Sustainable Excellence

There is a lot of discussion these days about sustainability. Usually when sustainability is invoked, the subject is environmental sustainability. Not without cause, there is a great deal of discussion about and effort expended towards trying to make organizations and our society environmentally sustainable.

Not too many years ago, environmental sustainability was not an issue on most people’s minds. Then, if someone spoke of organizational sustainability, they were more likely thinking in terms of the financial audit assumption of "going concern": an organization’s ability to survive as an ongoing entity; that it will be able to enjoy its assets and meets its obligations. This view is also too narrow, although it begins to get at the issue, at least as expressed in the organizations financial statements.

Without diminishing the importance of either of those meanings, today I would like to focus on a different aspect of sustainability, that of the organization itself.

What I am thinking about is an organization’s ability to sustain itself through its people. Jim Collins spoke to this point in his book Good to Great. He noted that a characteristic of great organizations is the ability to sustain themselves, and outstanding levels of performance, beyond the tenure of a given leader or even leadership team. I am concerned that too few organizations pursue this aspect of sustainability thoughtfully and purposefully.

Again drawing on Collins’ metaphor in Good to Great, if an organization has achieved excellence, it is safe to assume they have the right people in the right seats, at least for the most part. That is a great and notable accomplishment but insufficient. That coveted state can be changed in an instant through illness, accident, retirement, or a key person leaving to join another organization. In order to sustain greatness I believe two things have to happen. First, the culture of excellence has to be so ingrained, so fully and organically absorbed that it is not dependent on the efforts of any one person or few people to sustain it. Excellence has to have become embedded in the organizational DNA. Second, there needs to be a well thought out plan of succession and building of redundant skills, knowledge, and aptitude. I believe focusing on the second characteristic can help an organization develop the first.

The first step in this process is to identify potential successors for key organizational members. I have charged organizational leaders with identifying two or three possible successors to their role. This can be threatening, if sufficient trust has not been established. Some people may feel that asking them to identify possible successors is akin to asking a condemned man to dig his own grave. On the contrary, I believe it is an important aspect to leadership. Leaders train and nourish future leaders. How can you do that effectively if you have not identified who those future leaders are? One caveat: although I think it is important to identify possible successors, I would not tell a person he or she was next in line for a given position unless such a change was imminent. There are too many possible ways that knowledge could lead to problems.

Once the possible successors are identified for each key position, it is important that a well thought out development plan be implemented. Although, as stated above, I would not tell any of the individuals that they have been identified as the successor for a given person, I would tell them that they are viewed as particularly important current and future leaders for the organization. As such, the organization is going to specifically invest in their development.

Now comes the fun part: creating and implementing development programs for those identified. This is more art than science but the range of possible actions could include things as: formal training and/or education, special assignments, participation in select committees or task forces, mentoring, coaching, even lateral assignments to build professional breadth. The best action or set of actions will be different in each case. The goal of the plan will be to develop/ensure the values, skills, knowledge, traits the individual will need to successfully assume the target position.

It is possible that certain individuals will be identified as successors for more than one position. In that situation, careful discussions can ensure that there are not too many development resources applied to any one person or that gaps in experience are left because both parties thought the other was covering that area. Likewise in a large enough organization, cohorts of people who all need exposure to the same concepts or training in the same area could be formed to undergo the experience together. This has the added benefit of building vertical relationship networks that can pay untold and unexpected dividends to the organization over time.

In contrast to what I am proposing, spending time and money on developing people for a future eventuality that may never arise may seem foolish to some. There are those who have adopted a similar just-in-time attitude towards the people in the organization that they have for spare parts: don’t pay to keep them on hand, we’ll buy it when we need it. In this model, it is believed that little time or effort should be spent on developing people. Individuals should be brought in to do a specific job. If they do that well, fine - they should stay in that role until the organization either doesn’t need them anymore or until they are needed more in another role. In either case, promotion or discharge should be based on inherent goodness of fit with the job. Organizational resources should not be spent on development. If a person’s skills become outdated or no longer fit the needs of the organization, they should be discharged and a new person with the right set of skills should be brought in.

This type of transactional relationship between an organization and its members is the antithesis of organizational excellence. There may be short term gains, even flashes of brilliance that brings temporary success but sustaining excellence on the long term is not possible through that approach.

When we think of sustainability, let’s think of our organization, its culture and people, as well as the environment and profitability.