It was the best of service, it was the worst of service. Well, not really the worst, but with the title of this post, I couldn’t resist.

I love my Amazon Kindle. And not just because Rebooting Leadership is available in that format. So I was positively disconsolate when it stopped working on the first day of a 3-week trip.

From the Delta Sky Club at JFK, I logged into my Amazon account, clicked support, typed in my mobile number, and immediately my phone rang. They called me! I didn’t have to look up a number, dial it, navigate through an infernal scheme of menus, listen to hold music, and plead for a real human. One called me!

By virtue of my having logged into my account before I requested the call, the Amazon rep knew everything I wanted her to know. She didn’t ask me for my account number once, let alone twice. She grieved in sympathy with me, for a moment, over the demise of the e-reader, and without further inquisition, said she’d overnight me a replacement! Can you believe this? Did you know they did this? I didn’t.

Luckily for me, my wife was joining me on the trip 2 days later, and brought the new Kindle, completely loaded with all my stuff, to me.

Bravo, Amazon, all around!

Not so Panasonic. Our new Lumix digital camera (great camera – takes terrific pictures) arrived without the software, described in the manual, that lets the camera commune with the computer. Sending CD’s, I thought, is so first decade, surely it’s a download these days, and they just haven’t updated the manual.

Wrong. Went to Panasonic’s site (such as it is). Got no help there. Got on the phone. Customer service sent me to tech support, which sent me back to customer service, where a snippy woman who didn’t believe my story gave me the number for the “parts department”. I’m not making this up.

Twenty minutes later, Parts answered. They wanted my name, phone number, email address, account number, and – get this – the serial number of the item I was calling about – before they’d entertain any questions.

I asked how I could download the software. You can’t. We have to send you a CD. Please do. It’ll cost you $15. An argument ensued, and to cut my time losses, I surrendered the credit card number.

Ten days later, I got a paper receipt in the mail from Panasonic. Someone actually cut down a tree, refined its pulp into paper, printed a receipt, stuck it in an envelope, put it in a truck, took it to the post office, transferred it to a jet, put it on yet another truck, then a van, and then a nice man walked it to my house.

Five days after that, the CD turned up on my front doorstep.

Point: Both Amazon and Panasonic have now burned into my psyche their respective “brands”. I associate Amazon with terms like “pathfinder, state-of-the-service-art, newfangled, impressive, and going above and beyond to help the customer.” Panasonic, to me, now means “obsolete, outdated, obstructionist, old-world, traditional, clueless”, and a host of other things, none of them impressive.

Product brand, and service brand, extend to workplace brand. If someone were to ask me where they should explore selling their talent, Amazon would be one of the first names off my lips. Panasonic wouldn’t even occur to me.

I wonder – no I don’t – which company’s getting the best candidates turning up on its front doorstep.

Richard Hadden is a leadership speaker, author, and consultant who helps organizations improve their business results by creating a great place to work. He and Bill are the authors of the acclaimed business classic Contented Cows Give Better Milk, and Contented Cows MOOve Faster, and the brand new book Rebooting Leadership. Learn more about them and their work at ContentedCows.com.

This past March marked the 100th anniversary of New York City’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, one of the deadliest workplace disasters in U.S. history. 146 garment workers, mostly young immigrant women, died in the fire. As with too many things, it took a tragedy to bring about long overdue changes both in the garment industry, and in workplace safety in general.

While in some ways, we’ve come a long way with workplace safety, the anniversary provides an opportunity to reflect on the topic, and especially the role of leaders in keeping people safe at work.

Let’s be clear: Safety is everyone’s job. Repeat. Safety is everyone’s job. It’s the leader’s job to be sure that everyone knows that. Quality, productivity, organizational direction – you name it. The leader’s job is to set the vision, communicate it, model it, and help keep followers on track. The same goes for safety.

No sensible person would argue the merits of a safe workplace. Most of its benefits are self-evident. But there are others – significant, but less obvious.  Of course, people can’t work as well (or at all) if they’re hurt (or worse). But let’s not overlook the fact that if people are worried about their own safety, or if they have to make cumbersome adjustments to their work in order to stay out of harm’s way, they can’t possibly give their full measure of effort. They’ve got to slow down – beyond the reasonable “slow down” that comes with giving due care to the job.

When a leader shows (not just says) that safety is a big deal, that leader demonstrates, in a clear and compelling way, that he or she CARES about his or her followers. And take this to the bank: we know that people simply reserve their best effort for leaders who care about them as humans.

