Once you’ve decided on what that statement is — your organization’s North Star — then the real work begins: How to translate that North Star — for me, your company’s identity — into decisions and actions that will illustrate its power and prove its intrinsic worth; in short, make it real. As promised last time, that’s the focus of this article. 

Execution is messy. Getting everyone to sign up for and work toward one central idea about who the company is and what it stands for can be like trying to herd cats ... No matter how dedicated employees may be, no matter how engaged they (hopefully) are, they’re still people, with all the idiosyncrasies, foibles, insecurities — as well as talents and passions — that come with being human. 

I’m not going to address such vital success requirements as consistent, clear-eyed communications, training and development designed to support what your North Star calls for, performance management practices that incentivize and reward behavior and results that reinforce your ‘star,’ or any number of other parts of the business system, which need to be aligned with that star. Much has already been written about these vital necessities. My focus lies elsewhere: It is to harness the essential humanness of all employees in ways that naturally connect their needs with those of the organization. 

What’s the logic?

There’s an unspoken assumption in business that humans and organizations are fundamentally different “beings,” who have different needs that must be met in different ways in order for them to succeed. The facts are otherwise. When it comes to understanding the deepest need of an organization and the deepest need of an individual, each is a mirror image of the other. What is that need? It is to create value in the world and be rewarded for it in return. Whether company or person, this need is universal.

If organizations and individuals have the same fundamental need, then, why not treat them in the same fundamental way? If the company has worked to crack the code on its identity as a way to understand how it creates distinctive value, then, executives should invite employees to do the same — to meet the company on its own terms, identity to identity. 

Doing so gives management a platform to ask people to be responsible for figuring out how to connect the best of themselves with the organization — first, within the context of their current jobs, and second, in relation to the company overall. Hold people accountable for defining, and making, a contribution that is meaningful to the enterprise as well as to themselves, and that becomes part of their performance standards.

A Microsoft moment

Not long ago, a team of nine high-potential employees from different parts of Microsoft was formed to create a new software application. Team members quickly learned what experience and skills each brought to the project. Still, something was missing; there was a lack of appreciation for the special contribution each individual was capable of making. The team leader suggested playing a “game” that would allow each person to clarify their uniqueness and the potential it held in relation not only to the immediate development challenge, but to the development of everyone’s careers. 

Three months later, the team had designed a software application that exceeded management’s expectations in terms of its prospective impact in the marketplace. The result was uniquely their own. Further, team members had come to know each other in deeper, more important ways and were now able to bring their personal identity insights back into their day-to-day activities. 

Having employees clarify their value-creating identities isn’t a silver bullet; the experience needs to be combined with the more conventional aspects of implementation noted above. What the experience will do is spark productivity in surprising ways: It will humanize the process of translating your North Star into decisions, actions, and operations that are distinctive, authentic and sustainable. 

It will bring the chances of success down to earth.

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With good reason, companies today are increasingly seeking to put a stake in the ground that illuminates what they’re all about, why they’re here, apart from the need to make money. Getting this right is a powerful force that can, like a magnet, help attract and hold the right people for the right reasons, improve customer loyalty, and even draw investors, whose time horizons are well beyond the next quarter. Many books and articles have been written that assert seemingly critical differences among various kinds of company statements and, further, how to craft each one. These include mission, vision, purpose, brand, and identity statements. An online review offers these general descriptions:

A mission defines what an organization is, why it exists, its reason for being

A vision isfuture-based and is meant to inspire and give direction to employees

A brand is your promise to customers and other stakeholders, derived from who you are, and who you want to be 

Purpose is the driving force that enables a company to define its true brand and create its desired culture

Identity clarifies who you are as an organization, and what distinguishes the company 

Allowing for a few differences, these descriptions are largely the same. They all potentially represent a company’s “north star,” pointing the way forward in a manner that is designed to guide decisions and behavior. Here’s a statement that, with a few, small word changes (or none at all), conforms to all of these descriptions, equally well. It is Ikea’s stated mission: To create a better everyday life for the many people. The company’s declaration effortlessly translates as follows:

