One day last February Starbucks closed all of its stores for three hours. The purpose of the closing was to provide all of its employees with a jolt of corporate culture. As explained in the New York Times , the closing was not a training session but an education session in Starbucks coffee brewing techniques. Coming in the wake of layoffs at corporate office and more importantly lagging sales, it seems the session was well timed. Boosting morale in the stores is essential especially in a culture like Starbucks which prides itself on creating ambience where patrons feel welcome. Whether the effect of this mini-retreat will last longer than a coffee fix will be seen in Starbuck’s corporate performance.

Doing these time-outs corporate-wide is not unique but it does merit the question is it worth it? Yes, but with some stipulations. First, you need to have a corporate culture that embraces such activities. Second, you need to a reason to stage such an event. Not long ago, NASA held a stand-down in all facilities so it could spend time focusing on problems related to safety. Going forward here are three things to consider:

Know the outcome . Consider why you are having the retreat. One of the most common reasons is for training. Very little can be accomplished training wise in three hours but you can achieve much in terms of reinforcing the culture and demonstrating the unique qualities of the enterprise. Therefore the most important outcome of such events is reinforcing morale by educating employees on the company’s vision, mission and values.

Tell stories . Culture by nature is the sum of the values and beliefs of the organization but unless that culture is put into practice, it becomes ossified. Telling stories about how employees live the culture reinvigorates it. That is, focus stories on how people solve problems, satisfy customers, or add value to the company.

Mandate participation . Staging such events is typically a top down affair; senior management orders it and employees comply. That’s fine, but what is necessary to make the event lasting is to involve employees. Give employees and their managers an opportunity to either run the meeting or speak at it. This gives them ownership in the process.

Such events may not be practical to stage in large enterprises across multiple time but they do certainly attract attention. What happens locally, that is for individual employees is what matters most. Staging them corporate-wide however does attract attention. These events demonstrate that a company is concerned with its culture and the employees who live it. So such timeouts do have their value.

Source: Michael M. Grynbaum “Starbucks Takes a 3-Hour Coffee Break” New York Times 2.27.08

Insights into leadership come from anywhere. One place we may sometimes overlook is the entertainment industry. Too bad. Everyday men and women are putting themselves on the line to get their ideas turn into digital or celluloid magic. Two people trying to help young people learn the ropes and break into the business are old friends of mine, the father daughter team of Chuck and Lindsey Rosin with the launch of a brand-new social networking website, showbizzle.com.

Showbizzle is a social networking site featuring a digital platform for young talent to show their acting skills via video. “One of the greatest challenges facing people my age who are trying to break into show business is the issue of exposure,” says Lindsey Rosin, an award-winning playwright who graduated from Penn last year. “There are so many talented people, all trying to do the same thing and get to the same place, that sometime people can get lost in the shuffle.”

Says Chuck Rosin, “Each actor we work with, each character we develop/tailor for that actor, will do three separate monologues resulting in six minutes of original material for their reel.” Lindsey has written and directed the bulk of the more than 150 stories that will be appearing on the site but recently they have asked a team of nine young writers to contribute. The actors are paid for performing and so too are the writers if their stories are produced. In this regard, Showbizzle is modeling the industry: pay for performance.

Adds Lindsey, “For some people, it might be an incredible opportunity and a big break. The amount of exposure available on the Internet is endless and that is so priceless to a young talent who is just starting out on their career and trying to break through.”

For Chuck, a writer-producer with a long history of hit television shows including producing five years of Beverly Hills 90290, it is an opportunity to explore new media. “There is no studio. No network. No gatekeepers. No corporate sensibility. Just an idea to create fun digital entertainment in the form of a fictitious daily video blog about being in your 20’s, in Hollywood in 2008.”

Lindsey grew up in Los Angeles and knows the geography of the industry from the inside out. “There are many walls in Hollywood and it's hard to breakthrough, but the internet is boundary-less -- everyone can have a say and that's what we hope our taping into social media will provide.” One attraction of showbizzle is that you do not need to live in L.A. to be seen or heard. Post your video on showbizzle and you can get exposure.

In addition to the actor videos, as a social media site Showbizzle aims to create a community where young creatives can come together and share their experience. The thread of the network is the “Ask Janey” blog that documents the goings-on and what not of this hyper-crazy, sometimes upside down world of entertainment.

