No matter what BS you hear to the contrary, culture begins – and is perpetuated and maintained – by what occurs at the top of the heap.
Any ideas about driving culture “from below” is an amalgam of wishful thinking and consultant crockery. And only shared by someone trying to sell you something that sounds easier than the real work.
Take Elon Musk, for example.
Now, you can argue that Twitter is an appropriately regulated social media outlet, accurately praised for preventing ne’er-do-wells from propagating hateful messaging and disinformation.
Or, you can see Twitter as moving too far out of its lane, censoring freedom of speech that should promote differences of thought, ideas and opinion.
I’m cool with either. You do you. (See what I did there?)
Musk, if we are to believe media reports, seems to fiercely believe the latter, further contending that the root cause of the problem is the fabric – the very culture – of Twitter today. And he wants that culture changed.
His first official act then? He whacked a bevy of senior-most execs, including the CEO, within hours of closing the long-awaited purchase.
Again, argue whichever current state for Twitter you choose. Float your own boat, amigo. But if Musk wants a radically different culture, he’s going about it in the most expeditious, if not dubiously effective, manner.
What would clearly not work is a conflict or tension at the top of the organization regarding culture direction or emphasis.
Culture, like any major change initiative, is driven (again, from the top for those skimming) most quickly by simple a simple performance approach:
Setting clear expectations,
Managing to those expectations, and
Consequences or rewards for not meeting, meeting, or exceeding those expectations.
Clear expectations are a must. It’s hard enough for folks to follow our vision when everything remains constant; when changing, they have no hope to follow us if they can’t see it, and see it plainly.
Be clear. Give examples of success. Be explicit about what failure looks like. Use English, and small words. If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough (nod to Einstein).
Managing to those expectations is next. Here, we have metrics to help measure success and failure, based on the clear expectations outlined earlier.
Frequent calibrations allow empowered people the opportunity to align their efforts with our desired direction(s).
Specific targets here are again a must. Downrange visibility cannot be cluttered with a lot of bureaucratic bullshit.
Finally, consequences – both positive and negative – must exist so others can personally feel the effects of success and failure. Rewards and penalties. Carrots and sticks. Call ‘em whatever. Just know they are essential, as culture change and reinforcement are driven most quickly via consequences and rewards.
That actionable piece, often skimmed over quickly in glossy culture tomes, is where things really change.
If rewarded for bad behavior, that behavior will continue.
If penalized for positive efforts, future efforts will be less positive.
This is where things can get really interesting, as the law of unintended consequences rears its ugly head.
Rewarding individual performance sounds great but can work against the larger good of a successfully working team.
Rewarding cost savings or cuts can lead to a reticence in appropriate investments, allowing needed positions to go unfilled, terminations without sufficient forethought, or really idiotic spending restrictions.
Unintended consequences.
There will always be some instances of these unintended consequences. The key, then, is to set opposing rewards and consequences to allow for and balance the effects.
Example: Individual performance can be rewarded, but only after team performance triggers and award.
Cost-savings can be rewarded, but only within specific, agreed parameters (profitability, headcount, average SG&A, etc.).
Just a couple of examples – the devil is in the details, and your mileage may vary.
Bottom line for us… whether you or Elon Musk, $54B company or $100M, culture begins and is reinforced from the top of any specific organization. Ergo (my favorite useless word), Musk whacking the top of the Twitter food chain was a necessity if he firmly believed that the culture needed to be changed drastically. And quickly.
There’s a lesson there for all on top of their pyramid, so read it closely.
Now, it gets a bit complicated when we start discussing where the organization hierarchy actually starts and stops, but that’s for another article.
If Musk can do it, you can too.
Just stay focused, like Elon Musk. Assuming you can call electric cars, boring, brain chips, rockets and social media “focused.”
Okay, let’s get this out of the way: this “Quiet Quitting” stuff is just a load of crap. Nothing more.
Don’t fall for it, thinking you now have some incredibly useful excuse for why people aren’t performing as you think they should. Sorry – no cigar.
It’s a made-up phrase to describe an age-old problem. Likely invented by some consultant or academic trying to sell you something. (wasn’t me, promise)
First, employees playing hide and seek with their efforts and attention is nothing new. It’s likely gone on since we had employers and employees.
Think common phrases like “whack a mole,” “duck and cover,” “keep your head down” and “staying off the radar.”
