Does anybody really care?
There are many reasons that good strategies fail.
They range from, poor communication, lack of alignment, difficulty with change, underestimating resources required, failing to train people, running out of time…
But at the heart of all these things is:
How much do your employees care?
If your employees don’t personally care about what you are trying to do, it’s not likely to get done well, on time, or at all.
Give your people a reason to care
Here’s a good example:
The dreaded Mission Statement
You are probably already rolling your eyes at the thought of this…
This can become one of the most draining, irritating, and lame activities you can engage a management team in, and often results in a statement that reads something like:
To be the leading provider of the most innovative products in our space, with outstanding customer service, and the most efficient operations, therefore maximizing shareholder value.
OK employees…Now, hop to it! (yeah, right.)
The trick is to actually care
If you want a mission that employees care about and can act on, the trick is to start with something you actually care about.
When I work with management teams on this, we start with the question “What do you personally care about? Why are you here?”
Your employees will never care if your executives don’t.
Your team won’t care if you don’t.
You don’t need to call it a mission statement, but you do need to stand for something and care about something for real, if you want your people to spring into action, solve problems for you and drive the momentum you need in your business.
1. Define your strategy in terms people CAN care about.
If you care about customer service and believe that it is a competitive advantage then say so, and ask for help.
We are going to provide a level of personalized customer service for our products that is so good that our customers are shocked by it. We believe this is our key competitive opportunity. Providing outrageous levels of service compared to the industry will grow our business, and we will be profitable doing it.
Now you can ask your employees to start solving this puzzle for you.
It gives them something dig into. It gives them a way to engage. It gives them something that they can care about too.
2. Talk about why you are here.
Why, personally are you here? at this company? in this organization? What are you trying to do? Why does it matter to you? What are your values as a leader and as a human?
If you are willing to share your core values, your employees will care more.
You are giving them a basis to support you. When they talk about work at the dinner table, YOU are the company, much more than anything else is.
If you stand for something they can care about, they will care. If you only ever talk about projects and schedules, there is nothing for them to personally connect with or care about.
3. Talk about what excellence means to you, and why?
What is it that makes you proud of what you and your team delivers? What is most important to YOU that your business stands for and shows the world?
Is it innovation? is it service? is it quality? is it an externally validated proof that you are the best? What embarrasses you? What do you believe is wrong that other companies do? Why?
If you want your employees to step up, they need to understand why it matters.
So many managers struggle to get their employees to work at the same level of competence and quality that they personally deliver. Your employees will never care about rising to your level of excellence unless you really show them why it’s personally important to you to operate at this level of excellence.
What if you don’t care?
If you don’t really care about your work or your company, if you are only there because you need the money, remember, while they are paying you, it is your job to lead, so it is your job to find something you can care about.
If you don’t like the product, care about the way the company treats people. If you don’t care about the company, care about the customers.
I’ve been here. Believe me. It’s better to find something to care about than it is to check out. You are way more likely to get yourself into a better job later, (and maintain your sanity) if you keep caring about something along the way.
If you don’t genuinely care about something, you employees will not deliver for you.
Your strategy can be great, but if your employees don’t give a damn, your chances of executing go out the window.
February 9th, 2010 at 12:44 pm
Great post! This stuff really matters for an organization. The reason it appears to be fluff is that so few companies do this well.
The best advice I got was to substitute “McDonalds” or equivalent for your company name in your mission statement, strategic intent, vision, or whatever; if the statement still makes sense to a reader then it means you are still too generic and need to push for more specificity.
February 9th, 2010 at 3:12 pm
from Brian:
Oh, I love this blog entry, especially your assessment of “the dreaded mission statement”. Organizations routinely spout the most bland nothingness as their mission statements. And in nearly all cases (in fact, I can’t remember a single one), they fail to state what should be obvious: to make money and provide useful employment. This lack of honesty causes credibility leakage from the get-go. To “make money” may seem so obvious that it doesn’t need to be spelled out. But companies must be honest with themselves too, and ask, “do we really care about providing useful employment?” If they don’t, then the mission is merely to make money, and they should say so, so that prospective employees can know what they are getting into.
I learned to be straightforward, to say (and mean) something along the lines of: “our mission is to make money and have fun while we’re doing it; we provide products and services that people care about, and we do it in an ethical way that promotes both our employees’ personal and professional growth as well as the organization’s overall success in the communities we serve.”
February 9th, 2010 at 3:15 pm
from Stan:
I especially agree with point 3 below. However, it’s important to make sure that you can show what excellence means to you by, personally, delivering things that are excellent. We have top executives in our company who talk a good game, and might even give an example or two, but then expect the subordinates to show the excellence (otherwise “I’d be doing their jobs”).
Leaders need to evidence their own excellence, and not merely declare its necessity.
November 18th, 2011 at 3:33 am
My programmer is trying to persuade me to move to .net from PHP. I have always disliked the idea because of the costs. But he’s tryiong none the less. I’ve been using WordPress on a variety of websites for about a year and am nervous about switching to another platform. I have heard very good things about blogengine.net. Is there a way I can import all my wordpress content into it? Any kind of help would be greatly appreciated!
November 25th, 2011 at 5:41 pm
I have understand some superb stuff here. Certainly well worth bookmarking for revisiting. I surprise just how much try you set to make this type of excellent enlightening web page.