The Optimizer
Be-Stirred Book Review #3: The Optimizer: Building and Leading a Team of Serial Innovators - by John Sanders.
My connection to the author: I first encountered John as a host for the Creator Community podcast, where he interviewed new and upcoming authors from New Degree Press (my publisher). You can read more about him on his website, HERE.
Book Synopsis:
In The Optimizer, John Saunders uses a combination of personal stories and real world business case studies to illustrate how people become “optimizers” – his term for serial innovators and team builders. True optimizers know how to leverage their own personal skills and talents (along with those of their team) to consistently improve or develop successful new processes, services, and products.
The first part of the book centers on how individuals become optimizers. According to the author, people who wish to become optimizers likely adopt some of the following behaviors:
They voluntarily work outside of their comfort zones to round out their skill sets and otherwise grow as humans
They test their ideas and learn–often through failure–what works and what doesn’t
They are both self-aware and self-confident but also good listeners
In the second part of the book, the author evaluates how leaders succeed or fail at fostering cultures of innovation within their teams and organizations. Optimizer-leaders:
“Nail it before they scale it.” They keep the customer at the center of innovation, and they deeply know and understand both their customers and their problems
Build, measure, and learn “with a high sense of urgency”
Build trust with their employees through self-awareness, embracing vulnerability, and by communicating to their teams clearly and transparently
“Lift the curve” of their teams by identifying, leveraging, and employing employees’ talents and initiatives
They understand the inevitability and natural fears associated with change and how to mitigate them.
Finally, the author discusses some of the fundamental structural things companies can do to build a culture of organization. They include:
Establishing formal processes to surface, test, adopt, and support new ideas or ways of doing things
Allocating funds or otherwise budgeting for pivots and changes to how the business operates
Willingness at all levels of management to expect failure as part of the learning process and honor those failures on the same level as successes
What I Learned:
From talking to John and listening to him on the podcast, I knew the book was about creating a positive work / office environment and culture. The timing seemed opportune as I was also simultaneously learning about psychological safety. Ultimately, I concluded that (even though he didn’t use the term) John had distilled some practical ways to construct and sustain a culture of psychological safety in the workplace.
John is a great storyteller, and I enjoyed learning about psychological safety through his experiences in the finance and start-up worlds. Despite my inexperience with those sectors, I found The Optimizer to be eminently readable and understandable…with the exception of a handful of terms I had to look up. I also learned:
That start-ups fail approximately 75% of the time, which is a good success-to-failure metric for testing a new idea
The distinction between an invention and an innovation
Some of the reasons why change is so painful for both individuals and organizations
That, in company communications, leaders must communicate BOTH with clarity and transparency in order to effectively lead change, especially when profits are high
What I found most valuable, however, was a shorter section on how businesses and their people can become trusted advisors to their customers. John has a great series of questions that I think would be very helpful to employ whenever working with a client or customer.
And this is a short list of what I learned - I took five typed pages of notes as I listened to the book and then read portions of it on my Kindle. I’m now treating it as a textbook of sorts to help guide me as a trusted advisor to my own customers.
How you can experience the story: The Optimizer is available in paperback, hardcover, e-book, and audiobook formats wherever books are sold online. John also has a newsletter that I now subscribe to - it has great tips for not just building a business, but for making yourself and the world / culture around you better.
