These men drew many others to their vision. They had to, or their visions would have remained isolated. None of their products had a straight path to success. Band-Aid sales, in fact, stayed sluggish all through the 1920s, when they finally became single bandages rather than long strips that needed snipping. Dickinson was promoted to vice president.⁴ All three men ran with their visions, individually at first, then through the organizations they built. Or in Dickinson’s case, persuasively shaped. Each was mission-driven. As author W. Clement Stone understood, “When you discover your mission, you will feel its demand. It will fill you with enthusiasm and a burning desire to get to work on it.”⁵

How do you ignite that mission on all levels of an organization? How do you keep the vision singing as it’s translated into goals, objectives, and performance measures, tied up in budgets, and bounced about in often uncertain economies.

The motivation begins at the top. “Producing change is about 80 percent leadership—establishing direction, aligning, motivating and inspiring people—and about 20 percent management—planning, budgeting, organizing and problem-solving.” But leadership, Harvard professor John Kotter also pointed out, “exists at all levels of an organization. At the edges of the enterprise, leaders are accountable for less territory. Their vision may sound more basic; the number of people to motivate may be two. But they perform the same leadership role as their senior counterparts. They excel at seeing things through fresh eyes.”⁶

Top CEOs understand this. UPS’s co-founder and former CEO, James Casey, is credited with not just pioneering a company, but building a culture. Yet he once admonished a reporter to “remember the story is to be about us—not about me. No single individual should be given a disproportionate share of the credit.”⁷ Louis V. Gerstner dedicated his book, Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance, to “the thousands of IBMers who never gave up on the company, their colleagues, and themselves. They are the real heroes of the reinvention of IBM.”⁸ Southwest Airlines’ Herb Kelleher said, “ We hire great attitudes, and we’ll teach them any functionality that they need.”⁹

At a discussion in August 2001, Dr. Lionel Tiger, of Rutgers University, said, “Leaders often forget that people are predisposed to do a good job. I’m always impressed with the films in which the young player rushes up and says, ‘Send me in, coach.’ People are hardwired to want to be sent in. One of the things good leaders do is to allow people to do what is built into them to do anyway, which is to contribute.”¹⁰

But contribute how? Suppose an employee is working really hard, doing his or her best, yet still not doing what is best for the organization. This could mean the company’s “core purpose” is not clear. “Core purpose reflects an organization’s reason for being. An effective purpose reflects idealistic motivations for doing the company’s work. It doesn’t just describe an organization’s output or target customers; it captures the soul of the organization.”¹¹ For this soul to reach every cubicle, it needs to be genuinely integrated through all aspects of work. It can’t just be a slogan on the wall, or even perk that says “good job,” unless that job is designed to advance the organization’s mission and the employee understands exactly what the perk represents. Trying to enlist employees in a “purpose” is futile if that purpose is not shining through in job descriptions, objectives, and performance measures. And supervisors and employees are bound to feel uncertain about their own value in an organization if the link from their work to organizational mission and values is not kept upfront.

Vision, strategy, and organizational structure really come down to values. Core values are the essential and enduring tenets of an organization. A small set of timeless guiding principles, core values require no external justification; they have intrinsic value and importance to those inside the organization. The Walt Disney Company’s core values of imagination and wholesomeness stem not from market requirements but from the founder’s inner belief that these qualities should be nurtured for their own sake. William Procter and James Gamble didn’t instill in P&G’s culture a focus on product excellence merely as a strategy for success but almost as a religious tenet. Service to the customer is a way of life at Nordstrom’s that traces its roots back to 1901, eight decades before customer service programs became stylish. As Ralph S. Larsen, former Johnson & Johnson CEO, put it, “The core values embodied in our credo might be a competitive advantage. But that’s not why we have them. We have them because they define for us what we stand for.”¹²

Such convictions are the spirited force that Peter Drucker described as, “turning out energy larger than the sum of the efforts put in.”¹³

