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Your team wants more than money–give them meaning.  In National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation , arguably among the great holiday movies of all time, the hapless patriarch Clark Griswold eagerly awaits the delivery of his Christmas bonus, which he’s already spent on a new swimming pool.  Imagine his disappointment on Christmas Eve when his bonus arrived, and it’s not the fat cheque he’d expected from his boss, Mr. Shirley, but membership in the “Jelly of the Month Club.”   Despite Cousin Eddie’s assurance that it’s “the gift that keeps on giving all year,” Clark is unconvinced. He wanted that wad of cash!      The movie was released in 1989, a time when holiday bonuses were de rigueur, an expected part of the compensation package and a major incentive for employees like Clark.  A lot has changed since then. Money is not the golden carrot it once was.  Of course, people need to be fairly compensated for their work, especially in our punishing economy’s double-whammy of inflation and high-interest rates. Pay does matter–to a point.  But the old hallmarks of success–raises, bonuses, promotions–aren’t everything.  Today, people expect more from work. They are driven by intrinsic motivators such as a sense of meaning and fulfilment.  A Harvard Business Review article cited a study that found that more than 90% of the 2,000-plus workers surveyed across all ages and salary groups would give up an average of 23% of future lifetime earnings to have a meaningful job until retirement.  That’s huge! To be clear, I’m not saying nix the holiday bonus. If you can swing it, it will definitely be appreciated. But don’t rely solely on money to show your team you value them. Here are some other, more meaningful gifts you can bestow upon your team, and not just over the holidays–these truly are the “gifts that keep giving all year.” Recognition Everyone wants to feel like what they do matters.  Seize opportunities to celebrate great work, whether it’s an individual achievement or a group win. There are many ways to recognize exceptional performance: public praise, a handwritten note of congratulations and thanks, or even a company award. However you celebrate your team’s accomplishments, let them know their hard work has been seen and valued.   Respect This should be table stakes. But too many leaders let respectful behavior slide when things are tough. That is not OK, and it is also unwise: nothing erodes trust like disrespect. It hurts everyone and creates a toxic environment.  Respect is fundamental to a positive, collaborative, engaged workplace. It includes courtesy (even in a crisis), professionalism, and good habits that affect others, like punctuality and keeping your commitments.  But respect goes beyond just being polite. It’s also about creating a safe space for people to be their authentic selves. As a leader, you must create a respectful environment where communication is encouraged, and people feel seen and heard. When your team can safely ask questions, challenge each other, and share ideas.  The result? Respect fosters trust, which increases engagement and builds commitment. Connection Relationships are the engine of your company machine. They drive everything. Research tells us that the most effective leadership is relational.  Building relationships isn’t abstracted from the work; it IS the work of leaders.  That’s because a positive and productive workplace is one in which people feel safe — safe enough to experiment, challenge themselves and others, share ideas and be themselves. Research shows that people value communication with their manager not just about their roles and responsibilities but also about them as people.  Growth  High-potential employees want to learn and grow. They want to do challenging work that allows them to put their skill and ideas to work in a role that amplifies their strengths, interests and values. Empower your team by cultivating a learning culture in your organization. Communicate the importance of ongoing development, emphasizing that it is a shared organizational goal, and modelling the behaviour by being a lifelong learner yourself. And support them by working together to set learning and development goals aligned with their career aspirations and ensuring they have the resources (time, funding, etc.) to pursue development and training.  Autonomy No one likes feeling like their every move is being scrutinized or that they have no freedom or authority to make decisions.  Giving your team autonomy demonstrates trust in their abilities and faith in their judgment. This trust, in turn, builds a positive culture based on mutual respect between leaders and their teams. Autonomy is closely linked to engagement. When people have a say in how they do their jobs, they are more likely to be engaged, committed, and invested in the organization's success. So give your staff room to make their own decisions. And you’ll need to accept that sometimes, they aren’t going to make the best ones. Embrace these as learning opportunities, not failures or proof they can’t handle the responsibility. Learning from mistakes is a valuable part of the development process. And remember: autonomy isn’t hands-off. Make sure they have the support and guidance they need to succeed. That includes regular communication, setting clear expectations, and ongoing feedback.

