(Second in a series of reflections on corporate culture)

Any organization of human capital rises and falls based on membership’s confidence in corporate mission and means.  Effectiveness is achieved when corporate confidence flows liberally.  Leadership is the source, whether the flow is a tide or trickle.
“The people who are doing the work are the moving force behind the Macintosh. My job is to create a space for them, to clear out the rest of the organization and keep it at bay.”

— Steve Jobs —
______________________________________________________________
My home baseball team is the St. Louis Cardinals.  I used to be a Yankees fan, a hazard of being raised on Long Island. The Cards and Boston Red Sox are entangled in the World Series.  Not being able to predict what I will have for lunch tomorrow, prognosticating on the national pastime is beyond me.
But I know this.  Redbirds beware.

The Sox are stuffed with confidence like a Christmas stocking.  They came off a miserable 2013 season — 69 and 93.  With limited knowledge of the sport, I rely on the pundits who said a one year turnaround was impossible.  The pundits earned a check in the “error” column. Circumstances created the about face:  a cool general manager, a slate of talent on the roster, and John Farrell.  Manager Farrell is the axle around which the whole organization turns and he has invaluable leadership perspective.

An Amex Open Forum commentary by Jason Brick, posted October 23, credits Farrell’s transparent and communicative management style.  Observers say it allows him to, “…use influence, not authority to earn their trust, earn their respect, and create an environment in that clubhouse that is a trusting one.”  Trust builds corporate confidence. It is the key to a successful family, ball club, government organization, or university.
Absent trust girding up corporate confidence, people seek to self-protect.  Achievement is displaced by survival.  David Ortiz, who the Cards should be particularly mindful of, said “… the first day of spring training he said that he had our backs.”  Leadership provides a confidence-rich environment allowing people to unreservedly commit and give their all.

Corporate cultures pitting one person against another never instill confidence, instead they steal it.  Brick suggests that the celebration of talent, providence, and a willingness to take chances are the building blocks that allowed Farrell to mastermind the turnaround.  Corporate confidence breeds talent, providence, and entrepreneurship.  It is cause and effect simultaneously.

In Psychology Today online, November 23, 2010, Jim Taylor, adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco, suggests: “If you’re confident, you’re going to be motivated, relaxed, focused, and have mostly positive emotions. In contrast, if you lack confidence, you will likely feel unmotivated, stressed, distracted, and experiencing mostly negative emotions.”  Taylor believes that confidence is skill that can be developed over time, and, while success may breed confidence, it also allows risk-taking, breeding more success.  An ascending corporate culture.

Google posts on its corporate website Ten Things We Know to Be True as the fundamental operational concepts.  Number One on the list, “Focus on the user and all else will follow.”  Such focus requires corporate confidence. Without confidence in the larger group the full energy of all cannot be given to meeting the user’s needs. Any healthy organization has a foundational focus that must be consistently voiced by leadership and reinforced in day to day action.

“The Culture to Cultivate” by George Halvorson, CEO of the health care giant, Kaiser Permanente, appeared in the Harvard Business Review online in August.  His pronouncement:  People need to have the confidence to speak up about continuous improvement at every step.   “Our culture lets our employees know that if they see a way to do something better, they should take the initiative to point it out,” says he.
University students are not ball players, customers, doctors, users, clients, tenants, patients or any other receiver or giver of service. They are students — a special and unique breed unto themselves. When that incontrovertible truth is openly recognized and set forth as the raison d’être, our universities will be successful.  Organizational confidence allows razor-sharp focus.  If leadership doesn’t believe it, no one, not a single student, faculty, staff or family member will.

Our universities must be mindful of confidence and its impact on organizational success.

John Farrell and the Beantown Boys are worth watching, whatever the outcome.

Even for a St. Louis fan.

 By J. Larry Miller

Fall harvest continues and yields remain very good – especially corn yields. Soybean harvest is one of the slowest in recent years because of heavy dews each morning, frequent showers and early dews in the evenings. Usually, a farmer can begin harvesting on a daily basis by 10 AM and into the late night but this year has been different as harvest will not start until noon or 1 PM and as soon as the sun goes down it is over for the day. That is a very limited window and soybean harvest is much later because of the above mention conditions and a late maturity because of a cool late summer and early fall.

Larry Miller, executive director Franklin County Farm Bureau

A heavy frost on Tuesday morning killed some weeds in the pastures but a hard freeze predicted on Thursday morning will end the growing season and as far as I know all crops are mature and not in danger.

This has been a very beautiful fall and farmers should be thankful for the wonderful blessings.

It is already time to order fruit and pecans again – my where has the year gone? The Franklin County Farm Bureau will be selling the Pecans and they will be in by November 10^th and are selling for $9.00 a pound. 10 cases of pecan halves (1 lb bags) have been ordered and 2 cases of chocolate covered pecans (12 oz bags) have been ordered but they will be first come first serve so get your order in today.

