Des Moines

When I was at Cisco, the company was like a self-contained city.  There were 65,000 employees at peak worldwide, but they were subdivided into particular suburbs (business units) and power-cliques that transcended business units or geographic boundaries.  Over time, these tribes began to permeate the broader organization as it grew, so you'd find yourself running into the same old people ten years later in a completely different role.

When I got there in 1996, it was the Wild West.  Everyone was working their tails off, sleeping at their desk, tensions and stress were running high, and we were kicking ass.  Political correctness was a capital offense if it got in the way of making the next 20 million for the company.  Over time, as the growth began to slow, people surveyed the fallout of the previous years. They realized they had made enemies (or at least, engendered ill-will) of people that were now in positions of power and strength in groups they needed to work closely with.  I was among many that 'never saw a bridge I didn't immolate'.

The result?  By the post-dot-bomb years, the culture had changed from one of risk-taking to risk-avoidance, and from accountability to political correctness (PC).  You never knew when you were going to bump into the person on the other side of the desk (who completely failed at upholding their commitment/deliverables to the project), or end up working for them.  Critical feedback stopped, people had no accountability to speak of, and it became a culture of keeping the peace versus getting things done.  My last years there were like navigating a mine-field of old grudges, power-blocs, and ego-fests, just in order to add shareholder value.  I sadly learned the catchphrase "Nobody ever got fired for saying 'no' (to perceived risk)."

Des Moines is like that too.

It's a small town, and an even smaller professional working population.  At some levels, the 'bench' is very shallow and the people you meet are practically (if not actually) related. 

When I left Cisco three years ago, and realized that I'd be doing business locally, I started a brain on the people I met and their relations to each other.  It grew rapidly at first, then slowly, then rapidly, and so on. It's essentially a social graph of the connections between everyone I've connected with professionally in the city, who their colleagues, coworkers, golfing buddies, etc. are.  When I met with someone, I'd quickly drop them in the brain so I had context when I came into contact with them again. I followed Albert Einstein's attributed maxim to "never memorize anything you can write down".

Here is what it shows me (and no, before you ask, you may not have a copy.  If this blogpost doesn't get me crucified, that certainly would):

• There are approximately two degrees of separation among everyone I've graphed, which is nearing two thousand people.  Occasionally I'll encounter an outlier, who is also a hub for a hereto-unknown-sphere of individuals, but it's getting increasingly rare. 
• The quantity of tribal knowledge (aka baggage, context) is staggering.  A brief and harmless example is if you are planning on renting an office downtown, you'd benefit from memorizing the original name of every building before you start, not unlike a London cabbie and The Knowledge, because that's the semiotic domain that the commercial real estate world operates within.  It's not 304 15th Street, it's 'The Fitch Building'.  It's not 300 SW 3rd Street, it's 'The Brewery', even though it hasn't been a brewery since before prohibition.
• Everyone has worked with everyone in this city for decades, except for the 'up and comers'.  The up and comers are taking great glee in being the antithesis of PC, and many are cultivating enemies right and left that they'll have the opportunity to encounter over and over again should they opt to not move out of the state (and that is seldom any assurance either, as the dominant industries in town are rather small tribes on a national level anyway). 

What this has resulted in culturally reminds me of how Cisco evolved from '96 to '08.  There is very little honest, open, genuine, critical feedback. People are typically excessively PC or branded a heretic, and risk-taking is lauded publicly while being scorned privately.  There is abundant Schadenfreude in celebrating the failures of your enemies, therefore failure is a Very Bad Thing in this city rather than being accepted as a step on the road to success. 

We've got to change this. 

It's holding us back as a city, and it'll be the bounds that strangle us if we don't outgrow this passive-aggressive PC culture and reinvent ourselves.  We'll calcify, and eventually stop, if we don't take more risks, speak honestly and openly, and hold others accountable for their commitments and actions.  That doesn't mean you should run out, buy a gallon of kerosene and matches, and go hunting for bridges, but that does mean we need to find a sustainable path to taking risk and growing this city if it has any chance of survival.

These views are solely my own, and I will gladly take any and all responsibility.  Someone had to say it.

Comments

[Jensenrf]

I feel like this is the beginning of a much bigger conversation... that probably doesn't need to take place. I agree with a few points and probably guilty of most, if not all. I feel like I get it but at the same time I'm missing the what's next.

Risk taking is great, but I think calling on people who won't take risk is the wrong approach. Even in Des Moines there are people who are creating new opportunities without having to sort through this BS and idea of playing in the community sandbox. We need more of those people, people who just do shit and keep on going.

I have been a talker in this community for a almost three years now. And in 2010 I was just blown away by the people I have never heard of who have just being making things work and entered the scene with a working product.

We need more of those stories. Enough people just making things to reach a point that all of us just talking and building a community get jealous and start doing everything we can to execute and just keep up.

[RHS76]

As an non-entrepreneur, I can't speak as an "up-and-comer" or from the "old guard." From the outside, my perception is that there is a generation "business" gap. As a "cubicle grunt", I never believed in burning bridges with former employers and established professionals. Nor did I showed any arrogance and tried to be independent of "The Man."

I have no idea what these employers are saying to others behind my back if I'm not bad mouthing them. If they are bad mouthing me, I can only hope that my actions and behavior towards people in public and private will trump their internal agendas.

Sometimes, we have to either play or use "the game" to our advantage and to make nice, whether we want to or not. Either have a couple of offensive or defensive plays in your back pocket, or use your natural skills to play a position, whether it's a quarterback or a someone on a kickoff team.

In some ways, I do see the old guard in trying to hold on to their power base, in regards to the evolving business culture. It is not a surprise that former workers in the the corporate world have a sense of distrust. If they are asked to offer ideas on how to make the company efficient and responsive to their customers/client needs, the company doesn't heed them, it get tossed in the trash can for more micromanaging and ideas that have failed over and over again.

Reinventing ourselves is tougher for those like me, who are searching for the path that will ignite our passion and drive.

[Justin Brady]

Des Moines does have issues, but I am not sure it's a PC problem. Its more a trust problem. Why? Because our entrepreneurial community is still quite young. Many young entrepreneurs come into the community with big ideas and the training from the baby boomer "enron" generation that has taught us that other businesses are enemies. Unfortunately these Des Moines entrepreneurs have not yet learned how to work together and listen. They are still protecting their ideas and fearing that someone else will steal it from them. Have you ever seen the startup crowd talk in DSM? I mean really talk and share information / ask for help? Have you?