Cracking the Code: Is PXC the DNA?

"Rabbit's clever," said Pooh thoughtfully.
"Yes," said Piglet, "Rabbit's clever."
"And he has Brain."
"Yes," said Pooh, "Rabbit has brain."
"There was a long silence."
"I suppose," said Pooh, "that that's why he never understands anything."
The House on Pooh Corner


The evidence points to a shockingly simple idea: For organizations, PxC (process times culture) is the DNA of optimization. This simple formula and its persistent appearance in every case of sustained industry outperformance is a call for a new management science. The outdated management science we reference today is 400 years old, based on a Machine View of organization. Organizations are not machines. They are alive with processing and interaction. They evolve. They feel. They even emote.

From this framework it is much easier to see why PxC works. Process and Culture are the twin hemispheres of organizations. This leads inevitably to the need to reframe management and leadership. If you want to achieve Superperformance, you cannot afford to view them as locations, or capabilities limited to top-level practice. You have to see them as distributed properties of the whole. Management is what you do to process. Leadership is what you do to people.

From Superperformance:

‘When we begin to think of organizations as organisms, we notice that process and culture operate according to the same principles as our own brains. It is a well known fact that our brains are divided into two distinct hemispheres, and that each has separate processing and intuiting tasks. The left brain is primarily verbal, orienting to sequential, mathematical patterns, while the right brain is primarily nonverbal, orienting to parallel, holistic patterns. The two hemispheres are distinctly different, controlling different functions. But they still operate together, each lobe requiring the other for wholeness and completion.

Somewhat more obscure is the high-leverage intersection between the hemispheres, in the part of the brain known as the corpus callosum. The corpus callosum is the connecting terminal between the two lobes, the main channel between the two hemispheres, consisting of a profuse number of neural connections. It is a large bundle of more than 200 million nerve fibers that radiate throughout as well as join the two hemispheres of the brain. The corpus callosum allows the two lobes to communicate with each other. It holds the most complex group of nerves in the human body and provides for an integrated whole brain--and consciousness. It is through the neural connections of the corpus calllosum that the two hemispheres work together for wholeness. In organizations, process and culture interconnect in precisely the same way. It is through the full expression of this core partnership that organizations can become everything they can be.

Corpus Callosum

Organizations share this foundation of opposites with all of life in general. We inhabit a universe of chaos and order, male and female, expand and contract. Every day we breathe in and out, buy and sell, think and feel. Wherever you look, life organizes as polar-complements.

The ancient Chinese philosophy of yin-yang holds that everything in nature consists of opposite forces, which must remain in balance for life to thrive. The yin and yang are opposing forces that constantly shift, operating in continual conflict, yet at the same time requiring each other for completion. These opposites drive each other toward creativity and excellence, while simultaneously restraining each other to inspire harmony. To the ancient Chinese, there was nothing in life that was exempt from the pervasive influence of yin-yang.

Twenty-first century physicists exploring the immutable forces of nature have come to the same conclusion. In referring to this inescapable influence, Nobel Physicist Niels Bohr’s famous complementarity principle described the paradox of the particle-wave duality encountered at the subatomic level of light. Bohr discovered that light fundamentally consists of steams of particles (photons) that also paradoxically behave like waves. Later, Bohr saw evidence of complementarity everywhere. He predicted that knowledge of complementarity and its omnipresent influence would one day become the common knowledge of school children. Not just subatomic particles, but all of reality, he insisted, fall under its sway: “We have been forced to recognize that we must modify not only all our concepts of classical physics but even the ideas we use in everyday life.” This revelation led to Bohr’s famous choice of inscription on the Bohr family coat of arms: Contraria sunt Complementa (Latin for “opposites are complements.”)

Bohr Coat of Arms

In Biology, polar-complementarity appears in the double helix of DNA. Rosalind Franklin's famous purloined Photo 51 revealed to James Watson the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. "The instant I saw the picture my mouth fell open and my heart began to race," Watson later reported. Photo 51 resembled a fuzzy "X," whose diffracted image translated the DNA molecule for Watson into a double-helix shape. Soon after, Watson's collaborator Francis Crick read a report containing Rosalind Franklin's recent measurement of the DNA molecule. Immediately upon confirming Franklin's correlating numbers, Crick knew that they had identified the "secret of life." Crick and Watson concluded that the DNA molecule was indeed made of two strands-a double helix-running in opposite directions. The blueprint for life is made of complementary bases and twisted pairs. In a word, opposites!

