Inside the Box E-Book

David S. Cohen

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 438

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009

Beschreibung

How to turn company values into competitive advantage We are inclined, for whatever reason, to treat values like works of art. We view them as nice to hang on the wall, and beautiful to look at, but we don't act as though they truly mean much to us in the real world. In fact, the opposite is true. The best organizations understand their values, articulate them clearly, and hold them higher than any short-term concerns or short-cut methods. This does not put these companies at a competitive disadvantage. It is the source of their competitive advantage. If there's no clarity at the top about what values really mean, then there's no consistency at the management level or further down the organization. This means that there's no way to measure, coach, assess, promote or fire people in line with those values. Any organization that does not articulate its values concretely functions like a modern Tower of Babel. No one can be quite sure that they are speaking the same language at different levels or different locations within the organization. Decisions don't always make sense or feel right. Confusion reigns. No matter how compelling and inspirational the organization's vision may be, its aspirations fall far short in reality. Values are about achieving results in a way that is consistent with what an organization stands for. They provide a direct connection between the CEO, the factory worker and everyone in between; and form the basis of the organization's "brand" as understood by employees, customers, suppliers and even shareholders. When the work is done right, values provide an organizing principle, a directional compass that helps organizations succeed; they become a source of energy for an organization's vision, strategy and day-to-day efforts. Vision, strategy, market share, reputation and profits are all very important - but having a clear and consistent set of values is far more critical in predicting whether an organization will continue to succeed and grow as its people, markets, competitive landscape and technology change. People must make their contributions to an organization willingly and independently to bring passion, commitment, creativity and energy to a job. But they will do so only so long as they believe that what they are doing is authentic and meaningful, and is part of a code of commitment shared by the organization as a whole. Inside the Box focuses on values in a clear and practical way to understand what they are, where they come from and how they are transmitted from employee generation to generation. Inside the Box provides a roadmap for any leader or manager on how to identify the values that make an organization, department, team, or individual unique. It also shows how to measure whether an organization or individual is operating according to those values, and how managers can use values as the basis for all of their people decisions and drive superior performance as a result.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Praise

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Thinking Inside the Box

CHAPTER ONE - What’s Inside the Box? How Values Work

A Flash Test on Values

Values Create Behaviors

The Tower of Babble

Why Values Hit Home

Individual versus Organizational Values

Rebels with a Cause

Stated versus Real Values: The Organization’s Underground Culture

Aspirational or Core Values

Universal Values, Morals and Relativism

Value-Driven Organizations

Values and Visions

Visions Can Change; Values Don’t

Getting There

CHAPTER TWO - Reinforcing the Box: Making Values Meaningful Throughout the Organization

The Wizard, the Jam Session and the Gridiron

The North Star

Three Rules for Defining Values

Rolling ’Em Out

Living the Values

Celebrating Values

CHAPTER THREE - The Discipline of Working Inside the Box

Creating a Values-Based Organization

Culture and Values

Reinforcing the Right Patterns of Behavior

Evaluating Employees’ Performance in Light of the Values

Your Culture Captures Your Values

CHAPTER FOUR - Inside-the-Box Management Tools

The Fundamentals of Defining Performance

An Integrated Talent Management System

Hiring to Fit

The Performance Management Blueprint

Assessing Values Fairly

Creating a Legacy of Values

The Manager is Responsible

Your Employee Brand

CHAPTER FIVE - Selecting Inside-the-Box Leaders

The Top Leader

Keeping Leadership a Family Affair

The Serious Responsibility of Succession Planning

Talent Management, Not Replacement Planning

Integrating Values and Capability

The Pitfall of Using Behaviors from Competency Models that Don’t Fit the Values

The Pitfall of Focusing on Shareholder Values

Planning for Leadership

CHAPTER SIX - Does One Box Fit Forever? Organizational Growth: New Strategic ...

