I doubt that Tom Peters would agree and maybe not appreciate it, if I called him a Calvinist, but his post called We Have Met the Enemy is an outstanding illustration of Christian doctrines of original sin, indwelling sin, total depravity and the like.
Tom is most famous for his book In Search of Excellence, and his career as a consultant/speaker/author/business-guru. In the above post he opines on Starbucks, a company sailing in a wide open Blue Ocean yet whose stock is "in the tank." Along the way, he compares Starbucks struggles to those of Home Depot and says that basically, Pogo was right - "we have met the enemy and he is us." In both cases, the decline of Starbucks and Home Depot cannot be explained in terms of overwhelming competition, it is something within the companies themselves that caused them to decline. Here's a quick summary that could easily be translated into theologi-speak:
Yes, to use the oft repeated Walt Kelly quote (from his comic strip, Pogo): "We have met the enemy and he is us." "Innovation" is the business topic du jour. Of course, it's really the "topic du always"—even for 5-year old companies that started with a bang, and took advantage of said bang to undertake expansion. Or, for that matter, those choosing not to expand and graying in place. To use an even more oft used quote by the ubiquitous whomever: "Get thine own house in order first, dude." That is, in, conservatively, eight out of ten cases, I'd judge after 35 years of close observation, it's not a surging competitor with a "disruptive" strategy that generates a star's tailspin, but the star's inherent entropic (remember Newton) drift, away from innovativeness and toward mediocrity; such companies, almost all companies, do not have to learn how to innovate ... they have to learn how to not not innovate. "Data drawn from the real world," said Norberto Odebrecht, founder of the remarkable Brazilian heavy construction giant, Odebrecht, "attest to a fact that is beyond our control: Everything in existence tends to deteriorate." It's the molding innards, not the lousy strategy or uppity competitor, that cause most of, if not all of, the decline. And addressing said molding innards must, simply must, be the new or extant CEO's Job #1.
The money quote here is the one from Odebrecht - "everything in existence tends to deteriorate." That's a pretty good illustration of all the classic Christian doctrines related to sin. The classic Christian doctrine of sin points to internal corruption as the primary cause of personal, corporate and social decline. This is a good reminder because Christians have a habit of looking to "surging competitors" and "disruptive strategies" from the outside as the cause of our problems, when we really need to be looking at our own internal deterioration.
What may cause some controversy here (and I would love to elicit some discussion on this) is his proposed antidote to this - continual innovation. Christians tend to be the preservers of tradition and very often we see the urge to continually innovate as the cause of deterioration, whereas Tom sees it as the cure.
I'm somewhere in the middle - I see the value of tradition and there are things we must preserve. Yet, I kind of lean Tom's way here. Though we affirm our solidarity with Christians of all ages, not even the most conservative Christian would insist we duplicate the ways and expressions of say, the Christians of the 13th century. But what about the Christians of the last decade?
Tom is saying that if you don't innovate you deteriorate. That sounds like some good ol' emerging nonsense, right? Not so fast cowboy - consider how much reformed stalwarts like John Murray and John Frame sound like Tom Peters in this article by Stephen Shields (ok, I know that for some folks John Frame is not a reformed stalwart, more a wolf in sheep's clothing, but he's a stalwart in this little reformed heart of mine):
The great Reformed exegete John Murray strikes the balance well:
“However epochal have been the advances made at certain periods and however great the contributions of particular men we may not suppose that theological construction ever reaches definitive finality. There is the danger of a stagnant traditionalism and we must be alert to this danger, on the one hand, as to that of discarding our historical moorings, on the other.
…
When any generation is content to rely upon its theological heritage and refuses to explore for itself the riches of divine revelation, then declension is already under way and heterodoxy will be the lot of the succeeding generation…. A theology that does not build on the past ignores our debt to history and naively overlooks the fact that the present is conditioned by history. A theology that relies on the past evades the demands of the present“
(Quoted by John Frame in his article In Defense of Something Close to Biblicism)
So, what's your take on this - is Peters helpful in his diagnosis and/or cure?
Blogs are so informative where we get lots of information on any topic. Nice job keep it up!!
Posted by: Art Dissertation | January 06, 2010 at 08:46 AM