Archive for October, 2009
Thinka Linka Do
“Divide et impera”, or in English, Divide and Conquer is a phrase that we’ve all heard, many have experienced, and the clever have overcome. Forms of it have been attributed to Philip of Macedon and Julius Caesar and some incorrectly to Machiavelli, who in fact was denouncing it. It speaks to the power of effecting fragmentation, disintegration and dissolution of unity as a means to overcome adversaries or as a means to break down tough problems. Many problem solvers apply the technique, sometimes inappropriately to systems issues.
As a business practice, divide and conquer has been the effective stick that clever folks have applied to groups of competitors. The tool has been effective across almost any competitive environment, be it military, political, intellectual, athletic… endless arenas. It has been very effective when leveraging the shortcomings of traditional communications and transparency to events. But in the world of business, not so anymore. In fact, the world today may often give the advantage to the apparently fragmented, but virtually networked. Yes, the strength can be invisible and the responsiveness astounding. I would pose that a new adage might follow Sun Tzu’s logic and proclaim “Appear Divided, then Conquer.”
Here’s why … the big are always fighting entropy, the tendency towards disorder (it’s a rule of the universe). To those not anally retentive, entropy can be cool, it can be a tool. But to the big, entropy creates variability and variability looks bad. To the big, fighting entropy requires policies, controls, standards, inspections, oversight, hierarchies of non value adding resources, in other words, stuff that adds costs, time, and conservatism. Lots of that is necessary for many processes, but it is never free and mostly builds rigidity. Change comes hard and slow. The rigid can find that they are dead before they learn that they are sick.
When the fragmented could not connect, they became easy pickings. Not a hard one to figure out. In the business world firms typically have what the Japanese call an either “product out” or “customer in” philosophy and practice. Simply, it means that a business has a bias for promoting and selling who and what they have by persuading a customer that it is the best solution, or the business can configure and fit a solution specifically to the customers’ needs and circumstances. A big factor in this game has been bandwidth or resources, capabilities and talent. So there are factors of strategy, solutions and resources at play. Hard to make all the calls right, but historically the bigger had the larger catalog to show. The show of force and one stop shop can be a powerful tool to instill an image of reliability and capacity to a prospective client. But the bandwidth, capacity, catalog and resources have a cost. It’s a trade-off and balance issue. Balance is the operating word. We think of balance on a scale of weights, a static view. Today’s challenges call for dynamic balance, the kind you might see in an agile athlete or a top gun in a fighter jet.
Now … this is not about big is bad or sinister, and little is good. Good and bad have little to do with size, but rather principles and values. This is about agile is good and rigid is bad. Big or small, rigid is bad for the business and the customer. Here is how the game can change!
Never before has the capability to build and operate as a virtual enterprise been greater. The advent of technology is a tsunami of possibilities. The calamities of the recent economic failures have precipitated the freeing up (some call it unemployment) of armies of talent. Those that connect that talent virtually and create networked configuration of solutions can win the game with superior customer in.
Think then link, then think linked!
Lots to think about on this one …. Because agility is within reach to the big or the small. It’s less about size and more about paradigms and practices.
What do you think? How are you linked?
Throwing the Flag
Those who follow sports know that the quality of officiating is receiving much needed and overdue attention. In fact, there is one officiating team in NCAA Football that is currently sitting on the bench for terrible calls in very important games. In fact, the poor officiating may have determined the winners and losers. Sports are a great place to talk about poor measurement because we’ve all seen it. With the advent of better technology and high definition instant replays some of the boo-boos are much more evident. Competent people in the business of evaluating performance of any type are very aware of the impacts of measurement and very skeptical of any decisions people make …. Measurement issues surround us …. I used the word competent intentionally because those that don’t pay serious attention to the quality of measurement and render opinions, advice, or recommendations on data or information are dangerous people to have on board.
Let’s stay with college football for a little longer. Bad calls lead to new conditions that redefine all of the subsequent plays. Some calls don’t end up having terrible consequences, but others do. (Apply these points to everything else … work, play, health, safety, purchases, promotions, politics, war ….) Let’s take the bad call that changed the outcome of the game.
- Rankings changed among the competing teams
- Who played at bowls changed along with the commensurate compensation and attention? Also, all of the people who went to bowls changed, … , the travel, vacations, and lots of other secondary and tertiary order effects.
