17 Rules Successful Companies Use to Attract and Keep Top Talent

Why Engaged Employees Are Your Greatest Sustainable Advantage

Praise for 17 Rules Successful Companies Use to Attract and Keep Top Talent

“This book is packed with lessons for every manager who aspires to attract and motivate talented people and build a great organization. Russo is able to ground the best conceptual ideas in the wisdom of his own deep experience and share it all in an easy-going conversational style.”

—M. Diane Burton, Associate Professor of Management,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

“David Russo has spent a lifetime observing employees and organizations. His down-to-earth admonitions may at first blush seem obvious; however, they are pearls of wisdom. Leaders of big and small organizations would do well to heed his counsel and treat their people as if they were volunteers—as if every employee can indeed make a difference.”

—Thomas J. DeLong, Harvard Business School, Philip J. Stomberg Professor of Management Practice and co-author of When Professionals Have to Lead: A New Model for High Performance (Harvard Business School Press, 2007)

“Passionate and dedicated workplaces of talented employees are within every leader’s reach. David’s been there. He knows. And he gives it to you straight. Apply his trademark, candid advice that you’ll find in this book, and you will start seeing significant positive, profitable shifts in your company culture almost immediately. So listen up!”

—Martha I. Finney, President and CEO, Engagement Journeys, LLC and author of The Truth About Getting the Best From People

“David Russo is a thoughtful and reflective practitioner. His book, 17 Rules Successful Companies Use to Attract and Keep Top Talent, should be read by top-level executives, as well as human resources managers, if they want to know what actually works with respect to the attraction and retention of talent. The practical example Russo provides, which comes from his knowledge and experience, makes this an extremely useful publication.”

—Fred K. Foulkes, Professor of Organizational Behavior, Director, Human Resources Policy Institute, Boston University, School of Management

“This book is interesting, provocative, and deeply true. Russo’s advice points the way for leaders to build and sustain high performance organizations. Beautifully free of jargon and silver bullets, Russo wisely focuses on common sense and consistent execution.”

—Cade Massey, Professor of Organizational Behavior,
Yale University, School of Management

“Russo packages a career of experience and insight into a set of rules that will save managers much heartache and a constant ‘comfort’ guide as they face a new people issue for the first time.”

—Dallas Salisbury, President & CEO,
Employee Benefit Research Institute

Contents

Introduction

Rule #1: Understand Why Employees Come and Why They Stay

Rule #2: Play “Win-Win” with Your Employees (and Allow Them to Be All They Can Be for Self and Company)

Rule #3: Cultivate Leadership, Not Management, and Know the Difference!

Rule #4: Provide Ample and Appropriate Resources

Rule #5: Demand Contribution; Be Worthy of Receiving It

Rule #6: Applaud Effort; Reward Contribution

Rule #7: Cheerlead; The “Magic” of M&Ms

Rule #8: Build a Workplace on a Foundation of Respect

Rule #9: Cultivate the Risk-Trust Dynamic

Rule #10: Make Room for Fun in the Workplace (Nurture Lightheartedness/Levity)

Rule #11: Create Opportunities for Employee “Alignment” with Vision, Values, and Mission

Rule #12: Understand Human Capital

Rule #13: Treat Employees as “Volunteers”

Rule #14: Know Your Culture

Rule #15: Understand the Nature of Change and Prepare Your Employees to Embrace It

Rule #16: Cultivate Organizational Ethics; Demand and Reward Ethical Behavior

Rule #17: The Last and Overarching Rule: Tell the Truth! (and a Few Action Items to Grow On)

Index

Foreword: Great Teams, Great People, Great Leaders

I first met David Russo at a Jimmy V. charity golf event, in North Carolina. Jim Valvano, the charismatic basketball coach of North Carolina State, died of cancer 12 years ago, and the V Foundation, which he founded before his death, raises funds for cancer research. So, it wasn’t hard to pick out like-minded people at the charity event: Everyone was there to help raise money for a worthy cause and in memory of a great man. However, when I first met David, I immediately knew we would grow to be friends, and I sensed it after just a few minutes of chatting and a couple holes of golf. Why? Well, I recognized that he was one of my tribe. We have roots in Pittsburgh. His roots come from birth, and mine from a career that grew into a love affair with the town and its people—beautiful, honest, rough-and-tumble Pittsburgh. Plus, it turned out that we both shared a Catholic heritage. Moreover, David is a lifelong Pittsburgh Steelers fan, and as you might expect, I am kind of partial to that organization, having played there for 11 years, before and after I went to Vietnam.

