Ichak Kalderon Adizes's Blog: Insights Blog, page 40

Why Being Creative is Dangerous?

I mean dangerous to your personal life, to intimacy.

 

Study the biographies of great artists in all fields. Many have had more than one divorce. Some never marry. Or never remarry. Some live a bohemian life, moving from one relationship to another without any depth or intimacy.  Some find love in the bosom of prostitutes.

 

And the same appears to be true for great entrepreneurs or innovators. The common denominator being: creativity.

 

Now, why are being creative and being intimate incompatible?

 

Because energy is fixed. And being creative requires lots and lots of energy. Little if any is left for interpersonal relations; marriage requires work. Intimacy is not free; it takes energy to maintain it.

 

This illumination explains to me why Buddha had to leave his family, his wife, children everything to seek enlightenment.  It is apparently not easy to be enlightened, trying to maintain peaceful relations with a spouse.

 

Most of the calories we consume are for the brain to function, and when we are creative we require a great many extra calories. We need energy. It is not strange after a day of creating anything, not just artistic creations but anything new, that we are exhausted. More tired than if we had been digging ditches.

 

To be creative as an artist, as an entrepreneur, as an innovator, as a political leader, you need a supportive, understanding and non demanding spouse. You need peace and quiet and the least stressful environment. It is not surprising that artists are accused of being narcissistic.

 

They need total support, and they insist the world around them conform to their wishes, so that all their energy can be dedicated to their creative pursuits…whatever form they may take.

 

Not many spouses are willing to put up with it.

 

So the price of being creative, a leader, an entrepreneur or a true, fine artist may come at a high personal cost.  It often leads to problems with intimacy, and to a narrowing down of friendships.

Apparently nothing comes free. To create something new, you have to give up something else.

 

Sincerely,

Dr. Ichak Kalderon Adizes

The Collateral Damages of Multinationals

I have been consulting to major corporations as well as to family run businesses for over forty years. My analysis here, in this blog, is not based on “scientific” research. I have not built in a representative sample. I did not conduct interviews. Nor is there an extensive search of the literature on the subject. These are pure observations on my part based on many years of involvement with actual corporate decision-making.

My conclusions, due to the limited sample, might be wrong, and I would appreciate feedback.

 

Sustainability

It is a very hot subject. We are all worried about the environment and are conscious that we have to protect this “little ball of life” floating in space.

So, we need to stop water, air and land pollution. And stop “polluting people’s health” by feeding them food that makes them obese and diabetic…and in general runs down their health.

Who is more prone to pollute? Will a CEO pollute the air in the community in which he or she lives?

Not likely.

Why? The result would be that he or she will be socially ostracized. It is natural to care about affiliation and how one is regarded by neighbors and friends. Not to mention that a CEO will rarely make decisions which threaten the health of his family which lives in that community.

But what if the plant is thousands of miles away? In a foreign country? In a community in which he knows no one personally? Well, then, he might just allow pollution, especially if that decision will increase earnings per share…and of course increase his net worth.

I find that local companies care about their reputation. Their clients are the neighbors.  And usually the name of the founder is on the letterhead. They usually are concerned about what they do and how it is accepted by the community.

Not so for multinationals. Here the story is different. It appears to me that for them “sustainability” is a percentage of their expense budget. It is more of a PR effort.

I just returned from Bled, Slovenija where I attended a conference on Responsible Management, (PRME), an offshoot of the Global Pact of the United Nations. Under the terms set by the Global Pact of the UN, companies sign a pact to be socially responsible.

At the conference I met an endowed chair professor: The Coca Cola Professor on Sustainability.

I could not resist wondering:. Is this not the Coca Cola that provides sugar loaded drinks which cause obesity and lead to diabetes?  And is it not the same Coca Cola whose light coke is full of questionable chemicals that make it sweet?

And they are the one to be professing sustainability?

Give me a break.

And how about McDonalds?  On the one hand it is deeply involved in philanthropy while on the other hand the company turns out hamburger meat for millions that is loaded with chemicals to fatten the cows more quickly. The resultant beef is then cooked with lots of oil and salt, all of which helps to produce world -wide obesity.

Who is kidding whom?

I bet McDonalds’ CEO does not feed his family Big Macs. He knows better. But feeding  people in the inner city, people he will never meet, that does not cause him to lose much sleep…

I believe it is alienation that causes irresponsible managerial behavior: physical, social,  emotional, you name it, alienation,  the  distance between the decision-maker and the consumers. The multinational exhibit it the most because they are large and spread around the globe.

Centralization

In my consulting, I often come across companies that are branches of a multinational company. The locals would like to democratize the local company, make it more participative. Empower people,  etc.  But…their authority to make decisions is limited. Very limited. There is a Human Resources VP thousands of miles far away who decides how the local company will run. And this limitation does not pertain only to human resources. It includes marketing efforts as well as new product development efforts…The local management is constrained, disempowered. Its leaders cannot make any decisions that involve change.

So what, you might say.

There are repercussions.

