Recently, I was invited to contribute to Volume Seven of Insight Publishing’s Conversations on Success series.
David Wright, President of Innovators Group Inc. and Publisher of Conversations on Success, interviewed me for my chapter in the book. The interview was quite lengthy (over 5,000 words). I have broken it up into sections and will post it here...
David Wright (Wright)
Today, we are speaking with Dr. Bud Bilanich. His pragmatic approach to business, life, and the business of life has earned him the title of “The Common Sense Guy” and has made him one of the most sought after speakers, consultants, and executive coaches in the United States. Dr. Bilanich’s work focuses on improving the performance of individuals, teams, and entire organizations. Bud is Harvard educated, but he has a common sense, no-nonsense approach to his work that stretches back to his roots in the steel country of Western Pennsylvania. Bud, welcome to Speaking of Success.
Dr. Bud Bilanich (Bilanich)
Thank you so much for inviting me, David. It’s great to chat with you.
Wright
So they call you the “Common Sense Guy.” Why is that?
Bilanich
I’ve been doing this kind of work -- organization effectiveness and executive coaching -- for over thirty years. Over that time I’ve developed a great appreciation for the power of common sense. Sad to say, very often people don’t use common sense in their day-to-day work and in their businesses.
A few years ago I decided that common sense was something that was missing in business in America. I also decided I would begin focusing my practice on helping people apply their common sense to solve a lot of complex problems they face.
Wright
What are some of the biggest mistakes businesspeople make when it comes to common sense?
Bilanich
I think there are two of them. The first one is falling for fads. If you look just at the management literature and the hundreds of direct mail ads that come across your desks and your e mail in box these days, you find all kinds of offers and solicitations. They all say essentially the same thing: “try this program, it’ll solve all your problems,” or “here is the answer to all of your difficult questions,”; or “if you only do what I suggest, and follow my particular program exactly as I’ve laid it out, all of your troubles will go away.”
I think that most of our knowledge concerning business and life success is built on some basic, common sense principles. Most new programs and most fads are just these common sense principles dressed up in some new clothes and new language.
One of the things that I try to do is help people cut through all of the “noise”; get down to the basic ideas behind these programs and help them apply logical, common sense solutions to the issues they face.
The second problem is one of application. Common sense is called common sense because it is most often common knowledge -- most people know the right thing to do in most situations. Often, though, the common sense thing to do takes a lot of work. I believe it was Thomas Edison who said “opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work”.
The same thing is true with common sense. Many people know exactly what they should do but they don’t do it – because it’s difficult, or time consuming, or they have to make a commitment, or it takes a lot of effort and energy. So instead they look for something that is easy and quick on the surface. They usually end up creating more problems for themselves than if they’d just bitten the bullet and done what they knew was the correct thing to do in the first place.
Wright
You write a blog called “Common Sense Guy.” What made you decide to write it and how did you get started?
Bilanich
First of all I am very fascinated by technology and how, to borrow a phrase from Thomas Friedman, it is flattening the world. I like the notion of blogs, which allow people to communicate directly with others via the World Wide Web. It’s fascinating to me that I have so many readers outside of the U.S. in places like India, Australia, Japan, and Europe.
There’s a real opportunity with a blog to be able to communicate ideas about common sense. On my blog, www.commonsenseguy.com, I take issues that I find by reading USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, or the local paper in the town where I have some business, and point out common sense in action. More often though, I find myself describing where people have not used their common sense and it has resulted in some problems. For example, did Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay really think they could get away with it? On my blog, I take real world situations and then show how people could have used their common sense to do a better in handling them.
Wright
You’ve worked with some pretty big companies, GM, Glaxo SmithKline, Citicorp, Aetna, Philadelphia Electric as well as some small companies. Where do you find more applied common sense?
Bilanich
In general I find it in the smaller companies. That’s not to say that the big companies don’t have people who use common sense. But in many large companies, I often find that the culture sometimes mitigates against applied common sense. Earlier I mentioned that people will jump on the latest fad bandwagon. All too often in large companies I find this type of scenario: someone in a senior leadership position hears that Jack Welch really thinks that Six Sigma is the latest and greatest thing, and that it really worked well for GE. This leader says to himself or herself, “if it worked there, it should work here. All of a sudden, people are into doing Six Sigma programs. If the executive had dug a little deeper into the organization, he or she might have found out that there were a lot of people who were doing a lot of continuous improvement work, similar to Six Sigma already. Mandating the use of a specific program like Six Sigma or worse yet, a specific vendor, caused a lot of upset and problems – and undid a lot of good work that had been going on.
Also, I find that because there because there are more layers in big companies, there are more opportunities for messages to get confused as they move through the organization. The intent of senior executives often gets caught in what I call “the middle management black hole”.
Smaller companies -- more entrepreneurial companies – usually have fewer layers. And, the people paying the bills are also the ones making the decisions. That’s one of the main reasons I think you see more applied common sense in smaller companies.
That’s the first part of my interview and enough for today. Thanks for reading. Volume Seven of Conversations on Success will be available in late summer. I’ll keep you posted. Log on to my website www.BudBilanich.com for more common sense advice.
I’ll see you around the web, and at Alex’s Lemonade Stand.
Bud
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