by Louis Carter
If being first means writing the rules, then being the best means creating a center of excellence. This can be powerfully aspirational in terms of creating a plan for the future—wanting to be the best electronics retailer helped motivate Best Buy during their Renew Blue phase. Being first can also motivate an organization to continue innovating. For instance, Home Depot considered itself to be the best in class in big-box home improvement stores going way back. To hold on to that distinction, the company realized in 2007 that its information technology infrastructure required a dramatic upgrade. It was a major investment, and Home Depot made it happen to remain best in class. Today, technology connects their online and in-store business to give people a more seamless customer experience.
Both motivational and aspirational, being “best or bust” drives high achievement. It sends a signal to employees that they are standard bearers with a responsibility to make the most of the distinction. It is a bold option that is high risk and equally high reward for those that play to win.
Have a Way to Win
Last, playing to win requires not just a brilliant plan for proceeding but also a plan for winning. Former Rear Admiral Guadagnini, who flew over 90 combat missions for the Navy in five separate conflicts, told me about his plan for winning. Called the “Warrior Ethos,” it includes the “sense of mission accomplishment” mentioned above as well three other elements.
The sense of mission accomplishment is important because it distills the impulse for urgency that winning in a complex, competitive situation requires, but that’s just the beginning. The next element is called “disciplined aggression,” which is the ability to operate within the parameters that you’re given to aggressively accomplish the mission.
“The reason I say ‘disciplined’ is because the military is not an unlimited resource organization,” Guadagnini said. “We have limitations on people and on equipment. There are parameters within which you must operate as well as the rules of engagement and international law.”
This idea encompasses constantly taking action using the resources at hand and managing the limitations—and then forging toward the outcome that is desired.
The last two elements are “flexibility” and “bravery.” In the military setting, flexibility is having the adaptability to draw on orders and training “and put them together in an adaptive manner so that they can accomplish the mission in the face of circumstances that may have advanced from the original plan.” Bravery, in Guadagnini’s model for winning in combat, is “the ability to act, think, and make decisions that will garner a successful outcome despite those physical and/or perceived things that would instill fear in a human being, and to overcome that fear to think, and to take actions that are required to accomplish the mission.”
The Warrior Ethos comes down four adaptive elements that apply in the organizational context as well as in the military setting. Best Buy had its plan to Renew Blue. Netflix had its culture deck. Regardless of the particular points of your plan, having a way to win serves as yet another element to orient you toward achievement.
4. Foster Resilience
The last component of the killer achievement element of In Great Company is resilience—the ability to bounce back fast in the face of adversity and even failure. With resilience, the payback is derived by learning from painful experiences and being able to adapt and become better than ever. First introduced in the field of ecology to explain the adaptive capacity of an ecosystem, resilience is useful everywhere. For the purposes of the achievement, there are three important things to consider about this magic bullet ability.
First, resilience improves our odds of success. In her landmark research on motivation and mindset, noted psychologist Carol Dweck observed the differences between individuals who assumed their abilities were fixed and individuals who believed their abilities were fluid and subject to change and growth. Those with a growth mindset performed significantly better on difficult and challenging tasks.30 And leaders agree with her findings. For instance, one survey of executives reported that 76 percent of people at the board level considered resilience to be a prerequisite for success. Yet, regardless of its perceived importance, only 10 percent of people at any level said that their organization placed a lot of emphasis on building and maintaining resilience.31
Next, resilience is more important than ever. Today, with technological advances and strategic shifts coming at us at a dizzying pace, and 69 percent of executives reporting that their organizations have experienced disruptive change,32 the ability to adapt and proceed amidst increasing uncertainty is a crucial leadership trait at every level of organizations. According to Jim Citrin, “Adapting to change, taking in new information, and actually applying it in smart ways, is a core criteria of great CEOs right now.”
Finally, resilience can be learned. Resilience is not a trait that we must be blessed with at birth. According to the American Psychological Association (APA), “resilience is not a trait that people either have or do not have. It involves behaviors, thoughts, and actions that can be learned and developed in anyone.”33 Dweck’s work, as well, has shown that you can develop a growth mindset and increase your capacity for resilience in order to achieve goals and become better.
With achievement in mind, I coach leaders to focus on a few specific aspects of resilience in themselves and people working around them to foster this positive capability at the workplace level.
Focus on Strengths
Although we tend to associate resilience with overcoming weakness, a large part of the benefit comes from leveraging strengths.
