Assuming the Mantle of Leadership

In my years of working with organizations – both large and small – and dealing with leaders and managers, I’ve often wondered what makes a leader. Is it something they were born with, something they learn, or a little of both? How do people respond to their new role as leader when it is earned through years of dedicated, hard work? And how does that kind of leader compare with one upon whom the role is suddenly thrust?

            The question of comparison occurs to me as I read Passage of Power, the fourth book in Robert Caro’s planned five-volume biography of Pres. Lyndon Baines Johnson.

            This book covers Johnson’s life from 1958 into 1964, a period when he went from serving as one of the US Senate’s most effective and powerful Majority Leaders, to a stillborn presidential campaign, to a humiliating three-year role as Vice President, to the assassination of Pres. John F. Kennedy, which thrust him into the presidency, a position he had long craved.

            How he responded to the shock of suddenly assuming the world’s most difficult leadership job is a lesson that answers my question – at least anecdotally.

Behind The Scenes

Caro does an extraordinary job, both in writing the story as well as researching it. Certainly, no historical biographer that I’ve read to date can compare with Caro, whose eye for detail and ability to dredge up heretofore-unknown information about highly public people and events is unmatched. Perhaps his most compelling research concerned Johnson’s reactions and actions in the minutes, hours, days and weeks immediately following the assassination, when he assumed the weighty mantle of leadership.

            Lyndon Johnson was a driven man, always on a quest for power. Interviewed about his series and the nearly 40 years he has spent researching the man, Caro said that the books are as much about Johnson’s quest for power as about the man himself.

            Johnson was Senate Majority Leader from 1954 until he became Vice President in 1961. Johnson used the post to its full extent and more, becoming the most powerful Senate leader of the 20^th century, a man accustomed to giving orders and expecting them to be carried out.

            He was enticed into the job of VP believing that, in presiding over the Senate, he could finagle even more power than he had had as Majority Leader. But the Constitutional separation of powers limited the role and assured he would merely be casting tie-breaking votes.

            Once ensconced as Vice President, the power he had known and luxuriated in as Senate Majority Leader was gone. Instead, he became a mere figurehead with little to do. He grasped at roles for himself, but JFK and his coterie of aides and cabinet members, especially Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, nixed any meaningful role for LBJ.

            Johnson’s humiliating three years as Vice President was the most difficult and painful period of his life. And then fate intervened in the person of Lee Harvey Oswald. This is where the story of power and leadership gets interesting.

Passage of Power

Awaiting word of the gravely wounded president’s condition, Johnson, his wife and an aide were put in a heavily guarded private room at Parkland Hospital in Dallas. Throughout the interminable minutes of waiting, Caro writes, Johnson stood with his back to the wall, completely silent and absorbed in his thoughts. The power of the presidency passed to Johnson the moment Kennedy was pronounced dead.

            Initially hesitant, Johnson soon took control. Caro’s narrative describing the re-emergence of his powerful personality is remarkable:

“…His demeanor was very different in moments of crisis, in moments when there were decisions – tough decisions – to be made … in those moments he became … ‘quiet and still.’ He had been very quiet during the long minutes he stood there in the little room… There was a stillness about him, an immobility, a composure that hadn’t been seen very much during the past three years. Though he had been for those years restless, unable to sit still, unable to keep his mind on one subject, unable to stop talking, he wasn’t restless in that little room.

“…the hangdog look was gone, replaced with an expression” described as “set.” … "Johnson’s oldest aides and allies, the men who had known him the longest, knew that expression; the big jaw jutting, the lips above it pulled into a tight, grim line, the corner turned down in a hint of a snarl, the eyes, under those long black eyebrows, narrowed, hard, piercing. It was an expression of determination and fierce concentration; when Lyndon Johnson wore that expression, a problem was being thought through with an intensity that was almost palpable – and a decision made.”

Very quickly, he was giving orders and making rapid-fire decisions of great import.

            For me, as I noted, it is an impressive story of one man’s passage into power. I doubt many people could rise to such an occasion, as did LBJ. The notion of having to succeed a highly popular president on the heels of his sudden, tragic death just staggers the imagination.

            Johnson did it. And he did it with grace, thoughtfulness (for Jackie Kennedy and the Kennedy family), intelligence and tact.

            But he was also aggressive and eager to get himself out from under the Kennedy shadow and mark the presidency as his own. He wasted no time. While he assured the nation he would carry forth Kennedy’s initiatives, he needed something of his own. He alighted on it within his first month in office, designating the “War on Poverty” as his signature cause.

            The central message is this: born leader or otherwise, Johnson had the makeup of a man who knew himself well, his strengths and his limitations, as well as the ability to maximize those strengths and find the right people to make up for the limitations. In other words, a leader.

Walking the Management Tight Rope

Being a manager is to walk a tight rope. It’s about finding and maintaining the right balance consistently, lest you fall and fail.

