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|In: Business Ethics|Last Updated:

As we speak, a business is about to fail.

I’m not talking statistics. I’m talking about a specific business, one that experienced years of rapid, profitable growth. It’s about to fail, its management has no idea it’s about to fail, and the reason it’s about to fail speaks volumes about both the nature of business process, and its limits.

As a result of Hammer and Champy’s publication of Reengineering the Corporation in 1994, Jack Welch’s highly publicized adoption of Six Sigma at General Electric in 1996, and Toyota’s development of Lean Manufacturing, publicly codified in the 1990s, a perspective has coalesced among business leaders and thought leaders that corporations are collections of processes. Optimize processes, the thinking goes, and companies will decrease costs, improve quality, and increase throughput, all while reducing their dependence on individual employees.

As is so often the case when it comes to business thinking, the search for silver-bullet solutions blinded the searchers to the difference between validity and completeness. Yes, businesses are collections of processes (more accurately, they’re collections of business functions — a term we use in my consulting practice that includes process, practice, and all points between).

But that’s not all they are. Businesses are also composed of:

  • Individual, self-interested human beings,
  • Interpersonal relationships,
  • Communities,
  • Knowledge … subject-matter expertise,
  • Contests for power and influence,

… to list just a few of the most important perspectives.

And while legally “the corporation” might have hard, clear, well-defined boundaries, operationally the boundary separating inside from outside is both fuzzy and permeable.

The most obvious example is outsourcing. When a company takes a business function handled by staff and puts it in the hands of another company, it’s still that company’s business function.

Supply chain management and the use of independent distributors are also outsources: Whatever components a company purchases from outside suppliers are components the company could also choose to produce internally; likewise, whatever an independent distributor does is something a company could do with its own warehouses, trucks and so on.

Customer relationships are another fuzzy boundary. While customers are outside the corporate wall, customer relationships lie partially inside the company.

Which brings us to the about-to-fail company. Like many other companies, it relies on Asian sources for its components. Also following a familiar pattern, it employed a local representative to deal with its suppliers on a day-to-day basis while establishing formal processes for managing the supply chain.

Regrettably, the company followed another familiar pattern. Its founders mistook their success for their being the sole cause of success. As a direct result, they lost both their on-shore supply chain managers and their local representative in the course of just a few months. The on-shore managers’ departures were caused by the poisonous atmosphere engendered by the company’s founders. Without the on-shore managers to provide insulation, the local representative was exposed to the same atmosphere, and left as well.

What does this have to do with process, practice, and the company’s impending failure?

Everything. Because it isn’t just true that companies are collections of interpersonal relationships as well as business functions. They’re collections of interpersonal relationships before they’re collections of business functions.

And the smaller the companies involved, the more this is true — smaller firms are qualitatively different from bigger ones. The relationship between Apple and Foxconn might depend on nothing more than a negotiated contract and regular flow of controlling documents and management reports. I doubt it, but it’s possible.

The flow of components (or finished goods if the company fully outsources production) to a company with 250 employees that designs, manufactures, and sells, say, specialty shoes, or designer purses, or high-end baseball gloves, or any other product produced in quantities counted in thousands rather than millions … the flow to a company like this from its offshore suppliers of similar size depends on the relationship between the people who own and run its suppliers and the company’s local representative, and to a lesser extent to their relationship with the company’s on-shore supply chain management team.

Lose both and when the time comes to introduce new products that depend on new components, the negotiation will be between strangers, not between trusted partners.

This doesn’t make the situation irretrievable. Employees do move on to other opportunities, after all, and if they were able to build effective working relationships, their replacements can, too.

Whatever it is that a company needs to run effectively, whether it’s a critical piece of machinery or interpersonal relationships, when the people who run a company don’t value it they won’t invest in it. And if a company doesn’t invest in what it needs, it won’t get what it needs.

Which is why I expect it to fail.

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|In: Career Management|Last Updated:

The wood thrush sings beautifully. The ring-billed gull does not — it squawks. Don’t blame the gull.

Blame the gulls. There’s a difference.

Thrushes sing without interference. This gives males room to produce complex vocalizations. Female thrushes decide whose song they like best, which more or less determines who mates with whom … the whole point of birdsong.

Gulls, in contrast, live in crowded colonies. With so many males vying for mates in such close quarters, it’s all a male can do to even get noticed. Amplitude is the name of the game. Subtlety has no place in it.

Any parallels between different work environments are purely the reason I brought the whole thing up. This isn’t, after all, an ornithological or sociobiological blog, and I’m certainly not going to compare either gulls or thrushes to our political campaigns.

I don’t, after all, gratuitously insult birds.

So let’s stick to the workplace you’re responsible for. Among the reasons: you can do something about it.

The question, of course, is whether the communications environment your employees work in is more thrush-like or gull-y.

It boils down to what someone has to do to get someone else’s attention, whether it’s a peer, someone in another part of the company, or, for that matter, you.

Some work situations have far too much in common with gull colonies. Crowded and frantic, everybody has too many demands on their attention and no time at all to absorb messages that require serious thought and analysis. This being the case, everyone flags every email they send as Urgent! while preceding their executive summaries with brief abstracts, and the abstracts with catchy subject lines.

Even worse, in situations like this, where every signal contributes to the overall cacophony, everyone involved has a legitimate reason to ignore everything … except, that is, for the small number of messages they receive from a trusted few (analogies do eventually break down).

Compare this to a more thrush-like situation. The background noise level is low. Messages have more depth. Recipients have more time to absorb. The occasional shrill voice gets urgent attention, which, if the urgency turns out to be artificial, leads to quiet coaching regarding the value of quietude.

Sound idyllic? It might be idyllic. Or, it might go beyond idyllic, reaching the realm of utter fantasy.

In the world of the professional management consultant, organizations thrive when everyone focuses their time, attention and energy on the few things that matter most, ignoring the trivia that constantly tries to distract them.

It’s entirely possible this view of the world can actually work. It is, however, just as possible that it works for the people who adopt it only because there are others hidden in the background who handle all of the so-called trivia … a flock of tasks that really do have to get done, but which have no glory attached to them.

The two possibilities aren’t mutually exclusive either. It’s likely most work environments have to be complicated but don’t have to be as complicated as they are.

Here’s what I know for sure: Almost without exception, everything … everything … is more complicated than it looks at the surface. And if it isn’t, it will be soon, because a competitor will add to the complexity by enhancing their next-generation product or service.

Often, government regulations also add to the complexity load. Not that they’re unnecessary — that depends on the regulation. But they do generally add to the complexity, although there are exceptions.

Someone has to handle it all. And in many situations, adding enough staff to let everyone concentrate on just a few important priorities would be completely unaffordable. The conclusion: Some employees are valuable precisely because they don’t focus on a few important matters … they multitask, juggle, keep track, and muddle through somehow.

When they need help, or discover something that calls for higher-level attention, they’re going to sound inelegant, more gull than thrush, because they’re competing for attention with quite a few others who also have to multitask, juggle, keep track, and muddle through somehow.

Take two lessons from this. First, from a purely personal perspective you’re better off being a thrush than a gull. The stress is lower and everyone will admire you more.

And second, do everything you can to keep the complexity to a minimum.

You might not be able to eliminate it altogether. But only a birdbrain would make it any worse than it absolutely has to be.

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