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Who's in Charge of Your Reputation?
by Darin Drabing, senior vice president, operations, for Forest Lawn Memorial Parks and Mortuaries in Southern California, www.forestlawn.com, where he oversees more than 500 employees.
Do Personnel Issues Make You Sick?
Hiring and integrating new people into your organization properly is crucial to your success. It's not everything, though. What about everyone else?
Close your eyes and think of these two words: "personnel issues." Tell me what you see. More importantly, tell me who you see. Do you see a cavalcade of stars running across your eyelids? Do you feel all warm and fuzzy inside? Or is your jaw real tight, your temple beating a little bit?
Personnel issues have a tendency to zap us of our time, energy and resources, to suck the life right out of us. "Why can't people just do what they're supposed to do? It shouldn't be this hard. I should be concentrating on other things; I don't have time for this nonsense." Does that sound familiar?
When I look at an organization, this is what I see:
There are only three types of employees. I see high-potential employees; hopefully they're a good-sized portion of the pie. I see the majority of the employees, who I like to call valuable incumbents. And then, I see viruses. Why do I call them viruses? They make me sick, they're hard to kill and you can't do much about them except hopefully minimize their consequences. I hate to admit it, but there are some viruses in our organization. And I think if you're honest, you have probably hired a few viruses yourself.
High-potential employees. They're competent; they're trustworthy. They do things before you even know they need to be done. They're your leaders; they are people who are problem-solvers. They are also probably ignored by you in terms of how much time you spend with them. Why? Because you don't need to; they're self-motivated. These are the best people you have, and you take them for granted.
Valuable incumbents. This is the core constituency. These people are reliable, they're consistent, they don't make mistakes, they don't make waves, they don't cause trouble. Now, they're not going to reinvent the wheel for you, either—your high-potential employees will do that. But they're going to keep things rolling. That's where all your knowledge is; that's where your experience is.
Viruses. They have negative attitudes, they fight you all the way, they're antagonistic, they're your informal group leaders who are going to get around and say, "I can't believe that so-and-so, I can't believe they're changing insurance on us. I can't believe they're doing this."
And they're your system experts. Because every time you try to modify their behavior—OK, discipline them—what do they do? Back strain. Stress claim. Worker's compensation. Discrimination case. Sexual harassment. If there's a system they can take advantage of, they're going to be an expert at it.
Change Your Focus
Where do you spend your time? Do you spend your time with high-potential employees? Do you spend your time with your valuable incumbents? Or are you spending time on viruses, because those are your personnel issues?
I had the good fortune of being able to spend some time with Peter Drucker. He's written a bunch of books on leadership and management over the last 50 years, and we were talking about this exact subject, about how in the workplace sometimes there are people who are complete negative influences on what you're trying to accomplish, real viruses.
And he said something that ruined my day: "Were they viruses when you hired them, or did they become that way in your organization?" I said, "Well, gee, if I did what I was supposed to do about hiring, what did I let happen to them?"
So I had to ask myself again: Where do I spend my time? Am I putting out fires with these viruses? Or am I spending any time building fires and trying to motivate the high-potential employees and the valuable incumbents?
I decided if I wanted to change the organization, I had to change my focus. To start with, I stopped thinking about employees altogether. I started focusing on myself.
Ask yourself, how well do your employees know you? Really know you? Do you ever let them get very close? Do they know and could they tell someone else what motivates you as their leader? What things you value? Where you find meaning? Do they know what makes you get to work before they do, and what keeps you at work after they leave? Do they know what's important to you? It's a great place to start. Because your high-potential employees and your valuable incumbents actually want to know that. Your viruses couldn't care less.
Good employees need two things. They need to know that there's meaning in what they do and they need some vision, and that's what you need to provide them.
You do that by communicating. How do you communicate? You attend meetings. You write a memo. You send an e-mail. That's not the kind of communicating I'm talking about. I'm talking about taking advantage of quality time you have with employees, and it doesn't take much—it could be just walking across the parking lot with someone and engaging them on a personal level.
Talk about something that's not a problem, or that's not a deadline. Talk about something that has some meaning. Get into conversations about the mission of your organization and what's important to you, values and ethics. This is what motivates the right employee.
Tell stories. Stories are a very powerful way to communicate, and also it helps you be real. You're not the boss then, you're somebody telling a story. So be real with them. I use the same story with a lot of employees, some of them are probably tired of hearing it. I talk about the best funeral experience I ever had, and what that was like.
