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1-Page Summary of The Soft Edge
Overview
Anyone who has been to business school or studied business will know that in order to be successful, you need a good strategy and the right processes.
In addition to strategy and execution, business success requires developing relationships with people. Amazon is an excellent example of this because it has a strong relationship with its employees and customers.
There are three important points about taste in this passage. First, good taste is the key to success. Second, only a few people have good taste. Third, you should never need more than two pizzas for your team.
Big Idea #1: Successful companies are founded on three key elements: a strategy, a hard edge and a soft edge.
When we think of successful businesses, we usually think of great leaders, excellent products and good management. However, the foundation for all these is strategy. Strategy is like a triangle with three sides: knowing what market you’re in (marketing), who your customers are (customer service) and what your competitors are doing (competition).
The business side of things is where the hard edge comes into play. You can’t just have a good strategy, you have to be able to execute it properly as well. It’s important that you measure its success with numbers that show how fast and efficiently your company operates.
It’s hard to measure the softer side of business. It is that deeper meaning a company communicates to its customers and employees. The softer side makes a company great, while the harder edge is just one aspect of it. A good business has both aspects in balance, but a great one does more than that—the soft edge.
How do you measure your company’s soft edge? You can’t just put it on a graph and see if it correlates with business success. However, there is a model that will help you understand the aspects of your company’s culture that need to be developed.
Imagine that your soft edge is supported by five pillars. These are trust, smarts, collaboration and sharing of ideas, depth in taste and purpose for the brand. Let’s take a look at these five pillars supporting the soft edge.
Big Idea #2: Trust is a fundamental part of the soft edge.
When you feel like everything will be okay with your closest friends, that’s trust. It would be great if you could feel that way at work.
Trust is vital to the soft edge. It’s equally important to establish both external trust with your customers and internal trust with your staff. Customers need to trust you, so it’s crucial that you have a secure business. Northwestern Mutual has built its company on trust by being sound and prudent in their business practices while also making their values trustworthy.
To build trust internally, a company needs to be honest and transparent. A good example of this is NetApp, which has been on various lists as one of the best places to work. Even when they had layoffs, their reputation for honesty and transparency endured because they treated everyone with respect. The executive management team even traveled to all the affected offices to personally deliver bad news, which built trust in those employees who remained after the layoffs that they too would continue working hard.
Big Idea #3: A company needs smarts to keep up with the latest ideas and technologies.
The most successful companies are always changing and improving themselves. They’re smart because they work hard, try new things, and are willing to make mistakes. The best way to improve your company is by learning from your mistakes. David Chang, a famous chef who owns the Momofuku restaurant group in New York City, knows that well from his experience in Japan—where people value continuous improvement (kaizen) and acknowledging their own mistakes (hansei).
