by David Harder
Invest in skill-building programs that hone expertise in consultative sales, presentation skills, and strategic social networking. As they realize the personal benefits of developing these “courage skills,” they will be more capable of helping others do the same. The timeline for this initial development process can take place during the course of three to six months. This gives a long enough window to become really engaged in the learning process. We don’t need masters of each characteristic and skill, but we do need enthusiastic buy-in and an overall understanding of what we are going to accomplish and why. Most importantly, because we are discussing a practice, we must understand that it never ends; it only grows, deepens, and broadens. It becomes a way of life.
As your mentors grow in their effectiveness, so will your culture. You’ll be bringing a series of new dimensions into the workplace, and at the core will be mentors who gain the enormous personal benefits that can only be derived from uplifting others.
7
What Is an Engagement CEO?
Full and sustainable employee engagement begins with a CEO or business owner. The true “Engagement CEO” has the kind of awareness and commitment to recognize the mindset and skills required in a fully engaged organization. Much of the employee engagement “industry” tiptoes around this subject. God forbid someone loses a consulting assignment because we asked too much of the CEO! But let’s be clear: this is what it takes. But what does it mean to be an Engagement CEO?
An Engagement CEO:
1. Takes charge of the culture personally.
2. Develops a strong leadership brand as evidenced in their consistent behavior and messaging.
3. Walks the talk, leads by example, and leans toward democracy over elitism in any form.
4. Expresses continuous, genuine, and worthy praise to their employees.
5. Constantly seeks ways to keep their talent current and relevant.
6. Treats employees as the organization’s greatest asset versus a potential liability.
7. Packages engagement as a profit source rather than an expense.
8. Effectively manages and educates all stakeholders in the need for effective people initiatives.
9. Moves the vision from short-term financial performance to long term-value, brand strength, and reputation.
10. Tells themselves and others the truth, especially about change.
11. Keeps themselves directly connected to the front line.
12. Is transparent and expects transparency throughout their organization.
13. Shows respect towards all employees and learns from all of them.
CEOs of public companies have a specific group of stakeholders that usually need to be masterfully won over. Shareholders are often the biggest influences that push CEOs into short-term profit pushes rather than long-term growth. CEOs intent on building the business into its highest and strongest place need to link the development of people to that growth. Linking engagement to profit is one of the ways to secure their long-term support.
If any or all of these sound crazy or seem elusive to you, let’s start by understanding some of the beliefs that routinely get in the way of these characteristics being more common.
“Engagement initiatives are a sidebar activity, a perk provided to our employees.”
In truth, the business purpose of employee engagement is far more rigorous than simply making employees feel better. Being awake and present, journeying through change, and becoming better and more competent through the years represents one of the best and most demanding potential performance growth initiatives. Getting there demands everyone’s involvement and support, including as a leader who insists on across-the-board excellence.
“It’s cheaper and easier to hire new employees rather than keep someone who is working in ‘the trance.’”
In most cases, a CEO can justify high turnover to their shareholders. Minimal questions will be asked. On the other hand, they tend to give up on long-term investments such as building a category-leading workforce or developing the kind of talent that produces results that exceed all of the shareholder targets. But here is what’s unrealistic about this belief. If only 13 percent of the world’s workers are highly engaged, where are we going to go out and get them? Without leveraging a strong and rising employer brand, this widely held idea is delusional and also dismissive of one of the great opportunities for all businesses that is available right here and right now.
Become the greatest employer brand in your market. Develop the greatest talent pool. Create a workforce so magnetic and positive that customers come because they look forward to the experience. Build a culture so caring and supportive that people grow into their best selves. This is the kind of excellence that doesn’t come from feeling good, singing a few rounds of “Kumbaya” and moving on. This level of excellence is centered on building the kind of environment in which talent insists that everyone plays to their best ability, and grows continuously because they are invested in others and appreciate the impact your organization has on them. In other words, your organization does more than simply provide an income, it is a place that people come to live, grow, and expand their lives.
“Employee engagement is the purview of white-collar workers with cushy jobs.”
Try telling this to the U.S. Marine Corps or the cashiers at Trader Joe’s who have worked there an average of 18 years. Our line workers tend to be the majority that raises or lowers the expectations of our customers. The disengaged are the ones that make faulty ignition switches, which can kill people and damage the reputation of the organization. They turn their backs on customers. They don’t care.
These are also the very workers that we must train to change if they are to remain vital members in our culture. They are on the front lines. They take calls from irate customers or stand on their feet all day. They run forklifts from dawn to sunset and drive trucks through every imaginable neighborhood. Not only do they hold the biggest hand in our ability to engage customers, they can be the ones who make the products we treasure or the ones that break in our hands during the first use. In the category-leading workforce, the CEO recognizes their power and empowers them fully. And, at that moment when a product isn’t working and the customer is under pressure to get it fixed, they smile, they tell us everything will be okay, and it actually is okay. As a customer, we walk out the door feeling satisfied and acknowledging ourselves for picking the right brand, the one with the great people who go to any lengths to provide excellence in quality and service.