When I was in the USAF, we had a phrase we would use with people, especially as they were nearing a change in station, or were nearing their separation or retirement. We called it ROAD – Retired On Active Duty.
In other words, they had quit working for the most part, and doing just enough to make sure they didn’t get whacked.
Now we say, “he quit some time ago, just hasn’t stopped getting paid.”
This didn’t begin in 2022, so don’t pretend like it’s this newfangled, pandemic-apocalypse-WFH-related shenanigan.
if you’re just now hearing about stuff like this. Well, that’s on you. You’re likely easily bamboozled and equally confused.
Next, that whole “do more than required” has a name. It’s called discretionary effort.
Discretionary effort is that effort exerted or offered by the employee, beyond that which is required to keep their job.
Discretionary effort. I refer to it as the holy grail of leadership. You know you’re doing something right when those whom you lead offer you this added degree of ownership and effort. (Bad news – if you aren’t getting discretionary effort, well, that’s on you too!).
Here’s the rub; since we’re so incredibly bad (global leadership) at setting clear expectations, including written job descriptions, we may not realize… do you know what you call an employee who gives you no discretionary effort, only doing what is specifically required by the organization?
You set the requirements. You set the expectations. You set the minimum qualifications.
And they did exactly as you asked.
So don’t act like they’re doing less than is necessary, or less than what we actually required, because it’s neither of those. In fact, it’s exactly what we asked for.
The reality is that we aren’t very good at setting clear expectations for others, so our expectation has become that employees would always “do the right thing,” even if we weren’t clear on what that right thing is. Even if we didn’t know what it was at the outset.
So don’t blame the employee for “just doing their job.”
Wait a minute… that sounds eerily like typical performance management.
Finally discretionary effort is given in only three circumstances, reasons or events:
The employee is hardwired to do it. Some folks just can’t help themselves and will do a little bit more than expected of them regardless of their environment or for whom they work. They do it because that’s what they need personally to be satisfied when they go home at night.
The upside is, even with crappy leadership, you get the extra, discretionary effort from the hardwired crew. The bad news is, when they decide that that discretionary effort is not valued appropriately, they don’t just lower their effort.
No, they leave.
Leadership trust. People will give us the discretionary effort if they trust that will do good things with it; they have to believe that that we won’t abuse the added input, nor them for providing it.In other words, they want to make sure that they can trust us to not take advantage of them, or take them for granted.
Leadership influence – our ability to help people understand our vision, know the value of helping us pursue that vision, and then personally want to be part of wherever it is that were headed.This leadership influence is critical to the discretionary effort equation.
So, to put a bow on it: if we hire the right person (#1 above), and we provide a reasonably successful vision to follow, and are capable of positively influencing others to go with us on our journey, the odds are stacked in our favor that we’ll get that coveted discretionary effort.
If not, we can always just blame it on the Quiet Quitting, or Great Resignation, or some other made-up fad of the day to excuse our own lack of discretionary effort.
I have been vexed lately by organizations that have failed to have a succession plan for key leadership positions. Why do we do that to ourselves??
Maybe a better question is “why do we keep doing that to ourselves?
It seems to be filed in our playbooks as one of the Lessons Not Learned. And I certainly have no stone to throw at anyone who finds themselves in the all too familiar situation, as I’ve watched two organizations I’m involved with lose individuals – one expectedly and one not – who were more important to our success than we realized.
Apparently, we created single points of failure instead of points of success.
If we’re prepared for the change, the inevitable disruption is short-lived. If not, the gap in leadership talent can have a catastrophic effect. And I’m not just talking about changes in C-level leaders where we’ve groomed a single heir apparent. Instead of grooming more single points of failure, good succession planning focuses on developing a pool of talent with the desirable skills and experiences to fill either specific or a broader range of roles.
Sound simple I know, but I acknowledge it’s not often easy. Identifying “high potentials” is difficult in most organizations because we’re not intentional about openly discussing people with the potential to become more senior leaders. Heaven forbid we develop someone who then replaces us before we’re ready (even though I’ve never seen that happen).
We’re also often caught off guard by departures which is usually indicative of not being as in tune with or aware of our team members intentions or retirement planning. Most of the time, that’s on us.