On a personal level, Chuck, views this website as a chance to apply his creative development skills in new directions.”The industry is brutal – and the payout is shrinking save for those on the top of the food chain… But the insatiable need to be creative and express oneself for an audience predisposes whatever grim logic reality tries to bring to the party.”

The word, “stewardship,” is gaining in popularity. Most often you hear it in connection with environmental issues, as in our generation must be “stewards of the earth” so that we can pass it along to our children and grandchildren. Peoples native to North America are culturally imbued with a sense of stewardship for nature because their ancestors lived off the bounty of the land but did so with a respect for all creatures.

As defined by Webster’s New World dictionary, one meaning of steward is “a person morally responsible for the careful use of money, time, talents or other resources.” For that reason it is worth exploring how the concept translates to leadership. You do hear the word sometimes in reference to a senior leader on the verge of retirement. Stewardship is a top of mind consideration for those at the top, but it need not be, after all a more common meaning for steward is “supervisor or administrator.” So let’s consider how stewardship can influence three workplace behaviors.

Protect. Protection is inherent to stewardship. While we may know the principles of environmental protection, we may overlook that concept in our own workplace. One large company I consulted for years ago was struggling to instill a concept of personal ownership to its employees. It challenged employees to consider the business – global that it is – to be theirs. Thinking like an owner makes an employee more careful of expenses but also challenges her to think about what’s next in terms of planning, execution and results.

Manage. So often, to paraphrase the late, great Rodney Dangerfield, “managers don’t get no respect.” Too bad, managers are the ones that keep the business humming. Management, as it relates to administration and supervision, is what keeps the enterprise humming. Without sound management, the organization flounders.

Coach. Quantitative skills are essential for getting a job; people skills are essential to getting the job done right. Developing the right people for the job involves coaching. And good leaders must invest themselves in the development of their people. Coaching becomes the conduit for development.

Do all of these things and you will ensure a strong legacy. Leaders are judged by what they accomplish; in the corporate world that means the here and now but thinking long term it encompasses what you leave behind. So often senior leaders think about these things as they are about to leave when in reality they have been working on them over a lifetime.

Conventional thinking may ascribe a CEO’s legacy as a facility named in his honor or a chair endowed in his name. True enough, but the greater legacy, the real mark of stewardship, is the impact that leader has had on stakeholders – employees, customers, suppliers and shareholders. If the leader has truly protected and supervised – and very importantly developed -- then she has left the organization in a better position. Her impact lives on in others; her stewardship has been a good one.

Aspiration is inherent to the human condition. We want to aspire to do something to make a positive difference. Leaders who tap into the aspirations of their followers are leaders who have the opportunity to achieve greatness.

Steve Jobs is an example of an aspirational leader. His canvas is the fusion of personal computing and entertainment. Under his leadership, Apple has emerged not only as a force in personal computing but today is pioneering the distribution of music personalized through downloads (iTunes) and playback (iPod). Jobs has created such high expectations that he has tapped into the collective aspirations of a legion of hardware and software engineers and end users.

Aspiration is a blend of hope tinged with optimism. "Aiming high" is the slogan of the Air Force and it is a mantra that leaders can emulate when seeking to move their organizations and their people forward. Fundamental to aspiration is good communications. Here are some ways to foster it.

Envision the outcome. In The 7 Habits of Successful People, Stephen Covey advises us to use achievement as a foundation for vision. Such forethought gives backbone to aspiration. For example, if you want to achieve market leadership in your field, you must think about what it will take to achieve that leadership and then consider what you must do to make it happen. It is a form of reverse engineering from a future perspective. You consider what products you must offer, how you will develop and market them and, most importantly, whom you will hire to help you achieve it.

Listen to the soul. Visions come to fruition through hard work. But before the work begins, you need to tap into the soul of the organization to find out if your vision is its vision. If not, give employees the opportunity to make it their own. Leader’s vision remains a solo endeavor; shared visions become collective enterprises. Entrepreneurs possess an knack for tapping into collective consciousnesses. They do this through the power of their message, even their personality, and by shining a light on what people want to do, be it run a franchise operation or build a better mousetrap.

