3LINES-Model

The 3LINES-MODEL® covers a company’s STRATEGY, CULTURE and STRUCTURE, the impact on SENSE, WILLPOWER and ABILITY, and the desired RESULT, taking into account the VISION.

Vision

The 3LINES-Model® sees Vision as something all-encompassing, something binding, something which gives inherent meaning.

This meaning should be reflected in all work. It must generate a bond, and add emotional value to daily actions.

Everyone needs and is looking for meaning in their work in order to be able to act in a committed and self-motivated manner.
The stronger the VISION, the greater the enthusiasm for wanting to be part of it.

But a company vision alone is of course not enough. First and foremost, it needs to be embraced by everyone, starting “from the very top”.

A company vision is ideally just one short phrase. A phrase which everyone can memorise and immediately understand.
It applies in all areas of a company. It’s a phrase for the company, and belongs to everyone who works for that company.

The best visions are able to strike at a company’s core, and take all employees along with it.

The VISION often has an explanatory trailer to give it a clear, comprehensive direction.

What else is the VISION for?

To create connections between various company areas

  • As a guiding idea when setting priorities
  • To shape a common, basic idea
  • As a meaningful basis for making changes or decisions
  • As team responsibility, irrespective of hierarchy
  • For a long-term focus in matters relating to STRATEGY, CULTURE and STRUCTURE
  • To support “Corporate Image” and “Employer Branding”
  • To create a joint objective for all kinds of responsibilities
  • For a sense of community following mergers or integration of company divisions

Strategy

Mission

If a company sets itself a VISION, it must and will also ask itself which STRATEGY it will use to implement this VISION.

In the 3LINES-Model, answering this question starts with defining the company’s MISSION. It is seen as part of the strategy, and describes what the company will achieve.

This MISSION forms the basis of all the company’s GOALS, and sets the priority for all activities. Everything the company does must visibly contribute to achieving the GOALS and therefore the MISSION.

The MISSION perfectly covers the following aspects:

  • Who are we on which market?
  • What do we want to achieve on the market?
  • What will distinguish us?
  • What makes us special?
  • What standard do we set ourselves here?

Goals

The concrete GOALS for the years to come – the so-called strategic positioning goals – are derived based on the wording of the MISSION.

All future individual GOALS for each employee emanate from these goals. This ensures that every employee can establish a link between his/her goals and those of the company.

Culture

The “attitude towards life” at work is defined by the manner in which the employees interact with one another when achieving the strategic GOALS.

While the Strategy is determined by the market, this manner is determined solely by the company. If the means of co-operation is not set by the company, it is done so by the employees.

The description of how all persons operating within a company interact with one another at work is called CULTURE in the 3 LINES MODEL.

In the 3 LINES MODEL, the definition of a company culture consists of the concepts VALUES and RULES. First come the VALUES. VALUES in the 3 LINES Model are ethically moral concepts of fundamental importance to the company when it comes to co-operation.

To ensure these values can be seen as they are intended, they are assigned rules.

These rules must be tailored to one another so as to boost the positive effects of co-operation, and allow enough scope as possible for individuality.

A positive culture permeating the entire company is the basis for the motivation known as WILLPOWER in the 3 LINES MODEL.

Structure

The method of co-operation, the CULTURE, is an important success factor in fulfilling the MISSION. It is just as important to define which RESPONSIBILITIES must be met to ensure the MISSION and its derived GOALS can be achieved.

An employee’s importance to a company can be measured by his/her contribution to the company’s success. To be able to make this contribution, each employee must know which contribution and which result he/she is responsible for.

That’s why it’s important to define these Responsibilities.

Fulfilling a responsibility needs SKILLS. When RESPONSIBILITIES and SKILL collide, we get what the 3 LINES Model calls ABILITY. It is the managers’ responsibility to employ staff according to their SKILLS, and promptly ensure, in line with the STRATEGY, that the relevant employee SKILLS are available when needed.

Sense-Willpower-Ability

Establishing the STRATEGY means deciding which actions make SENSE at the company. In this way, actions which don’t follow this SENSE, or whose link to SENSE is unclear, would be senseless.

Based on the fact that WILLPOWER is determined by communicated GOALS making SENSE, cases in which SENSE is not communicated will see self-motivated employees interpret their own SENSE and act accordingly.

If things go well, it means his/her interpretation was right; it not, energy flows in a senseless, possibly even counterproductive direction. If employees tend to notice this more often in retrospect, or are negatively and inappropriately confronted with it, it considerably knocks their motivation, ultimately ending in internal resignation.

As employees are looking for security, they will generally do at least that which is most necessary, or work in such a way that errors remain unseen or cannot be attributed to them. Reassignment of blame, safeguarding emails, reverse delegation and objection to changes are typical symptoms of this.

It is not uncommon for allies to be sought as a way of protecting individual security within the STRUCTURE. SENSE and consequently also WILLPOWER are now geared around keeping everything as it is. Employees only want what they can get.

When companies change their STRATEGY in order to be successful, this almost always requires changes in the STRUCTURE. New RESPONSIBILITIES must be fulfilled, and new SKILLS learned. If an employee’s security lies in the STRUCTURE, this becomes difficult, involves huge effort, and takes too long.

The 3 LINES CONSULTING, TRAINING and COACHING is aimed at the 3 LINES Model’s fields of action. Determining causes and sustainably speeding up change processes at companies are the main focus.

Strategic HR development, which can be planned logically thanks to the 3 LINES MODEL, is uniquely catered to both nationally and internationally by our 3 LINES ACADEMY platform. The ability of providing qualified training for managers, sales staff and service staff at all company levels forms the basis of 3 LINES. We work with our customers to determine what is best for them, and set about implementing this in everyday company operations.

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