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Busting Your Corporate Idol

Three Options If Your Personal Values Conflict With Company Culture

January 10, 2013 by 2 Comments

Chapter 9: Paint Your Environment Part 2

Your company has a value system, more commonly called a corporate culture.  And as I wrote in Chapter 6,  unless you are the CEO and have carte blanch from the board to clean house, your chances of significantly changing company culture are close to zero. It can be dispiriting to feel that one has no control over the environment, which is why the illusion of control is so prevalent in the workplace.  There is a solution.

Holocaust Survivor Viktor Frankl wrote that “Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.”  Thankfully, the worst job imaginable is better than a concentration camp.  The lesson I take from Frankl is this: Having no control is not the same as having no choices. If your personal values are in conflict with the overriding corporate culture, you have three options:

  1. Change your values to match the corporate values. Remember, values are defined by how we act, not by what we aspire to.  Going along to get along equates to accepting the values of the organization.  I did plenty of this in my career, and wrapped it in rationalizations so that I didn’t feel guilty.  I don’t recommend this option, because eventually it will catch up with you.
  2. Leave the company.  Few people entertain this as a short-term solution, and often stay in unhappy situations longer than one would expect. I am lucky that I had the economic freedom to change careers.  The bills need to be paid, and leaving is not always feasible, and for many people is not the right solution.
  3. Use organizational savvy to force the organization to act in accordance with your values.  In other words, use the methods of power politics, financial forecasting, and alliance building to minimize or prevent actions that go against your values.

In the next post I’ll explain The Business Case For Good, which demonstrated how to use a forecast to make the company do the right thing.

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A New Model For Cooperation, Values, and Employee Motivation

October 26, 2012 by 2 Comments

Today we’ll take a break from Busting Your Corporate Idol for this timely guest post from Omer Soker, Founder of The Ethics Of Success. 

In 1943 Abraham Maslow clearly explained our hierarchy of needs includes being respected, accepted or valued by others. In 1968 Frederick Herzberg reminded us of this in his now-classic Harvard Business Review article entitled “One More Time: How Do You Motivate Employees?” Chip Conley’s recent best-selling book Peak re-affirms recognition and meaning as success and transformation drivers for employees.

And yet, too many distressed managers believe employees are out for themselves and motivated primarily by money. They overlook the power of collaboration with their employees.

A model for collaboration and shared values

People need purpose, especially at work. When an individual’s personal values are aligned with the core values of the company, that’s when passion is ignited – and that creates the collaboration that drives innovation, productivity, growth and competitive advantage. One example is Tony Hsieh who founded Zappos.com and sold it to Amazon for over US$1 billion. Zappos aligned its entire organisation around one mission: to provide the best customer service possible. It supported it with 10 values that resonate with everyone who works there including delivering WOW through service, embracing change, creating fun, pursuing learning, open communication, building a family spirit, doing more with less, being passionate and being humble. The flow-on benefits are high morale, lower turnover rates, and an environment and culture that attracts the best talent and an authentic connection with customers that drives sales to growth rates any company would envy.

This mutual goal achievement is represented in the red collaborative overlap of the twin circles: here representing the company and the individual (although they can also represent any two parties coming together).

At the extreme end of the company circle (in blue) are the managers who indulge in what I call “harmful self-interest” when they focus exclusively on short-term sales, at the expense of their people and their values. When values are compromised and when people are disrespected, both the health and the performance of companies suffer. These managers purport to self-interest, but they are harming everyone including the company itself by operating outside of shared values. At the opposite end of the spectrum is the employee engaging in a different form of harmful self-interest; be it avoidance of responsibility, politicking or sabotage of colleagues.

The white spaces in between are every day realities of compromise and accommodation that exist because we don’t live in a perfect world. Whether it’s the employee accommodating a request from the company to work late on a critical project, the company compromising to cater to a unique individual need or vice-versa, these everyday interactions and negotiations can be healthy, so long as they are not repetitive and within limits. It’s only when compromise or accommodation become chronic that values are jeopardized.

