THE BIG IDEA: When executed well, core values provide an unparalleled competitive advantage for leaders because they define a specific set of idealized behaviors they want their people to uphold.

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If you could wave a wand and magically have all of your employees behaving in certain ways, how would you want them to behave?

It’s easy to get frustrated when an employee is behaving in a manner that doesn’t support the organization—arriving late to meetings, speaking over others, or making rash decisions.

When you observe a negative behavior, you can try to correct it by calling the recalcitrant into your office and giving him or her feedback.

For this approach to be effective, the feedback needs to be well-timed (right when the undesirable behavior occurs) and consistent (more than once).

Humans don’t change their behaviors too readily or quickly. Conditioning new behaviors takes time, consistency, and patience.

How to Improve Employee Behavior

While its beneficial to train your leaders to become effective in-house coaches, when you’re heading an organization with thousands of people, the feedback approach alone cannot foster the behavioral changes you seek on a company-wide scale.

The alternative approach, used by a minute number of extraordinary business leaders, is to determine, in advance, the idealized behaviors they want their employees to embody. Then, to encapsulate these behaviors into a set of core values that permeates throughout their organization.

Now, any company can put together a list of values.

Enron, for example, listed core values in their 2000 annual report including “Respect: We treat others as we would like to be treated” and “Integrity: We work with customers and prospects openly, honestly, and sincerely.”

Obviously, listing a set of values isn’t enough.

The Behaviors and Skills Your Organization Values

Core values answers the question, “What does our business stand for?”

More than anything else, what your business stands for is defined by the actions and behaviors of your people.

The actual values of an organization are determined mainly by where it invests its resources and how its employees behave, not what the leader says or what’s posted on a company website.

Businesses that use core values to build extraordinary organizations—like Zappos, Southwest Airlines, and Netflix—take their values very seriously.

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings explains, “Actual company values are the behaviors and skills that are valued in fellow employees.”

Businesses that consciously cultivate their culture hire and promote employees who demonstrate their established set of core values. They train and enforce these idealized behaviors at every turn.

Core Values Require Specificity

To be able to hire, train, and promote employees based on a set of values, your core values need to be specific so they can be measurable.

Enron’s lofty value of integrity and its brief description sounds nice, but could a manager easily evaluate if an employee was working with customers “openly, honestly, and sincerely”? (And what about open, honest, and sincere communication within the organization? Clearly, that wasn’t valued at Enron either.)

In contrast, look at Netflix’s core value of honesty, a value similar to integrity. For Hasting’s organization, honesty means:

“You are known for candor and directness.”

“You are non-political when you disagree with others.”

“You only say things about fellow employees you will say to their face.”

“You are quick to admit mistakes.”

Can you see how these definitions make it easy for leaders to evaluate their employees and potential hires?

Core Values are the CEO’s Responsibility (Not HR’s)

Ultimately, businesses that use core values to create a unique corporate culture have leaders who embody the very same values they want their people to emulate.

Humans learn best through observing behavior, not words.

If a leader isn’t conducting herself with integrity, for example, you can be certain that the employees aren’t going to go out of their way to do so either. Research shows that employees are seven times more likely to demonstrate loyalty to leaders they believe have high integrity than to those they do not.

This suggests that chief executives must be clear on two things.

First, they must know what behaviors are necessary to move their organization towards their inspiring vision. Second, they must resolve to live these behaviors, to the best of their ability, each and every day.

This is not a small commitment. Could this explain why so few organizations succeed in creating thriving cultures with engaged employees?

SIDEBAR: Will Your Core Values Hold?

Here’s a quick checklist to test the integrity of your core values:

1. Does each value speak to at least one desired behavior?
2. Will each value help you make decisions (especially the difficult ones)?
3. Are your core values memorable? Will every team member be able to encode them in their minds?
4. Does each value represent distinct elements of your overall culture?
5. Will you be willing to uphold these values 50 years from now?
6. Are your values congruent with the behavior of your leadership team? Are these values BS-tested? Will an employee be able to observe hypocrisy?
7. Can your organization hold up these values in stressful and difficult situations (like increased competition, product recall, stock devaluation, or downsizing)?
8. Are you willing to defend these values unequivocally? That is, does each value permeate through the entire organization?

For concise instructions on how to discover your core values, click here.

THE BIG IDEA: Considering the staggering amount of time CEOs spend in meetings, investing time in improving meeting effectiveness is prudent for any outperforming leader.

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Management guru Henry Mintzberg was one of the first researchers to provide a glimpse into the daily lives of CEOs.

Mintzberg followed a handful of business leaders around the office for his Ph.D. thesis at MIT Sloan. His primary observation appears obvious: CEOs go to a lot of meetings. Roughly 80 percent of their work hours are spent in meetings.

