How David Beats Goliath

I highly recommend the New Yorker article on May 6, 2009 by Malcolm Gladwell, "How David Beats Goliath"

The sub-title is "When underdogs break the rules" but I think it is more appropriately "When underdogs break with existing conventions." Often people give these conventions the weight of rules, but they aren't breaking any rules by doing it. Gladwell talks about the basketball team that plays the full court press for the whole game and wins on legs instead of arms. They didn't break any rules they went against the convention.

We seem to want rules so bad that we create them in our minds to cover the way we want to approach situations. There's no rule that says a Walmart can't build stores in rural areas but that doesn't stop us from vilifying them. From the barber who opens on Sunday to the medical clinic that opens in a drug store...David beats Goliath by going against convention. Gladwell calls it being "socially horrifying".

What does that mean for you? Are you David or Goliath? If you're Goliath, what can you do to create the urgency that will keep you moving forward?

No Sense of Urgency

Dan Ciampa wrote a piece for The Conference Board Review on "No Sense of Urgency." It paralleled my thoughts on so many things that I wanted to address.

He talks about lack of urgency from the perspective of a new CEO, but you don't have to be CEO to recognize this feeling in your organization. Ciampa suggests that urgency fades away as people lose confidence about having any impact on the problems they face. Also, he states that success can work against urgency - as the employees without the "entitlement mentality" give up on urging changes and improvements and leave. Innovation slows down as organizational structures expand.

Ciampa points to some fundamental principles underlying any change in organizational urgency:

• Become a student of behavior change - for a new sense of urgency you need a critical mass of people willing to change comfortable habits.
• The top group must be of one mind on the diagnosis and the cure.
• Don't avoid making changes at the top - some senior-level people, who are blocking the ability of the organization to move on, may have to be replaced in order for things to improve.
• Find examples from which to learn. Hold up examples in your own organization.
• Identify learning needs and barriers to learning early in the process.
• Eliminate the fear of making mistakes and encourage experimenting.
• Get the right help and use it wisely. Be discriminating in seeking help and define precisely the types of advice needed and kinds of advisers best suited to these needs.
• Become "That kind of place".
  Make it evident to everyone in the organization that urgency is a real priority. Be prepared to clearly visualize what an "urgent organization" looks like.

Based on my experience I would add a few points:

• Identify the false assumptions on which the complacency is built. Will the funding stream continue indefinitely? Will customers continue to purchase more and more products?
• In education and non-profit organizations it is often impossible to have one culture around urgency that fits every program embedded in the organization. How will you deal with varying demands for urgency from varying programs?
• Funders - taxpayers, grantmakers, customers - have not yet learned how to effectively demand urgency for their investment...but they will.

I believe we are past time for opening a wide discussion on urgency and we should do it now.

Three Assumptions Leaders Should Question

John Baldoni, HarvardBusiness.org, wrote in response to Gary Hamel's "Moon Shots for Management" that he felt it was appropriate to question some underlying management assumptions. He identifies three:

1. It is important for organizations to set firm goals. Unreached goals can frustrate an organization rather than helping it to succeed. Maurice Schweitzer
2. Quick wins are essential to managers in transition. This has been demonstrated in a study by Mark Van Burren and Todd Salferstone to do more harm than good.
3. Senior leaders believe in their CEOs. A study by Booz & Company found that 46% of senior managers surveyed doubted their CEOs ability to navigate the current crisis.

I believe organizations operating in today's environment need to have a clear understanding of what business they are in and beyond that a simple set of guiding principles can be enough to move day-to-day decisions.

Its interesting how often the winner of a race is not in the lead during the early stages. To me that relates to quick wins. You can use up your resources and capacity focusing on early wins when you will need them for the end run.

The lack of belief in senior managers comes from the lack of collaborative leadership, even though it has been shown to be effective. There is still an overwhelming tendency of CEOs to think they can be the hero leader, guiding their troops out of harms way. Information is hidden. Authority is withheld. The easiest way to see this in an organization is to watch what happens when the CEO is not available. If the organization stalls it will be because no one but the CEO is able to make the decisions that would keep it moving forward. Can an organization like that be successful in today's environment?

The Urgency Challenge

I've been thinking lately about what makes something urgent. Why do we prioritize? How do we pick what we work day and night to get done versus what we let slide on our to-do list? I've been thinking about it because there are so many things that I think should be urgent that others apparently don't. My conclusion so far - pleasure and pain. We either apply ourselves with urgency to something because that will result in us achieving greater rewards, or we do it because failing to do so will cause us some sort of pain. Urgency can be applied at the personal level and at the organizational level. An organization will have an expectation of urgency if those in charge believe that applying the resources of the company to its products with urgency will result in greater rewards or not will result in greater loss or pain. Urgency and power are interrelated.