The Pentagon, about to get its budget cut, reminds me of some marketing organizations I know. They only have one lever. Spending. If you take away their spend lever, they are out of ideas. When you affect change only by applying resources, you build a culture that gets really good at buying things. For the military, it's weapons programs. For marketing departments, it's media spending. Spend more, get results, run out of money. Spend less, miss targets, lose your job. That's how procurements cultures become unsustainable in our new shared economic reality.
Any organization that can't identify how much is enough is in trouble. There is no controlled way to determine when you have enough money, time or good luck. Everyone could always use a little more of... whatever. When these cultures make buying the main agent of change, they push out the culture of creation.
In many corporations, creation and customer experience have moved to the product development department. Marketing is left to be a clearinghouse for media dollars. Blame it on TV in part, which rewards mega-spends with brute force results in reach and frequency. But yelling does little to earn good will among customers.
There are creators in every functioning organization. It's up to leadership to build a culture that fosters invention. Even the Pentagon, home of the $500 Army toilet seat, produced Seal Team 6 and its like. No organization is hopeless in this regard. We all just need to take a close look at the levers we give our people to do their jobs and take responsibility for the results we get.
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