Mergers and Acquisitions

When Values Collide: The Battle of Red versus Blue

It’s Not about the Money

The Aspiration to Change

Ensuring Your Return on Intangibles

CHAPTER SEVEN - Measuring Inside-the-Box Success: The Meaning of Integrity, ...

Integrity is Not a Value

Bringing it All Together

Validating the Values and Developing the Behavioral Role Profiles

Promotion and Succession Planning

The Revised Promotional Process

Hiring New Officers

Performance Management

Values Trump Strategy Every Time

Every Company Has its Own Values

Bibliography

Index

More Praise forInside the Box

“Inside the Box addresses one of the most over-hyped but under-valued issues in business today: corporate values. There are so many examples of companies pursuing essentially the same strategy and positioning with vastly different business performance. I am convinced that it’s the quality of the leadership that is the source of the difference in performance, and without strong values that leadership is elusive. Companies with strong enduring values are companies that endure.”

~ Martha Clark, Global Human Resources Director, AXA Rosenberg

“Inside the Box, Inside Corporate Headquarters, Inside the Locker Room…the game plan for success is spelled out clearly by David Cohen. The values formula is wonderfully articulated and so applicable in all of our worlds.”

~ David Poulin, Athletics Development, the University of Notre Dame; 13-year NHL career, 3-time NHL All-Star, playing for the Philadelphia Flyers, Boston Bruins, and Washington Capitals; 10-year Notre Dame Head Hockey Coach

“Reading David’s new book underscored the appreciation I have for the importance of values in my organization and in my life.”

~ Paul Bottero, President, Computer Horizons Canada

Copyright © 2006 by David S. Cohen

All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means — graphic, electronic or mechanical without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed in writing to The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright license, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free 1-800-893- 5777.

Care has been taken to trace ownership of copyright material contained in this book. The publisher will gladly receive any information that will enable them to rectify any reference or credit line in subsequent editions.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Data

Cohen, David S., 1947-

Inside the box : leading with corporate values to drive sustained business success / David S. Cohen.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN : 978-0-470-73920-4

1. Industrial management. 2. Corporate culture. 3. Values. 4. Leadership. I. Title.

HD30.19.C.4 C2006-903782-5

Production Credits:Cover design: Adrian So Interior text design: Natalia Burobina Printer: Tri-Graphic Printing, Ltd.

John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd.

6045 Freemont Blvd., Mississauga, Ontario L5R 4J3

TR

This book is dedicated to my grandfather EdRoth, my parents, Irving and Florence, andmy wife, Naomi, who have and continue tolive values-based livesandto Ezra Jacob and, God willing, his brothers,sisters and cousins, to be named at a laterdate, that they may ensure the continuity ofthe values from generation to generation.

Acknowledgements

This book did not begin with my career transition to corporate consulting twenty-one years ago. This is a lifelong work that began generations before me. The ideas that shape this book originated during long rides from Irvington, New Jersey, to Bradley Beach, New Jersey, with my grandfather. My grandfather shaped them as he told stories along the journey of growing up. As the reader will soon understand, the title of this book is not a flip turn of a phrase. My early education on what is a values driven company came during my time “inside the box” companies of my father and grandfather.

Over the last two decades I have spent working with corporations large and small around the world, I have come to realize that there are no correct values to drive business. The values that help one corporation succeed can be very different from those of another. In both cases, however, it is the corporation’s people that embody those values and behave according to them. Accordingly, I have some people to thank for this book. I begin by acknowledging those who knowingly or not provided me with insight into values. I think it’s safe to say that I have learned more from them than they have learned from me.

In my career, I have received valuable feedback from my clients and from many participants at conferences who have challenged my ideas and forced me to look at things from diverse perspectives. If this book causes readers to revise their own thoughts, I will have given something back to the ongoing dialogue about the centrality of people and the importance of values in the sustained success of organizations.

