In Great Company

by Louis Carter

  Positive results from this big shift were impressive. For one, cross-functional and cross-regional collaboration have increased dramatically. Employees are trained in strategic thinking, too, and they are invited to offer their input in brainstorming sessions. They have accelerated their global reach too and launched an entire line of WD-40 Specialist products that are currently creating growth in even highly developed markets.

  This bigger-picture focus creates an urgency around innovation and gives people permission to think beyond the current moment to what will drive the organization in the future. We may think of innovation mavens like SpaceX (which is ready to send rockets to Mars) as inherently future focused, but this intentional effort to look ahead is equally relevant for companies with traditional products and services. Steelcase, the office furniture innovator, for instance, is famously focused on remaining ahead of the market with patented designs and product updates based on insights they glean by interacting with customers.

  Like WD-40, Steelcase has a deliberate focus on balancing future thinking with present concerns. Former longtime CEO Jim Hackett said in the New York Times that he used a “bull’s-eye” approach: “You put ‘now’ in the center, and the outer ring is ‘near,’ and the furthest ring is ‘far,’” he said. “What I’ve argued is that you have to train yourself to work in all three dimensions simultaneously.”26

  The result? Steelcase is the largest furniture manufacture in the world with over 115 years of history to look back on.

  Future thinking seems to be working for WD-40 as well. In a recent employee engagement survey, 94.2 percent of employees said, “I am excited about WD-40 Company’s future direction,” and 99 percent said, “I feel my opinions and values are a good fit with the WD-40 Company culture.” And 98.4 percent said, “I love to tell people that I work for WD-40 Company.”27

  Put Risk in Perspective

  Creating space for innovation means making room for risk. The most entrepreneurial organizations among us enable experimentation and iteration. In these cases, most attempts at innovation are expected to fail at first—it’s baked into the formula. Small bets lead to important lessons that inform future growth.

  More and more, large organizations are following their lead. For instance, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich wrote in a memo to employees in 2017: “The new normal for Intel is that we are going to take more risks. The new normal is that we will continue to make bold moves and try new things. We’ll make mistakes. Bold doesn’t always mean right or perfect. The new normal is that we’ll get good at trying new things, determining what works and moving forward.”28

  Organizations like Intel are determined to create innovative cultures that can move quickly to seize opportunities.

  Make Innovation for Everyone

  Inclusion is a core idea that cuts across all five elements of emotional connectedness. It applies to this aspect of positive future specifically because innovation needs to be a cultural imperative in order to succeed. As we’ve seen through research, inclusion unlocks innovation by creating an environment where more ideas and different perspectives receive an audience.29 Luckily, there are myriad ways for companies to give everyone a shot at creating the future.

  As one for-instance, Google popularized the idea of side projects, whereby 15 to 20 percent of an employee’s time can be spent pursuing relevant ideas and so-called passion projects. Although the side project program at Google has been on-again, off-again, it’s been wildly productive in generating innovations, with Gmail, AdSense, and Google Maps all starting out this way.30 The idea has caught on like wildfire at companies like 3M (their program actually preceded Google’s), Intuit, Atlassian, and many others that encourage employees to build unstructured time into their day.

  Creating a competition is another way to get people to step forward with the innovation ideas. Stanley Black & Decker has an employee innovation contest where the winner gets the keys to the company Tesla for a month, for instance. Other companies have set up Shark Tank style competitions, whereby winners receive funding to pursue a prototype or commercialization of their idea. Yet another brand of innovation contest is the hackathon. Generally this is a structured challenge geared to solve a specified problem or build out an idea. Originally a Silicon Valley staple, hackathons have become mainstream in many companies across industries.

  From hackathons and side projects to challenges and other contests, there are easy ways for everyone, regardless of job title or level, to come together and try their hand at innovation.

  Be Ambidextrous

  “Ambidextrous organizations” as described by Charles O’Reilly and Michael Tushman are those that manage to uncover new opportunities even as they work diligently to leverage existing capabilities. More specifically, they “separate their new, exploratory units from their traditional, exploitative ones, allowing for different processes, structures, and cultures; at the same time, they maintain tight links across units at the senior executive level. In other words, they manage organizational separation through a tightly integrated senior team.”31

  This perspective enables companies to pursue innovation on multiple levels simultaneously without pushback or cannibalization. Michael Arena of GM has explained it like this: “Some people need to be fanatically focused on what it takes to design, build, and sell the best possible product or midsize SUV, for instance, and then other people need to be focused on the future game changing ideas like driverless technology, . . . and we create leadership links between the two parts.”

  This model helps organizations rise above the one-size-fits-all approach to innovation. It also helps them create a positive vision for their future because it keeps enough connections between the levels that each can benefit from what the other learns.

