Reading experience of Week 14 "Advantage: Organizational Health is Better than Everything" Frank

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The author talks about two conditions for the success of an organization. One is intelligence, including strategy, marketing, finance, and technology; the other is health, including the least office politics and the least Chaos, high morale, high efficiency, low turnover of good employees.

The difference in the impact on future development of successful companies and mediocre or unsuccessful companies has little to do with the knowledge or intelligence they possess, but is directly related to the health of the company.

Because most organizations only make fragmented use of the knowledge, experience, and intellectual capital they possess, while healthy organizations make use of almost all of these resources.

In order to create a healthy organization, the author proposes to abide by four principles, which are:

1. Establish a cohesive leadership team

2. Build an organization Clarity

3. Repeat and fully communicate organizational clarity

4. Strengthen organizational clarity

Principle 1: Build a cohesive leadership team

To build a cohesive leadership team, you need to do the following 5 behaviors:?

Behavior 1: Build trust

The first step for the healthy operation of an organization is to build trust , this is something that most managers are familiar with, but in fact, managers in organizations usually do not do well.

The trust required to build a good team is called "vulnerability-based trust."

When team members are fully comfortable being honest and unreserved in front of each other, when they are able to say from the bottom of their hearts, "I messed up," "I need help," "Your idea is better than mine." Good", "I love that I can do as well as I hate you", or even "I'm sorry", this kind of trust is created.

Dear readers, do the above conversations occur frequently enough in your organization? If you rarely hear this, ask yourself: Is your organization building trust based on vulnerability?

The core of the theory of vulnerability-based trust is that people are willing to give up their pride and fear and sacrifice themselves for the common interests of the team.

What can be done to build organizational trust?

First, let’s get to know each other better.

For example, when going out for activities, let everyone briefly introduce their lives to each other, where they were born, how many brothers and sisters they have, and where they rank. What was the most interesting and difficult challenge you faced as a child. These are very simple, but they can help us understand each other's lives better and build a foundation of trust.

In addition to informal life understanding, we can also conduct personality and behavioral tests to let each other know each other's personality and behavior, so that we can make appropriate behaviors ourselves. Such tests include MBTI, DISC, etc.

When we don’t understand the other person’s personality and behavior, we usually make some fundamental attribution errors.

? What is fundamental attribution error?

We usually attribute our success to our own characteristics and our failures to environmental factors. For example, when we accomplish something, we think it is because we are talented and smart and good at discovering; when we fail, we think it is bad luck or being influenced by others.

At the same time, we attribute the success of others to environmental factors and the failure of others to their own characteristics. For example, when others accomplish something, they will think that they are lucky and have someone to help them; when others fail, they will think that they are not good enough and are not the right person.

Readers, does this sound familiar?

However, genetic attribution errors will seriously damage the trust of the organization and make the organization lose health. Therefore, understanding the personalities and behaviors of different people in the organization, as well as providing fact-based explanations, will build trust and improve the health of the organization.

Second, leaders take the lead

The goal of building organizational trust is to enable all members of the leadership team to dare to admit their weaknesses and mistakes frankly in front of everyone. However, if the team’s If leaders do not take the lead, such goals cannot be achieved.

If the team leader is unwilling to admit his or her mistakes or weaknesses that are obvious to everyone else, it will be nearly impossible to get the rest of the team to take the step.

Behavior 2: Manage conflict

Conflict is not a bad thing for a team. In fact, fear of conflict is almost always a sign of a problem.

The conflict here refers to active and effective ideological conflict, where people are willing to express different opinions and even engage in stimulating debate when necessary when discussing important issues and making key decisions.

Of course, the prerequisite for active and effective conflict is trust! In an environment of mutual trust, conflict is simply a pursuit of truth and an effort to find the best answer.

Conflict has two extremes.

At one end is the absence of any conflict, also called "superficial harmony" because its main characteristic is that people show false smiles and false agreement on almost any issue. Opinion, at least on the surface.

On the other end of the spectrum is destructive conflict, where people are always arguing.

When moving from "surface harmony" to the other extreme, you will encounter more and more "constructive conflicts". Of course, past an "ideal conflict point," it becomes destructive conflict.

