Work is Love Made Visible

by Frances Hesselbein

  Yellow for events that were unsuccessful and made you feel bad

  Blue (or any other color) for events that were neutral

  Take a step back and look. The interpretation of results is obvious: the more red and orange you see, the more concerned you should be!

  Run this exercise again in four weeks. Have a notebook and pen handy, and write down your thoughts and feelings after each event you participate in at work. Mark the event with one of five colors.

  Finally, talk to several people who love you, asking them a series of straightforward questions: Do you think I am happy with what I do? Am I good at what I do? Should I keep doing that? Don’t be satisfied with their first answers; dig deeper. Then, ask the same set of questions to someone whom you dislike. Don’t get defensive. Listen and appreciate their honesty.

  2. Who Are You?

  There are many psychometric tests and 360-degree assessment tools that help us understand ourselves better. But let me describe a much simpler, yet equally powerful, exercise that you can run in a short time and at no cost.

  You most probably work with an organization that has a specific mission, vision, and values. These reflect the identity of the firm and become the social glue for employees, creating a specific company culture. Through specific associations, they are also part of the brand.

  But have you ever thought about your own brand?

  What would be your personal mission? What about your vision? Where would you like to be in some not-so-distant future? What values do you follow and want to be associated with?

  I ran this simple exercise with many of my clients. They were usually shocked by my questions, as they had been spending much time discussing the mission-vision-values of the company they manage, but had never reflected on themselves.

  There is another part to this exercise. Write down your personal mission, vision, and values and put this sheet of paper in a sealed envelope. Now go to several people you have worked with for a long time and ask them to anonymously share their opinions on the accuracy of your assessment of your mission, vision, and values. Don’t forget to fasten your seatbelt before reading their replies!

  3. What Else Is There?

  One of the worst enemies we face today is, paradoxically, our own success. Success usually diminishes or kills our openness to and readiness for change; if things have worked fine so far, why change? A triumph of yesterday often sets a foundation for the failure of tomorrow.

  Therefore, never stop exploring. Be hungry for new experiences. Force yourself to get out of your comfort zone. Do things you have never done before. Never participated in charity work? Try one Saturday next month. Never gone fishing? Check if anyone you know would take you for an early morning fishing trip. Never climbed? Find the nearest mountaineering club. That boring couple living across the street? Have a glass of wine with them.

  Be prepared to abandon stereotypes and clichés! I will never forget one of my climbing expeditions to the Pamir mountain range in Kyrgyzstan, where I met a Russian guy, who – apart from being a great mountaineer – spoke very good English. We spent some time in the camps on the mountain we climbed, talking to each other pretty often. He said he moved from Russia to the United States and worked there. Automatically I had a stereotype of a blue-collar worker from an Eastern European county. We climbed and talked. It was on the last day, when I was just about to leave the basecamp, that we exchanged our e-mails, so as to share pictures taken during the climb. I could not believe what I was seeing: his e-mail was in the @Princeton.edu domain! It turned out that, over the two weeks we were together, I had wasted a chance to talk to a great applied physics specialist working at a prestigious university by continually discussing weather forecasts.

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  There is a wonderful scene in the 1989 film Dead Poets’ Society when the unforgettable Robin Williams, playing English teacher John Keating, stands up on his desk in front of his somewhat shocked students, none of whom can answer his question: “Why do I stand up here?”

  He explains:

  I stand upon my desk to remind myself that we must constantly look at things in a different way. You see, the world looks very different from up here.… Just when you think you know something, you have to look at it in another way. Even though it may seem silly or wrong, you must try! Boys, you must strive to find your own voice. Because the longer you wait to begin, the less likely you are to find it at all. Thoreau said, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Don’t be resigned to that. Break out!

  I was lucky to meet my John Keating on a couple of rainy November days in Poland. Remember that your personal Marshall Goldsmith might be somewhere nearby.

  Reflection Questions:

  Who has been a mentor or inspiration – a “John Keating” or a Marshall Goldsmith – in your own life?

  What motivates you? Is your current job aligned with your dreams? Your values? Your mission?

  What stereotypes or clichés do you hold that might be preventing you from interacting more fully with others?

  26

  Don’t Just Let Culture Happen*

  Alex Osterwalder

  Alexander Osterwalder is an entrepreneur, speaker, and business model innovator. He is co-founder of Strategyzer, a leading SaaS company that helps organizations develop new growth engines, better value propositions, and powerful business models via online applications and facilitated online courses.

  In 2015, Alex won the strategy award by Thinkers50, called the “Oscars of Management Thinking” by the Financial Times, and ranks #15 among the leading business thinkers of the world. In 2013, he won the inaugural Innovation Luminary Award by the European Union.

  Alex is lead author of Business Model Generation and Value Proposition Design, which sold over a million copies in 37 languages. USA Today named Business Model Generation among the 12 best business books of all times. The German edition was named Management Book of the Year 2011. Fast Company magazine named it one of the Best Books for Business Owners in 2010. He crafted the first book with his long-time coauthor and former PhD supervisor Professor Yves Pigneur and 470 collaborators from 45 countries. It was initially self-published in 2009, with an innovative crowd-funded business model.

