Times of crisis call for rethinking top-heavy organizations.

There's an old story of two trees in a field, one a large, majestic oak with a sturdy trunk and broad branches. Not far away is a small, thin, and wiry willow. The mighty oak boasts of its strength and size and reminds the willow of all the ways the oak is superior to the willow. The willow is quiet. In time a heavy rain starts. The oak boasts of its ability to absorb so much water. The willow is quiet. After a while the winds pick up and grow in intensity, howling through the night. It's so dark and loud that the willow can't see or hear anything as it is battered in the wind. Eventually, the wind dies down and the sun rises. The willow looks around to see the once-mighty oak has been toppled in the storm. What made it such a formidable being in good weather led to its demise in the bad. The willow stretches to the sun. The oak is quiet.

In good times, it's easy for top-heavy organizations to rationalize their imbalance and boast of the number of vice presidents and executives in the system. As COVID-19 has reminded us, big and rigid isn't always better. Efficiency is.

Efficient organizations are nimble, agile, and flexible. They're able to see challenges and respond quickly to win.

So what should companies do to fix the problem?

1. Flatten the organization. Managers are not only expensive. If their roles are mostly to manage people and processes, they move further away from understanding the customers and adding value that can be directly connected to sales.

2. Increase the staff-to-manager ratio. It’s not uncommon to find a ratio of 4–1 or 5–1 in large companies. A big challenge here is that while this can help each employee think they get a lot of personal attention from their boss, this ratio can lead to incredible bloat. And since every level of management earns incrementally more than the people who report to them, senior managers and executives may spend most of their time managing managers. Increasing the ratio to 20–1 or, in some organizations, depending on roles, as high as 100–1, removes a tremendous amount of expense and process creep. Of course, this means every employee won’t get 30 minutes to an hour each week with their manager, but many employees don’t require or desire this level of interaction, anyway.

   For more information on this, read “How to identify the right span of control for your organization” by McKinsey & Company.

3. Trim the number of supervisors. This feeds off step 2 here but becomes a line item in the to-do list. As the ratios are adjusted, some supervisory roles are no longer necessary.

4. Trim the admin staff. Every executive probably doesn’t need a personal admin, much less a group of administrative people at their direction.

Does grace have a place in business?

Grace isn't something people talk about in the office. It's the kind of touchy-feely emotional connection executives can't quantify and therefore don't want to address. Yet it's exactly the kind of connection more executives could learn to use to transform their organizational culture.

I run into the fundamental attribution error in executives in all kinds of companies. If you're not familiar with the term, it's when we assign someone else's actions as tied to their core personality when we give ourselves a pass for the same actions. It's easy for us to say someone else is stupid or irresponsible when they make a mistake and without even thinking about it excuse our own similar actions as being influenced by factors like schedule, stress, distractions, etc.

We give ourselves grace for our issues but quickly blame others as fundamentally flawed for the same issues. Even worse is when we blame others for problems we've caused them.

I've found that in healthy business cultures, people work hard to do the right thing most of the time. And in pushing forward they make mistakes for all the right reasons. When those mistakes are made, management owes it to their teams to have some grace. We could all use a lot more grace.

Tankers and Speedboats: Is your innovation program solving the right problems?

What's the balance between your tankers (people who excel at keeping the train on the track and dialing up efficiencies), and your speedboats (people looking to move fast and find what's next)?

Most companies need both. Too many speedboats and you can new idea your company out of existence. Too many tankers and the world will pass you by. With innovation, it's often best to let your speedboats race out to the front.

I'll use the Peloton bike as an example. (https://lnkd.in/e3DJd-W) In your typical company, the challenge goes out to build a better spinner bike, so the tankers get on it. They hyper-analyze materials, components and electronics, adding and honing to build the ultimate self-contained unit, like bikes have always worked.

But the Peloton team are speedboats. They combined a love of cycling, problems with scheduling rides and the isolation of working out alone, and came up with a better experience in general. Now you can be a part of a group experience—at home. Log in, ride, sweat and win alone and yet still with others. Brilliant.

Tankers can now fine tune the machine while the speedboats run ahead.

Tankers and Speedboats: Checking the box versus solving the issue.

Every company has check-the-box employees. These are people who keep their heads down and move through a steady list of to-do items.

Sometimes these are the tankers who were hired to keep the machine going. I have also found this in tankers disguising themselves as speedboats. These people like to check LOTS of boxes every day to show how busy they are.

But we need people who lift their heads up to identify and solve issues.

Take, for example, the lowly highway stripe. Before 1911, roads had no dividing lines to help people know when they'd strayed too far over. Maybe this wasn't a big problem on straight roads, but there were countless wrecks around curves as people drifted around the turn.

Check the box people don't see or solve this problem. But a guy named Edward Hines, who was a Michigan county road commissioner, saw the problem for what it was—solvable. He had his crews add lines to the center of the roads, and thereby changed the way we navigate highways around the world.

It wasn't a crazy invention or expensive idea.

But it wasn't anyone's job to solve this issue, either.

Tankers and Speedboats: Are you trapped by success, or failure?

Success can trap even the speedboats of a company into believing their one brilliant win is enough. It isn't. Companies must continue to innovate and learn, try and fail, learn more and stretch to find what's new. Because in every category, someone is out there willing to fight to make an impact. And those without the roadblock of success can do amazing things before they're told those things can't be done.

On the other end of the spectrum is failure, which leads to risk aversion. They say if a cat sits on a hot stove and gets burned he'll never sit on a hot stove again. The problem is that he won't sit on a cold one, either.

I worked with a company once that had tried a number of innovation approaches years before. During one intense period they'd tried consultants, students, PhDs and more only to come up short. So they stopped innovating and just focused on legacy products.

The tankers of the company convinced everyone that innovation was a bad thing and pointed to the old data as proof.

After a scare from a competitor, new management turned the innovation spigot back on and the company lived to fight another day.

Tankers and Speedboats: Are you over-engineering the solution?

The average tv remote control has 40+ buttons. Most people use about six on a regular basis and stretch to 10 in a crunch. So why do remote controls have the extra 30+ buttons? Because they can. But should they?

This is a classic tanker paradox. Instead of stopping with clean and simple, tankers are driven to add and build until all that extra space is filled.

I found this in an innovation program with a client a number of years ago. Market and consumer insights said consumers really wanted a product that did ONE particular job very well and came in reasonably priced. The tankers in the organization skewed the data to show that what people really wanted was a product that did a VARIETY of things.

