When will these challenges and obstacles stop?
Can I just get a moment to catch my breath before I have to respond to the latest headwind?
If you’re currently leading a team or an organization, I’m betting one of these phrases has been bouncing around your head like a Ping-Pong ball in a wind tunnel.
That’s entirely legitimate.
Tariffs. Unemployment. Inflation. Shifting alliances. Housing. Immigration. RTO. White House medical advice. TikTok influencer videos. Algorithmically driven newsfeeds.
Trust me, I’d also want to go back to bed and wake up in 2026. Or 2036.
Crisis averted.
But that ain’t leading!!
When the news media, and the chatter at the golf club, is around terms like recession and austerity, its natural to imagine that we need to move to a wartime footing.
It’s also reasonable to imagine you’re already channeling powerful, motivating, wartime soundbites and speeches from Winston Churchill – “When you’re going through hell, keep going.” – or some Spartan phrase from the movie 300 like “No Retreat. No Surrender.”
Here’s the thing.
With the deepest respect, that aint leading either.
Well, not truly leading.
From conversations I’m having locally and conversations I’m watching across the world, much of leadership behaviour today is taking on this type of posture.
“We need to slow any transformation initiatives and keep our powder dry until we know which way the winds are blowing”
Exactly at the time transformation is evolving and reshaping markets and categories with alarming velocity.
“We need to drastically reduce our investment in L&D”
Exactly at the time upskilling and retraining employees is becoming competitive advantages and a talent magnet for innovative firms.
“We need to halt our leadership development programs”
Exactly at a moment when building leaders at every level in your organization is a necessity for increasing agility and adaptability.
“We need to cut Marketing dollars”
Exactly at the time that decades of research has proven that brands that spend in a downturn recover and grow share faster than those who went silent.
I get it.
When there is no perceived end to the crisis in sight, keeping capital investments down – or slashed to the bone – seems incredibly prudent. Some analysts and shareholders might praise you for your prudency.
Might I offer an alternative solution?
Rather than locking down your spending and investing, why wouldn’t you consider unlocking your culture?
No, not the false culture theatre of (really frigging expensive) free pizza lunches, foosball tables and another round of updated high gloss “Mission, Vision & Values” posters for the washrooms.
Yes, to the real growth potential of your culture of creative, passionate, committed humans that have the ability, intelligence and potential to drive the organizational results you so desperately need.
To do that unlock still requires genuine leadership – and maybe a few well-timed Churchill quotes – but leadership that obsessively focuses on these imperatives.
Accountability
Making it crystal clear what you demand from your people and why those demands are so critical to the organization. This is drawing a through line from your strategy to what you expect them to deliver. Why are we expanding into this market? Why are we shutting down this product line? Make the connection explicit and, vitally, make them accountable for both the results you seek and the way they behave. We’re real good at giving people OKR’s and KPI’s but really crap at being explicit about how those are delivered. Pro tip – your culture is defined by what you tolerate and if you tolerate “Brilliant Jerks” then that’s the culture your people will share.
Take-away – make your people fully accountable for both the behaviours they exhibit and the results you expect. You’ll be surprised how many will rise to that clear expectation.
Transparency
This gets squirmy for some leaders. Do I tell them our business is faltering? Do I tell them layoffs are very likely? Short answer – yes you tell them. And you tell them early and explicitly. Of course I’m not suggesting a fully open kimono here. Topics like potential mergers, union negotiations and the like require confidentiality at all times. But treating all topics related to the business like a black box often means leaving your people entirely in the dark.
Transparency achieves two vital components of any culture. One, it removes ambiguity and gives clarity on the actions needed from our people - see accountability above. Two, it treats your adult workforce like…errr….adults!! With respect, I think we’ve over-indexed on coddling and protecting our people. Hiding and shielding adults from business reality doesn’t stave off the potential outcomes, I’d argue it accelerates those outcomes because there’s no clarity and cohesion on what’s critical and what’s a nice-to-do inside your organization. NetFlix beautifully articulated a wonderful set of expected behaviours from their talent which, they’d argued, was foundational in the success of their culture and the success of their organization. In that order!! The culture was successful and the company succeeded because of that (and wicked content but I digress). One articulation was “fully formed adults” which remains one of my all-time favourite talent management definitions. This timeless HBR article from NetFlix’s Patty McCord goes into all the details about this concept.
Take-away – Transparency is a mark of respect to the people you’ve hired. It reminds them and reinforces that they truly matter. It also motivates them because they have clarity. Clarity on what’s needed. Clarity on the consequences.
