As organisations become large, as it quickly happens in the IT services industry, the challenge is always about keeping alive the small company spirit and the enthusiasm. The CEO and / or the owners start losing the touch with the masses and soon things start to become impersonal or worse bureaucratic.
I have heard so many leaders talk about this and in public while they may spout ideologies on how their organisation has got it right, in private they are deeply concerned and don’t have all the answers.
I have read a lot about strategy, reflected quite a bit and dug into my own little personal experiences with managing people and felt like sharing these thoughts here.
First a few postulates.
1. It is only the 3-5 % of the employees who really run the company, the rest are the worker bees and a large number are also sleep walkers. Usually we hear of the 20:80 rule. With IT company employee figures running into tens of thousands, 20% of say 100,000 employees works out to 20,000 employees. Its not a practical figure. Plus in the IT services industry, your people are the plant and machinery and hence I have used the 3-5% rule rather than the 20% rule. Why 3 to 5 % and not 5%? Well because as the numbers grow it becomes harder to create and maintain the corps of leaders who are your passion drivers.
2. Across human beings, what I have noticed is that employees want to be associated with companies that are already successful. Which means business is coming in at a good pace and profits are good. In such companies employee morale is generally good and there is a general level of well being. The distinguishing factor here is of course the leadership. Companies with great leadership don’t take the good times for granted and continuously focus on ensuring competitive advantage, while badly lead companies ride the wave and die a death when the wave subsides. At large and successful companies Employees –>
a) Crave to feel wanted and loved.
b) Want to believe that they are paid competitive and fair salaries as benchmarked with their colleagues around.
c) Dislike working under the constant threat of a Damocles sword – which in business speak is a do or die TARGET!
Empirically this is a truism, though no management guru or corporate czar will accept this, at least in public.
“How can you be in business and not have targets?”
Which is where my theory is that of creating smaller entrepreneurial units within large firms that allow this small firm spirit and personal connects come alive. Not easy because you then need to discover leaders who will lead like this and you need to have systems that allow flexibility without losing control. One without the other is a recipe for chaos.
Depending only on entrepreneurship and personal effort by a few people will lead to burn out and frustration. Having only great systems and not trained leaders to provide the personal touch and the in-the-trenches leadership also leads to bureaucracy and mediocrity soon.
You are an entrepreneur and its yours to do, is a nice line to get the monkey off one's back. But beyond the 3-5% of the folks, others need what I call as SCSC (Stability - Certainty - Simplicity - Clarity) which is the very opposite of VUCA. And it is the responsibility of these 3-5% of the leaders to provide the direction and the calm (SCSC) and thereby help build organisational enthusiasm.
Do write in with your thoughts and views!!!