In April, we administered an employee survey and conducted training for Alaska Clean Seas, an Oil Spill Response Organization (OSRO) operating on Alaska’s North Slope. Talk about dangerous work. In January, I visited their Prudhoe Bay operation, in preparation for the project. (That’s what we do. And we’ll do the same for you, if you ask us to work with you.)

From the moment I arrived in the aptly-named Deadhorse, Alaska, I was fed constant reminders of safety. Holding handrails (both inside and outside), eye protection, wearing seatbelts, appropriate clothing for Arctic weather, safe footwear, the list goes on. While every ACS worker I encountered made me safety-conscious, the issue of safety has no greater champion at ACS than President and General Manager Ron Morris.

What’s been the effect of an unrelenting focus on safety at ACS? The event for which they brought us to Anchorage in April was, among other things, a celebration of a remarkable milestone: Ten years without a lost-time accident at Alaska Clean Seas. You read that right. Ten years. No lost-time accidents. That doesn’t happen by…well…by accident. It happens only through leadership, and a commitment by everyone in the company.

So, Bill and I weren’t surprised when Ron Morris opened the Anchorage meeting, held on the 10th floor of the Captain Cook Hotel, with a safety briefing. Here’s how to escape in the event of fire, earthquake, or anything else that makes outside look better than inside.

So leaders – a few to-do’s to make sure you’re executing your leadership responsibilities with respect to safety:

• Mind yourself first. Model safety in all you do. At work, and away. Seatbelts, helmets, handrails, smart moves. Whatever means safety in your world.
• Keep your eyes and ears open for hazards, especially of the not-so-obvious variety.
• Keep your mind open to suggestions from others about potential hazards, and ways to make your place safer.
• Develop systems and processes that encourage safety awareness, and make it easier to comply. Be sure people fully understand the consequences of carelessness.
• Emulating our friends at Alaska Clean Seas, celebrate your success with safety, but never grow complacent.

================================

Richard Hadden is a leadership speaker, author, and consultant who helps organizations improve their business results by creating a great place to work. He and Bill are the authors of the acclaimed business classic Contented Cows Give Better Milk, and Contented Cows MOOve Faster, and the brand new book Rebooting Leadership. Learn more about them and their work at ContentedCows.com.

As an American with a British wife, I’m sometimes asked (and no more often than in the last few weeks) what I think of the British royal family. The question is usually accompanied by the implication that the American asking it doesn’t quite understand the value of the monarchy, and thinks the royal family is a waste of time and money.

While I don’t share that view, I do understand why some feel that way.

And while this blog post is about organizational culture, and not about about the Windsors and Waleses, there are some pertinent points. To wit, the Queen’s approval rating among the British is about 80%. Hard to argue (or compete) with that. And, although it’s impossible to know, I suspect that the value of the monarchy to the tourist trade exceeds its cost.

But the real value of the British monarchy, and its associated family is in how it helps to define the culture of the British society. For better or worse, the monarchy is part of – I said part of – the essence of what it means to be British. These historic assumptions and practices have given structure, and some stability, to British society, kind of like protein molecules give structure and stability to a great loaf of crusty bread.

The organization where you work has a culture. And that culture goes a long way toward defining what – or who – that organization is.

Two eminent scholars, John Kotter, and Edgar Schein, have studied and written much about organizational culture in the last 30-40 years.

Harvard’s Kotter asserts that culture is part of why some organizations succeed and some fail.

MIT’s Schein defines culture as “A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the group learned as it solved its problems…, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems”. He points to what he calls “artifacts”, as the outward manifestations of that culture. The architecture of the corporate headquarters, dress code, our hiring practices, and how we treat employees are all examples of these artifacts.

At the heart of Schein’s thesis is that assumptions drive practices. Think about your assumptions with respect to people in the workplace. Whatever those assumptions are, they give structure to your organization, and allow it to function, with some consistency, over time. Do you assume that people are on the asset side of the balance sheet? Or the liability side? Do you assume that they’re trying to cheat the company, or make a valuable contribution? That they want to learn, grow, and develop? Or stagnate, collect, and retire on the job? These assumptions are critical to how you respond to, treat, and therefore lead people.

Here at Contented Cow Partners, we tend to agree with Dr. Schein. Assumptions drive practices. And carrying it further, practices drive results.

As you sit and watch the endless loop of today’s Royal Wedding coverage on TV, wherever you are in the world, ponder anew what your assumptions are about the people you work with. And how those assumptions make it to the bottom line.

Cheers!

================================

Richard Hadden is a leadership speaker, author, and consultant who helps organizations improve their business results by creating a great place to work. He and Bill are the authors of the acclaimed business classic Contented Cows Give Better Milk, and Contented Cows MOOve Faster, and the brand new book Rebooting Leadership. Learn more about them and their work at ContentedCows.com.

