Leading Workplace Change™

Like many of us these days, I woke up this morning craving some positive news in the midst of our current economic instability.  Just as I was sitting down to write, our UPS delivery arrived for the day.  The driver is always friendly and at the same time efficient – never a wasted motion.  I was somehow reassured both by the normalcy of the delivery and also by thinking about the company behind it – United Parcel Service (UPS).  This is a company that does not make it into the news for any spectacular short-term gain, but is known for its steady and consistent growth.

I put on my organizational culture hat and thought that UPS is most likely a company with a strategic cultural driver of commitment to a long-term vision.  With this kind of driver in place, leaders are guided to balance their decisions concerning a possible short-term business gain against how well the decision will help the company achieve its long-term strategies.  Most likely, some portion of profit is re-invested into development of new products or services; and, leaders probably consider the needs of all stakeholders when making strategic decisions.  In the long-run this approach helps the company maintain a stable and committed workforce through good and bad business cycles.

Thus, I was not much surprised when I found the current CEO of UPS, Scott Davis expressing similar views in a recent interview with the Atlanta Journal & Constitution (Q&A / Scott Davis, Chief executive officer of UPS by Rachel Tobin Ramos, 9/20/08)

“We’re not really managing for the next quarter but many years into the future… It sounds folksy, but we really think our job is to leave the company in better shape for the next generation…We all feel very much involved in the outcome of this company (UPS). We still have about 30 percent of the company owned by insiders, both active employees and retirees.”

I do feel more positive about the potential of our country after thinking about UPS and the model it offers future company founders and the leaders of today.  We need to find successful models to guide us in how to transform our short-term gain focus into personal and organizational visions that balance what is good for today with what is good for the long-term.

Tags: Corporate Culture Observer, Leaders Leading by Terri – older, but wiser white lady
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The emergence of Republican Vice-Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin is making us think deeply about which kind of background and training will serve us best in the next leader of our country.  Ms Palin’s background as a mayor and the governor in Alaska seems to be of interest to many people and to me as well.  It may be the fact that the state she lives and governs is in many people’s minds - the last American frontier.  It makes us think about our country’s roots in rugged individualism – surviving alone in a log cabin in the wilderness.  In many people’s minds – rugged individualism is a founding ethos of our country.  And we do know how it plays out, as it is alive and well today in the organizational cultures of many American-based companies.

In organizational culture lingo – rugged individualism translates into valuing people who are “self-starters.”  They are self-motivated with a “can-do” attitude and they are able to figure things out on their own.  Successful people in “self-starter” cultures usually need to seek out their own opportunities and the organization waits for the crème to rise to the top.  There is not much investment in formal career development except for high potential people who have already proven themselves.  It can lead to intense internal competition when people start looking out for themselves more so than for the good of the organization.

So what does this mean for leaders of companies with a “self-starter” culture?  As you can see above, there are positive and not so positive aspects of this kind of culture and balance is again part of the answer.  A leader wants to harness the self-motivation towards meeting company goals; and, force collaboration where it is a requirement through alignment between personal and organizational metrics.  They also need a new and consistent focus on managing and developing people to produce 100% output from everyone.  Leaders will need to muscle these new foci as they go against the grain of “self-starter” cultures.

As a country, we are not alone in the wilderness anymore – we live and work in a complex, inter-related global marketplace.  And, shifting our national belief in a pure form of rugged individualism as represented in the cultures of many of our American-based companies will not be easy, but important for the long-term success of our economy.

Tags: Corporate Culture Observer, Leaders Leading by Terri – older, but wiser white lady
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I met up with a friend recently, and in five minutes, he brought me up to date on his job at a residential real estate company.  He started by saying - “we hired a new managing broker from outside the company; she is putting in an electronic marketing system and it is driving us crazy!”  He laughed as he said - ”We never needed a marketing system before.  We put our client names on a PDA rolodex - made sure we kept up with relationships at the country club and every year many of us made the million dollar club.  But the current downturn in the market is making all of us nervous and we know we need to do some things differently.”

I could not help but put on my “corporate culture observer” hat as I heard him use the phrase keeping up with relationships.  It makes sense that being relationship-driven is one of the traditional underlying sources of success in residential real estate.  It is the case in most companies where success in personal selling is the preferred method used to create income. And, from my knowledge of organizational culture it is normal that the primary source of external success is also many times used to guide how people operate within the sales organization.  They probably do not write things down or record how work gets done. They most likely talk to the folks who have been there the longest to find out how to solve a problem.

