What works?

How do you get things done?

What makes a person or organization or system effective?

These are the kind of questions which have fascinated me from childhood.

I learned at a young age to listen to adults and ask questions. A lot
of people like sharing what they have learned. In addition many adults
like teaching young people, if the young people are willing to listen.

That is why I have been very fortunate to find mentors to learn from.
It started with my family.

From very early I was fascinated with the question “how do things
work?” Initially much of my focus was on the natural world. I wanted
to be either a zoo director or a vertebrate paleontologist looking at
dinosaurs and other early life. Again and again, I would pepper people
with questions about how things work, the way species fit into
ecosystems or how species evolved.

I was very lucky that my relatives loved the natural world and
subscribed to the Pennsylvania Fish and Game commission magazine.
Every month it had really interesting articles about conservation and
the natural world. I began to learn how things fit together, how
successful species compete and evolve, and the principles of the
natural world.

In addition, my family came out of farming and manufacturing
backgrounds where getting things to work really mattered.

My uncle, Cal Troutman was a highway construction foreman. Every day
was spent getting men to be productive and focusing on completing a
project. His habits and lessons deeply impressed me.

My father was a career infantryman in the US Army in World War II and
Korea. He taught me that focusing on performance could be a matter of
life or death, a matter of victory or defeat.

Sitting around in the evening listening to my father and his friends
talk about what they were trying to get done was an education in
effective performance. Listening to them talk about problems to be
solved, principles of leadership to be applied, how to rethink things
when your first effort failed, all these were like a graduate
education in effective performance.

In 1965, I was fortunate to meet information technology pioneer Pete
Jensen at Georgia Tech. He was recommended to me by a State Senator
who told me that as a history student, I should also learn about the
future.

I learned very rapidly that Jensen thought about much more than computers.

Pete was intrigued with effectiveness and new and better ways of
thinking and getting things done. In his mind, the computer was just a
device for helping people get more done in new and better ways. He
introduced me to J.C. Lickleider’s “Libraries of the Future L and
Drucker’s “The Effective Executive.”

These books literally changed my life.

Lickleider was a psychologist who studied machine-human interfaces. He
became the great translator of information system-human interfaces.
For 44 years, I have drawn on Jensen and Lickleider to understand
computer and information systems development. The strategic education
they gave me encompassed virtually everything my team and I have
developed since.

Drucker’s “Effective Executive” was in the US Information Agency
library in Brussels in 1969 when I was working on my dissertation.
Jensen had instructed me to read it, so I did. It had such a profound
impact I have recommended it to audiences ever since.

If you really want to learn how to be effective, buy a copy in
paperback and reread it every year until you master all of it.

Drucker’s most powerful insight was that effectiveness is a learned
habit. Drucker asserted that studying successful leaders would help
you learn the habits of effectiveness.

Following this advice, for the last 40 years I have studied George
Catlett Marshall and his leadership of the American military in World
War two, Alfred Sloan’s leadership of General Motors, which in the
1920s was the most successful corporate strategy of the 20th century,
and Theodore Vail’s development of ATT as a social contract for public
utilities.

Running for Congress taught me more about effective performance. I had
to run three times to win (1974, 1976, 1978) to win.

Since I had no family money and was running as a Republican in the
middle of Watergate (I got 48.5% in 1974 against the dean of the
Georgia delegation), the race forced me to learn a lot:

• How do you sell well enough to raise money in a seemingly hopeless
cause? I read a lot of books on selling and got several really good
salesmen to coach me.

• How do you organize a campaign when your past experience was as a
student and teacher? I went back to Drucker and began talking with
effective managers.

• How do you manage your time effectively? I started with Drucker and
began using a Day-Timer. I also talked with the busiest people I knew
and read books on organizing and using your time.

• How do you make an effective speech? One of the highlights of my
1974 campaign was being able to talk one on one with then Governor
Ronald Reagan (his plane was delayed an hour and no one else was there
so he pulled out his cards and showed me how he thought about
speeches–it was a lifetime experience).

After I finally won in my third race (1978) the process of learning
about effective performance accelerated.

In 1979, I began a process of consulting with the American military
which has lasted 30 years.

The Army’s Training and Doctrine Command was in the middle of a
revolution in doctrine called AirLand battle. It would profoundly
change how we fight.

Working with Generals Donn Starry and Don Morelli taught me key
lessons about listening and learning before trying to lead. They
taught me to think deep (many years out), mid (a few years out) and
near as an automatic habit. They taught me to plan back from success
or victory.

I have also had the pleasure to work with Owen J. Roberts, a great
strategic planner who taught me the thinking and planning lessons of
his lifetime of working with very effective strategic CEOs.

Owen also introduced me to Edwards Deming, which led to a 60-hour
personal tutorial by Deming, the most famous quality leader in the
20th century. I find myself applying Deming’s thinking about
continuous improvement every day.

At 66 years old, after 51 years of studying and working at effective
performance, I still believe learning is the beginning of all success.

Today, I still find myself still learning new lessons, new insights,
and new approaches. In fact, I write this article from Japan after
having spent all day listening and learning.

But even while I am still learning, I now try to teach others about
effective performance the way my mentors taught me.

My lifetime of work thus far on effective performance has culminated
in two books.

The first is a simple introduction to “Five Principles for a
Successful Life,” which I coauthored with my daughter Jackie Cushman.

I try to live every day by the principles of Dream Big, Work Hard,
Learn Every Day, Enjoy Life, and Be True to Your Self. Our book
outlines how these principles have made a difference in our lives and
has over 40 testimonials from well known effective performers about
how those principles have been applied in theirs.

The other book is an introduction to how to effectively transform an
organization. “The Art of Transformation,” coauthored with Nancy
Desmond, is a comprehensive collection of the principles and habits of
effective performance.