How - Dov Seidman [140]
The conditions of the networked world make pushing vast amounts of information to workers’ fingertips cheap and easy, but it must come with a concomitant dedication to education. At GE/Durham, it means multiskilling. At Sewell, it means the rich stories, told again and again, and modeled in everyday behavior.
Self-Governance Builds Universal Vigilance
There are times when individuals can join an organization but not embrace its goals. In groups governed by informed acquiescence, these people can skate by or game the system to some degree, fly under the radar so to speak, and create drag on the system. They might even be part of the 2 percent that compliance efforts are currently focused on containing. In values-based self-governed groups, however, they can’t fool the culture; the vigilance of the group identifies them and makes them feel uncomfortable. In a self-governing group, the person who does not truly align with the values of the group will not feel at home, and be ejected. The overcharging technician at Sewell learned that lesson the hard way. Thus, the 98 percent take care of the 2 percent, ejecting the non-aligned before they can create the kinds of compliance failures that can bring a company down.
Greater than simply preventing compliance failures, though, the universal vigilance of a self-governing group maintains alignment over time. If someone is not performing, it becomes incumbent on everyone else to raise the issue and then solve it as a group, with a focus on fixing the problem, not assigning blame. With everyone accountable to the team’s success, slacking is not tolerated.
Global fast-food giant McDonald’s organizes itself more like an ecosystem than an organization with strong central control. CEO Jim Skinner likens the culture to a three-legged stool supported by the franchises, the suppliers, and the vast employee pool. But it is a strong commitment to values that keeps all these various and dispersed stakeholders aligned with a common purpose, and the culture it breeds exerts a similar self-regulating influence on all levels of the organization. “People talk about ‘tissue rejection,’ ” Skinner told me. “It occurs when people join us at too high a level from outside the organization without paying their dues, if you will, in order to understand our culture. It’s not really a rejection by the business itself, but by our culture. People in a sense say, ‘I don’t care how bright you are or what capabilities you have; you have to be able to understand all of what we stand for.’ ”27
Cultures like these are self-enforcing, and this reduces the need for external management controls. Honest feedback becomes the name of the game, and this form of self-governance takes advantage of the collective intelligence of the group to regulate the culture as a whole.
Self-Governance Shifts Decision Making from the Pragmatic to the Principled
Reputation, consistency, promise keeping—all the factors we’ve discussed necessary to achieve personal and corporate continuity in a transparent world—stem from the ability to make decisions based on principle, rather than what is immediately pragmatic. Values-based self-governing cultures are inspired by mission and steered by values. They enshrine long-term principles in place of short-term thinking, and challenge each decision maker to fulfill those principles in every act they perform. Decisions made on the basis of sound principles provide a steady rudder in stormy seas.
Self-Governance Is a Higher Concept
Like the trust, belief, and values it relies on, values-based self-governance speaks to the higher self. It governs in the name of principles and values, not rules, and only principles and values have the ability to inspire. Isn’t it more inspiring to think that you are your own legislature? More inspiring to self-govern