Weekly Roundup - May 18

This is our latest installment in our weekly series on fear in the marketplace and specifically how to be Brave in business decision making. Each week we post a few reads along with a synopsis of a few current business stories and how executives and managers are letting fear play out in decision making.

1. Recently Bud Light ended up with a black eye and controversy on its hands with a beer label with the tag line 'The perfect beer for removing 'no' from your vocabulary for the night.'

Despite using possibly one of the worst ideas ever, (especially in light of recent high profile cases of domestic violence such as Ray Rice in the NFL) what was potentially even more startling was the fact that this label was green lit only after going through 5 approvals inside Anheuser-Busch including marketing, legal, corporate social responsibility division and an advertising code committee.

At Corporate Bravery we talk often about the role that hierarchy and internal compliance teams have on creating fear in corporate decision making and this is a classic example. Even when pressed on how it decided against a recall their response was that the bottles didn't 'pose a health or public-safety concern'. The response shows that the culture isn't strong enough to allow individuals to use their best judgement and instead it is easier to hide behind protocol and layers of bureaucracy.

The article goes on to mention how AB InBev 'spread the blame' first to its advertisers BBDO for writing the label and then to the US Alcohol Tobacco Tax & Trade Bureau. The latter is laughable since the government agency can't possibly regulate stupidity.


2. In the lead-up to the NFL Draft I ran across an interesting take on how teams draft quarterbacks that is an interesting corollary to what often-times happens in our business organizations.

The article in the Wall Street Journal talks specifically about the quarterback position and how the position has evolved tremendously in the past decade but NFL teams continue to want to force those being drafted into the position in the NFL into a certain type of quarterback. To summarize the NFL's track record on innovation the article says, "True aficionados of football strategy would roll their eyes at the NFL game. It was, for all its revenue and viewers, not the place for innovation."

Weekly Roundup - May 11 2015

This is our latest installment in our weekly series on fear in the marketplace and specifically how to be Brave in business decision making. Each week we post a few reads along with a synopsis of a few current business stories and how executives and managers are letting fear play out in decision making.

1. Starbucks race campaign. I had intended to write about this a few weeks ago when the public outcry was at its loudest but couldn't find the time. So here it is.

By way of background, the Starbucks founder and CEO Howard Shultz felt that he should use Starbucks as a platform for race relations after Ferguson and other racial flash points in the past several months. This was executed by the creation of a hashtag (#racetogether) that was meant to spur dialog about race relations.

The problem is Starbucks is a coffee company and their employees are not trained sociologists so the whole effort just came off as self serving and looked to most consumers as a large corporation trying to capitalize off of a current event.

During one of the more embarrassing moments of the campaign the SVP of Communications at Starbucks refused to answer real questions from real minorities, blocked some of the questioners and then deleted his Twitter account. As you could imagine, this effort fell flat on its face amid public ridicule.

According to the Associated Press, the company’s chairman Jim Olson claims the phasing out of the handwritten notes was part of the plan since the beginning of “Race Together.” He also asserted that the changes are not a response to public mockery and outrage over the concept.
Per the AP:

A recently released memo from CEO Howard Schultz says the cups were always “just the catalyst” for a broader conversation, and the company will still hold forum discussions, co-produce special sections in USA TODAY and put more stores in minority communities as part of the Race Together initiative.

While there was probably a genuine desire on the part of Schultz to have a positive impact this is a classic example of a company not finding good alignment between core values, people and its messaging. The whole campaign was even parodied in this skit from SNL.



2. I read an article in Fast Company entitled "6 Steps to Being Viewed as More Powerful at Work" and I had the thought that while many of the items on the list are truly effective strategies of being viewed in this way, it begs the question - 'is this truly the objective we should be putting our energy behind?'

The Weekly Fearful Roundup

This is a new feature that I am starting this week to highlight examples I see in business & life where fear is ruling our decision making processes.

1. Lets start this week with a Vanity Fair article on the Brian Williams mess, but more specifically the fall of NBC News and how it happened. It is a fascinating read on the impact of mergers and acquisitions on corporate culture and how not to handle employment decisions.

