A physical for your company
How long since you had yours?
© John L. Mariotti 1999
As I was visiting my doctor for my annual physical exam, a conversation occurred that I have not been able to get out of my mind. He asked what I had been doing (he has known me since my corporate executive days), and as I explained, he began telling me about his role as one of the managing directors of their large medical group (85 doctors). By the time we finished, we agreed that we both did much the same thing--he diagnoses and treats physical illnessed and prescribes both treatment and healthier life habits if no illness is evident. When I am not writing this column, or books (or speaking about them), I do the same thing with companies.
The parallels are too striking to miss. First step is asking a lot of questions about history, prior problems, current health issues or complaints, and life hgealth practices like exeercise, diet, etc. The same thing happens when I undertake an advisory assignment. Next he checks my chart, complete with the statistics of a variety of standard tests and measures, and compares them against "normal ranages." Sounds like a review of the financial and operating statements to me.
Brain function: Strategy and plans--instructions to the rest of the bodily functions based on input from sensory organs. Nervous system: Information technology and systems and how well they deliver messages to and from the brain. (reflex checks are just one of these--tap goes the little hammer on the knee, and the foot jumps!) Eyes, ears, nose, mouth: These sense the outside world like a good sales and marketing group should. Listen, look, smell, taste, and feed it all back to the brain for processing and instructions. Arms, hands, legs, feet, and their associated muscle groups: Here is the operations organization--acquiring materials, making things, and then delivering them--converting energy into motion constructively and with purpose. Lungs, digestive system: This is where the resources (money which is transformed into goods and services and/or the energy to run things) are taken in and processed. Waste is filtered out and eliminated here too.
By now, you get the picture. Doctors check the body by doing tests of chemistry, pressure, temperature, reflex action, strength, muscle tone, and by testing the senses--sight, hearing, etc. Analyzing a company uses parallel tests--except the measures and diagnosis is far from as quantifiable. The chemistry of an organization is something an experienced executive can sense, but often not measure (or at least express quantitatively). Sometimes measures like turnover provide some indication, but there are measures that go unused.
Employee surveys, done professionally, and interpreted collaboratively between the professional who administers them and the managers/executives in charge can yield every bit as definite indications of disease or sickness as blood chemistry tests can.
The pressure in an organization usually manifests itself in the stress level within and on the organization. Like the bodily example, the environment is what causes the pressure to be higher than normal in most cases. Fix the environment, and the pressure is reduced. Irritations can be great distractions, like rashes on a body, that are not serious in themselves, but that draw attention away from more serious illnesses (or are the result of some undiagnosed serious illness).
I saved one organ for last--the heart. This organ, and its failure is the leading cause of death among people of nearly all developed societies. When the blood pressure goes up, the blood chemistry goes bad, overweight conditions prevail, and too little time and attention are spent on fitness and replacing fat with muscle, the human organism suffers and often dies.
Such it is also with the modern corporation. The heart of the corporation is its culture, its sense of purpose and meaning, the muscle that contracts and expands thousands of times each hour carrying fuel--blood, nutrients, etc. necessary to keep the brain and the body functioning in a normal healthy manner. The healthy heart is a coordinated and strongly beating one. Fewer stronger beats rather than many small aimless ones make for a strong body. The most highly conditioned athletes, usually have the slowest heart rate, and the fastest recovery to a strong resting heart rate after stressful acitivity.
It is the same with companies. Lots of small, less committed, uncoordinated moves in random directions are like the deadly fibrillation of a heart. Poor flow of blood means the brain and nervous sysstem shut down, and information flow is cut off to the remaining bodily functions. Why, then do so many companies cut off information flow just when the need for it is the greatest--in times of stress. And why do they shift direction over and over, like the fibrillating heart instread of establishing a strong, steady rhythm, pulsing energy and strenght giving nutrients throughout the organism.
Maybe my doctor and I have professions that are not so far apart after all. Perhaps my work of helping companies with "physical exams" and then deciding how to make them healthier is the corporate form of the medical profession. Now, let's see where I put my stethoscope...
