Principle 1: Senior Executives as Role Models (Item 2)
The senior executives' constant role modeling of these Business
Excellence Principles and creation of a supportive environment are necessary
to achieve the organization's potential.
You should regularly measure employees' perception of senior executive's
belief in the 10 Business Excellence Principles. For example, you should
measure perceptions of "trustworthiness" of the senior executive,
"fear" and overall "morale".
If you do not know what people expect of their leaders, it is difficult
to provide it. Just as you must find out what your external customers
need and then provide it, you must do the same for this group of important
internal customers. `Employees' are the `customers' of your `leadership'.
We continue to be amazed at how many people in authority (we cannot
call them leaders) behave as though this relationship does not exist.
An example employee questionnaire is given in tools.
There are two different types of bosses with fundamentally different
views about people — two very different thinking.
Old-style: These bosses think the world is predictable except
for people. People cannot be trusted. `Man is fundamentally bad'. Someone
must take charge to give order, predictability and stability. Structures
are needed to support order, viability and survival. Discourage new
ideas, creativity, innovation. Staff are willing servants waiting to
do what they are told. Leaders control.
New-style: These bosses believe that people are co-responsible
for creating their own world. `Man is fundamentally good'. Companies
have flexibility of role. People have many jobs and many roles. Innovation
is welcome and people are trusted. Influence depends on knowledge and
skills not position. People are not pigeonholed. Leaders enable and
empower.
The old style is being seen as less and less relevant and the new style
is seen as increasingly relevant. We have heard argument that there
is usually room in most companies for both thinking. Some people and
some processes need the old style – where more control is needed
and failure to follow rules exactly can result in poor work. Or that
"lazy, don't care employees need a good tough boss who will stand
for no nonsense and keep everything in line".
We are not convinced. Why did you hire lazy, `don't care' employees?
You didn't! Perhaps your style of bossing has turned them off. Why have
you designed your processes to require such a close level of supervision?
That's the way you've always done it! Wrong answer! Given a chance,
those lazy `don't care' employees would probably design a process that
would save you heaps.
In our view, there is no longer any room for the old-style boss.
 We hear a lot about
getting people "to bring their hearts and minds to work and not
leave them at the gate". The diagram below goes a long way to showing
how much of the "leaving hearts and minds at the gate" is
the result of employees' experience with bosses.
Consider this. You are at a meeting with a number of other people.
You have a lot to say but you are being ignored. If you are given space,
enabled and empowered, you volunteer with considerable enthusiasm (top
right). If you are not, you get pissed off and withdraw (bottom right).
If this goes on long enough, you become emotionally detached and isolated
(top left). This can continue until you become so detached that you
just go to work to pick up your pay. By this stage, you have definitely
left your heart and mind at the gate.
Where did this begin and who has the opportunity to fix it? With the
boss. If bosses continue to blame the employees for leaving their hearts
and minds at the gates, they get nowhere. The fault is usually with
the boss, not the employee. Old styles of management gets people onto
the left-hand side and keeps them there.
Many of the detached employees who you see as just coming to work to
pick up their pay have very active lives away from your workplace. Active
lives in an environment where they are allowed to volunteer and where
they feel appreciated. It is at work, where they learn not to volunteer,
that they withdraw and often become aggressive.
As a new-style leader, your job is to keep people in the top right
quadrant. Keeping them there can be a lot easier than getting them back.
Depending on how much damage was done with old-style bossing, you may
have a lot of work to do to help people move from the various states
of withdrawal.
How do you keep them there or get them back? As well as trust and valuing
diversity, leaders have to supply several other attributes.
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