What’s the problem with happy people?

“Are my people happy?”

“Are they engaged?”

“Are we doing everything we can to motivate them?”

More than ever, companies are concerned with these questions about their employees.  It’s common knowledge these days that happy, engaged, motivated people are the key to better profits and competitive advantage.

But there is an inherent problem with these questions:  They suggest the cause-effect relationship between leadership and happy people is simple, measurable and controllable. Yes, these qualities are an outcome of what leaders and managers do, collectively, to own and build the right kind of corporate culture. But when you are trying to reliably foster passionate, aligned action among hundreds or thousands of people working on diverse activities, often in teams across the globe – you are in complicated territory. Especially when you rely on methods such as incentive pay, benefits, concierge services, or gimmicky programs that leave people feeling manipulated but not really valued or able to make a meaningful difference.

People are unique in what motivates and engages them; there is no one silver bullet that “hits the sweet spot” for everyone the same way.

Enter corporate culture. The power of culture is creating a collection of habits in which the attitudes, interactions, and work flow naturally fosters more happy, engaged, motivated people. It’s hard work, but worthwhile. What is the recipe for building cultures that foster high employee engagement? They always have 5 success habits embedded in how people work together:

1) Clarity of Direction. Clarity is magic. People are more engaged when working together toward a clear goal. Think about your New Year’s Resolutions, if you made them. “I want to lose 15 lbs” is more motivating than “I want to get healthy this year” – there is more clarity to drive action. If an organization’s “Definition of Success” is to be #1 in its market, it’s a more energizing rallying cry than “We provide high quality dry cleaning to our customers.”  Business IS competitive, even if it’s non-profit. It can’t be all about the numbers, because most people’s lives aren’t impacted by the business profits. Evoking a friendly sense of winning and competing in an organization is good for engaging and motivating people.  Too often, we forget that as leaders our primary job is to ignite others passion and remove obstacles to them doing their best work. Clarity of direction is the starting gate for this.

2) Two Values are real and alive: Respect and Responsibility. You can call them anything you want, but these two values are always the underpinning of a highly engaged culture. This means people are in reality treated by leaders with great respect and are held to high standards of excellence in performance. It’s not one or the other.  In highly engaged organizations, leaders pay special and ongoing attention to ensuring these values are real, through how they communicate, hire/reward and (sometimes) fire people, and convey clear strategy and priorities. Employees may not be equally satisfied with every leader all the time, but in an organization driven by these two values, there is an overall climate of trust: Trust that leaders have our best interests at heart and they have a solid plan to help us win in our market. Everyone is happier when the team is winning!

3) Leadership 360′s mean something. The most engaged organizations have a robust and meaningful feedback process for ensuring leaders “walk their talk.” This process also helps to align leaders to one set of criteria that’s important for the whole company – while embracing the importance of different styles and types of leaders. Too many companies use leadership 360′s as an auto-pilot activity to identify high potential leaders and consider people for promotions, and miss the big opportunity to develop a feedback-based culture that  makes the entire organization stronger and more adaptable.  I teach clients that 360′s (or any individual or team assessment) are one symbol of the organization’s intent to foster honest, open, transparent dialogue – everywhere, all the time, based on the customer wants and needs. When this culture of constructive feedback happens every day in an organization, between leaders and employees, it energizes people. People are happiest when they understand what they can do to succeed, have a role in creating that success, and know how to do it.  The key to getting a 360 process right is making the process safe, which is how it will foster learning and growth, versus perpetuating political agendas.

4) Well Done!  If people are the heart of a business, praise is the lifeblood.  You have to lubricate your system to keep it running at top performance. It’s amazing how often I see organizations who “get” the importance of culture – yet their first-line supervisors are regularly criticizing and demeaning employees for mistakes. The general rule of thumb is “80% well done” and “20% take a look at.” This is not as hard as it sounds. Look for reasons to call out “good behavior” on a regular basis and you’ll see more of it. Keep the criticism flowing, and you’ll see more fear and mistakes. It’s a simple equation. Don’t believe me? Try this experiment for a week and see what happens: Put the names of 1/2 of your team on a post-it note, somewhere near your work area. Make a hash mark every time you say something positive about that person, whether it’s related to their job, an interaction with someone else, or just asking about their personal life/family.  The other half of your team, do nothing different. Note the difference. In just one week I would be shocked if there weren’t some remarkable changes in how those who received regular praise showed up … unless people are truly burned out or a poor job fit.

5) Change Makes Sense.  Flavor of the month in business is not as much fun as in the ice cream parlor. There is so much change people are being asked to absorb these days, that anything new typically is met with a giant yawn factor.  That’s no good for your engagement and motivation. Most people ignore change because it doesn’t make sense to them. There are 5 questions you have to answer for any employee during change. Communication during change must be much more frequent and transparent – the biggest de-railer of productivity is fear of the unknown (“Will I have a job?” “What will change?”). To make sense to people, plan much more frequent communication, preferably face to face, not email. Leaders who execute successful business change know this: Scale back and do less well. If you are making a giant sweeping “all at once” change – consider the ETL rule: Everything Takes Longer. Consider the company culture: How friendly and resilient are people to change? Do people want to hear from their manager or from the top leader? (usually a combination.) What is the overall trust climate? Are we informal or formal? Lastly, the more leaders communicate how the change is linked to and part of the overall strategy to win (see #1 above), the more it will feel like “stepping stones to our goal” versus a series of disconnected jumps off a cliff.

