The Ten Commandments

The Ten Commandments That Build Healthy, Successful and Long Lasting Organisations

The human factors that make for

great places to work

Russell John Connor

The Ten Commandments That Build Healthy, Succesful and Long Lasting Organisations

First published 2010Dynamic LinkIvydene, Winkfield Rd, Ascot, Berks, SL5 7EX UK.

The Author and the Publisher specifically disclaim any liability, loss or risk which is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly of the use and application of any content of this work.

Cover and book design; Linda Eglite

Copyright 2010; Russell John Connor

The right of Russell John Connor to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright holder except in accordance with the provisions of the copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Applications for the copyright holders written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the pub-lishers.

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I dedicate this to Irene whose love, and belief made this book possible.

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The Ten CommandmentsThat Build Healthy, Successful and Long Lasting Organisations

INTRODUCTION

Technology has a massive impact on our lives and drives change. In my, hopefully still brief, working life I have experienced the height of the jet age, grown up in the space age, worked through the digital revolution and entered full speed into the internet age.

New style organisations emerge to take advantage of opportunities that technology brings whilst others at least accommodate the changes or become extinct.

New styles of management emerge. ‘Call-me Tony’ informality has replaced deference and the ‘uniform’ in many organisations is now tee shirts and trainers.

New social trends emerge. Jobs for life are largely a thing of the past and managing careers is on the shoulders of the individual citizen along with other weighty matters such as making sufficient savings for retire-ment.

It would be easy to believe that each transformative wave heralds in new management principles. In this way, new replaces old and once cher-ished practices go the same way as the telegraph and fax machine.

Yet, despite this whirl of change there are fundamental principles that remain true today as they did at the dawn of our industrialised era.

These principles, commandments even, rest on the fact that whilst tech-nological change is sometimes revolutionary, human nature changes at a more gradual pace. Human beings are social creatures and unlike any others on the planet, are meaning-seeking and meaning-making.

When an appreciation of the complete person is fully embedded in organisations, the commandments expounded in this book become superfluous. However, so often in reality, the chase for the latest gadget or the next dollar means that the human factors that make for great places to work are ignored.

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I hope that my use of a Christian metaphor doesn’t offend. I have not come down from the business equivalent of Mount Sinai. My learning is not from being a chosen one or from being singled out as a messenger. I am very fortunate to have had great teachers, professors, colleagues and bosses. I have gained my perspective from standing on the shoul-ders of giants and for that I acknowledge their contribution.

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Russell John Connor2010


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thank You

Christine Manley

Prof. Norman Dixon

Prof. David Guest

Prof. Gillian Stamp

David Yeandle

Martin Bartholomew

Mike Harris

Judy Hobrough

Bob Orrin

Elliott Jaques Roger HamiltonNapoleon Hill

and also to the people that I have not met but who have inspired me

Brian Dive

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi

Prof. Emmy Van Deurzen-Smith

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THE TEN COMMANDMENTS

Thou shall keep the strategy alive

Thou shall not worship false Gods

Thou shall not share accountabilities

Thou shall match people to the work undertaken

Thou shall have measures that promote clarity, objectivity and team work

Thou shall create an organisational climate that builds clarity, trust and purpose

Thou shall promote social networks

Thou shall build-in flexibility and ensure that decisions are taken as close to the customer or end-user as possible

Thou shall have high performance leaders that engage others and embrace change

Thou shall know thyself

1.

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10.

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THE FIRST COMMANDMENT

Thou shall keep the strategy alive.

A strategy effectively defines the scale of the challenge and sets the demands for the organisation including how it needs to differentiate itself from competitors and deliver user-benefits.

Some strategies can be summarised in a vision or mission state-ment. These are powerful high-level statements that provide direc-tion. However, not all organisations find it possible to settle on one or two sentences that do justice to their brand, product or service offer-ing - and that is not a reflection of the quality of the strategy.

Strategies are rarely fully formed. They are typically in a state of formulation or deconstruction and that is a good thing! A strategy has to be alive and organic, not strangled at birth by bureaucracy and process.

