sensibility that has made American industry the world's best.
You know, I never saw that CEO again after crossing paths with him in the basement. But if I could meet him today, I'd ask him if he liked his job. One of the greatest benefits of all in connecting with the front line is the significance it brings to the work of leadership. Sure, it's nice to turn around a failing organization, but it feels even better to see our people excited to do their jobs and willing to place their trust in our executives. Every day we're inspired to work even harder to earn their trust. Every day we feel that what we do has meaning.
We do need to work hard, because focusing intensely on front-line personnel isn't easy. It's a more challenging way to manage, requiring new levels of effort and thoughtfulness. If you're not willing to commit more of yourself over a period of years, this book is probably not for you. If you are willing, then give our approach a try. The following chapters are each organized around a principle and underlying tactics. Chapters One through Four cover basic practices of spending time with employees, communicating, and opening up psychologically. Chapters Five through Eight address corporate culture, covering concepts of advocacy and accountability as well as the culture-building role of middle managers. The final two chapters, Nine and Ten, suggest how strategy can be formed to support and benefit workers. Throughout, I draw on episodes from my career – especially my police experience, which strongly shaped how I view front-line interactions.
When it comes to the specific tactics, not everything I suggest will feel genuine or applicable to you. Industries and leaders are all different. Adapt the tactics to your circumstances and personality. Find your own authentic leadership style; your own unique way of listening to, helping, and engaging with your front line. Reconnect with any experiences you may have had working front-line jobs, and challenge the often formidable psychological distance between basement and boardroom. Your people will thank you, and so will your customers or patients. Your organization will gain new vitality that will ultimately translate to the bottom line.
Chapter One
Know Your People
I have this old, embarrassing photograph of myself wearing a Native American headdress. It's shoved into my desk drawer. Even though the corners are bent and I've got this big, silly grin on, the picture means as much to me as any of the framed images featuring famous people that line my office walls. The photograph dates from 1987, when I was vice president for support services at Anaheim Memorial Hospital in Anaheim, California. It was my first vice president job, and it put me in charge of an array of departments including environmental services (or housekeeping, as it was called back then), food services, engineering, and construction.
I made a practice at the time of meeting regularly with all of my staff, including the environmental service (EVS) workers. I'd go down to the EVS break room and say hello when employees were coming on duty and getting assignments for the shift. I wanted to know what my employees did; otherwise, I felt, I couldn't be an effective manager. I had learned as a police officer that if you wanted to get information about your beat, you had to be on the street talking to people. You had to develop rapport and trust, and after a while people would naturally start talking to you and telling you what they knew.
Sometimes I just sat and talked with the EVS staff; other times I went out and accompanied them on the job. They taught me how to use those big, circular floor polishers, and every time I grasped the metal handles I was bucked around, much to their amusement. I didn't mind making myself a little vulnerable. Given how hesitant the employees acted around me and also how happy they seemed to see me, I surmised that I was probably among the few people from senior management to ever pay sincere attention to them.
As time passed, we built a relationship. The staff invited me to potlucks and other gatherings. “My boss's boss's boss knows more about what I do than my boss does,” they would joke. They also challenged me to see if I could find dirt after they cleaned. “You guys are so good,” I said, “I bet I can't find any.” But I would still put on white gloves and poke around. A couple of times, to be honest, I did find a little bit of dirt on the gloves, but I never let them know. The point of this exercise was not for me to evaluate their performance. It was about going out there, showing I cared, and thanking the team for its hard work.
One day, a couple of the workers knocked on my door and asked me to accompany them to the break room. When we arrived, I found that all the employees had gathered. With smiles on their faces, they presented me with a Native American–style headdress they had made out of fur. It had two pointy horns protruding out of the top, a blue and red beaded design running across the front, and fluffy white feathers streaming down each side.
I held it in my hands and admired it. “This.. is very nice. What is it?”
“This is for you,” they said proudly. “Our chief.”
Everyone applauded, and I didn't know what to say. What an incredible honor. Today, in addition to keeping that photograph in my drawer, I display the headdress in my office as a reminder of what I learned: that you can't be a distant boss and hope to be effective as a leader. You have to connect with people. You have to put time and energy into getting to know them and their work. Not just once. Or twice. Or three times. But regularly, month after month.
Fly-Bys Don't Count
Advice like this may sound familiar, but most CEOs and senior leaders don't do the kind of deep outreach I'm describing. More commonly they do what I call “fly-bys”; they flit in and out in a cursory manner – looking the part of the political candidate, shaking hands and kissing babies – not really bothering to truly engage with workers. Maybe they feel uncomfortable around line staff. Maybe they feel they have more important things to do. Maybe they're overwhelmed by the sheer size of their organization. Whatever the case, I doubt their attempts at outreach are doing as much good as they might think.
Here's an example. I once hired a chief nurse whom I'll call Marsha for one of our hospitals. Marsha's job was to oversee all nursing operations at her facility. Unfortunately, she became occupied with outside obligations, paying insufficient attention to her core duties. This led in short order to low morale among her workforce. Things got so bad that she had to leave the organization. Shortly after her departure, I happened to be in her hospital visiting my sick father-in-law. One of the nurses caring for him asked me to accompany her into the hallway for a private chat. “Chris,” she said to me, “I wanted to thank you. I'm glad Marsha is no longer working with us.”
“Why? You didn't like her?”
“No, because she was never here. Every so often she would throw on some scrubs so it would look like she was one of us. She would come up here and sweep through the units and smile and kind of talk to everyone a little bit. Then she'd disappear for months and you'd never see her. It was never real. We're glad she's gone.”
Employees aren't stupid. They know a fly-by when they see it. By satisfying herself with fly-bys, Marsha was highlighting for her staff how little she cared about them. She wasn't bothering to listen, talk, and build relationships. She wasn't engendering trust. She was pretending to be one of the team – and, I would add, pretending to be a leader too.
Roll Up Your Sleeves and Get Dirty
In reaching out to employees, don't content yourself with just making conversation. Observe them on the job, actually serving customers. As an exercise, we regularly have groups of middle managers sit in our lobbies for an hour or more. Their mission is to watch the interactions between our volunteers, our staff, and our patients. Every time we do this, our managers return with valuable new perspectives. One HR manager sat in a hospital lobby that she normally walks through nine or ten times a day. Afterward, she bubbled over with ideas for improvement. “I don't want to badmouth my hospital, but I never realized how dark the lobby was! I also watched a volunteer at the registration desk who was trying to multitask, answering phone calls at the same time she was trying to give directions to patients. It was very disorganized. And employees were spending more time paying attention to their BlackBerries than to patients.”
An even deeper way to get immersed is to pull up your sleeves and work with line employees yourself. When Hubert Joly took over as CEO of Best Buy in 2012, it was reported