Steel the heart. The late David Hackworth used this phrase from Shakespeare’s Henry V as the title of his book about the year he spent as a colonel in the Mekong Delta turning a band of hopeless draftees into a Hardcore Battalion. What Hackworth did was tap into his men’s desire to make it home alive. By channeling that desire, he molded a fighting force that indeed went home and inflicted damage on the enemy. As the most decorated soldier in U.S. Army history, Hackworth led by example. He was tough and he expected his men to be tough. As a soldier’s soldier, he trained his men well and did what was necessary to prepare them for combat and protect them from undue risk. Steeling the heart refers to toughening your people to adversity. Hackworth, like Henry V, did this by sharing the hardships. Managers who emulate that example will strengthen their team members’ resolve and prepare them to overcome obstacles.

Bend but do not break. A flip side of aspirations that stand the test of time is resilience. It is one thing to have a good idea of where you want to go, but it is quite another to be able to get there. Nokia, the mobile phone company, is a model of resilience. Throughout its century and a half existence as timber and mining business, Nokia has survived war, depression and country occupation by foreign powers. The last two decades have seen Nokia emerge as a leader in mobile phones. And despite recent ups and downs, Nokia has persevered by producing products that capture the imagination of consumers and tap into their aspirations for what cellular communications can be.

Leaders need to consider something more: the better tomorrow. An essential aspect of aspiration is optimism, a belief in positive outcomes. Optimism for its own sake is fool’s gold. But optimism coupled with attainable goals fuels progress and makes aspirations attainable.

The author would like to dedicate this column to the memory of Col. David Hackworth (U.S. Army ret.), who died in May 2005. A true soldier’s soldier, "Hack" lived his life according to the mantra of his spiritual mentor, Sun Tzu, “take care of your soldiers.” It is indeed a noble aspiration.

Excerpted from column for CXO Media June 2005

* * *

In an interview about Pam, the receptionist the character she plays on NBC’s The Office , Jenna Fischer tells Terry Gross on Fresh Air that silence is one of the ways that Pam uses to communicate. Since Pam is not particularly happy in her job, silence or one word answers are her means of distancing herself from the workplace. Some may label this behavior as passive-aggressive; leaders may label it as trouble.

In many ways management does a good job of teaching managers to articulate a message. Managers also receive instruction on listening to what people have to say. Yet many of us fall short when asked to listen for silence. That is, what people are not saying. Colin Powell is often quoted as saying when people stop coming to you with their problems, you have a problem. And sometimes that problem may be that they fear, distrust, or could care less about you. Neither alternative is acceptable. So here are some tips to deal with silence.

Look in the mirror. Could it be that you are sending signals that say, “Do not bother me for any reason at any time”? One talented manager I worked would sometimes become so engrossed in his work that he looked mean. Nothing could be further from the truth; he loves to share what he knew. When advised how he looked, he worked hard to smile more, a trait that conveys his natural sense of geniality. Same advice applies to others; relax your facial muscles. It conveys openness.

Ask for dialogue. First, check with your peers to make certain you are not turning people off by being abrupt, curt or rude. Then make it clear to your team that you expect them to talk about things gone right as well as gone wrong. If you have been sending negative vibes, you will need to start from scratch. Make it clear that stonewalling on problems is not acceptable. When problems are surfaced, keep you cool. If you bite off the head of someone who mentions a problem, you undercut your attempts to keep the lines of communication open.

Engage in dialogue. Once you have made the effort to get people talking, keep the communication flowing. Respect personal boundaries but make it clear that your team requires people to share information about the work with each other. Failure to do so, especially after you have made a point of asking for it, indicates that people still do not trust you. However, as a boss, you have the right to expect people to cooperate. If they do not, then you may have to invite them to find work elsewhere.

Make no mistake, silence is not a bad thing. In fact, so often it is wondrous. In our too busy and chaotic lives, having time to sit in silence and think, or just decompress is refreshing. But silence becomes a problem when employees use it as a weapon either to defend themselves, as receptionist Pam does. Likewise, bully bosses use silence to punish subordinates by withholding pertinent information from employees, which in turn prevents them from doing their jobs. Again, neither situation is positive.

Source
Terry Gross Jenna Fischer, Keeping It Real at ‘The Office’” Fresh Air WHYY/PBS 6.03.08
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... d=91105876