The Future of Leadership is Already Here by Micah Solomon

The future of leadership — company leaders who are preparing a bright future for their companies and perhaps for the world — is already here. These leaders focus not just on nuts and bolts, techniques and standards, but on culture.

A strong, consciously developed pro-customer (and pro-employee) company culture is a business advantage that will serve you for years—and inoculate you against competitive inroads.

Think for a minute about Southwest Airlines and the lengthy list of predicted category killers that have tried to imitate it: United Airlines’s United Shuttle, Continental Airlines’s Continental Lite, Delta’s Delta Express, and US Airways’s Metro-Jet. What did these companies lack: Money? Name recognition? Hardly. They lacked Southwest’s relentless focus on culture, which none of its pop-up competitors was willing to slow down to emulate. And all are now bust.

Why do great leaders work on culture first?

• Without a consciously created culture, your leadership won’t last beyond the moment you leave the building. An inevitable complaint I hear from consulting clients and at my speeches is this: “Employees act differently when there aren’t any managers around.” But with a great company culture, employees will be motivated, regardless of management’s presence or absence.

• The number of interactions at a business between customers and staff is nearly infinite, and only a strong, clear pro-customer culture gives you a fighting chance of getting the preponderance of these interactions right.

• The current technological revolution amplifies the problems of not having the correct culture: Employees not acting in their customers’ best interest will end up having their actions broadcast over Twitter within minutes.

• Business realities are continually changing, and only a strong culture is going to help you respond to, capitalize on, and drive forward these changes in order to serve customers and show your business in the best light.

How to start leading through culture.

1. Articulate your central philosophy, in just a few words if possible: a few meaningful words.

That’s right: a company’s culture can begin with words, but those words need to represent a decision—something you actually stand for, a decision then expressed in the clearest, and ideally fewest, words. Find a central operating principle. Think of the Ritz-Carlton’s “We are Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen,” or Mayo Clinic’s “The needs of the patient come first.”

2. Elaborate on your central philosophy with a brief list of core values

Make it a list short enough that every employee can understand, memorize, and internalize it, yet long enough to be meaningful. Your core values should cover how customers, employees, and vendors should be treated at all times.

3. Include the wider world

Your people want a sense of purpose, believe it or not, beyond the ability to exercise stock options at a favorable moment. More inspirational a version of the “triple bottom line,” such as Southwest’s “Performance – People – Planet” commitment and annual report card.

4. Reinforce your commitment to these values continually

You may want to go as far as to devote five minutes every morning to stress one value, or an aspect of one value, at your departmental meeting. (This is what the Ritz-Carlton does.) If that’s too often for your business reality or sensibilities, do it weekly. But don’t save it for the annual company picnic. Annual anything is the enemy of ‘‘core.’’

5. Make it visual

The Ritz-Carlton has ‘‘credo cards’’— laminated accordion-fold cards that each employee carries during work hours. The brand’s entire core beliefs, plus shared basics of guest and employee interactions, fit on that card. (Horst Schulze, the legendary founder of the modern-day Ritz-Carlton, says people chuckled twenty years ago when he said ‘‘laminated card’’; they’re not laughing now.)

Zappos highlights one of its core values on each box it ships out. And sometimes ‘‘visual’’ doesn’t mean words at all. One way that FedEx shows that safety is a core value is via the orange shoulder belts in its vans: Everyone can see—from twenty-five yards away—that the driver’s wearing a belt.

6. Make them the focus of orientation

That way, if safety is one of your core values and you stress this at orientation, on day two, when the new employee’s coworker tells him ‘‘In this restaurant, we stack the high chairs in front of the emergency exit when we need more room to do our prep work’’ [This is a real-life example, unfortunately], the new employee will experience cognitive dissonance and work on a way to align the actions of the company with the core values they’re supposed to reflect.

7. Most of all, train, support, hire, and, if necessary, use discipline to enforce what’s important to you

A core values statement is two-dimensional until you bring it to life—with the right people and energetic guidance. ‘‘Maintaining a culture is like raising a teenager,’’ says Ray Davis, President and CEO of Umpqua Bank. ‘‘You’re constantly checking in. What are you doing? Where are you going? Who are you hanging out with?’’ And, sometimes, you have to use some tough love when that teenager is acting up in ways that don’t support the culture you’re working to build.

By Micah Solomon, a customer service and marketing speaker, strategist, and bestselling business author. His forthcoming book is High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service. (American Management Association/AMACOM). He’s also the founder and “Dean” of the free online business resource, “College of the Customer.” Find Micah at http://www.micahsolomon.com.

 Photo courtesy of  Island Joe

Micah Solomon

By Micah Solomon, a customer service and marketing speaker, strategist, and bestselling business author. His latest book is High-Tech, High-Touch Customer Service. (American Management Association/AMACOM). He’s also the founder and “Dean” of the free online business resource, “College of the Customer.”