Sunday, October 9, 2011

A Corporate fairy tale—and a river in Egypt

It seems that everyone today is talking about peace for the Middle East. It’s wonderful. There is so much hope in the air.  Everyone says that ending the conflict between Arab and Jew is simple: create two-states, side-by-side.  They know how to do it, too:  the Arab announces what he wants and Israel makes concessions. There is even a way to measure success or failure: if Israel concedes-- success; if Israel does not concede-- failure.

It’s a simple plan. It is clear. It is tidy. It is easy to understand. But is it true?

It is not true. Want proof?  Look at Corporate America.  This is where you will learn about the Middle East deal-killer called ‘denial’.

You see, in corporate America, you will not succeed in the marketplace if your leadership embraces denial: if you produce something that does not meet the needs of its local market—and your leadership then proceeds to ignore negative facts —you will fail. The marketplace is that harsh and unforgiving.  The pre-Mac Apple computer (cost), the Sony Betamax (recording time) and the Ford Pinto (exploding gas tanks) attest to this. If you want to succeed, your leadership had better accept the facts ‘on the ground’ (after you introduce your concept), and then adjust  or re-tool. The success of the Tata in India and the introduction of the original Ford Taurus in the USA attest to this. Whether you want to sell cars in India or bring peace to the Middle East, your leaders will succeed only when they understand that the product you create must meet the needs of the ‘marketplace’ you wish to enter. Denying, dismissing or ignoring contrary facts will destroy your best inntentions.

 To be a Leader in business or diplomacy you must develop   ‘vision’ and attack denial. You must be able to see what others fail to see—and then act. This is usually deemed an ‘intangible’. But it isn’t. Every top CEO knows this. ‘Vision’ is actually very simple.  It’s the result of a four-step process: question; travel; compare; and then, finally, identify denial and kill it before it kills you. This process not only creates success for the top CEO, it can also help us understand why leadership will fail with its current  ‘two-state solution’.

The first step in this process is basic: what can cause us to fail? For a company that makes deodorant, for example, an answer might be, ‘smell’ or ‘price’. For diplomats looking for a solution to the Arab-Israel conflict, the answer might be hatred, or refusal to compromise. If a leader wants to fail, he should deny and/or dismiss these answers. Failure is that simple.

The second step is travel. This means doing what everyone else does not want to do: leave headquarters and travel around your Corporate geography, asking questions and listening to answers. What you want to learn is, what are the people outside the leadership bubble saying about your product?

 This is a difficult step because it is time-consuming—and, worse, you probably are not going to like what you’ll hear. Why? Because what you hear ‘in the field’  could be very different from what you hear from the people closest to you. For example, with the deodorant manufacturer, the people around you might say ‘price’ is the key to your success, but the people far away from headquarters might tell you that the wholesalers who market your product to supermarkets are arrogant and insulting, and supermarkets don’t like dealing with them. As a CEO all geared up to push an historically expensive national sales campaign, you will not want to hear this message—but you had better hear it if you want to succeed. With the Arab-Israel conflict, as a diplomatic leader, you might be all set to pressure Israel to make those supposedly peace-guaranteeing concessions, but when the people farthest from your bubble tell you that the Arabs in your newly proposed ‘Palestine’ are promoting hatred of Jews, not peace, you had better listen to that message. If you are selling ‘peace’  but the Arabs are selling maps of a ‘Palestine’ that replaces Israel, your plan to shrink Israel will  not lead to peace.  Deny or dismiss this reality and you will fail.

The third step is analysing what you have discovered while away from your bubble. This step is  called the ’reality check’ because it forces you to look at the real facts you face, not the facts that have been put in front of you by your bubble-enablers. For your deodorant company, this means looking at those supposedly arrogant and insulting wholesalers. Does their behavior impact how supermarket chains purchase and promote your product?  You had better find out, because your national advertising campaign may cost your company, say,  eighty million dollars more than it has ever spent for a single advertising campaign—and you don’t want that money going to waste because supermarkets will not promote your sale.  This campaign could be your hallmark strategy. It may be what you have assured the Board of Directors this company needs to become premier in its market.  This campaign will make you famous—or get you fired. If you are a true Leader, you do not at this moment call out, ‘damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!’  The same is true for Middle East peace efforts.  You say that Israel is the one who must be pushed?  Look at the facts on the ground: if you want peace, you had better ask how all those Arab calls to kill Jews—and all those newly minted ‘Palestine’ maps showing Israel ‘disappeared’—are going to impact your ‘peace’; because if you ignore the intensity of that hatred your ‘peace campaign’ could be the match that ignites a regional Armageddon. Deny the facts of Arab hatred and you could become no better than Neville Chamberlain claiming to have secured peace with Hitler. Is that the ‘peace’ you want?

The final step is the most difficult. Here, you must identify denial and then attack it by forcing your people to deal with the realities you face—those arrogant and insulting wholesalers, or the hate-mongering jihadists, who will destroy more than they create.  This is the step that separates the proverbial men from the boys. This step contains the difference between success and failure. This is where you must address the design flaws of your ‘product’. Otherwise, you are just another Ford Pinto, which continued to burst into a fireball when hit in the rear end by another car. At this step in the process, your bubble-enablers will tell you to ignore what ‘the outsiders’ say. They will tell you to go forward. If you just push hard enough, they will say, you will succeed. Do it, and push hard!

You are the CEO. The decision is yours alone. If you are a true leader, you know that  ‘denial’  is not just a river in Egypt: denial can kill.

The same is true for solving the Arab-Israel conflict.  Is there a leader out there who will confront denial—or are we just dealing here with more Ford Pinto manufacturers?

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