I’ve
worked with many people in my consulting career, but one of the most insightful
is Gary Hamel. I’ve worked with Gary on clients such as Whirlpool and Korea
Telecom. He usually plays the role of
guru by giving keynote addresses, facilitating executive workshops, and presenting
his breakthrough ideas to large audiences.
I’ve
heard Gary speak so often that sometimes I find myself drifting off into the
complacency of “… I’ve heard this before; doesn’t everyone know this?” Then, wham!
I’m hit by a “Hamely” – a phrase that Gary has been polishing; a phrase
that concisely breaks through complexity and rhetoric; a phrase that clears up
my thinking and emerges in my discussions with clients.
Now
I listen for “Hamelies.” I’ve heard
dozens of them, but here are my three favorites.
1.
Trees
Don’t Grow To The Sky
This Hamely captures the fervent
activity of planning for growth when a business has plateaued. I see this all the time.
It seems to me this is
where JC Penny has landed. Shareholders
and board members are beating an old business model; plans produce numbers that
refuse to materialize. JCP keeps beating
the dead horse business model of the 1960’s department store. It’s changed jockeys, brought back the old jockey,
and even given the old jockey a new whip.
It’s done everything but admit that the horse is dead.
For more than the last
decade JC Penny was looking the other way when customers changed their shopping
preferences. The department store
concept lost its luster. Just like a
pair of jeans, no longer does “one-size-fit-all.” People want to buy designer jeans in designer
boutiques. Ron Johnson couldn’t change
JCP around the idea that: “If you want
to run with the Apple crowd you have to look like the Apple crowd.”
But JCP’s loyal customers
want more than Johnson’s square deal prices.
They want their coupons, no matter how confusing the pricing. These are the people that grew the seedling
into a majestic oak. And they are the
same customers who are atrophying the great tree.
2.
All
Strategies Work – Until They Don’t
This Hamely captures the
complacency of strategy without relevance; again a common management malady.
It seems to me this is
where Blackberry has landed. Less than a
decade ago the “Crackberry’s” owned the business of doing business securely on their
phone. Blackberry’s value proposition even
elected presidents. According to
Blackberyology, business is not personal; social has no place in corporations.
Blackberry didn’t see the
discontinuity of disaggregated connectivity.
It didn’t see that the world continues to disaggregate to the level of
the individual yet connect to the level of the world. Unfortunately for Blackberry, organizations
are people and people are social and they look for connections beyond their
work – hello SnapChat.
Blackberry’s new strategy
is one of being bought; going private; and likely selling the company’s network
and patents. Once the sell off is
complete the ensuing strategy will work forever.
3.
We
Don’t Build Organizations To Change
This Hamily captures hope
without commitment; a most common affliction in business today.
It seems to me this is
where Nokia landed. What a storied
legacy is Nokia. It’s a tale of an
adapter, a changer. Nokia started back in
1865 as a paper mill and morphed through transformations in rubber making,
cables, electronics, and telecommunications to become the world leader in the
manufacture of telephone hand sets.
About four years ago when
Stephen Elop took over as president he wrote his “burning platform” memo to
call on Nokia’s transformation capabilities to move away from manufacturing and
enter the software driven market of smartphones. It didn’t work. What happened? The intransigence of core competence and
orthodoxies, that’s what happened.
Somehow along the way
Nokia forgot that its real core competence wasn’t making things, it was the
capability to change itself. Now it
doesn’t have to worry about getting out of the business of making handsets; it
can do that for Microsoft.
So Gary thanks for the
Hamelies! Now all we need are leaders
who act on them because: Hamelies are truisms.
