Learning to Dance

What Your Management Consultant Wont Tell You About Innovation and Collaboration (Because They Dont Know It)

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift. - Albert Einstein

Learning to Dance: What Your Management Consultant Wont Tell You About Innovation and Collaboration

Management consulting is big business. The six

leading suppliers of management consulting services (IBM Global Services, Accenture, PwC, Deloitte, Ernst & Young and KPMG) had a combined total of $165.4 billion USD in revenues in 2010/2011. While this includes many other services such as accounting and information technology, its an indication of the massive footprint these six firms have in the field. In fact, their ubiquity leads to the natural assumption that they are the source for the best thinking on management, particularly when it comes to managing under difficult circumstances. Complexity has risen as one of the most common words appearing in their discussions about management and for good reason, as a study commissioned by KPMG shows that managing complexity is the number one concern their clients with. around the world struggle with
However, in spite of their size and resources these firms do not represent the most innovative and effective thinking on management. In fact, they represent an

outdated and largely discredited approach to management and the weight of the rest of that $165.4 billion in services guarantees that this will never change. Why? Because most of those other services are concerned with accounting in some form or another and accounting is a quintessentially left-brained activity. The two firms that dont have accounting as their foundation (IBM Global Services and Accenture) are focused on information technology, which in most cases is also heavily left-brained in its outlook (and Accenture actually began as the IT consulting division of the accounting firm Arthur Andersen). Therefore all those management consulting services have been developed in a leftbrained environment and are delivered and supported by left-brained people looking for left-brained results. But when it comes to creativity, innovation, employee engagement, evolution and other issues that have become a matter of survival for many organizations organizations and public systems, the creative, emotional, imaginative, storytelling, bigbig-picturepicture-thinking, visual right brain is the place to be. And that is one resource that the accountants and system architects at these worlddominating firms have very little access to.

Name IBM Global Business Services

Employees 190,000

Revenues (USD) $56.4 billion

Relevant services Business services: business analytics and optimization; strategy and transformation Consulting: strategy; operations; people and change Consulting: human capital; strategy & operations Consulting: analytics; BPM; change management; process and innovation performance; strategy; sustainability; talent and organization Tax: Human capital/performance and reward Management consulting: business effectiveness; people & change

PriceWaterhouseCoopers Deloitte

169,000 182,000

$29.2 billion $28.8 billion

Accenture

236,000

$25.5 billion

Ernst & Young

152,000

$22.9 billion

KPMG

138,000

$20.6 billion

Learning to Dance: What Your Management Consultant Wont Tell You About Innovation and Collaboration

Left vs. Right

To begin, lets review the distinction between the left and right sides of the brain. The following table illustrates the different characteristics of these two hemispheres:

Left Brain

Right Brain

Reason Linear Objective Looks at parts Analysis Simplicity Logic Literal Control Abstract Quantity Isolation Extrinsic Black & white Accounting, Engineering Artificial

Intuition Iterative Subjective Looks at the whole Synthesis Complexity Emotion Figurative Play Sensory Quality Relation Intrinsic Colour Quantum physics, chaos theory Natural

Neither of these is good or bad, theyre just different and everyone has access to both of these sets of faculties to some degree, although most people identify with one side more than the other. However, theres no reason an accountant cant be a fine dancer as well. The problem is that weve tended to emphasize the left-brain when it comes to dealing with the real world of work, business

and generally getting things done. This makes sense at first because very often the measure of success at work is financial or some other numerical gauge that points the way to financial success, such as productivity. So it seems natural to let the number crunchers tell the rest of us what to do and how to do it. This is exactly what Frederick Taylor did with his theory of Scientific

Learning to Dance: What Your Management Consultant Wont Tell You About Innovation and Collaboration