Those constraints over time impact how people feel empowered in general. The entrepreneurial spirit is more limited when you are led rather than when you lead. I suggest to you that this impacts democracy. If people cannot make decisions about their working environment why do you believe they will feel empowered to influence decisions made by their politicians?

More alienation, caused by large, especially multinational, companies.

Taxes

I do not have to elaborate on this too much because it has been in the news lately.  I am referring to news stories about Apple and General Electric, how they have legally avoided paying billions in taxes by moving revenues and expenses between their foreign entities to countries with lower taxes.

How does a businessman who is not running a multinational feel when hit with increasing taxation? How does a small business owner who is struggling to make a go of his company one who carries a significant and increasing burden of taxes feel when he reads how mega giants like Apple or GE legally paid very little or no taxes…? Does he or she believe it is fair?

Does it not broaden alienation between people and their government?

What does it do to trust and respect? Does not alienation destroy it?

Financial Resources

The big companies have an advantage when it comes to securing finances. They have more to show; more resources and sophistication to support their requests.

I find that banks are not that interested in the small and even medium-sized companies. By and large the small and medium-sized companies have a hell of a time finding financial resources.

Resources are finite and the more that goes to the big fish the less there is for the small ones.

And this is not insignificant.

Why?

Because democracy needs a middle class, needs entrepreneurs. Unless you are a high tech start-up attracting private equity funds, or a large company with a great balance sheet,  you will have trouble resourcing finances. And so, not surprisingly, the middle class is shrinking.

Small is beautiful. Not as efficient, granted. There are economies of scale in size.  But what we gain economically we lose politically, socially and physically. When standards of living go up, it appears that the quality of life goes down.

Sincerely,

Dr. Ichak Kalderon Adizes

Crisis, Innovation and Entrepreneurship

The above title was the subject of a regional convention held in Podgorica , Montenegro, on September 20 2013. It was opened by the first Deputy Prime Minister, to which I was asked to deliver a short presentation.

 

I do not have the transcript. Here is what I said from memory.

 

Crisis comes from the Greek language, and it means-I find this interesting-that it is time to do something different. In Hebrew, the word for crisis is mashber, which comes from the root “something broke up.” Same is true for the meaning of the word in Chinese.

 

There is a common denominator here: crisis means that whatever we have had until now does not work anymore, and it is time to do something else, and differently.

 

Innovation by definition, means doing something different, something new.

 

Therefore, crisis provides a perfect environment for innovation; it offers us a chance to come up with fresh and different ways to satisfy an old or a new need.

 

However, it should be stressed, not all innovations are successful. Quite the contrary. Most fail. To be effective, to succeed, innovations  need an entrepreneur who will invest time, energy and money, to make the new ideas and approach commercially acceptable.

 

That brings us to the next important question: What are the conditions for successful entrepreneurship? In other words, what does an entrepreneur need if he is determined to introduce innovation?

 

First, a caveat. Whenever we introduce innovation and wish to make it successful, we have to deal with uncertainty and risk; they are not one and the same thing.

 

Uncertainty deals with insufficient information. And innovation by definition cannot give us historical data on which to base our judgment. And the future, by definition, is unknown.  Thus, uncertainty.

 

Risk is different. To commercialize or just monetize an innovation we need to provide energy, time and resources. All three are necessary if we wish to succeed.

 

There is always a chance our efforts to innovate might not work, and our time, energy and resources will be wasted. That is the risk.

 

Entrepreneurs of course want to have as little uncertainty as possible…and controllable risk as well.

 

Huh, there is a problem now.  In a time of crisis, uncertainty is high as is risk. That might tend to discourage entrepreneurs from embarking on a new path, on trying to innovate.

 

They might want to wait until the dust settles.  But waiting might not be the right strategy. They might lose the window of opportunity and someone else might step in and seize the chance to innovate

 

What to do?

 

In my opinion, here is where government has a role to play.

 

As long as potential entrepreneurs trust the government, trust the leaders, there is hope. And when there is hope, uncertainty and risk are not quite as threatening. It is trust in the system in which the entrepreneurs operates that makes uncertainty and risk tolerable.

It is the absence of hope, and of trust, that is damaging.

 

In this time of financial crisis, in my work as a consultant to national governments, I have been asked by several prime ministers and presidents for advice what do I suggest to do.

 

They expected an answer composed of some sophisticated economic policy or of some elaborate financial strategy.

 

My answer to all of them was the same: “whatever you do, do not lose the trust of the people.”

 

For example, look at the recent crisis in Cyprus and the way the government handled it.  Their solution was to freeze bank accounts of people’s deposits.

 

What does it do to trust?

 

Depositors will not deposit again in Cyprus, not for a long, long time. It was a short tactical solution with enormous long term strategic repercussions. Cyprus will never be the safe harbor for foreign investors that it used to be.

 

How about devaluation of the currency?

 

Again, when people lose trust in money, what happens?

You tell me.

 

Always be careful with how much money you print and flood the market in order to ease the credit crunch. Inflation has a serious impact on trust.

