The Self-Management Institute's first webinar on the Colleague
Letter of Understanding (CLOU), the primary tool used at The Morning Star
Company to organize without an org chart, formal hierarchy, job titles or job
descriptions.
Paul Green, Jr. describes the basic elements of a CLOU--Personal
Commercial Mission, Responsibilities and Activities, CLOU Colleagues and
Personal Development Goals. We then address the questions of viewers,
including:
* What are the applications of the CLOU? Employee Reviews?
Daily Reference? Conflict Resolution? Other uses?
* How are CLOUs updated and maintained?
* What do the levels of decisions authority (Decide, Act, and Recommend)
that are discussed in Doug Kirkpatrick's book, Beyond Empowerment,
mean?
* When is an employee ready to compose their own CLOU? What are
typically the greatest challenges for new colleagues within the
enterprise?
* Can anyone hold anyone else accountable based on their CLOU, even if they
are not CLOU Colleagues?
* Do you have any colleagues that are involved in traditional "oversight"
or management functions (for example, coordination of tasks but not execution
of those tasks, or in other words, do your top maintenance colleagues still
"turn a wrench")?
* CLOUs assume that individuals will be effective managers. How does
Morning Star work to ensure that everyone is capable of carrying out the
function of management in an effective way, especially if they have little to
no experience in management?
* How does performance management work? What happens when performance
goes bad and the employment relationship needs to end?
* We have managers now whose job is traditional management/oversight.
In a switch to Self-Management, would they be expected to work alongside
those colleagues who they had previously managed?
* Is there someone who establishes employee benefit programs, compensation,
advancement? Is that part of their CLOU?
