Disclaimer: These communications are intended for the employees of HB Global. We recognize that the general public will have access. The views expressed in these communications represent Bob Whalen in the context of HB Global and may not apply to broader audiences.
Jim Collins discusses the “Genius of the AND” in his book Built to Last. He explains that visionary companies need to be able to embrace the ability to pursue competing ideas at the same time. This concept can apply in a variety of ways and in various areas of our lives.
HB Global is no exception. In fact, HB Global is a great example of the power of “and” because of how our ESOP structure allows us to focus on creating value and making HB Global a great place to work. This extends beyond our mission to other key concepts in our company, such as safety, our vision, and even Radical Autonomy.
At HB Global, the concept of “and” is crucial to our success and is foundational to the mission, vision, and values of our company. We’ll continue to focus on this in the coming months.
Why Embracing “And” Is Important
It’s often difficult to keep two competing ideas in the same realm of possibility. The difficulty level of this changes depending on the ideas. Some seem impossible to reconcile, while others aren’t so much of a stretch.
When we embrace the power of “and” and try to reconcile competing ideas, we are able to get a little bit better each day. Falling back on “or” can often be used as an excuse to do things the way they’ve always been done or to cut corners. At HB Global, one of our core values is Growth, both individually and as an organization. When we push ourselves to unify competing ideas, we are able to grow rather than being stuck in the status quo.
When we focus on the concept of “and”, we aren’t forced to make tradeoffs. We can pursue two valuable things at once instead of making a choice. Oftentimes, when we really consider two competing ideas, they can work together to help create positive momentum.
We can see this positive momentum take shape in both our mission and our vision.
What This Means at HB Global
Because we’re an ESOP, we can focus on the “and” in our mission of creating value for employee owners and making HB Global a great place to work. While shareholders and employees are separate groups at many companies, employees at HB Global are the shareholders. This means that when we focus on creating financial value for our shareholders, we’re really focusing creating value for our employees.
This allows us to commit to an employee-centric approach to how we do business. We aren’t torn between financial results and taking care of our employees because, for us, these become the same goals. We’re also able to invest the value we create in our employees in other ways, such as educational resources.
The concept of “and” spans beyond our financials and our mission; it applies to a variety of areas within our company. Safety is one of those areas. While safety is our number one priority and we want everyone to go home the way they came to work that day, it is possible for us to be both safe and efficient. For example, an incident and the fallout from an incident create far more inefficiencies than taking 10 minutes to do a toolbox talk. We’ll be talking more about safety in next month’s blog.
Another area where “and” is particularly helpful is in the realm of Radical Autonomy. We can live out our core value of Team while implementing Radical Autonomy. We’ll talk more in-depth about this in July’s blog.
Our decentralized model is another great example of this. HB Global is a parent company to a family of brands. While we aim to have consistency in our overall mission, vision, values, goals, and standards, we encourage decentralization as it relates to our divisions. We know each brand knows their customers, niche, and region best. We ask them to continue on with what makes them unique and align their culture and actions with our overall guidance and expectations as a parent company.
All of this demonstrates how a focus on the power of “and” can enable us to take care of our employees while generating superior financial results.
Bringing Our Vision to Life
“And” is foundational to our vision of creating engaged employees who will create raving fans that help us generate superior financial results, which are in turn shared back to our employees.
