Leadership Starts with Culture

Uber’s corporate culture problems began long ago. You could probably say they began at the beginning.

The corporate culture in Uber from the beginning was one of “always be hustlin'” and “stepping on toes” according to an article in BGR. In a culture that hinges on that philosophy, you can expect that there will be personality conflicts. In addition you can expect harassment and abuse. It creates a no-holds-barred atmosphere where the only thing that matters is winning and crushing the competition.

What results is an eventual disintegration of the organization and the business.

Lack of Strong Corporate Culture Brings Disastrous Results

What’s resulted for Uber with this?

  • Most recently, the resignation of CEO Travis Kalanick.
  • Earlier in this year, the departure of 7 additional senior executives.
  • Sexual Harassment Lawsuits.
  • Uber drivers attempting to organize AGAINST Uber.
  • 200,000 users delete the Uber app from their phones in protest to Uber’s actions during the NY Taxi Driver protest
  • The apparent revelation that Uber has implemented systems to circumvent the law

Uber’s problem is clearly a top-down problem. It has created a poisonous corporate culture that has now put the organization in it’s current position of NO SENIOR LEADERSHIP at it’s most critical moment.

Before we go too far to eviscerate Uber management, however, we may want to see another picture.

More importantly for us than what Uber has done wrong is what we can learn from it and do right.

How Can Leadership Do Better?

Here’s some of the basic leadership lessons I see:

Corporate Culture Begins With Strong Core ValuesEstablish Core Values Early

It seems clear that a lack of real values exist in the corporate culture at Uber. When your primary drivers are to “Always Be Hustlin'”, promote “Meritocracy and Toe-Stepping”, and “Principled Confrontation” you easily fall into the trap of justifying behaviors for the sake of organizational success. Which is precisely what happened.

Case in point. Susan Fowler‘s blog post back in February of 2017. in the post she revealed alleged harassment and other abuses at Uber; along with a virtually powerless Human Resources department. When Fowler complained to HR about the manager she reported to directly propositioning her, she expected immediate results. Instead, she was told that while it was clearly sexual harassment the manager in question would simply be given a “stern talking to”. Why? Because he was a high performer and they didn’t want to ruin his career.

Core values place priorities where they belong and provide a barometer for the actions of every department and every employee.

I’m not a big operation right now, actually I’m barely a small operation. However, one of the first things I did when I started was to determine what was most important in what I do. I value trustworthiness, relationships first, and adding value to everyone. Through that, I can then gauge every word and every action around that. Anything that might jeopardize my trustworthiness, sacrifices relationships, or fails to add value simply is not appropriate. Failing to meet any one of these values is a deal breaker.

Set a Higher Standard for Senior Leadership

Whatever behaviors you expect out of your employees has to be not just exhibited but MAGNIFIED by leaders. This is especially true at the executive level.

Years ago I worked for an organization that in the business unit in which I worked started a large Total Quality Management campaign. Each and every employee not only had to develop a personal TQM statement, it had to be posted outside of their cubicle for all to see. I won’t even get into the insanity of creating cubicle world to promote total quality; that’s another talk for another time.

What made it fail was the lack of consistency at the executive level with this. Employees observed actions that were executed that seemed to fly in the face of most of the TQM principles. The reasoning then became that if they didn’t buy it, why should we?

Each senior leader needs to set the bar high for themselves because perception will always be a microcosm of reality. In other words, they will only see in their minds a small measure of what you actually are. If you want to promote trustworthiness, there is no room for moments where you aren’t so trustworthy; otherwise the perception is that you aren’t.

[tweetthis]Whatever behaviors desired in employees must be MAGNIFIED by leaders. #values[/tweetthis]

Place a Priority on the Care and Nurturing of Your People

Employees feel when they are NOT valued. They also feel it when they ARE valued.

Unless you are in an organization where the only person who ever talks to or serves a customer is you, then your employees are the real face of the organization. They will treat customers no better than they themselves are treated. So it only makes sense to place first value as a leader on your employees.

The Law of Reciprocity kicks in here. Treat people with respect and trust. Care for them professionally and personally. Help them get ahead. In return, they will commit more to you and the organization and treat your customers with respect and care.

Plan and Cultivate a Line of Succession

Teams (companies, organizations, throw your own word in here) of any size run in cycles. Leadership should and will eventually change. The ones that sustain success are the ones that have planned for that.

  • Excellent teams have intentionally cultivated people to assume greater roles.
  • They have embedded the core values in them.
  • Leaders train and coach them.
  • The Leaders have challenged them.

When that eventual change occurs, it’s almost seamless because the core values are still there. Even if some of the style changes, the core does not. The alternative is chaos while new leadership is identified and put in place; as well as for a long time after.

