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Professor J Hugh Davidson has recently completed a two-year research study on how to make vision and values really work in organisations. He concludes that companies can learn a lot from arts organisations about creating strong commitment, motivating people, and giving substance to brand promises; but non-profits still have much to learn from companies about professional management.

Mark Volpe went to Law School, spent 9 months with a Wall Street law firm, hated it, and became an orchestral manager on 20% of his Wall Street salary. Fifteen years later he was appointed Managing Director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

One of his earlier orchestras was the Detroit Symphony. Very short of funds, it needed $7m. Mark approached local auto-maker, Chrysler, and succeeded in meeting CEO Robert Eaton who told him, ?I won?t give you a nickel unless you develop a strong five year business plan for the orchestra. If you produce a convincing one, we may give you up to $5m?. Chrysler lent Mark Volpe some of its strategy people to help. A strong plan was developed, and Chrysler duly came up with $5m. Mark was then able to raise more funds from Ford and General Motors, and exceeded his $7m target.

This is an example of a company providing both cash and expertise. But perhaps the Chrysler strategy people also learned something. If not, they missed out. There?s an automatic assumption that arts organisations and non-profits can learn from business, but little recognition of the reverse: companies can learn from arts organisations.

The Research

What?s the evidence for suggesting this? My research involved face to face interviews with over 125 heads of well-run companies and non-profits in the USA and UK: companies like BP, FedEx, DuPont, Tesco, Nestlé, Johnson & Johnson and IBM; non-profits like Save the Children, British Red Cross, Greenpeace, New York Philharmonic, Boston Symphony Orchestra, and many hospitals, schools and colleges.

One of the main purposes of the research was to compare the relative performance of companies and non-profits on vision and values management. More hot air has been expended on vision and values than any other management topic. Everyone agrees it is important for organisations to have a clear long-term destination (i.e. vision) which motivates and excites; and a set of practices and behaviours which help them reach it (values). However, 90% of the writing on vision and values either lauds their importance or discusses how to design them. There is little on how to translate statements into reality, so that everyone in the organisation, not just a few people at the top, believes in and practices them. The real test is what people say in the pub after work, not what the Board thinks.

My research was designed to bridge the gap. The output was 7 Best Practices for Making Vision and Values Work, detailed in Table 1.

How does your organisation stack up? If it is typical of the non-profit sector, you will score highly on strong vision, strong values, and branding; less well on embedding and measurement. This was the picture in my research, where non-profits ranked equally with companies overall as Table 2 shows.

Vision, Values, People

Companies scored poorly on strong vision, because their visions were usually neither memorable nor motivating. Some died emotionally many years ago, although the people there still go through the motions, generating sales and profits. They are like the character in Oscar Wilde?s ?The Eighth Day?: ?She died when she was 32, and was buried at 87?. Here are some examples of strong visions, which meet the best practice criteria:

? ?The best care to every patient every day?. Mayo Clinic. The Mayo Clinic, the leading American hospital, was the most impressive of the 125 organisations visited. 30% of its patients are on Medicare, and it never turns anyone away.

? ?To produce the best classical music worldwide by every possible delivery channel?. New York Philharmonic. The NY Philharmonic wants to deliver live performances not just to concert audiences, but also globally through CDs, TV and the Internet. Electronic communication is an important aspect of its future vision.

Non-profits tend to have stronger visions and more deeply held values than companies because that is why people work there. As Peter Melchett, former head of Greenpeace UK, said to me: ?There?s a unity between Greenpeace values and the values of the individuals joining it ? most work here to realise and put into practice their own values through an organisation?. People in non-profits work to achieve visions while those in companies work to maximise their economic assets. Vision and values may help them accomplish this. Gavin Stride, Chief Executive of New Perspectives Theatre Company, takes a similar view: ?We are driven by values, not profits. Our values permeate everything ? the food in our café, the way we talk to people, our programmes. I say to our people, ?If you don?t feel like coming to work today, don?t come??.

