Are you in it for the money? Are you in it to get ahead? Are you in it to serve some one?                                                     …Two of these three choices are about you.

Nobel Lauriat, Milton Friedman is most commonly recognized for his commentary on the primary purpose of business — “to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits.”

Peter Drucker disagreed with Friedman and said, “There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer . . .”

Harvard’s Michael Porter suggests that it is to gain a “Competitive Advantage.”

Another Harvard Business School professor, Clayton Christensen, suggests that companies fail because they hold on to long to what made them great…presumably what either Porter or Friedman espoused – they become vulnerable to what he calls “Disruptive Innovation”.

W.E. Deming’s first tenet was to “Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and stay in business, and to provide jobs.”

Together, these men seem to have covered all three of the circles. There seems to be no consensus on just one. Standing in more than one would be confusing, so, which one are you standing in?

Consider two more questions:

“How will you measure your life?”
“How can you know your life’s purpose?

In Clay Christiansen’s 2012 book, “How will you measure your life?” it is clear that his thinking has evolved from his 1997 thesis regarding “Disruptive Innovation.” Two videos totaling 30 minutes illustrate the migration in his thinking towards the Customer Circle. Yale graduate, Adam Leipzig, gives a simpler and more straightforward answer to these questions in his video, “How to Know Your Life Purpose in Five Minutes.”

Leipzig poses five more questions:

Who are you?
What do you do?
Who do you do it for?
What do they want or need?
How do they change as a result?

Only two of Leipzig’s five questions are about you…maybe we are getting some where with this – after all we really are each other’s customers. Maybe the answer is that it is not about you.

An example might be that we are more comfortable accepting a new product when its benefits are presented to us before its features. Consider the universal TV remote control. No one would be interested in all those buttons without some hope of a benefit. (Personally, I have given up hope on this one.)

Intuitively, “concept before detail” makes perfect sense. But it presupposes that we already have a concept in the first place. What if we don’t already have a concept to build upon? Most likely, we’d just fabricate a concept. We’d have to make up a story to make sense of what’s happening; otherwise, we’d just dismiss the details as extraneous noise. Maybe that’s where mythology comes from – we just make up reasons in order to make sense of the details that surround us… and end up with theories that we think explain our world. So, in this way the details do come first, but for most of us there is already some concept out there that we can use and build upon.

We can remember details for a short time, but not until we attach them to a concept do they  play a part in our long-term memory of the things we think we know.

There is, however, a problem with this “concept before detail” idea: What if we already have a concept – even if it is only a myth – and then what if someone comes along with an entirely new concept for the same details? Now we have a hard choice: We can hang on to our old beliefs, level out those details that are troublesome, and sharpen up those details that fit our established beliefs – or we can let go of what we thought we knew to be true and accept the new theory. This dilemma describes a paradox:

Paradox defined: Paradox is used in a particular way within the literature of economics to describe situations in which apparent facts are in conflict with models or theories (paradigms) to which some class of people hold allegiance. This use of the word, paradox, implies a strong belief in both the measured facts, and in the paradigm. The resolution to economic paradoxes tends to be of the form that the data does not fit the paradigm, or the data is not correct or, (the most common case) the paradigm does not fit the environment measured.                                                                                                             Wikipedia

Our older concepts (paradigms) are based on lots of experience with lots of details and they are rooted in our habits. The networks of neurons in our neo-cortex have wired together over time and created our existing paradigms. Likewise, our limbic system has created habits to reinforce these beliefs. It is very difficult to just give up old concepts and change old habits even when they do not fit the facts. We are blinded by our beliefs and trapped inside our own biological system of concepts and habits.

It is easier to just re-interpret new concepts and details in order to make them fit into our existing paradigms. Biologically, we are not adept at willfully rewiring our own biological system.

“Great is the power of steady misrepresentation” ― Charles Darwin

Maybe this is part of the reason that traditional leadership philosophies are so slow to change, and why cultures so predictably lag behind changes in technology. But, with the ever-increasing pace of change, this presents an obvious problem. Darwin first put his finger on this concept – life evolves in order to fit the changing environment, or it becomes extinct.

“In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.” ― Charles Darwin

The organizations we inhabit must encourage the acceptance of new concepts and new ways of behavior, or they too must face the consequences and become extinct.

It is the environment that allows life to continually evolve, thrive, sustain itself, and become better.  Command and Control Structures protect the established ways and inhibit new ways of thinking and acting. A Process Control Environment is more lifelike, and it nurtures this kind of change. “Which came first – the concept or the detail?” – is the wrong question. The right question is:

“How best to maintain and sustain an environment that will nurture the emerging complexity of life, and the continual improvement of our paradigms and our habits?”― Bob Browne

Sys-Tao recounts how the associates of Great Plains Coca-Cola Bottling Company experienced the answer to this question. In the following 30-minute video, John Seddon recounts the seminal moments of how he discovered these same truths and developed what he calls The Vanguard Method.

As Seddon considered the details of how “work” works – the process – his paradigm shifted away from a Command and Control point of view and towards a systems point of view. When he studied the details of work in this way, improved concepts emerged naturally. The organizational environment changed. Only when the organizational environment changes do the people change too.

