Revolutionary
I’m about to say that people ought to look to Mao Zedong as a source of excellent methodology. I’m going to do this as someone who is not a Marxist, and who is aware of the mass deaths of millions which resulted from the application of Mao’s ideas to revolutionary warfare and political organisation. I’m writing about Mao because Mao went from itinerant teacher, to control of China, in 40 years; because he continued a process of structred disruption for his entire professional life; and because he showed us how he did it.
That is, he deliberately created a productive, disciplined method of envisioning and creating disruption which could be sustained over a period of decades, and which could be successfully adapted to other contexts.
Mao Zedong engineered one of the great disruptions of the Twentieth Century. Over a period of decades he methodically created a change in the world’s largest country, and that change continues today, more than 100 years after Mao started his . Anyone who studies insurgency needs to understand Mao’s approach; anyone who seeks to create sustained disruption ought to do so as well.
Peter Pan in Business
The adolescent startup is a well-understood commercial phenomenon, and the transition from commercial adolescence to commercial adulthood is widely recognised as difficult. One of the many facets of this transition is the idea that in emerging from commercial adolescence, a business risks abandoning its disruptive nature, its commercial edge and its entrepreneurial spirit. People who chose the startup life, and who walked away from staid, established businesses, did so because they appreciated the adventure and the spirit of wild youth; they are not interested in discarding these.
One expression of this is the serial starter: a person who creates a startup, brings it to the point of maturity, and exits to start again. Another expression is the business which refuses to grow up: the Peter Pan business. If the business can remain undisciplined forever, its people imagine it will be disruptive forever. If it never grows up, it will always be exciting, entrepreneurial and effective.
If a board is willing to overlook missed opportunities and foregone revenue, then this might be sustainable for a period of years. If the business was bootstrapped, then there might not be demands from investors to introduce discipline. If a business never goes public, the market can never demand optimum performance. If sales are robust; managers who are happy with the way things are, never have to ask what things might be.
For some businesses, a permanent adolescence can be difficult to resist, and Peter Pan never needs to know what might have been. Lost opportunity doesn’t show up on his P&L.
In some industries, commercial structures stifle innovation, and the more wealthy and powerful a business becomes, the less pressure it is under to evolve. In this context the adolescent disruptor might appear to have the only model that will enable productive change. Peter Pan must never grow up, in this context, because growing up appears to mean stultifying in an eternal adult present with no path to the future.
Peter Pan does not need a path to the future: he has no future. He never achieves his potential, because he never grows up. The biggest adventure he can imagine is to die: the ultimate stasis of eternal immaturity. Peter Pan has the option of remaining a lifelong, immortal, high-flying adolescent because (of course) Peter Pan is fictional.
In the real world, disruption and change come from an understanding of the future, of continuous and discontinuous change, and a readiness to shape the future. The kid who never grows up becomes the pathetic adolescent trapped in Mom’s basement, because growing up means developing capabilities and using them to go somewhere new.
The adolescent business might earn, but it will never achieve its potential.
The Model: Five Minute Mao
Mao Zedong, the son of peasants in Hunan Province, was going to destroy a thousands-year-old empire and replace it with something entirely new of his own devising. It was a significant task, and it required some careful consideration of ends and means before embarking on the project.
Mao prescribes a phased insurgency as the way to achieve revolutionary change over a long period of time.
Phase I
The first phase is to establish the capabilities that will disrupt continuously, and establish its basis of support. This is a moment of agitation, recruitment, training, developing doctrine and establishing structure and discipline. The list of capabilities that will be required is a long one, and without them Mao might as well have stayed in law school.
Doctrine, structure and discipline are not ancillary activities: they are core capabilities. Without doctrine, the insurgent’s vision of a better future cannot be communicated. Without discipline, deviation from doctrine cannot be managed. Without discipline, the methodical approach to disruption gives way to eagerness, as well as laziness.
(Mao was himself expelled from the Chinese Communist Party at one point, for breaching party discipline. He ignored his expulsion and continued to build operational capabilities.)
