John C. Beck, Author, Professor and Visionary

Top five breakthroughs in business education

Twenty-five years ago, I was among a group of Harvard MBA students who presented a petition to the school’s faculty.  The proposal which was almost unanimously supported by the students, had the distinction of being rejected by the faculty without a dissenting vote.  We weren’t asking for easier grades, or more days off, or better teachers.  We wanted more group projects.  We all felt we learned more through hands-on application of concepts that we did in case study discussions.  But the student recommendation was rejected “because the curriculum is for the faculty to decide.  It is not your place.”

For me, this experience has always been a metaphor for modern business education: teaching concepts, academic skills, and a kind of elitism.  Over the last 40 years there has been a 400 percent increase in the number of MBAs in the U.S.  Meanwhile economic growth rates have actually decreased.  However, CEO pay has gone from 30 times greater than the average worker in 1970 to 250 times the average worker in 2010. 

Lest we despair needlessly; there have been some nice innovations and experiments in business education over the last two decades.  My favorites include:

5)    On-line; taught by practitioners:  The University of Phoenix and other for-profit schools have churned out a lot of MBAs and made a lot of money by having highly standardized business courses taught by part-time instructors who also work in the fields they teach.  University of Phoenix first hit my radar screen when a PhD candidate friend of mine at Columbia was required to fulfill a basic course requirement  and chose to the cheapest alterative which was an online UofPhoenix course.  He has maintained that he learned more, retained more, and has applied more from that course than he did from the rest of his PhD course-work put together.  I have taught courses online myself over the last decade and believe that students can – and usually do – learn more and better online than they do in person.

4)    Personal Development and Societal Good:  I have been impressed by the programs initiated by Yale and Stanford that focus on the personal development of students and emphasize “doing good” with careers.  Theories are important, of course.  General business knowledge is also good.  But ultimately, these programs emphasize values, deep personal growth, and societal understanding. 

3)    Real Experience combined with Theory:  I joined the faculty of Thunderbird in Glendale Arizona in 1994 for one reason.  When I was being recruited, I sat in on a Business Strategy course was being team-taught by a relatively young, smart assistant professor and an almost retired IBM ex-executive.  The students got the best, latest theories about strategy in the context of real wisdom about how these ideas would really apply.  Sadly, soon after I joined the school – for accreditation requirements and kowtowing to ranking systems that emphasized publications - practical business experience all but disappeared from the Thunderbird campus.  None of this really worked the way they had intended … the highest overall MBA ranking that Thunderbird ever had was in the mid-1990s.

2)    Student Focus; No Tenure:  In 1994, I had also been in talks with IMD in Laussane Switzerland which was operating without a tenure system and with a real focus on student satisfaction in the classroom among mostly executive students. This was a new idea at the time, but it has come to serve as a model for many programs around the world since.  IMD professors are geniuses in the classroom.  There is a little bit of theory but the emphasis is on application to real business problems.  For the most part, the professors have never really “done” business, but they’ve taught so many executives that they know their real concerns.  The focus is on facilitation (for four years I was a Visiting Professor at IMD and advised that if I wanted good ratings I should make sure that 90% of the time, the participants are talking — odd to be paid so much for saying so little) and being a good entertainer.  When the professor does talk, the stories need to make the students laugh and cry.  Business theories do not do that.  (well… a few have made me laugh…). 

1)    Global and Project-based: My favorite current model is one that has come out of nowhere to be one of the biggest MBA programs in the world and one of the best ranked.  The Hult Schools are located in Boston, London, Dubai, Shanghai, and San Francisco.  Students in this one year program spend the first half year at one campus an then are free to learn in any of the other two campuses around the world for the remainder of the year.  This is the first truly global program spanning multiple coordinated campuses.  This program features a very small core group of faculty members who do enough research and publication to meet accreditation standards.  Many of the courses are taught by adjunct professors – the best teachers they can hire from anywhere in the world.  The term is structured so that professors can fly in and teach intensively for a week or so; virtually stay in touch with the students while they work on a group project throughout the term; fly back in for a final week of assessing projects and guiding all the students in the class through the lessons learned by each of the teams.

As an MBA student in 1986, I wanted a system of education that looks a lot like Hult does today.  But it took twenty-five years for one to emerge. 

It does make me wonder: if we listened to some of the smartest students around today about their needs in education, could we reduce that learning curve a little? And maybe in the process, MBA degrees may become more relevant – with more potential to induce growth, decrease inequities in the workplace, and encourage creativity.

Roger: uniquely individualistic

“I fought against my mother my entire life.  I did not want to be – could not be – who she wanted me to be.  She was a stunning woman – Miss Kingston Jamaica – and was accustomed to getting her way. Almost any man would do her bidding.  Any man, except me.   She had two problems on that front with me.  First, I was her son – thus, fairly resistant to her charms.  Second, I was gay – thus, fairly resistant to all women’s charms.”

“My mother knew I was probably gay from a pretty young age – she did not want to accept it – but deep down, she knew it.  She constantly pressured me to be ‘more of a man.’  To her, I was soft, and she worried that people would take advantage of me.  She always pushed me very hard.”

“So hard, in fact, she finally pushed me right out of the house.  I was 17 years old – when I left my childhood home to move into my own apartment with my 19-year-old boyfriend. “

“My mother was still very young when she died an agonizing death and my reason for being seemed to go with her.  Who was I now?”

“Sure, I tried to be a good son.  As I look back on it now, I did more than my fair share of tending the younger kids – being home after school to watch out for them while she was at work.  But growing up, it felt like I was rebelling constantly. It seems I was constantly saying “no” and trying to make my own space.”

“I lived with that boyfriend for five years, but an old theme returned – I felt like I was losing too much of myself to him.  Finally, I ended it and for the next 13 years, I dated constantly but, could never settle down for very long. I was afraid of letting an attachment define me.  I was afraid of losing that part of me that makes me Roger.”

 “After my mother died, I quit my job in the fashion business.  I needed a profession that was more meaningful and one that would allow me to help other people, but I wanted to be my own boss.  I wanted to be able to help them in my own, unique way.  I didn’t want to be part of a big organization.  I needed the freedom to grieve and to help others at the same time – in my own time.”

Roger is 44, but most people would guess he is in his late 20s.  Perhaps part of his need for autonomy is the fact that he has been treated much younger than his age for his entire life.  He was well into his 30s before people assumed he had even graduated from college.  In American society, most men aren’t taken terribly seriously until they are at least out of college.  Maybe this is why he was into his mid-30s before he was finally able to settle down in a long-term relationship again.

“I think I’m beginning to accept that I can make compromises finally.  It took half my life to get here.  But, then, I’m lucky. Living in Phoenix just accentuates my freedom: wide-open skies, a wild-west culture, and neighbors who never interfere. And I have a partner who gives me lots of space.  I can be with him and not be controlled by him. I can finally be me.”

BoonLi wants equality

“My mother was never allowed to take the exams to go to college.  She never got over that. I’m sure I bore the brunt of her disappointment.  I would have never received a scholarship to Oxford without her.  Many parents push their kids. But with her, there was a kind of desperation in the pressure.  Everyday I felt that if I didn’t study harder, life would never be fair to me. That if I didn’t struggle against it, life was going to get me. ”  

“Oddly, by going to Oxford, I came to believe in the unfairness of life even more.  Sure, I got into a great school and could, in some ways write my own ticket in life.  But I was reminded everyday in Britain, in a thousand small ways that I was not as good as everyone else around me.  When I was a student, Britain was very class conscious — it probably still is today, but I haven’t lived there for so long that I really can’t comment on it. “ 

“In that British consciousness, my Chinese face translated immediately to ‘less important,’ ‘unintelligent,’ ‘dismissible.’  Even fellow students and professors — and almost anyone else who knew I was an Oxford student — treated me almost as if I was an interloper in the tight knit group.  I was doomed to forever being an outsider inside my own university.  If I’d stayed in Asia, I might have psychologically dealt with the unfairness dealt to my mother.  I might have come to believe in my own self. I might even have come to believe that one could  overcome life’s natural unfairness.  But my stay in Britain just confirmed my learned biases.”

“It is probably not surprising that I took a job with MTV right out of college.  It was an organization full of people obsessed with proving that they “as young people” could be every bit as successful as their older and more experienced counterparts.  I had dealt with class, educational, racial, and then in my first job, age discrimination.  

But I will say, that here in New York City for the first time in my life, I have come to believe that my race is not an obstacle to be overcome.  I am a young, upwardly mobile Oxford grad in a good company and China is seen by many in New York as the future of all economic growth.”  

BoonLi glanced at the elegant wooden clock on the wall of his small but beautifully appointed apartment.  He had made time to talk with me, but I knew he had to leave soon to attend a fund-raising event for his latest cause.  His eyes swept around the room and then focused back on me.

“I guess, according to most people, I’ve made it in life.  They would say that I have no reason to struggle any more.  But the psychological patterns are so deeply ingrained that I will never lose them.  I will probably spend a part of everyday of the rest of my life fighting against inequality and unfairness.  It is a fundamental part of me now.”

Sally does Stability

“Running a farm is a constant cycle of financial ups and downs – fertilizer, equipment and better bulls are very expensive – everything depends on weather and markets.  Overlay that with my parents’ natural emotional mood swings and you can understand how I never knew, when I woke up in the morning as a child, if it was going to be a good day or a bad day.  It all culminated when my father and brother died within four months of each other bracketing my 21^st birthday.  That sent my mother into inpatient care.  My boyfriend and I left college, moved into the family home and had to take over much of the responsibility for the farm.”

“That boyfriend – now my husband – had been through a similarly disruptive childhood.  His parents divorced when he was only 5.  He was the oldest of five kids and really bore the brunt of keeping them together and focused.  They’d spend summers with his dad wherever his dad happened to be (he moved a lot) and the rest of the year in the mid-West with his mom.  It was less than desirable for instilling a sense of predictability and calm in his life.”

“So I suppose we ended up dating and spending time together because we were both seeking some kind of stability.  When my husband went off to one college and I went to another, both of our lives were even more chaotic.  After my mother got out of the hospital, I finally transferred to his school and life calmed down considerably. A year after that we were married – but we didn’t tell our families because we just didn’t want the uproar that would ensue.”

