No More Business As Usual

Fox or hedgehog?

When people think about businesses and what the key characteristic is that they most need to survive, resilience is the word that is most likely to come to mind. But people will also be aware of the need to be canny.

A useful analogy to describe this, is the fox and hedgehog. If you are considered to be a fox, you will know a little bit about a lot of things. If, on the other hand, you’re a hedgehog, you will know a lot about some things.

Both Nicole Yershon and Mark Earls describe themselves as foxes because to be successful you can’t expect to have minimal knowledge while hoping that business comes to you and the economy.

For Yershon, the way you get to be foxy is by being curious in response to what’s going on around you and then being prepared to make an effort to find out more things. This, says Yershon, has to be an innate part of your personality which brings with it, it’s own set of difficulties.

Yershon explains:

“A connector like myself, is able to know enough to be dangerous about everything but then know the right people to drill down to get stuff done. It’s all about relevancy, context, personalities, emotional intelligence, understanding the problem and how to find the right solution at a very, very, quick rate in your brain.”

Yershon says that it’s important that fox-like mavericks who anticipate the future are supported in their endeavours by visionary CEOs.

Creativity and adaptability

A study conducted by IBM of 1,700 CEOs from 64 different countries revealed that creativity and adaptability were the two key attributes they require of employees in the future.

But the CEOs also identified a problem which is by the time these workers progress to management positions, these attributes tend to be stripped from them.

The message seems to be that corporate culture extinguishes anything that it doesn’t recognize. Mark Earls asserts that this is true of innovation, generally. There is a history, says Earls, of IBM destroying its new products.

Earls explains:

“When IBM had a go at doing PCs, they took the best people from around the world from their mainframe business, and put them in Boca Raton to make a really fantastic PC. But at the launch they pulled them all apart, pulled the whole team, and put them back on normal duties again so the whole thing would die. There was no conscious strategic decision.”

Part of the problem is that leadership decisions at the top made on an exclusively rational basis, are often predicated on fear because this kind of decision making tends to preclude any prior hands-on experience of the technology.

Earls says:

“We often think of strategy as some kind of theoretical conceptual thing. The key is to just make some stuff and do it. Then get to the next bit and make another decision.”

Non-singularity

Earls posits that the flip side to these kinds of uncertainties is the potential for new possibilities to arise:

“Think about Einstein’s idea of future cone’s which is basically that the future is the possibility of almost anything happening. Some things at this end of the future cone are really unlikely. I’m going to be king of this country. It’s almost impossible. Some things are much more likely which is that I’m going to go fishing somewhere so those two things are both possibilities.”

Earls continues:

“We tend to see the future as being a singular thing because it’s much easier that way. Business forecasts still tend to be done about what precisely is going to happen and so we sign up to plans and targets. We all know it’s not like that. I’ve learnt that you have to look at lots of possibilities.”

A non-singular perspective was the basis of Steve Jobs’ Stanford University talk in which he explained how a series of random events, captured retrospectively from memory, led to his development of Apple.

Similarly, Shell’s ‘Blueprint or Scramble‘ vision for planetary transformation, based on non-singularity, is the inspiration for US Colonel Larry Wilkerson’s geopolitical outlook and strategic thinking.

There is a clear need for business to be re-imagined and re-designed in new, creative and innovative ways, equivalent to Blueprint or Scramble, because economies are falling apart. But this is a difficult ask especially since many companies still tend to be driven by the short-term maximization of shareholder profits.

The creative thinkers in business are those individuals like Yvon Chouinard whose business ethos is centred on the notion that companies aren’t there to solely make money, but to endure. Chouinard’s success is a testament to his business purpose and his staff’s productivity and engagement.

The key question that needs to be asked in the battle for efficiency, is why in most companies is staff turnover so high and productivity so low? In fact, we have to go back to the Great Depression to see growth as anaemic as it is at the moment.

Burning platforms

How is it possible for individuals to then go into a business with that macro economic environment with something really different?

Earl’s is of the view that it’s actually much easier to do different things now because new ideas are prerequisites to getting ahead of rivals.

The potential to disrupt established businesses as a consequence of new ideas means that ‘burning platform’ propositions are likely to create these disruptions at rapid speeds.

In fact, Earls says that it’s much easier to make a change proposition happen than it was in the middle of the last decade.

“More than two thirds of all mergers and acquisitions reduce shareholder value and that’s because of people”, says Earls.

What this appears to reveal is the inability of corporations to successfully copy and paste innovation and creativity, mainly because adapting to change is difficult.

“The thing I observe”, says Earls, “is that organizations seem to be really clear that they can just press a button and it will change direction. There is a high level strategy which is we’re now going to do this and all I have to do is go bing.”

The key point here, is that uncertainty is best embraced because there is no alternative other than to live alongside it. Earls says that, in his experience, companies have often lost touch with reality.

“They have a very singular story for themselves about how they got to where they are and where tomorrow is going to. They are often very divergent with the facts which is why someone like me gets called in”, says Earls.

A key factor that many companies tend to neglect, is the importance of the human experience in the workplace. Nicole Yershon says to make it more human, CEOs need to lead from a position of honesty, to be brave and fearless and to not be afraid of saying unpopular things.

Yershon posits that an unusual business is one based on a true non-hierarchical leadership that’s willing to acknowledge that there’s a problem and be prepared to roll up their sleeves and say how can we all solve this based on actions.