Society is heading towards a more sustainable, tolerant, progressive future. There are sweeping social and environmental changes that have been taking place this last decade that is being forced upon us by governments and consumers alike. And now it is taking shape as a business led movement driven by socially and globally aware employees; savvy investors for the future and inspired leaders of today. Just recently it was officially described as one of those deep-seated societal trends that we only see come our way every fifty or so years by the global trend tracking organisation Trendwatching in their September article “Demanding Brands.” So what is a demanding brand?

According to Trendwatching ‘Demanding Brands’ are ‘switched-on brands that are embarking on a journey towards a more sustainable and socially-responsible future that will demand that consumers also contribute.’ Even though that may cause some pain or inconvenience in the short term for the consumers when they are asked to respond to a meaningful demand on their time, energy or wallet, ultimately they will come to have a deep respect for those brands that push them towards taking action that they know to be right, as a condition of doing business with those brands.

Here are the four major demands that Trendwatching feels are beginning to have traction more and more in the hearts and minds of socially responsible businesses and consumers alike:-

The Planet: Demand action that is good for the environment, now or in the long term. (Think ‘reduce, re-use, recycle’ as an initiative of most local and national governments being promoted widely, taught in our schools today, and now promoted by more and more environmentally-conscious companies.)

Society: Demand action that is good for other people, whether that be close friends and family, local communities, or the larger sphere of society inhabiting our whole world. (For example, ThankYou Water and Zambrero here in Australia)

Lifestyles: Create products or services that demand consumers live healthy or behave well. (For example WholeFoods Markets in North America)

Nonprofits: Make demands on behalf of an established nonprofit, and insist that customers do something to support them. (For instance, our own Australian major charitable organisations of many years standing like World Vision Australia, Red Cross and their ilk are now increasingly looking at ways to partner with large corporations in a joint approach to the hearts and minds of consumers.)

Of course, consumers will not take action of this kind unless the brands that ask it of them are totally sincere, fully committed and completely transparent in their own efforts to make the world a better place. Meaningful action means just that, and those brands which don’t follow that golden rule of social consciousness will be caught out and discarded by the tidal wave of new consumers coming on to the scene in very quick time. So media stunts, one-off programs of the month, and consumer response promotions linked to customer loyalty programs fall into the ‘you’re not really serious’ consumer basket, and will be vilified and ostracised accordingly.

Authentic and concerted action by socially conscious brands in partnership with their equally concerned consumers is a trend that is growing bigger and bigger every day.

This demand on the consumer is a two-way street, because consumers everywhere are increasingly demanding it of their favourite brands. If you have any doubt about that, just consider how the ‘fair trade’ movement is rapidly gaining influence in the world today and the impact it is having on the coffee and chocolate industries of the developed nations as well as the current media and consumer focus on the Bangladeshi fashion clothing sweatshops and the impact that news is having on the ethical sourcing of products by fashion brands here in Australia.

Here are a couple of comments that describe the effect of this trend quite succinctly from the consumer-driven perspective… “91% of global consumers believe that companies must go beyond the minimum standards required by law to operate responsibly,”   (Cone Communications/ Echo, May 2013)….

and…..  “87% of global consumers believe business should place at least equal emphasis on social interests as business interests, and ‘purpose’ has increased as a purchase trigger by 26% since 2008.”  (Global Consulting firm, Edelman, 2012).

There are some excellent examples of brands that are making demands of their consumers as partners in this push to make a difference to our planet and all the people that inhabit it, in the feature article from Trendwatching titled ‘Demanding Brands.’ I think you’ll enjoy the examples they share with their global readership. I particularly like the one about the Brazilian soccer club, Vitoria, that promoted its charitable blood donation campaign through the progressive changing of the colour of the hoops on its players’ uniform strips each game from white to red to match the amount of blood being donated by their huge fan base each week.

From 17th-21st February next year, we will be leading interested executives from socially aware companies on a journey of discovery through the corridors of some of Australia’s most forward thinking organisations working in this sphere of social responsibility in harmony with commercial success. I would love you to join us on this study tour with a difference.

For more information contact me at brian@precisionprofiling.com.au and I will rush the details to you.

Until then… Let’s seek to understand more and judge less. Have a great week – Brian

Precision Profiling – What Makes You Tick? Through ‘Motivational Fingerprinting’ we uncover what you do, how you do it and why you do it, and most importantly, the hidden patterns that lead to your success, and that of your team.

While creating happy customers is one aspect of Naomi Simson’s business (and an important one), creating happy staff and stakeholders are equally critical components.

RedBalloon’s founder, Simson draws heavily on her experience as a senior marketer, having worked her way up over a 15-year period from marketing officer to product manager, marketing manager and director with well-known companies such as Ansett, IBM, KPMG and Apple. After leaving corporate life to become a mother, other priorities took hold and she decided to build her own workplace that people genuinely looked forward to attending every day.  Simson believes this is vital for long-term success and it’s something she is well versed in.  RedBalloon has secured a place in the list of Australia’s Best Places to Work produced by BRW four years in a row now.

RedBalloon are considered the pioneers of experiential gifting in Australia and New Zealand.

Although a recent arrival on the scene, here are some of the awards that they have won over the past few years:-

2013 –     #8 in the Top 50 BRW Best Places to Work in Australia (an award they are well and truly used to receiving) and one of only 9 companies to make this award 5 years in a row

2012 –     Secured a place in BRW Top 50 Best Places to Work in Australia.
BRW Fast 100 list from 2004 to 2009.  Red Balloon have also been a regular on the Deloitte Fast 50 for Australia, beginning in 2006.

2011 –     Australian Human Resources Institute HR Practitioner Of The Year – Awarded to RedBalloon Employee Experience Manager Megan Bromley.
-    Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Award – Awarded to company founder Naomi Simson (2011 Eastern Region winner for the Industry category).

2010 –    Hewitt Best Employers – One of only six companies to receive recognition.

2008 –    Nokia Business Award for Innovation – Presented to Naomi Simson at the Telstra Business Women’s Awards.

There are numerous other awards too many to mention here, and they are all centred around training, culture, team building and innovation.

In her book ‘Five Thanks a Day,’ Naomi Simson has compiled a collection of stories on the ‘how-to’ and science of saying thank you, the concept of which she also attributes as part of her success.

The name behind Simson’s endeavour was inspired by the 1956 Oscar-winning French short film Le Ballon Rouge (“The Red Balloon”), which takes viewers on a series of journeys with a young boy named Pascal and a whimsical red balloon that begins to follow him through Paris. That red balloon, a vibrant symbol of fun and happiness throughout the film, laid the foundation for Simson’s dream venture.

“I wanted to test if a business could be successful by simply listening to its people and its customers, and focusing on what would get people talking: the giving and receiving of experiential gifts that create memories,” Simson says.

Now, twelve years later, the company Simson founded in her family home has flourished into a six-time BRW Fast Company that has garnered many more accolades for its work environment, gift offerings, and employee engagement.

In an effort to bring RedBalloon into the business sphere, a corporate incentive service was created that offers employees reward points that may be redeemed for cash credit on the RedBalloon website. There are approximately 3,000 clients involved in this innovative program including such corporate heavy hitters as Qantas, Virgin Mobile, ANZ, Commonwealth Bank, Telstra and Origin Energy.

The work in this sector is not only rewarding for participating companies, but also for the RedBalloon employees coordinating the programs. “I have found my home in a business where they practice what they preach and ‘mix business with pleasure’,” says Matt Geraghty, General Manager of Corporate.

People Management

The work atmosphere at RedBalloon is just as upbeat and invigorating as the experiences they offer, and this is largely due to the high spirits of the employees.

“We believe that our people are our biggest competitive strength and, as a result, have shaped an award winning culture of fun, appreciation and recognition designed to attract and retain top talent,” says RedBalloon’s current CEO Kristie Buchanan.

A great deal of emphasis is placed on structuring the employees’ daily experiences to ensure that every work day is engaging and fulfilling.

“The framework – ‘Welcome. Tools. Grow. Flow. Appreciate’ – covers our approach to recruitment and on-boarding; what productivity tools we provide; how employees are kept connected to the flow of information; and finally, how they are recognised and challenged,” says Buchanan. “Our growth plans involve continuing to find more innovative ways to deliver meaningful experiences to our customers, our corporate clients and our employees. This could be in the form of products, in service delivery, in our marketing or technology.”

