The Rudolph Factor E-Book

Cyndi Laurin

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

Seitenzahl: 191

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2009

Beschreibung

The bestselling author of Catch! shares the innovation secrets that helped Boeing turn itself around from the brink of collapse The Rudolph Factor tells the story of Boeing's spectacular turnaround through a discussion of principles and qualities that are transferable and replicable to any size or type of organization in any industry. Authors Cyndi Laurin and Craig Morningstar use the story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer as an analogy to explore a corporate culture that managed to avoid disaster through progressive leadership; a highly participatory team-based culture; the development of an organizational constitution; and an alternative, aligned employee rewards structure. Using real-world lessons from Boeing's inspiring story, The Rudolph Factor shows companies how to nurture a culture centered around their "Rudolphs"-those out-of-the-box, creative employees who can serve as shining lights to lead organizations in accomplishing their goals. Applicable to anyone who runs a business of any size, this book shows readers how to find, nurture, and leverage the creativity of its employees to achieve a long-term competitive advantage.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Foreword

CHAPTER 1 - THE PREVAILING FORM OF BUSINESS CULTURES

AN ALTERNATIVE IS AVAILABLE

A PSYCHOLOGY OF CHANGE MODEL—AVTAR

CHAPTER 2 - THE BOEING COMPANY AND THE IMPETUS FOR A CULTURAL REVOLUTION

“FORTY AND NO MORE!”

THE RUDOLPH FACTOR

GENERATING A PEOPLE-CENTRIC VISION

CHAPTER 3 - WHY RUDOLPH, YOU ASK?

MODERN DAY RUDOLPHS

CHAPTER 4 - NURTURING RUDOLPHS TO MAXIMIZE THEIR INNOVATIVE CONTRIBUTIONS

A SMALL BUT MIGHTY HERD

THREE STEPS TO NURTURING YOUR RUDOLPHS

OUR CHALLENGE TO YOU

CHAPTER 5 - ESTABLISHING A TEAM-BASED RUDOLPH CULTURE

ELICITING ONGOING CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE INPUT

LESSON ONE: DOING WHAT YOU’VE ALWAYS DONE

LESSON TWO: CHANGE IS HARD FOR PEOPLE IF THEY DON’T KNOW WHERE THEY’RE GOING OR WHY

LESSON THREE: IT IS A JOURNEY

LESSON SIX: ALL TRAINING MUST INCLUDE IMMEDIATE APPLICATION TO THE TEAM

THE CREATIVE EDGE PROGRAM

RELATIONSHIP BY OBJECTIVES

CHAPTER 6 - REDEFINING LEADERSHIP

LEADING FROM WHERE YOU ARE

LESSON FOUR: LEADERS MUST EXECUTE BUSINESS STRATEGIES THROUGH OTHERS

LESSON FIVE: LEADERSHIP MUST BE PERSISTENT

LESSON NINE: TRADITIONAL ROLES MUST CHANGE

START LEADING TODAY

CHAPTER 7 - DEVELOPING A CORPORATE CONSTITUTION

POLITICS AS USUAL? NO

WHAT IS A CORPORATE CONSTITUTION?

LESSON SEVEN: YOU MUST HAVE A WRITTEN PLAN

AMENDING THE CONSTITUTION

LESSON NINE: TRADITIONAL ROLES MUST CHANGE

ELEMENTS OF YOUR CORPORATE CONSTITUTION

FINAL THOUGHTS ON CORPORATE CONSTITUTIONS

CHAPTER 8 - CREATING AN ALTERNATIVE AND ALIGNED REWARD STRUCTURE

DO REWARDS INSPIRE?

MOTIVATING AND REWARDING THE FOUR MODES OF OPERATION

LESSON EIGHT: RECOGNITION MUST BE PART OF THE PROCESS

EPILOGUE

Copyright © 2009 by Cyndi Laurin, PhD, and Craig Morningstar. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. Published simultaneously in Canada.

