Trusted Leader Blog

One of my darkest times as an entrepreneur was winning the contract to undertake all of the audiovisual requirements at Fashion Week.  It involved filming and editing 57 fashion shows in 4 days and creating a dedicated television network to play constantly updating fashion shows.  With 18 staff and 30 volunteers, we were massively under-resourced, working 15 hour days with barely a break.  We had naively (or stupidly) trusted our client that we didn’t need more resources to film and edit 15 fashion shows a day across Sydney (because they had no more budget).

For over a year, I’ve been running monthly executive roundtables with CEOs, entrepreneurs and executives.  On a couple of occasions I’ve had two senior leaders wax lyrical about their corporate culture.

The pace of change within most organisations is accelerating.  It’s now commonplace for companies to be restructuring, changing their business model, undertaking M&As, launching a new strategy or initiative, entering a new market or even relocating.

Around the world, there’s growing discontent about the ineffectiveness of employee engagement surveys.  Over the last fifteen years, employee engagement levels have remained static, despite companies being focused on it more than ever.  According to Gallup, only 24% of Australians are engaged in their jobs, while another study found that in Australia we recorded the third-worst global employee engagement figures in 2015.

Thousands of years ago, when humans roamed the African savannah, it was in our best interests to live in tribes.  Being part of a tribe allowed us to sleep soundly knowing that others were looking out for man-eating saber-toothed tigers.  If we became too sick to hunt, we knew our fellow tribe members would help us out.  We could trust that other people would look out for us and they could trust that we would look after them.  A solitary human would never have survived that hostile environment.

A few months back, I wrote an article called Are you Limiting your Company Vision?

Jane leads a team of 30 software programmers for a large insurance company.  After months of slavishly working on a new sales tool to promote to car dealerships, the head of operations informs Jane that the company’s strategy has changed.  The new direction means months of rework.  Jane’s team feel deflated.  Rather than celebrate a successful launch, they’re stuck with renegotiating contracts, dealing with the frustration from other internal departments and various technical challenges. Scepticism abounds with the new strategy.  Jane urgently needs to restore trust and counteract the growing cynicism of her team.

One of the most common complaints from employees revolves around whether they believe their organisation can be trusted.  

On a regular basis, I conduct roundtables with CEOs and executives about how many of their employees understand the company vision.  A common theme among all the organisations is that their executives all “live and breathe the vision,” but they often stumble with extending the same enthusiasm to other employees throughout the company.  In particular, filtering the “why the company exists message” down to the lower levels of the company.   Some even question if it even matters and whether “the German backpackers packing boxes for six months, or the Chinese computer programmer or the forklift driver” even needs to know.

You know what it’s like.  You walk into a company for a meeting and something feels off. The receptionist is rude, staff seem flustered and the place is a mess.  When you meet your client or colleague, you feel an almost palpable detachment and annoyance towards the organisation.