That was over four decades ago. A more recent study by Oriana Bandiera of London School of Economics and colleagues had the personal assistants of 94 CEOs provide detailed time sheets over a pre-specified week.

The results were similar to Mintzberg’s observations: 85 percent of the CEO’s time was spent working with other people through meetings, phone calls, and public appearances.

Why CEOs Need Meetings

Meetings dominate a CEO’s day because personal interactions provide valuable information critical to effectively running an organization.

Harvard Business School professors Michael Porter and Nitin Nohria argue that the ability to extract critical details needed to inform big decisions from employees is partly what defines the most effective CEOs.

Meetings also provide CEOs with an opportunity to communicate what they think is vital for their teams to know.

The Dark Side of Meetings

Another management guru, Peter Drucker, had strong views about meetings. He wrote, “Meetings are by definition a concession to a deficient organization. For one either meets or one works. One cannot do both at the same time.”

Or, as economist John Kenneth Galbraith said, meetings are “indispensable when you don’t want to do anything.”

The problem is two fold. First, we have too many meetings. Second, too many of them are unproductive.

12 Tips on Conducting Effective Meetings

Your goal, of course, isn’t to eliminate meetings, but to optimize their effectiveness as well as reduce their duration and frequency whenever possible.

Here’s a list of 12 ways to help you master the art of conducting effective meetings:

1. Clarify the purpose of the meeting when it’s scheduled. Request that participants come to the meeting prepared in advanced.
2. Clarify the objective of the meeting at its start. Every meeting should have purposeful direction.
3. Be mindful of meeting duration. Many 60-minute meetings can be done in 30 minutes. Many 30-minute meetings require only 15 minutes.
4. Start meetings on time regardless of who is late.
5. Reward the behavior you seek: Don’t invest time in reviewing meeting content with latecomers. Doing so rewards tardiness and penalizes timeliness.
6. Evaluate who really needs to attend each meeting. The more people, the more challenging it is be productive.
7. Avoid holding meetings for informational purposes; that’s the proper function of digital communication.
8. Elect a meeting moderator responsible for guiding the discussion toward the desired end goal. Don’t let specific participants dominate the meeting with endless conversation.
9. Whenever possible, end meetings early. The extra time can create a positive experience for participants.
10. Reduce distractions by closing the door and requesting that members do not use their phones during meetings.
11. Ask participants distracted with things unrelated to the meeting to leave. A meeting should be an active dialogue with all members involved.
12. End every meeting with a committed action plan.

Each of the above suggestions can greatly improve the quality, effectiveness, and results of your meetings.

A Bold Experiment: Cut All Meetings in Half

If you’re intrigued and brave enough, commit to cutting the duration of every meeting in half. Try this experiment over the course of the next two weeks and observe the results.

If you’re like many of our clients, you’ll find that you accomplish just as much. More importantly, you’ll discover a reservoir of free time that can be invested in more important matters.

If you have a clear objective, the shorter the meeting, the more focused the attention and the better the outcome.

Conducting more effective meetings will give you more time to focus on what matters most: leading with vision, cultivating a thriving organization, and better serving your customers.

THE BIG IDEA: Cohesive organizations and customer communities are created by the same mechanism. If you know what’s at the heart of both, you can build a thriving organization that fosters passionate customers.

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Like a hand full of marbles pouring into a bowl, when you put a bunch of people together, there’s chaos.

Egos bump heads like marbles colliding.

But then, a group begins to constellate around the center.

This center can take various forms.

In sports clubs and political groups, the center is a common goal, like winning a championship or an election.

In activist groups, the center is a cause, a slogan, or a set of beliefs.

In religions, the center is a God-image.

In corporate cultures, the center can be an inspiring vision, mission, or set of core values.

In destructive cults, the center is a charismatic leader with narcissistic and messianic qualities.

In Cult Brands, the center is usually an ideal, a set of values, or a theme of interest.

What Draws Groups Together

The group’s center acts as a magnet, attracting members to its core. The more powerful the center, the more cohesive the group.

Here’s the secret to transforming your organization and your customer relationships: the more archetypal the center, the more solid, enduring, and cohesive the group.

Archetypes draw people together. They inspire loyalty and connectedness.

As inherited dispositions in every human being, archetypes cause us to react in typical (instinctive) ways. Archetypes bind us together as members of the human family.

An Illustration of Archetypes in Action

Historically, world religions have kept the largest groups of humans together. The center of these religions (Christ, Buddha, Krishna, Muhammad) is the archetype of the Anthropos, the cosmic man, a collective soul that unites all people.