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eISBN : 978-0-470-49857-6

Dedicated to Rudolphs everywhere.Let your nose glow!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to acknowledge the following Boeing Company employees (former and current) for their time, efforts, and contributions to this book. Without their guidance and input, it would not have been possible to accurately describe the transformation and continued journey of the C-17 Program. First and foremost, we thank David Bowman (former C-17 Program manager and current vice president and general manager, Tanker Programs, Integrated Defense Systems at The Boeing Company) for entertaining our book concept and pointing us in the right direction. We also thank Vice President/ General Manager Global Mobility Systems, Jean Chamberlin, for her support and allowing us to interview several C-17 employees.

In the Employee Involvement area, we are most grateful to Edward Schaniel; Richard Nicholson, Psy.D.; Charles A. Macias, Psy.D.; and Suzi Hammond-Miller for going far beyond the call of duty to assist us with arranging interviews, sharing many hours of their personal time, and for being Rudolphs! Many thanks to Rick Sanford, Drew Oberbeck, and Craig Savage for their assistance in organizing our visits to the C-17 facility in Long Beach, California.

For their time and contribution in interviews, stories, and quotes, we thank Mark Adams, Leandro M. Aguinaldo, Michael Caldarera, William “Scott” Carnegie, Wayne C. Coleman, P. James Drake, Dr. Katherine “Kathy” Erlick, Ron Gill, Sal Gutierrez, Jake B. Hampton Jr., Elizabeth Haseltine, David Hernandez, Lawrence C. Holzer, Craig Johnson, Bernita Mason, Kami Moghaddam EdD, Anna M. Monaco, Daniel Munoz, Anthony Murray, Don Pitcher, Rosie Robles-Gleason, E. David Spong, Jeff Stagner, Lee Whittington, Patrick Wishall, and Don Woullard.

We also would like to thank some of our non-Boeing Company friends and colleagues for their time in reviewing the manuscript and offering insights and contributions from their own experiences in business and industry, including Steve Lewis, Doug Newton, Katie Peiffer, Steve Shank, and Aad Streng. We’d also like to thank the creator (s) of Skype as it has been a helpful communication tool in our collaborative efforts.

Many thanks to Lisa Ricci for her assistance and time. Last but not least, we are most grateful for the support and encouragement from our literary agent and friend, Stephen Hanselman, and our families. This book project has been a full-time job (in addition to our “normal” jobs) and would not have been possible without them.

Thank you!

C.L. and C.M.

FOREWORD

Here are two forewords by former C-17 Program managers who have gone on to continue great work within The Boeing Company and beyond. The first is written by E. David Spong, who is the current chair of the Malcolm Baldrige Foundation, and the second is written by David Bowman, who is the vice president and general manager, Tanker Programs, Integrated Defense Systems at The Boeing Company.

As one who lived the C-17 journey from early 1991 through the end of 2000, and considers it the highlight of my career in aerospace, I am delighted to provide my commentary on this retelling of the story and the lessons that Cyndi and Craig have so expertly extracted from it!

I am always surprised and intrigued by the differences in the C-17 story as told by various observers. Each person views it through a different knothole or lens and thus can and does make different observations, which, while not contradictory, can appear to tell a different story. For example, one senior member of the Operations (manufacturing) team credited the C-17 success to the implementation of lean. I attribute it to the use of the Baldrige Criteria in driving continuous improvement, and there have been several other variations. The authors attribute it to the “Four Pillars of Organization Greatness” and, of course, the “Rudolphs”!

Since 1998, when the C-17 Program received the Malcolm Baldrige Award, I have studied each of the subsequent organizations that have received the award and observed that what sets them apart is they all have great cultures. Initially, I thought that this was just an interesting by-product of their performance excellence efforts. However, now I believe and know it is a key and necessary element in being a world-class organization. In their research, Cyndi and Craig have brought the idea of culture into greater focus with the identification of the “Rudolph Factor.” As one of the leaders on the C-17 Program, we did not set out to create a culture to enable Rudolphs to contribute and flourish. We recognized that it was happening conceptually, and had we been more aware of the cause and effect, maybe we could have done more.

