Vol. 2.7 Culture Matters More Than Strategy

Like I have not said this enough, but yes, I am going to say it again -- PEOPLE MATTER!!  In the workplace or your own personal life -- people are the most important ingredient. Companies spend boatloads of money developing strategies -- from the "10,000 foot level, down to the granular level", etc. whatever...but the point they keep missing and do not value, is that without the workforce (people) behind them, it will never work -- they cannot be successful.


Strategy is rational and culture is emotional.  Which is why so many leaders ignore it -- they undervalue the fact that employees (their greatest asset) are living, breathing human beings with emotions.  And if employees are engaged on an emotional level, and feel respected, valued and part of a team working toward a noble goal, those employees will work their tails off for that leader and organization -- why?? because they know that someone sees and cares about them and they will in turn care also--about the leader, organization and its mission. 


Shawn Parr*, published in Fast Company, Inc., states that "Culture is a balanced blend of human psychology, attitudes, actions and beliefs that combined create either pleasure or pain, serious momentum or miserable stagnation".  He further writes that "Your people either create or undermine value, cultivate or kill relationships, drive or reduce success.  A well-conceived strategy living in the hands of unhappy, misdirected, misinformed people is a sure way to a slow and painful death.  There is no comparison to being in the hearts and hands of energized,  informed, and motivated people".


Lastly, he states that "Culture is the field on which the strategy plays.  A vibrant and functional culture is like a blanket that embraces, protects, and nurtures the strategy.  A company without a strategy lacks direction.  A strategy without a culture that understands or embraces it is like a sport team without a spirit".


I could not have said it better.  If there is no spirit -- no one wins. Caring (spirit) infused from the top down is what makes the difference.  Remember "Friday Night Lights -- Clear Eyes, Full Heart, Can't Lose"? That's what I was talking about...

*The Guvner & CEO of Bulldog Drummond, an innovation and design consultancy headquartered in San Diego.  Clients have included Starbucks, Jack in the Box, MTV, Nestle, Pinkberry, Virgin, Disney, Nike, Mattel,  Heineken and The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s, among others. 

Vol. 2.6 Blame-Storming

A few years ago there was a commercial on the television which showed a group of executives sitting around a conference table.  They were holding a "blame-storming" session.  Obviously something had gone terribly wrong at their company and since the executives were not going to accept any blame for their own failures, they needed a plausible scapegoat.  Thus, they were looking at employees and trying to decide who would make the best victim.  Once they decided on the best candidate,  then they needed a good story.  They needed to create a logical explanation as to why it was this employee's error and not their own...and they needed to tell the story as often as possible so everyone in the organization knew it.  

I have never forgotten that commercial, although I only saw it a couple of times.  It seems more real today than it did those couple years ago -- it was just a parody then, but today it is reality.

Hasn't blaming become part of the American way of doing business?  After a day of campaigning, each political party has their paid strategists research and come up with plausible "sound bites" to blame the other candidate or party for something that may not even be true -- if it sounds good and if it is salacious enough, they believe the voters will believe it  --  the truth does not matter.

From what I hear and experience, this is not too far removed from what happens in the workplace today.  A reader of my last blog pointed out that he does not believe this is the case everywhere -- and I am not suggesting that it does happen everywhere, but it seems to be prevalent enough to warrant being talked about.

How can employees feel part of an organization when someone in a position of power blames them for something that went wrong that was beyond the employee's control.  Maybe they were involved, but they were not he decision maker; maybe they were only involved tangentially, but the "story" that is told that so and so did  blah, blah, blah, and places them as the one responsible for the debacle.  If a leader says it enough times with enough conviction, they begin to believe their own stories and  other employees will believe it also.  Suddenly it IS the truth and that employee is in deep kimchi through no fault of their own.

Can an organization thrive when this happens?  I think not, and I hope that you think that too.  It is impossible to have a successful company, organization, or government, until we start hearing the truth, and  holding those leaders accountable for their own bad decisions.

Only when the bullying and the blame games stop, will we begin to heal and get back to the real business of government or running a company.  We need to start rebuilding the culture inside of each of these entities.  It is not an easy thing, but it is a very doable thing...and it needs to start now.

Vol. 2.5 Workers are in a Catch 22 Situation

It is my hope that many of you out there are happy in you work life.  I hope that you have a fulfilling job that gives you many psychological rewards.  If you are, I need to meet you.  I either hang with the wrong crowd or that happy fulfilled crowd keeps shrinking and eludes me.

