Lead Right for Your Company’s Type: How to Connect Your Culture with Your Customer Promise
William E. Schneider
AMACOM (2017)

A science-based system that can help eliminate the people problems an organization has now and prevent others from occurring

Before reading this book, I did not know that there is a “science of living systems.” Before reading that sentence, did you? According to William Schneider, “The science of living systems encompasses an amazing set of scientific disciplines: subatomic physics, biochemistry, molecular biology, chemistry, biology, anatomy, physiology, information theory, cognitive theory, psychology, anthropology, sociology, ecology, cosmology, and astrophysics (among others). What has emerged from the research is that all living systems share distinctive characteristics. Each system is w hole, and it is not reducible to its components. Its distinctive nature derives from dynamic relationships of its parts.”

Here is what he helps his reader to understand:

o The four living enterprises (i.e. control, collaboration, competence, and cultivation)
o The system-centric mindset and how to adopt it
o How to determine an organization’s type
o Leadership drivers for each type
o What a “customer promise” is and why it so important
o The nature and extent of that promise for each type
o How best to keep it

It is important to keep in mind, Schneider suggests, that “the four enterprise types are four different worlds and can’t practice empowerment or culture the same way.”

Then in Part II (Chapters 7-12), he thoroughly examines a proven methodology for getting an organization’s customers, promise to them, workplace culture, and leadership in proper alignment, with mutually beneficial relationships between and among them, and then sustaining that alignment, making whatever adjustments may be necessary to preserve the health of the given enterprise.

One of the most important vital signs of a healthy organization is that it has effective leadership at all levels and in all areas. Years ago, Tom Campbell observed that those with a title are identified as a manager “but your people will determine whether or not you are a leader.” This astute observation again reminds of me a passage in Lao-tse’s Tao Te Ching:

“Learn from the people
Plan with the people
Begin with what they have
Build on what they know;
Of the best leaders
When the task is accomplished
The people will remark
We have done it ourselves.”

Schneider recommends and briefly explains what can be learned from organizational assessments that have been validated by more than 38,000 people in 57 enterprises. They are Enterprise Customer Promise Indicator (ECPD)™, Enterprise Culture Indicator (ECI)™, and Enterprise Leadership Team Indicator (ELTI)™ as well as the Individual Leader Indicator (ILI)™. For more information about these assessments, please visit the Corporate Development Group website.

I agree with William Schneider: “Adaptation strengthens you and your enterprise. At the end of the day, ‘heading directly into the wind’ with your customer is the only real option that you have.”

Bon voyage!