What would your reaction be to an executive who, when asked about company values, replied, “What do you mean by ‘values’? Do you mean ‘value’? I don’t understand what you mean by ‘values’.”
That was Sir Alan Sugar’s response at a recent conference when asked if he’d ever sacked someone because their values conflicted with the company values. (In case you’re wondering, Sir Alan is the counterpart to Donald Trump on the British version of The Apprentice.)
Based on what we’ve seen lately, Sir Alan has a lot of company.
So I have some questions for you.
How do you establish values in your company or in your life?
Do you depend on a set ideology or do you determine them yourself?
Are your values absolute or are they flexible? Why?
Are they sustainable?
I hope that many of you will take the time to respond and add your own thoughts.
As you all know, I’m a corporate culture addict; I follow stories on culture the way most people follow celebrities. I have three to share today.
As anyone who follows business news knows Alan G. Lafley, CEO pf P&G for the last nine years is stepping down. Read this McKinsey interview with Lafley from 2005 and compare it to what he did. This is a guy who walks his talk. Then take a look at this short comparison by Bruce Nussbaum of Lafley and Bob Nardelli and decide which one you’d rather channel.
Want to read a short short story about changing corporate culture? Good, because here is one.
Last is a fascinating story on how to innovate from the outside in. Which leads you to Innocentive and the opportunity to innovate on your own and get paid for it. Don’t laugh, real creativity doesn’t have a job title, nor do colleges offer degrees in ingenuity.
Yes, it’s another post about my favorite company. Why do I write so much about Zappos?
Because, according to CEO Tony Hsieh, “Our No. 1 priority is the company culture. Our whole belief is that if we get the culture right, then everything else, including the customer service, will fall into place.”
Zappos embodies everything I believe about culture being the bedrock of corporate success.
Not bad for a dot com startup that was given exactly one week’s worth of additional funds in which to turn itself around or be shut down.
But heaping more kudos on CEO Tony Hsieh isn’t the purpose of this post. Rather, I’d like your opinion of why cultures such as this are so rare.
Hsieh is a Gen Xer running a truly multi-generational company (I confirmed this by calling and chatting with a customre support person, not HR or an official source, just a worker) that hires based on cultural fit and skills—they carry equal weight.
The focus on culture is one reason that Zappos doesn’t have the generational management problems besetting so many companies.
The Zappos culture is a long way from rocket science and Hsieh isn’t shy about explaining how to duplicate it, so you tell me.
A few weeks ago Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said“The danger of that for the country is that there won’t automatically be an ability to restrain the excess that is typically associated with big majorities and single-party rule.”
OK, typical political rhetoric, but that isn’t what caught my eye.
What I found so amusing was the line about the dangers of “single party-rule.”
Amusing because when the Republicans owned the majorities in both the House and the Senate and there was a Republican President single-party rule was fine.
But it brings up an important point and one that can have a major effect on your company or team.
The point is consistency.
If, in fact, holding both the Presidency and Congressional majorities is de facto single-party rule then it doesn’t matter which party holds it, it’s still dangerous.
In business terms that means that if you condemn something your competition does or the way it acts and then do or act the same way you’re being inconsistent.
Likewise, if you laude something and don’t either follow suit or escalate it you’re being inconsistent.
People hate inconsistency, whether they’re your customers or employees.
And don’t kid yourself that they won’t notice, they will—people aren’t stupid.
You don’t have the advantage of ideology working for you in a business setting. Ideology works in politics, most people won’t notice the inconsistency in McConnell’s words, but even rabid Apple fans are quick to call Apple on anything that they think is inconsistent with the brand or the culture.
So think about your consistency and monitor your words and actions—better yet, build consistency into your MAP.
“Customer loyalty is harder to measure. As we are in this recession, one way to measure this is that I believe when the recession ends, Men’s Wearhouse will have a higher market share than when the recession began. That will be because of our corporate culture, which will be the glue that holds the customer and the employee and the organization, the shareholder, holds it all together.”
Zimmer has infused the culture with trust and authenticity based on 3 principles
Listen carefully and wait at least one second after the other person’s last syllable before responding.