I think that I get around quite a bit even though I am retired, but I do not talk to anyone  -- not one single person, who is happy in their job.  They may like the work that they do but not the office politics -- or being told to execute really bad decisions.  The thought of an employee asking a question to try and understand a decision is next to heresy.

Yet employees want to be included in discussions, they want to think that their opinion counts, and they want to contribute to their workplace in a positive way.  Employees used to be hired because they had knowledge, skills and abilities, therefore having a very good chance of performing the duties of the position for which they were hired.  Those days appear to be long gone.

It is no wonder that most state exams are now done on-line -- just a point and click exercise.  Anyone could take an exam and lie about everything on it...heck your dog could take it and the dog could get the top score.  In fact the percentage of top scores is around 90%, unlike any Bell curve that I have ever seen.  If someone in state government has the hiring power, they can bring in anyone that they want...their friends, family, children -- all with no verification of anything on their application or the supposed "exam".  One day you are unemployed and practically the next day you can be employed by the state (assuming there are openings).

This practice started during Governor Wilson's administration and was short lived because it was deemed to be a very ineffective way of hiring the best talent for state government.  Potential employees were not being vetted in any meaningful way.  Apparently that logic no longer applies, and realistically it may not matter.

The sad fact is that there still exist very smart, and skilled employees in the workplace.  But they are not allowed to offer their advise or ask questions.  Their job, if it were to be described correctly on their duty statements or position descriptions would simply say "execute whatever the boss wants ".  If they offer an opinion, ask a question or have the audacity to suggest a direction, they are accused of not being a team player, or taking over a situation and excluding others; if they sit back and don't engage, they re told they are not contributing.

The rules of engagement in the work place have changed.  Is it any wonder so many employees are so unhappy?  They do not know whether to zig or zag.   Employees are caught in a Catch 22 situation.

Vol. 2.4 "Greedy Bastards"

Dylan Radigan, an MSNBC commentator with a finance background, has penned a book by this name.  He believes that American bankers and leaders are just that -- greedy.  They have put themselves before  everyone else.

Almost weekly we read about these same kind of greedy people in our own backyard -- most of them are in leadership positions.  I always thought leadership was about leading by example -- and that is the problem -- their example is not good for anyone who is honest, has ethics, compassion, or morality.

Newspaper articles recently reported that the top administrators of the Sacramento County Retirement System raised their salaries between 13%-22%.  Meanwhile that retirement system remains severely underfunded and workers are asked to make concessions.  Where are the leaders' concessions?

Certain staff in the Assembly and Senate also received pay raises -- maybe some of these were deserved, but when the state budget is so severely underfunded can we really afford these pay raises?

Cal Fire, in negotiations with state government officials, were "forced" to raise the pay of supervising Chiefs.  Seems that no on wanted to be a Chief -- the rank and file made more in overtime than a supervisor could make as a Chief.  I have to wonder if there was not  an alternative such as looking at the overtime compensation for the rank and file and perhaps even adjusting their hours so they do not receive as much overtime?  If government has no money, how can we keep raising salaries?

But my all time favorite greedy guy, at least so far, is the new Sacramento County administrator, Brad Hudson.  First he rolls into town making $258,000 plus benefits, and at the same time he is collecting a pension of $200,000+ from Riverside County.  I thought he had retired -- meaning that he was no longer working , hummm....  Why not leave Riverside after twenty five years and start anew here in Sacramento collecting retirement, another big salary plus benefits, and earning time under another retirement system so he can make yet more money.  So much for the era of austerity.

And then there was that crappy old furniture in his Sacramento office which was not to his liking.  It was so bad he needed to purchase $21,000 worth of new "nicer" stuff so as to make it inviting enough for those that want to walk through his "open door policy" door.  Then comes the shoe shine machine -- really???-- can't he do that at home or at least pay to have that done somewhere else?  It would seem that the shoe shiner belongs to all of us county residents; perhaps that is why we should darken his door -- to shine our shoes.

As if that was not enough, the most recent "need" was a "white noise" privacy system used by the US Air Force, the secretary of the defense and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that he had installed so no one could hear confidential personnel conversations.  Wow!!  What is going to be discussed in those county personnel offices?  It must be some top secret kind of stuff -- and a lot of it to justify the $15,000 expenditure.  If I worked for the county, I would be very afraid--are heads going to roll?