My favorite excerpt from the article is the following two paragraphs that highlight poor leadership, lack of trust, corporate politics and how they each can play a role in fear-based decision making.

According to one view, the Burke administration’s troubles at NBC News can be traced to the Ann Curry episode at Today, a messy situation it inherited from the Zucker regime. Line executives were sharply split over Curry’s desire to ascend from newsreader to Lauer’s on-air partner. The head of news, Steve Capus, was in favor; Today’s executive producer, Jim Bell, and Matt Lauer were wary. Capus prevailed, only to watch Curry’s ratings slide. By June 2012, when she memorably and tearfully announced her departure from Today, Capus and Bell were not speaking. “That’s where this whole thing begins to fall apart,” says the onetime executive. “Burke was the principal player [who made the decision to demote her], though he hid desperately behind this. Finally he makes a deal for her to go away and then gets cold feet about pushing her to announce it. Despite pleas from everyone, Burke would not push the situation. He just felt uncomfortable doing it, and he wouldn’t explain why. Which leads directly to this thing being a national ‘Oh, poor Ann Curry’ story, which was the furthest thing from the truth.”

The Curry saga convinced Burke that the news division under Steve Capus’s direction was broadly dysfunctional. “The prevailing line from the Comcast people when Steve Capus was in charge was all News needs is a real grown-up in there,” says a top NBC executive at the time. “You know, ‘These people don’t know how to run a business. What they need is organization. Change the structure, business development, better H.R., get some women in there.’ I mean, that’s verbatim. That was the script.” Bell was removed from the equation when Burke gave him the Olympics to supervise, but Burke wanted deeper changes. Insiders believe he found the Curry episode so distasteful that he resolved to distance himself from the details of talent management altogether. “This thing exploded into a soap opera, and let me tell you, it scared the hell out of Steve Burke,” recalls an executive who met with Burke regularly. “And that’s not a phrase you use about a tough guy like Burke. But I saw it.”

2. Next, I recently read about this new company that is participating in a business accelerator that I am familiar with.

Lessons from 40 Years of SNL

Like 23 million other people, I watched the 40th anniversary special of Saturday Night Live this past weekend. I laughed at the latest installment of Jeopardy, mourned Chris Farley all over again and enjoyed the comedy of Louis CK and Jerry Seinfeld.

There were a lot of laughs but also some awkward moments, such as Eddie Murphy's return. It was like he hadn't been on a stage in 35 years. As uneven as the show was, it still produced a lot of laughs and it also was a reminder about an important business / life lesson. Life is uneven.

I read an article in the Hollywood reporter about Lorne Michaels, the genius of SNL that has been a mainstay of the show for 40 years. He created and continues to lead SNL and put together what was the spectacle of the 40th anniversary special. He had this to say about SNL, specifically as a response to the question of whether he has ever felt satisfied with the show.

I used to say that on my tombstone would be the word 'uneven' because [the show has] never been described any other way in a review. It's only cumulatively that you sort of go, "Oh yeah, that." You can't be perfect for 90 minutes. We don't do spectacle and don't have much of a wide shot, so when you see somebody going into lens and taking it to some level that you hadn't seen even at dress rehearsal, it's a magical thing. I believe there's at least one or two of those in almost every show.

This quote made me think about the unevenness of life and specifically business. You can't 'bat a thousand' yet the cultures in many of our organizations expect or even demand perfection. Co-workers use your stumbles as opportunities to score political points and managers lose their ability to allow mistakes as a result of having previous decisions second guessed.

Avoiding Pain Doesn't Lead to Growth

From helicopter parenting to legislating safety in mundane daily activities, our culture continues to try and short-circuit the learning process.

The most recent example of this trend, but in a business context, was an article from the February 11th Wall Street Journal entitled "You're Awesome! Firms Stop Negative Feedback". The premise of the article is that the trend in corporate America is to minimize or avoid all-together any negative aspects of performance and to focus on strengths only. A couple of comments from the article that are particularly striking:

"Commerce company Wayfair teaches its managers how to make feedback 'palatable', according to learning and development specialist Ashley Kibitz, so that the company's hundreds of young workers, "not only understand they're doing a great job but exactly what it is they're doing great."

