Meta of Business

In comments to the previous post, pepita says

Man, I took a break from studying (philopsophy of management and organization, the specific topic being knowledge and learning) and I find a very abstract post here. I'm not sure I get it, it's a bit too 'meta' for me.

Hmm.Too meta? Maybe so. I do that a lot, at least here. Maybe not so much with certain types of clients, or they become non-clients.

But I'm lucky. I think that way, look at things that way, seek to frame things that way... and out the other end of me and my teams or my company pops an interesting thing: Something people always wanted, but couldn't describe, or believe in but were afraid to say, and admire and want to share. It is them, only better. Probably deeper than they realized. But simple too.

At least, that's how it works on the better days--those days when the urge for how we do things and when we measure them doesn't overpower the delicate yet potent catalysts of what and and why are we trying to motivate. What sensibility, probably one of possibility in some way, are we trying to create? And for who?

That thing is usually a solution to someones problem; a problem mirrored back at them in a way they and their consumers hadn't perhaps thought about. In many cases it is hope or trust, fine metaphysical things--and, often, things lost due to folly or myopia and reclaimed through the courage of serious introspection by those who write the checks.

But the thing about getting metaphysical over the making of a chair or serving customers is that it's often the root of "quality product." Quality itself is often an intrinsic good -- hard to argue, hard to quantify. It, the big Q, is metaphysical.

For instance, how, on paper, does your iPod compare to your Rio compare to your Creative Zen mp3 player? My anecdotal survey gives the win to the intuitive craft (and design care born of it, or is it the other way round?) that went into the iPod. Sure, anecdotal. And, many of the iPod's design features are "good" design, which makes them more usuable--more enjoyable.

"Good design." Ahh, enjoyable. But what are people enjoying? Maybe it's the convergence that a hard thing (mp3 player) actually complements a soft thing (your musical pleasure) for a change?

In film and writing they say good editing is that which you don't notice. For design, many would say this is true also (Tufte, Beirut, etc). Another way to view this might be that flow and force are the separators of good/great and bad/mediocre. Flow rules us in many ways. It's the instinct borne of experience or of identification. Of imprint. A mental/emotional moire detector--the sixth sense that tells us alignment is off somewhere. That tells us, nope, don't want to deal with this car salesman. Or, there's something "hinky" with the vaporators.

Jennifer, at Brand Mantra has picked up on a similar strain covered here a lot (How needs a why. Finding meaning within entitities.) with some recent posts about her search for an ecology within brands. It's good to see others questioning. It's good to see blogs driving so much of the questioning and picking up steam, no less, as they flatten or, at least, trouble the status quo in so many areas. Oddly enough, some past merchants of the then-prevalent metaphysical order had a lot of trouble with an invention-borne info surge similar to internet and blogs--the printing press, and spreading scientific inquiry into natural order. They locked up guys like Galileo and vilified others like Copericus and Kepler for asking "why?" and "sez who?" at the time.

But they simply wanted to know "why?" when the official "because we say so" was so obviously insufficient or incorrect or just debilitating to their practical and curious minds. As it turned out, natural order was different from official order. In so many cases, because official order was about control, not explanation or understanding. It was force, because flow was so darn immeasurable, so discomfiting. It was so... natural. And nature was pagan, evil and undisciplined. Or so it seemed.

Or as it so nicely fit into the desired "management" narrative.

It was force, because force is easier, albeit nothing like the non-linear nature and dynamism of our naturally progressing lives, careers and relationships. It was force because somebody at some higher level needed order, forced order, to be able to do their thing. Those below adapt, adopt and make do. Or they circumvent, guerilla-style. So it remains today, only the ground seems to be crumbling more rapidly, not from the edges, but from the roots up.

But the buckling is not, to my mind, driven by a newly birthed army of Junior Jack Welchs and Trumps armed with PCs and PDAs and natural comfort with networked existence. The imperative spoken less and less softly is not about profit but the purpose behind it, the meaning of work and the good or bad its legacy can leave in its wake.

Yin is shouting down down yang with a whisper. A whisper, because, many of the new developments in our expectation of work and of our systems are still "anomaly" as far as establishment business and mainstream media (same thing) are concerned. Because they would be the last to sanction a movement and a voice that has, at it's end, their confirmed fall from high as the keepers of that failing metaphysical state of mind that says the business of America is business.

