Comments

Tom - this has always been one of the most interesting paradoxes of your writing since I began reading your stuff in the early 1980’s. How do we achieve the correct balance between total anarchy and the straightjacket? To me we should aim for passion with a side salad of process. Boundaries are important in life. It’s interesting how physical boundaries are not usually impenetrable - more a line drawn on the ground or a stake in the ground. This means we can usually cross them easily. I say ensure essential legal frameworks are in place as the company grows and at the same time allow people - within reason - to cross the boundaries – otherwise they will only ever know their own grazing land and thier own flock and they will never find potentially interesting new water holes and pastures.

Posted by Trevor Gay at May 15, 2008 12:31 PM

To paraphrase William James:

There is really no method by which we can steer safely between the opposite dangers of believing too little or believing too much (read: having too much organization or having too little). To face such dangers is apparently our duty, and to hit the right channel between them is the measure of our wisdom.

Many of the ideas that get expressed as inspiring or mind-blowing from Tom are designed to lessen the burden where there is too much structure, where creativity and thinking are stamped out by procedures and policies (and bad management).

But this in no way means that he (or anyone) is in favor of having NO structure - the assumption makes no sense. It is, in the end, a false dichotomy. To say there is a tension between freedom and control is a truism - but to say there can be nothing but total freedom or complete control is silly.

Sounds like you stepped into some idealism, Tom! Take your boots off before going inside.

Posted by Martin Koning-Bastiaan at May 15, 2008 4:49 PM

Tom... Holding two contradictory ideas in your head at one time is difficult for most of us and yet I have always found it a launching pad for new learnings, creative ideas, personal growth, and substantive change. Obviously, you had one of those 'beautiful moments' that all creative thinkers cherish - a moment when you plunge into an intellectual battle between "what you use to believe" and "what you now believe"... I am sure most of your fans here will also cherish the fact that you openly share it with them... I am just so lucky with my work because I see these moments in my clients all the time - it is what I get paid to do I guess, that is, to provoke within my client and his/her team these "moments of truth" (to steal a phrase from SAS and the best book on customer service ever written)... We are moving into an era of networked organisations, like the one you discuss here, and no one but no one yet knows the correct DNA for them... What you and I do know, from hard won experience at the coalface in my case, is that what has worked in the past will be found 'wanting' in some respects and good for 'another go around the block' in other respects... I recently designed a new organisational format for a Church - yeah they had trouble letting a non believer do it - and I amazed myself with the architecture I came up with... Put simply it had clear boundaries to define 'contributions and conversations' within it - at the interface with the community it was highly geared to touch screen technologies, in the bowls where the hard work gets done it had some of what I saw when I visited Saddleback Church Community in Southern California that is purpose-driven groups, as a floating adjunct to those groups it had evangeliticals who kept the faith at Sunday Services, and as an outreach to the world it had a facilitated network which ran leadership, family problem resolution, etc programs... The end result is a highly networked organisation that is flat, has semi-autonomous work groups, and is bound together by faith. The revenue model is what I call a money tree that grows where it is needed and is pruned where it is not... the golden rule for the revenue model in this design is simple - "collect the money at the source and always give more use value than you receive in $ contributions"... to ensure my clients always had a simple map of their complex organisational design in their heads I told them to 'follow the money'...Richard.

Posted by Richard Lipscombe at May 15, 2008 5:36 PM

Often times the beauty in reading is misreading out of which often comes brilliant readings in their own right. But what also happens is that we read the works of others without really grasping the spirit or truth of the writer. We are left with our own readings and are disappointed when ours do not line up with the writers. Even if ideas are expanded there are no straight jackets here, only expansions…even outright changes which I don't see. But it’s all good!

While misreading have indeed created countless of books, it is also very important to seek to understand the writer's intentions. Often times I find that our understanding and sense of self are so strong that our funnel only receives that which we can comprehend in our limited understanding, instead of stepping outside of ourselves to grasp what others are seeking to say.

TP, it is highly likely that many have read your works through the prisms of their own understanding (which we all do on some level) but have not been able to see the nuisances of both content and style. The later, in fact, colors the former. In some sense, this is very much akin to the MBA, the Master of Business Arts that you alluded to instead of the Master of Business Administration.

The Mater of Business Arts allows for outside influences and the Master of Business Administration’s structure is perhaps more ingrained. One may deal more with people and the other systems, although it is people who run systems so there is no way of getting around the arts, as a dissonant symphony which eventually resolves to the tonic key. The Master of Business Arts goes beyond what is presented to how it is presented; creating that necessary “warfare” that you spoke of. For me, this is the beauty of capitalism in the best sense.

