Trust Your Company DNA

I always find it interesting to ask “senior” colleagues who has been with the company for many years: “How was things done back then ?”. Especially if the company has developed from a small start-up to a well-established player in the market I find it interesting to hear how the company changed during this transformation. These stories gives me an understanding of the company DNA which has enabled success and growth as well as driving behaviour and decisions.

A company I worked for some years ago was facing some traditional challenges we often see in companies that experience a high growth rate year on year. Increasing unit cost, declining customer service and quality problems. When we analysed these issues we found that “silo- thinking” , unclear responsibilities and inappropriate performance measures were some of the main reasons for the problems (as you would expect) and the ideas that came up for solving this was just as straight forward:

•“We should organise around a product or market”

•“A defined owner of a process should be able to make fast decisions”

•“Let’s measure something that’s actually important for us”

The real surprise came when one of the “senior” colleagues suddenly exclaimed “This is exactly what we did 10 years ago”. So why did we change or lose something that actually worked ?

Don’t reinvent the wheel but go back and check your company DNA. Why did we succeed in the first place ? Which strong capabilities have we lost ?

Of course, a big company requires other capabilities and functions than a small one does – but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/trust-your-company-dna-s%C3%B8ren-gotfredsen-u4yre