Asking the right question: a tribute to Howard Moskowitz

This is a classic on the internet, but still worth paying attention to. Malcolm Gladwell, the best selling author of the tipping point, Blink! and Outliers was invited to give a TED talk in 2004. He started out by saying he thought of talking about his latest book, but instead choose to talk about his personal hero. An that is dr.Howard Moskowitz. Moskowitz claim to fame came when he reinvented spaghetti sauce. ...Actually, he discovered a major flaw in thinking about product development and the first product in which he successfully fixed the flaw was spaghetti sauce. What happened? In the late 70 Pepsi came to his office asking him to determine the sweetspot ( the right amount of aspartame, an artificial sweetener) for their new product Pepsi Cola.

After extensive testing, by asking thousands of people to test samples, the results were a mess. No nice bell curve, but the dots were scattered across the board. For years and years, he tried to figure out what went wrong. Where was the flaw? Finally, he figured out that Pepsi had asked him the wrong question. The question was : develop the right Pepsi (single) and it should have been : develop the right Pepsi's (plural). Just watch and learn from this beautiful lecture. Everything starts with asking the right question(s).

What managers can learn from social science

The abilities that mattered most in the 20th century workforce were left brain hemisphere activities. For instance logical reasoning, linear programming and other rule based skills like accounting abilities, computer programming, etc. However, these skills are still very important and necessary today, but not sufficient. If you want to survive in the 21th century business environment, you'll need skills which are hard to outsource. Like artistry, creativity, empathy, big picture thinking, inventiveness,etc. Typical right brain hemisphere activities.

A way to test this is the so-called Duncker candle problem. Subjects are posed with three objects, sitting on a table next to a cardboard wall: A candle, a box of matches, and a box of tacks. From those, they had to make a candle holder that wouldn't drip wax. Most people fumble with the tacks and the candle, but the correct solution is to empty the box of tacks, attach it on the wall, and make an ad-hoc sconce. The problem has been considered a classic test of creativity because it requires seeing objects as being useful in ways never intended.

The essence of 20th century motivational tools (in HR) is work harder or faster and gain more rewards (the famous carrots and sticks types of rewards). Arguably, these tools work in a narrow band of circumstances. But, applied to present day jobs, where creative thinking, art, innovation and design are the key skills, these tools are counter-productive. This is not just an opinion, it has been thoroughly researched. Over and over and over again. However, managers don't seem to care.



Daniel Pink works as an individual business consultant, writer for the New York Times and Wired and now presents himself as a career analyst. In 2008 he delivered a TED presentation on the surprising science of motivation. One of the key points, in my opinion, is the notion that business still doesn't do what (social) science already knows. There is evidence based management for you. However, managers choose to ignore it. You might want to reconsider the impact of this behaviour if you read (again) about the global financial crises.

Do we learn something from this? Well, maybe. On the bright side, there is evidence on management from which we can all benefit. On the dark side, there is still an enormous gap to bridge. Why is that? Is there something flawed in the design of MBA programs? Maybe Henry Minzberg was right. In his book Managers Not MBAs, he challenges the validity of the perennially popular MBA program: a program that top-tier companies continue to rely on as essential to the creation of successful corporate leaders. As one of the great iconoclasts of management theory, Mintzberg emphasizes the need to re-examine and drastically change our traditional form of management education. As Mintzberg boldly asserts: MBAs do not managers make.