Gary Hamel spoke recently at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit.  Knowing his flair for language and keen insights into organizational design, I was anticipating quiet a stir…on the heels of his talk.  And I was not disappointed.  It was a talk that generated a lot of interaction.

Want a sample of the kinds of things he talked about at Willow Creek?  Hamel talked about the experience of speaking at the Leadership Summit in his Wall Street Journal blog, Management 2.0.  You can read the article right here.

One line in particular from the talk and the blog post is at the heart of a critical issue for many of our organizations.  Wonder why so much of what you're trying seems irrelevant?  Take a moment to ponder Hamel's line:

"Organizations lose their relevance when the rate of internal change
lags the pace of external change. And that’s the problem that besets
many churches today (Gary Hamel, Organized Religion's 'Management Problem')."

Can you see where denial may enter in?  I was in a meeting this week where I suggested that it was unreasonable to expect that adults would give you 3 hours of their time on Sunday mornings in a culture where few watch a one hour television program in 60 minutes.  "Most do what I do," I said.  "They TIVO the show and watch it in 42 minutes."  And yet…many of our organizations are designed to meet the needs of people 50 to 100 years ago.

"Organizations lose their relevance when the rate of internal change
lags the pace of external change."  How's your organization doing?  Got any relevance issues?

As many of you know, I am a big fan of Gary Hamel.  If you haven't read The Future of Management, you're clearly missing out on one of the best books on innovation and strategy I know of.

When is it time to take a look at the strategy that drives what you do?  Do you wait until it crashes?  Or do you take a look at it even when it seems to be firing on all cylinders?  Scott Anthony, author of The Innovator’s Guide to Growth: Putting Disruptive Innovation to Work, suggests that “it’s always at least worth considering whether it’s time to invert your strategy.”  In a recent Harvard Business Online article he gives a three question path for examining your current assumptions and a revised set that might drive future growth:

1. What is the critical assumption behind our current strategy?
2. What are distinct assumptions that, if true, would lead to a dramatically different approach to growth?
3. What are ways in which you can test the revised assumptions?

I love these questions!  Can you see how they might lead to a great discussion on your team?  Can you also see how it might pay to bring in a fresh pair of outside eyes?  In fact, Anthony goes on to write:

Need more.  Take a look at Ready To Go On An Assumption Hunt?

Ever realized suddenly that you were talking with an insider, clueless to the world outside the organization?  I had a brief verbal sparring match with someone this morning.  He wanted to know why we had a display of classic cars in the parking lot.  "It seems a little bit of a compromise," he said to me.  I stepped to his side and gestured to the homes across the street.  "Across the street and for as far as you can see are men that never step foot in here.  This is one Sunday when they might.  We want them to feel at home if they come today.  They, the over 200,000 people who live within 20 minutes in every direction and aren't here today are the reason the classic cars are parked where they are today."

Loved the line from Inside Drucker's Brain today.  So to the point for all of us.

"The bigger and apparently successful an organization gets to be, the more will inside events tend to engage the interests, the energies and the abilities of the executive to the exclusion of his real tasks and his effectiveness in the outside (p. 181, Inside Drucker's Brain)."

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, is well known for his "stop doing" list.  If you're not familiar with the idea, it is simply that all of us are doing things that we need to stop doing.  Rather than simply focusing on a "to do" list, we ought to put some time into determining what we need to stop doing.

Matthew May, in his new book, In Pursuit of Elegance, points to the origins of Collins' thinking and refers to this quote from USA Today:

A great piece of art is composed not just of what is in the final piece, but equally what is not.  It is the discipline to discard what does not fit–to cut out what might have already cost days or even years of effort–that distinguishes the truly exceptional artist and marks the ideal piece of work, be it a symphony, a novel, a painting, a company, or most important of all, a life (p. 9, In Pursuit of Elegance).

May's point is that the root of the elegant solution is in what you are left with after you eliminate what's unnecessary.  Think there's anything unnecessary keeping your organization from a significant advance?

Thought provoking post today over at Seth's blog.  Writing about the moment when operating systems surged from DOS to Windows, Seth Godin points out that prior to the switch the word processing tool of choice was WordPerfect.  Today?  Obviously Microsoft's Word.  In the moment when offices everywhere were choosing to move from DOS to Windows…there wasn't a WordPerfect version for Windows.  And office managers everywhere were in a moment where "do nothing" was not an option.  Instead, they were in a "pick something" moment.

As it often happens, there is a take-away from Seth's post for all of us that is a little different than his intention.  Here it is: When the operating system changes…you're not in a "do nothing" moment.  You're in a "pick something" moment.  The operating system in our culture has clearly shifted.  Head-in-the-sand organizations have chosen "do nothing" at the expense of any relevance.  Just like those offices that tried to stay with WordPerfect as the operating system shifted…"do nothing" organizations are finding their programs incompatible with the new operating system.    

