In the military, particularly in times of war, you must obey orders. There can be no questioning of authority, there can be no doubt. You are not being asked to do something that is reasonable or logically defensible. At any time in a “contact” (as engaging in hostile fire with the enemy is politely referred to) you may either die or kill someone you’ve never even met (let alone had the chance to decide whether you like or not).
That’s war. Its purpose: defending some definition of sovereignty you want as a defined people with a right to self-determination.
Whatever, it’s not clever. That’s exactly why you must just do as you’re told. Signing up is at least voluntary nowadays: your choice, know the rules.
Even in civilian pursuits, though, sticking to the rules and repetition in execution is what’s required to produce what commerce requires: consistent product quality that builds a brand and commands a premium.
Where you need to change, where you want to transform or turn around or reinvent or challenge, it’s not only about the people you choose but also the latitude they’re given.
Rules of safety also are born out of discipline, process and repetition, out of experience gleaned from trial and error. Mass production, assembly lines, economies of scale — these are things founded on procedure and process, and the hierarchy required to enforce them.
You cannot make a mistake in the assembly or functionality of the MCAS anti-stall system used in the 737 Max aircraft. If you do, it kills people.
But rules and innovation are on opposite ends of the spectrum. Rules and change cannot co-exist, almost by definition. As much as “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” often applies, if something isn’t working, then repeating it, applying the same rules and using the same people will not fix it. Never.
Where you need to change, where you want to transform or turn around or reinvent or challenge, it’s not only about the people you choose but also the latitude they’re given to judge, decide, make mistakes, self-correct, learn, dream and explore.
Of course, there must be guidelines, policies, shareholder requirements and environmental and social consciousness. Once these are agreed, though, with the right leaders in place, they only need checking occasionally, maybe once a quarter.
First you need to figure out where on the spectrum of military to entrepreneur you either find yourself or need to move to in order to compete, to survive. Disruptors, for the most part, embrace problems, absorb them, take them to bed, sleep with them, dream about them and then eat them.
There would be no Uber, no Apple, no power steering or ABS brakes or even e-mail and no permanent eradication of crippling diseases if it had not been for the men and women who dared to question boundaries and conventional wisdom and, yes, sometimes even break the rules.
People, teams and individuals, have made extraordinary differences.
KTM, once described as an “Austrian upstart” in the motorcycle business, is now selling more motorcycles than Harley Davidson and wants to break into the top three in the world. (I had a KTM 540 scrambler once — awesome power to weight ratio!) It’s been a case study of mistakes and learning and closing some models down while diversifying into others. It’s been about brave calls and endurance, about winning the Dakar rally every year since 2001, after trying for eight years before that.
Not every case study will be as daring, but most enduring change has common characteristics.
At some point it is no longer the individual leader who makes the employment decisions — it is the culture of the organisation that will either hug you in or spit you out.
Caged organisations with tired organograms, headed by stale divisional heads who have become accepting of failure as a refuge, who protect legacy comfort zones, will not be abided by leaders worth their salt. If you want to keep it in a cage, get a budgie, not an eagle.
Entrepreneurs don’t come from entrepreneurial families, but they do create them. Our troubles and divisions may just be the fertile breeding ground for entrepreneurs, for our problem solvers.
Let’s invite them into our formal, accepted (if not outdated) structures and thinking. Give them a chance to solve the problems — at least they know what they are. Let’s go find people living in the mistakes of our society and ask them to show us, to teach us.
Intersections will emerge, however uncomfortably, from those unlikely partnerships to one day form the foundations of the enduring prosperity we’re so desperate for. Not rules, not hierarchies, not influence without competence. Not protocol over expediency.
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