LOOKING TO THE PAST TO BE MORE EFFECTIVE IN THE FUTURE

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

Charles Darwin

I am on an extended business trip in France that has necessitated me staying over the weekend in Europe.  A German colleague of mine invited me to visit him at his home in Berlin, as he knew my interest to explore this very vibrant city. I took him up on the invitation as it would break up my week and refresh me for my second week of client work in France. As I write this I am flying back to Paris after a wonderful time in Berlin capped off by visiting a museum exhibit called Permagnon, which is a newly excavated city from Greco-Roman times. Perhaps it is the beauty of this sunny warm September day, or the fact that I am tired in a very relaxed way, but I find myself reflecting on the lessons historical events can teach leaders of today.

While I am not particularly a museum buff from the standpoint of being a student of history, I do enjoy what a good museum visit does to me, and particularly one on the Roman Empire. While viewing the architecture, the pottery, the statues, and countless other artifacts I keep trying to imagine the actual artists, laborers, aristocrats, and others who actually touched and handled these very items. I have been to Rome to experience what they have preserved, Cairo to see how the Roman Empire spread there (something I didn’t realize at the time), and of course now Berlin with the Permagnon exhibit. I came away from those experiences with a sense of awe and wonder about how life was in this grand empire centuries ago. It also makes me question what we have learned, if anything, from our history. I don’t know enough about the reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire to comment, although the demise of any civilization or corporation for that matter is usually because of the self-satisfied arrogance of the leaders and/or the inward-oriented self-absorbing bureaucracy of the enterprise that loses touch with its markets, customers, and employees or citizens as the case may be and is not agile enough to adapt to changing times.

To translate this to a current leadership consideration, I am not always certain that there is sufficient appreciation and empathy for the past given by executive leaders who take over companies or divisions and feel the urgency to “make an impact” immediately. Do they take the time to thoroughly understand the foundational past of the company and what this means for the future of their organization? Are there lessons and insights that lie in the rubble of the past that can be interpreted anew to ensure the path forward is connected to these strong foundations or so mistakes are not repeated?  Peter Senge, along with his colleagues at MIT at the time, published his ground breaking work called The Fifth Discipline in the early 90s in which he coined the phrase “the learning organization”.  He highlighted the lack of systemic thinking that goes on in corporations which causes unintended consequences to befall the most well-meaning of initiatives.

It is this learning “disability” of leaders and that causes mistakes to be repeated, often with dire consequences for the organization and the leader him or herself.