Check out for yourself why RedBalloon is one of Australia’s most sought after companies to work for and why it is also one of the fastest growing start-up brands in business today. I am sure it will give you food for thought. RedBalloon is another of the amazing companies we will be showcasing on our week long study tour in February of organisations that are changing the shape of the way we do business.

Drop me an email to brian@precisionprofiling.com.au if you would like to discuss further how to join our February study tour and create the environment that attracts and retains the young leaders of the future for your organisation.

Until then… Let’s seek to understand more and judge less. Have a great week – Brian

I must admit I got caught out recently when I thought I was doing the right thing by this young tradesman. I needed some landscaping to be completed at the front of my property and it just so happened that at the same time I was considering my options, a young man (around 25 years) happened to drop by with a business card offering to quote me on the job. He had been doing some work in the area and noticed that I had been preparing my front yard for a major facelift. He seemed knowledgeable about his craft (landscaping and concreting) and was personable enough in a rough ‘tradie’ kind of way. Once I had seen his handiwork on some previous jobs, I felt comfortable he could complete the work to an acceptable level, so I decided to give him the opportunity. So far so good…

Given I did not know him personally, I wanted to make sure that I would receive fair value for money so we came to an arrangement that I would pay directly for any of the material needed (machinery hire; sand and soil supply; concrete delivery etc.), and he would charge me at a daily ‘labour-only’ rate for him and his mate which would allow me to keep within the budget I had set aside for the project. He told me in advance what the daily rate for the two of them would be and it seemed reasonable enough so the project commenced with me confident that I had covered all the bases and that we were both on the same page with our mutual expectations.

The first couple of days I needed to be off site in meetings so I didn’t get much opportunity to observe what my contractor and his mate were doing. Each day there was evidence of progress in the right direction albeit slower than I expected, so I assumed that things were on track and I paid him as I had agreed to do at the end of the first two days of work. By day four I was beginning to get concerned that the project did not seem to be progressing as fast as I had hoped but I put that concern down to me not being knowledgeable in the ways of landscaping. Whenever I raised my concerns with my young friend, he assured me that things were progressing well and his super confidence seemed to allay my fears enough for me to question myself and my expectations rather than him and his abilities. By now I felt we were two days behind where we needed to be if I was to keep within my budget, so I decided to remain around for the next day to observe first-hand the work that was being done for me by our landscaper and his helper.

At the end of day five, the penny had dropped for me.

Here’s what I witnessed. The general theme of ‘a days work’ by my young landscaper….

Arrive around 8.30-8.45 am. Take the next half hour preparing site works (i.e. unpack the ‘ute’ while chatting about the night before with his mate). Set tasks for the mate to complete while answering mobile phone calls for another half an hour. Do some work for about an hour before taking a break. Complete the morning break and work for another hour before leaving the site together at around 11.30 am to have lunch. Come back an hour later, and work until around 2.30 pm when it was time to clean up. Leave at around 3.00 pm (sometimes earlier I later discovered) to go and quote on other jobs.

As you (and I) will discover from this scenario, a day of work for two tradesmen consisted of probably only five to five and a half hours of actual work. The rest was made up of late arrival, long meal breaks and early finishes interrupted constantly by mobile phone calls and a lot of watching by the tradie’s mate while the tradie did the skilled work.

That evening I quizzed my young contractor what a ‘fair days work for a fair days pay’ meant to him, and much to my surprise he answered that if he is on site for four hours or less it is charged out at a half day rate, but anything over four hours was a full day regardless of how much time was spent on site working. When I mentioned that it seemed like I was actually paying for a full day for two of them for only 1.5 hours more that his half day rate he shrugged his shoulders and said ‘this was what we agreed on.’

And he was right!

In my eagerness to engage him and cover what I assumed was all the bases, I left out one very important aspect of our communication. At a daily ‘labour-only’ rate – what constituted a days work? I wonder if you have you ever been caught out like this as I was.

And here is the valuable lesson I learned from this recent episode. When giving freedom to people without framework built around that freedom, what you are actually doing is giving them licence not freedom. This is because freedom and autonomy without proper framework takes away accountability, and without accountability freedom for the individual is a fairly hollow experience for all concerned.

This recent experience of mine translates directly across to the workplace, especially with our fast changing workforce where we are attempting to create cultures filled with the young Gen Y whizz-kids of the future whom we want to attract and retain. In our rush to engage with them and their self belief that anything is possible for them (instilled into them via parents; schools and the media), we need to be very careful that we do not give them licence without framework in the name of self determination and autonomy. It is a fine line between the two but it can be a slippery slope if we are not more careful as their employers.

I guess you may be wondering what was the final outcome for my landscaping project? Instead of it being an enjoyable win-win experience for both of us, once my trust had been broken I believe it developed into a lose-lose experience instead. My project took double the expected amount of time to be completed and henceforth my budget blew out significantly, and the extra work that I had agreed my eager landscaper could do once the main project was completed was given to someone else to complete under tighter and more specific guidelines as a result. So my young landscaping friend got less work in the end and I paid more than expected.

Here is an excellent link to a blog written by a young and eager Gen Y achiever Kejia Zhu, an employee of Facebook. He’s a 29 year old guy who was born in China, grew up in the UK and now lives in America. Kejia wrote a blog this week which received a lot of attention worldwide because it speaks to the heart of the overblown expectations of the Gen Y generation and their search for instant success before they reach thirty. In his blog Kejia talks with a fair degree of insight about the value of patience and the wisdom that comes with age and years of experience in a world bludgeoned by stories of overnight fame and success.

When I read what Keija says about his 92 yo grandfather’s achievements and his own new-found insight into the meaning of success, it gives me heart that there is a place in this world for every generation if we are prepared to step back and honour the unique perspective that people of each each decade of learning and discovery brings to the table.

http://kzhu.net/does-life-end-at-35.html

Drop me an email to brian@precisionprofiling.com.au if you would like to discuss further how to create the environment that attracts and retains the young leaders of the future for your organisation.

Until then… Let’s seek to understand more and judge less. Have a great week – Brian

Precision Profiling – What Makes You Tick? Through ‘Motivational Fingerprinting’ we uncover what you do, how you do it and why you do it, and most importantly, the hidden patterns that lead to your success, and that of your team.

Photo Credit – ‘Grandpa stealing wifi for his beloved iPad’  – Keija (@Kzhu)

Dr Sam Prince is a Scottish born, Australian medical Doctor with Sri Lankan heritage running a chain of Mexican restaurants. He’s an aid worker and founder of ‘One Disease at a Time’ which is currently on a mission to eradicate scabies from our indigenous communities. 

This incredible man started working in a Mexican restaurant while studying at medical school. He saw a gap in the market and started his own Mexican restaurant at the age of 21 whilst studying fulltime. He graduated medical school from Monash University and built up a chain of 17 restaurants, 170 staff and a turnover of $13.7m in between working full time as a doctor.  He is so passionate about helping others less fortunate than himself that he set up a program to help end hunger called ‘Plate 4 Plate’ where he partnered with a company called ‘Stop Hunger Now’ to make sure the money went to the right places.  Every burrito or salad purchased at Zambrero’s buys a meal for someone in a developing country.

This is what Dr Prince has to say about his philosophy:-

“We are not greedy and when you eat with us, neither are you. Every burrito or bowl you purchase, we pay it forward by helping provide a plate of food to someone less fortunate.  How?

Zambrero has been working with ‘Stop Hunger Now’ to help provide high protein, high vitamin meals that help strengthen people suffering malnutrition.

Every month, we add up all the burritos and bowls we have served at Zambrero and deliver the resources to provide meals to our distribution partner, ‘Stop Hunger Now,’ who provides the logistics to distribute the food relief to the areas most in need.

‘Plate 4 Plate’ is funded through the profits of Zambrero, which means we’re never going to ask you for money. All you have to do is enjoy any delicious meal from our fresh, healthy menu and we’ll donate a meal in return—a definite win-win!’

The program aims to feed ten million people each year.

