Cubic Counterforces

Why do business schools teach that the business world can be analyzed in a series of two dimensional charts?

Through my decades of experience in business organizations, I have drawn the conclusion that managing is much like working to unscramble a Rubik's Cube. Individual executives each take a shot at it. Each one figures that working in a focused way on their favorite color is the only right approach. Each one later skulks away in frustration leaving the cube for somebody else to fix.

What I think goes wrong is that the two dimensional myopia limits executives from seeing the rest of the story - the impacts on the other intersecting organizational dynamics. Like with the cube, one business perspective is always intertwined with at least two others and always must have equal and opposite forces at play. I call this The Law of Cubic Counterforces which is governed by the following truisms:

1. Every change from a given perspective must also be considered from the directly opposite counterforce perspective.
   
2. Any change scrambles any previous alignment of all adjacent elements.
   
3. When multiple managers individually try to sort out the same cube simultaneously, organizational energy disappears into a paralysis state.

When I assess organizational strategy, I do not throw away all two dimensional analytical models as some are quite useful, but they confuse the analyis if introduced too early. First, I prefer to try to stand back and learn about the multi-dimensions of an organization in a clinical way and try to relate my findings to a scrambled Rubik's Cube metaphor. (I should mention at this point that I have never found a fully aligned organizational cube and I would not suggest that it is even attainable except maybe in a sole proprietorship.)

Confused? It's understandable as our brains have been hardwired through years of training to think in only two dimensions. I have found that the cube metaphor helps me bridge into multi-dimensional thinking processes. Why becomes clear when we dissect our cube. If you have ever broken one, you would have found an assembly of three little "barbells" with fixed blocks on each end plus 8 loose blocks in each of 6 different colours.

Can you picture the "barbell" assembly that connects opposite faces of the cube? It is actually a bar with end blocks in different colors. In our metapahor, let's think of those three bars as invisible magnetic force fields and their individual end blocks as visible magnetic poles. The cube is really a core assembly of three such invisible intersecting force fields and that is why I dubbed this analytical model as Cubic Counterforces.

I first try to identify an organization's three intersecting force fields. These are the three most critical intersecting organizational Counterforces. There may be more than three but three is more than enough to manage in any fiscal period. It is probably not surprising to learn that the force fields will usually be some variant of time, quality, and money respectively. Those are the three underlying fundamentals that we can truly manage in any business!

So what are the counterforces? Simply, every decision always has a customer-centric perspective and a stakeholder-centric perspective. In a fully aligned cube, these two perspectives arguably should live in balanced harmony through a shared vision. But... in our metaphor we know we will always be starting with a scrambled cube.

Every decision should be objectively considered and presented from both these perspectives. I am not suggesting that this concept is not recognized in most organizations. I am simply stating that our planning and analytical models are rarely multi-dimensional and as such a biased perspective is often too easily approved based more on political pressures than on healthy debate by well represented opposing forces. I have always found that the people in an organization know yet keep silent when "the emperor has no clothes". That voice of reality is one voice that needs to be raised and represented.

We have now defined our major Counterforce themes:

Stakeholder timing horizon versus Customer timing horizon

Stakeholder perceived quality versus Customer perceived quality

Stakeholder ROI versus Customer perceived value

So, what about all those other little blocks on each colored face. These are the planning factors that must be examined from each Counterforce perspective. Each face is a matrix of three rows and three columns that intersect at a Counterforce pole. There is no right way to identify each row and column. It depends upon what is important to an organization in a given planning horizon.

In most cases, I have found the following to be practical :

Columns>>>> People... Process.... Technology

Rows>>>>>> Revenue Creation... Products... Fulfillment

When you combine all of these dimensions into a Counterforce template, you have an exhaustive analysis not only of the individual combination of elements but also of the competing objectives, perspectives, and their interdependencies.

This sounds too complex for one person to digest? Absolutely correct!

In order to address this reality, I advocate using a responsibility grid reporting to the CEO as follows:

• There should be two Senior Executives, responsible for Stakeholder Perspective and Customer Perspective respectively.
  
• Each Senior Executive should have three executive reports responsible for Time, Quality, and Money respectively.
  
• Each executive should have six middle management level reports responsible for People, Process, Technology, Revenue Creation, Products, and Fulfillment who interact in a matrix model to manage their interdependencies.

In smaller organizations, roles may be combined at any level so long as the Stakeholder and Customer perspectives are never cross-pollinated. In effect, the suggestion is to create two fully mirrored strategic planning teams who are mandated to prepare, defend, and monitor on an ongoing basis their own Counterforce perspective within their assigned domain.

The end result is a solid plan and an ongoing governance approach with appropriate checks and balances. Counterforces are a reality and must be embraced and encouraged for an organization to prosper. In fact, adopting this type of approach might have prevented the recent "dot bomb" and corporate fraud era. It certainly is an approach that can be advocated to proactively address Sarbanes-Oxley governance requirements.

I encourage readers to visit often to help me explore this topic of Cubic Counterforces further.