- Coaches got fired, hired or moved. Lots of the press chimed in labeling winners and losers. Life changing events took place ….
- Different kids got recruited by different coaches….. And on and on and on….. the dominoes keep falling …
- This was due to just one bad call (measurement) that changed the game, just one game.
Apply that to any professional sport, the gambling industry, and the lives of the happy and despondent whose lives revolve around the sport … it continues. There is good and bad from all of this …but it is different. So the better team doesn’t always win, and it wasn’t from poor performance….
Now, how about business performance? Have we considered just how much is impacted by poor measurement? How many big and small decisions alike were made on the shoulders of a bad call? Was the bad call on the shoulders of bad information or data? How about performance appraisals, promotions, demotions and the like? Any capital spending decisions made on poor data? Did we ever spend bundles fixing something that wasn’t broken beacuse our data was crap?
Sports are changing and some for the better as our measurements improve.
How about what we do?
It’s Not in the Bag …
It’s hard to miss the green. Bordering on fashionable, sometimes imitating political correctness, tugging at our sensibilities of responsibility, the green movement is here. The issue is enormous and affects everything from choices about the water that we drink in or out of plastic bottles, how we sort and take out the trash, our transportation choices, and even the faddish colors of the cloth bags some carry to the market. I suspect that I’m not alone in the surrealism of the duality of playing a participant actor in my micro world, and simultaneously as a spectator to the unfolding of the global drama. Surrealism emerges in that I may “feel good” about my cloth bag, but am skeptical of how the big drama will end, and whether the writers of this bigger play have blinders as I may.
Let’s stipulate that environmental responsibility is essential and that we have far too many that chose to ignore it or value their other interests far more, or simply are ignorant of the impact of choices. Let’s also stipulate that the consequences of being wrong are asymmetrical in that being wrong in one direction is far worse than being wrong in the other. We should all do more and debate less about the doable and personal choices. But there are questions that I don’t yet see being discussed sufficiently. The foremost is what if global warming is not arrested? Be it from what we do or what happens from climactic changes outside of our influence, then what? I’m convinced that the answer lies not in whether I carry my little cloth grocery bag.
What’s the plan for a hotter, wetter, or drier world? What are our strategies for living and thriving in that very, perhaps uglier and different world? Climactic change has had enormous change on life and extinction. While our current version of Homo sapiens (knowledgeable man) survived changes precipitated by ices ages, the Neanderthals could not. Man-made or climatic depletion of food production have wiped out civilizations (read Jared Diamond) and triggered migrations and adaptations for those who survived (we have some of their genes….) Yes, we do it to ourselves, but change comes also. The rigid lose to the agile.
Awful as or cynical as it may sound, we must have at least one path in our thinking, debate, and development of solutions that treats global warming, the changes in climate, sea levels, and countless other changes as an opportunity. Yes, an opportunity! If we consider that change may come as one possible and highly probable future, we may harness focused creativity and strategies that bring essential solutions. Solutions need to be developed addressing the fundamental ways that people, governments, leaders, technology, scarcity and abundance collaborate. Or we can degenerate into might makes right, war or subjugation of the weaker. I pray we become better than that.
Proactive thought may bring out what is best in us. I fear that waiting for calamities and scarcity to come, will surely bring out what is worst in some.
What are some questions we should be asking?
Who’s responsible?
What’s the cost of not asking?
What’s for Lunch?
“Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.” Anthelme Brillat-Savarin.
Do you know who he was? To folks like me who love our time in the kitchen, he is considered the “Father of Foodies.” His professional life was as a lawyer and politician, but his fame comes from laying the foundations and building the house of modern gastronomy. His book, Physiologie du goût (The Physiology of Taste) , is not on my list of recommended reads, but his insights are timeless. The Julia Childs and Emeril Lagasses and all the wannabees can thank our first “Iron Chef”. His comment above is among others that are relevant far beyond the realm of chopping blocks and saucepans.
Are we what we eat? There is more truth than truism in the biological sense. What we take in will fuel or kill many systems. But beyond the cheeseburger world comes the truism of we are what we eat. Earlier today I was speaking with an old friend about how the business landscape has changed and the strong likelihood that what lies ahead won’t look or operate like what is behind us. We should expect that the last year has delivered sufficient shock and awe to our rules and tools such that obsolescence is always closer than we were taught to expect. So, how can our first “Iron Chef” give us some insight?
