Cornerstone Blog

 

This is the third of four articles digging into cultures aligned with the four key strategies. Following independent design and stable production, this deals with a culture of interdependence in support of a delivery strategy. It’s all about enrolling diverse players across the ecosystem.

A culture of interdependence is a blended culture. The predominant feature is diverse people working interdependently to deliver things. Individuals have to be open to differences as they deal with a range of suppliers and customers.

While there’s generally a bias to stability, order and safety, everything else falls in the middle. Decisions may be hierarchical or diffused. People may be proactive or responsive. They have to balance results and caring and be open to directed or shared learning.

Build a culture like this to manage logistics, product supply chains and deliver things in an orderly and safe way.
Interdependence

This culture is labeled “Interdependence.” This is the opposite of independence and is all about people working together in teams. Those teams cross geographic, functional and organizational bounds as many of the people on core delivery teams may often work for different companies. The lines between employees, contractors, suppliers, allies, partners, customers and competitors often blur beyond recognition.

You Missed Out

The head of one organization bumped into the head of another and told him “We were going to name you our supplier of the year.”

“Were?”

“You never returned my call when I called to tell you that. So, we had to name someone else.”

At the time when Sam Walton told this to Procter & Gamble’s CEO John Smale, P&G did $2 billion per year in business with Wal-Mart. Smale got the message and moved three people to Bentonville to provide Wal-Mart with better service.

Not long thereafter the P&G/Wal-Mart system effectively eliminated all the people placing and receiving product orders. P&G was electronically linked into Wal-Mart’s systems so its systems knew when every individual product left Wal-Mart stores. It was able to ship replenishments to Wal-Mart’s distribution centers perfectly timed to go dock-to-dock from P&G’s trucks to the trucks going out to stores. If there’s nothing in the warehouse, warehouse turns are infinite.

A City of Suppliers

Now there’s a whole city of Wal-Mart suppliers based in Bentonville, blurring the lines between organizations in Wal-Mart’s superior interdependent delivery system.

Delivery requires a broad, loose matrix organization crossing geographies, functions, products and organizations. While you’ll still want one single point of accountability for each task, project, program or priority, the key to making this work is going to be a recognition of shared responsibilities.

Matrix organizations succeed with people working together interdependently to deliver shared objectives. They collapse when people put their own personal or functional objectives ahead of the common good. Thus, the leader’s main role in an interdependent, matrix organization is to enroll people through the use of formal or informal team charters.

Next & Last: George looks into a culture of Flexibility. You can read the first two articles here – on Independence and on Stability

This is the second of four articles digging into cultures aligned with four key strategies – Independence, Stability, Interdependence and Flexibility.  Here, George Bradt deals with a culture of stability in support of a production strategy. It’s all about ensuring reliability.

A culture of stability is more results-focused, authority-driven, formal, hierarchical, directed and closed. Expect people operating in a culture like this to care about order and safety, to be reactive and follow purpose and rules as written. These people will do what you tell them to do and not much more – which is exactly what you want.

Build a culture like this to produce things consistently and reliably on an ongoing, regular basis.

Stability

This culture is labeled “Stability.” Don’t expect flexibility or innovation. Expect compliance with the rules, with your direction. Expect people to deliver the minimum viable product every time. If you push people in a culture like this to operate more interdependently, to make decisions on their own, to be more proactive, at best they will resist and more likely, you’ll break the system.

Coca-Cola is a classic example of a production company with a culture of stability. It operates with a clear hierarchy of command & control with CEOs that see their primary task as enforcing policies. As a result, every Coca-Cola produced everywhere in the world lives up to the same high standards.

One of Coca-Cola’s biggest ever innovations was the introduction of New Coke. A small Skunk Works group worked the project all the way through, leaking nothing until the last minute when the new formula was shipped to every bottler in the world for a coordinated world-wide launch. The product was superior on the dimension of initial mouth appeal, but the brand failed. As a result, the company swallowed its pride and relaunched “Classic Coke.”

It’s an example of why stable production companies should think twice about revolutionary innovations.

Zara is another example of a stable production company. They outsource all their design by relying on copying others’ designs. Their magic is that they can go from seeing a design on a fashion catwalk to producing it and getting into their stores in 15 days.

In some ways, this is the tightest and most easily understood and managed culture. If you’re leading a producing company, drive stability, independence, results and authority. Have a bias to organize hierarchically. Do not shy away from command and control operations. Enforce polices for the good of all.

