Thirteeners

by Daniel F Prosser

  Deviating from your core business.When you are suffering sales losses due to the recession or because the competition is beating you at your own game, it may seem logical to seek a new vertical market, change markets, or even add to your core products and services. That’s usually a horrible mistake! Stick to your core, because plenty of businesses don’t and thereby create disasters for themselves.

  For example, a client of mine was finding it difficult to compete because other companies were encroaching on their niche market. Without any research, my client decided that the best way forward was to start a new online business that was somewhat related to its core business; it would serve the same client base. Management thought their core clientele would go for the new concept and would thus spend more money, but the strategy was a complete disaster.

  The company spent $20 million setting up this business, and not one client was interested—not one. To say leadership didn’t do their homework would be an under-statement. In addition to bypassing the marketing legwork to understand their clients’ needs, they got wrapped up in the excitement of having a new idea, and the new endeavor sapped critical energy from their core business. The new $20 million business bit the dust within a year.

  Being attached to outcomesYou’ve heard it before: “What you resist persists.” Time and time again, I’ve seen people focus on the negative aspect of something—and what they get is more negative results. If you are attached to not failing, it makes failing more vivid from your perspective. All you see are threats of failure. When you’re working hard not to fail, you can’t be working on winning at the same time. You need to stay focused on what you desire as on outcome rather than focusing on what you want to avoid or what you don’t want.

  You have zero control over the circumstances in your life, and the faster you figure that out, the happier and more successful you’ll be. Trying to change your circumstances can consume all your time and energy. So let go. Be the best you can be and never get attached to hoped-for outcomes.

  When you create a plan, don’t get attached to it. If you fail at it, you’re not a failure. Failure is not the end of the world; it’s a milestone in your education. You’ve heard the quote “Fail fast and fail often.” Well, get to it. It’s part of upgrading the conversations in your life from the ones you had as a child—about how fear of failure is a good thing—to an adult conversation about how failure is what happened yesterday. Today is an opportunity to create a new possibility.

  Managing people rather than promises and failing to value employee promisesAt one time or another most of us make promises to ourselves and others. But do we really value them? To build a THIRTEENER company or to just bring in the next great client requires a new level of rigor in making and keeping promises. It requires a new relationship to your own promises and to the promises other people make to you. Simply put, you have to deliver on your own promises and hold others to doing the same. You probably don’t do the latter very often; you may simply hope others will have the integrity to do what they say they will. And then, when they don’t deliver, you allow yourself to completely buy into the other person’s reasons why. As a result, 87 percent of strategies don’t get executed.

  So stop trying to manage people. Start managing promises, and see things begin to move.

  Failing to pay attention to the conversations you leadAfter ten years of study, I’ve discovered that Best Place to Work companies value entirely different internal conversations from the conversations valued by non-Best Place companies. What are the crucial conversations? According to employee reports, it’s the conversations that show that their leaders consider them important.

  Employees want to be acknowledged for their value, so the quality of the conversations and the quantity of these quality conversations will ultimately determine whether your organization will be a Best Place to Work. If that is not so important to you, consider that Best Place to Work companies deliver 2.5 to 3 times more value to the bottom line and to their owners than do others. Is that important to you?

  Treating your employees like familyThis is one of the biggest mistakes you can make. It’s so big, in fact, that I devote the entire next chapter to its main consequence: entitlement. I hear many “proud papas” (and mamas) talk about their company’s family atmosphere, but I shake my head in amazement at how limiting that thinking really is. Treating your employees like a family promotes patriarchy in your organization, and that saps all sense of urgency from your team by teaching that they can’t think or act without first checking with “Daddy” or “Mommy.” It limits an organization’s ability to grow and feeds the narcissistic proclivities of entrepreneurial CEOs. And it does one more thing: It creates entitlement, which is a virus that’s most noticeable in companies where leadership seems to be giving everything they can think of to keep their employees satisfied so they will remain with the company.

  Once they’ve caught the Entitlement Virus, employees demand more and more from the employment relationship, and they often actually withhold their commitment and performance if they don’t get what they want. They do that for one simple reason: It’s not their company. It’s Daddy’s or Mommy’s.

  That’s the last thing you want if you’re trying to create a THIRTEENER company. My advice: Get your maternal and paternal needs met at home. The more you treat people like they need to depend on you, the more they will avoid an important move until you say so. That means you’ll have to be there at every turn, and it also means that no one will grow. Not them. Not you.

  “Employees have three prime needs: Interesting work, recognition for doing a good job, and being let in on things that are going on in the company”

  — Zig Ziglar

  In addition to the Execution Virus, which undermines the performance of so many companies, you need to be aware of the Entitlement Virus if you expect to lead a THIRTEENER organization. Even the very best companies I know have the Entitlement Virus, and your company probably has been infected with it as well.