Sally is the definition of calm nestled between two dogs on the couch.  You might think she has nothing more to do than sit and chat about her psychological past, but this is not a topic that comes easily to her.  In the 30 years I’ve known her, I still know so little.  She looks behind her, past the turn-of-the 20^th-century original wood floors toward the magnificent hand-carved oak staircase that leads to the sturdily built kids’ rooms upstairs.

“I hope that is what we’ve been able to give to the children.  A sense that we are there for them and that life is now – and in the future still can be – predictable and safe and good.  We can’t do that if we don’t feel that in our own lives.  So we work hard to be different people than we were raised to be.  It is better for the kids and it is better for us as well.”

“I had to start my own consulting company.  I was tired of the roller coaster of politics and lay offs.  I knew I had a skill that was very important, but until I ran my own company, my job was dependent on someone else being able to sell my skills to clients.  Now I do that myself and the income flow is more consistent and predictable – partly because I know what is going on.  I feel like I’m in control.”

“And when I feel like I have some control in my life, the kids, my husband and people around me are probably happier – because I’m happier.”

Dave relies on Belief

“I suppose all of my priorities in life are actually based on my belief in God.  I make my decisions based on what my religion teaches me.  WWJD – “what would Jesus do?” is my guiding principle in life.  It is the basis of everything.”

“Sure, I was in the business world for 30 years and you can get sidetracked a lot during your career.  I was a salesman, and a darn good one.  In my line of work, it is easy to get drawn into some pretty unethical behavior.  Most of my colleagues have done something stupid at one point or another.  I can’t say I was completely immune to it during my whole career.  But I will say that I tried to be as ethical as I possibly could.”

“I pride myself on doing the right things and the things that God would want me to do.  I’ve tried to raise my kids that way.  And my relationship with my wife has been made so much better because of the teachings I believe in.”

Dave is 62 years old and has been able to take an early retirement.  He’s working with his oldest son on some business deals now.  But mostly he can take it easy and just do the occasional consulting to bring in a little extra cash.  His home and life appear relaxed and comfortable, but without a lot of showy extras.  Pictures of his family adorn the walls of his living room, but the most prominent spaces are devoted to pictures of Christ.

“I was drafted into the Vietnam War.  I think that is when I found Christ.  I was afraid, and needed something to rely on.  Most of my friends at the time were very anti-war, so I couldn’t even talk to them.  My parents didn’t need to hear my fears, it just made them scared and unhappy.  I needed someone to talk to, someone to confide in; someone who I could trust with my inner-most feelings.  Turned out that that was God.  I prayed all the time.  When some of my platoon-mates would see my lips moving, I know that they thought I was talking to myself, but I was just praying to get through the maneuver or through the exercise or through the day.” 

“So when I have a major decision to make, I pray first.  I try not to have anything else in mind.  I just pray.  My only real priority is what God wants me to do.” 

“I know some people believe that I just use God as my excuse for doing what I want to do anyway.  But I really try to listen when I’m praying and sometimes I make decisions and give advice that I wouldn’t normally.  For instance, a friend came to me to ask about his young teenage daughter who was pregnant.  Now, I believe that abortion is an awful sin.  I would never tell anyone it is right.  But before I talked to my friend about the situation with his daughter, I prayed really hard.  I got an answer that I didn’t like.  I prayed some more.  Still I had the same feeling.  So I prayed some more.  It never changed.  So I finally told my friend that maybe in his daughter’s case an abortion was the right thing.  I never thought those words would come out of my mouth.  But I advised him and his wife and daughter to pray long and hard about it because it is their issue — not mine — and maybe my divine communication wires were crossed.” 

“My friend didn’t talk to me for months.  Finally, he told me that his daughter was going to have the baby.  And a few weeks later, there was a blessed event.  It seemed I had been wrong  and everything was going to be fine.  Baby and mother seemed happy and well.  But then a terrible tragedy.  Before the baby turned a year old, her very depressed young mother took the life of the baby and her own life.”

“I didn’t hear anything from my friend for almost a year.  Then one night, he rings my doorbell.  He tells me that I had it right all along and that he and his wife should have listened to their daughter and to their own prayers more.  He told me that he really got the same answer that I had given him, but he couldn’t believe it.” 

“If you put God first – before other people, before doctrine, and even before laws – I believe you’ll always be blessed.  And you’ll make the right decisions.”

Roy and Joy

“Why would I go to work every day if I wasn’t having fun on the job?  Wouldn’t I look for something else to do?  I’m even busier now that I’m retired than I ever was when I was working, so I need to make sure what I’m doing is more fun than ever.  Why wouldn’t I do that?”

Sometimes Roy’s questions sound like the careful rhetoric of a preacher.  At other times, they come across slightly defensive.  But there is never any question of Roy’s resolve and unwavering belief in his philosophy toward life.  He doesn’t know any other way to live.

“Right out of college, I couldn’t imagine doing a boring corporate job.  My friends and I knew there was a lot of money in company jobs; we had a whole career of office work ahead of us.  When we heard about the chance to build some miniature golf courses in Southern California, we asked ourselves what could be better than that?  We started a company and spent our days outside in the California sun while playing golf – something we’d choose to do for fun anyway.”

“But a good thing can’t last forever, can it? We got tired of that.  It started to feel like a real job.  I knew that the next thing I wanted to do would be interesting and varied and exciting.  So, I got into investments.”

“What could be more fun than working in a new industry every few weeks?  Meeting new people?  Convincing myself, and them, about our really good ideas?  It was the dream job for most of my life.  I got involved when the company was young and we were all idealistic.  We rode the big waves in the stock market rises through the 1980s and 1990s and made a lot of money in the process.  Life was good, wouldn’t you say?”

“But just in case there wasn’t enough excitement in my work life, I started taking in study abroad students to live with my teenage kids.  From morning until night, I was involved in constant, new exploration.  I was always learning new things.  We would cook foods from their countries at home.  My kids learned so much and we all had more enriched, happy lives because of it.  That’s not what the average investment advisor does when he goes home at night, is it?” 

Roy pauses, and then shifts the conversation back to that preacher rhetoric. However, his tone is anything but defensive now.

“Why should all the fun end with retirement?  I’m on three or four Boards now.  I invest in Central Asian high tech companies.  I’ve travelled with the Uzbekistan Olympic Committee Officials.  I do my best to help the development of villages in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.   That is all just plain fun for me.”

“But when the sun goes down and the work day is over for me now, I do get a little retirement.  Nothing makes me happier than walking down the street from our apartment in Buenos Aires to have an early evening latte, or sitting on our balcony overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Baja sipping on a margarita, or being surrounded by my family – my wife, my kids, and my “adopted” exchange students, and all of my friends.”

“How can you find more joy in your life than doing all of that?”

Faye: The Good of Society

“There is nothing in the world that is as important to me as my family.  I believe that family will last forever and that kinship bonds that we create on this earth will last with us forever throughout the eternities.”

“It would be wrong for me to say that my Heavenly Father isn’t the most important being in my life… of course He is. But I don’t know where I’d be without my husband and my family and friends that have become like family.”

“Family has always been good to me.  Better in fact than I was to it. As the oldest of 6 children, I was supposed to help with the smaller kids.  And, usually I did, but not always. I was a little selfish when I was a girl.  Then when I got into high school, I wanted to sing and dance and spend time with my friends.  I loved all of those things.  I probably spent too much time working on my dresses and doing my hair.” 

“Before I knew it I was pregnant with my own child.” 

Here Faye pauses.  She never tears up.  But just a hint of pink emerges around her eyelids.

“Of course, that baby didn’t survive.”

“That was one of the saddest moments of my life.  But because of that little baby, one of the happiest things in my life happened — Jay and I got married.  Jay was two years older; he was graduating and going off to summer jobs and college; I probably wouldn’t have stayed in touch with him after high school.  But because of that baby, Jay and I were married just a week after high school graduation.”

“His family disowned him for a while.  My family was busy caring for me and preparing a good home for the new child.  It was the middle of the depression and Jay was lucky enough to have found a summer job in the mines in Nevada.  When he returned, his parents barely talked to him.  So he moved into our small home with all of my brothers and sisters.  He immediately started commuting to college  — he was up before sunrise and home well after dark.  I didn’t see much of him, but I had plenty to do taking care of my brothers and sisters and helping with the family business. I took care of my family, but really we were helping each other.”

“We had two beautiful little girls while Jay was in college and then our third came along right after he graduated.  It was well into the Depression by then and jobs were impossible to find.  He got a quarter-time high school teaching job.  I was about as busy and as tired as I’ve ever been in my life.  One summer, the girls and I survived mostly on vegetables that we grew in the backyard.  We really didn’t have any money to use at the market.”

“At our lowest point that year, our neighbor – a widow who was no better off then we were– brought us a small boxful of canned meat.  I knew those were probably her last cans of food, but she was sacrificing for us.  Her kindness, allowed me to take care of my family. I never ate anything in those cans, and stretched one can over two days of meals for the girls.”

“Then, out of the blue, through one of his professor’s recommendations, Jay was offered a position as a research assistant in a lab at Berkeley.  The job would pay enough to keep us alive.  They sent some money to help us with the move.  I took some of that, without telling Jay, and bought a carton on canned meat and left it on our neighbor’s front porch the day we moved.”

“Jay and I weathered all of those tough times.  My kids grew up and moved away, and I found a new family in neighbors and friends who were there to help and encourage me.  My community has become my family – people are the most important thing to me.  When you get older, you realize that houses, and cars, and clothing matter very little.  People you care for are the only things that really matter in the end.”

Chanthol: The Good of Growth

“Why do you keep saying the house is so big?”  Chanthol asks with an air of exasperation. “There are much bigger houses in America.  Yes, this is big in Cambodia, but nothing like the houses that you have in your country.”

“When we have guests or family visiting it is nice to have so much room.  But at night, my wife and I often sleep in our daughter’s room.  So we can all be close to each other.  So that we can be a family.”

“This is just the way that the world works.  As you get older you have more and more things.  When you go to the villages, you see that the older people have more things.  They give them to their children.  That is the way that the world is supposed to work.” Chanthol is unapologetic as he continues.

