Red pill or Blue pill?

For those familiar with the film trilogy the Matrix, the culture symbols that the red pill and blue pill represent will be familiar. They represent the choice between embracing the (sometimes) painful truth of reality (Red) and the bliss of ignorance (Blue). In the film the main character Neo is offered a choice between the two pills: the blue pill offering a fabricated reality thus living the ‘illusion of ignorance’ whilst the red pill leads to escape from the Matrix into the real world.

In his book the Art of the Start, Guy Kawasaki uses the red pill as an analogue to leaders of new organisations, in that they face the same choice to either live in reality or fantasy. He argues that if they want to be successful they have to take the red pill and see how far the rabbit warren goes.

So it goes without saying that if you’re in the business of professional services then the red pill is an obvious choice ? Well not exactly….

In his distinguished career as a management consultant David Maister discusses the importance of realising the gap between people’s knowledge and behaviour i.e. they know what to do but essentially don’t do it.  They know the answers to building successful businesses, but very few actually go and do it. In his book The Fat Smoker, Maister cites the fact that on working with 1000’s of professional service organisations around the world he found that their mission statements, corporate philosophies or vision were very similar: placing clients first, creating great client relationships, team work and staff wellbeing, to create a business that makes a difference etc etc.

The fact is that the vast majority of organisations were not as successful as they ought to be. In fact many were limping along and effectively a busted flush kept alive through debt and the boards ego.

Maister found it was those firms who had the courage to live for the long term, to make the difficult decisions (take the red pill) for creating long term strategic goals and walk the talk on their mission statements and focus on client, staff and stakeholder needs that not only succeeded but thrived.

In other words it was those firms who embraced the ‘romance’ for business i.e. nurturing long-term client and stakeholder relationships rather than focusing on the short-term quick wins and self orientated behaviour that won.

Despite modern day regulation now using behavioural economics strategies to get under the bonnet of corporate decisions, there is no rocket science here, only hard truths about trusting the intuition of the business owners and dealing with the fear of taking a longer-term view for business objectives.

We’ve found that one of the key risks to professional service firms’ success is the fact they think they’ve taken the red pill but have actually taken a blue one. For instance they had not put their professional statements around client centricity in action.

One of the best ways we can take a red pill is by setting out a strategic bonafide business plan. This covers where we are and where we want to be. What market data and management information we need to move forward and building goals and data tracking action plans to meet our long-term objectives.

So which pill will you take?