More important than the strategy document, or the finely crafted vision and mission statements are the processes that ensure that strategies are constantly in-touch with the external context.

Key processes include:

Communications and information flows especially about market developments,

Executive meetings at which the unthinkable can be voiced,

Allocation of accountabilities to translate strategy into action.

The strategy needs to define the purpose, aims and objectives of the organisation. ‘We are going to send a man to the moon and bring him home again’, was a great rallying cry for NASA’s Apollo pro-gramme However, to enable and realise the mission, the strategy embraced the design and delivery of human effort. Without the means of delivery, great sound-bites remain just that.

Those people in an organisation charged with developing the strat-egy must have their heads in the clouds and also their feet firmly on the ground.

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This ‘pull’ can create uncertainty that needs to be managed. If not, there is the danger of shifting to a more comfortable place that involves stick-ing with the tried and tested or getting caught up forever in ‘blue sky’ thinking.

Those people in the organisation that develop the strategy and bring it into existence - make it live - have to recognise that as human beings, we are all addicted to interpretation. Our perception is our reality. We are the story that we tell ourselves.

As such strategic leaders have to be good at interpretation and story telling.

Good interpreters have to be sensitive to changes in the environment, pick up on the small cues and build the information into a mental-model, which they can use to make predictions. Good story telling involves using this mental-model to create a narrative so that others can at first glimpse new possibilities and then tell the story from their own perspec-tive.

When a number of people start to articulate a compelling story, strategic change is not pushed through by executive willpower, it is brought into being by the day-to-day decisions taken at every level that align human effort with the strategic direction.


THE SECOND COMMANDMENT

Thou shall not worship false Gods.

There are many false Gods and these include two recent examples; Shareholder Value and Hero CEOs.

Do not fall at the feet of Shareholder Value especially when it comes in the form of Total Shareholder Return.

Total Shareholder Return compares companies via share-price move-ments and these become a proxy for value creation. However, the link between share-price and value creation is not direct or linear due to the fact that:

The future value of an organisation is already embedded in the share-price now. The share-price can over estimate the future value creation potential or underestimate it,

Markets can be manipulated in the short-term.

When Total Shareholder Return is used as the principle measure of performance, not only is there an incentive to manipulate the market, executives are rewarded for the value that the market expects them to create - whether they were doing so or not.

Do not fall at the feet of the Hero Chief Executive.

Charisma, charm and force of character are important qualities but don’t over-value them. Every strength has a shadow-side and it is easy for people’s strengths to become their downfall. Often, in testing times, the once attractive qualities that others admired reveal personal defect and character flaws. Charisma turns to arrogance, charm can become superficial flattery and force of character can be over-powering and intimidating.

Do put a high value on personal humility and professional will but the only true God is Value Creation.

Employment and all the assessments and development activities people go through should have the underlying goal of creating economic value constantly in mind. When it comes to assessing the

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need for a management job. A position should make a value contribution that is distinctly different to others either above or below in a chain of command. If not, it is an unnecessary expense and also prevents others from making their maximum contribution.


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THE THIRD COMMANDMENT

Thou shall not share accountabilities.

High performance organisations do what they set out to do without wast-ing resources, time or effort. Key to this is laying down the cascade of accountability and this is one of the key responsibilities of top manage-ment in the organisation. As organisations grow and mature, this cas-cade of accountability can become over-developed and wasteful.

Accountability; this is a more specific term than responsibility and relates to outputs. The reason that people are employed is to produce output. Put simply, accountability is what you can be held answerable for to another person. It is what you own. Put brutally, it is what you can be fired for not doing. A factory manager is responsible for the production of product from within their factory but they are likely to be accountable for the cost, quality and timeliness of delivery.

Accountability also defines the scope of the decisions and judgements that a person is required to make in their role. As jobs get bigger the scope to make decisions grows, the resources involved in making and executing the decision are more complex and inter-related and the time-scale over which the consequences play-out get longer.