Connection, Caring and Trust are foundational to exceptional leadership When I graduated from business school in the Dark Ages of the 1980s, many leaders I met early in my career fit a particular old-school management style: top-down, hierarchical, and male. They weren’t as baldly ruthless as some of the bad bosses from the era’s pop culture, as exemplified by Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko, a shameless corporate raider who famously declared, "Greed is good.” Yuck. Gekko is a somewhat exaggerated example (unfortunately, we’ve met worse!) of the worst kind of leader, but in the decades since, I’ve met many others who, while less toxic, hurt their teams and their leadership by micromanaging, passive-aggression, lack of empathy, authoritarianism, and… well, you get the idea. I’ll bet you’ve had a boss who ticked some of those boxes. Both leading and as a consultant, I’ve had a front-row seat on hundreds of leaders at all levels of management in companies ranging from family businesses to multinational corporations. I've seen it all: good, bad, and everything in between. And in a few cases, exceptional. Meet my co-author Art Smuck is one of those. He's one of the most original, dynamic, challenging, and compassionate leaders I’ve known, and he’s been a key collaborator and a close friend. Our history goes back nearly 30 years when I was a consultant working with the Perrier Group of America. Art was the pain-in-the-ass who’d been relegated to corporate Siberia for daring to question his higher-ups. (You can see why I wanted to work with him!) His manager was surprised but accommodating when I tapped Art to be part of my project. “Take him” was the unspoken message. But Art was precisely the kind of person I wanted to work with: bright, creative, challenging. He did not accept the status quo for the organization or, crucially, himself. He rightly saw both as works in progress. We vibed. We both hated the egotism and opportunism we saw in many leaders and how promising emerging leaders often felt pressured to fit the prevailing command-and-control mode. We knew there was a better way, both at the human level and for performance. In the nearly 30 years since we’ve explored that together: What does it take to create organizations that are both the best in their industry and the best place for people to work? We have lots of experience to draw from, including Art’s career, which took him from the front lines, to executive roles in private and public growth stage companies, to startups in emerging categories, to the CEO role of FedEx Supply Chain. For years, we’ve been field-testing our ideas with companies big and small, public and private, in various industries. They hold up. For the past year, we’ve been collaborating on a book with the working title Care to Lead™. It synthesizes our stories, experiences, observations and learnings into a single source. Call it our unified theory of leadership. It’s what I wished I had when starting my own leadership journey many years ago. As we’ve field-tested the concepts and practices in the book, many other leaders have said that they, too, would be better leaders today if they’d been exposed to the thoughts early in their careers. Connection rules Most leadership philosophies and frameworks focus outward on processes and systems, tactics and strategies. Care to Lead is different because it turns inward first. It’s a bit of a paradox: leadership is not about you, but it is about who you are. Yes, it's about your team, but to be effective, heck, to be great, you’ve got to work on yourself before you can effectively lead. Our book is premised on the belief that the most influential leadership is more about who you are – your character, mindset, and values – than what you do. We believe how you get things done is as important as the results. Caring, respect, trust and even love – yes, love – are part of leading great organizations and helping people be their best. So, why are values and character so important? They are the only thing that can generate respect and breed trust, creating those powerful connections that inspire people to move with you toward a goal. Values create clarity around what is accepted and expected in pursuing those goals. When you care about your team and its shows, you'll build trust, respect, and loyalty. When people feel heard, understood, and valued, it will motivate them to go the extra mile and take ownership of their work. Caring and empathetic leaders promote a culture of accountability, where everyone takes responsibility for their actions and learns from their mistakes. With this approach, the team becomes a collective unit that strives towards a shared purpose instead of just following orders. Love is in the air For a long time, these ideas felt almost radical. Today, more people have realized caring is not a sign of weakness but a testament to a leader's strength and wisdom. A caring leader can transform a group of individuals into a cohesive and motivated team driven by trust, a shared purpose, and a commitment to personal and professional growth. Caring leadership fosters innovation, supports empathy, and creates more prosperous and harmonious organizations. Leadership is not just about managing resources and achieving goals; it is about nurturing people and helping others reach their full potential. Care isn't just a leadership quality—it’s the heart of leadership. We are writing this book for any leader who wants to dig deep, challenge their thinking, and embrace leadership as an ongoing opportunity to grow as a person rather than a title or a fixed destination. It won’t provide answers so much as give valuable questions and habits of inquiry that can radically alter your leadership for the better and set curious and compassionate leaders on a new path. Want to be the first to know when our book is published? Care to Lead and sign up for the WhiteWater newsletter.

