#202: Adapt the nothing
Good morning dear friends
Today, we start with soul for reasons that will become clear.
/soul
There are many translations of the Tao Te Ching’s eleventh verse. Each translation presents a slight nuance exploring its core concept, that emptiness can create something, that utility can rest in absence.
I like D.C. Lau’s translation which reads:
Thirty spokes Share one hub.
Adapt the nothing therein to the purpose in hand, and you will have the use of the cart.
Knead clay in order to make a vessel.
Adapt the nothing therein to the purpose in hand, and you will have the use of the vessel.
Cut out doors and windows in order to make a room.
Adapt the nothing therein to the purpose in hand, and you will have the use of the room.
Thus what we gain is Something, yet it is by virtue of Nothing that this can be put to use.
//self
In winner of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Literature, Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over The Bones of The Dead, the protagonist, Janina befriends a shop assistant whom she dubs ‘Good News’.
As their friendship grows, Good News shares her story with Janina, who reflects, “When I heard Good News’ account of her life, I mentally began to formulate questions that start with the words ‘Why don’t you…’, followed by a description of what – in our view – one should do in this sort of situation. My lips were on the point of producing one of these impertinent ‘why don’t yous’ when I bit my tongue.
That’s just what colour magazines do – just for a moment I’d wanted to be like them: they tell us what we’ve failed to do, where we’ve messed up, what we’ve neglected; ultimately they set us on ourselves, filling us with self-contempt.
So, I didn’t say a word. Other people’s life stories are not a topic for debate. One should hear them out, and reciprocate in the same coin”.
And so, the respectful emptiness at the heart of Janina’s listening provides the safety for friendship.
///strategy
About halfway through master strategist Jim Collins’ business classic Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t, is a section entitled, The Triumph of Understanding Over Bravado.
Collins’s book was published in 2001 and has been a touchstone for business leaders ever since.
It compares ‘great’ companies to the also-runs. Reflecting on the latter he writes, “What’s so striking about the comparison companies is that- for all their change programs, frantic gesticulations, and charismatic leaders – they rarely emerged from the fog. They would try to run, making bad decisions at forks in the road, and then have to reverse course later. Or they would veer off the trail entirely, banging into trees and tumbling down ravines (Oh, but they were sure doing it with speed and panache!). Nowhere is this more evident than in the comparison companies’ mindless pursuit of growth: Over two-thirds of the comparison companies displayed an obsession with growth without the benefit of a Hedgehog Concept”.
The Hedgehog Concept emerges from the intersection of three questions:
- What are you deeply passionate about?
- What drives your economic engine?
- What can you be best at in the world?
On average, it took the Good to Great companies four years to crystallize their Hedgehog concept.
He reflects, “You can’t just go off-site for two days, pull out a bunch of flip charts, do breakout discussions, and come up with a deep understanding. Well, you can do that, but you probably won’t get it right. It would be like Einstein saying, “I think it’s time to become a great scientist, so I’m going to go off to the Four Seasons this weekend, pull out the flip charts, and unlock the secrets of the universe.” Insight just doesn’t happen that way. It took Einstein ten years of groping through the fog to get the theory of special relativity, and he was a bright guy”.
Collins advises that the best way to ‘grope through the fog’ is to create a grouping of people, a council, who meet regularly and, guided by the Hedgehog questions, undertake autopsies and analysis, ask questions, engage in debate and take executive decisions.
To make this concrete, you can review the previous month’s sales numbers or a recent event, or debate the implications of trends or key trends in your sector, or pick three of your top-performing product lines or people and discuss what makes them so, etcetera, etcetera.
In the Good to Great companies, the council existed ‘as a device to understand the important issues facing an organisation’.
Members came from various parts of the organisation, bringing with them a deep understanding of their area, with the capacity and willingness to engage in debate without defending parochial interest. Whilst it included key members of the management team, it was not exclusive to management, nor was every member of the executive present (some executives are excellent in executing immediate priorities and struggle to have more exploratory conversations, save them the frustration and don’t include them).
The council need not reach consensus. Its very purpose is to explore complexity. It rests with the senior executive to, when required, decide about action, but not every council meeting needs that. Your primary goal is to deepen and clarify the company’s understanding of what it does.
The name is not important, indeed the more innocuous the better.
And it met regularly. In some companies, weekly. In others, as infrequently as once a quarter. My sense is that unless you’re exceptionally clear on where you’re going, once a quarter is too infrequent, a complex company would need at least fortnightly probably weekly, and the minimum for a small company is monthly. Frequency and consistency build momentum.
You might be a leader in a large corporation thinking ‘My Exco is not going to do this’. Take control, you can do it for your division or department gather the handful of people who are interested and can contribute, think about your department as a business, the broader corporate as your market, your ‘world’ and create your Hedgehog Concept. If you pause and create space for strategic reflection you will be more effective.
Our world is noisy. We can act every hour, of every day and still stand still. Whether building a room, a friendship, or a company, it is useful to have a space filled with nothing.
Wishing you moments of emptiness…
Karl
PS: It was a post by ceramicist Karlien van Rooyen that provided the seed for today’s letter. You can see her magnificent work here.