52 BD GEMS : 36
GEM 36 : Go with the Flow
We are intrigued by the salmon, swimming upstream to spawn on the upper reaches of their natal river. This because, after they lived for years in the ocean, they remember their home ground, use magnetoception and decide to swim back. This journey of the salmon is an amazing phenomena in nature. Why is the salmon going against the flow? Why risk to be caught by bears, by eagles, or by sport fisherman?
Despite this great example of bravery, that inspired the realization of great things in history, this blog is about the opposite. Instead of going against the flow, this blog suggest you should – in general – try to go as much as possible, “with the flow”. To understand what “flow” is, we study nature. Water goes from high to low, driven by gravity. Iron is attracted by magnetic poles. Wind is the result of air going from high pressure to low pressure. The nuclear force pulls on quarks, anti-quarks and gluons, and holds protons and neutrons together. “Flow” for a given object or subject is defined as the path of least resistance, taking into account the sum of all forces impacting the direction.
The proposition of this post, is that a similar thing exists in business. I also call it “flow”, defined as the path ahead, where you are naturally attracted to, with the lowest level of resistance. Confronted with a business decision, you usually have multiple opinions, including your own. Each single opinion is a valuable proposition and has sound arguments. However, several opinions push the resulting decision in different, sometimes opposite directions. As a team you need to come to a conclusion. My suggestion is to use the method of “going with the flow”.
Very seldom, the sum of all opinions [or in similarity with nature, the sum of all forces] cancels outs to nil. In a spirit of going with the flow, a nil would mean “doing nothing”. Believe me, sometimes doing nothing is the best decision. But in the large majority of cases the sum of all opinions gives a direction, and this direction should be the path to follow.
Several of you might object this “voting based” type of decision making. You might feel that following one particular, yet clearly expressed direction, is better than the decision of a committee. Unfortunately this so called “one clear direction”, is often the direction where the boss wants to go and is, in many cases, against the flow. Brave, but highly inefficient in terms of acceleration and speed, relative to the sum of forces.
Decision-making by consensus, as is done in “boss-less” teams, is common in Scandinavia, emerging in Southern Europe. My experience in working with such teams, is that better results are obtained, not necessarily because of better decision-making. The secret of the success is that the resulting implementation goes “with the flow” and not against.