“Most of my financial success in life has just happened to me.  In fact, when I was younger – when I first went to the United States – material wealth meant nothing to me.  I came from a poor family.  My older brother was a hippie who went to the US in the 1970s and lived in a small, dirty studio apartment in the suburbs of Washington DC.  My parents were afraid of what was happening in Cambodia, so they sent me to live with him as a teenager.  When I arrived, his only furniture in the apartment was a guitar.  But he still lived better than my family in Cambodia.  Looking around at my new surroundings, I couldn’t understand why Americans needed so much wealth.”

“When the Khmer Rouge took over the country, I was still in Washington DC.   My brother and I were granted refugee status.  That meant I could work legally and I got a job in a seafood restaurant.  That job paid for my college education.  It didn’t pay for much else, but it did pay for tuition.”

“I shared my brother’s hippie attitudes about capitalism and the need for money.  Perhaps, my attitude about money would have remained throughout my life, but my family’s situation changed my mind.  My family was being held by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia during the days of the Killing Fields.  There was a growing refugee community in Virginia and sometimes I would hear reports that some of my family members had been seen alive.  Then I heard stories that there were “guides” who could bring whole families out of Cambodia for a price.  The price was generally more than a hundred thousand dollars – and it had to be delivered in gold.”

“I was nearing graduation and I looked for the job that would give me as much money as quickly as possible.  I went to work for the finance group in GE Capital.  This was the high growth period of that organization.  Soon, I was travelling around the world as an auditor for them.  My salary was high, but my yearly bonuses were more than I had thought one person could earn in a whole lifetime.  My official address was still that little apartment with my brother, but I was travelling constantly so my usual home was hotel rooms around the world.  I had no living expenses, so it didn’t take me long to earn the money needed to get my family out.” 

“On one of my trips to Thailand, I delivered a pouch full of gold bricks to a man in the refugee camps on the border of Cambodia. A friend of my family vouched for this man, but I could only hope that I would ever hear from him – or my family members – again.”

“Six months later, my whole family was with me in Virginia.  They all lived in the one room apartment with my brother for a while until I was able to find a three bedroom place.  I was never there because I was travelling.  They couldn’t speak English so they couldn’t find work.  I supported the whole family financially for years.”

“Without money, my family would have died an awful death in Cambodia.  Without money, they would have suffered in terrible poverty in the US.  My whole life has been in finance and in economic development in government; I’ve seen the importance of money in building companies, nations and personal lives.  My family would not have the chances that they’ve had without the money I was able to earn.”

Chanthol – tall, handsome, and impeccably dressed – glances over a family portrait with his strikingly beautiful wife and three daughters.  His oldest two daughters have made it into Ivy League universities and his youngest is still only in elementary school.  All have very bright futures.

“If I hadn’t earned so much early in my career, I couldn’t have turned my attention to government service – with an almost negligible salary.  It is wrong to say out loud, but many people think it: Without money, life can be almost impossible.  I probably do have more money than I really need now.  But I’m glad to continue doing government work for little pay and giving to charities and villages in Cambodia.  I can help a lot of people with the good fortune that I’ve been given.”

Lynn: a life lived for the Good of Life

One of Lynn’s earliest memories is of a casket.  Her brother Jimmy had been such an exciting playmate for the three older girls in the family.  Then one day with no warning, there was a little tiny casket. Lynn can’t remember Jimmy being sick, but he had been, and she and her sisters ended up all dressed in black.  Their playmate was gone.

As she grew up, Lynn put that trauma behind her.  She learned to laugh easily and make friends quickly.  She married a tall, handsome Navy Pilot, Paul, who sang in the Navy choir and appeared on national television on a few occasions.  By the tender age of 25, she and her 7-month-old son were living in Naval officer housing – headed to the top of the social heap in San Diego.  Life was good.  Until …

“I got a call first.  There had been an incident with Paul’s training flight off the California coast.  The plane had to be abandoned and everyone had bailed out.  Then another call brought the news that three of the crew members had been found quickly, but they were still looking for my husband’s parachute.  But not to worry, they told me, Paul had a life jacket as part of the parachute apparatus, so as soon as they spotted the parachute, they were sure he’d be just fine.”

“The wives of the other crew members who had been on the plane arrived at my apartment next.  They arrived empty handed, but they looked like they wished they’d brought a casserole or something.  But it was too early for that.  I suppose a casserole would have implied that something was seriously wrong.  It had still only been several hours since the accident, so no need to get too worried about anything.  The wives all repeated the same story.  There had been a fire.  Everyone abandoned the plane.  The last guy to jump had looked back just before his parachute opened and had seen Paul at the door of the plane.  One of the other crewmen reported that he had seen Paul’s parachute open.”

“After a few days of searching, they declared him dead.  His body was never recovered.” 

“For forty years now, I’ve had a recurring dream of him walking into the house and announcing, just like he always did, in his best Ricky Ricardo accent, ‘I’m home, Lucy.’

Lynn gave birth to twins just 6 months after the accident. Five years later she married Ken who already had 4 teenage kids, then together they had four more children of their own.  She and Ken and the kids lived on a large orchard. They also had a cow and lots of small animals.  Lynn was the classic life mother, surrounded by children and animals – always philosophical about the cycle of life.

“I’m always glad to see Paul, in my dream.  But then reality sets in.  I realize that I need to figure out how to fit him into my current life – how do I explain him showing up to my husband and to the kids.  I want to be back with him, I want to hear him calling out that he is home, but in my dream it always seems like I’m going to have to abandon Ken and all 11 kids to be with him.”

But it wasn’t Lynn who did the abandoning.   Ken died less than a year after his retirement; it almost seemed like too much for Lynn. Ken had scrimped and saved and had such big plans for retirement.  With the illness hitting and then the long slow death, his retirement was nothing but pain.

“Not many women these days have to deal with the loss of two husbands. I’ve seen more death than most of my friends or family, but I’ve also seen a lot more life.  And these days, sometimes, I can’t see at all because of the diabetes.  I’ve lost all feeling in one of my feet.  I know I won’t be around much longer, but I know how precious life is.  I’m lucky to be alive and I cherish every day I have.  There is no greater gift than life.”

Introduction to Eight Great

 Good people disagree often — and sometimes violently. 

This fact bothers me … and not just because of the “violently” part.  At a very deep level, it seems irrational that people who are trying to be good would be disagreeing in the first place.

In the middle of a disagreement — where I firmly and fundamentally believe that only one option is clearly “correct” — it’s a lot easier to believe that the opposing views are either inherently “bad” or they are at least a “bad” choice in this instance. If that were so, I could paint almost every debate in pure whites and blacks without all those annoying grays.

Along the way, however, I’ve come to think that people — generally — are trying to be good. They are – generally – trying to do good things and make good decisions. Anywhere in the world, when people disagree, they are usually doing it from the goodness of their hearts.  

If the top line equation in any decision algorithm is “Because _____ is Good, I will do _____”, then there must be a way to categorize the Goods we are deciding amongst. This book is an effort to do just that. 

Through interviews and surveys with over 2000 people in more than 20 cultures, I’ve come to understand that there are Eight Great Goods. All of our decisions in life can be sorted pretty easily into these categories. In one experiment, I found that a simple prioritization of these Eight Great Goods could predict a subject’s stance on issues ranging from the burqa ban in France to health care reform in the US to Liu Xiaobo receiving the Nobel Prize. Once you understand the Goods — and accept that they are all “good” — you will have a different conversation with someone on the opposite side of that issue than you’ve ever had in the past. You will never again believe that a contrary viewpoint is evil. 

In this book, I’ll explore the topic from many vantage points: individual, organizational and national. I’ll draw on disciplines as disparate as sociology, neuroscience, business management, philosophy, education, economics, psychology, and political science.  I am proposing a fundamentally new way of looking at goal setting and decision-making in areas as far-ranging as consumer behavior, conflict management, and even nation building.  Actually, since human existence is nothing more than a constant series of decisions, the Eight Great Goods offers a new model for thinking about life itself.

Abraham Maslow proposed a model of individual needs that has served the world well as a model for our individual lives for the last 70 years. I am suggesting a “Maslow’s hierarchy” for our social life. The theory of The Eight Great Goods will help you and me to understand us.

I have set a few optimistic goals for the readers of this book and here’s what I anticipate you’ll get out of reading it:

A Better understanding 

- of how you and people around you are making decisions 

- that there are eight big categories of trade-offs in our choices

- of why our brains naturally care about these eight categories

- that having a different decision-making algorithm does not make someone evil

- of why Growth is not the only Good that can or should drive your organization or your country

The ability to improve

- relationships both intimate and professional

- decision-making in organizations and in nations

- the way individuals see the big issues behind any complicated decision

- national consensus building around any issue

The opportunity to create

- discussions from a perspective of Good vs. Good

- cultures that agree more than they disagree

- organizations that understand where their priorities lie and how to achieve their goals

- new ways of thinking about your place in organizations and nations

A really fun read that will entertain, inform and give you something new to think about on every single page. 

With that, shall we begin?

If you’ve read this and are interested in more, please let me know.  I’ll be releasing some chapters pre-publication.

The End of Perfect?

While I was living in arguably the best hotel in Singapore for a year, I mustered my courage, approached the manager and finally told him that I thought there were some things that this hotel and staff could learn from Japanese hoteliers. I expected anger, but I got resignation.  He told me: “My friends who own and manage hotels around the world accept that we will never match Japanese hotels in service or consistency. It is impossible.”

Japan has always been the one place on earth where you could expect perfection. I’m sure there was a time when Japan wasn’t any more perfect than any other place on earth. But for decades, most of us have watched the slow decline of perfection in our cultures — except for automobile manufacturing, where over the last three decades US carmakers have actually caught up to Japan in building an almost flawless car. In most endeavors and certainly in attitudes, perfection is rarely the goal anymore.

I’ve been a professor long enough to remember grading student papers created on typewriters — they were filled with carets and line outs and margin notes. Students couldn’t be expected to retype a whole page just because a word had been misspelled or an article forgotten. They were, however, expected to catch the errors and make proper editorial notes before submitting. Then, the advent of word processors changed all that; we professors expected the final draft to be almost flawless.