Focus on connection, caring to build engagement. For the last few months, we’ve been working with a mid-sized company in the manufacturing sector on an ambitious strategic plan. This organization rocks at production and logistics. Its team is stacked with action-oriented leaders and high-energy doers who excel at productivity and process improvement. But one thing has become abundantly clear through our project: they’re not good at connecting with their people. Employee engagement is lower than it could be. Relationships are okay but not awesome. These relational weaknesses are hurting their business and holding them back from achieving their potential. Caring is key. Relationships are the core of every business, even those outside of what we consider people-centered, service-oriented or “caring” fields. People are the heart of any organization, even companies, like my manufacturing client, where logic and objectivity are prized (yes, I’m looking at you, engineers and accountants!). Everything flows from how well the team knows their leaders care: for the organization to be its best and for each team member to work at a place where they can be the best version of themselves. Most leaders do care about their teams. But, often, their teams don’t see that.Too many leaders neglect relationship-building to focus on tasks. It’s understandable. One leader we know called it “the burden of connectivity.” Leaders are swamped, and building relationships takes time. Others worry they’ll be perceived as unprofessional or lose their “authority” if they’re too friendly with their staff. What they aren’t getting is that building relationships isn’t abstracted from the work, it IS the work of leaders. A lot of research backs this assertion, proving that the most effective leadership is relational. Engagement is good for business. Research has correlated a number of positive organizational outcomes with strong relationships, including lower turnover, better performance and higher productivity. That’s because a positive and productive workplace is one in which people feel safe — safe enough to experiment, challenge themselves and others, share ideas and be themselves. Research shows that people value communication from their manager not just about their roles and responsibilities, but that also shows they care about them. The best leaders make a concerted effort to get to know their employees and help them feel comfortable talking about any subject, work-related or not. It’s about seeing people for themselves, genuinely caring about their success and growth, and intentionally helping them to be their best. When people feel seen and heard, not just for their work, but as people, it nurtures trust, which is the bedrock of engagement. Build better bonds. Here at WhiteWater, we’ve identified the key components of authentically deeper, more caring, and ultimately more effective relationships with your team. 1. Establish your base. The best place to start is one-on-one. To build deeper relationships with your team members, you need to proactively make time to connect. These intentional one-on-ones differ from accidental water-cooler conversations or work-focused meetings. They are an opportunity to develop a mutual understanding of each other as people, not just co-workers. Remember: relationships aren’t a one-way street. To build trust and rapport, you also need to let your people see who you are. Book some time with each team member. Before your meeting, ask them to reflect on the current state of your relationship and let them know you’ll do the same. You can even rate it with a simple 1, 2, or 3 ranking: One: Your relationship is distant or even negative. Two: You have a neutral to a positive connection, but it feels superficial. Three: You have a positive connection where they feel known, understood and cared for. During your time together, compare your ratings. Discuss why they might be different. What do you both see the same? Where are the gaps? 2. Build on your foundation. Keep meeting to build your understanding of your respective drivers and preferences for high performance at work. This is about aligning expectations, and exploring both what you are trying to achieve and the why behind it. When you understand your team members’ career aspirations and what motivates them, you can help them succeed. 3. Show genuine appreciation Celebrate successes. Along with sharing how much you appreciate their contribution, use this success to build on it. Jointly discuss what drove that success and explore ways they can use their skills and talents to benefit both themselves and the organization. 4. Embrace challenges. Openly discussing challenging or sensitive topics is part of a healthy relationship. Don’t avoid the chance to connect when there are problems. When there is trust and respect, difficult conversations, such as those about inappropriate behavior or subpar performance, are much easier and much more likely to result in understanding and a positive change. Taking the time to understand what drives your team members gives you the best chance to create the conditions for them to build that career within your organization rather than elsewhere (and, occasionally, help them achieve those aspirations in other organizations, if that’s what’s best for them). Connections, not transactions. A word of caution: creating deeper, more authentic relationships with your people is not a check-the-box effort. You can’t just go through the motions or meet once and consider this a task completed. Mere transactions are not enough to maximize engagement. In fact, that can easily backfire, breeding disconnection and even contempt. So be present – and be real. And remember that this takes time. Don’t rush it. But as you make time and space for relationships, as your comfort and capabilities in this area grow, and you connect better with your team, you might find the burden of connectivity becomes the joy of connectivity. Best Leaders.

