I would love to hear what you are thinking. Will drop you an email

Thoughtful people are always examining their possible paths, with hopes of doing something both enjoyable and meaningful. These “examinings” come in different sizes whose dimensions include time (e.g., decisions that affect today, this year, this lifetime…) scope (e.g., decisions that affect a little bit of your world vs. a lot of your world) and significance (e.g., decisions that affect only yourself or many people). At the smallest size, we call these examinings “planning”. At a larger scales, we call these “personal quests” or “life goals”. And at the largest scale, they become “movements” or even “revolutions.”

Good luck figuring out what you want to bite off for now, and for making it happen. (And don’t expect perfection.)

Do you have a plan for ensuring your organization “sticks to your core principles” when it grows to the point that you are no longer directly involved in the day-to-day operations?

What will you do when you are the CEO of a 500 person organization, and you are practicing some management by walking around, and you stumble upon two employees at each other’s throats? Or when you receive a letter from a customer who has been treated badly by your employees? What happens when your company’s very own performance management system (designed to motivate employees) drives short-term thinking, and in order to get a good review, your employees short change product quality or customer service?

What happens when you no longer recognize the company you meticulously nurtured and grew over the years?

Systems drive behavior. Systems have values embedded in to them either consciously or unconsciously. Your employees, clients, and customers experience your organization at the hand of your systems. Allow systems to be designed by default at your peril.

The partner piece to effective and consistent systems is organizational structure. A work-levels approach allows you to create a translational organizational design structure in your organization. This facilitates a natural translation of your “core principles” from the top to the bottom of your organization without gaps or overlaps.

My calling is to help executives embed their core values, as well as the two universal values necessary for work engagement, trust and fairness, into operations. This will ensure your core principles are, indeed, a part of the legacy you leave behind.

Regards,

Michelle