Management in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His time/motion studies were certainly the leading edge of management theory at the time and the fact that they reduced human workers to nothing more than sentient cogs in a big industrial machine was actually viewed as the height of progress. In many ways, weve never moved on. However, science did move on and as the twentieth century unfolded, the fields of quantum physics, general systems theory, cybernetics and complexity theory revealed that the so-called real world is far from the linear, predictable and mechanical universe that Sir Isaac Newton described in the 1600s. While the inanimate universe is largely governed by the forces and functions that are the domain of engineering, the universe of living things (which includes humans and their groupings) is governed by a different set of laws that arent linear or predictable. In fact, the natural world only really makes sense when we look at it holistically, as something we are inseparable from and which is subject to creative, subjective tendencies that cant be reduced to a single bottom line. Our own world of work, business and generally getting things done only really makes once we take it back from the accountants and engineers who have owned it for the past hundred years and add back in the human elements that weve been told to reserve for our personal time: i.e., the time when we go back to being people.

enough to unsettle most of our assumptions about the workplace and society in general. And the differences between the two can be boiled down to a single important point: A machine is the sum of its parts An organism is more than the sum of its parts. For example, a human being is more than a collection of organs held together by a skeleton, propelled by muscles and encased in skin. A human being also has something called emergent properties such as emotions, memories, intentions and skills that are a function of the whole and which cant be reduced to any combination of individual parts or functions. While those parts and functions participate in the whole, they dont define it. The dance tells the body what to do, not the other way around. Ultimately the dance and the body doing the dance comprise a synergistic whole, a complexity the languages of accounting and engineering are incapable of capturing. Organisms can also operate as a whole rather than a group of individuals when they get together. A common example is a school of fish, which appears to function as one entity. Left-brained scientists cant accept the holistic nature of this phenomenon and continue to try to break it down into its constituent parts and identify the mechanisms that make it possible. (As we will see, Deloitte has a program called As One that does try to get employees swimming together. Well see how they do.) All they can see is a bunch of individual fish and assume there must be some sort of coordinating mechanism. Again, that

The Big Idea

If one can accept the notion that organisms and machines are different types of entities that operate according to different principles, and that people are organisms rather than machines, this is

coordination and unity is an emergent property of the whole group of fish, not something that can be built from the ground up through training, programming or communications. This is why the analytical left-brained approach to organization is a dead end: because it insists on

Learning to Dance: What Your Management Consultant Wont Tell You About Innovation and Collaboration

reducing and simplifying things that cant be reduced or simplified. If you take a dancer apart to figure out how they are able to move so fluidly, you destroy the thing youre attempting to study. So it is with mainstream management consulting.

Moving Forward
This paper was written to draw attention to a particular problem and provide the reader with a fuller picture than they would otherwise have gotten so that they can make better decisions regarding their own actions. And the problem is this: the left-brain types who have pretty much cornered the market on organizational advice remain largely left-brained in their approach so they fail to fully understand the issues being raised and to fully understand the measures required to address them. Its not an adjustment thats called for, its a complete paradigm shift that can at times feel like the difference between accounting and modern dance. In the following pages well present a brief critical analysis of the services and programs offered by the Big Six that pertain to the issues of organizational change, performance, innovation and employee engagement. This will hopefully help the reader to see how the well-meaning words and impressive presentation fall short of what is required to bring about the scale and scope of change required. Because just as you probably wouldnt want a dancer doing your taxes, you probably dont really want to ask an accountant to teach your organization to dance.

Learning to Dance: What Your Management Consultant Wont Tell You About Innovation and Collaboration

Taking on the Big Six

In spite of the critical analysis to which we are about to subject them, we dont mean to suggest that any of these firms are doing anything wrong, misleading or unethical. Theyre doing their best to respond to the needs of their clients and the opportunities of the marketplace and are making some significant investments in the areas of change and engagement. And their core strengths continue to be critical for the well-being of any organization. But there is a growing awareness that financial performance isnt the only meaningful measurement for our organizations, just as measurements of physical well-being such as blood pressure arent the primary goal of our personal existence. In both cases, they are simply the conditions that make the pursuit of our goals possible. Weve confused the means with the end and that adjustment is part of the paradigm shift required. Not all the firms were looking at have made equal investments in the terrain of change and engagement, either. In fact, Ernst & Youngs service offerings still hew pretty closely to the traditional areas of accounting and finance, so were going to give them a pass.