Elevate the other person’s respect – by focusing on the positive before something that needs to improve.
Always ask the subordinate how a problem might be solved.
The willingness to listen proved its value when a lower-level employee presented Zimmer with the idea that the company rent formal wear, now a significant revenue producer.
Beyond these three principles, the culture provides an environment in which employees aren’t afraid to mention problems or own up to a mistake and Zimmer constantly reinforces his desire for feedback and responds to each email.
“I tell people I like primary information, as opposed to information sifted by various levels of management, but I only get five a day on average.” (Many employees have little confidence in their writing skills.)
You hear a lot about trust and authenticity these days, but I’m willing to bet that George Zimmer didn’t think in those terms 30 years ago when he founded Men’s Wearhouse; no matter the words, he built something that followed his own moral compass.
“I consider anything to do with employees or the stores to be my priority. That’s one of the other things, I guess, when it comes back to trust and authenticity. That is my priority. I don’t say that, I don’t pay lip service to that. That is how I run this business and how I live my life. So, I think the people that work in our stores, know that.”
That’s what founders do.
Sadly, when their compass changes so does the culture—think Angelo Mozilo.
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Be sure to check out the great links at the June 7th, 2009 edition of the Leadership Development Carnival, including lots of great management expertise—in case you think that ‘leader’ doesn’t apply to you.
(I’ve finally gotten my act together to participate, which means I’ll know when they’re happening and that means I’ll have the link to share with you:)
Tuesday, in Barrett’s Briefing, Pat Lynch, Ph.D., CEO of Business Alignment Strategies, said “employees’ perceptions of how their employer treats them on a daily basis” and Richard reminded us that how a remark is interpreted depends heavily upon the context you bring to it.
In other words, everything you hear, see or do is filtered through your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) and you’ll act on it according to your perceptions, whether they reflect the actual intent or not.
And we all know that what one person says and the other guy hears may have nothing to do with each other.
“Senior executives are acutely aware of how serious today’s reputational challenge is. Most recognize the perception that some companies in certain sectors (particularly financial services) have violated their social contract with consumers, shareholders, regulators, and taxpayers. They also know that this perception seems to have spilled over to business more broadly.”
But don’t hold your breath. In spite of all the talk executive pay is still going up, so, no matter how much spin, perceptions aren’t likely to change any time soon.
I’ve written in the past about the fragility of a company’s street rep, especially in the brave new internet world of instant, global, anonymous communication.
Perceptions are a constantly moving target that are distorted by a variety of circumstances—from as minor as feeling out of sorts to the global economic meltdown; as a result the communications that were understood today may not work tomorrow.
Whether company or individual you need to actively manage perceptions.
Experts constantly bandy such words as ‘authentic’, ‘honest’, ’sincere’ and similar terms in talking about how to change perceptions, when, in fact, there are only two things working together that actually accomplish perceptional change.
Those two things are actions and time.
If over time actions don’t back up whatever is said, then perceptions won’t change.
This is especially true regarding employee perceptions of company culture.
If a CEO wants to institute a cultural change then every manager at every level needs to support that cultural change or employee perceptions won’t change—but don’t expect it to happen overnight.
The greater the change the greater the cynicism as to how real and how sustainable it actually is, so don’t expect instant buy-in.
Communicate what you’re going to do and then do it consistently over and over forever—and watch perceptions change.
The last few days have been about the importance of culture, so why change now?
If you’re a long-time reader you know that I’m a culture fanatic. I believe that culture is the root, driver and cure for 99% of business and, as is said today, that culture eats strategy for lunch.
Culture also makes companies a lot of money, think Berkshire Hathaway, Apple, Google, Southwest, and Costco. And if that doesn’t convince you look at the dark side and think about what happened when Robert Nardelli trashed Home Depot’s culture.
Next, a Rambus alumni talks about how culture influences innovation in a company that makes its money by inventing and licensing its IP.