To make matters harder, we have senior leaders in the organization who are loathe to cause a domino effect by moving internal talent (who has to be replaced, which leaves a vacancy that has to be filled, etc.) and defaults to recruiting external talent. This, too, is disruptive and tends to frustrate the individuals who think they’re ready for the promotion and who will start looking for another job.
A few years ago, I worked with a mid-level leader who was hired to corral diverse activities under a single manager. As successful as he was, there was no one individual who could stand in during his absences because they lacked the knowledge of and insight into what was going on with the other managers in the division. Frustrated at being the single point of failure and the Chief, Cat Herder, he left the company with no one ready to take his place.
Then who did his function revert to? His boss, of course, and we can imagine how that turned out.
Two pieces of free advice (physician, heal thyself?): Stop the lip service about succession planning, and start being intentional about growing talented individuals to take on greater responsibility in the organization.
So, where do we start? How about the current and projected organization chart?
Have we forecasted prolonged absences? Are we planning to add another team to handle growth or downsizing to respond to market changes? Are we even thinking about who’s going to replace those we know are going to retire?
Then:
Make talent identification a regular part of conversations between senior leadership and boards of directors. We just don’t do that enough. The C-level needs to lead the way!
Decide on the skills we need to lead the company through current (and I dare say, future?) challenges to the organization. Do we even do that once a year when we half-heartedly participate in strategic planning efforts? Again, those skill gaps need to be a more regular topic of discussion.
Organizations that take it seriously will then assess and develop their identified talent to close the skills gap critical for the continued success of the company. This can go a long way to motivating and retaining our future leaders which, in turn, reinforces our corporate culture.
In my experience, both in the military and corporate worlds, we don’t do effective succession planning because it’s hard. No, we don’t do it because we’re too focused on the day-to-day performance of those who work for us.
We can admire the organizations that make leadership transition look seamless, and shake our heads empathetically at those who suffer through it, but what are we doing to make sure the disruption isn’t detrimental to our own company?
What’s it going to take before we do something about our lack of succession planning?
Fish or fowl? Black or white? Day or night? We frequently find ourselves arguing whether human resources — as a function — is a true business partner in the strict financial sense or an employee advocate in the most liberal sense.
We’re wasting our time arguing semantics and methodology. Our resources are better spent discussing and acting on results.
First, let’s get some clear definitions and positioning. Is the human resources executive the do-all, end-all example of goodness and perfect behavior in the organization? Of course not. No single person or function is solely responsible for our organization’s’ moral compass. We are, however, the keeper of that compass, like it or not.
It’s simple logic, not the soft, intangible, transactional focus that many embrace. As human resource executives, we function as primary agents of organizational and behavior change — it’s what we do. As focal points for change, we become the de-facto example for that desired behavior. Sorry, but there is a modicum of “glass house” while leading human resources.
This doesn’t mean we are, necessarily, this “employee advocate” that so many speak about. It simply means that we must be exemplify and model the very behaviors we hope to see in an organization. Yes, to some degree, that’s every executive’s charge. But again, we may not be the moral compass of our organization, yet we are surely the keeper of same.
So what, you say? Here’s “what:” We must be true business partners in every sense. Our goals must always be the organization’s goals — no exceptions. Within legal and ethical boundaries, we should be prepared to do whatever is necessary to support our firm’s vision and direction with personal conviction. This is non-negotiable. In addition, we must always recognize that — like it or not — employees (managers and executives often included) look to us for positive, correct examples of desired behavior.
Let’s make sure we set that positive, correct example.
“Leadership is about influence and inspiration.” – Everyone Who Knows Anything
Who has the most influence on the mood in your workplace?
If you’re part of the leadership – formal or informal – you do.
Especially if your mood reveals your anxieties about the organization or job security, or your lack of compassion for those struggling to meet your expectations.
Around the mid-point of my Air Force career, a mentor remarked one day, “You’re just not prone to happiness, are you?” After he had my 8-year-old daughter explain what a Marsh-wiggle was, we talked about the effect it was having on my Airmen. I got his point, and I’d like to think I’m remembered differently by those who served with me in my later years.
Like leading by example, you don’t have a choice about impacting the office climate with the mood you’re emoting. You may not be aware that you’re doing it, but that’s a matter of your emotional intelligence, not reality on the ground.
