Business managers who practice Cultureship know that developing and leading high-performing cultures can be learned and taught. Backed with irrefutable evidence, Cultureship introduces this system of beliefs and illustrates how changing culture can quickly lead to better business results; how every employee wants to grow, serve, and perform; how associates ultimately own the culture; and how successful leaders don't tell, they lead.
Once you understand each of the ten beliefs and how they fit together as a unified whole, you will be on your way to becoming a great leader. Applying Cultureship to your own business, whether you're a novice or a more experienced manager, will differentiate your organization, increase productivity, lead to higher profits, and elevate you to a more advanced level of personal leadership success.
Business managers who practice Cultureship know that developing and leading high-performing cultures can be learned and taught. Backed with irrefutable evidence, Cultureship introduces this system of beliefs and illustrates how changing culture can quickly lead to better business results; how every employee wants to grow, serve, and perform; how associates ultimately own the culture; and how successful leaders don't tell, they lead.
Once you understand each of the ten beliefs and how they fit together as a unified whole, you will be on your way to becoming a great leader. Applying Cultureship to your own business, whether you're a novice or a more experienced manager, will differentiate your organization, increase productivity, lead to higher profits, and elevate you to a more advanced level of personal leadership success.
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Overview
Business managers who practice Cultureship know that developing and leading high-performing cultures can be learned and taught. Backed with irrefutable evidence, Cultureship introduces this system of beliefs and illustrates how changing culture can quickly lead to better business results; how every employee wants to grow, serve, and perform; how associates ultimately own the culture; and how successful leaders don't tell, they lead.
Once you understand each of the ten beliefs and how they fit together as a unified whole, you will be on your way to becoming a great leader. Applying Cultureship to your own business, whether you're a novice or a more experienced manager, will differentiate your organization, increase productivity, lead to higher profits, and elevate you to a more advanced level of personal leadership success.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781938416187 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Greenleaf Book Group, LLC |
| Publication date: | 12/14/2012 |
| Edition description: | New Edition |
| Pages: | 236 |
| Sales rank: | 62,681 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d) |
Read an Excerpt
Cultureship
The ACBs of Business LeadershipBy Jason E. Bingham
River Grove Books
Copyright © 2013 Jason BinghamAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-938416-21-7
Chapter One
Belief: Integrity Leads to Profit
SERVING OTHERS WHEN YOU ARE ON 100 PERCENT COMMISSION!
Holy cow! There I was, in Birmingham, Alabama, with my new wife, Shelby, and we were moving into our second apartment. Our first apartment was in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. I had just accepted an offer from the only company I would ever work for (at least to this point), Trane. Trane sends their newly hired sales engineers to LaCrosse for six months of training, which corresponded with our first six months of marriage. It was way too much fun, yet for southerners, it was also way too much snow!
When we moved into our second apartment as a married couple in Birmingham, I started the real job. With my rose-colored glasses well attached to my face, I jumped in with my usual level of energy—picture a Jack Russell terrier after you throw a tennis ball. They started me off with the "shit" accounts. In other words, as the new sales guy, I got the accounts that no one else wanted. Yet, those accounts were tennis balls I was excited to chase, and I soon made some small wins by making the very small accounts worth a little more. I had to. The compensation was 100 percent commission. If I didn't sell, we didn't eat.
While I was growing up, my mom taught me that if I focused on serving others, the rest would fall in to place. I was not conscious of it at the time, but that is exactly what I did at Trane from the get-go. I served passionately, responded quickly, and did my best to do the right thing. Yet, the rose-colored glasses began to fall off at times.
My small successes were being overshadowed with many, many mistakes. I ordered the wrong voltage for an air conditioner and had to pay to get it right. I ordered the wrong thermostats and had to pay to get them right. I made a commitment to my customer that I could not keep or was not possible and, you guessed it, had to pay to get it right. And in Trane, when one guy makes a mistake, others pay for it, too. The 100 percent commission means that every salesperson who helps sell the job gets a piece of the pie. It also means that the same salespeople share every mistake. In my desire to serve, I was tripping over my inability to get it right.
