Today's Reading
Our company purpose is "to keep Oklahomans safe, informed, and entertained," and a crisis like this is a great and dramatic example of why we are in business. There is great clarity around this purpose, both on our leadership team and across the company.
But it wasn't always this way.
Our 114-year-old company was once divided into two distinct businesses: food manufacturing and a television station in Oklahoma City. Clearly, there was no synergy at all between those two. And even though both businesses were strong and profitable, they were very different in purpose and focus. This not only confused people in the organization and ownership, but also led to challenges for our leadership and their teams.
A critical point in our company's history came when we made the decision to identify the one business we wanted to be in, split off the other business (in this case, the food side), and articulate the purpose of our organization. We focused our energies on determining the purpose of the company and eventually crafted a message that our employees and constituents could endorse and appreciate. We believe our clear purpose is to keep Oklahomans safe, informed, and entertained.
Employees in every organization want to know the work they do has meaning. As the leadership team of our company, we take seriously our job to define our company's purpose and to make sure our employees understand that purpose. My senior leaders and I use the "safe, informed, and entertained" statement to open every presentation, both internally and externally, and talk about it regularly in meetings across our enterprise. It informs our strategy, helps guide our decision-making, and ensures we attract the right people to join our company.
I can't emphasize enough the importance of clearly identifying the business you are in, creating an accurate and clear purpose statement, and communicating that purpose regularly across your organization. Once my leaders and team recognized and embraced this strategy and purpose, it was much easier for us all to work together to achieve our mission of keeping our fellow Oklahomans safe, informed, and entertained.
ALLOWING CONFUSION ABOUT VALUES
Erik Peterson, former CEO, Corporate Visions, Inc., author of The Three Value Conversations
Twenty-five years ago, I received what I still consider the greatest honor of my professional career: the Founder's Award, given each year to the employee who best represented the company's values.
What made this award so special was that it was not bestowed by management. It was voted on by employees. Prior to the ceremony, everyone in the company submitted one name, and the person who got the most votes won the award.
I was not expecting that person to be me. I'd only been with the company a short time, and although we'd had a great year and I was excited to be there, it was my first year. I was just happy to be sitting there, watching from the audience as one person after another was called up on stage and recognized for various accomplishments.
The Founder's Award was the biggest honor, so it was the final award of the night. And they didn't announce the winner right away. The company founder built suspense by talking about the person who was being honored. When he finally did reveal my name, I was shocked. I somehow found myself on stage being handed a Rolex watch with an inscription on the back that read "Founder's Award Winner" and fumbling my way through a short acceptance speech.
I don't remember the actual words I spoke. What I remember is my wife in the audience, crying because it was such a special moment. I remember being surrounded by people—my peers—hugging and congratulating me. And I remember how overwhelming and moving the whole experience was.
After the ceremony, I went out with a group of colleagues to continue the celebration. At some quiet moment late in the evening, I found myself alone in a corner of the bar. I took off the watch to look at it again. I held it in my hands, then turned it over to reread the inscription. And as I sat there looking at the words "Founder's Award Winner," it suddenly struck me that even though my fellow employees had voted me most worthy of winning this award, and even though that meant I was the person who best represented the company's values, I had no earthly idea what any of those values were.
I knew there were six values, because I had been told there were six values.
I knew one was probably teamwork, because that's always a value.
I knew one must have been vision, because I remembered a poster up on a wall somewhere of a person looking across an ocean, so of course that must have represented vision, right?
But I had no idea what any of the other values were. And that's because, during that entire year when I was supposedly embodying them, those values—whatever they were—never influenced a single decision I'd made. There was no point at which I said to myself, I've got to make this tough decision. What do the company values tell me I should do?
Then I reflected on the effort the founders must have put in to come up with those values. There had probably been a workshop at a retreat somewhere, where they spent several days putting all these values together in the hope they would help employees make better decisions. Yet there I was, the guy who'd won the award, and those values hadn't impacted my decisions at all.
This excerpt ends on page 19 of the hardcover edition.
Monday, May 26th, we begin the book Topgrading (revised PHP edition): How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching and Keeping the Best People by Bradford D. Smart Ph.D.
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