The Winning Culture

Wisconsin Union Issues

As I watch the news about the state worker unrest in several states, I have to reflect on what this has to do with different types of organizations and different organizational cultures.

We need to remember that we have the "old style" organization and the "new style" organization.  The old style one was often engaged in manufacturing and needed a lot of employees who were good at following directions and obeying rules.  In fact, a manager at one of these organizations actually didn't want creative people who had the ability to think on their feet.  These people had a greater tendency to be disruptive and might not follow the rules.

Today, most of our most successful organizations are of the newer type.  These organizations are more apt to be in the service field, have a goal of serving the customer, and have a need to accomplish this fact in the most efficient manner.  These organizations need to have creative people who will give better customer service and accomplish the task in a more efficient manner.

From my perspective, it seems that unions are hold-overs from the old style organization.  It seems that they want all employees to act the same, work for the same salary scale built on experience, and have the same fringe benefits.  Unfortunately, the assumption that everyone is the same is not a vilid one.

People are not the same.  Some employees do a better job than others.  Some are more creative.  Some come up with creative ways to be more efficient.  Some actually serve customers better than do others. Since most managers would like to pay better employees more money as a system of incentive, they want to be able to reward based on performance rather than based on experience.  But, from my viewpoint, that idea seems to be opposite what I read is wanted by the unions.

I guess the real thing goes back to the desires of the owners of the organization.  Do they want to be part of the more successful modern organization, or are they willing to replicate the old style organization.  It would seem that the Governor of Wisconsin wants his state government to move into the newer thinking ways of more successful organizations.  

Faith, Trust, Control

Today I was thinking a lot about what religious faith has to do with good management.  In Christianity, faith in God means that we trust Him and not ourselves.  When we succeed in our own strength, it's easy to continue trusting our own efforts to provide results.  The problem, is that we are not trusting God.

In management, it's the same thing.  Leading people requires that we trust them and their decisions. When we don't trust our employees, we find ourselves trusting our own efforts instead.  When we look at the most successful organizational leaders we find that they train and empower their people.  They allow those employees to make decisions and don't "micro manage" the results.  In short, they lead them, they don't try to manage them.  

True Christianity involves giving control to God and trusting Him to run things.  Good leadership involves giving control to our employees and trusting them to provide results. 

The Need for Change

The State Of The Union address last evening said some very important things.  I believe that one has some important things to ponder.  This is the collection of two quotes that follows:  

"The rules have changed. In a single generation, revolutions in technology have transformed the way we live, work and do business… competition for jobs is real. But this shouldn't discourage us. It should challenge us,” said President Bareck Obama.  

I couldn't agree with these two statements more, and this has everything to do with this blog and my personal conviction about change in management thinking.  The old "industrial revolution factory thinking," is out and the new way of collaborative thinking is in.  Organizations that follow the old way are far less successful than those that embrace the new thinking.  

Just look at Southwest Airlines and compare it to all of the others.  Southwest manages in the collaborative style while the others manage in the bureaucratic style. Take shipping and compare FedEX with the USPS.  FedEx manages in the collaborative style while the Post Office manages in the bureaucratic style.  The list goes on and one.

If we agree with the President in this respect - that we need a major shift in competitiveness, and we need to be willing to make the needed changes in our own organizations.  These will not be easy.  These changes will anger parts of the organization who benefit from the status quo.  They will even anger individuals who don't want to change.  But, if we want to join the Southwests and Apples of the world, we need to be willing to pay the price for change.

This thinking especially covers fields like public education, the post office, and even government itself.  If we really want to be competitive, we need to insist that all of our organizations are lean and competitive.  Institutions like our schools must be willing to take the risk and change looking for the modern model that works.  We know that the old model doesn't work.

In this blog I try really hard to stay away from Politics, and I will continue to do so.  But, when politics begins to talk about change the way it was so well said last night, I have to think about the connection to modern management thinking which is the subject of the blog.

 

Why Empower

I recently saw a post on another blog about a heartwarming story involving employee empowerment involving a pilot of Southwest Airlines.  The link follows: http://www.elliott.org/blog/southwest-airlines-pilot-holds-plane-for-murder-victims-family/

One of the things that sets an organizational culture apart is its level of employee empowerment.  Does it give the employee the power to make "on the spot" decisions, or is every decision governed by a set of rules?  When we allow empowerment we have happier employees and generally better customer service.  When we go only by rules and regulations we have the advantage of more consistency in our operations.  I would suggest that one of the things that differentiates Southwest from all of the others is its level of empowerment.  It allows pilots to make these good decisions that later become wonderful and valuable public relations opportunities.  I believe there are important cultural reasons why Southwest is by far the most successful airline in the country today.

The Law of Unintended Consequences

As I read about the tragedy of the Arizona shootings, and then the political rhetoric and calls for legislation, it brings to mind the importance of carefully thinking through our management decisions. So often, our organizational leadership makes quick decisions to “put out a fire or plug a hole,” only to later discover that the decision caused even larger problems to occur. This especially happens in a bureaucratic or autocratic system, but can also happen in a collaborative system.

When mistakes happen there is a natural tendency to find someone or something to blame, and go about trying to make sure it doesn’t happen again. This causes the “blame game” to be played and also many new rules to be developed. The unintended consequences are that the blame game hurts employee satisfaction and trust. In addition, the new rules have to be enforced and that cost is often significant and hurts the efficiency of the organization.