The authors of The Rudolph Factor provide a fresh perspective on the factors that contribute to creating and sustaining a high-performing organization. They directly link these factors to the success of the C-17 Program, which they attribute to:

• Progressive leadership

• A team based-culture which leads to innovation

• A steadfast organizational constitution

• An alternative and aligned reward structure

Countless books that provide insight and advice on the subject of leadership are primarily for the senior leaders of organizations (not denying that leadership cannot or does not exist at other levels within organizations, but at least not addressing it per se). Cyndi and Craig view leadership with a thoroughly different lens from other researchers by separating it from job titles and positional leadership to those who demonstrate the commitment to the success of the people around them.

Many books and articles are also available that detail approaches and techniques to being more innovative, which in many cases seems like trying to solve the old problem of scheduling a breakthrough versus creating, staffing, and funding the equivalent of Bell Labs (where the transistor was invented). The former is probably impossible, and the latter—by today’s measures—is prohibitively expensive. Cyndi and Craig’s thesis is very different in that they believe and provide evidence to support (based on the C-17 journey) that innovators, or Rudolphs, exist within all organizations when a culture that empowers and enables contribution is created. The authors detail how to achieve this in a way that is easy to use and understand.

The steadfast “Constitution” (which is based on values, rather than rules) is cited as one of the “Four Pillars of Organizational Greatness,” which I completely agree with. As the authors point out, it only works well when used in conjunction with the redefinition of leadership.

Last but not least is the awareness that the reward and recognition program must be aligned with the four modes employees operate within—operational/tactical, facilitative /managerial, creative/innovative (where the Rudolphs live!), and strategic/visionary—rather than with the management structure.

I encourage you to read, enjoy, study, and learn from this book, and go forth to identify and empower your Rudolphs to lead you and your organization to world-class results.

E. David Spong Former Vice President and Program Manager C-17, and Chair of the Malcolm Baldrige Foundation

FOREWORD

As an executive on the C-17 Program in the 1990s, I was very much a witness and participant in the turnaround story and enormous breakthrough journey that transpired then and has lived on for over two decades. After a relocation assignment for a few years in Missouri, I had the honor of returning to the C-17 Program to lead it from 2002 through 2007 and then to lead the Global Mobility Systems Division, of which C-17 is a part. I do not believe it is an exaggeration to say that just about everything I have learned about true leadership has come from the past two decades of watching, listening, thinking, and working with world-class people, world-class teams, in a world-class culture.

After receiving the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 1998, it was no surprise that this organization needed to continue to embrace the Baldrige principles and continue to grow year in and year out (that, in and of itself, is a key recipe for excellence). In 2002, our team received the California Award for Performance Excellence and the Governor’s first Productivity Award. On accepting the award, I presented our story to many people at the annual conference, and it was there that I first met Cyndi Laurin. We had a very nice chat (her energy and excitement is very contagious), and she introduced the idea of one day writing a book using our story as a foundation. Needless to say, I was humbled and honored to participate in such a project. And here it is!

Over the years and through all the thick and thin of the C-17 experiences with great leaders like Don Kozlowski and David Spong as well as great USAF customer leaders, I have come to define a very personal definition for leadership that I use as my compass each and every day. That is, that leadership, in its most rudimentary form, is all about, and only about, connecting people to their future. Indeed, this is a servanthood definition for leadership, and each word in the definition can be defined further. The C-17 Program story is all about leadership. It took courageous leadership to even attempt the dramatic breakthrough cultural change that occurred, and it took great leadership to assure that disciplined incremental change occurred year in and year out for the past several years.

But the real story is that through strong leadership and a disciplined focus on people and teams (employee involvement and employee engagement), the true Rudolphs emerge as is discussed exceptionally well in this book. Rudolphs are not always those obvious entrepreneurs we read about. Rudolphs are you and me. When we are given the right leadership, tools, processes, and enormous latitude (empowerment) to find out how talented we truly are and how much more we can contribute than any of us ever thought possible, we can rise to make the impossible possible. We become true change agents!

