Businesses often spend a lot of time drafting or revising statements of vision, mission, values, etc., but hardly enough time trying to align the organization with its statements. Management scientist Jim Collins reminds managers that this method of allocating time is top-heavy. It is important to "align" the organization with the values in the sense of concrete actions and details.
Today's article comes from Jim Collins' valuable lesson on corporate culture, which not only prompts companies to sort out the key points of values, but also introduces the "alignment" method, sorting out values, practices, and strategies, and helping companies to formulate a clearer vision and move towards a sustainable business.
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By looking closely at the remarkable organizations, it is clear that they are focused primarily on the process of building "consistency" rather than on drafting perfect "statements."
This is not to say that there is no need to spend time thinking about things like ," what are our core values? "What is the root cause of our existence?" "What do we aspire to achieve and become?" These fundamental questions. In fact, these are very important questions that are in line with the "vision" of the organization. Vision is one of the least understood and most used terms in expression.
The vision is a combination of three basic elements:
(1) the root cause of an organization's existence; (not just making money, often referred to as its mission or purpose);
(2) its timeless core values;
(3) Bold goals.
Among them, for a superior and enduring organization, the most important is its core values.
01 The focus is on "aligning" the organization with the values
An organization with a vision statement and an organization with a real vision are far from each other. The difference is in building consistency to uphold an organization's core values, strengthen its mission, and drive it toward its goals. When you have excellent consistency, even if a visitor from another planet accidentally hits your organization, you can deduce your vision without having to read it on paper.
In fact, for organizations like HP, 3M, and Johnson & Johnson, their founders often didn't have vision statements early on. They usually start with a strong set of personal core values and a relentless pursuit of progress, and importantly they have an extraordinary ability to translate those values into concrete mechanisms.
For example, 3M has always had its own core values: supporting innovation, protecting creative individuals, and solving problems in ways that make people's lives better, which define the organization and give it its soul.
But what really sets 3M apart is its leadership's ability over the years to create mechanisms that put these principles into practice and translate them into action.
In the transformation of enterprises from excellent to excellent, there is no single decisive innovation, no amazing innovation, and there will be no lucky mutation and instantaneous miracle.
For example, 3M allows scientists to spend 15% of their time on anything they're interested in, requires departments to generate 30% of their revenue from new products launched over the past four years, has an active internal venture capital fund to support promising new ventures, retains a dual career track to encourage innovators to stay innovative rather than become managers, awards prestigious awards for innovation and entrepreneurial success, and more.
I don't even know if 3M has a formal "values statement", but because of its consistency in organization and values, I know 3M's core values very well, and I believe anyone familiar with it and how it works knows it.
02 "Alignment" method: specific, concrete
Creating consistency in organization and values is divided into two parts. The first is to identify and correct misalignments. Then there's the creation of new alignments, which I call the "closure mechanism." I'm going to talk about this process because it applies primarily to core values and also to creating alignment with goals, ambitious goals.
Identify and correct imbalances
Identifying misalignment means looking around the organization, talking to people, and getting opinions: "If these are our core values, and that's the root cause of our existence, then what are the obstacles that stand in our way?" ”
For example, many organizations say they respect and trust employees to do the right thing, but they actually undermine that statement by doing X, Y, and Z. The bias is not because these statements are wrong — these companies believe what they say — but because years of ad hoc policies and practices have institutionalized and obscured the fundamental values of the companies.
For example, suppose an organization launches a new service without coordinating its internal processes, which creates problems for customers. To ensure that this does not happen again, managers have developed a sign-off process for each new service introduced. Long after people forgot why it was created, the system is still in operation. Subsequently, people in the organization complained from time to time about the organization's elaborate signature process, recognizing that it was inconsistent with the values of respect and trust in the individual.
In fact, this is the lag of organizational behavior on values. Therefore, the leader's top priority is to create an environment and processes that enable people to safely identify and eliminate these deviations.
I recommend working with people across the organization. Mobilize everyone to identify points in their day-to-day work that do not align with the core values of the organization. This can be done by randomly dividing organization members into three to six groups, each of which presents three of the most significant imbalances. Suppose there are 24 people, divided into four groups, each of whom proposes three imbalance points for core values. Take a look at what you will find? The same imbalance was found in each group!
This process allows your organization to quickly identify four or five of the most serious disorders, rather than relying on private finger-pointing. Once you agree that the emperor has no clothes, you can start dressing him.
Create new alignments
It's one thing to eliminate dissonances that already exist but shouldn't be, it's quite another to create something that doesn't exist but should exist. Consistency alone is not enough, true alignment requires creative problem solving. Take, for example, a granite company that won the Baldrige Prize in 1992 as a small building materials business. Company support is constantly improving customer satisfaction, they tell customers: "If there is an order that you don't like, don't pay us." Deduct this amount from the invoice and send us a check for the balance. "They call this practice a short salary, which I call a bay thorn or a gear device.
Many successful organizations are stuck in their own way, but Granite is the opposite. They designed a system that makes it difficult for people to be complacent about continuously improving customer satisfaction. Without a short salary, Granite is not necessarily unstable, but this is far beyond what other organizations usually do. Similarly, 3M can simply say, "We don't get in the way of innovators." "It was good. But this is very different from the creation mechanism, such as requiring 30% of revenue to come from new products. By establishing these reinforcement mechanisms, Granite and 3M make their value realized.
Let's take another example. It's easy to say, "There should be more training for new entrants to understand our value system," but that doesn't create alignment. Alignment will develop a process in which all new employees will go through an 8-hour induction session within 48 hours of onboarding to understand what the organization is about. They will study the history and philosophy of the organization, meeting with an executive. Look, it's concrete, it's about the details.