continuously tasked with answering new and unexpected challenges. At the same time, economic shifts driven by massive, global interconnection have deeply affected relationships with stakeholders, customers and business partners. This creates a need to rethink how the enterprise works and delivers value. Well said, IBM Global Business Services. They even go on to promise that with the help of their consultants, you can reset your strategy and operating structures holistically. So far, it feels like reading something written by one of the leaders in the field of holistic approaches to complexity such as Margaret Wheatley, Peter Senge or Peter Block. In their process of rethinking how the enterprise works authors such as these have formulated a consensus that focuses on community. The wellknown quote by Margaret Wheatley whatever the problem, community is the answer provides a north star by which to navigate. In fact, community is the definition of a holistic approach because thats how you engage the entire system, by getting everyone in the same room and thinking together as one. It is immediately apparent that this isnt the

IBM Global Business Services

IBM GBSs capabilities brochure is entitled Strategy and Transformation for a Complex World, which places them smack dab in the centre of the conversation we want to be having. In fact, their opening paragraph does a great job of stating the problem: Accelerating complexity is driving new requirements for organizations the world over. In an environment of heightened uncertainty and volatility, they are

direction IBM GBS is headed. Still on the first page of their capabilities brochure, references are made to the depth of their industry research, the experience of their consultants in making change happen and their knowledge of technology. This is the conventional approach to consulting that says were the experts. Weve done this before and we can tell you what you need to do. And its going to involve buying a lot of proprietary stuff from us. Its the opposite of calling upon the wisdom of the community within the organization to identify the path thats uniquely right for them. Its an

Learning to Dance: What Your Management Consultant Wont Tell You About Innovation and Collaboration

interventionist approach, which is by definition not holistic. Tellingly, they promise that Our consultants counter uncertainty by creating an environment where outcomes can be measured to drive sustainable progress. The gist of this statement appears to be that complexity is something to be confronted and wrestled to the ground so that predictability and measurability can be restored. This is very different from the thesis of Margaret Wheatleys classic Leadership and the New Science that outlines how progressive, sustainable organizations must embrace the principles of complexity rather than oppose them. Next, in the section on Innovation and Growth, the following graphic outlines IBM GBSs view of the innovation cycle. Its interesting to note that

pretty common-sense roadmap for brainstorming, evaluation and implementation. Once again, they restate the problem quite nicely: In a volatile and uncertain world, companies are seeking to build more agile, customer-centric business models that, rather than treating increasing complexity as an inhibitor, turn it into a source of opportunity. But once again, their description of their services belies any real understanding of whats required, referring to strategic planning, focus on results, and the promise that their almighty consultants will provide a clear roadmap for differentiation based on business model innovation, implemented through efficient processes and operations. In the section on Organizations and People, they confirm the suspicion that the workforce is the heart and soul of any organization, but then proceed to discuss organizing and managing it while optimizing its performance as if a heart or a soul were a machine. This is one of many examples of the leftleft-brained perspective peeking rightout from behind the more right -brained ideas its being forced to grapple with. The following quote from this section is worth considering in its entirety: Human resources executives worldwide have told us that they are facing challenges at many levels, starting with the difficulty of building skills quickly and developing future leaders. They are also having trouble efficiently allocating the

sensing and envisioning is a step in the process. This reminds one of the Sensing phase in Otto Scharmers Theory U and also the role of positive visualization in such methods as Appreciative Inquiry and Preferred Futuring, all of which could be considered holistic approaches to organizational change. Aside from that, this is a

workforce and fostering collaboration to improve effectiveness. To address these issues, several key priorities have come to the fore: the need to cultivate and develop creative leadership, mobilize the organization for speed and flexibility, and

