What is The Enterprise Commitment?
Well, it's actually just 20 words, and yes, you can count them. There are 20 words here, and The Enterprise Commitment says this. When working in a team or group environment, I will place the interests of the enterprise ahead of my own, seemingly very simple.
INC magazine was kind enough to call these, the 20 most powerful words in business. I'm not going to disagree, but let's break them down. And see exactly what The Enterprise Commitment is saying, and then we'll look at why it's so important and powerful.
So breaking these 20 words down line by line when working in a team or group environment. What's important to realize is this isn't just about The Enterprise Commitment, it's actually an underlying point that I should make about the whole Visionary Operator Processor Synergist Leadership Styles model. It only has relevance in how you work with teams. That's what we're talking about here is how you show up and work with others. There are a ton of other, usually four Styles type, quizzes that you can take you can go to desk, you can, I could start naming hundreds of them.
Most of those are about you as an individual and can be used as just purely individual learning tools. The Predictable Success Leadership Styles model is all about how teams work. So The Enterprise Commitment is only about you working in a team. Here's the thing. In the world we live in now, certainly in the world of work, whether in a for-profit, not-for-profit, small business, huge business, multinational, two person chop shop, you are working with somebody else 99.8% of the time.
I'm sure that's the nature of modern work. Now, a lot of it is virtual these days, but it's still working with other people. So when working in a team or group environment, we're not just talking about how you show up when you're sitting in a conference room.
If you do ever sit in conference rooms, we're talking about how you communicate on email, on Slack, on Zoom, in the corridor, in passing conversations that's working in a team or group environment. And what The Enterprise Commitment says is 99.8% of the time when I'm in a team or group environment. In other words, there's more than me involved, then I place the interests of the enterprise. What do I mean by that? What are the interests of the enterprise?
It's whatever the thing is we're talking about, If it's launching the new product, if it's building the second factory. If it's starting a new ministry, if it's repainting, the office walls, whatever the thing that we're talking about, small or large, I'll place it ahead of my own interests. Now, by that I mean something in this context, very specific. When I talk about placing the interest of the enterprise, the thing that you're in the team environment talking about ahead of your own, I don't mean ahead of your need for more vacation or a bigger paycheck, or a second cup of coffee, I'm talking about your need to scratch your Visionary or Operator or Processor or Synergist itch.
That's what The Enterprise Commitment says. The Enterprise Commitment says when I'm just doing my own thing, I can scratch my Visionary itch, my Operator itch, my Processor itch, my Synergist itch all I want to, but as soon as I'm engaged with even just one other person, but in any sort of a team or a group interaction, once that happens, my job is not to get what most pleases me, what most fulfills me, what most makes me happy as a Visionary Operator, Processor, or Synergist, my job is to make sure we do whatever is best for the enterprise. And those two things not only are not necessarily going to cohere, they're almost certainly not. The most perfect solution is not the perfect Visionary solution. It's not the perfect Operator solution.
It's not the perfect Processor solution. It's not the perfect Synergist solution. The perfect solution for the enterprise is highly likely some version of a mix of those. So that's what The Enterprise Commitment says. Why is it important?
What does it do? If we begin to try to implement The Enterprise Commitment, well, essentially it's all about shared vocabulary. I could go off on a separate 20 minute rant very easily on just those two words. The vital importance of shared vocabulary in achieving success in any environment. But we've already been using it.
We use words like Visionary Operator, Processor, Synergist, that's a shared vocabulary that helps people communicate in a much more effective manner. And The Enterprise Commitment is a shared vocabulary that does three things that are really, really important. In other words, if your team members as a whole accept and understand The Enterprise Commitment, then three things are going to occur.
First of all, you're going to get much faster and easier conflict management. You're going to achieve much higher degree of alignment within your team, and finally, you're going to make decisions and implement them an awful lot faster. That's what shared vocabulary does, and I want to spend a little bit of time just sharing with you how it specifically does that in terms of using The Enterprise Commitment within your team.
Let's start by looking at how shared vocabulary, how the 20 most powerful words in business, The Enterprise Commitment can help overcome conflict. Well, it works like this. You will have been in team environments probably today at some point, if you're not doing this course very first thing in the morning at which you have sat and thought about some other team member, you're being a pain in the neck.
