GREAT Presentation on GOOD to GREAT by Jim Collins

The following description section explores four key elements to create a great place to work.

A Friendly Place
It may sound trite, but friendliness appears to be one of the distinguishing characteristics of good workplaces. People seem to enjoy each other's company. This is not an insignificant issue. Work for an organization is, after all, work in a group setting. It's very different, for instance, from the mostly solitary work of a novelist or a painter. When you work for an organization, other people don't disappear. You are forced to interact with others, with your co-workers and your boss or your subordinates.

There Isn't Much Politics Around Here
An atmosphere of mutual respect also affects how people han¬dle power struggles endemic to every human organization. In the workplace, people compete over promotions, choice assignments, and recognition, among other things. Competition can be healthy for both the individuals and the organization— but only if, to use a sports metaphor, the playing field is level. The field tilts when employers tolerate favoritism or practice outright discrimination against people because of sex, age, sexual preference, nationality, religion, etc. But even when the field is level, subverting others is the way to get ahead in some organizations, making employees feel there are no rules or referees.

At good workplaces, employees don't seem concerned about backstabbing. It's in this context that one expression heard repeatedly at good workplaces takes on meaning: "There isn't much politics around here." By that, people mean employees aren't constantly jockeying for position, trying to curry favor with the high-ups, worrying about the impact of their actions on their chances for moving up in the company, or looking over their shoulder to make sure someone else isn't setting them up to destroy their career.

You Get a Fair Shake
Good workplaces offer a dramatic contrast to business as usual in America, where being fair to employees is considered optional. Few non-unionized firms, for instance, have even an elementary grievance procedure that offers any protections. And even strong union grievance procedures only seem to moderate the worst abuses. They don't create an atmosphere of fairness. It may be nice to run a company that values fairness, the argument goes, but what does it have to do with making money? Employees at good workplaces consistently, and often without being asked, make remarks like: "They treat us fairly here," or "The company doesn't take advantage of you," or "You get a fair shake around here."

Such statements must be taken seriously. It's extremely difficult to fool people into believing they are being treated fairly when they're not. Most of us, especially in workplace situa¬tions, have a highly trained sense of injustice. We carefully note examples of favoritism, bias, inequity, and abuse, even if we don't express our outrage. So we don't gratuitously say something is fair when we know it's not. We normally offer that judgment sparingly, and only when it's genuinely deserved

Feel Like Family
Just what is meant by family? Of course, there are families and then there are families. Some have loving parents, while others have wife beaters and child abusers. So to suggest that a company is like a family may suggest widely different inter¬pretations. Generally speaking, people who work for good em¬ployers mean something very positive when they say their workplaces have a familylike atmosphere. Among other things, they mean:

1. A caring, nurturing environment: Employees at good workplaces talk about how supervisors take an interest in their personal lives. People talk a lot about how they feel valued as individuals, not just as part of an undifferentiated mass that performs tasks for the organization. This also applies to the relationships between workers. There is a pervasive feeling that your personal concerns are important to others in the organization.
2. A long-term commitment: You're in a family for life. You can't leave at will. By the same token, people at good workplaces often remark that they feel they have made a lifelong career commitment to the organization. Good employers recognize and appreciate that commitment.
3. We're all in it together: One of the best things about being part of a family is that it's assumed that everyone can play a distinct and valuable role. Part of the reason for this attitude has been that families have historically been economic units in which members pool their resources to sustain one another. Within the family, there's a feeling that everybody is "in it together." Family members are supposed to unite when confronting outsiders. Within an organization, this feeling does more than engender camaraderie. It also helps the organization achieve its goals more effectively. This is one factor that explains why good employers tend to be more productive and profitable than their competitors.

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Eric,
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Keeping Corporate Culture Alive

Once a corporate culture is in place, there are practices within the organization that act to maintain it by giving employees a set of similar experiences. For example, many of the human resource practices reinforce the organization's culture. The selection process, performance evaluation criteria, reward practices, training and career development activities, and promotion procedures ensure that those hired fit in with the culture, reward those who support it, and penalize (and even expel) those who challenge it. Three forces play a particularly important part in sustaining a culture—selection practices, the actions of top management, and socialization methods. Let's take a closer look at each.

