Living with integrity – its impact on our leadership and brand

Living with Integrity can be tough.  It’s  how we behave when no one is watching, will we live our values or are we going to sell out or compromise.  Knowing that every time we do we are the one that pays the price.  Even if no-one else is watching or ever finds out, we know and our opinion of our self takes the hit.

And if people do find out, what’s the immediate and long term impact for us as an individual and the brand or company we lead?

Golf legend Tiger Wood’s much publicised fall from grace is an example of the catastrophic consequences a business can face when its brand is found to be inauthentic.  The recent stories about the private life of the world’s No.1 celebrity golfer expose a huge gap between the perceived values of the Tiger Woods brand and those of the man himself.

As a leader and as a business we are all judged on whether we live up to the values that are associated with our brand.

Values driven leadership is about ensuring you live up to your values and the values promised by your brand.  After all your customers and employees have bought in to your brand and what you stand for. Your behaviour and the behaviour of your employees then should also reflect the values of the brand.  Of course if the values are what you’d like, rather than what is real then this becomes a challenge to sustain.  So it is important to ensure your brand does not promise something you no longer believe in or cannot deliver.

If your values are aspirational then acting with integrity is going to be a serious challenge.

Every day we’re faced with choices, decision points, where we can uphold our values or not.  At work we can be asked to do something ‘for the good of the company’ and yet we know that it’s against the company’s or our values.  It’s a short term win and another nail in the coffin of that particular value that’s just been over-road.  We may wish to behave differently but go along with it to keep our job.

Consistently acting against our personal values undermines our self confidence and self esteem.  Keep this up and eventually we don’t feel good about ourself and neither does anyone else.    Being consistently asked to act against the corporate or brand values begs the question how real are they and what problems are being stored up for future.

Let’s go back to the challenge facing Tiger Woods, now he has to re-build his brand so he can move forward.  Some people I’ve talked to say it’s not possible.  I think there is hope.

After all, authentic leadership is about who you are being as much as what you’re doing.

2009 figures showing the measurable impact culture has on performance

I often say that culture is a key factor in the profitability and growth of the business.  And if proof were ever needed as to the magnitude of difference it can make, then here are the latest results from Canadian businesses….

“The performance of Canada’s 10 Most Admired Corporate Cultures of 2009, in terms of three-year compounded annual revenue growth, has significantly outpaced the S&P/ TSX by an average of over 300% –or three times,” says Marty Parker, managing director of Waterstone Human Capital, a Toronto-based executive search and human capital consulting firm that has been running the program since 2005. The TSX/S&P compound annual growth rate from December 2005 to December 2008 was 3.8%; for the same period, the CAGR for Canada’s 10 Most Admired Corporate Cultures of 2009 was 12%.

“This proves that an outstanding corporate culture has a significant impact on performance, and that culture is an incredibly valuable asset,” says Mr. Parker.

A wide range of organizations made this year’s list, including: Telus Corp.; Fairmont Hotels and Resorts; industrial supplier Acklands-Grainger Inc.; human resource solutions provider Ceridian Canada;  and coffee retailer Starbucks Coffee Canada.

“This year’s data reflects the market correction of 2008,” says Mr. Parker. “What this tells us is that if an organization’s culture is strong, even with a major downturn, it outperforms “Our Canada’s 10 reflects these findings,” says Mr. Parker. “The reason these organizations are outperforming is because of phenomenal leadership and because of the commitment — from the top — to aligning corporate culture. These leaders are focused on behaviour. And behaviour drives results.”

Results of the 2009 Canadian Corporate Culture Study show that 88% of respondents believe their current leadership has led to the evolution of their organization’s corporate culture. In addition, 82% of respondents said that “leading by example” is a key strategy used to align culture. Furthermore, when it comes to hiring, 75% of executives surveyed said that cultural fit is more important than necessary skills.

Developing Your Organisation’s Culture – 7 Tips

Consciously developing your organizational culture is more important than ever.  At the end of the day if you aren’t developing it, then it’s developing you.

People are seeking to work for a business where they can experience fulfilment and authenticity.  Organizations which treat their employees well have experienced a better retention rate, increased productivity, increased innovation and lower sickness and absenteeism.

That said developing your organizational culture can be a big challenge for the leaders as well as its employees.   Here are few suggestions of things you can do:-

• Analyze your corporation’s existing culture and compare it with employees, suppliers and customers’ expectations and perceptions.  There are even tools that can measure this very accurately now and give valuable business insight that helps with performance and growth.

