Journey to the Emerald City: Achieve A Competitive Edge by Putting the OZ Principle to Work

279 Pages·2002·1.37 MB·English

by  Roger Connors

JOURNEY TO THE
EMERALD CITY
ACHIEVE A COMPETITIVE EDGE BY PUTTING THE
OZ PRINCIPLE TO WORK
ROGER CONNORS • TOM
SMITH
Prentice Hall Direct
"Written in the same remarkable vein as The Oz Principle, Journey
to the Emerald City uses masterful illustrations powerful language
and keen insight to continue the quest towards creating more account-
able, adaptable work cultures. Read this book, apply it, and then re-
cognize you're 'not in Kansas anymore.'"
Dr. Stephen R. Covey
Co-founder Franklin Covey Company
Author of #1 best-selling
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Connors, Roger.
Journey to the emerald city / by Roger Connors & Tom Smith.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-13-017584-6
1. Corporate culture. 2. Management.
3. Organizational behavior.
4. Success in business.
I. Smith, Tom (Thomas A.) II. Title.
HD58.7.C628 1999 658.4'063 - dc21 98-49113
CIP
Acquisitions Editor: Tom Power
Production Editor: Eve Mossman
Formatting/Interior Design: Robyn Beckerman
© 1999 Roger Connors and Tom Smith
Charts, diagrams, and illustrations ©1989-1998 Partners in Leadership, LLC
used by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or
by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN 0-7865-8717-2
Selected quotations were taken from the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
by L. Frank Baum. The authors of Journey to the Emerald City have no
affiliation with or connection to the producers or owners of the movie The
Wizard of Oz.
SM SM
Partners in Leadership, The Oz Principle, Creating a Culture of
SM SM SM
Accountability, Above the Line, Below the Line, The Results
SM SM SM SM SM
Pyramid, Steps to Accountability, See It, Own It, Solve It, Do
SM SM
It, and Culture of Accountability are servicemarks of Partners in
Leadership, LLC.
Prentice Hall International (UK) Limited, London
Prentice Hall of Australia Pty. Limited, Sydney
Prentice Hall Canada, Inc., Toronto
Prentice Hall Hispanoamericana, S.A., Mexico
Prentice Hall of India Private Limited, New Delhi
Prentice Hall of Japan, Inc., Tokyo
Simon & Schuster Asia Pte. Ltd., Singapore
Editora Prentice Hall do Brasil, Ltda., Rio de Janeiro
To
Gwen and Becky
Allyse, Bryanna, Katie, Josalyn,
Michael, Brent, Seth, Stephen, Kimberly,
Mary, Audrey, Jerry
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The writing of this book is really the summation of years of exper-
ience and effort. Our work with clients who have engaged themselves
in changing their culture has been a true laboratory of learning. To
them, first, we wish to express our appreciation and acknowledgment.
These clients have proven the theories and demonstrated the impact
of the process we describe in Journey to the Emerald City.
A project of this magnitude also involves many people playing
many different roles. Tom Gorman played a critical role in assisting
us throughout this project. His feedback and advice proved instrument-
al in shaping this book. We thank Michael Snell, our literary agent,
for his enthusiasm for this work and his encouragement on this
project. Jeff Howlett provided important research on this project and
demonstrated great ownership in interviewing our clients and
providing background research. Our thanks also go to Tom Power,
our editor at Prentice Hall, and to his entire team.
Our office staff, Susan Wynn, Robert Palmer, Lisa Mettler, and Terri
Daines each demonstrated great accountability to achieve the result
by doing whatever was necessary to meet deadlines and keep the
process going. Tracy Skousen provided helpful support in the business
which helped us take the time we needed to complete this book. We
have used a number of illustrations throughout the book to accelerate
the communication of the Cultural Transition process and to serve as
device for quick review. Pete Theodore contributed in a significant
way by providing effective design and quick turnaround of these
diagrams and charts.
An acknowledgment of the support of our families and our wives
is truly necessary, as they have endured the countless hours of travel
over the last decade as our work has taken us around the world and
away from them. For their sacrifices we express our gratitude.
PREFACE
In the search for increased value, improved profits, lower costs,
and growing market share, corporations have demonstrated great ef-
fectiveness in picking the "low-hanging fruit" of improved perform-
ance. Reengineered processes have heightened the ability of teams to
successfully capitalize on the value of the company's assets in signi-
ficant ways. Yet, in the midst of almost endless performance improve-
ment programs, we still see the single greatest asset of an organization
- its people - go underutilized.
When leaders and managers begin to actively manage the cultural
environment of their organization, we see an exciting, impressive,
and tangible return on "human assets." Shaping culture is the process
of leading people in a way that fundamentally impacts the way they
think and act. We have witnessed numerous efforts to impact results
by shaping culture over the past decade. Each of these efforts, when
guided by leaders dedicated to the needed culture change, has been
rewarded with record reductions in costs, record sales, record gains
in market share, record profits, record stock prices, and record personal
rewards.
In this book, Journey to the Emerald City, we describe a process of
managing culture that accelerates the ability to achieve organizational
results. In addition, we show you how to create a Culture of Account-
ability, where people think and act in the manner necessary for your
organization to achieve results. And we show you how to create that
culture quickly so that you can achieve competitive and organizational
advantage.
Our work has as its foundation one simple idea that we described
in our first book, The Oz Principle: Getting Results Through Individual
and Organizational Accountability. An organization will perform at
its highest potential if, and only if, each of its members assumes
personal accountability for achieving its results. When people become
personally accountable for achieving the company's results, powerful
transformations occur: A goal becomes an organizing principle. A
ROGER CONNORS • TOM SMITH
job becomes a mission. A task becomes a challenge. A company be-
comes a team. And a manager becomes a leader.
These may strike you as worthwhile changes, and they are. However,
like most worthwhile changes, they are not easily achieved. It takes
time to bring about a true cultural transformation. Therefore, managers
have repeatedly asked us, "How can we accelerate the transition to a
new, more effective culture?"
This book answers that question. Here we show you how to build
an effective company culture quickly and surely. Given the pace of
change today, the value of being able to quickly adjust, or even
transform, company culture should be evident. Competitive, regulatory,
and technological change happens so fast and frequently that the
ability of a company to change rapidly and repeatedly provides a
sharp competitive edge.
We pursue culture change for one reason and for one reason only:
to enable companies to achieve the results they want and need to at-
tain. Results are the product of the way people think and act. The
way people think and act in an organization amounts to that organ-
ization's culture. It's as simple as that. Since management is the art
and science of getting things done through others, we view managing
culture - managing the way people think and act - as the essence of
leadership.
We're not talking about secret methods or psychological games.
Nor are we talking about social experiments or workplace engineering.
Instead we offer a practical model of leadership, in which managers
- openly and completely - become accountable for fulfilling the pur-
pose of the organization. In the process, they lead others to achieve
the results the organization has committed itself to achieving.
In this book, you will learn practical methods of drawing forth
people's wholehearted commitment to achieving organizational results.
You will discover a simple, powerful framework for understanding
company culture and for changing it. In example after example, you
will see what has worked for leaders in a variety of companies, spe-
cific things that you can do every day in your company to create an
effective culture, quickly.
In our work with scores of organizations and thousands of individu-
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JOURNEY TO THE EMERALD CITY
als, we have seen the power of organizational culture, for better and
worse. We've seen organizational results held hostage by a company's
culture. We have also seen the transformation in performance,
products and profits - and in people - that occurs when managers
lead a company to a new, more effective culture. And, when they do
it quickly, we have seen them gain both organizational and compet-
itive advantage.
We want you to experience this journey as well.
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