Category Archives: Inspiring Identity

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A Test of Google’s Character

I hope Google is considering what I presented at it’s Mountain View, California headquarters last summer as it decides how to respond to the Chinese government’s apparent hacking of Google’s servers to access information on Chinese human rights protestors. If evidence becomes clear that the Chinese government is responsible for the attack, Google’s response will have an significant effect on the firm’s reputation, consumer brand, employer brand and employee engagement. This is a test of Google’s corporate character and whether or not it will live up to its aspiration “don’t be evil” and its belief in supporting a free marketplace of ideas. Human rights abuses and censorship in China are no secret. To be indifferent to China’s actions in this instance, however, is to provide silent assent. What company or leader would want such a legacy?

The Chinese Government-Google showdown reminds me of a line from Elie Wiesel’s profound speech entitled “The Perils of Indifference.” In it, Wiesel states:

“Why did some of America’s largest corporations continue to do business with Hitler’s Germany until 1942? It has been suggested, and it was documented, that the Wehrmacht could not have conducted its invasion of France without oil obtained from American sources. How is one to explain their indifference?”

It would be wise for Google’s leaders to read Wiesel’s speech and consider how history will eventually record their decision. Some decisions reflect inflection points for a firm and for history itself. As historian David McCullough reminds us in the preface to his book Brave Companions,

“…while there are indeed great, often unfathomable forces in history before which even the most exceptional of individuals seem insignificant, the wonder is how often events turn upon a single personality, or the quality we call character.”

This can be said for corporate character too.

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Note: Above is a video of a presentation I gave on leadership, employee engagement, productivity and innovation at Google’s corporate headquarters, the Googleplex, last summer. On this rare occasion, I presented alone. Normally I present with my colleague Jason Pankau because better together.  As Jason says, “Mike’s the serious one, I’m the fun one.”

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Here’s to Positive Role Models

While growing up did you have role models in your life who had a profoundly positive effect on you? Perhaps it was a teacher who believed in you and pushed you to strive, a parent of one of your friends who consistently provided encouragement or a coach who modeled great leadership, teaching you to work hard and play fair. I’m fortunate to have had positive role models and mentors in my life who brought out the best in me and I’ve tried to play that role for younger people in my community.

I was reminded about positive role models recently while watching a remarkable television program called Friday Night Lights. I really want to encourage you to check out this award-winning and critically-acclaimed drama. This show is gritty and real.  I don’t want to give away the story but suffice it to say the writing, acting and production of this show are extraordinary, a far cry from many of the vacuous programs on today.  You can rent the first three seasons at your local video store and the fourth season will be broadcast soon on NBC (if you have DirecTV, you can watch the fourth season now on Wednesdays at 9:00 PM Eastern).

While I’m not an avid football fan (and you don’t have to be to enjoy this show), I love this drama for its inspiration, entertainment and the values it promotes. The primary examples of great role models on display are in the characters of coach Eric Taylor and his wife Tami. Eric is the high school football coach in a football-crazy West Texas town that, incidentally, is based on Odessa, Texas, where I worked for Texas instruments in my first job after college.  Tami is a guidance counselor who becomes the high school’s principal in later episodes.   Eric and Tami are both leaders who inspire the kids to achieve excellence in their academic and athletic endeavors, and in their relationships and personal character. The show’s adult and teenage characters face the types of heart-wrenching trials and temptations that we all face in life, whether it’s the sickness or death of a loved one, a friend who needs us during a busy and demanding time in our life, or the lure of doing something we know is wrong for the sake of status or financial gain.

The above video clip includes images from Friday Night Lights set to Coldplay’s song “Fix You.”   The images coupled with the song’s music and lyrics capture the spirit of Friday Night Lights. I hope you’ll check it out. You’ll be glad you did.

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Connecting With Clients

What makes you indispensable to a client?  So indispensable that she treats you as a valued partner and pays you well for a sustained period of time?  The obvious answer is to have clearly demonstrable expertise in areas she values. This alone will open doors and close deals for you.  It won’t ensure long-term loyalty, however.

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Groundbreaking Identity Survey Report

Have you ever witnessed an employee whose personal identity is closely connected to the identity of his or her organization?  I’ve written about Nick the doorman at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in New York City and how fired up he is greeting cancer patients and their families.  Nick actually begins making eye contact  with patients when they are within eyesight walking toward MSKCC’s entrance (in Midtown Manhattan where no one makes eye contact).  One reason why Nick is so fired up is that he is a cancer survivor who attributes his survival to the care he received at MSKCC.

One of the leading thinkers on identity is Larry Ackerman, founder of The Identity Circle.  He wrote an excllent book entitled Identity is Destiny that effected the way I think about corporate identity and its impact on performance. Larry has come out with a new report entitled The Identity Effect.  The report is based on a survey of 2,000 individuals across five industries.  I wrote in the Connection Culture Manifesto and Fired Up or Burned Out, an organization’s identity has an impact on employee engagement and organizational performance if it inspires employees.  Larry’s research supports that view and sheds some additional insights on the power of identity. I encourage you to read it.

