Early in the semester of his supply chain strategy class, Stan Fawcett stands in front of his students with a fresh, yellow ear of corn in his hand.
“Do farmers grow corn in Iowa?” he asks, holding the vegetable high.
Fawcett is met with puzzled looks. Could a professor really be asking a question so straightforward? Whether the students respond yes or no, all their answers sound more like questions themselves.
The stage is set.
“No, farmers don’t grow corn in Iowa or anywhere else. The corn grows itself,” explains Fawcett, a Marriott School global supply chain professor. “Farmers clear the trees, remove the rocks, plow the fields, and provide irrigation. Then they add pesticides, fertilizer, and all those other things that lead to a bounteous harvest. The farmers’ job is to create the environment where the corn can flourish.”
Fawcett then turns the agrarian analogy to the cubicle.
“Managers’ most important job is to cultivate an environment where employees can flourish,” he says. “You have to create the environment just like you’re moving the rocks and plowing the field; you’ve got to make sure that you align measures, that you provide the proper training and skills, and that you are working with them individually to help them succeed.”
It doesn’t take an academic to note the difference between the cultures of JetBlue and Dunder Mifflin. But according to Fawcett and three other Marriott School professors, it’s the little things that add up and separate the two. The group’s article, “Spirituality and Organizational Culture: Cultivating the ABCs of an Inspiring Workplace” published in the International Journal of Public Administration, focuses on three critical ABCs—affirmation, belonging, and competence—that can make an ordinary organization inspiring. Raising Affirmation
The first characteristic of an inspiring culture is affirmation—realizing employees’ need for approval and letting them know they’re valued.
“A huge number of companies don’t understand the culture of affirmation,” Fawcett says. “Managers need to look for opportunities to express appreciation.”
A job well done is the most obvious reason to share gratitude, but Gary Rhoads,
another co-author and a marketing and entrepreneurship professor, says, “A lot of companies gather positive feedback, but managers never channel it to the people who actually do the work.”
That can be resolved through thank-you notes, compliments, and rewards. Employees also feel affirmed when they feel like problem-solvers in their organization, says Dave Whitlark, one of the study’s authors and a marketing professor.
“Engaged employees know that their managers trust them to do the right thing; they are given the freedom to do their jobs the way they think is best and are able to weigh in on decisions that impact how they work,” Whitlark adds.
Another key, according to the research, is to have employees view criticisms as opportunities to help them succeed.
“One of the hardest things a leader does is correct people when they are wrong.You have to create an environment where employees accept correction and even look forward to it because they know you want to help them,” Fawcett says. “When the people who work with you really believe that, then you become a coach or a mentor.”
Jim Brau, another author and Marriott School associate professor of finance, says, “As a frontline supervisor, how could I give constructive feedback to employees? If they feel that I’m teaching them, training them, and inspiring them to be more confident and knowledgeable about their specific jobs and skills, I could fire up employees and increase their personal confidence.”
Smart managers realize that saying, “Didn’t you read the email I sent you?” when an employee asks what time the meeting starts, sends a disconfirming message.
“The reality is that we’re really good at finding people’s faults. We’re very poor as a society at highlighting people’s strengths,” says Rhoads, who notes that it’s simply human nature for people to act this way. “Many companies focus on what doesn’t work instead of focusing on what people do great. And when you do that, you create a culture that drives the passion right out of employees.”
Taking time to celebrate the victories is what Brau believes managers should do to help employees feel supported and satisfied.
“If you’re a leader who can be a cheerleader, you’re going to do much better,” he points out. “If you fail to recognize when people do a great job, that is a complete failure in leadership. Without positive reinforcement, employees’ incentives to either stay at your organization or to excel go way down.” Nourishing Belonging
Belonging, the second component of a strong organizational culture, refers to people’s need to feel socially connected to co-workers and to the organization itself.
“I know a company in Mexico that had 18 percent turnover per month. They cut it to 4 percent by implementing the ABCs,” Fawcett says. “One of the things the company began was a monthly birthday party for all its employees. They ate cake and participated in a drawing for a free television, which was what they made on their production line.”
In addition to retention, the research shows that a strong sense of belonging leads to high productivity and service quality.
“You can scream at employees, and you can threaten them so they’re productive,” Rhoads says. “But if you want them to give quality service, you have to capture their hearts. When productivity goes up, quality doesn’t always follow, but when quality goes up, productivity always follows.”
Encouraging employees to build friendships also helps them succeed.
“If your work environment is dog-eat-dog, you’ll feel the only way for you to look better is to make someone else look bad. Some organizations want such fierce competition so only the superheroes stand out,” Brau says. “But that’s not the optimal way of inspiring employee improvement. If you are in an environment where employees feel like a team and the team either wins together or loses together, that’s a better model of organizational culture.”
