How (8 page)

THE INFORMATION JINNI IS OUT OF THE LAMP

The free flow of information has irrevocably changed the ways we interrelate, both for the positive and the negative. According to a recent Pew study, for example, 40 percent of the 11 million people who use instant messaging at work feel it increases teamwork, but 32 percent say it encourages gossip, 29 percent say it has been distracting, and 11 percent say it has added stress to their lives.
²¹
Unquestionably, communications technology has upended centuries of traditional practice, weakening the effectiveness of many habits that used to make us strong. It has changed the structure of how businesses operate and how people in businesses interoperate.

And we can’t go back.

We will never become
less
connected. We will never become
less
transparent. The information jinni is out of the lamp and he’s paying attention to no one’s wishes. Tired of living in the dark recesses of a tarnished copper fixture, he’s built himself a new house, one with transparent and permeable walls, framed by the new realities we’ve discussed in these two chapters: the destruction of the fortress, the flattening of the world, the rise of the business ecosystem, the fractured nature of virtual discourse, uncontrollable transparency, the destructive power of accusation, and the importance of reputation. With all these changes to the way we live, connect, and conduct our professional and personal lives, the questions become: How do we now thrive? How can we turn these challenges into strengths? We’ll answer these questions in the chapters ahead, but first there are a few more important issues to consider: changes in what society values, trusts, and relies on for stability in times of uncertainty.

CHAPTER
3

The Journey to HOW

It isn’t what you do, but how you do it.

—John Wooden, Hall of Fame basketball coach

I
nformation is king, hyperconnectedness puts that information in the hands of the many, and transparency reveals all: this is our new reality. Thus far, we’ve looked at some of the external forces working upon us as we struggle to adapt to changing times. There are other forces at work, though, powerful internal shifts that affect how we feel about ourselves as individuals, companies, and any group of which we are a part. The new needs and perceptions bred by these changes also exert a powerful influence on our future business success. To fully consider the rapid changes to the geography of business, then, we must also open our minds to how these strong forces have created a new playing field for success.

JUST DO IT

At the end of the twentieth century, new conditions left little doubt that we were but a mouse click away from having everything about us—good, bad, and indifferent—revealed. From our hobbies to our bank account information, personal identification numbers to details about what we spend or owe, lots of facts we might not feel comfortable discussing with friends routinely find their way to the public eye without us being able to stop them. Increased exposure brought increased unease, vulnerability that has affected us in ways many of us have not yet had time to fully consider. With all the
looking
that became possible, we began to look more, and at different things. We began to question whether the world in which we lived matched the values we held most dear. That’s when things began to change.

In 1996, writer/director Cameron Crowe made a film that insight-fy captured the values of the go-go 1990s,
Jerry Maguire
. In the film, Tom Cruise plays an amoral sports agent who wakes up in the middle of the night with an epiphany about the corrupt core of his business practices. He stays up all night typing his manifesto-cum-mission statement, “The Things We Think but Do Not Say.” In it, he argues that the future of business success lies in having fewer clients and treating them in more meaningful, humane ways, in reconnecting with the timeless values of human relationship. He distributes copies in the middle of the night to the entire office. The next morning, when he arrives for work, the entire company stands and applauds him, moved by the passion of his convictions. During the uproar of the ovation, one fellow agent turns to another and out of the corner of his mouth asks, “How long do you give him?” The second agent replies, “Mmmm. A week.” Sure enough, a week later, he is gone, his clients stolen, and his career in ruins.
¹

Jerry Maguire
tells the story of a man fighting back against the dehumanizing forces of the era. Upon its release, it became one of the top-grossing films of all time because it struck a chord in people tired of cutting corners.
²
We were in the Just Do It decade. The world was accelerating rapidly, and “Just Do It,” the advertising slogan of sport shoe maker Nike, captured the self-centered zeitgeist of the decade. The market was booming, and a huge new investor class experienced the particular easy-money thrill typical of speculative bubbles. Many leapt in as fast as they could, afraid the train would pass them by. Millions of people gambled in the market, and millions more saw their 401(k) accounts and retirement savings boom. People took chances, buoyed by the security that increasing prosperity brings. Everyone seemed to be in it for number one.

With the seemingly limitless possibilities of the dot-com era, the spirit of the age infected business. Managers, to answer the short-term demands of an increasingly insistent capital market, looked for short-cuts and easy solutions, managing for the here and now in ways that often neglected long-term goals. The habits and tendencies of the industrial age—efficiency, speed, and a focus on the bottom line—became all-consuming priorities. The message to subordinates was clear: Just get it done. Managers didn’t care how. As long as it fell within the limits of legality, Just Do It. Often, they ignored the methods employed. In the same way that the era of industrial capitalism rewarded and encouraged certain habits of mind, like hoarding, the 1990s seemed to call forth other qualities. In the 1990s, you got ahead by developing habits of ingenuity and cleverness, ways to dance around obstacles in fast-changing times. The winners danced elegantly; everyone else just danced as fast as they could. Business, in general, focused on managing initiatives and tasks and became obsessed with Gantt and Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) charts. Its approach to people was the same. The watchword of the day was
performance
, and human resources departments everywhere got focused on
performance management
. It became important to always answer the phone on the third ring, to always have a smile on your face, and to always perform any number of prescribed behaviors that managers felt would get them closer to their goals.

