'Practically Radical' Progress

The cofounder of Fast Company describes the transformative powers of being Practically Radical at IHRSA’s 31^st Annual International Convention

CBI: If you had to put your career in a nutshell, how would you describe it?

William Taylor: I’ve spent the past 25 years thinking, writing, and speaking about the power of business at its best—producing a set of ideas and insights, a collection of case studies, and an assortment of techniques that, I hope, can help business leaders at every level, and from all sorts of industries, to think bigger and aim higher. My job, whether it was as a young editor at the Harvard Business Review, as the cofounder and founding editor of Fast Company, or in my books and lectures, has always been to persuade people that the only way to win big is to change the game—and that your values as a person and as an organization are key to how you create financial value.

CBI: What led you to create Fast Company?

WT: Fast Company certainly triumphs over any other entrepreneurial experience I’ve ever had. My cofounder, Alan Webber, and I were editors at the Review, and we sensed that massive changes were reshaping the world of business—not just technology, or design, or the business models that were emerging in Asia, although those were all powerful. It was a feeling—one we sensed among so many of the people we met—that they were looking for more from their work than their parents had. They wanted to be part of organizations they believed in, to work with people they cared about, and to build companies that reflected the best of who they were. We said at the outset: “We’re not just starting a business, we’re launching a movement.” We wanted to change the conversation about what people got out of their work and their lives. And that’s just what we did! The magazine has been great—we just celebrated our 15^th anniversary—and it’s proven a great business, too.

CBI: Fast Company is known for having created the concept of “change agents.” Can you explain the term and describe how change agents can help shape a company’s future? 

WT: Right after the first issue came out, we organized a conference around the theme, “How Do You Overthrow a Successful Company?” The participants weren’t Internet hotshots who were eager to take on the Establishment, although, admittedly, that was our target audience. Rather, they were leaders and “change agents” from companies that had been around for decades, businesses that were doing just fine. But these people sensed that massive shifts loomed on the horizon, and wondered whether there was an urgent-enough commitment among their colleagues to embrace those changes and create the next wave of opportunities.

That was 1996, and here we are, 15 years later, and that’s still what’s on everybody’s minds. That’s because the work of making meaningful, deep-seated change—sustaining results and unleashing innovation over the long term—is the hardest work there is. It’s hard in troubled organizations and even harder in successful organizations. But that’s what it takes to be a leader and a change agent.

CBI: It doesn’t sound as though we’re talking about modest aspirations or little goals here.

WT: No, not at all. You can’t do big things anymore if you’re content with doing things a little bit better than everyone else or a little bit different from the way you’ve done them in the past. In an era of hyper-competition and nonstop reinvention, the only way to stand out from the crowd is to be known for something special. Originality has become the acid test of strategy.

CBI: In “Brand Is Culture, Culture Is Brand,” an article you wrote, you make a strong connection between culture and marketing. How does that connection—the focus on colleagues and customers—help businesses stand out, especially in a people business such as the club industry? 

WT: Even the most creative and disruptive leaders recognize that success isn’t just about thinking differently than other companies. It’s also about caring more than other companies—caring about customers, colleagues, and how the organization conducts itself in a world that tempts it with endless opportunities to cut corners and compromise on values.

Customers sense that connection immediately, which makes the depth of your talent and the cohesion of your culture that much more important. Success, today, is about so much more than price, performance, and quality. It’s about pure economic value. It’s about emotion, passion, identity, and sharing your values with others. Obviously, we all have to work to make our products and services more affordable, functional, and reliable. Ultimately, though, the real separation in business, the true differentiator, is making our people and organizations more memorable. 

CBI: How can you help front-line and other employees develop a “sense of empathy” so they can connect with people more effectively? 

WT: People at every level in an organization have to be clear about two things: First, what ideas, what convictions, does the company, as a whole, stand for? So many of the corporate executives I meet tend to focus on the age-old question: “What keeps you up at night? What problems nag at you the most?” But a more important and more powerful question—especially for individuals on the front lines—is: “What gets you up in the morning?” What makes you and your colleagues more committed than ever, more engaged than ever, more excited than ever, even as the business environment gets tougher and tougher?

The second question is: What kind of commitment are you making to one another with respect to how much you care, how much you’ll help, and what it means to be part of something special and do work that really matters? You can’t be special, distinctive, and compelling in the marketplace unless you create something special, distinctive, and compelling in the workplace.

Your strategy is your culture; your culture is your strategy. 

