If you aren’t familiar with Edelman’s Trust Barometer project, you should be. I can’t think of any other organization out there that has been able to peel back the layers of trust in the business world as effectively. (If you know of other work I should be looking at, please leave a link in the comments.) Anyway, I want to share some of their findings here because understanding them will help everyone build and grow better companies. This isn’t just a PR topic. It affects everything: Brand management, communications, operations, retail, customer service… everything.
First, the checklist. Below is a graphic that shows 16-trust building attributes every organization needs to be aware of (and gauge). It looks like this year, Edelman added categories (what they call trust performance clusters): Engagement, Integrity, Products & Services, Purpose, and Operations. I can’t poke a hole into this. It’s solid.
Since I am as much a fan of best practices, brand strategy and change management as I am a fan of data, insights and infographics, you can imagine how stuff like this makes me feel like a kid in a candy store.
Here’s another piece of the Trust Barometer project: shifts in trust around the world year over year (YoY). To be clear, the graph does not illustrate consumer trust in the countries listed, but rather how consumers in each of these countries tend to trust companies, media, government institutions and NGOs. (If you think of it as a sort of cynicism graph, the US, the UK, Germany and France are a lot less cynical about all four sectors today than they were a year ago. We’re not out of the woods yet, but it’s a good sign.)
Edelman’s Trust Barometer report for 2013 is summarized really well in this video. (If the link below doesn’t play, click here.) It’s less than 3 minutes long and packed with a ton of really fascinating info, so keep your finger near the pause button. And no, I wasn’t paid by Edelman to push their report or say nice things about them. I ran into this yesterday on the Facebook. I was impressed by it and thought it was well worth sharing with you guys.
What’s particularly fascinating to me:
1) Tech companies seem to inspire the most trust and banking/financial institutions the least amount of trust.
2) Leadership and corporate culture are cited as the primary causes of corporate wrongdoing. (And rightly so.)
3) Globally, CEOs have less than a 50% approval rating. Only 18% of people expect business leaders to tell the truth, and 13% of political leaders to tell the truth. That is execrable.
What it means: a) we have a global leadership problem, and b) people are no longer blind to it. If that shouldn’t trigger a wake-up call, I don’t know what will.
Interestingly, people tend to still trust institutions far more than the leadership of said institutions. In the US, for instance, 50% of people trust business institutions, but only 15% trust their leadership. That’s a 35 point gap. When it comes to government, those numbers fall to 38% and 10% respectively, for a gap of 28 points.
Our trust in people – particularly in those who should be our leaders – is eroding. Fast. This is a major problem and it needs to be addressed. And no, cool Superbowl ads and cosmetic rebrandings won’t fix this. It’s a deeper problem and it is going to take serious, grown-up, deliberate work to fix it.
The only thing I wasn’t super impressed with was the “diamond of influence” and the media clover leaf thingamajigs at the end of the video. It isn’t that they are wrong (they aren’t) as much as they attempt to fix a leadership problem by addressing an operational problem. To use a medical analogy, it’s a little like trying to cure someone’s brain tumor by enrolling them in a social graces class. The solution just doesn’t match the problem.
Here’s a thought: Before you can address changes in operational models, you have to address the gaps in leadership that are the root causes of said operational problems. For instance, if you focus first on working with the organization’s leadership on baking the 16 attributes of trust into their vision for the company and then operationalizing them, maybe you have something that might work. Then and only then do you bring in the diamond and the clover leaf – to address the how of your why and what.
Always match the right solutions to the right problem. Otherwise, your business solution runs the risk of being little more than the corporate version of a cargo cult: a lot of mimicking and parroting, but absolutely no hope of generating real results. If you have a leadership problem, address that. Don’t beat around the bush. Don’t skirt the issue. Address it and fix it. Start with an audit of your organization, using the 16 trust attributes as potential areas of improvement.
Food for thought. Discuss.
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Looking for straight answers to real questions about value, process, planning, measurement, management and reporting in the social business space? pick up a copy of Social Media R.O.I.: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization. The book is 300 pages of facts and proven best practices. (Go to smroi.net to sample a free chapter first, just to make sure it’s worth the money.)
And if English isn’t your first language, you can even get it in Spanish, Japanese, German, Korean and Italian now, with more international editions on the way.
Today in the US is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Whether you choose to make it a day of reflection, a workday like any other or just a day off, take a few minutes to consider the man, his legacy, his wisdom and his sacrifice. He isn’t just a name and a footnote in history. He was a man with a family and dreams and hopes of his own. And if it hadn’t been for an assassin’s bullet, he might still be alive today. (He would have turned 84 last week.)
It boggles the mind that he was only 39 when he was killed.
Management lessons from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (Jan 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968):
Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.
Rarely do we find men who willingly engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.
The time is always right to do what is right.
All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.
Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world better.
Many people fear nothing more terribly than to take a position which stands out sharply and clearly from the prevailing opinion. The tendency of most is to adopt a view that is so ambiguous that it will include everything and so popular that it will include everybody. Not a few men who cherish lofty and noble ideals hide them under a bushel for fear of being called different.
The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.
We must use time creatively.
A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.
Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.
If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.
Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?’
The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.
Human salvation lies in the hands of the creatively maladjusted.
Looking for straight answers to real questions about value, process, planning, measurement, management and reporting in the social business space? pick up a copy of Social Media R.O.I.: Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in Your Organization. The book is 300 pages of facts and proven best practices. (Go to smroi.net to sample a free chapter first, just to make sure it’s worth the money.)
And if English isn’t your first language, you can even get it in Spanish, Japanese, German, Korean and Italian now, with more international editions on the way.
Here are a few lessons Gaius Julius Caesar might have taught us were he alive today. He ultimately met a pretty brutal end, but until that point, the guy was so successful that his last name became synonymous with “Emperor”. (Point of note: the titles “Czar” and “Kaiser” come from the name “Caesar.”)
1. Six inches of point beats two feet of blade.
The Roman legions conquered most of the known world using javelins and the standard issue short-sword called a Gladius. Contrary to what you may have seen in the movies, the gladius was a stabbing weapon, not a hacking/slicing weapon. Compared to long swords and battle axes wielded by barbarian hordes, the gladius seemed a child’s weapon: Short and dagger-like, not particularly good at slicing. Yet its six inches of stabbing point beat its longer, scarier counterparts in battle. Why? Because the Roman legions were trained to use it properly.
What the Roman legions knew (and the barbarian hordes – including my own people, the Gauls didn’t) is that flailing wildly with long, heavy weapons forces you to commit too much to each attack. Swinging a heavy weapon opens up your guard just long enough for a legionnaire to thrust his gladius from behind a wall of shields and take you down. Not to mention the energy efficiency of a quick thrust vs. a wide swing. Legions used less energy in battle than their ill-trained counterparts, which allowed them to fight longer, thus giving them the ability to win against 2:1 and sometimes 3:1 odds.
