I was part of a team of consultants that worked with senior leaders at a defense contractor that was attempting to win a very big government contract against long odds and strong competition. These leaders were well versed on what it took to win this contractâtechnical perfection in engineering design of a technologically complex defense product and an organization that could be counted on to deliver on requirements surrounding cost, quality, and schedule. Government auditors had made it clearâbeing technically perfect was only half the battle. All competitors for this contract had the engineering expertise to create a winning prototype. Their challenge was creating a culture where people would do all the things necessary to meet the cost, quality, and schedule requirements. That turned out to be a very big challenge.
Hard working leaders. Smart people. Great decision makers. Talented problem solvers. Disciplined in doing their work.
ButâŚthat was not enough.
This was new territory for them, one for which the companyâs future hung in the balance. It was about creating a new state of being, a new culture, rather than addressing a big problem or making a tough decision. Everything they knew that made them a great management team worked against themâthey acted like this was just another problem to solve, another decision to make, and another opportunity to prove their experience would carry them forward.
Culture doesnât change as a result of great decision making and great problem solving. Culture permeates throughout an organization and its subunits and impacts everyday thought and action. Changing thought and action is about our identity as an organization, and culture change, therefore, is never a problem to solve or a decision to make. It involves a process that few understand because it involves not only senior leaders and formal leaders throughout the hierarchy, but everyone else as well.
Even if these executives truly understood this assertion, they had never lived it. This was new territory for them. They had read all the books. They knew what to say and they said it well. We didnât have to teach them much about effective organizations or culture or change. They were experts!
And they were lostâŚand they knew it.
They understood the challenge they faced was more than change. It was creating a new order of things in an organization that struggled with simultaneously achieving cost, quality, and schedule goals in their past. Their history with change made it clear that they needed to change how they led change efforts. It was for this reasons that we were brought in. They wanted help.
They needed help.
Despite conversations in which they stated that they understood how to lead this change effort, they had never attempted change on anything of this type, scale, or scope before. Their choice of words suggested that they believed it would be impossible. They had a history of hiring consultants, creating plans, delegating assignments, and pushing programs forwardâand going nowhere.
The time frame for the change effort was over two years out. Prototypes, plans, and government audits would fill that time, as the countdown began toward the final decision. Early on, we talked continuously about leadership, about their leadership, and about change. We talked about what it meant for them to show up as effective, trustworthy people first, and then as effective leaders. We talked about how culture can shift. We talked about their role and how it would have to evolve to lead this type of change effort. We talked about change strategy. We talked a lot about organizational conditions (e.g., work design, structure, metrics, and HR systems to include pay and rewards) that conflicted with their change goals. And, importantly, we talked about their workforce.
The workforce at this company was neither engaged nor committed to company success. They did what they had to do, and some of them, some of the time, went out of the way to make things worse (i.e., deliberate sabotage). Their unionâmanagement problems were long-term, deep-rooted, and well-documented. There was no cooperation on anything. Their functions fought each other, and in the aftermath, winners and losers alike left the organization less able to meet company objectives and work goals. They struggled to attract young people or keep those they were able to hire. Their turnover rate among their best employees, and thus their âbrain drain,â was alarming. The people there made pejorative reference to their executives who worked in what they euphemistically called the palaceâoffices that conveyed a majestic status magnified by the drab surroundings and aging furniture and computers that others had throughout the organization.
It was no surprise that this executive team knew that winning this contract would require a deep change in everything to do with their people. It also came as no surprise that they believed that it would take a miracle to reinvent this culture in a two-year time frame.
Over time, these executives started to understand the role that their workforce needed to play in securing their future. The epiphany came when we had them conduct focus groups with their own people and they came away shaking their heads as they reported stories they heard from a cynical workforce that was in pain. They heard stories about their own decisions and actions that lead to this pain. This executive team finally understood the role they played in creating the conditions that led to a culture that now made change all that more difficult.
Had they experienced this epiphany several years earlier, they might have started to create a more People-Centric and effective workplace where their current change challenge would be neither as daunting nor so seemingly impossible. They finally understood the need to make their people partners in creating their future. Easily said, but a miracle indeed in a company where leaders had spent decades harming their relationship with the very people who now were needed to secure this companyâs future.
This was my key learning from this engagement: The organizational conditions these leaders created became the very problems that they had to overcome. A famous 1970sâ syndicated comic strip (see Kelly 1971) had a very insightful cartoon character, Pogo, looking into the distance and proclaiming, âWe have met the enemy and he is us.â That same thing was at work here.
