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The Three Laws of Performance: Rewriting the Future of Your Organization and Your Life (J-B Warren Bennis Series) |  | Authors: Steve Zaffron, Dave Logan
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
Category: Book
List Price: $27.95
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Seller: indoobestsellers
Rating:  55 reviews
Sales Rank: 10400
Media: Hardcover
Edition: First Edition
Pages: 256
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.4 x 1
ISBN: 0470195592
Dewey Decimal Number: 650.1
EAN: 9780470195598
ASIN: 0470195592
Publication Date: February 3, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Steve Zaffron is, CEO of Vanto Group which has helped hundreds of companies envision and effectively implement major change and performance improvement. Zaffron and Dave Logan outline this proven system for rallying all of an organization's employees around a new vision, and more importantly, making it stick. Their focus is on making such transformations permanent and repeatable, providing practical examples from Vanto Group's clients such as Apple, Lockheed Martin, Reebok, BHP-Billiton, Johnson & Johnson, Morgan Stanley, and many others.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 55
 Excellent for breakthroughs and for innovative leaders January 28, 2009
Robert Richman (Los Angeles, CA)
35 out of 38 found this review helpful
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/R1M2XGQM44XLG1 This review covers:
- Why I found Three Laws different from most business books.
- One example of a powerful technique I use from the book.
- The concept of the "Self-Led Organization" - a company that can run itself
A Perfect Book At the Perfect Time January 27, 2009
Mathew Henry (Americus, GA)
40 out of 47 found this review helpful
The Three Laws of Performance could not come at a better time. Unless you have been living underground cut off from communication with the outside world, you must know that the world is facing unprecedented challenges. From the economy to the environment to global terrorism, the future doesn't look pretty. In fact it looks down right depressing.
While the authors of the book may not have intended it, the ideas in this book could very well be the answer to the question "How do we get ourselves out of this mess?" The US President has recruited some of the best minds in America to his administration to fix the US banking system, jump start the economy and stop climate change. We all may be praying that they are successful, but in each of our hearts we know that we are going to need to each embrace the required change if it is to be successful.
The personal and political habits that got us where we are now will not allow us to get where we need to go. We don't need change, we need re-invention.
So what about this book?
I, like many people want to do something about the issues that we are facing. A friend of mine gave me a copy of the book to read saying that I would like it especially because of the community work that I do. I was doubtful. I found the title to be boring and I am generally not interested in business books. She said that I would like it because I have to deal with a lot of resignation, which is true. Being an environmental advocate can feel like talking to stones.
I began reading it and got immediately intrigued by the First Law of Performance:
"How people perform correlates to the way the world occurs to them"
I would have never said it that way, but it made perfect sense to me. People don't recycle because it occurs for them like it doesn't matter. People will drive out of their way to save 10 cents on a gallon of gas or to use a 2 for 1 coupon but they won't recycle. How we act in the face of climate change or the economy really does make a difference but as my friend says, we are resigned.
This is also true even in organizations where people get paid to do a job. The authors Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan contend that it is people's individual views and the language they use to describe their situations that determine the actions they take. According to the book, the way people both view and speak about situations is influenced almost exclusively by the past. This in turn limits people's ability to adapt and work cooperatively together as past successes and failures literally limit their view of what is possible. This is true for both individual people as well as the organizations they are a part of. Just think of the auto industry or a losing sports team.
In most organizations, individual people feel that they have little or no say in what happens. As a result there is little or no real communication between the leaders and those they lead. The Three Laws asserts and illustrates that it is possible not just pay lip service to the notion of giving people a say in the organization but open a kind of platform for communication that is profoundly human.
An example of this comes in a surprisingly moving passage from the book where two women, working at the Lonmin Platinum Mine in South Africa, one black and one white were able to speak openly about their personal experiences of apartheid with one another and thus heal wounds they had carried since their childhoods. On the surface this conversation had almost nothing to do with the operations of a mine. Presumably mines care about productivity, profitability and safety, yet the legacy of distrust from apartheid and the fact that no one was willing to talk about it openly affected all of those things. The book goes on to tell the story of how a new spirit of trust developed at Lonmin and surrounding community.
The book is loaded with similar examples from real organizations all of which are used to illustrate the basic assertions of the book. I was finding it almost hard to believe until I read the endorsement from Bishop Desmond Tutu:
"God invites each of us to participate in the process of transforming the world - to create a world in which every person knows their infinite and irreplaceable worth and can truly fulfill their potential. This book filled with insights, real-life encounters and experiences, shows us how we may do this work of transformation. Applicable in the corporate, labour, political and civil society sectors - Steve and David have written an inspiring, practical book that will assist all who seek to rewrite the future of our world."
I must admit that I am one who seeks to rewrite the future of our world. I don't think I am very different than most people. As I said this is the right book at the right time.