Accountability should not be shared, although others may contribute to its delivery.

A lack of well-defined and clear accountabilities in an enterprise leads to organisational inefficiency characterized by:

Slow response to market opportunities,

Silo mentality,

Poor customer relationships,

Slow decision-making,

Low productivity,

Managers ‘dipping down’ – and taking decisions that can be best made elsewhere,


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Negativity,

Unclear authorities,

People playing power games.

Clear accountabilities not only avoid the negative consequences, they give people real ownership and purpose. Ownership and purpose are the foundations for the achievement of remarkable outputs.


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THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT

Thou shall match people to the work undertaken.

There is a gap in the practice of matching people to jobs.

Matching people to jobs has been a critical management activity since the beginning of organised activity. Arguably, there is no more important management responsibility. Yet, despite its importance, the process of ensuring a good fit can go badly wrong.

This gap in the practice of matching people to jobs can be described as a blind spot. As with all blind spots, there’s not only a lack of awareness of what’s missing but also unintended negative consequences.

The blind spot in question is so significant that it often results in frag-mented HR processes that, in the worst cases, become time-consuming hindrances to line managers.

This fragmentation happens because people and jobs have become disconnected concepts. The methods used to measure jobs and people have been informed by different disciplines and these disciplines have developed separate measurement technologies.

As with all technologies, there is often a lack of connection.

Job evaluation is a set of measurement technologies that enables job comparison. Whilst these systems are designed to compare different sorts of jobs and assign a grade that equates to a pay level or band they often become the basis for organisation/career structures. In practice, this has a terrible side effect.

Intended for one use, these grading systems end-up adding to the costs of bureaucracy, frustrating employees and undermining leadership development.

Psychology has its own technology - psychometrics - that seeks to provide objective data.

However, the data generated rarely dovetails with the specific job requirements. Not only that but psychometrics also has a pernicious side-effect.


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People seem to like to put a label on others and say that they are this or that kind of person. Many psychological approaches to people-profiling provide nice easy labels and this may account for their popularity. How-ever individuals resent being labeled themselves for the very real reason that they do behave in different ways in different situations. They also create the impression that people are unable to flex their behaviour once labeled.

Another major criticism of psychometrics is that the essence of the person is lost in the analysis.

When you measure jobs and people using a common language and similar dimensions a dynamic link is created between people and jobs. In this way, the gap is eradicated and the foundations for an integrated approach to Human Resource Management are laid.

The upsides of making the match are enormous. Matching doesn't mean that someone is simply working on autopilot delivering tried and tested products and services. When people are stretched and are able to get their head around the scale of the challenge faced, they rise to the occa-sion. They unlock their own potential to be intuitive and creative and in the process gain a sense of being in-flow and well-being.


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THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT

Thou shall have measures that promote clarity, objectivity and team-work.

Plenty of organisations are in the right market at the right time, dealmak-ers are seen as heroes as they drive rapid growth and many entrepre-neurs achieve success through seemingly having a golden touch. With rapid growth and healthy sales, many organisations don’t feel the need to change or even review the way that they do business.

However, luck can run out, deals start to destroy value and the golden touch can be lost especially when a key person such as the founder hands over the reigns.

The secret of sustained success is getting the detail right - consistently in areas that add value for the company and the customer. Getting the detail right involves using one of the oldest methods in the management toolkit, namely the setting of the right performance metrics.

Metrics are like the instruments on the dashboard of a car. They let you know very important information like speed of travel, distance covered and how much fuel is left in the tank. Just as with the dashboard of a car, the equivalent business metrics come into their own once you are on a journey and know where you are going.

A slogan heard in many organisations is, ‘if you can’t measure it you can’t manage it’. However in some of these organisations, managers are overwhelmed by measures and data, much of which is simply distracting noise. If you manage your enterprise by numbers, make sure that they are the right ones.

Some metrics are at the heart of failure. Economic recessions and the bursting of bubbles bring into the spotlight poor management.

