In Great Company

by Louis Carter

  At the same time, Best Buy scanned the periphery for emerging opportunities. One sign of flexibility amid the focus was an extension of the marketing partnership between Best Buy and Amazon that brought the organizations together to sell, exclusively, smart TVs equipped with Amazon’s video streaming capabilities and the Alexa voice assistant. This combination of focus and flexibility signaled Best Buy’s shift from turnaround artist to growth mode.

  WD-40 is another company that uses the focus and flexibility mantra to enable achievement. While CEO Garry Ridge directs their efforts in smart support of their ubiquitous blue and yellow can, he also expects people to take risks, explore change, and look for growth opportunities. In fact, Ridge gives WD-40’s employees a license to learn by insisting they uncover opportunities for the organization and its brand. As part of that, WD-40 employees take a “Maniac Pledge” to encourage ownership and experimentation: “I am responsible for taking action, asking questions, getting answers, and making decisions. I won’t wait for someone to tell me. If I need to know, I am responsible for asking.”17

  Not unlike Netflix’s freedom and responsibility imperative, the Maniac Pledge brings focus and flexibility together in a way that empowers people to achieve.

  Communicate Goals Clearly

  Aligning strategy and structure works best when objectives are simply stated and communicated repetitively. Simplicity like this makes goal alignment easier while repetition lights the path to achievement.

  Best Buy focused their people around their Renew Blue strategy in a few ways. First, they clearly articulated the problems their turnaround plan was created to address: declining revenue and declining margin. Next, Joly, a McKinsey & Company alum, organized priorities around five succinct goals:

  • Reinvigorate and rejuvenate the customer experience.

  • Attract and inspire leaders and employees.

  • Work with vendor partners to innovate and drive value.

  • Increase return on invested capital (ROIC) for investors.

  • Continue leadership role in positively affecting the world.18

  Finally, the company managed progress carefully across the organization, always referring back to the original two problems. When they completed the turnaround in 2017, Joly was quick to communicate their next plan, called “New Blue.” All of this consistency and simplicity made a complicated turnaround easier for people to rally around.

  Even when a turnaround is not at stake, communicating goals effectively makes it easier to create a cascade effect whereby organizational and individual goals can be achieved in lockstep. In my work with organizations, I’ve seen that simplicity means that employees can engage in goal setting and feedback opportunities in an effective way that focuses on meaningful achievement over mindless minutia.

  Set People Free to Achieve

  The next way to align strategy and structure is to hire the right people and set them free to achieve. With focus and goal alignment as guardrails, then, people should be empowered to demonstrate all the confidence and creativity they need to succeed. For instance, the 125-page culture deck is effective at Netflix because it provides a way for people to proceed on their own as much as it guides them to understand the cultural imperative of freedom and responsibility. The creative software firm Adobe has a similar ethos. Employees are carefully screened and trained, and then they are assigned challenging projects and trusted to carry out their responsibilities without micromanagement.

  Tom Kolditz has a complementary philosophy, drawn from his experience as a leader and teacher, that he calls “presumption of competence.”19

  “In an organizational context, ‘presumption of competence’ means you bring in people who are well trained and properly educated, who know the job, and you bestow a level of trust that helps them proceed and achieve,” he said. “And when bad things happen or things run off course, the presumption is that it was a situational issue, not a personal one,” he said.

  The “presumption” is that the individuals involved are competent but the situation is flawed and can be addressed together. This presumption of competence lets smart people propose creative solutions and problem solve without fear of failure or finger pointing. It sets limits but also sets people free to achieve.

  Channel Feedback for Achievement

  Feedback is another important driver of achievement. As with positive future—where we need to plan for a positive future even as we solve problems and create a culture of accountability, feedforward comes into play again here. Although it is self-evident that feedback should align with goals, organizations are starting to see that the traditional assessment process actually hinders performance, so some are beginning to look for ways to change.

  The biggest improvement is making feedback real time as opposed to waiting for the annual assessment. Adobe, for one, was an early adopter of redefining performance discussions to make them more meaningful to employees. Beginning in 2012, the organization has eliminated annual performance reviews, and it has scrapped archived paperwork and ranking. The company has replaced the process with regular discussions that cover expectations, feedback, and growth and development. The more informal, targeted discussions address performance issues when they occur, while experiences are fresh, instead of waiting for the review cycle, when employees and managers are left grasping for meaningful specifics that can affect future achievement.20

  Google’s approach is perhaps even more notable, and it dates back to the company’s inception. Developed by venture capitalist John Doerr and described in his book, Measure What Matters, Google’s performance management is built around setting and achieving audacious goals using objectives and key results (OKRs). The novel model gives organizations four “superpowers,” including “focus and commit to priorities” and “track for accountability.” The beauty in Google’s approach is that it builds stretch goals and focused measurement into the daily fabric of the organization in- stead of using a historical approach that measures achievement instead of driving it.21

