11. Create Opportunities for Employee “Alignment” with Vision, Values, and Mission

To cultivate truly engaged employees, organizations need to build “linking opportunities” between an organization’s wants, needs, and culture and the issues that drive employees and garner their attention, passion, and care. Think visceral! Obviously, one of the first steps for creating alignment is for leaders to get to know their employees at a deep level. I know that sounds intrusive and presumptive, but it should be simple and obvious. It’s almost patronizing to state that again here, but you’d be surprised how really uncommon it is for leadership to be “in the know” about what makes the workforce tick.

Try it yourself. Right now. Can you name two or three issues that are consistently and specifically important to your employees in general? Those things that generate water cooler talk, raised voices, joy and concern, bonding and sharing? When I say “important,” I am talking about the issues that are part of the daily pulse of life—like commuting woes and school board decisions. And I am also talking about larger issues of interest and concern; things like the employees’ aspirations for their children, their desires and hopes for themselves, their communities, and their country are central to this theme. Whether it’s “going green,” or ethics, or the Consumer Price Index, or the state of health care, these are the personal and global concerns that your employees bring to work with them every day. And, believe it or not, they are watching and listening for action and behavior that indicate where an organization stands, or falls, with regard to these things. In short, they tie their dreams and fears to the way the company perceives and reacts to the worlds around them. This includes both the intimate personal world of family, friends, and future, and the more distant but critically important world of economics and geopolitical events. Now, don’t expect any of them to prepare a treatise on these subjects, but understand that your employees are no less the “victims” of the six o’clock news and the dinner table news than you are; and they look to you for pathways to solutions, because you are in the better position to be the champion—you are relatively bigger, richer, smarter, more influential, and more powerful.

It’s imperative that members of the C suite know their employees in this way because knowing employees’ work-life issues, and their aspirations for personal growth and career development, is the first step toward linking employee aspirations with company goals, finding common causes with your employees. It is the first step toward achieving alignment, with all the distinctive competitive advantages—loyalty, teamwork, productivity—that alignment can bring. When you find that alignment, you arrive and dwell at a place where the organization’s goals and values foster ever-deepening links to the employees’ personal values, their dreams, objectives, and missions.

One clear path to building linking opportunities is to have an open culture where employees feel they are an integral, essential part of the organization and that they are directly contributing to the organization’s goals. When employees are aligned with the organization’s values and mission, and the organization displays its respect for individuals, employees engage more actively because they believe that their employer feels and thinks as they do. It’s only human nature, isn’t it?

Let’s look at this on the macro scale with some examples. Take the global pharmaceutical company Merck. It says “The mission of Merck is to provide society with superior products and services by developing innovations and solutions that improve the quality of life and satisfy customer needs, and to provide employees with meaningful work and advancement opportunities, and investors with a superior rate of return.”

Sounds audacious, doesn’t it? Well, it is. But notice that it is not product-focused, like the mission statement from, say, a driven, technology company like Oracle. (You can find Oracle’s mission statement on the Web, and it’s markedly different in tone and feel from Merck’s.)

Dare I say that the Merck mission statement is “aspirational” (that is, it declares what kind of business Merck wants to be); it’s even inspirational. Indeed, it’s almost touching to see that a large company could express such compassion by stating they want to develop “innovations and solutions that improve the quality of life.”

Let me ask you another question: Do you think that certain types of people would read this mission statement and say, “Wow, I know I would fit in there!” Certainly. Can you also imagine that certain other types of people would read the mission statement and say, “That place doesn’t sound right for me. It’s too...too. I just want to make money; I don’t want to save the world.” So the Merck mission statement acts simultaneously as a beacon and a lighthouse: One calls certain people, and the other warns people off. And believe me it’s just as important to turn an employee away with your mission statement as it is to draw the right people. It’s far more expensive and time-consuming to hire and fire the wrong person than to wait and hire the right person the first time.

You see, the mission statement is the first step toward defining the terms of an alignment between the organization and the employee. It’s the first step toward finding people who are in sync with the company’s goals and values, people who feel that the organization’s mission is aligned with the kind of company they want to be associated with—the kind of company they want to have their professional legacies linked to.

Here’s another example. Johnson & Johnson does not have a mission statement per se, but for more than 60 years it has had a 1,600-word “credo.” It is fairly wide-ranging, but you can guess its contents from the tone of the opening sentence, which states, “We believe our first responsibility is to the doctors, nurses and patients, to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services.”

Here, too, prospective employees can read that and broadly agree or disagree that this is a workplace where their personal goals and the organization’s goals can find common cause, to align, and subsequently engage. If you don’t believe that your first responsibility at work is to “doctors, nurses and patients, to mothers and fathers,” then you won’t fit in at J&J, and you should look elsewhere for meaningful work.

Notice that the missions of both of these organizations are externally focused.

