LTC Performance Blog — Building Healthy, High Performance Organizations

Integrity That Counts

April 21, 2011 · 0 comments by Melissa

Last month we wrote about the importance of having corporate values that really mean something. This month we’ve chosen “integrity” and a few examples that may help you think through the process of creating measurable and defined values.

Have you ever taken a look at the U.S. Air Force’s list of core values?

The Airman is a person of integrity, courage and conviction.

Integrity is a character trait. It is the willingness to do what is right even when no one is looking. It is the moral compass, the inner voice, the voice of self-control and the basis for the trust imperative in today’s military.

Integrity is the ability to hold together and properly regulate all of the elements of a personality. A person of integrity, for example, is capable of acting on conviction. A person of integrity can control impulses and appetites.

integrity

The description continues on but even after the first sentence, you can imagine that with a description like that, no member of the Air Force would be confused by the value of “Integrity.” Company values should clearly describe what is truly important to the organization - what the company stands for, and how people are guided to achieve their mission. Every decision and action is seen by the employees and management through the lense of these values.

Here are a few more examples of the corporate value “Integrity” as defined by different organizations:

Accenture, global management consulting and technology services

“Integrity: Being ethically unyielding and honest and inspiring trust by saying what we mean, matching our behaviors to our words and taking responsibility for our actions.”

Genworth Financial defines Integrity as:

We demonstrate fairness, honesty, and accountability
We do what we say
We communicate with transparency

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Performance Morsel of the Month

April 19, 2011 · 0 comments by Terry Lauter Comp

in Leadership, Management, Organizational Growth, Performance Development

Many “home grown” managers at a $100M publishing company had impressive technical talent with little formal management training. LTC helped this company develop a customized, yet cost effective leadership/management training curriculum for implementation in short in-house segments over a period of months.

The program served to develop base-line leadership skills and “common language” for company leaders. The program was institutionalized, so that new managers can be trained and additional modules added in the future.

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Like a Game of Telephone

April 19, 2011 · 0 comments by Terry Lauter Comp

in Employee Communication, Leadership, Management, Organizational Growth

Only in a game of telephone can the phrase “I did an extra lap in the pool” become “I dropped my phone in a pink toilette.”

It’s funny when it happens at a kid’s birthday party, but the last thing you want is your company’s new mission statement or announcement about financial earnings to get distorted as it travels through company mouths.

In this WSJ video, Nestle’s Chair Peter Brabeck-Letmathe discusses the importance of company-wide communication. He compares the old pyramid style of top-down communication to a game of telephone. We can definitely get on board with that analogy. Messages can get distorted and lower level employees can feel in-the-dark about the organization’s performance and status and when communication is not flowing properly.

“I think you have to find a way to talk to all of them,” Brabeck-Letmathe says.

By using technology to make an announcement to 285,000 employees at once, he is able to communicate his message clearly and “align the whole organization,” he said. In other words, the CEO and financial analysts hear the messages at the same time as the factory workers. There’s no lag time, no room for distortion or exaggeration.

We’d go a step further and say: make sure the line of communication is two-way. If you’re broadcasting the company’s financial report to the staff, open up a time for questions and answers from the staff, for example. Or if the CEO is making a major announcement through a podcast, open up small debriefing discussions afterwards between department staff and their supervisors.

We agree with Brabeck-Letmathe that alignment through communication is vital, but alignment also means opening up a way for employee communication to effectively get back to the top as well.

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Sometimes Less Really Is More

April 11, 2011 · 0 comments by Terry Lauter Comp

in Employee Communication, Leadership, Management, Organizational Growth, Performance Management

As we come off the back-end of a recession that left many companies struggling to regain their place in the market, it seems that more and more organizations are having to do more with less. Less money, less people and less resources.