The interviewer seems to require of you something that you were, in fact, being asked of. She seemed to have wanted to pigeon hole or place you within a structure based on her notions of what you were now prepared to give, perhaps expanding or maybe even discarding past ideas. I don’t presume to know here which was which.

From my reading of your works and your explanation here, I do not see any misalignment. I got a sense that there was more expansion here than discarding. But I’m sure the interviewer would not think of it as such. If she’s anything like our present newscasters and pundits (maybe not,) many are not interested in what the candidates really have to say but more impressed with their “smart” questions and their very appearance.

No worries. While I have come to the majority of your readings in the last several months, even after reading your Brand You article in 1997, I am perhaps not as well versed as the many who have been reading your works for many more years on this blog. But I most certainly can both contextually and artistically grasp the beauty and profundity of your work, even if I have created misreading. The difference lies in humility. This helps with questions and answers.

Posted by Judith Ellis at May 15, 2008 10:02 PM

Tom, is your debate not a reflection of how personal preferences for simplicity, order, understanding and control paradoxically conflict with people’s need for freedoms and the messiness / complexity that inevitably results, whether in business or the wider context?

Despite the desire to simplify (perhaps as the reporter was seeking to do), operating / managing a business is surely destined to be a constant balancing act between the desire or need for structure, systems and processes on the one side and the now (hopefully) accepted wisdom that you must allow talented people the freedom to express themselves if you are to create significant and sustainable value.

I have recently completed a fascinating book called ‘Yearnings’ that seeks to explore paradoxes in the wider context and they are applicable to business, a summarising quote; "the messes are the point. Joy and sorrow, good and evil, greatness and triviality, hope and anxiety, the ideal and the actual: the ability to live with these seeming contradictions and the ambivalence and tensions they create is what gives rise to wisdom.”

If I understand correctly, the point you have been exploring for years is that business is inherently messy and the art of Management is to design systems that enable people to work with freedom whilst fulfilling their place in the process of serving customers...like all things, it as a continuum that changes constantly, there can be no absolute right or absolute wrong.

Posted by Gareth Lymer at May 16, 2008 4:53 AM

Planet Earth is shaking under the Giant feet.
She is baptising through Fire and Water of Cosmic Dreamers.

http://www.jonathonart.com/bnr.html

http://youtube.com/watch?v=fsz6bOIuKJc

p.s
Great to go Visual and Audio, much better for my holographic Mind.

Posted by Ina Matijevic at May 16, 2008 5:19 AM

I like Gareth's thoughts here. I sometimes wonder if our sorting out have become itself the focus rather than our actions i.e., talking for the very sake of it void of actions. If we were all actually engaging in the necessary action of sorting out we would perhaps be much further along the realm of continuous evolving that really matter. It is much easier to talk a good game than actually engaging in the process necessary for comprehensive communication, simple or complex, jargon or allegorical. All of these still require understanding.

What we tend to have are waves of thinking about a process that generally reverts back to the same old same old. I guess there is something to be said simply about this process, though it appears to be a mere disruption without change. I often wonder if disuptions in an of themselves bring about lasting change or are they merely stops and goes in a reverted continuum where nothing really changes?

In our management processes there appear to be fads of thinking or doing, though the latter is less likely. By this I mean every so often a new best-selling book arrives and corporations flock to it en masse when it is en vogue, even if the managment style is not particuarly applicable to the organization. But often times nothing really happens to change processes from within, the process that begins individually that grows collectively.

What TP has done seems to me so comprehensive that one need only to apply the principles. (Principles are different from techniques or styles out which these evolve.) What makes his work so comprehensive is that it breathes; it is altogether human. The focus is really people and not merely processes.

Posted by Judith Ellis at May 16, 2008 8:00 AM

Awesome. It's comforting to me to see you work through this. I'm guilty of viewing "successful" authors/thinkers/consultants, like yourself, as having it all figured out and tend to put all of you on a pedestal. I appreciate your openness in revealing your thought processes. In my eyes, all of this openness and availability make you even more credible.
Now, to the content of your post, I believe Zingermans is a great company in working through this creative v. organized struggle. I attended a class of theirs. It was great seeing how they're working through keeping their soul while at the same time growing. Everyone should do themselves a favor and book a trip to Ann Arbor to visit Zingermans.

Posted by todd at May 16, 2008 8:47 AM

Since my early college days at the University of Michigan Zingermans has been for me love at first sight or taste! Thanks for mentioning Zingermans, Todd. What a fun loving place with excellent customer service, charm and food. Love always has its place. Hats off to Zingermans!

Posted by Judith Ellis at May 16, 2008 9:16 AM

Didn't know Zingerman's had branched off into training, perhaps much more too. But it seems very logical with their spirit of excellence. I was just there for dinner a few weekends ago and I'm impressed each time, as I was that first time as a college freshman.

