Great companies face a new breed of problems in their workforce:
• “Why do we keep losing people we’ve invested so much in to other companies?” they ask.
• Why does money always seem to make people’s decisions?
• Why did a recent study show that 80% of employees are dissatisfied with their jobs?
• Why are companies cutting back on community efforts due to a lack of internal vision and support for these initiatives?
• Why are so many leaders of great organizations plagued by the idea that their successors don’t yet possess many of the internal qualities that preceded their organization’s original success?
If you don’t think these are significant and growing concerns, ask around a little.
The Problem
In a recent documentary, Robert Mondavi talked about how he invested his life building a fabulously successful wine empire and turning the Mondavi brand into a household name only to experience a surprising decline virtually immediately when passing the baton into the hands of others. Those new leaders had plenty of talents and well understood the vision and mission of the company, but lacked other key ingredients. What were they missing?
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This example shows the type of issues that companies are encountering on a more regular basis. Is there a strategy to simultaneously address all these concerns? Yes, but perhaps not what you’re thinking. It is not a new flavor of 360 Assessment, a special employee recognition program, or the innovative leveraging of a new technology, even though those are all good things.
You don’t have to look far to find success in today’s corporate world. What’s harder to find is the character that used to distinguish the truly great organizations from those that were simply successful. Often, beholden to stockholders or other private investors and increasingly in pursuit of success at all costs, companies have become shorter sighted these days in some key areas, leaving behind corporate cultures relatively high on expertise and comparatively low on character. As with any shortsightedness, the eventual negative effects don’t appear immediately.
Companies that have been become relatively large are especially vulnerable to things like employee turnover, Sarbanes-Oxley compliance issues and an increasing number of leaders that turn out to be more concerned about themselves than their organization. These issues all decrease vitality of the corporate culture. Those that are addressing these issues generally experience limited success because they don’t look in the right place.
Ineffective Attempts to Solve the Problem
Some companies look outside their organization to blame increasing pressures of global competition or the gorilla-sized-dot-com’s of this world to find the culprit. Others quickly point beyond their company to a small group of ringleaders who have made the headlines, whose abuse of their leadership positions and whose lack of integrity virtually single-handedly crippled great companies. Unfortunately in many cases, those who do not proactively address the issues of Core Values Disconnect (CVD), do not tend to recognize the developing threats often already present inside their company.
With the advent of sophisticated online mechanisms for shopping one’s talents practically worldwide, more and more employees are moving from place to place. But do you think they would shift so much if they truly found what they were looking for?
Inside Corporate Culture
This may surprise you, but the major cause of lack of retention and many other company issues is not outside the organization, but within. Within the organization itself and within its people. A growing number of highly visible organizations have unknowingly drifted away from and become less capable of an authentic expression of their own Core Values. What could employee turnover and lack of character possibly have to do with a company’s Core Values?
What’s happening is that companies have been focusing on Vision (what they see for the future) & Mission (how they are moving toward that vision) and leaving Core Values (who we are and the values that shape our actions) hanging neatly on the wall.
The irony is that when companies find a consistent, authentic expression of their core values from the boardroom to the backroom, this releases an x-factor into their corporate culture that attracts people and creates a sense of greatness both to those within and without. People want to be a part of something great, something that makes a difference beyond making certain widgets and providing certain services.
Core Values Disconnect (CVD)
The reasons for this growing phenomenon of CVD are as multiple and varied as its symptoms. They range from mindsets like ‘values are too personal these days so we can’t really talk about that at work’ to ‘the values of our founder are outdated and we have a more current way’: from ‘let’s just focus on making widgets well’ to ‘aren’t they supposed to develop that outside work?’. The problem is that over time this mentality creates a serious issue with big consequences that large organizations are waking up to all over the country.
Companies are realizing that to have the best employees requires commitment to their soft skills development and that it is no longer good strategy to leave character and leadership training to chance. To complicate matters further, the issue is far deeper and more complex than most vanilla Leadership Training programs out there ever reach. So even organizations that have tried to implement Leadership Development and Character Based Training have often found that the results fell far short of expectations.
Here’s the billion dollar questions: So just how do we get those values that hang on the wall to be a part of everyday organizational life? How do they become part of our corporate culture instead of just a part of new employee orientation?
This requires something more than a one-size-fits-all ethics class or a pre-digested program on leadership. It requires a two-fold strategic approach that targets revitalizing the Company’s own Core Values in conjunction with training that reinforces those values and builds character and leadership of employees on an individual level. Together with time and commitment, these initiatives bring about a transforming effect on the entire organization.