Photo 51

In psychology Jung found the introvert/extrovert and thinking/feeling opposites. In mathematics we have positive and negative, linear and nonlinear descriptions—opposites again. Even in the Digital world, in binary language, we write code from a foundation of 1s and Os."

In organizations, we have this same foundation. It is much easier to see with a paradigm of organization as organism. The two fundamental building blocks, at the most elemental level of any organization, are (1) a process and (2) a person. The Superperformance Formula (Process x Culture = Superperformance) works because it captures the essence of an organization. The work of an organization (the tangible partner) is opposite from the spirit of an organization (the intangible partner.) Works needs to be controlled. Spirit needs to be liberated. Control and Liberation. Opposites.

PxC is the DNA and the Superperformance proverb, Manage Process, Lead People, is the simple, direct path to optimization.

Is Servant Leadership Super Leadership?

It's a consistent, astonishing pattern.

Superperformng CEOs: Harley Davidson's Richard Teerlink, SYSCO's John Baugh, SW Airlines' Herb Kelleher, IBM's Tom Watson, Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett, AIM's Ted Bauer, Sterling Bancshares' George Martinez and others-all of these can be described as men of uncommon humility and personal values. Most, if not all, could also be described as men of great faith. This begs a crucial question:

Is there a correlation between Servant Leadership and Superperformance?

In describing Servant Leadership, Robert Greenleaft wrote, " “The servant-leader is servant first… It begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. He or she is sharply different from the person who is leader first, perhaps because of the need to assuage an unusual power drive or to acquire material possessions. For such it will be a later choice to serve – after leadership is established. The leader-first and the servant-first are two extreme types.” (italics added)

“The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant-first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and difficult to administer, is: do those served grow as persons; do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants? And, what is the effect on the least privileged . . .will they benefit, or, at least, will they not be further deprived?”

Is it actually possible to possible to achieve (or sustain) Superperformance without a CEO with a fundamental love for people?

Six Sigma: So Over?

Business Week's recent article, "Six Sigma: So Yesterday?" posits the Six Sigma revolution has passed. In today's innovation economy, the article argued, blasting Six Sigma into every nook and cranny/pocket of resistance is the wrong strategy. According to Babson College management professor Tom Davenport. "Process management is a good thing. But I think it always has to be leavened a bit with a focus on innovation and [customer relationships]."

While Six Sigma (originated at Motorola) was developed as a systematic way to improve quality, the reason it caught fire has been its effectiveness in cutting costs and improving short-term profitability. But as many have observed, you cannot cost-cut your way to greatness. The chickens of "flash performance" will always come home to roost.

Six Sigma's DMAIC Model (for Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control) is an effective performance improvement model, no doubt.

So what's wrong with Six Sigma and how can it be transformed into a more robust optimization tool?

From GREAT to GOOD?

We know about companies who go from good to great, but is it possible to go in the other direction? Is it possible to have and then lose Superperformance? You betcha. The business landscape is littered with companies who were once great . . . but no more. Of the 20 companies profiled in Jim Collins' landmark Built to Last, published just 13 years ago, over half have slipped dramatically in performance and reputation, several today struggling for their corporate life. Consider the fortunes of Ford, Motorola, Sony, Boeing, Merck, or Phillip Morris, for example. According to Fast Company, "Each has struggled in recent years, and all have faced serious questions about their leadership and strategy."

What happened? How do great organizations lose their greatness? Can you chalk it all up to environmental factors outside of a company's control, or is something else at work?

What is the key to sustaining superperformance?

Surely there must be something vital to learn from the companies whose performance has yet to slide. What can we learn from Johnson & Johnson, American Express, 3M, or Wal-Mart, for example? What have these companies discovered about greatness that is still operating today?

Or it going from super to "stupor" inevitable for all?