Constancy of Purpose

Point to Ponder:

“Picture two animals: a fox and a hedgehog. Which are you? An ancient Greek parable distinguishes between foxes, which know many small things, and hedgehogs, which know one big thing.

All good-to-great leaders, it turns out, are hedgehogs. They know how to simplify a complex world into a single, organizing idea -- the kind of basic principle that unifies, organizes, and guides all decisions.

That's not to say hedgehogs are simplistic. Like great thinkers, who take complexities and boil them down into simple, yet profound, ideas (e.g. Adam Smith and the invisible hand, Darwin and evolution).

Leaders of good-to-great companies develop a hedgehog concept that is simple but that reflects penetrating insight and deep understanding.”

 - From the book "Good to Great" by Jim Collins

Story Line:

The famous quote “The secret of success is constancy of purpose” is originally attributed to Benjamin Disraeli, a British politician from the 19th century.  This term became well known when Edward Deming, the renowned management guru, presented it as the first of the fourteen management principles in his book “Out of the Crisis.”

The first time I heard this statement was in 1984 from the leader of my group, Dr. Craig Barrett, who often mentioned this quote to keep us focused on a singular objective: becoming “the world class manufacturing company”. 

A lofty goal indeed, but here is one example (of countless many) illustrating what it means to "walk the talk" and role model what he preached:

In mid '80s it was a normal industry practice to include capital and people expenditure for product rework as the part of the annual plans. Craig had recognized that in order to become "the world-class manufacturing company", we needed to do things right first time.

He issued the mandate of NO REWORK for our assembly factories. The plant managers gladly accepted the challenge. However, only a few weeks after the policy change, one rather large lot of product with big revenue potential got the wrong marking. The manager of the culprit factory came up with multiple reasons, requests, apologies, begging (let me ship this time, promise it will never happen again!!). Craig stood firm with the NO REWORK directive.

This action had a tremendous impact on people's behaviors.  From then on, there was tremendous focus on preventive actions. Plans were put in place to introduce the necessary and fundamental changes in company structure to create a culture consistent with the vision.

As we know, over the course of time, through this shared constancy of purpose, he succeeded in creating one of the world’s finest manufacturing companies.  Not only that, but he provided a real life lesson in leadership to us all.

Reflection:

Amongst many valuable lessons I learned from Craig Barrett, having constancy of purpose is the most important one of it all. Every great achiever in life that I read about had a singular purpose that drove all of their activities and plans: Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Gandhi, Mandela, Andrew Carnegie, Warren Buffet, Steve Jobs, Jack Welch, Jumong, Deng Xioping, Kitaro, Akio Morita, Kurosawa, Pele, Don Bradman, Sunil Gavaskar, Andy Grove. I'm sure you can observe and name your own.

Comments

[Your former colleague at (Chipset company)]

Now here is a contrasting story, Brownian Motion Leadership (Brownian motion is the theory of random movement of particles in fluid by Robert Brown and made famous by Albert Einstein). In late 80s, there was an Integrated Circuits start up in Sunnyvale, Ca specializing in Chipsets, leader at the time in their field, filled with brilliant engineers and real good designs and Intellectual property. They hired CEO from a large company. The rumor had it that he was very nice person, curious and famous in his previous company for implementing program of the month based on the last book he read.
Do not know what books he had read last, but he put forward a grand vision of making a small company with 50 people in to a large systems house. Invested in building PC boards and then based on the next book invested in building computer systems; none of which were the core strength of his people, diluted the resources, created huge customer issues, product reworks and returns. The company lost focus on its core which was Integrated Circuits and eventually ran out of money. Amen.

[from wisdom saying that I heard]

This is true. If you have understood 'it', you can explain it with simple words. And even elementary school kid could understand.
However, when you don't, it's getting even more complex.

[micro CEO]

On my mobile phone, I have this game called "Bubble Breaker". It is addicting, and also a good stress relief game because it requires just enough strategy and thinking to keep the player occupied, but it isn't a highly intellectual burden. Kind of like Tetris.

The object of the game is to eliminate certain bubbles to create a connected chain (or chains) of bubbles of the same color. The thing about this game is that the points increase exponentially with longer connected chains. 2 are worth 2 points; 3 are worth 6; 4 are worth 12 points; 23 connected bubbles of the same color are worth over 500 points, etc.

You may be wondering, how is such a game related to this discussion of leadership and constancy of purpose. (Admittedly, it sometimes saps my constancy of purpose to do useful things at lunchtime...)

Well, the point is that it is easy to get sucked into a desire to neatly clear the board of all colors (only in increments of smaller chains). This is psychologically pleasing, to think that you can work to get rid of all the bubbles. But it's counterproductive and the final score is invariably mediocre to aim for such a target of multitasking. Much more effective and powerful is the strategy to say, "Now I will concentrate on just purple, and focus on creating the longest possible chain of this one color. Everything else is secondary." This approach feels riskier, and it even requires applying more focus and brain power. If well planned and executed, this approach can result in a very high score. By my estimate, the difference between these approaches is not 20% or 50% or even 200%. It's more like 500% (5x more effective)!

Is this simple game with it's exponential scoring system similar to the game of life (and business) that we all play? Yes, I think it is.