Next:  George looks into a culture of Interdependence.  You can read the first article on Independence here

 

Since you should align your culture, organization and operations around one of four strategies, it’s helpful to flesh out what the four different cultures mean. In the first of four articles, George Bradt digs into a culture of INDEPENDENCE – unleashing individual creativity and invention

A culture of independence is more open, diffused, caring, flexible, informal and casual. Expect people operating in a culture like this to care about learning and enjoyment, to be proactive and driven by their own interpretation of the intended purpose. These people will be hard to control – which is exactly what you want.

Build a culture like this to unleash creativity and invention – the first step in innovation. Innovation is the introduction of something new. You need to be innovative to stay ahead of the curve whether your primary strategy is design, production, delivery or service.

All cultures are blends of many different elements. Some people will work interdependently. Some will have a bias to flexibility over stability and some things must be stable and reliable. But the over-riding, most important dimension is independence because the sparks of invention are inherently individual. Inventing requires freeing individuals.

Not only is each person in a culture of independence going to behave individualistically, but there is no overall formula for the ideal independent culture. Organizations may vary their cultural preferences on scales like work-focused versus more work-life balance or formal versus informal communication or how they learn.

Purpose

The one thing that probably should not vary is attention to purpose. CEO Tim Cook and all at Apple are clear they are “trying to change the world for the better.” They care about products and people, about inventing products that help people do things they could not have done before, about infusing products with a humanity that others have never done. Their purpose is their ultimate guiding principles.

Apple’s Cook sees himself as their chief enablement officer. His job is to lead the efforts to provide freeing support to Apple’s inventors. As he says over and over again, his job is “to block the noise from the people who are really doing the work” – the designers and inventors.

(This post is taken from an article which first appeared in Forbes.   NEXT:  George examines a culture of Stabillity)

Given enough time and money, your competitors can duplicate almost everything you’ve got working for you. They can hire away some of your best people. They can reverse engineer your processes. The only thing they can’t duplicate is your culture.

Brave Cultures Are Sustainable

All music is made from the same 12 notes. All culture is made from the same five components: Behaviors, Relationships, Attitudes, Values and Environment. It’s the way those notes or components are put together that makes things sing. (Follow this link for more on BRAVE cultures and some ways to put this into practice across interviewing, due diligence, and engaging with the culture.)

In sustainable, championship cultures, behaviors (the way we do things here) are inextricably linked to relationships, informed by attitudes, built on a rock-solid base of values, and completely appropriate for the environment in which the organization chooses to operate. As Simon Sinek famously pointed out, most organizations think what – how – why.

Great leaders and great organizations start with why (environment and values), then look at how (attitudes and relationships) before getting to what (behaviors).

• Behaviors: What impact? Implementation.
• Relationships: How to connect? Communication.
• Attitude: How to win? Choices.
• Values: What matters and why? Purpose.
• Environment: Where to play? Context.

It’s the context that makes it so hard to duplicate a championship culture. Because every organization’s environment is different, matching someone else’s behaviors, relationships, attitudes, and values will not produce the same culture.

Attitude Is the Pivot Point

As you work to evolve your culture, focus on attitudes. There’s a strong case to be made that IBM’s near-death experience was a result of a bad attitude. It thought it was the best. It thought its customers needed it more than it needed its customers. It stopped being flexible. The big thing Lou Gerstner did was reversing that attitude. Behaviors and relationships followed.

Of course, I am oversimplifying things. Few things are as simple as we hope they are.

Of course, you have to be in touch with your environment.

Of course, you have to make sure your values are current.

Of course, people and communication matter.

Of course, it’s all theoretical gibberish until someone actually does something

Attitude is not the only lever. But it’s generally the lever to pull first, using that choice or change to influence the others.

(Editor: Starting Thursday we begin a four-part series by George on culture as a competitive advantage).

 

Feeling like you are one of many, no way to see a path to a more strategic role from where you find yourself. You know you are not completely fulfilled in your career. You pick a direction, any direction to find an alternative to the track you are on.

This leads you to begin interviewing, within your company or outside. You ask, why am I not getting that interview? Or after getting the interview, why did I not get the position? Even if you are working in the same company and in the same position, are you asking why you are not progressing in your career?

Is this you?  And, if so, do you see what is happening?

If you are doing the same thing all the time, no matter how well you do it, no one will see you differently. If you want something new in your career, you must do something different.

You can put it this way: “You can’t get there, the same way you got here”.  Or the way Einstein said it: “Doing the same thing and expecting different results is the definition of insanity”.  No matter how you say it, something has to change if you want different results.

