Culture is King

CULTURE IS KING

 

At a leadership program, one of the participants shared “At our company, one of our top priorities is to work on our culture. We talk about it all the time. Last year, our company grew 600%. Our focus on culture-building worked splendidly”. Impressive.

 

One of the most sustainable competitive advantages will be developing a culture of leadership. Competitors can copy the products, can copy the services, copy the branding but they can never copy the culture. And culture is the very thing that makes an organization special. An organization’s culture is what sets – and then drives the standards of behavior. The culture tells people what’s acceptable and important. Culture lets people know what organization values are. An organization culture states its philosophy, its mythology, it religion. Culture is King.

 

The five best ways to build culture are as follows:

 

Rituals: I like the cult in the culture. The best companies, like Microsoft, Google, Southwest Airlines, Apple and Wal-Mart have something in common with Cults. They have unique rituals like Ship room discussions, 7 am team huddles or Friday afternoon pizza parties to promote team bonding. Rituals shape culture and keep it special.

 

Celebration: John Abele, founder of the multi-billion dollar Boston Scientific, once told me over dinner that “you get what you celebrate”. Powerful idea. When you see someone living the values your culture stands for, make a public hero. Behavior that gets rewarded is behavior that gets repeated. Catch people doing good.

 

Conversation: Your people become what the leaders talk about; to get your vision and values into your people’s hearts, you need to be talking about that stuff constantly – at employee gatherings, at your weekly meetings, during your daily huddles and at the water cooler. You need to evangelize what you stand for constantly. In his excellent book Winning, Jack Welch said that he spent so much time evangelizing GE’s mission that he could call his people at three in the morning and – half asleep – they could re-state it (He never did)

 

Training: A mission-critical focus to build culture is employee development. If you agree that your organization’s number-one resource is your people, then it only makes sense to invest significantly in developing your number-one resource. Hold seminars and have leadership workshops to instill the values you seek to nurture and build a leadership culture into their hearts and minds. When your people improve, your company will improve.

 

Storytelling: Great companies have cultures where great stories are told from generation to generation. The story about how the company was founded in a basement or the story about how a teammate went the extra mile or the story about how the organization fought back to victory from the brink of disaster. Story telling cements a company’s most closely cherished ideals into the hearts of its people.

 

People want to go work each day and feel they are a part of a community. One of the deepest psychological needs of a human being is the need for belonging. We also want to work for an organization that values us, that promotes our personal growth and that makes us feel that we are contributing to a dream. Get these things right by creating a Culture of Leadership and you’ll keep your stars and attract others.

 

“One of the most sustainable competitive advantages will be developing a culture of leadership”

 

(these are not my thoughts J and are copied from Robin’s book)

 

(Note: Previous posts are available here: http://weeksthought.blogspot.com/)

 

Problems reveal genius

PROBLEMS REVEAL GENIUS

 

Problems are servants. Problems bring possibilities. They help you grow and lead to better things, both in your organization and within your life. Inside every problem lies a precious opportunity to improve things. Every challenge is nothing more than a chance to make things better. To avoid them is to avoid growth and progress. To resist them is to decline greatness. Embrace and get the best from the challenges in front of you. And understand that the only people with no problems are dead.

 

An unhappy customer yelling at you might seem like a problem. But to a person thinking like a leader, that scenario is also a giant opportunity to improve the organizations processes to ensure that doesn’t happen again and to get some feedback that may be used to enhance products and services. So the problem has actually helped to improve the company. Free market research.

 

An interpersonal conflict at work can seem like a problem. But if you think like a leader and use the circumstance to build understanding, promote communication and enrich the relationship, the problem has actually made you better. It has been fodder for your growth and served you nicely. Bless it.

 

An illness or a divorce or the loss of a loved one might seem like a problem. Indeed they are and very painful too. But the ones who are truly successful are shaped by their saddest experiences. They brought them depth, compassion and wisdom. They have given them self-awareness and they them what they are today. They wouldn’t trade them for the world.

 

Problems reveal genius. World class organizations have a culture that sees problems as opportunities for improvement. Don’t condemn them – learn from them and embrace them. World class human beings turn their problems into wisdom. They see opportunities & possibilities. And that’s what makes them great. Remember, a mistake is only a mistake if that is made twice.