The next step is plotting where you are on the chart, where your company is on the chart – and taking some steps towards the middle. The chart can serve as an aid to self-awareness, and an understanding of the behaviors of others.

Collaboration is a way of aligning everyone’s interest so more of the workforce’s energies go into the company’s interest than into playing games. It’s more complex because there are many stakeholders with differing needs, but once a commitment is made to bringing these interests together and not seeing them as mutually exclusives, it’s amazing what companies can achieve.

Omer Soker has worked in senior corporate general management roles including Thomson Reuters and Reed Elsevier, as well as two company turnaround transformations in Australia. In August 2012 he established The Ethics of Success Corporation to help companies and individuals create and sustain positive change. He is a corporate speaker, workshop facilitator and business consultant.  Follow Omer on Twitter: @ethicsofsuccess or LinkedIn

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What Happens When High Integrity CEO Meets Toxic Culture?

October 19, 2012 by 5 Comments

Chapter 6:  Corporate Culture -The Invisible Hand of the Company Part 4

If you take a high integrity  person and put them in a toxic and/or unethical culture, which would win?  In other words, to what degree can an individual influence and change corporate culture?  It’s a question we’ll come back to multiple times in this chapter.

Lets start with an extreme example: What if Harry T Lobo, a highly respected and effective CEO we met in Chapter 4, were made the CEO of Goldman Sachs, a company thought by many to have an unethical culture. (Greg Smith’s very public resignation made public the callus and thoughtless way Goldman treated their clients. See this post on the subject for more.)  Harry, who is not known for his modesty, didn’t think he could change the company value system.  Harry told me “[It would] depend on the company, and how long the value system existed.  Goldman Sachs [is very big and is] proud of the way it operates.”  Harry explained to me that everyone working there shared those values, and the organization is too big to change by the CEO alone.

It took Harry five years to change the culture of the mid-sized organization he is currently running.  When he arrived, the company was full of “empire builders,”  with a “negative, finger pointing, aggressive culture.”  People who were resistant to the values he was instilling are “no longer around.”  Harry said that he let this happen over time, as people realized they no longer fit in they left, and people who espoused the values he was looking for were promoted.  (And see this post to see a case where Harry dismissed someone for being manipulative.)

This is a common theme I heard throughout the interviews I conducted, and is well described in the literature: People who fit best with the company values, whatever they may be, will tend to be promoted more quickly.

So how did Harry respond when he was working as a Senior VP in a toxic culture?  Did he change the culture, or was he changed by it?

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Discover Why You Can Never Let the Company Down

October 16, 2012 by 3 Comments

Chapter 6:  Corporate Culture -The Invisible Hand of the Company Part 1

The good news: I got the product out on time after leading the team through twelve months of crisis product development.  The bad news:  it did not perform well in customer hands.  The only surprise for me was how surprised senior management seemed to be. Prior to launch, the executives would stop me in the hall to ask if we were on schedule, and remind me how much revenue was on the line.  I loved the attention, and I was going to make sure we delivered what they were asking for.  They did not say ‘We will support any decision you make,’ or ‘protect the long term relationship with customers.’

After launch, I was too depressed to effectively defend myself from the storm of criticism because I felt that I let the company down.  What a ridiculous thought.  The company isn’t alive, and can’t be let down.

What I understand now, that I didn’t understand then, was that the company had a culture of making the date, and if I hadn’t been leading the team, someone else would have been.  It was expected that vacations would be canceled if need be, and they were.  I even led a conference call for several hours on the Fourth of July to help make the date.  I was at a family reunion at a resort in New Mexico, standing outside in the one patch of ground that had two bars of cell coverage – just enough to be heard.  If I walked more than ten feet in any direction, it dropped off.  It kind of symbolizes the impact of corporate culture on workplace behavior.  In theory I could walk anywhere I wanted to, but if I wanted to be heard, I had limited room to maneuver.

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When Do Shared Values Become a Competitive Advantage?