Our summer leadership series has explored why leaders need a vacation, too , and shared five simple steps for leaders who find it hard to shut their laptops and take some time away. In this post, we continue our seasonal theme with a focus on summer reading. There’s a reason “beach reads” is a genre: vacation and great books go hand-in-hand. Reading is leisure, but it’s also learning. And it has many well-documented benefits, including reducing stress and increasing your emotional intelligence, or EQ, a leadership superpower. It also expands your worldview, especially if you don’t limit yourself to business titles and dip into novels, memoirs, self-help and even poetry. Despite reading’s positive effects, the Pew Research Centre found in 2021 that almost a quarter of American adults hadn’t read a book in the previous year. If that includes you, it’s time to pick up a book. And if you are an avid reader, here’s a roundup of eight of the best curated reading lists and most recommended titles for leaders. We’ve also published a couple of titles that our team can’t put down - click here . NPR’s Books We Love website lets you mix and match filters, including genre and subject, to deliver a customized list from its archive of more than 3,00 recommendations from NPR staff and trusted critics. Best Books to Help You Improve Your Management Skills : Firmspace has a nice roundup of reads for “new managers, old hands, and anyone looking to improve their management skills.” Adam Grant’s Picks : “A good book helps you think differently. A great book inspires you to act differently,” the famed organizational psychologist and author writes on a Substack post where he shares his favourite new releases. Grant’s book picks cover finding motivation in unexpected places, designing more worthwhile jobs, and building a better future. Fast Company’s Summer Reading List For the Modern Leader : Succession! Shipwrecks! Romantic comedy! The Modern CEO newsletter’s Stephanie Mehta shares her diverse roundup with books offering leadership lessons and insights on the human condition. Forbes CFO Summer Reading List: The 2023 instalment of this annual roundup cites a great Harry Truman quote: “Not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers.” We couldn’t agree more! Check out this compilation of suggestions from members of the CFO Leadership Council. Harvard Business School Faculty Summer Reader 2023 : Great minds do not always think alike, as this eclectic compilation that explores spirituality, design, suspense, and more demonstrates. McKinsey & Co.’s Summer Reading : This year, the annual reading guide reflects “not only the imperative to address uncertainties as they become more profound but also the drive to learn from history—and to build a more sustainable, inclusive, and growing future for all.” Leaders from around the world share their best books. NYT’s Summer Books 2023 : “47 books, 47 adventures'' is how the Times headlines its 2023 summer reading list, which has “something to read for every creature you know.” Intriguing!

WhiteWater’s summer reading list: Our team is stacked with bookworms, so we had a lot of fun compiling a roundup of great summer reading lists and recommended titles for leaders. And we’ve added a couple of favourites that our team can’t put down. What are your favorites? Magic Words: What to Say to Get Your Way , by Jonah Berger Composing a Life , by Mary Catherine Bateson The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music , by Dave Grohl Talent Is Never Enough , by John C. Maxwell Passion For Success , by Kazuo Inamori Get in Gear , by Sean T. Ryan - OF COURSE!

How to Take a Summer Vacation: Top Five Tips for Leaders Summer is here, and many of us are looking forward to a well-deserved break from the daily grind. But as I wrote in a recent post , far too many leaders need help to switch off. Here are five simple ways to truly disconnect from work and take a real vacation. 1. Plan ahead One of the best things you can do before going on vacation is to plan ahead. Let your team know when you’ll be away so they can prepare. And make a list of items you want to accomplish before departure so you won’t have unfinished tasks on your mind when you’re supposed to be chilling out. 2. Delegate Delegating is good for everyone. It allows other team members to show their stuff and take on more responsibilities. And it gives you peace of mind knowing that essential tasks are being taken care of while you're away. 3. Set boundaries If you absolutely must check in with work while you're away (and I urge you to be honest about how essential this is), set a specific time and limit, and stick to it. This will contain and focus your work-related thoughts so you can relax and recharge the rest of the time. 4. Set your OOO Create an autoresponder to emails to let people know you're on vacation. This sets clear expectations for anyone trying to contact you while you're away. In your message, let people know who they should contact during your absence. 5. Leave your laptop at the office Cut the cord! The more you disconnect from your usual responsibilities and stressors, the more refreshing your vacation will be. Make the most of your time away. Soak up your surroundings. Try something new. Hang out with friends and family. Read a book. Take a nap. You’ll come back to work feeling fresher and more productive than ever.

