Back in November 2014, Fiona Macelli, the instructional designer for the City of Calgary’s Corporate Project and Asset Management Centre, posted a link to a TED talk on her scoop.it blog. It is very pleasing to see that other asset management professionals in Western Canada have taken notice of Simon Sinek’s Start With Why.
We believe this concept is fundamental to asset management, and we have made it a fundamental part of our business.
There is an apocryphal tale of a janitor at NASA, who when asked what he was doing responded, “I’m helping to put a man on the moon!” This is a great example of an employee who sees their activities as driven by the powerful Why of their organization!
You might be wondering what this has to do with asset management and performance management. In this post we’ll explain how, when you Start with Why, you can link your organizational values to your Levels of Service. Then, when your activities are driven by the assets that support your services, you can actually make those corporate values relevant to your employees. So when Frank is changing the packing on a pump, it’s clear to him that he’s helping to put clean, safe water into people’s homes. Or to keep his fellow employees safe while on the job. Or to put a man on the moon.
First, Start with Why. If you haven’t seen Sinek’s TED talk, it’s time. Watch the 18-minute video. See also the Start with Why website, or the book.
Corporate Values to Why
Assuming you just watched the video, or have seen it before, let’s begin. So… how do your corporate values align with Sinek’s concept of the Golden Circle (Why–How–What)?
Like many organizations, yours likely has a corporate vision, corporate values, and a mission. Let’s look at how these can align with your Why, and then consider how this relates to asset management and performance management.
Sticking with Western Canada, let’s look at Saskatchewan Crown corporations. For a specific example, let’s look at SaskPower, a company most people in Saskatchewan would be familiar with. This organization has Mission, Vision, and Value statements:
- Vision: A world-leading power company through innovation, performance, and service
- Values: Safety, dedication, and respect
- Mission: Reliable, affordable, sustainable power
How do these align with Sinek’s Golden Circle?
Well, the Vision combined with the Values looks a lot like a How: “by being a world-leading power company through innovation, performance, and service while applying the values of safety, dedication, and respect.” The What can come from the Mission: “providing reliable, affordable, sustainable power.” But where’s the Why? After watching Sinek’s video or having read the book, don’t you feel that the Why needs to be more fundamental?
Let’s dial back to the purpose of Saskatchewan’s Crown corporations. According to the Crown Investments Corporation of Saskatchewan (CIC), “the initial four guiding principles for services provided by government-owned corporations continue to exist today.” These services should be Universal (available to everyone), Reliable, of High Quality, and offered at a Reasonable Cost.
That’s starting to sound like a Why. In fact, you can see bits of the Why scattered into SaskPower’s vision and mission. Let’s add a bit, and say a reasonable Why for SaskPower is to Enhance the economic, social, and environmental well-being of Saskatchewan by providing universal, reliable, high-quality services at a reasonable cost. In fact, that’s sufficiently general for any Crown corporation. Of course, the CIC includes the caveat that this must be balanced with commercial needs and returns to the Crown’s shareholders. Now let’s think about this… what does that Why statement bring to mind? Financial and environmental sustainability? Generational rate equity? Focus on customers? Whoa! These things are starting to sound a lot like the broad benefits that can be achieved with real asset management…
Back to Sinek’s Golden Circle. The table below shows a general rubric for eliciting How and What from Corporate Vision, Values, and Mission statements. Then, we insert these statements for a few Saskatchewan Crown corporations. We’ve also inserted the general Why derived from the initial founding principles of these organizations.
Perhaps the rubric isn’t perfect. But it is interesting that each of the Crown corporations’ Vision, Value, and Mission statements contain elements of the general Why—which we derived from the founding principles outlined over six decades ago. In each case, that Why isn’t completely explicit in the Vision, Value and Mission, but it’s in there: affordability, reliability, benefiting the people of Saskatchewan.
Sinek makes a compelling case for Start with Why and its power to motivate. Using his Golden Circle, you can connect the general What of your organization to its Why. But how can that line be drawn in the other direction, right down to Frank, changing the packing on a pump? How can Frank clearly see the Why from where he stands in your organization? The key is to use asset management and maintenance management techniques where employee activities are driven by Levels of Service.
To bridge between Sinek’s theory of Start with Why and the levels of service in asset management, we just need to realize that our true What is in fact the most basic definition of our level of service: Clean, Safe drinking water. Safe, reliable natural gas. Affordable, reliable electricity. In the table above, we termed these supra-strategic. So fundamental they are above strategy. From these most general statements of our level of service, we can begin to derive more specific, actionable ones. Between Sinek’s organizational What and asset management’s Customer & Technical Levels of Service are the increasingly detailed mandates, key priorities, regulatory requirements, and so on. But these are merely lenses that bring your levels of service into focus. The path is clear: Why -> How -> What -> Levels of Service. And what is a Level of Service, other than your value proposition to your customer?
From here, you need to connect your levels of service to your employee expectations. We’ll discuss that in a later post.