Clearly, just feeding the world is not enough for Sam Prince. Off the back of the success of his rapidly-expanding group, Sam has also created the Emagine Foundation in 2007. They have built and equipped fifteen IT learning centres in rural Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Far North Queensland to date, ensuring that children in these areas are not prevented from accessing the education required to better their lives simply by virtue of their geographical location and socioeconomic circumstances. There are plans for one hundred centres across Asia Pacific by the end of 2014.

In 2009 Prince appointed his first CEO, Stuart Cook, to run the Mexican food chain. He’d met the then 23-year-old Cook on a bus on the way to the Taj Mahal. Prince was in India to pick up an award from the Junior Chamber International as one of the ten ‘Outstanding Young People of the World in 2008,’ in recognition of the aid work he’d done in South-East Asia and the public education campaigns he’d run in Sri Lanka to reduce the number of deaths from snake bites and dengue fever.

The Zambrero chain now has more than thirty restaurants and there are plans to build it globally to over one hundred restaurants in the next two years. Stuart has continued the great work started by Sam. In 2010 funding from Zambrero has allowed Sam to launch a multi-million dollar project, his not-for-profit organisation ‘One Disease at a Time,’ where he is also tackling a health issue closer to home:- the eradication of scabies, a disease prevalent in indigenous communities, where our indigenous children suffer from this disease at epidemic proportions.

Sam Prince intends to advance education and eradicate disease through ‘One Disease at a Time’ across the globe, starting with a three year ‘Healthy Skin Program’ in East Arnhem Land, and to demonstrate a best-practice model of partnering with (not working on) indigenous communities to create sustainable change.

“Sam Prince does the work of one hundred men, improving the lives of thousands through his innovative medical, business and aid projects,” stated GQ in naming him the 2011 Man of Chivalry in its annual Men of the Year list.

From the wise old age of 28, Prince admits to being fairly naïve when he first headed to Asia as a 21-year-old. He’d made a bit of money in business and wanted to give something back. He chose South-East Asia as the initial focus of his aid work because he’d seen the value that a free education had given his own parents who came from humble beginnings in Sri Lanka.

He learnt three significant lessons.

Lesson Number One:  Before you do any kind of aid work be sure that you have a clear understanding of what you believe is a basic human right vs what you believe is a basic human responsibility. There’s a clear line between the two, he says.  “As doctors we take the Hippocratic Oath of ‘First do no Harm’. If you actually don’t understand where that line is you can end up harming people by taking power away from them when you start doing things that you think are basic human responsibilities,” says Prince.

Lesson Number Two: When he thinks back to working in emergency departments in hospitals, Sam recalls the look of sheer desperation in the eyes of people wheeled into the emergency departments after suffering a medical emergency, such as a heart attack. He saw the same look in the eyes of the people he was helping. “It’s the eyes of people who are truly desperate for your help, money, time, effort, education or healthcare,” says Prince. “For me to sleep at night and to be able to look into the mirror and know that I’ve done things ethically every step of the way, I knew I could have no agenda. No political or financial or religious agenda. It is a value that we don’t ever cross.”

Lesson Number Three: You have to run an aid organisation with the same rigour as you would a business. “I thought that just because people were in need and needed a hand up that they were all good people,” he says. “The reality is that’s not the truth. People are good and bad, just like there are good and bad people in every other demographic.”

The idea behind ‘One Disease at a Time’ was sparked by a conversation with one of his mentors, Frank Bowden. The professor of medicine at the Australian National University Medical School had eradicated the sexually transmitted disease Donovanosis out of Australia permanently in four years at a cost of $4 million and ten staff. “That’s not a lot of money, time or resources and I thought ‘wow, that’s something I can do as a doctor, aid worker and entrepreneur’,” says Prince.  Professor Bowden now sits on the board of ‘One Disease at a Time.’

Professor Bowden says, “I am constitutionally suspicious of medical entrepreneurs who, in my experience, can put the pursuit of financial gain before the desire to care for their patients. The exact opposite applies to Sam. The son of one of my friends had been looked after by Sam in our emergency department one Saturday afternoon. My friend described the appearance of Sam amid the controlled chaos of the hospital as something like a magician waving his wand to create a bubble of peace and calm around his son. This is a special and rare talent.”

Through his work supported by funding from Zambrero, Sam intends to achieve his dream of providing the infrastructure and opportunity for disadvantaged young people across the globe to empower themselves through good health and a quality education. Sam’s success in business derives from an unusual ability to visualise practical solutions to seemingly vast problems, and to drive these through implementation through a calculated approach and by force of willpower and inspiring others to believe in his vision.

Samantha Cran, Chief Executive Officer of ‘One Disease at a Time,’ first met Prince at a business/networking event. She recalls being taken aback by his ability to translate his core values into actions and felt she had to be part of the movement. She started as a volunteer before becoming the CEO.

“Sam is the ultimate definition of an entrepreneur,” says Cran. “Whether it’s in business or healthcare, for each industry he is the visionary who can see a gap in the market before others do and then diligently backs himself in to fill it. He also has the tenacity to push through any barriers – it is this ‘will’ that people recognise early and are truly inspired by it.”

Prince puts the willingness of others to get involved down to him wearing his dreams on his sleeves.

“By virtue of claiming it and saying, ‘I want to do this’, and being open about it, this activates the people around you,” says Prince.

Dr Prince is also a sought-after speaker on both a local and international stage. His achievements have been recognised through a number of awards including the 2012 ACT Young Australian of the Year; the Junior Chambers International ‘Outstanding Young Person of the World;’ the 2008 National My Business Awards ‘Best Young Gun in Business;’ and the 2008 Canberra Business Council Excellence Award. In 2011 he received the Weary Dunlop Fellowship.

It seems that Dr Sam Prince is taking the Hippocratic oath of ‘First do no Harm’ to a whole new level of thinking…. meaning ‘First do no Harm and then do Massive Good.’

You can also read more about what Sam Prince and other business entrepreneurs like him are doing with regard to making money and making a difference on the website of Leaders of Distinction which along with Precision Profiling is showcasing the new breed of entrepreneurs arriving on the scene today.

What are your thoughts on the work and success of Dr Sam Prince? I’d love to hear them.

Drop me an email to brian@precisionprofiling.com.au if you would like to discuss further how to create the environment that attracts and retains the young leaders of the future for your organisation.

Until then… Let’s seek to understand more and judge less. Have a great week – Brian

Precision Profiling – What Makes You Tick? Through ‘Motivational Fingerprinting’ we uncover what you do, how you do it and why you do it, and most importantly, the hidden patterns that lead to your success, and that of your team.

When you think of some of the world’s most admired brands, there have been precious few who have lasted the distance remaining consistently near the top of all the “best” lists for the whole of their corporate life since inception. We have witnessed many burst on to the scene from nowhere only to disappear from view within a decade or so. And quite a few have remained in the public eye as product/service innovators one year; top financial performers another; employers of choice at other times; and maybe even good corporate citizens on other occasions.

But to be recognised as consistently high achievers in the triple bottom line of Financial, Social and Environmental performance takes a special kind of company with a special kind of culture and ‘servant leadership’ who understand the true meaning of ‘stewardship’ and all that it represents. In my opinion there is one company in the USA that has remained the stand-out performer for almost all of its 42 years in an industry littered with failures, and it continues to outperform on its “R.O. Double I” to this day. And no, it is neither a hi-tech nor an IT based company. It plies its trade in a brown fields industry that has been around for decades.

If I told you that this company has managed to maintain a special place in the heart of its millions of customers and the community at large every year with a workforce that numbers over 40,000 then its achievements become even more amazing given that this gives it 40,000 opportunities every hour of every day to ‘get things wrong.’ Invariably it gets it right 99% of the time.

This company continues to gather awards and accolades in all of the triple bottom line measurements that matter most year-in, year-out with a consistency of performance that is unsurpassed. I am talking about one of the World’s Most Admired Companies according to Fortune Magazine’s annual survey of corporate reputations (on the ‘Most Admired’ list every year since 1994 and all but twice in the ‘Most Admired’ Top 10); which is consistently awarded as ‘One of the Best Places to Work;’ ‘One of the Most Respected Corporations in the Community;’ a consistent ‘Green Leader’ on sustainability measures; a Positively Outrageous Service provider (that title is a clue); and a record holder for the longest running profitability streak in its industry with an unprecedented 40 consecutive years of profits and sustained operational excellence. It therefore comes as no surprise to learn that when Forbes completed its exhaustive market research in 2012 of the USA’s most desired brand, according to both men and women, this brand won the coveted #1 position.