Habit-building to foster a great corporate culture is the marathon of the fitness world: You have to invest the time and effort to train and prepare, but crossing the finish line makes it all worthwhile.  It takes time, commitment, and a structured approach.

Or … you can assume the culture will take care of itself, and keep doing what you’ve always done. Your people will vote with their feet!

Lisa Jackson is a corporate culture expert and co-author of the book “Transforming Corporate Culture: 9 Natural Truths for Being Fit to Compete” and the forthcoming “Culture Builder Toolkit” (Spring 2013). She specializes in methods to assess corporate culture, train leaders to align their corporate culture to strategy, and succeed at change and transformation.

You can visit her on the web at www.CorporateCulturePros.com or follow her on Twitter at
http://twitter.com/corporatecultur

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Corporate Culture Matters – 10 Fatal Flaws That Undermine Your Ability to Change

By now, every smart leader knows that corporate culture is an essential element of business performance.  In an era of increasing uncertainty and speed of change, your organization’s culture is either a source of strength and advantage that flies faster than your competition, or a recipe for disaster that will ultimately crash and burn. Unlike many change efforts companies attempt, cultural patterns are often deeply embedded and unconscious. A company’s culture will drive people to behave in ways that defy logic in spite of smart, well-intentioned leaders with a good strategy. This is why culture deserves special attention.

Based on extensive research and our experience over 15 years as culture change consultants, ten fatal flaws are most predictive of an ultimate crash-and-burn scenario. These may be overriding patterns in an organization. You may see more than one of them. Or, they may show up as sub-cultures under one powerful leader within a division or department.

1) Corporate ADD – aka, Attention Direction Disorder. This organization may have a high-falutin’ mission that everyone feels good about, but its strategy is non-existent. There is no clear guidance that tells people “what to say no to” and “how we will win in our market.” Priorities change as often as the tides, and new projects begin without stopping anything. When a shiny penny of “something new” catches the eye of leaders, we are all now going down that road. Corporate culture flaw: Employees and first-line managers lament “It’s flavor of the month around here. Nothing is important and everything is urgent. We’re running faster for less gain.”  This culture spins its wheels and typically experiences a steady decline in ROI or profit, especially when a smart competitor comes into the picture.

2) The World is Flat (until Columbus).  The organization operates in an industry that is transforming around them, while leaders have a death-grip on assumptions that are no longer true or have no relevance to customers: “Black cars are what people want.” “We have the most features on our system.” Depending on the size of the business and your industry, the CEO and executive team have no incentive to change, as the business demise will happen after they’re long gone. Under this flaw, the business is a cash cow and leaders pay only lip service to efforts for real or meaningful change – because their bonus depends on keeping things the same. Corporate culture flaw: People close to the customer hear more and more complaints, customers are bailing, and a smart competitor is on the horizon starting to steal market share. Good talent start to leave.

3) Customer? What customer?  This is the hallmark of companies in highly regulated or non-retail industries in which the product or service has enjoyed protection. They hold a belief (which nobody says out loud) “Our customers have no alternative, so we don’t need to focus on their needs.”  Corporate culture flaw: The organization is slow-moving and people feel they are working on activity that is disconnected from a clear purpose (bureaucracy). A breeding ground for paycheck-collectors, “we’ve always done it this way” types and employees who can’t get a job anywhere else.  High resistance to change, which becomes fatal if competition enters the picture.

4) Prove it. This organization lives and dies by the numbers, analysis, and spreadsheets. An innovation wasteland. Often found in engineering-focused cultures, typically with a leader who is attempting to grow through a strategy of “incremental product development.” In one telecom organization we worked in, there were 2,342 products still being sold. Customers were wildly confused.  This was a heavy anchor dragging on their ability to be relevant and nimble in their market.  The organization was losing ground to its main competitor and culture change required a massive and painful exodus in the leadership ranks. Corporate culture flaw: Much proof is required for a green light on anything. People with great ideas are marginalized as “risk-takers” – and they leave or go underground. Everyone keeps busy justifying how to hold onto the project they’re working on, versus serve what the customer needs or innovate.

5) World According To Us. A version of the “world is flat” but characterized by cowboy leaders who feel they know best. (Whether they’re wrong or right, they will find the evidence to be right,  leading to dangerous arrogance).  Enron was a classic example of this. Also News Corporation. Leaders operate from a mindset “the end justifies the means” and do not see wrongdoing in their approach. Corporate culture flaw: Congratulatory behavior and rewards for any positive news, and a very strong backlash to negative news, challenge to the system, or attempts at whistle-blowing. The top leader is often kept in the dark about what people are really doing to deliver the numbers.  Fear pervades everything.

6) Emperor’s New Clothes. The leadership in this organization has conveyed an aura of kingly status in which people avoid telling him or her the truth. As a result, the organization spends untold energy ensuring that the leaders hear what they want to hear, adjusting truth and facts to align with whatever the current belief the leader holds. If the belief is “we need to be #1 in our market” people will dig for facts and evidence that we’re #1 in our market, regardless of what is really so. Corporate culture flaw: Similar to “world according to us” – you will find a strong congratulatory culture, often peppered with comments about “John (CEO) says …”  Typically leaders talk a lot about change, innovation, or values – but don’t act in alignment with them.

7) We Buy Talent.  This organization has survived and succeeded through a revolving door of talent. They hire people and fire them as easily as the seasons change. There is no meaningful investment in growth or development. Eventually the organization gains a reputation for this, and good people are no longer attracted to it.   This can work in an organization’s favor during a bad economy, but is a problem when the economy turns around.  Corporate culture flaw: Because they are constantly on-boarding and training new people, systems and processes are often not followed, teamwork is rarely cohesive, and work productivity  unduly falls the shoulders of the few who are loyal and long-term.

