A better place to start the year
Posted on 03. Jan, 2012 by Adrian in Blog, Orange
A few weeks ago Greg Link sent me a galley copy of his new book with Stephen M. R. Covey called Smart Trust (to publish Jan. 10, 2012, from Free Press). As a fan of Covey’s previous book The Speed of Trust, I read this excellent new work over the holidays.
In the book, PepsiCo’s CEO Indra Nooyi told the writers that assuming good intent in others builds trust. After all, Google’s assumption of good employee intent has led to its 20 percent time rule—giving programmers one day a week to work on pet projects—and that has led to many of the company’s most profitable products.
While of course the authors wouldn’t recommend you eliminate analysis in all your business relationships, instead they suggest suspending distrust as the starting point. You’ll find assuming positive intent creates a virtuous, upward cycle of trust and confidence.
For instance, Nooyi said of her executive team, “I know every one of them wants me to succeed.” This is certainly not typical in most low-trust organizations we visit, where the CEO has to look over his shoulder to see who is gunning for his/her job or jockeying for position.
Ask yourself, are you as fortunate as Nooyi? Do all your direct reports want you to succeed? If not, what are you doing to turn that dynamic around?
Because Nooyi assumes positive intent and freely extends trust to the members of her team, they reciprocate in kind. One fun trust-building behavior that extends out of Nooyi’s assumption is her practice of sending letters to the parents of members of her team. She said, “These parents have never gotten a report card on their kids since the kids were in school, and how here they are in their 40s and 50s. These parents need to hear about all the wonderful things their kids are doing.”
Talk about a leader who is Thinking Orange!
And here’s a fun offer from the authors: If you buy their book next week–between Jan. 9-12–you can attend a free Smart Trust telecast, an hour on the new content with the authors. Simply go to goo.gl/HXLQr after you buy the book and register.
About Adrian Gostick
Adrian Gostick is a global thought leader on workplace strategy and the author of several successful books on employee engagement. The Carrot Principle by Simon & Schuster has been a regular New York Times bestseller, and 24-Carrot Manager has been called a “must read for modern-day managers” by Larry King of CNN. His latest book, The Orange Revolution, was a #1 Wall Street Journal bestseller."
The Carrot Principle
Human performance accelerated? Is this book about the work place or the human race?
With breakthrough research of 200,000 people over ten years from The Jackson Organization, and massive, new global data collected by Towers Perrin, The Carrot Principle demonstrates how constructive praise and meaningful rewards powerfully motivates people from every walk of life and inspires employees to excel, engage, and bring their best to work every day.
The Orange Revolution
Following the enormous popularity of their bestselling The Carrot Principle, Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton return with a groundbreaking guide to building high-performance teams. The powerful research reported inThe Orange Revolution reveals that the true driver of exceptional success for great companies is not a genius CEO. Breakthrough success is driven by a particular breed of breakthrough team that generates its own momentum.
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