“There isn’t enough time or resources to create an engagement culture.”
When a culture is disengaged and its talent isn’t adept with change, leadership finds itself constantly putting out fires, trying to woo back customers, laying off workers, and alienating critical talent. This is often the time that valuable talent development gets axed because CEOs with axes tend to start hoarding money and cutting costs. This logic is opposite of what is needed, which is critical strategic investments that will help them stabilize and regain footing. Most do this to keep the shareholders off their backs, but occasionally the axe legitimately has to fall. The axes even fall in high-performing organizations, but those events tend to be a seismic shock because they so rarely occur.
Richard Branson offers sound advice on this topic:“Train people well enough so they can leave. Treat them well enough so they don’t want to.”1
When a CEO leads the culture and makes the engagement solution a part of the culture, bringing it “in house,” the company is in the strongest position. Develop our people so well that they can work anywhere, and surprise them by being their best employment option; this combination creates the type of loyalty and enthusiasm that takes an organization to greatness.
In many cases, time should be invested in building rather than trimming. Often, it is difficult for a CEO to hear this when in the midst of a business crisis. However, that is typically when vision, communication, transparency, engagement, and a strong culture will b
e the only things that can pull the organization through.
“Create a strong consumer brand and the rest will follow.”
In modern business, the employer brand has become as important as, and in many cases more critical than, the consumer brand. A case in point that most everyone will recognize is Yahoo. When a top-tier graduate comes out of Stanford, Georgia Tech, or Carnegie Mellon, they are most often looking to become an employee with Apple, Google, Facebook, and other tech leaders. Essentially, the real competition for this talent is entrepreneurism. They are not even thinking of Yahoo. In fact, many of them would consider joining Yahoo as a career killer. Consequently, Yahoo has a dim future.
Marissa Mayer’s strategy for bringing Yahoo back was centered on acquisitions with which she could gut the talent to shore up the bench strength of Yahoo. Let me repeat that: she bought other companies to recruit enough talent to keep Yahoo running.2 What was its cost of talent acquisition? Unfortunately, her team did little to change the employee culture and the employer brand. In the technology world, it is easy to understand how talent directly impacts brand. But strong employer branding, the kind that attracts the best talent in any industry, can spell the critical difference between profit and failure.
For a CEO that has built his or her previous success on consumer focus, changing their mindset can be difficult and yet, like anyone else, no CEO is immune to the pitfalls and breakthroughs associated with personal change, the very skills we are promoting here. More pointedly, everyone reading this book is human, with all of the attendant shortcomings, the ability to make up erroneous stories, to stretch the truth and shrink-wrap the results around our comfort zone. That’s what humans do.
As I have shared, we learn nothing of real value by studying dys-function. We learn our greatest lessons by studying success. I don’t spend too much time studying organizational and leadership failures. They all have the similar problems that were not solved in time or on time. So what are the common threads among CEOs who lead highly engaged cultures?
Every year, Glassdoor conducts a national vote from employees on its CEOs.3 Here are this year’s top five. They have several common themes across the board with the addition of some wonderfully unique characteristics:
#1: Bob Bechek, Bain & Company—99 percent
In an industry that is not particularly known for its transparency, management consulting firm Bain & Company treats it as a critical part of its culture. As an employer brand, Bain is recognized as a company in which someone can rapidly grow. Much of the continual growth that takes place among all Bain employees is based on a strong and sophisticated mentorship program. There is little life balance. Bob Bechek came up through the ranks and has an extraordinarily strong reputation as a brilliant leader.
“I think the reality of power and influence and getting things done is overwhelmingly about informal authority nowadays,” Bechek argues. “New MBAs should be focused on how to develop the skills associated with that. But the reality is, even in my current role, the vast majority of what I do is exerted through information and not formal authority. If you’re involved in trying to get people galvanized around a particular course of action—or to feel inspired about what we’re trying to do or feel appreciated, motivated, and valued—that has almost nothing to do with formal authority.”4
#2: Scott Scherr, Ultimate Software—99 percent
I periodically work with Ultimate Software and find its talent personifies the very word. Its people are smart, enthusiastic, grateful, outgoing, and happy, and demonstrate the highest performance and service standards. The company has a stellar 97-percent customer retention rate. Virtually every client organization that uses Ultimate Software is somewhat religious about the experience. Much of this loyalty is based on effective and enthusiastic employees. It is the only employer in the top five to place great emphasis on work/life balance. Recently, Mr. Scherr said, “I feel humbled. I think [employees] trust me to take care of them and their families.”5
A member of Fortune magazine’s 100 Best Places to Work issue, Ultimate Software makes it a point to start on the right footing with an elaborate onboarding process that includes trips by every new employee to its Miami headquarters.