Normally when there are meetings regarding sensitive and confidential personnel issues, they are in an office with the door closed -- so either there is no insulation in the executive's office, he trusts absolutely no one, or he has an oversized ego.  I am sure it makes him feel real important to be right up there with the secretary of defense -- white noise system equals really big ego food.  I say all of this and I do not even know the man, but one can tell a lot about people just by their actions.  I hope I am wrong, but time will tell if Brad is here because he cares about doing a good job for Sacramento County, or he is just greedy.  I hope it is the former.

It is in this context that I so appreciate the CEO of Morgan Stanley, James Gorman.  Recently he told employees they would be receiving less than last year in total compensation.  And he further stated that if employees complained he would tell them,  "You're naive, read the newspaper, No.1"; No. 2., if you put your compensation in a one-year context to define your overall level of happiness, you have a problem which is much bigger than the job.  And No.3, if you're really unhappy, just leave.  I mean life's too short".

Very well said -- happiness and job satisfaction are not all about how much money you make, how nice an office you have, if you have a shoe shine machine or a "white noise" system in your offices.  It should be about so much more....

To Be Continued --

Vol.2.3 -- I Want to Go Into Organized Crime

These words were used in a political cartoon wherein a son uttered those words to his father.  The father calmly replied, "Are you considering the private or government sector?'  Ouch!!!  This should be a "funny parody" as the friend who sent it to me suggested, but it hits too close to the reality of what is going on in our country.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. recently stated that Americans "are being robbed of their freedom" and that we are now a kleptocracy.  I had to look that one up.  It is a word used to describe corrupt and exploitative governments that steal ruthlessly and relentlessly from the people. It is not a word that anyone would have used to talk about the American form of government until now.  As William Astore, a teacher of history at the Pennsylvania College of Technology, wrote, "It is usually applied to flawed or failed governments in Africa, Latin American" or other areas of the world where governments are"led by autocratic strong men who shower themselves and their cronies with all the fruits of extracted wealth whether stolen from the people or squeezed from their country's natural resources".

Humm...that sounds like the mortgage meltdown, where Wall Street bankers, the government sponsored enterprises (GSEs), i.e., Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and many others received taxpayer "bail out" money to rescue them from their own bad performance.  It is so amazing that one can bankrupt their company yet still pull in a huge salary and expect a fat bonus paid for by taxpayers who now have no jobs.  And people  have no jobs because of others' bad actions.  One would think that the Wall Street people, bankers, lenders, and government officials who acted so irresponsibly and perhaps even criminally, and Congress -- who voted on a myriad of the bills that took away restrictions that allowed all of this to happen, would at least feel contrite, be embarrassed, show remorse, maybe even shame, but no, we have seen none of that.  They act just like organized crime bosses -- they had nothing to do with nothing.  They continue with their opulent lifestyles while the rest of the country is in peril -- and they do not care.

I think that is what bothers me most -- no one cares -- they care only about their own self interest -- and that narcissistic self interest stuff has spread to almost every level in our society.  CEOs in private corporations care about the stockholders making money so they can get their big salaries and bonuses; government workers care about raising their pay as high as possible so they can get the highest level of retirement; hopefully they can retire early enough so they can go to work somewhere else.  Then they can earn another high salary while receiving their retirement, plus working on another retirement.  Is any city, county or other governmental official really worth $400,000+ per year?

As my friend said, "the message that he got from the political cartoon is that crime against society in general is okay and stealing public funds (which we should all hold sacred because it is our tax money) is acceptable."

I think that we have turned into a society of "Greedy Bastards".   More on that next time.

Vol.2.2 - Are We in the Void?

Robert Brumet, a Unity minister believes that we are in "The VOID".  He defines the VOID as being in between the old and the as yet-to-be-determined new.   This VOID makes us feel very  uncomfortable and  off balance, but we are in limbo?   He thinks not -- the VOID could be compared to winter -- a "dead" time of year -- we think, but is that true.  What we may not realize is during the winter season there is much going on underground.  Plants and bulbs are getting ready to burst forth in the spring by storing nutrients and growing and spreading their roots during this seemingly "dead" season.  When the conditions are right new blooms in all of their vibrancy will grace the landscape again.  Brumet believes the same to be true for all of us -- when the conditions are right the VOID will end and something new will spring forth.

