Papers polarize issues to sell papers. Televisions shows and movies sell us villains and heros. Pure good and evil is so pervasive in our pop culture, yet it rarely exists.

For every Russell Williams there are hundreds of thousands of Canadians that could never be labelled ‘evil’ or even ‘bad’. So it is unfortunate that conflict sells, because its popularity hyper-sensitizes us to label the people and organizations we see in our daily lives as good or bad, and I’m as guilty as the next guy.

But experience has taught me that, whenever I start to think of a coworker, group or organization as an bad or as an adversary, I’m usually wrong. I now force myself to stop and think: Is the individual behaving badly because they are bad, or because they are being put in a bad situation? In my experience, there has been almost no case where bad behaviour could not be explained by a bad situation. As a result, I inevitably see bad systems, not bad people.

But I’m not saying that this is an easy thing to do, it isn’t!

If every time you interact with a person they seem to get angry at you for ‘doing your job’, something called ‘cognitive dissonance‘ kicks in. This is the uncomfortable feeling that you get when things don’t jive. You think “This person is treating me like I am an unreasonable or incompetent person,” and this very likely conflicts with your view of yourself. In an effort to deal with this dissonance, it is much easier to say to yourself, “well this person must be a jerkface”, than to cool your anger and think “this is the product of a pretty standard human in bad system or situation”. In fact, a more likely course of action is that you try and find other people who also think that this person is a jerkface, share your experience, and feel better that your observation has be corroborated by others (helping satisfying the dissonance). You also become more perceptive of the other actions confirming that this person is bad (confirmation bias).

It is human nature, but it just isn’t very productive.

Since it so hard to react in a positive way when you feel like you are being attacked, prepare yourself ahead of time:

Dog-ear a page in your notebook and write a few things down to prompt you the next time you are dealing with a confrontation. Some suggestions:

• If you’re too angry to think straight, disengage!
• He/she probably isn’t angry with you, it’s their situation
• Say “I see that this is causing you concern, what can I do to help?”
• I can tear a strip out of this guy/gal, but would it really help my cause?

Remember, the best place to find a villain, is in the movies.

Click to read the story behind the photo.

When something bad happens, it seems to be human nature to find something –or someone– to blame it on. A few-hundred years ago, it was easy to find a scapegoat for a bad harvest, mental illness of a loved-one, the sudden death of your goat, a boil on your butt, or a hangnail. This scapegoat was called a witch.

It must have been pretty easy to find someone in any 17th century town that could be easily labelled a witch. It could be someone that didn’t follow societal norms, had mental illness, had a preponderance of warts, or had the dreaded third nipple (these were sometimes called the ‘witches mark‘ as the nipple was supposed to be used by demons to feed).

Today we are so much more knowledgeable about the world. When we have a bad harvest, we generally recognize that weather patterns have a random element. Mental illness is generally considered to be something hereditary, or environmental, and not the result of being cursed. We seek rational and scientific explanations when things go wrong, right?

Not so in politics and business. It’s the Witch Hunt 2.o.

Now, instead of comparing the weight of the accused to a duck, the yard stick of choice is an auditor.

We like to think that auditors are unbiased, truth-seeking individuals right? Well, if your competence is estimated by your ability to find fault in something, I think you are likely to find fault in anything. For comparison, think of a crown prosecutor or district attorney: are they lauded by the number of cases they won, or with the number of cases where justice was done? Yah, when an auditor is asked to find fault, they go for the win too.

A case in point: Toronto Mayor Rob Ford goes after the Toronto Housing Board (TCHC).

Mr. Ford has asked for the resignation of the volunteer TCHC board members citing the auditor’s findings that revealed: “between $4 million and $10 million was wasted on sole-sourced contracts. The report also revealed issues with record-keeping at the agency and found that $200,000 was misspent on luxury chocolates, spa trips and a Christmas party.”

Wow, doesn’t that piss you off? A government agency wasting $10M and spending $200K on chocolate. The nerve! Fire all those evil volunteer board… WITCHES!