#3: Dominic Barton, McKinsey & Company—99 percent6
Not known for its work/life balance, McKinsey invests in the professional development of its people more than any other company in the management consulting industry. Combined with full transparency, McKinsey and Barton’s leadership presents the ideal home for ambitious and hard-charging professionals.
A large cadre of newer professionals gets recruited into more lucrative positions in their second and third years, and yet the vast majority of them look back at McKinsey as the platform that launched their highly successful careers.
#4: Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook—98 percent
Many of the employees speak of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg’s humility, their willingness to listen, and their commitment to create a fully open and transparent culture. One employee said, “It might be easy to roll your eyes when people say how open their culture is, but it’s true, it’s more open than any other place I’ve worked at.”7
Zuckerberg has said:
Find that thing you are super passionate about. A lot of the of the founding principles of Facebook are that if people have access to more information and are more connected, it will make the world better; people will have more understanding, more empathy. That’s the guiding principle for me. On hard days...that’s the thing that keeps me going.8
Zuckerberg’s leadership style includes great passion, instilling purpose in everyone at Facebook; he is utterly committed to the company’s people and to the product.
#5: Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn—97 percent
The downside of LinkedIn’s culture is, once again, work/life balance and strikingly few workers over the age of 40.
These technology and consulting giants work in environments with extreme change impacting every worker virtually every single day. Jeff Weiner is loved for producing a culture that pushes growth. The first question asked after a new hire or promotion is, “What is your next play?”
Weiner’s most telling interview was on SuperSoul Sunday with Oprah Winfrey. He tells her the greatest advice he received from his mentor Ray Chambers, a Wall Street icon who pioneered the leveraged buyout and who later walked away from financial success to study happiness and pursue a life of philanthropy.9 He shared Ray’s five principles of happiness:
• Live in the moment.
• It’s better to be loving than to be right.
• Be a spectator to your own thoughts, a fundamental key to compassion.
• Be grateful for at least one thing every day.
• Be of service to others.
• • • • •
Our top five CEOs have several traits in common. But, there is one that overrides all others: none of them take shortcuts.
Additionally, each CEO drives the following characteristics and values:
• A fully engaged culture and a superior employer brand.
• The best possible products and services, or excellence at every turn.
• The organization makes the world a better place.
• The organization makes every attempt to fully engage with every customer.
• There is simply no substitute for human decency, compassion, understanding, and a pursuit for “the high road.”
Let’s examine an elephant in the room. In many cases, working at a category-leading organization precludes any sense of work/life balance. Some of our examples include organizations that put a great deal of through into helping employees establish a strong balance with raising families, pursuing personal interests and having regular “time out.” In many cases, work/life balance isn’t part of the equation and yet, the employees are highly engaged and praise the CEO. When we examine these cultures, we always find transparency, mentorship, strong change skills, and strong at-work relationships. Many o
f the people who work in environments like this view work/life balance as another fad. Engaged workers get more done in shorter periods of time. Engaged workers also tend to be engaged in every other aspect of their life. The more awakened we become, the more skilled we can apply to drawing boundaries, getting others to help us, and being strategic in how we want to live.
I asked colleagues and clients alike to recommend one person who embodies all of the characteristics of an Engagement CEO. One name kept coming up: Adam Miller from Cornerstone OnDemand. The company first came to my attention when my colleague Mary Campbell moved USC’s entire learning and development division onto a digital platform. It was a daunting and complex project that shifted 25,000 employees into virtual learning and development. Cornerstone provided the platform, which became one of the biggest online learning programs in the academic world. Mary was thoroughly won over by the consistency in Cornerstone’s performance, service, and sophistication. Cornerstone’s 95 percent customer retention record during a 12-year history is unmatched and endemic of an awakened workforce.
My colleague Kim Shepherd is one of the more visible leaders in the digital-based talent world. She endorsed Adam as an individual who built a category leader through walking the talk, transparency, and authenticity.
Adam Miller began the company in his apartment with his two friends Perry Wallack and Steven Seymour. Today, Cornerstone OnDemand helps many of the world’s largest companies recruit, train, and manage their people. More than 27 million users in 191 countries and in 42 languages engage with its software and services. Cornerstone has become one of the world’s premier resources in continuous learning and development.
We arrived at a building complex that is typical of the playfulness and interactive environments so common among tech leaders. The employees caught my attention. Everyone looked us in the eye and smiled, everyone who directly engaged with us was genuinely interested and interesting. The energy was positive, comfortable, and upbeat.