Blanchard LeaderChat

“Love” as the key ingredient to business success?  Ken Blanchard and Colleen Barrett make a convincing case in their new book, Lead with LUV: A Different Way to Create Real Success.  I received an early manuscript of this new book (due out in January) after attending Barrett’s keynote address at The Ken Blanchard Companies annual client summit in San Diego last month.  Their basic formula is simple: Southwest succeeds because it treats employees with respect, practices The Golden Rule, and loves people for who they are.  In return, the company asks employees to treat customers in a similar manner.

It’s an approach that allows Southwest’s leadership to expect more—and receive more—from their people than other airlines.  Because employees know that leadership is on their side, leaders can confidently challenge and hold people accountable for meeting expectations.  It’s a business version of tough love that only works when employees know you care.

Interested in trying a little leadership love at your organization?  Here are three tips for getting started:

1. Communicate your organizational mission and vision. Barrett explains that at Southwest, they are first and foremost in the customer service business—they just happen to express that service by providing airline transportation.
2. Define the values that will guide behavior. At Southwest values start with safety and practicing the golden rule–treating people as you would like to be treated–as a foundation.  Three additional values of Warrior Spirit, Servant’s Heart, and a Fun-LUVing Attitude guide employee behavior on a day-to-day basis.
3. Combine caring with high expectations. Leaders at Southwest treat their people with respect, strive to bring out their best, and love their people for who they are.  In return, employees are expected to buy into the company’s mission, and to practice the company’s values with each other and customers.

What’s the level of leadership love in your organization?  Do employees know that leaders truly care about them?  It’s an essential ingredient at Southwest that has helped to create long-term success and a fun-loving culture in a challenging industry.  What could it do for you?

Win an Advance Copy of Ken and Colleen’s New Book!

Would you like to get a sneak peek at the unbound manuscript version of Bringing LUV to Leadership?  Rarely made public, we have a small number of extra copies from the proofing and review process that we are giving away this Friday.  To be entered into the drawing, just sign on as a fan at Ken Blanchard’s new Facebook Fan Page by 12 noon Pacific Time, Friday, April 9.  Everyone who is signed up as a fan by that time will automatically be entered into the drawing.  Good luck!

The underdog New Orleans Saints defeated the Indianapolis Colts 31-17 in yesterday’s NFL Super Bowl, in large part I believe, to the power of their purpose. Purpose is defined as “the reason for which something exists or is done; an intended or desired result; determination, resoluteness.” Not that the Colts didn’t have a purpose because they certainly did. Every NFL team has a purpose of winning the Super Bowl each year. But this year it seemed as though the New Orleans Saints connected with their own purpose on a much deeper level that fueled them to victory when it counted most.

The story of Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 and its devastating impact on the city of New Orleans has been well chronicled. In March 2006, Drew Brees joined the Saints football team having just come off major shoulder surgery that threatened his playing career. Brees has been quoted as saying that he felt his decision to join the Saints was a “calling” – a higher purpose that he needed to fulfill, not only to resurrect his own career, but also to help the people of New Orleans resurrect their city. This deep connection to his own personal purpose and that of the city at large created a culture change within the Saints organization which ultimately led them to achieving the greatest prize in their profession.

After the game Brees was quoted as saying, “We played for our city. We played for the entire Gulf Coast region. We played for the entire Who Dat nation that has been behind us every step of the way.”

Teams of all kinds, whether in the sports world, corporate America, or the non-profit sector, can take a lesson from the Saints and the power of purpose. When chartering a team, one of the first priorities is to establish a clear purpose. “Why do we exist?” and “What are we trying to achieve?” are key questions that need to be answered.

Once a team is clear on its purpose, it can establish the values that will guide team members’ behaviors and decisions and in turn establish goals that will help them achieve their purpose. Finding a way to connect each team members’ personal purpose to that of the team will exponentially increase the productivity and morale of the team, allowing the team to achieve more than any one individual possibly could. When the team faces adversity, it will be their firm belief and commitment to their purpose that will carry them through.

“Just to think of the road we’ve all traveled, the adversity we’ve all faced,” Brees said.

“It’s unbelievable. I mean, are you kidding me? Four years ago, whoever thought this would be happening? Eighty-five percent of the city was under water. Most people left not knowing if New Orleans would ever come back, or if the organization would ever come back.

“We just all looked at one another and said, ‘We’re going to rebuild together. We are going to lean on each other.’ That’s what we’ve done the last four years and this is the culmination in all that belief.”

That sounds like the power of purpose to me.

Earlier this week, Fortune magazine announced this year’s 100 Best Companies to Work For, an annual listing of the companies that provide employees with the best combination of pay, perks, and culture.

It’s a great list that highlights some of the best employers, but sometimes the publicity that accompanies the list’s release gives people the wrong idea about what makes up an engaging work environment. While the consultancy that scores the companies, Great Place to Work Institute, goes to great lengths to measure each company on five serious organizational factors, the follow up stories tend to get reduced down to a series of unique perks and benefits that are fun to read and easy to describe.

