Titanic : Or, I'm comfortable not knowing

Yesterday marked the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster, which accounts for the recent upsurge in news and events surrounding the ship's tragic fate, as well as the return of the incredibly popular 1997 movie, (now in 3D!) titled, aptly, Titanic.It's not just a movie!!!

For a combination of reasons - the scale and luxury of the incredible ship itself, the many pronouncements of its 'unsinkability' prior to it well, sinking, the presence onboard of many of the time's super rich and elite, and finally the sheer scope and sadness of the tragedy that saw over 1,500 perish in the freezing sea; the Titanic story seems even more popular and in the societal conscious than ever before. The 1997 film played a significant role of course in cementing the Titanic story in our collective minds, it was for many years following its release the highest grossing film ever, and even now is still second in Worldwide box office receipts. With close to $2B in worldwide ticket sales and about 178,294 additional showings in the last 15 years on cable TV, chances are really, really high that everyone has seen this movie, or at least is familiar with it. It remains a legendary achievement in pop culture history.

The popularity and ubiquity of the 1997 movie has also had some unexpected effects on the understanding and interpretation of the actual events of the Titanic in the minds of some observers. Namely, it turns out that lots of people, (mostly young people), did not realize that Titanic was not just a movie, but an actual historical event. There have been loads of articles posted about this, this one from the Gothamist is a good example, and they (mostly), take the same kind of condescending slant of 'Can you believe these dumb kids?' and 'Our culture is doomed once these numbskulls are in charge.'. After all, the reasoning goes, how can you not know the Titanic story, it has been told, re-told, revised, re-revised, told some more, dramatized, and finally re-dramatized pretty much endlessly for the last 100 years.

So here's where I disagree with that kind of reasoning, particularly when it comes to 'adults' passing judgment on say the average 15 or 16 year-old that might not have realized that there was an actual Titanic, and not just the boat that Leo DiCaprio sailed on in 1997. The history of the Titanic is at best marginally interesting, and 100 years later the continued fascination with the tale is to me, kind of baffling. Yes, it was an amazing story; yes, there is some historical significance; yes, subsequent efforts to analyze, understand, and interpret the events have yielded some important insights; but the level to which this singular event has been elevated is in my view way out of rational proportion.  

If the 1997 movie was the first and only introduction and experience to the story for say anyone under 25 years of age, I am perfectly fine with that. And I'd submit that there are likely about a thousand other subjects that we as a society should be concerned that our next generation of workers and leaders need to know more about, the details of an ocean liner sinking in 1912 fall really low on that list.

Recently Naomi Bloom ran an excellent piece on the difficulty of keeping up with everything, and the importance of applying perspective, choice, and reasoning in the battle against an endless and unyielding stream of information.  The main point - you have to pick your spots, you can't know everything, and you have to decide what is truly relevant and meaningful. 

If keeping up with every nuance in the 100-year old Titanic story seems valuable to you, then that is fantastic, but don't crack down on some 17 year-old that doesn't see it the same way, or even never gave the entire episode a second thought once the movie ended. There are likely about a million things I'd rather have that kid be familiar with, (cruise control is not the same as auto-pilot would be one), than knowing if John Jacob Astor made it to the lifeboat in 1912.

More on the Talent-Strategy-Culture triangle

A few weeks ago I posted about the ongoing discussions on the relative importance of three distinct, but interrelated aspects of organizations (Talent/Strategy/Culture) that combine to define, set the direction, and ultimately determine the success or failure of the enterprise. In that piece, I proposed it might be that Talent, or perhaps worded differently, people capability, might actually trump both Culture and Strategy as being the primary determinant or most accurate predictor of ongoing success.Throw it to Jordan on the block

The theory, (it probably actually doesn't deserve to labelled a 'theory', perhaps 'notion' is a better term), is that without the raw talent, the right people with the right skills in place, that even the best company cultures can't progress from being 'fun' or 'happy' into truly successful, and also that the sharpest most on-point business strategies can't be executed.  Why I think I like this idea so much is due all the time I spend watching sports, specifically the NBA, where perhaps more so than many other team sports, sheer talent more often than not plays a disproportionate role in driving wins and championships.

