oakleafconsulting.com Blog

Knowledge is leverage. The question is, in a fact-based management culture, how do you sort through the avalanche of business data to begin to distill it into usable knowledge? The 2006 book “The Ultimate Question: Driving Good Profits and True Growth” posed this as the answer – ask customers to grade their willingness to recommend a company/product to a colleague or friend on an eleven point scale (0-10). This single question doesn’t close the deal on acquiring usable knowledge – data yes, information maybe, knowledge no, and wisdom far from it. Gauging your strategic choices isn’t that simple, although we all wish it was. However, this question should trigger needed customer-centric thought. This question’s answers ought to drive you deep into your corporate matrix of metrics to distill the plethora of raw data into usable information that can be molded into the knowledge of what makes a successful customer relationship for your business. If you then compile the pieces of acquired knowledge a central argument emerges, the trust-factor – a kernel of wisdom.

Just like our personal life, business life is chock-full of ‘Chutes and Ladders’ that build/destroy sustain/impede trust and relationships. In our electronically connected world, landing on a ‘Chute’ may well result in ‘game over’ for a business. Customer perception isn’t a game of chance. For better or worse it is the outcome of strategies cascading into principles that drive real-time ‘habits’ that are deeply embedded in the nature of a company. Success comes through a discipline of systematically recognizing and avoiding the ‘Chutes’ and making the ‘Ladders’ happen.

With that in mind, the source of market leverage lies in basics – the length and strength of the ‘lever arm’ (trust) and the relative positioning of the ‘pivot points’. Below is a short list of pivot points that are easier seen in hindsight (particularly when trying to recover from undesired outcomes) but can and should be considered in forethought. Visualize these ‘pivot points’ moving back and forth along the length of the ‘lever arm’ and the impact of their movement on your business.

The simple answer is no. The job does not make the person nor vice versa. People don’t change. If we each look back at the results of profile testing over the course of our careers, we’d find that to be true – we haven’t changed.

What is true is that the workplace is “theater”. While people don’t change, they do adapt. The typical recruiting or advancement questions are focused on how well a person will fill a particular role on the corporate stage – in what “Act” and in what “Scene”.

You might snicker but consider the array of business school seminars directed at “Professional Image” makeovers that aim to groom a person for “going on stage”. They don’t call them “Charm Schools” without reason.

Validated pre-employment and promotional fit testing is a slippery slope. There is an increasing reliance on both. If only the selection process was that simple – sit a person in front of a touch screen to poke away and let the artificial intelligence embedded in the software do your work.

There is one “scene” that has to be accounted for – how will a person respond when a “shitstorm” hits the “Corporate Kabuki Theater”. I don’t think there is a screening test for that. The bottom-line question is will a person own the organizational vision, pick up the flag and carry it forward in the face of adversity and seemingly overwhelming odds, or will they head for the exits.

Competency is the first pass/fail gate. Then onto “Fit” – is this a person who can and will embrace the vision. Actions are a person’s “voice”. Find the situations where the person being analyzed found themselves in a “predicament” and their actions will “tell” you who they are and what to expect. Fight or flight – throw other people under the bus – have another meeting – hide in the safety of negativity or did they take the risk of being for something and pursue it till it’s over.

The job doesn’t make the person, but how the person takes on the job when the going gets tough tells you who that person is.

‘Do the Math!’ is one of those conversation ending remarks that we have all been on either end of at one time or another.  It is a more polite form of – “Are you stuck on stupid?”

There are two kinds of ‘math’ in the world of business.  The first is the most obvious and as tactically important as it is strategic – an accounting system that works.  An accounting system’s mixed aims are problematic regardless of business size.  In larger organizations the conflicted aims are always between operations and finance functions.  Operations is always trying to figure out what is going on – and finance is trying to disguise or spin what is going on with the accounting system as the common ground.  In smaller businesses the problem is more simplistic – just getting the data into the system, and the impediment is always the burden of ‘too many hats’.

 A second kind of business ‘math’ is the strategic translation of feelings (your gut) using facts. Your gut is always going to be an indispensable part of any decision making process – you will never have all the facts.  But forward looking ‘math’ with the facts you do have in hand, and reflective ‘math’ during the on-going auditing of decisions is most often dysfunctional in organizations regardless size. Without a defined and disciplined ‘process’ of strategic thinking and implementation the future of a business falls on the fate of chance rather than risk. When the ‘math’ either works or it doesn’t is a pivotal point that is either seized and understood or lost and awaits the analysis of hindsight. ‘Doing the math’ is a continuous process and, in business, is a determinant of success or failure.

