Institutional Excellence


25 Secrets from Jack Welch The Prescription for Winning
Speed Simplicity Self-confidence
Three Major Stages of Organizational Evolution⁸
Bureaucratic: strategy is not emphasized; hierarchical structures; linear focus; dehumanized Complex: quantitative strategy; laterally complex structures; bifurcated, conflicting focus; limitations of workforce performance Adaptive: visionary, human strategy, simpler in context structure; work/family integration systems; capability and efficacy of workforce
Three Areas of Need Present in All Organizations
The need to accomplish the common task The need to be held together and maintained as a working unity - a whole is not just a collection of discordant parts but a synergistic integral combination of them The need which individuals bring with them into any organization
Three Important Features of All Organizations
The three interacting circles of need apply in every instance Every organization is unique; it has a distinct group personality or corporate culture The issue of the relation of the whole to the parts, the balance of order and freedom, is common to all


6-A: Important Traits that Determine Organizational Success in the New Economy⁴
Adaptability - the ability to accept and embrace change; the ability to adjust your perspective, approach, and behavior to new paradigms. Appreciation of ambiguity - the ability to deal with unstructured, untested parameters and to arrive at satisfactory conclusions in the rapidly changing economic environment Accommodation - participating in a wide spectrum of intragroup and intergroup decision-making activities Accomplishment - keeping your own, your employees', and your organization's level of performance high Access ability - getting information that your people need to reach the goals. Accessibility - being available to your people and seeking out them; providing support, information, and resources; sharing with them.
Key Characteristics of High-performance Organizations⁵
Clear understanding what business you are in: what you do; where you want to go; and what you want to be in order to define customers you want to serve. A theory of leadership that subscribes to and promotes the concept that leadership and self-leadership exists at all levels within the organization - everyone provides leadership for those responsibilities that have been assigned to them. A customer focus that is both internal and external implies that you don't just respond to what customers say they need and want, but you apply your own body of knowledge acquired from years of experience and study, in addition to your best knowledge of the customer, to deliver a product or service that will exceed customer expectations, achieve delighted customers and lead to customer success. A systemic and comprehensive focus on quality and performance improvement that applies to all areas of product and service, to all areas of the organization and to all people within the organization. This focus should not be just a program, but a way of life, a strategy requiring improvement by everybody in everything all the time and pursuing a vision of everyone doing the right things. A healthy state of discontent to motivate change and improvement - an awareness by both people and organizations that they can become better even through they may be pleased with who they are and proud of what they do. A continuous education process and action plan that helps everyone develop the knowledge, skills and abilities to do something different tomorrow that they cannot do today. An intensive top-down and bottom-up communication process that communicates the knowledge and information that people need - to improve at whatever they do - in a way that they understand and can apply to their job. Quantitative, systematic and proactive measurements that support the corporate culture and decision-making process Living conduct guidelines that provide guidance for honesty, fairness, integrity and loyalty and are used when situations change, new opportunities appear, and new challenges develop.
360 Degree Evaluation Process
Demand continuous feedback from all your constituents - superiors, peers, employees, and customers - to rate your organization's performance. Promise anonymity, if required. Identify deficiencies, recognize the need to make change and take action To get a real-time picture of your business in order to assess its strengths and weaknesses, subject your organization, yourself, and your employees to a continuous 360 degree evaluation process
Organizational Fitness Profile (OFP) Road-Mapping
OFP road-mapping - to chose and do the right things Corporate management - to do these things well

Why Institutional Excellence?

The leaders of great companies are not just great at growing profits. Most importantly, they are organizational architects determined to establish institutional excellence for as long as the company is in business. "When institutional excellence is in place, companies can achieve industry leadership for decades and generations."¹

Achieving the Right Balance Between the Whole and the Parts

One of the major issues in all organizations is getting the right balance between the whole and the parts - the need of the organization as a whole, the needs of its internal groups, and individual needs of its members. This in turn is a reflection of the reflection of deeper tensions between the values of order and freedom. They appear to be opposites, but the true function of order is to create freedom.⁶

The extent to which organization operates as a network of relationships enables individuals to make sense of their work and their world, and will strongly influence the coherence of the organization and its sense of purpose. Such purpose can only be grounded in the coherence and meaningfulness of people's work to themselves, their colleagues and their customers.

The New-Generation Adaptive Organization

Adaptive organization is a new third-stage organization based upon radically new logics of content, configuration, and change based on human capabilities rather than limitations. The three new logics for adaptive organizations include:

New logic of content: requires that concepts of strategy, structure, and systems are broadened to include a greater emphasis on human values, goals, capabilities, and efficacy.
New logic of configuration: specifies a new relationship among strategy, structure, and systems that gives priority to supporting workforce engagement and capability.
New logic of change: asserts that people seek meaning in work through accomplishment and contribution to shared organization goals, and specifies a top-down-bottom-up sequence of development activities.