  4. Keep Workplace Practices Positive

  The last prescription for positive future is extremely straightforward: keep things affirmative. My research shows that many of the most common workplace perks and trappings have scant long-term impact on engagement, but we do know what does play a role—a positive workplace. Research from the University of Michigan and elsewhere shows that positive workplace practices elevate engagement and improve employee effectiveness.32 In fact, the authors of one study reported, “When organizations institute positive, virtuous practices, they achieve significantly higher levels of organizational effectiveness—including financial performance, customer satisfaction, and productivity. . . . The more the virtuousness, the higher the performance in profitability, productivity, customer satisfaction, and employee engagement.”33

  We see positive practices coming from three places in an organization.

  The first source of positivity in the workplace is organizational culture. Positive cultures start with commensurate, transparent values and intentional, ongoing follow-through. Companies like Zappos, Warby Parker, and Southwest Airlines are well known for their upbeat, optimistic cultures for a good reason—because they work at it. They design their workplace practices to deliver on that positive vibe, and they hire accordingly. Warby Parker, for one, has a team dedicated to delivering on the positive culture that everyone talks about. Southwest? They have proven that they have a “culture of appreciation” by having never laid off a single employee.34

  The second source of positivity in the workplace is leadership. Yes, the aphorism is true: people don’t leave jobs; they leave managers. When a leader is unhappy, negative, or disengaged, it has a cascading effect that disproportionately affects everyone in their sphere of influence. Conversely, leaders who model positive behavior, including optimism, empathy, and enthusiasm, tend to inspire others to act similarly though their good example. It is notable that “emotional contagion” is especially relevant for leaders. When leaders are in a positive mood and behave accordingly, everyone around them follows suit.35

  The final source of positive workplace practices is communication. This is where authentic leadership and culture meet to create trust. Leaders need to speak the truth and do as th
ey say. And employees need to see for themselves that the organizational culture is not only about language but also actions. Communication that rings true in words and deeds delivers on the promise of a positivity future and keeps people connected.

  In order to operationalize these ideas, the discussion that follows brings the three sources of positivity together with specific advice for keeping workplace practices positive.

  Create a Climate of Optimism

  Optimism is the hallmark of a positive workplace. As part of that, employees need to know that they matter, that they are making a positive contribution to the organization, and that their good work has earned them a place at the company now and in the future.

  Generally considered to be a worldview, optimism can also be a promise that we build principles and practices around. Coca-Cola, for example, wants to “inspire moments of happiness and optimism.” The design firm IDEO, as well, counts optimism as a core value and considers it to be “the engine that allows us to reframe problems and provocations and experiment with new solutions.”36

  Companies can create a climate of optimism by maximizing and developing the strengths of individuals, as opposed to penalizing them for weaknesses. They can remove obstacles that stand in their way by providing resources, encouragement, and coaching. Organizations can also show that they believe in people by empowering them instead of micromanaging. Finally, they can invite more people to solve problems, thereby making them part of the solution and creating a proactive, positive, can-do culture.

  Feedforward

  Meaningful, targeted feedback is one of the most powerful tools we have to set people up to succeed. And today we have many more ways to offer and receive feedback. Pulse surveys, mobile apps, and new tools for 360-degree reviews all make it possible use instant insights to improve our performance. But there’s a catch. Oftentimes feedback has a negative impact on future performance. Delivered in the wrong way, feedback triggers a fear response and puts us on the defensive. Even worse, focusing on past events that are impossible to change makes us feel helpless and reinforces negative behaviors.

  Luckily, there is a far better way. I have found that people are In Great Company when they view feedback as feed forward. Coined by Marshall Goldsmith, author of What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, feedforward fits the positive future paradigm perfectly because it focuses on what we can do better. It uses an appreciative approach to provide information on future actions. These are the behavioral changes that underlie the principle of feedforward:

  Focus on maximizing and developing strengths in the future, instead of cataloging past weaknesses.

  Use what you know about “what went wrong in the past” to describe “how to be great in the future.”

  Don’t rank people with numbers or categorize or label them as good or bad based on past behavior.

  Elevate people with coaching. Don’t lecture to them.

  Be specific, and focus on meaningful future behavior. Don’t provide a meaningless information dump.

  Include multiple data points over time—not feedback from a single manager.

  Use the feedforward approach as part of everyday management. Don’t save advice for an annual discussion that is tied to compensation.

  Above all, instead of providing negative or positive feedback, focus on providing future-oriented options and solutions.

  Feedforward is the killer app not only for delivering feedback that will be received positively, but also for creating emotional connectedness. Taking a coaching approach to performance management and demonstrating that you genuinely want employees to succeed in the future brings people closer together every time.

