Leading to the Values
Are your firm’s values worth the price of the frames that they presently occupy while hanging in your lobby, the main conference room and your CEO’s office?
As a confirmed Leadership Anthropologist, I am fascinated by the use, misuse general lack of use of well-intended and thoughtful statements of values. What should be potent guides to behavior and frequent reference points for talent and business decisions are often nothing more than artwork.
Values are décor until they are taught and then applied in the workplace.
The All-Too-Common Problems with Framed Words
- The words are often meaningless agglomerations of gibberish constructed by a committee.
- Once framed and announced they are rarely referenced again.
- The values have no teeth. While the words on behavior might be spelled out, exceptions are the norm…often perpetuated by the very people that should defend and give life to the values.
- The values are absent from the hiring process.
- The values aren’t taught to new hires…not in an exercise of rote memorization, but with examples and stories and scenarios that help explain and educate on the import and relevance of these behavioral statements.
4 Steps for Breathing Life into Your Firm’s Values
1. Ensure that the words are clear, meaningful and actionable. If your values resemble so many meaningless mission statements (a post for another day), then it’s time to clarify. Note to self…don’t use a committee to wordsmith the values. The committee’s role is to review and challenge the author to improve the clarity, brevity and meaning of the statements. Even Jefferson had to bow to the demands of a tough editing committee as they took much of the flowery language out of the Declaration of Independence.
2. Teach the values. Or, more importantly, teach existing employees and new hires about the meaning and intent of the values. Yes, spend time and spend some money to create a program that helps everyone understand the values and importantly, understand the meaning, intent and application of these words to day-to-day business.
3. Hire to the values. Point your behavioral interviewing at understanding how people support or don’t support the firm’s values through their prior actions.
4. Enforce the values. If these things are to have any meaning or impact at all on your business, they must have teeth. I share Jack Welch’s perspective that it doesn’t matter whether you are an A player, if you don’t support and live up to the values of the firm, then your not going to be part of the firm.
The Bottom-Line for Now
The existence of clear, meaningful and usable values serves to eliminate much of the counter-productive noise in the workplace. Standards for behavior, performance, cooperation and even dispute resolution have their basis in some common guidelines.
Cynical leaders might be quick to say that they wouldn’t bet next year’s revenue targets on a program to improve the visibility, meaning and use of the firm’s values. While they might be right…the pursuit of the steps outlined in this essay will take time and there is always cost associated with time, I might just bet that the long-term future of the company will be more easily secured if the values are alive and well and serving as intended.
Why Do Evil Leaders Flourish Inside Some Organizations?
It’s always been a mystery to me why so many arguably evil managers and leaders not only last but seem to thrive inside certain organizations.
You know the type. Hey, maybe you are one. If so, chime in. I’ve never actually heard from an evil leader that was willing to talk openly about why he is the way he is.
Evil leaders tend to fit one or more of these profiles:
- The dictator
- The assassin
- The two-faced politician (is that redundant?)
- The warlord
- The megalomaniac
- The evil genius
- The double agent
While this might sound like the cast of a great new movie, I know a few people that would agree that it looks a lot like a quorum at their senior management meeting.
Is it our nature to gravitate towards evil leadership in our pursuit of power and wealth?
I sure hope not, because I’m missing that gene.
I’ve worked in and with organizations that seem to cultivate and reward more than their fair share of villains, thugs and hoodlums masquerading as leaders. My observations as to why some environments seem to produce a bumper crop of these dysfunctional characters include:
- No visible sign of values in action—the sign might be on the wall outlining the values, but other than that, nothing. No teeth and no meaning behind those words.
- Some leaders just like to be surrounded by enforcers. One leader I encountered as a consulted tolerated a truly heinous individual because in his words, “I like to have a pitbull in the office looking out for my interests.”
- Some senior leaders enjoy the conflict. It is entertaining and it fits their Darwinian view of the world.
- Some leaders are sensory deprived—they are so preoccupied with their own issues they are truly blind to the carnage going on around them. While they hear isolated reports, they are not perceptive enough to see the patterns.
The Cures:
- If you have the chance, fire an evil leader or even a future evil leader. I actually enjoy this. Ooops, is that a sign that I might be moving to the dark side?
- Regardless of where you fit in the food chain, establish, promote and reward those that show character and reinforce proper values. Fire the others. Yep, still enjoyable.
- If you are in charge or starting up, establish clear, meaningful values from day one and build your culture and team around those values. Abstinence from evil leaders is still the best bet.
- Help the evil leader unmask himself or herself. This is not for the faint of heart or light of bank account, since you are in essence playing their game but often without the power.
- Find a new job and company, but remember to do a great job culture sensing before you sign up. You would hate to move from one evil den to another.
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If you have a good evil leader story, the readers would love to hear it. Unlike most stories, we like these to end poorly for these people. It just makes us feel like the good people have a chance.
Detoxing Your Team
Filed under: Decision-Making, Leadership, Performance, Values
Most of us can recall working with someone that had such a strong, negative impact on the work environment that you could t literally feel the emotional mood swing when this person walked into a meeting.