 

Crisis can be an opportunity to change, to innovate, to encourage entrepreneurship, to improve the system and flourish again, but only as long as trust is not hurt.

Sincerely,

Dr. Ichak Kalderon Adizes

Too Lazy to Think?

The higher the rate of change, the higher are the instabilities and disruptions in our life.

Change impacts multiple subsystems. On the micro level, the personal level (emotional, intellectual, spiritual and physical subsystems), on the mezzo level of organizations like corporations and the macro level (economics, social, political institutions). As those system components do not change at the same speed, the situation is becoming increasingly COMPLEX.

That means that making decisions is becoming more stressful. More difficult to process.

The result is that people have difficulty to think clearly and increasingly look for instructions what to do. They seek formulas, so they do not have to think: just tell me “yes” or “no.”

This search for simple answers to complex problems explains in part the fantastic growth in the consulting services industry and the proliferation of coaches and life guides.

When in my work I refuse to give an answer to my clients and suggest they use common sense instead, I find them perplexed and somewhat unfulfilled. They want AN ANSWER. I suggest instead that they THINK.

Apparently, I am asking too much. In the complex world we live, finding common sense is not easy. It might be even very difficult to find.

Why?

What is entailed in finding common sense?

Common means that it makes sense to all the stakeholders.

Finding common sense means civilized exchange of information, and more importantly, exchange of judgment: what makes sense. It means learning from people who do not necessarily agree with you.

Not easy.

People have less and less time to exchange positions.  And less and less patience to hear and listen to each other. And thus, they are less and less tolerant to understand each other.

What is the alternative?

I believe the accelerated rate of change with the collateral stressful impact it has on the thinking processes is fueling religious revival in all religions. And the extremist sections of religions are growing in their extremism.

Why is that?

Because religion provides a “manual” of what to do and not to do whether it is the Sharia or the Torah or the New Testament.

One does not need to think. One needs just to follow instructions.

The other extreme response is hedonism. No rules whatsoever. No boundaries. Just go with the flow.

The common denominator in both cases is: no need to think.

Yes, it is becoming more and more difficult to think clearly. Finding common sense is becoming more and more rare. And when one finds people who can clear their mind to think with common sense, I find that they are not appreciated. They are too simple minded, I am told.

Simple is powerful or may be the answer is not in being simple but in simplifying the problem.

The more complex the problem, the harder we should work on simplifying it in order to understand it and be more and more willing to take the time and make the effort to find common sense.

It is not so common in the complex world we live.

 

Sincerely,

Dr. Ichak Kalderon Adizes

When No is a Yes

Today I have been talking to Dr. Ron Dushkin, an excellent New York doctor of homeopathy. I have known him for ages and we exchange ideas, problems and advise each other.

 

Today I told him about my problem to say NO.  Is it that I do not want to offend the other party, or is it that I do not want a confrontation?

 

Or is it that that I have learned to live with pain to survive. So better to accept what other people want and just accept even things I do not want.

 

But it is not very enjoyable and comfortable to behave this way because not only me, all of us, when we do not say NO and yield without really wanting to yield, we resent it.  We hold it against the people that we believe put us in this situation, in a corner, not able to say NO.

 

Victims, right?

 

When we feel victimized, there must be a villain and the person we did not say NO to is the villain.

 

Many times this designated villain does not even know we consider him or her a villain. They simply believe we said YES by not saying NO.

 

What to do? I asked Ron.

 

He had a “trick“ I liked and want to share it with you.

 

Saying NO to the other person is equivalent to saying YES to ourselves.

 

Let me repeat:

Anytime we say NO to something we do not like or want, we are actually saying YES to ourselves, to what WE want.

 

The insight for me was that I have difficulty saying NO to others because, not in spite of, I have difficulty saying YES to myself. In other words I do not count. I am not important.

 

AHA. “If I am not for myself who will be for me” is one of the rules of a Jewish sage.

 

Why do I consider the interests , wants, desires of others, my wife, my children, my clients more important than my own wants and desires?

 

Huh?

 

Why, really why?

 

Ron says when people ask him to do something or to have his time and he does not want to do it , he says: “Sorry, I am not available.”

 

I thought it was not the best answer possible.

 

I suggested to say: “I wish I could do that, but I have a prior commitment.”

 

Commitment to whom?

 

To myself, darn it.

 

I have an appointment with myself. I have a commitment to take care of myself.

How strange I came to that conclusion at the age of seventy five.  Why oh God, why do you make us wise so late and old so early?

 

Ron did another thing that in this case brought actually tears to my eyes.

 

I have real pain in my knees so he asked me to close my eyes, hug my hurting knee and thank my body. Thank it for everything it has done for me.

 

I got teary eyed. I realized how much this body of mine has done for me, taking a terrible beating with all my travel schedule, lack of sleep, eating terrible food, pushing it to the limit of its capability…and what have I done for my body? Very little. I take it for granted.

 

(Think about the analogy of management and workers. How much have the workers done for the company versus how much have the company done for the workers.)

