Click Hunting without Crazy Business Analyses
September 2, 2010
I wrote about the shotgun marriage of a consulting firm getting a competitor to critique another firm’s products. Now I want to highlight Business Week’s essay / opinion piece “Why Companies Need Less Innovation.” The subtitle is, “Businesses need most of their workers to carry out their primary duties with enthusiasm and consistency.” Tough to argue with this generalization, right?
I am not going to argue, I just want to point out some of the thoughts I had when I read this article and discussed it with a person who works on projects with me. Keep in mind that I am not objective. I worked at the “old” Booz, Allen & Hamilton before the recent “reinvention” of the firm. The person with whom I was working this weekend is a former Fortune 50 executive and a Wharton MBA. We don’t know the author, Pat Lencioni. I assume he is a blue chip person with a better track record than the addled goose.
However, some of his ideas –not the person – struck me as wacky. Here are the that I jotted down:
First, what the heck is the neologism “creatonomy”? I can’t pronounce the word, nor can I explain it. The goose does get playful with his metaphors in a free blog, but in my “for fee columns”, I use English, skip the Greek quotes and the speed with which I crank out the posts for this digital diary.
Second, organizations in trouble think they are pretty darned innovative. My view is that most organizations in trouble don’t know the key actions to take to make the business work. Confusing doing what’s needed with repetitive activity is fatal. I think the conflation of innovation and method is a big problem.
Third, I don’t know too many leaders who are into being specific. I know that getting clear messages from senior executives is difficult and getting harder. Here’s an example. One outfit wants me to do a briefing for its board. The date is six weeks away. I am buried. I alerted the top person to the need to tell me what to do. The answer I received today? “It will take me another week to get back to me.” That’s not clarity. That’s procrastination and a failure to know the exact action to take to get the needed result.
With America’s educational system failing Americans, I think that innovation may become even more difficult going forward. As a result, the problem takes care of itself, does it not?
Stephen E Arnold, September 2, 2010
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