How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?

A friend once asked if I thought it necessary to suffer in order to succeed - it seemed like a trick question. After hemming and hawing a bit, I had to confess that although I wished to think otherwise, I sadly believed that suffering leads to success.

And it should be no surprise. Judeo-Christian enshrines suffering as a test of faith and valor, one from which the sufferer somehow emerges greater than he entered (Book of Job, for example), closer to salvation. Take a look around at the countless variations on the "no-pain no-gain" mantra, particularly as regards athletic training and performance. Nietzsche's famous quote "what does not kill me makes me stronger", taken out of context, figures prominently in this Western mindset according to which success stems from hard work, which in turn requires effort and therefore suffering.  

Indeed, it can seem like sweet justice that those who succeed should have to sweat for it. Under this system, the lazy have only themselves to blame for their mediocrity while the mediocre are made to feel guilty that they are not working hard enough. Meanwhile, the industrious can forever hope to be rewarded for their pain - except that it doesn’t always work out. Why is that? 

Continuing with the sports analogy, it's quite clear that it's possible to train too much, to inflict so much suffering on one's body that it cannot benefit from the training. It's also possible to do wasteful work that yields limited or negative returns. Identifying useful work and finding the sweet point between effort and rest is the task of the coach. Looking further, the notion of pleasure is paramount: one can only excel at a task that provides enjoyment, even if effort is necessary. Indeed, that is Nietzsche's overarching point in Ecce Homo: 

"Now by what signs are a well-made human being recognized? They are recognized by the fact that such a person is pleasant to our senses; he is carved from one whole block of wood which is hard, delicate and fragrant at once. He enjoys only that which is good for him; his pleasure, his desire ceases when the limits of that which is good for him are overstepped. He divines cures for injuries; he knows how to turn misfortune to his own advantage; that which does not kill him makes him stronger. " 

Let's leave the athletic pitch to enter the shop floor. Workers, who extend themselves physically and psychologically, are much like athletes. Days are long, repetitive tasks cause injuries, and bodies age and whither at ill-conceived work stations - with well-known impacts on productivity. In the corporation at large, busyness is rewarded through so many indicators, most of which are essentially proxy measures of suffering. And yet, powering through pain, the ethos of bygone eras, has shown its limits. Unsurprisingly, concepts like lean come from outside the Judeo-Christian cultural sphere.  

Workers, we can all agree, should seek to maximize production while minimizing their suffering (which we can expand to include all waste). Nietzsche provides perspective and a few hints: seek pleasure and 'that which is good' when looking for optimization. A "well-made" person will know when his/her limit has been reached, will learn from mistakes, and find solutions to recurring problems. But there is more; Nietzsche's "well-made" person  

"… instinctively gathers his material from all he sees, hears and experiences. He is a selective principle; he rejects much. He is always in his own company whether his intercourse be with books, with men or with landscapes; he honors the things he chooses, the things he acknowledges, the things he trusts. " 

In these few lines we find some key ingredients to an innovative optimization process. We have left the realm of suffering for gain and entered the domain of progress through thoughtful observation, self-awareness, personal commitment, education, intuition, and (ultimately) pleasure.  

Today, I am changing my vision and trying to reject suffering as a basis for success. Effort is necessary to improve, but pleasure is a key driver. This is easier said than done. Abandoning suffering for pleasure requires trust and confidence.   

1. Self-confidence because(a) if underlings suffer, the boss gets stature fromimposing the suffering, and (b)each individual must believe in his/her sustained desire to strive in a positive-reward environment that markedly departs from western cultural norms  
2. Trust because, under a pleasure-based management model, management must trust its underlings to continue to work efficiently and innovate without fear of punishment - this despite the pernicious notion that underlings are somehow "lazy" (otherwise, they'd have worked hard and become part of management!) 

The benefits are potentially significant: workers will use their innate wisdom to improve their performance, as long as that they operate in an environment that gives them choices, and even more so if they can use the services of a well-meaning 'coach'. In short, management must trust that workers are "well-made" and engaged employees. This can be a difficult step to make for those raised in the worship of pain as a pathway to success, but it is a step on the long path to  kinder and wiser management.

Explanation and transformation

Thibault Brière, a corporate philosopher, stated recently that 'explaining is convincing people to do things they have not chosen'. He went on to show that choice is a fundamental driver of change, in that transformation succeeds when it results from a freely made decision to change. This raised a question: when change becomes necessary in an organization, how can the possible options be communicated to those who must change if 'explaining' is ineffective? What does it mean to communicate when one's aim is to precipitate a choice that is aligned with the common goal?  