The amazing brand that I speak of is none other than SWA – Southwest Airlines.

The low-cost (not ‘cheap and nasty’) airline universally recognised and feted for a plethora of “bests” across the whole gamut of Key Performance Indicators:–

• Best on-time performance
• Best baggage handling
• Fewest flight cancellations
• Fastest gate turn-around
• Lowest employee turnover rates in its industry
• Fewest industry customer complaints/highest ratings
• Over 60% market dominance in every city-city route it enters
• One of USA’s safest airlines and newest fleets
• Stock value consistently rising decade after decade
• Most worker/shareholder millionaires
• Growth of 20-30% pa in an airline industry littered with failures
• Standard and Poors rating that is one of the best in its industry
• Innovations in operational procedures, initial web design and on-line ticketing that turned the industry on its head.

And over those forty years of unabated profits it has all been achieved without the need to resort to lay-offs or pay cuts. That is a remarkable feat unmatched in US aviation history.

So how does Southwest Airlines do it? What makes its business model and its brand recognition and reverence so successful one might ask?

The most obvious answer is often found with the spiritual head of an organisation – the CEO. And Southwest Airlines had both a CEO and a 2-ic who almost reached mythical status during their time at the top over 35 of those 42 years. The co-founder, one time lawyer Herb Kelleher (President) and his 2-ic, one time legal secretary Colleen Barrett (Director of Culture) have created a culture built around fun and love (NYSE moniker – LUV) by never taking themselves seriously, hiring people with a sense of humour, and espousing a theory of delivering Positively Outrageous Service whilst achieving it all at the lowest possible operating costs, in the fledgling years out of necessity and ultimately as an industry game-changer. You can’t do that unless you engage your people and all of their diversity at a level of productivity and service where they are the difference that makes the difference in a ‘no- frills, low-fare, high-frequency’ airline with their good-natured attitude and ‘can do’ work ethic. To top it off, Southwest Airlines has always been a fully unionised workforce, so there are no corners cut through contracted or underpaid labour. I had the undoubted pleasure of witnessing this culture first hand over a period of seven years in the mid 90s when I led my world best practice study tours to the USA and Europe.

The Southwest operation and its head office at Love Field in Dallas, Texas, was always a favourite destination of mine because walking into their head office and touring their group departments for the day was like walking into a combination of an evangelical revival meeting and a Disney theme park all rolled into one, especially if one visited during Halloween.

The joy, the fun and the sense of camaraderie was palpable every single time. It literally jumped out at you off the walls of the place and was replicated in every personal story, every piece of written material, and every wall covered in photos and plaques and newspaper clippings and wacky stories everywhere you looked. This was not a contrived scene, it was organic. I know because I and my tour guests experienced it consistently year after year and I still have the photos and videos to prove it. What’s more, we never witnessed anything quite like it in any other best practice company elsewhere in the world in all of the fifteen tours I led over that seven year period, and certainly not in a ‘corporate’ environment with over 30,000 staff at that time. And remember – it was consistently profitable and consistently outperforming its competition in all of the industry benchmarks that mattered.

I once mused on one of my many visits back then whether this amazing environment would remain so special once its much loved co-founder Herb Kelleher and his ‘keeper of the culture,’ Colleen Barrett, finally retired and exited the scene. I was assured by anyone at SWA whom I happened to ask that there was ‘never any chance of the culture of love, fun, self sacrifice and passion abating,’ and they were right. Both Herb and Colleen have been gone from the scene for over six years now, and by all available measures the culture and the achievements – financial, social and societal – continue to this day. I believe this is because between Herb and Colleen, and their many thousands of colleagues, they not only led by example from the front, but they crafted a corporate architecture that focused on the highest aspirations of love; fun; service; humility and self deprecating humour that left no room for arrogance or false pride in its make-up. And they selected, hired, and trained accordingly.

From my observations, way back in the late 80s and early 90s, Southwest Airlines was the only company which could boast a company director at the highest level of seniority who was responsible as chief custodian of ‘culture.’ Ms Barrett headed up the committee whose sole focus was to ‘spread, keep and enrich the company culture and family spirit.’ I wonder if even today there are that many public corporations as significant as SWA who venerate and resource culture as a specific focus separate to their HR department or things of that ilk? As Colleen Barrett said herself back then, “Basically we hire attitudes. People don’t think of working for this company as a mere job. It’s a cause.” They actively seek out fun loving people who think outside the box in an industry where strict governance and uncompromising rules of safety must apply, and yet this does not detract from their enviable record of efficiency, safety and productivity, it enhances it.

In the words of Gary Kelly, the current Chairman of the Board, CEO and President, “With a Warrior Spirit, a Servant’s Heart, and Fun-LUVing Attitude, our nearly 46,000 employees create the unique Southwest culture that continues to maintain the excellence we have built up over four decades with our brand (in the form of Customer Service, Operational Excellence, Community Engagement and Consecutive Annual Profits)… We are committed to our purpose – to connect people to what’s important in their lives through friendly, reliable and low-cost air travel. It is that purpose that will guide us forward in pursuit of our vision to become The World’s Most Loved, Most Flown, and Most Profitable Airline.”

Southwest bonds its employees to one another by shared values that include such traditional virtues as integrity, trust and altruism. For the worker ‘evangelists’ at SWA, it isn’t just a job it’s a crusade. And if the key to a highly successful brand is the level of trust that it engenders in the community then Southwest Airlines has turned trust into an organisational art-form through consistently Aligning the Attitudes; Being the Behaviours and Managing the Message.

What are the three elements that drive that intrinsic brand trust? I believe that it can best be described as:-

•    Trust in one’s Competence (organisationally this may be represented by operating efficiency and safety)
•    Trust in one’s Commitment (organisationally this may be represented by service, pricing, and customer experience)
•    Trust in one’s Character (organisationally this may be represented by community engagement and support)

Southwest Airlines doesn’t just strive to achieve outstanding results in the triple bottom line of Financial, Social and Environmental performance. Nor does it lay claim to winning various awards in these areas while it hides anything less than optimal from its public. It actively and transparently engages in measuring its results in these three areas each financial year in the form of its ‘Southwest Airlines One Report’ which lists all of the good, bad and the ugly KPIs under the triple headings of:– Performance (financial and operational); People (cultural and social); and Planet (environmental and societal).

R.O. ‘Double’ I

In the work that I have been doing in this area of R.O.I.+I. (Return on Investment and Integrity) or ‘conscious capitalism’ as it has also been termed, I have begun to notice that companies are finally beginning to have quite a unique approach to key areas of business that until this millennium, were almost non-existent. (The old paradigms of R.O.I.; growth for growth sake; command and control; headcount on a balance sheet; and a focus on ‘giving back’ only after the shareholder returns and executive bonuses have been fully accounted for, and where corporate citizenship fell under the banner of public affairs/PR, are still widely in evidence as the main order of the day, but thankfully this is slowly changing.)

In no particular order, these changes in thinking with a differentiated approach fall under the general headings of:- Innovation; Engagement; Environment; Servant Leadership; Culture and Mythology, and are built around a Noble Cause as the new sustainable model of business (Financial and Operational best practices assumed). What I have been discovering is that companies that are changing our world and the way we do business, are coming from a much larger paradigm of heart-centeredness interwoven into the hard edged fabric of sustainable financial results. Such things go hand in hand. They are no longer mutually exclusive. Many (but not all) of these leaders are coming out of the ranks of business entrepreneurs who have only entered the workforce since 2000. They are a new breed of leader and they want to make a difference to all lives, not just their own. What’s more, they have the technological means and the social media street smarts to do so.

Logos, Pathos and Ethos

If we go right back to the time of the Greek philosopher Aristotle we will see evidence of this thinking as the source of influence, in the form of Logos (Intellect); Pathos (Emotion) and Ethos (Character). For too many years now we have witnessed only the Logos or rational approach to business sustainability. During the 90s, we began to see evidence of the Pathos or emotional appeal becoming part of the fabric of business in the form of customer service, employee engagement and cultural values as a focus. But now I believe that with the turn of the millennium we are beginning to witness the third critical element come to the fore in the form of Ethos or ethical behaviour in its broadest sense as an integral part of the new business model.