Sometimes, the difference between effectiveness and failure lies in how expertly a tool is used. Bigger and better doesn’t guarantee success. Fluency and expertise in the use of very specific tools, however, can turn an apparent disadvantage into a win. A well trained operator with a simple tool can be much more effective than a less well trained operator with an expensive, more impressive tool. Never take training, focus and discipline for granted.
2. People want to be led, not controlled.
While Julius Caesar was in command of his legions, he was hailed as a hero. His men would have followed him anywhere (and did). Why? Because he led them to victory and glory.
When he returned to Rome after defeating his rival Pompey, Caesar tried to rule Rome as a dictator. That didn’t work so well. In shifting from leadership to absolute control, he stepped over a line that the people of Rome – and even his closest allies – refused to cross with him. The result: Julius Caesar was assassinated by a group of senators bent on making an example of his death to any future would-be dictators. The lesson: Leadership = good. Control = bad.
Leadership implies direction. It promises a better tomorrow. It engages and fascinates and inspires. Control, however, is a crushing weight on liberty that no man ever accepts freely. Control breeds resentment and hatred. It fosters discord and revolution. Be aware of the difference and how your leadership/management style is perceived by the people under your charge. Aim to lead, never to control.
3. “I came, I saw, I conquered.”
A) Everyone loves a winner. The ingredients of leadership may be a brew of courage, vision and intelligence, but its flavor and appeal are the wins. It isn’t enough to be a leader. You have to prove it again and again by pulling off some key victories. Winning gives you something to talk about. Not winning means you should talk less and work more.
B) Brevity goes hand in hand with clarity. It doesn’t get much clearer than “I came, I saw, I conquered.” Even in twitterland, that leaves you more than enough room to add a hyperlink to a PDF that elaborates on such a succinct report.
4. “Experience is the teacher of all things.”
Books are nice. They’re a start. But at some point, you have to DO the thing. You have to build the business. Grow the business. Win market share. Outpace your competitors. Recruit the best minds. Create the culture-changing products. Fix the accelerator glitch. Stop the giant underwater oil leak. Rejuvenate your brand. Redefine your market. This stuff isn’t theoretical. You have to roll up your sleeves and learn the hard way what works and what doesn’t.
Julius Caesar learned soldiering with the rank and file of the Roman legions. He fought in the front lines, shoulder to shoulder with legionnaires. He slept with them, ate with them, drank with them, marched with them and bled with them. Had he not spent years in the trenches doing the work himself, he would not have been the military leader he became. “Experience is the teacher of all things.”
The subtleties of experience trump the best theoretical education in the world. Books will only get you started. You have to go the other 90% of the way through hard work. There’s just no getting around it. If you can’t learn how to be a race car driver by reading books, you certainly can’t learn how to lead an army of run a business that way either.
As for Social Media “certifications,” forget about it. Training (even what I can teach you at Red Chair events) will only get you so far. The only way to get good at something is to do it, and do it and do it until it becomes second-nature. Experience trumps instruction.
Say it with me, out loud so the whole class can hear you: There are no shortcuts.
5. “Cowards die many times before their actual deaths.”
Be bold. Take chances. Don’t hide. Every time you don’t speak up in a meeting, every time you let some jerk at the office take credit for your work, every time you hold off on releasing a product or green-lighting a bold campaign, you are building your house with faulty, weakened bricks.
Winning, being successful, beating the competition isn’t achieved by playing defensively. Every win is a succession of decisions that imply risk and take courage. Likewise, every failure is a succession of decisions marred by fear and cowardice. Learn this.
The same rules apply to your online presence: If you want to find your voice in the blogosphere and on the twitternets, have the courage of your convictions. Speak your mind, even if what you have to say may earn you a few frowns. It is easy to feel pressured by some well-followed “personalities” to keep your mouth shut or not speak against the grain. Don’t let yourself be intimidated. Your opinion is as valuable as theirs, and your point of view just as worthy of expression. Being blackballed by a handful of self-important bloggers isn’t the end of the world. Better to know who your friends and enemies are than to live in fear of retaliation. Speak your mind. Find strength in courage.
Build your house, one courageous decision and action at a time.
6. “I had rather be first in a village than second at Rome.“
Some folks are just happy to be there. Others are okay with being top 5. Others yet are content to be #2. Leaders don’t fit into any of these categories. They want to be #1. It’s a personality trait, nothing more. It can’t be faked or learned. You’re either this type of person or you aren’t. Bill Gates wasn’t interested in being #20, so he started Microsoft. Steve Jobs: Same story. Sir Richard Branson: idem. The great leaders of history, whether in antiquity or in our time all share a similar personality trait: #2 is not an option.
Same thing with companies and brands: Would you rather be #1 in a niche market or #3 in a broad market? Which holds the greatest value? Ask Apple where they went with that. Ask Microsoft where they went with it. It isn’t a question of which is the better choice. The question is more personal: Which is the better choice for you?
Note: Incidentally, in the world of Social Media platforms, there is no #2. You’re either #1 in your category, or you are on your way out. In this world, velocity and scale win.
7. “It is not these well-fed long-haired men that I fear, but the pale and the hungry-looking.”
The competition is the hungry kid with an idea, ambition and nothing to lose. Thirty years ago, they were Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Five years ago, they were Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams. Who’s next? Who will crush Big Advertising? Big Web? Big Print? Big Software? Big Consulting? Big Energy?
If you’re the industry leader, don’t look to your biggest competitors. Instead, look to the kids with the brains, the vision and the huevos to redefine your category and make you obsolete. Likewise, if you’re one of those kids, don’t let the big dogs intimidate you. If you have a better idea, fight for it. Make it happen. Don’t settle for what’s comfortable. Fight. The old guy playing golf with his CEO buddies every other day, he’s given up.
In the long run, my money is always on the hungry young wolf, not the fat one taking a nap in the sun.
8. “It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life.”
It is better to be a pioneer than a student. Go where no one has gone. Until Julius Caesar marched into Gaul and made it a Roman territory, it was a wild and savage land Rome feared would never be tamed. He had a vision of what could be, and he made that vision a reality.
Henry Ford had a vision. So did Walt Disney. So did the United States of America’s Founding Fathers. So did Steve Jobs, Howard Schultz (yes, I know, he wasn’t the original founder, but he was the one who made Starbucks “Starbucks”), Bill Bowerman, and Branson. Every brand of note, from the Roman Republic to The Beatles focused on creating and building, not just on learning. Learn all you want, but then do something with what you’ve learned. Contribute. Create something of value. Even if it is just a #chat, an idea, a YouTube video, a blog post, a presentation or an app. Create something. Anything.
9. Ask everything of your people, but reward them like kings.
The men who served in Julius Caesar’s legions and survived to the end retired wealthy. Never forget whose work really made you successful. Your employees, your friends, your business partners, your customers… Everyone who contributed to your success deserves more reward than you can afford. never lose sight of that. Executives who treat lowly employees like cattle are epitomes of stupidity and arrogance. In sharp contrast, executives who treat every employee with respect and gratitude are all win in my book. Strive to be the latter, and don’t skimp on rewards. Look a little further than the proverbial gold watch when trying to reward loyalty. Rise above institutional apathy. Yes you can.
