Artikelen
Hier vindt u door ons verzamelde artikelen, maar ook boek- en filmverslagen. Wij hebben deze onderverdeeld in de drie factoren die de rode draad vormen in al onze programma's.
The Talent Innovation Imperativeby DeAnne Aquirre, Laird Post and Sylvia Ann Hewlett
Een interessant artikel van strategy+business. De stelling is dat te veel bedrijven het talent dat zij in huis hebben verwaarlozen. Veel organisaties gaan nog uit van het oude, 20ste eeuw model van talent management. Een model dat geen rekening houdt met bijvoorbeeld de demografische veranderingen en de kenniseconomie.
Lees verder » The Talent Innovation Imperativeby DeAnne Aquirre, Laird Post and Sylvia Ann Hewlett
Een interessant artikel van strategy+business. De stelling is dat te veel bedrijven het talent dat zij in huis hebben verwaarlozen. Veel organisaties gaan nog uit van het oude, 20ste eeuw model van talent management. Een model dat geen rekening houdt met bijvoorbeeld de demografische veranderingen en de kenniseconomie.
De huidige economische crisis is voor veel organisaties een reden om een pas op de plaats te maken bij innovatie rondom talent management. De gedachte heerst dat werknemers zich voor 100% inzetten, simpel vanwege het feit dat ze blij zijn dat ze een baan hebben. Maar onderzoek van the Center for Work-Life Policy (CWLP) toont aan dat tussen juni 2007 en december 2008 medewerkersloyaliteit is gezakt van 95% tot 39%. Het vertrouwen dat werknemers in hun werkgever heben is in diezelfde periode gedaald van 79% tot 22%. Dit zijn weliswaar amerikaanse cijfers, maar of die nou zoveel zullen verschillen van de nederlandse cijfers?
Lees dit artikel van strategy+business in pdf
Sluiten | 
Print Het geheim om als organisatie 70% meer rendement te halen.Uit het onderzoek van universitair docente Mijntje Lückerath-Rovers (erasmus universiteit) blijkt dat bedrijven met een vrouw in het bestuur 70% meer rendement op het eigen vermogen behalen dan bedrijven zonder vrouwen in het bestuur.
Nog meer reden om serieus werk te maken van diversiteit. Alle initiatieven van de diverse organisaties om meer vrouwen naar de top te krijgen hebben helaas nog weinig resultaat geboekt. En dat terwijl dit zo hard nodig is.
Lees verder » Het geheim om als organisatie 70% meer rendement te halen.Uit het onderzoek van universitair docente Mijntje Lückerath-Rovers (erasmus universiteit) blijkt dat bedrijven met een vrouw in het bestuur 70% meer rendement op het eigen vermogen behalen dan bedrijven zonder vrouwen in het bestuur.
Nog meer reden om serieus werk te maken van diversiteit. Alle initiatieven van de diverse organisaties om meer vrouwen naar de top te krijgen hebben helaas nog weinig resultaat geboekt. En dat terwijl dit zo hard nodig is.
Meer diversiteit in teams, wat een bestuur feitelijk is, zorgt voor meer meningen en meer gezichtspunten. Besluiten die dit soort teams nemen hebben een hogere kwaliteit en leveren de organisatie aanzienlijk meer op. Maar hoe krijgen we meer vrouwen in de top van organisaties?
Met enkel initiatieven van buitenaf lukt dit niet, ook vrouwen zelf hebben hier een duidelijke taak in; zij moeten hiervoor hun ambities nog beter kennen en zichtbaar maken. En dat vinden veel vrouwen lastig. Onze programma's gericht op Vrouwelijk Leiderschap geven inzicht in waarom vrouwen dat lastig vinden en wat ze daaraan kunnen doen, zodat ook zij hun ambities gaan realiseren.
Een recent voorbeeld dat deze inspanningen lonen is de e-mail die wij vorige week ontvingen van een oud deelneemster, waarin zij haar bevordering tot Associate Professor aan de Universiteit Utrecht aan ons liet weten.
Sluiten | Print Prestatiemanagement werkt! Maar ..... het blijft mensenwerkAuteur: André A. de Waal
Intro artikel
Het succes van de balanced scorecard heeft een flinke impuls gegeven aan de acceptatie van prestatiemanagement, dat daardoor steeds meer gemeengoed is geworden onder profit en non-profit organisaties. Dat prestatiemanagement ervoor zorgt dat organisaties betere resultaten, in zowel financiële als niet-financiële zin, behalen wordt in toenemende mate duidelijk. Het blijkt in de praktijk dat, om prestatiemanagement echt succesvol te maken, het nodig is prestatiegericht-gedrag bij alle medewerkers te bevorderen. Prestatie-afstemming helpt hierbij.
Dit artikel is gebaseerd op het boek Presteren is mensenwerk, het streven naar een persoonlijke balanced scorecard (Kluwer, 2001).
Prestatiemanagement: meer dan ‘meten is weten'Onder het motto ‘meten is weten' voeren steeds meer organisaties een systeem voor prestatiemanagement in, om zodoende een prestatiegedreven-organisatie te worden. Prestatiemanagement is het proces waarin sturing van de organisatie plaatsvindt door het systematisch vaststellen van missie, strategie en doelstellingen van de organisatie, deze vervolgens te vertalen naar alle organisatieniveaus en meetbaar te maken door rapportage van kritische succesfactoren en prestatie-indicatoren, om uiteindelijk acties te kunnen ondernemen voor bijsturing van de organisatie. Kort samengevat: prestatiemanagement is niet alleen meten en weten maar ook sturen en bijsturen, tot op het laagste organisatieniveau.
Steeds vaker tonen onderzoeken aan dat goed prestatiemanagement positieve effecten heeft op de resultaten van de organisatie. De algemene teneur in de literatuur is dat prestatiegedreven organisaties zowel financieel als niet-financieel beter presteren dan organisaties die minder prestatiegericht zijn. Zo blijkt uit een onlangs afgerond promotie-onderzoek [1]dat het gebruik van een prestatiemanagementsysteem zowel de productiviteit als de innovativiteit van de organisatie verhoogd. Uit een ander recent Nederlands onderzoek [2]komt naar voren dat invoering van een prestatiemanagementsysteem in de vorm van de balanced scorecard bij één op de drie organisaties tot direct merkbare verbeteringen in de financiële resultaten heeft geleid. Daarnaast heeft invoering tot beter inzicht in de eigen activiteiten en tot het in gang zetten van organisatieveranderingen geleid. Interessant is dat slechts 5% van de onderzochte organisaties geen verbeteringen heeft waargenomen.
De verklaring voor de waargenomen positieve effecten is dat prestatiemanagement de aandacht van de gehele organisatie voortdurend richt op het behalen van de doelstellingen van de organisatie, en bovendien de individuele manager en medewerker stimuleert prestatiegericht te handelen. De conclusie van de meeste onderzoeken is dat het voor organisaties de moeite loont om te investeren in het opzetten en invoeren van een goed prestatiemanagementsysteem.
Goed prestatiemanagement = mensenwerkWaaraan moet een prestatiemanagementsysteem nu voldoen om de kwalificatie ‘goed' te krijgen? Ten eerste heeft het systeem een duidelijk doel dat in overeenstemming is met de beoogde strategie en dat doel is duidelijk gecommuniceerd naar iedereen in de organisatie. Ten tweede wordt in het systeem zowel de door de organisatie geleverde inspanningen als de resultaten gemeten. Ten derde worden de juiste prestaties in het systeem op een gebalanceerde wijze gemeten, zodat alle belangrijke aspecten zijn opgenomen in het prestatiemanagementsysteem, en er niet een te sterke nadruk ligt op één aspect. Ten vierde worden in het systeem de resultaten van individuen, teams en de organisatie als geheel gemeten, en wordt ervoor gezorgd dat individuele prestaties in overeenstemming zijn met de doelen van de organisatie. Ten vijfde is het prestatiemanagementsysteem gekoppeld aan de humanresourcemanagementsystemen;dit betekent dat het juiste gedrag, geïnitieerd door het prestatiemanagementsysteem, daadwerkelijk beloond wordt.
Onderzoek heeft uitgewezen dat op elkaar afgestemde systemen een positief effect hebben op de motivatie van medewerkers en op de bedrijfsresultaten. [3]Zo is bij Forbes 500 bedrijven aangetoond dat organisaties met een goed afgestemd systeem 64% meer verkochten en vier keer meer winst behaalden dan organisaties met een minder goed afgestemd systeem. Uit een andere studie bleek dat verkopen per medewerker driemaal zo hoog waren en het bedrijfsresultaat 45% hoger was bij organisaties met een goed afgestemd systeem dan bij organisaties zonder een dergelijk systeem. Hooggemotiveerde medewerkers blijken harder te werken, meer verkopen te genereren en beter in staat operationele kosten in de hand te houden dan medewerkers met een lage motivatie. Het behouden van medewerkers is een belangrijke factor voor het vasthouden van klanten, wat weer een belangrijke factor is voor verhoogde omzet en winst. Een studie toonde aan dat een verlaging in het medewerkersverloop van 7% resulteerde in $27.000 meer aan verkopen en $4.000 meer aan winst per medewerker. Medewerkerloyaliteit is gerelateerd aan klanttevredenheid, wat weer gerelateerd is aan toename van omzet en winst. Statistische analyse van verkoopdata van Sears, Roebuck & Co. toonde aan dat de houding van medewerkers ten opzichte van hun werk zowel de klanttevredenheid als de omzet significant beïnvloedde. Een verbetering van 5% in de houding van medewerkers zorgde voor een stijging in de klanttevredenheid met 1,3%, wat resulteerde in een omzetstijging van 0,5%.
Prestatie-afstemming is de sleutel Idealiter worden in een goed prestatiemanagementsysteem organisatiedoelstellingen van boven naar beneden doorvertaald in de organisatie. Iedere medewerker krijgt hierbij de verantwoordelijkheid voor een beperkt aantal doelstellingen en prestatie-indicatoren. De leidinggevende beoordeelt medewerkers op basis van deze prestatie-indicatoren. De duidelijke resultaatgerichtheid zorgt ervoor dat iedere medewerker gericht werkt aan het succes van de organisatie. Zo wordt bewerkstelligd dat iedereen dezelfde kant uit kijkt én uit werkt.
