The Astonishing Pile-Up

How to Build a Contrarian Corporate Culture

October 2008
By M. Daniel Suwyn

Yale University Dean Peter Salovey was looking over some statistics last summer and discovered that his college’s students were majoring in 72 different concentrations.
 
Despite this amazing array of options, Salovey learned that 55% of last year’s graduating class majored in just six different programs: History, Political Science, Economics, Psychology, Biology and English. He describes this as an “astonishing pile-up” of intellectual potential.

U.S. companies are facing a similar “pile-up.” Even when faced with dramatic and consequential challenges – the financial crisis, our dependency on foreign oil, take your pick – there is a staleness to our ideas, our strategies and the types of skills we look for within our companies.

We see corporate leaders continue to turn to the same people and the same types of talents even if these people and their skills are out of line with the challenge. There is something reassuring about relying on those who have come through for us before. But it often is a crutch that keeps us from looking at what knowledge, and skills we need to meet the current and future challenges.

Salovey challenged the Yale Class of 2012 to avoid creating an intellectual pile-up by taking a “contrarian’s” approach to their education. “Choose not to follow the herd but rather to find the underappreciated sectors,” Salovey said.

As much as 18-21-year-olds like to talk about individuality, research shows people that age are mostly looking for a place to fit-in. What would it take, Salovey asked, for students to have the self-confidence, to take the wise risk, to walk down a different path, to go against the crowd?

These are the same questions we should be asking within our companies. What should we be doing to avoid the economic and intellectual pile-up we see ahead of us?

Like college students, too often our companies make a lot of noise about being different while spending most of the effort and money on fitting in.

What if, instead, we spent that same effort and money on being contrarian? To standing out at a time when it would be easier to go with the crowd? Can we develop new business models, new visions, new continuous improvement plans when it looks safer to "get back to basics?"

First, a contrarian culture can only exist when truth is the company’s most valued commodity. Not complex, algorithmic truths, but simple truths. How can you make it easy for people to tell you the truth, especially the truths they think you don’t want to hear?

Second, a contrarian company takes no action without data. But it also takes no action without first taking the temperature. Do our employees understand why the company is doing something? Can they explain it to customers? Does it align with their values so there is no silent sabotage going on?

Third, just as there are processes to handle toxic chemicals, react to emergencies and handle equipment, the company needs a process for honestly and openly dealing with conflict along the Value Chain. Conflict is a given in business. How we deal with it is what distinguishes success from failure.

Finally, people at all levels of a contrarian company are constantly learning. With the economy in such a mess, it will be tough to pay for a contrarian culture. It will be harder to hire for it – competition for talent won’t be any easier. And it will be harder still to find the time to create it. And yet, a learning environment built on a sound contrarian discipline is just as critical to your future as sound fiscal discipline.

Dean Salovey told his students, “There are times when we all must depart from the comfortable path, say “good-bye” to what is familiar, even to what we have grown to love, and leave it for uncharted waters where unknown challenges lurk but fresh opportunities for learning await.”
 
Sometimes we seek the change; in times like these, the change seeks us. Will we engage it or get caught in the pile-up?


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