I have a big problem with the words 'manager' and 'management'. I think of a stagecoach with a team of high-spirited horses. The coachman has to 'manage' everything. The coachman does not provide the energy, the schedule or the destination. The coachman simply sees that the energy of the horses is managed so as to get the stage coach to the scheduled destination more or less on time. That may indeed be a complex management task.
Management seems to imply that destination and route have been set, and the role of the manager is to get to the destination through managing energy, people and resources. Bringing the analogy more up to date, we exchange the coach for a car. The driver handles the driving and makes sure that the car stays on the road and reaches the set destination. The driver is responsible for repairs and overcoming road obstacles. But the driver does not choose the car, the road or the destination. The driver's job is one of maintenance.
There are two basic forms of maintenance.
1. Maintain the existing methods and procedure.
2. Maintain progress towards the set destination and within set guidelines.
TIGHT MAINTENANCE
People are given routines to carry out for a number of reasons.
1. It is simpler to train them that way.
2. They cannot be expected to see the overall picture.
3. Routines are predictable and will fit into the overall system.
4. Routines can be monitored.
5. Routines are low risk compared to creative behaviour.
6. Without routines (as in a pilot's pre-flight check-list) things may be forgotten.
Tight maintenance means following the routine exactly, because any deviation means that the operator is lost, and the action does not fit into the overall picture. Ants in a complex nest follow the routines set down by the interaction of their chemical signals. These are perhaps more 'moment-to-moment' instructions rather than pre-set routines. But the pattern of instruction is pre-set by evolution. Bees in a hive follow their routines. Japanese Geishas follow the routines prescribed by rigorous training.
There is no doubt that the routine system works and works very well. In a stable world, gradually improving routines would be the best way to go. They might indeed be boring, and they might not make the best use of the brains involved, but things would work.
LOOSE MAINTENANCE
Here the goal or mission is made clear: 'make money'; 'be profitable'; 'do what you are expected to do'; and various high sounding mission statements. It may come down to: 'do whatever you want to do - provided that it has been cleared and sanctioned'. At a more definite level, an executive or worker would know the goal or purpose of their own work. There would be guidelines within which to work - legality; corporate culture; perceived approval of superiors; cost limits; peer pressure. A person is, in theory, free to explore new ways of reaching the objective within the set guidelines. In practice, that freedom is usually illusory.
RESPONSIBILITY
If you deviate from established practice, then you are responsible for what follows. If things do not work out, perhaps through no fault of your own, you are responsible for the failure. If you do nothing new, then you cannot make mistakes. The definition of a 'banker's risk' is 'to do what every other banker is currently doing'. That way you cannot be blamed. If you want to be entrepreneurial in what you do, you must take responsibility for the outcome.
RISK
Any deviation from maintenance is high-risk both for the deviating individual and for the organisation. It is true that a deviation from the usual may not be into an untried area. You may choose to introduce a method which is working well with other organisations. Such borrowed methods have been shown to work. Nevertheless, there is a risk that the new method may take some time to work and may not be supported long enough to reach that stage.
Also, the new method may not fit easily into the organisation, and the necessary adjustments may not be made by others in the organisation. New methods may even be resented as such and sabotaged. So proof of success in other organisations does not mean that an innovation is without risk.
For four years, McDonald's had trouble getting profits out of its breakfast business. Eventually it became the most profitable part of the operation. How many organisations would stick with an innovation that long? If it is an individual innovation rather than a corporate one, results have to be shown very quickly, too - otherwise the innovation is a 'failure'.
I was once told by the chief executive of a very large and well-known Swiss corporation that he would love his executives to come and tell him what mistakes they had made that year. 'Can you see a Swiss executive doing that?', he asked. He knew that if you tried new things, there were sure to be some failures: therefore mistakes were an indication of the will to innovate. Maintenance meant no mistakes, no risk and no innovation.
INDIVIDUAL AND CORPORATE RISK
Maintenance is always the safest policy for any individual. Do what you are supposed to do. Do what you have to do. Even a successful innovation is a risk, because the innovator gets reegarded as a high-risk 'ideas person'. For promotion purposes, what is usually required is a low-risk 'sound' person who is efficient and predictable.
From a corporate point of view, not doing anything new may seem low-risk. But if the world around and competitors are doing new things, the corporation may simply get left behind. By the time this is noticed as a 'crisis', it is often too late to do anything about it. Too many corporations have an undisclosed strategy which goes as follows: 'maintenance and crisis management'.
This means running things as they are until a crisis is evident to all and then taking problem-solving, crisis management measures. Far too many executives are unable to think at all except in a 'problem-solving' mode. If something is not a problem, they are not motivated to think about it and do not even know how to think about it. This is the essence of maintenance thinking.
ME-TOO
Many corporations have given up thinking about the future. The future is too uncertain and too complex, and the chances of getting things right are very small. So these corporations concentrate on being eficient and agile. Then they wait until a trend has establshed itself. Once this has happened they jump in with a 'me-too' product or seek to buy up the innovating corporation. This can be a successful strategy, but often the first in the field continues to dominate it. Had IBM been first in personal computers it probably would have had the field to itself today.
So there is a dilemma. Corporations need to innovate in order to stay competitive and even to survive. Yet for individuals maintenance thinking is a much less risky strategy. It is the usual balance between short-term risk and long-term gain. Why should an individual take a risk for the long-term gain of the corporation?
EXPECTATION
In any corporation innovation (and creativity) is either a risk or an expectation. Creative initiatives taken by individuals are high-risk. If, however, creativity is an expectation in an organisation, then not innovating becomes the risk. How is this expectation of innovation to be set? Talking about innovation and making it part of the mission statement are useless by themselves. I have always found a high percentage of executives who claim that, while a lot of lip-service is paid to creativity, little is ever done about it.
The culture and expectation of creativity can be set by a dynamic chief executive. I have seen this happen again and again. Executives come to know that they are expected to have ideas and to make innovative suggestions. In the absence of such 'drivers', it is difficult to install a culture of creativity. Unless the expectations are clearly set out in a concrete way, nothing happens.
One concrete idea is to make use of the 'Opportunity Audit' which I first suggested in my book Opportunity (Penguin). This is a formal framework in which executives are asked to indicate the new opportunities and innovations that they have considered or are considering. Such an audit makes it clear to everyone that maintenance is no longer enough. To be within budget and to achieve a sales (or production) target is no longer enough. It is now part of the job to explore innovations.
Another possibility is to set up a formal 'Creativity and Innovation Center' as Du Pont did at its Wilmington headquarters following my work with them. A further possibility is to set up a formal 'de Bono group' (or department) whose clearly defined business is to establish a culture and expectation of innovation. It would not be the function of such a group to do the innovative thinking for everyone else. The function of the de Bono group would be to help establish innovation as part of the culture and then to energise innovation in all areas.
MAINTENANCE PLUS
There is nothing wrong with maintenance. The bulk of our thinking and behaviour is directed at maintenance and should be so directed. At the same time there is a need to establish innovation as a permanent expectation and behaviour. Innovation is not a risky aberration, but a need. Thinking is not solely restricted to problem-solving. Innovation is an equally important part of thinking.
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