承諾管理學
Managing by Commitments
出 處 / 2014年1月號(員工最愛的公司)
作 者 / 唐納．薩爾 (Donald N. Sull)
主 題 / 組織
「承諾」塑造公司的特質，而且事實上，經理人每天都會做出承諾，不管是研發投資、承諾要達到成長目標，還是聘雇決策，都涉及今日的行動，同時與明日行動相結合。因為無法完全預期此刻決定會導致何種結果，必須更謹慎為之。
卓越的經理人因何而卓越？答案取決於你詢問的對象。很多人認為，祕訣就在出眾的策略思維，也就是具備優異的智慧，能決定公司競爭的方向和方式。也有人強調紀律，認為讓經理人脫穎而出的，是執行計畫的能力。還有些人覺得，經理人最重要的是鼓舞人心，能夠團結組織，領導員工完成偉大的任務。
當然，這些觀點各有道理。只是它們雖然闡明高階主管的個人特質可以非常多變，卻極少透露最基礎的管理實務，也就是成功的經理人會採取哪些行動，把策略、執行和領導力編織在一起。過分專注於高階主管是什麼樣的人，反而讓我們未能留意他們如何管理。
近年來，我研究有效能及無效能經理人，得出一個驚人的結論：成功的經理人雖然各有不同的個人特質，但他們都專精於做出且實踐承諾，以及再做出承諾。管理的承諾有多種形式，從資本投資、聘雇決策到公開宣示都包括在內，但每項承諾都會對公司產生立即和長遠的影響。隨著時間推演，領導人的這些承諾結合在一起，塑造了企業的身份形象、定義它的長處和弱點、建立它的機會和限制，並設定它發展的方向。
承諾的力量極為強大，但高階主管往往忽視了這一點。經理人往往受困於當前的動亂不安，而採取短期見效、卻對公司營運和組織造成長期限制的行動。一旦市場或競爭情況改變，他們可能會發現自己無法有效回應，即使清楚威脅就在眼前，必須採取行動，也難以因應。此時他們才驚覺困在自己（或前人）做出的各種承諾泥淖中。
經理人若了解自身承諾的本質和力量，就可以在公司的整個生命週期當中，更有效運用那些承諾。有些行動會使得新創事業具備不良特性，創業家能夠避免貿然投入那類行動。而老字號企業的經理人，可強化過去所作、迄今仍對公司有益的承諾，並學習找出阻礙變革的舊承諾，代之以能夠讓公司恢復活力的新承諾。
雙面刃
所謂「承諾」，指的是當下採取的某些行動，這些行動能夠「約束」組織在未來採取的行動方向。並非所有的管理選擇都可視為承諾；例如，執行長決定籌措競爭所需的資金，這行動不能視為具有「約束」作用，因為它沒有讓公司承諾採取某個特定的行動方向，那些資金可用於任何一種投資。相反地，如果那些資金專門用來建造一座專門的工廠或打造品牌，公司就是做出了承諾。換句話說，如果某項行動限制了公司未來的選項，而且若是要轉向，將付出龐大的代價，那麼這項行動就成為承諾（常見的承諾類型，見表：「具有約束力的行動」）。
Managing by Commitments
We often blog about Milestone Planner as a commitment tracker:- what have I committed to do for who… But it seems the right time to talk a bit more about management by commitments. It’s not a well known concept, but in the places that I’ve seen it practised, it delivers stunning results. I’m going to drawn on articles by Don Sull, who writes about managing by commitments, not hierarchies.
There is a tight linking here between business methodology and social technology. People who use social software inside of the firewall, and those responsible for managing the external social media activities of a business, will both hopefully find some useful insights, as those situations often expose the problems inherent in hierarchical business structures.
In this CBS News piece, Don Sull outlines the 3 different ways that things get done in complex organisations:
- By hierarchy
- By process
- By commitment
The first shifted out of favour in the 1980’s, although it lingers on! In the 80’s, Six Sigma, TQM and other techniques gave management by process the crown, as it demonstrably out performed management by hierarchy in that era. But just as management by hierarchycreates silos and slows communication across the organisation, management by process creates its own problems.
Management by process originally gained traction in the 1950s in Japan, going on to become a global phenomenon in the 1980s. This view of management sees the organisation as a bundle of processes, and has spawned a sea of different methodologies. They are variations on the same theme, focused on streamlining, removing excess resources and variance, and continuously improving and optimising how the business works.
One of the key problems with management by process is its strength: standardisation (and optimisation), which can get in the way of innovation. Mary Benner, from Wharton, and Michael Tuschman, from Harvard, found that the higher an organisation’s commitment to standardized processes, the lower the level of innovation in that organisation. In a rapidly changing world, what is most critical to your organisation – optimisation, or innovation? Hopefully that one is obvious. Everyone is having to think outside thebox
, because their box has been moved.
, because their box has been moved.