Same with twitter followers and blog readers. If they buy your book, if they come see you speak, if they help you in any way, take the time to do something for them. Strive to give back more than you receive.
10. “The die is cast.”
Make decisions. Live with those decisions. It’s that simple. Once you’ve committed yourself and your business to a course of action, to a play, to a tactical path, you’re committed. The time for doubt or indecision is gone. Stay the course and brave the storm. It’s all you can do.
Leadership isn’t for everybody. It takes nerves of steel, sometimes. It’s hard on the soul.
When you fail: Accept responsibility for the failure, learn from it, dust yourself off, and try again. No need to dwell on what you can’t change. Focus on what you can change.
When you succeed: Reward your people and give them all the credit. Don’t stop and rest, though. When you’re winning is when you should keep advancing. Winning is 100% about momentum. Never forget that.
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Want to help improve business through your digital programs? Pick up a copy of Social Media ROI – Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in your Organization. It was written to teach managers and executives how to build and manage social media friendly business programs and incorporate social technologies and networks into everyday business operations. The book is divided into four parts: social media program strategy & development, social media program operationalization, social media program management, and best practices in measurement and reporting. If your boss doesn’t yet have a copy, time to fix that. If everyone on your team doesn’t yet have their own copy, fix that too. No bullshit. Just solid methodology and insights. It makes for a great desk reference.
(Now translated into a bunch of languages including German, Korean, Japanese and Spanish.)
Today, instead of talking about social media, brand management, internet bubbles, who does what well and who does what poorly, let’s just talk a little bit about leadership. Corporate leadership, that is. Why? Because every single problem and dysfunction holding back an organization stems from poor leadership. Every. Single. One. Without exception. Hiring executives with obsolete skills to build new business models, not understanding how to properly leverage social media, getting dragged into a botched IPO, promoting risk-averse managers to leadership positions, expecting that the $10M a year you dropped on Facebook advertising will sell $100M worth of cars… That sort of thing.
Instead of doing all the talking, I will let people with a whole lot more experience than me give you some tips about how to become a better leader. Great stuff that transcends the typical leadership quotation mill.
Anne Mulcahy – Former CEO of Xerox
In a crisis, you have the opportunity to move quickly and change a lot – and you have to take advantage of that.
Change doesn’t happen if you don’t work at it. You’ve got to get out there, give people the straight scoop, and get buy-in. It’s not just good-looking presentations; it’s letting people ask the tough questions. It’s almost got to be done one person at a time.
There’s not a lot of room anymore for senior people to be managers. They have to be leaders. I want people to create organizations that get aligned, get passionate, get really inspired about delivering.
Stories exist at every level of the company. Whether it was saving a buck here, or doing something different for customers, everyone has a story. That creates powerful momentum – people sense that they’re able to do good things. It’s much more powerful than the precision or elegance of the strategy.
I communicate good news the same way I do the bad news. I thank people and make sure they feel a sense of recognition for their contribution. But the trick is always to to use the opportunity to talk about what’s next, to pose the next challenges. Where do we want to go? How do we want to build on it?
Margaret Heffernan – Author, The Naked Truth
Nothing kills morale like a staff’s feeling helpless. This often plays itself out when there are rumors of a new strategic shift or a major personnel move, or worse, when the papers are littered with bad news about your company. A big part of boosting morale is about constructing a haven of logic that offers individuals shelter from any storm. At its most basic, leaders have to communicate their awareness of business conditions and place their plans in that context. Each time [a CEO outlines] a future that comes true, he demonstrates his own competence and reinforces trust.
The happiest people aren’t the ones with the most money but those with a sense of purpose – a sense that they are contributing to something bigger than themselves. At least some of this has to derive from work. The purpose of a business, then, must be explicit and go beyond boosting the share price or fulfilling some bland mission statement. People want to believe that they are part of something meaningful. The sense of purpose doesn’t have to be grandiose or revolutionary, merely credible and anchored in values.
Purpose is achieved through goals, and the acid test for any leader is defining the appropriate ones. Too small, and celebrations soon ring hollow. Small goals breed cynicism. But too-big goals produce helplessness. Although it can be temporarily thrilling to rally around a big corporate slogan like “kill the competition,” the reality is that employees can’t do it alone and they can’t do it quickly.
Alignment between corporate goals and personal development has never been more critical. The more unpredictable the outside world, the more urgent the personal quest for self-determination. What employees look for in leadership is a sense that their personal journey and the company journey are part of the same story. When these goals aren’t aligned, employees tend to whine with others, eager to share their sense of anger and injustice, polluting morale. The only way to combat this and get back on track is proper feedback. Give employees the tools to influence their own fate.
Get a life. Keeping morale high is like being on a diet: It requires constant effort and is never over. New ideas, stimuli and motivation come from all around you. It’s the larger life, after all, that gives purpose to the climb.
Alan Deutschman – Senior Writer, Fast Company – writing about how IBM builds new businesses
Look for opportunities that can become profitable [billion-dollar] businesses in five to seven years. You’ll probably find them by talking to customers rather than to brilliant researchers in the labs, who are are looking further ahead.
J. Bruce Harreld – IBM
You want to celebrate failure because you learn something. You need some level of security to say ‘I screwed it up,’ and be comfortable that you won’t be fired.
Marcus Buckingham – Author, Break All The Rules
Turn anxiety into confidence. For a leader, the challenge is that in every society ever studied, the future is unstable, unknown, and therefore potentially dangerous. By far the most effective way to turn fear into confidence is to be clear – to define the future in such vivid terms that we can see where we are headed. Clarity is the antidote to anxiety, and therefore clarity is the preoccupation of the effective leader. If you do nothing else as a leader, be clear.
Effective leaders don’t have to be passionate, charming or brilliant. What they must be is clear – clarity is the essence of great leadership. Show us clearly who we should seek to serve, show us where our core strength lies, show us which score we should focus on and which actions we must take, and we will reward you by working our hearts out to make our better future come true.
See? Told you these folks know what they’re talking about.
Thanks to Fast Company‘s March 2005 issue for providing much of today’s content. (My collection is… extensive.)
Cheers.
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Social Media ROI – Managing and Measuring Social Media Efforts in your Organization isn’t a social media book. It’s a business management book, and it focuses on social media program strategy, management, measurement and reporting. If your boss doesn’t yet have a copy, time to fix that. If everyone on your team doesn’t yet have their own copy, what are you waiting for?
The more I watch Gordon Ramsay‘s UK-based shows, (not just Kitchen Nightmares but The F-Word as well) the more I notice similarities between the types of problems that plague struggling restaurants and the types of problems that plague struggling businesses. The problems are always the same (and by default, the solutions as well). Here are four of the most common parallels I have found exist between what I have watched him deal with on his various shows, and what I run into in the business world:
1. Without exception, poor leadership is at the heart of every business problem.
The Navy SEALs have a saying: “There are no bad boat crews, only bad leaders.”