Utilizing an electronic marketing system is of course driving my friend and his colleagues crazy at his company.  It requires people to input data regularly which takes time away from maintaining relationships.  This is going against the grain of a relationship-driven culture and it will be hard for people to maintain unless people are consistently supported and the system brings in some quick wins.  The managing broker will need to support people in muscling their way through unfamiliar behaviors.

My friend ended his tirade against the new marketing system by noting that he agreed with the new managing broker’s plan about everyone needing to work smarter and build on each other’s success.  I asked him if he thought the new marketing system would help them to do that.  His response was – “Yes, but someone has to be brave enough to take the time and teach me how to work the system first!”

Tags: Corporate Culture Observer, Workplace Stories by Terri – older, but wiser white lady
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How are family-owned companies different from publicly-owned companies?  The major difference we have seen centers on the kind of relationships created over time between employees, company leaders and the organization.  Depending upon the values of the founding family and the success of the business, these relationships many times build a culture where loyalty, respect and caring for people – customers and employees are rewarded.

An example of this kind of culture is clearly illustrated in an article about family-owned construction businesses, based in Georgia who shared the profits from the sale of the companies with their employees.  Employees received $1,000 per year of service with employees receiving checks ranging from $1,000 to $45,000!  (‘We wanted to share our good fortune’ by S.A. Reid, Atlanta Journal & Constitution, 5/5/08)  

The current 2^nd generation family member leader, Doug Walker explained their action in this way.

“You see so many big companies have executives more interested in gaining money for themselves and don’t look after their employees…We believe if you care about employees, they are going to look out for us.  When we sold the business, we wanted to share some of our good fortune with the people who helped us get there.”

As can be expected, a positive aspect of an organizational culture can also bring some unintended consequences.  One of the most difficult consequences in a company where the values of loyalty and caring drive the rules of behavior is that loyalty many times is rewarded over performance.  In this kind of workplace, employees expect their dedication to be rewarded through job security.  If long-term employees do not perform, they are many times not given feedback and simply relegated to jobs of lesser responsibility, but still taken care of.  A culture of entitlement grows and hinders the ability of the company to innovate and execute.  

The key for leaders is to find a way to balance rewards for long-term service to the company and its customers while at the same time putting in systems where performance against goals can be measured and rewarded as well.  Loyalty and performance are not either-or company values; they are requirements for success in a fast-changing marketplace.

Tags: Corporate Culture Observer, Leaders Leading by Terri – older, but wiser white lady
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I recently finished two posts about the cultural drivers of the presidential campaign staffs of Mr. Barack Obama and Mrs. Hillary Clinton, so for curiosity sake I was on the look out for research regarding the inner workings of Mr. John McCain’s campaign staff.  I found it in another article by Jim Rutenberg and this time with Adam Nagourney in the New York Times on August 10, 2008.  What struck me from this article was the reminder of how powerful an impact the professional training of a founding leader has on the culture of their organization.

Mr. McCain’s primary professional training is as a Navy attack aircraft pilot and according to the article he “preaches the need to improvise under pressure, subscribing to the military maxim that no plan survives first contact with the enemy.”  This guiding belief makes sense if your work environment is driven by life and death, crisis situations.  It would be important to be constantly gathering information and being comfortable with using this info to adapt plans in order to survive.  It also makes sense that in non-life-threatening situations that this “shoot from the hip” spontaneity might lead to an organizational culture where it is difficult for people to easily stick to a plan and execute as a disciplined team.

Upon reading this article, the unintended consequence does seem to be playing out in the workings of McCain’s campaign staff.  There are a number of examples given of a “big campaign decision” being made and the staff moving to execute and then Mr. McCain suddenly moving in a different direction and not staying on message.  At the same time, there are examples given of how openness to “competing opinions,” flexibility and taking risks serves the McCain campaign staff well.

As a founding leader of an organization, understanding the impact of personal professional training on your own beliefs and how you act is important – there are strengths and weaknesses, and the key is being aware enough to test out what brings success over a broad range of situations.  The ways of acting, based on your professional training may feel more comfortable, natural and other ways of acting will be more difficult.  There will be the need to be mindful and muscle your way through the unfamiliar ways of acting with the help of advisors and friends.

Tags: Corporate Culture Observer, Leaders Leading by Terri – older, but wiser white lady
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