 

I never think about what my body wants. Until it is in pain. Aha, then I notice it is there…

 

OH God why do you make us old so soon and smart so late…

 

Sincerely,

Dr. Ichak Kalderon Adizes

 

Mixing Incompatibles

(This insight is for those who have read at least one of my books and know the methodology somewhat.)

We know and have tested the hypothesis that in an organizational structure it is dysfunctional, to mix (P) and (E). Thus, Adizes methodology recommends not to have one VP for sales and marketing in the corporate structure.

Why?

Two different time perspectives. Marketing fulfills the (E) role, while sales needs to be (P) oriented. If those two functions are combined in the same department, with the same manager, the (P) function will dominate. The result being that the marketing department will carry the name of marketing, but in reality it will be bolstering and supporting sales.

By the same token avoid combining (A) and (P) or (E).

 

Why?

Because (A) will rapidly dominate the other two functions and the organization will become bureaucratized.

Intuitively I have known for years that PAEI roles should be separated…Thus, in a Syndag™, when we accumulate pips we DO NOT accumulate what is positive about the organization. The positive is accumulated in Phase 4 of the program for organizational transformation. Much, much later.

I would recommend that one never mix positives and negatives for the simple reason the two are incompatible. One process will undermine the other. For example, in a Syndag if we accumulated the positive as well as the Potential improvement Points, i.e., the negatives, the “pressure“ to cause change will be diminished. The purpose of the Syndag as an event that is supposed to start change will therefore be disrupted.

Now it occurs to me that this “rule“ of not mixing long with short range goals, and the positive with the negative, makes sense in one’s personal life too.

When you debate your problems in your own head, or at a session with a therapist, the tendency is to present the negatives, that is, the weaknesses, and to counter the “confession” immediately with: “Yes, but on the other hand,…” and present the positives for balance.

Why should we not mix positives with negatives at the same time?

Because one process undermines the other to the point that there is little energy, if any, left either to build one’s sense of self esteem, if the positives win, or to start a process of healing, if the negatives prevail.

In other words, it is all about energy. Conservation and the use of energy.

What should happen?

Keep the two apart. Separate the two sides of the internal argument.

First try and figure out what is wrong. The mind becomes engaged in processing information, facts and feelings. Focus on the negatives, on what is not working for you. Resist, at the same time, the desire and the sense that you need as well to balance your thinking by including the positive side of the argument with yourself.

Leave that for later. For some other time.

If you do so, sufficient energy might build up to start a process of change. It will not tell you, granted, what needs to change. For that you must think and process facts and feelings about the positive side of your conflict with yourself; determine what is right about you; and for you. But do all this later.

First create the energy to change by sorting and calculating what needs to be improved. Later, identify and quantify ONLY your strengths and positive attributes.

In both cases find a pattern. Then compare the patterns and design a plan of action.

I repeat, the positives and the negatives should be considered (apart from one another) in order to design a plan of action that is balanced.

But the accumulation of the positives and of the negatives, the sorting it out process if you will, needs to be done at two different intervals of time. Never simultaneously, or one rapidly after the other.

I hope I was clear and that it makes sense to you all.

Sincerely,

Dr. Ichak Kalderon Adizes

Contemporary General Management Education: A Critique

Delivered at the meeting of

the International Academy of Management,

Atlanta, Georgia, 27th of September 2013

by

Ichak Kalderon Adizes Ph.D

Founder and Director of Professional Services

Adizes Institute, Santa Barbara, California 

The following paper is based on forty years of consulting to corporations world wide, plus experience as a faculty member teaching at business schools at UCLA, Stanford, Columbia, Tel Aviv and Hebrew U, as well as giving visiting lectures in universities where I have been awarded fifteen honorary doctorates.

Summary:

Based on my experience, it appears to me that management education is failing to train those women and men who are relied upon to integrate all functions of management i.e. general managers.

Management education today is focused almost exclusively on functional disciplines. The integration is left to the business school graduates who have to learn the ropes by themselves, on the firing line. Not easy. Not right either.

Furthermore, our focus in training and developing future leaders is on INDIVIDUALS  and my experience is that such an individual who can perform  all the relevant tasks  does not and can not exist.

Our training is culturally biased  in favor of individualism and competitiveness, rather than collaboration, which is what is needed.

We  are not just failing in the United States and Europe.  We are now spreading this failure worldwide by opening business schools wherever there appears to be a market, causing collateral socio-political damage.

1.0 The Role of Management

Before describing and analyzing where we are failing, let me first define what management  (or leadership) is about, as I see it.

Business organizations are continuously experiencing change which is accelerating; New opportunities and threats  that impact the organization are always emerging.  They need to be addressed. The role of general management ( leadership) is to deal successfully with those opportunities and threats:  make  decisions and  implement them.

1.1 Decision Making

We teach students, the future managers, how to make decisions all right.  But the decision-making procedures we teach are mostly in functional areas: marketing, finance, human resources… Granted, general, integrative decisions, are addressed in strategic planning; however, there is more to general management decision-making than strategic planning.

