Musings: Playing Truth or Consequences with Organizational Purpose
Porter Airlines, McKinsey report, and Babs shelving books without a mission.
Many organizations, perhaps yours, have statements around their purpose, vision, or mission and increasingly around their values.
Some, like Porter Airlines, struggle with making these statements real in their everyday work. Earlier this week CBC Go Public reported on an incident in which a woman and her service dog were removed from an airplane by Porter staff who seemed to not know how to interpret and act on the Canadian Transportation Agency rules and their own airline’s policies.
Truth or Consequences?
This may be a situation of what I call “playing truth or consequences with organizational purpose”. This is a dangerous game where the leadership takes a pass on why and how they might lead an organizational culture that embodies its mission, vision, and value statements and instead only uses these declarations as disingenuous marketing messages.
Being disingenuous is always a trust breaker. Always.
There are consequences to breaking that trust such as:
poor staff moral
leadership crisis
negative media attention
declining impact or sales
shareholder and/or community backlash
legal and/or financial penalties
and just all-round bad karma (kicking a woman and her service dog off a plane is a definite for bad karma).
Leadership and Organizational Purpose
For the longest time we didn’t look for leaders who embodied the vision, mission, or value statements of the organization; we looked for leaders who could get the job done. Leaders were hired to achieve the organization’s purpose by increasing productivity, impact, or sales, managing change, and implementing the upward direction of the organization through the sheer force of their supposed strategic smarts and an unhealthy, at times toxic, iron will. This type of leadership was found across the corporate, public, and not-for-profit sector. No organization, not even the smallest underfunded doing-good charity, was immune from this idea of command and control leadership.
This is no longer the case.
The following from the McKinsey and Company report New Leadership for a New Era of Thriving Organizations (May 2023) speaks to this change in leadership in a corporate context, but it is applicable to all sectors.
For decades, the attributes regarded as central to being a successful company have mirrored the qualities prized in leaders: focusing on earnings, demanding results, exercising authority and control, and being fiercely competitive. For organizations to thrive now, all of these leadership characteristics must evolve.
The authors then go on to describe “five fundamental shifts in mindset” for today’s leaders.
In other words, you are moving “beyond” the current norm “to” an evolved ambition that’s needed to lead thriving organizations in this new disruptive era. We define the five shifts as beyond profit to impact; beyond expectations to wholeness; beyond command to collaboration; beyond control to evolution; and beyond competition to cocreation. Taken together, the five shifts redefine leadership for a new era.
Bingo!
With this type of leadership there is greater possibility for leadership vision and value alignment with those stated by the organization. There is greater possibility for leaders to “walk the talk” and to lead an organizational culture where everyone knows, understands, and “walks the talk”. As in everyone knows and understands how to meet the needs of a passenger and their service dog.
Two Quick Stories
Just Shelving Books
Decades ago I split my time between a public library and not-for-profit work. One day, after working with a not-for-profit group on their mission statement, I found myself in the library staff elevator with a cart of books to be shelved and the deputy director. We made small talk, I asked about the library’s purpose and mission statement. They responded with, “you don’t need to know that to shelve books”.
To Coach or not to Coach
Recently I was contacted by a large public sector organization about coaching their senior management public service team. Right up my alley!
I looked up the organization, read their mission and values statement, their strategic plan, and other bits of news about accomplishments and awards. This organization looked delightful and I was keen to talk with the CEO and deputy CEO about how we might work together.
When we met they said, “we need someone like you to knock some sense into them”.
After I explained how I approach coaching (as in not knocking sense into someone), I asked them if they were considering leadership coaching for themselves as part of this work.
No. Apparently they didn’t need it.
Hi, I’m Babs and you can find out more about me and my work as a coach at the Courageous Leaders Project where its all about leadership development.
Photo by Tiago Ferreira on Unsplash
I know that my work is making a difference and I am full on committed to growing it’s reach. And I need a little help from you. Refer five friends to this newsletter and as my way of saying thank you, you will receive the gift of a Just for You coaching session via Zoom.