el·e·ment: The situation in which you are happiest and most effective

In the following article I am going to outline how you can develop momentum towards improving your culture by integrating the “Critical Elements of Organizational Success.” The overriding objective in embracing the following methodology is the creation of a culture where your people live and breathe passion for who you are as well as what you do.

Critical elements are the truths that are so broad in scope that they affect every area of your company. There are other principles you possess that, when applied, affect only certain areas of your company but the elements I will speak to solve a wide scope of organizational problems and they should be observed as your companies top priorities. They are the small percentage of your organizational activity that will deliver a majority of your success. The “Critical Elements of Organizational Success” are those factors in which you cannot afford to fail as they can be the difference between “beating expectations” as a company or “re-organization and downsizing.”

In today’s business climate it is both common and logical that organizations find themselves stuck working short term tactics rather than staying the course cast by their vision. For publicly traded companies it is the board and shareholders that drive short term behaviors and in private organizations it may be your investors or simply survival. In crisis, the human mind is designed to prioritize what is actionable over what is subjective unless these elements have been programmed into your psyche. That is why it is imperative that leadership of great companies must develop a foundation of core truths or critical elements in which to operate from. In times of crisis you will then find that these organizations make balanced decisions that improve their short term position but stay the course charted in earlier, less stressful times.

In so many companies today, the critical elements aren’t necessarily positive. They are the byproduct of short term tactical decisions rather than a vision cast by the leadership team. If you have a deep political culture where the cancer of gossip or entitlement is squeezing the life out of your company, do you look to your line workers, supervisors or middle managers for accountability? You may want to but the culture is always developed upstream and at the headwaters of that river you will always find the executive leadership team.

A logical question at this time would be “why does a Revenue Acceleration consulting firm want us to improve our culture?” I will answer the question with an analogy. Auto manufactures go to great lengths to mate the performance of an engine to the rest of the car. To achieve great performance the horsepower generated by your sales engine must be married to a chassis or organization that is developed to support it. Operationally, if one is strengthened while the other is weak, the end result is poor performance. My focus in this series will be to provide you key areas in which you can improve or develop your culture to support a more powerful revenue engine. These four are…

1. Deeply Defining your Unique Ability
2. The “One Corporate Commandment”
3. People as the Project
4. An Emotionally Intelligent Organization

In the balance of the article I will begin to share how to cast a vision and organization where tactics naturally align with your long term objectives. Translation; develop a purposeful place to work where revenue and profit grow exponentially.

To summarize, there is a challenge facing a large percentage of American businesses today. The fact that most businesses are stuck in surviving the day or the month with little regard for strategic direction and even less understanding for how that impacts the morale and performance of their employees. The metrics driven by Wall Street or private investors tend to lead to a culture focused on delivering the month and quarter and rarely result in a culture of strategic thinking and logical problem solving. As we move forward we are going to focus on specific elements behind this philosophy that will help you build a powerful and consistent organization that delivers year over year.

Deeply Defining your Companies Unique Ability
In our practice, it is common in most companies that we engage with, that their offering or market focus is scattered or far too broad. In Jim Collins book “Good to Great,” he outlines that great companies build their leadership team and then determine their strategic direction. That is great in a rare circumstance that a company has a wholesale leadership change below the CEO (who then gets to rebuild the team and strategic direction of the company) but I personally cannot recall a single circumstance where the CEO survives a complete leadership team flush.

In the reality most leadership teams face, we must find a way to improve revenues and operational efficiency within our current culture and marketplace. My recommendation is quite simple in this area. Stop trying to make your business and culture too complex and focus purely on why you are in business and what you do best. What was your company built around? A unique product or service? An innovative manufacturing concept? A gifted individual? Than strip away all that isn’t within the confines of the original direction. Take into account if the market has moved and the viability of your current offering but generally pick what you do best and do it better than all others. Breadth of offering is rarely the key to success. Have you eaten at a restaurant that has American fare, Chinese, Mexican and Italian food on the same menu? How often do you go back because the food was so great? Customers think of your business the same way. Stick to one thing and focus your entire organization to that single purpose. It is powerful!

The “One Corporate Commandment”
Ethics, Ethics, Ethics! I am not talking about Enron, Tyco type ethics. We have Sarbanes-Oxley to remind of us that every day. What I am talking about is the culture that you have set in which you ask your employees to work within. Do you make decisions that you know are wrong ethically but are the right decisions to protect revenue or profit? Maybe it is backing out of a contract with suppliers because someone comes with a better deal mid contract? Maybe it is cutting compensation or bonuses because the company isn’t hitting its financial targets or maybe it is cutting critical personnel to hit quarterly numbers.