Even with organizational principles firmly embedded, awareness of them might stay in the boardroom. Most employees may not even know they exist. For this reason, communicating an organization’s vision and strategy to every employee should be viewed as an internal marketing campaign. The goals of such a campaign are identical to those of traditional marketing campaigns: to create awareness and to affect behavior.¹⁴ Capturing the essence of core values and purpose is not an exercise in wordsmithery. The point is not to create a perfect statement but to gain a deep understanding of your organization’s core values and purpose, which can then be expressed in a multitude of ways. In fact, it’s suggested that once the core has been identified, managers [and their staff] can generate their own statements to share with the group.¹⁵ The idea is not to spout a slogan but to get upfront and personal with an organization’s raison d’etre, to mainstream its principles, and practice its values as a given of daily worklife.

A worker without a clear purpose can become a directed producer if there’s a sound link with organizational mission and strong recognition for contributing to it. This can become even more crucial in a down economy. Mary Hayes wrote in Information Week that “in tough times, companies are seeing the value of making sure employee goals are closely aligned with the goals of the business overall.”¹⁷ Once carefully tailored to mission and values, computer software can provide important support to this effort. Goal-alignment software lets business help employees develop goals, then issue reviews, bonuses, and merit pay according to their successful achievement. But does software that collects, categorizes, distributes, calculates and holds employees responsible for their career goals sound a bit like Big Brother? Faye Katt, vice president of global employee services and corporate counselor at Baxter Healthcare Corp, asks, “Are you empowering your employees, trusting them, and asking them to be responsive and results-oriented? Those are shared values, [and] such a system doesn’t become Orwellian. It’s about results, and if you’re treating people fairly, it works.” According to analyst Maria Schafer, communication is key. If you say, “We’re going to be tracking you and watching you, who wants that?” Instead, she says that companies must show employees that they’re stake-holders in their businesses and that the more insight they have into corporate strategies, the greater chance there is for their companies’ success.¹⁸

NationsBank, now integrated with Bank of America, has put goal-alignment software in place with great success. Its software gathers relevant information from every organizational level and transmits it to executives as brief electronic reports. If executives want more detail about a given measure, they can double-click the item in the electronic report. “As a result, managers at every level can readily see if targeted objectives are being met, can tell where the best performance is coming from, and reward those responsible.”¹⁹

A vision provides the focal point. Then, to manage performance effectively, employee performance is aligned with organizational goals. But as Peter Drucker wrote, “The real difficulty lies not in determining what objectives we need, but in deciding how to set them.”²¹ “How can both managers’ and their boss’ eyes be focused on what the job—rather than the boss—demands?”²²

Communication is a vital start. “It’s a two-way affair, and the receiver’s function is no less important than that of the sender.”²³ Regardless of whether there is buy-in, everyone at an organization can be expected to understand where his or her organization stands. And buy-in tends to grow as employees feel connected to a mission, understand why and how their contributions are significant, and have performance measures directly linking their specific contributions to organizational goals. Everyone also needs to be on board. As a cornerstone of strategic performance management, the performance appraisal needs to be recognized not as a perfunctory pain but as the valuable management tool it can become. As a mainstreamed asset, it can help drive the entire organization toward a shared vision that reflects proudly on everyone in the entire organization. “A team isn’t really a team if it isn’t going anywhere. And if the values, mission, goals and practices of a team don’t match up, you’re going to have a tough time as a team player.”²⁴ Supervisors and other managers might, in fact, be appraised on how well their departments contribute to accomplishing strategic goals. For everyone to be on board, there needs to be a cascading effect, with accountability from the top. One Human Resources consultant, called in to train 180 supervisors on applying strategic goals to individual departments, learned quickly that the supervisors had no idea what these new goals were. They had not been shared—on any level—prior to the training.