They show up the ‘fat cat’ behaviour of senior managers that pay them-selves large bonuses despite destroying value. They also show up the lack of accountability in public organisations as they fail to deliver real improvement in service despite meeting notional targets.


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On the other hand there are plentiful examples to show that metrics which provide clarity, objectivity and promote team-work are crucial for success. Post the Second World War, Japan, a crushed and defeated nation with its industrial strength in ashes, built its success by focusing on the metrics of quality.

A really useful distinction when choosing the right metrics is that between Value Drivers and Value Builders.

Value Drivers are the factors that make the most of current capabilities and assets. These can come in many shapes and sizes and cannot be reduced to a one size fits all.

Value Builders are the factors that create future value. They provide the opportunity to take advantage of the opportunities and risks as they arise.

Choosing the appropriate Value Drivers and Builders and having the means of measuring these generates objective information on which evidence based decisions can be made.

Far from being dull and boring, the right measures provide direction. And, when you get to where you want to, measures provide the basis to celebrate real achievement.


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THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT

Thou shall create an organisational climate that builds clarity, trust and purpose.

A great deal has been written about motivation. In reality most people working in organisations want three simple conditions with regard to their work, namely:

Clarity. They want to be clear about what they are expected to do.

Trust. They want to feel that they can use their own judgement and be allowed to get on with work within their level of competence

Purpose. They want to know that the work undertaken is heading in the right direction and at the right pace and they want to know that the work that they do links to a broader purpose.

These conditions are met when managers undertake three inter-related activities in a balanced way:

Clarifying – Clarifying is establishing the core purpose of a person’s job and identifying their accountabilities. It is about specifying intended outcomes and a time-scale for completion. Clarifying is not a one way process. It has to involve engaging people and recognising that the only real expert is the person doing the job.

Enabling – Enabling involves equipping the person with the necessary tools, skills, knowledge and procedures that are safe and appropriate for the work to be undertaken. Crucially it involves providing the ‘space’ for people to make their own judgements to the limit of their current capabilities.

Reviewing – Reviewing is monitoring without crowding. It ensures that the work assigned is still relevant to the organisation and that the resources required are being used appropriately according to the current priorities. Reviewing also involves measuring performance against the intended outcome and recognising achievement. Most importantly of all reviewing is about communicating a sense of purpose and relevance for the work so that all individuals are clear as to how the job links to that of others and how the work is part of a broader goal.


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The optimal situation is where a manager provides a balance of Clarify-ing, Enabling and Reviewing. This leads to people making sensible decisions which build good customer relations, cement supplier rela-tionships and minimise rework and waste. People are clear as to what is expected and what they hold accountability for. They feel that they are trusted to make their own judgements within their area of competence and they have a clear understanding as to how their work connects to a wider purpose.


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THE SEVENTH COMMANDMENT

Thou shall promote social networks.

Technological advantage is relatively easily replicated and competitors make a habit of leap-frogging intellectual property. However, the total capability of the people and the way that they are organised and man-aged is not easily copied.

In today’s business climate, more than half of the value of many compa-nies is found in the intangible assets that include intellectual capital and a diverse, knowledgeable and skilled workforce. Therefore, not only is the people domain a significant component of share price value, it is also a major source of competitive advantage.

Organisations that believe, and demonstrate their belief, that people are their most important asset encourage social networks that promote the sharing of ideas. This somewhat intangible asset can be described as Social Capital.

Social Capital refers to the quality of the working relationships in and between organisations. When these working relationships enable responsiveness and innovation, this capital is high worth.

Social Capital is acquired if the cascade of accountability is clear and there is the optimal number of layers of management. Too few layers and the value of Social Capital is reduced as people communicate more to find their way ‘through the fog’. Too many layers and equally Social Capital is reduced as people communicate more to determine what is their turf and why others should get off it!

