Figure out what you do
Molendorp had to convince employees to support his vision and show them how their support would help the company grow. But if they were going to be effective flag bearers for OneAmerica, they had to understand the vision and know what their role was in fulfilling it.
“Leadership has to be continually coaching,” Molendorp says. “You have to say it, say it again and find a different way to say it. Find a different way to reinforce it and find a problem situation and talk about why the fixing of it is important to what we’re trying to do.”
One of the different ways OneAmerica found to communicate its message and generate employee support was through the creation of an in-company TV station called Channel OneAmerica. Flat-screen monitors were installed in each of the elevator bays to deliver a variety of messages meant to home in on the company’s vision.
“One of their peers is on the screen talking about what we are doing and talking about how they live out our values in their position or area of responsibility,” Molendorp says. “They hear from our field distribution partners who they know or have heard of. From time to time, they hear from me. … We work hard at reminding people at every opportunity why we’re here and how we do what we do and why we do what we do.”
A clear and identifiable vision that everyone can get behind is much harder to misinterpret and is essential to reducing the risk of miscommunication as the message cascades through the organization.
“What is your purpose for being there?” Molendorp says. “What do you have to do as an organization to make sure you continue in that position to deliver that value? I think those things fall out pretty clearly when you are focused on the vision and purpose.”
Molendorp says the conveyance of your company’s vision is akin to the steady, constant sound of a drumbeat. It’s a message that must constantly be communicated in many different forms to a variety of people.
“One of our challenges is to help people find a way to understand that no matter whether they are working in the mailroom or paying the claim on the product at the time it’s needed the most, everybody in the enterprise partners in the delivery of that benefit,” Molendorp says.
He flashes back a couple of years to a situation where OneAmerica was working with a single mother who was dying and wanted to make sure her kids would be taken care of.
Her poignant story was captured in the company’s annual report.
It’s all about putting some meaning behind the things your employees do to get them to see the value in it. At OneAmerica, it’s often a life-and-death issue that can produce an emotional response fairly easily. But any company can make a connection with employees between what they do and how it helps people.
“Let’s talk about manufacturing,” Molendorp says. “I’ve never been in that role, but I could imagine you have a lot of folks that are building a product. If that product isn’t linked to the marketplace in a meaningful, responsive way, then over time, they don’t have job security. You want your employees to understand the product they are building.”
It all starts with you and your ability to effectively communicate the message to your leadership team and then down the line to your employees.
“If you come into a great organization and sit down with the CEO and hear what’s going on and go down to the division level and down to the unit level and you get the same message, good things are happening,” Molendorp says.
When you’ve built a strong team that supports your vision, good results will follow.
“If you focus on the profit, you’re at the wrong end of the equation,” Molendorp says.