In all cases you must think through the message you are sending to the organization and what behaviors you are “endorsing” for the future. “Do as I say and not as I do,” does not work in corporate America. Your employees are very much like children and what they see you do they will copy. First because it is accepted practice and second because you are inadvertently showing them what it takes to be a leader in your company. True leadership is making the right decision even when it hurts. If you are going to miss the quarter and try to fix it by cutting staff and in conjunction eliminating morale, creating distrust and cutting productivity by 50% out of fear and gossip, remember that the next three quarters are looming and how do you think your new organization will perform against those goals?

Simply put, make sure you think through the long term effects of your decisions. Would you support your employees if they made a similar decision in the middle of the company? What culture will be present after the fall out of your decision? Is the decision purely self serving? Don’t cripple the future capabilities of your organization by compromising ethics now.

So we have covered the need to immerse your organization in your vision and strategies so they will not be pushed aside in turbulent times. I extended that into outlining the power of what made you great, especially when combined with high integrity modeled by leadership. Now let’s focus on elements that are far too rare. Your inalienable responsibility as a leader to serve your employees. To create an environment where failure is rare because the people around you simply won’t let it happen.

People as the Project
I had mentioned in the “One Corporate Commandment” that employees in organizations are very much like children. They need boundaries, appropriate discipline and overwhelming affirmation. An unbalanced working environment creates either aggressive or passive cultures. The average American company is far too aggressive in nature because we tend to focus on commands or expectations to get things done without doling out an equal amount of appreciation and praise.

There is one principal that I live by in managing people. “Would I treat my children this way?” For example; do I want my salespeople deeply competitive with each other and vying for the next big win? Sounds great, right? Well, that is how almost all corporate sales teams are structured and on the surface, it seems logical. I ask you if that is how you would pit your kids against each other? What would be the net result if you did? In reality you would probably end up with one dominant, athletic, high achiever and one passive, artistic and sensitive child. What you want is your child (employee) to be confident, successful and driven to whatever they are gifted in, not default to being passive because they can’t compete.

If you set your sales team up to compete with each other, you will end up with the Jack Welch 20/70/10 model. Did you ever wonder why only 20% of GE’s employees where high achievers? It is because the competition was internal, not external. Competing against your competitors in the market place is where the focus needs to lie, not inside your four walls. That is unless you have an affinity for gossip and passive employees that will only do what they think you want, not what is right: Highly critical employees that blame you, the company and the competition for their struggles. If that didn’t convince you then look to the research has proven that a people-focused, balanced environment outperforms organizations that have an internal competitive focus more than 4 to 1 in revenue growth and over 700% in profits?* Simply put, if you have a servant’s heart for your people, they will have a heart to make you and your organization successful.

An Emotionally Intelligent Organization
As I close this series, I save the best for last. I am a cheerleader for EQ! If you don’t know what that means, hit your local bookstore right now and buy Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. To date, the only book with a business slant written by a Psychologist that I have ever read twice. In Goleman’s research he simply wanted to know why a low IQ person could dramatically outperform a high IQ in the same job. EQ, as Goleman tabs it has many elements but I always find two traits of high EQ present when consulting highly successful companies. The first one is “Awareness.” Both situational and self awareness are almost always present in highly successful environments. The reason why highly aware people are behind greatness is they clearly know where they are gifted and where they are not. In addition, they make appropriate and logical decisions quickly. Generally this is due to the fact that they have isolated their mind to areas of expertise and they don’t try to impress others by having to know everything about everything.

The second trait is “Empathy.” You are starting to notice the themes throughout this series. Serve others and they will serve you. Our organization clearly embraces this reality. Collaboration and service are at the core of our success because in Western culture, we operate in a conviction environment. That means we feel beholden to others when they serve us first. Now I don’t recommend a strategy around building conviction, but I do highly recommend a strategy of “Empathy.” We live in a free agent business world and we are continually looking out for ourselves. I personally believe this selfishness is behind the average tenure of an American executive being just over 24 months. We tend to be highly entrepreneurial and not very empathetic. Combine the two and watch out!

Here is the really good news. Emotional Intelligence, unlike IQ, is a highly learned behavior set. You can study it, practice it and modify how you interact with people. I would highly recommend Goleman’s book as a starter. It will serve you well as HR Directors nationwide are buying in. When I serve as an interim Executive for a client, every hire we make must take an EQ assessment during the process. If they don’t pass, we don’t hire them regardless of experience or education. You see, I may not be as smart as Jack Welch but I won’t limit my thinking by saying only 20% can be high achievers.

*Kotter & Heskett; Corporate Culture and Performance
*Daniel Goleman; Emotional Intelligence