De praktijk leert dat een organisatie prestatiemanagement pas ten volle kan benutten wanneer prestatieafstemming is ingevoerd. Prestatieafstemming houdt in dat de doelstellingen op alle managementniveaus aansluiten op de missie en strategie van de organisatie. Deze doelstellingen vormen heldere verwachtingen over het functioneren van de medewerkers. De doelstellingen voor een specifieke medewerker worden vervolgens vertaald in kritische succesfactoren en prestatie-indicatoren, die toegesneden zijn op die medewerker. Op deze manier krijgt iedere medewerker in de organisatie een eigen, persoonlijke balanced scorecard, met daarin de informatie die nodig is om succesvol te kunnen zijn en om bij te kunnen dragen aan het bereiken van de doelstellingen van de organisatie. Dankzij de persoonlijke balanced scorecard weten medewerkers hoe ze hun doelstellingen kunnen bereiken en welke steun ze daarbij mogen verwachten van hun leidinggevenden. Tot slot wordt het humanresourceinstrumentarium (bestaande uit instrumenten voor de beoordeling, beloning, opleiding en ontwikkeling van medewerkers) afgestemd op het uitvoeren van de geformuleerde doelstellingen. Prestatie-afstemming voert prestatiemanagement door tot op het laagste niveau van een organisatie.
Om prestatie-afstemming door te voeren is het handig om het zogenoemde prestatie-afstemmingsmodel te gebruiken. Dit model gaat uit van de veronderstelling dat een organisatie haar doelstellingen alleen kan behalen als: (a) doelstellingen op alle niveaus aansluiten op de missie en strategie van de organisatie, (b) deze doelstellingen doorvertaald zijn in heldere verwachtingen ten aanzien van de medewerkers, (c) medewerkers weten hoe ze de doelstellingen kunnen bereiken en welke steun ze hierbij mogen verwachten van het management, en (d) het humanresourcemanagementinstrumentarium (beoordeling, beloning, opleiding en ontwikkeling, werving en selectie) is afgestemd op het behalen van de geformuleerde doelstellingen. Het prestatie-afstemmingsmodel wordt gedetailleerd beschreven in het boek Presteren is mensenwerk, het streven naar een persoonlijke balanced scorecard.
De praktijk heeft geleerd dat toepassing van het prestatie-afstemmingsmodel duidelijke voordelen heeft voor organisatie en medewerker. De kans op het daadwerkelijk behalen van de doelstellingen van de organisatie wordt beduidend verhoogd, doordat iedereen in de organisatie in dezelfde, juiste richting werkt, wat de effectiviteit van de organisatie verhoogd. De beoordelings- en beloningscriteria voor het personeel zijn gerelateerd aan de strategie en doelstellingen van de organisatie, waarmee het beoordelings- en beloningsinstrument een strategisch instrument is geworden. De uit het model voortgekomen beoordelingscriteria zijn gericht op resultaat, en zijn duidelijk geformuleerd en relevant door de afleiding van de organisatiedoelstellingen. Het implementeren van persoonlijke doelstellingen en duidelijke beoordelingscriteria, gekoppeld aan een variabel beloningssysteem, leidt bovendien tot een cultuurverandering: de betrokkenheid van de medewerkers voor het resultaat van de organisatie wordt verhoogt . Ook worden waarden en normen, in de zin van ‘wat is gewenst en wat is niet gewenst', duidelijker en meer uniform.
Goede prestaties komen niet vanzelf. De medewerkers van en organisatie moeten dermate gedreven zijn dat ze inderdaad willen werken aan het bereiken van de doelstellingen van de organisatie. Prestatie-afstemming kan helpen het prestatiegedreven gedrag van medewerkers te bevorderen.
[1]A.A. de Waal (2002), The role of behavioral aspects in the succesfull implementation and use of performance management systems, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
[2]Y. Mandour (2001), Balanced scorecard survey 2001, ICSB en www.balanced-scorecard.nl
[3]Zie o.a.: Cascio, W.F. (2000), Costing human resources, the financial impact of behavior in organizations, South-Western College Publishing; Gubman, E.L. (1998), The talent solution, McGraw-Hill; Hewitt Associates (1994), The impact of performance management on organisation success; Rucci, A.J., S.P. Kirn and R.T. Quinn (1998), ‘The employee - customer - profit chain at Sears', Harvard Business Review, January/February
Door: André de Waal
- Gepubliceerd in Manager & Literatuur, 2002, no. 8.1 -
Sluiten | Print Ethiek cruciale metgezel van een internationaal ondernemerdoor Prof. dr. Pieter Klaas Jagersma
Internationaal ondernemen heeft een belangrijke maatschappelijke dimensie. Het internationaal actieve Nederlandse bedrijfsleven heeft wat dit onderwerp betreft nog een lange en winderige weg te gaan.
Lees verder » Ethiek cruciale metgezel van een internationaal ondernemerdoor Prof. dr. Pieter Klaas Jagersma
Internationaal ondernemen heeft een belangrijke maatschappelijke dimensie. Het internationaal actieve Nederlandse bedrijfsleven heeft wat dit onderwerp betreft nog een lange en winderige weg te gaan.
Nederlandse ondernemingen horen op buitenlandse markten met hun omgeving te spelen in plaats van speelbal te zijn van diezelfde omgeving en daarin plaatshebbende ontwikkelingen. Alleen dan kan het 'spel van zet en tegenzet' (concurrentie) naar de hand worden gezet. Het internationale speelveld kent echter vele dikwijls moeilijk te doorgronden spelregels die met een vaak te klein lettertype aan het papier zijn toevertrouwd. Met name de internationale spelregels voor maatschappelijk verantwoord ondernemen (MVO) zijn vaak lastig te doorgronden.
Onlangs is aan Universiteit Nyenrode een onderzoek afgerond naar de belangrijkste succesfactoren voor internationaal ondernemen. In totaal zijn 375 functionarissen van 288 Nederlandse ondernemingen geïnterviewd (65 procent was actief in het MKB, 35 procent in het Grootbedrijf; 78 procent van de ondernemingen was afkomstig uit de industrie, 22 procent uit de dienstverlening). Opvallend dominant aanwezig was het onderwerp 'de internationale maatschappelijke omgeving' en hoe daar als Nederlandse onderneming adequaat op in te spelen.
De internationaal best presterende Nederlandse ondernemingen beseffen terdege dat good practices ook best practices zijn. Veel Nederlandse ondernemingen laten om diezelfde reden door onafhankelijke instituten 'internationale gedragsregels' opstellen. Internationaal actieve Nederlandse ondernemingen met expliciete internationale gedragsregels hebben volgens mijn onderzoek een relatief betere financiële performance in termen van het lokale, buitenlandse brutobedrijfsresultaat (er was spraken van een significant positieve correlatie).
Mijn verbazing was dan ook groot dat slechts 34 procent van de bestudeerde ondernemingen beschikte over een internationale gedragscode, terwijl van het grootbedrijf slechts de helft actief was op het terrein van de duurzaamheidsverslaggeving. Nog maar eenderde van de ondernemingen laat haar internationale code of verslag systematisch door externe partijen objectiveren en controleren. Vooral bestuurders van grotere ondernemingen rekenen het tot hun taak op een weloverwogen manier met het onderwerp MVO om te gaan.
Het complexe van internationaal MVO is dat het internationale speelveld aan uitdagingen louter en alleen uit dilemma's bestaat. Absoluut goed dan wel absoluut fout gedrag bestaat niet. Wat in het ene land acceptabel is, is in het andere land strikt verboden. De vrij vertaalde rode draad door veel commentaren was niettemin: ethiek is een essentiële metgezel van een internationaal ondernemer met eer. Succesvol MVO wordt dan ook gepraktiseerd, niet bereikt. Veel Nederlandse ondernemingen hebben wat dit belangrijke onderwerp betreft nog een lange en winderige weg te gaan.
Internationaal actieve Nederlandse ondernemers weten wel hoe in het buitenland de klok erbij hangt, maar hebben soms moeite de klepel te vinden. MVO lijkt soms veel weg te hebben van 'gezond verstand'-kunde. Toen het internationaal ervaren IHC Caland enkele jaren geleden vanwege 'Birma' de wind van voren kreeg van allerlei - overigens nogal primair en eenzijdig reagerende - maatschappelijk geëngageerde organisaties, was in ieder geval één ding overduidelijk: IHC Caland had de complexiteit van de MVO-materie onderschat. De boodschap: internationaal actieve ondernemingen worden geleid door stakeholders in plaats van sterke leiders.
Internationaal actieve Nederlandse ondernemingen bestaan bij de gratie van klanten. De 'license to act successfully' met klanten wordt in toenemende mate bepaald door het maatschappelijk-ethisch bewustwordingsvermogen van bestuurders en medewerkers - van hoog tot laag in de onderneming. Ook de buitenlandse klant is in de informatiemaatschappij niet langer onwetend, want hij/zij wordt op allerlei manieren gevoed met relevante maatschappelijke feiten die de aanwezigheid van buitenlandse ondernemingen kan frustreren. Een onderneming zonder 'duurzame' idealen is als een marktonderzoeker zonder feiten - men ontbeert in dat geval op termijn altijd een bestaansrecht.
Een in het oog springend onderzoeksresultaat was dat ook de juridische omgeving steeds belangrijker wordt. Een bijzonder juridisch onderwerp is het (produkt)aansprakelijkheidsvraagstuk. Het internationale aansprakelijkheidsvraagstuk betreft vele terreinen en dit is niet de ideale plaats om over dit onderwerp uitvoerig uit te wijden. Interessant is wel de relatie met MVO te benadrukken. Het gaat namelijk bij 'produktaansprakelijkheid' niet louter en alleen om risico-aansprakelijkheid maar eerst en vooral om de maatschappelijke verantwoordelijkheid die (buitenlandse) ondernemingen jegens hun (buitenlandse) omgeving hebben. Diverse Nederlandse kapitaalgoederenfabrikanten hebben wat dit onderwerp betreft de nodige maatschappelijke littekens opgelopen.
