Thirteeners

by Daniel F Prosser

  My company had a booth at an annual hotel technology show, and one day at a conference in San Diego my future was literally altered by an interesting conversation. A gentleman I had never met stopped at our booth to talk about telecommunications services in hotels. I think I said something to him about our most recent work—looking beyond technology optimization, at what really goes on in hotels that keeps them from maximizing profits. We required our clients to make sure their customers were not complaining about being price gouged (since customer satisfaction was fundamental to profitability), yet many of our clients still struggled with that, primarily due to lack of technology.

  All of a sudden my visitor blurted out, “I know why!” Then he began to tell me a story. He had checked out of a hotel the day before, and as he looked at his room bill, he muttered something about a charge for a call that he didn’t remember making.

  The clerk behind the desk cheerfully offered, “Oh, don’t worry, I’ll be happy to take that charge off your bill, sir.”

  A little surprised at her eagerness to appease him, he asked, “But won’t you get in trouble with your boss for doing that?”

  “No,” she said, “they don’t care.”

  They don’t care. Those were the most revealing words I think I had ever heard in business up until that time. I was suddenly struck with this thought: What if even the most responsible employees at every hotel front desk had a similar conversation, saying managers don’t care whether money is refunded when a guest slightly challenges his or her telephone bill? Sure, some improper telephone charges in those days were clearly due to technical deficiencies, but for employees to spontaneously deduct legitimate charges from a client’s bill at the front desk … that was interesting and troubling at the same time.

  After thinking about it and talking to others for a couple of weeks, I had a gut feeling that a conversation such as “They don’t care” could be going on all through the hotel industry. If that were the case, there was no telling what other, similar conversations might be undermining the profitability of other hotel operations. What could those conversations be? I wondered. And was there was a way to fix or change those conversations, so that they would stop undermining the businesses? I decided to find out for myself.

  What negative, “They don’t care,” conversation might be going on in your business?

  What impact does it have on your customers, employees, and the bottom line?

  How We Fixed the Conversation

  Steve Chojnacki, the general manager at the nearby Guest Quarters Hotel, was also a good friend of mine, and I talked him into conducting an experiment on his property. Each day he would have his hotel’s controller fax us the total phone charges that had been refunded to guests at the front desk the day before. We would then plot the new amount of refunded phone charges on a rolling, five-day (work-week) graph and each day fax the updated graph back to the hotel. Each day the hotel controller would tape the updated graph to the wall between the back office and the front desk. That way, front-desk personnel would repeatedly pass the graph. They couldn’t avoid noticing the total refunds from the five days before and the weekly trend.

  We agreed to say nothing to the employees about the experiment or the graph. That was part of the experiment. The graph simply appeared and was changed every day. No one was asked to look at it, but we made sure everyone had to walk by it.

  Miraculously, the total amount of money taken off hotel bills at the front desk began to decline, and the graph began to reflect the changes. On weekends, when we didn’t post a graph, the number shot back up significantly. But during the week, profits increased substantially.

  All we had done was change the information that employees were observing on a daily basis, and in so doing, we changed the conversation that was running in the background. The old conversation said, “They don’t care,” and it was producing undesirable results. The new conversation said, “They do care.” And all by itself, that new conversation altered people’s behavior in a way that produced positive results.

  What Are the Viral Conversations in Your Business?

  What do you suppose the conversations that are infecting your business sound like? In all likelihood, negative, virus-like conversations are replicating themselves throughout your organization, and you are completely unaware of them.

  These are the viral memes inside your company that are holding you back. They weaken your system of services to your clients and account for the lack of connectedness with your employees. Gaining complete, conscious awareness of them is the first step to building a breakthrough company.

  In the following pages, I will reveal what negative viral conversations sound like, what they do to your company, where they come from, and how you can replace them with positive viral conversations that will make your employees able to execute your company’s strategy and move your organization forward to where you declare it will go.

  “Information is almost never enough to spark change. Only when information powerfully impacts the current prevailing conversation do people choose to alter their behavior. Choose your information wisely, and use it with intention”

  — Dan Prosser

  In The Selfish Gene, published in 1976, British scientist Richard Dawkins coined or adapted the word “meme” to bring evolutionary principles into a discussion of how ideas and cultural phenomena spread. Dawkins said, “I think that a new kind of replicator has emerged on this very planet … We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation … I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like ‘gene.’”7 He cited melodies, catchphrases, beliefs (notably religious ones), fashion, and technology as examples of memes. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a meme as follows:

  A meme (’mm, meem) is “an idea, behavior, or style that spreads from person to person within a culture.”

