Keeping Things Simple Isn’t Easy

Just like the work required for laying a foundation to any building to stand the test of time, establishing routines that model the core values that will ultimately serve as the foundation our organization is built on can be incredibly difficult. Before moving on, I’ve gotta ask.. Is it just me or does it always seem to be way harder to develop good habits than it is to slip into bad ones? I guess we could take a lesson from what Robert Frost shared more than 100 years ago in “The Road Not Taken”... Slipping into habits that don’t exemplify our values is so much easier than doing what it takes to be the example we want our teams to follow.

While it’s been a long time since I’ve dug or poured footers, or mixed mud for block layers, I still have a very vivid memory of exactly what’s required in each step of a residential foundation, none of which is all that exciting. Establishing the habits required to effectively live out our organizational values, especially if we’re starting from scratch and the only one working to do so, is a heavy load for even the strongest leader. But practicing the behavior to develop the habit isn’t the hardest part; the step prior to and the step that follows both require even more determination.

Early in this process, we looked at the importance of removing any possible ambiguity and defining exactly what the words we list as our core values really mean. As you can imagine, Cindy and I work closely with many of our clients to help ensure they’ve done both. Developing a clear and concise definition for how each value is understood organizationally is a critical starting point, but it’s only a starting point! As leaders, we need to identify exactly how each of those definitions apply to our daily responsibilities; we need to translate them to the behaviors our teams see us performing. Developing that level of clarity for how we model each value may sound simple, but I assure you it’s not easy.

With that mental picture for acting out each value firmly in place, we can get to work on establishing our routine; our habits… Systems for sticking with each behavior until we’ve created the muscle memory I referenced before are huge, especially when we build those systems to support our individual behavioral style. Even then, there will be times where it feels like we’re not gaining any ground and doing the same old simple things isn’t making a difference. We’ll constantly hear of this new fad or that new approach, each being the best thing since sliced bread. The urge to chase new rabbits will often be high, but do you know what happens when you chase multiple rabbits? You don’t catch any…

Make no mistake, consistency is boring. Even more so when we’re working to keep our routines as simple as possible so each team member looking to us for leadership can understand exactly why we’re doing what we’re doing and how they can follow suit. I’ll say it again: keeping things simple isn’t easy. And many times, it’s stinking boring. Eventually, though, our teams will catch on. For that to happen, we’ll need to be very clear in detailing why we’ve chosen our simple approach and how each of them can do the same.

Detailing Why, Over and Over…

As we wrapped up our look at who ultimately cares about our values, and how much our organization’s entire reputation rests on them, I emphasized the importance of modeling our values and explaining why - because we can’t just assume the general public will piece it all together on their own; they’re busy chasing their own rabbits… Truth be told, we need to be just as intentional about providing that same kind of detail for everyone inside our organizations too.

Over the last few years, Cindy and I have shared a lesson called “Building Buy-In Around a Clear Mission & Vision” with no less than a thousand leaders from several hundred companies across the United States. In that message, we stress making sure each team member is not only familiar with the fancy mission and vision statements that are so often displayed prominently in the lobby for the world to see, but they have clarity around how their individual responsibilities help achieve the mission and vision. We hit on values during that session as well, but the reality is that values have to be firmly in place at every level of our organization to have any chance of sustaining the behaviors necessary for achieving the mission and vision.The challenge I see leaders struggle with frequently is feeling like they’re beating a dead horse as they’re including specifics about their values over and over and over again, be it in routine one-on-one conversations or in larger settings with their entire teams. When it comes to our values, though, there’s no such thing as talking about them too much!

