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What’s Your Work “Experience of a Lifetime”?

IMG_0449This is the mother ship, or at least that’s what I’ve always called the world headquarters of Morgan Stanley located in New York City’s Times Square. It was here that a significant moment in Wall Street history occurred on June 30, 2005. John Mack had been reinstated as Chairman and CEO by the firm’s board. On that day, when Mack and his wife Christy appeared at a meeting with hundreds of Morgan Stanley employees, they gave him a standing ovation. They knew this was an inflection point in the storied firm’s history. The man standing before them embodied their collective hopes that the firm would return to its former self by restoring a culture that was its greatest asset and the primary source of its competitive advantage.

Mack’s departure in early 2001 had come about as a result of Morgan Stanley’s merger with Dean Witter in 1997. Phil Purcell, Dean Witter’s CEO, became CEO of the combined firm and eventually pushed Mack out. Morgan Stanley’s reputation and culture suffered as a result of Purcell’s leadership style. I experienced the culture change first-hand. The book Blue Blood and Mutiny: The Fight for the Soul of Morgan Stanley describes this period in great detail and Joe Nocera of The New York Times wrote an excellent article about it entitled “In Business, Tough Bosses Are the Ones Who Finish Last.” Thanks to the vocal opposition to Purcell put up by former and current employees of Morgan Stanley, he was thrown out.

My introduction to Morgan Stanley came in 1996 when it purchased Van Kampen Investments where I worked reporting to the firm’s president and heading business and product development. As part of the team to integrate Van Kampen into Morgan Stanley, I commuted weekly to New York for a period of time. I was also part of a joint project to assess business opportunities in Japan. In 1998, I accepted  an offer to become chief marketing officer for Morgan Stanley’s Private Wealth Management Group. I was slightly apprehensive about moving to New York and joining this firm whose employees were known for their blue blood pedigrees. After all, I had grown up in the industrial town of Rockford, Illinois; my grandfathers had worked for a coal mine in the Appalachians; and I was the first in my family to go to college. I was intolerant of any hint of favoritism based on privilege rather than merit. I would soon learn that my concerns were unfounded.

Morgan Stanley was born as a result of the Great Depression. In 1934, the federal government forced the separation of investment banking and commercial banking pursuant to the Glass-Steagall Act and J.P. Morgan became two separate firms: J.P. Morgan and Company retained the commercial bank business and Morgan Stanley was created for the investment banking business. Both firms kept the values that J.P. Morgan himself summarized as doing first class business in a first class way.

From all I could see, this accurately described Morgan Stanley’s cultural DNA. The firm prized its reputation as first class. People at Morgan Stanley worked hard, were for the most part honest, and were typically engaged in philanthropic endeavors to help make the world a better place. Those who didn’t share the firm’s values weren’t considered to be “one of us” and they were thrown out if they lied, cheated or stole, or respectfully guided out if they didn’t live up to the firm’s standards of excellence. For me, Morgan Stanley’s values reflected my own and I was thrilled to be there and work alongside such outstanding colleagues.

The values that Morgan Stanley’s culture embodied included excellence in its every endeavor; open and, for the most part, civil debate on issues; and meritocracy in pay and promotions. It was a partnership culture in the very best sense and it had remained that way even after it converted from a legal partnership to become a publicly owned corporation in 1986. The energy and enthusiasm at Morgan Stanley was off the charts. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. My boss, John Straus, the head of Private Wealth Management, gave me the autonomy I needed to lead my department and get the job done. His door was always open when I needed his guidance or help navigating the politics that is part of every large firm. No one worked harder than John. My colleagues and I were inspired by his passion to create something great. I challenged the people I was responsible for leading to help Private Wealth Management reach its first billion dollar revenue year in history, a goal that we achieved  two and a half years later. It was one the best experiences in my professional life. Working at Morgan Stanley during those years was for me an experience of a lifetime.

Over time, as Phil Purcell and his loyalists exerted their control, that highly engaging environment soured. Former Morgan Stanley employees left in droves. John Straus left and, some months later, I did too. The experience was so eye-opening and disappointing to me that it was one of the catalysts for me to write the book Fired Up or Burned Out: How to Reignite Your Team’s Passion, Creativity and Productivity.

