philip morris and the reversal lockheed martin revolution

doug dean, vice president of r&d of philip morris came for a talk today. the topic description was unbeatable: the revolution that will empower philip morris to survive, given the current and growing restrictions on smoking culture. who doesn't want to know that? who isn't wondering about it?

surprisingly, 3/4 of the talk was HR-related. most of their revolution is based on the aggressive creation of "followership" as the perfect partner for leadership. aggressive, because even the layout of the "Dear John Letters" was discussed during the meeting. the very basics of their HR approach require the surgical removal of politeness in order to provide raw feedback to underperformers:

1) make expectations clear
2) if the competence is not there it must be developed
3) if expected competences are not developed, we'll remove the employee
4) if expectations are met, the employee will be given responsibilities according to their skills.

this is of course revolutionary: it will stimulate a more confident, risk-taking, active, efficient, responsible and reliable followership. this translates into growth. i agree completely on this approach, although it looks a lot like terrorizing employees. but the most interesting thing about this is that, of course, when you stimulate this kind of followership, the whole concept of leadership has to keep up the pace. this means the whole ladder of management must change. that the whole organigram must evolve. and i think that's the difficult part. because those stimulating change usually go for it for as long as it does not affect their own safety. but you can't implement this with 20 management levels.

the other 1/4 of the talk was about what i call the reversal lockheed martin approach. lockheed martin is the major defense partner of the american government (see bowling for columbine). they have been working on more efficient killing as a core business and everybody knows that a significant part of the evolution of technology is actually made of spin-offs of militar tryouts. well, what philip morris tries is the same, but in reverse: they are trying to kill less efficiently. and they are trying to spin off their discoveries in different areas for the benefit of human knowledge.

let's make things clear:

1) smoking kills
2) they know it
3) they won't stop
4) they are trying to minimize the poisonous effect of cigar, but in the meantime...

5) cigar kills just as much.

their r&d tries to understand the genetics behind the absorption of metals by the plant (basic origin of cancer related factors), the functioning of the human body (and why it finds smoking stimulating), the chemistry of combustion (since, surprisingly enough, not too many people really know what happens when tobacco burns) and the efficient production of chemicalia (the improvement of testing and deployment phases, which could be applied to pharmaceuticals and save africa in the blink of an eye).

so far, they've got far enough to realize that most of the damage is done by the burning (do you need a research department for that?). that basically, anything you burn to inhale will eventually kill you (i repeat, you really did not know that?). so they are working on devices that are warm enough release the stimulating power of tobacco but that do not really get to "burn" it.

that's nice.

but they're not removing the nicotine, they said. nicotine is the addictive thing, by the way.

in any case, that's the future.

in the meantime, everything written on the box of marlboros is still the truth.

smoking still kills, thus. they are still killing. they just promise they will stop killing. soon. they don't really know when.

i mean. imagine i'm a killer. a rich killer. i have been killing people for a while. everybody knows it. the families of the victims hate me. i recognize my crime. yet, i don't go to jail because i'm rich enough. and i know that. isn't it the most insulting thing of the world to say, openly, that i will stop killing soon??? wouldn't you just lynch me???