Bottom-up Innovation and the Survival of Organizations

Timothy B. Lee has some wise words to ponder:

So far I’ve described top-down thinking as the tendency to underestimate the effectiveness of bottom-up processes like evolution or Wikipedia, based on the assumption that decentralized systems can’t work well without someone “in charge.” The Innovator’s Dilemma critiques the flip-side of this fallacy: the tendency to believe that when an organization does have someone in charge of it, that that person has a lot of control over the organization’s behavior. In reality, hierarchical organizations have an internal logic that severely constrains the options of the people in charge of them. Bottom-up thinkers in both cases focus on the complexity of the underlying systems, and resist the urge to over-simplify the situation by focusing too much on the people in charge (or lack thereof).

No matter which way you look at or perceive the world there is something you'll be missing. That's why it's so important to view the world from as many different perspectives as possible. I think the advantage of "bottom-up" thinking is that inherently there are more people, and therefore more perspectives, at the "bottom" than there are at the top. This gives people at the bottom more chances to see things that others can't see and then take advantage of them (as long as the system allows for it). So I don't know if I fully agree with Lee on the advantages of "bottom-up-thinkers" being their focus on the complexity of underlying systems. I think that "top-down-thinkers" or the people "in-charge" also often focus on the complexity of a given situation, I just think that their particular vantage point blinds them to things more easily seen from a different position. But Lee draws us to an important point nonetheless. Organizations and the people in charge of them often do not have as many options available to them as they might need to survive and succeed. They are often to their detriment attached to their niche, and when the world changes and that niche goes away they die. The adaptable survive, and one common trait of adaptable people is the ability to look at things from many different perspectives, understand the causes and consequences of various changes in the world quickly, and alter behavior accordingly. This is harder for organizations to accomplish because it requires a lot of engagement with the outside world, and empowering employees at lower tiers within the organization to make important decisions. But it can be done.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Gobble! Gobble!

Gee's Comments about Boise and TCU in Context

Speaking about whether TCU and Boise State deserve to play for the BCS National Title, Ohio State President Gordon Gee said today

Well, I don't know enough about the X's and O's of college football...I do know, having been both a Southeastern Conference president and a Big Ten president, that it's like murderer's row every week for these schools. We do not play the Little Sisters of the Poor. We play very fine schools on any given day. So I think until a university runs through that gantlet that there's some reason to believe that they not be the best teams to [be] in the big ballgame.

In response Pat Forde, ESPN College Football writer and Boise State bandwagon member, tweeted

With all due respect to Ohio State prez Gordon Gee: his Buckeyes would be beaten by both Boise and TCU this year. Perhaps handily.

Then Adam Rittenberg, ESPN Big Ten college football blogger followed up with some non-micro blog style commentary of his own, which included these choice phrases in response to Gee

Ugh. It's just not cool for Goliath to pick on David when Goliath's forehead keeps filling up with welts.

But that's beside the point. The Big Ten is a very tough conference this season. Would Boise State or TCU make it through a Big Ten schedule unscathed? It'd be tough, but it's also possible.

The bigger issue is that Ohio State has a tough time making the strength of schedule argument in 2010. Although the Buckeyes take more scheduling risks than many of their Big Ten brethren, they still face the Eastern Michigans of the world too often.

Then

One thing several Ohio State fans pointed out on my chat is that Gee has just given Boise State or TCU some bulletin-board material if it should face the Buckeyes in a BCS bowl. Ohio State has had a hard enough time beating SEC schools in bowls. Now the Broncos, who have been brilliant in BCS games, or TCU have some extra incentive to beat the Scarlet and Gray.

It's fine for Gee to support a system that is set up to benefit his school. But singling out Boise State and TCU does nothing to help Ohio State.

I disagree with President Gee's premise (and it's a premise that pretty much everyone in the SEC has made with a lot less fanfare), which is that because TCU and Boise State haven't played as strong a schedule (especially in conference it would seem from his comments) as Big Ten and SEC teams play, that that somehow makes them undeserving of playing for the National Title. Both TCU and Boise have been dominant this season, and I don't think there is a team in all of college football that wouldn't have trouble facing them. Both TCU and Boise execute at a very high level, they always play hard and tough and smart, and they aren't afraid of anybody. I think college football is measurably improved by their emergence as legitimate title contenders, and I would love to see either one of them get the chance to play for the National Title against a power conference school so that they can put to rest this idea that they can't compete with and beat the best.