We sketched ideas on a continuum and went back to consumers to double check things before heading further in product development. Sure enough, the simple ideas came out on top.

At this point the client took over the rest of the product development. What hit the market was a convoluted mess. The tankers won. And the product failed.

I've found healthy teams balance their tankers with speedboats who have the power to say no to over-engineering.

It's time we give each other a break.

I've worked with hundreds of companies, executives and cultures over the years. The issue that comes up time and time again is a concept psychologists call the FUNDAMENTAL ATTRIBUTION ERROR.

It's that moment when someone blows through a red light and you think "What an idiot! They're reckless and are going to kill someone?"!!?

But you have no idea what's happening in that car or in the life and mind of the other driver.

On the other hand, YOU run a red light and give yourself a pass: "I'm late to a meeting. My kid just spilled her shake in her lap and is screaming. I looked down for a second and didn't realize the light changed."

It's easy to forgive ourselves for issues that seem SITUATIONAL. We're not bad people, we just found ourselves in a situation that caused us to do something bad.

However, we far too often assign those same issues to other people as part of their PERSONALITY. They ARE bad, stupid, ignorant, uncaring ... and their mistake is simply a manifestation of all that is wrong with them.

This week, challenge yourself and your team to see the GOOD in people. See that they ARE trying—that they ARE working to solve the problem.

It's hard enough out there. Let's give each other a break. #teamspirit

Is the ad agency model dead?

A year after launching a start-up agency built on filling the gap between in-house creative groups and traditional agencies, I get asked almost weekly if I think the traditional agency model is dying. The answer? Maybe. But the reasons are far simpler than people think.

1. Too expensive: This always has been an issue. Agencies that can't prove their value will die.

2. Too slow: I think this goes to responsiveness. Not everything can be done quickly. But much of it can. Time still equals money.

3. Too many people: Agencies still bring five people to meetings when two will do. And clients recognize that only two are actually doing the talking. Yet all five are billing $200 an hour. That's a logic problem.

4. Too full of themselves: The condescending, insular personalities who can't be bothered by the business challenge are just not relevant in a world that needs to find ways to solve problems faster and build better relationships.

5. Too much jargon: Can we give "proprietary processes" a rest? Many companies would be happy to forego the bloated process for faster, smarter work. Those processes are rarely proprietary, anyway.

In the end I think it's about solving problems efficiently and humbly.

Does anyone really care about core values?

I work with clients every year on vision, mission, core values and culture challenges. When we get to articulating core values, executives often defer to a standard list of behaviors like Integrity, Accountability, Responsiveness, Empowerment, etc. But this random list doesn't do anything for anybody.

Enron's core values were Communication, Respect, Integrity and Excellence. Most would agree that these values were anything but core to the company.

The culture was corrupt. And that's where I find executives get confused. Your core values emerge from the culture. They don't drive it.

If your culture is dysfunctional, it doesn't matter how many core values you list or how you word them. If the leadership doesn't demonstrate the kinds of behaviors you want, TELLING your employees how to act will fall on deaf ears.

Ralph Waldo Emerson put it this way: “What you do speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you are saying”

So, no, core values don't matter. Core behaviors do.

If you want to change a company, or help guide an organization to a positive new future, focus on the behaviors. Start at the top and cascade down. Once the leaders get it right you can consider making posters and t-shirts. Until then, no. You're just asking for trouble.

Does the age of a company really matter?

People like to talk about how old their companies are as points of difference from their competitors. As if being around for 30, 40 or 50 years will make the difference when people choose between the top options.

That's a nice, safe, rational belief. And if people made decisions rationally, promoting the age of the company would be a real differentiator.

But people are not rational.

According to some studies, up to 90% of all decisions we make are emotional. We may rationalize our choices after the fact, but emotions are driving the machine.

If age of the company really made the difference, people would be flocking to Sears and Kmart this morning instead of hopping online or heading over to Walmart or Target. That won't happen, of course, because Sears and Kmart have lost their relevance.

Relevance is what matters.

In every business category, whether B2B or B2C, service-oriented or manufacturing, people want to know that the products and services offered are relevant to how they live.

If you solve problems for your audiences, you have relevance.

If your solutions don't match the world around us, it doesn't matter if your company has been around for a day or a 100 years.

What if hope actually is a strategy?

Over the last few years of working with executives to help establish their business foundations and reset their company cultures, I have heard the phrase "hope is not a strategy" enough to have a gag reflex.

People bring it up when we talk about missions and values, when we get to employer branding and company culture, and when we discuss marketing plans. It seems like a go-to drop the mike kind of phrase for people who want to kill a conversation.

One major issue is that hope is EXACTLY what's missing from many company cultures today.

Executives must lead from the front in uncertain times. They must prove that even when it's tough they, the leaders, have some idea of what a positive future looks like and are willing and able to help the company achieve success. They must give the people in the organization hope that tomorrow will be okay.

Great leaders get this innately. Weak leaders struggle with it and as a result their companies die from within.

Hope is not only a strategy. It is one of the key factors in resetting struggling companies, blending cultures in mergers and acquisitions, and bolstering healthy companies looking to take on greater challenges.

Regardless of what your company values say, people need hope.

You are undeserving!

Try that phrase again and remove the "un". You are deserving.

Or this way: You. Are. Deserving.

When I work with companies with unhealthy cultures I often find people who have been beaten down over time and feel like their best their ideas have been killed by the system. When this happens often enough, people simply lose faith in who they are, what they can do and why they come to work each day.

Management's job isn't to beat people into submission. It's to lead them with a focus on a greater good, a bigger goal that will require everyone on the team bringing their best ideas every day. You deserve to have your best ideas heard.

You deserve to be recognized for contributing to the greater good. You deserve to know you have value in your role every day and that the company you're in is better because you are there.

You. Are. Deserving.

It's tough out there. Making a difference takes a lot of work. We need you to bring all the goodness that makes you uniquely you. And you deserve a company that will celebrate you. You are deserving.

"That's not the problem we told him to solve."

When working with executives to document their core Behaviors (Values) I often ask them to name an employee or two who represent their ideal staffer and then unpack what makes them great.

In one particular exercise the attributes included: can-do attitude; takes initiative; passion; courage, etc. Sounds like the kind of people who could move a mountain, right?

In the next exercise we did the same thing only with employees who don't embody the culture we want. One employee was named but there was some concern in the room because one exec said the guy had really come through on an issue.