General management has to make decisions that will enable the total organization to be run effectively (meet its purpose) and efficiently in the short and not only  in the long run.

1.11 The Ideal Executive

General management requires someone who is strategically oriented and at the same time focused on detail; someone who is visionary, creative and at the same time a linear, logical thinker; someone sensitive to people, a team builder, and at the same time who focuses on producing immediate results…and manages by those results…

We know from experience, that we, humans, have strengths and weaknesses.  No one is perfect. No single man or woman possesses all the necessary personality traits, ie managerial style necessary for such managerial excellence. Experience tells us it is practically impossible to find and train someone, anyone, to provide this all-encompassing leadership. It is too much to ask. Such individuals exist only in textbooks.

The ideal executive we describe and try to develop in our training programs is an amalgam of the best traits of many people with different managerial styles. Such a person who has all the characteristics and qualities that the amalgam requires does not exist. People who worked closely with Jack Welsh or a Lee Iacocca, CEO’s who have been considered to be the poster executive of outstanding leadership, I suggest, will tell you the same story: they are not  perfect. They do not possess all the qualities that are necessary for managing effectiveness and efficiency in the short and in the long run.

The mistake then is that we train individuals, so called leaders or entrepreneurs, and expect them to have all the traits necessary to manage organizations without fault.

1.12 Management as a complementary team

The managerial process requires a complementary team, a team composed of people with different, complementary styles.

Business schools do not teach students or trainees how to correctly compose teams. We do not teach which composition of  styles are functional and which destructive.

Furthermore we do not teach how to effectively handle the conflict that necessarily and naturally emerges even when  the team is  composed of people with  appropriate different managerial styles.

1.13 How we Handle Conflict

It bears repeating. Whenever there is a complementary team, necessarily, there will be conflict.  It can be destructive, unless leaders know how to convert the destructive into constructive conflict.

I am not aware of courses at business schools on how to convert conflict from destructive to constructive action; in essence a course on collaborative leadership.

We teach conflict resolution all right.  But conflict resolution removes conflict rather than harnesses it.

My experience with management education is that conflict is considered to be a negative rather than a natural phenomenon generated by change, which is constant.

When we negate conflict, because of its destructive potential, we halt change. We encourage bureaucracy.  We need to harness conflict . Not delegitimize it

1.14 Behavioral Science: Substitute for General Management

Conflict resolution has been the area behavioral scientists tend to focus on.  By and large behavioral science has replaced general management theory and practice in management education.  My experience is that better understanding of human behavior does not necessarily mean that our graduates know how to collaborate and handle conflict constructively. Behavioral science, in my opinion, is phenomenological and not structural. Its proponents do not provide a systematic approach to the process of transforming conflicts into a positive force.

1.2 Implementation Training

Making good decisions is necessary, but not sufficient for managing well.  Decisions that deal with change have also to be implemented.

Management education, as I have witnessed, does not teach much about implementation. It apparently assumes that if the decision is a good one, it will be implemented.  And we know from experience that this simply is not true.

1.3 Training Staff not Line

As a result, we train people who can analyze situations, diagnose problems, and make outstanding presentations of what needs to be done. But we fail to teach them how to take the bull by the horns and complete the process by implementing decisions that will handle change.

By and large, business schools excel in training staff people: Report writers. Consultants. Investment bankers. Hedge fund managers. Not leaders, who know how to manage change within organizations, change that involves PEOPLE.

Teaching general management has for the most part disappeared from business school curricula. Case studies do resemble general management experience, but the theory is missing in this kind of training.

1.4 Biased Reward System

How did all of this happen? How did we depart from general management training?

In large part it relates to the values embedded in academia. To be promoted in the academic world one needs to publish. But there are no peer reviewed publications that I know of that will publish experience based papers in general managerial theory and practice.  HBR, for instance, is not peer reviewed and thus does not count for academic promotion. Writing cases does not help   promotion either. There are only a few universities that will recognize books based on the review of managerial practices as a valid proof of academic excellence that warrants promotion.  And as I have already said, strategic planning, which is a part and parcel of general management, does not encompass all that is needed to be taught and known for general management.

By and large the requirements for promotion at business schools are to produce scientific papers mostly based on quantitative analysis.

The result is that the teaching faculty in business schools has been taken over on the one hand by behaviorists who publish scientific papers based on controlled experiments whose findings have remote application to real (business) life; and on the other by applied economists who rely on mathematics and computers to simulate reality, which again has limited application for general management.

General management deals with qualitative, fuzzy situations, and does not subject itself easily to quantitative “scientific “ research usually applied in the natural sciences. Over time those who were interested in general management failed to get promoted and the general management as such  was removed from the curriculum for being too soft, too unscientific.

It is this over-insistence on quantitative based scientific research that has caused general management education to be substituted by behavioral science.

General management is partially an art; this fuzzy component of the managerial process has increasingly disappeared from business education.