They’re right.
We are social animals, like bees, ants and wolves. In order to function properly in crises, we need a leader. Forget about the notion of flat organizations for a moment, and of theoretical “everyone is the boss and no one is the boss” ideals. Sure, it’s a nice thought and in some instances, that sort of perfectly flat structure can work. But eventually, circumstances will call for leadership. Why? Because for better or for worse, we are wired that way. In crises, we crave structure. Without it, armies cannot function on a battlefield, restaurant kitchens cannot function, businesses with more than 5 people cannot properly coordinate purchasing, inventory, marketing, budgets. Someone has to own certain functions. Someone has to steer the ship. Someone has to say “let’s do it” and “no, we aren’t going to do that.” Someone has to be lead the way.
Look at the US. Free country, right? And yet its citizen willfully elect leaders, give them the power to make policy decisions that will affect every aspect of their lives, from the amount of taxes they pay to what they are allowed to smoke in their own back yards. Instinctively, human beings know that without leadership, without an authority structure, there can be no organized society, no functional organization, and perhaps more importantly, no forward momentum.
Look at any stalled organization in the world, from a small mom & pop restaurant in Devonshire to a nation the size of the US: Stagnation, uncertainty, lack of direction, these always stem from an absence of clear leadership. It doesn’t matter whether the catalyst for the problem was a new restaurant opening down the street or the economy or a hurricane. Obstacles and challenges are just part of the landscape. What you do to get through (or around) them starts and ends with adequate leadership.
Watch enough Gordon Ramsay shows and you will notice a universal constant: Every restaurant in trouble has a leadership problem. The owner might be too busy trying to be everyone’s friend in the front of the restaurant to actually run his business, or the chef might be an incompetent bully. It doesn’t matter. Whatever problem exists stems from that. Dirty bathrooms, brought-in food, rancid meat in the fridge, lousy service, burnt desserts. Leadership. Or a lack thereof. The same is true of every other type of organization and business: A boss who skirts his responsibilities and expects things to happen on their own isn’t leading. He is just playing a part.
If a new hire sucks at their job, whose fault is it? (Who hired them? Who hired the person who hired them? Who hired the person who hired the person who hired them?) If a project team is stalled and things aren’t moving forward, whose fault is it? Who owns that project? Who is holding them accountable?
Who sets the example? Who makes sure things get done? Who makes sure things are done right? Who sets expectations for the entire business? Who is in charge here?
Before an organizational dysfunction can be resolved, hierarchy has to be clearly reviewed for imbalances. Leadership at every level has to be established, starting from the top. Leadership has to be clarified, expressed and put into action. Not just once per month or quarter, but every moment of the day.
Until you fix the leadership piece, nothing else matters. You can pump funding into the organization, give them new equipment, new marketing, 25% new customers overnight, it won’t matter. 2 months from now, the same problems that existed before the upgrades will still be there, and they start at the very top. Either the wrong person is steering the ship, or that person doesn’t really have what it takes to be there. Tough decisions ahead.
Things a leader has to be able to do on their own:
– Give every action purpose.
– Articulate vision into strategy.
– Transform strategy into action.
– Get employees to completely commit to their responsibilities.
– Make employees want to give their absolute best.
– Stand for something. (It inspires loyalty.)
– Lead by example.
– When something isn’t working, step in, roll up sleeves, and fill the gap in the chain.
– Show people who don’t want to be there the door.
– Give people a reason to be proud of what they do, no matter how far they are from the C-suite.
– Choose work over golf.
– Take a pay cut before laying off good employees.
– Take responsibility for every failure.
– Understand that delegation is only a short walk from abdication.
– Give truth a platform, no matter how inconvenient it may be.
A leader in denial isn’t a leader. He’s a drunk driver pretending to be sober, driving his car and everyone in it into a ditch.
2. Passion is the fuel of excellence. Whether tanks run on full or on empty, this is the stuff that’s in them.
Fuck “motivation.” Motivation comes and goes. I can motivate a team of salespeople with a cash bonus. I can motivate a bored subordinate with the threat of being demoted or fired. I can motivate someone with a kind word or a pat on the shoulder. Sure, motivation is needed at regular intervals, but at some point, if people don’t learn to motivate themselves, “motivating” people in an organization becomes a full time job.
Those inspirational posters and smarmy motivational calendars with their quotes of the day, rip them down, walk out into the parking lot and set them on fire. They’re shit. Not only do you not need them, they’re holding you back. They’re teaching you that motivation comes from cliché wisdom and that it can be purchased like a get well card. If you have passion for what you do, you don’t need someone to motivate you. The minute you start believing it, the minute you start putting your faith in “inspirational” products (and that is precisely what they are), is the moment you decide to let go of your own future.
I was asked not long ago to give a motivational speech to a team of executives. The mere notion of this blew my mind. A motivational speech? Me? It isn’t what I do. And to deliver this “speech” to people who make an incredibly good living working for a successful company when millions of people can’t find jobs seemed all the more absurd. I told the event manager that I had no idea what to say to these people, that I am not a motivational speaker, that he had the wrong guy. But the more he explained the predicament they were in, the more I felt like I needed to find some way to help them, even if it meant finding a way to “inspire” them.
This was new territory for me. My first instinct was to drag them by the ear to a soup kitchen or a social services office and tell them to take a good look, then thank their lucky stars that they had the option of needing someone to help them become motivated. I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. Why did these “leaders” need someone to infuse them with motivation? It pissed me off. Fortunately for everyone, I got over it.
Long story short, I didn’t give them a motivational speech. Instead, I taught them how to do stuff. I laid out some of the puzzle pieces for them and, together, we put them together. Then I showed them how to finish the puzzle on their own. I gave them something to do and gave them a reason to do it. I removed “motivation” from the equation completely. The motivation came from doing things that yielded results. In other words, we did the work that needed to be done.
The point being this: If I have to motivate someone to do their job every day, why are they here to begin with? Teach someone how to make a living doing what they love (or to give them a reason to love what they do for a living) and you will never have to motivate them again. Ever.
Watch enough Gordon Ramsay shows, and you will start to notice that many restaurateurs in trouble suffer from a certain form of defeatism and apathy. Sooner or later, if Gordon asks them the most pitiful question in his repertoire – “what happened to you?” – they will admit that they have “lost their passion.” They’ve gotten so caught up in the details, in the negatives, in the seemingly challenges of their profession that they have forgotten how to love it. If he can reignite that passion, they stand a fighting chance. If he can’t, they’re done. The restaurant won’t survive.
There is no gray area here. Passion vs. no passion. Success vs. no success. (And by ‘success’ I don’t just mean a fat paycheck.) It isn’t rocket science. The two are indivisible. The more child-like and visceral the passion, the higher the octane, the farther it will drive you, your project, your idea, your company.
There’s an honest conversation that needs to happen between a boss and an “unmotivated” employee (or between a consultant and a client), and it centers around passion. The question is this: Why are you here? “The pay is good” is an honest answer, but it is not a good answer. Same with “beats the hell out of working at Orange Julius” and “Too many content strategists and social media gurus in the marketplace already.”
