Random Riffs
Chickens & Eggs; Functions & Forms
October
3
2009
From the philosopher Aristotle to the scientist Stephen Hawking, some very large minds have puzzled over which came first, the chicken or the egg. While Hawking opts for the egg, it works much better for storytelling and myth-making purposes, if, on the fifth day, God was making chickens rather than laying eggs.
You jest about what you suppose to be a triviality, in asking whether the hen came first from an egg or the egg from a hen, but the point should be regarded as one of importance, one worthy of discussion, and careful discussion at that." Macrobius, Roman philosopher (395-423 AD)
Vexing questions of this sort are called causality dilemmas by those who devote their lives to such matters. And lest you think this an elitist enterprise, think of the times you’ve been kept awake wondering whether more people eat Hygrade wieners because they’re fresher, or whether they’re fresher because more people eat them. (Well, perhaps you haven’t, but Hygrade’s advertising agency saw to it that, back in the day, Montreal eaters of their wieners did.)
I have little interest – except perhaps on starry nights − in the chicken/egg question. I’m content that they’re both still around and that the only choice I have to make is which to have for dinner. I do, however, care about the ordering of function and form. And so should anyone responsible for organizing enterprises.
The function/form question, at least at first blush, seems far less vexing than the chicken/egg question: figure out what needs doing (function) and then decide how best to do it (form). If function determines form, then function comes first, right? Well, it sounds right. The rhetoric is compelling. But it’s flawed because, unlike God, who may have been able to write on a clean slate with no regard for precedent, we rarely, if ever, have that luxury. The “function determines form” imperative is undermined because it’s usually some pre-existing form that determines the new function. This is why so many organizations that set out to renew themselves end up looking pretty much the way they did before they began.
There can be a couple of reasons for this. The first has to do with power; the other with culture.
People in positions of power are generally reluctant to come up with a function that will result in a form that doesn’t keep them in power and doing pretty much the same things they’ve always been doing. This can be a special hazard in organizations with a dominant profession. To take an extreme case, military juntas, claiming a commitment to democracy and promising free elections as soon as civic order is restored, find that they rather like being in charge and want to keep it that way. So they modify the function from one of restoring order to one of maintaining it. A slippery slope indeed. All that by way of saying that you may know what you should be doing, but if it in any way diminishes your status, you will likely be seriously tempted not to do it.
Whereas no one is fooled by the power thing – especially the people over whom it is exercised − the culture thing is sneakier. Some wise person once said that if you put culture and strategy into a ring together, culture will win every time. Consider, as an example, the failed merger of Daimler Chrysler. At the time, analysts thought it made good strategic sense. And then, of course, there was the usual stuff about the synergistic potential of diversity where each party would benefit from the strengths of the other. But the two radically different management styles turned out to be an undermining weakness. And then we have the personalities of Steve Case and Gerald Levin of AOL and TimeWarner respectively. When these two guys fell in love, a little compatibility counseling would have been in order. The due diligence that is carried out when businesses contemplate mergers is typically based on product/market synergies, customer needs, strategic fit, and shareholder value, but cultural differences are barely acknowledged. In both cases, pre-existing forms sabotaged desired or anticipated function outcomes.
We extol the merits of self-insight for individuals but rarely apply it to our collective enterprises. I’ll end this with a self-insight (or lack thereof) story.
A number of years ago I regularly ate lunch at a popular downtown Toronto restaurant and got to know the owner quite well. One day he told me that he planned to expand, not by opening another restaurant in Toronto, but rather one in Calgary and another in Vancouver. It sounded like a dreadful idea to me and I told him so. I asked him if he had any idea why his Toronto restaurant enjoyed so much success. He thought it might have something to do with the food and the location. And he was partly right – the food and the location were great. But what he didn’t understand was the importance of his own role in the enterprise.
Daniel had learned the business from the ground up − bussing tables, washing dishes, peeling vegetables and finally, becoming a chef and, later, an owner. But Daniel was no office-bound owner – he acted as the maitre d’ who knew your name after your first visit and remembered it when you returned for your second; he went every day with his chef to the St Lawrence Market and picked out the makings for the daily specials; he hired all the wait staff and set the standard of customer service for them. In a nutshell, the restaurant was Daniel personified. But I don’t think he ever understood this. What he most surely didn’t understand was that it’s hard to be personified in two places at once – especially when the other place is 3000 kilometers away. But he went to Calgary and opened … and closed. And while he was out there the Toronto restaurant failed. By the way, he never got to Vancouver.
Daniel never fully understood the nature of his success. And because he couldn’t do that, he couldn’t calculate the risk entailed in trying to replicate himself. I think it’s important for organizations to develop a capacity for getting insights into their cultures because of the profound influence they have – for better or for worse – on the choices they make about their future. How might this be done? Here’s a hint.
Insights come at the oddest times and in the oddest places. I was drinking Guinness in a Dublin pub with an Irishman who had attended a leadership workshop I had just conducted. We were talking about a fellow participant who seemed to have no idea of the negative effect his behaviour had on others. He could, having no “ear” for social situations, effortlessly piss people off. Out of the blue – literally, because you could still smoke in Irish pubs − and with no apparent connection to what we were talking about, my drinking buddy asked, “Can you wiggle your ears, Brian?” I allowed as how I couldn’t. Nor was it even on any of my many to-do lists. “It’s easy” he said, “all you need is a mirror.”
What kind of mirror might we hold up to organizations? I’ll have a go at that in the next Random Riff. In the meantime, give it some thought and let me know what you come up with.