However, "ideal conflict points" do not always exist and need to be actively faced by the team.

The author mentions three ways to increase conflict.

First, discover conflicts.

Exploring conflicts means that when you suspect there is a potential conflict, you can ask everyone to express their psychological thoughts.

By seeking out and exposing underlying or even subtle disagreements that have not yet surfaced, team leaders (and team members can do the same) can avoid the damaging hallway complaints that can arise when people are unwilling to engage in direct , and during active debates, hallway complaints are inevitable.

Second, implementation approval.

Implementation approval means that when people begin to try to participate in a conflict, they need to receive prompt and positive feedback.

Leaders need to tell them: This is the right thing to do.

When someone reminds them in a moment of conflict that they are helping the team rather than hurting it by expressing disagreement, the stress in their minds disappears, the tension seems to disappear, and they You can concentrate on solving the problem at hand.

Third, create clear expectations and guidelines.

There are some rules that can be put in place to encourage conflict. For example:

If everyone remains silent during a discussion, it will be understood that there is a disagreement.

At the end of each discussion, encourage everyone on the team to participate in the discussion by having them formally commit to the decision.

Of course, for real conflict to occur, trust must first be established.

Behavior 3: Making a Commitment

Without conflict, people don’t have the opportunity to express their opinions, ask questions, and understand the reasoning behind them, and they won’t be motivated to make a decision. promise.

If leadership teams wait to reach consensus before taking action, their decisions are often too late and inconsequential ones that no one is happy with. This will lead to mediocrity and frustration.

Therefore, excellent teams will avoid the ideological trap and strive to "disagree but still go all out".

This requires that team members must openly express their opinions openly and without reservation before making a decision. As long as people have the opportunity to express their opinions and communicate fully, they can support the ideas proposed by others when they commit.

Otherwise, everyone will just smile and nod in the meeting, and when they return to the office, they will stand by and look forward to the day when something goes wrong, and then they can say: Look, something went wrong, and I didn’t care about it from the beginning. Love this note.

The only way to avoid negative destruction is for the leader to require team members to participate in the conflict and let them know that no matter what decision the team ultimately makes, they will be responsible for it.

Therefore, at the end of a discussion, a cohesive team must take a few minutes to ensure that everyone who attended the meeting leaves with a consistent understanding of the agreement that was just reached and the commitments that were just made. Be aware, and take the time to clarify things that are not particularly clear.

Because people tend to want to leave early when a discussion or meeting is over, they are more likely to tolerate ambiguous decisions.

So what leaders need to consider at this point is, should they take some time at the end of the discussion or meeting to clarify everything and make specific commitments? Or in actual work, wait until problems arise before improving them?

A mature leader will definitely make wise decisions!

Behavior 4: Taking Responsibility

If people are skeptical about whether their colleagues truly accept the decisions made by the team, they are often unwilling to correct their colleagues' behavior. This is Why commitment is so important.

In other words, if people know that a decision has only negative commitment, they will be less willing to correct their colleagues' behavior.

When team members know their colleagues are truly committed, they feel comfortable raising issues face to face without fear of resistance or backlash. Colleagues are responsible for each other and are the most important and effective source of a healthy organization's sense of responsibility.

In addition to colleagues being responsible for each other, it is also particularly important for leaders to be responsible.

When leaders need to correct team members’ behavior or performance, but they always act submissive and timid, then other people in the team will not play the role they should play. Role.

In other words, if the leader is unwilling to point out a problem with a member, or even let them get away with it, why should other team members do the same?

Therefore, a leader must have courage and be good at holding team members accountable, pointing out their problems, and then waiting to deal with their reactions, which of course may also be unpleasant.

But what is reflected behind this accountability is the leadership's concern for them.

Many leaders who have problems with accountability will try to convince themselves that their reluctance is due to kindness and that they simply do not want to upset their employees. However, if they look at the true motives in their hearts, they have to admit that they actually do not want to make themselves uneasy. Being unable to take responsibility is fundamentally selfish behavior.

It is not noble at all to conceal information that is helpful to the growth of employees. In the end, the employee's problems will affect his performance evaluation and even lead to his firing. Firing an employee whose behavior is problematic but not corrected is not considered a good intention.

