Know where you are
Before you can paint a picture of where you want to go as an organization, you have to have a strong grasp on where you are.
That begins with a well-defined foundation of cultural principles and core values that is clearly communicated to every level and geography in the company. It sounds like a repeat of the same principles you were taught early in your career, because it is. But the lesson still rings true for any leader: You need to set the tone from the top. If you want your employees to embrace something, you need to embrace it first.
“A culture can change or be refined as a business grows, but your core values have to be specific and succinct, and they have to be known throughout your organization,” Cook says. “We print our vision and mission statement, our principles and our guiding values together. Then they’re all posted in our office lobbies and conference rooms.
“We set it out there, our goals for leading the market and our goals for customer service.”
You also have to know the field on which you’re playing. That means sitting down with your management team and developing a realistic picture of the positives and negatives that your company is facing. In the economic environment of the past two years, there has been plenty of undeniably bad news out there. You couldn’t turn on the TV or open a newspaper without getting an eyeful of something displeasing. But you still need to find the positive aspects of your business and your market, around which you can rally your employees.
At Prudential California Realty, amid the swirling vortex of negative news, Cook was able to emphasize one key factor working in his company’s favor: interest rates.
“You have to stay informed and know what is going on out there,” he says. “But to some degree, you have to put the blinders on and know that you can make a difference. You can still have a positive attitude and outlook and go after your goals. You can’t dwell on negative things.
“In our case, even with the higher unemployment rate and the overall state of the economy, the positive that we could focus on in the housing market was that interest rates are at historic lows. So you find that positive point to focus on, and that’s what we’re focusing on.”
Cook and his leadership team take that focus and solidify it through a cascading communication system. The system starts in the administrative-level meetings with Cook and his department heads. From there, it is each department head’s responsibility to relay the message consistently throughout their ranks.
“We circulate data to all of our departments so each area knows how we’re doing,” Cook says. “Then they take those messages and communicate them down the ladder. First and foremost, I expect that it will be the same message I’m delivering to the management team. The management team keeps tabs on the messages by attending their department meetings on a fairly regular basis.”
Ultimately, in uncertain economic times, you need to keep information flowing so that employees get a sense of the company’s stability and future direction. Without that firm footing for your work force, people will begin filling in the blanks on their own, and that’s how assumptions lead to widespread rumors — how an easily contained brushfire blossoms into a destructive conflagration that could become a major challenge to extinguish.
“Your people probably want to know that the company is sound and has a financial footing that will allow it to keep its position,” Cook says. “And they want to know that things are going to get better. Maybe not necessarily today, but they want to know that there is a picture down the road. They want to know that they’re going to get off of that 35-hour workweek, that some of the cuts are going to be restored. But most importantly, they want to hear that the company is financially sound and not going anywhere.”
