This course focuses on the common human resource ("people") challenges faced by existing private businesses when they attempt to grow substantially. PART 1 OF THE GROW TO GREATNESS COURSE IS NOT A PREREQUISITE FOR TAKING THIS COURSE.
UPS Case Study
Loading...
Del curso dictado por University of Virginia
Grow to Greatness: Smart Growth for Private Businesses, Part II
196 calificaciones
Explore Related Videos
At Coursera, you will find the best lectures in the world. Here are some of our personalized recommendations for you
University of Virginia
196 calificaciones
De la lección
Growth is Much More Than a Strategy—It Requires a System
The required reading is Edward D. Hess, “Room & Board” Case Study. The second required reading is “Growth Is Much More Than Just A Strategy: It’s A System.”
Conoce a los instructores
Edward D. HessProfessor of Business Administration
Darden School of Business
OK. In the readings there's some optional
reading. One focused on UPS, the big public
company; the United Parcel Service. Now I want to spend a moment on that, and
maybe say a few things that we'll go look at it.
It's a big company, 40,000 employees. It is world class at operational
excellence. It's over 100 years old.
The founder Jim Casey is passed away, but he actually is alive today in that
company. If you read about that company you will
see what I mean. The values that he build the company on
live today. And what's interesting is, about UPS is,
they get consistent high performance. They have highly engaged employees, low
turn over, they promote from within, they have an anti-elitist culture, leaders are
stewards, employees are free agents. That means you work in UPS you can apply
for any other job you want. You don't need your manager's permission.
You are a free agent to, to be all you can be.
Every employee has training and development opportunities.
In talking about measurements, the UPS saying is, in God we trust, everything
else we measure. Now I went through that pretty fast for a
reason. I mean this company is an excellent,
operationally excellent company. But what's interesting is, their culture,
their system. They have a three prong culture.
It's a performance culture with mutual accountability up and down.
The CEO is accountable to every employee, just like every employee is accountable to
his or her teammates and the CEO. In fact, the CEO in UPS has a phone in his
office, that every employee has the phone number to and can call and talk about any
issue they want. Because the CEO is accountable to the
employees. No corporate jets at UPS.
No big fancy offices. Every officer has the same size office,
not even on the top floor. They eat in the same cafeteria the
employees do. In fact most of them started out as
package delivery drivers. Promotion from within, mutual
accountability, anti-elitist culture. They have constant improvement driven by
constructive dissatisfaction. Everyone has a duty.
To make suggestions how to better and we don't want to become complacent or
arrogant. Constructive dissatisfaction, we can be
better, we can be better. Don't be satisfied, don't become
complacent. An employee centric ownership culture.
And there a lot of them are owners of the company, have stock.
But also, they own their careers. They're highly paid.
They have great benefits. And the message is that we're all in this
together and if we all do our part, we all, all will be rewarded.
Again, they created a system. An internally aligned, seamless,
consistent message center, sender which basically drives the behaviors.
And in UPS what they want is excellence, operational excellence and constant
improvement every day. Every day.
And everyone feeling an accountability to each other.
So peer pressure to be better, to learn. It's an interesting story.
You can learn from stories. You can learn from stories.
There are other good companies out there that you can learn.
There are books on them. There's articles on them.
Go on the internet and search. Look at WL Gore.
Look at Zappos, Whole Foods, Starbucks. Look at Horst Schulze work when he created
the Ritz Carlton Corporation. Danny Meyer restaurants in New York.
Southwest Air, we talked about. Learn, in fact, I suggest to you, give
articles or books to your employees. I'm convinced that the essence of
excellence is learning. So why not in your huddles, ask people
what did you learn yesterday? Why not make learning something that is
necessary in order to be part of your business?
Why not have your employees keep a journal?
Yes, a journal. Where they write down everyday before they
go home what'd you learn today, and you keep that.
Because if people are learning, hopefully people are getting better.
Hopefully, you will then see whether your message is coming through.
Because, to build a great business okay, you've got to have other people
emotionally engaged in the pursuit of excellence.
And in the pursuit and execution of behaviors that evidence the values in the
meaning that you want your business to stand for.
And it doesn't matter whether you're selling paper, furniture, coats,
technology, alright? Computers, services, it doesn't matter.
The principles that we know from this whole area of high performance
organizations, high employee engagement, the system aspect, the internally
aligning, the principles go across industry.
Across, in fact, across cultures, alright? And it's like okay, and what am I trying
to do here? Sensitize you, make you aware.
This is something you need to be aware of, cognizant of, take into account and spend
time on. The bigger you grow, the more time you
have to spend on this. Because the more people you have, and the
more you're trying to get to consistent behaviors throughout your organization,
and ultimately getting to a point where people understand the fundamental
principles. The fundamental principles, and when
people get put into new situations they will generally do the right thing because
of those principles. Not because they pull out a rule book and
it says rule 147 says do this. Do you think the customer is going to
going to wait till you look up rule 147? I don't think so, okay?
And how and what are those principals? And every business has them, and you don't
need a lot of them. What you need is the right ones for your
painting. You are an artist, ladies and gentleman,
each of you. You have the opportunity to paint and
create your own busniness. Think deeply about the picture you're
painting, and make sure you spend time in huddles each day, and spend time each week
in fire house time thinking about where are we.
Where do I need to improve? Because you are going to be in chaos as
you grow a business. Growing a business is chaotic.
There is more than you can do, that's why you've got to prioritize everyday.
What do I need to focus on that's mission critical today.
You've got to prioritize the product or service you'll deliver to what customers.
You gotta have processes, and you constantly cannot allow growth to
basically out pace your people or your processes.
The reason you have a system, is it's sort of the foundational.
The system is sort of the, the rope, the life raft that brings employees back to
the core and the essence and is the answer to your question.
What is the purpose of my business? Or the answer to the question that
customers have. Why should your business exist?
Alright. Next week we're going to talk about the
difficult issue of building a senior management team.
And the interesting thing about my research is, my research found that it was
very, very hard for entrepreneurs to build a senior management team that worked well
together. There was two big difficulties.
Hiring the right people, and then having them fit together and work together.
And what was fascinating in my research, is CEOs as entrepreneurs grew their
business, when they went to hire higher level senior managers with competencies
either in finance, HR, sales, technology. That on average they made lots of
mistakes. Some cases they had to basically go
through two, and even as many as five different hires to get the right person
that fit. Do you know how costly, emotionally
draining, and disruptive to a business that is?
And so we are going to talk about it in the last week.
Building, the challenges of building a senior management team.
Have a great week. Thank you for your engagement.
I'll be working with you on office hours. I'll be watching the forums.
Communicate with each other, engage with each other.
Learn, think, process and have fun. Thank you.
Explora nuestro catálogo
Inscríbete de manera gratuita y obtén recomendaciones personalizadas, actualizaciones y ofertas.
Coursera brinda acceso universal a la mejor educación del mundo, al asociarse con las mejores universidades y organizaciones, para ofrecer cursos en línea.
© 2019 Coursera Inc. Todos los derechos reservados.