As a path to emotional connectedness, focusing on strengths happens on multiple levels. The individual level: It’s difficult to be achievement focused if you do not know your own strengths and weaknesses. Successful executives are actively self-reflective. They search themselves, openly ask for feedback, and adapt their behavior and decisions based on what they learn. The leadership level: Gallup has found that building employees’ strengths is a far more effective approach to improving performance than trying to address weaknesses. When employees know and use their strengths, they are more engaged, perform better, and are less likely to leave the company.34 The team level: Consider how much stronger a team will be when we understand each person’s strengths and put teams together accordingly. With a strengths-based approach, collaboration is far more effective, and engagement is higher.35
For the purposes of resilience, it’s critical to be able to call upon strengths to overcome the challenges we face along the path to achievement.
Fail Forward
Seen through the lens of resilience, failure uncovers viable opportunities for success. After all, we need to know what ideas, decisions, and behaviors fall flat in order to see what will work. Many of the most innovative organizations today seem to understand this, and they have policies in place that make failure acceptable as a stepping stone along the speculative path to success.
One of the tenets in the Netflix culture deck, for instance is, “You may have heard that preventing error is cheaper than fixing it. Yes, in manufacturing or medicine. Not so in creative environments.” In other words, in an entrepreneurial organization, people fail forward by following a few simple steps. First, they make many small bets at once, thereby minimizing the impact of any one misstep and maximizing the chance of finding a success somewhere in the batch. Next, they create an environment of experimentation, whereby people make their best guess and try things to see what larger lesson can be learned. Last, they abide by the iterative process. When an idea hits a wall, you adjust the premise or pivot in order to proceed forward.
Even more than making failure acceptable, some organizations reward it. Intuit hosts “failure parties,” P&G has its “Heroic Failure Award,” and Grey Advertising has a trophy engraved to commemorate major project flops. And W.L. Gore? They celebrate failure with beer or champagne as a way to live into their fundamental belief: “Action is prized; ideas are encouraged; and making mistakes
is viewed as part of the creative process.”36
For resilient organizations, the one rule they all adhere to is embracing failure to leverage the learning. As Richard Branson has said, you don’t learn to walk by following rules. “You learn by doing and by falling over.”37
Manage Burnout
One high-achieving manufacturing executive I know was passionate about her job. She worked long hours and was promoted rapidly up the ranks and eventually into a C-suite position. She accepted awards and received one accolade after another. It seemed like nothing could stop her, until something did: burnout. First, she became run-down from all the traveling and long hours. Then she started feeling depressed and was having trouble sleeping. Finally, she decided to take time off, and she ultimately left the company altogether to run a social impact organization.
This tale of corporate misadventure is all too common. Studies have shown that the characteristics we associate with high achievement, such as perfectionism and other type A traits, are also associated with higher levels of burnout.38 Related research has shown that 20 to 50 percent of employee turnover is due to burnout.39
This is a serious problem for leaders who want to set people up for success as part of an In Great Company workplace. As part of the fix, we need to balance a high-performance culture with supportive, empathetic practices that nurture the people who bring their all to the office every day.
For example, the consulting firm Point B was named Fortune’s number 1 “Best Medium Workplace” in the nation, in part because the company actively works at combating burnout in its employees. Point B makes travel optional, for example, employees dictate their own work schedules based on client needs, and if a consultant logs more than 60 hours in one week, managers step in to add a second consultant on the account.40
We can combat burnout with commonsense policies and fair work practices: making sure roles are clear, the workload is manageable, and people are not tackling low-value tasks that can easily be outsourced. In addition, burnout and other workload factors need to be addressed in solutions-focused performance conversations. More than anything, managers need to create a supportive work environment that fosters resilience. People should feel comfortable speaking up before they get sidelined by burnout.
Killer achievement is a core element of EC, and, along with the other four elements, it is a driver of being In Great Company. But it is also an outcome. When an organization is set up and structured for killer achievement, people are engaged in winning not only for themselves but also for the greater success of their colleagues and the organization.
KILLER ACHIEVEMENT: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
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CONCLUSION: FIVE THINGS TO DO RIGHT NOW
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Being In Great Company is not something that concludes. As I have said, it is an ongoing endeavor in pursuit of personal high performance and organizational transformation. The more you contribute to this program personally, and together as an organization, the bigger the payback will be in the form of emotional connectedness, engagement, employee retention, and high achieve- ment. And while the pursuit never ends, you must decide where to begin.
