#WorkTrends Guest Archives

Company Culture: For Those About To Rock

July 6, 2015/Archives /by Jim Knight

Most companies ignore organizational culture. It’s not important to them. Business leaders have been conditioned to focus exclusively on strategy and operations, all the while hoping that a strong culture will eventually be developed once they attain success. This mindset it totally understandable… and completely wrong!

Focusing exclusively on tactical nuts and bolts will keep the company from ever achieving cultural nirvana – and companies that succumb to this small-time thinking will continue to wallow around in a malaise, constantly pushing the program or strategy-of-the-day to attain any financial success.

Rock star brands understand the difference between these two approaches and seek a higher purpose. They constantly opt for long-term sustainability of culture versus the limited focus of an annual strategy. As iconic management consultant and writer Peter Drucker once famously put it:

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

Drucker was so right. Unlike processes, tools, products and strategies, all of which can be easily copied, company culture is unique. So unique, in some cases, that replicating it proves to be too hard for a competitor to even attempt. That’s the advantage. A great organizational culture provides differentiation for consumers and employees alike. And it should be hard to copy.

But company culture should not be hard to understand.

Therein lies the reason so many businesses ignore culture – they don’t understand it, so that’s where we need to start.

I define an organization’s culture as simply “a collection of individual behaviors.” That’s the purest and easiest definition I can think of to really communicate how a brand’s culture can be affected. All roads lead back to human behavior.

Essentially, culture is inherent in the behaviors of a company’s employees. Some would like to believe that the culture is defined by a set of behaviors that remain unchanged over time, but that’s simply not true. Behaviors change because people change – they come and go in a brand all the time. Culture change is inevitable. What we want is the right culture change.

Surround Yourself With The Right People And You’ll Have The Right Culture

All organizational practices – positive and negative – only exist because individuals make them happen. Therefore, employee behavior will always be home base for us as we create, maintain, enhance or even revolutionize your company culture.

Remember: culture is only as strong or as weak as the employees that collectively make up the heart and soul of the organization.

Companies with strong and anchored cultures will grow and prosper while those with weak and frail cultures will wilt and eventually die. In 2008, when I started to put my thoughts into words for my book, Culture That Rocks, it seemed to me that in the global economic downturn, the focus of many companies (other than the obvious of staying in business) was on meeting three goals:

Differentiated Value Proposition
Unparalleled Customer Loyalty
Strong Employee Engagement

Today these goals are still the focus of most leaders. But to get there, in many cases, they’re going to have to change some things about the company. They are going to have to make a commitment to enhancing their company’s culture. This might mean subtle changes for some organizations while others may require a drastic overhaul. Why invest in these changes? Because at the end of the day, a company’s culture contributes an enormous amount to its success.

Image: bigstockphoto.com

Values-Based Leadership And The Future World Of Work

July 15, 2014/1 Comment/Archives /by Mark Fernandes

The world has experienced many significant events in the last 200  years and noticeably so in the last 25. From the fall of the Berlin wall and the advent of the Internet to 9/11 and the great recession, much has happened that has altered how we see things. As John Mackey states in his book Conscious Capitalism, “these factors have dramatically changed society and created a transformed landscape for business.” He goes on to say, “all of these changes and challenges offer great business opportunities, but they cannot be effectively addressed if we use the same mental models we have operated with in the past.” This being said, there is a substantial amount of evidence illuminating the fact that leaders and subsequently leadership and business may not be evolving with the changing world.

Recent data from global surveys indicates an alarmingly low rate of trust, loyalty, hope, and optimism about the future among workers. These feelings (along with other dimensions measured) about paid work continue to push the critical metric of associate engagement down to levels in the 23% to 30% range in 2013 assessments. At this rate, it is estimated that some $500 billion annually is being lost as a result of such factors as lower productivity and employee frustration. In 2013 alone some 19 million employees, or 13% of the US workforce is estimated to have left their jobs. John Mackey sums it up best in saying that “most companies are still doing business using mind-sets and practices that were appropriate for a very different world.” We believe it is time to change that.