This book became a reality thanks to the support and encouragement of many people. When the proposal for the book was presented to my editor, Karen Milner, I was both surprised and pleased by her enthusiastic response. Her enthusiasm for the ideas of the book forced me to continue the creative process and to write even when I thought I would not finish the work. Once the manuscript was completed, Elizabeth McCurdy and Pamela Vokey’s support during the editing process helped maintain and hone our focus. Once again, copy editor Nancy Carroll provided a critical and essential perspective on the editing and helped improve what was unclear.

From the beginning, I was assisted by some very supportive and encouraging friends. But the one who made it all happen and brought it all together was Keith Hollihan. During the past three plus years Keith offered encouragement when I was not focused and was frustrated when I was not writing. Keith did not just help with the writing of this book but played an important role in shaping the original ideas, challenging my thoughts and making suggestions. I believe that in the end, Keith has more co-authored this than helped with the editing and writing. For that I am grateful to him and I appreciate his friendship even more.

I must also thank Gil Cohen, who besides being my son also works with me as a consultant. He has never stopped asking questions and challenging my ideas for their pureness and consistency. He drew his commitment to our shared values from his hero, my dad. Frequently, Gil would remind me of our perspective on the world and our understanding of where we come from. There are sections of this book that are better because of his comments and passion. I also thank Gil’s wife, Michaelanne, who has brought a renewed sense of calm and focus to Gil’s life.

The central theme of this book is the importance of passing values from generation to generation. The encouragement and support of both my other son, Ari, and my daughter-in-law, Sarah, helped me get to the end of this journey. They put the journey into crystal clarity when they began the next generation of our family by producing Ezra Jacob to whom, along with my parents and grandfather, this book is dedicated and without whom it would not have been written.

Finally I thank Naomi, my wife of thirty-five years, who has put up with many frustrations, including sacrificing our quality time together for the sake of this book. Naomi has always been supportive and optimistic, despite my ever-changing and frequent travel schedule, and my lack of focus or my hyper focus on things. I cannot thank her enough for putting up with me, my ADHD and my attempts to do too many things at one time.

INTRODUCTION

Daring to Think Inside the Box

For a few years, in the late 1950s, my father owned a box company in West Orange, New Jersey. The company produced folding boxes for toys, model airplanes and games. To me, it was a place of wonder. Any parent who has ever bought a present for a child knows that the box itself can be a bigger hit than the toy. Maybe it’s because the box, although empty to the critical eye, holds all the potential in the world.

Sometimes I did jobs on the factory floor, running one of the punch machines. I noticed how hard the employees all worked. They were motivated, disciplined and productive. They kept the work area clean. My father had been a union organizer in the 1940s and 50s, a socially conscious leader. Later, when he became a boss, he treated people fairly and with respect. He wasn’t the type to strike fear into those around him, but he did keep everyone focused on the job. Even from a young boy’s eyes, I could tell he enjoyed what he was doing. Watching my dad at work was one of my first exposures to leadership in action.

Values were very important to my father and our family. I came to understand that values formed the basis of my father’s leadership style in all circumstances, whether as a union organizer, a small business owner or a parent. As I grew older and became an educator and principal, I saw that values were important in schools, too. When schools are organized around a clear set of values, children know the difference between right and wrong and have the freedom to grow. Teachers can rely on those values when providing guidance and discipline and encouraging learning. Later, after I left the field of education and began a new but related career as a business consultant and executive coach, I saw that organizations were energized and inspired by values, too. Indeed, it was apparent that the best organizations succeeded not because of their products, market strategy or people but because all three factors were fueled by the same source — the organization’s values. This revelation rekindled a lifelong quest to understand what values mean, what they do for individuals and groups, and how they can be brought into alignment with what we do and what we strive to become.

Over the course of twenty years, I visited many organizations, large and small, in the private and public sectors in North America and around the world and took a good look inside. In a few very successful organizations, values were clearly articulated. Everyone, at all levels, understood the values in the broader context of the organization’s vision and culture; they also understood how to apply those values to their jobs. Values provided a direct connection between the CEO, the factory worker and everyone in between. Values formed the basis of the organization’s brand as understood by employees, customers, suppliers and even shareholders.