Imagine asking your spouse “do you love me?” and having her answer “you make a good living, I feel financially secure, and I like living in our house.” Good luck building something worthwhile out of that. It isn’t so different in business.
If you don’t understand what someone is passionate about, you don’t really know them. Sure, when you hire them, you can take a look at their resume and see where they have studied and worked, but you have no idea who they are. Too many companies hire resumes and CVs, bullet-list snapshots of someone’s past. Not enough companies hire people based on who people are and what they are passionate (and not passionate) about.
A few years ago, I was asked to hire someone for a newly funded position. For the next few months, I found myself suffering through a battery of applicants, each one more full of shit than the next. They wanted the job because of the pay and security. No one wanted the job because it was interesting or fulfilling (at least to them). I remember one woman in particular, when I asked her what she was passionate about, giving me this for an answer: “I am really passionate about people.”
What does that even mean?
I asked her. She nervously repeated her answer: “I am really passionate about people.” I asked her to elaborate. She had a hard time. Finally, she managed to articulate what she meant: “I love helping people, making their day, making them smile.”
“And you want to cold-call SMBs all day and try to sell them software?”
Wrong job for her. Wrong direction. She was never going to be happy doing this. She would be burned out inside of six months, desperate for a new job somewhere else.
Remember the Navy SEAL saying about boat crews and leaders? Here’s the detail that makes it work: SEALs are all volunteers. They want to be there. BUDs‘ (the grueling series of training evolutions during which future SEALs are selected from a pool of volunteers) primary purpose isn’t to train. It is to test. Not to test in terms of scores and aptitude, mind you, but to push volunteers to ask themselves how much they are willing to endure to do the job. If anyone isn’t truly passionate, desperately passionate to be there, they will allow themselves to fail or they will ring out. If all they want is the prestige of displaying the trident on their pretty uniform, they won’t make it. The selection process is designed to weed out the volunteers who are there for the wrong reasons. The real reward for surviving another day isn’t status or high pay or prestige. It is more pain, more hardship, more discomfort. How much are you willing to bleed for what you are passionate about?
Official US Navy Photo
While the SEAL example lies on the extreme edge of the spectrum when it comes to pursuing your passion, the principles it illustrates apply to every occupation in the world. Yes, you can be passionate about being a fry cook. Yes, you can be passionate about picking tomatoes or being a cashier or shoveling turkey shit on a farm. It’s a mindset, nothing more.
Here’s another little secret: Whatever you end up doing, whatever profession you end up pursuing, it’s going to be hell. Being a Navy SEAL isn’t about jumping out of helicopters and being movie-cool. It’s about freezing your ass off on the butt end of the world and going days without sleep or food. It’s about enduring hardships and discomforts that no other human being would be crazy enough to put themselves through. It’s miserable. Likewise, being a writer condemns you to a life of psychological and emotional hell. Whatever self doubts you have, multiply that by a thousand and you still won’t come close to understanding how difficult it is to sit there day after day and fill up blank page after blank page. It doesn’t matter what the job is: Actors, musicians, copywriters, photographers, salespeople, product managers, engineers, chefs, firefighters, EMTs, if they’re worth a damn, they all bleed for their passion. They suffer for it every day.
The more passionate you are about something, the more you are going to give up for it, the more it’s going to make you bleed. And here’s the key to it all: The more you’re willing to bleed for it, the more you will. It’s just how it works.
Last night, I was watching an episode of the F-Word (Season 5, episode 5) in which the UK’s two best local Thai restaurants went head to head in a 3-course contest. One of the two chefs, Chef Patria, talked about what she does. Check it this out.
Here it is on Youtube if your device can’t read BBCAmerica’s video. Fast-forward to 3:23 and listen to how Chef Patria talks about what she does.
“I cook with my love, my care, my passion. Everything, my heart, I put into every single dish.”
Fresh ingredients. A passion for perfection. An obsession with quality. It isn’t just a job. It’s a calling.
Is she an extreme case? A woman who has no time for a husband, children, a life outside of her work, whose last day off was Easter a year ago, who only sleeps 5 hours per night? A dragon lady whose energy in the kitchen would probably drive away 99% of foodservice workers in the US?
Yes. She is an extreme case. And that is precisely why she is exceptional at what she does. Does she truly need to work that hard 24/7 to be as good as she is? Probably not. But she loves what she does so much that she chooses to go all-in. This is commitment. This is passion. This is what complete commitment to one’s art looks like.
The world’s best fighters train and work that hard. So do the world’s best surgeons, athletes, musicians, actors, artists, and warriors. Why? Because distraction is weakness. Distraction is resistance. Anything that doesn’t strengthen them in their craft makes them weaker. For people in pursuit of excellence, working at it 8 hours per day then going home amounts to 1/3 commitment. To them, being 1/3 as good as they want to be amounts to engineered failure.
How hard are you training to become the best at what you do? How hard is your boss working at being the best at what he does? (Or should I be asking about his golf game instead?)
Later in the show, when Gordon jokingly asks chef Patria if she is as demanding with men as she is in the kitchen, her answer is simply this: “No compromise.”
Her restaurant wins the day’s contest and jumps to the top spot in the overall competition.
No compromise.
If you truly love doing something, doing it half-assed doesn’t cut it. You want that Superbowl ring? Work harder. No compromise. You want 6-pack abs by next June? Work harder. No compromise. You want to make consumers choose you over the competition? Work harder. No compromise. You want to be the best CEO the planet has ever seen? Work harder. No compromise.
That’s passion. Passion knows no middle ground. There is no such thing as a warm flame. It is either hot or it is out.
The death of passion in any business, from a small restaurant in Devonshire, UK to a global super-brand means the death of forward momentum, the death of quality, the death of every single competitive advantage fought for in the past. If you cannot reignite passion in a company’s leader, nothing else you do will yield results. Just like a chef who isn’t passionate about food can’t make a restaurant be successful, a CEO who isn’t passionate about what he does cannot make his company kick ass.
3. Sugar-coating the truth is for suckers.
tomfishburne.com
When a ship is sinking, every minute counts. This means that every interaction counts. Why sugar-coat the truth? Why perpetuate belief systems that have led to mediocrity or failure? If product quality sucks, it sucks. Say it, own it, try it on for size. Find out what it feels like to have allowed a crappy product to hit the market under your watch.
Remember when you were in school and you came home with a D- or an F when you didn’t apply yourself? Remember when you lost the game because you didn’t train hard enough or give your teammates 100% oeffort? There’s a brutal honesty that comes with keeping score. More empty seats than customers at your restaurant: That’s your way of keeping score. Bad reviews in the newspaper or on Yelp!: That’s your way of keeping score. Stalled market share quarter after quarter: That’s your way of keeping score.