"But that's not the problem we told him to solve," came an exasperated reply. And then the room fell awkwardly quiet.

On one hand they wanted people like themselves who took initiative and conquered big challenges. At the same time, they felt threatened by that behavior. Managers who live like this destroy good people and derail careers. They kill cultures and companies from within.

You want your best people solving problems on their own. You NEED your best people solving problems on their own. You also need people to solve problems you don't see or understand.

Strong managers get this. Weak ones never will.

Why You Should Make Better Mistakes

Avoiding mistakes is useless. Making them is human. Owning mistakes and learning from them is where leadership begins.

As we wrap up one year and head into a new one, I think it’s healthy to reflect on what was tried, what failed and what succeeded over the last 11 to 12 months. It may be a factor of age, but I’ve gotten to a place where one of my biggest fears is not trying enough big ideas to make a difference, in settling for less than what was possible and becoming comfortable with what is versus what could be.

Fear of failure is the term we hear most often. I’ve seen it in brand managers afraid to screw up a brand assignment they just took over. I’ve seen it in corporate executives who were living examples of the Peter Principle who, instead of remaining open to help from others and being vulnerable, fell prey to the idea that they always had to have the winning idea. I’ve seen it in senior managers who killed ideas because they were more disruptive than the manager was willing to fight for, even though disruption was desperately needed to keep the brand alive. When this happens teams eventually fail because the ideas just get smaller and smaller—because small ideas are easier to protect.

This is also a problem with people who haven’t been allowed to fail along the way. The kid who must get straight A’s, who can’t miss a note on an instrument or make a bad throw on a ball field may be doomed to a life of pursuing a goal that doesn’t exist.

Perfectionism Is An Issue

Better by Mistake author Alina Tugend, put it this way: “Experiments showed that those who are always scared to make mistakes—ultra-perfectionists, they are called—perform worse in writing tasks than those who aren’t as worried about being flawless. Experts theorize “superperfectionists” are afraid to practice writing, because to practice means to make mistakes. More importantly, they fear receiving any kind of negative feedback, so they don’t learn where they went wrong and how to get better.”

You Can’t Win Them All

Once you accept that you are going to fail, eventually, you free your mind up to do bigger things. It’s the act of trying that makes the difference. Relax. It’s not like you avoiding mistakes is going to make things any better or worse. Peter Drucker once said, “People who don’t take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year.” If you accept that you’re probably going to make two big mistakes a year, wouldn’t you rather make those two mistakes on something that has a chance to change your world? Or change the world?

There are stories out there of people who made it big without putting themselves or their ideas on the line. Personally, I think most of these are just scrubbed to remove any blemishes in the pursuit of perfection. When you aim high you may achieve great things. But even if you don’t win, you find out what you’re made of when you get back up again.

Consider these examples:

• Triathlete Mark Allen, in the seven years before he won his first of six Ironman Championships in Kona, Hawaii, did not finish, placed 3rd, placed 5th, did not compete, placed 2nd, placed 2nd, and placed 5th.

• John William Lindsey, who played first base for the LA Dodgers, spent 16 years in the minor leagues, the most by any player, before being called up to the Bigs.

• Post-it Notes came to life when Art Fry heard of colleague Spencer Silver’s low-tack adhesive and figured he could use it to help him mark his place in his hymnals because his bookmarks always fell out. It only took 10 years or more for the formula to find a home.

• The inventors of Bubble Wrap started out with a concept for wallpaper, then moved to greenhouses, then to packaging.

• Silly Putty was discovered during the pursuit of a rubber substitute for World War II. Though it wasn’t suitable for tires or boots, it was suitable for fun. Okay, this one probably shouldn’t go in the great examples category, but I like Silly Putty, so here it stays.

So You Blew It. So What?

I’ve been in bands and played guitar and sung on stage for years. One of my worst moments became one of my favorite memories. Standing in front of an audience of a couple hundred people in a church in Mississippi one night I played and sang a song I had performed dozens of times. Yet on this night as I finished the chorus and started the second verse I couldn’t for the life of me remember the words. Not one. And since I didn’t have lyrics with me I was stuck.

Rather than try to fake my way through the rest of the song and limp back to my seat I stopped, kind of chuckled nervously and said, “Have you ever had one of those moments when you forget a song? Yeah, me too. But I’m not leaving this stage until I finish a song for you, so if it’s okay with you I’d like to try a different option.” The audience laughed with me, which helped calm my nerves and ease the uncomfortable silence in the room. I sang my second song without any issues and got a standing ovation at the end. I figured I had just survived the worst nightmare a performer could have on stage. And I haven’t forgotten the lyrics in a song on stage since that night some 25 years ago.

Failure Has its Benefits

Evolutionary psychologist Nigel Barber, Ph.D., wrote, “People who fail repeatedly develop persistence in the face of difficulties … only people with extensive histories of failure could survive the difficulties that (some) individuals endured. Such dogged persistence is not a universal trait, of course.

With success, people keep on doing the same thing. When they fail, they are forced to adapt and change. That is not just a human characteristic but constitutes a basic feature of how the mammalian brain works.

If a lab rat no longer gets rewarded for pressing a lever that had yielded food pellets before, it gets visibly upset. As its frantic efforts fail, it resorts to all manner of strange, or novel, reactions from grooming itself to biting the lever, or leaping into the air. It is learning that the world has changed and its brain is getting rewired, so to speak.

When one combines emotionalism with originality, that is fairly close to what most people think of as artistic creativity. Artists are not necessarily frustrated people but tend to be dissatisfied with what they have accomplished previously and try to do something better, or something new.

The magical power of failure is not restricted to the arts, or to political leadership. It applies to all fields of human endeavor, including the crass activity of financial money grubbing. Anyone who bought Apple stock over most of the past decade made wads of money but learned nothing. Those who bought at the peak and lost 40 percent of their stake are still scratching their heads. Like the rat in the experiment, they are learning something.”

Failure Helps:

1. Discover what didn’t work

2. Fuel your creativity (I won’t compare you to the lab rat example above)

3. Inspire new energy

4. Warn you off of a dangerous approach further down that path

5. Uncover your own strengths

6. Humble the bold

Five Tips for Making Better Mistakes

1. Start with the idea that most people truly want you to succeed, so they want to support you versus try to break you down. The mind space you use to worry about what’s chasing you could be better spent looking forward and considering options. If you fail, those same people want you to get back up and win.

