In the nineties, Accenture struggled to keep women in executive positions. One theory was that women who left the firm did so to devote their time to parenting. But when they did the research, they found women were leaving to take equally demanding jobs. So, if it wasn’t the pull of family, why did women leave? Looking closer at the dwindling female talent pool, they saw something swirling beneath the surface: moments of incivility.

Here’s one way it showed up. Accenture’s informal mentoring focused on navigating office politics – whom to align with to represent you for promotions, and how to manage what others thought of you. One bit of advice was to make sure you were “heard.”

Being heard was a challenge at Accenture. During meetings, it was common to interrupt the speaker. Women found that others, including women, spoke over each other – verbally jostling to hold the floor. In fact, to avoid being spoken over in meetings, one very powerful and petite executive developed a strategy: she stood and up and circled the room while making her point. It worked, and she encouraged other women to do the same.

At many companies, incivility shows up as “throwing people under the bus.”

Recently, a friend of mine stumbled upon her direct supervisor and their Vice President deriding the quality of her work. When my friend brought it up, the supervisor invited her to drinks, begged her not to quit, and said it was a “misunderstanding” and “wasn’t personal.”

How about piñata-style management? This is when a manager believes that if they batter their people, good things might fall out. Another friend recently worked with an executive who sat back in every meeting, waiting to take a swing when the moment was right. Sometimes she yelled; sometimes she was snarky. She was known for asking questions out of left field simply to throw a person off. Yes, people did perform out of fear. But they also criticized, sabotaged, and quit in equal measure.

Christine Pearson, Lynne Andersson, and Christine Porath say what sets these experiences apart from other workplace hazards is ambiguity. Their definition of incivility is “low-intensity deviate behavior with ambiguous intent to harm… (and a) violation of workplace norms for mutual respect.”

So, incivility is not only pervasive, it’s elusive. The perpetrator can credibly deny the behavior, call it a misunderstanding, or blame the tension on the weak character of the target. It’s vague, slippery, and—because people get away with it—it builds over time.

But are discomfort and unhappiness the only down sides? No. Harmful behavior spurs people to leave organizations. And, for people who stay, the sheer energy it takes to live with incivility harms productivity.

Here’s the difficult part as a leader. You probably don’t see it.

That’s because the perpetrators are often high performers who are good at managing up. And the targets often don’t want to cause trouble. If you do see it, or you have a sense that something is off, know that it’s permeating your organization. To root out incivility, a leader must look a few levels lower and use an instrument stronger than a typical employee satisfaction survey.

Fortunately, our academic friends have figured out a way to measure it concretely. See if trouble shows up when you conduct this survey by Lilia Cortina and her colleagues.

The Workplace Incivility Scale (WIS-10)*

During the past year, were you ever in a situation in which any of your supervisors or co-workers:

1: Never 2: Once or Twice 3: Sometimes 4: Often 5: Many Times

If you find your team trending toward uncivilized behavior, take the following steps:

• Label it. Uncivilized behavior happens because the perpetuator can deny it. Don’t let them. Words have power. Is someone being condescending? Call it out. Are they rolling their eyes? Tell them you see it. You will remove their ability to deny and start to create accountability.
• Define the behavior you want. It’s easy to talk about respect, but how does that look in your work environment? You might have people share, anonymously, the behavior they would like to see. Then take action — make the best suggestions part of business as usual. A number of colleagues who left 1990’s Accenture have told me they would still be there if someone had acknowledged their contribution. What a shame. If the firm had heard that feedback and translated it into an expected behavior, they might have retained those A-players.
• Don’t tolerate it. You get the culture you tolerate. When you see it, stop it in the moment. And here’s the hard part – if your repeat offender is a critical contributor and/or high performer, you must let them go. They are hindering the team’s performance even while they are convincing you to rely on them. When I have done this, I have found the team’s performance improves significantly. And I’ve had colleagues ask me, “Why didn’t you do this sooner?”

Creating a civil work place is not simple, because it requires intention and confrontation. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s well worth it. Your people will spend less time focused on office politics and more time on the performance and creative solutions you want from them.

*I’ve included two items from a version of this tool from 2001, Cortina, Magley, Williams and Langhout.

