Leadership Principle 1: Decide What’s Important Around Here

My client didn’t respond right away. He had kids too, but his next response was,”Bill, 8:30 is when we all start. Is that clear?” Five weeks later, Bill showed up at 10:45. As he was busy going about his work, my client came up to him, fuming mad. “10:45! Don’ you remember our previous discussions on the importance of getting to work at 8:30?”

“But, Boss, I stayed late at work last night to finish that hot project you assigned me. I thought you’d understand my coming in later in the morning.”

“Well, I don’t. 8:30 is what’s important here. It doesn’t seem like we fit. You just don’t understand what’s important around here!”

Who hasn’t been in this type of situation, where actions can’t be explained on a rational basis? Yet situations like this occur because every potential leader has some things that he or she feels are very important. It’s the way we do things
around here, or the way we will change and do things differently around here.

These basic values, the answers to the question, “What’s important around here?” form the platform from which all leaders operate. They are the foundation on which all directions and plans are built. They are the underlying principles that will be lived up to, or you cannot survive in the organization.

What are the “8:30s” in your life?

What personal idiosyncrasies drive your workday?

How do they affect the people you want to have follow you?

I WANT 10,000 FIREFLIES OVER THERE!

Walt Disney was walking through Disney World, before its completion, with a small group of his department heads. Suddenly he stopped, pointed to a specific area, and said, “I want 10,000 fire­ flies over there!”

The head of construction asked, “When?”

Notice that the man did not say, “But, Walt, where could I pos­sibly find 10,000 fireflies?” or “Wouldn’t 5,000 be sufficient?

Perfection, absolute top quality, was the value here. Just do it, please. The man said, “When?” No second guessing, just “when?” He understood that for Mr. Disney, perfection was the value – a value the man himself obviously also bought into.

In order to have this fit, however, it’s important that your potential followers understand your values-what’s important to you.

You need to clearly define this for them. That’s the first step

Then you must discuss the values that are important to them.

That’s the second step.

Finally, together you both need to discover the values that are actually being demonstrated in your organization. What makes your place tick? What values have created your corporate culture?

Only after these three ingredients have been discovered and clearly stated can you
make the fit with mutual values.

DISCOVER YOUR MUTUAL VALUES

In discovering your values-yours and your employees­ begin with the premise that most people have honest, honorable values. They are all good, and neither unethical nor immoral.

One way to do this is to have a professional leadership seminar with a facilitator who can run a “discover our mutual values” session. This session can and should get hot. People are justifiably passionate about what’s important to them.

For example, let’s take the value of integrity, which I define as doing what you say you’ll do. For me, this is the key value in our business, one that seems simple to me

When I’m involved with people who follow this principle (or value), things go smoothly. There are no surprises. Outcomes can be predicted with a fair degree of accuracy.

When I find myself in new relationships with people who do not do what they say they will do, I’m exasperated, to say the least. In fact, I’m mad that these people have violated my trust in them. What is happening here? Our values are not mutually shared.

Here are some values that I’ve discovered people like to hash out so that they can really define “what’s important around here to all of us.”

Integrity – “Do what you say you’ll do.”

Growth – “We want to be bigger! Growth is king.”

Profit – “At all costs, the bottom line will be good.”

Professionalism – “Be the best you can be at your job.”

Great service – “Deliver legendary service (so good, it’s legendary”

Positive attitudes – “Grumps don’t fit in here.”

Common enemy – “We’ll do anything to beat the XYZ Company!”

Take risks – “We must try new ideas, even if that means failing many times.”

Give 110 percent – “Always. This will not be a sleepy place.”

Self-management – “Do what needs to be done without always asking ‘Is this, OK?’ before acting.”

Quality is king – – “Nothing goes out of our place that’s second-rate.”