SELECTION
The explicit goal of the selection process is to identify and hire individuals who have the knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform the jobs within the organization successfully. But, typically, more than one candidate will be identified who meets any given job's requirements. When that point is reached, it would be naive to ignore that the final decision as to who is hired will be significantly influenced by the decision maker's judgment of how well the candidates will fit into the organization. This attempt to ensure a proper match, whether purposely or inadvertently, results in the hiring of people who have values essentially consistent with those of the organization, or at least a good portion of those values.
Additionally, the selection process provides information to applicants about the organization. Candidates learn about the organization, and, if they perceive a conflict between their values and those of the organization, they can self-select themselves out of the applicant pool. Selection, therefore, becomes a two-way street, allowing either employer or applicant to abrogate a marriage if there appears to be a mis¬match. In this way, the selection process sustains an organization's culture by selecting out those individuals who might attack or undermine its core values.

TOP MANAGEMENT
The actions of top management also have a major impact on the organization's culture. Through what they say and how they behave, senior executives establish norms that filter down through the organization as to whether risk-taking is desirable; how much freedom managers should give their subordinates; what is appropriate dress; what actions will pay off in terms of pay raises, promotions, and other rewards; and the like.

SOCIALIZATION
No matter how good a job the organization does in recruiting and selection, new employees are not fully indoctrinated in the organization's culture. Maybe most important, because they are unfamiliar with the organization's culture, new employees are potentially likely to disturb the beliefs and customs that are in place. The organization will, there¬fore, want to help new employees adapt to its culture. This adaptation process is called socialization.
All Marines must go through boot camp, where they "prove" their commitment. Of course, at the same time, the Marine trainers are indoctrinating new recruits in the "Marine way." New Morgan Guaranty bank employees go through a one-year training program that tests their intellect and endurance, and that requires teamwork as an essential factor for survival. The reason is that Morgan Guaranty wants to mold new members into the firm's collegial style.
Keep in mind that the most critical socialization stage is at the time of entry into the organization. This is when the organization seeks to mold the outsider into an employee "in good standing." Those employees who fail to learn the essential or pivotal role behaviors risk being labeled "nonconformists" or "rebels," which often leads to expulsion. But the organization will be socializing every employee, though maybe not as explicitly, throughout his or her entire career in the organization. This further contributes to sustaining the culture.

The following article explores key characteristics of a learning company.

The learning approach to strategy
By this we mean that company policy and strategy formation, together with implementation, evaluation and improvement, are consciously structured as a learning process. In that sense it is not a gung-ho approach, but one that allows business plans to be developed, formulated and revised as you go along. Managerial acts are thus seen as conscious experiments, rather than set solutions. Deliberate small-scale experiments and feedback loops are built into the planning process to enable continuous improvement in the light of experience. (Interestingly, the words 'experiment' and 'experience' come from the same root.)

Participative policy-making
This characteristic refers to the sharing of involvement in the policy- and strategy- forming processes. That is, all members of the company have a chance to take part, to discuss and contribute to major policy decisions. There is a deliberate fostering and encouragement of contributions and a recognition that successful debate involves working with tensions, or even conflicts, between different values, positions and views. There is a commitment to airing differences and working through conflicts as the way to reaching business decisions that all members are likely to support.

Internal exchange
Internal exchange involves all internal units and departments seeing themselves as customers and suppliers, contracting with one another in a partly regulated market economy. The purpose of a department is thus to 'delight' its internal customer. To do so, individuals, groups, departments and divisions engage in constant dialogue - exchanging information on expectations, negotiating, contracting and giving feedback on goods or services received. Since our purpose is to delight our internal customer, the latter is seen as the key stakeholder. At the same time, internal customers recognize that their suppliers have rights and needs too, and treat them with respect. In any case, it is fully understood that the way to deliver quality is to receive it - hence we need good relationships with our suppliers in order to develop good relationships with our customers.

Another key element here is that of overall collaboration, rather than competition. Thus, each department not only seeks to delight its customer, and vice versa (mutual win-win), but, also, everybody remains aware of the needs of the company as a whole. This calls for further levels of discussion, negotiation and contracting in a spirit of overall win-win, to ensure that certain units are not delighting their internal customers in such a way as to prevent others from doing the same. By this collaboration there is an overall optimization of performance.

Enabling structures
Such structures create opportunities for individual and business development. Roles are loosely structured, in line with the established and contracted needs of internal customers and suppliers, and in such a way as to allow for personal growth and experiment. Thus, departmental and other boundaries are seen as temporary structures that can flex in response to changes. The aim is to create an organizational architecture that gives space and headroom for meeting current needs and responding to future changes.

Hi,
Can anyone forward the PPT to my email pls.
Tnx, Karthik

Hi,
Can anyone forward the PPT to my email
Thnks
Ajai