When deciding to buy a car, too many people focus on its (sticker) price, not its long-term cost (fuel, insurance, maintenance, repairs, storage, etc.). The cost far exceeds the price.
Similarly, wise leaders understand that the cost of non-compliance far exceeds the price of compliance.
HT to Seth Godin, 16 Feb
If you have an unpleasant interaction at work today, try this: assume for a brief moment that the words you are hearing or reading are not the real message. Look for the real motivation behind the words. Assume positive intent.
Perhaps there is nothing more below the surface. But very often the jab comes from a person who is suffering through no fault of your own, and they see you as a safe place to offload their pain.
Looking at it this way will allow you to measure your response.
Building a more ethical and compliant organization is not as complicated as leadership thinks.
But it is more expensive and time consuming than they hoped for.
HT to Seth Godin, Feb 8
If you are a supervisor of 8 people in your organization of 100,000+ employees, simply focus on the culture you can create with those 8 employees. Do what you can, with what you have, where you are, as Roosevelt once said. Outsiders will notice, and your microculture will spread.
HT to Seth Godin, January 30
If your organizational culture isn’t changing for the best, it’s because your leadership doesn’t want it to change.
If we saw a rusty spot on our car, we would probably take care of it right away to prevent the rust from spreading.
The same goes with a deteriorating culture. If we don’t address it at the first signs of decay, we risk that it will eventually fall apart.
HT to Seth Godin.
When something bad happens at work, we can try to find out who did it and punish them.
One way to prevent the same thing from happening again is to find out how they did the deed and put a new control in place.
Going one step further, we can ask why they did it. What pressured them? What belief did they hold? Then we can change our processes to alleviate that pressure, and we can articulate our values to change that belief – with all employees.
The last and most important question to ask is “What is it about our culture that led to this failure?”
Addressing only the first three questions will not solve the real problem. Only the last answer leads to an effective solution.
Business leaders have no problem repeating the financial targets at every meeting. From this behavior, people know it’s important.
The same leaders hesitate to repeat that these goals must be met the right way. And from that behavior…
Your boss really wants to make their numbers this quarter. They are willing to do, and ask you to do, just about anything to get there.
But what they want even more, often without knowing it, is to have a good reputation and a good job for the next few decades. Humans are bad at long-term thinking.
The best thing you can do for your boss is first to help them understand their vested interest in the long-term. Then you can offer solutions for the coming quarter.
If you create the right conditions, plants will grow. That’s what they want to do.
Likewise, people want to do the right thing (except for sociopaths). Your job as a leader is simply to create the right conditions for ethical behavior.
HT to Seth Godin
The Ethical Leader 