When I ran track in high school, that quarter-mile oval was the ultimate arbiter of my dedication to the team. The clock doesn’t lie. When I was on the rifle range in Lorient, my groupings on the target didn’t lie. You’re either getting faster or you aren’t. You’re either hitting your mark or you aren’t. There’s no sugar-coating on the field of battle. You succeed or you fail. You win or you lose. That’s it.
If half the fun of watching Gordon Ramsay’s shows is to watch him rip restaurants apart and yell at incompetent chefs, the real value of his apparent meanness is this: Gordon Ramsay isn’t there to make people feel good about failure. His objective is to fix restaurants in trouble. You don’t do that by wrapping the cold hard reality of failure in a blanket of warm euphemisms. If something sucks, it sucks. If something rocks, it rocks. Honesty, even when it comes across as being brutal, forces people who are living in denial to face the truth. is it a shock to the system? Yes. It is meant to be.
To many TV viewers, it seems that Gordon Ramsay is nothing but a loudmouth, pretentious asshole. The reality of it is that he has figured out that success and positive results are infinitely more valuable to confidence, self esteem and professional pride than platitudes and bullshit. In that context, sugar-coating bad news only prolongs mediocrity, failure and pain.
You want the good news or the bad news? The bad news is, your business sucks because of you. The good news is, you can turn it around, but you are going to have to take responsibility and start giving a shit.
That’s reality, and if it needs to be brutal, then it needs to be brutal. Deal with it.
If your job is to carry out orders, you’re off the hook. But as a consultant, as a therapist, a coach, an officer, a chef, a food critic, a leader, you don’t help anyone by injecting the truth with little white lies. Is it often the politically sound thing to do? Yes. And if your job, your next promotion or your contract is more important to you than actually doing your job (assuming your job is to fix a problem), then fine: cover your own ass and become part of the problem. On the other hand, if you are passionate about what you do, if you want to see real results, if the interests of your client or boss or peer supersede your own (and they should since you are being paid to look after them), then you have to be willing to risk ruffling feathers and pissing people off. Your job, believe it or not, is to do your job. If the client can’t face the truth and wants to fire you, then guess what? Let them. It’s their company going down in flames, not yours.
Here’s a little lesson I’ve learned over the years: The moment you allow yourself to get sucked into a clients’ dramas, their inner complexes, their excuses, their dysfunctions, you have effectively ceased to be of any use to them. Your value as a consultant, as an expert, as an advisor, is now zero. The moment you start playing that game, you’re done. You have become part of the problem. You have become a paid, willing accomplice in that organization’s eventual destruction. Congratulations on your new role. The twelve year old you would be so proud to see what you’ve become.
You have to be willing to be blunt. If the only way honesty will get someone’s attention is to deliver it brutally, then you have to find the courage to be the guy who delivers bad news to the CEO without embellishing or minimizing the bad news. That’s your job. If you don’t have the huevos to do your job, you don’t belong in this line of work.
And if you’re a business owner, a manager, heck, an adult in the process of screwing up and you can’t handle reality, it’s time to reevaluate a lot more than the discomfort of this moment. Thick skin comes with the territory. If you can’t effectively deal with criticism, especially when it is on the nose, maybe leadership is the wrong career path for you. If someone who knows better than you tells you what you are doing wrong, shows you what you are doing wrong, and then teaches you how to do it right, shut up and listen. If the comfort of little white lies is weakness, outright denial, especially when it becomes institutionalized, is career suicide.
Here’s the lesson: The faster you get to the truth, the clearer your perspective of where you are and where you need to go will be. It’s that simple. Anything that slows down or otherwise hinders that process is a liability. Get rid of the bullshit. Cut to the chase. The more painful and unpleasant it is to hear, the more valuable it is to you and your organization.
4. Competence is key.
It isn’t enough to be a critic and point out what’s wrong with a business. Anybody can do that part. Once you identify the problems and make the brass understand what is wrong with their operation though, you also have to know how to fix them. That doesn’t just come from reading business books and looking stuff up on Google. You have to be competent. Eminently competent, even. You can’t just glimpse what the solutions might be. You have to be able to show them, explain them, teach them. You have to know what works and what doesn’t, what hurdles the client will have to overcome before they can implement them, what tools they will need during that process, and how they will gauge their progress during their transition.
Theory might be great on paper, but you need to be able to show people how to get shit done.
One of the things Gordon Ramsay does in every show is teach restaurants in trouble how to do things they don’t know how to do. Note that he doesn’t leave his “clients” with a strategic brief or a findings report. He doesn’t just recommend that they revamp their menu or that they improve the quality of their dishes. He gets in the kitchen and teaches their chefs things they need to learn how to do in order to move forward. He shows them stuff that works, stuff he knows will work because he’s used it before.
Competence here makes all the difference in the world.
What can a 23-year-old consultant with no business management experience teach an executive team about effective change management? What insights into cross-functional social business integration can an SEO blogger-turned-social-media-guru provide a Fortune 500 COO? The benefit of… theory?
Contrary to popular belief, attending a webinar doesn’t make you an expert. Neither does attending 18 webinars. Neither does paying $13,000 for the privilege.
Having stayed “at the Holiday Inn last night” doesn’t make you an expert in anything either. (But okay, the commercials are funny.)
Just like a food critic isn’t necessarily qualified to be a chef, a consultant who can’t shift from talking to demonstrating isn’t necessarily qualified to give advice to anybody.
Competence, defined in only 6 words, boils down to this: Don’t just tell me. Show me.
Who do you want teaching you how to clear a bunker: A guy who read about it in a book, or the guy who has 5 years of combat experience and personally cleared dozens of enemy bunkers? Who would you rather have teaching you how to land airplanes in emergency conditions: A guy who read the manual, or the test pilot who actually performs emergency landings in all sorts of emergency conditions to learn what really works and doesn’t work? You get the point. Competence and experience go hand in hand. Talent alone isn’t enough.
Consultants need to be competent. Head chefs need to be competent. Restaurant owners, bodyguards, accountants, auto mechanics, surgeons, marines, airline pilots, parachute instructors, chemists and CMOs have to be competent. Even social media directors have to be competent. Brains, creativity and imagination matter. When it comes to innovating, nothing beats the combined forces of imagination, curiosity and perseverance. But when it comes to making things work, nothing beats experience. Nothing takes the place of being competent.
Strange as it may sound, Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares may be one of the best examples of how businesses succeed or fail, and why. Take away the setting (restaurants) and apply the themes and lessons of every episode to other industries and settings, and they work: Poor leadership, the slow death of passion, cultures of denial and the erosion of competence. Everywhere you go, you will find the same thing: The Post Office, your local bank, your favorite software company, a global superbrand, the local steakhouse. Each of these four factors will kill a business, any business, faster than you can say “no customers.” And while Chef Ramsay’s unorthodox style (unapologetically pointing out key problems, confronting those responsible, breaking them down, then dragging them – kicking and screaming – towards resolution) might seem inappropriate for “the real world” of business, while his body language and choice of vocabulary and confrontational style may seem out of place beyond the shock-happy world of reality TV, the guy is spot on. He isn’t there to apply lipstick on a pig. He knows that a new menu and fresh signage won’t be enough. He is there to perform an emergency intervention, to turn a failing business around in a week.
