Wahkôhtowin WE ARE ALL RELATED

Abundance Accountability Personal leadership Respect

Note: Refreshing intentional values is a key part of the culture journey. This is NOT a 1980’s re-do activity. It’s much more meaningful. This connects with last week’s blog.

The Challenge: Going deep on refreshing our values is hard work. The chair of a board I’m on and I exchanged emails on that very matter recently. Enlightened board members get it and govern accordingly. A values “check in” challenges us to the core if we’re serious about the exploration. As we undertook this initiative when I was Chief People Officer, our CEO was the lead investigator. We visited other advanced companies, learned what values they framed, why they did so, and how they were implemented. It was a rigorous focus that took several months. It was business, not fluff!

What We Can Do About It: It is definitely beneficial to visit other companies. Although, if we’re not careful, it can become a thesaurus exercise. In this spirit, I strongly suggest also looking beyond the boundaries of commercial enterprises. For example, in my geographical area there is much to learn from thousands of years of wisdom from the First Nations Cree. The Cree way, wahkôhtowin, is described as the safe path leading to healthy and balanced relationships between all of us, through what the elders describe as the Seven Sacred teachings. These are sometimes referred to as the Seven Grandfather teachings. These lessons are foundational to Cree traditions and in the heart of most Indigenous People in Canada. The seven sacred values are:

1. Peyak: Respect.

2. Nîso: Courage.

3. Nisto: Truth.

4. Newo: Honesty.

5. Nîyânan: Wisdom.

6. Nikotwâsik: Love.

7. Tepakohp: Humility.

If one digs into the narrative of each of these Cree values, it is profound. While I’m a proponent of building a unique recipe of values particular to each company, I would happily exchange uniqueness to conformity if each workplace adopted these. They are based on so much historical wisdom AND the Cree present them as an interconnected system. Hence we are all related through these seven teachings! How profoundly cool is that?

Wahkôhtowin… Think Big, Start Small, Act Now!

Lorne

One Millennial View: We often turn to history for present guidance and wisdom. It’s great to recognize that values like the seven listed above are still available for us to encourage, share and be interconnected with. While companies fight to become as modern as possible, sometimes foundations should be built on something ancient.

– Garrett

Blog 997

Edited and published by Garrett Rubis

Lead In With Lorne – The Benefit of Humble Pie

Personal leadership Podcast

Welcome to another Lead In With Lorne. This week we’re discussing the benefit of being served some humble pie, and how we can learn, improve and approach things with a more valuable perspective when we receive a helping.

Enjoy it on the YouTube video embedded below, or audio listeners can hear it on SoundCloud now too. We hope it enriches your Monday!

Kindly subscribe to the YouTube channel and SoundCloud to make sure you start your week with a leadership story.

Lorne Rubis is available @LorneRubis on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Hot Topic Friday: August 23

Friday Newsletter Personal leadership

Happy Friday! Here are my August 23 Hot Topics and how they relate to advancing culture or leadership.

Hot Topic 1: Hey Shareholders! You Are No Longer Everything.

Source: The New York Times.

What It’s About: Nearly 200 chief executives, including the leaders of Apple, American Airlines, Accenture, AT&T, Bank of America, Boeing, BlackRock and others representing some of America’s largest companies, issued a statement that redefines the purpose of a corporation. This NYT article claims, “No longer should the primary job of a corporation be to advance the interests of shareholders.” The group known as the Business Roundtable, declared companies must also invest in employees, deliver value to customers and deal fairly and ethically with suppliers.

Why It’s Important: Holy cow. What took these folks so long to arrive at this conclusion? DUH! Those of us committed to building great cultures and the importance of caring for all stakeholders have always known this to be true. However, better late than never as the saying goes. Now CEOS, let’s start doing stuff to show you mean it. (I wonder if Wells Fargo, Audi, Disney and other members of recent reported scandals signed it)?

Hot Topic 2: Employee Happiness and Business Success.

Source: The Economist.

(Preface: I’m almost embarrassed for The Economist publishing this now. I had to double check that it wasn’t August 1960 versus August 2019. Seriously).

What It’s About: A study by Gallup, covering nearly 1.9 million employees across 230 separate organizations in 73 countries found that employee satisfaction had a substantial positive correlation with customer loyalty, and a negative link with staff turnover. Furthermore, worker satisfaction was met with higher productivity and profitability. The research also showed that improvements in employee morale precede gains in productivity, rather than vice versa.

Why It’s Important: My first dumbfounded reaction is, “No S%#t.” You mean Gallup has to gather data from almost 2 million workers to come to that conclusion? Our followers could have confirmed the same outcomes for no cost. Why do so-called leaders, executives and shareholders still need convincing? It’s like somehow The Business Roundtable referenced in Hot Topic 1, and the esteemed Economist had an epiphany within the same week. So here we are, approaching 2020, and maybe we’ve finally turned the philosophical corner on investing in PEOPLE and CULTURE for greater, sustainable results… Well at least while business is good and shareholders are happy. Thank goodness bots and machines are easier to manage. Oops, sceptical not cynical.

My Weekly Wine Recommendation (Thanks to Vivino):

Flight & Feathers No. 37 Cabernet Sauvignon Rutherford Napa Valley 2017.

[Picture and ratings provided by Vivino.]

And finally! Here’s Cecil’s Bleat of the Week!

“The beginning is the word and the end is silence. And in between are all the stories.” – Kate Atkinson.

