Change the Language — and the Behavior Follows
By Joe Phelps, CEO, The Phelps Group
Our language
is like a computer's operating system. We are programmed by
it. By using the right words (with the right people) you can
change conflict to cooperation. Examine how you react when people
get your name wrong or your title doesn't quite fit. Your team
members will react in the same fashion and so will your customers.
Creating a company language strengthens your corporate culture
and bonds your team in a way that company picnics can't. It
makes everyone feel connected because they understand each other
and feel respected.
It will also help your company win business in a couple of ways.
First, your clients will subconsciously respond in a positive
manner when they see how well your team relates to one another.
Second, it makes potential customers more responsive because
they will feel that you understand them and their needs better.
It is also wise to listen to how your customers communicate
with each other and use their language when you do business
with them.
Here are some words and phrases that do (and don't) encourage
to effect a change in attitudes.
Don't use:
Boss — it's an old world word. Try team leader,
manager, associate or whatever is appropriate. Individuals are
their own boss. They don't even have to show up. They simply
determine their own level of success by reaping the positive
or negative consequences of their actions. The more responsibility
you have, the more you're actually working for the people around
you. So say they work with you, not for you. And say you work
with someone, not for them.
ASAP — busy schedules and relative importance
of tasks render this acronym almost meaningless. Best to agree
upon a specific date and time.
Departments — we abolished them at The Phelps
Group to organize in client-based teams. We refer to people
of the same skill as being in the same discipline.
Employees — it smacks of people working for others.
Associates seem to work best for us.
Creatives — used in some ad agencies to refer
to art directors and writers. This infers that our PR people
aren't creative. Or our promotion people, or producers aren't
creative. Or, anyone for that matter. We refer to our associates
by their function: writer, PR specialist, producer, art director,
etc.
Sold — don't use "we sold it to the client."
Better to say, something like, "We agreed on the concept." The
spirit being that we came to the same conclusions and have alignment
on next steps. No one wants to be sold. If you don't
have alignment, it won't stay sold for long.
I — when referring to what has been accomplished.
Give the credit to the team.
Make titles functional — not hierarchical.
Avoid:
Supervisor — no one wants to be supervised. They
want to be led. They want to be coached.
Executive — who isn't an executive in professional
services in a flat organization? Words like specialists, managers,
leaders may work better.
Senior — it's a relative term. Age is not much
of an issue. Productivity is the yardstick, not seniority. And
in many cases the younger are more productive because of their
technological skills or energy level. This is not to say that
we don't respect and revere the wisdom that comes with age and
experience. But titles are not the place to show this respect.
(Plus once you're over 40, you'd probably rather not be referred
to as "senior.")
With this spirit in mind, consider allowing people to make up
their own titles. The guideline is to be descriptive
of the functions performed, not a person's relative importance
within the organization.
In this same spirit, encourage the use of first names. Have
the youngest people call the oldest by their first name. Publish
phone lists alphabetized by first name. It's friendlier.
Speaking of lists: Always list people alphabetically —
never by rank. This goes for lists of client names as well —
even if the client organization still adheres to the old style
in its own communications. Don't waste time and suffer anxiety
figuring out a pecking order when building "To" and "CC" lists
on a memo or report. People aren't offended by seeing their
name in alphabetical order. (But they are offended if you happen
to put them lower then they expect in a pecking order listing.)
Using language appropriately will empower everyone in your organization,
it is the most powerful tool you have. It is also very simple
to use. Start by setting the example and suggesting what words
work best. Your team will quickly pick up the idea and the results
will show up in a stronger company culture and your bottom-line.
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How
to Create a Healthy Company Culture
By Joe Phelps, CEO, The Phelps Group
What is
company culture? Culture is defined as a belief or value system
of a group or a person. When we refer to a company culture
we are looking at the ways people are motivated or are inspired
to motivate themselves because they want to be part of the
team. Company cultures are constantly evolving and in successful
businesses they heavily influence the direction of the company.
To understand
exactly where your company culture currently is; start by
reviewing your mission, vision and values and asking yourself
if they are working for you. Company cultures are healthiest
when the individuals believe their contribution to the company,
the customers and their personal missions are aligned.
One of
the first steps in changing a company culture is to look closely
at what will work best for the future. Changing a company
culture can seem like a risk, but more often than not, staying
in the same place is a much bigger risk. Look deeply at the
possibilities and see where can you go from here.
Here
are a few tips to help create a healthy company culture and
attract the right people:
-
Publish
the company’s culture: vision, mission, values and
organizational model.
Know that higher commitment arises when the entire company
was involved in the formation or evolution of the company
culture. Getting buy-in from your entire team is one of
the most powerful tools a leader can utilize.
