The New How [Paperback]

Acknowledgments

The New How is not a memoir. Still, many of the ideas in this book developed gradually in my mind over the last 20 years, so writing it has been a clarifying view of what makes me believe these ways work.

This book emerged from a conversation with Harry Max in early November 2007. Having recently joined my Rubicon team, Harry and I were talking about my approach to strategy development, which I see as a deeply creative act—one that not only focuses on business concepts, frameworks, and ideas, but also the process through which strategies are formed, shaped, chosen, and made real by people.

Harry had recently written “the book” on how DreamWorks Animation collaborates internally in creating films. He raised this question: did successful business strategy really involve the same kind of creative acts as film development? And was the creative process itself crucial to successful outcomes? Of course, the answers were yes and yes.

Building successful strategies is deeply creative, and it’s when we blend the what with the how and the who that success is more likely to manifest. But this idea had a genesis long before my high-tech career. These beliefs were ingrained in me early. In 1987, as a community college student trustee, I was unexpectedly selected by my chancellor, Tom Fryer, to be given a seat at the table hashing out the future of the California community college system for a piece of reform legislation called AB 1725.

Tom was a notable national leader in shared governance, ...