interviews
Dr Jones: What are you passionate about? And what are you doing to deliver on this passion?
Miller: I’m passionate about the fact that Gallup and a myriad of other surveys continue to report that US workforce engagement is mired in the low 30% range, while a raft of other studies, including a freshly-minted Katzenbach Center Global Culture Survey, reveal a stark disconnect between how leaders and workers view their organizations, yet we still somehow fail to recognize that positive culture change is the Ultimate Strategic Plan. It’s embarrassing—or it should be.
Consider that well over a decade ago, the late Stephen Covey, in his last book, The Eighth Habit, cited a Harris survey of 23,000 employees in a broad sampling of industries, which found that just a tad over a third of the US workforce knows what their employer is trying to achieve and why, and four out of five don’t fully trust the organization they work for.
And not much has changed since then according to the profusion of research published more recently. Gallup continues to find that only about three in ten employees are engaged at work, leaving the other seven not engaged—and two of those are ‘actively disengaged’—while estimating that it takes four fully engaged workers to neutralize the toxicity of a single disengaged employee. Perhaps worse, according to an LRN survey, fewer than 10% say they work in a company with a strong set of values, and in a recent Booz Allen study, a staggering 96% of respondents say some form of culture change is needed within their organization. Yikes.
There’s plenty more, but you get the point.
There’s also plenty of compelling evidence that companies with positive cultures massively outperform the rest of the pack, starting a generation ago with perhaps the seminal work in this area published by now change management guru John Kotter and his Harvard Business School colleague Professor James Heskett. Their book, Corporate Culture and Performance, embodied their study of more than 200 firms over an 11-year period. What they found was that, “…corporate culture can have a significant impact on a firm’s long-term economic performance…”. Most striking, the increase in net profit over the 11-year study period among those firms most attentive to the interests of all stakeholders exceeded that of those prioritizing only the economic interests of shareholders by a factor of over 700(!). 756% vs 1%, to be precise.
That’s not a typo. Nor is it a coincidence.
Currently, Gallup tells us that companies with highly-engaged workforces outperform their peers by 147% in earnings-per-share, and enjoy an EPS growth rate more than four times that of their competitors. And in the Drucker Institute’s Management Top 250 rankings published recently in the Wall Street Journal, those companies rated lowest in employee engagement find themselves also populating the bottom of the list in terms of overall performance.
It’s self-evident that positive culture change is at once the greatest opportunity and most direct path to improved performance for the vast majority of enterprises. But it’s also apparent that organizational culture is hands-down the least understood and most under-managed attribute of virtually all organizations.
So the problem is obvious.
As is the solution.
I hasten to add, however, that ‘obvious’ does not connote ‘easy’. Permanent positive culture change ain’t easy, but it’s doable—and it pays big dividends.
For my part, after studying the subject for several years in the context of my corporate, entrepreneurial and consulting background, I have dedicated a private advisory firm to changing the way people work by helping them change the way they think. That’s our stated Purpose, a term I think of as interchangeable with ‘Vision’. The highly respected author and thought-leader Simon Sinek calls it our ‘Why’—the reason we exist as an organization, and ultimately the reason for everything we do. It’s this that defines an institution or a company, and its articulation is the first critical step in establishing the culture of any organization—the first brick in the foundation, if you like.
Dr Jones: How do you go about leading? And how do you use your passion to align people to your vision?
Miller: Einstein is often cited as having said, ‘Setting an example is not the main means of influencing others, it’s the only means’. And Albert Schweitzer is quoted saying, ‘The three most important ways to lead people are: by example, by example, and…by example.’
I think the Alberts are both right.
We have developed a checklist of the attributes of what we refer to as ‘Enlightened Leadership’ to convey our ideas on the subject and get leaders thinking—we believe thinking is often overlooked and underrated. Here are few examples:
Enlightened Leaders…
- have more questions than answers
- take responsibility, but never credit
- encourage creativity, but insist on collaboration
- know that doing the right thing is always the Right Thing
- recognize that creating value is prerequisite to realizing profit
- are never seduced into sacrificing the long-term to the short-term
We spend a lot of time discussing these attributes and their implications, eg, what does it mean to encourage creativity and insist on collaboration, and why would we insist upon one and merely encourage the other? Discuss.
As for alignment, to borrow a phrase, it’s complicated.
President Eisenhower’s famous definition of leadership well articulates the ultimate in goal alignment:
“Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.”
And the often-overlooked fact that Ike characterized leadership as art, rather than science or process, is important to a genuine understanding of how it works, which is to say, there is no constant, no equation or formula to define or accommodate every—or maybe any—circumstance. There is no endpoint or finish line to tell you that you’ve made it to leadership nirvana. There is only evolution, and it never ends. The very best leaders are themselves in a perpetual state of improvement and adaptation.
Our own definition of leadership is this:
“Leadership is the art of influencing others to adopt attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that enable perpetual improvement and the achievement of mutual goals.”
All that said, we do use a number of sequential tools to simplify the inherent complexities of leadership development. We’re big on building-blocks.
Dr Jones: Is there anything in your background not directly related to being a leader that has had an outsized impact on how you lead?
