CHAPTER 2

Cows with Attitude

You can make a happy person into a good worker, but not necessarily the other way around.

—Gordon Segal, founder, Crate & Barrel

Where Does Contentment Begin?

We have a healthy suspicion that some of you might be muttering things under your breath like, “Let’s dispense with all this idealistic ‘happy-go-lucky’ stuff. My employees are what they are. Some of them enjoy working here and give every appearance of being energized by their work, and others don’t. They’re just not contentable, and I don’t see that changing!” You could well be right.

Let’s clarify something. The job of “morale maintenance” in your organization doesn’t rest entirely on your—or management’s—shoulders. In fact, we agree wholeheartedly with noted organizational change consultant Price Pritchett, who admonishes us in his book, New Habits for a Radically Changing World, that we must “manage our own morale.” Nobody should have to handhold their workforce until they “feel good about things.” Indeed, each of us is responsible for our own happiness. But we think you’ll produce better results in a classic struggle between principle and pragmatism if—as an influencer of organizational culture and practices—you take reasonable steps that are well within your grasp to promote workplace satisfaction. And you should do it because it’s in your own best interest.

As noted in Jeb Blount’s wonderful book, People Follow You, “Leadership can be loosely defined as a process of organizing, inspiring, focusing, and enabling others to follow you in the interest of getting something done. Heretofore, the operative words in that definition might have been solely the ones ending in -ing. But that was then. More so today, the ‘you’ is of increasing importance, not because leadership is about you (it’s not) but . . . because people have lost faith in so many of the institutions around them [including] their employers. As they disengage from the institution, they choose instead to align with and follow individual leaders, at work, in churches, and in their communities. In short, people follow you. And you means YOU.” Ergo, it is very much worth it to you, as a leader, to want to earn that benefit of the doubt, and the discretionary effort that goes along with it. And no, you don’t earn it by going soft on people.

At any given time, most managers have at least three challenges with respect to worker motivation and satisfaction, all of which involve basic questions about human psychology and its relationship to morale:

At its very core, the whole notion of people being a distinct source of competitive advantage hinges on the way organizations and individual leaders perceive their workforces and the nature of the employment relationship. Do you see people on the asset or the liability side of the balance sheet? Are employees an opportunity—that is, a source of strategic advantage—or a cost to be reckoned with and minimized whenever possible? Are they viewed as little more than plug-and-play cogs in the operating process? Or do you see them as real, pulsating, thinking, idea-generating, responsibility-taking assets?

Sadly, virtually all of the economic models, attendant planning processes, and business metrics see something other than “human capital.” Instead, they seem to be front-loaded with the assumption that people don’t like to work, don’t want to work, and won’t work without exceptional and costly external stimuli. And it’s that same behavior modeling theory that still insists a “supervisor” is needed for every seven or eight worker bees.

Last year, I keynoted a conference for a large association of companies that rely on home-based workers for all of their production output. Since we don’t kiss and tell, let’s just call them Acme Supply Company and refer to their employees as “operators” (people who are, by the way, classified as employees and not contractors). As is our custom, I conducted phone interviews with a few future audience members to gain some added context relative to their business prior to the event.

One of the interviewees was the co-owner and president of a firm that employs 230 of these “operators.” He informed me that these 230 people, mostly women, all worked from home and were geographically dispersed across the southeastern United States. When I asked him how many he had met personally, he quickly responded, “None of them” and then elaborated by saying, “Truth be known, I don’t even know the names of more than a handful.” While still on the phone with this gentleman, I flashed back to the animal research referenced in Chapter 1 that suggests that dairy cows produce upward of 60 extra gallons of milk per year when called by name. I had to swallow hard to choke down the question I really wanted to ask him: “How hard do you think these people are working for you right now?”

