How to make innovation sustainable in the second lesson

Glenn Carroll, Professor of Organizations and Senior Associate Dean of Academics at Stanford Graduate School of Business, gave four lectures on organizational innovation on May 23 in Beijing. He brought different ideas of organizational innovation according to different situations such as start-up enterprises, small enterprises, and mature industries. At the same time, he also brought new ideas for how Chinese manufacturing can compete internationally.

This is the first module of the "Stanford Graduate School of Business Executive Training Program" co-organized by CEConline and Stanford Graduate School of Business. Nearly 100 senior managers came from all over the country to study this course. This event is sponsored by Volkswagen.

Here are some of the key takeaways from Professor Carroll's lecture that day.

Lesson 1 Organizational Innovation in Entrepreneurship

Lesson 2 How to Make Innovation Sustainable

A Case of Dreyer`s Ice Cream Company 1 It started as a small workshop in California. In 1977, two people bought the company, hoping to make it bigger and stronger, and in the process by empowering employees and realizing their potential. That is to say, the company cares about its employees and allows their employees to develop their abilities.

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In the beginning, they set up an office in Oakland with hundreds of people, everyone knew each other, and they helped employees solve problems. It was an informal atmosphere. After the company got bigger, it set up its own office in Los Angeles. After a few years, I found that the ideas of the employees there are not the same, their way of doing things, their way of thinking, and their cultural identity are not the same. How to do? They first determine what their core values are and write them down. Then they summarize the core values into the concept and philosophy of enterprise development. Then decompose philosophy into small things, which are the conventions or routines of doing things. These routines reflect a concern for people, respecting the individual, caring for others, helping others, not controlling or manipulating others.

We mentioned in the first lesson that there are two situations where culture can affect performance. The first is content. For example, Walmart always has the lowest price, and you know what to do when you look at cultural content. The second is because of the corporate culture, we are similar people, we have a tacit understanding with each other, so it is more convenient to coordinate, and this loyalty improves performance.

This company has been innovating, constantly improving and creating new tastes, which is the content of culture. This improves the performance of the company. But it's not particularly important in this case, because ice cream flavor innovation isn't such a big deal, unlike producing microchips. Generally speaking, it is not the culture itself that promotes the development of their performance, but a strong corporate culture that condenses everyone's hearts and makes everyone full of loyalty and desire to contribute to the company, so they can develop further.

A strong corporate culture is not necessarily a very warm little family-like feeling. For example, Cypress is an IT company. The founder is a colonel of the US Marine Corps. What he says is an order. If someone does not obey his order, he will shout. The company requires employees to be smart and work hard, which is a very militarized teaching. He can easily lay off a subordinate, even though the employee has been with him for many years. This company has been in business for almost 40 years now, and its development is not bad, thanks to a very strong imperative culture. Dreyer's and Cypress both have very strong corporate cultures, but the content is different.

Building a strong corporate culture The first step in building a strong corporate culture, I think, is the selection system. Many businesses take the time to select people, and once the criteria for selection are developed, these companies believe that they will find the right person based on those criteria.

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It is not easy to pick people based on very strict cultural standards, because culture itself is a very abstract and subtle thing, but it can be done very well in practice. What does that mean? Maybe an interview, a meal, a person's assimilation into the culture, you can tell at a glance. Just now I mentioned the founder of Cypress. He often rents a plane, takes engineers and employees to a completely new city, and then posts some advertisements for others to interview, asking his employees whether these people are suitable or not, generally 2% of people enter the company to work.

The second step in building a strong corporate culture is intensive early integration and training. When new people come in, let them integrate into the corporate culture. The earlier the training, the better. The first few days in the company are the most important, and the effect of retraining is better than the next three months or half a year.

These two points are not necessarily suitable for some new businesses, because both of them take a lot of time. This brings us to two other paths. One is the image and role of business leaders themselves, and leaders themselves symbolize culture. The founder of Southwest Airlines is a very charismatic and charismatic person, and he symbolizes the company's culture and is happy at work. The other is to let employees form a sense of ownership. When you make decisions, you listen to opinions from all sides, so that employees can say a word or two. Although they cannot have any effect on the result, they are involved and know what the leader is talking about, or They can see what the end result is and develop their sense of ownership.