Your Silence Speaks Volumes

Let’s say you’re a C-suite executive and a new CEO is on the way. You’re a strong performer, and the numbers support it. Still, you might feel really nervous—does this upcoming change affect your position within the company? Are you in danger? In our opinion, yes, you are.

You might be thinking of horror stories like Bed, Bath, and Beyond. After only weeks on the job, new CEO Mark Tritton fired all but one of his C-suite.

While this scenario is far from the norm, it is common for a new CEO to take a hard look at the team she inherits. She needs to prove her worth, quickly, or she’ll be the one on the way out. Studies show that this is especially true when CEOs come from outside the company, which can double involuntary departures.

So if you’re a top exec with a new CEO – or, for that matter, anyone with a new boss — what can you do to survive?

Harvard Business Review studied CEO changes of over 1,000 companies and interviewed a number of new CEOs. Their accounts support something we tell our clients:

Not communicating IS communicating.

There are many reasons people fail to communicate.

• You don’t yet have what you think you need – the information, or a firm decision to convey.
• You feel like the evidence speaks for itself, and you don’t need to add anything.
• You’re not ready for questions, because you don’t have firm plans. Maybe you feel like so much is going to change in the near future that your plans might be moot.
• You think someone else is better suited to deliver the message. It’s not your strength, or it’s not your place.

Whatever your reason, it’s not good enough. Because people will hear something, even if you’re not speaking. When they have gaps in their understanding, they WILL fill those gaps in some way. All you’re doing, through your silence, is giving up control over what they will think.

So what does this mean for you, if you have a new leader? Say something.

Communicate, even if you feel it’s unnecessary.

The HBR interviews revealed what you’re really saying when you stay silent:

• Early impressions are important, but they aren’t based on the information you might think. New CEOs won’t ask their predecessor about you. And even when they get input from valid sources, they don’t place much stock in it. They want to make up their own minds. One big mistake: not enough face time, to help them form the impression. CEOs told HBR of a variety of ways their executives missed opportunities to fill in the blanks, from ill-timed vacations to over-focus on customer relationships. Face time is critical when the new boss is forming impressions.

What you’re saying with your silence: “I won’t be there for you when you need me.”

• One CEO told HBR, “Virtually no one came to see me to ask how they could help.” CEOs are in a naturally hostile environment. They’re in survival mode, trying to quickly figure out who’s with them and who’s against them. CEOs told HBR that they did not equate lack of disagreement with support. In fact, without strong, clear agreement, the CEOs draw their own conclusions: you’re not on the same page. CEOs reported firing executives because of misaligned priorities, even though those executives had never once announced their opposition.

What you’re saying with your silence:  “I don’t agree with you and I won’t support you.”

• New CEOs who deliver positive outcomes for their organizations in the first year tend to keep their jobs; CEOs who don’t tend to get fired. So it’s essential that the new CEO delivers on their first-year agenda. They say executives should actively confirm that they understand and support the plans of the new boss. And, beyond simple agreement, it makes sense to clarify what the CEO is doing and what you, specifically, can do to support those outcomes.

What you’re saying with your silence:  “I won’t help you succeed.”

• It’s hard to fault an executive for painting a bright picture of their function or division to the new CEO. But resist that temptation; it will backfire. As one CEO said “I don’t have time to sort out trust issues. If you don’t show me the negatives, I suspect that either you don’t know them or that you will try to hide things from me.”

What you’re saying with your silence: “You can’t trust me.”

• CEOs have enough challenges without trying to twist their style to fit their new team. So, of course, they want executives to match their style. You can do that the hard way – many months of observation, trial, and error – or you can do it the easy way. Ask them. One new CEO had a direct-report who others assumed would be fired, but “He…asked how I wanted him to disagree with me. What kind of facts cause me to change my mind — stories from the front line or statistics? Could he disagree in public or only in private? Once he had made his case and failed to convince me, should he try again or just accept that the decision was made? How did I feel about his subordinates or peers knowing he disagreed with something?” His direct and thoughtful conversation literally saved his job and set him up for long-term success with his new boss.

What you’re saying with your silence:  “I won’t make this any easier.”

We often tell our clients that saying nothing tells employees, ”We don’t know” or “We don’t care.” Or both. That’s the very last thing you want your new boss to think. Our advice – say something.

Why training teachers to actively resist won’t work.