As I got to know David over the years, I found we also share something else, and that is a clear understanding of what motivates people, what makes teams gel, and how to sustain that motivation and team spirit over a long period of time. The common understanding we share is that standout organizations—whether they are great professional sports teams (like our Steelers!) or great business organizations of almost any size—cannot be manufactured or concocted. A still-wet-behind-the-ears NFL general manager or a freshly minted MBA may think that greatness is formulaic, and that dream teams can be assembled, like parts from a kit, by buying talent and tossing it on the field. They may naively expect to win a Super Bowl, or capture a dominant market share as a matter of course. You can no more expect that level of instant performance from a team—even one comprised of great players—than you can expect that from a business organization that has paid top dollar for talent, yet lacks the mission, the vision, and the goals articulated by great leadership. To put it another way, you can no more conjure up or demand greatness from a team or a business than you can train basset hounds to drive a minivan. From my experience with the Steelers, David’s experience at SAS, and the work we have both subsequently done as organizational and motivational consultants, one thing is abundantly clear: Great organizations are crafted with patience, great care, and honesty. They emerge only when great leadership articulates an honest and clear-eyed vision of a meaningful and successful future. If you think I’m being too idealistic, let me add that greatness is also about old-fashioned “play through the pain” hard work, overcoming obstacles, and making team members aware that they are part of something with potential for greatness. Equally important, all players—on the field or at the office—must know the role they play and understand exactly how they can contribute to outstanding results.

We can push this comparison even further, and the similarities hold true. Just as with an NFL team, where roles must be clear, so too must roles be clear in business. You can’t have a general manager who thinks he’s the coach, or the coach who thinks he’s an owner. Yet at the same time, it has to be clear to each member of the organization what his role is and—something that David really drives home in this book—what part the individual performance contributes to team performance and overall desired direction. It is crucial that every player knows this on and off the field, whether it’s a special teams player who is only out on the field three downs in a game, the defensive back who must defend both run and pass, or the assembly line worker whose quality assurance tests of product are the last line of defense against the tarnishing of a company’s brand. When people see the role they play—as we did as Steelers players with the likes of Jack Lambert, Mean Joe Greene, L. C. Greenwood, Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, and myself—you start to recognize that people are proud to be part of the team, of contributing to something greater than themselves. You find that they contribute what David calls that “illusive discretionary effort” every single day, every single play...and not just at crunch time. That’s what great leadership can bring forth in players in any organizational setting.

That said, I have come to discover in David and his writing, a kindred spirit that understands how people should be valued, encouraged, and inspired. And that’s what this book is about and why I agreed to write this foreword. So, in that vein, let me talk for a moment about great teams and great companies. You see, in the business world, because of well-executed plays, great runs, and record returns, one company might put up great numbers in a single year, and maybe even win the “Super Bowl” of their business sector—an effort that leaves them at the top of the heap temporarily. But what I’ve focused my energy on, and what this book focuses, is not the company or the team that wins a “Super Bowl” now and then, but the team or the company that establishes and sustains dynasties.

Look at the NFL clubs that have done this, the NFL clubs that have had dominant runs: The Cowboys, the Forty Niners. The Packers of the 1960s. The Steelers of the 1970s, when we won four Super Bowls in six years. Believe me, those great runs, those years of sustained top performance, were no accident. The owners and general managers of those now-famous clubs didn’t just toss a bunch of talent onto a playing field and hope for the best. These so-called dynasties were part of deliberate strategies, consistent leadership, and entrenched belief systems. All the great leaders of the past—Vince Lombardi, Bill Walsh, Chuck Noll—all these men were special in this way: They looked at their talent, indentified and acquired players to fill in the missing links, and then they created a vision for what these players were capable of becoming. They motivated them to achieve that, being careful to point out the importance of each role the individual players assumed. I realize that some of these great coaches had the advantage of team consistency before the dawn of free agency. But the modern dynasties do not have that advantage. Indeed, the players and the coaches both recognize that today, more than ever, players are “volunteers”—just as David Russo rightly points out that employees are volunteers in the workplace. In either setting, the clear articulation of vision and goals is sometimes the only thing that holds the talent together and crafts a team, and recognizing that is now doubly important in the NFL and in the business world.

This book provides a road map to achieve what I have lived in the NFL and what I have preached in my speaking career after the NFL. It sets down the rules. But as you get to know David over the course of this book, you’ll realize these rules were not dreamed up by somebody high in a Skybox who hasn’t been grinding it out on the field of play. David’s been in the trenches, and he’s worked with companies of all sizes, from start-ups, to the largest software companies in the world. So, in essence, I am here to vouch for his approach. I’ve seen it work magic, and I’ve seen it achieve greatness, a success that anyone is capable of, if they learn to become great leaders, and attend to the rules that follow in these great chapters.

—Rocky Bleier
Renowned motivational speaker and former NFL star

Acknowledgments

This book could not have been produced without the help of many professional acquaintances, friends, and family, who either stimulated the thinking that produced the Rules or encouraged me to lend my voice to the discussion of high-performing companies and what it takes to craft them. Special thanks go to John Wagner of J. Wagner Media; Jeffrey Pfeffer of The Stanford University Business School; Jim Goodnight of SAS; Milton Moskowitz, Robert Levering, and Amy Lyman of the Great Place to Work Institute; and Harry F. Dawley of The Liggett Group (retired), who, knowingly or not, mentored, prodded, challenged, and/or encouraged me to write.

About the Author

David Russo is Principal and CEO of Eno River Associates, Inc., a consulting practice that helps executives build high-performing organizations by developing win-win relationships with the workforce. Mr. Russo has consulted with many global companies and organizations, including American Express, Johnson & Johnson, Minitab, Inc., American Eagle Outfitters, and the CIA. Before his retirement in 1999, he was the senior human resources executive for SAS Institute, the world’s largest privately held software company, known as a perennial Fortune “Best Place to Work” for its quality work environment and focus on its people.