How (34 page)

David took me seriously, but he told me that he had spoken to others about the issue and that he and his group felt they were going about this in an appropriate way and that was the way it was going to be. “I wasn’t the sole decision maker, but I was the senior person on the team,” David said. “I was so convinced that I would make the call on the merits and lead the team on the merits that, while everything Dov was saying was theoretically correct, I felt that if LRN was the best or if X was, the best was going to win. I think that one of the lessons here is that we were just dealing with such different realities. In my reality—probably arrogantly—I didn’t think someone would walk away from competing for our business based on that set of facts; this was too attractive a proposition and our reputation for quality and performance would transparently give confidence to the world that no matter who knew whom, or who owned what, we were going to pick the best thing for Altria.”

I consulted with the LRN team. There was a lot at stake on what we would do, not just for the company abstractly, but for individuals and their livelihood. I made the decision to formally notify David and Altria that we were withdrawing from the process. It was a painful and difficult decision. I sent a letter to David. I tried to be very careful in the letter to not impugn his integrity or be critical of David or Altria or its leadership. I said simply that I felt that there was a conflict that was disabling, that we’d thought deeply about it, and that based on our values, beliefs, and the constitution of our company, we felt withdrawing was the right thing to do.

“At the time, I was shocked,” David said. “I didn’t understand it. I felt very strongly about my fairness and ability to run a fair process and do the right thing for the company. I just could not accept that the words meant what they said. It felt irrational because not only did LRN have a full shot, I thought it might win. I didn’t know what was really behind it; I just felt like it was a story that I’d probably never get to the bottom of. Then it occurred to me that it might be a tactic, that by calling our attention to these problems, LRN was trying to control some part of the process, to put us a little bit on the defensive and gain an advantage. Maybe LRN was attempting to differentiate itself by being
smart
. It never occurred to me to think it was simply a principled stance.”

In response to the letter, David reached out to me. “I thought it was my obligation to Altria to not let one of the quality companies withdraw from the process,” David said. The call impressed me; the letter didn’t ask for it and he didn’t need to make it. I said, “We withdraw,” not “Call me if you want to discuss it.” During the call, however, David got upset and at one point asked me if I was impugning his integrity. Perhaps because he thought we were just being clever, he began to find my position insulting. I took great pains to point out that I was not personalizing the situation, and that it was about LRN’s belief system and not his integrity. LRN simply felt compelled to withdraw. “It was hard not to take personally,” David said. “I was starting to get the message that here I am, the chief ethics officer, and in essence it’s being pointed out to me that at least some people perceive something I’m doing has the appearance of a serious conflict of interest. It made me uncomfortable, defensive, or at least self-justifying and, you know, any number of other adjectives.” We ended the conversation agreeing to disagree, and left it at that.

In retrospect, I think we failed to humanize each other at that time. That’s too common in business; people see each other as human doings, not human beings. At that point, I saw David as a businessman, the type of guy who, when he got off the phone, went on to the next task. I didn’t realize that he was the kind of guy I could hurt or easily insult. Conversely, he probably didn’t see me as the kind of guy who anguished and lost sleep over a principle. “I think I saw you as a walking balance sheet,” David said, “or a profit-and-loss statement. I found it hard to believe or accept that we had really offended any values or important LRN standards.”

A couple of years went by. Altria picked a vendor. There was a lot of loss in the situation, for both LRN and Altria. I felt their pick should have withdrawn as well, and in my dourest moments I thought that maybe they kind of deserved each other. “I took the position that life is long, and let’s move on,” said David. “Neither of us had crossed any lines or said anything that we would regret, so we kept it distant and professional.” During those years, David became an industry leader and something of a guru in this industry. He was often called upon to speak about his progress at Altria (which of course increased my disappointment at not being able to land the deal). I saw him speak at conferences and meetings. It was awkward. He would speak, and I would speak, but we didn’t speak to each other. Our reputations grew, and we grew more familiar with each other’s reputations. I was impressed by his passion and commitment; he seemed like a good guy.

Then one day, I got a voice mail from David suggesting a meeting. “At the time I called,” David explained, “LRN was developing something that was new, advanced, different, and no one else had. I am not dogmatic in my beliefs, nor do I think I’m infallible. As I grew into my position and became part of the community, I started to understand more of what I didn’t know. I took as my mandate that Altria needs to have the best possible program, so I reached out, despite our past. I saw it as the principled thing to do.”

Although I was still smarting after all those years, I thought, “no harm, no foul.” It was a new chapter. So we created a strong presentation customized to Altria’s needs, and began a series of meetings between our teams. David kicked the tires, and then dug deeper into our approach and specific solution. We developed a rapport, and David extended me the honor to speak at one of Altria’s global leadership conferences. “At that point,” David said, “we had put aside the past, and we were proceeding on a professional, on-the-merits basis. Within my own team, it was a big deal to invite Dov to speak at one of our leadership meetings, and I was conscious of that on two levels. One, I thought there’d be learning, and that was the main thing. And two, I thought it was useful to say to the troops, ‘I, David, am capable of learning, and we should not be standing on personal principle or history or anything else when it comes to doing the right thing for the company. We may have had an unfortunate experience with LRN, which left whatever scar tissue it left; but that was a few years ago, and we’re still about doing the right and smart thing.’ ”

After the conference, our teams sat down and had a long dinner. During it, David got very open about his thoughts about leadership and what it was like to be a young executive officer with Altria and go work overseas and come back. It was a very sharing dinner about perspective and views on big business, big companies, and leadership. We got to know each other a little bit more just in the exchange of perspectives that night. David showed a lot of power in his ability to be vulnerable and reflective in front of his colleagues, and a lot of humility.