Bye for now!

– Lorne Rubis

Incase you Missed It:

My latest Lead In podcast.

My latest blog.

Season 3 of Culture Cast.

Also don’t forget to subscribe to our site, and follow Lorne Rubis on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter for the latest from our podcasts, blogs, and all things offered on LorneRubis.com.

An Advanced Organization’s Values Can Kick Butt

Abundance Accountability Personal leadership Respect

Hi, we’re back after a summer break! Thanks for joining us again. As always we’re sharing with you our most valued and authentic insights relative to culture and leadership.

The Culture/Leadership Challenge: I keep an Enron values cube on my desk as a reminder of how hollow, empty and cynical organizations’ values can be. Enron, of course, was an energy company that reached dramatic heights at $90+/share in 2001 and disintegrated into bankruptcy almost overnight based on unethical leadership and systemic fraud. The infamous values cube beautifully captured so-called Enron values (like integrity), that were obviously anything but what the company really stood for. The western business world is populated by stated values. They are usually well intended, yet rarely well applied. At worst, they are symbols of contradiction and fuel cynical distrust among employees and stakeholders.

What to Do About It: The main thing about declaring values is that they need to be a unique recipe and a non-negotiable guide for EVERY person’s core behavior in an organization. It’s not the quantity (people believe that there should be only three or four), because it’s not about recital similar to a 5th grade memory contest. It’s not simply a memory game. It is about a deeply held belief that the behavior associated with all the values is a system, and fundamental to the success of the business. It’s obviously not the only element of business success, however it is a vital component. The secret sauce is fully integrating the values into the soul of the institution, and to introduce them to help people become better human beings first and foremost. How can we resist investing in that which makes us better? People ask me if people bought into the 11 stated values of an organization I was previously at, and my answer is always “yes.” Every single value we declared and reinforced made us better as individuals AND as a group. Furthermore, it is important for people to recognize that consistently living a value is life long exercise. One is never “done” achieving the necessary self-awareness and emotional maturity to truly live the value set in the moment every day. We stumble and celebrate how much more consistent we become. The commitment is relentless, everyday learning at a very personal level. Leadership needs to set the example and reinforce this. Every employee needs to commit from the inside out. When one can execute on this, you really have done something important for the culture.

Think BIG, start small, act now.

Lorne

One Millennial View: I mean, no one can deny that core values are important and crucial for all of us, and great organizations to possess. That doesn’t mean it’s not difficult, disciplined, and painstaking to uphold. As mentioned above, there will be times of falter, but if we don’t have values then what do we have?

– Garrett

Blog 996

Edited and published by Garrett Rubis

Lead In With Lorne – Say ‘Thank You’ to a Career Friend From the Past

Resources

Welcome to another Lead In With Lorne, we’re back! Thanks for letting us enjoy a bit of a hiatus, and speaking of saying “thank you,” this week we want to encourage everyone to say thank you to a career friend from the past. Someone has likely been there to help you bounce things off of in your career, and it’s a cool sentiment to let them know that hasn’t been forgotten.

Enjoy it on the YouTube video embedded below, or audio listeners can hear it on SoundCloud now too. We hope it enriches your Monday!

Kindly subscribe to the YouTube channel and SoundCloud to make sure you start your week with a leadership story.

Lorne Rubis is available @LorneRubis on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Hot Topic Friday: August 16

Friday Newsletter Personal leadership

Happy Friday! Here are my August 16 Hot Topics and how they relate to advancing culture or leadership.

Hot Topic 1: Why Do We Worry Then Worry Some More?

Source: The New York Times.

What It’s About: UCLA Clinical psychiatrist and author, Jennifer Taitz, writes about the negative impact of waiting for the “other shoe to drop,” and how this way of thinking robs us of fully appreciating moments of joy. We somehow believe that thinking of the next potential bad thing better prepares us for the worst. This is a false narrative. The article outlines why this happens and what we might do about it.

Why It’s Important: We need to recognize, welcome and embrace moments of joy. When we start worrying about what bad things could possibly happen before we fully soak in moments to relish, the less capacity we have for resilience. Two important worry antidotes to keep in mind include: 1. Cherishing our values more than counting “results” and comparing ourselves to others 2. Imagining life without this anxiety and visualizing living in this more desirable state. This is easier said than done, yet worth practicing.

Hot Topic 2: 27 Years of Research Finds One Key Thing for Long and Happy Life.

Source: Inc.

Why It’s About: A study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association by a team of University of Michigan researchers. The team analyzed data from the 27-year-old Health and Retirement Study and found that one thing led to people living longer. According to the article: “That one thing is inescapably interwoven with happiness, fulfillment, and maximum productivity at work: Working and living with a sense of purpose and meaning. The researchers found that those who had meaning and a sense of purpose (as measured by answers to questions from well-being self-assessments) lived longer lives than those who’d self-reported little to no sense of purpose and meaning.”

Why It’s Important: Both individuals and organizations require a sense of deep purpose to thrive. Yet too often, neither fully invests in the work required to establish purpose and meaning as an intentional driving force. Why is that? We consistently let activity and transaction lead us without really asking the hard questions as to WHY? Being self-aware and reflective is difficult, yet as the research confirms, it is so valuable. What about you?

My Weekly Wine Recommendation (Thanks to Vivino):

Rainwater Cabernet Sauvignon Rutherford 2017.