As we enter the final days of the 2010 political season in the U.S., our awareness of unethical and unscrupulous behavior rises to the surface. The voice inside us wakes up and starts talking and asking questions. What are the ethics of the main stream political strategy of “dirtying-up” an opponent? Is the domain of ethical behavior bounded only by money changing hands? Does unethical equate to illegal? Is there such a thing as ethically behaving badly? Is there a difference between unscrupulous and unethical behavior?

I recently completed the California Ethics Orientation training and out of the ca. 200 pages only about 2 focused on general behavior – the rest had money linked in. In the public sector, the umbrella legislative platform is usually entitled the “Uniform Code of Ethics”. Having read a few, there is so much legal jargon in these that they are virtually unintelligible.

In the private sector some companies and most professional associations have written ethical codes and standards of behavior. But in recent surveys almost half of those surveyed felt their company was behaving ethically.

So with all this behavior visible and swirly around us, are we falling victim to ethical apathy and indifference?

If you think about behavior as a mountain of possibilities, surrounding the mountain close to the base is a fence line. That fence separates legal from illegal behavior. Somewhere up higher on the mountain is a second fence that separates ethical from unethical. The posts that hold that fence are foundational principles (e.g. vested power whether in the public or private sector is for service; statements made should only be made in an objective and truthful manner; one shall not maliciously or falsely, directly or indirectly, injure the reputation and prospects of another, etc.). A bit further up the mountain is a third fence I’ll refer to as the “Stuck-on-Stupid” fence. It bounds behavior that is not illegal or unethical but just plain stupid.

Now take for example a body of work moving up the corporate structure or the academic world, and one receiver after another erases the name of the person before them, inserts their name implying the work is their own, and passes it forward. Is this illegal, unethical, plain stupid, or perfectly okay?

Try using the mountain and fence analogy to evaluate behavior – whether personal, in the public sector or the private sector. It might help us all break out of a state of indifference that we seem to have fallen into and start thinking again.

In any company or organization – from micro to Fortune 50 – the balancing struggle between freedom and order is constant.

Order is the foundation for continuous improvement. But freedom is the springboard for step change.

In response to an emergency, order becomes absolute. But in any number of other instances it is suffocating.

But when is enough order, enough? And when is freedom too much?

There is a constant dynamic of balancing going on throughout organizations. It never stops. But in most cases it is barely, if at all, conscious.

Every organization has mental muscle memory that governs the balance between freedom and order. It’s never neatly packaged; it’s never on the back of a credenza or in a handbook. But it does define who and what a company is. It’s that important.

Who is the mental muscle memory tender? How does it change and who changes it? How should it change? What should it change to? Where is the balance?

The mental muscle memory of an organization is the most frequently overlooked aspect of a company’s being. Those companies that tend it prosper – those that don’t decline.

Business life is full of them – just like our personal lives.  Dealing with them is not any easier.

“A good beginning makes a good ending.”  We all have first hand experience and understand that if you muck it up in the beginning, the middle and the end will never go well.  So why do we run right past that proverb’s wisdom even when we know better? 

“What the fool does in the end, the wise man does in the beginning.”  Too true, but many business launches and new ventures ignore that adage particularly when it involves digging in and developing a fundamental and pragmatic knowledge of the market.  So why in the “need for speed” or covered by the “cloak of secrecy” do we ignore that wisdom?

“Beginning is easy – Continuing is hard.”  No kidding, but why do we often go off on a business track unprepared for the inevitable adversity and challenges?

“The beginning is the half of every action.”  If only this were true.  I’d take half any day.

“A good ending makes for a good beginning”.  Yep.  Too often we hang on too long to a business idea gone badly.  Why is it so hard to let go, to move on?

Looking forward to the New Year, maybe the best business strategy would be to embrace the wisdom passed down to us by our grandmothers and apply it to our businesses.

An allegory is often a powerful way to gain insight or provide a conceptual bridge over personal mental roadblocks.
 

Understanding differences among the three distinct management styles – Bossing, Managing, and Leading – is something many wrestle with.
 

This may help.
 

Bossing is watching over someone while they dig a hole.
 

Managing is sending someone out with instructions to dig holes.