CircaSpecting: People, Tech, and Business

Yo-Yo's Make the Best Leaders

No, I don't mean Skilling, Ebbers, and their ilk.  What I mean is that the best leaders can operate on many levels.  They are not stuck in the weeds, nor are they stuck in the clouds.  They can strategize and delegate, but they also roll up their sleeves and do "real" work.  I call it yo-yo'ing, because the leader is constantly moving between strategic and operational perspectives.

Now, if you think that this cannot be done in larger companies, think again.  For instance, Gordon Bethune's legendary success story saving Continental Airlines was attributable largely to his ability to move fluidly between the strategic issues occupying Wall Street and the operational issues occupying folks on the shop floor, in the cockpit, and at the passenger counter.  He could repair an airliner and fly it, not just talk about policy. 

As such, he had three things without which no leader can succeed for long:

1. Unfiltered information from the strategic and operational spheres
2. Willingness and ability to contribute meaningfully on radically different levels
3. And, consequently, enormous respect from people at all levels

Before you try this, let me give you a warning: your first few attempts will involve incredulous employees and likely failure.  But, stick with it, and you'll earn the respect only a Yo-Yo is due.

Darwin, Corporations, and Pancakes

In a wonderful paper , Maria Guadalupe of Columbia University and Julie M. Wulf of Harvard Business School provide quantitative evidence that ...

when competition increases the value of quick and responsive decision-making, firms eliminate layers to improve the quality and speed of the transmission of information or increase the authority of division managers to become more adaptive to local information. 

The researchers used data surrounding international agreements to eliminate trade barriers, since those moments offer a crucible in which changes in competition are more absolutely and relatively pronounced; but, their observations are much more broadly applicable.  If flatter organizations are observed in the aftermath of step-function increases in competitive intensity, then just as Darwin taught us regarding biologically utilitarian adaptation, we can infer that flatness conveys a competitive advantage.

Order up: Pancakes.

Beyond the Big Bang: Strategy as Habit

This post is about how Social Enterprise will create competitive advantage through the way organizations approach strategy.  It's going to take a little set-up, so give me a minute.

There are several good strategy frameworks, and at various times in my career I've used them all.  Some of them feel tailored to new-venturing by entrepreneurs, some to big-betting by established firms, some to turnarounds, some to restructuring, etc.  (Almost all of these frameworks feel tailored to big management consulting fees.)  These are the Big Bang incarnations of strategy; they are dramatic, so they grab headlines.  Certainly, a few of these big plays have worked out spectacularly.  But, I would argue that the dramatic, headline-grabbing strategy "events" are some relatively rare and low-probable-yield versions of strategy.  How many mergers succeed, vs. blow up?  How many reorganizations are truly "strategically" transformational 10 years later?  It happens ..., and we all know deep down that those are the exceptions that prove the rule.  Strategy as a once-for-all-time exercise is, well, short-sighted.

Instead of strategy as Big Bang, what about strategy as Habit?  ALL organizations require strategic thinking to succeed, but few organizations actually face the dramatic moment -- ever, or certainly very often.  If that is true, then the sweet spot for strategy is something more routine, more "everyman", more evolutionary, more of a living process.  Strategy as Habit has 2 components, in keeping with the 2 primary definitions of the word "habit":  (1) a regular practice and (2) a long, loose garment worn by a member of a religious order.  (In case you've forgotten that second definition:  picture here).  Strategic thinking is a recurrent, involuntary action.  Our strategy is both a content statement and a style statement, both of which define and identify our team.  Strategy is participative.  Strategy has structure without being overly constrictive.

Ok, so let's get a few things straight.  Strategy as Habit is NOT:

• Hanging corporate mission statement posters all over the office
• Making the staff memorize the elevator pitch
• Giving everyone a copy of the strategy report from the consultants
• Holding an annual executive planning retreat in Sun Valley

Which brings me to my favorite strategy framework for Strategy as Habit:  the Seven Ss.  For a quick primer, see this summary from the Economist.  Or you can just figure it out from the traditional diagram below:

I think this framework captures the essence of internal factors that bear upon strategy.  The popular (in the exec suite anyway) view of these factors is that they are tools for the implementation of the strategy.  Tools and constraints.  Of course, there is some truth to that view.  Whatever strategy exists today in an organization, its ability to execute on that strategy largely depends upon the consonance of its strategy with the other six Ss at the organization.  But, I think the power of the 7S framework emerges when we think of organizational evolution over time -- with strategies morphing to exploit changes in the organization's internal and external setting.  When you begin viewing strategy as a living thing -- adopting the Strategy as Habit view -- then you see TWO important questions:

1. How do we best implement today's strategy?     AND
2. How do we best detect and respond to rationale for strategy evolution in the future?

