My father-in-law shot me an early email this morning mentioning the high quality Brooks op-ed, so I immediately clicked over. As I read the piece I couldn’t help but be impressed with the insights and the facts that Brooks laid out around the success of results-driven dullards as CEO’s.
However, one passage troubled me and continues to trouble me as the morning wears on. Here it is:
The second thing the market seems to want from leaders is a relentless and somewhat mind-numbing commitment to incremental efficiency gains. Charismatic C.E.O.’s and politicians always want the exciting new breakthrough — whether it is the S.U.V. or a revolutionary new car. The methodical executives at successful companies just make the same old four-door sedan, but they make it better and better.
Now it is tough to argue with a century of research, until you consider the main economic driver of the past century which was industrialization. Industrialization is what has caused this amazing economic growth and stability that the world has experienced, particularly post WWII, however I would posit that the industrial age has optimized its gains and we are now facing down the Networked Age, which Kevin Kelly and others have been prophesizing since the late 80’s. In the network age new values of leadership may emerge and the thought that incremental improvement is enough to sustain and grow enterprises may not be enough. In the networked age, the competitive advantage of incrementalism is obliterated by networks that reroute the minute that the product or service does not fulfill a need.
At 30 years old I do not have history or wisdom on my side, but I do not necessarily believe that we can rely on a century worth of research to define the path forward, nor do I think that you can discard the insights of the studies. All I believe is that grinding incrementalism, a hallmark of the industrial age codified in Six Sigma is not enough to create competitive advantage in the globally networked age.