Peach Limbs Don’t Grow on Oaks

A major assumption operating in most businesses is that they exist to make a profit. (At least we know it is in ours.) Hence, nearly all of our behavior responds to that assumption. If we’re going to discuss the kinds of practices that will transform your business into a grass-bellied, milk-producing Contented Cow, we first have to deal with the beliefs on which your company operates. All of the smart, innovative practices in the world will fall flat if they’re inconsistent with the prevailing assumptions.

To be sustainable over time, your practices must line up with your assumptions. Diversity management pioneer Roosevelt Thomas said it quite succinctly: “Peach limbs don’t grow on oaks.”1 He was referring to the fact that a peach limb grafted onto an oak tree will actually appear to live for a brief time, only to soon fall off dead. Similarly, you can fake practices you don’t believe in for a while, but you won’t be able to pull it off over the long haul.

Although Dr. Thomas originally made the comparison in another context, his metaphor describes precisely what happens in any field where the principles of organizational behavior theory apply. If you start changing your workplace practices without examining the assumptions that drive them, you’ll likely be disappointed. And you’ll likely make arbitrary, weakly executed, short-lived, and, to be sure, costly changes.

On the other hand, if you examine your assumptions about your employees, their human nature, which side of the balance sheet they’re on, what they need to succeed, and how much (or how little) it will take to provide that and find yourself deficient, you may end up modifying some of your assumptions a little. New practices can emerge from these adjustments, practices that are more consistent with your frame of mind and thus more likely to succeed. In short, if you’ll only stop kidding yourself, your chances for experiencing real change will increase exponentially.

Fortunately, even when cows are left up to their own devices, they seldom develop poor temperament and vices.

—“Improving the Welfare of Dairy Cows Through Management”2

You Get What You Expect to Get

So what do you assume about the people who work in your organization? What do you assume about people in general?

If you travel this mortal coil believing that most people who would come to work for you are lazy, stupid, untrustworthy, or mean-spirited, that assumption can’t help but show up in the way you run your business. You’ll invent all kinds of rules and procedures designed for numbskulls who couldn’t pour milk out of a boot with the directions printed on the heel. You’ll no doubt have a warden—er, supervisor—for every six or seven folks and will inevitably attract just the kind of people who match your assumptions. Discerning, competent employees won’t come anywhere near your place, thereby reinforcing your original assumption.

There is a reason that the crowds drawn to parades consistently outnumber those that attend funerals. Most people are far more attracted by hope, optimism, and freedom than by negativism and restriction. I want to work with and for people who believe that together we can do great things that matter.

People will not follow a pessimistic leader for long, nor will they perform particularly well for that person. If you truly expect to get the benefit of a person or team’s best effort, each person needs to sense that you have faith that he or she can and will deliver. Otherwise, all bets are off.

Several years ago, a professional football team was about a third of the way into a pretty dismal season. The team’s coach was quoted in the local media as saying that his team was so awful that he didn’t expect them to win another game all season. Guess what? They didn’t. Not because the coach was clairvoyant, but because they were merely living down to his expectations.

This example is indicative of the wider problem at all levels of business: you are likely to get just the kind of behavior from employees that you expect. And, paradoxically, they will either live up or down to your expectations because your policies, procedures, and employment practices had at their bedrock those same assumptions.

Core Covenants

Organizations operate on a limited number, not a great long list, of core beliefs and assumptions that are “burned in” to the very fabric of the business. Here are a few you should adopt and begin operating on today.

At one stage in my career, my boss’s boss was a rather devious and mean-spirited sort who had gotten his job for reasons that had nothing to do with merit. By and large, he ruled through intimidation. One day, I got a call from this fellow while out of town on business. I could tell from the slightly “tinny” quality of the audio that he was on a speakerphone. He spent about 10 minutes tearing me limb from limb over something I’ve now completely forgotten about. What I have not forgotten, though, is that shortly after we hung up, I got a call from one of my peers to alert me that she had been in this bozo’s office during the call—along with two of my direct reports, another of my peers, and a vendor. From that moment on, he never got my best effort, and to this day I’m fairly certain that if I saw that guy in a crosswalk, my vehicle would suffer unfortunate momentary brake failure.

