In Great Company
Page 5
DO YOUR VALUES ALIGN?
What are your core values, and how do they map with the core values of your organization? Use the Values Pyramid shown in Figure 2.4 as a tool for self-discovery, peer dialogue, performance management, and decision-making.
FIGURE 2.4
Once you discover the commonalities that connect your core values with those of your company (and those that are practiced by individuals on your team and elsewhere in your company), you can begin to identify where the agility lies and where you need to achieve greater alignment.
Do I Exemplify Our Corporate Values and Set up Others to Do the Same?
How can you be a leader who walks the talk and inspires others to follow suit? As Nooyi shows with her 5Cs, stepping up to communicate core values (in multiple forms and formats) is the right first step. The next step is demonstrating, through words and actions, that values are mission critical—a priority for you and employees at every level.
In some organizations, the values statement is so concise that leaders can and do recite it frequently. In other cases, leaders mention values explicitly when major decisions are made, making it clear to stakeholders how actions align with the values that define the organization.
Am I Successful in Making a Business Case for the Values of the Company?
Values should guide your decision-making. Without a supporting business case, values are easily set aside when a revenue opportunity presents itself—even one that falls outside the scope of the organization’s values comfort zone. Likewise, a business case for values makes the “what’s in it for us” clear to employees and customers.
Southwest Airlines, for example, has a clear and convincing business case for its “employees-first” imperative: “We believe that if we treat our employees right, they will treat our customers right, and in turn that results in increased business and profits that make everyone happy.”11
Do I Measure Values Alignment?
Measuring values alignment and using the results as part of your performance management systems rewards employees who are “values champions” and shapes and strengthens the culture. This endeavor should begin during the hiring and onboarding process—using assessments and focused interviews to hire people who are predisposed to share the corporate values—and it should continue as you and other leaders coach employees and provide performance feedback.
Likewise, employees should be able to factor values alignment into 360 feedback for managers. In general, you should put as much effort into measuring and managing values alignment as you put into ensuring business outcomes—because the two are inextricably linked.
Do I Tie Values to Business Strategy?
Values alignment should extend beyond corporate culture to business strategy and decision-making. This act of alignment is the single most important way you can give employees the tools they need to act in ways that reflect shared values.
For example, as we will see in Chapter 5, the Copenhagen-based biotech firm Novozymes embeds its core value—sustainability—into nearly everything it does. It created new businesses around sustainability, for example, and it builds sustainability across its own organization to enable all employees to contribute. In short, sustainability is reflected in Novozymes’s purpose, strategy, and long-term targets. The result? There is no doubt the organization has achieved values alignment.
Do I Have Partners to Help Keep Me Accountable for Values?
Through values-focused PR efforts, active discussions, and everyday business practices, you can actively invite customers, vendors, and other stakeholders into the values-alignment effort. Creating this type of business “values chain” strengthens bonds, creates loyalty, and extends emotional connectedness from your workplace to your partners.
Element 4. Respect
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Do I Treat Employees Like People?
Bob Chapman, CEO of the private holding company Barry- Wehmiller, has a respect-based management philosophy aimed at making people feel valued and cared for. His human-centric take on leading is designed to “add meaning to people’s lives.”12 And Chapman walks the talk. He offers financial incentives to employees who get health screenings, avoids layoffs, and eliminates things (like timeclocks in its factories) that rob people of respect. He avoids demeaning verbiage like “employees” (instead: “team members”) and “head count” (instead: “heart count”13). Chapman’s philosophy has clear commonalities with emotional connectedness—because it makes business better for everyone by basing it on empathy and respect. The result is that 79 percent of team members at Barry-Wehmiller say the company truly cares about them.14
Emotionally connected leaders respect differences, consider opinions, treat people with dignity, and understand that they have lives to lead outside of work.
The respect element of emotional connectedness is at the core of everything this book prescribes. It intertwines organizational success and individual empowerment and fulfillment. It also creates a lasting connection between leaders and employees based on what we all have in common—our humanity.
Again, the questions below are designed to test your emotional connectedness and help you develop a leadership style that is based on respect.
Have I Made Respect a Mutual Dynamic?
You may have noticed that people generally agree with you and follow your lead. Guess what? That’s not necessarily respect. It’s business as usual when you’re the boss. Creating mutual respect requires a deeper connection that can be established by engaging in dialogue, asking others for advice, showing your appreciation, and making “regular employees” feel comfortable in your presence. In other words, it requires dedicated effort.
