A Company's Success Is Its Greatest Barrier To More Success
Managing a company's culture is an extremely nuanced process. There are
plenty of brilliant startups that experience massive growth only to fall apart
when they get too large.
Blogger Eric Barker talks about how success is more environmental than we think in his latest post, "Even The Most Talented Workers Depend On Those Around Them." He cites an interview with Harvard Business School Professor Guatam Mukunda:
We came across a great TEDx
talk, "First Why, Then
Trust," that explains why this happens. Simon Sinek, author of Start
With Why and professor
of strategic communications at Columbia
University, starts out by explaining that trust is the basis for how
communities and organizations grow: "Trust comes from a sense of common values
and beliefs. When surrounded by people who believe what we believe, we're more
comfortable to take risks, experiment, explore."
He gives an example of how we're more likely to trust a 16-year-old with our
kids versus an experienced babysitter whom we don't know. "Our very survival,"
he says, "depends on trusting people who believe what we believe."
With that in mind, when growing
a business, it's more important to hire
people who share similar beliefs and values versus hiring solely for skill.
When there's a disconnect of values, companies fall apart. Sinek calls this
moment "the split," and illustrates it with this graph:
Blogger Eric Barker talks about how success is more environmental than we think in his latest post, "Even The Most Talented Workers Depend On Those Around Them." He cites an interview with Harvard Business School Professor Guatam Mukunda:
The unfiltered leader who is an amazing
success in one situation will be a catastrophic failure in the other, in almost
all cases. It’s way too easy to think, “I’ve always succeeded,
I am a success, I am successful because I am a success, because it’s about me,
and therefore I will succeed in this new environment.” Wrong.
You were successful because you happened
to be in an environment where your biases and predispositions and talents and
abilities all happened to align neatly with those things that would produce
success in that environment. That doesn’t tell you a whole lot
about the next environment down the pike.
Understanding this fundamental
truth helps explain why rockstars in some organizations can completely fail in
others — for example, why Ron Johnson
thrived at Apple and Target, but is struggling
to stay above water at JCPenney. Cultivating strong teams and company
cultures is a huge challenge, and few get it right.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/simon-sinek-ted-talk-2013-4#ixzz2Q0s3kVvs
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