These cost blunders drew concern from my peers, as did my low commission rate. Low income because of lower commission rates and high outcome because of all the extra expenses from mistakes was not the best business model for them. It was not the best personal business model either. Although I was on a "draw" that ensured a consistent monthly check, it was not a free draw. Essentially I was going deeper and deeper and deeper in debt. In fact, after two years on the job I was in my deepest hole yet with a debt of over $50,000. The pressure was building from everywhere—my peers, my boss, my wife, and maybe most of all, myself. I was frustrated and terrified of failure.
As I look back, the moment of truth was a health-care project with my newest customer. Seeing the need to get me more business, my boss moved some accounts around and gave me a large mechanical-engineering firm. Mechanical-engineering firms actually design the HVAC systems in buildings. Again, I jumped right in with speedy service. The lead designer, Kevin, and I hit it off immediately. He liked the attention and response. He felt he could trust me because I was always upfront and honest with him. He would design his jobs around Trane equipment when, in the past, he had preferred our competition. I was moving ahead, yet the large deficit in my draw account was weighing on me.
Kevin called one weekend and told me that he had a major hospital project that had to be designed by Monday morning. It was going to bid within two weeks, and then the building would be fast-tracked so that it would be completed before the summer months. Mechanical engineers like Kevin draw up the plans for HVAC systems, and they also create the specifications for those HVAC pieces. The stricter the requirements, the fewer the vendors able to comply. It is even possible to have a specification so strict that only one vendor can comply.
"Could you help me make the selections and lay out the system?" Kevin asked. I, of course, said yes. I met him for lunch on Saturday. He was clear: "Your equipment should be the preference, yet not exclusive." I told him, "I got it, no problem," and headed home to get it done. As I was digging into the selections, two words seemed to rise from the page: "high efficiency." I knew Trane had a huge efficiency advantage over our competitors, and I could lock out the competition if I selected and specified the right units.
My heart started beating faster, and I began to sweat. I was considering doing what it took to make commission, rather than doing the right thing for my customer. If I chose to write the specification around a proprietary efficiency, I would receive a very high commission. Since Kevin was constrained by time, he would most likely send it through to the final document without noticing that I had limited competition. It would be easy to make a quick buck, yet it would be abusing the trust he had given me. I would be risking the long-term relationship with a valued customer and my reputation as a salesperson.
I remember standing up and going to the kitchen. My mind started talking to itself. You sure have worked hard for this customer. You deserve to be paid for your efforts. Picture that little red devil dude with a pitchfork on my shoulder. Just as I was about to walk out of the kitchen, the door swung open and hit me right in the head. It was my wife, yet it was also God. His message was pretty darn clear: "Do not do it, dummy."
And I didn't. I wrote the specification so that it required high efficiency yet also allowed for multiple competitors. I even looked up my competitors' catalogs to make sure they could bid the project. That decision put me on the right long-term path. As it turned out, Kevin mentioned that project some time later as he and I were drinking a beer. He said, "I assumed you would lock that spec down, so I double checked. You made sure others could bid, didn't you?"
"Yes, I did."
"Knowing I can trust you is a big deal, Jason. Thanks," he said.
It took me a while to get off draw, yet looking back it was so clear. There finally came a time when I no longer had to follow up with my customers on projects. They would call me and ask if I wanted to work with them on a job. There was also a time when my customers began wanting me to make money. They would make suggestions such as, "This one is not a tight job, so price it fair, yet not cheap." Soon, I had a huge share of their business at a much higher commission rate.
The value I added to their businesses by focusing on their best interests had changed me from a vendor into a partner. They needed me. I reduced their risk and increased the value they added to their customers. The trust I built turned the process of price negotiation into a time for discussing the best way to stay on budget. We were making a profit together.
Shortcuts often don't save you any time at all. It's important to do the right thing and get things done right. When you do the right thing for long enough, the results come. The results came in wonderful ways for me, which culminated in receiving the Eagle award for the first salesperson to exceed quota in the first five years of his or her career.