I hope you enjoy this great book, and I thank Rudolphs Cyndi Laurin and Craig Morningstar for their creative and earnest efforts to share their innovative concepts for us to learn and to apply. The Rudolph factor as explained in this book is indeed replicable anywhere. One last thing I can assure you from experience—the journey is more fun than you can possibly imagine. Why else do it?

David M. Bowman Vice President and General Manager, Tanker Programs Integrated Defense Systems, The Boeing Company

Note: The views expressed in this Foreword are my own personal views and not those of The Boeing Company.

PREFACE

The Boeing Company has a long tradition of financial success by providing exceptional products and services to its many customers. However, it has also suffered—along with many of its competitors and suppliers—from the cyclic nature of the commercial aircraft business with wild swings in the demand for new aircraft. In the late 1990s, the dramatic increase in aircraft orders was negatively impacting its ability to deliver quality aircraft on time. In addition, the integration of Rockwell, and later, McDonnell Douglas with the heritage portions of Boeing was causing headaches, to say the very least. Airbus was proving to be a tough competitor, leading Boeing both in market share, new orders, and on-time deliveries. The Boeing Company seemed unable to define or offer a new commercial aircraft that met industry needs.

The company was also plagued by adversarial relationships, poor performance, and a loss of focus that was exacerbated by post-9/11 market pressures. Suddenly, at the lowest point, while experiencing cultural decay, market pressures, and the serious financial consequences they wrought, Boeing found its bearings and maneuvered a remarkable turnaround in record-breaking time that placed its rivals on the competitive ropes.

At the core of this impressive reversal of fortune are some crucial lessons Boeing learned a decade ago about innovation with its widely lauded cargo aircraft called the C-17 Globemaster. We believe these are lessons that Boeing is building on today enterprise-wide in several other Boeing facilities. While the technical elements and capabilities of the C-17 aircraft surpassed all expectations, the organization was not performing well. In an effort to stay alive, the customer (the U.S. Air Force), along with C-17 management and the employees partnered to fix the Program that unleashed a massive, cultural revolution.

In the simplest of terms, a new way of looking at leadership and progressive practices involving employees are the cornerstones on the path to Boeing’s successes. The C-17 transformation story has become the proverbial “pebble in the pond” and has influenced change at other Boeing sites and within other companies, such as Parker Hannifin and American Airlines.

In 2007, The Boeing Company and the U.S. Air Force granted us unique, sole-authorized access for the purpose of writing this book. Our intention is to use The Boeing Company’s successful transformation as a platform for teaching organizations how to elicit and benefit from creative, revolutionary innovations from within—from their current employees. Several aspects make this story unique. First and foremost, The Rudolph Factor principles are transferable to and replicable by any type or size of organization in any industry. At its core, the C-17 story reflects a revolution of the Program’s business culture that was riddled with adverse and antagonistic relationships and facing potential cancellation, but that went on to align nearly 10,000 employees to a common purpose and was subsequently awarded our nation’s prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, which is presented by the president of the United States. President Clinton, who presented the Award to the C-17 Program in 1999, referred to it as a “National Treasure.”

While the rate of this significant transformation was quite impressive (approximately six years), the thinking underlying the methods is even more compelling. A shift in thinking took place that drove new actions and behaviors and produced (and continue to produce) phenomenal results. The Boeing C-17 Program’s success is based on progressive leadership; the development of a highly participatory team-based culture; a steadfast organizational constitution; and an alternative, aligned reward structure. Above all, this nontraditional creative and innovative thinking occurred in what could be considered one of the most highly regulated and historically bureaucratic environments. We believe the tenets underlying the Boeing C-17 Program have been successfully transplanted and are currently in the process of being implemented into several other Divisions and Programs within The Boeing Company.

In the first section (Chapter 1), we explore general problems companies face with regard to eliciting innovative thinking from employees and how this lack of involvement and contribution goes hand in hand with disparate, disconnected, and/or dysfunctional corporate cultures. Combined, these nontangible issues diminish possibilities for an organization to be a world-class leader, and more importantly, to have any notable competitive advantage.