  So a meme is a unit of transmission of cultural ideas, symbols, or practices. It facilitates the spread of such things from person to person through writing, speech, gestures, rituals, and so on. Meme theorists look upon memes as analogous to a culture’s genes in that they self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.

  These theorists also hold that memes evolve by natural selection, just as organisms do. Variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance determine whether an individual meme will reproduce and how well it will do so. Memes spread by making their hosts behave a certain way, and those memes that propagate prolifically will survive, spread, and mutate. It’s also critically important to note that some memes may replicate themselves and spread even when they prove harmful to their hosts. It sounds a bit sinister as I describe it. But as you will learn, some memes do threaten your future ability to grow and prosper.

  The Genetic Code of the Workplace

  The application of meme theory to the workplace is fascinating because just as a species’ genetic code plays a role in its survival or extinction, memes—the genetic code of the workplace—play a role in the survival or failure of your organization.

  Much as a flu virus might infect all employees and produce illness, memes infect the thinking and actions of entire organizations, with the creation of a network of limiting conversations, for example.

  I have observed closely how memes create the genetic code of the workplace. They occur only in the context of language—of conversations. They determine what’s possible and what’s not possible, within the context of your strategy, for your future. You have limiting memes in your workplace right now, yet you don’t know they’re there, unless you know what they look and sound like. Even the most limiting memes are not visible until you find the key to discovering them.

  In the workplace, limiting memes exist through a system of hidden conversations that affect which information is created, interpreted, and disseminated. These memes form what I call the Execution Virus.

  The Impact of the Meme

  Memes are the pathogens that enter th
e workplace in the form of the Execution Virus and limit your thinking and actions to what’s currently believed to be possible. But when you know where to look and what to search for, uncovering the Execution Virus in your organization is relatively simple. After that, you need to understand the process of transforming it. This book will take you there.

  Three Execution Viruses

  Here are three scenarios that exemplify day-to-day life in companies that have been infected by an Execution Virus. Written in bold at the end of each scenario is a sentence that summarizes the hidden conversation taking place in that company, a conversation that has become a viral meme in that company—an Execution Virus.

  Scenario A:

  Jackie is the manager of a human resources department. She wouldn’t tell you this, but she is prone to confusion, and finds that state intolerable. She wants immediate answers from her staff, because if she doesn’t feel certain of something, her anxiety gets the better of her. Her behavior when she doesn’t have all the answers is becoming a problem for her staff, and having to stop and handle the disruption caused by Jackie’s behavior distracts the group from its purpose. Everything stops when they have to take care of Jackie’s emotional needs. It’s an unhappy situation, and there appears to be no solution because there’s no one to appeal to for relief from Jackie’s negative behavior. Her team starts thinking, “No one cares what this woman does to our morale, and they’ll never do anything about it, so we’re screwed.”

  Scenario B:

  John is the customer service department manager, and he is very distressed. He resents the way he’s being treated by his bosses, and his coworkers aren’t any happier. They are offended by the rules changes that are summarily handed down from on high whenever something isn’t happening that someone feels should be taking place. It’s not even clear what needs to happen. Nevertheless, “they” just changed the rules again.

  John just came back from an executive management meeting and discovered an email that changes procedures that have been followed for years. Customer service and support employees will now be required to get approval from two levels up whenever they want to accommodate an unhappy client. Previously if there had been a problem, call center employees were authorized to do whatever was necessary to make it right for the customer. Now it will take a week or more to process any customer complaint, and by that time, the customer will be furious.

  John believes that whenever management is not happy, they take it out on everyone else, and they do it because they can’t get it together themselves. It’s also embarrassing for John to have to tell his team members to make these changes because they all know full well that within a month there will be even more changes. No one in top management can make up his or her mind about what to do, and no one has thought to ask the people in customer service what they think is the best solution. If management asked, John and his fellow team members would be happy to show them what’s needed and how to handle the issues, but instead John and his team have started to believe, “We’re not worth listening to, management doesn’t care what we think, and it won’t get better any time soon.”

  Scenario C:

  Rachel is responsible for software sales, and she’s fed up. Her most recent customer just called and chewed her out because of the problems his organization is having with the new software she sold them. The software doesn’t work as promised, and the customer is running out of patience. This isn’t the first time this has happened, but whenever Rachel takes a client’s problems to the software support department, they tell her it’s the client’s fault for not saying what was needed when the software was installed.

