David Eagle dot Net

I’ve read a few Jack Welch books.  I want to talk a little bit about one point that he makes in a few different places.  I’ll summarize here.  Imagine you have two employees.  One of these employees is your star performer, beats every deadline by several days and turns in projects to spec every time, though his attitude about the company is cavalier.  The other employee is a middle-of-the-road employee, who is fully bought in to the Vision statement of the company, and is well integrated with its Culture.

I guess I should step back for a moment and define some terms.  A Vision statement describes the goal that a company has set for itself.  The Vision is the purpose that the company exists to serve.  A great example of this is the Vision statement of Google, which reads, “To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”  A Vision statement is a “high level” document, it does not describe the steps needed to accomplish any goal, it simply sets the goal in writing for all to see.  It is then the duty of every employee to function with the company’s Vision in mind, and particularly of Management and Product Development to drive the organization toward its Vision.

The term corporate culture (”Culture”) describes the attitudes and beliefs of a business.  As it does for individual people, it is the belief system of a company which determines how it behaves.  From how it hires its employees to how it interacts with its clients, the beliefs and attitude of a corporation, the “culture”, give it the ability to respond consistently in a myriad of different situations.

These two elements are critical to the success of large businesses, and must be clearly and purposefully defined.  Within smaller organizations, there is more room for error, because the head of the organization is still well connected to the lower ranking members, and by proximity he or she is able to pass on goals and a framework of behavior that take the place of a Vision statement and corporate culture.  When numbers of employees and layers of management increase, Vision and Culture are critical tools in communicating corporate goals and standards of behavior to employees at all levels of the organization.  An understanding of these two key elements should give employees a good handle on how to behave in situations that may not be documented in their employee handbooks.

Back to our two employees.  The super-star understands the Vision, but doesn’t care for it.  He constantly bucks corporate culture, ignoring it when it interferes with what he wants to do.  On the other hand, the mid-level employee, who consistently meets his deadlines and may make one or two little mistakes here or there, believes in the Vision, and is fully invested in the corporate culture.  Downsizing requires that you lay off one of these employees.  Which one should you lay off?

While it may seem that the super-star is the obvious keeper because of his superior production, the human element must be considered.  The mid-level guy loves not just his job, but what his company stands for.  He is able to take pride in what he does and who he works for.  The super-star doesn’t care, and is only coming to work for a paycheck.

The result?  The mid-level employee is more likely to invest personal energy in his job than the super-star.  This may take the shape of studying and recommending new technologies, becoming more invested in the Research or Planning phase of projects, or suggesting better, different, or new ways of doing things.  The super-star will do better at what’s expected of him than is expected because it fans his ego, but without any real reason to stay with the organization he will likely leave at the first sign of a better offer.

Retaining the person who is a better fit for the organization is always a better choice, even if that persons performance is not as strong as the performance of the top player in the department.  Making this choice is very difficult for managers at any level, because they see only the loss in productivity.  To be successful you must look beyond what you are producing, selling, and designing now.  How will it be sustained in a year?  2 years?  Over any longterm time-frame, an employee who is more invested in what your company stands for will contribute more to the overall success of the organization.

People can be trained.  People can gain skill through experience, and a mid-level guy today might be a super-star in a year, but a super-star today can never be convinced to believe in what you stand for unless he wants to.

Your responsibility?

1. Stand for something.

To have a Vision that means anything to anyone, you have to mean it.  Googles’ Vision aims to serve the world, and it’s clearly something that they believe in.  Something that simultaneously transcends and gives meaning to the relatively simple idea of “indexing web pages to be searched.”

2. Say it clearly

The best way to get your Vision ignored is to take a long time explaining it.  One sentence works best.  If it takes more than three sentences, you’re probably not talking about your actual vision, but about how you plan to accomplish it.  Move to a “higher level”.

3. Put it in front of your employees, every day.

These are the people that need to believe in it.  If they believe it, they’ll communicate it to the customers.  If they don’t see it, how can they believe it?  Every employee in your company should know where the Vision statement is located, and should be able to communicate the gist of it.

4. Decide how you want your company to behave, and behave that way yourself

Culture only happens from the top down.  If you want a company that’s loose on dress-code and strong on innovation, encourage an open-door policy amongst your managers, give credit where it’s due, and don’t stress the small stuff.  If conforming to an image of professionalism is important to you, enforce that idea with your managers, make sure they understand what the standard is, and that you expect it to be met.

Vision and culture are very easy to ignore, and very important.  By forgetting about them you can get into a lot of trouble, by spending some time thinking about them you can help your organization find an identity that yourself and others can identify with, and  really get behind.