Though first, of course, Jeremiah was a prophet.
Today, we tend to use the term "prophet" to mean a kind of fortune-teller. But good old classic propheteering like Jeremiah practiced was about delivering angry, impassioned harangues to His wayward people. Jeremiah was so talented and relentless, in fact, that today we call such written works "jeremiads." And, thanks to our Puritan past, Americans are supremely gifted at concocting jeremiads against their own apparently endless inadequacies, despite 300 years of national ascent.
(For a quick tutorial on the difference between a "jeremiad" and a "manifesto," see here. To the extent Americans embrace jeremiads, they tend to hate manifestos, mostly because the only one they can ever think of is The Communist Manifesto. Too bad Thomas Paine didn't call his The Common Sense Manifesto.)
No place is the jeremiad more evident than in the world of business. American consulting--lecturing, authoring, blogging and assorted quote-monkeying--is a virtual launch pad for the angry harangue. Do this or your company will die. Do that or your employees will depart. Blink and you are lost. The wolf camps at your door. War, children, is just a shot away.
In a recent article in the HBR by Michael Porter and Mark Kramer we are warned: "The capitalist system is under siege. . .The legitimacy of business has fallen to levels not seen in recent history. . .A big part of the problem lies with companies themselves, which remain trapped in an outdated approach to value creation that has emerged over the past few decades." Paul Nunes and Tim Breene advised to Reinvent Your Business Before It’s Too Late. Umair Hague argues in The New Capitalist Manifesto (that sounds just a bit like the New Capitalist Jeremiad) that “For too long, capitalists have taken people, communities, society, nature, and the future for granted — but today, they damn well shouldn't. Industrial-age capitalism is, we're discovering the hard way, predicated on extracting wealth from people, communities, society, nature, and the future. . .Argue with me all you like, raise indignant armies of PowerPoint-wielding MBAs against me if you must, but I believe that capitalism has reached a crossroads. To continue to fulfill its promise of being transformative. . .That might just demand abandoning some — or even most — of yesterday's tired, toxic assumptions about what prosperity is. . . .”
See? We’re always getting yelled at.
Just for fun I googled "Innovate or Die" and got 192,000 hits.
We are apparently mismanaged, misorganized, mismarketed, misbranded, miscommunicated, misallocated, miscalculated, misincented, misemployed and often (told we are) just plain mis-erable. And it is our leadership--you and I and that hapless clown in the office next door--that misses the latest social networking trend, falls off the product life cycle, jumps into the wrong markets, outsources in all the wrong places, destroys value and brings misery to the masses on a daily basis.
We are, you and I, destroying capitalism.
We might note here, of course, that Jeremiah was beaten, imprisoned, and threatened with death. Today we make our jeremiahs best-selling authors.
The question I've always wondered is this, then: Do jeremiads make a difference? Do we pay our money, listen, and then just go about our merry way, doing the things that are truly compelling, the stuff that provides better reward?
And in doing so--in paying attention and reacting to the real stuff, and whistling through the graveyard--do we get it right or do we get it wrong?
And, if we get it wrong so often, why do things get so much better all the time?
I recently read two books nearly in parallel, Gary Hamel's The Future of Management and Alfred Chandler's Pulitzer-Prize-winning The Visible Hand. The former is a jeremiad, more thoughtful and encouraging than most, but a stern lecture nonetheless on how we all mostly suck.
Chandler's book, whose subtitle might counter Hamel's as The History of Management, is a look at the rise of the modern business organization from 1840 till about 1920. Prior to 1840 we were all still laboring under 16th century production and distribution practices. By 1920, nearly everything that you and I would recognize about operating a business in the modern world was firmly in place.
In 80 years the world was turned upside-down by the convergence of coal (cheap, portable power); the telegraph (instant information); and the railroad (cheap, reliable national distribution). And, as entrepreneurs adapted to these conditions, the national standard of living skyrocketed, vast markets were created, and almost incomprehensible wealth was generated.
All without a jeremiad (or at least one we can remember. Andrew Carnegie did write The Gospel of Wealth in 1889, but it was directed at folks who had already gotten rich without a jeremiad).
Sometime later, apparently, we all got stupid. And now, should we believe the many jeremiads at hand, we're all just asleep at the switch, missing the ominous changes happening all around us, contributing to a dramatic fall from capitalist grace.
In The Future of Management, Hamel writes: "I dream of organizations that are capable of spontaneous renewal. . .I dream of businesses where an electric current of innovation pulses through every activity, where the renegades always trump the reactionaries. I dream of companies that actually deserve the passion and creativity of the folks who work there. . .Of course, these are more than dreams; they are imperatives. They are do-or-die challenges [my bold] for any company that hopes to thrive in the tumultuous times ahead-and they can be surmounted only with inspired management innovation."
There's that die word again, by the way. Oy. (And, for the record, while I like these sentiments, I think working in a company where the renegades always trump the reactionaries would be one wild ride into oblivion.)
Then Professor Hamel gets to the crux of the matter: "Now think back over the last 20 or 30 years of management history. Can you identify a dozen innovations on the scale of those that laid the foundations of modern management? I can't. Like the gasoline engine, our industrial-age management model is languishing out at the far end of the S-curve, and may be reaching the limits of its improvability."