Which brings us to that third approach: managing by commitment. It’s a perspective that looks at an organisation as a network of overlapping, continually evolving promises that people make to each other to get things done. It’s a mindset familiar to anyone who works with social networking platforms. It’s not about groups or divisions, it’s about continually evolving relationships between individuals. It’s an approach that it lends itself well to situations which cannot be standardised: innovation, emergent strategies, and crisis management. It also works well when you need to coordinate among people who don’t report to you: suppliers distributors, customers, virtual teams and so on. It’s no co-incidence that those applications are where Milestone Planner has its largest number of users.
distributors, customers, virtual teams and so on. It’s no co-incidence that those applications are where Milestone Planner has its largest number of users.
Sull points to a study conducted a few years ago that says 40 percent of all employees in the United States added most of their value to their organisations through non-routine activities. And about 70 percent of the growth of employees in the U.S. was among people who did this non-routine, non-hierarchical work. He goes on to say:
A lot of the organisations we’ve traditionally thought of as well-managed companies have put emphasis on making and fulfilling these kinds of commitments. It’s a big deal in General Electric and similarly Goldman Sachs… .[Talking about InBev, the largest brewer in the world:] …They’ve built a culture where people are very clear on what they are being asked to commit to, and their progress on their commitments is very transparent and obvious to people throughout the organisation… …they have posted their key five performance commitments for the year and their progress toward them. The charts are right there on the wall with red, yellow and green tracking stickers for everyone to see. They are very careful about bringing in people who are achievement oriented, not driven by power.
Now, we prefer the progress tracking to be in the cloud of course – not everyone is in the office. Don Sull and Charles Spinosa have researched how individuals make commitments within their teams. According to them the most effective commitments have five characteristics:
- They are public. They’re made publicly and their progress is tracked publicly.
- They’re active. Parties understand what they are agreeing to and what each party is requesting; people don’t just nod, they really have to take responsibility for the commitment.
- They are voluntary. The other party has the option to say something other than “yes”; they can refuse or make counteroffers.
- They are explicit: it has to be clear who is committing. These aren’t committees making promises, they are individuals. And it works best when it is perfectly clear to whom the commitment is made.
- They’re motivating: the rationale is made clear–why it matters to the individuals and the organisation is made clear.
That’s why, in Milestone Planner, we encourage sharing the plan with a broad group of people: The more public the commitment, the more effective it is. We make Actions and Milestones provisional when they are assigned to someone, until the person accepts them, and the comment/reply feature let’s people actively negotiate and renegotiate the commitment. The aim is to help you keep commitments active and voluntary. It’s that process that enables managing by commitment to work. It is a radically different way of working, and can take a while for people to get their heads around it, but once adopted, it fosters the kind of innovation that hierarchies and process too easily smother. Of course success is not just about the strategy, as Sull says:
Some people think the key to success is nailing the right strategy. But companies in your industry often will have a base strategy very similar to your own. Execution is where the real separation comes between winners and losers. Executing via hierarchies can be too slow in the kind of unstable markets most companies face today. Standardised processes by their verynature
Like Sull, we’d say that it’s not a simple case of one model being good, and the rest bad. Hierarchy has a role, as do standardised processes. Most sucessful organisations need a combination of power, processes and commitments. What matters is the kind of work you have to get done, building and tracking the commitments that enable that to happen, while building the supporting processes and structures to enable you to get better at it.
If you’re Toyota, and the bulk of the value you’re adding is in manufacturing a huge number of cars with a low number of defects, then an almost exclusive focus on standardised processes is completely appropriate. The times when you need to be more oriented toward managing by commitments is when you have this kind of emergent work that has to fit within networks rather than within a hierarchy.
It’s the latter kind of work we are seeing in abundance, coupled with a shortage in the ability to manage by commitments. Our aim is to make management by commitments easier, through Milestone Planner. There’s much more we’ll be doing with the commitment graph. This is just the beginning of a conversation.
Donald Sull: Manage by Commitments, Not Hierarchies
Donald Sull of the London Business School knows what makes your organization tick. He is an authority on the kind of changes companies need to make in order to respond more quickly to changing markets, global trends and even crises. It seems like quite a few organizations could use his advice right about now. His theory of "managing by commitments" offers relief from the inefficiency of traditional management hierarchies.
BNET: You propose a more flexible approach for managing large organizations in turbulent times and in very dynamic industries. Can you explain "managing by commitments" and compare it to some of the more well-known paradigms of management?
Sull: If you look at how people think about getting things done in large complex organizations, they basically sort stuff into three broad categories. The first is about power: the organization is a hierarchy where information flows up and orders flow down, and you do what you're told or you're fired or demoted. -- This tends to create silos: the hierarchy is very up and down and doesn't work well for work that requires cooperation across different units or functions. It's pretty slow as well; it takes a long time for information to get up the structure and for orders to find their way down.
Another approach that really started to gain traction in the 1950s in Japan, and became more well-known in the 1980s, is management by process. These are standardized operating procedures for getting things done. They could be formal processes for production or logistics, or they could be for other processes like decision-making. This view of management sees the organization as a bundle of processes. Six Sigma--TQM [Total Quality Management]...all of these are variations on the same theme. This is hugely helpful--it allows you to squeeze out excess resources and continuously improve on what you do. Bit here we also have limitations, probably the biggest one being that standardization gets in the way of innovation. There's been some interesting work done by Mary Benner from Wharton and Michael Tuschman from Harvard. What they found was that the higher an organization's commitment to standardized processes, the lower the level of innovation.
