Reprint: R0704B
Shortly after Jim Hackett became CEO of Steelcase in 1994, the office furniture manufacturer introduced two products. The Leap chair was a great success. But the Pathways office cubicle system ran into trouble from the start, plagued by R&D disputes, distribution misunderstandings, and product recalls.
How could a company fail as well as succeed? Hackett traced the root of the matter to something many organizations would see as a virtue: the company’s “can do” attitude. People at Steelcase were not spending enough time thinking things through before they jumped to execute. Hackett set out to transform Steelcase’s “doing” culture into a “thinking before doing” culture.
After much research, he developed a four-part process to give development teams at Steelcase the mental tools, intellectual resources, and time they needed to think a project through to completion. In the think phase, the team finds out as much about a potential project as possible. Team members ask questions, contact experts, do research, and come up with a range of options. In the point-of-view phase, they select the option they will pursue. Once the point of view is formed and cleared with the company, all second-guessing comes to an end and, in the plan-to-implement phase, the group determines the process by which the project will be completed. Only after full-scale practice runs with everyone involved does the project actually go forward in the implementation stage.
It takes a great deal of courage and confidence for people anxious to storm the world to slow down and explore all their options first, Hackett acknowledges. But by bringing thinking and doing into the proper balance, everyone is much better prepared to meet the future.