Therefore, leaders must take responsibility and point out problems of employees in a timely and effective manner, whether it is results-related problems or behavioral problems. The sooner they are discovered and solved, the sooner they will be solved, which will make employees and The sooner the team can achieve healthy and sustainable development.

The author also gives methods of team effectiveness exercises here.

Of course, these are all based on trust.

First, have everyone write down one thing another team member did that made the team better. In other words, write down everyone else’s greatest strengths that have a positive impact on the team, except yourself. In this way, understand the behaviors they exhibit in the team that are beneficial to the development of the team.

Second, have everyone write about things they like about other team members that might reflect poorly on the team.

Third, start with the leader, go to the team members, and ask everyone to talk about one of the leader's strengths, and then ask the leader to respond in one sentence.

Fourth, let everyone talk about an aspect that this leader needs to improve. After everyone provides their feedback, the leader provides a brief response to the feedback, not a rebuttal, just a response.

Fifth, do the same with other members of the team.

Sixth, remind everyone of the direct, honest, and helpful feedback they just shared.

The entire process not only shares each other's information, but also allows team members to realize that being responsible for each other is a sustainable and productive activity, which can encourage them to continue to carry out this activity in the future.

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Behavior 5: Focus on results

The only criterion for measuring an excellent team is whether it can achieve its predetermined goals.

Even if team members care about each other, like to work together, and the team atmosphere is thriving, as long as the team rarely or never achieves its goals, strictly speaking, it cannot be considered an excellent team.

Different teams or organizations have different definitions of goals, depending on the reason for the organization's existence. However, the goals of a cohesive team are those that are most shared among the entire team.

Only when everyone focuses on the same things and works in the same direction can the team achieve maximum output.

This means that good teams not only need to pay attention to the situation in their own part, but also need to ask about the situation in other departments and proactively help departments that may face difficulties as much as possible, because these difficulties may jeopardize the success of the entire organization. .

Therefore, executives in the organization must put the needs of the entire organization ahead of the needs of their departments. In other words, shift the team's priority from individual to collective, and show a commitment to the collective. With true commitment, a team can gain a huge competitive advantage.

A cohesive team will not see a scene like this: On a boat, the person sitting at the stern shouts to the person sitting at the bow: Hey, your end is sinking. However, he remained indifferent.

Here is a checklist to ask your team if they are able to achieve the following statements.

1. Team members trust each other and can truly be honest about their mistakes and shortcomings in front of each other.

2. Team members frequently engage in active, unfiltered conflict about important issues.

3. At the end of the team meeting, everyone reaches a clear, positive and specific understanding.

4. Team members hold each other accountable for their commitments and behaviors.

5. The leadership team puts the collective interests and needs of the larger organization ahead of their own departments.

Principle 2: Create organizational clarity

In order to improve the clarity of the organization so that everyone can clearly understand the collective behavior of the organization, six aspects need to be clarified. . The answers to these questions require consideration of the following three points.

First, the leadership must be cohesive. Without a cohesive team it is impossible to have a lively debate and achieve real agreement on these issues.

Second, when answering these six questions, leaders often unconsciously fall into a marketing or slogan mentality, trying to come up with catchy phrases or impressive statements. This is a sign that the team may have lost its way and strayed from its true goal of building real organizational clarity and alignment.

Third, answering these questions takes time. In answering these six questions, the important thing is not to get the right answer, but to get an answer that is correct in the direction and can be recognized by all team members.

Let me look at six key questions you must answer to build clarity and a healthy organization.

Question 1: Why do we exist?

In every organization, employees at every level need to know that there is something noble and great in what they do.

In order to clarify the reason for the existence of the organization, you might as well start from the following aspects.

What contribution have we made to the world?

Why do we do this?

Why do we help organizations do more business?

Question 2: How should we act?

The answer to the question of how we should behave is reflected in an organization's core values, which should provide the ultimate guidance for employee behavior at all levels.

There are three steps to finding core values.

First, identify employees who embody the best aspects of the organization. Conduct an in-depth analysis of them to see what qualities make them so highly regarded by their leadership teams. These traits form the initial source of potential core values.

Second, leaders must identify employees who, despite their talents, are no longer a good fit for the organization. What qualities about them make them a nuisance and a problem? The opposite of these annoying traits is another source of core values.