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  Right now, 51% of your employees are actively looking for a new job or watching for openings. This jarring stat, from Gallup’s 2016 State of the American Workforce Report,1 points out that talented people are on the hunt for organizations with a future vision for growth and prosperity, where there is a chance to contribute to that future and feel engaged with the work being done.

  What’s going to keep talented people around? You could try to motivate people with incentives and unique perks like ping-pong rooms and free meals, but none of those approaches address the deeper issue of why employees are on the move.

  We believe the answer is culture – the formal and informal values, behaviors, and beliefs practiced in an organization. Very few companies intentionally work on their culture; in fact, many companies just let culture happen. We believe that culture has to be intentionally designed and that leadership holds the power and responsibility to see this happen. Company culture can be a fuzzy conversation, but the right tools can make culture tangible and manageable. The corporation of the twenty-first century cannot just let culture happen.

  What Is Corporate Culture?

  When Dave Gray, founder of XPLANE, set out to design a tool to better manage culture, Yves Pigneur and I helped him create the Culture Map, a practical, simple, and visual tool.

  You can use the Culture Map to map out and assess an existing culture or to design a desired culture.

  Dave Gray often says that a company’s culture is like a garden: You can design it, but nature will still be a force. You can’t control everything about your culture, but you can intentionally take it into your own hands. Culture will emerge through constant care and nurturing.

  Here’s how the analogy of a garden helps leadership and t
eams to visualize their culture within the Culture Map. (See Figure 26.1.)

  The outcomes in your culture are the fruits. These are the things you want your culture to achieve, or what you want to “harvest” from your garden.

  The behaviors are the heart of your culture. They’re the positive or negative actions people perform every day that will result in a good or a bad harvest.

  The enablers and blockers are the elements that allow your garden to flourish or fail. For example, weeds, pests, bad weather, or lack of knowledge might be hindering your garden, whereas fertilizer, expertise in gardening specific crops, or good land might be helping it grow. The enablers and blockers are also the only elements of the Culture Map that management can directly control. What management puts in place – policies, rituals, systems – will either help or hinder the organization and result in corresponding worker behaviors.

  Figure 26.1 The Culture Map Garden

  Shape and Nurture Culture like a Garden

  Uber’s recent woes – lawsuits, investigations, and leadership churn – come to mind as a negative example of what happens when culture is left untended. It doesn’t just sour the brand for customers; it results in an organization that is stalled for any further potential growth. The company is now intentionally trying to transform its culture to better position it for future growth. Netflix, on the other hand, is a very different example of a company dedicated to building a great place to work where talented people contribute to a groundbreaking product. We recommend browsing Netflix’s culture slideshare online to see a company that is very intentional about its positive work culture and emphasizes collaboration. Hubspot is another example of a company that is explicit about its “culture code” – thus demonstrating the role of a great culture in attracting talented people.

  Of course, there are many different types of company cultures. Some have strong collaborative cultures, some are experimenting with flat versus hierarchical cultures, and some are purely focused on creating innovation cultures. Amazon is one example that comes to mind.

  We highly recommend you read Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s 2015–2016 letter to shareholders. It’s a fantastic example of how Bezos doesn’t let culture just happen, but has deliberately set out to design an innovation culture. Amazon’s stellar growth and constant reinvention is substantial evidence of the effectiveness of being intentional about your company culture. In Figure 26.2, we use the Culture Map to parse Jeff Bezos’s letter to shareholders and unearth concrete examples of how he has built a company with a culture of constant pioneering in new spaces.

  Figure 26.2 A Culture Map of Amazon

  The Culture Map organizes outcomes centered on the stellar growth that Bezos desires for Amazon. These are followed by very tangible behaviors that are visibly enacted inside the organization. Lastly, these positive behaviors are driven by enablers – the space where culture can really be designed and played with. Bezos’s letter to his shareholders also explicitly mentions some blockers found in most big companies that Amazon tries to avoid.

  Now we can really capture the culture in a tangible way. Your culture and company will be different, but you can use Amazon as a reference for understanding what part of your existing organizational culture enables growth and what parts block it. Then you can discuss and capture how to design a future culture that better encourages growth.

  How Can You Get Started?

  Company culture can feel like a beast, which is why many leaders avoid having these tough conversations. But there are small ways to get started. Here are three things you can do with members of your organization to begin the conversation:

  10 + minutes. Do a quick assessment to map your present culture. Think hard about enablers and blockers. Quickly capturing your current culture will allow you to carry over any existing enablers and positive behaviors that can also work in your desired culture.

  60 + minutes. In a slightly longer session, you can facilitate a shared understanding of your current culture with more people contributing their perspectives. Collaboration is key. How does your Culture Map change with others sharing their input?