Even supervisors grounded in goals usually can’t just run with them. Training is helpful not just in implementing but also in helping to identify and frame goals. If “improve customer service by 30 percent” is a priority, every department in the organization should spell out what, how, over what time frame, and at what cost this will be addressed. No department should be left out. Each department can contribute, even if support for the front lines is indirect. The point is that everyone swims together.

Goal-directed performance appraisals might be viewed as a six-step process:

When properly executed, an appraisal instrument can become a powerful tool for establishing corporate culture and ensuring that employees understand and act on the organization’s broad strategic goals. In valuing diversity, for example, an organization might evaluate supervisory personnel in such areas as the following:²⁶

At Xerox, a “Performance Excellence Plan” translates corporate strategies into specific individual or team objectives and goals. Supervisors and employees come up with plans for the coming year, including clarity about how progress will be measured. Clearly spelled out is what the organization will expect. In Washington, DC, National Cooperative Bank has implemented a three-step approach. Management links company goals to team and individual performance goals, then all employees work with their supervisors to develop the next year’s performance plan. The plan sets goals, establishes a mechanism for tracking progress, adjusts goals, and provides for “coaching” throughout the year as needed. Measurement criteria are built into the process. Then, management takes the process much farther—taking a broad view, a plan is generated to bolster the skills of all employees over the coming year, whether through coaching, training, and/or other kinds of professional education.

At the American Society for Training and Development, every employee has a calendar-based performance plan developed by both the employee and his or her manager. Together, they set up to six goals with at least three of them tied to metrics aligned with the organization’s overall goals. The remainder tie specifically to the department and/or the individual. There is a formal six-month (mid-year) review where the employee and manager review progress to date. There may be other informal reviews based on the employee’s project timelines and goals may be revised as necessary. At the end of the year, the employee conducts a self-assessment and the manager conducts a formal performance review. The manager and employee then discuss both reviews. Compensation is tied to this process, but is addressed separately.

The United States Army has a true cascade. Within the first 30 days of the rating period, warrant and commissioned officers sit down with their supervisors and develop major performance objectives. They review duty descriptions, knowledge required to perform these duties, and supervisory controls. Results must be aligned with those of their supervisors, whose objectives are aligned with those of their superiors. Each quarter, supervisors perform interim reviews with employees to discuss progress toward their objectives and revise them as needed. When the rating period ends, officers submit a summary of their accomplishments and are rated on a four-point scale.

Shifting the focus from past performance and ratings, Management by Objectives (MBO) encourages a supervisor/subordinate partnership approach that looks ahead. The focus is on goals to be achieved rather than merely looking back. Actively engaged in the process, the staff person has responsibility for managing his or her own job performance rather than just getting “marked” on what has already occurred.

Popular in private and public organizations,²⁸ the original MBO concept came from the accounting firm of Booz, Allen, and Hamilton, and was called a “manager’s letter.” The process consisted of having all the subordinate managers write a letter to their superiors detailing what their performance goals were for the coming year and how they planned to achieve them. The idea caught on at General Electric in the 1950s, and Douglas McGregor has since developed it into a philosophy of management.²⁹

Beyond an evaluation program or process, MBO reflects an “entire philosophy of management practice, a method by which managers and subordinates plan, organize, control, communicate, and debate. By setting objectives through participation, or by assignments from a superior, the subordinate is provided with a course to follow and a target to shoot for while performing the job.”³⁰ Goals are objective, often quantifiable, and just about always written.

Because this approach targets specific goals, it is critical that these goals be aligned with organizational vision and priority needs, not only across a company but within the department. Given their prominence, these are the goals that a staff person will feel most responsible for achieving.