In a larger number of less successful organizations I encountered, values were not so clearly articulated or widely understood. Sometimes the leaders of those organizations needed help expressing their values in concrete ways that could be communicated to everyone. Other times, the organizations needed help aligning values to vision, strategy, work processes and people systems. When the work was done right, values provided an organizing principle, a directional compass, which helped the organizations succeed and became a source of energy for an organization’s vision, strategy and day-to-day efforts.

And then there were those many organizations in which values were unclear and inconsistent. Usually, this meant that there were conflicts between the values that the leaders expressed and the values that they actually supported. Just as often, there was a hidden curriculum of values within the organization, which overrode the values that the leaders espoused. Such organizations were usually in distress. Even the ones that were thriving for a time fell apart at the first major crisis. If the senior leadership turned over or the market shifted or a new competitor appeared, those organizations were quick to panic, lose their way and break down. No matter how primed for success they seemed, their tremendous energy and vision was unsustainable in the long run.

Over time, it became obvious to me that vision, strategy, market share, reputation or profits were all very important, but having a clear and consistent set of values was far more critical in predicting whether an organization would continue to succeed and grow as its people, markets, competitive landscape and technology changed. In other words, I learned what every child knows. What’s inside the box — an organization’s values — is just as important and more exciting and satisfying than what comes out of the box — an organization’s vision, brand, business strategy and products.

But why do some organizations harness the power of values so well when so many others fail? Many people have written about the importance of values to leadership. Others have written about the importance of values to organizational culture and performance. But few have explained the mechanics of values — how they form the foundation of an organization’s culture and shape and influence strategy, brand, products and people. Many businesses talk about the importance of culture or leadership but fail to draw the links between what culture and leadership is based on and how to most effectively communicate, reinforce and build from that. In other words, they do not explain how values are expressed in vision and strategy, and how they guide leaders and managers in providing an environment of discipline, reinforcement and effective learning.

This book aims to do just that. You do not need to be the CEO of your organization to read it and implement these ideas. However, CEOs and senior leaders will benefit immeasurably from the clarity of the practices described. Leaders who are passionate about making their work environment more productive and supportive and who want to make a meaningful contribution to the world through the organization to which they have committed themselves will find this book inspiring and useful. In addition to the senior team, this book will be a helpful guide for managers who need an organizationally consistent language, framework and set of tools for getting the best out of their people. This book is also invaluable for the leaders of spin-offs, divisions, groups or teams who want to strike a special tone separate from the larger organization and for the human resources professionals who need detailed action plans to make a business case for why the leaders, not human resources, must be setting the standard and paving the path to success. Finally this book is for anyone who wants to take a leadership role in guarding, celebrating, fostering and living their organization’s values as if they were their own.

This last role is absolutely vital. Every organization needs its rebels, fanatics and whistle-blowers to be successful, but they must be rebels, fanatics and whistle-blowers with a cause, namely, their organization’s own values. Organizations need people who embody values through their actions and are simultaneously guardians and messengers of them, people who will keep the organization in line, regardless of who is failing to live up to those values. No matter how much management might wish that its people would fall expediently into place behind every initiative, strategy or action plan, the truth is human beings are not motivated by decree, reward or demand, but by the stirrings of their own hearts.

People must make their contributions to an organization willingly and independently to bring passion, commitment, creativity and energy to a job. But they will do so only so long as they believe that what they are doing is authentic and meaningful, and is part of a code of commitment shared by the organization as a whole. If an organization does not live up to its values in everything it does and thus fails to keep true to those values in striving towards its vision, it loses the energy, passion and loyalty of its people. Cynicism, increased stress, reduced quality, corner cutting and apathy are the inevitable results.