In the NBA, teams that win titles almost always have one (or more), of the league's most talented players, the kinds of players that can essentially take over in close games, can rally the team by setting an example for effort and dedication, and help to make the other players around them better, by virtue of their sheer ability. Essentially to win in the NBA, you need superior talent. It doesn't mean you will win of course, (see Heat, Miami - 2011 NBA Finals), but without it, the best team spirit, (culture), and coaching, (strategy), will only take you as far as the talent can carry you.

While culture is critical, and strategy is essential, having the talent makes it all work, makes the culture rise to more than a 'oh look how cure, there's a foosball table in the break room', and elevates the strategy from just words on a PowerPoint or a tagline on a website.  

So how do you go about landing that essential, superstar talent you need? Dang, that's a problem.

Well, having a fantastic company culture helps. Great talent wants to be in a place that they feel will challenge them, where they sense a greater purpose, and can learn from and engage with great colleagues. And it really helps to actually be a successful company already, or to have a story, (a strategy even), that resonates and can be envisioned, and that great talent can see themselves as a part of. Yep, it is kind of hard to attract and retain great talent without a great culture and a winning strategy.

Which I think is the reason why all these Culture vs. Strategy vs. Talent type arguments persist, because no matter what position on the triangle you take you are right.

And also wrong.

Rock-Paper-Scissors.

Off Topic - This Is My Home

Do you ever get a little tired of reading about Human Resources, workplace concerns, technology, or Jeff Van Gundy?

Me too. 

So for a Friday let's go off topic. This is the most interesting thing I think I read or saw all week. A short film by filmmaker Marc Cerosimo titled 'This Is My Home', about a man who has created an interesting and unusual home in the middle of Manhattan. A place filled with antiques, treasures, and collectibles but also one that is much different than what is expected.

A kind of vintage shop where anyone is welcome to explore, but nothing is for sale. Unless...

Check out the film, (email and RSS subscribers will need to click through), it is about 6 minutes long and I think you can spare the time on a Friday.

This Is My Home from Mark on Vimeo.

So what did you think?

Have a Great Weekend!

If culture eats strategy, then what eats culture?

I still play Rock-Paper-Scissors.

For a simple game, it is incredibly nuanced and complex. Like all good games, there is no sure way to win, and no sure way to lose. Some day I hope to hone my skills to the point where I can compete for big bucks on the R-P-S circuit.

Why mention Rock-Paper-Scissors? Choose wisely

It came to mind from thinking about two things - one, another run around the park for the popular 'Culture Eats Strategy' meme, (ok, it is not really a meme, I just couldn't think of a better word. Sorry.). This line of thought posits that without the 'right' or 'good' or 'well managed' company culture, that it does not really matter much what the business strategies are, that decreased or lacking employee engagement levels caused by that poor culture will effectively short-circuit and lead to failure even the best, most intelligent strategies. It makes plenty of sense, is fairly hard to argue against, and tends to play to the part of us that simply likes to believe if we create great places to work, great experiences, and happy/engaged/satisfied employees that everything else might just fall into place.

But like the Rock-Paper-Scissors game, that is non-linear, and where any choice you make can potentially be trumped by another choice, is it possible that while Culture may eat Strategy, that there might be something out there that might eat Culture?

How about Talent?

A few days ago mega fast food franchise company Yum! Brands, (think, Pizza Hut, KFC, Taco Bell), announced its latest quarterly earnings, and one of the highlights was the company's strong growth and performance in China, with an expansion of locations and same-store sales up 21% on the quarter. On the quarterly earnings call, Yum! CEO David Novak was asked about the company's successes in the often difficult to crack Chinese market, and his explanation of the reasons behind this excellent performance curiously did not attribute it at least primarily to some kind of superior business strategy, or wonderful organizational culture. No, he talked about Talent. From the transcript of the earnings call:

I think our whole formula for success in China has been geared on great local management team with phenomenal local operating capability. And we've always had one rule, we never want to expand any further than or faster than our people capability.