The other requirement for a good sense of belonging is that employees feel they are treated fairly and feel comfortable at work.
“Managers hold the key to employees’ sense of belonging,” Whitlark notes. “Employees need to feel like a member of the group on equal footing with others. They don’t want to feel like they’ve been pushed to the back of the room or excluded from individualized consideration.”
One example that may seem small but didn’t go unnoticed, he says, was at a company where employees felt disenfranchised because managers drank orange juice in their morning meetings and employees had only water to drink in their morning meetings.
“When managers have favorites or don’t treat every employee fairly and equally, the employees’ sense of belonging is compromised,” Whitlark says. Culturing Competence
Competence is the third, necessary element of an inspiring organizational climate.
Rhoads describes it this way: “You either lift people up, or you tear them down; I’m always surprised how many people take the teardown approach. And the way supervisors tear down employees is they peck away at their competence.”
Being micromanaged or assigned unimportant tasks can also attack an employee’s competence. “Employees appreciate being in control of their work performance—they complete projects, they get the autonomy,” Brau says.
Employees feel they gain competence not only through independence but also through instruction. Fawcett explains, “It could be in-house training; it could be bringing in a consultant; it could be incentivizing your employees to go back to school; it could be sending them to a conference or asking them to invest some of their personal time in education.”
But not all trainings are created equal. “Employee training programs often rely heavily on lectures and reading materials, the two most ineffective learning methods,” Whitlark says. “To help employees be competent in the field—where it matters—training programs need to emphasize discussion groups, role-play practice, and allow employees to teach other employees.”
For example, a manager could assign a newbie to shadow a six-month veteran for a week. “What does that tell the trainer?” Rhoads asks. “It says you’re competent; you’re a great role model. What does the new person learn? A lot from an enthusiastic employee. This arrangement actually accelerates the learning curve.”
At one organization Rhoads consulted with, he encouraged management to sponsor educational and recreational classes for its employees, taught by employees. “One class was on archery. Hundreds signed up! The person who taught the class was happy to share her talent. And it cost the company nothing,” he points out.
Whether it’s an official training seminar or a casual class on personal finance, educating employees helps ensure their loyalty to the organization.
“You don’t want to create your competitor’s best employees,” Fawcett says. “By investing in your employees you’re telling them that they are valued, which overlaps with affirmation. If you add a sense of belonging, they are much more likely to stay and keep that value for your organization.” Harvesting Culture
If an organization implements the ABCs, they’re more likely to grow a culture that encourages and enables employees, one that promotes individual growth and learning.
Recognizing culture is particularly important because, as Whitlark mentions, younger employees—the Millennial Generation—are more sensitive to organizations that undermine their feelings of affirmation, belonging, and competence.
That generation is learning about corn and culture in Marriott School classrooms as the professors share their research—and practice what they preach.
“When a professor or a manager understands and captures the vision of the ABCs, makes people feel valued, creates the sense of belonging, empowers them through competence, and then unleashes them to solve the world’s problems,” Fawcett smiles, “it’s awesome.” Case Study: The Impact of Flexibility on Morale When Gary Rhoads went to a call center in Chicago to diagnose its declining productivity, he—once again—learned the strong influence managers have in changing a culture.
The first step Rhoads took was to interview the top and bottom performing employees. He sat down with one of the most productive employees, who quickly informed him that she was about to quit.
Rhoads asked her why, and she explained that she had a daughter who finished high school at 2 p.m. The employee, who completed her shift at 2:30 p.m., didn’t want her daughter walking home through dangerous neighborhoods after school—she wanted to drive her home, and the company wouldn’t let her off a half hour early to do so.
Rhoads went to the CEO and asked him to help the employee, explaining that being flexible with her would improve productivity. The CEO agreed to let her go early as long as she made up the half hour she missed. He was, however, skeptical because she worked as part of a team and thought she would hurt the group’s performance because they’d be fielding incoming calls with one person fewer.
One month after the experiment began, Rhoads looked at the data. The team that was short an employee for thirty minutes was the top performer in the company.
“The co-workers told me, ‘We love her so much, and when she was gone we really worked hard because we were happy the company let her have the time off,’” he says. “The group saw her pain, and they wanted to help her take care of her daughter.”
Rhoads went back to the CEO and showed him the performance report. The ceo was surprised at the findings and remarked, “Gary, you have taught me something. I’m not pushing my people hard enough.”
That wasn’t the lesson Rhoads had in mind. “I realized I could not change the culture if it did not come from the top,” he explains and decided to stop consulting with the organization.
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Article written by Emily Smurthwaite
Illustrations by Andrew Bannacker
