What Makes the Novus Management System a Great One?

Speaker A One of the most important part for a management system to be successful is to be endorsed and practiced by the people and especially by the senior one. Because the people look up to you if you are blinking. If you blink, it will not be implemented. But if you walk your talk, they will become your agent of changes in the organization. Because they believe there is one thing that people will look very fast when they enter in a company. Whether or not the senior management is real, if you walk the talk, it gives you a lot more credibility in the organization. This is in general now I'm making a point when we initiate new employee to talk about the novice management system. So the requisite organization and how that fits into our way we operate in the organization, why we have key accountability documents, why we have media review, how we do the appraisal, what the role of the manager once removed. Looking across that is the practice that the employer recognizes is important. And seeing me every day, every new session, being there, promoting the cause means a lot to the employer. I believe management is practicing. People look at the manager as an example and that is really Jack's theory. The manager is the real manager, not going around to find the real boss. This is what many structures have many layers and the other one is the manager added value to the subordinate. You will see a good healthy relationship between manager and subordinate when that happened. You will not see a very good relationship when the manager is not adding value to the subordinate or the manager is not accountable for the subordinate output. Hiding why Novus is a beautiful place to be and how we are different from the others? Well, I need to tackle the first one I think because there is passion in what we are doing. There is passion and curiosity, which is contagious. And we try to make the environment, we leave a joyful environment, yet at the same time holding people accountable and b using the noise management system, make sure that everybody understand what the role is in the organization and yet have fun. That to me is the beauty. Personally, personally this has been the dream of my life. So personally to me is a great accomplishment to see there are so many people enthusiastic about working in this place. How this company is different from others. Different unfortunately implies that there is better or worse. Different doesn't mean necessarily that it's just a different way to go about our business. Treat fairly the employee. And there is one other things that I realized today. There is a sense of mission in what we are doing. Our vision is to feed the world affordable wholesome food and people relate to that. They understand that they have a job that is more important for the whole humanity than just send a truck of product to our customers. That is, I think one of the trick that is very important and makes the job of everybody relevant to the whole world. We hired almost 200 people in the last two years so it's a phenomenal pace if you think of a company that is only 300 employee when the 200 were added. So it's a very big hill to climb. The feedback that I receive of the people when they interview them is that freedom freedom to operate, freedom to express themselves but yet in a very systematic way. So within the boundaries of the Qqtr quality, quantity, time and resources so there is an understanding, there is a very important contract between the employees and the company in term of deliverable but not in term of how so you can laugh and yet accomplish what you need to accomplish. I invite every time. At least twice a year, my senior staff at my house, and we go through a very interesting exercise, which is beside the very good food that I gave them. Is that talk to me about the two things that you would like to improve in the company and the one that you think is very good and that keeps everybody on their toes and accept all kind of feedback. There is no censors and we are accepting any feedback and everybody needs to express himself. Since I have a group of people coming from all over the world with different culture I don't want the culture that is passive in the sense or more respectful for hierarchy, not express themselves. So I give the opportunity to everybody to say the two things and when they come back is I want a scorecard reporting back. Have we improved upon or not? What is important to me really is that we make every day we try to make a better company. That's what really I'm interested in. The legacy that we will leave is that we leave a place that is much better than the one we found. Although that one we found was a very beautiful one as well. So that to me is what is very important. Secondly, that the people understand that this is beyond their scope and their mission in the working place is a very big one at any level from the receptionist to the president. The impact that they have in the world it's very important and it's a meaningful impact. It's a positive impact in the world. Second, the third one is people have the possibility within frames to express themselves and themselves to the maximum that their potential capabilities are. And I always sought that for myself because this is me. I always pushed the envelope wherever I went because I have very little boundaries. My creativity comes out but I have a left brain and the right brain. They're working together. Sometimes they fight each other but they work together and that's what I want to instill the people to do and they mode four, they will get to four, they are mode two. They will shrink their job into a mode two. But there is nothing wrong. Companies are run by level two and level three. Those are the ones really doing the work. But we need to identify and make sure that there's a structure in place whereby they will have the possibility to deliver for us. When Theta and I started in our current role that would happen is because we were looking at all these tiers that we had the roles that we had really and we have overlapping four, there were three, three, there were four and all. So that helped to structure. So that was a very good start. Tremendous tool for people that think in term of engineering companies that is incredible by levels, right? You start wearing a different fresh look at the organization then it helps in the recruiting and then it becomes yours. You see, compared again when we were in Monsanto, we are 42, I was a grade 32. So to get to one it was impossible. And what the difference between a 32 and a 33? Hey, nobody could explain to me it was a swag. I know that when you got it to 36 you are the equivalent of a manager. So that was a big deal. But maybe General Atlantic they have very good for sure they have a very good system for the other company to copy. It needs to be easy to be implemented, easy to understand. People need to relate, can relate to this. So it's very simple. You don't need a PhD to understand and people should share and train each other. So that's the beauty of a simple method. People can relate to that. And Alieu Jackson is coming from exactly I'm a vet by training. So the theory is very simple. It's coming from what is your DNA built, that's your cognitive capability, how you look at the time arise and the complexity of task of your company. So what you want to accomplish at different level three months, one year, one to two, two to four and so forth and the rest is easy. I want to share two things with the audience which I think people can relate to or other people that are thinking about implementing this theory. Number one, it has been very simple and I'm coming from a military background myself and has been very simple to embrace conceptually. So that was very worth it because the implementation in a company is really important. If you have a too complicated system, it will slow you down and start to accelerate, which takes me to the advantage. Would we be in the same position we are today without the theory? I doubt, but you never know. It's difficult to rewrite the history. What I can tell you though is it help us to reduce cost along the way and to have better, more logical hierarchy and structure within the organization.