The art (or science) of business momentum

Is this a photo or a painting? It is art or science? It can be either or both. Our bias is to split the difference or "go along to get along" on the tough questions so as to not affect momentum. In life and in particular in business, momentum is the signal difference between success and failure. As a mentor once told me to great effect, "no one wants to work for a company that is not growing." Growth and momentum are complementary and active.

Growth is what pushes people to seek to reduce business to formulas. If the seemingly random mix of employees, products, partners, marketing and distribution can be reduced to an equation that equals sales, then targets can be met or beat by just doing the math. The math will equal momentum and successfully "closing the quarter" will require only a sharpened number 2 pencil.

Currency trading looks like a business built on science (mathematical algorithms, really) and network security is another. But it remains a short list even though we keep trying to make longer.

At the root of our failure to see lab experiments replicate and root in the field is the fact that a successful business can be built in a hundred different ways. Science abhors such variability, business rewards those open to it. Sure, it is often true that "if we can measure it, we can manage it," but it is always true that business allows work-arounds and science does not.

Just consider the decisions made in any given day. It can be built or bought. It can be owned or affiliated. Sales can be direct or by way of a channel. It can be manufactured or outsourced. We can hire full-time people or rely on independent contractors.

This is not to say that business is not absolute because it is binary, but to illustrate the point that at every turn in the business day there is a dense forest of decision trees confronting us. It clearly makes success more a product of art than the output of a formula.

A recent debate erupted about expanding licensing of certain business professionals. Lawyers, CPAs and such are among the professions so regulated now. Perhaps, it is argued, the rest of them should be, too. That's science talking. There is black letter law and the numbers must add up, but who is able to assign the steps leading to what new might come from the garage or university lab or a cross-country drive with time to think and plan? That's the art of it.

It is indisputable that business -- any business -- is part art and part science. But, to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson on the relative value of newspapers and government, if I had to choose between art and science, I would choose art. It is a powerful innovation engine, essential for growth and the raw material for momentum. Most of the science a company needs to project itself can be found in common software, readily available and easily installed.

But It is art that allows me to see a photo of a row boat floating on a lake in Maine and see a painting of how the weather was and how the chowder tasted.