De crux is dat traditionele en vaak langzaam groeiende dan wel verzadigde markten met produkten en prijzen in toenemende mate worden vervangen door explosief groeiende markten van ervaringen, belevenissen, ontspanning en publieke en persoonlijke opvattingen. Immateriële activa als reputatie, imago en identiteit worden snel belangrijker - met name bij het internationaal zakendoen. Alleen al daarom zullen internationaal actieve Nederlandse ondernemingen een vinger aan de pols genaamd MVO moeten houden. Vaar als internationaal actieve onderneming een zekere koers, maar twijfel altijd aan de kwaliteit van het maatschappelijk kompas.
[*] Prof. dr. P.K. Jagersma is ondernemer, commissaris, hoogleraar International Business aan Universiteit Nyenrode en hoogleraar Strategie aan de Vrije Universiteit te Amsterdam.
Sluiten | Print Summary Executive Briefing "Becoming a High Performing Organisation"By Esther Mollema, Direction
Lees verder » Summary Executive Briefing "Becoming a High Performing Organisation"By Esther Mollema, Direction
Contributors
- Richard de Vries, senior consultant, Hay Group
- Douglas Grobbe, Managing Director & Head of Financial Markets Netherlands ABN Amro
- Dr. Lynda Gratton, London Business School
- Grimbert Rost van Tonningen, Rost & Co
Details
- Over 20 executive delegates attending from various organisations within the Netherlands.
- Program created by Hay Group and Direction, Briefings for Business Leaders.
Date: September 30, 2004
Location: Grand Hotel Huis ter Duin
Richard de Vries MMC is senior consultant and business developer High Performing Organisations at Hay Group en co-auther of "High Performing Organisations"
"I can conclude from your show of hands that most of us are facing the same challenge: introducing performance management did not lead our organisations into high performance cultures. The performance management introduction is often promising: we often see energy boost in firms immediately followed by an improved performance. But already in the second cycle, discussions start about the flaws in the chosen system and the required time investment. People begin showing strategic behavior to comply with their formal goals. Ambitious goals, needed to reach lasting high performance, are avoided; it may cost you your bonus!
At Hay, we have studied how to ensure lasting performance improvement since 1990. We have found three discriminating factors for success: 1. Strategic clarity, 2. Deployment of individual employees and 3. Robust dialogue between manager and employee. As you can see, these are all qualitative factors and challenging to realize, especially in a large organisation. How we can accomplish this, is the theme for discussions today. I hope we will find answers among each other and the invited experts".
Douglas Grobbe is Managing Director and Head of Financial Markets Netherlands within ABN AMRO Bank.
"In essence, a HPO organisation continuously transforms best practice into common practice. At ABN Amro, we launched many initiatives to discover more and more best practice solutions. Because of the ever changing markets and circumstances, this is a continuous process. Currently we seek to dramatically improve our customer satisfaction. This asks for much more internal alignment. E.g. before a client was visited by eight different ABN Amro people who were on occasion giving the clients contradicting messages. Now, the Perfect Pitch Project team decided on one company ambassador whose message integrates all different recommendations into one clear advice to the client.
Working in an environment that is ever improving itself asks for great employees. We need to be the employer of choice to attract the high flyers we require. We have to relieve the company of the employees that cannot serve this kind of organisation. HPO is not only about making your good people better, it is foremost dealing with the less than average employees and your non-talent. In the Netherlands, this seems to be a tough issue. Dealing with less than great employees is a management responsibility, not an HR responsibility. We have given this responsibility back to line management. We need to teach them how to relay these difficult messages to let go of these people.
With our great employees we engage in far more dialogue than before and we created a talent management program. Our senior management communicates less in statements and seeks more dialogue. We ask our great employees to challenge our solutions. We understand now more than ever, that people follow people, not strategies. To accomplish this, we even abandoned the three-pillar segmentation that existed within our company. Our Executive Board can now operate much more as a team, and that team spirit is recognized within the company as the ‘best practice' to make our bank a better partner for our clients. We initiate more activities to give our great employees a sense of belonging".
Lynda Gratton is Associate Professor of Organisational Behaviour at the London Business School
"I agree with Douglas that trials and pilots are a very good method for changing organisations. The role of HR is to help the organisation to put a trail on pilots to keep improving the organisation. HR delivers the instruments, not the destiny.
But today, I will contribute the reason why I think there are so few HPO in Europe. Yes, we can identify UBS, SAP, Nokia, Tesco and the Bank of Scotland, but why are there so few? I argue that many companies are far past their "sell-by date", let alone being a HPO. I blame the baby boom generation. Yes I know this generation has built great companies. But the way they structured these organisations, with a great emphasis on control, is hindering us to build HPOs now. These organisations cannot change at the speed of markets and be an employer of choice because they are operating off the wrong data.
Demographic effects are slowly changing our society. Longer lives and fewer babies have a mind-blowing effect on us. New generations will have to work most of their lives. They will choose not to work in the same way we do now, simply because it is too stressful and the personal costs are too high. The idea that all humans first complete their education, then work and then retire, will become extinct. We will see this order more and more sliced in smaller sequences and then repeated. We already spotted the first "Welcome back to the company" for retiree's schemes in the US.
Every individual employee is a single source of growth for the organisation and has to be given more individual autonomy to choose the assignments they want, in the time they like, with the remuneration and benefit choice that fits their individual setting. The UK grocer Tesco has begun to see this and segmented five broad attitude segments of people within their workforce. They recognize the different attitude of the part time cashier versus the high flyer line manager. HPOs can only arise when organisations establish new kinds of companies that allow for all of the above. I call this Democratic Enterprises. Great democracies work only when the citizens, read employees, accept the obligations that come with democracy. A great democracy is very explicit about behavior and performance. Organisations must let go of the control issue that now occupy the boardrooms. The baby boomers who are ruling now think of my ideas as impossible. But let me reiterate: they are operating based on the wrong data. Did you for example know that people of 60 or even 70 years have the same performance levels as people of 25 years old? Or did you know that people who work from home work have a 27% higher productivity, are 25% more committed and are 25% less likely to leave the company. BT is working with this data very successfully. So yes, there I think you are right: There are very few HPOs in Europe because of the baby boomers".
Grimbert Rost van Tonningen is a well respected boardroom advisor.
"I am going to address your question on how to transform your organisation in a HPO. I will guide you through my findings and then offer you a method for starting things up.
As Douglas pointed out, creating HPOs is a constant movement towards innovation. For this, I believe that learning and commitment are key. HP is an example of a learning organisation but I have hardly found any in Europe. I agree with Lynda that leadership is underdeveloped here in Europe. I wish to add technology as an underdeveloped driver for innovation. We seem to think that change comes with more governance and even more competency management tools. I believe leadership and technology are also vital. We also have to remember that change can only occur when we have measurable goals that are translated in KPI's, financial objectives and management reviews. I often see strategic plans that are no more that budgets. HR and learning often has no link in strategy plans. How can HR ensure the resources and knowledge necessary to realize the goals of the strategic plan if this is the case?
I believe the way to transform to HPO is by starting up strategic projects. The outcomes help you realize the strategic plan. Both Douglas and Lynda have mentioned this already. I believe these strategic projects should be the basis for delivering but also for learning. I know Shell does it this way. The project teams combine young/new talent with more experienced management. HR facilitates teams with skill training and coaching on personal skills and subject expertise. All teams are sponsored by senior management. In this method, learning and innovation come together. I suggest you start your program with "low hanging fruit", which are easily implemented projects and some "quick wins", such as projects of process improvement, cross BU- cooperation or customer intimacy. When I suggest this, many companies scare away. It calls for real leadership and will mean that you throw overboard class room learning that is not linked to strategy. In your case it means that you could start up projects within 6 weeks. You will be able to see clear results within 12 months."
Conclusions of the day
Creating an HPO culture has no quick fixes or easy paths. The suggestions from the speakers and the group show us in which direction we should go. The delegates decided to form a study group that will come together regularly to discuss their efforts in becoming an HPO and to stay inspired by experts.
Can you join?
- For a limited group of organisations it is possible to join this study group. Please contact Muriel Schrikkema of Direction at schrikkema@dir.nl.
For more information about the HPO day and this summary, please feel free to comment to mollema@dir.nl.
For more information about Direction and our initiatives please visit our website: www.management-development.com or contact us at +31 (0)35 - 603 79 79.
Esther Mollema
Managing Director
Copyright © Direction, Briefings for Business Leaders Europe BV.
All rights reserved (but feel free to copy it, post it, quote it, think about it and forward on to others if you mention the source: www.management-development.com).
Sluiten | Print Visie en leiderschapdoor Prof. dr. Pieter Klaas Jagersma
Zeven jaar onderzoek over visie en leiderschap
In 2003 is door schrijver dezes een zeven jaar durend cross-cultural onderzoek naar leiderschap afgerond. In dat onderzoek ben ik op zoek gegaan naar de heilige graal van leiderschap in het algemeen en de rol van ‘visie' in het bijzonder. Het onderzoek leverde veel stof op tot nadenken, niet in het minst voor de HR-professionals onder ons.
Lees verder » Visie en leiderschapdoor Prof. dr. Pieter Klaas Jagersma
Zeven jaar onderzoek over visie en leiderschap
In 2003 is door schrijver dezes een zeven jaar durend cross-cultural onderzoek naar leiderschap afgerond. In dat onderzoek ben ik op zoek gegaan naar de heilige graal van leiderschap in het algemeen en de rol van ‘visie' in het bijzonder. Het onderzoek leverde veel stof op tot nadenken, niet in het minst voor de HR-professionals onder ons.
Dat visie en leiderschap belangrijk zijn blijkt wel uit de Holy Bible en wel het boek Spreuken 29:18 - Where there is no vision, the people perish. Visie en leiderschap zijn belangrijke communicerende vaten, want hoe kun je leiden als je niet weet waar je naar toe wilt gaan? Leiden wordt in dat geval lijden.