At Luck Companies, we have been in the human business for 90 years extending back to 1923 when our founder Charles Luck Jr. started the company on the philosophy, “If you do right by your people, they will do right by you.” Today, his beliefs are manifested in our company’s value proposition of “Doing good – making a difference in the lives of our associates, is the best path to doing well – exceptional personal and business performance.” Day in and day out we focus not only on what we do, but also on how and why we do it with a culture that prioritizes enterprise- wide alignment to a set of timeless core values and a purpose beyond just making money. Our mission (or purpose), “We will ignite human potential through Values-Based Leadership and positively impact the lives of others around the world,” leverages the fact that all human beings are born with the extraordinary potential to live a life of meaning and contribution, and speaks to Values-Based Leadership as the activator of that potential. We define Values-Based Leadership (VBL) as, “living, working, and leading in alignment with your personal core values, principles, beliefs, and purpose to in turn ignite the extraordinary potential in those around you,” a philosophy and practice similar to other styles such as Authentic, Servant and Truly Human Leadership.

Today, five years into our mission, we have experienced first hand the power of Values-Based Leadership and its capacity. We have witnessed the exponential effect of an ignited or actualized human being and the impact that one life lived meaningfully well can have on so many others both inside and outside our company walls. We have traveled the world to share our work, ideology, and VBL model, and remain humbled by the ongoing feedback about the difference it has made in peoples’ lives globally. And while our mission is clearly the meaning we aspire to make, its manifestation in how and the resulting culture where associates can make a difference while making a living is what we are most proud of. An environment that we believe will serve us well in the future of work.

(About the Author: Having a passion for inspiring people to believe in themselves and become everything they are capable of becoming, Mark is charged with transforming Luck Companies into a global Values Based Leadership (VBL) organization. In his role as Chief Leadership Officer, he serves as a thought leader for the ongoing development of the VBL ideology and model, and is responsible for the integration of VBL within Luck Companies. Mark’s work also extends beyond Luck Companies’ doors and includes sharing the VBL model through mentoring, speaking, teaching, and consulting with organizations of all sizes, across all industries and all geographies.

valuesbasedleader.com

Mark is an active member of the Mason Center for Social Entrepreneurship and was recently selected as one of the 100 Top Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business 2014 by Trust Across America and Switch and Shift’s Top 75 Human Business Champions. His genuine interest in helping people flourish is fueled by his deeply held belief in the extraordinary potential of all human beings and peoples’ ability to experience an exceptional quality of life once their potential is actualized.)

photo credit: JD Hancock via photopin cc

How To Create A Competitive Claim That Is More Than Hot Air

July 9, 2014/1 Comment/Archives /by Roy Osing

Most companies struggle with defining what makes them unique; different from their competitors. They can’t answer the question “Why should I do business with you and NOT your competition?” in a succinct meaningful way.

There are two traps they fall into.

First, they generally speak to the internal capabilities an organization has (what leadership believes are the differentiators) rather than being explicit about how they compare to others in the market. “We provide the highest quality products.”; “Our people are our greatest asset.” They stress technology. They talk about their size and claim market leadership.

Second, most competitive advantage statements are high level and aspirational in nature. They are not precise and specific enough to communicate how an organization is special among the choices available. “We provide the best value.” “We have been in business for 100 years.” “We offer the lowest prices out there.”

The use of helium filled adjectives often abound. Overused and eye-glazing descriptors like: better, best, top, #1, excellent, great, greatest, lowest, most and so on pervade the advertising airwaves.

A competitive claim must declare the difference between your organization and your competitors AND it must be precise enough so that people can “see” the difference. You can’t see “greatest” for example and you can’t see “most”. They mean different things to different people.

As the solution, create The ONLY Statement as an element of the Strategic Game Plan

“We are the ONLY ones that…” is its form.

ONLY must be brief. If it takes you a page of narrative to define your competitive advantage, you don’t have one.