Imagine that: A week.
With only a week to turn things around, your timetable for change is accelerated. There’s no time for reflection, for endless meetings, for brainstorming sessions, for PowerPoint tennis matches week after week after week. Things have to happen now. The time for bullshit, for excuses, for fear, for misplaced ego trips is gone. With an accelerated timetable, everything gets concentrated into what matters most: Getting things back on track. Getting things right. If necessity strips away excuses, urgency strips away bullshit. That’s what makes his shows so fun to watch and his management style so fascinating. It’s a crucible, a concentrated version of what many of us do over a much longer time-frame. Every episode is a case study in personal dysfunction, operational dysfunction, and in the process of getting things back on track. As corny as it often is, it is still brilliant.
So ask yourself: How would your business hold up to Gordon Ramsay’s scrutiny? What would be the effective range of your excuses? How willing would you be to put aside wounded pride, accept his recommendations, and make things right today?
Why aren’t you doing this now?
Whatever ails you, whatever challenges your company faces, I hope this helped, even a little bit.
Cheers,
Olivier
* * *
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Today, instead of doing all the talking, I will let people with a whole lot more experience than me give you some tips about how to become a better leader.
Great stuff that transcends the typical quotation mill.
Anne Mulcahy – Former CEO of Xerox:
In a crisis, you have the opportunity to move quickly and change a lot – and you have to take advantage of that.
Change doesn’t happen if you don’t work at it. You’ve got to get out there, give people the straight scoop, and get buy-in. It’s not just good-looking presentations; it’s letting people ask the tough questions. It’s almost got to be done one person at a time.
There’s not a lot of room anymore for senior people to be managers. They have to be leaders. I want people to create organizations that get aligned, get passionate, get really inspired about delivering.
Stories exist at every level of the company. Whether it was saving a buck here, or doing something different for customers, everyone has a story. That creates powerful momentum – people sense that they’re able to do good things. It’s much more powerful than the precision or elegance of the strategy.
I communicate good news the same way I do the bad news. I thank people and make sure they feel a sense of recognition for their contribution. But the trick is always to to use the opportunity to talk about what’s next, to pose the next challenges. Where do we want to go? How do we want to build on it?
Margaret Heffernan – Author, The Naked Truth:
Nothing kills morale like a staff’s feeling helpless. This often plays itself out when there are rumors of a new strategic shift or a major personnel move, or worse, when the papers are littered with bad news about your company. A big part of boosting morale is about constructing a haven of logic that offers individuals shelter from any storm. At its most basic, leaders have to communicate their awareness of business conditions and place their plans in that context. Each time [a CEO outlines] a future that comes true, he demonstrates his own competence and reinforces trust.
The happiest people aren’t the ones with the most money but those with a sense of purpose – a sense that they are contributing to something bigger than themselves. At least some of this has to derive from work. The purpose of a business, then, must be explicit and go beyond boosting the share price or fulfilling some bland mission statement. People want to believe that they are part of something meaningful. The sense of purpose doesn’t have to be grandiose or revolutionary, merely credible and anchored in values.
Purpose is achieved through goals, and the acid test for any leader is defining the appropriate ones. Too small, and celebrations soon ring hollow. Small goals breed cynicism. But too-big goals produce helplessness. Although it can be temporarily thrilling to rally around a big corporate slogan like “kill the competition,” the reality is that employees can’t do it alone and they can’t do it quickly.
Alignment between corporate goals and personal development has never been more critical. The more unpredictable the outside world, the more urgent the personal quest for self-determination. What employees look for in leadership is a sense that their personal journey and the company journey are part of the same story.When these goals aren’t aligned, employees tend to whine with others, eager to share their sense of anger and injustice, polluting morale. The only way to combat this and get back on track is proper feedback. Give employees the tools to influence their own fate.
Get a life. Keeping morale high is like being on a diet: It requires constant effort and is never over. New ideas, stimuli and motivation come from all around you. It’s the larger life, after all, that gives purpose to the climb.
Alan Deutschman – Senior Writer, Fast Company – writing about how IBM builds new businesses:
Look for opportunities that can become profitable [billion-dollar] businesses in five to seven years. You’ll probably find them by talking to customers rather than to brilliant researchers in the labs, who are are looking further ahead.
J. Bruce Harreld – IBM:
You want to celebrate failure because you learn something. You need some level of security to say ‘I screwed it up,’ and be comfortable that you won’t be fired.
Marcus Buckingham – Author, Break All The Rules:
Turn anxiety into confidence. For a leader, the challenge is that in every society ever studied, the future is unstable, unknown, and therefore potentially dangerous. By far the most effective way to turn fear into confidence is to be clear – to define the future in such vivid terms that we can see where we are headed. Clarity is the antidote to anxiety, and therefore clarity is the preoccupation of the effective leader. If you do nothing else as a leader, be clear.
Effective leaders don’t have to be passionate, charming or brilliant. What they must be is clear – clarity is the essence of great leadership. Show us clearly who we should seek to serve, show us where our core strength lies, show us which score we should focus on and which actions we must take, and we will reward you by working our hearts out to make our better future come true.
See? Told you these folks know what they’re talking about.
Thanks to Fast Company‘s March 2005 issue for providing much of today’s content. (I have quite the collection.)
Company/organizational culture is something I love getting into and am still learning a lot about.
One point of interest that intrigues me – and what you mentioned – is empowering your employees. Giving them not only the tools and structure to succeed, but empowerment and reinforcement from internal leaders – the attitude that not only spreads throughout the company but outside of the office also (as we all know, work/life intermingle so much). I say it’s intriguing because it’s such an integral part in making this culture change and a P2P business a success.
The biggest thing that companies will be asking though when reading this post, let alone your upcoming book, is ‘how the hell do we accomplish this?’ It sounds/is great, as how businesses function – internally and externally – is evolving, quick. But there’s definitely got to be a huge buy-in and sense of what a P2P culture looks and feels like.
The best way I know how to address Sonny’s question is this:
As always, the old adage about leading horses to water stands firm. First, you have to realize that “companies” aren’t what you’re working with. What you’re really dealing with are people. In other words, companies don’t make decisions. People make decisions. Particularly, leaders in this instance. If the leadership within a company refuses to commit to the type of change that will yield greater success for their business in the future (and starting immediately), I can’t help them. Heck, even Tony Robbins, Zig Ziglar and Dr. Phil can’t help them.
What’s important here isn’t to sell change. Nobody likes change. It’s scary, it’s risky, it’s unpredictable. You’ll never get very far selling fear, risk and uncertainty. Especially to that crowd. So you have to approach change from a very different angle: From the end result. From what they actually want to accomplish.