But lets scratch the surface by actually reading some of this auditors report:

Significant cost savings are likely possible if the recommendations contained in this report as well as the City Auditor General’s previously issued audit reports are implemented. Procurement at the TCHC is in the range of $200 million. Savings as a result of increased competition could in our view be anywhere from two to five per cent of this amount. Conservatively, cost savings of approximately $4 million to $10 million may be possible. In addition, significant savings are possible as a result of increased coordination of operations between the TCHC and the City.

Wait, 2 to 5%? I’d be willing to bet that any armchair quarterback could look at any organization’s books and find 2-5% that could have been saved. Would you call for the leadership’s resignation? If they took such liberties with $4-10M headline, I am starting to wonder how much was spent on chocolate…

What happened next? The volunteer, unpaid, counsellors were dismissed and replaced by a close friend of Rob Ford (he lead his transition team) who is going to receive an undisclosed paycheck! Wha?

The point of this post is not to show that Rob Ford is reading from a well-worn copy of ‘Dictatorship for Dummies!’, but how we as citizens and employees so often get duped by the same refrain: “The system is broken because of evil corrupt people that go to work every day trying to screw us!” Nobody seems willing to look at all the people they know, and at themselves, and realize that the vast majority of people don’t think this way (Rob Ford could perhaps be an exception here).

Lets look at some of the drawbacks of using the Witch Hunt 2.0 mentality when trying to improve organizational performance:

• Successful organizations are based on trust, you start with a serious trust deficit if you treat the organization as they enemy
• Fear is a poor motivator, when was the last time you heard of a team winning a championship because of fear?
• One of your first moves is usually to oust a bunch of people who have organizational knowledge of the very problems you are trying to fix
• A focus on bad people ignores a much more prevalent problem: bad systems

So what can we do about the Witch Hunt 2.0? Stop supporting (or electing, or appointing) people who spend most of their time pointing fingers.

Image via Wikipedia

From Wikipedia:

Upselling (sometimes ‘up-selling’) is a sales technique whereby a saleperson induces the customer to purchase more expensive items, upgrades, or other add-ons in an attempt to make a more profitable sale. Upselling usually involves marketing more profitable services or products, but upselling can also be simply exposing the customer to other options he or she may not have considered previously. Upselling implies selling something that is more profitable or otherwise preferable for the seller instead of, or in addition to,[1] the original sale. A different technique is cross-selling in which a seller tries to sell something else.

Unless you have lived under a rock –a very large rock– you have experienced up-sell. It is an old, well-established sales process, and it nets results. In many cases, the customer even ends up happier after the transaction, since they feel like they got a deal.

But when does up-sell become oversell?

Going through a local Tim Horton’s drive through, I had the following exchange:

Perky attendant: “Would you like to try one of our new raspberry turn-overs?” [Up-sell #1, technically cross-selling]

Me: “Uh, no. I’d just like a breakfast sandwich on a whole wheat bagel.”

Perky: “Lunch over at 11.” [It was 11:30, my bad.]

Me: “Hmmm… well I’ll get a small coffee, single-single.” [I'm buying time here to figure out what I am going to order.]

Perky, without missing a beat: “Would you like to upgrade to a medium for ‘Roll-Up-The-Rim’?” [Up-sell #2]

Me: “Uh, no thanks. Can I get a BLT on a whole wheat bagel?”

Perky: “Would you like cheese with that.” [Up-sell #3]

Me: “No.” [Noticing the over-up-selling, and starting to get annoyed.]

Perky: “Would you like to add a donut or danish to make that a combo.” [Up-sell #4]

Me, now dumbfounded, trying to keep my voice level: “No, thanks, that will be all.” [I'm wondering if she even knows she is doing this.]

Had I gone along with the oversell, I would have paid 50-100% more that what I wanted, had 1000 calories added to my meal, and perhaps had the slight chance to win another donut that I didn’t want. Instead of this desired outcome (for Timmy’s) I’m writing this blog post explaining how I think retailers can really take this approach too far, to the detriment of the relationship with their customers.