Back in the 90s, Southwest Airlines was one of the pioneering few profit-generating organisations that was doing the unthinkable…bringing ‘fun and love’ into the boardroom.

Some people view this idea of ‘conscious capitalism’ (or R.O.I.+I. as I call it) as idealistic and impractical. In their view the business world is a tough and brutal ‘dog-eat-dog’ world. To them, this is just a pipe dream – wishful thinking for the woolly headed idealists. In fact this way of doing business not only creates wellbeing for all stakeholders but it also creates sustained high performance. Traditional businesses that compete against an authentic socially conscious business soon discover just how strong, resolute and resilient these enterprises can be.  Just ask any executive of some of the now bankrupt or defunct airlines in the USA who marched to the beat of the older drums, what it was like to compete against Southwest Airlines in its own backyard for the last 40 years.

I will end this longer-than-usual article with the words of Herb Kelleher in his ‘Message to the Field’ back in the 90s in one of his famous addresses to his Southwest employees:–

“When you’re sitting around with your grandchildren, I want you to be able to tell them that being connected to Southwest Airlines was one of the finest things that ever happened to you in your entire life.

I want you to be able to say, ‘Southwest Airlines ennobled and enriched my life; it made me better, and bigger and stronger than I ever could have been alone.’

And if, indeed, that happens with your grandchildren, then that will be the greatest contribution that I could have made to Southwest Airlines and to its future.”

What are your thoughts on ‘R.O.I.+I.’ and the amazing SWA story? I’d love to hear them.

Drop me an email to brian@precisionprofiling.com.au if you would like to discuss further how to create the environment that attracts and retains the young leaders of the future for your organisation.

Until then… Let’s seek to understand more and judge less. Have a great week – Brian

Precision Profiling – What Makes You Tick? Through ‘Motivational Fingerprinting’ we uncover what you do, how you do it and why you do it, and most importantly, the hidden patterns that lead to your success, and that of your team.

And where there is an Information Resource Centre where books are borrowed and returned on an ‘honour’ system; where there are no bells or buzzers because the students are responsible for their own time keeping; and where appreciative enquiry, team teaching and collaborative study in an open learning environment is the order of the day. If you remember those old school days between 15 and 18 years of age when you sat in dreary classrooms while the teacher stood at the front and filled you full of information that you had to commit to memory and regurgitate at appropriate times, then it’s time to consider a new form of student utopia.

Because here in Melbourne, Victoria, we have a new style of teaching which goes to the core of what ‘education’ should be all about. If you consider that the word education originates from the Latin root ‘educare’ which means ‘to lead or draw out,’ not ‘to push in’ as most of our educational models of earlier times seem to reflect, you may begin to gain an inkling of what our newest secondary educative model for students from Years 9-12 is aspiring to achieve.

This is no experimental laboratory of learning. It happens to be one of our newest and most ground-breaking educational institutions, in the form of Nossal High School, built and opened as recently as 2010 by our Victorian Government as one of only four unique Selective Entry Schools in the state. Student competition to gain entry to this open learning environment is fierce (likewise the teaching staff), and the high achieving, socially aware and community minded alumni that Nossal is producing is testament to an environment where discussion and debate across a wide range of subjects with a wide range of peers is the norm. Nossal’s truly unique environment gives students the freedom to utilise ‘break out spaces’ around the school during class times, to independently study or meet with teachers for advice and support.

When you walk through the school, you will marvel at the open plan teaching spaces; the light, bright and airy feel to the whole physical environment; the internet cafe style study areas; the whiteboard tabletops for group project brainstorming; the many informal lounge areas for ‘chilling out;’ the casual teachers’ offices furnished with comfortable lounges for students wishing to have ‘one-on-ones’ with their selected teacher; the adaptable physical spaces that convert in a few minutes from auditorium to smaller, more intimate ensemble areas; the breakfast, tea and coffee facilities conveniently located around the common areas for students to avail themselves; and the extremely well equipped specialist teaching facilities.

Whether it be physical education, music, english, the sciences, maths, cooking, drama, languages, humanities or other elective subjects, the student-centric, learning-rich physical facilities are state of the art. The school even has a wonderfully equipped IT resource department that is solely there for students and teachers to leave their computers or other IT paraphernalia for hardware repair or software de-bugging or system set-up as the case may be.

But what is most striking when you explore the community is the quiet confidence of the students actively engaged with teachers and each other in an open learning environment or walking purposefully to their next study elective, ubiquitous iPad in hand, in a respectful atmosphere of collegial enquiry and discovery. When you stop and ask any student at random, what they do for fun outside of ‘classroom’ time, you will invariably hear the answer that ‘the whole experience of learning is fun here’, so the lines are very blurred between what constitutes schoolwork vs free time at Nossal High School.

In the pursuit of individual excellence via an environment that allows students to grow step by step to reach their full potential, not only do students learn from their teachers but also the teachers learn from their students. In the words of Nossal High School’s organisational ethos, “We believe that teachers and students are forces that exist for each other and therefore promote and encourage an environment where both staff and students are treated equally with respect and understanding.”

The school’s curriculum is based on Harvard University psychologist Howard Gardner’s principles of the ‘Five Minds for the Future,’ (Gardner, 2008) and it achieves this through exceptional learning, outstanding teachers, gifted and talented students and an innovative and dynamic adult learning environment. This is a philosophy that future leaders will need to develop certain cognitive abilities, which Gardner defines as the ‘five minds:-’ the disciplined mind; the synthesizing mind; the creative mind; the respectful mind; and the ethical mind. As Nossal High School’s website states, each domain is explored under this framework, so that students gain a high level of analytical thinking in a way that doesn’t limit their learning.

The Disciplined Mind – Individuals will need to be an expert in one area – they will need to develop depth and breadth in specific disciplines.
The Synthesising Mind – Individuals will need to be able to gather together information from disparate sources, find links, transfer and communicate this knowledge.
The Creative Mind - Individuals will be rewarded for being creative – that is the ability to construct a box and think outside of it, and approach problems in unique ways.
The Respectful Mind – The world of today and tomorrow is becoming increasingly diverse. Accordingly it is imperative to respect differences and similarities and promote tolerance and understanding, hence the significance of Physical, Personal and Social learning.
The Ethical Mind - Individuals need to be able to act ethically – that is to think beyond their own self interest and to do what is right under the circumstances.

Even the naming of the school was chosen with much thought invested into the process.

Sir Gustav Nossal is an internationally renowned scientist and a significant figure in Australia’s medical and scientific community. He was Director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (1965-1996), Professor of Medical Biology at the University of Melbourne and President of the Australian Academy of Science.

Gus Nossal has received numerous awards and recognitions throughout his career. He was knighted in 1977 for his ground-breaking work in immunology and made a companion of the Order of Australia in 1989. He was awarded the Albert Einstein World Award of Science in 1990 and in 1996 he won the highly prized Koch Gold Medal for major advances in biomedical science. He has been identified as one of Australia’s national living treasures.

He has been listed in annual Australia Day Honours four times, including as Companion of the Order of Australia in 1989, ‘For services to medicine, to science and to the community,’ and a Centenary Medal Winner, ‘For distinguished service to the study of antibody formation and immunological tolerance’ in 2000, when he was also named Australian of the Year.

It is fitting therefore, that the school is named after Sir Gustav Nossal, such a prominent and inspirational figure who believes in state education and has brought true benefit to the world. He continues to be an active champion of the school and its work, and at the beginning of each year he is an enthusiastic attendee at the opening assembly to present badges to the newest intake of Year 9 students.

The school’s Information Resource Centre, as the educational hub of the school, holds an extensive range of print as well as digital resources to complement the curriculum being delivered at Nossal. The IRC also holds an extensive fiction collection, general non-fiction books as well as audio visual resources and equipment.  The programmes being delivered by the IRC are wide and varied. Complementing the guest speakers and performers who visit the school throughout the year, the Information Resource Centre also runs a range of interesting and exciting programs and competitions for the all-round development of the students.

