“Humanity certainly needs practical men, who get the most out of their work, and, without forgetting the general good, safeguard their own interests. But humanity also needs dreamers, for whom the disinterested development of an enterprise is so captivating that it becomes impossible for them to devote their care to their own material profit.”
In our ROI-driven, accountability-dominated business environment, we’ve come to revere the former, practically minded executives, at the expense of the latter, dreamier type. Many think like Tim Kastelle, who argues on his site that you always need to know where you’re going if you are ever to get anywhere, but I think history shows that’s not really true. read more…
Peter Drucker once said that “management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” My father had a more practical view, he used to tell me that “a leader is one who has followers.” (If you think about it for a second, it’s wiser than it first appears).
It seems that almost everybody has their own view of what a leader is and how to go about being a good one, but there doesn’t seem to be an obvious formula. Steve Jobs and Mahatma Gandhi were both unquestionably great leaders, but couldn’t have been more different.
The truth is, there is no one path to leadership. The personalities of great leaders are as diverse as people can possibly have. Their one commonality is that they are distinct individuals, unmistakable for anyone but themselves. And therein lies their secret, they forge their own path, even when they themselves might not know where they are going.
Strategy guru Michael Porter likes to say that strategy is about making choices and indeed it is. Good strategy is as much about what you don’t do as it is what you do.
So it is not surprising that his former colleague, Roger Martin, along with A. G. Lafley, former CEO of Proctor and Gamble, focus on two of the most important choices in their new book Playing to Win: Where to play and how to win?
The book is notable in that it not only presents a coherent strategic framework, but also walks through how it was successfully applied to business problems at P&G. What it lacks, however, is a clear basis for making decisions about where to play and how to win for other businesses, especially ones that aren’t multinational conglomerates.
If major institutions, with a wealth of resources and expertise at their disposal, are still vulnerable, what chance do the rest of us have?
In fact, the data do paint a grim picture. A recent study found that 90% of companies were breached at least once in the past 12 months. However, while the situation is difficult, it is not hopeless. Like any other form of attack, the first step towards protection and prevention begins with understanding the threat. Here’s an overview:
Computers have been around for awhile. For a long time though, nobody could say if they were doing us any good or not. As economist Robert Solow put itin 1987, “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.”
MIT researcher called Erik Brynjolfsson called this the Productivity Paradox and had some ideas about why it persisted, such as time lags for the benefits to take hold and the difficulty of measurement, but the truth was that no one really if IT investment was profitable or not.
How times change. Now the worry is not whether investment in technology is productive or not, but whether we are. Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee now have a new book out spelling out in detail how machines are displacing the work of humans. This is not idle speculation or science fiction, it’s very real, very scary and happening as we speak.
The marketing world, in large part, can be split into two camps. Traditionalists, most notably Bob Hoffman at The Ad Contrarian believe that nothing has really changed except the tools. After all, while there has been a revolution in technology, basic human nature remains the same.
Digital advocates, on the other hand, are sure that the realm of communication has changed so completely that the old rules have lost relevance. They believe that the traditionalists are just fooling themselves, grasping at any straw in order to avoid changing their old, tired ways.
Having spent time in both camps, I have sympathy for both points of view. I’m equally frustrated with those who try to fit new media into old models and those who think that every shiny object represents a new paradigm. Nevertheless, it’s clear that something fundamental has changed and it starts with one of marketing’s most basic assumptions.
The first decade of the 20th century was ripe with new discoveries. Einstein had his miracle year, Mendel’s genetics were uncovered once again, Ford created his assembly line and the Wrights built their plane.
Still, to our modern eyes, life at the time was primitive. Most people did not have electricity, indoor plumbing or a telephone. Life expectancy was around 47 years and women did not even have the right to vote. We’ve come a long way since then.
In the 20th century we learned to master the physical world and discovered a strange, subatomic one underneath. These advances fueled a historic creation of wealth. In this new century, we will master the quantum universe as well as the complex, emergent code of our own biology and the benefits, as well as the dangers, will be even greater.
Management fads come and go. Core Competency, Value Chains, Reinvention and others have all had their day in the sun. Each had its merits and demerits, became overhyped and left us disillusioned until we found new promise in the next management craze.
Through it all, executives of every generation and industry have to manage and motivate their people, which is easier said than done. After all, control is an illusion. Good managers know that lunatics run the asylum and that their job is to help them run it right.
As the organization grows, it becomes a whole lot tougher. There’s less personal interaction, more formality and it becomes hard to maintain passion and purpose. Fortunately, increasing scale doesn’t have to result in a loss of momentum, but it does require less reliance on organization charts and a new focus on informal relationships.
In the classic TV show Dragnet, Sergeant Joe Friday famously admonished witnesses to give him “just the facts.” Generations of business executives have adopted the same approach, demanding substantiation rather than conjecture.
The problem is that the world is a confusing place and there are plenty of facts to go around. A quick Google search is all that is required to find the facts to support any argument. Studies conflict with other studies, contexts shift and the game goes on.
Yet even that far understates the problem. Even truths born out by rigorous analysis are often laid asunder by a rapidly changing world. Last year’s truths are often today’s red herrings. As rapid technological change transforms politics, culture and economics, we need a new approach that is based less on false certainty and more on simulation.
Starting a new business is hard. I should know. Over the course of my career I’ve started many, with varied results. I’m not alone either, about one third of businesses fail in their first two years.
Keeping one successful isn’t any easier. The average life expectancy for a company on the Fortune 500 has declined from 75 years to 15 years, so even the most successful business falter. There are no guarantees.
Nevertheless, some manage to buck the trend. Proctor and Gamble, 3M and IBM have all thrived for a century or more, prospering through countless business and technological cycles in widely divergent industries. While there is no silver bullet, every business needs to answer basic questions about how will they create, deliver, capture and maintain value.
Or install manually
Copy and paste the following Google tag code onto every page of your website, immediately after the element. Don’t add more than one Google tag to each page.
: Where to play and how to win?
out spelling out in detail how machines are displacing the work of humans. This is not idle speculation or science fiction, it’s very real, very scary and happening as we speak.