2. Surround yourself with people who embrace the chaos, accept that mistakes will happen and know the team will grow as a result. Building a healthy team culture enables you to keep the right kind of positive mindset you’ll need to try, fail, pick yourself up and try again. And again. And again.

3. Consider both sides of the results of your efforts. Life is rarely lived in the extremes, so the goods may not be as good as you dream and the bads are rarely as dismal as you fear. Unless you’re Nik Wallenda and walking tightropes between high-rise office buildings, failure will probably not be life threatening. And as long as you’re alive, you can try again.

4. Live and learn. Failure is rich in information, which you need so you can build your way to success. Stay open to the data, learn from your stumbles and keep moving.

5. Share your stories. The school of hard knocks is a tough way to learn, but necessary on the way to greatness. Learning principles would seem to indicate that you will get more out of your experiences, both good and bad, if you will teach others the lessons you learn. Your students will benefit as well.

Embrace your blunders. Learn to love them, then move on.

Now get out there and try. I kind of hope you fail, just a bit, so you can go on to do something amazing.

The Problems with Core Values—And How to Fix Them

Generic core values won’t make a difference in your company or your culture. Fix them.

Nobody Remembers Generic Values

Over the last few years we’ve helped a wide range of management teams craft their core values as part of organizational transformation. Ever since Jim Collins identified the importance of core values in his seminal bestseller Good to Great, companies across the planet have clamored to fill in that blank on their foundations list. These days it’s hard to find a company with a vision and mission that hasn’t taken a stab at listing out some form of values. Though the idea is right, often the execution is so very wrong.

Among the issues is that while filling in the values blanks, leaders forget that they are crafting language for people in order to help everyone in the organization understand what is expected, what will be rewarded and what kind of behavior will help the company succeed in the future. Generic should not be tolerated.

One Web site offers a list of 400 or more common terms you could consider for your values. We see them all the time: Integrity, Teamwork, Respect, Profitability, Dedication ... While there is nothing wrong with any of the terms in that list, there is nothing memorable about them, either. This means it will be very difficult for people within the company to remember which common attributes they are supposed to embody. Why settle for common when you could have uncommon and extraordinary values—the kind that help you build an uncommon and extraordinary company?

Say What You Mean

I think integrity is just as important as the next guy. So are respect and accountability and innovation and profitability. But your take on integrity may be decidedly different than mine. Keep in mind we want values to be memorable. So, instead of just listing the generic Integrity, try: Promises Made, Promises Kept or; Uncompromising Ethics or; Do the Right Thing, Even When No One is Looking. If your intention is that your company will be built through people doing what they say, or keeping promises no matter what, use those words in your values. The language will be fresher, more memorable, differentiating and significantly more authentic than some generic attribute.

Add Clarifiers When Necessary

Especially when introducing new values to a company, it can be beneficial for everyone involved to have some type of clarifier just to make sure everyone knows why each value has meaning in the great company lexicon. One of our clients had a few examples of cross-functional teams collaborating to bring new ideas to the market, but the practice wasn’t yet embraced across the organization. So with this aspirational space, we chose Ingenious Collaboration as the value and clarified it with “We nurture a collaborative environment that celebrates insatiable curiosity and diverse ideas.” This allowed us to capture the CEO’s intent and better ensure everyone in the company would be able to align themselves with his ideals.

For another client, staying true to their entrepreneurial roots was important. We could have just listed Entrepreneurship as the value. Instead, we chose Entrepreneurial Drive and clarified it with “We challenge ourselves to continuously think and act as entrepreneurs—with grit, big, bold thinking, get-it-done attitude, and measured risk taking—and to not lose our souls to bigness.” Entrepreneurial Drive is the shorthand. The clarifier provides the rich language the company needed to unite its people.

In the end, we want words real people understand and use—not corporate babble. The guy on the production line is not impressed with your MBA, nor does he care that you listed Resourcefulness as a new value. He believes he’s always been fairly resourceful, so you’re not helping him much. Give him language he can use and care about.

Edit Boldly

I live by a rule of threes and fives: People generally can remember three key points but lose interest after five. So keep your list short and sweet. Keep your values to ideas you will truly embrace and police. Four values that really lay a solid foundation for your company, and that you will reinforce throughout the hiring process, quarterly and annual reviews, and town halls, will always stand a better chance of making it into the corporate lexicon than any rambling list.

In his 2002 HBR article “Make Your Values Mean Something,” organizational guru Patrick Lencioni discussed what he calls “Permission-to-Play Values”, which “simply reflect the minimum behavioral and social standards required of any employee. They tend not to vary much across companies, particularly those working in the same region or industry, which means that, by definition, they never really help distinguish a company from its competitors.” He uses Integrity as an example. Rather than let that term clog up valuable values real estate, consider building your own permission-to-play values in order to give ideas that have more meaning to you and your company a little more room to breathe.

Live Out Loud

“What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

This statement rings particularly true in the case of company values. People wait to see how managers and company executives live the values, not how they talk about them, before deciding to adopt the values themselves. If the values are not regularly demonstrated from the top down, and reinforced in a positive, cascading communications style, the new values stand little chance of adoption across the company.

Consider this before you embark on the next t-shirt, coffee mug and poster campaign. Try living the values boldly from the top down. Lead boldly and reinforce the language through management levels. Use the terminology in meetings, town halls and presentation. Then find employees guilty of embracing the ideals. Above all, live the values.

Remember the guy on the shop floor? He’s been through this exercise before with the last management team. He’s heard all the words, seen the posters, and thrown away several coffee mugs as each regime tried to mail in a new corporate theme. He doesn’t care what “values” you talk about (and yes, he uses air quotes around your word “values") unless you live them first. If you say integrity and he sees managers cheating the system to hit their numbers without recourse, you might as well stop the communications program before you begin. He won’t buy anything you’re selling.

Know, Live, Tell

With clearly articulated values in place, and executives and managers living them across the company, it’s time to tell the stories. While I’m not a fan of poster campaigns, I do support getting the values language into the hands of every employee. One of our CEO clients printed his company’s vision, mission, values and corporate narrative on small pocket guides that were then distributed across the company—to each of the 25,000+ employees. People were expected to learn the language and use it. And he liked calling out people in town halls around the world to see if they knew the new values. It certainly drove home the point that he was serious about moving the company forward.

