Introduction: Companies that execute well are fit organizations. The have the muscle, stamina and speed to do what’s required across a range of demanding conditions. Companies that execute well are companies who do what they do with skill and confidence.
There is a purpose and focus that are clearly observable in the performance of a fit company. Companies that execute well are companies that are self-aware. They are able to observe their performance accurately, learn from what happened and make the modifications required to put their strategic intent into action more effectively.
How does your company carry itself? Success in this area has to be a group effort. As an executive, you can’t do it all. You can inspire, expect, coach and reward the right stuff, but the organization, as a whole, has to deliver it.
Action Steps
Creating Action Heroes: Where does your critical action occur? Who are your key performers? Are they your production folks? Are they your sales reps? Are they your designers, scientists or engineers? In the Mary Kay Corporation, you’ll hear that the whole organization is structured to support the saleswoman in the field. She’s their production unit. In the literature about Toyota, the emphasis is on the effectiveness of teammates on the production line. The production process is fundamental to Toyota’s success. Wherever your critical action occurs, and wherever your critical people are located defines the action nodes within your organization. I find it most productive for most companies to think of their entire organization as comprised of action nodes.
Everybody has a supplier and everyone has a customer, be they internal or external. Everyone has to manage their relationships with their suppliers. They have to do what they need to do to get what they need when they need it. That’s the only way that they can, in turn, keep their commitments to their customers. Think of each person as a link in your company’s value chain, interrelated, and tied together for success.
In interdependent social systems, all organizational actions require relationships with other members of the system: an individual within a system can never function in isolation. Key questions emerge about organizational relationships: with whom must I interact to accomplish the organization’s mission? How must I interact in order for the system to function optimally?
Leaders must be astute at tending and enabling effective collaborative relationships. To work optimally, these relationships cannot be dictated; they must prove their worth by adding value to everyone involved.
In organizations, relationships become formalized as processes. A robust system views its processes as opportunities for conversation about operational and strategic concerns. It then facilitates the kinds of relationships that let those conversations take place:
- What are we doing well?
- What could we do better?
- What does the environment have to say about us?
- What do we have to learn in order to improve with the things we don’t do well?
Leaders need to model concern about the answers to these questions, and cannot do so without listening well.
In this view of the organization, everyone is expected to look beyond their job to think about ways to improve the system as a whole. Relationships, then, are key to the company’s fitness. Ultimately, because relationships center on trust, it is crucial for organizations to seek ways to establish and enhance trusting relationships. It is only through the evolution of a trusting work culture that highly refined relationship skills---essential in networked organizations---can develop.
Systems find ways to transmit vital information, often in spite of formal processes.
Identity-focused action-relationships in networked organizations require quick, targeted information sharing; information has to flow within the relationship in order to fulfill the purpose of the system. Opportunities for people to talk together about the work and listen accurately to what others have to say are fundamental to the transmission of information.
Companies achieve results through interdependent processes---handoffs between departments and across boundaries. Heightened effectiveness and efficiency arise when all relationships within the company operate in sync with each other. No matter where people sit in such a system, they have to be able to determine what needs to happen now from a relationship standpoint that will allow the right kind of information to flow so that we can accomplish what’s required. Real value creation takes place within relationships; the level of intimacy the relationships attain ultimately determines the company’s potential for success.