You Can’t Go Back To Somewhere You’ve Never Been To

My first car was a beautiful 1956 Oldsmobile; I bought it in 1968, during the early half of my senior year in high school. It increased my degrees of freedom and mobility. No more having to catch rides with my buds. It was big, comfortable, and often needing some attention, as an older car does. When I bought my first set of tires, I watched every step of the replacement at the tire shop. I watched with great curiosity as the new tire was placed on a machine with a 360 leveling bubble that indicated where the tire was heavier and by how much weight. Small lead weights were added on the top side of the rim until the bubble centered. Back then, it was called balancing the tire. Today that is known as static balancing the tire, because the tire was not moving, it was static. The technology depended on gravity only. Those that were driving back then will tell you that when you hit a certain speed on the road, vibrations would start up.

Today, the balancing that I watch (still do) takes place with the tire mounted vertically in a machine that spins at the higher end of the speeds the tire will be experiencing on the road. The results rendered from the machine enable the technician to mount the weights on both sides of the rim. This is known as dynamic balancing and I get no vibrations when driving at any speed. There are reasons why the results are different and they have to do with the physics of vibration and resonance between the tire and the car’s suspension (it affects suspension bridges too, sometimes catastrophically). This balancing relies on determining asymmetric forces that can be evaluated. The nice part about this type of balancing is that the measurements and decisions better reflect what the tires will be doing once they are on my car.

By now, most of you know where this is going. This could be about measuring the attribute that better predicts a cause and effect relationship, so that the predictive attribute can be controlled. Six Sigma folks call that the X that determines the Y, with Y being the result. But we’re not going there today because that point, although important, has been overplayed sufficiently. I believe there is more fun to be had by looking at the contrast between static balance versus dynamic balance when applied by those who lead and manage our enterprises. We’ll start with some bigger level stuff today.

Often driven by a dominant financial lens, each year organizations go about the activity of asking questions about the future and then creating a batched set (made all at once) of decisions about what they promise to do for the next year (the business plan) and what they commit to use in resources to keep those promises (the budget). They then create a balance between the outcomes to be delivered (benefits) and the costs to be expended (the budget) and then get permission from leaders and owners to proceed. Some will add some degree of risk based signals so that they can adapt if things change. What we have learned is that every one of those yearly sets of promises and resource commitments has been wrong. All of them were wrong. The best enterprises knew they would be wrong and were ready to succeed anyway. The enterprises with leaders that believed they were in a deterministic world (X always determines Y) may not have been so ready to change in time and got in trouble. Some leaders run their enterprise with a static balance set of measurements and decisions and others do so with a dynamic balance set.

Those that use the static balance as a practice we will call the Rigidites and those that use the dynamic balance as a practice we will call the Agilitites. I have met both over the years. Some remain as good friends. What might be some differences between the two?

• Rigidites believe that faith in and adherence to the plan and budget are the measures of success or failure. Often they define who they are in the organization by classifications that are cost categories in the budget. They have rules and controls to ensure that making changes goes through a series of onerous series of painful steps. Many of the most senior Rigidites earned their position by succeeding for many years in a system where these rules worked well.
• Agilitites believe that the world around them is always changing in some ways that they cannot predict, and, that their ability to adapt to the new world leads to success. The have rules around vigilance to detect changes, fluid responsiveness and making changes should not be painful or onerous. They also are driven to keep their promises.
• When we try to imagine how Rigidites travel, we visualize them driving down a highway or taking a train from here to there. Once they start down a path, changing direction can be hard to do.
• We tend to visualize Agilitites navigating nimbly through the air or on the water. If they need to change direction, they don’t have as hard a time.
• Both can demonstrate success with evidence. Both have also failed.

So, maybe success is striking a balance that includes being able to travel on highways, land, water and air to get to where they need to go. If that is true, we may profit from some deliberation on some questions:

• How do we evaluate the plans and the nature of promises, resources and the measures of success for enterprises?
• What types of leaders, managers and talent do we need to establish the plans? What about when they are tasked to keep the promises?
• How strong are the paradigms that drive how we lead and manage?
• When we begin to attack what is not working and leverage what does work, how do we approach these needs?
• Can we repeat a yesterday when it was not what we remembered and had lots of what we didn’t know? Do we still think we can create all of tomoroow?

It’s time to plan our next trip. Do we want to go to Rigidia or Agilia?