What do you think are the lessons learned here? How can leaders better ensure that behaviors are appropriate and consistent?

And How to Add Them to Your Toolbox

An plumber without the right tools can't be effective. A leader is the same.It is complicated and challenging being the leader. Especially a leader with a position of authority.

Demands are everywhere. Demands for more efficiency, more productivity. Do more with less. Keep everyone engaged. Reduce turnover. Make a profit. Get the reports in on time. Get more clients or customers. Answer emails. Hire good people. Get rid of unproductive employees. Fix problems.

It’s easy to get lost in all that. It’s also easy to forget what you were put there to do to begin with.

Your primary job, no matter your title, is to Boldly Lead your team.

What does it mean to Boldly Lead?

Boldly Lead logoTo Boldly Lead means to be strong and courageous when facing the demands of the day. It means to always place your primary focus on the people in your team and providing them with what they need to accomplish their goals or deadlines. It means to protect your team when they need protecting.

To Boldly Lead means grabbing the corners of the blanket and shaking them forward; giving them hope and vision. It means navigating for them and bringing clarity in all situations.

To Boldly Lead means you place people first, because it is only through your people that things get done consistently and productively.

[tweetthis hidden_hashtags=”#BoldlyLead” url=”http://ow.ly/B5b3309TP7a” display_mode=”box”]To Boldly Lead means that your people are your highest priority at work![/tweetthis]

Boldly Lead with Critical Skills

If you want to Boldly Lead your team, there are tools you need to be ready to pull out and use constantly and consistently.

Empathy

To show empathy for others means that you have an interest in and relate to other people’s feelings. We show concern for when members of our team have issues, especially when those issues have a lot of emotional content. In an interview in Success Magazine, noted author Simon Sinek says it is as simple as saying the words “Is everything OK?

He gives a great example that he documented in his book Leaders Eat Last. In an interview with a Marine Corp officer about what makes them so special; why every Marine is ready to lay their life on the line for each other. The officer said you could go to any Marine Corp mess hall and you would see that the least in rank eat first and the high officers last. Putting the needs of our team members – especially their emotional needs – before our own goes a long way towards showing that they are important. What you get in return is commitment.

Start with asking. “How are things going?“, “Are you ok?“, “How are you feeling?”  And then listen. Don’t judge, don’t try to fix.

LISTEN.

Emotional Intelligence

More than just a buzzword, it’s an important skill for a leader.

Author and psychologist Daniel Goleman identifies five qualities you must demonstrate to achieve a level of emotional intelligence:

  1. Self-awareness
  2. Self-regulation
  3. Motivation (or passion)
  4. Empathy
  5. Social Skills

In other words, it’s not just enough to be self-aware (“I know I am a jerk sometimes”) we must also learn to control that and have the passion for others to want to, the empathy to understand how it impacts others, and the social skills to implement it.

Emotional Intelligence can only be effectively achieved through a commitment to daily personal growth. Develop a plan of intentional growth that helps you become more aware of your strengths and weaknesses, and follow a specific plan of daily improvement.

Strategic Planning

This is where vision and navigation come in. Seeing the road ahead and the path to take. Anticipating the roadblocks and obstacles and knowing how to overcome them or get around them. Coaching your team on how to move ahead and stay consistent with your mission and values.

Communication

Author and former presidential speech writer James Humes says it best: “The art of communication is the language of leadership.”

Is it any wonder that survey after survey, year after year, identifies communication as the number one skill sought by employers?

Learn and develop active listening skills. Study not just what to say but how to say it. Understand how personality types affect how we communicate. You will use this tool every day, all day.

Calendar

What does a calendar have to do with being a leader? 

Close up of arms of woman holding schedule. She choosing certain dateUse it to schedule your personal growth time (minimum 30 minutes a day), your reflection and navigation time. Everything you absolutely need to do.

I don’t know who originally said, but I heard it from Michael Hyatt: What gets scheduled gets done.

What else? Fill in the calendar with every person’s birthday, partner’s birthday, anniversary, children’s birthday, work anniversary, and other significant dates. Add a reminder to each. Make a point of recognizing each of them.

Making them important by remembering what’s important to them.

What tools do you use to Boldly Lead your team? Identify tools you need to add to your toolbox. How are you going to change things?

Share your thoughts here or email me at psimkins@BoldlyLead.com.

Failure to Engage

Most corporate efforts to solve employee engagement problems is making things worse instead of better. It’s an epic fail.

Here’s why.

The Employee Engagement Dilemma

employee engagement imageFor the last several years now, organizations are becoming more and more aware of the epidemic proportions of employee disengagement. It’s not just in the United States, it is world-wide.