But I also think that Rittenberg is wrong to argue that Gee's words do nothing for Ohio State, and I think that's because he doesn't know Ohio State the University very well, or what Gordon Gee is trying to accomplish there. I know Ohio State pretty well. My Parents still teach there, both since the 1970s, and they've each met and interacted with President Gee on a number of occasions, and I'm an Ohio State alum, and I've also heard President Gee speak on a number of occasions. One of the first anecdotes I heard from my parents about something Gee said when he arrived back at Ohio State on his second go-round as OSU president separated by stints at Brown and Vanderbilt went something along the lines of "I've just been president of two Universities that are not as good as they think they are, and now I'm the president of a University that is better than it thinks it is."

The thing I love about Gordon Gee, the thing that every Ohio State person loves about Gordon Gee, is that he believes Ohio State is a great university and he wants to make absolutely sure that it realizes that it's a great university, which is a much harder thing than it sounds. Ohio is a pathologically modest state, and Ohio State has often, to its detriment, been symptomatic of that pathology. So Gee is trying to give Ohio State confidence, swagger, ambition. He wants it to set its sights high, to believe that it can be the best public institution in America. It's his over-riding message whenever I've heard him talk. And so he likes to trumpet the things that are great about Ohio State, which obviously includes the football team, of which he is unabashedly proud.

Pat Forde and Rittenberg are both reacting to Gee's comments in the light of this present season. Oh no! Bulletin board material for Boise and TCU! Oh, but the Sagarin rankings show that Ohio State's strength of schedule is not much better than TCU or Boise! Oh, Ohio State might not even be able to compete with TCU and Boise! Gee doesn't care. He knows something that he wants all Ohio State fans to know and that is that Ohio State isn't competing with Boise and TCU, Ohio State has already reached the highest level of college football. Ohio State isn't looking for a signature program win, it isn't looking to be taken seriously by the establishment, it is the establishment. Gee doesn't care if Boise or TCU could beat Ohio State this year on a neutral field, he's trying to give an Ohio State program back some of the swagger it lost losing to LSU and Florida in National Title games by reminding everyone that Ohio State isn't worried about the fad schools of the moment because it knows that it's better than that.

There's a story I once heard about Larry Bird at the NBA All-Star Game three point shooting competition. Larry arrives and he's warming up and kind of studying all the other competitors but not saying anything to them, and they're a little uneasy because they don't know quite what he's doing and so they all start staring back at him. Larry smiles at this and says, "I'm just trying to see who's going to be second." Ohio State should always be wondering who's going to be second, that's Gee's point. That's not to say that Ohio State would beat TCU or Boise this year (according to Jeff Sagarin's rankings, TCU and Boise should both be classified as 5 point favorites over Ohio State, which is pretty good, but hardly the slam-dunk Forde implies), but success requires confidence, TCU and Boise know that as well as anyone. Gee is trying to make sure Ohio State has as much confidence as it needs.

Why Hate LeBron?

Michael Rosenberg at Sports Illustrated has one of the better articles I've seen about "Lebron Hatred" and the reasons behind it. The main core of his argument is summed up in this passage.

If we did not love sports, we would not hate LeBron James. He has not sinned against society. He has sinned against competition. And this sounds backward, but it's true: If he had sinned against society, we would have an easier time forgiving him. We all sin against society at some point. In sports, competition is everything.

I think this more or less nails it. LeBron, by working together with D-Wade and Chris Bosh to create a three superstar team, in most people's minds is guilty of taking a shortcut to win a championship. A championship has value because it is difficult to attain, because past champions had to give their blood, sweat, and tears to achieve it. It's cliche, we've all heard it in cheesy sports movies and on NFL Films documentaries, but champions are supposed to have gone above and beyond, are supposed to suffer, to fight back, to look defeat in the eye, to face their demons and in the end triumph in spite of all of it. LeBron though has seemingly found a way around that by simply joining two of the other best players in the game to make things easier for himself. I don't know if that's actually objectively true. As of today, the Miami Heat are 8-6, they have just lost Udonis Haslem, one of their best role players and team leaders, for at least the next four months, if not longer, D-Wade continues to play his no-holds-barred style, which makes him spectacular as well as injury prone, and the Heat seems to have trouble matching up with and defending size. But it's still far to early to tell how good the Heat will be, and they've shown at times already this year that they can be an elite team. If they become that elite team this year, or next, or the year after that, and LeBron, Bosh, and Wade hoist that championship banner, many people will look on and wonder why any of it matters. When the best have conspired to beat the rest is it really such a great achievement? And, won't it something to see if LeBron is 35 and still without a championship? How desperate for achievement will he be then?