The Way We Do Business Around Here

One of the best definitions of organizational culture that I have ever heard is also the simplest--the way we do business around here. The subject of culture is on my mind owing to its being the focus of the second meeting of the accomplished principals participating in the new NC Distinguished Leadership in Practice program at the Raleigh Sheraton last week. I’d like to share a bit of what happened there to underscore how we can all improve both workplace relationships and the bottom line by benchmarking how local industry leaders do business around here.

A primary task last week was to go on “field trip” to some of the NC Triangle’s most successful businesses where, with the assistance of on-site senior managers, principals explored the cultural practices that have contributed to the well-being of those industry leaders. All principals visited SAS, named this year by Fortune magazine as “The Best Place to Work in the World.” Due to time constraints, however, principals experienced first-hand only one other company—either Marbles Kid’s Museum, BB&T, GlaxoSmithKline, WakeMed, RBC, or Progress Energy.

Guided by Patricia Willoughby, a member of the NC State Board of Education and Executive Director of NC Business Committee for Education, DLP leaders had requested in advance that business representatives make a brief presentation about their company, focusing on organizational mission, vision, values, and core beliefs; policies and practices; and the history of the organization. Guides were also instructed to take principals on a tour of the workplace where they could ask any question of any employee.

So what happened? For starters, principals began to notice how written mission, vision, and values statements actually live in a successful company. While the letters in BB&T, for example, actually stand for “Branch Bank & Trust,” employees say the acronym means “Best Bank in Town.” I was personally on the visit and every time I asked that question, I got the same answer—with a big smile.

Principals also learned that how managers treat employees is recapitulated in how employees treat customers. At SAS, they heard this: “The employee is not only our first customer but our greatest asset. When they drive out of the parking lot at night, we want them to look forward to coming back the next day. Our bottom line depends on it.” Principals also learned that M&Ms, a gymnasium, a childcare center, a banking facility, and other amenities too numerous to mention are available at no cost—a hard act to follow!

Finally, principals began to notice how architecture, symbols, and stories inform and influence the culture. WakeMed employees, for example, talked about “The Wake Way,” sharing narratives about specific patients admitted to the emergency room who were treated and released not only within a time exceeding industry standards, but that left patients and family secure in the knowledge that they had just experienced high-quality care at the hands of compassionate medical professionals.

I feel really good about what was taught and what was learned. Sometimes I think that organizational culture is like air—as long as it’s healthy we hardly notice it. When it becomes fouled with ugly stories, attitudes, and relationships, however, the stench of it is all you can smell. I am betting that our principals have a new understanding of the importance of using their nose before it is needed rather than afterward. How’s the air where you lead, I wonder?

Listening

I was an eager, fresh-faced young professional on the move. That's when I met three people, all school superintendents at the time, who indelibly redefined for me what it means to be a leader. And I met another leader-in-progress yesterday. Although my new professional friend with Harrington Bank is not an educator, she has the same essential quality that has subsequently propelled my then superintendent acquaintances to even greater positions of influence. That quality is the ability to listen. But I am getting ahead of myself.

The year was 1991. I was a field representative with SERVE, the new educational R&D laboratory for the southeastern states. In all honesty, my job was created to permit me to earn a salary while completing my required year-in-residence at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Dr. Roy Forbes, the founding executive director for the lab and a UNCG professor, tasked me and two other doctoral students with making cold calls to superintendents across North Carolina. Our job was to tell them about products and services at the new lab of which at the time there were embarrasingly few.

My phone calls to gain an audience resulted in scheduled appointments with superintendents from Currituck County in the far northeast, down the coast to New Hanover County, taking a northwestern tack back to Guilford County, up to the state line through Rockingham County, and following the North Carolina-Virginia border back to the coast again. Of the scores of superintendents I met and subsequently worked with, three stand out--Mike Ward at Granville County, Tom Houlihan at Johnston County, and Gerry House at Chapel Hill-Carrboro City.

What distinguished these leaders from the others? Their capacity to connect with me as a human being and then just listen to me talk. There I was a graduate student and second-year assistant principal on leave from a small-town district, peddling little more than a smile and a promise. But when I sat down to talk with them about the lab, do you know what Mike, Tom, and Gerry wanted to hear? Who was Steve Bingham? What does he hope to accomplish at SERVE? What does he want to be for the world? What are his dreams? Imagine that. And now imagine the hard work I have put into myself all these years hence just wanting to live up to the great things Mike, Tom, and Gerry evoked from me the day I met them.

As many of you know, Mike went on to become state superintendent, Tom to lead the Council of Chief State School Officers, and Gerry to direct her own education foundation in New York. I am not sure what Morgan Grainger does at Harrington Bank. I do know that her company sponsors the Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools Teacher of the Year Program, that she read something about Triangle Leadership Academy serving CHCCS, and that she called me to learn more about TLA. And here is something else I know about Morgan--she has the same magic that Mike, Tom, and Gerry showed me lo those many years ago. At the risk of offense, she probably now knows as much about me and TLA as you do. Why? Because she asked good questions and just listened.

