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PACING TOWARDS CREATING A WINNING ORGANIZATION - by
Asima Sherali (Ms.)
What
is winning all about? Is it achieving success or
is it adding value? Is it achieving sustained
excellence? Or, is it both?
For
well established companies, their continuous
track record of success in the capital market
indicate their winning capacity. For start-ups
especially, the high-tech businesses where the
products have the shelf life of an ice cube on a
hot side walk, their ability to redefine
themselves as their businesses have grown and
their initial products faded, would be the factor
in gauging their winning capability. The test for
non-profits is, do they have a continuous impact
and are they growing to impact more number of
people? If so, why do we still find some
companies succeed while others fail over a period
of time?
The companies that win
will be those that build or maintain a steady
focus on developing leaders at all levels:
The
scarcest resource in the world today is
leadership talent capable of continuously
transforming organizations to win tomorrow’s
world. Most people in businesses will tell that
developing leaders is an important activity, and
that organizations must carry it out in a
thoughtful and systematic manner. The reality,
however, is that while there is much talk and
much surface activity, very few organizations do
a good job of it. Companies commit huge amount of
time and resources to elaborate well-enforced
human resources development processes, the result
is that they have produced very articulate
managers who are masters of the latest
‘business-speak’ and the fads and
fashions of management gurus, who end up acting
like bureaucrats and not leaders.
Jack
Welch, CEO, GE, spends an enormous amount of time
giving speeches to employees and taking the hot
seat in question-and-answer sessions. He has a
variety of modules usually half a day at a time
that he uses to teach leadership.
Winning
organizations provide a culture, which would
encourage people to explore their own leadership
potential, to challenge them to improve and to
ultimately motivate them to want to develop other
leaders for the ultimate test of success for an
organization is not whether it can win today, but
whether it can keep winning tomorrow and the day
after. Therefore, the ultimate test for a leader
is not whether he/she makes smart decisions and
takes decisive actions, but whether he/she
teaches others to be leaders and builds an
organization that can sustain its success even
when he/she is not around.
Winning companies bet
on people, not on strategies:
Larry
Bossidy, CEO, Allied Signal puts it, ‘At the
end of the day, you bet on people, not on
strategies’.
Winning
companies have the same goals as everyone else in
business – to create value for shareholders,
employees and customers. And they grow, and keep
growing – by efficiently delivering a
constant stream of desirable goods and services
to the customers.
But
what is it that makes these companies different
from other organizations? Winning companies
rather than concentrating on initiating winning
strategies for the marketplace, start by getting
smart, energized people in the right places so
they will make the right decisions. They realize
that in the time it takes for a question to be
passed up the ladder and a decision handed back
down, the customer will have gone somewhere else
or the opportunity will be missed. Mike Walsh,
late CEO of Tenneco puts it, ‘every person
in a key position has to see himself as a
mini-CEO. They have to conceptualize what has to
be done in the same way the CEO has. Then, it
cascades’.
Winning organizations
understand that not everyone can be an Olympian,
yet they create opportunities and encourage
people to give their best:
Most
organizations understand the need for leadership,
but make the mistake of betting on wrong horses.
They handicap their field of employees by
selecting the ones they think will go farthest,
and pour resources into training and developing
them. Unfortunately, their too-early design of an
elite-class of ‘high potentials’ often
weeds out the people who could ultimately turn
out to be the best leaders.
Winning
companies wait longer before making their
decisions, and they base them on broader
leadership skills rather than simply the ability
to complete individual assignments. Further, they
continue to pour resources into developing
everyone else, including the people that they
don’t think are going to make it all the way
to the top. In the process, they wisely eliminate
the late bloomers and traditional leaders, and
ensure that they get the best out of everyone.
Winning organizations are
avid learners. They draw from their pasts and
reflect on their experiences to develop lessons
for the future:
Winning
organizations have clear ideas of what it takes
to win in their marketplaces and how the
organizations should operate. They update their
ideas to keep them appropriate to changing
circumstances, and they help others to develop
their own ideas.
Patricia
Asp, Vice President of ServiceMaster states,
“Everything that we do happens through our
people – any productivity improvement, any
delighting of customers, service of customers or
responding to customers is all done through
people”. Further, she adds, “the
frontline worker goes into customers’ homes
and offices every day. They are the
company’s eyes and ears. The company,
therefore, invests a lot in making sure that they
understand what they see. We want them to see not
just how to do their jobs today, but to look at
what’s out there. What we could be doing? We
cause them to think about what are the best
opportunities. What will have to change within
our company and within our business units based
on what they see?”
Ms. Asima Sherali,
the author is HRD Manager with Karishma Software
Limited. She can be contacted at asima_s@hotmail.com
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