We had a Mentorship Unplugged session recently with Tom, a business analyst who helps enterprises and individuals define and achieve business strategies, develop and market products and services, and increase efficiency. He also authored books on management tools such as Gain Impact, Save Time (GIST). Tom shared with us insights and excerpts from his books and tools he had formulated which companies or individuals could use to assess their situation, their companies, their teams, business ideas and to improve their effectiveness in situations.

In one of his management tools, he shared a tool which classified people into various categories with different skill levels and working styles. He highlighted that the important thing is to realize that there are merits in all the different levels, and that if you recognize what level your team members are, you can then match the right person with the right job and maximize the efficiency of the team.

Another tool which Tom shared classified companies into different stages and modes. For example, a company could range from being in a haphazard mode (start-up phase) to being in a procedural mode (larger company). He expressed that he felt it was important to start a company in a culture higher than the “haphazard” level. In the midst of being in a “we-got-deadlines” start-up, where getting the product out to market or getting the code working is all that the team can think about, it is important for the leader to step out of that situation, slow the team down and get everyone to see things in a larger context and think through decisions properly.

Tom also shared with us anecdotes from his past experiences. Interestingly, while pursuing his Mathematics course at Caltech, he had Richard Feynman and Kip Thorne as his lecturers!

To a question posed by the audience on how to maintain innovation within a start-up that has increasingly more processes being set in place, Tom replied that 1 person could also be a bureaucracy by himself or herself. His view was that anything that is not morally or ethically wrong is probably good and worth trying out. He related personal experiences on how he had innovated time and again in his career, from how he joined a start-up that had the world’s first automated document library, to how he had helped catalyzed a nationwide grassroots movement that improved governmental service for the United States national agenda, to how he had helped introduce corporate licensing in Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E). His firm belief was that, “You can innovate in perceptibly the worst environment.”

A large company like Google is a great proof of this statement. Google places huge emphasis on maintaining an innovate culture despite its size, such as allowing employees use 20% of their work time to pursue any projects they want, or maintaining small work groups, or pursuing innovation at all levels, down to the way they store and label their food.

It was an interesting and thought-provoking evening, and NUSEA thanks Tom sincerely for openly sharing his view and experiences with us.

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