In this type of culture where dollars need to be stretched, hours need to be extended without the benefit of pay increases or incentives, supervisors have to oversee multiple departments, and certain perks remain in their burial place - it’s easy to become quite grumbly. You may even become paralyzed by the thought that the money, resources, and/or talent needed to fulfill your 2011 goals are just not there.

Well excuse us for trying to snap you out of it, but ReThinkHR.org is giving us all a wake up call:

“Leadership is about what you have…. not what you don’t.”

Resourcefulness is a trait that we’ve always admired in companies and people, but a video we recently watched brought new meaning to the word. We thank RethinkHR.org for bringing this video to our attention. Here’s a simple question as you watch: “If a group of young kids in a small remote village can do it, why can’t you?”

Click to watch:

Three thoughts picked our brain as we watched the short movie:

They let their dreams drive their potential. A group of young boys is driven to play football. They lack space, community support and money. What they do have? Arms, legs, each other, building tools, imaginations and a dream. If you’re a leader, then you have a team. Your team may not be as big as you’d like, as talented as you’d hope or as well equipped as needed, but if 10 underprivileged boys can put their heads together to make a floating football field reality, then truly - what is stopping you? Tap into your team’s creative synapses and be a promoter of resourcefulness. Can you imagine what great pride and camaraderie would come about when your team feels they rose to the challenge of doing more with less?
It didn’t take them long to start brainstorming and then get to work. They didn’t linger and sulk. They didn’t even ask anyone else for help and they certainly didn’t give up.
“More” isn’t always the answer. They had a field, new jerseys, and new cleats. Yet as they faced a miserable loss in their big game, what was their solution? Get rid of their cleats and play the way they did back home. The lesson: sometimes what is seen by others as the proper resources, doesn’t always produce the best results.

Don’t let resources spoil your team’s potential. Sometimes having resources, money and talent at our fingertips can stifle opportunities for resourcefulness and leadership that encourages creativity.

Take stock of what you have and encourage your team to drive straight toward opportunity with whatever it is you do have.

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Spring Fever Sets In

March 31, 2011 · 0 comments by Melissa

in Employee Communication, Leadership, Management, Organizational Growth, Performance Development, Performance Feedback, Performance Management

The New Year excitement has worn off now and anticipation of spring is settling in.

Is it just us or does spring bring with it a sense of optimism? Maybe it’s the warmth, the flowers sprouting, the exciting outdoor soccer games or the promise of summer vacation around the corner.

With all this goodness floating around it’s tough not to get a little sidetracked. But now is the perfect time to channel that optimistic, upbeat perspective into your employees.

Here are a few more suggestions for motivating year-round performance results from your employees.

Suggest that your employee serve as a mentor for someone else newer to the team
Offer your employee the opportunity to participate in a personal leadership/style assessment. Share your personal results from such an assessment with the employee and what you learned from the process.
Ask your employee for feedback about your style, and what you could do specifically to help him/her be more successful in their job.

spring-employees

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Excellent at What???

March 25, 2011 · 1 comment by Terry Lauter Comp

in Organizational Growth, Performance Development, Performance Management

EXCELLENCE. It’s a word we see often in a list of company values. It sounds great. Who wouldn’t want to work with a company that is committed to EXCELLENCE?

excellence1

But WHAT exactly does EXCELLENCE mean and if this is a value of your company, how exactly do you measure it? How does an employee know if he or she is meeting leadership’s standard of excellence? Because without actionable measures, EXCELLENCE is reduced to plain ol’ “fluff” and your clients and employees will see it as such.

To translate EXCELLENCE from fluff to a value of meaning, it needs a definition.

We’ve chosen a couple examples for you to see how other companies are defining excellence:

Excellence according to Seagate Technology

The pursuit of excellence is not a destination, it’s a journey. To achieve this we must:
Accept the challenge of ownership
Ensure quality in every aspect of our work
Take pride in our work, products, and vision
Accept that change is inevitable and that adaptability determines future success

Excellence according to Genworth Financial:

We prioritize to stay focused on the right things.
We take initiative to be a part of the solution.
We continually seek to teach and learn.

