Creating a company. Ideology - first
Greetings, colleagues. Today I want to share with you my dream.
I have been working in software development for about 12 years. During this time I changed more than 10 organizations. There were only two places where I stayed for a long time - by 3 and 5 (hello, Valera) years, and in other companies I worked from two to eight months.
Every time I looked for a new job, I formed the criteria of the company in which I want to work, found an organization that satisfies them, but was wrong almost every time. I could not determine the list of criteria that a company must meet in order for me to work in it with pleasure. And I realized that there is no list, but there is only one most important condition - the company must have a Soul. The soul of the company is something big and eternal, to which one wants to strive, spitting on personal interests, which gives meaning to all your actions. I'm sure everyone wants to experience something like this. And it seems I know how to achieve this.
')
Recently, I had to reflect on what is most important for the success of a company. Purpose, mission, values, investors, people, clients? Together?
After reading Edgar Shane, Jim Collins, Jeff Cox and Charles Dahigg, I came to the conclusion that the foundation of a sustainable company is an ideology based on the values ​​shared by all employees of the company. Ideology unites people and allows them to work together towards a goal. Ideology is the foundation that is the most stable part of the company. The goals, the means, the tools, the directors, the whole staff can change, but ideology - perhaps never.
Goals and principles are built on the foundation of ideology. They allow you to determine the short-term, medium-term and long-term prospective point of the company's stay and the way to reach this point.
And last of all, specific regulations are invented that speak about the dress code (or lack thereof), the work schedule, how the code review is conducted and other details .
What happens when some sort of regulation is missing? Do not worry, we have a goal, there is a principle of achieving the goal, there are values. We will define a course of action without it.
Imagine now that ideology with values, principles and goals has been missed. How will people react now to the absence of regulations? Either they will fall into a stupor or will act in their own discretion not synchronized with their colleagues. In the absence of ideology, values, principles and goals, companies create hierarchies, because employees need clearly defined tasks, because there is no way for them to determine where and how to move. Hierarchies are built, creating dependent people and managers who are overloaded with responsibility and devote most of their time to manual management and control. And this is very sad.
Like-minded people are an inexhaustible source of energy. They will support you even when things are going badly, are ready to be left without a salary or to tear a piece away from yourself, if you need it for business. That is why my ideology is very closely related to cooperation. Cooperation with each other, with the customer, with the management, with the subordinate, if the hierarchy at all proves to be relevant. If you rephrase a little, you can say “people are the most important thing”.
Companies that are interested in their employees only as a resource, receive employees who are interested in the company only salary. The employees are lazy, the staff are irresponsible and even, perhaps, incompetent? Maybe, but rather the fact is that you, as an employer, do not really need them. And you have established this status quo yourself.
Cooperation implies the creation of a unifying climate, which can exist if the focus is on values:
Such conditions can be the basis for creating psychological security in which employees will want to unleash their potential.
If we build cooperation in the absolute, we get the complete decentralization of power. There is no main boss who gives orders, there are no department heads who, at their discretion, filter or distort the information passing through them. There is a network of equal rights managed by a common understanding of the company's ideology and its principles of operation.
I'm talking about turquoise companies. For a better understanding of what turquoise companies are, you can start exploring from here , from here or immediately reading the book “Opening the Future Organizations” by Frederick Lala.
I don’t think that you can be confident in your future if you forget to read books, analyze your actions for errors and generally consider that “there’s enough”. In my opinion, any of these sins will lead to sad results. You cannot calculate how you (or your company) need to be, in order to achieve the desired result, you can only figure this out empirically, but it’s not just if you don’t adhere to flexibility and consider the best options to follow the originally developed plan. The situation changes, you get new information, but you continue to persistently follow the plan, which is already somewhat divorced from reality. Naturally, the company gradually weakens and begins to suffer losses.
The following factors, in my opinion, make it possible to build a company with a strong ability to adapt:
Working principles must be constantly questioned. Regulations are subject to change. Communications, people, structures - everything will change sooner or later. I am glad to change, if it allows me to carry the mission that I have chosen for myself. I consider it necessary to change constantly, constantly experimenting, making mistakes, learning from mistakes and becoming stronger.
Cooperation and continuous adaptation answer the question “How do we work?”, But does not answer the question “What are we doing?”. This question is answered by the key purpose of the company - the reason for its existence.
An example of the key purpose of the Google search engine “It is convenient to organize all the information in the world and make it accessible and useful to everyone.”
The key purpose can be used as a way to determine what needs to be done, and more importantly, what should not be done in any way. With the wording from Google, you will not open a grocery store, and rightly so - focus on the essentials.
In addition to the key purpose:
Perhaps banal points. But why few people follow them?
I have been working in software development for about 12 years. During this time I changed more than 10 organizations. There were only two places where I stayed for a long time - by 3 and 5 (hello, Valera) years, and in other companies I worked from two to eight months.
Every time I looked for a new job, I formed the criteria of the company in which I want to work, found an organization that satisfies them, but was wrong almost every time. I could not determine the list of criteria that a company must meet in order for me to work in it with pleasure. And I realized that there is no list, but there is only one most important condition - the company must have a Soul. The soul of the company is something big and eternal, to which one wants to strive, spitting on personal interests, which gives meaning to all your actions. I'm sure everyone wants to experience something like this. And it seems I know how to achieve this.
And let's start from the end
')
Recently, I had to reflect on what is most important for the success of a company. Purpose, mission, values, investors, people, clients? Together?
