weLEAD Online Magazine

leadingtoday.org

Copyright 2002 ã Jody Urquhart

Fierce Resolve

Bringing Corporate Philosophy Alive

By Jody Urquhart

IF THE SHOE DOESN’T FIT…?

Imagine this. A company has very promising and fashionable philosophies about customer service, integrity and trust. What are these glorious implications in the workplace? Nobody knows. Like beautiful footwear that doesn’t fit, no one has been able to try them out. Many companies invest a lot of time and resources to develop corporate philosophies (corporate mission, vision and value statements) but employees don’t buy into them because they just don’t fit the actual job. In fact, some employees find these corporate philosophies loose and irritating. Why?

Often mission, vision and value statements are ambiguous. Imagine you are a new employee and the organization you work for tells you to believe in certain philosophies (like your mother made you wear certain shoes). Yet you look around and you are not sure even the manager believes or understands them. It’s not clear how these polished philosophies relate to your job, yet you know they are important. This ambiguity can cause a lot of stress. You want to get your shoe in the door yet there is this massive void in your soul because you feel uneasy that the organization tells you constantly what to believe.

PITFALLS TO PHILOSOPHIZING

How much damage can corporate philosophies do? Here are some of the drawbacks:

1) ambiguous philosophies are hard to apply;

2) they are often created by a small group of employees and enforced on others;

3) many employees resent being told what to believe;

4) philosophy is theory. Business is a day-to-day hands on activity;

5) employees make things happen and need to be an integral part of the philosophy.

In many cases it’s not so much the corporate philosophy that is the problem, it’s how we apply it. Because employees are at the forefront of business activity, they need to understand a philosophy in order to apply it in different situations. If employees aren’t engaged and included in the process, an ambiguous statement turns them off their work. We apply a philosophy by engaging employees in it.

TERMS OF ENDEARMENT

How To Engage Employees in Corporate Philosophy

EMPLOYEES BEFORE PHILOSOPHY

Which would be better: a) a group made up of strong purposeful individuals or, b) a strong purposeful group that thinks alike? A group made up of strong purposeful individuals that think on their feet and define their own standards is far more attractive. Most successful organizations have mission statements, most individuals do not. Like organizations, employees need a purpose for their work, a guiding mission that provides meaning to daily activities. Employees must come before philosophy. So, before engaging employees in a corporate philosophy, first help them uncover their own sense of purpose in their work. The following example will illustrate why this is important.

When I was a retail manager, most of our staff was young and “couldn’t care less” about the job. This nonchalant attitude permeated the corporate culture. It was interesting to watch how quickly new staff adopted this attitude. They desperately wanted to fit in. As they loudly proclaimed, “this job sucks!” they pretended not to care about anything. The workplace defined their expectations of the job. Think of any new job you have had. When you first started, weren’t you looking for signs that indicated what the culture was like? What was considered acceptable? How far employees were able to push the limits? How much control the manager really had?

EMPLOYEES NEED TO DEFINE THEMSELVES OUTSIDE OF OTHERS EXPECTATIONS

Corporate culture defines expectations that affect performance. This is why we need to help employees to identify and strengthen their own sense of purpose before selling corporate expectations to them. Employees must define themselves outside of the expectations of others. They must define what is purposeful about the work, what they enjoy, and what success looks like to them to enhance their sense of individual purpose. Employees with a strong sense of purpose are more accountable, self-motivated and initiating.

Strategy: Here are some tools to help encourage individual purpose in others.

Get employees thinking about why they are working at this job in the first place. Depending on the job, the answers will vary. (The following are real answers drawn from a seminar).

Why are you in this job?

The pay check

I love my customers

Support my lifestyle

It’s a stepping stone to something else

Social Interaction

I have a great boss

These are all good reasons and likely an employee’s immediate response. Yet, if individuals dig deeper they can really get to the heart of it. The answers will start to tap into a more lasting sense of meaning. Ask employees what they care about. Eventually the answers will be more like:

What do you care about in terms of what you do in your job?

