The Sanford Berenberg Experience: Message of the Day

Sunday, April 25, 2010

Message of the Day - Rigidity vs. Flexibility

Good Morning,

This morning I was thinking of a way to describe to someone how have a team with fluid structure as being superior to one with fixed positions and duties.

Sure having fixed positions is efficient if the job never changes.

For example, the Roman Legionaries each had assigned duties both for combat and non-combat activities. When the legion arrived where they were camping for the night, every soldier had specific tasks to do to set up the camp. So efficient in this task that when the Romans left their camps, they were perfect for the natives to move into and create new towns. If you want to know how many of these camps became cities, look for towns with the name 'Chester' in them. Chester means camp. Worchester, Leicester, Chichester, etc.

But what if the tasks need to change? If a member of the legion is taught only to dig trenches, and now they need him to build a tower, he will have to be retrained before can be productive.

Here is a modern example. If you build the perfect baseball team, with each player being the best in their respective position, you can conceivably win every ball game. But, what happens when the game changes from baseball to football. Your team of baseball players now have to suit up and play this new game. How good will they be in this new game? Unless they are all like Deion Sanders or Bo Jackson, they may not be able make that change well and in that case, how many games will the team win now?

If you think the rules of the game don't change much consider this:

IBM started out making meat slicers amongst other products. They then moved to making mainframe computers, and now most of their revenue comes from something completely different.
Sony started out with transistor radios.
American Express was a freight delivery company.

If IBM, Sony or American Express built their teams solely to make meat slicers, radios or freight delivery they would have gone the way of the Dodo unless they changed.

Sure fixed and inflexible teams can change. Baseball players can learn to play football, but this takes time.

Building teams based on flexibility allows us to adapt faster, and speed is the name of the game in our no-holds-barred, dog-eat-dog, 500 miles per second, instant messaging, email laden world.

If that is not enough, think about Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece, the Tokyo Hotel. This massive building was designed to have its foundation sitting in mud. Yes, fluid mud. When earthquakes hit, the mud's flexibility absorbed much of the shocks and cushioned the building.

Flexibility can definitely be better than rigidity.

Enjoy!