            By balance, I mean walking that fine line between over-managing people and giving them too much leeway in their jobs. I couldn’t illustrate this better than did Danish author Carsten Jensen in a passage in his well-crafted 2011 novel, We, the Drowned, about generations of seamen from the small Danish port of Marstal:

“Every sailing ship has miles of ropes, scores of blocks, hundreds of square yards of canvas. Unless the ropes are constantly pulled and the sails endlessly adjusted, the ship becomes a helpless victim of the wind. Managing a crew is the same thing.

“The captain holds hundreds of invisible ropes in his hands. Allowing the crew to take charge is letting the wind take the helm: the ship will be wrecked. But if the captain takes complete control, the ship will be becalmed and go nowhere: he strips his men of all initiative; they’ll no longer do their best and go about their work with reluctance. It’s all a question of experience and knowledge. But first and foremost, it’s about authority.”

Of course, modern organizations are not 19^th century sailing vessels. Plying the vast open waters of the world’s great oceans at the mercy of fickle winds, currents and weather, there was an ever-present danger of rogue waves, sudden storms and typhoons, and lapses in judgment that could and often did result in disaster: lost ships, drowned crew, and lost cargo.

            While there may be no such life-and-death dangers in today’s modern office buildings and factory floors, the metaphor works.

Tight Reins Stifle Excellence

Managers who keep a tight rein on their teams, who micro-manage and second-guess their employees’ every move soon create a disheartened workforce. I’ve seen these situations first-hand.

            Employees “check out.” They go through the motions of doing their jobs, waiting for their manager to correct them, admonish them, or figuratively reach over their shoulders and do their jobs for them.

            This approach begs the question of such managers: why do you hire people? And exactly what skills were you looking for when you hired them? Are your people interchangeable? Clearly, by their actions, this sort of manager telegraphs his/her own gross insecurity that often betrays a personal lack of confidence, an innate craving to be superior when, in fact, that is in doubt.

            Conversely, the other extreme can be just as bad. When the manager is hands-off, offering little or no feedback or coaching, employees are cut adrift. They are left to guess what is expected of them, what determines excellence. In their minds, what they do has little meaning. Their errors and mistakes may or may not bring harm to the company, but it’s unlikely they’ll realize it until it’s too late.

            The happy middle ground is a bit of both: mentoring and coaching, nurturing and building the self-assurance of one’s employees until they feel secure and confident in their own abilities. They eventually gain a larger understanding of the team’s challenges, better able to make independent judgments, acquiring the wisdom that comes with experience.

            As Jensen notes, a manager’s role is to exert authority – not by doing your team members’ jobs for them or second-guessing every decision they make, but rather driving them to improve their own individual performances constantly for the betterment of the larger effort. It is coaching them to ask the right questions and to strive for personal improvement in their individual quests for excellence.

            As a manager, it’s your responsibility to leverage your own knowledge and experience to guide and coach your employees toward the acquisition of the same in application to the unit’s and the business’ challenges. It is helping them make the links between what they do every day and the organization’s larger purpose and goals.

Peeking Behind the Ad Agency Curtain

The daily interactions between people that occur in any workplace shape that organization’s culture, and make it a desirable place to work – or not. The daily struggle to create and maintain quality products and/or services is always a push-pull between people with different viewpoints, and sometimes opposing senses of what will work and what won’t.

      This is especially true in an advertising agency, where the sum total of the firm’s worth lies in its ability to operate as a team to deliver strategically targeted, consistently high quality creative work, which in turn must effectively sell its clients’ goods and services.

      “The Pitch,” a new weekly TV series on AMC, attempts to give us an inside view of this world of advertising agencies. My initial impression is that it did an okay job of it within the confines of a one-hour time slot.

      Filmed like most other reality TV shows with ever-present cameras hovering over participants’ shoulders, two ad agencies are pitted against one another in pursuit of a new piece of business.

      There is much truth in the broadcast: the tension, the petty jealousies, the short fuses, the preening egos, and the prickliness. But there’s also the whirlwind excitement of throwing crazy ideas against the wall in the hope that one will stick and ultimately become the killer idea that wins the account. And then there's the jubilation and profound sense of relief that comes with winning the account.

The Human Element

The larger message of the show lies in that human interaction, the quest for the right chemistry, both between the agency and its prospective client, as well as internally within the agency among the people who work long hours under a tight deadline to deliver winning work.

      “The Pitch” does a great job of capturing that tension, the sleepless nights and long days, and the death spiral feeling during the final days and hours leading up to “the pitch.” We’re reminded with on-screen chyrons how many days or hours are left as the creative teams scramble to put the finishing touches on the idea they hope will win.

      The “sneak preview” of “The Pitch,” which ran (appropriately) last Sunday night as a lead-in to “Mad Men,” pits WDCW of Los Angeles against McKinney of Durham, NC, for the Subway breakfast account. (The show’s regular slot will be Mondays at 9:00.)

      The prospective client is headquartered in Milford, CT, so both agencies had to fly considerable distances to meet (jointly, simultaneously and awkwardly) their prospective client who outlines the assignment. They return a week later with hoped-for knock-their-socks-off ideas to close the deal.