DISCOVER WHAT MAKES OTHERS TICK

In a few pages I’ll show you how to take your organization through the process of discovering what’s most important to the people in it, and deciding together what values your company will live by in the future. I call this process a Vision Quest, and it can do more for your organization than any number of seminars on motivation, quality, or management theory

Once, before I began a Vision Quest, my client told me, “Bob, we have two companies here. Even though you see only one company name, we really have two totally different companies.”

As we talked more about this, it became clear to me that there were two different sets of values being acted upon, which in turn created two cultures-i.e., two companies.

This person’s arm of the company was focused primarily on providing ever more effective and competitive service to customers.

But outside of his division, service scarcely seemed to be a concern. Everyone else seemed to be focused almost entirely on growth and on increasing the bottom-line profit

This problem exists in many organizations. It can take the form of different sets of answers to the question, “What’s important around here?” by department or division or location. Obviously, when that happens, the departments or divisions or locations can­ not, by definition, be headed in the same direction. It’s impossible. No synergy between departments means the loss of cooperative energy in achieving the goals of the organization.

There can also be two versions of what’s important when a company talks about one set of values (sometimes very loudly) but acts on quite another. For instance, an organization may emphasize quality over and over in its advertisements, public relations pieces and in-house publications. But in its day-to-day operations-the actual business of getting things done-management may, in fact, be far more concerned with high output and low production costs than with quality.

A simple exercise I suggest you do before you do a Vision Quest is what I call an Organizational Values Matrix. You do it by yourself first. Later you may wish to have your key people do it. Its purpose is to help you define, as well as discover, the values that make different people tick-and those values that are not necessarily yours, but that have become organizational values. Some of them you may like; others you may not agree with at all.

What you have just done is powerfully important. You have defined how you perceive the differences between what’s important to you and what’s important to others, and the differences between what’s important to the organization and what’s important to you and to others.

Now the task is to agree on a set of mutual values so that every­ one can say, “You bet! That’s important to me!”

PEOPLE CAN SOAR OR NOT SOAR

The key to the success of mutual values in an organization is to understand that.

If your values are out of sync with the company’s, you are in the wrong place.

It’s not that the organization’s values are wrong and yours are right, or vice versa. It’s just that they don’t match. And you’ll probably need to divorce from each other because not doing so feels bad. Plus, you cannot soar when values are not shared. You just can’t.

If you decide to stay, you’ll always be disgruntled, irritated, and frustrated. You won’t live up to your own potential. And you’ll know it.

SOME FACTS ABOUT VALUES

• Fact: Values drive organizations
• Everything you do is based on the basic values by which you live your life.
• Fact: Values shape.
• Attitudes – how you develop your people.
• Policies – how you treat personnel issues.
• Procedures – how fast you do things.
• Activities – how (if) you really celebrate victories Fact: Values are always being demonstrated.
• You can’t hide them.
• You can’t claim you have a certain value and then act differently, or you’ll be (correctly) labeled a hypocrite.

WHAT YOU END UP TALKING ABOUT

The groundwork has been laid. The homework has been done. You have discovered

What’s important to you.

What’s important to people.

What the organization has been demonstrating is important.

Agreement on your mutual values, the values you are “collectively passionate” about.

When a leader can constantly talk about values that everyone has agreed to, there is a “buy-in” by the followers. They know that the organization’s fundamental principles are in keeping with their own values. Since there will be a sense of ownership when these shared values are talked about, people will tend to come to decisions faster and define objectives more easily

It’s like an emotional and psychological goose every time you hear the leader talk about the shared mutual values of the organization.

Fact: Values create your organization’s culture-how the place lives as an entity.

Fact: You, as a potential leader, have values. You already know what’s important to you.

Therefore, you need to clearly state those values to oth­ ers. You must visualize them. “Make no mistake about it, these are the values that are important to me!” Be laser clear. Be brief

Then, find out who agrees with you. Those who do will follow you. Those who don’t, won’t. And shouldn’t.

Fact: Once you get people to agree on a set of mutual values, business objectives will be more easily defined.

Organizational direction is based on what you value.

People will now be easily able to buy in or buy out, to agree or disagree with the direction.