I’m a firm believe in using your company’s culture as a screening tool and I’m not the only one. Steve Balzac has some thoughts on the subject, too, including the price you pay for not remembering that people don’t magically change after they’re hired.
I’ve written multiple times about Zappos and I’m not the only one. Any time the conversation turns to productivity, customer service, branding, leadership, staffing, etc., and chances are someone will point to Zappos.
I seriously doubt that Tony Hsieh can even spell imperial CEO, let alone act like one—his office is a cube in the middle of a lot of other cubes.
He has built Zappos around extreme customer service—only to him it’s not extreme, because he knows no other way to do business. And Zappos employees are as passionate about Zappos as Hsieh is.
During his keynote address at the CEO Summit he said that “Creating a happy workplace is crucial to building a successful company. … After looking at research on human behavior he found that happiness is about four things: perceived control, perceived progress, connectedness and vision, or in other words “being part of something bigger.””
Hsieh constantly presents Zappos anywhere possible to build his brand, not talking about shoes, but about Zappos’ culture, the customers’ experience and how happy employees mean happy customers.
Companies constantly talk about the need for a ‘great customer experience’, whereas Zappos provides one.
He’s writing Delivering Happiness due out March 2010. If I was rich I’d send it to every CEO whose company can be found by searching ‘XYZ sucks’ (for example, ‘Comcast sucks’ shows 22,300 results).
In Richard’s interview with Pat Lynch regarding the EFCA, she said that employers have a choice, either take care of their people or the unions will. Lynch identified four primary issues on which employees rate their job satisfaction:
Employee satisfaction with immediate supervisor
Employee voice – do employees feel safe in challenging the status quo, do employees believe their ideas will be considered
Employee perceptions of procedural fairness
Rewards and recognition – these go far beyond compensation, which is not a significant element of satisfaction. Recognition is extremely important.
Richard suggested to start with an online satisfaction survey to learn how employees perceive management and the company and then to act on the results.
He also said, “come back Thursday to hear Miki’s take on keeping employees happy,” which isn’t really fair since everything I write is about keeping them happy and I even have a post called that.
But I’m committed, so let’s do this again.
In today’s language, ‘happy’ means ‘engaged’, which isn’t a new topic—think buy-in, ownership, commitment, involvement, etc.
Although the terms keep changing the behavior has been consistently on management’s radar for decades. The funny part is that the way to achieve it is as old as humanity and ties directly to the Lynch’s four issues.
The big four of engagement are
respect;
encouragement;
support; and
rewards.
Although descriptions and phrasing may vary, when all is said and done it always comes down to these four basics.
It’s not as if this is secret management knowledge. There are thousands of books, hundreds of classes, dozens of blogs and forums all teaching variations on this theme. I read a good article on it last year, but it was the comments that had the real value.
The real question then is if it’s that simple, why isn’t it put into practice more often?
If you don’t really believe in the value or numbers 1 or 2, you can talk all day and your people will hear what you say as hollow, i.e., no authenticity.
Number 3, support, includes skills training and career development. Ingenuity. Not just yours, but your group’s. Your people aren’t dumb, they know when the company can’t/won’t fund training, but there are tons of ways work around that, such as sharing their own expertise with each other during organized brown bag lunch sessions.
Number 4 usually involves money, but public recognition often ranks higher on the scale. And when there’s an authentic, provable lack of funds to provide significant rewards, every company can find other ways to prove that they value their people’s contributions.
There’s a final component that needs to permeate all ranks of management, it’s what I call the believability factor, BF for short.
Believability is a two-edged sword. A strong BF draws people to you; it helps them hear what you have to say; see the vision that you present; and underscores their willingness to follow your lead. Without it, even the straightest shooters may be casually dismissed.
The flip side is definitely worse, because con people, crooks and even murderers often have BF in abundance.
As anyone who follows business news knows Alan G. Lafley, CEO pf P&G for the last nine years is stepping down. Read this 
In other words, everything you hear, see or do is filtered through your 
Culture also 
He also said, “come back Thursday to hear Miki’s take on keeping employees happy,” which isn’t really fair since everything I write is about keeping them happy and I even have a 
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