Off the Shelf

Vision and Amazing Grace

Mike Hyatt’s recent post on Vision and Strategy is right on. Vision must come before strategy.

I went to the movies the weekend and saw Mike’s Blog post manifested on the big screen. Amazing Grace is the story of William Wilberforce and how his vision and faith led him to help change the world. Wilberforce was a deeply religious English member of parliament and social reformer who was very influential in the abolition of the slave trade and eventually slavery itself in the British Empire. It’s a very good movie and not only gives us a glimpse of history, but a tremendous lesson of leadership.

It’s vision that keeps Wilberforce going in spite of tremendous odds against him and when his own vision begins to wane due to the stress of illness, his wife’s vision re-ignites Wilberforce’s efforts. Consequently, the best strategy comes years after the members of parliament resolutely reject Wilberforce’s first bill to abolish slave trading. It’s vision that keeps him going and it’s vision that wins in the long run.

What’s your vision and how has it kept you going in spite of the odds?

The Flexible Culture

When an organization wants to impact product development and innovation they tend to create a culture steeped in Involvement and Adaptability. These are highly creative companies that quickly respond to customer and employees changing needs.

We spoke recently about cultures high in Involvement. To quickly review, they empower people, build teams and take time to develop organizational capability. They see that decisions are made at the lowest possible levels, ensure the right resources are available to tackle any job, encourage others to take responsibility, know how to use teams to execute projects, values employee’s contributions and strongly encourages a diverse workforce with lots of coaching and teaching.

Adaptability looks like this:

A culture that Creates Changes

• Encourages creative thinking
• Challenges “the way we’ve always done things”
• Generates innovative ideas and solutions to problems

A culture that Emphasizes Customer Focus

• Encourages direct contact with customers
• Responds quickly and effectively to customer feedback
• Actively seeks feedback from customers and continuously tries to improve service to them

A culture that Promotes Organizational Learning

• Deals constructively with failure and mistakes
• Creates a “learning” working environment
• Encourages employees to understand industry best practices
• Openly accepts criticism without being defensive

You can see that the Flexible Culture (Involvement and Adaptability) is responsive. They make decisions based on employee and customer involvement. You can also see how this type of culture could easily fail if they didn’t also have some level of Consistency and Mission within the organization to balance the outward focus and extreme flexibility. Digital electronics companies easily fall into this category. The industry is moving so quickly and the customer has so many demands, they need to remain nimble. Yet, they also need a high-quality product and have their employees looking to a core, driving mission – something that leaders like Steve Jobs has taken to incredible levels within Apple. He, among others, has been able to be flexible without losing quality or drift from the company mission.

We’ll look at one more culture type next time, and then begin to examine the importance of balance within any culture. Stay tuned.

We Are the Culture

Let’s take a break from the 4 pillars of culture and examine for a second how we (employees and leaders) can affect a culture. It’s simple, just not easy and it starts and ends with us.

If we don’t like “the way we do things around here”, then it’s up to us the change it. The fact is, if we wait for someone else, it will never happen. Now let me say clearly that I’m not advocating anything dishonest. I’m not saying that if you feel disenfranchised in the current culture that you need to put on a beret and pull a coup d’etat. I am saying that you have much more power than you think you do in order to bring the best culture to bear on your organization.

Do you need to have more consistency (to pick on of Denison’s pillars) in your work environment? Then determine what you can do today to bring about changes that reflect the attributes I discussed in my Blog post about the Internal Culture. Do you need more Involvement? What’s your plan to get people involved? And this applies whether you run the joint or work part time. The answer is in your hands. The changes needed to bring about the radical shift start with you. It will take time and energy, but it will be worth it, believe me.

Your attitude is key in all this. Ever read the parable in the Bible of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32)? To quickly paraphrase, it’s a story of two sons. The younger son asks for his inheritance early, blows it, realizes his mistake, comes home and reconciles with his father. The other brother sees all this happen and his response, when he sees his brother’s return and reconcile with his father, is bitterness and distance.

One of the lessons for us is that if we have an attitude of bitterness and distance, we’ll never change our circumstances. The culture, “the way we do things around here”, will stay exactly as it is unless our attitude is moved away from bitterness and distance to commitment and desire to make things better. Remember I said it was simple, just not easy. It's a lesson I'm learning every day. The good news is, you can too.

So let me ask you, what do you think about your organization’s culture and how can you take baby steps today to bring about the long-term changes necessary for it to become the right culture to make your organization/department/ministry/retail store great?

The Internal Culture

In my last posting I defined the Stable Culture – one made up of a tremendous amount of Mission and Consistency. Certainly we want our financial institutions to fit this mold and other companies (or departments) we trust with routine or exacting processes.

In this post I will define the Internal Culture. This is a culture that impacts quality, employee satisfaction and Return on Investment. The Internal Culture focuses upon Consistency and Involvement as the primary pillars from Denison’s four-pillar analysis.

CONSISTENCY
As I pointed out in the last post, a culture with Consistency spends time defining core values, works to reach agreement and manages coordination and integration very well. They “do the right thing” and “practice what they preach”. Consistent cultures work hard to help people reach consensus and promote positive discussion of all issues. They also work hard to foster alignment of goals across functional areas of the business.

They strive to define and practice their values, discuss and reach consensus, then integrate the issues cross-functionally with a high degree of communication and contact.