Learning to Dance: What Your Management Consultant Wont Tell You About Innovation and Collaboration

find ways to capitalize on the valuable collective intelligence of the workforce. Clearly this is a critical issue for organizations around the world and they are asking firms such as IBM GBS for help in learning how to dance. The question remains whether IBMs solutions for creative leadership, organizational mobility and collective intelligence are the best ones. Some indications that this isnt the case: fragmentation: accepting that developing such important solutions should still remain within the silo of Human Resources when they need to permeate the organization and be led from the top, middle and bottom reliance on Management for leadership: these firms know who they work for middle management so they are very protective of the prerogatives of middle managers, which often undermines otherwise reasonable-sounding prescriptions for employee engagement This falls far short of the holistic approach theyve promised. It amounts to learning to dance by treating each limb as a separate entity and then relying on the brain to coordinate them all rather than shifting control to the body itself and letting the brain concentrate on oversight (i.e., not tripping over chairs). It is a reoccurring theme in the literature of the Big Six that leadership must remain as much as possible the privilege of managers and everything possible should be done to make them as agile and wise as possible. This contradicts the view expressed by the great management guru W. Edwards Deming over fifty years ago that management is the problem, a view that has been carried on by Tom Peters among others, who insist that removing the bottlenecks of

managerial prerogative is the key not just to confronting chaos, but thriving on it.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers
Lest anyone think were being too harsh regarding the relationship between middle management and organizational dancing, PwC makes the very same point in their 2011 paper Demystifying innovation: take down the barriers to new growth. Having established the critical importance of innovation across all sectors and regions, they examine a number of myths about innovation in fine fashion, referencing some of the belles of the ball such as Southwest Airlines, Google, 3M and Zappos, recognizing the importance of intrinsic rewards, the value of incremental product improvements and the importance of collaboration, even between competing companies. Because the document is based on a survey of CEOs around the world, it speaks honestly about many of the issues theyre facing. Vineet Nayar, Vice Chairman and CEO of HCL Technologies, points out the disruptive effects to be expected from the new generation of employees: With Generation Y coming into the business, hierarchies have to disappear. Generation Y expects to work in communities of mutual interest and passion not hierarchies. Consequently, people structured hierarchies management strategies will have to change so that they look more like Facebook and less like the pyramid structures that we are used to. So do PwCs service offerings pass the test presented in their white paper? As far as we can tell, there is a major disconnect between the two. In the case of their offerings regarding innovation, the title of their white paper identifies barrier reduction as the key

Learning to Dance: What Your Management Consultant Wont Tell You About Innovation and Collaboration

element in an environment of innovation but the only prescriptions they offer within that document are another common-sense infographic of the process of innovation and an innovation scorecard (the left brain likes to measure things!) they developed for some universities. No indication whatsoever how they might help clients reduce the barriers to innovation or bring about the sort of less structured environment they have just vicariously endorsed. For that, the client would be advised to simply purchase a copy of Peters Thriving on Chaos, which provides a step-by-step manual to liberating employees to think creatively and effectively about their work. The book was published in 1987 so it can hardly even be considered leading edge except for the fact that the edge of management practice continues to be so dull. The problem with such an approach from the point of view of a multi-billion dollar consulting firm is that it also has the potential to liberate organizations from the need for consultants. This is a threat to their business model and there is no indication that any of these firms are willing to walk that walk, regardless of the talk they talk to their clients. At the end of the day their goal remains the selling of as many consulting hours as possible. When it comes to closing the sale at the end of the Demystifying innovation paper, the focus is still on the active agency of PwC to develop, effectively and efficiently manage and execute strategies, processes and programs. There is no suggestion that the clients workforce might have the capacity to do this for themselves and maybe just need some help in tearing down the walls that keep them from thinking and working together effectively. The suggested readings at the end of the document are all PwC publications, as if theyre afraid to let their clients step outside their intellectual hothouse and explore the marketplace of ideas on their own. Ironically ronically, lly, it appears that control is still ingrained in

PwCs approach to helping their clients become innovative. (Remember the control/play more innovative dichotomy we identified in the comparison of the left and right brains.) This opens up a huge paradigm gap that PwC themselves point to and then heedlessly fall into. They dont appear to have taken stock of the fact that Generation Y wont stand for some outside experts coming in and telling them what to do and how to do it. Before they know it, those kids will be in charge and theyre used to a world where ideas are shared freely and people organize themselves as they see fit according to what they want to do and who they want to do it with. They wont be waiting for permission and direction from the big consulting firms because theyve already been doing it and getting results. And most importantly, theyre used to an open source world where information is free and value resides in knowing how to work with it and seeing the possibilities before anyone else. The proprietary programs and closed thought-systems of the big consulting firms will be severely challenged by the next generation and they might ultimately end up having to eat their own dog food.