      As the story unfolds, Subway has already started serving breakfast, but is unsatisfied with sales. So this assignment targets a younger demographic – 18-to 24-year-olds – which they believe holds the most promise for growth.

      The Chief Marketing Officer at Subway is the guy who will ultimately judge the winner. I don’t envy the competitors because he seems like a tough customer able to maintain a good poker face.

      The sense of panic sets in immediately back in their home shops. McKinney ropes in its younger staff because they’re members of the target demographic. These kids look like they’ve been out of college for a couple of years, at most. Their ideas are rough, but intriguing.

What’s Missing?

A key element of the process that’s missing, probably because it’s not as sexy as the creative process, is the strategizing that always occurs before any creative work can begin.

• Who’s the target audience – specifically and generally?
• What do we know about them and their breakfast preferences?
• What are their media preferences?
• There’s an implicit assumption from the get-go that the creative product will be TV advertising, which assumes the target watches TV. If so, how do they watch: with finger poised over mute buttons at commercial breaks? When do they watch?
• What kinds of peer pressures determine their buying habits?
• What excites them, and what turns them off?

Answering these and related questions guide the media planning and strategy that help center the creative effort and avoid the problem of ineffective advertising down the road. But these agencies apparently just skipped ahead, riding on their assumptions.

      McKinney’s chief creative officer is an unsmiling killjoy who seems to like none of his team’s ideas. While bullying them, he delights in knocking down a lot of plausible approaches while offering no guidance or suggestions. Perhaps that’s his style, but for a business that thrives on good relationships among team members, his method strikes me as cold and counter-productive.

      “The Pitch” spends more time on McKinney – probably because they are the ultimate winners. We get a good flavor of the creative back-and-forth that is the heart of the ad business: the kicking around of crazy ideas in a conference room and the excitement when something feels just right.

      The winning idea involves a rapper, Mac Lethal, who writes a clever rap lyric that the McKinney team videotapes in a local Subway shop. McKinney goes one step further bringing the rapper to the pitch. As they close their presentation, he enters the room, surprises the client, and raps praises for Subway. The client grins for the first time.

      The closing scenes accurately portray the results back at their home offices – the McKinney offices exploding into cheers at the news, while the WDCW team plays basketball and talks philosophically, though not credibly, about not playing to win.

      It’s an entertaining reality TV show, but not the full story. It glamorizes the business, as seems to be its intent, with none of the downside of working in an ad agency: the slow-paying clients and subsequent cash flow problems, the lost accounts, and the impossible-to-please clients. Take “The Pitch” with a big grain of salt and enjoy it.

The Leadership Lessons of George Washington

Given the choice between working for a manager who operates in a top-down fashion issuing orders without benefit of alternative opinions, versus one who seeks a diversity of input, most of us would prefer to work for the latter. I dare say, too, that the latter type is more likely to be successful in the long run, by a number of measures.

      Would you judge George Washington a successful leader? Do we know why he was successful?

      There are few historic leaders that garner as many clichés as George Washington. The “Father of our Country” is credited for winning the American War for Independence, as well as providing the right vision at the right time to help guide the establishment of our Constitution, and serving as our first president, setting the standard for all those that followed.

      But it was a book, Washington's Crossing, by David Hackett Fischer, that really opened my eyes to the man’s truly distinctive leadership qualities.

      In school, we learned the abbreviated and hackneyed story of Washington. I don’t recall delving into the specifics of his character, what made him a great leader.

      Fischer’s book covers a brief chunk of the history of the Revolutionary War, from December 1776 to the following spring. In four to five months, the Continental Army, under the astute and wise leadership of Washington, reversed the fortunes of the Continentals and changed the course of the war. By comparing the leadership style of Washington to that of his counterparts, Gen. Sir William Howe and, more specifically, Gen. Charles Cornwallis, we learn why Washington really was a great leader. 

Shifting to Offense

To briefly recap the story, the British army chased the Americans out of Long Island and Manhattan, into and across New Jersey in the waning weeks of 1776. The rebels’ fortunes looked dismal as they crossed the Delaware River and made winter camp in Pennsylvania.

      As the year approached its end, the British and their Hessian allies prepared to continue its march into Pennsylvania with the goal of overwhelming and occupying Philadelphia, the Continental capital.

      But with a bold and highly risky strategy, Washington took the offensive, taking his ragtag army back across the ice-choked Delaware on Christmas night, surprising and overwhelming the Hessian camp in Trenton the following morning.

      Two days later, they fended off the reinforcing Brits and again went on the offensive by attacking the British stronghold at Princeton. The two successful battles really did turn the tide of the war in at least three important ways.

      First, the victories provided both the Continental army and the Continental Congress with their first major success of the war and an important boost in confidence. Second, they helped recruit badly needed fresh troops while drawing equally critical supplies. Third, British and Hessian armies’ losses badly shook their confidence, from the officer corps to the rank and file, and put them off-balance and on the defensive.

