Idea in Management

A few years ago economists discovered the human being--or more precisely, the human brain. All of a sudden "emotional man" supplanted "rational man," and real human behavior replaced perfect information as the basis for economic theory. The behavioral school of economics was born and the dismal science was reborn.

If you keep track of recent developments in business thinking, the same trend is cresting in the field of management. Call it "behavioral management": new, daring management theory is built on a combination of brain science, game theory, and close observation of how we actually behave as leaders, managers, and employees.

It's an approach that you could say is built to stick, one you can understand in the blink of an eye. But I've got a better idea: the 3 x 5 card. It's the critical low-tech tool for an alternative school of management that I'm championing. It's an approach that focuses on new rules for work and life--rules that are reality-tested and results-oriented. Rules that fit this time of economic volatility and individual uncertainty. In other words, rules that actually make sense and work.

I learned this 3 x 5 card approach from the late, great HBS professor and HBR faculty editor Ted Levitt back in the late 1980s. Now I've systemized it in a new book, Rules of Thumb: 52 Truths for Winning at Business Without Losing Your Self.

Ted was the faculty editor at HBR and I was managing editor. What I saw him doing was simply brilliant--or brilliantly simple. Every day Ted would start off with a small stack of 3 x 5 cards in his shirt pocket. When he heard an idea that clicked with him--one where the words were just right, where they expressed perfectly a thought or a proposition that Ted instantly knew made sense--he'd pull out a 3 x 5 card and write it down. At the end of the day Ted would transfer the cards he'd written on into various files he kept of ideas he wanted to pursue himself or assign to someone else for an HBR piece.

I copied Ted's system. It not only lead me to original insights and keen observations, it also made me a better listener. It became the basis for how HBR pieces originated, and later, after I left HBR to start Fast Company magazine, how we created pieces there.
When you keep 3 x 5 cards close at hand, you don't just listen to what people are saying; you listen into their ideas. You pay close attention to the way the words work--or don't work--to capture an idea or an argument. As an involved listener you help others frame or reframe an idea so it clicks into place: you become an idea chiropractor. You find yourself using your conversations strategically, listening to learn, and learning to make sense of the world. And each day, as you assemble that day's collection of 3 x 5 cards, you discover new lessons that help you develop your own understanding of how the world really works, your own rules of thumb that comprise your guide to work and life in a time of unrelenting turbulence.

At least that's how it worked for me. I've been collecting 3 x 5 cards ever since Ted introduced me to the practice. I see them as a handbook for our current economic problems and a playbook for creating a more sustainable future. Some of these insights could even have helped us avoid the economic mess we're currently enduring, if only we'd been paying attention.

Take, for example, Rule #37: All money is not created equal. It's a rule I learned when I was raising the money to start Fast Company. While I was eager to launch the magazine, it quickly became clear to me that some of the money that I could have taken wasn't money I wanted to take: it came with strings--or other people's reputations--attached. And while I wanted the money, that was baggage I didn't want to carry. I quickly learned that there's good money and bad money, smart money and dumb money, clean money and dirty money. There's even money that only looks like it exists--and then disappears.