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The Sparfish
On a tip from HCL Technologies CEO Vineet Nayar, I purchased and started reading “The Starfish And The Spider“. In the book, authors Brafman and Beckstrom define seven principles of decentralized orgs of people:
- When attacked, a decentralized org tends to become even more open and decentralized.
- It’s easy to mistake decentralized orgs (starfish) for centralized orgs (spiders).
- A decentralized org doesn’t have central intelligence; the intelligence is spread throughout the system.
- A decentralized org can easily mutate.
- A decentralized org sneaks up on you.
- As industries become decentralized, overall profits decrease.
- Put people into a decentralized org and they’ll automatically want to contribute.
Because of numbers 3 and 6, owners and SCOLs of centralized command and control hierarchies will never embrace the “starfish” concept. The self-centered need for SCOLs to project the image that “I’m great and you’re not” (number 3) and the constant external pressure to generate increasing profits (number 6) guarantee the status quo for all but the most enlightened leaders. However, because number 7 is the holy grail for the CGHs that sit on the throne, they try their best to feign being a starfish while remaining a spider. This systemic and self-defeating behavior is recursively nested all the way down the CCH; from the upper echelon of VPs and directors down through the fatty middle management layers and ultimately down to the BMs that rule at the interface with the DICforce.
Like Mr. Nayer, I don’t buy into the Brafman/Beckstrom set of principles 100%. Their starfish/spider metaphor works well up to a point. For example, a spider is much more mobile than a starfish; which enables it to be more proactive in acquiring the resources it needs to survive. Specifically, I believe that a hybrid “sparfish” org can increase profits while simultaneously providing an environment in which all members automatically want to contribute. By distributing resources more equitably via democracy and implementing a true meritocracy, the best of both species can be merged. The trick is figuring out how to freakin’ do it, no?
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
The corpocratic version of the “don’t ask don’t tell” policy is “SCOLs don’t ask what’s wrong, DICs don’t tell what’s wrong“. SCOLs, CGHs, BUTTs, and BOOGLs ensconced in self-images of infallibility don’t need to ask because they always know:
- what’s wrong,
- when it went wrong,
- who’s “responsible” for the wrong.
Likewise, the aforementioned management team always knows how to fix what’s wrong by launching initiatives that “get the job done“. Of course, when you don’t ever establish a baseline or periodically evaluate post-launch progress, initiatives will always be successful and reinforce the image of infallibilty, no? The funny thing is, if SCOLs always know the what, why, and who of dysfunction, how come they didn’t prevent the dysfunction in the first place?
Responsibilities And Compensation
If you’re in the blue box, better shoot for the yellow box ASAP and start accumulating titles (to post on LinkedIn.com) before your compensation curve flattens. Since there are fewer multividual contributors in an org pyramid, by auto-assumption they must be more valuable and deserving, right? Of course, the graphic below is an extreme exaggeration, but how far off the mark do you really think it is?
Empowerment Examples
Everyone’s heard of the worn and tired “employee empowerment” exhortation, but does anyone really walk the talk? Here are two specific and quantifiable empowerment examples from the same company. You be the judge.
Example 1 (via Gary Hamel: HCL’s Vineet Nayar on its ‘Management Makeover’ – Gary Hamel’s Management 2.0 – WSJ):
For example, our annual planning process for FY 2010 included a review of business plans for HCL customer accounts not only by top management but by 8,000 people throughout the organization. Under the program, dubbed My Blueprint, the plans were available on a portal where customer-facing employees, who would be charged with implementing those plans, could comment on them. This produced a flood of feedback and prompted the re-engineering of several plans.
Example 2 (via The world’s most modern management – In India):
Every employee rates their boss, their boss’ boss, and any three other company managers they choose, on 18 questions using a 1-5 scale. Such 360-degree evaluations are not uncommon, but at HCL all results are posted online for every employee to see.
I’m The Right Guy At The Right Time
From a recent article (I forgot to bookmark the link – D’oh!) describing the large backlog of IPOs still scheduled for this year, I discovered that GM’s (supposed) resurrection is expected to be the largest. It’s estimated that the “Government Motors” IPO will raise $15B dollars, but none of it will come from me and you’ll understand why in the narrative that follows.
From the same article, I also learned that GM is being led by its fourth CEO in 18 months, Mr. Daniel Akerson. Guess what? Mr. Akerson is an aged and most probably out-of-touch white dude just like all the other recent esteemed GM CEOs. Guess what? Mr. Akerson also speaks in the same, self-centered, corpo tongue as most stereotypical Tayloristic CEOs:
I’m the right guy at the right time.
I’m looking out the front windshield.
GM’s products are second to none.
GM’s global manufacturing structure is the envy of the industry.
I did not get to where I am in life by being deaf, dumb, and blind.
I wish the company well, but, uh, I ain’t gonna invest in GM. Are you?
Union Deterioration
It took me forever to concoct this dorky picture, so I’m not gonna try to ‘splain it with any accompanying words. Hopefully, you’ll understand my message. If you need clarification on my interpretation, please ask.
