Comments on: Needed: EVPs of Common Sense.

By: mousewords

mousewords — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 21:43:00 +0000

So true. And like writers, the front office will need to swallow the fact that, if they respect the “editor,” they must trust them, whether it hurts or not. Because believe me–it’ll hurt. ;-)

By: Tim Walker

Tim Walker — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 21:27:24 +0000

Precisely! That’s why I suggest someone who commands respect, but isn’t bought into the culture of the particular front office.

And the parallel to editors/beta-readers is perfect. Good journalists and book writers *welcome* good editors (even when it’s emotionally painful), because they know that a good editor will help improve the work. Bad writers, in my experience, are those who bristle too much — and unjustifiably — at being edited by a sensible editor.

By: mousewords

mousewords — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 21:06:08 +0000

What you need is the corporate equivalent of a beta reader! :-) My “baby” is my book, and I get so close to it that I can’t see it anymore. I need someone with common sense on my team, who’s not afraid to tell me, “Pseudo-sunshine is not a word.” (It made perfect sense to me.)

With a non-writer beta reader, you get someone who’s disconnected from the writing process, and sees the book as an audience. I may go on about the benefits of writing dialogue in strong character voices, so that one can tell who is speaking simply from the words. A beta reader tells me, “Yeah, whatever, just put ‘he said’ and ’she said’ more often.”

Following that theme, what if the EVP of Common Sense were someone *out* of the industry? Someone who’s successful in other areas, but knows nothing of the (for example) pro sports franchise? An accountant; a semi-retired architect; a mom. Someone who can look at a business proposition and say, “Yeah, that doesn’t make sense. Change it.”

By: Tim Walker

Tim Walker — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:29:11 +0000

Dave, I agree that common sense should be, uh, common across the enterprise. But it’s also human nature to lose perspective about our “babies” — our pet projects, ideas, departments, etc. I guess what I’m calling for is a big, high-level dose of perspective.

Thanks for the great feedback and elaborations.

By: dblwyo

dblwyo — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:35:40 +0000

OORAH ! I love this notion. That said let me play devil’s advocate on a couple of counter/complementary arguments.

1) A separate position – everybody should have common sense and the company should be run that way (your implicit argument is that it’s scarce, rate and x-grain to the decision-making processes)

2) Ostensibly the SVP of strategic planning should be this person. Of course in fact and practice the planning guy is usually some clever non-entity who owns the admin of the planning paperwork but is only slightly more respected than the SVP of HR :) !

3)What’re the chances – either formally or otherwise of actually embuing the corporate culture with common senses ?

If you look back thru business and organizational history this is THE position/attitude/process that made the great ones great. And the one that’s been so missing in the last two+ decades, e.g. Finance (btw watch Blankfein on CSpan) Autos (obviously) but also Tech, Pharma, Retail, etc. etc.

The Blankfein video is the closing argument of this post btw:
http://llinlithgow.com/bizzX/2009/04/firestorms_finance_futures_fro.html