      Their victories put the Americans on the offense, where they would remain for the balance of the war. By the spring of 1777, opposition leaders in Parliament in London began arguing that it was time to pull out of the conflict. Parliament was reluctant to grant Howe’s desperate requests for supplemental troops and supplies.

      Through the winter and early spring months of 1777, Americans continually harassed the opposition in the so-called “forage wars” of New Jersey, preventing the British and Hessians from obtaining critical feed for their horses and thereby reducing their mobility – the equivalent of denying gasoline and diesel supplies to a modern army. 

Superior Leadership Style

Through it all, as the Fischer repeatedly illustrates, it was Washington’s superior leadership style that made the difference. In one passage, he wrote:

“…Cornwallis imposed his plan from the top down, against the judgment of able inferiors, and prepared to attack in the morning. [Meanwhile,] Washington in his council of war welcomed the judgment of others and presided over an open process of discovery and decision that yielded yet another opportunity. In the night, Washington disengaged his forces from an enemy only a few yards away, and an exhausted American army found the will and strength to make another night march toward Princeton.”

You can sense the rigidly hierarchical style of the professional British general, bound up in the traditions of his army, while not brooking any alternative ideas or input from his officer corps, blindly moving ahead with his own plan.

      Washington came from a different stock, with a far more democratic army and officer corps. It would have been anathema of him to ignore or not seek the thoughts and ideas of his senior officers. And when he did, time and again it made the difference between victory and defeat.

      The more effective presidents over the years have been those that assume the role of senior executive – Lincoln, Kennedy and Reagan come to mind – presidents who surrounded themselves with a diversity of viewpoints, and sought the full range of opinions and insights before reaching a conclusive and final decision. The less effective presidents have been those that wasted precious time to build and reach consensus among their advisors. Or, conversely, those that led without benefit of alternative viewpoints and ideas.

      Washington’s is a leadership style that endures and remains highly applicable in a range of modern and conventional challenges. Clearly, in this way, George Washington established the model for the ideal leader, not just in politics, but also in the military and business.

Why Mustaches are like Social Media

Imagine you inadvertently overhear a snippet of your wife’s conversation with a friend. She doesn't like your new mustache, but hasn't said anything about it because she doesn't want to hurt your feelings. But she’s eager for you to get tired of it and shave it off.

      You’ve discovered a painful little truth. You’re “just trying it out” and think it looks pretty good. But you've gained a new insight into your wife’s tastes. You’ll probably shave it tomorrow morning.

      Imagine, too, that you’re the founder and president of a thriving multi-national business. You’ve always assumed that your employees admired you and, for the most part, heeded your counsel about how things ought to be done to assure continued growth and success.

      Recently, your communications team installed a new social media app on the company’s internal network that enables employees to meet and share ideas instantly, regardless of their location or time zone. It’s an immediate hit. Employees are buzzing in the online chat room.

      The head of communications suggests you spend a little time getting familiar with it and asks you to contribute to the conversation. You’re busy and this new communications tool seems a bit frivolous. One evening at home, you have nothing else to do so you check it out.

      Amid the back-and-forth chatter about challenges and opportunities, customers, products, and competitors, however, you discover a few comments about you and your leadership team. Employees are wisecracking about your management style, your directives and your ideas.

      You get angry. The next morning, loaded for bear, you call in your communications VP to talk about it. He advises you to calm down and consider the comments as constructive criticism. He’s right. So you think of them in the same way you do your wife’s feelings about your mustache. You’ve learned something else you didn’t previously know.

      It’s a learning experience. The best organizations, after all, are learning organizations. And what this new social media experiment is doing, you realize, is allowing people to share big ideas and to learn together through means that were previously non-existent.

      People are having virtual conversations about topics that make the business better. Maybe their stray criticisms of your style are justified. Maybe you are a little stodgy in how you see things and how you operate. So your eyes are opened now.

Parallel Worlds

Speaking of having one’s eyes opened… Bob Pearson has written a marvelously insightful book called Pre-Commerce. Though I’m only halfway through it, it’s really opening my eyes about social media’s potential for business.

      The book is about the places where customers and businesses intersect, and how companies can use social media to get ahead of the curve on product development, customer service, and customer satisfaction – all toward improving their customer relationships. The first third of the book sets up the rationale and the opportunity. The rest fleshes out the how-to and follow-through.

      In that first third, I found myself substituting the word “employees” in some of the places where Pearson uses “customers.” For instance, consider the following passage:

“The only way to start rebuilding trust and brand loyalty with the Pre-Commerce customer is to become an effective peer. An effective peer is one who provides the right information at the right place and at the right time. An effective peer doesn’t look for ways to avoid blame or responsibility. He or she corrects problems swiftly and to the satisfaction of the person wronged. And an effective peer constantly works to improve the relationship. That last step, the constant work on the relationship, is the most rigorous…”

While what Pearson has written is certainly true about the relationships a company should cultivate with its customers, those of you who are, like me, students of employee communications know that the words apply equally to the relationships an organization and its managers must have with their employees, and the nature of the communication that sustains those relationships.