With intervening generations of internet, blogs, and iPhone communication, my colleagues and I have often bemoaned that every year the standards of perfection sink lower and lower. Students are hardly to blame for this change. Student’s exemplars of the written word — professional writers and publishers — have very different standards now. 

Once errata statements were something that publishers avoided at all costs. A magazine with a “not” in the wrong place could land a publisher in court for libel. But the standards of perfection have changed. To avoid lawsuits today, a publisher of a website or blog simply has to correct a mistake in a reasonable amount of time after being notified of the problem. With more business communication on Blackberrys and iPhones, misspellings, abbreviations and grammatical errors are tolerated … if noticed at all. These days, a fully formed thought in an email can sometimes be the object of derision in some corporate cultures.

Compare this to my experience as the dean of a business school in Japan a few years ago. I watched as bright, talented Japanese employees would spend full workdays crafting single short emails to their customers. Every word was checked and rechecked by the author and then by an upward cascade of supervisors before it could be sent. I was simultaneously impressed by the precision and saddened by the lack of efficiency. I felt that the talents of many of my people were being wasted. I tried to insist that the quality of the idea was more important than the exact Japanese punctuation. But my entreaties fell largely on deaf transcultural ears.

In the aftermath of Japan’s recent crisis, I have heard the argument that Japan’s focus on day-to-day perfection allowed more important “bigger picture” considerations to be overlooked. Certainly before the earthquake, the power system and day-to-day operations in Japan were probably as efficient and perfectly executed as anywhere on earth. But the minutia of the workaday world can — and probably did — get in the way of envisioning a response to the largest earthquake and tsunami in recorded Japanese history.

As the country rebuilds itself, will the same focus on perfection remain? Or will we see some changes?

In the immediate wake of the triple disasters in Japan last month, perfection has already given way to practicality. Trains don’t necessarily run on time; equipment doesn’t work as it should, meetings are canceled at the last minute; hotel clerks don’t bow and say their lines with proper precision; for the first time in years of my flying on Japan’s domestic airlines, a flight attendant approached me as I boarded and asked in Japanese if it was okay if they didn’t make all the safety announcements in English — in the past, the sight of a foreign name on the passenger roster was enough to guarantee bilingual broadcasts.

When I lived in Japan recently, my apartment was in a very tall building in Tokyo. After the first major earthquake in that location, I remember the room continuing to sway long after the quake was over. The building was recovering its equilibrium. Even more surprising was that once the equilibrium was reached, I could hear gears and machinery in the walls locking in the building’s new position. 

The questions on many minds now are: Can a new equilibrium be found in Japan that will allow for flexibility without “locking in” potentially stultifying precision?  And, if there must be a choice, will the nation find a new balance that emphasizes less meticulousness and more litheness? If so, Japan may experience better growth rates and even more creativity.  On one hand, I would like to see that. On the other hand, where then in the world will we go to find perfect?

Japan’s greatest good: Life

It is hard to say there is one country that necessarily epitomizes a focus on “life” as its Greatest Good.  Every country is about the protection and lives of its people.  Every society comes into being – at least in part – as a haven where the strong can protect the weak and everyone looks out for each other. So why would I go and choose Japan as a place where the emphasis is more on Life than on the other Great Goods?  Strong cases could equally be made that Growth, Society, or Stability are Japan’s greatest Goods – strong enough that they warrant a short discussion before we turn to Life.

The government’s role

If I were writing this chapter twenty years ago, I might have been persuaded that Growth was Japan’s greatest good.  The country had come from utter destruction to world economic domination in thirty years.  People referred to the country as Japan Inc. and corporations as the main players in the society.  It seemed that everything was designed for Japan to grow economically.  But all of that ended in the early 1990s.  Since then economic growth rates have been among the slowest in the developed world.  Yet, the lifestyle of the average Japanese person has arguably improved for the last 20 years.   Japanese work fewer hours, live in better homes, have more and better cars, commute fewer hours, shop in better stores, and – most importantly – live longer than they did in the 1980s.  Something besides Growth seems to be at work in Japan today.

Japanese society is also known for being highly disciplined, orderly, and unflinchingly structured.  Japan’s trains and subways (even buses, amazingly!) arrive and leave within seconds of the scheduled time.  Japanese hierarchy is about as clear cut as any on earth – deference is paid to those older and those who are older (up to retirement at least) are charged with protecting those who are younger and inculcating them with values and behaviors that make them contributing members of society.  If you’re the same age as someone else, then you defer to the person who went to the better college or the better high school – there is a meritocratic categorization that every Japanese person knows all too well. So why would Japan’s greatest good NOT be Society or even Stability – it seems like a rigorously structured society.  And one adage that even the occasional visitor to Japan has heard is that the “nail that sticks up should be hammered down.”  This points to a need for fairness and equality. 

These observations suggest that the Greatest Good in Japan might be something other than Life.  But mostly, these behaviors are social not governmental.  Japanese culture is heavy on social relationships, structure, and fairness; but when we look at what the government enforces.  It is, more than any other nation on earth, focused on keeping people alive; government mandates and policies are written and enacted with more of a premium on Life than any other society on earth.

Legislating against war

It all starts with Japan’s Constitution.  It is the most pro-life in the world.  The basic law of the land is about peace and non-aggression – even to protect its own sovereignty, offensive hostility is not warranted.

The Preamble to the Constitution starts with these words (italics added):

“We, the Japanese people, acting through our duly elected representatives in the National Diet, determined that we shall secure for ourselves and our posterity the fruits of peaceful cooperation with all nations and the blessings of liberty throughout this land, and resolved that never again shall we be visited with the horrors of war through the action of government, do proclaim that sovereign power resides with the people and do firmly establish this Constitution.”

“We, the Japanese people, desire peace for all time and are deeply conscious of the high ideals controlling human relationship, and we have determined to preserve our security and existence, trusting in the justice and faith of the peace-loving peoples of the world. We desire to occupy an honored place in an international society striving for the preservation of peace, and the banishment of tyranny and slavery, oppression and intolerance for all time from the earth.

“We recognize that all peoples of the world have the right to live in peace, free from fear and want.

Then Article Nine of the Japanese Constitution, ratified shortly after the end of the Second World War, takes this even a step further.  It formally renounces war and war potential, and specifically forbids Japan from ever again maintaining land, sea, or air forces. 

Since then, Japan has actually built up an all-volunteer “Self Defense” force of 250,000 people on land, sea, and in the air.  One percent of the country’s GDP is spent on this civilian-led force.  Japan has now developed one of the most technologically sophisticated militaries on earth.  

But, the Japanese population still is largely opposed to war.  There is some evidence that younger people (those whose parents don’t even remember World War II) are likely to be slightly more hawkish than earlier generations, but still Japan, by and large, is a country that doesn’t even like to see their Self Defense Forces deployed in other countries for any military activity. When they are sent abroad to support the United Nations peacekeeping activities, for instance, they are always involved in non-lethal activities.  Issues of peace and war are still major drivers of election outcomes in Japan.  The ouster of US military forces from the southern island of Okinawa was a campaign promise that helped to elect Yukio Hatoyama and his Democratic Party in 2009; and it was his backtracking on that promise that drove his popularity level to support from less than 25% of the populace.

War and peace and war and peace and …

Culturally and historically, Japan is not necessarily a peace loving society.  Anyone who has read about World War II would have troubles thinking of Japan as peace loving.  But the expansionary, imperialistic philosophy that started after Japan opened to the West in the 1870s and culminated in the 1940s, was a 70 year period of aggression following a 250 year period of peace.  The Tokugawa Era in Japan, sometimes called Pax Nipponica, was the longest era of peace in any society in recorded human history.  This peaceful era immediately followed a period known as the Warring States Era, which you can imagine was a bit less serene.   What most people in the world don’t realize is that during the “samurai era” of the Tokugawa shogunate, the samurai never really got to fight.  They practiced swordplay a lot – but most of their days were spend in tea ceremonies, writing poetry, and (naturally) political machinations.  Never did they get to engage in actual war. 

It is a bit like there is a Peace-War switch, a light switch if you will in Japan.  When it is on, the light of peace is radiant.  Japan is a beacon, and example of non-aggression for the world.  When it is off, the culture is belligerent and bloodthirsty. 

After World War II, it was not necessarily the Japanese people’s choice to adopt a Peace Constitution. Left to their own devices, they may not have.  But as the only recipient of nuclear warfare in the world, the Japanese capitulated completely.  They fully expected to become the 49^th state of the United States. 

The mindset of the immediate post war era is exemplified by a story I heard years ago about General McArthur’s first triumphal motorcade into Japan.  On August 30, 1945 – just weeks after the atomic bombs – McArthur landed at Atsugi Air Force Base and then had to drive a few miles to his temporary Occupation Government.   Along the motorcade route, Hirohito’s Imperial soldiers were posted in tight formations along both sides of the road.  As McArthur’s car would near, the Japanese soldiers would turn their backs to his car.  McArthur was reportedly incensed.  He expected the soldier to face him and bow or salute, but turning their backs was a deep insult to him.  Later a trusted advisor set him straight.  The Imperial soldiers were trained to act exactly this way when the Emperor passed.  They would turn their backs and avert their eyes as a sign of respect.  But in this case there was an added rationale for their behavior.  The Imperial guard were now entrusted with protecting McArthur and as such, they also were turning their backs on the motorcade to keep an eye on the crowds lining the route – a crowd that had recently lost loved ones to McArthur’s military.  It was not unreasonable to think that someone along the way might be unhappy about his arrival in Tokyo.  The soldiers were turning their backs so they could keep an eye on the crowd and anyone posing a threat to the General.

In two weeks, Japanese military mindset had gone from kill all Americans to protect their General.  That is an amazing pendulum swing.  Will Japan’s pendulum swing back to militaristic warmongering?  Yes, probably.  But we are less than 70 years into this cycle.  If this period of peace is only half as long as Japan’s last peace period, most of us will never live to see that change.

Life goes on and on and on

Perhaps it is this religious and cultural background that has ensured that Japanese cycles of peace have been longer than their cycles of war.  Further, it is perhaps these cultural beliefs that ensure that government rules and practices have a very pro-life component to them.

Generally, Japanese traditional religious beliefs are life affirming to all kinds of life – human, animal, and even plant.  The native religion of Japan is Shintoism, which holds sacrosanct all of nature.  To be in touch with nature is basically to be close to the Gods and natural objects (animate and inanimate) are worshiped as sacred spirits. 

