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Purpose
Background |
Working Principles 1. Choose projects based on expected social impact. I consider myself a social investor. I prioritize my business time by expected impact on things I care about. I look for "tipping points," that is, readiness of client and context to change, along with the potential for creating social capital, either in a group or in society. I seek leadership, initiative, and willingness to grow and learn. I go where the energy is and thrive with fast-growing organizations. 2. Leave behind continuous improvement and learning. My focus is on creating lasting change. For five years I headed the "Follow-Through Committee" of the Boston Management Consortium, which provided millions of dollars of free management consulting services to City of Boston leaders. At Fidelity, I led the "Kaizen Learning Network," a community of individuals from across the firm interested in organizational learning; we eventually built the internal homepage for Fidelity's Intranet. I've learned that there are an unlimited number of techniques that will work to make change, but they are all secondary to leadership, passion, and self-conscious culture development. 3. Employ systems thinking for organization development. Ever since I met Ron Lippett at National Training Labs in 1985, I've made "organization development" my technical field of knowledge. (Some people's eyes glaze over here, but that's what turns me on!) To me, any group with shared purpose and interdependence is, or might become, a team, a high-performing organization, or a healthier community. Interactive energy and human purpose are as real to me as today's weather. I assume with Meg Wheatley that systems naturally tend to self-organize (see A Simpler Way) and I believe that local actions have global consequences, even as we react to a more connected world. 4. "The real bottom line is integrity." The words above come from a 1992 values statement for a Fidelity business unit. Financial services is a "trust" business. Even an honest error can blow up into a media nightmare and financial disaster; therefore, every employee has a large stake in maintaining investor confidence. Fidelity had 5,000 people when I started and the moral leadership of the Johnson family went a long way toward influencing due care. By 1995, Fidelity employees numbered 30,000, in dozens of locations, and I was part of a team that developed more and more explicit communication about ethics and values. By personal declaration, the working principles of my business are mutual respect, ethical conduct, and open communication. |