Third, leaders need to objectively analyze themselves to see whether they embody these values.

Question 3: What do we do?

The answer here is the specific business problem of the organization. There is no need for gorgeous adjectives or adverbs. Just explain it clearly and directly.

It is important to note that an organization's business definition will change over time, but this change will only occur when the market changes and requires a meaningful shift in the organization's basic activities.

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Question 4: How do we achieve success?

Answering this question is actually determining the organization's strategy. Determining an organization's strategy is actually determining the organization's success plan.

The best way for an organization to enhance the usefulness of its strategy is to use three strategic anchors to guide every decision the organization makes and to evaluate all decisions through them to ensure consistency.

Strategic anchors provide context for all decisions and help organizations avoid decisions that are purely pragmatic, opportunistic, and detrimental to the organization's plans for success.

How to determine strategic anchors?

You can use reverse engineering methods to extract strategic anchors from everything that actually exists in the organization.

First, list all the decisions and realities that have made the organization what it is, including everything beyond the reason for existence, core values, and business definition.

Second, screen for patterns that reveal the organization’s strategic direction and anchors.

Third, summarize the strategic anchors.

In addition, strategic anchors should also change with changes in the competitive landscape and market environment.

The author proposed a concept called strategic durability, which includes two dimensions, namely the entry threshold and innovation speed of a given market.

If the barriers to entry are high and the pace of innovation is slow, the durability of the strategic anchor is high and the strategy does not need to change frequently. Such as airlines.

If the entry barrier is low and the innovation speed is fast, the durability of the strategic anchor is very low, and the strategic anchor needs to be inspected and adjusted more frequently. For example, various online application software companies.

If the entry threshold is high and the innovation speed is fast, or the entry threshold is low and the innovation speed is slow, the durability of the strategic anchor will be relatively average. For example, the former is similar to a pharmaceutical company, and the latter is similar to various small and medium-sized service companies.

Question 5: What is the most important thing at the moment?

For an organization to establish consistency and focus, it must have only one primary task at a specific time, which can also be called a "topic goal."

Theme goals include the following factors.

First, single. One thing is most important, even if there are other goals worth considering.

Second, qualitative. Premature quantification will impose more restrictions on goals and also limit people's ability to work together toward goals. The goals will be quantified later.

Third, temporary. The theme goals must be within a clear time period, preferably 3 to 12 months.

Fourth, share it among the entire leadership team. When executives agree on a theme, they must work together to achieve it. Even by the nature of the goal, it falls within the purview of one or two of the executives.

How to determine the theme goal?

First, try answering this: If we accomplished just one thing in the next few months, what would it be?

Secondly, break down the goals. Break down topic goals into achievable goals. It can usually be broken down into 4 to 6 goals, which are qualitative, temporary, and shared by the leadership team.

Finally, determine standard operating goals. That is, setting clear, quantitative indicators.

When a theme goal is almost completed, the leadership team will start thinking about the next theme goal.

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Question 6: Who has to do what?

When leaders return to their respective jobs, clearly and clearly define the scope of their respective responsibilities. At the same time, a clear and specific division of labor is carried out.

After answering the above six questions, it is compiled into a strategic white paper, which contains the following two key points.

First, it must be brief, no more than two pages.

Second, leadership team members should carry it with them, not bury it deep in a filing cabinet.

Here is a checklist to ask your team if they are able to achieve the following statements.

1. Members of the leadership team know the reason for the existence of the team, are able to achieve a complete understanding of the issue, and are passionate about it.

2. The leadership team has defined and accepted a specific set of behavioral values.

3. Leaders have clearly agreed upon a strategy that will help them define success and differentiate themselves from their competitors.

4. The leadership team has a clear and realistic goal, and they will unite around this goal. They feel a sense of collective belonging to this goal.

5. Leadership team members know each other’s roles and responsibilities. They are good at asking questions about each other's work.

6. The leadership team provides a brief summary of each element of organizational clarity and regularly references and reviews it.

Principle 3: Communicate organizational clarity repeatedly and fully

When all the above work is ready, repeated communication within the organization is needed. Including top-down and bottom-up communication.

