February 2008

Tell the Same Truth To Everyone

Replicate and Sustain Best Practices

A Caution on Using Social Media

You Can't Build Trust By Spying on Employees<

Always tell the truth!

Question:

Our CEO is talking out of both sides of his mouth.  He's telling employees that everything's rosy while he's telling his management team to start bracing for some rough times. He's hinting of layoffs and facility closings. What's the best way to communicate in today's uncertain environment?

Answer:

When newly-elected Amtrak chairman Tom Downs first met with his new leadership team, he said four words should guide everything they do: Always tell the truth. 

Why in today's ultra-transparent business environment would any CEO think that he or she could get away with telling one story to one group of employees and the opposite story to another group?   It's bizarre.

Telling the truth is a value.  Not realizing that a team of people needs a common set of facts to perform at their peak--including knowing that they're headed for tough times--is ignorance.  How do these people get into these jobs?

Anyone who's played team sports knows that all things equal, teams that have a lot of relevant, accurate information perform better than teams that don't. Why would a business leader ignore that wisdom and think he or she was in a better competitive position by telling one group one thing and another group something else? 

If I'm sailing on the Chesapeake Bay with my ports and hatches wide open and my sails flapping in the breeze while aware that a squall is coming, I've put my crew and the sailboat in harm's way.  I don't deserve to be at the helm.  I should be removed.

So should CEO's who lie.

Make best practices sustainable

A characteristic of great companies is that they foster a strong sense of shared values, principles and platforms. When a practice works well in one part of the world, it can be introduced to other parts of the company immediately, thanks, in part, to web technology. It's efficient, saves reinventing the wheel and capitalizes on performance improvements the best practices offer. 

I write this as I'm co-conducting a workshop in Indianapolis with Bob Kula, a corporate communication leader at ConAgra Foods, and Carole French, who leads a huge Total Logistic Control warehousing facility in that city. Carole and her leadership team created an exciting story.  Their warehouse has been performing at a lights-out level for some time.  But in a pilot project focusing on kicking performance to an even higher level through increased employee engagement, the team has taken the warehouse into the stratosphere.  In less than five months, this well-running warehouse improved quality by 61% and improved inventory adjustments by 63%. Asa bi-product, productivity went up by 16%. Turnover is dropping precipitously as well.

We used the workshop to teach other leaders in the supply chain how to kick performance up another two or three notches in an already high performing business, then replicate the work across the entire supply chain.  But these leaders also learned that you can't just take what one warehouse did and plug it in to another warehouse. You still need to take time to generate local employee ownership in the performance opportunities that exist at their location and enable them to customize solutionsto their facility.  If they don't create local ownership and commitment, all they're likely to create is "another program" that's "not invented here."  Plug and play may work indefinitely for machines but not for people.  Sustainable improvements come though carefully nurtured ownership and commitment. 

Social Media—again

I got an email from a communications person in a pharmaceutical company who wanted opinions on using social media (podcasts, blogs, wikis and the like) in her communication repertoire. No specific problem.  Just in general.

I've worked with four pharmas recently so I know a lot about what they're trying to do. It's really no secret.  They're all hell-bent on identifying ways to get new medicines to market faster and cheaper, and to cut costs customers aren't willing to pay for and regulators are criticizing.  They're trying to fail faster, as crazy as the term sounds.  Essentially they're trying to identify and shut down projects that aren't going anywhere, before pouring buckets of money intothem.

I'm for using any legal and ethical means to efficiently improve performance. But with all the gushing over social media, it's all too often not much more than a solution looking for a problem.  Here was my advice to her and to you. Inspect any new opportunity to get better. But as of now, there's no evidence that podcasts or blogs have measurably improved quality, service, cost, speed, safety or productivity where it mattered to the financial health of the business. Of course,that may change. But, be careful about grabbing the next new thing when you still haven't flawlessly executed on the known solutions to these problems. 

Creepy technology

Business Week reports that eTelemetry, which provides tech department with network monitoring software has come out with hardware that gives managers desktop access to details about the online activities of their people.

Along with lying, no doubt another way to build trust among people who are working on the same team.