In a recent post, I included a video from There's Something About Mary. The video was of the scene where Ben Stiller picks up the hitchhiker whose brilliant business idea is a 7 minute abs workout program to compete with the market leader, the 8 minute abs program.
Stiller points out that the idea is all well and good until someone else comes out with a 6 minute abs program.
Well today, my friends, I have found the 6 minute abs program!
A few weeks ago I wrote about change. I identified two types of change: evolutionary and revolutionary. I focused that post on evolutionary change and promised to come back with my thoughts on revolutionary change.
If you've been waiting for the Part II (and you know who you are) then your dreams are about to become reality.
I should tell you that I have a greater personal affinity for revolutionary change. It's not that I don't think both types are equally necessary. They absolutely are. It's just that my heart lies more with revolutionary change. You may see that affinity in the way I write about change but please don't take this as an intellectual position that one is more important than the other.
I do hope you will go back and read the post on evolutionary change. But here's a quick synopsis: Evolutionary change is about making stuff work and work better. It takes early form ideas and their early implementations and slowly makes them better to the point where they work really well. Evolutionary change is what makes society work.
So what about revolutionary change? We'll come to that in a moment. But first I feel a responsibility to point out that revolutionary change is not, necessarily, an armed insurrection. Armed insurrections are, certainly, one form of revolutionary change but I will speak more generally about revolutionary change. Furthermore, please do not mistake my passion for revolutionary change as support for armed insurrection. I am not one of those who likes to literally storm barricades. Please contact your local law enforcement agency for any details on the legality of armed insurrection in your jurisdiction.
And now we can talk revolutionary change.
1) What is it? This is the rapid progress that constitutes major shifts in thinking and, therefore, behavior. This takes society from a belief that the answer is 3 to a belief that the answer is Q. Or guacamole.
Revolutionary change is a change in a significant paradigm, framework, perspective, mental model. Use whatever bit of jargon you like. The point is that it is a major qualitative change in thinking.
When I say that revolutionary change is rapid, I do not mean to indicate chronological rapidity. Revolutionary change may happen very slowly over time. Ideas ferment. They are discussed and debated. This can take centuries. Instead, I mean logical rapidity. Revolutionary change is discontinuous. The intellectual activity that led to the American Revolution stretched very far back in time from 1775. One could make a case that it stretched back at least 560 years to the Magna Carta. Still, to people not involved in the intellectual or creative activity behind the scenes, there is often a single moment in time that delineates the old world from the new. At one point there was a shot heard round the world and the colonies were in rebellion.
Great! After having disassociated myself from armed insurrection, I give you an example of armed insurrection to describe revolutionary change. Here's another example: gay marriage. The arguments in favor of legalizing gay marriage in the U.S. are decades old. But today, Vermont started legally marrying gays. Yesterday they didn't. Today they do. See?
2) What is it used for? Revolutionary change is designed to replace foundational ideas (whether for an individual, a business, a state, a society...) that are either wrong or that simply have run their course as means of guiding or inspiring behavior. Newtonian Physics worked well for a while. It wasn't useless. But Einsteinian Physics was found to be a much better theory.
As I pointed out in the other post, evolutionary change is designed to increase functional performance. It makes things better. But at some point the evolution runs out of steam because the guiding principles behind it have produced all of the improvements that they possibly can. When that happens, a revolution is needed. A new idea. Something to inspire continued progress.
3) What does it contribute? New ideas and the massive shifts in thinking that lead to great new behaviors, policies and products. Revolutionary change is the engine that drives progress in the world. Even though, as I pointed out earlier, evolutionary change is critical, evolutionary change needs something upon which to exercise its evolutionary powers. Something has to create the new ideas and the prototypes that will serve as fodder for the processes of evolutionary change. And that something, my friends, is revolutionary change.
4) What are its flaws? The biggest flaw is that it's messy. The qualities that make it so valuable also, unavoidably, make it messy. Because it brings about significant change and we are rarely ready to completely absorb that change and deal with its implications and effects.
