Chapter 8
Practice, Practice, Practice
The growth and development of the Walt Disney Company is directly related to the growth and development of its human resources—our cast.52
Walt Disney
Actors, musicians, athletes, and others who perform in public must train and practice. Otherwise, they risk embarrassing themselves and incurring the displeasure of spectators. Of great importance, too, is the teacher or coach who tells the musician that he or she is hitting the wrong notes or advises the athlete about batting stance, running form, and so on. Without such helpful criticism and the benefit of the more experienced mentor’s knowledge, a performer’s career is likely to be short-lived.
So it is in business. To perform at their best, a company’s employees must be thoroughly trained, and they need the help of more experienced staff members. Moreover, to maintain their competencies, training can’t be a one-shot thing; it must be ongoing.
Perhaps because of his background as an artist, Walt Disney fully understood the essential part that training and practice play in the development of an individual’s talents. Add in his well-known penchant for perfection, and it’s hardly surprising that he adamantly insisted on rigorous and continuous training for all of his “cast members.” After all, common sense dictates that everyone, from the backstage crew to the performers out front, must be thoroughly rehearsed in order to put on the really “good show.” But like so much else at the company Walt built, training takes on a special quality not found at most other organizations. Disney even devotes an entire “university” to it.
The students of Disney University enjoy the most exciting campus of any educational institution in the country: Over 29,000 acres of Disneyland and Walt Disney World and anywhere else the company operates. The required course work is brief, but it’s famous for its intensity. The freshmen are all new members of the Disney family: Some are there to prepare for a summer job; others are being readied to assume a permanent position.
Disney University—a process, not an institution—was conceived by Walt Disney himself prior to the opening of Disneyland in the 1950s. Today, every new employee, from senior executives to part-time desk clerks and tour guides, is required to undergo training prior to embarking on her or his day-to-day responsibilities. And in typical Disney fashion, the training process leaves nothing to chance, not only imparting knowledge about specific job skills and competencies, but also, and perhaps more important, ensuring that every employee has a thorough understanding of the Disney culture and traditions.
Thus, what is euphemistically called “human resources” at many organizations—which view training as no more than an expensive but sometimes necessary evil—is given top priority in the Disney universe. That’s because Walt considered training an essential investment in the future of his company.
Obviously, not every organization has access to the facilities and resources that comprise Disney University, but every organization can adopt the attitude that underlies the Disney approach to training and developing its culture. For principal Jan Drees of the Downtown School (Des Moines, Iowa), training teachers was a critical challenge in producing the culture she and her Business/Education Alliance team members were trying to create, Disney-style. They knew that breaking the mold of traditional education would be just as difficult in the realm of training teachers as it would be for teaching students. The B/E Alliance created a professional development center, which prepares both new and experienced teachers to foster a learning environment where children are self-motivated and where they can learn and grow in an atmosphere of mutual respect and trust.
Drake University School of Education soon became a valued partner, offering an innovative master’s degree program in Advanced Studies in Elementary Education. This program of weekend classes allows teachers to learn the latest teaching techniques and then apply their new skills in classes they teach during the week. Half of students’ class time is spent at the Downtown School. Jan Drees told us, “Focus is on classroom implementation. We all know that the ‘gold star’ approach to classroom management does not motivate learning. When students develop their own goals and take accountability for accomplishing them, true learning takes place.”53 There are currently 18 teachers enrolled in the Drake School of Education special master’s degree program. Another valuable partner is Simpson College, which provides as many as eight student teachers to the Downtown School each year. These undergraduate students spend most of the school year student teaching rather than just the typical six to nine weeks required in traditional school systems.