Given that we live in a cyber-connected world, Nossal High School aims to empower students to become ethical ‘cybercitizens,’ who approach the use of IT and e-learning in a systematic, disciplined and respectful manner. They are encouraged to challenge data and synthesize their findings. As the schools says, ‘A Nossal Cybercitizen knowingly adopts cyber ethical approaches when digitally interacting at local, national, regional and global levels. The overall philosophy is to use e-Learning and ICT to develop responsible, ethical student learning pathways in Virtual Learning Environments, the intranet and the World Wide Web. The digital pathways are to be used to develop logical thinking, problem solving, collaborative techniques, ability to synthesise and creativity in our students.’

Through the use of IT, underpinned by Cyber ethics, the school is challenging the students to become knowledgeable about the nature of information, comfortable with new technology and, able to recognise its relevance and potential. Cyber ethics is defined as the values, beliefs and behaviours needed to ensure safe, responsible and respectful use of digital technology.

This is the future of education that I envisage for our children if we are to create a world that is going to be sustainable for generations to come and where the focus is not purely on growth for growth sake and the insatiable consumption and global inequity that comes from such a single-minded approach to the modern economic reality.

It is fortunate that pockets of our world are now inhabited by educational institutions like Nossal High School. It is my fervent wish that this and others like it will be the model of educational best practice that public and private schools alike will aspire to become, because students that graduate from these secondary schools and on to tertiary study are the leaders we will be looking to in the future. Maybe one day, instead of a handful of secondary schools like Nossal, we will see centres of learning of this ilk spread throughout our communities. I hope so.

What are your thoughts on the future of education? I’d love to read them.

Drop me an email to brian@precisionprofiling.com.au if you would like to discuss further how to select the right people for your roles and how to leverage that knowledge for the benefit of them and your organisation.

Until then… Let’s seek to understand more and judge less. Have a great week – Brian

Precision Profiling – What Makes You Tick? Through ‘Motivational Fingerprinting’ we uncover what you do, how you do it and why you do it, and most importantly, the hidden patterns that lead to your success, and that of your team.

This happened to a global resource company client of mine a couple of years ago. They had advertised for a senior engineer to fulfil the role of Project Manager for all of their major feasibility studies that were in the pipeline. The person they had shortlisted had all of the right experience and qualifications, and had recently been employed in a role at another company that involved major project oversight. Prior to that, this candidate had a succession of business development type roles which relied on his engineering experience and training. According to my client he seemed like the right person for the job. Certainly he seemed to ‘tick all the right boxes,’ but there was something that didn’t quite seem to gel in their due diligence and so they asked me for my assessment. It concerned the fact that the two reference checks they had undertaken were throwing up anomalies that they could not reconcile and they wanted to know why. Here is what I discovered…

After profiling the candidate which included both quantitative on-line testing as well as a two hour discussion and qualitative assessment of his language patterns, I was able to confidently report to my client that neither of the previous employers were lying, and that both were correct in their personal assessment of the candidate’s performance. It depended less on whether he had the competency to undertake the role and more on his motivational preferences as to how he was motivated to use the skills he had and process his model of the world. His ‘motivational fingerprint’ if you will. Here is what I said…

    … “For the Project Oversight role where project leadership involves conceptual analysis and strategy, detailed risk assessment, systemic thinking followed by a properly structured plan of action taking into account all of the competing factors, the candidate has the experience and training but his ‘motivational fingerprint’ does not support him working in this way.”

Across the board he had rated motivational patterns like Concept and Structure; Reflection and Patience (i.e. Thinking before Acting); Focus on Information and Systems; Problem Solving (Risk Mitigation); Evolution (i.e. Gradual Change and Development); and Depth Orientation as quite low in his preferences. His language patterns in the discussion we had, reinforced this assessment of mine. Note: This is not to say that he was not trained nor competent in these disciplines. It is just that it was not his preferred way of working or using his skills.

    … “For the Business Development role where leadership involves the ability to seek out new development opportunities; make quick decisions; initiate action; and drive a team towards a long term goal, the candidate exhibits all of the action-oriented patterns one would expect to see as part of his motivational make-up, both in his quantitative assessment and in my qualitative assessment of our discussion.”

Across the board he had rated highly the following motivational patterns which indicated a strong preference for speed and action:- Focus on Activity; Initiation; Use (i.e. Jumping into Action); Convinced Automatically; Convinced by Doing (as opposed to Reading; Seeing or Listening); Difference (i.e. a preference for Rapid and Discontinuous change) and Goal Orientation.

Once I had shared my assessment with my client, it quickly became obvious to them why the manager who had employed the candidate in a Project Oversight role rated his performance so poorly and why the manager who had employed him in a Business Development role would hire him again tomorrow if the opportunity presented itself.

Both were telling the truth in the context of the role the candidate had performed for them previously, just as much as two people looking at a car accident from different perspectives and vantage points will describe the same scene differently, even though the reality of the crash was identical.

So the decision that was presented to my client quickly became a no-brainer as a result. The only question that needed to be addressed was whether the role for which they were hiring him was more of a Project Oversight role or a Business Development role, even though the candidate was equally skilled for both.

Given that the role at the resource company was a closer motivational fit to the one the candidate had reportedly underperformed in, the observation was made that this candidate might not be the right person for that role. Another more suitable candidate was subsequently chosen. This was not only the right decision for the employer but also in the best interests of the candidate regardless of his personal wishes.

Placing a ‘square peg in a round hole’ is not only a potential risk for the employer but also potentially highly stressful for the employee involved. As employees we should always aim to work towards our preferences and strengths that we develop as a result of those preferences, otherwise we will only invite feelings of boredom or inadequacy within ourselves.

Here is the challenge for employers however:–

All too often I observe that organisations only select or promote based on very limited criteria….

1. Competency – can they do the job?
2. Previous Experience – has someone else said they can do the job?
3. Gut Feeling – do we think they can do the job?
4. Rapport – do we like them enough to want them to do the job?
5. Performance over Time – after 3-6 months of trial and error, will we discover if they can do the job?

The missing ingredients in all of this which are crucial to the final decision are the Attitudes and Motivations of the Individual. i.e. Are they the right fit/best fit for the role? These measures are the most important and effective predictors of job performance, and employers ignore this fact at their peril.

As a result of ground-breaking research and development in psychometric testing over the past ten years, it is now possible to predict with a certain degree of confidence, how an executive will be most likely motivated to perform, behave and communicate in his/her specific work environment. This means that you can now unlock the motivational code for improving engagement, effectiveness and performance in the workforce from the highest to the most basic levels of employment. Not only can we now measure what motivates someone at work, but also to what degree and by how much these drivers motivate them, compared to the rest of the standard population.

The knowledge that a company gleans from these insights is a proven recipe for more incisive and effective candidate selection or promotion, and for more targeted information into successful ‘on-boarding’ or personal career development. This assists immeasurably in ensuring that an organisation’s external candidate/ internal succession selection processes are conducted at world’s best practice levels.

What are your thoughts on this? I’d love to read them.

Drop me an email to brian@precisionprofiling.com.au if you would like to discuss further how to select the right people for your roles and how to leverage that knowledge for the benefit of them and your organisation.

Until then… Let’s seek to understand more and judge less. Have a great week – Brian

Precision Profiling – What Makes You Tick? Through ‘Motivational Fingerprinting’ we uncover what you do, how you do it and why you do it, and most importantly, the hidden patterns that lead to your success, and that of your team.

Celebration

All too often when financial indicators show that results are finally heading in the right direction, leaders of teams or companies turn their attention to other issues and forget about what it took for their people to change course and re-direct their energies towards more fruitful activities. As I said in my previous blog, in order for lasting and impactful change to occur you must continue to reward the behaviour you want. Now that of course includes both individual and team reward and recognition, but there is one more element that if it is introduced at the appropriate times, you can potentially fast-track your culture to consistent achievement, and that is the element of fun and celebration. Celebration can take many forms, from as small as high fives amongst a close-knit team when a big result comes in, to a major themed event involving the whole organisation. It gives people a chance to say to themselves… “I am part of something special here, and there is no other place I would rather be.”