8) Run Faster.  Characterized by The Budget Game, in which no matter how big your effort and results this year, they have to be bigger and better next year, while cutting cost.  Leaders grudgingly acknowledge they are requiring an “impossible reality” but “it’s the game we have to play.”  Corporate culture flaw: People start to play games with their numbers to ensure they cushion their fall, and true innovation or breakthrough thinking rarely emerges. Many companies are caught in this game, typically with a strategy that’s too broad or a market position that can be easily copied or duplicated.  Also characterized by a lot of “talk” about change and innovation, but can only sustain haphazard progress toward real change.

9) Bad Dog. This organization has built a habit of calling out wrongdoing and mistakes without any clear direction of “what to do instead.” One company we know of has a well-intended leadership program to perpetuate open dialogue, but the culture is so deeply entrenched in CYA that it’s difficult for people to break out of old behaviors – those who try are subtly punished. Corporate culture flaw: People hear “no” so often, they spend their time figuring out how to avoid feedback, mistakes, and learning. The culture is running in place and cowering from any real and meaningful dialogue about change.

10) Decision Paralysis.  Very characteristic of matrix organization structures with a legacy top-down, authoritarian mindset. Usually decisions have been made by the few at the top” and those executives have not developed or trained people to take smart risks and make decisions. Corporate culture flaw: Small issues become massive road blocks and projects are often delivered over budget and late. This culture flaw often accompanies many of the corporate styles described above.

The world is changing faster than ever.  If you are experiencing stagnant growth or internal resistance to change, you can be sure one or more of these fatal flaws are undermining your efforts.  It’s time to re-think how your corporate culture can adapt faster, and support change, instead of waiting until a competitor does it faster.

Or, you can take your chances in a plane built to fly in the horse-and-buggy era.

Lisa Jackson and Gerry Schmidt are corporate culture experts and authors of the book “Transforming Corporate Culture: 9 Natural Truths for Being Fit to Compete.” They assess cultures and train leaders to align their corporate culture to strategy, to innovate faster and perform better in an age of rapid change and transformation. They are about to release their Culture Change Toolkit: the best of the best of what they do with clients, in a format that you can implement on your own. Check the website in the next month or two for details.

Visit them on the web at www.CorporateCulturePros.com or follow them on Twitter at http://twitter.com/corporatecultur

At the checkout aisle, I was asked what I’m sure was hoping to be a rhetorical question: “Did  you find everything?” Actually, I didn’t and told the checkout clerk so. “Your manager might consider adding an extra deli employee during the high school lunch hour.”  The checkout clerk rolled his eyes and said “Don’t get me started. The boss lets all the deli employees go to lunch at the same time because they want to socialize and customers are left hanging. I’m an old timer and I don’t believe in this new-fangled permissive management. Shees.” On that we were in perfect agreement.

The FLC of Businesses

What’s your company’s FLC (Frequently Lamented Concern). You know you have a few FLCs. Unfortunately, a corporate culture that is infused with too many FLCs without decisive corrective action can teeter on the brink of collapse. If there is a single FLC among the leaders we work with, it’s “We need greater accountability from teams and from our people.” Every time I hear that I recognized that this particular FLC is code for a variety of concerns that all have an impact on a company’s corporate culture:

• Not Owning Results:  The moment a company team or staff member gets something right, they’ll be lining up for their “Way to go!” congratulations. However, what happens when something goes wrong? Crickets. You have to own results on both ends of the success/failure spectrum.
• Being Afraid to Ask For Help: When was the last time you were in over your head? More importantly, when was the last time you admitted you were in over your head? File this under the category of “not admitting mistakes.” What should be ingrained in employees is the ability to cry “Uncle” when appropriate and bring in the extra resources to complete a project. Without that ability, failure is imminent.
• Forgetting Who the Customer Is: This is “trench warfare thinking.” Who are you in business for? Yourself or your customer. Without the former, the latter won’t have much to do. Too often employees become so focused on being right that they forget who they need to be right for.
• Assuming What the Boss Wants: “When we assume we make a….” You know the rest. There is a fine line between knowing and assumption. Knowing comes with clarity. Assumption is based on guesswork. Which is better for your business?
• Simple Laziness: There are some workers who you just can’t reach. A task that should take a day to complete is stretched on for a week. Is this ineptitude or simple laziness? And is it time for a new employee evaluation?
• Lack of Inspiration: This aspect of the FLC spins right back to management. Unless you can inspire your workers you won’t find inspiring results.

Being Accountable Vs. Being Nice

This all spins back to that issue of accountability or rather the lack thereof. Boil it down to a primary root cause? Our society (and by extension our workforce) is falling prey to the growing trend not to speak up and speak the simple truth plainly and swiftly. We like to call it “Parenting-We-Never-Got Syndrome.” We SO want to be nice! We SO want approval! We SO want to be liked! Anything that threatens those feelings will be pushed aside. There’s no way we can admit a mistake.

This folds into believing that “Consensus is King!” Consensus can also kill innovation.  Whether this is all a backlash from child-rearing in a post-Puritan era or just increasingly fuzzy communication skills  it’s wreaking havoc on performance in the workplace. That is a type of corporate culture you should be taking proactive steps to change.

The truth of the matter is that most employees would love to be held to a high standard. To be challenged to do great work. Unfortunately, mediocrity has a way of creeping into a company which can sap the success right out of a business.