-
Ensure
that associates understand and commit to the company beliefs
and standards. Invent ways to review them frequently.
This prevents them from getting lost in the day-to-day
shuffle of business. Posting them around the office, printing
them on business cards and even using them as screen savers
are a few of the ways to keep your company culture top-of-mind.
-
Hold
people accountable to their own goals. Job descriptions
are limiting. So, support team members by giving them
the ability to not only define how to do their jobs, but
how to do them extraordinarily well, to get results
that make them and the company happy. Encourage individuals
to develop an individual objectives action plan. Written
goals are much more likely to be accomplished than those
that are just thought about.
-
Measure
individual progress toward these commitments.
Each month, hold one-to-one meetings where team members
review their goals and commitments. Coaches help identify
obstacles and remind the associate of their accountability.
This reinforces desire and commitment to attain the goals.
-
Publicly
recognize individual and team successes. Create
a forum that celebrates associates’ accomplishments.
Applause, certificates of recognition and other fun acknowledgements
help team members feel supported and appreciated.
-
Terminate
consistently underachieving associates -- or ones who
are not aligned with the company’s culture.
Hire slower and fire faster. If someone is not a match,
it’s best to take action sooner, rather than later.
-
Recruit
people to exceed ever-increasing standards. Finding
the right people is a leader’s most important job.
At The Phelps Group, we encourage our associates to bring
prospects to our Brain Bangers’ Ball so we can get
to know each other in a low pressure, yet highly creative
and social atmosphere. (To find out more about the Brain
Bangers Ball, e-mail
with “bbb” in the subject line.)
We’re
finding that people are increasingly attracted to us because
of our culture. This is partly due to how highly we value
a healthy working environment. This is supported
by our belief that candid, kind and timely communications
will solve most problems.
Our constant
vigilance to uphold this tenet, combined with our thorough
hiring processes, and less-hierarchical organizational model,
has helped create a group of loving and caring individuals.
And because that has become such an important part of our
company, when anyone exhibits behavior outside the norm, they
feel peer pressure to examine their actions and align with
the culture.
A culture of success consists of alignment, integrated core
values, open feedback, and interdependence. We have proved
that it works here at The Phelps Group. Take some time to
integrate some of the tips above and your business will not
just survive, it will thrive.
About
the Author:
Joe Phelps is the founder of The Phelps Group, one of the
nation’s leading integrated marketing communications
agencies located in Southern California. Phelps, who started
his agency 20 years ago with one client, Fender Guitars, was
named the “Entrepreneur Leader of the Year 2000”
by the Los Angeles Advertising Association, is a Belding Award-winning
writer and has been featured on the cover on Inc. magazine.
At his agency, and prior to that at NW Ayer and Grey Advertising,
Phelps managed multi-million dollar campaigns for many of
America’s and Japan’s top companies. Phelps’
revolutionary business model is used as a case study at numerous
universities, including Northwestern, Colorado, Pepperdine
and USC. He may be contacted at (310) 752-4400 or through
the website at www.pyramidsaretombs.com.
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The
Ten Things People Want Most in Their Jobs.
Joe Phelps, CEO
The Phelps Group
With the
free market determining the labor costs (salaries) in most
products and services, the most important value-added component
a company can offer its people increasingly will be job satisfaction.
Extensive
research has been done on what’s important to us in
our jobs. The conclusions of most studies, and my personal
observations, are that the following ten points are the main
components of job satisfaction.
1. Recognition
for a job well done – Mark Twain said he could live
for two months on a good compliment. It is widely known that
recognition is the number one motivator of people.
2. A healthy
working environment – clean, well-lit, adequate space;
the proper equipment; and inhabited by people who care and
who communicate in an honest, timely fashion. Some companies
have workout rooms and bring in trainers to help their teams
achieve optimum health.
3. Meaningful
work – trading your time in life to help achieve something
worthwhile. This can be something within the company, the
community or even global. Reminding your team that everything
they do touches other people adds meaning to their lives and
work.
4. Responsibility
– people need to believe that they are responsible for
their own actions, and that they are trusted. Self directed
teams give people clear responsibility. They are also the
ultimate delegation tool for busy executives.
5. Accountability
– a feeling of ownership and of outcomes. It is a sense
of the proverbial buck stopping with every single person and
not in the lap of someone far down the line. People on self-directed
teams willingly hold each other accountable as well as themselves.
Accountability is the ability to follow through with your
commitments.
6. Equitable
compensation – linked not to longevity or rank, but
to performance; being treated like partners; possible equity
in the business can be important. There are numerous ways
to do this such as ESOP, phantom stock, etc. Talk with a compensation
expert to find out what is best for your company, and then
put the plan into action.