LIVING WITH INTEGRITY LEADS TO SUCCESS
Life has many choices, and the choices you make determine the quality of your life. Integrity is aligning your choices with your values. The actions of people with high integrity match their words, and their feet match their thoughts. Integrity is what happens when no one is looking. With integrity, you make choices that serve the greater good, and your decisions are the best you can find. Without integrity, you will tend to make choices that are more self-centered. If you are focused on your own benefit, you will make decisions that are useful and profitable to you without considering the impact those decisions may have on others. Using sales as an example, when you are on 100 percent commission or have some similar compensation system, every time you sell something you earn a portion of the net profit of that sale. This can create a habit of thinking short term about personal profit. You can make decisions without integrity to get the short-term profit. Being self-centered can mean making more money—in the short term.
On the other hand, you can make decisions that match your conscience. You can recognize that the situation affects all involved and then do your best to make the right decision. This might mean not selling a product or a service because it is not the right thing for the customer or because you know there is a better option available. Though it may seem paradoxical, deciding to not sell because your competitor has a better option probably is the right decision.
If you take a moment to closely consider all of the impacts of your decisions, you will find that integrity leads to profit. You might "get away" with selling something that is not right for a customer initially. You might even make a quick buck doing it. Yet, it's unlikely you'll be able to sell to that same customer again. The truth is rarely hidden for long. In my simple sales example, the end user of the product will most likely find out that he actually had better options or that he made a poor choice. He might hear from someone else that he made a mistake. And when that end user attributes that mistake to working with you, you will pay the price.
Unhappy customers talk about their experiences, and one disgruntled customer can influence many people. If you consistently serve yourself rather than the best interests of your customers, that one customer will become many. At a minimum, people who hear from these disgruntled customers will be wary when dealing with you. They may ask more questions than usual or do more behind-the-scenes investigation or get more quotes from other vendors, and all those actions would cost you time and money. You would have to answer more questions. You would have to battle more competitors. You would eventually decrease your market share, and more of your business would have to be priced competitively, which would reduce your company's profit. When you lose trust, you lose profit.
KEEP THE TRUTH OF THE MOMENT
Now, I want to spend some time talking about how to hold yourself to a higher level of integrity. I am not going to discuss the simple stuff. Either you are committed to doing the right thing or you are not. For the purposes of this discussion, I am going to assume that you are generally honest and have a desire to make the right choices after considering the needs of all involved.
You generally follow your conscience when you make choices. Your conscience is a set of beliefs you live by, and they can come from any of the experiences in your life. The problem is that you can be your biggest obstacle to integrity because your brain can build false beliefs. These false beliefs usually result in making poor choices, thus acting without integrity. For example, if you were to see a minor incident between two people, within seconds your brain would create some assumptions about the people involved. These assumptions may or may not be right, yet they could influence what you choose to see in the future and even your future decisions. Eventually, your brain can build false beliefs based on false assumptions.
For example, if my CFO were to ask a lot of questions about my decisions or direction, I might think she was challenging me, and my brain might start to think that she was out to get me, even though I may have very little information on which to base that assumption.
If in our next meeting I announce my vision and direction for our company and she asks, "Can you give us the data that led us to your decision to take us in that direction?" I might think she is trying to prove me wrong in front of the entire company. At this point, my assumptions would affect my decisions. I would probably send her less information in the future because I would be fearful about what she would do with it. My behavior would change based on the assumptions my brain made.
From the CFO's perspective, my behavior change would be palpable. She would no longer get the monthly reports and communication she used to get. She would start to wonder why I was holding back information, whether I no longer trusted her, and whether I was out to get her. With her thoughts and assumptions, she would start to treat me differently, which would only confirm my belief that she was out to get me.
I refer to this as a fictional story, but it was actually based on a series of events I witnessed. What is most interesting is that I know for a fact that the CFO actually thought the CEO was a great leader. She asked more questions so that she could help him support his direction with more facts. She was confident in his direction; he was just not communicating it well.
The point you should take away from this illustration is that our beliefs tend to prove themselves. When we form assumptions and beliefs, we tend to find the experiences and information that confirm our beliefs. Unfortunately, we also tend to ignore those experiences that are contradictory to our beliefs. In other words, we tend to find what we are looking for. Henry David Thoreau said it best: "There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect."
Integrity maxim #1: Never assume anything about anybody.