Want to harvest better performance? Plant the seeds in regular conversations with your reports about employees performance. Admit your own errors in judgment (to a degree). Be open to that one voice who isn’t going along with the consensus. And when you start to see the FLC piling up, nip them in the bud. The first time you force true clarity is the hardest. This is how you can effect a positive corporate culture change. It helps if you make it a habit. It really is one of the elegant and simple answers in a complex world.

What kind of FLCs are you struggling with in your business? Perhaps we can help. Let us know.

Lisa Jackson and Gerry Schmidt are corporate culture experts and authors of the book “Transforming Corporate Culture: 9 Natural Truths for Being Fit to Compete.” They assess cultures and train leaders to align their corporate culture to strategy, to innovate faster and perform better in an age of rapid change and transformation.

Visit them on the web at www.CorporateCulturePros.com or follow them on Twitter at http://twitter.com/corporatecultur

The number one challenge among these business professionals? Plenty of ideas but no way to get them done.

Which brings us to the million dollar question: Why not?

HEAD TRASH PILING UP

Maybe you think getting your sales force fired up with a positive motivational speech is the answer. Maybe it’s a shiny new acquisition. Maybe you expand into a new market. Perhaps all it takes is to reboot your product, call is “2.0″ and put it out into the world. Actually, those are all viable plans but making those plans WORK is where the real “innovations” comes into the picture. 90% of innovation is not at the iPod scale, it’s executing on clear goals …. not 20 or 30% of goals, but every person executing closer to 100% of their goals. We have yet to see a business that does that in any given year.

Most efforts to grow your business aren’t stopped by ideas, technology, or strategy. Growth is killed in execution. People don’t deal with their “head trash” – thoughts (mindsets and limiting beliefs) that create unwillingness to change even when it is the best thing to do. This strikes at the heart of why your corporate culture might need an overhaul.

When you look for head trash among  your staff you find it everywhere:

• “This wasn’t my idea”
• “Don’t distract me with the facts”
• “It has never been done this way”
• “It’s working well enough”
• “I already know that”
• “I’m too busy”
• “What’s in it for me?”

A university leader from the European Summit related his story. “The only way we will be able to do research in our future is to secure investments from the customers who can commercialize it. Since the government is withdrawing most of its funding for research, we have motivation to change! But trying to build an alliance between our organization and our customers is very difficult. We face huge resistance. Even though we know it’s what we need to do, we’re afraid of change.”

LEARN FROM FAILURE

What to do about it in your world?  Learn from failure. Ah, yes that old canard. We’ve heard it dozens of times but have you really ever put it into practice? Ask your team for a detailed list of the mindsets and reasons for the last thing that your company failed at. Don’t stop at the surface answers – drill deep. What you might discover is that the failure could be traced back to your staff’s head trash piling up and not your budget. Don’t stop a “crazy notion” from becoming your next “million dollar idea.” Dump the head trash today!

If you’ve got a perfect example of how head trash is standing in the way of your company’s success, let us know.

Lisa Jackson and her partner Gerry Schmidt are corporate culture experts. Visit them on the web at www.corporateculturepros.com or follow them on Twitter at http://twitter.com/corporatecultur

The  Corporate Culture Pros team was proud to kick off the conference with an in-depth workshop “Learn to Lead Culture Change” attended by over 40 training and development professionals. These business leaders each brought a unique perspective from their experiences inside companies from North America, Africa, Thailand, India and China, across a broad range of industries.  In such a diverse audience, people were surprised how much common ground they found. For example, culture change is a grand idea but how do you make it manageable? What do you do when your business faces growing uncertainty?  How can consultants better educate their clients about culture during the technology or strategy changes they are bringing? How do you get executives to really understand what culture change means? And, surprising research we showed that what employees care about really does not differ much from India to Indonesia to Indiana.  We are more similar than we imagined!

Questions on Cultural Change

We brought a specific teaching agenda, but wanted mostly to engage group interaction. We all together shared our perspectives on many great questions from the group, including:

• How can we develop a customized measure of culture that is meaningful in our business?
• How do you develop culture when the business environment is uncertain (eg, “we won’t know until the June healthcare decision what our business mandates are, but we still need to prepare”).
• What can you do when a culture of two separate merging organizations are completely different?
• What do you do when the executive team “talks” about supporting cultural change, but then doesn’t demonstrate their commitment in action?
• What role do values play in cultural measurement and change?

One participant from Brazil shared a powerful example of how her organization made a decision to hire based FIRST on values fit, and secondarily on competencies. Their job ads don’t talk about the experience, but focus on what character qualities they are seeking.  This significant change has led to stronger business performance in every aspect, because people are aligned and on the same page, which creates stronger trust.

During the workshop, we presented specific lessons showing HOW we taught clients to launch, lead, and sustain corporate culture change. Judging from the positive feedback from the participants, this really hit the mark. People wanted specifics, not general principles, and we really opened the kimono to show them exactly how we built the cultural process from ground zero. Here, we wanted to share some of those very same lessons.  The lessons were organized around 5 key questions:

Why is Culture So Important?

Lesson #1: Cultural change is more important today due to 6 business trends. First, the increased speed of change. Second, customers are demanding higher levels of transparency. Third, expectations of “instant information” in the broader culture changes expectations of communication at work. Fourth, now more than ever, people are seeking connection – a common tribal identity helps create alignment to common goals. Fifth, in an “app world” of user reviews, it’s crucial to make information transparent and easy to access for employees. Sixth, culture helps you do more with less in an age of “better, faster, cheaper.”

