Being Internally Coherent Vs. Externally Coherent.
Edition #174
Introduction
Welcome to The ContraMind Code.
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The Code helps you reboot and reimagine your thinking by learning from the best. It also enables you to draw a blueprint for what it takes to get extraordinary things done. You can share your valuable thoughts and comments and start a conversation here.
Take a journey to www.contraminds.com. Listen and watch some great minds talking to us about their journey of discovery of what went into making them craftsmen of their profession, to drive peak performance.
Why Do Big Businesses Seemingly Suck At Innovation?
Rohit Krishnan shares a lovely perspective on this topic in this article. Big businesses lag behind in innovation because they become extremely risk-averse and worry about investor backlash and stock price. Hence, they work in a culture of ‘Lowest Common Multiple(LCM)’ when it comes to making decisions. This leads to slow decay, often over a decade or two, in their market leadership and talent.
Here are thoughts from the article that can make you think and reflect on the reasons:
“The execs have figured out kind of what they need to do, in a vague outline sort of fashion, and are interested in getting some justification that gives them some sense of whether their intuition is okay, and also if the others in the organisation agree.”
“Everyone is afraid of complexity, and even if your solutions are only internally coherent rather than externally coherent, it'll still get purchase!”
“For any number of tasks where it's crucial to ensure everyone's pulling together as a team in the same direction, internal coherence is paramount.”
“Most times, if the results of your actions are easily visible or measurable, that goes in the easy pile. If they can't be disentangled easily or needs long time horizons to bear fruit, then that's the complex pile.”
“We don't want to be judged by black boxes. We want to be judged by black boxes that try to explain themselves.”
“Until we find better ways to be okay with not knowing what's going on, or create better information wrangling mechanisms, businesses will still focus on legibility and internal coherence.”
“If you’re small, you get the luxury of being nimble. If you’re large, you’re stuck between Scylla and Charybdis. Maybe that's the point.”
Read the entire article here.
How To Identify Great Leaders and Find Your Why.
This conversation, on Masters of Scale, between Reid Hoffman and Simon Sinek is about the 15th Anniversary edition of Simon Sinek’s best-selling book, ‘Start With The Why?’
Here are some key ideas and thoughts for you to reflect on from this conversation:
“You can't incentivize performance. Performance is an outcome.”
“True missionaries will tell the money to go screw themselves. True missionaries are not afraid of the short-term losses.”
“If we select the people who have the qualities of good leadership, that over time, they will enjoy mission success more often than not.”
“We want people to be able to repeat our ideas in their own words.”
“Optimism is not blind positivity.”
“Growth requires struggle. A marriage gets stronger because of conflict, not the absence of it. Even at work, the deadline, the product crashing, the team forced to come together,…”
You can also listen to the entire episode on:
The Truth About Overnight Success.
In this video, Rob Dial, host of The Mindset Mentor Podcast, explains what success really means and how success is a journey rather than a destination.
Here are some ideas from this video for you to think about:
“When you see overnight success, you don’t see ten years of their hard work behind it.”
“We live in a world of instant gratification, and we think we can get what we want immediately. But in life, success, happiness, joy, everything that is great in life takes. time.”
“Great things take time.”
“You just have the work in. There’s no shortcut.”
“If you just don’t stop, you can’t fail at anything. Most people don’t give themselves a long runway.”
“Make the decision of the thing we want to master, and we have to dedicate ourselves to it.”
“Your goals take only 3 things - Direction, Action, Time.”
You can click the above link and watch the video.
Being Internally Coherent Vs. Externally Coherent.
The phrases ‘Internally Coherent’ and ‘Externally Coherent’ are pretty compelling. They conjure up many images of what happens, mainly to working professionals and organisations.
As a leader or an individual working in a team, think for a minute how long it takes to build ‘internal coherence’ on any specific strategy, policy, new product ideas, a new business, or any decision you want to take. Does most of your time get spent on getting internal coherence? That’s a terrible sign.
So, what can this mean? If you spend disproportionate time ‘seeking internal coherence,’ the root cause may be a misalignment of your ambition for the business as a leader and the people working with you. The reasons could be a lack of understanding, belief, conviction or capability to execute. This is when meetings take precedence over execution.
On the other hand, imagine you are an individual team member and you spend a significant amount of time building ‘internal coherence' to get people, peers and seniors on the same page for what you do. Then, it is safe to assume there is no common purpose and clarity of agreed-upon outcomes from your teammates or within functions or departments for a specific project or initiative. This slows down the momentum in any organisation or team tremendously. And it is also energy-sapping, literally for every team member, to convince each other and get things done.
When a lot of time is spent on ‘external coherence,’ clearly the diversifications, market segments, new emerging business opportunities, pricing and margin differences or complexity, etc., come to the fore. This is because a lot of time is spent getting the stakeholders aligned with what is happening externally. Also, diversification and expansion become contentious issues as there is no alignment, and a lot of time is spent analyzing this. Therefore, not enough time and attention are paid to ‘internal coherence’, which can lead to poor execution and deployment.
The rule of thumb is that if too much time is spent on ‘internal coherence’ in an ongoing as-is business operation, it is a sign of trouble. However, if too much time is spent on ‘external coherence’ for strategic bets the company is taking for the future, then that’s a red flag too. This means there is a lack of alignment and conviction in that strategy amongst stakeholders.
The right balance of time is needed for ‘internal coherence’ and ‘external coherence’. Successful companies and leaders have the ability to manage this better. The truth is, there is no perfect answer to how much coherence you need to strive for. In some instances, after enough efforts are made to align stakeholders, you may need to push things through before it is too late and hurts your business.
Organisations and the people who work there need to develop ‘a strong sensitivity’ to find the right balance between internal and external coherence, as this can affect growth and innovation.
Some of the lessons we learnt from this week’s mission:
True innovation happens at the edge of complex problems and external coherence.
Great leaders tend to be missionaries rather than mercenaries.
Great things take time to achieve. There are no shortcuts.