That approach won’t work for everyone, nor is there one perfect way to craft the words or list of values for each company. But employees need to be able to access the words you use, to embrace the ideals you promote and share the stories that connect the tribe. Authentic stories of people within the company doing the right thing and employees rewarded for engaging in healthy new activities will go a long way in driving engagement and long term adoption.

People want to join a focused cause, to be a part of an organization that’s making a difference in the world. Craft your values to help that dream come true.

What do you think about what’s here? What are your favorite values? How would you improve the process?

5 Easy Steps To Get The Greatest Value Out Of Your Core Values

Weak core values can hold companies back in the battle for the best people and minds, investors and brand enthusiasts. Capture the values that make you unique and build the healthier culture the best employees seek.

1. Kill Hollow Core Values

Ever since Jim Collins and Jerry Porras called attention to the importance of organizational core values in their book Built to Last, the world has rushed to fill the corporate walls with attributes, beliefs, quotes and any number of vacuous statements that might pass as a value. We’ve all seen them: Honesty, Authenticity, Respect, Courage … the list can and does go on and on. It doesn’t have to be this way.

I encourage my clients to push beyond generic language to words and expressions that leave no room for misinterpretation. Let’s use Integrity for example. Integrity is an excellent trait. I believe all companies should fundamentally be built on a platform of people acting with some sense of integrity. If that’s true, and every company should act with integrity, and all employees should embrace it as a core value, how does one company differentiate their spin on integrity from another?

Therein lies the challenge, because synonyms for integrity include honesty, principle, sincerity, candor, goodness and righteousness, among others. What do you, specifically, mean when you list integrity as a core value? Do you want people to be honest, or sincere? To be good, or righteous? I’ve found that when the interpretation is left to the individual, the advantage almost always swings in the favor of the individual.

Want further reason to kill hollow values? Enron, now the poster child for corporate corruption and scandal, listed four core values in their 1998 annual report: Respect, Integrity, Communication and Excellence. Granted, they wrote clarifying sentences after each, but those sentences are just as hollow as the values. My personal favorite follows Respect: “We treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves. We do not tolerate abusive or disrespectful treatment. Ruthlessness, callousness, and arrogance don’t belong here.”

2. Watch How The Best Employees Think And Act

We as individuals live our lives based on what we value, and we want the places we work to operate the same way. As Jessica Amortegui points out in her article, “5 reasons You Need To Instill Values In Your Organization,” “rather than get people to live the values, [organizations] should focus on the values that live in the people. This taps into the innate qualities that exist across mankind: human virtues.”

Throughout my career, I’ve regularly conducted one-on-one interviews with people across my clients’ organizations prior to developing core language. During these interviews it can quickly become apparent what values the company embraces, what isn’t working and what the top employees wish could be expressed. By the same token, taking note of the traits the worst employee exhibit can often help provide clarity for what the company does not want to move forward. Once we’ve helped our clients discover the values that match their organization, we help craft language that will set them apart internally and externally.

3. Write Your Values To Reflect Your Organization

Expressing core values uniquely matters immensely for your company. They serve as a tool for recruiting and as a barometer of sorts for existing employees. They can be a banner to guide the desired ideas and actions, and guardrails against unwanted behavior.

Write the way your company thinks, acts and talks. If your environment is ultra casual, feel free to express your values that way. There’s nothing wrong with saying “No one here is too good to take out the trash or sweep the floor” if that fits who you are. If your culture is more formal, you might try “Entrepreneurial Spirit—We expect everyone here to do the little things in order to help us reach our goals”. Stay true to who you are—and what you want to become.

Here are a few examples that might help frame in different approaches:

Delta Airlines

• Always tell the truth

• Always keep your deals

• Don’t hurt anyone

• Try harder than all our competitors—never give up

• Care for our customers, our community and each other

McDonald’s

• We place the customer experience at the core of all we do

• We are committed to our people

• We believe in the McDonald’s System

• We operate our business ethically

• We give back to our communities

• We grow our business profitably

• We strive continually to improve

Sealed Air

• Uncompromising Ethics

• Courageous Determination

• Ingenious Collaboration

• Purposeful Innovation

Zappos

• Deliver WOW Through Service

• Embrace and Drive Change

• Create Fun and A Little Weirdness

• Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded

• Pursue Growth and Learning

• Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication

• Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit

• Do More With Less

• Be Passionate and Determined

• Be Humble

4. Wait A Year Before Handing Out Mugs And T-Shirts

How you introduce new values language to any organization is important. We caution our clients against rushing to print posters, mugs and t-shirts with the new values, which are often tied in with Vision and Mission articulation. It’s not that we have anything against t-shirts and mugs, it’s just that people tend to hate them in these circumstances. Seriously, hate them. T-shirts offered up too early in the process signify that a company is more interested in the organization than its people, and if the people don’t come first that t-shirt is likely to only represent how out of touch management is with those who make the company great.

We promote cascading communication—starting from the CEO and moving consistently through management—and management living the messages they preach well before they try to drive anything down into the system. A senior manager who cheats the system to get his way in front of his managers is going to have zero chance of getting his team to buy into anything he says about Integrity as a value. Once managers consistently demonstrate that they buy into the new corporate language, through their actions, the rest of the company can start to get on board—and then you can give everybody in the newly refreshed brand tribe a t-shirt to help them celebrate.

5. Have An Exit Plan For The Haters

Sometimes during the process of rolling out core values across an organization, companies find people who simply don’t or won’t embrace the new language. Let’s be clear here: the company carries the burden of first communicating any new cultural language to its employees and helping employees see the advantages of moving towards the new ideals collectively. But at some point management owes it to the rest of the company to help the naysayers move on. It’s really hard to have a healthy organizational culture when most of the company buys into the values while a few negative outliers are allowed to passively or actively fight the system. Either people agree that the values matter and live them, or the values don’t matter and neither does the culture.

Core values are an important part of building healthy organizations and getting everybody on the same script. Most companies don’t have to look much further than their best employees to know what kind of culture they have and what they should celebrate. But the words you use to articulate your values, the way management lives them, and the way you introduce the new language to the company can make difference in whether the organization buys into the program or just waits until management moves on to a new topic.

If you need help getting send me a note and let’s get the conversation started.

Four Principles for Being a Better Communicator

It’s been said that a confused prospect never buys. Know yourself, know your stuff, know your audience, and know what success looks like, and you too can be a successful communicator.

