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.Thatwas relatively easy to adopt because it matched their own view ofwhat American Express was and could be.15Having established that American Express s goal was to be the mostrespected service brand in the world, Harvey set about turning that goalinto reality:What was more difficult is then saying, if that [i.e., that AmericanExpress will be the most respected service brand in the world] is 11131_Edersheim_c07_f.qxd 2/10/04 3:25 PM Page 198198 McKinsey s Marvin Bowerthe case, what then do you do about it? What does that mean? It snot just a slogan.What does it mean? First, it means that you haveto get rid of any business that is not American Express, that can tbe American Express, that can t hold the brand.Which we did.16Within months of becoming CEO, Harvey put Shearson and FirstData Corporation on the block.He did not stop there in bringing thestrategy to reality:Second, it meant that the company, as a brand company, had tobecome an operating company, not a holding company, which hadprofound implications on how we structured the organization, howwe made the decisions, and criteria for defining those decisions.Ithad profound implications on the compensation system.It hadprofound implications on the performance evaluation system.So,having made that top-level decision, there were then a whole seriesof things that flowed from it.Part of the task of changing the cul-ture was to get people to understand the behaviors that were incon-sistent with that vision had to change.And behaviors that wereconsistent with that vision had to be celebrated and rewarded.17As Harvey had done at IDS, he took an active role in changing theculture of American Express:I tried to model the behavior.I also taught classes.I used presen-tations as learning experiences with people.I changed the perfor-mance evaluation systems.I changed the criteria on which peoplewould be paid and illustrated how we d do it.I tried to modelopenness and clarity.For example, we had a meeting in the boardroom.It was anumber of senior executives and a number of junior people in theback of the room.And there was a presentation being made.Afterthe presentation, I did something that had never been done as far asI know in the company: I asked all the people in the back of theroom, who had done all the work, what they thought and how com-mitted they were to the recommendation, what options they con-sidered, and what they thought of as the risk.They were shocked athaving been asked.But that story apparently bounced around thecompany very, very quickly.18 11131_Edersheim_c07_f.qxd 2/10/04 3:25 PM Page 199Educating a Generation of Leaders 199Training was also an important component of the cultural shift:There was lots of substantive training.But I guess the most impor-tant training was leadership training.How you decide on a leader-ship style to apply given the readiness level of an employee to do aparticular task and how to effectively apply that leadership style.That was probably the most important.19All of these factors the alignment of strategy with core strengths, theexplicit focus on culture, the CEO as a role model, the involvement ofmore junior people in decision making, and so on were pure Marvin.Having experienced the effectiveness and power of these very things dur-ing his 20 years at McKinsey, Harvey acted on this knowledge at Ameri-can Express (and IDS).In doing so, he applied his own style, but thefundamentals remain the same.As Harvey remembers:One of the things that Marvin did was that he constantly rein-forced the values by writing and speaking about them rooted inactions that had actually taken place so that it was a constantreminder.At American Express, I did not do quite the same thing.Instead of writing memos that stated, I tried to write memos thatexplained the decision not just what it was, but why it was, howit came about, how I had thought about it.I changed the name ofthe company magazine to Context.It was designed to providebackground, or the context for decisions that were made.So thatthe people would understand where we were coming from and notjust the what [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.Thatwas relatively easy to adopt because it matched their own view ofwhat American Express was and could be.15Having established that American Express s goal was to be the mostrespected service brand in the world, Harvey set about turning that goalinto reality:What was more difficult is then saying, if that [i.e., that AmericanExpress will be the most respected service brand in the world] is 11131_Edersheim_c07_f.qxd 2/10/04 3:25 PM Page 198198 McKinsey s Marvin Bowerthe case, what then do you do about it? What does that mean? It snot just a slogan.What does it mean? First, it means that you haveto get rid of any business that is not American Express, that can tbe American Express, that can t hold the brand.Which we did.16Within months of becoming CEO, Harvey put Shearson and FirstData Corporation on the block.He did not stop there in bringing thestrategy to reality:Second, it meant that the company, as a brand company, had tobecome an operating company, not a holding company, which hadprofound implications on how we structured the organization, howwe made the decisions, and criteria for defining those decisions.Ithad profound implications on the compensation system.It hadprofound implications on the performance evaluation system.So,having made that top-level decision, there were then a whole seriesof things that flowed from it.Part of the task of changing the cul-ture was to get people to understand the behaviors that were incon-sistent with that vision had to change.And behaviors that wereconsistent with that vision had to be celebrated and rewarded.17As Harvey had done at IDS, he took an active role in changing theculture of American Express:I tried to model the behavior.I also taught classes.I used presen-tations as learning experiences with people.I changed the perfor-mance evaluation systems.I changed the criteria on which peoplewould be paid and illustrated how we d do it.I tried to modelopenness and clarity.For example, we had a meeting in the boardroom.It was anumber of senior executives and a number of junior people in theback of the room.And there was a presentation being made.Afterthe presentation, I did something that had never been done as far asI know in the company: I asked all the people in the back of theroom, who had done all the work, what they thought and how com-mitted they were to the recommendation, what options they con-sidered, and what they thought of as the risk.They were shocked athaving been asked.But that story apparently bounced around thecompany very, very quickly.18 11131_Edersheim_c07_f.qxd 2/10/04 3:25 PM Page 199Educating a Generation of Leaders 199Training was also an important component of the cultural shift:There was lots of substantive training.But I guess the most impor-tant training was leadership training.How you decide on a leader-ship style to apply given the readiness level of an employee to do aparticular task and how to effectively apply that leadership style.That was probably the most important.19All of these factors the alignment of strategy with core strengths, theexplicit focus on culture, the CEO as a role model, the involvement ofmore junior people in decision making, and so on were pure Marvin.Having experienced the effectiveness and power of these very things dur-ing his 20 years at McKinsey, Harvey acted on this knowledge at Ameri-can Express (and IDS).In doing so, he applied his own style, but thefundamentals remain the same.As Harvey remembers:One of the things that Marvin did was that he constantly rein-forced the values by writing and speaking about them rooted inactions that had actually taken place so that it was a constantreminder.At American Express, I did not do quite the same thing.Instead of writing memos that stated, I tried to write memos thatexplained the decision not just what it was, but why it was, howit came about, how I had thought about it.I changed the name ofthe company magazine to Context.It was designed to providebackground, or the context for decisions that were made.So thatthe people would understand where we were coming from and notjust the what [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]