To Change the Culture, Change the Performance.
There are a lot of business books out there today that will tell you that in order to change your performance, you need to change your culture. Randy Pennington – the author of Results Rule – tells us that we’ve got that ass-backwards. What we REALLY need to do, he says, is to change the performance in order to change the culture. I don’t know about you, but whenever I’m exposed to an idea that challenges what I believe to be true, I get excited. This is one of those times. Although you’ll have heard most of these principles before (candour, being the best, accountability), what you probably haven’t heard before is HOW to make those principles come to life. For instance, in order to create a culture where candour is the norm, you need to have a group of people that feel comfortable around each other. That’s not advice you are going to get at an MBA program, but could quite possibly be the difference between success and failure to you. If that sounds intriguing, watch the preview summary, and then join me below as we put these principles into action.
What I learned from Seth Godin
I once had a conversation with Seth Godin where I asked him my “million dollar question”: why does the world need your book? His answer was brilliant. He said: “the world doesn’t need more books, the world needs more conversations”. And while I agree with him wholeheartedly, I’ve come to believe that we need even more than that – the world needs more action. So yes, let’s read some books together. Let’s have conversations about these books. But most importantly, let’s put those ideas into action. Together, let’s take one action this week that will move us one step closer to realizing our dreams and to do the things we know we are capable of. These books and principles, if nothing else, will be the kick in the ass we need to get it done. If you’ll join me, I’d love to hear from you in the comments. Let me know what your goals and dreams are, and which action you’ll take with me to make them a reality.
Action for Monday – tell yourself the truth and value candor – your success depends on it.
Truth and candor is hard. If you are anything like me, you’ll be able to say how important this is to your business and relationships, but when it comes time to actually open your mouth and have the truth come out, nothing happens. I’ve found that the closer I am with somebody, the easier it is to be open and honest with them. Which leads me to the conclusion that if you want the truth to be spoken at your workplace, get to know them first. When I first read “First, Break All The Rules” by Marcus Buckingham, there was a finding that I thought was a bunch of crap, and it said that one of the determinants of a successful workplace is if people said they had a best friend at work. (Here’s the full 12 questions from an article in Fast Company if you are interested). Now that finding makes complete sense to me. If you are friends with a person, you are more likely to have a frank and honest discussion with them, which over time eventually leads to more teamwork and performance. Awesome.
Action Challenge #1: Find one person at work this week who you aren’t great friends with (yet). Ask them to go grab a coffee and get to know them a bit better.
Action for Tuesday – pursue the best over the easiest.
Pursuing the best over the easiest is, well, very easy to say. Tough to do. Everybody from Jim Collins to Jack Welch have been yelling this one from the rooftops for years now. Intuitively I’ve always “got” this. I’ve spent many an hour thinking about what our company’s “hedgehog concept” is. However, for the longest time, I would only think about how that related to the products and/or services we would be providing. What I forgot to think about was how our company could be the best in the marketplace. There’s an enormous difference between having the best product in the world and being the best company. What Randy opened my eyes to (thank you Randy!) was that there’s an entire list of things that you need to be brave enough to commit to being the best in. There’s resource allocation, operational goal setting, information systems, support processes, and the list goes on and on.
Action Challenge #2: Pick a part of your organization (or life) aside from your product/service and make the commitment this week to pursue the best in it. Take one action this week to set the wheels in motion.
Action for Wednesday – leverage the power of partnership.
This one is by far my favourite from the book, because it highlights the true power of creating relationships. According to numerous studies, roughly 70% of the people who do business with you AND 75% of the people who work for you are looking for new partners. In other words, for 3 out of every 4 people you come into contact with, you aren’t doing a good enough job of building a partnership. Here’s the solution that Randy give us:
1. Make the conscious decision to see more in others than they see in themselves.
2. Communicate that to them.
3. Nurture it until it becomes a self-sustaining reality.
For me, this is a revelation. I’ve heard the principle before, but for some reason this time it really hit home. I can see so many places in my life where I’m not doing this. I also know that when somebody sees something in me that’s bigger than I see for myself, it stays with me forever and that I’ll move heaven and earth to stay connected with those people. This is a principle that I can see being applicable in every area of my life, and I hope you see that for yourself as well. If you take this action challenge on, I’d really love to hear from you.
Action Challenge #3: Find one person this week and find some potential in them that they don’t see for themselves. Let them know how incredible you think they are.
Action for Thursday – make the main thing the main thing.
Once again, here’s a principle that you’ve probably heard of before. In fact, there’s an entire book on this principle by Stephen Covey called First Things First. But in this case, Randy gets down into the details and asks us to start keeping score. According to Randy, we should be keeping score of whatever we think is important to our business. Putting rigour and metrics around what’s important to us is the only way we’ll keep focussed on getting the results we want to get. I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience, but I usually only like looking at the score when the game is going well. If the score is 10-0 for the other team, or I’m behind on my quota, all of a sudden there’s a whole raft of things that I’d rather pay attention to. The insight for me in this is that we need to make it compelling to look at the score at ANY time. So, the discussions around the scoreboard you’ll create need to be empowering, and action oriented. Are you behind? Ok. Now what are you going to do about it? What’s the next step? These are not hypothetical questions, by the way 
Action Challenge #4: Create one new measurement around something that’s critical to your success, but that you aren’t measuring today.
Action for Friday – learn, grow and improve every day.
Just by the fact that you are reading this right now means you’ve probably already got this one covered. So here’s a little bit of motivation to keep you moving in the right direction. Jay Leno, even though his latest antics haven’t really endeared many people to him, is the hardest working man in show business. For years, even though he had the top-rated late night show on television and made about 150 personal appearances every year, he would practice new material at the Hermosa Beach Comedy and Magic Club. Here’s what he had to say:
“This sounds silly, but my attitude is, sooner or later, the other guy is going to have to eat, drink, go to the bathroom, get laid, or take a vacation, and that’s when I catch him”.
Action Challenge #5: sometime this week, when you’d otherwise be doing something like watching TV or reading a trashy magazine, steal two of those minutes and take an action to move one of your goals forward.
Have an amazing week, and please let me know how your week goes in the comments below.