Excellent and Timely Guide for Leaders February 2, 2009
Don Worthley
24 out of 29 found this review helpful
In an age where conversations have become a commodity, a good book on the relationship between organizational performance and language is a must-read; and The Three Laws of Performance doesn't disappoint.
I was interested to see how the authors would handle the issue of generative language, language that's used to create rather than just describe. I was pleasantly surprised. Not only did the authors do a great job of navigating the delicate balance between the extremes (no appreciation for the power of future-based language on the one hand and a complete disregard for real world limitations on the other); they provided a clear road map along with engaging cases studies that help to guide the reader along a path that I believe will help leaders for years to come take their organizations to new levels of effectiveness and performance.
Ironically, the only thing I would suggest changing about this book is the language. The title should have been simply The Three Laws, or possibly The Three Laws of Leadership. Additionally, the 3 main laws could have been stated in a way that was easier for the reader to remember. Twice now, I've tried to describe the 3 laws to a friend and I wasn't able to articulate the laws effortlessly. I had to work at remembering the precise language. For those in the same boat, here's the shorter version that I'm now using when I give a quick description of the book to friends.
1) Performance is related to perception
2) Perception is rooted in language
3) Vision casting changes perception (Or, Generative language changes perception)
Rather than perception, the authors speak of the way things occur to the members of an organization, which works great in the book, but not as great in an elevator. I imagine that they strayed from the term perception in order to steer clear of the obvious clichés related to the term. For example, "Perception is 9/10th of reality" can be used to mean too many things.
With that said, I don't want to diminish the power of this book. I found that it was one of the few books that took me a couple of nights to read because I didn't want to miss anything. It may also be one of the few books I actually read again.
The overall structure of the book worked well for me: a section describing the 3 laws, a section on leadership and the 3 laws, and then, finally, a section on personal application. The first section includes 3 chapters which introduce the 3 laws by taking the reader through a mesmerizing weave of case studies that help to put real world handles on the ideas proposed by the Three Laws.
The second section focuses on the application of these 3 laws in the context of leadership. I loved the 3 corollaries to the 3 laws written for leaders and found the concept of listening for the future of your organization to be compelling in light of the supporting case studies.
The second chapter in this middle section describes the Self-lead organization. This is a loaded term that is defined in the chapter, but in essence the authors are providing guidance to leaders on how to guide organizational conversations so that the whole organization moves in unity toward what Jim Collins described in Good to Great as the organization's hedgehog principle. I loved this chapter.
Finally, the book ends with 3 chapters in a section that focuses on a personal application of the Three Laws. Don't skip these chapters! I can only imagine what it would cost to attend a Three Laws workshop with the authors, and I felt as though they provided all the instructions needed to replicate that experience as closely as possible.
As the authors note in the final chapters, reading The Three Laws is just the first step. The real goal is mastery; and in the new age of hyper-connected, social-media-powered conversations, the future shoguns (this term will make more sense when you read the book) of organizations of all sizes will be those leaders who have not only mastered the Three Laws, but are able to train others in the same art.
A 21st century version of Plato's Allegory of the Cave March 11, 2009
Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas)
12 out of 15 found this review helpful
In his comments in the "Editor's Note" section that precedes the Introduction, Warren Bennis acknowledges that he was fascinated by Zaffron and Logan's "gutsy aspiration to integrate an interdisciplinary slew of disciplines as disparate as brain science, linguistics, organizational theory, and complex adaptive systems with a few fundamental laws of human and organization behavior that could lead to palpable and profound change in both domains." Frankly, I had no idea what to expect when I began to read this book but soon realized that Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan would be focusing on an especially serious challenge that most people face every day: How to develop the ability to "rewrite the future"? That is, "rewrite what people [begin italics] know [end italics] will happen." In this brilliant book, they explain how Three Laws of Performance can help their reader to complete a natural shift "from disengaged to proactive, from resigned to inspired, from frustrated to innovative." Part I (Chapters 1-3) "takes these laws one at a time, and shows how to apply them" and answers the question "Why do people do what they do?; then Part II (Chapters 4 and 5) "looks at leadership in light of the Three Laws" and answers the question "What are the interrelationships between language and occurrence?"; and finally, Part 3 (Chapters 6-8), "is about the personal face of leadership" and answers the question "How does future-based language transform how situations occur to people?"
Note: "What exactly does [the word] occur mean? We mean something beyond perception and descriptive experience. We mean the reality that arises within and from your perspective on the situation. In fact, your perspective is itself part of the way in which the world occurs to you. `How a situation occurs' includes your view of the past (why things are the way they are) and the future (where all this is going"). Indeed, they assert, "None of us sees how things are. We see how things occur to us."