Let’s paraphrase the first quote, “Tell me what you feed your mind and learn and I’ll tell you what you are.”What do we feed our minds? What effect does that have on what we are insofar as becoming capable, relevant and fit for the challenges ahead? Are we brain-junk food addicts, glued to the tube and expert on the “reality” entertainment? Do we feed ourselves knowledge and shared insights that create a new fitness, one that matches the purpose we seek, want, or required for survival and success? What diet fits what’s ahead? Are we ready, or are we mentally obese and unable to even enter the race next week? It’s more than just choice. It may be more about transformation with focus, discipline, and follow-through.
History tells us that change can become transformative to societies. Be that climactic, political, viral, economic and many other reasons, adaptability and capacity to build new capability determines survival and success. Be it evolution, the response to gradual change, or revolution in response to disruptions, agility and adaptability trumps the hand.
When building a team or making hiring decisions I always make an effort to learn about the candidate’s brain food preferences and diet. Clearly some foods signal greater value and those who seek new knowledge and build new menus of capability go to the front of the line. When did we last take inventory of our mind and capability diets?
When we talk about what’s going on, is it about who’s left on the current survival island of misfits, or maybe is it about how social and business networks have radically transformed the world? Which person would you favor for an important job? I only know which one I would not consider at all.
What’s ahead is challenging and the rate at which obsolescence comes may be faster than we’ve ever experienced. I suspect that the need for talent and capability will remain strong, but wonder what value experience will carry. What we ate yesterday will not sustain us next year, will it?
“The discovery of a new dish does more for human happiness than the discovery of a new star.” Anthelme Brillat-Savarin.
“One Thing …”
It’s really great to be surprised, particularly when it’s a good one. For close to two decades I’ve been ranting about three rules, the only three rules we need to execute, improve, or accomplish close to everything. There are many attributes that contribute to success, brains for example, but those are not what this is about. The three rules are focus, discipline, and follow-through. They are applicable to better golf, getting a prom date, getting through school, and an endless list of goals to meet or ends to achieve. I have found that trying to get “there” and stay “there” without following all three is unlikely, geniuses included. What most of us call luck in the successes of others may have the hand of randomness, but more likely you’ll find the rules behind the “luck.” I’m pretty sure that by now some have figured out that “luck is when preparation meets opportunity.”
My surprise came at a conference this past week, one dedicated to performance improvement. These conferences almost always have gems and nuggets of insight and success stories, and this last one had a real humdinger. My first inkling that this was going to be good came when the presenter turned out to be the President and CEO of the organization. You typically don’t see folks from the C-suite presenting a story about performance improvement to a room full of professionals, consultants, gurus and geeks. With his story, Robert Weiner of PAS Technologies need never fear. I will leave the details out, but available to those with enough initiative to hunt him down and request a copy of the presentation. Those in the aerospace industry should jump on this, like now! It has ample examples of the three rules and lots of brains to boot. The three rules were evident and brilliantly executed. I can’t say that often, sadly.
There are two gems that stand out and can serve as benchmarks for those seeking to transform. Transform can apply from self to enterprises and everything in between. The first application has to do with understanding that fitness, typically governed by the laws of physics, is a precursor to exceptional business performance, typically governed by the laws of economics. Obese enterprises will not win races and sustain leads. Business fitness makes winning possible. The second part has to do with how to measure success and when to change focus, discipline, and follow-through. Robert Weiner got it right. As a consequence, his team was able to snatch success from the jaws of failure. If you want folks to get aligned, then they need transparency into what matters. If you want them to improve, they need the means to build capability that is measurable and scalable. If you really want this to work, focus on the essential. Then make sure all the consequences match. It’s hard to “walk the talk” when the signals “stumble the mumble.”
The coolest surprise came when he described the transformation that was executed with only one metric for fitness, then, and only after fitness was achieved, he shifted to only one metric for winning. Yep, one metric for each phase and that’s for the entire enterprise. It worked and will work. But this is not for the faint of heart or feeble in resolve. Many will moan that their metric is not there or that certain metrics belong for correctness and balance. Get the presentation from Mr. Weiner, read and weep. It is good stuff. When we pick the right one, the secondary stuff finds its place and aligns to contribute, rather than distract. Fitness requires all the systems to work in sync with clarity of purpose and outcome. It is hard and is likely to hurt, and that is good.