Bogus Assumptions

Unfortunately, we have seen too many organizations operating on one or more of the following very erroneous and dangerous assumptions:

• People need paternalistic employers who will take care of them, because they are incapable of taking care of themselves.
• The more we give people without expecting anything in return, the happier and better off they’ll be.
• Running a “kinder, gentler” organization will foster love, siblinghood, peace, and goodwill.

Indeed, the bankruptcies of two of the largest American automobile manufacturers and several commercial airlines bear witness to the folly of these premises.

Assumptions Are a Two-Way Street: The Employees’ Perspective

Assumptions would be immensely simpler to handle if you had to mind only your own. The problem is everyone else has a set as well. Of equal importance to your assumptions about your workforce is the whole question of theirs—about work, the organization, and you personally.

For example, what do they assume about profit? How much is there? Where does it come from? Where does it go? A good part of the impetus behind the 2011 Occupy Wall Street (and various other cities) demonstrations centered on these questions. Protestors (both present and at home) who believed that they had been pushed into a corner by two-plus years of vicious recession and a fairly jobless recovery took the position that none of the profits seemed to be finding their way to them—thus, something sinister must be in play. And the 99 percent versus 1 percent debate was born.

Something similar is involved in the continuing erosion of the trust factor in the workplace. What are employees’ assumptions when they show up for work in the morning? Are they fully engaged? Or is it more like, “I know they’re out to screw me, so I’ll get them first?” Would you even know? How?

What do they assume are the organization’s current priorities? Have they had to figure this one out on their own, or have you told them? Clearly? Are you sure?

And what are their assumptions about you? What do they think is important to you? What you stand for? Believe in? What will or won’t you tolerate? Yes, we know; you probably told everyone this stuff when you hired them, right? But how long ago was that, and have your actions really been consistent with those statements made so long ago? In other words, what’s your authenticity level?

Unless you and your entire management team have invested considerable personal time and effort communicating honestly and openly—sharing the bad news as well as the good, showing people the numbers, helping them understand them, and making sure that your actions back up your words—we would bet that you’ve got people operating with bad data. In other words, your organization very well could be afflicted with a bad case of ignorance . . . curable, but ignorance nonetheless. And as author and SRC Holdings founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Jack Stack pointed out in his book The Great Game of Business, “Ignorance Can Kill a Company!”3

What Employees Want: The Contented Cows’ View

Leaders of Contented Cow companies understand that although their people have individual preferences, there is a common list of things they want (and deserve)—things that are necessary to fully engaging with the enterprise:

The “Happy Curve”

Most of this book deals with what happens to people at work—the way they’re treated, informed (or not), and related to. But it’s only fair to devote a little attention to a discussion about “contentability”—the capacity to be contented. None of the other ideas and examples we introduce will do you any good if you have a whole field full of irascible beasts.

In an article that appeared in Business Horizons magazine, writer Dennis Organ advanced the theory that workplace morale depends not only on the work environment but to some degree on the internal sense of happiness that employees possess or lack. In other words, hiring inherently happy people can exponentially boost the morale of the organization as a whole.4

We think it’s a given that in order to have contented employees, you have to start with “contentable” ones. We all know people who seem to be happy no matter what, as well as those who aren’t happy with anything. Some people are always looking for a scapegoat, and the workplace is a target-rich environment. So does job satisfaction depend on what happens to us at work? How we are treated? The so-called working conditions? Or is it an individual’s emotional makeup? We tend to agree with Robert Owen, implementer of pragmatic reforms at his Scottish cotton mill, who believed that it was likely a product of both.