Helping employees improve their lifestyle

Helping employees feel good about themselves

Seeing the look in a customers eyes when they are really satisfied

Knowing the product is making a difference

Being in a strong and sound organization

The company values are consistent with my own

Honesty and integrity of business conduct.

FROM INDIVIDUAL NEEDS TO COLLECTIVE PURPOSE

Notice the variation between the answers in the two groups. As employees are asked what they care about in their jobs the answers move away from individual concerns toward helping others, building collective purpose. Employees must take care of individual needs before they can spare enough energy to contribute to others. Through coaching and follow-up, managers can help employees care for their own needs so they can free up their energy for the group good. As Maslow’s Hierarchy suggests, employees need to satisfy lower-order needs like food and shelter (pay check) and social needs (interaction) before higher order needs like purposeful work will prevail. As Maslow suggests, employees are most motivated by their strongest needs, so find out what those needs are and motivate them accordingly.

The more employees, both individually and as a group, answer these questions, the more purposeful the work becomes to them. If you join a financial planning firm and your manager tells you, “Your purpose is to help employees achieve financial independence,” it isn’t as meaningful as discovering a definition for yourself. The good manager continually draws the answers from employees. Just as employees draw from their paycheck, you need to draw from your talent base. Create conversations about things that matter to employees, at the same time creating for them a sense of identity. When employees have their own sense of purpose they are not so easily influenced by the environment or the employees around them. They have defined a purpose for themselves that not even a change in management, a change in the job or other employees’ negative opinions can take away.

SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE THIS

Some habits die fast, others linger forever. They endure usually because we are not aware of their furor. Knowing is half the battle, so squash bad habits simply by becoming aware of them. What if employees found out their habits were contributing to failure: “infesting outcomes and destroying otherwise promising results”. Managers can support employee growth by helping them become aware of the habits that precipitate fruitless results. One warning: don’t have employees focus on where they aren’t strong, at the expense of where they are. It all has to be in balance. Keep their focus on what they want—success. Help them be aware of weaknesses and focus on strengths. Ask employees what success looks like to them. Get them to define it clearly. They should define success with words, activity, goals, achievement, confidence, overall comfort and skill level, attitude and specific abilities. Then have them think about how they can incorporate these things into their job now. If they were successful on this job, then what would be different? Make sure employees understand how their strengths and skills add to the group’s collective purpose. Strong habits prevail and succeed if you focus on them.

Applying Corporate Philosophies

THE MISSION STATEMENT

Remember the movie Jerry McGuire? Tom Cruise’s character lost his job because he risked distributing his mission around the office, “the things we think but don’t say.” This mission embodied Jerry’s concern that the company had learned not to care enough about the business and their clients. Unlike most employees though, it really did mean something to Jerry—he says he is prepared to die for something and prepared to live for its cause. The corporate mission is a unifying source that focuses employees and departments on the reason for their work. Once employees are encouraged and aware of their individual purpose, get them focusing on company and group purpose. What is the purpose of our collective efforts? Mission statements and pat purpose statements don’t work. Managers often create job descriptions for staff have not met and often don’t even know. A mission statement that isn’t true to reality can do more harm than good to employees and customers. Because it is not true, it creates distance. The main reason its doesn’t seem true is most employees don’t understand why it is so important. For purpose to really work we have to involve employees in it. The following example illustrates how.

Let’s say a delivery company’s corporate mission is to be the “leading delivery company in North America with a solid commitment to get customer’s merchandise to them within 24 hours, in excellent shape and in a careful and courteous manner.”

It’s clear, it’s understandable, let’s assume it’s achievable. How do you make it real? Involve others. If possible, employees should be involved in the creation of the purpose statement. In many large organizations this is just not practical. Yet employees still need to know why they do the activities they do. Here’s how you involve others in the company purpose.