But we're like the Procter and Gambles, the king of marketing talent in the United States. We see ourselves as the leader in operating talent in China. The second big thing on people capability is just our development operations. Our development team -- we have 700 people in our development team. And we have the best retail management base in China. This is a huge competitive advantage as we go forward. 

Let that sink in a minute. People capability. The leader in operating talent. The main reason Yum! is winning in China.

Later in the discussion Novak does talk about the importance of flagship locations, and arriving first to local markets, both clearly business strategy type decisions, but the overall emphasis and the main reason for success and ongoing competitive advantage is finding, developing, and pipelining great local managerial talent.

Talent. Not culture, not strategy, not some innovative marketing or social media outreach.

It is a very interesting take, and I'd recommend reading the full transcript of the earnings call, (come on, you have time, lay off Facebook for ten minutes).

What do you think - if culture eats strategy, could it be that talent eats them both?

Have a great weekend!

If we're all so original, why are there so many Starbucks?

Most of us like to think we are kind of cool, interesting, hip, unique, and not at all as boring and predictable as the next person. This kind of attitude is perhaps more prevalent in the USA, where the ideas of rugged individualism, conquering the great untamed land and staking your own claim are still a part of the national psyche. We don't like to conform. We don't want to be told what to do. And we often chafe at what we sometimes perceive as artificial or arbitrary rules, policies, or regulations.

So why in this nation of free-thinking, freedom loving, don't you dare tell me what to do, think, feel, say, or buy kinds of people do we have so much sameness? Every town has a McDonalds and Starbucks, (usually more than one), you can score a $5 dollar Subway footlong everywhere, and in town after town a seemingly limitless string of non-descript strip malls remind you that even though you may be thousands of miles from home you have not gone very far.

A recent post on the Psychology Today Ulterior Motives blog titled 'Why We Love Independence, Individuality, and Starbucks' offers some ideas as to this apparent paradox - why we will sometimes travel across the globe only to seek out a cup of joe from Starbucks that we can easily get in our home towns. After reviewing some recent studies on the topics of mobility, choice, and familairity, the author offers the following observations to attempt to explain the seemingly contradiction:

The independent lifestyle that we often lead in the United States creates great freedom. But that freedom comes at the cost of our connection to community. When we move from place to place, we disrupt our connections to family and friends. We also force ourselves to adapt to a new house and a new environment.

In those times, we tend to attach ourselves to things that are familiar as an anchor. There are lots of things that we might use for that anchor. One of them is the places we shop. Shopping at a familiar chain store after moving provides a sense of balance to counteract the chaotic feelings we might have as we try to re-root ourselves in a new home.

Ok, that makes some sense. If you have relocated, left most all of your familiar surroundings and friends behind, then seeking out the relative sameness of chain stores, shops, or restaurants does certainly provide a level of comfort, and anchor of sorts as the piece describes. You may not know anyone in your new town, or at your new company, but that grande mocha with whipped cream will taste exactly the same as the one you used to get every morning on your way to your old job. And that is, mostly, a good thing. It's assuring, it's safe, maybe it is even control when everything else around you seems out of control. Starbucks and McDonalds are on every corner because we want them there, not really because there aren't better places in every town to get coffee and hamburgers.

So what's the hook back to work, or human resources, or anything at all relevant to the folks that might read this post?

Probably not much of one. Perhaps only that it might explain a little bit of why those unique, remarkable, and innovative corporate cultures we hear so much about (Zappos, Google, Netflix, etc.), seem to be the outliers, no matter how much they are discussed and analyzed. For all their notoriety and acclaim, the vast majority of us never get to work for those companies, the ones that are the corporate versions of that incredible hole in the wall local diner that makes the best handmade burgers and fries. 

Most of us tend to spend out time at the corporate equivalent of the Starbucks. Good. Quality. Solid. And exactly the same wherever you go. And that is the experience we bring with us as we move through the world.