• Discuss the existing culture in your department.  What aspects of the culture are great, what’s good and what needs to change?  Then agree what you’d like the culture to be and how everyone can support and make it happen.

• Induction.  This isn’t just about training new recruits in their job, it’s about making them aware of the culture you’re growing and how they can play their part.  Even though you’ve made the culture clear in the interview process, so you’ve not recruited a misfit, it’s not enough to think that’ll do.  There are of course still companies that spend all their focus on skills and fail to explain the culture and check for alignment – which of course is expensive as they can find themselves losing the new recruit within the next 6 months and having to start all over again.

• Communication.  And I’m not talking a quick 2 line email saying our culture / values are this,  it’s important and can you just send a quick reminder to all your staff.  Yes those emails are still too common, ouch.  I’m talking about a 2 way conversation where you bring awareness that this isn’t a band-aid or quick fix approach.  Rather an ongoing, strategic process to build a more attractive culture that fits the needs of the organization and that can improve its business growth.

• Have Champions.  This is a journey so it’s important to have people who whole heartedly support the creation of this desired culture.  Plus it’s important that the champions / key culture group realise that not everyone is going to jump onboard right away.  There’s going to be scepticism, even from those who would like the desired culture.

• Momentum and Measurement.  Developing the culture to being a sustainable, profitable and healthy one for both the business and staff takes time.  Look for low hanging fruit, celebrate what works, don’t re-enforce what doesn’t.  Lastly measure.  Not incessantly but say every 12 months assess your progress against the desired end point.

If you want to do more, if you’d like to measure your culture, if you’d like to discuss how you can not only manage your culture but generate wealth from it, then give us a call.

What do you make people feel?

I love the BMW Joy advert.  From a branding perspective they’ve summarised what they believe they’re about.

What I really like is the bit where they say… ‘we realised what you make people feel is as important as the thing you make’ or words to that effect. I even spoke back to the TV, saying how true that statement was – and it is rare I am moved to talk back to the tele.

Now of course comes the challenge of getting that feeling of Joy into their dealerships.   Yes the cars when you drive them bring a feeling of Joy (I’ve had one and did enjoy driving it).   The dealership staff though never left me even close to Joy; unless you count when they handed me my keys back and I found that this time they hadn’t damaged the car.  Fortunately the fourth dealership and a commute later and I found one that didn’t think damaging your car was a normal side effect of a car service.

Having been this clear about their corporate statement then it has to be felt at every touch point.  Let’s hope they’re working on this so that something this powerful doesn’t just become a gimmick.

As a leader can you articulate your brand ethos so succinctly, your purpose, do you know how people feel when they’re with you and when you’ve just walked out of the room?

In a nutshell…Who you are, what you stand for and how you make people feel, are as important as the ‘thing’ you sell.

What you pay attention to determines your business results

Every year, season and day is an opportunity full of new beginnings, potential and promise; or doom and gloom depending on what you choose to pay attention to.

Right now it is sad that companies are going into receivership, even sadder for the people who are facing uncertainty or job loss.  Yet for the leadership of each and every one of these companies, the state of their business can’t have been a complete surprise.  I think it is fair to say we’re in times of extremes, for every company that goes under there’s one that’s having its best year yet.  I truly hope you’re going to be in the latter category.

Now each year as I decide my goals, yes decision is an important factor in making them happen, I also make notes which will provide support or inspiration as I undertake the growth required to hit the goal.  Let me share with you a few notes I’ve re-written in my journal.  No they’re not new to me, in fact I share them frequently with my clients, but they’re so powerful and fundamental to success that on those days when everything seems to be going pear shaped, this is a very fast way of me getting back on track.

1) Your thoughts will determine your actions.

2) Your actions repeated become your habits.

3) Your habits determine your results.

4) If you don’t want to get the same results you’re going to have to change your habits.

Now the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.  So if I keep all the same habits I’m going to get the same results, if I don’t like these results then it’s logical to suppose insanity is the next step.

So when I want to get back on track quickly I pay attention to my thoughts.

What are you paying attention to, who’s voice are you listening to, who’s opinions are you mulling over?

All of this gives rise to thoughts, although in some cases we’re so busy we forget to think and just blindly accept, especially if the source is one of authority.

As a leader you set the tone.  Are the conversations the same you’ve been having for a while, has a habit of moaning, complaining, or expecting the worst set in amongst staff?

If things are really bad, if cash flow is poor, if customer retention is down, it’s a statement of the current position, which has arisen through previous thoughts, actions and habits.  It isn’t a guaranteed statement of the future, unless of course you keep everything the same.