Nosce te ipsum—Know Thyself

In the world of effective sales and communication it boils down to one simple truth: People buy you before they buy your product or service.

Ever since I was a kid I’ve heard the aphorism, “you never get a second chance to make a first impression.” Usually this was said in the context of making sure I didn’t screw up some big performance or meeting. It’s been applied to everything from code of conduct to dress to presentations and proposals to tone of voice and eating style.

One of the best and hardest experiences of my life was selling books door to door for two summers for the Southwestern Company while in college. During an intense week of Sales School, in which hundreds of college students from around the country are taught how to sell, one of the fundamental ideas driven home is that people buy you first and whatever you have to sell eventually, maybe. For a student trying to pay for college selling door to door, it’s an easy concept to adopt because you know beyond a doubt that you aren’t that good at selling anything and, if you have any hope of surviving the summer, people had better think you’re a decent person.

But there’s more to it than just being decent. People tend to make decisions at a gut level, emotionally, very quickly and decide whether you’re worth their time or not. When you’re selling door to door, your prospects check you out before they open the door. If they determine you’re not a threat, you might get a chance at pitching your goods. It’s what happens in speed dating: in just a few minutes we believe we can determine whether the person sitting across from us is worth another cup of coffee. Scientists call these kinds of snap judgments rapid cognition.

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Blink, addressed the idea of rapid cognition, where decisions are made in one to two seconds and at a gut level before your rational mind has a chance to catch up. I liken it to the average couch potato racing Olympic world record holder Usain Bolt in a 100-meter race. Bolt would sprint down the track, cross the finish line, change his shoes and grab a drink before Mr. Potato stumbled to some sort of ending.

Science tells us over and over that most of us feel a long time before we understand. In communication, that feeling is hugely important because you must know that the people you’re communicating with feel a connection with you—or don’t—in only seconds. So your well-prepared message, your 200-slide PowerPoint deck, your incredibly detailed logical, rational discourse on your topic du jour doesn’t stand a chance if your audience is turned off by you in the first few seconds and certainly first few minutes of your engagement.

This means you need to know you very well; your strengths, your weaknesses, your presentation style, when you tend to oversell or shut down, what you evade and your natural biases. Self-awareness helps you avoid some obvious social landmines so you don’t stumble in your first impression.

How you dress and speak are somewhat obvious elements as well. If you overdress for a casual discussion, or wear shorts to an executive presentation, you communicate that you don’t know your audience. Since we tend to prefer people who are like us, your social mismatch can close down the pitch before you get started. And your audience may never tell you why you missed.

If you haven’t already, it’s worth your time and money to look into some type of personality assessment tool, like Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or DiSC. These tools can help you understand how you're wired and how the rest of the world may see you.

Know Your Stuff

Clarity starts with company purpose then cascades down to what products the company makes or services it offers.

I’m always amazed by how many people show up to presentations underprepared to talk about their own products or company. It’s a fundamental element of sales and good communication—you must know what you’re talking about. So get and be prepared.

You can’t sell what you don’t know. Why does your company exist? Why should anyone care that you are here and why would they care if you went away? According to the Meaningful Brands Index released annually by Havas Media, 73% of all brands could disappear and consumers wouldn’t care. The study covers brand authenticity, brand stories and brands contributing to the overall well-being of society.

I work with a range of clients every year to clarify and define their authentic story. We’ve found that companies without some fundamental purpose beyond making money have a hard time rallying the troops within the organization, and confuse their customers as well.

You might ask, “What does company purpose have to do with good communication?” The answer is simple: when you don’t first understand your organizational purpose, you run the risk of chasing after any shiny object. When that happens, two people from the same organization may have a difficult time telling the same story about their company, or the products and solutions that company offers.

Become an expert in your own company, its products and services, its history and legacy stories. If you're selling a service, you owe it to yourself and to your audience to know exactly what you can and can’t do, how your product is different and better than the competition, and how to solve the challenges your audiences face. Once you have the details down, you will be able to tailor your communication to suit your audiences. Not everyone is going to be excited about the same things, so you must be able to adjust. But you can’t adjust if you don’t have the fundamental knowledge to draw from in your conversation.

Know Your Audience

People desire information that addresses what they need, so you stand a better chance of making a true connection if you start with what’s most important to them.

We humans are a selfish lot. We think about ourselves first and often. Think you’re different? Find a group picture with you in it. Who do you look for first? That’s right, you. Most people do. Then we find the people we like in the photo, then the people we don’t like (just in case they look bad in the photo) and finally, if there’s time, the other people who just happened to be sharing our space at the moment the photo was taken. It’s natural, it’s human, and it’s the way your audience thinks every time you try to communicate. You have to know they are more interested in themselves than they are in you. So it makes sense to understand what you’re up against.

In his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey identified one habit as “seek first to understand, then to be understood.” Making it a habit is exactly the point. In sales and communication you have to overcome your own desire to talk about yourself and whatever you have on your mind. Your audience is looking for information based on what they need. Seek first to understand them, then move on to help them understand how you and your product or service might solve a problem.

Just as personality tests help you figure out your communication style, they can also offer some barometer to measure your audience. Some people like big stories, some just want the facts. Some want to know you’ll always be there and cover all the details along the way. The faster you can read your audience the better chance you have of effectively communicating and closing a sale.

Know What Success Look Like

Start with the end in mind, and make sure both parties share in the spoils.

Stephen Covey also said to “think win-win”. In its base form that’s all there is to it. You need to have some idea of what an ideal outcome is—and that outcome should always include some form of shared value. Unbalanced outcomes aren’t sustainable for the simple reason that we humans like things to work in our favor. Bend the odds too far in one direction and the other party is eventually going to opt out of the deal. This is true in relationships, marriages, business deals and trips to the casino.

When you begin your conversations with the idea that the outcome will be good for both parties, you are more likely to look for positive compromise and stay open to creative solutions to the challenges on the table. Since both you and your audience ultimately want to win, it only makes sense to build your conversation from that angle and work to help both sides succeed.

Effective communication doesn’t have to be tricky or difficult. It’s one of the reason I use the tagline “logical branding.” When you apply these four principles—know yourself, know your stuff, know your audience and know what success looks like— conversations, sales calls, ads, social media posts and more just seem to end well on a more regular basis.