Agency
Deliberately having some AI Agentic fun re-imagining the classic WW1 poster “Father, what did you do in the Great War?
The vital third leg of the stool. If you’re going to make them accountable and communicate transparently with them like adults, then give them the space and latitude to act like those fully-formed adults. That’s agency. Let them shape and define how they’re going to achieve the results you’ve transparently shared with them. Study after study has shown that the people in the business – particularly those at the point of contact with customers or product – have infinitely better, more actionable ideas than the bods back at HQ. Make your employees directly accountable for finding improvements in the business and then give them the agency to experiment with new ideas to deliver that. Numerous organizations have embedded this “agency” into the heart of their culture and seen cycle and cycle of positive impact and business returns. Since 1951 Toyota’s “kaizen” approach of soliciting employee ideas has produced a staggering 50 million new ideas with an implementation rate of 70% (think of the savings on consultants). 3M’s storied “15% culture” allows employees to spend 15% of their time on self-directed projects outside their day-to-day mandate. To put some real teeth into the 15% initiative contributing directly to the business, 3M have set an expectation that each division should generate 30% of sales from products less than 4 years old. Talk about accountability and transparency. Other organizations renowned for this approach include Google, Adobe and Zappos who regularly cite that giving their employees time, space and freedom to come up with business ideas and enhancements has led to billions in new ideas and billions more in cost reductions. That’s agency in action.
To be clear I’m not advocating a free-for-all without boundaries, constraints and clear expectations. I’m suggesting you evaluate decision rights and consider pushing them down to the point of client contact – Ritz-Carlton famously gives employees $2,000 to solve customer problems without needing managerial approval. Look at your layers of bureaucracy and consider how much those layers are suffocating employee morale and stifling new ideas. Strong recommendation to follow the good folks at Corporate Rebels or pick up a copy of “Humanocracy” by Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini.
Take-away – Holding your people accountable and then dictating how, where and what they should do is akin, as David Ogilvy famously said, to buying a dog and barking yourself. I’ll guarantee you that your people have hundreds of solid ideas to dramatically improve your business. They need the freedom and agency to do that. Freedom from micro-managing. Freedom from recrimination for trying new things.
But, I can hear you say, I’m staring into an austerity budget, a looming recession and this feels like all-out conflict.
So, where do I start?
Respectfully you start by recognizing that your culture is not defined by the superficial, warm and fuzzy nonsensical dimensions you may have used before. Especially now.
Your culture is the executional layer of your strategy. Your culture is how your people behave and make decisions every day inside your organization. And your culture has a vote on whether your strategy gets implemented, partially deployed or frustratingly ignored.
You start by being deliberate around how you lead leveraging the elements of accountability, transparency and agency outlined above.
You start by looking long and hard at what you tolerate inside your organization because that has an enormous impact on what your culture really is…not what you say it is.
You start by being that kind of leader.
Cue Winston.
Is there any better line from Churchill than “Will you stop interrupting me while I’m interrupting you”
Note – my use of wartime language is purposefully metaphorical. It is not intended to reflect geopolitics or the increased polarization and division we all see in the world.
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References
· · In researching this “wartime” themed post I dove into the ChatGPT history books to understand how successful the Allied wartime efforts were in galvanizing strategic actions and behaviours from their populations. The examples of highly motivated ordinary civilians stepping up were astounding:
o In the US during WW1, $20billion was raised in wartime bonds with a 1/3 of subscribers coming from low-income households. In Canada a similar effort netted $100 million when pre-war drives raised only $5 million.
o In addition to rationing rubber and gasoline, a self-directed reduction in driving by US families during WW2 led to a 18% decline in gasoline usage in 1942 with a subsequent decline of 20% in 1943. Accountability and agency.
o In the UK, “Dig for Victory” civilian gardening allotments were producing 2 million tonnes of food by 1943.
o Canadian WW2 Victory Bonds raised $12billion dollars with civilians accountable for 48% of the money raised.
· Find a more complete list of initiatives that ordinary civilians accomplished here.
· Advertising in a recession has been extensively researched by the phenomenal Les Binet and Peter Fields. An excellent synopsis here.
· A fascinating read about Toyota’s employee suggestion approach – and the 50 million ideas it has generated.
· Ritz-Carlton’s famous $2,000 approach – and its impact on loyalty and revenue – here.
· More about 3M’s 15% culture in this article from Wired.
· You’d struggle to find a better WW2 biopic on Winston Churchill than the legendary Gary Oldman playing the British Bulldog in “Darkest Hour”