The Difference: When Good Enough Isn't Enough

by Subir Chowdhury Narrated by Dominic Hoffman

Overview

If you saw a toothpick on the floor, what would you do?

This seemingly innocuous question was posed to*Subir*Chowdhury by one of his*longtime*clients, and ultimately lead him to a profound realization: good enough is not enough. The best processes in the world won't work without developing the kind of mindset - a caring mindset - that is needed to achieve*real and*sustainable change in both organizations and individuals.

In his compelling new book,*bestselling author and*globally recognized management consultant Subir Chowdhury*tackles an issue that has haunted him in his work with many of the world's largest organizations. *Why is it that some improve only incrementally, while others improve 50 times that? The ideas and training are exactly the same. What is the difference?
*
The difference,*Chowdhury*explains, is the ability*to nurture the skills, loyalty and passion of the people who make up*an organization.**It is a culture built on straightforwardness, thoughtfulness, accountability and resolve. *Organizations and individuals that embrace all of these “STAR” attributes-not just one or two of them-will shine. *He goes further, showing us why having a*caring mindset*outside of work is integral to both personal and professional success.

A powerful guide to living a successful life and career,*The Difference*will inspire you to be the difference - at work or home.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Praise for The Difference:

"Years ago, my dad taught me a secret, one that Subir brings home in this heartfelt little book: CARE. It's easy to spell, but hard to do. Worth it."
— Seth Godin, Author of the New York Times bestseller Linchpin

“A disarmingly powerful, fresh-news slant on why and how people (you and I and everyone we work for, or with, or work for us), are the most important factor in every facet of business success, and why so many miss the mark.  If you’re looking to create breakthroughs in your business and in your life this book is for you.”
— Tony Robbins

“Subir Chowdhury’s STAR mindset deserves five stars.  Take his advice –and take it to your team.  It will make a huge difference in your organization.”
— Harvey Mackay, Author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Swim With The Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive

“Whether you are serving a customer as part of your job or interacting with a stranger on the street, you have the power to make a positive difference in the lives of others. The Difference proves that a caring mindset can lead to great things. Don’t settle for good enough—read this book and aim for excellence!”
— Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The New One Minute Manager and Collaboration Begins with You

“Full of cautionary and inspirational tales, The Difference digs deep into corporate culture to show what it really means to strive for excellence. It's not just about hitting the numbers; it's about a culture of caring based on honesty and regard for others. The Difference will help you make a difference in your own life and to those around you.”
— Daniel H. Pink, Author of Drive and To Sell Is Human

“A thoughtful book about what it means to be thoughtful – and how we can contribute in a meaningful way to others, at work and in our personal lives.”
— Adam Grant, Wharton professor and New York Times bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take

“Those who fail to adopt the caring mindset Subir Chowdhury describes in The Difference will find themselves falling behind in innovation, employee engagement, and productivity. Reading and practicing the ideas in The Difference will change your life.”
— Marshall Goldsmith, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Triggers and Thinkers 50 #1 Leadership Thinker in the World
 
“The Difference is a must read to understand the required mindset that is the difference between success and failure.”
— Vijay Govindarajan, Coxe Distinguished Professor at Tuck at Dartmouth & Marvin Bower Fellow at Harvard Business School

“Subir Chowdhury nailed it with this book.  The Difference has what you need to succeed in business and life that they don’t teach you in school.”
— Mark A Wagner, President of Business Operations, Walgreens
 
“Subir has simplified the true meaning of business life with his gripping, haunting — yet disarmingly liberating—book. Readers completing the last page of The Difference will entirely be transformed —you will be quite different from the person you were when you began the journey!”
— Jay Abraham, World Wide Business Growth Strategist

“The Difference is Superb. Subir Chowdhury has again eloquently and insightfully captured why some organizations win and others don’t.  The STAR framework leads to marvelous cases, tools, and actions that can be quickly adapted to improve organizational success.  The applications to professional and personal settings are captivating and useful.”
— Dave Ulrich, Rensis Likert Professor, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan and Partner, The RBL Group

“Subir Chowdhury opens a new door to understanding with his STAR philosophy, and no one will ever look at a toothpick in the same way as they did before. The Difference helped them to respond to “Who cares?” Leaders at every level will learn and grow with Subir’s latest and greatest book. We are grateful.”
— Frances Hesselbein, President and CEO, The Frances Hesselbein Leadership Institute, 1998 Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient

