Revolutionizing Your Workplace: Steps to Transform Your Organization
In 1987, the country’s leading manufacturer of aluminum, aptly named the Aluminum Company of America, had a problem. Despite the company’s long history of excellence – making everything from the tin-foil wrappers on a Hershey’s kiss to parts for the Wright brother’s plane that first took flight at Kitty Hawk– Alcoa was a mess. Several management fumbles had left a wake of angry employees; quality slipped and profits dipped.
The company was in desperate need of transformation. Alcoa’s ultimate appointment of a new CEO, Paul O’Neil, illustrates how implementing the Transformational Model can create sweeping, transformative change.
First, what is the Transformational Model and how is it implemented? It starts with vision. Many leaders are visionaries; they have no problem seeing their end goals. Attaining them, however, can feel daunting and downright impossible at times.
The Transformational Model breaks each step toward your vision into palatable portions that can inspire and motivate your team to work together toward a common goal.
Environment: Environments must adapt. In order to achieve robust organizational health, transformational leaders keep a finger on the pulse of the world around them as it relates to their product and their customers. With their vision in mind, these leaders know they can adapt and innovate to stay relevant.
Strategy: A well-formed strategy is a compass for a company that may seem lost. A meticulous strategy gives a sense of purpose to a team recommitted to reaching a shared vision.
Core Process: This is how the sausage gets made. Great leaders understand that these processes, as well as strategy and systems, are within their control. Streamlining effective processes can motivate your team to reach your vision together.
Structure: Structures are about the people on your team and their relationships to one another and to the deliverables. Structures are also within a leader’s control and should be adapted as needed to support the core process and strategy and improve performance.
Systems: Great leaders can KISS (keep its systems simple). Systems are the beating heart of an organization. It’s how employees create a team that’s greater than the sum of its parts. Without the systems that coordinate the efforts of an entire team, the sausage simply could not get made. And get made, it must!
Results: Results are the sweet fruits of your team’s combined efforts as you work toward your shared goal.
To drive us home, let’s return to the late-80’s shambles that was Alcoa.
Newly instated CEO, Paul O’Neil, began with a vision. He knew the challenges he was inheriting and decided to focus on creating a long-term culture of unity. O’Neil wanted a common goal, a rallying point that every employee, no matter their rank, could get behind. This vision, he believed, would foster unity among the employees, and eventually transform their communication, attention to detail, production quality, and overall job satisfaction.
His strategy was simple: “I want to talk to you about worker safety,” he said in his first speech as CEO. “I intend to make Alcoa the safest company in America. I intend to go for zero injuries.”
Alcoa employees eventually got on board with the new CEO’s suggestion and got to work.
O’Neil’s system was straightforward. If an employee was injured, a branch's leadership had 24 hours to report the incident and present a detailed plan for ensuring that injury never happened again. This created better communication among higher-ups at Alcoa and floor managers, which created a strong culture of communication between managers and floor workers. These and other systems rooted in safety principles made Alcoa one of the most streamlined, efficient companies in America.
The change was exponential. O’Neil retired in 2000, leaving behind a legacy that’s now reviewed as a case study in leadership excellence. In the 23 years O’Neil was behind the helm at the aluminum juggernaut, he quintupled the company’s annual net income and increased its market capitalization by $27 billion, according to the 2012 book, The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg, which chronicles some of O’Neil’s leadership prowess.
If your vision feels unattainable, it’s not. The Transformational Model could be the perfect fit for your team and the experts at Leadership Delta are ready to walk you through the steps, transform your team and help you make your vision a reality. Contact us today.