August 10, 2012 by 3 Comments

Chapter 3: The Real American Idol Part 8

In the last post, I used the McKinsey 7S model to explain the importance of shared company values to corporate culture.  Tom Peters’ book “In Search of Excellence” introduced the 7S model to the broader business community when it was first published in 1982.  Peters argues (as do many others) that strong company values give a competitive business advantage.  The top companies “create broad, uplifting, shared culture,” which allows them to  “ extract extraordinary contributions from very large numbers of people” because they share “ a sense of highly valued purpose.[i]”  In other words, when people really believe in what they are doing, they work harder.

This rings true for me.  People I interviewed felt that working in the Biotech industry is “motivating in itself” because of the direct connection to improving human health.  I was, however, surprised to learn that people in the computer industry find “solving customer problems” to be an analogous type of motivation.

When people described their best work experiences, often they pointed to a time when everyone in the company was aligned around a clear set of goals.  Notice the emotion-laden words as a research VP describes her best work experiences.

There were stages in my job where I loved my work.  I would get in early, I would stay late, I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I thought I was making a contribution and it all felt right to me.  I thought about what made it good.   I was really clear in my scientific heart we had strengths to address what we were going after.  What I knew as my training as a scientist, and the company had resources that really felt like we were aligned with the goals of the company.

Shared values have an additional benefit on the practical level – they facilitate decision making.  According to Peters, the Excellent companies did not need detailed procedures because “people way down the line know what they are supposed to do in most situations because the handful of guiding values is crystal clear.” In contrast, Peters sites the difficulty of making decisions at a large company put together by a series of mergers.  “The top people are inundated with trivia because there are no cultural norms.”  Underperforming companies like this can also have a strong culture, but the focus tends to be on politics or “the numbers,” rather than on people or products.[ii] Peters argues that these companies do not have strong values.  I disagree – there are strong values, but the values are pointed in a different direction.

What differentiates the values of the companies classified as Excellent when compared to the lower performing companies?  The Excellent companies put people first.

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[i] In Search Of Excellence: Lessons From America’s Best-Run Companies.  Thomas J Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr. Harper and Row (1982) p. 51.

[ii] In Search Of Excellence: Lessons From America’s Best-Run Companies.  Thomas J Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr. Harper and Row (1982) p. 76.

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Twitter NBC Olympics Flap Torches Boundaries Of Free Speech

August 2, 2012 by 2 Comments

Chapter 3: The Corporation, The Real American Idol Part 4: 

At the end of the last post, I was discussing circumstances when a person has to speak in the name of the company.  This is not a problem, until that speech starts to conflict with your internal value system.  The whole issue of speech gets tricky pretty fast, because a company routinely expects an employee not to publically disclose things that would be damaging to the company.

I asked many people I interviewed if they were ever in a situation where they had to make a trade off between being straight with a customer and protecting the company.  Here is a typical answer, this one from “Matthew,” a 20-year software employee, and a Buddhist.  “I do that every day.  I deal with customer issues that are unresolvable, or 18 months in the future.  We are encouraged to be relatively straight with them and also to not bad mouth the company.  As a representative of the company, we have a certain obligation.  It’s of it is why you get the paycheck.  I have had 1 or 2 situations that had to do with directly lying to customer.  It came back and caused a huge headache.”

Matthew’s last point is worth elaboration.  Lying to customers is often a bad business strategy, but the criteria for what speech is permissible varies greatly between company cultures.  Which brings us to the Twitter Olympics flap.  Twitter first suspended and reinstated the account of Guy Adams, a news correspondent who shared the corporate email address of NBC executive Gary Zenkel.  (More details on the story available here.)  The key point for now is that, in Twitter’s own words, “there are some limitations on the type of content that can be published with Twitter.”  I love the name of this section on the website, “Content Boundaries and Use of Twitter.”  Boundaries is a wonderful word.  And what sets the boundaries of behavior?  In my opinion it is values.

What are the values of your company, and how do they impact speech by employees and executives?

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The Secret To Corporate Values Uncovered In Ancient Rome

June 14, 2012 by 5 Comments

Chapter 1 My Corporate Idolatry Part 4

I thought about the sacrifices I had made for the company, such as my fitness, my sleep, my time with family, and my focus.  In fact, the company gave out an award at the quarterly “all hands” employee meeting to the person who showed the most company spirit, which often came in the form of getting on a plane at a moments notice, or canceling a vacation.  Every quarter I was disappointed that I didn’t get it.

