Taking People With You: The Only Way to Make Big Things Happen Paperback (20 page)

CAST THE RIGHT SHADOW
: No culture takes root unless the leader owns it first. So mean what you say. Remember, as the leader, you are always onstage. People are always watching you, so make sure your actions match your intentions. Model the principles of your culture yourself and recognize when you see others living up to them. Rob Savage, our COO at Taco Bell, gives an award each and every week to a different manager who has put the tools she learned in ABR training to work in order to drive results in her restaurant. He then lets all the other RGMs know about her success. It’s a lot of work for him to keep up with this weekly program but the fact that he does it sends a powerful message. It shows that he cares about people and he cares about results and that he’s keeping a close eye on both those things.

CHOOSE THE RIGHT PEOPLE
: Jim Collins, author of
Good to Great
and someone who has researched the topic of corporate culture extensively, says great companies have cultlike cultures. And cultlike cultures are self-selecting. If you are doing it right, then when you build your team, when you interview new employees, when you review the performance of your people, culture should always be a key factor. You should always be thinking: How does this person fit with our culture?

As Collins explained to me when I interviewed him, “There’s a very key question that comes up: How do you get people to share your core values? And what we really learned is that great companies don’t try to get people who don’t share their core values to convert to the religion; they find people who have a predisposition to those values, and they bring it out of them.” It’s for this reason that when I interview potential
new hires, I always try to make it clear what we believe in. I tell them straight out that one of the biggest reasons why someone won’t last in our company is because he doesn’t display a belief in all people.

It is critical that people know what you stand for in your organization. Before somebody gets hired, we sit down and talk about our credo. Everything we do in our business, we talk about it. We wouldn’t start a presentation without it. I think it’s critically important to recognize who we are, what we stand for. And it’s really important that you have people who can rally around that. Anyplace in the world you go with J&J, you see our credo hanging on the wall, in any language, and it’s what allows me to sleep well at night, because I know that all of our employees are really looking at the same priorities, the same responsibilities, and are doing things we hope in a way that we’d all be proud of.

—
BILL WELDON, CHAIRMAN OF THE BOARD AND CEO, JOHNSON & JOHNSON

MAKE CULTURE THE HERO
: Finally, remember to make a big deal out of your culture. When your team succeeds, point to it and show how the culture helped make that success possible. For example, when I hold a meeting at our Restaurant Support Center, I might recognize team members from the IT department for displaying excellent “Take the Hill” teamwork in solving a tough technology issue. Or when I visit one of our business units, I might recognize marketing team members for Going for Breakthrough in a successful new program. When I visit a restaurant, I might recognize someone I see delivering great customer service for Being a Restaurant and Customer Maniac … 
Now
! I do this as publicly as possible, not only to make the people I’m recognizing feel appreciated, but also to reinforce the idea that our culture is helping our organization get great results.

Things change. Priorities change. The business climate changes. You have to let your culture change too and grow organically so it doesn’t start to feel static and irrelevant to people.

We call our cultural framework our How We Win Together principles, but when we first started out, they were a bit different than they are now. Back then they were called our How We
Work
Together principles. If you recall the tool I introduced in
chapter 6
, “Tell It Like It Is,” this change was how we defined the “second set” for our culture.

When we made the shift, we kept some things and added some others. In our first set we had talked about our belief in people, our emphasis on recognition, and customer mania. In our second set, in order to take the company to the next level, I felt it was important to add the principles of building know-how, going for breakthrough results, and employing “take the hill” teamwork, which come from a military perspective that the way to win a war is battle by battle, or the way to reach an objective point is by taking it hill by hill. (Refer to our How We Win Together principles on pages 151–152 for an explanation of each of these.) I also
shared with you how, along the way, I changed “customer focus” to “customer mania” to add emphasis to a concept I didn’t think we had taken seriously enough.

Investment banking is a risk-taking business. It’s driven by money. And it just didn’t fit with our concerns about whether we were always doing the right thing for the brand and for the customer. So we decided to exit the business. We retreated, went back to the core business, went back to what we were—cards, travel, travelers checks, providing security and trust for people at home and away from home, and enabling them to travel the globe and do whatever they want. I mean, that’s basically what American Express is all about and what it stands for.