  180 + minutes. In this long session, you can define your desired culture and kick off a conversation about how the company can move there from its current culture. Individuals, teams, and leadership can collaborate to discuss and capture the desired enablers and behaviors that everyone can begin to experiment with and implement internally.

  Like a successful garden, a happy and engaged workforce is the result of an intentionally designed company culture; it’s not something that you just let happen. Companies should be as intentional about culture as they are about strategy and business model innovation. We believe that a tool like the Culture Map is incredibly important for capturing and discussing organizational culture. Each one will be unique to the challenge that an organization has to face, whether that’s tackling growth, crisis, or disruption. But you can’t create a culture that will be effective in doing any of that without the right tools.

  Reflection Questions:

  How would you describe the corporate culture of your workplace?

  What actions do leaders at your organization take to nurture and grow this culture?

  What elements of Amazon's organizational culture do you believe are most important to its success? Are there any similarities/differences between Amazon and your own organization's culture?

  Notes

  *. This article was written with Dave Gray, Yves Pigneur, and Kavi Guppta.

  1. Kavi Guppta, “Gallup: American Workers Are Unengaged and Looking Elsewhere,” Gallup’s 2016 State of the American Workforce Report, Forbes.com, https://www.forbes.com/sites/kaviguppta/2017/03/08/gallup-american-workers-are-unengaged-and-looking-elsewhere/#1c178fed3e8c.

  27

  The Space Between Intention and Action

  Liz Wiseman

  Liz Wiseman is the New York Times bestselling author of Multipliers1 and Rookie Smarts2 and teaches leadership to executives around the world. A former executive at Oracle corporation, she was VP of Oracle University and global leader for HR Development. Her clients include Apple, Disney, and Google. Liz has been listed on the Thinkers50 ranking and named as one of the top 10 leadership thinkers in the world.

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  The French artist Paul Gauguin once said, “I shut my eyes in order to see.” My own life experiences have taught me how to see in the dark – to observe the invisible and to read the unwritten, unspoken words that reveal obscured truth. It’s a skill I acquired at a young age.

  My father was a gruff man who was hard on the people around him. He was raised in a good family and worked with his father and brother in the family business. But, when a disagreement about how to run the business evolved into an impasse, my father not only left the business, he left his family, vowing to never speak with them again. Tragically, he never did.

  With his own family (a wife and four children), he oscillated between two modes: (1) a grumpy, curt know-it-all who told everyone what to do and how to do it, and (2) a sullen and withdrawn recluse, often retreating to the TV room. He had a knack for saying the wrong thing and pushing people away. Around my father, it was easy to be offended or hurt. Some in our family viewed him as cold-hearted and unkind. Yet, for some reason, I saw him differently. While I clearly observed (and experienced) his gruff exterior, I could also see underneath it. On the inside, I saw a man who was hurt and deeply wounded: a tenderhearted, good father who just didn’t know how to show love and concern. It was obvious to me that his bossy behavior was actually a misguided attempt to keep his children from making similar mistakes to his own. I can’t recall ever hearing him say, “I love you” to me or anyone else, yet I always felt loved. As his good intentions became more visible to me, I was less affected by his critical behavior, and we developed and sustained a wonderful relationship. Unfortunately, there were others who didn’t see beyond his behavior and their relationships didn’t fare as well.

  Growing
up with a perpetually pessimistic and overly prescriptive father trained me to see the gap between intention and action. The empathy I gained by understanding my father helped me develop compassion for all of us who suffer bouts of hypocrisy – those moments (or entire phases) when our behavior falls short of our good intentions. It sensitized me to the disconnect that occurs when one person judges himself based on his positive intentions while others judge him on his negative behaviors. I certainly had witnessed how misunderstandings and problems can grow in the dark, dank space between intention and actions.

  When I graduated from college and began my career, I encountered dozens (if not hundreds) of people like my father – overly bossy bosses and know-it-all colleagues. I saw how these leaders, determined to be the smartest in the room, actually shut down and pushed people away. In their barrage of brilliance, they diminished the people around them. Later in my career when I began to research this dynamic, I discovered that these Diminisher leaders got less than half of the intelligence and capability of the people who worked for them while, in contrast, Multiplier leaders were rewarded with the full intelligence of their employees. The economics were compelling: Compared to their diminishing colleagues, these multiplier leaders were getting twice the capability out of their people, all for the same price.3

  As I did more research and heard from thousands of people who were stuck working for Diminishers, I realized there was more at work than just economics; these leaders left deep emotional craters. People who are shut down, limited, and bullied at work feel the toxic effects seep into all aspects of their lives. Employees with Diminisher bosses consistently reported experiencing increased stress, reduced confidence, low energy, depression, poor health, general unhappiness, and more. And the collateral damage didn’t stop there; if not addressed, diminishing usually intensified. The majority of individuals also reported that they carried stress home – becoming angry and irritable, complaining more, and withdrawing socially.