Last week, I wrote about embracing the “Genius of the And,” a concept from the book, Built To Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (HarperBusiness, 1994), which was written by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras. This week, I want to explore two more key concepts to building a visionary company from the same book, namely finding your organization’s purpose and building your core ideology plus the notion of “preserve the core/stimulate progress.”
In the first concept, Collins and Porras wrote, “A key step in building a visionary company is to articulate a core ideology.” As they explain, “Core ideology = Core Values + Core Purpose.” Within this framework, they define core values and purpose in the following manner:
“Core Values = the organization’s essential and enduring tenets - a small set of general guiding principles; not to be confused with specific cultural or operating practices; not to be compromised for financial gain or short term expediency.”
“Purpose = The organization’s fundamental reasons for existence beyond just making money - a perpetual guiding star on the horizon; not to be confused with specific goals or business strategies.”
For many leaders, this makes sense and they do not dig any further into the original research. However, the best leaders comprehend one small, but important point that Collins and Porras discovered. As they wrote, “In short, we did not find any specific ideological content essential to being a visionary company. Our research indicates that the authenticity of the ideology and the extent to which a company attains consistent alignment with the ideology counts more than the content of the ideology.”
Years later, Patrick Lencioni would write in The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business (Jossey-Bass, 2012)that when building and maintaining a cohesive leadership team, it “requires an intentional decision on the part of its members…. teamwork is not a virtue. It is a choice - and a strategic one… A leadership team is a small group of people who are collectively responsible for achieving a common objective for their organization.” The precursor for this choice is that all the members of the leadership team agree on the “core ideology” and focus on maintaining consistent alignment with it. To me, this is a defining difference between good leadership teams and great ones. And I have seen this make a difference over the course of 36 years of doing this work.
The second concept that Collins and Porras wrote about is called “Preserve The Core/Stimulate Progress.” Recognizing that core ideology is essential, organizations must still change if they are to meet the challenges of a changing world. There must be an inherent drive for progress within the company that does not require an external reason or justification. Note: This is not an inherent drive for “change.”
For me, one important insight within the research is that a company must be willing to change everything if needed, except the core beliefs and values. For it is the core ideology that provides continuity and stability while the drive for progress urges continual change, or as I like to frame it up, continual improvement. As they wrote: “The interplay between core and progress is one of the most important findings from our work. In the spirit of the “Genius of the AND,” a visionary company does not seek mere balance between core and progress; it seeks to be both highly ideological and highly progressive at the same time, all the time. Indeed, core ideology and the drive for progress exist together in a company like yin and yang of the Chinese dualistic philosophy; each element enables, complements, and reinforces the other.”
They continue on this line of thought when they wrote: “The core ideology enables progress by providing a base of continuity around which a visionary company can evolve, experiment, and change. By being clear about what is core (and relatively fixed), a company can more easily seek variation and movement in all that is not core.”
Finally, they explain, “The drive for progress enables the core ideology, for without continual change and forward movement, the company - the carrier of the core - will fall behind in an ever-changing world and cease to be strong, or perhaps even to exist…. Although the core ideology and the drive for progress usually trace their roots to specific individuals, a highly visionary company institutionalizes them - weaving them into the very fabric of the organization.”
For me, the phrase, “The core ideology enables progress” is a powerful statement. But I believe that many companies have not focused enough on their “core.” I think for many it has not seemed important or “latest and greatest” given what ever book is on the NYT best-seller list. Furthermore, this management by best-seller trend creates strategic blindness to the relationship between core and progress. The outcome of this choice over time has been very difficult and painful to watch. Those who struggled before the pandemic struggled more in the pandemic. Those who had an institutionalized core before the pandemic still struggled, but they their struggles were not as disruptive as those who did not have a core ideology woven “into the fabric of the organization.”
This week, take this information and share it with your team. Rediscover your core and take better care of it during the next 3-5 years.
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