WHAT WE'VE LEARNED THROUGH OUR GROWING PAINS For a long time, I was basically a plumber.  I had a stable, relatively small group of clients and my standard service offerings. Business was steady. I was running the proverbial road, responding to clients as needed. We could survive quite nicely at that level forever – or until retirement.  Then, around five years ago, something shifted. We saw the value of the intellectual property we had created over the years and its impact on our clients. We realized we could help many more if we scaled up the business.   I began to imagine how big WhiteWater might be and how we might grow. My team and I started making the first intentional moves towards scaling. Over the past couple of years, we’ve seen that drive to growth catch on. We've doubled the business between 2022 and 2023 and are on track to repeat that in 2024.  Most incredibly? We didn’t kill ourselves to get there (other than spending way too much time on airplanes and hotels!). We were working at a (mostly) sustainable pace, and it began to come together.  Damn, this stuff we’ve been talking about really works! Getting intentional  We’ve learned a lot about what it takes to expand, especially for small to medium-sized businesses. It’s been an exhilarating journey that’s put our team on a big learning curve, one on which we also see a lot of our clients.  Like us, many others may not think big enough about the possibilities for their companies. We all put fences around ourselves that don't need to be there. And when they try to scale, they often need help getting from idea or strategy to implementation.  Even for us as experts in this area, it’s not perfect. Life happens. Plans need to pivot. Small teams are under a lot of pressure. But amid the day-to-day hustle and bustle and the messiness of running a small but growing business, progress is possible…we call it getting the big ball of chaos moving in roughly the right direction! In this post, I share my reflections on what has fed our growth. I also speak frankly about some challenges I’ve had as a leader trying to navigate this change and growth.  We held ourselves accountable to our goals.  An American Society of Training and Development  study on accountability found that the odds of achieving your goal basically double with every intentional action you take to make it happen, including setting timelines, making plans, and having a committed accountability partner.  With these simple steps, your odds of achieving your goal rise to 95%, an astounding, nearly  10-fold improvement over just having a goal that’s just in your head!  As this study makes clear, more than having goals is required. They need rigor and structure to be realized, but don’t over-complicate it. A regular catch-up with your accountability partner increases your chance of achieving your goal by 95%! That’s just a 5% chance you won’t achieve your goal! This is the essence of our Get In Gear  training program and book, which performance drives processes to results. We use some different languages, but the basic idea is the same: when we set goals, there are specific things we need to do to meet them.  So, write down your goal and the steps you need to get there. Give yourself deadlines. And engage an accountability partner who will meet with you regularly.  We developed better processes. In WhiteWater’s early days, we didn’t really have standard operating procedures for, well, anything.  Like a ringmaster, I was at the center of operations, running my circus. The company knowledge was mostly in my head. That wasn't such a flawed approach, as I was in regular contact with the team and could work directly with any of them to provide guidance.  Over the last two years, though, that has had to change. I’m not able to touch every part of the business anymore. I had to let go of some things and delegate. Today, there's all kinds of work happening in this organization that I’m not directly involved in. I’m on a need-to-know basis. The other day, our content coordinator shared notes from a call with the agency supporting our marketing. Before, I would have been in that meeting. Today, I can get a debrief. And there are many days when she just takes action, and the results turn out better than if I had been involved! It’s a little scary letting go. But the team has delivered, making it easy to trust them, which is incredibly freeing. It builds their confidence and competence.  And it releases me to higher-level leadership work…or just staying out of their way. We put the right people with the right capabilities in the right roles.  I’ll try not to hurt my shoulder too badly, patting myself on the back, but we did a fantastic job this year finding excellent people to take us to the next level.  For the first time, we have a dedicated content coordinator who’s giving our marketing efforts rigor. We added an operations manager who is putting all the behind-the-scenes systems in place, including HR and onboarding processes. (And, really, she spends a lot of time cleaning up all the messes I have made!)  We hired additional consultants whose experience and perspective are challenging and expanding our thinking…and helping everyone on our team be better. The combination of process with the right person in the right role is creating a beautiful flywheel effect, and our team is feeling the momentum. It really is a testament to getting the right people pointed in the right direction to the goals and then giving them the latitude to be their best.  It’s still not perfect (is it ever?), but we're systematically moving to a way of working where there is a clear process and clarity on roles and responsibilities. We're building the architecture to let WhiteWater run without me someday.