Belangrijkste eigenschap en vaardigheid van een leider
Uit mijn onderzoek onder ongeveer 500 interviewees en ruim 10,000 respondenten uit ondernemingen afkomstig uit Europa, Noord-Amerika, Azië en Zuid-Amerika is gebleken, dat het ‘hebben van een visie' en het daadwerkelijk ‘handen en voeten kunnen geven aan die visie' als achtereenvolgens de belangrijkste eigenschap en vaardigheid van een leider worden gezien - ongeacht de herkomst van de voor mijn onderzoek benaderde interviewees en respondenten (managers en ondernemers op leidinggevende posities). De bulk van de interviewees en respondenten gaf overigens ruiterlijk toe dat men doorgaans niet de beschikking heeft over die eigenschap en vaardigheid. Dit zet vanzelfsprekend aan tot denken. Hier lijkt een belangrijke toekomstige opdracht voor HR-professionals te liggen.
Uit het onderzoek kwam eveneens naar voren, dat visie als de kurk van leiderschap wordt gezien. Een ‘juiste' visie komt de kwaliteit van strategische en operationele beslissingen ten goede, fungeert niet zelden als change road map, is doorgaans het fundament van de bedrijfsstrategie, een ‘kompas' voor in het bijzonder gedecentraliseerde ondernemingen en een bron van motivatie en inspiratie voor individuele medewerkers.
Wat is een ‘visie'?
Een visie is a guide to corporate priorities that reflects a fact-based view of the future and sets forth aspirations that are demanding but achievable (Jagersma, 2002). Een visie is ‘aantrekkelijk' (lieert de inspanningen van individuele medewerkers aan een hoger ‘boeiend' doel), ‘veeleisend maar haalbaar' (en geeft daarmee de mate van ambitie van een onderneming weer) en is altijd gebaseerd op ‘feiten' (iedere visie hoort ingebed te zijn in een fundamentele analyse van zowel de interne als de externe omgeving van een onderneming). Een visie fungeert in de praktijk van alledag als smeerolie tussen de veelheid aan concrete doelstellingen van een onderneming en haar strategieën (concrete acties gericht op het realiseren van die doelstellingen).
Het ontwikkelen van een visie
Het ontwikkelen van een visie is veelal een gecompliceerd proces. In de meeste ondernemingen is de hoogste leiding verantwoordelijk voor het formeren van een visie. In sommige ondernemingen ligt ‘de bal' bij het middle management en in weer andere ondernemingen is er sprake van een proces waarbij de hoogste leiding samen met het middle management een visie baart. Visie-ontwikkeling verloopt moeizamer als er meerdere partijen bij betrokken zijn.
Het ontwikkelen van een visie vindt of op een langdurige, weloverwogen organische c.q. ‘incrementele' wijze plaats dan wel via de weg van de snelle, met de nodige risico's omgeven ‘revolutie'. Interessant is dat het adagium old visions never die, they have to be killed door vrijwel alle interviewees en respondenten werd onderschreven. Het proces van het ontwikkelen van een visie zet de tone of voice in veel ondernemingen. Er staat daarbij veel op het spel. De uiteindelijke ‘volzin' genaamd visie is dan ook van invloed op de koers van ondernemingen, ingrijpende veranderingsprocessen en (dus) bedrijfsresultaten.
Het realiseren van een visie
Het doorgronden van het belang van een visie respectievelijk wat een visie is en inzicht in het visie-ontwikkelingsproces garandeert vanzelfsprekend geen goed ondernemingsresultaat. Uiteindelijk moet ook een ‘geweldige' visie in de praktijk gerealiseerd worden. Pas in dit stadium wordt van leidinggevenden ‘echt' leiderschap gevraagd. Globaal kunnen we het daadwerkelijk realiseren van een visie in twee fasen onderverdelen. Ten eerste zal in een onderneming gecommuniceerd moeten worden wat de (nieuwe) visie van de onderneming is (‘wat wil de onderneming bereiken?'). Het tot stand brengen van een breed draagvlak betekent gebruik maken van uiteenlopende media (zoals speeches, schriftelijke notities, video's, speciale ‘events', etc).
Het daadwerkelijk realiseren van ‘individuele betrokkenheid' (fase twee) bij de hoofdweg die een onderneming is ingeslagen dan wel wenst in te slaan, betekent in de praktijk het ‘personaliseren' van de vaak algemene visie. Dat betekent de juiste boodschap via het juiste medium op het juiste moment bij de juiste persoon afgeven. Dit luistert bepaald nauw. Het realiseren van een visie is geen sinecure.
Sluiten | Print Karaoke CapitalismThe age of the hollow company
The brand is all - firms make nothing and outsource everything, says Peter Freedman
Lees verder » Karaoke CapitalismThe age of the hollow company
The brand is all - firms make nothing and outsource everything, says Peter Freedman
THE share price of Metro International, a Swedish publisher based in London, rose by 457% in the 12 months to March 11. It was a spectacular performance for a company that almost prides itself on the blandness of its newspapers and on the fact that they can be consumed from cover to cover by a commuter during an average journey time of 16.7 minutes.
March 11 was also the day that Metro, like all newspaper publishers, got the biggest news story of the year when Al-Qaeda detonated 10 bombs on Madrid trains.
Metro International and Al-Qaeda are two organisations with utterly different values and objectives. But they do have something in common - their "corporate" structure. In their own ways, they epitomise how the age of the internet and e-mail, outsourcing and offshoring, deregulation and globalisation is changing the rules of business and the nature of the modern corporation.
First, take Al-Qaeda, which, even more than Metro - let alone such icons of 21st century business as Google or Lastminute.com - provides the very organisational model of a modern corporation. It has a strong brand, a high-profile "chief executive" and a non-labour-intensive back office, implementing a global strategy by orchestrating and fronting (or, in the jargon, "white-labelling") an international network of outsourced suppliers (assorted groups of Islamic militants), with the aid of mobile phones, the internet and fibre-optic communications.
Metro, meanwhile, publishes 34 local editions of its free newspaper and distributes them in 16 countries (though not, so far, Britain). The announcement in February of its first quarterly net profit as a public company, together with a growth rate of 40% last year in weak advertising markets, indicated that, after heavy investment, the company was proving the soundness of its non-traditional business model.
The company employs few reporters per edition compared with a traditional newspaper, preferring to buy most of its content from news and picture agencies and packaging it under the Metro label. It does not own its printing presses but outsources its printing, along with most of its distribution.
"It is a hollow corporation," said Kjell Nordstrom, a Swedish business-school academic and co-author of Karaoke Capitalism, a new book on the changing nature of companies and business.
Metro International is just one example of a hollow company - one that is applying to the newspaper industry a business model already proven in, for example, the computer industry by Dell and in the furniture industry by Ikea. It operates, in effect, as a network orchestrator, buying the things that firms in its sector traditionally produced themselves.
"The boundary of the firm - the definition of what is inside or outside the company - has always moved back and forth," said Nordstrom. "What is happening now is that the boundaries are moving more quickly; and they are moving in a particular direction, with companies shifting more and more activities out of the corporation."
The result is that companies, both large and small, are performing ever fewer of their traditional functions and becoming "hollow".
The change is being driven by politics and technology. The factors range from the liberalisation of international trade (the average level of tariffs in industrial countries is now less than a tenth of the level before the second world war) to the spread of personal computers, the internet and fibre-optic cables capable of transferring huge amounts of data at high speed and low cost. These factors have exposed companies to ever more global competition, putting ever more pressure on them to cut costs by outsourcing and offshoring, which have themselves become ever easier.
"A single, corporate model has dominated business life for some 100 years," said Jonas Ridderstrale, Karaoke Capitalism's other author. "The vertically integrated industrial company was the model. This was a corporation where most activities were carried out internally. The firm made what it sold."
This traditional model is crumbling. IT in general, and the internet in particular, have ushered in a new age of information that has made markets more efficient and so shifted the advantage to those who play the markets most shrewdly.
"We have moved from a world of building to one of buying," said Ridderstrale. "And the more non-core activities you place outside the firm, the higher the value you can generate."
One technique for doing so is the use of "white-labelling" - the practice whereby a company supplying a product or service may provide it to more than one distributor, permitting each to slap on its own label before selling it to the end-user. Thus, a cornflake factory might supply the same cornflakes to rival supermarkets, each of which will label them with its own brand.
The internet lends itself particularly well to white-labelling. Infomedia, one of Britain's fastest-growing private companies, not only sells mobile-phone content (ring-tones, games and so on) through its own website, partymob.com, but also supplies the same content to websites owned and fronted by other companies in Ireland, Australia and elsewhere.
One is iol.ie, the consumer website for BT in Ireland. "They wanted to supply this same content to their customers," said Michael Tomlins, Infomedia's commercial director. "So we made a smaller version of partymob.com for them and white-labelled it. Consumers in Ireland are not made aware that the website is run by Infomedia. But they get the full service and the highest-quality content that only a company specialising in mobile content could provide."
Another sector where white-labelling is growing fast is financial services. If you buy, say, a new BMW and decide to take out insurance at the same time, the policy will be sold as BMW insurance but actually be underwritten by Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). Indeed, seven of the top 10 carmakers use RBS to provide their insurance, which they label as their own.
A result of the growing use of white-labelling and outsourcing is that many companies seem to consist of little more than a brand. But companies - or "brand-carriers" - still take responsibility for delivering on the brand promise by orchestrating their network of suppliers, policing quality control, and shouldering ultimate legal responsibility. Brand-carriers are buck-carriers.
"If you buy a computer from Dell, you will end up at a call centre owned by someone else, but Dell is ultimately responsible," said Ridderstrale. The same applies if you buy a pair of trainers from Nike or a phone from Sony Ericsson. "They are not actually made by Nike or Sony Ericsson, but the company that is selling to the final consumer has to accept responsibility for the entire chain."
A modern company, argues Ridderstrale, is like a Lego model. "Once, activities and units were welded together. Today, you can take them apart and move the pieces around."
The nature of companies, in short, is changing because companies now outsource what they once produced in-house. Of course, outsourcing itself is far from new. But what is new is the sheer scale of it. The number of companies outsourcing their manufacturing almost tripled in a two-year period, Business Week magazine estimated recently.
Indeed, at least four things are different about the new outsourcing. The first is its international nature - outsourcing is becoming offshoring and is spreading across borders and continents.
