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Purpose = Profits

November 29, 2011 By 1 Comment

Check out this analysis by Morgan Stanley of some of the largest public tech companies in the world: Companies with “simple, focused” missions achieve the biggest gross margins.

Fascinating, yes?  Note that QlikView and Salesforce have the biggest gross margins AND more simple, focused missions than the other companies.

A clear mission is so valuable, but so many companies struggle with finding the courage and commitment for standing for something.  Or they fall into gobbledygook corporate speak that lacks inspiration and clarity. Or the “mission statement by consensus” process is so draining that people end up with “whatever” missions rather than something simple and great.

Big hint: If  the mission process gets painful, you have the wrong people involved.

(See the story that accompanied the chart over at Harvard Business Review, “Employee Values = Stakeholder Value” by Lars Bjork, CEO of QlikTech.)

Filed Under: Activating change, Communicating, Language, Leadership, Organizational change, Smart company stories Tagged With: , , ,

Five questions for finding the right boss

November 9, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Hi Lois,

I love your Foghound website and specifically your concept of rebels in the organization. Guess what, I identify with this and am the rebel. It has not always been with a positive outcome. I am wondering if you have any ideas on how to find the “protectors” within an organization for these people. Specifically, if one was to interview for a job, how would you know if this potential boss would give the rebel freedom and protection?

Any thoughts are appreciated. This is definitely something I think about.

 

Finding the right boss is crucial for corporate rebels. With the right “protector” you can feel safe in creating change and new ideas that will make a difference. Plus, a good boss can help guide you through the complexities of organizational politics and decision making.

Here are some job interview suggestions to help you figure out whether the person would be a good boss:

1. What is the organization trying to achieve?  This reveals whether a clear organizational purpose exists. When there is a clear purpose, rebels have a much easier time because they can link their  new ideas to how they support the big organizational goal or purpose.  When goals and purposes are fuzzy, rebels can get caught in an unproductive eddy of questioning the validity of the proposed idea.

2. What’s possible that hasn’t yet been done in this [field|company|organization) or  What are the greatest opportunities for the organization? This helps you see if the potential boss is a forward-thinking idea person. (Aside: A corporate rebel recently told me that her new CEO  told the top execs to stop thinking about new ideas and focus their energy on executing his strategy (which they disagreed with).  That no-possibilities boss is losing some of his best talent.)

3. What do you especially like about the organization’s culture and work environment? The response to this will uncover whether the person is positive and appreciative of the strengths of the organization, or a Debby Downer who defaults to problems and negativity.  From my observations, positive, optimistic bosses are more open to –and appreciative of — rebels.

4. What’s the best assignment/project you’ve ever been involved with?  What made it so fulfilling? Does the person  most value implementation or creating new things? This idea helps you understand what makes the person tick.  Rebels need a boss who veers more to the creating new things mindset.

5. How do you support people who question approaches that may no longer be effective and see alternative ways to do things?  How a person answers this will be more telling than the words themselves. Is the person comfortable with the question?  Does the answer flow easily and naturally — or does it take a bit  to find the words? Does it sound like the person truly values truth-telling idea people? Or do you detect some annoyance? Does the response indicate that people regularly bring up ideas and the boss has a genuine and comfortable way to support those people and ideas?

Lastly, look around the work environment.  Do you sense a lot of energy and positive buzz?  Or is there a hushed, disengaged feeling? I know this is a bit touchey-feely, but the environment speaks volumes about whether it’s a place rebels can thrive. After walking around the offices of a big ad agency last year, I instantly knew the company was not steeped in creativity.  It was too quiet. People were heads down in their cubicles. There were few fun things tacked around cubicles and common spaces. Sure enough, eight months later I heard the agency had lost three big clients.

Ask your potential boss good questions, and find time to walk around.

 

Filed Under: Communicating, Corporate Rebels, Language Tagged With: , ,

The 90-30 conundrum

June 24, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Approximately 90 percent of people who participated in Foghound’s recent Corporate Rebel Study said that they agreed that involving rebels more helps improve corporate culture and develop a more innovative company.

BUT only 34 percent percent are “very satisfied” with rebels’ ability to provide that value inside their organizations.

Companies want these rebels’ fresh thinking but many corporate cultures are getting in the way of that happening.   For while companies want to innovate the study found that they are uncomfortable when people challenge the status quo, question executive decisions, go around the rules, and ask too many questions.

If changing quickly to  tap into marketing opportunities and challenges is more important than ever, perhaps it’s time to change what our organizations value, model new behaviors as leaders, and teach rebels how to share their ideas in ways that trigger conversations vs. provoking anger.

I’ll be blogging more in the coming weeks about rebels.  Please feel free to share this research in your organizations.  I look forward to hearing more about your experiences in creating organizations where change agents are valued vs. viewed as trouble makers.

