“Culture is coded wisdom.”-Wangari Maathai
1: Seen the movie City Slickers?
At the heart of this classic 1990s comedy is the relationship between Mitch, a Manhattan yuppie played by Billy Crystal, and Curly, a tough, wizened cowboy played by Jack Palance.
Curly tells Mitch, “It all comes down to one thing. You focus on that, and everything else don’t mean s#&t.”
Mitch is confused. He asks Curly to tell him what the one thing is.
Curly tells him, “That’s what you have to find out.”
Later in the film, Mitch is faced with a life-threatening situation that reveals what his one thing is: What really matters are his wife and kids.
“In that instant, his troubles with his career and reaching middle age—previously considered monumental and insurmountable—melt away,” Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, and Vikram Malhotra write in CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest.
2: The best CEOs are like Curly: When building an engaging, powerful workplace culture, they appreciate the importance of “the one thing.”
“When it came to cultural focus,” the authors write, “the CEOs we interviewed were laserlike.”
“When he took over the global broker in 2005,” they note, “it was operated as a federation of acquisitions. Leaders were protective of their client relationships and looked to solve for their individual P&Ls.”
“Our team inherited a wonderful set of assets from a truly iconic founder, but everyone viewed themselves as an individual entrepreneur, everybody wanted to do their own thing, and we’d all underperform as a result,” Greg remembers.
Which is why he focused on “Aon United”—a strategy where all of Aon’s associates put the firm’s clients at the center of all they did. Doing so meant supporting each other and collaborating as a global firm on their clients’ behalf.
The payoff? “They’d gain and retain more of their clients’ business and be able to innovate and scale faster to meet client needs,” write Carolyn, Scott, and Vik.
Greg describes the voyage as a “difficult and challenging path that took a decade.”
And it was an abundant one: Aon grew from a collection of acquisitions with a $6 billion market capitalization into a fully integrated firm valued at over $50 billion as of early 2020.
Other examples of “The One Thing” in action include Lockheed Martin, where Marillyn Hewson demonstrated a relentless focus on “Innovation with Purpose,” a battle cry focusing the firm’s associates on unwavering customer service while developing cutting-edge products and services.
“At Netflix, Reed Hastings consistently emphasizes a culture of ‘Freedom and Responsibility,'” the authors note, “that uniquely maximizes both empowerment and accountability in ways other organizations envy.”
Mastercard‘s Ajay Banga unremittingly focused on his firm’s “Decency Quotient” or DQ. He says: “DQ allowed me to encapsulate many behavioral traits into one phrase. The phrase is flexible enough to allow interpretations, so it applies to different individuals but doesn’t allow for misinterpretation.”
3: But with a narrow focus, don’t we miss out on other elements of our values statements and leadership models? Aren’t those important as well?
Yes, and the best CEOs limit their focus to the message that will make the biggest difference. To do so, they search for and find a powerful phrase that drives the company forward.
“Ana Botín, who oversees two hundred thousand employees at Banco Santander,” Carolyn, Scott, and Vik note, “routinely drives home her company’s cultural mantra through a single phrase: ‘Simple, Personal, Fair.'”
“Those three words are where you turn when there is no rule book,” she observes. “I believe in rules and process and governance as much as anybody, but you cannot write everything in a book.
“Say you have a customer who is ninety-two years old and cannot access their account. The rule says one thing, but if you want to be fair and personal, maybe you go to their house and help them in person.
“The principles explain how we are different from other competitors,” she says, “because we do things this way.”
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: Does my organization have “The One Thing” that drives our culture?
Action: Journal about my answer to the question above: If yes, do I see the impact? If not, what should our “One Thing” be?
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