The traditional school system is not only failing our students, it is failing our teachers as well. The New Iowa School Development Corporation reports that in Iowa nearly 18 percent of new teachers leave the teaching profession after their first year, 28 percent within three years, and 50 percent within the first seven years of their careers. Educational Leadership magazine reports that 40 to 50 percent of new teachers leave the profession within five years. Judi Cunningham, executive director of elementary and early childhood programs for the Des Moines Public Schools, admitted, “There’s probably nothing more important in the field of education now than professional development. So, if this new center can help the teachers of Des Moines and Iowa, that would be fantastic. We talk a lot about changing teachers, but we have to provide them with some structure and some expectations and some ways to do it. This will be another learning opportunity in addition to the university setting, and it will be a wonderful combination of coursework and teaching. I don’t know how many times teachers have told me, ‘I learned much more in my 6 or 18 weeks of student teaching than I learned in four years of college.’”
In this chapter, we will help you distinguish between training that is purely perfunctory and the kind that will enable your employees to perform at their peaks.
Training—Whose Responsibility Is It?
Only two days after Disneyland opened on July 13, 1955, Walt Disney called the vice president of casting into his office. Normally the calmest of individuals, Disney was so upset over a situation at Tom Sawyer’s Island that he shooed everyone but the casting executive out of his office and closed the door, an uncharacteristic act for Walt Disney.
The immediate cause of Disney’s agitation was the behavior of the boy hired to play Tom Sawyer. The red-haired, freckle-faced 12-year-old, who greatly resembled the fictitious Missouri schoolboy, apparently had read Mark Twain’s novel and was going to great lengths to imitate the rambunctious Tom. He was actually picking fights with other boys visiting the island!
It was a delicate matter, since Walt himself had suggested the boy, previously a messenger in his office, for the job. The vice president, taking his cue from the boss, had hired the young man on the spot. Now the executive was telling Disney, “The kid is beating up all your guests. We have to fire him.”
But Walt’s response, from behind closed doors, took the vice president by surprise. The boss was upset, to be sure, but his anger was directed toward the executive for his failure to train the boy to deliver the “good show.” The youngster was only trying to do his job in the best way he knew how, Walt reasoned. The fault lay with Disney management for not making sure the boy understood what was expected of him.
The incident, which had been forgotten until it was recounted by the then-retired vice president at a celebration honoring the little red-haired boy for his 30 years of service to the company, illustrates the underlying belief that led to the evolution of Disney University into a world-class training program. Because Walt Disney believed so strongly in a company’s responsibility for training its employees, students at Disney U now receive a complete orientation called Traditions, which includes an explanation of the company’s values and traditions, on-the-job training, and procedures for advancement.
As the story suggests, Walt Disney understood the detrimental effects that the sink-or-swim mentality can have on the workplace. Under this approach, which unfortunately is prevalent at far too many companies today, people are thrown into new jobs and left to discover the rip tides on their own—hopefully before they are dragged under by them. If someone is deemed worthy of being in your employ, why not take the time to pilot him or her through dangerous currents? After all, if you buy a $30,000 piece of equipment, you would likely follow the manufacturer’s break-in procedure.
Consider an orientation program as the recommended break-in procedure for new employees. Drawing on the expertise of its veterans, Disney designates trainers in each department to oversee and guide the work of new cast members. Front-line employees at Disney also serve as facilitators in some training sessions, sharing their on-the-job experiences with newcomers. Believing the adage that “to teach is to learn twice,” Disney thus accomplishes the dual goal of instructing new staffers while reinforcing company values and traditions among old hands. Such contact with senior staffers also makes clear to new cast members that opportunities for advancement are available.
But perhaps the thing that most distinguishes the Disney training approach is its initial concentration on making each new employee feel as if his or her efforts will make a real difference to the company as a whole. As the head of training and development at Disney University says, “If we want new cast members to deliver Disney, that is, to exceed people’s expectations, then for those first few days they’re with us, our new people better feel that the company believes the same about them.”55
New employees who are thoroughly grounded in what is expected of them and who believe that the company has confidence in their abilities will gain an amazing degree of self-assurance. Consequently, they will do their jobs much better right from the start, increasing their value to their employers.
What Kind of Training?