Let’s say you dream of being in a more strategic role. To date, you have been very operational. Are you seeking positions where you can prove you have what it takes to do the job?

Do you apply for a strategic role? Do you ask to be part of that new project at work?  Or are you thinking right now, how can I do that when I don’t have the skills and/or experience (are you crazy)?

 

Why Are You Looking?

Let’s start by looking at why you want a more strategic role.

Do you recall being asked to get involved in a project or you had an opportunity to be part of a strategic conversation? It lit you up like fireworks on the 4th of July. You were so energized, you thought, this is what I really want to be doing.

You got a taste of something different, some exposure to another possibility to earn your living. Something woke up inside you to make you start asking yourself, what is possible for me? Is there more than what I am doing?

Understanding what I call the characteristics or attributes of a position which truly excites you is more important than your skills and experience. Don’t get me wrong; no one is going to hire a business person to be a medical doctor, just because that is what they truly want.

But it also doesn’t mean that an accountant can’t become a professional leadership coach.   Oh, that’s what I did. In fact, I changed my career six times after leaving college. (No, I won’t tell you what span of time that entailed.)

 

Explore Yourself

Back to the point, what you really want to do will take reflection and self-exploration. As a coach, I ask many questions and will take the time to truly understand where you want to take your career.

Some people know in general what they want, yet still need to understand what is driving that decision. Others know what they don’t want, and they need to understand what it is they do want in their careers.

When you are clear on your purpose you begin to see a path. The path will show you how the experience you have can be transitioned into a new career.

The skills you have may be very useful in the new career and applied in different ways. You may have skills you are unaware you acquired while gaining experience doing whatever it is you have done in the past. You start seeing how you can get out of the forest!

Now armed with a true understanding, you are ready to present yourself for the position you truly want. You will have the passions that others don’t have to differentiate you as a viable candidate. You will ask more questions about how the position fits the person you want to be and that will result in a level of confidence about achieving your ideal position.

Fulfill your potential by investing in yourself to discover what you truly want in your career and your life.

I would be honored to support you on your path to fulfill your potential. Remember when you rise, you raise those around you to be a better version of themselves.

 

Laura Di Tomasso is an executive coach based in Austin, Texas. You can contact her and learn more about coaching opportunities.

If you are the smartest person in the room, you are definitely in the wrong room.” – Michael Dell

Ambitious interviewers are anxious to get a crystal-clear picture of candidates including their personalities and primary social motives.  It is also wise to dive deeper and take a close look at the candidate’s background:

• The professional background of the candidate: who are the people on his or her team and who make up the extended professional network?
• The personal background of the candidate

The candidate’s professional background

One of the best ways to separate the average candidate from the excellent, where talent is concerned, is to zoom in on the people with whom they surround themselves. Truly outstanding leaders and managers never forget that they depend on the people around them for achieving remarkable and impressive company targets.

They also realize that by surrounding themselves with the best and the brightest this will have a positive impact on their personal learning curve. For these reasons, they tend to hire the very best people they can find.

Within our firm, De Vroedt & Thierry Leadership Consulting (Cornerstone Amsterdam), we intentionally look beyond the individual when we are selecting talent, and we pay close attention to the people they hired in their present job.

Are their immediate subordinates and colleagues able to equal or even surpass the candidate in skills and achievement? What kind of people are they in contact with professionally? After 20-plus years in executive recruitment I find this all highly relevant information. As mentioned, you can tell a good candidate from the grade of people they select!

Someone who dedicated a large chunk of his working life to talent management and who conducted remarkable interviews was David Ogilvy, the 20^th century advertising master. His assertion that true talent loves to gather excellent achievers around them, to fill in the gaps in their own expertise and areas of improvement – regardless of how talented they are — really inspires me. Here is how he put it:

First, make yourself a reputation for being a creative genius. Second, surround yourself with partners who are better than you are. Third, leave them to go get on with it.”

To Ogilvy, the ideal corporate structure resembles the Russian Matryohka doll, an ever-growing collection of greater people. If you are bold enough to hire those who are greater or better than you, you will end up with an organisation of giants.

Some people may react cynically to this principle, saying that there are plenty of CEOs and top managers who may be talented and yet are bent on selecting weaker individuals to work for them so they can rule without being opposed.

With very few exceptions, such managers are what I call Sun Kings: they surround themselves with people who appear to be good at their jobs but who turn out to be nothing more than submissive followers and dutiful implementers. Potential hires like this are to be avoided at all costs, regardless of where they might have worked previously, or how talented they are in other respects.

