Category: Knowing-doing gap

I dug this old thing out for a paper I am working on.  Enron is an ancient story, but as we see the wave of scandals rolling through, I think it is important to once again remember how much hypocrisy and pure dishonesty spews out of organizations at times.   Part of the story is the weird phenomenon that we talk about in The Knowing-Doing Gap, that talk is sometimes treated as a substitute for action, that by saying the right thing it somehow excuses people from actually doing it.  Attached is a 60+ page pdf from The Smoking Gun of Enron's Code of Ethics, dated July, 2000.  It starts with a foreword from the late Kenneth Lay, who was back to being CEO by then, which opens with this sentence:

"As officers and employees of the Enron Corp., its subsidiaries, and its affiliated companies, we are responsible for conducting the business affairs of the companies in accordance with all applicable laws and in a moral and honest manner."

In reading this, I start to wonder, what does the code of ethics in Bernie Madoff's company look like?  Also, this is a very detailed document, as I said over 60 pages.  My hypothesis is that the longer a code of ethics in a company, the more likely they are too be sleazeballs. As I've heard my father-in-law say many times, when people talk about ethics and morals more than seems necessary, his impulse is hide the good silverware.

Here is the Download for Enron ethics

This is in the spirit of the The Knowing-Doing Gap, and wonderfully concise.  I don't agree with everything — for example, I believe in editing and all forms of iteration.  And pretending you know what your doing when you don't is sometimes necessary, and a good thing to do when failure does little damage, but I hope my surgeon, airplane pilot, or the CEO of AIG aren't just pretending (although I suspect that they are faking it at AIG)! 

I love the attitude and it is advice is spot on at least for creative people and for people who want to learn new things.  The manifesto is from the Bre Pettis Blog.  You can find the original here.  This is it:

Dear Members of the Cult of Done.

I present to you a manifesto of done. This was written in collaboration with Kio Stark in 20 minutes because we only had 20 minutes to get it done.

The Cult of Done Manifesto

1. There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion.
2. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done.
3. There is no editing stage.
4. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing
   what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even
   if you don't and do it.
5. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it.
6. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done.
7. Once you're done you can throw it away.
8. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done.
9. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right.
10. Failure counts as done. So do mistakes.
11. Destruction is a variant of done.
12. If you have an idea and publish it on the internet, that counts as a ghost of done.
13. Done is the engine of more.

I thank Ryan Jacoby from IDEO for sending this to me. In the email where Ryan sent it, he added, "This
comes to me from Ken Meier. Ken is a colleague that gets things done. He laughs
in the face of perfection." That is the right attitude for doing creative work in particular, because as I have written here before, the most creative people actually fail more than their more ordinary counterparts, simply because they do more stuff. See this post on Dean Keith Simonton's book Orgins of Genuis for more discussion and evidence.

Since I believe in iteration and editing, what changes would you suggest? What would you add? Would you take out anything?

I might add "Are you talking about getting it done, are actually getting it done?

In The Layoff, the HBR case I have been blogging about, I come out pretty strongly against across-the-board 10% cuts focused on those ranked lowest, usually on the basis of the last performance evaluation.  There are several reasons I believe this:

1. Performance evaluations in most organizations are done badly enough that the way the bottom 10% are selected is flawed, and indeed, most people in flawed systems know that — and see them as unfair.

2. An across the board cut punishes the most efficient units most, the least efficient units least.

3.  An across the board cut assumes that the best way to weather the bad times — and then recover quickly when the good times return — is to have an organization that is a perfect imitation of the one that you had before, but is just 10% smaller.   This last one is especially troubling, as strategic adjustments are almost always needed to weather and recover from tough times.

I have been getting a bit of push back from people  who are telling me that, although nothing is perfect (I agree with that), across the board cuts are most fair.

Let me know what you think.  This decision is facing many bosses right now.

This morning's San Jose Mercury has a story that quotes the post I wrote here pretty extensively.  I think it is a pretty accurate and represents they situation fairly, as I know it.  It is called Major Yahoo! Reorganization Looms.  I do have a comment about one of the people interviewed for the story:

Jeffrey Lindsay, an
analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein, said Bartz should "put in a very
old-school reorganization, strip out a bit of costs, and probably take
out some of the least productive senior officers."