If you want to further mobilize and inspire employees, you can carry out job rotations in many regions, and promote people below within the organization to form a good competition mechanism.

Also pay attention to the reward mechanism. Generally, companies with a strong culture do not emphasize monetary rewards. On the contrary, they spend a lot of energy on non-monetary rewards, such as selecting outstanding employees every week. In particular, reward those practices and values that are critical to the company.

Organizational Design: Culture, Architecture, and Networks Let's look at this more broadly. There are three ways to achieve control and coordination when doing organizational design. The first is culture. The second is the structure, the organization structure is what everyone usually contacts the most. The third is through so-called social networks.

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Culture, structure, and network generally exist within an enterprise. The problem is that some are more important and some are less important. Managers need to know which aspects are most relied upon when designing an organization. We theoretically believe that there are two kinds of matching, one is external matching, which is the matching between environment, strategy and organizational design, and the other is internal matching, which is the matching of culture, structure and network.

Generally speaking, culture is a very important link, but if an enterprise is to undergo an earth-shaking transformation, it will essentially destroy the past culture. At this time, it may not be possible to rely on culture for better control and management. .

The advantage of the structure is that it can decompose enterprise activities into tasks one by one, and what tasks each person is engaged in can be better supervised. Another point is that more complex tasks can be broken down into single jobs.

Network, specifically the network of relationships. There are a series of relationships within an organization, and managers need to understand it, shape it, and make it beneficial to them, so as to achieve their career goals.

We often say that coordination and cooperation within the enterprise are mainly carried out through the relationship network. For example, Digital Electronic Equipment Co., Ltd. DEC is a place where electronic engineers like to work. There is no internal structure or institutional mechanism. Engineers are willing to work in this company, thinking it is a cool job. The company culture emphasizes personal heroism, seek truth from facts, and don't waste time on useless things. Everyone may think that such a company must be a mess, and it is impossible to develop into a large company with 250,000 people, or even become a dazzling star in the history of world innovation, but in fact it is such a company. Because everyone has been instilled from the very beginning the idea of doing the right thing and doing it every day to benefit the company. The way they communicate and coordinate is through the network of relationships. How do they go about it?

For example, a person receives a call from a client saying that he proposes to do this project. He thinks the project is good and can bring profits to the company. Of course, he cannot complete the project by himself. He calls another colleague, Say I do a project and need an expert in telecommunications. Colleagues think that Mr. Hu is a good fit, but Mr. Hu is too busy, but this project is too important, so they have a discussion, at this time, Mr. Hu has to judge whether his project or this project is more beneficial to the company. There is no leading coordinator in this process, it is purely a dialogue between two engineers, and Mr. Hu is finally willing to participate, and the two of them form a team. If enough people can be found to believe in the project, the project can be done.

Let's compare the conventional ways of doing things. You control this department, and another department controls you to steal people. This is a difficult decision to make. You need to see if there is someone in your department who is doing nothing now. If there is, that person is definitely not the strongest person under your command, so borrow that person. So there is such a problem under the traditional organizational structure. You have to do a project, there is no way to get the best employees, and he is not very happy with the borrowed employees.

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Of course this example is a bit exaggerated. However, if the project formed by the network relationship can be successfully operated, its effect can be very significant. And if the network model is successful, its efficiency, flexibility, and adaptability will be higher than traditional organizational methods. The advantage of the network is that once it's set up, it doesn't take much effort to make it work on its own, and it doesn't require a lot of deliberate management.

Some people ask that if you adjust privately through interpersonal relationships, it is possible that your colleagues will be blocked by your supervisor, and it will increase conflicts between departments.

Actually, as a supervisor, if your subordinates do the right thing You have no right to ask him not to do something. Google might be a more recent example of spending 20% of the time doing what it wants to do. DEC is a very extreme case. The vast majority of DECs are engineers, with very similar ages and genders, so there is a lot of overlap in the network, which is the first point. The second point is that once a problem occurs in the network, it is difficult to figure out who is responsible. The company must have a certain tolerance for failure. This involves setting up certain systems or checkpoints within the enterprise.

Lesson 3 How Small Businesses Can Compete with Giants

Chinese Exporters Should Learn to "Tell Stories" - Live Discussion and Sharing of Stanford Business School Executive Training Course

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