Book Review - The Road Less Stupid by Keith J. Cunningham
READ: 15 mins
AUTHOR: Robert Craven
Book: The Road Less Stupid by Keith J. Cunningham
Seth Godin has consistently written books I wish I had written. And so has K.J. Cunningham. He is like a more articulate, brighter and more successful version of myself. The book is like an extended version of my Check-in Journal Questions Book.
You may gather that I like this book a lot.
Some people don’t.
They feel that endless short chapters get dull and doesn’t add much to their understanding of the business world. But I disagree. The trick is to dip into the book when you need to rather than read it from cover to cover.
The book is like a good guide, helping you deal with those fundamental questions I always ask:
Where are you now?
Where are you going?
How are you going to get there?
What are you going to measure to assess your progress on the way?
Cunningham asks questions, lots of them, and he gives you the opportunity to reflect and try and answer them for yourself and your own situation.
Some of his questions
What specifically needs to happen to stop the disorganisation you are experiencing?
What is the structure you need to create the progress you require?
What are the projects that need to happen this quarter to support your overall goal?
What are you measuring to assess your progress?
Are you holding those around you accountable for their responsibilities?
Are you aligning your resources to match your priorities?
Many of the chapter headings (48 of them!) explain their contents. The contents are brief including car bumper sticker ideas (not very British) and questions for you to reflect on. Chapters include:
The 4 Hats of Business
Culture Is King (You Get What You Tolerate)
Generalisations Kill Clarity
A Crisis Is A Terrible Thing to Waste
3 Pillars of Success
The Advantage of Being Small
Simplifying Growth
Who wouldn’t want to read some of those titles?
The book is full of pithy truisms and philosophies:
The key to making more money is doing fewer stupid things.
What it takes to make money is very different from what it takes to keep it.
As business people, it’s important to look at how things are being done.
A business owner has mastered leverage and structure.
Opportunity without structure is chaos.
Most entrepreneurs hate structure, but it is necessary for growth.
Most are not honest about the reality of their situation.
We’re good at “ought” but terrible at “is” – and that gap is the symptom.
The hardest part of thinking time is getting clarity on the problem that is – and without that clarity, you are tactical and not strategic.
Optimism is your enemy in business – we need a board to get the truth.
Execute on strategy and plan – not idea – and you’ve got to have people.
Nothing can change until the unspoken is said, and the greatest failure of leadership is a lack of courage.
We’re addicted to the idea of growth and scaling as though big is the same as rich.
Your competition dictates your revenue.
Always start with powerful questions.
My key takeaway was the five core disciplines of thinking which are:
Find the unasked question
Separate the problem form the symptom
Check assumptions
Consider 2nd order consequences
Create the machine
Also I loved the exercise in the chapter, A Crisis is a Terrible Thing to Waste, where you write down 50 things you learned from your last failure or disaster and list what you would do if you had your time again. Very powerful.
As you may gather. I liked this book and I don’t say that very often.
Here are the first two chapters (courtesy of Amazon).
Chapter 1
The Dreaded Dumb Tax
“It is not supposed to be easy.
Anyone who finds it easy is stupid.”
—Charlie Munger, Vice Chairman of
Berkshire Hathaway
Smart people do dumb things.
Here’s the proof: How much money would you have right now if I gave you the ability to unwind any three financial decisions you have ever made? Write that number down . . . seriously.
Over the last thirty years of mentoring, coaching, advising, and teaching business owners, I have asked this simple question to tens of thousands of entrepreneurs, business owners, and CEOs. I have yet to have anyone tell me her wealth or income would be unchanged.
Chances are the erroneous assumptions you made that caused these financial mistakes were obvious with the passage of time. The problem is that by the time you woke up and smelled the coffee, the decision had been made and the loss incurred.
We have all paid “dumb tax”; mine is in the tens of millions.
I am a smart man, but not as smart as I think I am. I am an expert at business and investing, yet I have been bankrupt. The intergalactically dumb decisions and assumptions that caused this financial disaster were not a result of an inadequate IQ but rather an unwillingness to use it. Thinking is critical to sustainable success in business; said another way, business is an intellectual sport.
The bulk of my problems are a result of indigestion and greed, not starvation. Had I been more thoughtful (and less emotionally impulsive) in the initial decision-making process, I would have made far fewer bad choices and, as a result, my wealth would be many multiples of what it is today . . . and so would yours.
Years ago, after suffering a humiliatingly large dumb tax, it dawned on me that I have a seemingly unlimited ability to hit unforced errors and sabotage my business and financial success.
Here is my startling, yet obvious conclusion and the premise for this book: It turns out that the key to getting rich (and staying that way) is to avoid doing stupid things. I don’t need to do more smart things. I just need to do fewer dumb things. I need to avoid making emotional decisions and swinging at bad pitches. I need to think!