How Do You Measure Culture?

Lesson #2: Cultural change must be driven by defining tangible, measurable behaviors.  Values and beliefs are crucial conversations within the business; however, when it comes to driving cultural change you must identify granular and teachable behaviors to tell people what you want them to do differently.

Why Change Fails v. Succeeds?

Lessons #3: Cultural change is about making business change work.  Culture change will never succeed when it’s viewed as an effort unto itself, disconnected from business strategies and goals. When cultural change is disconnected from the business, urgency will falter and the changes will not sustain. If you need changes in how people plan, communicate, or make decisions – do this because it will enable business goals and strategies.

How Do You Get Your CEO On Board?

Lesson #4: Cultural change must be led by the CEO or top leader. If they don’t see the direct value and connection to the business strategy and results, the attempts to lead cultural change will not work. We have been most successful in creating C-level and executive buy-in because we connect the language of culture to the language of business. They are not separate.

How Do You Change Culture?

Lesson #5: Cultural change can feel messy – unpredictable, non-linear, part science, part art. What makes it less messy? A clear process with steps. While you cannot conduct cultural change the same way you engineer a project, system or structure, it’s important to apply a proven set of key success factors.

During the ASTD workshop, we made these lessons come to life with complete case studies of two client cultural change processes. These proven lessons are key to ensuring that you can lead cultural change in your organization.

At the end, one participant said “You’re the first people I have met who have made practical sense of a topic that is often academic theories and grandiose ideas, which can’t be realistically implemented. Thank you!”

Mission accomplished. That’s all we had hoped to do with our work – demystify the topic of culture and make it simple and straightforward to execute.

You can sign up for an excerpted presentation of these lessons from the ASTD conference here. And if you’ve got a great ASTD story about what you learned, feel free to share.  We’d love to hear from you.

Lisa Jackson and Gerry Schmidt are corporate culture experts and authors of the book “Transforming Corporate Culture: 9 Natural Truths for Being Fit to Compete.” They assess cultures and train leaders to align their corporate culture to strategy, to innovate faster and perform better in an age of rapid change and transformation.

Visit them on the web at www.CorporateCulturePros.com or follow them on Twitter at http://twitter.com/corporatecultur

Exactly how would you define corporate culture as a business concept? Would it be as simple to say it’s the “personality” of a particular business? The truth is that corporate culture goes far beyond a personality or a company’s brand. It’s the collective ways in which 10’s, 100’s or 1000’s of employees interact to make all the day-to-day decisions (both large and small) that allows a company to execute its vision and strategy. It’s what makes a business greater than the sum of its parts. Absent a clearly executed vision and strategy – and an adaptive corporate culture – a company can come crashing down upon itself.  (We’ll keep these companies unnamed to protect the innocent!)

On the Road to Success

If vision is the destination then strategy is the engine. When built well, that engine will provide the power for a business to advance from point A to B.  This makes corporate culture the FUEL. And the “company car” won’t run without that fuel. Without this formula that car is on a meandering sight-seeing road trip, not a focused journey that delivers a clear value to its customers.

Today, the most effective company management teams see their job as providing alignment and clarity between WHERE they’re headed (vision), HOW they’ll get there (strategy) and HOW exactly they will work together to make decisions, collaborate on goals, and serve customers. In this high-octane age of greater competition across every industry, total alignment and clarity is the only way to win.

When the Vision-Strategy Formula Runs Out of Fuel

This is not to say the best laid plans of the vision-strategy formula don’t often go astray. Too often myopic executives spend a much higher percent of their time word-smithing a lofty vision statement and crafting a pithy strategy then developing the vital resources needed to create TOTAL clarity and alignment throughout their entire workforce. This includes clearly defining what that strategy means for their business and what they must DO in their corporate culture to execute it.

For example, two of our recent clients invested millions with the same high-priced consulting firm developing a fancy, well-researched strategy. In one case, after 6 months behind closed doors with an army of consultants, the top executives made a company-wide announcement that they would be selling off approximately half of all their brands. After this edict, people remained in a kind of virtual limbo for 9 months not knowing whether they would be on the sell or keep side of the equations. They had no idea whether the projects they were working on would be trashed or elevated. As you can imagine, while the company leaders figured out the details of who, what, when and where – productivity and morale plummeted. They still met their numbers, so executives could “crow” about the success. And, the spirit and sustainability of this organization’s primary capital – people – was eroded.

In another case, a company spent $25 million developing a strategy the business could not execute without implementing a massive change. In the ensuing 2 years (a lifetime in the business world!) they made minimal forward-progress. Unlike our first example, their numbers remained flat.  All because the leadership and culture were poorly aligned to deliver a much needed 180 shift in project charters, decisions, and change management practices.

When we taught their people a method to measure and align their corporate culture, this became the fuel behind their strategy, rather than culture being a hindrance. In both cases, we consciously worked to build a culture based on listening to people, made rapid progress of being clear and aligned toward shared vision.  More importantly, there is now a solid trust building among leaders and employees once again.

Amazon Works the Formula

Organizations with widespread shared clarity about vision, strategy AND corporate culture perform the best in the marketplace. In Amazon’s case, Jeff Bezos has 56,000 employees and 164 million customers who count on him getting this formula right. The evidence suggests he’s doing just that: Amazon stock is up 397% in the past five years, has a $90 billion stock market valuation, with a host of impressive growth numbers.

