The test of an organization is the spirit of performance

The following is from Peter Drucker's Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices. There's not much I can say but, "read this and study it well."

The purpose of an organization is to enable common men to do uncommon things.

           

No organization can depend on genius; the supply is always scarce and unreliable. It is the test of an organization to make ordinary human beings perform better than they seem capable of, to bring out whatever strength there is in its members, and to use each man’s strength to help all the other members perform. It is the task of organization at the same time to neutralize the  individual weaknesses of its members. The test of an organization is the spirit of performance.

The spirit of performance requires that there be full scope for individual excellence. The focus must be on the strength of a man – on what he can do rather than on what he cannot do.

“Morale” in a an organization does not mean that “people get along together”; the test is performance, not conformance...there is no greater indictment of an organization than that the strength and ability of the outstanding man becomes a threat to the group and his performance a source of difficulty, frustration, and discouragement for the others.

"A company that needs business suits to prove its seriousness probably lacks more meaningful proof."

I have never been a fan of dress codes: there's no empirical evidence it leads to higher levels of performance (after all, not a single study on high performance organizations shows a correlation between performance and dress codes).

Furthermore, I am in total agreement with the philosophy of Ricardo Semler, as outlined in his wonderful article, Managing Without Managers. He speaks eloquently to the "rule of common sense" and notes:

 

“…we replaced all the nitpicking regulations with the rule of common sense and put our employees in the demanding position of using their own judgement.

“We have no dress code, for example. The idea that personal appearance is important in a job – any job – is baloney…A company that needs business suits to prove its seriousness probably lacks more meaningful proof.”

'nuff said!