The Committed Enterprise

Hugh Davidson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN: 9780750661997
• eBook ISBN: 9781136358876
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

It is easier to describe vision and values than implement them. However this updated paperback edition of The Committed Enterprise shows how to achieve success by understanding the needs of stakeholders and maximising them.

It details the Seven Best Practices for making vision and values work and is based on research with leaders from 125 leading enterprises worldwide. Using a unique format to allow fast track or in-depth reading the book includes hundreds of examples from enterprises as diverse as PepsiCo, Caltech, Tesco, Mayo Clinic, BP, New York Police Department, DuPont, UPS and many others.

The text is essential reading for managers, and students of strategic organisational strategy.

The new challenge for
organization leaders

Overview

Fast Track or Fast Track and Scenic Route Who are they? Main ones are customers, finance providers, employees How prioritize? How link? There’s a natural conflict It needs to be managed Relative importance of stakeholders is changing Customers becoming most important Committed Customers + Motivated Employees = Satisfied Resource Providers This formula links stakeholders Vision and values drive it The Mayo prioritizes and links stakeholders Its strong vision and values are driving force 125 organization leaders in USA and Europe interviewed on vision and values Companies and non-profits covered

1.1 Distinctive format of this book

1.2 Two ways to read it

How this book will deliver reader value

This book is aimed at leaders and senior managers of every type of organization, from global companies to schools, police forces to small businesses, and will enable them to do two things very well:

• Establish a strong set of vision and values
• Make them work in practice at all levels

The first is less important, yet wrongly absorbs most of their time on this task. Typical practice is to spend months crafting a set of vision and values statements, communicating them through seminars, meetings, posters, booklets, intranet and plastic cards, before breathing a sigh of relief and getting ‘back to work’.

Based on anecdotal evidence, there is a mismatch between relative importance and time allocation, as shown in Table 1.1:

Table 1.1

Mismatch of priorities (read across) Developing vision and value statements Making them work Relative importance 15% 85% Time allocation by leaders 80% 20%

Results, unsurprisingly, are often depressing. This book therefore focuses on implementation, outlining seven Best Practices for making vision and values work, and taking a hard-edged approach to a soft topic. Creation of vision statements is included because exciting visions work better.

Companies and non-profits are given equal attention, since each has much to learn from the other. Non-profits often have superior skills in developing vision and values, living them and branding them. Companies are usually better at building systems to embed and to measure vision and values.

Most business book buyers don’t finish reading their books. To avoid this, The Committed Enterprise has a fast track on the left-hand pages. These make a complete presentation, taking an hour to read. This distinctive format recognizes that you are short of time, and more accustomed to scanning charts than reading blocks of text.

Once the charts catch your attention, however, they will divert your eyes to the right-hand pages, thus getting you involved in the book. Reading the whole thing should take about 4 hours, which is feasible on, say, a flight across the Atlantic.

1.3 Stakeholders have an economic interest or impact on your organization

Economic interest and impact	Employees Shareholders Suppliers	Distributors Partners Trade unions
Economic impact	Customers Pressure groups Regulators	Legislators Communities Media

1.4 Stakeholders have conflicting needs

The new challenge – gaining commitment from all stakeholders

Strong vision and values, effectively practised, build commitment among stake-holders. Many leaders said this was their most important task. It’s also one of the most challenging. The various stakeholders have powerful needs, which often conflict, as Chart 1.4 demonstrates. They are difficult to win over yet easy to lose, and reluctant to subordinate their interests to those of the organization.

So what exactly does this ugly but useful word ‘stakeholder’ mean?

A stakeholder has an interest in, or impact on, an organization. Chart 1.3 gives examples of each type. The first group has a vested interest. It includes employees and finance providers. The second has an economic impact and includes customers.

There have been three big stakeholder changes in recent decades: more types, greatly increased power and a rise in the importance of customers. To bring clarity to this complex situation, organization leaders need to find convincing answers to three questions:

• Who are our stakeholders?
• What is their relative priority?
• How can their interests be linked?

These questions were included in the research described later in this chapter (p. 14). Results highlighted significant differences between businesses and non-profits. For companies, shareholders were No.1 stakeholder, for non-profits, the customer dominated (Ta...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface to original edition
• Preface to revised edition
• 1 The new challenge for organization leaders
• 2 How vision and values create Committed Enterprises
• 3 The seven best practices for creating the Committed Enterprise
• 4 Building the foundations of the Committed Enterprise
• 5 Measuring the strength of the vision … If there is one
• 6 Timing and building a new vision
• 7 Creating hard values for sustainable advantage
• 8 Emotional activism – communicating by action, signals and words
• 9 Creating systems to embed vision and values
• 10 Branding the Committed Enterprise
• 11 The hard-edged organization – measurement
• 12 Why most vision and values programmes fail
• 13 Vision and values before and after acquisitions
• 14 Aligning individuals and organizations
• 15 A renewable process for vision and values
• Summary: 10 Keys to failure
• Summary: 10 Keys to success
• Appendix: Interview outline
• Index