The most famous example is the offshoring of call centres to India. Thus, as of this month, up to half the 50m calls answered each year by Britain's national rail-inquiries service are to be handled by call centres in India as part of a £100m contract run by BT and Ventura.
Offshoring, however, is just a sub-category of outsourcing. And we ain't seen nothing yet. Offshoring still accounts for a minority of outsourcing but is predicted to end up in a landslide majority. A recent McKinsey study estimated that while 20% of world output was already open to global competition, the figure in 30 years would be 80%. The fact that English is the language of the business world means that English-speaking countries will feel the greatest effect. "What we have so far," said Ridderstrale, "is a mere tea-party."
The second thing that is different about the new outsourcing is the spread from manufacturing to services and from manual-workers to knowledge-workers - from grunt work to graduate work.
"Twenty years ago, there weren't many people with an engineering degree in China who were available on a global market. Today, there are a bunch of engineers in Beijing who have read the same books and are prepared to do the same work as British engineers," said Ridderstrale. The same is true for architects, accountants and MBAs. "What is happening is the standardisation of whitecollar work."
So, while China entered the global supply chain for manufacturing years ago, now China, India, eastern Europe and others are entering the global supply chain for service, white-collar and, increasingly, graduate jobs.
The third difference about the new outsourcing is that it is being applied to front-office functions. "Traditionally, companies found it easier to outsource a lot of functions such as internal accounting, finance and software development because such services didn't have a direct impact on the customer-facing side," said Bundeep Singh Rangar, chief operating officer of Ariadne Capital, a venture-capital firm with expertise in outsourcing. But now, with firms under ever more pressure to drive down costs, they are also outsourcing the customer-facing parts of the business.
Hence, if you decide, say, to dump your car insurer and switch to another brand, you could end up at both stages speaking to the same call centre without knowing it, since call centres take pains to keep the services they provide to different brands separate by, for example, using different phone numbers and different staff.
The fourth new factor is the result of the first three coming together to achieve what might be called Total Outsourcing Nirvana, or TON. "What is new," says David Boyle, author of a new book, Authenticity: Brands, Fakes, Spin and the Lust for Real Life, "is the fantasy that companies can break everything down into a few functions, which appear on a computer screen, and then do whatever is necessary from any part of the world."
Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist and writer on globalisation, points to the new ability of companies to disassemble, outsource and then reassemble any process, having had its component tasks performed anywhere in the world.
Friedman says this is the product of three forces, which have served to connect all the resource pools on the planet. "First is the massive installation of undersea fibre-optic cable that has made it possible to globally transmit and store huge amounts of data for almost no cost. Second is the spread of personal computers around the world. And third is the convergence of a variety of software applications - from e-mail, to Google, to Microsoft Office, to specially designed outsourcing programs - that made it possible for operations scattered around the world to work on the same platform.
Such changes are not just affecting multinational corporations. "We ourselves," said Nordstrom, "have a small supplier of web-development services - a company of eight or ten people outside Stockholm, but they also have two or three people in Bangalore."
IBM has a network of more than 12,000 suppliers across the world, all wired to its system. At the other end of the scale, Today Translations, based on the doorstep of the City in east London, has a four-woman office orchestrating a global network of some 1,500 linguists.
And in Elstree, Hertfordshire, Jeremy Freeman runs a small e-business consultancy called Bamps. He used to have four employees but now outsources the work to a network of 10 freelancers. "The people I used to employ were really jacks-of-all-trades but now I can hire masters, with greater specialist knowledge in their fields," he said. The quality of service he can provide has increased and so, as a result, has the quality of his clients. And he is saving on employer's national insurance.
Nor is this an isolated case. In America, more people - 16m soloists, 3m temps and 13m micro-entrepreneurs - now belong to the so-called Free-Agent Nation than work for the public sector.
Bron: Timesonline.com
Sluiten | Print Management TodayJune 2005: Management - It's About Results
Today's great corporate leaders associate success with culture, vision, character and trust. But leading US management academic, Professor Dave Ulrich challenges the conventional wisdom and places a relentless emphasis on results. Kate Kerrison talks to Dave Ulrich before he embarks on his lecture tour in Australia.
As co-author of Results-Based Leadership, and one of the world's leading business educators, Dave Ulrich says today's leadership teaching focuses too narrowly on personal attributes and fails to explore the critical connection between leadership and the desired results.
"Much of the leadership training still focuses on the 'be, know, and do' of leadership - personal character - more than the results leaders should deliver," he says. "We have seen dramatic results when leaders pay attention to the outcomes."
Ulrich, who was named BusinessWeek's Top Management Guru in 2001, says results do not just come in the form of short term financial impact, but even more as a longer-term intangible benefit where investors gain confidence in the firm as a result of the quality of leadership and, as a result, generate a higher market value.
That is not to say character and a beliefs system are not important. Ulrich says he learned key management lessons from his parents: "From my mum, care and how to show it by listening and understanding rather than judging. From my dad, work hard, don't overthink things, do them."
Having just taken a three-year sabbatical to serve his church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in Montreal, Canada, Ulrich says he will miss the chance he has had to focus on helping people find meaning, hope, learning, and relationships that matter most to them.
"I have learned that people need meaning - a sense of purpose in their lives; hope - a focus on the future and what can be; learning - an ability to grow and progress; and relationships - an ability to be with others in personally important ways.
"I think managers have the opportunity to weave these four factors into their organisations. When they do so, organisations become a community for employees and employees who become more committed. I like to be with managers who find meaning, hope, learning, and relationships important as part of their work pattern."
On a personal level, Ulrich has always worked as an academic and says he is drawn towards the world of ideas as well as their application. "Academia gives me the chance to explore ideas and consulting the chance to apply them," he says.
At the same time he has resisted any temptation to take on a corporate role, saying that while the impact within a company would be more intense, he finds the 'world of ideas' much broader.
"I don't think I would be that good of an executive, to be honest. There are different skills to the executive world that I am not sure I have. I may not be as politically sensitive as I should be, nor able to be as consistent with an agenda as I would need to be. I like the idea of moving ideas from place to place."
Results-based leadership is hardly a new concept. Ulrich and his colleagues from the University of Michigan's Centre for Strategic Human Resources have refined the methodology over more than 15 years. Each year they undertake surveys to identify what differentiates human resource (HR) practices and high performing organisations around the world.
However, Ulrich says it is hard to know exactly how pervasive results-based Leadership has been on a global basis.
"Most good leaders intuitively do results-based leadership when they focus their personal competencies on delivering results.
"The US market often gets criticised for being so bottom line focused so perhaps more of the message of results resonates in US markets than others. But, any leader anywhere in the world succeeds by delivering results in the right way."
Ulrich names General Electric (GE) as a company that has mastered results-based leadership.
"GE gets a lot of press, and most of it for good reason. The leadership heritage at GE is to deliver results. But the company is also committed to ensuring that leaders know, and do, the right things. This means not only ethical behavior, but also leadership behavior. We would argue that GE has a leadership brand, or leaders with a certain reputation.
"This means the reputation rubs off when GE leaders go elsewhere, like 3M or Home Depot, and transfer some of the leadership brand to another setting.
"Some would argue that in a large and complex holding company like GE, the quality of management is their business.
"The more complex the enterprise, the more diverse the enterprise, the more that the whole is more than the sum of the parts through the quality of management or leadership exhibited in the company. GE continues to demonstrate its ‘leadership brand' from the top throughout the company."
Ulrich says this leadership brand has transcended even the CEO. "GE has a heritage of CEOs who embody a commitment to delivering results in the right way. This heritage may include leaders with quite different styles (Jack Welch v. Jeffrey Immelt), but while personalities and styles may differ the underlying leadership brand continues."
While results-based leadership is endorsed by some of the world's largest businesses, Ulrich argues it is just as relevant for small business as big business.
"All organisations require leaders who define and deliver results in the right ways. In large organisations the leadership brand that comes from a results approach gets enacted at each level of the organisation.
"In smaller organisations, the senior leaders become the carriers of the leadership brand because everyone sees and touches them. Their personal behavior becomes the expected behavior of employees in the firm."
While Ulrich is recognised for his work in general management and leadership, he specialises in the HR profession.
In his latest book, The HR Value Proposition, he takes his results-based leadership theories into the HR domain.
The new book, to be published this year by Harvard Business School Press, is co-authored with Wayne Brockbank, the clinical professor of business at the University of Michigan Business School, as well as faculty director and core instructor of the Strategic Human Resource Planning Program, the Human Resource Executive Program, and the Advanced Human Resource Executive Program at the university's Executive Education Center. Over the past twelve years, these have been consistently rated as the best HR executive programs in the United States and Europe by the Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek.
Ulrich is Director of the Michigan Human Resource Executive Programs in Hong Kong , Singapore, and India, as well as the Michigan Global Program in Management Development in India . He is also a distinguished visiting professor of business administration at Instituto De Altos Estudios Empresariales (Argentina).
Ulrich says, "HR professionals need to actively deliver value. They must do things that actually make a difference and add value for investors."
According to Ulrich there are two major parts of the HR 'value' equation. One focuses on transactions and doing the administrative work of managing people better, faster, and cheaper. This can be done through service centres where duplication is reduced, through e-HR systems where employees have self-reliance, or through outsourcing some of the HR work.
The other part of the HR value equation is more difficult to define, but has a larger impact.
"This is when the HR work helps meet the needs of employee, line manager, customer, and investor stakeholders. This value comes when HR professionals identify critical organisation capabilities and deliver them through their work," he says.
But it is easy to be seduced by process and activities rather than value delivery. "At the end of the day, it is nice to look at the lines of code (or processes or guidelines) that were created and define this activity as success. However, it is more important to be measured by the impact of the activity.
"HR professionals often like to do what is easy rather than what is right. After a while it is easy to run a compensation administration program, to run a training program, to do a hiring process. These administrative processes become routine and the HR people lose sight of the deliverables or strategies they are attempting to serve or deliver.
"Turning the 'strategic' into operational actions is messy and confusing at times, so many HR folks don't jump in and learn by doing."