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Nations Need Inspiring Identities Too

I’ve written about the need for organizations to have inspiring identities as one means to unite, engage and align members. Identity is the narrative that describes mission, values and reputation. An identity become inspiring when it connects with the personal identities of the organization’s members.  Nick, the door man at the 53rd Street location of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) in NYC is fired up, in part, because of MSKCC’s inspiring identity. Nick believes in MSKCC’s mission to provide “The Best Cancer Care, Anywhere,” he embraces MSKCC’s values of caring about people and being the best in providing cancer treatment (i.e. the value of excellence), and he is proud of MSKCC’s reputation as one of the leading cancer centers in the world.

Nations need inspiring identities too. America has benefitted from its identity as the “land of the free and home of the brave,” with values of liberty, equality of opportunity and justice for all. According to historian Gordon Wood, by the early 1800’s, America’s reputation had been transformed from being viewed as on the fringe of the civilized world to being at the vanguard. An inspiring identity contributed to America’s success.

One region in today’s world that needs to find an inspiring identity is Central Asia.  

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Culture, Not Who Pays, Is Real Problem in Healthcare

The New York Times columnist David Brooks just came out with his Sidney Awards for the best magazine essays in 2009.  I always read them because Brooks is among the very best writers/thinkers in journalism today.  One of the award winners is “The Cost Conundrum” by Atul Gwande, the surgeon, author and MacArthur genius award recipient.  Brooks describes Gwande’s essay as the most influential essay written this year.  I highly recommend that you take the time to read it.

What I found especially interesting in Gwande’s essay is that he concludes that culture — or more specifically, the values of doctors — is at the heart of America’s heathcare cost crisis rather than who pays the costs.  Gwande takes us to McAllen, Texas where in 2006, Medicare spent nearly $15,000 per enrollee, twice the national average, but achieved no better than average quality of care.  Like a good investigative reporter he roots out the truth by conducting qualitative interviews and looking into quantitative data.  He discovers that the average doctor in McAllen orders more procedures than the average doctor in America.  Upon further investigation he learns that in towns like McAllen it’s a handful of doctors who drive up the cost per patient by ordering unnecessary procedures. He explains how these doctors benefit financially from ordering unnecessary procedures. The financial benefits come in the form kickbacks to admit patients to hospitals and revenue to partnerships of physicians who own diagnostic equipment such as MRI and CT-scans.  He sums it up this way:

“When you look across the spectrum from Grand Junction to McAllen–and the almost threefold difference in the cost of care–you come to realize that we are witnessing a battle for the soul of American medicine.  Somewhere in the United States at this moment, a patient with chest pain, or a tumor, or a cough is seeing a doctor.  And the damning question we have to ask is whether the doctor is set up to meet the needs of the patient, first and foremost, or to maximize revenue.”

In some ways, this is a matter of identity.

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Connecting Up: Our Need for Transcendence

What do many scientists at NASA and engineers at Google have in common with a doorman at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC)?  The answer: they are fired up about the importance of their work and have a passion and energy that drives them to be a force for the cause.  Employees at NASA are fired up that they are exploring space.  Google employees are fired up because they are organizing information and making it accessible to the world.  I learned  this when I met employees at NASA and Google.   I spoke at both organizations earlier this year.

The doorman I refer to at MSKCC is named Nick.  When my wife Katie and I were walking down 53rd street in NYC in 2004 and we got within eyesight of the MSKCC  entrance, Nick locked his eyes on her and greeted her like a returning friend.  This in in Mid-town Manhattan where no one makes eye contact! Nick knows cancer patients when he sees them, probably from the wigs they wear.   It felt like the healing began within eyesight of MSKCC.

Katie was at MSKCC for high dosage chemo treatments she needed to treat advanced ovarian cancer.  Late last year her oncologist told her it that given favorable test results and five years in remission it was unlikely she would have a recurrence.  Words can’t express how overjoyed we were to hear that news. When we told Nick, he gave Katie a big hug and said how proud he was that she persevered.  We learned that Nick was a cancer survivor too and he attributed his survival to the treatments he received at MSKCC.  Is it any wonder then that this man is so passionate about his work at MSKCC.  You have to see Nick to believe it and you can if you stop by MSKCC’s entrance on 53rd Street across the street from the Citigroup building.  He’s a big guy with a dar complexion and blue eyes. Tell Nick you read about him.  Don’t worry that it may seem strange.  Former cancer patients and their family members regularly stop by to say hello to Nick. That’s how beloved he is.

Nick’s example shows that people are fired up if their work reflects the eternal values of the transcendent: truth, beauty and goodness.  MSKCC’s work reflects goodness and is expressed in it’s tagline “The Best Cancer Care, Anywhere.”  Apple’s passion for the aesthetic design and ease of use of its products reflects beauty. Work in the fields of journalism, research, theology and the academy reflect truth-seeking.

Truth, beauty and goodness are eternal values that reflect transcendence.  Human beings need the truth, beauty and goodness of transcendence to meet our need for meaning in life.  If you can find time over the holidays, reflect on the need for the transcendent values of truth, beauty and goodness in your own life. Below are links to some of my favorite essays, speeches and articles that touch on transcendence. Let me encourage you to print them out, read them and consider their relevance to your life and the lives of those you love.  

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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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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.