
Conformance, the drive to achieve and the hot stove rule
Organisations seem to expect two things from its employees across levels:
1. Conformance
2. Drive to achieve
My question is this: can these two coexist?
Let me say some more about both these seeming polarities.
Conformance
Organisations have rules that must be adhered to, processes that must be conformed to, performance goals that must be achieved. There are clear consequences for failing.
A culture of conformance certainly serves a purpose. As organisations pursue scale, this culture of conformance assures predictability.
That is unfortunately in a ceteris paribus world.
Drive to achieve
As we talk to more and more organisations, they tell us that they want leaders across levels to be agile, disrupt, challenge status quo, innovate, deal with uncertainty and ambiguity, show flexibility, take ownership, have fire in the belly and so on.
However, there seems to be disappointment that these qualities are not as widely visible as desired.
This especially among large organisations.
Why is this important?
Large Organisations can see that their businesses are being disrupted by smaller organisations that seem to have less conformance and greater drive to achieve.
They are underdogs, hungry to grow, fighting to survive and fiercely competitive.
Given this evolutionary reality, can they co-exist?
What is going on?
Mark Twain (1835 – 1910) said, “If a cat sits on a hot stove, that cat won’t sit on a hot stove again. That cat won’t sit on a cold stove either. That cat just don’t like stoves.”
For several decades, leaders of people have understood the value of the hot stove rule in ensuring discipline, process compliance and performance. Their employees end up not liking stoves.
Employees of smaller organisations on the other hand live with hot stoves all the time.
Can leaders be coached and trained to enhance their drive to achieve?
There is enough evidence to suggest that the drive to achieve can be inculcated and fueled in individuals.
However, I believe that there are two important pre-conditions for this to work:
1. The employees must have a certain amount of intrinsic desire to achieve, do better and excel and the discipline to pursue that desire in a purposeful manner
2. The system around them (the culture of the organisation and style of the senior leaders) should support these efforts.
Of course, not everyone needs to disrupt. Some need to drive change while many others need to keep things going.
In the days to come, more and more organisations and even nations will find that their cheese has been moved. To find new cheese, they will need to look within, reinvent their culture and values in action, so that leaders can do their work and get comfortable with the hot stove.
Video Link: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/dwgxe6ts59kg1fe1ufc82/The-Hot-stove-rule.mp4?rlkey=peg4y8m2n6lhq32ovnqhsv74p&st=6wgojg2e&dl=0
Youtube Link: https://youtu.be/6iKsrY3tR3s