“Houston, we have a problem.” That single line, paraphrased and popularized in the 1995 blockbuster Apollo 13, revealed much more than the harrowing events of a near-fatal NASA mission. It hinted at the power of effective learning.

Without a realistic simulated environment on the ground, drilling astronauts on worst-case scenarios, the entire crew would have been lost. It is powerful proof that good training drives real results.

Talk of arming teachers, to save the lives of their students and themselves, has us thinking about the Apollo 13’s training triumph.

Could teachers be effectively trained to defend against an active shooter?

Emerson develops learning programs our clients use to teach people to follow new processes or systems, up their performance, or deliver excellence for customers. What does that have to do with training astronauts or teachers to save lives? It all comes down to creating new behaviors. We know how to do that.

Let’s examine the training principles we recommend to effect new behaviors, and how those principles would work if we trained teachers to resist a violent intruder.

Match competencies to the role.

This is something our clients do outside of training. Every role has a competency profile – the skills and capabilities a person needs to be right for the job.

This is a common-sense but critical element of great performance. Yes, training helps people perform, but there are certain gaps that are hard to bridge with training. That’s why recruiters and managers take such pains to pair people and positions.

Needless to say, we hire teachers for their excellence in instructing our kids. They need teaching certificates, along with intelligence, communication skills, perception, compassion… If we were hiring people to neutralize violent intruders, the list would be different. So, before we even approach training, we have a potential performance problem.

Make it realistic.

The closer training is to reality, the better. Why? In order for people to perform, they need to transfer what they learned in training to on-the-job performance. The further the learning environment is from the performance environment, the less likely it is that the learner will transfer those new behaviors to real life.

Part of it is the setting. “State-dependent learning” says people perform better in the physical environment in which they learned to perform. That includes all the sights, sounds, smells, tools, and people. So, ideally, the learner would receive training in his or her performance environment—the real workspace.

Part of it is the scenario. We try to present learners with exactly the inputs and stimuli they will face on the job, and give them exactly the resources they will have at hand to solve the problem.

Could we apply that to teacher response training? They could certainly train in their own school buildings. That would be critical, as—aside from state-dependent learning—each building is physically different; those differences would require a custom response. But what about the scenario? That’s more of a problem.

It’s hard to anticipate exactly what would happen when someone is literally trying to take people by surprise.

Which brings us to our next principle…

Train on the exceptional.

We build training to include both the default and likely exceptions. Let’s say we’re designing training for department store employees. We might include scenarios on accepting purchase returns. In the common situation, it’s relatively simple: (1) Scan receipt. (2) Enter return reason code when prompted. (3) Press the Return button. Great. But then we ask, “What if…?” What if the customer doesn’t have a receipt? What if it’s past the time window to accept the return? What if this makes the customer mad? What if there’s a technical issue like an error message or a system outage? We must train employees on each of these scenarios.

But what if the default situation is already chaotic? If an active shooter going from classroom to classroom trying doors is your baseline, what other scenarios would we train? Imagine teachers learning to respond to one grave possibility after another.

Create unconscious habit.

We tell our clients that knowing what to do is not enough, especially in high-pressure situations. New behaviors must convert to habits, through repetitive practice cycles made up of a trigger, the right action, and some kind of reinforcement. Consider this comment on the police response to the Uvalde school shooting:

In the past two years, the Uvalde school district has hosted at least two active shooter trainings, according to reporting by The Times. One of them was two months ago. …Law enforcement officers need to be mentally prepared before they arrive on the scene, so they can respond immediately.

Repetitive training builds practice and confidence. Big gatherings for training every few years are more expensive and less effective for muscle memory. Instead, departments should consider more virtual tabletop exercises they can run through in an afternoon. Have officers walk through schools and talk with one another about how they would respond. Require officers to check all their gear before they begin a shift.

Opinion | After Uvalde, We Must Ask: Is Active Shooter Training Working? – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Learning experts know that, even if you drill during training, you can’t let new behaviors go stale and expect performance. We recommend our clients train only what is needed or will be used immediately on the job, providing natural repetition. Then we extend the learning experience through check-ins, on-the-job challenges, or learning networks, giving learners as many opportunities as possible to apply new skills after training.

So how would that work, if we were training teachers to forcibly resist?

They can’t actually use those new skills on the job until the unthinkable happens. Are we prepared to invest the time, effort, and emotional energy to effectively drill teachers, over and over, on their worst nightmare? Because that’s what it would take to create the right behaviors to make any difference.