As we’ve mentioned in this space before regarding the leaders need to define the playing field, a few years ago I watched my kids play a pick up soccer game with their neighborhood friends. No one bothered to define the field boundaries; they just started playing. After a minute or two, someone kicked the ball up the street: GOAL! The team celebrated. The other team, though, said it wasn’t a goal. They argued for a while and started again. The ball went into the bushes. Out of bounds, one side said. No it’s not, said the other. The kids wound up spending more time arguing than playing, and everyone soon just gave up and quit the game. Even in a pick-up, neighborhood soccer game, the players need to know the rules of the game. In this post and in Part 2 later this week, we’ll talk more about how organizations define the rules of the game. For organizations, the “rules” are their values, guiding principles and beliefs. When the organization defines them clearly, the leader’s roles are clear: ensure the values get applied in all decision-making situations, and teach them to new employees, peers and everyone who does business with the company. Many organizations, though, have not established a clear, concise set of values. That can produce fatal results, no matter how talented the employees might be. I worked with a manager as part of an engagement with a large utility. Chris inherited a tough situation after being promoted into a division manager position. Quality and productivity had fallen within the division. Financial performance was getting worse. Customers were upset, and the morale of the work group was taking a significant hit. Chris found that he had a very experienced and capable work group. Many of the people had worked for the company for more than 20 years. They were absolute pros and understood far more about the inner workings of the company than he ever could. But they were frustrated by their complete lack of autonomy. Every decision had to be checked with their manager. Chris wanted to change that. But he knew that autonomy without boundaries would lead to anarchy. So he gave his team members the latitude to solve, on the spot, any problem that they encountered with the customer. He just told them to consider four questions while making their decisions: • Is this the right thing for the customer? • Is this the right thing for the short- and long-term financial performance of the company? • Is this the right thing for my coworkers? • Will this action help us be a better company tomorrow than we are today? Within days of implementing these values, performance on every dimension improved dramatically. Let me leave you with two questions: Why do you think this simple change yielded such quick, pronounced results? This story leaves out a key part of a manager’s job when it comes to communicating an organization’s values. What do you think is the missing element? Intrigued by what you’re reading? Download our white paper on converting strategy into execution and learn more about us by visiting our website . WhiteWater International Consulting, Inc. helps organizations understand the challenges they face and helps enterprises achieve and sustain outstanding performance through unleashing the passion and capabilities of its people. Because an organization is only as good at the people who power it.

Every organization, including yours, has a set of core values. Values, and the cultural fit that result, help drive strategy execution. From one organization to another, many of those values, such as teamwork, inclusion, respect and integrity, might overlap. But each one has its own unique way of prioritizing and emphasizing the most important values to the enterprise. In our white paper “ Strategy to Execution (S2X) ,” we outline the seven Levers of Execution, the factors we’ve identified over the years that make up the critical framework to connect strategy and execution. The first of these is “Right, Right, Right: The Right People in the Right Roles with the Right Capabilities.” A critical part of putting the right people with the right capabilities in the right roles is a cultural fit – matching the organization’s people with its values and strategy. Perhaps you’re nodding along at this point. Of course, your organization wants to fill itself with people who share its core values. But many continue to recruit, tolerate and even promote people who don’t fit, because those people “deliver results.” It’s understandable. Let’s say a team leader has determined the top sales person in her group is not a team player. (I’ll give you a real-life example of this in the next post.) If the team leader lets this top performer go, she can’t be certain exactly how things will shake out. But she knows that sales are almost certain to decline next month. Why rock the boat when your reward is almost certain to be poorer performance? One reason is it’s not always easy to balance the benefits of keeping a high performer with the harm. The benefits are easy to measure: our sales are rising; our output is up. The harm is harder to calculate. Maybe your team members aren’t cooperating with each other as much as they should, because they don’t trust that top performer. They think, with good reason, that he might hog the credit (and bonuses). Exactly how much is that costing your organization? The short answer is you don’t know. But often, it’s more than you think. Sooner or later, a poor cultural fit almost certainly will hurt your results. In business, as in many other endeavors, you’re often faced with a trade-off between short-term and long-term results. It’s almost always easier to choose the short-term and vaguely hope that the long-term will sort itself out. It rarely does. A bad cultural fit can happen any time. You might hire someone with a great resume who had a great interview, but after a few months on the job, it’s clear she can’t get along with other workers. A dispute might erupt between two people that starts a cycle of behavior that hurts the organization. There are often stages in an organization’s life cycle when it’s especially vulnerable to problems with cultural fit. Can you think of when that might be? That will be the topic for the next post. Intrigued by what you’re reading? Download our white paper on converting strategy into execution and learn more about us by visiting our website . WhiteWater International Consulting, Inc. helps organizations understand the challenges they face and helps enterprises achieve and sustain outstanding performance through unleashing the passion and capabilities of its people. Because an organization is only as good at the people who power it.

