Post-modern management: Partnership more important than leadership in 2010
Professor Karl Moore from McGill, who did that interview with Michael Porter the other day on the future of business’ role in society, is back with a TED talk he gave on the future of post-modern management. He notes that as the internet creates a system of “algorithmic authority” and tears down the rigidity of authority, “leadership” and “management” will have less impact on team-building than partnership, especially for those under age thirty-five.
Given the role of larger and larger bureaucracies in many key industries, this reality will be quite disruptive.
Arik Johnson on the organizations of the future
The most important implications of any strategic trend is usually not that your organization must do something drastic, it is that your organization is obsolete and can’t respond effectively at all.
Case in point: newspapers and the Internet. It’s not so much that newspapers could have done something to maintain their business model of classified advertising, it’s that they need a brand new business model and structure to survive. If that is the major implication of the trends we track as strategic analysts, then we almost must develop skills to help organizations change quickly and painlessly.
On that note, check out this talk from Aurora WDC’s Arik Johnson on the future of organizations, recorded at last month’s Intelligence Collaborative meeting in Washington.
August Jackson: Be the change you want to see in the intelligence profession
A sneak preview of August Jackson’s presentation at the inaugural Intelligence Collaboration meeting coming up this Thursday.
An introduction to the Intelligence Collaborative
I’m very excited for our upcoming inaugural meeting, this Thursday of our new, increasingly global, professional society, The Intelligence Collaborative.
The following video explains what intelligence is, why we need to collaborate, and why now is the perfect moment.
Have a look at the video, and if you’re anywhere in the MidAtlantic region, consider a trip to our nation’s capital this Thursday. Tickets are free – just bring your interest in how social media will change the practice of intelligence.
Interview with Arik Johnson on the future of competitive intelligence
It is more than enough work thinking about how the world is changing. Exceedingly few people think about how people think 
about the changing world. I’m proud to say I know some great folks who are on the cutting edge of understanding intelligence and decision making. Here, we’ve got a copy of the latest Competitive Intelligence Podcast, the brainchild of August Jackson. This time, he’s interviewing our friend and colleague Arik Johnson of the intelligence consulting firm Aurora WDC, on his view of the present and future of intelligence and its effect on leadership. The interview is broad ranging
- A new paradigm of intelligence: scarcity of analysis instead of scarcity of information
- The “perpetual beta” mindset, one of rapidly-changing technology and reduced barriers to entry
- The next decade of competitive intelligence: CI 2020
- CI’s evolving role as a mechanism and process to correct for cognitive bias
- The importance of a customer-centric model in delivering intelligence
It’s a great year to revisit our assumptions on how decisions are made. This is a great discussion to get you kicked off.
The 2012 Pelosi GTxi SS/RT Sport Edition – Strategic Scenarios in a Time of Political Intervention
If you have a certain nostalgia for 1980s Soviet advertising, or if you’re interested in the current state of the semi-nationalized automobile industry, you’ll get a chuckle out of this “scenario,” an ad for the 2012 Pelosi GTxi SS/RT Sport.
It’s funny, and yes, it contains some fairly partisan political jabs. That kind of material is something I would studiously avoid in a professional context – especially this blog. That said, we’re not in ordinary times. I would say that the current level of government involvement now means that political analysis of industry developments is more important than ever.
As I have said previously, the government is no longer simply regulating industry or financing it through monetary policy – it is now managing companies with the taxpayers as stockholders who have a right to see their investments protected. This will necessarily require an analysis of politicians and their goals. This may mean our competitive analyses will lay bare political feelings in our own organizations. That was the risk of the U.S. Government’s bailout policies, a dramatically-increased politicization of the American – and global – business environment. And here we are.
Douglas Rushkoff on the future of value creation- why the web broke everything (but it’s a good thing)
I am glad to see Douglas Ruskoff weigh in on our current situation. He’s a fantastic thinker, humanistic and often contrarian, the author of many books including the recent Get Back in the Box: Innovation from the Inside Out, which is about the foolishness of senseless innovation. If I read Rushkoff correctly, he sees economics as a distinctly human, connected enterprise, and the absolute opposite of where our commercial leadership has taken us.
He presents some major, major ideas:
- The recent goal of business has been to make every company a holding company, one whose purpose is the acquisition and/or management of debt as opposed to a group of competent people who do things for other people
- People at all levels have become more interested in the perceived value of assets (homes, shares of companies, CDOs) than the actual value that they might ever produce
- Most of these ideas are supporting people who may not even be in the system – long-gone investors, maybe even dead guys
- The monetary system is not about encouraging trade, but often preventing trade
- The American Revolution came about because England forbid people from providing each other with services
- LOCAL CURRENCIES used to be very popular and could be again
- We were probably better off economically in the Late Middle Ages (the Black Death notwithstanding)
We need to revisit our total concept of value creation. It’s great that Rushkoff is lending a hand.