INVOLVEMENT
Cultures that focus on Involvement:
Empower People
• Decisions are made at the lowest possible level
• Create an environment where everyone feels his/her efforts can make a difference
• Encourage people to take responsibility
Build Team Orientation
• Build effective teams that get the job done
• Designs work so it can be done by a team
• Acknowledges and celebrates team accomplishments
Develop Organizational Capability
• Coaches others in skill development
• Is sensitive to diversity issues
• Develops people so they can be promoted – the organization always has great “bench strength”.

Too often companies who are seeking to improve quality only focus on the processes (Consistency). They forget their people and simply create more rules and policies. If you as a leader truly believe a department or company lacks quality go to your people for the answer. Building Involvement along with Consistency will bring you the change you are seeking. Toyota and Honda are two examples of this. They have tremendously successful methods, and they also have been tremendously successful at people development, empowerment and using rewards and recognition to motivate people. Polices and consistent methods are important, but a committed, involved workforce is absolutely key to helping a company or department with pursuing quality and improving ROI.

What about your business? Do you see the need for more Internal focus? Tell us your story.

The Stable Culture

In my last post I referred to Daniel Denison and his work on the link between organization culture and bottom-line performance measures such as ROI, ROA, Sales Growth, Quality and Employee Satisfaction. The Denison Model, made up of four culture traits, Mission, Consistency, Involvement, and Adaptability, serves as the basis for the Denison Organizational Culture Survey and the Denison Leadership Development Survey that are tremendously helpful tools.

While each trait is important and part of any culture, certain combined sets of traits have proven to produce certain organizational results. We’ll look at the combination that produces the Stable Culture in this post.

A focus on Mission and Consistency produce the Stable Culture. Companies that focus on Mission and Consistency impact such measure as Return on Assets, Return on Investment and Return on Sales.

Within the traits, certain building blocks must be involved to create Mission and Consistency and leaders who want to create stability as well as solid ROA, ROI and quality should focus on these:

MISSION
Strategic Direction and Intent – Companies who want to focus on Mission need to make certain that strategic direction is not only communicated but also executed. It’s a matter of communication and delivery. They also focus on long-term strategies.

Goals and Objectives – Mission-driven companies set goals and objectives from the top down. People are not confused where the ship is heading and they know if they meet their goals that it will get there. They involve employees in the goal-setting process and they find ways to track progress. All goals are aligned with the vision.

Vision – All people will have a clear understanding of the vision. That means it’s easy to understand, grasp and communicate to others. It’s the lighthouse beacon that keeps the ships from straying off course. In mission-driven organizations it rarely changes. They make it so everyone sees the connection between mission and daily activities.

CONSISTENCY
Coordination and Integration – Companies that score high in consistency have tremendous coordination and integration within the organization. Things like project hand offs, goal alignment, policies, and procedures are probably well documented and rarely change. Integrated companies strive to use informal networks to get things done and do well in cross-functional projects. They also build support through contacts with other departments or units.

Agreement – Companies who score high in consistency work hard to help people reach consensus, even on difficult issues. They relish in bringing out diverse opinions when making decisions and they promote constructive discussion among people with conflicting ideas. They seek win/win solutions whenever disagreements occur and they seek to clarify and understand other’s points of view when there are differences.

Core Values – Consistent companies do “the right thing” even when it unpopular. They walk the talk and have an established ethical code that guides their behavior and is non-negotiable. The core values shape the standards and employees actively use the core values are filters for working with others. In other words, their “yes” means “yes” and their “no,” means “no”.

Leaders seeking a Stable Culture need to focus thier leadership style on Mission and Consistency. They need to develop ways within the organization to bring vision, values, agreement, coordination, a long-term view and strategic intent into play every day.

Culture and Effectiveness

Daniel Denison is one of my favorite spokespersons on corporate culture. What I appreciate most about Denison is his research showing how culture leads to corporate effectiveness (results). Denison has developed several tools to help companies understand their culture and the measures are strong predictors of future financial performance of the organization In other words, the culture you as a leader create leads to predictable financial and market outcomes. Further, if you want to change your current outcomes, look at what changes you need to make in your culture in order to reach the vision or goals you have established.

Last week I began to take my leadership team through Denison’s model. My plan is to use this Blog as a training tool for them, and anyone who reads the next few posts.

The Beginning:

As a first step, let me share with you from Denison’s book, Corporate Culture and Organizational Effectiveness.

1. Effectiveness (or lack of it) is a function of the values and beliefs held by the members of an organization. Shared values and beliefs become the fundamental basis of coordinated action within the organization. This involves mission and the consistency in which the organization holds to the mission and the beliefs and/or assumptions held by the organization.

2. Effectiveness is a function of the policies and practices used by an organization. H/R strategy, internal environment, conflict resolution, planning or making decisions all create a culture have impact upon an organization’s level of effectiveness.

3. Effectiveness is a function of translating the core values and beliefs into policies and practices in a consistent manner. Building a strong culture demands that vision and practices are consistent throughout the organization. Leaders need to not only preach, but also walk the talk consistently with the core values and beliefs.

4. Effectiveness is a function of the interrelation of core values and beliefs, organizational policies and practices, and the business environment of the organization. There is a strong correlation between effectiveness and this interaction. If the interaction is muddied (in the eyes of the employees or customers) or inconsistent the resulting culture may not reach the intended result(s).

Over the next several posts we’ll look at Denison’s concepts and tools. We’ll learn how each shapes an organization to be effective in certain areas of business -- one concept may produce high profitability, while another (or combination of two) may achieve high revenues and customer service. We’ll also discuss how you can apply each concept to your business with some real examples and thought starters. I would really enjoy hearing your thoughts and feedback about your organization.

The right corporate culture for your organization can create an effective enterprise that serves not only customers but employees and shareholders/owners as well.