Lovers or Fighters: The War Over Business Metaphors

I've been following the raging war (just a pun - really ;-)) about the business as war metaphor kicked off at Decent Marketing, Katherine Stone's blog, in her "I'm A Lover Not a Fighter" post. Follow-ups here and here.

Basically Rich at Missing Link is saying people have the right to choose any metaphor they want to describe business and give any title they want to a business book. Of course. But I don't think this is an argument about political correctness.

I see it being a debate about what is an effective, productive metaphor. This ain't it, in my opinion. I don't care a whit about PC -- for instance, how's this for an unpopular view -- I think outsourcing is a good thing (when it's context stuff, reference to Geoffrey Moore).

Back to the debate. The intent of any business book (and marketing in general) is to spread messages -- to spread memes. I think Katherine is just asking aloud about the right message to spread about effective, productive ways to conduct business.

You want to write a manifesto on war and business. Go ahead. Besides the fact that I think it's the wrong metaphor, be wary of what you invest in. My philosophy: If that's what you invest in believing, then that will become your expectation and ultimately your resulting experience. Business can be war. It can be hell. It can be ruthless, cut-throat, corrupt, ugly and lacking in integrity. Among those that agree that business is war is a smattering of those that interpret what that means and say "business is evil" and are just counting the days before they can leave the soul-crushing battlefields they currently find themselves in. They too are invested in the war metaphor.

Katherine just said she's investing in a different viewpoint. She's a lover, not a fighter. That's her choice. That's my choice too. And I think there's enough business people out there that are have witnessed and experienced 'lover' metaphors in business that work to invest in that choice.

I think the war metaphor may have applied for a time as most larger hierachical organizational constructs were derived from military organizational structures (see snippets below from The Future of Work) but it's very outdated and doesn't fit the realities of today's organizations nor the ways they are evolving (and certainly not the way their customers are buying).

Trends around the markets themselves (which ultimately are comprised of individuals), communications infrastructure, enterprise structures among others point towards a more networked, distributed model of business that's going through further evoluton. In marketing and sales, it's less about pushing your product and more about attraction. (And love is probably the most attractive force of all.) It doesn't resemble traditional military structures (heck, military structures themselves are evolving to combat their networked organization foes). I think business and military are fundamentally different domains addressing different problem sets.

Probably the biggest reason I disagree with the war analogy is that a war is clearly a well-defined (two entities) zero-sum game and that is just too simplistic a stance in business. It's interesting that later in this post I cite Ricardo Semler whom says that the business as war analogy is no longer touted by the consulting gurus (he's temporarily at Harvard Business School right now). Even the business as symphony orchestra he cites is not a comprehensive enough metaphor, but it is a step in the right direction.

So, I'll be looking to compare emerging business trends to lover and fighter analogies going forward. These two books below (skimming/reading this weekend) just happen to reference military metaphors.

Thomas Malone, in The Future of Work traces the evolution of organizational structures. Much of today's enterprise structures are the result of copying military organizational structures. The thesis of his book is stating that businesses are moving to more decentralized structures. He defines decentralization "as the participation of people in making decisions that matter to them."

It hardly needs saying that for most forms of traditional warfare, size is a significant advantage. As Jared Diamond puts it, "ten malnourished farmers can still outfight one healthy hunter." By why should ten or one hundred farmers want to get together to fight smaller groups of their neighbors?" [Summarized bottom line: land for more food, slaves for complex agricultural societies, etc.]

...the immediate factor that led to their creation [of larger groups] was virtually always military force. Early farmers didn't just say, "Hey, let's get together so we can have more efficient division of labor and better public works projects!" Either they merged under the threat of military annihilation, or they were conquered and absorbed by another military power.

Why were these bigger organizations centralized?...The short answer to this question, again, is communication costs. It was simply too expensive to have highly decentralized decision making in such large groups. When the only means of communication is face-to-face conversation, egalitarian decision making among a large number of people usually just takes too long."

In the Seven Day Weekend, Ricardo Semler says that the mission statement is a carryover from the military and mainly intended for "public relations" and debunks the need for a top-down mission statement within a corporation. Semco itself does not have a mission statement.

The mission and credo terminology is borrowed from the military, and the deficiencies in the military analogy illustrate why grassroots, deed-driven values are preferable and successful. ...

Dressed up in red, white, and blue; shod in desert boots; and draped in camouflage cloth; mission and credos are appealing to the general public. As a result, companies love them and readily adopt the military model and mind-set when dealing with their "troops", including customers, suppliers, investors, government regulators, and employees. The whiff of gunpowder glamorizes an otherwise humdrum process, conceals the command-and-control tactics, and silences critics.

A few years ago, it was popular for business gurus to equate companies with armies, and so a barrage of military paradigms such as marketing blitz, flanking attack, Sun Tzu's war strategies, the business wit and wisdom of Von Clausewitz, and endless bomb, bullet, and ballistic similes became the rage.

Today, as geopolitics become hotter, those same gurus have cooled down and equate a well-run company to a symphony orchestra. I must say, I prefer the change.

An orchestra brings together individuals with initiative, discipline, and love of their art.

Believe it or not, manufacturing a bus is similar to playing Mozart in the park. Both have a purpose, a system, and people who take the product to a waiting public.

While less bloodthirsty than the military battle cries that inspire them, corporate mission statements and credos are nothing more than feeble attempts to force workers to look in one direction...In its most cynical form, it's like telling soldiers they must follow orders blindly....Yet within a company, truly sustainable profit, growth, and quality will happen only when employees feel it's worthwhile to get up for work. That won't happen if their outlook on the world is already shaped and restricted by the company's mission statement. They have much more time to think about what they're doing than a soldier in the heat of battle does.

"Genuine, organic values must come from the ground up. Relinquishing control nurtures these values, because they'll then flourish in organizations like moss on rocks.