As Curly, the crusty cowboy in City Slickers said, “Do you know what the secret of life is? … One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean …” we know the word …..
In the Dark?
There’s a pretty interesting debate going on between some really bright folks about whether information, or history, can be destroyed. It’s not among real historians, archaeologists, biographers, or anyone else most of us would imagine. It’s among very renowned physicists, luminaries including Stephen Hawking. Dr. Hawking was among the very early to write for the enlightenment of us outside the genius gene pool with “A Brief History of Time.” He is also credited with the conceptualizing and predicting of black holes.
Black holes are entities in the cosmos whose density is so large that they pull in, “suck up” everything around them including light. Nothing gets out, like some in-boxes we all know about. Black holes and their effects on information are what the big debates are about and where reputations are at stake. We know that the regular types of information and histories are destroyed all the time. Information or history is destroyed by cataclysms, wars, book burnings, oral accounts, my faulty memory, and a very long list of other means, including our scary hard disk crashes. It’s sad, but creates lots of opportunities for sleuths of all disciplines.
Here’s the fascinating part. The real physicists out there will rankle at my oversimplification, but I’m just not that smart. A big part of we actually “know” about what’s out there in the cosmos comes from bigger and better telescopes and other measurement technology. The stars, planets, galaxies and other cool stuff are visible because light has travelled big amounts of space-time. For now, let’s just say that it has covered very large distances across space in very long periods of time, light years in fact. We know by now that what we see all happened in the past, including everything near to us since light had to bounce off of or emanate from what we “see.” Light moves very fast, so we believe it’s happening in the “now” and that’s comforting to many.
Here we go. If nothing can escape the black hole’s pull, including light, then the information about a star or galaxy is lost on the way to us if it comes near a black hole. As far as our instruments can tell, the star never happened, the information is lost. This argument has been going for a long while and even Dr. Hawking has moved from his position on the subject. His new position involves perspectives that include more dimensions than we can understand and multiple universes, some without black holes. This stuff is not for everybody.
So it is all about light. We’ve known about it for a long time. We use terms like enlighten, bright, luminary, obscure, in the dark, and other descriptions that have to do with information, knowledge, and other types of history. If we don’t put light on something, or if does not give off light that reaches us, information is lost. It is as if it never happened. Worse, if our management and information systems take data in and it never gets out, information is lost. We have black holes of our own making.
Maybe it’s time to take the debate from the realm of physicists, astronomers, and cosmologists and bring it into the realm of operating an enterprise. Information is being lost, history of what happened no longer exists, and we will make some decisions in the dark. These black holes can be found everywhere. In fact, the post 9-11 investigation revealed that critical information was lost because of interagency black holes and individual biases.
Dr. Hawking has concluded that if we are in one of the parallel universes that does not have black holes, information is not lost. So you can’t have it both ways in any given universe.
But there is hope for our businesses. We can change what and how we execute and create a black-hole-free workplace. It’s good for our health.
On the Dock of the Bay
Have you thought about how we make decisions? It’s fascinating and frightening. I believe decision making is by far our greatest Achilles Heel. In his book, “Fateful Choices, Ten Decisions that Changed the World”, Ian Kershaw delivers a monumental and insightful lens into decisions by world players during 1940-1941, leading to the catastrophes of World War Two and beyond. It uncovers complexities, blind spots, paradigms, megalomania, group think, and perversities of gaming. The tugs-of- war within closed doors and the powers at play within and outside the decision makers’ line of sight are overwhelming. At the end of the day, people often allow their smallness decide the fate of millions and the subsequent direction of the world.
The same can be said of the events that led to our current economic and financial catastrophes and consequences. The same can be said about how we individually decide and the impacts we have on others.
What we read of history often sounds like a linear series of events that had clear cause and effect, heroes and villains, smart and stupid as the drivers. Not so simple. My own attempt at simplicity leaves a lot out, but I conclude that two big factors in decisions are:
- The lens we put on things.
- How we frame the way we will make choices.
