I managed to escape childhood without serious injury, save one little part of my body: my pinky toe. I was constantly stubbing it and scraping it. Once in middle school, I caught it so hard on the side of a dresser that I was convinced it was broken. For days it was swollen and red and excruciating to move. And that tiny injury to a seemingly insignificant part of my body made a surprisingly significant impact to my total mobility. I could walk, but only slowly and gingerly. Running and skipping at recess were temporarily out of the question. It was a small injury, but it really cramped my style for a few days.
Embedded in this childhood anecdote is a truth we all take for granted: our bodies are not a collection of disparate parts that operate independently from one another. If one part of you isn’t working, it affects all of you. You cannot run with just one foot. Your sense of taste is vastly improved by your sense of smell. Your left eye and your right eye work together to create a complete and accurate image (well, most of the time).
“Operating as one” is the obvious choice for our bodies. Yet how often do we ignore this same principle in an organization?
As we work with companies ranging from massive Fortune 50 behemoths to tech startups, we at The People Side see the same challenges emerge at varying scales. All organizations face the temptation to operate in silos rather than as one unified system. One department makes a decision that has an unintended impact on another department. Two teams are unwittingly working on the same idea. One business function lobbies for more resources at the expense of another function, without truly understanding the implications to the total business.
What happens when organizations give in to this temptation and fail to operate as one? In our experience, business performance suffers, employees get frustrated, and the company simply fails to reach its potential.
The most successful companies we work with recognize the power of an Enterprise Mindset. Their leaders are committed to developing it and spreading it across all levels of the organization when they are teaming and delivering results.
Leading with an Enterprise Mindset means filtering everything through the lens of OUR goals. People with an enterprise mindset do the following:
When making decisions and solving problems, they act first as a champion of the total enterprise and then as a champion of their business unit and team. They appreciate enterprise-level trade-offs and resource implications.
They don’t tolerate the other business functions in the organization, they value them. They appreciate and understand the upstream and downstream impact of their team’s decisions on other parts of the business.
They’re willing to de-prioritize their own team’s preferences and projects in service of the greater good. The company is their “First Team.”
Hopefully you see leaders in your organization exemplifying this enterprise mindset. Are they the exception, or the rule? Why don’t more of us operate this way?
For many of us, operating with an Enterprise Mindset means making seismic mindset shifts and adopting new, intentional actions. We believe it may slow us down because controlling our part of the business is simply more concrete and straightforward. But independent action inside interdependent systems causes rework, conflict, and frustration.
In service of better outcomes for all, here are 5 things to prioritize if you want to grow and demonstrate an Enterprise Mindset:
Actively learn about other business functions. In his great HBR article “How Managers Become Leaders”, Michael Watkins says, “Enterprise leaders need to recognize that business functions are distinct managerial subcultures, each with its own mental models and language. Leaders must be able to speak the language of all the functions and translate for them when necessary.” Challenge yourself to set up time over the next 6 months with one person from each business function in your organization, and bring questions that will help you understand their goals, challenges, and your interdependencies.
Seek to understand the total ecosystem. In addition to learning about each business function, start to see the whole system as a series of interconnected parts. This starts with an in-depth understanding of how the business actually works and what creates profit and loss. I’m often astounded at the lack of business and financial acumen even among high-level leaders. At one point in my own career, I acknowledged that I needed a deeper understanding of corporate finance, so I got a mentor who made a world of difference for me. I gained an understanding of the various profit and loss levers and an appreciation for their dependencies on and implications for different business areas.
Be customer-centric. Your customers don’t care about your silos. They care about the quality and affordability of your products and services. Keep their concerns front of mind and you’re more likely to steer clear of siloed thinking.
Ground conversations in goals beyond your team. Rely on phrases like “I know we both want the same thing,” or, “This decision gets us closer to [Enterprise Goal A] but may also have implications to [Enterprise Goal B].” Ask questions that bring the conversation back around to broader goals and enterprise impact. And remember, if individual or departmental performance is routinely rewarded and celebrated, enterprise-wide performance will be sacrificed.
Cultivate cross-functional relationships. It’s not enough to simply learn about other business functions. The organization is best served when meaningful human relationships exist across functions. This may not happen naturally, and you may have to make it happen. One heavily-siloed organization I worked with sent groups of VPs from various business areas to off-site leadership development programs. They learned a lot, but more importantly, they created friendships and connections that allowed them to work more seamlessly together to achieve the company’s goals.
Developing an Enterprise Mindset may be the single-most powerful shift you could make in your quest to achieve results – your results, your team’s results, your department’s results, and the results of the organization. Remember the wisdom of the pinky toe: one small part of the whole can enable or limit the potential of the total system.