Anyone who has taken a knowing breath and been within reach of a portal to the outside world this week has heard the howls of outrage over the TSA’s stepped up body scans and searches. Purportedly in an effort to discover weapons and explosives secreted on the human body, the agency has recently deployed advanced imaging equipment together with more aggressive groping, ‘er pat down procedures.

When it comes to security measures, the flying public ‘gets it.’ We really do. What agency management fails to grasp is that we’re not stupid, and we still retain quite a bit of choice as to how cooperative we’ll be when “security measures” are visited upon us. Ironically, it’s not appreciably different from the way our employees react when new procedures are implemented in the workspace.

Rather than beating the TSA like a rented mule, let’s revisit a few practices that lend themselves to more successful outcomes, be it in the airport or our more pedestrian businesses:

1. Selling trumps telling.  Rather than announcing new procedures at the “tip of the spear” e.g., when passengers are nearing a new screening device for the very first time, find ways to communicate ahead of time, what changes are being made, and why they are beneficial to the traveler, ‘er employee, ‘er customer. If you want me to buy into the change, tell me reliably and convincingly how the change is going to make my life better. Better yet, show me.  Telling someone to “Do it because I say so, or because I have the badge and you don’t” didn’t work a hundred years ago, and it sure doesn’t work today.
2. Be authentic. Stop the canned responses and lame rationale for asking people to do obviously stupid things. Be quick to admit and remedy your mistakes. People really don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to be honest.
3. Lighten up a little. In case you haven’t noticed, most of us are self-absorbed, nervous, and wrapped a bit too tightly these days. We don’t respond very well to having overly officious security officers, supervisors, senior vp’s  or spouses barking orders. Smiles help. So does “please and thank you.”

If you think about it, what’s going on in airports today is akin to behavior that I’m told exists in strip clubs, but for the fact that no one is making money or having any fun at it. Perhaps DHS Secretary, Janet Napolitano should consider hiring some younger, better looking screeners and giving them a daily stack of $1 bills to tip passengers for putting some skin in the game… or dancing while we’re in the AIT machine:-)

Your views as always are welcome.

*****
A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows

In what may ultimately prove a landmark decision on workplace privacy, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled this week that government workers have no right to privacy when using employer-owned communications devices. The case stemmed from a suit brought by an Ontario, CA police officer whose extremely personal text messages (not all of which were directed to his wife) were exposed during an audit of the business vs. personal usage of his city-owned device.

My first thought was, what on earth was this guy thinking when, rather than quietly reimburse the City for the personal messages, he opted to file suit on grounds of unlawful search?

My second thought was, and is, that, though the Court restricted its ruling to government employees using government-owned devices, the ruling will undoubtedly spill over and have a chilling affect on private enterprise as well, and not necessarily in the expected manner.

Employees have been extensively using employer-owned wireless devices and communications networks for better than a decade. During that time there has been something of an uneasy truce as we have each allowed the line between business and personal time/pursuits to blur. To an ever greater extent, workers (at all levels) have permitted more frequent invasion of what has traditionally been their private, off-duty, personal space. It is no longer unusual at all to have one’s off-duty time peppered with business related messages, queries, and conference calls. Once the sole realm of managers who ostensibly were being paid for such interruptions, today, workers at all levels and pay grades are involved. In turn, employers have seen, and largely acquiesced to a greater co-mingling of personal with professional activities in the workspace.

Though there has been (and always will be) some tension in this arrangement, if we (manager types) are not careful, the Court’s ruling could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, and disrupts what is otherwise a pretty good thing.

Some managers and organizations will use the Court’s ruling as an excuse to more aggressively police and restrict non-sanctioned use of company devices and networks. Doing so would be a mistake. How?

By and large, we have been the beneficiaries of this arrangement, where, within reason, we get free (yes) access to team members, regardless of whether they are technically on or off duty. In a world where speed of thought, response, and execution reigns supreme, this advantage is worth a lot to us. The very second that our workers decide to either turn the device off, or demand compensation for the time when it is turned on, thus making them accessible, we have lost a lot of ground. This is a decision that each of them can make at any time, quietly, and without notice. When you get down to it, we face a simple high school physics problem… There are more of them than us. This is no time to get stupid.

*****
A thought leader in the arena of leadership and employee engagement, Bill Catlette is a seminar leader, keynote speaker, and executive coach. He helps individuals and organizations improve business outcomes by having a focused, engaged, capably led workforce. For more information about Bill, his partner Richard Hadden, and their work, please visit their website at www.contentedcows.com, or follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ContentedCows