I love old buildings. They are part of our cities’ stories… and our citizens’ identities. But I’m also a realist. Old buildings need a lot of TLC and an inspired person to help it rediscover itself for a new era, a changing market, and new realities.
Organizations are like this, too. Some organizations have great histories, but their value proposition - to clients and employees - is wearing thin. They want to be great places to work for the next generation, but they don’t want to change a thing.
Often, the leaders of these organizations have years and years of experience. Experience can be overrated; it just makes it harder for leaders to unlearn a lot of crap. As Andy Hargadon says, “Twenty years of experience is not 20 years of experience. It’s one year of experience repeated 20 times.” And for some leaders, what they learned 20 years ago is not only useless for the next generation, it’s harmful. Thinking about the old buildings I love… asbestos seemed like a good idea at the time it was built.
In thinking about old buildings and experienced leaders, I ran across this conversation between Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton about business leaders and wisdom. Admitted, I’m a Pfeffer Pfan. Both Pfeffer and Sutton come from an evidence-based management background. They’re willing to look at their peers and say, “A lot of what you think you know is fallacy.”
And sometimes that’s exactly the message I have to deliver to leaders who say they want to become Next Companies. It can be a hard pill to swallow, and I admire leaders who know what they know, but have enough doubt and willingness to learn so that they’re continually refining what they know. After all, my job as a consultant is to help. And I’m not helping anyone by telling her or him that their strategies will work, if I know they won’t.
What do you know for sure? It’s possible that you’re basing some of your strategies - in the market and with your employees - on assumptions that may have been true 2, 5 even 20 years ago… but no longer hold up. Don’t you owe it to yourself and your people to get it right, not be right?
