We built and moved into our “new” home some twelve years ago. Despite the fact that it’s sitting on a granite ledge, the house is settling.
12 years of settling means two things: Stuff that was once tight is now loose, and stuff that was once loose is now tight. Doors, cabinets, and locks come to mind, but this phenomenon affects everything.
Down in the basement (where “loose” is creating hairline cracks in the cement floor) sit my tools. You can accumulate an awful lot of tools in a lifetime: Four or five different kinds of hammers. 25 screwdrivers. Even a Dremel tool, which is like holding a small Tasmanian Devil by the hindquarters, and seemed like such a useful thing when I bought it.
Among all these tools, however, sit two that are in such regular use that they almost never get put away: WD-40 and duct tape.
In a world of constant settling, where everything is either getting tighter or looser, these are the two tools of choice.
That’s pretty much how an organization works. Always settling. Anything that looks steady-state is an illusion, a function of choosing a short enough measurement interval. You can be sure, if it’s a process (“Quality is great”), a team (“they’re just not getting along”), a market (“it sure looks disorganized”) or an organizational structure (“this matrix organization is humming”), it’s headed in one of two directions: tighter or looser. Friction or chaos.
There are two tools specially designed to meet these conditions.
When the CEO of Yahoo forbids employees from working at home, she’s just applying some duct tape to a process that’s headed toward chaos. When the CEO of Microsoft ends the“rank-and-yank” employee review process, he is spraying a little WD-40 on a practice with too much friction.
If you have been in a large company long enough, you will have survived several cycles of decentralization and centralization. This is simply WD-40 and duct tape at work. And, if it’s a successful organization, you may have noticed that the duct tape appears when times are tough and folks have to toe the line around expenses; the WD-40 appears when times are good and you want people to swing freely for the fences.
The 1960s were all about building value through M&A and conglomerates, a decade of duct tape. We are now in a world awash in the WD-40 of Silicon Valley, where autonomous pieces slide together just long enough to trade value. Innovators Dilemma is a brilliant attempt to get us to spray WD-40 on our bound-and-gagged products while Getting Things Done pays homage to duct tape in a world of personal chaos.
Yin carries the WD-40, Yang totes the duct tape.
Some say the world will end in fire. Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of management, though, I believe this: With a generous supply of WD-40 and duct tape, you at least have a fighting chance.
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