Buddhism was introduced to Japan in the sixth century, and the Japanese were quick to adopt the parts of Buddhist teaching that dealt with the spirits of living and dead people and animals.  The Buddhist teaching of revering all life as part of a grand cycle resonated with traditional Japanese beliefs.  But now the Japanese had even more reason to avoiding hurting or killing a lower life form (or even a lower status human being) because, according to Buddhist teachings, in your next life you may come back in a similarly lowly station.  Every living being should be treated with respect.

Japan is certainly not the only culture with deep-rooted beliefs in the sanctity of nature.  But it is certainly one of the few modern nations where average citizens maintain a sense of animal and plant deities. And while the Japanese don’t report that they are for the most part deeply religious, the idea of natural spirits does stir their imaginations.  Hayao Miyazaki’s animated shorts and full-length movies often feature these animistic images.  The Japanese flock to the theaters in droves to see these films.  Miyazaki started in the early 1990s and became known for using young protagonists or children to play key roles in his storylines.  Innocence seen through the lens of precocious youth is often juxtaposed with themes of nature and ecology being destroyed by man.

In 2001, Miyazaki launched the most adult and most deistic of his movies.  With its release in Japan, Spirited Away drew an audience of 23 million.  The reviews of the movie were stunning and it cemented Miyazaki’s reputation within Japan.  An Academy Award for Best Animated Film brought the movie to the attention of even non-film buffs in the West.  But on viewing the show, many were non-plussed the imagery was definitely non-Disney.  Sure, there were talking animals, but the animals were of questionable integrity.  As likely to eat as they were to shelter the human characters.  While Japanese audiences seemed to revel in the animal and plant spirit gods, Westerners found themselves yearning for a clearer wrong and right.  For the Japanese, nature is good in and of itself.  No matter what form it takes.

A life not wasted is more of a life

It is not just in issues of war and peace that the Japanese government emphasis on Life can be seen.  I was first made aware of this when I was just a college student. I was interested in Japanese views of individuality and collectivism and decided to write my undergraduate thesis on Japanese juvenile delinquency as a way to explore that.  My research involved riding with a motorcycle gang for a summer and riding with a motorcycle gang involved run-ins with the law.  And it was the way the law dealt with the kids in the motorcycle gang that gave me my first glimpse into Japan’s focus on Life.

The motorcyclists that I rode with were all in their teens and they did some bad things.  When they were hauled into a police station and booked, the kids didn’t immediately expect they would be jailed.  Because usually they weren’t.  The most common punishment was to be asked to write a letter of apology and sign it.  They were then released to their parents or to their homeroom teacher.  Even when they violated the law more than once, they were released after a scare and a formal apology. 

I asked the police why they did this.  One particularly articulate officer explained with a question: “Why should they spend any of those limited hours in jail doing nothing with their relatively short life?”  The hope was that with a catch-and-release strategy, they could move these kids on to productive lives.  My experience was that their strategy worked quite well.   Of the 20 or more motorcycle gang members that I knew in those days, only one went on to a life that involved adult criminal behavior.  The rest, for the most part, became salesmen.  The last time I saw any of these guys, they were in suits and ties and talking about their sales commissions. 

Walking past the death scoreboard

Frequenting neighbor police stations in Japan while completing my research and walking past them regularly since (there are over 15,000 of these small police boxes in the country!), I was (and am still) struck by the prominent display in front of all of them of accident and death statistics.  A board with moveable plastic numbers announces the number of accidents and accidental deaths in the country the day before and a running tally of the number for the entire year.

In my book, The Attention Economy, I found that a profound form of attention is what I call “back of mind” attention – this is routine, almost subconscious attention.  I found that companies that want to get more attention to a particular initiative do well to have constant reminders of that issue posted around the work place.  It just keeps the initiative in the back of your mind without devoting a lot of serious thought to it.  But initiatives tend to work better if these signals are present. 

There must be some deep psychological impact to the Japanese populace of regularly passing police boxes and stations with the death count so proudly displayed.  And it is another non-subtle message that the government is working to preserve life – a message that I’ve never noticed so clearly enunciated by any other government on earth.

Caring about health care

During the US debate about healthcare reform, the Japanese system was often rolled out as an example of one form of government-run health care system. Most Japanese were granted government-health insurance in 1938, making it one of the earlier nations in the world to offer health care to most of the population.  Then, in 1958 the law was revised to cover the 30% previously uninsured.  Since that time, either employers or the government covered all Japanese.

There are three broad categories of insurance in Japan: employer-based insurance, national insurance and insurance for the elderly. Primarily, the national government, private employers, and individual coinsurance payments finance these programs, but the services are delivered through a mostly privately-operated hospital and clinic system. All of these programs cover a broad range of services: in- and out-patient care, most prescription drugs, and dental care.

Japan’s system differs from the US model in that it is compulsory; has no competition among insurers due to government established reimbursement rates; and patients are free to choose their medical providers.

Today, Japanese go to the doctor about four times as often as Americans – on average 14 times a year.  The choice of physician is completely free  — no need for a referral from anyone.  Walk into any doctors office in the country, shell out a small copay, and your visit (and the prescribed drugs) are virtually free. Japanese can expect to be seen – even by the most popular specialists – on the day they choose without a waiting list.

A culture of living and letting live

Something about being one of the most densely populated countries on earth – especially when you consider that most of the Japanese islands are mountainous and largely inhabitable – is that you learn to live healthily in close quarters.  While medieval Europeans treated bathing as an annual affair, Japanese had already incorporated it into a daily routine – and built a tradition of worshipful relaxation into a visit to the bathhouse.  Buddhism connected bathing to purification; mountain spas allowed for Shinto worship of nature while soaking in an outdoor hot spring.  And Japan’s close quarters made bathing a necessity.  The health benefits of a seriously scrubbed society are clear, but a specific law requiring bathing doesn’t appear to have ever been on Japanese books.  Nevertheless, the consequences of not bathing could result in one of the oddest reasons I’ve heard for being ineligible for military service.  In Japan, you could be denied a spot in the military or receive a dishonorable discharge for body odor.  That’s right … during World War II, if you didn’t bath for a few days and started to offend your platoon-mates with your stench, you’d be shipped back to an awkward homecoming.

The social emphasis on avoiding the spread of diseases in a dense population can be seen every winter in Japan today.  About ten-percent of the morning commuting population on any Tokyo train or bus during flu-season can be seen wearing a medical nose and mouth mask.  Some wear it because they don’t want to be infected themselves.  But the vast majority of face-mask wearers do it because they are still sneezing or coughing and want to limit their likelihood of infecting their co-commuters and co-workers. 

Most of us Americans would probably prefer to stay home rather than go back to work wearing a face mask before we are completely healed.  But the work ethic of Japanese almost demands that you show up at your place of employment as soon as you are able to drag yourself out of bed.  Everyone senses a responsibility to work, but there is also a strong right to work. 

A surprisingly large – and visible – portion of older men is employed in “traffic directing” jobs.  Any construction site or public works project has a handful of people whose sole job is to direct foot traffic around the hazard.  In the US, a traffic cone is set out and you are pretty much on your own.  In Japan, a truck that is backing up is cause for four or five older gentlemen in highly reflective outfits to wave red flashlights and make sure that there is no harm to anyone in the surroundings.  Even a parking lot entrance and exit will usually employ at least one person whose sole job is to ensure that the entering or emerging cars negotiate the intervening sidewalk without threat to pedestrian life or limb.

Hard to live without a livelihood

This right to work is reflected strongly in Japanese employment law.  And it exhibits a very different set of priorities than you find regarding employment in the US.  Japanese thinking is that an employee is dependent on an employer for life itself.  Once an employer hires someone, they have a responsibility for more than a few weeks or months – they are really making a lifetime commitment to that person.  You can’t fire, reduce the salary or demote an employee without cause.  And if there is cause, you have to punish them according to work rules that have been established by the Labor Standards Office.  The only other instance when a salary can be cut or an employee fired would be when the company is nearly bankrupt and all employees (including management) take a cut at the same time.

These laws, as many analysts have noted, really only apply to full-time employees in relatively large companies.  And the lifetime guarantee only lasts up to the age of 55.  Older, non-permanent, small-company employees actually don’t have any of these guarantees.  And increasingly, Japanese workers are accepting “temporary employment.”  Some estimates put the percentage of non-permanent workers under the age of 35 at about 20%.  These workers are known as Freeters (combining the word “free” with the German for worker “arbiter”) or NEETS (people Not in Employment, Education, or Training).  They do actually work, but they are not “officially” employed.  So they are not officially exempt from layoffs.  Often these non-permanent jobs pay better hourly wages than permanent jobs, and there is not the obligation involved in being a permanent, full-time employee.  During an upturn in economic growth, companies often hire temporary employees first and then after assessing the situation (to make sure the need for additional staff is long-lasting), they will convert some temporary jobs into permanent jobs.  But every employer in Japan understands the obligation involved.  Once employees are full-time, it is impossible to fire them just because economic growth slows or sales are sluggish.  In this way, the livelihood of the employee – not the interests of the shareholders – is the ultimate objective of a Japanese corporation – Life not Growth is the top priority.

Working to death

The intersection of life and work is not more obvious anywhere in Japan than in the concept of karoshi (kah-roe-she), or “death from overwork.” Just the fact that a particular terms has been developed to describe the phenomenon in Japan may make you think that there is a real problem.  And while there is no doubt that Japanese employees tend to stay late at the office – later than their American counterparts, there is a social aspect to these later hours that is not found in many American firms.  My experience in consulting with and working for Japanese firms is that Japanese employees are much more likely than Westerners to go for drinks and dinner with their coworkers – usually at a bar or café near the office.  A common pattern is then for the employees to go back to the office after the social outing. 

Especially with the downsizing of workforces in the US over the last decade, there is plenty of evidence that the average American worker spends almost as many hours and at least as much effort in the office as do the Japanese.  The main difference is this:  If a Wall Street broker is found in the morning slumped over his computer, it will be called a heart attack.  If a Japanese banker is found under the same circumstances, it will be labeled karoshi, and an investigation into workplace practices will be launched. 

