Governance - the edge between Leadership and Structure
Leadership can be visionary with effective executive style and still struggle to succeed for lack of a working relationship with the structure of the organization. This leads us to another critical strand of DNA: governance. Governance has a number of things in common with executive style and vision in that all three very directly to the acts of accomplishment and achieving the goal; they all attach directly to leadership.
Governance addresses lines of communication, chains of command, policies and procedures, etc. They are put into place to create reliable and effective vehicles for activity within the organization. Governance differs from executive style in that it does not address the “style”of execution; rather, it provides the pathway and boundaries, or the container, for execution.
Anchored by leadership and structure, governance must react to and be accountable to both. Certain structures will not be amenable to some types of governance introduced by the leadership. On the other hand, leadership might resist certain types of governance suggested, or demanded, by the structure.
Where the vision energizes strategies and executive style calls the culture into action, governance empowers the structure. Empowered structure can participate with its anchor, strategy, in decision-making while at the same time generating motivation within the culture. When governance is effective, the structure provide its proper share to motivation within the culture to participate in the system. When motivation within the culture is at an effective level, the culture's response to executive style is enhanced.
Leadership can push the system to reach for high production in an effort to dominate market share. On the other hand, leadership might endorse, or mandate, risky, cutting edge accounting practices or create organizational charts demonstrating high personal decision-making power and low accountability. The leadership might require significant redundancy within the Structure to ensure reliability. Or, it might create regulations that become very rigid, aimed at tightly controlling people’s time and behavior.
Perhaps ideally, the leadership can engage in co-designing flexibility in the structure, encouraging dialogue among the organization's members, and a clear endorsement of integrity and internalized personal values within the organization. The darker side of this scenario might be a lack of leadership influence in the how the structure is designed and run, leaving it to flounder while alternatives abound.
From a Structure perspective, working groups might be designed to mount an aggressive expansion of market share as an example. Lone wolves might be supported if they continue to bring in the goods – and no questions asked. Left unchecked, however, one might find the bottom line becoming the driver for how things are done; lone wolves rule at the expense of others. Structure might influence governance by creating a context that strives for a safe secure path to maintaining the status quo or protecting market share against erosion by focusing attention on customer satisfaction and retention rather than acquisition. Loss of overall perspective, however, could see a failure to respond to vital market opportunities.
The Structure might influence governance to expect teams to create a 360-degree view of the marketplace, a consideration of basic maintenance needs coupled with some risk associated with growth. Reports include data from an array of sources that satisfies the Leadership's desire for the “best” picture of achieving success. Here again, data collection and analysis as well as consideration of the “"what if"” scenarios could log-jam the system if the system is not balanced.
Motivation - the edge between Culture and Structure
Culture and structure provide the anchors for the motivation DNA strand. Motivation is an enthusiasm for participation; it is the potential for action. But it is also more: it is enthusiasm for action. Culture is motivated when the structure provides the container for effective and rewarding work. Likewise, the structure is “motivated” by the culture's response to the container that has been created. Although the structure is something relatively codified, it is represented and maintained by people who have the capacity to respond to perceived success and, therefore, can respond through motivation. When the structure takes on a form that satisfies the culture, motivation is created. If not, motivation diminishes and the structure feels pressure to change. If, on the other hand, the culture’s behavior is synergistic with the structure, motivation is created within the structure; if not, the culture might feel pressure to modify its behavior.
The Motivation DNA strand connects Structure with Culture. Keep in mind that Leadership and Strategy both connect with and influence Structure as well. These multiple influences increase the chance that Structure and Culture might be conflicted in places. Our assumption is that when Structure and Culture are aligned, motivation is generated.
Motivation could take the form of offering incentives for enlarging market share, creating new markets, and doing what needs to be done to get ahead. Or, its incentive process might lead to externalizing rewards for work to the point where the internal commitment dies. Motivation, on the other hand, could be bolstered when reward and security are obtained through maintaining the status quo, not losing ground, building deep relationships with clients to insure long term stability. The darker side here occurs when moving from the status quo will not be considered out of motivation to maintain safety.
Motivation can be generated by gems that have been distributed in a wide variety of locations: some rewards will be attached to more aggressive approaches to new business but with a caveat that relationships cannot be sacrificed for the short-term gain; while other rewards might come from relationship-building with existing clients.
Looking at Motivation from the Culture perspective could take the form of defining heroes and icons by their “attack” on the marketplace and their “"take no prisoners"” perspective on the competition. On the shadow side, these people do what needs to be done –- whatever the cost. A different Culture scene finds those most admired as the ones who “"really" know people” and have a capacity to satisfy the clients’ needs time and time again. The value of dependable client relationships is evident. Language within the culture is framed around the concept of “"maintain it and they will stay"” rather than “"build it and they will come".” Gambling on the future is not in the vocabulary.
The Culture might consider the “"build it and they will come" perspective. But this attitude will be attenuated by recognizing the value of what already is in place. In this case, heroes are those who can transform themselves to meet the challenge of standing their ground or accept opportunity of a new adventure. A weakness here may emerge as the inability to discriminate which heroes are to be emulated at which times.