"No judging, rating or critiquing is allowed at VMWare, says Victoria Sevilla, who develops training for employees there. 'It doesn't depress employees into thinking one more thing to develop, one more thing that's wrong' she says."

Hey, I like the Strengths Finder process as much as the next person, but I don't think this is exactly what they had in mind when they want their readers to focus on their strengths. Ignoring their weaknesses all together is not part of the process.

Don't get me wrong, I think it is important to spend as much time as possible on positive feedback. As a manager I have experienced first-hand the power this has on employees' performance. However, avoiding difficult conversations that need to be had only creates conflicting expectations, eroding performance and / or cultural issues with your team.

While growing up in church as a kid I would hear stories from the Bible about the dreaded disease of Leprosy and only recently realized that those afflicted with the disease lost extremities - not because of the disease itself but because they had an inability to feel pain and thus lost parts of extremities due to repeated injuries. I can't help but think this is the same thing that is happening in organizations employing this approach - but it is our people that are atrophying.

The problem with many of our organizations is that our Managers have a different mindset regarding safety and try and insulate their people from making mistakes either to avoid pain for themselves or for their people. In reality the safety that we need isn’t to not feel pain but to know that when those situations arise our managers will help us learn what caused the pain and thus correct our performance to be successful the next time we step out boldly towards results.

Along that line of reasoning the article provided this counterpoint:

You Can't Regulate Culture

Reading this article from the Wall Street Journal from January 2015 entitled As Regulators Focus on Culture, Wall Street Struggles to Define It I was struck by how out of touch management and regulators are in defining and creating a positive and effective work culture within the banking industry.

The problem with this focus and struggle with culture is that it is driven by a desire to avoid future regulatory problems rather than a real interest in creating an environment that is engaging for employees where they might actually enjoy spending a significant part of their daily lives.

Some of the typical things that have characterized bank cultures include being one of the last industries to have a strict dress code, oftentimes requiring a logo lapel pin to be worn at all times. Banks have typically had very hierarchical organizational structures where the running joke is everyone has a Vice President title. Banks have typically lacked flexibility in working time and location and have been rigid with other aspects of work environment.

Other things about typical bank culture is bank hopping. It is not uncommon for many in management at banks to have worked at several different banks within a 5 or 10 year span as that was the path to greater financial rewards. Taking a book of business to another bank is rewarded.

These aspects and more show up in turnover numbers. When I worked for a large regional bank in the 2000's the turnover rate for the entire bank of 20,000 employees consistently ran in the high 20% to low 30% range. This study on turnover rates in late 2012 showed that the banking industry as a whole had one of the highest turnover rates of all industries.

One of my favorite lines from this article says "regulators acknowledge that culture is a difficult thing to measure". This led banks to measure things like how often employees go to happy hour or how they score on a happy to grumpy ratio. This is measured by defining happy employees as those who say they are satisfied and are more likely to act ethically. Satisfaction is way different than engagement and being happy may just mean they are well paid - again incentivizing the very behavior they are trying to root out.

The article also mentions that the industry is spending millions on workplace consultants specializing in how to measure culture including the use of surveys to tease out attitudes around pay being the best measure of success. When I asked a friend in the banking industry, specifically branch management, about this he indicated that no one answered these surveys honestly because no one wants district and regional managers in the branch. The fear of additional scrutiny and oversight invalidated the results but made management feel better about how well they are doing with culture when in fact fear was driving the behavior.

According to the article, one consulting firm hired by a bank determined it was a red flag when employees used the term 'workaround' in internal communications because it indicated a willingness to bypass set rules or policies. If you have ever worked in a bank you would know it requires work arounds of large and unwieldy systems and bureaucracies just to serve the customer. Well intentioned employees now flagged as possible threats - sounds like a good culture inducing policy to me.