In addition to modeling the behavior you want to see, you also need to hire the right people and design incentives appropriately. Luckily, all of this effort has a big payoff. Respect has a reinforcing effect. When you show respect for employees and design the workplace around it, it sends a signal: everyone is expected to do the same. With persistence, respect becomes a cultural norm (Figure 2.5).
FIGURE 2.5 The Respect Effect
Am I Self-Aware? Would Others Say I Am Self-Aware?
A start-up CEO I know told me she was having difficulty with retention. She was stumped. She trained and paid people well, but they were exiting faster than she could recruit replacements. It didn’t take long for me to pinpoint the problem. She was a difficult, prickly, and sometimes abusive boss who nonetheless expected people to work long hours under her watchful eye. She showed them scant respect, and she had no idea the disastrous effect it was having on the workplace.
No one plans to have a problem with respect. It happens in part because we get so busy steering the ship and creating shareholder value that we lose sight of how we are treating people. This is why self-awareness is so essential for leaders. Cultivating respect to spark emotional connectedness requires knowing how your actions are affecting others and understanding how people perceive you.
The rewards of self-awareness come through a combination of internal and external inputs. Internal: Objectively assess your actions, attitudes, and behaviors toward others. You can achieve this by setting time aside, keeping a journal, or otherwise getting in touch with your motivations, triggers, and emotions. External: Ask others to tell you the truth about yourself. Solicit anonymous feedback on a regular basis and take it to heart. Over time, if you find that your self-perception is not in sync with how others see you, get coaching, and make the changes you need to create and maintain mutual respect.
Do I Take Inclusion Seriously?
Inclusion is at the very center of respect—respecting people’s differences, cultivating their unique strengths, and allowing them to contribute fully and bring their best selves to work. As we will see in Chapter 6, leading for inclusion applies to employees as well as stakeholders such as suppliers and customers.
Leaders who practice, cultivate, measure, and incentivize inclusion at all levels are rewarded with a workforce that is di
verse, teams that are empowered and creative, and (according to research) companies that generate great shareholder value.15 Best of all, they are creating a workplace where people really are In Great Company.
Do I Provide Trust in the Right Balance?
There is no doubt that trust is an essential driver of mutual respect. Yet, like anything else, it can get out of balance. As we have seen, a lack of trust can destroy emotional connectedness. But too much trust? Research shows that an excess of trust, or misplaced trust, can have a negative impact on productivity.16
In other words, leaders need to be present, offer positive feedback, and add value. The key is to demonstrate trust through appreciation and empowerment, while also giving people the support and guidance they need to be their best. With this, trust is kept in the right measure as a driver of mutual respect.
Element 5. Killer Achievement
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Do I Set People up to Succeed and Achieve?
In The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People, arguably the most influential management book of all time, Stephen Covey proposes that we “begin with the end in mind.” That simple, brilliant idea offers a path to success that is more memorable than any case study or synthesis of research anywhere.
In my own work with CEOs and CHROs, I have found Covey’s idea to be more relevant than ever as we struggle to cope with technological complexity, overlapping objectives, the always-on workforce, and the risk of executive burnout. With this as the backdrop, each of us needs to begin with the end on mind, even as the goalpost constantly pivots and shifts.
Killer achievement is leading with an orientation aimed at accomplishing the maximum results using a focused yet flexible approach to execution that gives employees the support, resources, and motivation they need to achieve.
Emotionally connected leaders cultivate killer achievement, not to create a cutthroat or competitive work environment but to connect people with common goals, set them up to focus on their strengths, and make them more able to master the tasks that matter most. With achievement orientation, when one person succeeds, everyone does. Achievement orientation requires a balance between determination and flexibility because as goals shift, so too must the strategies and training needed to achieve them.
The guiding questions to bring achievement orientation into sharper focus follow.
Do I Create and Communicate Clear, Compelling Goals?
Setting objectives and communicating them crisply is one of the most critical ways you can add value as a leader. Yet, there’s much more to the task than that. Emotionally connected leaders think about simplicity, meaning, and empowerment—all things that align people around killer achievement.
Simplicity, first, is critical because goals need to resonate with people in diverse roles and apply to functions across the organization. They need to be easily understood and widely applicable. Next, you need to communicate the big picture or the “why” that is associated with the goal. After all, this critical context is what tells a story and makes goals more meaningful. Finally, you need to enable people to achieve goals in their own way. In other words, goals are tools that should be used as much to empower people as to manage them.
Goals will forever be essential tools in performance management, but emotionally connected leaders view them as another opportunity to bring people together—this time around achievement.
