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A "rainbow of honesty" how to use symbols to change culture

Here is an interview with the CEO of Ford, Alan Mulally, good all the way through, but especially from minutes 12′-16’30″. He tells a great story of a highly visible moment where he found a way to use the traffic light system to get his people to know that covering up poor performance is a worse sin that the results themselves. You get to hear how quick it can be to change a cultural norm with the right leadership behavior.

Remember that culture is the patterns of behavior that is encouraged over time. At Ford, the pattern of behavior that had been encouraged was to “look good” and make out that everything was fine. So everyone presents their own area as doing fine, even though the culture was loosing $17bn. To build an Achievement culture, transparency is the first step – you cannot improve if you cannot acknowledge where there are problems.

When a leader gets really clear on the behavior he or she is looking for, encouraging this behavior at every opportunity – and discouraging the opposite, sends the message very fast. Every time unwanted behavior is ignored, the message is received that it is actually OK. This is what it means to “walk your talk”.

Thank you to our client Christine Boulton, champion of the culture journey in the Water Corporation, Western Australia, for sending me through this link.

Leading by omission – Ricardo Semler

“Every one of us can send emails on Sunday night, but how many of us know how to go to the movies on Monday afternoon”? Asks Ricardo Semler, the CEO of Semco during this interesting seminar at MIT Sloan School of Management, he talks about the way Semco innovates by challenging the business formats that are basically legacies of military hierarchies, which neglect or deny the power of human intuition and democratic participation. The best piece we found in this presentation was from the minute 26:20 to 40:27.

Davos Annual Meeting 2010 – Rethinking Values in the Post-Crisis World

“Ethics”, says one of the speakers, “are the resistance of values under pressure”. “Tourists don’t vote” says another in relation to changing the power of short term shareholders’. A panel of world leaders debate whether we are learning from what has been happening.

How Google fosters innovation

If you want to build a culture of innovation, watch how the best do it. Douglas Merrill, CIO of Google describes some of the behaviors, symbols and systems of his company. Watch his passion and his curiosity, features of innovative cultures. See how clear he is about the beliefs and principles that underpin his company. How could you help people like Douglas thrive in your organization?

Innovation: NVIDIA founder on why they chose innovation over opinion

NVIDIA is a 3D graphics company that was formed in 1993 at a time when 3D technology was an emerging field. In this interesting seminar at Stanford University, NVIDIA’s co-founder and CEO talks about why he chose to ignore industry wisdom and customer opinion when deciding about the future needs of the market. They stayed true to their belief that there was an “insatiable” desire for 3D technology, and had this lead their product design and strategy rather than the perceived wisdom of the day.

Customer-centric: Volcano led to new communication channels

The recent disruption of air travel caused by the Icelandic volcano created opportunities for airlines to communicate with customers in new ways using social media. Traditional avenues such as call centres and websites could not meet demand nor get up-to-the-minute details out to customers quickly. Find out which airlines led the way in keeping their customers informed as events occurred.

Greater-Good: Can burgers save the planet?

Burgerville, an American fast food chain, use locally produced ingredients, source energy using renewable alternatives, recycle their waste and have recently begun providing nutritional information on customer receipts. These are just some of the initiatives they have implemented to realise their sustainability values.

Jack Graves, Chief Cultural Officer, discusses here how they differentiate themselves from their large competitors and bring their mission to “serve with love” to life for their employees and customers.

Customer-centric: Starbuck’s social media strategy

Starbuck’s brand positioning and focus on the importance of the customer come through in this article about their social media strategy. It covers the ten ideas they use to govern their use of social media to engage customers and promote brand loyalty, while staying true to their coffeehouse culture.

Values based organizations integrate social concerns into their mission

Ben Cohen, previous co-owner of Ben and Jerry’s icecream and current advisory board member, is a business leader who believes that companies have to be ‘mission led’ and socially responsible. In this video from The Economist he discusses his ideas about the role of business in today’s world, including the achievements that can be realized for organizations and society when values and social concerns are shared by customers and an organization.

Greater-Good: Waste Management extracting value from waste

Waste Management is aiming to transform their business from disposing waste via landfill sites to “extracting value from waste” to help the environment. Reflecting the characteristics of a Greater-Good culture, CEO David P. Steiner believes that he can help the environment and produce profit for shareholders, rather than believing that a choice needs to be made between the two. An example of one of their environmental initiatives is the configuration of a landfill site into a biofuel gas plant which they use to power over half of their fleet, (click here for more information).

Steiner states in this article that the most important aspect of his job is to change the culture. The article captures some of his personal learnings about the messages he sends as a leader. Interestingly, engaging 45,000 employees was not an issue, and neither was marketing their offer to customers, as Steiner notes that both groups were already on board.

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