Using Deliberate Disturbance to heighten execution in Consulting Firms
We often use the term "when the dust settles", but for the dust to settle, first we have tot kick it up. And the same applies to businesses too. After the dust settles citizen seem to see great and see things they didn't see before. But then why are consulting firms so allergic to changes? Why are they so chronically entrenched in their ways of doing things, that they keep doing it even if it obviously doesn't work?
One of the reasons is that consulting firms in general are very risk allergic, and living a minor pain is a lot great than going through temporary major pain to eliminate the minor pain once and for all. The question is that if we're not willing to disturb our own comfort, sooner or later the market will disturb us so much that we may not be able to recover.
But it's also obvious that only external powers can cause serious disturbance. This is just plain physics. If I roll a ball, the ball keeps rolling in one direction. And in an ideal, resistance and gravitation-free world that ball rolls forever in the same direction. The ball cannot convert its own speed or direction. Only an external force. That's called perturbation. The external force disturbs the ball, and changes its speed or direction.
One great example of perturbation is Japan after the Second Word War. The war seriously perturbed Japan, but then the country emerged as an industrial superpower.
But let's see...
Where This Perturbation Thing Originates From Russian-born Belgian scientist, Ilja Prigogine discovered that nature didn't work in predictable ways. There are all the time some unknown factors. When you melt and ice cube, you can never restore the resulting water into ice cube again.
Prigogine also discovered that when a ideas is perturbed, although it goes into chaos first but then it reorders at a higher level of complexity and sophistication. Then in 1977, Prigonine received a Nobel Prize in chemistry for his discovery.
So, now let's see...
So, How To Use Perturbation In Consulting Firms? Many consulting firms fall into the trap of their own "methodologies" and "approaches" they use with their clients, and "the way we do things colse to here" in their own operations. Over the years they come to be more and more protective of these approaches, and firmly believe that no revising is possible.
And this allergy to disturbance keeps them at status quo level.
So, how to avid stagnation? How to perturb the firm?
Consulting firms in general are paramount for lack of accountability. Partners are regularly above the law, so no one can touch them. Associates are quietly doing their clients work in the background. Only citizen who are involved in client acquisition are accountable... But only for landing new business.
Sa far as the firm's values and ethics are concerned, there is no serious accountability.
One form of perturbation is to build "consequences" for breaking commitments.
I love using the local temporary labour agency. Depending on their sins, citizen of any position are "sentenced" to a obvious whole of days of building labour for minimum wage. This is unpaid leave from the firm, and citizen have to prove with pay stubs that they spent the given whole of days doing labour work not merely sitting at home.
Personally, I don't believe in firing citizen but do believe in penalising citizen who break their words and let their colleagues down. If they do it repeatedly, they must go.
This penalty ideas causes huge disturbance in people. Can you fantasize a expert with an Mba and being asked to do building labour for 3-4 months? Yes, it's pretty unpleasant, but the firm must not tolerate behaviours that violate the firm's code of ethics. Otherwise the code of ethics is nothing more than one page on the firm's website. Mere window dressing.
So, now let's look at the...
...Stages of Perturbation Let's look at what happens inside a firm when we deliberately apply chaos or perturbation to it, and how it influences firm-wide performance.
Pre-chaos status quo stage: Everything is fine and stable. citizen do what they've all the time done, and execution is steady... At the general mediocre level.
Perturbation Stage: Something whether deliberate or unexpected happens that turns the firm upside down. What can be this disturbance? For instance...
A major rainmaker leaves the firm or kicks the bucket
Due to consistent and productive non-marketing, the mom of all famines hits the firm
A customary client sues the firm
A fire takes out the office and all the hard copy documents are in ashes.
Post-chaos improved stage: After the preliminary chaos, citizen pull together in an unprecedented manner, and start-rebuilding the firm on some new foundations.
For instance, if you're a rainmaker and spend most of your time driving colse to and meeting and dining prospects. Nice. It's also very very high-priced but the rainmaker doesn't care because the firm pays for it. Then you go to a new firm, where there is no visiting and meeting prospects. You have to operate a client acquisition system. It requires a totally separate approach.
inherent Problems With Perturbation Some citizen use perturbation in an abusive manner. One of the some forms of that is organising contests between rainmakers who can bring in more business, and threatening them that at the end of each month the lowest performer is fired. Retarded though it may sound, many firms practise it to spur wage generation. But this is not sustained revenue. Just a flash in the pan. This is a form of covert perturbation when you quietly set your citizen against each other. It may work for a while but finally it crashes and dies.
There is another kind of perturbation that seems to be abusive on the surface, but it has good intentions. It's the military.
Yes, drill sergeants yell, and make citizen do push-ups in elbow-deep mud. But when push comes to shove, every soldier knows that those "nasty" drill sergeants are nothing else but preparing them to stay alive in real situations. The soldiers also know that those nasty drill sergeants are willing to kill to protect their soldiers because for them the whole one issue is the security and welfare of their soldiers.
Benefits of Perturbation So, now we know we have to buildings the firm somewhere between flexibility and stability. Excess flexibility leads to more disorder, while excess stability leads to rigidity.
The Edge of Chaos is what scientists call the zone where innovation originates from as a consequent of interaction between some people. And the Edge of Chaos is a rather unbalanced environment. Only this lack off equilibrium and lack of optimisation can sustain an environment where new ideas can be developed. But to loosen up on structure, you need citizen with strong self-discipline with whom you can collaborate without the need for policing them and introducing rigid structures.
So, the key question from management's perspective becomes...
"How miniature buildings do we need to speak steady and balanced growth?""Do we have adequate discipline built into our culture that allows us to loosen the rein on our people?""Do we nothing else but trust our citizen adequate that they won't abuse the lax structure?"