This messiness is also manifest in the behind-the-scenes intellectual and political ferment leading up to the discontinuous effects. Revolutionary change can cause significant discord because not all people agree. Not everyone agrees that a fundamental change is needed. And even those who agree will often disagree on which revolutionary path to follow. Revolution demands quite a bit of faith precisely because it is so new and untested. And it is difficult to get everyone to agree on matters of faith. This sort of messiness sometimes ends up in actual armed insurrections which may be necessary at times but certainly impose a significant cost on everyone involved.
Another flaw is that revolutionary change is so inspiring that it can pull people away from taking the time to evolve ideas and make them better. The prospect of new ideas, new behaviors, new products can be so sultry and alluring that people may too hastily discard the existing ideas. Revolutionary change may cause people to treat everything as a fad and make it more difficult for them to respect the sort or stability that most people need to live healthy well-adjusted lives.
5) How do you create revolutionary change? You ask lots of "why" and "what if" questions. You fantasize. You challenge the most sacred laws. Of religion, society, culture and, yes, nature.
BTW, when I say that you challenge these laws I do not mean that you go around acting rude or pissing people off. I mean that you challenge them in your mind. You play with them mentally to see whether they are really true and necessary. You discuss with others. 6) What kind of people are good at revolutionary change? People who can hold two opposing thoughts in their mind at once. People who can acknowledge that objects fall when dropped but also imagine a world where objects can fly.
People who just have an ability to look at the world and see it as it could be rather than as it is. People who can see past (or through) the structures that have been created and understand the underlying principles behind them. And then destroy those principles.
People who are more comfortable than others being laughed at. People who are more inspired by their ideas than they are by the opinions that others have of them. Because let's face it. The Wright Brothers probably took a lot of shit. As Emerson said, "for non-conformity the world whips you with its displeasure." So true. You've got to be able to tolerate the whipping. This is not masochism. I'm not talking about people who just like being whipped. This would actually be very conformist. I'm talking about people who can tolerate the whipping. Who either don't feel it because they are so wrapped up in the inspirational content of their ideas or who feel it but can live with it because they value truth and progress more than the feeling of not being whipped.
Leaders of revolutionary change must have lots of courage. Which is a topic I hope to address in an upcoming post.
To quickly sum up both of my recent posts on change, evolutionary change makes society work better today. Revolutionary change allows it to continue working tomorrow. Balancing the two types of change and the need for some modicum of stability is a tricky task. Leaders must consciously plan for this lest their institution sway too far to an extreme, sacrificing today for tomorrow, tomorrow for today or simply whipsawing back and forth so quickly that people can never feel settled in their lives.
You can't love a person on command. Love, respect, admiration... all of these must be earned. They are organic involuntary responses to stimulus. (Not that your attitude going-in doesn't make it more or less easy.) If I want you to love me, I can't just ask you to because you can't just agree to. Instead, I have to inspire you to love me. I have to engage in the behaviors that will make you love me (if the underlying conditions are favorable).
So if this is true for love, why do you think that asking me to be your fan on Facebook is going to work? I may like you. I may love you. But I cannot be your fan unless...well, I'm your fan. So don't put the onus on me by asking. Put the onus on yourself to inspire me to identify as your fan, by engaging in the sorts of inspirational behaviors that will automatically produce fan-ness in me.
Asking me to be your fan is like a lawyer simply admitting that he doesn't have a case and just falling on the mercy of the court. It's like telling me that there is no good reason I should be your fan but asking me to please ignore that and do it anyway.
Is that how you think you can succeed?
C'mon. You can do better. Show me your greatness. Share your excellence with me. Inspire me. If you don't have any greatness, excellence or inspiration then you do not deserve fans. If you do, you will not need to ask for them.
In my last post, I wrote about the search for precious things as requiring somewhat of a hands off approach. I wrote that the search for beauty cannot be successful because beauty is inside of you and until you stop searching you can never find it.
I think this idea applies to business as well. I think that the path to profit and shareholder value has to come from a focus within rather than on a search for shareholder value.