After reading Edgar Shane, Jim Collins, Jeff Cox and Charles Dahigg, I came to the conclusion that the foundation of a sustainable company is an ideology based on the values ​​shared by all employees of the company. Ideology unites people and allows them to work together towards a goal. Ideology is the foundation that is the most stable part of the company. The goals, the means, the tools, the directors, the whole staff can change, but ideology - perhaps never.
Goals and principles are built on the foundation of ideology. They allow you to determine the short-term, medium-term and long-term prospective point of the company's stay and the way to reach this point.
And last of all, specific regulations are invented that speak about the dress code (or lack thereof), the work schedule, how the code review is conducted and other details .
What happens when some sort of regulation is missing? Do not worry, we have a goal, there is a principle of achieving the goal, there are values. We will define a course of action without it.
Imagine now that ideology with values, principles and goals has been missed. How will people react now to the absence of regulations? Either they will fall into a stupor or will act in their own discretion not synchronized with their colleagues. In the absence of ideology, values, principles and goals, companies create hierarchies, because employees need clearly defined tasks, because there is no way for them to determine where and how to move. Hierarchies are built, creating dependent people and managers who are overloaded with responsibility and devote most of their time to manual management and control. And this is very sad.
My ideology
The most important is cooperation
Like-minded people are an inexhaustible source of energy. They will support you even when things are going badly, are ready to be left without a salary or to tear a piece away from yourself, if you need it for business. That is why my ideology is very closely related to cooperation. Cooperation with each other, with the customer, with the management, with the subordinate, if the hierarchy at all proves to be relevant. If you rephrase a little, you can say “people are the most important thing”.
Companies that are interested in their employees only as a resource, receive employees who are interested in the company only salary. The employees are lazy, the staff are irresponsible and even, perhaps, incompetent? Maybe, but rather the fact is that you, as an employer, do not really need them. And you have established this status quo yourself.
Cooperation implies the creation of a unifying climate, which can exist if the focus is on values:
- A responsibility.
- Respect.
- Openness
- Honesty.
- Mutual aid
- Independence.
- General understanding.
Such conditions can be the basis for creating psychological security in which employees will want to unleash their potential.
If we build cooperation in the absolute, we get the complete decentralization of power. There is no main boss who gives orders, there are no department heads who, at their discretion, filter or distort the information passing through them. There is a network of equal rights managed by a common understanding of the company's ideology and its principles of operation.
I'm talking about turquoise companies. For a better understanding of what turquoise companies are, you can start exploring from here , from here or immediately reading the book “Opening the Future Organizations” by Frederick Lala.
The second is continuous adaptation
I don’t think that you can be confident in your future if you forget to read books, analyze your actions for errors and generally consider that “there’s enough”. In my opinion, any of these sins will lead to sad results. You cannot calculate how you (or your company) need to be, in order to achieve the desired result, you can only figure this out empirically, but it’s not just if you don’t adhere to flexibility and consider the best options to follow the originally developed plan. The situation changes, you get new information, but you continue to persistently follow the plan, which is already somewhat divorced from reality. Naturally, the company gradually weakens and begins to suffer losses.
The following factors, in my opinion, make it possible to build a company with a strong ability to adapt:
- The cooperation described above and the general attention to people. Your employees will give you a sea of ​​ideas, choose the most interesting ones and take responsibility for their implementation. Just be attentive to them.
- Special attitude to making mistakes. There is nothing wrong with mistakes if we learn from them. I want to make as many mistakes as possible, learn from them and get stronger. The main thing is not to make a critical error, and for this you need to limit the size of the experiments.
- Encouraging initiative and creativity. Inattention to the opinion of employees can drastically undermine the ability to adapt the company.
- The minimum hierarchy is for employee initiatives not to be filtered by managers.
- Focusing effort. It is carried out through the explicit formulation of the ideology, values, goals and principles of the company.
- Simplify everything. If you need 2 weeks to create a project in Jira because of the connection with accounting and bureaucracy, you have bad things to do. If, after creating the project, you cannot set up suitable for the project and the workflow team there, you are on your way to death. You have brought yourself to a place where you cannot change. So you have, most likely, become irrelevant.
Working principles must be constantly questioned. Regulations are subject to change. Communications, people, structures - everything will change sooner or later. I am glad to change, if it allows me to carry the mission that I have chosen for myself. I consider it necessary to change constantly, constantly experimenting, making mistakes, learning from mistakes and becoming stronger.
Third - focus on the main
Cooperation and continuous adaptation answer the question “How do we work?”, But does not answer the question “What are we doing?”. This question is answered by the key purpose of the company - the reason for its existence.
An example of the key purpose of the Google search engine “It is convenient to organize all the information in the world and make it accessible and useful to everyone.”
The key purpose can be used as a way to determine what needs to be done, and more importantly, what should not be done in any way. With the wording from Google, you will not open a grocery store, and rightly so - focus on the essentials.
In addition to the key purpose:
- Set SMART goals.
- Make sure your every action fits the goal.
- Choose the most effective actions to achieve the goal.
Perhaps banal points. But why few people follow them?
Interesting books on the article
- Jim Collins From good to great.
- Frederick Lalu. Discovering the organizations of the future.
- Edgar Shane Organizational culture and leadership.
- Charles Dahigg. The power of habit. Why we live and work this way, and not otherwise.
- Jeff Cox. Purpose. The process of continuous improvement.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/349668/
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