These executives created their challenge. Had they better understood what it meant to treat their workforce as a critical stakeholder every day, cost, quality, and schedule would be everyoneâs responsibility, and not just those who managed these metrics. Had they worked to create a real shared future with their people, that workforce would have been more readily on board for change when change was needed. Had they turned their people into their partners, the culture change that seemed so daunting to formal leaders would have been everyoneâs responsibility to produce.
This learning point has stuck with me throughout the subsequent years. I began to see examples of and heard stories about executive teams and other leaders who managed to harm their relationship with their people and, as a consequence, experienced the blunt end of their power when their cooperation was most needed. Espousing values about how important people are is not enough to secure the real support that people must add in all modern organizations. Support like that takes time to earn, and it is easy to lose.
When we donât understand the critical role that our people play, we canât lead and manage in ways that truly make them our partners. We canât (or wonât) see how we have to protect this stakeholder groupâs allegiance. We will never see the Simple Truths I describe or understand the type of leadership that we need to live every day for all of this to happen, the foundation stones that help engage people in and commit them to an organizationâs cause. We will never create the corporate culture where shared responsibility and change are just what people do every day.
In this book, I will describe 10 Simple Truths that, when taken together, arguably lead to more effective organizations and cultures that sustain that effectiveness. They are axiomatic. They are what it takes to create and sustain organizations where people not only perform up to their capabilities, but also show up when we need them most, in times of change.
I have presented these Simple Truths dozens of times to leaders, managers, and students who nod their heads in real understanding and agreementâŚand who also wonder out loud whether they are able to lead and manage in ways consistent with the principals they reflect. Simple does not mean easy.
For some, years of mental habits will make this mindset feel unnatural and uncomfortable. For others, prior success in older ways of thinking will make acceptance of some of these Simple Truths challenging. Still other readers will be excited to see a path to goals that they care about for their business. Donât let prior mental habit and prior approaches get in the way of seeing this possibility. Allow yourself to become excited about a new path that can produce the results you want mostâa sustainably successful business that can weather, and thrive in, the turbulent times that all businesses face.
I suspect that some of you might believe it would be hard to implement these Simple Truths in your business. In the company described above, these leaders spent decades dipped in a culture that made these truths hard to see and accept, and even harder to make come alive. They seemed too simple to be real; too simple to work. And yet we can find examples of organizations that live these Simple Truths every dayâŚand who thrive.
Southwest Airlines is a well-known example. Even here, my friend Cynthia Young, former Director of Internal Customer Care for a decade, tells me that people find it hard to believe the Simple Truths that underscore Southwestâs long-term success. She would regularly make presentations on, or host visitors who come to learn about, the Southwest way, only to hear people repeatedly ask, âCynthia, what do you really do to get your people to buy in so much to Southwestâs culture?â So simple they canât be real; too simple to work!
The Simple Truths work because of leaders who are People-Centric at their coreâin their mindset, their heart-set, and their behavior. They work because of People-Centric leaders who infect others with this approach, and who help embed these truths into their culture. They work because the culture it produces is one where people are engaged and committed to serving each other, their customers, and the business well. They work because it is a path to something that serves all stakeholdersâa place to serve and to be served, a place to be supported, to grow, and be honored for contributionsâŚand a place where everyone can prosper.
What form does this leadership take? It is leadership based on true respect for all people these leaders touch (employees, customers, stockholders, suppliers, distributors, etc.), built on a foundation of the Simple Truths.
Too simple to be true; too simple to work.
Imagine what could result if your organization culture produced engagement, commitment, and contribution from all of your people. Now imagine the consequences that would follow if you didnât try to bring about this level of engagement, commitment, and contribution to your business. Then ask, where are we now? What direction are we headed in and what does our scorecard look like? Are your people highly engaged, committed, and contributing to your businessâ success? Is there a gapâŚand does that gap have anything to do with failing to create the kind of culture that can create and sustain an effective organization?
You will find application questions and activities at the end of every chapter. Answer the questions and do the activities. I recommend that you bring your leadership team together to discuss these questions and do these activities together. Effective organizations do not just happenâŚthey require leadership and sustained efforts at helping everyone in the organization (whether 100 people or 1000 people or 100,000 people) come to value and live these Simple Truths. The outcome will be an organization that can win today and tomorrow, that doesnât struggle with creating the next order of thingsâeither inventing new ways of competing or quickly catching up with those that do.
For most of us, that means that personal development has to be on our career journey. Indeed, as noted by Willyerd and Mistick (2016), personal development has become a necessity in todayâs changing reality. We cannot fully predict...