For some unknown reason, perhaps a karmic-imbalance in the universe, these toxic characters have the unnerving and disconcerting tendency to be great survivors. They rule their teams like Tony Soprano and they manage the higher-ups with diplomatic skills that would make a great politician proud. And they do all of this in broad daylight, while the people that work for and with them roll their eyes and hope not to fall into the toxic character’s line of sight.
While it is easy to intuit that toxic employees are value destroyers, we’ve been short on hard data about the true impact that these individuals have on the work environment. Until now.
The April 2009 Harvard Business Review summarizes a study by Christine Porath and Christina Pearson that offers insights into “How Toxic Colleagues Corrode Performance.” Porath and Pearson polled several thousand managers and employees from a variety of U.S. companies about the impact of toxic people at work, and the results affirm what we’ve long suspected. These people extract a costly toll on the rest of the employees and on overall performance.
Selected highlights when faced with toxic or rude co-workers:
- 48% decreased their work effort
- 47% decreased their time at work
- 66% said their performance declined
- 78% said their commitment to the organization declined.
And so on.
Art’s Observations:
The best advice that I ever learned the hard way took was “fire the politicians.” In one case earlier in my career, I was the enabler for this toxic individual, preferring to see only his strengths and talents and ignoring the havoc he created in the working environment.
Ultimately, I learned to fire toxic characters fast. The individuals that did not share and exhibit the values that we espoused or that ruled through intimidation were the first ones out the door, regardless of their capabilities.
I’ve never regretted firing a toxic employee.
Fair warning. Toxic employees don’t make it easy for you to fire them. The best of the worst actually frighten their bosses into inaction, not through overt intimidation or threats, but through more subtle approaches. Remember, these are skillful politicians with the hearts and minds of gangsters, and they’ve convinced a lot of people about how valuable they are to the organization. A conscientious manager may find herself swimming against the tide of popular opinion from her peers or higher ups on this issue.
Brace yourself for a fight, don’t be intimidated and stick to your guns. It’s easier to back down and the toxic employee is betting on this outcome. Like most thugs and bullies, they don’t expect people to stand-up to them and fight back.
I’m certain that I read “fire the politicians” somewhere, and I wish that I could provide attribution. Regardless, it’s good advice, especially in these tough times when teams are shrinking and those left behind must be capable of performing at a high level.
If you’re on the edge about who should go, you will be well served to get the toxicity out.
Values in Action-Helping Your Son or Daughter Choose a College
For anyone who has lived through the process of supporting their son or daughter in the search for a college, it is a truly exciting, perplexing and tiring endeavor. It’s also an opportunity to watch values in action at the various institutions as well as with your own child as they wrestle with what is to them a monumental choice.
First, a word about my son. I have no qualms highlighting my parental pride as I’ve watched him arm-wrestle peer pressure to the ground during this process. Many of his friends are escaping across state lines to “Party U” and their exuberance over staying together and their encouragement for him to join the herd has reached the point where it now annoys him.
This is a great test of character and while he has excellent grades and good test scores and has some options, he is looking at this decision from a very mature perspective. Oh, and just to add some real-world context for his decision, like most of us, he faces some parameters that complicate the decision-making process.
The Parameters:
- In the absence of a clear-cut academic or professional goal, we will support him for in-state tuition, or he can take it upon himself to make up the difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition. He is also welcome to move out of state, work for a year and gain residency before starting college.
- If he chooses to complete his general education requirements at the community college, and if he has a clear academic and professional goal at the end of two years, we will support him for the institution of his choice.
- He must work during vacations to contribute to his books and living expenses.
- Four years only and Mom and Dad are done.
He’s in the process of working through the choices, and is considering two very different institutions and the community college route. We are trying hard to not hinder or complicate the process for him. If asked, we offer our thoughts, mostly in the form of questions. We’ve also suggested various frameworks for decision-making, but we are trying hard to not influence his choice. I know what I would do given the opportunity, but the extra 30 years of life experience tends to help simplify the choices. To an 18 hear-old, it seems like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. Stay tuned.
The Values and Performance Commitment of the Institutions:
I have a hard time not letting my sensitivity to values and my quest for performance excellence interfere with my opinion about different academic institutions. In the case of universities, I believe that you learn a lot by how the organizations conduct themselves during student open house events.
The formula is pretty much the same everywhere you go. The visiting parents and prospective students meet in a big auditorium, watch a video or two, listen to the Director of Admissions and hear from a panel of over-achieving students. After a general session, you break out into a College Fair, take a campus tour that ends up with a visit to a typical dorm room (yikes!).
At noon, you grab a quick lunch and then hustle across campus to hear from the academic area that your son or daughter is most interested in. You ask questions, walk around a bit more, and cap off the visit by buying a t-shirt at the bookstore and then embarking on the long trip home.
The formula is OK, and you can learn a lot if you pay attention, ask questions and immerse yourself in the experience. If your son or daughter has strong interests in a particular area of study, these are great opportunities to compare schools. However, for the undecided masses, after you do this three or four times, they all tend to blend together.