If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.” – David Ogilvy

The relevance of screening the candidate’s personal background

Keeping one’s business and personal lives separate may seem ideal, but it is fast becoming impossible to do in a world where the different spheres of people’s lives are converging more often. For that reason, it is useful to examine candidates’ personal lives for the wealth of information home life can reveal about how they might go about their job.

You cannot, of course, investigate the personal life of a candidate without prior permission. You can, however, be explicit in asking personal questions during an interview, or subtly involving someone’s spouse or partner in the selection process. Just be sure that you are on the right side of your country’s pertinent legislation and regulations.

A candidate should not feel pressured into answering such questions: you must remain meticulous and transparent in your selection process, avoiding questions which are obviously disrespectful, rude or transgress into an area of protected privacy.

I noticed that the dynamic range between what an average person could accomplish and what the best person could achieve was 50 or 100 to 1. Given that, you’re well advised to go after the cream of the cream.” – Steve Jobs

Conclusion

If you are determined to find the best and the brightest I advise you to look at candidates from various angles. You should keep their entire background in mind.

Who have they surrounded themselves with, both professionally and personally? Do they surround themselves with people who fight for what they believe is the right course of action, or are they simply yes-men who follow orders and implement what is being told?

Worthwhile candidates know that a company atmosphere encouraging employees to speak up is an invigorating place to work. And in a tight labour market that will be comprised 50 % of the millennial generation, it will also be a way to become an employer of choice!

In 2005, long before Norway had begun to implement quotas for women in the boardroom, Elena Terol stepped out of a distinguished corporate career in talent acquisition to start her own executive search firm in Spain. She knew what she wanted.

Elena hired women partners for her company, ExcellentSearch, the Cornerstone member company in Madrid. The company grew; and so did the global discussion about the disturbing lack of women in senior executive roles and, more acutely, in the boardroom.

So in 2009, Elena and her team started, from scratch, a division dedicated to increasing female board members and executives in Spain. “We wanted women to be more visible.”

Elena’s team diligently built a database of over 300 talented women in all functions. When the new owner of the global telecommunications company Jazztel arrived in Spain, he asked Elena to present women-only candidates for an opening on the board. ExcellentSearch did not have to scramble.

Elena presented four female candidates for the position. The CEO was so impressed that he hired all four of them: one for the board position and the other three in tech, marketing, and human resources positions.

Jazztel later became a reference brand of Orange, a company where 8 of its 15 board members are women.

We presented four women for one position and he was so impressed with their talent he hired all four.”

Jazztel believed in women. But many other businesses fail to move beyond diversity speak and therefore continue to lag behind in hiring female executives — despite the claim that a more balanced leadership bench improves the bottom line.

In Room at the Top: Women Leaders and the Role of Executive Search, the London-based Recruitment & Employment Confederation blames the inaction on “ businesses not listening to advice from executive search firms to widen the talent pool and to question historical practices when it comes to senior appointments.”

A Larger Pool

Elena urges businesses to undertake a more rigorous search (“not just taking the recommendation of a friend”) or to hire a headhunter that can provide a larger, more objective pool. As with Jazztel, businesses are becoming increasingly explicit in asking search firms to provide a diverse set of candidates.

In Elena’s practice, her team typically talks with a sub-set of 10-15 candidates and in the end presents 3-5 to clients. She likes 2-3 of them to be women.

Changing the Climate

Voicing a commitment to hiring more women is inadequate. Spain, along with other countries, is hiring more women into senior roles but there is a long way to go. As for women on boards, the reviews on quotas are mixed.

While they’ve clearly increased the number of women on boards (Norway is slightly above its 40% mandate), quotas alone cannot tackle the underlying need for businesses to transform the organizational climate for women. Businesses must truly believe that women in leadership roles are major assets – and that means confronting the challenges of change.

The irony is that, in Elena’s view, women are more apt to challenge norms and raise the difficult questions in the boardroom. Sometimes it takes women to hire more women.

Making Women Visible

Women play a role in making themselves more visible, in part because they don’t always know how to sell themselves. They tend to be much less aggressive in their branding and fail to ask for what they want. In the inner circles of women mentoring one another, it’s called the “don’t ask, don’t get” phenomenon.

Elena’s advice? Don’t be afraid to ask for a specific position if you want it. And prepare for what it takes.

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For percentages of women on boards in your country between 2010-2016, see Female share of seats on boards of the largest publicly listed companies produced by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

There’s a catch when you hire a new leader.

If you spend $300,000 on an exceptional car you expect, and get, a very comprehensive warranty.