I’ve given a lot of thought to what made Morgan Stanley so successful. I know it was the firm’s people and culture. People were fired up because they worked in a Connection Culture. Another way to describe Morgan Stanley’s culture is that it was, as I wrote earlier, a partnership culture. David Sirota describes a partnership culture in his excellent book that I highly recommend entitled The Enthusiastic Employee and in this interview he did with Knowledge@Wharton.

How about you? Have you been a part of a Connection Culture or Partnership Culture where you felt connected to the firm’s mission, values, reputation, your colleagues and your day-to-day work? If so, what fired you up about it? I would like to hear about your work “experience of a lifetime.” Just post it in the comment section below.

(Note: on January 1st, 2010 James Gorman will succeed the retiring John Mack as Morgan Stanley’s CEO. John Mack will continue to be the firm’s chairman. To John Mack, I would like to say thank you for your leadership. And to James Gorman, congratulations and best wishes. Lead Morgan Stanley in a way that reflects the mindset of its founder who said  “…at all times the idea of doing only first-class business, and that in a first class way, has been before our minds.”  MLS)

Michael Lee Stallard speaks, teaches and writes about leadership, employee engagement, productivity and innovation at leading organizations including Google, GE, NASA, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics and the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia.  Most recently, Michael and his colleague Jason Pankau filmed a 90-minute program for Linkage’s Thought Leaders Series that will be released in January of 2010.  Michael wrote the guest editorial for Talent Management magazine’s January 2010 edition and last month his article on how the force of connection boosts productivity and innovation was featured as the lead article in the UK’s Developing HR Strategy Journal. Click on these links to learn more about Michael and Jason in the media and their speaking engagements.

 

 

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LRN’s Dov Seidman: Inspiring Principled Performance

Thought leaders such as Peter Drucker, W. Edwards Deming and Martin Seligman have had a profound effect on entire industries.  In this and coming posts, I’d like to bring your attention to a few thought leaders I believe will have a profound effect on business in the years and decades to come.

Dov Seidman is the CEO of LRN.  I’m going to see The New York Times columnist Tom Friedman interview Dov this Sunday coming evening at the 92nd Street Y in New York City.    You can purchase tickets for the event and see a video of Charlie Rose interviewing Dov at this link.  I highly recommend that you take the time to watch the video and, if you live in the NYC area, to attend the lecture/interview.

Dov argues that in today’s more transparent, hyper-connected world, maintaining a stellar reputation is critical to success.  The days of The Music Man — who behaves badly and then moves to another locale where inhabitants are unaware of past bad behavior — are gone.  Dov encourages organizations to develop a self-governing culture that out-behaves the competition.  His company helps organizations do this by providing, communication, education, certification and registry capabilities.

When organizations develop principled performance, it results in powerful connections among employees and with customers.  These connections are critical to sustainable performance as I have pointed out in The Connection Culture: A New Source of Competitive Advantage, a free ebook published by changethis.com.

To learn more about Dov’s views, I highly recommend reading his excellent book entitled  How: Why How We Do Everything Means Everything…In Business (and in Life) and checking out articles at this link to LRN’s website.

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Leading with the Power of Community

Do you ever wonder how past leaders could have missed what seems so obvious in hindsight? Sadly, most leaders live in an environment that makes them vulnerable to managerial failure.  The problem lies in a little-recognized reality of leadership: isolation.

Leading can be lonely.  Typically leaders have few, if any, high-trust relationships at work.  Because leaders have the power to make or break the careers of those around them, people are afraid to be honest with them and challenge their thinking.  Likewise, too often leaders are reluctant to let their guard down out of fear of losing the respect of their colleagues.

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HR: Order Takers or Game Changers?

The best HR leaders are game changers.  They develop conviction about what constitutes a high-performance work culture. They are a force that helps develop the values and processes necessary to make a high-performance work culture come to life.  The departments they run are NOT staffed with the type of order-takers Keith Hammonds described in his wildly popular Fast Company article entitled “Why We Hate HR.”