Phase II
The next phase of Maoist insurgency is to demonstrate potency. In particular, an insurgent has to communicate that the revolutionary change is constructive and not destructive. The insurgent shows that it offers something better, while simultaneously showing through guerrilla warfare that it is capable of winning the fight.
In this phase, the insurgents challenge the authorities and consolidate their gains. They create the conditions for eventual victory.
If the insurgents fail or are defeated in Phase II, then they move back to Phase I, rebuild, and return to Phase II when they are ready.
Phase III
Once the population is ready to support the insurgent as a credible alternative to the authorities, and once insurgent capabilities have reached the point where local success is realistic, the insurgent moves to open confrontation. Mao’s revolutionaries don their Mao jackets and Mao caps, unfurl the red banner of revolution and march on the provincial capital, or indeed the national capital.
Fighting a civil war in Phase III is no good if Mao’s army hasn’t got the capabilities he’s been creating since Phas I. Mao’s people had to be able to follow orders and shoot straight, or the Chinese Communist Party would be an historical footnote.
Mao’s insurgency is future-oriented: at every phase they understand that they will eventually create a future based on a shared vision. Indeed, because Mao was a Marxist, he was working from a very clear required future state; and because his first phase involves refining an understanding of doctrine, he was able to express it clearly.
Business Mao v Business Pan
The eternal adolescent is not charming.
In commercial terms, the adolescent business might retain some of the dash of its teenage years, but it has not highly developed all the capabilities it needs to the level at which they need to operate. Entrepreneurial sensibility is an important capability, and perhaps it is fostered by keeping a rather piratical, undisciplined approach to the dull details of business operations; but there are other capabilities that need to be developed.
(I wince as I write this because I am not without sin here, as my colleagues are thinking as they read this.)
Yet, it is hardly reasonable to expect a business to acquire all its capabilities instantly, and to a high level. Certain business-critical capabilities might need to be hired or bought or body-shopped in at short notice, but some need to develop over time, and need to be brought on-line in appropriate sequence.
This is where Mao started.
Mao wanted disruption. He wanted consistent, productive disruption that would lead him and his party (and his people) to the future state he had envisioned for them. He created a road map of disruption to take him to a future created by disruption, and he expected his colleagues and fellow-travellers to adhere to his doctrine, adhere to his road map, and adhere to his understanding of what it meant to be a revolutionary.
I don’t have much use for Communism, and I thank God that I didn’t grow up in Mao’s China; but I don’t have to like the product in order to be impressed by the way he developed and delivered it.
Don’t Remain the Adolescent, Become the Insurgent
Some adolescents hate the idea of growing up and becoming someone else, someone they don’t want to be. For them, adopting discipline and self-knowledge, becoming future-oriented and strategic; is letting go of their cherished identity.
The route I envision is a pathway from adolescent to insurgent. Have a clear understanding of the future state you will create. Disrupt, but disrupt in alignment with structured strategic action. Disrupt in a disciplined context which can sustain disruption. Disrupt for decades, while those you have disrupted stand in awe of your energy, consistency, maturity and capability. Build your ethos around your insurgency, to ensure that even as you develop your capabilities, you never lose your edge.
Each of these points requires more than intuition. Transition from the ‘move fast, break things’ corporate adolescence to becoming a successful business revolutionary requires structured thought and serious commitment. Communism is not required.
I’m meeting in person to discuss structured approaches to the future, including strategy, strategic alignment, culture and ethos. Drop a note to me, or to Rina rina.atienza@nusbacher.com, who will be happy to help us find a moment to discuss what this means to your own revolution.
A little less Peter Pan, a little more Mao
This is an interesting analysis, and I couldn't help thinking, as soon as I started reading it, about the expressed intentions of Donald Trump when he became President in 2016. He also expressed admiration for the Chinese and Russian leaderships, who were able to "move fast and break things", but he didn't have the ability to follow through; permanent disruption is not a recipe for a happy society. Maybe this is a starting point for discussion...