… As its vision: A better everyday life for the many people

… As its brand promise: To create a better everyday life for the many people

… As its purpose: To create a better everyday life for the many people

… As its identity: An organization dedicated to creating a better everyday life for the many people 

Clarifying the logic of one 

There is simply no good reason a company must have a mission, a purpose, a brand promise, and a vision, or even two of these. One will do. And, one type of company statement is not more important than any of the others. What matters most is that whatever statement you select be informed by the unique contribution your company is capable of making in the world; i.e., how it creates proprietary value. 

There are three other criteria worth mentioning. Your company’s north star needs to be distinctive – it is about your company and yours alone. It needs to be authentic – it cannot be fabricated, or invented; it can only be discovered. It must be sustainable – it has to have the bones to be nearly timeless, despite how often you may need to express it differently to maintain its relevance.

In short, less is more. Employees have enough to do without having to memorize, let alone help operationalize, two, three, or four separate ideas. Make it easier for them to succeed: Simplify! What label you choose is far less important than the substance of the statement you embrace.

Eighteen months after the Dow engagement began, the company replaced three of its original statements with one: To constantly improve what is essential to human progress by mastering science and technology, and modified its values to support this mission. The result helped employees put their collective energy into one, value-creating idea that inspired innovation and commitment, and helped produce the economic, social and environmental benefits Dow’s stakeholders deserved.

If you’re in the market for a mission or a (fill in the blank), keep the following criteria in mind. 

Make sure how your company creates proprietary value is the foundation of that statement.

One statement is enough.

Ensure that your statement is distinctive, authentic and sustainable.

Your employees will thank you. Executive communications will be streamlined. Conversations will be more focused. Expectations will be clearer. The connection between company mission and individual jobs will be easier to make. Accountability will be enhanced. 

When it comes to forging a compelling north star for your organization, the above measures are the only ones you really need. Then the real work begins: how to translate that north star into decisions and actions that will illustrate its power and prove its intrinsic worth. (Stay tuned; that topic is coming up next.)

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I’m just back from my third trip to Tanzania – a three-week immersion into a startlingly different land, whose people, animals, birds and weather never fail to help me see life more fully than I otherwise might. These safaris give new meaning to the word, perspective.

Safari, which literally means journey, is defined above all by its unpredictable nature. Yes, there is an itinerary – a plan, as it were – but the real adventure unfolds in ways that includes a variety of unexpected pitfalls, which need to be reckoned with in the moment. This reality got me to thinking about the surprising connections between safaris and managing organizations. Here are five such connections for you to consider as you strive to help your organization succeed…

Getting stuck in the mud

Our first “pitfall” in TZ

The safari situation: Eleven of us are in two Toyota Land Cruisers when a back tire on one of the trucks suddenly slides into a muddy ditch: We can’t go forward or backward. We’re completely stuck. The second truck comes over to us, unfurls a tow rope that can pull up to five thousand pounds, hooks it to our undercarriage and then, with a lurch, pulls us free from our hole, so we can safely continue on our journey.

The management situation: In business, getting stuck in the mud can show up in a number of ways. One way is when a company has been very successful. So much so, that it has come to take its success for granted and, unwittingly, has developed myopia about its own vulnerability. One day, management realizes that its seemingly indomitable market relevance is waning. In short, the company is stuck in a self-imposed, very muddy rut, unclear about how to move on. Maybe extraction will take a new CEO, or a merger or some other meta-change. Perhaps less drastic measures are possible. In any event, to avoid getting stuck in this particular kind of mud, surround yourself with well-intended skeptics, as well as avid supporters, who won’t hesitate to pull you up short, by challenging the assumptions that led to your success in the first place.