A few years back, Training magazine estimated that $48 billion was being spent annually on the training of 47.2 million employees who put in 1.5 billion hours on professional development. That’s a lot of money and a lot of people, so it sounds pretty impressive until you begin to scrutinize the numbers carefully. The 47.2 million employees constituted only 37 percent of the workforce in the United States, while 54 percent of the money spent was allocated to training managerial candidates, who make up about 10 percent of the workforce. That’s not such a splendid picture after all, and it gives rise to a number of questions:
Are we training the right people?
Are we getting the results we need to be competitive?
Is standard training enough?
What kind of training should be offered?
First and foremost, we must start training all employees, not just the professional managers. That many companies fail to grasp the urgency of implementing widespread training was brought home to us in our work with a client. This company had agreed to sponsor a program designed to teach both management and union employees how to improve performance. At the end of the third day, a mid-level manager came to us and said, “Why are you teaching these union employees management techniques?”
Somewhat taken aback by the question, we explained that we firmly believe that customer focus has to be everybody’s job, but especially the front-line workers’. The misconception that only an elite group need be privy to a company’s customer-focused mission, goals, and strategy presents a serious danger to any organization that buys into it. Without a doubt, such shortsightedness jeopardizes the company’s achievement of its goals. For one thing, it deprives a company of a vast source of talent and ideas, and for another, it encourages a division among staff members that can only damage the organization.
To include everyone in training is a crucial first step, but to ensure that true learning will take place, an organization must also give every employee in a focused work environment an opportunity to use what has been taught. Lasting knowledge is acquired when on-the-job experience is used to reinforce what has been taught in the classroom.
Unfortunately, a great many companies employ the “spray and pray” method of training. That is, they spray training on people, then pray that it gets absorbed. That kind of slapdash approach is at odds with what we call the Performance Learning Cycle, illustrated in Figure 8-1, in which the depth of training is as important as the breadth. So all companies must ask themselves, “Are we giving our employees enough of the right kind of training?” That means providing employees with the techniques they need to achieve the desired customer-focused results and then following up with a hands-on situation that offers a chance to practice the ideas and learn from experience what works and what doesn’t, all under the watchful eye of a veteran coach.
Figure 8-1. Performance learning cycle
The next phases of the Performance Learning Cycle, after training and practice, are the measurement of achievement and its timely recognition. It almost goes without saying that recognizing and applauding an employee’s contribution are critical to reinforcing the desired behavior. Without some expression of appreciation, the enthusiasm and hard work required for further improvement are likely to diminish. But someone who is commended for an achievement usually responds by producing even better results. Ultimately, the employer can expect that the results will translate into cost savings, quality improvements, reductions in cycle times, and strengthened customer relationships.
Appreciation means different things to different people, so how an organization chooses to recognize achievement depends on the circumstances involved and the culture of the organization. Disney uses various kinds of celebrations, service pins, distinguished service citations, and other internal excellence awards. A personal word of acknowledgment from a respected leader can go a long way; or small team rewards can help build morale—perhaps dinner at a restaurant or an informal office party. Monetary bonuses are always appropriate, of course, but when cash awards are not feasible, look for other forms of recognition.
When the newly learned skills are reinforced with coaching, practice, and recognition, they become habits; habits that will move your company steadily along the path of improvement. Moreover, a company that embraces employee training as an essential investment in its future will soon see that continuing education enhances the odds for sustained long-term success. (See Figure 8-2.)
To reap the optimum benefits of any training program, however, the entire company must be committed to it, with the main push coming from the top. When it becomes clear that top management firmly supports the change effort, impressive results will follow.
When we first began to work with Plumbing & Industrial Supply, for example, the 38-member company had been trying for some time to implement a customer-focused culture, but with minimal success. Among other things, multiple-day Dream Retreats had been held to teach top management the new concepts, after which team members were supposed to relay what they had learned to the lower-level employees. Daily responsibilities required that the implementation be done piecemeal.
Our initial employee survey turned up a telling and disturbing attitude. The typical comment went something like this: “If the program is so important, then how come we’re not really trained to do it? We’re only getting a couple of hour-long sessions while management goes off for days.” The snail’s pace of implementation was clearly taking a toll.