The second section (Chapters 2 through 4) explores lessons learned and demonstrates how the leaders of Boeing’s C-17 Program recognized Employee Involvement and the development of a culture of creative contribution as the two most important factors in revolutionizing their business culture—as gleaned from their experiences in identifying, nurturing, and building their own Rudolph Factor (a term referring to a small percentage of every company’s highly creative and unconventional thinkers). Boeing C-17’s success can be correlated to examples from other companies that have orchestrated innovative thinking and experienced transformative results as well. The primary lessons are grouped into three stages—each of which builds on the progressive and innovative thinking behind the C-17’s success. The first stage reveals the methods of identifying Rudolphs (Chapter 3, “Why Rudolph, You Ask?”). The second stage explores how companies who have become adept at identifying their Rudolphs must then learn the lessons of “Nurturing Rudolphs to Maximize Their Innovative Contributions” (Chapter 4).

The third and final section of the book (Chapters 5 through the Epilogue) demonstrates how “Establishing a Rudolph Culture” (Chapter 5) without addressing three other vital areas of the organization will not result in organizational greatness. We share ideas of how to integrate a highly innovative Rudolph Culture with three other essential elements of organizational dynamics, which combined make up what we refer to as The Four Pillars of Organizational Greatness. The Four Pillars include the following:

1. Establishing a Rudolph Culture

2. Redefining leadership as “connecting people to their future”

3. Developing a Corporate Constitution—an unwavering institutional memory and infrastructure that does not change no matter who is leading or what external circumstances are presented

4. Creating an Aligned Reward Structure—consonant with different types of employees (worker, manager, Rudolph, or executive) and in alignment with the other three pillars

The beauty of The Rudolph Factor is that it often does not require a company to use or spend additional money or resources because Rudolphs are already there—they only languish in not being identified, nurtured, or having a healthy system from which they can effectively contribute. This book is intended to be used as a tool to assist people within organizations to get on the same page and to facilitate enterprise-wide cultural transformations. The design and content are structured as an ongoing reference guide for employees, managers, executives, and of course, Rudolphs! The process of transforming the culture, redefining leadership, creating a “Corporate Constitution,” and aligning the reward structure becomes a company’s sustainable competitive advantage and a powerful mechanism for leveraging The Rudolph Factor.

Enjoy!

CHAPTER 1

THE PREVAILING FORM OF BUSINESS CULTURES

A company without competitive advantage is as good as extinct; and in today’s global economy, the fundamental elements of competitive advantage have changed. While the uniqueness of a product’s features (function, design, quality, and/or price) was once considered the primary criteria for an organization’s competitive advantage, today’s criteria are comprised of nontangible features that are more people-based rather than product- or process-based . This is not to say the products or processes are not important. We are simply referring to the notion that a people-centric focus has a profound and positive effect on the products and processes people manage.

Currently, companies tend to be product-only or process-only focused (people tend to be left out of the equation altogether). The ability to leverage an organization’s Rudolph Factor begins with this fundamental shift in thinking, which then provides management with a new approach to catalyzing the creativity in its own ranks as developed from the winning ideas and tools proven in the crucible of one of the world’s largest companies—The Boeing Company.

In our work with businesses large and small, we have recognized that roughly 10 percent of any organization’s people are true agents of innovation—people who can shine the light exactly where a company needs to go to achieve higher levels of innovation. This critical 10 percent of an organization is its Rudolph Factor—borrowing a metaphor from the famous reindeer of the popular children’s Christmas story, Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer . As the story goes, Rudolph’s bright, illuminated nose led Santa’s sleigh through the fog to accomplish its mission of delivering toys all over the world by Christmas morning. Similarly, modern day Rudolphs in the business world tend to go unnoticed until their unique and unconventional thinking is needed. Companies like Boeing that have learned to identify, nurture, and leverage their Rudolph Factor are today’s leaders of innovation and change, and hence, dominate their respective fields with this unique and sustainable