Illustration by Ruth Macapagal
I was having lunch with the CEO of one of Europe’s largest software companies, a multibillion-dollar company. He told me an incredible success story.
“Guess what,” he said. “We were a lot behind in the launch of a new software product because we had a problem we just could not solve. And then an intern had an idea of how we could solve it. And he went ahead and did it. He programmed the whole solution for us.”
“Nobody had asked him to. He was not even a regular employee of our company, just an intern. But his innovation allowed us to launch many months earlier and save millions of dollars. At our annual employee gathering, I handed him a cheque of 25,000 euros.”
The business of your dreams
Imagine what your business would be capable of if your people were to act like that intern? How many challenges would “solve themselves” almost overnight because your best people would constantly think a few steps ahead? Where the people at the top would not have to mandate change, but the employees themselves would carry out whatever changes necessary for the greater good of the company? Where the leaders at the helm would lead with vision, and the employees would carry that vision out seamlessly, without effort?
Let’s think about what happened in that software company for a minute. Someone who is an intern and not even a regular employee of the company is someone who has a very limited assignment. His role and responsibilities are small.
He went beyond that role, put in extra hours and solved a challenge because he saw it was beneficial for the business. There was no financial gain in sight. He did it because he felt compelled to solve a problem that would benefit the greater good of the company. He did not even know if he would still work there in a few months.
How can you create a culture like that?
A compelling vision
First of all, your vision needs to be so compelling that it draws top people to you like a magnet. Like moths to a flame. We all know companies like that. There is a reason why Google (now Alphabet) ranked at the top spot of the companies where the best and the brightest would like to work, even years before it became one of the world’s most valuable companies.
When I visited Google for the first time in 2010, the energy was electrifying. The dedication of the people was exemplary of the dedication the first 100 Google employees had when the company was still in its infancy. And when I called for project meetings at Google headquarters to support the charitable arm of my group, the World Peace Foundation, I had never before seen top teams come together so fast and so efficiently to rally behind an idea. It is the Google spirit.
Cause vs cash burn rate
A good friend of mine was among the 100 first Google employees. The stories he has told me about that time were legendary. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were still calculating their “cash burn rate” at that time, the rate at which Google was using up its cash reserves from their venture capital. Nothing was certain. Nothing indicated the behemoth future this company would have and its potential to rise to the summit of the top 5 most valuable companies in the world. But all 100 first employees were burning with a passion that still burns at the Google HQ today.
And it comes from the vision and mission of the company. They have to be relevant for our times, and more importantly, our future. Google is a good example because many odds were stacked against its success.
Google’s mission, namely to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful, is relevant and will stay relevant for our times until people deem this mission accomplished. Then Google will have to reinvent itself.
To the moon and back
Take another one of the world’s five most valuable companies, Microsoft. When Bill Gates declared his vision of “a computer on every desk and in every home” in the late 1970s, people thought he was crazy because they did not think this was possible. Today, every smartphone has more computing power than the big machines that sent the first man to the moon.
Your vision has to be the shining light of your business, with a promise so grand, so ambitious and so relevant that top talent sees immediately that this is highly relevant for the world we live in. Sounds too farfetched? Far from it. It’s the secret ingredient of the world’s best-performing companies, and the most neglected ingredient of the underperforming ones: a compelling vision and mission.
The power to act
But a compelling vision or mission is not enough. Your people also need to feel the power and permission to act, innovate, take their own initiative, to be self-reliant. That is the second magic ingredient in the incredible success story of the software company I described in the beginning.
Its company culture encourages people to make mistakes without fearing public shame or humiliation. Only by encouraging mistakes can you free people from theory inhibitions to act and try out new things. The freer your people will feel to try new things and fail, the more successful your company will become. And the easier your job will be as a leader.
I recall one of our Asian and Filipino clients where leadership had the bad habit of publicly humiliating employees who made mistakes. Needless to say, that company’s innovation was virtually nonexisting. When the owners requested us to turn their business around, prepare it for the future and make it more profitable, one of the first things we did was to change the company culture and make it a leader in innovation.
People had to feel free to make mistakes and take initiative, to become go-getters, and to become entrepreneurial within the boundaries of the organization.
Lead with respect
You can lead with fear, or you can lead with respect. Let me ask you: who would you rather follow into a jungle or into a fierce battle, the leader who compels you with a whip or the leader you genuinely admire and respect?
The answer is simple. You always get the best out of people if you lead with respect. This means you need to lead by values and have the highest of ethics, and a dedication to the purpose and vision of your business.
Open communication
One of the challenges in the Filipino culture is how you deal with mistakes, and how you deal with people when things go wrong. It’s challenging for a lot of companies to get their people to talk openly to each other, to address mistakes and weaknesses. But that is precisely what is needed: to build a culture of open communication without anyone losing face.
It is your key to creating magical breakthroughs.
3 action steps
ʎ Encourage mistakes. The freer your people will feel to try new things and fail, the more successful your company will become. And the easier your job will be as a leader.
ʎ Lead with respect, not with fear. Lead by values, have the highest of ethics, and a dedication to the purpose and vision of your business.
ʎ Build a culture of open communication. INQ
Tom Oliver, a “global management guru” (Bloomberg), is the chair of The Tom Oliver Group, the trusted advisor and counselor to many of the world’s most influential family businesses, medium-sized enterprises, market leaders and global conglomerates. For more information and inquiries: www.TomOliverGroup.com or email
Tom.Oliver@inquirer.com.ph.