Posted by Judith Ellis at May 16, 2008 9:24 AM

I am enjoying this discussion, for one! Judith's sensitive reading of what the interviewer was doing (or looking for) has great value - the charity with which you have responded is wonderful. I took it a more crass way - that she was being simplistic (given what Tom has stood up for in the past, wouldn't he agree that going even further is even better?).

There is a tendency to think that hashing out an issue is not in and of itself part of the "doing". Reconstructing our understanding to recover nuances that we missed before is an active movement toward greater/more appropriate action.

If all that TP does is get us to stop and think about management a bit, think about the effects of our actions on employees or the company itself, this is itself a worthy task - because we may start being just a bit more flexible, just a bit more thoughtful in dealing with others. And THAT can lead to changes that mean EVERYTHING to an employee or company.

A homey example: I have a son who is extremely musical. His favorite thing to do his first three years was to listen to or (even better) make music. His sense of rhythm, time, and enthusiasm was incredible. When it came time to start giving him some structure in his music making I was terrified (there is only so long that a cacophony would satisfy him or us) - I did not want the lessons to beat the fun out of it - I wanted him to retain his deep love for music. I know what happened to myself and my wife too in music lessons, where the rigid structure did not make room for creativity and love. When we started on piano lessons, he hated it. It was all about notes and scales and after a year could not play a tune we would recognize. We stopped that and found another method (called Simply Music) that emphasized songs and rhythm (lots of blues) and got him playing songs we could recognize and sing along with immediately. It does have structure - it does have progression in complexity, but it also makes room for creativity and keeps the LOVE in it. This is a good balance for him. It may not be for others.

Finding this balance (in any realm) is difficult - there are no answers that apply to everyone's situation. It is the quest and the recognition of a good fit that is something we should not shrink from. Too many times we (me too!) fail to make the journey and instead rely on previous answers or previous methods. Then we recreate and sustain the institutions and problems we had before.

Posted by Martin Koning-Bastiaan at May 16, 2008 11:52 AM

Martin...I am a trained musician, having started singing professionally at the age of 10, later progressing to opera and then jazz. I did not begin with lessons, piano or voice lessons, right away but most certainly did in middle school. In fact, I got my sense of musicality in the black church.

I think it is VERY important to learn the structure of a thing. However, the structure must evolve out of one's own sensibility. The process should not be put on but applied to. I recently heard a rather brilliant preacher speaker at the recent NAACP dinner in Detroit on "difference is not deficient." Our main problem is seeing difference as deficient.

The brilliant orator makes a great analogy between how university bands differ in presentation and style. My alma mater, the University of Michigan's band, for example, plays with excellent European precision, while a historically black college like Grambling applies funk in incredible ways. Both are great, though they most certainly are different.

Structure does not have to be loveless just pliable. After all, it is people who create structure and we are anything but rigid by nature. Our very progression in life so indicates this without our doing anything to aid in the process. We age naturally.

All the best to your son, Martin.

Posted by Judith Ellis at May 16, 2008 1:28 PM

Balance can be found rather quickly. I have done so in an array of various diverse fields. Recently, I was asked by a local government to be the controller. (I've been consulting with them.) Ask me if I've ever done this before? Nope! But I have not doubt, if I wanted to do so, that I could. Collective experience is invaluable.

The key to balance to me seems to be an openness of mind and having a certain largess of spirit. (Being curious is also most important.) We hold ourselves back from forward thinking and acting. We make eloaborate excuses for our failures and great schemes for our ineptitude instead of just consisently re-aligning ourselves.

Balance is not complicated. The very earth itself turns on an axis that appears so simple, yet for eons we thought it complicated. Now, the intricacies of the process may be complicated but what hold everything in motion is simply beautiful. Often times we apply complications as a means of masking reality. The earth is round moving on an axis; galaxies seem infinite. Balance lies within.

Posted by Judith Ellis at May 16, 2008 1:51 PM

Judith -

I completely agree. Thank you for your kind words. Too many times we fall into thinking that difference is deficient without taking the time to understand what is going on and how things work together. We (the generic we) are attracted to patterns and latch onto them very quickly - many times so quickly that we shove experiences or people into boxes without really taking the time to understand them. All too often this is found in public life, politics and businesses.

Einstein said it well: "Things should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler."

Posted by Martin Koning-Bastiaan at May 16, 2008 2:04 PM

Thank you, Martin, for the Einstein quote and for your words of wisdom. They are love and light from which good things spring.

Posted by Judith Ellis at May 16, 2008 3:57 PM

I find myself on the side of Rule of Law & Order & Justice & Development.

Posted by Andres Agostini (Andy) at May 22, 2008 3:24 PM