Jack Welch declares shareholder value “dumbest idea in the world,” employees number one constituency
This is perhaps the top entry in the Guinness Record Book of Complete Philosophical Reversals.
Jack Welch, “Neutron Jack,” the great father of steroid-pumped management, “Flourish Elsewhere” human resources, cutting the bottom 10%, and evangelist of shareholder value as a singular strategy, has now declared the whole “money for Wall Street” thing is the “dumbest idea in the world.”
For those of you who have heard the term “shareholder value” abused in every possible context, a phrase used as a placeholder for an actual strategic thought, this reversal is akin to hearing the Surgeon General come out and say, “You know Marlboros and tequila get a bad rep – I think they are part of a healthy breakfast.”
This too is an overcorrection. People who bet their money on the performance of a for-profit enterprise will expect a certain level of return compared to stockpiling gold or letting money sit in a savings bank (assuming you can find a solvent bank these days.) Jack is right, shareholder value is a result and not a strategy – but it’s still a fine goal.
The difference in the next economy will be that half the world won’t be investing through Wall Street for the basic societal functions of assuring a dignified retirement for aging citizens. Once the pensions set to grow at 8% fail (coming soon to an economy near you!) people will get even more hesitant to invest in nameless, shapeless glass and steel buildings. Investing in for-profit companies will return to where it ought to – a risk undertaken by the very professional and very observant.
Will corporations really see employees as their number one constituency, as Jack suggests? He obviously saw value in firing over 110,000 employees in his tenure at General Electric – but it sounds like a nice idea.
The future may look like more of a balance between durable human relationships and the need to keep the doors open by making money.
The future is NOT in more bank lending
I studiously avoid day-to-day politics into the discussion of strategic trends, but in this moment of critical government decision it is unavoidable.
Listening to President Obama’s speech before a joint session of Congress, I tried to imagine the impact of the trillions in deficit spending on the global economy. America’s recapitalization of banks, according to the President, is to stabilize the economic system but also to get banks lending again.
The concern is that if we do not re-start lending in this country, our recovery will be choked off before it even begins.
You see, the flow of credit is the lifeblood of our economy. The ability to get a loan is how you finance the purchase of everything from a home to a car to a college education; how stores stock their shelves, farms buy equipment, and businesses make payroll.
But credit has stopped flowing the way it should. Too many bad loans from the housing crisis have made their way onto the books of too many banks. With so much debt and so little confidence, these banks are now fearful of lending out any more money to households, to businesses, or to each other. When there is no lending, families can’t afford to buy homes or cars. So businesses are forced to make layoffs. Our economy suffers even more, and credit dries up even further.
That is why this administration is moving swiftly and aggressively to break this destructive cycle, restore confidence, and re-start lending.
I have placed several graphics on this blog about the trillions of dollars in debt that have been created through this culture of debt in the past twenty years. This crisis is due largely to that culture. Surely, rolling lines of credit are necessary to running most businesses. There are fluctuations in cash flow that require a certain percentage of your annual revenue to be offered to you in credit to keep things functioning.
That’s not what has been going on. We’ve financed trillions of dollars of GDP through rampant debt. Note the difference between real GDP and economic activity financed through leverage:
This culture has destroyed the Anglo-American banking system. Many corporate mergers have been made possible only through billions in available debt. Education prices shot well ahead of wages due to availability of private student loans. Housing is crushing the middle class now that the bubble has burst – a bubble that would have been impossible without a reckless culture of debt.
If we are to recover, the culture must change. According to Mish, who should be one of your favorite economic bloggers:
With all due respect Mr. President, you and Congress want to force banks to lend when banks (by not lending) are acting responsibly for the first time in a decade. Mr, President can you please tell us who banks are supposed to lend to? Do we need any more Home Depots? Pizza Huts? Strip malls? Nail salons? Auto dealerships? What Mr. President? What? And why should banks be lending when unemployment is rising and lending risks right along with it?
Note that he mentions retail, also at an all-time high bubble, and which also will come down.
I’m in a mood to make short-term predictions about management: The future is in growing your business from organic growth, recapitalizing cash from operations. It will not be from exuberant bank lending policies, or this malaise will last an extra five years.
Obama tests Keynesian economics in 2009 – new hotness, or old and busted?
I thoroughly enjoyed the NPR segment yesterday entitled “Obama tests Keynes” in which a couple of young guys dig into the often-bewildering rhetoric of the economic stimulus package. Funny, relevant, and worth a listen.
It’s important that in this case it’s young journalists taking a fresh approach to the economic arguments of Baby Boomers. I don’t think the Boomers at the head of our institutions often recognize that the political ideologies discussed were born long before we arrived on the scene, and often have no connection to reality for Gen X & Y. The snarkiness between taxcutters and economic stimulators often generates as much deep-seated passion as comments about “Hanoi Jane” Fonda – it’s a reference to a fight that started well before our births, and may need minutes of explanation to even make sense.