My Story:
The Best Funeral Experience I Ever Had
I was born in a small town in Indiana called French Lick. My dad was a funeral director, a good funeral director, but my best funeral experience wasn't with him.
I'm very fortunate to work at an organization in Southern California called Forest Lawn. It's got a good reputation, I hope. But even though I'm in charge of the operations, that's not where the best funeral experience I had happened.
About 12 years ago, a friend of mine's dad died. He was the only son of divorced parents. He flew to Milwaukee, where his father had lived, and called me on the phone. "Hey, Darin, what do I do?" I started going through the process, saying, "This is what's going to happen. Have you picked a funeral home?" "Yeh." "Where is it?" "It's called Krause Funeral Home." Many of you probably know Mark Krause.
As I started explaining things, I felt really bad. It was my best friend; I couldn't really help him on the phone. So I flew out there. Krause Funeral Home was great, but the funeral home itself wasn't so special—it's no different than yours. People there were very nice. Prices were appropriate. That's not what made it the most important funeral to me.
I happened to be driving the family car in the procession. When we got down to the end of the church driveway, the funeral coach, driven by Mark, who was right in front of me, stopped right before we got on the main road. Mark got out and I thought, "This is strange." He started walking back, and I thought, "What happened?" Mark leaned in, and although I can't replicate his wonderful Wisconsin accent, he leaned in the door and said, "Charlie"—that happened to be my friend's name—"Charlie, turn around and look at all those headlights. All those people loved your dad."
And I thought to myself, if that was me, I probably would have been thinking to myself, "How many of these cars am I going to lose on the way to the cemetery?" Or, "Did I order enough escorts?" But not Mark. He found this little moment of truth, when he connected. And that made a difference.
So when you communicate to your employees, talk about things that matter. I'll probably have a lot of people now running around, looking in windows saying, "Look at those headlights!" But that's not the point. The point is being real and finding some way to connect with employees.
You've got to create a culture that people can commit to. It's not about putting a piece of marble on the wall. It's about honoring someone's mom. You've got to get your employees to think this way, and you've got to define a mission.
Do you have a mission statement? Is it something that lives and breathes? Does it have any meaning at all? Ours is a real basic, simple one. You could actually stop at the first line. It says, "Caring service is our reason for being." And we talk about and use these phrases in the workplace, and the right people connect to that.
Another thing we say is we're going to have the "highest level of personal and ethical service." What exactly does that mean? How do you define that? For us, it's simple. It means you just talk about doing the right thing to the employees.
How do you do the right thing? If you know the difference between right and wrong, as long as you do what's right, this is the easiest job in the world. It's employees focusing on doing what's right, and not being severely penalized if they happen to make a mistake—because people are human, they make mistakes.
We also talk about "finest facilities." Everybody's got fine facilities, right? Is it everyone's job to worry about the facilities? Maybe not. Depends on how you define the facility. If you see a piece of paper out on the lawn, do you go pick it up? Do your employees go pick it up? A photograph or a picture hanging in the hallway that's just a little askew—does everyone try to straighten it because they want to have the finest facility? If you talk about these things and you do it yourself, your employees will start mimicking your behavior.
And of course we have the goal of trying to anticipate the needs of people who are in sorrow and trying to exceed everyone's expectations. It's kind of a stretch, because you know how hard that is, but if you set that as a goal for one of your employees, maybe he'll go that extra mile, even when no one's looking.
You have to create a culture of commitment; you've got to define a mission. It's got to be meaningful to people—it can't be fluff. And you have to share your vision. You have to talk about how you want your organization's reputation to be interpreted by others. It's got to be a big vision. It's got to be so big that you can't do it yourself, that you couldn't imagine doing it with two people. It's got to take every employee you have working toward this goal for it to work.
1. Have a Hiring Plan
Where do you find employees who will enhance your company's reputation?
2. Tools to Help You
How to avoid hiring a horse thief, or anyone else who is wrong for the job.
3. The First Day on the Job
Are you making a good impression on your new employees?
5. Evaluating & Motivating Employees
Find out who can do it, who "gets it," and how to get the best out of the people who "get it" and can do it.
Darin Drabing can be reached at ddrabing@forestlawn.com; (323) 340-4701.
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Copyright ICFA 2002
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