The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither it’s pipes nor its theories will hold water.
John W. Garner, Forbes “Thought” page Aug 1, 1977 from The Official Rules by Paul Dickson
It occurs to me that this applies in business if you substitute leadership, vision and other high level ideas for philosophy and you replace plumbing with management, training and oversight.
It’s amazing to me that amount of high falutin’ clap trap folks will espouse (not to mention pay consultants for) in the first category, without considering if the ideas actually work. Then they’ll go to all kinds of effort to convince themselves they don’t need to be consistent and specific in the later category.
The truth is, it’s more fun and feels great to philosophize about your vision and the like; while it can be tedious and time consuming to actually discover what’s important to measure and hold people accountable (especially yourself).
If you want to play football, a game plan is nice. But accomplishments happen on the field, in the huddle and executing plays. You’ll do better with good execution and good huddles and no game plan than the other way round. Better if you have people who can do both well.
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2 responses to “Plumbing vs Philosophy”
So true. The vision is easy, the processes are weak – or missing. Amazing how much energy people put into their mission statements and so little attention is paid to the actual execution of those missions. Efficient process is the most underappreciated and undertaught aspect of business, and yet it is the difference between the successful and unsuccessful companies 90% of the time, in my experience.
Since I only work with small companies it was interesting for me to read “Execution” by Larry Bossidy, Ram Charan, and Charles Burck and find that large companies have the same problems.