Is it possible to change today's business culture? To do so requires CEO buy-in and they make up much of the problem. The change I'm writing about is how business should treat employees, treat customers, and demand excellence of itself. Mediocrity seemingly runs the business world. At the risk of sounding like Ayn Rand, this country was not grown by mediocre businessmen who spent their time analyzing whether or not building railroads to the West was a sound business model for a quickie ROI. And while I'm at it, don't lecture me on the Chinese labor or slavery of old. Just because those things existed in this country doesn't mean good things didn't happen then. In fact, I would say many of our good qualities are masked today by fear, political correctness, and our litigious culture. There were some daring businessmen in the 1800s. It was a time where our culture was evolving and finding its way.
Today, things are radically different. We have trapped our own entrepreneurial spirits by submitting to cultural fads, legal trends, and bad legislation. While there are still daring individuals out there, I think the status quo for CEOs is to appease shareholders rather than build something. There's a huge difference. To spell it out, a CEO of today is a product of learning to deal with the complexities of numbers projections while balancing shareholder general opinion, hoping that somebody somewhere doesn't sue you into oblivion. Those who have mastered these skills are good at what they do. Many of them are well-educated, talented people. But it's like they are holding themselves back from greatness because that would be poor form. In most cases, CEOs have handsome benefits for conforming to the mediocre CEO mold. Not that I've been in that position, but I'm sure it's hard to risk passing up a seven or eight figure parachute in exchange for building something nobody has ever before.
The sure path to mediocrity is to listen to current, popular sentiment as if it was a scientific law. As I've written before, the 90s ruined business culture on many levels. One of them that just crawls under my skin is the "good enough" philosophy of product development. This concept has become so commonplace, that nobody seems to question its wisdom or long-term effect. Basically, the principal is that, especially in the consumer technology sector, products only have to be good enough to provide a revenue stream to build the next version since the life cycle of the product is so short. This line of thinking has consumers already not expecting quality from cell phones, software, computer hardware, and now even appliances.
I would argue there is a dangerous cultural side-effect from the "good enough" mentality, which is that it doesn't stop with simple products. This mentality is creeping into our every day lives. Customer service is now just good enough, for example. There is a 7-11 close to my client's office. I stop by there for gas often. For the past month, at least half the pumps have been out of order. When did that become an okay way to run business?
Within corporate culture, "good enough" is around every corner as it spreads from product development to strategic business meetings to accounting and even to HR. After a while, it's hard to get a handle on standards for quality and excellence, much less enforce them. This is where most companies are today. Long-term vision is nearly replaced with good-enough-to-get-by until the next quarterly shareholder conference call. Don't even think of taking a short term loss to finance a great product that will benefit the company in the next ten years.
CEOs set the tone and culture for any given business. When they only expect the status quo, that is how the company will be from top to bottom. Employees are loyal to leaders with vision and courage while they simply "work for" companies without expectations. Start looking around you. How many things in your life are just "good enough"? Personally, I've been haunted lately by things that I did just to get by. I'm my own CEO and I am setting new expectations for myself. It has to start somewhere.
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Unrest by Parkway Drive