Sounds to me like the management at Novell and WordPerfect had visions.
They communicated them and you heard them. Every person has a vision and
it is communicated in their every action their every question. The problem
the management at Novell and WordPerfect had not taken time to decide what
their vision would be so the employees saw dozens perhaps hundreds of
different visions of the company way. This lack of a conscious choice and
delivering of the vision leaves everyone to decide on their own and good
attitudes then charge in different directions. Causing chaos.
The top level CEO's visions is communicated in the measures used and then
by the actions taken. It can be great when the choice is conscious as at
HP and disastrous as it was at General Motors.
At 03:23 PM 9/30/97 -0600, you wrote:
>My best friend was a VP at WordPerfect (he actually hired me). One night
>at dinner he said to me, "You know, the problem, Ben, is that the
>employees just don't understand WordPerfect's beliefs." I said, "Yep, and
>I'm one of them. Why don't you explain it to me." He did his best, but, in
>the end, he didn't understand them either.
>
>Last year I was giving a presentation to my division and I asked a simple
>question: "How many people in this room know what Novell's values are?" No
>one raised their hand. Then I asked, "How many people have personal
>values?" Every hand in the room was raised. I followed it by asking, "How
>many people use their personal values to make decisions every day?" Nearly
>every hand was raised. One guy, who sensed where I was leading shouted,
>"How are we supposed to know what to do within Novell if we don't even
>know what we value?"
>
>That started quite a discussion. Unfortunately I was not in a position to
>do anything about it. It was a great discussion that lead absolutely
>nowhere.
>
>Benjamin B. Compton
Eugene Taurman
interLinx ilx@execpc.com http://www.execpc.com/~ilx
"What you see depends upon what you thought before you looked."
--Eugene Taurman <ilx@execpc.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>