Читать книгу Upstanding - Frank A. Calderoni - Страница 15

What we know as someone's character anchors the relationships we build with people around us—our boss, the people who work for and with us, our customers, our vendors, our investors, the communities in which we do business, and the world at large. Positive business reputations rely on leaders and cultures with upstanding character—behavior that demonstrates values people can rely on and build trust in. From what I have learned, character is intrinsic and enduring—like a boulder that weathers a hurricane with no visible stress or damage—and the origins of the word reflect this.

Character found its way into our language from the ancient Greek word charassein, which means “to engrave,” as you would engrave a letter, number, or other character onto a surface such as clay, wood, or metal using a chisel. As the pioneering psychoanalyst Dr. Richard Sterba pointed out, this original meaning has since been broadened to humans. Says Sterba:

Character designates the features of personality which are more or less indelibly engraved upon it, features which of course express themselves in actions and reactions, features that are “characteristic” of the individual, features by which one ego structure can be differentiated from others.¹²

I believe that, just as a great culture creates competitive advantage, so too does defining and nurturing an upstanding company character. Companies with upstanding character embrace and embody the virtues of empathy, courage, authenticity, honesty, integrity, respect, and more. All of those attributes combine to create positive interactions and relationships that are then rewarded with loyalty, engagement, and goodwill. People make decisions on what to buy, where to work, whom to partner with, and whom to affiliate with based on a company's values and on the character (or lack of it) displayed by its people. Do you stand for something? Is your focus on making the world a better place or just on making money?

We all have our personal opinions on which companies stand out when it comes to character and living their values; there are a variety of annual surveys that rate the best places to work based on employee feedback. For example, rankings for the annual Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For are based on the results of a 60-question survey given to workers at companies with at least 1,000 U.S. employees. According to the Great Place to Work organization, which administers the survey, 85 percent of the evaluation is based on what employees report about their experiences of trust and reaching their full potential as part of their organization, no matter who they are or what they do. The remaining 15 percent includes an assessment of all employees' daily experiences of the company's values, people's ability to contribute new ideas, and the effectiveness of their leaders, to ensure they're consistently experienced.¹³

Here are the top three companies on the 2020 list and a sample of what employees had to say about these organizations. It will be interesting and instructive to see if the organizational stresses brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic have a significant impact on the upcoming versions of this annual list.

 Hilton. “I love how I don't feel like just a number here. I am a strong believer that Hilton cares about their employees just like they care about their family and I am truly blessed to have been given the opportunity to work for such an amazing company.”

 Ultimate Software. “Ultimate Software takes care of its people and genuinely believes that putting people first is the only way to succeed. I have never felt more supported in my role or happier to come to work than I have since I started my journey with Ultimate.”

 Wegmans Food Markets. “When management says they care about their people it actually shows in their actions. I have always been made to feel wanted and valued as a person and employee.”¹⁴

I can almost guarantee that all companies on the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For list have strong, positive cultures and that their leaders have character and are fully aligned with their organizations' values. There are, of course, companies that have done well financially—sometimes incredibly well—despite having bad reputations and creating negative environments for their employees. But they are the exception, and the good results don't last.

The kinds of behaviors that were once considered “par for the course” in some organizations—underpaying women, celebrating aggressive “bro” cultures, excusing bad bosses, stigmatizing LGBTQ+ employees, marginalizing people of color—are no longer tolerated. People don't want to work for companies like this; they don't want to buy products or services from companies like this, and they don't want to support companies like this.

Consider the example of Uber, the disruptive ride-sharing pioneer that achieved a valuation of $70 billion by 2016, just seven years after it was founded in 2009.¹⁵ This valuation was truly a remarkable financial milestone, but there was a very dark side to this accomplishment. Uber's problematic culture, endemic in the engineering team, was revealed in 2017 when former software engineer Susan Fowler wrote a blog post about her experience of sexual harassment and discrimination at the company and her unsuccessful efforts to get management to do something about it.

By the time Fowler made her viral blog post, more than 200,000 people had deleted their Uber accounts—many to protest Uber's perceived support of the U.S. government's travel ban of January 28, 2017, and also the company's negative culture and then-CEO Travis Kalanick's alleged role in creating and perpetuating it.¹⁶ According to one Uber executive, employee morale cratered after these incidents. “Until 2017, you could go into Uber on any given day and half the T-shirts were Uber T-shirts. They disappeared overnight. People didn't want to wear Uber stuff.”¹⁷

In June 2017, Kalanick took an indefinite leave of absence, and he was ultimately pressured to step down as CEO by five key investors (he remained on the Uber board of directors until 2020). Uber's next CEO—Dara Khosrowshahi—joined a few months later and immediately got to work on reshaping the company's tarnished corporate culture, creating a more stable work environment, and stemming the exodus of talented employees. Even so, three years after the CEO transition and after publicly acknowledging that its culture was detrimental and in need of change, Uber continues an uphill battle to repair its reputation. This is a textbook example of how an unmanaged culture can cause real reputational and financial damage to an otherwise promising company.