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Re: Breaking the Mould

Visionary folks are delusional – they can see something that isn’t there yet. Through the marvelous creative process, they can bring a business into being. In a similar way, they create divisions, open branches, pull teams together for projects.

Each of these involves the coming together of a set of what I call Founding Conditions. You need

An opportunity
Some capital
A business concept
Key committed people

That set permits a run to be made. The run can be as long the market situation supports the founding conditions.

Strategy still remains a rolling of the dice. We survey a situation, make a call, allocate resources and take a cut at it. Nowhere is it written that even the best judgments have to work!

All kinds of circumstances can intervene – a change in the original factors, a flaw in one of the elements pulled together for the purpose, human failings – or maybe the idea or the way it is being acted on just won’t make it.

From time to time I see folks who are stuck.

Ron was getting a creeping feeling. He was bemoaning declining margins with higher dollar, more complex, project business in his company. I suppose he could have just gone on tinkering, trying to bump the margins a bit and/or cut costs.

But the cumulative stagnation and intermittent bad news were trying to tell him something. A pattern crystallized – and he reached one of those realizations we dread and welcome at the same time. His whole organization was off track.

Staffed up to track the model of bigger organizations in his field, he had allowed the show to rev up under a model that was fundamentally at cross-purposes with the core strength of his enterprise.

He – and it – were trapped inside a "set". He needed to break the mould.

Here’s a truism often spoken but seldom acted on – if the horse is dead, get off it! To Ron’s great credit, he did.

The company needed a jolt and when they got it, they were off to the races again – with better prospects.

Another requirement to step out may presuppose that a leader is getting exposure to levels of success only available to those operating on different platforms.

You might get pushed up against a version of who you are or what you can do that is unfamiliar but is calling. Letting that happen is painful and provocative.

Sam saw that his retail clothing venture had a better mousetrap – largely because of his fascination with back office IT. He was vaguely aware that he could do much more but it wasn’t until he was confronted with the possibility of fronting a consolidation play that he reluctantly embraced it. Good thing! His company is three times what it was.

It takes great courage to break the mould, one that has had success for you but cannot carry you all the way you need to go. It means standing apart from comfortable structures, from familiar people, even from the previously defined self. It involves risk, interruption, and the unknown.

But the elements of the new order cannot come into play until the mould is broken.

Those who can allow themselves to see beyond the present form, who know there can be more productive relationships, those who can entertain the radical options – they’re the ones who break out.

People yearn to be free of themselves, to be different. But it’s tough to risk doing away with the way we are and launch on some new tack. The other day I talked to someone looking at software with enormous potential advantage. When I asked why she hadn’t made the jump, she said, “I’m scared that I’ll put a bunch of work into it - relying on it. If it doesn’t, the value of all that work will be lost.” Touché.

Today we pretend that we will embrace any new advance. Of course, if it’s technology, most will make the jump.

But when it comes to breaking off a course our company is on – well….. Strategy has been set. A team has been formed. They’re pushing hard. Results are so-so. You see another way. Whether to go there ……

The February Harvard Business Review had a great article - “Why Bad Projects Are So Hard to Kill”. What they seized on was the irrational belief held by the team (particularly the Project Leader) that - despite contrary evidence mounting up – the project would work out in the end. It wouldn’t. In the examples, things had to turn very bad before the show was closed – by an independent face with a dry detached perspective.

It is the biz of leaders to break the form they created. There are times when the horses, harnessed the way they are and pulling down the road that has been chosen – will just never get as far as we want.

This is a hard moment. In our Presidential Competencies talk, we call it “making the painful call”. No one else but the leader will do it – probably for the reasons in the HBR article (you can get a copy from us – if you request it). But the freedom – if it’s the right call – can be immediate!

Breaking the mould is not for everyone or at every opportunity. Releasing the resources to be redeployed in another formation – starting over with a clean slate – it’s a very fresh feeling – unencumbered, once the dirty work of demolition is done. The beauty of redirection is you know what to create this time. The other form showed you what NOT to do. You’re better guided and it’s a whole new adventure.

Doug Bouey

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