Be Thankful for Every Bad Manager You’ve Ever Had

In spite of all the material out there on what it takes to be a good manager—a quick Google search as I started writing this provided 166 million options—unfortunately, most of us are more likely to spend time working under a bad manager than one that matches our ideals. But getting stuck with a bad manager isn’t all gloom and doom, because most of us learn more from bad experiences than good, and those bad experiences can create tectonic shifts in how you work with others as you grow in your career.

Lions, Tigers and Bad Managers, Oh My!

The human brain is hardwired to learn and hang on to lessons learned in extreme moments, especially ones that evoke fear. If you’re a caveman walking alone and a lion jumps out from behind a bolder (if you survive) you’re going to remember specifics about that event—where you were, what you did, where the lion came from, etc.—so you don’t repeat that experience. If you're in the office and a particularly lousy manager jumps all over you and blindsides you with accusations and acrimony, you’re likely to remember that experience and try to minimize the chances of that happening again.

There is even science that says negative experiences may push the good ones to the back in our memories. So you can thank every bad manager you’ve ever had for setting the examples of what NOT to do for the rest of your career.

The Rules Don’t Apply to Them

As I mentioned earlier, there is no shortage to tips and tricks for being a good manager. Back in 1970 Robert Townsend wrote one of the first and great guides for organizational management and health in Up the Organization: How to Stop the Corporation from Stifling People and Strangling Profits. There is enough practical and timeless information in this one book to wonder why bad managers still exist today. I recommend you add this book to your personal library.

The same is true of First, Break All The Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman. If the guides have been written, and all the tools are there for the taking, why do bad managers still terrorize the landscape? I think it comes down to one simple idea: the rules don’t apply to them.

Buckingham and Curtis distinguish four core activities and the different views of traditional managers versus great managers:

 “Conventional wisdom says:

• Select the person … based on her experience, intelligence and determination

• Set expectations … by defining the right steps

• Motivate the person … by helping her identify and overcome her weaknesses

• Develop the person … by helping her learn and get promoted

 “By contrast, great managers:

• Select for talent

• Define the right outcomes

• Focus on strengths

• Find the right fit

Seems easy enough, right? Why then do so many people get this so horribly wrong?

Newton’s Third Law, in Management

Newton’s third law of motion says that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The same can be applied to management. When working with companies to define core values and better understand what’s working in the organizational culture, we typically interview managers and line employees. It becomes clear pretty quickly which traits the best employees embody and what the worst employees do consistently. The best employees often act in the exact opposite manner of the worst. If this is the case, then it may be easier to look at the traits the worst managers share and do just the opposite.

Don’t: Be a jerk—Your lack of integrity and brutish behavior may unfortunately be permitted by the organization, but the people beneath you will hate you. They may follow because they have no choice, but they won’t respect you and may quietly pray for a way out.

Do: Live authentically—Vulnerability in leaders has been proven time and again to be a key driver in building strong teams and company cultures. No one expects the people at the top to have all the answers, so take the pressure off yourself and be real and human and reachable.

Don’t: Try to be the brightest star in the constellation—It isn’t possible, anyway, and the best employees will find a way to leave your constellation.

Do: Share the spotlight with the people doing the heavy lifting—Make it a habit to make sure your best people get time in the spotlight. Help others see the valuable contributions of your team. When your team earns the credit, dole it out in extra large portions.

Don’t: Focus on people’s weaknesses—The weaknesses will only improve slightly (they’re weaknesses for a reason) and you’re likely to have bitter, resentful employees who hate the fact that you only point out what’s wrong.

Do: Focus on people’s strength—All the science proves this is where you can realize exponential growth, have happier employees and achieve greater goals. As a bonus, learn to say thank you. People like to hear that they do well from time to time. Be gracious and authentic in your praise.

Don’t: Micromanage the process—As a manager you should have better things to do than staying neck deep in the minutiae. Chances are good that if you’re mired in the details, you’re also encouraging the internal spin that destroys company culture.

Do: Focus on the outcomes and embrace multiple paths to success—Hire good people, get out of their way and help them succeed more wildly than you or they could ever achieve as individuals.

Don’t: Point fingers and place blame—Some managers misinterpret accountability as their job in holding everyone else accountable. Wrong. Build a healthy culture and the team will hold themselves accountable to each other. If people only act responsibly when the boss is around you have some serious issues just waiting to break the surface.

Do: Keep your feet on the ground—Error increases with distance. Stay relevant. The further you are away from the people who make your company great and the work getting done on the front lines, the greater the likelihood that that you become a caricature rather than an actual leader.

Don’t: Isolate people, skills and processes—Insecure managers like to put people on islands and make them feel like they're always on shaky ground.

Do: Build communities and help people find their tribe—Help your people feel welcomed as part of a broader community. Build a stable environment that reduces fear and encourages every person to bring their very best idea to the job every day. When that happens you have a chance to create jobs with meaning for talented people who want to change the world.

If you’re currently working under a bad manager take notes so you can apply what you learn later and throughout your career. If you think this list is incomplete, add to them here. Remember we want to focus on our strengths and build better managers, not try to rehab every bad one. Healthy corporate cultures the world over will help weed out the bad and keep the good ones going. Good luck out there.

Unleash The Power Of Your Organization With Bottom-Up Leadership

Taking a bottom-up leadership approach can positively shake up your company and help bring some of the best ideas out of the shadows and into the market.

Most companies operate under a top-down management approach, in which visions and business plans are set at the highest levels and passed down through the organization. This can be great in theory, but it can also leave some of the most innovative and breakthrough ideas locked inside the people on the front lines. When those people feel disconnected from or shut down by leadership, the company can be doomed to irrelevance, especially in an era that demands innovation.

Build A Strong Core Team

W.L. Gore & Associates, a company known for its innovation and made famous for Gore-Tex, uses sponsors to help new hires untangle the system and find their place in the organization. They help make connections and find links so people are set up to succeed from the beginning. The company further allows employees to choose their assignments and follow their passions. Once an employee selects a project or team, they’re pretty well locked into the commitment. From that point on, their accountability is to their teams, not to their bosses. But great ideas often come from passionate individuals and strong teams.

Listen. Repeat. Act.

When current General Motors CEO, Mary Barra, first started at GM, she was an 18-year-old student co-op full of new ideas. She had the good fortune of working with mentors and managers who helped her learn and grow—and who listened to her ideas. As she moved through the company she saw the value of staying in touch with and open to the ideas of those on the front lines.