Deloitte
Deloitte has stepped forward with great conviction into the organizational transformation/employee engagement space. Unlike PwC, they have done more than publish a few white papers that simply identify general trends without offering corresponding solutions. Deloitte has attempted to build programs into their service offerings and they appear right on their website. Unfortunately, their presentation stumbles out of the blocks as the employee engagement programs they offer appear under the heading of human capital, a term that would resonate with an

Learning to Dance: What Your Management Consultant Wont Tell You About Innovation and Collaboration

accountant but is a poor way of engaging with actual human beings. The term human capital categorizes them as nothing more than process inputs even more coldly than the term human resources and betrays a very strong left-brain bias to the topic. Well begin by examining their program called which turns out to be a survey in which management asks employees how happy they are and solicits their suggestions. A generation or two ago the employee suggestion box was considered engagement in the West and this appears to be nothing more than an updated version of that. The hierarchical paradigm that assumes the primacy of management is still in place here. There is an exponential force available from employees but it can only be expressed if systemic barriers to the flow of ideas and actions are removed so that employees really do multiply each others efforts (E2 = employee x employee). employee) Channeling employee engagement through a management survey will achieve arithmetic results at best. E2:
TM,

prescription is robust enough to meet the challenge. We believe Deloitte when they say that this program is the result of a major global knowledge initiative to assess, interpret and enhance the way people work together in an organization. However, they go on to say that our approach provides a comprehensive and systematic way of measuring and classifying As One behaviour, a sentence comprised almost entirely of left-brained words and concepts. What follows is a (proprietary, of course) system of phases (Who, What and How), modes of As One behavior (eight of them), a decision-making matrix, a proprietary diagnostic with a leading-edge interactive interface and the promise of formulated, targeted interventions. Their definition of As One behavior (a cohesive group working together productively towards a

the exponential power of employee engagement

common goal) is sound. Their equation for Next, we will examine Deloittes As One program, which seeks to answer the question How can you harness the full power of your organization to deliver on your key strategic priorities? This is the key question that anyone delving into the area of organizational development ultimately must answer. Its not just a question of selling more widgets, but of carrying out the organizations core purpose, its very reason for existing. And the question of how to engage everyone within the enterprise in this purpose is a deep challenge. The name of the program suggests that the way to do this is to get everyone thinking and working as one, pulling in the same direction and so forth. The proponents of holistically organized, fully engaged enterprises would obviously agree with this conclusion. The question is whether Deloittes Peter Block would disagree. In his book The Answer to How is Yes he argues that organizations tend to rush Interesting to note that its a linear, not an exponential, equation. The sort of purpose they refer to as the what consists of tactical goals such as replicating best practices, abiding by government regulations and developing successful products. And they suggest that the question of how is the missing dimension that is often overlooked and misunderstood. producing it looks like this:

Learning to Dance: What Your Management Consultant Wont Tell You About Innovation and Collaboration

