The Circle of Responsible Management

Let's review what we've covered in the past six episodes.

When adopting Responsible Business, we suggested some foundational, essential, and valuable concepts.

Becoming a Purpose-driven organization is primary because Purpose is a big idea, a moonshot, why the firm exists, and that which gets people out of bed in the morning to come to work.

Hiring for synergy means hiring talent with hard skills, like computing and engineering, which enhance your core competence. But soft skills, like collegiality, attitude, and alignment with a company's Purpose, are at least equally important. The idea is that every new or seasoned employee creates a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Creating a Learning Organization involves mutual respect and the ability to point out issues without blame. As Toyota points out, "No Problem is a Problem." If you think you have no problems, you have a problem. To be effective, everyone must understand the business to improve it.

Dynamic Strategy, also called Emergent Strategy, involves being attentive to the business ecosystem to make incremental strategic decisions in response to developing changes rather than relying on a strictly planned, static strategy.

Systems Thinking – understanding systems and the potential consequences of applying changes – can reveal the root cause of problems and pave the way for intelligent adjustments.

Continuous Improvement, the engine of a Learning Organization, is an upward spiral of planning actions, testing them, implementing changes, reviewing impact, tweaking if necessary, and looking out for problems in the future. In this way, transformation becomes everyone's job.

We also introduced two concepts that, admittedly, are not broadly used by Responsible Business proponents. That's because I made them up. But you may find the concepts useful.

The first concept is called the Hierarchy of Strategic Intent. The term describes the result of an organization's concisely written Purpose, Mission, Vision, and Ethics statements. The four statements are a reference for anyone in an organization needing a reminder when decision-making gets tough. The Hierarchy of Strategic Intent tells stakeholders what the firm is up to and what to expect from the company as a "good citizen."

The second term is called the Circle of Responsible Management, and it's the umbrella of day-to-day operations management informed by the Hierarchy of Strategic Intent. The idea of circularity implies that the two concepts are interdependent, linking the tenets for which the firm stands with responsibility for and pride in "how we do things around here" daily.

A quote I find inspiring comes from W. Edwards Deming, an American engineer and management theorist who introduced statistical quality management to post-war Japan.

Deming said, "People are entitled to joy in their work and a sense of ownership." I'd say that the Japanese Auto Industry learned that lesson well!