In fact, I think just saying "shareholder value" - as impressive as it might sound to the Harvard Business Review crowd - destroys value.
The search for shareholder value makes you look for operational efficiencies. It turns your attention to maximizing your IP - brands, technologies, etc. It calls on you to look out there for acquisitions that can round out your portfolio... All well and good.
But I think it is the wrong frame.
And so I'd like to propose an alternate frame. I'll call it "Employee Value" for the HBR crowd. I could call it "love" for you hippies. Call it whatever you like. But the idea is that if you want to make lots of money, focus on your people. Now, of course, every company dribbles out the corporate pablum about "our people are our best assets." I'd love to see a study on the companies that say things like this. I suspect you'd find them to be the least pleasant places to work. The least inspiring.
I'm not talking about your slogan. I'm talking about whether you really understand what you have in those people. Whether you really understand that in the hearts, minds and souls lies the jackpot you want to hand over to those shareholders.
People naturally seek excellence, beauty, greatness. Their natural propensity to search for it knows very few bounds. It does not respect your brand strategy. Your customer segmentation. Your portfolio. It just wants to create greatness. Your people will have great ideas. Let them run with these ideas. I'm not saying go execute every idea. I'm saying take off the P&L / shareholder value lenses and put on the "employee value" lenses. Give your people every opportunity to pursue their passions. Help them. Respect them. Encourage them. Yes, make sure they adhere to societal standards and your business values. But if you truly encourage them to find their greatness and then you provide the tools to commercialize that greatness (with as little editing as possible), you will succeed wildly.
If you need your glasses or that missing sock, your best bet is to look for them.
But many of the most precious things in the world cannot be found by looking for them. In fact, looking for them almost guarantees that you will never find them.
You cannot write a beautiful poem by sitting down and searching for beautiful words and sentiments. You do not create beautiful music by looking for beautiful combinations of sounds. You cannot produce a beautiful photograph by looking for beautiful scenery. You do not experience transcendent moments of love, wisdom or the divine by carving out time and setting your mind to it.
These precious things flee from your efforts as fast as you try to catch them. While you are trying to hunt them down out there, they lodge themselves ever deeper in your soul - where they resided all along.
The poem, the music, the photo... they are not out there. You will expend your life in the search for this beauty if you look outside. They are inside of you. If you wish to find them you have to stop trying. You have to let go of your goals and objectives. You have to abandon your plans. You have to stop feeling so proud or confident in your skills. You have to take off the lenses that have helped you see so clearly the specks of dust that are on your eyes at the expense of the majesty of the world that lies just one inch in front of your face and stretches out forever within your grasp.
Yes, you have to prepare yourself for this beauty. To write a beautiful poem you must have a vocabulary. To produce a beautiful photo you must have a camera and know how to use it. But you do not find the scene that will become your beautiful photo. It finds you. It finds you if you are not looking. It finds you when your heart is open to it and your mind is clear.
When you quiet the voices inside your head that tell you this and that path to success, that encourage you to make your mark, that point out to you all of those people and circumstances that have robbed you of what should have been yours... Only then in the peace of not wanting or needing, of not looking for greatness and beauty, will beauty and greatness reveal themselves to you. It will come from within. You will know it right away. And whether you choose to share it with others in the form of a poem, a symphony or a photograph, it will be your beauty that they see.
Change. It's been a favorite topic of discussion for some time now. The election of our first black President. Massive shifts in the economy. The impact on society of the internet. Heck, it's even a favorite topic of the folks who hang out on street corners.
So I thought I'd write a bit about change.
It seems to me there are two kinds of change: evolutionary change and revolutionary change. This post will focus on evolutionary change. I'll take up revolutionary change in my next blog post. Partly because I want to create a bit of suspense for both of my readers. And partly because I'm most of the way through a Westmalle Tripel and I want to enjoy the buzz by lounging around and watching some TV.
OK. Evolutionary change. Here goes.