Miller: Actually, there is. I spent several years in the military, and was fortunate to have been assigned and trained in neuro-psychology. In this role, I did individual counseling and behavior management, and assisted psychiatrists and psychologists in conducting group therapy. Now that I think about it, I guess I was probably there mostly as the muscle in case things went sideways–definitely a non-leadership position.
Due to a shortage of professional staff, however, I eventually had the initially terrifying opportunity to independently conduct some regular group therapy sessions, despite my utter lack of any professional qualification. But between the genuinely high quality of the training I had received, and the incredibly rewarding experience of being responsible for these groups, I gained invaluable insight into the mechanisms of human behavior that has served me well ever since, and has definitely helped shape my thinking around leadership.
Dr Jones: What is your philosophy on building a team? What do you search for? How you go about selection? And how do you go about managing performance?
Miller: I think teams—like leaders—are made, not born or appointed. I believe team-building is a matter of interactive daily dialogue, not a one-off outing to a climbing wall, escape room or local pub. And I eschew group-hugs, trust-falls and the like. I believe that Trust must be the default condition, and that everyone should be made aware of that from day-one. I’d much rather risk having my trust betrayed than force those around me to earn it.
I know this flies in the face of the so-called ‘conventional wisdom’, but the psychological power of this notion is not to be underestimated. It works. And remember the equation that underlies Jack Welch’s famous ‘Truth and Transparency’ dictum:
Truth + Transparency = Trust.
One last thing about trust—like communication, it’s either a two-way street, or it’s a dead-end. It’s that simple.
As for recruiting, we think much more attention to the front-end of the process is generally required. It’s imperative that we embrace only those who can ultimately adopt our purpose, goals, and values as their own. This no doubt makes the selection process more time-consuming and expensive, but the time and cost pales in comparison to that of a mistake. We promote an ‘Enlist, Empower, Energize’ model, giving equal weight to each of the ‘E’s. If we do it well, we can expect a much higher rate of Engagement—the ultimate ‘E’.
As a general rule, we see the ‘annual performance review’ as an antiquated device that has outlived its utility as a meaningful performance management tool. Performance management should be a regular and frequent part of our daily interaction with those we lead. I also personally advocate a monthly one-on-one offsite lunch with each of those I work with as an opportunity to discuss each other’s performance, reinforce our Purpose, Values and current Mission, talk about tactical adjustments, revise expectations or goals, catch up on personal stuff, etc. We need to know each other.
Dr Jones: What data do you use to ensure you are leading effectively?
Miller: Well, there’s always the ‘bottom-line’, but that seems like looking in the rearview mirror rather than through the windshield—more roadmap than compass, if you’ll forgive the multiple metaphors. Improving performance is, of course, the objective, but if you take proper care of the culture, the data pretty clearly indicates the numbers will move in the right direction. The conventional wisdom may say that’s a bit of an over-simplification, but I say, ‘try it—you’ll like it’.
There is clear value to be found in the occasional survey. We like a slightly modified version of Gallup’s Q-12, which produces a sort of Likert-scale scorecard, and there’s a useful culture assessment instrument that’s an adjunct to something called the Competing Values Framework that provides an objective graphic depiction of an organization’s current culture. This tool can also be used to map the desired culture, and it essentially consists of only 6 questions. User-friendliness and focused brevity are virtues.
More generally, though, I have found that just showing-up with eyes, ears, and mind wide open is the best way to get a feel for how things are going, and where the soft spots might be. I don’t know if the Japanese-style Gemba Walk is still a thing, but I do know that if you want to know how to dig a better ditch, you need to talk to a ditch-digger.
Dr Jones: What are some of the biggest mistakes today’s leaders are making? And how would you go about fixing it?
Miller: I think far more leaders need to recognize and accept the fact that responsibility for culture and engagement falls squarely in their laps. Poor workforce engagement is a reflection of poor culture. Poor culture is a function of lousy leadership. It’s that simple. MIT Professor Emeritus Edgar Schein, perhaps the world’s leading contemporary culture guru of the last half-century, has written:
“The only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture”
Dr Schein also warns us that culture is the ‘most difficult organizational attribute to change’. Let’s face it, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it—and they decidedly are not. In the Katzenbach survey I mentioned earlier, over half the respondents said they either ‘had other priorities’, or ‘tried to change their culture but didn’t succeed’.
We’ve all heard the statement famously attributed to Peter Drucker:
‘Culture eats Strategy for breakfast’.
That quote about sums it up for me. But failure is a certainty absent a degree of organizational will—from the top—sufficient to enable genuine and enduring commitment to an immersive process requiring honest introspection and consistent effort; a process guaranteed to be at once discomforting, arduous and perpetual.
And ultimately, rewarding on many levels.
Dr Jones: What do you see as the 2 or 3 opportunities for leaders over the next several years?
Miller: My response to the preceding question applies here, as well. I believe positive culture change is the most impactful opportunity we can imagine—the one that opens wide the door to all other opportunities, and thus singularly deserving of the highest priority.
Dr Jones Do you have any final words of wisdom for Everyday Leaders?
Miller: Yes, I do:
Never presume to traffic in wisdom.
