The first two – tasks and goals – are captured through thinking deeply about what needs to happen to turn a strategy into reality.  People within an organization can then agree on who is responsible for which tasks and can articulate a concrete goal or set of goals from a strategy.  Measuring performance against the metrics developed is then fairly straightforward (if not fraught with difficulties).

The third part of the equation, however,  can be elusive and is often undervalued.  Articulating the what of a project is often much more straight forward than articulating the how of a culture.  (For example, how many of us can identify with a comment such as this?  “Geez, Jim is sure good at closing contracts but I cannot stand to be in the same room with him!” It is important to understand the real negative impacts of misaligned behavior and to know how to deal with people exhibiting ‘counter-culture’ behavior.)  Identifying the values and styles of an organization – and then devising a system to create alignment to that culture – can go a long way to achieving a strategic goal and make hitting targets, tasks and goals easier.  Think of the companies or organizations you value most – I suggest it should then be pretty easy to visualize the positive behaviors of the people working within those companies.  I want to suggest that the culture around a company plays as big a role in achieving strategic goals as does completing all of the tasks on a list.  It is worth creating a performance management system to measure not only objective completion of tasks and hitting of targets but also whether a person lives the values and fits the culture of an organization.

Working with companies to help them articulate their vision and values (not trying to impose one from outside), helping clients align teams to the articulation of a shared vision and values and building the measurement systems to ensure the words are lived, not simply posted on the wall, provides immediate, tangible, positive results.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately both because of some work opportunities as well as some direct observation.  An airline employee rolling her eyes at me – quite a different perspective than the one given by the airline’s expensive advertising – compared to an employee at a local chocolate factory making my visit and purchase easy and valued.  Eye contact, smile, conversation, respect.  Brings me back every time.  Another local shop where the employees enjoy each other but do not seem particularly to like the customers – hmmmm.  An on-line retailer where the customer service representative sounded like she was doing a crossword, not focusing on my purchase.

It is deeply rewarding to help build systems to articulate, communicate, train and measure performance against corporate culture.  If you are interested in the conversation, please let me know by either emailing me at drocchio@thearnogroup.com or calling me at (802) 253-7804.

David Rocchio

Here is a scenario: A young couple starts a small business with a unique position in an industry. It becomes a labor of love. They are on the cutting edge in the industry and become experts. They take care of their employees, inspire deep loyalty, and they each occupy a hallowed place in the business as it grows. The founders’ personas become so embedded that in reality the mission of the business is simply to support the founders as they grow the business.

Fast forward to the twilight. The couple’s children are out of college and decide to come home and work in the family business. Soon they are making preparations to take over. The transition is bumpy. Morale sinks, production slides and the founders linger, trying to preserve their legacy, equity and effort. Without intending to, mixed messages emerge for the employees and the ability of the new team to drive growth and value is eroded. This also assumes that the new team – the founders’ children – has the skills, training, attitude and capacity to take the business to the next level.

Quite often for people who have built their own business their vision for the business is intuitive. When that is the case, for the rest of the team, the mission becomes a game of follow the founder and objectives are set by their instincts.

Companies face the greatest risks in times of transition. The departure of founders is just such a transition. When founders leave, the alignment around the values, vision and mission of the business will often leave with them, because the founders personify the vision.

Sustaining the vision may sound simple, but it is never as easy as we expect it to be. There is the very hard question of whether a next generation is – or can become – adequately developed to take over a business or whether a better approach is to develop professional management or consider a merger, acquisition or sale to realize the founders’ vision. But for any course of action to succeed, there is a need to take the personification of the vision and articulate what is intuitive to the founders and those around them. There is a need understand what it is about the founders that brought home the mission for all the employees.

Having the mission and vision clearly articulated at the moment of transition builds confidence, and allows the decisions of the new leadership to be strategic, either grounded in history, or a deliberate and conscious departure from that history. As long as that choice is grounded in the vision, the hard work of succession planning and execution can build a strong foundation for a business to sustain its value through these difficult transitions.

But successful offsites require unique skills usually not found in the typical corporate setting. Worse, all too often companies depend on chief executives to create and manage the offsite – the very people who should in fact be temporarily liberated from day to day responsibilities so they can take a fresh perspective on things. To maximize your ROI, to ensure critical objectives are met, and to ensure your time and money are well spent, we’ve created a free white paper to show you how to pull off the successful offsite meeting. Download our free white paper here.

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