By Jim Stroup
The two great elements of competitive advantage, so clearly obvious yet so elusive, are mission and execution. Simply put, know what it is you do, then do it. Very few organizations are able to develop even an adequate focus on these elements. Those that do possess an inherent competitive advantage of inestimable value. It is a tool that offers an intellectual framework and an organizational sense of balance, increasing both momentum and agility.
KISS
Albert Einstein purportedly said, “Physics should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” Not just physics, but everything should be no simpler than possible--and no more complicated than necessary. Unfortunately, it is exceedingly difficult to find, and to consistently navigate, the safe zone between. Managers are often seduced by oversimplified formulas touted as solutions, but which inevitably prove to be shallow and inflexible. On the other hand, there are temptations in every quarter driving us to overcomplicate. While we often reel with disappointment from one simplistic promise to another, it is the insidious tendency to overcomplicate that proves the more enduring and damaging.
There is great satisfaction in creating complex procedures and Byzantine organizations. It helps convince managers that they are intelligent and accomplished. It also constitutes a sort of flak which they can throw up to confuse those, whether analysts or shareholders, who keep pressing them for results. But the truth is that these ungainly concoctions are not the result of managerial brilliance but the sclerotic accretions of ill-discipline.
Montaigne said, “No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.” Unfortunately, these days, an awful lot of wind is used up in just identifying the port. Forget the poetry and the lofty rhetoric. Leave the consultant-facilitated vision-drafting sessions for senior executives in glamorous off-site locations. Let your misguided competitors indulge in unveiling the marble-engraved products of such nonsense in their corporate headquarters. As for you, keep it simple.
The best way to find out what you do is to ask those most likely to know (and, by the way, senior executives are typically not in this group). Ask your front-line employees. Ask your sales staff. Ask your vendors and your customers. Ask your competitors. You might be surprised--even inspired--to learn what others think it is that you do. Then, ask certain of them, especially your customers, what they want you to do, what they would like to be able to gain from your services. Ask them what problems they identify with your organization.
This is the critical step, so do it right. The greatest--and most common--error made in problem-solving is failing to properly frame, or define, the problem. Take the time to learn what object you should be directing your attention to. Avoid being among those who mistake activity for forward motion.
The lazy and the stupid
Years ago, a German field commander observed that since all military officers are either smart or stupid, and also either energetic or lazy, it is relatively simple, really, to classify them for assignment. The smart and energetic ones, for example, treat every tasking with equal importance, and they work as hard as can be on all of them. As a consequence, they make great staff officers: devoted, tireless, and, best of all, undiscriminating.
The smart and lazy ones, on the other hand, make great commanders. They prioritize with ruthless institutional selfishness, determining which of their taskings are really vital to mission accomplishment, focusing on those, and, with the most blithe disinterest, simply ignoring the rest.
As for the stupid officers, the lazy ones can be tolerated, but the stupid and energetic ones are a grave danger, and need to be discovered and weeded out before they destroy the unit from within.
There certainly is an often-missed organizational lesson in the moral of the stupid and energetic manager, but let's stick here with that of the smart and lazy one. Managers like this are more accurately seen as disciplined and focused. What, exactly, is their secret?
Managerial laziness
They have developed command focus. This is the threefold ability, or discipline, to: 1) keep your eye on the goal, 2) prioritize by working only on those activities that advance you toward your goal, and 3) prioritize by ignoring all the distractions which will run you aground short of your goal.
Remember, this is really only practical when the validity and efficacy of the goal is inherently sensible and widely acknowledged and agreed. If your organization's strategic vision and operational goals are only found hanging, impressively framed, in the lobby, then forget it: You're doomed to drift aimlessly and to wash up on the first reef you strike, confusing it for your destination. If, however, your strategy and goals are sharp and straightforward, then you know how to identify the fair winds from the foul, and how to trim your organizational sails to them.
The flip side of activity
Prioritizing doesn't mean what to do first, or what to do in which order. It means what to do, and what to ignore. The hardest part, and the one that actually requires the greatest and most ruthless discipline, is to be inactive where that is vital to advancing (or, more typically, to removing impediments to the advancement of) your organization toward its goals. These temptations come from both without and within.
Warren Buffet once remarked that CEO’s must know when to be active--and when to resist the temptation to act. When everyone is doing M&A deals, downsizing, globalizing, process re-engineering, aggressively expanding their markets, “visioning,” or the like, maybe you should just take a look at your business model and, if you're on track, stay there. Your obligations are to your shareholders and your business--not to the press or the consultants banging on your door. Your goal is to define what is good for your business and to execute it--not to let others make those determinations for you, and to simply slot in alongside all the other cows in the herd stampeding along, panicked to avoid missing the latest managerial fad.
But avoiding ill-disciplined activity within your organization is just as important. Discipline is defined as doing that which advances you toward accomplishment of your valid goals. Is your method of operating your business doing that? Take a look at your procedures, your reporting requirements, and your intra-organizational communications. Which are really necessary, and which not? Which actually inform and advance organizational productivity, and which simply satisfy an ill-disciplined and ill-defined instinct for accumulation of irrelevant detail and imposition of pointless control?
The competitive organization's managerial culture is one that implicitly subjects every proposed activity to this sort of scrutiny--and not just by managers, but by employees. Everyone should know what the organization's goals are, and how what they are doing contributes to achieving them. If they don't see that connection, they should be encouraged to question the tasking. Doing so will reinforce the goals, and either remove pointless activities or increase organizational energy directed at relevant ones.
The competitive organization has the institutional discipline to be both smart and lazy. Does yours?
Jim Stroup is an organizational leadership and strategy consultant, and the author of Managing Leadership. See http://www.managingleadership.com, or e-mail jhs@managingleadership.com.