Once, fine, twice, you’re pushing it, three, four time, you’re starting to show the customer disrespect.

I am sure that Perky would have thought I was pulling her leg if I had drove up asked “I really don’t know what I want, can you help me?” But isn’t that the way she ended up treating me?

Up-selling is a valuable tool, and doesn’t negatively impact the client experience if used sparingly, but lets not oversell it.

We associate feedback with the boss-employee relationship, and that is unfortunate. There are lots of bosses out there, and most suck at providing feedback of any sort. The opportunity doesn’t lie with our bosses.

Instead, lets expand our thinking beyond the boss-employee relationship (if you happen to be a boss, you can play too):

Who Looks Up to You?

If you are a humble sort –like myself– this can be a bit of a struggle. Grab your scribbling device of choice, and create two columns with the following titles: “Name“, “Why he/she looks up to me“. Don’t do this on your whiteboard.

Some ideas for the columns:

• Have you been doing your job longer than some of those around you?
• Are you recognized as an expert or talented in a particular area?
• When you have received positive feedback (particularly in public), what was it for?
• Do you have unique experience that could be valued by others?
• Have you accomplished something that the others around you have not?
• Do you have a skill at identifying growth in others?
• Are you in charge of accomplishing a task that involves a team?
• Do you see valuable behaviours that aren’t being recognized by the business?

Come up with a minimum of five names. For the next month, give these people (whether at home, work, or elsewhere) one piece of positive feedback each week. Put a reminder in your calendar if you have to. Use the second column to help frame your feedback in a context that will be meaningful for the recipient.

You don’t need permission, and change starts with you.

This works wonders. Please come back and provide us your experiences below.

“The customer is always right.” has become a clichéd and throw-away statement, to the point that it no longer has any value.

But change ‘the’ with ‘our’, the statement suddenly becomes a powerful way to connect your brand to your customer.

“You can please some of the people all of the time, you can please all of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time”. - ca. 15th century, see note*

This saying is ancient, yet so often ignored. Most companies, especially those striving for growth, want ANY customers, regardless of whether they will be profitable customers. If a business tries to please everyone, limited resources will get spread so thin that failure is inevitable. This is a big reason why ‘the’ must be replaced with ‘our’.

First, a couple of examples where companies decided who their customers were, and who they were not:

1) Rackspace Matched Fanatical Support with Average Technology: Rackspace made a very conscious decision that they wanted to focus on being the best at customer support. This means making everybody happy right? Wrong.

They decided that if they targeted the entire hosting services customer base, they would end up with customers that would constantly push them to roll out bleeding-edge technologies that were not yet stable, tried and true. The latest technology needs more resources to support. This is why BMW tests out new technologies an features on their highest-end (and lowest volume) cars. By focusing on attracting customers that want great customer service, over the latest technology, Rackspace able to focus resources and deliver on the ‘our customer is always right’ adage.

2) Sprint Fires 1000 Customers: Sprint can hardly be identified as synonymous with success, a quick look at their stock price seems to indicate that they are still headed for the dustbin of history, but they did do something that fits the ‘our’ vs. ‘the’ paradigm. They decided they were NOT about customer support, and decided to ‘fire’ their most whiny customers.

Their service department discovered an 80/20 rule, where a small fraction of customers were creating the vast majority of their support calls. So instead of trying to please these demanding (and unprofitable) customers, Sprint decided to fire them. Good for business? Not sure. But I am sure the next employee survey will see a big spike in satisfaction for Sprint’s call centre workers!