I recently wrote an article that describes a game changing strategy HR leaders should consider in light of today’s widespread employee disengagement.  The article was just published as the lead article in the UK’s Developing HR Strategy journal.  It’s entitled, “The Force of Connection: Boost Employee Engagement, Productivity and Innovation.”  You can download it at this link.

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Obama Leads Learning Organization

In this morning’s New York Times, David Brooks in his column entitled “The Analytic Mode,” argues that President Obama leads a learning organization.  I completely agree.  In the past I’ve argued that President Obama is an intentional connector in part because he is a bridge builder who accords respect to his political opponents and because he solicits the ideas and opinions of his advisors then considers them before making decisions.  This leadership approach creates Connection Cultures that keep members of his administration feeling connected so that they give their best efforts, align their behavior with organizational goals and take the risk to communicate information, especially information the president may not want to hear but needs to hears. President Obama might also be described as an “integrative thinker” who employs a “design thinking” approach.  What do you think?

Here are links to resources that will help you consider the wisdom of President Obama’s approach in general and specifically with respect to the decision to commit additional troops to Afghanistan.

David Brook’s NY Times column entitled  “The Analtytic Mode”

Speech I recently gave at Google on Connection Cultures and the “The Force of Connection”

Dean Roger Martin of The University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management on the Integrative Thinker and Design Thinking

For some perspective on a president’s decision to increase troops, listen to this Bill Moyer’s program that includes taped conversations President Johnson had with his advisors prior to committing troops to Vietnam.

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Can the Force of Connection Save this College?

Buck Smith, a 74-year-old, grandfatherly man, is leading a remarkable turnaround at Davis & Elkins College, a small liberal arts school in West Virginia, one of America’s poorest states.  Key to Smith’s strategy is strengthening the connection among everyone who is part of the college community.  Check out Buck Smith’s story in an inspiring and enlightening article that appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Eduction entitled “Turnaround President Makes the Most of His College’s Small Size.”  As you read the article, look for the three elements of a connection culture: Vision (Inspiring Identity), Value (Human Value) and Voice (Knowledge Flow).  For those of you who are unfamiliar with Connection Cultures, read the free, downloadable Connection Culture Manifesto published by changethis.com and available at this link.

Thanks to Dr. Al Bowman, president of Illinois State University, for sharing this article with me.  Dr. Bowman is another college president who is leading a turnaround.   I’ll be writing about it soon.  Stay tuned.

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A Coach Whose Record May Never Be Surpassed

One of my heroes celebrated his 99th birthday last month. I’m not going to tell you his name just yet because it will spoil the story for some of you.    In his honor, I’m posting an excerpt from my book Fired Up or Burned Out that describes why he is such a great leader and admirable individual. There is much to learn about leadership, employee engagement and productivity from his example.

Connection and the Legend

So often in life, good things bloom from the seeds of hardship. The personal character of a young teenager who went on to become a great leader was immeasurably shaped during the Depression when his family lost their farm in Indiana.  His father’s reaction to the loss was unusual. He wasn’t bitter about it. Instead, his dad focused on the future and told his children that everything would be all right. And it was.

During those impressionable years in this leader’s life, he learned that, like the Depression, some things in life are not in our control. His father taught him that he should always strive to do his best at anything he chose to do and not worry about the outcome. He would later spread that philosophy to countless other.

Another perspective he gained during those formative years was to value people. By watching his mom and dad and hearing the stories of faith they taught him, he learned the joy that came from making people and relationships his focus in life.

The young boy grew up to be an outstanding high school and college basketball player in a state that was rabid about the game. After college he married Nell, the love of his life and the only woman he had ever dated. He taught high school English and coached basketball until 1943 when he enlisted to serve in the Navy during World War II. When he returned from the war to the high school in South Bend, Indiana, where he previously taught, he was offered his old job. Other returning GIs were not, however, and so he refused the offer because he felt it was wrong for the school to deny veterans the jobs they had left to serve their country. Instead, he accepted an offer to become athletic director and head basketball coach at Indiana State Teachers College.