7. The
chance to learn – opportunities to grow into more significant
positions with greater responsibility and ultimately, to increase
one’s value to the organization. Supporting the team
members in getting advanced degrees or improving their skills
through classes or conferences is a great way to open this
door for them.
8. The
chance to do great work – not just work that meets minimum
standards and expectations, but quality work: A+ work! Ask
your team what it takes for them to do their job really well
and ask if they’ll commit to that standard.
9. Understanding
– knowing how the work relates to the realization of
the overall goals of the business. Sharing the company goals,
and getting input from your team at your annual meeting is
a great tool for getting buy in and creating understanding.
10. The
chance to work with interesting, motivated, responsible people
– whose personal and professional goals are in alignment
with one’s own. Encourage your team members to introduce
great people to your company, you never know when you’ll
meet someone who is a great fit.
Now, take
just a moment to review the list again. It becomes obvious
that the concept of a self-directed worker
deployed on a self-directed team is a natural system for making
sure many of these needs are met.
About
the Author:
Joe Phelps is the founder of The Phelps Group, one of the
nation’s leading integrated marketing communications
agencies located in Southern California. Phelps, who started
his agency 20 years ago with one client, Fender Guitars, was
named the “Entrepreneur Leader of the Year 2000”
by the Los Angeles Advertising Association, is a Belding Award-winning
writer and has been featured on the cover on Inc. magazine.
At his agency, and prior to that at NW Ayer and Grey Advertising,
Phelps managed multi-million dollar campaigns for many of
America’s and Japan’s top companies. Phelps’
revolutionary business model is used as a case study at numerous
universities, including Northwestern, Colorado, Pepperdine
and USC. He may be contacted at (310) 752-4400 or through
the website at www.pyramidsaretombs.com.
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Iraqi
Freedom Tactics Boost Workplace Productivity
By Joe Phelps, CEO, The Phelps Group
Is your
company as successful as Operation Iraqi Freedom? One of the
reasons OFI was so successful is because of the way our “special
ops” teams are constructed. To understand how this works
from a business perspective, let’s look at an article
by Frederick Reichheld of research firm Bain & Company
in the October, 2001, issue of Harvard Management Update.
In his article on employee loyalty, he writes “…the
military has learned that the essential management device
that makes beliefs and desires practical in operation is the
small team in which individual soldiers operate. Small units,
made up of 5-10 soldiers, provide clear visibility and accountability.
Everyone’s role is vital because there is no slack,
and even in chaotic battle conditions, rapid communication
and coordination are still possible.” This is one of
the reasons our military teams have been so successful. That
same level of success can be achieved in your company by utilizing
the power of small, self-directed teams.
Why
Small Teams Work Best:
Participants
on a small team can see the fruits of their individual efforts.
They can see the actual work they’ve performed. There’s
no place to hide on small teams like there is in a bureaucratic
division or department of a large company. Therefore, one’s
personal contribution can be measured and one can be duly
rewarded for exceptional work. They are small enough to make
“one for all and all for one” real and believable
to the participants. They contain the rewarding social element
of camaraderie, which is so necessary for most people to feel
their work is fulfilling.
Let
Freedom Ring
Freedom,
expressed as time and place – where I want to be when
I want to be there – has to do with flexible time to
take care of other life chores as needed; experiencing more
of the joys of family, friends and new challenges; the flexibility
to work from virtually any place at any time; and to be connected
to families and communities more than ever before.
We can
have that flexibility now, because technology finally allows
us to sever the tether from our offices and desks, yet stay
in touch with our teammates.
Professional
people are often thinking about their work challenges in the
shower, on the freeway and, too often, when they should be
listening to their spouse and children, they’re working.
There’s the potential to work around the clock. This
is a far cry from the “leave it all at work when the
whistle blows” mentality of the factory worker and to
a great extent, many of the white-collar workers of modern
day bureaucracies.
The combination
of this desire for freedom, the flexibility made possible
by communications technology and the “always on my mind”
mental work calls for a new way to organize. The departmentalized,
“always in your face” pyramidal hierarchies invented
for factory work are simply outdated.
Let’s
Trust Each Other
The continuous
pressure of solving work problems, regardless of the time
of day where one is physically, sets up the need for a counterbalancing
tension release. One release can be flexibility, in terms
of when and where someone works. Granting this flexibility
requires trust.
What’s
wonderful about human nature is that trust begets trust. If
you trust me, I’m much more likely to trust you. The
more we trust each other, the better we communicate. The better
we communicate, the more productive we are together. It’s
either an upward spiral, or a downward spiral, depending on
the level of trust.
Leadership’s
purpose, after setting the mission and vision for the company,
can almost be distilled to:
- Find
the right people.
- Provide
them with the resources they need to do their job.
