Insight
The Next Generation of Gurus
Assistant Professor at London Business School London Business School's Don Sull possesses a CV which has guru written all over it. Armed with a degree, an MBA and a doctorate from Harvard, he has worked with McKinsey & Company as a consultant and was involved in the $1 billion leveraged buy-out of tyre maker, Uniroyal Goodrich.
Suggesting that he is as much Renaissance man as new man, Sull's career also boasts a thirst for philosophy, fluent German, a spell as a bouncer in a motorcycle bar, authorship of a musical and membership of the Harvard Boxing Club.
It comes as a surprise, therefore, that Don Sull's research currently centres on something he calls 'active inertia'. This is a term to describe the corporate tendency to carry on doing what they have always done when they are faced with a crisis. Rather than freezing rabbit-like in the glare of change, managers and organisations carry on in much the same way as before. 'Inertia is the enemy of progress.
Past insights ossify into clichés, processes lapse into routines and commitments become ties that bind companies to the same course of action. Perhaps the most vital and fulfilling element of a manager's job is to prevent inertia,' Sull concludes.
He brings an historical and philosophical slant to business research and education. Sull contends that all the talk of visioning and looking towards the future is all very well, so long as it is does not forget the past: 'People tend to think of the past as a hindrance. But you can't have a revolution every day. The past also enables and can be a dynamic force. It confers certain advantages such as trust, brands, reputations and relationships'.
His belief that managers, educators and thinkers require a broader view challenges accepted wisdom. He is critical of the view of management as a social science to which a set of formulae and rules can be universally applied. 'We are starting to see the limits of the model of management as social science. Management is closest to practical and moral philosophy. How do you get people to act in a proactive way to do the right thing?' he says. ' The biggest problem is not that people don't know what to do, just that they don't do it. There is a lack of ambition and imagination'.
But, he observes, such limitations are hardly surprising when one considers a business education system which prefers foolproof models to Stoic philosophy: 'In the US business education has been construed more and more narrowly as applied science. Business school professors are engineers and managers are mechanics. Management education is about knowing the right thing to do and getting people to do it. The fundamental assumption is that there are universal laws which can be extracted. I don't believe there are global business laws other than in finance. There are useful generalisations, but in management, context, timing, personality and history are everything. The challenge lies in developing judgement, knowing which tool to use rather than reaching for the hammer every time.'
Don Sull is currently working on his active inertia research and plans a book within three years. Only then will we discover whether he can measure up to his own challenge: 'Managers need first rate Plutarchs, not second-rate Adam Smiths'.
Commentary by Stuart Crainer (www.suntopmedia.com). Source: http://www.janelanaweb.com/manageme/stuart3.html