The Bottom Line Up Front

Culture in a group is too important to be left to chance. Managers must work together with group members to define what it means to collaborate, communicate, problem-solve, and innovate in pursuit of their function’s charter. While focused on organizational culture, a recent article by Erin Meyer at H.B.R., Build a Corporate Culture That Works (tiered paywall), offers a unique approach managers can employ to make their group’s Rules for Success memorable and actionable.

Manager, I Checked and Your Rules for Success are M.I.A.

It’s a simple yet powerful concept: defining the behaviors essential for membership in a group. Why, then, do so many managers struggle with drama storms, low engagement, high turnover, and less-than-great performance?

The simple answer is that it never occurs to most to deliberately define the behaviors required for participation and success..  

I work with hundreds of managers annually, from the front lines to the C-suite. Part of what we do in every program is review my Manager’s Operating System™ and the Ten Core Programs Essential for Success. One of the foundational Rules is deliberately defining the rules for success with your group members. For most managers, the idea that you can define your culture in terms of more specific and relevant behaviors than your firm’s values describe is novel. The idea becomes tangible when I frame it in the context of eliminating drama storms in their working environment.

Rules for Success—Creating an Environment (mostly) Free of Drama Storms

Everyone who has ever managed knows what a drama storm is, even if they’ve not heard that phrasing. These are the he said/she said, they didn’t, why don’t they, don’t they know type discussions that suck the oxygen and energy out of so many groups.

With drama storms, managers act as referees, and there’s an air of stress in the working environment.  At their core, these drama storms are situations where accountability is absent, and expectations for collaboration, communication, and problem-solving aren’t clear.

In my best infomercial voice, But wait! There’s a cure!

Something almost magical happens when individuals come together to define the behaviors they and their counterparts are accountable for in the process of working together. The drama storms subside, collaboration quality increases, information starts to flow more freely, problem-solving takes on an upbeat demeanor, and people focus on figuring out ways to not only help each other but get better at what they do.

Wow!

The cost to create your Rules for Success, other than time, which has value, is nothing.

Core Topics for Your Rules for Success Discussion with Your Team

  • Accountability—what it means and what our expectations for each other are with it
  • Communication, including feedback—and what our expectations are in all situations
  • Problem-solving in the face of ambiguity.
  • Disagreeing and resolving 
  • Sharing feedback with each other and the boss.
  • Collaborating to create, solve, and perform
  • Generating ideas to help us innovate
  • Supporting each other
  • Helping each other grow

While other sets of behaviors may be relevant to your group’s mission, most Rules for Success fit into one of those categories.

If you’re interested in my Ideas-to-Actions Guide to Defining Your Team’s Rules for Success, let me know via e-mail, and I’ll pass it along. I plan to include different variations of these in my forthcoming book, The Manager’s Journey and if you are agreeable, I would love to include yours with attribution. 

A Power Tip for Your Rules Activity—Frame Them in the Form of Dilemmas

In Erin Meyer’s excellent article at H.B.R., Build a Corporate Culture That Works (tiered paywall), she suggests building your culture around real-world dilemmas. Meyer offers: “When you articulate your culture using absolute positives, it makes a statement, but it’s unlikely to drive the day-to-day decision-making (and therefore the behavior) of your workforce. The trick to making a desired culture come alive is to debate and articulate it using dilemmas.”

I love this idea. Instead of generating tired, unarguable, and unimaginative cliché-riddled statements that show up in so many organizational values listings, Meyer’s approach helps these come to life as memorable, actionable behaviors.

Make them Memorable and Actionable

Meyer points to some great examples, including Amazon’s guidance for moving beyond tough topics to decisions and implementation: “Have a backbone: Disagree and commit.” Or, Pixar’s verbiage for curing the issue of maximizing creativity with: Regularly share unfinished work. My favorite visual and olfactory rule referenced in the article that comes without any verbs is AirBnB’s statement defining leadership’s responsibility to tackle the big issues transparently: “Elephants, dead fish, and vomit.” The issues are big, in plain sight, and at least two out of three really stink. No ambiguity there.

Consider the dilemmas you and your group members encounter and define them as problems. What Rule for Success can you generate that clarifies the required behavior for the situation? If you end up with something that’s too much of a cliché or just abstract, encourage some creative idea generation. While you might not love the idea of “Elephants, dead fish, and vomit,” no one will forget it’s their responsibility to clean up the messes and take on the big issues everyone sees, but no one seems to own.

Do the work with your team and you’ll enjoy the safe haven from daily drama storms.

Art's Signature

 

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The Manager’s Operating System and the Rules for Success activities are key topics in Art Petty’s New(er) Manager Development Program. Check here for an upcoming session, or contact Art to discuss a program for your group.