Commentary -- Organizational Excellence

An important goal, or just another meaningless term from fad-based management practices? You can make it real and vital by using this term to describe what you value most in your organization. Most of us place highest value on more than one aspect of our organizations, so that we need a definition that captures each of these. Here are some typical components of an organizational excellence definition:

You may choose one or two of these as being most-valued, along with one or two more as necessary but not quite as highly-valued. However you arrive at the unique definition for your organization, you will have taken the first step toward making this normally vague concept both concrete and operational — that is, measurable.

Appearing most often in fuzzy, idealistic mission statements, the term "organizational excellence" is rarely defined specifically enough to address in practice. Operationally, it resides in the category of "be good" and "do good". While expressed ideals alone have some value, their real value can be obtained only from action aimed at moving the organization toward each component of its excellence definition. This requires excellence-defining concepts that are amenable to action and, most important, to measurement of results. Action without measurement of results is a formula for inconsistency, repetition, and ineffectiveness. At best.

If the values embodied in your definition of organization excellence are more than just words, then you need to attach to each value concrete actions that will move your organization toward the value from its current state. This means that you must be able to measure where you are starting and to assess your progress toward a better state.

For example, many organizations say they value highly having "great people". Nice ideal but talk about a fuzzy concept. Do you have "great people" now? Can you identify them? What are their defining attributes in this context? Microsoft may choose attributes like "smart" and "aggressive" while an engineering firm might choose "team-oriented", "practical" and "reliable". Defining "great people" for your organization may be the easy part. How would you go about achieving the "great people" value?

If you have been through anything like this exercise before, you will probably have discovered that it is nearly always an iterative process. You start by defining what attributes characterize your value and then develop some action ideas for strengthening each attribute. When you begin to consider the implications and possible consequences of each action idea, however, problems often arise. This nearly always sends you back to the drawing board to refine your definition so that it can be pursued by practical approaches with little risk of adverse consequences.

Think about achieving a "great people" value. Would you ask those who don't meet "great people" criteria to leave? Probably not. But you might start to emphasize these criteria in hiring and promotion decisions. You want to have as many "great people" in your leadership group as possible. If one or more of your attributes can be learned, then you can build in some action plans aimed at developing individuals in the target attributes.

You may also want to identify your "great people" role models and feature them in communications and events to encourage others to aspire to become like these models. Translating a vague concept like "great people" into a concrete, measurable element of your organizational excellence definition is much easier if you start with stories or models that seem to best embody the concept. Most groups can agree on a few people known to all that come closest to the group's consensus on what a "great person" might be. Stories about each of these models can enhance and balance the definition.

Once you have identified your models and value-illustrating stories, you can begin to extract the traits and behaviors that place these models in your "great people" category. This typically is an iterative process and it nearly always takes a while for a group to reach consensus on a basic definition of a "great people" value in terms that can be pursued and measured.

Once you have developed such a list of attributes, this aspect of your organizational excellence definition becomes operational. The next step is to figure out where you are today along this multi-dimensional, "great people" metric. One approach is to carry out an intuitive assessment of the people in your organization — assigning each person to an ABC classification ("A" = among our "great people", "B" = good but not great, "C" = average or below). As you might expect, this approach is so subjective that it is more likely to confuse than enlighten. A better approach is to develop or purchase an assessment tool that can be tailored around your list of "great people" traits and behaviors. While still subjective to some degree, it can make the assessment process systematic and reasonably concrete.

With your "great people" assessment tool, it should be a fairly simple matter to track your progress toward a goal of "more great people". But how many "more" should you strive for? You may settle for a steady increase in the percentage of your employees who fall into the "A" category. More compulsive types may want to have a specific percentage for each year. Can you ever get to the nirvana of 100% great people? Probably not, but you may be able to get into the 80% range where you can legitimately claim organizational excellence in this important value.

Continued measurement of your "great people" percentage will help keep your organization focused on important action areas — a good way to avoid complacency as your approach excellence in any value.

As you implement your "great people" action plans, you will be able to evaluate results using your assessment tool, probably annually. You want to see more people in your A category and fewer in your C category each year. But what else may be affected by your "great people" initiatives? To ensure that pursuit of one aspect of organizational excellence doesn't have an unacceptably high price in terms of impact on other aspects, you need to measure also the other aspects of your organizational excellence definition.

Pursuing a "great people" value may have to be moderated to maintain progress on other values like "solidly profitable" or "recognized innovator". Your "great people" may be expensive to recruit and retain. You may need some stable population of not-so-great people who do much of the organization's hard but essential work. Or, you may find your most creative people in the C category — far from "great" by your excellence definition but valuable and essential nonetheless.

Your organization is virtually certain to face a number of trade-offs in its pursuit of organizational excellence however defined. It is hard to over-emphasize the importance of the thinking that goes into making such trade-offs. Some initially high-valued aspects of your definition may be dropped or made secondary as you work with them and try to balance their value against other parts of your definition.

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