A couple of weeks later, he and I had dinner together, just the two of us, and during the meal, I had my briefcase open (I think I did it on purpose). At some point, I pulled out a copy of LRN’s Leadership Framework, the constitution around which our company was built, and got very passionate. I shared our ideas about values-based leadership, our commitment to our beliefs, and how the framework governs all that we do. It was a great meal, where we both really opened up with each other. “As we were leaving the restaurant, I had my epiphany,” David said. “I stopped Dov on the street and said, ‘You know, it just occurred to me that you really believe in what you say, and that you were truly acting on principle back then, and I don’t think I really believed it until right now.’ ” It was at that moment I felt complete closure. David and I stopped seeing each other as human doings, and started believing in each other as human beings. At that moment, Altria and LRN stopped being companies in business together, and started doing a Wave.

In the ensuing months, David and I began to nurture a wide-ranging relationship of collaboration and innovation. During that same time, Altria’s original contract with its vendor expired and Altria began a new formal selection process. “It became clear to me,” said David, “that because of the way LRN perceived itself and runs its business, they were more likely to have real insights into values-based business and doing the right thing.” It became clear to me that through our process of rediscovery and connection, David and I created, even if inadvertently, an atmosphere that allowed our respective teams to collaborate powerfully—with trust and understanding—and to forge a partnership to bring values-based solutions to Altria’s operations worldwide.

David and I built our relationship one interaction at a time, over time, as we both learned more about each other and found a way to reach across the divide of business that had separated us. Along the way we both struggled in the Valley of C, and the things we held dearest to us—our principles, integrity, reputation, honesty—were put severely to the test. Yet despite all the challenges during the journey, neither of us strayed from what he most believed; we kept getting our HOWS right. Years later, we were able to reconnect because, though troubled and strained, the synapses between us were never fully broken. Both of us sensed something strong and authentic in the other and so, with the intercession of time and reflection, we were able to rebuild those connections and make them strong and lasting. Although the Wave we tried to start in the third inning petered out, by the seventh we were all waving our arms and cheering together.

Part IV

HOW WE GOVERN

INTRODUCTION: INNOVATING IN HOW

Business, simply put, is a vessel that contains and expresses the results of human endeavor. Within it pools much that we aspire to: meaning, success, significance, excellence, and contribution to the greater good. There, too, live greed, self-serving attitudes, covetousness, consumption, exploitation, and a host of our less savory qualities. A company or an organization forms to achieve a goal unattainable by an individual alone—a greater service to others, a larger product, or an advancement of human knowledge. For business to find its greatest expression and achieve its loftier aims, it must organize and govern itself in a manner that unleashes these higher forces in those who join within it. Every group faces the challenge of how best to accomplish this goal, an organizational premise that attracts the best and brightest, inspires them to achieve at the highest level, and generates sufficient reward—both monetary and nonmonetary—to compensate their efforts.

In Part One, we discussed the many forces and factors that have fundamentally changed the world in which business operates, placing a new and intense focus on HOW we do What we do. In Parts Two and Three, we examined in depth these new HOWS and explored ways we can, as individuals and groups, learn to master a way of acting and thinking about the world that aligns us more closely with these new realities. Taken together, these three parts provide a new lens through which to see and react to the challenges we face day to day. This leaves us with a profound question: If HOW is the new fuel of human connectedness and achievement, can we conceive of a new organizing principle, a new way of binding ourselves together, in order to create groups, teams, and organizations more capable of making Waves? In other words, can we embed HOW horizontally across every aspect of our organization and make it something that informs everything we do?

To illustrate what I mean by that, let’s briefly discuss a concept that had a similar transformative effect on twentieth-century business: quality and process management, which I think of as the HOWS of WHAT. Since the mid-1980’s or so, global business heartily embraced the concept of designed-in quality and process reengineering. The impetus for the shift came from the success of Japanese manufacturing techniques. Before Japan’s rise as a manufacturing powerhouse, the rest of the world was stuck in the quagmire of the production triangle (see
Figure IV.1
).

FIGURE IV.1
The Production Triangle

Each point of the triangle represented either fast, cheap, or good. The idea was that you could pick two: You could have it good and fast, but it wouldn’t be cheap; good and cheap, but it wouldn’t be fast; or fast and cheap, but it wouldn’t be good. The trap lay in the fact that quality was generally considered an end-of-the-line inspection point. Widgets would roll off the line, and someone standing at the end would inspect them for quality and throw the bad ones away. If there were 20 steps in the manufacturing process, quality was step 21; steps 1 to 20 didn’t concern themselves with quality. Businesses could deliver high-quality products, but it was more costly to do so because it meant throwing away more products at the end of the line. More profoundly, businesses generally viewed quality as an aesthetic, a soft, amorphous characteristic that couldn’t be easily quantified or measured. People thought, “I know good quality when I see it; but it’s subjective.” We did not have a common vernacular for it;
good
was in the eye of the beholder.