What is left after transactional HR has been automated, centralised, eliminated or outsourced forms the heart of The HR Value Proposition.
Ulrich says he and Brockbank continue to be confronted by future-focused questions such as:
Why does HR matter so much more today?
How do I convince my line manager to pay attention to HR issues?
What specific things can HR do to connect with customers, investors, employees, and line managers?
What are emerging HR practices?
While deliverables (outcomes, intangibles, or capabilities) are important, what are the investments in HR practices that make these outcomes happen?
How does HR help to build, not just measure, intangible value creation?
What are the evolving and emerging roles for HR professionals?
According to Ulrich: "These are the questions that remain after re-engineering, automating, or outsourcing HR. These are the questions we address in this book.
"We continue to believe that HR professionals should focus more on deliverables than on doables or activities. We believe that key deliverables are organisation capabilities and intangibles that define the organisation's identity and personality and that deliver high performance to all stakeholders. We also believe that HR leaders can align practices to more effectively execute business strategy.
HR professionals who demonstrate the right competencies and play the right roles will be more effective than those who do not. And, we believe that with creative thought and discipline these beliefs will become actions that deliver value. In sum, we believe that this is a great time to be a HR professional," he says.
Ulrich urges aspiring leaders to strive for excellence in both areas by demonstrating attributes and achieving results. He suggests that a lot of leadership teaching focuses too narrowly on organisational capabilities such as vision, character and trust, while attention to the critical connection between leadership capabilities and the desired results is lacking.
He believes it is essential that leaders are able to demonstrate results in four key areas: results for employees (human capital); results for the organisation (learning, innovation); results for customers (delight target customers) and results for investors (cash flow)
Built around three critical capabilities, namely strategy and operational design, leadership development and strategic HR, results-based leadership will help you to define, build, increase and sustain value, with an emphasis on leveraging human and social capital - critical intangible assets.
Dave Ulrich CV
Dave Ulrich has just completed a three-year sabbatical serving as president of the Canada Montreal Mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and has returned to the University of Michigan, where he is a Professor of Business.
Professionally, he studies how organisations use human resources (HR) to build capabilities of speed, learning, collaboration, accountability, talent, and leadership.
He has helped generate multiple award-winning databases that assess alignment between business strategies, HR practices, and HR competencies. Having consulted and done work with more than half the Fortune 200, Ulrich has been credited as a leader in moving HR from a staff backwater to its new place at the CEO's right hand, while, along the way, helping with the process of building intellectual capital, creating strategic clarity and driving change.
He has published more than 100 articles and book chapters and 12 books, including: Why the Bottom Line Isn't: How to Build Value Through People and Organization (with Norm Smallwood), Results-based Leadership: How Leaders Build the Business and Improve the Bottom Line (with Norm Smallwood and Jack Zenger), and Human Resource Champions: The Next Agenda for Adding Value and Delivering Results.
He was editor of Human Resource Management Journal (1990-1999), and has served on the editorial boards of four other journals.
Sluiten | Print Heeft het OM nog meer te verbergen?door dr. Martin Hetebrij
Een analyse van het handelen binnen het OM
Lees verder » Heeft het OM nog meer te verbergen?door dr. Martin Hetebrij
Een analyse van het handelen binnen het OM
Het openbaar ministerie en het Nederlands Forensisch Instituut zouden in het proces tegen Cees B. welbewust cruciale DNA-informatie hebben achtergehouden, die zeer voor zijn onschuld pleitte. Deze door de NFI gegeven informatie, met de voor Cees B. ontlastende conclusies, leidde niet tot correctieve acties binnen het NFI. Een voormalig politieman lichtte Netwerk hierover in en zegt vanwege zijn kritische houding daarover te zijn ontslagen. Als er echt informatie is achtergehouden, hoe is dat te verklaren?
De onzin van Tunnelvisie
De hoogleraar rechtspsychologie Peter van Koppen zoekt het in de NRC van 7 september jl. in de zogenaamde tunnelvisie. Door de toenemende druk van de politiek op het Openbaar Ministerie zou deze zich steeds meer als crime fighter zijn gaan gedragen, meer gericht op het winnen van zaken dan op waarheidsvinding. In dat gevecht komt men, volgens hem, psychologisch in een tunnel die het zicht ontneemt op andere alternatieven dan waarvoor men zich inzet.
Deze verklaring is echt onvoldoende. Een tunnelvisie is een individueel verschijnsel, en sommige individuele medewerkers bij het OM en de NFI zouden zich erdoor hebben kunnen laten leiden. Maar het idee van een breed optredende tunnelvisie, van een soort collectieve gekte kan misschien voor een psycholoog aanvaardbaar zijn, maar het snijdt geen hout. In grote organisaties als het OM en het NFI mogen we voldoende geestelijk gezonde mensen verwachten, die anderen op hun tunnelvisie corrigeren.
Natuurlijk, er staat een grote maatschappelijke druk op het OM. Het kan best zo zijn dat het zich meer dan vroeger tot crime fighter ontwikkelde. Dat zal dan leiden tot meer felheid en inzet in de acties, maar het hoeft er niet toe te leiden dat men de regels van het juridische spel gaat overtreden.
Donner's reactie is vanuit het oogpunt van het OM goed te verklaren. In de huidige situatie is het OM namelijk bijzonder kwetsbaar voor negatieve media aandacht.
Een collectieve houdgreep
We moeten de verklaring voor het beschreven verschijnsel zoeken in het functioneren van de OM- en de NFI-organisaties. Hoe zou deze verklaring eruit kunnen zien? Ik begin met een voorbeeld, een verhaal dat ik tijdens de training "Politieke Vaardigheden en Besluitvorming" vernam van een projectmanager:
Een projectleider doet mee in een groot, voor de organisatie zeer belangrijk project. Al snel merkt hij dat hij zijn opdracht nooit goed zal kunnen uitvoeren en nog sterker; dat het project zijn doelen nooit gaat bereiken. Hij stapt naar zijn projectmanager om hierover te praten. Hij krijgt te horen dat hij op straffen van ontslag nooit meer met die onzin aan moet komen. Vanaf nu is er twijfel aan zijn inzicht en hij moet bewijzen dat dit onterecht is. Geschrokken gaat de projectleider te raden bij anderen en het beeld maakt hem niet vrolijk. Zijn projectmanager blijkt al lang te weten dat het fout gaat met het project. Ook hij maakte zich ongerust en stelde het probleem aan de orde op het niveau van het college van bestuur, bij het collegelid dat het project altijd sponsorde. En daar kreeg de projectmanager precies dezelfde behandeling die hij naderhand zelf gaf aan zijn projectleider. Nog wat gesprekken verder bleek dat er binnen het college grote spanningen heersten, en dat het sponsorende collegelid de strijd en zijn positie zou verliezen als ‘zijn' project zou mislukken.
Er vindt een grote mislukking plaats, die naarmate ze langer duurt steeds meer geld gaat kosten en slachtoffers maakt. Meerdere partijen zijn daarvan op de hoogte en hebben elkaar in een collectieve houdgreep, waardoor geen ervan het probleem aan de orde durft te stellen. De nadelen zijn zo groot, dat men afziet van actie en zich stilhoudt. Het enige wat er voor ieder nog op zit is ervoor te zorgen dat als het mislukken uitkomt anderen de schuld krijgen en niet zijzelf. Herkenbaar? Is dit niet hoe het vaak bij grote projecten gaat?
Je kunt een strafrechterlijk onderzoek heel goed opvatten als een project. Naarmate de maatschappelijke en politieke druk toenemen om een strafrechtelijk onderzoek snel en effectief op te lossen, stijgen de nadelen voor de hele organisatie.
Tijdens strafrechtelijke onderzoeken probeert men de zoekrichting zo snel mogelijk te beperken tot enkele en zo mogelijk één dader. Die keuzes hebben altijd een risico, maar ze zijn nodig om het onderzoek richting te geven. Als eenmaal de beperkende keuzes zijn gemaakt, de eerste resultaten zijn geboekt, maar ook twijfel is ontstaan, dan kan de situatie ontstaan zoals hiervoor beschreven; doorgaan op het oude spoor. Verder uitstel zal het nog maar moeilijker maken terug te keren van het gekozen onderzoekspad. Wie dan ook betrokken is binnen zo'n onderzoek, ieder loopt gevaar als de onderzoeksrichting moet worden gecorrigeerd.
Wat moet er gebeuren?
Het is niet erg dat het OM feller wordt. De maatschappelijke druk mag best daartoe leiden. Men moet zich bij het OM veel beter bewust worden van de macht- en intimidatiemechanismen die in zo'n situatie kunnen ontstaan. Laat het OM eens beginnen ervoor te zorgen dat er voldoende intern kritische processen mogelijk zijn, en dat mogelijke kritiek ongestraft mag worden geuit.
Het grootste gevaar van een organisatie onder grote externe druk, die intern sterk gepolitiseerd is, dat iedereen gewend is geraakt verdacht te moeten zijn op de eigen veiligheid. In zo'n organisatie is het mogelijk dat velen weten dat er iets echt fout gaat maar dat je voor het melden daarvan geen enkele ondersteuning kan verwachten, of dat je er zelfs voor wordt afgestraft. Het eerste schaap dat over de dam komt wordt geslacht. Als het OM niet in staat is om de zo nodige interne kritiek te garanderen, dan mogen we helaas nog veel herhalingen verwachten.
Dr. Martin Hetebrij publiceerde het boek "Communicatief Management, tussen macht en communicatie". Samen met Direction geeft hij de training "Politieke Vaardigheden en Besluitvorming". In november ‘05 verschijnt zijn nieuwste boek rond macht en communicatie in organisaties.
Sluiten | Print Thinking Outside The CupSurprise! Starbucks barista-in-chief Howard Schultz is making a big, bold push into the music business. He aims to transform the record industry -- and turn Starbucks into the world's biggest brand, period.
Lees verder » Thinking Outside The CupSurprise! Starbucks barista-in-chief Howard Schultz is making a big, bold push into the music business. He aims to transform the record industry -- and turn Starbucks into the world's biggest brand, period.
