1: “Culture can be a hard topic to get one’s head around,” Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, and Vikram Malhotra write in CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest.
Perhaps the best definition comes from Marvin Bower, McKinsey & Company‘s former managing director, who said culture is “the way we do things around here.”
Which is why the world’s best CEOs focus on “one thing” to “rigorously reshape the employee work environment and measure progress in a disciplined way,” the authors note.
This strategy is potent because most organizations have a wide range of stakeholders.
“It helps to have a handful of highly memorable and instructive phrases that sit beneath the governing principle of the ‘one thing,'” write Carolyn, Scott, and Vik.
Sam Walton, founder of Walmart, summed up the goal for customer service into his “10-foot rule”: “Whenever an employee is within ten feet of a customer, they’re expected to look them in the eye, smile, and ask, ‘How can I help you?’ the authors write.
At Microsoft, new CEO Satya Nadella required all his leaders to read and discuss Carol Dweck‘s book Mindset.
For the rest of Microsoft’s associates, he crystalized the book’s core message into something relatable, memorable, and powerful: At Microsoft, they would no longer be “know-it-alls” but rather “learn-it-alls.”
“With those six words, risk aversion and office politics immediately started to decline,” they write.
2: The best CEOs also understand the power of a single, memorable action.
“At McDonald’s, for example, employees to this day tell the tale of founder Ray Kroc picking up litter in restaurant parking lots,” the authors write, “emphasizing the importance of a culture of cleanliness.”
Other examples include Hewlett-Packard‘s cofounder Bill Hewlett, who used a bolt cutter to break a lock on a supply room door “to signify the importance of trust and openness between management and frontline staff,” they note.
Or, Esquel‘s Marjorie Yang, who had a wall torn down at one of the company’s facilities because several bricks had been laid wrong.
Why did she do this? “To convey to the workers, as she puts it: ‘that we are looking for quality, nothing else will do.'”
The best CEOs know that stories like these are shared throughout the organization and speak loudly to define what the culture is all about.
When Marc Casper, the CEO of Thermo Fisher Scientific, arrived in Japan after a 13-hour flight, he made it a point to tear a poster off the wall that featured the brand’s prior marketing messaging.
“People talked about why I’d done that,” he recalls, “why the branding initiative was important, what we were trying to accomplish and why the execution was important to me personally. That dialogue accelerated what we needed to do. . . That builds culture.”
Another effective strategy is to turn important cultural initiatives into questions. “At Siam Cement, Kan Trakulhoon used this approach to bolster his culture of innovation.
“As he visited various sites, he always made it a point while on the shop floor to ask, ‘What are you working on to improve your process and your productivity?'”
One time, when Kan asked this question, the foreman froze and couldn’t speak. Kan “put his hand on the foreman’s shoulder and assured him it was safe to answer, whatever the answer was.
“When he came back for his next visit, however, you can bet everyone on the shop floor was ready with an impressive answer.”
3: Other times, the right short video can grab people’s attention.
Delphi‘s Rod O’Neal showed his leaders worldwide a video of a honey badger. “I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a honey badger, but that is one badass animal,” he says. “It basically does what it needs to do. Everything runs away from it, even lions.”
Rod told his team they must become honey badgers to defeat their competitors.
“The video went viral,” Carolyn, Scott, and Vik write. “After that, when he’d walk through Delphi’s facilities, be it in the United States, China, Brazil, or elsewhere, he often saw a picture of a honey badger in someone’s office.”
“You communicate not only when you say, ‘Let’s go do this,'” Rod shares, “but when you can describe a journey and put romance behind it.”
More tomorrow!
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Reflection: What tools can I use to strengthen my workplace culture? The One Thing? A highly memorable phrase? A single, memorable action? Turn important cultural initiatives into questions? Use powerful videos?
Action: Do it!
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