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through the equation and come to focus on questions of implementation far too quickly. The true missing dimension which Deloitte has missed as well is actually the question of Why? This is a much deeper level of purpose than Deloitte has captured in their what phase. Its the existential question that people answer by choosing the field theyre going to work in, the organization theyre going to work for, the people theyre going to work with and the projects theyre going to work on. Block suggests that before we can move forward as one on anything we need to understand the choices weve made the things weve said Yes to and how the latest project fits into that schema. Another take on the idea of a cohesive group working together productively towards a common goal is the concept of the Big Hairy Audacious Goal that Jim Collins identifies as one of the characteristic elements of companies that have gone from Good to Great. This is a goal that inspires people to transcend their individual and functional boundaries and binds them together in collective effort. Unlike Deloittes uninspiring examples, its a goal that engages people at all levels so that they invest not just their time but their minds, emotions and hearts in the undertaking. This is how you achieve E2. This is how you achieve As One behaviour. The primacy of Why has been captured by Simon Sinek in his book Start With Why. In contrast to Deloittes linear schemata, he sees the relationship between the stages towards innovation as a series of concentric circles he calls The Golden Circle: According to Sinek, this model codifies the three distinct and interdependent elements (Why, How, What) that makes any person or organization function at its highest ability. Based on the biology of human decision making, it demonstrates how the function of our limbic brain and the neocortex directly relate to the way in which people interact with each other and with organizations and brands in the formation of cultures and communities. In other words, acting As One. There are many thought-provoking books available on the topics of innovation and collaboration, many of which have been on the bestseller lists and their authors on TED talks, so they cant be dismissed as alternative or esoteric. And anyone familiar with the works of such authors as Daniel Pink, Seth Godin, Clay Shirky and Douglas Rushkoff in addition to those already and yet to be mentioned in this paper can quickly and easily see how superficial, insular and inadequate the proprietary programs of the big consulting firms are. In fact, in spite of their frequent references to the concept of complexity, the big consulting firms appear to have ignored the actual science of complexity. Deloitte didnt need to carry out its major global knowledge initiative because so much of the work has already been done. The fields of general systems theory, chaos and complexity theory have been in place for over fifty years and they have studied the phenomenon of at one behavior in natural systems as simple as whirlpools and as complex as human societies. And there are many excellent books that address the application of these principles to organizational

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strategy such as Margaret Wheatleys Leadership and the New Science and Dana Zohars ReWiring the Corporate Brain.

and communication over management and documentation. Agile has become a consulting buzzword along with complexity, so to see whether Accenture bases its use of the word with the established practice we examined the article entitled Creating an agile organization in the October 2009 issue of the companys Outlook newsletter. It turned out to be a thorough, well thought-out piece that displays a true understanding of the

Incidentally, the As One system has been published in book form. The supporting website is www.asone.org, also the home of The Deloitte Center for Collective Leadership.

fundamental principles behind adaptive practices such as Agile. Some examples: The agile organization puts its non-negotiables, operationally speaking, in the center, while empowering the local units and geographies to be more responsive and adaptive to local markets,

Accenture
Accenture claims to be the worlds largest consulting firm, so it would be expected to be a thought leader as well. Accentures roots are in technology, not accounting, so they would be expected to be leaders in applying technology to solving organizational challenges and opportunities. In fact, high-tech has been a crucible where many high performance methodologies have been developed and/or tested. One of these is the software development methodology called Agile, an iterative, selforganizing approach that emphasizes feedback

customers and trends. This creates the right mix of necessary bureaucracy with the nimbleness and speed of frontline innovators. . . . If the workforce, and the organization as a whole, is to perform at greater speed and with more nimbleness than before, knowledge and experience must be availableor, better, proactively deliveredto the right people at the right time. In many cases, the innovation required to meet a new marketplace need exists somewhere in the organization; the challenge is finding it. Companies must do whatever they can to overcome the structural deficiencies and organizational silos that prevent the ready flow of information around parts of the organization. When we looked at our data in terms of the ability to be organizationally agile, some of the findings were somewhat expected. Characteristics such as adaptability, creativity and innovation, aggressiveness and risk taking scored high as qualities conducive to agility. In addition, the importance of leveraging technology, minimizing

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bureaucracy and managing talent with the long term in mind supports quality execution at speed. On the other hand, looking at factors that were negatively correlated was instructive and even, occasionally, eye-opening. The item most negatively correlated, for example, was financial fixation . . . As organizations aim to change their corporate culture and create new generations of leadership development programs, they need to make sure they are developing the culture and leadership ready to take on the marketplace of the future, not of the past. Agile organizations, therefore, adopt leadership mindsets based on an assumption that people are, in many cases, eager for change. These companies and leaders make the experience of change something that is not traumatic but is a natural parallel to the pattern of change that people seek out in other parts of their lives. By adopting a mindset of continuous renewal, an organization helps to create a culture that supports and motivates the kinds of behaviors required to be more agile: seeing opportunities instead of barriers, and looking beyond the way things are done to the way things should be done. Although many elements go into the ability to create an adaptive culture, several are particularly important. Adaptive organizations promote continuous learning among the workforce, using methods that emphasize active learning over passive, classroom-based approaches. They rapidly harvest current, frontline experience through advanced knowledge management tools, moving it into learning programs and knowledge bases that quickly get the best knowledge and experience to the entire organization. For these