“When Good Enough is not Enough is a profound distinction that will make a significant difference in your business and your life.  The fact that Subir’s extraordinary reputation was informed by his grandfather’s wisdom of the ages advice from Bangladesh is a testament that true principles transcend geography, not just time.  We are all blessed that Subir chose to pick up the pen as his grandfather intended.  The secret of teaching his grandson to write to the authors of the books he was reading is worth the price of this book alone. It reveals the principle used to fuel Facebook and LinkedIn.  Read this book twice.”
— Greg Link, co-founder Covey Leadership Center and Author of Smart Trust

“Drawing on the real-world situations he deals with in his professional life, Subir Chowdhury reveals why certain organizations succeed while others don't.  Thoughtfully written, and a compelling read.”
— Narayana N. R. Murthy, Chairman and Chief Mentor, Infosys Limited

“Insightful! The Difference shows managers and leaders at every level how to better engage and develop a company’s most fundamental resource:  its people.  It is the difference between good enough, and being truly great.”
— R.C. Bhargava, Chairman of the board, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd. And Chairman of the board of Governors, IIT Kanpur

“Myths about how we should live our lives abound.  But they are just that, myths.  And too often they lead us to lesser, and poorer lives.  In this straightforward and inspiring book, Subir Chowdhury distills a lifetime of experience, rising from impoverished beginnings in Bangladesh, to his decades of consulting work with CEO’s of the many of the top Fortune 500 companies, to becoming one of our leading thinkers on workplace culture and organizational values.  His STAR model for making a difference at work and in our personal lives, is seemingly simple, but surprisingly nuanced and profound.  This short but powerful book could change your life. “
— Rita Gunther McGrath, Professor, Columbia Business School
Author, The End of Competitive Advantage

“A small book that will make a big difference in your life and career.  Buy two, and give one to a friend.”
— Keith Ferrazzi, Author of Never Eat Alone

“We’d all like to make a difference in our lives and make the world a better place; the wisdom and insights that Subir Chowdhury imparts in this short but remarkable book will help to show you how.”
— Eric J. Topol, MD, Professor, The Scripps Research Institute
Author, The Patient Will See You Now

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171964344
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	02/21/2017
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1

What a Toothpick Can Teach Us About Caring

You can change your mindset.

—Carol S. Dweck, author of Mindset

Subir,” a senior executive in the manufacturing industry asked me, “What do you do with a toothpick when you are done with it?” I looked back at him with puzzlement on my face. Was this a serious question?

I’ve overcome plenty of tough challenges in my life—as a child growing up in Bangladesh, I never dreamed that I would enjoy the life I’ve lived. After moving thousands of miles away to start a new life in the United States, I faced one obstacle after another—a foreign culture, a new social life, a demanding job—but I embraced my new home and became a citizen. Today, as one of the world’s most recognized experts on organizational strategy and corporate quality, I’ve helped some of the world’s best-known brands improve their processes, save billions of dollars, and increase their profits and revenues. I’ve worked with all kinds of organizations: profit, nonprofit, healthcare, government, manufacturing—large and small. You would think after doing what I’ve been doing for more than twenty years, I could figure out the answer to a perplexing problem that I noticed in my consulting work: why two companies of roughly the same size from the same industry—both of which have implemented exactly the same processes with the help of my team—have met with drastically different results. It didn’t make sense to me: one company achieved a return of 5 times their investment—adequate, to me, but hardly spectacular—while the other saw a return of 100 times their investment. I was determined to figure out the difference.

It was a nightmare morning. I was up at five thirty to make my appointment. It was snowing the kind of heavy, wet Michigan snow that piles up quickly. Traffic was painfully slow. Several drivers had slid off the road. I feared I would be late for the first of three meetings I had scheduled that day. But I kept inching forward and arrived, just in time, for my first meeting with Mark, an executive vice president in a major Fortune 500 manufacturing company.

I want to share several remarkable events that occurred on that day, events that helped me discover why one company achieved incremental improvement while the other was radically transformed. But first I would like to make two important points. One, while the events that I describe in this chapter happened in a manufacturing company, they could have happened in almost any organization.