  This is the third customer to call this week with a similar problem, and the third time she’s gotten grief from software support. She is struggling with her sales, and she hasn’t had an interested client prospect in over three weeks. She’s thinking that if she sells software to any other clients, she will just get more calls from them with more problems, and that’s the last thing she wants to have to deal with. At this point, she’s thinking, “The software is flawed, management doesn’t care, and there’s just no sense of urgency from the support department to solve any of my clients’ problems—I give up.”

  These committed employees have three things in common:

  They care very much about what they do for their customers.

  Each of them is experiencing the chaos of the workplace, and there’s no apparent solution coming from higher-ups.

  Each of them has been infected with a deadly and common workplace virus, a meme, that doesn’t stop with them—in other words, an Execution Virus.

  What similar story can you tell about a Jackie, a John, or a Rachel in your organization?

  The circumstances in these particular scenarios and the hidden conversations that result have a direct and lasting impact on the overall performance of these three employees’ companies. However, what these employees think is the problem is really a symptom of a much deeper issue. No one is consciously aware of the contextual source of the problem—the conversation that’s running in the background of each of these companies. They are only aware, indirectly, of the outcomes. The outcomes are visible, but the causes are not.

  The Damage That Execution Viruses Inflict on Businesses

  How do you think the employees at these three companies might act as a result of these conversations? I can help you with that.

  Scenario A:

  Jackie’s HR department employees are working hard to avoid any confrontation with their drama-laden supervisor. That means they are removed from the mission of the company and the purpose of the HR department, which is to serve the company’s employees and their supervisors.

  Scenario B:

  John thinks nothing will ever change for the better, and he’s dreading having to deal with all the unhappy customers that the new rules will produce. He will find a way around the situation, or he’ll pass the problems off to someone else. He will struggle to do his job and will continue to resent upper management, who apparently don’t know what customer service agents have to deal with and who don’t communicate with anyone at his level—except to issue edicts through the division manager. Sooner or later, a better job will come along, and John will jump at it.

  Scenario C:

  Rachel is done selling software. She’s still on the payroll and will be as long as she can hold out, but she doesn’t want to lie to prospects about the efficacy of the product and its (in)ability to solve their problems. That just creates more problems for her to deal with, and she hates getting angry calls from customers who don’t get any satisfaction from the support department. She is convinced that the company doesn’t care that she is faced with disgruntled clients, and she no longer finds it easy to pick up the phone and follow up on leads for new business. Cold-calling is a thing of the past for her, and she would rather risk losing her job than create additional problems that make her life more miserable. She is embarrassed to work for her employer.

  The hidden conversations—and the beliefs and actions they create—aren’t confined to Jackie’s employees, John, or Rachel. The conversations are spreading like wildfire throughout these employees’ respective organizations—replicating like a virus. The way management and others act or do not act toward them has infected everyone. These employees’ beliefs, attitudes, and feelings that their organization lacks values are invading the culture of the organization, undermining and sabotaging the organization’s ability to execute its strategy. This is the Execution Virus in action.

  The Execution Virus Creates Disconnected Companies

  As we explained in Section 1, connected companies produce extraordinary results, and companies become connected (usually without knowing it) by engaging in the ten conversations I call the ConnectionPoints. Here we see the opposite effect: Hidden, viral conversations cause employees at Jackie’s, John’s, and Rachel’s companies to become disconnected from their company’s mission and purpose, thus producing poor results. Whi
le Jackie, John, and Rachel names are fictionalized, the situations they find themselves in are not made up. Scenarios just like these take place at businesses in every country every day, and even the best companies aren’t protected from the insidious viral memes that lodge themselves in the workplace and force entire organizations to settle for mediocre results or worse.

  Why Does This Happen, and What Can You Do to Fix It?

  You’ll notice that in each of these three scenarios, the Execution Virus originated not because of something the employees were doing but because of something they were reacting to. Jackie’s staff was reacting to Jackie’s chronic negative behavior, John and his staff were reacting to arbitrary and damaging rules handed down by uncommunicative management, and Rachel was reacting to a lack of help from the software support department. Moreover, in each of these scenarios, the employees felt powerless to change the situation. That is another identifying aspect of a disconnected company: The employees feel powerless to make the company’s situation better.

  But before you as the leader of the company can address that problem, you must first discover what is causing employees to feel powerless. In many, if not most cases, the person causing that problem is right at the top—meaning it could be you. It comes down to awareness: Looking in the mirror and finding out what you’re doing to cause your company to become disconnected and infected with an Execution Virus is the first step to replacing the Execution Virus with a new meme that creates a connected, successful company.