My corporation was my idol.  I knew it was true in the pit of my stomach, but the rational scientist in my head wanted more information.  A few days later I found a great article on the internet called “What is So Terrible About Idolatry” by Rabbi Tzvi Freeman, editor of ‘Ask the Rabbi’ at Chabad.org. Rabbi Freeman described what is distinctive about idolatry in places like Babylon in the ancient world.  “If you don’t like what one god demands of you, you go find another god more to your taste. … After all, none of them is supreme, none is all-powerful.”  

This is just like the corporate world.  There are many different companies, each with its own culture and values.  And if you don’t like the values of your company, you can move to another.  For example, if you think your company is not honest enough with customers, you can find one that is more transparent.  But if you think transparency is bad for business, there is a company for you too.  There is no overriding set of values, beyond the need to be profitable.

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Ozzie Guillen, Free Speech, and Corporate Values

April 11, 2012 by 2 Comments
Baseball Cropped from Image:Baseball.jpg by Tage Olsin under Creative Commons License

Baseball Idol - see note for attribution info

Miami Marlins  manager Ozzie Guillen was suspended five games by the team for making the comment that he “loves Fidel Castro”  in a Time Magazine interview.  Guillen apologized in a tearful press conference, explaining that what he mean was that he admired the way Castro has stayed in power despite the fact that he is hated by much of Cuba’s population.

What amazes me is the number of people who feel that Guillen was exercising his Constitutional Right to Free Speech, and therefore the Marlins have no right to discipline him.

Excuse me?  There is no constitutional right to work for a particular employer, and there is no prohibition against a private employer suspending or firing an employee for something they say.

Working for a company is a tacit agreement to follow the company’s values, whatever they may be.  Ozzie Guillen works for a company whose customers hate Castro, and therefore praising Castro goes against Marlin’s values.  I am not going to weigh in on whether Guillen should have said what he did.  But the Marlins are a business, and they suspended him to show their customers that “The pain and suffering caused by Fidel Castro cannot be minimized.”  Part of adopting company values is accepting the rewards and punishments that come with that value system.

I am reminded of something a CEO told me about running a company.   ”Your life is not your own. You are driven by being a lot of things  that are broader, about marketing the company to the financial community.”  Guillen in many ways like the CEO of the Marlins.  He is the public face of the organization.  He is paid millions of dollars by the team, and for that money he forfeits his right to speak in public in a way that the company doesn’t like.  What applies to Guillen applies to executives and employees throughout the corporate world.

In fact, I think I once lost a job because I called out someone powerful in a meeting.  To be honest, I didn’t really mind being let go, and I understood that I was putting my job on the line when I spoke up.  Whether this was right or wrong of the company is immaterial.  (And I should say that I have no direct evidence that this is why I was included in the next RIF.)  A company is most effective when everyone is on the same page, and it could be argued that someone who publicly dissents from the leadership should be let go because they are taking away from the common purpose.  I know there are a lot of Harvard Business Review articles saying that stifling dissent is a bad business strategy, and I agree.  Nevertheless, retaliation for speaking out is reality that employees  deal with every day.

Different companies have different tolerances for criticism of the company officers.   But few if any companies will tollerate an employee who speaks or acts in a way that is harmful to the company bottom line.  Ozzie Guillen’s suspension is a great example of the arbitrariness of company values.  Guillen made similar comments about admiring Castro two years ago when he was manager of the Chicago White Sox.  Admiring Castro does not conflict with White Sox values because few White Sox fans really care about Castro.  But publicly admiring Castro does conflict with Marlins values, because Marlins fans care a lot.

I suspect that if Ozzie Guillen paid more attention to people-first values,  he would have been more sensitive to the feelings of the Cuban-American community about Castro.  Plus, someone with strong people-first values would not admire a dictator for his ability to stay in power.  Some people around the world admire Castro for providing universal health care and a good education to his people.  But admire him for staying in power?  C’mon Man!

 

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