A few years ago, i had a custom set of wheels made for my bike. I had the rims specifically weighed and picked out of a set of about 10 rims. I had the spokes weighed and balanced to make sure they were the lightest ones. The spoke nipples (the threaded parts that are basically nut that the spokes attach to the rims through) were color matched to the paint on my bike. all said, the wheels weighed about 1435 grams. Not crazy light, but pretty darn light. And they were fairly aerodynamic having decently deep rims and bladed spokes to cut through wind. Being aerodynamic, they cut through wind pretty well, and being light, they accelerated and climbed well. But custom rims cannot be laced as tight as some of the manufactured wheels out there. The one thing I lacked was the stability that comes from an incredibly tightly laced wheel.
I decided to give up my beloved wheel set and get a mass produced one (ok, so I have not yet seen another set of my wheels on the road, but still, they are not custom wheels). They happen to be just as light, almost as aerodynamic, and insanely sturdy. There is so little flex in my wheels that on hard corners going downhill at 45 mph, I have absolute confidence in them and I know exactly what they are going to do. Nonetheless, it was a hard decision to make, to replace my perfectly good older wheels.
I’ll admit. Even I talk too much about governance and the structure and network it takes to have a good governance model. But regardless of the model, it is not about your governance model, its about the effectiveness of your decisions. Do you make the right decisions? How fast do you make a decision? How often do you execute your decisions as planned?
You can have a great governance model. You can be totally well informed about what goes on in the organization based on working groups that inform you about the state of HR. You can be well networked and statused. And with all of that, you can still make the wrong decisions or avoid making decisions.
I have seen organizations where the governance model was to include so many people in the decision that at the end of the day, nobody wanted to be accountable for the final decision. The group would reach a point of consensus so that if anything went wrong, nobody had to take accountability, and they were all both blameless and at fault. It was also an environment where when the group was close to consensus, if someone saw something was clearly wrong, nobody would stand up for fear of being the one having to be accountable for a different decision. It was a governance model. It was inclusive, well networked, but it turned out it was a bad model. Either nothing got done, or often, the wrong things got done. When it comes right down to it, you need to be inclusive and networked in the governance model, but you also need to be able to react quickly and authoritatively when the circumstances call for it. You need to have accountability for the decision that is separate from accountability for the execution and implementation of that decision. And you need to have the ability and the willingness to switch gears in the middle when you realize that something is either wrong, or jut that something could be better.
I had. Perfectly good bike, with perfectly good wheels. I’m continuously amazed at the quality of my new ride. It feels smoother when i ride over bumps, more solid when I ride down a hill, but jut as light and aerodynamic. I was the right decision to make, even though it pained me to make it.