As a group:

a) break down the corporate mission into its separate aspects and,

b) understand why each part is important to the different partners

c) apply it to the job.

Here is how our example unfolds:

a) Break down the purpose into its separate aspects

1) get customer’s merchandise to them

2) within 24 hours

3) in excellent shape

4) in a courteous and careful delivery manner

b) As a group discuss why each aspect of the purpose is important to the different partners, and important to:

· the various department(s) in the organization

· the company

· the customer

· their immediate coworkers

· and to the individual job(s) in their department

c) Apply it to the job.

Start with number one, getting merchandise to the customer, and discuss why this is important to the department (if this is applicable). Of course you want to discuss other departments as well, especially the departments most affected by your activities (i.e. the sales department is really affected by manufacturing). Go through all the categories and make an extensive list, and then go back to number two and start over again.

BROADER PERSPECTIVE

As a plane leaves the runway the objects outside get smaller and your view widens. Pretty soon you see people as tiny dots on the pavement, then you see your neighborhood, then the whole city. As you step back from a situation at work, your view also widens. Pretty soon you see your job, then coworkers’ jobs and then the purpose of the whole company.

Help employees become more aware of how their job affects others—from the company as a whole, to their individual jobs, to customers. Ask staff to stretch their perspective past the day-to-day. They are learning to focus not just on the short-term daily activities, but to link their job to the bigger picture. Employees are more accountable and committed when they understand how others depend on them.

FOCUS ON ACCEPTANCE NOT IMPLEMENTATION

Focus on employees and their acceptance and understanding of the principle, not on implementation. Keep surveillance to a minimum, leave the implementation to them. Get individual employees to commit, based on what they care about and what they are good at, to keeping this purpose alive. Remember the movie Castaway? Tom Hanks really cared about (actually was obsessed with) getting customers’ packages to them within 24 hours. Even if it took him five years to do so, he was going to be sure he got the parcel to its final destination. Surely someone in the delivery company shares a similar concern. Get this person to commit to making sure this 24-hour deadline is met. Have them report back to the group with data, success stories, areas for improvement, etc. Then be sure you have a strong communication commitment through regular meetings, celebrations, newsletters and group projects. Break out of constricted job functions and break into employee’s hearts and minds by vying for their input and acceptance.

ENTICE TALENT

Make sure managers know the strengths of individuals on their team. Keep an inventory, then summon their skills to the project. Too often employees suppress their talents because the job doesn’t provide an outlet in which to use them. If employees aren’t using their skills and talents regularly, they may quit and take those talents elsewhere.

THE TEST

Every employee in the business should be able to answer the question, “What does your company do?” This should reflect the customer’s needs and not just be a reiteration of the product. Ask 15 employees at various levels of your organization what the corporate mission is. Record the answers. If their responses don’t reflect the corporate mission, reword and simplify it. Even more important is their understanding and acceptance of the mission. Go through the steps above again until you engage employees enough that they understand and accept the corporate mission. In this way you create a corporate culture that revolves around employees and their collective purpose.

Comments to: ido@idoinspire.com

BACK TO weLEAD HOME PAGE

About the author:

Jody Urquhart, a popular speaker and writer, is recognized in Canada, the United States and Europe, She has presented her signature topic, Joy of Work, to 65 organizations last year alone. Her monthly column on the same subject appears in over fifty trade journals. Jody is also an associate speaker for the Individual Development Organization in Vancouver where she works with Bill Clennan, the Dean of Canadian Speakers.

Jody holds diplomas in Professional Speaking and Writing from Mount Royal College and in Management and Marketing from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology. She studied Management for three years at the University of Calgary. Her business experience includes management positions in both the banking and retail industries. Jody is a proud member of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers and holds the distinction of being one of its founding board members. Jody is the author of the book “ALL WORK & NO SAY TAKES THE PASSION AWAY”. To order your copy, or to discuss having Jody speak at your next meeting, feel free to email her at ido@idoinspire.com