Extremes and "Snappy Polarity"
So here we go again, from one extreme to another.
We basically had eight years of one political party drunk with power ruining things for everyone. Now, based on the latest Wall Street Journal op ed ( October 17, 2008) we are already talking about the liberal super majority destined to get drunk on power and really ravage things for everyone.
This could absolutely be true and could happen. Let us hope that they have learned the lessons from the last eight years and don’t. I hope that if Senator Obama wins he will have the intellectual fortitude (as he appears he does) to perform post mortems on what has happened and guard against abuse of power.
The point, however, is that once again we the people are engaging in what I call “snappy polarity”. We swing from one extreme to the other as if there is no middle ground and no lessons to be gained from hybrid thinking and new proposals. I will stop here because this is not a political but an innovation blog.
There is analogous behavior in business, however, and it is a polarity of extremes driven by the consultancies. I find it so ironic that at the same time the Boston groups of the world are advising one company to decentralize, they are advising the other to centralize. I will not mention names, but this is exactly what has happened in my industry with several players. What is up of that? I theorize that they are just taking advantage (don’t blame them, really) of the massive confusion that exists in corporate boardrooms regarding solutions on how best to organize and compete in a crushingly competitive world.
In my view, it ought not to be about these extreme solutions; it ought to be about hybrid concepts and ideas on how to drive for maximum creative and innovative output. If this is truly the objective- and it ought to be- then these dictums are stale and dead on arrival.
There are management concept and ideas emerging from Innovation theories that challenge these practices head on. How about rotating management structures? How about adopting trial and error-based organizations? How about adopting venture capital theories in management? How about organizing around “fast failing” philosophies? How about intra-company entrepreneurial centers?
Will our ego-centered management cultures accept these solutions and ideas? Not yet, but they will.
The point is that new, hybrid ideas need to considered and tested and not dismissed with this entrenched polar thinking and snappy, emotionally driven behaviors.
We basically had eight years of one political party drunk with power ruining things for everyone. Now, based on the latest Wall Street Journal op ed ( October 17, 2008) we are already talking about the liberal super majority destined to get drunk on power and really ravage things for everyone.
This could absolutely be true and could happen. Let us hope that they have learned the lessons from the last eight years and don’t. I hope that if Senator Obama wins he will have the intellectual fortitude (as he appears he does) to perform post mortems on what has happened and guard against abuse of power.
The point, however, is that once again we the people are engaging in what I call “snappy polarity”. We swing from one extreme to the other as if there is no middle ground and no lessons to be gained from hybrid thinking and new proposals. I will stop here because this is not a political but an innovation blog.
There is analogous behavior in business, however, and it is a polarity of extremes driven by the consultancies. I find it so ironic that at the same time the Boston groups of the world are advising one company to decentralize, they are advising the other to centralize. I will not mention names, but this is exactly what has happened in my industry with several players. What is up of that? I theorize that they are just taking advantage (don’t blame them, really) of the massive confusion that exists in corporate boardrooms regarding solutions on how best to organize and compete in a crushingly competitive world.
In my view, it ought not to be about these extreme solutions; it ought to be about hybrid concepts and ideas on how to drive for maximum creative and innovative output. If this is truly the objective- and it ought to be- then these dictums are stale and dead on arrival.
There are management concept and ideas emerging from Innovation theories that challenge these practices head on. How about rotating management structures? How about adopting trial and error-based organizations? How about adopting venture capital theories in management? How about organizing around “fast failing” philosophies? How about intra-company entrepreneurial centers?
Will our ego-centered management cultures accept these solutions and ideas? Not yet, but they will.
The point is that new, hybrid ideas need to considered and tested and not dismissed with this entrenched polar thinking and snappy, emotionally driven behaviors.
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