“The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.” — Abraham Lincoln
What I Believe
I have been thinking about leadership, what it means, what it demands, and how rarely it looks the way people expect. We have some big rocks to move, and I need everyone focused and determined about doing what is best for the business. The leadership and organizational system we are building rests on a foundation of beliefs that serve as guiding principles for how we approach our work.
While some of what follows may seem directed at executives or managers, the truth is that all of us are leaders. We lead our clients and one another through change, every day.
I believe that:
• Authority is earned, not granted.
• Real leadership is about serving people, not ruling them.
• Our job as leaders is to do for people only what they cannot do for themselves.
• We get the behavior that we inspect, not what we expect.
• Every interaction is a teachable moment. Use them.
• If the leaders cannot solve problems together, the team never will.
With that as a backdrop, let me share the ideas and stories behind the management philosophy I want to build.
The First Rule
The first rule, above all others, is that each member of the team acts in the interest of others above self. You will be successful because you help other people become great. Zig Ziglar, the legendary sales trainer, said it simply: “You get what you want by helping other people get what they want.”
When I worked at Nordstrom, if you saw a messy table as you walked by, you jumped in and cleaned it up. It did not matter if it was your department or your job. We all pitched in because serving customers was our priority, and a messy store was a poor reflection on all of us. What was remarkable was the sense of pride we had. I would like each of you to start acting in a manner that instills that same sense of pride, making our customer experience, your first priority.
The Gift Wrapping Station
I remember being fifteen years old at the men’s sportswear gift wrapping station, a week or so before Christmas. I had a huge line. Customers were getting grumpy. I was overwhelmed and stressed. I did not have the experience at that time to know what I should do or even how to ask for help. I was suffering in silence. So were our customers.
The next thing I know, two people appeared and started helping me. We spent the next few hours wrapping Christmas presents. I actually started to have fun. The customers were happy. The Christmas spirit began to take hold.
The two people who helped me were Jamie Baugh, president of Nordstrom, and John Nordstrom. I had no idea who they were or how important they were. I just needed help. They walked by, saw a huge line, rolled up their sleeves, and started working.
There was no recrimination, no lengthy discussion. We were busy, which was a good thing. There were customers and employees who needed to be taken care of. Jamie and Mr. John introduced themselves afterward, and I was amazed that they had simply jumped in. Do you think I ever forgot that taking care of customers and employees was my top priority? Later in my career, when Mr. John would visit with me, I took enormous pride in making sure that my teams and I were delivering customer service consistent with the standard he had set.
How many of our teammates are struggling right now and need someone to jump in? In my mind, we are not here to manage the experience we deliver to our customers. We are here to model it for our teams, to teach them how to be great by doing the work with them, so that they can be stewards of our clients, our brand, and our company.
The Power of How You Communicate
I had a peer 360 review a number of years ago and was subject to significant criticism for my lack of communication skills. I found this hard to believe. As a salesperson, communication is my primary tool, and I had built a career on it. What I came to understand is that the deficit was not in my clarity or word choices but in the style I used to convey expectations.
I believe it is my job to point out what needs to be accomplished, not to tell people how to do it. Then, to challenge the plan that has been created to achieve the goal. When I say “challenge,” I mean asking a lot of questions to ensure that you have thought through all the details, that you have taken the time to apply critical thinking not only to how you will achieve the goal, but to whether the goal is even the right one in the first place.
You may have noticed that I keep an hourglass on my desk. Time is our most precious resource, and it is there to remind me of that every day. Every assignment or objective should be pursued with a specific tempo in mind. If for some reason the timing has not been conveyed, you should ask.
If you tell someone how to do something, you have stripped them of their genius, their creativity, and their power. That feels like a moral failure to me. This is not to say you should easily be dissuaded from an idea or an opinion. Quite the contrary. It means you should challenge your team to own their point of view, so that you might be persuaded and inspired by their brilliance. The question is not whether you are right. The question is whether we are executing on the right plan. That is why the sequence matters: the quality of your planning, the chance to debate it, and a clear understanding of when you will be done.
Making Bets
You cannot really tell how strong a person or a team is until they endure hardship. As a buyer at Nordstrom, you had to place orders for merchandise six to nine months in advance. Inventories were set as a fixed ratio to sales. When business was good, better than plan, you would run out of merchandise. When it was slow, inventory would start to back up. Being under-bought and over-bought were both sins, but not equally measured. I saw many buyers get fired for being over-bought. Very few, if any, for being under-bought. Every order placed was a gamble on the business. I became very comfortable living in a world where I had to make bets every day.
I was not comfortable because all my bets were good or because my predictions were accurate. By nature, I am an optimistic person, and I usually see nothing but opportunity. Life does not always work that way. I was successful because I followed the trends and became comfortable in my ability to react to market conditions. I would get out and personally sell the slow merchandise, or negotiate reduced orders from suppliers ahead of a downturn. When business was booming, I would cut deals to deliver merchandise earlier than scheduled. I always found a way to right-size and grow the business. There is always a way. I believe that in my heart.
I do not expect you to be comfortable making bets, but I expect you to make them. To make decisions for the business in advance of the need and to stand behind those decisions. To be willing to stand for what you believe in, and to be humble and learn when your bet does not work. Pushing yourself to see down the road will make you a good leader. How can anyone follow you if you do not have a vision and a long-term plan? What needs to happen for our business to become a great customer experience agency? What is not figured out? Where do you need to invest time and intellectual capital?
Team Above Self
When you place your teammates, employees, and customers above yourself, prioritization becomes easier. It is counterintuitive. You feel like you were hired to accomplish a mission, to get something done for the company. You are right, you were. The question is: what is the method for achieving that goal? It is teamwork. You need to be trusted to be a member of a team. When someone believes you are just out for yourself, or that you do not care about them personally, they will not trust you.
While we need an org chart and we need to continue adding structure and processes to the company, those things must be in service to our employees and customers, not tools to resolve conflicts or create tiebreakers within the team. The only thing that matters is how well you are taking care of your peers, employees, and customers. You do not need an org chart to do that. You can help each other every day in many ways.
I remember my Merchandise Manager pulling me aside one day, a few months into my first management job, to have the big talk. He told me a story about how great generals lead their armies into battle. They do not sit in some comfortable tower and tell people to go to war. They are the first to charge, not the last. He was telling me that I needed to lead by example, demonstrating the values of the company. He was a good man who was trying to get my attention, just as I am trying to get yours.
That is where a company worth caring about comes from. We are in the people business. We all freely give our time and intellectual capital to help achieve a common goal. No one does it just for the money. We all want a leader who will teach us and make us great. There is a quote on my desk from Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can.” Let us be that for one another.
The Work Ahead
We have ambitious goals and big challenges. We need everyone working together to be successful. We need to organize a fast-growing company while inventing methodologies and solving problems that are fundamental to customer experience management.
I want to be part of a great team and company, one that enables change so that our clients can transform the way they interact with their customers. The act of trade and commerce is a powerful and uniquely human experience. Every day we make choices with our time and money based on relationships and expectations. Personalizing that experience is a good start toward our longer-term vision. Let us help our clients wow their customers.
Let’s go be great.