Throughout their narrative, Zaffron and Logan urge their reader to keep in mind that the Three Laws of Performance really are laws, not rules, tips, stages, or steps. Each of the three "distinguishes the moving parts at play behind an observable phenomenon. A law is invariable. Whether you believe in gravity or not doesn't lessen its effect on you." Nor does any of the three lessen its effect on performance. The challenge is to understand them, to understand how there are interactions and even interdependences between and among them, and most important of all, how to apply them effectively, productively, and consistently.
Bennis and the others have their own reasons for thinking so highly of this book. Here are two of mine. First, Zaffron and Logan's ideas about "rewriting the future" may at first seem (as Bennis' suggests) "astonishing" but not after understanding exactly what they mean by it. Specifically, to "rewrite" is to overcome the quite normal tendencies of not seeing and hearing what is but, rather, only what we expect based on past "occurrences"; of protecting and defending what James O'Toole so aptly describes as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom;" of encouraging and, if necessary, forcing others to accept our determinations of what is and is not real; and of using descriptive language (i.e. that which accurately depicts the world as it once was or is now) rather than future-based language (also called generative language) to "craft vision, and to eliminate the blinders that are preventing people from seeing possibilities." In essence, "rewriting the future" involves using future-based language that projects a new future that replaces what conventional thinking predicts, once a process of "blanking the canvas" has been completed. Zaffron and Logan explain that process on Pages 74-81. I also suggest re-reading the discussion of "Rackets" on Pages 45-47.
Another reason why I think so highly of this book is that, in Chapter 6 ("Who or What Is Leading Your Life?") Zaffron and Logan share some especially interesting insights about "taking on some deep work - the kind of work that needs to be done for us to be leaders in our lives. And we really mean being a leader in all respects of our lives, including at work, in relationships, with family, with community, even with all of society." As I worked my way through this chapter, much of the material resonated with material in another book that I also highly admire, Alan Watts's The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are. With regard to the subtitle, Watts explains that there is no need for a new religion or a new bible. "We need a new experience -- a new feeling of what it is to be `I.' The lowdown (which is, of course, the secret and profound view) on life is that our normal sensation of self is a hoax, or, at best, a temporary role that we are playing, or have been conned into playing -- with our own tacit consent, just as every hypnotized person is basically willing to be hypnotized. The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego." This is precisely what Zaffron and Logan have in mind when stressing that each individual must first understand and then be guided and informed by the Three Laws before attempting to transform others. In the final chapter, they urge their readers to take on and then sustain seven commitments that, when made with integrity, will break the "performance barrier" in various conversation, first with one's self and then with others. For example, commit to creating a new game by declaring that something is important. "That is what you are putting at stake, and it is what you are holding yourself accountable to. When others commit to the [new] game with you, they join you on the field."
This what Jim Collins and Jerry Porras have in mind when advocating that an organization commit to what they call a Big Hairy Audacious Goal. As they explain in Built to Last, it is "a huge and daunting goal -- like a big mountain to climb. It is clear, compelling, and people `get it' right away. A BHAG serves as a unifying focal point, galvanizing people and creating team spirit as people strive toward a finish line...a BHAG captures the imagination and grabs people in the gut...Indeed, when you combine quiet understanding of the three circles with the audacity of a BHAG, you get a powerful, almost magical mix."
Steve Zaffron and Dave Logan are world-class pragmatists. They have no illusions or delusions about how difficult the challenges will be for those who make the seven commitments. However, they offer this strong reassurance to their reader: "There are no circumstances in business or in life that you can't handle with the Three Laws. No matter what hurdles you have to jump, challenges have to face, unfamiliar territory you have to cross, you're ready for it. Play the game passionately, intensely, and fearlessly. But don't make it significant. It's just a game."
A truly remarkable book April 16, 2009
Derek Dearden (Hampshire, UK)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
One of the things I've always wondered about Management Consultants is "What do they actually do?" Or, to put it another way, "How much difference can they really make, or is it all just a bunch of hot air?"
This book certainly gives some dramatic real-life examples of radical shifts that the authors caused in companies that they advised. Shifts that went way beyond any normal conception of what we would expect to be possible. Right in the first chapter they detail a turn-round at the Lonmin mining company in South Africa, where a disastrous safety record and inter-racial tension stalemated all previous attempts to improve productivity.
The case of Lonmin was an illustration of the "First Law" - that How people perform correlates to how the situation occurs to them. This is profound. It rarely crosses our minds that what we perceive is merely our own interpretation of a situation - we take it for granted that we directly perceive the reality itself. Other people's actions often seem to us to make no sense at all - yet they will be perfectly logical to that person, given the interpretation they have: on that occurs to them as reality!
The second and third laws deal with ways that this perception of situations arise, and what can be done to re-cast them both for ourselves and for others.
Although primarily written from the perspective of resolving conflicts and challenges in a workplace contexts, every insight in the book applies just as readily to our family and inter-personal situations.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 55
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