Читать книгу Upstanding - Frank A. Calderoni - Страница 17

Culture and strategy are interdependent—they feed and have the potential to elevate each other. When a company's culture ignites passion and loyalty in their employees, their efforts to ensure the success of that strategy are multiplied. The results aren't visible just internally, but externally as well.

In the past, leaders were mostly judged on their ability to execute the technical aspects of their jobs and to deliver results. And while these will always be important qualities for leaders to have, motivating and energizing the people on their team are just as essential. In 2019, Fortune published its list of the World's 50 Greatest Leaders. The list represented a big shift in how we view leadership effectiveness today. Instead of being focused solely on financial results, the Fortune ranking rewarded leaders in business, government, philanthropy, and the arts who “are transforming the world and inspired others to do the same.” And, in the case of the business leaders on the Fortune list, they do this by creating great corporate cultures.

On the flip side, some companies do a poor job of creating a positive and sustaining corporate culture, but I would say most are in the middle—they believe they have a good culture but don't actively nurture or invest in it. It is an untapped resource.

What I've seen over and over again are leaders who take their culture for granted. They'll schedule an event that is meant to improve morale, or they'll take on a couple of short-term culture-boosting initiatives, check the box, and then move on. They don't realize that culture is an ongoing, evolving thing that has to be constantly developed and nurtured. Actively demonstrating character and culture starts at the top—it can't be delegated, and it must be intentional.

The second development I've seen is when the singular pursuit of business results comes at the expense of culture, which ends up jeopardizing enduring performance. It's all about how many widgets the company is going to make, and how they're going to make them. They overemphasize efficiency and results—giving culture and people a back seat. Over-indexing on quantitative success will not drive hypergrowth, agility, and loyalty. I know it sounds contrary coming from a former CFO, but you can't sustain your business by managing only to financials.

The third development that often causes culture and strategy to go wrong is office politics and ego. If you don't keep politics and egos in check, bad behaviors emerge, and strategies invariably go awry. Bad behaviors can undermine a culture immediately because they turn people off and shut them down. Instead of being engaged and productive, people take a big step back as they realize they have to play the game. And if an organization rewards politics and ego, these bad behaviors will persist and spread, and have a detrimental effect on culture.

Now more than ever, it's time for leaders in every organization and every industry to put character at the center of everything they do. This character must be based on upstanding values that guide behavior while embracing what has always been good for business—the pursuit of excellence, respect for individuals, and respect for the communities where we do business. The character we exhibit as leaders has a profound influence on the culture of our organizations. And, for hypergrowth, adaptive, customer-centric companies in our era of digital transformation, character-led culture is strategy.

In the chapters that follow, we take a look at exactly how leaders in any organization can define an upstanding character and culture that separate them from the rest of the pack—leading to levels of performance far beyond what you might have ever imagined possible. Now, let's get started.