Do I Inspire People to Be Best in Class?
Whether they are farmers or pharmacists, people want their work to matter. In fact, research tells us they need a reason for work that adds meaning to their lives.17 And what better reason is there than the chance to be a part of something great?
Emotionally connected leaders set people up to achieve great things by motivating them to be “best in class” at what they do. And there are multiple ways to be the best—being first, improving quality, getting great reviews from customers, being innovative, and so on. What this comes down to is that people aspire to high achievement. It is your job as a leader to inspire and equip them to be their best and help them celebrate the small wins that mark steady progress along the way.
Do I Give People the Support They Need to Achieve?
Setting clear goals and motivating people to go for greatness is a solid start. After that, emotionally connected leaders take the next logical step by giving people the support they need to achieve.
The first level of support is just-right resources. Allocating funding and assigning people in the right measure is as much an art as it is a science—starving projects sets them up to fail, and overfunding creates pressure and stifles experimentation.
Next is development. Study after study shows that employees want training and development options to help them be their best and remain competitive.18
Last is moral support. Mentoring, coaching, and carefully facilitated meetings are three ways that emotionally connected leaders enable people to come together to support each other and help one another achieve.
Do I Have a Strengths-Based Approach to Management?
You get the best from everyone when you play to their strengths. Strengths-based leadership cultivates achievement and maximizes resources by leveraging each person’s top talents.19 At times, we have seen organizations that hire people they believe will be a good fit based on culture and skills—even if there’s no particular role to fill. The idea is that they will use their strengths proactively to create a role or join a project team that needs their particular strength.
Another moment to focus on strengths is in performance management. As Figure 2.6 shows, achieving a balance in how you structure performance conversations offers a process to focus on appreciating strengths first even as you present the development advice that people need to become better and achieve radical outcomes.
FIGURE 2.6 The ARAD Model
Starting with strengths and using appreciation creates lasting connections between leaders and employees and enables people to achieve more based on what they do best. Providing ratings, advice, and a dialogue gives them what they need to accelerate their progress and strengthen their skills and performance.
Do I Balance a Focus on Goals with Flexibility?
Achievement orientation is a path to high performance and a core component of the In Great Company approach. Yet, sustaining achievement and keeping people emotionally connected requires you to build flexibility into the workplace to minimize stress and avoid employee burnout. This imperative brings several ideas together and connects back to the respect element of EC. We need to appreciate employees as people and position flexibility and empathy as levers to keep people connected and able to achieve in a way that leverages their strengths.
Killer achievement is an easy imperative for leaders to champion—but all five elements of EC need to be valued for people to feel respected and connected. The chapters that follow outline each of these elements and prescribe a playbook approach to help leaders spark a cultural high performance that is reinforced by the practices that put people In Great Company.
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SYSTEMIC COLLABORATION
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Companies that are In Great Company go beyond traditional collaboration. They create systemic collaboration where team-based decision-making, cocreation, and balanced conversation become the hallmark of successful working relationships. Collaboration moves from being a buzzword to becoming a part of the fabric of the company’s operational infrastructure.
The Dutch banking multinational ING Group took this idea to heart when they eliminated the traditional organization chart over a two-year period beginning in 2016. Since then, everyone works in highly collaborative project teams. Each team has a leader who is responsible for product delivery and a “coach” to make sure the team collaborates effectively. The agile team model employed at ING borrows ideas from Spotify, Netflix, Google, and others. As part of their highly collaborative structure, ING has very few traditional managers, and success depends heavily on trust and transparency within t
eams. Although their transformation was admittedly novel—and daring for one of the world’s largest financial services and insurance conglomerates—the change was meant to engage one of their most important stakeholder groups: employees. The result has been improved cycle times, a focus on customer needs, and a company culture that people want to be a part of.1 More specifically, the organization credits their collaborative approach with the following big wins:
1. We are more efficient and more flexible.
2. We can innovate faster with shorter time to market.
3. We are a more attractive employer; our employees have much more freedom and responsibility than in a traditional company approach.2
ING is far from alone in its quest to turbocharge performance through collaboration. General Electric is also betting its business on collaboration within and among project teams.3 As it attempts to make the difficult shift from being a massive industrial era behemoth to being a lean, digitally enabled enterprise, its leaders have deemed collaboration to be core to their efforts at reinvention and transformation. As part of that, much of the GE workforce is now organized in small, cross-functional groups that huddle with customers and suppliers, utilizing their feedback to optimize their product development process.4