In organisations that really tap into the potential of their workforce, the flow of communication is not just up and down a functional hierarchy. Bringing teams together from different parts of an enterprise and includ-ing suppliers and customers to work on projects not only breaks-down ‘silo-mentalities’ and encourages team work, it provides vital new perspectives and generates extra-ordinarily valuable intellectual prop-erty.

In really effective and high performing organisations the social networks reinforce and add value to the processes or value chains that produce the desired outcome for the organisation.


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Making the seemingly impossible happen lies in the conversations that exist in organisations. Conversations produce innovation. Conversa-tions coordinate and deliver service.

Alternatively conversations can kill initiative and undermine quality and service delivery.

Social networks enable conversations. Leaders should not only promote the means of having positive conversations, they need to immerse themselves in the conversational environment and actively shape the conversational landscape.

The articulation of a desired future is like a seed. For this to germinate and flourish it needs to be ‘watered’ by the everyday conversation of possibilities, nourished by the nutrients of free speech and provided the room to grow – often in unexpected and delightful ways.


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THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT

Thou shall build in flexibility and ensure that decisions are taken as close to the customer or end-user as possible.

As the rate of change is increasing and as we operate in a competitive world; it follows that the flexible organisation will have increasing com-petitive advantage.

Flexible organisations:

Focus on the individual needs of customers as if they were in a popu-lation of 1, i.e. their only customer,

Change direction quickly where it is clear that a planned course is not working out. An example of this is recognising that a product is not performing as it should and modifying it rapidly.

Flexibility relates to speed of response and reaction capability. Both aspects are increased if the decision-maker is close to the point of action.

Decisions should be taken at the lowest level in the organisation as possible. Any decision that needs to move away from the point of action and be cascaded up the organisation hierarchy is a potential limitation.

The appropriate location for decision-making is the closest point to the customer or end-user at which the information and perspective required for good decisions exists.

Getting this balance right sometimes involves a dilemma between stan-dardisation and local decision-making.

There is always a tension between the needs to standardise and the desire to be very flexible and adaptive especially related to providing customer benefits. Flexible companies determine what must be ‘global’ and therefore non-negotiable and what can be ‘local’.


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As a rule of thumb, no employee should be more than one or two step away from the external environment. By steps, it is meant either people that report in to a job-holder or steps in a process. For instance, analysts that get their information filtered through many people are not going to be in - tune with the marketplace. Equally, executives that rarely meet with customers or have long lines of communication before hearing the voice of the customer are by definition going to be out of touch.


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THE NINTH COMMANDMENT

Thou shall have high performance leaders that engage others and embrace change.

Every organised activity gives rise to two fundamental and opposing requirements; the division of labour and co-ordination.

Management attention especially in the early phases of industrialisa-tion focused on the division of labour. In this, it strived for standardisa-tion and ‘replicability’.

Leadership is different to management in that it encompasses both this division of labour - the ‘chunking-up’ of the work-flow and the co-ordination of effort - the holding together.

Every study that attempts to identify why one unit, amongst a mass of similar units, is more successful than the rest inevitably comes down to identifying that the quality of leadership makes the difference. High performance organisations have high performance leaders - it is as simple as that. These leaders achieve the twin goal of efficiency and stakeholder involvement.

Leadership provides the climate for high performance where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. The outcome of which is empower-ment, engagement and self-motivation.

Leadership is a state of mind. Leaders recognise that they are the architects of their own lives and adopt powerful positions that enable them to:

Take responsibility for their situation and feeling (they don’t blame others for where they are or how they are currently feeling),

Be aware of their own standards and values and live according to these,

Always have a choice (even a choice not to decide),

Be authentic and own their own feelings.


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High performance leaders are not necessarily charismatic figures that are able to provide inspired visions and motivational speeches. Whilst high-impact styles may be appropriate in some situations, the funda-mental outputs from leaders are:

Decisions that move the organisation forward,

The setting of the context for others,

The creation of space for people to use their own judgements and,

Appointing ordinary people (and enabling them to do extra-ordinary things).

Contrary to popular myth, human beings are not adverse to change. However without the right conditions being present, the tendency is towards stasis and the status quo.