Organ’s story of Jack Davis makes an interesting case. Davis, a former corporate executive, unscientifically formulated the idea of what he called the Happy Curve when he had the opportunity to take over a company in crisis. His new environment was a nightmare for shareholders and a really bad place to work; almost everyone was miserable, and with good reason. But there was a small but solid core of upbeat, supportive, and optimistic people. Careful, deliberate observation of these people caused Davis and his staff (none of whom were trained psychologists) to conclude that these folks were just plain cheerful people, on or off the job. They had stable and fulfilling family lives, interests outside of work, and confidence in their abilities. Ups and downs were part of their lives too, but on balance they were comfortable in their own skin and stayed on a pretty even and relatively elevated keel.

Now consider the possibility, as Davis did, that each individual has a range of moods. High for one person may be average for another, and some people would never get as low as others. In fact, each person might have a sort of emotional set point (like the one that’s supposed to be anchoring our weight) toward which moods tend to gravitate, unless something really unusual is going on.

Moreover, Davis and his crew came to believe that they had somehow ended up with a disproportionately high number of people with low Happy Curves. In other words, the grouches had reached critical mass. Since morale is a group dynamic more than an individual condition, the abundance of low Happy Curves alone was enough to drag down the others at least a little.

As the business grew and attrition created openings, Davis made a conscious effort to hire people who not only were qualified but seemed to have the potential for being happy. Although no one was ever fired for being sullen (perhaps they should have been), the organization eventually took on a new, more positive outlook. Sales improved, and the spiral turned upward. Of course, higher morale was not the single silver bullet that saved this company, but it was obviously an integral factor.

A “Sticky” Variable

As it turns out, a number of research studies corroborate Davis’s experience. What we call “morale” is, according to University of California, Berkeley professor Barry Staw, described as a “sticky” variable. That means some of it is accounted for by what is innate, as opposed to being caused by environmental factors. For example, when organizational psychologists measure the job satisfaction of a group of people at two points in time separated by intervals of up to several years, the best and most consistent predictor of job satisfaction at the later time is the earlier assessment of job satisfaction. This finding holds up even when many people in the group have changed jobs or employers.

A study of 5,000 adults begun by the National Institute on Aging in 1973 found that the happiest of people in that year were still relatively happy 10 years later, regardless of changes in their work or other circumstances.5 Perhaps most telling, Staw and his research associates found that a high school counselor’s rating of the “cheerfulness” of adolescents predicted their job satisfaction 30 years later as well—or better than any single aspect of their jobs! Also persuasive are the results of studies of identical twins separated at birth, indicating that 30 percent or more of the variation in adult job satisfaction relates to genetic factors.6 There might be something to this sticky variable business, but, of course, it’s not the whole story.

We’re not suggesting that work environment doesn’t matter. You’ve had good jobs and bad ones, and you know there’s a difference. But we do think there’s good reason to believe that people vary in their tendencies to experience good morale—within a range—regardless of environmental factors. Retired Marriott CEO Bill Marriott apparently feels the same way, which is why he implored managers to hire those who have the manners and “spirit to serve,” preferring to train people in other skills they might need. Unfortunately, you can’t teach nice. Any company would do well to adopt a similar philosophy when recruiting.

You can, by the way, hire “for fit” and still uphold your organization’s commitment to equal employment opportunity. There aren’t any gender, racial, or ethnic differences in the tendency to be happy. (Indeed, the only acceptable discrimination in hiring practices should be directed against grouches!)

But Will They Be Contented Here?

We have made the case from the start that Contented Cow companies are great places to work. And although this is an absolute fact, it’s also a fact that all cows aren’t going to be content living on your ranch. Contented Cow companies unabashedly take steps to ensure that people who won’t fit in with their particular environment don’t go to work there (and that they don’t last long if they do somehow manage to get on the payroll). In effect, what they recognize—and it’s as true in your company as it is in theirs—is that not everyone would be happy, productive, or successful working there.

For some, the selection process actually extends past the new hire’s start date. Zappos is so committed to getting the fit right with each hire that they offer new employees $2,000 to leave during their new hire training if for any reason they feel the fit isn’t a good one.

