The Seductive Power of Secrets

In one of my first meetings when I was setting up my department in China I had a revealing experience – a glimpse of the political power play that underlies office operations here.
We were three colleagues around the table, H, department head of another department inside the R&D center, S., one of my engineers, and me. One of the topics was an analysis activity that H.s team would start doing. Some of my colleagues in Europe had been doing that for some time and I had some documents describing the process. I said that I would email the documents after the meeting.

Our secret (photo by Amanda Smith)

After the meeting S. comes to me and says carefully: “Don’t send the files.”
Seeing my surprise, he continues; “It is better for us if we keep this secret. Information that only we have makes us stronger. Their department started before we started, so they have some advantage. Our department will have more foreigners, so that is our advantage. Share only a little bit at a time.”

Being Swedish and brought up in a religious faith in transparency and sharing, I almost exploded, but managed to count to ten before responding.
-“Well S. – thank you very much for sharing your thoughts. Please always do. However, this time I decided to do it differently.” Then I told him why I thought it wise to share the material and also to keep my promise. Later we could outsource some of the less interesting jobs to that team because we trained them.

I am convinced that collaboration has more “upside” than “downside” – more advantages than disadvantages. On the long run, you gain more by sharing than by hiding. It is possible everywhere to build a culture of trust to enable openness and teamwork. However, in China, most of the education system is built on competition and there is no advantage of help anyone else ever. I guess that explains why it is unusual and unfamiliar to share.

 

Three years later, S. is a champion of sharing. He has had the opportunity to feel the strength of teamwork. He has experienced the benefits of being open and has transformed into a role model for the junior engineers in the team. Of course there is always some politicking and positioning in any office, but I have never seen it so clear as in China. It has helped me to be more aware of the games played elsewhere, so I smell it easier these days. And now I know that it is possible to push it aside and search for sustainable synergies.

My wise brother Hugo says that hiding information is a left-over thinking from the “Stuff-society” of scarcity. If I give you one of my things, I have less and you have more. It is a zero-sum game. Classic win-lose thinking.

Today, we live in the information/knowledge/idea society. If I give you one some knowledge, I still have the same as I had, but you have more. There is a net gain for us as a system. Sharing is neutral-win, with a large chance of reciprocity, that next time you will share back, to a win-neutral situation. All together this is win-win.

Deliver to Spec – an ethical dilemma

A few years back, I worked in an American multinational corporation in the automotive electronics business. We developed embedded software for cars, as a consultancy for the OEMs (Volvo, Saab, Jaguar,…). In this explosion of electrification, it was a playground to put processors in
every piece of plastic possible.

All the embedded computers create immense problems with reliability.

I ran into an ethical dilemma for consultants – the balance between delivering what was agreed vs. what they need. My company’s interest was to deliver quickly according to the agreed specification, and then sell extra-hours. I felt the pressure to implement features that were in some way faulty, so that we could close the fix-price project and then start charging for additional work. Nobody would admit this, but it was something that made me quite uncomfortable. We were taking advantage of the car-makers lack of competence in computers and software, to ensure short-term profits on our side.

The project managers inside the consultancy were heroes when they closed projects fast – and would be celebrated for their efficacy. Even when the software was crap.

It is a genuine conflict of interests, where one company has a long-term need for robustness and a great product, and the other company does not have to care. I found this corrosive for the morale, and a typical example of win-lose relationship. On the long term, everybody loses.

I think that this problem has many facets. An important one was how success was measured inside the consultancy company. Even though top management was talking about long-term partnerships and quality and integrity, that was not what was celebrated. That was not measured.
And you get what you measure, as Deming used to say [1].

There is a lot of good thinking needed to find new ways of running businesses to encourage mutual long-term benefits. How can you make your customers more successful – and – at the same time make a sustainable profit?

How do you build long term win-win relationships with your customers?

[1] W. Edwards Deming – “Out of the Crisis”

Scott Adams (c) – shares how it feels to deliver rubbish.