Myths

How does The Respect Revolution impact on business myths as postulated by leading business books? (Those myths authored by Adizes, Buckingham & Coffman and Collins & Porras[1] are responded to, below.)

Myth 1: Marketing and sales should work hand in hand.

Reality: The subtlety of this statement is that indeed marketing and sales should work hand in hand, but one should not control the other. First, marketing should be the driver of sales. Marketing is there to discover client needs and trends and pass them to product development for execution. From there the concepts go to production to manufacture items that the sales department will sell. The tendency to have marketing under the control of sales will lead to the stifling of marketing as an innovator, so marketing could play an inferior role as a support to sales rather than leading the direction of sales (and product development). (See Volume VIII.)

Myth 2: Strategy precedes structure.

Reality: Whatever corporate structure is in place will shape the corporate strategy, just as whatever building structure is in place will determine the purpose that the building will serve. To deal with strategy (and structure), it is best to start with a clean slate. The proper process sequence is to evolve a plan and, from that, determine the desired strategy. Then design the structure to bring that strategy about. Developing a strategy without changing the structure will see the company revert back to the strategy of the unchanged structure. The reality is that the structure will determine the strategy. (See Volumes VII and VIII.)

Myth 3: Companies prosper under born leaders, charismatic leaders.

Reality: The Respect Revolution shows seventeen dysfunctional leadership styles (Volume XII), which means the board of directors must tread lightly and knowledgably when selecting a new CEO.  The relationship between managing and leading are noted in Volume II.  No one has a monopoly of “good” features. It’s the ability to take what you have, expand on it, and then augment what you don’t have with other people in your organization that makes you a good leader. (See Volume III.)

Myth 4: Business and private lives are different.

Reality: Bill Mills, quoted in the Ottawa Citizen, tosses out the seemingly universal distinction between work life and personal life: “You have only one life and part of it is spent on the job and part of it outside of work.” (See Volume XII.)

Myth 5: You can be anything you want to be; just follow your dreams.

Reality: If you are a wallflower, do you believe that you can be a great public speaker? If you are impatient, do you believe that you can have a great career solving Chinese mind puzzles? If you are an extrovert, do you believe you can achieve greatness as a monk in a cloister? If you are a friendly person, do you believe you can have a wonderful, successful job as a corporate hatchet man? You can be great only in a career that focuses on an area that brings out your innermost, natural, wired-in strengths. You may be able to perform opposite jobs and you may even do well in them.  But they will never elicit a thrill for you and you will never become a superstar in them. (See Volume IX.)

Reality: A focus on weaknesses is like a focus on what route not to take to travel to New York from Chicago; the number of options of wrong choices is infinite. The focus should be on a person’s strengths--how to best get to New York. That is, there are many more wrong answers than right answers; trying to look at all the wrong to find the right is a lengthy approach that might never lead to the best answer. (See Volume IX.)

Myth 7: Managers should seek perfect people for the job.

Reality: Show me someone who can consistently pick a perfect person for the job or, even more challenging, show me the perfect person and I will show you an exaggerator. Pick for suitable skills and experience as a starting point only. The natural skills (Volume II), the PAVF talents for the job, are critical towards achieving a high degree of success. Select for the appropriate, innate PAVF talents. You must become aware of the PAVF needs for a job, and the PAVF characteristics of the individual. Then adaptability and adjustments among team members will have to augment or make up certain deficiencies. The “perfect” person is the one whose PAVF mix matches the real job needs. (See Volume IX.)

Myth 8: Tune the company for excellence as soon as management is on side.

Reality: Your having a willing management team is not enough. You cannot climb the mountain to the peak of Excellence if you carry too much baggage on your back, no matter how well intentioned the group is. You will simply fail. The baggage--the problems within the organization--must be removed first, because the excess will impede attempts at fine-tuning the company to Excellence. Do not put the cart before the horse. (See Volumes II, III and VI.)

Myth 9: Upward movement should be into successive levels of management.

Reality: While a promotion to management may be the logical next rung up for some, it might not be the right fit for others. Forcing specialists “up the ladder” often leads to incompetent management--and incompetent specialists, i.e. the Peter Principle. The answer is to have parallel paths of movement upwards: management for management types and specialization for specialists. Both should have rewards and prestige that are comparable. In this way, super employees can excel and super managers can excel. (See Volume IX.)

Myth 10: It takes a great idea to start a great company.

Reality: The concepts espoused in The Respect Revolution (Volume II) illustrate that great companies don’t have to start with great ideas. More to the point, we have to realize that “change” is ever-present, which means that any great idea will ultimately be replaced by a new one -- because of change. So, even if a company starts with a great idea, it cannot be sustained by that great idea alone. It must have more, much more. The key is an ability to respond to change. That means that you craft products or services after you detect the need for change, tailoring those products to feed the need created by change. Thus, you may start with a weak idea and build from there, adapting to change and thus refining your product to the new world that you see. (See Volume III.) The Respect Revolution shows specifically how to attack problems and situations that change delivers starting that attack from the bottom up and thus discourages “well-planned” complex solutions. The simple explanation is that, in most situations, it is better to eat the elephant one spoonful at a time without any plan of how we are going to get it all down. However, the real point is to encourage bottom-up focused solutions that immediately satisfy those directly affected. Picking pieces at the bottom will build, mold and congeal the diverse parts of the enterprise, gradually making its way throughout the company with what appears to be an apt, well-planned solution, or in this case, product. This is invoking chaos theory--the creative, and mathematically explained, order of the universe. (See Volumes V and VIII.)

Myth 11: The most successful companies focus on beating the competition.

Reality: It is safe to say that many, if not most, of your competitive firms don’t know what they are doing--because most of your competitors are not successful. And, since each enterprise is unique, a focus on improving itself should be the organization’s own priority--not a focus on the competition. This should be extended to employees by setting them up to compete, not against the competition or other employees, but against themselves. (See Volumes VIII and IX.)

Myth 12: Change is irregular and unsuspected. 

Reality: The only constant is change! The Respect Revolution series shows as its base premise that change drives the world (Volume III). And it drives companies. Change is unending. Only companies that embrace change will survive in the long term. To embrace change, companies must be light on their feet; they must avoid becoming complacent or arrogant or self-congratulating. They must listen to all without prejudice and they must reach out. To reach out they have to protect, nurture, and institutionalize the innovative and visionary factors within their enterprises, as the visionaries are the agents of change. “Listening without prejudice” means hearing those we don’t agree with and being prepared to change, to reverse action by 180 degrees if required, consistent with the company’s core values. In a few words, showing respect. (See also Volume VII.)