CBI: “Great People Are Overrated,” a piece that you wrote for the Review, poses an interesting question: “If you’re building a company, would you prefer one standout person over 100 pretty-good people?” What does that have to do with culture?

WT: When I visit companies for the first time, when I meet with the CEO, I always ask, “Why would great people want to be part of what you’re doing?” In other words: How does the way you compete, the culture you’ve created, and the purpose you serve—how do they lead to your getting more than your fair share of the best people in your field? I also ask, “How do you know a great person when you see one?” The best companies care less about what you know at a particular point in time—your technical credentials—than about what makes you tick as a person and whether your individual values dovetail with their business values. They hire for attitude and train for skill. That’s culture.

CBI: Who are the business visionaries you most admire?

WT: I’d name three business “doers.” Steve Jobs’ definition of success called for nothing less than achieving greatness. He never settled—never believed that good enough was good enough. His legacy inspires all of us try harder. Herb Kelleher, the founder of Southwest Airlines, built a unique and uniquely prosperous company in the least attractive industry ever created. He took the ultimate commodity—an airline seat—and turned it into an experience that’s affordable, fun, and surprising. He’s a great leader and a real hoot. And Kathy Cloninger, who just retired after 10 years as the CEO of the Girl Scouts of the USA. Surprised? Well, Kathy took one of the most ubiquitous, but plain-vanilla brands and made it into something that was energetic, dynamic, and relevant again. She transformed an organization that seemed marginal to the culture and made it hip. That’s hard! It’s also the sort of work that all kinds of companies and organizations should be doing.

CBI: With the exception of franchises, club companies seem to reach a certain size, around 500 facilities, and then lose their way, go bankrupt, and/or get sold off. Any idea why that might be?

WT: It’s one of the defining challenges of growth: The bigger and more successful you become, the harder it is to maintain the commitment, the sense of passion, and the culture that helped make you big and successful in the first place. Success has a way of sowing the seeds of its own undoing. People get less hungry. Little problems go unattended because they don’t seem as serious a threat as they did when the company was smaller. Management admits new people into the workforce who don’t have the same sense of urgency and commitment that the original employees had. Coming to grips with size is a very common problem.

CBI: Another phenomenon that’s common to many other industries is now emerging in ours—a proliferation of budget providers, growing pressure on mid-market operators, and strong performance on the part of high-end brands. What’s your take on that?

WT: The lesson is as simple as it is urgent: It’s not good enough to be “pretty good” at everything anymore. You have to be the most of something—the most focused, the most responsive, the most colorful, the most elegant: the most something! For decades, companies and their managers were satisfied with strategies and practices that kept them in the middle of the road—that’s where the customers were, and that’s what felt comfortable, safe, and secure. In the new world of business—with so much change and pressure, and so many new ways to do everything—the middle of the road has become the highway to nowhere. As Jim Hightower, the colorful Texas populist and radio commentator, is fond of saying, “There’s nothing in the middle of the road but yellow stripes and dead armadillos.” To which we might add…companies and their leaders who are struggling to stand out from the crowd, while insisting on playing by the same old rules in an increasingly crowded marketplace.

Don’t get stuck in the middle of the road!

CBI: Finally, in closing, give us a little preview, if you would, of your IHRSA presentation?

WT: I plan to talk about what it means to do something important and build something great, about how organizations and their leaders can unleash positive, long-lasting change in these fast-moving times. I want to talk to people in their role as leaders and impact players, wherever they may reside in the hierarchy; what’s great about business today is that you can make a huge difference no matter where your name appears on the organization chart. So I hope to energize people to ask more of themselves and of their companies, and to give them some advice about how to do that.

I promise there will be a few surprises, but, if I mentioned them now, they wouldn’t be surprises at IHRSA’s 31^st annual convention in Los Angeles!

In the mid-1990s, William C. Taylor, an editor at the prestigious Harvard Business Review, and fellow editor Alan Webber raised $550,000 from a group of investors and created a prototype for a new type of business magazine. In November of 1995, in partnership with Mort Zuckerman, the owner of U.S. News and World Report, they launched Fast Company. A critical and commercial success, the publication was sold less than six years later for $340 million. A prolific author, Taylor has written five best-selling books, including his newest, Practically Radical: Not-So-Crazy Ways to Transform Your Company, Shake Up Your Industry, and Challenge Yourself. He is also an international speaker, editorial contributor, and adjunct professor at Babson College, America's top-rated school for entrepreneurship. A graduate of Princeton University and the MIT Sloan School of Management, he lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with his wife and two daughters.