Moreover, many business schools that want to be recognized for their academic excellence discourage their faculty from consulting. The result is that many business professors have very limited experience with real life business practices and processes and so teach what they know from books or journals  they have read or knowledge they have gained from quantitative academic research studies. The world is far messier than what controlled experiments yield, and reporting the findings does not help in handling the complex and gritty reality general managers need to master.

1.5 Dysfunctional Profit Orientation

Not only have the behaviorists taken over management education, but often the remaining curricula are dominated by mathematicians and mathematically oriented economists.

What is wrong?

Economic theory promotes the idea that the goal of business is profits.  It can be measured.  It can be validated.   And thus very elegant formulations of what should be done or not done by management can be published.

This profit orientation bias impacts general management education today. It makes profits and shareholder equity the banner that everyone has to follow.

True, there are courses on social responsibility and ethics. But, I would say, those courses are lipstick on a pig’s lips. I suggest their impact on the managerial behavior of recent graduates is minimal. Graduates of leading business schools today end up in Wall Street, in consulting firms, in hedge funds, where the religion is profits, led by computer based decision-making and mathematical formulations.

What is wrong with this?

In the unrestrained search for profits we are destroying our environment. That is what is wrong.  And by managing with computers we are losing the people touch, which is essential for managing, for leading organizations well.  They are composed of people, are they not?

1.51 Business Training as a Liability

In developed countries because of  this greedy, obsessive, search for profits, business is viewed as a liability.

Socially conscious young people are flocking to work for NGOs. Not for business. And those who go into business are not necessarily at the top rung of society. Quite the opposite. Business is considered to be  dirty endeavor.

Watch movies like Wall Street. Read opinion pieces in popular journals.

Businessmen are the thieves, greedy bastards, that need to be regulated. And thrown in jail.

1.6 Undermining Democracy

One of the ironies of it all is that on the one hand the USA sends its soldiers to fight and die for democracy. On the other hand business schools are promoting the opposite of democracy worldwide: They champion organizations  managed by an elite that enriches itself without accountability to the people it leads.

In this way business schools have become incubators that nurture economic elites who gain political power and widen the socio-economic inequality in the nation in which they operate. This has socio-political repercussions that later have to be dealt with by military power in order to overcome revolutionary tendencies on the part of those who feel exploited.

2.0 Quo Vadis?

It is long past time for our business schools to do some soul-searching and to reconsider the premises on which their education programs and policies are based.

Published books by Ichak K. Adizes

(Most translated and published in 26 languages, English version  available from Adizes Institute, www.Adizes.com):

1.Adizes, I., Industrial Democracy, Yugoslav Style, New York Free Press (1971)

2. Adizes, I. and Mann-Borgese, E. (Eds.), Self-Management: New Dimensions to Democracy,(Santa Barbara, California: ABC/CLIO  (1975).

3. Adizes, I., How to Solve the Mismanagement Crisis, ( Homewood, Illinois: Dow Jones/Irwin (1979).

4. Adizes, I., Corporate Lifecycles: How and Why Corporations Grow and Die and What To Do About It, (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 361 pp. (1988).

5. Adizes, I., Mastering Change  (Santa Monica, CA: Adizes Institute Publications, 240 pp. (1991).

6. Adizes, I.: Managing Corporate Lifecycles: An updated and expanded look at the Corporate Lifecycles. ( Paramus, NJ: Prentice Hall Press, 1999)

7. Adizes, I.: Pursuit of Prime,  (Santa Monica, CA: Knowledge Exchange,

1996.)

8. Adizes, I.: The Ideal Executive, Why You Cannot Be One and What to Do about It. ( Santa Barbara Cal  Adizes Institute Publications, 2004.)

9. Adizes, I.: Management/Mismanagement Styles, How to Identify a Style and What to Do About It.  Santa Barbara Cal: Adizes Institute Publications, 2004.)

10. Adizes, I.: Leading the Leaders, How to Enrich Your Style of Management and Handle People Whose Style is Different From Yours. (Santa Barbara Cal : Adizes Institute Publications, 2004.)

11. Adizes, I. How to Manage in Times Of Crisis. Santa Barbara Cal, Adizes Institute Publications, 2009.)

12. Adizes, I. Insights On Management . (Adizes Institute Publications, 2011)

13. Adizes, I. Insights On Policy . (Adizes Institute Publications, 2011)

14. Adizes, I. Insights On Personal Growth . (Adizes Institute Publications, 2011)

15. Adizes, I. Food for thought: On Management . (Adizes Institute Publications, 2013)

16. Adizes, I. Food for thought: On Change and Leadership  . ( Adizes Institute Publications, 2013.)

17. Adizes, I. Food for thought: On What Counts in Life  . (Adizes Institute Publications, 2013.)

About the Author:

Ichak Adizes was awarded his Ph.D from Columbia Business School . Was tenured  by UCLA Graduate School of Management.