Here are some other ‘tradeoffs’ you may have experienced (note that many tradeoffs translate to better margins for the seller):

• Nordstrom customers are willing to look the other way on price to have a stellar shopping experience
• Costco customers are willing to trade off stylish product displays and reasonable portions for a great price
• LuluLemon customers were willing to pay high prices for workout wear, so they could look fashionable even at the gym
• Chrysler recognized that there were people who needed reasonably priced vehicles with more room, but didn’t care much about how the vehicle drove, and the mini-van was born
• Apple recognized customers that could use a computer, MP3 player, smart phone and tablet, that cared a lot more about simplicity & style than the underlying technology, which begat the iPod, iPhone, iPad and original Macintosh
• Marks Work Wearhouse knows their customers are willing to overlook cachet clothing labels to shop for reasonably priced, utilitarian work wear that is easy to maintain
• Harley Davidson riders trade reliability and modern technology to be part of a culture that says something about who they are.

So who are your customers, and what are they willing to trade off?

Are they like Rackspace customers, willing to trade off bleeding edge technology for the ability to talk to a real person when they have problems? Or are they more like Sprint customers, looking for a cheap solution where they will hopefully never have to call customer support?

Ideas to definine (y)our customer, the tradeoffs they are willing to make, or what they will pay extra for:

One approach is to capture all of the attributes that your client base values in the products/services that you and your competition could offer. Based on the demographic you desire, which items would they put at the top of the list, and at the bottom? Once these are ranked, laminate the sheet and make sure your entire team has it: marketing, sales, operations, customer support… everyone (test it of course).

Another  approach has used successfully by several organizations including the ‘Don’t Mess With Texas’ campaign and The Saddleback Church, is to personify your target customers. Saddleback helped their employees understand their customer by creating a detailed -yet fictitious– model customer named ‘Saddleback Sam’. It’s human nature to be able to more easily identify with an individual than some abstract group. By turning their target demographic into a person they could relate to, Saddleback enabled each of their employees to make independent decisions that would be more likely to be consistent wit their target audience, and more likely to connect with their customers.

Once you define who the customer is, ‘Our Customer Is Always Right’ starts to mean something.

*Note: I always try my best to give credit where credit is due, but this quote is very elusive, even though most of us have heard it. It is often attributed as a variant of ‘can’t fool all of the people all of the time…’ which *may* be attributed to Lincoln (even that is debated). Other sources attribute this to an adaptation of a John Lydgate quote by Lincoln. Since my grasp of middle english is tenuous at best, I can’t understand Lydgate’s work well enough to find a quote even close. Since it is clear that all people that I could attribute this to are long dead, and unlikely to take offense, I decided to move on after a long and fruitless goose-chase.

About ‘Leadership Weekly Digest’ (LWD): The goal of this weekly newsletter is to highlight quality articles from the past week –in a condensed format– that discuss leadership, with a focus on employee engagement. Much of the content comes from those we follow on Twitter, and members of the Employee Engagement Network.

You can also subscribe to the RSS Feed for LWD.

Brand Is Culture, Culture Is Brand by William Taylor

In July, LWD featured a debate between Fast Company’s William Taylor and Nick Corcodilos on the value of the human resources (HR) function, which then spilled over into a discussion on this blog. HR took quite a beating from Mr. Corcodilos, who indicated that HR “needs to be invented.”

Mr. Taylor’s new post may indicate a direction that this re-invention could take, which focuses on the link between brand (think of the marketing function) and culture (HR).

That’s what helps you stand out among your customers, and stand out from the crowd in a hyper-competitive marketplace. The new “power couple” inside the best companies, I concluded, was an iron-clad partnership between marketing leadership and HR leadership. Your brand is your culture, your culture is your brand.

While I dislike the choice of ‘power couple’ to make his point, as it seems to easy to substitute ‘fad’, I do like the concept of a stronger interaction between these two functions. Both (strategic) HR and Marketing specialize in human behaviour, but their focus is internal and external respectively. It is only natural that they collaborate on improving the employee-customer interaction, which so important to a strong brand.

Taylor cites one company that has actually taken the step to merge the two functions under the same executive (Corner Bank) with the following benefits:

“Our people are our best marketing tool,” [SVP HR & Marketing] Jana [Dobbs] explained. “Advertising is important, the design of the Web site is important, but if customers have a positive experience every time they come into the bank, that’s what builds our reputation.”