"It's probably not the best reorganization you could do, but it will have a very positive impact," Lindsay said

My question to Mr. Lindsay is, OK, what would be the best reorganization that Bartz could do?  I want to hear your magical ideas about that plan — it sounds like you can't come-up with any better ideas either.  Management and leadership are often a lot easier to talk about and write about than to actually do, and I do my share of complaining about bad management too.  But every executive I know will tell how tough it is out there right now, and coming-up with a "new school reorganization" is probably a lot harder than it looks — in fact, I have no idea what that would look like and wonder if Mr. Lindsay can tell us.

I wrote a detailed post about the possible role of group dynamics in the miracle on the Hudson. I have also blogged quite a bit about about how good bosses need to create psychological safety, especially to enable people to speak up when they have made errors — including here and here. Well, with the terrible crash near Buffalo of flight 3407, I found myself going back and reading research on airplane cockpit dynamics, and came across a 1984 article in the American Psychologist called "Dyads and Triads at 35,000 Feet" by H. Clayton (Clay) Foushee (8:885-893). 

A lot of research and work has been done since that time to improve the decision-making and team dynamics in the cockpit.  Indeed, Captain Chesley Sullenberger consults on this topic, which they sometimes call "cockpit resource management."  But I was still struck by how Clay's old article described a case study of 1979 crash of a commuter plane, which apparently happened partly because the second officer (still on probation) failed to take control when the captain (a vice-president known for his gruff style) became incapacitated.  Then, he reported this study:

'Apparently this reluctance to question captains or assume control is not an isolated problem. In an investigation Harper, Kidera, and Cullen (1971) at a major carrier, captains feigned subtle incapacitation at predetermined point during final approach in simulator trials characterized by poor weather and visibility.  In that study, approximately 25% of these simulated flights "hit the ground" because, for some reason, the first officers did no take control.' (page 888).

Pretty scary, huh?  Next time you think your boss is screwing-up, and you are afraid to say something, you might think about this study. And if you are a boss, are your people so afraid of you, that they are afraid to speak-up?  Unfortunately, it appears that fear of authority is one of many causes of knowing-doing gaps.

P.S. The Harper et al study was published in Aerospace Medicine, vol 42: 946-948.And if you want to see the NTSB report about the 1979 crash, go here.

The
current HBR has a case written by Senior Editor Bronwyn Fryer called "The
Layoff," which presents a difficult challenge much like that faced by
many executives, and includes comments by Laurence J. Stybel, Maryann Peabody, Jürgen Dormann, and me.  I think it does a pretty good job of both
showing how hard it is to be boss right now and of showing some of the worst
pitfalls to avoid.  HBR has weird policies about when and how much stuff
the provide online, and what they charge for and don't charge for — the text is here, free to read at least for now.  There is also an executive here, along with the summaries for the rest of the current issue.

Diego over at Metacool told me about Nuts, Bolts, & Jolts, by Richard Moran.  which is essentially a list of hundreds and hundreds of little bits of advice and observations about how to survive in organizational life — especially in a Dilbert kind of company. It doesn't have a plot, but groups the little gems into themes.

A few of my favorites:

Never answer your cell phone when you are in the bathroom.

If you work at home a lot, don't talk about Oprah or General Hospital when you do show up.

Self-directed teams require a lot of direction.

The grapevine is usually about 90% right.

The more time the company spends on budget preparation, the less useful it will be. Just learn how to do it, and get it in.

Worry more about implementation that strategy, it is harder to do.

Don't put your company's name on a vanity license plate. You'll have to re-register your car when you get laid-off.

Go to the company holiday party, but don't stay too long.

Don't talk about your boss, clients, or projects in elevators or taxi's.

There are hundreds more, and most of them are pretty fun — even if you disagree with some.  I disagree with, "Don't tell people there ideas are bad unless you have a better one," at least in healthy organizations and groups, I think that challenging and critiquing ideas –without being a jerk — is part of the process.

It is a fun and quick read. Moran is pretty clever and funny, although I think the book is more aimed at individual survival than building a creative company — but survival is pretty damn important these days!

After working with Stanford's bureaucracy for month and months to try to get a scholar appointed and paid (we have the money, that is not the problem), and still not having luck, I was reminded of a lovely and rather obscure article by James March   It was based on an address that he gave to academic administrators at the University of Illinois in 1980.  This excerpt seems especially appropriate at the moment:

"The importance of simple competence in the routines of organizational life is often overlooked when we sing the grand arias of management, but effective bureaucracies are rarely dramatic…. Much of what distinguishes a good bureaucracy from a bad one is how it accomplishes the the trivia of day to day relations with clients and day-to-day problems in maintaining and operating its technology.  Accomplishing these trivia may involve considerable planning, complex coordination, and central direction, but is more commonly linked to the effectiveness of large numbers of people doing minor things competently. As a result, it is probably true that the conspicuous differences around the world in the quality of bureaucratic performance are due primarily to variance in the competence of the ordinary clerk, bureaucrat, and lower manager, and to the effectiveness of routine procedures for dealing with problems at a local level.  This appears to be true of armies, factories, postal services, hotels, and universities."

