How to Grow Your Company Without Sacrificing Culture

Karen Rubin

Here is another valuable Management Tip of the Day from Harvard Business Review. To sign up for a free subscription to any/all HBR newsletters, please click here.

*     *     *

Every company wants to grow. But growth often brings some hiccups, especially when it comes to organizational culture. If you’re growing fast, here are two ways to keep your culture intact:

• Spend a lot of time communicating. If people are unhappy, don’t try to squelch their anger. Instead, identify the loudmouths. Spend time listening to them, not interjecting your own thoughts. That way, you can learn more and solve their gripes.

• Measure culture. It’s tough, but not impossible. Use internal surveys or interviews to get a baseline. Find out why people enjoy working at your company and what they value. Use this information to monitor what matters most to your employees.

Today’s Management Tip was adapted from “How Start-Ups Can Maintain Company Culture While Growing” by Karen Rubin.

To read that article and join the discussion, please click here.

Also, you may wish to check out Management Tips from Harvard Business Review by clicking here.

First, Clearly Diagnose (Define; Identify; Clarify) the Problem – Then, and Only Then, Design the Solution

First, read these excerpts and points from Richard Rumelt’s Good Strategy/Bad Strategy:  The Difference and Why It Matters:

A leader’s most important responsibility is identifying the biggest challenges to forward progress and devising a coherent approach to overcoming them.

A good strategy does more than urge us forward toward a goal or vision. A good strategy honestly acknowledges the challenges being faced and provides an approach to overcoming them.

…the term “strategy” should mean a cohesive response to an important challenge. Unlike a stand-alone decision or a goal, a strategy is a coherent set of analyses, concepts, policies, arguments, and actions that respond to a high-stakes challenge.

…strategy focuses and coordinates efforts to achieve a powerful competitive punch or problem-solving effect.  Bad strategy tends to skip over pesky details such as problems.

• The four major hallmarks of bad strategy:  #2 — Failure to face the challenge.

• The centrality of the kernel.  The kernel of a strategy contains three elements:
• #1  A diagnosis that defines or explains the nature of the challenge.
• #2  A guiding policy for dealing with the challenge.
• #3  A set of coherent actions that are designed to carry out the guiding policy.

And this (from the “first Google response” to the search term:  “strategy define”):

Strategy:  A plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim.

And now, this:

The classic approach to persuasion is Monroe’s Motivated Sequence.  It has five elements, but it boils down to two:  Problem, Solution.  From the Wikipedia page:

Attention: Hey! Listen to me, you have a PROBLEM!
Satisfaction: But, I have a SOLUTION!

—————-

In the world of business, we have had kind of a run on the “solutions” end of things.  Many companies put “solutions” in their very name, and many others find a way to offer “solutions” in their promises to customers.

This is a very good thing to offer – solutions.  And until we have solutions, and implement them (back to the centrality of execution), we will not move forward.

But there is a very important – make that crucial — prior step.  Before there can be solutions, there needs to be a very clear, a crystal clear, and absolute accurate diagnosis of, and understanding of, the problem(s).

So, whatever else you do in your business life, spend a hefty chunk of time on this:  “what is the problem we’re dealing with right now?”  Until you know, with precision, the answer to that question, you should not even begin thinking about “what is the solution?”

If strategy leads to a plan of action, (“a set of coherent actions that are designed to carry out the guiding policy”), it really does matter to know just what the issue is that you are dealing with with your plan of action.

First:  what is your problem?
And then, and only then:  What is the solution? 

Do Nothing! A book review by Bob Morris

Do Nothing! How to Stop Overmanaging and Become a Great Leader
J. Keith Murnighan
Portfolio/The Penguin Group (2012)

How to lead more effectively by doing less and helping others to do more…and do it better

The title of this book attracts attention but is misleading. It implies that J. Keith Murnighan emphatically recommends that leaders literally do nothing. On the contrary, he has written a book—and a quite valuable book – in which he explains how to lead more effectively by doing less so that others can more…and do it better as they “learn by doing” rather than by admonition or from passive observation. As is also true of countless other business books, the subtitle is far more informative than is the title. “In other words,” Murnighan suggests, “stop working and start leading.”

As he notes, here’s a familiar challenge: “Things are simpler when other people are in charge and you don’t have to make big decisions. Taking over as a leader means that you must depart from the comfort of the status quo, and the anxiety, fear, and uncertainty that accompany your excitement really are noxious. To avoid these feelings, people naturally fall back on what’s familiar and certain – that is, what they know how to do. Unfortunately, this can be truly counterproductive.” Why? There are some tasks best completed by a leader; most other tasks can – and should – be completed by others (i.e. direct reports). No one person can do everything. Leaders should commit most of their time and energy to being facilitators and orchestators.

I agree with Murnighan’s analogy: “When things are really clicking, work will be like the performance of a great Beethoven symphony, with the notes in the right place, the crescendos coming on time, and at the end, a feeling of exhilaration at your collective accomplishments. Leaders and their teams never experience this kind of thrill when leaders do too much.” Quite true. The results are even worse, however, if leaders do nothing.

Here are several of the passages in Murnighan’s book that caught my eye:

o  A ‘litmus test” to determine whether or not you are doing too much (Pages 18-19)
o  “Five Natural Problems of Individuals as Leaders” (40-51)
o  A Japanese proverb (“Every stranger is a thief”) and a rational model for building trust (86-88)
o  “Door Fasteners” and “Dental Work”: Two examples of why “Effective leadership is lonely” (128-132)
o  Defining characteristics of a “profit-maximizing company” (161-163)
o  Mini-profile of Norbert Brainin, the first violinist of the Amadeus String Quartet (183-187)

No brief commentary such as this one can do full justice to the scope and depth of information, insights, and counsel that Keith Murnighan provides within this volume. One of the core principles that he affirms throughout the narrative is rightsizing. However, it remains for each reader to determine the nature and extent of what is appropriate to her or his own circumstances insofar as two critical issues are concerned: division of labor and allocation of resources.  The challenge and (yes) the opportunity is to determine correct proportionality (i.e. rightsizing) at any given time, in any given situation. That is a determination that only a leader should make, albeit after consultation with associates, and it will ultimately determine the success or failure of the given enterprise.