The departure email Kelly Thomas sent when leaving his Chief Product Officer role at JDA Software was not the typical exec fluff. He left on the heels of the company crossing the $1 billion mark in revenue. Some of that goldmine ended up in his email as nuggets of career and business wisdom.
Kelly delivered this wisdom as a collection of quotes dear to him. Each quote accompanied by the way he saw it used in careers, business, and product creation.
To my surprise, I already held many of his quotes dear as well. They were each good in their own right, but together with his commentary they were something more. That’s when I thought I should share the collection.
Quotes and platitudes litter the business world, most are just shiny rocks. But occasionally you find a gold nugget. Kelly collected a small fortune of these. And with his permission, I’m sharing them with you now.
(Edits made for links, formatting, and redaction. These views are mine and Kelly’s, not that of any of our employers past or present, including JDA Software.)
Please enjoy these little nuggets of business wisdom from Kelly Thomas.
From: Kelly Thomas
Sent: Friday, April 14, 2017 6:53 AM
To: All JDA
Subject: Signing OffTo the entire JDA team – colleagues and fellow supply chain management professionals – with humility, I wish to extend my sincere thanks for making me understand, for making me smarter, and for improving my lot as a human being. All of you bring rich backgrounds and experiences that have helped me in my journey. I have tremendous passion for our field; I now wish to view the action from the sidelines. I will be rooting for you.
As a final parting note, I offer the attached nuggets of wisdom that I have picked up along the way from some common and uncommon sources. My apologies for imposing on you; if you find them corny, please delete.
I wish you nothing but the best. Godspeed.
Regards,
Kelly Thomas
SVP, Chief Product Officer
JDA Software
“Come to work each day willing to be fired.”
Gifford Pinchot, Intrapreneuring, 1985
I read this book in 1986, shortly after it came out. Pinchot describes how to be an entrepreneur in a large organization. In it, he created “the intrapreneur’s ten commandments;” the first of these commandments is the quote above. As a young software engineer, I had these ten commandments posted above my desk. This is obviously easier said than done, but it creates a mindset important for driving new ideas in a large organization.
“A good plan violently executed right now is far better than a perfect plan executed next week.”
General George S. Patton
We’ve all heard how you shouldn’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Speed is extremely important in business, particularly when tectonic plates are shifting below your feet.
“To those whom the gods wish to destroy, they send thirty years of success.”
Paraphrase from a Longfellow poem, 1875
There are many variations on this and it is a recurring theme in some of the other nuggets. For example, a variation on this is Jack Welch’s “change before you have to.” This is often the most difficult thing to do and why many successful companies are hard to sell to. 57% of the companies in the Fortune 500 in 1995 are not there today. This data point alone should drive even the most successful companies to invest heavily in supply chain management software.
“At that moment, it suddenly occurred to me that the enemy was more scared of us than we were of them.”
Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant
When Grant was commissioned as a colonel in the US civil war, he had to lead troops into battle for the first time. He was petrified; scared to the point that he wished he was anywhere else. As he and his troops approached the enemy, he found that the enemy had abandoned their encampment and retreated. At that moment he realized they were more scared than he was. For every battle thereafter, he remembered this and was always the aggressor. As Lincoln said – “I need this man – he fights.” Remember this in all things related to competition; you cannot compete effectively in defensive mode. (It turns out that Grant not only liked a nip of whisky from time to time but he was a man of great humility and integrity, along with being an excellent writer. His memoirs are widely regarded as the best by far for any US president).
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
Albert Einstein
Of course many of us know this quote, but it is often misunderstood. Einstein was plenty smart (IQ=150+), but so were most of his contemporaries. It was he, though, who could sit in his office and watch trains, imagine, and devise thought experiments. This imagination led to the special theory of relativity and ultimately the general theory of relativity. It’s quite possible that this imagination accelerated scientific thinking by 30 or 40 years. There are plenty of smart people in our company and in our industry; it will be those that can join intelligence with imagination to create the next wave of thinking in supply chain management.
“Follow the money.”
Deep Throat, later revealed as associate FBI director Mark Felt
This helped Woodward and Bernstein uncover Watergate and it will help you understand how companies and supply chains operate. To start the understanding of supply chains, follow the money – understand deeply the company’s income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement. Warren Buffet has bought entire companies simply by reading their 10K. To truly understand how a company and its supply chain operate, understand gross margins, inventory turns, product complexity, and the asset and labor intensity of the industry in which they compete and how they stack up. When comparing companies, make sure you are comparing apples to apples.
“I had all the disadvantages necessary for great success.”
Larry Ellison, Founder, Oracle Corp.
