Why don’t your old methods get results?
Know the 3 Enemies of success:
Lack of motivation
Lack of Motivation: we lose our motivation because we get distracted or overwhelmed when we encounter a challenging task. So we begin to lose sight of our long-term goals and the rewards of accomplishing the goals.
Your social circle
A man is known by the company he keeps. We tend to form friendships and close relationships with people we have similar ideas, outlooks, and tastes with, but we also start to adapt to each other’s habits along the way. In short, you tend to become like the people you hang out with.
You have a good business already
Think Differently
Throughout your long journey, you will encounter plenty of hurdles that will make you want to give up.
It will be tempting to just go back and end your journey when you think you’ve already gotten far, but don’t go back.
There will always be a way around each problem (roadblock) if you put your mind and heart to it.
Think about why you started in the first place.
It will be hard, but it will be worth it.
To move forward maybe will need to think differently.
“How do I think differently?” You may ask.
There are nine aspects of thinking differently:
- Emergence over Authority
- Pull over Push
- Compass over Maps
- Risk over Safety
- Disobedience over Compliance
- Practice over Theory
- Diversity over Ability
- Resilience over Strength
- Systems over Objects
To move forward perhaps we need to think differently…
Emergence Over Authority
We once thought only in a linear manner, we believed that there was one source of the way it ‘would’ be. That source stated what will be done, whether that source is religion, government, the captain of the sporting team or the business leader. Each spoke from a position that assumed and demanded that right.
Authority is the position of power and is often accompanied by ego. With that ego often there is a reluctance to forego that power.
What has changed is an attitude towards information and information’s role in challenging many areas. Information is enabled by the internet. Information is a tool in decision making; information assists in learning; and, information is the product of measurement.
Information is now available to all, whether they hold a position of power or not.
- Information is available to a person
- The information is used and that creates knowledge
- The knowledge is used and that creates wisdom
With the changing attitude to information, authority is being replaced by emergence.
To tap into emergence, that is the collective capabilities of all, we need to release control, at least a little.
Plug more minds into the system and give them a longer, more durable trail and before long the system arrives at a phased transition. A transition from command and control (authority) to the wisdom of the collective (emergence).
Pull over Push
When this approach is applied to business it means reducing costs, increasing the ability to respond to quickly changing circumstances, most importantly stimulates the creative thinking needed to determine if his or her job is productively done.
Demand-Driven: The logic of pull says that the supply should not be generated until demand has emerged. The assets that traditionally prepared your company for the future, such as software lines of code, contingent inventory, in-house expertise are liabilities on your asset register. A business should try to use resources just in time for just the time necessary and then relinquish that resource.
And, you are the Leader who Thinks differently.
Compass Over Maps
Do you need a Compass or do you need a Map?
Why don’t we explore that question?
A great deal of what we do follows a set of instructions to get to a known outcome. In computing terms, it is referred to as an algorithm.
Just like a computer program, humans can turn intent into logic. Logic to produce a result. That logic can be tested, analysed and changed. It can be said that algorithms drive human behaviour.
To achieve results marketers use algorithms to connect into human thinking. Such as Amazon ‘if you liked that, then you may also like this’.
Understanding compasses over maps:
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to.” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where.” – said Alice.
‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.” said the Cat.
“- so long as I get SOMEWHERE.” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Does Alice need a map or a compass?
The Choice
A map implies a detailed knowledge of the terrain and a way to find an optimum route.
A compass is a far more flexible tool and requires the user of the compass to employ creativity and autonomy in determining the optimum path.
In our ever-changing environment, a detailed map may lead you further and further into the depths of the forest at an ever-increasing cost. A compass will always take you to where you want to go.
Firstly you need to know where you need to go. I don’t think Alice knows the answer to that question yet.
Using a compass will not take you on a predetermined route. You will know where you are going and circumstances may cause slight deviations in your route. Deviations to avoid disasters, reduce costs or to uncover hidden treasures.
Let us get down to Business
The discipline of compasses over maps allows companies to respond rapidly to changing assumptions and environments.
Risk Over Safety
The challenges that business faces in this age of innovation are ‘make it better; make it cheaper; make it quicker’
Better – Cheaper – Quicker
Can you do that using your existing processes and risk profile?
If you answered yes to that question, I have a supplementary question:
How?
Write down your answer.
Are you doing that now?
If not, why not?
Write down your answer.
What you have written may say…
- It is too expensive
- We will need to change our systems
- I don’t know how to
- It is too risky
Was your answer one or more than one of those, or maybe a variation on one of the answers?
If you stay where you are without making your product or service better, cheaper or/and quicker then you are slowly becoming uncompetitive. When you become uncompetitive your customers will go somewhere else and your business will go broke.
The discipline of compasses over maps allows companies to respond rapidly to changing assumptions and environments.
Disobedience Over Compliance
Some people think that disobedience over compliance is a new thing.
Maybe that is not so.
In the 1920s at DuPont researcher Wallace Hume Carruthers worked with polymers. Polymers were poorly understood at this time. The project grew from a new organisational structure at DuPont, suggested by Charles Stine in 1927, in which the chemical department would be composed of several small research teams that would focus on “pioneering research” in chemistry and would “lead to practical applications”.