In my last post, I told you the story of Chris, a manager who upon his promotion restored the performance of a talented team by giving the workers autonomy – but autonomy guided by four critical questions that Chris used to communicate the company’s values: • Is this the right thing for the customer? • Is this the right thing for the short- and long-term financial performance of the company? • Is this the right thing for my coworkers? • Will this action help us be a better company tomorrow than we are today? At the end of the story, I asked you two questions: Why did it work so well, and what else did Chris need to do to communicate those values successfully? To answer the first question, consider the frustration of operating without a clear understanding of an organization’s values. To use a sports analogy, imagine you’re a running back on an unmarked field. On first down, you take the hand-off and move four steps to your left. The referee blows the whistle and says you went out of bounds. The next play, you go two steps to the right, and you get whistled again. How completely demotivating is that? After a few more plays like that, you’re going to start running straight into the line, because it seems futile to try to go around. You’re going to go nowhere, but you know you won’t get into trouble, either. You’re going to do the minimum to keep your job. That’s what the pros on Chris’s team had been reduced to before he joined them. They felt they couldn’t make a move without the “ref” blowing the whistle on them. After a while, they gave up and did the minimum to keep their jobs. Chris restored their motivation by giving them his trust. But he gave them trust with accountability, guided by the company’s values, translated into four questions that could guide their daily work. The four questions were well thought out. You might use similar questions for your organization. But Chris knew they weren’t enough, and here’s why: We like to think of values as a black and white, clearly drawn lines. But in the real world, sometimes the line is gray. Before you make that decision, you should ask somebody else. What if, for example, the commitment I’m making to this customer – doing the right thing for her – has a negative impact on somebody else in my organization? What if the special discount I offer makes the company better today (because I made the sale) but might make it worse off tomorrow (because word might get around that other customers can demand the same discount, cutting our profit margins)? When the line is gray, before you make that decision, you have to ask somebody else. A manager has to navigate these gray lines and communicate the thinking process behind them to the rest of the team. Intrigued by what you’re reading? Download our white paper on converting strategy into execution and learn more about us by visiting our website . WhiteWater International Consulting, Inc. helps organizations understand the challenges they face and helps enterprises achieve and sustain outstanding performance through unleashing the passion and capabilities of its people. Because an organization is only as good at the people who power it.

In our last post, we discussed cultural fit and the importance of hiring and supporting people who fit in well with your organization’s culture, values and strategy. That’s advice most of us heartily agree with but don’t always follow, and we explored the reasons why. Now I want to talk about “when.” Sometimes, a bad culture fit is obvious. Your teammate is selfish, doesn’t always tell the truth, doesn’t support others. In short, he’s a jerk, but the company tolerates him because his numbers look good. But often, the cause of a bad culture fit is subtler. Someone who has been a good cultural fit and has reflected the organization’s strategy and values for years is now out of step. What happened? In many cases, the person didn’t change; the organization did. Your organization might be facing a new business environment – a new competitor, a new technology, a new opportunity – that forces everyone to adjust. And a few of your teammates, for all their good qualities, can’t or won’t make the necessary adjustment. They aren’t bad people. But, they are still causing the team and the organization to under-perform. And like it or not, if they can’t get back in step with the organization’s direction and evolving culture, you have to make the tough choice that they must go. These critical moments are inevitable in successful organizations. Market and customer preferences change, the competitive landscape changes, technology changes. These changes force the organization to change to stay relevant. I worked with a consumer products company in the US that faced one of these moments. To this point, its sales force had been a “team,” to use the term very loosely, of cowboys. Each one had her own territory and was told to sign up as many customers as possible, plain and simple. If a customer just outside a sales person’s territory had a problem, she had zero incentive to help her teammate – that was just time wasted that could have been spent selling to one of her customers. Customer turnover was huge. At some point, it became clear that the company’s sales people had successfully sold the product to just about every potential customer in the area. Sales people were paid entirely on commission, based on selling the product to the customer, whether the customer was using it or not. Customers were winding up with a backlog of product they didn’t want and likely would never exhaust. What now? The company realized it had to change its approach. The focus could no longer be about getting new customers. It became, “How do we keep the customers we have, and make each customer relationship more satisfying and more profitable?” Accordingly, compensation for sales people changed from straight commission to a mix of salary and bonuses based on team results and dramatically improving the customer experience. One sales person was resistant to the change. He was a cowboy, and a good one. He had been a sales leader, and a lot of his peers respected him. But now, he was holding the organization back. He saw the new compensation system as a threat, and he didn’t change his approach. The group’s performance was being held hostage by this one guy. We had conversations with that company’s leadership team about this salesman several times. They agreed he was holding the organization back, but chose not to act. Maybe they thought they could rehabilitate him over time. Months went by. Other divisions were making the transformation much more effectively. Finally, after a year, the division leadership terminated the salesman. How do you think the team responded? First, a striking the number of people the very next day told the divisions managers a version of, “Wow, it’s about time. We thought you were never going to make the change.” As for team performance, it was like flipping a switch. Within days, the performance improvement was noticeable. We drew two critical lessons from this experience, which have been confirmed on many other occasions: You can’t hide a bad cultural fit. Your team members know if someone isn’t playing by the rules, and they expect you to do something about it. You might focus on the sales or productivity that walks out the door with the person you just let go. But your team’s performance is likely to rebound, perhaps more quickly than you expect. Intrigued by what you’re reading? Download our white paper on converting strategy into execution and learn more about us by visiting our website . WhiteWater International Consulting, Inc. helps organizations understand the challenges they face and helps enterprises achieve and sustain outstanding performance through unleashing the passion and capabilities of its people. Because an organization is only as good at the people who power it.