Taylor goes on to detail more concrete examples of the brand-culture-brand linkage at USAA, a major insurer of U.S. servicemen, veterans and their families. In this case there is an institutional focus on creating empathy for the clients so they can “learn is to empathize with and see the world through the eyes of a soldier on active duty”. This approach has contributed to USAA blowing away their competitors in customer loyalty rankings. Read Taylor’s post for more detail on USAA’s approach.

I don’t think Taylor’s intent was to promote the idea that HR and Marketing be combined, but it does make for an interesting suggestion for anyone thinking that HR may need an overhaul. I hope Mr. Corcodilos decides to weigh in!

Richard Branson: Five Questions on Business Philosophy @ Entrepreneur.com

Richard Branson says these are the questions he is asked most often in his travels. I think he is fibbing. I mean, where are goodies like “Do you actually condone sex on your airplanes?“. Well, these are the 5 he chose to answer:

1. What is the best advice you ever got? Answer: He actually chose two from his mom, and 1 from Freddie Laker: a) Never look back in regret, move on, b) Openly criticizing people reflects badly on your own character, and c) You’ll never have the advertising power to outsell British Airways. You are going to have to get out there and use yourself. Make a fool of yourself. Otherwise you won’t survive. [Which ones do you think were his mom? -ed.]
2. What is the worst advice you ever got? A: He always sought advice on important issues from multiple sources, so he felt there was no such thing as bad advice, just bad ‘angles’.
3. What advice would you give to young entrepreneurs on how best to start? A: “To remember that it is impossible to run a business without taking risks… You really do have to believe in what you are doing. Devote yourself to it 100 percent and be prepared to take a few hits along the way.
4. In your career you have had lots of successes, but you have failed in some businesses. What have you learned from those? A: “Though I believe in taking risks, I also firmly believe in “protecting the downside.” This means working out in advance all the things that could go wrong and making sure you have all those eventualities covered.”
5. Do you have any regrets? A: True to his answer in #1, he doesn’t like to dwell, but to move on. But if pressed, he admits that just missing out on the deal to run the UK’s national lottery, sits at the top of his business regret list.

A selection of our recent posts:

• Change: Taming the Stubborn Elephant
• Quiz: Can You Recognize Good Performance?
• 10 Reasons to Quit Your Job
• LWD 2010WK39 – Do You Prefer Your Science Hard- or Soft-boiled?

It seems that the world loves certification. If the competence of a supplier can’t be determined, or testimonials aren’t available, a piece of paper with a seal and signature will often do just fine. If you can build a business around providing this certification, all the better…

Introducing the ‘Positive Recognition Accreditation Test’.

Follow these steps:

1. Print this questionnaire.
2. Choose the best answer for each question using an HB pencil, making sure to completely circle your answer.
3. Attach a recent picture of yourself, and two proofs of purchase.
4. Wad up the papers and throw them out the nearest window.
5. Stop worrying, our process is really advanced, we will get your submission.
6. Please allow 36-48 weeks for delivery of your certification.
7. Once confirmed, please be sure to use ‘PRAT’ after your name, and wear your new found accreditation proudly.

The Questionnaire:

When should these meetings occur?

1. Do them along with the corporate performance review cycle; once a year should do it.
2. As a rule, every time you present your employee’s work as your own, you should take the time to provide them positive feedback.
3. As close as possible to when the positive behaviour or outcomes were observed, in order to have the greatest positive benefit.

What is the best way to set up a recognition session with an employee?

1. Inform the employee that you need to talk to them about ‘an HR issue’.
2. “You, in my office, now!”
3. Set up a short meeting with the employee regarding ‘positive feedback’ at a time where you can give them your undivided attention.

What is the appropriate agenda for the meeting?

1. Set aside time to get to know each other, as this is the first time you realized that this person even reports to you.
2. Time is money, make sure to ask the employee for other things you need to get done while they are basking in your adulation.
3. Stick to providing the positive feedback, otherwise the session won’t really be a reward.