Corporate rebel ebook
View more presentations from Lois Kelly

Filed Under: Activating change, Corporate Rebels, Innovation, Leadership, Organizational change, Problem solving, Research Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Social media expose: the passion problem

March 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Supergirl

Social media is exposing a problem in business: many, many employees and customers don’t care much about the business; they’re not flocking to  join Facebook fan pages, participate in employee communities, add comments to blogs.

Take a look around and you’ll find the evidence everywhere.  After all the worries about what employees might post,  working for months with legal to get guidelines in place, and putting that corporate blog and Facebook page in place,  there’s a thunderous echo of nothingness.

The reason? Most people are just not that into their companies.  Sure, their companies may be good places to work, opportunities for professional advancement may be decent, and the company is probably a responsible corporate citizen.  But the passion is missing.

Social media is exposing a significant business problem: bland corporate cultures.  I would suggest that we should be spending far more time on the culture problem than on social media. Of course, the more you spend on the latter, the more vivid you’re likely to see the cultural issues.

In most corporations processes, rules, and values, e.g., integrity and  truthfulness, are clear and understood, but people don’t care about  the company with their head and their hearts.  (Do companies even use the word “love” or talk about feelings?)  The primary reason for this lack of passion is because companies’ purpose beyond making money is unclear.  There’s no meaningful cause or purpose that everyone in the company is together aspiring to achieve.

Pick your study or expert and you’ll see the quantifiable value of a strong corporate culture.

  • Financial growth/profitability: Companies with strong cultures returned 1,026 percent for investors over 10 years compared to a 122 percent for the S&P, according to the business school authors of  Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit From Passion and Purpose.
  • Speeding change, adopting new strategies: “You must create a culture  that motivates people to execute the strategy — not to the letter but to the spirit. People’s minds and hearts must align with the new strategy so that at the level of the individual, people embrace it of their own accord and willingly go beyond compulsory execution to voluntary cooperation in carrying it out.” Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant. (Notice the head and heart term again?)
  • Bringing humanity to work: “What we need is not an economy of hands or heads, but an economy of hearts. Evert employee should feel that he or she is contributing to something that will actually make  a genuine and positive difference in the lives of customers and colleagues. For too many employees, the return on emotional equity is close to zero. They have nothing to commit to other than the success of their own career. To succeed today a company must give its members a reason to bring all of their humanity to work.” Gary Hamel, Leading the Revolution.

We’ve heard so much about the potential of social media and enterprise 2.0 to bring  people together in new ways to brainstorm, collaborate, build deeper relationships, eliminate barriers, bring new ideas to market faster.

But if people don’t love your company, don’t expect to reap the big benefits of social media.

The good news, however, is that most companies have a bigger reason for being, a purpose more significant  than simply growing financially.  Someone just has to step up and lead the charge to uncover that purpose and focus the organization around it.

It could just be the most rewarding challenge of your career.

Filed Under: Activating change, Innovation, Leadership, Social media strategy Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Is your culture ready for social media?

December 23, 2008 By 1 Comment

Installing Web 2.0/social media tools is easy. Realizing the benefits from them might not be, depending on a company’s culture.

Steve Radick has a good post over at Social Media Strategery (say that three times fast) where he poses 10 questions to assess whether an organizational culture can support what social media enables.  Good questions all.

  1. Are employees discouraged from contacting people outside of their chain of command?
  2. Are employees discouraged from challenging authority?
  3. Is risk-taking rewarded or punished?
  4. Are employees rewarded for collaborating with other colleagues or for authoring/producing original work?
  5. Do your employees have regular access to the Intranet?
  6. Does your leadership value the feedback of employees?
  7. Are employees prohibited from speaking externally without prior permission?
  8. Is the contribution and sharing of intellectual capital part of the employees’ regular routine?
  9. What’s more valued, entrepreneurship or following orders?
  10. Do employees derive more value from networking with colleagues or from using the Intranet?

The risk of rigid corporate cultures: talent suck

What’s especially interesting to me is that if a company doesn’t value contributions, risk, networking and entrepreneurship, what will happen to the company in the next three years? Can organizations stay relevant if they are this rigid? Unlikely — especially in any industry where talent is at a premium. (And that is most. This recent Business Week article, “The Global Talent Crisis,” is especially insightful about the issue.)

A communications professional recently asked me for advice on where to start with social media considering that her CEO doesn’t value communications, never mind “this new stuff.”  (The CEO’s words.)  My advice to her was to get a new job at a different company. If senior management doesn’t want to empower employees and collaborate with customers, there was little she could do. And yet, the longer she goes without social media experience, the more difficult it will be for her to  advance professionally.

Creative, innovative talent will not tolerate the old command-and-control corporate culture. It’s too suffocating an experience, too difficult to learn new skills, and bad for career development.

Filed Under: Activating change, Leadership, Social media strategy Tagged With: , , , ,