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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nWhy does so much management advice sound reasonable but turn out to be of little value? Most readers will know what I mean. Take the following guidance on how companies can \u2018accelerate their agile transformation\u2019:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
- Create a C-suite with an agile mindset<\/li>
- Hire and develop the right mix of talent<\/li>
- Foster an agile-friendly culture and organizational structure<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n
What\u2019s not to like? Well, that\u2019s the problem. The first test of any management advice is to ask, \u201cIs the opposite also true?\u201d If not, then the statement is a simple truism like each of those above. Clearly one wouldn\u2019t want a C-suite with an anti-agile mindset nor a firm with the wrong mix of talent and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nevertheless, some truisms bear restating because they deal with priorities \u2013 necessary conditions \u2013 without which change efforts may fail. So, we should look at this advice more closely. The problem is that each of the sentences is a linguistic trick. It starts with a verb, which makes it sound like an action, but it\u2019s really an achievement, a desirable outcome. This is why one can\u2019t disagree with them. They are like cut flowers: the spectacular result of a creative process but not its cause<\/em>. They are emblems of success, outputs not inputs. To be truly helpful these generic \u2018whats\u2019 will have to be turned into specific \u2018hows\u2019 \u2013 how to \u2018create a C-suite with an agile mindset\u2019 in this <\/em>organization, in our <\/em>situation, with these <\/em>people, right here<\/em>, right now<\/em>. And that\u2019s where things get difficult. Every organization is different: history and context matter. Priorities will differ and what works in one situation may not work in another. And in the end it will turn out that the cluster of attitudes we call an \u2018agile mindset\u2019, like so many other \u2018success factors\u2019, is itself an emergent property, a consequence <\/em>of a successful change effort, not its cause<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many writers gloss over these problems by treating corporations as if they were rational decision-makers, actors in their own right, with clear goals. Companies are said to have \u2018found ways to infuse a higher-purpose calling into their culture\u2019, they \u2018leverage their core capabilities to enter new growth markets\u2019 and \u2018unleash the creative abilities of their people\u2019. Personifying corporations as actors in their own right may be useful for headlines but it\u2019s unhelpful when we are trying to understand cause-and-effect in complex systems. When The New York Times <\/em>publishes a report that \u201cBoeing Fired Its Leader\u201d its journalists are using writers\u2019 shorthand to report the outcome of a complex process, not to describe the decision of a lone actor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What Is To Be Done? Grow Your Own Flowers!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Peter Drucker contended that a every business had two tasks: the one administrative, the other entrepreneurial. Administration is needed to make the today\u2019s business effective (efficiency is a minimum condition) and entrepreneurship is needed to create tomorrow\u2019s business. These are the twin elements of performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, these two activities demand different logics, the one analytic and the other integrative. Administrative logic is that of the engineer: breaking down complicated mechanisms into their elements, identify causes and optimizing the parts to improve the whole. Or perhaps it that of the plumber: clearing blockages and stopping leaks. Whatever the metaphor, it is an analytic process and it has been the default approach for Anglo-American managers for the past seventy years. It is necessary but not sufficient. Used on its own, it has been the root cause of a lot of true-but-useless management advice that ignores history and context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the logic of entrepreneurship is integrative, synthesizing rather than analytic. It is more like that of a gardener than a plumber, someone who brings together people and resources: selecting people for their growth potential and the contributions they can make and then creating and maintaining the conditions in which they can grow, individually and collectively. It\u2019s about anticipating effects through pattern recognition developed through experience from the past, mixed with a vision of future. Gone are the clarity and certainty of administration to be replaced by the confusion and uncertainty of innovation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The twin logics are often described as scientific management<\/em> and humanistic management<\/em> respectively, but the relationship between them has been a vexed one. As recently as a decade ago Adrian Wooldridge, Bagehot columnist for The Economist<\/em>, described it as a \u2018battleground\u2019 between hard and soft management. Paradoxically, successful entrepreneurial activities have plenty of vision, leavened with strict observance to detail and process There is a complex dynamic between contradictory, yet interdependent processes. The result is dilemmas that have to be lived, rather than problems to be solved. With dilemmas, opposites are always true, depending on the context. To plan for the future we have to know the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thus the practice of management is all about sense-making, using the integrative powers of narrative to make sense of the situation in which the enterprise finds itself, what the people know and can do and the actions the situation demands. It is about creating the conditions for emergence. It\u2019s about helping individuals understand their own stories, make meaning from their experiences and anticipating what might happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ancient Wisdom<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
This blog began with some simple truisms so it\u2019s fitting that it should end with some profound truths. This is the wisdom from the past that, it sometimes seems, we have to keep on discovering and rediscovering through experience:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over a century ago, management pioneer Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933), one of Drucker\u2019s greatest resources wrote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe skillful leader then does not rely on personal force; he (sic) controls his group not by dominating it but by expressing it. He stimulates what is best in us; he unifies and concentrates what we feel only gropingly and scatteringly, but he never gets away from the current of which we and he are both an integral part. He is a leader who gives form to the inchoate energy in every man. The person who influences me most is not he who does great deeds but he who makes me feel that I can do great deeds.\u201d (The New State<\/em>, 1918)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And 1,500 years before Follett, Lao Tzu, the semi-legendary author of the Tao Te Ching<\/em>, wrote something like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Learn from the people<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Plan with the people<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Begin with what they have<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Build on what they know<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of the best leaders<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When their task is accomplished<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The people all remark<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe have done it ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
About the Author: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
David Hurst<\/strong> is a speaker, writer and management educator <\/em>(www.davidkhurst.com<\/a>). His most recent book is The New Ecology of Leadership: Business Mastery in a Chaotic World (Columbia University Press 2012)<\/em> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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