1.11 (V) 01.08 - How Must We Act to Ensure Success (1)
Okay, we've done the first two questions. First question, why do we do what we do? Getting at that core purpose. Second question, what does success look like? Really defining that vision for success, that if we are successful as a team, here's what we will create for our customers, stakeholders, employees and otherwise. Now time for the third question. This is potentially one of the most important questions that you have to to answer as a leader in your team, which is, how must we act to ensure success? This question is ultimately getting at the values that will guide the choices and behaviors for yourself, but even more importantly, your team members. One of your responsibilities as a leader, because you're not gonna always be there in the room when people are behaving, making decisions, and acting. You need to be able to provide what I call guideposts, the values that are going to guide decisions and guide actions. And ultimately these values have to be embedded in the vision that you are creating and communicating for your team. So let's again look at a few examples. This time I'm gonna show you some examples that maybe don't necessarily always have the intended impact that we might aspire, or want. Here's the first. This is a good example of what you might see, when you walk into an organization, up on the wall. These words of values, in this case they are respect, integrity, communication, excellence. With the quote that says we treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves, the golden and rule if you will. But what's interesting in this organization in the 90s the 1990s was a client of mine this organization had to add something to its value statement that was shared internally and ultimately the language they added was as follows we do not tolerate abusive or disrespectful treatment. Ruthlessness, callousness and arrogance do not belong here in this organization. Now, to be perfectly honest if you have to add that language formally to the value statements that you are communicating internally to your company. You can only imagine the actual culture and behavior that exists within the teams in that organization. Ultimately that organization was one that we now know as Enron, that no longer exists and the history is well documented. So let's look at other examples where they have defined the values. How must we act to ensure success so that we are able to achieve that vision that we aspire to? Let's look at an example, Johnson & Johnson. If you've ever been to a Johnson & Johnson office location, and this is true for many of their locations around the world. You will see something whether it be in the foyer. You'll see it throughout the organization, at people's desks, whether it be on a mouse pad, or an image somewhere around the office. A statement that Johnson & Johnson calls our credo. This credo is ultimately a statement of its values. A statement of not only if we're successful here's what our world looks like but it clearly communicates a set of values that guide choices and behavior. So here's the credo that is shared with every Johnson & Johnson employee and is reinforced in many different ways throughout the organization. And I'm not going to go into depth or detail and read all of the different sentences and paragraphs in the credo. This is the credo in it's entirety so you can read it on your own. But I wanna make one important point. I want you to look at the first paragraph. The first statement. We believe our first responsibility, now I have bolded and underlined first because I think that's a really important word in this credo. We believe our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses, and patients, to mothers and fathers, and all others who use our products and services. Ultimately, Johnson & Johnson is articulating here, is their first priority, their first responsibility is to the customers, the people who actually use their products. Then skip to the second paragraph. We are responsible to our employees. Everyone must be considered as an individual. So the second paragraph is articulating that employees come next. Our customer becomes first, second paragraph our employees. Now jump to the third paragraph. We're responsible to the communities in which we live and work and to the world community. So Johnson & Johnson as a global organization is making a commitment to the communities in which they work and live. So again, customer comes first, employees come second, communities come third. Then look at the fourth paragraph, and again I bolded and underlined one word in the first sentence our final responsibility is to our stockholders. Business must make a sound profit. We must experiment with new ideas and so on. But think of the importance, the statement that's being made here by Johnson & Johnson. And again, go look at their stock performance over the course of history. It's one of the most successful organizations in the world in terms of financials, profit, and ultimately shareholder value. But what they're stating here is that our customer comes first, our employees come second our communities come third. And ultimately our stockholders, our shareholders, are our final responsibility. So what's the importance of this value hierarchy, or this value prioritization? Well, there will come times when you as leaders, and your teams, and your employees have to make choices. Because you can't always satisfy the needs of everybody. You can't always satisfy the needs of your customers, your employees, your communities, and your stock holders. There will come a time and there will come a day when you have to make really tough choices. And engage in behavior that satisfies one stakeholder, potentially a customer, over the benefit of one of the other stakeholders, whether it be an employee, a stockholder, or otherwise. So Johnson & Johnson has had this credo for decades. Why is that important? It's going to guide, again, decisions, actions, behavior. They've had this credo for decades, and in 1982 they were the prime target of an attack. And this attack put a lot of pressure on Johnson & Johnson. About what it was going to do and really put this credo to test. So let's look at that example, so what happened was an individual who has actually never been found, walked into a pharmacy, stole or shop lifted bottles of Tylenol. Laced those bottles opened them up and laced them with a poison called cyanide which is lethal or fatal. And then this person put this bottles of Tylenol back on the pharmacy shelf to be sold. Unsuspecting innocent people came bought those bottles of Tylenol, got a headache got sick, took the medicine and ultimately passed away. Seven people in total had died. You can imagine the crisis that now Jonson & Jonson is faced with. But if you go back to the credo, the question becomes, what do you do? As a leader within Tylenol, what do you do? So you have to remember, the first priority is to the customer, the people who use the products. So let me pause. If you were a leader within Tylenol, what would you choose to do?