Amazon’s mission is clear and simple: To be Earth’s most customer-centric company where people can find and discover anything they want to buy online.

Their strategy is expressed best in one of Bezos’ top ten Maxims:

“Base your strategy on things that won’t change. For Amazon, the 3 big constants are: Wider selection, lower prices, and fast-reliable delivery.”

Their corporate culture (equal parts friendly and intense) is grounded in 2 main concepts:

• The “empty chair”
• Relentless measurement.

Bezos often leaves a chair open in meetings as a reminder to consider the empty seat, occupied by the customer, as “the most important person in the room.”   Another of Bezos’ maxims:

“Determine what your customers need and work backwards. If customers don’t want something, it’s gone – even if that means breaking apart a powerful department.”

They track performance against 500 measurable goals, almost 80% related to customer objectives. The culture is 100% aligned behind their mission and strategy.

Ask yourself the questions:

• What kind of corporate culture are you creating to execute your strategy?
• How aligned is your culture to deliver on your strategy?

Definately worth the time to consider. Here are some valuable tools that can help you develop a stronger corporate culture for your business:

1)     A free self-assessment of your culture current state

2)     A host of other free tools describing elements of successful cultures.

Lisa Jackson and Gerry Schmidt are corporate culture experts and authors of the book “Transforming Corporate Culture: 9 Natural Truths for Being Fit to Compete.” They assess cultures and train leaders to align their corporate culture to strategy, to innovate faster and perform better in an age of rapid change and transformation.

Visit them on the web at www.CorporateCulturePros.com or follow them on Twitter at http://twitter.com/corporatecultur

The Beyond Bureaucracy Challenge is a  “culture on steroids” competitive contest sponsored by the Management Innovation Exchange (partnership with Gary Hamel and McKinsey). It’s purpose is to collect out-of-the-box practices that engage employees, empower people, and foster learning.  These great stories show culture change in action – how companies today are building better teams, transcending organizational hierarchy, allowing people to retire in their 20′s, developing talent, and addressing the “work-from-anywhere” age.

This contest is off to an extremely enlightening start with a sampling of engaging stories such as

4 Tactics to Change From Directive Leadership to A Self-Correcting Organization by Joris Luijke

Growing People: The Heart of the Organizational Transformation by Pamela Weiss

Inspiring the Future of Work By Unlocking Innovation Through Chaos, Creativity and Collaboration by Derek Neighbors

What These Culture Stories Have in Common

Building a corporate culture with high engagement, empowerment, and ease of relevant information flow takes effort. A core culture principle we teach is “Knowing Does Not Equal Doing.” Cultures out-perform their competitors by a sustained commitment to purpose-driven habits that foster clarity and alignment – not just toward a common purpose but toward a common identity. It is NOT what you know … or what you say … it is what you are committed to doing. This is how you differentiate from your competitors, read your market, and respond to change.

“…Many people, especially smart people, [who] imagine that insight and understanding are enough to change behavior. But that is rarely the case. As the renowned psychologist Anders Ericsson reported in his studies on mastery (described in Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers), “deliberate practice” is consistently more significant as an indicator of success than any kind of inherent genius. Deliberate practice requires steady, consistent repetition over time, until new behaviors take root in the body as new habit.

Three Culture Habits Worth Cultivating

Here are a few simple and powerful work practices that make a big difference in driving stronger engagement, innovation, and creativity. Would these appear in your “Beyond Bureaucracy” stories?

1.   Bias for action. Most organizations today need to discipline teams and projects to foster smaller decisions, act quickly, and adjust. Instead of milestones 30 days out, try for one-week milestones. Instead of budgets requiring VP support, whittle a project down to a smaller pilot, and scale once it succeeds.  This is the new way of doing business – move faster, learn, adjust.

2.  Better meetings.  Everyone wastes too much time in bad meetings. Keep meetings short (30-45 minutes) and small (3-5 people). Provide a clear meeting structure (goal, agenda, roles, decisions). Limit large, long-winded conference calls unless they are Webex work sessions. Add a visual element to meetings – it helps people stay attentive, whether on a conference call or face-to-face. Just don’t go overboard with the dense Power Point slides.

3.  Ask more questions, Tell less.  Relationships are the new currency of today’s workforces. Relationships require conversation. “Telling” and declarative statements shut down dialogue.  “Asking” questions invites dialogue.  Yes there is a place for definitive, bossy direction. Like when the building is on fire. But most work is done in teams, and benefits from taking time to explore what people think. Think of it as an investment that reaps compound interest (more inquiry), versus spending that immediately depreciates in value (too much directive). Encourage ideas by saying things like “Great point … how would you approach that?”

Aristotle said it best: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act but a habit.”

Lisa Jackson and Gerry Schmidt are corporate culture experts and authors of the book “Transforming Corporate Culture: 9 Natural Truths for Being Fit to Compete.” They assess cultures and train leaders to align their corporate culture to strategy, to innovate faster and perform better in an age of rapid change and transformation.

Visit them on the web at www.CorporateCulturePros.com or follow them on Twitter at http://twitter.com/corporatecultur

Seeking Culture Change and Employee Engagement?

Achieving growth and innovation is on everyone’s minds these days. Increasingly leaders are seeking culture change and employee engagement as the answer. In this era, being  in the driver’s seat requires extreme leadership. It’s hard to navigate the whitewater of global competition, workers who don’t like to be told what to do, and fast-moving change.

So how do corporate cultures become truly engaged?

