A Short Review "Obliquity" by John Kay
Since the Pacific lies to the West of the Atlantic one might think that the quickest route from the Atlantic to the Pacific would like in a westerly direction across the Isthmus of Panama. Not true. The Panama Canal, which presumably follows the best route, proceeds to the Pacific in a southeasterly direction. That fact illustrates exactly what John Kay means when he says that the best solutions are not always the most obvious or direct ones.
This will come as no surprise to many people who have found for themselves that happiness is often not found when pursued directly but often pops up unexpectedly when working for an end that is bigger than themselves.
When people are striving hard to achieve goals that are almost at the limit of their ability they are often described as being `In flow', and will frequently describe those times as being amongst the best in their lives, although they would be too busy to work out whether they are happy or not at the time.
As Professor Kay says, "Happiness is where you find it, not where you go in search of it".
Likewise companies that focus entirely on the bottom line often end up doing far less well than companies that regard the profit as only one of the measures of their success. When ICI's stated aim was to be the world's leading chemical company it made great profits. When it started to focus primarily on short term shareholder returns it briefly became more profitable and then declined relentlessly until it ceased to exist as an independent company.
Similarly Boeing was the world's leading aircraft company while it focused primarily on building good aeroplanes. When they imported the management from an ailing rival, which might have been a warning in itself, short term shareholder returns came to the fore, symbolised by moving the HQ to Chicago to be close to where the lobbying could be done, and the company entered a period which few remember with pride.
John Kay gives numerous examples of companies that made great profits while they strove to be the best in their field and fell to mediocrity when quarterly returns became their guiding star.
If it was true that the direct route to achieving success was the best then the Soviet system of central planning would have been more successful. However it is generally acknowledged that the more oblique approach of market capitalism, with its trial and error approach, has worked better.
Similarly no one could fault the excellence of the planning and logistics that McNamara brought to bear on the North Vietnamese, but the Viet Cong's more oblique approach triumphed. In fact in the world of the military it is axiomatic that obliquity often triumphs as the direct approach is far less likely to have the element of surprise.
It might be said that the oblique approach often starts with redefining a problem, focusing on the end goal and not getting tangled in steps and targets along the way. In fact, with each different iteration of the process of solving a problem, the issue at stake becomes better and better defined. Thus obliquity often works in a loop and reaches a solution to a problem that could only have been loosely defined at the outset. In this way great businesses often prosper by meeting needs that customers did not know they had until the products that satisfied these needs had been created.
Models are useful tools. However a model is only useful if it simplifies, and that means that it leaves out a lot of the detail. Think of the Tube Map for instance. The original version superimposed the lines on a topographical map so it was more accurate in a way, but nothing like as useful Harry Beck's simplified version. However a model may beautiful enough to win its creator a Nobel Prize and yet it may fail when confronted with reality. Long Term Capital Management's system was intellectually brilliant but nearly brought down the western banking system. If a model had all the details in it, it would be reality, not a model. The map is not, and cannot be, the territory.
Systems that have evolved are often better than those that been designed from scratch. This is one of the paradoxes of obliquity - as Kay says, "Adaption is smarter than you are". For this reason re-engineering an organisation is often not the best answer. What may work better is trying systems that have successfully evolved elsewhere.
Many businesses have become very successful by pursuing unquantifiable but meaningful objectives that resulted in good returns and excellent careers for their employees. It is not true to say that they were, in fact, just trying to maximise profits.
The idea that people are always behaving in a rational manner to maximise their returns has spread from business to the social sciences. Obliquity shows that this is a gross oversimplification, and calls for a reexamination of this thinking which has dominated this field for two generations.
Consistency of opinion too can be overrated. Some might agree with F. Scott Fitzgerald that a sign of a mature person is to be able to hold two opposing views in mind at the same time, and yet still retain the ability to function.
A common fault in evaluating situations is to know what conclusions you would like to reach and to work the reasoning back from there. Dodgy dossiers ?
Yet another common trap for people is the illusion that they know more than they do. Bankers whose arrogance and stupidity allowed them to be led to disaster by following their models without question fall into this category.
An oblique approach will allow you to learn more and more about a problem as you work on it. Indeed when starting a new project it may suffice to have a general aim in mind and to allow the precise objectives to crystallise as you work on it. There are strong similarities here to the Deming Cycle:
Plan Do Check Act Plan Do Check Act etc..
Professor Kay concludes "Obliquity" by mentioning another oblique way of crossing North America.
I conclude by saying that no short review can do justice the important ideas in "Obliquity". However the roots of this book lie in an article that John Kay wrote for the FT years ago. Many of us who read it at the time thought that his ideas deserved a fuller exposition, and are most grateful to him for providing it.
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- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 6 April 2010
- Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 April 2010
Top reviews from other countries
- Alessandro CioffiReviewed in Italy on 26 March 2025
Rory tricked me...
Rory Sutherland said during an interview that this book was amazing, loving his book and interviews i bought it quickily...Alessandro CioffiRory tricked me...
Reviewed in Italy on 26 March 2025
no insight in lateral thinking, very high level and almost trival comments, often also imprecise.
horrible. wrote this at page 110/180 c.a. if improves will come to change my review, but doubt it...
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- Robert MorrisReviewed in the United States on 28 April 2014
"Tell all the truth but tell it slant. Success in circuit lies." Emily Dickinson