Here it is on a bumper sticker: All my problems started out as a good idea and all those “good” ideas were emotionally justifiable at the time. Not only that, my current financial condition represents my very best “thinking.” Yours does too.
I have yet to wake up in the morning and say to myself, “Okay, Keith, today is the day you are going to permanently screw up the rest of your life. Today you will do some things that will have major catastrophic consequences for decades to come. Today is the day you will not use your best ideas or even your second-best ideas. Today is the day you will only use your third-best ideas!” When you stop to think about it, what sabotages our dreams and causes most of our problems (and ensuing dumb tax) is our excessive optimism and emotional belief in magic pills, secret formulas, and financial tooth fairies. (All balloons look good when they are filled with hot air.) Dumb!
We make it harder than it needs to be. We gravitate toward impulsive, glandular decisions instead of thoughtful, rational ones.
As John Maynard Keynes astutely said, “Most people, when confronted with a choice of changing their thoughts or proving there is no need to change, get busy on the proof.”
Here it is on a bumper sticker: Emotions and intellect work inversely. When emotions go up, intellect goes down. Optimism is a deadly emotion in the business world. Warren Buffett said it best: “Optimism is the enemy of the rational investor.”
In other words, I need fewer “good ideas.” Well . . . that’s not exactly true. I need fewer good ideas that I jump out of my chair and execute without weighing the alternatives and thinking about what could go wrong (the 2nd-, 3rd-, and 4th-order consequences) and whether or not those consequences are acceptable.
More often than not, critically thinking about what could go wrong and doing the work to mitigate those risks before taking action is abandoned in favour of comfort zones, the path of least resistance, and speed (instant gratification).
Most of us have heard of, own, and in some cases actually read a book that was first published almost eighty years ago. With more than 70 million copies sold since its original publication in 1937, this international best seller is considered to be the bible for business success. The name of Napoleon Hill’s book is Think and Grow Rich. It isn’t “Use Your Gut and Grow Rich” or “Sit in a Dark Room, Om, and Visualize a Sack Full of Money Dropping on Your Head and Grow Rich” or “Do What You Love and Grow Rich.” It’s not about touching yourself, closing your eyes, or relying on fantasy economics (which are only effective in fantasies). And it’s certainly not a “Secret.” It’s THINK! (There are no secrets . . . just stuff you haven’t learned yet.)
My outcome for this book is that it will add to your tool belt, knowledge, and insights to support you in being thoughtful about your decisions and decision-making process prior to taking action. You will run your business more effectively, make more money, and dramatically increase the likelihood of keeping that money if you adopt the discipline of Thinking Time.
Chapter 2
The Discipline of Thinking Time
“I insist on a lot of time being spent thinking, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business. I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business. I do it because I like this kind of life.”
—Warren Buffett
The idea of writing a book about Thinking Time (which I am hoping was not my 3rd-best idea) has been in the making for decades. It started over twenty-five years ago (shortly after I paid a gigantic dumb tax), when I began tracking and recording the critical skills, tools, and insights I learned the hard way and which I have found are necessary to be sustainably successful. In the process, I have developed several core beliefs that have moulded my thinking, actions, and results. Here are the critical few that are relevant for this book:
There is no such thing as a natural business owner.Successful business owners and entrepreneurs are not born with an innate set of skills that produce business excellence and success. Great business owners work hard, practice, study, test, think, correct, and practice some more. None are infallible or perfect, but all are committed to excellence and mastery of the game.
Attempting to win the game of business by trial and error is about the stupidest way to learn anything.Trial and error is a “Pin the Tail on the Donkey” strategy that is painful, slow, and expensive, and it rarely succeeds. If I wanted to call you on the phone, I could Google your number, or I could start randomly dialling numbers in the hope I would one day stumble onto the right combination. By then, of course, I would have forgotten what I wanted to talk to you about.
Running the wrong direction enthusiastically is stupid.It does no good to practice the wrong thing. Practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent. To excel, we need a coach or an advisor to watch our swing and provide candid advice about what we are doing wrong and how we can do better.
If you want to do better, you must get better.People do not do better because they want to do better; they do better because they get better. You cannot achieve a new outcome without learning something new and practicing what you learned (probably outside your comfort zone). A commitment to mastery (improving) is essential for excellence.
The people with the best life have the best choices.People with a lousy life have lousy choices. If I want to improve my life, I need to create better choices.
Here it is on a bumper sticker: You will pay the dumb tax if you ignore these principles or you will pay to fix the problem. Either way, you are writing a check. One happens to be far smaller than the other.