Karoshi was labeled in the late 1980s and since then almost 40,000 Japanese have been deemed to be its victim.  That large number pushed bureaucrats to structure the Japanese pension system to offer benefits to the families of karoshi victims.  And following the 2008 death of a 30 year old Toyota work (who had been putting in 80 hours of overtime a month), the Japanese courts insisted that Toyota change its work processes to ensure no more karoshi among its workforce.  No similar pension benefits have been granted to workplace death survivors in the US.  US courts don’t push corporations to redesign the employment practices to keep employees from overworking.  Again, in Japan, we see the obvious emphasis on Life rather than on economic Growth.

Life begets longer life

All of this emphasis on life and living conspires to give Japan the lowest infant death rate and highest life expectancies (an average of 82 years) in the world.  But of all the Japanese, it is those on the island of Okinawa who can claim the longest lives. The Japanese government claims that 457 Okinawans are at least 100 years old — that is 34.7 centenarians for every 100,000 Okinawans.  By far, the highest ratio in the world. (By contrast, the USA has about 10 people over the age of 100 for every 100,000 in the population.) And Okinawan oldsters appear to have far lower rates of dementia and hip fracture than their U.S. counterparts.  Some Okinawan centenarians claim they are still having sex, but researchers can’t confirm that.  But a few individual stories are truly amazing: martial artist Seikichi Uehara was 96 when he defeated a thirty something ex-boxing champion in a nationally televised match and Nabi Kinjo became a local legend when she hunted down a poisonous snake and killed it with a fly swatter. She was 105.

Okinawans benefit from all the usual Japanese Life priorities — the “peace Constitution,” the health care system, the employment guarantees, and the cultural emphasis on life and living.    But Okinawans also lay claim to better nutrition (they eat a quarter of the salt and sugar of other Japanese) and a relatively stress-free existence — with year-round warmth and sunshine, short commutes to work, and few corporate jobs.  

Disaster planning on shaky ground

Maybe it is centuries of living in one of the most physically vulnerable geographies on earth that makes the Japanese so focused on Life.  The earth can shift below your feet at any time in Japan.  While developed countries in the west – those focused on Growth and Individuality — move more and more budgetary resources away from governments, one Japanese learning from the great Hanshin earthquake in 1995 was that more centralized control is actually better for saving lives.  The Self-Defense Forces in Japan were given authority to deploy automatically in case of a disaster without local political authorities calling for that help.  And fire response coordination was centralized in Tokyo and Kyoto rather than with local fire departments.   Japan’s government and her companies have for years, sacrificed Growth opportunities to invest in better and safer construction and disaster planning – all to save one extra human life.

The flip side of Japan’s life culture

I suppose I can’t end this discussion of Life in Japan without a short detour into Suicide in Japan.  Japan is one of the only countries in the world where suicide is still considered an honorable act.  It is not illegal and, to many, it is considered honorable.  Many non-Japanese have come to be familiar with the Japanese terms for suicide – seppuku and hara-kiri (introduced to the US by military personnel with the pronunciation “Harry Carry” after World War II).  Official statistics show that about 30,000 Japanese per year kill themselves.  That puts the suicide rate among the top ten countries in the word, and by far the highest rate among developed nations.  Over 70% of these are men, many over 60 years old, but a disturbingly large number of 30-somethings as well – one common pattern is that they are jobless, and deep in debt to loan-sharks.  And suicide is the leading cause of death among those under 30 years old.    Some still adopt the traditional samurai method of death by sword, but stepping in front of trains, falling from tall buildings or cliffs and drug overdoses are also common.  But it is one traditional method suicide that brings us back full-circle to the cyclical nature of life.  It was not uncommon for older people in Japanese history – those reaching the point of complete dependence on their children – to just wander off into the mountains and never be heard from again.  In highly urbanized Japan, this is somewhat more problematic.  But there is still a place, even for this form of suicide.  It is called the Aokigahara Forest – a dense forest with literally breathtaking views of Mount Fuji and signs posted along the most common paths reading “Please reconsider” and “Consult with the police before you decide to die.”  About 70 people a year make this place their final return to nature.

Perhaps it all comes back to the definition of life in Japan.  Life is protected and cherished like it is no other country.  But once a life is no longer seen to have purpose or meaning, it is unusually common for an individual to put an end to a life not worth living.

The 8 Great and Change (how do we become something different?)

Maybe I always thought that change was an important component of leadership … I really can’t remember any more. But, I do remember the moment when my current appreciation for the link between the two became really clear to me. For four years as a graduate student, I was a research assistant to John Kotter at Harvard Business School. He was interested in what made leaders into leaders and wrote and researched a great deal on the topic — eventually he was named the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership at Harvard. 

A few years after he was named THE leadership guy at HBS, I realized that he was no longer talking a lot about leadership. He was spending a lot more time talking about “change.” I was puzzled by the shift, but the answer was simple. He told me: “I finally distilled the essence of leadership down into what leaders really do. What a real leader does is changes the way that other people do things.”

Kotter had written an early book describing the differences between leaders and managers. And when you think about it, getting people to do the same thing over and over again is management; getting people to do something different is truly leadership. It is one of the best definitions of the difference between those two words that I’ve ever heard.

Thus, good leaders have to be leaders of change. 

Not all organizational changes will involve a change in the prioritization of Goods. I’ve seen plenty of companies that have gone through some sort of wrenching change — as the company decides to globalize, for instance. The greatest Good is still Growth, but the determination has been made that growth can’t come from the local market any more, so there needs to be a new external focus for the corporation. 

But, often a big change involves a shift in what the organization is ultimately trying to accomplish. And the more explicit this shift is, the better. 

Changing your organizational Goods

While countries can change their goods and sometimes do, the priorities of nations usually stay in place for a much longer time than they might for organizations. The inertia of a nation is just a lot bigger than for a company. With really strong leadership, even countries can change their focus — especially in the face of a crisis or a major opportunity.

But, there are some other good reasons why you see major strategic changes in an organization. For instance, customers may have new needs; new technologies may be emerging; or your competitors are getting stronger. Sometimes the shift in prioritization of Goods comes because of new leaders who bring with them, their personal priority set. 

However, there is one prediction I can make without potential refute. If you don’t regularly reassess the priority of your Goods and either recalibrate or re-emphasize your current prioritization, I know that over time your organization will become one that emphasizes Stability over all else. 

For some organizations, Stability is exactly the Good they should emphasize. I want my electricity utility to be highly focused on stability — well … I suppose I want them to emphasize Life or safety first, but after that stability. I want to be sure that I get my electricity in an uninterrupted way. I don’t want them to be tinkering with the system as they try to grow their revenues or profits. I just want to pay about the same amount every year and get the same services.  

Even so, there are other organizations that would not choose Stability as their most important strategic goal and yet they find themselves making decisions based primarily on that basis. This is the process of bureaucratization. As individuals, we like to have some assurance of stability in our lives. When a large number of individuals in an organization are all seeking that stability, you get lots of routinization and boundary building. And, it is hard to hack your way out of that icy wasteland of bureaucracy. So, as a leader, you need to constantly assess and assert your Eight Great Goods. 

Thunderbird School of Global Management

One of my favorite examples of an organization that has been struggling with identity — partly because they don’t have a clear set of Eight Great Goods priorities — is a school in Glendale, Arizona called Thunderbird School of Global Management. I’ve been associated with the organization for two decades and have watched it go through a major change of Goods from which it never really recovered.

Thunderbird was established in 1946 at a decommissioned air base in the Arizona desert. The charter of the original school was to teach students — many of them recently discharged military men on the GI bill — foreign languages and cultures to ready them for jobs outside of the US. The classroom buildings and dorms were just the old barracks and hangers from the air base that were repurposed for educational programs. The control tower building, for instance, became the “student union.”

Through its first 40 years, the school took a very practical bent — lots of language classes, along with culture, business and government courses often taught by recently retired practitioners. This strategy was all about Society — helping students to better connect to the world around them and become valuable contributors to our increasingly global society. Students claimed that one of the most valuable parts of their time at Thunderbird was the socialization with students from so many different nationalities who became friends for life. The entire program was very human relationship centric.

And, it developed a strong reputation — especially outside of the US. When I took a job at Thunderbird in 1994, a colleague from Brazil informed me that he thought Thunderbird was better regarded in his country than was Harvard. 

When I first visited the campus, the education, students, and teachers were all in stark contrast to Harvard Business School where I had been educated. I was, honestly, enthralled with the fact that I could sit in a corporate strategy course team-taught by a really smart theoretician and a recently retired IBM executive. The conversations became real world based applications of the theory they were learning. It all seems so … relevant.

In the early 1990s a new president was brought in with a much more traditional academic background. Until that time Thunderbird was a big hit with students, but it was not so popular with professional educators. The way to prestige in academia was with lots of publishing in academic journals and this was not the forte of the average teacher at Thunderbird. So a new class of academics was hired — mostly young folks but, from good schools — with a strong potential; and a deep interest — in publishing. 

Since rankings of MBA programs were based to a large degree on the publications and reputation of academic personnel, Thunderbird’s star began to ascend quickly. When US News & World Report started ranking “International” business programs, Thunderbird became a perennial list topper.

Over the next few years, the school made some wrenching changes. In terms of the Eight Great Goods, the school moved from a focus almost exclusively on Society to one on Growth and Individuality. The master’s degree, which had been called an MIM (Master’s of International Management), was dropped in favor of an MBA degree. The language requirement for real proficiency in a second language was abandoned. And the third of the school that had focused on International Policy was almost completely dismantled — the professors, for the most part, “outplaced”. 

The focus of the curriculum was business, students were no longer encouraged to take jobs in not-for-profits or governments upon graduation — it was argued that the lower salaries in those professions kept the schools’ rankings low; and there was increasing emphasis on the discipline of finance which helped graduates in finding jobs on Wall Street — where the high salaries help drive up rankings. While students would still congregate at the on-campus Pub for socializing, the professors, for the most part, did not. The professors became more traditionally academic — sequestered in their offices trying to pound out the next academic article and eschewing Master’s level teaching because it interfered with their research. The introduction of an Executive Education program at the school added further Growth focus to the faculty. Executive Education paid faculty members a lot more than teaching the master’s students. And, the revenue from those classes went mostly into faculty pockets rather than to the school itself.