  Start with Yes, And

  “Yes, and” are powerfully positive words. Saying “yes, and” to a business idea, a request for coaching, a bid for more responsibility, or even just an offer to get coffee together is affirming, active, and empowering for both parties. Saying “and” after “yes” gives you the opportunity to address your requests and needs to your “yes.” In contrast, starting with the word no or other negative language, such as the word but, shuts the other person down, negates the other person’s requests or feelings, eats away at trust, and stops action in its tracks. We can’t always say a firm yes, but using positivity as our default creates a way to step away from our comfort zone, think differently, and consider the possibilities.

  Probably the person who has the most notable predisposition to positivity in business today is Mr. Optimism himself, Jeff Bezos. In order to encourage Amazon’s managers to give the green light to more ideas and experiments, Bezos put into practice what he calls “the institutional yes.” That is, he challenges leaders to default to the positive rather than shutting down new thinking.

  Bezos has other positive policies that get people to say yes. One is called “working backward,” whereby product developers write the press release for an innovation before it’s even developed—to help them start with the customer and show what success looks like before seeking approval to proceed.

  Saying yes is just one example of positive language. The idea is to choose to speak in a way that creates a positive environment, fosters innovation, and enables forward momentum.

  Whether by leveraging passion, managing change, creating space to innovate, or simply creating a positive workplace, giving people the gift of a positive future not only keeps people connected in a positive way but also sustains that connection and sets people up to be In Great Company.

  POSITIVE FUTURE: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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  ALIGNMENT OF VALUES

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  When the popular outdoor clothing company Patagonia printed an advertisement on Black Friday in 2011, they were one among many. Hundreds of retailers from Target and Best Buy to Home Depot had all promised extended store hours and one-day sales. What set Patagonia apart by a country mile was their ad telling customers in bold lettering: “Don’t Buy This Jacket.”

  The full-page notice in the New York Times contained a large photo of a popular Patagonia jacket, urging consumers to put down their credit cards and consider resisting “the culture of consumption.” It was a maverick move for Patagonia, and it was right on the mark—and on the money. The company’s counterintuitive strategy led to a surprising surge in positive publicity and delivered record-breaking seasonal sales.1 The antimaterialism message and other similar brand-appropriate moves by Patagonia elevated the organization to cult status not only among customers but also among employees. And the gesture was authentic. It was a proof point that reinforced their stance on social issues such as protecting the planet, and it fully aligned with their established corporate values.

  Alignment of values is often viewed as subjective and intangible, which makes it even more important to agree on a concrete definition. In my work, I view it as the condition whereby an organization’s core beliefs or values are wholly embraced and implemented by employees and leaders. Alignment of values informs a company’s culture, exemplifies their reason for being, drives decision-making, and establishes a common framework for how the organization and its employees can grow together and move forward into the future. What’s more, values alignment emerged in our study as a basic requirement for creating a workplace where employees feel like they are In Great Company.

  Patagonia is a paragon when it comes to values alignment. Take their mission statement: “Build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis.”2 This tells us that Patagonia not only takes customer needs and environmental sustainability seriously but also considers each to be a reinforcing mechanism for the other. In pushing back on Black Friday buying, the organization was simultaneously looking out for its consumers as well as their shared beliefs around conspicuous consumption—and publicly living into its mission.

  The result? Today sales continue to surge, brand recognition is high, and employee turnover is “freakishly low.”3 Values alignment creates an
undeniable connection among employees. In fact, Patagonia’s past HR director told Workforce magazine that the company represents the culture of its employees as much as the em- ployees are the custodians of it.4 That’s emotional connectedness in action. When people buy into a common belief system within their company, and the bond proves to be sustained and authentic, it establishes genuine trust, and employees are able to find more meaning in their work.

  Alignment of values is a potent state of being that keeps people connected and encourages them to perform at their best. Howard Behar, founding president of Starbucks, told me about the time early in Starbucks’s history, when he and Howard Schultz witnessed the power of values alignment:

  As 7,000 or more of us streamed into the Key Arena in Seattle for our first ever “all-hands-on” meeting of store managers, Howard Schultz and I sat and watched in wonder. Their energy and camaraderie was tremendous. Almost simultaneously, we said to each other “How the heck did this happen? How did we get here?” The answer was simple. The people made it happen. They believed in a greater purpose, which they helped create. We created it together, and that’s what made Starbucks successful.5

  Alignment of values is part of what makes Starbucks successful—and the same can be said for every other great company that endures over time. They cocreate core values that resonate with employees, and emotionally competent leaders actively embody these values, building them into the core of the business and creating the In Great Company dynamic. Memorable, meaningful values that employees believe in are the heartbeat of every great company, and without them there is no foundational identity upon which to thrive and grow.