Excellence according to Children’s Hospital Central California:

Excellence: We depend on exceptional people to provide exceptional quality health care and services throughout Children’s Hospital. We set high standards and we support each other as we strive to achieve them. We invest in each other and we value the individual and cultural differences that make us strong. We are proud of our superior services as measured by quality outcomes.

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Googly Eyes for Google

March 24, 2011 · 0 comments by Terry Lauter Comp

in Leadership, Management, Organizational Growth, Performance Feedback, Performance Management, Training

Close your eyes for a minute and think about Google. Try to picture a Google manager. What qualities and characteristics come to your mind?

Do you picture a master of computer code who consistently spends time with his or her employees and cares about their career goals? Or maybe an MBA graduate with sharp people skills and an admirable reputation amongst his or her employees?

Well, maybe someday soon, but even a company like Google needs a little time to get its act together.

You’ve heard of “Google Analytics.” Now the data-mining Goliath is putting “People Analytics” to the test and we’re sending googly eyes their way because of it.

According to a recent New York Times article, “Google’s Quest to Build a Better Boss” by Adam Bryant, the company is on a mission to transform their management styles by relying on … wait for it… data gathered from more than 10,000 internal observations about managers.

Project Oxygen began in 2009, according to Bryant’s article, and the company wasted hardly any time putting the findings to work.

Managers are quickly learning where they fall short. One began to understand the importance of giving “clear and direct feedback” to those he leads, the article acknowledges.

“What employees valued most were even-keeled bosses who made time for one-on-one meetings, who helped people puzzle through problems by asking questions, not dictating answers, and who took an interest in employees’ lives and careers,” Bryant writes.

And as it turns out, master technical expertise ranked way low on employees’ measurement scale of effective managers. It’s the song we’ve been singing for years - technical skills mean nothing for a manager who is lacking in people skills.

Google’s quickly implemented training and coaching programs (based on the results, of course) resulted in a staggering improvement of 75% for the company’s worst-performing managers, the article says.

Sure, some of these are lessons Google could have learned in researching HR blogs and reading Eric Harvey’s management training books. But Do-It-Our-Way Google wanted to make sure they’d had the answers that were most relevant to their employees. We don’t doubt others will start following in their footsteps.

“H.R. has long run on gut instincts more than hard data. But a growing number of companies are trying to apply a data-driven approach to the unpredictable world of human interactions,” Bryant writes.

It sure is nice to see a company like Google paving the way for other companies of its size to rely on a data-driven approach when it comes to human interaction.

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Values That Truly Drive Performance

March 21, 2011 · 0 comments by Terry Lauter Comp

in Organizational Growth, Performance Management

You’ve seen the posters. You may even have a couple in your office. A vibrant picture depicts a mountain climber reaching the mountain peak and then reaching out his hand to give his fellow climber a lift to the top. Big bold words underneath read “TEAMWORK.”

The posters are nice and no doubt, they can evoke some powerful emotion and inspiration. But how much do they really say about your company?

A lot of times these posters are put up with much excitement as you attempt to position them as a constant reflection of your company’s vision and values. TEAMWORK, INTEGRITY, COMMUNICATION….

With good intent, all these concepts may have been integrated into your company mission statements or values. But soon after, these values fell flat and those posters on the wall lost their effect.

Workforce Management’s Kris Dunn writes that “most company values and mission statements are so far removed from daily activity that they never become useful as gauges on how work is actually done in a company. They also aren’t front and center enough to guide decision-making on a daily, weekly or even quarterly basis.”

But what’s even worse than having posters that have lost their meaning? How about employees that have lost their way?

Katie knows communication is an important value to the company. And she even knows she’ll be graded on such when her performance reviews come around. But “communication of what and with whom” she wonders?

Bobby thinks it’s great that his employer touts “integrity in all business interactions.” But “will my boss recognize my efforts to bring integrity to the job? What if my view of integrity is different from his view?”

