I was talking with a CEO the other day who stated, "You should see our company when there is an emergency. Employees jump into action and go above and beyond the call of duty. All the departments set aside their differences and work together as one highly effective team.
Everyone in the organization do whatever it takes to get the job done. It's a thing of beauty. We get 3 months worth of work done in 1."
He continued, " After the emergency is over, we go back to our normal ineffective ways."
Video Transcript
Do you have complacency permeating your entire organization where you feel your employees are on cruise control there's no sense of urgency no drive no motivation to get things done? People are doing just enough work not to get fired. If you have that happening in your organization that is like a cancer that's going to take decades to metastasize and slow your company down so you become irrelevant in your space.
You know what happens then at some point an investment banker comes in they buy your company for pennies on the dollar, they sell out the assets and the rest of the company they get a bullet and go bang, they kill it. So the question is why does complacency come in and when I was thinking about this topic I was reminded of this once more, that my dad came home from this new job and he just came home shaking his head, oh you would not believe this.
I was about thirteen years old and when I heard this I still remember it he says you know he met with his boss for the first time, got this job went into his boss's office to have this great conversation and a guy says you know welcome aboard and my dad started walking out of his office and before he got to the front door to get out of his office and go to the shop floor his boss said, hey wait a minute Joe see that trash can over there, and my dad looked at it and said yeah. He says, you know if you have any ideas any new ideas for us throw them in the trash can and don't take them out into the shop floor we're happy with what we have going on.
That's a clear case of complacency coming from the top down because change is difficult for everyone and yet leaders that you know sometimes and you might be one of these leaders that you know you need to be liked so there's a project going on that should be killed someone should get a stake and put it in his heart and end the mess but because we don't hurt feelings we don't want to be the bad guy we let that project go on longer than we should; and sometimes it's a year in other times we have an employee that we should be firing because they're cancer to the organization but because we want to be liked or whatever we hold on to them for a lot longer than we should and we do part them employees come in and say you know thank you so much for firing that person.
But why didn't you do it six months ago? So when we have leaders doing that you know not just at the top but our middle managers doing that with that sends a message to the entire organization that you know hey you know bad behavior it’s OK, if you're doing like mediocre work it's OK just go along to get along; in fact I was talking to a leader of a company and I was asking him so what happens when there's like one of those emergencies you can lose an account he said you wouldn't believe it is a thing of beauty every single department comes together people stay late they're passionate they're motivated they're driven and we get six months worth of work done in two months, that's it, really then what happens when the emergency is over? Oh then we go back to normal, what does that look like? It looks like cruise control.
All the things I described; so if you're a leader you need to make sure that you've got an organization where people are driven to succeed driving each other to move forward, not for their own personal ego and the gratification because they're committed to you in the organization to make it when to beat the competition to be significant in that space, and the only way to do that, is you need to understand what drives human behavior, and I’ve got a course that you should take a look at a separate course and what it's going to do is teach you fundamentally how we human beings are built what drives us what creates ‘stuckness’ within us and how do we get people unstuck; because as a leader you need to understand that you're not in the process improvement business you're not in the I'm going to tell you what to do business you're in the culture business the belief change business, you're in the business of getting people mere mortals at work for you to set aside their peers and go on a journey with you and build something significant.
And that's my passion is empowering leaders with the tools they need to become awesome with the tools they need to improve people that they're leading, with the tools they need to be masters of change so not only do they get their employees to step up to a much higher level but they get the customers to embrace your organization to embrace you and not go to the competition.
So how do you build of that institution that has a following that you become significant in your space? So if this speaks to you, you know click on the link inside of the course and learn the tools you need to become better stronger faster.