Changing your mind is hard.
Changing your habits is harder.
Changing an organization’s culture is even more difficult

Porter’s thesis explains how companies achieve success. Christensen, on the other hand, explains that these same companies fail because they hold on too long to what made them successful. In both cases, success is measured in financial terms relative to the competition. It appears that the common purpose of these companies is to be financially successful and to beat the competition.

Sys-Tao suggests that our purpose in life is greater than that. It has to do with our customers. Everything living is nested inside increasingly complex networks of living systems. Our businesses are no different. We are all each other’s customers and each of us is a supplier in some way to some network of nearby customers.

When we realize why our job is important to our immediate customers, we naturally become intrinsically motivated, more creative, and more collaborative. We tend to self-organize into more innovative and more capable organizations. One result of this is financial success, but when we focus on our financial success and make it our purpose this web of life seems to eventually unravel.

If customer focus creates a competitive advantage, I suppose Porter is correct. If losing sight of customers and focusing on financial returns causes failure, then I suppose Christensen is also correct. Whatever! But, when our purpose in life  becomes customer-focused, then I believe we will be happier, and sustainable financial success will more than likely be the result. “Constancy of Purpose” is the relevant W. E. Deming term to use here.

Likewise, most westerners are relatively more comfortable determining the cost and function associated with each individual part of a system, while eastern cultures are more likely to focus on the overall relationships among the parts and the flow of the total system. Why is this true?

We know that these differences are not biological; therefore, they must be cultural. But do we merely think about different things, or do we actually think differently?

These distinctions are illustrated in Christian Bueno’s 45-minute video, West and East, Cultural Differences. Bob Browne’s book, Sys-Tao, Western Logic – Eastern Flow, follows up on these theories and suggests that we need to become more aware of our respective blind spots. Symbolically, the “Sys” represents our traditional western – left-brained – point of view, while the “Tao” represents that of more eastern – right-brained – cultures.

Iain McGilchrist explains these distinctions in greater detail in his 12-minute video describing the “Divided Brain.”

Implicit in this expression is the implication that our thoughts and our actions are not always in sync. In other words, we are not nearly as rational as we like to believe we are.

In the space of six years, at least three best-selling books seem to be wrestling with this incongruity:

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, 2005, by Malcolm Gladwell

Predictably Irrational, 2008, by Dan Ariely

Thinking, Fast and Slow, 2011, by Daniel Kahneman

Included here are three videos that summarize the books:

Gladwell seems to be telling us that our first impressions are often more accurate than our careful analysis of all the details. Ariely, in a more entertaining way, shows that we can be easily misled or manipulated by these differences in the way we “think.” Nobel laurite Daniel Kahneman resolves the dilemma with his theory that there are actually two different types of “thinking,” which serve very different purposes.

According to Kahneman, when we think “fast” we are operating effortlessly and in a spontaneous and intuitive way. Our actions are based on deep-rooted instincts and habits. On the other hand, when we think “slow,” it takes conscious concentration and effort to think things through, and, importantly, it takes an environment free of fear and anxiety. For example, it is hard to contemplate the evolution of the saber-toothed tiger if you fear that one may be lurking nearby.

Traditional leadership philosophies suggest that we are rational – but most of the time we are not. Furthermore, the “incentives” inherent in the traditional organizational environments that we inhabit – just like the saber-toothed tiger in the room – actually inhibit “slow” thinking.  It is no wonder that we are most often “predictably irrational.”

Sys-Tao seeks to resolve this paradox. We must be psychologically bi-lingual – we must be able to think both “fast” and “slow.”

Why is it, then, that the traditional principles of good management so often paralyze well-run companies? Sys-Tao answers this question. Traditional Command and Control Structures protect existing paradigms, reinforce deep-rooted organizational habits, and inhibit the acceptance of disruptive new ideas.

As the pace of change accelerates, it becomes increasingly necessary for established organizations to break this cycle. On the other hand, the existence of these phenomena creates a competitive advantage for more entrepreneurial organizations that thrive more naturally in a Process Control Environment.

Modern physics complements our traditional view of classical physics, and, in a similar way, The Sys-Tao Way complements our traditional western leadership philosophies. Like modern physics, Sys-Tao presents a very different paradigm and it also requires a more right-brained point of view. We do not need to become Buddhists, but we must engage the right hemisphere of our brains in order to comprehend this complementary leadership philosophy.

In these videos, Ackoff captures the essence of Systems Thinking as well as the distinguishing characteristics of “analysis of the parts” and “synthesis of the whole” – something akin to the “Sys” and the “Tao” in Sys-Tao.

Harrison Owen coined the term and started the movement he calls “Open Space Technology.” It is not unlike what has been called a “Process Control Environment”  in Sys-Tao, and it is the antithesis of what was referred to as a “Command and Control Structure.” It is about living systems of diverse self-organizing beings operating with a common purpose and a sense of urgency within high levels of complexity at the edge of chaos in an environment that is free from the fear of some master controller with preconceived conditions. The aim of self-organization is simply to continually improve.

Harrison Owen is a storyteller, and he tells his story in this video.