Destructive cults, too, constellate around this God image. Its members project this powerful archetype—what Jung called the Self—onto the leader.

The Self, as well as God or Nature, has been described by many ancient philosophers as an “infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” (We can all ponder that on our lunch break today.)

Symbolic images that point to the Self, like the circle, the apple, the star, the tree, and the egg, are found in countless religious narratives, myths, fairy tales, and individual dreams.

The Self, in its masculine expression, often takes the form of the wise old man, the guide, the mentor with supernatural aid. This archetype is expressed by characters like Merlin from the Arthurian legend, Gandalf in the The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit series, and Yoda in the Star Wars franchise.

In its feminine expression, the Self may take the form of an earth mother or love goddess. Southwest Airlines, for example, is aligned with the feminine expression of the Self. Their organization is guided by the principles of relatedness, care, and love—all attributes of the feminine Self.

Putting Archetypes to Work in Your Organization

How do you put archetypes to work?

Start at the center. The center is unique for each organization. Your strengths hint at it. Your organization’s passions point you in the right direction. The forces that drive your customers to do business with you provide invaluable clues.

This center should be expressed in your ultimate vision, your core values, and the language of your corporate culture.

How will you know when you’ve found your center? Your heart will awaken. Your employees will come together as teams. Innovation will increase by virtue of the passions of the men and women guided by archetypal forces deep within them. Your stakeholders will observe it. Your customers will hear the call.

Remember: the more archetypal, the more essential, and the more human your center is, the more cohesive your organization will become. And, the more easily you’ll attract customers who want to join forces with you.

THE BIG IDEA: Cohesive organizations and customer communities are created by the same mechanism. If you know what’s at the heart of both, you can build a thriving organization that fosters passionate customers.

__________________

Like a hand full of marbles pouring into a bowl, when you put a bunch of people together, there’s chaos.

Egos bump heads like marbles colliding.

But then, a group begins to constellate around the center.

This center can take various forms.

In sports clubs and political groups, the center is a common goal, like winning a championship or an election.

In activist groups, the center is a cause, a slogan, or a set of beliefs.

In religions, the center is a God-image.

In corporate cultures, the center can be an inspiring vision, mission, or set of core values.

In destructive cults, the center is a charismatic leader with narcissistic and messianic qualities.

In Cult Brands, the center is usually an ideal, a set of values, or a theme of interest.

What Draws Groups Together

The group’s center acts as a magnet, attracting members to its core. The more powerful the center, the more cohesive the group.

Here’s the secret to transforming your organization and your customer relationships: the more archetypal the center, the more solid, enduring, and cohesive the group.

Archetypes draw people together. They inspire loyalty and connectedness.

As inherited dispositions in every human being, archetypes cause us to react in typical (instinctive) ways. Archetypes bind us together as members of the human family.

An Illustration of Archetypes in Action

Historically, world religions have kept the largest groups of humans together. The center of these religions (Christ, Buddha, Krishna, Muhammad) is the archetype of the Anthropos, the cosmic man, a collective soul that unites all people.

Destructive cults, too, constellate around this God image. Its members project this powerful archetype—what Jung called the Self—onto the leader.

The Self, as well as God or Nature, has been described by many ancient philosophers as an “infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.” (We can all ponder that on our lunch break today.)

Symbolic images that point to the Self, like the circle, the apple, the star, the tree, and the egg, are found in countless religious narratives, myths, fairy tales, and individual dreams.

The Self, in its masculine expression, often takes the form of the wise old man, the guide, the mentor with supernatural aid. This archetype is expressed by characters like Merlin from the Arthurian legend, Gandalf in the The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit series, and Yoda in the Star Wars franchise.

In its feminine expression, the Self may take the form of an earth mother or love goddess. Southwest Airlines, for example, is aligned with the feminine expression of the Self. Their organization is guided by the principles of relatedness, care, and love—all attributes of the feminine Self.

Putting Archetypes to Work in Your Organization

How do you put archetypes to work?

Start at the center. The center is unique for each organization. Your strengths hint at it. Your organization’s passions point you in the right direction. The forces that drive your customers to do business with you provide invaluable clues.

This center should be expressed in your ultimate vision, your core values, and the language of your corporate culture.

How will you know when you’ve found your center? Your heart will awaken. Your employees will come together as teams. Innovation will increase by virtue of the passions of the men and women guided by archetypal forces deep within them. Your stakeholders will observe it. Your customers will hear the call.

Remember: the more archetypal, the more essential, and the more human your center is, the more cohesive your organization will become. And, the more easily you’ll attract customers who want to join forces with you.

THE BIG IDEA: Goals, strategies, objectives, and tactics are four powerful tools for providing organizational direction and achieving results when chief executives can clearly differentiate between each of them and know how each one relates to the whole.