In a way, as a person who helps businesses find their *effective* voice and its resultant power in flow, I sometimes think of what I say and do as telling business it's gotten too big for britches it was never meant to wear in the first place. Business has lost its soul. That soul is craft, with profit both as proof of passion and of fit of purpose. But in the pursuit of lean, all we get is mean. As we lop off 10 one-thousandths from the sheet metal we use to make our microwave ovens to squeeze 10 million out of our Cost of Goods Sold, we know what is happening. It is mated with management naivete born of hurry, pressureor boredom that drains 100 million from another line on the P&L. In many ways, it parallels a similar pruning of craft and attention perennially squeezed from our efforts. Sacrifice of our ideal and ambition is part of operational imperative. As we see leaders with more opportunities to wave their arms, proclaim their importance, and cash those pay-for-non-performance checks as measured against their misfired efforts, practiced, usually, via their craft: finance.

"Suck it up" sucks the life, the soul, out of all except those crafting the artfully written "Suck it up" memos. But soul never leaves us, eh? At least not while we can think and breathe and do.

And strive.

For me, that is the metaphysical fundamental. A simple question: What do we care about? Another follow on: Who shares our care? The graph from the previous post pepita mentioned attempts to explain that simple but seemingly incomprehensible state--and seeming vacuum within the groups we create.

So much of the businesses and the people and products we admire have that element of feeling close to the surface. That mystical deeper allegiance and alignment with organizations is what sustains them and their people when the shit hits the fan. Which, more and more, seems to happen faster and faster. Capital equipment won't save you. M&A cleverness bombs spectacularly at rates over 65%. Blackberries do nothing to retain powerful personalities. Off-sites and BOHICA miracle initiatives find us biting our lips, and only noting the heightened realization: Why the hell am I in the room with these people?

Marketing, in many cases, becomes spending scads of money to introduce unsuspecting customers to our unfulfilled or belligerent employees. That new headquarters? Same. In all, lots of bricks; poor or no mortar. No glue. No bonds.

The gaps we try to fill with cash and stale powerpoints are metaphorical ones in most cases. They are symptoms of broken bonds between people who strangely think discussion of such things belong outside business. And again, as the text accompanying that graph suggests, companies, products, whole industries come and go. People, needy and hopeful and lonely people, remain. And they search. For story, for metaphor, for metaphysic and intrinsic reasons why they should care. About your idea of how things ought to be, Madam Leader.

And they leave you behind, or hobble you, if you don't ever attempt to connect with that which moves you. Them. US.

So yes, pepita, I would say business is not a thing apart from metaphysics. Once the idea of surplus relpaced sustenance 5000 years ago, it is and always has been, a search for identity and fulfilment. Sometimes in major ways, sometimes in small. But a metaphysical search just the same. In modern terms, two business acronyms come to mind.

WIIFM
MMFI

What's in it for me? Make me feel important. Those are not about greed or narcissim, not really. Not hardly. If business and business schools spent one third of their time asking and answering those questions meaningfully within the tripartite markets of their shareholders, consumers and employees things might hang together a bit more coherently and resonantly. Especially in the rough times. I know that when I have the chance to present such questions in my work, the answers seem to satisfy without us having to resort to bonus, a fleet of Benzes for managers, or couponing and slotting-fee-ing ourselves to chapter 11.

Force or flow. Artificial or natural order. The meta of business is really, right now, the denial of the pattern language of people. We are the molecules of business matter. And often unobserved, unsanctioned in our real motives and desires. Ignored. I can see what makes the molecules hang together and hold me up on this Aeron chair I sit on only if I look really closely. And not with everyday eyes. And even then, I can only measure the hyperphysical: the electric charge or the paths they leave. I can't actually see them: energy is invisible. And, in many ways, it is meta.

The characteristics between atoms are invisible when we look from a distance, and when we insist on observing that way. People, the soft molecules of business are no different. They have patterns that aren't scientific, aren't on some chart in some business school. But they are somewhat knowable. If we know what to look for. And where. And why.

Once we do that, the "how" always comes. Like an epiphany.