Lastly may I wish you a dose of Good Luck

Here’s the recipe:-

1) Create and notice opportunities

2) Make decisions based on your intuition

3) Create self fulfilling prophesies through positive expectation

4) Have a resilient attitude

There is still time to have a phenomenal year.

Is Greed Ever Good? – Remuneration and Motivation in an Organisation

The business culture of the 80’s put a clear emphasis on personal reward on the basis that highly motivated individuals could transform organisations and societies.  This continued until the late 90’s  when we began to see some companies traumatised and bankrupted by the inappropriate use of remuneration as a motivator.   Now there rages a debate about the bonus’s paid in the financial sector, and the short term view or reward they encourage.

The notorious Barings Bank had individual traders on bonuses in the millions yet in the long term these motivated individuals were not fulfilling the company’s objectives.  Then of course there are the reward system’s based on appropriate performance indicators, resulting in the organisation’s success and yet problems arise from the large differential between salaries of senior people and those of middle management.

Wise organisations are therefore trying to reward and motivate all staff so that staff act energetically to further the corporation’s interests both short and long term and feel they have been treated fairly. However there must clearly be in place the link between the items on which they are being rewarded and the actions they are able to take to influence the desired outcome.

A wise organisation accepts that:

• It is reasonable for the individual manager to act in his or her own interests.

• Managers work for people not organisations and want to please the superiors closest to them, or failing that, their peer group.

• Managers want to achieve and will be attracted to those tasks at which they know they can succeed, usually favouring the short term at the expense of the long term.
The clear implication is that an organisation should be aware of the culture at play before relying on a remuneration structure to change performance and behaviour. In other words the management and organisation’s values must be in balance with the remuneration system.
There are 5 major pre-conditions to the installation of an effective reward structure.

1. Measurement: “If you don’t measure it you won’t get it”. There are various measurement systems of which Balanced Scorecard, which sets multiple objectives and is used by Tesco, is perhaps the best known.

2. Monitoring: If the performance measures are not monitored properly or only monitored in a review at the year end, it can give the manager signals that they don’t really matter or, worse still, that failure is acceptable providing all the managers fail together.

3. Control of the tools for the job: The organisation must ensure that the individual is not over dependent on factors outside his control to achieve the performance measures set out (this is the ‘how’ part of the equation).

4. Consistency: Ensuring that short term organisational factors don’t over-influence managers or drive them from their real objective. The organisation must also ensure that its own design (be it bureaucratic or loose) is appropriate to what is being asked of managers.

5. Reward and strategy in line: An organisation’s achieving a clear strategy is not an event that will take place in the future; it is a journey. A remuneration system can be put into an organisation even when it has a relatively muddled strategy providing that organisational and management disputes are resolved by reference to strategy and the “balanced score card”. Only then will there be pressure on the organisation to refine its strategy, structure and remuneration systems.

Based on these 5 pre conditions, there is a checklist of 10 factors that the effective remuneration and reward structure must achieve:

1. Support the business strategy

2. Encourage the desired behaviour

3. Reward relevant performance

4. Be fair

5. Be substantial

6. Be tax efficient

7. Be timely   (The reward must take place close to the achievement)

8. Incorporate non financial rewards (Recognition can be as important as cash)

9. Be firm   (A bonus lost through missing target should not be recoverable whereas a salary increase should only be delayed until target is reached)

10. Be crystal clear

Focus on what you want

My dad, in his time, has uttered some wise words to me.  Whilst teaching me the finer points of driving he said that, should I ever get in to trouble, always focus on where you want your car to end up (ideally in a car sized space), rather than do what seems to come natural and have your attention glued to the object you’re hoping to miss, because if you do that you’ll hit it.

It works – I used to live in Yorkshire, where there are sheep on the loose, snow drifts to contend with, aside from other cars on the road.  And so far I’ve always managed to find a space the size of my car to ‘park’ in.

Now in the conversations I have with my clients there is one that looks a bit like this..

Client “This is what I don’t want to happen…. and I’ve been thinking about how I make sure it doesn’t happen….”

Me “Do you know what you do want to happen and how you can make that happen?”

Client “Yes, but I’m concerned because I really don’t want blah to a happen…”

When you know what you want or where you want to be – then focus on that.  You’ll be significantly more productive.

Right now that holds true when we’re bombarded with stuff on the credit crunch.  I’m not suggesting ostrich maneuvers here.  However if you obsess about your business not making any money, guess what.  Then again if you ask yourself a different question, like how can I make more money? Then you’ll find over time more and more ideas or opportunities coming to you around that subject.