Here?s another contrast between business and the arts, drawn by a senior orchestral manager who used to run a large investment bank. The illustration is slightly disguised but retains its essence: ?We had 20,000 employees at the investment bank, now I have just over 100. Both sets of people are very smart, well trained and highly motivated. The difference is in size and style. At the bank you can throw lots of money at people or fire them. Here you can?t do either. The players are on fixed salaries, strongly unionised, and have jobs for life. So my management style tries to fit the different circumstances.?

Common ground

And just to prove it is a mistake to typecast business, here?s a statement about people which may surprise you, from Joe Weller, CEO of Nestlé USA, with sales of over $8 billion, and very successful performance: ?I tell people that their job is not the most important thing. Spiritual life (however defined by the individual) is number one, family and friends number two, job number three and then come hobbies and community service. I really believe that a person with balance in life is much more focused and productive at work?. Joe stands out at 6'8", and so does his bold thinking, which initially took senior colleagues aback.

Another unifying link between most arts organisations is the commitment to artistic excellence. This applied to all three American symphony orchestras interviewed. As Gavin Stride observed: ?If the art is good, no one gives you problems. If it?s not, you get disputes?.

Yet artistic excellence costs money. With government funding in most countries becoming tighter, and competition for funds accelerating, many non-profits have a vision of becoming more financially independent. Funds are needed to expand activities, to involve a more diverse range of communities, to invest in management development, and to improve facilities. Source of funds will remain an important future issue for most non-profits.

Companies may be surprised that nonprofits outperform them on managing their brands. They should not be, because the substance behind many organisation brands today is the commitment and values of their people, rather than technical brand management skills. If the external brand promise does not reflect the internal reality, big problems will ensue. Enron is the latest company to discover this.

Frederick Smith, the Chairman and Founder of FedEx, the express delivery company, illustrates how positive values shape his brand: ?The FedEx brand closely reflects our values. FedEx people deliver the promise of the brand to the market place through their day-to-day performance?

In arts organisations, it is very important for administrators and performers to have shared values. In some, there is a chasm between the two, with performers viewing fund raisers as grubby commercial people outside the magic circle of the performer.

A particular ?people? issue in American symphony orchestras, which makes them very challenging to manage, is the concept of the ?blind audition?. This is mandatory practice. So recruitment is done without interviewing or even seeing people. Each candidate plays behind a curtain, and those who sound best are hired. The positive side is that USA orchestras have lots of women and minority players. The negative is that someone may be a superb player, but very weak on emotional intelligence - egotistical, disruptive and a poor team player. And the players have jobs for life. You can?t fire them and can only buy them out of their contracts. One orchestra still has a player who joined in 1947. Perhaps your management task is easier than this!

In summary, companies can learn a lot from arts organisations about creating strong commitment, motivating people, and giving substance to brand promises.

How To Outperform

Where do companies outperform nonprofits? In information management, personnel systems (recruitment, structure, appraisal and rewards) and measurement skills. The gap is closing, but nonprofits still have much to learn from companies about professional management.

Here are some things you can do to overtake companies in all aspects of vision and values management:

1.Establish candidly who you are and what you stand for. Involve everyone including customers and donors. You can?t decide where to go unless you know where you are now.

2.Develop a future vision which excites and challenges. Test its strength against the Best Practice criteria.

3.Involve all your people in developing vision and values. Win their hearts and minds. Build competitive advantage.

4.Communicate by action, signals and repetition. Words alone don?t communicate ? they just set the standards for judging your actions.

5.Embed vision and values into all practices, behaviours, processes and systems.

6.Develop a distinctive brand proposition for your organisation, which honestly reflects its substance, and sets it apart.

7.Regularly measure how well you are managing vision and values. Talk to colleagues at all levels, to customers, finance providers. Listen, respond, change.

Professor Hugh Davidson is Visiting Professor of Consumer Marketing at Cranfield University School of Management. He has had volunteer experience with prisons, churches, charities and colleges.


His latest book, The Committed Enterprise ? How to make vision and values work, was published earlier this month by Butterworth Heinemann. This details how to apply the 7 Best Practices summarised in this article. e: hughdavidson@compuserve.com