Establishing MBO works like this:

“Every business, if it is to succeed, must have a sense of direction and mission, so that no matter who you are and what you are doing, you know how you fit in and that what you are doing is important,” wrote former IBM CEO Louis V. Gerstner.³¹

IBM has instituted “Personal Business Commitment,” a system that aligns company objectives with the activities of individual employees. “PBC helps [IBM] understand every individual’s unique contribution to achieving corporate objectives and rewards employees accordingly. Managers can clearly see what is expected of their staff, how to measure activities, and how to tie them to company objectives. This kind of empowerment and accountability motivates people not just to do their best but also to focus their energies on doing what is best for the company.”³²

At the beginning of the year, all IBM employees sign a personal business commitment that states what they will deliver to the company. Employees align their personal commitments with IBM’s overall business plan as:

Objectives incorporating the development of specific skills are tied to both individual commitments and business unit plans. These plans and commitments form the baseline against which performance will be evaluated.

One of the most important tools in the arsenal of MBO techniques, the balanced scorecard translates an organization’s mission and strategy into a comprehensive set of performance measures. It looks at the big picture, building in measurable steps for strategic management. The aim is to foster a team approach to achieving organization-wide objectives.

“The Balanced Scorecard retains an emphasis on achieving financial objectives, but also includes the performance drivers of these objectives, [measuring] organizational performance across four balanced perspectives: financial, customers, internal business processes and learning and growth.”³³

Here’s how it can work:

When a major corporation set the company-wide goal of improving customer service several years ago, it let none of its employees off the hook. Even those employees or departments who didn’t interact with customers were encouraged to take part—by treating the in-house units to which they reported as customers. The chef in the cafeteria, for example, didn’t meet with actual customers but began to regard the employees who ate in his cafeteria as his customers. The corporation’s entire corporate culture is now infused with the commitment to recognize customer service. Visitors to its headquarters are often surprised and delighted to see messages about customer service emblazoned on the floors and engraved on doorways throughout the building.

You might institute a balanced scorecard approach in your organization by asking each employee to develop his or her own individual scorecard. Challenge the employee to come up with ways of supporting your organization across the four main areas, by assisting your organization to save dollars, attract and retain customers, improve internal business procedures, and contribute to your own and your colleagues’ learning and growth.³⁴ The more involved an employee is in setting these parameters, the more enthusiastic they will be about achieving them.

In 1996, accounting giant KPMG engaged in a study of seven European companies that had implemented scorecards. Only 30 percent had achieved their original stated goals, however, the majority of them were satisfied with the results. KPMG concluded that a balanced scorecard is an expensive way to raise awareness. As a result, it designed “The Ten Commandments of Scorecard Implementation.”

Do:

Don’t:

Below links the performance appraisals of Marilyn, Richard, and Peg to the goals of their organizations:

Marilyn’s law firm has set a goal of 15 percent revenue growth over the next 12 months. To reach this goal, the firm will hire seven associates. Because Marilyn coordinates new hires in her role as office administrator, she and the managing partner identified nine new objectives during her recent performance appraisal. Several give Marilyn the chance to enjoy new challenges plus do some of the traveling that she has been eager to do.

In his role as duplicating supervisor, Richard understands that his company must produce cutting-edge products to meet customer needs and stay competitive. Therefore, he is expected to continually learn all he can and stay on top of new developments. Given the situation with his ill mother, he has lagged in new training over the past several months. Loss of a recent order made the lag even more apparent. To meet organizational revenue, he worked out the following objectives with his supervisor, each of which advance organizational goals yet are attainable despite Richard’s need to spend time with his mother. Over the next four months, Richard will be appraised on four new objectives:

Given her continuing poor performance record, Peg’s supervisor sits down with her and asks how she thinks she can be more helpful at their advertising agency. The question has an upbeat tone. It also puts more responsibility on Peg, making her accountable for a workload that, in part, she helps to shape. If Peg really doesn’t want to begin contributing at an acceptable level, that will also be clear. The discussion generates three suggestions that, along with already assigned tasks, will drive Peg’s performance. A follow-up discussion is scheduled in three weeks to review just these new objectives, each of which is geared toward strengthening customer service, a goal designed to help generate new business. A discussion is scheduled in six weeks to review Peg’s progress on all of her objectives.