Southwest Airlines

I had the good fortune to witness this in action first hand during the nineties as part of my world class best practice study tours when I led different groups of senior executives on six occasions over a number of years to the headquarters of the iconic Southwest Airlines under the then leadership of CEO, Herb Kelliher. Southwest Airlines has consistently led its industry year-in, year-out in all of the benchmarks that matter… Best On-Time Performance; Fewest Customer Complaints; Best Baggage Handling; Most Admired Company; Best Employer; One of USA’s safest airlines with the newest fleet; and 30 years of profitability to round out the score, in an industry littered with financial under-performance and failure. Not coincidentally, Southwest’s culture was built around positively outrageous service; pride in performance; spirit of love; (or “LUV” as is their call-sign) and fun. I can honestly say that over the years, every single visit to the headquarters of Southwest Airlines at Love Field in Dallas meant a day filled with awe and outright enjoyment for me and my tour colleagues. That place encapsulated the essence of having fun at work, and finding reasons to celebrate life as part of their work. The stories are too numerous for me to share here but if you want to know more I recommend that you get a hold of the wonderful book about the airline, “Nuts” by Kevin and Jackie Freiberg.

Today, it is hard to go past the exploits of none other than Sir Richard Branson of Virgin. Here is a leader who has brought that sense of fun, adventure and celebration to the lives of his legion of followers and staff across the globe. And to know that Richard Branson is personally a very shy individual, goes to show that this aspect of leadership is possible for anyone to demonstrate if the desire is there and the reasons genuine.

Performance Management

No matter how, well your team is travelling, there will always be the need for performance management, or correction, with different individuals at different times. It doesn’t matter whether it is performance related or behaviour related the worst thing a leader can do is ignore the problem and hope that it will go away. I have lost count of the number of times I have had to coach managers and leaders who have got themselves into hot water because they allowed an issue of poor performance or inappropriate behaviour to fester. Their final act of desperation has been to try and fudge the issue via the ‘redundancy’ route or to introduce a series of warning letters which have only one end result as a consequence, which is termination. There is a far better way, and that is to nip poor performance or inappropriate behaviour in the bud early by introducing a proper process of discussion, counselling, warning, review and documentation that encourages the recipient to change direction, and leaves no doubt as to what is expected by way of the changes needed. In most companies, the HR department is well versed in the appropriate process to follow, and it is every manager’s responsibility to fully acquaint him/herself with the proper due process and follow it. For those smaller businesses which do not have an HR department, it is the CEO’s responsibility to source the appropriate information from their industry advisory council or the appropriate government department advice line, and to ensure that all members of the leadership team are fully conversant with their responsibilities under IR law. With all the available sources of information on line, there is no excuse for poor performance management practices.

While I do not put this forward as the prescriptive action to take in this area, one set of steps I have found as a useful reminder of how to support changes in actions or behaviours is the “Five F’s” formula:-

Facts – List only the observable facts as you know them to the individual to whom you are giving feedback. (Stay away from making judgments, assumptions or interpretations of the behaviour – just list the observable facts.)

Feelings – Mention how you feel personally about the actions or behaviours you are describing. (i.e. “Own” your feelings about the issue so that the individual is left in no doubt about how you feel as a result.)

Findings – Ask the individual what their ‘take’ on the issue is and listen without interruption until they have finished.

Future – Explain clearly the change in behaviour or action you wish them to take from this point on and the belief you have in them being able to undergo the changes needed (and offer further coaching or training and encouragement if it is a performance issue).

Follow Up – Schedule and diarise a follow up meeting to be held at an appropriate time in the future (say 3-4 weeks) when you can review the performance or changes in behaviour with the individual. (This is a time to recognise and reinforce the improvement made or to proceed to the next level of performance management and review if necessary.)

Of course depending on the nature and the seriousness of the performance or behaviour being addressed, there is also the opportunity for the introduction of independent management and employee representation and documentation if appropriate to the circumstances.

Individual Capability

Finally to complete the picture of effective performance management, one has to also address the aspect of personal capability. i.e. The unconscious attitudes and motivations of the individual involved. There is a risk that some of those chosen to perform in a particular role are unsuited to the task regardless of the level or amount of training and coaching they receive. In other words ‘square pegs in round holes.’  To continue to work with them and attempt to develop and correct them serves neither the best interests of the organisation nor the individual involved. This is where setting up a properly structured ‘Model of Excellence’ programme for replicable roles such as sales and customer service,  will assist future selection (both external or internal) and development strategies, in a far more precise and impactful way than has gone before. In other words… ‘Select for Success; Groom for Growth; and Replicate for Results.’ Since those people who may not be a good fit for the role have been selected through previous processes of hiring and internal promotion, I feel that it is incumbent upon the leaders of an organisation or a team to do whatever they can to assist those individuals to transition to a more suitable role, either internally or externally.

Phew – turning around under-performance. Not an easy subject to cover, and often one which many organisations and team leaders fail to address adequately and comprehensively. I hope that these series of five articles help you on your own journeys of leadership, and although they only skim the surface of what is a deep and multi-faceted issue, I trust that what I have covered these past five weeks has helped you to map out the territory that needs to be covered for effective and lasting change on the journey of long term, sustainable performance.

Once again here are the topics we covered prior to this article, in chronological order:–

Part 1 – What do you do if your Team is Warm and Fuzzy but Underperforming?

Part 2 – What do you do if your Team is Underperforming? – Setting the Scene

Part 3 – What do you do if your Team is Underperforming? – Creating the Structure and Support

Part 4 – What do you do if your team is Underperforming? – Measurement; Reward and Recognition

So now I hand it over to you for your comments and input into this series on performance management. As always, if you know of anyone whom you believe would benefit from these topics, please forward this on to them. Email me at brian@precisionprofiling.com.au  if you would like to dig deeper into any of these topics.

Until next time… Let’s seek to understand more and judge less. – Brian

Precision Profiling – What Makes You Tick? Through ‘Motivational Fingerprinting’ we uncover what you do, how you do it and why you do it, and most importantly, the hidden patterns that lead to your success, and that of your staff… plus – all those things that are holding you or your staff back from getting the results you truly deserve.

Measurement

As the saying goes, “you can’t manage what you don’t measure.”  It never ceases to amaze me how organisations both large and small hold their people accountable for bringing in the results each month but don’t actually measure the things that are critical to their performance, or if they do, then the measurements that are chosen are not specifically relevant to the activities and behaviours that lead to the right results. Invariably they tend to measure the outputs and not the inputs. KPIs stand for exactly what they mean – “Key Performance Indicators,” not ‘Key Result History-Staters!’ Invariably when proper measurements are not in place, underperformers manage to slip under the radar, the wrong people are recognised, the wrong market circumstances or events are used to explain away poor results, and underperformance is not addressed at the source and whether the activities that lead to sustainable results are being adhered to. So what are the categories of metrics that need to be considered in order to give objective feedback on what should be addressed and how it should be addressed?

Productivity or Income-Generating KPIs

First there are the lead indicators that deal directly with productivity and delivery of the key results pertinent to the role. And if the role involves income generation for the business, then those KPIs should not just focus on the numbers but also the relative value of each client’s business in relation to where the client sits on the relational profile in terms of long term value to the business. There needs to be allowance for activities leading to the generation of new business, as well as activities and performance resulting in current business growth of existing client groups. Every business is different, so it is important to focus not only on what are the critical and most insightful KPIs for your business, but also the relative ability of your Management Information Systems to deliver those numbers in the form you want and to the level you need. Too often company leaders know what they need to measure but their systems have not been designed or adapted to deliver the goods. And as I have discovered when interviewing top performers in a role, they intuitively know what the ‘real numbers’ are that indicate they are on track, but their own organisation is just not able to objectively measure the same things and so often their individual work is going unnoticed.

There are also two other forms of measurement that I would like to draw your attention to which are not KPIs relating to productivity or income generation, but I believe are equally important if you wish to gain a more balanced view of performance. One set of figures are the CSI indicators, or ‘Customer Service Indices’ and the other set are the ‘Team or Culture-focused Assessments.’

Customer Service Indices

It is fairly obvious that any role which involves direct external customer interaction such as sales, call centres, service departments and the like should have measures that show how your people are performing at the critical point of customer interface, but have you considered that the rest of your people have internal customers for which the work they do has an impact on your organisation’s financial health and wellbeing also? During my days of leading world’s best practice study tours overseas to Europe and North America where we studied the best of the best, every top performing company in its industry that we visited had developed ways of measuring internally how well each person was performing on that score, with appropriate measures of feedback and service delivery.