- Hold
them accountable to their own goals.
- Show
trust by getting out of their way and allowing
them to do what they’ve committed to do.
This cultural
mindset will improve employee retention by enhancing their
commitment to the organization, as opposed to their merely
“obeying” in order to earn money. It also creates
the kind of teams that do whatever it takes to get the job
done right.
Creating
a successful business or military operation requires believing
in accountability and strong self-directed teams. These teams
need to be built on freedom and trust, the cornerstones of
success. Using this proven method will allow your business
to achieve victory at a time when economic and political struggles
are damaging companies who are still using leadership techniques
that do not take advantage of their greatest resource - their
human capital.
About
the Author:
Joe Phelps is the founder of The Phelps Group, one of the
nation’s leading integrated marketing communications
agencies located in Southern California. Phelps, who started
his agency 20 years ago with one client, Fender Guitars, was
named the “Entrepreneur Leader of the Year 2000”
by the Los Angeles Advertising Association, is a Belding Award-winning
writer and has been featured on the cover on Inc. magazine.
At his agency, and prior to that at NW Ayer and Grey Advertising,
Phelps managed multi-million dollar campaigns for many of
America’s and Japan’s top companies. Phelps’
revolutionary business model is used as a case study at numerous
universities, including Northwestern, Colorado, Pepperdine
and USC. He may be contacted at (310) 752-4400 or through
the website at www.pyramidsaretombs.com.
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Dealing
with War & Fear in the Workplace
by Barton Goldsmith, Ph.D.
With the onset
of war with Iraq, and the terror alert at High, American business
is experiencing a new dynamic. Many of our team members are
dealing with fear. This feeling is present in every area of
our lives and creates new challenges for business leaders
and professionals at all levels. The key for business is that
we need to understand that this affects everyone in a company
from the CEO on down.
This feeling is
not something Americans are used to. Living with fear changes
the way people behave at work. It affects our ability to “be
professional” and makes us nervous, which doesn’t
let us perform at a high level.
Fear affects our
productivity, our communications, our ability to create and
our emotional well being. In order for business to deal with
this, we must first and foremost learn to identify its existence.
Without the ability to identify the problem, it will only
get worse and weaken the structure of our businesses and our
lives.
In order to eliminate
fear and to decide what to do about it, people have to be
encouraged to talk about it. The leader of a company is in
a position to do a great deal to alleviate fear by getting
the conversation started. The first step is to make it safe
for your people to talk about what they are feeling. If you
don’t get them talking, they will act out their feelings
of fear and could unconsciously make or avoid decisions that
affect the entire company.
This is where the
CEO and a company’s communication policy can make a
huge impact. If the leader of a company takes the time to
talk one to one with their team members, it is incredibly
effective. When the leader of a company disengages the traditional
corporate “pecking order” and creates a feeling
of openness and trust, their team responds in kind. When a
business team feels valued and supported, they are more likely
to hold together and perform well even during a difficult
time.
One CEO who does
this regularly and who encourages his team to do the same
with each other is Joe Phelps, CEO of The Phelps Group and
author of “Pyramids Are Tombs.” Phelps’
new thinking in business paradigm structures has helped him
create a company that is not only weathering the current storm
of an economic downturn, but actually growing at an impressive
pace. His methods for creating a non-traditional corporate
structure are worth looking into – and so is his book.
Phelps believes
that, “The more we trust each other, the better we communicate.
The better we communicate, the more productive we are together.
It’s either an upward spiral, or a downward spiral,
depending on the level of trust.”
This may sound
“touchy-feely,” but there is a real bottom line
payoff to his ideas and to understanding how open communication
affects your business. If people have to sit on their feelings,
they will sit on their ideas. Getting out their concerns,
whether it be about the war or the company, will help them
feel safe enough to give you their best.
So first things
first, get your team talking about how they are feeling about
the current crisis and how this may affect the company. I
suggest you start by getting everyone in a room, buy some
pizzas and lead off the conversation by saying something off
the wall.
Joe Phelps says,
“When the leader of a company is willing to show that
they don’t have to be perfect all the time, their team
will be much more comfortable about sharing their feelings
and then their ideas.”
I couldn’t
agree more. Once the team sees that you and their fellow team
members are opening up, your one to one conversations will
be quick and easy. If you can feel the undercurrent growing,
it’s time to begin talking. There is no question about
it, so stop wondering, order the pizza and start the dialogue.
It’s an investment that will bring your team together
and you will see the results reflected in your bottom line.
These
tools will help your company stay alive in a difficult situation.
In a very serious crisis, additional insights will be very
valuable. For more information on managing critical incidents,
send an e-mail to
with the words “Critical Incident” in the subject
box.
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