Culture: Why Most Companies Will Never Achieve Greatness

Excerpt from my forthcoming book, "Your Attitude Sucks - Fixing What's Wrong With Corporate America."

For most organizations, there has never been a more challenging year than this one. Literally, the bottom fell out of the market. But here's the interesting note: many have managed to figure out that it wasn't the recession that knocked their business down, it was the THREAT of the recession, the let's-wait-and-see attitude until this whole thing shakes out. Businesses weren't hurting as much as they were cautious. So they pulled in spending until the worst was over.

But I began to ask myself, "why wouldn't any smart, forward-thinking company not provide some sort of training to their people in down times? Surely this would be the time to do it." (That question led me to a very honest answer).

I spent the summer, writing, thinking, working, studying, tearing down what I know, building up ideas, researching, focusing and honing in on what corporate North America was doing. I came to a few honest conclusions about the corporate world and as a result, came up with a presentation (which turned into a full-day of sessions) called the 7 Attitudes to Greatness.

It has never been more clear about what needs to change in corporate North America: Attitude and the resulting corporate culture.

The culture of any workplace is simply the collective result of the attitudes in the building. Culture is the collective RESULT of every workplace policy, initiative, direction, vision, response and recruitment of talent. In other words, your culture is a direct reflection of your attitude in the workplace. Culture is the RESULT of the corporate attitude. Simply put, if the vast majority of people at your workplace think it's a lousy place to work, then yours will be a lousy company to do business with. Apathy and mediocrity will run rampant and morale will hover near rock bottom.

Change the individual attitudes and you change the culture. Culture and Attitude are the key drivers behind any organization's results in sales, marketing, customer service, management, leadership, change management, innovation, health and safety, communication, motivation, performance, work-life balance, recruitment and retention, problem-solving, productivity, stress, teamwork and most of all, financial performance. Everything is driven by attitude and culture.

Here is one of the most amazing statistics I've ever found that really illustrates how important attitude and culture are on financial results: Organizations with strong attitudes financially outperform their competitors by four times. That means organizations who have a confident attitude combined with a sense of service will make four times as much money as companies who are mediocre.

But many organizations apparently don't want to make four times as much money. Some companies are completely satisfied to remain mediocre or they would be choosing to improve their culture, attitude and performance and make four times as much money. They apparently could care less. As long as the doors stay open, that seems to be good enough. As long as everyone has a job, good enough. As long as the company doesn't go belly-up, good enough. Meanwhile, on the other side of the board, incredibly few organizations openly choose greatness. 

If you recall, earlier, I mentioned that companies holding the line on spending led me to a very honest answer. Here was that answer: the vast majority or organizations are simply mediocre - one mediocre organization checks to see what the other mediocre organizations are doing and does that. One follows the other, right or wrong. They have mediocre service, they hire mediocre people, expect mediocre results and equip their people to do a mediocre job. They are satisfied with sitting in the middle of the pack, attracting middle of the pack kind of people and getting middle of the pack ideas at their meetings.

Most organizations, it turns out, are afraid to be great. They are afraid of leading the pack for fear that they become a target for other organizations to challenge. They don't like the spotlight and avoid it. They've seen what hackers try to do to Microsoft and don't wish to be the same sort of target. Media scrutiny is intense on the big players - think of Wal-Mart and the media glare of their association with third-world garment manufacturers. So they are satisfied with sitting near the top-of-mediocre pack as long as no one takes a shot at them.

Being great comes with a price. People will attack those who are great. Why? It is so much easier to try to tear down something great than it is to rise to greatness yourself. When lazy and mediocre people tear people and organizations of greatness down, it makes them feel as though they magically elevate themselves.

When organizational leadership lacks confidence, that lack of confidence permeates throughout the entire organization. They hide behind ridiculous automated phone trees when you try to reach them. They use their voice mail to screen their calls because what they are doing seems more important than what any customer may want. They take days to respond to email inquiries. Ask them something out of the ordinary and they have to check with a manager. Ask to speak to a manager and the only one just left for lunch. These organizations have mostly become faceless, nameless places who employ faceless and nameless employees whose collective apathy for their work oozes through their pores.

In spite of the fact that 51% of customers choose a business based on Attitude issues (friendly staff, exchange and return policies, approachability, helpfulness and after-sale service), these same organizations won't equip their people with personality tools to be in that 51 %. Instead, they focus their efforts on arming their people with product knowledge training - useful but not if there aren't any customers. And even though they have been product trained, ask a question about the product and if you are not met with a blank stare, you get a big sigh as though you are being a huge bother to them. They are dripping with an I-could-care-less-about-this-job attitude.

