Read & Lead

P&G is a training company. It has been conducting on-the-job, formal classroom, and web based training for a long time based on the belief that its success is derived from its people. It has been paying much attention to attracting and recruiting the finest people in the world. P&G provides the various learning program like personal leadership, people and communication, project management and e-learning programs. P&G’s extensive supports for training its people means that it can encourage individuals to develop their competency through high-quality education. P&G’s pursuing the learning organization surely seems to focus on long-term success, not short-term profit. P&G has been clearly concentrated on building a “learning” organization rather than on acquiring the individual personality traits of visionary leadership. That is the outstanding example of clock building.

As the principle put it, organization is the ultimate invention of the clock-building leadership.

[2] 그 기업이 지속적으로 핵심 가치와 핵심목표에 부합하고 있다는 증거 한 가지를 들어 주십시오.

P&G’s core purpose is “provide branded products and services of superior quality and value that improve the lives of world’s consumers. And its core values are “leadership, ownership, integrity, passion for winning, trust”  P&G invests $4 billion each year in research and development (R&D) to achieve its core purpose. This has led to a talent made up of 7500 Ph.D.s and researchers in 71 countries. It also holds more than 24,000 active patents worldwide. P&G was a 1995 recipient of the National Medal of Technology, the highest award the U.S. government gives for achievement in technology.   The award recognized the company for creating, developing, and applying advanced technologies to consumer products that have helped improve the quality of life for billions of consumers worldwide. P&G remains one of only a few companies to have received this recognition. This means P&G continues to live by its core purpose because P&G has been making the most efforts to provide the product of the world-best quality based on the continuous product innovation. And this also means that P&G lives by its core values, passion for winning (compelling desire to improve and to win in the marketplace).

Yes, P&G has a clearly defined core ideology and do every effort to stick to it.

[3] 그 기업이 이익 보다 자신의 핵심 이념을 더 우선하고 있다는 증거 한 가지를 들어 주십시오.

In China, P&G partnered with the Beijing Health Bureau Labor Union. P&G donated 10,000 product packs to families of the front line health care workers, who were helping prevent the spread of SARS. The event touched the hearts of P&G employees, who volunteered to help prepare the product packs. Many P&G people worked through weekends and nights so that the product packs could reach the families before the local holiday, when the separation from the family member would be felt the most. This shows that P&G adheres to its core purpose to improve the lives of the world’s consumers by providing its products to people in need without profit, as well as sales of its product, not being oppressed by the “Tyranny of the OR”. The core ideology of P&G surely represents more than just a bunch of nice-sounding platitude. P&G shows the faithful adherence to its core ideology and That is the good example of “More than Profit”.

Yes, this anecdote shows clearly how P&G adhere to its core ideology.

[4] 그 기업이 핵심을 보존하며 발전을 촉진하기 위해 활용하는 메커니즘은 무엇입니까? 두 가지 들어 주십시오.

   4-1.   Preserve the Core

P&G has long-standing practices of carefully screening potential new hires, hiring young people for entry-level jobs, rigorously molding them into P&G ways of thought and behavior, spitting out the misfits, and making middle and top slots available only to loyal P&Gers who grew up inside the company. Indoctrination processes are both formal and informal. P&G inducts new employee into the company with training and orientation sessions and expects them to read its official biography “Eyes on Tomorrow”, which describes the company as “an integral part of the nation’s history” with “A spiritual inheritance” and “unchanging character”. New hires immediately find nearly all of their time occupied by working or socializing with other members of “the family”. P&G has a long historical track record of paternalistic and progressive employee pay and benefit programs, which bind its people closely to the company. (profit-sharing plan for workers, employee stock ownership plan, sickness-disability-retirement-life-insurance plan) P&G has used these programs not only as a means of rewarding employees, but also as mechanisms to influence behavior, gain commitment, and ensuring tightness of fit. That means P&G translates its core ideologies into tangible mechanisms aligned to send a consistent set of reinforcing signals. And it also indoctrinates people and impose tight of fit, and create a sense of belonging to something special. That is the exact example of “Cult-like Culture”, one mechanism among “Preserve the Core” principles.

You’ve proved the existence of indoctrination process and tight of fit mechanism, showing that you understand cult-like culture which is pivotal in preserving the core.

   4-2.   Stimulate Progress

P&G has the competing brand management structure that P&G brands compete directly with other P&G brands, almost if they were from different countries. P&G already had the best people, the best products, the best marketing muscle. So why not pit the best of P&G against the best of P&G? If the marketplace doesn’t provide enough competition, why not create a system of internal competition that makes it virtually impossible for any brand to rest on its laurels? That means P&G create internal competition in order to keep itself vibrant. P&G has a definite discomfort mechanism in place to combat the disease of complacency that inevitably begins to infect all successful organizations. This is the good example of “Good enough never is”, one mechanism among “Stimulate Progress”.

Yes, brand manager system is a perfect example of GENI translated in the form of “clock”.

Instructor feedback: Yours was a perfect one.

Assessment: E