Meanwhile tuition for the MBA program went up — to very near Harvard Business School levels — but enrollment went way down. When I first joined Thunderbird, there were about 1500 master’s students on campus. When I reconnected with the school in the mid-2000s, the campus felt like a ghost town. There were only about 500 students on campus at that time.

The decrease in head count — regardless of higher tuition — was wreaking havoc on finances. By the time a new president came into the school in 2003, the school was hemorrhaging almost $10 million a year. What had once been a very self-sufficient business model based on Society, had turned into a financial wreck when the priorities changed to Growth and Individuality. 

A shift like this need not necessarily have such dire consequences. In fact, you would expect a focus on Growth would usually lead to better financial management. But, in this case, individual faculty members reaped the harvest of a Growth emphasis — some of them making as much as a half million dollars a year while the school was sinking into receivership. 

Furthermore, there was another important incongruence. The students were still coming to the school based on its reputation for an emphasis on Society. Sure they came to get an MBA, but Thunderbird students were not your usual group of MBA students. They were former peace corps volunteers, missionaries, nurses, writers, and philosophers who were surprisingly — for MBAs — much more interested in traveling the globe and in making the world a better place than they were in making a buck. The priority of the students never changed from their emphasis on Society.

This disconnect between what Master’s students wanted and what Thunderbird offered became a source of tremendous tension.

Under the direction of the new president, the school has stopped losing money, but still is not anywhere close to being in good financial shape. Also, the rankings of the school continue to slide. Interestingly, the highest overall ranking the school ever achieved in the Business Week MBA list — number 25 — was in the mid-1990s when Thunderbird wasn’t even offering an MBA! Since then, overall rankings of the school have dropped. The School has managed to retain good rankings in Global education and regularly does very well on Wall Street Journal rankings that look at the quality of students and the student’s reputations among employers. The school still attracts students who want to be different from the usual MBA, and their employers appreciate that.

The president of Thunderbird recognizes this too and continues to try to edge the focus of the faculty away from Individuality and Growth — in both curriculum and behaviors — but, the president is a natural Society-based leader who wants consensus for change. That consensus is not forthcoming and the stand off between student (customer) priorities and school (faculty) priorities continues to this day. 

Starting a new organization

I started this section talking about John Kotter and his theories of change, but it was interesting to be a fly on the wall in some of the meetings with him and his team as he was starting up his company, Kotter International. John has always been a bit of a nonconformist, rankling at any system or process that tied him down too much. Academia is good for that kind of individual freedom. Unless you are on the administrative side of higher education, you can actually create a lot of autonomy for your career. But now, for the first time, Kotter was trying to start a company of his own. With the first couple of employees, he gave them the same the autonomy that he had always fought for in his career. But as the company grew, he realized that there had to be rules. In fact, Stability was a more important Good than he’d ever realized when he was just doing things on his own. His employees couldn’t be inside Kotter’s head all the time, and they were all creative talented people themselves. So, rather than having them out selling and delivering dozens of different products as the Kotter “system,” he quickly discovered that he was going to have to create a standard and hold everyone to it. I watched as Kotter had to make the shift quickly from Individuality and Joy to Stability, Society, and Growth. And while this was a necessary change in his new firm, the irony was not lost on him: Here was a company that was all about telling clients how to change and it was adopting Stability as its greatest Good.

Choice Humanitarian

The toughest wars, debates and disagreements come when the combatants are supporting a different version of the same Good. Religious wars, ethical disagreements, economic model diatribes, and tribal clashes are all examples of different interpretations of the same Goods. Changing from one version of a Good to another version can be equally challenging. That is what I found myself in the middle of as a Board member at Choice Humanitarian — a non-profit charity for poverty alleviation and village development based in Salt Lake City, Utah. 

I was invited onto the Board of the organization at an interesting turning point in their history. They had been founded by Mormons and developed a network around the world based on connections to Mormon missionaries and communities. Everyone on the Board, when I started talking to them, was Mormon. But the CEO had a notion that the Society of Choice Humanitarian should not be the Mormon community but, rather, the world. One of their country managers was by that time a non-Mormon and they had decided that they wanted to expand their Board — and their fund raising efforts — beyond the confines of Utah. I had grown up Mormon but had left that belief system behind long before, so it was thought that I might be a good “bridge” to a bigger world for them.

The first efforts to make the change were almost comical. I’ll never forget the offsite in Mexico where a group of teetotalling Mormon retirees had a day of leadership training led by two non-Mormon gay men. After a tense afternoon session in which one member of the Board was reprimanded by the gays for his sexist ways — he consistently interrupted and talked over the one woman Board member every time she tried to add anything to the discussion — the dinner conversation was commandeered by one of the gay consultants who expounded on the finer points of understanding a truly great beer.

Eventually a non-Mormon CEO was hired and the Board expanded to a handful of non-Mormons. But it was a rocky road. Board votes on new initiatives tended to split Mormon versus non-Mormon. And the new CEO was concerned that the cultural gulf between the two Societies might be too great for the organization to bridge.

And he was right.

Eventually the non-profit reverted to its largely Utah roots. Making perhaps a fair assessment that for consistency and uniformity of decision-making, Choice Humanitarian needed to retain its focus on Mormon Society. It had tried valiantly to shift its definition of Society, but failed.

Other organizational priority shifts

I’m sure the difficulty, yet necessity, of changing Goods can be seen not only in the company stories that I’ve watched personally. Just look around at some of the big companies that have seen changes in their histories. You probably have some pretty good stories yourself. And there are plenty in the news on an almost daily basis.

In an earlier chapter I talked about Sears trying to change its strategy. It was basically moving from an emphasis on Stability (“Protect the Assets of the Company”) to Society (customer focus). 

Toyota had long been known as a car company devoted to quality control and safety (Stability and Life). New management and an increasingly international Board pushed Toyota to focus more on Growth in the last decade. During the car company’s safety and recall crisis in early 2010, the company’s new CEO, the 53-year-old grandson of Toyota’s founder, was quoted on the front page of The Wall Street Journal as saying: “Toyota’s rapid expansion in recent years attracted much praise from outside the company, and some people just got too big-headed and focused too excessively on profit.” (“Toyoda concedes profit focus led to flaws” WSJ, March 2, 2010) The elevation of Growth in their priorities had caused problems that created the first economic loss for the firm in 50 years. Now the company admits that they have re-elevated their focus on quality, longevity of the firm and the sanctity of Life as their primary goals. 

Remember, none of this is to say that Growth is unimportant to Toyota or any other firm; just that priorities can and do shift.

Another case that I watched from the inside — but if you read the papers at the time, you probably know about it too — was the shift from Andersen Consulting to Accenture. Arthur Andersen, an audit firm that sadly saw its demise during the Enron scandal, had its start — as do many accounting firms — as a company and culture focused on Stability. There is not much that happens in the business world that is more about Stability than accounting and audit rules. This is the place where companies have to show that they comply with the law of the land. And the auditors are there to make sure that the companies do that — or at least look like they are doing that. From this foundation of audit, a consulting firm — Andersen Consulting — got its start. But Andersen Consulting was not, at the beginning, anything like the McKinseys or the Bains of the world. AC consultants were not advising CEOs about broad far-reaching strategic views. The firm’s bread and butter was in computer system implementation and the reason that Andersen Consulting was better than almost anybody else doing this kind of implementation is that they had a rule book — which was a damn good rule book — called Method/1. This was such a rigid process — much like a good audit — that the New York Times called Andersen’s a “culture of clones” in a 1992 article (September 6, 1992). In addition to the focus on Stability, there was also Society — very little mid-career hiring and a feeling that you were part of the Andersen Consulting family when you joined the partnership. Also, Fairness mattered a whole bunch — career paths were clearly laid out. No one got a promotion inside Andersen until they had the proper tenure with the firm — no matter how talented they were.

In the early 2000s, the firm split with Arthur Andersen formally and changed its structure from a partnership to a listed corporation. Suddenly, the culture and the priorities also shifted significantly. Growth became the main focus, but there was also more focus on Individuality — and individual merit — than in the past. Accenture has been very successful with this strategy. The firm has tripled the number of employees and more than doubled its share price since it made the shift in Good prioritization.

It should be obvious from the stories above that organizational changes in priorities can happen, but they are tricky. Some happen quickly — particularly when there is pent up “demand” for the change or there has been a crisis that drives an organization to redefine itself. Some intended changes never quite “take” and the organization reverts to the safety of an old set of priorities. But to be successful, the leadership of the organization must be involved. And the more explicit the change is, the better. If you can let your people know that you’re shifting from a Stability focused organization to a Joy based organization and, if your actions are consistent with that message, you stand a much better chance of making the change successfully.

Change Exercises

To see if your change efforts can be improved by using the Eight Great Goods tool, try the following exercises:

1) As a leader, prioritize your own personal Eight Great Goods. What is most important to you personally? If you have a leadership team in place that is helping you to lead, ask them to list the priorities they believe are in place in the leadership team.

2) Ask your employees what they think the organization’s Eight Great Goods are. If you are the leader of the organization, employee’s perceptions of your priorities and the organization priorities will probably closely align. But if they are different, that should be cause for an interesting discussion about why your decisions and the organization’s Goods are different.

3) Ask your employees and customers what priorities you and the organization SHOULD focus on. 

4) Meet with your people and discuss how you can make decisions that will better reflect what the organization’s Goods should be. If you are saying that your priorities are one thing, but your decisions are reflecting another prioritization, how do you change your decisions to make the two align?

5) If you are in the middle of a change effort in the organization, how would the change be characterized from an Eight Great Goods perspective? Would your employees be able to tell you how the Good’s prioritization would change based on the efforts you have initiated?

What will Egypt become?

For thirty years, the greatest Good of the government of Egypt has been Stability. To preserve the safety and well-being of the country and the region, Hosni Mubarak and his top team have argued against change in these last weeks as they have for decades previously. 

My research has shown that there are Eight Great Goods that any nation bases its top-level decisions on. There is nuance in every choice, of course, but nations usually have an implicit top priority. You can easily categorize any grouping of people according to their decision-making Goods. 