Yet management has the audacity to whine and complain that they can't find enough good people and the good ones they find they can't keep. They talk about Employee Engagement being their greatest challenge when, in fact, the easiest way to engage an employee is to make him or her believe that the work means something and that it's part of a mission for the greater good. Instead, they give lip-service to a mission of delivering exceptional service while making it difficult for the customer to be satisfied when there is a problem. By their actions, they actively choose mediocrity, train their employees in barely the basics of the job, rarely solicit ideas from their people and wonder why they have a hard time motivating their people.

They barely talk to their employees especially during this downturn. That leaves employees feeling tenuous about their job security and fearful about the future. They remove any training budget that could actually help their people (and consequently their customers) in a downturn which professes the loyalty of senior management: to saving money not investing in their people. No one achieves greatness by cutting and slashing budgets. When senior management holds onto their cash it demonstrates how much loyalty management has to their people. And once the economic situation recovers and the markets open up again, these same organizations will be surprised at how many of their people take a job somewhere else. The organization demonstrates no loyalty to their people and are surprised that their people hold no loyalty to their employers.

But management has become obsessed with leadership - that new trendy buzzword. In a vast sea of sickening mediocrity, organizations don't want to be seen as mere managers, that's so "last year." No, they want to be seen as dynamic leaders of great organizations. They see leadership as some sort of Utopia of power and influence to be achieved when, in fact, leadership is not an outward accomplishment. It is an inward attitude of how one chooses to live life. Leadership is a lifelong commitment to self-improvement. But people don't have patience. They want drive-through McLeadership and they want it now. In the same way they could get married while sitting in a car instead of having to endure all of that bother of standing up in a chapel, people don't want to do the work to be real leaders. They don't want to do the work they just want to have the title. They don't want to invest that much time. They see McLeadership as some sort of Viagra pill: just swallow and you're good to go. McLeadership (a.k.a. Leadership Lite) seems to be good enough.

In the same way that every schoolchild gets a "Participant" ribbon just for playing, McLeadership doctrine says that anyone can become a McLeader: intelligent or moronic, qualified or debutant, experienced or fresh out of university. In a desperate attempt to achieve McLeadership nirvana, people have become self-anointing. Never before has it been so easy to become a McLeader. Never before have access to McLeadership courses been so numerous not to mention that every third profile on LinkedIn touts McLeadership Expert credentials of which there is no real certification to become a Leadership expert.

Corporate managers are invited to walk away from their restricting straitjackets of old-style management and instead are lured into donning the fresh, white, apostolic, flowing robes of the new Church of McLeadership. It is the biggest corporate cash-cow to come along in years. Training companies have simply re-branded their management courses and jacked the prices for participants who now willingly pay thousands of dollars to be anointed "leader" over a weekend. And these McLeader courses can be taught by any bum off of the street. There are no qualifications necessary to teach McLeadership. There are no national or international standards for McLeadership courses to comply with. And with 350,000 different Leadership titles alone on Amazon, how many opinions are there on what leadership is? Who cares? People are buying right now.

"Sell. Sell. Sell. This won't last long," is the chant from the Church of McLeadership.

Organizations refuse to accept that leadership is not something you get in exchange for money and that a marginal manager on Monday will not become a leader of men and women by Friday. A manager who could barely find his ass with both hands on Monday will not be leading others to greatness by week's end.

Mediocrity is rampant. "Good enough" has become good enough. But there is good news: to be outstanding, all that is required is to be one step above mediocre. Anyone can win in that market. That should be encouraging news to any organization looking to be the best in their field.

But you have to want to be the best in your field in order to be one step better than mediocre. Sadly, most don't. And so they wallow in mediocrity just like everyone else. They accept mediocre performance from their people. They accept mediocre ideas. They accept mediocre management. They accept wallowing somewhere in the middle of the pack as okay. They train their people to be simply competent -- not outstanding -- just competent - and more often than not miss that mark too.

If your people are good but not great, if your management is good but not great, if your sales numbers are good but not great, if your attrition numbers are good but not great, if your safety numbers are good but not great, if your innovations are good but not great, if your service is good but not great, if your results are good but not great then you have a corporate culture of "good enough." Don't deny it. It's right there for everyone else to see. Your results prove it.

It's a sad case of mediocre people wanting to seem to be great without actually doing the work. And this, ultimately, is what is wrong with corporate North America: the delusion of mediocre organizations thinking themselves great without actually wanting to do the work, making the investment and earning it honestly. That delusion is an ATTITUDE. And that's what I want to change.

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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

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