A VP at Chic-fil-A on Positive Environments
Dripping-faucet-leaders irritate with constant tweaks and suggestions. Your team wants you to shut-up and leave them alone.
Additionally, honest leaders build negative environments by constantly fixing and improving.
The dark side of pursuing excellence is nitpicking.
Perfection-seekers are nitpickers.
Nitpicking:
- Shows attention to detail.
- Is different from being particular.
- Unhelpful, nagging self-doubt.
- Micromanaging.
- Contagious.
- Bullying.
- Misses the real issue.
- Typical for a weak link.
- Negative and unproductive.
- Is a label used by people who miss critical details.
More useful and humorous contributions on Facebook.
The problem of talent and skill:
Mark Miller, VP at Chic-fil-A and author of, The Secret of Teams, believes focusing on talent and skills apart from the critical third element builds negative environments.
“There are three critical ingredients for high performance,
- Talent.
- Skills.
- Community.”
Mark believes negative environments emerge when leaders focus on talent and skills but neglect community. His book includes suggestions and illustrations of community building.
Don’t spend all your time focusing on performance. Focus on community, too. Chic-fil-A begins meetings with “family time,” for example. If that sounds weird, you’re pursuit of excellence may create negative environments.
When continuous improvement goes too far:
“If you scored a 97% on the test you don’t need to fixate on 100%.” Mark Miller.
Mark said positive environments include:
- Focusing on what went well.
- Talking about what worked.
- Asking, “Who went above and beyond?”
- Reinvention. “What might we do differently next time?”
Lousy leaders pursue excellence but
don’t celebrate progress or build community.
The sustained pursuit of excellence requires community building. Caring community takes talent and skill further, faster.
How can leaders pursue excellence and build family environments at the same time?
Connect with Mark: @LeadersServe
Free chapter of The Secret of Teams.
Added resources:
Mark Miller in his own words. (3 min.)
How Zappos builds happy work environments.
Great Post Dan.
Biggest project in my mind these days company culture.
Working as hard and smart as I can to make huge leap in this area.
Have a great day!
Scott working the HOW method Honest we got to know we got a problem Houston Open to solutions coming from all fields including left and completely out of the stadium Willing to implement said ideas till they are proven not to make desired result or they do!!!!!!! Sounds so very simple, don’t it???????
Thank you Scott.
Some believe that culture building IS the work of leadership. Great cultures enable great performance. One thing is certain. Most of us can spend more time focused on this issue.
Cheers
Dan, I find it ironic that Mark, as a senior leader at Chic-Fil-A, talks about community. If you are straight, evangelical Christian, you are part of their community. If you miss any of their vetting marks, however, and happen to be gay, Muslim or not of the proper
ethnicity, not so much.
Thanks Mentor.
I wondered if the recent decisions at Chic-fil-A might come up in this conversation.
I didn’t bring them up to Mark. I did follow the media on this and it seemed like the pain Chic-fil-A experienced was a learning experience. … But, I can’t speak for them.
I do notice that sometimes, those who preach tolerance aren’t always tolerant. That goes for Chic-fil-A and their critics.
Thanks for adding to the conversation.
To throw my two cents in here, I have to say that the issues CFA faced a while back over the “marriage equality” flap were the first thing that came to mind when I saw that your featured today was a CFA exec. You have featured others (Nessmith I think) and the content was all good. I liked today’s content too (Lord knows as a perfectionist I need to be reminded how counterproductive nit pickiness can be). I do continue to have concerns over the breadth of the “community” CFA creates for staff and customers and still believe what I wrote in July 2012. http://biggreenpen.com/2012/07/30/when-a-check-in-says-more-than-i-was-here/
Thank you Paula.
I can’t tell you how glad I am that you joined this conversation. Community includes agreeing, disagreeing, and expressing concerns.
YOu know me. I don’t mind stirring the pot. A stirred pot creates thought.
You have my best.
Brilliant and scarey … too true to many managers
Dan,
Once again an awesome post. I agree that culture and community are our biggest challenges as leaders. The balance of skill and community is, in my opinion, a key factor in successful leadership.
Keep up the great work!
David
Thank you David.
I believe that addition of community takes top talent and skill development further. I was glad to learn from Mark.
Cheers
Great post, Dan. I’ve met Mark Miller a couple times and am always impressed with the depth of his ideas that he communicates in a very easy-to-understand way. Can’t go wrong with this everyday leader!
Thank you Nathan.
When I started pushing back on nitpicking, I though Marks response was very helpful… The idea that negative enviroments that nitpicking creates can be addressed with community building is powerful.
Cheers
Dear Dan,
I agree that community is significant in performance. This creates a culture where people own the goal. Talented people with good skill may not perform if community is not good. However, I feel, community can make people more talented and skilled. I also think that people attitude is very important to create environment. So, I questioned myself. What determines what between community and people attitude. And I arrived at intuitive conclusion based on my experience is that it is the leadership attitude at the top that determines people attitude at lower level. And this top down attitude builds bottom up attitude. And finally both kind of attitude, create and build community and environment in any system.
So, I believe that leaders can pursue excellence by aligning people mind to the organizational goal, making them believe this goal and building and strengthening relationship based on human attitude. I also believe that relationship is more important than actual performance in the organizations. One leads to other and not vice versa.
Hi Dan. Just a suggestion. Have you ever thought about having an audio podcast? I’ve been following your blog and it’s not always I have the chance to listen to the audio while on my desk, however, I would love to hear them on my way to worl.
Just a suggesiton.
Regards
Dan, this is great stuff! Thanks for sharing!
A great blog about who are true leaders. When you have leaders like this, then they can just sit back, relax (well sort of), and watch their well-oiled machine run smoothly. Thanks for the share
Sue Bock
http://couragetoadventure.com/blog
Totally agree! Community helps a leader to build a trusting environment, for all team members, which in turn leads to excellence. Nice informative post! to the least.
One way is by building culture within their teams/organizations. This could be off-site meetings, it could be through chasing a very specific activity, it could annual events that people talk about for a long time. Positive connections and memories are a great way to build a family atmosphere.
How can leaders pursue excellence and build family environments at the same time? I think this is an excellent question and a very interesting post. I think a positive work environment can be created by direct positive reinforcement! Many managers think money is key- just give employees a nice raise and/or a fat bonus check and they will be more productive and less likely to part ways. But research has shown that money does not buy employee happiness. It may work on some, but employees respond best to and are more motivated by positive reinforcement. It could be a simple word of thanks, active solicitation of input from all team members, or some other one-on-one recognition. It works wonders for motivating employees and the best thing is that it costs nothing and is in abundant supply. I just read a fantastic management book that promotes and teaches the correct way to use positive reinforcement within the workplace called “Green Beans & Ice Cream” by author Bill Sims Jr. (http://greenbeanleadership.com/) The author is well known for designing behavior-based recognition and reward programs for companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, and Disney. The book captures the essence of stimulus-response (in this case, incentive –
behavior) that is at the root of all activity. It is by pin-pointing
specific behavior that we change perceptions, outlook, and cultures. Direct positive reinforcement seems to be the way to go and as I have put these lessons into practice I am finding it to be helpful, relevant, and life-changing. I recommend it to anyone in a leadership position (teachers, CEOs, parents, spouses, anyone!)