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On the third move of a chess game, nine million positions are possible.

This is only a board game. Imagine how many more options you and your team face in the normal course of business.

New campaigns, new markets, new customers, new product launches, repositioning … your options are endless. In this confusion, you can sink into a vast ocean of to-dos, of action for action’s sake.

When this happens, you start confusing motion with progress, busy-ness with business.

We live in get-it-done-now world. The temptation will always be to become tactical first and fast, to focus on getting things done ASAP.

If this cycle is not understood correctly, you can unknowingly trap your teams in endless meetings and empty tasks with only marginal progress on the horizon.

In order to avoid this maze of confusion, infuse your thought process with four simple distinctions: goals, strategies, objectives, and tactics.

1. A goal establishes your target—the end picture of what you want to achieve.
2. A strategy sets your basic guidelines and approaches to realizing the goal.
3. An objective is a key result you set in order to execute a strategy.
4. A tactic is an action step or tool used to achieve an objective associated with a strategy.

These four elements are great companions in leading your organization because they give you the cohesion to keep everyone on your team moving in the same direction.

Goals: Establishing Your Desired End Picture

The team whose coach says, “We are going to make it to the super bowl,” makes it to the big game … then loses.

The team who wins never intended to just get there. Their coach said, “We are winning the whole damn thing!”

When setting goals you have to state exactly what you want.

Southwest Airline’s primary goal is to operate a low-cost business in order to offer low-cost fares to their customers.

Walt Disney World’s primary goal is to make attendees (of all ages) of their parks happy.

Strategies: Determining the Best Approach

Once you know the end picture, you need to develop your strategies.

Your strategies are how you grow and manage your business. There are three core categories of business strategies: operations, marketing, and innovation.

There are countless strategies in each of these categories. We conjured up 52 of them for marketing alone.

Strategies developed in each of these key areas should help the business realize its primary goal.

Everything you and your employees do—every single activity that influences the business and affects your customers—should push a defined strategy forward.

All employees need to clearly know, understand, and internalize these key strategies so they are empowered to make decisions and take actions that will move the organization closer to the goal.

One of Southwest’s key operations strategy is built into its goal: operate a low-cost airline. Only if they can operate a low-cost airline can they hope to offer low-cost fares, which they have been doing successfully for over 30 years.

Disney’s key operations strategy is to create a magical experience for every customer who enters their theme park.

Objectives: Defining the Critical Results

To execute your strategies effectively, there are certain conditions that must be in place for your end goal to be realized. Your critical objectives are these conditions.

Southwest realized that they make money when their planes are in the air; they spend money when their planes are on the ground. They created an objective to get off the ground fast.

But to make objectives actionable, they need to be specific and measurable. You need to be able to clearly determine if the objective is achieved or not.

Southwest invented the “10-minute turn” to get their planes in the air quickly. Their objective was to get off the ground in under 10 minutes. Today, with larger aircrafts, their turn time is now 25 minutes, but this on-going objective still helps them keep fares low.

Disney executives realized that every employee of the park will likely interact with customers at different times. And these chance encounters either help create magic or kill it. In order to create a magical experience for every customer who enters their park, they set an objective that every employee must help create this desired experience.

Tactics: Deploying Effective Actions

Having a strategy won’t automatically make the tactics apparent, but understanding your critical objectives will help make these choices clear.

Executives who solely focus on tactics too easily abandon the overall strategy and its objectives when a tactic fails. They confuse a tactic with the objective.

When a coach loses a game, he doesn’t change the objective of winning the championship. He simply changes his approach after learning what he can from his prior failure.

Tactics often fail. You still have to spend endless hours testing and retesting, refining and thinking about your tactics.

Southwest deploys numerous tactics to execute their low-cost strategy. For example, it only flies one type of aircraft: three models of the Boeing 737, which creates efficiencies in training and maintenance. Their open seating initiative helps passengers flow onto the aircraft faster, reducing Southwest’s turn time (how quickly they get back in the air). A faster turn translates to a more profitable airline.

One of the most effective tactics Disney deploys to help ensure that their customers experience a magical day is their employee training. Disney University is a three to four week training that every Disney employee in their park system must go through, whether you’re a janitor or a park executive.

Leading with Vision

If you want to steer your business toward a new, compelling, and sustainable future, you first need to have a clear vision in mind.

You can’t expect anyone to understand your vision unless the direction is clear within yourself.

Goals, objectives, strategies, and tactics provide a top-down approach to leading and managing your organization. They are four invaluable friends on your journey to growth and outperformance.

May this New Year bring you inspiration, passion, and clarity for the adventure that lies before you.