Free Taking People With You: The Only Way to Make Big Things Happen Paperback by David Novak

that good ideas can come to you. That means creating an atmosphere in which the people around you feel comfortable speaking up and know that there is a benefit to doing so.
I got to be about forty years old and finally had to admit that I didn’t do everything perfectly. That first admission was probably the hardest. … I need to recognize I don’t always have the best ideas. Our people don’t always have the best ideas. My company doesn’t always have the best ideas. So I need to be looking everywhere.
    — DAVID COTE, CEO OF HONEYWELL INTERNATIONAL
    Early in my career, I had a boss who, every time I came to him with a new idea, would answer by saying, “That’s funny, I’d been thinking the same thing.” At first I thought it spooky how alike we were, but pretty soon, I caught on. As the big boss, he didn’t want to admit he hadn’t thought of something himself. And it wasn’t just me. Around the office,“I was thinking the same thing!” became a punch line that one of us would shout anytime anyone had an idea, no matter how trivial. (“I think I’ll go get a glass of water” … “Well what do you know, I was thinking the same thing!”) Not only did our boss’s bad habit dampen our drive to come to him with ideas that could improve the business, but it also caused us to lose respect for him as a leader. After all, if he needed to steal our ideas, he must not have been very
confident about his own.
I think the best thing I can do to become a better leader is to keep an open mind to all different points of view, learn and listen to people of other industries, because I think our world is changing so much that first we’ve got to figure out lots of dots and then figure out how to connect the dots. We need to recognize that there isn’t a book on how to run a $40 billion, now going to a $60 billion, corporation. You don’t just take the book from the rack and read it and become a leader. You have to write the book as you go along. It’s the listening and learning that really makes a difference.
    — INDRA NOOYI, CEO OF PEPSICO
    In contrast, Howard Draft, head of Draftfcb, one of the world’s largest communications agencies, once told me how, even though he’s been in the business for more than thirty years, he often relies on the ideas and opinions of young people right out of college. In a recent meeting where a team was working on a creative strategy for a Kraft product, he was offering the group his viewpoint when “this young woman with a pierced nose and red hair looks up at me and goes, ‘You’re absolutely wrong and here’s why you’re wrong.’ I was so proud of her I went over and hugged her.”
    Imagine the difference in working for these two guys: One won’t even admit your ideas are your own; the other is hugging an employee in front of everyone because she had the guts to stick up for her opinion, which she backed up with knowledge. Who would you want to work for?
    Tactics for Wiping Out “Not Invented Here”
    If you want to take people with you and reach your goals more efficiently and effectively, you need to learn to see every person and every experience as an opportunity to expand your knowledge base. The tactics below will help you ensure that you are truly wiping out “not invented here”:
Model the behavior by being a know-how junkie yourself:
When I was in marketing, I read
Ad Age
every week cover to cover. In fact, anything that had anything at all to do with marketing, I was all over it, looking for ideas and knowledge about what was going on in the industry. If you want your people to be learners, you have to show them that you have a passion for learning too.
Actively listen to and learn from others:
One of the best things I do every year is attend meetings of the American Society of Corporate Executives. This is a group of about thirty active CEOs who get together periodically. The price of admission is that each person has to give a ten-minute presentation on