Apathy: The Kiss of Death

Every time your employees think about your company, they have one of three impressions:

1. They hate it.

2. They think it's fine.

3. They love it.

We all know we're in trouble if our employees hate working for us. It's easy for even the most boneheaded boss to grasp what that will mean:

* They'll do just enough to keep from getting fired. Can you afford that?

* They'll treat your customers and each other poorly, which will kill your brand by a thousand cuts.

* You'll have a really hard time attracting the kind of talent upon which to build your firm.

* The few people of talent you do attract will leave - the more desirable the employee, the faster that will happen.

Here's what most employers don't get, though (I believe because so few of them have themselves ever worked for a beloved company): there's no middle ground here. If your company is merely "Okay" or "Not that bad - for work," it's a lot the same as when it is hated. You'll experience the same exact problems as the leaders of a hated company, only the drain on your success will appear in slow motion by comparison.

There's no middle ground in the hearts of your employees. They either love you or they hate you. And apathy is close enough to hate that there's no reason to split hairs over the difference.

If they don't love working for you, they hate working for you.

Maybe - I'm not certain, but maybe - this wasn't always the case. Maybe once upon a time all work sucked, all employers were at least a little lousy, and people took their lumps, put in their time, and stuck around.

But it's 2010. And today, there are already enough wonderful employers out there that anyone of quality need not put up with anything less.

There's a lot of buzz right now about what a phenomenal culture Zappos has, and there should be - they've earned it, they are indeed just as great a company to work for as the hype would have you believe. Or so I've been told by so many Zapponians that I have to believe it.

But let's not stop with that one example.

Read "Let My People Go Surfing," and learn how fantastic a cause - yes, not just an employer, but a cause - Patagonia is.

Go to a Disney park and talk to anyone there about how they love their company. It's practically a cult! Oh, and don't stop there. Find a former Disney employee or twenty, and ask them what it was like working for that company.

Or try CD Baby. Or Southwest Airlines. Or Nordstrom. Or Four Seasons. Or Wegmans. Or Cisco.

Is your company beloved of your employees? Seriously: on a scale of 1-10, ten being the best ever, where would they put you?

I've got news for you. If you aren't earning pretty consistent tens from your people... you're screwed. Especially as the economy continues to emerge from the Great Recession. Doubt that at your peril.

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This is part four of a five-part series introducing the way business is being won in the Twenty-First Century. Your comments are invited and cherished.

Management Is War? Make That "Was."

Name the one defining event of the Twentieth Century. There were several, of course: the Cold War, the Great Depression, World War I, the Sixties. But it's hard to argue that World War II didn't change everything; or maybe I should say it intensified the way we already did things.

The one big management lesson from the Second World War was that command-and-control leadership in the style of the military gets things done. Huge things. Seemingly impossible things. A bit ironically, it saved the world for Democracy.

Backing this up, look at the number one selling international management handbook of the past century. Blanchard's The One Minute Manager? Close, but no. Peter's In Search of Excellence? Again, that's up there, but not number one. No, the best selling management book of the past century is Sun Tzu's age-old military classic, The Art of War. You want to get things done? Looking to win at commerce, to vanquish your foes? Lead your business like it's an army, from the top down.

Here's the thing, though: top-down leadership creates vast waste of human talent. It motivates us to do what the big boss orders, but it also turns off our inner drive to exceed when no one's watching, or monitoring, or counting one acute measurement of our output.

Order your people around, and they'll do the bare minimum to keep their jobs. Measure their performance by the numbers, and they'll give you those numbers - and very little more. Think for them, and they'll stop thinking for themselves - they'll stop thinking for you, for your company.

People are smart. They start a new job eager to give of themselves. A growing handful of companies get that, and encourage that, and benefit tremendously from that. Most still don't.

Look at my favorite list of successful businesses, Fortune Magazine's 100 Best Companies to Work For. Out of those 100, how many are not just popular with their people, but also thriving despite this weak economy? And how many squelch their employees' natural talent and drive with command-and-control, by-the-numbers management styles?

Have you read The Art of War lately? You notice that Sun Tzu is kind of a psycho? Few talented people would choose to work for him today.

