“Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”

—Lao Tzu

Having a disengaged character is the same as having no character.

We all have our own definition of what character is—especially when it comes to personal character, the kind of character that is within each and every one of us. But I'm sure that our definitions of character are not all that different from one another. Generally, a definition of personal character will include traits such as honesty, strong values, moral excellence, integrity, compassion, and so on. Essentially, character is the code of conduct that we apply when we have choices to make—it's a framework for decision making. It's also the foundation of trust we need to build strong and lasting relationships with others.

When we talk about company character, I think there is a subtle, but significant, difference from the way we talk about personal character. As I mentioned earlier, companies with upstanding character embody empathy, courage, authenticity, honesty, integrity, respect, and so on—very much the kinds of things we expect people with strong personal character to embody. However, when you're talking about an organization, there's more to upstanding character than these traits. Upstanding character is informed by the values that an organization and its leadership, teams, and partners embrace and commit to that define their behavior.

I asked Yvonne Wassenaar—CEO of Puppet, a provider of software solutions that automate how its clients continuously deliver, make compliant, remediate, and manage their multi-cloud environments—for her perspective on company character. Says Wassenaar:

I think about character in terms of three areas: what does the service or offering you're bringing represent to the market (e.g., value, durability, playfulness), what are the values of the people or teams that deliver the service or make the offering, and how do these individuals show up (e.g., what's their personality? Not just what they say, but what do they say and do in service to your customer?)? Character is a combination of all these things. And where does that character come from? I believe, at its core, the character of a company comes from the people on your team—at the end of the day, people make companies who they are.¹

Like many other organizations, to ensure every Anaplan employee and partner is working from a shared point of view, we have published a set of values that we are all expected to live by.² I hold myself and our teams accountable to our values. We spotlight values stories at our Company Update meetings, and we have recognition programs to acknowledge employees who have embraced them and put them to work in their own jobs. And I personally do my best to live Anaplan values every day:

• Open;
• Authentic;
• Inclusive;
• Collaborative;
• Creative; and
• Tenacious.

Open doesn't just mean being open to new information, although that's certainly an important part of this particular value. It means being open to change, innovation, and transformation. And it means being open to feedback from others, both positive and negative. For example, if your manager suggests that improving your presentation skills would be valuable for your career development, you're able to accept the feedback and let go of what's made you successful in the past to try new approaches and strategies. Open also means communicating transparently without a hidden agenda and being willing to share information and knowledge with others rather than holding it in a silo. Being open helps to develop trust, which is the bedrock for all of the Anaplan values.

Authentic is all about bringing our real selves—our best selves—to work. We each have our own circumstances and unique history that make us who we are. It used to be that there was a hard wall between your professional identity and your personal life, but things have evolved. While we have always valued authenticity, it's even more relevant and necessary since COVID-19 forced us to work from home for an extended period of time. Being invited into people's homes for virtual meetings has been both rewarding and humbling. It's been a real lesson in empathy. I encourage everyone in Anaplan to bring their real, authentic selves to work and to do so without fear or discomfort. When we are supported and empowered to be ourselves, it really frees people to do their best work and reach their full potential.

Inclusive means welcoming everyone to the table, regardless of gender, age, sexual orientation, beliefs, ethnicity, physical ability, or any of the other things that make us who we uniquely are. It's about making room for others to be their authentic selves and embracing and valuing their differences. At Anaplan, we want our board, our executive team, and our workforce to be a reflection of our customers and the communities in which we do business. I'm convinced that having a diverse and inclusive workforce is not only desirable, it's the key to our success, now and in the future. We want the very best, most talented people—regardless of what their backgrounds might be—to come to Anaplan and build lasting careers. We need their ideas, their perspectives, and their voices. Fostering diversity and inclusion is unquestionably the right thing to do and it's also good for business. In just one example, according to a 2020 McKinsey report, companies in the top quartile for ethnic and cultural diversity were 36 percent more profitable than companies in the bottom quartile.³

Collaborative is more than just working together on teams or sharing ideas. It's about taking opportunities and challenges and finding the best people in the organization to work on them regardless of boundaries or hierarchy. While this might take the form of formal, cross-functional teams, it's also quite simply a recognition that good ideas can come from anywhere in the company. When we collaborate with others both in and out of the organization, we create value, which we then deliver to our customers. A key component of collaboration is sharing the work—and sharing credit too. Rather than trying to keep the spotlight on yourself, true collaboration is about elevating ideas and creating the best solutions for the good of the company and our customers, not just for individual rewards or recognition.