Which brings us to our third approach: managing by commitment. Here, we look at an organization as a network of overlapping, continually evolving promises that people make to each other to get things done. The advantage and the power of this approach is that it lends itself quite well to situations that cannot be standardized: emergent strategies, innovation, one-offs or one-of-a-kind crises. It also works well when you coordinate among people who don't report to you:suppliers
, distributors, etc. And that kind of work is quite important. There was a study done a few years ago that said 40 percent of all employees in the United States added most of their value to their organizations through these non-routine activities. And about 70 percent of the growth of employees in the U.S. was among people who did this non-routine, non-hierarchical work, so it's a big idea in the context of the economy as a whole.
, distributors, etc. And that kind of work is quite important. There was a study done a few years ago that said 40 percent of all employees in the United States added most of their value to their organizations through these non-routine activities. And about 70 percent of the growth of employees in the U.S. was among people who did this non-routine, non-hierarchical work, so it's a big idea in the context of the economy as a whole.
BNET: So, what does this mean for the individual manager or group head who needs to interact with people on a daily basis? How does it change what they do?
Sull: My colleague Charles Spinosa and I have done a fair amount of research on how individuals make commitments within their teams. The most effective have five characteristics. First, they are public. They're made publicly and their progress is tracked publicly. Next, they're active. Partiesunderstand what they are agreeing to and what each party is requesting; people don't just nod, they really have to take responsibility for the commitment. Third, these are voluntary. The other party has the option to say something other than "yes"; they can refuse or make counteroffers. Fourth, commitments are explicit: it has to be clear who is committing. These aren't committees making promises, they are individuals. And it works best when it is perfectly clear to whom the commitment is made. And fifth and finally, they're motivating: the rationale is made clear--why it matters to the individuals and the organization is made clear.
Next week, Sull will illustrate how companies are using "management by commitments" to gain flexibility and capitalize on market opportunities.
Managing By Commitments
Great managers know when to make and break promises
Donald N. Sull
The Idea in Brief
You make commitments—R&D investments, public promises to hit growth targets, hiring decisions, joint ventures—every day. Each involves actions taken today that bind your company to a course of action tomorrow.
Commitments shape your business's identity—defining its strengths and weaknesses, setting its direction, establishing opportunities and limitations, and focusing and energizing employees. But like double-edged swords, commitments are dangerous if wielded carelessly.
While each decision defines your company's capabilities now, it also reduces its flexibility in the future. When competitive conditions change, you may be unable to respond effectively—even if you see the threat and know what's needed.
You can't anticipate every commitment's long-term consequences, but you shouldn't shy away from making commitments. But before each key decision, ask: "Am I locking us into a course of action we'll regret later?"
The Idea in Practice
As your company matures, you make different types of commitments:
1. Defining commitments. These earliest, most enduring commitments establish:
2.
• strategic frames: shared views about how you'll compete
• resources: hard assets (land, machinery) and soft assets (brands, technologies)
• processes: production, decision making, resource allocation
• relationships: associations with individuals and organizations providing resources, including customers, suppliers, distributors
• values: shared norms uniting and inspiring employees
Defining commitments determine a young organization's course and identity well into the future—but hamper later change efforts. To make the right commitments, ask, "Is this a decision we can live with in the long run?" Don't define commitments hastily if you don't have to.
2. Reinforcing commitments. These buttress your defining commitments as your firm matures. They include daily actions such as customer contract renewals, and occasional big bets like a major acquisition. They build efficiency, sharpen focus, temper risk, and attract employees, customers, and partners who fit the company's identity.
They also increase your company's rigidity, closing off needed new options if the competitive landscape shifts. Yet many executives cling to them because they paid off before.
3. Transforming commitments. When disruptive change strikes, pressure to make even more reinforcing commitments mounts. Instead, force your firm out of the status quo—with new, transforming commitments:
• Select an anchor. Choose a new strategic frame or revamped process. Invest in different resources. Establish new partnerships or values.
• Secure the anchor. Make clear, credible, courageous commitments that render the status quo untenable—leaving no room for retreat.
• Align your organization. Reconfigure remaining frames, processes, resources, relationships, and values to support your new direction.
When digital technology took off, newspaper publisher Thomson Corporation's president, Michael Brown, transformed his company. He selected an anchor, publicly stating Thomson's plan to serve the specialized-information market in the U.S.—a new strategic frame. He secured that anchor, repeatedly communicating the new direction to stakeholders, acquiring information providers in the legal and financial markets, and divesting publishers that didn't support the new direction. He aligned his organization, integrating new acquisitions and tightening operations to secure financing for more acquisitions. Thomson became the leading provider of specialized information to financial-services, legal, and health-care professionals. Operating in 53 countries, its 2002 revenues exceeded $7 billion.