No, I’m not trying to resurrect the old myth about leaders having to be charismatic – there’s plenty to evidence to debunk that; but from the C-suites to the referent leader far down in the organization, others are taking their positive and negative emotional cues from you. This is anything but new information, and yet we could all benefit from the occasional friendly reminder.
A huge part of a leader’s job is inspiring others to follow in pursuit of a vision. You make it really hard for them to be inspired if they don’t think you’re inspired yourself. Reflect for a minute on a couple of the best leaders you’ve known – were they positive and encouraging in a way that made you want to do more and better, or did their interactions feel perfunctory and their tone and manner show worn places in the veneer covering their anxiety?
Okay, here’s a test: we all come to work at less than our best once in a while. On the rare occasion you do – regardless of whether you’re bothered by something work-related or something that happened outside the office – do people ask you what’s wrong? If not, you should be worried. It means they’re either used to you being in a bad mood, or you’re not as approachable as you should be.
If that strikes too close to home, stop it. Get your fire back… people need to believe that you like being their leader.
I can’t guarantee your motivation and authentic positive outlook will fill your workplace with unicorns, butterflies, and rainbows. But it won’t hurt. On the other hand, I can assure you that your dour mood directly affects your employees’ morale and engagement.
Your folks deserve your best. Are you giving it to them?
The coronavirus has really wreaked havoc in the workplace and the labor market, hasn’t it?
No wonder almost all of the respondents to this year’s Triangle Performance Survey of Senior Leadership ranked leading in VUCA as the top leadership challenge in 2022. Today’s job market is about the best example of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity I’ve seen off the battlefield.
That makes it easy to blame COVID-19 for our talent management challenges. (By the way, your talent doesn’t want to be managed.) We can just write our attrition problems off to the Great Resignation, right?
Not so fast, leaders! Most attrition is our own fault.
There’s plenty of research that shows most people say they leave their job because of the pay, limited opportunities for advancement, and their boss. We may have limited influence on the first, but the last two are absolutely leadership issues… and fixing those two is free.
Interviewing external job candidates last week, I wasn’t surprised to hear all of them say the reason they’re looking for another job is directly related to the environment in their current company.
And guess whose fault that is.
Now guess how many of them admitted to their companies that they’re quitting because their boss is a jerk. In round numbers, zero.
James Rickwood, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
I would suggest that it’s not all that important why someone quits, because short of an opportunity dropping into their lap or winning a BIG lottery, they decided to quit long before giving notice. Like in a relationship that’s gone sour, once our partner decides it’s time to break up, it’s only a matter of time. They might be lured into staying a little longer, but if we don’t fix what they’re unhappy about, they’re headed to greener pasture.
No, what’s important is why they started looking elsewhere in the first place. That’s where we find a common thread: the boss. The leader who’s supposed to helping them feel valued doing worthy work. Sometimes, that’s actually us.
I asked all the candidates I interviewed what makes them feel valued – apart from the financial compensation, of course. (I also asked them what criteria they used to decide if a job was a good fit, but that’s a topic for a future newsletter.) Their answers weren’t particularly complex, and it made me wonder if their current boss ever took the time to find out. If they had, they might not be looking to fill an unexpected vacancy.
And it’s not the Quiet Quitters that are looking for better leadership. We wish! They seem pretty content to put up with shoddy leadership and give the minimum effort required to keep their jobs as long as we’ll keep paying them.
Unfortunately, it’s the good employees that tire of being treated badly at work and start looking elsewhere. Again, if we don’t URGENTLY fix what they’re unhappy about, they’re leaving us as soon as their criteria for a good fit is met.
Case in point: my daughter left a healthcare position she had been very happy in for a couple of years after a significant leadership change… not a change for the better, I might add. It didn’t take very long for her to realize the relationship was going to end, so she started looking around for an organization and position she believed would allow her to again feel valued doing worthy work.
When she eventually let the company know she’d be leaving and they asked why, she gave them all of stock answers: limited opportunities in her current role, wanting to explore other areas of healthcare, flexibility, benefits, PTO, etc. What she didn’t tell them was that she was unhappy with the leadership and didn’t believe they particularly cared whether she felt valued or not.
I’m not suggesting we hit the PANIC button every time someone leaves the organization, but I do believe that if we don’t make an honest effort to learn why they started looking for a new job in the first place, we’re not doing our jobs as engaged leaders.