Without values, everything may be permissible, but few people will stay committed and loyal to such an organization for long. They may collect their paychecks every other Friday; but they won’t be thinking about how they can solve a problem or achieve an objective on the drive home or even, in all likelihood, while they are sitting at their desks. As one front-line employee of a telecommunications firm said to his union representative about his company’s values, “If our company will begin living this way from the top and throughout, this will stop being a job and become a career again.”

Thinking Inside the Box

A few years ago, I visited a client on site. The client was a company that happened to make boxes. I didn’t think about that connection to my past until I entered the plant. Suddenly, the smell of the factory brought all those memories of my childhood rushing back.

I thought about my father, and I began to see how his leadership style affected the people around him. As a consultant and coach, I was now in the business of helping people grow their organizations through hiring and leadership development. I realized, from an adult perspective, that my father’s disciplined approach to the way things should be done was not restrictive; it provided a structure that the people who worked for him found comforting and liberating. As his adolescent son I had always thought that he boxed us in with his values, but now, as an adult, I saw that box in a very different light. Adults look at boxes as limiting, but children see them as filled with potential. Parents who have bought presents and witnessed their child spending more time playing with the box than the toy understand this profoundly. I began to reflect on the way people in organizations talk about the need to “think outside the box” and why that always annoyed me. “The box is not your problem,” I’d always wanted to say. “Figure out what you’ve got in the box and you’ll be all right.” I had no idea what I really meant by that until recently. Finally, I understood: organizations are boxes. People, ideas, emotions, dreams and values live inside them. Thinking “outside the box” always seemed like an excuse to ignore what made an organization special by trading all that away for whatever was fashionable or trendy. I knew, however, that what’s deep inside the box — organizational values — was the real treasure.

In the end, this book’s approach and message can be summed up by this metaphor: instead of thinking outside the box, I am calling on people to think inside the box. This means a shift in thinking which is necessary if your organization is to be value-focused. It is a recognition that what an organization stands for on the inside is equally as important as the vision it tries to make real to the world outside.

What an organization is thinking inside the box has long been overshadowed and overwhelmed by external concerns: what the shareholder is thinking, for example, or what competitors seem to be doing, or what customers are demanding, or what the market makes financially profitable in the short term. The problem, however, is that without an internal grounding for those concerns many organizations lose focus and lack consistency of principle when it comes to the way they do business. They fail to harness the full extent of the energy at their disposal through their own values. They have no center of gravity or reliable compass to support their direction. They make decisions for bottom-line, expedient or opportunistic reasons. Sometimes they achieve short-term goals, but they always pay a long-term price. In my twenty years as a consultant, executive coach and advocate of a value focus for organizations, I have seen it happen time and time again.

Thinking outside the box has become such a common cliché in organizations in recent years that some firms impose fines for using the term. But the expression continues to hold sway. You hear it, especially, anytime there is a call for ideas that break through the confines of what has always been done. Organizations continue to need the shake-up that such a phrase represents. Twenty years ago, most large organizations had bureaucratic cultures that inhibited fresh ideas and promoted an inwardly focused myopia. IBM, for example, was famous for not being overly concerned about what was going on outside its own high walls. Why should Big Blue care about what its customers wanted or what its competitors were doing or what innovations were being hatched in the garages of teenaged inventors? After all, what made sense for Big Blue was naturally going to be right for the market or the customers; just as a few decades before, what was “good for GM was good for America.”

But now that a succession of break-out-of-the-box organizational theories and fads have firmed their grip on a generation of managers’ minds, there is a need for a renewed counterbalance to that thinking. Organizations that think predominantly outside the box are prone to quick fixes and inappropriate solutions, or to simply following the latest trend set by a popular business journal or author. Lacking the center of gravity that values provide, they focus on results without consideration for how those results are achieved. They benchmark, mimic and play catch-up with their competitors; they bring in outside charismatic leadership as saviors regardless of value fit; and they merge with or acquire other organizations without considering the ramifications of culture or values alignment. They may be nimble, flexible and profitable in the short term, depending on circumstances, but they do not last or make their mark on the world.