 

“The only people with no problems are dead”

 

Burn your boats

BURN YOUR BOATS

 

Great achievement often happens when our back are up against the wall. Pressure can actually enhance the performance. Your power most fully exerts itself when the heat is on. Who you truly are surfaces only when you place yourself in a position of discomfort and you begin to feel like you’re out on the skinny branch. Challenge serves beautifully to introduce you to your best – and most brilliant – self. Please stop and think about that idea for a second or two. Easy times don’t make you better. They make you slower and complacent and sleepy. Staying in the safety zone – and coasting through life – never made anyone bigger. Sure it’s very human to take the path of least resistance And I’d agree it’s pretty normal to want to avoid putting stress on yourself by intensely challenging yourself to shine. But greatness never came to anyone normal. ( Mahatma Gandhi, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Mother Theresa, Thomas Edison definitely marched to a different drumbeat – thank God)

 

I’ve never forgotten the story of the famed explorer Hernand Cortes. He landed on the shores of Veracruz, Mexico, in 1519. Wanted his army to conquer the land for Spain. Face an uphill battle: an aggressive enemy, brutal disease and scarce resources. As they marched inland to do battle, Cortes ordered one of his lieutenants back to the beach with a single instruction: “Burn our boats”

 

How fully would you show up each day – at work and in life – if retreat just wasn’t an option? How high would you reach, how greatly would you dare, how hard would you work and how loud would you live if you knew “your boats were burning”, that failure just wasn’t a possibility? Diamonds get formed through intense pressure. And remarkable human beings get formed by living from a frame of reference that tells that they just have to move towards their goals.

 

“Challenge serves beautifully to introduce you to your best – and most brilliant – self”

 

Act like an Athelete

ACT LIKE AN ATHLETE

 

One of the best ways I know to create  spectacular results in the most important areas of your life is through daily practice. Top athletes know that practice is how you get to greatness. I was in Moscow a while back for a series of speeches and workshops. One morning I went down to the hotel gym for a workout. It was 6 am. Guess who was there? Mary Pierce, the tennis start. For two hours, she ran, lifted weights, did sit-ups and countless push-ups. She was paying the price for success.

 

You need to practice to get to your greatness. Athletes know this so very well. Why does it seem so foreign to the rest of us? Sure practice takes discipline. But as my friend Nido Qubein often says: “the price of discipline is always less than the pain of regret”. Wise man.

 

What I’m suggesting is that personal and professional greatness takes work. I would never suggest that you could get to your dreams without having to make some sacrifices and pay the price in terms of dedication and self-control. “Pay the price”. Words with the ring of truth. The best among us make it all look so easy. I call it the Swan Effect – elite performers make personnel and business mastery look effortless and seem to make things happen as gracefully as a swan moves along the water. But, like the swan, what you don’t get to see is all the planning, discipline, hard work and near-flawless execution taking place below the surface.

 

Yes, sometimes life sends you unexpected challenges that knock you off tract – that’s just life happening. But with a series of best practices in place to keep you at your highest, you’ll stay in a positive state much more often. Practices that will lock you into your best may include a morning journaling session where you record your feelings, thoughts and the blessings you are greatful for. Or you may start your day with a strong workout and an elite performer’s meal. I often listen to music for 15 minutes as it not only energizes me, it makes me feel happier. I also use Success statements or affirmations to get my mind focused. Success & Joy and inner peace don’t just show up. You need to create them. Find your series of practices, perform them with consistency. And then go out into this beautiful world of ours and shine.

 

 

“Top athletes know that practice is how you get to greatness”

 

Your schedule doesn't lie

YOUR SCHEDULE DOESN’T LIE

 

There is an old phrase that says “what you are doing speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you are saying”. You can say that your primary value involves putting your family first, but if time with your family is not all over your schedule, well then the truth of the matter is that your family life isn’t your priority. You can say that being in world-class physical condition is another top value but if I don’t see five or six workouts etched in your weekly schedule, then the reality to be confronted is that your health just isn’t as important as you profess it to be. You can argue that self-development is an essential pursuit to you because the better you are, the more effective you’ll be. Show me your schedule and I’ll discover the truth. Because your schedule doesn’t lie.

 

There can be no authentic success and lasting happiness if your daily schedule is misaligned with your deepest values. If there is a gap between what you do and who you are, you are out of integrity. I call it The Integrity Gap. The greater the chasm between your daily commitments and your deepest values, the less your life will work (and the less happiness you will feel). Why? Because you are not walking your talk. Because your video is not congruent with your audio. Because you are committing the crime of self-betrayal. Worst crime of all. And the witness that lives within the deepest part of you- your conscience – sees it.

 

Your schedule is the best barometer for what you truly value and believe to be important. Too many people talk a good talk. But talk is cheap. Less talk and more do.

 

 

“Your schedule is the best barometer for what you truly value and believe to be important”