Effective learning experiences are realistic and repetitive, preparing well-chosen people to create the new habits they need to perform. We have trouble imagining that training teachers to use guns will meet those criteria.

Does a big change have to slow you down?

How many times have you read recently that companies are in the throes of unprecedented change? We’re all tired of hearing it, but it’s true. On top of all the organic changes we face – the need for new strategy, systems, skills, and structures – the pandemic has added a layer of fundamental change.

For example, nearly every organization has had to reconsider where and how its employees work. And it’s no wonder – a large portion of the work force likes working remotely, and over half of employees would consider quitting rather than returning to the office before they feel safe.

Just when we think we’ve considered all possibilities, we see new changes on the horizon. California, for example, is considering making a 32-hour work week the law.

Business leaders need to land on a model that works for them and then help employees make the shift. No matter what leaders decide, it amounts to another wave of change.

Which leads me to change management – helping your business survive and thrive through multiple change initiatives. Approaching big change fills many leaders with resignation that, at a minimum, the organization is in for a bumpy ride.

Why? Because there is always a drop in performance after a change event.

But there isn’t. And there shouldn’t. It’s a pervasive myth. The fact that we expect one creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Our mindset is powerful, and it can work against us. Remember the four-minute mile? It was assumed to be an absolute limit of human performance, until Roger Bannister broke it. He broke it because he did the hard work of preparation, and because he believed he could. And after he believed, other elite runners followed. Not because they were suddenly physically stronger, but because they saw it was possible. Roger Bannister had taken the teeth out of 4:00.

Steady (or improving) performance through a change event is no less possible than a sub-four-minute mile.

Setting the expectation that there will be a drop in performance is giving your power away, just as those runners used to. It’s creating a haven for sloppy change interventions.

Drops in performance don’t have to happen. They happen when we have not:

• Clearly defined the performance required after the event. In other words, we have not described the specific actions each person must perform differently on Monday morning.
• Mapped the before and after, from each individual’s point of view. For example, where are the resources people used to depend on? What new resources are in their places?
• Let people practice the skills needed for these new actions. We haven’t let them try, fail, use the new tools and resources, and find a way to succeed.
• Convinced our people that they need to perform these new actions – that the change is vital to the organization and there’s nowhere to go but forward.
• Allowed them to demonstrate their own success, so they won’t be afraid to go all in.

Anything new here? Nope. But here’s the issue: we have spent our days believing in the performance drop, and working to minimize it. What if our change planning made the drop unacceptable? What if the metrics we talk about, but never measure, included an immediate timeframe to adoption: start-to-success within three months?

These steps take significant effort and attention to detail. They require steely commitment. I suspect we’re afraid to step up to the task. And we’re afraid to demand the same of the sponsor whose neck is on the line for delivery.

We’re afraid because we’re looking down. We expect hard times, lower performance, and lots of confusion and adjustment after the change. So our sponsors and our people hesitate.

What if, instead of asking them to weather the dip, we ask them to move upward and only upward? What if we tell them that, after all that ground work (in the bullets above), we’ll be stepping UP, not down?

When an executive has gone to the board for a transformational change, make sure they know how to lead the team in this way. Their careers hang in the balance. Give them the option to support you in doing the right work so your organization steps up — only up — to new levels of success.

What’s best for your organization?

The post-pandemic work model is still being defined. Some organizations have decided to allow their employees to work remotely, indefinitely. Others are implementing a hybrid approach. Some remain in a “wait and see” mode.

Obviously, this is not a “one size fits all” situation. Each organization is weighing its options.

Normal wasn’t working. We must not think of it in terms of pushing a button and going back to the way things were.  — John Kerry

If your organization is still on the fence, consider the questions below. They might help you choose the best solution for your organization.

Part 1: What do our people think?

• How do our employees feel about how they’ve been working?
• What is their ideal work setting?
• Have we asked them?
• How can we engage employees in examining the options and choosing a solution?
• How will we communicate and implement a work model change?

Part 2: What are the possibilities?

• Does the work environment have to be one way or another?
• Have we considered all options?
• Can we let departments, functions, teams, or individuals decide what works best for them?

Part 3: How does remote work serve us?