This year oranges are $26 for a 4/5 bushel and $16 for a 2/5 bushel. Grapefruit and Tangelos are both $25 for a 4/5 bushel and $15 for a 2/5 bushel. Fruit should be here by December 18^th – but as usual you will get a call when they come in. Orders for fruit must be placed by November 27^th.

To order pecans or fruit call 435-3616.

The Franklin County Farm Bureau Annual Meeting will be held on December 2 at the Benton Civic Center on Hudelson Street and reservations are being taken now. There will be a Silent Auction to benefit Ag in the Classroom, entertainment by the group Blend, a drawing for a door prize donated by COUNTRY Financial Agents from Franklin County and a short business meeting along great food. And don’t forget about giving a donation to the Annual Harvest of Help to benefit area food pantries during the holidays. Call 435-3616 to make your reservations today.

With harvest foremost on everyone’s mind it is hard to remember to take time and enjoy the sunrise and the sunsets. Just remember to enjoy your time in the fields, with your families and also enjoy the harvest that has been given to you. Before we know it the cold blistery weather will be here. Hopefully all of the crops will be out of the fields by that time and there will be time to enjoy a few “weeks” of down time. But as a farmer I know that there is always something to do even during the coldest of times.

Remember we are farmers working together. If we can help let us know.

Loyal dissent is the highest form of assistance to an organization, while going along mindlessly, is a debilitating form of treachery, made more so when consciously engaged in for personal gain.
“Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels – men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.”
— Dwight D. Eisenhower —
________________________________________________________

Organizations are populated with men and women of every stripe, yes, yes-men too.   And, this old-fashioned gender biased term is now free of any trappings of a past age.   Described ineloquently, and gender neutrally, as apple-polishers, toadies, bootlickers, minions, lackeys, sycophants, puppets, kowtowers, fawners, pawns, and brownnosers:  And Juliet nearly missed the point, “Tis but thy name that is my enemy.”

It’s the action, not the moniker.

Healthy debate and discussion in a vacuum of thoughtful leadership causes otherwise potent organizations to falter: in boardrooms, classrooms, sanctuaries, or statehouses.  Fear of divergent views by leaders transforms complacency into callousness rather than strength.  Dishonest agreement is alchemy. People pleasers, often defended by their bosses as loyalists, drain the life out of an organization even if for a season cohesiveness seems to prevail.

Umair Haque, writing on the Harvard Business Review website, November 17, 2010, suggests, “The simplest way to uncover a worst practice is to ask your critics — the fiercer, the better. Most companies have been taught to bash, beat, and silence them — but if you really want to discover where “best” is far from good enough, your critics are worth about five hundred times their weight in management consultants, pundits, and assorted beancounters.”

Don’t misunderstand.  Argument for its own sake may be the supreme form of Ike’s “subversion.”
Good organizations encourage and instill the values of debate directed toward vision-defined progress.

Every leader must have a “Challenger in Chief”, yes-men need not apply.  Noreena Hertz writes in the Harvard Business Review that leaders need a person who is willing to argue with them.  There is absolutely no down side to this perspective.  Progress crippling issues might be exposed before they attain corporate culture as “best practice.”

The yes-men at Amazon have their own corporate identifier based on the nature of Chief Jeff Bezos, according to Dan McGinn in HBR last week, “How Jeff Bezos Makes Decisions.”  They are called “Jeff-Bots.”  Brownnoser sounds like a compliment in comparison.  McGinn says the leadership style of Bezos is “infectious”.  Maybe the approach works in the corporate world where a single vision guides all, but I doubt it.  It falters in a shared governance environment, such as a university; where the vision must well up from a thousand voices, and be glued together by the ringing call of leadership.

The price of silence in the face of insight regarding foolishness, greed, or narcissism is high. Will Yakowicz writes in Inc. last month, ‘It’s Time to Fire Your Yes Men.”   “At Lehman Brothers, for example, there was an unspoken rule: Voice dissent and you’re going to get fired. Before Lehman’s demise, the board of directors and management were so agreeable no one dared to say their decisions were leading them right into the financial crisis.”

Further he suggests that Abraham Lincoln was always surrounded by a “team of rivals” and Google Chief Eric Schmidt brings in informed, intelligent dissenters.

“As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another,” proclaims the Book of Proverbs.

Evidently the great emancipator and the king of the Internet embraced this simple but challenging concept.
In Forbes last May Alex Knapp revealed a series of leadership principles professed by James T. Kirk, Captain of the Starship Enterprise.  “One of the advantages of being a captain, Doctor, is being able to ask for advice without necessarily having to take it.” He confided this to Bones — you know the compassionate human being — in reference to a  conflicting opinion offered by Spock — you know the relentlessly logical  Vulcan  — seemingly devoid of any feelings at all.
While imitation is regarded as the sincerest form of flattery, honest, sincere, mission-guided dissent may be the most loyal form of citizenship in any complex organization.
Good leaders welcome it.  Weak ones run from it.