kinds of enterprises, collaboration is standard operating procedure. Accenture or at least the authors of that particular article seem to have a handle on what makes an organization agile and adaptive. They seem to have a firm grasp on the how and what. The only thing missing is the why. And this is a dangerous omission, because in not addressing it not only do they overlook a critical component of agility, but they obscure their own self-interest, which may not be entirely aligned with the agility of their clients. An agile organization is a highly athletic organism, and although athletes appear to be focused on the bottom line (finish lines, world records, championships) that is a mirage. Athletes are intensely driven by intrinsic goals and external measurements are simply a source of feedback. They dont get anywhere near a significant milestone without countless anonymous hours competing against themselves and striving for a dream. It doesnt even seem possible to become a highperformance organization without a clear sense of purpose. Simon Sinek contrasts the humble efforts of the Wright brothers with those of a well-funded, famous competitor who quit the pursuit of manned heavier-than-air flight as soon as they announced their first successful flight because he had never been in the game for its own sake. Accenture themselves have identified financial fixation as an impediment to agility, but even ven in their excellent description description of an agile organization, they only manage to refer to intrinsically oriented processes as means to an an extrinsically quantifiable end such as market share, profit, efficiency, etc. Helping organizations uncover their deepest purpose is exactly the sort of thing that left-brain oriented types are least capable of doing.

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Steve Jobs and Apple stand out as the greatest example of an agile, adaptive organization that achieved the height of extrinsic success by virtue of its (and particularly his) passionate devotion to a clear, uncompromising almost unreasonable vision. Apples darkest days were when it was under the control of reasonable, responsible leaders who paid appropriate attention to the bottom line. The ideas and expertise reflected in the Accenture article on agility may be enough to create and sustain a Microsoft but would never have been sufficient to cultivate an Apple. The other important omission from that article is the fact of Accentures own self-interest, which must reside in the selling of as many consulting hours and as much technology as possible, both of which could quickly and easily compete with the clients needs. One of the hallmarks of Agile development is its lightweight governance: napkin sketches and Post-its on the wall are all thats often needed for documentation and scheduling. In cases where digital technologies are required, there is a universe of inexpensive or free technologies both proprietary and open-source that can be used to enable ability, technologies as disposable as a napkin or Post-it note. Would Accenture support the adoption of those technologies over its own offerings? Theyve made a strong argument for organizational agility; their challenge would be to prove that they are prepared to eat their own dog food.

That phrase is enough to telegraph their perspective: complexity is confusing and bad; we restore simplicity so your left-brain can relax. This adversarial attitude is further confirmed by the title of their May 2011 study called Confronting Complexity: Research Findings and Insights and then once again in the heading of the section called striving for simplicity. To begin with, KPMG provide their working definition of complexity: Complexity is the number and magnitude of the issues requiring decisions from senior management in order to run a particular business successfully. Note the emphasis on senior management, rather than the organization as a whole. We have already mentioned the tendency of the big consulting firms to protect the privileges of management in the face of complexity, even as some such as Accenture have acknowledged it as a barrier to agility.

KPMG
As mentioned, we are skipping an analysis of Ernst & Young since they seem to have pretty much stuck to their knitting and havent ventured into right-brained territory. Which brings us to KPMG, who have also made a significant investment in the war on complexity, going so far as to enshrine it in their tagline cutting through complexity.

