CHAPTER 14

When the Contented Cows Come Home

Speculations on the Near Future

The Contented Cows . . . What Next?

As before, we’ve put a little pressure on the 12 Contented Cow companies (and a lot more on ourselves) by offering them as examples for others to follow. Their reputations are what they are, and we happen to think they’re well deserved. Yet, one has to wonder just a little about whether they and their shareholders will continue to enjoy the advantages they’ve created. Will they keep living up to and redefining what it takes and means to be a Contented Cow? Or will they rest on their laurels while others pass them by? Only time will tell. Clearly, it’s within their capability to do the former and within human or corporate nature to do the latter. The question is: Will they remain a breed apart? Does it mean enough to them?

Is it possible some of them have already become just a little too enamored of themselves or spend more time than they should reading their own press clippings? We wish we could be more certain.

The Path Ahead

Organizations must realize that just as they have choices, their employees (particularly the better, more skilled ones) do, too. The new rules of the game have been set, and now it’s only a matter of time before everyone learns how to play, and play it to their advantage.

For example, employees will adjust to their newfound responsibility for their work, careers, and future, which is good, because it’s about time. But those organizations that refuse to provide people with the information and tools they need to do their best work—and to make valid decisions about their future—will face real difficulty. Any parent who has watched a child go from the teen years to adulthood knows precisely how this goes. We must either continue to alter the nature of the partnership by putting it on an ever more adult-type footing or watch helplessly as they run off and leave us.

As predicted in the earlier version of this work, we have evolved to having at least four different classes of employees in the workplace. Each one has varying degrees of connectedness to the organization and totally different pay and benefit schemes. The determination of who winds up in what class of job, for how long, and under what conditions is made as often by the employee as it is by the organization. And to remove any doubt about it, that choice is made for selfish reasons. It’s no longer analogous just to the world of professional sports, where players simultaneously engage in multiple sports—or at the very least, have become expert at leveraging their free agency. Nowadays, we see free agent contractors in health care, information technology, and even the military.

Just in timing, work process disaggregation, and the externalization of the workforce will remain with us. To the extent that we employ contractors, temporary workers, or part-timers in core activities, we must find new ways of harnessing or positioning their effort as a distinct competitive advantage. Otherwise, everyone winds up working for Manpower, and things such as dedication and willingness to part with discretionary effort will go the way of loyalty.

No More Big Brooms or Silver Bullets

Managers have gotten somewhat of a break over the past several years in that the big brooms of downsizing and rightsizing have enabled them to gracefully disguise the firing of nonperformers and malcontents. We were able to push these individuals out the door with everybody else and do it with less commotion and unpleasantness than if it had happened on a case-by-case basis. But the big brooms are becoming silent. There aren’t too many companies left with a need to undergo the kind of radical restructuring we’ve seen over the past decade.

Given the heightened importance of everyone on our payroll, we simply must do a much better job of facing up to performance issues. Appraisal and the whole performance improvement process remain of paramount importance. And let’s face it: we’ve done a miserable job with this in the past. The Deming crowd and a lot of HR professionals who have grown weary of the fight would have us believe that we should just do away with the process. But with all due respect, they’re wrong. It’s an issue far too important to simply shrug our shoulders and run away from. We’ve got to figure it out—sooner rather than later.

Pat Riley, president of the Miami Heat NBA franchise dealt with the subject head on in his book The Winner Within. According to Riley, “Avoiding the solution of a tough, miserable problem is not discretion. It’s cowardice. And it’s robbery. Because as long as a serious problem goes unsolved, no team, no person can exploit its full potential. Any coach who doesn’t kick the complacent ass on his team will wind up kicking his own before long.”1

Keeping Them Fired Up and in the Game

Managers will have to work harder than ever to make their organizations attractive places to work. If we can’t—or won’t—offer security, we must offer real challenge and lots of freedom to pursue it. The good news is that people really do thrive on challenge and achievement—both the team’s and their own. But it’s up to us to invent the game, sell it, explain the rules, and erect the scoreboard.

We applaud the many corporations that have gone to great lengths to get their people feeling like owners. That’s what it’s all about. Quite a few have even pursued a path of actually making them owners, via stock options, grants, and the like. And that’s even better. But despite all the communication methods at our disposal, few have let their employees know about them effectively, and even fewer have bothered to clearly articulate anything about the vagaries of the market and the occasional effects this little thing called gravity has on it. Most of us have already experienced firsthand the diminishing motivational return on investment one gets from underwater stock options. So what makes us think our people will feel any different?

Although we needn’t build an entire town as Milton Hershey did, we must resolve the issue of benefits, particularly health care. As the Committee for Economic Development’s Frank Doyle pointed out, neither we nor our workers can well afford the incongruity between having a more flexible workforce and our antiquated benefit structures.2

Moreover, in the case of health care benefits in particular, we must be mindful of the fact that we now have an entire generation of baby boomers starting to fall apart at an ever-increasing rate. All of this is occurring at a time when more and more of them don’t have health coverage. Whether those people are real employees in the traditional sense, contract workers, or something else is immaterial. As Robert Owen figured out, if they’re sick, hurt, or busted up—they can’t work!

So What About You?

In as compelling a way as we know how, we’ve tried to illustrate the distinct and valuable advantages of treating people right. If nothing else, maybe what we’ve done is confirm for your head what your heart has known all along. The 12 companies we chose to profile in the Contented Cow comparison ended up with a $70 billion annual wealth advantage for shareholders. How much more incentive do you really need?

We fervently hope that some of the facts or ideas we’ve shared will become a cause for action. But if you intend to change some of your managerial behaviors, or perhaps your outlook or assumptions—even in a small way—you must do it with a sense of urgency. Don’t wait, because time is not your friend. Yet you must also be deliberate. You can start by taking a no-nonsense, clear-eyed look at the way you personally are operating now—no copping out or scapegoating. To those who would say, “But geez, I can’t really do some of these things until my boss plows the way, or our system just won’t let me . . .”—we say, “Bull!” Find a way! Go ahead without them! The truth is you can start making a difference in your company right now, without anyone’s help or permission.

And just what is your company or business, anyhow? You know as well as we do it’s not the name over the door. It is not a brand, a logo, or nameplate. It isn’t even the products you make or services you sell. Nor is it a ticker symbol, a bank account, or a piece of paper your attorney filed in Delaware long ago.

Instead, it’s you—because as our friend Jeb Blount pointed out in his book of the same name: People Follow You. And it’s the people who will (or won’t) show up for work tomorrow morning and the attitude they bring with them when they pass through the front door. It’s their ideas, their sweat, their emotions, their energy . . . their expectations of and faith in you. It’s both what they are, and what they can become.

It’s people who individually and collectively, but not always consciously, decide whether to:

• Walk with a spring in their step or to shuffle their feet.
• Smile at customers even when they’re having a bad day themselves.
• Use the tools you’ve provided with purpose and conviction, or take them home and put them in the attic.
• Show up early and stay late, or hit the snooze button, roll over, and call in sick.
• Walk through fire for you, or merely hang on well enough to avoid getting fired by you.
• Say “I can help,” as opposed to “That’s not my job.”
• Find a way to do it better, faster, and cheaper, or simply settle for “good enough.”
• Make something great happen here, or instead vote with their feet.

Again, it’s a matter of choice . . . yours and then theirs. Good luck and Godspeed!

Notes

1. Pat Riley, The Winner Within (New York: Putnam, 1993).

2. Frank Doyle, The Committee for Economic Development, 1996.