ONLY never includes the “P” word. Claiming a price advantage is a slippery slope as price can be easily copied and it says nothing about value provided. “The reason it seems that price is all your customers care about is that you haven’t given them anything else to care about. “ – Seth Godin

A couple of ONLY examples:

“We provide the ONLY solution that permanently stops people from depositing biohazard contaminants through manhole covers”— MUG Solutions, Vancouver

“St John Ambulance is the ONLY provider of First Aid, Health & Safety Solutions Anytime, Anywhere”— St John Ambulance, Vancouver

Test ONLY with your customers to ensure it addresses something they care about, and you consistently demonstrate 24/7. The ONLY Statement works. It can be observed. It can be measured. People get it.

Start your ONLY journey today….

(About the Author: Roy Osing (@RoyOsing) is a former executive vice-president and CMO with over 33 years of leadership experience. He is a blogger, educator, coach, adviser and the author of the book series Be Different or Be Dead.)

To discuss World of Work topics like this with the TalentCulture community, join our online #TChat Events each Wednesday, from 6:30-8pm ET. Everyone is welcome at events, or join our ongoing Twitter and G+ conversation anytime. Learn more…

TalentCulture World of Work was created for HR professionals, leadership executives, and the global workforce. Our community delves into subjects like HR technology, leadership, employee engagement, and corporate culture everyday. To get more World of Work goodness, please sign up for our newsletter, listen to our #TChat Radio Channel or sign up for our RSS feed.

Do you have great content you want to share with us? Become a TalentCulture contributor!

photo credit: Len Radin via photopin cc

Be Different Or Be Dead

June 23, 2014/2 Comments/Archives /by Roy Osing

BE DiFFERENT or be dead: the stand-out leaders’ mantra

NEVER has it been more important to carve out a distinctive and unique place for your organization in the market than it is today. The economy is unpredictable. Competition is intense as new competitors are entering the market at a blistering rate. New technology “rains down” relentlessly.

Markets are cluttered with sameness; products and services are undifferentiated and competitive claims are lost in the crowd. Customers are more empowered than ever before, establishing relationships with suppliers that deliver distinctive solutions and ignoring those that don’t. Which organizations are successful and survive this challenging business environment, and what separates them from the others that struggle, hang on and eventually fail?

Those that are able to win this battle are DiFFERENT from their competitors. They survive the scrutiny of the discriminating customer by providing relevant, compelling and unmatched value.

Those that have no distinctive identity simply don’t make it.

They die. How can organizations stand-out from the herd and distance themselves from it? It starts with reinventing how strategy is developed. The emphasis is shifted from strategic direction to execution. Many plans look good on paper but can’t be executed. They are theoretically pristine but worthless as they fall short of delivering results.

The BE DiFFERENT or be dead Strategic Game Plan is designed for execution and answers 3 questions:

1. HOW BIG do you want to be? – growth goals
2. WHO do you want to SERVE – target customers to achieve growth
3. HOW do you intend to compete and WIN – value proposition that gives The WHO reasons to buy ONLY from you. Being the best of the best is ignored; being the ONLY ones that do what you do is coveted.

Marketing is focused on creating experiences rather than flogging products. Investing in current loyal fans is given priority over providing special promotions and deals to acquire new customers. Mass markets are ignored in favour of concentrating on the individual and discovering their “secrets” that will unlock economic value. The world of “me” gains momentum.

Customers are looked at holistically; experiential packages are designed for each of them to satisfy their broad life desires. Creating happiness is the marketer’s end game. Customer Service is out; SERVING Customers is in with the end game to “dazzle” the customer and take their breath away. Internal rules and policies are re-vectored to make customer engagement a friendly process. The customer is brought in to the organization to get their fingerprints on how they want to be treated.

“Leadership by Serving Around” is the new culture. “How can I help you?” are the words leaving leaders’ lips not “Do this.”

The BE DiFFERENT Bottom Line:

To Stand-out from the Herd you need to provide value that people care about and that is unique. Failure to deliver and you’ll be ignored, invisible, common and dead (sooner or later).