In my opinion, the first thing that our organization has to do when a problem develops is to immediately go to the team or department where it developed. Without placing blame, find out how it happened and if it is apt to happen again. Was it a random accident that is not likely to reoccur? Will the team learn from the incident? Often this analysis is sufficient, and the matter can rest at this point. With this solution, we learn from the problem, lessen the chances for reoccurrence, and we don’t hurt employee satisfaction.

If the problem requires a more serious approach, which is the group that is in the best position to design the fix? In the bureaucratic environment, the quick answer will be management. But, in the collaborative environment, it is obvious that the department where the problem occurred is actually the place where it should be fixed. With some direction from management, the team should sit down and analyze the problem, and come up with a good fix. In this way, there is a much less chance of an unintended consequence.

Mistakes Made = More Rules

In the Bureaucratic environment, what does management do when there is a problem?  Simple, it passes more rules and regulations, and enforces existing rules to make sure that everyone obeys.  The problem is that the system doesn't work.  

There obviously was a problem with the snow removal in New York around Christmas.  What's NY City's solution?  According to a recent article, "Saying a lack of information hampered snow clearing, the mayor announced that 50 Sanitation trucks assigned to Midwood, Flatbush, Ditmas Park and Kensington will be outfitted with GPS and that roving observation teams armed with video cameras will transmit live feeds back to City Hall during the upcoming storm."

In the collaborative environment, management gets with the workers in the field and works with them to find better ways to serve the public.  The workers are not blamed, (other than the ones who violate the key rules) and management certainly doesn't install more ways to monitor the workers with video cameras and GPS units.  In the collaborative environment the supervisors and management would be out there clearing the streets rather then going around checking on the workers.

I find it interesting to read news articles every day and filter them through the different organizational cultures.  Bureaucracies run for cover and blame the front line workers.  Collaborative cultures gather the workers and together work for a better way.  Needless to say, the collaborative culture delivers better service to the customer and at a lower cost.

Vision

As we start the new year it’s easy to consider the famous “new year’s resolution.”  While there are many jokes about the practice, it does bring up a serious issue about establishing the culture of the organization.  When we have a vision of where the organization is headed, and all members agree and buy into the vision, the organization works a whole lot better.  

I don’t agree with endless meetings wasting huge amounts of time hammering out each and every word of a vision statement.  But, I certainly do agree that the organization should spend a little time making sure that everyone is on the same page and everyone is going in the same direction.  

This should be done for each department or team in addition to the whole organization.  The accounting team, the sales team, the operations team, and virtually all other teams should make sure each member is on the same wave length and heading in the same direction.  This discipline will quickly prevent forming “silos” where managers move in different directions.

While we are at it, it’s not a bad practice for each of us to practice in our own homes.  It’s great the get the family together and map out a vision for the family during the next year.  The practice may help unify the group and cause the family to agree that they must all pull in the same direction.

 

The Old and the New

In reading several books recently, I've come to realize the importance between the old style, "factory" type organization and the modern collaborative organization.  In the old style organization, the owner hired workers who would be obedient and do that which the boss or manual said to do.  The owner really didn't want a very creative person.  After all, the worker was really just another machine in the factory.

In the new modern organization, we want people to think for themselves.  We want them to be creative and be problem solvers.  Yes, the business owner wants them to be obedient, but more importantly, the owner should want the workers to add to the knowledge base of the organization.

We must question if our schools are properly training students to be creative or just to be obedient?  In short, are they training them to work in the old style factory type organization or to work in the modern organization.  We must also ask ourselves if we are managing our workers to be obedient or to be creative and add to the knowledge base of the organization.  These are far-reaching thoughts and must be considered in any of our leadership decisions.

Fear as a motivator

I've recently been reading Seth Godin's book, Linchpin.  It really got me thinking on how we all tend to use fear as a way to motivate people to change.  Employers, schools, and even society uses it.  We fear not doing well, being fired, not fitting in, etc.  In reality, fear stymies our creativity and won't let us really succeed.  So, the challenge for managers and leaders is to figure how we can motivate without using fear.  In my opinion, that could be a major challenge for the coming year.

Best place to work

Having happy employees is important, if not required, to have the brightest and best employees.  It is interesting to correlate happy employees to the success of the organization.  Today I saw a release from glassdoor.com that Southwest Airlines has been rated as one of the best places to work.  That is, the rating is from the employees themselves.  Other winners were Facebook, General Mills, and Overstock.com.  It is interesting that these companies are also eminently successful.  

Two things beg a comment.  First, the world now knows if your employees are happy or not.  Years ago, nobody would know about happy employees.  After all, unhappy employees would generally be fearful of appearing disloyal.  Today there are websites like glassdoor.com that regularly post anonymous ratings and reviews about companies.  People looking for good jobs pay a lot of attention to the reviews and will not bother to interview where employees are not happy.

The second key thing is the importance of happy employees.  The fact is that they do better at the two things that are most important to the company.  They serve the customers better, and they work harder to be more efficient.  That's why happy employees generally equal organizational success.

Remember the old Carnation Milk ads?  Contented cows give sweeter milk.  Well, contented employees serve customers better and are more efficient.