Case in point: the radio program deals primarily with the multi-decade conflict between Keynesians, who believe that well-timed government spending can save flagging economies, and market fundamentalists who belief that the entire economy can be managed through tax cuts and manipulation of the interest rate. The Keynesians protest, “government spending led to winning World War II and got us out of the Depression!” Market fundamentalists tend to argue that the slump of the 1970s proved that it’s not a cure-all – and that only deregulation, tax cuts, and Greenspan’s masterful operation of the interest rates saved us from big government stagnation.
The radio program concludes by saying that after all the discussion about this once-in-a-lifetime event, the Obama plan is basically pure Keynesian economics. After this, we’ll be able to see once and for all if it works or if we were imagining it the 1940s. The exciting bit is, this may be the first verifiable test of classical economics!
This kind of thing makes me insane.
Here we are, heading straight into the meaty part of the 21st century, experiencing an economic emergency that could only be created by a combination of today’s special mix of globalization, Internet, post-hegemonic power vacuum, unchecked assumptions, and 6.8 billion people at an unprecedented moment in history. And the only topics our elites can discuss is:
“So should we spend a lot of money on credit or fool around with the interest rate?”
Every day, people wake up and turn on the television or radio or Web site of their choice and begin worrying about a select group of numbers that are forced at them daily. We hear these measures so often, people are mistaking them for important or relevant.
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average – a collective of large-cap equities, and the prices that Wall Street gamblers are willing to pay that day to take part in their eventual earnings
- Housing starts – the number of new suburban homes under construction, with the assumption that all human housing should eventually stretch to the planet Mars
- Consumer spending – The amount people spend on Guitar Hero and couches and other goods for their new suburban homes
- Interest rates – The rate at which money can be borrowed from banks to the Federal Reserve, to other banks, to people, through credit, through…oh cripes I have a master’s degree and still don’t really get it. Suffice it to say that the interest rate policy appears as logical as Aztec shamanism, and about as transparent as the election of the Pope
- Stimulus packages – The amount of fake money spent on real things, supposedly to be paid – with interest! – by future generations, who will repay this through all the fantastic, super-paying jobs that are right around the corner…so…uh…just let us retire in peace, um, and keep paying your taxes…
We follow these things excessively, and to the untrained eye, they don’t seem to be leading to better management of the world economy. In fact, the world has been managed exclusively through these kinds of measures, and our policymakers are stuck arguing on the radio about whether KEYNES got us out of the GREAT DEPRESSION using these numbers.
GUYS – CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE NEW STUFF HAPPENING?
U.S. manufacturing now resides in China. Our kids are in debt. The Internet is making new companies possible and other companies obsolete. Science and technology is rolling onward. This is probably just another phase of Kondratieff cycles or Schumpeterian creative destruction. We’re looking at a huge change of management between the Boomers and Gen X. The Boomers are going to start going to the doctor a LOT and will crush the private healthcare system. Mass media is about to go extinct. Europe is out of kids, while the average age of Iran in 24.
Now, how is it that the argument can still be down to deficit spending versus interest rate policy?
Here’s some new measure to try out on the TeeVee, just to inject a bit of new debate into the public sphere:
- The Gig Rate: Measure the percentage of people who just graduated with expensive student loans and got a job that pays for rent, food, and debt repayment
- The Grandma/Doctor Ratio: Percentage of grandmothers able to get to their doctors appointments as scheduled, not left at home, letting their prescriptions go out of date, because they can’t get transportation
- The Ebay Entrepreneur Stat: Number of cash flow-positive home-based jobs created through Internet technologies, allowing people to make money and still raise their kids
- The Youth Diabetes Drop: Number of young people diagnosed with Type II diabetes mellitus able to reverse their disease through diet and exercise, thus saving society billions in the long-run
- The Volunteer Volume: Number of people financially secure enough in their lives to donate time to a local charity, improving their communities at no cost to taxpayers
- The Revitalization Rate: Dollars generated through the repair of our natural and built environments, from wetland and waterways to city centers and school districts, creating economic prosperity while giving future generations even more opportunity
I don’t care if you use these – invent your own. Find a way of discussing economic prosperity in a way that doesn’t use these same, tired, busted statistics.
It’s time to leave John Maynard Keynes where he was: a Cambridge elitist who bounced around the London dinner party circuit, hating the working class and delivering all kinds of new, interesting ideas just for shock value. I think he’d be sorely disappointed in us if he thought that in 2009 we hadn’t moved past him, despite having gone to the moon, defeating communism, and inventing about 1000 new world changing technologies.
KEEP THINKING.
About Eric Garland
Eric is one of the world's pre-eminent thoughtleaders in forecasting and strategy. He helps leaders of business and government make critical decisions about their futures.New project: Manufacturing 2020!
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