What is the best way to provide the feedback?

1. Buzzwords, lots of buzzwords. e.g. “That was some real client-oriented  best-in-class hyper-collaboration in execution our game plan! You’re really taking it to the next level!”
2. High-five, low-five, round the back, over the top handshake.
3. Use precise, descriptive terms that indicate observed behaviours and how they related to positive outcomes.

How do you close the meeting?

1. Say “Now go get ‘em champ!” as you smack their butt on the way out the door.
2. Hug it out.
3. Ask the employee to think on how to continue to build on this success, and to bring this up at the next performance & goal-setting review.

View This Poll

About ‘Leadership Weekly Digest’ (LWD): The goal of this weekly newsletter is to highlight quality articles from the past week –in a condensed format– that discuss leadership, with a focus on employee engagement. Much of the content comes from those we follow on Twitter, and members of the Employee Engagement Network.

You can also subscribe to the RSS Feed for LWD.

Physics, psychology, and ‘management science’, pretty much cover the full spectrum from the ‘hard’ to the ‘soft’ sciences. Engineering usually tries to find application for the ‘hard’ sciences, but this engineer isn’t a hard-science bigot, I use what works! I mean, who can ignore a study that finds “Men without money desire heavier women than are desired by wealthy men”; someone has to find a practical application for this research! Now seriously…

The Biology of Business: Homo Administrans @ The Economist

I am not sure why The Economist doesn’t identify their authors. It may be to avoid losing their best writers to the competition, or that they want to be seen as some kind of all-knowing borg; I think it is the latter.

What hard science can be found within the often foggy field of ‘management science’? This article highlights the work of several biologists that are applying hard science to delve into things that you might care about:

• If you want happier employees, you might want to start off by hiring happier people.
• People with low levels of the hormone cortisol will be less interested in deferred compensation.
• Oxytocin, a neurotransmitter, plays a role in building trust.
• There are genetic predispositions to the fields we choose, particularly within the creative arts and physical sciences [ironically 'soft' and 'hard' -ed.]
• The greater the mismatch between testosterone and status, the less effectively a group’s members co-operate.
• Around 40% of the variation between people’s incomes is attributable to genetics.
• The role that testosterone can play in the sales process.

Before you ask us for a blood sample kit to put this new knowledge to use, consider that this is pretty new stuff, and there are already laws that ban the use of genetic information in job recruitment. Researchers cited also admit that they are dealing in averages and trends, which is hard to apply to individuals.

I recommend this very well-researched and interesting article, which provides hope for those who want to see a more rigorous ‘hard science’ approach to topics important to managers. Thanks to Phil for passing this along.

Revenge of the Introvert by Laurie Helgoe

We often make the mistake of associating shyness with introversion. Shy extroverts exist, as do ‘outgoing’ introverts, and this article helps us better understand this dynamic. Probably my favourite part was a ‘sub-article’, that very accurately portrayed the internal monolog that occurs when you ask an introvert the apparently rhetorical question ‘How are you?’. As an ‘outgoing introvert’ I found this portrayal both accurate and funny:

Good? That’s not quite right. I really have had a pretty crummy day, but there isn’t a quick way to explain that… I hate that we so often just say ‘good’ because that’s the convention. The other person doesn’t really want to know… While the introvert is evaluating the question on at least two levels (how she is feeling and what she thinks about the question, perhaps also what this says about our society), the speaker is already moving on to sharing something about his day. [Been there! -ed.]

In our very extroversion-oriented western society, introverted behaviour is often marginalized because those behaviours get misconstrued as ’antisocial’, passive, or not ‘team-oriented’. Scans of the electrical behaviour and blood flow in the brain show increased activity in the introvert’s frontal cortex and Broca’s area. These areas are used to perform remembering, planning, decision making, problem solving, and speech production. These areas were more active in introverts than in extroverts, both during challenging cognitive tasks and at rest. Researchers observing this trend propose that introverts limit input from the environment in order to maintain an optimal level of arousal. Extraverts, on the other hand, seek out external stimulation to get their brain juices flowing. So while western society frowns on the introverts tendency to withdraw, the introvert does not do this to limit their contribution, but to increase its effectiveness; keep this in mind the next time you hold a brainstorming session.