Such measures not only narrow the risk but also make plain from the start just how serious the organization is about employment matters. Moreover, their meticulous care has the beneficial side effect of confirming for the individual that he or she is joining an elite organization, thus creating high expectations, which, in turn, breed high performance. During a tour of the Zappos operation, our tour guide volunteered that despite what one might expect, very few people take the money and leave.

One measure of a person’s capacity to be satisfied and productive at your company is the degree to which that person can live with your ground rules. Every organization has certain things that they consider sacrosanct and immutable. Changing them just isn’t up for discussion. Among other things, Contented Cow companies realize the absolute futility of trying to convert someone whose internal compass points 40 degrees to the left or right of the corporation’s.

It’s not a matter of morality but of makeup. More so than the average company, Contented Cow companies have a crystal clear sense of direction and a keen awareness of their core values. Accordingly, they tend to take very strong positions on anything that impinges on those values and have little room for those who are unwilling to make the journey with them or are otherwise unsuited to their demanding standards.

Many herds allow their cows to develop their own individual personalities as long as it does not mean special care and treatment . . . Individual cows must fit into the system rather than the system conforming to the habits of the cow.

—“Improving the Welfare of Dairy Cows Through Management”7

Chick-fil-A: Never On Sunday

You can’t get a Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich—or anything else on the quick-service chain’s menu—on a Sunday, because each and every one of their stores is closed that day. If you want to know why, read founder Truett Cathy’s book, It’s Easier to Succeed Than to Fail. In reality, it doesn’t matter why. That’s just the way they’ve chosen to run their business. Although they could probably increase sales by opening their stores on Sunday, they’re happy to leave that to McDonald’s and others. Before you assume that they are too old-fashioned for their own good, consider the fact that the majority of Cathy’s stores do more business in six days than their competitors do in seven.

In an age when body art of all types, extreme hairstyles, and freedom of individual expression are evident everywhere, some organizations remain resolute in their insistence on conservative personal appearance standards. FedEx, Marriott, and Disney, for example, are fanatical about their people’s appearance and anything else that the customer/guest comes into contact with. Although Disney reversed a long-standing no-beard policy for theme park employees in early 2012, you can be quite certain that the only thing that stands out in their parks is the costumed characters, and that’s the way they want it.

As speed of execution becomes an ever-greater factor in our lives, companies are increasingly emphasizing a person’s ability to learn and quickly master new information and concepts. The learning curve for most jobs is steeper and shorter, and forgiveness for newbies is practically nonexistent. Hence, if you can’t demonstrate the ability to quickly grasp new information, you’re toast.

According to Fox Sports analyst and former football coach Jimmy Johnson, a player has to be teachable. An unteachable player will be miserable personally and fail the team at crucial moments. Johnson amplified the point in his book, Turning the Thing Around, when he said, “We evaluate a helluva lot more than vertical leap and forty-yard dash times. If I’m talking with a group of prospective draftees and one kid’s sitting there flipping ice at his teammate, he’ll be hard pressed to sit on my list for more than about five minutes. I have formal training in the psychology of learning, but none of that does any good on an unwilling or uncaring pupil.”8

Get good people and expect them to perform. Terminate them quickly and fairly if you make the wrong choice.

—J. Willard Marriott Jr.9

Time after time, in organization after organization, the winners are absolute zealots about who will and won’t get to play on their team. According to former A.G. Edwards CEO Ben Edwards, “We want someone with character who shares our values and who will fit into our culture. We’re looking for a long term happy marriage.”10 More often than not, they rely on the intangible factors rather than raw credentials or ability when making that decision.

The fast-growing and financially successful Chick-fil-A chain has a uniquely positive corporate culture. Operational expertise alone is not enough to cut it there. Truett Cathy says he looks at a person’s character as much as anything else when he hires an employee or contracts with an operator for one of his growing number of stores.