Larry Ellison grew up with many disadvantages in life (his name comes from Ellis Island – “son of Ellis”). What he means by his statement is that from the crucible of his many disadvantages sprung great things. Love him or hate him, Larry cannot be denied his due.
“The more difficult the decision, the less it matters what you choose.”
Eugene Kleiner, Co-Founder, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers
Kleiner Perkins is the grandfather of all Silicon Valley venture capitalists. What Eugene Kleiner meant by this statement is that if you have really deeply done your homework through detailed analysis and are having a difficult time choosing between investments, it really doesn’t matter which one you choose, because they will both pay off.
“The reason God could create the world in six days is because there was no install base.”
Unknown Cisco executive
Any company in the world would love to have a large install base with a large number of customers. This is what companies spend years seeking and building. However, in the process, the install base creates inertia. Companies can become captive to their customers, leading to the Henry Ford syndrome: “if I asked my customers what they want, they would tell me faster horses.” A balanced approach is needed – respecting the past while pivoting constantly to the future.
“The most important determinant of project success, by far, is the quality of the resources you deploy on the project.”
Barry Boehm, Software Engineering Economics, 1981
Methodologies are a dime a dozen; everyone has one. The best team in the world with the worst methodology will still succeed; conversely, a mediocre team with the best methodology in the world will still fail. Boehm’s book was one of the best in the early 1980s; many of its approaches are now dated (he later developed the spiral development approach), but its conclusions are not.
“Human intuition and rapid judgments are often wrong, due to bias and a host of other factors.”
Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman is a psychologist who won the Nobel Prize in Economics. He and his colleague Amos Tversky were pioneers in fusing together psychology and economics into the field of behavioral economics. One of the things they developed was prospect theory, which blew holes in Bernoulli’s utility theory, which had held sway for more than 300 years. The basic idea is that your current position is very important in judging the prospects of changes in one direction or another. Another key element is that a very high majority of humans judge the prospect of loss as much more important than the prospect of gain. This drives a lot of human decision making. This bias should be considered when making decisions in business, particularly investment decisions.
“When the rate of change on the outside exceeds than the rate of change on the inside, the end is near.”
Jack Welch
As a young manager, I was an acolyte of Jack Welch. His background was very similar to mine. The world of supply chain management and technology is changing at a rate faster than any I have seen in twenty years. We must endeavor every day to stay ahead of that curve.
“You’re never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you’re never as bad as they say when you lose.”
Resignation speech, Lou Holtz, football coach, University of Notre Dame.
In 1988, Lou Holtz and Notre Dame won the national championship. After an 11-year run as one of the most successful coaches in Notre Dame history, he resigned amid unrelenting pressure for better results. Many of us will have successes and failures along the way. Remember the above quote, no matter what side of the coin you happen to be on at any given point in time.
“One is never more on trial than at a moment of excessive good fortune.”
Ross Perot, founder and CEO of EDS Corporation.
The early years of EDS were like a cult with Ross Perot as the ringleader. He created an employee handbook with ten commandments. One of the commandments is above. The idea is that while success often breeds success, it is at your moment of great achievement that you must not take it for granted and remember how difficult it will be to repeat it. This is when humility should be at its highest.
“The Americans always do the right thing, but only after they’ve tried everything else first.”
Winston Churchill
I have seen this dynamic play out over and over again in business. (Many colleagues have heard me use this quote). With all things related to customers, try always to do the right thing first. You will save a lot of time, money, and loss of credibility in the long run.
“To this day, not a week goes by that I don’t think about it.”
Bill Walton, basketball superstar
At UCLA, Bill Walton was the center of a basketball team that won 88 straight games, a record that still holds for any men’s college sport. However, the thing that he remembers most is not any of the 88 games in the winning streak – it was the 89th game when they lost; and to this day not a week goes by that he does not think about it. That’s definitely a guy I want on my team.
“Humility and steely determination; the mirror and the window.”
Jim Collins, Level 5 Leadership
Jim Collins’ research and empirical data directly contradict the popular culture view of the celebrity CEO. He and his team showed that the most successful leaders have a unique combination of two characteristics – humility and steely determination. If you met them without knowing them, you would never guess they were the leader (think Bill Belichick). Also among the characteristics were the concept of the mirror and the window. Empirical data showed that the best leaders always looked directly in the mirror when looking for blame for failures, while at the same time looked out the window – to others – when assigning attribution for successes. A corollary to this is the adage: “there is no limit to what a person can achieve or where they can go, if they don’t mind who gets the credit.”
“Everybody has a plan, until they get punched in the mouth.”