• What are the benefits for continuing to work remotely?
• What’s the down side? What’s been missing since we’ve gone remote?
• What are the business outcomes of remote work?
• Are customers impacted by remote work?
• How do our shareholders view remote work?
• Have we enabled our people to be successful in a remote setting?
• How do we ensure teamwork if we’re remote?
• How is our culture impacted if we don’t work with each other in the office?
• What tools, infrastructure, and support enable employees to flourish in a remote environment?
• What did we learn about remote work during the last two years?
• Did we make assumptions that our people know how to work remotely?
• Are there certain employee behaviors and skills that enable successful remote work?
• Will our recruiting and development change based on new skills or behaviors?

Part 4: Should we return to the office?

• What are the benefits of working in the office?
• What is the downside of in-person work?
• What are the business outcomes?
• How do we ensure we don’t lose those people who would prefer to work remotely? How can we incentivize them?
• If we decide to return to the office, are there certain business events that might drive our timing?
• If we return to the office, do we have proper safety protocols in place?
• Do we have healthcare professionals on-site? Do we have enough healthcare professionals on-site?

Part 5: Could a hybrid model work for us?

• What are the benefits of working in a hybrid model?
• What is the downside of a hybrid model?
• What are the business outcomes?
• What does a hybrid work environment look like?
• Does hybrid mean certain roles work from the office and others work remotely? If so, how will we determine which roles should work from the office?
• Does hybrid mean certain activities happen in the office and other activities happen remotely? If so, how do we make those decisions?

Wherever these questions lead your organization, grant your leadership and your employees some patience during these uncharted times. Have faith that, together, you will find the model that works for you.

Use this four-part agenda to launch and support a strong, focused team.

We talk about the need to both perform and transform. If you only transform but don’t perform, you have no here and now. If you only perform but don’t transform, you have no future. — Frans van Houten, CEO of Royal Philips Electronics

A few years ago, a friend began a company turnaround. His first task: tell his executive team they would not receive bonuses due to missed goals, despite growing revenue and EBITDA.

The team had never met face-to-face. Some had been through three management changes; others were new hires. This is a surprisingly common problem. As Jon R. Katzenbach writes, “Even in the best of companies, a so-called top team seldom functions as a real team. The fact is, a team’s know-how and experience inevitably lose power and focus at the top of the corporate hierarchy. And simply labeling the leadership group a team does not make it one.”

My friend was up against this daunting challenge. He couldn’t afford to build a new team from scratch, so he asked for our help to build his team as they were running the company. They needed both performance, in the moment, and transformation to their vision for the future.

In preparation for our working sessions, we agreed on the following principle:

High impact teams result from meaningful work, not team-building exercises.

We met in a series of four meetings. Over the following two years, this team increased sales 50% and EBITDA 300%.

Meeting 1 Outcomes – Strategy and Working Agreements

The CEO had an overall vision for the turnaround. The team, shell-shocked from bad news, needed to hear it. Because they needed to jell quickly, we wanted them to explicitly agree on how they would work together.

At the first meeting, we:

• Defined the culture they wanted.
• Described the strategy using four key words and personal stories.
• Determined specific actions for the next 180 days.
• Agreed on how to work together.

Meeting 2 Outcomes — Momentum, Working Styles, and Profit

In the first 180 days, the team agreed on a new budget, met five new distributors, introduced three products, and hit their targets.

In this second meeting, we:

• Celebrated a successful quarter.
• Identified their preferred working styles and examined ways to adapt to their colleagues’ styles.
• Explored how to work with existing assets to increase profitability.

Meeting 3 Outcomes: A Visual Vision

People crave meaning. The most successful companies are clear on what they stand for, and why. Now that the team had worked together for a while, they were ready to clearly articulate their direction.

Here, we summarized their:

• Core Values – what they stand for
• Core Purpose – what they exist to do
• Aspirations – what they want to be
• Visual Vision – what the future looks like, in hindsight

Meeting 4 Outcomes: Focus, Goals, and Connection

The team was winning, clearly focused on a differentiator, and they had resolved factory capacity to increase profits. The CEO wanted them to sustain progress into the new year, create long term impact, and strengthen their connections as a high-functioning team.

So we:

• Examined how they accomplished what they did, and how to sustain it.
• Created steps to achieve their personal goals with the differentiator.
• Applied strategies to stay focused.