      I don’t mean to imply that Pre-Commerce is about employee communications, per se. In fact, it’s about transforming your business from a conventional 20^th century marketing organization into one that leverages social media to listen to, learn from and engage your customers through every stage of the transaction – all toward improved revenues, profits and long-term success.

Engaging Customers

Aside from my word substitution, the other obvious intersection here between the external and internal worlds of business is why it’s critical for employees to engage customers. As Pearson notes, “I can toss out a few examples of innovation and a theory or two, but that doesn’t do anything to change your culture. You need to get all of your 500, 5,000 or 50,000 employees focused on listening to customers more effectively.” Which can be achieved through effective use of social media.

      To come full circle, Pearson’s insights can also be applied to how we engage our employees inside the organization. Which is why the use of social media behind the firewall excites me. It can become a valuable part of a company’s internal communications dynamic.

      While stimulating and increasing productive internal dialogue – irrespective of managers’ and employees’ physical location – these tools also give leaders the opportunity to eavesdrop on and participate in that internal discourse, a productive, relevant conversation that was heretofore very difficult.

      Imagine the potential, especially in the context of what Pearson writes about being an effective peer. The best managers and leaders are those that operate in the manner of a peer, speaking to employees as equals. They understand that their chief role is to help employees acquire the necessary resources to do their jobs – and then get out of the way and let them do it.

      What better way to uncover those needs, to cultivate trust and those critical internal relationships, than to engage in a robust dialogue? And when use of social media tools means that the dialogue can occur whenever and wherever you want, the possibilities for success and greatness are limitless.

Putting the Client Where He Belongs: Front and Center

From its founding, any business’ raison d’être is to provide customers with a product and/or service that improves their lives in some way. When a business consistently does that well, it succeeds and thrives – as well it should.

      Conversely, when a business loses that impetus, when its focus shifts away from its customers’ needs and, instead, concentrates on the money it makes and a desire to make more, its demise is in sight.

      Such appears to be the case with Goldman Sachs. 
      Wall Street (and beyond) is abuzz this week on the heels of a provocative March 14 New York Times Op-Ed by Greg Smith titled “Why I am Leaving Goldman Sachs.”

      In it, this vice president, a 12-year veteran of the firm, explains that the company he came to know and love was a culture that “revolved around teamwork, integrity, a spirit of humility, and always doing right by our clients. The culture was the secret sauce that made this place great and allowed us to earn our clients’ trust for 143 years.”

      Where is Goldman Sachs today, and why is this man so disillusioned that he has decided to leave? What changed? According to Smith, “The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm … you will be promoted into a position of influence.”

      He adds, “Today, many of these leaders display a Goldman Sachs culture quotient of exactly zero percent. I attend derivatives meetings where not one single minute is spent asking questions about how we can help clients. It’s purely about how we can make the most money off of them.”

A Common Tale, Alas

Much the same story can likely be told of some of the big marketing and communications agencies today. A lot of the effort they expend seems to be on expanding their service offerings to their clients, not necessarily because the clients need them but because more service means higher retainer fees and greater agency profits.

      The initial assignment, however small, is seen as a foot in the door to sell ever more services that they may or may not need – like the proverbial door-to-door salesman. I know some clients will automatically push back, telling their agency to concentrate on delivering the promised service. And they’re right to do so.

      The correct way to grow an agency’s business with a client is first to deliver the service for which it has been contracted. When the delivered results meet or exceed the client’s expectations, it’s likely the firm will be invited to provide additional services.

      Of course, it’s a delicate dance because, in the course or working side-by-side in the client organization, other client challenges may become apparent, which the agency is prepared and able to address. If the agency’s honest motivation is to help the client deal with the problem rather than to “grow the business,” there’s a good chance it will be invited to do so – often without having to ask for it.

      As Smith knows, a service-oriented business should bring to bear appropriate and necessary additional services to their clients, not principally for the supplementary revenue they might afford but rather to provide those clients with complete solutions to their challenges.

      My experience has always been that when you provide great service to your clients, when you help them achieve or exceed the results they desire, they are more than happy to reward you with more opportunities, and they are pleased to know that you can make a profit. 

      On the other hand, when clients are seen first and foremost as a source of revenue and profit rather than as a firm's core driver, the clients sense it. And frankly, such a firm's ultimate demise is predictable and justly deserved.

Leading by Example

The larger question is whether the right or the wrong attitude is embedded in the culture. When leaders of the firm talk of little else but profitability and revenue streams, those on the lower rungs of the ladder correctly sense where the organization’s priorities lie and, by extension, what gets rewarded.

      Smith understands this truth: “These days, the most common question I get from junior analysts about derivatives is, ‘How much money did we make off the client?’ It bothers me every time I hear it, because it is a clear reflection of what they are observing from their leaders about the way they should behave. Now project 10 years into the future: You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the junior analyst … doesn’t exactly turn into a model citizen.”

      I believe, too, that in 10 years, some of those junior analysts will be vice presidents there perpetuating its poisonous culture – that is, if Goldman Sachs is still in business.