Second, the company had hired me to help them with problems with quality. But it might just as easily have involved any attempt at changing the status quo: improving customer service, fostering diversity, retaining talents, improving revenues, cutting operating expenses, increasing profits. And although the other people I met that day were mostly senior executives, and people who report to them, they might just as well have been line managers, supervisors, or workers on the manufacturing floor. The lessons are universal.

I had experienced an anxious two and a half hours on the road, the kind of thing that can knock anyone a bit off center. I knew I needed to focus on the task in front of me—on the person who hired me to help solve critical problems at their company—rather than on my own lingering anxiety. When Mark and I met in his office that morning, he lowered his head, as if he were in pain. I knew something was bothering him deeply. It seemed pretty obvious to me that he was having a worse day than I was.

“Is everything okay?” I asked. “I know I got off to a bad start this morning. I was worried I might be late, and you know how I hate being late. But you look particularly concerned. What’s going on?”

He replied, “I am worried. Very worried.”

A J.D. Power Quality Report had been released the day before. The company had been rated “poor” for initial quality. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist—or quality consultant—to know that this is not good news for a company. When disheartening results like that are received, sometimes the first thing the CEO does is fire whoever is in charge of quality. In this case, that was Mark.

“Is your boss upset with you?” I asked. “Do you want me to talk with him? Those results have nothing to do with you. The issues you are dealing with are everyone’s responsibility—not yours alone.”

It was at that moment that he looked at me and asked, “Subir, what do you do with a toothpick when you are done with it?”

“What do you mean? What kind of question is that?” I asked, confused and a little alarmed. It was not a question I had ever been asked before. Mark was normally a straight shooter. I was so surprised by the question that I did not immediately grasp the significance of the toothpick.

Finally I told him, “I throw it in the trash.”

“Exactly. I do the same thing. I asked my assistant what she would do, and she said the same thing. I asked five of my colleagues, and they responded the same way. That’s what they would do. But I was here this morning, meeting my boss at six thirty despite the winter storm. I knew he was upset because of yesterday’s J.D. Power results. And as I was walking to his office, I noticed a used toothpick on the floor. Someone had tossed it on the floor instead of in a wastebasket! And it bothered me so much because I felt . . .” At this point his voice broke a little. “I felt I had done everything I could to communicate the need for quality in everything we do here. I’ve been championing quality throughout the company—and then I find a used toothpick discarded thoughtlessly on the floor. Subir, it is indicative of a much larger issue. If an employee doesn’t care enough to throw a used toothpick in the trash, but instead drops it mindlessly on the floor the way a selfish motorist tosses litter out the window on the highway . . .”

His voice trailed off. The look on his face was hard to read. “This is where we work. Normally the only people going into the executive suite are executives. But it doesn’t matter whether the person who did this is an executive or not. The point is that someone in our company did this. Now I know why our quality sucks. It is because some of the people here just don’t care. If they don’t care enough about something as basic as throwing away their trash properly, it’s clear why there is so little accountability in our operations or production or sales.”

“What did you do when you found it?” I asked.

Incredulous that I would even ask, he said, “I picked it up and threw it away.” And that was part of his point. No one was above such basic responsibility, even the senior management and the CEO.

I agreed of course that the toothpick was emblematic of a much deeper problem within the company. As is often the case with management issues, the smallest signs can be indicative of more systemic issues. The toothpick episode reminded me of what Jan Carlzon, the CEO of SAS Airline Group at the time, is rumored to have said about passengers who find their seat trays dirty. They wonder if the airline is ignoring other parts of the business, including pilot training and engine maintenance. Dirty trays, he said, meant the airline was settling for good enough.

After our talk, Mark and I went to a group meeting to discuss the J.D. Power quality rating results and other issues. Because of my long-standing relationship with the organization, they included me in the meeting. The CEO had made it clear that he wanted all functional departments and levels of the organization to share their ideas openly. The meeting included both engineers and senior management, including the COO. The COO asked Mark to talk about why they did so poorly on the J.D. Power Quality Report.

You could hear a pin drop in the room. Several people, especially the engineers, knew what the real issues were—machinery that needed upgrades, a workforce that hadn’t been trained to make quality their top priority, buggy software, unreliable suppliers—but no one spoke.

The COO, remaining composed, listened intently. He encouraged the people around the table to speak up. The problems Mark raised, he said, belonged to every member in the room—they were everyone’s business. He told them they must help one another, even if a problem affected someone else’s group or department.

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