Creative is a willingness to look beyond existing approaches and structures when trying to solve difficult problems for ourselves or our customers. It encompasses seeing opportunities, taking risks, and pushing ourselves to innovate and advance our capabilities. Although creativity is consistently rated as one of the top attributes that employers seek when hiring, according to a Conference Board survey, 85 percent of employers said that they were having difficulty finding qualified applicants with the right characteristics.⁴ In addition, according to research conducted by Adobe, 75 percent of respondents reported that they are under pressure to be productive on the job instead of creative, with only 1 in 4 employees believing that they are living up to their creative potential.⁵ Even more troubling is the fact that many employees are afraid to volunteer new solutions that don't fit the organization's prevailing wisdom. It only takes one negative comment or non-response from a manager or executive to discourage an employee from being creative on the job.

Finally, tenacious means that we don't give up easily—we'll try every possible route to a solution and persevere until we get there. Part of the reason why we are so tenacious is that we always strive to put our customers first. We are focused on finding innovative solutions to their most difficult problems and making their planning and other systems more effective and efficient. But these solutions aren't easy—there are many moving parts, enormous data sets, and multiple stakeholders to satisfy. A tremendous amount of effort goes into making sure our customers' implementations are successful and they feel well supported every step of the way. That requires tenacity. What it doesn't mean, however, is that we expect our people to put in 12-hour days, week after week, until they collapse from burnout. Tenacity includes knowing when to pause and rest, so that you can come back with renewed energy, innovation, and applied creativity to solve problems and continue the journey.

In addition to living our values, at Anaplan, we share a common mindset. We call this approach being “A-shaped”—A as in Anaplan. A-shaped people live our values every day and get their work done in the following ways:

• A-shaped people start with our customers.
• A-shaped people think big and act bold.
• A-shaped people win with speed and innovation.
• A-shaped people act like owners.

Anaplan's values were developed in a very intentional way. First, we worked together to determine the behaviors that were already in practice throughout the organization, and then we asked employees what kind of values they considered essential in an organization they wanted to work for and that they personally aspired to and would be proud of. Then finally, I weighed in along with my executive team with the values that we felt were critically important.

It was no surprise to me that the list of values we came up with was remarkably consistent—we shared a very common perspective on how we would conduct ourselves as A-shaped people.

As I noted in the introduction, Anaplan values were instrumental to our collective performance in 2020. All the investment of time, energy, and attention to communicate, recognize, and reinforce our values created the resilience we needed to weather the cascading waves of external crises hitting employees, customers, and partners. We had built a position from which we could quickly and decisively act. In hindsight, it's clear to me how instrumental the connection between our values and culture was to our strength as a brand, a team, and a competitive force at a time when other organizations struggled.

Is Your Character Online or Offline?

When we talk about character, it's easy for us to get tangled up in the quality of the character itself. Is someone's character good or is it bad? Is it weak or strong? Is it courageous and confident, or is it hesitant and insecure?

I personally believe that the majority of people we encounter in our lives have good intentions—they want to do what's right. Sure, there are always a handful of people who let their ego or greed get in the way of doing the right thing—for example, Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos, who lied about the capabilities of her blood testing technology, and Martin Shkreli, who increased the price of toxoplasmosis/AIDS drug Daraprim from $13.50 a tablet to $750 and was convicted of defrauding investors for many millions of dollars.⁶ But, in my own personal experience, these kinds of people are very much outliers.

So, let's start with the baseline assumption that the vast majority of people have decent personal character—it's part of who we are as human beings. Why then do we hear so many stories about companies and leaders that act in ways that are contrary to having upstanding character?

I asked Cy Wakeman if she could explain why some people seem to embody character, while others do not. Wakeman told me that we all have a core character but that this character can be either “online” or “offline.” When someone's character is online, it is fully activated—it is genuine and inseparable from who they are. When someone's character is offline, however, their character is not engaged; there's a gap between what they say and how they behave. Says Wakeman:

I think we're all born inherently as really good people, and we know right from wrong. We have some inherent character within us, but our egos can push us offline, where we are unconscious or falling asleep in terms of character.⁷

People who aren't living their character are essentially sleepwalking through life—they know the right thing to do but don't do it because they have checked out and have become numb to what's happening in their surroundings. It's the difference between being very intentional about one's values or treating them as an afterthought. I wonder if this was the case for Ben Silbermann, CEO of Pinterest, who was asked to comment after the former COO of Pinterest—his No. 2 executive, whom he recently terminated—posted a highly critical blog post on Medium about gender discrimination at the company. According to Kara Swisher, writing for The New York Times, Silbermann reportedly oversaw “a profoundly dysfunctional culture where far too many of its roughly 2,000 employees feel left out.”⁸

In a company that prides itself on empowering its customers—70 percent women⁹—to live out their aspirations, it's disturbing to hear that those who felt voiceless and left out of their culture were primarily women and people of color. This is a powerful example of an “offline” character. We explore more about the cultural disconnect at Pinterest in Chapter 7.