At present he is the President of a world wide consulting firm, The Adizes Institute, and is   the founder and Chairman of the Board of the Adizes Graduate School for the Study of Change and Leadership. He serves as the academic advisor to the Russian  Academy of Economics International Business School .

Dr Adizes was awarded sixteen honorary doctorates , and in recognition for his consulting service, two honorary citizenships  and the honorary rank of lieutenant colonel from the Israeli Army.

There Are No Mistakes

Think about it. If at the time you made a decision you knew it was a mistake, would you have made that decision?

 

It is not logical. Right? We do not consciously make mistakes. Unless we are addicted, say, to something like smoking. Then we light up knowing that it is harmful to our health.

 

But if we are not addicted, if we are logical and in control of our emotions and our needs, we will make the best decision possible at the time.

 

Like getting married. Or buying a house. Or accepting a job offer.

 

A mistake is something we beat ourselves over.  Usually the self recriminations begin after some time has passed, after we get more information,  develop new insight, and become aware of the undesirable repercussions of our decision.

 

So “a mistake” is our judgment about a decision we made in the past. But now, based on new information, about which we were unaware earlier, regrets have set in.

 

Obviously it does not make sense.

 

At the time we decided and took action, that was the best decision we could have made at the time. We acted with all the emotional, intellectual and spiritual capabilities we had at hand…

 

The best.

 

So what do we gain by beating ourselves over the head for being who we were?

 

Instead of saying “I made a mistake,” we should ask ourselves “what is there for me to learn” now that I have new information and new experience.

 

What should I have known, considered, judged, evaluated differently?

What is there to learn now from the experience?

 

And I would write it down. And read periodically what I have written.

 

Why?

 

Because we forget the lessons of life and repeat the “mistakes.”  We all  know people who divorced, only to marry a new spouse very similar to their former wife or husband.  It become a way of repeating a pattern over and over again.

 

By writing it down, we articulate the lessons. And by re-reading those notes and observations we are better able to absorb and learn from them.

 

The notebook with the lessons described and spelled out serves as a reminder not to repeat the decision that we will regret later on and beat ourselves over the head for it.

There are no mistakes in life. Only lessons to learn.

Sincerely,

Dr. Ichak Kalderon Adizes

Conflicts Over Love

There are books on “the language of love” that claim different people expect love to be expressed differently. Some prefer being touched. Others expect more touching and still others want presents, etc.

It seems to me that there is another differentiation: men and women interpret love differently. Not only do their interpretations (of love) differ, but so too do their expectations about how love should be expressed within their relationship.  And that often becomes one of the sources of conflict within a marriage,

Both men and women want and expect love, but the language of love for men is often different from the language of women, and that is the insight of today. (Of course we all recognize that some men have a strong feminine side, some women a dominant masculine make-up; and that they act in accordance with their personality, rather than a gender stereotype. Thus, in this insight the term man or woman should not be taken literally.)

Love is, I said in the blog on Searching for God, total integration, which means Mutual Trust and Respect; you cannot love someone you do not respect, nor trust.   I now realize that was a masculine way of expressing love.

Those with masculine energy, for the most part MEN, desire from their WOMEN partners love expressed in respect and trust: Just show you respect me and trust me as a husband, as a provider, as a father- whatever I am supposed to do. That is paramount.

Those with feminine energy, for the most part WOMEN, want respect and trust too, but their focus or emphasis is on action that is addressed to feelings. They seem to be saying directly or indirectly:  I want you to take some time and demonstrate that you care about me, that you value me, that you want to hug me.

Men also want to be hugged, but in moderation, whereas women hope that expressions of love will be constant and overflowing.

A woman bringing flowers to a man does not generate the same response (nor the same feeling of love and gratitude) as a man bringing flowers to a woman.

A man might say: Buy me a shirt or a jacket but do not overdo it. Women love men to overdo it for them.

          Women who show love by hugging and kissing, but who then criticize a man tend to miss the target. He will feel disrespected, and thus not loved, although he is hugged.

What is the moral of the “story,” of this insight?

Do not expect love the way you want to be loved.

Express love the way the other person wants to be loved.

(In managerial terms:  have a marketing orientation, not a production orientation; that is, focus on the client’s needs).

I observed recently that this insight has validity for how I behave with my grandchildren. My granddaughter loves to be hugged. My grandson runs away when I overdo it.

We are different. And we have to learn how to treat and love each other differently.

Another moral, I dare to say, is that over many centuries women have successfully indoctrinated men: they have made it perfectly clear just how they expect and wish to receive expressions of love:  A thoughtful gift on a birthday; a romantic surprise on an anniversary; an impulsive and spontaneous gesture of intimacy on a commonplace weekend. And they express hurt feelings if men forget an anniversary or, God forbid, a birthday.

We men, however, have failed abysmally to effectively communicate to our partners that we want to be loved more with respect and trust than with a gift of flowers and hugging.  And it is time we did something about this. With women taking a stronger and stronger lead in relationships, the sex wars are more intense then ever. Trust and respect are tested to the limit and impact adversely how men feel loved.