      And that’s the question that emerges from this Op-Ed: will Goldman Sachs learn the wise and timely lesson that Mr. Smith is offering them and survive? Frankly, it’s a pretty simple warning: “I truly believe that this decline in the firm’s moral fiber represents the single most serious threat to its long-run survival.”

      He adds: “It astounds me how little senior management gets a basic truth: If clients don’t trust you they will eventually stop doing business with you.”

      So when a business loses touch with its culture, when its people cease following the guiding beacon that led the firm through 143 years of success, what should it do to regain its footing? Smith advises that it should “…make the client the focal point of your business again. Without clients you will not make money. In fact, you will not exist… And get the culture right again, so people want to work here for the right reasons. People who care only about making money will not sustain this firm – or the trust of its clients – for very much longer.”

      Wise counsel.

 

Cultivate Your Employees’ “Extreme Trust”

In a 2001 feature story about him in Fortune magazine, Southwest Airline’s founder and former CEO Herb Kelleher said, “You have to treat your employees like customers. When you treat them right, then they will treat your outside customers right. That has been a powerful competitive weapon for us.”

      I’ve never forgotten that quote and have used it on many occasions because it cuts to the heart of the purpose of effective employee communications. Yet it amazes me how many organizations don’t follow that guidance, some even going the opposite direction by taking their employees for granted.

      A recent article about customer relations in Fast Company caught my eye because it provides an apt parallel with respect to the internal environment. “If Your Customers Are Poised For Revolt, It’s Time For Extreme Trust” makes the case that today’s more open environment created by social media has opened businesses up for closer scrutiny by their customers.

      No longer can businesses operate in secret, expecting that their customers will follow along in blind loyalty. The author, Don Peppers, explains that, “It used to be that a business could generate substantial profits by keeping its customers in the dark. Entire business models are based on charging customers fees they shouldn’t have to pay, or selling them products they don’t really need.”

Proactively Trustworthy

Peppers makes the case for “extreme trust,” which he explains as being “proactively trustworthy, not just by providing a reliable product and competent service, but also by understanding and proactively watching out for your customer’s own interest.”

      The case he makes is valid and worthy of consideration by people focusing on their customers. But I contend that the same case can be made for focusing on one’s own employees in a parallel fashion, actively seeking to gain their extreme trust.

      To help the reader – presumably a businessperson with customers – adjust and respond appropriately by checking her/his own company, Peppers provides a few self-assessment questions. I’ve taken most of Peppers’ questions and substituted the word “employees” wherever he uses the word “customers” – as well as a couple other tweaks so it makes sense.

      See for yourself. How would you answer these questions about your own internal environment and your relationship with your employees?

• Is your company's financial success generally aligned with what's good for your employees? 
• Have you identified conflicts between how your firm succeeds, financially, and how it does what’s good for your employees, individually?
• Overall, would your company make more money with uninformed, unknowledgeable employees, or from well-informed, knowledgeable ones?
• If an employee is well-informed, knowledgeable, and paying attention, would he choose to remain with your company or would he be more likely to leave?
• Do your employees proactively prompt one another to avoid errors or oversights? Whether your answer is yes or no: Is this part of their training? Is it part of your company's culture?
• If your business were a government, would your employees be trying to overthrow you?

Last question (my own): Are you keeping your employees in the dark, whether deliberately or through your own neglect?

      Remember what Herb Kelleher said and take it to heart. If you focus on keeping employees engaged in the business and happy, your customers are the ultimate beneficiaries. And when your customers are happy, they’re loyal, which will show up on your bottom line.

Virtual Communications for Virtual Employees

The time we spend working during our productive years represent the bulk of our waking hours. Consequently, the people we work for and with often become our friends, people we know the best.
     This was especially so in the traditional 9-to-5, Monday-through-Friday office routine that, along with lifetime employment that was prevalent in the post-World War 2 years in America, is now a thing of the past. While it lasted, it helped establish numerous deeply embedded corporate cultures based on the relationships that people developed working together day in and day out.
     That’s all changed. Slowly, at first, technological advances made it possible to work away from the office. First came the fax machine and FedEx overnight delivery of important documents. The speed of change ratcheted up considerably in the past 10 to 15 years with the advent and then widespread adoption of the Internet by businesses and its penetration into so much of what we do.
     By the way, it was a mere 12 years ago that corporate leaders like GE’s Jack Welch “discovered” the Internet and urged their peers to do likewise or risk being left behind. And don’t forget that Microsoft was late to the party with its Internet Explorer web browser, long after Netscape was the default Internet browser.