  2. Set People Up to Succeed

  People achieve more when organizations set them up to succeed through training, personal development, ongoing learning, and diverse opportunities to grow. Almost all of the leaders and executives I interviewed for this book mentioned ongoing learning and professional development as priority levers to help people at every level be their best. And research on employee engagement supports this. Learning opportunities, professional development, and career progression are among the top drivers of employee satisfaction and workforce success, according to Deloitte. As part of that, employees under the age of 35 rate professional development as their number 1 or number 2 driver of engagement.22

  Jazz Pharmaceuticals, as well, put employee development directly at the center of their culture at a critical time for the organization. Eric Fink, Jazz CHRO, told me about creating the culture of learning and development that transformed the organization on the heels of the 2008 to 2009 recession. These are Fink’s words:

  It was an especially dark moment for a lot of companies. Jazz was losing money, the stock was down to 53 cents a share, and we were in default on our debt and closing in on bankruptcy. At the time, [CEO Bruce Cozadd] was trying to talk me into coming over to Jazz from Bayer to be head of learning and development. In the beginning I was thinking, why the heck are you hiring a sales trainer if you’re considering going under? I had an infant just home after eight weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and another who was two years old. Why would my family and I pick up and move across the country to join a company on the edge of decline?

  But the things that Bruce told me stuck with me. He wasn’t telling me about hitting a certain stock price or winning over Wall Street at that point. He seemed far more passionate about building the culture of the company and setting us up to succeed.

  He told me: “It’s about the people. Do you know how we’re going to rise up and out of this? By investing in our salespeople and getting them read
y to drive revenues on our products. That’s the plan. We’re going to train people, and our employees will pull us out of this. We can do this together.”

  I flew back home after the meeting, and I couldn’t let go of what he said. My mentors at the time were saying, “What the heck are you doing? You were at GSK [GlaxoSmithKline]. You wanted to go smaller, so you went to Bayer, which is a world-renowned pharmaceutical company, and now you’re going to throw it all away and join some hundred-person company that’s in financial freefall?”

  But I was hooked. I was like, “I gotta do it. It’s crazy, but I believe in this.”

  So we followed the plan and invested in people. We focused on training them, motivating them, and empowering them. And it worked. Over the next few years, we took a product that was approaching its 10-year anniversary, Xyrem, and elevated it from single-digit growth to double-digit-plus volume growth for three years running, which is unheard of. By that time, we were running on all cylinders in a number of ways and starting to look at new opportunities. Come 2012, we were paying our loans, we hit profitability, and we had cash in the bank. In a matter of two years we were in a completely different situation, largely driven by investing in people.23

  Fink’s story is unique, and he’s passionate about learning, but the lesson itself applies across the board. Training and development set people up to succeed, and ongoing learning is one of the best ways to create the type of emotional connectedness that leads to peak achievement. Let’s drill down into two of the best lessons.

  Train Continuously

  As we saw with Jazz Pharmaceuticals, learning is a cultural mandate as opposed to a single glitzy onboarding video or a one-off training session. It needs to be robust and continuous as a way to keep people engaged and connected—especially within large, complex companies that have technology as their backbone and constant transformation as the new normal.

  This seems to be the perspective at Visa, where the organization continues to take its business forward by creating new ways to prepare global employees to support clients and partners as they migrate from plastic credit cards to digital payment options over multiple platforms. As part of that, Visa’s learning and development (L&D) department took the lead to build a corporate university that included “physical learning hubs and a next-generation digital learning ecosystem . . . [that] brings all learning together [to] . . . develop skills they want and need to help them grow professionally.”

  The results look good so far. Six months after launch, more than 80 percent of the company’s employees had interacted with the digital campus. Specifically, users started and/or completed formal learning or viewed and/or completed informal learning.24

  AT&T is going through a similar talent transformation. It has partnered with Udacity and Georgia Tech to provide online courses and blended learning opportunities for over 140,000 employees to actively engage in acquiring new skills. Like Visa, AT&T is striving to create a culture of on-demand, ongoing learning.25

  Make Learning Inclusive

  The learning and career development programs at Visa and AT&T are vast and state of the art by necessity. Their businesses are built on technology that is changing rapidly, and their people need to be lifelong learners who constantly update their skills. Yet, even beyond technology companies, training needs to be accessible to everyone to yield emotional connectedness. This inclusion mandate is especially true in service-oriented industries where training has an immediate impact on customer satisfaction.