If the Stability of the Mubarak regime is no more, what will become of Egypt?

Stability.  There is a good chance that the country will remain a country based on Stability. Egypt is a nation full of laws and customs that are built around the greatest Good of Stability — anyone coming into power through whatever short term means (election, coup, foreign manipulation) could pretty naturally slip back into the old command and control structure that Mubarak has perfected during thirty years of practice.

Individuality.  The United States always gives moral support to nations trying to adopt real democracy. Remember, this is the same US which has supported countless regimes of Stability because they were ultimately in the best interests of US Individuality. But even in strongman countries like Cambodia, a forced set of elections and the beginnings of democracy can — over decades — lead to Individuality emerging as a much more important Good — eventually even the Greatest.

Growth.  America’s favorite sidekick to Individuality is Growth. Our belief — borne out by some good evidence — is that an economically growing nation will have less social strife and be less interested in adopting an aggressive stance internationally. China is a great example of a country with Stability as its Greatest Good, but they leave us alone — and we, them — because of a strong focus on Growth. Singapore, interestingly, is one of the best examples of a country that has swung the pendulum from Stability to Growth in the last decade. Casinos, luxury cars, gay bars, and even chewing gum — all practically outlawed a decade ago — now flourish in Singapore. If you can afford it, you can have it. Growth is unlikely to be the greatest Good in Egypt, but it will have to be near the top.

Belief.  One of the fears of many Americans is that Egypt will become a much less secular state. There is a strong possibility that religious leaders will rise to fill the power gap and a national system will be built around Islamic law — where Stability, by the way, would still be very important — but the greatest Good would ultimately be Allah. There is, perhaps, a bit of hypocrisy in this American fear. We as a people place more emphasis on Belief than any developed nation on earth: 27% of Americans report that Belief is their greatest good — almost as many as those who choose Life itself —compared to 2% of respondents in a place like Japan.

Life.  Speaking of Life and Japan … Life is written all over Japan’s national system: from Japan’s “Peace Constitution,” to its anti-gun legislation, to its neighborhood police boxes with daily death tolls posted on the front wall, to its health care system, to the employment policies that make it almost impossible for an employer to take away someone’s livelihood, to the strict laws against “working an employee to death.” The economy might not be growing in Japan, but people do live long and very comfortable lives. Egypt’s future government is unlikely to make this a top priority — but would it be so bad if they did?

Society.  This Good is all about interpersonal relationships — the connections between people. These epitomize feudal societies. American Taliban-busting in Afghanistan was designed to destroy a Belief and Stability hierarchy; in its place emerged the primacy of human relationships. But before you throw this Good out just because I mentioned Afghanistan, let me also mention Switzerland, which holds together three language groups and 26 semi-autonomous cantons — really neighborhoods; it is the law of social harmony that drives this country more than any other. A move from strongman to sophisticated Society is highly unlikely in Egypt; sadly, feudalism and Balkanization might be the natural results of a shift to the Greatest Good of Society.

Fairness.  This philosophy was behind every communist government that ever existed.  But in every case, their downfall was that the greatest Good ended up being Stability instead of real Fairness. Scandinavian countries are much better examples of a real implementation of this Good: income disparity is small, taxes are relatively high, access to social services is even, and still things like access to the top of a corporation is Fair in a place like Norway where a 2003 law requires that 40% of all corporate Board posts be women. Fairness could be a very nice national priority within a Muslim nation, but it would be a new experiment that has never been tried in the past.

Joy.  My favorite Greatest Good for a nation is the one that the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan has adopted. Here Gross National Happiness (GNH) is measured instead of GNP. It is hard work for them to constantly balance things like economic Growth and Stability with Joy. But, having sat in on meetings of the Prime Minister and Cabinet members there, I can tell you that when push comes to shove, Joy is always the winner in their debates. Britain and France have made noises about trying to adopt some of Bhutan’s thinking. I hope that Egypt’s next regime won’t rule out these emerging notions either.

Whatever government emerges, Egyptians have the chance now to begin a discussion about what they want to be in the future. If the conversations are about trade-offs amongst Goods rather than brawls about good and evil, the outcomes will be more clearheaded and longer lasting. 

Decisions and the 8 Great Goods

If you examine studies done on organizational culture and decisions, the two are highly correlated. From corporations to government organizations to hospitals to fire fighters, study after study shows that culture has a huge impact on decisions in organizations.

Decision-making is the clear realm of the leader in any human group. It is the most explicit role of leadership. Attention will focus on the leader whether the leader wants it or not. A leader may task others to create a culture or to direct change — but if the leader doesn’t support it completely, it will not happen. An organizations’ leader must make decisions.  Many decisions may be delegated to subordinates, but when the subordinates disagree, the leader is left to make the final decision. US Presidents have noted the importance of this leadership role with memorable quotes like: “The buck stops here” (Truman), “I am the decider” (GW Bush) and “In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” (T Roosevelt).

Even Napolean got into the quote books on this topic: “Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.”

The whole point of prioritization of the Goods is about decisions. If your personal prioritization isn’t explicit, you are still subconsciously using some kind of a hierarchy to make decisions. If you are doing any form of group decision-making, however, subconscious is not a good idea. It causes chaos and disagreements where there need not be any; the more explicit the prioritization, the better. So, in any organization, all decisions can be streamlined with a clear, well-communicated prioritization of Goods.

There are lots of models of decision-making — there are whole academic disciplines devoted to understanding decisions: organizational behavioralists, psychologists, sociologists, and brain scientists — all hard at work on the issues. In other words, lots of people have tried to understand how we come to a conclusion about what we are going to do.

But when it comes to good bases for organizational decision-making, I think there are really 3Cs — Clarity, Consistency, and Candor.

Clarity

One thing that is pretty evident, if there is not a clear end goal — aim or mission — then groups of people will dither for a long time over every decision.

One of the clearest decision-making apparatuses I’ve ever experienced as a consultant was in a project that I was doing for Wal-Mart. We were supposed to be coming up with ideas for an advertising campaign for the company. The group I was working with was extremely clever. Great ideas were emerging. We believed we had notions that would reposition Wal-Mart and really sell well to the American — and even foreign — public. But, once we met with the Wal-Mart executives, we heard a broken record — that given my years of teaching about the company I had oddly not anticipated: “How much will that cost?” “Will it be clear that we are low cost with that message?” “We want simple ads that show we are low cost.” “Will that idea take the focus off of our low costs?”

Every sentence out of the Wal-Mart executives’ mouths was about “low cost.” It was their religion. It was their culture. It was their ultimate Good. All decisions had to take cost into account — and usually cost was the ultimate factor in those choices.

In too many organizations — even businesses where you might think the “almighty dollar” would usually be the final arbitrator — the bases of decisions are muddled or non-explicit.  This leads to a lot of faffing around.

Consistency

In the case of Wal-Mart, the “cost” criterion is both clear and consistent. But not all organizations do both of the first two Cs equally well. Clarity is an important first step in achieving consistency, but it is not enough. I’ve seen many organizations where there was a shared — and clear — understanding at the top of the organization that the basis of decision-making would change under certain circumstances. For the people lower in the organization — those who are not in on the inner circle; these departures from stated norms can be nerve-racking.

I consulted in a company that did a great job of hiring really amazing people into its ranks.  It promised lots of autonomy (Individuality) and opportunities for innovation (Joy). These same people loved the clarity of the message and the opportunities that were presented. Once they were in the firm, however, there was a different story.

We all have seen or heard of the pre-hire lies that attract good people who find that once they are on the inside, the truth is far different from the recruiting hype. But, that was not what was going on in this case. Here, there were indeed people at or near the top of the firm who were basing their decisions on Joy and Individuality — Stability didn’t rank very high in their decision-making. But between those top people who did a lot of the recruiting of the “high potential” staff and the newly hired staff, there was a layer or two of people who had completely different decision-making Goods. They understood that they were overseeing potential future stars who were meant to leapfrog them to the top of the organization.  Their completely understandable response was to become focused on Stability and Fairness — “If I can’t get my ideas heard a level above me, then neither can you.” The recently hired new employees were leaving in droves. The message at the top — and to the world — was clear: “We are a company that is all about innovation and new ideas — we welcome mavericks.” But, that message was not applied consistently throughout the ranks.

Candor 

You can be clear — “Society is the most important Good” — consistent — “Society is what everyone makes decisions on in this organization” — and still be pretty dishonest.

And it is even worse when decision hypocrisy comes into play — you know, where decisions made are said to be based on one thing, but it is really something else that is most important. Decision hypocrisy just makes employees crazy. The most common version — which you’ve probably experienced more than once in your life — is the “Decisions are made on the bottom-line … but (sotto voce) it is really all about power” hypocrisy. This is the one where the Board and shareholders are led to believe that money is the ultimate criterion, but really good ideas, good opportunities, and important cost-cutting are lost because someone is trying to hold on to their job or get an important promotion.

In a 2010 Sloan Management Review article, Peter Tingling and Michael Brydon call what inevitably results from this, “decision-based evidence.” A decision is made first on the basis of one Good and then resources are dispatched to make up the evidence to support the decision based on a different Good. The authors conclude that this is not always bad. If the audience for the evidence is external to the organization, then it may be a necessary evil.  But they warn that this process should not be used to convince internal constituencies.  Those inside the company just have too much access to information to ever believe the bogus evidence.

But the key is that the internal messages must be honest. (I would actually go a step farther than this and argue that for long term organizational health both internal and external messages should be consistent and candid.)  And the only way out of a dishonesty trap is with honesty — a hard nut to crack in a corporate culture riddled with duplicity. In fact, if your culture is riddled with dishonesty, it is unlikely that you’ll ever realize that your priorities are not clear or consistent. So, in many ways, without real candor, it is unlikely that your organization will achieve any of the 3Cs.

Decision Exercises

1) Ask a dispassionate third party to look at a string of decisions that you and the organization have made in the last few weeks/months. 

2) What do those decisions say about your priorities?

3) If you look at your boss’ and your subordinates’ decisions — small to large decisions — what are they prioritizing? Is their decision based on the same Good as yours?

4) Ask your people if they believe there is any duplicity in the decision priorities. If there is, is it a “necessary evil” or is there a way to create a system with more of the 3Cs?