So this girl walks into a bar. She holds a tall iced coffee in one hand, and her blond hair is piled high in a ponytail, neon bikini strings peeking out from her tank top. At this bar, however, headphones hang above the stools, and computer screens are embedded in the countertop. The girl looks at the "bartender" quizzically. "So you can burn music here and it's, like, legal and everything?" she asks. The bartender smiles and nods. "Omigod, so you have, like, every song, ever?" Well, not every song, but quite a few: approaching 150,000 -- about 20,000 albums' worth. The girl settles onto a stool and grabs a headset, taking a long drag on the straw in her drink as she starts tapping away on a screen. "That's awwwesome."
It's awesome indeed, this new-concept music store on the trendy Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica, California. It's a beautiful space with warm lighting and wood paneling -- a place where you can buy regular old CDs, or linger with a drink while you listen to music and sift through thousands of songs stored in a computer database to create your very own personalized, mixed-CD masterpiece. In about five minutes, a freshly burned CD, complete with your chosen title and funky artwork on both the disc and the jacket (plus liner notes!) will be ready to take home. It all happens very smoothly, and yet it's a novel and startling experience. But what's most startling about this remarkable new place to buy music is this: It's a Starbucks.
The Hear Music Coffeehouse, as it's known, opened last March as the first of several fully integrated cafe-music stores that Starbucks is launching with its wholly owned subsidiary, retailer Hear Music. This August, Starbucks will install individual music-listening stations, with CD-burning capabilities, in 10 existing Starbucks locations in Seattle. From there, the concept rolls out to Texas in the fall, including Starbucks stores in the music mecca of Austin. With the help of technology partner Hewlett-Packard, Starbucks plans to have 100 coffee shops across the country enabled with Hear Music CD-burning stations by next Christmas, and more than 1,000 locations up and running by the end of 2005. Think iTunes meets Tower Records. With lattes.
"Great companies recognize who they are and who they are not. But they must have the courage to examine transformational opportunities."
Chairman and chief global strategist Howard Schultz's ambitions for this new business operation are vast; it's not just about selling a few CDs from a coffee shop (Starbucks has been doing that, successfully, for about five years already). Schultz wants Starbucks customers to make their own CDs, yes, but he also thinks they will someday use Starbucks' enormous Wi-Fi footprint to buy and store music from the network on any device imaginable -- from laptops and iPods to phones and PDAs. He hopes record labels will develop proprietary material just for the Starbucks network. And that Starbucks itself may help break new artists and develop original material. Indeed, Howard Schultz plans nothing less than to turn the entire music industry upside down. "We are the most frequented retailer in the world," he says. "With hundreds of thousands of songs digitally filed and stored, these Hear Music coffeehouses combined with our existing locations can become the largest music store in any city that we have a Starbucks in. And because of the traffic, the frequency, and the trust that our customers have in the experience and the brand, we believe strongly that we can transform the retail record industry."
There's something even more intriguing going on here, though. This push into music is the start of a daring effort to reinvent one of the world's best-known brands. It is an experiment that asks whether that brand is powerful enough, and Starbucks' relationships with the 30 million customers who pass through its 8,000 stores every week durable enough, that they can be used to completely transform the business.
"Great companies are defined by their discipline and their understanding of who they are and who they are not," Schultz says. "But also, great companies must have the courage to examine strategic opportunities that are transformational -- as long as they are not inconsistent with the guiding principles and values of the core business." And so Schultz finds himself on a precipice, at the edge of just such an opportunity, where he celebrates coffee as both the origins and the core of his business, and yet has dreams of transcending those origins to become something much more.
In effect, Schultz is asking the question famously posed by Theodore Levitt, the Harvard Business School professor and father of modern marketing: What business are you really in? Levitt explained that the once-powerful railroads, for example, were blindsided first by automobiles and then by the airlines. It happened because they had defined themselves too narrowly as being in the railroad business rather than the transportation business. As railroads, they were entrenched and invulnerable; as transportation, they were wide open to attack. Theirs was a failure of imagination -- the inability to reconceive themselves based on the business they were really in.
Over the years, a handful of companies have taken Levitt's words to heart, reimagining the very definitions of their businesses and their industries each time they reached a critical turning point. Disney was once a little studio that turned out cartoon shorts. Then Walt Disney opened a theme park unlike anything anyone had ever known. Now his company develops, produces, and distributes films of all kinds; has a network of theme parks; and runs a vast media empire. Virgin's Richard Branson turned a little music magazine into a music superstore, then launched an airline, and, most recently, a cell-phone company. And before her ImClone disgrace, Martha Stewart was among this select few: Her home-catering operation became a series of cookbooks, then gave birth to a multimedia company and a lifestyle-products line that sold everything from hand towels to patio furniture at Kmart.
In each case, as the company reached a plateau in one industry category, a visionary leader looked past the original product or service to redefine, in the broadest terms, the business it was in. Disney, Branson, and Stewart reimagined their cartoon, magazine, and food-service operations as entertainment enterprises. Then, when entertainment itself became too constricting, they blew apart traditional industry characterizations altogether. Now what they really sell is a lifestyle. Disney and its idealized view of wholesome, all-American family life; Virgin and its vision of youth, sexiness, adventure, and exuberance; Martha Stewart and her promise that you, too, can lead the elegant, good life. They sell you the dream, then the full suite of products, services, and experiences to achieve it.
And Schultz would like Starbucks to join them. He aims to achieve what so few are able to do -- to reimagine his company as something bigger, better, and more significant than it has ever been. In fact, forget joining them. Schultz plans to surpass them all. "We have the potential to become the most recognizable and respected brand in the world," he says flatly.
That may be hubris, or it may be an attainable goal. Either way, Schultz must still answer Levitt's question: What business is Starbucks really in? Clearly, it's more than coffee shops. Like those other successful marketers, Schultz is selling his own lifestyle dream, one of affluence and comfort, a forward-looking but not-too-trendy community experience wrapped around a steaming cup of coffee in a cozy living room that exists on every block between home and work.
This wouldn't be the first time Schultz has transformed his company with a quantum leap of imagination. When he arrived at Starbucks in 1982 as the director of marketing and retail sales, the company was a coffee roaster and wholesaler. Back then, coffee was a 40-cent cup of brownish water, and Maxwell House reigned supreme. Now millions of coffee drinkers think nothing of paying $4 for a tall vanilla latte. Sure, it tastes better than coffee from the 1980s, but is it really worth 10 times as much? Probably not. And Schultz knows it, because he's not really selling the coffee. What he's really persuading us to pay for is that relaxing world of velvet armchairs and afternoon chats with friends in a home away from home that's filled with . . . yes, music. Or as he puts it, "We've known for a long time now that Starbucks is more than just a wonderful cup of coffee. It's the experience."
And those $4 lattes, with their extra-foamy triple-caffeinated profit margins, sure do add up. Since its IPO in 1992, Starbucks has been a stellar performer by nearly every measure. The stock is up 3,500%, with a market capitalization that increased from $400 million to about $15 billion this year. Starbucks opens three new stores every single day, and now has about 8,000 coffee shops around the world (up from 165 in 1992). It has racked up more than 12 consecutive years of sales growth in existing stores; in each of the last five years, same-store sales have increased by 5% or more. Far from showing signs of flagging, this critical measure of retail performance is looking even better lately. Same-store sales rose 9% in 2003.
And yet it's hard not to wonder whether Starbucks' cup won't someday run dry. With a shop on what seems like every corner, can market saturation be far behind? Schultz dismisses the notion; he's fond of pointing out that Starbucks has just a 7% share of the North American coffee market, which would suggest that there's lots of room to grow. And despite some setbacks, Starbucks has 1,867 stores overseas and has big hopes for China.
"Of course no chief executive wants to say, 'Yes, our market is saturated,' " scoffs Geoffrey Moore, a partner at the Silicon Valley venture-capital firm Mohr, Davidow Ventures and author of the business classic Crossing the Chasm (HarperBusiness, 1991). "But the notion that 7% market share means he still has a big field to go after is silly. His market is not all coffee drinkers. His market is people who buy into an upscale 21st-century cafe society experience, which is much smaller."
Whether or not Starbucks' own railroad moment is waiting just around the bend, now is probably not a bad time to be thinking of some new and different ways to grow. "Schultz is doing something quite unusual in business," says Adrian Slywotzky, a partner at Mercer Management Consulting and coauthor of How to Grow When Markets Don't (Warner Books, 2003). "He's already looking ahead, doing the arithmetic and saying, 'Well, our current model is not forever.' There are probably a few more years of growth left in coffee shops, and he's asking, 'How do we manage that inevitable slowdown a couple of years from now?' "
There are several ways Starbucks might answer that question, Slywotzky says. It could expand grocery operations, increase corporate sales, or explore entirely new markets. The company has already had some success in the first two categories. It sells bottled coffee drinks, coffee-flavored ice creams, and coffee beans in grocery chains nationwide. And it sells to food-service companies that supply coffee on airlines and in hotels and restaurants.
But all told, these businesses don't add up to a very big hill of beans for Starbucks. They amount to something like 8% of total revenues. And profit margins are slim.
Schultz stumbled on another answer five years ago when he walked into the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto. He was on an idea-hunting trip, the sort of expedition he and other Starbucks executives frequently go on. "At our core, we're merchants," he says. "And that means we travel the world all the time, looking at and examining the best retailers and merchants, whatever they might be." That day, Schultz walked into a Hear Music record store and fell in love.
It wasn't huge by the standards of superstores such as Tower Records, HMV, or Virgin Megastore. Instead of ringing up CDs by the latest top-40 bubblegum princesses, the store clerks talked to Schultz about such artists as jazz greats Ella Fitzgerald and Dinah Washington. "When I think about the average music-shopping experience, what I would call the sense of romance about music is gone," Schultz recalls. "But when I saw Hear Music that first time, it was clear that they had cracked the code on the sense of discovery that music should have."
What Schultz had come across was a group of music stores with something of a cult following in the Bay Area. Hear Music was one of the first stores in the country to introduce the now-universal concept of the "listening station," those headphone-equipped CD stations where shoppers can try their music before they buy. Though the stores carry fewer titles than the music superstores, Hear Music prides itself on introducing customers to music from off-the-beaten-path artists, and the people who work there are passionate about music. A Hear Music employee can almost always suggest singers you might like if you tell him what music you already own. If you don't know the name of a particular tune, he can probably track it down for you.