  Nordstrom and Ritz-Carlton, both known for their gold standard employee training, have programs that are famously inclusive and immersive. In both cases, learning is built into the business every day. At Ritz-Carlton, for instance, employees at every location around the world have a daily huddle with managers before a shift begins, to talk about how to exemplify the culture and values of the organization.26 The Cheesecake Factory, as well, provides learning opportunities across the board. Servers get two weeks of on-the-job training. Management candidates attend a 12-week development course. Even dishwashers are included in training initiatives.27 And it has game-based training portals that include a “leaderboard” and an iPhone game.28

  The result of inclusive training? The Cheesecake Factory, as well as Nordstrom and the Ritz-Carlton (as part of Marriott brands), are perennials on numerous best-places-to-work lists. As these organizations demonstrate, training and development opportunities set people up to succeed.

  3. Play to Win

  If alignment and training are critical to achievement, so too is mindset. My research shows that people want to be part of an organization that plays to win because passion and dedication add more meaning to work. While playing to win is sometimes associated with choosing a winning strategy, it is also incredibly relevant when it comes to connecting people around a culture of performance and mobilizing them to act passionately for maximum achievement.

  Retired Rear Admiral Mark T. Guadagnini, former commander of Naval Air Training, told me about what it means to him to play to win. It begins with what he calls a “sense of mission accomplishment,” which is “the ability to go out under any circumstances and to make sure the job gets done, gets done right, and gets done right every time.” He went on to say: “It’s about creating a sense of urgency—a feeling that you must win. [In the Navy], we don’t train people not to lose. We train them to win. And that’s the overwhelming feeling that is of primary importance when you’re in combat because lives are at stake and our way of life is on the line.29

  Even when the stakes are less momentous, playing to win—and creating that sense of mission accomplishment—can be the force used to deliver whatever goals an organization encompasses, from a nonprofit’s social priority to improve lives, to the determination to be the best in any given industry. The salient point is that playing to win needs to align purpose and goals, and it needs to be a part of a sustainable cultural imperative. Life is Good, with its goal to “spread the power of optimism,” for instance, can focus on winning in its own way, just as readily as Netflix, with its culture of freedom and responsibility, can do the same. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to creating the will to win, but there are building blocks that you can put into place.

  Think Big

  The first way to play to win is to create a compelling end goal. Jim Collins and Jerry Porras introduced the notion of a BHAG, or “Big Hairy Audacious Goal”: a long-term ambition to mobilize the organization and stimulate progress. Here’s what Collins and Porras say about it: “A BHAG engages people—it reaches out and grabs them in the gut. . . . It is tangible, energizing, and highly focused. . . . People ‘get it’ right away; it takes little or no explanation.” Examples include these: “Every book, ever printed, in any language, all available in less than 60 seconds” (Amazon); Enable human exploration and settlement of Mars (paraphrasing SpaceX); and “A computer on every desk and in every home” (Microsoft).

  Big River Steel’s “think big” goal—to reinvent what it means to be a steel company—drove the steel start-up to make major waves right out of the gate. When it was founded in 2014, the Big River facility was the biggest economic development project in Arkansas history, the biggest construction project in the state, and one of the most technologically advanced. They were EBITDA positive in their second month of operation, the only steel production facility to be LEED certified for safety, and they were actively out scouting for “rebels who dare to go big” to join the company. All of those “think big” goals are helping them achieve their compelling vision of the future.

  Thinking big, with a BHAG or another type of momentous goal, drives achievement under certain conditions.

  First, the momentous goal needs to be strategic. It should guide business and product development and direct how an organization focuses its resources. Volvo’s BHAG—“By 2020, no one should be killed or injured in a new Volvo car”—speaks volumes to the carmaker’s designers, safety experts, and factory workers as they move into the age of dr
iverless cars. Next, the “think big” objective needs to push people to act. The 2020 deadline in Volvo’s BHAG creates and sustains the sense of urgency, just as Walmart’s did in 1990 when the company pledged “to become a $125 billion company by year 2000.” Last, the goal needs to have an emotional appeal to engage employees. Volvo’s objective to eliminate driving deaths easily fits the bill, as does SpaceX’s vision of enabling human exploration. Both are compelling enough to grab ahold of people and inspire them to act.

  Thinking big and being able to articulate a specific and compelling vision for the future encourages and empowers people to act in service of achievement.

  Be Best or Bust

  The next play-to-win tactic is to aspire to be the best. This commitment to innovation and excellence helps fine-tune operational issues such as hiring and performance management, and it gives employees a strong sense of ownership and pride.

  One way to be the best is to get there first. Big River Steel, for instance, was founded to be the world’s first “Flex Mill,” meaning it was set up to produce a wide range of product types for automotive, energy, construction, and agricultural industries. This “first” designation not only set the company apart instantly and gave it a reason to be in business, but it also helped form the company’s thinking on several core issues. Innovation—Big River needed to be technologically advanced. Hiring—the company needed people who could be trained to use new equipment. Values—they were blazing new territory so they needed to set a high standard with their safety and sustainability scores.