Like you just look at Joe and you think, Joe, you're such a pain in the neck. Now, let me rephrase. You would never say that, right? You'd never think that. Neither would I, but I'm told that other people do.
But here's the thing that's sort of unhelpful. Joe May well be being a pain in the neck, but expressing that's not going to achieve much. Now, if as I assume you have, you've taken our Leadership Styles quiz and you spent any amount of time with your results, you already will have been using a shift in your terminology.
You'll be using shared vocabulary to think, Hey Joe, aren't you being a bit enter your own Style, aren't you being a bit Processory here, a bit Visionary here, a bit over Operator, a bit too Synergist because that's highly likely why you felt Joe was being a pain in the neck. You're a Visionary Joe's a Processor you don't see the world the way she does. You're an Operator. Joe's a Synergist, the two of you, very little in common. So there's a shift in shared vocabulary when we begin to recognize that not all, but a very large element of interpersonal team conflict is not actually personally based.
It's Styles based and the use of the Styles terminology helps begin to push the rough edges off that interaction and reduce the conflict. But even more powerful is when we start to think and say, what would The Enterprise Commitment have us do here? At this point, we're not pointing at Joe at all. We're simply asking Joe and everybody else in the team to invoke The Enterprise Commitment subtext, start being a little less Processory or whatever the Style is that's being irritating.
And that is a huge de-escalator of conflict. Just try it. We'll talk about in the toolkit how you can circulate The Enterprise Commitment and try it with your team.
I guarantee you, you'll see a reduction in the degree of team conflict when together you start to invoke The Enterprise Commitment. The second thing that will happen is you'll get a huge increase in team alignment. Why is that? Very specific reason. And it's that when you've got the Visionary Processor, Operator, Synergist, all trying to think through and get a solution that satisfies them.
That's trying to square a very big circle or circle a very big square, one or the other. However, whenever we have the enterprise solution as being what we're all looking for, we're all in the same boat. We're all looking for the same thing. We're not each of us looking for the solution that scratches our itch, so we don't have the Visionarys buddying up and lobbying for their solution or the Operators doing the same, or the Processors or the Synergists.
We are all using The Enterprise Commitment to find the one solution that's best for the enterprise, best for whatever it is that we are discussing. And the third thing that the shared vocabulary of The Enterprise Commitment will bring for you is a huge increase in speed. Speed to decision making, speed to implementation. And why is that? It's a version of what we were talking about a little earlier.
You have been in these meetings, you have been in these meetings where everybody is talking at each other. Joe is speaking to Fred because Fred is driving Joe crazy and Joe can't see how Fred's solution would be any help whatsoever. Fred, on the other hand, is trying to square the circle with Greg and so what goes on and so what goes on and so what goes on and we have 20 subtextual conversations going on depending on the size of the team.
Again, if the team together is looking to come up with just one solution. That's the enterprise solution. If we are all trying to find what's best for the enterprise, we're all looking at one thing. We're not trying to reconcile individual solutions that each person comes up with. Try it.
Use The Enterprise Commitment. Distribute it amongst your team, unleash the power of shared vocabulary. Now, I should say one thing. This is not an instant fix. You can't just distribute Enterprise Commitment cards.
Hand them out to the team. Get everybody to memorize these 20 words. Read 'em out at the start of every meeting and expect this to happen immediately. You will find your team drifts back in to that Styles based. Slow ponderous Each person talking to the other person trying to reconcile their solution.
Their Operator solution. Processor solution with somebody else's Synergist solution. Visionary solution. It's natural. Your team has been hardwired to do this for a long time, so you've got to persevere.
You've got to keep formally reminding yourselves as a team, you've got to put training wheels on, make this work over a period of time. Sure, you'll slip back into the old ways, but the more you keep pulling yourselves up and stopping it and actually physically saying, hold on a minute, let's get back to The Enterprise Commitment, then the more you'll begin to build that muscle and the more this will become a permanent way of thinking until it's just an inherent part of how you as teams show up and you'll be amazed at the degree to which new hires, for example, people coming in from another part of the organization, will just be like fish out of water for a while, because this isn't something that's natural and normal. It is something that you need to learn as a team. You need to work at it and build the muscle.