7-S Model - a Managerial Tool for Analyzing and Improving Organizations

The 7-S model is a framework for analyzing organizations and their effectiveness. It looks at the seven key elements that make the organizations successful, or not: strategy; structure; systems; style; skills; staff; and shared values. To be effective, your organization must have a high degree of fit, or internal alignment among all the seven Ss. All Ss are interrelated, so a change in one has a ripple effect on all the others. Thus, to improve your organization, you have to pay attention to all of the seven elements at the same time... More

Sources of Your Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Sustainable competitive advantage enables business to survive against its competition over a long period of time. An intelligent and integrated human resources strategy is the most important source of sustainable competitive advantage.. More

Corporate Leadership

Leadership is the necessary condition for long-term competitiveness. In particular in the knowledge economy, what is proving to be most effective is "the emerging style of values-based leadership, both as motivation for constant innovation up and down all organization levels and as a source of unity and coherence across fragmented firm boundaries".⁴ Harnessing your abilities to lead through the power of intellect, will, persistence, and vision creates synergies that propel successful companies in the quest for, and achievement of, competitive advantage...More

Trust-based Working Relationships

Trust has an important link with your organizational success. Trust-based working relationships are an important source of your sustainable competitive advantage because trust is valuable, rare, imperfectly imitable, and often nonsubstitutable. "Trust elevates levels of commitment and sustains effort and performance without the need for management controls and close monitoring."⁴ When trust exist, "it is less necessary for firms to establish formal contracts to specify expected actions and interaction patterns. In addition, when parties trust one another, it less necessary for the firm to rely on organizational structures to monitor and control individual and group behaviors"⁹...More

Employee Empowerment

A successful corporation must be able to craft a new partnership-based relationship with its employees - it must be able to live the ideals of people power, rather than merely talk about them...More

Establishing an Attitude of Relentless Growth

Establishing an attitude of relentless growth is what enables an organization and its people to achieve their goals. The spirit of relentless growth keeps fresh ideas flowing and reinvigorates your company.

The Relentless Growth Attitude establishes a context within which corporate executives lead by setting direction, creating strategy, securing resources, defining organization architecture, and ensuring that learning occurs. The Growth Attitude should start at the top and work its way down your organization...More

Cross-Functional Teams

"While separate departments help to develop deep knowledge in each functional area, they also make it difficult to coordinate activities across departmental boundaries. Organizations often establish cross-functional teams to deal with this dilemma."¹ Cross-functional teams will also help you to lead innovation and change through your organization... More

Continuous Corporate Renewal

For a manager, acceptance of the status quo is deadly. In business, nothing is ever truly fixed or complete because its very aspect is a work in progress.

Learning Bottom-Up

"As managers, our obligation is to listen and act, putting the knowledge resources of our employees to work by enhancing connectivity", says Desmond Bonnar from Thames Water. "In this way we can expand options and remain ahead of the learning curve that is the inevitable by-product of change."⁴

How To Bring About Effective Change

Change creates opportunities, but only for those who recognize and seize it. Successful change efforts are those where the choices both are internally consistent and fit key external and situational variables. "You have to find subtle ways to introduce change, new concepts, and give feedback to people so that they can accept and grow with it."¹...More

Road-Mapping Your Organizational Fitness Profile (OFP)

The Organizational Fitness Profile (OFP) can help to x-ray your organization, identify its weaknesses, and take corrective action in order to achieve optimal performance. The OFP process starts with the top management team developing a "Statement of Strategic and Organizational Direction" in order to communicate and explain the logic behind the strategy. After the statement is issued, a task force composed of middle managers from different functions or businesses is appointed to collect information from inside and outside organization about specific management practices that help or hinder the implementation of specific strategies. The data collected by the task force enable the top management to analyze the organization's effectiveness. A plan is then established jointly by the top management and the task force to implement this new organizational vision... More

80/20 Theory of the Firm

The key theme of the 80/20 Principle applied to business is how to create the greatest stakeholder value and generate most money with the least expenditure of assets and efforts. The game is to spot the few places where you are making great surpluses - be that a product, a market, a customer type, a technology, a distribution channel, a department, a country, a type of transaction, an employee, or a team - and to maximize them; and to identify the places where you are loosing and get out...More

Case Study: General Electric¹

Today, General Electric succeeds in dozens of diverse businesses, and is continuously at the vanguard of change. Some years ago however, in locations throughout GE, local managers were operating in an insulated environment with walls separating them, both horizontally and vertically, from other departments and their workforce. Employee questions, initiatives, and feedback were discouraged.

Determined to harness the collective power of GE employees, create a free flow of ideas, and redefine relationships between boss and subordinates, Jack Welch, CEO, General Electric, created a new corporate culture. It's key elements are:

Redesigning the role of the leader in the new economy: creating followers through communicating a vision, and establishing open, caring relations with every employee
Creating an open, collaborative workplace where everyone's opinion is welcome
Empowering senior executives to run far-flung businesses in entrepreneurial fashion
Liberating the workforce; making everybody a participant through improving vertical communication and employee empowerment... More

Bibliography:

"Extreme Management", Mark Stevens, 2001
"The 80/20 Principle", Richard Koch, 1998
"Relentless Growth", Christopher Meyer, 1998
"A Manager's Guide to the Millennium", Ken Matejka & Richard J. Dunsing, 2000
"The Basics of Leadership", Merlin Ricklefs, 2002
"Effective Strategic Leadership", John Adair, 2002
"The Centerless Corporation", Bruce A.Pasternack and Albert. J. Viscio, 1998
"MegaChange", William E. Joyce, 1999
"Strategic Management: Competitiveness and Globalization", Edition 4, Thomson Learning, 2001

Contact info Check what we can do for you Advertise Partner with us Become an Author Become a Sponsor