Despite the awareness and the efforts to stem the gushing flow of blood, the problem isn’t getting better.

In fact, there are some signs that it is getting worse.

Updated research from Gallup, OfficeVibe, and others reveals the awful truth.

A whopping 88% of employees don’t have a passion for their work!

An almost equally large 80% of Senior Managers are dispassionate!

The cost to corporations is now OVER $500 Billion annually!

Calculate Your Own Impact

If you want to figure it out for your company, try this ROI Calculator from OfficeVibe.

I did a sample just to give you an idea.

Say you are a small business. If you have

  • 100 Employees
  • $50,000 Average Annual Salary
  • 45% Turnover Rate (one local company I know of actually has this)

Then you could save over

$1, 405, 641 a year

through better engagement.

Let’s take a bigger company.

  • 1,000 Employees
  • $80,000 Annual Average Salary
  • 30% Turnover Rate (better but still high)

Then improved engagement will save you

$17, 666, 485 a year!

So why, then, in the face of the wonderful financial and productivity gains to be made with better engagement; why is it that we can’t seem to make things better?

Let’s start with a little story.

Bacon and Egg Breakfast

It’s an old joke but one of my favorites because it never really loses its relevance.

bacon and eggsA chicken and a pig are walking down a street and walk by a diner. Painted on the plate glass storefront window of the diner is an advertisement for a Bacon and Egg breakfast. Probably with toast but that’s not relevant here.

The chicken proudly perks up and says, “Look! If it wasn’t for my contribution that breakfast would not be possible!”

The pig says, “Yeah, for you it’s a contribution! For me, it’s total commitment!

It’s a great story for the difference between involvement and commitment. It’s also a great reason why our engagement efforts are failing.

Failure to Commit

From researching this, the conclusion I have drawn is that most organizations are failing to resolve employee engagement issues because they have not made it a priority in their strategic plan.

They are INVOLVED in employee engagement but are not fully COMMITTED to it.

In other words, they are the chicken and not the pig.

Here’s some examples of “solutions” to employee engagement that I have seen:

  • Taking the annual employee survey and re-packaging it as an Employee Engagement Survey.
    Incidentally, most companies are taking about the same amount of action from it now as they did when it was just an Employee Survey; that is to say very little if at all.
  • Creating new metrics to study employee engagement
    Don’t misunderstand. Metrics can be a valuable information source – if you know what you actually need to measure and if they can provide guidance to resolve issues. Otherwise, it’s just numbers. The other issue I have here is it is important to remember that with Employee Engagement not everything that counts can be counted.
  • Adding new benefits to the employment package.
    This is related to the old-school thought that all you have to do to make people happy is offer them more money and more bennies. Despite the mounting evidence that is doesn’t work and never did work, people still use it.
  • They focus on improving employee happiness
    On the surface, that seems logical. Where it falls down is that it makes an incorrect assumption. This approach assumes that a happy employee is a productive employee, yet this is NO EVIDENCE to support this.

These and other approaches will likely fail. While there is no one cure-all for employee engagement, the evidence seems to suggest that until Employee Engagement is made a STRATEGIC PRIORITY FROM THE TOP DOWN that anything we try will be a failure.

What does that look like?

  • A clear and concise mission statement and corporate value set lived out (and emphasized) from the top.
  • A well-defined leadership development track that focuses less on management technique and more on real leadership skills.
  • A improved system of hiring that focuses on character traits as strongly as skill sets.
  • A structured ongoing program to equip and empower employees to perform with excellence.

It’s time to stop being the chicken and become committed like the pig.

What engagement fails have you seen? What hurdles do you see in implementing real solutions? Share your thoughts here or email me at psimkins@BoldlyLead.com

Influencing Culture

What if…

What you do and what you say in every situation made a difference?

Of course, you know what’s coming next.

It does!

Two things inspired me to write this today.

First, I was reading my morning devotional. It was Esther 4.

Book of Esther pictureIf you are not a person of faith before you stray away: there is a valuable lesson in here for everyone.

In the story, the Jews are facing annihilation at the hands of Haman through his influence on King Xerxes. Mordecai, a Jew, had managed to get his cousin Esther, also a Jew, placed as Queen. Mordecai sends her a message to intervene with the King on behalf of the Jews but doing so could endanger Esther’s life and she hesitates, doubting her influence.

Mordecai’s response moved her: “Who knows if perhaps you were made queen for just such a time as this?

How would that hit you?

That one moment where she doubts she has influence and doubts she can make a difference is where she ends up having a huge impact and makes the biggest difference of all!