I started to think about the nature of explanation and its role in corporate transformation, process optimization, the dreaded 'change management', etc. I looked at schools for inspiration. 

In schools, explanation is the favored mode of communication - and we are not afraid to call it that. When they 'explain', successful teachers in reality empower students to access knowledge - they make  knowledge available to their students while adopting a respectful posture towards knowledge. This implies that knowledge exists outside of the teacher, in a space between the students and the instructor, from where they can pluck it with the right learning tools.  

This makes intuitive sense; the Pythagorean theorem is Pythagoras' original brainchild, not any particular math teacher's. In this way, the teacher's ego is not part of the communication or explanation: she is a vessel who presents a greater truth - her explanatory skill comes from setting goals (find the length of the hypotenuse) and in presenting ideas and tools to lead students towards that goal (theory, drawings, textbooks, potential applications, exercises, etc.). Importantly, she sets her students on the path to using this theorem in its many advanced applications beyond planar geometry. 

This is in contrast to teachers who impart knowledge to passive students. These teachers are under the misguided impression that knowledge comes from them, and that they must transfer it to their students. They 'explain' the material, which is to say that they talk about formulas and rules rather than ideas and concepts. Students also retain this information, to be fair, but they cannot 'own' the concept - it remains the teacher's - and they might not be able to use it in more advanced settings. 

What, then, to make of the above observations in the changing corporate environment?  

Every organization seeking to improve itself attempts large and small transformations. Often, management will identify a new path to the future - more or less democratically, with or without external help, etc... These (path & future) must then be 'explained' to those who will transform themselves with the goal is that they will become 'engaged' and the transformation self-sustaining.  The new path can be as simple as changing the way a task is performed or as ambitious as upending the business model. The more ambitious the path and/or profound the changes, the more challenging and crucial the 'explanation' will be. 

Consider, as above, a company that experiences a crisis and must identify a path to salvation and success (the new goal). The crucial 'explanatory' moment comes at the root of the new path, when he company ventures into new territory to seek its new goal. The solution to the crisis usually emerges from a period of soul searching and can spring from a number of sources: 

• a collective exercise within the company
• an outside consultant's prescriptive report
• the CEO
• members of the executive team
• members of a special 'transformation' team
• a combination of the above, etc...

Unfortunately, independent of its provenance, the management team (or the CEO) might be tempted to claim ownership of the solution for any number of reasons:  

• to revel in the sheer joy of having found a brilliant solution
• to satisfy its collective ego
• to compensate for its lack of self-confidence
• to justify its existence
• to cast its collective self in the role of corporate savior

Whatever the reason, we have a situation akin to the teacher who doesn't realize that she didn't invent and doesn't own the Pythagorean theorem. This is particularly true because the solution to the company's crisis most likely involves the creative and clever combination of existing and new ideas, some of which might come from other countries or industries, and therefore only appear to be new. 

If the solution is presented as having sprung, fully formed and Athena-like, from the cranium of the almighty CEO - plus or minus the executive committee - it's unlikely to gain traction. The rank and file cannot own the solution: it is not theirs to seize, understand, manipulate, and revise or expand upon. The CEO and top management are essentially saying: "we know what's good for you, and we will now magnanimously explain it to you", treating employees like children and depriving them of initiative or ambition. There can be no common ground, no room for an expanded understanding of the concepts underlying the solution, and nowhere for each member of the organization to carve out a unique understanding of how following this new path will solve his or her problems.  

This type of explanation leaves the staff with one of two options: submission or resistance. Neither is a positive dynamic on which to build a collective future.  

On the other hand, management can present the solution to the crisis as an idea larger than any individual or small team: an idea that exists in the space between the individuals that make up the company; an idea from which they can take the concepts that they need to reach the new goal, individually and collectively. Because this solution can be shared by all equally (it is owned by none), individuals, small groups, and indeed the whole organization, can make it theirs in the most appropriate way, as suits their activities. 

This is easier to do if the solution emerged from a respectful, positive, and collaborative process, but if the solution did come from a small group, it must be presented as an owner-less idea - a theorem of sorts. The staff then need help grasping the impact of the theorem on their daily activities and acquiring the skills to implement it. They can also expand on the solution, proposing innovations and taking initiative, since they are not challenging the idea's owner. 

Much like later mathematicians used the Pythagorean theorem to explore new kinds of mathematics, so employees can share the common elements of the solution, and find individual, unique, and innovative ways to follow it to collective success. The confusing concepts that might need clarification and the uncertainties inevitably associated with change can be addressed both collectively and individually, through exercises, training, and problem solving, much in the same way that a classroom of 13 year olds might collectively teach themselves that a2 + b2 = c2 under their teacher's leadership - and remember it for life.