Replacing the magic bullet with the magic…toilet?

By Jeff Lesher

I think of myself as a skeptical idealist.  I believe that we are capable of great things and should attempt to achieve them.  However, experience suggests that many of us would simply pursue the path of least resistance, even when our common sense tells that we probably are wasting our time.

For “fun,” I aggravate myself regularly just by reading the newspaper and popular business publications to find out about the latest business version of the “Thigh Master.”  It seems that every week or so the bar is lowered in terms of our gullibility, laziness, or – pardon me – stupidity, when it comes to how to build and sustain high-performing organizations by finding, developing, and retaining high-performing people.

Google is held up as the current flavor of the month in terms of building a high-performing culture.  And why not?  The stock price has just surpassed $500 a share.  How bad could that be?

In fact, there is much to admire in Google, and perhaps a lot to emulate.  The trouble is that the coverage of Google tends to focus on the peripheral – albeit entertaining – aspects of what makes them (and can help keep them) successful.  Case in point, The Washington Post, in its October 21, 2006 feature on how Google’s culture breeds innovation, spends a good deal of time on employee attire, what food is served in the cafeteria, and – my personal favorite – on the “Japanese high-tech commode with a heated seat” that occupies every bathroom stall.  Most importantly, “[i]f a flush is not enough, a wireless button on the door activates a bidet and drying.”  All together now: GROSS!

On second thought, maybe the toilet reference is metaphorical.  In other words, as long as the stock keeps humming along, who cares about sustaining the business with clear mission objectives, aligned strategic priorities, and the people and systems to support their achievement.  And if we…uh…lay an egg, we can just wash and dry ourselves and move on.

The trouble is, when organizations allow themselves to believe their own press (and in our culture, it’s very likely that this was Google’s story as much as it was the Post’s), they find themselves all-too-soon on the other end of the self-congratulatory spectrum.  And this is far from just ego-deflating; it costs people money and their jobs.

From this story and others, I am sure that Google not only has a culture but a good one.  My counsel to them and others, though, is to retain and evolve this culture through clarity of thought, language, and process, rather than high-tech toilets.  Google has a chief culture officer, Stacy Sullivan, who contributes to maintenance of Google’s “anything-goes culture.”  This culture protection is accomplished in part by insuring that Google’s “rigorous hiring procedure similar to those used for admission to elite universities” factors in whether someone is “Googley.”  Ms. Sullivan states, “[i]t’s an ill-defined term – we intentionally don’t define that term, but it’s…not someone too traditional or stuck in ways done traditionally by other companies.”

In a word used by my Yiddish ancestors, “Oy!”  It’s hard to know where to start with this, but let me try.  Perhaps I can help Google, but I have to share with the unsuspecting that there is no magic toilet.  There is magic, however, in your people and what they know and how they apply their knowledge that makes them (and others) successful in your organization.  By identifying and defining those success factors, as well as building them into your selection, development, and recognition and reward criteria and process, you can not only expand high-performance, but sustain it.  Otherwise, you’re likely to become one of my clients (and no one wants that ☺), who meets me by sharing that too many people and the organization as a whole is underperforming.  You don’t understand why because you’ve said many times that each of your people needs to innovate, be client-focused, continuously learn, be committed to excellence, etc…and it’s “obvious” what that all means in terms of each person performing his/her job together and individually.  To which I reply, “if it was so obvious, you we wouldn’t be talking….”

So:

• Clarify your mission – what are you trying to accomplish, and what is the impact you have to have on your world?
• Prioritize your assignments – in order to accomplish this, what are the top/first three things that need to happen?
• Infrastructure – do you have the people and systems in place to accomplish these assignments?
• Success criteria – what are the common performance qualities that your high-performers embody and that you desire in others?  Identify and define these behaviorally, including how they should be applied differently by people responsible for their own work, the work of others, and/or leading the organization
• Process – the success criteria and their application to address strategy and mission need to be reflected in your human capital process (including selection, development, recognition/reward).

It’s no wireless remote bidet, but this stuff keeps you (at least organizationally-speaking) fresh!

©2006 Applied Knowledge Sciences, Inc. All rights reserved.