Some companies call it regaining a sense of history. Recently, in an effort partly aimed at reducing employee turnover, Citi, one of the world’s largest financial organizations, produced an extensive video to tell the story of their organization, mandatory for all employees. But what did they really hope to do? --Reacquaint most of the organization with the values that originally made the company great and stop the exodus. That way, employees at all levels would have a sense of being a part of something bigger.
The byproduct of what’s happening today, is an organizational climate of largely money-motivated, opportunistic employees that are ready to jump ship at the first down turn and leaders without a cause bigger than themselves. Both feel a sense of entitlement, squabbling with one another while they could be using the same energy to further their own contribution to the company. These same individuals could also find innovative ways to use platform of their business to make a unique difference in the community and world around them.
Solving the Problem
But let’s make it clear, this article is not another long distance attempt to potshot corporate America. It’s about partnering with organizations that recognize the growing need to become more effective in these critical areas and finding innovative ways to help them bring about change.
It’s not that in most organizations there are not many superb individuals who work to a higher standard and exemplify it well. It’s that the tide has turned to make this the exception rather than the rule. Companies need to revisit developing a greater sense of commitment to give back to employees and the community. Company efforts need to be bigger in spirit than donating primarily for tax breaks and a few token gestures at the holidays.
Why are companies so much more successful at training vision and mission than core values? The pursuit of vision and mission is much more visible in the near term and critically important, but in many cases, companies have been unaware of the slow departure from the original core values that were a vital part of making them great. What are core values anyway? They are what brought life to the vision and mission to the company in the first place. They do this in the same way a heart pumps blood to the rest of the body to keep it healthy and strong, literally being a ‘life-giver’ causing the body to work like a well-oiled machine.
It is quite common that companies have articulate renderings of their core values that hang on the wall, but have little success relating these values to their organization in such a way that employees internalize them. In some cases, the values have been passed down from a past founder, however recently or long ago, and simply have faded with time as if they were going out of style. Bet though technology, products and services may change, core values endure.
One of the greatest untapped potentials is undoubtedly a dedicated organization where employees at every level feel good enough about what they are doing to keep giving their all for the sake of the big picture. Let’s face it, in many places, the big picture has become the little picture. People are too busy thinking, “What’s in it for me? Where is the grass greener?”
But companies need to find ways to go beyond being successful to become significant. It’s not easy to address these issues and bring about the improvements that are necessary because generally there are relatively few who specialize in imparting core values and character to business professionals and their corporate cultures.
In some organizations, a key leader is getting ready to hand the baton to a successor. The successor, though capable in many ways, doesn’t seem to ‘get it’ on a deeper level. It is often the case that one generation of employees has not really been successful at imparting their core values to the next. Something significant is lost when this transfer is not made. Is there a way to bridge the gap before it is too late?
When Core Values are intentionally, skillfully, consistently and authentically woven into the fabric of an organization at every level, everybody wins.
“Leadership is about living these values, about living with integrity, about working with others to create a world where people's minds and hearts can be inventive and brave, human and strong; where people can aspire to do useful and significant things; and where people not only can aspire to change the world but can actually do it”, said Carly Fiorina, Former CEO Hewlett-Packard, (known at one point as one of the most powerful corporate cultures on earth).
In a way, even the Federal Government has gotten in on the act by passing the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002. Past all the red tape, it is basically an effort to legislate corporate values when it comes to accounting and reporting practices for publicly held companies. But we already know that though it is helpful to have legislation and this is a significant step, the root of the problem is at the character level and will not be solved with pieces of paper only.
But we must remember that Core Values need to endure. They are not passing like so many other aspects of business that must adapt to changing tastes. Once we realize that Core Values Disconnect is the root cause of many problems in corporate cultures today, the next step, beyond just pondering and discussing it, is taking action. The solution lies in finding the authentic combination of Core Values, figuring out how to communicate them so they come alive in employees and sticking with them through thick and thin.
For companies that want to reach higher and simultaneously address these increasingly draining issues outlined here, the commitment to a skillfully designed Strategic Core Values Initiative and Character-Based Training is as fundamental to their long term success as adherence to their Vision & Mission.
I Recommend these 2 books. Go to www.godisworking.com
Corporate Training: www.roili.com
Rick Hubbell
VP/Senior Consultant
ROI Leadership
San Jose, CA
408 487 1800