So, if we find that our character is offline, and we want to bring it back online, what can we do? According to Wakeman, this requires a lot of self-work:

The only way we know is self-reflection. Instead of blaming others for your predicament, you should ask, “What can I do to lead differently?” And self-reflection is a really big component of leaders with online character. When something happens, they go first to, “What's my part in this?” “Where do I need to evolve?” “Where do I need to grow?” And then, secondly, they go to, “How can I move through the world in accordance with our values and help others?” So, they first go internal to get wisdom. And then I like to say, they move externally with the ability to really love and connect dots and bring people together. And that's really what leaders with engaged character do. They're really running a program of their own evolution.¹⁰

The first thing that happens to people who go offline is they quit evolving—they lose interest in being relevant for what's next. The early signs of this are either emotional avoidance or a conscious decision to stop keeping up with the times. People who are offline put up walls that separate them emotionally from the people with whom they work. So, instead of really getting to know their people and empathizing with their challenges, they avoid all that and focus strictly on results—the bottom line. When confronting problems, they assign blame externally instead of reflecting on their own accountability for what's happening.

There's also an online or offline component to what employees experience in the workplace. Wakeman explains:

I worked with a leader who used to say to his people, “We're totally family focused. We understand that many of you have young kids. We want you to be available for your family—to be able to go to your kid's ball games or to their music recitals.” I told this leader, “Stop telling people that—tell them the truth: ‘We are driven on deadlines. We work hard. We play hard. There'll be times that you're here on a Sunday night 'til four in the morning. And there'll be times where you'll be able to surprise your kid during the school day in their classroom.'”¹¹

This may sound counterintuitive, but wouldn’t it be better to be the leader who provides realistic expectations on how and when you can put your family first? It may not always be a perfect work life blend, but being honest with clear boundaries will garner appreciation from your employees rather than appearing disconnected.

Is your character online or offline? Are you consciously living your core values or are you sleepwalking through them—unaware that you are out of alignment? If you're not sure where you're at, review the sidebar to assess your situation.

Making the decision to take your character online is the first step—and it's a big one. But you must also be accountable for the results. You must actually do what you've committed to—accountability is a mindset, not a skillset. Wakeman suggests that your readiness to be accountable has these four factors:

• Commitment. The willingness to do whatever it takes. Ask, “Are you in or are you out? What's your level of willingness?”
• Resilience. The ability to stay in. If you make a mistake, don't dwell on it. Bounce back quickly from setbacks and keep moving forward.
• Ownership. The ability to embrace the good, the bad, and the ugly. Recognize the positive aspects of your contributions and always invite and be open to candid and even raw feedback.
• Continuous learning. Mining our successes and failures for where we can grow next so we can commit to bigger things. Don't look at mistakes as failures, view them instead as teachable moments that will help you improve.¹²

As you work to take your character from offline to online, these four factors can help you get where you want to go. In fact, I consider them to be essential stepping stones.

The DNA of Organizations with Upstanding Character

In my experience, organizations that have upstanding character have four characteristics deeply embedded in their DNA:

• They operate with larger purpose. Their company purpose is clear and shared. They aim to create value for all stakeholders, including employees, customers, partners, investors, and the communities in which they operate. They stand for a set of environmental, social, and governance convictions aligned with their purpose and values.
• They are values-led. Organizations with upstanding character have strong core values that are universally recognized, and everyone is expected to make decisions and conduct themselves through that prism. This begins with recruiting smart and talented people who are aligned with the company's values, then continues by communicating the organization's values to everyone—both inside and outside the company—continuously and in multiple channels. The ideal outcome is the values become second nature and everyone in the organization aligns with the values and lives them. People who aren't aligned with the company's values are given the opportunity to align or encouraged to find organizations that are a better fit.
• They follow through on convictions. Organizations with upstanding character don't just bury their values somewhere deep within their website, and then do as they please when sudden opportunities or difficult problems arise. They consistently—perhaps obsessively—insist on doing what they say they are going to do. For example, a company that prides itself on being customer-centric should ensure that lines aren't long inside a store, help is easy to find, and communication channels are continually monitored so that responses are timely. The company's actions must be visibly and reliably consistent with their stated values.
• They answer the call in challenging times. In 2020, we faced worldwide protests against racial injustice, a global pandemic, a recession caused by the resulting business disruptions and downsizing, natural disasters, and a polarized political landscape. Any one of these events would present organizations with a tremendous challenge; all three simultaneously were unprecedented, and extremely painful for businesses and employees alike. In times like these, when confronted with a crisis, companies with upstanding character will answer the call—they make hard decisions and navigate the uncertainty guided by the values and behaviors embedded in their DNA.

