Issue No. 407 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting recommends a very short read—with an organization-changing tool from Jim Collins. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for the HBR article, “Why Your Meetings Stink and What to Do About It.”
Fire Your Boss!
At W.L. Gore & Associates, “employees have the authority to fire their bosses.”
Now that I have your attention—read more about this in the Harvard Business Review article by Jim Collins, now available in mini-book form: Turning Goals into Results: The Power of Catalytic Mechanisms.
According to the company’s founder, Bill Gore, “You are a leader if and only if people choose to follow you.” So how do team members fire their bosses? “…they can’t fire the person from the company but, if they feel their boss isn’t leading them effectively, they can simply bypass him or her and follow a different leader.”
That’s one of the five examples of a catalytic mechanism—and in just 78 pages of this HBR mini-book (fast reading), you’re hooked. Here’s another one:
At Granite Rock, the company launched “a radical new policy called ‘short pay,’” because their BHAG aspirations were high. “Granite Rock would provide total customer satisfaction and achieve a reputation for service that met or exceeded that of Nordstrom, the upscale department store that is world famous for delighting its customers.”
Imagine—a 99-year old company that sells crushed gravel, concrete, sand and asphalt—thinking they could “delight” their customers. Their short pay concept, says Collins, was revolutionary.
“The bottom of every Granite Rock invoice reads, ‘If you are not satisfied for any reason, don’t pay us for it. Simply scratch out the line item, write a brief note about the problem, and return a copy of this invoice along with your check for the balance.’”
Collins adds, “Let me be clear about short pay. It is not a refund policy. Customers do not need to return the product. They do not need to call and complain. They have complete discretionary power to decide whether and how much to pay based on their satisfaction level.”
Wow!
Do you have angst about the value of college—and the cost of tuition for yourself, your children, or grandchildren? How about this audacious idea from Jim Collins? “…suppose universities issued tuition invoices at the end of the semester, along with the statement, ‘If you are not satisfied with the dedication of the professor in any course, simply scratch out that course and send us a tuition check for the balance.”
The big idea? Short pay “impels managers to relentlessly track down the root causes of problems in order to prevent repeated short payments. It signals to employees and customers alike that Granite Rock is serious about customer satisfaction in a way that goes far beyond slogans.”
In my experience, only a small percentage of organizations and companies are appropriately focused on goals, especially “S.M.A.R.T.” goals (download The Results Bucket chapter from Mastering the Management Buckets). Or read about “SMARTER” goals in Michael Hyatt’s book, Your Best Year Ever: A 5-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals.
Collins defines catalytic mechanisms as “the crucial link between objectives and performance; they are a galvanizing, nonbureaucratic means to turn one into the other. Put another way, catalytic mechanisms are to visions what the central elements of the U.S. Constitution are to the Declaration of Independence—devices that translate lofty aspirations into concrete reality. They make big, hairy, audacious goals reachable.”
He adds, “My research indicates that few companies—perhaps only 5% or 10% currently employ catalytic mechanisms, and some of them aren’t even aware that they do. I have also found that catalytic mechanisms are relatively easy to create and implement. Given their effectiveness, they are perhaps the most underutilized—and most promising—devices that executives can use to achieve their big, hairy [or holy], audacious goals, or BHAGs.”
Catalytic mechanisms have five characteristics:
1) “A catalytic mechanism produces desired results in unpredictable ways.”
2) It “distributes power for the benefit of the overall system, often to the discomfort of those who traditionally hold power.”
3) “A catalytic mechanism has teeth.” (Example: “If you are five minutes late, you lose your bonus for the day. If you are 30 minutes late, you lose your bonus for the week. If a product is returned for poor quality, bonus pay declines accordingly.”)
4) “A catalytic mechanism ejects viruses.” (Example: fire your boss.)
5) “A catalytic mechanism produces an ongoing effect.”
Attn: Nonprofit Fundraisers!
The blurb on #5 is a must-read. “The lack of catalytic mechanisms is one reason many organizations rally in a crisis but languish once the crisis has passed. Leaders who feign a crisis—those who create a burning platform without simultaneously building catalytic mechanisms—do more long-term harm than good by creating a syndrome of crisis addiction.”
“How,” you ask, “did I miss this HBR classic by Jim Collins?" Published first in July-August 1999, the mini-book debuted in 2017. It popped out on page 116 of Scaling Up (my 2018 book-of-the-year by Verne Harnish). The catalytic mechanism (or Brand Promise Guarantee) is one of Harnish’s “7 Strata of Strategy.”
NEXT STEPS: 5x5x5x5x5. Buy five copies of this Collins gem and recruit five team members to each share a 10-minute report on one of the five catalytic mechanisms—over the next five weekly staff meetings. (Suggest they share five minutes of content and five minutes of discussion.) Enjoy!
To order the book from Amazon, click on the title for Turning Goals Into Results (Harvard Business Review Classics): The Power of Catalytic Mechanisms, by Jim Collins.
P.S. If you missed Turning the Flywheel, also by Jim Collins, read my March review here. The book is brilliant.
YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Collins, noting an insight from Henry David Thoreau, writes that “BHAGs are a company’s wildest dreams. Catalytic mechanisms are their foundations. Build them both.” Does our organization have either? What’s our next step?
2) Collins says when pursuing BHAGs, “our natural inclination is to add—new initiatives, new systems, new strategies, new priorities, and now, new catalytic mechanisms.” Don’t! “Don’t just add, remove,” warns Collins. What should we STOP doing—so we can re-focus on a catalytic mechanism?
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Get Off the Insane To-Do Assembly Line!
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook
Do you have a “DON’T-DO LIST?” It’s very simple: For 90 days, keep a list on your desk or computer of what you will STOP doing. (My friend Tony Danhelka calls this “selective neglect.”) You must rigorously prune your To-Do List every day, every week, and every month. You can’t keep up—the conveyor belt is hurling work at you faster than the famous chocolate factory scene on I Love Lucy.
Visit The Delegation Bucket and download Worksheet #16.4: "My Don't-Do List." If you're ready to bless your team members and add more balance to your life, start using this one-pager every day to rigorously prune your To-Do List by adding items to your Don't-Do List.
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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Tired of assembly line graphics and uninspiring media that doesn't produce results? Check out the innovative work from Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video).
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