1In public discussion of business, we take certain values for granted.
2Today I'm going to talk about four of them:
3collaboration, hard work, creativity and excellence.
4Most people would say they're all 'good things'.
5I'm going to suggest that's an over-simple view.
6The trouble with these values is that they're theoretical concepts,
7removed from the reality of day-to-day business.
8Pursue values by all means,
9but be prepared for what may happen as a result.
10They can actually cause damage, which is not at all the intention.
11Business leaders generally try to do the right thing.
12But all too often the right thing backfires,
13if those leaders adopt values without understanding and managing the side effects that arise.
14The values can easily get in the way of what's actually intended.
15OK. So the first value I'm going to discuss is collaboration.
16Er, let me give you an example.
17On a management training course I once attended,
18we were put into groups and had to construct a bridge across a stream,
19using building blocks that we were given.
20The rule was that everyone in the team had to move at least one building block during the construction.
21This was intended to encourage teamwork.
22But it was really a job best done by one person.
23The other teams tried to collaborate on building the structure,
24and descended into confusion, with everyone getting in each other's way.
25Our team leader solved the challenge brilliantly.
26She simply asked everyone in the team to move a piece a few centimetres, to comply with the rule,
27and then let the person in the team with an aptitude for puzzles like this build it alone.
28We finished before any other team.
29My point is that the task wasn't really suited to teamworking,
30so why make it one?
31Teamwork can also lead to inconsistency - a common cause of poor sales.
32In the case of a smartphone that a certain company launched,
33one director wanted to target the business market,
34and another demanded it was aimed at consumers.
35The company wanted both directors to be involved,
36so gave the product a consumer-friendly name,
37but marketed it to companies.
38The result was that it met the needs of neither group.
39It would have been better to let one director or the other have his way,
40not both.
41Now industriousness, or hard work.
42It's easy to mock people who say they work hard:
43after all, a hamster running around in a wheel is working hard - and getting nowhere.
44Of course hard work is valuable, but only when properly targeted.
45Otherwise it wastes the resources that companies value most: time and energy.
46And that's bad for the organisation.
47There's a management model that groups people according to four criteria:
48clever, hard-working, stupid and lazy.
49Here 'lazy' means having a rational determination not to carry out unnecessary tasks.
50It doesn't mean trying to avoid work altogether.
51Most people display two of these characteristics,
52and the most valuable people are those who are both clever and lazy:
53they possess intellectual clarity, and they don't rush into making decisions.
54They come up with solutions to save the time and energy spent by the stupid and hard-working group.
55Instead of throwing more man-hours at a problem,
56the clever and lazy group looks for a more effective solution.
57Next we come to creativity.
58This often works well - creating an attention-grabbing TV commercial, for example,
59might lead to increased sales.
60But it isn't always a good thing.
61Some advertising campaigns are remembered for their creativity,
62without having any effect on sales.
63This happened a few years ago with the launch of a chocolate bar:
64subsequent research showed that plenty of consumers remembered the adverts,
65but had no idea what was being advertised.
66The trouble is that the creator derives pleasure from coming up with the idea,
67and wrongly assumes the audience for the campaign will share that feeling.
68A company that brings out thousands of new products may seem more creative than a company that only has a few,
69but it may be too creative, and make smaller profits.
70Creativity needs to be targeted, to solve a problem that the company has identified.
71Just coming up with more and more novel products isn't necessarily a good thing.
72And finally, excellence.
73We all know companies that claim they 'strive for excellence',
74but it takes a long time to achieve excellence.
75In business, being first with a product is more profitable than having the best product.
76A major study of company performance compared pioneers -
77that is, companies bringing out the first version of a particular product -
78with followers, the companies that copied and improved on that product.
79The study found that the pioneers commanded an average market share of 29%,
80while the followers achieved less than half that, only 13% -
81even though their product might have been better.
82Insisting on excellence in everything we do is time-consuming, wastes energy
83and leads to losing out on opportunities.
84Sometimes, second-rate work is more worthwhile than excellence.
85'Make sure it's excellent' sounds like a good approach to business,
86but the 'just-get-started' approach is likely to be more successful.