Suppose one of your core values is to encourage employees to participate in decision-making and contribute creativity, so you want to encourage people across your organization to provide input and ideas, so you create an opinion box. Is that alignment? Yes, it's an alignment mechanism, but to make it a really effective one, you have to understand the concept more deeply.
Instead of placing comment boxes on a separate hallway, consider placing comment boxes in each hallway, conference room, and lunch room —people may be generating ideas anywhere, not just staying in one place. Add a commitment to this mobilization, and each submission (anonymous or real name) will be publicly responded within 48 hours in the form of a statement with an explanation of what will be done and who is responsible for completing it. In addition, give recognition, prizes or bonuses to the best ideas and suggestions, and even randomly give a "thank you for your investment award" to all those who have given suggestions. This is alignment.
03 Core values are eternal
Core values are embraced,
Not "implanted" to someone else
When describing the alignment process, I assume that your organization has identified core values—that's a big assumption. On this basis, let me make some suggestions.
First of all, you can't "set" organizational values, you can only discover them. Nor can you "implant" new core values into people. Core values are not something that people "buy". People have to tend to hold them.
Executives often ask me, "How do we get people to share our core values?" ”
The task is to find people who have tended to share your core values. You have to attract and retain these people and let those who aren't willing to share your core values move elsewhere.
I've never encountered an organization that can't recognize a common set of values, even a global organization of people from different cultural backgrounds. The key is to start with the individual and then get into the organization.
One way to determine your organization's true core values is to form a "Mars group." Imagine you're asked to reproduce the best features of your organization on another planet, but you only have 5 or 7 seats on your rocket, so who would you send? They may have a deep understanding of your core values, be the most reliable and capable of their peers. I often ask a group of 50 or 60 people to nominate a Mars group of 5-7 people, and they will end up choosing a strong, credible team that can express core values brilliantly because they are themselves the epitome of those values.
Please note: Top management must have enough confidence to trust the work of the Mars group. What experience has seen, as seen by executives willing to take that risk, will find that the panel identified the values of the organization that executives are trying to impose from above, an experience that reinforces managers' beliefs about the core nature of the values.
The Mars team should try to solve some fundamental questions: What core values do you bring to your work? Do you think these values are fundamental enough that you stick to them whether they're rewarded or not? How do you describe to your loved ones the core values you represent at work and the values you want them to represent at work? If you woke up tomorrow morning with enough money to retire for the rest of your life, would you continue to uphold those core values? Even, can you imagine these values still working 100 years later? Do you want your organization to continue to maintain these values, even if one or more of them become competitively disadvantaged in some way? If you were to start a new organization tomorrow in a different way of working, what core values would you establish in the new organization regardless of its activities?
The last three questions are key because they help groups make a crucial distinction: core values are timeless and do not change, while practices and strategies should change in time.
Differentiate between values, practices and strategies: change means change
Every agency, whether for-profit or nonprofit, must grapple with a vexing question: What should change and what should never change? It is a matter of distinguishing timeless core values from business practices and cultural norms. Timeless core values should never change; business practices and cultural norms should never stop changing.
For example, an eternal core value of academic institutions is the freedom of intellectual inquiry. One approach in support of this core value is academic tenure. But there is a lot of evidence that the practice of tenure may need to be changed or abandoned because it no longer serves the purpose for which it was created.
But if I suggest that academic institutions seriously consider changing tenure, the average academic might say, "Never!" "You're violating our core values." But this protest stems from a failure to distinguish between values and practices: the core value is freedom to explore, and tenure is a practice. Often, agencies stubbornly stick to those usual practices, and as a result, they don't change what should change.
Defending obsolete practices under the banner of core values may actually be a betrayal of true core values.
Your core values and goals, if conceived properly, remain fixed. Everything else, practices, strategies, structures, systems, policies and procedures, should be open. The confusion between the concept of eternity and the concept of time arises in all aspects of life. At the national level, for example, the president of the United States said, "We can't touch Medicaid in its current form because it would be inconsistent with the nation's core values." But if you take out the Declaration of Independence and Lincoln's Gettysburg Address and look at our position and the reasons for our existence from these two great statements, you won't see anything about Medicaid. This confusion, whether intentional or unintentional, has impeded debate, let alone changed.
Finally, how do you have an off-site retreat?
Many times, off-site retreats are a wasted opportunity, and most organizations use it the wrong way.
When you spend a few days drafting and revising a "statement of values," stop all ineffective practices, especially year after year. Instead, come together to discuss: How does our consistency work? What progress have we made in eliminating dissonance? Do we need to adjust last year's decision? Let this be an ongoing process. Your values are fixed at the very bottom, you only need to do it once, and the rest is to patch up the organization.
Typically, executives spend a fraction of their time and effort gaining understanding, a small portion of creating consistency, and the vast majority of their time and efforts documenting and writing a statement. In fact, the allocation of time and energy is almost reversed.
You should spend a lot of time gaining understanding, recording your understanding with a small percentage, and most of your time should be creating alignment. In short, focus on what you do as an organization, not what you say.
Never think of your organization,
What a great achievement has been achieved.
Jim Collins
Known as one of the most important management thinkers of the 21st century, The Virstar Speaker is a world-renowned management expert and best-selling author, one of the fifteen people who influenced Chinese management, and has won the Stanford University School of Business Outstanding Teaching Award. He plays a dual role as a mentor and a trainee in his quest for "how to make great companies." He is also a Socratic advisor to leaders in business and society. In more than 30 years of rigorous discipline, he has authored or co-authored a series of books with a total global sales volume of more than 10 million copies, including the best-selling "From Excellent to Excellent", "Evergreen Foundation", "Choosing Excellence", "Flywheel Effect" and so on. In his new book BE2.0, Jim Collins returns to small and medium-sized enterprises and startups, standing near them and looking at the long-standing and fascinating mountain.
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