When we adjust the original diagram a bit, you start to see that the secret to strategy success -- both IMPLEMENTATION and EVOLUTION -- is fundamentally the staff.

The founding strategy may not start with the people, but its implementation and all subsequent strategy evolutions are hugely influenced by the people. They are the ones, after all, who design the business systems, develop their skills, train each other, shape shared values daily, and project the culture's style to thousands of customers every day.  They watch competitors on the street, and they listen to prospects who've declined proposals.  In all but the smallest organizations, the CEO's ability to drive the details of strategy execution in all these areas around the company is practically nil.  There are too many details to master, too many situations to understand, to many disciplines to learn, etc. 

In fact, we all know that the true strategy of any firm is not exactly what the CEO tells the WSJ.  It's not what Corporate Communications writes in the Annual Report.  The true strategy of the firm, the one that actually matters to its future, is the one that's sifted and seasoned and amended and nuanced and enriched in a thousand ways by a thousand people whose names the CEO has never heard.  And, all of those actions today will create tomorrow's strategic landscape for the firm.

(BTW: As a CEO, I love it when someone on our staff adapts our strategy to make us more competitive -- provided I hear about it.  I want to understand; I am a student of my business.  And, I also want to speak truthfully about our strategy with external parties.  Nothing worse than rambling on and on to journalists about a strategy that no one's implementing!)

So, we need to stop talking about Social Enterprise as something that youngsters really want to play with while at work.  Or as something that lets the CEO blog/twitter/etc to get the troops on-board with his strategy.  Instead, we need to realize that the enterprise is already social, and the only people missing that are in the executive suite.  Ironically, those are the very folks who stand to benefit most from harnessing the potential of these technologies: better awareness of what's really going on and earlier detection of opportunities to evolve. 

And, what that translates to is priceless: leaders who look in-touch internally and smarter externally.

Tim Berners-Lee and The New Web for Numbers

Tim will be glad to know I agree. ;)  Seriously, though, it's important to understand that there is a reason why we all started our web/sharing work with documents and words: they are easier.  They have intrinsic meaning.  The fact that we can disagree about what "bonnet" (head covering vs. auto cowling vs. whatever) is a simple proof of intrinsic meaning.  Numbers are different.  Can we disagree about "7"?  Not really; it has no intrinsic meaning -- other than, the rather useless "the integer between 6 and 8".  No, numbers take their meaning SOLELY from context, and context is hard to communicate.  Very, very hard.

So, context sharing is the killer app for enabling the next stage of information webs, those which will revolve around numbers.  And, this I think is a very big idea.  Given that businesses are usually "run by the numbers" to a large degree, I believe that the only way Enterprise 2 will make significant inroads is by solving this "numeric context sharing" problem.  When they have the ability to exploit social tech on hard numbers, businesses will want to (and have to) embrace Enterprise 2.

And, that's why I'm so excited about what we're doing at Lyzasoft to allow data analysts to share data bound with implicit context metadata --such that their peers can understand, assess, remix, mashup, and apply that data with all kinds of other data to solve emergent problems.

Thanks, Tim, for stretching our imagination.  Again.

Wave!...Captains vs. Carvers

When I read Heather Havenstein's article in CIO on the (much, MUCH talked about) topic of GenY technology usage patterns and preferences, what really jumped out at me were the comments.
 
Of course, it's a bit sad to see a high level of disrespect for people who think/work/live differently.  But, more importantly from where I sit, it's sad to NOT see 3 things:

1. Discussion of the body of research that demonstrates how these young professionals, who grew up immersed in tech during their cognitively formative years, had their brains re-wired in several key ways.  Generations differ somewhat, in terms of cultural styles, norms, etc.  But, this generation may be (literally) wired differently.
   
   • More responsive to visuals and symbology
   • Faster scanners
   • Non-linear text processing
   • Stronger impulse to engage, comment, clarify, question -- to be actively involved
   • Faster, more discerning search relevant information (not just on Google)
   • Identity-based/relationship-based meaning inference
   • and, many more
2. Discussion of the opportunity to create competitive advantage by reshaping organizations.  This is not the first convulsion in the western corporate form, and it certainly won't be the last.  But, go back and review the list of evolutionary advances in my previous point.  If that does not look like something akin to "super knowledge workers" -- I've done a bad job of communicating.  The new information processing skills of this generation are a new natural resource from which forward-thinking leaders can create new organizational forms and new decision models -- using new tools and methods, of course -- that will make their organizations more aware, more agile, more adaptive, more informed, more collaborative, etc.  Who do you want to bet on: the company that's wedded to the status quo of top-down, centrally-managed decisioneering....OR....the company that finds a responsible way to speed up decision/information velocity within the team, using the tools and methods that have been incubating just outside the corporate gates?
   • My bet is on the latter
3. Comments from Human Resources officer(s), whose responsibility is centrally finding talent and creating a culture that develops/applies this talent effectively.  Forward-thinking HR professionals should be allying with CIO's, Information Architects, Strategy Officers -- even CEO's -- to make a case for creating competitive advantage by reshaping the 1990's organization into something relevant for the next 10 years.

