193 Summary......Page 194 Conclusion......Page 196 B......Page 198 D......Page 199 I......Page 200 M......Page 201 O......Page 202 Q–R......Page 203 S......Page 204 W–Z......Page 206 This Book Is About Everything It Takes To Build A Workforce That's Strange And Extraordinary Enough To Execute Your Most Powerful Strategies And Your Unique Value Proposition. It's About Understanding Exactly How Your Workforce Needs To Be Different; Creating An End-to-end Strange Workforce Value Chain; Implementing Workforce Systems That Support Your Unique Goals; And Establishing Detailed Metrics Based On What Makes You Unique, Using Those Metrics To Drive Clarity Throughout Your Entire Organization, And Steer It Toward Success.--book Jacket. Be Strange. Be Very Strange -- Shine A Flashlight Into The Black Box That Exists Between Your Workforce And Beating Your Competition -- Organizational Outcomes: How Do I Know I Am Winning In The Way I Want To Win -- Performance Drivers: What Must Customers Notice About Us So That We Win -- Strange Workforce Deliverables: What Our Workforce Does To Make Customers Notice And Love Us -- Job-specific Strangeness: Different Deliverables From Different Jobs -- Strange Workforce Architecture: What Systems Will Produce The Deliverables I Need From My Workforce -- Strange Workforce Architecture: Breaking Out From The Pack -- Strange Workforce Architecture: Taking The Next Step -- The Magic Of Metrics: Creating And Implementing Measurement Systems. Daniel M. Cable. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. To achieve sustained competitive advantage, you must create and deliver something that's valuable, rare, and hard to imitate -- and you can't do that with a run-of-the-mill workforce. Your workforce needs to be strikingly different, obsessively focused on delivering on your unique value proposition. Compared with everyone else's workforce, your people need to be downright strange. This book is about everything it takes to build a workforce that's strange and wonderful enough to execute on your most powerful strategies and your unique value proposition. It's about understanding exactly how your workforce needs to be different; creating an end-to-end Strange Workforce Value Chain; implementing workforce systems that support your unique goals; establishing detailed metrics based on what makes you unique; using those metrics to drive clarity throughout your entire organization; and steer it towards success. If you're tasked with executing strategy through people, and balanced scorecards and strategy maps just haven't been enough, take your next and greatest leap forward: make The Change to Strange.