The Secret of Seven Ss
The Seven Ss is formed in the late 1970s and early 1980s to be able to look through organizations and the various factors that helped or didn’t helped them reach the top. This framework is consisted of seven aspects, each beginning with the letter S so it can be memorized easily.
Strategy:
The path which the organization decided to tread for its future growth.
Structure:
The shape in which the the organization is built and how the elements are interrelated with one another.
Systems:
The formal and informal method that guides organization’s daily activities. Also involves the imjplementation if information technology.
Skills:
The talent and knowledge of the people who work for the organization.
Shared values:
Originally referred to as superordinate goals. These are significant principles that inspire the group to work for a common goal.
Staff:
Pertain to the organization’s human resources.
Style:
The employees’ attitude in presenting themselves to other people, particularly to the suppliers and customers.
This framework is a great help for managers who are having difficult time thinking on how to improve their companies. The idea is that companies look into these seven Ss simultaneously. It also gives the impression that not only creating new strategy and setting up new systems can lead to improvements.
These seven Ss were often separated into hard Ss and soft Ss, The hard Ss are consisted of the first three (strategy, structure and systems) while the last four (skills, shared values, staff and style) are the soft Ss. All seven are interconnected with one another so a change in one will influence the others. The good thing is that an improvement in one can lead to the improvement of the remaining six.
The concept of the seven Ss was developed in1960s and 1970s during the progress of Japanese manufacturing company. Some say that Western corporations were better at the hard Ss while the Japanese were firmed in working with all seven which made them triumphant.
In a diagram, these seven Ss are within a circle to depict the equality of the elements. However, Richard Pascale, the theory’s champion, gave a special place for shared values. He referred to this element as the “glue that holds the six together”. The shared values can be placed on the center of the circle because no two companies share the same corporate culture.
Pascale expanded this notion in his work “The Art of Japanese Management”. In this book, he did a comparison between a Japanese company, Matsushita, also known as Panasonic Corporation and ITT, an American management company. His writing proved that behind excellent companies is the coming together of the seven Ss.