Secondly, I read a blog post from my mentor John C. Maxwell, also talking about influence

He also says those moments when we don’t think about who or how we influence is where we can have the greatest influence. The chance encounters, the seemingly insignificant.

[tweetthis hidden_hashtags=”#culturecounts” display_mode=”box”]We think about major moments so much that we forget that minor moments count as well.[/tweetthis]

Think about those moments and think about your day so far

Image of Influence Network

Are there moments you miss? What about your family this morning as everyone woke up? The person behind the counter at the coffee shop? The security guard at the front door to the office? The co-worker you walked by this morning?

In every circumstance, our choices help create examples for others to mirror. For example, most people will smile back at you if you smile at them. By making those same choices consistently, we encourage it in others, and that helps build culture.

Therefore, culture is created, it doesn’t just evolve. We help shape culture by our thoughts, our words, and our actions.

[tweetthis hidden_hashtags=”#CultureCounts #Ahhamoment”]Our daily choices influence culture in every circumstance.[/tweetthis]

What if you were in a particular time and place for such a time as this?

What if this person or group was where your influence counted the most?

What will your next choice be?

What thoughts and suggestions do you have to help others shape culture?

Double-Dose of Leadership

John C. MaxwellWe had the benefit at the 2014 L2:Learn-Lead simulcast to hear from John C. Maxwell twice.  He opened the proceedings, which I documented in the post Why Leaders are Learners – Part I, and then closed it with another talk.  This was an excellent close for many, who left raving about what they learned from this.  I did too!

Leaders are Learners By What They Ask Themselves

John emphasized that the first place he looks to ask questions is to ask questions of himself.  The questions we ask ourselves direct us — and sometimes re-direct us — to keep us focused on our vision and goals.  They help us determine if we are improving, if we are making an impact, and if we are truly leading.
Asking yourself questions on a regular basis helps keep the main thing the main thing.  It keeps us from majoring in the minors and getting lost in the details.  It helps us maintain a big picture view.

Three Questions to Ask Yourself

1.  Am I investing in myself?
When we take time, energy, and money to invest in our own growth, we prepare ourselves to lead more effectively, to be a more productive contributor, and primarily to unlock more of the potential in others.
[snaptweet]It doesn’t get any better for my people until it gets better for me.[/snaptweet]
This requires DAILY, INTENTIONAL growth.  I call it being a 1%er.
[snaptweet]Focus on growing yourself by just 1% a day.[/snaptweet]  That seemingly small 1% compounds quickly and soon you find yourself doing great things before you realize it.
Three Investment Indicators
  1. MY SELF-IMAGE – How do I perceive myself?  Do I truly believe in myself?  Quickly gauge yourself on this on a scale of one to ten.  Where are you?
  2. MY DREAMS – Do I have BIG dreams of what I want to achieve?  Are they scary and yet exciting?  Quickly gauge yourself on this on a scale of one to ten.  Where are you?
  3. MY FRIENDS – The Law of Environment kicks in here.  Are the people around you encouraging and uplifting?  Do they challenge you?  Do they add value to you?  Are you able to encourage, uplift, challenge, and add value to them?  Quickly gauge yourself on this on a scale of one to ten.  Where are you?
We will only invest in ourselves if we can honestly rate ourselves high in these areas.
2.  Am I investing in the right people?
  1. Do they influence others?  Who do they influence?  How many do they influence?
  2. Do they have potential to grow?
  3. What is their attitude and competence level?
  4. Chemistry Factor – Do they fit into the formula?  Do I like them?  Do others like them?
  5. Passion Factor – Do they have a genuine passion for what they do?  Are they motivated?
  6. Character Factor – Do their character traits fit in with the character traits I desire for my team?  Are they grounded?  Trustworthy?
  7. Values Factor – Are their values compatible with the team or organization (or my) values?  Critical to have this for the right culture within your team or organization.
[snaptweet]Culture eats vision for lunch![/snaptweet]
  1. Team Work Factor – Are they able to fit in and perform well as part of the whole?  Or are they a lone wolf?
  2. Support Factor – Are they supportive of other team members and organization objectives?  Can they support and complete me?
  3. Creative Factor – Can I count on them to seek out creative solutions to challenges?  Can they find possibilities out of impossibilities?
  4. Options Factor – Can they give me options?
  5. Ten Percent Factor – Can they give me the last 10%?  All the fruit is in the last 10%.  Can they stay for the harvest?
3. Am I genuinely interested in people?
Leaders see more than others see and see before others see.  Do I really care for others?  If so, I can use my advantage to add value to others.  If not, I will only use it to add value to me.

Where did you find yourself on this?  What questions do you ask yourself regularly?  Do you set aside time to think?

Add your thoughts and comments below.