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November 2006 | | | What's Culture Got to do With It? Creating Alignment in Organizations
On Thursday, November 2nd at 12:00 (EST), join the tompeters!company for an informational webinar focusing on culture.
In this rapidly changing New World of Work, more and more companies are (rightly) measuring their culture as part of an effort shape it. But how do you define your culture? How do you harness the latent power of your most valuable asset: your people? This web seminar, co-hosted by Juli Ann Reynolds, President & CEO of tompeters!company, and Jeff Tetrick, CFO of Pinnacol Assurance, will demonstrate how you can measure your culture, and how this new-found knowledge can make a positive impact on your business.
"Seating" will be limited, so regretfully we can only offer this to the first 50 people to register. To do so, e-mail Nick at nadams@tompeters.com for more information. |
![Back to top]() | | Cool Friends ![]()
Bill Taylor and Polly LaBarre coauthored Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win, which hit bookstores earlier this month. It's based on the theory that "having the courage to be different makes all the difference in business today." You can read their Cool Friends interview here, or visit their website to learn more.
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![Back to top]() | | The Future Shape of the Winner
Wouldn't You like to Shorten the Odds of Success?
For 24 years Tom has devoted his life to an obsessive search for what makes organizations excellent. On 5th December, at the Institute of Directors, London, Tom's consulting business is delighted to be able to offer you an insight into The Future Shape of the Winner.
During this half-day session you will be introduced to our Future Shape of the Winner framework, and be given the opportunity to consider how your business should respond to the chaos and challenges that we are all currently facing in our work.
This highly interactive session will start with Coffee and Danish at 8.30am and finish with a Lunch Buffet at 12.00 noon. Tickets cost £75 (plus vat) per person and numbers are strictly limited.
To join us, please call 01708 437380, or email team@tompeters.co.uk
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![Back to top]() | | Where's Tom?
Where oh where will his travels take him? Where oh where has he been? Here is what is on the agenda for the globe-trotting Mr. Peters:
November 2006
11/2 Chicago, IL: Discover Financial (private event)
11/6 Litchfield, AZ: Leadership Network Corporation (private event)
11/8 Las Vegas, NV: Dealertrack (private event-but you know that. What happens in Vegas ... )
11/17 Chicago, IL: HSM (private event)
11/30 Madrid, Spain: ONO Companies (private event)
Remember to check Tom's calendar at www.tompeters.com for updates that may have been added after this newsletter went to print. Also, slides will be added after each event, so be sure to check for those as well. Finally, a list of Tom's recent travels, including links to slides, can be found at the end of the newsletter. |
![Back to top]() | | The Power of Measuring Culture Juli Ann Reynolds, CEO, Tom Peters Company & Susan A. Murphy, Ph.D. & Chief Consultant
Imagine that your beautifully crafted strategy failed when the divisions within your organization clashed. Logically, it seems that strategy should drive behavior—but, in reality, it's your culture (underlying norms, values, belief systems) that dictates how people are going to work together. As a result, employee behavior directly impacts your bottom line—your costs, revenue, productivity, customer base, even your brand. Every aspect of your business is affected.
Aligning your culture with your strategy is imperative. As we've known since the 1999 Fortune Magazine article "Why CEOs Fail," CEOs failed when they did not execute their strategy. If strategy and culture are not aligned, the culture encourages behaviors that conflict with what you're trying to achieve, blocking execution of your strategy.
Here is an example. If your strategy is to create synergies and economies of scale while the culture, (often described as "the way we do things around here") is one where people work autonomously and in silos, the strategy could be impossible to achieve. This gets much more complicated in a world where mergers, acquisitions and alliances shape the corporate landscape. We know all too well that even with a respectful courtship, the expected synergies in merging two corporate cultures often fail to materialize. If only companies could simply snap together like plastic building blocks!
The most important asset in every company is the esprit de corps: the motivation and passion of each employee ... and ... their willingness to collaborate together on whatever strategic projects are deemed mission critical for growth. At a time when 55% of the U.S. workforce is "disengaged" in their work (and 19% are "actively disengaged"), at an annual productivity cost of $328 billion, understanding this esprit de corps element can greatly increase your chances for success in building alliances (Gallup Poll, 2005).
It's fortuitous that we can now effectively measure the culture of a group, an organization or a corporate division. In creating new business lines, leveraging infrastructures, reinforcing supply chain efficiencies to manage the flow of services, goods, information and funds; it is more important than ever to define and measure corporate cultures for the sake of developing compatible business strategies.
The merger of Nissan & Renault is a great example for successfully aligning strategy with corporate culture. CEO, Carlos Ghosn powerfully communicated his integration plans so that employees understood that Nissan would indeed retain its own management, and its brand identity. He needed to create the employee confidence required to support the decisive actions necessary to revive the company. His strategy was effective only because it engaged the latent power of Nissan's culture-Nissan's people.
There are many examples of an "evolved culture," one born out of merger activity where two cultures do become one; where they do align in sharing strategy and values, norms and behaviors, in turn leading to internal cohesion. However, there are many more examples of acquisitions that lead to total disruption and dissolution of shareholder value. Culture should never be an afterthought. It is the key driver of value creation, a strategic asset. However, if not shaped or managed, culture becomes a liability.
To do the shaping and managing, begin by selecting a tool that measures culture. We use a software application, called Re-imagine!Corporate Productivity, or R!CP. This tool objectively captures and analyzes business assets in a timely, user-friendly, online system—with output that stimulates CEO reflections and creates dynamic management dialogues.
This kind of assessment changes the business game! There is no right or wrong ... R!CP simply pinpoints where the organization ranks on specific indicators crucial to achieving operational excellence across the business: 1) innovation, 2) strategy execution, 3) dominant culture traits that reinforce strategy execution, 4) and talent management.
The R!CP tool is the result of 18 years of research at Stanford, Santa Clara and Berkeley Universities; as well as across 500 organizations. It's the only statistically-valid assessment product in this category available today.
Why measure? Tom devours ideas on the power of execution-borrowing from execution experts such as Larry Bossidy, former Chief of AlliedSignal, as well as Google founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. It is imperative to measure, align, and then to execute in order to shape business productivity.
Gallup Poll, 2005
"Exceptional performance occurs when employees are aligned with the culture and the culture is aligned with the strategy."
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![Back to top]() | | Where's Tom? (part II) As promised, here is where Tom has been. Slides included!
October 2006
10/5 Copenhagen, Denmark: Affinion Group (private event)
10/17 Istanbul, Turkey: FED Training (private event)
10/18 Barcelona, Spain: CIDEM (private event)
10/24 Frankfurt, Germany: HSM presents Tom, Rudy Giuliani, Malcolm Gladwell, Anne Mulcahy, and more (public event)
10/27 Milan, Italy: World Business Forum: HSM presents Tom, Madeleine Albright, Rudy Giuliani, and more (public event) |
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(C) 2006 tompeters!company | | |
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