I recently had a document passed along to me from my business partner.  The piece from the Boston Consulting Group, titled “The Seduction of Reductionist Thinking”, opens up by mentioning how every company is grappling with change and few are finding success.  As I read through I kept nodding my head agreeing to every point made.  I thought to myself, it’s about time someone exposed the functional silo structure and linear “resolution” process as the primary handcuffs to successful change.  If large organizations would take this to heart we wouldn’t be in the economic mess we find ourselves in…  Then the big shock.  The paper was published in 1992!

Having worked in a big corporation myself I saw first-hand the everyday failings of silo structures and linear processes.  Departments are actually incentivized NOT to share knowledge with each other, let alone even talk to one another.  As projects move through a “gate” process, small subsets of issues are resolved without any consideration for the impact those decisions make further along in the process.  Design groups, marketing groups and sometimes engineering groups wind up “polishing turds” as it’s known.  No matter how talented they may be, they were handed an unsuccessful project from the start. 

I believe the functional silo/linear process is residue from the industrial revolution.  It allowed us to make the same thing over and over with fewer and fewer failures.  In today’s world this is simply an execution operation and in my opinion a commodity.  To be successful, organizations better figure out how to create “new” and solve challenges never encountered before again and again.  Call it an innovation operation, a change operation, an operation with design thinking/process injected… the terminology isn’t so important.

The path toward a “better way” is discussed in the article.  It really comes down to multidisciplinary teams working together, processing all salient considerations and features at once to deliver holistic solutions.  Off the top of my head, Apple comes to mind.  They conceive the entire experience from brand, to product, so service, to marketing communications, retail, and packaging concurrently.  Each outward touch point of the organization depends on and supports the others in a coordinated fashion.

If you have an interest in revolutionizing business operations, or innovation I strongly suggest reading the piece… it’s only 2 pages:

http://www.mgmtarticles.com/content/5530/

Last week I attended a forum on conscious capitalism sponsored by the local chapter of Flow Idealism.  Conscious capitalism is a business management model that promises to provide value for a broader set of stakeholders.  In doing so the model delivers greater return for investors.

Over the last few years the concept has been widely publicized by Whole Foods CEO John Mackey.  I attended the founding Catalyzing Conscious Capitalism workshop held late last year in Austin.  Mackey and other like-minded CEOs and entrepreneurs were part of the small collective numbering around 100.  I certainly believe in the concept and its potential to solve many of our issues and current crisis through a better form of business.  However, I have noticed that these events are predominantly attended by well off people.  While they all seem to have good hearts and of course podiums to preach, the events lack they type of people who can deliver impact at the grass roots level.  Where are the people living further down Maslow’s hierarchy?  It would be nice to see a plan to engage these foot soldiers. 

I sincerely hope we don’t see a new conscious business alliance.  I fear this will become another list to join with little or no standards and therefore no meaning or impact.  What’s mentioned at last week’s event?  …Yep, a conscious business alliance.  This will go the way of the “Designer’s Accord”… a marketing tool that delivers zero impact.

Back to last week’s event.  I was particularly drawn to the dialogue of Bijoy Gaswami and Gary Hoover.  They seemed to banter back and forth well with Bijoy providing a philosophical perspective founded in logic and Hoover in practice and experience.  I hope to see both of them together on future panels.  They helped me further understand the conscious model and how I might deploy it in my own small business.

If you have not heard of conscious capitalism or simply want to know more I strongly suggest reading John Mackey’s white paper on the subject:

http://www.flowidealism.org/2007/Downloads/Conscious-Capitalism_JM.pdf