There is one answer every leader can do more of to change and improve their corporate culture through employee engagement. It doesn’t cost anything. It is guaranteed to increase business results and performance. It does not require gimmicks or manipulation.

It is truly the most serious advice we give our clients:

Build trust.

Trust is in short supply in our larger societal culture.  There are complete trust breakdowns happening in every system: Our governments. Our corporations. Our families. There’s a reason for this: We are in the midst of a massive transformation of our human society. It’s systemic, it’s painful, and it’s growing.  Any time humans are facing significant change, trust issues surface. Like a magnet, people are programmed to fear change that is forced on them. They polarize against it. Since the pace of change is increasing, it is directly impacting employee engagement, and is redefining what it means to be an employee and leader in our companies today.

In business, trust is the foundation of everything – including your corporate culture, employee engagement, and productivity problems. In our book Transforming Corporate Culture, we use the analogy of trust being like the sun – it is the life-source of an organization.  When trust is weak or cut off, productivity suffers. Unless you are a solo player, you cannot drive engagement, motivation, and passionate action. No matter how many surveys, initiatives, or technologies you deploy, unless people trust their leaders (and vice versa) you won’t achieve maximum productivity. That’s true whether your organization is 5 people, 50, or 5000. Campbell Soup CEO Douglas Conant says it this way:

“You have to inspire trust, and once you earn people’s trust, you have permission to do some amazing things. Trust gives you the permission to give people direction, get everyone aligned, and give them the energy to go get the job done. Trust enables you to execute with excellence and produce extraordinary results. As you execute with excellence and deliver on your commitments, trust becomes easier to inspire, creating a flywheel of performance.” (excerpted from Gallup Management Journal).

Culture change and employee engagement are never about resources, strategy, or technology.

There are three common misunderstandings we have observed in efforts to drive culture change and employee engagement. They are about the role of trust in today’s workplaces:

1) Relationships are seen as “soft.” We don’t have a resource problem on our workplaces. We have a relationship problem. Employees are disengaged and untrusting because they’re not connected to each other – and their leaders – through the strength relationships create. If that sounds airy-fairy, think about this in your own life. You’re far more committed to following through with a boss or client you like and trust. You’re much more likely to make a change you are personally motivated by, and when you”re willingly accountable to someone you like and trust (think of your personal trainer). If you need to be convinced about the link between trust, engagement, and the bottom line, you probably shouldn’t be leading a P&L statement!

2) Trust in leaders is automatic, and they ought to be blindly trusted to make decisions and communicate on a “need to know” basis … while employees should remain grateful and “live with it.”  Trust in leaders is not automatic anymore; unfortunately it’s the reverse: People mistrust leaders until they’ve proven otherwise.  Trust must be given for it to be received – and leaders must lead that effort. You will not generate a high-trust workplace unless you show you trust others you trust them through your actions. The opposite is also true: You cannot expect to make secretive decisions that impact people’s daily lives and livelihood, announce them via email  - and generate trust.  The cost for this common mindset is extremely high, and growing worse by the day. Given the truth about change and polarity and the level of change organizations are facing, a continued steady diet of force-fed change is like junk food to our organization’s cultural health. Trust is at an all-time low and it’s significantly impacting workplace engagement and productivity.

3) “If I trust my people, it means I’m letting the animals run the zoo.”  Trust is maintained by mutual personal responsibility.  In the face of massive gaps in effective communication, trust is considered a contractual agreement rather than a relationship agreement – and is too often left to lawyers and judges to figure out. Trust between two human beings and the dialogue that fosters tolerance, understanding, and true problem-solving is rare. Given that trust is the life-source of any organization, this is an alarming trend in our view.  For example, in a company culture, an agreement to “Treat each other with respect” (a common value) needs conversation that creates common meaning and widespread buy-in.  Rarely does that dialogue happen beyond a poster on a wall. The topic “how we treat each other when things don’t go as agreed or planned” is considered soft and fluffy. And yet, trust is fostered primarily through what happens when the going gets rough – not when everything is groovy.

The First Rule of Trust

To build more trust within your team or work environment, the first step is to WANT to create an environment of trust. Then you must demonstrate that in your behavior as the leader, by assuming positive intent, over-communicating your decisions, and giving people bad news in person. Learning to create a culture of positive intent is the “first rule of trust.”  This brilliant description of the power of positive intent by Indra Nooyi, Chairman and CEO of Pepsi illustrates the point.

One of our clients used the power of positive intent to change the culture in his IT organization. (He was CIO of a Fortune 50 company). He noticed one behavior in the culture was eroding trust more than anything else: The tendency for people to criticize others and seek blame, especially when there were problems with a project. After learning the “positive intent” rule, he started a simple practice. Every time one of his team members complained about someone (usually who was  not in the room), he would ask them; “Do you really think Joe got up this morning, looked in the mirror, and said, I’m going to drive the IT guys nuts?” “I assume Joe’s intent is positive, but we don’t understand something he’s trying to do, or maybe he doesn’t understand what we’re trying to do. What do you think his intention really is?”

Our client reported that it took a while for his positive intent principle to catch on, but after enough time, the culture shifted significantly – and permanently. With a bit of support, and lots of repetition, this change spread beyond his team to the entire IT organization.

Lisa Jackson and Gerry Schmidt are corporate culture experts and authors of the book “Transforming Corporate Culture: 9 Natural Truths for Being Fit to Compete.” They offer a proven method to teach leaders how to evolve their corporate cultures to perform better, innovate faster, and show they truly care about people in an unprecedented era of rapid change and transformation.

