The journey from a Company to an Organization — 0/3
Long years ago, I was in a discussion with a senior colleague who grabbed a pen and white paper and said: “Listen Kareem, we are an organization that makes money from having the right people working with the right process”. As he was saying it, he was jotting this on the white paper: “People + Process = $”. He then handed me the paper to memorize it well.
I am not sure what happened to that paper though this equation engraved in my mind. It is quite basic; yet profound. It kept evolving in my mindset across all roles I have encountered . I recall I reproduced this scene in many encounters with different teams, having me playing the mentor role though. I maybe made a tweak to replace money with ‘Success’, as money is one of other means of defining success. Moving forward in my life, I learned that money is a result of success and have never been the purpose; at least for those who did blow up with success and earned tons of money.
For those who haven’t worked with me, I am a very much Process-oriented person, which I like about myself don’t get me wrong. It was the People factor that I haven’t invested in as adequately as it ought to.
The shift happened to me when I understood that organization needs leaders to lead it to success. Leaders who are capable of creating the environment and culture for their teams to prosper. Leaders who lead by purpose and vision.
Purpose
Well, I am herein sharing my insights about how leaders can transform their organizations to realize their purpose and hence their potential.
It is worth mentioning that this series tackles the organization design and transformation topic from an organization mindset perspective. In my humble opinion, this is what matters most.
Organizations already deploy policies and procedures for their employees to strictly adhere to. Policies and Procedures are themselves insufficient for organizations to realize their potential. It is the organizations’ people who makes the organization mindset. Organizations mindsets are reflected in their vision, strategy, products and services and very crucially in their market communication and customer engagements.
And hence, leadership is a mindset practice more than anything else. And it’s the leader’s accoutability to lead the organization through its mindset transformation.
What I am sharing is the discipline I have captured, experienced and committed to across my endeavors. Those are bulletproof best practices that have been being around in the enterprise community for some time and I am just emphasizing and connecting the dots for those whom might find it useful.
A bit of background
I got to learn, among the years, that there is a difference between a ‘company’ or an ‘organization’. Businesses, normally, start by recruiting a company of employees to serve a market segment that is in need for such service. Sooner or later those companies, either successful or not, tend to transform their businesses either for expanding their market share, surviving competition or adapting to economical conditions and/or technological evolutions.
Such transformation inevitably involves a quite deal of Change Management as anyone can imagine. And Change Management is a mindset shifting process in its core. I think that structuring companies, ruling policies and applying processes are not sufficient by themselves to transform a company into an organization though.
Starting from the ground up, I will be sharing my point of view on the basic characteristics that should be in any company, then will move towards the organization fundamentals, before closing the series with the evolutionary characteristics, as I am naming them.
This Episode Zero is a nutshell glimpse on all characteristics — that I intend to elaborate upon in coming episodes — for those whom may be interested in following on.
Without further ado, let’s begin.
The Basics
By the basics, I mean what need to be in place for any company to fairly operate in an fairly effective manner. Those are three main behaviors that a company should foster across all levels.
- Sense of Ownership
- Communication, Communication, Communication
- Trusted Teamplay
The Fundamentals
Uplifting a company to an organization is more than adding more departments and hiring more employees. Those are the three main behaviors that an organization must have to exist in the market impactfully.
- Experimental Problem Solver
- Value-driven Decision Making
- Data-driven
The Evolution
Beyond the basics and fundamentals, comes the evolution. The organization is now ready to take it to the next level. Promoted through those three main behaviors:
- A Culture of Innovation
- Growth Mindset
- Existential Flexibility
Closure
I would like to hint that the precedence for developing such organization mindset pillars is somehow significant as it, in most of them, relates to organization maturity prerequisites.
Mindset change management is a No One-Size-Fits-All program. Each company has its unique nature, driven from the unique people as well as its policies and procedures playbook.
At last, I believe those are applicable for companies and enterprises at various stages of their business venture lifecycle.
In coming episodes, I will be elaborating a bit on how practically each of the above mentioned characteristics can be developed within the organization.
That’s all for Episode Zero. Looking forward to seeing you in coming episodes. And I will be glad to learn about your different insights.
Thank you for reading.
