When I picked up Do Lunch or Be Lunch: The Power of Predictability in Creating Your Future by Howard H. Stevenson with Jeffrey L. Cruikshank, my immediate thought was that here's a book written by a guy (we'll just consider Stevenson here, although he probably couldn't have done the book without his associate) who wears sharkskin suits with an open-neck shirt and an indiscreet gold chain whose previous work took the form of a late-night infomercial.
Boy, was I wrong.
The snarling tiger on the cover and the somewhat `80s Wall Street or Hollywood agent title notwithstanding ("I'll have my people call your people and we'll have lunch at Spago"), Do Lunch or Be Lunch is anything but an End
of the Millenium Guide to Getting Ahead by Climbing Over the Bodies of the People You Have Just Knifed in the Back.
Far from it.
For one thing, Stevenson is the Sarofim-Rock Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard
Business School and I can only assume that people who get that sort of position aren't likely to be slicker than slick. Indeed, it is quite evident that he is quite a decent guy, for he proclaims right at the start: "As I sat down to commit these ideas to paper, I realized almost immediately that I wouldn't be satisfied speaking to the relatively small
audiences that normally pay attention to books by business school professors. I therefore resolved to speak to my readers in the same voice that I use to connect with people in business." Which is remarkable, inasmuch as the book is published by the Harvard Business School Press, a fine publisher that is not necessarily known for the deft, lucid prose style employed by its authors (i.e., some of them might think that the first sentence of this piece is
telegraphic in its comparative brevity).
This is an unexpected book. And an important one. That's because although it is a business-related text, it has applicability well beyond the reorganization of information technology or structural delayering or
intellectual capital measuring or what-have-you that many texts on the same shelves describe. It's not that those things aren't important, but try to delayer the structure of your family or measure the intellectual capital of your spouse, and you are likely to end up in court.
The exhortation of the title is actually based not so much on contemporary predatory practices, but on what our ancient ancestors had to think about when there was a rustling behind a bush. They could either hunt what was back there, and consequently dine, or be hunted, and then be dined upon. This was not something that these people understood immediately; more than a few were probably snack food before the concept was fully subscribed to.
Stevenson argues that predictability is one of the most important things in our lives. He's not talking
about crystal balls or secret writings or the like. Rather, this predictability is more in tune with
Plan-Do-Check-Adjust methodology that Dr. Deming taught. As Stevenson puts it, "You take your best shot, and you stay committed to a constant cycle of observation, calculation, prediction, and action. Over the long run, prediction is a process of perpetual recalibration—albeit with deep roots."
When dealing with most any issue that involves other people, Stevenson says that there are two issues that can be plotted along two axes, each from high to low: Agreement on What We Want. Agreement on How the
World Works. If people are going to work together—whether it is in a business or at home—then there must be a clear understanding of what all of the parties have in mind with regard to these two things. As Stevenson puts it,
"In order to work together, we have to understand where we are on the axes of agreement...We then have to understand how much agreement is needed to do what we want to do together." And he stresses that it is fundamentally important to do things with other people if you want to get anything done (as in it is probably a whole lot easier for a group of hunters with spears to deal with a tiger than one guy). Stevenson continues, "This sets us up to
build futures together, for some period of time. Then things change, as they always do, and we have to be flexible enough to recalibrate." Then continue.
As he recommends: "Act as wisely as you can, and use that experience to act more wisely next time around."
That is solid, simple advice.
