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|In: Leadership|Last Updated:

We used to say, “Quicker, cheaper, better … pick two.” Then process re-engineering came along, promising improvements in all three through the magic of being more insightful than those who built the current process. Sometimes re-engineering succeeds. Sometimes it does more harm than good, in part because, as discussed in this space over the last two weeks, neither quicker nor cheaper consists of just one measure. While “Shorter cycle time, higher throughput, lower overhead, reduced unit cost, and better … pick a few,” sounds dull, it’s more likely to keep you out of trouble than its snappier predecessor.

Quicker and cheaper are each multiple measures. How about “better” — is that just one measure, or is it more?

From the perspective of any given process, it really is just one measure. Quality (“better”) means adherence to specifications.

A process is a factory, producing a large number of items which are supposed to be identical in one or more respects. If your goal is to improve a process — perhaps the most common objective of any IT-related project — then improving process quality mean its outputs more closely meet specifications.

Not every activity in a business is a process, though. A lot of time and energy goes into figuring out what specifications the company’s processes must meet. “Better” in this sense can’t be constrained by any simple, single measure.

How does this relate to IT? It isn’t a new point, but it bears repeating: Nobody cares if the software works, only if the business has changed successfully. That means IT needs to be able to lead business improvement efforts, which in turn means understanding how to make the business “better” in all senses of the term — adherence to specifications, and choosing the right specifications in the first place.

So … specifications have two major sources. The first are customers — people who make buying decisions about our company’s products and services. Customer-driven specifications are a matter of aesthetics.

Aesthetic specifications are never right or wrong in any objective sense — all they can do is match the tastes of the customers we’ve decided to target. The specifications for a Lamborghini Gallardo, which are all about speed, handling, acceleration, and looking very, very cool, are neither more nor less right than those for the Toyota Prius, which emphasize price, reliability, and incredible gas mileage. Two different groups of customers, two different entirely right specifications.

The other source of specifications is competition … winning and losing. What determines whether your company wins? There’s no simple formula.

Think baseball: Some teams win on pitching, some on rallies, and some on home runs. Different strategies work better against different opponents, except, of course, that all strategies beat the Cubs … but I digress.

Think chess: Some players emphasize positional chess, building unassailable formations from which they can launch attacks; others concentrate on combinations — surprising sequences that win by tricking an opponent into making a mistake. Which is better depends on who you’re playing.

In military doctrine, as my friend Curt Sahakian, president of the Corporate Partnering Institute, reminds me from time to time, maneuver warfare holds the current key to success. It works through a process-like formula called the OODA loop (observation, orientation, decision, and action) developed by Colonel John Boyd after the Vietnam War debacle.

Whichever side has the faster OODA loops generally wins. Which doesn’t, however, mean the process of developing competitive “specifications” has been reduced to a predictable, repeatable process.

Far from it. Speeding up your OODA loops only works when the accuracy of observation and orientation, and the suitability of decisions and action, don’t suffer.

If this weren’t the case, any decision made quickly enough would win, as would action no matter how sloppily executed. But that isn’t the case.

For while indecision almost always leads to failure, the world has no shortage of stupid losers whose only ability is to make snap decisions without first understanding the situation.

And while failing to act guarantees losing even more than failing to decide, taking action certainly doesn’t guarantee winning. It’s the ability to execute that in the end makes the difference.

Want another description of the ability to execute? It’s having the discipline to make sure you adhere to the specifications that are, after all, the products of worthwhile decisions.

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|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

“Trust your feelings.”

This phrase perfectly expresses the philosophy of many Americans, even those not named Luke. You’d have thought Jar Jar Binks would have discredited all things Star Wars, but apparently not.

So if you trust your feelings, consult them and figure out the right thing to do. It’s a time of weak profitability for your company and you have to choose between two individuals. Steven is a marginal performer but a great guy. If you fire him, his chances of finding another job are dismal.

Wendy is a superb producer, but is evil. She gets along with her co-workers, but she yells at her kids, kicks stray puppies, and talks to friends on her cell phone in the movie theater.

Who do you fire — Steven or Wendy? Most of us run meritocracies and would keep Wendy. But what makes meritocracy right?

Nothing, that’s what. Meritocracies are efficient, but efficiency doesn’t measure right and wrong.

Corporations (or at least publicly held corporations, where the owners don’t run the company) are amoral entities. That’s amoral, not immoral, by the way. To be immoral you have to subscribe to a moral code and then violate it. The sole corporate standards of behavior are the maximization of shareholder value and the legal and regulatory frameworks within which the corporation must operate. None of these are moral propositions.

You’re a moral agent working for an amoral one. As we asked last week, what are your moral obligations?

One school of thought says that as an employee and a leader, you’ve signed an implied contract. The company pays you; the right thing to do is to act in its best interests. So long as the company doesn’t ask you to break the law, this obligation takes precedence over how you’d act on your own. You fire Steven and promote Wendy.

Another school of thought insists that you obey your own moral compass at all times. “I was just obeying orders,” isn’t, after all, a compelling defense. Promoting demon spawn from Hell just isn’t a choice you can live with, nor is putting a perfectly nice guy on the street when you can prevent it. Steven stays and you squash Wendy like a bug to keep her from ruining any more movies.

Neither the follow-your-own-moral-code-at-all-times perspective nor the act-as-your-company’s-agent viewpoint provides perfect guidance. When it comes to morality, context is everything. While it would be lovely if you could choose just one of these perspectives and go with it, you can’t. They’re both perfectly valid. You have to balance them against each other.

Under most circumstances your employer’s decision (so long as it’s legal) should supercede your own preferences. The alternative is a my-way-or-the-highway attitude which accepts no ambiguity, nor the possibility that someone else might have a valid point of view. If everyone acted this way, no company could exist for more than about a week, because every time the company made a decision with moral overtones, it would lose every employee who disagreed with it.

You can’t, on the other hand, always defer to the company’s judgment: What’s best for the corporation, while legal (or at least winnable in court, which is indistinguishable from legality) can be just too disgusting to be a party to.

As a corporate leader you face few clear-cut choices. Is it any wonder that, faced with this level of ambiguity, so many leaders shrug and just do what’s best for themselves? Looking out for yourself isn’t immoral. In fact, our entire economic system assumes you’ll do exactly that. While it isn’t what you’d call an ethical code, it is a social imperative. Your employer certainly won’t do it for you. It’s looking out for its shareholders. If you don’t protect yourself, you’re unprotected.

Assessing your moral obligations when you’re acting as your employer’s agent, isn’t a matter of simple, clear-cut choices, which shouldn’t surprise anyone. Ethics is a complicated discipline.

If you think trusting your feelings does the job, here’s a question to ponder: Socrates was a very bright guy and spent his life pondering the subject. He was neither the first nor the last very bright person to do so over the past several millennia.

If ethics is so simple, what do you think they’ve been pondering about?

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