 Sincerely,

Dr. Ichak Kalderon Adizes

Feel to Feel

I was watching a mother as she was soothing her crying child when I realized that very few words passed between the two. Hardly any at all.  The mother was holding her daughter close to her chest, kissing and caressing her lightly. The only sounds I could hear were soft murmurs of love.

 

I thought to myself, “at the end of the day” (a South African way of saying : “what is really important is…”), we are all children at heart.

When we are in pain, all we want is to be loved, caressed, held close to the heart, comforted by someone we love. Not words. At those moments of hurt and anguish words only interfere with our need to feel and be felt.

 

It has long been a truism in our culture that women do not want someone reasoning with them when they are feeling despondent or simply feeling low.  Logical investigation of why they hurt and what to do about it often only leads to anger, if not fury.

 

What is wanted is that we shut up and listen. What is wanted is  emotional touching, not reason; love, not logic; a sense that the person they care about connects to their feelings, not their mind.  What I call: feel to feel.

 

But come to think of it, we men need and desire the same kind of response.

 

Imagine for a moment a man coming home from some interaction in the office that went badly. Our partner tries to talk us out of how we feel; tries to use logic; tries to persuade us not to be so bruised or unhappy or out of sorts.

 

I believe our response is predictable. We will be furious too.

 

Just shut up and feel my pain, is what we want too, although often we are unable to utter the words: Too macho to ask for comfort.  But wouldn’t it be nice if our partner just held us, hugged us, listened to us and was “just there…?”

 

If an insight is called for here, it might be stated as:

 

Logical issues should be handled with  logic,

and

Feelings should be handled with feelings.

 

Not feelings with logic or logic with feelings.

 

Here are some examples of a potential confusion:

 

Think of a person dying. Imagine someone telling him that it is not so terrible. Really. There is life after death. And God is waiting. And come to think of it, heaven is not a bad place to be. Huh…it is so idiotic that it is not even funny…an extreme example of feelings handled with logic, with words.

 

Something else is wanted here. Something simple. And direct. Perhaps as slight a gesture as holding someone’s hand. Silently. With a caress. Or placing a hand on his (or her) heart. Gazing directly at one another.

 

It becomes a way of showing love. Of transmitting your sense of caring. Do not speak. Talk will only interfere, will only blur the connection.

 

Feelings should be responded to with feelings…

 

By the same token we should not handle logical issues with feelings either.

 

Imagine that you come to someone and ask him (or her) for advice, explaining what went wrong.

 

Instead of reasoning with you, offering alternate suggestions or possible paths to follow, he (or she) tries to hold your hand, hugs you in an effort to offer comfort  and tries to make you feel better.  You will dismiss that person in a heartbeat. You were seeking advice, not emotional support; tough analytical reasoning, not sympathy or empathy.

 

The rule then is: feelings should be responded with feelings and logic with logic, and do not confuse which stimulus calls for which response.

Look at lovers sitting on a bench by the beach at sunset. Is he saying: “Let me tell you the many ways WHY I love you,” or is he just holding her in an embrace and not saying a word?

 

Speaking would ruin the moment.

 

Feelings come from the heart and, yes, there is and can be heart to heart communion. Without declaring a sentence or uttering a word.

 

The mind speaks with words; the heart with action done in silence.

 

To me this insight, which evolved as I watched a mother soothe a crying child, has repercussions within a marriage, in a lover’s fight… and even in a business partnership turning sour.

 

Because what hurts people more times than we understand, is not what happens to them, but what it means to them. Often it is the heart that is reacting to what is going on, not necessarily the mind.

 

And to help someone in that situation we need first to empathize. When he (she) calms down and asks for our comments, in effect  wants us to speak, only then should we respond with words of understanding. But not sooner.

 

If this insight makes sense, it has repercussions in international relations as well. For example, today there is still no peace in the Middle East. I suggest that there will be none until both sides are able and willing to respond to each other with “heart speak” not “mind speak.”; with actions from the heart and not words expressing the mind.

 

What is happening instead is that words of negotiation have become the form and substance of exchange. They have covered over and replaced the feeling side of the equation.  What they have left on the table is all barter and logic; rational thinking; who did what to whom; who is the victim and who is the villain.

 

All the while the real problem is staring us (and them) in the face:   Jewish hearts bleeding from the Holocaust, and Palestinian hearts torn  by the loss of home and land.

 

I am not suggesting here that they hold hands and look into one  another’s eyes. Please…but there are ways I believe each side can turn to one another with an open heart. Less talk, more heartfelt action.

 

Here is an example: A friend of mine who is the personal physician of  Shimon Peres, the President of Israel, does exactly that.

 

Once a month he and dozens of physicians visit a different Palestinian village and offer their medical services free of charge.

 

That seems to me a feel to feel act. A response from the heart, less talk and more heartfelt action

If there is going to be peace in a marriage, in a partnership going sour, in international relations, the path must lead from the heart…and include far fewer words.  At least to start with.

 

Sincerely,

Dr. Ichak Kalderon Adizes