...And as I've shared in previous posts, one of the key hallmarks of the Twenty-First Century is choice of employment. Just watch as the economy continues to pick up. We're about to see job migration on an unprecedented scale. Business rulers: prepare to kiss your best talent goodbye as they flee to more enlightened corporate cultures.

My guess is that, as a competitive necessity, top-down management will fall out of favor in this exciting new century. My guess is that Blanchard, or Peters, or Daniel Pink (author of the must-read Drive), or another more enlightened management guru, will finally surpass Sun Tzu's sales. It's about time!

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This is part 3 of a 5-part series.

Three Trends, One Direction

There are three major trends contributing to the breakdown of the Twentieth-Century ways of doing business. Together, these and other forces are driving us into the new modes of the Twenty-First Century. These trends are:

1. Transparency - Especially because of Social Media, but also from the ubiquity of information available to us in general, companies can't hide behind their billboards any longer.

2. Dissolution of the Business/Ethics Divide - Fact is, there never was such a thing as "business ethics" separate unto itself: there has always been just ethics. People are getting that now, finally. As with transparency, this trend has only begun to take effect. Just wait!

3. Employee Mobility - Once thought only to benefit companies, the end of employment for life is also giving employees more power, because they have begun voting with their feet: if an employer rules by Twentieth-Century standards, the best talent won't stick around for long. And unlike a generation ago, there is no career penalty paid for what was formerly seen as disloyalty.

These three trends are all leading us toward the same conclusions:

* Workers: People want to work for ethical companies. In the new century, ethical behavior has turned into a competitive advantage for attracting and keeping talent.

* Consumers: People want to buy from ethical companies. So doing the right thing in business has actually become a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

* Investors: As this change continues to develop, we'll see ever-more investors choosing to grow their money with ethical companies because it pays them a higher return. This has already begun, as I'll relate in a future post.

Enlightened Self-Interest. It's here to stay. Welcome to the 21st Century!

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This is part 2 of a 5-part series to kick off the rededication of this blog. Your comments are not only requested, but - in the spirit of collaboration that is a hallmark of this exciting new century - they are essential to the development of these ideas.

New Century, New Rules

For several years now my books, this blog, and my career have all been dedicated to teaching a few powerful-yet-simple interwoven themes:

1. Doing the right thing pays. In other words, Enlightened Self-Interest.

2. Profits stem from five-star customer service. That level of service is only possible with company-wide a culture of service, which can only happen if leadership gets it and fosters such an environment. Thus my Three Legs Principle, like the three legs necessary to support a stool: Leadership + Culture + Customer Service = Profits.

3. Key to the success of any organization is employee love of that organization. (Yes love, not satisfaction. No one ever moved earth and sky because they were merely satisfied.) So if you run a business and your employees would rather work somewhere else... guess what?

(a) The employees you have aren't going to give you their all; they'll likely only give you the bare minimum to keep from getting fired...

(b) You may - may - attract some talent, but that won't be easy and it won't be the norm, and...

(c) You're going to lose your top talent to better offers - more engaging, inspiring employers - like an ax wound hemorrhages blood, until your organization perishes.

As I said, these are three aspects of the same theme.

There's something deeper going on, though, and I have to admit I didn't fully appreciate it myself until quite recently:

These principles aren't merely important; they don't "just" give companies a competitive advantage. I now realize they're part of a historical trend that is as inescapable to how business is done in the Twenty-First Century as electricity and the assembly line were to the Twentieth.

Trends don't announce themselves: they sneak up on us, often as an entertaining diversion, until the novel becomes ubiquitous and we have trouble even remembering the old ways. Social media is the novelty of the early Twenty-First Century that has rewritten all the rules. This silly little thing, our distracting MySpace and frivolous Facebook and downright odd Twitter and entertaining YouTube, and the myriad interactive features we've come to love on all sorts of websites throughout our day, have established themselves as the new status quo. And they are making Enlightened Self Interest, in all its manifestations, not a should-do, but a must-do.

Let me repeat for clarity: in the Twenty-First Century, doing the right thing is no longer a good idea. It is absolutely essential to the health of an organization.

Thus, the new name of this blog, 21st Century Business.

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This is part one of a five-part series. Stay tuned for part two later this week. I've got a lot to share, and can't wait to hear your thoughts. Indeed, in the true spirit of Twenty-First Century business, I can't fully develop this line of thought without you!