That’s unfortunate because there are some very strong cultural concepts common to each of these organizations that can get lost in the shuffle. Here are the five items that each of these best employers has in common:

• Credibility—managers communicate the company’s direction and plans while involving others.  Leaders “walk the talk” when it’s time for action.
• Respect–the organization provides employees with a professional work environment that includes the equipment, resources, and training they need to do their job well.
• Fairness—compensation, benefits and rewards are distributed fairly and equitably.
• Pride—the company maintains a good standing in the industry and in the community.  The organization structures jobs so employees have individual work that they can be proud of.
• Camaraderie—the organization creates a hospitable work environment that is friendly, welcoming, and where people feel that they are part of a team connected by common values and purpose.

As we celebrate these great companies, it’s important to remember what makes them great. On-site saunas, concierge service, and a game room are all nice perks, but the real definition of a great place to work is an environment where employees experience trust, have pride in what they do, and enjoy the people they work with.

In an article for Strategy + Business entitled The Promise (and Perils) of Open Collaboration, author Andrea Gabor identifies the challenges organizations face when they choose to adopt a collaborative work environment.   According to Gabor, the biggest obstacle for an organization is the deep change required in the way knowledge is controlled and shared — changes that have the potential to alter relationships both within the company and with its outside constituents. Anything short of total commitment, Gabor warns, is likely to lead to short-lived improvements and eventual failure.

For organizations considering open collaboration, Gabor recommends a clear-headed look at the challenges associated with the change and she identifies seven essential strategies to making it work including:

1. Creating a clear leadership message
2. Collaborating with customers
3. Building a culture of trust and open communication
4. Cultivating continuous improvement
5. Building a flexible innovation infrastructure
6. Preparing your organization for new skill sets
7. Aligning evaluations and rewards

The article points out that “open collaboration is a complex, all-embracing process, requiring genuine commitment from corporate leaders, a willingness to abandon many venerable corporate customs, and an appetite for unleashing and managing disruptive change across the organization.”  But Gabor also encourages organizations to move forward and continue to develop their approach to open collaboration, because for those that do there are great benefits as well.

Sometime today or tomorrow, be sure to read—or save, this article—it’s one of the best on collaboration that we’ve seen. 

And if you are looking for a little additional inspiration and insight on the subject, check out the on-demand webcast of Pass the Ball: The Power of Collaboration.  This is a presentation Ken Blanchard did together with Cisco WebEx in June as a part of their Pass the Ball initiative. Ken shares his thoughts on getting others involved, how a philosophy of “none of us is as smart as all of us” helps everyone accomplish more, and the difference between serving and self-serving behavior.

65% of North American workers reported that they were not recognized at work during the past year according to the authors of The Carrot Principle, Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton. That’s a shame because recognition supercharges the basics of good management according to the authors.  Here’s how 

• Goal Setting—once you set goals, use timely recognition to identify progress towards those goals.  For example, if the goal is greater efficiency—recognize employee who are the most efficient—if it is accuracy—recognize the employees who make the fewest mistakes. 
• Communication—add recognition as an agenda item to all individual and weekly staff meetings.  It’s also a good way to communicate company values and culture on an ongoing basis.  
• Trust—recognizing the contributions of others shows direct reports that you care and appreciate their efforts.  It also lets people know that everyone will be recognized for their contribution on a project.  That goes a long way towards building trust. 
• Accountability—recognizing good behavior shows that you are paying attention to goals and progress.  It’s also a positive way to let people know that behavior is being tracked.

What’s your organization’s approach to reward and recognition?  You can learn more about The Carrot Principle by checking out this short video at BNET, one of our recommended web sites.

Most people do not pay attention to trust in their organization until it is broken.  But by then the damage is done: people withhold facts and information, managers set convoluted goals, management is not available, people talk behind each others’ backs, etc.  The list goes on and on. 

Part of the reason may be that people see trust as a “nice to have” cultural issue to work on once you have everything else in place. This is a fundamental mistake because the level of trust in your organization is a hard-edged economic driver that will impact just about every aspect of your organizations performance. 

Author Stephen M. R. Covey, in his book The Speed of Trust  describes this impact as either a high trust dividend that can add 40% to your organization’s performance or a low trust tax that can subtract up to 80% by adding to your costs. .

This dividend or tax impact occurs because trust is the ultimate determining factor whether individuals will be good team players, will make the commitment to change, and will work beyond minimum requirements to achieve desired outcomes.  

What’s the trust level in your organization? 

All relationships, personal and professional, are based upon trust. And there is a big difference between the way people work together when they trust each other versus how they work when trust is low or nonexistent. When employees who work together trust each other, they exert more effort in their jobs and expend less effort monitoring each other. This leads to increased productivity, lower costs, and greater satisfaction for workers as well as shareholders.

70% of change efforts fail according to Pat Zigarmi, coauthor with Ken Blanchard, John Britt, and Judd Hoekstra of the new book Who Killed Change? out in bookstores now.   