Ultimately, organizations with upstanding character employ people with upstanding character—all the way up and down and across the organization. As I mentioned earlier, each of us has our own set of beliefs and behaviors that together form our character. However, in my own experience and research, I have found that people with upstanding character tend to have a very specific set of resonant attributes, including the following. They…

Have deep personal convictions. They own a deep set of core beliefs and they use these beliefs as guardrails for the decisions they make and the behaviors they engage in—or avoid. While some of these deep personal convictions may evolve gradually over time, others are held as lifelong beliefs—anchors in a world that is constantly changing.

Are authentic. They are unfailingly true to themselves and they don't hesitate to tell you what's on their minds and to give you their unvarnished opinions. You always know what kind of person you're dealing with, because authentic people know exactly what they stand for.

Are accountable. People with upstanding character hold themselves accountable for results. When they commit to completing a work product—a report, proposal, presentation, and so forth—they can be relied on to deliver. They keep their word. If for some reason they realize this will not be possible, they notify their stakeholders to work out alternatives.

When I asked Marilyn Miller—our Chief People Officer—about accountability, she explained the interaction of personal accountability and the organization's values:

This is uncharted territory for many companies because there used to be such separation between company values and personal perspectives. But today, we are at an entirely new level of personal accountability. There is a newfound expectation of leaders. It is no longer enough to just manage the business. It's become important that leaders think beyond their company roles and have a personal conviction on systemic racism, environmental impact, and sustainability as well as the human side of a global pandemic or crisis. The role of leadership has evolved to include advocating and advancing solutions to these challenges that are bigger than their own business.¹³

Foster inclusivity. As research and our own experience at Anaplan show, time and time again, being inclusive leads to better outcomes for the organization. People who foster inclusivity draw others in and seek diverse thinking and experiences while upholding a shared set of values. There's plenty of research that shows the advantages of diversity and inclusion, including McKinsey's 2020 report, “Diversity Wins: How Inclusion Matters,” which drew from a data set comprising more than 1,000 large businesses in 15 countries. In addition to improved profitability, the report found that companies with more diverse representation had a higher probability of outperformance. According to the report:

Companies with more than 30 percent women executives were more likely to outperform companies where this percentage ranged from 10 to 30, and in turn these companies were more likely to outperform those with even fewer women executives, or none at all. A substantial differential likelihood of outperformance—48 percent—separates the most from the least gender-diverse companies.¹⁴

It's well proven that organizations do better when they recruit and nurture a diverse group of people to explore opportunities and tackle difficult problems.

Have a growth mindset. According to Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck, those who believe that success comes from hard work, continuous learning, and persistence have a growth mindset—they believe that intelligence can be developed and increased and they are continuous learners.¹⁵ Those with a growth mindset will naturally persevere despite challenges and failures—learning important lessons that eventually lead to their long-term success. They are always willing to learn more and to surround themselves with people who are more expert than they are.

Are in touch with their core value system. Our core character is forged from the beliefs that reside deepest within us. Core values influence your personal moral or ethical codes. What's most important when it comes to our core value system is whether we are actively engaged with it or disconnected and out of touch. This relates to Cy Wakeman's idea of character that can be online (activated) or offline (disengaged).

What kind of people do you have in your organization? Do they fit this profile, or do they fall short in one or more areas?

In Part II of this book, we explore the building blocks of character-driven organizations. Please keep in mind as you move forward into the next part that this is not a prescription—not a “check-these-boxes-and-you're-done” approach to creating a company with upstanding character. This is more food for thought—a summary of some of the things that I have personally seen during the course of my career, along with examples and insights from other business leaders.

That said, if you find your organization lacking in one or more of these six building blocks, then you might consider why it's missing, and what could be gained if it were a part of your own organization's DNA.