First things first: Uncovering the true objectives of an organization’s leadership team
Before you do anything, you want to uncover the leaders’ specific objectives (or wishes, even) and then create a picture of what the company (as an organization) will look like in this “fantasy” version of the future. This takes more work than it sounds. You would be amazed how many CEOs have absolutely no idea where they really want to be in 5 years. They’ll tend to throw around numbers that sounds good but aren’t based in reality, like… “We’re at $8.3B in revenue this year. I want to be at $12B by 2012.” Because $12B in 2012 sounds cool and the investors will love it. But that’s bullshit. It’s all about swagger, not reality.
In cases like this, when you ask the CEO how they’re going to get there, you get an equally nonsensical answer like, “we’ll sell more stuff” or “we’ll expand into new markets” or some other such generalization. No specifics. No action plan. Nothing but pipe dream. That’s dangerous and counterproductive. What you need to do is get them off the cowboy plan and get them back to reality: You have to get specific about their goals. These types of sessions aren’t about impressing anyone. They’re about getting down to business, which starts with getting back to reality.
If they want to hit $12B by 2012, fine. Work your way backwards from that. What’s it going to take? Probably some key acquisitions, first and foremost. Is that even possible? Are they in a position to pull it off without risking too much exposure? Does it even make sense to try and grow that quickly? What else do they need to do? Look for strategic partnerships? Expand distribution? Capture more market share? All of the above? Okay, you have 24 months. Show me on a 24-month schedule/timeline how you currently plan to accomplish that.
And guess what: Most of the time, that plan doesn’t actually exist. It got as far as being turned into a few bullet points on a slide in someone’s powerpoint presentation six months ago. So you have to start from scratch and see what’s realistic and what isn’t. You have to work out all of the contingencies. It isn’t rocket science, but it takes work. And it takes organization. And it takes commitment. Before you can even get to how a company is going to address empowering their employees through a real cultural change, before a company is ready to actually pull this off across all of its departments as a matter of policy, it has to know exactly where it wants to go and what it will take to get there. Not only that, but the leadership team has to both understand and accept that such empowerment is one of the ways they will get there.
Second: Mapping out the start, the “finish” and everything in between
Growth, change and success are hard. You have to map it all out, starting with where you are, where you want to go, and all the points in between if you want to have a shot at actually pulling it off. So change management, which is really what we’re talking about here, starts with that process. And that process starts with painting a crystal clear picture of what you want the organization to look like at the end of the process. (More like a milestone than a finish line, but that’s a topic for another day.)
Now, in order to hit the numbers the CEO threw at you, you really have to be able to create a detailed snapshot of the company in this specific future. What it looks like. Where it operates. How it operates. How it is structured. How it executes on its activities. You have to not only create a snapshot of what it looks like on the outside, but also on the inside, layer by layer, like a CAT scan.
Understanding changes in cultural dynamics and the evolution of technology, you can then zoom in from the portrait/snapshot of the company to its structure, then to its processes, then to the skills of its members. From there, you can reverse-engineer the adaptive phases that the company needs to go through. To be realistic, the example I gave you (24 months) is too short when it comes to true cultural change for a company that didn’t have much of a culture to begin with. It takes time for organizations, especially large ones, to develop the kind of social and emotional sophistication to do this well. It takes maturity, and maturity takes time. It isn’t something you can accelerate or optimize.
In this example then, the company’s strategy would focus a lot more on acquisitions and partnerships than growth through cultural change. But it isn’t to say that a cultural evolution couldn’t begin to happen during that time period. In order for the strategic changes to be a success, a lot of internal work needs to ensure that these changes won’t become a liability when it comes to simple things like customer service, customer experiences, internal communications between divisions, brand erosion, etc. You can’t divorce culture from infrastructure. Companies that don’t understand that always fail at creating efficient (and sustainable) versions of either.
Basic Lessons to keep in mind:
Anyway… Long story short: The most important thing when trying to get buy-in is to help clarify exactly where the company wants to be in 5, 10, 20 years. Not pie-in-the-sky bullshit, but specifics. Once you have that, you can paint a clear picture of what the future of the company NEEDS to look like. Now you’ve flipped change on its head. Instead of selling uncertainty, you’re selling clarity.
Knowing where you’re going is 90% of getting there. Most company execs are so focused on meeting numbers this month and this quarter that they just aren’t able to look beyond the here and now long enough to actually drive their businesses anywhere. They’re too busy reacting to the next pothole or turn ahead.By helping them see 1 year into the future, then 2, then 5, than 10, you can help them impact their numbers now, this quarter, this half, this fiscal year, by giving their performance context in relation to where they want to actually take their business.
That’s a big part of what I do, and everything has to start with that. Before you can get to cultural change management, you have to make sure the leadership team knows where it wants to go and what it needs to do to get there.
The caveat: Lazy execs and the reality of horses that just won’t drink
But with all of that, if the CEO and the COO and the VP of this and that just don’t want to change their ways, if they are more committed to their game of golf and corner office and third McMansion than to the success of their business, there isn’t much I can do to help them. I already know I can’t fix stupid. I’m pretty sure I can’t fix lazy either.
People have to want to be successful, and it can be hard to convince a late career exec making seven or eight figures and eying retirement in five to ten years that success is about more than the wealth they’ve already amassed. Success is a frame of mind they either want to have or not. The biggest lesson for them is this: Success doesn’t live in the past. Memories do. Success lives in the here and now and tomorrow. It really doesn’t matter what you accomplished ten years ago. What matters is what you’re doing today, and what you’ll accomplish next. Anything else is just ego. Throw away the plaques and the trophies. They aren’t who you are.
A guy who just wants to enjoy the trappings of success but isn’t willing to work his ass off to perpetuate that success is a guy who’s given up.That kind of individual is completely worthless to me, and more importantly, to his/her organization.
Unless the rest of the management team and I can appeal to their sense of pride and self worth, and tap into the ambition that fueled them in their youth, they’re basically in the way. Individuals like these must either get back in the game or move on if you want the organization to evolve. I can’t light a fire under their ass every single day. I can do it for a while, but eventually they have to step up and want to run the ball all on their own.
So, all this to say that you won’t win them all, Sonny. Execs who have grown complacent, live in denial, or refuse to accept that their companies are headed straight to the crapper in ten years are beyond being reasoned with. I’ll only get so far with them before I move on to someone who won’t waste my time.
In the end, I can’t help people who don’t want to help themselves. And since organizations are really collectives of people, you either find leadership teams made up of people who are willing to do whatever it takes to save and/or make their businesses kick ass, or management teams made up of people who are happy to pretend that everything is golden even though their business is either stalled or in the tank. Usually, the latter are the first to blame the economy or cheap imports or whatever else they can throw a cat at to explain slow, flat or negative growth rather than take the blame themselves.
I am not a miracle worker. I wish I were, but I am not. I help people who are serious about making their business truly successful and are looking for good honest help. The rest, I try not to waste my time with. It is far too precious as it is.
At some point soon, I’ll actually go over how to create really solid internal cultures both from the top down (trust, leadership, mentoring and hiring practices) and from the bottom up (trust, engagement, tribe mentality, alignment with the organization’s belief system), so don’t go too far. We will visit this topic again.
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