Directors Of Disasters Wanted
As the title of the following “Directors Are in Demand, Even if Companies Fail” NY Times article states, high paid, do nothing directors who snoozed while the companies they “directed” went right down the tubular chute are still being sought out to “help” corpo survivors prosper.
While in some cases investors are suing members of the boards of the failed companies, shareholder advocates have for the most part focused their energies on other issues. And public outrage over the financial crisis has been mainly focused on the executives in charge of firms like Bear and Lehman.
In many cases during the real estate bubble, directors approved the strategy that paved the way for executives to make risky investments on borrowed money.
In our corporate system the directors are supposed to be in charge, not the C.E.O., yet they rarely get any of the blame because they’re typically dominated by the C.E.O.
The incestuous inbreeding that goes on in the CEO and board of directors stratosphere is so powerful that not even an A-bomb can break the lovefest. Of course, the classic response of board members from failed CCFs (which does have a grain of truth in the unlikely case where they’ve learned something from the failure) is that their hands-on experience will save their new CCFs from suffering the same fate. Uh, OK.
Is This A CEO Talking?
From Who’ll Catalyze Change: Us or Them? – Harvard Business Review, HCL Technologies CEO Vineet Nayar says:
We at HCL have embraced a philosophy that’s based on an inversion of the management pyramid, with managers becoming as responsible to employees as employees are to managers.
Vineet’s joking, right? Nah, he’s fibbing to cover up the reality that he rules with a Stalinistic iron fist at HCL, no? This joker follows up with an even bigger whopper:
Too many people caution us about acting on instinct and conviction. But we must surround ourselves with employees that dare to try new things in new ways. They may not achieve perfect results, but if they focus on getting better each day with one more attempt, they will solve many problems that appear unsolvable.
Acting on “instinct and conviction” and not on objectively measured scientific “proof” (that really camouflages subjective, random, self-serving, opinion)? WTF? This Vineet dude needs to be cast out of the guild of management and “put in his place“, no?
In The “Old Days”
In the “old days”, when companies fell upon hard times and had to let some DICs go, or when the DICforce went on strike, jobs were mechanized enough so that managers could fill the holes and keep the joint running until the situation improved. Of course, in most orgs, that is no longer true today since most managers, certainly those that are BMs, shed and conveniently forget their lowly “worker’s skills” as soon as they are promoted out of the cellar into the clique of elites. Thus, a company that cuts front line DICs without cutting some managers puts itself into a deeper grave. Not only does productivity go down because the holes of work expertise go unfilled, but the overhead cost rises because the same number of managers are left to “supervise” fewer DICs. On the other hand, if all or most of the jettisoned DICs were dead weight, the previous sentence may not be true – unless dead weight BMs were retained. But hey, in the minds of most managers (and all of those who fall into the BM category), fellow comrade managers are not dead weight.
Update: Shortly after I queued this post up for publication, a friend(?) serendipitously sent me this link: Lockheed Martin press release. Notice the “delay” that took place from the time they shed 10000 DICs to the time they offered some 600 BOOGLs, CGHs, and SCOLs their (no doubt generous) “Voluntary Executive Separation Program“. Better late than never, right?
The executive reductions will help align the number of senior leaders with the overall decline of about 10,000 in the employee population since the beginning of last year, cut overhead costs and management layers, and increase the Corporation’s speed and agility in meeting commitments.
Nice corpo jargon, no?
I Found Another Gem
Whoo hoo! I’ve stumbled upon another rare gem in a massive pile of ugly rocks. As the graphic below shows, I’ve added HCL Technologies to my list of favorite companies. Led by their visionary CEO, Vineet Nayar, HCL is one of the few models for successful companies of the future. Since the vast majority of corpo Executive Teams are stuck in the mechanistic Sloan/Taylor mindset of the 1900s with no intention of changing the way they manage, err, impose control, it’s always refreshing and exciting to discover a new game changer.
So, how do I decide whether a company is a cut above the rest? Via subjective evaluation of external observations, of course. Financial performance, which is of course important, is of secondary concern. Here’s my unscientific list of “research” methods:
* Read third party accounts of experience given by former and current non-management employees.
* Read, listen, and watch interviews with CEOs and executives.
* Scour publicly available mission statements, visions, core values and cultural descriptions for authenticity, lack of corpo jargon, and attention to detail.
* Stay away from glossy annual reports – which are all clones of each other.
* Ignore whatever the hand picked company spokesperson(s) say – propaganda city.
Of course, my methods aren’t perfect, but do you know of any better ones?
Related Articles
- Why HCL Technologies puts employees ahead of customers (tech.fortune.cnn.com)
- HCL Technologies Annual Revenues up 24.1 % YoY; Quarterly Revenues up by 21.5% YoY and 7.7% Sequentially; Europe Annual Revenues up by 20.6% YoY in FY10 (prnewswire.com)
- Management Innovation: Extreme Management Makeover (petervan.wordpress.com)
- Indian outsourcer HCL Technologies quarterly profit up 6.9 percent to $74M on strong demand (taragana.com)
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