  Entitlement Infection

  One quiet Saturday afternoon, I was sitting in my office at the far end of what I assumed was an empty building. As I was working, I heard the printer down the hall spitting out documents. I hadn’t hit the print button on my computer, so I took a look around. Only one office had its lights on. I moseyed over to where the printed documents were to see what was going on. It turned out that one of my employees was about to resign and start his own company. He was planning to compete against us, and he was making copies of our proprietary business documents. Apparently, he thought he was entitled to take what he wanted. Had I not been there, this employee’s feeling of entitlement would have resulted in our confidential information being taken.

  This is not to say that employees who feel entitled are going to steal intellectual property or even that all employees are infected with the Entitlement Virus. But some will feel they are entitled to help themselves to things they want, and the sad fact is that 95 percent of all companies experience employee theft. It may be as small as employees taking home office supplies, or it could be as serious as millions of dollars embezzled by a trusted bookkeeper.

  A sense of entitlement prevents you, your employees, and your company from meeting the challenges of competition and growth. In his transformational 1993 book Stewardship: Choosing Service over Self-Interest, Peter Block stated, “At the heart of entitlement is the belief that my needs are more important than the business and that the business exists for my sake.”13 I’ve dealt with this issue myself, when a downturn in business made me want to keep my employees at any cost. I discovered that the need to nurture familial-type relationships with employees was a double-edged sword.

  When I related to my employees as if they were members of my extended family, I made it nearly impossible to hold them accountable. That created a bad precedent for getting important work done in the future—not with my longtime employees, but with others who had joined later and realized this was a place where you didn’t
really have to work very hard, be on time, do what’s promised, or even complete assigned duties with any degree of enthusiasm or integrity.

  The Entitlement Virus impacts performance by infecting the thinking of employees and leaders alike, and it works symbiotically with the Execution Virus, each one keeping the other in place. And as with other viral memes, you can’t see the Entitlement Virus. You can only see its symptoms, so remember this: When you are trying your best to solve a problem and nothing is working, consider that the real problem is invisible to you. It’s under the surface, and you’re going to need to ask different questions to get to its source.

  Like with the Execution Virus, you can neutralize the negative Entitlement Virus by replacing it with a positive virus: Empowerment.

  What Is Entitlement, and Where Does It Come From?

  Anyone who has ever owned or managed a business has experienced the impact of entitlement and wondered what to do about it. It’s a covert issue that drives most CEOs crazy. As I’ve said, entitlement is most noticeable when leaders appear to be doing everything they can possibly think of to keep their employees satisfied and with the company, while those same employees demand more from the employment relationship and then withhold their commitment and performance if they don’t get it.

  Entitlement is a real problem that will prevent you from executing your strategy, but it’s merely the symptom of more dangerous underlying conditions. Employees who think they are entitled often feel as though they are victims of management exploitation or mistreatment. Left unchecked, entitlement can result in covert acts of revenge. Therefore, it’s important to understand what’s at the source of your employees’ entitlement thinking. Your company’s future depends on it.

  Patriarchy Is at the Root

  I believe that the root cause of the Entitlement Virus an be attributed to two issues:

  1) The fear of losing, which makes clients, employees, and others more important than the business;

  2) A pretense of leadership that claims employees are more important than management, although, in fact, management believes chiefly in its own entitlement.

  Entitlement is the result of a patriarchal belief system that most of us share—a belief system often designed around financial control and the idea that you must maintain a clear line of authority to operate your business: Entitlement implies that if you’re the boss, you are endowed with special privileges that others don’t have, and it arises when management wants to avoid being seen by employees as taking advantage of the system for their own gain.

  To believe in entitlement as a leader, you must first operate under the arrogant assumption that you’re making all the sacrifices and that, therefore, you should be entitled to something extra. After all, it’s your company. At the same time, you are trying to hide that you’re doing well; you might even become indignant if someone suggested that you were making all the money and not paying others what they “deserve.” Finally, you’re telling yourself that if employees knew how much you were “raking in” compared to what you pay them, they just might up and leave. All this lets you extend the fiction that no such issue exists. And that will come back to bite you, because you’re only fooling yourself.

  In reality, you are entitled to something special. You ought to be making significantly more money than your highest-ranking employee. Why are you trying to justify your salary to yourself? When you have a good year, do you jack up everyone’s salary? No, you don’t do anything of the kind. Instead, you find a way to give people a nice reward along with verbally demonstrated appreciation. And that’s exactly what you should do, not go off half-cocked out of guilt, trying to make up to others for your good fortune. That’s just another pretense of leadership, and it’s the pretending that is hurting you.

  Even if employees come and tell you that they think they should get a raise, having your best year in business doesn’t mean you have to start overpaying employees. Once you overcompensate by raising a salary, you can never bring it back down without consequences.

