Push Decisions to the Edge
This last Saturday, I stopped for a bagel. I went to the bagel chain named after a relatively smart guy. I ordered an everything bagel with chive cream cheese, my favorite! I asked if they had chai, and the clerk said, “All we have is coffee.” I looked up at the wall, and from the list there, I ordered an iced mocha. I’ve been doing the low-carb thing and wanted a treat - Saturday is my cheat day. The clerk replied again, “All we have is coffee.” I pointed to the wall, with a confused dog look on my face, and he told me that “corporate made them put the sign up even though they can’t make any of those fancy drinks and won’t let them take it down.” I could tell by the lilt of irritation in his voice he had to answer this question way too many times a day.
Having worked retail for a decade, I groaned inwardly. This happens when people don’t have the autonomy to do their jobs and are not trusted to make good decisions based on a clear corporate vision. If I were asked to write a vision for them based on my recent experience, it would be, “We want to torture our employees by treating them like children and by encouraging customers to ask them questions that make us look foolish. We want our customers to have the same choices at every store regardless of our ability to deliver.” I searched high and low on their website and couldn’t find a vision statement. Shocking! It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how to fix this, but it does take some autonomy, clear corporate vision, and some trust or perhaps some canny outlaws.
Monoculture is Death
If life is diverse, then monoculture is death, if not just dead boring. Can you say potato famine? Up to 1.5 million people died because of a monoculture! With crops, companies, or cultures, a lack of diversity is never a good idea. My girlfriend is a foodie, and we were watching a Michael Pollan documentary, The Botany of Desire, a few nights ago. I learned that 99.9 % of apple orchards in the west are monocultures. They don’t grow from seeds but from cloning – watch the movie or read the book if you want to know more. We have similar issues with potatoes; most potatoes in the US are the same strain. Why is this bad?
If you grow a crop without sexual reproduction, you’ve cut out evolution from the growing process. Which means you get reliable and predictable results, not bad right? The bad part is that the things that are trying to eat your crops, molds, bacteria, insects, and other pests, are evolving. Since all of the crops in a field, a town, or in some cases, the entire country are the same, one effective pest could kill the entire crop nationwide before anyone had time to react.
We use pesticides to keep these pests away from our crops. There are farms and orchards that are diversifying their crops, but not many, and some people are using GMO crops to introduce evolutionary advantages to mono-crops. Most of these folks are beholding to big agra and have to grow what makes the most profit.
I’m using crops as a metaphor. The same is true for cultures and companies. When a company is run in a command-and-control fashion, a mono-leadership is making most of the decisions. Companies that run this way have built-in limitations that restrict their sustainability. Diversity of leadership and vision lead to transparency and innovation.
After reading Steven Johnson's new book, Where Good Ideas Come From, I started thinking about connecting the monoculture issue we have in the farming industry with issues we are having with businesses. The book contrasts evolution with innovation and draws many parallels between Mother Nature’s and human innovation - striking similarities.
