Articles—Issue 22, May 2007
The Welcome Mat
A friend recently started a new job. He is a seasoned banker/trust officer/wealth management guy. He had been at a bank that had many cultural challenges—enough so that even though they recently promoted him, he was wooed away by a large trust company. While he is a highly paid manager, he didn’t leave for the money.
Several days before he stared with the new company, the senior HR manager called him and laid out his schedule and appointments for the first few weeks. When he arrived on his first day, his office was already functional. Flowers on the desk, a welcome card from his team, functioning email, and his business cards already printed. Even though he had a hectic first few weeks with a number of problems to solve, he had an immediate sense of loyalty and respect for the organization. He believed the mission and values of the organization because they were modeled for him on day one. This allowed him to be effective much quicker and add value to the organization very quickly. He didn’t have to spend weeks trying to identify the unidentified values and political landscape.
Culture matters. If the messages that you telegraph as a leader are not consistent with your desired business practices, you’ll have misalignment that will eventually bleed into your income statement.
I use a survey tool in my consulting practice that compares client-company data with research based best practices that are tied to financial performance. There are three core drivers of performance: strategy, organizational design and culture which are broken down into 35 key components and 117 different individual factors. One of the key components of culture is “management modeling”. Another is "values credibility." Compare my friend’s experience with an experience that you have had, or better yet the experience that your employees are having on their first day.
(c)2007 by Tood Ordal. You are welcome to share this informational article with others.
Todd Ordal is a business consultant helping executives struggling with execution. Prior to founding the consulting firm Applied Strategy LLC, Todd spent over 25 years in management and executive roles such as President and CEO. You can contact Todd at todd@appliedstrategy.info