Are they with you?

People keep asking me, “what do you think is happening given the current economic situation, what do you think leaders need to pay attention to?”

There are several things, but today I’m going to touch on one.  You need to remember that it’s better to have people working with you than for you.  And it’s even more important when making and communicating decisions that you remember they’re people and not human resources.  They may well interpret your words and actions in ways you hadn’t foreseen.  They’ll be influenced by the media / their peers / sources you may or may not be aware of.  Fear and scarcity are sources of motivation and the media are currently banging that drum very well.  A workforce driven by fear is nowhere near as valuable as one driven by a mission, a desire to be there, to work with you.  Choice is a valuable component.  Now just before you go, yes I know this, cor how flippin obvious/basic/apple pie, take a moment to check just how much of this are you putting in to practice, and would those who work with you agree?  If there was such a thing a a fear-o-meter where would the needle be?

If you need to make redundancies who do you need to re-engage and how soon can you do it?  Putting it another way if you over look this, or do it badly, you build a wave of disillusionment and insecurity that can spread.

Right now what needs to be re-enforced – the vision, the immediate goals, the behaviours that will give you agility and resilience…???

Defining who you are as a leader before you lead

It is often said that great leaders are made but it can also be said that these same leaders are sometimes lost.  The ability to lead is different for each person and most will find that to be effective in leadership they must define for themselves who they are in this position.

Defining who you are as a leader is important before you can lead other people.  Many have found that trying to be the type of leader that others want them to be may not fit with their personal integrity.  It is up to every leader to define exactly what this means.

In many organizations leaders are chosen not on their abilities but on the need of the organization.  Sometimes an individual is put into a leadership position unexpectedly.  As an example, recently a leader in a nonprofit organization stepped down after ten years in the same position.  This should have been a very important transition for her but instead, it was met with bittersweet memories.  The problem was that she was thrust into a leadership position after the founder of the organization died.  She had been there the longest and was asked to take the position.  Although she didn’t feel ready, she was flattered and took it.  As soon as she took the position she went back to school and achieved a master’s degree in Nonprofit Management.  She thought this would be enough but what she wasn’t prepared to do was work with some of the volunteers in the organization who had their own agendas. Sadly, she started off on the wrong foot with them by not being a confident leader.  Although she was able to make some changes in the organization, she wasn’t able to bring it to where she would have liked to see it go.  What she learned from this is that she had to pull her leadership from within herself instead of trying to please the other people who expected her to be like the founder.  This is something that effective leaders find out.

Education can only give you theories and ideas; it cannot actually show you how to lead.

Most leaders have had life experience that brings them to a certain philosophy of life and this philosophy usually comes with them into their leadership position.  They learn how to treat people well, and they learn how to move people forward when they can get their cooperation.  They also have a strong vision for their own lives and where they want it to go.   When this vision matches with the organization’s mission or at least complements it, the individual is able to lead effectively.  Leaders who rely on that intrinsic knowing of what to do in any situation seem to be able to strike a balance between what they expect from employees and what they expect from themselves.  When this comes together for them in the workplace, it allows them to develop other leaders.

In the future, we are going to need more leaders to fall back on this intrinsic knowledge in hard times.  They will be the ones to create innovative ways for organizations to move forward.

Life Long Learning

“A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go, but ought to be.”  Rosalynn Carter

Our life is one long learning process.  Learning does not come to an abrupt halt after the completion of school or college, but it continues throughout our lives. 

Leadership should include providing everybody with the scope to learn and develop.  You may say, ‘but I do, they just don’t seem to take it up’.  It’s worth finding out if this is because they haven’t made the connection between the learning and development on offer and the future direction of their role.  Equally another common reason is they’re worried to take on something new in case they make mistakes in the process and it will not be appreciated by their leaders.

Are you in the habit of :-

-  highlighting improvements made

- offering words of encouragement

- helping them learn from their mistakes

- offering guidance at every stage so they don’t lose their focus / direction

Or do you tend only to have conversations when things have gone wrong?

A great leader is conscious of all the quintessential ingredients which make up great leadership and as part of this is often already developing the future leaders of the department / organisation.   Managing that balance between striving for the growth of the organization and exerting equal preference for the growth of the staff. 

Learning and development is not just attending a course.  Courses are great when new skills need to be acquired.  More often though your staff don’t need a new skill, they need to learn the finer points and experiences of how to make more of what they already have.  A different conversation and one you can have with them on a regular basis.  If you don’t feel you can do that then talk to a business, career or leadership coach.

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