Long story short, Morgan is to talk to Harrington Bank senior leaders about the possibility of TLA-VitalSmarts trainings for their employees. You'll recall that, thanks to our friend, Howard Schultz who went to bat for us at corporate, we can invite and profit from business participation in Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and Influencer trainings. That's a promise for much-needed revenue.

Whatever comes of my conversation with Morgan, however, I will count as a second benefit. The first benefit is her affirmation our work, you and me, together. I remain grateful for the opportunity to serve as your executive director and for the opportunity it affords me to connect with future-ready leaders like Morgan Grainger.

Pay for Performance: A Red Herring?

Last week, I wrote about how my wife and I spent two days of our summer vacation, this only to share some thoughts about Jim Sweeney and the remarkable leader that he is. While not hiking the High Sierras or chilling in the California wine country, however, I stole a little "me time" to read two books that had been sitting on my shelf for way longer than I care to admit. Relax. This is not a book report.

If, however, you have not yet perused Dan Pink's Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, and Dan Ariely's The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic at Work and at Home, you owe it yourself to do so. To make a connection to the world of TLA, I need to say just a word about both books. And I do have a point to make.

In Drive, Pink draws on 40 years of research on human motivation, exposing the mismatch between what science knows and what business does. Although carrots and sticks worked in the last century, he argues, that is exactly the wrong approach for today's knowledge workers. For folk in complex, creative jobs, employers should tap into the ingrained need for autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

This got me thinking about the Obama administration's educator pay-for-performance scheme. The fact that multiple large-scale merit-pay demonstrations have failed to increase student achievement notwithstanding, Pink's research suggests that such attempts are doomed to fail from a scientific, motivational perspective. I asked my wife, a middle-grade family and consumer science teacher, could she work any harder if she was paid more. She laughed at me.

And now Dan Ariely. Many of you may know that he is Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke University. In The Upside of Irrationality, Ariely marshals data from his own original and sometimes hilarious experiments to draw compelling conclusions about how and why we behave as we do. To stay with the pay-for-performance issue, Ariely's first chapter explains why neither CEOs nor professional basketball players perform any better with increased compensation. Among other things, his studies show that with increased pay comes increased performance anxiety. At best, the data demonstrate an inverted U shape suggesting that pay and performance are related--but benefits accrue only up to a point and then drop off.

What Pink and Ariely say to me is that there are no magic bullets when it comes either to improving leading or teaching in schools. We know that money matters and we have woefully little of it in public education right now. Until we learn more, however, about the connections between compensation, motivation, stress, and performance, I urge caution in creating high expectations around what may ultimately prove a red herring to school improvement.

Our Friend, Jim

By now most of you have met Dr. Jim Sweeney, a retired educational leader living in North Raleigh currently working as TLA Consultant for Planning & Development. Jim's role with TLA is, by his own description, a "jobette," a way to stay engaged in one's passion while remaining free, say, to spend the summer at your Sierra Nevada mountain cabin. So in this Friday's blog, allow me pull a few thoughts together, the sum of which I hope will inspire you to be like our friend, Jim, when you grow up.

If you missed last week's blog, it is because I did not write one. This was so, in part, because my wife, Deborah, and I were spending two of our eleven-day California vacation with Jim and his wife, Jan. Having retired from Sacremento City Schools as a superintendent and then later as a superintendent coach for the Stupski Foundation for Education, Jim moved to North Raleigh only a couple of years ago, once again demonstrating the talent magnet that is our little corner of the world.

By the way, Jim had enjoyed an earlier career as a professor at Valdosta State and Iowa State Universities, this on the heels of being a successful public school teacher, coach, and principal. What Jim is able to share with our clients is way beyond useful. I will save for another occasion exactly how he is helping TLA.

Several years prior to moving east, Jim and Jan bought a place in Graeagle, California, a beautiful high Sierra town about an hour northwest of Reno, Nevada. Although Jim is a septuagenarian, we "young folk" struggled to keep up with him on our daily hikes in this nearly mile-high land. At night, we ate and drank like kings and queens and slept like babies. Clearly, Jim and Jan share a philosophy that friendship, the beauty and bounty of nature, good food and wine, and spirited conversation matter and matter a lot.

As Jim and I typically hiked ahead of "the girls" each day, we had an opportunity to talk about books we were reading, people with whom we have worked, and the general state of education, leadership, and the world. For a man who has undoubtedly experienced his share of potholes and pitfalls, Jim has an amazingly sanguine view of the future. Whatever disappointments or regrets he may have, I never learned of them. With Jan, Jim seems determined to live life eyes straight ahead, as if everyday could be the last and so, a day to be celebrated, drank to the last drop.

So when I say that Jim is our friend, I mean that I am better for knowing him, more blessed because of his experience liberally shared with me and all those with whom he has worked at TLA. He is our friend because he is someone who patiently asks the right questions, listens deeply to your responses, and leaves you feeling as if what you said was the most important thing he heard all day. Jim is our teacher. In every way that have known Jim Sweeney, he has demonstrated, in this student's mind at least, the embodiment of a transformational leader. When I grow up, I want to be like just like Jim.