đ« âKillâ Your Organization đ«
âStatus quo, you know, is Latin for âthe mess weâre in.ââ -Ronald Reagan
As a child, I despised Apple.
I have no idea why; Steve Jobs never did anything to me. But I grew up in a PC Family, and something about the devotion of those who used Apple computers rubbed me the wrong way.
Eventually, I converted.
I have owned MacBook Pros for the previous 13 years (and am unlikely to switch), and thatâs before you factor in my iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, and AirPods.
Interestingly, my Apple conversion corresponded to the worst decade in Microsoftâs history, a good reminder that social trends drive many decisions, instead of our brilliance.
Today, both Microsoft and Apple are thriving, and Microsoft has occasionally regained its status as the worldâs most valuable company.
As someone who worked for legacy organizations my entire career, I love case studies like Microsoftâs because they are, to paraphrase Spinoza, as difficult as they are rare. In honor of the worldâs birthday, itâs time to learn about a powerful concept of separating organizations that write new chapters versus those that fade into oblivion.
Refounding
Satya Nadella receives (deservedly) the lionâs share of the credit for turning Microsoft around.
Writing the forward to Nadellaâs book, Bill Gates compares Microsoftâs turnaround to refreshing the screen of oneâs browser, because âwhen you hit refresh on your browser, some of whatâs on the page stays the same.â Organizational refreshes require a balance between keeping whatâs great about the organization others built while making noticeable improvements.
Who knows, maybe Bill Gates once read Tradition and Change?
But Gatesâ metaphor is similar to a concept called ârefounding,â a word that means exactly what it sounds like. One can allow organizations to die slowly or ârefoundâ them when faced with imminent demise. No one person can be credited with this concept, and the Oxford English Dictionary dates the first usage of the term ârefoundâ to the early 1500s. A number of reasons explain why it is so difficult to ârefoundâ an organization, but my favorite comes from Gordon MacKenzie, who, in recounting his years working as an artist for Hallmark Cards, describes mature organizations as akin to a giant hairball.
A hairball?
Yes, a hairball. Gross, but an incredible metaphor.
MacKenzie argues that a hairball is created when âtwo hairs unite,â and then are joined by another, another, and another, until before long, âthis tangled impenetrable mass has begun to form.â And over time, âThe gravitational pull a body exerts increases as the mass of the body increases.â Turning to organizations, MacKenzie argues that if you substitute the word âhairâ for policy, procedure, committee, or system, you quickly see the parallels:
âEvery policy is another hair for the Hairball. Hairs are never taken away, only added. Even frequent reorganizations have failed to remove hairs (people, sometimes, hairs, never.) Quite the contrary, each reorganization seems to add a whole new layer of hairs.â
Nodding glumly yet? Good, thatâs what Iâm here for.
MacKenzie describes with powerful simplicity how the same norms that used to be a part of the organizationâs growth now become a part of the organizationâs weakness, requiring a mindset shift of many stakeholders that is difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.
Of course, the easiest way to untangle a hairball is not to try and untangle it, but to throw it away, or create a new hairball (i.e., start another organization.) However, for all of us, this is much easier said than done, and most of us must live in the real world where our task is to take organizations that matured over time and keep them relevant, by doing what MacKenzie calls âorbitingâ the hairball, making an asset of the institutional gravity that keeps you from flying out into space while avoiding being sucked into a âdifferent kind of nothingness.â
Hence, the power of the refounding mindset.
Of course, there is a danger to seeing refounding as meaningless corporate jargon, and truthfully, the number of Jewish organizations that were ârefoundedâ and thrived beyond anyoneâs imagination is small. Plus, many organizations try to claim they were reinvented, but no one outside a cloistered inner circle agrees.
Yes, itâs hard for a reason.
But what better time to imagine itâs possible?
Kill the Company
If refounding is so difficult, figuring out where to start is even harder. This is one of many reasons why I hope youâll consider reading Lisa Bodellâs Kill the Company. Bodellâs approach starts with a simple visualization:
âPretend that you work for your organizationâs biggest competitor. Write a plan to kill your company.â
The power of Bodellâs book lies in its simplicity. The only way to successfully complete this activity is to force people to avoid Pollyanish assumptions and imagine the darkest possible future. But when one is willing to do that, they create the first seeds of the tools to come out the other side.
Bodell argues that âOnly after youâve killed your company will you be able to tap into the innovation that will transform it into a killer company.â The alternative is for your company to become a âzombie companyâ:
âYouâre not going to literally kill the company, of course â not the one you dreamed up and built with your sweat, nor the one that you wanted to work for because you were a fan of its amazing products, nor the one you admired because you believed it provided an essential service. But the zombie company that it has become, the one infected by the twin viruses of negativity and complacency, the one populated by frustrated, worn-out employees, the one dragging its feet through the muck of processes, short-term metrics, and the status quo? That company needs to be destroyed.â
If you read the first issue of Moneyball Judaism, where we learned about the value of Gary Kleinâs pre-mortem, you will likely see parallels between Klein and Bodellâs approaches. While key stakeholders are often willing to worry about a dark future, too few turn those worries into strategies.
But no matter which of these metaphors appeals to you most (refreshing the browser, orbiting the hairball, or killing the company), they all sow the seeds of a powerful mental discipline that leaders can learn over time.
The Big Think
What I Read This Week
- The Bear Should Be Required Reading for Nonprofits: I started watching The Bear this summer and really enjoyed it. I especially enjoyed this analysis of what lessons we can learn from it.
- Thriving After Failing: I love thinking about failure, and how people return after failure. This piece on the subject was fantastic.
- Why Do People Prefer Online Services?: I wonât lie; for reasons unrelated to Jewish law, I cannot stand participating in or leading online services. But I might be in the minority.
- The Surprising Origins of Our Obsession with Creativity: Do you love creativity? Me too? Do you understand creativity? Not sure I do, after reading this article.
- The Last Time Always Happens Now: I love simple and powerful truths, so consider reading this article. In brief, while we always know when we are doing something for the first time, we rarely know when we are doing something for the last time. How would we change our actions if we approached more things as if they were our last time?