How an organization’s members behave on a day-to-day basis profoundly affects an organization’s bottom-line results. One of the biggest mistakes I commonly see leaders make is to vastly underestimate the negative impact that results from either not having clear behavioral standards or from a failure to hold organization members accountable for established standards of behavior.

I’m not talking about obvious bottom-line behaviors such as “sell as many cars as you can” or “produce as many widgets as you can.” Those are the easy ones to keep everybody focused on. I’m talking about the behaviors that many organizations pay mostly lip service to despite the fact that the sum of these behaviors is one of the critical differences between great organizations and their lesser counterparts.

Which behaviors am I talking about? I’m talking about flight attendants who don’t greet boarding passengers when they make eye contact with them. Or organization members who work on unrelated items on their laptops or BlackBerrys during face-to-face team meetings while important presentations are being made. Or organization members who frequently fail to respond to important e-mails in a timely manner. Or an auto repair shop owner who promises a customer that if he brings his car back the next morning he’ll personally check it out but immediately hands it over to someone else when you return and doesn’t even mention his promise (this happened to me a few weeks ago and it silently obliterated this guy’s credibility with me). I’m talking about organization members who routinely behave rudely or unethically without being held accountable because they produce excellent results in one or more coveted areas.

Why do these types of day-to-day behaviors matter so much? It’s because they impact an organization’s bottom-line as much as the obvious bottom-line oriented behaviors do. Consider what happens when a “bad apple” star professional athlete is allowed by organization leadership to pretty much do as he wishes as long as he produces a certain level of quantitative results. The organization strikes a proverbial deal with the devil. The organization might get short-term gratification in terms of fan attendance and team wins but they’re going to pay the piper in a myriad of bottom-line ways that usually don’t show up right away but instead grow like an invisible cancer until the organization is quite sick.

For example, many organizations lose some of their best people over time because the really good ones are much more likely to decide they don’t want to be part of an organization that condones bad behavior. Organizations that allow bad behavior aren’t credible. They are like parents trying to teach their children to do things that they don’t role-model themselves. Organizations that allow bad behavior are always inefficient. This is so because of the background “noise” they suffer from. It’s human nature that bad behavior will be talked about and it will upset people and it will cause conflicts and it will erode focus from the things organization members should be focused on.

The Dallas Cowboys football franchise recently cut ties with their highest profile player because they finally realized (after he almost single handedly killed team chemistry and effectiveness) that they could never be a championship franchise with the cancer this player’s behavior created. After the Cowboys announced the decision, at least one commentator asserted that now the Cowboys quarterback could simply focus on making the right play vs. having to always worry about keeping his prima donna former receiver happy to avoid another distracting tantrum.

Some magnitude of this tale is being played out in countless organizations in all types of industries as I write this. So what’s the cure for this cancer? Like so many crucial leadership issues the cure can be spelled out fairly simply but administering it requires a level of courage, consistency and candor that most leaders don’t have the capability and/or willingness to demonstrate. For those who dare, the following four steps kill the cancer and build a strong organizational immune system:

1. Determine which day-to-day behaviors are the most critical in support of your defined mission & vision (this requires that your organization has a clearly defined mission & vision and that the organization is focused on executing the mission and driving towards the vision)
   1. These behaviors become “standards” that all organization members understand
   2. Keep the set of standards to the minimum necessary (6-10 is a good range to aim for)
   3. These standards should be “observable” behaviors NOT values such as “honesty” (refer to exhibit 1 for an example set of actual behavioral standards from one of our clients).

      EXHIBIT 1 (click on image to enlarge)

      

      
      

2. Engage and educate ALL organization members regarding the standards
   1. This isn’t a one-time event but an ongoing process that never ends
   2. The organizations that do this the best make this a visible, dynamic part of how they run their organization (think Disney theme parks)
3. Be “constructively intolerant” of variances to the established standards
   1. When an organization member falls short of a standard, address it EVERY TIME, as close to real-time as feasible.
   2. This could range from a low-key but specific coaching dialogue to a documented counseling session or whatever is appropriate to ensure organization members are accountable for behaving in accordance with the standards that have been determined to be critical to the organization’s success.
   3. Ultimately, there must be significant negative consequences for those who repeatedly behave in conflict with any of the behavioral standards, even after appropriate coaching and counseling
4. Tangibly demonstrate that those who best behave in accordance with the behavioral standards are ultimately rewarded for doing so
   1. This can show up in a myriad of ways, from public feedback to performance appraisal ratings to promotions and compensation levels
   2. Provide frequent on-going positive feedback, both publicly and privately, to those who are behaving in accordance with the behavioral standards (make it specific and as real-time as feasible)

Tags: behavioral change, behavioral standards, managing behavior, organizational behavior, Performance Management

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 10th, 2009 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Behavior, Performance Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.