Rectifications (8) – ‘Cutting edge…’ ….‘World class…’

Rectifications (8) – ‘Cutting edge…’ ….‘World class…’

Torrey Orton
May 12, 2009

Following the suggestion of Confucius, I continue some rectification of names for our times. Elsewhere I offer some ‘solutions’ to some problems of linguistic degradation. Relevant observations appear towards the end of my Dances with Difference (4) post.

‘Cutting edge…’ is what we say when we mean that whatever we’re doing is just far enough behind the leading edge to actually do something reliably enough to be marketed to early adopters. Those in the know know that the failure rate of pure research is 98% , of applied technical research like drugs, invented materials (plastics, etc.) and so on, a good chunk fail and of start-ups around the survivors of the previous culling even smaller but startling amounts fail with appropriate variations between activity domains.

The earlier you are in the innovation cycle the more likely it is that your product /service will not last the course. Early adopters are the consumer side of this process. We often end up with memorials to failed beginnings - Betamax video, Atari’s, Commodores, Mac Lisas, Visicalcs (don’t remember this one? – Quicken, MYOB and siblings’ grandfather). How many internet start-ups came and went in 5 years of the bubble at what aggregate loss?

On these figures we may be wise to stay away from leading edges and doubt the likelihood that the cutting edge could slice a spud. I prefer takeoffs like The Bleeding Edge by Charles Wright, weekly in THEAGE Green Guide . He hopes to straighten us out about fallacious, falsified and fraudulent offerings in the ITC arena (a domain of notoriously cutting edges). His rendition of a Telstra customer service event is a classic example of modernised customer services where we are scored by the cutting edge of their leading edge business practices, for our good they’d say.

In a world where any can opener and financial product and face cream, not to say health “solution” and car is cutting edge, just how much junk are we being sold and how compelling is the argument for our purchasing NOW? The compulsion these days, I guess, arises from the great emptiness of repetitive acquisition syndrome. I find it surfacing in my therapy practice among the 35-50’s as a surrounding aura which soundlessly and sightlessly sucks meaning out of people with no replacement or alternative on offer. They are barely aware apart from a slight sense, as one said, of a low level anxiety underlying everyday life.

As for ‘world class’, it may be possible that there are world class performances in all domains of human activity (and those of nature for that matter). How we could say with much assurance that they are world class is a matter of interest. But that doesn’t prevent people pretending almost daily to have or be doing or making world class things themselves as a core come-on in a sales or marketing strategy. They usually cite some evidence base for the claim, but most (all?) are subject to doubt from a big enough perspective, if not for the accuracy of the framework and processes they have used.

This has never stopped any one from making such claims. Freedom of expression plus necessity of competition ensure the economic viability of discretionary misrepresentation. So they are able to proceed to the next step unimpeded, if not without guilt. This step is the implicit or explicit proposition that everyone should be attempting to become world class themselves, preferably by buying whatever the claimants have on offer. More evidence is given for the transferability of the class in point, with lots of numbers, a few instruments or tools, and a large existing client base as influencers for the prospective sales. Celebrity endorsement by using does all the preceding at half the expense, apart from the aesthetic expense to the rest of us of acquisitive presence syndrome.

This practice is systematised in, for example quality systems (which succeed at less than 50% of implementations), leadership development ( a new one each 6-12 months) and training programs (which themselves hang off the apparatus of quality and leadership). About this time in the product development life cycle the relevant driver of sales is identity polishing for prospective purchasers through membership of the group who buys / uses world class products. Advanced product /services can amplify the drivers by, again implicit or explicit, compliance mechanisms guarding the entry way to markets, right to advertise services, etc.

However, it has been discovered over the last ten years that many of this type of products / services cannot be transferred from one context to another with any assurance. Yet, they sale on in the marvellously self-sealing cycle which characterises, e.g., weight-loss programs, though perhaps with better performance ratios. The weight-loss mob manage an approximately 95% failure rate, which doesn’t stop anyone from signing up for more. Probably all you need to do to be ‘successful’ in weight works is change your product name occasionally to meet the needs for fashion statements in health care. I imagine they follow the latest research on contributing factors. Maybe weight loss is really about how you look – trying to lose is the look for oneself for many of us?

So what is the role of leading edge world class products? They are fashions to some extent. Also they express our inclination to improve and the importance of a vision or standard of excellence as a motivator for many. Whether they are any good or not, they are ‘cutting it’ by stretching or slicing the fabric of current practice(s) - a necessary stage in change of any sort.

Thanks to Brassie and Hamid’s complaints about my lack of channels for anger, and Brassie’s personal support for my making a difference suggestions a few weeks back, I’m going to provide some channels for cutting edges and world class actions to sustain them:
1- Remember cutting edges are mostly local now.
2- Leading at your own scale and pace will provide plenty of edge at a controllable level (see anger).
3- Engage others with you in these small scale high personal return edgeworks.
4- Discourage yourself and others from consuming the blandishments of large scale cutting edges of the sort that amass easily into large group obsessions; any fundamentalist engagement has this kind of potential at its core.
5- Ask others to sharpen the cutting edge you are walking.

That’s for starters. You may notice that this is a recommendation for little insurrections, non-violent of course. You’ll discover how leading your edge is by others’ efforts to dull it. By the time I get finished with this linguistic cleansing I may have the foundations for a movement…of something(s) for someone(s) to somewhere(s).

Finally, some cutting edges which led to world class losers: Edsels, New Orleans flood controls, CDO’s built from sub-primes plus 0% down-payment loans = GFC, non-renewable energy sources plus unlimited consumption plus excess uses = climate change; the extreme management practices of Enron and World Comm; the unsurpassable returns of Storm Financials, the bonuses of financial wizards. What are your favourites?