The issue has NOTHING to do with "letting employees dictate how work will be done."  That's an absurd caricature of the argument, typically made by controlling captains who are afraid.  The issue has to do with corporate strategy, specifically the long-overlooked strategy domain of human capital.  Who wants to go surfing?

Importing the Future

When you borrow a lot of money to create a false prosperity, you import the future into the present.  It isn't the actual future so much as some grotesque silicon version of it.  Leverage buys you a glimpse of a prosperity you haven't really earned.  Michael Lewis, Vanity Fair magazine

Like most deep truths, this one is instructive across many areas of life.  For instance, I think many entrepreneurs (you could also substitute "corporate change agents") are so hungry for "prosperity" -- for the validation of seeing your idea adopted, of having people talk about your product, of winning deals, of a large staff -- that they are often tempted into thinking money can significantly accelerate the path to genuine success for the project.  But, we've seen more than a few raise money, blow it in a vain (interesting word choice) attempt to import the future into the present, and get ejected when the natural pace of the market did not immediately and permanently reshape itself to their desires. 

I love traveling to places where the frenetic pace of post-modern life has not crept in.  You don't have to go far to find them.  Two hours outside any big city in world -- Paris, London, Denver, San Fran, Boston, Seattle, Toronto -- you can find people who still see with perfect clarity that Life has a rhythm and Nature a cadence.  Go, watch, remember.  These places are not foreign; they are True.

In all our striving, we need to remember that we are working at the margins; there are very real limits to how fast we can change the world.  What makes the world-changers great people is NOT that they had a flash of brilliance and changed the world overnight.  That's an adolescent view of greatness.  What makes the world-changers great people is that they were able to influence and shape and move the massive collective of all-of-us over time, through persistence and charisma and patience and compromise and energy and tenacity and forgiveness and a hundred other virtues.

Shortcuts suck.

Back to the Future: Self-reliance

It once was noble to be self-reliant. 

Then someone told us we were supposed to be waited on, were supposed to hop on the bandwagon, were supposed to listen to experts, were supposed to ... become dependent.

Take a few minutes to refresh your self with Emerson's essay on self-reliance.  Download The_Essay_on_Self_reliance

Wisdom in trippy children's books

"There is no use trying," said Alice; "one can't believe impossible things."

"I dare say you haven't had much practice," said the Queen.  "When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day.  Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

It is SO adult to ignore the impossible.

Try this experiment:  Meet 1:1 with the members of your team for 30 minutes, and force the conversation to stay on one subject: "what are we assuming is impossible?"  There will be lots of worthless observations -- that is, lots of things which are in fact impossible.  But, if you work at it, I bet you will uncover a few items that you should NOT be assuming impossible.  And, those are the kernels of transformation.  I tried it a couple of weeks ago, and we had some terrific breakthroughs. 

Jump down the rabbit hole!

Gemini Twins: Style and Substance

"Let's not forget that style is in itself a concept, and made up of a synthesis of concepts. It is a shorthand, a reference to other ideas.  Used carelessly, it becomes meaningless, but if stylistics elements are part of a conceptual solution, then you can feel virtuous. 

The real trick in all this is to ensure that the varied of precise group of viewers that the work is designed for respond to, and understand, the point of the exercise, style or no style.

Style that works is a concept, and a concept that doesn't work has not been styled effectively."

The End of Print, David Carson

Prisoner's Dilemma and Business Technology: Speed Trumps

Here is a slight twist on the classical Prisoner's Dilemma game problem.  Two suspects are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated both prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to 1 year in jail for a minor charge.  But, the first one to rat out the other goes free immediately, with the accused partner getting a 10-year sentence.  Each prisoner must choose to betray the other or to remain silent.  How should the prisoners act?

That is analogous to the situation faced routinely by decision-makers; the prisoners are companies in the same market space, and the police are the customers/partners/regulators/etc of the market.  Both companies are engaged in perpetual development of products, services, and methods -- with the explicit objective of getting the upper hand on the other company.  Given the significant rewards accruing to the first mover -- even when imperfect -- the decision-makers will never wait until they are perfectly prepared.  Speed trumps precision.  They HAVE to go before everything is just so.

If we can minimize the OODA Loop cycle time, we can create the ultimate competitive advantage -- the ability to innovate one step ahead of the other company again and again.  Our analytics don't have to be perfect -- just practically reliable and fast.  So, the winning strategy has to be enabling the decision-making corps to self-serve the Decision Support process, because coordination with additional parties (IT, consultants, etc) will saddle us with extra baggage that the competitor may not be carrying.