Although we relayed the findings to management, we recognized that the company’s small size was at the heart of the problem. Whereas a large company can afford to take groups of people off on retreat for three days without disrupting operations, that is not the case at a small company. So we suggested to the president that the training program be conducted on weekends. “Let people take one day off and then ask them to work overtime on Saturday or Sunday.”
But the president had another solution: “There is no reason why you can’t have three sessions of 10 or 12 people, and we [management] can take over their jobs while they are out. We can load trucks. We can drive their routes. It would probably be good for us to get back to the nitty-gritty jobs while the others are off being trained.”56
Besides being an excellent sign of top-level commitment to the change program, the president’s suggestion helped repair the breach that had opened between management and the workers, who had felt they were being treated like second-class citizens not worthy of training. Within a short time, the customer-centric culture had permeated the organization.
Make Excellence a Habit
The goal of learning is to develop positive habits that benefit individuals and organizations. When learning a foreign language, for example—say, Spanish—first a pupil studies to get good enough to understand and be understood in a social situation. That is a useful but limited skill. If that person goes to live in a Spanish-speaking country, his or her limited skill will at first prove inadequate for new-found needs. The language has to become like a habit, an involuntary reaction, before the student will be fully comfortable with it, but that won’t happen until she or he has practiced, and then practiced some more.
Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do … excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”57 If this is so, organizations that wish to pursue superior performance at all levels must work to ensure that the characteristics that define excellence are practiced, and then practiced some more, until they, too, become an involuntary reaction.
We believe that proper habits grow from obtaining knowledge, attitude, and skills. Knowledge is understanding what, how, and why we need to do something. Skill is applying that knowledge in a practical situation. Attitude is the desire to transform our knowledge into skills and, ultimately, into a habit. A company that claims the corporate value of excellence must therefore establish a specific ongoing process to transmit knowledge and, in turn, improve employees’ skills and attitudes.
But for such an effort to produce the desired results, a company must understand that the customer drives the process. Many times, we have encountered training programs for which an organization’s human resources department has developed extensive in-depth material that neglects to mention the importance of the external customer. Employees are trained to refine their own skills and perhaps to take care of the needs of internal customers, but the raison d’être, the external customer who provides the revenues that support the company’s existence, is ignored.
Knowledge of customer needs and expectations can be taught, but not attitude or motivation. These elements are transmitted through the behavioral patterns of employees and are part of the values and sense of mission that pervade the workplace. In fact, Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl defines attitude as “our response to what we have experienced.”58 The process is summarized in Figure 8-3. That is why employee training becomes far more effective when old-timers, who can become role models as well as instructors, are involved. Their behaviors provide signals to new employees as to the company’s underlying culture.
Illinois Power, which invested thought, money, and effort in developing a training program that supports its cultural transformation, exemplifies a company that has reaped the rewards of an organization-wide commitment to customer-focused training.
As an initial step in the implementation, we instituted an intensive training program that included a three-day Dream Retreat and a complete immersion in the concepts of a customer-centric culture. The aim was to improve team-work, customer service, and employee empowerment. In one small example, line workers were allowed to rearrange work schedules to allocate time more efficiently. By making a point of training its employees in a “customer first” approach, Illinois Power instigated a remarkable turnaround throughout the company. Capping the utility’s accomplishment was its 1991 receipt of its industry’s most prestigious tribute, the Edison Award.
Another top-flight company that has achieved enviable results with its training initiatives is Motorola Inc., a Fortune 100 global communications leader. In the l980s, Motorola pioneered Six Sigma, a quality and business improvement methodology that is still revolutionizing industry. Two decades later, in 2002, Motorola achieved the unique distinction of receiving the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for a second time. Motorola became the only company in the world to have received this award twice, having won it earlier in 1988. Motorola is still finding ways to reinvent itself using Six Sigma (a registered trademark of the company), and Motorola University offers Six Sigma Certification and Six Sigma consulting and training services to organizations throughout the world.
