Strategic Balance

Righteousness with justice is the fundamental link at the core of the strategic system put in place by Moses. A few centuries later this strategic vision is reasserted by Amos. A bit later, not so far away, it is reclaimed by Jeremiah. When this linkage is in good shape, the rest of system is very resilient. When one or both of these elements are seriously tarnished or become separated, the rest of the links are not strong enough to produce comparative advantage and the community is vulnerable.

Porter would caution us not to view righteousness or justice as core competencies. They are, rather, the thematic outcomes of a whole host of linkages. Ikea’s activities are organized around the linked themes of variety and affordability. Variety is produced by a web of linked activities. The same is the case for the core themes that Moses set in place.

Righteousness – or tsedaq – is the original and true self of each individual. This is the expression of God that each of us can be. Righteousness is the outcome of self-awareness, self-correction, learning, opportunity, courage, and many more linked activities focused on discovering and being your true self.

Justice – or mishpat – is the character of a community where the righteousness of individuals is nourished and our shared identity is celebrated. Justice is the outcome of caring for the oppressed, correcting the selfish, working and learning together, enjoying the creative contributions of one another, and many more linked activities.

When the web of links between righteousness and justice are then also linked there is a knotted chain of great strength. But these words – especially righteousness – have in our day been exiled to mostly religious contexts. Many of us also live in a time and place where the link between religious life and the rest of life is less than tight. The concepts, however, – using other words – persist. Porter’s writings echo similar themes. Peter Drucker does as well. The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi offers the following:

There are two opposite tendencies in evolution: changes that lead toward harmony (i.e., the ability to obtain energy through cooperation, and through the utilization of unused or wasted energy); and those that lead toward entropy (or ways of obtaining energy for one’s purposes through exploiting other organisms, thereby causing conflict and disorder.)…Harmony is usually achieved by evolutionary changes involving an increase in an organism’s complexity, that is, an increase in both differentiation and integration. Differentiation refers to the degree to which a system (i.e., an organ such as the brain, an individual, a family, a corporation, a culture, or humanity as a whole) is composed of parts that differ in structure or function from one another. Integration refers to the extent to which the different parts communicate and enhance one another’s goals.

Replace differentiation with righteousness and integration with justice and you could be reading a highly-educated post-Darwinian Amos. This strategic pairing – righteousness and justice – is a source of comparative advantage that is available to all of us, as individuals, communities, and enterprises. It is the fundamental source of true and sustained comparative advantage.

Unfortunately we too often choose entropy rather than harmony. This can produce measurable short terms gains. But as Csikszentmihalyi joins Moses, Amos, Jeremiah, and others in pointing out, this is the cause of conflict, disorder, and finally death. This is the kind of zero sum competition that Porter warns is the outcome of focusing only on operational effectiveness.

The long-term, sustainable comparative advantage derived from linking all your major activities and your entire value chain to the themes of righteousness and justice is a result of linking your activities to the structure of fundamental reality. To make this point I might choose to quote my favorite quantum physicist, instead I will draw on a 15th Century Spanish rabbi:

Genuine existence engenders the existence of all of creation. The sublime, inner essences secretly constitute a chain linking everything from the highest to the lowest… There is nothing – not even the tiniest thing – that is not fastened to the links of this chain… The entire chain is one. Down to the last link, everything is linked with everything else; so divine essence is below as well as above, in heaven and on earth. There is nothing else.