A selection of our recent posts:

• Taming the Stubborn Elephant
• 10 Reasons to Quit Your Job
• LWD 2010WK38 – How Pathetically Prophetic!

Chip & Dan Heath, brothers and co-authors of one of my favourite books “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die”, borrow this metaphor of an elephant and its rider to represent our emotional side, and our rational side respectively. To illustrate this simply: the rider makes the decision that they want to lose 10 pounds, the elephant eats that 20 oz. steak anyway. Change efforts often boil down to short-term payoffs trumping long-term goals, with the elephant playing the role of villain.

The focus of this book, and why it is such an important read, is how to successfully implement change when you don’t have a lot of will power, authority, and/or many resources at your disposal.

Most –if not all– of the time we want to implement change, this is the very situation we are in. On a personal level, we have our own elephants that can help or hinder us, and when dealing with others, many more elephants.

While I would characterize ‘Made to Stick’ as ‘a marketing degree with a psychology minor in a book’, ‘Switch’ would be ‘a degree in organizational behaviour with a side of economics’. It drives home the fundamental concept that behaviour can’t simply be understood by looking at rational self-interest, rather, it is a complex combination of self-interest, perceived identity, social cues, your environment, and emotions thrown in just to make things interesting. Out of this complexity, they derive a clear methodology for implementing change, and illustrate this approach using a wide range of real-world examples:

• Conservation: Saving the St. Lucia Parrot
• Health Care: Reducing the intern work week from a patient-killing 120-hour works to 80
• Public Safety: Creating ‘designated drivers’ 5-seconds at a time
• Customer Service: How Rackspace went from bottom to top by getting rid of voicemail
• Corporate Culture: Getting paper pushing bureaucrats to care about the customer
• Amoung many others…

Fundamental to all these change initiatives is that the vast majority of people would do the right thing given the right context, environment and motivation. Before I close with a brief outline their methodology, I want to recommend that if there is one change-related book you read this year make it this one!

“Switch” methodology:

1. Direct the Rider
   1. Look for existing bright spots and building from what is already working
   2. Identify the destination clearly
   3. Provide crystal clear black & white behaviours that lead to change
2. Motivate the Elephant
   1. Make your audience feel bigger
   2. Make your problem seem smaller
   3. Leverage emotion to advance your goals
3. Shape the Path
   1. Change the environment to make the change easier
   2. Encourage habits that fit with the change
   3. People instinctively want to fit in, use this to assist change

Dan Heath will be speaking October 14th, 2010 at the Shenkman Arts Centre in Ottawa. Register HERE, and join me there!

About ‘Leadership Weekly Digest’ (LWD): The goal of this weekly newsletter is to highlight quality articles from the past week –in a condensed format– that discuss leadership, with a focus on employee engagement. Much of the content comes from those we follow on Twitter, and members of the Employee Engagement Network.

You can also subscribe to the RSS Feed for LWD.

The title of LWD two weeks ago was “Your_Co Has Died, Restart?”, we didn’t intend this to be prophetic. A few days after that post, the server we host this site on was hacked, and we faced this very situation! Unfortunately, our host wasn’t able to recover a recent backup, so we lost almost a week of data, including e-mail. As a result, there was no LWD for WK37, and a lot of time has been spent finding and recreating this site on a new host. Happy we found a great new hosting provider (CharlottezWeb) who were very helpful in getting us up and running quickly (thanks Jason)!

Balancing Profit and Purpose at Whole Foods: Red Fish Blue Fish by CV Harquail

This is the third time we have featured CV, which is some kind of record. We keep a close eye on her Authentic Organizations site for posts to highlight in LWD, because she is awesome.