At a time when management became increasingly aware that Japanese manufacturers were invading the company’s markets with considerable success, Motorola was by no means in bad shape (profit improvement hovered between 5 and 10 percent per year). In 1981, Motorola’s CEO announced an ambitious five-year strategy designed to improve process, product, and sales. The measures put in motion included setting a strategic goal for quality (target of no more than 3.4 defects per million products); instituting performance rewards (savings stemming from team recommendations shared as bonuses); initiating senior management reviews (constant reinvigoration of quality programs with results passing through the entire organization); and, most important, training employees (40 percent of training one year was devoted to quality matters). The success of this creative combination propelled Motorola to new heights. Over the past four years, Motorola Inc. beat the S&P 500 by 40 percent, and in their 18 years of implementing Six Sigma, the company has documented over $17 billion in savings. Additionally, Motorola University has helped companies from Black and Decker to Toshiba reap dramatic rewards. This is a great lesson in practicing what you preach!
Beware the Performance Appraisal
One of the favorite devices of human resources departments is the performance appraisal. These appraisals have become something of a constitutionally mandated fact of business management. We believe that these appraisals are, in truth, harmful to morale and unnecessarily costly for an organization to administer. Let us explain.
A few years ago, we asked the CEO of a major company what he considered to be his company’s greatest asset. “My employees,” he answered without hesitation. “I make certain that we hire the best possible people for the job.” He then went on to explain his hiring policy, from the search process to the extensive interviewing of a candidate, the personality testing and, finally, the careful checking of references. It was an impressive list.
He concluded by saying, “My most important job is to make sure that my company is made up of winners.”
When we asked him further about the company’s performance appraisal system, he assured us that it, too, was carefully structured. Once a year, every employee was evaluated in depth by a supervisor, and the CEO was proud to report that supervisors spent a considerable amount of time and thought on performance appraisals.
Later on, we had the opportunity to chat with the supervisors and employees of the company. When we asked about performance appraisals, everyone, without exception, agreed that (1) performance appraisals were a waste of time; (2) people dreaded the entire ritual; (3) the process did not result in behavioral change; and (4) the outcome was influenced by the recentness of performance.
In the course of a year, we talk to hundreds of people, and the reaction to performance appraisals is universally negative. They are described as one of the biggest barriers to service and quality improvements. Here’s why. Most people believe that they are above-average performers. When their appraisal evaluation rates them as average or below, they feel discouraged and misunderstood, and the quality of their work often suffers.
As the late W. Edwards Deming, considered the architect of total quality management, once described it:
The effects are devastating. Such a system substitutes short-term performance for long-term planning, wrecks teamwork, and nurtures rivalry. It builds fear and leaves people bitter or despondent, unfit for work for weeks after receipt of the rating.59
Performance appraisals are highly subjective; they depend on the evaluator’s personal attitudes. Suppose, for instance, that an employee has missed two days of work in the previous year. One supervisor might give relatively great weight to the absences, especially if the missed days have been recent, and rate the employee as “average,” while another supervisor might completely ignore the missed days and assign an “excellent” rating.
Other factors, too, enter into the assessment of a worker, and they are often situations over which the individual has no control. For example, an employee may have the necessary education for a job and be a hard worker to boot, but further on-the-job training may be needed for the person to perform at the desired level. Some people are hired for jobs for which they do not have the appropriate education; others are evaluated on results that are heavily dependent on factors over which they have no control. Effort and commitment are really the only parts of the equation over which an employee has complete control, but it is impossible to isolate the effects of these factors.
In the final analysis, performance reviews may tempt a worker to try to please the boss at the expense of either fellow workers or, more importantly, the customer. Such efforts can undermine teamwork as well as job performance.
There Is a Better Way
What are the alternatives to traditional performance appraisals? We help companies devise individual development plans that foster an environment of understanding and a commitment to personal growth. If you think about it, the word development sends a much more positive message within a company than does the term appraisal. A company that wants its workforce to be productive—and what company doesn’t?—will find that individual development plans are more conducive to achieving that goal.