Top-down communication

Good leaders believe that their most important responsibility is to be the chief reminder officer.

The most reliable and effective way to get an organization moving in the same direction is to ensure that leadership team members leave the meeting with a clear consensus and to communicate this information to their leaders in a timely manner. Direct reports and having direct reports convey the same information to their own direct reports is called “escalation.”

There are three key points in level-by-level communication.

First, consistency of information from one leader to another.

Second, the timeliness of communication.

Third, real-time communication.

Most organizations fail to truly communicate with their employees because they are not clear and consistent on key messages.

It is important to note that success with top-down communication begins with Principle 1 (Build a cohesive leadership team) and Principle 2 (Create organizational clarity). Without them, no amount of communication is useful.

Bottom-up and horizontal communication

Providing employees with a bottom-up communication tool is very important in any organization, however, it is not a panacea. This is because there is no consensus on key issues and a cohesive leadership team is unable to respond to employee suggestions and requests.

In fact, asking for more feedback from employees will only exacerbate employee frustration when the feedback and suggestions they provide cannot be digested and used.

Here is a checklist to ask your team if they are able to achieve the following statements.

1. The leadership team has clearly communicated the answers to the six organizational clarity questions to all employees.

2. Leadership team members regularly remind people in their departments about the six aspects of organizational clarity.

3. At the end of the meeting, the leadership team reaches a clear and specific decision on what information to convey to employees, and communicates the information step by step in a timely manner after the meeting.

4. Employees can accurately state the reason for the organization’s existence, values, strategic anchors, and goals.

Principle 4: Enhancing Organizational Clarity

To ensure that the answers to the six critical questions are truly embedded in the organization, leaders must do everything they can to structurally strengthen them.

To do this, ensure that your personal people system (every process involving people), from recruiting to people management, training, and compensation, is designed to reinforce the answers to these questions.

People systems provide organizations with a structure that links operations, culture and management, even if the leader is not around to remind them.

At the same time, the organization must institutionalize its culture, but it cannot become bureaucratic. Bureaucratization will turn useful human systems into administrative distractions, such as burdensome and boring performance appraisals. And the best performance management processes are designed to spark the right conversations around the right topics.

Here is a checklist to ask your team if they are able to achieve the following statements.

1. Organizations have a simple way to ensure that newly hired employees are carefully selected based on the company's values.

2. New employees learn the six elements of organizational clarity during induction training.

3. All managers in the organization use a simple, consistent and non-bureaucratic system to set goals and evaluate employee performance. This system is specifically tailored around elements of organizational clarity.

4. Employees who are not in line with the organization's values ??will be fired. Those who are in line with the values ??but perform poorly will receive the guidance and help they need to achieve success.

5. The compensation and reward system is built around the values ??and goals of the organization.

In addition to the above four principles, the author of this book also proposed several types of meetings.

First, daily reporting meetings. It lasts 5 to 10 minutes. This type of meeting has no agenda and does not solve problems. It just exchanges information.

Second, weekly tactical meetings. The time is 45~90 minutes. Evaluate all priorities and work on your priorities for the week.

Third, special meetings. The time is 2~4 hours. Discuss important issues that have long-term implications for the organization.

For a baseball player, training is important, but playing in the game is even more important. Similarly, for leaders, it is important to hold meetings and discuss, but it is even more important to actually deal with problems and dilemmas.

Fourth, quarterly outing summary meeting. The time is 1~2 days. Step away from the business of the organization and see things from a fresh perspective.

Here is a checklist to ask your team if they are able to achieve the following statements.

1. Tactical and strategic discussions are held in separate meetings.

2. In the tactical meeting, the team first reviews the progress of the goal before determining the meeting agenda. Unimportant administrative topics can easily be left out.

3. At the monthly strategy meeting, devote enough time to discussing major issues so as to clarify the issues, conduct discussions and reach resolutions.

4. The team holds an outing summary meeting every quarter to review the situation in the industry, organization and team.

The above is the essence of this book compiled by the author. It is a bit much, but it is really useful. Readers who are interested in team organization and management may wish to read this book carefully, which will be very inspiring. At the same time, it is recommended to read it together with the author's other book "Five Obstacles to Team Collaboration", the impression will be more profound.