Changing a flat tire while surrounded by wild animals

Cape buffalo, Tanzania

The safari challenge: We’re driving down a forested road into the Ngorongoro Crater, considered by some to be the eighth wonder of the world, because of its wide range of ecosystems and virtually the whole range of safari wildlife. Suddenly, we discover we have a flat tire. We have no choice but to change it, despite the Cape Buffalo, lions, and other animals that wander free, nearby. We exit the vehicle and our guide, with some help from us, moves with surgical precision to replace the flat. It is done in minutes and we continue our trek, having avoided any encounters with the Crater’s natural residents.

The management challenge: The pace of business continues to increase, while countless decisions are made every day. Plans are formulated and executed with success in mind. Sometimes, however, companies experience “flat tires” which complicate their best-laid plans. Suppliers fail to ship on time. Product development cycles take too long. Distribution costs increase, unexpectedly. Meanwhile, the company is surrounded by hungry competitors, eager to take advantage of your unexpected misfortune. Changing the inevitable “flat’ means having a Plan B at all times. Anticipate the problem. Be agile. And be swift.

Dealing with the wind and rain

wind and rain in Ngorongoro Crater

The safari challenge: We’re camping on the Serengeti. Our tents are solidly constructed and totally enclosed. Each tent has two cots, each with bedding. One night, the rains came, and came, and came. Another night, it was the wind howling outside our canvas domains. Thoughts turned to whether our tents would withstand these poundings. They did. So did we.

The management challenge: The “wind and rain” management teams face are the macro-economic conditions which are entirely out of their control. There’s nothing one can do about rising interest rates, GDP growth, or budding trade wars. The best way to deal with the wind and rain that’s part the business landscape is to make sure you’ve constructed a secure “tent” – a strategy and culture expressly designed to withstand the economic elements which won’t always be in your favor.

Traveling with no clear path in sight

The safari challenge: One of the core tenets of safaris is that you drive off-road more than you drive on-road. In fact, you often drive no-road. In the course of our three-week excursion, we spent about as much time crushing brush as we did cruising dirt paths. Forget asphalt! My point: Our driver-guides were our leaders. They saw what we could not see. They knew where we were going when we decidedly did not. And we got there.

The management challenge: Planning is the sine qua non of business. Most successful companies plan a clear course and follow it to the extent possible. The truly remarkable company is one that can follow not just a plan, but its instincts – not blindly, but based on deep experience, intuition, and one other rare ingredient: trust in the informed wisdom of its people to get the company where it needs to go.

Getting lost and finally found

The safari challenge: We’ve been driving in our trucks for most of the day, heading to a campsite where none of our guides have been before and we don’t have the GPS coordinates. It has been a long, dusty trek and it is starting to get dark as we cruise around the bush. We are clearly lost, yet our guides remain confident we’ll find our destination soon. We decide to stay put as the second truck peels off to search the area more broadly. Twenty minutes later, the second truck radios us. They’ve found the site and give us its location. Soon enough, we see the lights of our camp on the horizon. Concern turns to composure. We are nearly home.

The management challenge: There are times in every company’s life when it loses its way, maybe a little, maybe a lot. Getting lost can occur as the result of a crisis of reputation, or some unexpected physical hazard that shakes the organization to its core. It can also happen in more benign ways, like when the company reaches a generational milestone that leads people, often unwittingly, to take stock of the past while wondering about the future. In these moments, the operative question is, where are we going? “Getting found” calls for calm nerves and strategic discipline. It also calls for faith and fortitude as counterweights to the uncertainty these moments bring.

Want to manage the safari way?

1 Along with supporters, surround yourself with well-intended skeptics, who won’t hesitate to challenge the assumptions that led to your success in the first place.

2 Have a Plan B at all times. Anticipate problems. Be agile. Be swift.

3 Forge a strategy and culture expressly designed to withstand the macro-economic elements which won’t always be in your favor.

4 Trust in the informed wisdom of your people to get the company where it needs to go.

5 Remain calm at all times. Maintain strategic discipline. And hold to faith and fortitude in the face of uncertainty.

Furaha safari!

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