Friday, October 19, 2007
I’m not a foodie but I live with one so it wasn’t a surprise when we ended up at one of Portland, Maine’s best restaurants, Five Fifty-Five, during a recent vacation. What qualifies this story for this column is that I believe my positive experience had as much to do with the restaurant’s culture as it did with its food. When done right, a business can take on a personality, one that stems from its culture – values, aspirations, and shared expectations. And just like any other appealing personality in a relationship, it can draw you in. How does this happen?
First, the business has to be congruent. In other words, all parts of the operation have to fit together, seamlessly. In Five Fifty-Five’s case, the parts are service, atmosphere, menu, price, and attitude. I have been to plenty of restaurants that have the service down pat but the menu is uninspired. Or a fantastic menu but the actual meal doesn’t match expectations. Or how about those restaurants that have a fancy decor and are obviously projecting the attitude of “we are upscale” and one day you see some tacky sign in its window advertising two-for-one specials. Or lackluster wait staff surrounded by beauty and elegance. It takes a lot of forethought and effort to make sure all the pieces fit together.
But getting all the operational parts to fit together is not enough to create a personality. The business also needs to know “who they are.” Some of this comes from matching the parts well but I believe an experience of personality comes from thoughtful, purposeful design on the part of the business owners. And this personality isn’t necessarily an extension of the owner’s personality. Rather, once you combine operational congruency with a concrete vision -- that is when a personality can emerge that can draw you in. My sense from Five Fifty-Five is that if the owners walked away tomorrow, the staff would carry on the culture because it is that palpable and satisfying to them.
I think the biggest business payoff is that a consistent personality throughout the experience builds trust along the way, implicitly and imperceptibly. In the case of Five Fifty-Five, the consistency of each contact point we had, whether with a staff person or the actual product, was so powerful that we ordered more and enjoyed more than we would ordinarily. By the time we got to the dessert menu, there was no doubt we were going to order the homemade marshmallow fluffernutter because we had complete trust in what they would serve us. And we were not disappointed. It reminded me that a great dining experience has a symphonic quality to it.
So think about this if you’re having trouble attracting and keeping customers. How congruent is your company’s personality? How fragmented? Does it turn customers off or draw them in further? Who are you?
The Proof is in the Fluffernutter
Poisoning a Culture
Friday, October 12, 2007
I wanted to follow up on my blog from last week about the sexual harassment guilty verdict against the New York Knicks, including its head coach Isiah Thomas and its owner, James Dolan. Even though the conventional wisdom says that Mr. Dolan is in no jeopardy of losing his position (his father would have to fire him), nor is the parent company, Cablevision, likely to lose customers over this, no one should fool themselves into thinking “no blood, no foul.” Leaders who create and perpetuate a culture of intimidation, secrecy, and retaliation ultimately poison their own organizations. This happens because rather than attracting and retaining talent that can drive organizational performance, such a culture attracts and retains people who often are motivated more by self-interests than the interests of the organization. Sometimes it’s a matter of survival, in others a matter of ego. But when it happens with the people in positions of responsibility, the contamination spreads fast and wide.
What kind of talent is going to be attracted to such a work environment, especially when talent is in such short supply in most industries? Who would want to put up with such behavior? One profile is the talented person who takes a big salary with the intent of sticking it out for a year or two and leaving with their resume and bank account upgraded. Then there is the lesser talented person who gets hired because real stars have no interest in such shenanigans. And even more deadly is the person who actually agrees with such leadership practices. Add in those already in the company who feel their only option is to stick it out and so they withdraw as a means of survival. Let this dynamic go unchecked and the poisonous culture becomes more and more embedded in the organization’s fabric and mindset. Then see how ugly this is when new leaders attempt to administer a strong antidote.
I must confess two separate examples that came my way this past week made this story all the more extreme to me. One was the article on leadership in the October 1 issue of Fortune magazine that my colleague Rob Pasick passed on to me. Fortune teamed up with Hewitt and RBL Group to “conduct new research into the ways companies around the world are developing leaders and which are doing it best.” They identified nine best practices that these companies shared when it comes to developing leaders. I checked, “encourages a hostile work environment” wasn’t one of them.