In Zigarmi’s experience of working with clients on organizational change initiatives over the past 20 years, a couple of common mistakes keep popping up when organizations go about launching large scale change in their organizations.   

What causes change to fail in most organizations?  Here are three that Zigarmi recommends keeping an eye on: 

1. People leading the change think that announcing the change is the same as implementing it.  So much energy in organizations is spent preparing to communicate the change and the reasons behind it, but not nearly the same energy is spent planning for the successful execution and rollout of the change after the announcement.
2. People’s concerns with change are not surfaced or addressed. If leaders do not take the time to specifically address individuals’ needs and fears near the beginning of the change process, they will find themselves fighting an uphill battle later on in the process.
3. Those being asked to change are not involved in planning the change.  Leaders need to gain the buy-in and cooperation of the people who are being asked to change. Without that, resistance smolders. This is because people feel that change is being done to them rather than with them. 

Interested in learning more about Zigarmi’s thoughts on leading people through change in your organization?  Be sure to check out interviews with Pat in the May 2008 and May 2009 issues of Ignite or Pat’s webinar recordings on implementing change. 

To learn more about Who Killed Change? including access to the first chapter, follow this link, Who Killed Change?

Collaboration is a powerful competitive strategy for today’s organizations—and for individuals also. Why? It’s because no one can develop the skills necessary fast enough to meet the increasing demands of customers. Today you have to partner with others if you are going to succeed. What can leaders do to improve collaboration in their organizations?

Ken Blanchard identified three strategies in his presentation yesterday to over 700 people who joined him online for a webinar on The Power of Collaboration. Ken believes that there are three ways that leaders can help their organizations become more collaborative.

1. Model collaboration. How do the senior leaders in your organization work together? Do different business units cooperate with each other, or is the situation more competitive? Behavior speaks volumes. When employees see their senior leaders work collaboratively, they know that this is an important value in the organization.
2. Adopt a learning attitude. You have to be curious and willing to learn. If you believe that you already have all the answers, you’re probably not going to see the value in collaborating.
3. Be a humble, high performer. In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins identifies that the best companies have leaders that mix a resolve for high performance with an equal dose of humility. It’s a powerful combination that achieves results yet maintains perspective.

A recording of Ken’s presentation is available online at no charge. You can view the presentation and see everything that Ken covered by clicking here.

Don’t miss Ken Blanchard for a free webinar today on The Power of Collaboration.  This is a special event co-sponsored by Cisco WebEx as a part of their Pass the Ball Ideas in Motion program featuring different thought leaders from a wide variety of business, social, academic, and government sectors all coming together around one concept—that ideas get better when you share them with others. 

Ken will be talking about The Power of Collaboration and sharing some of the things that get in the way of people working together effectively.  You’ll learn the importance of keeping a learner’s perspective, how to get out of your own way, and how to choose a collaborative partner. With Ken’s experience of writing 42 books with over 50 different coauthors, he has a unique perspective on what works when it comes to teaming with others. 

You can sign up for this event now or check back later at The Ken Blanchard Companies website for information on how to access the recording of today’s event.  Also be sure to check out the entire Pass the Ball project at WebEx.  It’s a great way to learn about the power of collaboration and how people are taking advantage of the synergy that occurs when people work together towards a common goal.

In the June issue of Ignite, Ken Blanchard identified ego as one of the biggest stumbling blocks to people being able to collaborate effectively.  Now that ego is on my radar screen, I’m beginning to see it appear all around me. 

Most recently I saw the behind-the-scenes impact of ego described in Jim Collins new book, How the Mighty Fall.

In a section on The Dynamics of Leadership-Team Behavior, Collins explains some of the subtle changes that take place in the way teams operate once ego—expressed as “hubris” sets in.  The result is behavior that is defensive, self-promoting, comparative, and resistant to new ideas. See if you recognize any of these behaviors starting to creep into your team dynamics:

According to Collins, in teams on the way down: 

• People shield those in power from unpleasant facts, fearful of penalties and criticism for shining light on the rough realities
• People assert strong opinions without providing data, evidence, or a solid argument
• The team leader has a very low questions-to-statements ratio, avoiding critical input and/or allowing sloppy reasoning and unsupported opinions
• Team members acquiesce to a decision but don’t unify to make the decision successful—or worse, undermine it after the fact
• Team members seek as much credit as possible for themselves, yet do not enjoy the confidence and admiration of their peers
• Team members argue to look smart or to further their own interests rather than argue to find the best answers to support the overall cause
• The team conducts “autopsies with blame,” seeking culprits rather than wisdom
• Team members often fail to deliver exceptional results and blame other people or outside factors for setbacks, mistakes, and failures

Are you looking for a way out of this vicious cycle?  Start by looking at where your focus is as an organization.  Is it on serving yourself, or on serving others?  Ego plays a big part in this.  Looking for some ideas?  Be sure to check out Ken Blanchard’s interview in Ignite or better yet, join us for Ken’s webinar tomorrow on The Power of Collaboration.  You’ll learn some ways to get your organization back on track.