If you view someone through the glasses of your experiences alone, you risk losing the truth of the moment. Your brain tends to form beliefs on limited information, and those beliefs influence your decisions and changes in behavior toward that person. The person will pick up on your changed behavior and eventually change his or her own behavior accordingly. Instead of following our conscience, we follow our brain, which has some false assumptions and beliefs. To hold ourselves to the highest integrity, we need to constantly test all assumptions by talking directly to the people involved, rather than making up our own version of the story. We need to test our assumptions thoroughly before allowing them to become beliefs. Later in this chapter, you will read about a tool called "Direct with Respect," which has helped me control my brain's ability to create false assumptions and has improved my ability to act with utmost integrity.
Sherman's Simple Truth
The story in the last section reminds me of a shoeshine guy I was blessed to meet in the Chicago O'Hare International Airport. I didn't have much time, but I thought I could manage to squeeze in a quick shoeshine without a problem. Unfortunately, the line took longer than I thought. When I finally sat down in the high chair that allows clients getting their shoes shined to see over the heads of all the passersby (and thus makes the client feel somewhat like a king), my boarding time was within five minutes. Yes, I was feeling a little stressed.
Sherman, the shoeshine guy, looked like he was in his sixties, yet he had the energy of a thirty-year-old. He had a big smile. He asked me how much time I had, and I grimaced. He asked if he should do the quick version, and I said no. He said, "Okay, you will get my best shine and still be on time." I relaxed immediately as he went to work shining my shoes like it was the most important thing he could be doing.
He chatted with the young shoeshine guy next to him about a customer two weeks ago who ended up not having enough cash and asked if it would be okay to catch him later. Sherman told the customer no problem. One week later, that same customer came by and not only paid for the shine but also tipped Sherman an extra $100. The young guy said, "You are so lucky. Didn't you also have a reporter come by and write an article about you? How do you do it?"
Sherman lifted his head, for some reason looked me in the eyes, and said, "I figured out that if I don't let my head get in the way and just focus on passionately serving others, amazing things happen." For me, it was like a message from God, yet he was using Sherman, who was looking me right in the eye, to deliver it.
Sherman hit the nail on the head. I realized that if I could keep my head out of the way, it would probably be fairly easy for me to determine the right thing to do by looking for the reality of the situation. Then I would do the right thing. Then the right things would happen for me.
Sherman also pointed out that I should surround myself with people who don't let their head get in the way. I should pick leaders based on their integrity as much as their talent. This concept would serve me well as I moved into management.
ALL MINE AND NO ONE ELSE'S
My tendency to justify my past decisions or blame poor decisions on other people or events affects my ability to act with integrity. It might have its roots in the "fight or flight" instincts we have from the saber-toothed tiger days. When I make a bad decision or have a bad result, either my "fight" instinct can pop out to blame someone else, or my "flight" instinct will activate to justify my decision, rather than face the real consequences.
There are many legitimate reasons to blame or justify. In my world of HVAC at Trane, if it were sixty degrees all year long, our sales would be low and I could easily blame the weather for the poor business results. I could justify to my bosses that I really didn't have any options because the weather did not allow for a different result. And I would be right with my blame and justification.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Cultureship by Jason E. Bingham Copyright © 2013 by Jason Bingham. Excerpted by permission of River Grove Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Preface....................viiAcknowledgments....................xi
To the Reader....................xiii
Chapter 1 Belief: Integrity Leads to Profit....................1
Chapter 2 Belief: Trusting Others Expands Profit....................17
Chapter 3 Belief: Associates Own the Culture....................29
Chapter 4 Belief: Leaders Don't Direct, They Lead....................43
Chapter 5 Belief: Everyone Wants to Grow, Serve, and Perform....................63
Chapter 6 Belief: Enlightened Teams Achieve Superhuman Success....................85
Chapter 7 Belief: Purposeful Associates Create Loyal Customers Who Maximize Business Results (the ACBs)....................97
Chapter 8 Belief: Excellence Is Driven from the Ground Up....................109
Chapter 9 Belief: Changing Culture Can Change Results Quickly....................129
Chapter 10 Belief: Strong Leaders Follow Culture....................143
Chapter 11 Results Are the Real Starting Point....................171
Appendix....................189
Index....................209
About the Author....................219