Mike Tyson
Planning is important, but the adjustment you make when you get punched in the mouth is equally important. These are basic principles of supply chain management.
“To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.”
Steve Prefontaine
The quote speaks for itself – all of you have gifts, please don’t sacrifice them. Steve Prefontaine was the poster child and an original inspiration for the Nike Corporation. Love him or hate him, his in-your-face approach and charisma epitomized the Nike swoosh. While many athletes are associated with Nike, only Prefontaine has a bronze statue at their headquarters.
“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?”
John Maynard Keynes
Apparently, Keynes frequently changed his mind and was often challenged for doing so. Do not be afraid to change your position in the face of new data. Embrace the data, modify your position, and move forward.
“The ten thousand hour rule.”
Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers
If you want to become an expert at something – I don’t care how smart you are – you have to put in the time. Ten thousand hours is six hours a day for five years. If you want to become an expert in replenishment, or inventory management, or warehouse management, or whatever – start the process, and stick to it. If you do so – I guarantee you – five years from now you will be a world-class expert and in high demand.
“If something is too good to be true, it usually is.”
Lance Armstrong, Bernie Madoff, and others
We hired Lance Armstrong for the i2 Planet conference in 2003 (or thereabouts). It was a great story. The only problem is that it was not true. From time to time in your career, you will run into situations like this. If your gut tells you something is not true, or if someone guarantees you an outcome, don’t walk away – run.
“Kick ass, have fun, and make money.”
Scott McNealy, Co-founder, Sun Microsystems
This was the best way to finish a sales kickoff presentation in 1999 and it still has a lot of punch for the sales community. I like this quote because it’s simple but also integrated. In sales, you have to kick ass in order to make money, and you have to make money in order to have fun. And, there is a subset of the sales community that has to kick ass just to have fun.
“4Es and a P.”
General Electric
The four Es and a P are still a good way to evaluate people, particularly leaders. You should look for people who have high Energy, have the ability to Energize others around a common cause, have the Edge to make difficult yes or no decisions, consistently Execute against their plans, and have tremendous Passion for the company vision.
“I don’t trust a man who ain’t got a little gamble in him.”
Evel Knievel
This is not to say you should take the same gambles as Evel Knievel. Having said that, fortune favors the bold.
“When did you know?”
Sanjiv Sidhu, Founder of i2 Technologies.
When I first heard this, I thought it was stupid. Then I realized belying its simplicity is a core principle of supply chain management and other disciplines. If your project is late, when did you know and what did you do about it? If sales are less than your plan or if inventory is piling up, when did you know and what did you do about it? Advanced visibility has always been a core principle of supply chain management; it is core to closed loop control; without it, you have an open loop system that can spiral out of control. However, visibility is necessary, but not sufficient – you must do something with it.
“The harder I work, the luckier I get.”
Lee Trevino
This can be attributed to many people, including Thomas Jefferson, but I liked it when Lee Trevino said it. Lee Trevino grew up dirt poor, dropped out of school at 14, and went on to become one of the best professional golfers of all time. Tom Watson once saw him on the practice range and said: “Lee, let me see you hit the 150 yard sign.” To this, Lee replied: “Do you want me to hit the one or the zero?” That only comes from hard work.
“I only have to find one, because they’re all a*#holes, so they all hang out together.”
Carl Icahn
Years ago, when Carl Icahn was asked how he found the talent with which he surrounded himself, he replied with the above. In searching for talent, find that one person who is going to really make a difference no matter how long it takes. He or she will bring the others.
“When people see coffee stains on our tray tables, they think our engines don’t run properly.”
Don Burr, CEO of People’s Express
I believe I read this in Fortune magazine around 1986 and it stuck with me. Little irritants in our software cause our customers to question the capabilities of our backend engines. Customer experience touches every group of a company and is only as good as the weakest link. Steve Jobs was maniacal about little irritants. And, yes, People’s Express did go out of business, but they were a pioneer at the dawn of the low-budget airline segment and Don Burr was a heck of a smart guy.
“I’ll never give career advice to anyone ever again.”
Bruce Springsteen’s father
When Springsteen won the Oscar for the Philadelphia soundtrack, he took the statue to his father’s house and placed it on his father’s kitchen counter; his father’s response was the above quote. This is a difficult one, particularly with kids; it’s often not clear what the best advice is. If someone has a vision, and is giving it the 10,000 hours, it is better to get out of their way and support them.
“Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.”
General Douglas MacArthur, Farewell address to a joint session of the US congress, 1951.
Thank you and goodbye.
Featured image: Original photo by Alvin Mahmudov on Unsplash