I have blogged often about change and how people avoid it (who moved my cheese?), but it cropped up again the other day when I was reading Harvard's Rosabeth Moss Kanter* thoughts on business. She has six key principles for business:
Many of these are familiar with me, after all I often talk about employees becoming the company’s dog, but Rosabeth expands on this theme and talks about the “curse of success”. This is the curse that affected Blockbuster, Nokia, Kodak and others. It is the curse of being so successful at one thing that you will do your utmost to stop anything affecting your one thing.
Blockbuster knew about streaming but gave it up to Netflix because they believed rentals was the future; Nokia laughed at the iPhone, as did Blackberry – whoever wants a phone without a keyboard? – and they missed the swipe left; and Kodak had a digital camera before anyone else, but threw it out as laughably stupid - who would want a digital camera? This is the curse of success.
A great example was posted just the other day by Jessica Neal in her podcast with Rosabeth about these things and Rosabeth talked about Hewlett-Packard (HP). Steve Jobs, that guy from Apple who is no longer with us (☹) was keen to find a partner to make the chips for the next generation Apple Computers, so he knocked on HP’s door. There were lots of discussions and head nodding and “oh, this is a great idea, we will take it to the team” … and then nothing happens.
Suffice to say HP didn’t get the deal. Why? Because they wanted to play it safe, as most firms do. The executive management team want to avoid risk, so they play the game and then say no. They stop innovation and challenge. They want everyone to be their dog. Sit, stay, drop, fetch. This is how corporations work.
There’s nothing wrong with this. I am not criticising. It’s just brilliant people making “safe” decisions to protect their quarterly earnings and get their bonus … instead of building the future.
This is Rosabeth’s point. Her point is that big companies get so focused on protecting their core business that they cannot see the future standing right in front of them. Rosabeth calls it the curse of success because you get so good at one thing that you reject everything else.
This reminds me of so many other thought leaders like Clayton Christensen, Michael Hammer and Peter Drucker going way back when.
The critical factor is that you have to challenge the company and stop stagnating it. This point is 10x in banking because, in banking, we are 10x more risk averse. You need to change the game.
Meanwhile, the podcast between Jean and Rosabeth is well worth your time and recommended: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/why-confidence-is-the-secret-to-transformation/id1733889562?i=1000729333051
* Rosabeth Moss Kanter holds the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professorship at Harvard Business School, and co-founded the Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative. She has spent decades teaching and consulting on organisational change and leadership, developing principles that businesses of all sizes can use in their organisations.
** in case you didn't Google it, Perturbatio is Latin for confusion, disorder and disruption.
Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...