What comes first?  Strategy or structure?  According to Peter Drucker it's a no brainer.

"Only a clear definition of the mission (purpose) makes possible clear and realistic business objectives.  It is the foundation for priorities, strategies, plans and work assignments…Structure follows strategy.  Strategy determines what the key activities are in a given business.  And strategy requires knowing what our business is and what it should be (p. 162, Inside Drucker's Brain)."

What if your organization is working with a legacy structure?  If you want to accomplish your mission you'll need to start there, formulate strategy to do what needs to be done…and then align structures to make the strategy happen.

Pick up your copy of Inside Drucker's Brain by Jeffrey A. Krames right here.

The first step in a growth strategy?  It's probably not what you think.  According to Peter Drucker, "The first step in a growth policy is not to decide where and how to grow.  It is to decide what to abandon (Inside Drucker's Brain, p. 101)."

Uh oh.  Is that what happens in your management team meeting?  Are you first deciding what to abandon?  Most of us would have to admit that the first part of the conversation is about the next growth initiative…what we're going to do and how we're going to do it. 

What about you?  Think about your last few meetings where next steps were on the table.  Didn't you start right in talking about what was next and then lay out the steps that lead to there?  Just asking for trouble if you listen to Drucker.  Why?  Although counter intuitive, it is the ability to ruthlessly "abandon yesterday's breadwinner even before one really wants to, even before one has to," that gives room for innovation.

No budget for the next thing?  No time for the next thing?  No energy for the next thing?  Could it be that yesterday's breadwinner is on it's way out…is in decline…but it goes unacknowledged?  Might still be "winning" but is actually winning the wrong game?

Could it be time for abandonment?  Could it be time for a purposeful discussion that starts in a different place?

How closely are you watching the relevance of your organization?  How often do you take a look at your assumptions to see if they still line up with the outside world?  In an earlier post I referred to a strategic principle from a very helpful HBR article, When Growth Stalls, noting that, "Leaders must bring the underlying assumptions that drive company
strategy into line with the changes in the external environment."

Can you think of an assumption in your organization that would be worth examining to see if it is out-of-alignment with the external environment?  (Now, as I noted in the earlier post, this is not the same as compromising on underlying principles.)  Need an example?  In the early years at Willow Creek Community Church weekend services included only a single song that the congregation sang and it was a song that tended to be about God as opposed to singing to God.  Why was that their strategy?  "Seekers" in the 70s and 80s were more influenced by a propositional method.  It's not like that now at Willow.  Why the change?  Determined to remain relevant and not miss the future, their leadership took a fresh look at their assumptions and concluded that today's seekers need to participate in an experience, as opposed to simply observing one.

Ever taken the initiative to reexamine your organization's assumptions?  It's an essential practice if you don't want to miss the future.  Why doesn't it happen more often?  I think Gary Hamel has it right:

"Companies miss the future when top management's intellectual capital depreciates faster than its authority.  Indeed, I believe that a misalignment between power and perspicuity is the most frequent and deadliest cause of strategic maladaptation.  Analyze a company behind the curve, and you will invariably find an organization where senior management has retained its influence but lost its foresight (p. 204, The Future of Management).

Got any strategic maladaptation going on in your organization?

One of the real finds in the blogosphere is Newspring's Tony Morgan.  His list of observations about when church marketing works is right on target.  Really could be and ought to be the basis for a series of great discussions that are begging to be had at churches and organizations far and wide.  Think with me about just a couple of his observations about when marketing works:

• "Someone says “I’m in” and timely follow-up happens."  Timely follow-up?  I checked with Jake Beaty (who leads Newspring's Care and Outreach effort), asking how quickly they'll follow up on decisions made at one of their Christmas services.  Answer?  Same day.  That definitely qualifies as timely…don't you think?
• "We know who we are trying to reach."  Hmmmm.  Wonder how many churches really have worked that one all the way through?
• "We’ve acknowledged we can’t reach everyone."  Can you imagine this discussion?  Can you play it out ahead of time in your mind?  What a valuable opportunity.  Dare you take it?

Honestly, the whole post was such a great string of discussable and actionable bullets…you really need to read it and act on it yourself.  And you can do that right here.

How connected are your senior leaders with what is happening in the culture around them?  How often do their statements and actions ring "out-of-touch?"

In response to the big three automakers' visit to Washington D.C. this week, Bob Sutton had a great post about how they were  clueless to what matters most and suffer from a "no we can't" mindset.  Citing their arrival by private jet as evidence that they are out of touch, Sutton writes that, "The
culture and work practices at  GM almost seem designed to create executives who are
clueless about what kinds of cars people want to buy and what kind of
experiences that car owners want to have — and about a lot of other important things as well."

Sound familiar?  If you think about your own organization, how in touch are you really?