Right now, some simple competence sounds pretty damn good to me. As you may have gathered, March is not much of a fan of heroic leaders, he believes more in well-designed systems filled with competent people.  His quote also reminds me of one I heard from the folks at the Institute for Health Improvement (they credited the Army Corp of Engineers): Strategy is for amateurs;execution is for professionals. 

 The above quote is from "How We Talk and How We Act: Administrative Theory and Administrative Life," which March published here. For a general tour of his work, check out Decisions and Organizations and The Pursuit of Organizational Intelligence.

P.S. The post is dedicated to that very patient scholar!

F.M. Cornford was a renowned classics professor at Cambridge University who lived from 1874 to 1943. He published famous works such as From Religion to Philosophy: A Study in the Origins of Western Speculation. I confess, however, that the only book of his that I have ever read is his short and extremely funny: Microcosmographia Academica, which is subtitled "Being a Guide For The Young Academic Politician."  My father-in-law, who was the Provost at the University of California at Berkeley at the time, first told me about the book perhaps 32 years ago –  as soon as he discovered that I was embarking on academic career.  More accurately, he grabbed the book and started read passages aloud to me.  He is off doing other things now, notably developing  Rockpile Vineyard  out of nothing. But I can still remember him reading these sentences to me and then laughing like hell:

 "I shall take it that you are in the first flush of ambition, and just
beginning to make yourself disagreeable. You think (do you not?) that you
have only to state a reasonable case, and people must listen to reason and
act upon at once. It is just this conviction that makes you so unpleasant."

This statement, unfortunately, is just as true of academic politics now as it was when Cornford published it in 1908 in Microcosmographia Academica.

I just re-read Cornford for something I am writing.  After a failed scramble to find my copy, I ordered an out-of-print version from Amazon.  But it turns out that there was no need to spend the money, the entire little book is free right here.

As you will see, this little masterpiece is at once both a charming period piece and a largely accurate description of how organizational politics unfold in academia to this day — and in a lot of other organizations as well. Cornford's advice for young organizational politicians is just as useful as what you can find in Pfeffer's Managing With Power, and will all due respect to Jeff, it is a lot funnier.

It doesn't take long to read the book, but I can't resist reprinting a several of my favorite passages:

A Caucus is like a mouse-trap; when you are outside you want to get in;
and when you are inside the mere sight of the other mice makes you want to
get out.

Political influence may be acquired in
exactly the same way as the gout; indeed, the two ends ought to be pursued
concurrently. The method is to sit tight and drink port wine.

The Principle of the Wedge is that you should not act justly now
for fear of raising expectations that you may act still more justly in the
future — expectations which you are afraid you will not have the courage
to satisfy. A little reflection will make it evident that the Wedge
argument implies the admission that the persons who use it cannot prove
that the action is not just. If they could, that would be the sole and
sufficient reason for not doing it, and this argument would be superfluous.

The Principle of the Dangerous Precedent is that you should not now
do an admittedly right action for fear you, or your equally timid
successors, should not have the courage to do right in some future case,
which, ex hypothesi, is essentially different, but superficially
resembles the present one. Every public action which is not customary,
either is wrong, or, if it is right, is a dangerous precedent. It follows
that nothing should ever be done for the first time.

When other methods of obstruction fail, you should have recourse to
Wasting Time; for, although it is recognised in academic circles
that time in general is of no value, considerable importance is attached
to tea-time, and by deferring this, you may exasperate any body of men to
the point of voting against anything. The simplest method is
Boring. Talk slowly and indistinctly, at a little distance from the
point. No academic person is ever voted into the chair until he has
reached an age at which he has forgotten the meaning of the word
'irrelevant'; and you will be allowed to go on, until everyone in the room
will vote with you sooner than hear your voice another minute. Then you
should move for adjournment. Motions for adjournment, made less than
fifteen minutes before tea-time or at any subsequent moment, are always
carried

I especially love this last one, as although we live in a world where there is so much pressure and apparent reward for being engaging and inducing excitement, Cornford's point — that being deadly boring is a useful tactic — is a delightful counterpoint.   As he says, being boring is a great way to obstruct change. I have also seen it used to great effect by a smart administrator to calm a group of upset faculty members (I was one of them).  Our anger evaporated because the long rambling talk was so boring that it took all the energy we had just to stay awake.  I thought that this particular administrator was simply a boring speaker as this was the first time I ever saw him — I only realized it was a brilliant political tactic a couple years later when I saw him give a charming speech that had the audience roaring with laughter throughout.

