Posts from — October 2005

When an MBA said “low-hanging fruit”, he meant “easy pickings”, something that could and should be snatched with minimal effort. But real low-hanging fruit ripens last, and should be therefore picked as late as possible. Further, picking the low-hanging fruit first meant that you’d have to carry your bushel basket higher and higher as the day wore on, which was plainly stupid. Low-hanging fruit was meant to be picked last.

[from Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, p 11-12]

It’s a pity that anyone uses “low-hanging fruit”. Like most of modern business, it is a term divorced from the world it supposedly comes from. We use terms, create strategies, move forward, without the smallest understanding of how the natural world actually works.

It’s not that we need degrees in biology. Scientists, oddly enough, often don’t grasp the natural world well, either. Too compartmentalized. The world outside is messy, confusing and contradictory. Creating a sustainable agriculture (one that you can invest in each year and see an increasing or continuing return) is actually quite difficult. It takes a strong understanding of both the soils and the cycles of the local climate, some of which are twenty years long or more. Ignoring the mega-cycles of mini- ice ages and 500-year events, or catastrophic climate change from events like Krakatoa or the impact of an asteroid, you still have a multitude of variables that must be continually balanced.

I can’t imagine many business leaders successfully running a field or fields. They would end up taking as much as they could as soon as they could, leaving the field in ruins. A true “slash and burn” technique.

A note: surprisingly, slash and burn isn’t a very good form of agriculture and can only be done when you have metal axeheads. It doesn’t produce as good of results as many other low-tech techniques such as slow-burns to add carbon to the soil. Most of the nutrients go up in the smoke in slash and burn. Strangely, you can see how this works as an analogy for many modern business practices.

It’s odd that an agricultural phrase came into business usage. Most of our business metaphors come from the military. It’s not a good fit. Agriculture would be, I’d reckon. From what I know from talking to successful farmers and gardeners, it’s a hard life full of risk. You have weather, sure, but you also have changes from plot to plot. You don’t just have to worry about which landrace will work on your soil but which will work best when it’s wet in the spring, dry in the summer and wet at harvest. All rice are not the same. You must predict the unpredictable (weather), rally forces to react to outside actions (war, markets, catastrophic atmospheric events), create adequate reserves while not having so much that they go to waste. Most of the time, there aren’t known good decisions. You have to make decisions in uncertainty, relying on the wisdom of the past and your own experience. Even non-modern farming has these issues.

So next time you’re tempted to call something “low-hanging fruit” just say “easy pickin’s”.

A common complaint against those of us working with The Law of the Real Boss (or RO or Worklevels, etc.) is that we concentrate too much on the structure of the organization to the exclusion of other important things, such as what the organization actually does.

It’s a valid complaint. So let’s talk about how different important elements interact.

I have been writing up success stories from the GO Society conference in August and one of the fascinating things was that each emphasized the need to get your strategy working correctly first. I began to write this (and even got a good way into it) with that assumption: you start with Strategy which leads to what your Structure you need, which in turn determines who you need where.

Except that it doesn’t really work that way. Markets, strategy, structure, social milieu and people work in linear ways, but it depends upon your current situation. To be frank, the interact on each other not consequently but concurrently, creating a chaotic churn. You have to balance all of them at once. You don’t have the luxury of concentrating on only one, although you may focus the majority of your energy on one.

And I’m using “milieu” rather than “culture” to make clear that I refer to the culture of the greater society, not simply one’s work subculture.

Let’s take Strategy as our example.
[Read more →]

eWeek interviewd IBM’s Janet Perna as she retires this month (“Interview: IBM’s Perna Predicts Changes in What ‘Data’ Means”). She’s been with the company for 31 years, and in that time became one of the leading forces behind databases. Her closing comments about what she is really proud of is interesting and worth hearing.

[eWeek:] Looking back, what are you really proud of? The Informix acquisition? The self-managing database

That’s a tough question over a 30-year period. The thing, the most sustaining achievement, is the team you leave behind. It’s the people. The people really make this business what it is. When I look at it I look at the technical team, the sales team, the executive team that I’m leaving behind that will carry this on, not only on behalf of IBM but on behalf of customers and partners. That’s truly the legacy: Can what you’ve built sustain itself?

I’m very proud of the team, the organization, I’m proud of the business we’ve built together. We’ve taken it from a business of less than $1 billion to a multibillion-dollar business. We’ve significantly increased the size of the team. And moving from a database technology to where we are today with information integration, content management, and master data management, to all the acquisitions we’ve done, and our ability to integrate all the companies we’ve acquired through the years.

That’s tough from many perspectives: from people coming in, to people who were here, who continue to embrace new teammates, new colleagues. For me it’s about the people who are here and their support and the culture of dedication.

That I’m the most proud of. And that does result in good business.

At the end of the day, that’s what it’s about. That’s what it is.

Can what you’re building sustain itself after you’ve gone? Or have you created a culture dependent upon its creator?