When creating personal development plans, the first requirement is that each employee understand the company’s vision and its values and how they relate to the individual’s responsibilities. Job scope and guidelines for performance must be clarified. Everyone from the mailroom employee—whose speedy and accurate job performance precludes stopping to chat at every office—to the middle manager—whose in-box should be emptied expeditiously—must understand his or her part in the process. It should be made clear that one person’s failure to carry out assigned duties has an impact on the whole process and that the organization is only as strong as its weakest link.
One of our clients took an interesting approach to developing guidelines for employees. Rather than defining procedures, the company identified areas of known failure, ideas that had been tried in the past without success. Other than these particular paths, employees were free to exercise their own initiative in order to obtain desired results. Having an understanding of how and why something failed in the past enabled the employees to accomplish their goals more efficiently. With this example in mind, we encourage our clients to go heavy on guidelines and light on procedures, particularly when training employees.
A second imperative for setting up effective development plans is that desired outcomes be jointly defined by management and employees. Avoid specifying methods and means. Doing so only leads to undesirable and unproductive micromanagement. What’s more, tightly prescribed approaches give employees a built-in excuse for failure; for example, “I did what you told me to do, so it’s not my fault if something went wrong.” Often a simple example of what quality output looks like is the best motivator. At the moment of understanding, all those necessary measurable objectives and expected results will make sense to them.
At Disneyland, Jungle Cruise Boat cast members are given a script that suggests telling certain jokes but still allows cruise leaders to inject their own personalities into the performance. By giving cast members guidelines rather than dictates with prescribed expectations for the outcome, The Walt Disney Company is encouraging employees to exercise good judgment, which is a hallmark of empowerment.
A third area of importance in designing individual development plans is an evaluation of processes. According to sociologist Kurt Lewin, effectively changing behavior requires consideration of the environment and the process as well as the person. “Behavior,” he observed, “is a function of the person times the environment.”60
An experience with a former client illustrates the validity of Lewin’s observation. The company, which made automobile engine parts, had a milling plant staffed by good but not exceptional workers. Everything went along fine most of the time, but occasionally, product quality levels would drop into the unacceptable range for no apparent reason. During one of these dips, the company’s human resources department decided that the plant workers’ attitude was at fault. So HR launched a comprehensive training program in interpersonal relationships. Alas, the quality levels did not change. Why? Because this approach wrongly assumed that change comes solely from the individual. In this particular case, further investigation revealed that the quality discrepancies were the result of problems at the raw materials supplier. Deming validates Lewin’s concept. He once stated that more than 85 percent of the quality and productivity problems in the United States are the result of the process. Therefore, it is imperative that process improvements be discussed between management and employees. Process improvements may also require changes in management policy. Management needs to assume a proactive role by asking the following questions:
What do you need from management to reach your objectives?
How can we both achieve great success?
How can we remove barriers to success?
Direct face-to-face discussion is key to evaluating the process correctly; contact via memos or e-mail will not ensure that the message is heard and absorbed on both ends. What’s more, this dialogue must be ongoing to support continuous improvement.
Finally, personal development plans must include a determination of the positive and negative consequences associated with meeting or not meeting the desired results.
Although the plans should be revisited approximately every six months, or at the least on an annual basis, this activity is not a replacement for regular feedback. We encourage our clients to employ a 360-degree feedback system that constantly updates performance information. Immediate feedback provides the basis for achieving and maintaining excellence because it allows an organization to customize individual development plans. When everyone is helped to achieve personal bests (as described in Chapter 3, these must be aligned with the overall vision of the organization), the organization’s overall performance improves dramatically.
As should be obvious by now, an organization’s management cannot afford simply to say to new employees, “Here’s what we expect of you. Now go to it.” A company must be prepared to work with new employees and guide them until they become familiar with their responsibilities and the organization’s culture. The former manager of customer satisfaction at Disney summed up the reasons for Disney’s success this way:
Recruit the right people, train them, continually communicate with them, ask their opinions, involve them, recognize them, and celebrate with them. If you show respect for their opinions and involvement, they will be proud of what they do and they’ll deliver quality service.61
Nothing more need be said. With all employees primed to deliver, we will take a look next at the role proper planning plays in bringing dreams to fruition.
