Set the tone
In order to clear up communications
and stop filtering things coming up the
line, you need top management to quit
sugarcoating truths and using jargon
where the plain truth would do. At L.A.
Care, Kahn decided he’d first take symbolic, companywide measures to show
how the culture was going to be moving
forward.
Kahn went to his employees and asked
them to help cut down the company’s
bulky 64-word mission statement and the
packets given at board meetings because
both were thick, antiquated representations of how heavy company communications had become.
“If it takes you 20 pages to explain it,
you’re probably not giving the message
directly,” he says of cutting the board
books. “So there’s a directness of communication that I put in place. I said to the
staff, ‘That’s how I want to communicate
with you. That’s how I want you to communicate with the board.’”
And after that process was over, Kahn
showed a little flair for the dramatic.
“At the end of my first year, I came to the
board and I did something that was kind
of a gimmick, but [it] sent a message,” he
says. “I weighed the board book from the
first meeting when I came here and
weighed the board book a year later, and I
congratulated the board on having lost
over half a pound.”
Doing things in the public eye like that
may seem, as Kahn puts it, gimmicky, but
when you’re trying to build a company
culture around something, you need to
make a point of emphasis to begin rallying
people.
Of course, you have to do the daily parts,
too. At L.A. Care, Kahn began making it a
point to communicate very directly with
his people. He took that to his direct
reports and had them do the same with
their people. To get people putting out
messages more clearly, he says start by
cutting the euphemisms.
“I think it’s fair to say that the staff here
feels like they have no confusion over
what I mean,” he says. “I am — I hope —
fairly kind but very direct, and when there
is a problem, I believe in calling it a problem, not a challenge, because I don’t want
people to have to interpret what we’re
saying to each other.”
That’s doesn’t just mean using the thesaurus to find the most brutal word for
your message, it means that you give people a chance to hear where they and the
company stand, and you address that
process very honestly. It’s no surprise that
L.A. Care has biannual reviews, but Kahn
says the focus is on letting employees
know exactly where they stand and what
help they can get to improve.
“If you have an employee that’s having a
problem, they shouldn’t be surprised by
their supervisor coming to them and saying, ‘You can’t do this job anymore; you’re
being fired,’” he says. “They should have
lots of warning and opportunity and support for improving their situation. We do
annual and midyear reviews, and that way
you avoid having any sort of confusion
about levels of performance.”
You also need to show that effort daily.
Whenever Kahn was in front of his people
he was willing to directly answer any
question they put before him. If you want
people to have clearer communications,
you have to answer every question you get
from employees with honesty and without
any hostility.
“You can’t be afraid to answer the tough
questions with honest answers,” he says.
“If you’re in a defensive mode, you’ll
sound harsh.
“When you’re not direct, people have the
sense — whether you are or not — that
you’re hiding something and if you want
everybody to buy in, they’ve got to be able to understand it and
they’ve got to be able to repeat it, like the mission statement.”
So many businesses worry about protecting feelings, but they
don’t realize that people get mixed up in a game of protect the
intent, and they don’t actually understand that they need to
change their work habits or go in a completely different direction
with a project. Kahn believes L.A. Care’s mission is too important
for things to slow down because people can’t fully judge what
others mean.
“You have to tell people why that’s important,” he says. “They
have to understand it’s important because it will take us less time
to do the same thing; if it takes us less time to do the same thing,
given that we have important things to do, it will give us more
time to do the important things.”