And, yes, motions for adjournment are always popular.  Indeed, I can think of a few especially popular faculty at Stanford who don't usually say much at meetings, but are quick on the draw with motions for adjournment. One of my favorite lines, which I heard years ago, was "It is 1:30 and I believe it is time to declare victory."

Enjoy.

As I said in my last post on on the Stanford Student Who Tried to Work at Ford, I've been astounded by both the amount and quality of reactions to my post last Thursday on The Auto Industry Bailout. I argued that I am ambivalent about whether or not the bailout should happen, but if it does happen, part of the deal has to be a path to fundamental cultural and organizational change.  I argued that in particular GM seems to be designed to keep its executives as clueless as possible and that the company is poisoned with a "can't do" attitude — that their core competence is explaining why change isn't possible and (based on watching the hearings again)why NONE of the problems they face are management's fault. 

At the moment, Thursday's post has generated about 10,000 page views (about 20 times my average post) and 42 comments, plus I have received another 20 or so emails from people who prefer not to make public comments.  These comments are all thoughtful and some are so good that I think it is worthwhile reprinting them again as posts.  The first "reprint" was from that eager young engineer mentioned above who was dismayed by his experience at Ford.  Here is the second, which I find astounding.  My original post argued that one reason that leaders at GM were so clueless is that power dynamics in meetings (and other interactions) are deeply dysfunctional, with the highest status person in the group doing all the talking and none of the listening, regardless who has the most expertise in the room.  As a result, it seems to be a system designed to preserve the status of those at the top rather than to get the best information to the right people at the right time.

This conclusion resulted from observations (often measuring talking time) during meetings I have attended at GM over the past 30 years for diverse reasons.  Matthew E. May, who spent 8 years working full-time for Toyota University and is the author of The Elegant Solution: Toyota's Formula for Mastering Innovation, describes a trick he used in a meeting at GM to bring these dynamics to light and to show the damage that they can do. I guess they didn't learn lesson.  Here is Matthew's amazing story:

Thank you for a thoughtful and
insightful post. Everything you describe mirrors my experience with a
part of GM in the early 90s. I was doing some consulting with a division of
GM and told them the best ideas were not getting heard – in fact, no ideas were being heard. The managers to a person told me that wasn't their
culture. During an offside I had the opportunity to design part of the
program. It was an age-old prioritization game called Survival on the
Moon: you've crash landed on the moon, 200 clicks from the mother ship,
with 25 items you have to rank in the order of their importance in
surviving the trek to the ship. You do it individually, then as a
group, in order to make the point that "we" is smarter "me". (There is
a right order, provided by NASA.) I constructed the table rounds
cross-hierarchically, so one table might have a vp and a lowly staffer.
Then I played a dirty trick: I gave the lowest ranking person at each
table the answers ahead of time, saying that when it came time for the
group ranking, their job was to everything in their power to convince
the table they had the right ranking, short of revealing that I had
given them the answer. Not a single table (about 15 tables of 10) got
the right answer. Then I had the ringers stand up. Got to catch all the
managers red-faced.

I spent 8 years inside Toyota as a fully retained adviser to the
University of Toyota. It is the antithesis of everything you describe.

Matthew,thanks so much for sharing this story.  It holds lessons not just about where GM needs to change, but should serve as a cautionary tale for every boss. Matthew's trick would work in a lot of other organizations.  For example,it would work in hospitals where nurses are often afraid to speak-up when doctors make a mistake and ignored and belittled when they do (although some are getting better). And if you want to read about an organization that — at least for many years — suffered from the same dynamics, go to the official report written by the blue-ribbon committee that investigated the accident that destroyed the Columbia Space Shuttle.  It it is one of the best management books ever written and you can get it free online. 

In fact, this all raises an interesting question: If you are the boss, how do you stop these dysfunctional dynamics from happening? I recently wrote that getting out of the way for awhile (as John F. Kennedy did) is one solution.  Any other ideas?