In its intimacy, quality, and customer focus, Hear Music must have reminded Schultz very much of his own company. And the rest of the music industry, with its commoditization, standardization, and concentration on shoveling millions of Hilary Duff CDs out the door, must have looked a lot like Maxwell House. "We never dreamed we'd be sitting on the unique opportunity we're sitting on now," he says. "We just saw that they were doing for music what we had done for coffee."
On some level, of course, it hardly took a flash of blinding insight to see that music and coffeehouses were made for each other. "Our customers respond to music," says Anne Saunders, senior vice president of marketing. "Part of why they come is as an entertainment destination, for a respite, a break with friends, as a place for community gathering. The idea for the music service is very grounded in why people come to Starbucks."
Since acquiring the company in 1999, Starbucks has sold Hear Music compilation CDs in its stores. And it launched a popular series of CDs called "Artist's Choice," in which musicians from Lucinda Williams to the Rolling Stones share their favorite songs. Nearly 400,000 copies have been sold at Starbucks stores. It was after seeing those results that Schultz and Don MacKinnon, one of the founders of Hear Music and now Starbucks' vice president of music and entertainment (doesn't that title tell you something?), began to wonder whether there was a bigger opportunity to explore.
Schultz and MacKinnon came to believe that the core Starbucks customer, an affluent 25- to 50-year-old who's likelier to be tuned in to NPR than to MTV or one of the nine gazillion radio stations owned by Clear Channel Communications Inc., probably feels ignored by the music industry. The shopping experience at most record stores is off-putting, with customers overwhelmed by the volume of stuff but still unable to discover great new music. At the same time, the consolidated radio industry has gone as bland and homogenized as low-fat milk. "What you're left with is this very broad audience made up of the core Starbucks customer, who loves music and can't find it," Schultz says. "We have a unique opportunity to take advantage of this."
There are clear parallels between the way Starbucks is developing this new music business and the way Schultz developed the core coffee business.
Follow that blond girl into the Hear Music Coffeehouse in Santa Monica, and you'll start to see what Schultz means. Down on the Promenade, it's early on a Sunday afternoon, and the cobblestone sidewalks are full of people. They flock to the Starbucks storefront between Broadway and Santa Monica boulevards for iced-coffee confections. Customers order at an outdoor bar, and are directed inside the store to pick up their drinks on the other side of the doorway. More often than not, once folks step inside, they decide to stay.
A smooth R&B tune is grooving over the sound system, and a quick look at the wall over the music bar reveals a projected-light sign: "Now Playing: 'When It Hurts So Bad,' by Lauryn Hill, from the album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill ." The store is crowded. More than 60 people are in the small space -- 3,000 square feet, just large enough to accommodate the coffee and music bars, two short aisles of CD racks, plus space to mill around near the center of the store.
Now take a peek around the corner, at the Tower Records on Santa Monica Boulevard. It's easily four times as big as the Hear Music Coffeehouse, and there are just 10 people inside. None are interacting with a Tower employee, and none are using the listening stations -- perhaps because three of them are broken. (Tower's parent company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in February.) And here's the Borders, just three doors down from Hear Music. It has an entire floor dedicated to music and movies, but there are no employees and just two customers -- both looking at DVDs.
Back at the coffeehouse, each of the seven listening stations at the CD-burning music bar is in use, and -- though you wouldn't believe there was enough space for this many -- all of the 55 other HP Tablet PC-based listening stations around the store are in use, too. Three more stations outside at the coffee bar make 65 places in all where customers can listen to as many songs as they have the patience to sample.
There are no restrictions on what songs you can listen to, or for how long. Pick up any CD from the racks, wave its bar code under the scanner at the bottom of the listening stations, and a complete list of the songs on the album appears on screen, along with a description of the artist and links to other records. "The scanning thing is pretty rad," says Nathan Hill, 26, who comes by often to check out the selection. "It helps me find stuff." If Hear Music has written reviews about, conducted interviews with, or produced compilations that include the artist, those are linked, too. The tablets are simple ATM-style touch screens. And often there are recommendations: "If you like Norah Jones, you might try Shelby Lynne."
There are clear parallels between the way Starbucks is developing this new music business and the way Schultz developed the core coffee business over the past two decades. Though his ambitions are global and his product is mass market, each coffee drink is personalized and created individually. Like all Starbucks executives, Saunders, the marketing chief, worked in a store when she first arrived on the job. "I waited on hundreds of customers while working the cash register and was struck by how every single one of them ordered something different," she says. "A flavor shot, extra hot, half-caf, maybe all those things together. Every single person coming in here has a different experience, designed the way they want it."
At the Hear Music Coffeehouse, the personalization is even more . . . personal. Choose your cover art. Create an album title. Select your songs. Move them around into a different order. Pick music by mood, by artist, or by genre -- it's your choice. "We have a marketing tagline on the wall to reinforce how important we think that personalized experience is," says Saunders. "It reads: 'It'll be your favorite CD because you picked every song.' " And the product itself is high quality and perfectly packaged. "So many people aren't ready for digital music if they approach it on their own," says MacKinnon. "Here, there is no barrier to exploration, and you take something home that is tangible and beautiful."
And here's who MacKinnon has in mind: a woman with a head of unruly gray hair who has been tapping intently on a screen at the music bar for nearly two hours now. It's Mother's Day, and Kerry Smallwood, 47, just received a gift certificate to the store. A friend brought her here when the Hear Music Coffeehouse first opened. Today is her sixth visit. "I pretty much just listen to the CDs I make here now," Smallwood says. Her playlist so far has songs by Norah Jones, Rufus Wainwright, Sting, and Oscar Petersen.
Has she ever burned a CD for herself on a computer at home? Smallwood's expression is completely blank. "No, no, I've never done that. I don't know how." She's exactly why Starbucks thinks it can go up against Apple's more technology-oriented iTunes service. Smallwood will never know that there is a mini server farm hidden behind the service door at the back of the store. She just knows that for $6.99 for her first five tracks and $1 for each additional song, plus about a five-minute wait, she gets another beautifully packaged, personalized CD.
It's all very smooth, it's all very seamless, and it all seems to make so much sense. But does it? Can Schultz and his team carry off a transformation like this? Is it really a smart move for a coffee company to reimagine itself as a lifestyle-entertainment enterprise and to start by serving up music? After all, the mere fact that a certain sort of music and a certain sort of coffee appeal to the same sort of customer doesn't necessarily mean that they should be sold at the same store. By such logic, what would stop Starbucks from selling, say, hiking shoes, or take-'em-home versions of the new-agey furniture in its stores, or earth-friendly kids' toys? That's why Mohr, Davidow Ventures' Moore cautions Schultz to tread carefully. "It's a very interesting experiment, but if I was on their board of directors, I'd be more concerned that they not corrupt the brand," he says. "If Starbucks is just trying to find more ways to monetize the traffic that comes through, this is a bad idea. At some point the customers will start to feel abused."
Though he acknowledges the risk, Schultz sees his company poised at a turning point -- and he's confident the music service is the next step along Starbucks' path toward becoming, yes, the world's biggest brand. "The hardest thing is to stay small while you get big, to figure out how to stay intimate with your customers and your people, even as your reach gets bigger. We want to be a respectful merchant so that we're not trying to sell anything that would in any way dilute the experience," he says. The music business won't do that, he vows; rather, it will enhance that experience. "Great retailers recognize that they're in the business of constantly surprising and delighting their customers," he says. This big, bold push into music, he expects, will do both.
Fast Take: Redefining your Business
To Howard Schultz, Starbucks isn't in the coffee business. It's in the people business. Once you start looking at things that way, the horizons get a lot wider. Here's Schultz's guide to contemplating life beyond the cup.
Think like an athlete.
Whenever you reach a plateau, it's time to rethink. If you're number one or number two in your category, maybe it's time to reconsider the category in which you compete: Create a broader definition of the industry, and develop a new plan to conquer it.
Team up with like-minded partners.
Hear Music and Don MacKinnon approach their business the same way Starbucks does: Customer interaction is vital, intimacy is important, and the shopping experience is everything. That's what made launching a music service together smart, not crazy.
Dream big.
A corollary to finding a new industry definition: Make its boundaries as wide as possible. "We have the potential to become the most recognizable and respected brand in the world," Schultz says. Not the biggest coffee company but the biggest brand, period. "When you're building a business, you have to dream as big as you can possibly imagine -- otherwise, what's the point?"
Stay small.
Everyone loves the convenience of a widely available product or service; no one likes to feel anonymous. Even as Starbucks goes global, adding new products and new businesses, Schultz and his team strive to maintain the intimacy and personalized feel of every single Starbucks encounter. "Our biggest challenge is to get big but stay small," he says.
Fast Take: A Coffee-Klatsch with Mr. Schultz
Words of wisdom from the architect of Starbucks' phenomenal success:
"Customer loyalty is not an entitlement."
Whether you have 30 customers or 30 million (like Starbucks), customers are fickle. They're bombarded with newer products and snazzier messages every day. Companies must continue to prove their worth -- or lose it. Says Schultz: "We know we need to win back our customers' loyalty every day. Our success is based on their continued trust in our people and our environment over long periods of time."
"Great brands aren't built on ads or promotions."
Redefining the industry you're playing in doesn't just mean hiring an agency to think up a fancy new slogan. To make it work, you have to offer high-quality new products and services that customers actually want, and that will reinforce the value offered by your core brand and expand the emotional connection your customers feel with it.
"It's no fun being a pioneer."
When launching a new product, service, or business unit, remember that experience still counts. Even though the Hear Music Coffeehouse experience is unique, developing it with folks familiar with the music business was vital. "It's always best to surround yourself with people who've done it before, in some form or another," Schultz says.
"Stay humble. There is no room for arrogance."
Customers can tell when a new product or service is an authentic outgrowth of the company's mission, and when it's an overblown gimmick designed to feed the buzz machine. Be aggressive with your business performance goals -- not your ego.
Bron: Fastcompany.com
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