investiledysfunction

We do lots of work around innovation and one of the things we do is keep on top of what is going on out in the marketplace especially amongst new, innovative startup companies.  To this end, we have created a database of 6000+  innovative companies to ensure we’re on top of the latest & greatest technologies, business models and ideas.  The database grows basically daily and our knowledge of what is going on out there grows with it.

Oftentimes, our understanding of these innovative companies leads us to venture capitalists who provide the fuel (aka money) for these young companies to take shape and grow.  In recent work on green companies, I came across an article on Vinod Khosla of Kleiner Perkins fame and now on his own with Khosla Ventures and his outlook on the green movement.

Khosla has created a presentation entitled “Mostly Convenient Truths From a Technology Optimist” and in this, he states that global warming is “a technology crisis, not a resource crisis” and that solutions to large problems require “a dash of greed.”

While we may not wish to admit it, Khosla is entirely right when we think about what will make green efforts successful.  Except for a notable and loud contingent of folks, many people are not going to go green unless their greed is satiated.  By greed, I don’t mean necessarily mean monetary greed although if going green will help people earn more or save money, that will help in adoption.  It could also be greed for their time (make things simpler so I save time or save effort).

Ultimately, Mr. Khosla hits on a very human sentiment which is “what is in it for me?”  He is using this to drive his own investments forward in various green tech areas.  Overall, efforts that are grounded in this idea of enlightened self-interest will do the best.  Whether it is for VCs like Khosla or for companies who wish to be more green or for individuals aiming to go green, self-interest will save the day.  For companies, being green in a way that impacts and benefits your bottom line will be much more sustainable and impactful than much of the public relations efforts tagged as green that we are seeing these days.

Given the vast amounts of unproductive complexity (UC) that resides within organizations, it is amazing how prone we are to believing silver-bullet strategies will transform the company and miraculously grow revenues, shareholder returns, profits, customer and employee satisfaction. 

When I talk about unproductive complexity, I’m talking about the absurd matrixed organization structures, transfer pricing issues, overly-detailed budget processes, steering committees, infighting due to silos, bizarre short-term oriented incentive structures and other ridiculous processes and practices organizations adopt.  Managers would have you believe that this complexity is an unfortunate consequence of being big and global or multinational, and to some extent, that is true.  But unproductive complexity is often a result of territorial and suboptimal behavior.  It’s end result is slow and often poor decision-making.  Unproductive complexity is the enemy of innovation.  It is good, however, at creating job security for a host of mediocre and incompetent people who can sneak by while they shuffle papers from left to right and churn out PowerPoint presentations and Excel spreadsheets.  And given their accomplices in the leadership ranks, this activity over accomplishment method becomes acceptable.  If you want to change organizational performance, focus on stamping out unproductive complexity.  This should be the focus on reengineering efforts - not knee jerk cost cutting and layoffs.

So with that rant about unproductive complexity out of the way, let me get back to the subject I wanted cover.  Given this UC, it perhaps makes sense that leaders are drawn to consultant, software, academic elixirs that are simple.  With all the day to day b.s. they have to put up with, it’s probably comforting to think that if they just do “this one great thing”, they’ll have changed company performance and arrived.  There is probably some psychological basis so I’ll just assume that there is some school of psychology that says “when people are overwhelmed, they take comfort in something that doesn’t overwhelm them.”

And as a result, consultants, academics and many software vendors who’ve realized this bring elixirs and other alchemy-in-a-box solutions to management and with great success, they sell them and make lots of money.  In fact, entire industries emerge around some of these practices.  This enables the leaders to not think too hard for a bit because the solution is just right in front of them.  It also often serves the dual purpose of making the leader seem bold, visionary, strategic, etc.  These are all nice appelations that we like.

Here are some of my favorite elixirs that appear to be hot these days.  Some actually have value but given everyone is hanging out their shingle and professing expertise in many of these areas, I worry that organizations will end up with a whole lot of nothing after investing in these efforts with these dubious experts.  

Here is my list which I hope to revisit over time and get input on.  The top elixirs, hot topics, etc are: business intelligence, IT portfolio management, innovation (always hot), corporate social responsibility, anything green, web2.0, social networking.