A Caring Coach

For the 1946-47 season Indiana State received a post-season invitation to the National Association of Intercollegiate Basketball (NAIB) national play-offs. After the coach learned that a young African-American, second-string guard on his team, Clarence Walker, would not be allowed to participate in the tournament because of the color of his skin, he declined the offer.

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The Blind Side

I highly recommend seeing The Blind Side, a movie about Baltimore Ravens’ offensive tackle, Michael Oher.  It’s worth the price of the ticket alone to see Sandra Bullock’s tour-de-force performance as Michael’s adoptive mom, Leanne Tuohy.  What I especially like about the movie is that it shows how the right social environment helps people thrive in life.

I don’t want to give away the story so let me just say in a nutshell that it was Leanne Tuohy who reached out to Michael.  It would have been easy for her to ignore him, but she didn’t. Instead, Leanne felt compassion for a young man who was wearing shorts in the winter and hanging around a high school gym just to stay warm.  She took the time to get to know him and his life’s story.  While others saw him as “Big Mike,” a quiet, giant, African-American young man from the Memphis ghetto, Leanne Tuohy saw him as a thoughtful boy with a big heart and protective instincts to match.  She called him “Michael,” a name he much preferred to “Big Mike.” Leanne’s insights helped Michael discover who he really was deep down inside and who he could become. These insights helped Michael see himself as a protector who “has the back” of his family and those he loves. It should come as no surprise then to learn that Michael Oher thrived in football as an offensive tackle responsible for protecting his teammates from the defense.

The Blind Side shows how the social environment we live in shapes us for good or ill.

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Is Patriot’s Bill Bilichick Great?

Bill Bilichick is being criticized for his decision to go for it on a fourth down in last night’s game against the Indianapolis Colts. I wrote admiringly in Fired Up or Burned Out about Bilichick and Tom Brady’s leadership of the New England Patriots. Neither man is perfect, of course*, but there is much to admire. Steven Levitt’s Freakonomics column in The New York Times provides another reason why Bilichick is among the best coaches when it comes to team performance. Levitt argues in “Bill Bilichick is Great” that statistically the coach made the right decision if his goal was to win even though it would subject him to endless criticism if the decision failed to pay off.

*filming the signals of opposing teams, as the Patriots were caught doing, is one shameful example.

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Why Employee Engagement Efforts Fail

To be successful, employee engagement efforts must educate and inspire then model, mentor and measure.  Most employee engagement efforts educate employees and thereby lay out the rational case but they utterly fail to inspire.  Research has shown that emotional factors are four times as effective as rational factors when it comes to the amount of effort people put into their work. Stories move people’s hearts, capture their imaginations and, as a result, they inspire people to make the effort to change.  When we hear inspiring stories about great leaders and individual contributors who engage the people around them, we inevitably want to emulate them. This gets people started on the right track.

To keep them moving in the right direction and build habits that engage, modeling, mentoring and measuring are all necessary. Most leaders understand they must model the behavior they want to spread.  Mentoring and measuring are also necessary to provide honest feedback, help us see our blind spots and provide the encouragement individuals need to persevere.  Absent these essential elements, any program is unlikely to succeed.   Here are some questions to consider:

1. Do your employee engagement efforts inspire as well as educate?

2. Do your employee engagement efforts mentor to provide encouragement and measure results to provide honest feedback?

If your answer is “no” to either or both of the above, you need to address the gaps.

Update

Here are a few updates related to my work.

Corp! magazine recently published an article on the presentation Jason Pankau and I gave at the Forum for People Performance Management and Measurement, an affiliate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.  You can read it at this link.

The Boy Scouts of America selected Fired Up or Burned Out as a text for its People Management 3 course for advanced staff leaders.

On Jan. 26-27 I will be chairman of the Human Capital Institute’s Talent Management for Life Sciences conference in Princeton, NJ.

This month, Developing HR Strategy, a journal based in the UK, published an article I wrote about how leaders develop emotional and rational connections with their followers.