Organizations that know how to think inside the box have a limitless resource of positive energy and single-minded focus at their disposal. Their values are a treasure chest, complete with map and tools. Thinking inside the box is a deliberate check against what the organization’s own values dictate the right answer, strategy, standard or direction to be. Should a manager promote or celebrate the actions of an employee? Think inside the box to measure that person’s performance against the organization’s values. Should the board hire a particular CEO? Think inside the box to determine if that candidate’s values are a match for or would be a shift from the organization’s values. The latter would create a negative impact as it would be countercultural. Should a customer service representative agree to or reject a customer’s demands? Think inside the box to independently and efficiently decide the right answer.

In this book, we will help you do some inside-the-box thinking about your organization, your people, your leadership and your terms of success. In the chapters that follow we look at famous value bellwether organizations like Johnson & Johnson, GE and even the New York Yankees for the way that they achieve greatness consistently over time. We also look at equally well-known organizations that have struggled recently and publicly with issues, challenges and failures linked to value conflicts. Finally, we closely examine a number of lesser-known organizations like Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh and sanofi-pasteur that are currently striving to integrate their values with their leadership discipline and daily work processes.

Our journey will cover the following terrain. In the first chapter we look closely at the importance of values and value-based systems. I will show you what they mean, why they are real and what they do for an organization. In chapter two, we look at how much the CEO or top leader influences the organization’s values, and how an organization can define and roll out those values to be embraced and understood by everyone, at all levels, in all roles. In chapter three, we look at how values create organizational culture, the means by which values are expressed through unofficial rules, guidelines and corporate legends. In chapter four, we link values to work by defining the behaviors that employees need to use in order to be successful. I also detail how employees can be hired, identified, supported, developed or dismissed according to their values performance. Managers and supervisors become the living embodiment of the organization’s values, and as such they are responsible for defining them with their direct reports and honoring those who live according to them in tough or unusual circumstances.

In chapter five, we look at how to develop leaders and develop a real succession planning strategy by using values as a standard and guide. We also discuss the impact on your employees when you promote a person who others do not perceive as a standard-bearer of your values. In chapter six, we look at values and change. A frequent criticism of inside-the-box thinking is that organizations need to be responsive to the outside world. I couldn’t agree more. Staying true to principles is the way lasting organizations navigate change without losing their bearings and sense of direction. Actually changing values and culture is a phenomenally difficult task that few organizations have managed successfully, despite many attempts. Finally, in chapter seven, we look at the measurable outputs of values. Organizations that operate under consistent and long-standing values systems have been called “enduring companies” and “institutions.” This book, in large part, is about how organizations achieve such success.

Although values come from top leadership and are cascaded down through the ranks, the authenticity, impact and worthiness of those values can only be measured through the people doing the work of the organization. Asking your own employees is one way to make that determination. They are the ones who know you best, who are sensitive to whether you are consistently living up to the organization’s values and who are unfailingly aware of whether your organization is on the right track. Most leaders who fail to make values real, deny or protect themselves from the insights of their employees as a matter of course. This book will provide the framework and questions to prompt productive self-examination. In education, we say that the best way to know the capability of a teacher is to ask the students. Students always know, very quickly, if their teacher is prepared, committed and effective. So, too, a salesclerk at Home Depot can tell when the new CEO comes from an organization with an entirely different value set. But we’ll tell that story in detail in chapter five.

Remember, what’s happening inside the box is far more important to your people than what’s going on outside the box. Leaders should be prepared to refocus and unashamedly reaffirm their values. Sometimes that requires looking at the world from a different perspective.

CHAPTER ONE

What’s Inside the Box? How Values Work

• When people feel alignment between their personal values, their organization’s values and their manager’s values, they call it a “good fit.”