Then on Wednesday I had the distinct pleasure of hearing Joe Dumars, NBA Hall of Famer and now general manager of the Detroit Pistons, speak on leadership at the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Small Business Conference. (Personal plug...I followed Mr. Dumars with a break-out session on how to develop your company's leadership pipeline. Videos of all the presentations are supposed to be eventually posted on the Chamber's website.)Mr. Dumars exudes integrity. (The NBA named its sportsmanship trophy after him.) His three keys to effective leadership? Have the conviction of knowing who you are; set the tone by letting your passion come through; and be the most unselfish person in the room. The irony that his back court team-mate for many years was Isiah Thomas was not lost on many in the crowd. Compare and contrast. That’s a lesson every leader should learn.
Live, from New York, A Cautionary Tale
Friday, October 5, 2007
For this week’s entry, I go to the world of professional sports to remind us that leadership, culture, and the law can intersect with significant consequences. This past week, the jury in the Isiah Thomas sexual harassment case reached its verdict. It found Mr. Thomas, head coach of the New York Knicks NBA basketball team, guilty of sexually harassing the Knicks’ former senior vice president of marketing, Anucha Browne Sanders. It also found the New York Knicks corporation guilty of subjecting Ms. Browne Sanders to a hostile work environment, and specifically its President, James Dolan, guilty of retaliation. Mr. Thomas’ monetary fine – zero, the Knicks’ fine -- $8.6 million, Mr. Dolan’s fine -- $3 million.
This is a painful reminder that the law, through Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, holds leaders accountable for their culture, at least in the sense of not creating a hostile work environment. Given all the business books that flood the market touting the management and leadership practices that create successful companies, one would think this type of leadership philosophy would be unheard of in such a public organization as an NBA franchise, and one as storied as the New York Knicks. And as Selena Roberts of the New York Times points out in her article (“The Garden Needed a Warning Label”) this week, there is another sexual harassment case working its way through the legal system involving the New York Rangers, the NHL team, also under Mr. Dolan’s leadership.
From an organizational culture perspective, this is most disturbing to me because it is one thing to have incompetent leaders mishandling an organization and putting it and its employees at risk. It’s another thing to consciously manage your people in such a way that intimidation, secrets, and humiliation define the company’s culture. Given the testimony and verdict, it’s hard not to detect a degree of malevolence in Mr. Dolan’s leadership practices that goes against every management philosophy and ethics of human relations.
But why did it take a public trial and jury to hold Mr. Dolan accountable for his leadership practices? In some ways, this was a disaster waiting to happen. Charles Dolan, father of James Dolan, was the founder of HBO and is best known as the owner of Cablevision Systems Corporation, a large cable television operator in the New York City area, which also owns Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, the New York Knicks and New York Rangers. Wikipedia lists his estimated worth at 2.3 billon dollars. Though a public company, the Dolan family has essentially run Cablevision as a private company for most of its existence and should actually go private later this month. In 1999, Mr. Dolan gave his son responsibility for the Madison Square properties listed above. Given the strain between the two men that has been reported over the past few years, it wouldn’t be surprising to find out that the father deferred to the son when it came to decisions so as not to come across as a meddler. Add to this that both the Knicks and Rangers are basically franchises, albeit unusual ones, where the respective commissioners of both leagues, David Stern and Gary Bettman, also tend to defer to the team owners, and you end up with little oversight and even less accountability.
So the cautionary tale is that these dynamics that undermine accountability can easily cause those in positions of responsibility to turn a blind eye to such management and leadership practices, which eventually catch up to an organization, its leader, and its stakeholders. Though some in the New York press are saying that the verdict will not hurt Dolan’s career, I can’t help but think of the impact this will have on attracting and retaining talented people in these organizations. But talk about being naïve. I don’t think this is on Mr. Dolan’s mind. It just doesn’t fit in with this Greek tragedy.