Tech Evolution
The Internet and its myriad technologies, the hardware and software, have now enabled us to be effective workers no matter where we are. First, it was email. Most recently it’s Skype, iChat and website services like GoToMeeting.com where people can work together in real time no matter where they are.
     Twenty or 30 years ago, working from home one or two days a week – if not all the time – would have been unthinkable. Today, it’s what we’re used to it. In fact, it’s expected and often part of the job.
     But paralleling that evolution, we’ve seen the deconstruction of the conventional office routine, where your boss is down the hall in the corner office. I recently consulted for a large multinational firm with headquarters in the Boston area. Its North American sales manager – a member of the senior management team, by the way – worked out of his home in Boulder, CO.
     I asked him whether it impeded his ability to be an effective manager. “Not at all,” he said. “I’m on the road most of the time anyway, so it doesn’t matter where I set up my office. If I’m needed at headquarters, I can be there tomorrow morning.”
     A friend of mine works for an international bank. Due to increased state taxes, the company recently relocated its headquarters across the border to an adjacent state. He had been accustomed to a half-hour commute by train, but it expanded to more than 90 miles by car – one-way. He told me he now works from home three days a week and spends 12 to 14 hours a day in the office the other two days.

Lost Camaraderie
The jarring aspect of this new arrangement, he said, is the radical change it has imposed on his unit’s unique culture and cohesiveness. The office space where the transferred employees now work is vacant of much of the staff most of the time, he said. The camaraderie that he had known for years is now gone. He rarely sees his colleagues face-to-face any more – though they do converse on the phone regularly. But it’s not the same.
     Assuming this is the norm today, we can infer that the dispersion of employees from central offices will likely continue and their nomadic numbers will increase. What effect does this new paradigm have on employee communications and one’s ability to manage people effectively?
     In a nutshell, it means managers and leaders have to work even harder to establish and sustain solid communication links with their employees. Certainly the best communication is face-to-face. And we can assume that the manager-employee relationship is initially established with a face-to-face meeting, supplemented with periodic personal visits.
     But over the long term, it behooves managers and leaders to maintain those critical relationships with a regular flow of two-way information through any and all possible and practical means: email, text messages, telephone, voice mails, Intranet chat rooms, and every other tried-and-true method that works in a given organization.
     Sure, you may miss the opportunities to participate in office betting pools on “March Madness.” And you may miss the chance encounters at the water cooler to catch up on personal news with your employees, and to see photos of their kids growing up.
     Unfortunately, these aspects of our work lives that add meaning to our personal sides are being lost to the surge of technology and the push for greater efficiencies. But we can’t afford to let it also sacrifice the effective working relationships and communications that drive the business and its success.

Navigating Toward Your North Star

Leaders know the critical importance of a vision to guide them and their company to success. They expend enormous resources developing and acting on that vision within their management teams and driving their organization forward.

     The most successful leaders are also adept at sharing, communicating, and constantly nurturing that vision with their employees, ensuring that the entire company is focused on that same ideal, navigating always toward the same destination – in the direction of their “North Star,” if you will.

     An insightful blog, “What Wise Leaders Always Follow,” posted on the HBR (Harvard Business Review) Insight Center, provides practicable guidance to business leaders about identifying their own North Star and how to follow it.

     Author Prasad Kaipa, a senior fellow in the Center for Leadership, Innovation and Change at the Indian School of Business (Hyderabad, India), says that wise leaders “root themselves in a noble purpose, align it with a compelling vision, and then take action… That noble purpose becomes a North Star, giving direction when the path ahead is hazy, humility when arrogance announces false victory, and inspiration when the outlook seems bleak.”

Simplifying One’s Choices

Indeed, as Kaipa points out, “Though it is not always simple to find one’s North Star, once it appears, its guidance helps simplify one’s choices… It becomes their calling, and they service that calling willingly, happily, and infectiously.”

     The key word in that last sentence is “infectiously,” because in order to be compelling, a North Star must be infectious in its conciseness, while the leader that communicates it must endow it with real world meaning and enthusiasm.

     Employees and line managers sense their leader's passion, and it spreads in the same way that a political cause can suddenly catch fire when a politician succinctly verbalizes a guiding principle that people immediately understand, identify with and latch onto.

     Pres. John Kennedy’s admonition that “we choose to go to the moon” conveyed a common desire and, ultimately, a destiny. He gave the nation an ideal to aim for, something that the people could visualize and strive for. Everyone directly and indirectly involved in the space program instinctively sensed his or her role in reaching for Kennedy’s North Star – a destiny that, in fact, out-lived Kennedy. The nation rose to the challenge and succeeded. The citizenry was universally enthused and supportive.

     In the case of a business, the North Star is not a fixed, finite point in time or space, or a specific end in itself. Kaipa illustrates his essay by discussing at length the Aravind Eye Care System and the North Star that its founder, Dr. Govindappa Venkataswammy fixed on to start the company: “To eliminate needless blindness by providing appropriate, compassionate, high-quality eye care for all.”

     Kaipa says it was a “seemingly impossible dream.” To support it, the founder developed a simple set of principles:

• Turn no one away regardless of ability to pay
• Give everyone the same high quality care
• Don’t be dependent on outside funding sources

Though he doesn’t say it outright, we can infer that Dr. Venkataswammy’s North Star and guiding principles inspired not only his employees, but also everyone it touched. There’s something powerful and empowering about being associated with a cause whose North Star is like that. Your North Star needn’t be so lofty or altruistic, but it should match your desires, affinities, abilities, and reach, including those of your employees.

