Compensation as a Strategic Asset

CHAPTER 3GROWING THE COMPENSATION PIE: THE BIG PICTURE FACTOR

“All organizations are perfectly aligned to get the results they get.”

—Jim Stuart

No matter how noble or powerful your organizational mission (why your firm exists), that mission (and your long-term vision) cannot be achieved unless you understand the ecosystem that supports it. To achieve your desired results, you must be clear not only about who you are, who you serve, and why but also how you do so. You must create organizational alignment.

Organizational alignment is linking strategy, systems and processes, people and culture, to best accomplish the mission, vision, and desired business results of an organization. Alignment occurs when the above elements are mutually supportive and focused on effective and efficient delivery of results.

The first step is an understanding of why organizations get the good results they get and why they get the not-so-good results they get—and it’s not based on their compensation criteria or methodology. This chapter discusses two organizational models important to accounting firms: the 7S Model and the Organizational Effectiveness Model.

THE 7S MODEL

While employed as a client partner and business developer at FranklinCovey Co., Coral received her first exposure to the company’s performance cycle, later to be called the Organizational Effectiveness Cycle (OEC). She came to understand it as an iteration of McKinsey’s “7S” Model, which illustrates the seven key components of an organization, ...