Similarly Deepak Chopra also believes that chaos and instability equal an opportunity for a collective change -- when we collectively reach rock bottom, we will change, because the current situation is not sustainable.    Have we sunk to our collective rock bottom?  I certainly don't know.   What I do know and do believe is that change begins within each and everyone of us.  As Chopra further states, "Be the shift inside of you, then you can communicate the shift to others...soon others are resonating on the same frequency and the energy spreads."

Christopher Renza, a health writer suggests that "at the most fundamental level of being human there is a primal energy exchange that happens between us whether we are conscious of it or not."  He also asserts that "quantum physics has theoretically proven that everything is in a constant state of energy exchange."  It is that energy that connects all of us together and brings us into relationship with one another.

Chopra suggests that we "look at the chaos in the world through the lens of what is the opportunity here for us".   He further instructs us to to ask ourselves:  "What are my unique skills at this moment?  What do I really care about?  Who are the people I can connect with and ask for help?  Who are the people I can help with?  How can I nurture the right relationships and are they examples of the people who have made a differences in this kind of situation?"

Our collective consciousness can and will change.  That change is well under way -- the Occupy Wall Street movement, the Tea Party faithful, broadcasters and  writers voicing their concerns, disgruntled workers and disenfranchised students are all speaking out.  While they may have different points of view, they are putting energy out.  This growing energy  has not all come together yet.   If we are in the VOID as Brumet claims, we all are growing in awareness, nearly unnoticed,  just like plants in winter.  We are being creative, sharing ideas and thus forming an energy that is working toward that moment, when the time is just right -- when our collective consciousness changes -- and a new beginning bursts forth.

Vol.2.1 -- How Did We Get Here?

Have you ever noticed how often you say to yourself, "How did I get here"? It's like you wake up one morning and wonder how did whatever (credit card debt, personal relationship problems, etc.) get so messed up.  The truth is it was happening all the time.  But it was unfolding step by little tiny step, so maybe you did not really notice it -- just a niggling feeling in the back of your head.  So you just ignored it and lived in denial until THAT morning (like we all do).  But as always happens, unless we deal with these whatevers they have a way of reaching critical mass down the road.  And  THAT morning was your day of reckoning and at that moment you became conscious -- and the pain and anxiety started, because you knew you must do something.

How did we get here as a society?  The seeds for these changes were sown over the past several decades.   Little by little our sense of  shared societal beliefs and moral attitudes changed.  And just like in our personal lives when we did not deal with a problem when it was small, it only continued to grow and become bigger.

Is it time to recognize how we have allowed the media backed by large corporations with their mass marketing and television programs to define what is acceptable in our society.  We began to believe that we needed more "stuff"  (consumer goods) to make us happy.  And we bought it -- bigger houses, nicer cars, a myriad of things -- women went to work in droves in order to be able to afford this level of conspicuous consumption.  And via the movie Wall Street with its Gordon Gecko in 1987, we learned that "greed was good".

Television, corporations and politicians continued to shape our beliefs.  In 2001 the Survivor series started and through it we learned how to form alliances; we also learned that by being conniving and treacherous one  could be rewarded.  It was acceptable to pretend to befriend someone and then stab them in the back -- all  for personal gain.  It was about the individual and not the collective whole.  Many supposedly "reality" shows have followed.  In fact the  media has dominated our every thought and shaped what we believe across the board -- what we buy, the way we look, what we watch on TV, which politicians to vote for and what is right and wrong.

The worst part of all of this is that we are all accomplices.  By watching these shows, accepting explicit lyrics in our music, and by thinking that we are not good enough unless we get more "stuff", we are all guilty.  Big money is supporting all of this -- and we are supporting them.  If we did not watch all of these shows, did not buy numerous products, or buy the lies that are told to us, this could not be happening.   We are our own worst enemies!!!  While we have been lulled into submission by mindless entertainment, our corporations, leaders, politicians and wall street have been living by that motto that greed is good and it has been for them.   We have been robbed of our jobs, our homes, our savings, our children's futures and even our culture.

Is it any wonder that this country is in a crisis and so are our governmental institutions, our corporations and even our families.  We have been distracted by the the wrong things -- the greed instead of the good, the ME instead of the WE -- we thought we could fill ourselves up with stuff instead of what is inside us.  How wrong we were -- but we have an opportunity now for a collective change.  Let's seize THIS moment!

Stay tuned....