Touching External Audiences

A compelling North Star and its infectiousness can also serve as an effective recruiting tool, attracting exactly the kinds of people who are inspired by it and thus eager to apply their skills and energies to help the organization attain it. Equally important, it attracts customers and builds brand loyalty.

     Communicating your North Star becomes an all-encompassing affair, reaching not just the internal audience but also customers, venders, and investors. People feel more connected to a business when they sense its guiding spirit and want to invest in it themselves, either by buying its products or stocks, or joining the effort as an employee.

     Perhaps Apple is the best contemporary example of a company that has identified its North Star and effectively communicated it to its internal and external audiences. Steve Jobs famously said he wanted to “put a dent in the universe” – a new age way of saying that he wanted Apple truly to change the way people lived their lives.

     I contend that Apple became successful because it – more especially, Steve Jobs – created and effectively communicated its North Star. More important, Apple established a pattern of breakthrough products and services that repeatedly validated its North Star. Each time it did so, it reinforced its core principles while increasing employee and customer loyalty – which is about as good it gets for a business.

A Military View of Communications

In the context of combat, far from home base with all hell breaking loose, there is nothing more critical than good communications. Well, that and lots of ammunition. But even so, without reliable, consistent communications, you’ll never have enough ammo.

      The parallel in business is that you may be able to throw a lot of money and people at challenges or a crisis, but without effective communications, it won’t make a lot of difference. That’s why the words of wisdom from retired four-star General Stanley McChrystal ring so true in a terrific interview* in Inc. magazine.

      Gen. McChrystal was commander of the Joint Special Operations Command in Afghanistan during its peak period of engagement. He is also a third-generation West Point graduate – a soldier’s soldier, as the expression goes.

      My naïve image of such a man is one of rigid hierarchy, someone who lives and breathes “chain of command,” with little patience for the softer part of operations – i.e., the people side of the equation. So I was pleasantly surprised to read in this brief interview his strong belief in the importance in building relationships as a precursor to establishing effective communications before a crisis hits.

Relationships at the Core

He talked about the value of the physical communications links – telephones and the Internet, for instance – but said that relationships are most important, which he explains as “having people you know and trust that you can communicate effectively with so you can get a clear understanding of the situation and you can begin to craft a credible response.”

      In other words, the cultivation and maintenance of relationships is the key to effective communications, which in turn is central to being able to successfully respond to the challenges everyone faces, in both war and everyday business.

      Not only is it unwise to await the crisis to begin the effort to build relationships and establish firm communications links, but to wait is to guarantee failure. Especially in the context of a crisis – be it on the battlefield or in the office – the lack of a foundation of established relationships and the trust they embody means that communications will be chaotic and worthless.

      As I’ve pointed out here numerous times, a guiding vision or mission is the single most effective way to build those relationships in an organization, to unite people around a shared sense of purpose, everyone striving for the same ultimate result. The same is true in a military context.

“Commander’s Intent”

Gen. McChrystal shares that philosophy, though he uses a different term. “We develop something called ‘commander’s intent’ to put in clear words what it is we really mean … designed to explain, in the commander’s own voice, what it is we were going to do, why we thought that was important, how it fit in to the bigger context of what we were trying to do, and then what might be successful.”

      I’ve rarely read a better, more succinct description and purpose of “vision” than that.

      As though reading my mind, he went on to say that, in business, “commander’s intent … might be ‘vision’… It would explain to people, here’s what we’re trying to do, and if things aren’t exactly as you expected them to be, this is still the end result. If you empower each employee with that kind of context and understanding, they get what we call ‘shared consciousness and purpose.’ They suddenly understand what it is they are trying to do in what environment, and what the organization is trying to accomplish.”

      Beautifully said. 

      People within a business who fully understand and work toward a vision will always encounter stumbles and barriers along the way. The strategy they so carefully worked out may not unfold exactly as they had planned. But they still keep their eyes on the desired end results, as laid out in the vision.

      There’s an old expression about war strategy and planning: as soon as the fighting breaks out, the first thing to get tossed aside is the battle plan. Chaos rules, but the end goal remains unchanged.

      When people are working toward a common vision, the way they communicate and the words they use to communicate come more naturally. There is less guessing as to another person’s meaning and intent since they all know where they’re going and their communications are built on the trust inherent in established relationships.

      In a military context, say in Afghanistan, if the commander’s intent is secure the Helmand province for the local citizens desirous of peace, then the strategy and component tactics toward that end make sense. The officers within the chain of command continually reemphasize that desired end result, making it relevant for better understanding among their troops. As they then move forward as a unit, securing one town at a time battling the local Taliban forces, in the face of chaos and mayhem of battle force their plans change on the fly.

      We face our own Taliban every day in business – albeit, not mortally dangerous. When we’re able to stay focused on the vision that drives our organization, we’re able to communicate our intents clearly to our teammates to surmount the daily struggles and setbacks, better able to help meet the ultimate goals of the organization.

*Thanks and a tip of the hat to Mary Schaefer for bringing the Gen. McChrystal interview to my attention.