The challenge with decisions involving multiple players gets messier because often there are multiple lenses and the frames at play. Lenses are essential for what they bring into focus and what they leave out. Framing is essential because it sets forth the remaining and discarded degrees of freedom. Time and consequences fuel the process and create many of the biases.
This topic is important today for us individually and for our organizations. How we evaluate our environment and the choices it prompts us to make depends on what we see (our lenses). Do we see scarcity and the commensurate hunger and fear that it creates? Do we see abundance and the commensurate opportunity and confidence we can harvest? Do we rely on what time has taught us about good and bad, cause and effect, right and wrong, or ask if the rules have changed and the drivers may be different? Have we led and managed from personal “genius” or by process? I have come to believe that in stable times process trumps personal genius and in changing times, the genius card takes the pot.
The framing of how we can decide is a tough one, but one aspect we can work at improving. Again, it is affected by what we envisage as time available and consequences, but constrained by what our lenses put in front of us. Personal choices carry an infinite number of variables and are compounded by beliefs, values, personal history and levels of personal insanity, ignorance, knowledge and education. Business choices carry the variables that are precipitated from a business economic or public service value system. Both matter.
When I read accounts of events and decisions, they are usually developed because there were consequences that are far reaching. A lens on the decisions made within these accounts invariably carries a post hoc focus on the extent and impact of the consequences, good or bad. That’s the problem with retrospect, not the advantage. So I will oversimplify again.
How often do we manage the present from the future? How often do we stand five, ten or more years from now and look back into today and the sequences of events that came about? It is not a frivolous pretend exercise, but rather a visionary versus incrementalist lens and frame for decision making. Looking at tomorrow with a future retrospective lens may surface that which is unseen from where we stand today. Why? Because the behaviors of other players and the many “what ifs” will carry more weight, essential weight.
The other part may have to do with whether we see scarcity or abundance ahead. That affects how I regard you and you regard me, personally or collectively. We can choose to create the visionary future we see or remain a spectator at the dock waiting for a boat to come for us. Either way, consequences will follow.
“Whenever faced with two choices, always take the third.”
The Real Deal
While driving this morning I caught some news on the radio. One disturbing bit of news reported that a large defense contractor in Great Britain is facing potential fines of over $1 billion for alleged bribery paid in pursuit of business. This contractor is a major supplier to the US Department of Defense and the alleged acts took place outside the US. Still, the news should be disturbing to all of us. Many have heard the line, “That’s just the way it is over there. If you want to get business, you have to play the game.” The government of the United Kingdom does not agree! So, what’s the net value of that business when we deduct the penalties and fines? What will that do to their competitive position over the next ten years? Will people understand that bribery is abhorrent here, but acceptable there?
To the overwhelming number of ethical and principled firms, this is not about you!
After this last year of colossal failures in the financial system and unrepentant players, what should we expect from captains of industry? Last year we heard a similar line, “Everybody’s doing it. If we don’t follow suit and make the loans, we will not get our share of the money to be made.” Where is the money now?
I’ve read many written statements of values, ethics, behavior, and respect for investors, customers, employees and the public at large. So, how do we know they are more than paper? How should we know? The very saddening answer is that more regulation will precipitate. More controls, inspections, reports, hearings and constraints on productivity and value creation. What’s the real cost to the many precipitated by others? Do we really believe that we should know because a regulator will tell us it is so?
I know organizations that live, breathe and behave in accordance with great values and ethical standards. They are successful, competitive, and a magnet for people seeking employment. In fact, I wrote about one a few months back, May I have a word with you? …. Values. These folks are the real deal.
Let’s go back to respect for the stakeholders. How will the stakeholders benefit if those values and behaviors are the real deal?
- Investors will benefit from the confidence that their moneys are not sitting on a time bomb waiting to destroy returns and long term value.
- Customers will benefit because their prices don’t carry the burden of graft and decisions are easier when the integrity of the supplier is unchallenged by a clean track record.
- Employees will benefit from never facing a choice between earning a livelihood and behaving in alignment with personal values and beliefs about honesty.
- Society at large will benefit the most from the reduced costs, increased employment and better value without the burden of regulation and constraints to growth.
The list of benefits is big, too big for a blog.
So, who decides what is next? Who has the responsibility?
Let’s ask the person in the mirror for starts. How will that person make choices today? When we ask the same question tomorrow, what will be the answer?