Questions to Ask
Do you support individual development planning rather than the demoralizing performance appraisal?
Do you verbalize and demonstrate to employees that you value their partnership in creating plans for their own self-development?
Are you providing training to the right people in the organization?
Do you provide training that is tailored to the needs of your employees?
Do you celebrate the contributions of employees, even when they are not exactly in line with management’s thinking?
Do your managers coach employees to reinforce important concepts after they have been formally trained?
Actions to Take
Ask for feedback from employees on the value of specific organizational training that they attend.
Concentrate training efforts on those who need skill development rather than on those who desire training as a company perk.
Schedule follow-up sessions with employees to reinforce skills learned in a formal training environment.
Ask employees to engage in regular 360-degree evaluations.
Institute development plans in place of performance appraisals. Work in partnership with employees to create their own plans.
Team Appreciation at Its Best
All the members of the Global No-Frost team were experts in their fields, but many were philosophically far removed from a culture that endorses teamwork. It isn’t easy, we have discovered in our consulting work, for people who are used to working within a hierarchical, conservative structure to adjust to a completely different work environment. Describing his experiences throughout the project, Jerry said, “I could see people’s expectations grow and grow and grow. They were pushing themselves on all levels.” In the end, people said that they had never felt so fulfilled, so satisfied by any job.
One situation that Jerry faced involved the cultural differences between team members. Even though everyone had a sense of commonality about the work, there were nevertheless differences of behavior and attitude. So we initiated another two-day training session for the team and called in two professional advisors to enlighten us about national differences. They warned the non-Americans that Americans could be brash, sarcastic, and loud. Then they warned Americans that Indians and other Asians often hold back, watching and waiting for signals from their superiors before they contribute anything. On the other hand, Brazilians, they said, can be argumentative and noisy. Gradually, we established what you might call cultural assimilation, a trained awareness and respect for national differences. It was still a gradual process, but knowing what to expect from another member often smoothed the way. It kept people from being offended and created an empathy and appreciation of others that continued to grow throughout the process.
Jerry also felt that he didn’t want his team members to know each other only on a nine-to-five basis. To foster the sense of a team identity, he organized after-work events. “Fairly early on, we developed a work hard and play hard environment,” he explains, “lots of parties involving families. We had barbecues, cookouts, and trips to local fairs.”
There were more formal celebrations, too, when a milestone was met, but these were on company time and at company expense. The impromptu gatherings were more family affairs and really served to establish cross-cultural bonds.
Our Featured Organization: Men’s Wearhouse
SERVANT LEADERSHIP IN ACTION
Most retailers don’t put training on their “to do” list, and when people fail to perform, they’re sent packing. Why bother developing people, when we can pay people with less experience less money and when we know there are people on the street that we can hire? some may ask. George Zimmer, however, and his team at Men’s Wearhouse, North America’s largest specialty retailer of men’s tailored clothing and business attire, know why this thinking is short-sighted.
George has invested years of tending to his culture where “Servant Leadership” rules. This practical philosophy of motivating, supporting, and inspiring (all words incorporated into Men’s Wearhouse mission statement) is the foundation for all of the company’s training programs. Servant Leadership at Men’s Wearhouse is about nurturing people and training them to become the best they can be: “self-actualized” (another word from Men’s Wearhouse mission statement). “It’s about how much you impact the people below you, not impress the people above you,” Shlomo Maor, associate vice president of training told us.62 Based on teachings of the late Robert Greenleaf who coined and defined the concept in the 1970s, the essence of Servant Leadership is the adoption of persuasive rather than manipulative power. Since leaders must be “authentic” in the mind of George Zimmer, the entire Men’s Wearhouse culture has become a caring and benevolent one where leaders know that their business is more about people than about men’s clothing.