The CEO had inherited this collection of executives. Using a thoughtful structure, we created an experience that turned them into a team.

And How To Stop Them

Vaccines are here. Hopeful for post-pandemic normalcy, employers across the country are bringing their employees back to the office. But not all of them.

To put it mildly, many people are quitting their jobs in what the media are calling “The Great Resignation.” Back in March, the 2021 resignation rate was 2.4 percent – the highest rate of quitters recorded in any March of the last 20 years. Some of this is the release of a backlog—would-be leavers who kept their jobs in 2020 to fend off pandemic-driven hardship. But, as the backlog clears and businesses welcome everyone back to the office, many are still saying, “No, thanks.” Just this week the Labor Department released its November 2021 jobs report showing a record number of workers opting out.

Why? There are several reasons. One is increased savings and debt reduction. Another reason: people hated the pandemic, but loved working from home. Faced with a choice between going back to the office and quitting, some people will quit.

And, if they have another job option, why not? During remote work, they saved a lot of money and a lot of time—no commute, no travel costs, no dry cleaning, no costly lunch, no co-worker-you-hate, no drop-ins from the boss, no sharing the bathroom with dozens of strangers… I could go on, or I could sum it up in one word: Control.

Yes, pajamas are comfy and your dog’s head resting on your lap makes a meeting more bearable. But home is greater than the sum of its perks—working from home (or a coffee shop, or a beach) gives humans the autonomy we crave. It’s not the fuzzy slippers; it’s the choice to wear the fuzzy slippers.

So what’s a company to do? Create control.

In our change management work for clients, we use the concept of control to create momentum and improve adoption of a change.

We do this by making people feel in control of a change. That doesn’t mean we’re tricking them, just building in autonomy where we can and focusing their attention on those autonomous feelings.

Here are a few ways you might create feelings of control to entice workers to stay with you.

1. Flexible Hours. Giving people their choice of shifts—earlier, later, or even a four-day week—might soften the return to a commute.
2. Goal-Based Weeks. Don’t make people sit at their desks eight hours a day, regardless of what they’re doing. Set realistic performance milestones and give employees the remainder of the week off after they hit them.
3. Work-at-Home Days. Schedule all-hands-on-deck days, for in-person work, and let them work from home the rest of the time—but only if they want to! Choice is the point here.
4. The Comforts of Home. Think about what workers will be missing when they come back to the office, and give them alternatives. Cheap lunch? Pay for it. Privacy? Create pods for people who want to get away. Kids nearby? Set up a day care. A better view? Think of your office space as a campus. Open up new spaces to work, so people can curl up on a sofa near a window, or feel like they’re at their favorite coffee house as they work.

The keys to making any of this work are genuine choice (not a top tier for some choices and a slower track for others) and communication (clear, consistent messaging on choice before they decide to quit… so get on it).

Some of these ideas sound costly, don’t they? Maybe not more costly than turnover and productivity dips.

A final thought: As they contemplate bringing the work force back to the office, the C-Suite might ask itself why. Why do you need them in the office? Is it because seeing the work and the workers right in front of you makes you feel in control?

Using Behavior Change to Create a Nimble Organization

People love stability. Stability, to our brains, equals safety. Organizations love stability. Stability, to organizations, means predictability, which makes customers and markets happy. So it’s no wonder people and companies are suffering.

After years of feeling threatened politically, financially, and physically, we’re trying to find our feet. But the pandemic, for one thing, keeps rocking us. First it was “just” COVID. Then it was the Delta variant—even more deadly, if that was possible.

Now it’s Omicron; we’re googling the Greek alphabet and bracing for the worst. But health experts are delivering the good news/bad news. It appears to be much more transmissible, but also much less deadly. What do we do with that?

Omicron feels like a tipping point. We just learned how to vax up and lock down, but now we’re not sure what to do. It’s almost worse; a whole new flavor of pandemic offers us even less stability.

Change is our new normal. That’s a common refrain. But what do we do about it? How do we reconcile our innate need for stability with constant global upheaval?

At Emerson Human Capital, we believe behavior is the foundation of any change.

If you can engineer different behaviors, you can change outcomes, mindsets, emotions, and even organizational culture.

If you want to prime your organization for our new normal—relentless change—try instituting these kinds of behaviors.