With a father who worked as a die maker for Pontiac for 39 years, Mrs. Barra fully understood what could be learned from those who touch the product every day, even in adjusting minor details that affect the people on the front lines. In an interview recently with Business Insider, Mrs. Barra proudly stated how as VP of Global Human Resources for GM, she shortened the unwieldy language of the dress code to just two words: Dress Appropriately. While something like this might seem trivial to some, it can be a sign of respect to those who feel patronized by the language passed down by managers who have lost sight of what life is like in the trenches.

Remember That Great Ideas Come From Anywhere

Passionate people with their hands in the work have a better chance of making connections between seemingly disconnected dots. Many people are familiar with how 3M’s Arthur Fry used an experimental light adhesive to create a better bookmark and thereby invented Post-it Notes. Mr. Fry’s inventiveness was evidence of a 3M culture where ideas, even ones that aren’t immediate successes, are shared in order to make the collective output even better.

The same can be said of the Gore Company. Dave Myers, an engineer with Gore’s medical teams, thought the company’s technology being used on mountain bike cables to block out gunk might work on guitar strings as well, since guitar strings lose tone and quality over time due to oils in the skin. After a bit of of exploration, Mr. Myer and his team introduced Gore’s industry-leading Elixir guitar strings.

In these and myriad other examples, success comes from sharing ideas and staying open to contributions from all areas of the company. Keeping employees locked into silos significantly diminishes the organization’s chances of regularly discovering breakthrough ideas.

Watch Out For Management Bias

Far too often managers miss the great ideas generated on the front lines. NPR host and author Shankar Vedantam believes he knows why.

In his book The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives, Mr. Vedantam’s research shows that managers often put more weight behind ideas from distant sources than ideas from their own employees. Simply put, it’s easier—and often more attractive—to hire high profile consultants than to ask for ideas from within the organization.

Vedantam goes on to discuss how managers can rush forward with “confirmation bias”, seeing only the ideas that support their own theories while discarding proof that their idea isn’t the strongest one on the table. This can be a culture killer because employees quickly see their ideas being pushed aside in favor of hierarchy and management. When this happens morale plummets as key employees face a cruel choice: stay with a company that undervalues their contributions or take their ideas elsewhere.

Be Wary Of Superstars

In a 2014 interview with The New York Times, Google’s Senior Vice President of People Operations, Laszlo Bock, talked about the problem with shooting stars. “Successful bright people rarely experience failure,” he said, “so they don’t learn how to learn from that failure.”

Bock continued: “They, instead, commit the fundamental attribution error, which is if something good happens, it’s because I’m a genius. If something bad happens, it’s because someone’s an idiot or I didn’t get the resources or the market moved.”

By contrast, “We’ve seen that the people who are the most successful here, who we want to hire, will have a fierce position. They’ll argue like hell. They’ll be zealots about their point of view. But then you say, ‘here’s a new fact,’ and they’ll go, ‘Oh, well, that changes things; you’re right.”

Ask Yourself: What Could Bottom-Up Thinking Do For Us?

Far too many management programs today emphasize action over listening, and title over experience. Most tend to prefer the sanitary approach of using consultants because writing a check is easier than building forums. When this happens, we communicate to our employees that they and their ideas don’t matter.

Management has to listen and act.

We think using these simple ideas can make a big difference. What do you think?

Why You Need Change Management Bread Crumbs

In the classic tale of Hansel and Gretel, two small children are led out into the woods to fend for themselves and with expectations that they won’t survive the night. However, the kids have the evil plan all figured out and leave a trail of pebbles and bread crumbs to find their way back home so they can eventually slay the witch.

Managers Are Evil Until Proven Otherwise

For many employees involved in change management initiatives, the story of Hansel and Gretel is far too close to their own experience, minus the bread crumbs. We hear it all the time: employees feel like they’re being led into the woods to certain doom while senior managers feel like they’ve done their jobs in telling their staff that big change is coming, that they shouldn’t be worried and that everything is under control.

These broad and vacuous statements do nothing but reinforce the idea that upper management is trying to “change” employees right out of a job.

Upper management must understand that the prevailing attitude with line employees is that change is going to end badly for them. It’s survival mentality. In his book Leaders Eat Last, author Simon Sinek discusses at length how the brain fires up a dose of the hormone cortisol when we sense danger. The human body doesn’t wait until we can see the danger, it takes care of business ahead of time. Cortisol helps focus our attention on getting out of dangerous situations.

In change management initiatives, employees tend to sense that change is happening even if nothing has been announced in the company. Keep in mind that bad news travels faster and is, frankly, more exciting than good news. So given the chance to leap to conclusions, most of us leap the wrong way. Managers have a responsibility to their direct reports and to their companies to over-communicate what’s happening and help overcome human nature. No shady language, no duplicity, no dodging the hard questions.

This steady stream of communication can be considered the bread crumbs out of the woods for employees. The biggest difference here is that the trail leads to a new, hopefully even better, destination instead of back to the original starting point.

Error Increases With Distance

It’s easy for managers to be lulled into complacency when communicating change issues. Many believe that since they delivered a clear message once or twice, then everyone should be on the same page. Others believe that since they heard a message from their managers then everyone else must be getting the same message. This isn’t even close to reality. With one client, we found up to 10 degrees of separation from line employees to the C-suite, which made those at the senior executive level appear to live above the clouds. They were for all intents and purposes untouchable to the average employee.

But the CEO leading the change worked very hard to shorten the distance between his office and the people making products every day. He communicated clearly to his senior leaders and expected them to help cascade the same language, using the exact same terms, to the people below them. And he got regular reports on who was doing the communicating and how the messages were being received.

This seems like such a simple concept, but many of us forget that with every level in the organization comes a greater chance for error, for key messages to be twisted and altered to fit the personality or agenda of the messenger.

Whenever possible, we suggest that senior leaders shorten the gap between the top of the company and the bottom. Deliver messages directly and in person to the broadest range of employees. Expect managers to do the same, and measure both participation and impact. This enables executives to manage the chaos before stories get too far off the desired path.

Go Far Together

One African proverb says “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” The same is true of change management.

Change doesn’t happen fast nor should it, in most cases. It takes time and planning to get the messages right and help everyone get on board. Organizational change is about setting up the company to go the distance. You can’t do that by racing alone.

Build a solid platform, communicate the end goal and how the company plans to get there, and recognize that most of the workforce won’t believe the messages until they see them lived out in and through management. With these bread crumbs the rest of the organization will make their way back to safety and join the rest of the company in reaching new goals.