That said, the mission statement doesn’t have to be altruistic. If asked to articulate a mission statement, some organizations may say that they are “in business to make money.” Full stop. They will draw prospective employees who share that value, whatever the consequences to the company years hence.

As with the other aspects of managing companies that I have addressed in this book, the mission statement or credo does not create the organization’s values. It should describe a culture that already exists at the company. Without a doubt, the mission statement or credo can help sustain that culture, but it can’t create it. The leadership does that.

You can easily imagine an extreme example, I am sure. You can’t be an importing business that buys expired third-world pharmaceuticals for resale to U.S. children, while you issue a credo that says you are “concerned about people’s health worldwide.” It’s empty sloganeering, and employees will be the first to detect that the leadership doesn’t stand behind the company’s stated principles, which inevitably creates a festering sore that breeds toxic workplaces and contempt. So, your mission statement has to be sincere. It has to articulate a set of values that exist (or that you aspire to diligently subscribe to) at your organization. It can express aspirations; indeed, it should declare aspirations, but they must be achievable by the estimation of reasonable people. You can’t have a 50-person company that makes specialty tools in Vermont and claim in your mission statement that you are “a global purveyor of a full range of the world’s finest tools to leading corporations.” No one would believe you, because it’s not true, and the employees would be the first to grow cynical about the claim. You can, however, say, “Our team of New England craftsmen aims to delight customers anywhere in the world with a line of fascinating, hand-crafted specialty tools.”

Now, here’s a to-do—and you have not had much homework in this book so far, so stop the bellyaching. Go ahead and write an accurate mission statement or credo for your company as it is today. Be entirely honest, even if your mission statement declares that you are not (yet!) the best in your field. Then, more importantly, write a mission statement or credo for the company you want to be. That second document shows you how far you are in policies and alignment from where you need to be, and it is instructive, in any event.

Elsewhere in this book, I have discussed that one of the reasons people go to work is to learn and grow. So, if you have a company that says that developing your people through learning and growth is a core, defining feature, then declare it to be so in your mission statement. If your company’s core value is to be “family friendly,” say so. That’s something that people can get behind. (Frankly, it would be impossible to be an “antifamily company,” wouldn’t it? So, take note that the mission statement can and should put forth principles that are hard to be against.) If your company is all about competitive pay, profit sharing, and high-quality benefits, say so, and you will draw employees who align with those principles.

After a mission statement or credo has been put forth, the principles declared within it offer guidance, especially in times of crisis. Some of you may remember the 1982 Tylenol scare that became a defining moment for Johnson & Johnson. Someone had tainted packages of extra-strength Tylenol in the Chicago, Illinois, area with huge doses of cyanide. That act killed seven people. Nearly overnight, America and the world were on alert. As a result, Tylenol dropped from a 37 percent market share to 7 percent, and the company had to determine how to quickly address the problem, restore consumer confidence, and save their reputation. Johnson & Johnson’s response was textbook in an exemplary way, and they found guidance for their actions in their credo. Johnson & Johnson decided not to spin the story with slick corporate PR or assign blame to employees, distributors, or retailers, even though it was known that the murderer had tampered with the Tylenol after it was on the shelves, long out of Johnson & Johnson’s control. Instead, Johnson & Johnson referred back to their credo, which initially states, that their first responsibility is to “doctors, nurses and patients, to mothers and fathers.”

With that as guidance, they put a national recall in place, retrieving and destroying 31 million bottles of Tylenol at a reported loss of more than $100 million dollars. Advertising campaigns for the product were pulled, and new advertising was prepared. The product was returned to the shelves only after a triple-layered tamper-proof cap system was invented. The leadership bet that stockholders would understand this adherence to principle, and that the stockholders would have faith that the brand would emerge stronger for their conscientious action. And they bet correctly. Johnson & Johnson’s response to the crisis is now the subject of studies at the university post-graduate level. It was exemplary behavior, and it was enabled, in strong part, by the existence of a sincere credo, and the fact that the credo described a corporate culture that truly believed, and behaved, in alignment with those principles. How much easier it must have been for Johnson & Johnson employees to confirm their links to the company and its mission after such a selfless and exemplary performance. “They really care about people more than money! I’m people—they care about me! It makes sense for me to make the effort to make them successful, and I can always be proud of my relationship with them, in my community and with my family and friends.”

Now you may be thinking I am taking the easy way out by referring to pharmaceutical companies’ mission statements. After all, those companies are in the business of making people healthy, and it would be hard to disagree with that as a guiding principle for any business. The real test would be for a company that makes something that doesn’t necessarily make people healthy. Like furniture, for example.