—
JON LINEN, ADVISER TO THE CHAIRMAN, AMERICAN EXPRESS COMPANY

The fact that cultures shift doesn’t mean that you sacrifice consistency in your core values. Every culture should include certain firm beliefs that people stick to no matter what happens. Those are the things that will guide you in difficult times. For us, the idea that we believe in all people and put people capability first will always guide us. But at the same time, I’ve talked before about how you need to be constantly looking at the reality of your business and identifying the unfinished business. Doing this can affect the priorities in your culture. You can stay true to your core values and still shift your emphasis now and again to help keep people on the right track and ensure that you take your team to the next level.

As a final word, I want to clear up a common concern that people have about culture: Having a culture that puts people first doesn’t mean you sacrifice performance. On the contrary, being a good leader means that you are constantly building the capabilities of your people. And in order to do that, you have to be able to make tough calls about who is helping to raise the team’s overall performance level and who might be
dragging it down. At Yum! the bottom 10 percent of our people every year end up moving on to another company.

We don’t draw a lot of attention to that fact because we believe it’s much more effective to motivate people in positive ways rather than through fear of losing their jobs. No one likes to have to fire someone, but you have to think about
all
your people. What sort of message does it send to those who are benefiting the company when you turn a blind eye to someone who isn’t? Asking those people to move on actually supports our cultural values, because the people who remain know they’ve earned their spots.

When I talk to other top executives and CEOs, I hear over and over again that some of the worst decisions they’ve made in their careers have been about waiting too long to replace people who just haven’t been a good fit in their organizations.

In our company we take our People Planning Review process to heart because it helps us ensure that we are rewarding the right people and raising the bar on those who need an extra push. I personally review six hundred of our leaders every year, evaluating both the results they’ve generated
and
how they’ve generated them, meaning how well they’ve lived up to our cultural principles. Sure, you need to display measurable results to get ahead, but no one gets promoted in our organization until they’ve also demonstrated that they can help grow the capabilities of people they work with.

Self-reflection

Exercise

When thinking of your Big Goal, how much time and effort do you spend on:

Strategy  ____

Structure  ____

Culture  ____

100 percent

Are you OK with that? If not, what might you do differently to alter your time allocation?

•   Every leader needs a plan to get big things done, and an effective one has three basic parts: Strategy, Structure, and Culture. It’s important not only to hit each aspect but also to consider them in order.
  
•   
  The best way to decide where you should be leading people is to start by fully understanding the realities of where your
  business is today. Then share that understanding with those you lead by telling it like it is.
  People will appreciate the fact that you trust them enough to be honest about how things really are.
  
•   Imagine what the future will look like if you accomplish your Big Goal. You will build a better plan to get there if you start out with
  a compelling vision of the future. And the people you lead will be more likely to help you make that vision into a reality if you let them make it their own by getting their input and ideas. Remember, no input means no commitment.
  
•   
  You gain alignment about your goals and your plans to achieve them by involving people in the process of deciding what to do and how to do it, not by telling them what needs to be done.
  
•   
  If you don’t back up your plan to achieve your Big Goal by putting the right resources in place,
  people won’t believe that you really care about getting it done, and obviously you won’t be able to get it done.
  
•   
  A culture where everyone wins together
  is going to make it possible for you and your team to accomplish this or any Big Goal. To truly motivate people, you need a positive work environment, one where all members know they count and feel appreciated and respected.
  
•   To further reflect on these lessons and put them to work for you, go back through your answers to the Exercises and Self-reflection questions at the end of each chapter. Next, answer the following questions, which will help you determine where you need to focus your efforts the most as you build your skills as a leader.
  
•   What are the biggest aha’s you picked up about yourself while reading the chapters in part 2, “Have a Plan”?
  
• Of those aha’s, what are the two or three that, if you worked on them, would have the greatest impact on your Big Goal?
  
•   What will you start doing differently tomorrow as a result of what you’ve learned in this section?
  

As in the previous Learning Download, the stories that follow are from people who have been through my leadership program and have had their own difficulties in maximizing their potential in a particular area. I hope you’ll take some inspiration from how Cristina, Al, and Steve did something about those things that were difficult for them.