Along the way, however, we lost the value of leadership. You manage things; you lead people. And we felt it. Just Do It was no longer enough. As
Jerry Maguire
seemed to show us, by the end of the decade people started to care about
how
you did it—how you treated people and how you achieved your goals. The winds of public opinion shifted, and, importantly for business, the shift started to affect the bottom line. As early as 1997, a global public awareness campaign buffeted Just Do It Nike by exposing the substandard factory conditions at its manufacturing facilities around the world.
³
Information about the HOWs of business became increasingly easy to obtain and share. Change was in the air, but its scent was often overpowered by the heady rush of the times. It was not until the turn of the century that the natural cycles of boom and bust began to expose the new realities, and things got shaken up.

THE CERTAINTY GAP

We all carry in us a vision of ideal stability and security, an idea in our minds and hearts of what it would feel like to live a perfectly secure life. We never achieve this ideal state because at any given time the conditions of our lives or the world around us create varying degrees of uncertainty and disequilibrium. This opens a gap between our ideal state and the realities of life. I call it the Certainty Gap, and I believe it exerts a profound influence on our ability to succeed. The Certainty Gap never disappears entirely; it gets larger or smaller as conditions change. When it is small, we hardly pay it any attention; we feel in our guts that we can take any hit that befalls us. As it grows, however, we close ranks and protect ourselves from the threats around us. The larger it becomes, the more help we need as we attempt to fulfill our life’s desires (because even when times get rocky and we feel at risk personally and professionally we still need to carry on with our lives, grow our businesses, and pursue our goals).

I have always thought that three pillars give life integrity: physical security, material prosperity, and emotional well-being. Like the three legs of a stool, when they sit soundly on the ground life is authentic and meaningful; the stool has integrity. When something damages any leg, however, the stool becomes wobbly; life becomes unsafe and insecure. At the beginning of this century, concurrent with the growth of the information age and the sudden connectedness and transparency technology brought to people the world over, the Western world experienced a series of shocks that collectively rocked our stools.

First, the dot-bomb fell, exploding the bubble economy and setting off a severe economic recession that exerted persistent dislocating effects on employment and financial security. Although we knew that expansion and contraction cycles are normal for the economy, we newly sensed that factories closing would never reopen. The economic realities of a new global economy pushed jobs in larger economies overseas where others could perform them at lower cost. These developing countries in turn experienced rapid growth and increased wealth, often challenging the traditional values that had long provided them with stability and continuity. The underlying economic assumptions of much of the world shifted, and somehow we sensed that, unlike previous business cycles, the pendulum would not swing back to nearly the same place as before.

Then, in rapid succession, a series of corporate scandals came to light and rocked global business, abuses so egregious that the mere mention of the names brings back the whole history: Enron, WorldCom, Parmalat, Hollinger International. Corporations became among the least-trusted organs of society, according to a study conducted by Harris Interactive and the New York Institute for Reputation.
⁴
We started paying closer attention to everything business was doing, and the emerging transparency allowed us to see more deeply into its workings. In another study, conducted by LRN/Wirthlin Worldwide in 2003, 71 percent of Americans polled said that “none,” “very few,” or “only some” corporations operated in a fair and honest manner, despite the fact that relatively few had transgressed.
⁵

The disappointments we felt came not only from the lapses in the business world and failures in the economy; we began to feel the revealing power of technology throughout the culture. Every facet of society seemed suddenly laid bare, flaws exposed for all to see. Scandals in the Catholic Church, fabrications by college football coaches, professional athletes on steroids, reporters for the
New York Times
inventing stories; icons at every level of society seemed suddenly vulnerable. These were the people and institutions we looked up to and held as paragons of meaningful life. People who could normally be trusted had let us down. As the foundations of their success became exposed, we saw that many successes were built on the same Just Do It habits of expediency and short-term values. The instruments of society that gave us our emotional center began to crumble around us, filling us with doubt about the structures of our beliefs. It is against our nature to accept that long-term success can be built on a corrupt foundation, but in such a world, on whom could you rely?

And then the World Trade Center towers fell, ushering in a series of global attacks against civilians—Madrid, London, Bali, and others—that, coupled with destabilizing regional wars, left much of the world uneasy. The needs and procedures of physical security suddenly intruded into the day-to-day lives of many who had long felt safe.

This was by no means the first time a confluence of events had rocked the three legs of the stool. World War II, the Vietnam era, Watergate, and the Mideast conflict and oil crisis of the 1970s, to name a few from just the previous half-century, all brought similar disruption and instability. Boom times, tough times, corruption, and fraud were by no means new to us, but the deeply dislocating difference this time around lay in our startling new ability to see it all in real time. Much of what happens around the world is now present in our daily lives. This flood of undigested and unprocessed information bombards us minute by minute, giving us little time to regain our footing. When our stools wobble, the Certainty Gap grows, and when that happens, we reach out for reassurance, for things that can stabilize us and give us confidence to go on. We look for something to fill the gap.

THE LIMITATIONS OF RULES

To pursue our endeavors and achieve our desired success, we need certainty, consistency, and predictability, a hard floor from which to take a leap. Basketball players can jump higher than beach volleyball players can because they play on a hard wooden floor. It is much more difficult to leap high with the sand shifting beneath your feet. The Certainty Gap describes not only our internal relationship to sureness, but also our relationship to the societies in which we live. In democratic societies, we look to rules—in the form of laws—to provide the certainty, consistency, and predictability we require. In the days of fortress capitalism, we got very good at writing rules, but as the century came to a close, we began to sense that rules were letting us down.