Table of ContentsAchieving Through The OrganizationThe Top Twelve Human Characteristics of Organizations Bill Byrne Wants to Build
The Top Twelve Human Characteristics of Organizations Bill Byrne Wants to Build
- The Organization Focuses On Excellence. Excellence results from the practiced application of talent. Organizations, like people, are prisoners of habit-that which is done repeatedly. Excellence requires constant dissatisfaction with current conditions and perpetual reaching for something better. Excellence is not accidental. It occurs only in organizations that expect it and plan for it. The adage from Ben Hogan that only "Perfect practice makes perfect" also applies to planning. Planning is perfect practice, an organized, systematic, and continual effort that enables an individual or group to practice what it wants to become. Planning provides goals and objectives to serve as a road map. These goals and objectives are transformed into expectations, which in turn form the foundation of excellence.
- The Organization Selects Talent Effectively. A key component of every achieving organization is its talent-selecting process. Sequenced interviewing, testing of basic skills, and professional, validated profiling of mental aptitudes and personality characteristics are all increasingly important pieces in the human resources puzzle.
The leading organizations reduce selection risk by matching the job to the talent, rather than the more common practice of matching talent to the job. This results in fewer misplaced workers, increased productivity, and reduced turnover.
In most organizations selection means hiring. In achieving organizations, it's a continuing evaluation process that includes building a base of knowledge that facilitates reviewing, coaching, and selection for promotion. - The Organization Is Busy. What do most employees favor? Do they want an environment with no challenge, where little is asked of them, where they can be lazy? Or do they prefer an environment where challenge is present, where others have high expectations of them, where they work hard? The cynics pick the former. Note, however, cynics aren't leaders.
People rise to expectations. They respond to the call for action. They want an opportunity to strut their stuff in front of an admiring audience. And they want to be in a working group which creates the organizational success that provides them an opportunity for personal satisfaction and growth.
In a previous chapter I discussed the benefits of high PEP (Per Employee Productivity). Paying fewer people more, better positioning everyone to reach for their potential, is a formidable weapon used by achieving organizations. - The Organization Cares. Caring comes from the inside. It's real, not positioned. A caring attitude runs freely within a caring organization's veins. Caring can't be manipulated.
A caring organization may say no, disappoint, and terminate, but it does so with sensitivity and professionalism. - The Organization Measures Effectively. To measure effectively means having a system in place that is sufficiently objective to permit two or more observers to reach the same conclusion independently. Effective measurement is an unemotional process that gauges the person's work. Ineffective measurement gauges the person.
- The Organization Enhances Relationships. It develops opportunities to build teamwork and a common identity of purpose within the group. It creates informal partnerships between employees and departments, and between employee and employer.
This only occurs when everyone understands, through planning, where the organization wants to go. Without that knowledge, the team tries to pull the corporate wagon in different directions. - The Organization Distributes Choices. Responsibility is decentralized. People are aware of what is to be done and comfortable that they have adequate latitude to do it.
Distributing choices offers significant potential for developing excellence in customer relationships, giving the employee closest to the customer more responsibility and authority to create customer delight. Organizations with delighted customers allow the employee on the firing line greater discretion to do what's needed to accommodate customers.
Organizations which distribute choices effectively have a horizontal structure with less hierarchy and less distance between the top and bottom of the organizational chart. While the leader is prominent in creating the organization's strategy and focus, it's the empowered entrepreneurial associate who implements and executes the agreed upon strategy. - The Organization Is Highly Ethical. The leader sets the pace. Honesty, integrity, and a visible sense of fairness give assurance to employees and customers that a well-defined ethical boundary is at the heart of the organization.
- The Organization Encourages Experimentation. Achieving organizations believe the status quo is no go, that without change there is no future.
Experimentation is not a science. It's an art form requiring accommodation of mistakes, false starts, and failure. Every organization and every person has the potential to do better. Organizations that encourage experimentation perform more to their potential and enrich the lives of their people, then give employees the opportunity to be wrong while they reach. - The Organization Shares Success. An entrepreneurial leader is, more than most others, driven to succeed. That success, however, is not egotistical or selfish. Leaders and entrepreneurial achievers refer to success as our rather than my, the company as our rather than my. As an alternative to "I did it," they say, "We did it."
Sharing includes a distribution of the benefits of success. Making employees "profit holders" is sharing. Enriching employee lives through flexible scheduling is sharing, and empowering them to lead is a way of sharing success.
Profit is a friendly, positive word in sharing environments; a nasty word in selfish ones. Staff attitudes toward profit are a ready indicator of whether or not they believe they work in a sharing organization.
A sharing company is fair. It's a feeling, not a fooling, company. It's not about big titles, calling employees partners or associates, or being humanistic. It's not about cliches. Either you are a sharing organization or you're not; either you are good to your people or you aren't. Sharing is not fancy–just authentic. - The Organization Treats Employees the Way I Wanted to Be Treated when I Was An Employee. Reflect on what was important to you as an employee. Can you reconcile that with your actions and attitudes as a leader? Are you comfortable with yourself? If not, better make some changes. But be sure you change for the right reason. Change because you have come to understand that your leadership style impacts employee performance and productivity. And performance and productivity impact profit.
- The Organization Promotes Lifelong Learning. Unfortunately, I didn't become interested in learning until after I left school. Now I hunger for new thoughts, new ideas and new concepts.