PinoyAlert - Project Alert

By: Thomas J. Peter and Robert H. Waterman Jr.

Let us suppose that we are asked for one all-purpose bit of advice for management, one truth that we were able to distill from the excellent companies research. We might be tempted to reply, figure out your value system. Decide what your company stands for. What does your enterprise do that gives everyone the most pride? Put yourself out ten or twenty years in the future. What would you look back with greatest satisfaction?

We call the fifth attribute of the excellent companies," hands-on, value driven". We are struck by the explicit attention they pay to values and by the way in which their leaders have created exciting environments through personal attention, persistence and direct intervention-far down the line.

In Morale, John Gardner says " Most contemporary writers are reluctant or embarrassed to write explicitly about values." Our experience is that most businessmen are loath to write about, talk about and even take seriously values systems. To the extent that they do consider them at all, they regard them only as vague abstractions. As our colleagues Julien Philips and Allan Kennedy note, "Tough minded managers and consultants pay much attention to the value system of an organization. Values are not "Hard" like organization structures, policies and procedures, strategies, or budgets." Philips and Kenny are right as a general rule but, fortunately wrong- as they are the first to say - about the excellent companies.

Thomas watson Jr., wrote an entire book about values. Considering his experiences at IBM in A Business and Its Belief, he began.

One may speculate the length as to the cause of the decline and fall of a corporation. Technology, changing tastes, changing fashions, all play a part..... No one can dispute their importance. But I question whether they in themselves are decisive. I believe the real difference between success and failure in a corporation can very often be traced to the question of how well the organization brings our the great energies and talents of its people. What does it do to help each other? and how can it sustain this common cause and sense of direction through many changes which take place from one generation to another. Consider any great organization-one that has lasted over the years-I think you will find that it owes its resiliency not to its form of organization of administration skills but to the power of what we call belied and the appeal these beliefs have for its people. This then is my thesis: I firmly believe that any organization, in order to survive and achieve success, must have sound set of beliefs on which it premises all its policies and action. Next, I believe that the most important single factor in corporate success is faithful adherence to those beliefs. And finally I believe organization is to meet the challenge of a changing world, it must be prepared to change everything about itself those believes as it moves through corporate life. In other words, the basic philosophy, spirit and drive of an organization have far more to do with its relative achievements than do technological or economic resources, organizational structure, innovation and timing. All these things weigh heavily in success. But they are, I think transcended by how strongly the people in the organization beileve in its basic percepts and how faithfully they carry them out.

Every excellent company we studied is clear on what it stands for, and takes the process of value shaping seriously. In fact, we wonder whether it is possible to be an excellent company without clarity on values and without having the right sorts of values.

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