Seeking out individuals who like other people, who are optimistic, who have passion, and who are trainable is much more important to the leadership of Men’s Wearhouse than finding folks with stellar resumes. In fact, many employees of the company are ones who were viewed as failures in their former work lives. Potential new hires who arrive here quickly discover they don’t need to be afraid or ashamed of making mistakes. The focus at Men’s Wearhouse is to celebrate successes and mistakes, learn from them, and move on. And, most of all, employees know that this is a place where, like Four Seasons, The Golden Rule is an implicit working principle throughout the organization. “If we take care of them, and that means training and nurturing them, they will take care of the customers,” Eric Anderson, director of training, told us in our interview with him.63 If an employee isn’t performing well in the organization, the reaction of Men’s Wearhouse leadership is to blame themselves and figure out a way to achieve a win for the employee and the company.
Training is an integral part of the fabric of this uncommonly paternal organization. There are no training budgets and no training measurements. Training is happening all the time, at every level, both formally and informally. Everyone, from senior-level staff to sales associates in the over 500 stores, must be committed to practicing the skills that will help them and their fellow team members grow and excel.
One could debate whether or not it’s possible to train people to possess “emotional intelligence” (admittedly an overused term according to Eric Anderson), but it is a coveted trait of salespeople at Men’s Wearhouse. It’s about developing sensitivity to others, and honing a skill for “reading” the customer.
The formal training and development here affords employees numerous opportunities to learn in a classroom environment, some 40 hours per year. Upon their arrival at Men’s Wearhouse, new Wardrobe Consultants typically receive two days of new-hire training by their district managers. The goal is to immerse employees immediately in the culture and the team philosophy. The next step is out-of-store training, Suits High, a more specific regimen that takes place after two to eight weeks on the job.
But the biggest and most anticipated learning experience of all is yet to come. Suits U (officially Suits University) is a week reminiscent of leaving home for the first time or going off to begin college. And, for some Wardrobe Consultants, being on a plane for the first time in their lives is an experience they will remember forever. The week-long training is filled with energizing classroom activities, and vacation-like fun takes place on a beach in California. This perfect mix of education and team-building is exclusively for employees approaching their one-year employment anniversary.
And they are about ready to meet the man of the hour, Men’s Wearhouse’s legendary and masterful teacher, Shlomo Maor. We were lucky enough to witness Shlomo in action with a mesmerized group of students of Suits U at the Fremont, California, corporate offices. These students were “wowed” by a stage play depicting the fine art of selling acted out by the man who once broke all company sales records in his Men’s Wearhouse years in the field. On this very first day of training, Shlomo makes disciples out of all who enter his sanctum. “Shlomo has uncovered specific principles of retail that seem so obvious that you wonder why every company wouldn’t do it, but few are,” remarked Eric Anderson.63
How Shlomo Maor communicates those principles is the stuff of corporate legends. One minute he is bellowing about the importance of timing when greeting the customer: “Do you think you should stand by the door, and after the customer has spent 45 minutes driving in his car, just jump into his face and ask, ‘May I help you?’ No. That’s wrong.” To Shlomo, retail is theater, and the greeting is the opening action. He alerts his students to the fact that the best salespeople set the stage before they utter a word to the customer. Then all at once, Shlomo becomes the reverent pastor in keeping with the Servant Leadership model. He describes the synergistic environment, that the whole is always greater than the sum of any group of individuals. Participants hear over and over again that at Men’s Wearhouse there is no such thing as a zero-sum game, where someone wins and someone loses. In the end, he reminds them that the ultimate goal is for the company and the employee and the customer to win. History has proven that countless more empires have been destroyed from within than from the outside. After witnessing the interaction of Suits U students with Shlomo, and with one another, it is almost impossible to believe that this empire could topple!
Clearly, the best predictor of a successful Men’s Wearhouse store is not a great salesperson, but rather a successful team. Moreover, the company goes all out to motivate and reward team performance by staging frequent contests and linking bonus targets to team goals. There are volume bonuses on sales, plus weekly and monthly bonuses based on store performance. Eric Anderson is convinced that achieving the goal of working collegially in teams at Men’s Wearhouse is paramount to the success of the entire team of nearly 8,000 employees. And to add certainty to this, he states with conviction, “Ours is a culture where training will never finish last.”