Leaders at all levels in an organisation can facilitate change - and they don’t need to follow a complex change - management process. What it does require is:

Authentic communication,

Genuine consultation

Giving your word and sticking to it,

Leading by example.


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THE TENTH COMMANDMENT

Know Thyself.

Highly capable organisations are clear about their strengths.

Like people, organisations have talents and know-how, they are good at some things and not so good as others. These talents and know-how define the organisation’s uniqueness and must be preserved, promul-gated through the organisation, enhanced and developed in the long-term if the organisation is to survive and thrive.

Highly capable organisations know where they are strong and where their strengths are key to gaining competitive advantage.

Exactly where extra capability needs to be added depends upon a thor-ough analysis of the strategic needs of the organisation and can include the following areas:

Technical Problem Solving. Is there a high degree of need to handle and solve unforeseen problems? Does this capability need to be preserved or developed as a source of major competitive advan-tage?

Customer and Client Relationships. Are these relationships the prin-cipal competitive strength of the organisation? Does it depend upon building close, long-term, harmonious relationships amounting to almost friendship with key people in the client/customer organisa-tions?

Workforce skills. These are the learnt how-to’s. Do the skills of the workforce need to be at a very high level developed through training, apprenticeships and continuous development? Are they are likely to be key asset in generating the performance of the organisation? Are they possessed to the same extent by the competition and would it take a considerable amount of time and expense to recreate these skills if dispersed?


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Just as with people, when organisations know themselves, they do not try to bend out of shape to emulate others, they diligently turn their purpose into action through designing appropriate structures, matching people to jobs and creating a climate where strengths are identified and developed.

When seeking to understand others, recognise that people are highly context sensitive. That means they take their cues on how to behave from what is happening around them including the culture and manage-ment style of the organisation. Therefore, to really appreciate the true perspective of a person it is necessary to connect through dialogue. Dia-logue is a conversation that is uncluttered by practiced responses that so often occurs in interview situation or formal business meetings.

When seeking to understand yourself, reflect on your thinking and the processes that lead you to act. Thoughts and words are incredibly pow-erful - they have caused many of the great unions and the great conflicts throughout history. We also value what we think about and we think about what we value.

Our ability to think, especially our ability to think about thinking, defines us as human beings and awareness of our thinking intentions provides real insight. Personal insight increases the range of choices that we have and allows us to act with purpose and power.


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SEEK AND THEE SHALL FIND

I recommend the following:

Smart Business Metrics by Bob Phelps, Prentice Hall, Financial Times. ISBN 0 273 66396 8

The Accountable Leader by Brian Dive, Kogan Page. ISBN 978-9-7494-5160-8

The Healthy Organisation by Brian Dive, Kogan Page. ISBN 0-7494-4252-2

The Requisite Organisation by Elliott Jaques, Casson Hall, ISBN 1-886436-04-5

Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill, Marketplace books, ISBN 1-59280-260-5

Everyday Mysteries, Existential Dilemmas in Psychotherapy, Emmy van Deurzen-Smith. Routledge. ISBN 0-415-08704-X

The Paradox of Success by John R O’Neil, McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-709209-0

Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, Csíkszentmihályi, Mihály (1996), New York: Harper Perennial, ISBN 0-06-092820-4.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Russell is the Managing Director of consulting firm Dynamic Link (www.dynamic-link.com).

He has been influenced by Levels of Work ideas first expounded by Elliott Jaques. It was at the London School of Economics that Russell was first introduced to the pioneering thoughts of Jaques and, many years later, was reintroduced to his work through an association with the Brunel Institute of Organisation and Social Science.

Russell has developed Global Profiling System. This is a Levels of Work classification and measure-ment system which transforms the way that people and jobs are matched.

He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from University College, London and post-graduate qualifications in Personnel Man-agement gained from the London School of Economics.

Russell is a Chartered Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and has a Diploma in Counselling and Psycho-therapy from Regent’s College, London.

The Ten Commandments

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