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Canadian CEO Bill Thomas goes on to say in his introduction: My personal view is that it [the report] demonstrates a clear need for those in senior management roles throughout the world to develop embedded, structural responses to complexity, baking in the agility, openness of mind and flexibility necessary to thrive in an inherently complex world. This prescription is oxymoronic of course: a response to complexity anchored in a relatively small number of people cant be embedded or structural. Its the organization itself that needs to become agile, open-minded and flexible. There are some useful insights to be derived from KPMGs research, the most important being the fact that 94% of executives believe managing complexity is important and that 70% feel that increasing complexity is one of the most important challenges their company faces. Aside from that, KPMG displays a fundamental lack of understanding of complexity in the following chart, which shows the responses to their query about the causes of complexity in the business environment:

complexity, one that firms such as KPMG are well suited to address. That sort of complexity benefits from the ability to cut through and achieve clarity. But thats not the type of complexity that represents the most pressing challenges or the most promising avenues of innovation that organizations are facing. Sorting out tax and regulatory issues wont save an organization that has lost its sense of purpose and is unable to think and act in an intelligent, cohesive manner. Another interesting result was the fact that information technology was seen as both a major contributor to complexity and a major solution to the same problem. In fact, at 84% it was the most popular solution, which KPMG endorses as the effort of management to stay on top of things. KPMG seems unaware of the philosophical and epistemological jeopardy to which this inevitably leads, in spite of the fact that their own research is telling them that the more they do to control complexity through information technology the more it increases. The systems-based solution is to locate knowledge management and decision-making as close to the point of contact as possible and rely as much as possible on simple feedback systems. Co-locating work teams is one such simple technology that can lead to an exponential increase in organizational intelligence and responsiveness. This is how the dancers nervous system works; its the natural approach to management that allows all of us to get through the day without losing our minds or dropping dead because we forgot to breathe. In its conclusion, KPMG offers the following prescription: Faced with this stream of issues, senior management has a responsibility to respond with strategies to mitigate complexity and take

The left brain views complexity as an aberration, a problem to be solved. The right brain sees it as the natural order, although some factors such as competition and speed of innovation certainly bring it to the surface. This is not to say that regulations and tax regimes arent the cause of a very simple type of

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advantage of the opportunities it presents. This implies institutionalizing the study of complexity, to identify the most effective techniques for dealing with it and apply them throughout the organization. Successful management teams will be looking for ways to embed agility into their organizations, moving rapidly to understand and meet the changing needs of their markets. They also will need to develop powerful, yet flexible structures to manage the demands of increasing regulation without stifling innovation. This is one of the clearest illustrations of the schizophrenic position the leading consulting firms find themselves in as they attempt to address the issue of complexity using only their simplicity-loving left brains. In that one paragraph complexity is something to be both mitigated and exploited, something to be solved by management and yet requiring the entire organization to be become agile, which as weve seen means overcoming the reliance on centralized management. It speaks of agility as something that can be embedded in an organization, betraying a total lack of comprehension of the systemic nature of the issues theyre dealing with. And the best prescription they can give is to recommend institutionalizing the study of complexity, to identify the most effective techniques for dealing with it, which sounds like an admission of defeat, that they dont have the answers. The study of complexity has been institutionalized. There is both a science and an art to it, and only those who can approach it with an appreciation and understanding of both elements can embrace complexity, foster agility and engage human beings in the complex whole that is their workplace, their community or their society.

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About the Author Russell Giesbrecht has been a writer, filmmaker, entrepreneur and marketing consultant known for his ability to see the forest for the trees and to distill the unique elements of an organizations culture into just the right words and images. In all his work, his emphasis has been on capturing, understanding and magnifying the stories that motivate people and organizations. This led him to turn his attention to the untold story of how many organizations fail to realize their potential and the good news stories that remain dormant as a result. Drawing on his graduate school training, he studied the field of organizational development and evaluated the range of conventional methodologies including Lean, Six Sigma, TQM, BPM, ADKAR and Re Reengineering. At the same time, he reco recognized that modern sciences such as quantum physics and chaos theory have presented a new way of looking at things that wasnt reflected in conventional views of the organization. In the work of leading proponents of the natural approach to organizational development such as Margaret Wheatley, Peter Senge and Peter Block he found the platform for his thought leadership which he exercises through consulting engagements, communication programs and workshops.

www.wholebrainedthinking.com

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