What Local Leaders Talk About Most

A company is a reflection of the people who work there, and the competition for top people is fierce. If you love what you do and you're good at it, it's a great time to be you.

So how does a company go about winning the hearts and minds of people like you? Step one - craft a worthy 'why'. Choose a noble purpose, values that resonate and a culture of excellence and self actualization. Then, make it believable. By doing so, the company expects to see measurable improvements in their recruiting, retention, and employee engagement scores.

Here's how it goes...

With great anticipation the worthy-why campaign rolls out with a splash. The CEO leads the charge, deftly drawing the connection between company actions and purpose, decisions and core values, and eloquently illustrating the theme of the company's new culture. Fantastic! Corporate coms capably reinforces and builds on the messaging. A new company paradigm has arrived, and it's great!

But a year goes by, then two and recruitment remains a struggle, retention...ugh, and employee engagement? The survey says... down three points. That makes no sense! The 'company' has done everything right! Right? Well, ...hang on, let's define 'company'. Are the CEO and corporate coms really the company? Are they even half of what people think of as 'the company'?

At a local ASCE chapter luncheon three young engineers are catching up. "So what's the latest?" one asks the others. "I feel like I work for two different companies." says one. 'Corporate' is saying all the right things. You know, talking about the company's purpose and values. And they all sound great. They want a culture that promotes individual excellence, everyone becoming a recognized industry leader. I mean, that's what I want, and I think its what everyone wants. But we almost never hear anything about that in our office. All we hear about is last week's utilization, WIP and A/R. The same old stuff. It's frustrating because you want to get really excited about the profession and what we do every day, but we get reminded constantly that the real bottom line here, is the bottom-line. All that purpose and core values stuff isn't real, at least not here. It's disappointing."

Surprise! Local leaders and supervisors are quite often the most influential of all company leaders. Not the very capable CEO, C-suite, or corporate coms. Why? In addition to much more face-time, local leaders and supervisors have the most control over the things that matter most to people, their compensation, career trajectories and employment status. Local leaders are front-of-mind all the time. They win on relevance.

Why didn't local leaders commit to the worthy-why campaign? Because humans do what they believe to be in their best interest. To get all leaders behind any new initiative, there needs to be a compelling incentive. A carrot and a stick. If local leaders know they won't be held accountable for the uptake of purpose, values and culture, but they will be held accountable for utilization, WIP and A/R, then that's what they're going to talk about most. And what local leaders talk about most becomes the de facto company culture and purpose, which of course, defines the company's reputation as a workplace, and so it goes...

The punchline is this: The virtual cycle of success is energized when everyone's individual incentives are aligned with the success factors of the business, i.e., all oars are rowing skillfully in the same direction. Misaligned incentives create a short-circuit that hobbles success and quickly delivers mediocrity. Leaders align incentives. So align incentives!

That's it.  Till next week. Cheers,

Dave Bennett

Reply to: dave@goodnewsfriday.com

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