But, fear not.
If there is one overwhelming lesson that Visible Hand teaches, it is this: When the conditions are right and truly compelling, we move. We react. We invent. We create. We innovate. Not all at once. Not in a straight line. (In fact, Schumpeter warns us that innovation is decidedly lumpy.)
And not everyone gets it, which is why there are plenty of losers.
What Chandler makes clear, though, is that wanting to innovate may be a fine and dandy impulse (just as a Boy Scout tries to be trustworthy courteous, kind, obedient and cheerful. . .), but being ready to respond to market conditions--when it's clear that a firm can make more money, be more efficient, or grow faster--is how leaders really create and adapt. When the market outruns their old processes they change. And guess what? Smart people know when that is, and they don't have to be told or read about it.
Getting scolded in a jeremiad, threatened with death and damnation, may sell books but it simply doesn't move us. Or, at least it doesn't move us anything like having a genuine threat or opportunity at our doorstep.
Take the story that Chandler tells of James Buchanan Duke.
Duke was a manufacturer of smoking tobacco in Durham, North Carolina, who, by 1881, was losing business and share to his established neighbor, Blackwell and Company. Duke responded by moving to produce cigarettes, a new and exotic product that was only just beginning to take the place of pipes, chewing, cigars and snuff. In 1881 four cigarette firms produced 80% of the US output, mostly for nearby markets.
In 1884 a sharp reduction in taxes on cigarettes allowed major price cuts, so Duke installed two Bonsack cigarette machines--each capable of producing 120,000 cigarettes a day, enough to overwhelm the American market. So, Duke built a factory and set up offices in New York City, the largest urban market available (and often the fastest to adopt vice!). He contracted with an advertising agency to get the word out. He followed by building a global distribution organization and establishing an extensive purchasing network. By constructing and owning his own storage and curing facilities, Duke could buy directly from farmers at auction, reducing cost and uncertainty.
By 1889 Duke produced 834,000 cigarettes with sales over $4.5M and profits of $400K. Competitors followed suit, resulting in the 1890 merger of four companies into American Tobacco Company.
So, while we all hate cigarettes, the message is clear: Duke fell behind his competitors and responded by 1) adopting mass production of 2) a new and exotic product, 3) envisioning (and creating) a national market, 4) choosing a brilliant roll-out strategy, 5) employing the new art and science of advertising, 6) establishing global distribution and purchasing, and 7) vertically integrating. Oh, and then he merged his business, another nifty innovation, to create a powerhouse.
I ran out of fingers while counting major leadership/business innovations, and nary a single jeremiad. The threats and opportunities were apparently cause enough for Duke to innovate, though it obviously took a measure of brilliance, courage and luck to find the path.
And lest we think Duke was alone, the Pillsbury brothers were doing the same with the automatic all-roller, gradual-reduction mill (which led to the creation of the modern breakfast industry ) as were Heinz, Gold Medal, Libby, Pet, Carnation, P&G, and Kodak (to name just a few). "During a very short time period in the 1880s, new processes of production and distribution had transferred the organization of a number of major American industries--tobacco, matches, grain milling, canning, soap, and photography. These changes were revolutionary, and they were permanent."
It might be pointed out, too, that missing an important trend and then hurrying to catch up is hardly deadly, and surely not the end of capitalism or civilization. In fact, such a strategy has become so common among successful companies that we've invented a business-sounding term for it: fast followers.
So, while I liked the ideas in the Hamel book, I found the history of Chandler overwhelmingly convincing. Any one of us can miss the important trend or the big idea, but as a collective we get it right. Not always as soon as we like, but we eventually get it right. Because it hurts too much to get it wrong.
So, Jeremiah was a prophet.
Some of you will recall, though, that Jeremiah was also a bullfrog.
You might remember that the next time you're seeking a little business wisdom.
P.S. -- A quick codicil from one of my favorite books of 2010, George Friedman's The Next 100 Years: "There is a continual fear that American power and prosperity are illusory, and that disaster is just around the corner. The sense transcends ideology. Environmentalists and Christian conservatives are both delivering the same message. Unless we repent of our ways, we will pay the price—and it may be too late already. It’s interesting to note that the nation that believes in its manifest destiny has not only a sense of impending disaster but a nagging feeling that the country simply isn’t what it used to be. We have a deep sense of nostalgia for the 1950s as a “simpler” time. This is quite a strange belief. With the Korean War and McCarthy at one end, Little Rock in the middle, and Sputnik and Berlin at the other end, and the very real threat of nuclear war throughout, the 1950s was actually a time of intense anxiety and foreboding. A widely read book published in the 1950s was entitled The Age of Anxiety. In the 1950s, they looked back nostalgically at an earlier America, just as we look back nostalgically at the 1950s. American culture is the manic combination of exultant hubris and profound gloom. The net result is a sense of confidence constantly undermined by the fear that we may be drowned by melting ice caps caused by global warming or smitten dead by a wrathful God for gay marriage, both outcomes being our personal responsibility. American mood swings make it hard to develop a real sense of the United States at the beginning of the twenty-first century. But the fact is that the United States is stunningly powerful. It may be that it is heading for a catastrophe, but it is hard to see one when you look at the basic facts.
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