With that in mind, I have five steps directed at immediate action. They are based on my coaching agenda, and they will help you accelerate out the gate, organize around the ideas in this book, and plan to measure your progress along the path to success. You can lean into the first step, or you can jump ahead if you are already prepared, invested, and somewhere in the process of becoming In Great Company (Figure 8.1).
FIGURE 8.1
1. Discovery
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I have coached you throughout this book on the paramount importance of self-awareness and discovering your strengths and development needs. To be In Great Company, you need to be clear with yourself and open with others on two overlapping dimensions: individually and organizationally.
Individually: Know where you stand along the path to becoming an emotionally connected leader. The questions in AppendixA act as an ideal self-assessment tool. Use them to determine your strengths and development needs. Ask your peers, direct reports, and fellow leaders to review the questions and provide you with 360-degree feedback. Include trusted outside stakeholders in the process. Customers, vendors, and other members of your value chain will be eager and able to help you become a better leader.
Organizationally: Determine the health of your company and how far you and your colleagues need to go (and in what areas) to be emotionally connected and In Great Company. Use the Sample Employee Pulse Survey in Appendix B as a tool to take the temperature of the organization. Assign project leaders in HR and across functions, and make sure that executives act as sponsors. Although the discovery step is only the beginning, leaders need to be the first and best champions of change.
2. Goal Setting
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Use the results of your personal and organizational assessments to determine your needs. Go deeper by examining the vital statistics that define your organization. Compare annual data over a five-year period pertaining to employee and customer retention, loyalty scores, sales, and bottom-line results. Which way are they trending, and what story does that tell you?
Use this information to determine what you are solving for. What is central to your problem statement: Employee or customer attrition? Decreasing sales? Lack of innovation? Poor engagement scores? Underutilization of resources? Agree on the strengths that you will build on. Which elements of EC are you strongest in? Where do you stand on the crucial “respect” element?
Next, use the five dimensions of the In Great Company framework to set stretch goals that are achievable. Create one or two guiding objectives that connect back to the overall problems you are solving for. Create a small number of cascading goals that you can measure and manage over time. Ask yourself: “Do these goals address our core concerns? Are they meaningful to people across the organization? If we take the same pulse survey and self-assessments a year from now, will we be able to gauge our progress?”
Finally, create a communication strategy that will both inform and engage people to work together to achieve these goals in a way that brings people together in pursuit of becoming emotionally connected and In Great Company.
3. Coaching
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The In Great Company approach is designed to bring people closer and give them the support they need to achieve great things. The most critical support mechanism for sparking emotional connectedness is coaching. As discussed, an emotionally connected leader is more coach than traditional manager.
Once goals are clear, coaching conversations can occur regularly with leader- and peer-coaches creating the backbone of support, guidance, and accountability. In fact, in some of the companies where I’ve worked to help create a coaching culture, everyone in the organization had access to coaching, whether the coach was a peer, manager, or professional executive coach. Everyone received the support and guidance they needed. Regardless of the coaching lineup, trust and confidentiality are the two main ingredients of the relationship. The coach must be respectful, collaborative, and clear on goals. The people being coached need to be respectful, open, and eager to be active participants in their development journey.
MAKE COACHING A CORE CAPABILITY
The material in this box is based on and adapted from Marshall Goldsmith and Sal Silvester’s “Stakeholder Centered Coaching Model.”1
Coach Responsibilities
Tailor the process to the leader’s needs and schedule.
Assist the leader in crafting goals and enlisting stakeholders.
Accommodate leader’s schedule for calls and meetings.
Provide honest assessment, healthy challenge, and strong support.
Recap conversations and return calls and e-mails in a timely manner.
Provide support to stakeholders, and ensure that the process is working.
Model strong skills for giving and receiving feedback and suggestions.
Honor highest level of trust and confidentiality.
Leader Responsibilities
Identify and reflect on your core values.
Commit to goal, and share it with stakeholders.
Enlist stakeholders for challenge and support (humility).
Try behaviors that are outside your comfort zone (courage).
Follow up with stakeholders.
Debrief regularly with the coach.
Focus on the “end in mind.”
Both
Engage with respect.
Collaborate to achieve goals.
Celebrate success.
4. Measurement
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At the leadership level, measurement is where you prove you are a steward of change. One of the tools I use for measurement consists of a dashboard to mark progress along the five elements of EC. (See Figure 8.2.)