Team or Culture Focused Assessments

There is no poison more insidious and dangerous to the culture of your organisation, than the person or group of people who get the results but do so by abusing your company’s codes of behaviour or disrespecting the goodwill of their colleagues. While they may achieve short term results for you, ultimately the resulting disharmony created within the team environment will lead to personal acrimony among the players and potentially team dysfunction. As Jack Welch, the much respected CEO of General Electric says, ‘Having top performers who are abusive of your company values and culture should be weeded out before their behaviour sends the wrong message as to what is acceptable for the health of the culture.’ Whether your measurements in this area are in the form of team or cultural surveys; values assessments; 360 degree feedback or other means of measuring personal behaviour that leads to respect and support of others, be aware that without addressing this aspect of performance measurement you might never be able to achieve the goal of creating a champion team.

Reward and Recognition

It follows that for effective reward and recognition, first you need to address the issue of performance measurement, as I have above. So now it is important to consider how the people whose activities and results which drive the success of your team or organisation are being encouraged and rewarded to perform to the best of their abilities. It is a consistent premise of human behaviour and motivation, that in order for lasting and impactful change to occur you must reward the behaviour you want.  The two key behaviours which are critical to your business success are team focus and individual performance and achievement.

If for example, your income-generating people are only rewarded when the team hits its targets as a group then there is no incentive for those individuals to achieve or over-achieve should that be their desire. This can potentially create an environment where mediocrity is the norm. Conversely, if only high performing individuals are rewarded for reaching or surpassing their targets, then there is no incentive for individual members to support each other in a team-based environment, and those who have no hope or expectation of achieving any rewards personally, may reduce their efforts. This can potentially create an environment where either mercenary behaviour or complacency is the norm.

The key to sustained excellence at both the individual and team level is for the measurements and subsequent rewards to address both aspects of team success and individual excellence. If this is not currently the case in both or either of the above two aspects of recognition and reward then I recommend that you give thought to addressing both these items as an integral part of your overall programme of change and development.

In my final blog in this series on Performance Management, I will cover the aspects of Celebration, Performance Management and Individual Capability, to complete the picture.

I look forward to your comments and input to this series on Performance Management, and if you know of anyone whom you believe would benefit from these topics, please forward this on to them. I would love to hear from you directly with any questions you may have, so email me at brian@precisionprofiling.com.au  if there is anything in this series you would like me to clarify further.

Until next time… Let’s seek to understand more and judge less. – Brian

Precision Profiling – What Makes You Tick? Through ‘Motivational Fingerprinting’ we uncover what you do, how you do it and why you do it, and most importantly, the hidden patterns that lead to your success, and that of your staff… plus – all those things that are holding you or your staff back from getting the results you truly deserve.

Actually it was neither. This may be the judgment that others might have formed about Bill, but if they were to judge him in this way they would have been mistaken. The following information is what we shared with his boss, the CFO, in order to give him deeper insight into Bill and how best to lead him.

When we profiled Bill as part of a company-wide assessment into the underlying culture that was driving the business at the senior executive level, we discovered a couple of very interesting patterns that were prevailing as motivational drivers for him. Right off the scale as a strong driving pattern in terms of unconscious drivers for Bill, was a pattern called “External Reference.” This means that a person is likely to seek out the advice and opinions of others before making decisions. It also means they may want to use data or other external measures for input. People with a very high external frame of reference are motivated by positive feedback; they happily involve others when making decisions; and they use objective data to evaluate their personal performance.

As far as the use of external data and input was concerned, this style of approach is one of the unconscious drivers that made Bill so accomplished in his work, among other patterns of thinking he had…. such as being strongly focused on detail (crossing t’s and dotting i’s); being likely to see potential problems before most others would with any given project or operation; and always wanting to make sure his work was totally correct by double checking everything he did. ‘So what was the downside?’ you may well ask.

Well not only was Bill off the scale on the high side in terms of needing external input and data to support his risk assessments, his lowest pattern of decision making by a country mile at the other end of the scale was a pattern called “Individual Motives,” or having an internal frame of reference when making decisions, which is the direct opposite pattern to having an external frame of reference. (Someone who has a high Internal Frame of Reference is far less likely to be influenced by the input and opinions of others, because they are more comfortable in deciding for themselves, and confidently following their own criteria when making a decision. Bill was the total opposite to this.)

In fact the gap between the two patterns for Bill was even greater than you would normally see in someone because in his model of the world, both were polar opposites on the scale, with 46 other patterns of motivation separating them. I and my colleague had never seen such a huge gap between the two forms of decision-making before in one person, so we were very keen to spend some time with Bill and find out more about how he operated.

There were no surprises here either, because after every answer Bill gave to any question of ours about how he worked and what made him so effective in his role of risk management, he followed his answers up with these same type of responses… “How did I go?”…. “Is that the answer you were looking for?”…or… “Is this what you were wanting from me?” To the profiler, these are fairly strong indications that the results we had received from Bill’s quantitative testing, were being actively reinforced qualitatively by the manner in which Bill was responding ‘live’ in his discussions with us.

When we debriefed Bill’s boss with our assessment of Bill’s patterns of motivation we were able to reassure him that all of the unconscious drivers that one would hope to see in a person whose role was high level, company-wide risk management, were there to support Bill and his effectiveness. Even the high External Frame of Reference was useful, it was just that it was also being displayed in the form of him constantly checking his decisions and actions against external criteria such as ‘running things by the boss.’

Where the CFO was previously concerned that Bill was not confident enough in his role and was therefore unable to adequately cope with its scope and level of responsibility, we were able to show him that this was part of Bill’s way of working. As a result, consideration was given to assisting Bill in two ways. One was to ensure that his support team had complementary motivational preferences to Bill, so that their department had a more balanced approach to decision making taking into account the strengths of both ways of thinking and working. The second suggestion was that Bill might be well served by some external executive coaching around these two specific patterns to help him also achieve a more balanced approach to decision-making personally, and his apparent need for constant external checks when it was not necessary.

You may be interested to know that the CFO appreciated these insights he had discovered about Bill, especially given he had been his leader for a long period of time and couldn’t quite understand up to this point why Bill, who was so accomplished in his eyes, still felt the need to ‘check in with him’ on a regular basis.

Being the type of boss that most of us would love to have due to his keenness to understand and draw out the best in his people, the CFO then went on to say… “Well in a few days I will sit down with Bill, and ask him where he would like to focus his energies in the future and how I can support him in that.”

To which I and my colleague immediately responded with smiles on our faces… “That’s the one approach that may be less likely to work for Bill, than just about anyone else in your team. Remember, Bill prefers to receive input and direction first and foremost, so he can then get on with the job of compliance and risk management. Asking his opinion will probably boomerang straight back to you in the form of him needing to base his decisions on where you think he is best placed for the good of the company. If you don’t want to go around in circles with Bill, just set out your clear intentions for him so that he knows what’s on your mind, before seeking some input from him.”

It’s the same with my two young children in their approach to study. One always likes to check in with me or his mother first regarding any decision he makes or activity he embarks upon, while the other one will tell us exactly what she intends to do regardless of our input or suggestions. And it is not a male vs female thing going on either! (Special note to all of the males out there who might be saying… “Typical!”) As you can imagine, it makes for some very interesting discussions in our household balancing the needs of both children at different times.

People are such a kaleidoscope of nuances and motivations, that even the smallest of things like just two motivational patterns can tell us a lot about how to support them to be the best they can be at work.

Drop me an email to brian@precisionprofiling.com.au if you would like to know more about how to gain a deeper understanding of your key people in order to leverage their motivational make-up.  You’ll be surprised how quickly you can start to unlock the secrets to their success, with direct benefits for your business.

Note: For further information on these two opposing patterns of unconscious motivation you will find they were covered in a previous blog of mine a few weeks ago. http://precisionprofiling.com.au/more-hidden-secrets-to-the-world-of-unconscious-influence

Until next time… Let’s seek to understand more and judge less.  Have a great week – Brian

Precision Profiling – What Makes You Tick?  Through ‘Motivational Fingerprinting’ we uncover what you do, how you do it and why you do it, and most importantly, the hidden patterns that lead to your success, and that of your staff.