1) What is it? This is the slow progress that is the most common form of change. This is the form of change that takes you from a rough draft to a solid and functional first draft, a first draft to a finished work and a finished work to version 2, 3, etc. Evolutionary change ceases to have utility when the object it changes already offers as much value to its users as they need.
2) What is it used for? Evolutionary change is designed to increase the functional performance of an institution be it a business, a state, a social group, etc. It makes things work better. And we need things to work better. Garbage bags still rip too damn often. That's got to stop.
3) What does it contribute? Well, better garbage bags didn't you read what I just wrote?! Evolutionary change improves our quality of life, expands our ability to influence our environment and gives jobs to politicians who generally are unsuited for honest jobs. It also gave us opposable thumbs.
4) What are its flaws? The principle flaw is that it hypnotizes people so they don't know when to quit. Evolutionary change is so absorbing that it makes its practitioners want to keep going and making whatever they focus on better and better. But, you see, at some point, my garbage bag is going to be really good. It won't rip ever. It will have a nice fragrance and absolutely prevent any bad odor from getting out. It will have a cushiony handle and be easy to carry... Then I'll be happy.
But the practitioners of evolutionary change won't quit. They will keep looking for additional ways to improve my garbage bags even though I'm done with the whole garbage bag evolution thing. Why? Because they will have told themselves a story about how goddamn important garbage bags are and how they, alone, are the experts in garbage bags. And how there are "unmet needs." They will forget that, although they spend all day thinking about garbage bags, the people for whom they make the garbage bags don't.
Evolutionary change lulls us into a trance because it is continuous. You can always be just a little bit better. And we all want to be better. So we walk down that path. Bit by bit. We like the accolades we get. It feels good. If we take one more step we know we'll get another Scooby snack. We won't realize that the nutritional value we derive from those Scooby snacks decreases with each additional one we ingest. We won't realize that seven minute abs is about as good as we need it to be.
5) How do you create evolutionary change? You find annoyances in your life. Like leaky garbage bags. You ask lots of "how" questions. You observe the minutiae of life. How things work. You dive really deep into a given area. You experiment. A lot.
6) What kind of people are good at evolutionary change? People who have a very high attention to detail. People who are patient. After all, my ultimate garbage bag is not going to be built in a day. [BTW, I did not start writing this post with the intention of mentioning garbage bags at all. I certainly didn't intend to use them as a running example. But this is how it goes. For whatever reason, I'm fixated on garbage bags now. It's weird. Really.] People who like to see fast results. Yes, I also said that they are patient. What I mean is that they are patient to get it right. But they like to see steady improvement.
Alright. That's pretty much all I have to say about evolutionary change. I'll just sum up by pointing out how critically important evolutionary change is. This is what makes stuff work well in society. Whether that stuff is a government program, a car, our televisions or, yes, you guessed it: the goddamn garbage bag.
There's a new Starbucks near my house on Rt. 4 just west of the George Washington Bridge. They've got a sign out front advertising the fact that they are open 24 hours / day and that they have drive-thru service.
Great. I'm sure that's convenient for lots of folks.
But Starbucks isn't about convenience. Not that they are about inconvenience, but they are not a convenience store.
Starbucks is an indulgence. It's an experience that goes beyond the coffee. Or at least that is what propelled its growth for so long. Before they lost their way and found out what happens to brands that lose their way.
Starbucks has always been about re-creating that Italian coffee experience in a way that American consumers could enjoy. It's the third place away from home and office where you can enjoy seeing your coffee made and even sit down to enjoy the beverage with some measure of tranquility.
What about 24 hour drive-thru tells you this will be an indulgent experience? 24 hour drive-thru is for fuel. Actual fuel or oil for your car. Or just crappy junk food like Twinkies that you pick up at the little store at the rest stop to fuel your road trip.
24 hour drive-thru does not at all fit the Starbucks brand. If this is how they choose to compete, they will have their ass handed to them by McDonald's.
Instead, they need to stick to their mission. And if they need to grow and have an opportunity to acquire valuable real estate on key highways, go ahead and start a new brand that's all about convenience with high quality. You cannot be all things to all people.