1. Assess. Encourage teams to continually take in new information and use it to make their work better. Implement checkpoints to stop and reassess based on new information, then adjust goals or processes. The individual behaviors you want to see are gathering, analyzing, and sharing information.
2. Fail fast. Make trial and error normal. When you want to change goals or processes due to new information, green-light a pilot to test the new way. Quickly gather results, adjust, and implement. The individual behaviors are raising new ideas, approving pilots, and celebrating what you learned (not what the pilot achieved).
3. Sprint. Any project can learn from Agile software development projects, which do their work in sprints. A sprint is a set period of time during which a discrete chunk of work is produced and evaluated. Sprints are typically no longer than 30 days. Sprints allow a team to absorb and react to new information quickly. Imagine a one-year initiative. Now think of everything that has changed in the last year. Sprints don’t plan everything, then design everything, then build everything…they create individual components of a solution, fast; components are easier to fix, and new sprints benefit from new information. The behaviors you want are all the parts of an Agile sprint process.
4. Step up. This is about using all the information you have—external and internal forces, lessons learned from your own projects, and information from other teams—to up your capabilities. It’s like a rock climber who gains muscle and agility by climbing a mountain; she uses that new ability on the next mountain. We strengthen not in our “downtime,” but as we climb. The behavior you want is asking and acting on questions like these: What did you learn to do on your last project, or in your last cycle? What have you learned from the outside world or from another team’s experience? Who learned it? How can you encode and use that new capability?

When we say “institute these behaviors,” we mean you have to identify them, communicate them, measure them, and reinforce them. It’s an investment; you either want this kind of organization, or you don’t.

Behaviors like these will not only improve your performance, they will begin to create a more nimble culture—where questioning is ok, risk is celebrated, and you commit to being smarter tomorrow than you were today. Companies that do this well are ready for whatever the world throws at them.

Don’t schedule your strategic planning session until you figure this out.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Time for those leadership sessions we use to plan for the future. But before you clear those calendars and head into days-long meetings, ask yourselves: what question are you trying to answer?

We’ve helped many leadership teams plan for the following year. It’s surprising how many companies schedule an off-site or a series of working sessions without clarity on exactly what problem they’re trying to solve and what objectives they want to hit.

So before you schedule, figure out which questions you’re trying to answer.

1. Who are we and where are we headed?

Every executive team must align around their purpose, vision, and values. But not every team knows how to align. It takes practice. The process builds relationships as team members discuss, work, collaborate, and agree on a singular view of the future.

This work might seem unnecessary; most organizations already have a purpose, vision, and values. But it’s worth asking whether these “truths” require revision. Triggers include acquisitions, changes in leadership, and significant market shifts.

2. Are we organized to achieve our vision?

A good operating model is the blueprint of your organization, It shows all the key  components that contribute to the organization’s value stream, including inputs, outputs, processes, metrics, and technology. It highlights the interdependencies within teams and processes and how they deliver value.

By constructing the model together, the leadership team develops a greater awareness and appreciation of all contributions and understands the importance of acting in unity.

Again, you probably already have an operating model. Or do you? Many of our clients are surprised to discover they don’t have it documented, and certainly not accessible to the company or used as guidance for day-to-day work. Even a strong operating model is worth refreshing every few years.

3. How do we get there?

“There” is wherever you plan to go—the mission, the vision, the operating model… Businesses thrive when the organization knows what it wants to achieve and by when. Every company should have a roadmap.

Executives are responsible for identifying the high-level “what and when.” The session should include representatives of key business functions to determine the “how.”

4. What is our message to the organization?

If an organization must change in any way, it needs a message. As the executive team creates the message frame—the four key words that anchor the message—they clarify and align on the change.

The message frame ensures all leaders and advocates tell the same compelling story, consistently and authentically, without relying on written materials or PowerPoint decks. Each communicator customizes the story with details and data that mean something to that particular audience—this is what gets your entire organization pulling in the same direction.

5. How should we work together?

We all have natural patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving. Effective teams understand how these patterns impact the overall team dynamic and how to use the strengths of their members to deliver results and move the organization forward. Smart teams create working agreements that take into account different working styles and reduce conflict. Agreements should be simple and direct, created by the team, and present at all meetings.

One of our favorite tools to craft these agreements: the Clifton Strengthfinder™ Survey. We work with a team to find each member’s unique contributions and leverage them in service of the strategy. Then we define team agreements, taking working styles and culture into consideration.