Elma Bolton replaced Charles Stine and he was only interested in research directed towards commercial outcomes. Despite the direction from Elma Bolton, Wallace Carruthers continued to work with polymers. In the spring of 1930, Caruthers and his team had already synthesised two new polymers. One was neoprene, a synthetic rubber greatly used during World War II. The other was a white elastic, but strong paste that would later become nylon.
It was because of disobedience that this new industry of synthetic textiles came into existence after that time.
Disobedience provides results that are unexpected,
Compliance is aimed at predictable results.
Think for yourself and question authority. That is a quote from Timothy Leary, world famous psychologist.
An organisation that celebrates innovation must encourage disobedience over authority.
Disobedience is not criticism.
Criticism is about the work, disobedience is the work.
There is a Thin Line Between disobedience that helps the organisation, and disobedience that does not. The question asked is am I happy with the past? If the answer is yes, then the future will be absolutely the same as the past, devoid of innovation and you will gradually lose your competitive advantage. Lose that advantage to those who are innovative and changing to match and evolving market.
Practice Over Theory
“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.”
Yogi Berra.
Putting practice over theory recognises that in a faster future in which change has become a new constant there is often a higher cost to waiting and planning than doing and then improving.
In the good old slow days planning of almost any endeavour, one that requires capital investment, was an essential step in avoiding failure that might bring financial woe and social stigma.
In the network era, however, well-led companies have embraced, encouraged failure.
Now launching anything from a new line of shoes to your own consulting practice has dropped dramatically in price and business commonly regarded failure as a bargain-priced learning opportunity.
While, that might sound frightening it can be incredibly enlightening.
When you emphasise practice over theory you don’t have to wait for permission or explain yourself before you begin.
Practice Thinking
Agile software development, for instance, takes advantage of a decreased cost of innovation. Agile methodology gained credibility for its emphasis on adaptive planning. Think shoot, ready, aim then shoot ready aim again. It achieves early delivery to clients and the ability to improvise in response to changes. This stands in contrast to traditional approaches of product development that require detailed plans before any production could start. Product launch may have required tooling and changes to a factory, therefore cost of failure was high.
Advanced fabrication methods and open source software have lowered the cost of production so far that it is often less expensive to try something then it is to talk about it. Even so some organisations will still spend more time and money studying a proposal then deciding not to fund it than it would have cost to build it.
Leading
When the leader of an organisation decides to undertake Practice over Theory the goals become far easier to achieve.
Diversity Over ability
Matching Talent
Matching talent to tasks traditionally was management allocating as command and control management. Rather than command and control management another attribute that is diversity. Diversity is an attribute that has traditionally been underestimated.
Crowdsourcing can, and has, integrated public contribution into the core of how companies do business. Whether that be funding, market research, new product identification or solving problems the crowd knows more and has more than the confines of your company. A very simple example is asking your customers how they would like the product you provide enhanced. That integrates the consumer of the product with the producer of the product.
Greater wisdom leads to a greater product and thus leads to increased sales and increased customer satisfaction.
Thinking in Action
The further distance a person is from the problem, in geography and discipline, the more likely they are to solve complex problems.
They will almost certainly be looking at the problem differently and will then come up with different solutions. When trained subject matter experts are looking at a problem they very often look at the problem in the same way, because that is the way they have been trained to look at the problem.
A unique solution to the problem may be found by a diversity of thinking.
Differences become forms of acquiring talent.
Embrace diversity.
A resilient organisation learns from its mistakes rather than sending a strong organisation broke.
Resilience Over Strength
The classic illustration of resilience over strength is the reed and the oak tree when subjected to a storm. The reed bends with the wind and then, when the wind dies down, it springs back up again. The oak has hardened itself to failure by stockpiling resources in the strength of its trunk but ultimately submits to the strength of the wind. The oak has failed while the reed remained resilient.
Large companies have traditionally hardened themselves as with the oak. They have stock piled resources and implemented hierarchical management procedures and processes along with a detailed 5 year plan designed to isolate them from the forces of chaos. They have valued safety over risk, push over pull, authority over emergence, compliance over obedience, maps over compasses and objects over systems.
A resilient organisation learns from its mistakes, rather than sending a strong organisation broke.
To imagine that there will be no mistakes is foolhardy, your preparation for how you will address these mistakes define if you wish to be a resilient company of a strong company.
An oak or a reed. The choice is yours.
Systems Over Objects
Firstly let us discuss systems and objects.
Let us look at an example of the future:
Driverless cars.
Driverless cars are our cars of the future, according to Google, a company developing driverless cars.
In Google’s opinion a driverless car is an object. The way the driverless car fits into the environment delivering the purpose for which it is intended is by integrating a collection of systems.
Without the systems the Driverless Car is an inanimate object, doing nothing.
Your Business
Your business is a collection of objects.
They are not inanimate objects, they are objects such as your product, clients, staff, your offices, etc.
You have integrated this collection of objects with the systems you have in place.
Are your systems equipped for the future?
The future that is complex, even more complex than today, and unpredictable.
And the systems needed for that complex and unpredictable world need to be resilient and agile. You will then be able to respond to the unpredictability and complexity. You will be enhancing your systems by thinking differently. You will be using your brain as a collection connection point for overlapping systems.
You will be addressing the complexity, unpredictability, and asymmetry as you grow your organisation around resilience and agility.
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