Typically, when we see an initiative fail in an organization it’s due to a lack of personal accountability. But if company leadership doesn’t establish measurable values, they’re shooting themselves in the foot before the race even begins, and setting their employees up to fail with them.

Healthy, high-performance organizations realize this and hold their people accountable for achieving specific, measurable and realistic objectives. And that’s exactly what Dunn calls upon companies to do when they are constructing their mission statements and values.

Dunn’s example in a nutshell:

Ineffective nebulous value statement: INTEGRITY–Demonstrates uncompromised integrity in all actions with customers, team members and all other stakeholders.

Good, measurable value explanation:

“Create three to four statements that illustrate how integrity plays out on a daily basis in your organization. Then have the manager rate employees on how they perform against the behavioral statements you created.”

INTEGRITY–Demonstrates uncompromised integrity in all actions with customers, team members and all other stakeholders.

As evidenced by:

Team member keeps all commitments (large and small) and effectively communicates changes as they occur.
Team member effectively balances needs of company with needs of customer, doing best to represent the interests of both parties.
Team member acts upon identified unethical conduct.

Placing measurable descriptions on your company’s values will keep your employees motivated and focused, and will give you a solid ground for judging and driving employee performance.

For the next several weeks, we’ll help you brainstorm ways to measure some of the most common company values. Stay tuned.

To read Dunn’s full article, click here: http://www.workforce.com/archive/feature/hr-management/why-integrity-doesnt-drive-performance/index.php.

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Performance Morsel of the Month

March 14, 2011 · 0 comments by Terry Lauter Comp

in Uncategorized

Loss of a major customer threatened a high tech organization. With budgets cut to the bone, a quick fix was needed to stem layoffs. LTC helped this company create a short-term Gainsharing Program which would allow employees to leverage their recent business training to uncover cost savings.

A “Show Me the Money” theme identified $300,000+ in cost savings. An employee panel recognized $103,000 of it. A small portion was shared with employees. Witihin a few short weeks, silos disappeared and teamwork dramatically improved.

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“Earl” Hits an HR Heartstring

March 7, 2011 · 0 comments by Terry Lauter Comp

in Employee Communication, Performance Management, Staffing, Training

If it’s a Friends episode, chances are you’ve seen it. And if George Costanza was in it, how could you have missed it?

Actor Jason Alexander (aka George of Seinfeld) plays a supply manager named Earl who is just about ready to give up on life. What seems to bother Earl most is his unnoticeable existence in his workplace. When he shouts out that he’s going to kill himself, his coworkers don’t take any notice and continue on with their own work and relationships.

Photo from allocine.com

Since this is Friends and not a depressing episode of CSI, the episode has a happy ending. Eventually, Phoebe marches to Earl’s office after meeting him on the phone and convinces Earl that he is not worthless and that she (although she just met him) is his friend. Each time we watch the episode, we can’t help thinking about the other Earl’s out there in the working world.

Do you have any Earl’s in your workplace? You know–hard workers who keep to themselves and don’t get much recognition from their co-workers or supervisors. You know, the ones who are genuinely nice guys and a strong asset to your company, but they often each lunch alone and typically keep to themselves.

Seems that every mid to large-scale company has one or two. The Earl’s of the world are not hopeless causes.

Everyone has that internal desire to be recognized, noticed and told by a real human that we’re doing a great job once in a while.

As leaders, it is our job to care about the Fun Bobbies, Social Sarahs, Motivated Marks and yes, even the Introverted Earls.

Have you talked to your “Earls” about their personal and professional goals lately? If the idea of approaching your Earl employee isn’t so comfortable, think about alternative ways to get their feedback.

Ask them to write down their top three goals for the year. Also ask them to write down how they believe you can help them pursue those goals.

Coach them a bit into giving you real answers. Let them know you actually want some real answers and want to help because they’re valuable to your company.

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