6. How do we sharpen our performance?

To make improvements in business processes, org structure, and behaviors, leaders need to know what’s working and what’s not. A working session can pinpoint what should change, and determine how.

Some of the tools we use as a first step: 1) SWOT analysis, which identifies strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, and 2) the Start, Stop, Continue exercise. Then we take those findings, prioritize, and plan implementation.

Many executive teams blend these types of sessions into something custom that works for them. What’s most important is clarity—understanding your problem, the process you will use, and the outcomes you want—before you start.

How to Get a Job with Us – or Anyone

The first recruiting Emerson ever did took place about 20 years ago, in our first company headquarters – our CEO’s basement. Our recruiter conducted phone interviews surrounded by critters – Trish’s cat, her large poodle, and the overly friendly woodland animals who made their way through the open window.

“Can you tell me a bit about what made you contact us?” Our recruiter asked one candidate. “Well, actually,” he answered enthusiastically, “my dad said great things about your company. He used to work for Emerson!”

Cool story, bro. At that time, we were just a few months old, so we didn’t know your dad.

In those early days, the average person thought “Emerson” was a window company or the electric company, depending on their geography. Candidates often said they knew our work, but that was rare.

Today, candidates seem to be as informed about our company as we are. They have worked alongside our employees at client sites, attended our workshops, read our books, and spent hours on our website. We offer the flexibility today’s workforce wants — to work remotely and make their own hours, while serving our clients well. They know who we are and they know they want to work with us.

That makes our job a little harder. The candidates we talk to love Emerson. They love what we stand for, what we do, how we do it, and who we are. We love them right back. We sometimes wish we could hire all of them, but we can’t. Our recruiters have to make tough decisions.

Want to land a job with Emerson – or any company? Here’s what we recommend:

Impress us with your communications.

If you represent Emerson, you will help clients create business outcomes. There are a lot of documents and deliverables that support those outcomes, and they have to be exemplary. The first deliverable we see is your resume. If we wouldn’t present it to a client, we can’t hire you. Is your resume well written, succinct, good-looking, and honest? Great! We’re already interested.

If we ask you for a writing sample, make sure it’s your best work. It might seem like a perfunctory step in the process, but we take it very seriously. The same with your emails to us. We ask ourselves whether we’d send them straight to a client, under our logo. That’s a high bar.

Be yourself.

If you are smart, polished, funny, or professional, we will love talking to you. But if you are consciously trying to seem smart, polished, funny, or professional…you won’t. You will just sound like you aren’t being yourself. Or, worse yet, you might come off sounding pompous or defensive. We want to get to know the real you. That’s the only person we want to meet.

Do your work.

Sometimes we come across candidates who misunderstand what we do. If you don’t really understand what we do, your examples will just make things worse – they will prove you don’t know the job you’re applying for.

There are also candidates who DO understand what we do, but they’ve never done it. They’ve been around it, next to it, have a friend who does it… Writing an article about a house fire is not the same thing as being a firefighter. Just be clear and distinct about your experience. Not having every skill we need is better than “stretching” your experience to seem like you do.

Answer the question.

The bulk of an interview is made up of questions and answers. Our conversation will go smoothly if you answer the question that was asked. Sometimes it’s simply too much of a good thing – enthusiasm can make you lose track or talk in generalities. Or, maybe you don’t know the answer. That’s ok! It’s always better to be honest. When you are honest, we can have a real and productive conversation and get to the right answer for both of us.

Remember the “I” in team.

For the purposes of our interviews, there is an “I” in team. If you’re a great person to work with, you’re probably used to acknowledging other people’s contributions and seeing every victory as a team effort. And we love that – that fits our culture beautifully. But, just for this conversation, we need to know what you did. We’re not hiring your whole team. What was your role? What did you deliver? What difference did you, personally, make to your company or client?

Mind your manners.

We are grateful for your interest in our company. We appreciate the time you take in getting to know us. We feel lucky you sought us out as a potential employer. We like it when we can tell you feel grateful, appreciative, and lucky too.

We hire experts in behavior change. They are smart, capable, kind, collaborative, down-to-earth people with a great sense of humor. If this describes you, and you take our few bits of advice, we’d love to hire you. Who wouldn’t?