  Have you ever felt owed by your business for the effort you put in?

  Have you ever felt guilty about your employees’ compensation, even while knowing they are paid fairly?

  Who Has the Entitlement Virus, and What Does It Do to Them?

  So to paraphrase Peter Block, the viral meme that best encapsulates the Entitlement Virus is “The employees’ needs are more important than the business.” As for who has been infected by this meme, the answer is managers who are trying to prevent employees from withholding their efforts unless they receive extra perks. Employees will know when you’re trying not to lose business, not lose good employees, not lose your best clients, or not lose face.

  Managers who are infected by the Entitlement Virus think they’re doing what’s best for the company by overlooking infractions such as coming in late or taking longer lunch periods. These are the things that my clients complain most about. It drives them crazy. What’s the big deal with a little tardiness, they ask themselves, or missing a client’s deadline, or helping yourself to a pencil or a pad of paper for your kid’s homework?

  The answer is the loss of integrity. Little infractions turn into huge issues over time. But the real cost of ignoring this kind of thing is that it keeps your organization from operating with integrity. It’s an infected strategy that derails attempts at resolving even the slightest conflicts between you and your employees.

  When managers believe their own sacrifices entitle them to special benefits, that belief creates feelings of entitlement among the rank and file as well. Management is the primary source of entitlement thinking, and therefore, only management can transform the negative Entitlement Virus into the positive Empowerment Virus.

  The Plan of Attack

  To attack the virus of entitlement, take these five steps:

  First, eliminate the ridiculous conversation that begins, “We’re like family around here.” If I had $10 for every time a CEO told me he or she tried to treat employees like family, I’d be on a yacht in the Caribbean. Sure, it sounds good when you say it, and it might seem like it’s desirable to create close relationships because they purportedly feel good to everyone. But the fact remains that most families are dysfunctional. Why would you want that kind of dysfunctional behavior in your company, too?

  All families tend to be patriarchal or matriarchal by nature. So even with the best of intentions, trying to create a business culture that’s like a family ends up ultimately breeding sibling rivalry, jealousies, and resentments. And as in your family (and in mine, too), accountability is usually absent most of the time. When employees become familiar with each other, they tend to stop holding each other accountable because nobody wants to step on friends’ or siblings’ toes.

  Start relating to employees according to their accountability (that is, in the job they hold or the professional role they play) instead of their personality (their privileged position in the company). The ”vice president of marketing” is an accountability; my Starbucks buddy Anastas isn’t.

  The big shift usually takes place when you ask employees to make real promises to take real actions and then measure how well they have kept their promises. If they don’t do the job, rather than getting upset, simply be curious. Ask, “What’s missing that kept you from keeping your word?” Then, begin working with the employee to close the gap by helping to provide what’s missing. Doing this one thing will cause immense change within your company.

  Next create a structure for fulfilling promises. When employees know what your vision for your company is and how they contribute to its fulfillment, they can make meaningful promises to accomplish things that will make a difference to the bottom line. But that requires a different kind of conversation from you as their leader.

  The first thing you need to do is knock off all the talk about all your great ideas. Sure, you’re an entrepreneur; you’re going to have great ideas. But you don’t have to blab about them out loud, so stop talking about all t
he things “we’re going to do” in the future. Focus on your core business issues and start promising the specific measurable actions you are going to take right now. Rather than talking to your employees about what you will do in the future, be an example right now of what you want from your employees.

  Managers literally stop the action when they confuse “talking about taking action” with actually taking action. They collapse the two into each other. For example, you may hold a meeting to talk about how to solve a problem or how you’re going to get a desirable new client, but a week later, you have the same problem because no action has been taken. No one is managing and measuring the promises for taking action; they’re simply managing “talking about” taking action. So get into action and hold employees accountable, and then start measuring for what you want. Those are the only things that matter.

  Communicate fully. If you are keeping secrets of any kind in your company, you are building resentment, and feelings of entitlement will emerge, if they haven’t already. Without information, employees cannot be expected to act in ways that support your vision. Instead, they begin to make things up, and what they make up is either not the truth or wrong 99 percent of the time. Do you want that going on in your company?

  When you withhold information, you teach your people that withholding is a value. Most likely it’s not a value you want. Not fully communicating means you don’t trust anyone with important information. And if you don’t trust your employees, your employees won’t trust you.

  Understand that alignment is a leader’s work of art. Years ago, a great coach, Mitzie Hoelscher, taught me that alignment was my principal job as a leader. Nothing moves in an organization unless there is alignment with the vision and mission. Without it, there is no accountability, and in turn, no accountability means no alignment. They go hand in hand. You won’t mitigate entitlement if you’re not aligned, and you can’t align if you’re not accountable.