The mind of a fox. Clem Sunter
Hedgehogs are generally non-confrontational. Whereas foxes will readily enter a fight, hedgehogs prefer to roll up in a ball and use their protective spikes to deter any challenge, especially from foxes. Nevertheless, foxes are carnivorous and are not unknown to make a tasty meal of sleepy hedgehogs. And gypsies have been known to bake them in a covering of clay.
Foxes? Hedgehogs? What have these got to do with golf? And more importantly, what can we learn from distinguishing between them? This book attempts to uncover the mind of a fox. What makes someone a fox? How does a fox manoeuvre not only through the game of business, but also through the game of life? In order to gain an insight into the versatile mind of the fox, we need to compare it to the stiffer persona of the staid hedgehog.
In brief, a hedgehog is a person who believes that life revolves around one big idea, one ultimate truth and that if only we can get at that idea or truth, everything else will come right. Once programmed or hooked on an idea, or even worse an ideology, a hedgehog cannot shake it off. Alternatives are irrelevant. As opposed to searching for a hypothesis which most closely fits the facts, a hedgehog will shoehorn the facts into something which will support his ideology, however much the arguments have to be distorted.
A fox, in contrast to a hedgehog, is someone who believes that life is all about knowing many things. Foxes are people who embrace uncertainty and believe that experience – doing things – is an essential source of knowledge. Action sorts out the sheep from the goats! Moreover, like good golfers know that an excellent sub-par round is only built up one shot at a time, foxes depend upon an incremental approach to change the status quo. Life very rarely confronts you with life-changing experiences. Rather, the transformation of your prospects is the result of many small steps taken one at a time, with little knowledge in advance of what the next step will be until it presents itself. Hence, foxes understand that it is a waste of time trying to delineate an exact path into the long-term future. Crossroads upon crossroads upon crossroads await you. You take the turning you like at the time, and you never look over your shoulder. Consequently, while hedgehogs like to bury themselves in certainty and cloister themselves from disruptive influences, foxes enthusiastically forage for new ideas and explore new routes in the quest of developing a wider range of options for nourishment. In pursuing this course, foxes rely as much on intuition and imagination as they do on their reason and senses. James Dyson, a well-known and very foxy British inventor, puts his success down to his obsession for detail and never-say-die approach to problem-solving: “Once you begin to break down a problem into little bits and tackle each one you find a solution.” Voilà – he has completely redesigned the vacuum cleaner, the wheelbarrow and the washing machine and is worth £500 million.
Returning to the world of golf, how would a hedgehog like golfer differ from Tiger Woods? Firstly, he would have a pre-tournament press conference at which he would expand at great length on his vision and strategic plan for the event. If conditions during the tournament were exactly as predicted in his plan and he played the course exactly as he had anticipated, he might win it. But if the weather was different, the course tougher, and things did not go according to plan, he would end up with a series of lousy scores and his name way down the list. He might even call a post-tournament conference to complain how things totally beyond his control had led to his demise: for example, the state of the greens, the newness of his clubs or the unruly nature of the spectators. Hedgehogs can be bad losers cum laude!
Resilience is where Tiger has such an advantage over his fellow competitors, and permits him to win by such large margins in tournaments. For the reality is that things seldom go according to plan for any player, however consistent he is; and Tiger is more consistent than most. Where Tiger puts clear blue water between himself and the rest of the field is his ability to turn adversity into opportunity. When he hits a wayward shot, his powers of recovery are sublime. If his drive ends up behind a tree, he can hook or slice his iron shot so that the ball bends in flight and lands on the green. From “unplayable” lies just off the putting surface, he invents a chip shot which leaves his ball centimetres from the hole. He holes long putts when he needs to. He can stop a shot in mid-swing when he hears the inopportune click of a spectator’s camera shutter.
Tiger has the strength, the touch and the imagination to be the champion. In addition, he possesses the vital characteristic of BMT or big match temperament. None of these qualities is spontaneously acquired. Admittedly, in Tiger’s case, he always had the potential; his father spotted it at the age of three. However, his current prowess has arisen from years of preparation, hard physical training and focus. He can make those minor adjustments to his game which are crucial to his victories precisely because, more than any other mortal on earth, he has achieved mastery over what he can control – his shot-making. He has the flexibility because he has the focus. This may sound contradictory! Nevertheless, we are going to show you later in the book that focusing one’s energy is a prerequisite for the capacity to manoeuvre out of difficult situations.
Two boardroom species
As in golf, so in business there are plenty of hedgehog CEOs. Some achieve spectacular results in terms of earnings-per-share growth and capital appreciation for shareholders. But their companies have invariably been fortunate enough to experience business conditions in line with their own wishes or reflecting the assumptions contained in their strategic plans. It is only when the future branches off in an unexpected and undesired direction that the mettle of a CEO is tested and you can tell whether he is a fox or a hedgehog.
An obvious indicator of a hedgehog CEO is that he shoots the equivalent of a golf score in the upper 90s when he experiences the unexpected. Then he explains in the annual report and to members at the annual general meeting how the mess is due to adverse factors beyond his control; but the company is doing something about it! When things go badly on the golf course, cheating hedgehogs have been known to move their balls surreptitiously to better lies by employing the “foot wedge” – another name for an adroit little kick. The other tactic is to replace the ball nearer the hole on the green after cleaning it. In competition, hedgehog “ringers” might even enter a better score on their cards than they actually achieved; or bolster their handicaps beforehand by logging in artificially high scores. In business, the hedgehog equivalent is to use strong-arm tactics to retain market share, be unmerciful towards suppliers, bully the employees or subtly embroider the accounts. In the short term, hedgehogs have lots of ways of covering up bad track records! The amazing thing is that hedgehog CEOs can still come out smelling like roses and pay themselves huge bonuses with the full support of the board’s remuneration committee. A recent UK study showed that there is no correlation whatsoever between CEOs’ pay and performance.
On the other hand, Tiger Woods has to perform within the rules to be paid. If he didn’t regularly shoot rounds in the 60s, if his name wasn’t regularly at the top of the leader board, he wouldn’t get the sponsorship fees or prize money. Tiger cannot bamboozle anyone with fine statements of intent about strategic restructuring or repositioning. His clubs do the talking and the results speak for themselves!
The examples chosen from golf and business highlight how different a hedgehog is from a fox. Hedgehogs are inflexible and slow to move. However, once they start on a course, they don’t deviate. Inertia sets in. Because so many hedgehogs in the animal kingdom have been flattened by cars, they now have their own tunnels excavated for them under motorways by caring preservation societies. Colin Powell, the American secretary of state who was previously an army man, makes it clear in his autobiography that he despises military people in the hedgehog mould. They are immaculately dressed but make little practical contribution. According to Powell, all they do is “break starch”, namely put on trousers that have been starched to perfection. In other words, hedgehogs are conspicuous at military parades, bristling with importance and marching to the thump of the big bass drum. But they are seldom seen in the trenches doing the actual fighting and showing courage under fire.
By contrast, foxes are quick to make changes in their actual behaviour. Occasionally, these are large changes, as when Reynard the fox leaps out of the chicken coop when he sees Farmer Giles coming out of the farmhouse door with his shotgun! Their intuitive response is what allows them to survive in a changing environment. One point which is constantly missed by management text books and business school courses is that 80 per cent of the success of world-class companies