The Road Less Stupid is designed to accomplish two primary objectives:
Provide a structure/process/skill set to enable you to create a successful Thinking Time ritual that, if applied, will result in a significantly reduced dumb tax. The Thinking Time process I have developed and used over the last twenty-five years is described in the first couple of chapters.
Suggest a series of possible Thinking Time topics and questions you can use to spark your thinking, grow your business, make more money, and ultimately avoid doing something stupid.
The Road Less Stupid is a direct result not only of my experience of owning and running businesses but also, more importantly, from working closely with founders, CEOs, and business owners in an intimate Board of Directors environment. The topics I am writing about are the most common issues I have encountered with our clients and Board members, regardless of their company’s size or industry. I think you will find the majority of these topics, lessons, and questions are relevant to you as well.
The book is organized into short, stand-alone chapters and designed to be consumed in a nonlinear way. Your understanding of each chapter is not contingent on having read the prior chapters. Open this book to any chapter, start reading, and you will get my drift fairly quickly.
Most chapters will require less than five to ten minutes to read, but the insights you will get from your Thinking Time sessions (which I explain in the chapter “Thinking Time: The Process”) will change the way you run your business and do your job. Use my Thinking Time questions as a springboard for either creating additional questions or for your actual Thinking Time session. If your business is anything like mine, revisiting a question in future Thinking Time sessions is a particularly good idea. Things tend to change at an astonishing pace; yesterday’s answers rarely solve tomorrow’s problems. (See the chapter “The Only Constant in Business Is . . .” if you have any doubt.)
Some chapters have an intimidating number of possible Thinking Time questions. I left all of them in each chapter so that you could have a wide range to choose from. You do not need to address each and every one; just find the high-value questions on a topic and work on those. A few are better than none.
Sometimes, I have used the same question in multiple chapters. I don’t mind repeating a question if it adds value to the current Thinking Time topic. Any of the proposed questions will help you get optics (insights) on areas in your business that need prioritization and work.
This is a business book for business readers, meant to educate rather than to entertain. Wrestling with and candidly answering my suggested questions in your Thinking Time sessions will enable you to minimize taking irrational risks and making stupid decisions (which inevitably results in an unnecessary dumb tax) and to maximize creating more robust choices and business success.
Full list of Chapter Titles
Chapter 1: The Dreaded Dumb Tax
Chapter 2: The Discipline of Thinking Time
Chapter 3: The 5 Core Disciplines of Thinking
Chapter 4: Thinking Time: The Process
Chapter 5: Mmm . . . Kool-Aid
Chapter 6: The 4 Hats of Business
Chapter 7: Culture Is King (You Get What You Tolerate)
Chapter 8: Generalizations Kill Clarity
Chapter 9: A CEO Should Never Delegate . . .
Chapter 10: A Crisis Is a Terrible Thing to Waste
Chapter 11: Ordinary Things, Consistently Done, Produce Extraordinary Results!
Chapter 12: O Baby!
Chapter 13: Help Me Understand
Chapter 14: Opportunity Without Structure Is . . .
Chapter 15: Mann Gulch
Chapter 16: Dreams and Demand
Chapter 17: The Big 8
Chapter 18: Something for Nothing . . . Seriously?
Chapter 19: The Only Constant in Business Is . . .
Chapter 20: Everything Counts
Chapter 21: The 3 Pillars of Success
Chapter 22: The Advantage of Being Small
Chapter 23: Simplifying Growth
Chapter 24: The Bathrobe Theory of Business: When a Good Idea Isn’t
Chapter 25: YOU, Inc.
Chapter 26: Keeping the Lug Nuts Tight
Chapter 27: The Apology
Chapter 28: How Am I Going to Play the Second Half?
Chapter 29: Execution
Chapter 30: Strategic Growth
Chapter 31: Systems vs. Flexibility
Chapter 32: Correcting the Business Model
Chapter 33: Indigestion (1 + 1 ≠ 2)
Chapter 34: If You Want to Grow . . .
Chapter 35: On vs. In
Chapter 36: Not All Risks Are Created Equal
Chapter 37: The Triangle of Death
Chapter 38: Mommas Love Their Babies
Chapter 39: Prioritizing Growth Strategies
Chapter 40: Creating Enterprise Value
Chapter 41: It’s Not About the Plan
Chapter 42: My Biggest Problem Is . . .
Chapter 43: Options Analysis Matrix
Chapter 44: Cause and Effect
Chapter 45: What Gets Measured Is . . .
Chapter 46: The Great Question
Chapter 47: Advice from the Chairman of the Board
Chapter 48: One Last Thing
Appendix 1: Bumper Stickers, Reminders, Words of Caution, Hints & Never Forgets
Appendix 2: Invitation to a Board of Directors
Appendix 3: CEO Scorecard®
Appendix 4: Keys to the Vault® Business School
About the Author
