Question

You have just been selected by the investors to become the next CEO of a three year old start up company. The company is doing well in its space, but the board has some concerns. 1. The founder and now former CEO is an older guy and has a traditional work ethic and a similar expectation of those who work for him. Although a great technologist, the investors do not think he can build a company for the long term that reflects the values of its target market. 2. The company's target market is the fast moving, active life styles of the 22-34 year old "casual professional". The technology is responsive to this market, but the company's approach to its market lacks the characteristics of the "casual professional". 3. The reasons the board selected you as the new CEO was your firm grasp of what today's professionals expect from a business and how you envisioned changing the culture of the company. When asked by the lead investor, how did you respond to the following questions? Question#1: What do you believe today's young professionals expect from a business that delivers its products/services through a variety of leading technologies. Question#2: If you are to change the internal culture of the company, what would you do? What are the characteristics of a 22-34 year old professional? HINT: This is a Peter Pan exercise.

Answer 1

1. Being a young professional my expectations from business -

Aim high -

• set a lofty ambition for your strategy, not just financial success but also sustain value creation, making a better world through our products, services, and presence. Example Apple early goal of making computers for rest of us which effectively shaped the personal computer industry.
• Next aim is the dedication to excellence that seems almost obssessive to outsiders. Together, a strong long term strategy and a fierce commitment to excellent execution can transform not only company, but also regional economy.
• Lofty goals requires patience we must persevere without lowering our standards, and the confidence to believe we can reach goal soon enough.

Build on strength -

• Take inventory of most distinctive capabilities. For example where we have excelled as a company, acheiving great desired outcome with out heroic efforts. Articulate all different things that had to happen to make these capabilities work and figure out what it will take to build on our strength. So that we can succeed same way more consistently in the future.
• The more knowledge we have about our capabilities, the more opportunities we will build on our strength.

Be ambidextrous -

• This is the ability to use both hands with equal skills and versatility. In business this is the ability to manage strategy and execution with equal competence. In some companies, this is known as being bilingual: able to speak language of the boardroom.
• Lack of ambidextrous can be a chronic problem. For example if IT professional focus only on the execution when they manage ERP upgrade or the adoption of new application, they may be drawn to vendors for their low rates or expertise on specific platform.

Clarify everyone's strategic roles -

Successful leaders spent a great deal of time and attention on the connection between strategy and personal commitment.

Align structure to strategy -

set up all organization structure, including hierarchical design, decision rights, incentives, and metrics, so they reinforce our company identity: our values proposition and critical capabilities. If structure of company do not support strategy, consider to remove it or change them whole.

Transcend functional barriers -

Great capabilities always transcend functional barriers. For example Starbucks create the right ambience, Haier ability to rapidly manufacture home appliences to order, and Amazon apptitude for launching product and services enabled by new technology.

2. Being a 22 - 33 year age old professional we can change internal culture of the organization by following steps -

1. Define your target culture - corporate culture lies mainly in unspoken pervasive values and practices. Different formats support can be used for it.

• A vision or a mission statement for your company that provides a clearly expressed goals that will govern all of is employees action.
• A set of values that form the basis of our organization culture.
• A set of message related to those goals and values.
• A set of deontology rules to apply.

2. Put your culture into practice - In order to stick and become reality a, the right behavior and attitude must be nurtured. Encouraging the right attitude spans several company function including human resource, internal communication and top management.

3. Recruit the right people's - A target culture we would like to kick start , recruiting the right person is the key. A company is a living complex organism if all of a sudden half of the components think and behave differently our culture will automatically going to change. New behavior and methods will replace old ones. We can not replace half of our staff overnight. Recruit some change agent who seek candidate that are natural fit with our desired values and then encourage them in the way we can.

4. Mould your recruits - finally we can onboards and train our new comers in the corporate culture that we wish to maintain. One thing company with strong corporate culture all shares is a heavy accent on core values, dos and don't when recruiting and especially when welcoming new recruits.