Twice to this point, as we looked at ways we can rally our team around our values and again when working through how we model our values for everyone to see, I mentioned something in passing that many of us likely take for granted today; at least those of us who have come to love God’s chicken sandwich. In yet another conversation with Jeff Henderson, who worked directly for Truett Cathy earlier in his career, he shared the story behind the “My Pleasure” that you and I have become so dependent on as we wrap up our short stint in line at Chick-fil-A. Before I move on though, do you know what happens when a Chick-fil-A employee forgets to say that today? Do yourself a favor and check that out on YouTube…

Jeff shared that Mr. Cathy had his own initial “My Pleasure” experience while staying at a Ritz Carlton. Truett said it just felt better than hearing the traditional “You’re welcome”, or even worse, “No problem” after thanking someone for their service. That was one of many things that set his experience apart from stays at other hotels, which prompted him to begin working to implement the phrase within the Chick-fil-A culture. Let’s be honest, receiving that “My Pleasure” response does feel a lot better than having someone grunt “No problem” as we get the wrong food, without a milkshake, after being held hostage for a week and a half in the McDonald’s drive through… With him being the founder of the company that brought us God’s chicken sandwich and building a culture that provides an experience that was previously unheard of in the fast food sector, one could easily assume that when he so much as suggested the idea of replacing “You’re welcome” with “My Pleasure,” the heavens opened and every single person even remotely affiliated with the organization fell right in line - but one would be wrong! From the time he first shared the idea internally, it took Truett Cathy ten full years of explaining exactly why he wanted the Chick-fil-A organization to be known that way. Not only did he have to model a seemingly simple request routinely himself, he had to provide explicit detail around how, when, and why each team member should be using that response themselves. But ten years? Holy cow! (get it, the Chick-fil-A Cow!)

Galatians 6:9 says, “let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, IF we faint not.” Drive past any Chick-fil-A around lunchtime and it’s easy to see that the Cathy family, as well as the owner of each store, has made it to that “due season” part. Had Truett let up on his expectation for “My Pleasure” to be the automatic response to any version of “Thank you” after even nine years, it may not be what we’re accustomed to today. If it took him that long for this to permeate his company, isn’t it fair to expect we’ll need to be willing to pound the drum over and over, detailing why we’ve chosen the behaviors we use to model our values and exactly how each team member can do the same while fulfilling their responsibilities? Keeping it simple helps us get the ball rolling. Explaining it clearly will be a difference-maker in whether our teams internalize our message.

Specific Detail, Shared Simply and Clearly

While the foundation for the residential construction projects I was involved with in my teens was on a much smaller scale than the skyscrapers I alluded to earlier, they were no less important to the long term stability of the home. The same holds true for the core values in a business of any size. And although starting simple and detailing exactly why we’ve chosen those values is rarely exciting, especially when we’re the only ones engaged in that process early on (or for years in some cases), it’s just as essential as the strong foundation in the construction world.

In Everyone Communicates, Few Connect, while emphasizing the importance of keeping things simple as one of the core practices for how leaders connect with their teams, John Maxwell quotes Albert Einstein as saying, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it enough.” During a recent session Cindy and I hosted for owners and executives from about twenty organizations we work closely with, a large part of the conversation was focused on how so many organizations list the same words as their core values without clearly differentiating what’s expected in practice - at any level. Thinking back to Enron’s eloquent definitions we looked at early on, the general ideas were clear but there was very little specificity around how those values would be displayed in any particular role.

One key lesson I’ve learned from leading through difficult situations is that when we don’t provide clarity, as quickly as possible, our teams are left to form their own conclusions. And like it or not, those conclusions are usually assumptions based on the limited information they have, through a lens focused solely on their individual scope of work. This is the epitome of the phrase, “you can’t see the picture when you’re in the frame.” Without providing explicit clarity for how they apply to any given team member’s role around even the most brilliantly crafted definition, those team members will be forced to adapt our values to their behaviors on their own. Whether it’s because we don’t feel like we have the time to provide that level of detail, we think we’ve already explained it well enough, or we just don’t have enough familiarity with what’s involved in their daily tasks to do it, failing to share this kind of clarity leaves the door wide open to them coming up with a mismatched definition - if they’re still thinking about those values at all.

Make no mistake, defining our values simply and detailing the behaviors involved in displaying them in each team member’s role will never be easy. It is, however, our responsibility - IF we hope to ever have our core values embedded as deeply within our company as “My Pleasure” is with Chick-fil-A. Even then, we’ll need to become an individual case study of displaying something I’ve suggested a few times to this point: consistency. We’ll pick up there soon!