Visit them on the web at www.CorporateCulturePros.com or follow them on Twitter at http://twitter.com/corporatecultur

Engaged People are the Result of a Culture of Trust

This is part Two of Two on driving culture change through an organization. Review Part One

Most leaders today are looking for growth through innovation from an engaged workplace culture. And yet, most companies are struggling with the level of engagement and creativity that is truly needed.  So how do corporate cultures become truly engaged?  The answer is “Build trust.”

Do You Want Culture Change That Fosters High Trust? Why?

This is an essential question to answer.  Fostering trust takes time and intention. We can see how important it is in our personal lives.  In an organization, trust is about keeping your word and speaking honestly. This can feel very risky in an environment where people are belittled or punished for speaking up or saying “No” or “We can’t do that.” Culture change based on a foundation of trust means you believe your organization is a “living entity” and relationships drive success. If the primary belief and focus is to make money, then leaders feel it is their responsibility to demand performance from those they hire – ie, people are there to serve the bottom line an d generally cannot be trusted to do that without a lot of carrots and a big stick.  “Demand” in a relationship doesn’t create trust. It does not leave people feeling “I am valued and I contribute.” (people feeling valued is an essential ingredient for innovation). Demand-based cultures are parental.  And this is an outdated mode of operating. In today’s global organizations with increasingly diverse workforces, learning how to drive collaborative leadership is the foundation of project success and speed.

At the same time, there are demands leaders must make to win a fiercely competitive era. If trust is high in the culture, then demand can be high too.  But if it’s all “demand” and no relationship-building, then external rewards and punishment become the only method to driver results, and trust diminishes. Today’s workforce disengagement shows the The Doom Loop situation that results from this thinking.

Any culture change must explore the question: “Do we want to foster greater trust between workers and management? Why?”  When you believe that your organization’s ability to make money and compete better is a direct RESULT of healthy relationships, it’s easy to see that building trust is paramount.

As is true with any relationship.

The first tool or principle of building trust is to use the power of positive intent. We gave an example of how one of our clients used this tool in last week’s blog.

3 Techniques for Culture Change Through Giving and Receiving Trust

Building trust WILL increase workplace engagement, creativity, and performance. Try these 3 tips: 

1) Skill. Does the person have the skill to execute what you’re asking? This is the first rule of fostering more empowerment and trust is “Don’t allow people to sink. Teach them to swim.” Better to take on fewer projects within a quarter and allow the teams to meet their agreements within promised time frames. The frantic “shell game” that most companies go through in re-prioritizing weekly and setting impossible goals fosters mistrust. Working within your capabilities builds a widespread sense of accomplishment and trust capital.

2) Accountability.  Will the person do what they say they’ll do? How will you decide? Can you provide feedback without blame or judgment? (ie, positive intent). Having clear agreements, milestones and behavioral expectations is crucial to building trust. In today’s workplaces there is far too much guesswork, interpretation, and appeasement on the part of managers. Everyone is too busy, and as a result mature, honest conversations that feel or look like conflict are either avoided or dropped harshly without context. A good leader will call people out when they’ve not kept their word, discuss the obstacles that led to the breakdown or missed deadline, help them problem-solve to remove obstacles, and most importantly – make new agreements.

3) Business Relevance. Not everyone should have a say in everything. (In spite of a widespread Gen Y entitlement belief!) When you are building a trust-based culture, it is important to be open and transparent about decision rights so people can visibly see the effort you’re making to be fair and smart. Give a longer trust-leash to people who can and will earn trustworthiness in return. Separate trust in character from trust in performance. The former is about good hiring. The latter is about good management.

If this all seems too complex, you take one simple step to build more trust:

Ask the question several times a day, before you act: “Is what I’m doing right now likely to build more trust among my team/organization … or erode trust?”

How will you know the answer?

Hint: Ask your people.

Lisa Jackson and Gerry Schmidt are corporate culture experts with a proven method to teach leaders how to evolve their corporate cultures to perform better, innovate faster, and show they truly care about people in an unprecedented era of rapid change and transformation.

Visit them on the web at www.CorporateCulturePros.com or follow them on Twitter at http://twitter.com/corporatecultur

Innovation seems to be the topic du jour.

• 36 % of all respondents to the survey admitted that their innovation strategy is not well aligned to their company’s overall strategy

• 47% said their company’s culture does not support their innovation strategy

• Companies with both highly aligned cultures and highly aligned innovation strategies have 17% higher profit growth than companies that reported low degrees of alignment

• The most important innovation goals among respondents are “superior product performance” and “superior product quality,” each ranked number one or two by a plurality of more than 40% of all respondents

• In terms of their cultures, companies share traits even if executives don’t find that their cultures are aligned with innovation. More than 60% cited “strong identification with the customer” as among the top two cultural attributes of their organization, and 50% chose “passion for and pride in products.

Here are tips to help executives determine if their culture is ready to support innovation, and 4 culture types that hinder or derail innovation.

Leaders, it’s all about increasing the dialogue with your people.  Take a bold step today!

As the creative genius Steve Jobs said “Make a dent in the universe.”

Lisa Jackson and Gerry Schmidt are corporate culture experts and authors of the book “Transforming Corporate Culture: 9 Natural Truths for Being Fit to Compete.” They offer a proven method to teach leaders how to evolve their corporate cultures to perform better, innovate faster, and show they truly care about people in an unprecedented era of rapid change and transformation.

Visit them on the web at www.CorporateCulturePros.com or follow them on Twitter at http://twitter.com/corporatecultur