What I want to take a quick look at today is the aspects of modern business culture that I think are the barriers to any organisation or for that matter any State or government wanting to become a profit leader in the next wave of the MobCon.
The first idea is metrics. If you can only manage what you can measure then you are, after all, the sum of the parts that you choose to measure.
The new managerial class tended to neglect process innovation because it was hard to justify in a quarterly earnings report, where metrics like “return on investment” reigned supreme.
Noam Scheiber The New Republic. Upper Mismanagement or Why can’t Americans make things? Two words: business school.
All of which means if you want to profit from the MobCon then you will have to begin by changing your performance metrics.
The second idea is Equilibrium.
In the 19th and 20th centuries we made stuff: corn and steel and trucks. Now, we make protocols: sets of instructions.
Physical stuff is subject to the laws of scarcity: you can use up your timber. But it’s hard to use up a good idea. Prices for material goods tend toward equilibrium, depending on supply and demand. Equilibrium doesn’t really apply to the market for new ideas.
When the economy was about stuff, economics resembled physics. When it’s about ideas, economics comes to resemble psychology.
David Brooks of the New York Times The Protocol Society
Most managers I talk to yearn for equilibrium. They probably don’t know it but their actions and their attitudes all point towards delivering some form of optimised equilibrium. They continually strive to put in place the processes and procedures that will normalise, standardise and improve the business workflow. Their objective is to create a unified system of doing business.
Now, if there is one rule we know to be true in the Information Economy, it is Equilibrium Equals Death. The problem is most organisations don’t recognise the equilibrium threat. We know this because too many rules make an organisation rigid and inflexible and yet we persist with this idea that the future profitability of our business can be measured directly against the number of protocols and rules we introduce to manage and operate the business. After all isn’t this what the introduction of performance metrics was all about?
Unfortunately in the Information Age future profitability isn’t about getting the balance between chaos and rigidity or Freedom and Disciple if you like, into equilibrium. It’s about managing the dynamic so it remains unstable. Your ability to survive and thrive can be measured by your capacity to cultivate variety inside and outside your organisation.
Which leads me to the third idea: The value of Education.
One of the best articles I have read on education in recent times is Marty Nemko’s America’s Most Overrated Product: the Bachelor’s Degree. You can take a look at it online at The Chronicle of Higher Education but you’ll need to subscribe. A hint for you though: The “take away” is in the title.
Alvin and Heidi Toffler probably put it more succinctly when they wrote in Revolutionary Wealth
“…while teachers incarcerate kids in classrooms, their ears, eyes and minds escape to rove the cyberunvierse. From a very young age, they are aware that no teacher and no school can make available even the tiniest fraction of the data, information, knowledge – and fun – available online.”
Even Bill Gates has chipped in on the problem…
“America’s high schools are obsolete… By obsolete, I mean that our high schools – even when they are working exactly as designed – cannot teach our kids what they need to know today… This isn’t an accident or a flaw in the system; It is the system.”
The old maxim of “Those who can’t, Teach” is fundamentally wrong - although I do think there is some value in the maximum “Those who can’t teach are responsible for education policy”. The simple fact is you need your best and you’re brightest to be available as teachers simply because they are the only ones capable of inspiring others to follow in their footsteps.
The reality is today neither the teacher nor the students need to be in the classroom to achieve this symbiotic relationship. Indeed, today most kids will probably learn more on Facebook than they will learn in the classroom. Just as my generation benefited from having TV. (See The New York Times Study Finds That Online Education Beats the Classroom - Updated 1-1-2010)
If we accept that and work with it then we can make education relevant again and inspire a whole new generation to lead us into profiting from the knowledge based economy
So what are we doing to make this happen? The answer is nothing. Instead of changing the dynamic we try to camouflage the reality with bread and circus acts like free Student Laptops and the carefully crafted media events that show off our brightest “survivors”.
Vision is what is lacking in our education system. Vision is also lacking in much of our business thinking and in our affairs of state. After all, how can you see anything in the distance if your horizon is limited to the quarterly results or a 3 or 4 year election cycle? But vision is what is needed. After all it is the hallmark of true leadership.
In short, I look at everything as a limit: “What does this (company/sector) look like at infinity?”
Roger Ehrenberg How I Invest (And What I’m Looking For)
So before we finish this post. Let’s ask the question: How do you measure vision?
Easy, you begin by measuring hope and enthusiasm. You measure how eager people are to become involved in the doing. You measure their willingness to respond with action rather than with talk and analysis. You measure what motivates and inspires them to deliver their best every time they are asked to make a contribution.
“Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity”
General George S. Patton
Think about it. Today we fill our classrooms and workplaces with rules and regulations. Policies and procedures. Protocols and instructions. Yet for all the performance metrics you are gathering today you are probably missing the key one that will make or break you tomorrow. Isn’t your organisation’s vision for the future the most important performance metric you should be monitoring today?
Stacey Derbinshire
December 29, 2009
Just wanted to say HI. I found your blog a few days ago on Technorati and have been reading it over the past few days.