Finding Gold in the Corn:
While all of the institutions that we’ve looked at have some great positives to offer, one stands out head and shoulders above the rest. Surprisingly (to me), it is Western Illinois University. This relatively small (by state school standards) institution in the middle of who knows where, IL, definitely has it going on.
Attend an open house at WIU, and you’ll meet and hear from University President, Al Goldfarb and the top executives. Most other organizations roll out the Director of Admissions, but at WIU, the entire management team thinks enough of you to attend, talk and mingle. Mr. Goldfarb stresses values, treats and talks to the students and parents like they are customers and goes so far to offer his personal e-mail address and an invitation to use it.
While one might be able to dismiss the President’s good sounding rhetoric, as you meet and talk with the executives of the institution, you hear the same messages about values and personal care and students as customers over and over again. The cynic in me thinks, “Hmmm, OK, Al runs a tight ship and has his managers singing out of the same song book.”
Start meeting with the instructors and administrators, and the same encouraging messages come through. People talk like they believe this stuff.
Fast forward a few months and bump into a group of purple-clad people in the airport and introduce yourself to realize that you are meeting Al’s entire management group on their way to California. Try as I might to penetrate their P.R. message defense, I can’t. These people are genuine in how they view the world. They are like the old Avis commercial…”They Try Harder,” because they have to.
Our oldest son decided to attend WIU a few years ago, and as we mingled in a room of hundreds at the new student orientation session the Summer before he started I was shocked when one of the university employees walked up to me, looked at my name badge and said, “Mr. Petty, you must be “son’s” father.”
It turns out this was his counselor. Talk about an impression. My memory is fuzzy, but I believe that I went through four years at a remarkable institution, the University of Illinois, and never met a counselor, much less someone that knew my Dad’s name.
At every turn, we’ve been impressed with this lesser known school in the cornfields of Macomb, IL. The other very good institutions just seem to fail in comparison. The passion, the customer-focus and the strong sense of values-based management come through loud and clear at WIU and are missing in the presentations of the other programs. At WIU, you begin to establish context for the people behind the bricks and mortar and at least for a parent, this is palpable.
Our youngest son may or may not attend WIU, the choice is his, but I do know a group of people focused on performance excellence when I see it. Kudos to the team at Western Illinois University. He could do much, much worse.
Leadership Caffeine for the Week of March 16, 2009
Filed under: "To Do" List, Leadership, Leadership Caffeine, Values
I’m heading to Austin, Texas for the first few days this week, so in celebration of the forecasted 80 degree+ weather, I’ll be sipping on something cold and caffeinated by the time you read this post.
First, some weekly reminders;
- Remember, you set the tone for your entire team. Show up with a smile on your face. Ask people how their weekends were and muscle your calendar a bit to get in some more one on one time with your colleagues and teams.
- Focus your energy on finding and knocking down some barriers for your project teams. If you are a project sponsor, meet with the project manager, ask for an update and ask how you can help. Then do it!
- Make certain your team members are up to speed on the big issues. Share performance updates and review key priorities. Challenge your team members to evaluate their own priorities in the context of the organization and identify prospective activities or projets that don’t fit. Then kill the projects that don’t fit.
- Be on the lookout for positive and constructive feedback opportunities and engage. Be specific and reinforce or focus on observable behaviors. Remember to link the feedback to the business.
- Hey, it’s March already. It’s probably time to schedule your next professional development planning session with each individual team member.
The Bigger Picture: Are You Leveraging Your Firm’s Values as a Leadership Tool?
Many leaders and many firms miss the value of their values. Those noble thoughts outlined and framed on the conference room wall or embedded in Lucite on your desk, are actually worth much more than the paper or plastic they are printed on.
The theory is that the established values of the firm define standards of behavior and expectations for the day-to-day actions and decisions of employees. Mostly, they just sit there and look nice on the wall.
If you’ve ever had the occasion to work for or with a firm that takes values seriously, you know that these are powerful tools to lead by. (For a detailed post on this topic, see: Values-Based Leadership: More of What I Learned at Matsushita.)
- Use the values to explain the culture and expectations for citizenship and performance to prospective recruits and new hires.
- Leverage the values as a filter for decision-making on tough people issues. Jack Welch’s maxim was that you could be an A (top) player but if you didn’t fit the values of the corporation, there was no place at GE for you. It’s amazing how relevant the values become if your colleagues see you making the tough consistent calls in line with those values.
- If your firm doesn’t have a strong values-culture and values statements, create your own for your team. I did this through a “Charter” document that outlined the expectations for performance and involvement by all team members, and it served the same purpose as a statement of corporate values would have, only it was function specific (although holistic about engaging and working with other members of the organization). Hey, it filled a gap and was better than waiting for values statements to magically appear.
The Bottom-Line for the Week:
Engage, ask questions, find ways to help and then spend a few minutes thinking about how to apply your firm’s values to improving your leadership performance. People value your time and your attention, and they thrive on pursuing meaningful challenges in environments where the rules are clear and agreeable. Oh, and try and have some fun while you are at it. Life is short and the joy is in the journey.
-Art
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