Critical Number, Flourishing, and Wandering On

Today, I want to share an experience from my working life in corporate America that I think illustrates why I say that, in my opinion, most for-profit organizations (and probably nonprofits, too) are command-and-control-centric.

They tend to value and prioritize building, creating, and contributing (if It is profitable) over autonomy or connections for connection’s sake.

They tend to value external validation and assessments over individual self-growth and fulfillment for their people.

They tend to value structure and routine, with offsites and “team-building” fun activities sprinkled in as mini-rests or rewards.

And usually, most people really don’t want to be at these events.

Back before there was the book The One Thing by Gary Keller, there was a book called The Great Game of Business by Jack Stack. They share some similarities.

In this book, Stack tells the story of Springfield Remanufacturing, which was nearing collapse and bankruptcy, and how they turned the organization around by focusing on creating employee ownership.

This was ownership in the results and profits, as well as some decision-making rights.

But not enterprise governance rights over strategy, funding, and so on.

That’s typically reserved for senior leadership and the board of directors, who evaluate and direct the actions of an organization.

Yes, employee work councils exist in Europe and play at that level, but …

Well, let’s not get into geopolitics and the pros and cons of democracy and end up ruining everyone’s good time here …

The Great Game of Business is an inspiring story for several reasons.

Springfield Remanufacturing is one of the only company examples I’m aware of that seems to have a real interest in the deep-dive and internal-validation ends of the spectrums.

And these ends tended to be valued and operating at all levels in the organization.

However, they did this through a lot of structure and routine.

Calling it a game was where the “fun” came in.

In fact, I believe that in a later book or article, Jack Stack talked about wanting to remove as much emotion from organizations as possible.

I’m not sure what he meant by this or what he said exactly, but if I have the general idea right, then that’s what structure and routine are designed to do.

It removes the “I don’t wanna” blues.

Do you must. There is no try.

Structure and routine create the machine.

For me, one of the most inspiring parts of the book was when Stack shared his overarching goal for all the people in his organization.

Ultimately, he wanted every single member of his company to own their own home, free and clear of any debt.

Jack Stack is an example of a benevolent, charismatic leader of the sort Max Weber believed was the best solution for ensuring human flourishing in organizations.

The problem with that solution is that there’s always the “meet the new boss” moment.

And the new boss might not be the same as the old boss, to borrow and modify The Who’s famous lyric.

Nevertheless, we sometimes have to take a win where we can get one in this world.

As it turns out, I worked for a company and convinced the senior leader I supported to read this book.

He really enjoyed it and was inspired by it.

I also brought in a consulting organization that specialized in implementing The Great Game of Business approach.

If hired, they promised to coach and guide us through it.

To my surprise, he, the Senior Vice President, and his senior leadership team all agreed to move forward … tentatively.

It was both amazing and a bit of a sheet show.

First, the head consultant thought this part of the organization was going to be “sold” and spun off from the main organization.

That’s what had happened to Springfield, which had been part of International Harvester. Stack and others talked them into selling it to them.

The company I worked for had a division of about 2,000 employees within a company of somewhere between 15,000 and 20,000 employees.

So, it could have been possible.

But I don’t remember anyone ever telling the Great Game consultant this.

I certainly didn’t, and I don’t think anyone else on the senior leadership team had, either.

When we got the top leaders in the organization together—about 50 people out of the 2,000 employees—it confused the heck out of them, too.

We had brought them all together for a two-day offsite strategy workshop.

The consultant started his early-morning presentation to the leaders by telling all of us that we had “an incredible opportunity” to become the owners of the spun-off division.

“Huh? We’re being sold and separated from the larger company??!!”

Like I said, it was both amazing and a sheet show.

Part of this strategy offsite was designed to roll out the people strategy I had developed with the blessing of the senior leadership team.

They had all been involved in shaping the strategy to some extent, too, but were still somewhat tentative and skeptical, so I had to drive a lot of what happened.

And I was fairly inexperienced in large-scale organizational change.

Oops.

I had branded this the “C.E.O.” people strategy.

The letters in CEO stood for Committed and Engaged Owners of the business.

One way to think about this vision was to see if we could get all 2,000 employees thinking like small-business owners.

It was a multiproject initiative, but essentially, we wanted to educate employees about the economics, processes, and constraints involved in successfully running the division.

And then help them work better as an overall team, with a shared goal of overall “business” success.

One method used by Springfield Remanufacturing, which we wanted to implement, too, was what they called defining the “critical number” for the business and making it visible to everyone.

At Springfield, every member of the organization knew exactly what that number was and how the work they did impacted the ability to achieve it.

In a nutshell, the idea is that this is the most important performance metric for the organization for a defined period of time.

Typically, it would change every six months at Springfield Remanufacturing.

This is a great example of deep diving versus spinning plates.

These fifty leaders of the organization we had pulled together at the offsite were great plate spinners.

During the offsite, we had them break into groups and come up with the most important performance metrics for the organization.

The first list had somewhere close to 117 items on it, as I recall.

After another round or two of dialogue and breakout groups, we finally got it down to 21 Critical Numbers.

Hmm. Critical Number?

Shouldn’t that be just one number?

It didn’t seem to sink in with these folks.

It’s been a while, and honestly, I don’t recall if we were ever able to implement this critical-number method at the highest level of the organization.

I’m thinking no, we did not.

However, some department leaders ran with it.

They were true believers in the Great Game and took it deep into their parts of the operation.

One leader in particular went a little rogue.

Not only did he implement the critical-number idea with his operating team, but he also shifted their performance reviews and bonus payouts to be based on the team’s success in achieving its critical number.

That is, instead of atomized, individual performance ratings and bonuses, it became a shared, team-based objective.

If the stretch goal was met, everyone got the highest bonus payment possible.

What? We can’t have that!

Anarchy has ensued!!

I suppose I was derelict in my duty because I let him run with it.

If I had followed my bosses’ and his bosses’ “isolate and eliminate the bottom 10% of performers” individual performance-management philosophy instead … well, it would have been a different story.

They would have wanted me to shut it down, hard and fast.

Instead, I just didn’t say anything and let the experiment run.

What’s the phrase?

Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil?

Yeah, I was skating on thin ice.

Oops.

However …

This operating team’s results went from mediocre to outstanding.

The department’s employee survey results went from mediocre to outstanding.

Employee attrition in that part of the organization went from the mid-20% range down to around 5%.

And get this. I didn’t get fired or reprimanded.

I actually ended up receiving the equivalent of what some organizations call “the president’s award” for top performance, recognizing my leadership and work on this CEO strategy.

However, right around the time of the award, my boss informed me that I needed to relocate to company headquarters if I wanted to stay with the company.

So, I found another job with a different company and left soon after.

And perhaps left a lot of chaos for someone to work through after I was gone.

You can’t change the world overnight.

Sometimes the best thing to do is throw a few curveballs and then just wander on.