Loyalty: The First Trait of a Healthy Corporate Culture
Tenaciously preserve the core mission & vision; hang in there with the team; no traitors
While every company needs to work through its own distinctive understanding of the kind of corporate culture it needs if it hopes to excel and succeed in accomplishing its mission, the fact is that there are some common themes among many great organizations. How can this be? As human beings we do have some common characteristics as a species and it should be no surprise that alongside our vast diversity we find some commonalities.
So think of this essay and the nine more to come as a sort of working “hypothesis” about common traits of ethically healthy cultures. You can’t simply copy or replicate these ten traits or core values for your organization; the process of identifying and embedding core values in your company must be customized for your context and setting. But these ideas may help you as your team works through its culture and core values project.
I want to propose that loyalty be at the top of the list of core values of ethically healthy corporate cultures. Loyalty is the capacity and the inclination to remain faithful and steadfast, the disposition to stay committed, to hang in there, to not “bail out” or disappear even when things are tough. It is not simplistic, unquestioning conservatism---thoughtlessly or fearfully clinging to traditional ways. Loyalty needs to be given to the right things---two things actually---to our core mission/vision and to our team.
Loyalty to the Mission and Vision
Jim Collins and Jerry Porras have presented a compelling case for the first aspect: loyalty to the mission. They call it “preserving the core” ( Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, 1994) Great, enduringly successful companies don’t wonder what their purpose is and change fundamental direction from year to year. They are ferocious in staying anchored to their “core ideology.” Stimulating creativity, innovation, and risk-taking without first and then simultaneously strengthening this core, they argue, is a recipe for disaster. Nikos Mourkogiannis’s Purpose: The Starting Point of Great Companies (2006) and Richard R. Ellsworth’s Leading With Purpose (2002) powerfully underscore this same message: it all begins with loyalty to the right mission, vision, and purpose.
How do we achieve a culture of loyalty to the mission and vision? On a general level, try to make sure that the company’s mission aligns with the basic human drives (1) to create and innovate and (2) to help others and fix what is broken. If our company mission taps into these elemental human characteristics it will be much more likely to elicit loyalty and passion.
One a more specific level, be very clear about the company mission and vision and then make sure that there is an overlap or alignment between the company mission and that of our employees. Employees need to be screened and hired for mission compatibility. Be very clear about the company mission and vision from day one; ask questions to find out the mission and vision of a prospective employee. Make sure they have a broad overlap or don’t make the hire.
Loyalty to the Team
Loyalty is also about personal relationships on the team. ( See Dennis C. McCarthy, The Loyalty Link: How Loyal Employees Create Loyal Customers, 1997). Nothing will undermine good ethics and excellent business faster than back-stabbing and disloyalty among the team. We don’t have to like everything about each other but we do need to build relational loyalty or we will be severely impaired.
It used to drive me crazy when my dean (back in the late 1980s) would threaten to quit my administration whenever things got tough for him. I see now that after the second episode I should have helped him pack and hit the road. His disloyalty---a deeply embedded character trait---was extremely destructive all the years he worked at that institution (despite his other stellar abilities). We can learn something from the priority the Army and Marines give to this value of loyalty. If you are expecting to be in combat, loyalty to mission and team are critical. Without it, we are just not going to be competitive. The SAS software firm (with a brilliant record of success and a 97% employee annual retention rate) and Southwest Airlines (profitable thirty-five years in a row, until the past year recession, the only major airline that knows how) are two shining examples of corporate cultures that stress the kind of loyalty I am talking about.
How do we build such team loyalty? Certainly we need to be careful about the kind of people we hire; make sure these are team players and not narcissistic individual egomaniacs. Align personal interests and rewards with team interests and rewards. Recognize and reward team loyalty whenever you see it if you want people to keep showing it. Intervene quickly and make the necessary changes when you see team breakdowns. Do not tolerate disloyalty and betrayal.
None of this means that we keep people on forever who are not performing or that we are blockheaded about re-tooling aspects of our mission and vision. This is one of the traits, the first one, but not the whole list. But we will be paralyzed and undone if we don’t have some tenacity to our core mission and some loyalty to our team.
-David W. Gill
© 2009 David W. Gill.