How Sears Killed Sears A Horrific Case of the Missing Follow-up/Follow-through Process Early in my career, I was responsible for a team of technical sales engineers. After a few weeks, I inherited an engineer who had worked for our company for about a year and had developed a reputation as lazy and ineffective. Yeah, I know: the proverbial Thanksgiving Special: the organization was playing “Pass the Turkey” with him. Yet, as I got to know him, I found that he was bright, energetic and highly motivated…the complete opposite of his reputation. I asked him what he’d been doing for the last year. His completely honest response: “Not much.” Why? “Well, frankly, no one has asked me to do much, and then they never check on me. So, I spend my time researching, reading and, generally, hanging out.” Besides the obvious lack of direction or anything that resembled a critical goal, the Follow-up/Follow-through process was totally non-existent. While the sales engineer bore a lot of the responsibility for being missing in action, his previous leaders also clearly failed him. The good news: after we established a few critical goals and started a regular Follow-up/Follow-through process, the sales engineer began to put all that reading and research to work. Within months, he had earned his new reputation as being smart as a whip and doing great things for our customers and our organization. Follow-up/Follow-through: Generating Learning and Accountability for Results In our last post, we talked about the 7th gear in the Strategy>Execution>Results Framework: Follow-up/Follow-through. It’s the gear that keeps the other gears aligned and translating effort to results. As the story above illustrates in stark terms, when Follow-up/Follow-through is missing or ineffective, the other gears wobble, grind and waste time and energy. Effective Follow-up/Follow-through: Set the Rhythm Performers and Leaders need to establish a consistent rhythm for following up and following through. They should create a consistent time frame for meeting, updating and assessing progress toward the project’s goal. Once the rhythm has been established, the burden is on the performer to follow-up with the leader at the agreed upon time. This shifts the responsibility and accountability for performance to the performer and away from the leader. Instead of having to nag performers about scheduling their next status meeting, leaders can focus their attention on their own critical goals and priorities. Follow-up/Follow-through Rhythm: Driven by the Performer’s Needs and the Goal How frequently should they meet? The answer is generally driven by: • the performer’s needs • the nature of the goal or task. Let’s say you just hired a new team member who brings a ton of new capabilities, raw talent and enthusiasm to the organization. But, she has no experience with how things work within your organization and has not proven that she can apply her talent and enthusiasm to consistently achieve critical goals. In this case, you would be wise to start with a fast follow up/follow-through cycle. This enables the leader to provide the guidance the new team member needs to be successful. It also allows the leader to celebrate quick wins and understand her quickly evolving development needs. In the first few days on the job, the cycle might be daily or even every few hours. Or the new team member might be assigned to shadow or be shadowed by a mentor, in which case, the cycle might be nearly continuous. As the new team member demonstrates that she can operate safely and effectively on her own, you can (must) gradually decrease the frequency of the follow-up/follow-through cycles. On the other hand, your “pros in position” will feel smothered by an hourly or daily Follow-up/Follow-through rhythm on a goal or task they are expert in. Weekly, monthly or quarterly better fits their needs. A Recipe for Disaster Establishing a Follow-up/Follow-through rhythm that is less frequent than quarterly is a recipe for disaster. Waiting for the annual or six-month performance review creates too much potential for performers to drift out of day-to-day alignment with their critical goals. (Wait a minute…are you still doing annual performance reviews? We should talk.) If you’re not already comfortable with follow up/follow through, I suggest that whatever interval you choose, make it regular, such as every week at the same day and time. But follow up/follow through can also occur at specific, but not necessarily regular, intervals if that’s what a project plan or task requires. For example, a foreman at a commercial windows and doors company might follow up with his manager within a day of completing an installation. Depending on the size of each job, their meetings could be days, weeks or months apart, but they still occur at specific times. What do you think? To what extent have you established a Follow-up/Follow-through cycle for each of your goals? Is Follow-up/Follow-through driven by the Performers’ needs and the nature or the goal, or driven more by crisis? To what extent does your Follow-up/Follow-through process push responsibility and ownership to Performers, rather than Leaders? Next: The project’s role in setting the Follow-up/Follow-through rhythm. Intrigued by what you’re reading? Download our white paper on converting strategy into execution and learn more about us by visiting our website . WhiteWater International Consulting, Inc. helps organizations understand the challenges they face and helps enterprises achieve and sustain outstanding performance through unleashing the passion and capabilities of its people. Because an organization is only as good at the people who power it.