Problem: You are selling your customers something they like, but it is bad for the environment. How do you stop selling the product without alienating your customers?

Answer: Colour code the products, based on their impact on the environment, so that customers can make better choices for themselves, and suggest that the products will the worst environmental impact will be phased out in the future.

In this case the produce was fish, and the company was Whole foods.

But by socially conditioning their customers with this color-coding system for several months before phasing out the products, Whole Foods is trying to get buy-in from the customer by encouraging them to make more sustainable, alternative choices. Customers may learn to enjoy more sustainable seafood choices before the unsustainable choices go away. — Jessi Schoner

If they had just pulled the products, some customers would have gone elsewhere in reaction to this unilateral decision. Instead they participate in the process which leads to better outcomes for the customer, the retailer, and fish stocks.

Can you apply this to something you are trying to change?

Why Great Teams Tell Great Stories by Michael Hyatt

Regular readers will know we are big fans of the book Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath, which explains how to turn ideas into action. They conclude that book with the importance of stories in helping make a message high-impact, memorable, and even viral.

Michael Hyatt builds on this observation by  illustrating the impact that a story has in fostering innovation and consistently excellent customer service:

Breakthrough teams tell such stories frequently and with passion. It is a secret ingredient of their success. Stories are vital in helping individuals understand how world-class results are achieved and in making the possibility of doing so believable. Such tales have a way of perpetuating success. The listener retells the story and, more importantly, internalizes its message and becomes part of the story.

Mr. Hyatt provides a four-step primer on leadership storytelling:

1. Share the truth, nothing but the truth.
2. Catch their interest early.
3. Tie it to your team’s core values.
4. Keep it simple.

How Herman Miller Has Designed Employee Loyalty by Kermit Pattison

CV will not be the only repeat performance this week, as Kermit Pattison was featured in LWD WK34 for his article on Chip Conley’s Employee Pyramid.

This interview discusses how Herman Miller (yes, the maker of the cool office chairs) maintains an incredibly low attrition rate, with employees having a longish 14 average years of service. Brian Walker, CEO of Herman Miller, attributes this employee loyalty to the policy of encouraging employees to bring their ‘whole person’ to work:

We try very hard to let people bring their passions to work… All of our people have gifts and talents and are capable of doing more than their job classification. Our constant drive is to figure out how to mine that hidden talent and capability so we can use it to its fullest and so our people get the greatest enjoyment out of what they do.

This culture was fostered right from the very start with founder D.J. De Pree contrasting his view of the worker with that popularized by Henry Ford. De Pree stated “I want all of you here. I want the whole person.” This is in clear reference to Ford’s oft-quoted line ”Why is it that I always get the whole person, when what I really want is a pair of hands?”

This somewhat contrarian view of the worker continues to this day, which also includes a different perspective on the role of the superstar employee than you find in most of the corporate world: “We’re not as much about superstars as having a collective of 6,000 people who are very passionate about what they do and trying to bring all their gifts and talents to it.”

So how does Herman Miller maintain this culture?

1. Providing lots of opportunities to lead via the many ad hoc teams that are put together to solve problems. It becomes evident from watching their performance in these ad hoc teams who the new leaders should be.
2. Not placing too much stock in fixed job titles, previous education or training on determining where in the organization you will end up.
3. Creating cross-disciplinary teams that even span external partners. These teams deliberately create a design tension, to balance the competing desires of each function to find the best solution.
4. Looking to salary reductions and shortened work weeks to deal with major market perturbations (like the precipitous drop in sales after the dot.com bubble burst) instead of mass layoffs.
5. Being open with employees on the status of the business, especially when things are going to be tough.
6. Integrating social and environmental responsibility into everything they do. HM claims this helps attract the best people, who want to work for organizations who make a difference.

A selection of our recent posts:

• 10 Reasons to Quit Your Job
• LWD 2010WK36 – Your_Company Has Died, Restart From Last Save?