Chick-fil-A’s selectivity pays off in more ways than one. Their employee turnover rates, for example, consistently run at a fraction of the industry average. Other companies should take a cue from the chain and reorient their recruitment and selection processes by hiring “for fit” rather than mere credentials.

Contentability and Corporate Assimilation

We know that we’ve just advised you to hire only those people who will be able to fit in or assimilate to your culture. And we suspect some readers may have a problem with organizations that, at least in their eyes, impose undue requirements for assimilation. Such prerequisites can be a double-edged sword. Organizations that require people to fit in by meeting arbitrary or irrelevant considerations often filter out potential top performers who don’t fit the irrelevant part of their mold. For example, a company that insists that a woman behave like “one of the guys” or that people leave integral aspects of their identity at the door puts the wrong filter on the selection process.

The other edge of this sword is that strong leaders of outstanding organizations realize that many very talented people will not be able to meet the requirements necessary to succeed in their Contented Cow companies. These people won’t be happy, productive, or successful working there—no matter what. What sets these companies apart, though, is that they actually do something about the realization. Their assimilation criteria are strictly business-oriented, deliberate, and rational and do not consist of conveniences, preferences, or unquestioned traditions.

Every organization requires some degree of assimilation. You must be completely in touch with the real requirements for success in your business and highly disciplined in proclaiming those things loudly, clearly, and unashamedly to all who would invest their time and hopes in working there. Ultimately, as Roosevelt Thomas puts it, “People will always have to salute certain organizational flags. The job of the leader is to be very clear about which flags need to be saluted.”

Company standards and assimilation criteria exist for a reason—one that frequently has to do with the customer. For example, FedEx has gotten the message loud and clear from literally hundreds of customer focus group sessions that they prefer a neatly attired, clean-cut look—that is, no beards. The way the company sees it, as much money as you’re paying to do business with them, they’re only too happy to oblige.

Disney is every bit as emphatic about the use of coarse language. In fact, we’re quite certain their “cast members” would be fired for using some of the words in this book. But if you fathom the simple logic behind Disney’s requirement, it has a lot to do with the fact that the majority of what they sell is based on an image of clean, wholesome entertainment for some very impressionable kids.

It’s no less the case at Marriott, where only about 10 percent of job applicants pass muster. If an applicant is at all uncomfortable with their clean-living, extremely service-conscious environment, he or she will not make it there. Some would say that the Marriott way has its roots in the company’s Mormon-influenced origins, and they might be right. But as frequent Marriott guests, we can tell you that it most assuredly makes a difference—wherever it comes from. As proof that we put our money where our mouths are, large chunks of this book were written while holed up in various Marriott hotels around the country.

The Proof Is in the People

Although the Contented Cow companies are unique in many ways, they share remarkable commonality in three important respects. The rest of this book is going to hang on these three branches (no speed-reading).

Day in and day out, each of them does a remarkable job of:

In the following chapters, we’ll address each of these areas by addressing the following questions:

Our job, then, will be to pick through the situations and examples, bringing to light those that define each characteristic in the simplest, clearest, and most replicable manner.

Chapter Summary

Notes

1. Roosevelt Thomas, Beyond Race and Gender (New York: AMACOM, 1991), 14.

2. J. Albright, “Improving the Welfare of Dairy Cows Through Management,” Business and Management (1982).

3. Jack Stack, The Great Game of Business (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 9.

4. Dennis Organ, Business Horizons, May–June 1995.

5. National Institute on Aging Study, 1973.

6. Organ, op. cit.

7. Albright, op. cit.

8. Jimmy Johnson, Turning the Thing Around (New York: Hyperion, 1993), 180.

9. “Money, Talent, and the Devil By the Tail: J. Willard Marriott,” Management Review, January 1985.

10. Frederick F. Reicheld, The Loyalty Effect (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1996), 105