Take a look at the mission statement for the office furniture maker Herman Miller. “Herman Miller, Inc., is a leading global provider of office furniture and services that create great places to live, learn, work and heal.” Just as we saw with the pharmaceutical companies, this mission statement declares the company’s principles in a way that broadcasts the Herman Miller culture to prospective employees (and customers!). If you don’t have the temperament, or patience, or level of conscientiousness to work at a place whose mission it is to create “great places to live, learn, work and heal,” then you should look elsewhere for work, because there is little chance that you will align with the company. However, if reading that mission statement inspires you, makes your heart flutter a little, and you can imagine a future in service of those goals, then there is a good chance that you will align with this corporate culture. When employees are asked what they do for a living working at Herman Miller, they may choose to respond that they design furniture or source fabric, but I bet a fair number of them say something like, “I help build great places to work.”

Are your employees so aligned that they would say something similar, something in alignment with the aspirations declared in the mission of your operation? They had better be able to do so, because they are your ambassadors at home, in their communities, in their churches, and among prospective employees they meet in their social interactions. In fact, I can think of few more effective recruiting techniques for high-quality people than the “recruits” that come to your company because they have witnessed an employee talking with pride about his work outside the workplace. As a “recruit” looks upon the proud employee, the recruit may not say, “Hey, I want to design and sell chairs.” But she may wistfully say, “Well, whatever that guy does, that’s the way I want to feel about my workplace.” That’s alignment.

Now that you know the importance of a mission statement and the role it plays in alignment, you have to look at how to bring your organization’s culture in alignment with the statement, and vice versa. In other words, you are reading this and saying, “That’s fine for Johnson & Johnson and Merck and Hermann Miller, with all their resources and HR fire power, but how do I do this in my shop, today?

Often it’s just a matter of simply and publicly stating your goal. Many people refer to this as the BHAG—Big Hairy Audacious Goal, as popularized by Jim Collins’s book Built to Last. A BHAG is important, because you need a statement that people can get excited about, that people can rally around. In a tandem effort, it’s often good to also identify an enemy that is important to defeat. That enemy can be a competitor, or it can be an abstract principle such as mediocrity, poverty, or cynicism. Once you start down this path, with a little bit of vision and great deal of discipline, dedication, honesty, and transparency—and no playing people politics, you are fully a meritocracy now!—you can reach out to your current workforce, and the workforce you intend to hire, to “literalize” the goals, to describe activities, projects, and processes that deliver on the mission statement. These activities, projects, and processes have to make sense on a practical level to the employee, but they also must be seen in the light of and in the context of how they contribute to the BHAG. This isn’t something you can do in a day, or in six months. It is a continual process, where you announce your mission and stick by it as demonstrated by your actions. The employee will be the ultimate judge, and it will be evident whether the employees are with you as you all try to push the rock up the hill.

In an earlier example I cited a phrase used when the Four Seasons hotels train new employees. They state that Four Seasons employees are “ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentleman.” I refer back to that, because it fits so well as a summary example of the points I am trying to get across here.

Just as with Merck, Johnson & Johnson, and Hermann Miller, this Four Seasons credo can be referred to for guidance for corporate behavior, for personal behavior, and to determine personal alignment even for people who don’t yet work for Four Seasons. The truly engaged employees (or hopeful prospects) feel as though they can live by that guiding principle and enter the workplace every day with this statement guiding their personal and professional behavior.

What I suggest in this rule is as essential as it is demanding to execute. But the initial implementation is likely the hardest aspect of creating a mission-statement-directed company. As with these larger more seasoned companies, the principles take on a life of their own, as more and more of your organization’s activities and procedures are driven to align with and work in harmony with your BHAG desires.

I do some consulting work with an emerging U.K. company, Red Gate, Ltd, a software company that competes in the competitive data base software marketplace. The co-CEOs Neil Davidson and Simon Galbraith take the topic of alignment seriously. They are convinced that the “manifesto” that they have published and communicated to their employees is a fair and comprehensive representation of the values and long-term goals of the company, and (they hope) for the managers and employees. But merely to post the document and to reinforce it was not enough (“to say it is so, does not make it so”). Neil and Simon called on the head of HR, Hannah Whatling, to build a platform for alignment between employee and company aspirations. What Hannah has done is not so much unique in its formation as it is in the way it was strategized and how it is being executed.

She had Red Gate join a consortium of mostly Cambridge, U.K.-based companies that built a collective people- and management-development incubator. The incubator enlisted public and private training and education providers to serve as sources for the learning and growth interests of Red Gate staffers. To enlighten and entertain, the incubator has also engaged speakers and lecturers on various topics, and most importantly they have provided resources, including money and time, to make the experiences readily available to employees. The training and education are not presented as punishment or as an R&R day-off-site reward. It really is focused personal development and career training. With this approach, Red Gate is building a “learning organization” from the inside out, and the company continues to use and assign specific training elements to bridge knowledge-and-skill gaps. But Red Gate also uses the consortium participation as a platform for employees to meet personal learning and career goals. The fact that employees who participate are more likely to achieve at a higher level of contribution is not lost on the leaders. But whoever said that sensitivity to issues that drive employees, alignment, and external focus are less worthy of merit, just because they originated out of the enlightened self-interest of the organization?