Invest that or more in a new CEO?  No warranty.  Just hope you made the right decision.

There may not be a absolute guarantee in recruiting top talent but there is a critical ancillary process that will hugely tilt the table in favor of a successful hire. It’s called Executive Integration Coaching.

Integration Coaching is not as well-known a term as onboarding and should not be confused with it. Onboarding has no acceptable definition other than a vague “getting an executive off to a fast start”. It has become commoditized and, in many instances, does not last longer than a few weeks and does not consist of much more than “the computer is here and the coffee maker down the hall.”

Onboarding is a short-term, agenda-driven orientation that tends to be a one-size-fits-all approach.

Executive Integration Coaching, on the other hand, views the transition as the second part of a comprehensive leadership succession which in many ways is more difficult than the recruitment and assessment stages.

The process is carefully designed, with a long-term view, to maximise the success of the new Executive. It involves emotions, beliefs, egos and understanding of what the organization is and should become, with a particular emphasis on company culture and political landscape.

Research indicates new leaders fail not because their operational abilities are inadequate but because they come in unprepared to lead in a new and different organizational culture. A recent survey reported 65% of respondents believed the failure of a new leader was due to poor culture fit.

It’s a two-edged sword. The organization may have felt they have the right person and moved on to other matters, assuming the new leader will “settle in” and figure things out on her own.  She, on the other hand, may not have sought the clarity needed to maneuver in a new environment at an accelerated pace and in a successful manner due to unspoken norms and expectations.

An Executive Integration Coach sees bigger issues

Companies increasingly are turning to Executive Integration Coaching for the solution. It’s a logical progression. The executive coach, most often an external partner, is experienced in a broad range of leadership attributes that extend beyond the parameters of the job.  The coach is looking to the bigger issues of how the leader’s experience and expectations align with his or her new environment.

At Cornerstone International Group, we are dedicating resources to focus specifically on Executive Integration Coaching as an essential component of the leadership integration process.

Our firm, The Human Capital Group, which is the Cornerstone Member in Nashville, Tenn., is leading this movement as an integrated talent solution provider. We believe that our clients want a focused partner that will provide solutions that are:

• Built around attracting, developing and retaining talent
• Tied to the organizational strategy and show an ROI
• Personalized and ongoing
• Addressing integration misalignment right away

The return on the Executive Integration Coaching process is both long as well as short term and provides a seamless transition that is beneficial to the organization as well as the new leader.  Executive Integration Coaching is based on the premise that learning and development are ongoing and that a learner mindset is critical during any time of transition.

So, the next time you plonk down Ferrari money to attract a new Executive, look into the extended warranty. It’s called Executive Integration Coaching.

Leave me a comment or feel free to contact me at ginger-duncan@cornerstone-group.com.

Some company recruiters may not know what a short list is.  Those who do, recognise it as a critical step in identifying the best candidate for a senior position in their organization.

The Short List only comes up in Retained Executive Search. The methodology in Retained is to scour the market for not only the best qualified but the best fit with the client company. (

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The result of this rigorous discovery and scrutiny – across town or across the globe — is the Short List.  There may have been a Long List earlier, but the Short List is the critical moment.

This is the List that contains the names of the people that an experienced and professional agency consider the best qualified for a specific challenge and who are worthy of your review.

And why is this the key – the critical moment – in your bid to secure absolutely the best talent?

Because if that person is not on the Short List at this point, you are going to fall short of your goal.  You are overwhelmingly likely to select a finalist from this list.  It is very unlikely that you are going to restart the basic search because you are relying on the firm you retained to have covered ALL the bases, not just the easy ones.

Let’s look at this another way. You could do your own research. But at your paygrade you should not be looking under rocks. Or you could go the contingency search route and evaluate a flood of “available” supported by minimum documentation and reasoning.

In either case, you will be drawing up your own list of finalists, your Short List, based on less than optimum input.  Compare that with how we would do it at Cornerstone International Group.

With over 250 experienced executive search consultants in 56 offices and 34 countries around the world, we have a pretty good idea where the best people are.  Once we thoroughly understand your organization, your immediate needs and where you want to get to, we will also have a pretty good idea of who will be the best people to deliver your goals.

They may not be available. But we also know which of them might be interested in what you do, who you are, and what you are offering – interested enough to move.

They will be on our Short List to you – a list of maybe half a dozen exceptional achievers, women and men, tightly aligned to your briefing and goals, assessed and pre-screened.

We bring this list to you. We go over each candidate in detail. We bring in who you want to see. We make recommendations.

But this is your show. We just got you to the championship round.